As to dying, the virgin recluse living a life of quiet contemplation and scholarship had every chance of living for two, three or even four times longer than her married sister; convent records show that nuns very often survived to the age of 80, 90, even 100, while the reality of contemporary childbirth is clearly indicated in the words of Psalm 116, directed for the use of women in labor: “The snares of death compassed me round: and the pains of hell gat hold on me…O Lord I beseech thee, deliver my soul.”
