Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts) (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 29) [Multilingual ed.] 9782503541341, 2503541348

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Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions

MEDIEVAL WOMEN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS Editorial Board under the auspices of the School of Historical Studies, Monash University General Editor Constant J. Mews, Monash University Editorial Board Juliette Dor, Université de Liège Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University Anneke Mulder-Bakker, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London Gabriela Signori, Universität Konstanz Claire Waters, University of Virginia Nicholas Watson, Harvard University

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 29

Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany by

June L. Mecham Edited by

Alison I. Beach, Constance H. Berman, and Lisa M. Bitel

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Mecham, June L., author. Sacred communities, shared devotions : gender, material culture, and monasticism in late medieval Germany. -- (Medieval women) 1. Monastic and religious life of women--Germany--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Convents--Germany--History--To 1500. 3. Women--Religious life--Germany--History--To 1500. 4. Religion and sociology--Germany--History--To 1500. 5. Material culture--Religious aspects--Christianity. 6. Material culture--Germany--History--To 1500. I. Title II. Series III. Beach, Alison I. editor. IV. Berman, Constance H. editor. V. Bitel, Lisa M., 1958- editor. 297.1'00943'09024-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503541341

© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2014/0095/35 ISBN: 978-2-503-54134-1 Printed on acid-free paper

For my family

Contents

Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xiii A Note about June L. Mecham Chapter 1. The Heath Convents of Lower Saxony

xvii 1

Chapter 2. In Festo Paschali: Performative Devotion and Liturgical Ritual

25

Chapter 3. The Art of Devotion

57

Chapter 4. Wealth and Poverty, Piety and Necessity

89

Chapter 5. Abbess Katharina von Hoya and the Creation of Monastic Space

127

Chapter 6. The Art of Reform

159

Chapter 7. Walking in the Footsteps of Christ

205

Epilogue 261 Note on Coinage

265

Bibliography 267 Index

299

Illustrations

Map Map 1, p. 2. The Heath Convents c. 1400.

Figures Figure 1, p. 5. Kloster Lüne, Workrooms. c. 1482/3. Figure 2, p. 8. Kloster Wienhausen, Nuns’ Choir and Parish Church, facing east. c. 1330. Figure 3, p. 9. Kloster Wienhausen, Interior of Nuns’ Choir, facing west. c. 1330–35. Figure 4, p. 10. Kloster Wienhausen, mural with dedication of West Wing. Figure 5, p. 11. Kloster Wienhausen, Effigy of Christ. c. 1290. Figure 6, p. 12. Kloster Wienhausen, Resurrection Statue. Late thirteenth century. Figure 7, p. 34. Kloster Wienhausen, Image of the Resurrection, painting on vellum. c. 1320. Figure 8, p. 36. Kloster Wienhausen, MS 29, fol. 6r. After 1460. Figure 9, p. 38. Kloster Wienhausen, Image of Christ’s Entombment. c. 1330. Figure 10, p. 39. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Painting in Nuns’ Choir, the Entombment. c. 1330.

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 11, p. 40. Kloster Wienhausen, Stained Glass panel depicting the Entomb­ment. c. 1330/40. Figure 12, p. 46. Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS J 29, fol. 126r. 1478. Figure 13, p. 48. Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS J 29, fol. 52v. 1478. Figure 14, p. 54. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesbibliothek, MS I 74, p. 189. c. 1460. Figure 15, p. 60. Kloster Lüne, Display of Textiles. 1930s. Figure 16, p. 65. Braunschweig, Städtisches Museum, Inv. Nr. B 129. c. 1430. Figure 17, p. 70. Kloster Lüne, Lenten curtain. c. 1325. Figure 18, p. 71. Kloster Lüne, Lenten curtain. c. 1325. Figure 19, p. 73. Kloster Wienhausen, Lectern cover. Four­teenth century. Figure 20, p. 75. Kloster Wienhausen, Heilsspiegelteppich. Late fifteenth century. Figure 21, p. 79. Kloster Wienhausen, Marienkleid. Fifteenth century. Figure 22, p. 79. Kloster Wienhausen, Marienkleid. Fifteenth century. Figure 23, p. 80. Staatliches Museum Schwerin, figure of Christ-child from Holy Cross convent, Rostock. c. 1500. Figure 24, p. 80. Kloster Ebstorf, surcoat for the statue of St Maurice. Fifteenth century. Figure 25, p. 132. Kloster Wienhausen, Christ carrying cross. c. 1450. Figure 26, p. 132. Kloster Isenhagen, Chalice donated by Katharina von Hoya. c. 1433. Figure 27, p. 169. Kloster Wienhausen, Man of Sorrows, c. 1450–1500. Figure 28, p. 170. Kloster Wienhausen, Man of Sorrows, c. 1450–1500. Figure 29, p. 171. Kloster Wienhausen, Veronica, c. 1500. Figure 30, p. 172. Kloster Wienhausen, Veronica. c. 1500. Figure 31, p. 182. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St Bartholomew. c. 1500.

ILLUSTRATIONS

xi

Figure 32, p. 183. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St Katherine. 1500. Figure 33, p. 184. Kloster Lüne, Embroidery of Miracles of the Resurrected Christ. 1503–07. Figure 34, p. 185. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St George. 1500. Figure 35, p. 188. Kloster Lüne, Detail from the embroidery depicting the Miracles of the Resurrected Christ. 1503–07. Figure 36, p. 189. Kloster Lüne, Detail from embroidery of Prophets and Sibyls. 1500. Figure 37, p. 194. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 8. 1772 (1499). Figure 38, p. 194. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 9. 1772 (1499). Figure 39, p. 195. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 12. 1772 (1499). Figure 40, p. 195. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 13. 1772 (1499). Figure 41, p. 196. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 14. 1772 (1499). Figure 42, p. 197. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 15. 1772 (1499). Figure 43, p. 240. Christ in Misery, Lower Saxony, convent of Holy Cross in Rostock. c. 1500. Figure 44, p. 242. Schematic image of Christ’s wounds. Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv Ebstorf, Handschrift IV, 18, fol. 219v. Before 1500. Figure 45, p. 246. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Heavenly Jerusalem. c. 1330. Figure 46, p. 247. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Heavenly Jerusalem, Convent Founders. c. 1330. Figure 47, p. 248. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Murals in Nuns’ Choir, Convent. c. 1330. Figure 48, p. 249. Responsorial. Wienhausen, Handschrift 29, fol. 21r. c. 1450.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Tables Table 1, p. 14. List of Communities of the Lüneburg Heath. Table 2, p. 102. Total Number of References in Fifteenth-Century Heideklöster Documents to Choir Nuns with Income.

Acknowledgements

T

he completion of this manuscript would not have been possible without the support — intellectual, monetary, and emotional — of numerous people. First and foremost I must thank my Doktormutter, Lisa M. Bitel, who provided me with an assistantship for Monastic Matrix (http:// monasticmatrix.org) while I was a graduate student and who encouraged my research of the German convents that eventually led me to Wienhausen. I am grateful for her continued willingness to read and edit my work. Her support, advice, and careful questioning of my arguments have immeasurably improved my work; her friendship and encouragement have been invaluable. I thank Luis Corteguera for graciously agreeing to serve as co-chair of my dissertation, for being so generous with his time, and for always being so thoughtful in his advice. I also thank James Brundage for allowing me to impose on his weekly ‘dissertation parties’, which helped bring the initial dissertation to completion. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Steven Epstein, Carolyn Nelson, and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, for their careful reading of my dissertation. Financial support for archival research in Germany was provided by a Graduate Exchange Scholarship from the University of Kansas for study at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn and a Short-Term Research Grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). These grants enabled me to spend the academic year of 2000/01 in Germany, conducting research on Wienhausen. Further support for the monograph was provided by the University of Nebraska-Omaha through a Martin Fund Award for archival research in Germany granted by the History Department of the University of Nebraska-Omaha in May 2007. A Neil Ker grant from the British Academy provided further monetary support for manuscript research in the archives of the Lüneburg Heath convents in 2007. An Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medieval Studies at the Medieval Institute at the

xiv

Acknowledgements

University of Notre Dame, IN, in 2006/7 enabled me to transform the dissertation from the study of a single convent into a monograph about the several convents in the region. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the various individual abbesses and prioresses of the Heath convents who graciously opened the doors to their convents and archives in support of my work. Above all, I thank Wolfgang Brandis, archivist of the Lüneburg Convent Archives. Not only has he provided unfailing support of my research, but he has also become a close friend and ally in this project. I am most grateful for the generosity and friendship he and his family have demonstrated over the course of the past seven years in inviting a young and lonely researcher into their home, and I thank him again for his informal tours of the Lüneburg convents and surrounding region. I am particularly grateful to him for acting as intermediary between an unknown American researcher and the various abbesses and prioresses of the Lüneburg Heath convents. Special thanks should be extended to Äbtissin Renate von Randow, who allowed me to stay on occasion at Wienhausen, permitted me to work in various rooms within the convent, and generously invited me to join her for lunch or dessert. I must also thank the former prioress of Wienhausen, Frau Niebuhr, and Äbtissin Krüger from the convent of Ebstorf. I am grateful to the archivists at the Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Hannover, the state archive in Hildesheim, and the episcopal archive in Hildesheim for their courtesy and help with the manuscripts from Medingen. Images appear in this book by permission of their various archives. In the years spent researching and writing I have had the support of many colleagues and friends. I am indebted to the moderators and participants in the Seminar for Medieval History sponsored by the German Historical Institute in October 2001 — especially Patrick Geary, Johannes Fried, and Caroline Walker Bynum — for their stimulating questions and useful advice. I would like to thank Jane T. Schulenburg for her friendly advice on medieval textiles, embroidery, female spirituality, and the use of space, which has led to several enjoyable conversations. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Maryanne Kowaleski and Constance Berman for their careful reading and excellent advice on the economic chapters of my dissertation. Without their suggestions, this portion of the monograph would be in considerable disarray. Any errors in this regard are mine. I am further indebted to Henrike Lähnemann for her generous help with the manuscripts from Medingen and with the translations from Middle Low German. Any translation errors are mine. Thanks also to my friends and colleagues Marie Kelleher, Alison Beach, and Valerie Garver for their emotional support and generosity of spirit. My colleagues at the University of Nebraska-

Acknowledgements

xv

Omaha also deserve thanks in this regard, not only for their support in financing this project through in-house grants, but also for their unfailing interest in the project and their concern for my failing health. I am particularly indebted to Sharon Wood, who has provided my family and me with financial, emotional, and even culinary support. She has demonstrated the true meaning of friendship, and I shall ever be grateful. In 2007, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. By 2009 the cancer had metastasized and spread throughout my body. At the present, there is a considerable chance that I will not be able to see this project through to completion. I therefore must extend a most heartfelt thanks to those who have agreed to ready the manuscript for publication, namely Lisa Bitel, Constance Berman, and Alison Beach. Of course, any mistakes in the monograph are mine and mine alone. Last but certainly not least, I must thank my family. I thank my parents for their love, encouragement, and unflagging support of my interest in history and all things medieval. I thank my husband for shouldering the burdens of a full-time job, for not protesting a year spent apart while I was in Germany, and for the multitude of diapers he changed for our daughter while I worked at the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame. The love and care that my husband and mother have given to me in this time of illness have been truly amazing, and I can only say that they are truly the sine qua non of this project. I love you all. Thank you. February 2009

A Note about June L. Mecham Lisa M. Bitel

J

une Mecham spent years researching and writing this book. I had the good luck to watch her do it. I saw her get the idea, march determinedly into the sources, and start to build a dissertation. I observed and occasionally commented as she simultaneously struggled to make a life and a career, juggling the desire to disappear into medieval religion and art history with her happy devotion to her husband, parents, and then her baby girl. I sympathized with her ups and downs at the job market and listened when she voiced aspirations for an academic career. June finally landed a good job, settled into a house with her family, and began the onerous task of reducing a nine hundred-page manuscript to a publishable book. Then she was diagnosed with a highly aggressive cancer. Although she resisted and struggled, wielding her considerable strength and evincing her many virtues — stoicism, generosity, cheerfulness, kindness, and an unrelenting and rueful sense of humour — she succumbed all too quickly. In our last conversation, she formally requested that I, together with Constance Berman and Alison Beach, put the finishing touches on her manuscript and guide the book into print. With typical thoughtfulness, June divided up the labour among her comrades according to their areas of expertise. Another good friend of hers, Wolfgang Brandis, eagerly assisted us in collecting and preparing the images for this book. None of us is an expert on June’s topic, but we are all familiar with the work. We have done our best to edit, revise, check, and finish everything that June produced. We strove to maintain June’s style and voice throughout the work. We thank June’s editor at the press, Constant Mews, and the external reviewers for their thorough reading and helpful comments. We are grateful for the assis-

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A Note about June L. Mecham

tance of June’s contacts in German archives and museums. Sharon Wood, June’s colleague at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, tirelessly gathered up the bits and pieces of June’s work and sent them off to Germany, Iowa, and California. Sharon Wood also forwarded gifts from colleagues and friends, particularly in Omaha and Kansas, that contributed to the costs of this publication. I speak on behalf of all three editors in thanking them. Similarly we together acknowledge the encouragement our institutions, colleagues, friends, and family have provided for our work. For financial support we thank the University of Southern California, the University of Iowa, and the Ohio State University. Thanks also to Hamish Cameron and Teresa Iverson who laboured long and hard to edit and format the text. Much gratitude, finally, to Jane Schulenburg, who crafted the perfect image for the book’s cover. If we were dedicating this volume, it would be to June, lost but still loved. Los Angeles, April 2011

Chapter 1

The Heath Convents of Lower Saxony

R

esearchers on female monastic life in Germany and German-speaking regions are blessed by the quantity and quality of existing source materials, both visual and textual, that survive from the Middle Ages. Extensive documentary collections, literary and liturgical sources, artwork and ephemera can illuminate the lives and devotional practices of professional religious women in northern Germany, especially in Lower Saxony and the region of the Lüneburg Heath. Beginning in the late ninth and early tenth centuries with chapters of canonesses at Brunshausen, Lamspringe, Möllenbeck, Fischbeck, Kemnade, Wunstorf, and Gandersheim, over a hundred communities of religious women had been founded in this region by the time of the Lutheran Reformation. Indeed, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries alone, there appeared seven convents of Premonstratensian women, twenty-six convents of Augustinian women, thirty-five convents of Benedictine nuns, and thirty-one Cistercian houses for women.1 The textual and visual evidence preserved from a group of six of these convents in Lower Saxony, collectively known as the Lüneburger Heideklöster, the convents of the Lüneburg Heath, provides the extensive material for a study of the multifaceted piety and devotional practices of the religious women of those communities. These six medieval communities of women include three 1  Hoogeweg, Verzeichnis der Stifte und Klöster, pp. 138–50. As he tells us on pp. 143–45, all the Heath convents were in the Welf (Guelph) duchies of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, which comprised a single territory before 1261. [Addendum: In 2012, a full survey was published in the four-volume catalogue of the religious houses in Lower Saxony: Niedersächsisches Klosterbuch, ed. by Josef Dolle.]

Chapter 1

2

Map 1. The Heath Convents c. 1400

The Heath Convents of Lower Saxony

3

Benedictine communities with founding dates as follow: Walsrode (c. 980), Ebstorf (c. 1160), and Lüne (c. 1172); and three Cistercian houses: Isenhagen (c. 1243), Medingen (c. 1228–30), and Wienhausen (c. 1221–29).2 While each convent had a unique history and communal identity, they shared numerous connections and similarities, including both monastic ones and ties to regional, social, and economic networks. Extensive charter evidence remains, often in situ, documenting the economic activities of these communities both prior to and after their mid-fifteenth-century reforms.3 Their collective designation as the Heideklöster based on the convents’ location within the dukedom of Lüneburg reflects a modern rather than medieval categorization. Among them only Medingen and Walsrode have lost the majority of their medieval structures and internal conventual records. Walsrode, in the diocese of Minden, is the earliest. It was founded c. 980 as a community of canonesses, but later became Benedictine. A fire in 1482 destroyed the medieval church, monastic buildings, and many of its medieval artworks, liturgical items, documents, and texts. Three late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century cartularies, probably made as a result of Walsrode’s reform, are the basis of an edition published in 1859 by Wilhelm von Hodenburg. 4 The original community of twenty-four canonesses had grown to eighty inhabitants by 1494; by then probably about forty were choir nuns coming from both bourgeois and noble families. By 1518, the community still comprised thirty-two nuns.5 Walsrode was reformed under Duke Frederick the Elder in 1475. Duchess 2 

Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp.  21–46. Jaitner, ‘Ebstorf ’, pp.  165–92, 377–402; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp.  165–92, 377–402; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp.  228–67; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp.  518–47; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, pp.  756–96; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 22–54. 3  Charters from the convents of Ebstorf, Medingen, Isenhagen, and Walsrode have been transcribed and published, for instance Archiv des Klosters der Mutter Maria zu Isenhagen, ed. by Hodenberg (hereafter UKI), or as noted below; charters from the convents of Lüne and Wienhausen remain unpublished but have been catalogued and preserved in situ in their respective monastic archives. [Addendum: The Urkundenbuch for Lüne has now also been published: Urkundenbuch des Klosters Lüne, ed. by Brosius.] 4  Three cartularies created in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were destroyed in a bombing raid on Hannover between 8 and 9 October 1943, but fortunately had been published in Urkundenbuch des Klosters Sankt Johannis zu Walsrode, ed. by von Hodenburg (hereafter UKW); Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 14–15, 49. 5  Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 22, 33, 51, estimates that Walsrode was composed equally of noble and bourgeois nuns, at least during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Heinrich Tölner, provost of Ebstorf from 1397 to 1426, was related to Ludger Tölner, the

4

Chapter 1

Anna of Nassau reissued the reform decree in 1482, when nuns from Ebstorf helped reform Walsrode.6 Walsrode’s prioress, Margarethe von Hodenberg (1475–80?), was replaced by a nun from Ebstorf, Walburga Grawerock, prioress of Walsrode from 1483 to 1495; and the Ebstorf provost, Matthias von dem Knesebeck (1464–93), participated in reform visitations at Walsrode. Ebstorf in the diocese of Verden probably began as a house of Premon­ stratensian canons or possibly of canons and canonesses that had been founded c. 1160 by Count Volrad of Dannenberg (1158–74) and his wife, Gerburg. Fire resulted in the canons’ abandonment of the site and its resettlement with canonesses from Walsrode. Ebstorf, like Walsrode, eventually became Benedictine.7 Its fourteenth-century church survives, as does its cloister and early fifteenth-century stained glass windows depicting scenes from the Speculum humanae salvationis.8 Among the notable works from the convent of Ebstorf are woolen embroideries depicting scenes from the life of Moses, the embroidered middle section of a surcoat used to decorate the convent’s statue of Saint Maurice, and three embroideries worked on linen with silk thread.9 A list of Ebstorf ’s inhabitants in 1464 recorded fifty nuns, including the prioress, but only eight came from noble families.10 Reform began at Ebstorf in the 1460s when reformers there called in a member of the Bursfeld congregation, Abbot Dietrich Einem from Huysburg (1448–83). A second visitation in 1469 fully effected Ebstorf ’s reform. provost of Walsrode and Medingen (1416–46). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 432 (15 April 1414) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 435 (19 February 1415). Urkundenbuch des Klosters Ebstorf, ed. by Jaitner (hereafter UKE), p. 170, does not include Raboden de Wirte in his list of provosts, but the charter of 19 February 1415 specifically refers to him as such. References to a schoolmaster and school at Walsrode date from 1490 and 1496 respectively: Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 51. Two of the bourgeois prioresses at Walsrode also appeared in the wake of the convent’s reform: Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 33; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, p. 254. 6  Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 47–49; UKE, pp. 172–73; Brosius, ‘Walsrode’, p. 537. 7  UKE, pp. 165–67; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 23. 8  At Ebstorf it is possible to see the nuns’ speaking window, the opening through which food was passed into the refectory from the kitchen, and the furnace beneath the refectory, which provided heated air to warm the structure: UKE, pp. 186–87; Köster, Bilder aus Kloster Ebstorf. 9  Hahn-Woernle, Die Bauplastik, pp. 33, 64, 70, 89–92, 99; Appuhn, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 15; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, p. 23; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 273–87, 292–94. 10  UKE, Urk. 523 (10 October 1464); Godele van Boldensen appears twice in this list. The convent’s register from 1470–77 recorded the renunciation of prebends by fifteen nuns; at least one, Elisabeth Wytzendorpe, is not recorded elsewhere in the charters. Ebstorf, KE, Abt. IXb, Nr. 1, fol. 20r; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 245, 251.

The Heath Convents of Lower Saxony

5

Figure 1. Kloster Lüne, Workrooms. c. 1482/3. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

Lüne in the diocese of Verden is first noted as a community of canonesses in 1172 that had sprung from religious women gathered around one Hildeswidis, who probably belonged to the ministerial family of Marmstorf.11 Composed of ten canonesses and a prioress in 1231, by 1284 Lüne had become a community of Benedictine nuns restricted to sixty members. 12 In 1393 Lüne comprised fifty-six women (moniales, conversae et sorores); in 1466 only twenty-seven (perhaps only including choir nuns) were counted. By 1519, however, the community of nuns at Lüne had climbed to eighty-seven.13 11 

Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p.  377; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, p.  254; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 244–58. 12  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 54 (4 June 1284). 13  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 410 (24 March 1393). Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 378, 384, 390, notes fifty-seven, but I count fifty-six nuns.

Chapter 1

6

Lüne attracted urban women of both wealthy noble and middling status, but by 1493 not a single nun in the community came from the nobility.14 Although prohibited from educating girls not destined to become nuns, the community was still active in the education of young girls as late as 1555.15 Many of the structures built as a result of Lüne’s fifteenth-century reform are still standing, including workrooms built in 1482/3 (Figure 1), the washhouse built in 1500, and the weaving house erected in 1509. The provost’s house, built by Provost Schomaker (1493–1506) still stands, as does the new kitchen (the present summer refectory) erected in 1482 by Provost Graurock and the infirmary built in 1508.16 The convent of Lüne preserves four altar cloths and three Lenten hangings (Fastentücher, or altar veils) embroidered by the nuns in the opus teutonicum style between 1250 and 1350, in addition to four large-scale woolen embroideries created between 1492 and 1508.17 The Cistercian abbey for nuns at Medingen in the diocese of Verden was founded between 1228 and 1230. In 1781 a fire destroyed most of the medieval monastic structures, charters, and manuscripts, but sketches and records published in 1772 by Johann Ludolph Lyßmann, a preacher at the parish church of Medingen, have provided a source for the textual and visual materials once held by Medingen’s nuns.18 More recently, archival research by Joachim Homeyer has resulted in the publication of over seven hundred charters for Medingen.19 One of these, from 1393, listed eighty-eight choir nuns, in addition to lay sisters and other members of the monastic familia. According to Ida-Christine Riggert, women of bourgeois origin comprised nearly half the choir nuns at the convent of Medingen by the mid-fifteenth century. 20 A charter from 1481 14 

Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 245, 251; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 379, 390; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 528. 15  References to a schoolmaster and school at Walsrode date from 1490 and 1496 respectively. Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht, p. 75; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p. 385; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 522–24; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 51; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 111–15, 147. 16  Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 380, 395. 17  Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp.  13–22; Lorenz-Leber, Kloster Lüne, pp.  44–48; Appuhn, ‘Der Auferstandene und das Heilige Blut’; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 178. 18  Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht is generally taken as reliable; see Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp. 518, 546. 19  See Urkundenbuch des Klosters Medingen, ed. by Homeyer (hereafter UKM). 20  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 245, 251; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 379, 390; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 528.

The Heath Convents of Lower Saxony

7

(after its internal reform) still recorded seventy-one choir nuns, in addition to fourteen girls who had undergone the convent’s coronation ceremony and twelve lay sisters.21 Medingen played an important role in educating the daughters of Lüneburg’s leading patrician families and had established a school for young clerics under Provost Ludolf of Lüneburg (1326–55), but fifteenth-century reformers threatened excommunication if the nuns continued to educate those who did not enter the convent.22 Matthias von dem Knesebeck, provost of Ebstorf (1464–93), participated in the 1479 visitations that accompanied the reform at Medingen, as did nuns from Wienhausen and Derneburg.23 Wienhausen, Medingen, and Wöltingerode all included the dramatic paschal performances of the Depositio and Elevatio crucis and Visitatio sepulchri among their liturgical repertoire.24 Duchess Agnes of Landsberg and Duke Henry ‘the Long’ of Saxony, countpalatine of the Rhine and elder son of Henry the Lion, founded the Cistercian abbey of Isenhagen in the diocese of Hildesheim in 1243; they may have intended it to be the male counterpart to their earlier female foundation at Nienhagen, which would later become Wienhausen. A fire in 1259 led to the monks’ abandonment of the site and its resettlement with Cistercian nuns from either Wienhausen or Wöltingerode between 1259 and 1265.25 In 1506 Isenhagen numbered fifty-six inhabitants, including lay sisters and students, a number that generally accords with the fifty-two seats provided for the community in its late fifteenth-century choir stalls. Efforts by the abbot of Riddagshausen to reform Isenhagen in 1442 met with considerable resistance on the part of the nuns, leading Duchess Anna of Nassau to call for reform again in 1488.26 21 

UKM, Urk. 402 (1 June 1493) and UKM, Urk. 534 (27 July 1481). Similar prohibitions were placed on Lüne, yet the community remained active in the education of young girls as late as 1555; Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 432 (15 April 1414) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 435 (19 February 1415). 23  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 23; Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 634; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 523; Riggert-Minder­ mann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 38, 327; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 64–66. 24  Riggert-Mindermann, ‘Monastisches Leben im Kloster Ebstorf ’, pp. 202–04. Cf. UhdeStahl, ‘Figürliche Buchmalereien in den spätmittelalterlichen Handschriften’, pp.  44–5; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 520; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 176; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 29, fol. 18v. 25  Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp. 228–32; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 27. 26  Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 33; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp. 238, 253–54. 22 

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Figure 2. Kloster Wienhausen, Nuns’ Choir and Parish Church, facing east. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Isenhagen preserves its fourteenth-century church and brewing house as well as the north and east wings of its medieval cloister and its chapter hall.27 The east wing of the cloister still has its decorated consoles, and an early fifteenthcentury painting of the Volto Santo of Lucca combined with the legend of Saint Wilgefortis/Kümmernis still exists in a former chapel. Isenhagen preserves a hanging dating from the mid-fourteenth century for use behind the abbess’s stall. Six embroideries worked in linen and silk thread from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries attest to the needlework skills of the nuns of Isenhagen, while four antependia produced by the nuns of Isenhagen between 1488 and 1500 reflect the nuns’ continued needlework activities in the renewal of liturgical spaces after their internal reform.28 Wienhausen, in the diocese of Hildesheim, was also founded between 1221 and 1229 by Duchess Agnes of Landsberg and Duke Henry ‘the Long’ of Saxony as a community of Cistercian nuns. Much of the medieval fabric of 27  28 

Appuhn, Bilder aus Kloster Isenhagen, pp. 2–3. Appuhn, Bilder aus Isenhagen, pp. 28–31, 38–39; p. 35 (Brüdern).

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Figure 3. Kloster Wienhausen, Interior of Nuns’ Choir, facing west. c. 1330–35. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

9

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Figure 4. Kloster Wienhausen, mural with dedication of West Wing. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

the convent of Wienhausen survives, and, despite continuous occupancy and architectural change over the centuries, its general plan remains readily visible. Most notable is Wienhausen’s fourteenth-century nuns’ choir and west wing (the former winter refectory), built in the step-Gothic style.29 Even more stunning are the paintings in the nuns’ choir (completed between 1330 and 1335), with an elaborate programme of murals depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the lives of the apostles, and the virgin martyrs providing a rare glimpse of early Gothic decoration (Figures 2, 3, and 4).30 29  30 

Maier, Convent of Wienhausen, trans. by Wolfson, pp. 13, 14, 23. Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 759; Michler, Kloster Wienhausen.

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Figure 5. Kloster Wienhausen, Effigy of Christ. c. 1290. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

The nuns’ choir, built in 1330, holds eighty-nine seats. A record from 1431, how­e ver, listed only thirty choir nuns (including the abbess), although making oblique references to other members of the monastic family.31 The artistic commissions and building projects undertaken at Wienhausen provide some indication of the wealth of the Heath convents. The convent’s famous wooden effigy of Christ, or Grabchristus, as well as its statues of the Resurrection and the enthroned Madonna, all date from the late thirteenth century (Figures 5 and 6). A mural located next to the entrance to the nuns’ winter refectory, depicting the dedication of the west wing to the Virgin, Christ, and Wienhausen’s 31 

Possibly servants; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 771.

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Figure 6. Kloster Wienhausen, Resurrection Statue. Late thirteenth century. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

patron saint, Alexander, and which included Abbess Margaretha and Provost Dietrich, served as a reminder to Wienhausen’s nuns of the role played by the abbess and provost in supporting construction. In the period between 1300 and 1450 and particularly during the rule of Katharina von Hoya (abbess, 1422–37, 1440–69), Wienhausen created splendid works depicting the genealogy of Christ, the scenes of Saint Anne, the life of Elisabeth of Thuringia, and the Speculum humanae salvationis.32 32 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 184, 187–402.

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The ‘Women’s Religious Movement’ With the exception of Walsrode, the Lüneburg Heath convents reflect the rapid expansion of female religious communities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries designated by Herbert Grundmann as ‘the women’s religious movement’.33 Although Walsrode, Lüne, and Ebstorf began as communities of canonesses, all had adopted the regular life of Benedictine nuns by the mid-thirteenth century.34 Despite their adoption of the Benedictine rule, these former canonesses continued to enjoy certain privileges associated with communities of canonesses, most notably the ownership of private goods and income. Indeed, their members may never have adhered strictly to the Benedictine principle of the vita communis, or communal life.35 The other three Heideklöster were houses of Cistercian nuns.36 Ebstorf and Isenhagen emerged from failed establishments of religious men as described above. 37 With the exception of Ebstorf and Walsrode, each community experienced a series of early relocations (see Table 1).38

33  34 

p. 28.

Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. by Rowan. Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 377–78; Brosius, ‘Walsrode’, p. 535; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode,

35  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 22–40; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 28–29, 45–47; UKE, p. 182; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p. 379; Brosius, ‘Walsrode’, p. 535. 36  Krenig, ‘Mittelalterliche Frauenklöster’, pp. 1–105. But see Degler-Spengler, ‘The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns’, pp.  103, 119, Berman, ‘Were There Twelfth–Century Cistercian Nuns?’, and Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, pp. xi–xiv, 40–42, 151, where she equates the insistence on such documents with historiographical misogyny. See Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 48–50, 54–58, 61–62, for male religious officials of the region regarding those three communities as Cistercian; also see UKM, p. 74; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 520; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 758; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, p. 238, 251; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 27, 33, 41, 56; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 52; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 76; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 111; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 121; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. XXIII, 34, 76; and von Boetticher, ‘Riddagshausen’, p. 618. 37  UKE, pp. 165–67; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 23. 38  The community of Wienhausen relocated from Nienhagen to Wienhausen on account of the mosquitoes, ‘poison worms’, and unhealthy air of their previous location. Medingen was forced to relocate two times: first after the murder of their provost by Wends, then because of noisy nearby streets. Lüne and Isenhagen relocated twice due to insufficient resources and fire. Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp.  27–41; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp. 233–34; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 379–80; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp. 518–21; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 3.

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Table 1. List of Communities of the Lüneburg Heath. Abbey

Diocese

Date Founded

Ebstorf

Verden

1160

Isenhagen

Hildesheim

Lüne

Order Praemonstratensian, then Benedictine

Date Reformed 1469

1243/59–65

Cistercian

1442/1488

Verden

1172

Canonesses

1480s

Medingen

Verden

1228–30

Cistercian

1479

Walsrode

Minden

c. 980

Canonesses

1475/1482

In all six convents, the internal administration relied on a hierarchy of offices filled by choir nuns. The abbess or prioress held the highest administrative and spiritual position within the community. She supervised the performance of the monastic hours and the nuns’ other religious duties, guarded the discipline and enclosure of the nuns, and administered the internal affairs of the convent. A sacrista or capellanin aided her by overseeing the care of the liturgical vessels and vestments. A cellaress oversaw the community’s provisions and collected money from the properties and income specified for her office or from memorial donations.39 An infirmarian, infirmaria or sekemesterinne, supervised the care of the ill, while a cameraria cared for the convent’s textiles and provided the nuns’ clothing. The women who occupied these positions aided the abbess in running the convent, helping collect income or rents from a convent’s properties and distributing pittances (or special meals) to the community, usually on the occasion of the performance of a memorial.40 Holding an office (that of infirmarian and cellaress in particular) might entail management of specific properties or income, bringing to the incumbent a certain amount of prestige and patronage within the community, but administrative service also enabled individual nuns to influence communal devotional practices.41 The Heath convents depended on male clergy to provide for their spiritual needs. Such clerics performed the Mass, heard nuns’ confessions, and served 39 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 305 (1 August 1350), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 367 (19 February 1385), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 587a (22 January 1497). 40  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 405 (26 July 1400), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 426 (29 June 1412), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 453 (13 July 1434), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 454 (12 June 1450). 41  See Appendix 1.

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chapels and altars. For Wienhausen there is record of a verger (costere), scribe, and bell-ringer (campanarius). Within the cloister itself, conversae, or lay sisters, aided perhaps by other female servants, performed the more mundane community chores: washing, weaving, caring for the sick, or serving secular guests. In addition to conversae and lay brothers, or conversi, these houses employed other servants, who generally lived outside the monastic enclosure, did not wear a particular habit, and swore obedience only to the monastery.42 The abbess was the head of the monastic community, but like religious women throughout the Middle Ages, the Heath convent nuns often relied on the services of a provost or procurator as well as on priests and other servants for their spiritual care and economic survival. From the fourteenth century, by their right to present candidates, the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg influenced the choice of provosts at all the Heath convents. Not surprisingly, since many provosts came from the ranks of the duke’s secretaries, chaplains, and chancellors, these nuns occasionally were swept up in the political disputes of the region.43

Spiritual and Social Networks, c. 1300–1470 Although almost none of the community’s liturgical books have survived, the basic framework of the nuns’ liturgy can be reconstructed from the Benedictine Rule, as well as a few interesting details. 44 The inspectors coming to Wienhausen to check on how the injunctions of the reform had been adhered to, in 1483 referred to alternating song between the priests and nuns in the divine office and the Mass, which was explicitely forbidden; however, the visitatores (inspectors) also commanded the nuns to sing in unison with clear, rounded voices and appropriate pauses, rather than shouting their responses. Despite the recurring inspections to enforce full enclosure in the reformed convents, they remained attractive to pilgrims and visitors. Indeed, Wienhausen, 42 

Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 196–98. Conversae were only responsible for praying the pater noster and Ave Maria with their accompanying versicles and the Gloria Patri. 43  UKE, pp. 168–71, 181; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 73, 97, 119–39. Although Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 27, ascribed the foundation of the female community in Isenhagen to the bishop of Hildesheim, it is likely that Duchess Agnes played some role in this new female foundation; see Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 36A (1247). For Isenhagen, see Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp. 235–37; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 50, 52, 59, 68–76. 44  Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, p. 32; see Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483).

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with its relic of the holy blood, must have been an important stopping point among the northern German sites dedicated to the holy blood.45 This may explain the numerous pilgrimage badges discovered beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choir.46 At Ebstorf, a chapel located in its cemetery for the Ebstorf martyrs — a band of Christianized Saxon warriors who had fallen in battle against the Normans in 882 — attracted pilgrims from the early fourteenth century.47 Isenhagen possessed a miracle-working pietà that also might have attracted visitors.48 Social networks connected members of the Heath convents. All drew their members from the relatively restricted and exclusive circles of the noble, patrician, and leading bourgeois families in the dukedom of BraunschweigLüneburg and the cities of Lüneburg, Braunschweig, Uelzen, and Celle, whose daughters they educated.49 None of these communities freed themselves from the jurisdiction of the bishop or from the influence of the local dukes. 50 All observed a religious lifestyle based on the Benedictine Rule, observing similar liturgical ceremonies, such as the coronation of their choir nuns. Nuns from Wienhausen may have provided the first members of Isenhagen, while canonesses from Walsrode formed the first female community of Ebstorf.51 The three communities of Wienhausen, Walsrode, and Isenhagen had a more noble composition and drew the fewest women of urban origin. Between 1470 and 1501, half of Wienhausen’s deceased nuns belonged to the landed 45 

Bynum, Wonderful Blood. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 157–238; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 522. 47  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 24; cf. UKE, p. 167. 48  Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, pp. 236, 249, 255. 49  A charter issued by Duchess Mechthild of Braunschweig-Lüneburg in 1253 prohibited the nuns at Wienhausen from educating any girls not destined for monastic life except those belonging to the ducal family. Medingen educated the daughters of Lüneburg’s leading patrician families and established a school for young clerics under Provost Ludolf of Lüneburg (1326–55), but were forbidden from having ‘worldly’ girls come into the convent for instruction in needlework (Handarbeit) or proper deportment (gutes Benehmen). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 46 (c.  1253), Hannover, Hauptstadtarchiv, Copiar des Klosters Wienhausen, No. 41 (116), Hannover, Hauptstadtarchiv, Königliche Archive zu Hannover; Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht, p. 75; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p. 385; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp. 522–24; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 51; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 111–15, 147. 50  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 52, 59, 67. 51  UKE, p. 166; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 31; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 23, 27. 46 

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nobility; between 1501 and 1549 about one-third of the nuns still came from these families.52 By contrast, women of bourgeois origin composed nearly half of the choir nuns at the convents of Ebstorf, Medingen, and Lüne by the midfifteenth century. Of the fifty-one nuns in Ebstorf in 1464, only eight came from noble families. Lüne attracted urban women of both wealthy and middling status, but by 1493 not a single nun in the community came from the nobility. Abbesses at Wienhausen and Walsrode came primarily from the landed aristocracy, whereas the prioresses of Ebstorf and Medingen frequently belonged to patrician families, especially from the mid-fifteenth century onwards.53 Only Wienhausen had numerous recruits from high-ranking noble families, including women from the ducal family of Braunschweig-Lüneburg; women from the family of the counts of Hoya became nuns at Wienhausen, but entered none of the other Heath convents.54

The Period of Reform: 1470–1500 Perhaps the best example of the common history that bound the Heideklöster together was their shared experience of monastic reform in the late fifteenth century. All the Lüneburg Heath convents underwent internal reforms modelled on the Windesheim and Bursfeld congregations, although none of the six ever appeared as official members of those groups.55 Rather, the Heath communities felt most the reforming influence of the same regional ecclesiastical and political authorities who had shaped their development in earlier centuries: the bishops of Verden and Hildesheim, Duke Otto of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and later Duchess Anna of Nassau. These individuals travelled among the Heath convents introducing the reform and providing instruction in correct liturgical practices, singing, and Latin.56 At each house reformers encountered a strong sense of communal identity — of spiritual and social status — that had evolved within the Heath convents over the centuries. Often initial opposition to the reformers provided a basis for feelings of unity. Two rounds of visitation were necessary to reform Wienhausen, Ebstorf, Isenhagen, and Walsrode, but 52 

According to Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 245, 251; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 379, 390; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 528; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 33. 53  UKE, p. 183; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 249–52. 54  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 250. 55  UKE, p. 172; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, pp. 383, 389; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode,p. 48. 56  Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, pp. 67–70.

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conformity with the reformers eventually intensified existing networks and connections among the Heideklöster. Reform might come via nuns from a neighbouring convent or with the same visiting reformer. Johannes Busch, for example, initiated the reforms of both Wienhausen and Ebstorf in 1469/70.57 The nuns who travelled between communities to reform them often remained for several years, achieving prominence as new leaders.58 Susanna Potstock (1470–1501), a nun from the newly reformed convent of Derneburg, became Wienhausen’s first reforming abbess. A nun from Wienhausen, Margaretha Puffen (1494–1513), eventually became the new abbess in Medingen.59 In 1481 reformed nuns from Ebstorf became the new prioresses of Walsrode and Lüne. Ebstorf ’s nuns also assumed the positions of sacrista, cellaress, and choir-mistress at Lüne, and Ebstorf ’s provost, Matthias von dem Knesebeck (1464–93), participated in the visitations that accompanied the reform at the convents of Medingen, Lüne, Walsrode, and Marienstuhl.60 Nuns from Wienhausen and Derneburg aided in the reform at Medingen (1479); and after the reform, members of the various communities continued to journey to neighbouring houses for important liturgical occasions, such as the installation of a new abbess.61 The reforming effort not only brought changes in the leadership of the Heath communities, but altered their social composition and size. All had averaged between forty and sixty choir nuns over the course of their history, although Wienhausen and Medingen may have surpassed these numbers in the

57 

Fifteen years later (in 1483), Abbots Bertram Bredenbeck of Saint Godehard (1473–93) and Hermann Polmann of Saint Michael (1473–86), members of the Bursfeld congregation, conducted another visitation of Wienhausen and issued a reform protocol. Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 629–35; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 24 (7 July 1483). 58  Reforming nuns from Ebstorf spent three years at Lüne. The Wienhausen necrology recalled that one of the nuns from Derneburg, Mechthild Elvessen, remained five years at Wienhausen, where she took ‘considerable effort with our sisters’. Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 49; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. LXI; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 91–94. 59  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 541 (13 October 1479). 60  Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p. 383; Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, p. 391; RiggertMindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p.  325; Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p.  49; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 64–65, 91; UKE, p. 173; Brosius, ‘Walsrode’, p. 537. 61  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p.  23; Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 634; Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p. 523; RiggertMindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 38, 327; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 64–66.

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late fourteenth century.62 Reform of these communities resulted in an influx of new members, lowering the median ages of nuns and including additional numbers from bourgeois families, which changed their overall social composition. Thus, for instance, although Wienhausen traditionally had drawn its recruits from the leading noble families of the region, by 1549 noble women comprised only a third of its choir nuns.63 Reforming efforts, which tended to be led by the younger generation, also promoted abbacies for younger nuns.64 Thus Sophia von Bodendike became the new, reform prioress of Lüne at the age of twenty-three. The new prioress of Ebstorf, Mechthild von Niendorf, was only twenty upon her election. The nun who composed the narrative of Ebstorf ’s reform completed her work at age twenty-four, having perhaps begun her task at the age of eighteen.65 At Isenhagen the pre-reform abbess, Gertrud Kolkhagen (1442–70), was probably the first abbess of bourgeois standing; her successor, Barbara Antoni (1488–1510), also came from a bourgeois family. Two bourgeois prioresses at Walsrode appeared in the wake of the convent’s reform.66 Along with changes in the social composition, age distribution, and size of communities, reforming efforts encouraged a flurry of scribal activity and exchanges of letters and manuscripts among the Heath convents. Stricter observances necessitated the copying of new liturgical texts. Johannes Busch, for example, requested a Collectarium from the abbot of Marienrode, so that the nuns of Wienhausen might copy it and thereby cease to sing secular songs. 67 Similarly, the former Wienhausen nun, Margaretha Puffen, promoted considerable copying and literary effort at the community of Medingen where she had gone to become the reforming abbess.68 According to the Ebstorf chronicle, composed c. 1487, the nuns copied at least twenty-seven new manuscripts to replace older liturgical volumes. Initially only a few nuns sang the new hours, copying the liturgy for the next day the night before, until the entire commu-

62 

UKM, Urk. 402 (1 June 1493) and UKM, Urk. 534 (27 July 1481). Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 251; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 771. 64  Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 136–37, 142–43. 65  Uffmann, ‘“…wie in einem Rosengarten”’, pp.  217–20; UKE, p.  183; Lorenz-Leber, Kloster Lüne, p. 26. 66  Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, p. 33; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, p. 254. 67  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 634. 68  Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp. 525, 535; Lähnemann, ‘“ex Medinck”’. 63 

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nity learned the new methods of performance.69 One unfortunate result of such activities was the destruction of earlier liturgical books. Indeed, the first act of the reforming prioress of Ebstorf, Gertrude von dem Brake, was to confiscate all the existing choir books, declare them corrupt, and have them cut to shreds.70 The reforms of the Heath convents emphasized private devotional reading outside of the liturgical offices.71 The internal reforms of the fifteenth century resulted in either the active destruction of, or passive disregard for, the Heath convents’ pre-reform libraries, but the Observant movement promoted the creation of a number of new texts intended for both devotional and liturgical, as well as practical and economic, purposes and actively encouraged the composition of self-reflective texts, such as necrologies, communal histories, and reform narratives. Particularly important for the Heath convents are the reforming narratives from Ebstorf, the chronicle and necrology from Wienhausen, the chronicle and reform statutes from Lüne, the Lüne sacrista’s book (Amtsbuch), and surviving letter collections. 72 Post-reform abbesses and prioresses composed texts documenting their activities and expenditures, which not only provide information about the reform, but also about the daily challenges faced by reformed women.73 Such records of the reform and of individual, communal histories assumed other forms: as discussed later in this book, the nuns of Medingen commissioned a pictorial and narrative history of their community’s fifteenth-century reform in a series of fifteen painted panels, and the woolen embroideries produced by the nuns of Lüne functioned similarly.74 The embroi69 

Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, p. 391. Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, p.  74; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Cura Monialium’, p. 121; Riggert-Mindermann, ‘Monastisches Leben im Kloster Ebstorf ’, p. 198; Härtel, ‘Die Bibliothek des Klosters Ebstorf ’, pp. 109–21; WinstonAllen, Convent Chronicles, pp. 169–70. 71  UKE, p. 185; Riggert-Mindermann, ‘Monastisches Leben im Kloster Ebstorf ’, pp. 199– 200; Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, p. 403; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p. 92. 72  The ‘Ebstorfer Reformberichte’ appear in Ebstorf, KE, Hs V2 and are transcribed in Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’. Ebstorf, KE, Hs V4 contains Latin exercises (dictamina) composed by Ebstorf ’s reformed nuns. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn; Lüneburg, KL, Hs 13, the ‘Lüner Chronik’; Lüneburg, KL, Hs 14 (Reform statutes); Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23 (Amtsbuch der Sacrista); Lüneburg, KL, Hs 15, Lüneburg, KL, Hs 30, and Lüneburg, KL, Hs 31 (letter collections, Briefkopiar). 73  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 24 (Aufzeichnungen der Priorin Mechthild Wilde); Wienhausen, KW, Fach 33/1a (Notizbuch der Äbtissin); Isenhagen, Klosterarchiv, Hs D 24 74  Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. 70 

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deries and liturgical decorations from the Heideklöster provide evidence not only of medieval artistry, but also of the activities that constituted the nuns’ monastic labour. The Observant movement advocated writing for administrative and didactic purposes. Indeed, pragmatische Schriftlichkeit, literature of a practical, moral, and didactic nature, played an important role in communities of the devotio moderna, the religious movement from which the Windesheim and Bursfeld congregations had developed.75 In the wake of their reform, nuns at the convents of Wienhausen, Ebstorf, Lüne, and Medingen all composed practical manuals, reform chronicles, and conventual histories, and such genres were often intertwined. A work composed by the sacrista of Lüne following that convent’s reform, for example, included both information about her office and a description of Lüne’s daily life and communal history. This manuscript, known as the ‘Lüne Chronicle’, included both historical and practical information. 76 Exchanges of manuscripts between the convents of Ebstorf and Wienhausen are evident, as are those between Ebstorf and Lüne.77 In 1522 Abbess Katharina Remstede of Wienhausen sent a liber coronacionis to read and to correct to Thitburg Remstede, a professa in the convent of Lüne and presumably a relative of the Abbess.78 The reforms intensified early connections between the Heath convents by introducing common devotional practices that mitigated differences based on monastic order or diocesan practices, and female reformers brought new skills and activities, shaping the artistic output that followed in the wake of reform in ways unique to each convent.79 The reform that bound the Heath convents together thus replicated broader, pre-existing networks of social, political, religious, and economic ties that connected the female monastic houses in this region with each other and with the secular world. By the late fifteenth century, then, adherence to the reforming effort played a greater role in stimulating exchanges between convents than membership in a particu75 

Scheepsma, ‘“For Hereby I Hope to Rouse Some to Piety”’, pp. 34–40; see also Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, ed. by Van Engen and Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. 76  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23, ‘Amtsbuch der Sacrista’; Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, pp. 65–66; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt. 77  UKE, p. 185. Two prayer books, possibly originally from Wienhausen are at Ebstorf, and a text of the Dornenkron Latin meditation, probably originating in Ebstorf, were recovered from under the floor of the Wienhausen nuns’ choir; see n. 87 below. 78  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, pp. 272, 304. 79  Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 58–67, 90–103; on needlework, see Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 137, and Chapter 3 below.

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lar monastic order, but the Heideklöster maintained contact with communities that remained unreformed. Connections between the nuns of Wienhausen and their unreformed Cistercian sisters in Braunschweig’s Holy Cross Abbey are documented in the Konventstagebuch written by an anonymous sister of Holy Cross in the late fifteenth century.80

An Embarrassment of Riches: The Heideklöster of Lower Saxony and their Textual and Material Resources The survival of other textual and material sources is the result of the continuity of the Heideklöster. Although the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg established Lutheranism as the official religion in their territory in the sixteenth century, they did not take measures to formally dissolve the female monastic houses within their lands. Resistance to the earlier reform by the nuns of Wienhausen and Medingen resulted in the destruction of portions of their monastic complexes. At Wienhausen, Duke Ernst ‘the Confessor’ attempted to accelerate reform by ordering the destruction of the wall around the monastic enclosure, the northern wing and infirmary, and the eastern wing with its chapel to Saints Fabian and Sebastian; the present timber and brick constructions of the northern and eastern ranges date from 1549/50. At Medingen, reformers removed the convent’s bells and tore down the wall and some buildings. Nonetheless, the communities themselves survived and quickly rebuilt.81 The imposition of Lutheran reform did not encourage the preservation of devotional and liturgical texts or religious artwork at the convents. Still, because the Heideklöster adopted Lutheranism only slowly and incrementally, much of their medieval heritage survived. The communities still function today as houses of female Protestant communities, which are responsible for the preservation and care of the buildings and their material artifacts. Scholars have identified over forty devotional texts, primarily Orationale, produced by the reformed nuns of Medingen in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These Medingen Orationale provide rich evidence of the spiritual and cultural sophistication of its fifteenth-century community.82 The 80 

Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch des Heilig–Kreuzklosters, Braunschweig’, fol. 11r–14r, transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 347–49, 352–53. 81  Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, p.  526; Maier, Convent of Wienhausen, trans. by Wolfson, pp. 35–36. 82  Lipphardt, ‘Niederdeutsche Reimgedichte und Lieder’, pp. 67, 92–93, 113–15. On cur-

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convent of Ebstorf preserves fifty-one manuscripts produced in the wake of the convent’s reform. The manuscripts are complex ensembles that combine text pastiches (formed with excerpts and citations from the liturgy, Bible, songs, and other devotional texts) with translations, paraphrases, explanations and amplifications of the excerpted texts, directions for meditation, and what may well be unique compositions developed by Medingen’s nuns in the processes of copying and translation, such as the Ebstorf songbook of 1541.83 There is also substantial medieval artwork in the form of statuary, stained glass, murals, and small devotional images for these houses, with the exception of Medingen and Walsrode. This artwork, dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, attests to the rich visual culture that shaped the nuns’ devotional lives, as is discussed later in this book. Ebstorf is famous for its mappa mundi, the Ebstorfer Weltkarte, often ascribed to Gervasius von Tilbury, which was created in or near Ebstorf during the provostship of Johannes Propst (1256–81).84 Among the most remarkable artistic survivals from the Heideklöster are numerous textiles, such as Wienhausen’s three embroideries of the romance of Tristan and Isolde, the earliest of which dates from 1300.85 In addition to these larger works, the convents of Wienhausen and Ebstorf preserve several Marienkleider, small robes used primarily to dress statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.86 Finally, the ephemeral materials recovered from the Heath convents offer a rare glimpse into the daily life and spirituality of the late medieval nuns who inhabited these communities. In the 1950s researchers recovered a trove of objects beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choir and northern range at

rent efforts to develop a database for the Medingen manuscripts, see Lähnemann, ‘“An dessen bom wil ik stighen”’ and Lähnemann, ‘Die spätmittelalterlichen Medinger Andachtsbücher’. 83  This is true as well of nearly half of the songs in the Wienhausen Liederbuch, compiled just prior to reform in 1469; see Irtenkauf, ‘Die Ebstorfer Liederhandschrift’; Härtel, ‘Die Bibliothek des Klosters Ebstorf ’. 84  Destroyed in World War  II bombing, the work is well known from a copy; HahnWoernle, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte. 85  Attention has focused on the three Tristan and Isolde embroideries produced between 1300 and 1370. See Pickering, Literature and Art in the Middle Ages; Fouquet, Wort und Bild in der mittelalterlichen Tristantradition; Wilhelm, Kloster Wienhausen; and Moessner, ‘The Medieval Embroideries of Convent Wienhausen’. 86  [See the catalogue of the dresses at Wienhausen: Klack-Eitzen, Haase, and Weißgraf, Heilige Röcke.]

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Wienhausen including musical manuscripts.87 Some of the objects recovered attest to the mundane existence of the nuns — knives, wax tablets and styli, back scratchers, eyeglasses, spindles, needles and other sewing accoutrements, and even a miniature tin salt cellar. Other items reflected the nuns’ devotional practices — leather scourges, diminutive crosses worn as amulets, rosary beads, small statuary figures, pilgrimage badges, devotional images or Andachtsbilder, small prayer books, and fragments of professions. As a result of these finds, researchers conducted further investigations in 1961 and 1964 beneath the nuns’ choirs at Isenhagen, Ebstorf, and Lüne, leading to the recovery of similar but less extensive caches of artifacts and devotional items.88 Such multifaceted evidence surviving from the Heath convents presents a unique matrix from which to construct a social and cultural study of female monastic devotion in the later Middle Ages.

87 

Sievers, Wienhäuser Choralhandschriften. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 157–60; Appuhn, Der Fund im Nonnenchor, pp. 46–47. 88 

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n the gloom of the predawn hours of Easter Sunday, nuns at the convents of Wöltingerode, Wienhausen, and Medingen awakened to re-enact — indeed to relive — the defining moment of Christian belief: the resurrection of Christ as recounted in the Gospels.1 Having symbolically buried Christ on Good Friday in the rituals of the deposition from the cross (Depositio crucis), the nuns now gloried in the annunciation of the miracle of resurrection in the liturgical rites of the elevation of the cross (Elevatio crucis) and the visitation of the holy women to the tomb (Visitatio sepulchri). The dramatic rituals of the Depositio, Elevatio, and Visitatio drew upon medieval monastic ideas about devotional memory and theological imagination to create a liminal state in which individual communities experienced the divine by identifying with, and recreating the actions of, the holy figures of three Biblical narratives. Art and architectural space helped facilitate this identification by transforming churches and chapels into replicas of the historical Jerusalem and their congregations into the people of Judea who witnessed these events. The Visitatio sepulchri melded ritual and drama in a theatrical spectacle played before an audience of clergy and lay people.2 Yet for religious women its performative character extended beyond the merely theatrical, for the Visitatio functioned as both a means of expressing as well as constructing their spiritual 1  Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, p. 1; Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, p. 131; Bjork, ‘On the Dissemination of Quem Quaeritis’, pp. 49, 60. 2  Flanigan, ‘Medieval Liturgy and the Arts’, p. 30.

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self-identity.3 The story of the three Marys and their visit to Jesus’s tomb not only drew upon medieval assumptions about female care and compassion, but also contemporary mystical interpretations of Mary Magdalene as both convert and lover of Christ. Religious women used the intimacy implied by the holy women’s responsibility for Jesus’s dead body, visually and physically represented in the Visitatio sepulchri, to assert a powerful position of female connection to, and unity with, a human Christ. The Visitatio emphasized the centrality of women to the initial discovery and dissemination of the news of Jesus’s resurrection. What is more, the spectacle of the Visitatio actively involved women in the liturgy and encouraged their composition of new texts, music, gestural sequences, and dramatic staging. Women of the Cistercian convents of Lower Saxony seized this annual opportunity to assert their roles as sponsae Christi in ceremonies of the Paschal season. Easter meditations and prayers allowed nuns to identify with both the Virgin Mary, mourning her son’s death, and more particularly with Mary Magdalene. In the Visitatio sepulchri, medieval brides of Christ became the Magdalene, whose search for Jesus at the tomb had been associated with the bride’s search for her beloved in the Song of Songs since the thirteenth century. Both of these intimate relationships with Jesus, enacted and exalted in their elaborate and dramatic rituals surrounding Easter, built upon normative gender roles and expectations. At the same time, however, the Visitatio permitted religious women to instigate a dynamic and intimate connection with their Saviour at both the personal and collective level. They imagined the parameters of this relationship in poetry, prayers, songs, meditative dialogues, and devotional artwork. As designers of texts and performances that defined the Paschal season, religious women not only contributed actively to the liturgical life of their communities, but also influenced the religious experiences of local parishioners. The nuns’ sophisticated use of religious artwork and handling of material objects in sacred space demonstrate their mastery of Paschal performances. Their creative manipulation of gender roles and relationships, and their imaginative engagement with theology via the Paschal liturgy, prove the fundamental importance of performative piety among the Heideklöster.

3 

Turner and Turner, Image and Pligrimage in Christian Culture.

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The Drama of the Paschal Season Performance of the daily monastic liturgy was the primary devotional task of women who followed the vita contemplativa, or contemplative life.4 Arising in the dark, nuns and canonesses performed Matins, the first of eight canonical offices or ‘hours’, at around two or three a.m., followed by Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. While male and female houses adhered to similar liturgical-musical traditions, women’s communities used different rites for consecrating virgins (the oblation, or oblatio). In northern Germany, nuns also conducted coronation ceremonies (coronacio) at a novice’s veiling. Finally, their dramatic liturgical performances at Easter came to differ from those performed in men’s monasteries or other churches.5 As early as the ninth century, monasteries, cathedrals, and parish churches celebrated the Paschal season with liturgical scenes connected to, yet independent of, the Mass for Easter Sunday. By the tenth century, congregations across Europe portrayed and witnessed the entombment and resurrection of Christ and the visit of the holy women to the tomb in the yearly liturgical rites of the Depositio and Elevatio crucis and the Visitatio sepulchri. The Depositio took place on Good Friday when a priest ritually buried a crucifix or Host representing Jesus in a tomb or sepulchrum, often symbolized by a box or chalice. On Easter morning the priest removed the hidden object from the sepulchrum in the Elevatio rites.6 In some cases, women’s communities also enacted a scene of Christ’s descent to hell (Descensus ad infernos) as part of the Elevatio ritual. The Visitatio sepulchri (Visit to the Tomb, also known as Officium Resurrectionis or Officium sepulchri) re-enacted the revelation to the holy women who went to Jesus’s tomb expecting to anoint a broken and lifeless body and returned instead triumphantly certain of Jesus’s miraculous resurrection.7 The scene 4 

Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, p. 32. Yardley, ‘“Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne”’, pp. 20–21. Traits denoting manuscripts used and produced by the canonesses at Klosterneuberg include: inscriptions identifying female use; female portraits; the use of Laon neumes; the use of German inscriptions and rubrics; the distinct placement of the Dedicatio ecclesia, a distinct rubrication of the Visitatio sepulchri; and distinct modal and melodic structures within the Visitatio sepulchri. Norton and Carr, ‘Women’s Liturgical Manuscripts’, p. 2. 6  Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, p. 26; Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, pp. 1–130. 7  Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, p. 120; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 148. 5 

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originated as additional gospel lines inserted into the Mass on Easter. By the eleventh century the visitation scene had become a regular part of the Easter liturgy. In northern Europe the drama assumed a standard position at the end of Matins, immediately preceding the singing of the Te Deum hymn, which medieval theologians interpreted as marking the moment of Christ’s resurrection.8 Performance of the Visitatio was not confined to a particular order or region, although Benedictine and Cistercian communities figure prominently as creators and disseminators of this ceremony.9 Although common across Europe and sharing many Latin tropes and antiphons, Visitatio rituals also reflected local interests, concerns, and material environments.10 A re-enactment of the Depositio and Elevatio crucis and Visitatio sepulchri might emphasize privilege and hierarchy, by means of rituals hidden from public view and witnessed only by a few select participants. Alternatively, public performances of the rituals could teach (or remind) parishioners of the lessons of the Easter drama.11 Some performances were more elaborate and dramatic than others. But everywhere they appeared, these Paschal scenes united Christians in the experience of mneme theou, the ‘memory of God’. Men and women, monastics, priests, and laity gathered to create sacred time, space, and place. In the consecrated space of church or chapel, before altars specially decked with holy objects (crosses, hosts, or relics), they entered into duratio, the extra-temporal time of the divine.12 However, religious women fine-tuned Paschal liturgies to suit their own devotions and communities. The Visitatio sepulchri was particularly popular with female communities; at least twelve German convents had their own texts for it.13 These dramatic liturgies emphasized the action and speech of female 8  Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, pp.  1, 130; Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, p. 131; Bjork, ‘On the Dissemination of Quem Quaeritis’, pp. 49, 60; Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, p. 32. 9  Hennig, ‘Die Beteiligung von Frauen an lateinischen Osterfeiern’, p. 212; Wright, The Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama in France. 10  Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 35; Flanigan, ‘Medieval Liturgy and the Arts’, pp. 17–29; Rankin, ‘The Mary Magdalene Scene’, p. 230. 11  Ogden, ‘The Visitatio Sepulchri’. 12  Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, p. 2; Dox, ‘Theatrical Space’, pp. 187–88; Breck, ‘John Wyclyf on Time’, p. 217; Haastrup, ‘Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama’. 13  Linke, ‘A Survey of Medieval Drama’, p. 35; Hennig, ‘Die Beteiligung von Frauen an lateinischen Osterfeiern’, pp. 211–27; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 145, 153; Lipphardt, ‘Visitatio sepulchri’; Lateinische Osterfeiern, ed. by Lipphardt (hereafter LOO), iv (1976),

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characters in the dramas, thus implicitly advertising the religious authority of abbesses as well. Convent liturgies for Easter also promoted the importance of Mary Magdalene in the Easter story.14 This independent elaboration of the Paschal liturgy appears particularly in the longer Visitatio performances traditionally described as Ludus paschalis, or Easter plays.15 The most obvious difference between Easter plays in women’s and men’s communities was the casting. In men’s monasteries, men assumed all the roles in the drama. But Visitatio manuscripts from Gandersheim, Gernrode, Essen, Nottuln, Münster, Regensburg-Obermünster, Klosterneuburg in Austria, and Notre Dame in Troyes all specified female performers for the roles of the holy women. The community of St George’s in Prague had a tradition of female performers dating back to the twelfth century. 16 In fact, sisters in at least twenty-three women’s communities scattered across Germany and northern France played the three Marys every year, while male clerics were recruited from outside the convent to perform the parts of angels, apostles, the unguent merchant, and Christ.17 Virtually every extant text of the Visitatio associated with a female religious community mentioned that women played these roles. Most likely, then, the nuns of Wöltingerode, Medingen, and Wienhausen also participated in their re-enactment. Female performers lent realism to events depicted in the Visitatio. Many communities, both male and female, employed a variety of additional means to fashion realistic and lively performances. Participants often carried censers, candelabras, or candles in the processions that framed the dramatic dia-

1443–45; LOO, v (1976), 1551–55, 1682–91; Norton and Carr, ‘Women’s Liturgical Manuscripts’, p. 3. See also Wright, ‘The Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama in France’ (1936), pp. 39–41, 87–90, 180–183; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’; Rankin, ‘A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri’; Lowen and Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song’. 14  Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, p. 70. 15  I use ludus to refer to staging or literary qualities of a text. The Drama of the Medieval Church, pp. 411–12; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 37. 16  Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 153; Hoogeweg, Verzeichnis der Stifte und Klöster, pp. 12–13; Streich, Klöster, Stifte und Kommenden in Niedersachsen, p. 45. 17  Hennig, ‘Die Beteiligung von Frauen an lateinischen Osterfeiern’, pp. 211–27; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 153; Norton and Carr, ‘Women’s Liturgical Manuscripts’, especially pp. 2, 10; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, pp. 73, 79–81; The Drama of the Medieval Church, pp. 333–35.

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logues.18 Celebrants used devotional props such as effigies and sepulchres, grave clothes, a sudary (sudarium, which represents the cloth that wiped the sweat from Christ’s brow), or relics in their re-enactment of the resurrection story. At Braunschweig, a house of canons, one writer included cues for processions, props, gestures, and vocal quality in his texts for the liturgy, providing for a lively, didactic performance that transformed the nave into the sacred place of Christ’s entombment and the lay congregation into the people of Jerusalem who witnessed these events.19 Processions transformed the static space of a church into the scene of an active search for Christ. Nuns used artwork and other props to recreate the sacred place of Jerusalem and Jesus’s tomb within the monastic enclosure or church. Gesture and vocal quality conveyed the deep emotion of participants in the most moving scenes, such as Mary Magdalene’s grief at Christ’s death.20 Elaborate bridal imagery and nuptial metaphors, poignant dialogues of the Magdalene and Christ, and intense concern for Christ’s body characterized these plays.

The Visitatio Sepulchri among the Heath Convents of Lower Saxony Among the female Cistercian houses in Lower Saxony, Medingen, Wöltingerode, and Wienhausen all celebrated the Paschal season with considerable fanfare, as manuscripts from these houses attest. The nuns of Wöltingerode were performing the Depositio and Elevatio crucis and the Visitatio sepulchri by the thirteenth century.21 Two fragmentary Visitatio manuscripts from Wienhausen (MS 80, c. 1350, and MS 36, c. 1400), indicate an elaborate performance at that monastery that featured speeches in the vernacular; plays at Wienhausen, like those performed in other communities across Anglo-Norman and German regions, also added the character of an unguent merchant to the drama.22 Surviving artwork from Wienhausen also suggests a regular performance of the Depositio. At 18 

LOO, i (1975), 186–92; LOO, ii (1976), 379–83. Wolfenbüttel, Landeshauptarchiv, MS VII B 203, trans. in LOO, v (1976), 1498–1504. See also Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 45–48. 20  Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, pp. 72, 128; Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, pp. 79–83, 240; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 117, 143–53. 21  LOO, iv (1976), 1443–45; Lipphardt, ‘Visitatio sepulchri’, pp. 119–28. 22  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36 and Wienhausen, KW, Hs 80. These texts were previously catalogued as Handschriften C and D. Regarding Type III dramas, see Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, p. 239, Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, p. 31, and Linke, ‘A Survey of Medieval Drama’, p. 22. 19 

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Medingen, a text of the Visitatio confirms that nuns performed the Depositio and Elevatio crucis as part of their regular Paschal rituals by the fifteenth century.23 No record remains of the direct exchange of Visitatio manuscripts between the convents of the Lüneburg Heath, but these communities shared liturgical practices emanating from the dioceses of Hildesheim and Verden. They also shared a Cistercian identity, geographical proximity, spiritual and familial connections, and patronage by Welf rulers, which undoubtedly promoted the exchange of liturgical traditions among these houses. Visitatio texts from Wöltingerode, Medingen, and Wienhausen share organizational and compositional features with the Visitatio text known as Braunschweig IV (c. 1350) from the chapter of Saint Blasius in Braunschweig. The dioceses of Verden — to which the convent of Medingen belonged — and Hildesheim — to which Wienhausen, Wöltingerode, and Saint Blasius in Braunschweig belonged — both included the Visitatio sepulchri as part of their liturgical rites, and both had a heritage of dramatic liturgical performances. Indeed, by the fifteenth century, the Heath convents formed a close circle actively engaged in the exchange of ‘good Easter practices’.24 While the texts from Medingen and Wienhausen lack specific rubrics for elaborate performances, nonetheless there are a few indications that the nuns of these houses also employed gestures and vocal modulation in order to fashion a dramatic presentation. The Medingen Visitatio included directions for displaying Christ’s burial shroud for an audience and pointing to the sepulchre.25 At Wienhausen, participants repeated three times the crucial exchange 23 

Hildesheim, StA, MS Mus. 383, Orationale des Zisterzienserinnenklosters Medingen bei Lüneburg (HI 5 according to Lipphardt), fols 125v–127v; trans. in LOO, v (1976), 1551–55; Lipphardt, ‘Niederdeutsche Reimgedichte und Lieder’, pp. 70–73, 104–05. For dating, see Stahl, Mittelalterliche Handschriften Stadtarchiv Hildesheim, pp. 98–99; Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fol. 40r; Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 45; Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3), fol. 46v. 24  I am grateful to Henrike Lähnemann for pointing out further connections among the convents of Ebstorf, Lüne, and Medingen. The Visitatio texts from Wöltingerode, Medingen, and Wienhausen share organizational and compositional features with the Visitatio text known as Braunschweig IV (c. 1350) from the chapter of Saint Blasius in Braunschweig. The text of Braunschweig IV is preserved in Wolfenbüttel, Landeshauptarchiv, MS VII B 203, Lektionar der Stiftskirche St Blasii in Braunschweig, fols 23r–27v; trans. in LOO, v (1976), 1498–1504. The Visitatio dramas categorized as Braunschweig I and II date from the thirteenth century, LOO, iii (1976), 808–11. Stammler, Kleine Schriften zur Literaturgeschichte, pp. 258–60. 25  ‘Hic ostenditur sudarium […] Hic ostenditur Sepulchrum Salvatoris’ (Here is shown the cloth that had been about his head [...] Here is shown the sepulchre of the Saviour): LOO, v (1976), 1555.

