In July 1491 Mechthild von Vechelde, abbess of the Cistercian monastery of Holy Cross (1490–1507), near Brunswick in Lower Saxony, announced that all the inhabitants of the monastery would come together to beat flax for linen.1 This was a labour-intensive activity that the nuns customarily performed as a festive occasion. The anonymous sister who recounted this event describes how on the ‘happy day’ (dies oportunus) the flax was brought into the monastery precinct where the nuns joined ‘our family’ (nostrum familiam)—the laysisters, their provost, priests, young scholars in training, male and female boarders and servants—in the strenuous activity. The nuns sang devotional songs, including some they had composed for the occasion, while the boarders and others, including some of the sisters, sang secular songs. The provost, George Knochenhauer (1491–1503), also sang songs he had composed specially for the occasion. He, together with Mechthild and her monastic officials, also awarded small gifts as prizes. The occasion enabled the entire community to share the physical exertion and also to perform important social work, contributing to cohesion and the collective identity of the different groups that comprised the monastery’s familia.2
Although the nuns of Holy Cross reportedly delighted in an event that provided a welcome interruption to their routine work of liturgical prayer, others were not so pleased. We learn from the sister who described this incident in her ‘convent diary’ (Konventstagebuch) that certain people from outside the convent, most likely members of the city council, were ‘scandalised’ at the event.3 The ramifications of this for the convent were lasting. Their confessor and provost, both of whom had participated without criticism, responded to external pressure to amend the nuns’ behaviour. George Knochenhauer ensured that this practice did not reoccur by refusing to allow the nuns to sow flax in their fields.4 Rather than risking open confrontation with the abbess and convent, he employed an indirect approach, yet one still underlining the scope of his authority.
This incident and its fallout illustrate the dynamic tension that characterises the relations between the abbess and provost in the shared work of governing a monastery. Women’s religious communities relied upon priests to provide various material and spiritual services. The institutional arrangements to support this took diverse forms depending upon religious order, location, and patronage.5 Reflecting medieval ideas about governance as a primarily masculine preserve, many monastic women in German regions shared the direction and management of their monastery with a senior cleric, the provost.6 The abbess and provost were each responsible for managing different but interrelated aspects of the monastery’s spiritualia, primarily the nuns’ spiritual work of prayer and the clerics’ intercessory masses for donors, and the temporalia, the administration of monastic properties and incomes, and the maintenance and well-being of the convent and other people who worked to provide for the nuns’ material needs. Joint governance functioned as a partnership and the nature of the relationships between the two key officials had material implications for how women exercised their office and conducted their work.7
Drawing on the account of daily life within Holy Cross recorded in the anonymous nun’s convent diary, this chapter examines the interplay of gender and authority in jointly governing the spiritual and temporal affairs of a monastery. Focusing on the dynamic tension between nuns and their clerical officials, I explore how women perceived their role and performed their duties as abbess in relationship with their provost. Recent research into women’s activities as rulers has shifted critical attention from how women exercised royal or lordly office as individuals to how they performed the duties of their office relationally.8 As Elena Woodacre has recently observed, ‘one of the situational factors that could prove crucial for a woman’s ability to access or exercise power was her relationships with those around her’, in this instance the provost with whom she shared governance.9 The interdependent nature of joint monastic governance invites examination of how the scope of women’s activities, the limits to her authority, and how she undertook her duties as abbess were influenced by her relations with the monastery’s provost.
The convent diary provides evidence for how abbesses of Holy Cross and successive provosts worked together or in tension to direct the monastery. The entries cover the latter decades of the fifteenth century, documenting a period of political turmoil in Brunswick and the region and how it impacted upon the monastery. Written from the perspective of a first-person observer, if not necessarily a participant in all the events she records, this narrative is an unusually rich source for the inner workings of convent life, how the relations between abbesses and provosts were perceived, and the attitudes of the author and her community towards how their spiritual and material affairs were directed. The text presents valuable evidence for how the abbess managed the convent, what activities she undertook, what she was responsible for, who she directed, and how she sought to extend the scope of her authority. Attention to what and how the abbess is described as managing and how she worked with—or against—the monastery’s provost shows how personal and working relationships were vital to shaping the scope and experience of an abbess’ work.
Holy Cross and the convent diary
Holy Cross was the most important monastery for women in Brunswick. It was founded around 1230 on a site outside the north-west gates of the city as an act of atonement to conclude a local war between ministeriales of the duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the city.10 An abbess and provost are first mentioned by name at Holy Cross in 1266, indicating that the nuns managed the monastery’s business with a provost from an early date after its foundation.11 The abbess and provost were jointly responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of perhaps sixty to seventy souls, including the convent of around thirty to forty sisters, the chaplains who served in the monastery’s church and altars, boarders, and the various male and female workers in the familia who managed or laboured on the estates, or worked as artisans or servants.12 The abbess directed the spiritual work of the convent, principally the regular sung prayer of the divine office. The provost supervised the work of the priests who celebrated intercessory masses for donors in the monastery’s church and altars, and performed sacramental functions. He directed the nuns’ confessor and as the example of the flax beating shows, he also was responsible for the spiritual tenor of the monastery.
These spiritual duties were made possible by the economic endowments of families and donors who invested in the spiritual work of the nuns’ prayer and commemorative masses for their salvation. In the late fifteenth century the monastery held extensive landed properties concentrated in the vicinity of the city and maintained close financial ties to Brunswick through investments in the city’s annuities markets.13 The abbess and provost were jointly responsible for managing these economic interests and the multitude of legal, administrative, and representational duties they required. Both roles demanded considerable leadership, organisational ability, and financial competence.
The institutional arrangements to govern the work of the inhabitants of Holy Cross reflect the monastery’s place within intersecting social, political, and religious networks. The nuns of Holy Cross were first mentioned as following Cistercian customs in 1256. The monastery was not formally recognised by the General Chapter as incorporated into the order, although throughout the medieval period the convent perceived itself to be and was recognised locally as Cistercian.14 This juridical status had implications for how its spiritual and economic affairs were directed. In female monasteries that remained unincorporated the provost as senior cleric was responsible for the monastery’s spiritual and temporal affairs. In incorporated monasteries, however, the Chapter sought to minimise the risks presented by this consolidation of power by assigning responsibility for spiritual and material administration to different officials.15 The office of provost (praepositus) originated within male religious houses, where the incumbent was responsible for the administration of the institution’s temporal affairs.16
Membership of the convent of Holy Cross attracted the daughters, aunts, and cousins from the lesser nobility and patrician families in and around Brunswick.17 Elisabeth Pawel (1484–90) and Mecththild von Vechelde, the two abbesses whose rule is described in the convent diary, were members of important mercantile families in the city.18 By the fifteenth century Holy Cross was closely integrated into the administrative control of the city of Brunswick. The city’s governing body, the Council (Rat) comprised members of patrician families, many of whom had female relatives within the convent of Holy Cross. Economic and administrative oversight of Holy Cross was part of the Council’s broader control over religious institutions within the city. The Council appointed influential citizens as procurators (procuratores) to assist the nuns and their provost and to provide administrative oversight, thus serving as a mechanism through which the monastery was integrated into the city’s social politics and administration. These officials were often related to the nuns of Holy Cross.19 The priests who acted as the monastery’s provost were drawn from the city’s churches and religious foundations, further reinforcing the institution’s close civic ties. The provost of Holy Cross was also a member of the unio clerici, the group of leading prelates who determined ecclesiastic affairs in Brunswick. The choice of candidate to this office thus held significance beyond the governance of the monastery because the incumbent also participated in administering the spiritual affairs of the city.20
The Council also exercised significant influence in the monastery’s spiritual affairs. Most notably, Holy Cross was the only female monastic house in the region not to adopt the stricter interpretation of monastic life advocated by religious reformers in the later fifteenth century.21 In Brunswick, the Council’s resistance to reform at Holy Cross preserved its interests in the monastery and limited the potential for external interference from neighbouring territorial powers, primarily the bishops of Hildesheim and the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Nevertheless, the author of the convent diary reveals how shifting expectations of what was considered to be appropriate religious conduct for women influenced aspects of the nuns’ daily lives. The convent adopted certain practices that point to the influence of reforming ideals, such as maintaining enclosure, sharing a common table, and the nuns’ desire to conform to Cistercian liturgical customs.22 The negative reactions to the festive activities that accompanied the flax beating, however, draw attention to differing spiritual attitudes. The measures taken by provost George Knochenhauer to prevent the event from reoccurring shows how external expectations of religious women’s behaviour could affect nuns’ scope to directly manage their affairs within the cloister.
