Chapter Eighteen Subversive Obedience. Images of Spiritual Reform by and for Fiftenth-century Nuns

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Figure 1 Elsbeth Stagel writing (fol. 3ra), Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß,

ca. 1450–70 (Photo: J. Carroll/Stadtsbibliothek Nürnberg).







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and offers a glimpse at a fifteenth-century moment when the nuns’ agency

and the reformers’ goals found a delicate compromise.

In the prologue affixed to the fifteenth-century Nuremberg exemplar of

Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, the reform-minded Dominican Johannes

Meyer (1422–1484) stated that he wrote out the text of the earlier Töss

vitae for the scriptorium at St. Katharine’s. He further amended the sisterbook by adding a life of Elsbeth Stagel to the beginning material and a life

of the mother of Heinrich Seuse (ca. 1295–ca. 1366), as well as a vita for

Elizabeth of Hungary (1292–1338) at the end (fol. 67vb, Fig. 2).5 Meyer

may have focused on the Töss Nonnenviten rather than other fourteenthcentury Dominican sister-books, such as Adelhausen or Engelthal,

because of Elsbeth Stagel’s long friendship with her spiritual advisor, the

great mystic Heinrich Seuse.6 Certainly the importance Meyer conferred

upon the vitae is reflected in its careful execution at St. Katharine’s. Klara

Keiperin, the mistress of the convent’s books after 1457, was one of three

scribes who copied the volume, and the extensive illustration cycle was

executed by the workshop of Barbara Gewichtmacherin (d. 1491).7 The

corrected manuscript is easy to read and joyously colorful.

As in any work copied from an earlier source, two agendas are simultaneously present in the volume. When dealing with a fifteenth-century



vol. 9, cols. 219–223; Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, “Elsbeth Stagel,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, ed. Marcel Viller, 17 vols (Paris, 1960), vol. 4, pp. 588–89.

5 The additions and changes to the Töss chronicle are outlined in the Introduction

found in Elsbeth Stagel, Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, ed. Ferdinand Vetter, in Deutsche

Texte des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1906), pp. vii–xxvi. Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles.

Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, 2004),

pp. 13–14, explains that Meyer amended the original Tưß manuscript with his prologue and

epilogue, as well as the biography of Seuse’s mother. Seuse and Stagel corresponded for

years about spiritual matters. Elizabeth of Hungary was a sister at Töss and the daughter

of King Andrew III of Hungary (ca. 1265–1301). She was never a queen, although called one

in the Schwesternbuch.

6 In addition, the Töss stories have fewer visions connected with illness and death than

most other Nonnenviten, whose tales often seem to follow a bout of extreme ill health on

the part of the visionary.

7 Klara Keiperin, née Baumgartner, was a Nuremberg patrician who was born in 1424,

married in 1439, widowed in 1442, entered St. Katharine’s in 1447, and died in 1498. During

her time in the convent, she wrote all or part of eighteen manuscripts. Barbara Gewichtmacherin came to Nuremberg with a second group of reforming sisters from the cloister

at Schönensteinbach (Alsace) in 1445. The two known manuscripts on which she worked

as a scribe (Nuremberg Stadtbibliothek, Cent VII, 34 and Cent VI, 100) are in Alsatian and

dedicated to her Prioress Gertrud Gewichtmacherin and Subprioress Ursula Tötin, both

from Schönensteinbach. Barbara is better known as the illustrator of several texts from St.

Katharine’s. Schneider, Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, pp. XX–XXI, XXIX,

67–68.



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Figure 2 St. Elizabeth of Hungary (fol. 67vb), Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß,

ca. 1450–70 (Photo: J. Carroll/Stadtsbibliothek Nürnberg).



copy of a fourteenth-century work, it is necessary to tease apart the original purpose of the piece from its repurposed intent. Three major forces

contributed to the fourteenth-century creation of Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß. As Anne Winston-Allen correctly has argued, Elsbeth Stagel

worked on her Schwesternbuch at a time of mystical flowering within the

Dominican order. Stagel and her contemporaries, who wrote similar lives

of their fellow nuns, recorded these hagiographic and thaumatographic







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biographies to legitimize their convents.8 While Dominican men had

been called to preach, the justification for female Dominicans, aside from

prayer, was less clear. A form of validation for their existence was implied

in the spiritual power of female faith exhibited in the biographies they

recorded—a power gained through direct contact with God, Christ, the

Virgin, or the Saints.9 No one could question God’s favor or a cloister’s

existence when confronted with the evidence found in these Schwesternbücher. The visions contained in the nuns’ lives also conveyed authority

to women who were normally barred from contributing to contemporary theological discussions. Winston-Allen defines this development as

empowerment, while Caroline Walker Bynum interprets it as outright

rebellion by an excluded group.10 Both readings represent aspects of a

multi-layered truth.

