Mitgite einbrachten. Dazu gab es Konversen aus dieser sozialen Schicht, die
Brüder als Mönche im gleichen Konvent besessen haben. Die Konversen haben
in der Regel auch aus der Umgebung des Klosters oder aus Orden gestammt, in
denen die Klöster begütert waren. Die Motivationen der eingetretenen Konversen scheinen vielfältig gewesen zu sein. Neben äußerlichen Gründen, wie Armut
und Krankheiten stand natürlich auch die echte Berufung. Bei den im höheren
Alter Eintretenden scheint das Begräbnis im Kloster eine gewisse Rolle gespielt
zu haben. Die Zahl der Konversen war nach Klöstern und Zeiträumen sehr verschieden. Das Verhältnis Mönche und Konversen wird mit zwei zu drei oder
eins zu drei angegeben. Dabei wird vom Verfasser auch die Größe der Klostergebäude zur Interpretation der Konventsstärken herangezogen. Eine interessante
hese, die man im Rahmen der Cistercienserforschung weiterverfolgen muss.
Im Verlauf des 14. Jahrhunderts ging die Zahl der Konversen rasch zurück, doch
wirkte sich dieser Rückgang nicht auf ihre Stellung in den Konventen aus. Das
dritte Kapitel widmet sich den „Konversen als Arbeitskrat in der Klosterwirtschat“. Ausgehend von den Grundsätzen der cisterciensischen Klosterwirtschat waren Konversen nicht nur in allen Gebieten der Landwirtschat, sondern auch in der Wirtschatsführung und im Handel der Klöster eingesetzt. Sie
waren dabei auch in den Stadthöfen beschätigt und haben als Handwerker in
allen Berufen gearbeitet. Der Verfasser zählt hier Bäcker, Weber, Schuhmacher,
Gerber, Walker, Schmied, Wagner, aber auch das Baugewerbe auf. In den Klöstern traten sie darüber hinaus als Gastbrüder, als Schreiber und als Klostermeister, Schneider und Küchenmeister auf. Der Verfasser weist hier insbesondere
auf die zahlreichen Erwähnungen in den Urkunden der einzelnen Abteien hin.
Das vierte Kapitel befasst sich mit der Stellung der Konversen, die sich nach
der Vorgabe des Ordens, der Situation der jeweiligen Klöster und der Bedeutung der Konversen als Arbeitskrat bezog. Eine besondere Rolle spielte das im
fünten Kapitel vorgestellte „spirituelle Leben der Konversen“. Sie mussten gegenüber den Mönchen im Stundengebet weniger Zeit aufbringen, waren aber
im spirituellen Leben dennoch eng an das Leben der Mönche und die entsprechenden religiösen Gebräuche angeschlossen. Daraus wird deutlich, dass Menschen aus allen Schichten im Kloster ein institutionelles Gefäß suchten, um im
Gebet und Arbeit nach benediktinischer Sicht Gott zu dienen. Bernhard von
Clairvaux hebt darauf ab, dass die Arbeit ein wichtiges Element der praktischen
Spiritualität war. Diese stand bei der Rezitation der grundlegenden Gebete wie
„Pater Noster“ und „Ave Maria“ unter Einbezug ihrer Arbeit in gewisser Weise
gleichwertig neben den Gottesdiensten der Mönche. In den „Ergebnissen“ fasst
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der Verfasser seine Ausführung nochmals zusammen und zeigt die Bedeutung
der Konversen in den Cistercienserabeiten der Eidgenossenschat. Dabei dürften sich diese Ergebnisse auch auf andere Klöster des Ordens übertragen lassen.
Die weitere Erforschung wird dieses tun müssen und dabei deutlich machen, ob
diese Ergebnisse nur regionale Bedeutung haben oder über die hier untersuchte
Region weit hinausgehen, was im Grundsatz anzunehmen ist. Im Anhang stellt
der Verfasser die in den Quellen erwähnten Konversen in den untersuchten Abteien vor und schat damit eine umfassende Quellenlage, auf die sich die Forschung der Zukunt berufen kann. Der Band schließt mit einem umfangreichen
Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis und wird durch ein ausführliches Register
sehr gut erschlossen.
Georg Schrott
Gerald Hirtner, Netzwerk der Tugendhaten. Neuzeitliche Totenroteln als
historische Quelle. (Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige, 48. Ergänzungsband). Sankt Ottilien, EOSVerlag 2014. 462 Seiten + zahlreiche Illustrationen, gebunden, 16,5 x 24 cm €
49,95 ISBN 978-3-8306-7678-2.
Bisher gab es zum frühneuzeitlichen Rotelwesen, einem „Arkanum der Geschichtswissenschat“ (1) und „Stiekind“ (2) der Forschung, nur eine Reihe
von Aufsätzen meist bayerischer Autoren. Selbst die üppige „Quellenkunde der
Habsburgermonarchie“ übersprang das hema. Nun hat sich Gerald Hirtner in
seiner Dissertation daran gemacht, diese Quellen- und Literaturgattung in einem weit gespannten monographischen Bogen zu untersuchen und damit eine
empindliche Forschungslücke zu schließen.
Hirtners Arbeit ist zugleich Bestandsaufnahme, Quellenkunde und ein Beitrag
zur historischen Netzwerkforschung. Nach einem Überblick über den wissenschatlichen Stand und der Beschreibung des Vorhabens charakterisiert der Autor die verschiedenen Formen mittelalterlicher und frühneuzeitlicher Roteln.
Anschließend widmet er sich ausführlich seinem Quellen-Pool, nämlich der
Rotelsammlung der Erzabtei Sankt Peter in Salzburg. Die Analyse der statistischen Verteilung beispielsweise nach der Diachronie, der geographischen Herkunt oder der Ordenszugehörigkeit lässt typische Charakteristika des Quellencorpus hervortreten. Weitere Arbeitsschritte beschätigen sich mit Inhalten
und Funktionen der Roteln. Aus dem Material greit er schließlich die Texte
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benediktinischer Herkunt heraus, um an ihnen „Benediktinische Netzwerke in
Salzburg“ (233f.) zu untersuchen. Angehängt sind exemplarische Quelleneditionen und die Reproduktionen von Vignetten aus Roteldrucken. Ein Orts- und
Personenregister erschließt die Arbeit.
Cistercienserklöster treten als Emittenten in der sanktpetrischen Sammlung in
vergleichsweise geringem Ausmaß hervor. Im 17. Jahrhundert stehen 35 cisterciensische Roteln 1262 aus den Männerkonventen des Ordo Sancti Benedicti
gegenüber (73), im gesamten 18. Jahrhundert stammten 49% der Roteln aus
Benediktinerstiten, 25% von Augustiner-Chorherren und 12% von Benediktinerinnen. Nun erst folgen die Cistercienser und Prämonstratenser mit je 7 bzw.
6%. Das lässt sich nicht allein dadurch begründen, dass es weniger Cistercienser- als Benediktinerklöster gab. Eine wichtige Rolle spielte es beim Rotelaustausch, ob und wie lange Klöster miteinander verbrüdert waren. Denkbar ist
aber natürlich auch, dass es ordensspeziische Kulturen der Selbstdarstellung
in Netzwerken und Öfentlichkeiten gab, denen die vergleichende Ordensforschung aber bisher noch nicht auf der Spur ist.
Hirtner schließt die Forschungslücke, in die er vorstößt, nicht hermetisch
dicht – er kann es nicht und will es nicht. Denn die Rotel-Forschung ist von
einer Einzelperson weder fachlich noch quantitativ zu stemmen. Als Desiderata formuliert er eine „vollständige Bestandsaufnahme der Rotelsammlungen
in Österreich“ (322) (und man möchte ergänzen: ebenso in den anderen Territorien). Vor allem fordert er eine interdisziplinäre Auswertung ein (323). Eine
der vielen noch zu bewältigenden Einzelaufgaben wird exemplarisch hervorgehoben: die Ermittlung der Druckorte, distributionsgeschichtlich wichtig, aber
schwer zu bestimmen, da Roteln keine Impressa besitzen. Der Autor schließt
mit dem Hinweis, die Erstellung von Professbüchern sei eine „unabdingbare
Voraussetzung für die prosopograische Erforschung der neuzeitlichen Klöster
und Stite“, und betont die Bedeutung, die die Roteln hierbei einnehmen würden (323). Neben diesen kurzen Andeutungen im abschließenden Ausblick böte
sich eine ganze Reihe weiterer Impulse zur Anschlussforschungen an. Beispielsweise wären es viele Roteln wert, von der neulateinischen Literaturgeschichte
unter die Lupe genommen zu werden, sind unter den barocken Exemplaren
doch einige Glanzstücke „spitzindiger“ Rhetorik zu inden. Roteln liefern eine
Fülle von Beiträgen zur „Geschichte des Todes“, bieten Kunsthistorikern in ihrem typographischen Schmuck mancherlei Erkenntnisse an und erlauben über
einen Zeitraum von vielen Jahrzehnten einen Abgleich zwischen „Ideal und
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Wirklichkeit“ – sprich der panegyrischen Rhetorik der Roteln und der realen
Zustände in den Konventen.