The convent diary from Holy Cross is a unique witness into daily life within a female monastic community that did not adopt reform in the latter fifteenth century, providing valuable testimony into how the abbesses directed aspects of the nuns’ spiritual work and material affairs.23 The author offers no clues to her identity in the text. She probably came from one of Brunswick’s patrician families, although she does not appear to have been one of the senior nuns or to have held office.24 The author wrote in Latin, the language in which the nuns’ spiritual duties were performed.25 It commences sometime before late 1484 and the text finishes abruptly in June 1507, very likely because the author died of an outbreak of the plague that killed around thirty members of her convent. The work has some characteristics of a chronicle, in its chronological ordering of events, although it is not an institutional history and rarely extends beyond the walls of the cloister except where events impact on the narrator’s life. It also shares some features of a personal diary or ‘ego-document’ in which subjective accounts of experience are recorded, although the standpoint is clearly that of the community, the ‘we’ rather than a personal perspective.26 Her focus is her present and future generations of sisters, and she frames events and anecdotes as edifying lessons for future readers with clear instructive and didactic commentary. For example, she wants her readers to understand why new practices were introduced, such as new prayers to be recited for the monastery’s donors, so that later generations of sisters grasped the purpose of their spiritual work and why they performed certain duties: ‘I have written this so that those who follow will know why we have this form of prayer.’27
As a record of daily life the author’s account reveals insights into how the abbess and provost worked together and the difficulties the convent could encounter when these relations broke down. She stresses the importance of stability and collaboration in the key relations for the monastery’s material security, and comments on occasions of tension or conflict as a warning about the adversity that could ensue from dissension.28 Her insider perspective on how these officials worked together or in conflict affords a closer examination of how the work of joint governance was negotiated in practice.
Gender and governance arrangements at Holy Cross
The abbess and provost each held separate and distinct, as well as interdependent, responsibilities to direct the monastery’s spiritual obligations and the economic activities that enabled them. The abbess ensured the convent fulfilled its spiritual duties. The primary obligation of religious women was the correct performance of the divine office or ‘work of God’ (opus Dei), the regular sung prayer of the canonical hours. In addition, the author of the convent diary refers to ‘all of our works’ (omnia nostra opera) as encompassing, in addition to the divine office, a range of other collective monastic practices such as collation, readings at mealtimes, reciting commemorative prayers in chapter, and the nuns’ spiritual discipline.29 ‘Work’ (opus) is used by the author to refer to the nuns’ spiritual obligations as distinct from labor, which she uses to refer to activities that involved physical exertion, such as the manual activity that punctuated their rounds of prayer.30 No details of what this labor involved are given in the text, although the description of beating flax and a reference to teaching the nuns at Wienhausen how to spin and weave fabric for monastic garments indicates that the sisters at Holy Cross performed or supervised cloth work of various kinds.31 The obligation to perform a substantial programme of sung prayer of up to eight hours each day could be physically exacting, leading these duties to be recognised as the ‘burdens of the choir’.32 Moreover, in some communities nuns may have used certain foodstuffs, in particular saffron, as a stimulant to assist them to overcome fatigue due to the long hours of singing this work involved.33
Although the abbess’ ability to directly manage the monastery’s temporal affairs was restricted by the requirement that she work with the provost, nevertheless she managed extensive financial responsibilities such as those pertaining directly to the convent, including the annual payments by relatives for the nuns’ maintenance. The abbess was assisted in her administrative duties by several female monastic officials. The most important of these were two senior nuns, or capellana, one of whom assisted the abbess to direct the spiritualia of the convent, the other of whom supported the abbess to manage the convent’s finances or temporalia, such as the incomes and expenses and business matters.34 Prior to taking on the abbacy, Mechthild had herself acquired considerable administrative experience in managing the convent’s temporalia as prima capellana. Her entries in the surviving account book indicate her careful attention to maintaining these records.35 The author refers to the prospect of the abbess and her officials undertaking financial and administrative responsibilities as ‘laborious’ and a ‘burden’, emphasising the effort this work involved.36
Abbesses Elisabeth Pawel and Mechthild von Vechelde also demonstrated a keen interest in how the convent’s farm and the monastery’s estates were managed. They were responsible for the convent’s material well-being and sought to minimise the economic damage when a provost incurred heavy debts. On occasion, an abbess also personally intervened to assess the economic state of affairs. In 1488, after the convent returned to the cloister buildings following an eighteen-month exile in the city to avoid the danger of a local war, Abbess Elisabeth and Mechthild, who then managed the convent’s estates, travelled to the village of Wetlenstedt to assess the extent of the damage for themselves.37 The provost was obliged to provide accounts of income and expenses to the abbess and her senior officials. He also took an oath not to sell, mortgage, transfer or otherwise dispose of any property without the knowledge and consent of the abbess and the Council of Brunswick.38 These provisions underlined the provost’s obligation to act in the interests of the convent as well as to seek the approval of the abbess when important financial decisions were made. Further, they express the presupposition that the abbess and her officials were capable administrators with the knowledge and ability to make decisions and discuss proposals about property transactions, and to know when to seek financial or legal counsel and how to oversee the provost’s actions.
The provost as the senior cleric held the superior authority over the abbess, convent, and all those who worked in the monastery. He was responsible for the provision of sacramental services to the nuns and for public religious services in the monastery’s church and chapels. In practice he only performed these functions himself on special occasions. He also supervised the nuns’ confessor, and the chaplains and priests who performed the commemorative masses for donors.39 The provost directed the administration of the monastery’s estates and properties, which comprised the farms held by the convent, the Propstei (praepositura), which included the properties that he maintained himself, the priests and scholares (priests in training), as well as the properties that supported the monastery in general.40 Together with the abbess he represented the convent in external legal, financial, or ecclesiastical proceedings.
