Thinking Together About Medieval Disability
4 April - 30 May 2025
The Wardlaw Museum Research Studio
University of St Andrews
Fictive Narrative: Imagining with the Archive
Fictive narrative is a form of creative non-nonfiction in which the author both digs deep into the archive (both textual and osteological) and imagines voices and stories to fill its gaps and silences. This technique invites the author – and the reader – to imagine the world of the subject through their own eyes. In this example, historian and archaeologist Alison Beach brings together historical research, osteological analysis, insights about pain, work, and joy from our first conversation withstudents from the St Andrew’s Disabled Students’ Network, and reflections on monastic communities of care from the contemporary nuns of the ancient abbey of Minster (England):
There is evidence that there were female scribes at Elstow. Iron and bone styli, which would have been used for writing, were discovered in the area of the cloister and kitchen during the excavations. Entries on two thirteenth-century mortuary rolls were written at Elstow, further suggest that there some of the nuns were scribes. This evidence was brought to my attention by Prof. Elaine Treharne of Stanford University, CA USA.
​
Below: Iron stylus discovered in the area of the cloister of Elstow Abbey. Photo courtesy of David Baker
We have no textual references to women embroidering at Elstow, but this was a common occupation both among noble lay women and nuns in the Middle Ages. Luxurious liturgical textiles – including Orphreys, elaborate embroidery done on a fabric such as linen – were in high demand for priestly vestments such as stoles and were highly valued. Embroidered liturgical textiles number among the artistic treasures of medieval Europe. See Stefanie Seeberg, “Women as Makers of Church Decoration: Illustrated Textiles at the Monasteries of Altenberg/Lahn, Rupertsberg, and Heiningen (13th - 14th c.),” in Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, vol. 1 (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 375–84.
​The bell for Vespers sounds, and I wait patiently for sister Agnes to help me make my way to the choir as she always does. I never tire of the beauty of the cloister as the sun begins to set. The time set aside for work after None is always best when the weather is fine and we carry our mending, or embroidery, or parchment and pens into the cloister walk. On my better days, I join in with the rest. On others, I nap, glad for the fresh air and the quiet company of my sisters.
The pain in my back has been building all day, and I am grateful for sister’s steady arm and kind words as we make our way slowly from the cloister into the church. She helps me gently into my stall in the choir. I am relieved to take my familiar seat.
I try to stand up with the others as the cantor intones the invitatory and the office begins.
The sisters across the choir begin:
​
“Make haste, O God, to deliver me…”
And all on my side respond:
“…make haste, O Lord, to help me…”
Pain now radiates up and down my back, and I decide to keep to my seat. I try to fill my lungs to sing, but the only sound I make is a cough.
​
“Make haste, O God, to deliver me.”
I have sung these opening words of the seventieth Psalm just about every evening of my life here. As a girl, I imagined God delivering me from a life of enclosure chosen for me by my parents. Now, with the wisdom of age and the lessons of pain, I know better. I pray for deliverance from my pain, and mercy does come from time to time. These are the good days, when I can stand and sing and join in the work in the refectory or garden. Other days are not as good. Maybe deliverance comes in small moments of grace.
I reach for the orphrey I am embroidering, a welcome distraction from the pain searing my back. I have taught dozens of young nuns to create intricate patterns with needle and thread, and I have often had to push aside prideful thoughts about my own skill and the beauty of the work I am creating. But even as direct my soul to humility, I find comfort and joy in the repeated gestures of my art, its motions and rhythms in sync with the standing, sitting, and bowing of the of the community as we chant the psalms. Small moments of grace?
My hands begin to tremble as the fourth psalm ends. My thimble drops to the floor and rolls out of sight and reach in the dark space under my feet…
​
Above: The Rupertsberg Antependium. Hanging for the front of an altar. Detail showing several of the nuns who embroidered it. Purple/Red silk with embroidery. Germany, early 13th c. Public Domain
​
Vespers and None are two of the eight “hours” of communal prayer that structure the monastic day. See Alison I. Beach, “Living and Working in a Twelfth-Century Women’s Monastic Community.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain. Cambridge, 2021. Vespers is timed with the setting sun each evening.
​
Above: Sister John, a nun at the ancient monastery of Minster sleeps in the cloister garden while her sisters work nearby. Image ussed with permission of Prioress Nicola of the Abbey of Minster-in-Thanet. Full video "Where you treasure is, there will be your heart also."
Above: Religious women performing the liturgy in their choir stalls. Image: The Psalter of Henry VI. London, British Library. Cotton Domitian A XVII f. French, 1405-1410.
​
Above: Ring Thimble discovered by a metal detectorist. England, 15th or 16th c. Image: British Museum Portable Antiquities]
Renovations of the nuns’ chapel at the monastery of Wienhausen (Germany) uncovered needles, thimbles, spindles, and part of a small hand-held loom under the choir stalls suggesting that the nuns did needlework as they sang the liturgy of the hours during the Middle Ages. See Horst Appuhn. Der Fund vom Nonnenchor (Kloster Wienhausen, 1979). I have borrowed this detail and applied it to Elstow.