Convent Chronicles Research Articles

Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's Chronicle of the Dominican Observance

Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's Chronicle of the Dominican Observance

Talking to God: the use of images in the Dominican nunneries of late medieval Teutonia

Several convent chronicles from within the Dominican Province of Upper Germany dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries provide interesting insight into the manner in which works of art were utilized in late medieval religious life. Amongst other findings, study of the sources reveals that the nuns used images of the Mother of God and of the Crucified Christ not always and not only to meditate upon and commemorate the facts of salvation, but above all to receive support and solace in times of distress. The conception of icons derived from these sources is of the merging of archetype and image and of the indwelling of the person depicted in the image. Examples such as St Katharinental in northeastern Switzerland, where a large supply of images has been preserved in addition to numerous statues, are of particular interest for the study.

«Dell'officio della scrittora». Fra fides e custodia: 'monache scrivane' e notai a Verona nei secoli XVII e XVIII

Current Diplomatics embrace every form of documentary evidence and investigate the legal implication of documentation. This article investigates the different ways those scripts were created, stored, and ordered for both immediate and future use in the nunneries of Verona’s diocese during the Modern Age. The institutional and juridical system (Republic of Venice, Papacy, as the ecclesiastical law and canon law) have a direct impact in the multiplication of records, in the production and preservation of large quantities of documents, fastened in fascicolo and volumina inside the nunnery’s scriptoria and archives. A detailed examination of written documents demonstrates the network existing between the religious written culture and notarial one: notaries and nuns were scribes involved in the production of documentary sources (preparatory notes, protocols, notarial notebook, memoranda and imbreviaturae). Consequently, together with the notaries, the nuns took part in the written production of their convent. And so, notaries, who might have many scribes in their employ, traced their personal sign and wrote the final formula known as the completio on the instrumenta which were in authentic form or in copy bounded (or registered) in libri-documento. We don’t know much about these nun writers (‘monache scrittore’), but from their written production we can learn some details of history of documentation. These works, together with the letters, the libri instrumentorum, the diaries, the daybook, the rent rolls and the convent chronicles relate the role these scripts played in the juridical and institutional debate during the Modern Age.

Anglo-Norman Hagiography as Institutional Historiography:

ABSTRACTScholarly work on postconquest English convents has tended to assume that, unlike their male monastic counterparts, English nuns lacked institutional self-awareness and conscious historical documentation. On the contrary, this article proposes that certain convent manuscripts functioned as convent chronicles. This article uses the postconquest foundation Campsey Priory and one manuscript, British Library Additional 70513, a collection of Anglo-Norman saints’ lives belonging to the priory from the thirteenth century, as a case study, demonstrating how these hagiographic texts operate as a Campsey chronicle. It argues that four saints’ lives in particular—the lives of Modwenna, Osith, Audrée, and Katherine—constitute an undercurrent of particularly strong institutional identification in the manuscript. Finally, this case study aims to encourage further research investigating not only networks of female readers in postconquest England but the particular literary cultures of individual convents.

"Going against some forcible wind": Writing and Reform in Medieval and Early Modern Convents

