exile and linguistic encounter: early modern english ......language barriers sheds new light on...

Exile and Linguistic Encounter: Early ModernEnglish Convents in the Low Countries and France

EMILIE K. M. MURPHY, Univer s i t y o f York

The history of religious migration and experience of exile in the early modern period has received agreat deal of attention in recent years. Neglected within this scholarship, however, is sustaineddiscussion of linguistic encounter within these often fraught transcultural and transnationalinteractions. This article breaks new ground by exploring the linguistic experiences of religious exilesin English convents founded in the Low Countries. Most women within English communities in exilewere linguistically challenged; focusing on the creative ways these women subsequently negotiatedlanguage barriers sheds new light on female language acquisition and encounter during this period.

INTRODUCTION

ON 7 APRIL 1623, a Benedictine nun in the English convent in Brussels,Ursula Hewicke, wrote a heartfelt letter to Jacobus Boonen, the archbishopof Mechelen.1 She described the ongoing fierce and personal dispute betweenher abbess, Mary Percy, and their confessor, Robert Chambers, by which “theylose the authoritie due to them, and we living thus suspended.” Continuing,Hewicke emphasized how “many inconveniences would have bin avoydedthat have bin and are amongst us” if it had not been for “wanting languageto write or speake of to Superiours.” Closing, she explained: “In the lastVisitation I desired to make relation of a thing to the Vicar generall [deputyto the archbishop, and on this occasion the convent visitor] which I couldnot doe by any interpreter, because our Right Reverende Ladie [the abbess] . . .

The author would like to thank Caroline Bowden, Marie-Louise Coolahan, John Gallagher,Alisa van der Haar, and Victoria Van Hyning for their thoughtful and constructive commentson earlier drafts of this article. The research for this article was funded by the EuropeanResearch Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013 / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615545).

1 Archive of the Archdiocese of Mechelen, Regulieren Brussel, Engelse Nonnen (hereafterAAM RB EN), Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 7 April 1623. All lettersunfoliated.

Renaissance Quarterly 73 (2020): 132–64 © The Author(s) 2020. Published by the RenaissanceSociety of America.doi: 10.1017/rqx.2019.493

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had commaunded that we should not speake of it to any, but to herselfe andGhostlie fathers, under paine of mortal sinne; therefore I did make petition . . .that we might have meanes to learn french, that by this tyme I might have binable to write or speake it to your Lordship but now I can doe neither of them.”As a result, Hewicke’s letter was sent with the following instructions in Frenchon the address leaf: “I desire very humbly to have Mr Colford for the inter-preter.”2 Gabriel Colford was a layman and father of a fellow nun, and he faith-fully translated Hewicke’s letter, which was then circulated, alongside theEnglish original, to the archbishop.3 The translation contains several markingsindicating its reception by Boonen or one of his secretaries; notably, the line “tohave the means to learn French” (“d’avoir moyen d’apprendre francoise”) hasbeen underlined.

Hewicke’s letter was written during one of the most serious disputes ever toaffect the English convents in exile, and the controversies lasted until the latterhalf of the seventeenth century.4 The Brussels convent was under the spiritualjurisdiction of the archbishop of Mechelen, and their Statutes granted varyingamounts of authority to key officeholders who were subordinate to him.Alongside the abbess (who was elected by the convent and held her term forlife), the nuns were subject to the authority of various male superiors, namely:the convent’s visitor (who was appointed by the abbess and the convent, butthey were all to obey his orders), the ordinary confessor (appointed by the arch-bishop, and who regularly heard the nuns’ confessions), and extraordinary con-fessors (who could technically either be appointed by the archbishop or theabbess, but most were chosen by the abbess and heard confessions with her per-mission). Subject to multiple figures of authority, as Jaime Goodrich hasargued, the convent was “fertile ground for power struggles.”5

Hewicke’s complaint about the abbess restricting access to interpreters andtranslators, their use deemed a “mortal sin” because of the sensitive nature of theinformation that would have been given to them as a result, underlines the waythat language barriers in the Brussels convent were a major source of contentionduring this period of conflict. With these actions, the abbess was also activelyundermining the decrees enshrined in the convent’s Statutes, which explainedthat the nuns had the right to communicate privately with the bishop or the

2 “Je desire treshumblement d’avoir Monsieur Colford pour l’interpreteur.” All translationsare the author’s except where otherwise noted.

3 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 7 April 1623, trans.Gabriel Colford.

4 For more on the disputes see Murphy, 2019; Goodrich, 2016; Walker, 2008, 235–36;Walker, 2003, esp. 70–72, 134–47.

5 Goodrich, 2016, 96.

EXILE AND ENCOUNTER 133



visitor. This type of letter was to be kept secret from the rest of the community,including the abbess, who was responsible for reading any other mail sent orreceived.6 Percy was evidently highly concerned about knowledge of the com-munity’s disputes leaking beyond the cloister walls, and by preventing thewomen from using translators, she eliminated many of the nuns’ abilities tocommunicate with their non-English-speaking male superiors.7 As a result,only those who could speak other languages had the power to air their griev-ances, and those with only English could not. Ursula Hewicke’s letter demon-strates that significant linguistic concerns were ongoing in her community, andthe example illustrates several key issues that will be addressed in this article.How did multilingual culture shape daily life for English women in enclosedcommunities in France and the Low Countries? Was it common for exilednuns to feel linguistically challenged, and how were these issues overcome?What can responding to these questions reveal about cultures of translation,and about the linguistic experiences of religious migrants more broadly?

The history of religious migration has received significant attention in recentyears and scholars have attended to the multifaceted ways that exiles’ experi-ences were crucial to broader developments taking place within early modernsociety and culture.8 Neglected within this scholarship, however, is sustaineddiscussion of linguistic encounter within these often fraught transcultural andtransnational interactions. Histories of exile and refuge usually acknowledge thedisorienting effects of being in foreign lands “amidst people of foreign tongue,”but this is not developed further.9 Where languages are discussed, it is ofteneither in the context of missionaries learning local languages in order toChristianize indigenous societies and weaken or replace their traditional cul-tures, or in the context of particular language-speaking communities establish-ing their own “social and cultural enclaves amidst the local population.”10

Despite the richness of these analyses, when thinking about the way religiousmigration influenced people and places, it is striking to omit the reciprocitiesinherent in foreign-language encounter and exchange, and not to consider howthis shaped the everyday experience of exiles.

English convents in exile were founded explicitly for the preservation ofEnglish Catholicism, and foundation documents often contained requirements

6 [Grey], 1632b, 8–9.7 As well as restricting access to translators, there is also evidence that Percy attempted to

intercept and read many of the women’s letters. See Murphy, 2019.8 See Worthington; Janssen; Fehler et al.; Spohnholz and Waite; van der Linden; Terpstra;

Corens.9 Van der Linden, 8.10 Balint, 138.

RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY134 VOLUME LXXIII , NO. 1



that members should be English in origin.11 However, by focusing on the mul-tilingual experiences of exiled English nuns, this article supports current schol-arly efforts to correct research on the convents that has tended to view thecommunities and their language and culture as uncomplicatedly English.12

Caroline Bowden has drawn attention to the interactions of the cloisters withtheir neighbors as patrons and benefactors,13 and has argued that the nuns were“changed” by the experience of assimilating different cultures (while remaining“essentially English”).14 Other scholars have also been attentive to the points ofcontact between convents and their local communities, for example by explor-ing how the circulation of relics embedded English convents within interna-tional networks of piety.15 Building on this research, this article argues thatfocusing on linguistic encounter makes visible palpable changes occurringwithin the communities, as the women interacted with foreign-language speak-ers, acquired new languages, or were forced to find other means to negotiatetheir language barriers. It has been claimed that the foundation of houses spe-cifically for English women (who previously had to join foreign religious com-munities) “solved language problems.”16 By critiquing this claim, and bydemonstrating the ways that the nuns overcame linguistic challenges, this articleuncovers new perspectives on the inner workings of the nuns and their cloisters,and their relationship with the outside world.

