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From about the thirteenth through to the seventeenth century in England and on the continent certain nuns held the office of chaplain in their monasteries, serving as companions and chaperones to their superiors. In England, evidence for their roles survives especially in bishops’ visitation reports, revealing for example the repeated desire that superiors regularly rotate their chaplains. Some literary evidence for the existence of nun chaplains also survives, as in Mechtild of Magdeburg’s Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. This article considers the origins of the office and the concerns surrounding those who held it.
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