An individual who served as provost could also be powerful in his own right.41 As an influential position with authority over a religious institution’s property and affairs, the office of provost of a female monastery could be appealing to career-minded clerics seeking influence and lucrative benefices. The office could thus attract candidates who were more interested in the possibilities for advancement than in genuine concern or commitment to perform the duties of office in the nuns’ interests, a failing the nuns were well aware of and sought to avoid. This could be exacerbated by the requirement that nuns observe enclosure, which limited their ability to directly manage their temporal affairs. Women’s ability, therefore, to secure someone of their preference to perform the office was a crucial means through which they could limit the inherent asymmetries of power in this structure. It was critical for them to have male officials whom they could trust to manage the day-to-day activities of the monastic economy and to represent the convent’s interests.42
The convent diary offers a fascinating glimpse into what motivated the nuns when they were selecting a provost and how they sought to have their interests met. In October 1505, when the convent was looking for suitable candidates to serve as provost after the death of Henning Duve (1503–05), the author of the convent diary eloquently expresses the nuns’ frustration in finding a suitable successor: ‘We did not want to have wealthy or distinguished priests, but humble men who were not rich so that they would be [our] servants (famuli) and providers and not provosts.’43
The nuns at Holy Cross drew on their familial networks and the monastery’s procurators to identify potential candidates from among the secular clerics serving in the city’s religious institutions.44 The nuns could be forthright in setting out what they expected a provost to undertake and how they wanted him to work with them. The author describes how the extent of the convent’s requirements outlined by Elisabeth Pawel to a prospective candidate to replace Heinrich Karstens (1483–88) in 1488 ‘did not please everyone who was there’, suggesting that the scope of the nuns’ expectations may have contributed to their difficulty in finding suitable candidates.45Three years later, the author observed that Mechthild von Vechelde sought to avoid conflict with the Council about the nuns’ choice of a provost, stating that she did not want to accept anyone into the office whom the Council would not confirm.46 The comment underlines Mechthild’s strategic approach in seeking to avoid any tensions with the Council that could lead to external interference in how the monastery was managed.
A provost could be appointed for life, although in effect they served varied lengths of tenure in office, some departing for other appointments, others removed for negligent administration, and still others, such as George Knochenhauer, serving until death.47 In the latter decades of the fifteenth century Holy Cross had nine different provosts over a period of thirty-seven years, of which the longest serving was George, for twelve years, and the others between two to five years. The frequent change in incumbents could create instability in the monastery’s administration, which was balanced by the continuity of the sixteen-year abbacy of Mechthild von Vechelde. Despite the provost’s main responsibility to fulfil the representative and economic functions of the monastery, in practice the abbess, supported by convent officials and the lay estate managers, was crucial in managing these transitions and providing stability to the monastery’s governance.
Managing spiritual work
Monastic life was fulfilled through spiritual work. The duty to perform the divine office was the central aspect of nuns’ lives; it represented their spiritual effort for the world.48 The abbess bore a weighty responsibility for her complex work as the convent’s spiritual leader and example: she had the obligation to answer for her own conduct and that of the nuns in her charge on Judgement Day.49 She exercised ultimate authority for the correct performance of the convent’s spiritual work of liturgical prayer and for observing the customs of their rule. The convent diary offers glimpses into how Elisabeth and Mechthild’s actions shaped the spiritual environment of the convent, and their efforts to extend these actions to the wider monastery. Analysis of occasions where the abbess and provost worked together to manage the monastery’s spiritual obligations brings into focus the respective scope of their responsibilities and how the limits placed upon the extension of women’s actions into wider spiritual affairs were enacted.
The manner in which the abbess led the nuns to fulfil their spiritual duties could have material consequences. The way in which the nuns followed the requirements of their rule and correctly maintained their regular rounds of sung prayer were examined by monastic visitors at intermittent intervals. If an abbess or her nuns were found to require correction in how their spiritual work was undertaken this could result in unwanted external intervention into the affairs of the convent. It is not surprising, then, that the author of the convent diary describes the nuns’ delight when in September 1502 the papal legate Johannes von Palz visited Holy Cross, where after an examination of the cloister he pronounced that he had discovered no fault. His presence, the author declared, ‘honours the monastery’, but more importantly for Mechthild his affirmation of the manner of her leadership lent her and her monastery greater spiritual prestige, and with it potential appeal to donors. Performing the spiritual work of prayer generated worldly benefits in ongoing financial terms.50
The abbess had the scope to shape the spiritual environment of the convent by introducing new practices, within the requirements of the rule. One of Mechthild von Vechelde’s first acts as abbess in August 1490 was to establish her spiritual leadership through a clever strategy to promote the value of the nuns’ spiritual work to their kin and the monastery’s patrons. Her decision to introduce a new commemorative practice to recognise the convent’s patrons and benefactors underlines the central importance of nuns’ spiritual duties and how they expressed the convent’s role within a broader spiritual economy. Cistercian customs stipulated that memorial masses or celebration for donors and benefactors would be celebrated once a year to restrict the expansion of commemorative practices for individual donors from becoming too onerous.51 Mechthild’s solution shows her concern to observe Cistercian statutes in daily practice while also enhancing the appeal of the monastery through introducing special commemorative prayers for the nuns’ kin and benefactors. She determined that the convent would recite special prayers in chapter each Monday for specific groups—former sisters, their priests, and ‘for those who give annual incomes to the monastery or make other gifts’, thus singling out the nuns’ kin, who paid regular annuities for their maintenance—for regular special commemoration.52 By working to establish new practices Mechthild sought to enhance the appeal of the nuns’ intercessory prayer to the monastery’s donors and the nuns’ families. Mechthild’s actions underline how she asserted her direction of the convent’s spiritual business to shape the work her nuns’ prayer entailed. Her decisions demonstrate her keen awareness of the interrelationship between the nuns’ spiritual labour and its economic benefits. Through her actions Mechthild sought to encourage continuing financial investment in the work of women’s intercessory prayer.53
The abbesses of Holy Cross also took steps to promote the interests of the convent when external events impacted upon their ability to perform their spiritual duties in their customary manner. The convent diary records how, during two periods of interdict, the nuns were not permitted to celebrate divine office with the full solemnity of singing or ringing bells, but to recite the words only; nor were they permitted to receive communion.54 The way in which the nuns received news about the interdict, and how its practical implications for the monastery’s spiritual obligations were worked out, illustrates how the abbess and provost managed their respective areas of responsibility. In 1487, for example, Heinrich Karstens announced that the monastery was required to observe an interdict that had been placed on the diocese of Hildesheim. After consulting with other prelates in the city to confirm what it entailed, he informed Elisabeth of the changes required to ensure that the monastery observed the ecclesiastic requirements correctly. The author makes clear that all communication about the interdict and what it involved was conducted through the provost; Elisabeth and her senior officials were limited to discussing the changes required with the provost and implementing them within the convent. When she received news that the interdict had been lifted, Elisabeth rejoiced, and in a striking display of her spiritual agency, she ordered a celebratory mass, accompanied by the organ, to be sung for the dedication of a new chapel to mark the end of the long period of musical absence.55
Although abbesses Elisabeth and Mechthild were bound by obedience to perform the convent’s liturgy to conform with the interdict, they nevertheless saw their responsibility as being to mitigate its most serious effects. They drew upon their networks in efforts to release their monastery from its restrictions. At first glance the respective roles or fields of action could imply that the spiritual authority of abbess and provost were aligned with the categories of external/public/male and internal/private/female. Although Heinrich managed the external and official formalities relating to the interdict’s requirements, Elizabeth was not passive or restricted from exerting external influence in ecclesiastic politics. In November 1487 she sought assistance from Wulbrand von Oberg, a cathedral canon from Hildesheim with influence in Rome.56 She informed him about the impact of the interdict upon the convent, how it prevented the nuns from fulfilling their spiritual duties through ‘the neglect of our divine office’, and implored him to act on their behalf to lift the ban. Wulbrand promised to petition Rome, and to assist the convent in various, unspecified, ways.57 Elizabeth drew upon her office and her social and political networks to petition for the monastery’s interests. Her actions offer an instructive example of how enclosed monastic women utilised their broader networks of social relations beyond the cloister to promote the interests of their institution.58
The spiritual leadership of the abbesses at Holy Cross also extended to obtaining privileges, such as indulgences, through which they shaped the monastery’s spiritual environment. These privileges provided a further means to promote the monastery’s spiritual prestige to donors and benefactors, to maintain its appeal within a competitive spiritual economy, and to shape the devotional experience of the nuns and familia through participation in popular devotional events. The account of how Mechthild secured the jubilee indulgence for Holy Cross in 1500 draws attention to the relational quality of her authority to determine the monastery’s spiritual affairs. Her actions illustrate how she perceived the scope of her spiritual responsibilities and how her claims were subtly contested.