This article provides a much needed complement to existing scholarship onlanguage learning and linguistic encounter that has predominantly focused onthe experiences of elite men.17 An exception is the work of Michèle Cohen, whohas traced how competence in French throughout the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries became associated with femininity.18 As Cohen has shown,women’s conversation in this period was highly regulated and the spaces forfemale language learning, and in which female voices may be heard, were

11 See comments on the “national character” of the English convents inWalker, 2003, 38–40.12 See, for example, discussion of the Englishness, national identity, and the influence of

Counter-Reformation Continental culture on English Catholic identity in essays by Kelly,2016; Glickman; Havens and Patton. At this point it should also be noted that this articlehas purposefully not considered the language skills of Mary Ward and her order of uncloisteredsisters (modeled on the Society of Jesus) as it is the particularities of linguistic encounter forreligious women that either were or became enclosed that is of interest here.

13 Bowden, 2015a.14 Bowden, 2010, 314.15 See Kelly. For the ways musical performances could also situate the convents within local

and international networks, see Murphy, 2018.16 Lux-Sterritt, 6.17 See, for example, Lawrence.18 Cohen, 1996. See also Cohen, 2003 and 2010; Stevenson, 2007.




sharply delineated.19 Although seeming to attend to the particular needs offemale language learners, Peter Erondell’s 1605 text The French Garden . . .Being an instruction for the attayning unto the knowledge of the French tongueexacerbates such demarcations. As Juliet Fleming explains, Erondell “denieswomen access to the male world and confines them in the traditional sphereof home and family,” and as John Gallagher contends, this text is “domesticin every way: set at home and in the home, and denying women’s ability togo abroad, in the city or in the world.”20 The assumption both in Erondell’stext, and in Cohen’s subsequent analyses of French language instruction forwomen in the eighteenth century, is that if women were to learn French itwould be in the domestic sphere (as Cohen has emphasized, “girls learnedFrench at home with governesses”) for the simple reason that it was fashion-able.21 Yet, thousands of English women did travel to the Continent duringthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to join newly established conventsin exile, and they subsequently negotiated language barriers out of necessity.Their physical translation, in the sense of moving from one place to another,affected literal cultures of translation within their communities.

The linguistic experiences of English nuns in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies are uncovered in this article by combining insights gleaned from man-uscript sources held in various convent archives around Europe, such as female-authored translations and convent chronicles, with a case study of the scores ofletters generated by the Brussels Benedictine convent during a particular periodof turmoil in the 1620s. In so doing, this article argues that some convents cer-tainly fostered nurturing environments for linguistically gifted nuns to under-take translations. However, by moving beyond the scholarship that has drawnattention to these few women, a broader picture of linguistic competence is pro-vided. The article demonstrates that language skills were rare and highly prizedby communities due to the frequency and necessity of foreign language encoun-ter. Finally, the article focuses on the specific processes by which nuns learnedlanguages and negotiated language barriers both outside and within the conventwalls.

CONVENT CULTURES OF TRANSLATION

In recent years, significant work has been undertaken on the importance ofEnglish convents as sites of literary production and consumption, and as a resultscholars have been made aware of a handful of linguistically gifted nuns. Such

19 Cohen, 1996, esp. 64–97. See also Gallagher, 2014, 94.20 Fleming, 19; Gallagher, 2014, 96.21 Cohen, 1996, 84.




work has illuminated the vital role that English convents played in thetranslation of religious texts. For example, Marie-Louise Coolahan and JaimeGoodrich have highlighted the collaborative translations of convent rules,customs, and statutes undertaken by religious women and their male superiorsin English and Irish Poor Clare houses, and English Benedictine houses,respectively.22 Nuns are also known to have undertaken individual translationprojects, which were then printed through the assistance of male superiors.A well-known example is the aforementioned Brussels Benedictine abbessMary Percy’s (prof. 1600–d. 1642) translation from French of theAbridgement of Christian Perfection, first published in 1612. In the 1612edition, Percy signed the dedicatory epistle with her initials “P.M.”23 A secondedition was published in 1625, but this time the (nearly identical) dedicatoryepistle and a new preface to the reader were attributed to the Jesuit AnthonyHoskins using his initials. As a result, some contemporaries seem to havebeen unclear where the exact credit for the translation lay. To clarify matters,the Benedictine monk and confessor to the Benedictine convent in Cambrai,Augustine Baker (1575–1641), penned a treatise An Enquiry about theAuthor of the Treatise of the Abridgment and Ladder of Perfection. In it Bakerconfirmed that the work “was Translated, and Set forth in English by &under the Name of the Lady Mary Piercy . . . [but the] preface was soTranslated into English, by Fa[ther] Antony Hoskins, of the Society ofJesus . . . the Residue (I mean, the whole Body of the Book) being of theTranslation of the Said Lady Abbesse: whom the Said Father A. Hoskins didmoreover somewhat Aid (as I am likewise Informed) in the Translation ofthe Said Body of the Book; and did Procure, or Help for the Getting of itprinted, and was the First Publisher of it.”24 Baker wrote the enquiry for theBenedictine nuns at Cambrai, and it is unlikely that he anticipated anyonebut this community to read it.25 However, others were made aware that creditfor the majority of the translation lay with Percy because in 1628 the 1625edition was reissued and Percy’s authorship made explicit on the title pageand in the prefatory material.

Although there are a few other translations by English nuns that entered thearena of print, the majority of female-authored translations remained in man-uscript.26 A library catalogue of the books of the English Benedictine nuns ofOur Lady of Good Hope in Paris, compiled around 1690, provides evidence for

22 Coolahan; Goodrich, 2014b.23 Berinzaga and Gagliardi.24 Downside Abbey MS 26551, 8–9.25 My thanks to Jaime Goodrich for sharing her thoughts with me on this point.26 For example, de Sales.




both translation activity in the convents and the circulation of translated textsamong other members of the Benedictine order.27 For example, the catalogueincludes the entry for Agnes More’s translation of Jeanne of Cambrai’s The Ruinof Proper Love and the Building of Divine Love. More was at the Benedictineconvent in Cambrai from 1625 until her death in 1656. Presumably whensome of the sisters from Cambrai traveled to Paris to found a new convent in1652, they took a copy of More’s translation with them.

Other notable translators include Catherine Holland (prof. 1664–d. 1720),an Augustinian nun from the convent of Nazareth in Bruges, who “so wellemploy’d her pen as to perpetuate her pious memory in this community by sev-eral pious books and saints lives which she translated from french and dutchinto English.”28 Fellow Augustinian and first prioress of the Convent ofSt. Monica’s in Louvain, Jane Wiseman (prof. 1595–d. 1633), was aninvaluable asset to her community and “had her Latin tongue perfect & hathleft us many homilies and sermons of the holy fathers translated into Inglishwhich she did with great facility.”29 Cambrai Benedictine Barbara Constable(prof. 1640–d. 1684) was another prolific writer, linguist, and editor. Shetranslated extracts from different sources and brought them together for theedification of her fellow nuns.30 Constable provides insights into herrationale for the work through her prefatory material: “tho: I perhaps makethem speake ill of English, they were buried amonge many other thingsconcerninge other subjects which perhaps made them not so sufficientlytaken notise of as they deserved.”31 She explains the process of translation ina collection of prayers she compiled, which were “collected out of diversebookes as I met them for the most part not yet in our language.”32 In her ded-ication of Speculum Superiorum, Composed of diverse Collections in 1650 to theconvent’s abbess, Catherine Gascoigne (prof. 1625–d. 1676), she similarlyexplains that she has “drawne these collections from amonge many other thingswhich perhaps hindred them from beinge so well observed even by those theymost concerned; as now they may being drawne apart from them and unitedtogether.”33 Constable wanted to ensure that all nuns, regardless of their lin-guistic ability, could engage with the most recent devotional texts of theCounter-Reformation.

27 Rhodes.28 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 181–82.29 Douai Abbey (hereafter DAB) WML MS C. 2, 369.30 Wolfe.31 Wolfe, 168–69.32 Wolfe, 169.33 Wolfe.




