Private life and private property in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 331
Attitude of ecclesiastical authorities 336
The movement for the enclosure of nuns 343
Attempts to enforce enclosure in England 346
Attempts to regulate and restrict the emergence of nuns from their houses 353
The usual pretexts for breaking enclosure: (1) illness 361 (2) to enter a stricter rule 363 (3) convent business 367 (4) ceremonies, processions, funerals 368 (5) pilgrimages 371 (6) visits to friends 376 (7) short walks, field work 381
The nuns wander freely about in the world 385
Visitors in the cloister are another side of the enclosure problem 394
The scholars of Oxford and Cambridge and the neighbouring nunneries 395
Regulations to govern the entrance of seculars into nunneries: (1) certain persons not to be admitted 401 (2) certain parts of the house and certain hours forbidden 402 (3) unsuccessful attempts to regulate the reception of boarders 409
The strange tale of Sir John Arundel's outrage on a nunnery 429
The sack of Origny in _Raoul de Cambrai_ 432
Sources of evidence for the moral state of the English nunneries 439
Disorder in two small houses, Cannington (1351) and Easebourne (1478) 452
Disorder in the great abbeys of Amesbury and Godstow 454
Moral state of the nunneries in the diocese of Lincoln at two periods 456
Attempted statistical estimate of cases of immorality in Lincoln (1430-50), Norwich (1514) and Chichester (1478, 1524) dioceses 460
Reform by external authorities: (1) a parent house 478 (2) the chapter general of the order 481 (3) the bishop of the diocese 482
The episcopal visitation and injunctions 483
How far was this control adequate? (1) concealment of faults 488 (2) visitation too infrequent 490 (3) difficulty of enforcing injunctions 492
Value of visitation documents to the historian 493
CHAPTER XIII. THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Autobiographies and biographies of nuns 500
Popular poetry (_chansons de nonnes_) 502
Popular stories (_fabliaux_, _exempla_) 515
I. ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE TEXT: A. The daily fare of Barking Abbey 563 B. School children in nunneries 568 C. Nunnery disputes 581 D. Gay clothes 585 E. Convent pets in literature 588 F. The moral state of Littlemore Priory in the sixteenth century 595 G. The moral state of the Yorkshire nunneries in the first half of the fourteenth century 597 H. The disappearance or suppression of eight nunneries prior to 1535 602 I. _Chansons de Nonnes_ 604 J. The theme of the nun in love in medieval popular literature 622 K. Nuns in the _Dialogus Miraculorum_ of Caesarius of Heisterbach 627