The broad topic of leadership and the related issues of power and authority have attracted vigorous and fruitful debate, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, academics and their contemporaries in business strove to express in both popular and academic language a concept which was and is widely understood but difficult to analyse. In 1961 Tannenbaum defined leadership as ‘an interpersonal influence exercised in a situation and directed through the communication process towards the attainment of a specific goal or goals’. Burns some seventeen years later perceived it to be inextricably linked with authority, observing that such authority was [in the distant past] ‘legitimated by tradition, religious sanction, rights of succession and procedures, not by mandate of the people …’ These are useful insights for the contemporary scholar seeking to understand the intricate social dynamics of the medieval nunnery.

The term ‘leadership’, though modern rather than medieval, is entirely appropriate for describing the status and function of the medieval prioress or abbess. Tannenbaum's emphasis on goals fits the paradigm well, given some extension of his argument; and Burns' specific reflections on authority can also be extended to focus on the nunnery community and its function. It is clear that the authority of the prioress or abbess was legitimated by religious sanction, notably by the church, via the monastic rule which determined the pattern of her service. However, such authority was also legitimated by the people, the believers who accepted the religious as role models and intercessors, and also the community of nuns responsible for electing their superior.