In addition, the fourteenth century worried that the original piety of

the Order’s founders had been lost in the subsequent hundred years. As

Elsbeth Stagel lamented in her sister-book, “the love of God is beginning

to decline these days in many places in the hearts of men, and one would

like to hear about earlier times.”11 It was hoped that examples of earlier

faith could renew fourteenth-century Dominican nuns’ spiritual devotion

by reminding them of the expectations and traditions of their Order. Thus

the composition of the Schwesternbuch from Töss in the fourteenth century, as well as other such books, served the nuns both within their cloister and within the Order.

8 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, pp. 207–08.

9 The contents of the Schwesternbücher are carefully analyzed in Hester Reed Gehring,

“The Language of Mysticism in South German Convent Chronicles of the Fourteenth Century,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1957. Also Walter Blank, “Die

Nonnenviten des 14. Jahrhunderts. Eine Studie zur hagiographischen Literatur des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Visionen und Lichtphänomene,” Ph.D.

dissertation, Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, 1962; Georg Kunze, “Studien zu den

Nonnenviten des deutschen Mittelalters. Ein Beitrag zur religiösen Literature im Mittelalter,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Hamburg, 1953; Gertrud Jaron Lewis, By Women, for

Women, about Women. The Sister-books of Fourteenth-century Germany (Toronto, 1996);

Siegfried Ringler, Viten- und Offenbarungsliteratur im Frauenklöstern des Mittelalters

(Munich, 1980); and, in part, Charlotte Woodford, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 2002).

10 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 208; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and

Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), p. 206.

11 Stagel, Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, p. 87. “Es beginnet ietz die götlich min an

fil stetten erlöschen in der menschen hertzen, und möcht ain mensch über fil zites etwas

hören . . .” Translated and quoted in part in Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 76, further translation is my own.



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As Winston-Allen has pointed out, reformed fifteenth-century Dominican sisters were encouraged to write a very different type of story. As part

of the Order’s broad reforms in that century, male clerics urged the nuns to

record in convent chronicles their foundation history and the subsequent

growth of their community.12 These chronicles had many fewer vitae,

focusing instead on the founding myths that stressed piety and the establishment of a continuum within which contemporary nuns could place

themselves. The implication, perfect for a reform, was not to deviate from

that tradition. Also in keeping with the fifteenth-century reform’s focus on

practical spirituality were the recurring themes of character, competence,

fortitude, and industry. The result was a series of chronicles that WinstonAllen sums up as “works that were not only generated by the reform but,

at the same time, sought to shape, validate, and perpetuate it.”13 The main

characters were workers imbued with simple faith. This model became

the preferred fifteenth-century type.

The fifteenth-century copies of earlier Schwesternbücher, like the Nuremberg Tưß, also were created during this time of Dominican reform. In keeping with that movement, the series of vitae in Das Leben der Schwestern zu

Tưß contains a recurring theme of faith rewarded, which corresponds to

principles of the reform. The copying of an earlier manuscript also would

have reinforced the fifteenth-century desire to put sisters to work. And

certainly the reform’s reawakened interest in the history of the Dominican

Order played a part in the selection of this volume for replication.14

Complicating the situation is the fact that the contents of Tưß run

counter to some of the primary goals of the reform, such as its emphasis on community, skepticism about female mysticism, and containment

of women within the rules of the Order. If Das Leben der Schwestern zu

Tưß was meant to inspire the sisters of St. Katharine’s, the role models it

provided were not in keeping with the concerns of the church hierarchy

who met at the Council of Constance (1414–1417). The Observant reform

focused on stricter practices, claustration and practical work while echoing the Council’s caution to clerics to be wary of accepting any female

visions or revelations.15 During the fifteenth century, a time of reimposed



12 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 197.

13 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 238.

14 As Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, p. 14, points out, the Schwesternbücher’s

emphasis on poverty, virtue, and spiritual devotion would provide appropriate reading

matter for the reformed sisters.

15 Ute Stargardt, “Male Clerical Authority in the Spiritual (Auto)biographies of Medieval Holy Women,” in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An







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male authority, any female deviance was discouraged. Yet the contemporary sisters of Nuremberg painted images into their Tưß manuscript

that stressed tales of extreme piety, mystical revelation, and individual

empowerment, such as that of Mezzi Sidwibrin (Sidenweberin) who had

an ongoing dialogue with the Virgin and Child (fol. 23rb, Fig. 3), which she

related to her fellow sisters.16

While the Tưß images are, on one level, subversive to the reform, it

should be noted that the Nuremberg illuminators carefully chose which

events to illustrate, avoiding the flamboyantly dramatic and focusing on

moments of quiet connection between individual nuns and holy figures.

