Varieties of Female Friendship: The Nun As Loose Woman(1/2)

·Independent religious women/nuns from the Church's perspective: from "fallen women" (whose virginity/looseness under monasticism was transmogrified into harlotry and seen as the ultimate immorality) to "brides of Christ" (domesticated, institutionalized and in the meanwhile heterosexualized).
·The Church only reinvigorated the tradition of good/bad woman distinction (and called those bad "pagan") which existed well before Christianity for female autonomy is always in conflict with patriarchal orders.
Lust, carnal attachments, harlotry (...) were said to derive from the loose condition of religious women (their state of being independent and unattachedto men). The supposed "unnaturalness" of nuns (...) was a convenient explanation in which to ground their status as "fallen women".
For years, Catholic clerics and critics had attacked the independent lives of nuns. The Protestant Reformation grounded these attacks in the virginity of nuns, seeing this as the ultimate symbol of their looseness. It used the age-old hetero-relational tactic of transmogrifying the virgin - she who is untouched by men - into the prostitute, she who is despoiled, conquered, and constantly handled by men. (...) A loose woman who resides in a female world that is free from direct bonds with men becomes a loose woman who is put in constant bondage to men and male desires. Women who are unattached to men become immoral.
The Reformers reinforced and created new grounds for assaulting a tradition of female monasticism that Lina Eckenstein has characterized as heir to the independent spirit and activity that existed among women, much earlier, in "outgoing heathendom, that is, in pre-Christian times". Eckenstein connects the development of religious communities of women in early Christianity, particularly among the Germanic peoples, with pre-Christian goddess traditions.
The nun carried on the tradition of the loose woman, that is, the independent woman, associated with a pagan and ungodly period. Therefore, female autonomy and detachment from men were regarded as pagan and ungodly. The male hierarchy was always in conflict with the independent spirit which had drawn many women to convent living initially. Eckenstein notes that the good/bad woman distinction arose prior to the introduction of Christianity.
Christianity accepted and reinvigorated this distinction (good/bad woman distinction) and attempted to force women to live within its parameters. Consistently it cast "aspersions" on women's independence. It domesticated the earlier traditions of loose women, which attracted women to convents, by gradually regulating the Rule and the living conditions of nuns, along with their ability to move freely in the world at large. It also transformed the Gyn/affective integrity of the pre-Christian loose woman by symbolically heterosexualizing the nun as the "bride of Christ" in its liturgy and traditions of prayers.
As a religious without vows and outside the established religious orders of women, the Beguines posed an immense threat to the Church hierarchy. They often held meetings of women at which theology and spirituality were discussed without te counsel of priests. Hostile churchmen denounced their thirst for theological knowledge, saying that the study of theology should be restricted to the clerics. Beguines sought no church approval for their lives but called themselves religious women. The Beguine movement differed from all earlier female religious groups in that "it was basically a women's movement, not simply a female appendix to a movement which owed its impetus, direction and main support to men." It had no Rule of life. It sought no authorization from Rome and no benefits or patrons. The majority of its members came from the lower classes and lived by the toil of their own hands.
The General Council of Vienne in 1311 condemned the Beguine way of life. Shortly thereafter, many cities acted to dissolve the Beguine houses (Beguinages) but this was not really accomplished until the beginning of the 15th century. Some of these women continued to live in a modified Beguine style until the end of the 18th century. Others went into established religious orders. Many others, according to Rufus Jones, who "were deprived of their Beguinage and turned adrift without means of support, and forbidden to beg, were compelled to die of want, or to find husbands, or to sink to a life of prostitution."
For those loose women who entered convents and remained, the Church failed to realize that many of them carried their tradition of looseness into the monastery. And often, in the convent, the revised hetairā (the so-called prostitute) found her "original impulse" toward hetairism in the sisterhood of her female companions.
The convent is also a primary locus for the long-term institutionalization of female friendship under the aegis of sisterhood, a situation in which women spent their lives primarily with women, gave women the largesse of their energy and attention, and formed powerful affective ties with each other.