The Use of Images in the Pastoral Care of Nuns: The Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans

Abstract

The article examines the role of imagery in the cura monialium, or the pastoral care of nuns, in the circle of the Dominican preacher and mystic, Heinrich Suso. Among the images described in Suso's writings are the paintings in his oratory at the Dominican church at Constance. Although their existence has never been posited for lack of a physical or functional context that would lend credibility to the written sources that describe them, both the paintings in the oratory and the copies distributed to nuns can be shown to have existed and to have parallels in contemporary Dominican practice in Italy as well as north of the Alps. Reevaluation of the references to art in Suso's writings suggests that the use of images in the cura monialium provided a decisive precedent for the widespread adoption of devotional imagery in the later Middle Ages.