Constance H. Ber man
Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop (eds.), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe [vol. 1]. he Hull Dialogue. Brepols, Turnhout 2013.
XXXIV + 370 pages, 156 x 234 mm € 90 ISBN 978-2-503-53972-0.
Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop (eds.), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe [vol. 2]. he Kansas City Dialogue. Brepols, Turnhout 2015. XLV + 415 pages, 156 x 234 mm € 100 ISBN 978-2-503-54922-4.
Historians of medieval and modern life alike have understood for some time
that literacy comprises much more than the ability to sign one’s name. Feminist
medievalists have come to understand that literacies can include vernacular as
well as Latin expertise and that a variety of sources must be deployed to tease
out evidence of various types of literacies. hese two volumes provide a dramatic
reassessment of the achievements in literacy of nuns in medieval western Europe
that includes using, reading, understanding, composing, writing and copying
of both Latin and vernacular texts and creating and illustrating the books and
organizing the document collections that have preserved the evidence of that
literacy, and of almost all else we can know about those nuns. hese volumes
so beautifully edited and presented by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and
Patricia Stoop, in the Brepols series: Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts,
provide a new understanding of the importance of medieval religious women’s
literacies, of their highly-developed skills and abilities in those areas, and of their
considerable access and contributions to medieval book culture. hey conirm
that women’s religious communities could be lively intellectual centers and that
their access to and understanding of the written word extended beyond the vernacular to considerable expertise in Latin, rhetoric, grammar, and composition
as well as to the book-making skills.
here is much of value here, including the introductions’ solid bibliographies of
work that has gone before. Topics and dates range widely and are best described
across the volumes and I am grateful to Virginia Blanton for providing me a table of contents for the third volume based on the Antwerp conference, which allows me to mention several new directions of continuations in that volume. he
signal achievement of these volumes has been to bring less-known works to the
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fore and to add to the accumulated scholarship which oten continues to follow
a trajectory of looking for the evidence of medieval nuns and their communities in untouched or neglected archival and library collections, establishing how
oten we can now determine that „anonymous“ was in fact a religious woman,
combatting long-held assumptions that houses of nuns were few and far between and illed with defective or unwanted women without religious vocations,
that nuns and abbesses were capable literate women, managers of property, who
provided care for the poor and whose prayers for souls were valued in a variety
of medieval regions, practices, and reforms, and as contemplative, mystical, spiritual beings.
I begin with the most diicult topic, England, for which the evidence is sparser
than for the continent, or Scandinavia. In volume one, „Conceiving the Word(s):
Habits of Literacy among earlier Anglo-Saxon Monastic Women“ (149-167),
Lisa M. C. Weston argues that in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms „the founding
of monastic houses by and for high-status women . . . provided one of the most
successful strategies for aligning and consolidating secular and religious power‘‘ (149). „Substantial evidence reveals Anglo-Saxon monastic women as active
and engaged readers of both sacred scripture and contemporary writers‘‘ (150).
As evidenced by the praise of Hild of Whitby by Bede, the correspondence of
Aldhelm with Hildelith of Barking, both in the late seventh century, and letters
exchanged with Boniface in the next generation, by such nuns as Leoba, Weston evokes „the habits of literacy that characterized life in women’s monastic
communities during the irst century or two of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon
England“ (167).
In the next article, „he Literary Culture of the Anglo-Saxon Royal Nunneries:
Romsey and London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 436.“ volume one (169183), Stephanie Hollis asserts that „the paucity of Anglo-Saxon hagiography“ for
religious women was the result of „non-survival of texts,“ rather than because of
nuns’ not having produced them in the irst place (169). She argues that later vitae of such saintly women as Edith of Wilton or Wulhild of Barking, had drawn
on pre-Conquest writings. She turns to the issue of whether the Lansdowne
436 legendary was the work of women, pointing to a tendency to attribute to
the men in their service such volumes as this, which originated in the house of
nuns of Romsey because of its ex libris; for Romsey this suggests a larger library
there that disappeared at the Dissolution or earlier because of appropriations by
individuals like the chaplain at Wilton attested elsewhere as having walked of
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with a book. She suggests that „to ofset the popular belief that the standard of
educational attainment at medieval English monasteries was generally low,” a
database of both lost manuscripts known to have belonged to nuns and anonymous manuscripts attributed by modern scholars to male communities might
demonstrate more overlap than once thought (183). hat is to argue forcefully
that „anonymous“ might oten have been a nun.
In volume two (289-306), Andrew Rabin discusses „Courtly Habits: Monastic
Women’s Legal Literacy in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” in Anglo-Saxon Nunneries’ access to „the texts of the law‘‘ (291). According to Rabin, „he absence
of evidence for nuns’ legal literacy … relects the tendency of pre-Conquest lawmakers to discount female ecclesiastics as readers of legal texts, especially royal legislation“ (294-295). Rabin sees their treatment in the law as a „specially
protected category of passive subject rather than as fully realized legal agents‘‘
(295). But he also sees the necessity for religious women to deal in legal documents such as charters. As an example of this he discusses the disposition of
charters for an abbey of religious women at Withington in Gloucestershire, an
example in which a group of women do access legal agency through control of
documents concerning land, primarily because the dispute involved the various
female heirs of a woman founder. his dispute and its resolution, thus turned
on female monastic reading of law as well as scripture history and grammar as
outlined by Aldhem (305).
Marilyn Oliva looks at this in a diferent way in „Rendering Accounts: the
Pragmatic Literacy of Nuns in Late Medieval England,” volume one (51-68), a
solid contribution to our understanding of nun’s use of non-literary sources:
„administrative documents, primarily nuns’ household accounts, but also, in
a supplementary role, bailifs’ accounts, and also rentals.” According to Oliva,
„he mundane records indicate that many of the nuns for whom these sources
survive wrote and kept their own household accounts, actively conferred with
their bailifs and reeves, and relied on their own written accounts to do so“ (5253). Obviously, as she acknowledges, some of these records may have been written by male scribes hired for the purpose, but „Quotidian details“ suggest that
daily and weekly tallies were the business of the nuns and that „evidence of the
nuns’ active involvement in the composition of their accounts can be seen in
their form and language“ (61). Oliva attributes this pragmatic literary skill to
nuns’ learning on the job with help from superiors over the course of careers
of oice-holders within the community. he presentation of evidence for the
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everyday pragmatic literacy of English nuns provides another angle from which
to view these women religious, but also in the larger context of these volumes
suggests yet other ways in which pragmatic writing skills identiied as those of
nuns might occasionally provide clues to our understanding of the larger problem of copying literary and liturgical sources.
Similarly, in volume two (307-325), Emilie Amt, „Making their Mark: the Spectrum of Literacy among Godstow’s Nuns, 1400-1550,“ surveys cartularies and
documents of practice, traces of the conventual library and evidence from the
Dissolution. Two iteenth-century cartularies survive, one Latin and one Middle English translation of it. he irst is dated to 1403/04 and is argued by Amt,
very convincingly, to have been produced by the prioress of Godstow, Alice of
Eaton, and not by a later Alice (of Henley) identiied in error by earlier scholars
(310-312). he second, is a translation made in the 1460s by a „poor brother,“
name omitted, who stated that he should make this translation, „for as much
as women of religion, in reading books of Latin, are excused of great understanding“ (313). his is the passage cited by Eileen Power in 1922 as evidence of
English convents’ „poverty of learning,“ but as Amt is quick to point out, the
same author tells us that these nuns were, „for the most part in English books
well learned“ (314).
he evidence of charters and cartularies thus shows nuns’ use of Latin, French
for annotations, and English and their active engagement in managing their
own afairs. More diicult to assess is the library, to which in addition to some
English content in the English cartulary, and a fragment in the Latin cartulary
of a French verse life of Ediva of Winchester, the community’s founder, only one
other manuscript book, a Latin psalter, may be added. his was a mid-fourteen
hundreds git, which may provide some evidence as to devotional reading by the
nuns. A third bit of evidence for the literacy of Godstow’s nuns is provided in
the evidence of notes sent by ex-nuns to agents to collect their pension payments
ater the Dissolution. What Amt concludes is that familiarity with the written
word varied considerably among the nuns of late medieval Godstow.
