The Rule attributed to Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) was first brought to England at the end of the sixth century with the Roman mission led by Augustine, the first bishop of Canterbury (579–c. 509). Among the monastic communities that were founded in the ensuing three and a half centuries, however, adherence to the Rule was by no means universal or exclusive. It was not until the tenth century, when concerted efforts were made to revive monasticism in England, that the imposition of the Rule as the sole guide to monastic life on communities of both men and women religious became a desideratum. These efforts culminated in a council convened by King Edgar (959–75) at Winchester in c. 973. Led by Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury (960–78), Athelwold, bishop of Winchester (963–84), and Oswald, both bishop of Worcester (961–92) and archbishop of York (971–92), the council promulgated an agreement that Athelwold had crafted: the Regularis concordia anglicae nationis monachorum sanctimonialiumque. Through this agreement, the council sought to unify the practices of monastic communities across England by placing them under the protection of the king and queen, and by standardizing liturgical practice and other aspects of daily life. The Benedictine Rule, decrees from the councils summoned by Louis the Pious at Aachen (814–40) in 816 and 817, the customaries of Fleury, Ghent and other northern continental monasteries, and some native traditions informed the agreement's composition.

In its proem, the Concordia addresses both monks and nuns, and recalls that abbots and abbesses attended the council at Winchester. Such explicit inclusivity of nuns in the text's opening moved Jean Leclercq to observe that ‘one of the most charming’ features of this reform effort was ‘the part played by women at all levels’; in his estimation, it was the characteristic that ‘distinguished the English reform from all others’. Thomas Symons thought it likely that members of the women's monastic communities at Nunnaminster, Shaftesbury and Wilton were in attendance at the council. Symons did not provide evidence to support his claim beyond citing the Concordia's proem, but the geographical locations of these communities – all in Wessex – and the manner in which they were founded – all by members of the royal house of Wessex – probably encouraged him to draw this conclusion.

In around 1404, Sibyl de Felton, the abbess of Barking Abbey in Essex from 1394 to 1419, granted, “with divine permission,” an ordinal “for the use of the abbesses in the said house into perpetuity.” This book, now Oxford, University College, MS 169, includes many of the features proper to medieval ordinals: it details the Masses and hours of the Divine Office that were to be celebrated throughout the entire year, negotiating the coincidence of multiple feasts on a given day; providing incipits to chants, prayers, and readings; assigning roles to specific monastic officers, other community members, and attendant clergy; and supplying performative cues for the intonation of chants and for the staging of processions, liturgical dramas, and other rituals. This book – with its clear articulation of the procedures for the yearly distribution of books at Chapter on the first Monday of Lent, the profession of new members, and the election, consecration, and installation of a new abbess – was also to double as a customary for the abbey. Details culled from the ordinal's rubrics reveal that the purpose behind the book's production was, in part, to organize and preserve Barking's liturgical practices, many of which were first initiated in the more distant reaches of the abbey's past, some even date to the period soon after the Norman Conquest. And the list of abbesses found near the book's end suggests that the ordinal remained in use until at least the death of Abbess Elizabeth Lexham in 1479, if not until the abbey's formal surrender to King Henry VIII's commissioner on 14 November 1539. Barking's ordinal is the only comprehensive liturgical plan to survive from a women's monastic house located in medieval England and, thus, offers a unique record of how at least one late medieval community of Benedictine nuns not only participated in but also scripted, orchestrated, and starred in its various liturgical performances.

Among the ordinal's most remarkable directives for performance are the physical and spiritual transfigurations envisioned for the Barking nuns, which often were to exceed the limits of liturgical precedent, gender, and ecclesiastical status.