Staff
Miss Ashley Tallyn
(email at a.e.tallyn@durham.ac.uk)
Research Topic
A study of the health of monks' and nuns' health using multiple lines of evidence
Abstract
My research focuses on examining the differences, if any, in the health and quality of life of medieval monks and nuns, between 1066 and 1535. The foundational purpose, subsistence practices, and amount of donation-based revenue for monasteries and nunneries were very different, given that these were both religious institutions founded on the principles of a life of prayer and devotion. I want to explore at how this variation affected the inhabitants' health.
I am looking at osteological, artefactual and documentary evidence from several sites in both the North and South of England to establish whether there were any differences in the diet and overall health between the monks and nuns. The question of how this affected the quality of life of these individuals is an interesting one, in that our modern ideas regarding quality of life will not be the same as those of the medieval world, where religious ideology dictated that physical suffering was good for the soul.
I am hoping that this research will shed light on the lives of these individuals as well as helping to produce a more complete picture of the differences in the roles and status of men and women in the Late Medieval period.