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between Christ and Mary Magdalene at the saviour’s tomb: ‘Maria! Rabonni?’ (Mary! Master?). Each time they sang a different melody, allowing time for the Magdalene to enact her transformation from doubt to belief.26 The figure of the unguent merchant in convent manuscripts (unguentarius in Wienhausen’s fragmentary Visitatio, MS 80) likewise indicates an intentionally dramatic performance of the Paschal liturgy. Scenes for the merchant were not biblical and seem to have been created purely for dramatic and even comic effect.27 Cues for the staging of this character in dramas from other monasteries suggest how Wienhausen’s women structured scenes around him. For instance, the Ludus paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoite, in Picardy, which has several crucial similarities to the text of Wienhausen’s Paschal play, also included the figure of the merchant. At Origny-Sainte-Benoite, the text added dialogue between Mary Magdalene and the merchant in French and directed Mary Magdalene to stand apart while her female companions, the other Marys, negotiated with the merchant. As at Braunschweig, 28 the Origny drama also included a gestural sequence in which the Apostles Peter and John took Mary Magdalene by the sleeve, pulling her aside to ask, ‘Quid vidisti in via?’ (What did you see in the road?). Prostrations and other gestures further punctuated Mary Magdalene’s revelations: ‘Sepulcrum Christi viventis’ (I saw the sepulchre of the living Christ) and ‘Precedet vos in Galileam’ (He goes before you into Galilee). The work also featured three extra laments with new melodies sung by the three Marys.29 The Visitatio sepulchri from Origny employed still other methods to fashion a dramatic performance; for instance, directing the three Marys to begin singing in low, disturbed voices when first approaching the empty tomb and 26 

Lipphardt, ‘Visitatio sepulchri’, pp. 127–28. [The text is now in Mattern, ‘Liturgy and Performance in Northern Germany’.] 27  Nieder, Die deutschen und französischen Osterspiele, pp. 23, 138; Lowen and Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song’. The dramas from Braunschweig, Medingen, and Wöltingerode all lack this elaboration. However, a fifteenth-century manuscript housed in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel (Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Helmst. 965) includes a Visitatio text with similarities to Wienhausen, KW, Hs 80, which includes this figure. The manuscript is translated by Schönemann, Der Sündenfall und Marienklage. 28  For Origny-Sainte-Benoite, see Drames liturgiques, ed. by de Coussemaker, pp. 271–9; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’; Wright, The Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama in France, pp. 88–90; and Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 144. 29  LOO, v (1976), 1682–95; Rankin, ‘A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri’, p. 9; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 147–48.

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increasing the volume as they questioned an angel about Christ’s whereabouts.30 The text also noted that the three nuns chosen to play the parts of the Marys should dress in white chemises, cloaks, and hoods without veils, and further, that the female performers should undergo ritual purification (hand-washing or covering their heads with white veils) as part of the play’s action. In addition, the set was to include a sepulchre large enough to hold five or six people. 31 Origny’s play emphasized the revelatory role of Mary Magdalene — directing her to point at the sepulchre and raise the sudarium for clergy to kiss — as did Visitatio sepulchri texts from women’s convents elsewhere in France, England, and Germany. In the same vein, the Visitatio from Sainte-Croix in Poitiers reduced the dramatis personae of the tomb scene to one: Mary Magdalene, standing alone before the audience, mimed a search in which she entered and exited the sepulchre while announcing her discovery in a growing voice.32 Cues from Origny fill in the blanks of manuscripts from the Heath convents. Scenes of the Magdalene and the merchant demonstrate the sort of dramatic flare that often accompanied the Paschal liturgy in female monastic communities of the later Middle Ages, especially if — like many convents — these nuns shared their church with a local parish and aimed their play at a general audience.

Material Culture and the Paschal Liturgy within the Heath Convents Religious women used voice, body, and the space around them to bring the central events of the Resurrection alive for their audiences. They manipulated the windows, doors, chapels, and altars of their churches, as well as religious art and objects, to make the Easter experience visual and tangible. Almost every performance of the Visitatio involved the use of some material items, most commonly candles, censers, liturgical vessels, and a sudarium.33 Above all, performance 30 

LOO, ii (1976), 380. Rankin, ‘A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri’, p. 6; Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, p. 120–21; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 145–46; LOO, ii (1976), 379–80; LOO, v (1976), 1461; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, pp. 78–79. See also Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, p. 385, and Yardley, ‘Was Anonymous a Woman’. 32  LOO, v (1976), 1461; LOO, i (1975), 186–88. Wright, The Dissemination of the Liturgical Drama in France, pp. 39–41, notes considerable similarities to German Visitatio texts. 33  LOO, ii (1976), 379; LOO, v (1976), 1682–91; Rankin, ‘A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri’, p. 6. 31 

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Figure 7. Kloster Wienhausen, Image of the Resurrection, painting on vellum. c. 1320. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

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of the Visitatio sepulchri required some form of sepulchre, either a permanent feature of the church or a temporary prop.34 No sepulchre survives from the convent of Medingen, but several of the prayer books produced by its nuns in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries record meditations and processions associated with a sepulchre that once existed there.35 Some convents made do with tents instead of a wood or stone tomb. However, a nun at Medingen recorded directives in her Orationale that indicate a physical structure large enough for a nun to kneel before it.36 At Wienhausen, a wooden statue of the Resurrection, an effigy of Christ, and a sepulchre all may have played a role in the dramatic Paschal liturgy.37 The statue of the Resurrection clearly occupied an important place in the devotional life of Wienhausen’s nuns, for the iconography of the image was replicated in a variety of media throughout the convent. It appears in the fourteenth-century paintings on the ceiling of the nuns’ choir, on a wall in the upper level of the south cloister, embroidered on a lectern hanging, and depicted in a fourteenth-century miniature on vellum (Figure 7). The author of Wienhausen’s fifteenth-century responsorial made a visual connection between this statue and the Visitatio drama. Along the left border of the page where she recorded the text of Mark 16. 2, an artist inserted three scenes; one portrays the holy women at the sepulchre in conversation with the angel, another depicts Christ with Mary, and the third shows Christ emerging from his tomb. The scene of the holy women at the tomb recalled the Quem quaeritis dialogue, while the depiction of the Resurrection at the top of the page reminded viewers of Wienhausen’s statue (Figure 8).38 While the images in the Wienhausen responsorial demonstrate the communal use of the statue, the image painted on vellum reveals the importance of the statue in the nuns’ private devotions. The nun who created this miniature copied the iconography of the statue, but imbued the artwork with personal meaning by surrounding the figure of Christ with inscriptions of the incipits 34 

LOO, iii (1976), 909. See also Alexander, ‘The “Molly Grime” Ritual’, p. 50. Hildesheim, DB, MS  J 29 (HI1), fols  35 v, 38 v. See also Giermann and Härtel, Handschriften der Dombibliothek zu Hildesheim, ii, 179. 36  Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 26; see also Hannover, LB, MS I 78 (HV3), fol. 289r; Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3), fols 2v–5r, 29r, 32r–v, 44r. 37  Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 195–196; Haastrup, ‘Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama’, p. 142. 38  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 29, fol. 6r. 35 

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Figure 8. Kloster Wienhausen, MS 29, fol. 6r. After 1460. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

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from Easter hymns and prayers. In particular, its creator associated the Paschal imagery of the statue with the Eucharist.39 The act of fashioning such images was a conscious performance similar to the liturgy that also enabled religious women to combine spiritual work with appropriately feminine labour in a visible and tangible expression of their piety. The statue of the Resurrection from Wienhausen had a visual counterpart in the convent’s late thirteenth-century wooden effigy of Christ, or Grabchristus. This figure may have had a dual function as both a permanent meditational image as well as a prop in the liturgical re-enactment of the Depositio (Figure 5). At some point after the initial creation of the Wienhausen effigy, the wound in Christ’s side was deepened, perhaps to accommodate a host ‘buried’ within on Black Friday as part of the symbolic entombment of Christ in the Depositio.40 A silver effigy of Christ from Lincoln Cathedral had such a hole in its chest specifically ‘pro sacramento imponendo tempore resurrectionis’ (for placing the sacrament inside at the time of the Resurrection).41 The Wienhausen wooden sarcophagus, commissioned c. 1448 by Abbess Katharina von Hoya, probably replaced an earlier sepulchre. 42 Alternately, a niche or recess in a wall could have served as the sepulchre for the Wienhausen effigy.43 While the sepulchre commissioned by Abbess Katharina probably did not alter the role of the Grabchristus in the Paschal liturgy in any significant way, it may have prevented the statue of the Resurrection from being used in the Elevatio, for the sepulchre could not accommodate this work.44 The location of Wienhausen’s effigy and Resurrection statue prior to the fifteenth century is not clear, but they must have been in the nuns’ choir, the parish church, or (after 1448) in the new chapel to Saint Anne. By the fifteenth century, at least, the sepulchre was not located in the nuns’ choir.45 In 39 

Cf. Lähnemann, ‘“An dessen bom wil ik stighen”’, pp. 19–46. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 189 (12  January 1314), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 404 (13 December 1399); Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 191–93. 41  Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, p. 227. 42  Appuhn, ‘Der Auferstandene und das Heilige Blut’; Hartwieg , ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 190–91. 43  Stolt, ‘Medieval Religious Drama in Sweden’, pp. 57, 61; Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, p. 241; Alexander, ‘The “Molly Grime” Ritual’, pp. 50–51. 44  Appuhn, ‘Der Auferstandene und das Heilige Blut’, pp.  133–35; see also pp.  192, 194–95, 201, 206. 45  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85 and Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86. 40 

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Figure 9. Kloster Wienhausen, Image of Christ’s Entombment. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

any of these spaces, however, local parishioners probably formed an audience for these dramatic scenes, at least until reformers insisted upon a greater distance between the monastic and lay communities.46 Regardless of where the rites of the Depositio and Visitatio sepulchri took place, the effigy of Christ and the sepulchre gave the performance a physicality that enabled the nuns and their audiences to experience the historical Jerusalem of Christ’s passion right there in the convent of Wienhausen. The convent’s most prized relic, a drop of Christ’s blood, enhanced the association of the convent with Jerusalem, just as a splinter of the True Cross promoted imaginative devotions at Holy Cross in Poitiers. Christ’s tomb, indeed Christ himself in both body and blood, lay within the convent of Wienhausen. Like the convent’s statue of the Resurrection, another small meditational image painted on vellum by one of Wienhausen’s nuns around 1330 reflects the importance of the Grabchristus within the nuns’ private devotions (Figure 9).

46 

Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 39.

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Figure 10. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Painting in Nuns’ Choir, the Entombment. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Once again, the nun who created this image copied the distinct iconography of Wienhausen’s fully-clothed effigy as well as the scene from the nuns’ choir, including even the latter’s circular frame. Its creator adapted the image by surrounding the scene with words from the Easter versicle: ‘O sepulchrum nobile’ (O excellent sepulchre).47 Her effort emphasizes the personal importance of the Depositio, with its tender imagery of female care and compassion, to the nun’s devotion. Another small diptych of Christ freeing the damned from Hell and emerging from his tomb, which copied even more closely the images in the nuns’ choir, also suggests the importance of the annual Paschal drama in the daily lives of Wienhausen’s fourteenth-century nuns. Not only did the artist replicate the circular framework of the original, she also duplicated the decorative border of triangular shapes that appeared in the medallions in the nuns’ choir. The owner eventually left this image to her sisters, for a strip of paper pasted to the back of the wood preserves the medieval library number by

47 

Wienhausen, KW, WIEN Kc 33.

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Figure 11. Kloster Wienhausen, Stained Glass panel depicting the Entombment. c. 1330/40. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

which it was stored: ‘Sub’ p’ XXXViii’.48 Such images joined communal liturgical practices, as well as shared iconography, to the private realm of individual devotions (Figure 10). A stained glass window in the upper level of the southern cloister dating from the same period also replicated the iconography of this scene, but replaced the figure of the Virgin in the foreground with a small female dressed as a Cistercian nun and kneeling in prayer (Figure 11). 48 

Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp.  187–88. For Wienhausen’s nuns, see: Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 42–45.

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Despite one modern scholar’s disparaging remarks about the window being the work of ‘a dilettante nun, who perhaps placed herself below as the patroness’, this image carried great meaning for its medieval viewers.49 By kneeling in prayer below Christ’s sepulchre, the nun not only appeared in the traditional position of patron, but also of the Virgin; she virtually became the mourning mother of Christ by virtue of her placement in the foreground. The location of the stained glass in the wall of the south cloister, directly across from Wienhausen’s highly decorated nuns’ choir, encouraged the sisters to imagine themselves within the same scene whenever they passed it. 50 Whether the intent was to prepare Wienhausen’s nuns for their liturgical duties or to serve as a perpetual reminder of their piety, the window illustrates the importance of liturgical performances like the Depositio and Visitatio sepulchri within the regular devotional lives of Wienhausen’s nuns. In a similar way, cues to the liturgical framework of convent life also appeared on the eastern wall of Wienhausen’s All Saint’s chapel (c. 1300) and on the ceiling of the nuns’ choir (c. 1330–35). Scenes of the holy women’s lament over Christ’s body, closely associated with the Depositio, decorate both locations.51 In each case, the images referenced Wienhausen’s effigy, distinctively wrapped full-length in a white shroud with gold designs that mimicked embroidery.52 All of these portrayals of Christ’s Entombment at Wienhausen consistently depict the scene from a right-hand perspective, which further suggests that the actual Grabchristus could only be approached from one side.53 Traces of graffiti on the right front arm of the effigy, which predate the creation of the present wooden sepulchre, confirm that the right-hand side was what was accessible.54 In contrast, the relatively unharmed condition of the back and underside of the figure suggests both lack of access and the infrequent movement of the effigy.

49 

Korn, Kloster Wienhausen, p. 40. The windows were moved during restoration in 1894; it is unclear whether the original organization of the windows was preserved when they were returned to the convent. Korn, Kloster Wienhausen, pp. 19–21. 51  Maier, Convent of Wienhausen, trans. by Wolfson, pp. 38–39; Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 192–93. 52  Stolt, ‘Medieval Religious Drama in Sweden’, pp.  58–60; Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 199–200; Haastrup, ‘Medieval Props in the Liturgical Drama’, pp. 141–46. 53  Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, p. 193. 54  Appuhn, ‘Der Auferstandene und das Heilige Blut’, pp. 88, 135; Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, pp. 188, 207. 50 

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The wooden statues of the Resurrection and Grabchristus at Wienhausen and the nuns’ performance of the Depositio and Visitatio not only relocated the convent to Jerusalem, but also turned its nuns into the holy women who cared for Jesus’s body. The Wienhausen Grabchristus still has a peculiar brownish coating inside its shroud, on the right forearm, on the painted blood drops of the right hand, on the sole of the right foot, and on the nimbus.55 If the coating indicated the use of some preservative material, the entire artwork would reflect traces. However, the predominance of the substance on the right-hand side of the figure and in the locations associated with Christ’s wounds suggests that nuns regularly and symbolically anointed the figure with oil in imitation of biblical women’s ministrations to the body of Jesus. Nuns and clerics elsewhere also tended to their statues at Easter. Fourteenth-century texts from the convent of Barking and from Hereford Cathedral refer to priests washing images of Christ as part of the Easter rituals. In the Depositio from Barking, a text clearly influenced by the abbess and nuns of this community, the priests removed the sculpted corpus from the cross and washed its wounds in a mixture of wine and water at the high altar.56 While priests performed this ritual at Barking and Hereford, the tasks of preparing a body for entombment traditionally belonged to women. The tradition outlasted the Protestant Reformation; at celebrations in early modern Sweden and Britain, women continued to assume the performative duties of washing, anointing, and/or dressing effigies and statues, as well as crucifixes.57 Women inside and outside the cloisters of premodern Europe ushered the dead into their tombs, and the nuns of the Heath convents were no exception, except that they tended only the most exceptional of bodies.

O rex glorie wane wultu in min herte kommen? Mary Magdalene and the Sponsa Christi In the Visitatio, women’s experience literally took centre stage in the Paschal liturgy and, by extension, in the entire liturgical calendar. The revelation granted to the holy women at the tomb preached an empowering image of feminine agency to medieval nuns and offered influential role models for the brides of 55 

Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holzskulpturen’, p. 207. LOO, v (1976), 1455. See also Sheingorn, The Easter Sepulchre in England, pp. 27, 159. 57  Antiquitates Ecclesiasticae, eller Gamle swenske kyrkie-handlingar, ed. by Dijkman, quoted and trans. in Stolt, ‘Medieval Religious Drama in Sweden’, p. 61. See also Alexander, ‘The “Molly Grime” Ritual’, p. 55, and Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, pp. 367, 376–77. 56 

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Christ who re-enacted these biblical scenes.58 It is not surprising, then, that the liturgical celebrations surrounding the Paschal season also stimulated the composition of new texts and artwork by religious women. Like their sisters at Barking and Origny-Sainte-Benoite, the nuns of Wienhausen and Medingen elaborated upon the Paschal liturgy with their own meditations and prayers (often in the vernacular) and in doing so developed a spirituality and identity unique to their convents.59 Medieval nuns of the Heath houses were especially interested in elaborating and expounding upon the emotions of Mary Magdalene. In some cases, their compositions seem also to have had a didactic purpose. One fragmentary Visitatio drama from Wienhausen, composed c. 1400, preserves the Hortulanus scene, including the dialogue between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, along with two subsequent monologues by the Magdalene.60 The Wienhausen fragments developed on the Latin liturgy, explaining in Middle Low German the theological significance of the Magdalene’s words and deeds in the context of her emotions and intimacy with Christ.61 The composer thus moved beyond a simple rehearsal of the Magdalene’s experience to assert the comfort that all Christians received from the miracle of the Resurrection, their assurance of salvation.62 The vernacular text also developed the typological significance of Mary Magdalene, associating her with the woman from whom Jesus cast out seven devils in Luke 8. 2 and Mark 16. 9. Following the Latin line describing the saviour’s discarded shroud, the Magdalene exclaims in German, ‘I saw the linen cloths and the shrouds. If you seek them you’ll find them there.’63 The Magdalene also evoked the yearning bride of the Song of Songs; her visit to the sepulchre became the bride’s search for her beloved, as in the Old Testament verses.64 58 

Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, p. 76. Lipphardt, ‘Niederdeutsche Reimgedichte und Lieder’, pp. 113–14. 60  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36. [See also Mattern, ‘Liturgy and Performance in Northern Germany’.] 61  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36, fol. 5v; Lipphardt, ‘Visitatio sepulchri’, p. 126. See also Linke and Mehler, Die Österlichen Spiele aus der Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau, pp. 1–2. 62  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 9, trans. in Classen, Deutsche Frauenlieder des fünfzehnten, p. 187; Lowen and Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song’, p. 608. 63  Following the Latin, ‘the angelic witnesses, the shroud, and the clothes’ (‘Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes’), the vernacular elaborated: ‘The holy angels were witnesses there that Jesus’ resurrection is true’ (‘De heylighen engele tugheden dar, Ihesus upstandige were war. Ick sach de lakene myt den doken, dhe vynt me dar, we se wil soken’): Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36, fol. 5v. 64  Yoshikawa, ‘The Bride of Christ’, p. 36. 59 

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Like  the figure of the bride/soul/caritas with whom she was frequently identified in monastic theologies, Mary Magdalene’s lines in the fragmentary Visitatio from Wienhausen reveal her as simultaneously consoled and inconsolable. In the monologue following the antiphon, ‘Ardens est cor meum’ (Burning is my heart), she suffers, too, like an abandoned woman in the chivalric poetry of fin’ amor whose pain is inconsolable and who desires death together with her lost lover.65 Such imagery drew upon Cistercian mysticism, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux’s interpretation of the Song of Songs as a conversation between God and Mary Magdalene.66 Iconographically, the Magdalene’s pain became physical as she suffered sympathetic pangs of the Crucifixion. Her heart felt ‘as if pierced with a spear’, exactly as her beloved Lord was wounded.67 The nuns of Wienhausen shared their interpretation of Mary Magdalene, possibly derived from Bernard of Clairvaux, with other late medieval nuns. A similar emphasis on the Magdalene’s sorrow and personal identification with Christ, explored through the use of the vernacular and the language of courtly love, permeated the Ludus paschalis from Origny-Sainte-Benoite. This work also turned the Magdalene into a lover and bride who mourned her loss and questioned her own existence and identity. The Magdalene of Origny emphasized her imitation of Jesus’s suffering by repeating the statement: ‘Je cuit de duel me tuerai. Dolante! Ta mors au cuer grant duel plante!’ (I will kill myself from sorrow. Sorrowful [me]! Your death plants great sorrow in my heart!)68 In fact, this section of the Visitatio formed the heart of the play, making the loving relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalene the fundamental encounter of the Easter story.69 While the texts from Wienhausen and Origny are not identical, each employed the language of bridal mysticism and courtly love to emphasize Mary Magdalene’s tragic loss and her personal identification with Christ’s suffering. The nuptial imagery associated with the Paschal season and the apostolic authority granted to Mary Magdalene within the Visitatio undoubtedly res65 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36; Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, ed. by Herbert, ii, 1478–79; Lipphardt, ‘Visitatio sepulchri’, pp. 121, 127; Drames liturgiques, ed. by de Coussemaker, p. 276. See also Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 107; Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 88r, 144r; Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3), fol. 200r; also Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 107, where the Virgin replaces the Magdalene. 66  Yoshikawa, ‘The Bride of Christ’, p. 35. 67  Yoshikawa, ‘The Bride of Christ’, p. 43; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 36, fols 2v–3r. 68  Drames liturgiques, ed. by de Coussemaker, pp. 276–77; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/ Playing Places’, pp. 74–75. 69  Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, p. 74–76.

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onated with religious women. In general, texts associated with late medieval women’s houses emphasized the role of Mary Magdalene, adding new elements to expand her role in the Easter story. By contrast, texts by male monastics or writers associated with secular churches placed less importance on the Magdalene’s role.70 The re-enactment of the Visitatio sepulchri spoke directly to religious women’s personal relationships with Christ. Meditative dialogues and bridal imagery in the fifteenth-century Medingen Orationale emphasized the same active, intimate, and gendered connection to Christ depicted in performances of the Visitatio.71 Rather than associating Mary Magdalene with the vita activa, the Visitatio sepulchri promoted symbolic associations between the Magdalene and the bride of Christ. Similar associations appear in the Easter Orationale from Medingen.72 Imagery from both the Song of Songs and tales of courtly love helped authors of liturgical manuscripts associate the role of the bride of Christ with the Christian church (ecclesia), the individual soul, Mary Magdalene, the Virgin, or consecrated women in general.73 The Medingen Easter Orationale glossed the sponsa Christi (or brut Christi in the Middle Low German) in all these ways, while both text and image clearly identified the nuns in this role.74 In one image, the association between the sponsa Christi and the nuns of Medingen is obvious. Here a Cistercian nun wearing the distinctive crown of Medingen kneels before the Risen Christ, greeting him with a quote from the ‘Exultet’: ‘O mira circa nos tue pietatis dig[natio]’ (O miracle your wonderful care for us). Christ in turn addresses her directly: ‘O sponsa ecce patet tibi ostium cordis mei ut securum ad me habeas accessum’ (O bride, look, the door of my heart is open to thee to give thee safe access). Blood from Christ’s wound pours into a chalice, reminding viewers of the communion, at precisely the moment during the Easter Mass when the nun’s direct dialogue with Christ occurred (Figure 12).75 70 

Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp.  150–51; Rankin, ‘A New English Source of the Visitatio Sepulchri’, pp. 1–2. 71  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1) (1478); Trier, Bistumsarchiv, Ms 529 (T1), transcribed in Mante, Ein niederdeutsches Gebetbuch, pp. xxiii–xxvi. 72  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1). 73  Yoshikawa, ‘The Bride of Christ’, p. 34. 74  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 43r, 83r, 123v, 134v, 136r, 184r. Similar addresses appear in Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3). For a visual depiction of a Medingen nun as a sponsa: Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 96v–98v. 75  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fol. 104r. The same image appears in Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 114.

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Figure 12. Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS J 29, fol. 126r. 1478. Photo courtesy of Dombibliothek Hildesheim.

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This connection between mystical dialogues employing nuptial imagery and communion appears throughout this manuscript. At one point, Christ, in the guise of the heavenly sponsus, displayed his wounds to his beloved and consoled his bride (symbolizing at once any individual believer’s soul and a nun engaged with the liturgy), assuring her that he would provide the nuptial garments that she lacked. ‘O my most beloved bride’, declared Jesus, ‘Today I take you as my wife and spouse because I have lain down my soul for you; therefore do not be sorrowful on account of the lack of a nuptial garment; today I shall unlock for you the treasure of my devotion, from which I will give to you the cloak of immortality.’76 Contemplating these words, the nuns of Medingen thus envisioned communion, and more specifically the Easter communion, as a nuptial banquet during which they might carry on an intimate dialogue with their heavenly bridegroom.77 Not only the nuns’ exalted status as brides of Christ, but also their enclosure helped them cultivate intimacy with Christ. Prayers within the Medingen Orationale invoked the metaphors of the heart as a house, a sepulchre, a grave, and a garden, expressed in the small meditational images or Andachtsbilder produced by nuns.78 A depiction of Christ taking the hand of his sponsa in this same manuscript portrays that sponsa protected by a wall, linking her visually to the enclosed nuns at Medingen (Figure 13). The use of the first-person and feminine pronouns in the manuscript (‘ego indigna amatrix’, ‘ego misera peccatrix’, ‘ik arme sunderinne’, ‘ik un-werdighen denst-maghet’), as well as illustrations of Cistercian nuns wearing the distinctive Medingen crown and the frequent correlation between the images and the devotions prescribed in the text, further indicate that the Medingen Orationale was self-reflexive.79 76 

‘Sponsus; O sponsa mea dilectissima nil metuas ego rex inmortalis assumam te hodie in vxorem et sponsam quia pro te posui animam meam. noli eciam tristari propter defectus vestimenti nupcialis. ego reserabo tibi hodie thesaurum mee pietatis. ex quo dabo tibi stolam immortalitatis.’ Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 96v–97v. See also fols 166v–167v. My thanks to Henrike Lähnemann for assistance with this translation. 77  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 86r, 95r; also fols 80v–85r. 78  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1); Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3), fols 165v, 18v, r-v 93 , 121v. See also Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1143.2 Novi, fol. 69r; Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Helmst. 1402, fols 126v–129v. My thanks to Julie Hotchin for these references. For relevant images, see Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, pp. 137–75, plates 8, 10–12. 79  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fol. 98r, 140r; Mante, Ein niederdeutsches Gebetbuch, pp. 33, 25. See also Hildesheim, DB, MS J 27, fol. 147v; Hannover, LB, MS I 78; Hannover, LB,

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Figure 13. Hildesheim, Dombibliothek, MS J 29, fol. 52v. 1478. Photo courtesy of Dombibliothek Hildesheim.

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The nuptial imagery in compositions from Medingen also referred to liturgical rites of oblation and coronation, which asserted a young girl’s future status as the sponsa Christi even before she made any formal profession. As in a secular wedding ceremony, organ music, song, and the ringing of bells signalled the festive occasion, as did a meal provided by the nun’s family, which replicated a wedding feast.80 At some convents, coronation took place in the Paschal season; for example, the reform chronicle from Ebstorf recorded that in 1464, the convent chose the fifth Sunday after Easter (‘Vocem iocunditatis’) for the coronation ceremony.81 Nuns whose coronation fell within the Paschal season surely took personal meaning from the bridal imagery of Medingen’s prayer books and the laments of Mary Magdalene in texts from Wienhausen. Indeed, the anonymous Ebstorf nun who described the Observant reform in her community interpreted the Paschal season in explicitly nuptial terms. She noted that the fifth Sunday after Easter would remain forever the day of her coronation, when she became a bride of Christ and joined eternally to her heavenly bridegroom.82 The meditative dialogues of the Medingen Orationale enabled the nuns to move from the position of pious believer petitioning a distant God to that of privileged intimate of God, conversing directly with a human Christ.83 Similarly, nuptial imagery underscored the privileged status of the sponsa Christi, whom Christ filled with the Holy Spirit as his morning gift, clothed in a shining garment, and blessed with the golden crown of the Godhead. She joined Him in a celebratory nuptial feast; it was to her alone that He revealed His treasure. Her bridal procession included the cherubim and seraphim, angels and archangels, magnates and potentates, knights and barons, and martyrs and virgins.84 The MS I 96; Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 376, Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 383, and Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3). 80  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 14, fols 29r–47r; Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 563, 603; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 156–74, 232, 264–68; Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’; Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483); Muschiol, ‘Zeit und Raum— Liturgie’, p. 44. 81  Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, p. 399. Other days appropriate for the coronation ceremony were Epiphany and the feast days of the apostles; see Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p. 168. 82  Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, p. 399. 83  Hannover, LB, MS I 78, fols 116r–118v. 84  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 80v–82v; for the Bridal procession: fol. 129r-v. See also: Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 71r-v, 94v–95r; Giermann and Härtel, Handschriften der Dombibliothek zu Hildesheim, ii, 179–81.

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nuptial imagery associated with the Paschal season thus provided fertile ground for meditation and prayer by Medingen’s nuns, lending itself to the cultivation of their privileged identity as brides of Christ.85 Dialogues between Christ and the praying nun-cum-devoted-soul replicated in meditative prayer the performances of religious women in the Visitatio sepulchri. In fact, the physical re-enactment of this event must have encouraged nuns to visualize their relationship with Christ as an active dialogue. The bridal imagery prominent in these exchanges further suggests that religious women mediated their intimacy and familiarity with Christ through familiar gender roles. The roles of caretaker and bride both emphasized personal intimacy with Jesus. Both roles appeared commonly in Visitatio texts from women’s houses, either singly or combined. For example, an Easter poem in an Orationale from Medingen united bridal imagery with the narrative and dialogue from the Visitatio scene, juxtaposing the three Marys intent on anointing Christ’s body on Easter morn with the bride joyfully united to her heavenly bridegroom on Easter day: This is the imperial Easter day, which all the world cannot praise enough […] This is the lovely Easter day, on which the King’s Son from the land of angels was joined to His dear bride, whom He had wooed so long. He clothed her so to honour with new rose-coloured clothes, He gave her for a morning-gift, the mirror of the Holy Trinity, to contemplate for the time of eternity.86

Regular rehearsal of the duties and emotions of the holy women at the grave, especially the suffering and then the joy of the Virgin and Magdalene as symbolic sponsae Christi, thus taught the nuns in Lüneburg’s Heath convents the language and imagery through which they achieved personal intimacy with the divine. The importance of prescribed gender roles, particularly women’s predictable role of making and providing clothing for both the quick and the dead, also appears in fifteenth-century prayer books from the Cistercian convent of Wöltingerode. Not only do the texts from Wöltingerode employ nuptial imagery emphasizing the union between Christ as sponsus and the nun/devoted soul as sponsa, but they also include specific prayers by which the nuns of this community could spiritually clothe Christ.87 As the next chapter notes, mental 85 

Cf. Mante, Ein niederdeutsches Gebetbuch, pp. 109–10. Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1); I am grateful to Henrike Lähnemann for help with this translation. 87  Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1147.1 Novi, fol.55r. See also Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1143.2 Novi, fols 12r–45v; Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1147.1 Novi, fols 55r– 86 

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prayers that provided metaphorical clothing for the Virgin Mary or Christ also referred to the work of religious women who created and decorated textiles for the church, its altars, and especially its statues of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Notably, one of the prayer books from Wöltingerode provided prayers for the nuns’ imaginative preparation of Christ’s tomb.88 The prayers described, for the nuns’ contemplation, the immense boulder (‘pro immense lapide’) that sealed the tomb, but which was later rolled away to reveal the risen saviour; a silken hanging to place over the sepulchre (‘brede ok enen siden teppet super hoc sepulchrum’); and a golden candelabra with five lights (‘aurea candelabra […] dar up lucencia luminaria de dar luchtende unde brenende’) that illuminated the mental scene but also symbolized knowledge, meditation, truth, wisdom, holy faith, and the indivisible Trinity. To this richly detailed scene of the sepulchre, a praying nun might come at all hours as she read a versicle.89 Like the meditative dialogues in the Medingen Orationale, this mental preparation of Christ’s tomb rehearsed the movements of the biblical women at the historic tomb, as played out in the liturgical theatre of the Visitatio sepulchri. In both private meditation and Easter drama, women were in charge of the burial’s setting, the tomb, and the body. Such concerns emphasized the integrated spiritual and physical intimacy religious women enjoyed with Christ via traditional gender roles. The nuns did not forget the saviour’s mother in the Easter dramas; the Virgin, too, needed to be dressed and addressed for the season. Prayers to the Virgin Mary directly followed prayers to Jesus in the Medingen Orationale from Hildesheim; writers at Wöltingerode included prayers for spiritually dressing the Blessed Mother with similar Paschal prayers for clothing and preparing the sepulchre of Christ.90 The organization of the prayers in these texts suggests that, by the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Marian devotion further promoted religious women’s spiritual identification with Christ. 86v; Rüthing, ‘Die mittelalterliche Bibliothek des Zisterzienserinnenklosters Wöltingerode’, p. 207; and Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, pp. 120–51. I am deeply indebted to Julie Hotchin for calling my attention to these prayers in the Wöltingerode manuscripts. 88  Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1143.2 Novi, fol. 57r. 89  Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1143.2 Novi, fols 59r–62r. 90  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1); Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3); Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1147.1 Novi, fols 14–55r (prayers directed to the Virgin Mary, prayers for spiritually clothing the Virgin), fols 98v–112v (‘Salutationes Marie et Christi’: ‘Greetings of Mary and Christ’); Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 1143.2 Novi, fols 158r–201v (‘Verba beate Marie virginis ad filium in cruce pendentem’: ‘The words of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her son hanging on the cross’).

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Lived Religion: Liturgical Rites and the Parish Community Despite the insistence by bishops and the pope that vowed women observe strict monastic enclosure, as enunciated in Boniface VIII’s decretal Periculoso (1298), the families of nuns and lay congregations provided the audience for — and sometimes even participants in — liturgical celebrations performed at convents. Family and friends typically attended ceremonies of oblation and their accompanying celebrations, entering even into the cloister and nuns’ choir in order to lead the oblate to the altar — a practice technically forbidden by ecclesiastical authorities. Prohibitions against allowing lay people into the nuns’ choir at Wienhausen, which appear in the visitation report from 1483, probably reflected this custom.91 The anonymous author of the Konventstagebuch from Holy Cross in Braunschweig similarly noted that family and friends were invited to the oblation celebrations of Elisabeth and Fia von Weferlingen on 19  June 1499. In this case, however, many excused themselves, leaving the author to comment sadly that the elaborate preparations and excellent fare had been in vain.92 Rubrics often directed that in order to perform the Visitatio sepulchri nuns and canonesses leave their own choir areas and move into the nave of the church, where they were closer to the congregation. At Essen, for example, the canonesses descended from their choir loft to join the chorus of canons and the boy’s schola in the centre of the cathedral as part of the staging of the Visitatio.93 References to spectators and the use of vernacular hymns in the conclusion of many Visitatio sepulchri performances similarly attest to the regular presence and participation of a lay congregation in this liturgical ceremony.94 Performances of the Visitatio at Wöltingerode, Medingen, Wienhausen, and Saint Blasius in Braunschweig all concluded with vernacular hymns.95 A secular congregation likewise participated in the ritual of the Elevatio crucis at Medingen.96 Outsiders played a crucial role in the Visitatio sepulchri when nuns 91 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483); Wienhausen, KW, Hs 27. See Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 234–58. 92  Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, fols  130v–131 r. Edited in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 423, 233, 258. 93  LOO, iii (1976), 908–09; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, p. 152. 94  LOO, iii (1976), 911. 95  LOO, v (1976), 1501–02, 1555, iv (1976), 1445; LOO, ii (1976), 278. 96  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fol. 40r; Hildesheim, StA, MS 52, 379 (HI3), fol. 47v; Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), p. 51.

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playing the holy women displayed Christ’s grave clothes. The laity became disciples to whom the announcement of resurrection was made.97 Visual depictions of the joint celebration of the Easter liturgy by the nuns and lay community appear in several sections of the Medingen Orationale. The lavishly illuminated pages that record the prayers for Mass and Vespers on Easter Sunday, for example, depict Medingen’s nuns (distinctive in their habits and crowns) and the local parish greeting the Easter day with parallel gestures of arms and hands uplifted in prayer. A brilliant sun, drawn as the face of Christ, dominates the page. At the bottom of the page the nuns intone the Latin ‘Illuxit dies quam fecit dominus’ (‘Brightly shines the day that was made by the Lord’, part of the Laudes salvatori), while the congregation responds with a vernacular hymn, ‘Also heylich is desse dach’ (This day is so holy).98 The image for Vespers in this text also illustrates a joint celebration by nuns and lay worshippers. The nuns intone the hymn, ‘Vale, O dies orientalis et solaris’ (Farewell O Day of the East and of the sun), while the lay congregation sings, ‘O sote dach woldestu bi us bliven’ (O sweet day, wish you would stay with us!).99 A similar depiction appears in the prayer books from Medingen for the end of Easter day. Here the image of the receding sun surrounded by stars, while nuns and lay congregation bid adieu to the Easter day, appears as part of the prayers and meditations to be performed after Compline (Figure 14).100 The presence of vernacular hymns, as well as references to the general exultation of all Christians in the prayers and meditations on surrounding pages, suggests that the images depict a secular congregation rather than representing an imagined choir of angels or martyrs.101 By inviting lay participation, these ceremonies positioned the secular audience as the people of Judea in the annual re-enactment of Christ’s resurrection, playing opposite nuns, priests, and deacons as three Marys, Christ, angels, and apostles.102 The involvement of a lay congregation further indicates the didactic purpose of dramatic Paschal rituals. Monastic leaders elsewhere explicitly 97  Flanigan, ‘Medieval Liturgy and the Arts’, p. 16. See also LOO, ii (1976), 380, 382; Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 144–45, 226. 98  Hildesheim, DB, MS  J 29 (HI1), fol.  52r; Giermann and Härtel, Handschriften der Dombibliothek zu Hildesheim, ii, 177–83. 99  Medingen (Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2)); Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fol. 126v. 100  Hannover, LB, MS I 74 (HV2), pp. 188–89. 101  Hildesheim, DB, MS J 29 (HI1), fols 52v, 127v. 102  Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, pp. 78–79.

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Figure 14. Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesbibliothek, MS I 74, p. 189. c. 1460. Photo courtesy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek Hannover — Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek.

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used dramatic liturgies to instruct the larger community; the English abbess of Barking commissioned such liturgical works specifically to counteract the spiritual torpor of her parish. 103 Vernacular hymns were a sign of didactic intent, which the drama made more effective.104 As images from the Medingen texts made clear, the audience of Visitatio ceremonies at the convents of Wöltingerode, Wienhausen, and Medingen were at once pupils and actors. The nuns’ creative liturgical performances, with special gestural sequences, textual elaborations, new music, or new arrangements of traditional elements, offered religious women a profoundly meaningful medium for personal devotion and public instruction.105 Just as a nun in the role of Mary Magdalene might instruct the lay parish by offering a model of perfectly affective devotion, so too the nuns shared the devotional lessons recorded in the Medingen Orationale with non-monastic brothers and sisters. One of the prayer books produced at Medingen belonged to a married laywoman, Anna Töbing, who was the wife of the burgomaster in the neighbouring city of Lüneburg and whose three sisters were nuns at Medingen.106 Paschal celebrations illuminate the meaning of performative devotion to religious women but also their active role in shaping the devotional experience, or la religion vécue, of their own communities and the parishes beyond the cloister.107

Conclusion: Performative Piety in the Context of the Visitatio sepulchri The annual drama of the Visitatio sepulchri provided religious women with appropriate models for pious behaviour, while simultaneously emphasizing their uniquely gendered relationship with Christ. In their performances of the Visitatio, religious women underlined the compassion and care, and the love and intimacy, so movingly recorded in the Biblical narratives and personified above all by the figure of Mary Magdalene. As composers and performers of 103 

Young, ‘The Dramatic Associations of the Easter Sepulchre’, pp. 1–30. Ogden, The Staging of Drama, pp. 63, 200–01. 105  Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, pp. 79, 84–85; Lowen and Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song’, pp. 612–15; Muessig, ‘Prophesy and Song’, pp. 146–58. 106  A Psalterium produced at Medingen (Berlin, Staatsbibl., MS theol. lat. oct. 189) was likewise produced for a laywoman. Braun-Niehr, ‘SBPK Berlin Ms. Theol. Lat. Oct. 189’; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Cura Monialium’, pp. 108–09. [Gotha, Forschungsbibl., Ms Memb. II. 84 (GO), Lähnemann, ‘Medinger Nonnen als Schreiberinnen zwischen Reform und Reformation’, p. 39.] 107  Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses, trans. by Scholz, p. 16. 104 

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the Visitatio sepulchri, religious women became messengers of the glad news of redemption and rebirth. They directly influenced the devotional praxis of local parishioners and also affirmed their own identity and exceptional status as brides of Christ.108 Through performances of the Visitatio sepulchri, the nuns of Medingen and Wienhausen actively formed their own identity and relationship to Christ. This relationship was characterized by its dynamic, intimate, and gendered nature, best illustrated by the dramatic elaboration of Mary Magdalene’s character in convent liturgies. The use of bridal imagery in hymns and dialogues, as well as nuptial metaphors and meditative dialogues between Christ and the interior soul, promoted the same loving ties between nuns and Christ. Like the holy women at the tomb, the women of Lüneburg’s Heath convents embraced and exalted their responsibility to mourn for Christ and tend to his body — both publicly, by turning their churches into stages for the burial and resurrection, and privately, in the theatres of their minds and hearts.

108 

Lowen and Waugh, ‘Mary Magdalene Preaches through Song’, pp.  597, 614–20; Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, p. 171; Matthews, ‘Textual Spaces/Playing Places’, p. 77; Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses, trans. by Scholz, p. 16.

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The Art of Devotion

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n The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1282), a former Beguine residing in the Cistercian convent of Helfta, described her mystical conversation with the Virgin Mary concerning the Nativity. Mary told Mechthild that she had used the gifts of the Magi for the support of the poor, and with the remaining gold (thirty gold marks) she had donated a Fastentuch (hanging used to cover the altar during Lent) before which the people might pray. Mechthild, who often drew upon textiles as metaphors, described this cloth in detail to illustrate for her fellow sisters and readers how the Old and New Testament were united in Christ. According to Mechthild’s description, the left half of the Fastentuch was of black cloth embroidered in green, representing the Old Testament; the right half of the textile, white with gold, represented the New Testament. A vertical gold strip ran top to bottom crossed by a horizontal band decorated with jewels. In the centre of the cross stood a lamb. Mechtild related this Fastentuch to the Temple curtain, reputedly woven by the Virgin while pregnant, as well as with the actual practice whereby the clergy ritually removed the Fastentücher from their altars at Easter.1 Mechthild of Magdeburg’s visionary account encapsulates the various themes explored in this chapter: connections between female monastic piety and lay piety, the religious significance of creating or donating liturgical textiles, religious women’s identification with the Virgin Mary and Christ, and their ability to shape the visual and devotional experiences of their fellow Christians.

1 

Mechtild of Magdeburg, Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. by Vollmann-Profe, pp. 370–75; Newman, ‘Die visionären Texte und visuellen Welten religiöser Frauen’, pp. 115–16.

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Just as Mary Magdalene provided a model for the nuns’ role as brides of Christ, the Virgin Mary provided a model for their work of fashioning liturgical textiles. Women adorned the liturgical spaces under their care as Mary the temple virgin decorated her sanctuary. They prepared for Christ, as did the mother Mary, and, like the Blessed Virgin in Mechthild’s vision, guided the devotions of their fellow Christians. Religious women’s creation and use of liturgical textiles thus helped them express their spirituality in ways that corresponded with, and even exalted, their gender and status within their congregations. Such pious labour enabled women to enact their piety, creating visual and physical testaments to their devotion that framed the liturgy and its performance. Their needlework also encouraged consecrated women to act, as Eileen Power quipped, like ‘holy housewives’, caring for God’s person, His mother, and His fellow saints and martyrs.2 Finally, the material culture of medieval devotion enabled pious women to insert themselves directly into the liturgy and participate by proxy in its most exclusive rites. In the process, women actively shaped the devotional experiences of their own monastic and parochial communities in ways that were personally and collectively meaningful to them.

Clothing the Body Divine: Liturgical Decorations and Female Devotion As can be seen and heard, beautiful churches have since been founded with exquisite workmanship very well equipped, with carpets and also with hangings much beauty is captured, with masterly work all walls beautifully adorned Lapis lazuli, silver, and also gold within created an exquisitely beautiful shine within.3

So remarked the deacon, poet, and notary, Eberhard, in his rhymed chronicle of Gandersheim, written in 1216 at the request of Abbess Mechthild of

2 

Power, Medieval English Nunneries, p. 131. ‘So men mach wol hören unde sein, | schöne godeshus sint seder vele gestichtet, | mit schöner zirheit harde wol berichtet, | mit teppeden unde ok mit ummehangen alle wende vil schone befangen, | mit mesterliken sinnen wol gemolt. | Lazur, sülver und ok dat golt geven darinne | harde wünnechliken schin’: von Gandersheim, Die Gandersheimer Reimchronik, ed. by Wolff, p. 1. 3 

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Waltingeroth.4 Eberhard reminds us that for the medieval Christian, devotion was just as much visible and tangible as it was cerebral or emotional. Costly devotional items such as manuscripts, relics, artwork, and textiles functioned as symbols of wealth, status, and piety, both for the men and women who contributed to their cost or labour, as well as for the institutions that received and used them. Such donations played an important part in the pious displays of high-class men and women throughout the Middle Ages, but literary and testamentary evidence reveal striking gender differences, particularly in the later Middle Ages. In her study of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century testamentary bequests from England, Katherine French noted that pious men favoured monetary donations, while women tended to donate material items, especially items of a personal and domestic nature.5 In fact, women and clerics were most frequently responsible for the commission, creation, or donation of textiles for religious use.6 More than half of the donations of textiles or money for textiles recorded in the necrology of Wienhausen, for example, came from women. One textile donation by Almodis de Gustede is probably an extant embroidery depicting a hunt scene still on display at the convent.7 Women’s preference for donations of material goods rather than money or income reflected prevailing gender ideologies and normative gender roles across medieval Europe. Women existed primarily within the domestic sphere, hence feeding, clothing, and nurturing — both physically and emotionally — were primarily women’s responsibilities. The cultural attitudes and assumptions that dictated such care applied equally to religious and lay women.8 4 

von Gandersheim, Die Gandersheimer Reimchronik, ed. by Wolff, pp. viii–x. French, ‘“I leave my best gown as a vestment”’. See also Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 569–602, Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 21, and Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages, p. 87. 6  See, for example, the selection of wills provided by Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 170–73. 7  Wienhausen, Jagd-Teppich I. See Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, in Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. XXXV–LXXVI, here pp. LXX (16 October), LXXIV (19 November); Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp.  24–25; and Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 169–170. 8  Huneycutt, ‘“Proclaiming her Dignity Abroad”’, p. 160; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. Some scholars assert that lay piety was in essence female piety. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 185; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the 5 

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Figure 15. Kloster Lüne, Display of Textiles. 1930s. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

Both religious and lay women contributed to the wide variety of textiles used to decorate and divide the space of the church and cloister. They fashioned large-scale works to decorate the walls and floors, as well as altar cloths, altarfrontals or antependia, scampualia or Banklaken (hangings placed above the choir stalls), dorsals (hangings used behind a seat, such as the abbess’s or provost’s stool), and Fastentücher.9 Women also produced smaller scale items, such as robes for the statues of saints, aurifrisia (decorative bands used to cover the altar where the altar cloth and antependia met), corporals (the cloths upon which rested chalice, paten, and ciborium), book covers, and other liturgical decorations. Secular women donated their jewellery — particularly gold or silver crosses, wedding rings, necklaces, and bracelets — as decorations for statues of the saints, Christ, or the Virgin Mary. Religious and lay women also donated Cura Monialium’, pp. 108–109; French, ‘Women in the Late Medieval English Parish’, p. 160. 9  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 119–21, 127–28, 131–32, 137, 164.

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money for lamps and lights to burn before important cult images and to buy crowns for statues of the Virgin.10 Thus, by virtue of their own labour or pious donations, women contributed considerably to what one scholar has called the ‘devotional clutter’ that so impressed medieval believers (Figure 15).11 In the process, they not only connected their work to the worship of God, but also sacralized the mundane objects of women’s quotidian lives. Female monastic houses in northern Germany functioned as important centres for the production of liturgical textiles. Nuns spun and dyed yarn and beat flax for linen.12 Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, Saxon convents produced a multitude of embroidered works using linen, wool, silk, and seed pearls, although their greatest renown came from the opus teutonicum, a special form of embroidery using white linen thread on a linen background.13 Convent chronicles, necrologies, and administrative records, as well as the surviving textiles themselves, attest to the women’s skills as weavers, seamstresses, embroiderers, and decorators of liturgical items.14 Items found beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choirs at Wienhausen, Isenhagen, Ebstorf, and Ribnitz likewise document the textile work performed by the nuns of these communities. The sisters lost or discarded thimbles, scissors, spindles, needles, eyeglasses, pearls, tiny wooden weaving boards for making ribbons or decorative borders (Bandweberei), fragments of coloured thread and textiles, as well as patterns drawn on paper and vellum.15 Among the Heath convents, Lüne and Wienhausen preserve the greatest number of medieval textiles. Most famous are Wienhausen’s three large, 10 

French, ‘“I leave my best gown as a vestment”’, p. 69; Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 594–96; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages, pp. 102, 118; Ziegler, ‘Reality as Imitation’, pp. 122, 125; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 24; Signori, ‘Wanderer zwischen den “Welten”’, pp. 131–41. 11  Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, p. 596. 12  For the purchase of materials used in dyeing wool: Wienhausen, KW, Hs 33. Recipe for dying yarn: Lüneburg, KL, Hs 24. See also Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 79–93; Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, fols 64v–67r, transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 384–85. 13  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 10. See also Schuette and Müller-Christensen, A Pictorial History of Embroidery, pp. xviii–xx. 14  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 161; Die Stiftung des Chronik des Klosters Ötenbach, ed. by Zeller-Werdmüller and Bächtold, p. 231. 15  Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’; Raskop, ‘Klarissenkloster Ribnitz’, pp. 269–76. See also Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 54–60.

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woolen embroideries of the romance of Tristan and Isolde, the earliest of which dates from 1300. Women in the convents of Lower Saxony made at least fortyeight woolen embroideries, many of which may be ascribed to the workshop in Wienhausen.16 Indeed, for almost two centuries, the convent of Wienhausen was the largest and most important producer of religious textiles in the region.17 However, the convents of this region also produced at least thirty-six other still-existing textiles — and probably many more now lost — between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.18

The opus feminile Textiles served as powerful expressions of power, wealth, and status in the Middle Ages, second only to precious metals and jewels. Members of the elite, both secular and religious, eagerly sought luxury textiles for personal, domestic, and ecclesiastical adornment. 19 The messages conveyed by textiles, however, extended beyond power and wealth. Textiles created specifically for liturgical use conveyed lessons in theology, provided religious instruction, and reflected the devotional interests of those who commissioned, designed, and produced such work as well as those who simply admired them. The incorporation of heraldic shields, donor portraits, or even references to the embroiderers themselves further imbued textiles with a variety of commemorative functions. Indeed, textiles constituted a particularly expressive medium for the performance of devotion, precisely because they could simultaneously convey such a wide range of interests and concepts. And because women often assumed a direct role in their creation, textiles had particular resonances for them. Although the written record occasionally refers to male embroiderers, such work was generally considered opus feminile or ‘women’s work’. Men did not dominate the professional production of textiles and related craft guilds until late in the Middle Ages, but even then,

16 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 177; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 7. 17  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 184, 188–272. 18  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 116–56. 19  Schuchhardt, Weibliche Handwerkskunst, pp. 16, 24, 53; Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, pp. 4–5.

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women remained active in the creation and decoration of textiles.20 Within the domestic sphere, only aristocratic women, and later wealthy bourgeois women, had the time and money to produce the decorative embroidery in costly materials such as silver and gold thread, further adorned with silk, pearls, and precious stones.21 Since the majority of religious institutions in later medieval Germany attracted novices from aristocratic, patrician, and wealthy bourgeois circles, textile work remained one of the primary occupations of nuns. In fact, it is usually difficult to distinguish between textiles produced in a conventual or secular setting based on techniques employed or the iconography of a particular work.22 By the Middle Ages, religious rhetoric had framed needlework as the monastic labora most suited to elite women’s spiritual purpose and religious status. In the sixth century, Caesarius of Arles had recommended spinning and the production of cloth as useful for promoting the humility, industry, and enclosure of nuns.23 Although other writers of monastic rules advocated more intellectual pursuits for vowed virgins, most European nuns came to play traditional domestic roles and practiced the same kinds of work as women outside the cloister. The exclusion of women from the medieval priesthood, university, and ecclesiastical hierarchy further meant that for women the religious life constituted less of a break with the secular habitus than for men. And, although ecclesiastical officials directed pious women to renounce their ‘worldly’ fondness for expensive textiles and fancy clothes, both clerics and vowed women regarded the production of liturgical embroideries and decorative items for the church as tasks particularly suited to female piety. Prescriptive literature governing female religious life maintained distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate needlework. Caesarius of Arles thus warned against the production of lavish embroideries, yet made a concession for the embroidery of smaller items, such as napkins and face towels, with the abbess’s approval.24 Inspired by monastic reforms in the twelfth century, 20 

Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, pp. 14–19, 62; Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, p. 338; Kuchenbuch, ‘Opus Feminile’. 21  Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, p. 55. 22  On the ‘convent stitch’: Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 8; and Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 22. 23  Caesarius of Arles, Oeuvres Monastiques, ed. by de Vogüé and Courreau, ii: Œuvres pour les moines (1994), pp. 190, 206. See also Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, p. 8. 24  Caesarius of Arles, Oeuvres Monastiques, ed. by de Vogüé and Courreau, ii (1994), 230.

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nuns of the convent of Lippoldsberg in the diocese of Mainz upheld the production of textiles as suitable female labour, but renounced decorative work to signify their return to stricter observances, citing Saint Jerome’s caution against working with silk, lace, or gold thread.25 Such work, according to Idung of Prüfening (c. 1155), only served to ‘feed the curiosity of the eyes … therefore women doing this kind of work can be called not so much workers as delighters of the eyes’.26 Visitation reports from subsequent years, like the one preserved from the convent of Heiningen in 1240, repeatedly enjoined religious women to fashion only simple works in linen. Indeed, Eudes Rigaux (d. 1274) had to reprimand the nuns of St Amand on six different visits for producing frivolous items such as alms-bags, small pillows, needle cases, or fringes.27 Significantly, around 1215 the English Ancrene Riwle enjoined its female readers to live frugally and ‘not acquire things in order to give them away’, for the nun was ‘not a housewife’, it preached, ‘but a religious woman’, even when weaving or stitching within the domestic economy controlled by women.28 The provincial council that met in Magdeburg between 1383 and 1403 allowed only nuns in extreme poverty to sell their handiwork. 29 The distinction between useful and frivolous needlework, however, was often lost in the economic and social realities of women’s daily practice. What is more, nuns’ cloth work linked them to the outside world commercially, spiritually, artistically, and socially.30 Except for high-minded critics and episcopal overseers, most Christians did not object to monastic embroidery. Christine de Pizan thought it quite appropriate for vowed women at the Dominican priory of Poissy, near Paris, to stitch purses embroidered with birds in gold and silver, girdles, and laces to give as gifts to their guests.31 25 

Urkunden bis zum Tode Erzbischof Adalberts, ed. by Stimming, p. 310; PL, xxii (1863), col. 875. 26  Idung of Prüfening, Cistercians and Cluniacs, trans. by O’Sullivan and others, p. 76. 27  Urkundenbuch des Hochstifts Hildesheim, ed. by Janicke and Hoogeweg, ii, 583; Rigaud, Regestrum visitationum Archiepiscopi Rotheomagensis, ed. by Bonnin, pp. 73, 111, 326, 401, 451, 456, 486, 512, 517–18, 534, 575, 587, 624. 28  The Latin Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. by D’Evelyn, pp. 167, 172; Ancrene Riwle, trans. by Salu, p. 187. 29  Concilia Germaniae, ed. by Schannat and Hartzheim, v (1763), 698, transcribed in Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 160. 30  Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Cura Monialium’, p. 120. 31  de Pisan, ‘Le Livre du Dit de Poissy’, ed. by Roy, pp. 159–222; see also Lowe, ‘Women’s Work at the Benedictine Convent of Le Murate in Florence’, p. 142.

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Figure 16. Braunschweig, Städtisches Museum, Inv. Nr. B 129. c. 1430. Photo coutesy of Städtisches Museum Braunschweig.

In creating decorative liturgical textiles, women could look to the pious examples of saints Etheldreda, Liutberga, Paulina of Thuringia, and Margaret of Scotland, among others, along with the Virgin Mary.32 Illuminations and paintings regularly depicted the Virgin engaged in homely activities such as sewing or weaving, especially in scenes of the Annunciation or the Holy Family.33 A fifteenth-century antependium from the Jodoci chapel in Braunschweig, for example, depicts the Virgin working at her loom (Figure 16).34 32 

Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, pp.  7–8; Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 160–01; Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 592–93. 33  Sheingorn, ‘“The Wise Mother”’, pp. 106–07. 34  Schuchhardt, Weibliche Handwerkskunst, p. 26; Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 117; Carr, ‘Threads of Authority’.

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Thirteenth-century accounts of Mary’s life as a temple virgin elaborated in considerable detail on the pious industry she demonstrated in creating and caring for liturgical textiles. Indeed, details of the Virgin’s life in the temple probably drew their inspiration from the activities of contemporary religious women. One account of Mary’s childhood, for example, described how the daughters of the pontiffs and magnates, who were all of noble blood, served as custodians of the temple, washing the sacred vestments, caring for the ornaments of the altar, and preparing textiles for its decoration by weaving fine linen and purple-dyed cloth, fashioning veils, robes, and hangings covered with gold and fine silk. 35 The story emphasized the industry and skill of the Virgin Mary, who ‘bustled about’ (‘satagebat’) as she also made fine linen and purple cloth, covering her works with gold or silk embroidery. Indeed, the Virgin made all ‘ordinate, sagaciter, composite, decenter, et ornate’ (orderly, wisely, suitably, appropriately, and ornately).36 Another contemporary vernacular account asserted further that Mary’s cloth work made her worthy of God’s favour and grace.37 So masterly (‘meisterlîche’) was her embroidery and she prepared it so marvellously (‘worhte ez sô wunneclîche’) that all who saw it praised it, affirming that Mary deserved divine grace. A stronger encouragement for, and affirmation of, women’s work in the creation of liturgical textiles would be difficult to find.

Framing the Liturgy: Women’s Role in Shaping the Devotional Experience The rich material treasures concealed within monasteries thus did not merely represent the wealth or status of a particular community, but also the allegorical treasure of the nuns’ spiritual dedication and virginity.38 Instead of adorning their own bodies, religious women clothed the body divine, dressing the church in the altar cloths, aurifrisia, and antependia that adorned the altars; the robes, crowns, and jewellery placed upon important statues; the banners, floor coverings, and scampualia that decorated the walls; and the vestments worn by the clerics and priests.39 Religious artwork and liturgical decorations also 35 

Vita beate virginis Marie et Salvatoris rhythmica, ed by Vögtlin, p. 27, transcribed in Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 158. 36  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 158. 37  Rückert, Bruder Philipps des Carthäusers Marienleben, p. 15, quoted in Kroos, Nieder­ sächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 159. 38  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 290. 39  Hills, ‘The Veiled Body’, p. 278.

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offered a powerful medium for the conveyance of corporate memory, spiritual identity, communal devotion, and individual piety. Religious women visibly and tangibly expressed their devotion and actively shaped the liturgy by framing its performance with their works of art. Pious women could illustrate the elements of Christian devotion that most interested or appealed to them and could incorporate self-representative elements. Inscriptions, donor portraits, self-representations, or allegorical images of the Virgin, soul, or sponsa Christi created a close association between the rituals performed within the church or at the altar and the women who produced, commissioned, or donated items for liturgical use.40 Textiles further functioned as symbols of Christian faith, testaments to individual, familial, and communal piety, and expressions of spiritual identity and social status. Perhaps the most famous textile to commemorate female piety is the Rupertsberg Antependium of 1230, which featured images of the convent’s founders, most notably Hildegard of Bingen, as well as the nuns of the community. Other religious women memorialized themselves and their devotion similarly. Abbess Kunigunde of the Benedictine convent of Göss in Steiermark commemorated herself five times within the liturgical textile she created, depicting herself with the female founder of the convent.41 Embroideries produced by the nuns of the Heath convents reveal references to their founders, patrons, and the monastic inhabitants themselves. One hanging made at Isenhagen between 1327 and 1331 referenced the community’s noble founder, Duchess Agnes of Landsberg, by including the heraldic shield of the Margraves of Landsberg along with the heraldic shields of the local nobility.42 A fourteenth-century altar cloth from the convent of Lüne, worked in the opus teutonicum style, likewise arrayed along its border the shields of regional families.43 Whether these shields denoted the genealogy of patrons or nuns within the convent, or both, they also provided for the families’ perpetual memory and associated the nobility with acts of devotion performed at the cloth-draped altar.44 40 

Hamburger, ‘A Liber Precum in Sélestat’, p. 234; Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, pp. 137, 175, 204; Penketh, ‘Women and Books of Hours’, p. 274. 41  Grönwoldt, ‘Kaisergewänder und Paramente’, p. 632; Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, p. 334; Krone und Schleier, p. 523. 42  Appuhn, Bilder aus Isenhagen, p. 39. 43  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 40; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, p. 20. 44  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 183; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 22–23, 26–27, 67, 143.

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The primary audiences for works produced and used in convents were the inhabitants of the community and their families. The latter visited nuns’ churches, for example, on such occasions as a girl’s oblation, coronation, or profession.45 In fact, the donation of a textile with heraldic references might form part of the gifts that accompanied the entrance of a daughter into a monastic establishment. In such cases both the nun and the decorated textile functioned to ensure the family’s memorial. Such textiles also served as reminders of the noble lineage of a community’s inhabitants.46 As markers of social status and family lineage, liturgical textiles bridged the divide between the secular and the sacred, lay piety and monastic life. For religious women, textiles could function as self-reflective works of art, particularly when they depicted scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary or other scenes that might be allegorized at the time of an official veiling (oblatio or desponsatio).47 Marian scenes within the Saint Anne embroidery from Wienhausen, for example, legitimated the nuns’ own monastic experience of identification with the Virgin. Religious women not only associated their entrance into the convent with Mary’s admission to the temple, but also saw in the Virgin a model for their role as sponsae Christi. The insertion of the convent’s patron saint, Alexander, between the scenes of the holy family and Mary’s entrance into the temple made the identification even stronger.48 In a similar way, writers and illustrators of manuscripts included images of themselves in the liturgical books they produced for use in their convents. Dominican nuns from the convent of Paradies near Soest jotted their initials and prayers in the decorative borders of their liturgical texts. They also inserted self-portraits, which they identified with their initials in the borders and miniatures.49 Most modern researchers, although acknowledging that embroidered designs reflect the style, arrangement, and iconography found in manuscript illuminations, have failed to adequately recognize textiles as evidence for religious women’s involvement in this artistic field.50 Yet medieval writers, such as 45  Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p.  233; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 66, 144, 180. 46  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 23–24, 26. 47  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 22–24, 135–36, 141–74, 185. 48  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 154–56, 163. 49  Marti, ‘Sisters in the Margins’, pp. 5–45. 50  Both Kroos and Staniland remark upon the connections between manuscript illumina-

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the author of the Quedlinburg chronicle, understood the decoration of textiles and manuscripts as intimately related. Quedlinburg’s nuns explicitly connected Abbess Agnes von Meissen’s production of manuscripts with her role in designing the convent’s famous knotted rug depicting the marriage between Mercury and Philosophy (c. 1200).51 Women imbued their needlework with commemorative and even documentary functions, thereby transforming communal works into personal memorials.52 Indeed, the commemorative power of liturgical texts and textiles alike may have been more powerful than that of other historical records, for unlike charters and chronicles, such tapestries, cloths, and liturgical books did not remain hidden in the archives but were routinely displayed and used by successive generations.53 By placing their names, prayers, images, or family heraldry within religious texts and textiles, religious women documented their role in crafting such works and also publicly located themselves directly in the higher labour of the liturgy. Over the seasons and years of the church calendar, liturgical texts and textiles drew new groups into the obligations of memoria.54 This commemorative function of liturgical textiles attained particular prominence in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when the nuns of the Heath convents used textiles to announce their communal histories, their unique religious identities, and the ideals of the Observant reform. Religious women also influenced the liturgical experience through the works they created to obscure the view of the altar in special seasons and on feast days. Particularly notable in this regard were the Lenten embroideries used to veil the altar known as Fastentücher or Hungertücher. Communities traditionally hung Fastentücher before the altar on Ash Wednesday as a form of visual penance — depriving them of a view of the most holy space of the church and its images of Christ — during the Lenten season.55 On the Wednesday preceding

tion and embroidery, without commenting on the fact that monastic women were involved in both activities. Staniland, p. 20; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 81. 51  Kurth, Die deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters, iii, 33, 53; Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, p. 337. 52  See for example the Gertrudis-Graduale, Köln, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus., M 67–71, c. 1340, illumination on parchment, pp. 507–08. 53  Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, p. 335. 54  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 148. 55  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 22.

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Figure 17. Kloster Lüne, Lenten curtain. c. 1325. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

Holy Thursday the curtains were removed with the recitation of the Biblical text, ‘and the veil of the temple was torn in two’ (Matthew 27. 51).56 Three of the earliest of such textiles from Lüne depicted the Passion, Resurrection, and Maiestas Domini; their lack of colour reinforced the Lenten themes of renunciation, penance, and spiritual preparation for the Easter celebration. The textiles from Lüne are particularly important because they offer proof for a tradition of female design extending from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.57 Outsized details in these scenes — such as the banners, censers, 56 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 131. See also pp. 177–78, where Kohwagner-Nikolai challenges the previous identification of these textiles by Renate Kroos as Fastentücher, arguing that their size and the transparency of the linen would not have prevented a view of the altar if used in such a manner. 57  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 35, 51.

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Figure 18. Kloster Lüne, Lenten curtain. c. 1325. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

swords, and whip — often described by art historians as ‘childlike’, suggest that vowed women rather than professional artists planned and executed the embroideries (Figures 17 and 18).58 Contra Staniland, pp. 19, 23–24. 58  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 61. See also p. 39.

