Resumen de Women and Literate Liturgical Culture at Syon Abbey in the Late Middle Ages: The Syon Processionals
This article contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the scribal activities of medieval women, demonstrating that the writing of both text and musical notation could be an activity used by some women to refine their liturgical practice. We explore the written culture of Syon Abbey, and conduct a comprehensive paleographical analysis of a processional manuscript produced there—Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS F.2. We identify multiple scribes in its production and in subsequent layers of intervention. Each text scribe also wrote musical notation, showing that this was not a rare, arcane skill but—a least for this manuscript— an integral part of the scribal skill set. We compare this manuscript with the four other processionals from late-medieval Syon. By examining their different chant choices and how these intersect across layers of revision, we are able to offer for the first time a secure relative chronology for the Syon processionals.
