Studien und Texte zur literarischen und materiellen Kultur der Frauenklöster im späten Mittelalter: Ergebnisse eines Arbeitsgesprächs in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 24.-26. Febr. 1999

by Falk Eisermann (Editor), Eva Schlotheuber (Editor), Volker Honemann (Editor)

This volume contains 11 contributions that open up unknown and unstudied sources for the culture of nunneries in the later Middle Ages using examples from Germany, Switzerland and England. It focuses on the spiritual life of nuns, their education and vocational training, forms of art and piety, legal status position, and aspects of monastic architecture. Edited here for the first time are a treatise or "Sendbrief" on simony, a Low-German rule for Franciscan nuns, and documents on the reformation history of North-German nunneries. Art-historical contributions discuss the relationship of text and image in vernacular manuscripts. Archaeological and textual studies explore the relevance of claustration for the development of architecture. Furthermore, the history of education and libraries is discussed in studies on the instruction of young Benedictine nuns in Northern Germany, on the libraries of Dominican convents and a Saxon Cistercian nunnery. Contributors include: Wolfgang Brandis, Falk Eisermann, Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Volker Honemann, Annette Kern-Stahler, Margit Mersch, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Eva Schlotheuber, Peter Schmidt, Werner Williams-Krapp, and Marius Winzeler.

432 pages, Hardcover

First published July 30, 2004