The convent’s longing to share in the spiritual benefits of the papal jubilee in 1500 accounts for the urgency and excitement with which abbess Mechthild seized an opportunity to obtain the indulgence towards the end of the jubilee year.59 On the evening of November 2, 1500 a monk claiming to be from the Cistercian monastery of Walkenried (in Saxony) arrived at Holy Cross. When the jubilee was announced in Rome, the Cistercian General Chapter acquired the privilege to obtain the indulgence for members of the order—such as nuns—who could not make the pilgrimage to Rome. The monk informed Mechthild that he was authorised by the order to communicate the jubilee to Cistercian communities. The presence of a monk in these unusual circumstances could have raised doubts; nevertheless, in the absence of provost George, Mechthild assumed authority to acquire the privilege for all inhabitants of the monastery.
Mechthild directed the nuns and the familia to be gathered into the nuns’ church that evening to participate in the reading of the privilege before the monk departed the next day. He received a solemn reception in the church, where he read the bull aloud to the assembled congregation from the altar. The spiritual significance of the occasion was lost on many members of the familia as in the haste to gather everyone together there had been little time to communicate what was happening or its purpose. Moreover, the bull was read in Latin, which contributed to the confusion of those in the familia who could not understand what the monk said or why they were there. In contrast to the confusion the circumstances generated among the familia, the author describes how the nuns listened to the bull being read aloud with rejoicing, crying ‘tears as if they were married to their spouse’, whereas others wondered why the sisters reacted in this manner. Even those who did grasp the potential significance of the event, the clerics, did not trust the credentials of the Walkrenreid monk, criticising him as a ‘vagrant and seducer’. Moreover, the author adds that the clerics laughed at the sisters ‘as if we were more simple than usual people and therefore more easily fooled’, underlining the subtle tensions that shaped relations between the nuns and priests. On the following day Mechthild obtained a copy of the bull for the large sum of one gold florin.
When provost George returned the next day and heard about the incident, he also queried the monk’s credibility, although after making enquiries he confirmed that the monk’s claims were legitimate. The author notes that he reassured the nuns that they had not been deceived and the indulgence was valid, although Mechthild was admonished for paying too much for a copy of the bull. George’s actions, and the reassurance they generated, underline how ultimate authority to act in this matter rested with him as the senior cleric of the monastery.60
Mechthild’s actions and the reactions of the clerics and others within the monastery’s familia highlight how her authority for spiritual matters that extended beyond the convent relied upon a consensus between the provost, other clerics, and members of the familia.61 Mechthild’s hasty action and the lack of communication with the groups within the familia—clerics, laysisters, labourers, and boarders—about the purpose of the event led to confusion. The divergent attitudes of these various groups highlight how they influenced the limits of her authority. Although Mechthild accepted the legitimacy of the monk’s claims to represent the order, the nun records that many people remained suspicious about his veracity, suggesting a lingering doubt about Mechthild’s judgement and whether the scope of her spiritual work extended into affairs beyond the convent. Customarily she would be expected to consult with the provost to determine whether to proceed with the monk’s offer. We see here how Mechthild understood her responsibility as extending to procuring spiritual benefits for the monastery. Her behaviour on this occasion, however, appears to have led to doubts in some quarters about her capability as a leader. The relational quality of Mechthild’s authority is also evident in George’s response. By confirming the legitimacy of the monk, and thereby the indulgence, he simultaneously affirmed her decisions and reinforced his ultimate authority to determine spiritual matters pertaining to the monastery.
Managing temporal affairs
Sound economic management of the monastery’s temporal affairs was of paramount concern for the author of the convent diary. Nuns’ spiritual labours were made possible by the endowments of properties and incomes from pious benefactors, and the convent relied upon co-operative relations between the abbess and provost to provide for their material welfare. The author makes sharp observations about the impact on the convent’s financial security and well-being that disagreement and conflict could create, and she attributes the monastery’s impoverished state to dissension between the abbess and provost.62 Poor economic management also aroused anxieties for ecclesiastic and civic officials, because they wanted to avoid the prospect of religious women leaving their cloister to manage their own affairs.63 Despite the restrictions of enclosure, in certain circumstances nuns nevertheless did leave the cloister to conduct monastic business. The convent diary is a witness to Elisabeth and Mechthild’s active engagement in the convent’s financial concerns and their desire to ensure that their provost managed the monastery’s estates to reflect their interests. The author documents the growing tension from the late 1480s between these officials, reflecting different attitudes about who rightly directed certain aspects of the monastery’s estates, and how the provost’s rule was undertaken. The nuns’ anxieties were fuelled by their deteriorating relations with Provost George and mounting debt. The nun’s account is particularly striking for the evidence it provides for how economic necessity also led to circumstances in which women’s economic management could be recognised as legitimate, granting a capable female administrator enhanced authority to direct her monastery’s affairs.