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The nuns may have been determined to produce the textiles within the convent in their entirety, from the spinning of the linen thread to the last stitch, as a form of devotional exercise.59 Horst Appuhn, one of the experts most familiar with the textiles, noted what he regarded as iconographical blunders, such as a sprinkling of detached, outstretched palms lining the Hell-mouth in the scene of Christ’s harrowing and the placement of John rather than Mary to the right of the crucified Christ.60 The design of the fourteenth-century lectern hanging from the convent of Wienhausen has been ascribed to its nuns on the basis of similar criteria (Figure 19).61 Although scholars’ criteria for identifying female artwork has generally been its supposed naïveté, lack of skill and sophistication, or its childish or provincial style, nonetheless, it is clear that religious women chose to design the liturgical fabrics that they produced and used.62 Moreover, like the Fastentuch described by Mechtild of Magdeburg at the beginning of this chapter, the disproportional iconography of banners, censers, swords, and other liturgical items so disparaged by art historians reflect the theological and devotional interests of the nuns who inhabited these convents. The exaggerated swords, for example, emphasized Jesus’s and Mary’s suffering, which was a prominent theme in the spirituality of the nuns in the Heideklöster. Similarly, the oversized banners in the Lüne embroidery probably replicated the iconography of the nuns’ statue of the Resurrection. A lectern hanging designed by the nuns of Wienhausen likewise referred to their statue.63 The nuns who created these textiles thus shaped the visual experience of the liturgy by selecting the iconographical elements and emphasizing features that held special significance for them. While the fourteenth-century embroideries used for Lent from Lüne renounced colour, the nuns of Wienhausen created an elaborate and colourful large-scale embroidery of the Mirror of Mankind’s Salvation or Speculum humanae salvationis (the Heilsspiegelteppich) for their Lenten observance. 59 

Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, p. 63. Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp.  28, 44. See also Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, p. 336. 61  Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 60–63, 78, 119–56. 62  Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, p.  213; Marti, Malen, Schreiben, und Beten, p.  247; Gerchow and Marti, ‘Nonnenmalereien, “Versorgungsanstalten”, und “Frauenbewegungen”’; Eißengarthen, Mittelalterliche Textilien aus Kloster Adelhausen, p. 88; Canzler, Bildteppiche der Spätgotik, p. 132; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Zur Funktion des Heilsspiegelteppichs’, p. 110; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 35, 88–89. 63  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 24. 60 

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Worked during the abbacy of Katharina von Hoya in the late fifteenth century, Wien­ hausen’s Heils­s piegelteppich is the largest medi­e val embroidery preserved within the convent, measuring 400 × 620 centimetres (Figure 20). Although the embroidery would have provided an appropriate visual accompaniment to the daily devotional readings in the nuns’ refectory, it more likely served as a Fastentuch to cover the altar; or, depending on where it was hung, it was used to prevent a view of the choir from the parish church or of the altar from the nuns’ choir.64 The theme of the Speculum humanae salvationis prepared the faithful for the reparatio by tracing Biblical history from man’s fall from grace all the way through the life and passion of Christ. The thirty-five scenes of the embroidery corresponded to the thirtyfive weekdays of the Lenten period, and its themes parallel those found in Lenten sermons. The embroidery thus fulfilled didactic as well as meditative purposes.65 The iconographic similarity between the embroidery and various illustrated manuscripts of the Speculum humanae salvationis suggests that the nuns modelled their work 64 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Zur Funktion des Heils­ spiegelteppichs’, pp.  121, 129–33; KohwagnerNikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bild­ stickereien, pp. 127–28, 164. 65  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 196.

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on a manuscript owned by the community and may have used the text to help design the embroidery.66 Wienhausen’s Heilsspiegelteppich demonstrates how the nuns used their embroideries to guide the meditations of both the monastic and parochial communities. Although it is unclear whether the nuns of Lüne and Wienhausen shared an altar with their parish congregations, nuns at other convents in the region did. At Ebstorf and Preetz, fifteenth-century Observant reformers tried to prevent just such shared use of church spaces. 67 In 1480 visitors similarly criticized the nuns of Wienhausen for admitting secular persons into their choir, a practice that also occurred on special occasions at the unreformed convent of Holy Cross in Braunschweig.68 Hence it is quite likely that the textiles from these convents also influenced the liturgical experiences of the broader Christian community. Indeed, while the Speculum humanae salvationis was intended primarily for a lay audience, Wienhausen’s Heilsspiegelteppich reflects both performative devotional practices within the convent and the religious culture that nuns shared with outsiders.69

Holy Housewives: Performative Piety, Affective Spirituality, and Secular habitus In the later Middle Ages, mystical visions in which pious women served as attendants to Mary or Saint Anne at childbirth, reported by religious women across medieval Europe, encouraged nuns to adopt an affective piety rooted in prevailing gender ideologies. The visionary experiences of women such as Margaret Ebner (1291–1351), Saint Brigit of Sweden (1303–73), and Margery Kempe (c. 1373–1440) reflect the popularity of this type of gendered devotion.70 Meditative tracts sounded the same theme, exalting domestic devotion 66 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Zur Funktion des Heilsspiegelteppichs’, pp.  113, 134–35; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 40–44, 51, 72–81, 183. 67  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 46–47; Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, pp. 372–407. 68  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7  July 1483); Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fols 129v–130v; transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p. 422. 69  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 169. 70  Ebner, Major Works, ed. and trans. by Hindsley; von Ebner and von Nördlingen, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik; Kempe, Book, trans. by Windeatt; Birgitta of Sweden, Revelations, ed. by Butkovich.

Figure 20. Kloster Wienhausen, Heilsspiegelteppich. Late fifteenth century. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

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and advising ordinary nuns to attend to the needs of the Virgin or Christ.71 For example, the popular Meditations on the Life of Christ (Meditationes vitae domini nostri Jesu Christi), written for a female audience in the thirteenth century, directed its readers towards a vigorously dramatic form of prayer that functioned, as one historian has noted, as a creative act of image-formation.72 Like the performance of the Visitatio sepulchri described in chapter 2, the Meditations on the Life of Christ promoted devotional practices based on enacting the gendered role of caretaker, presenting the Virgin Mary as an appropriate model for feminine, maternal devotion. Evidence that the nuns at Lüne, and perhaps also the other Heath communities, were familiar with this work is found in the textual excerpts of the convent’s embroidery of the miracles of the Resurrected Christ (produced from 1503 to 1507).73 Other images, such as the miniature from the Dominican convent of Paradies near Soest, in which a nun appears as an assistant at the birth of Saint John the Baptist, also illustrate the nuns’ desire to care for Christ and his sorrowing mother.74 As in the Visitatio dramas, material culture objects provided a medium for visually and physically enacting such gendered piety. Nuns who recorded visions in which they nursed, cradled, or otherwise cared for the infant Jesus often focused on an actual doll-like figure of the Christ-child during their devotions. These diminutive statues often wore rich clothing and jewels and might be used in conjunction with miniature altars, altar ornaments, and cradles.75 Although a few monks or laymen may also have used statues of the Christ-child in their devotions, in general it was women who owned and used such statues.76 The figures appear prominently as both objects and actors in women’s visionary accounts.77 71 

Riddy, ‘Nunneries, Communities’. Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 144. 73  Appuhn notes in particular the words used by the Arisen Christ to greet the Virgin Mary, ‘Salve sancta parens’ (Hail, holy mother). Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 90. 74  Marti, ‘Sisters in the Margins’. 75  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, p.  327; Rublack, ‘Female Spirituality and the Infant Jesus’; Hale, ‘Rocking the Cradle’. See also Ziegler, ‘Reality as Imitation’ and Hamburger, ‘Am Anfang war das Bild. 76  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, pp. 317, 320–21, 324. See also pp. 38–40. 77  Marti, Malen, Schreiben, und Beten, pp. 253–54; Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, p. 324; Vavra, ‘Bildmotiv und Frauenmystik’; Lewis, By Women, For Women, About Women. 72 

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Perhaps the most famous woman to possess such an image was the German Dominican mystic, Margaret Ebner. On Christmas day 1344, Margaret received a Christ-child (Christkindl) from her spiritual advisor, Heinrich of Nördlingen.78 This followed an earlier gift of two alabaster images sent by Heinrich from Avignon to her in 1338, one depicting Mary with the baby Jesus and the other Saint Katherine.79 The register of the sacrista at Lüne similarly recorded gifts of small statues to young women, given by relatives at their profession. In 1505, for example, Adelheid Stüver received a silver statue of Saint Aldegunde from her mother; another mother gave her daughter a silver figure of Saint Clare.80 Nuns entering the Westphalian convent of Herzebrock also brought figures of saints, liturgical vessels, books, and other devotional artwork as part of their dowries.81 The Birgittine convent of Mariawald near Lauenburg could count fifteen cribs among its possessions in 1534.82 The possession and use of statues of the Christ-child, with their accompanying cribs, clothes, and other accoutrements, reflect another aspect of the shared devotional culture of women. Small statues adorned with brocades and silks, pearls and gold buttons, likewise appeared among the trousseaux of young Florentine women — those entering marriage as well as those entering the convent.83 Both vowed women and secular matrons donated or bequeathed their statues to other women. A prayer book produced by the nuns of Medingen for a patrician woman from Lüneburg included directions for imagining the altar as a crib and the host which the priest elevates as the Christ child on Christmas afternoon and during the midnight Mass.84 Whether such monastic devotions were meditative or literal, it is clear that they mirrored the domestic piety of the housewife. Such practices further emphasized an affective piety centred on the role of caregiver. As other scholars have argued, religious women clearly 78 

Rublack, ‘Female Spirituality and the Infant Jesus’, pp. 37–53. Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 8; von Ebner and von Nördlingen, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, pp. 20, 90, 214. 80  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23, fol. 77v. 81  Flaskamp, ‘Anna Roedes Spätere Chronik von Herzebrock Flaskamp’, pp.  120–21; Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, p. 151. 82  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 50–51; Kammel, ‘Das Christkind in der eigenen Stube’, p. 39; Wentzel, ‘Christkind’, pp. 603–05. 83  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, pp. 311–29, especially 311–17. 84  Andersen, ‘Das Kind sehen’; Kammel, ‘Das Christkind in der eigenen Stube’, p. 39. See also Schleif, ‘Katerina Lemmels Briefe’, p. 112. 79 

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aimed to shape not only their own devotions, but also lay spirituality. 85 The affective use of small statues was not confined purely to the realm of private devotion. Margery Kempe, the flamboyant visionary of King’s Lynn, recorded how a female pilgrim in Jerusalem carried with her an image of the Christ-child ‘and set it in the laps of the respectable wives. And they would dress it up in shirts and kiss it as though it had been God himself ’.86 The use of these figures indicates a feminine religious culture that transcended the divide between monastic and lay piety as well as public and private devotion. Religious and secular women likewise cooperated in sewing costumes and devising other adornments for statues of the Virgin Mary, Christ, and the saints.87 As with the provision of liturgical textiles, women provided the material support (money or clothes) and the labour (the manufacture of garments or the actual decoration of statues) for these objects. And once again, the Virgin Mary served as the model for such devotional acts. Not only did she provide for, nurture, and clothe the infant Jesus, but according to the Pseudo-Bonaventure, Mary also covered the naked Christ at his crucifixion with her veil.88 The donation of jewellery and clothes by pious laywomen to decorate statues in parish churches and cathedrals became an established practice in the early Middle Ages and continued into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.89 Some saints demanded such adornment. Visions recorded in the book of the confraternity for Saint Ursula in Tull noted several instances in which her saintly co-martyrs appeared in dreams to demand that the nuns decorate Ursula’s relics with clothing, rings, and other costly items.90 As with decorative embroidery worked in gold or silk, the adornment of statues tended to blur the line between the secular and religious realms. In fact, in the sixteenth century, religious officials began to stipulate that only garments made specifically for the 85 

Schleif, ‘Katerina Lemmels Briefe’, p.  110; Schleif, ‘Forgotten Roles of Women as Donors’. 86  Kempe, Book, trans. by Windeatt, p. 113. 87  Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages, p. 86; French, ‘“I leave my best gown as a vestment”’; Ziegler, ‘Reality as Imitation’, pp. 122, 125. 88  Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, pp. 366, 368, 373, 377. On the Pseudo-Bonaventure, a text written circa 1300 for Franciscan nuns, see chapter 000, below. 89  Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 366; French, ‘“I leave my best gown as a vestment”’, p. 69; Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 569–602, especially 590, 592–96; Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages, pp. 102, 118; Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 122. 90  Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 143.

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Figure 22. Kloster Wienhausen, Marienkleid. Fifteenth century.

Photos courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen. Figure 21. Kloster Wienhausen, Marienkleid. Fifteenth century.

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Figure 24. Kloster Ebstorf, surcoat for the statue of St Maurice. Fifteenth century. Photo courtesy of Kloster Ebstorf. Figure 23. Staatliches Museum Schwerin, figure of Christ-child from Holy Cross convent, Rostock. c. 1500. Photo courtesy of Staatliches Museum Schwerin.

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purpose, rather than those that might actually be worn by a typically fashionable woman, should be used to decorate religious statues.91 References to garments for the saints (tunics, mantels, dresses, and the like) appear scattered among the records of monastic and parish churches throughout Europe, but the actual textiles have mostly disappeared.92 Among the Heath convents, Wienhausen preserves the greatest number of Marienkleider, or robes, for statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Thirteen garments made from a variety of coloured silks and velvets, and decorated with embroidery, pearls, precious metals, and leather, are still extant. More than twenty existed originally (Figures 21 and 22).93 The styles of the robes indicate that Wienhausen’s nuns made them specifically for their statues of the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary, and a standing Christ-child (no longer extant). Apart from two isolated references to donations made by laymen for clothing such statues, no documentation reveals exactly when the nuns ceased production or use of the Marienkleider.94 The nuns of Wienhausen stitched the garments from precious scraps of earlier textiles. They were probably inspired by the artistic renewal that accompanied the convent’s internal reform around 1470, although the practice of clothing statues certainly predates the reform. The imposition of Lutheranism in the region in 1525 eventually brought an end to such practices, but not until after the last Catholic abbess of Wienhausen was elected in 1565. 95 Records and a few surviving textiles elsewhere attest to the continuing custom at other convents in this region.96 Four sets of clothing fashioned by the nuns from the 91 

Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 381. Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 163–4. 93  Klack-Eitzen, ‘Marias neue Kleider’, pp. 21–31; Maier, Kunstdenkmale des Landkreises Celle, pp. 166–68. My thanks to Dr Klack-Eitzen for sharing with me the results of her research, specifically the association of certain robes with the figures of the Resurrection and Virgin in Wienhausen. 94  ‘Hubertus Lorberen […] duos florenos ad tunicam beate virginis in choro. […] Pie memorie generosus princeps dux Hinricus de Brunswuick et Luneb. Dedit nobis vestem coccineam ad ornatum sanctorum ymaginum in choro’ (Hubertus Lorberen [gave] two florens for a tunic for the blessed Virgin in the Choir […] The noble prince of pious memory, Duke Henry of Braunschweig and Lüneberg, gave us a scarlet garment for decorating the image of the saints in the choir). Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. LXI (22 July), XLII (25 February). The nuns probably reworked this donation into the smaller robes that actually clothed the figures according to the liturgical season. 95  Klack-Eitzen, ‘Marias neue Kleider’, pp. 28–30. 96  The statue of Saint Clare from the Clarisse convent in Ribnitz possessed at least one mantel. Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, p. 203; Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 24. 92 

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Cistercian convent of the Holy Cross in Rostock for their fourteenth-century statue of the Madonna and child still survive.97 Similar garments presumably clothed the wooden statue of the Madonna and child in Ebstorf, created c. 1320; however, only one robe for the Christ-child remains extant.98 Nuns at Rostock also decorated at least six other small statues with robes and crowns. 99 One of these figures, a Christ-child produced in Mechelen c. 1500, still wears the robe of blue velvet so lovingly stitched by the nuns, with a small silk garment (currently preserved in a fragmentary state) beneath. The nuns also adorned the figure with a pearl crown and a rosary composed of coral beads (Figure 23).100 Similar figures of the Christ-child from the Brabant are preserved at the convents of Preetz and Walsrode; based on the extant garments from Wienhausen, it is likely that their image of Christ was also one of these Brabant Christkindl.101 Perhaps most unique among clothing for devotional statues is the surcoat fashioned by the nuns of Ebstorf for the nearly life-size wooden sculpture of their patron, Saint Maurice. Like the clothing from Wienhausen, the garment was made of much earlier textiles. The nuns of Ebstorf dressed their statue splendidly on Maurice’s feast day of 22 September. The embroidered strip down the centre of the surcoat dates from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, while the remaining portions stem from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century (Figure 24).102 The production of crowns for the statues of saints, decorated with embroidery, pearls, or other expensive materials, also fell within the realm of the artistic work considered appropriate to nuns. Despite the poor survival of such ornaments, these crowns were probably the most common way of adorning statues. Statues often possessed several crowns for different occasions, just as they enjoyed a variety of robes.103 Traces of damage on Wienhausen’s statue 97  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp.  50, 66–67; Hamburger, ‘Introduction: Texts Versus Images’, p. 23. 98  Köster, Bilder aus Kloster Ebstorf, p. 37. 99  One of these small figures was probably an image of the Saint Anne Trinity or Anna Selbst­ dritt, decorated with a crown and robe. Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 50, 117. 100  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 111–17. 101  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 115; Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 159; Preysing, ‘Über Kleidung und Schmuck’, p. 349. 102  A woven stole for the figure also survives. Kroos, Niedersächsische Bildstickereien des Mittelalters, pp. 49–50; Köster, Bilder aus Kloster Ebstorf, pp. 33, 36. 103  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 49.

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of the Virgin with child indicate that the nuns changed this figure’s robes frequently and placed a crown, accompanied perhaps by a veil, on the statue. 104 The Wienhausen chronicler likewise lamented that ‘two artfully gilded crowns, worked from the best gold, as well as other golden crowns for the figures of Saint Mary, Alexander and other saints’ were lost during the reform of 1469.105 Nuns from the convent of Holy Cross in Rostock had at least sixteen — and possibly as many as twenty-two — crowns, which they used along with garments to decorate their statues of the Madonna and saints. 106 The wooden statue of the seated Virgin and child from Ebstorf was also adorned with a crown. For nuns who wore crowns as part of their monastic habit (as did those from the convents of Medingen, Wienhausen, and Lüne), the coronation of statues allowed yet another empathetic parallel between themselves, the Virgin Mary, female saints, and even Christ the King.107 When nuns carefully dressed their statues, they were acting as kinswomen and servants to the saints and Jesus. As the scholar Richard Trexler has noted, the Saviour who wore robes and crowns in German convents was not a traditional icon of Christ triumphant or Christ enthroned in judgement. Instead, these devotional, decorated images of the Christ child or the crucified saviour emphasized Jesus’s vulnerability and his reliance upon faithful followers. For Trexler, the practice of adorning images reflected contemporary social relations of dependency as much as of gender identity.108 However, these ritual activities specifically exalted the dependence of Christ and his saints on women in their traditional supportive role as mothers, wives, or attendants at birth and death. By dressing their statues, women affirmed their intimate relationship with the Divine. Nuns’ creation and use of gorgeously garbed statues provide the clearest expression of how medieval ideas about gender converged in the affective piety and performative devotional practices of religious women.109 Nuns understood their ministrations to the statues as thematically and theologically related to other convent devotions. Sister Beli von Lütisbach had a 104  Gussone, ‘Die Krönung von Bildern im Mittelalter’; Hartwieg, ‘Drei gefaßte Holz­ skulpturen’, pp. 195, 224–27, 239. 105  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 23. 106  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 36–37, 48–49, 110–11. 107  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp.  562–63, 603–04; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 160–64. 108  Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 371. 109  But see Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 373

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vision, recounted in the fourteenth-century Sister-Book from Töss, that illustrates this point. One night the Virgin Mary appeared before Sister Beli wearing a beautiful snow-white dress. The Virgin announced herself as the mother of heaven whom Beli regularly honoured; what is more, the Holy Mother informed Beli that her repeated prayers (the Englische Gruss or Ave Maria) had metaphorically stitched the Virgin’s shining gown. Careful seamstress that she was, Beli examined her work, only to discover to her irritation that it lacked any sleeves. When the nun inquired about this, the Virgin supplied her with the necessary pattern for the sleeves: whereas Beli usually repeated 150 Ave Marias during her devotions, if she were to add fifty more, she would be able to add sleeves and finish the Virgin’s dress.110 Mechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrud of Helfta, and Caterina de’ Ricci all recalled similar visions in which the Virgin Mary interpreted nuns’ prayers as garments for herself or for Christ.111 The prayers of Wöltingerode’s nuns for the creation of garments to clothe Christ (as discussed in chapter 2) functioned within this same tradition. Beli’s vision also illustrates a common narrative device of the Dominican Sister-Books, whose authors used concrete examples drawn from their daily lives and personal experiences to articulate abstract theological concepts.112 The vernacular spirituality of Dominican nuns was born in a particular visual environment, which Ulrike Wiethaus has termed ‘feminized enclosures, rich in detail’.113 Vowed women’s visions of clothing reflect their upbringing in secular childhood homes. Once within the convent, nuns recreated the domestic sphere and household economies of their secular sisters, putting their mundane skills to religious use. The details of Sister Beli’s vision reflect the typical domestic training of girls who would someday manage houses of their own — the careful examination of one’s work, the irritation with perceived flaws, and the necessity for a ‘pattern’ to complete the project properly. Indeed, a prayer for the creation of a mantle for the Virgin Mary from the convent of Unterlinden in Colmar even specified the types of fabrics to be used and their cost. A sky-blue Damask cost 30,000 Ave Marias, the golden stars on it required the repetition of the sequences twelve times, while the silk thread to sew the garment could be acquired with 110 

Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 120. Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, pp. 136, 139; Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 372. 112  Zimmermann, Gott im Denken berühren, pp. 22–27, 42–47, 61–62, 116, 149. 113  Wiethaus, ‘Thieves and Carnivals’, p. 216. 111 

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1,000 Magnificats.114 In such a way, the prayers of religious women mirrored the actual labour they performed in decorating the holy objects and sacred spaces entrusted to their care and the attention to detail that they routinely gave to their work. Prayer and needlework, and the liturgy and costuming, were inseparably woven together.115 For her fellow and future sisters in Töss, Beli’s vision illuminated the spiritual significance and unity of their oratio et labor. The nuns’ physical presence in their church and convent — their movements, their gazes, their interaction with the precious objects of their regard — expressed their understanding of their purpose. Beli’s vision designated needlework (labor) as a tangible expression of their interior devotion and, at the same time, revealed these religious women’s prayers (ora) to be a form of domestic work. Their prayers had tangible results of providing and caring for those they loved — the Virgin, Christ, or the saints — just as the decoration of statues did.116 Indeed, the nuns and their allies outside the convent regarded their prayers as valuable gifts to the saints and offered specific instructions for the creation of garments through prayer.117 Religious women’s industry mirrored the pious labours of the Virgin Mary as described in medieval narratives of her life. Nuns’ devotions and prayers echoed the Blessed Mother’s concerns for her child. Through their prayers, religious women assembled a crib and mattress for the baby Jesus, as well as pillows, swaddling, and other garments.118 This pleased the Virgin, who informed Saint Caterina de’ Ricci (in a vision at Christmas 1540) that the swaddling cloths, bands, and cloak that clothed the infant Jesus were the product of the prayers offered by Caterina during Advent. When Mary returned a year later in another Christmas vision, she herself diapered the baby, ‘saying that these were the swaddling cloths and the diapers that the nuns of the convent had prepared by their prayers during Advent’.119 114 

Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 139. Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, pp.  189–90; Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, pp. 139–40. See also Trexler, ‘Der heiligen neue Kleider’, p. 369. 116  Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 122. 117  ‘Diese Vorstellung kann man in ihrer Realistik kaum überbewerten; die Rosen sind nicht metaphorisch gemeint, sondern als konkrete Gabe vorgestellt’ (One can hardly overestimate the realism of this image; the roses are not meant as metaphor, but rather imagined as an actual gift): Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 125. 118  Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, pp. 129–35. 119  Razzi, Vita di Santa Caterina de’ Ricci, ed. by Di Agresti, pp. 108–09, 119–20, quoted in Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, p. 326. See also Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 133. 115 

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Conclusion: ‘Patterns’ of Gendered Labour and Devotion The surviving textiles of the Heath convents offer a particularly salient expression of the performative piety embraced by the female religious in this region. The faded threads display late medieval assumptions about gendered labour and female care. The textiles give material form to medieval gender ideologies that governed women’s work, responsibilities, and piety. However typically feminized their labours were, though, the nuns’ stitchery represented more than the sublimated maternal or domestic desires of women behind cloister walls.120 The careful stitches also commemorated the spiritual creativity, meditative focus, and ritual gestures that nuns used to transform their liturgical spaces into sites of women’s devotions. Like the Visitatio sepulchri, the textiles encouraged religious women to adopt the cultural concerns of wife and mother and become ‘holy housewives’. Indeed, cloth work gave physical form to the injunctions to ‘serve our Lady and the child Jesus as much as you can’, found in religious guides like the Meditations on the Life of Christ.121 Yet the production of liturgical textiles simultaneously served many purposes: the demonstration both of domestic skills and monastic discipline, decoration, and commemoration; the expression of piety; and religious instruction. Observant reforms at the end of the Middle Ages did not impede religious women’s involvement in the creation of liturgical textiles. In fact, many of the surviving works are a direct result of the artistic activity that accompanied these reforms. Yet the care that religious women devoted to their statues and textiles raised questions about the relation of pious labour to material excess — of monastic devotion and visible, tangible, worldliness — which eventually infiltrated convents. Writing to the ecclesiastical authorities in 1628, Margaret Smulders, a nun and reformer who caused much turmoil at the small convent of Bethlehem in Louvain, complained that ‘for weeks, early in the morning and late at night, with the infirmary as their secret working place, Mater and Anna busied themselves sewing a skirt for Our Lady, from excellent satin and very lavishly embroidered’. Margaret viewed her sisters’ work as wasteful and parodied the rationale for stitching yet another fancy skirt. Our Lady must have yet another robe of gold linen, even though she already has two satin robes, two or three of crimson, and a few others of still other material. 120  Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual, trans. by Cochrane, pp. 327–29; Rublack, ‘Female Spirituality and the Infant Jesus’, p. 37. 121  Bonaventure, Meditationes Vitae Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, ed. by Peltier.

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But even that’s not enough to satisfy them [the other nuns], because they don’t have one of red velvet, and they lament it. There are still other images of Our Lady in the choir, and I couldn’t begin to describe all their clothes.122

Indeed, Smulders caustically remarked that the images of Our Lady and other saints had ‘so many different robes that you’d think the sisters were clothing real people’. Although Smulders wrote in the seventeenth century, her description of the nuns’ activities reflected a tradition of female artistic creation that dated back to at least the sixth century. In performing such work, religious women modelled themselves on the Virgin Mary in her various roles as temple virgin, bride, and mother. Indeed, material culture linked the convent and the secular world, thus helping religious women reach beyond the enclosure and interact with the broader Christian community. By creating fine textiles and decorating the altar and statues of their churches according to the liturgical season, such women literally framed the liturgy and its performance, shaping their devotional experience in ways that were personally and collectively meaningful to themselves, their kinswomen, and their larger communities. The nuns’ possession of personal property, however, including the fine costumes and crowns of devotional statues and the personal income that brought costly materials for their pious work also tied these vowed women to the laywomen of their social class. Unfortunately for the sisters, the bishops and priests who ministered to communities of religious women were not as supportive of this feature of the Heath convents, as were their lay women patrons, as the next chapter argues.

122 

Quoted in Harline, The Burdens of Sister Margaret, pp. 148–49.

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Wealth and Poverty, Piety and Necessity

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he thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were a time of economic development for the Lüneburg Heath convents, the Heideklöster. Up to roughly 1350, the primary economic activity documented was the acquisition of endowment for community support in the form of land, tithes and other sources of ecclesiastical income, and secular fees collected from courts and mills.1 The Heath convents sold, purchased, and exchanged properties with each other, and their members benefitted (eventually individually as well as communally) from profits derived from the brine pits in Lüneburg, one of the most important northern locations for the extraction and sale of salt. Religious institutions possessed close to half of all income from the saltpans, with returns of as much as ten per cent.2 1  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 5 (15  August 1215), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 9 (24  April 1233), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 13 ( June 1235), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 167 (26 July 1303), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 204 (9 June 1317), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 348 (6 December 1378), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 354 (6 February 1380), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 359a (31 March 1381) document its patronage rights in several churches. [CHB adds that Mecham cited Götke, ‘Grundherrschaft Kloster Ebstorf im späten Mittelalter’, Chapter 4, unpublished at the time she read it, on the provost of Ebstorf ’s claims. She did not believe, as he apparently did, that the provost’s rights were identical with those of the nuns and that the two could be merged. Gotke has now appeared as Götke, ‘Wirtschaftsverhältnisse’.] 2  Bachman, Die Rentner, pp. 164–69, 214. Such income was expressed in units known as chorus/i or Wispel. One chorus equalled three plaustra or Fuder, which comprised twelve Rump, equal in turn to thirty-six individual measures of salt (süss): 1 Chorus (Wispel) = 3 Plaustra (Fuder) = 12 Rump = 544,320 kg. See also Lamschus, Weißes Gold aus Lüneburg.

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Throughout the thirteenth and into the fourteenth century, wealthy urban families gave income from the Lüneburg saltpans to support their female relatives in these religious communities, especially at Lüne. Their possession of income from the saltpans at Lüneburg made the Heath convents quite wealthy. All six Heideklöster were among the top twenty-one ecclesiastical institutions in terms of salt possessions in the region. About one-third of Ebstorf ’s income derived from its salt possessions. The nuns thus found themselves in a better economic situation than those religious communities elsewhere that relied on income from land alone, and consequently the nuns of the Heideklöster may have suffered less from the agrarian depressions and warfare of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.3 Income from the brine pits in the city of Lüneburg eventually provided the dominant support for the nuns at Lüne and Ebstorf; in both places income from land took a back seat. Charters of acquisition of salt income by Lüne averaged more than one per year from 1321 to 1360 and again in the 1370s; a final burst of acquisitions, albeit slower, saw nine acquisitions in the two decades between 1431 and 1450.4 Nonetheless, the convent of Lüne also expanded its land-holdings in the fourteenth century, especially from 1311 to 1330 and 1381 to 1400.5 While Lüne, located in Lüneburg itself, held the most rights in the salt works, with a little over thirty-eight chori and eight pans, the communities of Ebstorf, Isenhagen, and Wienhausen, with possessions ranging from ten to twenty chori, were not far behind.6 Between 1344 and 1348 the nuns of Ebstorf considerably expanded their income from the salt works, making eight purchases and one exchange of income from the saltpans in Lüneburg. For Ebstorf, we can cite the Registrum bonorum salinarium of 1369/70, which

3 

Bachman, Die Rentner, p. 19; Götke, ‘Wirtschaftsverhältnisse’, pp. 251–61. Bachman, Die Rentner, p. 181. As early as 1285, Herderus, a citizen of Lüneburg, conveyed a plaustrum of salt along with his daughter, Gertrud, to Wienhausen. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 125 (1285); cf. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 128 (1288), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 130 (1289), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 171 (22 February 1305). For Lüne, see Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 106 (13 December 1305), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 108 (15 September 1306), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 175 (23 March 1327), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 183 (18 September 1329), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 237 (13 March 1340), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 310 (13 January 1356). For Isenhagen, see UKI, Urk. 109 (18 November 1325), UKI, Urk. 145 (9 April 1331), and UKI, Urk. 246 (24 February 1354). 5  Nolte, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Nonnenklosters Lüne. 6  Bachman, Die Rentner, pp. 170–75. 4 

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records that by that year Ebstorf received returns from six pans and thirty-four and a half Wispel.7 Indeed, that report of 1369/70 allows us to cite the salt income for each house for that year. As recorded in the Registrum, the Benedictine convents collectively had the most, with Lüne bringing in 36,716 marks, Ebstorf 22,650, and Walsrode 13,033; but the Cistercian communities also had considerable income: Medingen had 14,875 marks, Wienhausen 7,733, and Isenhagen 5,783. There was a serious decline in salt income thereafter. For 1499 we have only the number for Ebstorf: 846 marks, 12 shillings from its salt possessions; this is a drop over four generations (130 years) to about a third of Ebstorf ’s 22,650 marks in 1369/70. But other houses appear to have had less income later. This declension in salt income for these communities probably reflects not only an overall economic decline, but also the siphoning off of the nuns’ income by their provosts, the transfer of some salt income from community support to endow specific devotional purposes, and the transformation of some of this communal income into individual annuities, as discussed below and in the next chapter. Indeed, gradually, and often as a protection from rapacious patrons and incompetent provosts, the nuns of the Heath convents came to allow or allot private income for individuals within their communities in order to provide for their sustenance and to allow them to support various devotional activities. Gradually too, income came to be attached to specific offices. At Isenhagen, obedientiaries for the office of All Souls (established in 1379) appeared prominently as purchasers of money rents, but whether using funds associated with the office, their own cash, or both is not clear.8 This study emphasizes in each of its chapters how such personal wealth funded devotional priorities and religious art and memorials for nuns and their families. Such individual income also protected individual sustenance across communities in the face of threats to communal endowment.

7 

Wienhausen, KW, Fach 33/1a (Notizbuch der Äbtissin), fols 12r–13v; Bachman, Die Rentner, pp. 214–15, which lists the convent’s 1369/70 possessions in the Lüneburg saltpans as one saltpan, fourteen chori, and two plaustra. 8  Cf. UKI, Urk. 402 (1  June 1393), UKI, Urk. 408 (14  April 1406), UKI, Urk. 422 (2 February 1421), UKI, Urk. 424 (20 June 1424), UKI, Urk. 452 (16 June 1443), and UKI, Urk. 459 (28 October 1447).

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General Economic Trends Early acquisition of endowment beyond the salt-revenues varied from house to house among the Heideklöster, and the record is more complete for some than others. Between 1221 and 1245, the community of Wienhausen actively pursued the acquisition of property and income from the surrounding areas. By 1245 the community had substantial holdings of sixteen and a half mansi and income from tithes in eight different villages.9 Between 1281 and 1298, Wienhausen acquired tithes over an additional 206 to 507 acres within the bishopric of Hildesheim, whose bishops were strong supporters of the community. By 1340, when the convent of Wienhausen described its possessions, it listed tithes in forty-five locations and income from fifty-seven places.10 The nuns of Ebstorf experienced similar economic development. By the early fourteenth century the community had increased its land holdings, profiting by purchases from the nobility during a period of economic recession.In documents from 1220 to 1526 we find references to tithes in sixty-two settlements, the majority acquired by purchase, and references to property at eighty-one rural places as well as in the cities of Lüneburg and Uelzen. Following Ebstorf ’s reform between 1470 and 1479, the abbey is described as holding rights to tithes in forty-four villages, mostly located near the convent.11 The arrival of the Black Death in northern Germany in 1349 marked changes in the economic lives of the Heath convents. On the one hand, the selling of income sources from the Lüneburg brine pits from the mid-fourteenth century may reflect the financial straits of the Heideklöster at that time. On the other hand, Isenhagen began such sales in 1346/7 just as the community moved to its current location and began construction of its church there. At Isenhagen there is a clustering of such acquisitions that may coincide with the move to a new site. In 1343 Alheidis Emmellen from the convent of Distorpe conveyed a plaustrum of salt from the Lüneburg brine pits and two marks to the convent of Isenhagen. She stipulated that the two marks belonged to Adelheid and Ghertrud de Querrendorpe, nuns in Isenhagen, for the duration of their lives,

9 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 7–33; based on the mansus of from ten to thirty acres given by Lübben, Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch. 10  Wienhausen, KW, Fach 33/1a (Notizbuch der Äbtissin), fols  1v–11 v; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 769. Cf. UKM, Urk. 43 (5 November 1286) for Medingen’s tithes in thirteen villages. 11  Scholz, ‘Die Zehnterwerbung des Klosters Ebstorf ’, pp. 41–51.

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and then would provide clothing for the nuns.12 The testamentary bequest of 1349 from Heinrich de Molendino combined the provision of income for his seven nieces in Isenhagen with a donation for the purchase of good beer and wine on high feast days.13 In 1363 Mechtild Blurot, a nun in Isenhagen, purchased an annual rent of eight shillings to be used by the convent after her death for pittances on the Feast of the Holy Apostles (15 July).14 Between 1356 and 1363 Isenhagen made further sales of income sources, which probably came as a result of the costs involved in establishing itself at its new location, after a fire destroyed part of the monastic complex.15 For Isenhagen’s nuns the years between 1385 and 1387 were difficult ones, and in 1385 they appealed to the bishops of Hildesheim, Bremen, Verden, Minden, and Paderborn and the inhabitants of their dioceses for support on account of their great poverty and because bad weather had ruined their harvests. The nuns noted in this appeal that their office of All Souls had witnessed numerous miracles and signs, and offered the possibility of establishing confraternities.16 Sales of the community’s income and possessions in the Lüneburg brine pits in the years immediately following this appeal provide further evidence of Isenhagen’s financial woes.17 The years between 1338 and 1348 also saw the sale of sources of income from salt by Wienhausen most likely to fund building projects and artwork.18 Although Wienhausen quickly recovered its losses, these sales foreshadowed the worse economic conditions of the fifteenth century and the effects of the reform that are discussed in detail in chapter 5. 12 

UKI, Urk. 202 (16 June 1343). UKI, Urk. 226 (18 January 1349) and UKI, 274 (s. d.). 14  Isenhagen, Klosterarchiv, Urk. 272a (20  August 1363), in Urkundenbuch Isenhagen (Ergänzung), ed. by Lampe. 15  UKI, Urk. 162 (6 March 1336). Isenhagen sold three chori, half a Fuder, and half a pan, which brought about 1500 marks used to build the new convent church: Bachman, Die Rentner, p. 185. UKI, Urk. 252 (19 June 1356), UKI, Urk. 255 (18 October 1357), UKI, Urk. 268 (7 December 1361), and UKI, Urk. 273 (8 November 1363). 16  UKI, Urk. 353 (24 February 1385). 17  UKI, Urk. 354 (13 January 1386), UKI, Urk. 355 (13 August 1386), UKI, Urk. 356 (13 August 1386), and UKI, Urk. 358 (29 October 1387). 18  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 272 (5 August 1338), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 285 (4 August 1341), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 286 (24  August 1341), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 292–93 (2 February 1344), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 301 (28 April 1348), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 305 (1 August 1350). Bachman, Die Rentner, p. 186, suggests Wienhausen alienated salt income for building. 13 

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The initial impression of the fifteenth century is of varied economic success. Only the convent of Medingen appears to have prospered in the early fifteenth century. In 1428 the community purchased a farm in Bevensen from the bishop of Verden for 1400 marks. Two years later, it purchased the tithes in Barum, along with tithes and a farm in Tätendorf, from the bishop of Verden for 600 marks.19 Also, in 1443 Medingen purchased from the city of Lüneburg for 1872 marks an annual rent of 104 marks, which would improve the nuns’ prebends and provide fresh meat or fish on Sunday or one other day of the week.20 The nuns also benefitted from the generosity of Brand Tzerstede, a city councilman in Lüneburg who in 1441 and 1444, at a total cost to himself of 675 marks, purchased annuities from the city of Lüneburg totaling forty-five marks to be paid to Medingen’s nuns.21 Yet in 1479, despite the acquisition of these properties and rents (or perhaps because of the considerable sums spent for them), the reformers of Medingen judged that the community did not have the means to finance its own reform; this may possibly have been because of usurpations by its provosts.22

Outside Interference and Encroachments Although protected somewhat by their salt income, the Heath convents also suffered during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from political disputes among Lower Saxony’s bishops, dukes, and cities. We see this for Wienhausen after a disputed episcopal election in the mid-fourteenth century greatly reduced the Hildesheim bishop’s patronage of monastic houses.23 Indeed in the course of a 1349 feud with Erich (the pope’s personal choice), Bishop Heinrich of Hildesheim (whom the pope refused to recognize) mortgaged some of Wienhausen’s possessions, and the nuns had to pay Bishop Heinrich 420 silver marks for his promise never again to mortgage the abbey’s goods.24 But the problem reappeared less than a century later when in 1433 Wienhausen paid another sum of 240 marks (192 Rheingulden) to Bishop Magnus, which he 19 

UKM, Urk. 439 (8 September 1428) and UKM, Urk. 440 (30 April 1430). UKM, Urk. 448 (23 June 1443). 21  UKM, Urk. 447 (1 February 1441), UKM, Urk. 461 (28 September 1444), and UKM, Urk. 459 (confirmation, 3 April 1447). 22  UKM, Urk. 524 (31 October 1479) and UKM, 533 (28 June 1481). 23  Scott, Society and Economy in Germany, p. 17. 24  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 302 (5 June 1349). 20 

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turned ‘to his chapter’s use and employed in his necessity’. In return, the bishop released the convent from having to pay the visitation fee of 14½ marks and 5 shillings; but since the nuns had had to borrow the Rheingulden given to the bishop from Hermann Schonehals, they hardly profited, for they henceforth owed Hermann and his heirs 13½ marks and 5 shillings per year for that loan.25 Wienhausen also suffered at the hands of its ducal overlords. In 1368 Duke William confirmed the income and holdings granted to Wienhausen by his predecessors, but only after making unlawful claims for protection, services, and appraisals.26 Duke Magnus in 1371 admitted that the dukes of BraunschweigLüneburg had attempted to exploit the convent for its money around midcentury. Reconfirming the convent’s possessions, he conceded that he had no right to demand money from Wienhausen or harm its farmers and servants.27 The need to secure such confirmation charters as a result of the ducal war over succession (the Erbfolgekrieg that lasted from 1370 to 1388 between the Welf and Askanier families) led Duke Albert in 1378 to grant the church of Bröckel to Wienhausen as reparation for the damages done during those wars; in his charter, he asserted that the convent’s finances had been so weakened that the nuns had resorted to begging outside the monastic confines ‘on account of their most serious need’.28 While the last may be hyperbole, it is clear that in the final decades of the fourteenth century Wienhausen, and possibly its patrons as well, had become impoverished. Only five charters in Wienhausen’s archives record donations to the community between 1351 and 1400.29 Occasionally, the Heideklöster joined forces to preserve their economic interests against encroachment by secular rulers. In 1392 they banded together to pressure the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg to promise not to encroach on the possessions of the ecclesiastical institutions within their duchy; to reaffirm the privileges and freedoms of the communities, including the right to free elections; and not to demand lodging for foreign princes and their retainers, but to protect the communities from war and aggression.30 The Lüneburger 25 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 450 (24 June 1433). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 330 (12 March 1368). 27  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 338 (24 May 1371). 28  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 348 (6 December 1378). 29  But Wienhausen’s nuns did receive small bequests; see Testamente der Stadt Braunschweig, ed. by Mack, i (1988), 118–21, 161–63; iii (1990), 441, 443, 561–65, 596. 30  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 384–85 (20  September 1392) and UKM, Urk. 401a (14 September 1392). 26 

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Prälatenkrieg, a conflict between the city of Lüneburg and its eminent salt prelates, began as early as 1388 and escalated between 1449 and 1462. It brought renewed difficulties for the Heath convents when the dukes of BraunschweigLüneburg exploited the Prälatenkrieg in order to win back territory. Then in 1482 the dukes came into conflict with the bishop and city of Hildesheim over a proposed beer tax. A decade later the dukes were embroiled in a contest with the city of Braunschweig, leading to another conflict with the cities in their territory known as the ‘Great Urban Dispute’, or Grosse Stadtfehde. As food prices climbed and provisioning became more difficult, disputes such as these affected the monastic houses in the region.31 Cistercian nuns faced additional financial demands when in 1488 Pope Innocent VIII decreed that every monastery living according to the Cistercian rule pay for the confirmation of its status and privileges with a tithe of its income to support the fight against the Turks — a tithe that the abbess of Wienhausen remarked was given freely, rather than because the abbey was subject to tithes.32 In 1488, as well, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick, responded to a complaint brought against Duke Henry ‘the younger’ of Braunschweig-Lüneburg by various monasteries including Wienhausen, asserting that the duke had appropriated their incomes and taxes by force; the Emperor ordered the duke to make restitution.33

Management by Provosts: Careful Providers or Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing? The management of property has usually been seen as having posed problems for professed religious women. It was an ecclesiastical commonplace that women, by virtue of their inherent physical, moral, and spiritual inferiority to men, required male guidance for both their spiritual care as well as for the management of their properties and provision of their necessities. This attitude justified the widespread appointment of provosts for such women’s communities as the Heideklöster. The provost oversaw the management of the properties held by the monastic institution and in this region was often powerful in his own right. For instance, the provosts of Ebstorf, Lüne, and Isenhagen num31 

On the general political situation and such disputes in late medieval Germany, see Scott, Society and Economy in Germany, pp. 27–55. 32  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 574 (13 February 1489). 33  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 572a (18 September 1488).

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bered among the salt prelates, a powerful group that participated in both the administration of Lüneburg’s brine pits as well as the most important political decisions of the dukedom.34 The day-to-day management and provisioning were often the preserve of the procurator, who was supervised in German convents by the provost. The provost often combined his economic responsibilities with legal and religious ones. At Wienhausen and Ebstorf the office of provost was combined with that of the archdeacon, which made him responsible for supervising the diocesan clergy and presiding over ecclesiastical courts in several parishes.35 Provosts oversaw the priests, chaplains, confessors, and scolares (the young boys destined for the priesthood), who served female communities.36 Sometimes provosts even assumed these roles themselves. A charter from the convent of Wienhausen, for example, stipulated that the provost conduct High Mass on feast days.37 Because of these spiritual responsibilities, provosts generally came from the ranks of the secular clergy or canons; regular clergy rarely served in this role. Heinrich Hellewede, for instance, provost of Wienhausen from 1396 to 1410, had been a canon in Bardowick.38 Finally, because of the wealth involved in such positions, dukes maintained a right to appoint their own favourites to these posts. The provost was generally responsible for the preservation, administration, and improvement of a community’s possessions. He oversaw the economic activity of the monastic estates, supervising farms and day labourers and providing to the community a yearly accounting of income and expenditures. The nuns of the Heath convents relied upon their provosts for necessities like food and drink, clothing and shoes, or materials for manuscript production and decorative embroidery; thus the sacrista’s book from Lüne noted that the prov34 

UKE, p. 166; Reinhardt, ‘Lüne’, p. 379; Lorenz-Leber, Kloster Lüne, p. 4. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 9 (24 April 1233); UKE, p. 182; Götke, ‘Wirtschaftsverhältnisse’, p. 259. 36  On scolares: Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 161 (17  September 1298), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 181 (9 April 1309), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 194 (2 June 1314), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 198 (29 August 1316), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 202 (17 April 1317), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 262–63 (1 December 1331), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 275 (2 February 1339), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 276–77 (24 April 1339). 37  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 505 (6 February 1473); Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauen­klöster, pp. 110–11; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, p. 770. 38  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 426 (29  June 1412); Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauen­klöster, p. 106. 35 

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ost was responsible for supplying paper and writing materials.39 The provosts of Ebstorf were similarly responsible for supplying the nuns with meat, fish, vegetables, spices, and beer.40 The relationship is documented most clearly for the fifteenth century. Thus a 1470 contract between Provost Helmold and Wienhausen’s community agreed that he should purchase bread and ‘good beer’ for them throughout the year and provide them with twelve fattened swine and ten cattle annually; four barrels of fresh butter, six barrels of herring, a ‘good piece’ of stockfish, three barrels of cheese, and 120 fowl each year; and thirty sheep every three years.41 By the late fifteenth century, a division had been made between the properties administered by the provost and those that remained under the monastic community’s administration. As a result, the provost often managed his own household and oversaw a separate workforce for the properties he controlled. At Ebstorf tithes of grain and meat were almost entirely under the administration of the provost, as were the majority of farms, fields, and other landed properties. The provost also controlled from a third to a half of the income that Ebstorf ’s community derived from the saltpans in Lüneburg. In fact, the provost of Ebstorf, with his control of extensive farms, tithes, and various courts, had achieved the status and power of a territorial lord by the late fifteenth century.42 The tension between the provost’s independent household administration and a community’s continued dependence on him, sometimes coupled with differences in social status, could lead to considerable conflict between the nuns and their provosts. It was well recognized, moreover, that the provosts had frequent opportunities for peculation, usurpation, and even alienation of conventual properties. Several charters from Medingen and Wienhausen suggest attempts by donors of memorials (and even provosts themselves) to prevent such usurpations. Thus, when Provost Dietrich Brand of Medingen purchased and donated half a chorus of salt to the convent in 1383 to support pittances for his own memorial, he made sure to stipulate that no future provost could interfere with 39 

Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23, ‘Amtsbuch der Sacrista’, fols 2v, 61v, 76v. Götke, ‘Wirtschaftsverhältnisse’, p. 257. 41  Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 108. Cf. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 495a (12 March 1470); Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 496 (26 November 1469); Lüneburg, KL, Hs 14, fol. 74; Nolte, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Nonnenklosters Lüne, p. 40. 42  Ebstorf ’s reform of 1496 led to the salt income being divided between provost and convent: Götke, ‘Wirtschaftsverhältnisse’, pp. 255–58. 40 

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this distribution. A year later Ludolf Ruscher, a city councilman in Lüneburg, placed a similar stipulation against any provost making claims to the distribution of income from the half plaustrum of salt he had conveyed to the nuns of Medingen.43 A donation to the convent of Wienhausen by the knightly family of Mahrenholtz in 1399 took similar precautions to preserve the properties conveyed to the office of the sacrista (or cüsterin), declaring that ‘the provost of this same convent of Wienhausen [shall not] … have any rights, duties or taxes, or possession or establishment of duties or duty payments, or use in the aforesaid properties’.44 Another source of strain between provosts and female communities stemmed from the considerable amounts the nuns might owe their provosts, in some cases because they were providing pensions to former provosts. When Egidius, cardinal bishop of Tusculum, resigned from his position as provost of Lüne in 1373, the convent was forced to provide him with a pension of 2,080 florins, paid out as an annual sum of seventy gold florins.45 A Wienhausen charter from 1411 mentions that the community used cash from the sale of salt income to pay off part of a debt of 700 marks owed to their former provost, Heinrich Hellewede.46 In 1490 the nuns of Walsrode faced similar claims of debts owed to their former provost, Rudolf von Sulde. Rudolf ’s brother, Bernard, a monk in the Cistercian monastery of Loccum, claimed that the nuns owed 700 Rhenish Gulden to their provost Rudolf, which Bernard now demanded. But on 10 November 1490, the new reforming prioress, Walburgis Gawerock, and nine senior nuns formally declared their ignorance to the notary, Heinrich Lessing, of this debt. Seven days later, having travelled to the convent of Ebstorf, where the former prioress and her sister had been sent following Walsrode’s reform, notary Lessing stood before the speaking window and recorded the statements of Margaret and Ghiselheidis Hudenbergh, who also testified that they had no knowledge of this debt.47

43 

UKM, Urk. 385 (19 December 1383); UKM, Urk. 386 (1 April 1384). For limits on the provost’s alienations, see UKM, Urk. 410 (22 March 1403). 44  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 399 (18 January 1399). 45  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 358–360 (1373), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 373 (1379), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 375 (8 July 1379), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 382 (26 August 1380), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 421 (20 September 1395), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 482 (18 June 1425). 46  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 440 (26 December 1417). 47  UKW, Urk. 320 (10 November 1490) and UKW, Urk. 321 (17 November 1490).

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In other cases, accusations emerging in the context of reform are not just of extorting pensions or claiming debts, but of provosts’ mismanagement. On the eve of its reform, Prioress Mechtild and the convent of Medingen wrote to the city council of Lüneburg to request aid after their provost, John Mahler, abandoned them in debt.48 Wienhausen’s reforming provost, Dietrich Tijtze, made numerous references to the mismanagement of his predecessors in the charters he issued, firmly placing the blame for Wienhausen’s economic problems on the exploitative practices of its provosts rather than on poor management by its abbesses.49 This was not the end of the difficulties that Wienhausen’s nuns faced with their provosts, however. Tijtze’s successor, Heinrich Wetemann (1478–90), was a poor administrator.50 Then between 1490 and 1496 Heinrich Schrader served as the convent’s provost, but was so bad that the nuns eventually got the duke to remove him.51 Simon Reineke (1496–1502) proved little better; not only did he have a concubine, but he sold tithes at four places without the knowledge of the nuns.52 A similar situation arose at Lüne where Dietrich Schaper, provost for the convent from 1440 until 1457, acquired a reputation as a notorious fornicator and who, along with his associates, caused significant damage to the convent. He and his mistresses were accused of stealing linen, cooking pans, valuables, and some 16,000 marks from the convent.53 Such financial depredations by provosts and their associates help to explain why in the fifteenth century the communities of nuns of this region found it 48 

UKM, Urk. 490 (October 1467). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 503 (21  December 1472), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 509 (29 September 1473), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 521 (11 April 1475), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 525 (10 April 1476), in which Bishop Henninghus confirmed income from the churches of Bröckel and Wienhausen to Wienhausen’s nuns and set the provost’s yearly salary at twenty marks. 50  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 51–54. 51  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 584 (24 October 1493). 52  The Wienhausen chronicle blamed the concubine more than the provost. Emphasizing her greed and presumption, the author noted that the besotted provost gave her ‘whatever she demanded from the convent’s goods, and did everything according to her desire and approval, no less than if she were the ruler of the entire convent’. And as he lay on his deathbed, ‘with absolute boldness, the maid made the steward carry many goods, both openly and secretly’. So thoroughly did she abscond with the provost’s property that ‘no other household items remained behind, except a bed’: see Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 55–56. 53  The nuns of Lüne also appear to have stood by their fallen provost, praising him in their records as ‘a man clever in spiritual and temporal things, prudent, circumspect, most constant, of proven virtue and expert’: Nolte, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Nonnenklosters Lüne, p. 102. 49 

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expedient to establish personal annuities for individual nuns or to allow those nuns to purchase annuities for one another. An important reason for such diversion of property from communal to individual support was to protect their sustenance from the peculations and bad management of their provosts. While ecclesiastical leaders expressed concern about the excessive or inappropriate possessions of monastic men and women, the issue was less about personal property per se, than about matters of secrecy, obedience, and superfluity, at least until the time of the Observant reforms in the fifteenth century.54 Looking beyond the Heideklöster, we see nuns at Cistercian Holy Cross near Braunschweig at odds with their provosts over the management of their farms in 1486 when they wished to receive cows at their farm in order to be able to make dishes using milk (lacticinia). Two years later, the nuns complained that their provost spent his time at his own home, engaged in building projects rather than in managing their affairs, and as a result the nuns lacked sufficient bread, wood, and charcoal. In 1491, with the appointment of a new provost, the author of the Konventstagebuch recorded the nuns’ hope that the new provost would help eliminate the debts caused by his predecessors through their lack of care, but instead the community’s debts grew.

The Gradual Rise of Personal Property at the Heideklöster A religious woman might have access to a source of personal funds (broadly defined as her peculium) through provisions made for her support (dowries and prebends), arrangements for income supplementary to the prebend to cover personal needs (Leibrente or Leibgedinge), or an income from an occasional distribution of coin as a pittance or because of the monastic offices she administered.55 She might spend her wealth for a variety of purposes. In 1362, Gertrud van Hamersin, a nun in Lüne, donated one talent for the purchase of a tonne of good beer and lights on the feast of St Thomas (21 December).56 A nun might also obtain a peculium through her own labour, for specific services such as notary work, needlework, cooking, or even showing up regularly at choir, the so-called ‘presence money’. At Lüne, in the wake of the convent’s reform, the 54 

Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 80–88; note that this volume has now appeared as Mixson, Poverty’s Proprietors, but the citations are still those to the dissertation. 55  Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, p. 460 defines the peculium as any property, but generally small, held by a religious person for her/his own use. 56  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 329 (25 July 1362).

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Table 2. Total Number of References in Fifteenth-Century Heideklöster Documents to Choir Nuns with Income. (Note that not all would have been alive at the same time.) Convent

Unknown 2 marks amount or less

4 marks

8 marks

10 marks Number of Choir or more Nuns with Property

Wienhausen

5

10

5

2

0

22

Medingen

19

45

8

8

2

82

Walsrode

35

24

2

0

1

62

Ebstorf

0

18

0

0

0

18

Lüne

9

35

10

7

0

61

Isenhagen

13

22

16

1

1

53

prioress rewarded the nuns upon completion of the large-scale embroideries with items of clothing, small loaves of bread, almonds, candles, gilded sweets, spiced wine, and small gilded eagles and roses (Table 2).57 Monastic officers called ‘obedientiaries’ also controlled the funds tied to their offices, including the duty of distributing to nuns the coins given by donors as pittances to encourage the nuns to pray for donors ‘pro salute animarum suarum’ (for the preservation of their souls).58 Secular donors might insist that specific nuns, especially their own relatives, serve as the administrators of such pious funds and offices involving the distribution of pittances as we see, for instance, at Medingen in the early fifteenth century.59 Such offices held by the nuns whose families had endowed them allowed their incumbents to demonstrate piety and devotion to a particular saint, to distribute food or coin throughout the community, and to gain monastic good will. Such offices also preserved those nuns and their families within the monastic memoria.

57 

Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23, ‘Amtsbuch der Sacrista’, fols 2 v, 61v, 76v; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 191; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 91, 110. 58  UKE, Urk. 165 (22 April 1322), UKE, Urk. 224 (19 February 1335), UKE, Urk. 407 (12 August 1397), UKE, Urk. 418 (13 March 1401), UKE, Urk. 429 (15 June 1406), UKE, Urk. 439, UKE, Urk. 440 (25 July 1414), UKE, Urk. 450 (25 July 1421), UKE, Urk. 465 (1 August 1430), UKE, Urk. 522 (28 July 1464), UKE, Urk. 543 (29 September 1469), and UKE, Urk. 545 (29 September 1469). 59  UKM, Urk. 415–17 (4 July 1413).

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Indeed, evidence from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries attests to individual property holding and provisioning among the Heath convents. This is a trend seen elsewhere. By the mid- to late fourteenth century, the monastic provisions that supported an individual had often assumed the form of a fixed rent or annuity, ‘contracted for and payable directly to the individual religious at regular intervals’, the monastic prebend (praebenda or Pfründe). In studying this topic among German, Austrian, and Swiss convents, Helga Schuller outlined a three-tiered hierarchy of monastic proprietariae similar to that found at the Heideklöster. The smallest, but most common, amount of private income possessed by the religious women in her study hovered between one and two pounds. These women generally belonged to families of the impoverished nobility or the lesser bourgeoisie. A middling group possessed around three or four pounds and often enjoyed individual cells. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy were the ‘top earners’ or Spitzenverdiener. These women had a yearly income that could surpass ten pounds and/or held substantial landed possessions. They often employed maids and sometimes enjoyed their own houses within the monastic complex. Such privileges allowed them to replicate a noble lifestyle within the confines of their monastic enclosures.60 By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Heath convents had developed into large communities, and a range of personal wealth is evidenced, although the exact details are elusive, in part because of our incomplete evidence for entrances, ages, deaths, or social class; even status within the community remains elusive. At first such income was held by only a small fraction of any community, and this probably remained the case for amounts of income significantly in excess of that of other nuns. Even if we have contracts that suggest acquisition of private income, it is often difficult to know what percentage of nuns held such private income at any one date. The contracts often do not tell us whether nuns were acting on their 60 

Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, p. 461. Annuities paid to the community may have provided a dowry solution for families unable to assemble a single lump sum; see Wien­ hausen, KW, Urk. 74 (5 April 1263), where the conveyance of a dowry and Leibgedinge appears by Henry Tymonis, citizen of Braunschweig, for his daughters entering Wienhausen. Similarly Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 43 (12 May 1278) records a certain Dietmar donating half a chorus of salt and two measures of wheat ad supplementum prebendarum for his sister in Lüne. A charter of 1434 from Wienhausen listed Drude van dem Sande, Mechthild [Metteke] Spade, and Elisabeth Velhauwers, as ‘clostervruwen’ (Low German for religious women). These same three women were listed among the dominae who died prior to 1501, and the Wienhausen chronicle described Elisabeth Velhauwers as the administrator of a chapel within the convent, or capellanin. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 15, 78.

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own behalf or that of the community. Similarly we do not know for how long a nun lived to enjoy such private income and often do not know if it was passed on to someone else in the community or had been shared out during the recipient’s lifetime. One pointer is found in the 1393 contract made when Medingen entered into spiritual confraternity with the Benedictine nuns in Arendsee, and the charter recording the agreement named all the nuns at Medingen at the time, as well as the lay sisters (sorores), servants, and retainers of the extended monastic familia. Of the eighty-eight choir nuns recorded in this document, twenty-eight were also mentioned in charters that concern private income or the purchase of annuities. Although in a few cases some may have been acting on behalf of the entire community, nonetheless nearly a third of Medingen’s nuns had some association with private funds or the purchase of annuities by the late fourteenth century.61 What is possible is to estimate the distribution of wealth at these individual communities, in ways similar to that done by Helga Schuller as discussed above. Wealth can be roughly divided into four levels. The largest group of those acquiring funds was that of nuns who received rents of less than two marks. A second group received three or four marks annually. A third group of women enjoyed annual income of between five and eight marks. A top level of earners had access to ten marks or more per annum. At all six houses, the greatest number of women with income held the smallest amounts, receiving less than two marks annually. Only a small number (only one or two at each community and possibly not concurrently) attained the level of a Spitzenverdiener (‘top earner’), with over ten marks per annum.62 Only at Medingen were there five individuals between 1400 and 1500 — and not necessarily all at once — having more than ten marks per year.63 The convents of the Lüneburg Heath were all mixed communities, composed of women drawn from local noble, patrician, and wealthy bourgeois 61 

UKM, Urk. 402 (1 June 1393). On some of these, see for Ebstorf, UKE, Urk. 463 (20 October 1429), UKE, Urk. 471 (31 July 1436), and UKE, Urk. 474 (15 June 1439). For Wienhausen, see Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 491 (9 August 1464) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 508 (24 August 1473). For Lüne, see Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 500 (25 June 1437), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 502 (25 July 1438), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 571 (23 June 1473), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 608 (31 December 1499); for Isenhagen, see UKI, Urk. 269 (14 February 1362). 63  For Medingen, see UKM, Urk. 383 (23 June 1383), UKM, Urk. 420 (10 September 1416), UKM, Urk. 461 (28 September 1448), UKM, Urk. 463 (3 February 1450), and UKM, Urk. 474 (26 February 1456). 62 

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families, yet the ratio of women with property from various groups differs from house to house. At each house, women from both the nobility and bourgeoisie appear as recipients and purchasers of annuities, but generally women from urban backgrounds appear more frequently as possessors of private income, annuities, or other forms of support. The predominance of bourgeois nuns as possessors of annuities or other forms of support, particularly during the fifteenth century, suggests that the custom of retaining private property may have originated among bourgeois recruits.64 Such distinctions reflect social origins, but sometimes in unexpected ways, for many more bourgeois than noble women are recorded acquiring such income; this may mean that the noblewomen’s income sources did not generate contracts. In any case, arrangements for and the size of income among the Heideklöster nuns were varied and often made by ad hoc arrangements; the increase in nuns having income up to the mid-fourteenth century was gradual, and often it was only in the face of threats to communal income (from provosts or outside authorities) that families and nuns began to establish such personal income. To the extent that is it possible to tell, only at Walsrode did more noble women than urban women appear as proprietariae. The count of Wölpe made the earliest such arrangement when he provided a prebend for his daughter entering Walsrode in 1270; in 1300 the knight Meinard von Altenesch also provided his two daughters in Walsrode with lifetime usufruct on a quarter of his land in Ober-Neuland.65 Still, by 1310 an annuity was paid to a bourgeois nun in Walsrode, the daughter of Albert Holle, a citizen of Lüneburg; it was based on the city’s saltpans.66 A tendency for such income to fund distributions to the community or devotional art must be underlined. Moreover, it must have come as something of a surprise to Heideklöster communities to be told by the reformers (as they would be in the mid-fifteenth century) that the forms of personal income they enjoyed represented the vice of proprietas. The nuns must have often thought that they had procured the necessary permissions for such funds, or it is possible that they believed that by entering the market in twos and threes in joint purchases of annuities for members of their communities (a widespread phenomenon seen among the Heideklöster, as discussed below), they continued to fulfill injunctions about the common life. 64 

Cf. Berman, ‘Cistercian Nuns and the Development of the Order’. UKW, Urk. 65 (8 April 1270) and UKW, Urk. 84 (7 July 1300). 66  UKW, Urk. 95 (10 May 1310); cf. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 74 (5 April 1263) and UKE, Urk. 59 (25 May 1294). 65 

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Many such religious women had received the approval of their male superiors for the transactions that provided them with personal funds, as was the case with the nuns of Walsrode who received episcopal sanction for the arrangements they made.67 The convent of Ebstorf received papal permission for its nuns to inherit and keep private possessions in 1259 and again in 1313.68 Some nuns specifically addressed the question of proprietas, arguing that the possession of funds for one’s necessities and other licit purposes was valid. For example, a charter of 24 February 1343 from the convent of Medingen documented the purchase of tithes in Almstorp by the prioress Mechtild of Medingen, the subprioress Elisabeth von Boizenburg, the cameraria Elisabeth von Bernowe, and one Gertrud von Verden, all ‘sanctimoniales et professe in Medinghe’ (nuns and professed women at Medingen). It recorded that the nuns had collected one hundred marks from parents and friends and that, notably, the provost had given them all special license for this purchase. The resulting income would provide for the necessities of the nuns and other persons and, upon the deaths of the four nuns, would support a pittance for the community on their anniversaries.69 Moreover, if we look more closely at other transactions by one of the principals acting in this charter, Gertrud von Verden, we see efforts to provide income more widely across the community, at least after her own death. In 1351, Gertrud joined a different two nuns, Gertrud von Repenstede and Ermgard Witte, in purchasing an annuity of three marks; while again in 1366 she joined six other women, including her nieces Gertrud and Herburg and the conversa Gertrud von Eppensen, to purchase a farm in Almstorp and a cottage in Thondorf for thirty-eight marks. Later in 1366, members of the same original group granted life income from the tithes at Almstorf to three other nuns: Elisabeth von Buxtehude, Margaret von Lubberstede, and Margaret Niebur.70 That many in the community benefitted would seem to be an important point of Gertrud von Verden’s efforts. Similar assertions were used to justify such personal wealth elsewhere. Thus in a charter dated 15 June 1300, two nuns from the convent of Waterler in 67  UKW, Urk. 166 (4 July 1360). At the end of Chapter 5 the issue of such approval by superiors is addressed briefly, but more generally. 68  UKE, Urk. 29 (28 October 1259) and UKE, Urk. 116 (1 March 1313). 69  UKM, Urk. 239 (24 February 1343). 70  UKM, Urk. 276 (27 March 1351), UKM, Urk. 349 (24 February 1366), and UKM, Urk. 352 (31 October 1366).

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Saxony noted that, given the abbess’s permission, the possession of private income for the payment of debts and other licit purposes did not contradict the Benedictine rule nor constitute proprietas.71 Those nuns also demonstrated their devotion to their own relic of the holy blood (like that at Wienhausen) when in 1334 Johanna von Derenburg, Bertradis von Schlanstedt, and Elisabeth von Levede purchased an annuity which would provide for the necessities of the divine cult, eventually stipulating that the income belonged specifically to the custrix for lights before the relic of the holy blood. Conrad, a lay brother at Waterler also provided income for two lights on the high altar and a third for the elevation of the Corpus Christi; this donation enabled him to demonstrate his personal devotion to the relic of Christ’s blood, for the charter specifically noted that his gift was in honour of the precious blood of Jesus Christ and the convent’s patron saint, Jacob.72 In 1357 four nuns from Waterler purchased, with the help of their parents and their own funds, one hide (mansus) and one field to be conveyed to the community in return for an annuity of one mark. The same charter described a second purchase of two more hides at another location, conveyed to Waterler for an annuity of two marks.73 Such arrangements benefitted both the religious community of women, which obtained the possessions purchased by individual nuns, as well as specific nuns who received an annuity from the convent from the properties they purchased. Such transactions were principally intended to provide for individual nuns, for it was stipulated that if the provost failed to provide the nuns with the annual three marks from the lands purchased, the nuns could manage the properties or choose a manager themselves. That the possession of personal funds was not the willful act of individuals, but accepted within communities, is demonstrated by a charter that documents the renunciation of one such prebend by a nun of Walsrode on 27 February 1325. Ermhard Winninghausen, a nun of Walsrode, as penance for an undisclosed sin that led to her expulsion from the community, also renounced her prebend. ‘With tears and sobbing’, but ‘without contempt of the place and the religious and renowned virgins waging war against sin for the dignity of God’, 71 

Urkundenbuch der Deutschordens-Commende Langeln, ed. by Jacobs (hereafter UKWa), Urk. 22 (15 June 1300), UKW, Urk. 48 (6 August 1307), and UKW. Urk. 50 (16 June 1309). 72  UKWa, Urk. 86 (24 March 1334), UKWa, Urk. 94 (22 December 1338), UKWa, Urk. 96 (18 December 1342), UKWa, Urk. 112 (30 April 1357), and UKWa, Urk. 161 (30 April 1453). 73  UKWa, Urk. 112 (30 April 1357).