The landscape of Catholic piety in the early modern period is, as Carlos Eirehas argued, “difficult to imagine . . . without translated devotional texts.”34

Female translators played an important role in this landscape, and the linguisticabilities of at least some of the nuns were known beyond their cloister. Forexample, Catherine Gascoigne and fellow Cambrai Benedictine ClementiaCary (prof. 1641–d. 1671) were commissioned to translate the works oftheir spiritual guide Augustine Baker into French for a local Benedictine con-vent, St. Lazare.35 Excerpts of these translations may have been included in the1651 publication by Antoine Civore of Les secrets de la science des saints, indi-cating the broader circulation of these texts.36 Circulation of these texts beyondthe walls of the cloister meant that the nuns’ reputations as linguists increased,and the women were happy to cultivate these reputations.

The question of whether authorial reputation was at odds with the vows ofhumility, chastity, and poverty taken by the nuns at their profession might leadto the assumption that when female-authored work was circulated beyond theconfines of their particular cloister, it was often unwillingly. As the BenedictinePotentiana Deacon (prof. 1608–d. 1645) stated in the preface to her translationof the Delicious Entertainments of the Soul when it was printed in 1632, she hadnever intended “more than the use of a particular cloister through God, and hersuperiors have other disposed of it and exposed it to the public view of theworld.”37 However, this should not be taken at face value. As JaimeGoodrich has argued, Deacon’s translation was a way for her to purposefullyshape public perceptions of the Cambrai house’s spiritual practices.38 By trans-lating a text that supported Ignatian piety, she was implicitly rejecting the con-templative mysticism of Augustine Baker, her community’s unofficial spiritualdirector. Since it was printed on the title page that the text had been translatedby a “Dame of our Ladies of Comfort of the order of S. Bennet in Cambray,”Deacon was, therefore, not truly anonymous. Deacon ensured her textinfluenced the outside reputation of the convent by claiming to be representa-tive of the convent’s attitudes, when in reality the majority of the communitysupported Baker. Furthermore, her reputation as the text’s translator circulated:Augustine Baker himself was well aware that Deacon had translated the text, asshe is attributed as its translator in a catalogue in Baker’s hand of books held atCambrai.39

34 Eire, 83–84.35 Goodrich, 2014a, 169.36 Goodrich, 2014a, 225n68.37 De Sales, sig. a2r.38 Goodrich, 2014a, 154–67.39 Beinecke Library, Osborn MS b 268.




All nuns used an individualized voice when composing prefatory material; bychoosing to write their dedications in the first person, they were gesturing withan authoritative design on their audience. The personal pronouns in these pref-aces can be viewed as a form of self-authorization; it was as an individual thatthe female religious influenced her audience, and presented the motivations ofthe translator and her community. In Alexia Grey’s (prof. 1631–d. 1640)dedication to her abbess at the Ghent Benedictine house, Eugenia Poulton(prof. 1604–d. 1646), she firmly aligned the house’s piety with the contentsof the vernacular Rule. In doing so, she highlighted the abbess’s role as protectorof the text and her responsibility to share its contents: “Give me therfore leave,most Respected Madame, though after many ages, to lett this so holy a rulespreed her rayes abroade in our English tonge, under your ladishippesprotection, that as you instill the love of it in our hartes, so you would makeitt obvious to our Eyes.”40 It is unclear whether Grey’s role as editor ofthe translation was well known to her contemporaries, but by signing hername in the preface she would become inextricably linked to the text, andassociated with its authorship for centuries afterward.41

The convents’ reputations as centers of translation circulated in the dedica-tions of printed translations. It is striking that of the 127 English translations ofCatholic devotional texts published from 1598 (the year the BrusselsBenedictine convent was founded—the first new cloister specifically forEnglish nuns in exile) to 1700 that were dedicated to specific individuals (theother 113 either did not contain dedications from the translator, had general-ized epistles to the reader, or were dedicated to, e.g., the Catholics of England),more than a quarter were dedicated specifically to English Catholic exiled nuns.Not surprisingly, considering the number of well-known Benedictine linguists,almost half of the thirty-four dedications were to Benedictines.42

The reputation of some convents for translation might explain why scholarshave not looked for evidence of linguistic limitation, and has led to flawedassumptions about general comprehension, particularly regarding what itmeans when nuns are referred to as Latinate. Although some knowledge ofLatin was required of all the choir nuns for performance of the divine office,this did not mean that the women were competent beyond their liturgicalduties. Some women struggled to learn even the rudimentary Latin for the lit-urgy, such as the Antwerp Carmelite Ann Woolmer (prof. 1712–d. 1740), who

40 [Grey], 1632a, sig. 3v.41 Goodrich, 2014b, unearthed evidence of the manuscript circulation of the translation of

the Rule and Statutes, thus complicating the previous attribution of Grey as translator.42 These figures arise from my survey of editions of Catholic books printed in English from

1558 to 1700, as provided in the printed bibliographies by Allison and Rogers; Clancy.




was subsequently relieved of her obligations and was allowed to say the lay sis-ters’ office: “She had not the obligation of reading the divine office on accountthat she was not able to learn Latin, but said the lay sisters office, tho allwaysassisted at great feasts in the quire. . . . [She came to] Vespers and Complain[Compline] which she could say pritty well, joyning with ye quire.”43

Widespread linguistic limitations can be discerned from the same sourcesthat often draw attention to talented individuals, because by highlightingthem it demonstrates their exceptionalism in the communities. As VictoriaVan Hyning has argued, the Louvain chronicle particularly celebratedLatinity and women’s education in both the convent and domestic settings.44

Convent obituary books also celebrated rare linguistic talents. The obit book ofGhent Benedictines notes that one of Cecily Price’s (d. 1630) “rare qualities”was French;45 French was one of Catherine Thorold’s (d. 1634) “good parts;”46

Dame Aloysia Beaumont (d. 1635) “spoke Latin” and translated several “piousthings into English” for the benefit of the community;47 and Mary Southcote(d. 1641) was another who “understood Latin.”48 Highlighting the languageskills of just four nuns in an obit book that detailed the lives and abilities ofall of the nuns of the Ghent community from 1627 to 1659 (thirty-six total:twenty-eight choir and eight lay sisters) proves that this was a particularly raretalent to be lauded. Widespread linguistic limitations do not make the conventsany less centers of translation and multilingual activity, but rather point towardthe broader importance of interpretation and oral cultures of translation thatwere vital to the communities.

ORAL CULTURES OF TRANSLATION

The translations produced in the convents by linguistically gifted nuns wereread aloud at mealtimes and at communal meetings known as Chapter,which were held each week for administrative and instructional purposes. Aswell as reading from texts newly translated in the convent, some nuns wereeven able to translate devotional texts in foreign languages while readingthem aloud, such as Lierre Carmelite Margaret Mostyn (prof. 1645–d. 1679),who, according to her sister and fellow nun Ursula Mostyn (prof. 1648–d.

43 Cited in Hallett, 2007, 114. Lay sisters were usually from less elite backgrounds than thechoir nuns and entered the communities with reduced dowries. These women were exemptfrom choir duties in order to serve the physical and temporal needs of the choir sisters.

44 Van Hyning, 2014b.45 “Obituary Notices,” 13.46 “Obituary Notices,” 15.47 “Obituary Notices,” 20.48 “Obituary Notices,” 28.




1700), “would on festival days, and at other times; find out some pious histor-ical Book; and read to the religious . . . with only casting her eyes on the Booke,she would deliver it word for word to the Sisters in our naturall language; andthis in so smooth a style, and with so great felicity . . . it was heaven to hearher.”49 Margaret Mostyn was a rare talent in the convent, and in the sameway that nuns such as Barbara Constable and Catherine Holland had donewhen they produced written translations for their fellow nuns, Mostyn’s skillsenabled the large proportion of her community that lacked language skills toaurally engage with the latest devotional texts.

