Clemence of Barking

Clemence of Barking (fl. 1163–1200) was a 12th-century Benedictine nun and Anglo-Norman poet-translator of Barking Abbey. She is noted for writing a translation of the biography, the Life of Saint Catherine. Clemence's hagiography of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is widely regarded as, what would be considered today, a Christian feminist text. Mary, the sister of Thomas Becket, was appointed as abbess by Henry II during Clemence's time at the abbey of Barking. Many of the abbesses at Barking Abbey were familially related to the British royal house, and likely often selected by the monarch until the early thirteenth century. Because Barking Abbey was one of the most wealthy monasteries in Britain at the time, the nuns at Barking were allowed more freedom to pursue cultural and literary interests. As a nun of Barking Abbey, Clemence was part of an elite religious community under the protection of British monarchy.

In addition to her work, many other texts have been associated with the abbey of Barking, including Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence's Life of Thomas Becket, and Adgar's Gracial. The nuns contributed texts at the monasteries; however, very few medieval monastery manuscripts remain, making it difficult to discern how much writing nuns were contributing at the time. It is likely that Barking's nuns were creating texts to be shared with each other, with royalty, and other outside visitors. Following the Cluniac Reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the production of books was encouraged, and women were contributing more writing as a result. which was composed at Barking Abbey between 1163 and 1170. Nonetheless, there is not enough evidence to determine who translated the Life of St. Edward, as anonymous writing was common in Middle English literature, and even more common among women writers. Clemence's version of the account is regarded as being one of the earliest vernacular lives of the saints, and one of the only accounts written by a woman, Scholars argue that in this portion of the translation, Clemence employed self-authorization. Because the act of writing was already quite subversive for twelfth-century women in Europe, Clemence's strategy of self-authorization is regarded as a bold move. Scholars also suggest that Clemence's reclamation of authority was a strategy for taking hold of patriarchal depictions of women in literature in order to reinterpret them as a woman for women. Scholar, Gina J. Froese writes that Clemence's work "hints at an authorial anxiety that suggests a send of unease with the process of subverting and reclaiming. Though she follows and sometimes mimics the structure, form, and style her male predecessors also apply, we clearly find indications of protest against misogynistic views and corrections of such interpretations that place her at odds with the authority of her predecessors."

Works The life of St. Catherine, Ed. William MacBain, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Oxford, Backwell, 1964.