For the daughters of the nobility Christianity was in many ways an even more attractive prospect. It gave women autonomy in establishments under their own authority. What was more, in mixed monasteries of men and women, it was a woman who ruled as abbess.

The Church provided an alternative to unwanted marriage deals for young princesses and, because convents would come to play a large role in fostering royal cults, it was a posting that could well find favour with a kingly father. For widows, the move into a convent provided an alternative to the uncertain politics of being the wife of a dead king in the court of a new king whose own wife would be looking to establish her authority.

The lands that accompanied a convent gave its abbess considerable economic clout in her area, which the shrewd among them – and they seem to have been nearly all shrewd women – employed to maximum advantage.