Memory-Keepers

Chapter 1 details the roles and responsibilities incumbent on two monastic officers—cantors and sacristans—who, though indispensable to the production and direction of their communities’ liturgies, have been neglected in histories of medieval monasticism. This chapter identifies nuns known to have held these offices and examines the different ways they created, preserved, and passed on their communities’ memoria through copying books, circulating mortuary rolls after the death of a consoror, composing saints’ lives and miracle collections to honor their foremothers, translating and guarding their relics, decorating sacred spaces, maintaining the proper observance of the liturgical calendar, and orchestrating the hours of prayer and Masses, even preparing the eucharistic offering. Highlighting the various roles and responsibilities that cantors and sacristans assumed is essential because they, along with their abbesses and prioresses, are the stars of the history this study seeks to relate.