The Cloister and the Garden: Gendered Images of Religious Life from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Abstract

This chapter compares the Speculum virginum to the De claustro animae [Cloister of the Soul] of Hugh of Fouilloy, a treatise addressed to male religious, and the anonymous De modo bene vivendi [On the Manner of Living Well] , addressed to a religious woman but also extant in a version adapted to religious men. It observes that the Speculum offers an essentially solitary model of the religious life, unlike the De claustro animae , which employs much more public imagery. The contrast between these two treatises illustrates the gendered quality of theorizing about the religious life. By contrast, the De modo bene vivendi , a treatise influenced in part by the Speculum , has much less emphasis on virginity and on bridal imagery.This suggests that the Speculum virginum did not provide the only way in which monks could think about the religious life. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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