In volume one (185-206), Virginia Blanton takes up „he Devotional Reading
of Nuns: hree Legendaries of Native Saints in Late Medieval England.” She
begins with her assertion that „Little attention has focused on the legendaries
associated with female communities: in fact, collections of saints’ lives have largely been ignored, perhaps because it is believed that they are too ubiquitous
to provide much information about a particular reading community“ (185). Yet
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as she argues, twenty-percent of the devotional readings to be identiied with
English nuns, is such saints’ lives, as analyzed in Table Four (204-206) on their
legendaries. Blanton analyzes one legendary in Latin, one in French and one in
English. hey are respectively British Library MS Lansdowne 436; British Library MS Additional 70513; and Cambridge University Library MS Additional
2604. One conclusion is that despite the various languages and original owners
of these legendary manuscripts, they collectively suggest widespread concern
among women religious readers about those whom Blanton describes as their
„forbearers of English vowed religious“ (201).
In volume one (69-93), Veronica O’Mara presents the irst of three articles on
the problem of the paucity of „strict textual evidence used dispassionately “ (69)
for late medieval England’s nuns’ literacies. As described in „he Late Medieval
English Nun and her Scribal Activity: A Complicated Quest,” O’Mara sets out
to avoid what might be called wishful thinking and ill-founded assertions about
manuscripts produced by women and for not jumping to conclusions too easily
in attempts to attribute the „anonymous“ manuscript to a late medieval English
nun. As she describes it as being so much harder to ind evidence for nuns’ or
laywomen’s literacies and scribal activity in English „literary contexts“ than for
the continent, I am reminded of a conversation long ago with the late Mary
Martin McLaughlin, about organizing a conference session; as Mary put it, „this
has to be very solid.“ It is that insistence, which O’Mara brings to her quest,
which is so admirable, even if at the cost of sometimes opening up again what
were once thought to be solid attributions. here is something like this as well
in the article by Nils Dverstorp discussed below.
At the end of the article, O’Mara describes her method: „To adopt a taxonomic
approach to nuns’ scribal activity by looking out for what is added, what is marginal, so that eventually we may be able to speak in a more grounded way about
what is at the centre and so contribute to other eforts in constructing the lives of
such women“ (92-93). Some of O’Mara’s arguments about women scribing their
own texts (or not) are easily made. In looking at surviving English letter collections that oten involved women, like the Paston letters, she inds that there is
little positive evidence for women having written their letters themselves (72).
She argues similarly that unlike for the continent, few surviving sermons for late
medieval England have been found and only six sermons that were addressed
to nuns. As for nuns’ colophons, earlier studies had found only one, that by a
scribe identifying herself as a nun from Nunnaminster. O’Mara adds here to that
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census with her own discoveries in early sixteenth century manuscripts: of colophons, ownership inscriptions and notations that can be attributed to women.
his is the irst of a three-part study.
In volume two (123-147), O’Mara continues on „Nuns and Writing in Late Medieval England: he Quest Continues.“ Looking at the documents „of surrender“ of women’s religious houses at the time of the Dissolution (1536-39) for evidence of nuns’ handwriting, she reports them as disappointing -- almost entirely
ambiguous results with nuns oten only making a mark, for whatever reason.
She then turns from the ownership inscriptions of the earlier article to look at
whatever „unique material“ there may be in nuns’ hands that was inserted in manuscripts, even when it is impossible to tell that an entire manuscript was scribed by a woman. Again, her indings are mixed, suggesting that others’ conclusions have sometimes been overdrawn. She concludes that while her manuscript
analysis provides indications of what English nuns might have read, it provides
little about what they may have been writing. O’Mara promises to conclude her
quest by looking at Syon, the English Birgittine abbey in „Scribal Engagement
and the Late Medieval English Nuns: he Quest Concludes?“
here is much about the Birgittines, known for their sisters as well as brothers
having great interests in literacy. Volume one has three articles on Birgittines in
England and Sweden. Monica Hedlund, in „Nuns and Latin, with Special Reference to the Birgittines of Vadstena,“ volume one (97-118), begins with an overview of earlier religious women known for their intellectual power: the great
abbesses of the twelth century: Heloise, Hildegard and Herrad. While positing
a change in access to learning for nuns ater 1200 because they were shut out
of the universities, there were still notable women, like the thirteenth-century
Cistercian nuns at Helta who are described as being inluential among the later
Birgittines for their mystical writing. It is, as Hedlund states it, „against a rather
heterogeneous background that we have to see the question of how much Latin
the Vadstena sisters knew“ (103). heir customary, the Lucidarium, states that
they were to have their own psalters and to read and sing from the text and musical notations in choir, but it cannot always be assumed that they understood
the Latin texts they sang, for along with evidence for systematic training in Latin there are also interlinear Swedish translations in some surviving manuscripts
(103-107). Moreover, there is some evidence for scribal work by those nuns with
a talent for it (109). She concludes that „all the evidence seems to conirm that
at least a passive and practical understanding of Latin was the norm among the
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Vadstena sisters, in all probability several of them had a rather good command
of the language“ (113).
Also in volume one (239-251) is Jonas Carlquist’s „he Birgittine Sisters at Vadstena Abbey: heir Learning and Literacy, with Particular Reference to Table
Reading.“ Carlquist opines in his opening (but there is a confused citation here),
that in England at Birgittine Syon abbey, „most nuns were not able to understand non-liturgical Latin, but that the minority who could was greater than has
been previously thought“ (240). He tells us as well that at Vadstena, which had
an impressive vernacular library for the nuns, „Latin knowledge seems at a irst
glance to be very much in the minority“ (240). He then turns to the manuscript
that he has published, a composite volume for reading aloud to the nuns at table: „he table readings are usually connected to the daily readings in Latin in
the church, probably with the aim of allowing the sisters to gain an awareness of
the topics of the day and to get explanations of the more complicated aspects of
their beliefs“(243). he readings include quotations in Latin usually translated,
except from the Bible, from Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Birgitta, Gregory the Great, Jerome, Hugh of St-Victor and, and John Chrysostom.
He tells us that „he fact that just a few Latin quotations in the table reading
manuscript are not followed by a translation raises the question [as to] whether
the nuns themselves understood the Latin passages . . . his suggests that the
Latin competence among the nuns of Vadstena Abbey was mostly practical. he
ordinary nun knew as much Latin as was needed for her daily duties“ (245).
Still, „the education and textual world of Vadstena circa 1500 appears to have
been rich“ (250).
In the next article, „Vadstena Abbey and Female Literacy in Late Medieval Sweden,“ volume one (253-274), Ingela Hedström, addresses earlier assumptions
about the illiteracy of nuns at Vadstena in comparison to the brothers there.
here was some sort of education within the convent that included the training
of new sisters as is mentioned in a few examples. Hedström argues for a considerably literacy when she examines the Regula, to determine which oices in the
convent required literacy by the incumbent. „Many of the positions in the convent or tasks that a sister could have performed required that the sister had to be
able to read or write, or to have direct contact with books.” he abbess had ceremonial functions that required reading and commenting on common readings
and she had probably been elected because of her „intellectual and administrative capacities.” he prioress and her assistants had duties that included reading
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to sisters in the inirmary. A lectrix was in charge of table readings, probably a
position that rotated among the nuns, cantrices too would have had to read from
the choir books, the treasurer had to write down expenses and income. here
were also sisters who copied, who proofread and who oversaw the translation
from Latin into Swedish (255-257).
Hedström concludes that „at least half of the sisters were able to write and we
know the names of many who did so at the end of the iteenth century.“ Indeed,
as she states, „It seems clear that the sisters mentioned in the Diarium [the chronology compiled by the brothers] were especially skilled and probably wrote
manuscripts for use by the brethren“ (269). Indeed, „Perceiving the sisters as merely unlearned women copying texts translated into the vernacular does not do
these nuns justice . . . Rather than looking at the extensive production of books
in the vernacular as some form of regression, because the sisters did not know
Latin, it could just as easily be interpreted as a rise in the number of sisters who
could – and wanted to – read“ (271). Such interest in the vernacular, moreover,
does not preclude some of them knowing Latin.
In volume two (109-122), Nils Dverstorp presents „Step by Step: he Process
of Writing a Manuscript in the Female Convent of Vadstena,” with reference to
manuscript Stockholm, Kungligabiblioteket, MS A 9, a book recognized to have
been written by a nun at Vadstena sometime ater 1450. His careful paleographic
analysis of the manuscript, however, shows something new. hat although at
irst it appears to have had multiple scribes, careful tracing of overlapping changes in letter forms suggests instead changes in the hand of a single scribe over
time. What this means, of course, is that reported numbers of diferent scribes
at a house of nuns like Vadstena may have been slightly over-counted. In fact if
some scribes were very consistent in their hands over time, others may have had
variations in their letter formation if they had stopped and started a manuscript
over time. It is an interesting use of paleography.
