Aldhelm’s De virginitate and Anglo-Saxon nuns at the turn of the 7th – 8th centuries

Introduction. The publication focuses on the prose treatise De virginitate, composed by Anglo- Saxon Church author Aldhelm at the turn of the 7th – 8th centuries. The work was written for the nuns of the double monastery of Barking and its abbess Hildelith. The treatise has not received proper attention in domestic historiography. The purpose of this article is to study De virginitate in the context of associated with double monasteries social, cultural, and historical realities of Aldhelm’s day Britain. Methods and materials. The study is based on textual, historical, and cultural methods. The treatises of individual Church Fathers and a wide corpus of narrative testimonies, provided by Anglo-Saxon Church writers, have been used. Analysis. It is shown that in his epistle to the nuns of Barking Aldhelm not only derived from the previous tradition of praising virginity, but produced original writing that has preserved unique features of the environment in which he and his dedicatees moved. Among these features the following are emphasized: the presence of a large number of formerly married noblewomen in Anglo-Saxon double monasteries, the use of luxury, the wide spread of epistolary contacts in the clerical circles, the high level of aristocratic nuns’ education, and a large share of intellectual activity in their daily life. Results. Rhetorical, conceptual, and structural peculiarities of Aldhelm’s treatise prove that he belonged to the part of Anglo-Saxon clergy that did not debate the high position of noble women in the Church. Aldhelm’s praise of the Barking nuns’ virginity and learning, as well as the examples of cooperation and spiritual amity between the sexes among early Christian saints, can be considered manifestations of support for double monasteries as Church institution, spread in his days