"Going against some forcible wind":Writing and Reform in Medieval and Early Modern Convents Claire Walker (bio) Mita Choudhury . Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. ix + 234 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-801-44110-2 (cl). Ellen Gunnarsdóttir . Mexican Karismata: The Baroque Vocation of Francisca de los Ángeles, 1674–1744. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. xii + 305 pp. ISBN 0-803-22199-1 (cl); 0-803-27113-1 (pb). Linda Lierheimer , trans., ed., and intro. The Life of Antoinette Micolon. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2004. 144 pp. ISBN 0-874-62708-7 (pb). Anne Winston-Allen . Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xvii + 345 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-271-02460-7 (cl). In the 1640s a nun in the cloister of English Benedictines at Cambrai in the Spanish Netherlands wrote of her personal struggle to reform her ways, dedicate herself entirely to God, and achieve spiritual satisfaction through prayer and meditation. Amidst expressions of frustration with her own failings, Barbara Constable criticized the woefully inadequate direction she and her sisters received from the priests responsible for their spiritual progress. She likened her quest to "lead a true spiritual life in this age" to struggling against a strong wind which constantly forced one backwards.1 Constable's evocative motif might well be applied to the experience of religious women across the centuries. From women who embraced observant reforms in fifteenth-century Germany, to French Ursulines in the seventeenth century, to charismatic founders in the New World, and nuns in eighteenth-century France, women religious faced daily battles against not only their own failings, but also the expectations and interference of confessors, church leaders, families, and even local and national political bodies, all of whom attempted to impress their own vision of the religious life upon those in the cloister. Like Constable who wrote against this "tyranny," other women similarly voiced their concerns, fears and hopes in [End Page 135] letters, spiritual diaries, chronicles and, occasionally, in published works. Their determination to follow the paths they believed most beneficial to salvation often resulted in conflict and condemnation, but they nonetheless persevered. In so doing the convent was cemented as a vital religious and civic resource in medieval and early modern communities. Each of the four books examined in this review shows the potency of the nun and her cloister. Anne Winston-Allen's analysis of the fifteenth-century Observant movement in German- and Dutch-speaking cloisters in the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland uses the nuns' writings to show that women were active in both implementing and resisting the reforms which aimed to restore the original spirit of their religious rules and constitutions. Winston-Allen argues that far from being pawns in masculine Church politics, nuns actively reconfigured monastic life and participated in the late medieval "conversation on spirituality" through their extensive collection, consumption, transmission, and production of religious literature (232). Over a century later, during another era of reform, Antoinette Micolon founded six Ursuline houses in the Auvergne, and recorded her struggles to solicit the necessary financial, ecclesiastical, and local support, as well as an appropriate religious rule for her sisters to follow. Linda Lierheimer's edition of Micolon's autobiography highlights women's importance in implementing the principles of the Catholic Reformation in France through their work as catechists, teachers, and missionaries, and it shows how they combined practical skills with spiritual inspiration to garner respect and attain their objectives. An ecstatic religiosity propelled Francisca de los Ángeles from an early age into positions of religious leadership within her family, beaterio, and the wider community in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century Querétaro, Mexico. Although her mysticism and missionary activities brought her before the Inquisition, Francisca's spiritual determination and her ability to muster the support of her city's ecclesiastical and secular elites led to the evolution of her beaterio from a refuge for poor local girls to an establishment patronized by the upper echelons of Querétaro society. Moreover, she became a respected religious figure in the city (200–203). Yet Francisca...

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

Agnes of Harcourt, Felipa of Porcelet, and Marguerite of Oingt: Women Writing about Women at the End of the Thirteenth Century

Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's FrancienVie d'Isabelle de France(ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's ProvençalVida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina(begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-ProvençalVia seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu(between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.

Anne Winston‐Allen, . Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xviii+345 pp. $55.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewAnne Winston‐Allen, . Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xviii+345 pp. $55.00 (cloth).Sara S. PoorSara S. PoorPrinceton University. Search for more articles by this author Princeton University.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 86, Number 4October 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/509673 Views: 11Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. By Anne Winston-Allen. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xviii + 345 pp. $55.00 cloth.

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. By Anne Winston-Allen. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. xviii + 345 pp. $55.00 cloth.

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. Anne Winston-Allen

<i>Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages</i>. Anne Winston-Allen

Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middles Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.

Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middles Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.

:Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

:<i>Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages</i>

Book Review: Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women in the Late Middle Ages

Book Review: Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women in the Late Middle Ages

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (review)

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. By Anne Winston-Allen. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2004. Pp. xviii, 345. $55.00.) Religious life for women in the late Middle Ages has received significant scholarly attention in the last few years-attention that has come in various forms, including the mounting in 2005 in Germany of an international exhibition, Krone und Schleier, which brought together a magnificent collection of objects from late medieval women's religious communities, and the publication of several monographs focusing on women and monastic reform. Anne WinstonAllen 's Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, is a fine example of the work being done in this growing field of research. In Convent Chronicles, Winston-Allen proposes to offer what she terms a rare inside look at the Observant movement within German- and Dutchspeaking women's communities in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland-rare because she offers for discussion and analysis long overlooked writings-particularly chronicles and historical accounts by female authors, and inside because these writings emerged from within the Observant communities themselves. She argues that the history of the Observant movement needs to be reconsidered by taking women's writings into account, and that this reconsideration will compel scholars to revisit the broader issues of women's self-concept and agency in the late Middle Ages. After a brief historical, historiographical, and methodological introduction, Winston-Allen presents and discusses excerpts (in English translation) from women's monastic writings. In the first chapter, she selects texts that address the nuts and bolts of daily life within Observant communities-who entered and why, issues of rank and status, living conditions (including complaints about over-salted entrees and warm beer), education, work, and the structure and oversight of spiritual life. Issues of self-concept and agency emerge clearly from Chapter Two, in which Winston-Allen discusses convent founding narratives-narratives that, looking back at, interpreting, and imagining events that in many cases had taken place some 100 years earlier, tended to stress female solidarity in the face of financial and organizational hardship, a non-hierarchical approach to organizing and problem-solving (even in working with male supporters), independence and humility. …

