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Joan of Leeds
Serial Number 54129: new article, stand by
'''Joan of Leeds''' was an early-14th-century [[fugitive|runaway]] nun.
==Escape from the nunnery==
Joan of Leeds was a nun, and a resident of [[St Clement by York]] [[nunnery]] in the early years of the 14th century. All that is known of her life comes from a [[marginalia]] in one of the [[William Melton|Archbishop of York's]] ''[[Registrum]]''. In 1318, tired of her enclosed life, she faked a mortal illness and eventually her own death. Joan created a dummy to take the place of her corpse, and a number of Joan's fellow nuns [[Aiding and abetting|aided and abetted]] her plan. Pretending to believe her to be dead, and to being deceived by the dummy, they buried it as her—with full [[Catholic rite]]s—"in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place", wrote Archbishop Melton. Joan's motives for escaping the nunnery are unknown, but the Archbishop put it down to a desire to follow "the way of carnal lust", which she was unable to do in [[orders]].
Joan of Leeds was considered [[apostate]] for voluntarily absconding from her nunnery.
===Overview===
Joan's was not the first fugitive nun that St Clements by York had had to deal with. In 1301, another nun known only as Cecily had met a group of mounted men by the priory gate; throwing off her [[habit]], she put on an ordinary gown and escaped to [[Darlington]] where she lived with one Gregory de Thornton for the next three years. Further scandal touched the priory in 1310. One of the nuns, Joan de Saxton, had been punished by Archbishop [[William Greenfield]] for unknown offences, but which, according to the historian [[Eileen Power]], had probably involved immorality. Although the punishment was subsequently reduced, Greenfield wrote to the Prioress, [[Agnes de Methelay]],|group=note}} laying out certain conditions for de Saxton's future conduct. Among other restrictions, she was not to leave the [[cloister]] except accompanied by other nuns, nor to receive visitors, and she was expressly forbidden to have anything to do with one [[Lady de Walleys]]: if de Walleys visited Clementhorpe, de Saxton "was to be sent away before Pentecost". For her part, the Prioress was forbidden to employ girls over the age of 12 in the Priory except when absolutely unavoidable. Only the year prior to Joan of Leeds escape Melton had issued instructions to the priory that "the frequent access of men and women to the house was not to be allowed, lest evil or scandal should arise".|group=note}}
==Historical significance==
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===Discovery===
The story of Joan of Leeds came to light in 2019, when a research project at the [[University of York]]—headed by Professor [[Sarah Rees Jones]]—examining the ''Registra'' of the [[Archbishops of York]] of 1305–1405 uncovered |group=note}}
Rees Jones described Joan's tale as "extraordinary—like a Monty Python sketch", noting, however, that we do not know what came of her or her case with Melton. This was not, Jones said, unusual: "there are quite a lot of cases of monks and nuns who left their religious house. We don't always get the full detail or know what the outcome was".
== Notes ==
== References ==
=== Bibliography ===
* Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)
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February 13, 2019 at 11:01PM
