Female Dominican Identities (1200-1500)

Dominican nuns were canonically called moniales ordinis Sancti Augustini sub cura et secundum instituta fratrum praedicatorum viventes. This complex denomination shows how weak could be the institutional link between dominican friars and « dominican » nuns. In some communities indeed (those founded on the « Prouille » model), nuns were permanently submitted to the cura, both spiritual and temporal, of a little community of friars who lived within the monastery. However, in most of the Dominican monasteries, friars were not permanently present. Moreover, the 1267 bull Affectu sincero allowed the friars not to celebrate mass nor confessions for nuns, and to appoint secular chaplains to replace them. What was, then, the « dominican » identity of such communities of women, who were supposed to lead a classic monastic life under the guidance of secular chaplains ? On the other hand, can we consider that the mulieres reliogiosae who, like Catherine of Siena, were not officially placed under the spiritual cura of the Preachers but who were actually part of their cura, were not « dominican »? During the XIIIth century indeed, Dominic’s order faced a great dilemma, under the pression of religious women : how could women be part of the Order of Preachers ? Women could simply not be preachers. Franciscan friars tackled the same kind of problem : could religious women be poor ? In both cases, Papacy proposed solutions which forced, on the one hand, the friars to accept the cura of the nuns and which led, on the other hand, religious women to renounce a great part of their ideal (Affectu sincero, 1267 ; the new rule of Urban IV for clarissan nuns, 1263). The official existence of « dominican » nuns then has to be considered much more as a result of the papal policy towards religious women than as a real creation of the Order. I argue indeed that from Prouille (1206) to the Observance (XVth century) dominican friars did not consider nuns and other women as part of their Order, but rather as part of their mission to convert people : as St Dominic himself had shown, a woman who embraced regular life could be considered as a converted one.