The tensions arising from differing opinions about how the monastery’s farms were to be managed in the interests of the nuns are illustrated by a dispute about maintaining cows. As the example of beating flax showed, the provost could control what was produced on the estates, with far-reaching ramifications for the customary social, spiritual, and economic activities of the convent. In August 1486 the convent asked Provost Heinrich Karstens to acquire cows to provide the nuns with a regular supply of dairy produce, so that they could avoid paying high prices for fresh produce. He refused, the author claiming that he ‘impeded us’ from obtaining the cows many times because it had not been ‘our custom’ to manage cows. Heinrich may have been reluctant to outlay the expenditure or to take on additional responsibility. Eventually he succumbed to pressure from the convent’s supporters, and he grudgingly agreed to manage the livestock.64 Around the same time the nuns received gifts of cows which they arranged to be tended on the convent’s farm. Elizabeth Pawel hired a female servant to tend to them. In this she acted independently from the provost, securing a servant who laboured under her direction and not that of the provost. On the day of her election as abbess, August 1, 1490, Mechthild von Vechelde used the occasion as an opportunity to test her new authority over the question of the dairy cows. She asked provost Heinrich Biwende (1488–91) to maintain the cows for the convent, but he too refused and the author laments that Mechthild’s efforts ‘came to nothing, and the constant quarrels and anger remained between provost and the abbess just as it had before’.65 In this move, Mechthild may have hoped to gain the backing of the abbot of the nearby Cistercian monastery of Riddagshausen, who officiated at her election. The dispute over whether the provost would maintain a dairy herd to provide the nuns with fresh produce underlines the limits to the abbess’ authority to direct what was produced on the monastery’s estates and also how the nuns were restricted in their ability to control how they sourced food supplies and managed their expenditure.66
The author’s mention that Abbess Elizabeth employed a female servant to tend the cows alludes to one of the underlying causes of deeper differences in attitudes that shaped relations between the nuns and their provosts, namely the respective authority to direct how the monastery’s estates and female servants were managed. The abbess had authority to direct the convent and certain laypeople to perform activities on lands belonging to the convent whereas the provost exercised authority over all remaining members of the familia. These tensions come into clearer view in the divergent attitudes of the abbess and provost to the presence of donatas, laywomen who worked on the convent’s farm and the lands held by the Propstei, and who owed obedience directly to the abbess.67 The presence of the donatas at Holy Cross was contested and a source of disruption in some parts of the familia. These female servants did not follow the same customs as the convent’s laysisters but instead those devised by Elizabeth Pawel. Their black tunics further set them apart from the monastery’s laysisters, alongside whom they worked. The author of the convent diary expresses her own doubts about the suitability of their form of life, observing that the women ‘did not live according to the statutes of [our order] but according to those of our abbess [Elizabeth] who located them [on the convent’s farm] and proposed their manner of living’. The nun also comments on the friction that the different customs for the donatas and other members of the familia aroused. The donatas at times refused to share in the heavy work with the rest of the familia, claiming that they were not required to perform this labour as a privilege of the rule they followed.68
Two donatas joined the monastery in 1488, and although they gave obedience to the abbess she directed them to work on the farm which was managed by the Propstei, where their activities supported the provost and clerics, as well as the rest of the monastery’s community. Control over who had authority to manage this farm had been at issue between the abbess and provost for some years, with the provost seeking to shift responsibility for the farm from the convent to the Propstei. George Knochenhauer was unhappy with the presence of the donatas working on the farm alongside other lay servants. At Easter in 1493 he terminated the arrangement and removed the donatas from the farm, replacing them with laywomen who worked under his authority. He acted without consulting Mechthild and refused to permit the donatas to remain there.69
The disputes about estate management and direction of the monastery’s servants demonstrate that by the 1490s George Knochenhauer was gradually asserting increased control over the direction of laypeople working at the monastery and the activities that were to be performed on the estates. George’s precipitate action indicates the increasing levels of tension arising on both sides at the inability to negotiate a compromise to resolve their differences. It is likely that he considered the presence of these women in the lands of the Propstei as an interference in his domain. A lasting resolution was eventually reached when the women themselves approached Mechthild with a request to make their vows as laysisters, and so adopt the same status as other women who laboured for the monastery. The narrator implies that the women may have been pressured into making this request, as they reportedly expressed concern about the dangers of living according to the wish (voluntatem) or rule of the abbess rather than ‘according to the institutes prescribed for them, and claimed that they weighed this decision as a matter of conscience’. Mechthild eventually agreed to accept this change in status and invested the women as laysisters in 1495.70 In doing so she relinquished the abbess’ former custom of having female servants directly under her authority, a further acknowledgement of the provost’s claims to direct all of the monastery’s familia. Moreover, the transition of the donatas into laysisters resulted in Mechthild losing aspects of direct control over agricultural production for the convent.
One of the inherent risks in arrangements for joint governance was how to make decisions effectively and exercise authority when one party was ill or incapacitated. The strain that this situation could place on all of the familia is evident in the nun’s description of the effects of George Knochenhauer’s failing health upon his capacity to perform his duties. In April 1503 tensions flared between Mechthild and George over the construction of a new bakehouse. The narrator describes how George was afflicted by memory loss and difficulty in reasoning, which resulted in him refusing to listen to advice or to relinquish his duties.71 George organised timber to be prepared for the construction of the bakehouse, even though he knew that the Propstei did not have the funds to pay for it. When asked about the money he retorted that if he ran out of money the ‘lady abbess would make it up from the treasury of the monastery’. He was also reportedly heard to say: ‘I will borrow, auntie Mette [Mechthild] ought to pay.’72 George’s actions suggest that his growing incapacity influenced his attitude towards the authority of the women. His public comments also point to an underlying attitude that, as provost, he was not ultimately responsible for the expenses he incurred on behalf of the monastery, and his expectation and knowledge that ultimately the nuns would have to address them. This situation provided nuns with powerful motivation to maintain close oversight over the state of the monastery’s finances. The convent eventually secured financial support from the Council, and with the assistance of their procurators the bakehouse was completed.73 Although George had served the convent faithfully during his early years in office, his incapacity now severely disadvantaged the nuns.
George’s reportedly flippant attitude towards his financial accountability is the most colourful example of the poor state of relations that divided all who lived in the monastery at the time. The author describes how the co-operation and negotiation of authority so critical to sharing governance effectively had now hardened into delineated spheres of authority that allowed little possibility of overlap. The provost and abbess controlled the management of their respective farms, refusing to permit the laypeople subject to the authority of the other party to labour on their domains.74 The provost’s refusal to accept counsel exacerbated the ongoing debt issues, and Mechthild lacked authority to prevent him from authorising expenditure. The convent diary’s account exhibits remarkable balance in depicting this fragmented scenario. The author also recognises how Mechthild’s traits contributed to the conflict. She observes that although Mechthild firmly resisted any efforts by George to involve himself in convent affairs, when she sought to intervene in the Propstei she claimed divine authority, ‘thinking that she herself worked in submission to God’.75 Of greater potential damage was the impact of these divisive relations upon the rest of the familia. The loyalties of the monastery’s inhabitants were divided; those who sympathised with the provost ‘despised the abbess’, arousing her anger towards them in return. These circumstances show how the breakdown in consensus across the different groups threatened to undermine Mechthild’s personal authority.
The monastery’s debts weighed heavily on the sister who composed the convent diary.76 This is a common theme in nuns’ accounts of their relations with their provost.77 A monastery could acquire debt through mismanagement, self-interest, or lack of ability, but for the nuns affected the result was the same, as a Propstei burdened with debt impacted upon the economic security of the convent. A heavily indebted Propstei also deterred potential candidates for the position of provost from taking the office, as they did not want the work involved. The desire to alleviate the debts of a monastery could be a strong motivator for women to seek greater control over their own economic management, although the requirement to observe enclosure limited their scope to directly manage temporal affairs.
The level of debt that encumbered the monastery at George’s death in 1503 also aroused considerable anxiety among the councillors in Brunswick. When Mechthild approached the Council to search for a new provost they made her a counter-offer: the procurators suggested to Mechthild and her senior nuns that they undertake the rule (regimen) of the Propstei and all the familia themselves.78 The benefits, the procurators continued, would be to release Holy Cross from debt and ‘preserve it for the future’. The council’s willingness to adapt the long-standing governance arrangements that restricted Mechthild’s authority demonstrates how economic pragmatism could outweigh gendered assumptions about female capacity to rule. The Council presumably recognised Mechthild as a competent administrator and apparently trusted her ability to manage the estates of the Propstei effectively. The Council’s proposal also indicates an acknowledgement of shared interests; Holy Cross was closely intertwined with the Council through shared social relations so it was in all interests to ensure the monastery’s financial survival.
Before accepting the offer to extend her authority, Mechthild expressed the reservation that she could not perform the full duties of economic management without breaching enclosure. The narrator presents this dilemma as evidence of Mechthild’s commitment to ‘regular observance’, implying that she would only take the unusual step of breaking enclosure out of necessity. Mechthild did not accept the proposal until she had consulted with every member of the monastery’s familia. She received the governance of the temporal affairs of the Propstei and the abbacy in September 1503.79 The procurators appointed the priest Henning Duve as provost, to supervise the monastery’s spiritualia and to assist Mechthild; he remained subject to her in temporal matters. The author records that after twelve months of this arrangement the nuns had made some small progress in reducing the burden of debt.80 Mechthild’s cautious and consultative approach was strategic, especially in view of the deteriorating relationships between the familia and the convent in recent years. In talking to all members of the familia she could counter potential criticism from within the familia about how she proposed to conduct herself; these negotiations also enabled her to establish authority over people who had previously owed obedience to the provost. Given the emotional climate engendered by the divisions within the monastery, Mechthild needed to gain confidence that the familia would work with her.
