PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

This seminar presentation draws on material from the final chapter of my forthcoming book, In Christ’s Stead: Benedictine Women’s Ministries in England, 900–1225. It analyzes the portraits of women religious as exemplary intercessors rendered in saints’ lives, miracle collections, manuscript illuminations, and seal images produced in the late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods. All of the portraits examined were ultimately fashioned by male writers, painters, and engravers, but many still bear the marks of the women who inspired, commissioned, and shaped their fashioning. This presentation highlights the collaborations between artists and patrons and interrogates the internal motivations and external contingencies directing their efforts: memorializing the past, modeling prescribed practices, promoting the cults of saintly foremothers and the intercessory powers of the present community, and soliciting donors and new members. The very survival of a monastic house depended on the spiritual prestige it could claim over neighboring religious communities. Claims to prayers answered and miracles performed could persuade donors of means to grant gifts of land, money, and other material resources, but these claims had to be proven and publicized by oral and written testimonies and physical evidence in order to attract sufficient attention and patronage. And so captivating portraits of intercessors had to be fashioned.