Voices from a distant land: Fragments of a twelfth-century nuns' letter collection

Speculum

Volumn 77, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 34-52

  Beach, Alison I ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950083681     PISSN: 00387134     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2903785     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. The fragments are now cataloged as Admont, Stiftsarchiv Ii/1.
2. Wichner, "Das ehemalige Nonnenkloster O.S.B. zu Admont," Wissenschaftliche Studien und Mittheilungen aus dem Benediktiner-Orden 2 (1881), 75-86 and 288-319.
3. For a general history of Admont, see Jakob Wichner, Geschichte des Benediktiner-Stiftes Admont, 4 vols. (Admont, 1874)
4. and Rudolf List, Stift Admont, 1074-1974: Festschrift zur 900-Jahrfeier (Reid im Innkreis, 1974).
5. Hirsau was a Benedictine monastery in Württemberg, founded in 830 and reformed in the eleventh century under Abbot William (d. 1091), who had been a monk at St. Emmeram in Regensburg. William's customs, the Consuetudines Hirsaugienses, were adopted at numerous German monasteries, including Admont, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. See Hermann Jakobs, Die Hirsauer: Ihre Ausbreitung und Rechtsstellung im Zeitalter des Investiturstreites, Kölner historische Abhandlungen 4 (Cologne, 1961).
6. For a contemporary report claiming that the nuns were strictly enclosed, see Bernard Pez, ed., Bibliotheca ascetica antiquo-nova, hoc est, collectio veterum quorundam et recentiorum opusculorum asceticorum, quae hucusque in variis mss., codicibus et bibliothecis delituerunt, 8 (Regensburg, 1725), pp. 454-64.
7. "Praeterea licet post completorium secundum regulam perpetuum haberet silentium, tamen cum rogaretur a parvulis, ut versus et prosas praediceret illis, sicut erat plena caritate et dilectione, accepit tabulas et scripsit eis reddendos in crastino versus et prosas" ("In addition, although after compline she kept perpetual silence according to the rule, when, nevertheless, she was asked by the girls to dictate verse and prose for them, since she was full of love and concern, she took up tablets and wrote verse and prose to be handed over to them the next day"): "Vita, ut videtur, cuiusdam magistrae monialium Admuntensium in Styria saeculo XII," Analecta Bollandiana 12 (1893), 363-64.
8. See Alison I. Beach, "Listening for the Voices of Admont's Twelfth-Century Nuns," in Voices in Dialogue: New Problems in Reading Women's Cultural History, ed. Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame, forthcoming).
9. On Admont's female scribes, see Alison I. Beach, Women as Scribes: Monastic Reform and Book Production in Twelfth-Century Bavaria (Cambridge, Eng., forthcoming).
10. Admont's necrology was edited by Sigismund Herzberg-Fränkel in MGH Necr 2:287-309. The monastery's charters were preserved in a series of sixteenth-century tradition books (libri traditioni), all of which had been destroyed by the end of the nineteenth century, the last in the fire that destroyed most of Admont in 1865. Fortunately, Wichner consulted the libri prior to their destruction, and the details of many of the charters reflecting the admission of women are noted in his article on the nuns. See Wichner, "Das ehemalige Nonnenkloster," p. 77, n. 1.
11. Joan M. Ferrante, To the Glory of Her Sex: Women's Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), p. 18.
12. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, eds., Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre (Philadelphia, 1993).
13. Among the most recent studies of Heloise and her letters, including the persistent question of authenticity, are Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York, 1999)
14. and Bonnie Wheeler, ed., Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman (New York, 2000).
15. On the letters of Hildegard, see Lieven Van Acker, ed., Hildegardis Bingensis Epistolarium, CCCM 91 and 91A (Turnhout, 1991)
16. and Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, 1 (New York, 1994).
17. For an edition and translation of Elisabeth's letters, see Anne L. Clark, ed., Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete Works (New York, 2000), pp. 235-54.