More is to come on Birgittines. In volume three Ann M. Hutchison will discuss
„Readings for the Nuns of Syon Abbey.” Eva Lindqvist Sandgren will consider
„Reading and Pictorial Preferences in the Birgittine Prayer Book, Uppsala Univertsitetsbibliotek, MS C 12. Anne Mette Hansen will describe „Devotional
Books for the Birgittine Abbey of Maribo“ a house founded in the iteenth century in Danish Lolland. Mary C. Erler discusses „he Transmission of Images
between Flemish and English Birgittine Houses.“
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For northern climes, volume two (229-248) includes „What Icelandic Nuns
Read: he convent of Reynistad’ur,“ by Swanhildur Óskarsdóttir. She discusses books that would have been included in libraries for house of nuns in northern Iceland and examines in detail Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Collection
MS AM 764, a miscellany of texts compiled in the late fourteenth century,
that would have been of interest to religious women and which was probably
produced for Reynistad’ur. For Ireland, an article by Maeve Collan, „Líadain’s
Lament, Darerca’s Life and Íte’s Ísucán: Evidence for Nuns’ Literacies in Early
Ireland,“ volume two (209-228), discusses a tradition of Irish women poets for
which there is only a late survival of written versions. hat such texts as Líadain’s
Lament and Íte’s Ísucán have internal claims that they are by women, but that
such internal evidence has been ignored suggests an ”androcentrism“ of both
surviving texts and scholarship (226).
A third article in volume two considers Irish nuns transported to Spain. „Her
Book-Lined Cell: Irish Nuns and the Development of Texts, Translation, and
Literacy in Late Medieval Spain,“ by Andrea Knox, volume two (67-86), concerns not just migration to Spain ater the Henrician Dissolution from the 1540s
onward, but earlier Irish Dominican nuns active in Spain from the thirteenth
century, particularly in providing education for girls. In this case, „It appears
that none of the surviving texts and books was overseen by male members of
the Dominican Order, with the result that they were not always as sanitized as
Rome or the Inquisition would have liked“ (84). In this case the nuns’ enclosure
protected them somewhat from investigation. Also concerning Spain in volume
three will be Blanca Garí, „What did Catalan Nuns Read? Women’s Literacy in
the Monasteries of Catalonia, Majorca and Valencia.“
In volume two (327-339), Darcy Donahue discusses „he Personal and the Political: Ana of San Bartolomé’s Version of the Discalced Carmelite Reform.“
According to Donahue, convent documentation, which came to include chronicles of the lives of exceptionally pious or leaned nuns, was a form of self-preservation and even advertising used to recruit new members and donors. „In the
case of Spain, this is particularly true of the discalced Carmelite Order, founded
by Teresa de Ávila in 1562“ (328). Donahue describes the topic of her article, the
chronicler of the Carmelite Reform, Ana of San Bartolomé, Teresa’s nurse and
secretary: „he daughter of aluent peasants, by her own account she acquired
writing skills miraculously in one aternoon through copying the script of her
mentor, Teresa of Avila; „ this was recorded in the canonization testimony (330).
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Ana’s News on the Beginning of the Teresan Carmelites, written in 1598 tells the
story of her heroic mother igure, but also includes biographies of iteen of the
irst discalced Carmelite nuns, thus comprising a history of the early order.
For Italy, there are two articles in volume two. Antonella Ambrosio points to
account books and other archival documents as a potential source for women’s
literacy in Naples in „Literacy in Neapolitan Women’s Convents: An Example
of Female Handwriting in a Late Fiteenth-Century Accounts Ledger,“ volume
two (89-108). hus Ambrosio presents for Naples the types of practical literacy
documents that Oliva in volume one presented for England. Ambrosio compares the nun’s writing in igure 8 with that of a friar from Naples on igures
6 and 7. Although it appears that sometimes the nun may have unsuccessfully
attempted to keep a straight horizontal line of writing across the account page,
her less cursive hand appears appropriate for such accounts and relatively easily
read. he layout is much like some of the accounts found for thirteenth-century
Cistercian nuns in northern France, on which I have forthcoming work.
Again in volume two (171-189), Loretta Vandi argues for „he Visual Vernacular: he Construction of Communal Literacy at the Convent of Santa Maria in
Pontetetto (Lucca).“ Here what she strives for is a description of the less polished
illuminations in four early to mid twelth century manuscripts surviving from
that abbey of Santa Maria produced not long ater the death of the founding
Abbess Humbrina in 1124. It would have beneitted from some consultation of
Jefrey Hamburger’s Nuns as Artists: he Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent
(Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996). here is an elaborate analogy here that is diicult to tease out, but which seems to be used to call
the nuns’ manuscript painting „the visual vernacular.“ What she seems to argue is
that the more formal manuscript art associated with nearby monks and canons
is related to the illustrations in these nuns’ manuscripts in the same way that
more literary Latin is related to vulgar Latin.
More on Italy is promised for volume three; Brian Richardson will contribute
„Memorializing Living Female Saints in the Milanese Convent of Santa Marta
in the Early Sixteenth Century,“ and Melissa Moreton discusses „Exchange and
Alliance: the Sharing and Giting of Books in Women’s Houses in Late Medieval Florence.“
Articles on the Clarisses and Franciscan Tertiary Women may also concern
Italy: he forthcoming volume three from the Antwerp conference will have
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articles on mendicant women. hey include Julie Ann Smith, „’Faciat eas litteras
edoceri: Literacy and Learning in the Clarissan formae vitae,“ and Alison More,
„Religious Order and Textual Identity: he Case of Franciscan Tertiary Women,“ that may concern Italy. Others on mendicants include „he Legacy of St.
Margit: A Case-study of a Dominican Monastery in Hungary,“ by Hedvig Deák,
„’Sitting Between Two Sisters’: Reading Holy Writ in a Community of Tertiaries in Sint-Agnes, Amersfoort,“ by Sabrina Corbellini, and Almut Bretenbach
and Stefan Matter’s „Image, Text, and the Sisters’ Minds: Franciscan Tertiaries
Rewriting Stephan Fridolin’s Schatzbehalter.“
As for France and Germany, Flanders and the Netherlands, in volume two (326), Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck take on the cross-channel connections
in „Leoba and the Iconography of Learning in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Women Religious, 660-780.“ Citing work by Felice Lifshitz and Jane Schulenburg,
they argue that „References to women’s participation in religious culture, especially in intellectual culture, are most oten preserved in saints’ lives,” and that
„presentations of Anglo-Saxon abbesses demonstrate a set of expectations about
literacies.“ (6-8). hey refer to self-referential texts by Leoba herself and reminiscences of the sisters at Tauberbischofsheim that were incorporated into the Vita
written c. 836, half a century ater Leoba’s death, by Rudolf of Fulda, concluding
that the narrative demonstrated „the authority and agency of a learned female
community“ (25-26).
he transfer of manuscripts is the topic of the opening article in volume one,
by Helen Scheck „Reading Women at the Margins of Quedlinburg Codex 74“
(3-18). She discusses a manuscript of Jerome’s letters produced at Carolingian Chelles near Paris circa 800 that later found its way to the Ottonian royal
women’s house of Quedlinburg. Scheck describes the manuscript „as a conduit
for the transmission of women’s intellectual culture“ for nuns at Quedlinburg
introduced their own notes and commentary (5). Indeed, Scheck argues that
usage and notations and script styles show that the manuscript was „actively
studied“ for ive centuries (8). Scheck opines, „While the readers note moral
guidance and presumably take it to heart, they do not respond to the explicit
antifeminist statements.“ Not passive recipients, instead „women read themselves into the manuscript, responded to it, altered it, and destabilized [it]“ (17-18).
For volume three Blanton and Scheck promise a return to the Anglo-Saxon to
Carolingian connection in „Leoba’s Legacy: he Carolingian Transformation
of an Iconography of Literacy.“
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In volume one, Bruce L. Venarde makes a diferent claim for practical literacy
in „Making History at Fontevraud: Abbess Petronilla of Chemillé and Practical
Literacy“ (19-31). Here Venarde asserts quite rightly that literacy also encompasses the recognition of and use of the written world as a tool. Even if we cannot
be sure that abbess Petronilla herself actually wrote or copied charters, letters,
and other materials, what is clear is that Petronilla saw writing as an important
component in her preservation of the memory of Robert of Arbrissel and of the
many bequests that had been made to him and his foundations. his was not
just a matter of having sought to obtain a Vita and possible canonization in her
commissioning of irst one, then another life, or of her insistence in adding four
statutes to those given by Robert which conirmed that he had turned over rule
of the foundation to women. As important as lives and rules was her insistence
that bequests be recorded in written charters and then copied into the Grand
Cartulaire de Fontevraud that was constructed over the course of the twelth
century (and recently published by Jean-Marc Bienvenu and others (Poitiers:
2000 and 2005). Petronilla is an excellent early example of this kind of use of
literacy as a tool that gave women power, for they could use the written word to
counter the brute strength of men and „custom.“
In volume one (33-50), Alison I. Beach discusses “’Matild de Niphin’ and the
Female Scribes of Twelth-Century Zwiefalten.” Located in southwestern Germany in the region, the Hirsau reformed Benedictine abbey of Zwiefalten contained seventy monks, 130 lay-brothers, and sixty two sanctimoniales or holy women, who may have included both nuns and lay sisters (38-39). In the thirteenth
century a scribe commented in Zwiefalten necrology that Matild of Niphin had
copied many books earlier (33). In 1099 or 1100, a ire had destroyed much of
Zwiefalten’s Library. hey were replaced during the period from 1109-1140 by a
large team of scribes, including ive named ones, among them Matild (39-40).
his was not a mixed-gender copying team, but what Beach describes as „two
scribal workshops at Zwiefalten in the twelth century: one stafed by women
and the other by men.” It appears that it was the liturgical books that the women,
and in particular Matild (probably the most prominent scribe), would copy;
those liturgical books also have elaborate embroidered repairs to their parchments (42-47). According to Beach we can „responsibly imagine… not only the
level of practical literacy required to produce the books, . . . but perhaps also a
degree of literacy that allowed them [the nuns] to make use of the monastery’s
extensive libraries for biblical study and other forms of devotion“ (50).
