the cause of the weak
and the oppressed. Within the precincts of the church the poor fugitive
from violence done in the name of justice was offered sanctuary, and the
right of sanctuary was usually respected.

Within the walls of the monastery women were offered safety. There were
many, of course, who might choose the quiet and the comparative ease of
the cloister life from motives little better than worldly, and others
who might enter with sentiments of romantic devoutness which it is hard
for most of us to appreciate in this day; and both were doubtless
satisfied with what they found in the convent. But there were many
others who had been forced into a life absolutely distasteful to them
and alien to their temperaments. How many of these withered away in
discontent! how many revolted more actively and led lives that brought
reproach and disgrace upon the Church! Among the earliest of the satires
against social abuses we find those against hypocritical, avaricious,
gluttonous, or licentious monks and nuns; and the stream of satire runs
throughout the Middle Ages. Monks live in the _pays de Cocagne_, to gain
admittance to which one had to wallow seven years in filth; monks and
nuns are in Rabelais's _Abbe de Theleme_, and _en leur reigle n'estoit
que ceste clause: fais ce que vouldra_; and monks and nuns again play
anything but edifying roles in the _fabliaux_ and their successors, the
short tales such as one finds in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_.

Monasteries for women abounded all over France, most of them under some
form of the Benedictine rule. Within their own monasteries women could
govern themselves, though the whole convent was usually dependent upon
male ecclesiastical control, either attached to a neighboring monastery,
or under the jurisdiction of a bishop. In the great double monastic
community of Fontevrault, established about noo by Robert d'Arbrissel,
women were exalted above men; the nuns sang and prayed, the monks
worked, and the entire establishment was under the guidance of the
abbess.

The abbess or prioress occupied a position of responsibility and dignity
not unlike that of the chatelaine. She too had the control of a large
domestic establishment, and she was responsible not only for religious
discipline but for the temporal provision for her nuns. The abbess had
the power of a bishop within the limits of her convent, and bore a
crosier as the sign of her rank. She might even hold some feudal