Linguistically gifted nuns like Mostyn were also vital for the communities’daily interactions with locals beyond the convent walls, which indicates whytheir abilities were so prized within the surviving convent records. Due totheir regular external interactions it was more common for community leaders,such as abbesses and prioresses, to have at least one other language. During aconversation with a merchant, the first prioress of the Antwerp Carmelites,Anne of the Ascension (prof. 1610–d. 1644), is noted to be able to move easilybetween multiple languages, including Latin, without even noticing it: “Uponan occation, she was speaking to an English merchant who to try in what per-fection she had languages he, without her perceiving it, passd from English toDutch, French, Spanish and lastly to Latten, when after some discourse she wasat a loss to answer readily, and so reflecting with herself said ‘Why do you speakto me in Latten for I cannot speak it?’ He answered ‘I see you can Rd Mother,when you do not reflect it is so.’”50 This interaction is revealing not just of Anneof the Ascension’s high multilingual competence, and of her own lack of lin-guistic self-awareness, but also of the significant local polyglot communitythat the convents regularly encountered. The time demands of frequent com-munication with those from outside the convents meant that abbesses and pri-oresses usually employed linguistically competent nuns to assist them withadministration and correspondence. For example, the Paris BenedictineAgnes Temple (prof. 1662–d. 1726) “spoke French very well” and was inter-preter for Prioress Catherine Gascoigne before later succeeding her in her officeas prioress after her death in 1690.51 Another known Benedictine linguist wasthe nun Christina Forster (prof. 1641–d. 1661), who “spoke French excellentlywell” and was the official translator for the abbess at the Ghent convent until

49 Elizabeth Mostyn (in religion, Ursula of All Saints): “What we particularly observed inour Reverend Mother of happy memory’s constant practices in perfection and solid virtue.”Cited in Hallett, 2017, 109.

50 Cited in Hallett, 2007, 54.51 “The English Benedictine Nuns,” 345.




her departure to help assist with the foundation of another community inBoulogne.52 Forster’s language skills were explicitly noted in the convent annalsas an important reason she was sent to assist with the new foundation.

Establishing a new convent involved liaising with local governors and mag-istrates, and there are multiple other examples of nuns being sent specifically tosupport new communities due to their linguistic ability.53 For example, theBenedictine Marina Beaumont (prof. 1637–d. 1682), who could speak “bothLatin and French,” was sent “by reason of her language” to begin a new mon-astery in Ypres by the bishop.54 When founding the new Augustinian conventof St. Monica’s specifically for English women from the Flemish community ofSt. Ursula’s in Louvain in 1609, language skills were singled out as useful skillsfor the nuns to have, particularly for those in roles that would require regularinteraction with the local communities. The St. Monica’s chronicler, MaryCopley, explained that because Mary Best (prof. 1615–d. 1631) “had wellthe Dutch language,” when she joined the new Augustinian community atBruges she was made procuratrix.55 As the constitutions outlined, the procura-trix was to “diligently and carefully wright up all that she receiveth or layethout,” to take care of “all exteriour things,” and to liaise with the local Dutch-speaking community to purchase items the community needed, such as food.56

Selecting convent officers more generally on the basis of language ability wasnot uncommon, as demonstrated in a letter from the Brussels BenedictineAlexia Blanchard (prof. 1612–d. 1652) to either the archbishop or one of hisdeputies with her recommendations for particular positions.57 In her letter sherecommended Renata Smith (prof. 1615–d. 1664) for the position of infirmar-ian, with Thecla Bond (prof. 1619–d. 1655) to assist her in communicatingwith the local doctor.58 Bond was a highly proficient linguist, and regularlycalled upon to translate her fellow nuns’ letters in order to help them commu-nicate with the archbishop and his superiors.59 Blanchard also suggested UrsulaHewicke (prof. 1603–d. 1638) for the office of depositary (acting as treasurer orbookkeeper), and named Mary Persons (prof. 1608–d. 1642) to help her with

52 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 33.53 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 37.54 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 44.55 DAB WML MS C. 2, 343.56 DAB WML MS E. 5, 15.57 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Alexia Blanchard to Jacobus Boonen?, ca. 1628, trans. Gabriel

Colford. (Original has not survived.)58 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Blanchard to Boonen?, ca. 1628, trans. Gabriel Colford.59 For example, AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Clare Curson to Jacobus Boonen, 1624/25.

Scribal letter in Bond’s hand.




the language.60 What is interesting about this particular recommendation isthat by the time Blanchard’s letter was sent (around or after 1628), Hewickewas seemingly capable of corresponding in French.61 Although in early 1623,as noted at the start of this article, Hewicke complains about her inability tocommunicate, the evidence of her surviving letters suggests that by the endof 1623 she had learned enough French to write by herself—a point that willbe returned to later. Mary Persons was also a skilled linguist, and translated anumber of letters on behalf of several nuns in her community.62 What this sug-gests, then, is that Blanchard felt the office of depositary involved such a highlevel of interaction with foreign-language speakers that they required an abun-dance of linguistic competence.

Linguistic competence was also needed to attract patrons. In 1659, a yearafter the Boulogne Benedictine nuns moved to Pontoise, Anne of Austria,queen regent of France, visited the community. The abbess, ChristinaForster, “who spoke the French language excellently well and had a very gayn-ing behaviour and alloquence, sufficient to charme a less obliging princess,gayned soe much uppon that Queene” that she said that if there was anythingthat she could ever help with “to give her notice of it, and it shold be donn.”63

Many other patrons came from the local community, as exhibited in the finan-cial records and accounts of all of the communities in exile.64 These relation-ships were usually fostered from their attendance at the convent churches, orthrough the grating that separated nuns from visitors in the parlor, known asthe grille. This mediation underlines the significance of orality in convent cul-tures of translation, where the nuns were most often heard but not seen. Inexceptional circumstances the nuns were allowed to apply for special permissionto break enclosure. For example, the prioress of the Augustinian convent inBruges, Augustina Bedingfield (prof. 1622–d. 1661), applied to allow buildersinto the cloister in order to expand the convent.65 It is highly unlikely that thesebuilders would have spoken English, resulting in the presence of multiple

60 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Blanchard to Boonen?, ca. 1628, trans. Gabriel Colford.61 See, for example, AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 2

September 1623; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Katherine Thecla Bond to Jacobus Boonen, ca.1625–26.

62 For example, AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Mary Watson to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1620–30.Autograph letter in Persons’s hand.

63 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 49–50.64 See, for example, the donations made from “Monsieur Adrian Basson,” “Madame Anne

Francise van Abbenga,” and “Monsieur Henry vander Barrge,” in the Antwerp CarmeliteBenefactors book for 1651. In Convent Management, 146.

65 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 29.




foreign-language speakers regularly entering and exiting the convent while theexpansion took place.

Occasionally, the nuns broke their enclosure to go begging for alms.Although this was forbidden in Tridentine regulations, Victoria Van Hyninghas uncovered evidence in convent chronicles that the Augustinian nuns inboth Louvain and Bruges begged in the streets when their regular sources ofincome had reduced.66 To successfully beg it would have been helpful forthe nuns to be able to speak at least some Dutch or French. The Brugeschronicle describes the experiences of two sisters sent out on the streets ofBruges in 1635:

She [the prioress, Mary Pole (prof. 1622–d. 1640)] sent two sisters to theAbbey of Dunes, where they kept Solemn feast of St Bernard. The sisterswere very charitably relieved, and sent home well loaden with flesh andbread. This encouraged our Reverende Mother to persevere a beggar; andshe sent our sisters to several other places. Some relieved them, others at firstspoke harshly to them, thinking we dissembled and that we were not truly inwant, yet after a while we had many friends, and some advised us to put up arequest to the town, declaring our necessities, and craving license to beg. Towhich the Town giving no answer, we presumed to take silence for consent,and continued beging. Nobody contradicting it. In a short time we hadmany benefactors who weekly gave us bread sufficient for our whole convent;besides also flesh sometimes, and other things. And at the end of this year wehad as much Almnes in money as came to 276 florins.67

The chronicler vividly articulates the transcultural transformation takingplace, as Van Hyning has explained, “in the eyes of their neighbours” who ini-tially perceive the nuns as “rich foreigners, then as ‘beggars’ and finally as‘friends.’”68