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Alfred homas, in volume one (207-221), „Between Court and Cloister: Royal
Patronage and Nuns’ Literacy in Medieval East-Central Europe,“ uses the arrival
in England of Anne of Bohemia in late 1381 as the lead-in to his consideration
of this „highly-educated young woman“ and the milieu in which she had been
brought up, one in which tri-lingual literacy in Latin, German, and Czech was
expected (207). his literacy among Bohemian royal princesses goes back to the
founding of the bishopric of Prague in 973 and it extended through famous women of the Bohemian royal family. he most famous was the early thirteenth
century Agnes of Bohemia (c. 1211-82) who was brought up in the Cistercian
convent of Trebnitz and then at Praemonstratensian Dozan. A surviving book
of Hours owned by Agnes, (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 739) attests to her reading competence in both Latin and German, and marginalia in
German may possibly be by Agnes (212). Another book of hours (San Marino,
CA, Huntington Library, HM 58285) that belonged to Anne of Bohemia’s maid
of honor and cousin Margaret of Teschen has Czech and German as well as
Latin prayers. hat the three languages were all read (and probably spoken or
sung) by elite women is conirmed here, but it is not yet clear that any of these
books or the notes in them or their illustrations were scribed or painted by nuns
or their royal patrons.
Images of women teaching each other are the topic of Karen Blough’s „Implications for Female Monastic Literacy in the Reliefs from St. Liudger’s at Werden,“ volume two (151-170). Blough argues for an eleventh-century date for the
frieze containing reliefs of women gesturing as if conversing with one another,
oten holding books, by reference to the surviving gold front cover of the Gospel Book of Abbess heophanu von Essen, illustrated here on Color Plate One,
p. xv. As Blough contends these are women listening and commenting: „he
iconography of the Werden reliefs clearly suggests such active learning on the
part of monastic women“ (162). Moreover, Blough suggests that these are the
canonesses of nearby Essen, „who for the monks of Werden were the highly visible, contemporary embodiments of a tradition of intellectual exchange among
religious women extending back to the Early Christian period“ (164). Referring
to the recent work of Katrinette Bodarwé on these religious women at Essen,
for whom as many as sixty diferent hands have been identiied, Blough suggests
that the Werden reliefs relect in particular the Essen community under abbess
heophanu, a granddaughter of Otto II, elected there in 1039 (168).
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Two contributors who have been pioneers in work on nuns and their books are
included here. hey are Cynthia J. Cyrus, who provides in volume one (119-132)
„Vernacular and Latinate Literacy in Viennese Women’s Convents,” and Anne
Winston-Allen, in volume two (191-208) „Outside the Mainstream: Women as
Readers, Scribes, and Illustrators of Books in Convents of the German–Speaking regions.” heir contributions here are continuations of much larger projects that have appeared earlier.
Cyrus, in repositioning the question from nuns’ literacies to „What did monastic literacy entail?” looks at seven Viennese women’s houses and surviving liturgical and non-liturgical manuscripts (120). She concludes that: „these Viennese
manuscripts . . . reveal active processes of study and cogitation. But they reveal
as well a bivalent literacy [that] . . . is not an ’absence’ of scholastic achievement,
with sole emphasis of Latin, nor is it merely the addition of a ’new’ language as
a singular measure of success. It is the mixture of the two languages … and their
[the nuns’] abilities to shit from one mode to another … [that] serve as deining
features of the literacy of these late medieval nuns“ (132).
Winston-Allen, rather than focusing on one place, takes us on an excursion beginning in the Cistercian house of nuns at Wienhausen in lower Saxony to look
at a richly decorated „processional“ made by Sister Gertrud Bungen circa 1490
and there is a wonderful color image of this on page xxii. hen she turns to the
cloister of Paradies near Soest in North-Rhine Westphalia, where nuns incorporated their own portraits into the initials of manuscripts they had copied. hen
she moves to the Benedictine nuns of Engelberg in Switzerland, whose nuns
made two unusual psalters, richly illuminated with images of the life of Christ,
but images that elevated the role of the Virgin Mary with crowns such as those
that late medieval nuns themselves might have worn. Winston-Allen cites
the illuminated manuscripts’ survey „Repertorium of Manuscripts Illuminated
by Women in Religious Communities of the Middle Ages.” http://www.agfemart.com and a variety of other items found there, She eventually returns to the
Lüneburg Cistercians of Medingen where she describes how „nuns at the end
of the middle Ages were inventing new genres of texts and disseminating them
to women outside the convent“ (205). In her view at Medingen and elsewhere
in the late iteenth century „he Reform had brought a new focus on the making of books“(204). It is unfortunate that she could not cite the study by the
late June Mecham, Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Medieval
Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, ed. by Alison I. Beach,
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Constance Berman, and Lisa Bitel (2014), for in Sacred Communities, we ind
out that those reformers coming to Wienhausen, Medingen, and elsewhere arrived with carts ready to carry away the incumbent abbesses, who were given
no quarter. Sacred Communities thus problematizes the self-serving narratives
of the male reformers that were introduced into the discussion at least as early
as 1922. hose reformers introduced havoc into pious communities of religious
women who had created solid relationships with neighboring secular communities and a wonderful tradition of decorative textile production. Winston-Allen’s
article is a ine one, but it has not yet gotten these insights into the „costs“ of
reform that Mecham had uncovered.
he same issue of overlapping publication dates arises with the article by Eva
Schlotheuber, in volume two (249-68), „Daily Life, Amor Dei, and the Politics
of the Letters of the Benedictine Nuns at Lüne in the Fiteenth and Sixteenth
centuries.“ his treatment, which concentrates on letters from the late iteenth
and early thirteenth century, better complements what we know of Mecham’s
work, mentioning, for instance that reformers deposed abbesses and prioresses.
What remains unclear to me, but perhaps beyond the scope of this articles is
how much the great skills in scholarly Latin among these nuns that she discusses
here (266) were skills already present at this abbey before the reform and not
only during and ater it. he main point, however, is that by the use of a scholarly Latin, which local clergy might not have available to them, the nuns could
carry on a correspondence with churchmen at a higher level of authority and
circumvent interference by locals in their afairs. Here literacy in Latin becomes
a coded, nearly secret, and very empowering language, the language of power in
many senses. „From this position, they achieved a special authority in speaking,
which made them revered and sought-ater correspondents for religious and lay
people alike“(267).
Wienhausen and Medingen were houses of Cistercian nuns among those Lüneburg communities, but so was Helta as described by Ulrike Wiethaus in
„Collaborative Literacy and the Spiritual Education of Nuns at Helta,“ volume
two (27-46). In her opening line, Wiethaus states that „In the thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries, the unincorporated Cistercian house Beatae Mariae
Virginis at Helpede (known today as Helta) in Saxony produced a remarkable collection of monastic women’s writings.“ Recent work suggests that by the
fourteenth century the distinction between „incorporated“ and „unincorporated“ Cistercian houses of nuns was less important. Wiethaus’s important article
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explains that „he manuscripts produced . . . include the synchronous practice
of collaborative and individual authorship, the blending of Latin and vernacular
text genres and conventions, and the skillful combination of oral and literate
devotional practices. [Although] modern conventions of single authorship . .
. have privileged the names of the three known Helta authors: Gertrud von
Helta, Mechthild von Hackeborn, and Mechthild von Magdeburg . . . Helta’s
textual productive was collaborative anonymous authorship“ (34). he advantages of this anonymity in the production of mystical texts, as Wiethaus concludes, was „central to the emergence and dissemination of the ‚new mysticism’ at
Helta, [where] contemplative pedagogy and training constituted the bedrock
of mystical literacy“(41).
Regina Dorothea Schiewer also discusses sermon collections of importance to
Cistercian and other nuns in „Books in Texts -- Texts in Books: he St. Georgener Predigten as an Example of Nuns’ Literacy in Late Medieval German,“
volume one (223-237). Schiewer sees such sermon collections as essential to the
cura monialium, which she characterizes as particularly burdensome to early
thirteenth century Cistercians, but in the end she turns primarily to Dominican nuns in this study and she underlines those indications in this important
sermon collection, St. Georgener Predigten, that it was composed for reading
aloud as well as in private. he transmission was extensive probably because of
the demands made on the reader, which relect an impressive level of interest in
theology and education of these monastic women. Especially noteworthy, however, is the production of many such sermon manuscripts by Reformed nuns of
the late Middle Ages (237).