Although the Tưß vitae are filled with theatrical tales of shining lights,

glowing rooms, and levitating protagonists, none of those more supramagical instances are depicted. The dramatic details of such stories

made fascinating reading, but they never found visual expression. Thus

the reader is left to form interior pictures of Offmya von Münchwil, ill

in bed at the end of her life and seeing a light enter the room, produce

a cloth and a patten, and watching as the body of Christ lies down upon

the plate.17 Similarly, the artists choose not to portray Margret von Zurich

watching Sister Juliana Ritterin fill with light and float in the air, or Beli

von Wintertur absorb the light of the Holy Spirit until she flew around the

room.18 These extreme events certainly would not have been acceptable

to the reform hierarchy, and they would not have helped to underscore

the Nuremberg sisters’ emphasis on power gained through calm exhibitions of piety and sanctity.

What is stressed by the Nuremberg images is a tone of intimate personalized spirituality, which pervades the vitae from Töss, as well as those

of the convents of Diessenhofen, Ötenbach, and Weiler, sister-books that

also were copied at St. Katharine’s.19 A further complication comes from

the fact that all four convents were unreformed at the time their stories



Anthology of Feminist Approaches to Middle High German Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen

(Göppingen, 1991), pp. 209–10. A discussion on the censorship arising from the Council

of Constance can be found in Werner Williams-Krapp, “ ‘Dise ding sind dennoch nit ware

zeichen der heiligkeit.’ Zur Bewertung mystischer Erfahrung im 15. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift

für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 20 (1990), pp. 61–71.

16 Stagel, Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, pp. 28–29.

17 Stagel, Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, p. 32.

18 Stagel, Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, pp. 36, 41.

19 Schneider, Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, pp. 67–69, 78–79.

The Schwesternbücher of Tưss, Diessenhofen, and Ưtenbach are found in Nuremberg’s

Stadtbibliothek, Cent. V, 10a. Weiler’s vitae are found in Cent. VI, 43b, ff. 1r–16v without

illustrations.



Figure 3 Mezzi Sidwibrin and the Virgin and Child (fol. 23rb), Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß, ca. 1450–70 (Photo:

J. Carroll/Stadtsbibliothek Nürnberg).



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subversive obedience: images of spiritual reform



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were selected for copying at St. Katharine’s.20 If, as Bynum has stated,

male religious power derived from the office held and female religious

power was acquired through visions,21 then the Tưß illustrations and the

Schwesternbücher tales seem to present the nuns with a path to agency at

a time when possibilities were limited.

For the Nuremberg copy of Tưß to be embraced by both the clergy who

looked after the spiritual lives of the sisters, the cura monialium, and the

nuns, it had to find a compromise that addressed observance and empowerment in a manner that each constituency could accept. On the one

hand, it may be possible that the male religious viewed Schwesternbücher,

Tưß included, as directed at the reform, but not integral to the reform.

Their stress on individual efforts and the power of faith to transform were

acceptable themes within observance but not its focus. On the other hand,

those same themes, with additional emphasis, also can become a call to

self-empowerment—a call that the patrician daughters of St. Katharine’s

may have welcomed. The Nuremberg illustrations capture the ecstatic joy

of piety and the personal reward of spiritual purity, while also celebrating the individual in contact with the holy. Thus the illustrated copy of

Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß attempted to balance these two agendas.

Text and image worked in tandem to persuade the Dominican sisters of

the reward of commitment, yet beneath that official rhetoric is the narrative of unmediated contact with God. To understand how and why these

messages were created, it is necessary to examine more closely the illustrated copy of Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tưß and the circumstances in

which it was created.

Much is known about this volume, the book production at St. Katharine’s, and the tumultuous history of reform connected to that cloister. The

fifteenth-century reform was part of a larger movement that encompassed

most Orders and emphasized strict observance. The plague and the Avignon papacy had loosened the oversight on many religious institutions,

and in 1380 Master General of the Dominican Order Raymond of Capua



20 Tưss, Diessenhofen, and Ưtenbach were never reformed and remained Conventual

convents. They never rededicated themselves to a life of enclosure, prayer, and subservience to a male hierarchy. Weiler was reformed in 1478, but the St. Katharine’s volume

contains the hand of Sister Elisabeth Schurstabin, who left Nuremberg in either 1468 or

1472 for the convent of Maria Medingen, where she died in 1476. Thus the Weiler Schwesternbuch was copied before the cloister underwent reform. Schneider, Die Handschriften

der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, pp. 78–79. It should be noted that no Schwesternbuch or

chronicle was written about St. Katharine’s in Nuremberg.

21 Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 22.



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(ca. 1330–1399) began a reform of the religious communities under his control.22 In 1388, the reform was broadened to include the female religious

and an attempt was made to bring luxury-living Dominican nuns back to

a life of discipline and proper piety. Especially appalling were the living

arrangements favored by the Dominican nuns who often resided in comfort, retaining their jewels, feather beds, and linens. They were reported

to be much addicted to rich food, gossip, and sloth. Such an existence ran

counter to the Dominican goals of a life of voluntary poverty, religious

devotion, obedience, and fasting. One house, Schönensteinbach in Alsace

(founded 1397), was designated as the reform model for the province of

Teutonia. There enclosure was enforced, dietary rules obeyed, and the

hourly devotions performed by all. Newly devout nuns from that convent

then could be sent out in groups of three to twelve to bring the remaining houses into line. In short order, the sisters of Schönensteinbach had

reformed the convents of Unterlinden in Colmar (1419), the Steinen cloister of Basel (1423), St. Katherine’s in Nuremberg (1428) and St. Nikolaus

in undis at Strassburg (1431). These five convents became known for their

intense prayer, austerity, self-reflection, inner devotion, and artistic production. All aspects of their religious life, including the making of manuscripts and tapestries, reflected the sisters’ renewed commitment of their

souls and hands to God’s will.23

At St. Katharine’s in Nuremberg, Meyer wrote that in 1396 and 1397

Prior Konrad of Prussia had unsuccessfully attempted to reform that

wealthy convent,24 but resistance was so great that, when he attempted

22 The eyewitness account of this reform is found in Johannes Meyer, O.P., Buch der

Reformacio Predigerordens, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, in Quellen und Forschungen zur

Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1909).

23 Much has been written about the late medieval reform of the Dominican Order; some

are general histories while others focus on individual cloisters. Overviews of the reform

can be found in Gabriel M. Löhr, “Die Teutonia im 15. Jahrhundert. Studien und Texte

vornehmlich zur Geschichte ihrer Reform,” in Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des

Dominikanerordens in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1924); John Baptist Reeves, The Dominicans

(New York, 1930); William A. Hinnebush, The History of the Dominican Order, vol. 2, Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York, 1973); Eugen Hillenbrand, “Die Observatenbewegung in der deutschen Ordensprovinz der Dominikaner,” in Reformbemühungen

und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm (Berlin,

1989), pp. 219–71; and Benedict M. Ashley, The Dominicans (New York, 1990). For issues

of reform as they affected the Clarissans, see, in the present volume, Eileen McKiernan

González, “Reception, Gender, and Memory: Elisenda de Montcada and Her Dual Effigy

Tomb at Santa Maria de Pedralbes.”

24 Meyer, Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens, pp. 61–70. The story of St. Katharine’s

reform is discussed in T. von Kern, “Die Reformation des Katharinenklosters zu Nürnberg

in Jahre 1428,” Jahresbericht des historischen Vereins in Mittelfranken, 31 (1863), pp. 1–20;







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to deliver a papal bull calling for changes, two sisters threatened to hit

him over the head with a large crucifix and drove him from the cloister.

Afterward, in self-defense, Konrad allowed his brothers to carry bags of

flour at the waist to throw in the faces of aggressive nuns. Despite this

measure, the convent remained unreformed. A crisis was reached in 1428

when a wealthy widow took herself, and more importantly her fortune, to

Alsace rather than live among the disorder of St. Katharine’s. The Nuremberg city council was enraged at this loss of capital and requested that

the Prior General bring their Dominican sisters under control.25 With

that goal in mind, ten sisters from Schönensteinbach were dispatched to

Franconia (northern Bavaria).26 For eight days, the reforming nuns were

denied entrance to St. Katharine’s, but with the backing of the town and

the new General of the Order, Bartholomäus Texery (d. 1449), the Alsatian

nuns were finally admitted and set about reforming the Franconian convent. Of the thirty-five sisters then residing at St. Katharine’s, eight left for

conventual cloisters, but the rest remained and recommitted themselves

to the Dominican Order. The conversion of the Nuremberg nuns to observance was so complete that they in turn became the reformers for eight

Dominican convents in southern Germany and Austria.27

Pivotal to the success of any reform was the ability to find practical

work for the newly observant Dominican sisters. At St. Katharine’s, as at

other Dominican cloisters, it was a delicate task to find useful but undemeaning jobs for the patricians’ daughters and the minor nobility housed

there. In Nuremberg, the Schönensteinbach reformers reintroduced the

Johannes Kist, “Klosterreform im spätmittelalterlichen Nürnberg,” Zeitschrift für bayerische

Kirchengeschichte, 32 (1963), pp. 31–45; and Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, pp. 110–11,

130, 146–47. Some of the initial resistance to reform may be due to the efforts of middleclass reformers to impose order on noble or patrician daughters.

25 Meyer, Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens, pp. 66–67.

26 The ten nuns were a talented group: Gertrud Gewichtmacherin, who became the

first reform prioress at St. Katharine’s, Katherina von Mülheim, who became prioress at

Tulln in 1466, Ursula Jotin, who became prioress at Pforzheim, Elysabeth Karlin, also a

prioress at Pforzheim and a scribe, Anna Burgreffin, a subprioress at St. Katharine’s, Margretha Kartheuserin, a singer and a scribe (thus also knowledgeable in Latin), Margretha

Vornan, Ursula Wolsechin, Margretha Imhoff, a scribe, and Agnes Tafferin, a lay sister.

They were accompanied by Brother Cunrat Spilberger. Meyer, Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens, pp. 64–66.

27 St. Katharine’s took part in the reform of Tulln in Austria (1436), Pforzheim (1443),

Heilig Grab in Bamberg (1451), Altenhohenau (1465), Maria Medingen by Dillingen (1467

and 1472), Heilig Kreuz in Regensburg (1476 and 1483), Gotteszell in Gmünd (1478), and

Engelthal (1512). Meyer, Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens, pp. 65–66; Lotte Kurras, “Ein

Bildzeugnis der Reformtätigkeit des Nürnberger Katharinenklosters für Regensburg,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg, 68 (1981), pp. 293–296.



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tradition of singing and writing. Soon after the Alsatian nuns’ arrival at St.

Katharine’s, books began to be copied in vast numbers, both for consumption within the convent and to be sent to other institutions.28 The Franconian sisters expanded their output by producing tapestries, woodcuts,

and illuminations, as well as the manuscripts.

The St. Katharine’s scriptorium that produced the Tưß manuscript

appears to have been led by Margareta Kartäuserin (active ca. 1430–1489),

a prolific scribe who arrived at St. Katharine’s with the original ten sisters

from Schönensteinbach. A decade later another sister from Gebweiler,

Barbara Gewichtmacherin (active ca. 1440–1491), came to Nuremberg and

began a tradition of illumination.29

The Kartäuserin/Gewichtmacherin collaboration produced a distinctive style. The idiosyncratic calligraphy includes a broad, powerful, round

cursive script that is an Alsatian import.30 The painted style is comprised

of stylized figures with minimal modeling, bright colors, and a decorative

effect, with an emphasis on line and pattern. The effect is similar to that

of a colorful textile piece. Christoph von Murr’s eighteenth-century report

attests to the success of the Kartäuserin/Gewichtmacherin pairing. Von

Murr recorded that, during Margareta and Barbara’s lifetimes, one of their

volumes sold for 400 thaler, more than double the cost of a town house.31

The style of the Tưß illustrations reflects the decorative motifs found in

Gewichtmacherin’s images, but pares the elements down to their simplest

forms, eliminating almost all modeling. Thus the miniatures may more

accurately be placed within St. Katharine’s workshop rather than attributed to the leader of that enterprise.32 Tưß does remain, however, one of



28 The organization and output of the St. Katharine’s scribes is described in Schneider,

Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, pp. XII–XXXIII. She estimates that, at the

height of its production, St. Katharine’s owned about 500 volumes. Of those, the nuns

created half. Today 147 manuscripts from the convent are housed in the Stadtbibliothek

in Nuremberg.

29 Schneider, Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, pp. XII–XIII, XIX–XXI.

Also Christine Sauer, “Zwischen Kloster und Welt: Illuminierte Handschriften aus dem

Dominikanerinnenkonvent St. Katharina in Nürnberg,” in Frauen-Kloster-Kunst. Neue

Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters, eds. Jeffrey Hamburger, Carola Jäggi,

Susan Marti, and Hedwig Röckelein (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 113–29.

30 Schneider, Die Handschriften der Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, p. XVI.

31 Christoph Gottlieb von Murr, Beschreibung der vornehmsten Merkwürdigkeiten in des

H. R. Reichs freyen Stadt Nürnberg und auf der hohen Schule zu Altdorf (Nuremberg, 1778),

pp. 77–78.

32 One of Barbara Gewichtmacherin’s illuminations is reproduced in color in FrauenKloster-Kunst, plate 9.