As well as liaising with local traders and patrons, the exiled religious commu-nities needed to communicate with their local archbishop and his deputies on aregular basis. It was unusual for male superiors and civic officials in the LowCountries to speak much English (if any at all), which resulted in the use oftranslators and interpreters throughout this entire period.69 In 1692 theBruges Augustinians utilized the Italian priest and rector of the Jesuit college

66 It is not clear whether these nuns were choir or lay sisters. Van Hyning, 2014a, 94.67 Cited in Van Hyning, 2014a, 97–98. From The Chronicles of Nazareth, 14.68 Van Hyning, 2014a, 98. See also Van Hyning, 2019.69 Even at the end of the eighteenth century there was an official English translator attached

to the Council of Brabant, and this officer helped organize the sale of convent property after1794 when the communities began to return to England.




at Ghent, Father Herman Visconti, as their interpreter when the bishop visitedthe monastery on March 22 and it is clear that the nuns had autonomy over thischoice of intermediary.70 The Ghent Benedictines were also very clear abouttheir rights to choose their own interpreter, as an event described by AbbessAnne Neville in her Annals of the five English Benedictine communities makesplain. One evening in 1641 the Ghent community were advised that the bishopwould be with them in the morning, “and that he had appoynted him his inter-pretor, speaking some litle English. This very much surprizd us, beein a shortwarning and a positive appoyntment of an interpretor, which was rather to be atthe Comunityes choyce, the[n] by any other way of ordering.”71 When theinterpreter arrived at the convent, the nuns refused to allow the unnamed clericto enter, arguing that he did not have “sufficient knowledg of the language” tohelp them with their particular issues. The bishop subsequently sent “MrHobrooke to be interpreter,” but as he was a layman, this did not suit theGhent Benedictines either. “Then his lordshipe sent an Irish priest, MrDalton, the pastor of the great hospitall, a friend to the Community and aman without exception for abillity. Yet the Community remaind constant tothe refusall, alleaging that they wold not quitt theyr priviledg of makingtheyr owhene choyce, for no person living. Mr Dalton, returning to theBishope, he sent the Deane and 4 more of the chapter to examin our Rulesand constitutions to see uppon what title we made so strong a plea for ourselvs, to refuse whom his lordship named.” The nuns “imediatly gave themthe Latin statutes to peruse, and poynted out the place where it gives theCommunity the choyce of tow [sic] Religious men to be present with theBishope and assist in theyr behalfe in thes concerns.” As a result of their pro-testations and interventions, citing the privileges awarded them in their statutes,they eventually had two of the Society of Jesus approved to assist in their inter-pretations with the bishop—John Faulkner and George Duckett.72 As JaneStevenson has argued, the nuns’ knowledge of their Latin statutes was“power.”73

The importance of having access to language skills was recognized both bythe nuns themselves but also by their male superiors and the local community.This meant that when Mary Pole was elected prioress of the new Augustinianconvent of Nazareth in Bruges, the community’s chronicler explained how she“was very welcome to them [the locals], especialy the bishop there, being veryglad they had chosen a superiour that cou’d speak the language for she had the

70 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 87.71 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 28.72 “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities,” 29.73 Stevenson, 2007, 54.




French tongue perfect having liv’d some years in France before her entrie intoreligion.”74 This statement shows that communications between the convent,particularly its leaders, and outsiders were frequent and significant enough thatit was a relief when there was no need to have to find translators andinterpreters.

NEGOTIATING LANGUAGE BARRIERSBEYOND THE CONVENT WALLS

Problems with external translators were particularly acute in the BrusselsBenedictine convent in the 1620s. The nuns’ choice between, and employmentof, collaborative authorial strategies with both internal and external interpretersgave the women authority over their correspondence.75 The texts were vital ave-nues for the women to express dissent and raise concerns about the way theircommunity was governed. Similar to the protests of the Ghent Benedictines,who vehemently defended their freedom to choose their own interpreter torelay their grievances to their bishop, the Brussels nuns asserted their right tochoose their own translator for their correspondence. These choices wereinextricable from the religious politics of the communities. This is evident inUrsula Hewicke’s letter requesting the assistance of Gabriel Colford to translateher correspondence; issues within communities were often made worse due tolanguage barriers, further underscoring the necessity of negotiating them.

After arriving on the Continent, the women negotiated language barriers inseveral different ways. As Mary Copley had explained in the St. Monica’s chron-icle, Prioress Mary Pole had learned the language during her time spent inFrance with her brother before becoming a nun. Several other women areknown to have language skills thanks to time spent in the Low Countries orFrance before discerning a vocation. Augustinian nun Elizabeth Lovell (prof.1621–d. 1634) is another noted by the Bruges chronicler to have gained lan-guage skills thanks to living with her grandmother, where “in these countriesshe grew perfect in the flemish language.”76 Bruges Augustinian lay sisterElizabeth Bartlett (prof. 1653–d. 1691) was said to have come “fromBruxelles, where she had been bred up some years, and perfected in the flemishlanguage.”77 Louvain Augustinian Margaret Clement (prof. 1557–d. 1612) isanother example, as she had relocated with her parents to Louvain at the start ofthe reign of Edward VI in 1549 and was brought up “learning both of the

74 DAB WML MS C. 2, 392.75 Murphy, 2019.76 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 10.77 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 31.




Latine and Greek tongue.”78 Margaret had evidently absorbed the Dutch lan-guage and culture that surrounded her, because at St. Monica’s in 1612 she isnoted by her fellow nun and biographer Elizabeth Shirley (prof. 1596–d. 1641)as singing a “Dutch ditty” on her deathbed.79

Several other women acquired language skills during time spent on theContinent before entering convents; while it is well known that men traveledabroad to learn languages during the early modern period, female language-learning travelers were also not uncommon. According to Copley in theSt. Monica’s chronicle, Helen Britton (prof. 1614–d. 1652) had come overseasto visit her cousin “Mrs Fortesckue” in St. Omer, at the time having “no inten-tion to religion but only to see these countries & learn French.”80 Other womenwere sent to the Continent to learn languages: sisters Perpetua Best (prof.1619–d. 1630) and Mary Best (mentioned above due to her nomination as pro-curatrix for her Dutch language skills) were sent by their father to Antwerp to“live in these parts . . . to learn the language.”81 Some parents sent their daugh-ters specifically to foreign convents to learn languages. Before Mary Appleby(prof. 1667–d. 1704) entered the Paris Benedictine convent, her grandfatherthought to send her “for some time into a French monastery to learn thelang[uage].”82 Elizabeth Blount was a schoolgirl at the Augustinian conventin Bruges, when she was “by her Parents orders sent to Deynes, a Monastryin Gant, to perfect her self in the french tongue,” and it was here that she“declared her vocation to be a Benedictine” and professed at the EnglishBenedictine house in Ghent in 1612.83

Sending children to foreign convents to learn languages was, quite strikingly,not a practice restricted to Catholics, and by the mid-eighteenth century was acommon enough practice that it was used as a defense in a legal argument. In1743, one Philip Journeaulx published a pamphlet articulating his own versionof recent proceedings lately heard at the Parlement of Paris.84 The case (whichultimately ruled against Journeaulx, despite his propagandist attempts in print)

78 DAB WML MS C. 2, 4.79 Convent of Nazareth, MS A.III St. Ursula, Arch.CXI, 70. My thanks to Victoria Van

Hyning for sharing her photographs of this manuscript with me. No autograph manuscriptsurvives, but this early copy now held at the Augustinian convent of Nazareth in Bruges con-tains corrections in Shirley’s hand and as Van Hyning has convincingly argued can be consid-ered authoritative if not authorial on the basis of her interventions. See Van Hyning, 2014a,41n1.