Tom Mertens, in volume one (133-146) provides „Praying in the Vernacular:
Middle Dutch Imitative Forms of the Divine Oice from the 1370s to 1520s.“ He
asserts that the massive number of Middle Dutch prayer books has been so overwhelming as to inhibit research on them. So here he concentrates on a single
speciic form, the prayer books that ofered simpliied vernacular versions of the
monastic oice. hese were associated, particularly in the diocese of Utrecht,
with what might be called a „second religious women’s movement“ associated
with houses of beguines, sisters of the Common Life, Augustinian canonesses
and the like (134-35). Among the best known of these Middle Dutch vernacular
forms derived from the Divine Oice were he Book of Hours of Geert Grote
(1340-1384), a liturgical Psalter begun by him, a Lay Breviary, and texts that
coordinated texts for mass and oice for the same days of the liturgical calendar.
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In volume one (275-292), Wybren Scheepsma provides „Writing, Editing and
Rearranging: Griet Essinchghes and her Version of the Sister Book of Diepenvenn.“ his is a discussion of the book and the context for Sister Griet Essinchghes’ compilation of the Sister book (or collective biography) of Diepenvenn
and of the Windesheim convents of the Devotio moderna. In this movement it
turns out that Diepenveen was an important community from which at least
iteen other reform communities derived (279). According to Scheepsma, „As
an urban-based reform movement the Devotio moderna also took full advantage
of the educational opportunities in towns . . . Education was highly valued by
the devout . . . and convents such as Diepenveen provided instruction to girls“
(279-80). It was in such a situation that the Sister-books thrived and in which
two surviving manuscripts of a sister-book for Diepenveen were produced. here, their development from a house of lay sisters into a house of nuns meant that
the sisters had to learn Latin by creating a school so that they could perform the
Oice.
A rather spectacular series of indings has allowed Scheepsma to identify the
author of the 1500-1534 manuscript. Griet may be linked to the family of an alderman of the Hanseatic town of Zolle (289). Her version of the Sister book, the
second surviving manuscript, but with a missing version between the irst and
second, contains comprehensive details about some of her family members. She
herself attests (in Scheepsma’s translation), that there were many more virtuous
sisters that she had let out: „If I were to record the virtues of all the sisters, I dare
say I would not accomplish it in a hundred years“ (292). he aim was to inspire virtue, but the accomplishment records as well, the literacy of these devout
women.
Kees Schepers in volume two (269-87) describes „A Web of Texts: SixteenthCentury Mystical Culture and the Arnhem Sint-Agnes Convent.“ His evidence
is the manuscripts found to have survived ater the Protestant authorities in 1580
forbade public Catholic worship. From that point the sisters of Sint-Agnes with
no new novices admitted, saw their numbers decline rapidly from about a hundred in 1580 to only four in 1634 when the convent was closed (270). he surviving manuscripts that have been linked to Sint-Agnes attest to the inluence
of fourteenth-century mystics: Ruusbroec, Eckhart, Tauler and Henry Susa,
with good copies of their works that have been used for recent editions. Other
„original“ sixteenth-century mystical texts are also found in these manuscripts
as well as copies made from sixteenth-century printed texts published by the
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Carthusians of Cologne. As the author says, such a mystical community (on
which there is much more here) is reminiscent of the earlier thirteenth-century
nuns of Helta (272-74).
Patricia Stoop in volume one (293-312) discusses „Nuns’ Literacy in SixteenthCentury Convent Sermons from the Cistercian Abbey of Ter Kameren“ or la
Cambre near Brussels. here nuns wrote down sermons delivered by an illustrious Franciscan priest, Johannes Mahusius in the 1560s, but the sermons themselves were preserved in copies not from Ter Kameren itself but from those derived
from those at Ter Kameren copied for Benedictine nuns. Stoop quotes an entry
from the last of a series of sermons that provides information about the copying and the redactor, Barbe Tasse, abbess (1563-93) – this is Stoop’s translation:
„And it was for the annual Mass [for the dedication of the church] when the
very honourable Father Jan Mahusius was delivering this sermon to our monastery of Ter Kameren. He gave me, the honourable Lady Abbess, and the whole
convent, the Pater Noster for a new year . . .“ (303).
In volume two (47-66), in „From Reading to Writing: he Multiple Levels of
Literacy of the Sister Scribes in the Brussels Convent of Jericho,“ Patricia Stoop
begins with the assertion: „It is beyond doubt that many women religious in the
Low Countries were literate and had access to books. Most Middle Dutch books
from religious institutions in the Low Countries up to 1550 derive from female establishments (some two-thirds of about ive hundred manuscripts“ (47).
As it turns out, many of these came from the Augustinian convent in Brussels,
Our Lady of the Rose Planted in Jericho. he community was the second-largest
producer of manuscripts and third largest owner of them in the Low Countries (47-48). he work was done in a „writing chamber that between 1466 and
1490 had working space for ive or six women scribes, working together in small
teams (61). Account books record the expenses for writing books as well as the
income from their sale. Stoop discusses the sisters’ education, their production
of manuscripts and sisters writing down sermons that they heard. Some of these
skilled sermon-writers later became oice holders (66). Following on these two
studies Stoop will provide for volume three an article co-authored with Lisanne
Vroomen, „he Reportationes of Henricus Cool’s sermons by the Anonymous
Nun from the Carthusian Convent of Sint-Anna-Ter-Woestijne near Bruges.“
Volume three will include several other pieces on nuns as readers. „Anonymous
hen, Invisible Now: he Readers of Sermon a dames religioses“ by Cate Gunn,
and „Translation and Reform: Le livre de l’Arbre de la Croix Jhesucrist and the
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409
Nuns of Montmartre,“ by Catherine Innes-Parker. here is also an article to
come from Anne Jenny-Clark, „he Transmission of Books among Canonesses
of the Collegiate of Sainte-Waudru in Mons: he Example of Marie de Hoves’s
Books,“ and one by Sara S. Poor, „he Countess, the Abbess, and heir Books:
Manuscript Circulation in a Fiteenth-Century German Family.“
he two volumes that have appeared so far are marvelous ones. hey are consistently solid reassessments of nun’s literacies and the association of such women with both practical literacy and book culture. he third volume promises
to be so as well. Together the series revolutionizes our thinking about nuns’ literacy; there will no longer be any excuse to cite Eileen Power on this. hese
volumes and the more than ity articles included within all three, along with
insightful introductions, full bibliographies and lists of manuscripts, useful indices, many illustrations and even some color plates, are impressive publications.
More importantly is their major achievement in totally changing what we know
about nuns’ literacies! Brilliant!
Kathrin Müller
Paul Geißendörfer (Hg.), Kirchen und Klöster der Zisterzienser. Das evangelische Erbe in ökumenischer Nachbarschat in Deutschland, Österreich und
der Schweiz. Lindenberg im Allgäu, Kunstverlag Josef Fink 2015. 320 Seiten
+ 210 Abbildungen, 16,8 x 24 cm € 24 ISBN 978-3-89870-820-3.
Der Titel „Kirchen und Klöster der Zisterzienser“ suggeriert zunächst, man
hätte es hier mit einem weiteren jener Kompendien zu tun, die im HandbuchFormat einen großlächigen Überblick über die zahlreichen, aufgelösten oder
noch existierenden, Klöster des Cistercienserordens zu geben suchen. Vielleicht
sogar mit einer Art Neuaulage des von Peter Pister herausgegebenen „Klosterführers aller Zisterzienserklöster im deutschsprachigen Raum“, der 1997 bezeichnenderweise im gleichen Format und ebenfalls unter Beteiligung des Josef
Fink Verlags erschien, mittlerweile aber nur noch antiquarisch zu haben ist.
Der Untertitel ofenbart jedoch, worum es bei dieser Sammlung vor allem geht:
„Das evangelische Erbe in ökumenischer Nachbarschat“. Der Herausgeber
Paul Geißendörfer war evangelischer Gemeindepfarrer am ehemaligen Cistercienserkloster Heilsbronn in Franken. Auf seine Initiative hin wurde 1993 die
„Gemeinschat Evangelischer Zisterzienser-Erben in Deutschland“ ins Leben
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gerufen, die seitdem zu jährlichen Trefen zusammenkommt. Auf der „Suche
nach Spuren zisterziensischer heologie und Frömmigkeit im Bereich der evangelischen Kirche“ sei die Gemeinschat bestrebt, so Geißendörfer in seinem
Vorwort, „das geistliche und kulturelle Erbe aus vorreformatorischer Zeit neu
zu entdecken, die Kirchen und die noch vorhandenen Klostergebäude verstärkt
für geistliches Leben in der evangelischen Kirche zu nutzen.“ (6)
Das vorliegende Buch stellt in erster Linie die in dieser Gemeinschat vertretenen Klöster (Männer- und Frauenklöster) vor. Dadurch ist die Auswahl kleiner
als beispielsweise im Klosterführer von Peter Pister, was das Werk insgesamt
überschaubarer macht. Durch den identischen Aufbau der Texte zu den einzelnen Klöstern sowie durch die ausgewogene und gut ausgewählte Bebilderung
wird das Buch sehr übersichtlich und auch optisch ansprechend.