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Ermhard confessed that she had sinned often ‘by my fault’. She made supplication ‘with humble prayer’ for indulgence, so that the Walsrode nuns might preserve her, ‘straying and rejected sheep that she was’, as a participant in their prayers and suffrages, so that she might be redeemed. While the charter documenting her renunciation of her prebend and her expulsion from the community reveals neither her sin (which was likely not one of having personal property), nor the amount of her prebend, it does suggest that the community did not reject the holding of prebends, but took them as a matter of course.74

Joint Property Acquisitions across Class Boundaries Already in the years between 1350 and 1450, many sorts of monastic women acting independently of male or secular help entered the marketplace for annuities, provisions, and even storage facilities for food. The earliest examples of nuns acting as such independent agents come from fourteenth-century Lüne, while Medingen’s nuns acted in this way only between 1350 and 1400. Isenhagen’s nuns also tended to act as individual purchasers after 1400, while nuns at the convents of Wienhausen and Ebstorf participated most actively in such transactions in the period from 1400 to 1450. Together, the charters suggest that personal property holding had increased by the end of the fourteenth century, as had the direct involvement of professed women in its administration and purchase. While transactions involving individual nuns may have concerned dowries, nuns of the Heideklöster frequently joined together to engage in economic transactions, and certain families and individuals appear repeatedly. 75 While the division of income in joint purchases may suggest differences in wealth, it also suggests the nuns’ efforts to create or supplement prebends for entire communities. The charters for Wienhausen document many such arrangements from an early date. In 1282 Wilburgis, a female citizen of Lüneburg, arranged for a postmortem conveyance of a plaustrum of salt to Wienhausen; she specified that one mark, four shillings (one talent) belonged to her two female relatives within the convent, Wibe and Gele, and that after the death of all three women, Wienhausen’s community would receive the entire income. 76 Such 74 

UKWa, Urk. 124 (27 February 1325). On dowries for Medingen: UKM, Urk. 33 (17  July1280), UKM, Urk. 100 (14 October1311), UKM, Urk. 195 (15 July 1336), and UKM, Urk. 197 (10 May 1336). For Lüne: Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 20 (1262), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 88 (13 March 1298), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 105 (9 April 1305), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 108 (15 September 1306), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 183 (18 September 1329). 76  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 118 (1282). 75 

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joint purchases often involved two to four individuals, and they often were based on family relationships — of sisters, aunts, and nieces.77 A charter from Ebstorf dated 30 October 1462, for example, documented an annual rent of five marks, six shillings to be held by four nuns at Ebstorf — the sisters Geseke and Elisabeth Papen and their cousins Barteke and Katherine Schomaker — in return for a loan of 108 marks, which they had provided to one Dietrich Wülsche of Lüneburg. The four cousins enjoyed this annuity for the duration of their lives, and the community benefitted from it after they died.78 Monastic women thus acted in ways similar to their secular counterparts, purchasing annuities that provided for their own comfort as well as supporting pious practices like memorials, intercessory prayers, anniversary masses, votive lights, pittances, and other forms of charity.79 Like secular donors, the religious women often stipulated that the funds be used for memorials after their deaths. Usually it was choir nuns who engaged in such transactions or had family members who engaged in such transactions for them, but lay sisters and prebendariae were not entirely excluded. In 1351 at Medingen, a lay sister from the convent’s mill named Gertrud (‘Gertrudis soror nostra in molendio’) spent fourteen marks to acquire a lifetime annuity of one mark, which she conveyed for her memorial upon her death.80 77  On familial networks: for Wienhausen, see Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 314 (6  July 1357), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 411 (6 December 1404), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 416 (1408), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 449 (1431), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 432 (15 April 1414), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 460 (1 November 1442), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 492 (1465). At Walsrode, see UKW, Urk. 119 (19 April 1322), UKW, Urk. 137 (2 November 1333), UKW, Urk. 167 (31  October 1360), UKW, Urk. 68 (31  October 1360), UKW, Urk. 219 (30  June 1394), UKW, Urk. 229 (12 October 1400), UKW, Urk. 235 (29 February 1404), and UKW, Urk. 248 (26 February 1412). On Ebstorf charters reflecting familial bonds: UKE, Urk. 165 (22 April 1322), UKE, Urk. 224 (19 February 1335), UKE, Urk. 247 (1 September 1347), UKE, Urk. 433 (23 June 1409), UKE, Urk. 455 (13 November 1425), UKE, Urk. 458 (28 June 1426), UKE, Urk. 471 (31 July 1436), UKE, Urk. 518 (30 October 1462), UKE, Urk. 520 (13 July 1464), UKE, Urk. 534 (2 May 1466), UKE, Urk. 536 (8 November 1466), and UKE, Urk. 556 (25 April 1475). 78  UKE, Urk. 518 (30 October 1462). Earlier the four cousins had been provided for by their aunt: see UKE, Urk. 458 (28 June 1426). Geseke and Elizabeth Pappen joined together again in 1466 to purchase another annuity of four marks from Hartwig Schomaker, the mayor of Lüneburg and presumably also a relative of theirs, for sixty marks. After the sisters’ deaths, the annuity remained with Ebstorf so that prayers might be said on behalf of their family. UKE, Urk. 536 (8 November 1466). 79  Signori, ‘Leere Seiten’, pp. 163–76; Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 40–41. 80  UKM, Urk. 281 (22 May 1351).

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At Lüne we also see nuns joined by men of their community to purchase annuities. For example, in 1331 Aleke Gelen, a nun at Lüne, joined Jakob von Lüne in purchasing two rumps of salt from the Lüneburg brine pits. Although the charter does not reveal Jacob’s precise status, the specification that his income be used for books for the scholars in Lüne suggests that he may have been a teacher there.81 In 1345 Provost Heinrich and Prioress Alheid of Lüne purchased a rump of salt from the nun Wichburg von Rene, half of which provided support for a nun named Kunegundis Pomeris.82 In 1367 two other nuns at Lüne, Margarete von Hamersen and Mechtild Huscow, joined Engelbert, a prebendiary at Lüne, to purchase a half chorus of salt, which they possessed during their lifetimes and converted to memorials after their deaths.83 In a complicated transaction from 1352, a plaustrum of salt was purchased by brother Johannes von Barendorp (‘noster confrater’), along with Ermengard Melbeck, and Lüne’s prioress, Giseltrud Willeri (1349–57); one rump belonged to Johannes for life and would provide a memorial for him after his death, a second was divided between the two women for personal income and support of various anniversaries, a third rump was for the provision of lights, and the fourth, similarly, was for altar wine and lights for Christmas and for memorials for citizens of Hamburg: Friedrich and Johannes Roden.84 The highest percentage of charters recording choir nuns in possession of personal income comes from between 1350 and 1400, when at least a third of the choir nuns may have had some private income. But by 1400, the Heath convents appear to have witnessed a decline in the number of choir nuns going out into the market to purchase new sources of rent. And so, if it was such purchases per se that the reformers railed against, the practice of entering the market may already have been declining before the reforms. Still, the overall number of women in possession of private income may have increased during this period because such income tended to be passed on within the communities. The same number of private holdings divided among a smaller number of nuns may have allowed the percentages of those left with private income to increase. For reformers, moreover, it was not merely the possession of private property, but the excessive nature of such property held by some religious men and women that constituted the vice of proprietas. 81 

Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 203 (14 December 1331). The other half rump provided for lights: Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 275 (22 May 1345). 83  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 347 (15 February 1367). 84  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 299 (25 February 1352). 82 

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Monastic Proprietariae as Internal Patrons Often contracts about income include stipulations about support of specific devotional practices, such as the provision of lights in honour of particular holy figures or before specific art or relics. As early as 1299, a nun named Wichburg from Wienhausen donated six marks to the community for the provision of a perpetual light in the nuns’ choir before the convent’s relic of Christ’s blood.85 In 1314 the nun Johanna von Hildersum gave Wienhausen twelve marks to establish candles before the Lord’s sepulchre on Saturdays.86 In 1331 the former abbess of Wienhausen, Margaret Bock, gave the community five marks for providing lighted candles before the relic of Christ’s blood on Saturday.87 Again, in 1344, three nuns helped Wienhausen repurchase income from salt from the Lüneburg brine pits, and Elisabeth Kruse, who served as the convent’s custos, stipulated that her income from that purchase be used to provide lighted candles before the convent’s relic of Christ’s blood.88 By establishing perpetual lights before Christ’s sepulchre and blood, Wienhausen’s nuns utilized individual property to emphasize their devotion to the humanity of Christ and their most prized relic. Sometimes these donations of income to individual nuns, as at Medingen and Lüne, clearly specified that they served to augment and improve the possessor’s prebend (‘ad supplementum prebendarum; ad meliorationem prebende’), but they often did more — funding lights or pittances or supporting the poor.89 Thus, four charters from the convent of Lüne united provision of annuities for individuals with support of lights in honour of the Virgin, the Five Wounds of Christ, and All Souls, or lights on the feast of Corpus Christi; indeed several 85 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 162 (1299) and cf. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 186 (7 February 1313). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 189 (12  January 1314) suggests an earlier sepulchre for the effigy of Christ before that commissioned by Abbess Katharina von Hoya in 1448; on which, see next chapter. 87  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 259 (9 September 1331); Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. XXII. 88  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 292–94 (2 February 1344); cf. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 300 (15 June 1347), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 301 (28 April 1348), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 306 (14 August 1350). 89  UKM, Urk. 100 (14 October 1311), UKM, Urk. 118 (3 November 1318), and UKM, Urk. 121 (27 October 1319); Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 43 (12 May 1278), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 98 (8 July 1303), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 104 (13 December 1305), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 112 (2 March 1310), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 176 (23 March 1327), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 191 (28 May 1330), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 236 (1 May 1339). 86 

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charters from Lüne record donations of income by its nuns to provide lights.90 At Lüne in 1329, two nuns, Tidburg Leonardi and Elisabeth Hollo, described as sponsae Christi, purchased a rump of salt from the pans in Lüneburg, which they then divided into thirds, one of which Tidburg designated for the perpetual provision of lights on the day of the Innocents (28 December), that of the Annunciation, and the feast days of Saints Kilian, Jacob, Maurice, Michael, Katherine, and Benedict, and the 11,000 virgins. The other two-thirds belonged to Elisabeth Hollo and provided for the support of Mechtild Abbenborg while she attended the convent school. Later, that salt income would support lights on the already specified feast days and on that of the Circumcision and the nativities of both the Virgin Mary and Saint Matthew.91 Similar arrangements appear in other contracts for the community, for instance, when Mechtild de Dannenberg, designated ‘professa in monasterii Lune’ (a professed woman in the convent of Lüne), donated three marks’ annual rent to provide lights before the Corpus Christi in 1399.92 At Walsrode the devotional bequests and grants of support gradually meld into one type of grant after the mid-fourteenth century, when bequests concentrating on memorials and lights increasingly came to have a component of lifetime support for individual nuns. Often such individual support for a lifetime, however, also enabled specific devotional preferences. Thus, in 1333 five nuns from the convent of Walsrode (Hebelen von Thus, Margaret Hogheherten, and the sisters Adelheid, Odilia, and Alburgis Schorlecken) purchased a half plaustrum of salt from the Lüneburg saltpans, income that provided for postmortem memorials on their behalf.93 In November 1350 the donors Beate and Hartwig Abbenburg purchased an annuity from the saltpans in Lüneburg for the support of Wichburg Kokes (their daughter?) at Walsrode; after she died, seven shillings annually were to be used to provide for lights and two shillings for the anniversaries for all three mentioned. The nun who collected these funds (‘domina vero collectrix’) would have two shillings for her labour, and any additional income was to be distributed equally among the Walsrode nuns — the first hint of personal income at this house.94 90 

Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 50 (22 August 1282), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 58 (1288), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 182 (8 March 1329), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 199 (1331), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 347 (13 July 1367); and for Isenhagen, see UKI, Urk. 343 (5 April 1382) and UKI, Urk. 349 (22 July 1383). 91  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 182 (8 March 1329). 92  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 456 (26 May 1399). 93  UKW, Urk. 137 (2 November 1333). 94  UKW, Urk. 160 (23 November 1350).

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A flurry of activity in support of lights dates to July 1360 when three Walsrode nuns — Beke Kleinkokes, Abelen Scherliken, and Greta (Margaret?) Wittorf — assembled twenty-six and a half Bremen silver marks for the purchase of a farm in Alboizen. With the approval of the bishop they designated that the revenues be used, not for their personal utility, but for supporting lights and memorials, including memorials for Wichburg Kokes and her parents (the memorial supposedly funded in 1350), lights before images of the Holy Cross and the Virgin, and lights for Beke Kleinkokes’s own memorial. The other two nuns, Abelen Schorliken and Margarete Wittorf, used their shares for lights in honour of the Virgin and Saints Peter and Paul.95 In October of that same year, 1360, we see two additional purchases made on the same day. First, four nuns at Walsrode and two prebendariae (secular corrodians) purchased a half plaustrum of salt in the Lüneburg saltpans. The nun Sophia Balghe immediately turned over her income to fund lights in honour of the Virgin, and the other three nuns — Gertrud, Mechthild Raddeges, and Ermengard Advocati — along with the prebendaria, Giseke Paghencop, directed that their funds be used for their own memorials after their deaths. The second prebendaria, Mechthild Linthorn, however, received her income to dispose of as she wished — if this was for personal income, it must be pointed out that she was not a nun. 96 In the second charter from that year, a half plaustrum was divided equally in two parts, one purchased by two nuns — Beke Hellewede and Gisela Ulla — and the other by a group of three nuns — the sisters Alburgis and Elisabeth Wensen and Adelheid von dem Hofe. It seems to have been used for lights for the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary — the division perhaps represented their contributions to the purchase.97 In 1362 two of the nuns from this second charter group — Beke Hellewede and Gisela Ulla — purchased another half plaustrum of salt along with three other Walsrode nuns — Walburgis Kokes, Ermedrudis van Alden, and Mechthild van Stockem. Walburgis Kokes got the largest rent, a whole rump, and, perhaps anticipating her own death, used it to support pittances for her postmortem memorial. The other four nuns divided the second rump among themselves for diverse purposes: Beke Hellewede and Gisela Ulle devoted their income to the purchase of altar wine for Easter, while Ermedrudis van Alden and Mechthild van Stockem kept the income for life and devoted it after their deaths to lights for All Souls and the Corpus Christi feasts.98 95 

UKW, Urk. 166 (4 July 1360); but see UKW, Urk. 160 (23 November 1350). UKW, Urk. 167 (31 October 1360). 97  UKW, Urk. 168 (31 October 1360). 98  UKW, Urk. 170 (6 July 1362). 96 

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Sometimes such a bequest was initiated by women already inside the community, but often it must have come from outside and, as we see in the next chapter regarding the case of Katharina von Hoya, was initiated by parents. This was also true in some cases at Walsrode where in 1367 Mechthild, mother of the nun Amelie van Gilten, provided income for her daughter and for the nuns of Walsrode when she purchased a farm in Brock. She directed that annual income from the farm would provide Walsrode’s nuns with half a mark each to be used for their clothing. Amelie would receive another twenty-eight shillings from the same property for life, to revert to Walsrode’s common support after her death.99 At Walsrode the nun Margaret Wittorf can be seen by 1381 emerging as one of the large spenders and substantial patrons of her community of nuns. Margaret provided cash for Walsrode’s operating expenses in return for annuities for herself and others, but also devoted considerable attention to personal pious purposes, in particular to her devotion to Corpus Christi. Gathering money provided by her friends and relatives, Margaret Wittorf purchased a plaustrum of salt from the convent’s own possessions in the Lüneburg saltpans that she then diverted (along with the gift of a farm in Bierde, jointly purchased in 1375) to the support of a fourth priest to perform daily Masses in the convent’s Corpus Christi chapel.100 Two years later, in 1383, Margaret purchased a farm in Einzingen for her own support and for pittances for her fellow nuns. Margaret directed that after her death the nuns should distribute two marks among themselves on the feast of Corpus Christi, receive eight shillings at Christmas and Easter, and receive two shillings in return for prayers on her behalf. She also stipulated that six shillings would support lights on the altar of that chapel during Mass.101 Further arrangements made by Margaret Wittorf in 1390 using another 150 marks from her own funds and those of her friends continued to support that fourth priest for the honour of Corpus Christi and the distribution of pittances to secure her own and her family’s remembrance, while also providing charity and comfort to her fellow nuns. Thus through her various purchases, Margaret Wittorf demonstrated her wealth, social status, and personal connections, as well as her own particular devotion to the Corpus Christi, confirming her role as what we would call an active fund-raiser and internal patron of the convent 99 

UKW, Urk. 177 (29 November 1367). UKW, Urk. 184 (12 March 1375) and UKW, Urk. 187 (1 February 1381). 101  UKW, Urk. 188 (15 March 1383). 100 

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of Walsrode.102 Such large sums expended for income, presumably to be dispersed among the nuns in some form, at least at some future date, indicate once again the presence of large spenders and internal patrons in such communities. As Walsrode entered the fifteenth century, more emphasis was placed on personal pensions. In 1400 eleven women from Walsrode, including the lay sister ‘Ghertrud conversa’ and the future prioress Richardis Honhorst (1407–13), purchased a half chorus of salt from the Lüneburg saltpans from two female citizens of Lüneburg for 240 Lüneburg marks. Here clearly personal pensions were involved, and the nuns divided up the income among groups of three and four.103 Four years later, in 1404, two of the nuns involved in this earlier purchase, Adelheid and Elisabeth Bockes, joined a different group of five nuns to purchase more plaustra of salt. Half a plaustrum was shared by Adelheid and Elisabeth Bockes; Elisabeth Vosses received an entire plaustrum for herself; a third half-plaustrum was shared by the nuns Kunegund, Anezadels and Mechthild Hoppener, and Adelheid von Stade.104 Such complex bequests and distributions are attested elsewhere among the Heath convents.105 The testamentary bequest made in 1324 by Provost Johannes of Lüne, for example, conveyed a half-plaustrum in the Lüneburg saltpans to the convent of Lüne with the stipulation that it be divided into two equal parts. The first part provided for lights for the Nativity of Christ and then also for the memory of Johannes’ mother. The second half was designated for his own use as provost during his lifetime and for his sister, Sophia, a nun in Lüne, after his death.106 A variety of worldly and spiritual concerns thus intersected in arrangements that supported individual monastic women and the men associated with them. At Ebstorf in 1347 two sisters who were nuns purchased an annuity of eight shillings from the brine pits for their personal use, but it devolved after their deaths onto the community in exchange for memorials for themselves and their family.107 102 

UKW, Urk. 205 (12 March 1390), with confirmation of UKW, Urk. 217 (24 June 1393) and UKW, Urk. 233 (23 September 1401). Cf. UKW, Urk. 196 (19 November 1384), UKW, Urk. 231 (27 March 1401), and UKW, Urk. 256 (5 June 1413), for related gifts. 103  UKW, Urk. 229 (12 October 1400). 104  UKW, Urk. 235 (29 January 1404). 105  For examples of support for lights before Corpus Christi altars, see UKE, Urk. 429 (15 June 1406); UKI, Urk. 280 (21 January 1366). 106  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 163 (1 May 1324). 107  UKE, Urk. 247 (1 September 1347) and UKE, Urk. 427 (21 September 1404).

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Half a century later, in 1397, the former prioress of Ebstorf, Berta von Boldensele, joined with Heinrich up dem Dore to purchase an annuity to provide pittances for Ebstorf ’s choir nuns. 108 In 1425 the former mayor (Bürgermeister) of Lüneburg arranged for a testamentary bequest of two marks to be paid to his daughters, Greteken and Geseken, nuns in Ebstorf, for the duration of their lives; after their deaths, the convent would have the income for a memorial for the mayor and his wife as well as for his parents.109 Something similar is seen in 1443, when the widow of the mayor of Lübeck purchased an annuity of five marks from the city of Lüneburg, which she donated to the entire community of Ebstorf.110 At Ebstorf such arrangements made by families of religious women often served more than one purpose, providing money for the material support of their relatives who were nuns; funding the pious observance of memorials, anniversaries and votive masses, and even chapels; and providing special pittances or charity to monastic women. In 1426 Katharina Gronehagen, a widow and citizen of Lüneburg, provided her daughter Geseke, a nun in Ebstorf, with life income from a plaustrum of salt, but stipulated that three marks of this income be given yearly to the poor and sick people of Saint Nicholas in Bardowick. After the daughter’s death, the annuity was to be given to the donor’s granddaughters, Geseke and Elisabeth Pappen and Beteke and Katherine Schomakers, if they decided to make professions at Ebstorf, but the three marks should continue to be given to the poor.111 Three sisters of the Wichtenbeck family, also early fifteenth-century nuns at Ebstorf, similarly purchased an annuity of three marks at a cost of forty-eight marks in the early fifteenth century, providing for themselves as long as any one of them should live, but after all their deaths to provide for a memorial for themselves, their parents, and their friends, with pittances distributed to the clergy, candles in the nuns’ choir, and a mark for white bread for the nuns during Lent and Advent.112

108  UKE, Urk. 407 (12 August 1397); see also UKE, Urk. 418 (13 March 1401) and UKE, Urk. 450 (25 July 1421). 109  UKE, Urk. 455 (23 November 1425). 110  Bequests for daughters are found in UKE, Urk. 463 (20 October 1429) and UKE, Urk. 484 (28 June 1443); cf. UKE, Urk. 534 (2 May 1466). 111  UKE, Urk. 458 (28 June 1426), UKE, Urk 518 (30 October 1462), and UKE, Urk 536 (8 November 1466); her granddaughters entered Ebstorf. 112  UKE, Urk. 433 (23 June 1409), UKE, Urk. 453 (4 April 1423), and UKE, Urk. 463 (20 October 1429).

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Donors to Ebstorf might combine charitable support for individual nuns (often their relatives) with provision of lights. Thus, in 1439 Dietrich von Swalen of Lüneburg arranged for an annuity of ten marks for his daughter Hilliken, a nun in Ebstorf, eight of which marks would, after her death, provide for the performance of memorials for himself and his wife and daughter, and the last two marks going to the light dedicated to the Holy Spirit in the marketplace of Lüneburg.113 Similarly, when the former provost of Ebstorf, Hildebrand von Eltze, drew up his will in 1477, he provided a lifetime annuity of two Rhenish florins (Gulden) for his sister, Geseke van Eltze, a nun in Medingen, with the money reverting after her death to the nuns of Ebstorf. 114 Such stipulations that rents or possessions owned by individual choir nuns during their lifetimes devolve onto the convent after their possessor’s death thus allowed donors to combine support of family members with charity for the monastic community and for nuns themselves to act as donors. Like other pious donations, memorial arrangements that placed relatives in control of the funds enabled donors to support both individual family members as well as the broader monastic community. Such arrangements varied in their ultimate outcomes. Thus at Medingen, while the donation made in 1336 by Ludolf Burmester for his daughter, Adelheid, specifically stated that the income she derived from the half plaustrum of salt should be used for her clothing, shoes, and other provisions during her novitiate, four shillings were designated for her personal use.115 In 1349 Friedrich Rode, a citizen of Hamburg, provided his aunts at Medingen with an annual rent of three marks to possess during their lifetimes; after their deaths it would support a memorial for Friedrich and his brother.116 In establishing income in 1358 and 1359 for their daughters in Medingen, Dietrich von der Molen and Johannes von Melbeke specified that, after their respective daughters’ deaths, the latters’ income would revert to their siblings or secular heirs.117 In 1407 Otto Garlop donated a half plaustrum in 113 

UKE, Urk. 474 (15 June 1439), UKE, Urk. 439 (25 July 1414), and UKE, Urk. 440 (25 July 1414). 114  UKE, Urk. 561 (21 October 1477). 115  UKM, Urk. 195 (22 February 1336) and UKM, Urk.197 (10 May 1336). 116  UKM, Urk. 270 (4 December 1349). 117  UKM, Urk. 322 (23 August 1358), UKM, Urk. 326 (18 February 1359); see also UKM, Urk. 351 (7 September 1366), UKM, Urk. 393 (20 December 1386), UKM, Urk. 396 (23 June 1390), UKM, Urk. 461 (28 September 1448), UKM, Urk. 463 (3 February 1450), and UKM, Urk. 476 (13 May 1457). Gertrud von Repenstede shared with her brothers: UKM, Urk. 327 (29 May 1359) and UKM, Urk 334 (15 June 1361).

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Lüneburg’s saltpans to the convent of Medingen for the provision of two pittance meals, stipulating that his sister Walburg (Webbeke) serve as administrator of these funds and be allowed to keep any extra money for herself.118 Some of the wealthiest nuns acted as donors or patrons of their own communities. Nuns at Isenhagen and Lüne occasionally helped their communities purchase lands and other income by providing loans of ready cash as well. In 1398 Adelheid Vrund, a nun in Lüne, provided the convent with twenty marks, which it used to purchase properties in Vrestorf. In return, Alheid received an annual payment of two marks from another of the convent’s properties. The charter also recorded her donation of one Bremen mark for the support of lights in the convent.119 Prior to her donation in 1439 of fifteen marks annually, which she designated for the purchase of Salzwedeler beer for the female servants of Isenhagen on feast days, Beke Brüggen, prioress of Isenhagen (1443–46), had received income of as much as thirty marks, in addition to tithes, from a farm in Wentorf. 120 In 1447 Beke and Katharine Greving, a former prioress and an obedientiary for the office of All Souls of Isenhagen, together provided their community with 150 marks (eighty and seventy marks respectively) to purchase properties in Osingen, as well as to support memorials and the office of All Souls.121 At Wienhausen, Adelheid Arndes received an annual rent of twelve Gulden — between eighteen and twenty-five marks, depending on whether these were Lübeck Gulden or Rhenish Gulden. Another such Spitzenverdiener at Wienhausen was Katharina von Hoya, whose annual income of more than twenty-five marks is examined in the next chapter.122 The transactions of the women of the Mahrenholtz family at Wienhausen also illustrate how wealthy nuns emerged as important patrons who could provide their communities with loans for purchasing or redeeming land or producing income. In 1386 Olgard Mahrenholz (later abbess of Wienhausen) and Elisabeth Mahrenholtz, along with Gertrud van Langeln, cellaress and 118 

UKM, Urk. 387 (24 April 1384), UKM, Urk. 388 (26 May 1384), UKM, Urk. 412 (29 November 1407), UKM, Urk. 427 (10 February 1420), and UKM, Urk. 428 (14 March 1420). 119  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 451 (26 November 1398). 120  Isenhagen, Klosterarchiv, Urk. 432b (26 October 1434); UKI, Urk. 434 (19 July 1435), UKI, Urk. 435 (21 May 1436), UKI, Urk. 437 (1 July 1436), and UKI, Urk. 444 (28 June 1439). Beke Brüggen later made a donation of eighty marks to the convent; UKI, Urk. 459 (28 October 1447). 121  UKI, Urk. 459 (28 October 1447). 122  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 536 (1 May 1478) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 430 (11 October 1412).

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procuratrix of the lighted candles before the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, contributed money towards the purchase of a farm in Eklage. In return, they shared an annual income of twenty-four shillings from this property. Then, in 1399 Adelheid, Greta, and Elisabeth van Mahrenholtz conveyed eighteen marks of their own money, collected from their ‘vrunden’ (friends or relatives), so that the convent might purchase about sixty acres in Harber. The three sisters received the usufruct of the property for their lives; upon their deaths, the income belonged to the infirmarian for use in purchasing oil for the lamp before Christ’s effigy in the church. Included in the same charter was the individual contribution of Ilsebe van Mahrenholtz, who purchased fifteen additional acres in Harber for another five and a half marks. She kept usufruct in this property; after her death, the income again went to the infirmarian for the same purpose: to provide oil for a lamp before the effigy of Christ, a statue that had important symbolic associations for the nuns of Wienhausen.123 This family was involved in complex annuity purchases that appear to be dowry transactions. Thus, in 1413 at Wienhausen, Provost Johann van Holthusen and Abbess Olgard van Mahrenholz sold a bushel of wheat malt from their malt house to Ilseben Holsten and Ilseben van der Heyde, described as ‘spiritual virgins in our convent of Wienhausen’, who paid fifteen marks. 124 The former Wienhausen abbess, Olgard van Mahrenholtz, took similar precautions when she purchased an annuity of about two marks, five shillings in 1427. Not only did she obtain the right to bequeath her annuity to another nun within the community, but she also ensured that she could reclaim her money if her annuity was not paid at the appropriate times.125 The Heath convents were unusual neither in their devotional choices nor use of wealth, as a few examples from elsewhere show. The testament and donations of Klara zum Rhein (c. 1455), prioress of the unreformed convent of Klingental and the sister of Basel’s Bishop Friedrich zum Rhein (d. 1451), reveal intentions to provide for the liturgy and decoration of the church of Klingenthal, providing Mass and Sequence books worth twelve Gulden, a Monstrance worth twenty-eight Gulden, and memorials for her parents and siblings, many 123 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 369–70 (4  March 1386) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 404 (13 December 1399). 124  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 431 (20 January 1413) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 460 (1 November 1442); Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 78, LIII. 125  Olgard van Mahrenholz, abbess of Wienhausen (1405–22); Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 448 (9 October 1427), described her as ‘a virgin in God’.

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of whom (except for Klara’s parents) were members of the community.126 At Cistercian Lichtenthal near Baden-Baden, successive abbesses arranged for the support of specific nuns in the fourteenth century, and personal gifts that fell to the convent after the death of their individual monastic possessors are recorded in the necrology, including gifts of money, artwork, glass, and textiles. For instance, in 1344 Abbess Agnes von Baden arranged for a rent of five quarters of grain to go to the nun Lutgard Rise; after the latter’s death, two quarters went to her fellow nun, Katharina von Weissenburg, and the other three reverted to the community. Again, in 1360 Abbess Agnes made a similar arrangement for two other nuns.127 Visitors and reformers often railed against the bonds of friendship and worried about cliques that might arise within monastic communities. It is possible, but unlikely, that such ties played a role in the joint transactions of the women in the Heath convents, but my examination of the evidence suggests that the groups involved in such transactions were constantly changing. An exception may be seen in the contract of 1344 in which four nuns from Lüne (Mechtild Bertoldi, Margarete Hardvici, Hadwig Hetvelde, and Windelburg von dem Berg) joined together to purchase a half plaustrum of salt for eighty marks; half a rump from this purchase supported Mechtild von Dannenberg for life, while the remaining portions provided for lights. There are indications that these nuns formed a group around Mechtild Bertoldi, but if this was a clique, it was exceptional.128 Late medieval nuns like those of the Heath convents viewed private provisioning as a means to support community. Indeed, the Wienhausen chronicle suggests that private funds could actually strengthen the bonds of community by supporting devotional practices, aiding a community in financial need, or providing pittances and lights. In the opinion of this anonymous nun who authored the chronicle, individual incomes benefitted the entire community, maintaining its aristocratic image and enhancing the spiritual capital and status of a house.129 Abbesses, prioresses, and other wealthy nuns regularly assumed the role of patron within their own communities, using their spiritual stature and familial connections to secure financial support, support building campaigns, commis-

126 

Signori, ‘Leere Seiten’, pp. 163–73. Schindele, ‘Die Abtei Lichtenthal’, pp. 81–89. 128  Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 268 (31 March 1344). 129  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 25. 127 

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sion artwork, and acquire spiritual benefits.130 Individual nuns in possession of private funds engaged in identical acts of internal patronage on a smaller scale. Religious women who used such private income to support their communities through donations or loans, who promoted specific devotional practices (like lights before cultic objects, crowns and robes for statues of the Virgin, liturgical texts and textiles, or memorials and anniversaries), or who provided for the comfort of their fellow sisters through pittances or other donations, engaged in the same customary acts of pious patronage as aristocratic and bourgeois women.131 Indeed, it is generally accepted that the role of patron was one of the few well-sanctioned public roles for women in the Middle Ages, although certainly not the only one; such a role enabled wealthy women (whether nuns or secular women) to express their own spiritual interests and concerns. The actions of the nuns in Lüneburg’s Heideklöster thus reflected the broader cultural assumptions that tied gender, status, and piety to wealth and individual acts of patronage. Such acquisitions of personal property at all the Heath convents present a particularly complex issue because accusations of holding personal wealth and excess (however widespread such practices might have been and however justifiable) would become the thin edge of the wedge allowing reformers to be introduced in the mid-fifteenth century.

Poor Little Nuns Who Could Not Manage Money? That such religious women in the late medieval Heideklöster often pooled their resources in order to enter the market place to purchase annuities for their own and their religious sisters’ support is a reflection of their ability to manage resources optimally, for their ability to bargain for the best resources would have been enhanced by the joint expenditure of larger sums. It may also have been that by engaging in such joint endeavours such nuns sought to protect themselves from complaints from their sister-nuns or ecclesiastical superiors about personal use of wealth. Whether or not this is true, on a less exalted level we often see a combination of sharp business sense and pious intentions, as 130 

See McCash, ‘Cultural Patronage: An Overview’, pp. 1, 16–23; Caviness, ‘Anchoress, Abbess, and Queen’, pp. 124, 138; essays in Taylor and Smith, Women and the Book; Gill, ‘Open Monasteries for Women’, pp. 21, 31; Valone, ‘Roman Matrons as Patrons’, pp. 49–72; Smith, Fleming, and Halpin, ‘Court and Piety’, pp. 94–104; Mecham, ‘Breaking Old Habits’; and various works by Jeffrey Hamburger. 131  Kamerick, Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages, p. 86; French, ‘“I leave my best gown as a vestment”’; Ziegler, ‘Reality as Imitation’, pp. 122, 125.

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in the arrangements made by two Ebstorf nuns, Beke van dem Lo and Greta Wichtenbeck, to purchase an annuity of one mark over the house owned by Ludwig Wulf, a citizen of Lüneburg, in 1423. They arranged to receive their annuity in payment of four shillings distributed four times a year — on Saint John’s day in midsummer, on Saint Michael’s day (29 September), at Christmas, and at Easter. The women specified that after they had enjoyed the annuity for the duration of their lives, it should be given to another woman, one Beke van Linde, if she still lived. After Beke van Linde’s death, the amount devolved upon Ebstorf to be used for a memorial administered by the cüsterin and cameraria.132 Examination of the nuns’ annuity purchases at Wienhausen reveals the business sense of those nuns as well. In 1408 three nuns from Wienhausen joined together to purchase a perpetual annuity of one mark, four shillings from a mill. They stipulated that their money should be paid even if the mill providing the annuity was damaged or uninhabited, and they retained the right to bequeath their annuity to another member of the community or to use it to keep up the fires in the bathhouse.133 The nuns’ management expertise is also reflected in clauses about devolution of income and making assurances that loans made to the community should be repaid as annuities. Thus in 1396 Adelheid van Wirte, a nun of Wienhausen who had loaned the convent money in 1379, contributed fourteen marks towards the purchase of a farm in the village of Eklage. The charter arranged that the rent of one mark from this property belonged to Adelheid and two other nuns, Soffie van Gravenhorst and Soffie van Zellenstedt, but Adelheid retained the right to convey the annuities of the two Soffies to other nuns in the future.134 In 1414 the provost and abbess of Wienhausen sold space within a storehouse to Sophie von Zellenstedt, Sophie (Soffeken) van Wirte, and Gheseke Stymes for their lifetimes, with reversion after their death to a memorial for the provost of Ebstorf, Raboden van Wirte, Sophie van Wirte’s brother.135 In 1431 the prioress of Wienhausen, noblewoman Mechthild von Oppershausen, and her sub-prioress, Margaretha, along with another nun, Sophie von Zellenstedt, similarly loaned the provost and abbess of Wienhausen seventy marks for the purchase of swine. In return the nuns received an annuity of ten marks until they were reimbursed.136 In 132 

UKE, Urk. 453 (4 April 1423) and UKE, Urk. 471 (31 July 1436). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 416 (20 January 1408). 134  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 386 (24 February 1393). 135  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 432 (15 April 1414). 136  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 449 (29 September 1431). 133 

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1468 another of Wienhausen’s nuns, Adelheid Werckmesters, who twelve years earlier had arranged for her own annuity of one mark, gave the convent twelve marks cash that would provide the nuns, Greta and Wuneken Suringes, with a lifetime annuity of one mark, four shillings.137 When the prioress, cüsterin, and cameraria of Ebstorf (Gese van der Molen, Elisabeth Raven, and Greta van dem Heimbroke) joined together in 1459 to purchase an annuity of four marks, they protected their own interests by insisting that the annuity would continue to be paid even if the farm on which it was based became uninhabited or fell on hard times.138 By such means, individual nuns exercised their patronage, piety, and charity on an individual level, using their income or their loans to provide for the personal support or comfort of their monastic friends and family, as well as for themselves.139 They also showed their abilities to manage property and income with capabilities that are often denied when medieval religious women are discussed. The cost of some of the annuities purchased by the nuns of the Lüneburg Heath provides a final indication of the amounts of money religious women might have had at their disposal. Charters from Lüne document individuals paying sums between fifty and a hundred marks in exchange for annuities.140 Similarly astounding would be the 150 marks paid in 1431 by an individual nun at Walrode, Metta Hoppener, for an annual return of a half wagonload of salt from the Lüneburg saltpans, although how this income was to be expended is less explicit.141 Such purchases indicate the considerable amount of money that religious women might be able to amass, but more typical were the sums of fifteen to thirty marks paid by the nuns of the Heideklöster for annuities of one or two marks.142 137  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 477 (13  February 1456) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 494 (30 November 1468); cf. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp.78, LV. 138  UKE, Urk. 512 (8 September 1459), UKE, Urk. 471 (31 July 1436), and UKE, Urk. 520 (13 July 1464). 139  ‘Sie selbst aber verstanden sich durchaus als fromm’ (But she considered herself to be thoroughly pious), as Signori, ‘Leere Seiten’, pp. 173–74, comments on modern researchers citing such actions of unreformed women as evidence of their lack of piety. 140  On annuity purchases at Lüne see Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 434 (26 May 1399), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 486 (5 February 1427), Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 508 (2 January 1440), and Lüneburg, KL, Urk. 608 (31 December 1499). 141  UKW, Urk. 266 (3 February 1431). 142  Baum, ‘Annuities in Late Medieval Hanse Towns’, pp. 39, 42. Cf. Scott, Society and

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This was similar elsewhere beyond these six abbeys. For instance, the nuns of Preetz in Schleswig-Holstein enjoyed anywhere from four to six marks annual income and generous pittances. In 1488, Prioress Anna of that house recorded her distribution of prebends to the entire monastic community, and she herself provided those nuns with pittances of raisins, almonds, saffron and other spices, honey, and small amounts of coin. The nuns of Preetz gave considerable amounts of money to their own community, ranging from thirty to 200 marks to support material luxuries and devotional practices. Thus Sister Benedicta Breiden provided thirty marks for a white velvet chasuble, while Prioress Wichburg Pogewiske contributed money towards the provision of Hamburg beer during Lent. Margaret von Königsmark, a nun in Preetz, also arranged in her will of 1443 for the provision of cheese, a ‘good’ Rhenish wine, almonds, and spices, so that the prioress and convent might enjoy a ‘nicely seasoned almond dish each year’.143 Were the nuns’ annual returns excessive, and was it always really theirs to spend? Nuns at Holy Cross had income that averaged between two and four marks that was paid biannually at Easter and Saint Michael’s by parents or relatives of the nuns; but whether individuals had control over it is less clear, for it appears to have been paid at least initially to the community rather than to individuals. We do know that Gerborg von Kemme’s 1473 testament similarly declared that the one mark given to Ilse and Hanneke Broitzem, nuns at Braunschweig’s Holy Cross convent, be used for the improvement of their bedding, furs, and shoes.144 But what was considered superfluous, and how much money did religious women actually possess?145 These questions are difficult to answer, for we lack the kind of detailed accounts of monastic provisioning prior to the fifteenth-century Observant reforms that would make it possible to calculate how much support individual nuns received from the convent. The conveyance of dowries or even fixed prebends for women entering the monastic life Economy in Germany, pp. 22, 26, 35–36; Schleif, ‘Forgotten Roles of Women as Donors’; and Bachman, Die Rentner, p. 61. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 429 (1 September 1412), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 448 (9  October 1427), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 477 (13  February 1456), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 489 (23  November 1463). And for Ebstorf, see UKE, Urk. 165 (22 April 1322), UKE, Urk. 224 (1335), and UKE, Urk. 453 (4 April 1423). 143  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 8–9, 14–15, 28, 35–36, 40–41, 50–56, 58–62. 144  Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fols 219v, 9v, 29r, 64r, trans. in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 80, 226–27, 346, 357–58, 383, 464–65; Braunschweig, Stadtarchiv, B I 23, 2, fol. 84r. 145  Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p. 71.

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do not appear to have necessitated written verification, and it is often difficult to distinguish clearly between transactions intended to provide for the lifetime support of a woman and those that were supplementary.146 As a supplement to fixed prebends or support from the monastic community, such annuities provided their recipients with considerable disposable income, for by the fifteenth century a mark (often the annual income for a nun) was enough money to purchase an inexpensive manuscript book or several cheap, printed books, provide for personal necessities, or considerably supplement her daily fare.147

Conclusion The fixed rents or annuities that provided religious women with such income came from a variety of sources — from the regular payments of tithes owed by landholders, from vineyards, or from rental returns from urban properties. For the nuns of the Lüneburg Heath, the most common source of such income was salt production. Such income might be secured by family members on behalf of a nun or purchased by religious women themselves. When placed within the broader pattern of the convents’ economic development and from the perspective of the women who employed such funds, such annuities appear differently to us than they do when viewed from the position of the reformers who condemned them. Indeed the careful analysis of personal property included in this study underlines three important aspects about such proprietas and accusations about it. First, the possession of private income or property among nuns within the Heideklöster was a late development and usually concerned small amounts. Second, such individual provisioning became prevalent when religious women 146 

By the end of the thirteenth century, the Dominican order recommended forty or fifty marks in community endowment to support a nun — an annual return of three marks: Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, p. 33; whereas Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, p. 227, estimates that by the late middle ages a yearly payment of two marks could not have provided for the daily support of a nun. 147  In 1497 the register for the convent of Ebstorf recorded a payment of three marks, ten shillings, and four pennies to the shoemaker for sewing the nuns’ winter shoes; in 1528 five pennies a year purchased two pairs of felt shoes for each nun. The convent provided the leather for the shoes, although it paid the shoemaker for the leather used on the soles of the shoes. Ebstorf, KE, Abt. IXb, Nr. 1, ‘Schusterrechnungen’ (1528–42), and Nr. 8, Vol. 1, ‘Ausgabenregister’ (1497), fols  5 v–6 v; see Götke, ‘Grundherrschaft Kloster Ebstorf im späten Mittelalter’, Chapter 5.

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and their families at the Heideklöster no longer trusted their provosts and other administrators. Third and most importantly, such individually controlled wealth did not lead to decadence or worldliness at these communities, but instead accomplished important things within religious communities, such as devotional practices and artistic decoration. It is critical that scholars emphasize the ways in which such funds allowed individual religious women to be — like lay-women from outside — patrons in their own communities in support of specific devotional practices. These are the important conclusions of this study, which is based not on the allegations of the reformers, but on consideration of the monastic practice at the Heideklöster. The very effective use of personal property for devotional purposes by a single wealthy noblewoman, Katharina von Hoya, abbess of Wienhausen, is the subject of the next chapter, which also considers the arrival of reformers at the Heideklöster.

Chapter 5

Abbess Katharina von Hoya and the Creation of Monastic Space

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ometime before 1433, on a visit to the neighbouring Cistercian convent of Isenhagen, the noble Abbess of Wienhausen, Katharina von Hoya (ruled 1422–37, 1440–69), fell ill. Languishing near death, the Abbess had a vision of Saint Anne. Appearing in a costly garment, perhaps symbolic of the gracious soul but with worldly overtones, the Saint chastized Katharina for her worldliness, particularly the money she had spent in renovating her private chamber.1 While, as we shall see, the irony of the Saint’s appearance may have escaped the Abbess, the import of her vision did not. Upon recovery Katharina converted her private chamber into a chapel dedicated to a variety of saints, foremost among them Saint Anne. This chapel functioned as the spatial and material stage upon which the Abbess could perform her renewed piety. Not only did Katharina lavish money on the material fittings and decoration of the chapel, but she also created a sanctified space that provided for the religious needs of both the monastic and parochial communities. Katharina von Hoya’s foundation of the Saint Anne chapel at Wienhausen reveals several significant aspects of late medieval devotion. The structural history of the chapel demonstrates the fluid negotiation of boundaries between sacred and secular space. It also illustrates the interaction between nuns and their parish communities, as well as the similarities in the devotional practices of secular and monastic women. In fact, the establishment of this chapel elucidates the broader patterns governing female religiosity and devotion outlined in the previous chapters, particularly women’s involvement in the decoration of 1 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 14.

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sacred spaces and the performative nature of their piety. Additionally, the economic transactions and patronage of Katharina von Hoya present an individual account of how gender, social status, wealth, and spirituality might converge for professed religious women in the later Middle Ages. Katharina’s wealth initially allowed her to enjoy the privileges of an aristocratic lifestyle, but her spiritual conversion transformed her from just another noble nun into the pious patron of her monastic community of Wienhausen. Established and ultimately abolished in the century between 1430 and 1530, Katharina von Hoya’s Saint Anne chapel provides a fascinating study of how a wealthy nun manipulated social status and habitus, wealth and private patronage, space and religious artwork, to express her piety and shape the devotional practices of the monastic and parochial communities of which she was a part. Like numerous other such foundations, Wienhausen existed in part to provide material and spiritual support for wealthy and noble widows. According to the Wienhausen chronicle, Duchess Agnes of Landsberg had established the Cistercian nuns at Nienhagen as a place for her own pious retirement after six years of widowhood. The community was later relocated to, and renamed, ‘Wienhausen’. Both Agnes of Landsberg and Mathilde, the sister of Duke Otto ‘the victorious’ of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, retired to Wienhausen as widows, and that tradition continued. In fact, researchers have often dubbed Wienhausen the ‘female house of the Welfs’. 2 The agreement made between the convent and Mathilde of Wenden, who lived at Wienhausen from 1292 until her death, reflected a typical arrangement for a noble woman who entered such a convent as a widow. In 1321 Mathilde, the daughter of Duke Johann of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and widow of Prince Heinrich I of Werle, confirmed the conveyance to the community of Wienhausen of her entire widow’s portion of 1500 marks of silver along with her ‘invaluable possessions’, including a silver figure of the virgin. In exchange, she received lodging within the convent and annuities for her support.3 Such residents, or lay corrodians, often lived in

2  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 1; Maier, Convent of Wienhausen, trans. by Wolfson, p. 6; Riggert-Mindermann, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, p. 55. 3  After her death, the annuity returned to the convent. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 217 (1321); Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 46, XXXVI. See other examples in Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 358 (23 December 1380), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 330a (12 March 1368), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 523a (13 December 1475), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 585 (20 May 1496), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 559 (13 May 1484), and Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 30–32.

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separate apartments on the edges of the monastic complex; but at the outset, so did the noble nuns, including Katharina von Hoya before her illness.4

Katharina von Hoya and the Cistercian Abbey of Wienhausen The story of Wienhausen’s Saint Anne chapel begins with a history of the physical structure. The structure first appears in the documentary records from Wienhausen as an individual household inhabited by an earlier noble woman, the junckfrowe van Gravenhorst, who perhaps did not have the status of a choir nun. The Wienhausen chronicle referred to the house (Behausung or logament) inhabited by the noble virgin, Alheyde of Gravenhorst, as a structure ‘suitable to her status and comfort’. The dwelling apparently lay outside the cloister precinct proper, but near the sexton’s house next to the church and parish courtyard. It thus straddled the spatial divide between monastery and parish, simultaneously traversing boundaries between private and communal, secular and sacred space. Thus this particular dwelling at Wienhausen, situated outside the cloister proper yet within the monastic complex, would have perfectly suited a noble widow or corrodian, whose status straddled the boundaries between secular and religious life. Before becoming abbess of Wienhausen, but as a fully-professed choir nun, Katharina von Hoya acquired the house for five marks from Provost Herman Eyken, purchasing the structure and making improvements to it, expanding its width and height, albeit without the approval of the abbess at the time.5 The Wienhausen chronicle echoes the charter’s account that Katharina made improvements to the house for her use ‘at her own cost’ of forty marks. 6 Katharina’s initial desire to inhabit this dwelling thus may have reflected an interest in her own social status rather than a commitment to communal religious life. Residing with her fellow nuns in a common dormitory was not acceptable, despite the fact that by the fifteenth century each nun possessed her own cell. Even Alheyde’s former dwelling required improvement for Katharina von Hoya.7 4 

See Erler, ‘English Vowed Women’. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 14 6  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 452 (13 December 1433). 7  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p.  28. On nuns in separate cells elsewhere, see Weyer, ‘Die mittelalterliche Klausur des Klosters Alpirsbach’, pp. 262–77, 328–38. 5 

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As the daughter of Count Otto III of Hoya and Bruchhausen and Mechthild of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Katharina von Hoya came from one of the ruling families of the region. Although no surviving documents record Katharina’s entrance into the convent or her novitiate, she probably joined the community in the same manner as did other wealthy nuns of the landed aristocracy and urban patriciate. Perhaps entering first as a student, once she had decided to make her profession, her family arranged for her support within the community. The first document mentioning Katharina is from the abbacy of Olgard of Mahrenholtz. In a charter dated 1 September 1412, the provost agreed to pay Katharina twenty-eight shillings annually on Saint Martin’s Day (11 November) in return for a payment by her family of fifteen marks to the community.8 Since Katharina was in her seventies when Johannes Busch reformed Wienhausen in 1469, she was about thirteen years old when this first annuity was arranged. That same day in 1412, Mechthild of Oppershausen, who would be elected as abbess but opted to serve as prioress under Katharina von Hoya in 1437, also purchased (or rather her family, like that of Katharina, purchased) a yearly annuity of one mark from the convent.9 A month later, in October 1412, Count Otto III arranged for his daughter, Katharina, to receive a much more substantial annuity — twenty-five marks annually — for life. This would come from the income the Count received from the old city of Hoya and would revert to the ducal house after Katharina’s death.10 This yearly stipend elevated Katharina above the majority of monastic inhabitants, placing her among the ranks of the Spitzenverdiener (top earners) who enjoyed an annuity of ten pounds or more.11 In 1420 Katharina also acquired a meadow that the convent owned near Oppershausen for twentyfour marks, but whether as an additional source of income for herself or to help out the community when it was short of cash is less clear.12 Katharina von Hoya’s possession of a separate dwelling within the monastic complex at Wienhausen must be read against the material habitus of the medieval high aristocracy, as well as the flexibility and liminality that characterized 8 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 428 (1 September 1412). Although the purchase was originally intended as a joint venture, Katharina appeared as the sole purchaser; the name of a second nun, Metteke Spade, was crossed out. 9  Mechtild (Metteke, Mette) is described as the youngest daughter of Henning of Opperns­ husen. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 429 (1 September 1412). 10  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 430 (11 October 1412). 11  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 525 (10 April 1476). 12  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 443 (8 December 1420).

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late medieval female religious life. Her private abode reflected the social privilege, status, and wealth that enabled noble women to enjoy private space and comfortable lodgings, irrespective of their religious status. Yet to end the story here, with an emphasis only on the material expression of privilege and nobility, would deny the ways in which status, wealth, and spirituality intersected in the lives of women like Katharina von Hoya. Her replication of an aristocratic habitus through her possession of annual personal income and her purchase of a private dwelling was not unique. At all the Heath convents, nuns coming from the landed nobility, the urban patriciate, and the wealthy bourgeoisie had begun to enjoy personal income, while displaying their piety and wealth in the form of personal devotional images and the monetary support of cult practices as seen in the previous chapter. After her formal entrance into Wienhausen, and aided by her noble lineage, Katharina von Hoya climbed the administrative hierarchy. In 1422, despite being only about twenty-three years old, she was elected abbess by the community. Fifteen years later, in 1437, she was forced to abandon that position. According to Wienhausen’s chronicle, this forced resignation was based on Katharina’s youth, which certain members of the community felt made her unsuited to be abbess, but in fact by 1437, she would have been forty years old. Her resignation reflects, instead, factionalism within the convent; indeed, the chronicle’s author noted that the Abbess was persuaded to resign her office in the presence of visitors in order to avoid being deposed by angry nuns in her community. Three years later, however, Katharina again became abbess. Initially, the community had selected her sister-nun, Mechthild of Oppershausen (who had entered on the same day in 1412); but before Mechthild could be confirmed, she conveyed the position to Katharina. According to the Wienhausen chronicler, Mechthild did this in part because Katharina was ‘nobler in lineage, partly also because at that time the region was in a poor condition, and she [Mechthild] feared that the convent might be seized and harmed by its princes’.13

From Noble Nun to Pious Monastic Founder: Katharina von Hoya Despite the irregularity with which in 1440 Katharina assumed the office of abbess for a second time, the Wienhausen chronicle remembered Katharina von Hoya as a capable leader. With her family connections to the dukes of 13 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 12–13. Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 633.

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Chapter 5 Figure 25. Kloster Wienhausen, Christ carrying cross. c. 1450. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Figure 26. Kloster Isenhagen, Chalice donated by Katharina von Hoya. c. 1433. Photo courtesy of Kloster Isenhagen.

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Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Katharina was perfectly positioned to become a great champion of the house. Indeed the chronicler reported that Katharina proved so resolute in her dealings on behalf of Wienhausen that the citizens of Braunschweig tried to murder her with a poisoned drink after she refused to grant the city the tithes of Ohrem. Fortunately for Katharina, the drink was instead accidentally given to the bishop, who died immediately.14 It was sometime before 1433, during her first abbacy, that Katharina contracted the serious illness that resulted in her vision of Saint Anne. As noted, the Saint criticized the Abbess for her extravagant and wasteful expenditure on her private dwelling, for which she was warned that she would have to atone severely in the next life.15 The symbolic associations surrounding the figure of Saint Anne made her appearance to Katharina particularly appropriate. By the fifteenth century, Saint Anne not only represented the cult of the family to aristocrats concerned with their genealogies, but she also provided a model of female piety, often depicted instructing the young Virgin Mary. 16 Who better to educate the aristocratic Abbess in the error of her ways and channel the symbols of Katharina’s familial status — her private dwelling and personal wealth — into appropriate acts of devotion than Saint Anne? This vision of Saint Anne set Katharina on the path to becoming a great patron of Wienhausen. Upon her recovery and return to Wienhausen, Katharina converted her private dwelling into a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne. It was consecrated in 1433, and the Abbess ensured that the chapel lacked nothing either materially or spiritually. Indeed, Katharina contributed liberally from her own funds for artistic decorations, liturgical objects, and spiritual blessings for both the chapel and the community of Wienhausen as a whole.17 Wienhausen still preserves at least two of the fifteenth-century artworks commissioned by the Abbess for this chapel: the wooden sepulchre holding the convent’s effigy of Christ, consecrated in 1448, and an image of Christ bearing the cross, also dating from the late fifteenth century (Figure 25). According to the convent chronicle, the Abbess purchased the statue of Christ

14 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 13, XIV. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 14. 16  Sheingorn, ‘“The Wise Mother”’, pp. 69–80; Dörfler-Dierken, Die Verehrung der Heiligen Anna. 17  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 452 (13 December 1433), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 461 (13 July 1443), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 485 (13 July 1461). 15 

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carrying the cross for twenty-eight marks and the sepulchre for 100 marks.18 Katharina’s friend and fellow choir nun, Elisabeth Velhauwers, who acted as the new administrator (capellana) of the Saint Anne chapel, also contributed to the decorations and liturgical items in the chapel.19 The Abbess’s wish to express her gratitude to Saint Anne for her recovery inspired further artistic commissions. According to the Wienhausen chronicle, Katharina donated even more items — much more that was ‘known to God alone’.20 Indeed three whole pages of the Wienhausen chronicle list the various purchases and donations made by Katharina von Hoya. The Abbess acquired several vestments and other objects for the Mass in a variety of colours, five yellow and three white choir robes, a pyx, three Missals, and three chalices.21 The bases of two surviving chalices, one preserved at Wienhausen and the other at Isenhagen, depict the Abbess in prayer. Incorporated into the decorations at the base of the Isenhagen chalice are also two works originally intended to be worn as amulets: a small mother of pearl carving of the Virgin and child and a red jasper, believed to protect one against sickness. Such items may have numbered among the personal belongings of the noble Katharina von Hoya (Figure 26).22 The necrology reports additionally that Katharina gave four lamps depicting images of the saints, which the community used in its summer refectory, a linen altar cloth painted with scenes from the life of Christ, and another worked with pearls.23 During her abbacy, the nuns of Wienhausen created three large-scale woolen embroideries for use within the nuns’ choir: one depicting the genealogy of Christ through scenes associated with Saint Anne; another recording the saintly life of Elisabeth of Thuringia; and a third with scenes from the Heilsspiegelteppich (Figure 20).24 Wienhausen’s necrology notes that Katharina von Hoya acquired these items for the community with her own 18 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 15, XLI. Heutger, ‘Katharina von Hoya’, p. 50. 19  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 14–15. 20  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 18. 21  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 16–18: robes were purple, red, white, blue, and variegated silk worked in gold or silver. 22  Appuhn, Bilder aus Isenhagen, p. 42. 23  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. xli. 24  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 127–32, 137; Wilhelm, Kloster Wienhausen, pp. 39–47.

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funds, from her relatives, or from payments for her handiwork.25 The chronicle merely noted that she provided for these works without outside help, ‘ohne einige fremde Hülffe’.26 Katharina’s spectacular expenditures followed a long tradition in which women, both religious and secular, functioned as artistic patrons of monastic houses in general and chapels in particular.27 Her patronage likewise fits into the tradition whereby abbesses and prioresses served as spiritual leaders, financial managers, and patrons of the art and architecture of their monasteries.28 Counting the items listed in the Wienhausen chronicle, including the sepulchre and wooden statue of Christ, we can estimate that Katharina von Hoya spent over 400 marks on liturgical decorations and artwork.29 Katharina’s transformation of her private wealth into gifts to the community and her domicile into a chapel reflected her devotion and monastic office, as well as her social status and wealth. In fact, the chapel and its works of art probably enhanced the latter. Katharina von Hoya also engaged in a wide variety of activities that expressed her renewed piety beyond the foundation of the Saint Anne chapel.30 25 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. xli. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 16–18. 27  Wealthy late medieval women often founded chantry chapels to commemorate deceased family members: Elizabeth Wilcote, for example, who between 1438 and 1445 commissioned and oversaw the construction of a chapel in the church of North Leigh: see Heard, ‘Death and Representation’. 28  Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, pp. 50–51; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, pp. 58–79. 29  A considerable amount when one considers that the prioress of Preetz in Schleswig– Holstein built an entirely new infirmary from the ground up for about 586 marks and 3 shillings only sixty years later: see von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, p. 59. 30  In 1437, four years after the chapel’s consecration and at about the same time as she renounced the office of abbess, Katharina obtained a letter of absolution from Johann Christian, a deacon of the Holy Cross church in Hildesheim and commissioner for the diocese. Katharina was joined in her absolution by four other nuns: Elisabeth Velhauwers, the new capellana of the chapel; Mechthild Spade (this nun must have originally joined Katharina in her annuity purchase of 1412); Druda Prome; and T. of Weide. These women, two of whom consistently appear associated with Katharina of Hoya, illustrate the bonds of friendship or what reformers denounced as the factional familia. They probably represent the pro-Katharina party within the convent during the dispute over her initial abbacy. Christian released the nuns from all sentences of excommunication, suspension, or interdict and restored them to the sacraments of the church and the community of the faithful. This absolution coincided with her renunciation of the abbacy; it likely performed the dual function of demonstrating Katharina’s renewed piety as well as expressing her penitence and that of her supporters. Absolving them from all sins, faults, 26 

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Like many other Spitzenverdiener, Katharina was in a position to make loans to others, and in this capacity she also could express her status and her patronage of the community of Wienhausen. In 1431, when Wienhausen redeemed a chorus of salt in Lüneburg’s brine pits, Hinrike Luseke, Provost Herman, and Prioress Mechthild affirmed that they owed Abbess Katharina 300 marks for the redemption of this asset. Some of this was cash she had collected from the convent’s various funds, including 130 marks from her own family’s memorial.31 In 1434, a year after the consecration of the chapel dedicated to Saint Anne, Katharina sought to re-establish the familial memorial from which she had taken funds three years earlier and, using her own funds, purchased a plaustrum of salt to support memorials at Wienhausen for her father and other kinsmen.32 During her own lifetime, she herself oversaw these memorials, distributing small monetary pittances that accompanied them and designating her associates, Elisabeth Velhauwers, Metteke Spade, and Drude van dem Sande, as administrators. After their deaths, the administration was to go to the community’s cellaress, magistra, and cubicularia. Thus Abbess Katharina asserted both her renewed piety and her familial status by ensuring that the memorials for her family would be honoured by the nuns of Wienhausen in perpetuity.33

and negligence, whether mortal or venial, the letter instructed the confessor to proscribe six days of fasting (or less if combined with penance) to the nuns each year, during which they should recite seven Pater Nosters and seven Ave Marias, along with seven psalms or other pious acts, as the confessor should see fit. As a preventative measure, this absolution further secured the spiritual status of the convent within the local community, protecting it from any possible negative repercussions over Katharina’s removal as abbess. By guarding the community’s reputation in such a way, the former Abbess demonstrated both her own personal piety as well as her spiritual support of the convent. It was about politics in the abbey, however, not about personal wealth. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 456 (6 April 1437). Katharina of Hoya no longer appeared as abbess in Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 456a (18 April 1437), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 428 (1 September 1412), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 491 [c. 1464]. 31  For example, in 1431 a charter recorded the community’s debt of 300 marks, which it owed to Abbess Katharina of Hoya. In exchange, the community agreed that the Abbess might receive an annual payment until the debt had been repaid, ‘without any hindrance or contestation by our succeeding or future provosts’: Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 448a (24 June 1431). When Katharina transformed her private dwelling into a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne in 1433, she added a similar clause to prevent the provost from hindering or contesting the arrangement: Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 452 (13 December 1433). 32  Oberschelp, Beiträge zur niedersächsischen Preisgeschichte, p. lix. 33  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 453 (13 July 1434) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 454 (12 June 1450).

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At first glance, one might think that the narrative of Katharina von Hoya’s vision of Saint Anne recorded in Wienhausen’s chronicle was meant to suggest that Katharina knew her possession of private income was wrong. One might equally argue that the account served as a cautionary tale for other wealthy nuns at Wienhausen. Yet, Katharina von Hoya’s transformation of her private wealth into communal donations did not prevent her or other nuns from continuing to purchase private annuities. Indeed, Katharina may have regarded the continued purchase of annuities from the community as a form of charity and humility, since she was effectively providing loans to the community and reducing her own assets. Thus, in 1446, Abbess Katharina provided twenty marks so the convent could purchase pasture rights for its cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep in the ‘Flotwedel’. The community also acquired a right to cut wood for heating and building wagons in the duke’s forest at Molen and elsewhere at the cost of 500 marks; in return for the Abbess’s contribution to that amount, the community agreed to pay her an annuity of one mark, four shillings on the Feast of Saint Martin, ‘just like our other virgins, who also receive a yearly stipend’. The charter made clear that nothing should hinder payment to the Abbess. Over ten years later, in 1457, Katharina provided the convent with another twenty marks in return for another annuity, and again the charter stated that ‘her [loan of ] money shall not be damaging to her’.34 One of the women closely associated with Abbess Katharina was Elisabeth Velhauwers, who provides another example of how, before the convent’s Observant reform, Wienhausen’s wealthy nuns used personal funds to assert both status and devotion. Although Elisabeth’s social origins are never mentioned in Wienhausen’s records, given her close association with Katharina von Hoya, she may have come from the nobility.35 Five years before the reform, in August 1464, Elisabeth paid one of the largest amounts ever given by a single nun, conveying eighty marks to the community of Wienhausen in return for an annuity of five marks, five shillings from its goods.36 Additionally, Elisabeth 34 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 469 (5 January 1447), Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 468 (25 November 1446), and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 478 (21 January 1457). This represents a loan of forty marks at five per cent interest: see Rosen, ‘Two Municipal Accounts’, p. 376. 35  She received the indulgence of 1437 along with the abbess and served as administrator (capellana) of the Saint Anne chapel as well as the Hoya family memorial: Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 453 (13 July 1434) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 456 (6 April 1437). 36  Elisabeth arranged to receive two marks from the convent’s ‘chamber’ house and three marks, five shillings from the land in Offensen. However, another nun, Alheyt van Verden, ‘also a virgin given in our convent’, already lived on the income of these properties. In a rather com-

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acquired the right to convey this income to another nun if she wished, and after her death the annuity would support memorials for her and her parents.37 Elisabeth’s arrangements show her providing for her own lifetime comfort, wealth, and status within the community, while emphasizing her piety by making monetary arrangements for future memorials. In fact, Elisabeth Velhauwers continued to exert her influence within the community from beyond the grave. Appearing as a ghost, she complained of the hardships she endured after the kitchen steps were moved and requested that they be rebuilt in their previous location.38 She was thus viewed as a continuing force influencing the monastic community.

Access and Enclosure: Sharing Monastic Space at Wienhausen The possession of individual wealth, combined with an aristocratic pattern of private patronage, gave Katharina von Hoya and wealthy women like her the opportunity to become benefactors of their communities from within. The creation of Wienhausen’s Saint Anne chapel demonstrates how religious women took an active role in manipulating the material culture, physical structures, and space of their monastic complexes to represent their personal pious interests and shape the devotional practices of their local parishes. Katharina von Hoya created a sacred space in which both the monastic and lay communities at Wienhausen could demonstrate their devotion by attending Mass, making donations for the support of the chapel, or saying prayers before the sepulchre of Christ. Wienhausen’s Saint Anne chapel thus highlights the fluidity that existed between private and communal space, as well as secular and sacred space, within female monastic complexes. Indeed, the creation, decoration, and use of the Saint Anne chapel all reflected an interplay between religious women, material culture, sacred space, and the local community that had become traditional by the late fifteenth century.

plicated series of negotiations, it was arranged that Elisabeth receive something else until Alheyt died, after which Elisabeth would receive the three marks and five shillings from the farm in Offensen and the two marks from the ‘chamber’ house, regardless of who dwelt there. The charter that records the donation is Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 491 (9 August 1464); this same woman (Alheyt van Verden) is named in the list of deceased ladies (dominae) in the monastery’s list compiled in 1501. See Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 78. 37  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 491 (9 August 1464). 38  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 145.