80 DAB WML MS C. 2, 147.81 DAB WML MS C. 2, 188.82 “The English Benedictine Nuns,” 340.83 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 142.84 Journeaulx.




intended to resolve the hotly contested guardianship of two girls, Deodata andElizabeth Roach, and the crux of the legal battle was whether the girls belongedto the French or English nation. The girls had been born in what was thenMadras, to John Roach, a merchant and former major of Fort St. George, onthe southeast coast of India. Major Roach had brought the children back toEngland, and not long afterward Roach had sent them to the EnglishAugustinian convent in Paris. He had asked his friend, Richard Quane, to sup-port them while they were there. (Quane had gone bankrupt in London andhad moved to Paris. Roach had then lent him money to help set himself upagain, and it was from this money that the girls were supposed to be supported.)Roach subsequently died, and left his daughters a significant inheritance.Shortly afterward, several claims were made for the girls—Journeaulx, seem-ingly another friend of Roach, was made their guardian by the English courts.Around the same time, the French courts granted the wardship of the girls to anIrish woman named Mrs. Macnamara, who claimed to be a kinswoman ofMajor Roach, and who had then promptly married the eldest daughter toQuane’s son. This act was a ravishment, claimed Journeaulx, and was motivatedsolely to resolve Quane’s ongoing financial problems. In the discussions overwhether the girls belonged to the English or French nation, and as such whohad the legal jurisdiction to appoint the girls’ guardian, one of the argumentsput forward was that, as Roach had sent the girls to a convent in Paris, he hadintended them to become French subjects. Journeaulx denounced this claimvehemently: “Our English people send their daughters every day to France,to learn the language and to have French education. The convents at Calais,Gravelin and Boulougne are full of them. There they enter and go out asProtestants, and no body ever imagined that their Parents had the leastIntention of giving them to France, by placing them in those convents.”85

That this was not unusual is corroborated by the fact that it was the subjectmatter of several contemporary novels.86 These “convent novels,” as theyhave been dubbed by Ana Acosta, focus on the supposed threat posed byContinental convents to English Protestantism and were written partly as awarning against sending Protestant girls abroad to the foreign conventschools.87 This practice is remarkable, both considering the virulence of anti-Catholic sentiment in political arenas during this period and for the simple factthat sending children to Catholic schools or convents abroad had been illegal

85 Journeaulx, 100.86 [Anon.], 1765; Brooke; [Anon.], 1771; [Gibbes]; [Fuller]; [Bennett].87 Acosta. See also Vickers.




since the 1570s; parents going to these lengths suggests the perceived lack ofgood language instruction in England.88

Some convents themselves sent promising novices to foreign communitiesand schools for language learning. Alathea Anderton (prof. 1658–d. 1679)was a schoolgirl at the Augustinian convent of St. Monica’s in Louvainwhen in 1657 she was sent to another community in Brussels. When shereturned to St. Monica’s before her profession the following year she wasnoted to be “much improved for she got both French and Dutch.”89 Thisalso happened at the English Carmelite convent in Lierre, when MaryTeresa Warren (prof. 1660–d. 1696) was sent to a local school before her pro-fession “to learn the languiss of the cuntrey, a quality most nessisary for ourhouse” and “in a short time she spooke Duch parfectly will.”90 In 1718 theprioress of the Bruges Augustinians sent “Miss Gifford” to the Ursulines atLille “that she might be perfected in the french tongue” (she had arrived inBruges in 1710 with her nurse at just four years old and had joined the con-vent school).91 In 1722 Mary Markham and Ann Poulton left the school atBruges to “go to two different Monasteries at Namurs, in order to be per-fected in the french tongue.”92 That the convents would send their youngstudents and potential novices away for foreign-language instruction furtherunderlines the way that language skills were qualities “most nessisary” for theEnglish houses.

Sending girls to foreign convent schools also calls into question the qualityof the language education on offer at the English convents themselves. Mosthouses had schools for young women, and as Caroline Bowden has argued,the intentions of the religious orders regarding treatment of the pupils varied.For some, such as the Franciscans, the aim of schooling was to instruct themon the assumption that they would be entering the convent once they hadreached the appropriate age. However, the Augustinians and theSepulchrines aimed to educate girls to be both good Catholic wives and moth-ers, as well as to recruit new members.93 It is not currently clear whether these

88 For an extensive overview of anti-Catholicism in British history see Adam Morton’s bib-liography of anti-Catholic literature: https://antipopery.com/bibliography/.

89 DAB WML MS C. 2, 610.90 Cited in Hallett, 2007, 222.91 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 174.92 The Chronicles of Nazareth, 192.93 Caroline Bowden, “Experiencing Schooling in the English Convents.” Paper presented at

the “Early Modern Orders and Disorders: Religious Orders and British and Irish Catholicism”

conference, University of Notre Dame, London Global Gateway, 28 June 2016.



https://antipopery.com/bibliography/

https://antipopery.com/bibliography/


schools prioritized language learning, and in general curricula for the schoolsremain somewhat elusive. The Sepulchrines of Liège make reference to thesubjects taught in their thirty-page pamphlet A Brief Relation of the Orderand Institute, published in 1652 to promote their religious order and theirschool, where they “teach them all qualities befitting their sex, as writing,reading, needlework, French, Musick.”94 The Augustinian convent schoolin Bruges is also noted to have instructed their students in French andLatin, and yet the convent frequently sent their scholars to foreign commu-nities to learn languages.95 It is likely that practices changed over time,depending on the availability of suitable instructors. Suggestive of the subjectsthey had taught in exile, at least in the latter part of the eighteenth century,after their return to England in 1795 the Dunkirk Benedictines (then atHammersmith) advertised the curriculum of their restored convent schoolin the 1797 Laity’s Directory as including the “English and French languages”along with “Geography, history, plain and ornamental work, drawing, danc-ing and music.”96

More generally, however, in-house convent language provision seems tohave been inadequate. In an appendix to his pamphlet, Philip Journeaulxclarified his earlier arguments by exclaiming that Major Roach hadquite clearly never intended to settle the children in France on a long-term basis:

For if he had had the least Design to settle them in France, he would nothave put them into a Convent of the English Nuns, where generally theyonly speak English, and very little, or very bad French: He would have placedthem rather in a Convent, where they would have been in a Capacity to havelearnt the French language, and to have imbibed the French Manners andEducation; but, instead of doing this, he sent them into a Convent ofEnglish Nuns, where, no Doubt, it was his Intention that his Children, whowere scarce then the one more than six, the other more than five Years of Age,should continue to speak the Language they were designed to speak hereafter,that is to say, the English, which is the Language familiar to the EnglishNuns.97

It would seem, therefore, that, in England at least, the English convents did nothave a widespread reputation for good foreign-language instruction.

94 [Anon.], 1652, 54.95Walker, 2016, 172.96 Cited in Evinson, 19.97 Journeaulx, 132.




The lack of language skills in the English Antwerp Carmelite conventprompted the bishop of Antwerp to instruct the women to practice half anhour of Dutch every day, and a full hour during Lent.98 The bishop ofGhent also attempted to insist that from the early 1650s the GhentBenedictine novices could only be admitted to profession once they were fluentin either French or Dutch, “so he could spare the translator and communicatedirectly with them.”99 It is clear that neither of these demands from the bishopsmade any long-term difference to the general linguistic competence of the com-munities; in 1665 the prioress of the Antwerp Carmelites asked for prayers tosupport the profession of a local lay sister with the explanation that “she is dutchand of the towen, but a fine woman well borne and seems to have a great voca-tion amonghest us. She do not want a forten as time are now, only her mother islooth to part from her now and on the other side tho’ our foundation be forenglish yet if mother sub: should die we should be in great distress for langueig,yet we have no Dutch no more, and everyone else is not feit for bussnes.”100

The prioress feared that if the community’s single linguistically competent nundied, the entire convent would be in “great distress” due to their lack oflanguage skills. It was therefore vital for the community to admit this Dutch-speaking lay sister.

