Nun faked his own death to drop the monastery

Joan of Leeds lived for a time in the 1300s. She was a nun, but did not want even to be in the monastery. To escape, staged she his own death by making a doll that resembled her own.

According to datidas archbishop to follow a life characterized by "the lustful desire".

It could perhaps have been the plot to a dramafilm, but this story is taken from reality. With the help of written sources has a group middelalderforskere examined the archive at the University of York, and found evidence for this spinnville the story, writes The Guardian.

Faket his death

The very first historic track that pointed to a "nun on the run" was easy to overlook. A very short note on the latin lay hidden deep in one of the 16 huge volumes that make up the register of the archbishop trading business from 1304 to 1405.

Dagbladet has been sent the translated snippet from the University of York.

In 1969, became a nun is found brutally killed. In death she may have taken with him a dreadful secret

"This is to warn Joan of Leeds, nun at St. Clement at York, that she should come back to his monastery", called in the little notice that is written by archbishop William Melton in 1318.

He leads up the date: 11. august 1318, the day of the big St. Lawrence-feast.

the Archbishop wrote to inform the dean in Beverley about the "scandalous rumor" that he had heard about the benediktinernonna Joan, that she had "impudently threw away decency in their religion, and tilbakeholdenheten by their sex."

"With a illvillig mind simulated she is a bodily disease: she pretended that she was dead, without fearing for either their health or soul," writes the bishop further.

NOTICE: A small note in the margin of one of the archbishop records of the trading business tells a dramatic and heart-wrenching story of nonna Joan of Leeds. Photo: University of York View more - Carnal desire

the Archbishop then tells that the nun "by help from several evil conspirators" had made a doll that resembled her body. With the help of the misled she is the other "devoted and faithful" at the monastery.

"She had no shame when she conducted its burial in a sacred place, together with the religious who already lay there", he writes further.

Miss naked trøndere

the Archbishop accuses Joan of Leeds for the "wily and utspekulerende show" have turned their back to all decency and the good in religion".

He believed she had been seduced by the indecency, and that she had broken their promises, rejected the religious habits, and "perverted his livsbane on an arrogant show away from poverty, and obedience, to a life characterized by carnal desire".

"She wanders now at large, to the imminent danger of her soul, and to the scandal of all in her order," he concludes.

- Many such cases, the

Professor Sarah Rees Jones leads the research team that has worked with this project. She says to The Guardian that they, unfortunately, has not found any records that say anything about how it went with the Joan of Leeds.

- Unfortunately, and this is really frustrating, we do not know the outcome of this case. There were quite many cases of monks and nuns who left their religious houses. We don't always know all the details, or how it ended with them, " she says.

In a historienedtegnelse from York County, described another of these escapes.

Stood up from the wheelchair and killed his mother

Late one evening in the first year in the 1300s, came some men to klosterinngangen with a oppsalet horse. Here he met a nun by the name of Cecily them. She threw off the nonnehabitten, put on another robe and rode off with them to Darlington, where Gregory de Thornton was waiting for her. She lived with him for three years or more, it is stated in the record.

- Hard

Joan of Leeds escape from the monastery happened in the same period that there was a choice of abbedisser in the monastery of her, St. Clement of York. Her mednonner Agnes of Methley and Beatrice of Brandsby were both chosen to be the abbess.

It ended with the archbishop Melton chose to deposit Agnes after having cancelled the results from the double selection. In this period began also the crops to take up, after the great famine from 1215-1318.

Obviously was not a monastic life that Joan had envisaged or wanted, and life was hard, concludes the professor, in his written summary of the incident.

the Mystery of the "Vaginaenes Mona Lisa" can finally be resolved