La-Cour-Notre-Dame-de-Michery: A response to Constance Berman (A history of a 13th-century French Cistercian convent)

In a recent article in JMH, Constance Berman suggested that the thirteenth- century history of the Cistercian nuns of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery in France has been distorted by scholar's reliance on the fifteenth-century ca rtulary of the house. This compilation, she argues, was meant to portray th e nunnery as a failure and to justify its transformation into a male priory . The authors of the present article attempt to show that Berman's doubts a bout the reliability of the cartulary are unjustified and that the archeolo gical evidence of the church of La Cour which she uses to infer La Cour's f inancial vigor in the thirteenth-century actually points strongly in the op posite direction.