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With the help of her capellana Elisabeth Velhauwers, Katharina von Hoya transformed her former dwelling and the space it enclosed and outfitted it with liturgical items, devotional artwork, and relics, transforming it from a mundane household into a sacred site. This transformation received official sanction in 1433 when the chapel was formally consecrated. In the following years, the chapel’s sacrality was reconfirmed through the spiritual benefits Abbess Katharina von Hoya secured for it. In 1448 Bishop Albert of Minden granted a forty-day indulgence to anyone who visited the Saint Anne chapel and the effigy of Christ (Grabchristus) that it housed for devotional reasons. Anyone who attended Mass or any other divine office, or who prayed and progressed around the chapel on various saints’ days, on Sunday, or during Lent, received this indulgence. So did anyone who offered lights or ornaments to the church or chapel, or who donated gold, silver, vestments, or precious things in their testaments. Finally, all would receive that indulgence if they approached, prayed, and genuflected before the effigy of Christ or the relics of the saints. This indulgence marks the transformation of this effigy of Christ from an object with which the nuns had engaged actively into a more passive item of veneration.39 The same year, the Bishop of Minden also granted a forty-day indulgence to any truly penitent person who recited prayers in the presence of Wienhausen’s sepulchre which housed the effigy of Christ, offered lighted candles before it, or provided for its necessities or decorations.40 In 1460 the cardinal bishop of Tusculum and papal legate in Germany granted the convent the further privilege of holding religious services in this chapel during times of interdict.41 The indulgences and privileges granted to Katharina’s Saint Anne chapel are important in three ways. First, they confirmed the sacral nature of the structure and the space it enclosed, ensuring that the chapel would receive the necessary donations and support for its maintenance, as well as enhancing the spiritual status of Wienhausen itself. Second, the benefits of greater spiritual value bestowed on the chapel that Katharina had created, the specific salvific value endowed to it, elevated her role as pious patron. As her reputation came to bask in the reflected brilliance of the chapel’s spiritual importance, Katharina as abbess came to exercise a new level of patronage within the convent and beyond. Third, the indulgences available at the Saint Anne chapel were ones equally accessible to the laity. Like many other female monastic communities throughout Europe, 39 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 470 (13 March 1448). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 471 (28 August 1448). 41  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 482 (30 October 1460). 40 

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Wienhausen’s nuns shared their church with the local parish, using an upper-level nuns’ choir to divide the two groups. The shared use of the Saint Anne chapel followed a definite pattern of interaction between the nuns of Wienhausen and their local parish, particularly in the use of liturgical space and devotional objects.42 The participation of the laity in the Easter and oblation ceremonies that occurred within the Heath convents has been noted in chapter 2. The privileges did not restrict spiritual benefits to the nuns but confirmed that such benefits might be obtained by any person who visited the consecrated space of the chapel and performed the appropriate acts of devotion before its sacred objects. 43 In this respect, a fundamental continuity with its mundane origins characterized the nature of the space occupied by the new Saint Anne chapel, for it symbolically bridged the boundary of devotion between the monastic community and the local parish, just as it had crossed the divide between secular and religious in moving from its previous existence as a private dwelling into being a chapel. Additionally, its shared use by monastic and parochial community alike was a visual and physical demonstration of the piety of wealthy and powerful nuns like Katharina von Hoya and Elisabeth Velhauwers. The visitation report of 1483, mentioned earlier, suggests that Wienhausen’s nuns continued to allow secular persons into the nuns’ choir. The visitors insisted that the nuns should not open the doors to their choir to show the ‘delight of [its] ornaments’ nor permit any secular persons to enter the choir in order to view its crosses. If certain images or crosses were necessary for a procession or any other church rite, they should be gathered at the altar in the lower church. Such comments suggest that Wienhausen’s nuns had shown off their choir and its decorations to the view of local parishioners or perhaps even family members and important secular visitors. Moreover, the visitors’ report indicates that the nuns and parishioners of Wienhausen participated together in the use of the devotional objects preserved in the nuns’ choir.44 The nuns of Wienhausen and their local parishioners also shared access to the chapel dedicated to Saints Fabian and Sebastian which was located near the cemetery. But the visitors of 1483 ordered the nuns of Wienhausen to close the external entrance to the chapel of Saints Fabian and Sebastian with stone and to wall up its windows as well, at least up to the level of the nuns’ cloister. This was done, according to the Wienhausen chronicle, for ‘particular reasons — 42 

See for example Oliva, The Convent and the Community. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 470 (13 March 1448); Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 471 (28 August 1448). 44  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483). 43 

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which are unclear and conjured-up deceptions’. The visitors’ attempt to eliminate the parishioners’ physical and visual access to this chapel and restrict it for the nuns’ use alone suggest that here too the monastic and local community had collaborated in the use of sacred space.45 The result of these alterations was that sacred space became increasingly restricted and confined within the more forcefully delineated boundaries of the nuns’ enclosure. Higher walls and other architectural changes were also undertaken by the reforming provost, Mathias of der Knesebeck, at Ebstorf. He extended the nuns’ choir and created a new side chapel with a communicating window for the nuns’ use. Previously the sisters had approached the altar for the sacrament; after this they could receive it separated even from the choir by filigreed latticework, at the window of a side chapel.46 Thus did reformers strive to increase the level of division between monastic and parish communities by means of new architectural structures and barriers, and in fact, the issue of enclosure was one of the most contested elements of female monastic reform, perhaps because of the marked structural and spatial changes it entailed. The Wienhausen chronicle, for example, recorded the erection and extension of walls between the infirmary, dormitory, and kitchen.47 Such changes indicate the importance for fifteenth-century reformers of the delineation of sacred from secular space and of the monastic community from the secular world. Adherents of the reform redrew the spatial landscape of female houses, with higher walls, locked doors, barred windows, shutters, and ironwork employed to restrict what they regarded as an unacceptable level of interaction between the female religious and the laity. 45 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 2v; Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483); Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 26, and see Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 131. The renovation of a wall around the courtyard containing the chapel of Saints Fabian and Sebastian likewise numbered among the various improvements made to the convent under the reform Abbess Susanna Potstock; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 28–29; Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483). The visitors complained as well about the presence of markets near the monastic complex and, citing Periculoso, ordered that enclosure be strictly observed, for the nuns to guard against opening the speaking window to the ‘incautious sight’ of men and women, suggesting that nuns have not only a double iron grating and wooden slats on that window, but a drapery between the two. See Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women. 46  Ebstorf, KE, Hs V2, fols 1a and 6a, transcribed in Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, pp. 392–93, 403–07. 47  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 28–29; Wien­ hausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483).

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Not surprisingly, the Saint Anne chapel at Wienhausen would fall victim to such ideological and structural changes. Within the first three years of her abbacy, Wienhausen’s post-reform abbess, Susanna Potstock, moved Wienhausen’s Saint Anne chapel into the cloister, in part because the previous structure had been damaged by weather and fire. 48 Because parishioners had previously enjoyed access to this chapel, its relocation inside the cloister symbolized the more general restriction of sacred locations that lay at the heart of the reforming agenda.49 At some point between 1501 and 1505, Abbess Potstock’s successor, Catharina Remstede, once again renovated and perhaps even relocated the chapel. This time, the nuns of Wienhausen sold their own handiwork to pay for the chapel’s masonry and arranged for the chapel to be reconsecrated to the Virgin Mary with new privileges.50 Sometime earlier, Abbess Potstock returned the structure that had previously housed the Saint Anne chapel to secular use. A charter from 1473 recorded a payment of about 319 marks by Alheyt Daghevorde, a ‘worthy woman’, possibly a corrodian in Wienhausen, for which Alheyt obtained use of the house and arranged for the performance of three memorials. The charter specifically noted that this was the same dwelling once purchased by Abbess Katharina and that Alheyt had already made improvements because of its dilapidated state.51 Another reference suggests that the community later converted this structure into a guesthouse and eventually into a dwelling for the provost, for in 1496 the new provost, Simon Reinecke, was allowed to use ‘the new guesthouse [called] the Saint Anne house, which is next to the churchyard, built next to the church door’.52 Thus, in the hands of Wienhausen’s abbesses, religious space could be transformed even in its sacrality; the Saint-Anne space proved quite negotiable, as the intersection between secular and religious life reappeared in yet another altered form. In many ways, the construction of the Saint Anne chapel at Wienhausen reflected assumptions about the interconnection between female 48 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 26–29. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 470 (13  March 1448) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 452 (13 December 1433); Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 28, 37–39, 41, XIV. 50  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 39. 51  Alheyt paid 150 Gulden. I have estimated the amount in marks on the presumption that these were Lübeck Gulden rather than Rhenish Gulden. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 28; Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 503a (1473). 52  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 586 (7 August 1496). 49 

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piety, status, and material culture, as well as the relationship between female monastics and the broader community, which had acquired the weight of tradition by the later Middle Ages. It was precisely such interaction between the secular and the sacred that the Observant reformers of the fifteenth century sought to erase. While the structural changes that accompanied these reforms are frequently interpreted as an example of the imposition of male ecclesiastical restrictions that reduced female agency, the transformations that occurred at Wienhausen suggest that religious women were not excluded from the process of defining the monastic spaces they inhabited, either before or after the fifteenth-century reforms.53 Katharina von Hoya’s possession and use of personal funds to provide for her own material comfort embodied the typical habitus of pious noble women which came to be replicated in female monastic communities throughout late medieval Europe. Her possession of a private dwelling within Wienhausen exemplified the fluidity characteristic of female piety and devotion, which by the fifteenth century often made little distinction between the lifestyle of a pious corrodian, canoness, or regular nun.54 But the conversion of Katharina’s private dwelling into a chapel shared with parishioners illustrates how wealthy women could transform personal income into powerful physical and visual expressions of their piety and patronage. Katharina von Hoya’s Saint Anne chapel provides another example of how Observant reform did (and did not) alter the traditions of religious women. Not only did the creation of this chapel demonstrate the intersection of female monastic piety with personal wealth and material culture, it also reveals nuns’ willingness to rearrange the monastic enclosure to suit their devotional needs. Ironically, had it not been for Katharina’s spiritual conversion and the lavish donations of art and money that resulted from this experience, her wealth might have left little trace in the historical record. Katharina von Hoya thus becomes the archetypical patron of her own religious community. Yet within her own lifetime Katharina von Hoya’s use of her private wealth to create sacred space for her entire monastic community and the parishioners in the vicinity — an exemplary interaction of piety and devotion — would be called into question by the arrival of reformers. Nonetheless, when no longer able to demonstrate their piety by using wealth to become private patrons of the community, the nuns of the Heath convents, still as devout as ever, once 53  Schulenburg, ‘Gender, Celibacy, and Proscriptions of Sacred Space’, p. 354; Schulenburg, ‘Strict Active Enclosure’; Bruzelius, ‘Hearing is Believing’. 54  Peters, Patterns of Piety, p. 116.

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again turned to art, and their houses became centres of artistic and literary creativity. Their inhabitants sought to fulfill the mandates of reform, but adapted to the reforming rhetoric of restoration, renewal, and revitalization as a means of expressing their (continued) piety and community identity. In fact, new building projects and new artistic commissions played an important role in the changes that accompanied the fifteenth-century reforms.

Battling the Vice of proprietas: The Advent of the Observant Reforms at Wienhausen In the week prior to Advent, in 1469 (at about two o’clock in the afternoon) the Augustinian Prior Johannes Busch entered the convent of Wienhausen on a mission of reform.55 Accompanied by Abbots Henry of Saint Michael and Lippold of Saint Godehard, both from Hildesheim, the abbess of Derneburg and four nuns from her abbey, Duke Otto of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and the knight Johannes of Oppershausen, the reformers presented a formidable force of ecclesiastical and secular authority.56 Inspired by the devotio moderna or Modern Devotion and the Observant movement, fifteenth-century reformers arrived at the Heideklöster not only to challenge nuns’ personal possession of property and condemn their ties to local parishioners, but to alter the ways in which sacred space was defined and used. Yet they faced an equally remarkable abbess in Katharina von Hoya. Maintaining that she had kept practices in the community just as she had found them when she assumed office forty years earlier, and adding that she did not wish to alter those practices, this septuagenaria presented a significant obstacle

55 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 19. The reforming impulse came not from the Cistercian order but from the ecclesiastical and secular rulers of the region, namely the bishop of Hildesheim and the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Johannes Busch came from Sülte, a community of Augustinian regular canons, while the monasteries of Saint Michael and Saint Godehard in Hildesheim belonged to the Benedictine order. The knight Johannes of Oppershausen witnessed charters recording the sale of tithes by the provost and bequeathed a farm to the convent in the event of the death of all his male heirs: Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 526 (24 April 1476) and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 529 (26 June 1476). The convent necrology recorded further gifts of fifty Gulden, a chasuble, a chalice, and a horse by Johannes: Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. lix. Other donations made by the Oppershausen family appear there as well: Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. xxxviii, lxiii–iv, lxvi, lxvii. 56 

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to the reformers.57 In the end, Busch recalled in his own account of events that he and Henry, abbot of Saint Michael’s, resorted to the use of physical force. Each grabbed the Abbess by an arm, ‘moderately dragging her [emphasis mine] by the sleeves of her habit’ and begged her to climb into the wagon that would remove her to the convent of Derneburg.58 Katharina von Hoya’s close associate, Elisabeth Velhauwers, an office-holder within the convent was also removed by the threat of force.59 According to the Wienhausen chronicle, Elisabeth pleaded in tears and promised that she ‘would do whatever [the reformers] wished, if only she might remain at Wienhausen’. The officials remained unmoved, however, and she ascended weeping into the carriage with the Abbess.60 Thus Busch portrayed himself and his fellow reformers in a heroic fashion — indeed as valiant warriors battling the disobedience caused by proprietas. The physical removal of nuns resistant to reform was a tactic both advocated as well as frequently employed by Busch; he often came with wagons ready to evict the recalcitrant nuns and obviously did not expect them to fall in with his reforming agenda.61 As members of the landed nobility, urban patriciate, and wealthy bourgeoisie, the nuns of the Heideklöster all expected to enjoy a certain lifestyle, which the possession and use of private funds had supported. Likewise, both the nuns and their families regarded individual property for their maintenance as appropriate to their status and role. Indeed, the possession of private income and personal property had become so customary by the later Middle Ages that even reformers could not entirely eliminate the practices or privileges associated with it. Finally, the report indicates that Busch’s tale of his heroic reform 57  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 630, 633–34; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 19. 58  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 631. The former abbess spent about a year at Derneburg before she was permitted to return to Wienhausen, where she died in 1474. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. xli. 59  The close bond between Katharina of Hoya and Elisabeth Velhauwers is indicated by Elisabeth’s request that she be allowed to visit Katharina in the convent of Derneburg. This she succeeded in doing in 1470, and she later accompanied the Abbess upon her return to Wienhausen. She was listed among those ‘dominae’ who died prior to 1501 as Elisabeth Delhomver and appeared in the convent necrology under the entries for 20 March. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 15, 22, 78, XLV. 60  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 20–23; Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 632–33. 61  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 588–96.

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of Wienhausen must be qualified. Rather than changing over a matter of days, weeks, or months, monastic individuals and communities only gradually, often grudgingly, put into practice changes decreed by the reformers. In fact it is possible that the reformers were simply wrong about proprietas. Despite the condemnation by monastic reformers, visitors, and ecclesiastical superiors, the possession of private property did not preclude a continued, indeed enhanced, spirituality. Instead, the possession of private income or property provided the means for religious women to perform their devotion in a way appropriate to their position as women from the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie. While economic considerations may have driven the sale of annuities or encouraged private property and individual provisioning, broader cultural attitudes and assumptions also affected the prevalence and acceptability of such practices. From the account preserved of the reform in the Wienhausen chronicle, it is clear that the nuns interpreted their traditions and events differently. When faced with the need to take sides, the nuns of Wienhausen displayed their loyalty to the Abbess. When Busch asked the nuns to demonstrate their desire for reform by walking to the right side of the refectory, he recalled that Wienhausen’s nuns expressed their ‘sinister’ nature by all walking to the left side. According to the Wienhausen chronicle, however, the nuns acted thus: Not, as one might maintain, as a precursor to rebellion, but rather to demonstrate their obedience to their superior, from whom they did not wish to be divided whether living or dead, with the exception of one nun, who walked to the other side, but who, as soon as she saw that her sisters had positioned themselves with the abbess, went over to their side.62

Neither the Abbess nor the community of Wienhausen regarded the possession of personal wealth as problematic. In fact, Wienhausen’s nuns viewed the purchase of annuities and possession of private income as a means of keeping the convent in good economic condition. In the nuns’ eyes, the possession of individual income or private support benefitted the entire community. Indeed, the Wienhausen chronicler remarked that the reforming Abbess Susanna Potstock (1470–1501) found the convent lacking in grain and victuals, ‘since before the reform each provided for herself with her [own] hands, and whatever else she

62 

Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 563–64, 630; Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 19, 25.

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might receive, in terms of her support, so that the monastic goods remained in good stead and might be increased’.63 Proprietas, however, had become the catchword of reform. Regarded as the root of all sin, proprietas, according to the reformers, was responsible for the dissolution of monastic observance, and they used it as shorthand for a wide variety of unacceptable practices. Individual property caused inequality leading to the lack of a common table or standardized dress. It encouraged the maintenance of secular ties and familial allegiances that resulted in cliques and disobedience. It facilitated the breaking of enclosure to visit relatives and thus could be associated with a failure to maintain chastity. The reformers ignored the possibility that proprietas might also open the door to intense devotional practices.64 It is also evident that Busch did not recognize the tense emotional climate created by his actions or the injustice, bigotry, and prejudice of his own violent tactics in effecting such reform, although once the reform was complete, Busch stressed the obligation of those entrusted with the cura monialium to provide spiritual consolation and support to their female charges. By the fifteenth century, the nuns of Wienhausen dwelt individually in private cells, the product of an emerging culture of privacy, and the nuns of late medieval communities and their relatives ‘regarded their way of life, based on private means of support but performing communal spiritual services, as valid’.65 The dividing up of communal areas, particularly dormitories, was common among both the male and female religious by this time. Canonesses and regular nuns alike might enjoy the privilege of private structures within the monastic complex. In the eyes of the nuns and their secular relatives who collaborated in the production of manuscripts or artwork, they were contributing jointly to the support of chapels or memorial endowments and donating 63 

Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 25. Busch associated proprietas with secular dress, disobedience, and the maintenance of secular ties and social hierarchies, and often spoke of it in close connection with failure to maintain proper enclosure, breaking chastity, and leading a generally dissolute life. Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 562–64, 571–73, 588–91, 614–15, 629–35, 644–46. Geert Groote argued that discord, fights, schism, and disobedience resulted from the love of property, as did excessive eating, drinking, carousing, and back-biting. Groote, Gerardi Magni Epistolae, ed. by Mulder, p. 164. Kerkering argued that property brought disobedience, contumacy, pride, partiality, envy, vanity, wandering minds, and inequality. Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 234–35; Hotchin, ‘Guidance for Men who Minister to Women’, p. 11. 65  Hotchin, ‘Guidance for Men who Minister to Women’, p. 17. 64 

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money towards pious ends — such as monastic pittances, anniversary masses, and lights — private income and private spaces that made such activities more possible. The arrangements they made for their memorial Masses and vigils, their donations of money for clothing or for lights before cult objects, and the pittances, prebends, and annuities that supported the nuns who prayed on behalf of donors and preserved their memory may have served a variety of purposes, but were ultimately devotional in nature. Such arrangements should be read as part of a broad spectrum of devotional practices based on such economic arrangements that were embraced by secular and religious persons alike. The desire for private space and individual dwellings both inside and outside common buildings, as well as the ability to construct such spaces from personal funds, was not uncommon by the fifteenth century. But the possession of private space symbolized status and wealth in the eyes of Observant reformers, who thought that private cells or households reflected a decline in monastic life — the inequality, divisiveness, and attachment to the world — that were part and parcel of the overarching vice of proprietas.66 But this argument went further than those reformers’ ability to enforce it. While in 1469 the reformer Johannes Busch would emphasize the reestablishment of a common table in his reform of Wienhausen, and visitors in 1483 empowered the abbess to force the nuns to change their cells periodically, neither reforming group attempted to re-establish a common dormitory.67 Indeed, the north wing at Wienhausen, torn down in 1531 but rebuilt in 1549, reaffirmed the division and privatization of monastic space that had developed in the preceding centuries. Two rows of individual chambers, each with a small window, divided the upper level of the rebuilt north wing. To overcome the deficit caused by the reformers’ abolishment of private provisioning, the provost provided meat and drink for Wienhausen’s nuns from Advent to the feast day of Saint Anne on 26 July, after which the abbess became responsible for providing the nuns with their daily fare. The results were spartan. The Wienhausen chronicle complained that for more than three years the nuns had had to make do with a drink from cooked barley groats and only received beer on high feast days, a considerable step down for the women of this community. Other communities were similarly unequipped to support a communal table. 66  Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture, pp. 124–27, argued that secular habitus shaped the architecture of female religious houses, which in her view often replicated domestic architecture. 67  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483).

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According to Busch’s account, before the reform attempted there, the canonesses of Heiningen lacked not only meat but even the basic staple of bread in quantities sufficient to provide for the community.68 As might be expected, the advent of the Observant reform appears to correlate with a decline of private property ownership and individual provisioning at all of the Heath convents. No charters recording purchases of annuities or provisions for the support of individual nuns postdate Medingen’s 1479 reform, and a letter of indulgence issued to that community in 1481 suggests that reforming efforts had successfully eradicated proprietas. According to this indulgence, the community comprised seventy-one choir nuns (down from the eighty-eight nuns listed in 1393), but there were in addition fourteen puellae coronatae (girls who had completed the liturgical ceremony of coronation) and twelve lay sisters. That only eight choir nuns listed here may be found in earlier documentation concerning private annuities suggests that ownership of private support may have declined to include only about ten per cent of the nuns in the newly reformed community.69 Although no documents record such an event, it is likely that some property-owning nuns chose to leave rather than be reformed. At the convents of Isenhagen and Wienhausen, where considerable resistance to reform existed, private provisioning was more tenacious. For Isenhagen, a charter issued in 1487 after the first reform attempt there recorded the donation made by Ilsebe Nigenkercken, a citizen of Lüneburg, to provide two marks annually to the nuns of Isenhagen during their reform and two marks to her sibling, the nun Hilleke.70 After the second attempt at reform at Isenhagen under Duchess Anna of Nassau, circa 1487/8 (the first attempt had been made in 1442 by the abbot of Riddaghausen), there is only one instance of a nun from Isenhagen in possession of a private annuity.71 In the thirty years following the reform of Wienhausen, nine charters provided for some form of lifetime support for individual nuns, although two reaffirmed previous arrangements. In 1473 the nobleman Werner of Oppershausen 68 

Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 600. UKM, Urk. 534 (27 July 1481), p. 487–88. 70  Ilsebe Nigenkercken had obtained the money from her brother, Albert Mozendorppe. Hilleke is described as the sister of Albert. Isenhagen, Klosterarchiv, Urk. 538a (1 October 1487), in Urkundenbuch Isenhagen (Ergänzung), ed. by Lampe. 71  Isenhagen, Klosterarchiv, Urk. 570c (27  March 1501), in Urkundenbuch Isenhagen (Ergänzung), ed. by Lampe. One of the reforming nuns from Ebstorf remarked upon the difficulty of reforming the nuns at Walsrode as well: Oldermann, Kloster Walsrode, pp. 48–49; Schulze, ‘Isenhagen’, p. 238; Brosius, ‘Walsrode’, p. 537. 69 

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provided an annuity of ten marks to his daughters, Cecilia and Alheyde, nuns in Wienhausen. One of Werner’s relatives, the knight, Johannes of Oppershausen, had participated in the convent’s reform and may have encouraged their entry there. The two sisters lived on money deposited with the nuns by Werner — 150 marks or a hundred Rhenish Gulden — in return for an annual payment back to him, actually received by his daughters. If the convent redeemed the hundred Rhenish Gulden, new arrangements were to be made with the advice of the nuns, so that his daughters would continue to receive ten marks annually. Upon the deaths of his two daughters the income would return to Werner and his heirs rather than to the convent. Other families, primarily from the local bourgeoisie, made similar arrangements to continue the annuities for their female relatives at Wienhausen.72 While Observant reform did not entirely end the practice of individual provisioning, it did have several important consequences for its continuing practice. First, it effectively eliminated the purchases of annuities by nuns as individuals and as groups. Likewise, the provision of annuities in cash declined, and nuns began instead to receive rents in kind, including food, paid on their behalf. The provision of food may have been a less objectionable form of familial support than cash. In several charters issued under reforming Abbess Susanna Potstock, Wienhausen’s nuns received support in kind. In 1474 Tilen Lutherdes, a citizen of Braunschweig, made arrangements for the provisioning of his sister Alheyde, a nun in Wienhausen, from acreage he held in Vordorpe.73 Twelve years later, he arranged for the support of Ilse Lutherdes.74 In 1497 Jan of Campe reaffirmed his obligation to convey this support to Ilse, who by then was cellaress and received five bushels of oats, three bushels of both wheat and rapeseed, and one bushel of rye.75 Moreover, after the reform, urban families were more likely than noble families to provide support for individual nuns at Wienhausen, with only one of the nine such charters from a noble family, that of Oppershausen, whereas five of those nine charters issued after 1469 supported seven different nuns from the bourgeoisie; the social origin of nuns in the remaining three charters is unclear. 72  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 508 (24 August 1473); both are referred to as ‘domina’. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 79, and Wienhausen, KW, Urk. passim. 73  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 514 (4 July 1474). 74  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 564 (12 January 1486). 75  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 587a (22 January 1497).

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Whereas bourgeois families may have provided support for their female relatives in annuities because they could not convey large amounts of dowry or wanted their daughters to identify with the aristocratic habitus of the community, nobles may have ceased such arrangements for their daughters in order to ally themselves with the reforming interests of the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Nonetheless, fourteen years after Busch’s reform in 1469, Wienhausen was again visited by abbots from Hildesheim and by a priest from Verdun. These visitors noted that nuns owned property and that the vice of proprietas still existed within the community. They expressed concern as well about the nuns’ enclosure, rich clothing, the presence of markets near the monastic complex, and the facts that the nuns sang secular songs and allowed secular persons into the establishment.76 Such reports suggest that Wienhausen’s nuns continued to maintain contact with the secular world, relying on their families for support, especially for clothing and food, and that Wienhausen’s nuns continued to employ the same justifications for private property — of custom and poverty — invoked by other female religious communities facing reform. The concerns of the visitors at this point, however, seem to have centred on having sufficient communal income to support the nuns and the avoidance of simony. The reformers ordered that the nuns of Wienhausen cease to make either explicit or implicit agreements for the admittance of women into the community, and they were likewise prohibited from demanding clothes, treasures, or meals, ‘whether under the pretext of custom or under the cover of poverty’. Rather, the community should only accept as many suitable members as could be sustained by the material resources of the monastery; and the visitors then established a limit of sixty women, including both choir nuns as well as lay sisters. 77 The reform of an individual community like Wienhausen was thus solidified over a matter of decades. The nuns of Lower Saxony who purchased personal annuities and made arrangements for their use purposefully engaged in practices that enabled them to shape the devotions of their communities, provide for their own and their family’s memorials, express specific devotional interests, or provide charitable support for their family members or friends who took the veil. Nowhere is this interaction more apparent than in the case of Katharina von Hoya at Wienhausen. Katharina’s example, as one of the few Spitzenverdiener among the nuns of the Heath convents, provides a glimpse of how gender, social sta76  77 

Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483). Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483).

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tus, wealth, and piety shaped the performative devotional practices of professed religious women. Their contributions to pious purposes might even extend beyond monastic enclosure to sustain the parochial uses of altars and so forth, as was the case in the later fifteenth century when the noble Katharina von Hoya of Wienhausen created and endowed a chapel that the nuns shared with the local parishioners. Fifteenth-century reformers dwelt on the material aspects of private income — the secular clothes, lavish fare, and superfluous goods — as signs of a failure of individual monastic proprietors to disassociate themselves from their families, communities, and secular life in general. In doing so, the reformers almost universally disregarded the pious ends towards which private income might have been directed by those who donated, purchased, or received it. Like the Observant reformers who recorded their valiant battle against the hydra-like beast of proprietas, subsequent historians have focused primarily on the ways in which personal property facilitated the replication of a secular lifestyle, with its maintenance of social hierarchies, exclusivity, and inequality.78

Women of the World: Questions of Social Status, Worldliness, and Excess This study presents a more nuanced view. In the eyes of Johannes Busch and many other fifteenth-century reformers, the possession of personal income or private provisioning resulted not from the poverty of a community or the faults of their male guardians, but rather from a failure by nuns to renounce their worldly lives and status. Such recalcitrant nuns maintained what Busch saw as social inequalities and a hierarchy based on wealth and lineage. For reformers like Busch, such private wealth and provisioning reflected social origins and secular, familial concerns that opened the door to all types of vice. When he visited Wienhausen in 1469, for instance, Busch recorded that the nuns lived in proprietate, owning personal property and providing for their own food and clothing according to their means.79 Yet, he continued, the nuns of Wienhausen believed they practised a common life because they kept their money in a communal chest (although in individual purses and boxes) and took meals in a common refectory, although the fare of each varied according to what she was 78  The original ideals of poverty had weakened since the fourteenth century, replaced instead by private possessions, the indulgence of which created ‘crass social differences within the convent’. Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, pp. 458, 460, 465–66; cf. Signori, ‘Leere Seiten’, p. 174. 79  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 629, 633–34.

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provided by the community, what she had purchased with her own funds, and what she received from family and friends. Thus ‘one had much and was affluent, while the other sitting at her side had little and was less worthy’.80 If we look beyond the rhetoric of reform, however, we may ask whether female proprietariae stemmed from particular groups, how much money they possessed, its purchasing power, and whether it ultimately benefitted the community or returned to their families after a nun died. The evidence varies and defies generalization. For example, a desire to provide solely for family members appears in a charter of 13 July 1464, made by the widow Mette Dalenburg. She wished to support her daughters, both nuns in the convent of Ebstorf, so that they ‘might serve the Lord God diligently and without any considerable complaint and pray for their mother and have prayers said on her behalf ’. She purchased an annuity of eight marks from the Lüneburg saltpans to be paid for life to her two daughters, Wibeke and Ilsebe, at Ebstorf; but after the daughters died, the funds reverted to Mette and her heirs. Perhaps anticipating the changes to ensue with the arrival of the Observant movement, Mette ensured that her daughters’ funds would not be alienated or swept into a common fund by stipulating that, if Ebstorf were reformed, ‘the aforementioned eight marks from that moment on shall return to the aforementioned Mette and her heirs and fall free without anyone’s hindrance or contradiction’.81 Yet such arrangements cannot easily be reduced to a single function, for in Mette’s view supporting her daughters in exchange for their prayers for her soul and those of the entire community certainly supported both mundane and spiritual ends. Arrangements like Mette Dalenburg’s may illustrate the vice of proprietas, as conceived by monastic reformers, in all its forms. In their view such arrangements resulted in the possession of individual income and maintained familial loyalties, leading to reluctance to reform. Busch’s complaint that families did not wish to provide for entire reformed communities, but only for their relatives, is also illustrated. Remarking that, ‘they wished well to nourish their own, but not everyone’, he viewed such arrangements as avoiding support of the common life of the reformed community; his response was to threaten to relocate the nuns.82 80 

Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 633–34. Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 129–31, argues that this is a well-rehearsed trope of Observant reformers. 81  In return for this annual payment to her daughters of eight marks, she paid 120 marks to the convent of Heiligenthal in 1464. UKE, Urk. 520 (13 July 1464). 82  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 574, 591.

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Harkening back to an idyllic past, reformers viewed themselves as latter day apostles, restoring the purer religious practices of earlier centuries.83 They extolled the practices of a communal table and communal life, condemning the ‘varied customs and traditions of individual monastic houses, through which their members expressed their social and religious identity’. 84 Yet they chose to ignore the deficiencies of such traditional practices. Even according to the report of the reformers, the religious women of the Heideklöster and elsewhere had suffered economically, not just from war and famine, but from the neglect, mismanagement, or outright thievery of their provosts. Reformers were not inclined to blame religious women for the mismanagement of conventual finances and often placed the blame for financial troubles squarely on the provosts. Still Busch and other reformers could not see much beyond the vice of proprietas for which they did hold women accountable. That these nuns and their families had attempted to avoid the appropriation of community income by provosts and others by introducing individual property does not seem to have occurred to the reformers. In part, this may reflect the widely held gendered assumption that religious women lacked ‘good business sense’, that they were not capable of handling their affairs and should not be engaged in financial transactions or management. But while we may ask why reformers like Busch discounted the pleas of economic necessity on the part of the religious women whom they sought to recall to the vita communis, should we not question as well the veracity of the reformers’ claims that the possession of private property and individual support were signs of worldliness? In following common tropes about reform and thinking in the standard clichés about proprietas, were reformers too short-sighted, lacking in insight, or too obstinate in their beliefs to recognize that private property might have supported intense religious devotions at the very communities where they were condemning it?85 Was it only that they believed that women were indeed inevitably profligate of wealth? 83 

Hotchin, ‘Guidance for Men who Minister to Women’, pp. 1–27 (here at p. 8); Lesser, Johannes Busch, pp. 51–52. 84  Hotchin, ‘Guidance for Men who Minister to Women’, p. 5. 85  How much was needed to support a nun? At the end of the thirteenth century, the Dominican order calculated that the minimum requirement for the support of an individual nun comprised an annual sum of three marks silver, about forty or fifty marks silver (£100–130) if paid in one lump sum; dowries of forty to fifty marks appear standard from the end of the thirteenth century according to Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, pp. 456–57. On the material support of nuns in the late fifteenth and sixteenth century, see Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 143–52.

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‘Poor Little Nuns’: Piety, Property, and Business Savvy Fifteenth-century reformers addressed property management and private income in the context of female religious life from a series of established assumptions. Johannes Busch, the chronicler of the Windesheim reform, regarded women’s holding of individual wealth — proprietas — ‘as the sin from which all others flowed for women in particular [my emphasis]’.86 The characterization of religious women as proprietariae and their condemnation for the vice of proprietas was seen to encompass a wide range of behaviours and practices: not only the possession of personal goods — clothing, jewellery, books, other household goods, and cash — but also ownership of land and rents.87 As mentioned earlier, in his account of Wienhausen’s reform Busch recorded that, although he was not able to open the chest belonging to Abbess Katharina von Hoya, he nevertheless estimated that she had been able to accumulate a great sum of money over the past forty years. He did collect a hundred Lübeck marks, but he estimated that there were another hundred marks which certain nuns, fearing reform, had given to persons outside the convent for safe keeping.88 Moreover, there was the claim by some nuns that their property-holding had been authorized by their superiors; indeed the power of religious superiors to authorize the possession of personal property was an issue with which fifteenth-century reformers also had to grapple.89 Geert Groote (father of the devotio moderna) and Dietrich Kerkering (a famed theologian in Cologne) demonstrated more ambivalence than Busch on this issue. Indeed, Kerkering was one of the few writers to acknowledge that religious women might use private income for spiritual as well as material purposes. Kerkering noted that the nuns performed an annual ceremony in which they gave the keys to their chests to the abbess, thereby acknowledging that they held such possessions only 86  The second volume of Johannes Busch’s Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum dealt strictly with the reform of female communities, in which the vice of proprietas figured prominently: Hotchin, ‘Guidance for Men who Minister to Women’, p. 14. On the interpretation of ownership of private property as a particularly female vice among nuns in England, see Warren, Spiritual Economies, pp. 20–21. 87  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 610, 614–18. 88  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 633. Busch’s assumptions about the Abbess’s wealth appear valid, considering both her annual income as well as her gifts to the community prior to 1469. 89  Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 139–140, 183–92. Johannes Busch, Liber de Refor­ ma­tione Monasteriorum, p. 572.

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through special license. Describing the practices of the nuns of Saint Aegidius in Münster, he stated: ‘Each of you whom it pleases, with the license of the abbess, takes the annual rents that fall to the monastery, and spend or consume them for her personal utility and for her comfort, and even gives, if she wishes, certain alms from them or converts them to pious uses.’90 But he could not perceive such practices through any lens but the reforming rhetoric of declension, continuing with a lament about the vices stemming from such proprietas.91 Just as medieval reformers ignored the pious purposes associated with the possession of personal income, so too did they discount the economic sense of religious women. Henry of Ghent (c. 1217–93) viewed the ‘little women’ (‘mulierculae’) — i.e. nuns and beguines who purchased annuities — as the victims of bad advice from their male advisors.92 In his 1415 treatise De vita monastica, the Augustinian hermit Conrad of Zenn went even further, arguing that prelates ‘out of malice’ actively deceived the ‘animas simplicium fratrum et corda paupercularum monialium’ (souls of simple brothers and the hearts of poor little nuns), when telling them that it was no mortal sin to have property.93 The diminutive terminology employed by these authors reflected a disdain and dismissal, revealing that such religious authorities often did not regard religious women as capable of being economic actors or their work or management of property as having value or the possibility of success. Women, and in particular religious women, were victims of the misguidance (intended or not) of those entrusted with the care of nuns. Influenced by such narratives, today’s historians have often emphasized the ways in which personal property facilitated the replication of a secular lifestyle and the maintenance of social hierarchies, exclusivity, and inequality. But to continue to view religious women in this way is simply to accept the rhetoric of the reformers without question. As Gabriela Signori has noted, religious communities that resisted reform have been treated as foils, ‘Kontrastfolie’, by both medieval and modern authors.94 Just as there are standard clichés used to justify the takeover of nuns’ properties by their male rivals, so there are standard clichés used to justify the reformers’ ousting of those reluctant to give up control 90 

On Kerkering, see Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 187–93; Melk, Stiftsbibl., Hs 900, fol. 56, transcribed and translated in Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, p. 134. 91  Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, pp. 134–36. 92  Henrici de Gandavo, Quaestiones Quodlibetales, ed. by Macken, p. 218. 93  De Vita Monastica, fol. 40r, transcribed in Mixson, ‘Professed Proprietors’, p. 243. 94  Signori, ‘Leere Seiten’, p. 174; Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, pp. 465–66.

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of their communities to reformers. Numerous studies attest to the ubiquity of female monastic proprietariae, demonstrating that such practices were not confined to a single religious order or specific region.95 But few until recently have attempted to move beyond the accusation of religious women practising the vice of proprietas. Writers then and now have utilized the examples provided by the rhetoric of reform to lend drama to their descriptions of the reforming effort. Yet they almost invariably do so without bothering to investigate the circumstances and without observing on their own terms the nuns and their supporters who were standing accused of such vices as proprietas. Although recent scholarship has begun to question the rhetoric of reform and to investigate defences of property holding, few researchers have considered the influence of medieval gender expectations in helping shape proprietas as a particularly female vice in the eyes of reformers. Few have explored the pious ways in which monastic proprietariae actually used their income. It is easier simply to repeat the dramatic stories and clichés about religious women and their lack of capability and devotion. This study makes it apparent, however, that private income enabled wealthy choir nuns at the Heideklöster to become important patrons of their own religious communities and, by using money, to demonstrate a piety that was both personal and individual to shape the devotional practices of those communities. Indeed, nuns often viewed the private income as the means for contributing to the economic and spiritual status of their convents. Combining assumptions about aristocratic status, wealth, and the suitable expressions of piety, nuns appear to have been less concerned about proprietas than were their reformers. Indeed, in many communities, including the Heideklöster, nuns’ activities as proprietariae allowed them to enact their performative devotions. While reformers of the Heideklöster could not entirely eradicate the nuns’ assumptions about property holding and personal income, they probably were successful in altering the more direct participation of religious women in such transactions. Thus, Frederick of Heilo, a contemporary of Busch and fellow adherent of the devotio moderna, noted that ‘the labour of this time’ was to correct and emend ‘the intellect and emotion, which are greatly corrupt in all of us, but especially in women’.96 But in removing private property, the Observant 95 

See Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, pp. 453–87. Gleba, Reformpraxis und mate­ rielle Kultur, pp. 145–51; Dißelbeck-Tewes, Frauen in der Kirche. Vanja, Besitz- und Sozial­ geschichte documented thirty-three nuns (at least half of them from the lower nobility) who held property or annuities between 1337 and 1514. 96  Tractatus contra pluralitatem confessorum et de regimine sororum, in Amsterdam, Uni­

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reformers also removed the nuns’ ability to use personal funds to support particular devotional practices at many houses, which might be viewed as a net loss. Like the fifteenth-century reformers whose rhetoric they too easily accept without further investigation, modern historians have used the possession of personal property as an indicator of a decline in monastic standards. They have repeated the tropes of its weakening of ideals of poverty and the communal life and its contribution to the maintenance of social distinctions and hierarchies, exclusivity, and inequality.97 But to accept unquestioningly the rhetoric of an earlier age and to come to such conclusions without investigating just what the nuns, such as Katharina von Hoya, at the Heideklöster and elsewhere were doing with their private income, may be to miss the devotional richness of such nuns’ lives.

versity Libr., Codex IE 26, fols 25v–26r, cited in Schlotheuber, ‘“Nullum regimen difficilius”’, p. 58, n. 53. 97  Vanja, Besitz–und Sozialgeschichte, p. 65; Schuller, ‘Dos–Praebenda–Peculium’, pp. 458, 460, 465–66.

Chapter 6

The Art of Reform

I

t is tempting to see in the Observant reforms a break with the shared devotional culture traced in the preceding chapters, but to do so would oversimplify the relationship between the two. Challenging the connections maintained between secular and monastic life, reformers denounced the private possession of goods, including the personal ownership of devotional artwork. Observant reformers, however, did not reject artwork per se, especially for religious women. Art held an important place within female spirituality and monasticism, especially in the context of female enclosure and the cura monialium, two traditions that received particular emphasis within the reform. While individual reformers debated the function and merits of images, the movement accommodated both the destruction and the creation of artwork.1 Indeed, the visual arts often complemented devotional literature as a medium for the expression of reforming ideals. Male reformers attempted to direct the use of religious images according to the ideals of the Observant reform, restricting their function to the cultivation of moral virtue and regular observance, but reformed women imbued the artwork they created, commissioned, and used with a wide array of meanings. The nuns of the Heath convents accommodated reforming interests, yet still adhered to the traditions of performative piety embraced by their predecessors. Certain traditional practices, like the production of liturgical embroideries, the creation of religious images, and the adornment of important cult figures with robes or crowns, attained heightened importance in light of the return 1 

Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, pp. 177–95.

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to strict observances.2 As an expression of the Observant reform, religious artwork assumed enhanced commemorative, historical, and didactic functions. At the same time, it provided a medium through which religious women continued to assert their unique communal identity and even to contest subtly the need for reform.

Worldly Goods or Devotional Aid? Proprietas and Religious Art While those who condemned superfluity in private property could demonstrate its connection to the secular world and its vices, the personal possession of devotional art was more problematic. On the one hand, private images, household altars, and lavish devotional items, like rosaries of gold and coral, reflected the sort of conspicuous consumption and enjoyment of luxury that characterized the piety of the wealthy and socially prominent.3 Both Franciscan and Dominican decrees ordered religious women to renounce all the precious items, Paternosters, gold, silver, and money that they possessed.4 Dominican rules further stipulated that nuns were not to use pictures in their choir stalls or to build small chapels or prayer rooms, but they still permitted the possession of images of the crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary, and, later, Saint Dominic.5 On the other hand, religious art held an important place within female spirituality and the cura monialium, one which leaders of the Observant reform continued to recognize. Although they emphasized the importance of literacy, devotional reading, and record keeping, the Observant movement was not 2 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 139–40. ‘Heures me fault de Nostre Dame […] | Qui soient de soutilouvraige, | D’or et d’azur, riches et cointes, | Bien ordonnées et bien pointes, | De fin drap d’or bien couvertes, | Et quant elles seront ouvertes, | Deux fermaulx d’or qui fermeront’ (I must have a Book of Hours of Our Lady. It should be a very easily used work, of gold and azure, rich and precise, beautifully laid out, and beautifully painted, covered in cloth of gold, and when it is open with two golden clasps to close it). Deschamps, Oeuvres complètes, ed. by de Saint Hilaire and Raynaud, p. 45. For the role of household altars and images in lay women’s devotion, see Signori, Räume, Gesten, Andachtsformen. 4  Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, p. 125; Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittel­alters, p. 21; Ritzinger and Scheeben, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Teutonia’, p. 30. In 1484 the city council of Ulm complained about the women at the convent of Söflingen, particularly their pointed shoes and their rosaries of gold and coral. Signori, ‘Wanderer zwischen den “Welten”’, p. 134. 5  Hamburger and Suckale, ‘Zwischen Diesseits und Jenseits’, p. 32; Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 182. 3 

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iconoclastic.6 It included both those who would abolish the personal use of devotional images in favour of communal worship, like Johannes Busch, as well as those like Johannes Meyer and Konrad of Prussia, who upheld the utility of such images, even those owned individually. For reformers, however, the utility of devotional images lay not in their ability to facilitate an intimate spiritual union with the divine, as was exalted in the visionary and mystical literature of religious women. Rather, the usefulness of religious art resided in its ability to inspire moral virtue and conformity with Observant practices. It was primarily within this context of a moralizing, inward-looking spiritual life that Observant reformers accommodated devotional artwork for religious women.7 Chapter 3 discussed how devotional paintings, sculptures, stained glass, textiles, illuminated manuscripts, images for meditation (Andachtsbilder), and other precious items (cleynode) shaped the communal as well as the personal devotional practices of professional religious women. 8 Indeed, the possession and use of religious artwork reflected a shared set of devotional practices that united rather than divided female monastic devotion and lay piety. This appears particularly prominently in the practice of erecting and using household altars, something recommended for both lay as well as professed girls in the later Middle Ages.9 Just as a secular bride brought a dowry to her prospective groom, so too nuns may have viewed their personal possessions and private religious images, including their Christkindl or bambini, as appropriate attributes of a Sponsa Christi.10 Religious women often received items of a devotional nature, such as books, images, statues, and household altars, from their family, friends, and spiritual directors.11 As noted previously, Margaret Ebner’s spiritual director, Heinrich of Nördlingen, provided her with figures and images to use in her devotions. 6 

Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 191. Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, pp. 187–88, 190. 8  Some fifty-three items attest to the individual and corporate devotional practices of the nuns of Holy Cross, while archival sources document at least another eighteen items. Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 14, 61–136. See also the catalogue of items from the Krone und Schleier exhibition. 9  Signori, Räume, Gesten, Andachtsformen, pp. 134–40. 10  Kammel, ‘Imago pro domo’, pp. 13–14; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, p. 79; von Ebner and von Nördlingen, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, pp. 20, 90; Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, p. 8; Chronik des Klosters Herzebrock, ed. by Flaskamp, pp. 37–79 and 120–21, quoted in Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, p. 151 11  Signori, ‘Wanderer zwischen den “Welten”’, pp. 136–41. 7 

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Through him, she also received gifts from women in other communities, including an amber cross, a small image with a cross, and a relic of Saint Agnes from the Cistercian nuns of Burtscheid.12 Remarking upon the numerous gold and silver items sold by the convent of Ribnitz in 1510 to finance the acquisition of two villages, Abbess Dorothea von Mecklenburg (1480–1537) noted that she had contributed her own precious items (clenodye), which she had received as gifts from her friends. 13 Chapter 3 likewise noted that the nuns of Lüne received gifts of small statues as well as silver spoons, wine jugs, and money from their relatives on the occasion of their profession.14 Nuns also frequently received items through testamentary bequests. For example, in 1373 Margaret Todinghusen of Lübeck bequeathed her good rosary along with a small household altar with an enclosed figure to her sisters Wendele and Alheid, nuns in Neukloster. Additionally, she provided a small golden image for the high altar and a small clasp for the mantel of the Virgin Mary.15 The ownership of personal possessions, particularly private devotional objects, thus reflected ideas, presumptions, and perceptions connected to both the gender and social status of the female religious, embraced not only by the women themselves, but also by their families and male spiritual advisors. Such shared attitudes and assumptions help to explain why the visitors who returned to Wienhausen in 1483, fourteen years after Busch’s reform, found the nuns still in possession of private goods. Complaining that the vice of proprietas still remained, they directed that ‘the cell of each sister should be visited often and each thing examined, and the cells of the sisters shall be ordered to be changed as often as it may please the abbess’. 16 While the inspectors of 1483 did not explicitly force the nuns to renounce their personal items as before, their regulations served to discourage individuals from accumulating more than could be easily transferred to another location or commissioning lavish decorations 12 

von Ebner and von Nördlingen, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, pp. 239, 248, 260. 13  ‘So hebbe ick tho deme vorghemelten summen geldes ethlyke myner clenodye, de my myne frunde gheschenket hebben’ (I add to the aforementioned sum of money a number of precious items given to me by my friends). Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, p. 213. 14  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 23, fol. 77v. 15  Hasse, ‘Kleinbildwerke in deutschen und skandinavischen Testamenten’, pp. 62–64. 16  ‘Celle singularum sororum sepius visitentur et singule res aspiciantur et prout domine abbatisse placuerit ordinentur celle eciam sororum aliquociens permutentur’. Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 554 (7 July 1483).

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for their cells, as Wienhausen’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inhabitants would nonetheless do.17 As in centuries past, the visitors sought to regulate, rather than to eradicate absolutely, the nuns’ personal possessions. While it is impossible to recover the motivations for the choice of images or statues given to individual nuns (a pious exemplar of religious life, a patron saint, an object to facilitate mystical union or channel devotional desires), undoubtedly the images and household goods condemned by fifteenth-century reformers carried intimate associations for their possessors. Statues of Saint Aldegunde of Maubeuge (b. c. 635) and Saint Clare of Assisi offered models of female religious life that may have inspired donations of their statues by the nuns’ relatives. The silver spoons, gold plates, goblets, and the like enumerated and valued by Busch may have meant more to the women who owned them than a simple display of social status or wealth; they may have carried personal associations with a woman’s dedication to the religious life, her desponsatio, or even familial pride and love. The personal feelings associated with private property may also account for the resistance with which religious women greeted their removal. Reflecting the veiled resentment of those unwillingly reformed, the Wienhausen chronicler recalled that the abbess of Derneburg, who assisted the reform of the community, gathered up the nuns’ personal and communal objects ‘like a thief ’ and allowed them to be sold at reduced price by her friends in Braunschweig. 18 Among the items taken, the chronicler listed gold rings; three gold crowns for the statues of Mary, Saint Alexander, and another saint; a silver spoon; a gilded chain inset with pearls and other gems; pictures of various saints; and other decorations for the choir.19 Although the chronicler did not indicate whether such items were held communally or individually, her sentiments reflect how enormously disruptive 17 

Wienhausen preserves several individual cells that were decorated with lavish paintings on the walls and ceiling, even stained glass windows in the case of the abbess’s cell. Particularly striking are the abbess’s cell (cell 2), decorated under Abbess Katherina of Langlingen c. 1587, and the cell of Engel Wennes (cell 29), decorated with painted quotations from the Bible on the walls and painted faux architectural details on the walls and ceiling. Similar paintings survive in the nuns’ cells from the neighbouring convent of Lüne in the city of Lüneburg. Maier, Convent of Wienhausen, trans. by Wolfson, p. 37. 18  ‘Solche und dergleichen Sachen hat die Domina von Derenburg diebischerweise zu sich genommen und durch ihre Jungern und Freunde in Braunschweig und anderswo um geringen Preiß verkauffenlaßen’. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 22. 19  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 23.

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the loss of material possessions could be for religious women. Writing perhaps a decade after the convent’s reform, the chronicler still smarted over the confiscation of the nuns’ possessions, noting that this caused ‘the greatest disadvantage to the convent, so that it still had not overcome the damage’. 20 The removal of these items may have reduced the symbolic and cultural capital of the community or even called the nuns’ spiritual authority into question. As the Wienhausen chronicler noted: ‘The images of the saints and their decorations were valued so little that many good practices and customs were abolished and decried as foolishness, by which then many previously peaceful souls were placed in worry and sorrow.’21 The spiritual and psychological disruption caused by these reforms is reflected in the chronicle’s accounts of the numerous ghosts and demons that plagued the community of Wienhausen in the decades following the reform. These apparitions were so numerous that the abbess was forced to appoint specific nuns to guard those sleeping in the dormitory and provide aid and comfort to those afflicted.22 Documentary sources and archaeological discoveries provide evidence of the rich material culture that surrounded religious women and the importance of artwork to female monastic devotion. As noted previously, in the 1950s, researchers discovered items beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choir in the south wing of Wienhausen, as well as between the floor of the nuns’ cells and the ceiling of the summer refectory in the north wing. These finds led to further investigations in the 1960s at the convents of Isenhagen, Ebstorf, and Lüne. Among the items recovered at Isenhagen, for example, were fragments from a household altar and wax triptych, fragments of prayers, letters, keys, eyeglasses, linen thread, and various images.23 Recent restoration and archaeological work has brought to light similar caches from the former convent of Poor Clares in Ribnitz, where researchers uncovered a complete prayer book and song book, 20  ‘Ist also das Vorerwehnte zum höchsten Nachteil des Klosters weggeführet, daß es auch den Schaden noch nicht verwunden hat’. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 22–23. 21  ‘Die Bilder der Heiligen und ihren Zierath hat man sehr gering geschätzet, manche gute Weise und Gewonheit abgeschaffet und vor Narrerey ausgeruffen, dadurch dann manche vorhin befriedigte Seele in angst und Traurigkeit gestürtzt’. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 22–23. 22  This occurred under Provost Heinrich Wetemann (1478–90). Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 53. 23  Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 160; Appuhn, Bilder aus Isenhagen, pp. 46–47.

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fragments of stained glass windows, and an image of the enthroned Virgin painted on vellum that probably dates prior to the foundation of the convent in the early fourteenth century. Needles, thread, patterns, and pearls also emerged from the Nonnenstaub, as did objects of everyday life, such as knives, book clasps, and rings. The substantial amount of plant and animal matter found at Ribnitz further provides insight into the diet of the nuns.24 The finds from Wienhausen, which comprised over two hundred objects — devotional as well as practical, dating from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries — remain the most extensive in terms of the devotional and artistic items recovered. Among the mundane personal possessions owned by the nuns of Wienhausen number seventeen knives, a dozen wax tablets and stili, six book closures, eighteen spindles, thimbles, a pair of scissors, iron needles, six small boards for weaving ribbons, eyeglasses, and even a miniature tin salt cellar. Researchers also uncovered three leather scourges, three small crucifixes worn as necklaces, six rosaries, several relics, and pilgrimage badges, in addition to several small prayer books, fragments of prayers and professions, devotional images, and small figures. These items probably ended up beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choir through a combination of unintentional loss and conscious preservation.25 Approximately ninety Andachtsbilder, small drawings, and later printed images used as mnemonic devices and foci for meditative exercises, dating from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, survive from Wienhausen. Such images were frequently pasted into devotional books to supplement or reinforce the text through an illustration, but several of the images recovered at Wienhausen retain traces of nail holes or ties, indicating their use in individual cells or choir stalls.26 Over half of the images created prior to 1510 (fifty-four out of one hundred) depict scenes from the life of Christ. Fourteen images portray the Virgin Mary or scenes from her life, while another fourteen images can only be vaguely identified as holy figures. Of the Christocentric scenes, the Crucifixion appears most frequently, followed by images of the Veronica 24 

Raskop, ‘Klarissenkloster Ribnitz’, pp. 269–76. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 157–238; Appuhn, Der Fund im Nonnenchor, pp. 10–13. 26  Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 160, 163–65; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure, and the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, pp. 88–89. Such images were undoubtedly what the thirteenth-century Dominican superiors had in mind when they issued statutes stipulating that nuns should not make pictures to hang next to their seats nor procure images or erect little chapels. Ritzinger and Scheeben, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Teutonia’, p. 27. 25 

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(the cloth imprinted with Christ’s visage), Christ’s Resurrection, the Man of Sorrows, and Christ’s wounds.27 Like Wienhausen’s embroideries, several of these Andachtsbilder were produced in the convent by the nuns themselves. The diminutive size of many of the images, their amateur artistry, and the ephemeral materials employed preclude their having been produced or commissioned from an outside workshop.28 More importantly, some of the earliest Andachtsbilder from Wienhausen duplicated iconographic motifs found elsewhere within the convent, reducing them to a smaller, more individual scale.29 The creation and use of such images enabled religious women to follow the command ‘ora et labora’ to create visible and tangible expressions of their piety, just as the production of liturgical textiles or the performance of the paschal liturgy had done. They thus reflect the performative devotional practices embraced by the nuns of the Heideklöster. As an expression of the monastic injunction to work and prayer, such activities could be accommodated within the reform movement. The years surrounding the reform of Wienhausen, in fact, reflect a period of considerable artistic activity on the part of its nuns; over half of the Andachtsbilder recovered at Wienhausen belong to the period between 1450 and 1500.30 Although it is difficult to determine precisely which images were produced prior to and after Wienhausen’s internal reform in 1469, the influence of reform appears in certain duplicate images of the Man of Sorrows, the Veronica, and the Virgin Mary.31 In order to understand this influence, it is useful first to consider the role of devotional artwork within the reform and the cura monialium.

27 

Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 166. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 189. 29  Wienhausen, KW, WIEN Kc 33. The nun who produced this image may have also created the small diptych of Christ freeing the damned from Hell and emerging from his tomb, which copied even more closely the images in the nuns’ choir. This image was once held communally, for a strip of paper pasted to the back of the wood preserves the medieval library number by which it was stored: ‘Sub ‘p’XXXViii’. Nevertheless, it is possible that, like many other artworks, it first belonged to an individual and then later came into the communal possessions of the convent. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 187–88; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 43. 30  Appuhn, Der Fund vom Nonnenchor; Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’. 31  Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 167. 28 

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The Art of Enclosure: Art and Space within the (Male) Context of the Cura Monialium The male religious entrusted with the cura monialium thought that images were important to female devotion, but for reasons far different from those extolled by modern historians.32 Medieval ecclesiastics frequently based their advocacy of images and artwork in female devotion on a misogynistic view of women as ‘spiritual weaklings, who required the aid that pictures provided’.33 Henry Suso, for example, categorized nuns with male novices when he advocated the utility of images for religious instruction.34 Artwork could also serve as a means of directing and controlling women’s ecstatic spirituality or their ‘flights of devotional fancy’ along institutionally acceptable trajectories.35 Male leaders of the Observant reform did not depart from such attitudes, nor did they seek to abolish religious art, but they did attempt to channel religious women’s use of devotional images in particular ways. Reformers such as Meyer, Busch, and Nider used religious art to illustrate reforming ideals, such as the importance of the communal over the individual and the superiority of interior versus exterior devotion. They thus used images for moralizing purposes, attempting to restrict their function to mnemonic devices for the recollection of appropriate internal virtues and external behaviour.36 Johannes Busch adopted a moralizing tone whenever he commented upon the devotional artwork owned and used by religious women. For Busch, religious artwork often stood as a symbol of the decline in monastic standards among the female religious and their reluctance to accept reform. The dramatic resistance enacted by the canonesses of Wennigsen provides a case in point. Busch described how the women there prostrated themselves in a circle in their choir between wooden and stone images of the saints. By this means they hoped ‘that since the walls and bolts had not defended them against the duke

32  Henry Suso, for example, had his cell in Constance painted with images and patristic sayings. Illustrations also played a prominent role in his Exemplar, whose audience was primarily female. Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 187; Lentes, ‘Der Mediale Status des Bildes’; Hamburger, ‘The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns’. 33  Hamburger, ‘A Liber Precum in Sélestat’, p. 232. 34  Hamburger, ‘The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, pp. 20–45. 35  Hamburger, Nuns as Artists, pp. 216, 219; Hamburger, ‘To Make Women Weep’, p. 32; Ziegler, ‘Reality as Imitation’, pp. 113–14, 121. 36  Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, pp. 186–87, 191.

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and us, at least the saints, invoked with lights, would deign to protect them’. 37 Busch thus associated the use of images with the (futile) disobedience of the canonesses to the secular and ecclesiastical authority of men, presenting this episode as a negative example of resistance to the reform. In his description of the changes instituted at the Holy Cross convent in Erford, however, Busch used artwork to illustrate the importance of communal versus private devotion. Here Busch recounted how he took the sculpted and painted images of Christ and the saints, which the nuns had at their stalls for their private devotion, and placed them towards the east end, where the nuns’ choir was joined to the church. Busch was unequivocal about his motivation in acting thus. He transferred the items so that all the nuns might view them collectively (in communi) and not, as they had previously been wont to do, in private (in privato).38 In this example, the removal of images from the individual seats of the nuns and their relocation towards the eastern end of the choir underscored the reforming emphasis on the communal over the individual. Busch placed the images in closer proximity to the sacred space of the altar (located in the eastern end of the church or choir). At the same time, he brought the images into closer association with secular piety, since the eastern end of the nuns’ choir was often the place where it joined the parish church. Despite Busch’s efforts to transform private images into communal art, individualized devotional images continued to play an important role within the context of female spirituality, the cura monialium, and the Observant reform. An anecdote concerning the establishment of the first reformed house of female Dominicans at Schönensteinbach helps illustrate the nature of this continuing connection. According to the account preserved by Johannes Meyer, Konrad of Prussia installed the first reformed nuns in the convent of Schönensteinbach, the community that became the model house for the Observant reform among female Dominicans, in 1397. The ceremony culminated in the formal enclosure of the nuns, but before this took place, Konrad gave each nun an image of Christ.39 37 

Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 556–57: ‘ut eas, quas muri et repagula contra ducem et nos defendere non poterant, saltem sancti cum luminibus invocati protegere dignarentur.’ The canonesses first employed this physical demonstration of resistance when the reformers arrived. Indeed, they sought recourse in the symbolic power of imagery after the duke broke down their door and physically removed the stones that had been used to barricade the opening, ‘just as he was accustomed to doing when conquering castles’. 38  Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 611. 39  Meyer, Buch der Reformacio, ed. by von Loë and Reichert, ii (1908); Lentes, ‘Bild,

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Figure 27. Kloster Wienhausen, Man of Sorrows, c. 1450–1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Konrad’s gift may have followed an already established tradition whereby religious women received devotional images on the occasion of their formal profession or coronation, as occurred for example at the convent of Lüne. According to Meyer, Konrad wished to give each nun an image from the Lord’s Passion, but the individual pictures were different: one portrayed the scourging of Jesus, another showed the crowning with thorns, and so on. As a great sign, however, the Lord miraculously transformed all the images prior to their distribution so that each nun received an identical scene of the crucifixion of Jesus with Mary and John beneath the cross.40 Konrad’s gift substituted a sacred image for the nuns to conReform, und Cura Monialium’, pp. 179–81. 40  Meyer, Buch der Reformacio, ed. by von Loë and Reichert, ii (1908), 9: ‘Nun hett der wirdig vatter brůder Cůnrat gern de swöstren etwas geben glich ainer als der andren; do hat er bildlin von dem liden unsers heren, die warent aber unglich, anes wie er gegaislet ward, ans die krönung, ans sust, daz ander so; do verwandlet unser lieber her mit ainem grossen zachen die bildlin alle, also daz sy alle glich förmige crucifix wurdent, und Maria und Iohannes under dem crütz stůndent. Also do gab der selig vatter jetlicher swöster ain bild des gecrützgen Christus.’

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Figure 28. Kloster Wienhausen, Man of Sorrows, c. 1450–1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

template in lieu of a view of the outer world, while simultaneously upholding the reforming principles of uniformity, equality, and devotion to the Passion.41 Many of the images produced by the nuns of Wienhausen in the fifteenth century seem to reflect similar ideas about the acceptable use of religious art. Two works depicting Christ as the Man of Sorrows surrounded by the figures of Mary and John reflect the same Passion-centred piety that played such an important role in the Observant reforms in northern Germany and in later medieval piety in general (Figures 27 and 28).42 The image of the Man of Sorrows also carried indulgences that were important to reformed communities.43 Fashioned from papier-mâché, these images were exact duplicates, indicating that they had come from the same mold and were mass-produced within the convent. The different 41 

Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 181. Bynum, Wonderful Blood. 43  Camille, ‘Mimetic Identification and Passion Devotion’, p. 187. 42 

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colouring on each work, however, reflects the individual creativity of the nuns who painted them.44 One emphasized Christ’s wounds by means of tiny droplets of blood on his chest and forearm, representing the wounds on Christ’s hands with red stars, while the second image depicted only the side wound. Two duplicate images of the Madonna with child, also dating from the late fifteenth century, similarly document the nuns’ role in their creation. One image of the Madonna with child painted on wood even had initials carved on the back, perhaps an indication of private ownership or the artist of the work. The nuns of Wienhausen may have produced these images as gifts for other communities, donors, or visitors, but it is also possible that they created them for their own use, as expressions of the sort of communal identity and devotion encouraged by reformers like Konrad of Prussia. Moreover, these images probably provided a visual accompaniment to the nuns’ passion-centred meditations, as well as to their particular devotion to the Veronica. Seven of the Andachtsbilder recovered from Wienhausen depict images of the Veronica.45 44 

Appuhn and Heusinger describe these images as ‘Dilettantenarbeit, also das Werk der Klosterschwestern’ (The work of amateurs, thus the work of the nuns). Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, p. 172; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 44. 45  Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’, pp. 199–200; Ham­ burger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’, pp. 323–27.

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Figure 30. Kloster Wienhausen, Veronica. c. 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Such devotion to the Veronica was not unique. Images of the Veronica painted on vellum or pressed in wax also appear among those produced and used by nuns at the convent of Holy Cross in Rostock.46 Of particular interest, however, are those depictions of the Veronica from Wienhausen that demonstrate exact duplication and serial production. The first type depicts the visage of Jesus as the vera ikon displayed on a cloth and held by a female figure; two such images, painted on leather c. 1500 and measuring 8.4 cm × 4.2 cm, survive from Wienhausen (Figure 29).The unique set of Veronicas on a single sheet of vellum has evoked diverse interpretations from scholars, who have variously theorized that the nuns of Wienhausen produced this series as pilgrimage badges, as gifts to other religious communities, or perhaps as a means of intensifying their efficacy.47 Given the Veronica’s association with pilgrimage 46 

The Wienhausen images may have provided the iconography for an image of the Veronica produced by the nuns of Holy Cross in Rostock. Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 30, 46, 51, 99–100, 121–22; Hamburger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’, pp. 332–33, 338. 47  Hamburger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’, pp. 323–28; Appuhn, Der Fund vom Nonnenchor, pp. 16–21.

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to Rome, this work may indeed be a sheet of pilgrimage badges. Rather than distributing them to external visitors, however, Wienhausen’s nuns may have used them to commemorate their own, virtual pilgrimages within the monastic complex (discussed further in the next chapter). Nuns at the reformed convent of Lüne as well as the unreformed convent of Holy Cross in Braunschweig performed mental pilgrimages associated with the jubilee of 1500, through which they simulated pilgrimages to the seven principal churches in Rome. 48 It is possible that the nuns of Wienhausen also practised such devotions. Used internally by the nuns, whether as pilgrimage badges or not, these Veronicas could serve as reminders of the uniformity, conformity, and devotion to the Passion established during the convent’s internal reform, just as had Konrad of Prussia’s images. Alternately, circulating among reformed houses, they could have functioned both as a reflection of spiritual confraternity through their Passion-centred piety and of mutual adherence to the ideals of Observant reform (Figure 30). In his analysis of the theological and mystical symbolism surrounding the Veronica in medieval artwork and visionary literature, Jeffrey Hamburger argued that the reverence that religious women demonstrated for the Veronica stemmed not from their identification with her as a woman per se, but rather from a desire, shared by religious and lay persons, to come literally ‘face-to-face’ with Christ.49 Hamburger’s analysis, however, effectively removes the female figure and her actions from the narrative context of the image. I am less inclined to dismiss the importance of the female figure and her actions, for these images reflect precisely those associations between material objects, female care, and a gendered relationship with Christ that formed the matrix of the performative piety exhibited among the female religious houses in this region. Devotion to the Veronica would have encouraged religious women to identify with the Biblical women of the passion and their gendered acts of female care, just as did the iconography and devotional practices surrounding the paschal liturgy. Like the images of the Virgin Mary at her loom that associated female piety with household chores, the Veronica associated an object of domestic production — notably, a textile — with female care (giving the cloth to Jesus to wipe his brow) and its result (personal and intimate knowledge of Jesus). The association of the Veronica with the marriage veil also undoubtedly resonated with 48  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 5, fol. 40r; Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fol. 36r-v, trans. in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 364–65. 49  Hamburger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’, p. 322.

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professional religious women. As the ‘official’ brides of Christ who actually wore a crown and veil as part of their habit, such associations would have particularly appealed to the nuns of the Heath convents.50 Similarly, the Veronica sometimes assumed the role of a love-token exchanged between the heavenly bridegroom and his sponsa, as it does in a manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, written by one woman for another. 51 Veneration of the Veronica thus may have held special importance precisely because of the connections it had to female labour and female care.

The Art of Enclosure: Architectural and Artistic Renewal within a Female Context of Reform The images preserved from convents such as Wienhausen illustrate how the possession and use of individual devotional images reflected as well as transcended the changes of the Observant reforms. It was not merely coincidental that Konrad of Prussia distributed images to the nuns at Schönensteinbach prior to their enclosure or that religious women regarded their personal devotional images as necessary attributes of a sponsa Christi. The theory that external images resulted in the formation of internal images justified the use — even the need — for religious images as visual-aides for enclosed women, and the emphasis on female enclosure within the reform may thus have served to enhance the role of religious artwork.52 The programme of renewal undertaken by reformers affected more than the individual ownership of property; it also involved the repair, restoration, and alteration of physical and communal structures, as well as the artistic decoration of the monastery.53 In some cases, these renovations provided the necessary support for the re-establishment of communal life, repairs made to kitchens, for example, farm buildings or dormitories. Other changes reflected the reformers’ desire to delineate more clearly sacred from secular space and to put an end to the shared use of religious spaces and objects by nuns with their local 50 

In theory, all Christians assumed the veil by taking Christ as their heavenly bridegroom. Hamburger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’, pp. 317, 375–79. 51  The text refers to the Veronica as ‘a louetokene to hauyn your blissid visage in remembraunce’. Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS  Holkham Misc. 41, quoted in Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae’, p. 60. This text also emphasizes a direct dialogue with Christ throughout its passion meditation. 52  Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 180. 53  Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 168–69.

