Anglo -Saxon religious women who went to the continent: group study

In the seventh and eighth centuries two groups of Anglo-Saxon religious women left England and went to the Continent. The first group were those about whom Bede wrote in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (III.8) where he claimed that many Anglo-Saxons, both men and women, went to convents on the Continent to practice the monastic life when there were few convents yet in England. These women mostly went to the monasteries at Brie, Chelles, and Andelys-sur-Seine in Francia. A second group of Anglo-Saxon religious women went to the Continent in the mid-eighth century in support of the missionary work of Boniface of Mainz and his fellow monks, as they worked for the conversion of the Germanic peoples across the Rhine. Each individual woman, from both groups, left behind some information---some a great deal and others only a few details---about the religious houses with which she was associated, her own religious activities and, most importantly for this study, her kin and their relationships with her. Overall, it is evident that secular kinship was acknowledged and maintained within the religious life, and that the presence of kin was a strong factor in determining which convent on the Continent a woman might enter. The Continental convents of Brie and Chelles had strong attachments to Anglo-Saxon England, and an Anglo-Saxon religious woman might reside in a convent with her aunt, sister or niece. Further, most if not all of the women working in the Boniface missionary effort were related to Boniface, his monks or each other. Even while living within the familia Christi, loneliness must have been an ever-present part of the lives of these women in foreign lands, and the presence of kin helped to ameliorate that loneliness. This work provides a point of reference for a study of kinship within the Anglo-Saxon church and for a larger project that will eventually give us a better understanding of kinship in Anglo-Saxon England and how the religious woman functioned within it.