In accepting authority to govern the Propstei, Mechthild and her officials implemented a fundamental shift in how female authority was exercised at Holy Cross. The convent diary presents Mechthild as obedient to the will of the Council and as acting out of necessity. The author reports her as saying to the procurators that ‘although it seems a burden to us and each and every member of our convent to undertake such a laborious task’ (laboriosum opus tale), nevertheless, the nuns assented because ‘your authority has advised this’ and out of the ‘necessity of our poverty and penury’.81 Mechthild is depicted in terms that assert her humility and obedience, these monastic virtues emphasise her claims to authority. The nun’s depiction seeks to redress the unusual practice of a female leader extending her authority into what was customarily the provost’s domain. Moreover, Mechthild is presented as taking on this additional work not for her own sake, but because she has been asked to and in the context of dire need. Mechthild acted with the full knowledge that her ability to direct all of the monastery’s economic affairs depended upon building consensus for her authority with all members of the familia. She was only able to extend female abbatial authority within a broad network of consensual relations involving the support of the Council and of the people whom she directed. Further, this portrayal echoes the language used to describe Mechthild’s self-understanding in her conflict with George, in which she claimed to be ‘acting in submission to God’. The question arises, then, whether Mechthild proposed herself to the procurators to direct the Propstei, presenting herself as humble and obedient, and above all as the most experienced candidate, to govern the monastery out of its economic difficulties.
Conclusion
This examination of how the abbess and provost directed the spiritual and temporal affairs at Holy Cross highlights the inherently relational character of the work involved in monastic governance. The ‘insider perspective’ of the convent diary provides evidence not available from other sources such as charters or financial records about how monastic women understood the nature and scope of their responsibilities, as well as those of their provost. This author’s descriptions of how the monastery was managed in practice shed light on the personal and working relationships between the abbess and her provosts; they illustrate how vital these relationships were to the abbesses’ effective spiritual leadership and temporal administration.
The abbesses of Holy Cross expressed a strong self-understanding as leaders responsible for the spiritual and material well-being of their monastery. The responsibilities of abbess and provost for managing the spiritual work of the monastery imply a spatial delineation of their roles, the abbess directing the convent’s spiritual work within the monastery and the provost as the senior cleric supervising the monastery’s public religious services and ecclesiastic matters. Abbesses, however, promoted the interests of their monastery by drawing on their social and political networks and through their actions to shape its spiritual environment. Whereas the abbess directed the liturgical work of the convent independently of the provost, her ability to direct spiritual matters for the monastery could be contingent upon her relations with the provost. Mechthild’s decisions—for example, acting in the absence of Provost George to secure the spiritual benefits of the jubilee indulgence—shows how she perceived the full extent of her spiritual work for the monastery, but also illustrates how her claims were contested by some within the monastery’s familia. Her decisions were eventually confirmed by the provost, demonstrating how the scope and nature of her actions were both affirmed by and contingent upon the provost’s validation.
It has been argued that the provost’s responsibility for a monastery’s temporal affairs acquired greater importance in the later Middle Ages as the result of the increasing emphasis on the enclosure of religious women.82 In the provost’s absence, the spiritual responsibilities of the office could be performed by other priests, but as George’s deterioration shows, the loss of a capable administrator to govern the monastery’s estates could contribute to financial difficulties. Although religious women were required to rely upon a provost to conduct the monastery’s temporal affairs, nuns were not precluded by enclosure from maintaining close involvement in, if not direct control over, the management of their monastery’s economic affairs. The abbesses of Holy Cross undertook extensive financial work for the convent and exercised keen oversight of their provosts’ administration. Religious women’s limits on their ability to directly manage the economic work of their monastery made their relations with their male officials all the more vital. It was crucial for nuns to influence the selection of a provost, in order to secure a person whom they could trust and with whom they could work. The vagaries of personality, capability, and experience meant that problems still arose; however, it is worth noting that the support nuns could muster from kin, patrons, and officials outside the monastery demonstrates how sound working relationships were widely recognised as key to managing the monastery’s business effectively.
The relational character of monastic governance comes to the fore in Mechthild’s response to the offer to take on the ‘laborious’ task of administering the estates of the Propstei. The obligation to maintain enclosure meant that her relations with the diverse groups of the monastery’s familia were all the more important to enable her to direct the work, usually the responsibility of a provost, effectively. Whereas her actions to secure the indulgence had been hasty, arousing confusion and disaffection about her leadership within the familia, on this occasion she acted with greater strategic caution, working to build consensus across ‘every member’ of the monastery before consenting to undertake the task. The author presents her actions as a model of monastic virtue, but lying behind this is the practical reality that Mechthild needed to gain the support of a community divided by conflicting loyalties between abbess and provost for her rule to be possible. Her actions crystallise the inherently relational character of monastic governance, and how, even in overcoming the perceived limitations of her gender to assume authority for all the monastery’s temporal affairs, the manner in which she fulfilled the role was contingent upon her working relations within and outside the monastery.
Notes
1A note on terminology: I use ‘convent’ in its broadest meaning to refer to the community of nuns (conventus) who lived and worked at Holy Cross, and ‘monastery’ to refer to the institution and its inhabitants.
2Eva Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt und Bildung. Die Lebenswelt der Nonnen im späten Mittelalter. Mit einer Edition des ‘Konventstagebuchs’ einer Zisterzienserin von Heilig–Kreuz bei Braunschweig (1484–1507) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 101–03 and the text in the edition at fols. 64v–67r, 383–85. I cite the edition hereafter as TB. This anecdote is a valuable witness to the nature and importance of musical culture for religious women’s devotional life; Linda Maria Koldau, Frauen-Musik-Kultur. Ein Handbuch zum deutschen Sprachgebiet der frühen Neuzeit (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 643–48.
3TB, fol. 66r, 384: ‘aliqui de extraneis scandalizabant’.
4TB, fol. 67r, 385: ‘Et hoc provenit, quod prepositus, cui forte hoc displicuerat, tam callide impedivit, ut postmodum numquam permisit nobis linum in nostro orto seminare, sed causam noluit dicere, ne videretur nos reprehendere.’
5For an overview see Fiona J. Griffiths and Julie Hotchin, eds., Partners in Spirit: Women, Men and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), and Klaus Schreiner, ‘Pastoral Care in Female Monasteries: Sacramental Services, Spiritual Edification, Ethical Discipline’, in Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Susan Marti, trans. Dietlinde Hamburger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
6Julie Hotchin, ‘Female Religious Life and the cura monialium in Hirsau Monasticism, c. 1080–1150’, in Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Constant Mews (New York: Palgrave, 2001), and Eva Schlotheuber, ‘The “Freedom of their Own Rule” and the Role of the Provost in Women’s Monasteries of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Partners in Spirit, ed. Griffiths and Hotchin.
7Theresa Earenfight, ‘Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe’, Gender & History 19 (2007): 1–21, and Elena Woodacre, ‘Contemplating Royal Women’s Access to Power and the Transition between the Middle Ages and the “Monstrous Regiment” of the Early Modern Era’, Medieval Feminist Forum 51 (2015): 61–68.
8In addition to the works cited in n. 6 above, see also Theresa Earenfight, ‘Medieval Queenship’, History Compass 15 (March 2017): 1–9 and Amalie Fößel, ‘Gender and Rulership in the Medieval German Empire’, History Compass 7 (2009): 55–65.
