Founded by Henry V of England in 1415, Syon Abbey was a Birgittine double house that became a center of learning and preaching, as well as devotional and liturgical practice. When Henry VIII broke with Rome and closed the English monasteries, a small group of Syon nuns moved to Antwerp and lived alongside the Birgittine sisters at Mariëntroon (Dendermonde). This study investigates the sisters’ peregrinations in the Diocese of Cambrai between 1539 and 1580 as a context for local survivals of their devotional and administrative books.

Biography: Virginia Blanton is University of Missouri Curators’ Distinguished Professor and currently a Fulbright Scholar at the Ruusbroecgenootschap at the Universiteit Antwerpen. Her research focuses on representations medieval women and their relationship with books, as writers, readers, singers, patrons, and book owners. Dr. Blanton is co-editor of the three-volume series Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe (2013–2017), and she is also a founding member of the multidisciplinary NEH-funded team, CODICES, which conducts optical, chemical, and computational analyses of manuscripts and early printed books.