Auf der vorderen Umschlaginnenseite inden sich drei Karten (Deutschland,
Österreich, Schweiz), in denen die behandelten Klöster eingezeichnet sind.
Nach Inhaltsverzeichnis und mehreren Vorworten folgt zunächst ein „Kurzer
Abriss der Geschichte des Zisterzienserordens von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart“ (Arnd Friedrich, 14–20), danach ein ebenso kurzer Überblick über
die wichtigste Literatur (21–22). Den Hauptteil des Buches bilden, in alphabetischer Reihenfolge, die Texte zu den einzelnen Klöstern – zunächst (23–236) wie
gesagt die „in der Gemeinschat vertretenen evangelischen Kirchengemeinden,
Klöster, Konvente und Kommunitäten an Zisterzienserkirchen in Deutschland“. Auch diese Texte sind sehr knapp gehalten – jedem Kloster kommen etwa
zwei bis drei Seiten zu – und sind alle nach demselben Schema aufgebaut: Nach
einem kurzen, manchmal nur stichpunktartigen Überblick über die „Geschichte“ folgt unter der Rubrik „Sehenswert“ eine Zusammenstellung der kunsthistorischen Besonderheiten und abschließend ein Abschnitt über das jeweilige
Kloster „heute“. Abgerundet wird das Ganze mit einer Auswahl der wichtigsten
Literatur. Ein graphisch abgesetzter Kasten zu jedem Kloster enthält aktuelle
Informationen wie Adresse, Telefon, Email, Internet, Öfnungszeiten, Gottesdienstzeiten, Führungen.
Im Anschluss an die „Evangelischen Zisterzienser-Erben“ werden zusätzlich die
verhältnismäßig wenigen heute noch „aktiven“ (oder gar erst in jüngerer Zeit
gegründeten) Klöster des Cistercienserordens mit bestehenden Konventen in
Deutschland (237–270), in Österreich/Südtirol (271–301) und in der Schweiz
(303–315) behandelt. Auf den ersten Blick scheint diese Auswahl nicht unmittelbar nachvollziehbar: Während die evangelischen Beispiele in großer Zahl
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aufgenommen wurden – ob sie nun „Konvente und Kommunitäten“ beherbergen oder lediglich als Gemeindekirchen dienen –, galt dieses Kriterium nicht
für die katholischen Beispiele: Hätte man hier ebenso sämtliche als katholische
Pfarrkirchen genutzte ehemalige Cistercienserkirchen aufgenommen, wäre die
Auswahl wohl annähernd identisch mit jener in Pisters Handbuch geworden.
Stattdessen wirken die Seiten zu den heute noch in Betrieb beindlichen katholischen Klöstern hier eher wie ein kurzer Anhang.
Wer also eher an einem vollständigen Überblick ehemaliger Cistercienserklöster
interessiert ist, sollte nach wie vor auf das Handbuch von Pister zurückgreifen.
Der Gewinn, den man aus dem neu erschienenen Buch zieht, liegt woanders
– und zwar gerade in der Fokussierung auf das „Evangelische Erbe“. Der überwiegende Teil des Buches befasst sich mit den Klöstern, die entweder bereits im
Zusammenhang mit der Reformation nach 1517 oder aber spätestens im Rahmen der Säkularisation 1803 aufgelöst wurden. Konsequenterweise haben die
Einzeltexte einen Schwerpunkt in der Zeit nach der Aulösung des ursprünglichen, katholischen Cistercienserklosters. Dementsprechend war auch schon der
kurze geschichtliche Abriss am Anfang des Buches unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Reformation bzw. dann der weiteren Geschichte der aufgelösten Klöster erfolgt. Viele davon waren nach der Reformation zu evangelischen
Pfarrkirchen geworden, Klöster in Schulen oder Hospitäler umgewandelt. Einige Kirchen wurden zerstört und sind heute nur noch als Ruinen erlebbar.
In einigen wenigen Klöstern gab es tatsächlich eine gewisse Kontinuität, wie
beispielsweise in Loccum, wo nach der Annahme des Augsburger Bekenntnisses
durch den Konvent (um 1600) ein Predigerseminar entstand, das im Prinzip
heute noch besteht (vgl. auch das Vorwort von D. Horst Hirschler, Abt zu Loccum, Landesbischof i. R., 12–13).
Mit diesem für die klassische, tendenziell eher „mittelalter-lastige“ Cistercienser-Literatur eher ungewöhnlichen Schwerpunkt bilden die Texte eine wichtige
Ergänzung zum bisherigen Forschungsstand. Positiv zu vermerken ist an dieser
Stelle die Auswahl der Autoren: In den meisten Fällen wurden die Texte von
speziell mit dem jeweiligen Kloster verbundenen Fachleuten verfasst – häuig
Konventmitglieder. Beispielsweise schrieb der Heiligenkreuzer P. Karl Wallner
OCist den Text zu Heiligenkreuz, P. Pius Maurer OCist jenen zu Lilienfeld.
Aus der Perspektive der evangelischen Zisterzienser-Erben erklärt sich letztlich
doch auch die Auswahl der in das Handbuch aufgenommenen Klöster. Die
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zusätzliche Aufnahme der noch „lebendigen“ katholischen Klöster in den Katalog lässt sich in diesem Zusammenhang ebenso wie die Vorworte von mehreren
Repräsentanten des Cistercienserordens als bewusste Betonung der Ökumene
verstehen und demonstriert vor allem den Anspruch der Gemeinschat, sich
tatsächlich als „Erben“ der gelebten Tradition zu sehen. Ein wichtiges Anliegen ist es, aktiv den Kontakt mit dem Cistercienserorden zu suchen. Davon,
dass dieses Bestreben durchaus beidseitig ist, zeugen gegenseitige Besuche und
Sympathiebekundungen unterschiedlicher Art. So waren seit dem Jahr 2000 zu
den cisterciensischen Generalkapiteln Vertreter der „Evangelischen Zisterzienser-Erben“ geladen, umgekehrt nimmt ein Vertreter des Generalabtes als Gast
an den Jahrestrefen der Zisterzienser-Erben teil. Fr. Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori
OCist, Generalabt des Cistercienserordens, betont in seinem Vorwort (10–11)
die „freundschatlichen Beziehungen“ beider Gemeinschaten. P. Kassian Lauterer OCist, Abt emer. von Wettingen Mehrerau (8–9), geht auf den Begrif
des gemeinsamen „Erbes“ ein, das die heutigen Erben zu verantwortungsvollem Umgang verplichtet. Er geht sogar so weit zu formulieren, dass die ehemaligen Klosterstätten „unverkennbar zisterziensischen Geist atmen und gerade
dadurch evangelischem Stilempinden entgegenkommen.“ Die „Gemeinschat“
sieht er als „eine geglückte und ehrliche Form der Ökumene. Ohne jeden Versuch einer gegenseitigen Vereinnahmung dürfen sich evangelische und katholische Zisterzienser-Erben gemeinsam über das Patrimonium Cisterciense freuen
und versuchen, es für Menschen von heute geistlich fruchtbar zu machen.“
Joachim Wer z
Sabine Klapp, Das Äbtissinnenamt in den unterelsässischen Frauenstiten
vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert. Umkämpt, verhandelt, normiert. (Studien
zur Germania Sacra. Neue Folge 3). Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter-Verlag 2012.
X + 621 Seiten, in Leinen gebunden, 16,8 x 24,1 cm € 130 ISBN 978-3-11029631-9 e-ISBN 978-3-11-029644-0.
Die Forschung zu süddeutschen Damenstiten steckt nach wie vor in den Kinderschuhen. Dies war der Grund, weshalb sich 2012 zum ersten Mal in Weingarten der Arbeitskreis zur Erforschung süddeutscher Damenstite traf. Absicht und Forschungsinteresse ist es, das extreme Gefälle in der Stitsforschung
zwischen Süd- und Norddeutschland zu begradigen [Vgl. Dietmar Schiersner,
Volker Trugenberger, Wolfgang Zimmermann (Hgg.), Adlige Damenstite
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413
Oberschwabens in der Frühen Neuzeit. Selbstverständnis, Spielräume, Alltag
(Stuttgart 2011).]. Einen wichtigen und wertvollen Beitrag für dieses Vorhaben
leistet die 2009 an der Universität Trier eingereichte Dissertation von Sabine Klapp. Knapps Arbeit analysiert die Äbtissinnen der vier unterelssäsischen
Frauenstite Andlau, Hohenburg, Niedermünster und St. Stephan in Straßburg.