9Woodacre, ‘Royal Women’s Access to Power’, 64.
10Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 31–36.
11Ute Römer-Johannsen, ‘Braunschweig, Hl. Kreuz’, in Germania Benedictina, Band XI Norddeutschland. Die Frauenklöster in Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein und Bremen, ed. Ulrich Faust (St Ottilien: Eos, 1984), 70.
12Römer-Johannsen, ‘Heilig Kreuz’, 87.
13Römer-Johanssen, ‘Heilig Kreuz’, 81–85, outlines the scope of the monastery’s landed holdings and their geographic relation to the monastery. For individual nuns’ financial dealings in northern Germany, see: June Mecham, Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 90–126.
14Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 48–58, discusses the Cistercian links and self-identity of Holy Cross. For the broader debate about the relationships of Cistercian nuns to the order, see: Eva Schlotheuber, ‘Die Zisterzienserinnengemeinschaften im Spätmittelalter’, in Norm und Realität. Kontinuität und Wandel der Zisterzienser im Mittelalter, ed. Franz J. Felten and Werner Rösener (Berlin: LIT, 2009), 265–84, Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (London: Routledge, 2013), 124–55, and Elizabeth Freeman, who examines the debate about Cistercian nuns and adduces new evidence to identify them in England: ‘“Houses of a Peculiar Order”: Cistercian Nunneries in Medieval England, with Special Attention to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 55 (2004), 245–87.
15Margit Mersch, Das ehemalige Zisterzienserinnenkloster Vallis Dei in Brenkhausen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern: 2007), 89–93, 106; and Schlotheuber, ‘Zisterzienserinnengemeinschaften’.
16Albert de Vogüé, ‘Propst (praepositus)’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich: Artemis, 1995), 7:264.
17Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 36–44. See also the prosopographical details about the identified members of the convent mentioned in the Konventstagebuch in Appendix 6.2, ‘Konventsmitglieder und Kandidatinnen’, 481–526.
18Elisabeth Pawel was from a family of money changers and goldsmiths and Mechthild von Vechelde was from a family of drapers, one of the leading families in the city. Her cousin, Albert II von Vechelde, was mayor of the Brunswick Altstadt between 1481 and 1501. For brief prosopographical details, see Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, Appendix 6.2, no. 51, 510–11 and no. 64, 519–20.
19Ordinarius der Stadt Braunschweig, cap. 51 ‘Van vormunderen uppe dem Rennelberghe’, in Urkundenbuch der Stadt Braunschweig, ed. Ludwig Hänselmann and Heinrich Mack (Berlin: C.A. Schwetschke and Son, 1862), 1:162, no. 63; and Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 19–20. Mechthild’s cousin Albert II von Vechelde served as procurator between 1464 and 1488 (Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 346, n. 53). This practice was not uncommon in the century after the monastery was founded; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 38.
20Römer Johannsen, ‘Heilig Kreuz’, 88. For a list of provosts of Holy Cross, see Romer-Johannsen, ‘Heilig Kreuz’, 94, updated for the fifteenth century by Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 480.
21Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 58–103. For an orientation to the vast literature on late medieval monastic reform and its implications for religious women, see Mecham, Sacred Communities; Heike Uffmann, ‘Wie in einem Rosengarten’. Monastische Reformen des späten Mittelalters in den Vorstellungen von Klosterfrauen (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgescichte, 2008); and Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).
22Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 99–103.
23Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1159 Novi. The manuscript is described by Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 335–36. Numerous convent histories and narratives were written by women in the later fifteenth century to justify the changes that reform entailed or to provide moral and edifying exemplars for their community; Uffmann, ‘Wie in einem Rosengarten’; Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles.
24Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 313. The original opening of the work, in which the author may have referred to herself and her purpose in writing, has not survived. The details she provides in the account indicate that she did not have access to sources of information about the city’s politics in the same way as nuns from the leading Brunswick families and that she was not part of the circle of noble nuns within the convent; Klostereintritt, 315.
25On Latin instruction and proficiency in northern German convents, see Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 268–96; and Eva Schlotheuber, ‘Intellectual Horizons: Letters from a Northern German Convent’, in A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Anderson, Henrike Lähnemann, and Anne Simon (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 343–72.
26Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 321–27.
27Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 317 and TB, fol. 56r, 378: ‘Hec scripsi, ut sciant postere, unde talis oracio institutionem habuerit.’
28TB, fol. 222r, 467: ‘Et hoc ideo scripci, ut posteri precaverant sibi, ne discencionem parant inter prepositum et abbatissam, quia hoc fuit origo omnis mali et penurie, que nobis evenit.’
29TB, fol. 87v, 398.
30TB, fols. 127v–128r, 421. In her description of how nuns spent their days during an interdict in 1498 the author records that the nuns performed manual labour, or work, before vespers: ‘tempore laboris ad domum operis, tempore congruo in capitolio vesperas’.
31Subprioress Elze Broitzem and a laysister spent two months at the nearby Cistercian monastery of Wienhausen in September–November 1487 where they instructed the nuns there how to spin and weave culcullas, a long cowl or robe that formed the nun’s habit, and to sew the cloth band crowns nuns wore atop their veil; TB, fols. 21r–22v, 352–53.
32Bishop Gray to the nuns of Elstow in England in 1432: ‘et talem que onera chori [illegible word] ceteris religionem concernentibus poterit supportare’, cited in Anne Bagnall Yardley, Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 76.
33Volker Schier argues this point from evidence for the Birgittine monastery of Maria Maihingen in Franconia: ‘The Cantus sororum: Nuns Singing for their Supper, Singing for Saffron, Singing for Salvation’, in Cantus planus: Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the IMS Study Group, Lillafured/Hungary, 23–28 August 2004, ed. László Dobszay (Budapest: Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2006), 858.
34The capellanae were an administrative office that appear to have been unique to northern German convents. They were senior officials appointed by the abbess, in addition to the customary monastic officials such as the subprioress, cantrix, sacrista, and cellaress. For a list of convent officials for the period covered by the convent diary, see Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, Appendix 6.1, ‘Ämter’, 478.
35The surviving account book (Wolfenbüttel, Staatsarchiv, L Alt Abt. 11 S. Crucis Fb III 1) was initiated by Mechthild in July 1490; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 329–32, 375 n. 364.
36TB, fol. 218v, 464–65.
37TB, fol. 39v, 368.
38Ordinarius, cap. 50: ‘Van dem proueste vp dem Rennelberghe’, in Urkundenbuch der Stadt Braunschweig, ed. Hänselmann and Mack, 162.
39Ulrike Hascher-Burger and Henrike Lähnemann, Liturgie und Reform in Kloster Medingen. Edition und Untersuchungen des Propst-Handbuchs Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. lit. e. 18 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 51–56; Ida-Christine Riggert, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1996), 105–39; Schlotheuber, ‘Zisterzienserinnengemeinschaften’.
40The Propstei (praepositura) designated the properties that maintained the provost and clerical members of the monastery and also referred to the building in which they were accommodated, usually located just outside the monastic enclosure.
41For the backgrounds and careers of men who served as provosts at the Benedictine monasteries of Ebstorf, Lüne, Walsrode, and the Cistercian monasteries of Medingen, Wienhausen, and Isenhagen, all to the north of Brunswick, see Riggert, Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 115–21. For the office of provost as the highpoint of a career for clerics in male religious institutions see Brigide Schwarz, ‘Hannoveraner in Braunschweig. Die Karrieren von Johann Ember (d. 1423) und Hermann Pentel (d. nach 1463)’, Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 80 (1999): 9–54.
