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The abbey responded that she had been of a sufficiently mature age to know what she was doing, whatever excuses she might later raise. Her plea that she had been too young to know her own mind eventually must have been accepted, for a compromise was effected by allowing Maubuisson to keep some of her dowry and letting her depart with the rest of her property. We cannot tell what frightened Eremburge, but surely a strong part of her motive for professing at the abbey was to flee a perceived danger.

A child oblate not only was often in the company of relatives inside the convent but was also part of the concerns and plans of her kin outside the convent, thereby staying connected to her family at large. A forceful noblewoman, Hersende, made a major donation to the Priory of Saint-Silvain in Perigord in 1010. 31 She specifies in the charter all the relatives in her extended family who are to benefit by the donation. With a fine, literary sweep the gift is made to God, the Virgin Mary, and the donor's daughter, Hildegarde, who is a nun at the priory.

Mayheude acted autonomously, although her choice to enter Notre-Dame could have been motivated by a need to escape an intolerable marriage as well as to fulfill a spiritual vocation. Further, it is possible that in some of these cases women's choices were not free if husbands were actually rejecting unwanted wives-those who were barren or no longer desirable-and forcing them into nunneries. This, however, is unlikely, since the canonists forbade a husband to remarry while his wife lived as a nun, so to rid himself of a wife this way did not free a man to remarry lawfully.