Although the authors of the early monastic rules established firm parameters for the religious life, their instructions concerning the care and maintenance of conventual possessions are sketchy. This is not surprising, given that the dominant rules were written at a time when monastic life was simple and religious communities relatively isolated from the secular world. The original form of St Benedict's Rule directs the convent superior to keep a list of convent property and ensure that suitable office-bearers care for such items, which are to be shared. It contains no hint of administrative duties apart from the obligation to draw up a deed of gift in cases where property is offered at the reception of a postulant. Although there are specific injunctions to relieve the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, bury the dead and help the afflicted [in a section devoted to ‘good works’], any guidance about the financing of such services is lacking. Clearly, the principles explained by St Benedict were considered sufficient to guide the religious in all aspects of their service. Yet the responsibility of balancing the distaff, or domestic, side of convent affairs with the obverse, spiritual side symbolised by the crosier, was a heavy one.

Subsequent versions of the Rule, which might have been expected to reflect the cumulative experience of later religious, are also lacking in directions for financial management, though the ‘Northern Version’ from the fifteenth century gives a narrow glimpse of the material culture which had developed in the nunnery by this time.