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communities. The result of such efforts could be a considerable alteration in the architectural complex and use of physical space in reformed houses. Each of the convents of the Lüneburg Heath underwent structural changes as a result of its reform. At Ebstorf, the reforming provost Matthias von der Knesebeck built a new kitchen and water system, higher walls, a grille in the entrance hall, and a smaller speaking window, which ultimately had to be enlarged.54 In 1482/3 Provost Graurock added a new kitchen and workrooms at Lüne; in 1497, his successor expanded the nuns’ choir and created a new washhouse. In 1508 the convent built a new infirmary, and a year later a weaving house was added. The refectory was also lengthened, provided with heating under its floor, and decorated with new murals.55 Similar alterations occurred at other reformed houses. The convent of Gertrudenberg in Westphalia, for example, undertook building projects continuously between 1486 and 1496, work that provided income and work for labourers and craftsmen from the nearby city and region. Workers repaired the church roof and other portions of the monastic buildings, including the bakery, bath house, infirmary, and mortuary chapel, along with the fences, stalls, and walls of the monastery. A new guesthouse and dormitory were built as well as several new mills. Workers likewise repaired the community’s three great altars, created a lectern for the choir, renovated the sacrament shrine, restored the organ, and reinforced the sacristy with doors and locks.56 Although it might be tempting to interpret such structural changes in terms of the imposition of male control over the lives of the female religious, reforming abbesses and prioresses proved energetic agents of the renegotiation and renewal of liturgical and monastic space. Just as prior to Wienhausen’s reform Abbess Katharina von Hoya transformed the private and domestic space of her domicile by creating a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne, so too did enterprising leaders of the reform actively restructure the use of space within their monasteries. The role of Katharina von Hoya’s successor, the reforming Abbess Susanna Potstock (1470–1501), in relocating the Saint Anne chapel and restoring the original building to secular use, has already been noted.57 Additionally, she oversaw the renovation and construction of cells for the nuns, improved the bathhouse and the abbess’s house with fireplaces, had walls built around portions of the monastic complex, and made a variety of improvements to the farm buildings.58 54 

Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, pp. 392–93, 403–07. Lorenz-Leber, Kloster Lüne, pp. 26–27, 30–31, 42. 56  Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 168–73. 57  Wienhausen, KW, Urk. 503a (1473). 58  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 28. 55 

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Abbesses at other reformed houses undertook similar structural renovations.59 The first reforming abbess of Herzebrock in Westphalia, for example, renewed portions of the kitchen, along with the cloister, refectory, and choir, which received new vaulting and painting. Her successor renovated the guesthouse, parlor, infirmary, and gates, and constructed a new portal for the convent’s distributions to the poor, a new bakery, a dormitory for the lay sisters, and a house for the procurator. Prioress Anna von Buchwald (1484–1508) from the Benedictine convent of Preetz in Schleswig-Holstein undertook a building campaign that increased the comfort of her fellow nuns and allowed her to assume the role of patron, while altering the use of various spaces within the monastery. According to her own account, Anna had the bathhouse repaired, adding drains, fireplaces, tables, and benches. She also erected a wall to enclose a small yard next to the structure where the nuns could enjoy fresh air. She oversaw the demolition and rebuilding of the fireplace in the refectory as well as the construction of new cells for the nuns, and she repaired the cloister’s rotting roof at her own expense.60 Indeed, under Prioress Anna, the monastery was substantially rebuilt with a new bakery, infirmary, mill, and provost’s house, as well as redecorated with stained glass windows, vaulting, paintings, and an organ for the church.61 Anna von Buchwald not only altered and repaired the mundane structures of the convent, she also shaped the way in which the nuns used the sacred space of the church and its altars. As noted in the preceding chapter, Anna changed the way her nuns experienced communion and interacted with the lay parishioners by adopting measures that separated the two groups who had previously shared the use of the high altar.62 Both male and female reformers thus worked to restrict the level of interaction between religious women and their local parishes by visually and physically inserting a greater division between the two groups. At the same time, architecture and artwork continued to provide a means by which consecrated women could structure their devotional surroundings, thereby expressing their communal devotion, religious ideals, and collective identity.

59 

Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 167–68. von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 13–14, 37–41. 61  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 13–14, 37–50, 58–60. 62  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 46–47; Borchling, ‘Literarisches und geistiges Leben’, pp. 372–407. 60 

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The desire for renewal found expression not only in the improvements made to the physical structures of reformed monasteries, but also in the artistic decoration and reappointment of its liturgical spaces.63 A number of scholars have commented upon the ‘desire for renewal’ (Erneuerungswillen) or ‘reclaimed self identity’ (wieder gewonnenen Selbstbewusstsein) of both male and female reformed houses, which found expression in artistic commissions. 64 In the wake of the fifteenth-century reforms, nuns in the convents of the Lüneburg Heath produced a wide variety of liturgical textiles and embroideries, images, and other devotional items for meditative use, like the small dioramas or Paradiesgärtlein, composed of artificial flowers made from silk thread, relics, and small statues.65 The newly appointed abbesses and prioresses of reformed houses acted as patrons of this artistic revival. They not only commissioned new works from professional artists, but also provided the motivation and support for the production of large-scale embroideries, tapestries, liturgical decorations, and new liturgical texts by the nuns of their communities. Among the convents of the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony, the convent of Lüne fashioned large-scale embroideries depicting the lives of saints and Jesus, while the nuns of Ebstorf and Medingen produced new liturgical manuscripts to replace those judged unacceptable by the reformers.66 At Wienhausen, Abbess Potstock oversaw the repainting of the nuns’ choir by three nuns and acquired new choir robes and banners, several new liturgical books, a chalice, and a costly crucifix.67 Three nuns from the convent of Poor Clares in Ribnitz, working together with their artistic father-confessor, helped to paint their refectory with an image of the crucifix and images of the apostles with Saint Brendan. They also worked together to create a triptych for their community and a large image of Saint Francis for the choir.68 The abbess of Ribnitz commissioned two other images, 63 

Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 161–70. Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 161–65; Kolb, ‘Benediktinische Reform und Klostergebäude’; Schreiner, ‘Mönchtum im Geist der Benediktregel’. 65  Twenty-four such ‘Paradise gardens’ survive at the convent of Ebstorf. Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 9, 58. 66  Lorenz-Leber, Kloster Lüne; Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne; Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien. 67  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 27–30. 68  Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, pp. 70–71: ‘byde flogel unde lede der tafelen hebben bereth unde vorguldet III susteren, alse suster Anna van der Lu, suster Anna Bugghenhagen unde suster Cristina Bodins. De bilde heft ghemalet broder Lambrecht 64 

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one depicting the Holy Trinity and the other the Last Supper; she also contributed choir robes, priestly vestments, and glass windows.69 At Preetz, Anna von Buchwald commissioned numerous paintings and murals for the nuns’ choir, including an image of the vision of Saint Gregory with the Arma Christi, a history of the True Cross in twenty-eight scenes for the north wall, and a statue of the Virgin Mary for the altar. The painter, Peter from Lübeck, also completed murals for the cloister, refectory, and chapter house at a cost of thirty-three marks.70 As part of the general renovation of the prioress’s house, Anna added windows and painted decoration to the ceiling, as well as painted scenes along the wall of her study. Like Wienhausen’s Katharina von Hoya, Anna used her own money to pay for the pious images on her study wall, remarking that she conveyed them to her successors with the injunction that they remember her and say: ‘requiescat in pace’. 71 That she saw herself as not only fulfilling the duties of her office but also assuming the role of internal patron to the community is evident in the repeated exhortations within her narrative for the nuns to remember her in their prayers. She reminded future nuns that the comfort of a good fire ‘you have obtained through [my efforts]; therefore, pray to God for me. […] Because of this pray to God for me, since I accomplished this with much difficulty!’.72 The Prioress’s sister, Dilla von Buchwald, likewise contributed a red altar cloth depicting the Annunciation in gold and pearl embroidery (worth approximately 135 marks), which she commissioned from another nun, one Anna von Qualen, and donated in 1495. To this donation, the Prioress added another altar cloth of green silk.73 Slagghert, bichvader.’ In 1528 the father-confessor, together with the same three nuns, worked to create the paintings in the refectory. Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, p. 60: ‘Unde ys anghehaven des Dunredages na Viti myt den pannelyngen tho malen umme dat reventer erstmals unde so vortan, unde de syde baven in deme reventer, dar de bom steyt myt deme crucifix unde ander bylde, ock de ander syde, dar de apostelen ghemalt syn myt sunte Brandanus.’ Even Princess Ursula worked one day to grind colours for the paintings. 69  Gifts for the re-outfitting of the priests and the liturgical spaces of the convent were provided not only by the abbess, but also from members of the local nobility and from the nuns’ father-confessors. Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. by Techen, pp. 172, 188, 193, 203–09. 70  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 46–47; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, pp. 69–70. 71  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, pp. 44–45. 72  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, p. 15. 73  von Buchwald, ‘Anna von Buchwald’, p. 48.

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Another example of religious women’s agency in ‘fashioning, furnishing and using their own liturgical spaces’ appears in the efforts of Katerina Lemmel to provide stained glass windows for her cloister of Maria Mai in the early sixteenth century.74 Indeed, according to Corine Schleif and Volker Schier, Katerina’s active involvement in ‘initiating and administering the project, choosing or approving the designs and the programme, and influencing its execution (or trying to)’, ultimately provided her with a means of preaching — of expressing ‘theological accents and interpretations’ that shaped the devotions of her fellow Birgittine nuns.75 Katerina’s patronage thus served the same purposes as the production of liturgical textiles or the performance of the paschal liturgy did for the nuns of the Heideklöster. Professional religious women likewise continued to adorn statues of Jesus and the saints as part of reforming efforts to improve the decoration of their communal spaces. The noble nuns of Überwasser in Münster (Westphalia) purchased a black silk mantel, gold thread, pearls, and other decorative items to adorn their statue of the Virgin. They also expanded the Virgin’s wardrobe with new mantels in red and blue, improved her crown, and reworked a silk hanging into another mantel for the statue, an antependium, and chasuble.76 The surviving Christ-child from the convent of Holy Cross in Rostock dates from after this community’s reform, as do the garments, crown, and rosary that adorn the figure. So too, the robes preserved at Ebstorf and Wienhausen probably reflect the activities of the nuns after their internal reform (Figure 22).77 An inventory from Wienhausen, dating to 1685, documented robes for the statue of the Resurrected Christ and the two angels that originally accompanied him, as well as a silver crown and three banners for the figure, indicating the continued presence of such items well into the early modern period.78 Inventories made of the artworks and liturgical items in the convent of Holy Cross in Rostock circa 1593 to 1595 likewise documented several garments, crowns, and other decorations for the statues of saints.79 Finally, the interpretation of prayer as the clothing of the saints continued after the Observant reforms as well. Johannes Meyer, for example, recounted 74 

Schleif and Schier, ‘Views and Voices from Within’, p. 211. Schleif and Schier, ‘Views and Voices from Within’, p. 224. 76  Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, pp. 164–66. 77  See Chapter 3. 78  Appuhn and Grubenbecher, Kloster Wienhausen, p. 47. 79  Hegner, Kleinbildwerke des Mittelalters, pp. 193–200. 75 

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in extremely visual language how Elisabeth Grissin of Schönensteinbach fashioned clothing for Saint Anthony by virtue of her prayers or ‘handwerkliche[s] Beten’.80 Meyer, however, was careful to emphasize the allegorical meaning of such practices, noting that the clothing created for the saints through devout prayer stood for the virtues a nun should adopt. Meyer thus sought to channel such devotional practices into the cultivation of appropriate monastic morality and discipline.81 Nevertheless, reformed nuns continued to use artwork as a means of expressing both communal and individual devotion.

Reminders of the Reform: The Embroideries from Lüne Reformed nuns not only produced smaller works like personal meditational images and Marienkleider, they also produced large-scale embroideries as part of the general reform and reappointment of liturgical spaces. 82 The convents of the Lüneburg Heath bear particular witness to such activities, although the reform affected textile production differently in each house; as noted earlier, textile production ceased with the reform of Ebstorf, but was stimulated by reform at Lüne.83 The best evidence, in fact, for the involvement of nuns in the production of large-scale embroideries as part of the reform survives from Lüne.84 In the space of just sixteen years during the reform, from 1492 to 1508, the nuns of Lüne produced four large-scale woolen embroideries depicting the sibyls and prophets (1500–02), the tree of Jesse (1503–05), miracles performed by the Resurrected Christ (1503–07), and the Resurrection surrounded by celestial elements like the stars, sun, moon, and angels (1504–08). These works deco80 

Meyer, Buch der Reformacio, ed. by von Loë and Reichert, ii, III.35: ‘so hatt sy doch gar grosse und sunderlich gnad zů dem grossen halgen vatter sant Anthonio … sy bettet ym zů ainem gaistlichem rock, XXVIII M “Ave Maria” zů ainem fůter, M “Te deum laudamus” zů ainem halsband, M mal die antipfon “Confessor domini” faden zů negen; sy machet ymoch in yr andacht ain schöne zierliche corkappen und volbracht sy und machet sy mit XXX M “Te Deum”’. See also Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, pp. 120–51, and Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 189. 81  Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 190; Lentes, ‘Gewänder der Heiligen’, p. 134. 82  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 138–39; Appuhn, Bilder aus Isenhagen, p. 35. 83  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 7, 111. 84  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 29.

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rated the nuns’ choir during important liturgical seasons: the embroidery of the sibyls and prophets during Advent and Christmas, the Tree of Jesse at Christmas and on Marian feasts, the Resurrection embroidery at Easter, and the embroidery of the miracles of the Resurrected Christ from Easter to Pentecost.85 The dynamism of this artistic revival was due, in part, to exchanges of personnel between communities that occurred as a result of reform. Female reformers brought not only new ideas and practices, but also new skills, new activities, and new personalities. The Prioress of Lüne, Sophia von Bodendike (1481–1504), a nun and reformer from Ebstorf, provided the inspiration and direction as well as the technical skills, primarily her knowledge of the technique known as ‘convent stitch’, needed for the creation of the large-scale woolen embroideries produced by Lüne’s nuns.86 Produced for use within the convent, the embroideries from Lüne clearly demonstrate both the technical skills and the devotion of the nuns who created them. Documentary evidence reveals the nuns’ involvement in both the design and the production of these works.87 One outstanding example is the Resurrection embroidery from Lüne. Mechthild Wilde, who succeeded Sophia von Bodendike as prioress of Lüne, recorded that just a few days after Sophia’s death in 1504, a fellow nun, Margaret Rosenhagen, showed her this work. As Kohwagner-Nikolai notes, since the sacrista’s record documented the beginning of the work by six sisters (KR, SV, CS, GR, AR, and GH) on 14 June 1505, Margaret must have shown the abbess the design for the embroidery.88 In fact, the timeline for the production of the work can be established with particular accuracy. The new prioress was shown the proposed design in 1504, and a year later the actual work began. The Lüne chronicle recorded the completion of the embroidery in 1507; the sacrista’s record noted its presentation on 26 May 1508 and the Prioress’s gifts to each of the nuns involved in the work, namely a 85  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p.  11; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 174. 86  The ‘convent stitch’, Klosterstich, consisted of a form of couching that helped economize on the cost of thread. Staniland, Medieval Craftsmen, pp. 40, 70. 87  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 21–22, 25, 27–29, 89, 101. 88  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 24, fol. 2: ‘Item feria quinta ante Invocavit presentavit mihi Margarete Rosenhagen magnum tapete cum resurgente et de diei albam sub tunicam Engelsek de TO panno et novam lucernam, magnum frustum de speciebus de auratis et crosibulum cum claret.’ Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, pp. 185, 191; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 91.

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Figure 31. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St Bartholomew. c. 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

small gilded eagle, a loaf of bread, and a jug of almonds.89 Embroideries on this scale (the Resurrection embroidery is 475 cm × 420 cm) represented a considerable expenditure of time and labour. Approximately seventeen sisters, working in groups of four to nine for five or six hours per day, completed Lüne’s large-scale embroideries within two to four years.90 The first works created by Lüne’s nuns after their reform were five sets of embroidered scampualia or Banklaken. These decorative embroideries were hung above the nuns’ seats in the choir or chapter house on special occasions.91 The 89 

Lüneburg, KL, Hs 4, fol. 63r: ‘Eodem anno in Sabbato ante Viti inceperunt consuere Sorores KR SV CS GR AR et GH magnum tapete.’ Lüneburg, KL, Hs 5, fol. 44v: ‘Item eodem anno consuerunt sorores magnum Tapete in quo continetur magna Stella cum Resurgente.’ Lüneburg, KL, Hs 4, fol. 76v: ‘Item vi feria Cantate presentaverunt iste Sorores KR SV ESR CS GR AR et GH magnum tapete de resurgente. Domina priorissa dedit eis pro earum labore auream aquilam apotecalem, unum panum, unum crateram cum amigdala.’ Notably, this reference lists one additional nun: ESR. Other rewards included items of clothing, gilded sweets, and spiced wine. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 191; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 91, 110. 90  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 12; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, p. 12; KohwagnerNikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p.  191–93; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 101, 108, 184. 91  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 63, 120.

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Figure 32. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St Katherine. 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

first set, dating from 1492, portrayed scenes from the life and martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, the patron saint of the convent. Later sets depicted scenes from the life and martyrdom of Saint Katherine (1500) and the life and martyrdom of Saint George (1500) (Figures 31, 32, and 33). The incorporation of excerpts from the rhymed offices of their feast days and their use to adorn the nuns’ choir on the appropriate days (Bartholomew on 24 August, Katharina on 25 November, and George on 23 April) suggest that these embroideries were an expression both of the renewal of liturgical spaces and of communal devotion.92 A smaller, fourth embroidery, with scenes of the nativity, the resurrection of Christ from the tomb, and Christ seated in judgement, was made for the provost’s seat in 1508. Around 1500 the nuns of Lüne also produced a set of ten woven scampualia depicting a pelican feeding her young from her breast, symbolic of the sacrifice of Christ. Used in the nuns’ chapter house, the images not only associated the nuns with Christ, but also provided a reminder of the rigors of the Observant life, for below each pelican sacrificing itself for its young sat a nun who had renounced the secular world and adopted strict obedience to the rule. 93 The 92  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp.  12, 54, 56. Excerpts from the liturgy also appear in the Easter embroidery from Lüne. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 51, 173. 93  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 20.

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Figure 33. Kloster Lüne, Embroidery of Miracles of the Resurrected Christ. 1503–07. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

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Figure 34. Kloster Lüne, Detail from Banklaken depicting the life of St George. 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

stylized repetition of the pelicans in this work has lead researchers to postulate that Lüne’s nuns developed the design as well as engaged in the weaving.94 Once again, the transfer of personnel and the architectural changes associated with reform accompanied the production of these new textiles. The nuns of Lüne credited their knowledge of weaving to a new member of their community, a Margaretha von Wehrbergen, who entered the community in 1500 but later appeared at Wienhausen under their reform abbess Katharina Remstede.95 The construction of both a weaving and a wash house, which was probably used in the dyeing of the yarn, reflects the nuns’ growing involvement in cloth production in the early sixteenth century.96 94  Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, p. 37. One woven work, depicting the heraldic shield of Abbess Katharina Remstede, survives at Wienhausen. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 19. 95  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp. 20–21; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, p. 37. 96  The woolen embroideries may have been produced in the refectory, where an eightmetre-long table still exists. Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 23–24; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 98–99.

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Like the liturgical textiles of earlier centuries, the large embroideries and Banklaken produced by the nuns of Lüne served a variety of purposes. Lüne’s nuns created these embroideries for decoration and warmth, but more importantly as testaments to their devotion and particularly as stimuli for the imitatio sanctis and as ‘visual prayers’ (Bild gewordenes Gebet) to the convent’s patron saints, the Virgin Mary, and Christ.97 The first Banklaken produced by the nuns of Lüne, for example, took as its theme scenes from the life of the convent’s patron saint, Bartholomew, and portrayed the nuns’ devotion to him explicitly in the ninth medallion, where they kneel before him. The final text of the border of the Banklaken depicting the life of Saint Katherine similarly included a figure of a kneeling nun, who implored the saint to pray for the community: ‘O sancta Katherina ora pro nobis’.98 Above all, however, such works functioned in the context of reform. They served as expressions of the nuns’ rededication to the vita communis as well as the vita contemplativa, and they acted as records of the reforms’ success. The Lüne Banklaken, for example, documents the growing number of nuns within the community by increasing in size from five metres to nearly twenty metres. Finally, they provided enduring memorials to the leaders, participants, and success of the reform.99 Dedicatory inscriptions worked into the border of each embroidery clearly illustrate the devotional and memorial role of these works. The embroidery depicting the miracles performed by the Resurrected Christ (Figure 34) records, for example, that: In the year of the Lord 1503 Lady Sophia von Bodendike, prioress, arranged [as] is customary, for this embroidery [to be created] by the hands of the sisters in Lüne in praise of God and his mother Mary, and the holy Bartholomew, our patron saint, in the twenty-third year after the reform.100

Similar memorial and dedicatory inscriptions form part of the other large-scale embroideries and Banklaken produced by the nuns of Lüne.101 In each case, the 97 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 149. Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 26–29; Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp. 54–55, 60; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 149. 99  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 122, 139–43, 146–67; Michael, ‘Bildstickereien aus Kloster Lüne’, p. 78. 100  ‘Anno domini M quingentesimotercio fecit Domnia Sophia de Bodendike prioresse consuere est ut tapete per manus sororum in Lune ad Laude Dei et sue genitricis Marie et sancti Bartholomei patroni nostri xxiii reformacionis.’ Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 10, 34–35. 101  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 5, 7, 23, 31–34. 98 

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text summarized the work’s devotional and memorial purposes, while documenting the role of Lüne’s reform prioress, Sophia von Bodendike, as the motivating force behind their creation. The Resurrection embroidery even recorded Abbess Bodendike’s death in 1504.102 Specific references to the leaders of the reforming movement in Lüne, the year of completion, and its relationship to the year of the reform served as reminders not only of the reform itself, but also of the success of Lüne’s nuns in adhering to its principals. Embroideries produced in other female houses combined similar devotional and memorial functions connected to reform. The woolen embroidery depicting scenes from the life of Mary Magdalene from the Weissfrauenkloster in Erfurt, for example, not only reflected reforming interests in communal labour, but also asserted through its iconography the importance of withdrawal from the world and from such stimulating forms of religious inspiration as preaching.103 The embroidery produced around 1516 by the nuns of the Augustinian convent of Heiningen near Wolfenbüttel functioned similarly. Created in conjunction with the physical renewal of the monastery, this work also memorialized the community’s reform and those who had participated in it by including the names of each of the fifty-nine inhabitants of the convent around its border.104 References to the leaders of the reform appear in the heraldic shields included in the Lüne embroideries. The corners of all the embroideries and Banklaken produced by the nuns of Lüne are embellished with the shields of Prioress Sophia von Bodendike (1481–1504) and her uncle, Bartold von Landsberg (the bishop of Hildesheim and Verdun from 1470 to 1502), her successor Mechtild Wilde (1504–35), and Provosts Nikolaus Graurock (1458–93) and Nikolaus Schomaker (1493–1506).105 The embroidery depicting the miracles that followed Christ’s resurrection displays the heraldic shields of Prioress Bodendike (upper right) and her successor, Prioress Wilde (lower right), and Provost Schomaker (upper left) and his successor, Provost Lorbeer (lower left). Such references recalled the leaders’ connection to the reform as well as their patronage. Provost Schomaker, for example, provided the nuns of Lüne with a new organ and a new baptismal font, and he may have even commissioned one of the triptychs depicting Christ as the Man of Sorrows, just as his predecessor Provost Graurock had.106 102 

Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 101. Böse, ‘Der Magdalenenteppich des Erfurter Weissfrauenklosters’. 104  Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, pp. 324–25. 105  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 25–27, 30–31, 35. 106  The nuns received their new organ in 1496 and a new baptismal font in 1505. LorenzLeber, Kloster Lüne, pp. 10, 14–15. 103 

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Figure 35. Kloster Lüne, Detail from the embroidery depicting the Miracles of the Resurrected Christ. 1503–07. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

As in earlier centuries, secular patronage and familial connections continued to be memorialized. The windows of the interior scenes in the Saint George embroidery, for example, display the heraldic shields of prominent Lüneburg families, just as they often appeared in the windows of the convents themselves (Figure 31).107 Kohwagner-Nikolai has connected many of these heraldic shields with sisters present in Lüne during the reform, such as the conversae Elisabeth Bock (recorded in 1484) and Margaret Graurock (present from 1482 to 1557) and the nuns Anna von Bülow (d. 1549), Anna de Ghilten (who entered the convent in 1492), Heilwig von Harling (d. 1551), Kunegunde de Schulenburg (present from 1493 to 1551), and Anna Stöterroge (present from 1493 to 1521). The heraldic devices of the Garlop, Provost, Schneverding, Semmelbecker, Töbing, and von Medingen families also appear.108 Interestingly, women from these families also numbered among the nuns in possession of annuities (see Table 2). Kohwagner-Nikolai further suggests that the unidentified heraldic shields may reflect newly established heraldic creations for nuns of bourgeois origin.109 The Banklaken produced by Lüne’s nuns thus performed 107 

Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 74. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 26. 109  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 67. 108 

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Figure 36. Kloster Lüne, Detail from embroidery of Prophets and Sibyls. 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Lüne.

a dual memorial function as records of the nuns’ familial status and lineage as well as of individuals present at the time of reform, especially those who held prominent positions within the community.110 Reform thus did not curtail the use of textiles as symbolic statements of social standing and familial pride. The reforming effort did, however, unite such secular concerns with a sense of spiritual and communal pride in the reform itself. This pride in the success of the reform is also evident in the occasional incorporation of the initials of the nuns involved in the creation of specific works.111 The embroidery of the miracles of the Resurrected Christ, for example, incorporated the initials of the nuns who worked on it. The nuns, probably using manuscript illuminations as a model, inserted their initials (HE, AL, KE, MRO, AG, and ESM filatrix, i.e. spinster or producer of the yarn used in the work) in the text bands carried by the centaurs and birds in the bottom medallions (Figures 35 and 36).112 Initials of the embroiderers, together 110 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien,pp. 25–27. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 107. 112  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Gestickte Bildteppiche’, p. 193; Pietsch, Kloster Lüne, pp. 10, 34; Schuette, Gestickte Bildteppiche, p. 50; Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp. 10–13, 18–20, 96–104. See also Marti, ‘Sisters in the Margins’. 111 

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with the heraldic shields of the prioress, provost, and bishop also appear in the embroidery of the Sibyls and Prophets created between 1500 and 1502 and in the Resurrection embroidery produced between 1504 and 1508.113 The record of Lüne’s sacrista further recorded the initials of the nuns who worked on the embroidery of the tree of Jesse (GS, EH, KR, SV, ESR, and CS).114 Kohwagner-Nikolai has identified these initials with individual nuns in Lüne. In addition to Margaret Rosenhagen (MRO), the nun who designed the Resurrection embroidery and who perhaps oversaw the workshop, KohwagnerNikolai identifies Anna Griff (AG), Cunegundis Schulenburg (CS), Elisabeth Hokens (EH), Gertrud Hoppenstede (GH), Gheseke Schapers (GS), Gertrude Semmelbecker (GSE), Katharina Semmelbecker (KS), Gertrude Vulle (GU), Trude Bromes (TB), and perhaps Heilwig von Herling (HE?) and Elisabeth Schneverding (ESR?).115 The heraldic shields for the families of five of these nuns (the families of Schulenburg, Schneverding, Semmelbecker, and Harling/ Herling) also appear within the Banklaken produced by the nuns of Lüne.116 The dedicatory texts, heraldic shields, and initials of the nuns all reflect the memorial purposes of Lüne’s embroideries. Indeed, Heide Wunder argues that it was primarily women who imbued liturgical textiles with such functions. Kohwagner-Nikolai similarly asserts that the production of decorative textiles was a special form of female memorial and history.117 The Lüne embroideries also functioned as mnemonic and didactic works of art.118 As Kohwagner-Nikolai notes, religious women had a different relationship with the creation of liturgical textiles than professional artisans. For religious women, textile work fulfilled both commands: ora and labora. It united the spiritual with the sensual, and it combined the vita contemplativa with the vita activa, for in designing and creating such works of art the nuns worked intensively with both the imagery and theology upon which their devotion was based. 113 

Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p.  98; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 102–07. 114  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 4, fol. 61v. References to those involved in the production of these embroideries also appear on fols 73v, 63r, and 76v. Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 102–03. 115  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 105, 111; Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 12. 116  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 26, 105. 117  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 143; Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’. 118  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 160–61, 171.

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The iconography of their embroideries offered Lüne’s nuns images for meditation and recollectio, but their texts also contained references to the liturgy, Bible, or devotional works like the Legenda Aurea and Mediationes vitae domini nostri Christi.119 The Resurrection embroidery from Lüne, for example, includes excerpts from the Easter liturgy, such as the words chanted by the deacon for the consecration of the Easter candle, as well as excerpts from an Easter hymn.120 The Banklaken incorporated excerpts from the liturgy of the saints’ feast days, while Lüne’s embroidery of the Sibyls and Prophets included Biblical excerpts as well as references to the Meditationes vitae Christi by the Pseudo-Bonaventure and the Sibyllarum et prophetarum de Christo vaticinia written by the Dominican Filippo de Barberi, c. 1481.121 Such references reflect the nuns’ familiarity with contemporary theological and devotional literature, a currency also evident in Wienhausen’s Saint Thomas embroidery (completed c. 1380), which drew upon the narrative of Hermann von Fritzlar that appeared between 1343 and 1349.122 Indeed, the woolen embroideries produced by the nuns of the Heath convents over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries frequently embodied complex theological programmes.123 Embroideries created in the context of the Observant reform further conveyed messages about uniform devotional practices and theological beliefs.124 For example, images incorporated into the Lüne embroidery of the Sibyls and Prophets offered a didactic gloss on the work’s theological content. Along the bottom border of the embroidery appear two naked children: one with a mirror and another employed in spinning. As allegories of vanity and industry, they offered a lesson in the virtues for religious women. Read together with the image of a child seated before an open codex containing the initials of the embroiderers, they could be held to refer directly to the nuns of Lüne. The legendary ass that brought sacks of grain to Lüne’s nuns after the fire of 1372, 119 

Michael, ‘Bildstickereien aus Kloster Lüne’, pp. 70, 72; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 135–36. 120  Michael, ‘Bildstickereien aus Kloster Lüne’, p.  75; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 173. 121  Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, pp. 54, 56, 76, 90, 96; Michael, ‘Bildstickereien aus Kloster Lüne’, pp. 148–54; Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 51. On the Pseudo-Bonaventure see below note 000. 122  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 47. 123  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 135–36, 140–41. 124  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 141.

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thereby providing miraculous support for the community during a period of economic difficulties, also appeared among the images along the border of this embroidery.125 Jane Carroll has proposed a similar didactic function for the small portraits of Dominican nuns engaged in weaving that appear in the border of the Passion Tapestry associated with the convent of the Holy Sepulchre in Bamberg (1495). Rather than regarding these images merely as proof of the nuns’ engagement in weaving or the specific production of this tapestry, Carroll argues that the figures symbolize the reformers’ call to return to the active life and the discipline of monastic labour.126 Birds embroidered along the rightand left-hand edges of the Lüne Resurrection embroidery likewise reminded the nuns of their duty to serve God: one of the birds calls out ‘servitedeo, servitedeo’ (serve God, serve God!).127 Regularly displayed during the various liturgical seasons, the embroideries from Lüne acted, in the words of Heide Wunder, as stitched history (gewirkte Geschichte), with both didactic as well as documentary functions.128 Their texts and imagery reminded the nuns of their communal history and of the convent’s reform, and also commemorated those who directed and participated in the reform. They offered both instruction in the ideals of the reform and testimony to its success, while providing suitable images and texts to guide the nuns’ meditations during the liturgical year.129 With their specific references both to communal history and to individual members of the convent, the Lüne embroideries demonstrate once again how liturgical textiles could function as self-reflective works of art, enabling religious women to convey images of themselves and their devotion. One might note here the particular emphasis placed upon women in the Lüne embroidery depicting the miracles of the Resurrected Christ, the Wienhausen embroideries of the lives of Saints Anne and Elisabeth, or the growing self-consciousness of the Lüne embroideries.130 The production of these embroideries, moreover, underscored the idea of devotion as an act, as physical action connected to the material world as well as contemporary gender ideologies. The embroideries and 125 

Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 81. Carroll, ‘Woven Devotions’; see also Hamburger, Nuns as Artists. 127  Similar iconography appears in the Easter Orationale created by the nuns of Medingen. Apphun, Bildstickereien des Kloster Lüne, p. 98. 128  Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, pp. 324–25, 342. 129  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, p. 185. 130  Kohwagner-Nikolai, ‘Per manus sororum…’: Niedersächsische Bildstickereien, pp. 64, 162. 126 

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artwork created by the nuns of the Heideklöster in the wake of the Observant reform thus attest to the continuing importance of performative devotional practices within female monasticism. Indeed, they are the physical artifacts of that piety. The textiles produced by the nuns of Lüne under Prioress Bodendike thus provided generations after them with a model of the performative piety and communal labour deemed appropriate to female monastic devotion. There is no clearer expression of the connections between performance and physical action, devotion and prayer, and handiwork and the textile arts, than the description of the movement of the nuns of Mary Magdalene around their cloister while engaging in textile work. Johannes Busch praised these women for combining manual labour and prayer: For they were not occupied with more heavy external labor, but, lest they be lazy or talkative, as is the custom of many nuns, they made a circuit of their cloister with their handiwork, [whatever] they were accustomed to pursue, whenever they were unoccupied by the divine office, so as to knit, sew or weave, boots, gloves, and socks, and while labouring to pray through the seven psalms and vigils nearly every day of the week: before the meal the seven psalms, [and] after the meal the vigils, according to their constitutions.131

Here work was combined, not only with prayer, but also with actual physical movement in a dynamic performance of piety before God and man.132

Reminders of the Reform: The Painted Panels from Medingen Heide Wunder’s reference to textiles as ‘gewirkte Geschichte’ recalls the emphasis placed upon historical writing and communal records within the Observant reform. Not only did reformers advocate private devotional reading, they also emphasized the importance of keeping written records for administrative purposes and encouraged historical research and the composition of corporate histories. Under the direction of their reform Abbess Susanna Potstock (1470–1501), for example, Wienhausen’s nuns updated their necrology, produced a richly illuminated responsorial, and constructed a narrative of the convent’s foundation, leaders, and the important events in its history: the

131 

Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 586. See also Busch on Hillegund von Hanenzee: Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 584. 132 

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Figure 37. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 8. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

Figure 38. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 9. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

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Figure 39. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 12. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

Figure 40. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 13. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

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Figure 41. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 14. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

Wienhausen chronicle.133 The nuns of Ebstorf also produced a chronicle for their house, as did nuns in reformed convents throughout Germany.134 Such histories often served a didactic purpose, presenting an idealized vision of a community’s former monastic life in order to inspire change in the present.135 As the embroideries from Lüne indicate, historical works were not confined to written form. The convent of Herzebrock, for example, had an altar panel painted to commemorate the community’s reform along with the foundation of the house (with images of the founders), the patronage of Abbess Sophia von Goese (the second abbess of the reform), and the nuns’ confessor, Hermann von Bercken.136 The convent of Medingen similarly commissioned fifteen wooden panels that portrayed the community’s foundation, significant episodes in its history, and its fifteenth-century reform. Painted sometime between the years 1494 and 1499 and restored in 1639 under Abbess Margareta von Dassel, the 133 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 1; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 29. Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. 135  Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles; Woodford, Nuns as Historians, pp. 36–41. 136  Gleba, Reformpraxis und materielle Kultur, p. 163. 134 

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Figure 42. Johannes Lyßmann, Medingen panels, panel 15. 1772, original artwork 1499. Photo courtesy of Kloster Medingen.

original panels perished in a fire in 1781. Our current knowledge of the images and their accompanying texts derives from the sketches and records published in 1772 by Johann Ludolph Lyßmann, a preacher in the parish church at Medingen (Figures 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, and 42).137 Like the embroideries from Lüne, the panels united text (both Latin and Middle Low German) and image, serving didactic as well as commemorative purposes. The panels also reflected the nuns’ strong sense of communal identity and presented an image of the community as obedient, observant, pious, and divinely blessed. Indeed, it was this sense of communal identity that enabled Medingen’s nuns to contradict subtly the very need for reform itself. One of the most striking features of the Medingen panels is their emphasis on the role of male leadership in the community’s foundation, success, and reform. Each panel included the male religious figure responsible for the nuns’ care at that particular historical moment. Initially this figure is the lay brother, 137 

Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. For full critical edition with German translation of the Latin inscription see Die Inschriften der Lüneburger Klöster, ed. by Wehking, no.  58, pp. 125–137. Online at .

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Johannes, the founder of the community, who is then replaced by the provosts who later assumed his leadership role. Generally portrayed on a larger scale than the nuns, these male figures played the more prominent visual role. The nuns, by contrast, grew smaller, even as they increased in number from the initial four lay sisters. This emphasis on male leadership projected an image of appropriate female subordination to male authority and thus supported the ideals of reform. The thirteenth panel, however, contrasts this with the image of divine intervention in the suppression of the nuns by their male director. This panel recorded the miraculous vision of the community’s patron saint, Maurice, who appeared before the provost during the Mass at Christmas, threatening him with a drawn sword if he would not give to the nuns what was due to them. The provost’s vision of Saint Maurice confirmed the special status of the nuns as ‘daughters of St Maurice’ and their entitlement to their prebends which the provost had tried to withhold. Both the Latin and the Middle Low German texts recorded that although the provost alone witnessed the vision, all the nuns in the choir fell to their knees and genuflected. The nuns of Medingen thus followed their male superior obediently, even though the written narratives explicitly remarked that they failed to witness the vision.138 This emphasis on male leadership and the cura monialium certainly reflected Observant concerns as well as the reforming tendency to idealize the past. However, it also could work subtly against the reform by presenting an image of the community as historically obedient and orthodox. The eighth panel similarly combined the reforming interests of Medingen’s fifteenth-century nuns with a subtle subversion of their need for reform. This panel portrayed Provost Nicolaus bringing books to the community, accompanied by a female figure (Imma I, the community’s first named prioress from 1263–84 and aunt of Provost Nikolaus), who came from the female Benedictine house of Dambeke.139 In addition to portraying the two figures with their books, the Latin text carefully enumerated the liturgical works they brought: the Benedictine rule, two Antiphonals, and a Gradual bound in leather. This interest in the specific works brought to the community reflected the reformers’ emphasis upon literacy and correct liturgical texts, an interest equally apparent in reforming chronicles and records.140 The sentiments of 138 

Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. Reinhardt, ‘Medingen’, pp. 520, 540. 140  Hotchin, ‘Reformatrices and their Books’, pp. 251–92. 139 

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Medingen’s newly reformed nuns likewise emerge in the vernacular text’s (presumably shocked) remark that the community belonged to the Cistercian order, yet it did not have the Benedictine rule — the foundational text for any reformed community.141 The eighth panel thus asserted the reformers’ interest in regular observances and the texts they necessitated; yet it could also serve as a gentle reminder that the convent had observed the requirements of the Benedictine rule even before the fifteenth-century reform. The subsequent panel made both the reforming interests of the nuns and their assertion of previous compliance even more explicit. The ninth panel recorded the visionary appearance of the Virgin Mary, who directed Provost Hartwig to construct walls around the convent when it was located in Old Medingen. According to the Latin text, certain nuns objected to the Provost’s programme of enclosure, arguing that it would prevent them from receiving food prepared with milk from the village.142 Nevertheless, both the Latin and the Middle Low German texts remarked that the community accepted enclosure after learning of the provost’s vision, and the narratives further clarified that this occurred twenty years before the nuns moved from the location of Old Medingen.143 Once again, this panel underscored the nuns’ obedience to their provost and to a divine mandate. In fact, it made the community’s enclosure an explicit command of the Virgin Mary, whose own chastity was often linked symbolically with enclosure.144 The Middle Low German text added that because of the nuns’ more rigorous life, many people came to the convent and placed their children in the community. This was also a phenomenon evocative of the experience of newly reformed houses; as its numbers grew, the convent became too small and another location had to be found.145 Together, the eighth and ninth panels documented the community’s observance of both the Benedictine rule and strict enclosure, two elements stressed in the fifteenth-century reform. While this image of the community as orderly and enclosed might have served a didactic function to inspire the newly reformed 141 

Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. 143  The Latin text stated: ‘Et ista clausura contingit xx annos ante transmigracionem de antiquo Medinge etc.’ In Middle Low German: ‘dyt schude 20 jar tho voren, er dat nye Closter buwet wart, dar id nu jtzundes tho Meding is.’ 144  On the Virgin Mary’s association with enclosure, see Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul, pp. 68–70, 166. 145  Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. 142 

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nuns of Medingen, it may have worked equally well to suggest that the nuns had adhered to these principles prior to the appearance of the reformers. In fact, the specific attempt to date these events to twenty years before the community’s relocation to New Medingen favour the latter interpretation, for if a general picture of earlier orthodoxy was what mattered, a specific date would not have been necessary. A complex portrait of both the nuns’ assertion of their own desires as well as their ultimate submission to the authority of their male superiors appears in the accounts of the community’s relocation to New Medingen recorded in the twelfth panel. Both the Latin and vernacular texts remarked upon the division between the younger sisters, who were pleased with the move, and the older sisters, who lamented this transfer, reflecting a generational conflict that again resonated with the experiences of the Observant reform. Visually, the image portrayed the nuns in front of the convent of Old Medingen weeping, as indicated by the fact that they held handkerchiefs to their eyes. According to the Latin text, the older sisters wept because it was necessary to leave the pleasant location where their predecessors lay buried and relinquish their association with the local community.146 In this case, the Latin text reflects the rhetoric of reform, with its emphasis on breaking the convent’s ties to the secular community. The vernacular text expanded on this opposition considerably. Indeed, it contradicted the Latin text by arguing that it was not merely the nuns’ connection to the local community, but rather their sense of responsibility for the observance of memorials that accounted for their opposition to the relocation. Likewise, the nuns’ concerns were not neglected. The Middle Low German noted that the provost agreed to return each year to Badendorpe accompanied by two chaplains, where he would hold a Mass and sing Salve sancta parens. He would then travel to Old Medingen, where he would perform a requiem Mass and sing Si enim credimus, returning to New Medingen that same day.147 While the presentation of this event suggested considerable opposition to the community’s relocation, perhaps tied to an increase in the level of the nuns’ enclosure (as suggested in the Latin text), the vernacular narrative presented the commu146 

‘Interea seniores erant in fletu, quia eorum magistras ibidem sepultas, deliciosam terram et consortia hominum relinquere oportebat.’ ‘Anhang der funfzehn Tafeln, in welchen die vornehmste Begebenheiten unsers Closters von dessen Stifftung an, bis auf das Jahr 1449 kürtzlich verfasset sind’, in Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht, Appendix. 147  ‘Anhang der funfzehn Tafeln, in welchen die vornehmste Begebenheiten unsers Closters von dessen Stifftung an, bis auf das Jahr 1449 kürtzlich verfasset sind’, in Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht, Appendix.

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nity in a positive light. Concerned with their obligation to provide memorials, the nuns made arrangements with the provost so that these duties would not be neglected, and having done so, they obeyed the will of both Provost Ludolf and Saint John the Baptist. Any such contestation of the reform, however, disappears in the final two panels, which depicted the re-establishment of a communal table and the election of the community’s first reforming abbess. The fourteenth panel portrayed both the reforming emphasis upon the vita communis as well as the revival of the nuns’ spiritual life through the provost’s donation of texts used in the divine reading. Not only did the provost figure prominently as the largest person in the centre of the image, holding several books under his arms, but the vernacular text also recorded his contribution of six songbooks.148 A text scroll at the top of the image likewise stated: ‘Provost Tileman, promoter of the reform, brought for this same reform six books and many goods.’149 The final panel depicted the consecration of Medingen’s first reform abbess, another result of the community’s reform, and the role of Medingen’s new provost, Ulrich von Bülow, in promoting the reform by erecting new buildings and providing material support for the community. Recalling the memorializing purpose of Lüne’s woolen embroideries, the Latin text extolled the newly elected abbess’s efforts on behalf of the reform at Medingen, declaring that ‘like an angel of the Lord she walked among us and never ceased to labour on our behalf both day and night’.150 The last panels thus presented an image of the community as shaped by the nuns’ recent reform. Like the embroideries produced by the nuns of Lüne, the panels commissioned by the convent of Medingen after its reform demonstrate how reformed nuns utilized artwork for historical, memorial, and didactic purposes. They not only recorded the convent’s history, but also became a site for negotiating this history. As at Lüne, the nuns of Medingen used artwork to affirm both the unique history of their community as well as identify it with the fifteenth-century reforms. Thus while male reformers sought to restrict devotional artwork 148 

The Middle Low German stated: ‘[Tilemann van Bavenstedt] dede groten vlith und vorderde de reformacien un vorkoffte syn vederlicke erve un gaff dat by dat Closter. He gaff ock VI sangboke, de leth he scriven tho Hyldensem dar he bördich uth was’ (Tilemann van Bavenstedt made great efforts and promoted the reformation and sold his paternal inheritance and gave that to the convent. He also gave six songbooks, which he had written in Hildesheim, where he was born). Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht; Homeyer, 550 Jahre Äbtissinnen in Medingen, p. 41. 149  Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht. 150  Lyßmann, Historische Nachricht.

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to the role of mnemonic tools used in the pursuit of monastic morality, for reformed women religious artwork had a significance that surpassed the mere affirmation of, or adherence to, reform ideals. Religious women used their control over the art and architecture of their communities to assert their adherence to the ideals of the reform, but also to express continuing traditions of performative piety and communal identity and even to contradict the very need for reform itself.

Conclusion The production of liturgical decorations and the ownership of religious images reflected ideas, assumptions, and perceptions of female spirituality and piety shared by men and women, monastic and secular alike. The reformers of the Heath convents could remove the personal objects that offended their sense of communal spiritual life, but they could not challenge the social and ideological principles that associated female religious devotion with the material culture of the medieval church, and especially religious art. Moreover, even as reformers railed against the personal possessions of nuns, they nevertheless continued to regard the gendered activities of ‘writing, sewing, embroidery, tapestry weaving, spinning, crocheting, combing and carding wool, hooking and weaving cloth’ as suitable activities for monastic women.151 As a result, reformed communities continued to express their piety by embracing the material world, producing and using meditational images, woolen embroideries, and other liturgical decorations. Observant reform, however, did bring certain changes in the way religious women interacted, or were supposed to interact, with devotional art. While male leaders of the reform proved willing to incorporate images within the context of the cura monialium, they sought to restrict their function to allegorical or metaphorical reminders of appropriate (Observant) religious virtues and behaviour. Male reformers thus employed images primarily for moralizing purposes, emphasizing in their use the importance of the community over the individual and the interior, mental world over the external, material one. Female leaders of the reform also embraced devotional artwork as a means of expressing reforming interests and ideals and conveying these to future generations of monastic women. The creation of large-scale embroideries and other artworks commemorating internal reform reminded, as well as inspired, cur151 

Johannes Meyer, Ämterbuch, quoted in Carroll, ‘Woven Devotions’, p. 186.

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rent and future nuns to imitate the devotion and labour depicted, functioning ‘as sermons in thread’.152 At the same time, architectural changes and the artistic decoration of communal devotional spaces, especially the nuns’ choir, chapter hall, and chapels, allowed reformed communities, and especially reforming abbesses and prioresses, to express their piety and patronage in traditional ways. Finally, within the context of monastic memoria, liturgical textiles continued to serve as polyvalent symbols of corporate history, communal devotion, and individual piety. It is within this context that the nuns of the Heath convents expressed their ambivalence to the reforms that had taken place within their communities. The efforts of reformers to channel the visual-visionary spirituality of religious women along different paths, however, were not entirely in vain, for the nuns of the Heath convents did adopt the reforming interest in internalizing a compassio passionis. Christ’s passion had been central to the nuns’ devotions in the past, but influenced now by the spirituality of the devotio moderna, the reformed nuns of the Heath convents began to cultivate empathetic identity with Jesus’s suffering in ways that were new, yet consonant with their traditions of gendered religious devotion.

152 

Carroll, ‘Woven Devotions’, pp. 182–201; Wunder, ‘“Gewirkte Geschichte”’, pp. 341–42.

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ust as reformers discarded customs and liturgical traditions that seemed to depart from strict observances, so too they sought to channel devotion in new directions. Influenced by the spirituality and religious practices of the devotio moderna, the reformed nuns of the Heath convents focused increasingly on the brutal details of the Passion.1 In doing so, they followed patterns of female piety that had been developing since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Devotion to the Passion was not new to the spirituality of the nuns of the Heideklöster. The dramatic liturgical performances of the paschal season, with their cultivation of both personal and communal intimacy with Christ, provided a foundation for the elaboration of a Passion-centred piety. The nuns’ creative use of religious artwork and sacred space, as well as their exaltation of the Virgin Mary as a model of appropriate female piety, likewise drew upon long-standing traditions. Nevertheless, the reception of new texts, the re-evaluation of communal and personal artwork, increasing spatial and ideological restrictions, and changes in liturgical practices and social composition — changes brought by the convents’ Observant reform — resulted in new forms of religious expression. As the preceding chapters have shown, communities that underwent reform became flourishing centres for the creation of a wide variety of written works, including chronicles and monastic histories, practical guides and economic records, liturgical texts, meditative tracts, and prayer books. While a thorough analysis of the devotional texts produced and used by the nuns of the Heide­ 1 

See especially: Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, ed. by Van Engen; Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’.

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klöster in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries exceeds the bounds of this work, a brief sampling of manuscripts reveals how the nuns of these communities embraced and personalized the reforming emphasis on Passion-centred piety.2 Of particular interest are five manuscripts preserved at the convent of Wienhausen that date from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Three of these contain a meditation on the crown of thorns (the corona spinae or Dornenkron), and two others record the nuns’ observance of the Stations of the Cross, which functioned as a kind of mental pilgrimage. Internal references to the chapel of Saints Fabian and Sebastian to ‘our cemetery’ and ‘our sepulchre’ in manuscripts 85 and 86, combined with the lack of a professional hand, indicate that the nuns produced these works specifically for use within their convent. References to the sepulchre, presumably the one commissioned by Abbess Katharina von Hoya, further establish 1448 as a terminus post quem for the production of these two texts.3 With their emphasis on a vivid recollection and recreation of the Passion, these texts not only reflect the growing importance of Passion-centred devotion in late medieval piety, but also the specific influences that the devotio moderna, the cura monialium (the pastoral care of nuns), and the internal reforms of the later fifteenth century had on the nuns’ religious practices.4 They further illustrate the changes and continuities in the performative piety of the nuns in the Heideklöster by combining a new consciousness of reform with older forms of piety.

Passion Devotion, the Question of Priests and the Cura Monialium, and Female Spirituality The Passion-centred devotion of the later Middle Ages emerged from traditions of affective spirituality that emphasized human emotion and physicality as the means of achieving spiritual perfection and unity with the Divine. 5 Influenced by the writing and devotions of figures like Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi, Christian piety focused increasingly on Jesus’s humanity, particularly ‘those moments that aroused the deepest sentiments of love and 2 

Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 15 contains a series of Passion meditations. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, and Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86. 4  For a selection of devotional texts, see Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, ed. by Van Engen. 5  Kieckhefer, ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’. Kieckhefer speaks of the subtle shift from devotion to the Passion to ‘Passion-centred devotion’. 3 

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compassion: his infancy and Passion’.6 Ardent love of Christ in his human form led to compassion for Jesus’s suffering. The figure of the suffering Christ demanded both an empathetic response as well as an ‘immediate participation in the events of the Passion — what one might call a compassion — in which the individual is lost in the recollection and re-enactment’.7 Pious Christians thus expressed their desire to participate in the humiliation and pain of Jesus in a form of imitation that really entailed union or fusion.8 Such compassion required the cultivation of particular cognitive and meditative processes, drawing once again upon the monastic concepts of mneme theou (memory of God) and duratio (God’s time). As noted previously, mneme theou combined emotion, imagination, cogitation, and pious recollection as a means of recreating key events in the Christian narrative of salvation, while duratio described the extra-temporal time of creation and judgement that allowed the history of Christian salvation to replay itself in the present moment.9 Together, mneme theou and duratio enabled medieval Christians to transcend the mundane and arrive at an immutable divine, i.e. ‘to experience salvation history in an omnitemporal present’.10 By the fifteenth century, this desire for imitation and union drew upon detailed descriptions of the Passion that encouraged an empathetic experience of Christ’s human ordeal by virtue of their vivid recreation of Jesus’s suffering.11 Passion-centred devotions assumed an important place within fifteenthcentury reform movements, as did the literacy, devotional reading, and meditation that served as the prerequisites for such piety. Men with such disparate backgrounds as Jean Gerson, Thomas à Kempis, and Jan Hus wrote meditations on the Passion, an indication of the importance of Passion-centred devotion and the texts that supported such piety.12 The influence that Passion narratives 6 

Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 90. The term ‘comPassion’ provides a useful shorthand for describing the ways in which medieval Christians sought not only to have comPassion for Christ’s suffering by placing the scenes of the Passion before the eyes of the heart (ante oculos cordis ponere), but also the ways in which pious believers strived to assume for themselves the role of co-sufferer within the narrative. It is within this context that I employ the term. See also Kieckhefer, ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, pp. 75–108; Swanson, ‘Passion and Practice’, p. 14. 8  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 35; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 246. 9  Dox, ‘Theatrical Space’, pp. 187–88; Breck, ‘John Wyclyf on Time’, p. 217. 10  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 73; Despres, Ghostly Sights, p. 9. 11  Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ’, p. 17. 12  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 61. 7 

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and meditations had on the devotional practices and visionary experiences of late medieval men and women is also reflected in the number of saints and mystics, or aspiring saints and mystics, who embraced such forms of piety. 13 It informed the spirituality of men from diverse regions and religious backgrounds, such as Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), Heinrich Tauler (d. 1361), and Heinrich Suso (d. 1365), but figured especially prominently in the devotional practices of women. Clare of Assisi (d. 1253), Angela of Foligno (d. 1309), Brigit of Sweden (d. 1373), Julian of Norwich (d. 1416), and Margery Kempe (d. after 1438) all embraced Passion-centred devotions. For many women, especially those venerated as saints and mystics, devotion to the Passion assumed both visual and physical form. Alda of Siena (d. 1309) wore a crown of thorns and Jeanne Marie de Maillé (d. 1414) stuck a thorn into her head in memory of the crown of thorns; Beatrice of Ornacieux (d. 1303) pierced her hands with blunt nails.14 Ida of Louvain (d. 1139), Marie of Oignies (d. 1213), and Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) translated their participation in Jesus’s suffering into miraculous stigmata.15 Dorothy of Montau (d. 1394) performed a pantomime of the crucifixion that involved praying with her arms extended in the form of a cross. Elisabeth of Spalbeek (d. 1316) similarly re-enacted the events of the Passion within the confines of her chapel, beating her chest, caressing and kissing a diptych painted with a scene of the crucifixion, and moving around her chapel in an ecstatic state; this culminated with her own representation of Christ’s crucified body and the appearance of the stigmata on her own hands, feet, and side.16 The Poor Clare, Eustochium of Messina (d. 1491), fashioned images of the holy places in Jerusalem in her chamber, especially those associated with the Passion, to which she came daily ‘as if present at the real places’ to contemplate ‘tearfully the gentleness of her spouse — each deed and act in succession’.17 Despite the prominence of mystics and saints, devotion to the Passion was a form of piety shared by the professional religious and the laity alike.18 As R. N. 13 

Kieckhefer, ‘Major Currents in Late Medieval Devotion’, pp. 75–108. Rodgers and Ziegler, ‘Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Trance Dance of Faith’; Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, p. 117. 15  Female saints were also among the first to experience the stigmata. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, p. 119. 16  Rodgers and Ziegler, ‘Elisabeth of Spalbeek’s Trance Dance of Faith’, pp. 299–340. 17  Annales Minorum, ed. by Wadding, xiv (1735), 503. See also Picard, ‘Croix (chemin de)’, cols 2576–2606 (p. 2603); Thurston, The Stations of the Cross, pp. 12–13. 18  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 9, 13; Chartier, ‘Texts, Printing, Readings’, p. 169. 14 

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Swanson remarked, ‘at its peak this is the devotion of the visionary, although it need not reach such heights’. 19 A fifteenth-century text associated with an Augustinian convent, for example, provided its reader with an explicit five-step programme for meditations on the Passion, but also pragmatically counselled her to pass quickly through those parts of the narrative that did not stimulate the desired devotion.20 This text illustrates the way in which the demands of late medieval Passion piety gave rise to an entire genre of religious works designed to facilitate the imaginative recollection of Jesus’s life and suffering. Although associated with an increase in lay literacy, this genre emerged particularly from needs associated with the cura monialium, a feature that still has not received the attention it deserves.21 Prohibited from preaching and missionary work and facing increasing physical restrictions as a result of growing concerns about female enclosure, religious women in the later Middle Ages had to rely on the imaginative imitation of Christ’s suffering and humiliation in the Passion as the only officially sanctioned form of imitatio Christi available to them. Indeed, meditation on the Passion was a devotional exercise that men often recommended for religious women, especially among female communities in the Netherlands and Germany.22 The development of Passion-centred piety and the literature that supported it therefore must be considered both within the traditions of Cistercian and Franciscan spirituality and within the tradition of devotional texts written for women by men. The emergence and use of such texts reflects the deep longing of religious women to engage directly in the imitatio Christi. They likewise reflect the need, perhaps felt by religious women themselves but especially by those entrusted with their care, for proper guidance in achieving such imitative union within the confines of female monastic enclosure. 23 Not only were 19 

Swanson, ‘Passion and Practice’, p. 14. This is a paraphrase of Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’, who transcribes Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett der staatlichen Kunstsammlungen, Hs A 71a, 1, fols 7v–9v, on p.  175: ‘Notandum quod quandocumque non affuit gracia meditanti in uno membro dominice Passionis. Transeat illud membrum breviter. Et aliud se transferat. Et in quocumque membro invenerit. Ibi diucius debet immorari et delectari in domino.’ 21  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 116–24; Bestul is one of the few scholars to raise the question of how priests involved in providing the cura monialium, the care of souls for nuns, may have helped shape these devotional texts. The question is explored below. 22  Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae’, p. 55; Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 9–25. 23  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 37, 48, 55; Despres, Ghostly Sights, pp. 19–54. 20 

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some of the most influential and popular works of this genre directed towards women, but also the literary strategies they employed were ‘specifically appropriate for female readers, who in the prevailing discourse of misogyny were associated with the physical and the literal, thought to be less capable than men of understanding the spiritual, and lacking in meditative powers’.24 One of the primary goals of Passion-centred devotions was to feel as if one had been actually present: ‘quasi te praesentem interfuisse senseris’.25 Aelred of Rievaulx concluded his De institutis inclusarum, or ‘Rule of Life for a Recluse’, a text written between 1160 and 1162 and addressed to his older sister, with a meditation on the life of Christ that repeatedly exhorted her to imagine herself present and participating in various events of the Passion.26 The Meditationes vitae Christi by the Pseudo-Bonaventure, written in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century for a Franciscan nun or community of nuns, similarly instructed its female reader(s): Feel yourself present as if [these things] were done in your presence, as it comes directly to your soul in thinking of them … You must be present at the same things that it is related that Christ did and said, joyfully and rightly, leaving behind all other cares and anxieties.27

Not only did this work actively encourage its (female) readers to use their imagination in order to feel present within the Passion narrative, but also it was the first comprehensive biography of Christ to contain regular interpolations of non-Gospel material. Along with the Vita Jesu Christi of Ludolph of Saxony (d. 1377), the Meditationes vitae Christi remained one of the most influential devotional texts of the later Middle Ages.28 Developing alongside such Latin treatises were vernacular Passion tracts, written, in the words of James Marrow, ‘by, for, and at the level of relatively unsophisticated [emphasis added] monks, nuns, and members of extra-religious

24 

Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 116. Stephen of Sawley, Treatises, ed. by Lackner, p. 100; Stephen of Sawley, ‘Speculum Novitii’. 26  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 39. 27  The attribution to Bonaventure was still accepted in the 1960s when an edition was published by Ian Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green. See Bibliography under Bonaventure. The work has been attributed to the Franciscan John de Caulibus, although scholars still disagree over his authorship of the texts. Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 48. See also Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, pp. 238–39. 28  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 186–92. 25 

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communities’.29 Although vernacular Passion treatises should not be associated exclusively with female readers, like their Latin counterparts, some of the most influential texts were written specifically for women.30 Richard Rolle (d. 1349), for example, composed his vernacular Meditation B for an audience of female recluses. The fourteenth-century German tract Christi Leiden in einer Vision geschaut (Christ’s Suffering as Revealed in a Vision) was likewise directed to a nun.31 With its extremely graphic descriptions of Christ’s suffering, this text anticipated a wide variety of vernacular Passion treatises and devotional texts that incorporated elements of ‘de heimlike passie’, or ‘Secret Passion’, as described below.32 Influenced by such texts, religious women from all walks of life expressed the desire to participate in the Passion and identify with Jesus’s suffering. Julian of Norwich recalled her desire ‘to have been at that time with Mary Magdalene and the others who were Christ’s dear friends, that I might have seen in the flesh the Passion of our Lord which he suffered for me, so that I could have suffered with him as others did who loved him’.33 Margery Kempe claimed to have achieved such a state, for ‘it seemed in her spiritual sight as though she had been at that time in Jerusalem, and saw our Lord in his humanity, received by the people as he was while he went about here on earth’.34 Such unity, however, occurred less as a result of recreating the Passion in a transhistorical or ahistorical time, ‘a timeless contemplative’, than as a result of placing the Passion within the lived experience of the reader — what J. T. Rhodes describes as the creation of the ‘devotional present’.35 One technique for creating this sense of the devotional present especially associated with texts written and used by religious women was the use of present-tense verbs and a first-person perspective, which encouraged meditative 29 

Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 193; Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 10–11. Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 10–12, 67–8; Meale, ‘Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England’, p. 138. 31  Riddy, ‘“Women Talking About the Things of God”’, p. 107; Marrow, ‘“Christi Leiden in einer Vision geschaut”’, p. 343. 32  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 64; Marrow, Passion Iconography. 33  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. by Spearing; Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, p. 241. 34  Kempe, Book, trans. by Windeatt, I.78, pp. 224–25; Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, p. 242. 35  Bestul speakes of a timeless contemplative present. Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 73; Rhodes, ‘The Body of Christ’; Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications’, p. 23. 30 

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dialogues with Christ.36 Such dialogues featured prominently in the fifteenthcentury Orationale produced by the nuns of Medingen. Another technique used to establish a sense of the devotional present was the creation of vivid and detailed mental images of the suffering of Jesus.37 However, because the Gospel accounts left those desiring a direct, personal experience of the Passion eager for more detail, religious writers looked to the Old Testament. Inspired by both Franciscan spirituality and the elaboration of the liturgy where passages from the Old Testament supplemented accounts from the New, many prophecies, metaphors, similes, and symbols came to be interpreted as direct narrative expositions and used in accounts of the ‘Secret Passion’.38 Accounts of the Secret Passion elaborated the brutality of Christ’s torments with graphic and even gory details of his suffering, which encouraged devout readers to identify with Christ’s pain in an intensely somatic way. Scholars have both denigrated and distanced themselves from the brutality of these accounts.39 In an attempt to understand the concerns of these texts, if not rehabilitate them, Thomas Bestul connected their emphasis on excruciating bodily pain and physical contamination with a growing materialism in western European culture, a rise of the use of judicial torture and the experiences of the plague.40 It is important to recall, however, that such vivid imagery was intimately connected to misogynistic assumptions about the types of spiritual care religious women required. The emphasis such works placed upon the visual, both in terms of the construction of mental and physical images as well as the use of actual artwork, is a case in point.41 Prayer itself functioned as ‘a regulated act of the imagination’, but such was particularly true of late medieval Passion-centred devotions.42 The Meditationes vitae Christi stated this explicitly: ‘For the sake of greater impressiveness I shall tell [the events of the Passion] to you as they occurred or as they might 36 

Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, pp. 235–40; Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolo­ro­sae’; Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’. See also Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’, p. 183. 37  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 46; Despres, Ghostly Sights, p. 34; Picard, ‘Croix (chemin de)’, col. 2578–79. 38  Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 191–92. 39  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 71, 148; Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae’, p. 57–58, 70. 40  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 88, 106, 149. 41  See in particular Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary. 42  Lentes, ‘Bild, Reform, und Cura Monialium’, p. 179; Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, p. 236.

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have occurred according to the devout belief of the imagination and the varying interpretation of the mind.’ Following this model, the text presented the reader with two options for imagining Jesus’s crucifixion: one in which he was nailed to the cross on the ground and another in which he was nailed to an already upright cross. Not only was the reader given the option of choosing the scenario that evoked the greater emotional response, but also the duplication of this culminating event reinforced its dramatic and somatic impact. The author likewise encouraged the reader to elaborate the details of Jesus’s childhood, remarking: ‘truly you, just as it seems [appropriate], can enlarge upon it (extendas) and follow it (prosequaris), just as [if you were] a little child with the child Jesus.’43 Other Passion narratives provided options for the imaginative recreation of different scenes.44 The goal of such works was cultivating a personal relationship and identification with Christ, rather than on maintaining biblical accuracy. In fact, the Meditationes vitae Christi advised the reader not to worry about the orthodoxy or factual accuracy of certain points, but rather to ‘take it as if I had said “suppose that this is what the Lord Jesus said and did”’.45 Passion narratives, especially those inspired by Franciscan spirituality, encouraged their readers ‘to extemporize visions and then find solace and affirmation in these consciously embellished scenes of Christ’s life’.46 Combining mnemonic and imaginative elements to create vivid mental images, this form of pious recollectio, or ‘visual meditation’, was meant to evoke an affective and somatic response to the Passion, as well as to move the reader beyond visualization to active participation in the events. Associated as such literature has been with female spirituality and with the provision of care for enclosed women, one aspect of the cura monialium, it is not surprising that Passion-centred narratives also paid particular attention to the role of women, and especially the Virgin Mary. The thirteenth-century Planctus beatae Mariae, for example, one of the most popular Marian laments, was originally directed to a community of religious women.47 As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, Mary provided a model of female piety promoted 43 

Bonaventure, Meditationes Vitae Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, ed. by Peltier, p. 511. Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’, p. 181. 45  ‘Hoc est, perinde accipe, ac si dicerem: Mediteris quod ita dixit vel fecit Dominus Jesus; et sic de similibus.’ Bonaventure, Meditationes Vitae Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, ed. by Peltier, p. 511. 46  Despres, Ghostly Sights, p. 61. 47  Despres, Ghostly Sights, pp. 53, 188. 44 

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by male ecclesiastical leaders and embraced by devout women. Whereas earlier accounts emphasized the Virgin’s stoicism during the crucifixion, Passion narratives from the twelfth century onwards increasingly elaborated Mary’s emotional and physical suffering and eventually developed her unique co-suffering or compassion with Christ into a position that made her co-redemptrix.48 Part of the reader’s direct participation was thus not only a personal identification with the pain and suffering endured by Jesus, but also by his mother. Among the earliest writers to focus on Mary’s mental anguish in the Passion was the Pseudo-Bonaventure, but the Speculum humanae salvationis of Ludolphus of Saxony captured the essence of this development in the questions that framed its image of the sorrowing Virgin: ‘For who would not suffer with a mother so very agitated? … And would not commiserate such a troubled mother?’49 Mary provided both a model of spiritual intimacy with Christ and the prime example of the literal imitatio Christi. The story of the Virgin making a daily pilgrimage to the sites of the via dolorosa after Jesus’s death, for example, offered a model for observing the Stations of the Cross.50 Religious women seem to have identified particularly with the Virgin as a model of affective piety and a co-participant in the Passion. Margery Kempe, for example, not only claimed ‘that our Lady and she were always together to see our Lord’s pains’, 51 but also usurped the role of Mary by casting herself as the initiator of the Virgin’s devotions. ‘She went to our Lady and said, “Ah, blessed Lady, rise up and let us follow your blessed Son as long as we may see him, so that I may look upon him enough before he dies.”’52 Imitatio Mariae thus continued to offer a powerful means by which religious women could identify and unite with the humanity and suffering of Christ.53 Although late medieval Passion narratives placed the Virgin as co-sufferer and co-redemptrix ‘at centre stage in the drama of human salvation’, her char48 

Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 111–13. ‘Quis enim tam turbatissimae matri non compateretur? […] Et quis tam turbatissimae matri non miseretur?’. Speculum humanae salvationis, ed. by Lutz and Perdrizet, i, 56; Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’, p. 187; Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 45. 50  Storme, The Way of the Cross, trans. by Dunlop, p. 61; Thurston, The Stations of the Cross, p. 3. 51  Kempe, Book, trans. by Windeatt, I.79, p. 231; Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space With­in’, p. 243. 52  Kempe, Book, trans. by Windeatt, I.79, p. 229; Hodapp, ‘Sacred Time and Space Within’, p. 242–43. 53  Bynum, ‘And Woman his Humanity’, pp. 171–75. 49 

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acterization is nevertheless the product of the male imagination.54 Bestul contends that: The perspective of women and women’s roles formed in the Passion narratives is a deeply masculine one even in the many cases when their intended audience is female. This perspective tends to affirm the rightness of the subordinate position of woman in medieval society by constructing an image of the Virgin Mary that largely conforms to male expectations of female behaviour and male understandings of female personality, psychology and appropriate demeanor.55

Reflecting the gender ideologies held within medieval society and especially within clerical culture, such texts promoted images of female obedience, acceptance, suffering, and silence. Passion narratives emphasized Mary’s physical weakness — her immobility, muteness, and pain throughout the Passion. Indeed, according to Bestul, the ‘extravagantly suffering Mary can be interpreted as an attempt to appropriate female subjectivity to serve male-defined ends having to do with the dissemination and perpetuation of established ideas about gender relationships’.56 Late medieval Passion narratives and meditations thus reflected assumptions, attitudes, and ideas about gender that were shaped primarily, if not exclusively, by a male clerical elite. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that religious women understood these texts in the same ways as male authors or readers did. The complexities of different audiences and reading processes could result in the presence of various discourses, some favourable and some unfavourable to women, within a single text.57 As Bestul remarks: At the smallest unit of audience, the individual reader, a text’s meaning, [or even multiple meanings], may have been understood in a conflicted, confusing manner, with different understanding held simultaneously or sequentially — perhaps (and the suggestion is not altogether facetious) depending upon the day of the week, or perhaps conditioned by how one was located at any given moment within the immediate, social micro-environment.58

54 

Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 121. Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 124, 119. 56  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 116, 121, 124. Bartlett draws similar conclusions in her study of devotional literature for women in Middle English. Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, pp. 19, 63–139. 57  Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, pp. 2–3. 58  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 118, 121. 55 

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Anne Clark Bartlett argues similarly that the reading of devotional literature ‘can never represent the unproblematic transmission of a fixed message into the ready mind of a reader, no matter how pious and receptive’, for such would deny the complex dynamism of the reading process.59 Medieval women’s identification with the figures of Jesus and Mary must therefore be seen as a complex, sometimes self-contradictory negotiation of social and cultural meanings.60 Moreover, as Felicity Riddy has pointed out with regard to the relationship between male clerks and female readers, it is ‘difficult to tell who followed and who led’.61 Even if they themselves did not compose such works, as readers, copyists, and patrons of Passion-centred literature, women helped to shape the texts they used and the devotional practices they encouraged, integrating them, at least in the convents of Lower Saxony, into their traditions of performative piety.

