The Cartulary of Chatteris Abbey.(Review)

The Cartulary of Chatteris Abbey, ed. Claire Breay (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1999; pp. 479. 50 [pounds sterling]).

Chatteris nunnery is fortunate in that its substantial cartulary has survived. As Sally Thompson pointed out nearly twenty years ago, the relative scarcity of documentary material deriving from female religious houses when compared with their male counterparts has had a serious impact on the historiography of medieval English nunneries. But Chatteris is doubly fortunate: this is an exemplary edition of the Cartulary, the more valuable since it sheds significant light on a nunnery which, though far from poor, was not in the front rank of English …