Das Stit Andlau ist im Vergleich zu den anderen genannten Untersuchungsobjekten nicht dem Straßburger Bischof untergeordnet.
Sabine Klapp verfolgt im Wesentlichen zwei Forschungsinteressen: Zum einen
sollen die bisher kaum beachteten, analysierten und kontextualisierten „Geschichte und Strukturen“ der verschiedenen Stite untersucht werden, um so
das Phänomen des „Kanonissinenstits“ (3) zu erläutern. Sie stellt die Geschichte der einzelnen Stite kompakt und anschaulich dar. Zum anderen will Klapp
das Amt der Äbtissin und deren Handlungsspielraum und -kompetenz untersuchen. Dabei weitet sie den Blick auf die Bedeutung der Äbtissin in Politik,
Gesellschat, Kirche und klösterlicher Gemeinschat. Die klösterliche Gemeinschat selbst wird in Klapps Arbeit immer wieder auf die soziale Zusammensetzung der Konventualinnen hin untersucht. Ihre Untersuchung zielt dabei vor
allem zentral auf eines ab: Die Strukturgeschichte soll mit praxisorientierten
Ansätzen verbunden werden, um so „die Stitsleiterinnen als handelnde Subjekte jenseits normativer und struktureller Vorgaben erfassen“ zu können (357).
Klapp strukturiert ihre Arbeit klar in zwei große, zentrale Kapitel: Das erste
Hauptkapitel thematisiert den jeweiligen optionalen Handlungsspielraum der
verschiedenen Äbtissinnen, der sich in den Beziehungsgelechten zu Papst, Reich
und Bischöfen niederschlägt. Für den zweiten großen Abschnitt schöpt Klapp
aus einem reichen Fundus an akribisch erarbeiteten Quellen, wie beispielsweise
den normativen Stitsstatuten: Äbtissinnen und ihr jeweiliges kirchliches oder
weltliches Gegenüber und Umfeld werden analysiert und in chronologischer
Erzählstruktur erarbeitet. Aufschlussreich sind hier – wie in zahlreichen klösterlichen Untersuchungen – die verschiedenen Konlikte zwischen Kloster und
Bistum, Kloster und weltlicher Obrigkeit, Äbtissinnen und Konvent. Klapp
veranschaulicht durch die unterschiedlichen einzelnen Fallbeispiele ihre hesen
und ihre Untersuchung. Ihr gelingt es jedoch nicht die praxisnahen Ansätze in
Gänze auszuschöpfen, was jedoch nicht die Qualität der Studie beeinträchtigt.
Wahl, Amtseinführung, Amtsverständnis und das sozial-politische Umfeld mit
den verschiedensten Einlüssen werden in einem weiteren Schritt der Arbeit
von Klapp thematisiert. Die meisten der Äbtissinnen waren darauf bedacht, den
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Verwaltungsraum und die jeweiligen Güter zu erweitern und somit das Stit zu
einer standesgemäßen Ausstattung und Lebensführung zu führen. Die Arbeit
stellt in einem großen Abschnitt die Führungsperson der Äbtissin in das wechselseitige Beziehungsgelecht des Konvents und erörtert dabei die Über- und
Unterordnung, das Miteinander und Gegeneinander im klösterlichen Alltag.
Mit Blick auf das Reformationsgedenken 2017 und auf einen noch
jungen Forschungszweig mit Interesse auf die evangelischen Klöster ist besonders die geschilderte Umbruchphase durch die Reformation von Interesse. Dabei fällt auf, dass sich die Geschlechterrollen und
-aufgaben wandeln, was im Kontext der Gesamtthematik der Dissertation eine
wichtige Rolle spielt. Die Reformation, so die Autorin, habe zu einer Domestizierung aller Frauen geführt und deren Einlussbereich auf Haus und Haushalt
beschränkt. Dieser Wandel nimmt auch Einluss auf die Rolle führender Personen in einem Damenstit, so wie auf das Damenstit als Ganzes. Interessant
ist, dass Klapp nachweisen kann, dass auch in den nun evangelischen Damenstiten, die durch die lutherische Lehre konvertiert wurden, Frauen als Äbtissinnen vorstanden. Sowohl die Zeit vor, während und nach der Reformation
wird in einem ausführlichen prosopograhischen Anhang ausführlich erörtert,
was den wissenschatlichen Wert der Arbeit enorm steigert und die Qualität
der vorgelegten Arbeit unterstreicht. Das übersichtliche Register wie auch das
umfassende Quellen- und Literaturverzeichnis machen die Arbeit transparent
und ermöglichen den Einblick in weiterführende Studien.
Sabine Klapp ist es gelungen, eine fundierte und historisch bislang zurückgebliebene Forschungsarbeit zu präsentierten, die Ausgangspunkt für weitere Abhandlungen im Kontext der Damenstite sein kann.
Joachim Wer z
Miriam Montag-Erlwein, Heilsbronn von der Gründung 1132 bis 1321. Das
Beziehungsgelecht eines Zisterzienserklosters im Spiegel seiner Quellenüberlieferung. (Studien zur Germania Sacra, Neue Folge 1). Berlin/Boston,
De Gruyter-Verlag 2011. XIV + 666 Seiten, in Leinen gebunden, 17,1 x 24,1
cm € 150 ISBN 978-3-11-023513-5 e-ISBN 978-3-11-023514-2.
Die vorliegende Studie in der Reihe der „Studien zur Germania Sacra, Neue
Folge“ ist eine Grundlagenarbeit für weitere Beschätigungen mit dem Kloster
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Heilsbronn, aber auch mit anderen süddeutschen Cistercienserklöstern und der
Region Franken. Miriam Montag-Erlwein unternimmt in ihrer Dissertation ein
nicht immer einfaches Unterfangen, das die Beziehungen zwischen Kloster und
Welt untersucht. Sie wählt die 1132 gegründete Cisterce Heilsbronn als Exempel, da es eines der fränkischen Klöster ist, das sich als „lokale[s] Integrationsund Identiikationszentr[um]“ (1) versteht. Soziale Beziehungsgelechte der
Cisterce sollen dabei ausgewertet und analysiert werden. Ein Unterfangen, dessen Schwierigkeit für einen fast 200-jährigen Zeitraum nicht zu unterschätzen
ist. Innovativ ist dabei, dass sie eine „multiperspektive Betrachtungsweise“ (2)
einnimmt, indem sie zum einen die Wandlungs- und Transformationsprozesse
der klösterlichen Gemeinschat, zum anderen den „Kontext und die Interessen
der in Verbindung zur Cisterce stehenden Personen bzw. Institutionen“ (2) untersucht. Montag-Erlwein fragt nach dem Beitrag Heilsbronns zur „Ausbildung
und Ausgestaltung Frankens als Herrschatsraum“ (4) und der fränkischen kulturellen Entwicklungsprozesse.
Die Arbeit stützt sich auf 384 erhaltene Urkunden aus den Jahren 1132 bis 1321,
zahlreiche Annalen, die erhaltenen Nekrologien und die teilweise rekonstruierbare Klosterbibliothek. Es ist zu bedauern, dass die Autorin bewusst auf die
Quellengattung der von 1338 bis 1374 erhaltenen Rechnungsbücher verzichtet.
Rechnungsbücher zeigen otmals aufschlussreich und informativ die Verlechtungen der Klöster untereinander auf und lassen in der Regel interessante Rückschlüsse auf das jeweilige Kloster zu.
Die Gliederung ist bemerkenswert: Montag-Erlwein untersucht in sechs Kapiteln die verschiedenen Beziehungsgelechte der Cisterce: zum Papsttum als
Schutzinstanz (13-62), zum Königtum (63-113), innerhalb des Cistercienserordens (114-148), zu den angrenzenden Bistümern Bamberg, Eichstätt und
Würzburg und deren Bischöfen (149-264), zum Adel (265-475) und zu den um
das Kloster liegenden Reichsstädten Nürnberg, Windesheim und Nördlingen
(477-532). Im letzten Abschnitt thematisiert sie die Regionalisierung des Klosters (533-580) mit der Analyse nach Herkunt und Sozialstruktur der Mönche
und Konversen, der Erörterung der Beziehungssituation zu Stiten und Klöstern
der unmittelbaren Umgebung und der Frage nach der Bedeutung der dortigen
Bibliothek. Das ausführliche Namens- und Ortsregister erleichtert den Zugang
zur Arbeit und Recherchen.
Heilsbronn ist eine Tochtergründung von Ebrach. Dies ist im ersten Kapitel in
der Studie von Wichtigkeit, da Ebrach als Mutterkloster intensivere und engere
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