The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 55

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come mothers, as it was ingrained in
them that it was their sole mission in life
to bear children, thus preserving their
husband’s familial line and wealth. 56
The alternative career to the burden of
motherhood was that of a nun.
Since the founding of Christianity,
young girls and women have pursued
a life in imitation of Christ. By the
Middle Ages, conventual life required
those girls and women to take three irreversible
vows of chastity, poverty, and
obedience. According to the Benedictine
Rule, a woman entering conventual
life also had to give up her worldly possessions,
pray daily for her sins and the
sins of others, stay silent, live in seclusion,
and live an ascetic life. Although
many women entered conventual life
due to a spiritual calling, some women
entered conventual life to further their
education.
Convents provided women with
an education that was not provided at
home. A nun was required to be literate
in a variety of topics other than domesticity
and religion, such as economics.
Nuns had to be able to read, write, and
translate sacred texts from Latin into
the vernacular; therefore, women were
trained in Latin, which happened to be
the language of Renaissance humanism.
Consequently, convents became the setting
for women pursuing higher education.
Kathryn Hinds suggests that convents
were “often the only place where
an intelligent woman was allowed to
pursue an education.” 57 As a result,
women became scholars, authors, and
scribes, offering them a power that was
typically denied to them as a wife and
mother. They wrote plays, devotional