It is likely that linguistic competence and practices varied between conventsand over time depending on the availability of suitable nuns to act as instruc-tors. At the Poor Clares convent in Gravelines, the first abbess Mary StephenGough (prof. 1597–d. 1613) was especially keen for the choir nuns to have aperfect grasp of Latin for singing the divine office. As the chronicle notes,Latin grammar (“accidents”) was learned as part of their training: “three orfour that were most apt were put to learn their accidents, a Religious beingappointed at certain hours to heare their lessons.”101 This “Religious” maywell have been a priest, but it is equally possible that more experiencedchoir nuns were teaching the novices Latin.102 Although it is possible theGravelines Poor Clares had Latin grammars to help assist them in their learn-ing, it is worth pointing out that their instruction was explicitly aural: “a reli-gious being appointed . . . to heare their lessons.”103 Other glimpses ofpotential in-house language learning come from inventories of booksknown to have been owned by the communities; the Pontoise Benedictines

98 Cited in Majérus, 150.99 Majérus, 150.100 Majérus, 146–47n49.101 Monastery of the Poor Clares, Gravelines Chronicle, 36.102 Goodrich, 2011, 85.103 Monastery of the Poor Clares, Gravelines Chronicle, 36.




had a copy of Cotgrave’s French-English dictionary from 1632, and theDunkirk Benedictines had a copy of the Latin language-learning manualCordery’s Colloquies (1652) and a 1662 edition of Manuel Alvares’sIntroduction to the Latin tongue.104 The surviving library catalogue of theCambrai Benedictines records that the convent held two copies of Alvares’sIntroduction, dated 1684 and 1686.105 Such texts likely assisted the convent’stranslation activity discussed earlier, but may well have supported the nuns’own language learning. The Latin texts were no doubt used to help supportthe learning of the divine office, and there is evidence that some women taughtthemselves these skills. For example, Mary Appleby at the Paris Benedictineconvent had, according to their chronicle, “an extraordinary capacity for learn-ing, [and]. . . got by her own industry to understand perfectly wel both frenchand latin.”106

Actions like this underline how pragmatically the nuns viewed the nego-tiation of language barriers; for female language learners on the Continent,the factors dictating which language to learn were highly practical, and ideasabout linguistic prestige do not appear to have greatly influenced the womenin the cloisters. All the convents were located within cities containing mul-tiple working languages and, as Alisa van de Haar has demonstrated, the LowCountries during this period were profoundly multilingual. Although fromthe Middle Ages onward a language border existed between Romance andGermanic languages (respectively south and north of the line in fig. 1),forms of French and Dutch were used frequently on both sides:107 “A mer-chant operating at the Antwerp Bourse could find himself speaking Dutch atbreakfast, French at lunch, and a mixture of the two at dinner, while hearingEnglish, Spanish and Italian in between. Moreover, each area within the LowCountries spoke its own dialect, further complicating the language situa-tion.”108 Although in the Low Countries, as in England, French was viewedas a “tool for climbing the social ladder,” in practice bilingualism was mostcommon.109 For English women in exile, therefore, whether the womenencountered and learned Dutch or French (or both) depended on wherethey had lived or traveled, which particular community they had spent

104 Bowden, 2015b, 382; my thanks to Caroline Bowden for sharing with me her personallist of the Dunkirk books now held at Downside Abbey.

105 Stevenson, 2005, 374.106 “The English Benedictine Nuns,” 390.107 There were also communities in France not displayed on this map in Paris, Aire, Rouen,

and Pontoise.108 Van de Haar, 45.109 Van de Haar, 63.




time in, who was available to support their tuition, and which language theypreferred.

NEGOTIATING LANGUAGE BARRIERS IN THEBRUSSELS BENEDICTINE CONVENT

Learning French was a vexed issue at the Brussels Benedictine house in the1620s; surveying the hundreds of letters that were generated by the Brussels

Figure 1. Map of the Low Countries with the language border indicated, and locations of theconvents indicated with small stars. Map based on van de Haar, 45, with permission.




nuns during this period, there is evidence that linguistic competence increasedamong members of the community as a direct consequence of the women beingprevented from using external translators.110 By 1623 several nuns had peti-tioned the archbishop for language lessons; for example, Aurea James (prof.1617–d. 1669) asked Jacobus Boonen that “sum order may be taken thatthose may learn french that desire it wherof my self is on[e].”111 In early1622 Frances Gawen (prof. 1600–d. 1640) asked Boonen for permission touse Gabriel Colford as her translator, and at the same time she requested thatshe be able to “learn French from him.”112 Colford was the translator forUrsula Hewicke’s letter to the archbishop at the start of this article that containedher request that she might have the “means to learn French,” although Hewickedoes not specify how or from whom.113 It is likely that Colford was allowed toinstruct the religious that desired it at the grate through the convent grille, as sev-eral nuns appear to have learned French over the course of the 1620s.

After Ursula Hewicke petitioned Boonen for permission for languageinstruction on 7 April 1623, by September 2 she felt confident enough towrite her own letter in French. The letter spans several pages, and she creditsher new ability to the combined strength provided by Boonen’s encouragement,along with the unction of the Holy Spirit.114 More plausible than Hewickelearning French entirely from scratch in less than five months is that she under-emphasized her preexisting skills in April. As the decade progressed, ScholasticaSmith (prof. 1610–d. 1660) was able to overcome the language barrier; in 1628Smith sent a letter to the archbishop in English, alongside a French summary inher own hand of the main points she had made.115 Smith may well have hadassistance from another member of the convent, but it is still a noteworthydeparture from her actions in the early 1620s, when she used the services ofexternal translators Gabriel Colford and Jesuit priest Charles Waldegrave.116

From the evidence of surviving letters, Mary Vavasour (prof. 1616–d. 1676)increased her language skills during the period, as she used John Daniel andGabriel Colford as translators in the early 1620s, but wrote her own lettersin French toward the end of the decade.117 Finally, Katherine Paston (prof.

110 Murphy, 2019.111 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Aurea James to Jacobus Boonen, 1622/23.112 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Frances Gawen to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1622.113 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 7 April 1623.114 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 2 September 1623.115 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Scholastica Smith to Jacobus Boonen, 2 August 1628.116 For example, AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Scholastica Smith to Jacobus Boonen, 1624/25.117 For example, AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Mary Vavasour to Jacobus Boonen, 8 April

1623, trans. John Daniel; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Mary Vavasour to Jacobus Boonen, 25November 1628.




1613–d. 1640) learned French; after using John Daniel in 1622–23 she latersent her own letter and acted as a translator for Agnes Lenthall (prof. 1603–d.1651), Ann Ingleby (prof. 1612–d. after 1632), and Mary Percy in 1628.118

The nuns were predominantly instructed orally. This was due to the obser-vance of enclosure when external tutors were used, and supported by the factthat speech and sociability were fundamentally embedded in language pedagogymore broadly during this period, as John Gallagher has aptly shown.119 Oralinstruction was indicated in the religious hearing the Latin lessons of thenuns in the Gravelines Poor Clares convent, and it is also detectable in theBrussels Benedictine nuns’ writing, as they developed creative forms ofFranglais in their letters to the archbishop and his deputies. For example,when Mary Persons translated a letter for Elizabeth Southcott on 24 April1629, she created the word inexpecté for unexpected.120 Unable to find theappropriate word, Persons invented one that she thought sounded French.Ursula Hewicke used the services of an unnamed nun on 19 June 1621 tohelp translate her letter—as she says in a French postscript, “I have used thehelp of one of our good sisters to put this into French.”121 In a letter a fewmonths later, on 25 August 1621 (where she has most likely used the servicesof the same nun, although she does not state this explicitly), Hewicke uses theword destourbier, which is not a French word but based on the context it is evi-dently meant to mean to disturb.122 Interestingly, two years later, once Hewickehad mastered French herself, this word returned to her letter of 2 September1623; it is possible that the nun who had assisted her in 1621 had been helpingher to improve her written skills.123 Another potential explanation is thatHewicke had kept draft copies of her earlier letters to assist her in her languagelearning. Scholastica Smith’s summary of her own letter in French that she sentalongside an English copy may also been part of a language-learning exercisewithin the convent.124

118 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Katherine Paston to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1622–23, trans.John Daniel; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Agnes Lenthall to Jacobus Boonen, 31 July 1628,trans. Katherine Paston; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ann Ingleby to Jacobus Boonen, 31July 1628, trans. Katherine Paston; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Mary Percy to JacobusBoonen, 3 August 1628, trans. Katherine Paston.

119 Gallagher, 2019.120 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Elizabeth Southcott to Jacobus Boonen, 24 April 1629, trans.

Mary Persons.121 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Silvester Verhaegen, 19 June 1621.122 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 25 August 1621.123 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 2 September 1623.124 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Scholastica Smith to Jacobus Boonen, 2 August 1628.