18. Collectio Reinheresbrunnensis, ed. Friedel Peeck, MGH EppSeI 5 (Munich, 1978), pp. 80-81. Peeck suggests that the nuns had in mind the treatises of Adalbertus of Samaria and Hugh of Bologna.
19. See John Van Engen, "Letters, Schools, and Written Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries," in Dialektik und Rhetorik im früheren und hohen Mittelalter: Rezeption, Überlieferung und gesellschaftliche Wirkung antiker Gelehrsamkeit vornehmlich im 9. und 12. Jahrhundert, ed. Johannes Fried, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien, 27 (Munich, 1997), p. 105, where he describes manuals of dictamen as offering "a practical alternative to the full rhetorical training of the schools," and as "providing instruction suitable for apprentices and professional clerks in almost any setting."
20. In the double monasteries of the Hirsau reform, the head of the female community was called magistra rather than abbatissa. The only surviving copy of the Vita magistrae is a thirteenth-century copy: Admont, Stiftsbibliothek MS 25. Scholars have debated the identity of the author, but she was certainly a nun at Admont. See Friedrich Ohly, "Ein Admonter Liebesgruß," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 87 (1956), 13-23.
21. See Ohly, "Admonter Liebesgruß," p. 18.
22. Damien Van den Eynde, L'œuvre littéraire de Géroch de Reichersberg, Spicilegium Pontificii Athenaei Antoniani 11 (Rome, 1957), pp. 198-99;
23. and Peter Classen, Gerhoch von Reichersberg: Eine Biographie (Wiesbaden, 1960), p. 404.
24. Classen, Gerhoch, pp. 404-5
25. and Van den Eynde, L'œuvre, p. 288.
26. The most useful general introduction to the study of medieval Latin letters is still Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental 17 (Turnhout, 1976).
27. In 1162 Archbishop Englebert of Salzburg gave Abbot Godfrey (d. 1165) a collection of letters from the archdiocese of Salzburg to which the monks added copies of their own correspondence. See Die Admonter Briefsammlung, ed. Günther Hödl and Peter Classen, MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 6 (Munich, 1983).
28. A few examples from among the many will suffice: in Elisabeth's correspondence, see Letter 15, which is addressed to a kinswoman, Mistress G. (Clark, ed., Complete Works, pp. 247-49 and p. 297, n. 304, where Clark suggests that the addressee might have been Guda of St. Thomas of Andernach);
29. Clark notes (p. 298, n. 306) that these initials are expanded in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS Vindob. Pal. 488, to Rudolphus, Lu _, and Hermannus. In Hildegard's correspondence, Letter 1 (Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistolarium, p. 3) replaces Bernard with B. in line 1;
30. See Helmut Flachenecker, Schottenklöster: Irische Benediktinerkonvente im hochmittelalterlichen Deutschland, Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, N.F., 18 (Paderborn, 1995), pp. 214-36.
31. Admonter Briefsammlung, pp. 74-76.
32. On the course and effects of the papal schism in Bavaria, see Romuald Bauerreiss, Kirchengeschichte Bayerns, 3 (St. Ottilien, 1951), pp. 67-79.
33. Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 4 (Berlin, 1954), p. 965.
34. John Van Engen, "Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard," in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld, ed. Alfred Haverkamp, Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, 12.-19. September 1998, Bingen am Rhein (Mainz, 2000), pp. 376-77.
35. Two of the better-circulated treatises in the twelfth century were Adalbertus Samaritanus's Praecepta dictaminum, edited by Franz-Josef Schmale in MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 3 (Weimar, 1961)
36. and Hugh of Bologna's Rationes dictandi prosaice, ed. Ludwig Rockinger, in Briefsteller und Formelbücher des eilften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1, Burt Franklin Research and Source Works Series 10 (New York, 1961), pp. 47-94.
37. Constable, Letters, p. 42.
38. F. A. Wright, ed. and trans., Select Letters of St. Jerome (London, 1933), p. 21.
39. Ephraim Emerton, ed. and trans., The Letters of Saint Boniface, Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies, 31 (New York, 1940), p. 34.
40. Wright, Select Letters of St. Jerome, p. 177. This letter was written in 385 C.E.
41. Hildegard, Letter 16: Van Acker, p. 48;
42. trans. Baird and Ehrman, p. 65.
43. See, for example, