Transitions, Continuities, and the Struggle for Monastic Lordship
This chapter looks at the period around 900 to argue that, below a surface of change brought about by wars, invasions, and local upheavals, a more significant process of transformation was unfolding, determined by socio-political, institutional, and religious alterations initiated several decades earlier. Two observations are essential to understanding this phenomenon. First, that the reorganization of the female monastic landscape in these decades resulted primarily from the progressive reorganization of Lotharingian regional politics. And second, that some religious groups at least continued to rely on the ‘coping strategies’ discussed in the preceding chapter. Far from being the fortunate survivors of processes over which they had had no control, the women in these houses and their male associates were actively involved in securing the continued existence and societal relevance of female communities.