Passion Devotion among the Heath Convents of Lower Saxony As with their other religious practices, the Passion-centred devotions of the nuns within the Heath convents reflected broader spiritual trends.62 Their recollection of the Passion in the Dornenkron meditation or re-enactment of the via crucis mirrored the intimate, personal identification with Christ that was so desired by, and became so characteristic of, female mystics.63 For the women of these communities, however, such devotions were intimately connected to the Observant reforms of the late fifteenth century. Influenced by the devotio ­moderna, these reforms emphasized Latin literacy and pragmatische Schriftlichkeit, i.e. literature of a practical, moral, and didactic nature. They also advocated private devotional reading outside of the liturgical offices, favouring works that focused on the life and Passion of Christ.64 59 

Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, p.  2; Chartier, ‘Texts, Printing, Readings’, pp. 157, 171. 60  Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, p. 84. 61  Riddy, ‘“Women Talking About the Things of God”’, p. 107. 62  Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 151–57; Bynum, ‘The Female Body’, pp. 182–83; Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary; Hale, ‘“Taste and See, for God is Sweet”’, pp. 3–14; also, ‘Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs’; Petroff, ‘Women’s Bodies and the Experience’, pp. 91–115. 63  Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 246, 263. 64  Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. Regarding the Passion-centred piety of the Windesheim congregation, see Schuppisser, ‘Schauen mit den Augen des Herzens’, pp. 171–72.

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A number of surviving prayer books from the Heath convents attest to the importance of devotional reading and meditation in the wake of the Observant reform. The convent of Ebstorf, for example, preserves seventeen prayer books dating from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, in addition to Breviaries, Psalters, collections of sermons, and theological and mystical works. At least two of the prayer books preserved at Ebstorf likely originated in the convent of Wienhausen, pointing to the networks of exchange through which texts and devotional practices circulated among the reformed houses of the Lüneburg Heath.65 Like the Orationale from Medingen, many of the surviving manuscripts from Ebstorf and Wienhausen were created by the nuns for their own use. The cheaper paper and parchment used, the occasionally incomplete rubrication, the use of both Latin and Middle Low German, the composite nature of the manuscripts, and the presence of feminine pronouns all suggest domestic production and ownership.66 In one instance, the scriptrix made this authorship by and for religious women explicit, stating: ‘I performed this labour for your [Christ’s] perpetual honour and for the use of my sisters.’67 However, unlike the texts from Medingen, with their sophisticated use of the motifs of bridal mysticism, the prayer books from Ebstorf and Wienhausen contain more generalized prayers directed to Christ or Mary and graphic Passion narratives in the tradition of the Secret Passion.68 As with the use of religious art, reformers sought to regulate the content and structure the reception of the devotional literature used by reformed women. The Latin revival associated with the reformed houses of northern Germany thus brought new methods of instruction that demanded recte legendi 65 

Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13 and Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 15 appear to have had an original provenance in Wienhausen. Härtel, ‘Die Bibliothek des Klosters Ebstorf ’. 66  All indicate that the nuns of the Heath convents produced these texts for internal use. For example: Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 18, fol. 209r: ‘ego indigna peccatrix’ (I unworthy sinner); Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 189v: ‘ik arme sunderinne’ (I poor sinner); Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 253r: ‘ego misera peccatrix indignaque tua famulatrix’ (I a wretched and unworthy sinner, your handmaid). Additionally, the so-called Ebstorf Liederbuch, catalogued as Ebstorf, KE, Hs VI, 17, contains a number of unique compositions probably created by the nuns themselves. Helmar and Giermann, Handschriften des Klosters Ebstorf, pp. xi–xii; Irtenkauf, ‘Die Ebstorfer Liederhandschrift’, p. 123. See also Mecham, ‘Reading between the Lines’. 67  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 18, fol. 222r-v: ‘ego hunc labore facio ad perpetuum nominis tui honorem et sororum mearum utilitatem.’ 68  Ochsenbein, ‘Bildung und Gebet im spätmittelalterlichen Kloster Ebstorf ’, pp. 225–28; Härtel, ‘Die Bibliothek des Klosters Ebstorf ’, pp. 109–21.

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as well as recte intelligendi.69 The result was not only a better understanding of Latin grammar and content, but also the cultivation of cognitive methods that directed devotional thought along certain channels, particularly in terms of the internalization of monastic discipline. According to Eva Schlotheuber, reformed houses like the convent of Lüne had as their educational goal ‘the disciplining of expression as well as thought’.70 The Observant reform thus influenced not only what the nuns of the Heideklöster read, or even what language they read it in, but also ideas about how they were to read it. The influence of the reform is also apparent in the texts’ preoccupation with male authority and correct devotional practices. Attention to prayers authorized by spiritual leaders (particularly men), the insertion of directives regarding the manner and form of praying, as well as references to indulgences associated with certain prayers, all reflect a heightened interest in orthodoxy that likely resulted from the internal reforms of the fifteenth century. Of particular interest, however, are the nuns’ Passion-centred devotions, for they illustrate the changes as well as the continuities in the performative piety of the Heideklöster.

Reliving the Passion in the Dornenkron Meditation The nuns of the Heath convents enthusiastically embraced the trend in late medieval piety that made Passion meditations the duty of every religious person. A rubricated text preceding a Middle Low German prayer in a prayer book from Ebstorf declared ‘that every Christian is bound to contemplate twice every day the bittering suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ with proper devotional thanksgiving’.71 Devotion to the Passion occurred both outside of and within the context of the liturgical hours and Mass.72 Indeed, by the fifteenth 69 

Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, p. 73. Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, pp.  77–87 (here p.  86). Similarly, ‘Die Fähigkeit des Ausdrucks und der Reflexion der zukünftigen Nonnen wurde geschärft, aber zugleich an feste Normen gebunden’, Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 287, 293–95 (here p. 295). See note 71. 71  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 17, fol. 261r: ‘Eyn jewelick cristen mynsche is des plictich dat he alle daghe twie aver trachte dat hilghe bitter lident uses leuen heren Ihesu Christi in rechter inneges danck anamicheyt.’ [The Latin and German texts that follow were transcribed by Mecham from manuscript sources that have not been published. She summarizes them in her text; since the original text has not been published earlier, it seems important to preserve those transciptions here.] 72  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 15, fol. 183v: ‘Si quis desiderat nosse vita spirituali et disponit vivere 70 

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century the liturgical hours were not only associated with particular stages of the Passion narrative, but also with details drawn from the Secret Passion.73 An Ebstorf prayer book that originated in the convent of Wienhausen, for example, measured the indulgences associated with the prayers of each liturgical hour in terms of the Passion narrative, namely the number of blows received by Jesus, the number of thorns in the crown, and the number of tears shed by the Virgin.74 Other texts provided the nuns with a means of reliving the Passion outside of the context of the liturgy. The meditative prayer of the Dornenkron, for example, offered a meditation on the events of the Passion that centred on the crown of thorns. Some manuscripts containing the prayer from the convent of Wienhausen (manuscripts 31, 60, and 69) were conveniently small, ranging in size from 10.8 × 8 to 12.8 × 7.5 centimetres, and thus provided portable devotions beyond the liturgical hours. Two of the works were composed in Middle Low German and bound in leftover vellum covers from reused liturgical books. The third text, manuscript 69, may have belonged to a more aristocratic sister than the other two; it was bound in a new leather cover and embossed with a knightly figure holding banner and shield, which suggests Saint Maurice and hence probably Ebstorf. Each manuscript comprised eight to fifteen sheets of paper folded in half to form books of sixteen to thirty folios. Paleographic analysis suggests that these manuscripts date from the second half of the fifteenth century, and comparisons with other prayer books containing the Dornenkron meditation suggest a terminus post quem of 1450 with a probable production date between 1470 and 1500.75 With slight variations, these texts from Wienhausen follow the general outline of the Dornenkron meditation as it appears in other manuscript and early print copies. Particular comparisons may be drawn with the Dornenkron meditation that appears together with Dietrich Kolde’s Christenspiegel in a devotional book printed in Deventer circa 1499. et crucifere cum X et in X crucifice inter missam deus dies cum legitur ewangelem exiit edict hanc prescriptam orationem incipiat adiungens xxxv laudai . o. g. et hoc faciant per totum annum et iterum inverte sacratissima natalis dei lecto eadem.’ See note 71. 73  Bestul, Text of the Passion, p. 48. 74  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fols 28r–36r. The beginning of this text also marks the beginning of a new hand in this prayer book. See note 71. 75  Seventeen prayer books that included this prayer, catalogued in this work, were all composed after 1450. The earliest manuscript to contain the prayer dates from circa 1480. The prayer appeared most frequently in the years between 1490 and 1530. Achten and Knaus, Deutsche und niederländische Gebetbuchhandschriften. See also, Pensel, Verzeichnis der deutschen mittelalterlichen, pp. 282–83.

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I shall hereafter refer to this work, currently preserved in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, as the Stuttgart Christenspiegel.76 The Dornenkron typically began with an introduction that identified the meditation and occasionally the author and provided directions for its correct performance. Wienhausen manuscript 60, for example, directed that the meditation be recited every Sunday evening, either standing or kneeling in a penitential pose, but not sitting, for then it would be ‘falsely spoken’.77 The Stuttgart Christenspiegel provided similar instructions, adding that the prayer should be read before an image of Christ.78 Such directions recall the reformers’ concern for correct exterior behaviour as well as interior devotion. Those who could not read the work were directed to speak instead seventy-seven Pater Nosters and Ave Marias. With slight variations, prayers that greeted Jesus, thanked him for his suffering and pain, and asked for his protection preceded the meditation proper.79 The meditation then moved through a series of scenes from the Passion, most prefaced with a brief greeting or remembrance (‘Wes gegrotet’, ‘Ave’, ‘Ich ermane dich’). The description of these scenes often incorporated details associated with narratives of the Secret Passion, such as how Jesus’s tormentors grabbed him by the hair and beard, flung him to the ground, and savagely continued to pull his hair. 80 Such details reflected the anti-Jewish sentiment 76  See Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, pp.  337–45. Likewise, a prayerbook (Washington, DC, Libr. of Congress, Rosenwald Collection, Ms 4) containing various other meditations on the suffering of Christ, including die Betrachtungen des Leidens Christi, also includes this meditation. This work, intended for use by a nun, has been localized only to the Upper Rhine and dates from 1518. See Schutzner, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books in the Library of Congress, ii: Theology and Canon Law (1989), pp. 340–55. 77  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 2r-v: ‘Dusse dorne kronen schal me beden des sondages nochteren und ok gerne erme sprickt stande iffte knyiende edder in der venyen sunder nycht sittende id sy den sake men kranck were.’ See note 71. 78  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 337. See also Achten and Knaus, Deutsche und niederländische Gebetbuchhandschriften, pp. 269, 299. 79  These features appear in all three of the texts from Wienhausen, Hs 60, Wienhausen, Hs 31, and Wienhausen, Hs 69, and in the Christenspiegel from Deventer (Washington, DC, Libr. of Congress, Rosenwald Collection, Ms 4). Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, pp. 337–38; Schutzner, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books in the Library of Congress, ii: Theology and Canon Law (1989), pp. 340, 346. 80  See Johannis de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi, ed. by Stallings-Taney, p. 281. In addition to the manuscripts from Wienhausen, this feature also appears in the Crown of Thorns meditation preserved in the Brussels, BRB/KBB, Ms IV 115, fol. 78v; cited in Marrow, Passion

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typical of many late medieval Passion narratives.81 One aspect that received particular emphasis was the destruction of Christ’s beauty and the contamination of his purity with impurity. Drawing upon the prophetic imagery of Canticle 1. 4, Nigra sum, sed formosa, and Isaiah 53. 1–4, Quasi leprosus, the texts from Wienhausen recalled how Christ, ‘the most beautiful of men among the children of men [Psalm 44. 3]’, was rendered ugly, and even deformed, in the Passion.82 Like many other Passion narratives, particularly those from Germanic regions, the meditation offered detailed descriptions of Jesus’s defilement through impure fluids, particularly human spittle.83 Drawing upon Rupert of Deutz’s commentary on Hosea 7. 6, the Dornenkron meditation recounted how the ‘evil’ Jews bound Christ’s face and eyes with a dirty cloth and walked around him, hitting him and spitting in his face at the house of Caiaphas.84 The text recalled that people threw filth (‘dreck’, ‘slijck’) from the street onto Christ’s head and face on his way to Pilate, making him so ugly as to be unrecognizable.85 Later, the meditation described how the Jews pulled Jesus upwards by his Iconography, p. 71. See also Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 71–75. 81  Marrow, Passion Iconography; Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 69–110. 82  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fols 5r–6r: ‘Na wordestu gesettet up eynen kolden steyn und eyn olt purpuren klet is dy angetogen[.] O in welkem groten anxste bistu gewese[.] Do de bosen Ioden dy de dornekronen brochten und helben dy de myt twen staken crucewist up dyn hovet gesettet und dy by den schulderen und haren ghe holden de dornekronen helben se hertliken gedrucket an dy benediede hovet[.] Myt groten bomen isste staken uppe dat de scharpen dorne desto deper dyn hovet dorch groven … und dat benediede blot vlot over alle dyn antlat und makede dy so mystaldich de du to vorem werest de alder schoneste manckt den kynderen der mynschen.’ The Latin text stated more succinctly: ‘in aspecum [sic] deformis es’ (you became deformed in appearance). Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 5v. 83  Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 69–110. 84  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 3r: ‘In cayphas huse wart dyn hilge antlat und ogen myt eynem unfledigen doke vorbunden de bosen Ioden helben umme dy her lopen und hertliken geslagen und dy bespyget sunder underlat in dyn hilge antlat.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 3v: ‘In domo cayphe frons oculique tui sordide velabantur caput tantum et faciem desiderabilem percellerebant faciemque tuam sanguine lentam intenti sputamine fede fecerunt benedicta facies caputque tuum domine percussum est.’ Rupert of Deutz, Osee Prophetam commentaria, col. 111; Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 121. 85  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 3v: ‘van herodes und synem gesynde bistu bespottet myt eynem witten klede und eynen strokransz gesettet up dyn hovet und du bist spotliken van ome ghe grotet und dyn alder schoneste antlat is dy geslagen und bespiget myt sodenen laster […] In den wege is dy in eyn honspottynge dreck der strate up dyn hilge hovet unde dyn hilge hovet geworpen Du bist so gans mistaldich geworden dat du nouwe gekent wordest.’ Kilde, Der

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hair and beard and opened his mouth (according to Wienhausen manuscript 31 this was done with a stick) to pour in their ‘stinking, unclean, or impure spit’ (‘oren stinckende spekelen’). They described how Jesus’s mouth was so full of spit that when they raised him up again, it poured out of his mouth: ‘as much as your back was beaten, so much did the unclean spit flow from your mouth.’86 Recalling the legend of Hur’s martyrdom with spittle, Quasi leprosus, the meditation claimed that Christ had nearly suffocated from spit and that the mixture of blood and spittle on Christ’s face made him resemble a leper. 87 Interestingly, the association of the story of Hur’s death by spittle with the Passion narrative also appeared in the Speculum humanae salvationis, a work with which the nuns of Wienhausen were clearly familiar, given their production of an embroidery on this same theme. Indeed, Jeffrey Hamburger has argued that monastic women may have purposefully embraced the image of Jesus’s ugliness.88 The Dornenkron also dwelt in detail upon the physical torture of Jesus, re­ counting how he was repeatedly beaten, bound with rope and iron chains, and dragged around by his hair. 89 It likewise described how the blood from the Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 339: ‘van Herodes ende van sinen gesinde bespottet wordest mit eenen witten cleede ende een storehoet op dijn coninclicke hoeft als een geck ende van hem spottelicken gegruetet […] Ende om di te meer oneeren te bewijsen so worpen si slijck van der straeten op dijn hoeft ende in dijn aensicht op den weghe. Du waerste soe mismaect dat men di niet kennen en mochte.’ Isaiah 53.1–4, Quasi leprosus, as well as Canticle 1.4, Nigra sum, sed formosa, provided the details for Christ’s transformation from beauty to ugliness. 86  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 14v; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 7r: ‘Wan den bosen Ioden bistu up wert ge togen by dynen hilgen haren unde to rugge werdt by dynen hilgen barde unde helben also dyne hilgen mundt ge opent [according to Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31 ‘myt stocken’] unde alle ore unfledichheit oror borst dar in ge spict [alle ore stynckende spekelen dar inne gespiget, according to Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31]. Dyn hilge mundt war so gans ser vorvult myt oren stinckende spekelen so vaken alse se dynen rugge pynigeden so vaken vlot de unreynicheit wedder uth dynen munde.’ In Latin: ‘Tanta immundicia os tuum repletum est ut quociens dorsum tuum impingebatur tociens refluxit de ore tuo.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 6v; Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 341. 87  Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 52–53, 131–32. 88  Hamburger, ‘To Make Women Weep’, pp. 18–22; Bestul, Text of the Passion, pp. 69–110. 89  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 10r: ‘Do bistu unbarmhertichliken ge togen in eynen keller treppen wart dyn hilge hovet unmyldichliken ge seret De eyne toch dy myt den repe dat dyne hende weren mede ghe bunden to rugge de ander myt yseren keten de dy umme dynen hilgen licham was ge dan de ander toch dy up wert by dynen hilgen haren.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 4v: ‘ad gaudum cellarii caput tuum tremendum letum est cumque […] deorsum et cathena crinibus sursum tractus ad columpnam penaliter corpus tuum flagellabatur.’ Such details drew

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wounds caused by the crown of thorns nearly suffocated Christ and how the blood flowed over his face and body as a result of his falling five times on the path to Calvary.90 It described how the crown of thorns, imposed by the ‘evil’ Jews (‘den bosen Joden’) and pressed down upon Jesus’s head with two large stakes placed crosswise, not only dug into Jesus’s forehead, ears, and neck, but also pierced his eyebrows, eyelids, and the veins of his head, and penetrated his brain down to his teeth.91 Christ’s bleeding and ugliness functioned again as ­aspects of his physical humiliation, and it was above all Christ’s humiliation that the crown of thorns meditation exalted. This emphasis on Christ’s blood reflected devotional and intellectual concerns current within late medieval society, yet had specific connections to female spirituality.92 The first revelation recorded by Julian of Norwich, for example, dealt with the crown of thorns, using language and imagery similar to the Dornenkron meditation.93 Unlike many mystical visions, however, bleeding did not assume any nurturing or particularly feminine characteristics in the Dornenkron manuscripts from Wienhausen.94 The use of somatic language likeupon Psalm 87, which figured prominently in the Passion liturgy; it was read in its entirety during Matins on Good Friday. Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 111. 90  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 10r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 10r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 19r: ‘So unmechtich gewest und van den bosen Ioden gezwungen dattu en viff mal myt dynem gansen licham swarliken uppe den steyne vellest und dat bolt is uth dynen hovede und licham gevloten up de erde.’ Only the vernacular renditions make references to the ‘evil Jews’. 91  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol.  5 r-v: ‘Corona spinea frontem aures collumque tuum operuit cuius aculei impressi cum stipitibus ut profundius sacrosanctam caput tuum penetrarent frontem palpebras tuas perforantes tympana aures venasque sacrati tui capiti sauoabant pertransierunt ceri item et cerebrum usque ad dentes sanguis tuus benedictus faciem tuam irrigavit in aspcum [sic] deformis visus es.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 12r: ‘Dyn hilge vornhovet unde dyne hilgen ogenbranen helbet se dorge graven dyne dunnygen oren unde aderen dynes hilgen hovedes helbet se vor wundet de scharpen dorne hebben ge gan dorch dynen nacken unde bregen wente to dynen hilgen tenen.’ 92  Hamburger, Nuns as Artists; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; also, Wonderful Blood; Bildhauer, Medieval Blood. 93  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. by Spearing, Chapter  4, p.  45. David Aers, however, regards Julian of Norwich as being remarkably singular for the way in which she did not aim ‘to induce the affective responses we might have expected in a conventional meditation on the Crucifixion […] [nor] move us to any affective imitation of a suffering, tortured body as an imitation of Christ’. Aers, ‘The Humanity of Christ’, pp. 86, 89. 94  Only once, in the vernacular text of Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, did the scribe approach such a concept, referring to Christ’s blood as fruitful. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 19r-v: ‘O wo jammerliken bistu ge ledden myt den cruce unde uth dynen hilgen hovede is dyn hilge blot

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wise appears only once in a petition that the reader might ‘through compassion […] continuously have in the memory of my heart Christ’s ugly image; grant me that I might taste [emphasis added: “gustare”, “smecken”] [your] love for which you suffered so willingly’.95 For the nuns of Wienhausen, however, the emphasis on Jesus’s blood may have elicited a specific association with their own monastic community and their most prized relic — a drop of holy blood. Given that the community had a tradition of demonstrating its devotion to this relic by placing lighted candles before it, the Dornenkron meditation accorded well with the established practices of the community. The meditation also paid particular attention to the robing and disrobing of Jesus in connection with the crown of thorns: That purple gown, which had been baked into your wounds, they took off of you and dressed you again in your own gown, so that you should therefore appear more ridiculous. When Pilate condemned you to death, so was the crown of thorns harshly taken from your blessed head because due to the width of the crown you were not able to put on your own robe. From the dressing and undressing the pain of your wounds was renewed.96

Christ bore all this, according to Wienhausen manuscript 60, ‘with a peaceful visage’ (‘myt ge negeden unde fredesamygen angesichte’).97 The meditation also described Christ’s walk to Calvary, where his crown of thorns was removed and then replaced a second time, thus renewing his wounds

fruchtbarliken ge vloten.’ Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 179, 237. 95  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 13v: ‘O leve here helpe my dat ik dorch medelidynge dyn mystaldige ge bilde mote stetliken hebben in gedechtenisse des herten Vor leve my dat ik dyne leve moge smecken umme welker leve willen du heft so myldichliken ge leden.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 6r: ‘Concede mihi amorem tuum de gustare quo pro me passus es Tempore infirmitati praecipue morti in hora.’ 96  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 17r-v: ‘Dat purpuren kleyt dat in dynen wunden was to ge backen helben se dy uth ge togen unde hebben dy dyn egen kleyt wedder an ge togen uppe dat dyn doth desto honeliker scholde wesen. Do pilatus dy hadde vorrichtet to den dode do wart de dorne kronen van dynen benedieden hovede echtige nomen unmyldichliken wente van der bredicheit der kronen so mostest du dynen egen rock nycht an teyn Van der antedinge unde uthtendinge so wert de pyne dyner smerte vornyget.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fols 8v–9r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 5r. A similar description appears in the crown of thorns manuscript from Brussels, BRB/KBB, Ms IV 115, fol. 145v, quoted in Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 72, 196. 97  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 16r.

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and causing his blood to flow upon the earth.98 It further related how Jesus was placed naked on a hard, cold stone, recalling how pitifully he sat there, shivering from the great frost and bleeding profusely. Wienhausen manuscript 69 further recounted: ‘the sharp thorns bore so greatly through your eyebrows that you were not able to move [them]. Your holy blood flowed over your eyes [and] nose [and] over your holy head, so that you could hardly breathe.’99 Such descriptions evoke images of Christ like the one possessed by the Cistercian nuns of Holy Cross in Rostock. Finally, the meditation related how Christ was placed upon the cross, the mocking title ‘king of the Jews’ set above him, and how (according to Wienhausen manuscript 31) they hit the crown of thorns with the hammer while placing this sign. Each manuscript described the crown of thorns sliding from Jesus’s head to cover his face, so that the thorns once again penetrated his eyebrows or eyelids, and how Jesus cried when he saw his mother Mary and John standing below the cross. 100 Wienhausen manuscript 31 further elaborated that Christ was so forcefully crucified that all his limbs were torn asunder, a detail found in other accounts of the Secret Passion. 101 The Dornenkron concluded with Mary holding her crucified son in her lap and beholding the wounds of his body, describing in effect an image of the pietà, an image that provided a springboard for the personal prayers and Marian devotions that usually followed.

98 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fols 18v–19v. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 11r: ‘Spinarum aculei oculos et palpebras penetrantes monere non prena […] sanguis tuus preciosus super oculos nasum osque tuum et capite tuo effluxit unde anhelitus tuus impeditus.’ Wienhausen, KlA Wienhausen, Hs 60, fol. 22r-v: ‘De scharpen dorne helben so ser dorch ge graven dyne ogenbranen dat du se nycht kondest rogen. Dyn hilge blot is over dyne ogen [und] nese unnidt uth dynen hilgen hovede ge vloten so dat du nowve kondest atem.’ 100  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 22v: ‘O wo vel tranen hefftu uthgegoten do du dyne leven moder dynen jungeren Johanni bevoldest.’ The same text appears in Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31. 101  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fols 11v–12r. ‘Du bist unbarmhertichliken ghe worpen uppe dat cruce up de erde dar van du grote pyne geleden heffst an dynem hovede und du wordest so stram uth gerecket an dat cruce dat alle dyne ledemate van andergyngen und myt dren negelen an dat cruce genegelt.’ A particularly violent description in a text of the Secret Passion from the Netherlands told how Jesus was flung so fiercely onto the cross that ‘all His wounds were renewed, and His head fell hanging over the cross because it was unsupported, and it was kicked back and forth by His tormentors’. Ghent, Bibl. der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms 220 (cat. no. 6), quoted and translated in Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 169. 99 

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Like many other Passion meditations written by and for women, the Dornenkron’s graphic imagery engaged its reader by creating vivid mental pictures that demanded a somatic response to Christ’s suffering. Even so, it does not necessarily represent a craving among Wienhausen’s nuns for an emotional and somatized experience per se. It would be presumptuous to assume that, given the monastic culture saturated with Biblical symbolism that surrounded them, the nuns of Wienhausen were unaware of the references to the prophecies that provided the foundation for the details of the Dornenkron meditation. Again, the nuns’ embroidery of the Speculum humanae salvationis, perhaps designed with the aid of a manuscript owned by the community, demonstrates that this type of allegorical interpretation was not foreign to them. The meditation clearly encouraged its readers to identify directly and personally with Christ. This was achieved not only by means of the first-person perspective, but also by describing Jesus’s internal feelings or thoughts. The texts from Wienhausen particularly elaborated Christ’s anxiety and fear.102 They recalled ‘with what great pain’ Jesus heard the crowd cry out to crucify him and ‘with what sadness’ he heard the ‘evil folk’ order his death. 103 The Wienhausen texts noted that having been placed on the cold stone of Calvary, Jesus shivered and ‘thought about all his suffering and the pain of each person’.104 A nun could thus experience both the physical suffering and human emotions of Jesus, remaking these scenes in her own interior performance of the Passion.105 Franciscan friars similarly encouraged the laity to blend their own history with the sacred history of scripture as part of their attempt to identify with and imitate Jesus.106 102 

References to Christ’s anxiety appeared when he prayed in the garden on Mount Olive, when he stood before Pilate, and after his scourging. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fols 6 v, 9v, 11r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 4r. Other works on the Passion included references to Christ’s fear; Rupert of Deutz wrote of Christ’s fear in Gethsemane. Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 90. 103  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 16r-v. ‘tolle tolle crucifige crucifige eum hefftu myt groter smerte ge hort […] O leve here wo droffliken hefftu ge hort dat sick dat bose volk dynes unschuldigen dodes hefft ge vrouwet.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 7v: ‘Impios de tua morte gaudere audisti et converso amicos contristari agnovisti.’ 104  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 11r-v. ‘O wo jammerliken heffstu geseten up dem steyne van groten froste und wedage heffstu gebevet und dyn hilge blot gegoten und heffst do over gedacht alle dyn lydent und eynes isliken mynschen pyne.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fols 20v– 21r: ‘O wo jamerliken hefftu geseten uppe den kolden und harden steyne van groten froste hefftu gebevet und dyn hilge blot gegoten unde twylt dat se bereyden dat cruce hefftu medelidingen over ge trachtet eynes isliken mynschen pyne.’ 105  Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, p. 222. 106  Despres, Ghostly Sights, pp. 8, 15–16, 37.

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Finally, like many other late medieval Passion tracts, the Dornenkron meditation exalted Mary as a model for the kind of empathetic suffering that resulted in a state of compassion. As noted above, the meditation concluded with an image of the pietà, recalling ‘what great pain and tenderness your mother Mary had, as she had you in her lap, when she sat beneath the cross and with sighing beheld your wounded body, the deep wounds of your hands and feet and the depth of the sharp crown of thorns that went through your head’.107 The pain Jesus endured thus became Mary’s pain as well as the nun’s pain, as each held before her eyes Christ’s suffering in the Passion.108 Notably, this imagery of holding and beholding the body of Jesus evoked the same kind of associations between female care, concern, and compassion for Jesus’s body as did the nuns’ dramatic re-enactment of Christ’s entombment and the holy women’s visitation of his tomb. Mary’s importance was further underscored by the Marian devotions that almost always followed the Dornenkron meditation. Together, the first-person perspective, the brutal details of Christ being mocked and mishandled, the description of his emotions, and Mary’s sympathetic suffering gave the Dornenkron meditation the emotional intensity of personal experience, enhanced perhaps by its weekly re-enactment. The repetition of the Dornenkron meditation every Sunday worked to erode the boundaries between the recollection of Jesus’s suffering and a nun’s own personal memories and associations. Discussing the experiences of Margery Kempe, Denise Despres likewise speculates that ‘we can assume that those who generally practiced visual, participatory meditation created “fictional” biographical experiences, or biblical scenes that were really self-conscious narratives that explored individual spirituality and responses to Christ’. 109 Together with the liturgical hours, the reading of works like the Dornenkron or Meditationes vitae Christi, which was also intended as a weekly meditation, meant that each week — indeed every day — a nun recalled the Passion of Christ.110 As a result, Jesus’s 107  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol.  13 r-v; Wienhausen, KW,Hs 60, fols  235 r–242 v; Wienhausen, KW,Hs 69, fol. 11v: ‘O welcke grote smerte und droffnisse hefft dyn leve [hilge] moder maria gehad do sick se dick doth hadde in orem schote under den cruce und sach myt suchteden ansende dynen vorwundeden licham de depen wunden dyner hande und vote und de depicheit der scharpen dorne kronen de dorch dyn hovet weren gegan.’ 108  The Latin of Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 10r (‘Dolorose mulieres allocutus inter quas mater tua cuius mesticia tibi soli congnita [sic]’), similarly mentioned Mary’s sorrow, recalling that Christ alone knew her sadness. 109  Despres, Ghostly Sights, p. 83. 110  Despres, Ghostly Sights, p. 47.

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Passion itself became part of the nun’s own lived experience, part of her own mundane reality. She thus came to know Christ as intimately as she knew her own daily routine. Enacted on a weekly basis and exalting an intimate familiarity with Jesus modelled on concern for his body as well as the compassion of the Virgin Mary, the Dornenkron meditation reflected the same emphasis on traditional gender roles and relationships as did many of the other devotional practices embraced by the nuns of the Heideklöster. The Dornenkron meditation thus accorded with the nuns’ traditions of performative piety.

Walking in the Footsteps of Christ: Passion Piety and Interior Pilgrimages While the Dornenkron meditation suggests a shift towards internal, rather than external, performances of the Passion, the nuns’ observance of the Stations of the Cross reflects a different perspective. Another pair of late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century manuscripts from Wienhausen (manuscripts 85 and 86) document the performance of an interior pilgrimage in the form of the observance of the Stations of the Cross. Like the Visitatio sepulchri dramas enacted by the nuns in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Stations of the Cross combined mental or interior devotion with exterior actions. The nuns who reenacted the via crucis progressed to certain locations within the convent where they recalled the individual events of the Passion, recited prayers, and performed other external signs of compunction, compassion, and love. The practice relied on theological imagination and devotional memory as well as the use of monastic structures and communal artworks to reconstitute the sacred locations and events of the Passion. The Stations of the Cross thus constituted a performance in the dramatic sense of the word. It united action, contemplation, and religious artwork with the goal of demonstrating the individual piety of the performer to both a divine as well as a monastic audience. Such practices transformed the entire convent of Wienhausen, not just the nuns’ choir or parish church, into both a performance space — where the experiences of Jesus could be re-enacted and relived — and a liminal space — a place where past and present united in devotional experience. Like other texts that fostered Passion-centred devotion, texts for mental pilgrimages emerged from the intersection of the spiritual desires of religious women and the needs of the cura monialium. Since the early Middle Ages, professional religious women had formed an avid audience for pilgrimage

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accounts, especially images and texts that facilitated mental or spiritual pilgrimages.111 Indeed, dramatic liturgical rituals like the Visitatio sepulchri may have addressed a desire for, as well as fostered a sense of, ‘virtual’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land.112 By the fifteenth century, ‘Christians expressed an ardent fervor to go on pilgrimages, both real and imaginary’, influenced both by repeated crusading efforts and Franciscan spirituality.113 For those unable to make actual pilgrimages, particularly enclosed monks and nuns, the practice of making ‘spiritual’, ‘virtual’, or ‘mental’ pilgrimages provided a means of participating in this aspect of the imitatio Christi. According to her vita, Saint Rita of Cascia (1382–1457) progressed around her cell, stopping at certain points that marked the stages of her pilgrimage.114 Saints Columba of Rieti (d. 1501) and Osanne de Mantua (d. 1505) engaged in similar mental pilgrimages,115 as did one of the lay sisters from the convent of Lorvão near Coimbra.116 The performative devotions of Elisabeth of Spalbeek and Eustochium of Messina have already been noted. The vita of the Dominican mystic Heinrich Suso (d.  1365) likewise recounted how ‘he accompanied Christ from place to place’ as he progressed through his monastery each night, re-enacting the episodes of the Passion from the last supper to the crucifixion.117 By mentally transforming certain locations within his monastery into the sites of the Passion, Suso achieved a sense of the devotional present that allowed him to feel as if he were ‘walking at Christ’s side’ and led to a state of compassion, a ‘Christ-like feeling of sympathy’ that enabled him to nail ‘himself to the cross with his Lord’.118 The depth of Eustochium’s meditations likewise allowed her to ‘feel the crucifixion’, but unlike Suso this identification was premised on her gendered relationship with Christ, who was cast in the role of spouse. Her sympathetic union with Christ,

111  Halpin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Women and Pilgrimage’, pp. 97–122; Rudy, ‘A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage’, pp. 514–15; Halpin, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 213. 112  Halpin, ‘Anglo-Saxon Women and Pilgrimage’, pp. 119, 121. 113  Rudy, ‘A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage’; Picard, ‘Croix (chemin de)’, col. 2581; Storme, The Way of the Cross, trans. by Dunlop, p. 75. 114  Storme, The Way of the Cross, trans. by Dunlop, p. 109. 115  Picard, ‘Croix (chemin de)’, col. 2603; Annales Minorum, ed. by Wadding, xv (1736). 116  Thurston, The Stations of the Cross, pp. 16–19, 93–95. 117  Suso, The Life of Blessed Henry Suso, trans. by Knox, pp. 41–43. 118  Suso, The Life of Blessed Henry Suso, trans. by Knox, pp. 41–43.

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which drew upon both medieval gender ideologies and theological imagination, transformed her cell into the city of Jerusalem. Perhaps even more influential for the reformed nuns of the Heath convents were the practices of the sisters of the Modern Devout, who ‘participated in a deeply Christocentric religious program’ that included mental pilgrimages.119 Narratives of the pious lives of these sisters included accounts of their virtual pilgrimages, such as the one made in 1417 by two members of the convent of St Mary and Saint Agnes at Diepenveen, one of the earliest communities under the spiritual direction of the chapter of Windesheim. Just as fifteenth-century nuns of the Heath convents made joint purchases and pious donations, the sisters from Saints Mary and Agnes collaborated in their devotions, planning their mental pilgrimage (prayer-journey or bedevaert) to Rome as if it were an actual trip, calculating the duration of their travel and concerns about delays. Sister Truyde explained that, ‘she wanted to depart on the day after Three Kings’ Day [i.e. 7 January]; that way, they could arrive in Rome on Saint Agnes’s Day [21 January] and could visit her church then. They would do this pilgrimage through exercises and prayers, especially by reading fifty Ave Marias every day.’ However, Sister Gertruyt ‘would not consent to her, because she was afraid that she might delay them along the way. She asked her how long she planned to stay in Rome and when she planned to come back’. Truyde answered that ‘she had already been in Rome once, at which time she remained there three days, but that she could not say precisely how long she would stay this time’. Although Gertruyt fell sick and died before the sisters undertook their spiritual journey, she was nevertheless credited with having made a postmortem trip to Saint Agnes’s church in Rome in her vita.120 Surviving manuscripts from female monastic houses associated with the devotio moderna include pilgrimage narratives and guides to Jerusalem as well as texts for virtual pilgrimages.121 The Augustinian canonesses at Saint Agnes Maaseik may have been inspired by women like Sister Stijne Zuetelinck when they made their copies of Den aflaet der heiliger stat Jheruslem.122 Nuns at the 119 

Scheepsma, ‘“For Hereby I Hope to Rouse Some to Piety”’; Devotio Moderna: Basic Writ­ings, ed. by Van Engen. For specific examples of mental pilgrimage among the sisters, see de Man, Hier begeinnen sommige stichtige, pp. 176–77; Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 226–28. 120  Scheepsma, Deemoed en Devotie, pp. 93–94; Translated in Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 229–30. 121  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’; Miedema, ‘Following in the Footsteps of Christ’. 122  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 211–54.

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reformed convent of Lüne as well as the unreformed convent of Holy Cross in Braunschweig performed similar, but perhaps less elaborate, mental pilgrimages associated with the jubilee of 1500, whereby they simulated pilgrimages to the seven principal churches in Rome.123 These devotions involved a physical progression through the monastic complex, especially to various altars, as well as mental devotions and prayers.124 Although no texts related to virtual pilgrimages to Rome survive from Wienhausen, the presence of the small images of the Veronica noted in the preceding chapter probably document similar practices. Wienhausen manuscripts 85 and 86 provide guidance for a mental recreation of the Passion and virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Functioning within the context of the nuns’ Passion-centred devotions, the texts incorporate meditations and prayers for each location. The manuscripts order sisters to progress towards the ‘sepulchre of the Lord’, which probably refers to the wooden sepulchre commissioned by Abbess Katharina von Hoya and consecrated in 1448, thus providing a terminus post quem, while the inclusion of the account of the Veronica also accords with a composition date from the later fifteenth century. The story of Veronica did not appear in texts of the Stations of the Cross prior to the accounts of Hans Lochner (1435) and Georg Pfintzing (1436). Although neither text indicates a particular season, day, or time for performing this particular devotion, nor specifies whether such spiritual pilgrimages were to be undertaken individually or communally, both manuscripts clearly located the practice within the physical structures of the convent of Wienhausen. Like other texts for mental pilgrimages, a set number of Pater Nosters and indulgences accompanied each station; typically these comprised seven years and seven carenae (a period of forty days). While clearly related to each other as well as to a group of texts from the Augustinian convent of Saint Agnes in Maaseik, the Wienhausen manuscripts are not duplicates. Variations in the devotional associations of each station and the location of stations within the monastic complex indicate that while the nuns who copied these texts relied on a common exemplar, each personalized her observances.

123 

Lüneburg, KL, Hs 5, fol. 40r; Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fol. 36 , transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, ppp. 364–65. 124  Lüneburg, KL, Hs 5, fol. 40r: ‘Septem ecclesias visitavimus infra monasterium; primam ecclesiam tenuimus in choro, secundum ante hostium ecclesie, tertiam ante Mariam, quartam in armario, quintam in capitolio, sextam in refectorio, septem in infirmitorio et legimus V “Pater noster” et “Ave Maria” in quolibet loco.’ Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fol. 36r-v. This is transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 364–65. r-v

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The nuns of Wienhausen began their mental pilgrimage in the choir, located on the upper level of the south wing. Here each nun was to imagine the residence of Pontius Pilate, ‘where Christ, in the presence of all the people, was unjustly condemned to be yoked to the cross and punished with death’. Having associated the sacred space of the nuns’ choir with the historical Jerusalem and Pilate’s residence, she progressed to the ground level of the cloister. While descending the steps to the ground level, she contemplated with her ‘mind’s eye’ the house of Pilate, ‘where the impious imposed the cross on Christ and the twenty-eight steps, which he was forced to go up and down pitiably with the cross, [and how] while doing [this] he brutally fell down on the steps’.125 On each step she read three Pater Nosters ‘with a devoted heart’. According to manuscript 85, if the nun genuflected, she might receive remission of all her sins and be able to free one soul from purgatory. Manuscript 86 noted that the nun could achieve this by moving on her bare knees instead of walking. 126 In both cases the nun attempted to mimic physically Christ’s actions, mentally transforming the convent stairs into the steps of Pilate’s residence and humbling herself as Jesus himself was humbled. Once a nun took the first step in her procession around the complex, she entered the space of theological imagination and transformed the monastic complex into the city of Jerusalem. Aided by the concept of duratio, a nun could re-enact, and thereby relive, the historical Passion of Jesus.127 The physical space of the convent thus comprised sacred and liminal as well as performance space. In both manuscripts, the first circuit began when the nun walked through the door to the cemetery where the chapel to Saints Fabian and Sebastian stood. Here she recalled ‘that place where Saint Helen ordered two marble stones to be erected, formerly placed over the steps before the residence of Pilate, where Christ, burdened by all the people, was dressed in a purple robe’, and she contemplated ‘most seriously’ the bearing of the cross and Christ’s bitter Passion.128 As in the Dornenkron meditation, the manuscripts incorporated elements drawn from narratives of the Secret Passion, recalling how Christ’s detractors dragged Jesus by his hair and beard, threw mud and stones, sang indecent songs, and reproached him with shouts.129 125 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 1r-v. 126  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 2r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 2v: ‘et proposito te emen­ dandi nudis genibus.’ 127  Dox, ‘Theatrical Space’, pp. 187–88; Breck, ‘John Wyclyf on Time’, p. 217. 128  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 2v. 129  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 4r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 4v; Marrow, Passion Iconography.

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Like the Dornenkron meditation, the Stations of the Cross also fostered an identification with the figure of a caring Virgin Mary and through her a sympathetic union with a human, suffering Christ. This association began in the second circuit, in which the nun progressed around the infirmary. Here the manuscripts directed the nun to look ‘with the eyes of the heart at that place where the Blessed Virgin Mary herself lay prostrate before Christ in her soul out of compassion for her beloved son’.130 Manuscript 86 used mirror imagery to describe the bond between mother and son, describing how Mary suffered under the burden of the cross just as Christ did: Seeing and hearing all this your most just mother cried out and herself fell to the ground when she had seen you weakened through your most bitter Passion. And with compassion [for] your mother herself, weakened by all the blows to [your] body, [you fell] to the ground, still burdened and wearied with the cross.131

The text thus emphasized the union of Mary and Christ by virtue of their mutual suffering, an idea which also found visual parallels in images of the crucifixion where Mary was pierced with a sword, as she is in the fourteenthcentury lectern hanging designed and embroidered by the nuns of Wienhausen (Figure 19). The story of Mary walking the via crucis in memory of Christ’s Passion, which was popular in the later Middle Ages, provided a ready model for the nuns’ spiritual re-enactment of Christ’s Passion.132 Like the nuns’ other performative devotional practices, Mary’s re-enactment of the via crucis emphasized a close relationship with Christ premised on gendered ideas about maternal care. The physical location of this contemplation underscored the associations between female compassion and care. The infirmary, a site of Christian compassion towards the diseased and dying, where Wienhausen’s nuns cared for their fellow sisters, provided an ideal context for meditating on Mary’s humble empathy with Christ. Performing the Stations of the Cross thus asserted the nuns’ symbolic status as intimates of Christ by building upon medieval gender ideologies, particularly those which asserted a sympathetic connection between Mary and Jesus. In the third circuit, the nun proceeded to the lavatorium, where (according to manuscript 87) she attended ‘in spirit that place where Christ, exhausted and 130 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fols 2v–3r. 131  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 4r. 132  Storme, The Way of the Cross, trans. by Dunlop, p. 61; Thurston, The Stations of the Cross,p. 3.

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weary, fell and lay prostrate on the ground’ beneath the weight of the cross.133 By contrast, manuscript 85 associated the lavatorium with the account of the Veronica.134 In the fourth circuit both manuscripts left the choice of location open. As this meditation occurred in ‘no particular place’, each nun was free to combine her meditations on thePassion with locations within the convent that held particular significance to her.135 Manuscript 86 added: ‘If you wish, pray for the faithful departed, so that at least by your support they shall be freed from pain, and for [whomever else] you desire.’136 In the fifth circuit, the nun approached the ‘sepulchre of the Lord’. It was here that manuscript 86 recalled the story of the Veronica. By associating the Veronica with the sepulchre, this manuscript united two scenes of the Passion in which women played an important role and two works of art that held particular importance to the nuns of Wienhausen. In contrast, manuscript 85 directed the nun to meditate on how Christ was thrown repeatedly to the ground beneath his cross when she reached the fifth circuit and the sepulchre, thereby linking the sepulchre with Christ’s suffering.137 In the sixth and seventh circuits, both manuscripts again provided the nun with the freedom to choose any location within the convent, directing only that she pray for the living and implore ‘divine thanks as may seem appropriate’ in the sixth circuit and do likewise for the deceased in the seventh.138 Returning to the infirmary in the eighth circuit, the nun pondered ‘Christ’s miserable journey with the cross down through the city of Jerusalem outside the gate of judgement [and] between two thieves up to Mount Calvary, where he was crucified’.139 Direct connections between locations within the convent and places in Jerusalem ceased in the ninth circuit. manuscript 86 instructed the nun to walk to the end of the infirmary and contemplate ‘with a devoted mind the first horrible fall of Christ with the cross’. Afterwards, she approached the steps to the nuns’ cemetery, where she pondered the second fall of Christ under the burden 133 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 4v. 134  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol.  6r; Storme, The Way of the Cross, trans. by Dunlop, pp. 95–97. 135  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 5r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 7r. 136  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 5r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85 provides no prayers at this location. 137  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 5v; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 7r. 138  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 6r-v; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 7v. 139  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 6v; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 8r.

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of the cross.140 While the nun progressed before the house (of Veronica?) on the right side, this same manuscript directed her to ‘imagine with the eyes of the heart the third most bitter fall of Christ with the cross’.141 The nun’s meditation thus shifted from the contemplation of specific loca sancta in Jerusalem to ponder more abstractly Christ’s suffering. The choice of location for these meditations enhanced their devotional impact. Uniting the nun’s memory of Christ falling three times beneath the weight of the cross with the infirmary and cemetery had the effect of associating Christ’s suffering and weakness with visual reminders of mankind’s own bitter suffering (in illness) and weakness (in death). Concluding the nun’s observance of the Stations, the eleventh circuit reasserted the direct association between the convent and the city of Jerusalem. As the nun climbed the steps up to the choir once again and approached its permanent altar, the manuscripts directed her to: Ascend spiritually Mount Calvary to [the place] where Christ suffered much, yoked to the cross, and bore [it] with great weariness and bitterness, to where he mounted fifty steps with the cross, and then fell down, [and] was forced to climb again, [to the place] where he was finally crucified and died for the salvation of the whole world.142

The high altar, which probably held the convent’s prized relic of Christ’s blood and perhaps also its statue of the Resurrection, thus became Mount Calvary and the physical location of Christ’s crucifixion.143 The nun’s re-enactment of the via crucis concluded, appropriately, in this most sacred location. Standing before the altar, each nun recited five Pater Nosters and an additional prayer for the remission of all sins. Manuscript 86 ended here, but manuscript 85 continued with several pages of meditations on the Passion of Christ, combined with prayers on behalf of the nun, All Souls, and the founders of the convent.144 Nevertheless, the work did not prescribe further stations. Since 140 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fols 7v–8r. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85 combined the ninth circuit with a continued meditation on Christ’s suffering on Mount Calvary and Christ’s ‘great misfortune’ under the cross (fol. 9r). This devotion to the falls of Christ developed in the fifteenth century. Picard, ‘Croix (chemin de)’, col. 2602. 141  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 8r. 142  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fols 8v–9r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 10r-v. 143  Appuhn, ‘Der Auferstandene und das Heilige Blut’, p. 98; Hamburger, ‘Art, Enclosure and the Pastoral Care of Nuns’, p. 97. 144  Among the prayers, the nun expressed her desire to recall the Passion daily and attain eternal life. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 85, fol. 14r: ‘Rogo ergo te domine Ihesu quotidie est corde

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the procession began and finished in the choir in both manuscripts, tracing the story of Christ’s journey from the home of Pilate to his crucifixion on Mount Calvary, it would appear that each text preserved the Stations of the Cross, as it was observed by the nuns of Wienhausen, in its complete form. The blank pages that exist at the end of each manuscript may have been left so that a nun could add other prayers or devotions to the work. The texts from Wienhausen are almost certainly related to the indulgenced mental pilgrimages entitled Den aflaet der heiliger stat Jherusalem, which appear in six manuscripts from the Augustinian convent of Saint Agnes in Maaseik, a community placed under the spiritual guidance of the Windesheim Congregation shortly after its foundation in 1429.145 Dating from 1500 to 1510, the six manuscripts from Saint Agnes are contemporary or slightly later than those from Wienhausen. A seventh work, manuscript A1, provided the source for the copies made at Saint Agnes, but cannot be ascribed to this community’s scriptorium with any certainty.146 Manuscript A1 corresponds most closely to those from Wienhausen, both stylistically as well as in its emphasis upon Mary as a model of sympathetic suffering and union with Christ. Despite the clear connection between the devotions recorded in the manuscripts from Wienhausen and Saint Agnes in Maaseik, individual variations appear.147 For example, both declare that climbing steps on one’s knees in pious imitation of the steps Christ climbed earned one forgiveness from all sins and released one soul from purgatory; but the Saint Agnes manuscript locates the steps in Rome, near Saint-John Lateran, while the texts from Wienhausen place them within the monastic cloister and associate them directly with Jerusalem.148 Likewise, both works begin at the residence of Pilate in a place called Licostratos (‘Lithostrotos’ in the Wienhausen manuscripts), but thereafter the order of events diverges. meo crucem Passioni ac morti tui per continuam memoriam […] et me per tuam Passionem et gratiam actionem recognoscere facias ut tua passio et mors me ad eternam vitam perducant.’ Further directives included prayers ‘pro animabus’ (fol. 14v) and ‘oratio fundatoribus’ (fol. 15r). 145  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 212–13. 146  I follow the designation of the texts provided by Rudy. A1 refers to Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS IV 428; A2, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS IV 94; A3, Utrecht, Mus. Het Catharijneconvent, BMH MS 101; A4, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS II 1332; A5, Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS II 277; A6, Brussels, BRB/KBB MS IV 317; A7, BL, MS Addit. 29985. Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 232–37. 147  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 211–54. 148  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 86, fol. 2r; Manuscript A1 is more elaborate in its description. Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS IV 428, fol. 298v, in Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 226.

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While they follow a similar progression, the texts are clearly not identical. In the first circuit of the Wienhausen texts, for example, the reader contemplates the monument erected by St Helen and the dressing of Jesus in a purple robe. In the texts from Saint Agnes, these aspects are associated with the fourth and second stations respectively. Each work calls upon its reader(s) to contemplate the prostration of the Virgin Mary in her compassionate suffering with Christ, the desire of Simon Cyrene to assume the burden of the cross, the scene with Veronica, and Jesus’s arrival at the ‘Judicial gate’. In the Wienhausen texts, these events occur in the second, third, fifth, and eight circuits respectively, while the texts from Saint Agnes associate them with the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth stations.149 Like the Wienhausen texts, the manuscripts from Saint Agnes emphasize the Virgin Mary as a model of empathetic compassion as well as an exemplar for the physical re-enactment of the via crucis itself. Indeed, a text from Saint Agnes instructed its reader not only to ‘put an image of Our Lord carrying his cross before you’, but also to ‘think of the great distress of his mother as she followed him with the other women’.150 Manuscript A1 similarly united the journey of Christ and Mary, stating that: ‘the sweet mother fell many times to the ground to kiss the bloody footsteps of her beloved child. So anyone who practices the merciful journey of Our Lord and his beloved mother will earn […] seven year’s indulgence […] [and] forgiveness from all sins, pain and guilt.’ 151 The texts from Saint Agnes also employ the same mirror imagery found in those from Wienhausen, noting that: ‘When you [ Jesus] met your mother with the heavy boards of the cross […] she was so pained that she sank to the ground in exhaustion. And seeing this you were so frightened that you also fell to the ground under the heavy cross.’152 The relationship between Mary and Jesus, in fact, received even greater elaboration in the manuscripts from Saint Agnes than in those from Wienhausen. For example, the manuscripts from Saint Agnes described how ‘you [ Jesus] cast your bloody eyes on her and inclined your crowned head to her as if to say, “I thank you my dear mother that you brought me up in the greatest poverty in which a mother could bring up a child and that you never abandoned me in this terrible misery, but you followed me and stood by me”’.153 The texts from 149 

For the order of the Saint Agnes manuscripts, see Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 215–20, 238–54. 150  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 215. 151  Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS IV 428, fol. 298v, in Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 221. 152  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 217. 153  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p.217.

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Saint Agnes also focused more on Mary’s suffering, relating how the Virgin ‘fell into John’s arms from her great sorrow’; how she held Jesus’s body in her lap after his deposition, crying ‘so hard that the tears fell into his side wound and made his holy wounded heart all wet’; and finally, what sorrow she felt at the burial of her child.154 Indeed, the final stations in the manuscripts from Saint Agnes are ‘emotional places rather than physical sites’, which place the reader in sympathetic suffering and empathetic union with Mary, particularly by building upon her maternal feelings. Thus like their sisters at Wienhausen, the women of Saint Agnes re-enacted Christ’s suffering in a mental performance of the Passion. The incorporation of details from the Secret Passion likewise transformed the texts from Saint Agnes into a Passion meditation similar to the Dornenkron. Indeed, a ‘devotional meditation on the Mount of Calvary’ followed these indulgenced prayers. 155 Attention to the number of steps Christ walked from one location and event to the next in the manuscripts from Saint Agnes, a feature not present in the manuscripts from Wienhausen, does convey some sense of movement, but overall the texts from Saint Agnes place less emphasis on physical re-enactment. For example, they did not personalize the devotion by associating it with any specific locations or images within their convent. However, the manuscripts from Saint Agnes emphasize two other features closely associated with the performative nature of female monastic piety: an emphasis on spiritual dialogues with Christ and a particular devotion to the Veronica. As Kathryn Rudy remarked, one of the notable features of the manuscripts from Saint Agnes is the way in which they ‘transmogrified [this mental pilgrimage and its associated prayers] from a description of the Passion into a conversation with Christ’.156 So too, they emphasized Christ’s encounter with Veronica. In fact, the scene with Veronica was one of the most developed stations in all the manuscripts from Saint Agnes, and it received extra visual decoration in at least one manuscript with blue pen designs made on the page.157 The manuscripts from Saint Agnes described in detail how ‘[e]xhausted, wet with sweat, and with a disfigured face, you came to Veronica’s house. Then you asked her for a cloth, in which you imprinted your holy disfigured face as a souvenir, which those who loved you valued with great ardour and gratitude as 154 

Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 219–20. Een devoet mediteringe des berchs van Calvarien: Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 214. 156  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 212. 157  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 218. 155 

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a valuable thing [cleynoet]’.158 A prayer to the Holy Face, a version of the Salve sancta facies, followed. Manuscript A1 even associated the Veronica with Mary Magdalene as a lover of Christ, declaring: ‘From this station Our Lord carried his cross 310 steps to the house of the honest Jewish woman Veronica, who along with Mary Magdalene, was the special lover of Our Lord.’ A later copy softened this language, noting merely that Veronica, ‘along with Mary Magdalene, was your special friend’.159 Thus one finds the same connections between female compassion and care, the body of Christ and his physical suffering, female witnesses of the Passion and Resurrection (Mary Magdalene, the Virgin, and Veronica), and the language of bridal mysticism, which figured so prominently within the dramatic paschal liturgy and performative piety of the nuns from the Heideklöster.160

Painting a Mental Picture: Passion-Centred Devotions, Religious Artwork, and Monastic Space In their desire to know Christ intimately — to know his appearance, emotions, and pain — mental and visual piety coalesced for the nuns of the Heath convents. As noted previously, remarks prefacing the Dornenkron meditation frequently directed the reader to pray ‘before the image of Christ’.161 The very structure of the text, with its continual refrain of ‘Ave’, ‘Wes ge grotet’ in the Middle Low German, suggests a connection between the meditation and the use of devotional objects such as a rosary, statue, image, or Andachtsbild that could be addressed directly.162 Wienhausen manuscript 31, in fact, instructed the reader to say one of the Marian prayers that followed the meditation ‘before the image of our dear lady as she stands in the sun’, referring to the type of the ‘Madonna im Strahlenkranz’.163 Images of the pietà and statues that portrayed Christ car158 

Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 216–18. Brussels, BRB/KBB, MS IV 428, fol. 290r, translated in Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 223. 160  Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 231. 161  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 1v: ‘Duth beth wert ge heten de dorne kronen unses leven heren wese lest vor den belde Christ.’ Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 337. 162  The exclamation appeared fourteen times in Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, preceding each section. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31 does not include this refrain. Rosaries were among the objects recovered beneath the floorboards of the nuns’ choir at Wienhausen. Appuhn and von Heusinger, ‘Der Fund kleiner Andachtsbilder’. 163  Wienhauen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 16r: ‘Duth na gescreven beth leset alle dage vor unser leven frouwen belde alse se in der sunne steit.’ 159 

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Figure 43. Christ in Misery, Lower Saxony, convent of Holy Cross in Rostock. c. 1500. Photo courtesy of Staatliches Museum Schwerin.

rying his cross, like the one from Wienhausen, or works that depicted Christ seated on a stone at Calvary with head bent beneath a crown of thorns, like the one possessed by the Cistercian nuns of Holy Cross in Rostock, undoubtedly reinforced the mental imagery of Passion narratives like the Dornenkron. Jeffrey Hamburger has even argued that the literature prepared by and for religious women can only be read with visual images in mind, even when the text itself remains unadorned (Figure 43).164 164 

Hamburger, ‘“On the Little Bed of Jesus”’, pp. 387, 411.

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At Wienhausen, the nuns’ Passion-centred devotion and the texts that supported it coincided with their creation and use of Andachtsbilder, and similar themes permeate these works. For example, like the Dornenkron meditation, the Veronica and the Man of Sorrows focus on the physical appearance of Christ, both in its beauty and ugliness, providing a visual shorthand for the tradition of Biblical exegesis that transformed Christ’s ugliness into a symbol of his redeeming humanity.165 The images of the Veronica and the Man of Sorrows from Wienhausen also emphasized the same aspect of Christ’s human suffering that the Dornenkron meditation affirmed in its graphic descriptions. So too, the Dornenkron’s vivid descriptions of the Jews pulling Jesus’ hair and beard parallel representations of Christ with long hair and a beard in images of the Veronica. Finally, the Veronicas from Wienhausen may have functioned as pilgrimage badges for those nuns who completed virtual pilgrimages within the monastic complex. Works like the Dornenkron and Stations of the Cross thus provided the literary counterpoint to the visual images the nuns of Wienhausen created and used for their private devotion. The use of images also played a role in the devotional texts from Ebstorf. A prayer found in Ebstorf manuscript IV, 18, for example, employs a schematic image of the side wound to structure the nuns’ devotion to the five wounds of Christ. The text stated: This latitude, longitude [and] size of one wound, namely the side [wound] of our Lord Jesus Christ, demonstrates to the religious person who approaches [it] with a devout heart [and] beholds [it] through the day [that s/he] will remain untroubled by mortal sin and venial sins [and] will merit the indulgence of the side wound of Christ, forty days of indulgence.166

Text and image united in this particular prayer, since the grant of indulgence depended on the nun beholding the image of the wound depicted in her prayer book. Although less explicit than other examples of Passion meditations that sought to portray Christ’s wound or the nails of the crucifixion to scale, this

165 

‘Pendebat ergo in cruce deformis, sed deformitas illius pulchritude nostra erat.’ Augustine, Sermones de Vetere Testamento, ed. by Lambot, p. 365. See also, Hamburger, ‘Vision and the Veronica’; Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 52–62. 166  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 18, fol. 219v: ‘Hec latitudo, longitudo, magnitudo unius vulneris scilicet lateris domini nostri Ihesu Christi demonstrat religiose persone adeo quicumque devote corde aspexerit per diem securus manebit a mortali peccato et venialium peccatorum promerebitur indulgenciam wulnere lateris Christi xl dies indulgenciae salve latus.’

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Figure 44. Schematic image of Christ’s wounds. Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv Ebstorf, Handschrift IV, 18, fol. 219v. Before 1500. Photo courtesy of Kloster Ebstorf.

prayer reflected the same desire to measure and quantify visually the devotion to the Passion (Figure 44). In fact, the conveyance of indulgences frequently relied upon a combination of pious prayer and religious artwork, particularly images representing episodes from Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. A rubricated introduction to a prayer in Ebstorf manuscript IV, 13 stated that Pope Sixtus gave indulgence for mortal sins to all the faithful saying Pater Nosters and Ave Marias in the presence of the image of the Resurrection.167 Another prayer in this work similarly linked the grant of an indulgence with a particular artistic representation. Another scrip-

167 

Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 111r.

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trix noted that Pope Gregory conveyed indulgence for saying the Lord’s Prayer in the presence of a figure of the Lord Jesus as he is seated on the sepulchre.168 With an original provenance from Wienhausen, this text probably referred to the community’s statue of the Resurrection, but Ebstorf ’s nuns could have used their smaller, yet similar, statue of the Resurrected Christ emerging from his tomb. A few pages later, the manuscript suggests the use of an image similar to the one possessed by the Cistercian nuns of Holy Cross in Rostock (Figure 22). The text noted: ‘The following prayer should be read before the image of the saviour who sits upon the stone naked.’169 Indulgences could also be earned by saying prayers before the crucifix, as occurred in the mental pilgrimages performed by the nuns of Lüne.170 Given the emphasis upon female enclosure within the Observant reform movement, mental pilgrimages proved particularly suited to communities of nuns, for they provided a means of engaging in Passion-centred devotions and achieving spiritual union with Christ as well as participating in pilgrimage. The tighter spatial restriction instituted by the Observant reforms also had the positive effect of elevating the unique and sacred nature of the convent, particularly those interior parts of the complex that became more restricted, such as the nuns’ choir and chapels. Such separation and isolation facilitated the transformation of the convent into a liminal space by affirming the interior cloister as a place where the miraculous might be made manifest to only a select few through ritual and devotion. Religious artwork further enhanced the sacred and liminal by recreating holy sites within the confines of an individual’s cell, the monastic enclosure, or even one’s own city.171 The Dominican nuns of Saint Catherine’s in Augsburg possessed images of the seven principal churches in Rome, which they used to make spiritual pilgrimages and thereby earn indulgences, as did the Clarissen nuns in the Bickenkloster in Villingen. 172 During the Jubilee in 1500, the nuns in

168  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 132r-v. A different hand, from which this excerpt stems, began on fol. 119r. 169  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 136v: ‘Oratio sequences legitur ante ymaginem salvatori quo sedet super lapidem nudus …’. This appears in the same hand as the preceding reference. 170  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 109r. 171  Thurston, The Stations of the Cross, p. 63. 172  Miedema, ‘“Geestelike Rijckdom”’, pp. 123–26; Cuneo, ‘The Basilica Cycle of Saint Katherine’s Convent’, pp. 21–25; Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’; Rudy, ‘A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage’, p. 514.

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Braunschweig’s Holy Cross convent also had panels (‘tabulas’) in their choir to facilitate mental pilgrimages to the seven principal churches in Rome.173 The connections between reform, enclosure, artistic revival, and the practice of mental pilgrimage can be seen particularly clearly at the Bickenkloster in Villingen. Between 1492 and 1500, the new reforming Abbess Ursula Haider commissioned over one hundred stone plaques surrounded on either side with frescoes. These works presented the nuns of Bickenkloster with some 210 holy locations and their associated events, to which they might make mental pilgrimages and earn indulgences.174 According to the convent chronicle, the inspiration for these images and inscriptions came from the pilgrimage of one of the convent’s father confessors, who loaned the Abbess a book, presumably a pilgrimage narrative, that listed the holy sites and their associated indulgences. Six stone altars erected in the cloister, representing six of the seven principal churches in Rome, along with the chapel of the Virgin, which symbolized the seventh principal Roman church, also formed part of the programme. Along with the altars, these images and inscriptions, seventy of which are still extant, facilitated spiritual pilgrimages both to Jerusalem and to Rome. They also provided visual and textual documentation of the indulgences that Pope Innocent VIII confirmed for this Clarissen convent in 1491.175 Like the nuns of Wienhausen, the Clarissen sisters in Bickenkloster used these images and inscriptions as part of a physical progression through the convent. Because Bickenkloster suffered damage during the Thirty Years’ War and subsequently underwent several alterations, the current placement of the surviving panels does not reflect the original programme. However, a manuscript dating from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century provides a list of all the Stations, their indulgence value, and their location within the convent, illustrating that the programme encompassed the entire monastic complex.176 The nuns of Bickenkloster used these images during the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, together with appropriate prayers, postures, and gestures (generally kneeling but on occasion folding hands cross-wise in 173 

Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fols 142v–144r. Transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 430, 438. See also, Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. 1159 Novi, ‘Konventstagebuch’, fols 142v–144r, fols 150r–152r, fols 159r–161r, transcribed in Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 430, 434, 437–38. 174  Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’; Miedema, ‘Following in the Footsteps of Christ’, pp. 87–88. 175  Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’, pp. 176–78. 176  Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’, pp. 176–89.