Other instances of Franglais occur when the women used English wordswhen they could not find or remember the appropriate word in French. Forexample, a letter from Mary Vavasour from 14 February 1629 frequentlyuses the English word difficulties instead of difficultés.125 The English word dif-ficulties is used by Ursula Hewicke in her correspondence both when she usedthe unnamed nun as translator on 19 June 1621 and in her own letter from 29October 1624, implying that Vavasour and Hewicke were instructed by thesame unnamed nun. Gabriel Colford and multiple nuns all used the Englishword voices instead of voix in their correspondence.126 For example, bothColford and Mary Persons use the English word in their translations of lettersfrom, respectively, Frances Gawen and Maria Kempe (prof. 1619–d. 1657),around 1622/23.127 Colford does it again in his translation of PotentianaDeacon’s letter in around 1624.128 Agatha Wiseman (prof. 1603–d. 1647)uses the word repeatedly in the letters she wrote on 26 November 1630, andagain in 1632. Persons uses the word when writing on behalf of the whole com-munity in 26 March 1632, and again in her own letter from 6 March 1638.129

It is not a coincidence that the majority of these borrowed words and hybrid-isms often sounded like the words the women were attempting to find inFrench for their letters. As Gary Schneider has demonstrated, orality wasvital to cultures of epistolarity, and these examples of Franglais in their lettersfirmly underscore orality’s importance in the negotiation of languagebarriers.130

The significance of orality to the convents’ multilingualism is evident fromthe surviving letters from Brussels, which suggest that more nuns had the abilityto speak and read French than felt confident writing it, a supposition that fitswith broader human capacities for language acquisition. As Abbess Mary Percyherself wrote in a letter to the new archbishop, Jacobus Boonen, on 8September 1621: “for as much as I myself cannot write in French, with the

125 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Mary Vavasour to Jacobus Boonen, 14 February 1629.126 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Silvester Verhaegen, 19 June 1621; AAM

RB EN, Doos 12/1: Ursula Hewicke to Jacobus Boonen, 29 October 1624.127 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Frances Gawen to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1622, trans. Gabriel

Colford; AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Maria Kempe to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1622–23, trans.Mary Persons.

128 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Potentiana Deacon to Jacobus Boonen, 1624, trans. GabrielColford.

129 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Mary Percy and Agatha Wiseman to Jacobus Boonen, 26November 1630 (in Wiseman’s hand); AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Benedictine Monastery ofthe Glorious Assumption to Jacobus Boonen, 26March 1632; AAMRB EN, Doos 12/3: MaryPersons to Jacobus Boonen, 6 March 1638.

130 Schneider.




approval of your reverence I will write my letters in English to the Prior of theCarthusians, so that he puts them into Latin, which I assure myself he will dovery faithfully.”131 Yet Percy can read the language, as she translated the 1612Abridgement of Christian Perfection from French. Several other nuns apologizedfor their lack of written language skills, adding statements in French such as “Iwould write more but I lack the language extremely” and “I beg your Pardon formy bad French” to the end of their letters.132 Providing rare insight into thelinguistic competence of lay sisters (usually hidden in conventual sources), on5 March 1629 one lay sister, Barbara Duckett, also complained to the arch-bishop, and in so doing explained how she could speak a “litle Duch” but“can writ noe other than my owne language.”133

Foreign-language-speaking lay sisters like Duckett were vital to English con-vents in exile, as these women usually assisted in positions that involved someinteraction with the local community. As Claire Walker has shown, in manyconvents the lay sisters were involved in a number of ventures within theirlocal community’s commercial markets. For example, lay sisters from theLouvain Augustinians provided a laundry service for local priests, monks, andthe laity.134 The endeavors of these lay sisters, and of those elsewhere, wouldcertainly have required foreign-language encounter; in 1663 the BrugesFranciscans petitioned their local bishop, asking him to allow them to admittwo or three local girls, since the English-speaking sisters “are neither fit norable to go to the market or do any other service because they do not understandthe language of the country.”135 When local women joined the English com-munities there is also evidence that they endeavored to learn new languages. Forexample, according to her convent biographer, the Lierre Carmelite AnneLysens (prof. 1705–d. 1723) “loved much more to speake English then herowne naturall Dutch, being very attentive when ever she did but hear the sistersspeake aney words wch sounded, as she imagin’d, fine and not common. Thoseshe would carefully retaine in her mind to bring out in the first occasions, tho’maney times so improper to what she was sayeing, with which she hugelydeverted the community.”136 Lysens’s efforts and mistakes may well have

131 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/2: Mary Percy to Jacobus Boonen, 8 September 1621.132 “J’euse escrit davantage mais je manque le langage extremement”: AAMRB EN,Doos 12/1:

Martha Colford to Jacobus Boonen, 18 January 1629; “Je vous suplie Pardon a moy ma mavaisefrancois”: AAM RB EN, Doos 12/3: Alexia Blanchard to Jacobus Boonen, ca. 1621–25.

133 AAM RB EN, Doos 12/1: Barbara Duckett to Jacobus Boonen, 5 March 1629.134Walker, 1996, 414.135 Majérus, 46.136 Cited in Hallett, 2007, 233.




amused the other nuns, but she persevered in negotiating her own language bar-riers through conversation—by listening and speaking.137

CONCLUSION

Ursula Hewicke lamented that “many inconveniences” in her convent couldhave been avoided if it were not for lack of language skills. It is evident thatHewicke was not alone in feeling linguistically challenged, and that many mem-bers of English convents in exile did not have high levels of foreign-languagecompetence. English convents were nonetheless highly multilingual spacesand provided environments that encouraged the linguistically gifted to under-take translation projects. These projects were largely intended for the edificationof their fellow nuns, but the reputations of convents as sites of translation activ-ity spread beyond the cloister walls. However, the struggles that many exiledEnglish nuns faced when trying to communicate in a language other thantheir own demonstrate that language problems were certainly not solved bythe institution of houses for English women. As few as four members of theGhent Benedictine community during a thirty-year period had more thanone language, and yet living amid speakers of foreign languages both withinand outside the convent profoundly shaped daily life. Due to the frequencyand necessity of linguistic encounter, language skills were rare and highlyprized by communities: convents recognized the need for language skillswhen founding new cloisters, promoting nuns to particular offices in order toengage with the local community, and communicating with their Dutch- andFrench-speaking superiors.

English nuns negotiated language barriers in a variety of ways. Some womenhad languages when they entered the convents; Margaret Clement’s timeabroad meant she had absorbed local Louvain culture to the extent that shechose to spend some of her final living moments singing in Dutch. Otherswere sent to learn languages in foreign convents and schools, both by their fam-ily members and by the communities themselves. Indeed, the practice of send-ing young women to religious communities abroad to learn languages wascommon in England, even among Protestants. Notably, the decision to learnFrench or Dutch was purely pragmatic, and based on the availability of suitableinstructors. Although effective in-house instruction in foreign languages withinthe English convents themselves seems unusual, a case study of the BrusselsBenedictine convent during the 1620s suggests that some women were able

137 Mockery was a common experience for foreign-language learners during this period. See,for example, the mockery of the speech of travelers returning from Europe in Larkin, esp. 47–56;and the reception of an “Italianate” Englishman in Gallagher, 2017.




(and were increasingly compelled) to learn French in order to communicatewith their male superiors. The women might have had access to grammarsand conversation manuals, but it is likely that the process of this acquisitionwas predominantly oral. This is evident from the oral quality of their letters(that included created words that sounded French) and the orality of conventcultures of translation more generally. A particularly tantalizing case of oralacquisition is found in the example of the English-learning Dutch lay sisterAnne Lysens, which also underlines the potential for further investigationinto the ways in which other non-anglophone lay sisters learned English duringthis period. Focusing on foreign-language encounter and acquisition has pro-vided hitherto-unrecognized insights into the daily experiences of early modernEnglish women in the Low Countries and France, and attending to the meetingpoints between different cultures and languages should become a fruitful ave-nue for future scholarship on religious exile and migration more broadly.




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