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[In historical studies,
prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a
historical group, whose individual biographies may be largely
untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple
career-line analysis. The use and development of prosopography,
therefore, is closely connected to the problem of scarcity of historical
data. For more information see the guide at:
http://prosopography.modhist.ox.ac.uk/images/01%20verboven%20pdf.pdf]
John Cunningham remarked that medieval Scottish convents were shrouded
in mystery but had power in “molding the piety of the time [yet were]
too secret in their operation to be traced.” It must be this secrecy
that has kept scholars away from the subject of Scottish convents as to
date, no one has undertaken a complete study to assist in an
appreciation of female monastic establishments and the women who lived
in them. There are many reasons why this may be the case. First, many
monastic historians in general consider female monastic houses to be
unimportant or uninteresting in the overall history of a particular
order or the movement as a whole. Secondly, excuses have been made that
female houses were too poor, had scanty resources, and were “too
different” from their male counterparts to render them important enough
to study. Faced with these comments from historians it is no wonder that
no study of female monasticism in Scotland has been attempted.
What this paper intends to give is a perspective on how female
monasticism has been studied in the past, how it has changed and evolved
and how it may be possible to study female monasticism in Scotland based
on new methods or approaches. Finally, by using these new methods, I
hope to show that we can leam something about the convents of Scotland,
especially those women who became nuns and the importance these convents
may have had in their community.
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Looking for Nuns here (pdf) |