42On religious women’s efforts to obtain and exercise the privilege to elect a provost of their choice, see Riggert, Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 112–27; and Uffmann, ‘Wie in einem Rosengarten’, 232–40. In Britain religious women also sought to obtain men they could trust to serve as lay estate officials; Kimm Perkins-Curran, ‘“Quhat say ye now, my lady priores? How have ye usit your office, can ye ges?” Politics, Power and Realities of the Office of a Prioress in her Community in Late Medieval Scotland’, in Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 130.
43TB, fol. 230r, 472: ‘Noluimus habere sacerdotes divites et honoratos, sed humilies et non potes, ut essent famul{i} et provisores et non prepositi.’
44For example, prior to assuming office as provost in 1488, George Knochenhauer was vicar at the church of St Michael in Brunswick. A member of the family, Grete Knochenhauer is recorded as a nun at Holy Cross in 1399. His successor, Henning Duve, was treasurer of the confraternity of St Matthew in Brunswick and later deacon there prior to his appointment as provost. Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 383 n. 426 and 460 n. 902. By the fifteenth century, the Council of Brunswick retained the right to confirm the nuns’ choice and the new provost received full authority to exercise the spiritualia and temporalia of the monastery from the bishop of Hildesheim.
45TB, fols. 30v–31v, 359.
46TB, fol. 63r, 383.
47Römer-Johannsen, ‘Heilig-Kreuz’, 87–88.
48For the liturgy and how it shaped religious women’s practice and outlook, see Jürgen Bärsch, ‘Liturgy and Reform: Northern German Convents in the late Middle Ages’, in Companion to Mysticism and Devotion, ed. Anderson, Lähnemann, and Simon, 21–46; Gisela Muschiol, ‘Liturgy and Rite in Female Monasteries of the Middle Ages’, in Hamburger and Marti, Crown and Veil, 191–206; and Yardley, Performing Piety.
49The Rule of St Benedict, trans. with an introduction and notes by Anthony C. Meisel and M. L. del Mastro (New York: Doubleday, 1975), chapter 2, 48.
50TB, fols. 153v–155v, 434–35.
51For the Cistercian practice of cumulative commemoration of groups of donors over individual commemorative prayers, see Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order, 33–38.
52TB, fols. 55v–56r, 378.
53On the continued value of nuns’ intercessory prayer in the late medieval period, see Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 39–46.
54TB, fols. 15r–18r, 349–51. The monastery observed the spiritual restrictions of interdict from June 8, 1487 to July 1, 1488, and January 14, 1498 to December 25, 1498.
55TB, fol. 38r, 366–67.
56Wulbrand von Oberg was a notary at the Roman Rota or appeals court, and from 1508 procurator; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 354 n. 150.
57TB, fols. 24v–25r, 354.
58Nuns’ ability to harness familial and patronal networks to assert their authority and pursue their monastery’s interests has been a hallmark of recent research into women’s monasticism, for example: Jennifer C. Edwards, ‘“Man Can be Subject to Woman”: Female Monastic Authority in Fifteenth-Century Poitiers’, Gender & History 25 (April 2013); Sigrid Hirbodian, ‘Reformschwestern und Reformverliererinnen. Strategien und Handlungmöglichkeiten geistlicher Frauen in den Reformen des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in Reformverlierer 1000–1800: Zum Umgang mit Niederlagen in der europäische Vormoderne, ed. Andreas Bihrer and Dietmar Schiersner (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2016); Sherri Franks Johnson, Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain.
59Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 52–54; the events are documented in TB, fols. 135v–140v, 425–28.
60Schlotheuber, ‘Zisterzienserinnengemeinschaften’, 11.
61For broader analysis of the power of female rulers as contingent on a consensus of their subjects, see Fößel, ‘Gender and Rulership’, 58.
62For example her observations about the financial damage to the monastery that could arise when there was dissension between the abbess and provost; see n. 28 above and discussion below.
63Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 105–36, and Nancy Bradley Warren, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 55–72.
64TB, fols. 9v–10r, 346–47.
65TB, fol. 53v, 377: ‘sed nichil profecit, sed semper lis et indignacio inter prepositum et abbatissam perseveravit, sicut ante fuerat’.
66Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 78. The convent maintained the monastic custom of the common table, reflecting their sympathies with the ideals of a shared life promoted by religious reformers. This practice may have made the convent more reliant upon their provost to supply the stipulated foodstuffs, such as dairy produce, so the nuns did not have to purchase it themselves.
67Riggert, Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 209–12, discusses the general role and duties of donatas.
68TB, fol. 53v, 377: ‘Erant tunc in allodio due converse vestite nigris tunicis viventes non secundum statuta conversarum ordinis, sed secundum statuta abbatisse. Que eas ibi locaverat et modum vivendi eis posuerat.’
69TB, fols. 100r–101r, 404.
70TB, fols. 116v–117r, 413: ‘Et dicebant, quod periculosum esset eis sit vivere solum secundum voluntatem abbatisse et non secundum instituta eis prescripta, et fecerunt eis scrupulosas et perplexas in conciencia sua.’
71TB, fol. 202v, 457.
72TB, fol. 202r, 457: ‘hoc domina abbatissa de reposito claustra thesauro faciliter supplevet … Eck wil borghen, Mette mome scal betalen’. In August 1503, the convent’s accounts record that Rose Osterlo, the mother of a certain M. Osterlo (unknown whether she was a nun or a laysister) donated money for the completion of the bakehouse; Schlotheuber, Klostereintritt, 510.
73TB, fol. 212r, 461.
74TB, fols. 203v–204v, 457–58.
75TB, fol. 204r, 457: ‘Abbatissa vero, cum de rebus prepositure aliquid valuit abbacie attrahere, estimabat se obsequium deo operare.’
76The author laments the monastery’s financial position and when George Knochenhauer was elected provost in 1491 she expresses the hope of the convent that ‘we would be liberated from debt through his efforts’ (per industriam), although this did not eventuate; TB, fol. 64r, 383.
77Mecham, Sacred Communities, 96–101; Riggert, Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 132–34; and Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 41–43.
78TB, fol. 218r, 464; ‘Missi ergo rogaverunt dominam nostrum, ut concilio habito cum senioribus ascensum preberent ad suscipiendum regimen prepositure et tocius familie sicut et ceterorum cenobiorum prelate pene omnes fecissent.’
79TB, fols. 218v–220v, 464–66.
80TB, fol. 222r, 467: ‘In festo Michaelis [September 29, 1504] {fin}itus est primus annus, quod habuimus regimen utriusque, prepositure et abbacie, et modicum profecimus, quia debita prepositure gravabant claustrum, quod vix erat nobis spes reparationis, nisi deus nos specialiter adiuvaret.’
81TB, fols. 218v–219r, 464–65: ‘Licet nobis et omnibus et singulis personis conventus nostri videatur grave et laboriosum opus tale aggredi et tantis curis nos implicari, tamen, quia vestra hoc consuluit auctoritas et penurie seu paupertatis nostre exigit necessitas ascentire.’
82Hascher-Burger and Lähnemann, Liturgie und Reform, 54; and Riggert, Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 111.
Select bibliography
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Griffiths, Fiona J., and Julie Hotchin, eds. Partners in Spirit: Women, Men and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.
Hascher-Burger, Ulrike, and Henrike Lähnemann. Liturgie und Reform in Kloster Medingen. Edition und Untersuchungen des Propst-Handbuchs Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. lit. e. 18. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
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