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the lap).177 The nuns even recalled Christ’s crucifixion in a gestural sequence that directed them to: Go to the location where our Dear Lord was nailed, lie on the ground, as he was thrown [to the ground]; pray one Pater Noster. Stretch the right arm out cross-wise from yourself, as the first arm [of Jesus] was so brutally stretched and nailed; pray one Pater Noster. After that stretch out the left arm also, recalling how His members were pulled apart; pray one Pater Noster. Place the feet also cross-wise on top of each other; pray one Pater Noster, recalling what unbearable pain your Lord and God suffered.178

Like the nuns of Wienhausen, Bickenkloster’s nuns transformed their convent into the actual locations in Jerusalem associated with the events of the Passion and expressed their compassion with Christ through internal and external performances of the Passion. Although the exact location of both the wooden effigy of Christ and the sarcophagus within the convent of Wienhausen remains unclear, both works of art would have similarly transformed their location into the symbolic locus sanctus of Jesus’ burial.179 The wooden statue of Christ carrying the cross also underscored the connection between Wienhausen and the Jerusalem of Christ’s Passion.180 In this case, an almost life-size Christ literally walked the via crucis within the convent walls (Figure 23). Other artwork within Wienhausen associated the historical Jerusalem of Christ’s Passion with the heavenly Jerusalem of the Resurrection. Thirteenthcentury murals on the ceiling of the All Saints’ chapel depicted the heavenly Jerusalem with Christ enthroned and the nine angelic choirs, while paintings on its walls portrayed scenes from the Passion, including the entombment. The 177 

Evidence for the nuns’ practices are based on a manuscript written in 1659 which probably copied an earlier text. Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’, pp. 193–201. 178  ‘Jetzt gang zue der Statt, da unser Lieber Herr auff das genaglet war, lig auff die Ertten, wie er auffs geworffen war, bett 1 vater unser. Ströckh den rechten arm Creützweiss von dir, als der im zum ersten so herttigklich durch graben und angenaglet war, bett 1 vater unser. Darnach ströckh den linggen arm auch, bedracht, wie im seine H. Glider auseinander gezogen und gethöntt waren worden, bett 1 vatter unser. Lög die füess auch Creutzweiss auff einander, bett 1 vatter unser, bedracht, was unergründlichen schmertzen dein Herr und Gott erlitten hatt.’ Transcribed in Stegmaier-Breinlinger, ‘“Die Hailigen Stett Rom und Jerusalem”’, p. 199. Translation mine. 179  See Chapter 2. 180  Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, p. 15.

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Figure 45. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Heavenly Jerusalem. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

iconography of the nuns’ choir, painted around 1330, united the historical and the heavenly Jerusalem. Scenes on the vault of the ceiling recount the life of Christ, portraying Christian history as a unified narrative, beginning with the Annunciation in the west and culminating with Christ enthroned in the heavenly Jerusalem in the east above the altar (Figures 45 and 46). A crenellated wall divides scenes from the Old Testament and depictions of the martyrdoms of important male and female saints, from the swirling vine motifs that lead to the ceiling. This architectural motif is multiplied in a dizzying array of towers, windows, walls, and arches surrounding the figures in the heavenly Jerusalem, giving the impression of the nuns’ choir as a cityscape. Such iconography gave visual form to medieval associations of the church, and specifically the church vault, with the heavenly Jerusalem.181 Just as the paintings in the nuns’ choir visually created a heavenly Jerusalem within the convent of Wienhausen, so too the community asserted its place within this celestial city. Included within the heavenly choirs surrounding 181 

Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem, p. 87; Lillich, ‘Constructing Utopia’, pp. xi–xiv.

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Figure 46. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Heavenly Jerusalem, Convent Founders. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

the enthroned Christ were the convent’s founders, Duke Henry and Duchess Agnes, accompanied by the abbesses and provosts of Wienhausen. Painted on the northern wall, almost directly below the image of the founders and abbesses in the heavenly Jerusalem, appears the complex of Wienhausen, guarded by two seraphim (Figures 47 and 48). An illuminated miniature of Christ enthroned in the heavenly Jerusalem in the Wienhausen responsorial, created around 1480, likewise suggests the inclusion of the community. On the far left-hand and right-hand sides of this miniature stand two abbesses with their crosiers, probably representing Wienhausen’s abbesses. The angel placed on the right-hand side of Christ holds a church, perhaps intended to represent Wienhausen. Thus the nuns of Wienhausen once again placed their community, even the monastic structure itself, within the heavenly Jerusalem. In doing so, they reflected the sentiments of Bernard of

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Figure 47. Kloster Wienhausen, Detail of Murals in Nuns’ Choir, Convent. c. 1330. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

Clairvaux, who described the monk as both ‘monk and citizen of Jerusalem’ and his own monastery of Clairvaux as a ‘heavenly Jerusalem on earth’.182 Nevertheless, the conflicted relationship between Observant reform, interior devotion, and external images discussed in chapter 6 also appears in the sixteenth-century prayer books preserved among the Heath convents. For example, one of the prayer books from Wienhausen (Ebstorf manuscript IV, 15) includes directions for creating a mental flower garden from the contemplation of particular images of the Passion. Perhaps coincidentally, the nuns of Ebstorf created several flower gardens or little ‘gardens of Paradise’, ‘Paradiesgärtlein’, which held important relics. It instructed the reader in a visual shorthand of the scenes she should contemplate, but unlike the previous examples of prayers whose indulgences were attached to the use of images, this devotion privileged mental visualizations. Indeed, after stating that the indulgence is based on the 182 

Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae,col. 1045: ‘monachus et Hierosolymita’; Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolae, ed. by Migne, col. 169: ‘Et, si vultis scire, Clara-Vallis est. Ipsa est Jerusalem, ei quae in coelia est, tota mentis devotione, et conversationis imitatione, et cognatione quadam spiritus sociata.’

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Figure 48. Responsorial. Wienhausen, Handschrift 29, fol. 21r. c. 1450. Photo courtesy of Kloster Wienhausen.

number of steps Jesus took and the places he fell, the text explicitly confirms that those who performed such devotion mentally, without the aid of images, were more blessed: ‘However, more blessed will be one who is able to do all this mentally without images or figures.’183 Influenced by the ideals and instructional methods of the reform, the nun who created this text revealed her interest in Passion-centred devotion while simultaneously expressing concerns about correct devotional practices. It is clear, even from such abbreviated descriptions of the images to be contemplated and how this was best done — either privately and mentally or physically and visually — that this devotion drew upon specific, even standardized, depictions of the Passion. Its author was likewise familiar with how such images could be used as aides to meditation and prayer. Here one sees the nuns of the Heath convents caught between their own traditions of using religious art and their desire to implement and conform to the rigor of the reform by affirming that contemplation and prayer without the use of visual aides was better. The Passion-centred devotions embraced by the nuns of the Heath convents after their reform thus reflect the tension between text and image — between visual and mental devotion, traditional practices and reform — that accompanied the Observant movement itself. 183 

Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 15, fols 210r–211v: ‘Beatior autem erit quicumque hec omnia mentaliter facere absque ymaginibus et figuris poterit.’

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Networks of Piety: The Observant Reforms, the issue of the Cura Monialium and the Transmission of Texts The influence of the Observant reforms among the Heideklöster is present not only in the issues surrounding the use of artwork, but also in the networks through which specific works were circulated. The nuns of the Heath convents may have acquired their knowledge of the Dornenkron or the texts for mental pilgrimage through their ties to the laity.184 As noted earlier, literate lay women and professional religious women were two primary audiences for Passion narratives and devotions, and they often bequeathed their manuscripts to each other.185 Anna Muntprat of Constance, for example, gave her sister Veronica, an Augustinian canoness at Inzigkofen, a devotional manuscript that included a meditation on Christ’s suffering in the Passion. She also provided the Benedictine nuns of Zoffingen in Constance with several religious books, including the Lives of the Fathers, Heinrich Suso’s Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, and Bonaventure’s Lignum vitae.186 Indeed, Felicity Riddy has noted that patterns of book giving suggest ‘that the literary culture of nuns in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and that of devout gentlewomen not only overlapped but were more or less indistinguishable’.187 The translation of the Dornenkron meditation into the vernacular, its alleged efficacy as a cure for headaches, the Passion-centred piety of the text, and its connection to indulgences all reflect concerns held by lay and religious alike in the late fifteenth century. It is far more likely, however, that such texts travelled through the networks of piety established among reformed houses. With its emphasis on the bodily suffering of Christ, the Dornenkron meditation reflected a spirituality shared by communities of Cistercians, Franciscans, and Modern Devout. 188 In its introduction to the Dornenkron, Wienhausen manuscript 60 ascribed the 184 

The Wienhausen necrology notes donations of books by Joachim Wisenhauer and his wife, Conrad Eyken and his wife, or Duchess Margaret of Stargard. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. XLIII, XLVIII, LXIV. Although these examples date to the beginning of the sixteenth century, they probably indicate established trends in donations. 185  Religion appears to have been one of the dominant reading interests of medieval women. See especially: Meale, ‘Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England’, pp. 128–58; Bell, ‘Medieval Women Book Owners’; and Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers, pp. 1–33. 186  Fechter, Deutsche Handschriften, p. 130. 187  Riddy, ‘“Women Talking About the Things of God”’, pp. 108, 110; Dutton, ‘Passing the Book’, pp. 49–52. 188  Marrow, Passion Iconography, pp. 20–21.

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work to a Franciscan named Theodore.189 It seems likely that the reference is to Dietrich Kolde (d. 1515) — Theodoricus in Latin and hence Theodorich and Theodor — the Augustinian turned Franciscan reformer and author of the Christenspiegel.190 As noted previously, one of the thirty-four extant copies of the Christenspiegel (the Stuttgart Christenspiegel) included the Dornen­ kron meditation among the additional prayers and meditations appended to the text. The press of Richard Paffroet in Deventer, supported by brothers of the Common Life, printed the Stuttgart Christenspiegel in 1499,191 a work that included twenty-one wood-block prints.192 As a prominent preacher and reformer, Kolde wrote the Christenspiegel as a handbook for pious lay persons, yet he was also involved in the cura monialium. Kolde served as spiritus rector to a group of Third Order Franciscan women living in the Laekenstrasse in Brussels and probably had a hand in the transformation of this community into a Clarissen convent. 193 In his life and work, Kolde reflected the connections between the spirituality of the Franciscans, Augustinians, and Modern Devout, as well as between reforming efforts, care for the laity, and the care of nuns. Other prayer books containing the Dornenkron meditation also reveal connections between this meditative prayer, the piety extolled by the devotio moderna, and female Franciscan and Augustinian houses.194 As many of these same connections also appear in the life of Johannes Busch, it seems probable that the nuns of Wienhausen acquired their knowledge of the Dornenkron meditation as a result of their reform by Busch. They may have copied their texts from originals that, like the Stuttgart pub-

189  Wienhausen, KlA, Hs 60, fols 1r–2v: ‘Hir volget na seven seventich artikel van den lydende unses salichmakers dat he geleden hefft an synen hilgen hovede de hefft ge settet eyn broder der mynneren brodere ge heten Theodoren und duth beth wert ge heten de dorne kronen unses leven heren.’ Marrow noted that one of the manuscripts of the Secret Passion also mentioned that a monk wrote it. Marrow, Passion Iconography, p. 185. 190  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 11*. Pages in the introduction and text both use arabic numerals; introductory pages are indicated by an asterisk following the numbers in the original. 191  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 29*. 192  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 92*. 193  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 9*. 194  Achten and Knaus, Deutsche und niederländische Gebetbuchhandschriften, passim; MacDonald, ‘Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Scotland’.

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lication, included the meditation among works written by Kolde.195 Texts of the Dornenkron could also have accompanied the exchange of other manuscripts, like the Cistercian collects, which Busch requested from Marienrode for the nuns of Wienhausen to copy.196 The convent of Derneburg may also have played a role in their transmission. Sophie von Schulenburg, abbess of Derneburg, and four other nuns accompanied Johannes Busch when he came to reform Wienhausen.197 One of these nuns, Susanna Potstock, became the first post-Reform abbess of Wienhausen. According to the Wienhausen chronicle, Potstock brought books with her when she arrived. Perhaps the texts of the Dornenkron were among them.198 It seems likely that the manuscripts for the performance of interior pilgrimages from Wienhausen and Saint Agnes also reflect the literary and devotional exchanges that existed among reformed houses.199 As with the Dornenkron meditations, connections between female Franciscan and Augustinian houses and the devotio moderna appear in relation to texts for mental pilgrimages. The reform of Wienhausen in 1469 corresponds with the dates established for the practice of mental pilgrimages as well as for prayer books that included the Dornenkron.200 By this date, the motifs of the Secret Passion had all developed, and meditations in the form of ‘crowns’ or rosaries (Kronen und Kränze) had also become standard.201

195 

Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 83*. Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, p. 634. 197  Regarding the reform of Derneburg : Johannes Busch, Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, pp. 591–97, 629–35. 198  ‘Sie hat auch zu Gottes Ehren viele Bücher bey das Kloster gebracht, deren etliche von den Brüdern in Hilden, etliche in Zell etliche von ihren Jungfrauen im Kloster sind geschrieben worden.’ Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn, pp. 19–26. 199  The nuns of Wienhausen or Saint Agnes could also have obtained their works from one of their father confessors or priests, like the nuns of Bickenkloster in Villingen. The necrology of Wienhausen listed twenty-seven people from whom a total of approximately eighty books were donated. Most of these gifts date to the years after the internal reform of the convent. The majority of books were donated by clerics. Although a few titles are mentioned, Dornenkron never appears among them. Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen, ed. by Appuhn; Leerhoff, ‘Wienhausen’, pp. 775–76. 200  Marrow, Passion Iconography; Achten and Knaus, Deutsche und niederländische Gebet­ buch­handschriften, pp. 55, 109, 123, 182, 210, 226, 247, 254, 269, 299, 318, 327–328, 329. 201  Achten and Knaus, Deutsche und niederländische Gebetbuchhandschriften, p. 15. 196 

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Direction or Innovation? The Ars moriendi and Marian Devotion within Passion Piety Given the imposed nature of reform among the Heideklöster and the role of those providing the cura monialium in the development of Passion-centred devotions, the nuns’ performance of the via crucis and use of the Dornenkron meditation may seem less a spontaneous expression of female spirituality than a testament to what male advisors regarded as appropriate female religiosity. However, the very opposition that reformers encountered at houses like Derneburg and Wienhausen bespeaks the independent spirit of these women. Such strength of purpose doubtless guided the selection of devotional texts and the adoption of pious practices. Although the manuscripts from the Heath convents of Lower Saxony record no personal, mystical experiences, they do indicate the active involvement of the nuns in the composition, organization, and interpretation of their prayers.202 In this, these nuns had a ready model in the Sister Books from the Modern Devout, which were also written by, for, and about women. The use of the first person pronoun (ick), as well as feminine nouns (creatura, indigna peccatrix, sunderynne, sunderesse or schrijverse), indicates the conscious construction of the texts from a female perspective.203 The presence of two vernacular and one Latin version of the Dornenkron at Wienhausen similarly indicates that the nuns shaped this meditation not only in its content and context, but also in its linguistic expression. Further, variations within the texts may reveal some traces of the personal devotional interests and concerns of individual religious women. The manuscripts from Ebstorf, Wienhausen, and Saint Agnes in Maaseik all provide indications of the spiritual needs, concerns, and desires of the religious women who copied and used them. As Rudy noted, each version of the text, Den aflaet der heiliger stat Jherusalem from Saint Agnes, while undoubtedly derived from a common source, differed ‘in terms of spelling variations, word order, and particularly fluid elements, such as the final breathless petition that comes as

202 

Scheepsma, ‘“For Hereby I Hope to Rouse Some to Piety”’. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 13v: ‘Ick unwerdige und boshafftige creatura.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 3r: ‘O leve here Ihesu Christe Ick arme sunderynne dancke dy.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 15v: ‘O piissima virgo Maria ego indigna peccatrix coram te anima et corpore prostrata humiliter peto.’ Two texts from Saint Agnes bear colophons by their female scribes, while another lists all the sisters that possessed the book. Others make reference to female scribes, ‘schrijverse’. Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, pp. 211–51, especially 211–13. 203 

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a refrain at the end of each section’.204 The same is true of the texts from the Heath convents.205 All three of the Wienhausen manuscripts concluded the Dornenkron meditation with prayers to Christ, but these varied from the generalized thanksgiving offered to All Souls in manuscripts 60 and 69 to the very personalized petitions in manuscript 31.206 Such personalization also appears in the prayers to help the nun perform her devotions, as when the scribe of Wienhausen manuscript 60 petitioned that Christ ‘help me that I might honour internally the crown of thorns on the coming Sunday and should devoutly honour so that the benefit of your [his] holy suffering might never be lost to me’.207 Such short prayers represent the individual scribe’s dialogue with her text, as she molded the meditation to frame her internal performance of Christ’s Passion. Among the individual variations of the texts, however, two organizing principles emerge: concerns related to illness and death and Marian devotion. Assertions of the efficacy of the Dornenkron in dealing with illness of the head, or headaches, act like sympathetic magic, using the pain Christ suffered in his head to remove the pain felt by the reader. 208 The prayers also drew upon the concept of the treasury of merit, petitioning Christ for forgiveness, aid, and help based on all that he had earned (verdient) by suffering in his head and senses.209 Both vernacular versions of the Dornenkron meditation from Wienhausen similarly requested protection from evil and help in the final hour. Wienhausen manuscript 31 petitioned to be protected from all evil and for the use of rea204 

Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 220. Härtel, ‘Die Bibliothek des Klosters Ebstorf ’, p. 113. 206  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fols 13v–14r: ‘O leve herre Ihesu Christ ick arme sunderynne dancke dy uth grunth mynes herten vor alle pyn und martir de du umme mynen willen geleden heffst an dynen hilgen hovede und gansem licham menniger leyewis und bidde dy vorbarme dy myner und lat my to hulpe komme dyn hilge bitter lydent in alle mynen noden besunderken in myner lesten stunde.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fols 23v–24r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 12r. 207  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 345: ‘Ende ghevet my uwe gotlicke gracie dat ick v die crone des naesten sonnendages innichlicker lesen moet. Amen.’ Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 24v: ‘Unde help my dat ik dyne dorne kronen an den sondage to tokomende echt mothe innychliken eren uppe dat dat vordenst dynes hilgen lydendes nummer an my werde vorloren.’ 208  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 6v: ‘O leve here vor leve my stetliken dyn hilge lydent be­ trach­ten und in gedechtenisse hebben mynes herten besunderken an der tyt der krancheit des lichammes und des hovedes.’ 209  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 345: ‘in velatenisse hoerre pynen die si mit horen hoefde ende mit horen viif sinnen verdient hebben.’ 205 

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son up to the hour of death.210 The vernacular texts also included prayers that Christ not turn his face away from the reader at the Last Judgement, that he be mild and merciful, and that the Holy Trinity protect the nun for all time.211 The author of the Latin text similarly offered a final prayer for the remission of sins and asked for the ability to raise her spirit, memory, and intellect to the Lord, so that she might be illuminated. She then requested that Christ watch over her body, spirit, and senses and protect her from all noxious infirmities, lesions of the plague, and the powers of evil. Finally, she petitioned Christ that she might truly know, feel, love, and long for him and know herself and love her enemies.212 Such requests reflect the individual scribe’s dialogue with Christ through her copying of the text.213 Virtual pilgrimages also appear connected to the ars moriendi, especially in texts associated with the Windesheim Congregation. A manuscript preserved in the royal library in The Hague, which belonged to another convent within the congregation, placed a text for spiritual pilgrimage just before a description of holy unction and the prayers to be spoken by the dying sister and the convent, a meditation on contrition for sins, and other prayers for indulgences.214 Concerns related to death and prayers to defend the nun from all manner of harm, particularly evil, peril, sins, and scandal, also figure prominently in the prayer books from Ebstorf, as witnessed by the directions to read certain prayers daily in order to avoid a sudden death and promises that particular prayers would ensure one’s entrance into heaven.215 210 

Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 1r-v. Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 25r; Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 14r. 212  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fols 12r–13r. 213  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 338: ‘Ende wilt mi in deser vren beschermen voer mine vyanden, dat si mi niet en berouen van der innicheit ende vuyricheit des gebedes mit queaeden ydelen gedachten ende dat si hem niet en verbliden in horen aensichten dat si mi verwonnen hebben.’ 214  The manuscript is The Hague, Royal Libr., Ms 133 F 1. Miedema, ‘Following in the Footsteps of Christ’, p. 91. 215  For example, Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 1v: ‘Quicumque subscripta verba quotidie dixerat subitanea morte non peribit’; Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fols 179r-v, 260r: ‘Dat gy my by stan in al minen noden und in miner lesten stunde mines dodes unde weste mi bescherme schilt’; Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 83r: ‘de hac oratione dicit Gregorius qui siqui eam cotidie devote dixerit nec diabolus nec aliquis malus homo se nocere poterit’; Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 115 r: ‘Si quis hanc orationem cotidie devote legitur diabolus ei nocere non valet et sine confessione et communionem non discedet’; Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 17, fol. 47r: ‘Hanc orationem sanctus Augustinus composuit quia qui qualibet die homo puro corde dixit diabolus ei nocere non poterit.’ 211 

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The Ebstorf prayer books also frequently promised that the reader would be able to secure the Virgin’s aid upon death if she read prayers dedicated to the Virgin Mary, sometimes five times daily or every day in the morning or evening.216 A prayer in Middle Low German from a Wienhausen manuscript (Ebstorf manuscript IV, 13) provides a rather touching description of what might occur to the praying nun at death, petitioning Mary, as mother of mercy, to help her, especially in her last hour when the body and soul divide, the heart breaks, the mouth no longer speaks, the eyes fade, and life ends quickly.217 Another prayer in this same manuscript, attributed to the Venerable Bede, promised that the praying person would be protected from human harm and receive the spiritual aid of the Virgin Mary at the time of death.218 The texts for mental pilgrimage from Wienhausen and Saint Agnes and the Dornenkron meditation also placed their imitatio Christi within a Marian context. As noted previously, the Virgin Mary provided not only a model for those who wished to literally re-enact the via crucis, but also a model of the intimacy and compassion with Christ that was the goal of all Passion-centred devotion. The bond between mother and son by virtue of their mutual suffering figured prominently in the manuscripts from both Wienhausen and Saint Agnes. In the final three stations of the Passion, the texts from Saint Agnes not only focus on the emotional suffering endured by Mary, but each manuscript also had appended to it further Marian devotions. Five of the six manuscripts from Saint Agnes included a meditation on the limbs of the Virgin, Die croen der glorioeser weerdiger macht maria. Five of the six manuscripts also appended a translation of the Psalterium maius beatae Mariae virginis, and four of the manuscripts included both texts.219 216 

Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 116r-v: ‘Si quis hanc orationem cotidie quinquies dixerit sancta Maria ei in suo fine aparebit. O virgo virginum […] Si quis hanc orationem cotidie mane et vespere dixerit sine dubio sanctam Maria in suo fine presentem habebit. O maria piissima stella maris clarissima mater misericordia.’ Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 90v: ‘Quicumque hanc orationem omni die cum devocione legerit, domina nostra in extremus ei cum magna gloria apparebit cumque ab omni tribulacione liberabit. Maria virgo virginum mater et filia regis omnia, qui genuisti triumpha.’ 217  Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fol. 308r-v. 218  Ebstorf, KE, Hs, IV, 13, fols 55v–56r: ‘Incipit oracio venerabilis Bede presbiteri de VII verbis domini IX in cruce pendentis …’. The same prayer appeared again later in this text with only minor alterations, as well as in other of the Ebstorf prayer books. Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 13, fols 104v–105r; Ebstorf, KE, Hs IV, 19, fol. 94v. 219  Manuscripts A2, A3, A4, A5, and A7 all contain Die croen der glorioeser weerdiger macht Maria; the Psalterium maius beatae Mariae virginis is found in manuscripts A2, A3, A5, A6, and A7.

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Although the Dornenkron meditation did not emphasize the bond between the Virgin Mary and Christ as vigorously as the nuns’ re-enactment of the via crucis, the prayers and liturgical excerpts following the meditation placed it within a Marian context. All three of the Wienhausen manuscripts and the Stuttgart Christenspiegel followed the Dornenkron meditation with Marian devotions.220 For example, Wienhausen manuscript 60 instructed the reader to greet the saddened mother of God and ask for help in the last hour and to speak the antiphon Salve regina, or another that the reader likes, and Orate pro scriptrice.221 The prayers following the Dornenkron meditation in Wienhausen manuscript 31 likewise affirmed the special bond between the Virgin and Christ, using the same mirror imagery of sympathetic suffering as had the Stations of the Cross. After greeting Mary with three Ave Marias, the text directed the reader to say her prayers every day before the image of the Madonna im Strahlenkranz.222 The nun’s prayer requested — on behalf of the suffering and sadness she endured because of Christ, especially through the thirty-three dozen and nine-hundred tears that she cried, and so that she might always remain in Mary’s presence — that Mary forgive the nun’s sins and impure thoughts and improve the nun’s life.223 Translations of the antiphons from the office of the Virgin Mary followed.224 The final Marian prayer assumed a personal note, as the nun commended her soul, her five senses, all her works and sorrows, her friends, both living and dead, and all Christian souls into Mary’s and Christ’s hands.225 A prayer to Saint Anne, in which the nun beseeched aid for herself and all her friends in her final hour, followed.226 Indeed, the structure of this text Rudy, ‘Indulgenced Prayers’, p. 220. 220  Kilde, Der Christenspiegel, ed. by Drees, p. 344. 221  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 60, fol. 25r–25v. An edition of the Dorne Croene based on manuscripts from the Netherlands similarly combined the meditation with this antiphon as well as other collects. Stracke, Dorne Croene ons Heeren. 222  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 14v. 223  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fols 14v–15v. 224  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 16r: ‘Van unser leven vrowen O du konnigynne des hymmels vrouwe dy All[elui]a Wente den du heffst gedragen All[elui]a De is upgestan All[elui]a Bide god vor uns All[elui]a.’ The antiphona for laudes are: Regina coeli, laetare, alleluia; Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia; Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia; and Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia. The versicle and response are omitted. 225  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 17v. 226  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 31, fol. 18r: ‘Grote de moder sunte Annem O hilge moder sunte Anna helpt sulff drude Bidde vor my und vor alle myne frunde […] und in myner lesten stunde Amen.’

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recalls images of the Anna Selbstdritt, the St Anne Trinity or Trinity of the Incarnation, works of art that illustrated Jesus’ matrilineal and physical descent from Anne through Mary.227 In contrast, the Latin Dornenkron text from Wienhausen built upon the theme of the crown of thorns, declaring that the nun offered this ‘crown’, that is her prayers, to Mary, to whom she demonstrated suitable obedience.228 The nun then directed a personal prayer to Mary on behalf of herself, her parents, her deceased relations, and her spiritual brothers and sisters so that Christ might grant them the ability to dwell in heaven with him, to contemplate and praise him forever.229 A prayer to the early Christian martyr and saint, Erasmus, followed.230 In the final prayer, the nun sought the benediction of Mary and God, petitioning them as an unworthy (female) sinner, humbly prostrate in body and soul before Christ (‘ego indigna peccatrix coram te anima et corpore prostrata humiliter’).231 Once again Marian devotion was placed within the context of the ars moriendi, on an appropriate death based on the martyrdom of Christ and the saints and aided by the merciful Virgin Mary.

Conclusion: Passion Piety and Performative Piety after the Observant Reform Conveyed through the spiritual networks of the Observant reform and influenced by providers of the cura monialium, the piety of the reformed nuns of the Heideklöster advanced an emotional devotion to Christ’s suffering that, while characteristic of female religious communities, was not exclusive or unique to female spirituality. The nuns worked within well-established spiritual traditions, using standard prayers like the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria and framing their Passion-centred piety within a context of Marian devotion and desire for a pious Christian death. Indeed, the ways in which these women combined Passion-centred piety with concerns about the ars moriendi and devotion to Mary seem specific to convents associated with the Windesheim congregation. 227 

Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages’, p. 83; Sheingorn, ‘“The Wise Mother”’, pp. 112–20. 228  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fols 13v–14r: ‘O piissima virgo maria offero tibi hanc coronam spineam et peto ut […] filio tuo ut per te sit ei acceptabile obsequium meum exiguum.’ 229  Wienhauen, KW, Hs 69, fols 14v–15r. 230  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fols 15v–16r. 231  Wienhausen, KW, Hs 69, fol. 16r.

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Such associations were not unique, nor did they represent the only possibilities. A manuscript with Passion-related prayers and meditations belonging to Dame Anna Bulkley, for example, focused instead on Eucharistic devotion, the Mass, and preparation for communion.232 The principles of organization that structured these manuscripts may help elucidate the ways in which the devotions of ordinary nuns diverged from the heroic feats of their more famous mystical and saintly sisters. Specifically, the contextualization of Passion-centred devotions within Marian piety suggests that while extraordinary religious women embodied a literal imitatio Christi, reformed nuns’ intimacy with Christ was mediated through gender roles and relationships, particularly those that exalted a maternal compassion for the body of Christ. Among the nuns of the Heath convents, this model of devotion followed traditions of performative piety that connected medieval gender ideologies with physical expressions of religiosity, especially religious artwork. For the nuns of the Heideklöster who copied Passion treatises and fashioned the devotional artwork that reflected its themes, Passion-centred devotion became a doubly creative act. Male spiritual advisors may have directed the exchange of texts, channelling female devotion along appropriate gender lines and through networks of female houses. Liturgical books and manuals for those who held office within the convent provided clear guidelines for the performance of communal religious rituals according to the principles of reform. Personal prayer books functioned, on the other hand, as a practical and literal means of reforming the soul — of ensuring that the nuns observed correct devotional practices, both inside and outside the confines of the official liturgy and Mass. The variations within individual manuscripts, however, reflect the particular spiritual concerns and personal choices that influenced the structure and reception of each work. Indeed, the very act of reading and copying these texts was a kind of appropriation. Because many religious women were barred from the direct physical imitation of Jesus via the vita apostolica, imaginative meditation on Passion narratives and spiritual pilgrimages provided some of the few ways in which they could engage in the imitatio Christi. The spatial geography of the convent, with its enclosure and artistic decoration, both of which were affected by the Observant reforms, continued to foster a mode of thinking — the space of the imagination, as well as the means of recreating the space of performance — that allowed religious women to seek a personal union with Christ. Using the sacred 232 

Rhodes, ‘The Body of Christ’, p. 399.

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spaces of their enclosures, with their chapels, altars, and artwork along with the graphic narratives of Christ’s suffering in their devotional texts, late medieval nuns created a sense of the devotional present. There Christ’s past became their present, his Jerusalem their enclosure, his journey their path, his suffering their pain, and his memories their own recollections. Physical space and religious artwork thus combined to establish a level of reality and emotional intensity that allowed a nun not only to visualize the events of the Passion but also to transcend the limits of time and space to relive Christ’s suffering. Associated as such practices were with the religious artwork, material structures, and sacred spaces of their monasteries, as well as with physical actions, external gestures, and a gendered identification with Christ and Mary, the Passion-centred devotions of the nuns of the Heideklöster continued to reflect the importance of performative devotional practices on the eve of the Lutheran Reformation.

Epilogue

H

ow did the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century nuns of Lüneburg’s Heath convents envision their role and status as professional religious women, as noble women, and as reformed nuns? They performed their piety visually and physically through collective and individual re-enactments of important religious events, such as the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb and the Passion. They embraced cultural attitudes and assumptions about appropriate expressions of devotion, particularly as they intersected with familial status and gender roles, relationships, and duties. Their devotion was performative in the sense that it combined physical action, and on occasion dramatic performance, with ideologies about gender and social status particular to the region of Lower Saxony and the later Middle Ages. Specific acts of devotion varied over time and from community to community, but certain long-term trends are discernible. Dramatic communal rituals — such as the Depositio and Elevatio crucis and the Visitatio sepulchri — as well as individual performances of the Passion — such as the Stations of the Cross or the Dornenkron meditation — played an important role in these monastic communities. By emphasizing the narratives of the Resurrection and Passion of Christ, religious women were able to identify with the gendered devotion expressed by the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Veronica. For the nuns of the Heath convents, this translated into the assertion of a powerful position of intimacy with the figure of Jesus. The nuns of the Heath convents also manipulated the religious artwork, material objects, and sacred space of their monastic communities to assert their special status as brides of Christ, empathetic intimates of Jesus, and inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem. As they created and used their precious textiles, religious women literally framed the liturgy and its performance, crafting and performing their devotional experience in ways that were personally and collectively meaningful. The production of religious artwork, devotional manu-

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scripts, and liturgical dramas further enabled the nuns of the Heideklöster to shape the religious experiences of their local, parochial communities. The nuns of the Lüneburg Heath convents fashioned their own spirituality, but they did so within the context of a devotional culture shared by male reformers and the female religious and by laymen and women alike. Prevailing ideas about gender and social status permeated this devotional culture. Rather than rejecting normative attitudes, the nuns of the Heideklöster embraced and manipulated prescribed gendered roles as a means of performing their devotion and expressing their identity as religious women. Assuming the roles of bride, mother, and lover, they used their individual and collective status and wealth to claim a privileged position of intimacy with Christ. Like many female mystics and saints, the nuns of the Lüneburg Heath reached God — as historian Caroline Walker Bynum has put it — ‘not by reversing what they were but by sinking more fully into it’.1 Even though they never achieved the heights of mystical experience or sainthood, the women of the Heideklöster reflected a similar propensity for devotional practices that built upon women’s somatic social responsibilities.2 In terms of spirituality, the nuns in these communities trod the middle road. They neither astounded their contemporaries by their outstanding piety or learning nor scandalized their neighbours with any extraordinary vices. While an affective response and somatic union remained the ideal goal of their religious practices, no surviving evidence suggests that the nuns of the Heath convents ever translated their piety into extreme forms of renunciation or sought mystical sainthood. Rather, the cultivation of controlled religious reflection, as conditioned by the educational efforts of the fifteenth-century reformers, characterized their devotions.3 The nuns of the Lüneburg Heath expressed and practised their religion in ways that made sense to them as women, as members of the wealthy and elite classes, and as pious individuals. Their possession of personal property also derived from the social, cultural, and economic habitus they shared with their secular counterparts. Despite condemnation by monastic reformers, visitors, and ecclesiastical superiors, such possessions did not preclude a continued spirituality.4 Personal 1 

Bynum, ‘And Woman his Humanity’, p. 172. Bynum, ‘The Female Body’, pp. 197–98. 3  Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, pp. 293–95. 4  Marti, ‘Sisters in the Margins’, p. 21; Berman, ‘Dowries, Private Income, and Anniversary Masses’, p. 10. 2 

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income and private devotional items allowed nuns to carry out their vocations and supported their self-image as religious professionals, pious noblewomen, and brides of Christ. The wealthy nuns of the Heideklöster frequently used their private funds as a means of performing their piety, becoming patrons of their communities from within through donations both great and small. The material wealth of individual nuns served as another means of demonstrating the symbolic capital of their communities, especially through the support of certain chapels and devotional practices, such as providing votive lights before important cult objects or funding priests to sing masses for the feast of Corpus Christi. Indeed, Observant reformers adhered to the traditions of piety that structured female devotion in specifically gendered ways and encouraged religious women’s exaltation of maternal or spousal roles. At the same time, the nuns of the Heath convents did adopt the reforming interest in internalizing a compassio passionis, that is, cultivating an empathetic identity with Jesus’s suffering in ways that were new, yet consonant with their traditions of gendered religious devotion. In the final decades of the fifteenth century, the Heideklöster became centres of artistic and literary creativity as their inhabitants sought not only to fulfill the mandates of reform, but also to adopt the reforming rhetoric of restoration, renewal, and revitalization as a means of expressing their (continued) piety and communal identity. The creation of large-scale embroideries and other commemorative artwork reflected the interests and influence of Observant reformers; yet they maintained the nuns’ traditions of performative piety, particularly in the realm of artistic productions and female patronage. They also continued to assert the nuns’ sense of their singular status and communal identity, thereby providing a subtle contradiction to the rhetoric of reform itself. The Heath convents are unique among medieval women’s communities for the amount of documentary and material evidence that has survived, but the devotional practices observed by the nuns of this region were not unusual. Many women’s houses observed the dramatic paschal rituals of the Depositio and Elevatio crucis as well as the Visitatio sepulchri. Nuns elsewhere also stitched embroideries. Although the liturgical embroideries preserved from the convents of the Lüneburg Heath provide an astounding illustration of religious women’s activity in the textile arts, a similarly rich visual and material culture existed in other female houses throughout Europe. 5 Professional religious women frequently possessed private funds and personal items; likewise, other communities practised interior pilgrimages and embraced passion-centred 5 

Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Italy.

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piety. In this respect, the spirituality exhibited by the nuns of the Heideklöster may be regarded as representative, and the performative devotional practices they embraced may serve as a hermeneutical model for female monastic devotion in communities from which far less information survives. Despite what their medieval critics said, the women of the Heath convents were both well behaved and fully deserving of a prominent place in the history of European society and its religions.

Appendix 1

Note on Coinage Constance H. Berman

T

he money mentioned in the charters consulted by Mecham for this book derive from the monometallic (silver only) currency introduced by the Carolingians in which the only coins minted were the denarius, denier, penny, pfennig, and sometimes a half penny or obol. Such coins usually came from local mints, such as that of the bishops of Hildesheim, which was only one of many types of ‘feudal’ coinages found in later medieval Germany. It is impossible to establish any comparative values even with reference to specific mints. Given the evidence of surviving coin hoards from the period and region, it seems that payments in coin would often have been made in mixed coins from a variety of local mints. Sums of money were often expressed not in pennies, but in a money of account in which twelve denarii equalled a solidus, shilling, or sou, and twenty solidi equalled a libra, livre, or pound, etc. Most were minted with both an obverse and reverse die, although single sided impressions have been found on coins called bracteates issued by the bishops of Hildesheim (among others) from the mid-twelfth through to the end of the thirteenth century. There also appears to have been some issuance of a double penny coin in the fourteenth century. References to the mark refer not to a coin, but to a different counting system for pennies. Regional systems for the mark varied, but there appear to have been 192 pennies to the mark of Lübeck. At the time of the Carolingian reform that ended the minting of gold coinage, the silver denarius was virtually pure (about ninety-eight per cent) silver. By the twelfth century, however, the ‘feudalization’ of coinage throughout much of

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Europe had led to a gradual debasement in which copper replaced fifty to eighty per cent of the silver. (Exceptional were the sterling pennies of England, which remained of a high purity.) This debasement was probably not inflationary, at least up to the end of the thirteenth century, because economic expansion kept pace with the increased supply of newly minted, but more debased, coins. In the mid-thirteenth century, coinage reforms followed the introduction, first by Italian cities, of a gold coinage (florins and ducats). A new silver twelvepenny coin called the grossus denarius or groat, etc., was also introduced. Such groats were minted in Germany, for instance, by the abbesses of Quedlinberg and the count-bishops of Hoya. They are occasionally referenced in the documents for the six monasteries treated in this book, as are sterling pennies from England.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to maps and images.

Abelen Scherliken: 113 Adelheid Arndes: 118 Adelheid Bockes: 115 Adelheid Burmester: 117 Adelheid de Querrendorpe: 92, 93 Adelheid Stüver: 77 Adelheid van Wirte: 122 Adelheid von dem Hofe: 113 Adelheid von Stade: 115 Adelheid Vrund: 118 Adelheid Werckmesters: 123 Advent and Christmas: 77, 85, 122, 148, 181, 198 Aelred of Rievaulx: 210 affective spirituality: 74–85 Agnes, duchess of Landsburg: 7, 8, 67, 128, 247 Agnes von Baden: 120 Agnes von Meissen: 69 Albert Holle: 105 Albert of Minden: 139 Alburgis Wensen: 113 Alda of Siena: 208 Aleke Gelen: 110 Alheid Emmellen: 92 Alheid of Lüne: 110 Alheyde of Gravenhorst: 129 Alheyt Daghevorde: 142 Almodis de Gustede: 59 Amtsbuch, sacrista’s book from Lüne: 20, 77 Amelie van Gilten: 114 Ancrene Riwle: 64

Andachtsbilder, devotional images: 24, 47, 161, 171, 239, 241 Anezadels Hoppener: 115 Angela of Foligno: 208 Anna de Ghilten: 188 Anna Griff: 190 Anna Muntprat: 250 Anna of Nassau, duchess: 4, 7, 17, 149 Anna Stöterroge: 188 Anna Töbing: 55, Anna von Buchwald, prioress of Preetz: 124,176, 178 Anna von Bulow: 188 Anna von Qualen: 178 annuities: 89, 107–10, 114, 116–18, 122, 123, 125, 130, 137, 138, 148–51; see also individual convents Appuhn, Horst: 72 archaeological evidence: 123–24, 164–65 Arma Christi: 178 Augustinian communities: 1, 187, 209, 231, 236, 237, 250–52; see also individual communities Baden-Baden (city): 120 Banklaken (hangings): 182–86 Barbara Antoni, abbess of Isenhagen: 19 Barking, abbey of Benedictine nuns in England: 42, 55 Barteke Schomaker: 109 Bartlett, Anne Clark: 216 Bartold von Landsberg: 187

300

Beate Abbenburg: 112 Beatrice of Ornacieux: 208 Beke Brüggen, prioress of Isenhagen: 118 Beke Greving: 118 Beke Hellewede: 113 Beke Kleinkokes: 113 Beke van dem Lo: 122 Beke van Linde: 122 Beli von Lütisbach: 83–85 Benedicta Breiden: 124 Benedictine communities: 1, 3, 5, 13, 28, 91, 104, 176, 198, 250; see also individual convents including Ebstorf Benedictine rule: 13, 15, 107, 198, 199 Bernard of Clairvaux: 44, 206, 247, 248 Bernard von Sulde: 99 Berta von Boldensele: 116 Bertradis von Schlanstedt: 107 Bestul, Thomas: 212, 215 Beteke Schomakers: 116 Bonaventure (Pseudo): 78, 191, 210, 214 Boniface VIII, pope: 52 blood, holy relic at Wienhausen: 16, 110, 171 Braunschweig (city): 16, 32, 150, 163 Braunschweig-Lüneburg family: 17, 95, 128, 130 Henry ‘the younger’: 96 Otto III: 130 Otto, duke: 17, 144 bridal and nuptial imagery: 30, 47–49 Bremen (city): 93 Brigit of Sweden: 74, 208 Bursfeld congregation: 4, 21 Busch, Johannes: 18, 19, 130, 144–46, 148, 151–55, 157, 161, 162, 167, 168, 193, 251, 252 Bynum, Caroline Walker: 262 Caesarius of Arles: 63 Carroll, Jane: 192 Caterina de’ Ricci: 84, 85 Catharina Remstede: 142 Celle (city): 16 Cistercian communities: 1, 3, 6–8, 13, 26, 28, 40, 44, 45, 47, 91, 96, 99, 120, 162, 199, 252; see also individual convents including Isenhagen, Medingen, and Wienhausen

INDEX Christine de Pizan: 64 Christkindl (Christ-child): 77, 78, 81, 83, 85, 86, 161 Christmas and Advent see Advent and Christmas Chronik und Totenbuch des Klosters Wienhausen: 83, 133–34,141 Clare of Assisi: 208 clothing for statues and saints: 66, 78–87, 121 through prayer: 180 Conrad of Zenn: 156 coronation of nuns and young girls and crown from Medingen, worn by nuns: 27, 47, 49–50,149 courtly love (fin’amor): 44, 45 crown of thorns see Paschal liturgy, Passion devotion and piety: Dornenkron meditation Christenspiegel of Dietrich Kolde: 219–20, 251 Cunegundis see Kunegundis Pomeris cura monialium: 159, 160, 167–74, 198, 202, 203, 206, 209, 213, 250–52 Depositio crucis: 25, 27, 28, 38, 41, 42, 261, 263 Derneburg, convent of: 7, 252, 253 devotio doderna: 21, 144, 155, 157, 159, 203, 205, 216, 230, 250–53 Dietrich Brand: 98 Dietrich Einem: 4 Dietrich Kerkering: 155, 156 Dietrich Kolde: 219, 251, 252 Dietrich Schaper: 100 Dietrich Tijtze: 100 Dietrich von der Molen: 117 Dietrich von Swalen: 117 Dietrich Wülsche: 109 Despres, Denise: 227 Dilla von Buchwald: 178 Dominican communities: 160, 168, 243; see also individual convents Dorothea von Mecklenburg: 162 Dorothy of Montau: 208 Dornenkron meditation see under Paschal liturgy, Passion devotion and piety Drude van dem Sande: 136

INDEX Easter: 25–29, 31, 37, 44, 45, 49, 51, 53, 70, 122, 124, 140, 181, 191 Easter (Paschal) plays: 25, 27–30, 33, 37, 39, 47, 51 Eberhard of Gandersheim: 58–59 Ebstorf martyrs: 16 Ebstorf, convent of: 3, 4, 13, 14, 24, 74, 82, 196 administrative roles: 18 buildings: 141, 175 cemetery: 16 class and status of nuns: 17 devotional art and relics: 4, 164, 179 income and finances: 90–92, 96–98, 102, 106, 108, 109, 115–17, 122, 123 liturgy: 19 manuscripts and texts: 23, 177, 217–19, 241–43, 248, 253, 255, 256 reforms: 4, 18–21, 153, 180 ritual and performance: 49, 243 social networks: 18, 23, 141 textiles and needlework: 4, 61, 179–81 Egidius, cardinal bishop of Tusculum and legate to Germany (1460): 99, 139 Elevatio crucis: 25, 27, 28, 37, 261, 263 Elisa Bock: 188 Elisabeth Bockes: 115 Elisabeth Grissin: 180 Elisabeth Hokens: 190 Elisabeth Hollo: 112 Elisabeth Kruse: 111 Elisabeth Mahrenholtz: 118, 119 Elisabeth of Spalbeck: 208 Elisabeth of Thuringia: 12, 134, 136 Elisabeth Papen: 109, 116 Elisabeth Raven: 123 Elisabeth Schneverding: 190 Elisabeth Velhauwers: 134, 136–40, 145 Elisabeth von Bernowe: 106 Elisabeth von Boizenburg: 106 Elisabeth von Buxtehude: 106 Elisabeth von Levede: 107 Elisabeth Vosses: 115 Elisabeth Wensen: 113 Erbfolgekrieg: 95 Ermedrudis van Alden: 113 Ermengard Advocati: 113 Ermengard Melbeck: 110 Ermgard Witte: 106

301

Ermhard Winninghausen: 107, 108 Ernst, ‘the Confessor’, duke: 22 Essen, canonesses: 52 Eudes Rigaux: 64 Eustochium of Messina: 208, 229 Fastentücher (altar veils): 6, 57, 60, 69–74, 70, 71 Filippo de Barberi: 191 Flowing Light of the Godhead, of Mechthild of Magdeburg: 57 Francis of Assisi: 206, 208 Franciscan communities: 160, 212, 226, 251, 252; see also individual convents Fredrich Rode: 117 Fredrich zum Rhein: 119 Frederick of Heilo: 157 Frederick the Elder, duke: 3 Frederick, Holy Roman Emperor: 96 French, Katherine: 59 Geert Groote: 155 Georg Pfintzing: 231 Gerborg von Kemme: 124 Gertrud Hoppenstede: 190 Gertrud Kolkhagen, abbess of Isenhagen: 19 Gertrud of Helfta: 84 Gertrud van Langeln: 118 Gertrud von Eppersen: 106 Gertrud von Hamersin: 101 Gertrud von Repenstede: 106 Gertrud von Verden: 106 Gertrude Semmelbecker: 190 Gertrude von dem Brake, prioress of Ebstorf: 20 Gertrudenberg, convent in Westphalia: 175 Gese van der Molen: 123 Geske Papen: 109, 116 Geske van Eltze: 117 Gervasius von Tilbury: 23 Ghertrud de Querrendorpe: 92, 93 Gheske Schapers: 190 Ghiselheidis Hudenbergh: 99 Giseke Paghencop: 113 Gisela Ulla: 113 Grabchristus, wooden effigy of Christ at Wienhausen: 11, 37, 38, 41–42, 119,133,139, 245 Graurock, provost of Lüne: 6

302

Greta Suringes: 123 Greta van dem Heimbroke: 123 Greta Wichrenbeck: 122 Greta (Margaret?) Wittorf: 113 Grundmann, Herbert: 13 habitus: 130, 131, 151 Hadwig Hetvelde: 120 Hamburger, Jeffrey: 173, 240 Hanneke Broitzem: 124 Hans Lochner: 231 Hartwig Abbenburg: 112 heavenly Jerusalem wall painting, Wienhausen: 245–48, 246–48 Hebelen von Thus: 112 Heilwig von Harling: 188, 190 Heilsspiegelteppich (Mirror of Mankind’s Salvation or Speculum humanae salvationis), Wienhausen: 72–74, 75, 134, 222 Heinrich I, prince of Werle: 128 Heinrich de Molendino: 93 Heinrich Hellewede: 97, 99 Heinrich Lessing: 99 Heinrich of Hildesheim: 94 Heinrich of Nördlingen, spiritual advisor to Margaret Ebner: 161, 162 Heinrich Schrader: 100 Heinrich Suso: 208, 229 Heinrich Tauler: 208 Heinrich up dem Dore: 116 Heinrich Wetemann: 100 Henry of Ghent: 156 Henry of Saint Michael: 144, 145 Henry, the Lion: 7 Henry, ‘the Long’, duke of Saxony: 7, 8 Herman Eyken: 129 Hermann Schonehals: 95 Hermann von Berken: 196 Hermann von Fritlar: 191 Herzebrock, convent in Westphalia: 176, 196 Hildebrand von Eltze: 117 Hildegard of Bingen: 67 Hildesheim (city): 17, 31, 93, 144 Hodenburg, Wilhelm von: 3 Holy Cross Abbey, Braunschweig: 22, 52, 74, 101, 124, 173, 231, 243, 244 Holy Cross Abbey, Erford: 168

INDEX Holy Cross Abbey, Rostock: 81, 82, 172, 179, 225, 240, 243 Homeyer, Joachim: 6 Ida of Louvain: 208 Idung of Prüfening: 64 Ilsben van der Heyde: 119 Ilse Broitzem: 124 Ilse Lutherder: 150 Ilsebe Nigenkercken: 149 Ilseben Holstein: 119 Innocent VIII, pope: 96, 244 Isenhagen, convent of: 3, 7, 8, 13, 14, 16, 24, 127 administration and offices: 91 buildings: 8 class and status of nuns: 16, 17 devotional art and relics: 164 income and finances: 90–93, 96, 97, 102, 108, 118 reforms: 7, 149 social networks: 16, 17 textiles and needlework: 8, 61 Jakob von Lüne: 110 Jan Hus: 207 Jan of Campe: 150 Jean Gerson: 207 Jeanne Marie de Maillé: 208 Johann Ludolph Lyßmann: 6, 197 Johann van Holthusen: 119 Johanna von Derenburg: 107 Johanna von Hildersum: 111 Johannes Meyer: 161, 167–69, 179, 180 Johannes Nider: 167 Johannes of Lüne: 115 Johannes of Oppershausen: 144, 150 Johannes Propst: 23 Johannes von Barendorp: 110 Johannes von Melbeke: 117 John Mahler: 100 Julian of Norwich: 208, 223 Katerina Lemmel: 179 Katharina Remstede: 185 Katharina Semmelbecker: 190 Katharina von Hoya, abbess of Wienhausen: 12, 37, 73, 114, 126–31, 133–36, 138, 139, 151, 152, 155, 158, 175, 178, 206, 231

INDEX administrative duties: 131, 133, 139, 144, 145 attempted murder of: 133 Saint Anne chapel: 37, 127–29, 133–36, 138–40, 142, 143, 175 status and wealth: 127, 128, 130–32, 134–37, 140, 143, 146 visions: 133 Katharina von Weissenburg: 120 Katharine Greving: 118 Katharine Remstede, abbess of Wienhausen: 21 Katherina Gronehagen: 116 Katherine Schomaker: 109, 116 Klara zum Rhein: 119 Kohwagner-Nikolai, Tanja: 181, 188, 190 Konrad of Prussia: 161, 168, 169, 171, 173, 174 Konventstagebuch from Braunsweig: 52, 101 Kunegund Hoppener: 115 Kunegunde, abbess of Göss: 67 Kunegunde de Schulenburg: 188 Kunegundis Pomeris: 110 lectern hanging, Wienhausen: 72, 73 Legenda Aurea: 191 Liber coronacionis: 21 Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum of Johannes Busch see Busch, Johannes Lichtenthal, Cistercian community of nuns: 120 Lippold of Saint Godehard: 144 Lippoldsberg, convent: 64 Ludus paschalis see Easter Ludolf Burmester: 117 Ludolf of Saxony: 210, 214 Ludolf Ruscher: 7, 99 Ludwig Wulf: 122 Lüne, convent of: 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 24, 74, 162 buildings: 6, 175 class and status of nuns: 6, 17 devotional art and relics: 164, 169 iconography: 77, 83 income and finances: 90, 96, 97, 100–02, 108, 111, 112, 115, 118 reform: 18–21, 180, 182 ritual and performance: 243 social networks: 17, 18

303

textiles and needlework: 6, 61, 62, 67, 70–72, 177, 180–83, 185–87, 191–93, 196, 197, 201 Lüneburg (city): 16, 90, 92, 96, 99, 100, 105, 108, 122, 149 Lüneburg Heath (Lüneburger Heideklöster), convents of: 1, 3, 11, 13, 14, 21, 24, 149, 157, 159, 174, 177, 202, 203, 205, 206, 216, 248, 249, 258–64 administrative roles: 14, 15, 18, 91, 97, 102–05 annuities: 149, 150 buildings: 177 class and status of nuns: 16–19, 157, 158, 263 devotional art and relics: 23, 66, 67, 159–62, 164, 166, 177, 250, 261 education: 16 gender roles and performance: 26, 58, 59, 86, 87, 193, 261 income and finances: 89–92, 98, 100–05, 107, 108, 110, 119, 121, 123, 125, 126, 154 liturgy: 15, 19, 26–30 male clerics and clergy: 14, 45, 97 manuscripts and texts: 19, 20, 22–24, 31, 33, 43, 218, 239, 248, 253, 254 reforms: 15–22, 86, 87, 143–46, 149, 150, 159, 180, 202, 203, 250 rituals and performance: 26, 43, 56, 179, 239, 261, 263 social networks: 15–19, 21–23, 31, 103–05, 140, 250, 262 textiles and needlework: 58, 61, 62, 67, 72–70, 76, 86, 87, 166, 177, 179, 180, 193, 217, 263 see also individual convents: Ebstorf, Isenhagen, Lüne, Medingen, Walsrode, Wienhausen Lüneburger Prälatenkrieg: 96 Lutgard Rise: 120 Lutheranism: 81 Lyßmann, Johann Ludolph: 6, 197 Magdeburg (city): 64 Mahrenholtz family: 99, 118, 119, 130 Maria Mai, cloister, stained glass windows: 179 Margaret Bock: 111

304

Margaret Ebner, Dominican mystic: 74, 77, 161, 162 Margaret Hoghehertin: 112 Margaret Hudenbergh: 99 Margaret Niebur: 106 Margaret Rosenhagen: 181, 190 Margaret Smulders, nun of Bethlehem in Louvain: 86, 87 Margaret von Königsmark: 124 Margaret von Lubberstede: 106 Margaret von Todinghusen: 162 Margaret von Wittorf or Margaret Wittorf: 113–15 Margareta von Dassel: 196 Margarete Hardvici: 120 Margarete von Hamersen: 110 Margaretha, abbess of Wisenhausen: 12 Margaretha Puffen, abbess of Medingen: 18, 19 Margaretha von Wehtbergen: 185 Margarethe von Hodenberg, prioress of Walsrode: 4 Margery Kempe: 74, 78, 208, 211, 213, 227 Marie of Oignies: 208 Marienkleider (small robes for statues): 23, 79, 81, 180 Marmstorf family: 5 Hildeswidis: 5 Marrow, James: 210, 211 Mary Magdalene: 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 42–45, 57, 49–51, 55, 58, 187, 193, 211, 239, 261 Mary, mother of Christ: 26, 45, 50, 51, 58, 65, 66, 76, 133, 142, 170, 171, 173, 205, 213–15, 217, 227, 228, 233, 237–39, 256–58, 261 adornments for: 60, 61, 78, 81–87, 113, 121, 162, 163, 179 depictions of: 178 domestic model: 65, 66, 133, 173 visions of: 57, 58, 74, 83–85, 199 Marys, the story of the three: 26, 29, 50, 53 Mathilde of Wenden: 128 Matthias von dem Knesebeck, provost of Ebstorf: 4, 7, 18, 141, 175 Mechthild Hoppener: 115 Mechthild Linthorn: 113 Mechthild of Magdeburg: 57, 72, 84 Mechthild of Oppershausen: 130, 131

INDEX Mechthild Raddeges: 113 Mechthild von Stockem: 113 Mechthild Wilde: 181, 187 Mechtild Abbenborg: 112 Mechtild Bertoldi: 120 Mechtild Blurot: 93 Mechtild de Danneberg: 112 Mechtild Huscow: 110 Mechtild of Waltingeroth: 57–58, 59 Mechtild von Niendorf, prioress of Ebstorf: 19 Medingen, convent of: 3, 6, 7, 117, 197, 200, 201 buildings: 6 class and status of nuns: 6, 17–19 education: 7 iconography: 77, 83 income and finances: 91, 94, 98, 99, 102, 106, 108, 111 manuscripts and texts: 35, 53, 177 male leadership: 197, 198 panels: 193–203, 194–97 reform: 7, 18–22, 100, 149, 200 rituals and performance: 25, 29–31, 45, 47, 50–53, 55, 56 textiles and needlework: 201, 217 social networks: 17, 18, 31 Meditations on the Life of Christ (Meditationes vitae domini nosri Jesu Christi): 76, 86, 191, 212–13, 227 Meinard von Altenesch: 105 mendicant decrees on possessions: 160 Metta Hoppener: 123 Mette Dalenburg, and daughters (Wibeke and Ilsebe): 153 Metteke Spade: 136 Minden (city): 93 mneme theou (memory of God): 28, 207 necrology of Wienhausen: 59 needlework see textiles and needlework Nikolaus Graurock: 175, 187 Nikolaus Schomaker: 187 Observant reform movement: 20, 21, 49, 69, 74, 124, 143, 144, 148, 150, 153, 159–61, 167, 174, 191, 193, 200, 202, 203, 205, 216–18, 243, 251

INDEX common property and spaces: 13, 147, 148, 154, 168, 176, 179 devotional art: 159–61 discussion of proprietas: 13, 125, 144–49, 151, 153–58, 162 Olgard van Marnholtz, abbess of Wienhausen: 118, 119, 130 opus feminile, ‘women’s textile work’: 62–66, 86, 87 opus teutonicum, textile style of white on white: 6, 61, 67 ora et labora: 85, 166, 190 Orationale from Medingen: 22, 35, 49–51, 55, 212, 217 Origny-Sainte-Benoite, convent: 32, 44 Ossane de Mantua: 229 Otto Garlop: 117, 118 Paderborn (city): 93 Paradies at Soest, Dominican nuns: 68, 76 Paschal liturgy, Passion devotion and piety: 206–16, 218, 228–49, 259 devotional texts: 209–12, 214, 217, 231–34, 259 Dornenkron meditation: 218–20, 222, 224–28, 232, 238–41, 251–54, 256–58, 261 Secret Passion: 212, 219, 220, 225, 238 see also Easter peculium (personal funds): 101–03 pelican feeding her young, imagery: 183–85 Periculoso: 52 Peter, painter of Lübeck: 178 pietà: 16, 225, 227, 239 pilgrimages, mental: 173–75, 229–39 Planctus beatae Mariae, Marian hymn: 213 Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit: 21, 216 Prague (city): 29 Preetz in Schleswig-Holstein, nuns: 124, 176, 178, Premonstratensian communities: 1, 14 Poissy, Dominican priory of nuns, France: 64 Poor Clares, convent in Ribnitz: 164, 165, 177, 208 other convents: 243–45, 251 Power, Eileen: 58 prebendariae (secular corrodians): 109, 113, 128

305

proprietas and proprietariae: 13, 105–21, 125, 144–49, 151, 153–58, 162 provosts and management: 96–101 Psalterium maius beatae Mariae virginis: 256 Quedlinburg, knotted rug of marriage of Mercury and Philosophy: 69 Quem quaeritis: 35 recte legendi and recte intelligendi: 217–18 Registrum bonorum salinarium: 90–93 Resurrection painting, Wienhausen: 34 Resurrection statue, Wienhausen: 12, 35 Resurrected Christ, miracles of tapestry: 180, 189, 191 Rhodes, J. T.: 211 Richard Paffroet: 251 Richard Rolle: 211 Riddy, Felicity: 216, 250 Rigger, Ida Christine: 6 Rudy, Kathryn: 238, 239, 253 Rupert of Deutz: 221 Rupertsberg Antependium: 67 Saint Agnes, convent in Maaseik: 230, 253, 256 Saint Anne: 12, 68, 133, 134 visions of: 74, 127, 133 see also saints: celebrations of and feast days Saint-Amand, convent near Rouen: 64 Saint Blasius, convent: 31, 52 saints: 65, 229, 230, 232, 237, 257 celebrations of and feast days: 10, 12, 82, 93, 111, 112, 118, 122, 137, 148, 183, 230 images, statues, textiles: 8, 60, 66, 81–83, 134, 163, 164, 177–80, 183, 186, 192, 219 visions of: 198 see also Mary Magdalene, etc. Saint Ursula of Tull, confraternity book: 78 salt works, salt revenues: 89–94, 99, 114, 115, 136 Schönensteinbach, Dominican nuns: 168 Schier, Volker: 179 Schleif, Corine: 179 Schlotheuber, Eva: 218 Schorlecken family: 112

306

Schuller, Helga: 103, 104 Secret Passion see under Paschal liturgy, Passion devotion and piety Shomaker, provost at Lüne: 6 Sibyls and Prophets tapestry: 180, 189, 190 Sibyllarum et prophetarum de Christo vaticinia: 191 Signori, Gabriela: 156 Simon Cyrene: 237 Simon Reinecke: 142 Sister-Books from Dominican German nuns: 84 Sixtus IV, pope: 242 Soffie van Gravenhorst: 122 Soffie van Zellenstedt: 122 Song of Songs: 43, 44, 45 Sophia Balghe: 113 Sophie van Wirte: 122 Sophia von Bodendike, prioress of Lüne: 19, 181, 187, 193 Sophia von Goese: 196 space see Observant reform movement Speculum humanae salvationis: 4, 73–74, 222 of Ludophus of Saxony: 214 Spitzenverdiener: 41, 43, 136 Stations of the Cross: 206, 214, 228, 231–39, 241, 257, 261 stitched history (gewirkte Geschichte): 192–93 Stijne Zuerelinck: 230 sudarium: 30, 33 Susanna Potstock, abbess of Wienhausen: 18, 142, 146, 147, 150, 175, 177, 193, 252 Swanson, R. N.: 208, 209 textiles and needlework: 58–65, 61, 62, 67, 68, 72–70, 76, 86, 87, 166, 177, 179, 180, 193, 217, 263 Thitburg Remestede: 21 Tidburg Leonardi: 112 Tilen Lutherdes: 150 tithes and other income sources: 92–94, 96 Thomas à Kempis: 207 Trexler, Richard: 83 Tristan and Isolde tapestries at Wienhausen: 62

INDEX Überwasser, convent in Münster: 179 Uelzen (city): 16, 92 Ulrike Bülow: 201 Ursula Haider: 244 unguent merchant: 32 Unterlinden in Colmar, Dominican convent: 84 Verden (city and bishop): 4, 6, 17, 31, 93 Veronica, story of: 172, 231, 234, 235, 237–39, 241, 261 Virgin working at her loom, from Braunschweig: 65, 173 Visitatio sepulchri: 25–33, 35, 38, 41–45, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 76, 86, 228, 229, 261, 263 vita contemplativa (contemplative life): 27, 186 Volrad, count of Dannenberg: 4 Gerburg, his wife: 4 Volto Santo of Lucca: 8 Walburga (is) Grawerock, prioress of Walsrode: 4, 99 Walburgis Kokes: 113 Walsrode, convent of: 3, 4, 13, 14, 16 class and status of nuns: 3, 4, 16, 17 income and finances: 91, 99, 102, 106–08, 112–15 reforms: 3, 4, 18, 19 social networks: 16–19 Weltkarte from Ebstorf (mappa mundi): 23 Wennigsen, convent of: 167, 168 Werner of Oppershausen: 149, 150 Wichburg Kokes: 112, 113 Wichburg Pogewiske: 124 Wienhausen, convent of: 3, 7, 8, 10–12, 14–16, 24, 74, 118, 119, 131, 133, 136–38, 162, 163, 185, 224, 234, 238, 245–48, 251 buildings: 10, 22, 37, 41, 138, 140–42, 148, 152, 175, 206, 232 class and status of nuns: 16–19, 150–53 clerics, duties of: 15 devotional art and relics: 10, 11, 40–42, 164–66, 169–73, 179 food and living conditions: 148, 149–52

INDEX iconography: 35, 37–42, 73, 81–83 income and finances: 90–95, 97–100, 102, 108, 111, 118–20, 122, 137, 138, 142 manuscripts and texts: 24, 30–33, 35, 44, 49, 206, 217, 219–21, 223, 225, 226, 228, 231–37, 239, 241, 252–57 privacy: 147, 148 reforms: 18–22, 130, 144–51, 155, 163 rituals and performance: 25, 29–32, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 232–37, 244, 26 social networks: 16–19, 22, 31, 44, 140–43, 152, 217 textiles and needlework: 23, 24, 59, 61, 62, 68, 72, 73, 81, 82, 134, 191, 192 see also Katharina von Hoya, abbess of Wienhausen Wiethaus, Ulrike: 84 Windelburg von dem Berg: 120 Windesheim congregation: 21, 155, 236, 255, 258 Wöltingerode, convent: 7, 25, 29–31, 50–52, 55, 84 Wunder, Heidi: 190, 192, 193 Wuneken Suringes: 123

307

Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources, trans. and introduced by Anna Silvas (1999) New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact, ed. by Juliette D’Or, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (1999) Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays in Honour of Felicity Riddy, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchinson, Carol M. Meale, and Lesley Johnson (2000) The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material Derived from the Trotula and other Sources, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (2002) St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. by Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (2003) Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée, Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of Bossut, trans. by and with an introduction by Martinus Cawley OCSO and with a preface by Barbara Newman (2003) Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (2004) Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius, ed. by Stephanie Hollis with W. R. Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Kathleen Loncar, and Michael Wright (2004) Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (2006)

The Writings of Julian of Norwich: ‘A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman’ and ‘A Revelation of Love’, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (2006) Les Cantiques Salemon: The Song of Songs in MS Paris BNF fr. 14966, ed. by Tony Hunt (2006) Carolyn P. Collette, Performing Polity: Women and Agency in the Anglo-French Tradition, 1385–1620 (2006) Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (2007) Anna M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger: Philosopher of God (2008) Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, ed. by Barbara Newman, trans. by Margot H. King and Barbara Newman (2008) Claire M. Waters, Virgins and Scholars: A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria (2008) Jennifer N. Brown, Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Mid­ dle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (2009) Suzanne Kocher, Allegories of Love in Marguerite Porete’s ‘Mirror of Simple Souls’ (2009) Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries (2009) Mary Dockray-Miller, Saints Edith and Æthelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience: The Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St Æthelthryth (2009) Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century: The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame, Anchoress of Magde­ burg, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, trans. by Jo Ann McNamara, Barbara Newman, and Gertrude Jaron Lewis and Tilman Lewis (2012) Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue, ed. by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop (2013) Catherine of Siena: The Creation of a Cult, ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Gabriela Signori (2013) Partners in Spirit: Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500, ed. by Fiona J. Griffiths and Julie Hotchin (2014) The Manere of Good Lyvyng: A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard’s ‘Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem’, ed. by Anne E. Mouron (2014)