Convent chronicles: women writing about women and reform in the late Middle Ages

Convent chronicles: women writing about women and reform in the late Middle Ages

Convent Chronicles. Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

Convent Chronicles. Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (review)

210 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) and there is also a chronological outline of events and texts. This section groups the publications of the more prolific figures together, in an unusual but ultimately serviceable format. If there is any criticism that can be made of a volume which will set a standard for the future, it is the absence of any consideration of the influence of continental literatures. But then since the work of Mario Praz, so many decades ago, no-one seems willing to tackle the Spanish and Italian antecedents of much courtly and Cavalier verse. Another omission is the relationship of much of the poetry of the era to the fine arts and especially music. In both urban and rural settings music continued to be enjoyed during the Interregnum and provided an aural context for the production, reception and transmission of many texts that lose much of their character and meaning when read just as words on paper. Nevertheless, The Cambridge History of Early Modern Literature remains a thorough and indispensable guide to the era through the lens of the best literary and historical scholarship of the new millennium. Dosia Reichardt Department of English James Cook University Lowe, K. J. P., Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and CounterReformation Italy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003; hardback; pp. xvi, 437; 42 b/w illustrations; RRP £60, US$90; ISBN 0521621917. In this handsomely produced and richly illustrated book, K.J.P. Lowe brings together the fruits of her research over the last 15 years on nuns’ chronicles in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy, of which hitherto we have had only tantalising snippets in various book chapters and articles. The book discusses three convent chronicles: the chronicle of Santa Maria delle Vergini in Venice (Le Vergini), which was composed in 1523 by one or more anonymous chronicler/ compiler(s) from amongst Le Vergini’s Augustinian canonesses; the chronicle of the Benedictine convent of Santa Maria Annunziata (‘Le Murate’) in Florence composed by Suora Giustina Niccolini in 1598 and the Clarissan convent of Santi Cosma and Damiano (San Cosimato) in Rome, written by Suor Orsola Formicini in three versions between 1603 and 1613. This last convent still exists today, with a community of nuns observing strict enclosure on the Aventine. These core sources are ably supplemented by many additional archival sources relating to Reviews 211 Parergon 21.2 (2004) each of the convents and its members, as well as by useful comparisons with other known convent chronicles of the period. Lowe’s purpose in writing about nuns’ chronicles arose out of ‘a desire to investigate texts in which women explain how they make sense of their lives’(p. 1). Her methodology, using Robert Brentano’s concept of ‘connected differences’, is to understand the similarities and differences between the three chronicles through comparison (p. 2). Lowe’s ultimate goal is one familiar to many historians of women and gender, that is, to have the work of these nun-historians recognised, celebrated and, above all, taken seriously – as an example of the many and varied cultural activities with which nuns were involved and which helped to shape their particular community’s identity. She is right to point to the neglect of such sources by historians (p. 6). The writers’insights and information about the world in which they lived are fascinating, as is each nun’s self-fashioning as expressed through her writing style, choice of subject matter and approach to it. The book is divided into three parts and eight chapters. ‘Part I: History Writing and Authorship’consists of a lengthy chapter about the creation of the chronicles followed by a chapter giving as much biographical detail about the author(s) of the chronicles as Lowe is able to discover from the often sketchy details the nun writers provide about themselves (with the exception of Suor Orsola Formicini). In the case of the chronicle of Le Vergini, this is made even more difficult by the fact that the chronicle’s author(s) remain anonymous, although Lowe makes an educated guess based on the available evidence. The second part of the book focuses on the historical and cultural context...