Gaming and Women’s Religious Life: examples from the Middle Ages and hypotheses for research that is still (or almost) to be done

The difficulty of observing ludicity in the specific context of female monasticism derives from the general paucity of sources; nuns left us far less written material than their male counterparts. As regards the Early Middle Ages, however, there is one document that offers significant insights concerning the issue. This is the protest of an abbess in the Kingdom of the Franks who defends herself against the accusation of having played tabula on the grounds that the practice had never been explicitly forbidden, neither by monastic rule nor by canon law. Part of this contribution is devoted to checking whether this gap in the regulations really existed. The rules governing the life of nuns aimed to construct a daily routine that involved an uninterrupted succession of prayer, manual activity and reading. Therefore, at least in theory, there was no time for ludic pursuits in a nun’s day. Nevertheless, it could include paraliturgical episodes involving elementary forms of dramatic presentation of Christ’s Passion. Except for games of chance, which were always firmly prohibited because of their unacceptable proximity to the practice of ordeals, there was a gradual move in the Middle Ages towards acceptance of games and playing of them by monks, a trend that led from more or less explicit banning of ludic activities to regulating the practice in the Late Middle Ages. For women, this progressive legitimation of ludicity is not so obvious, though the practice became part of the image of nuns in the Late Middle Ages.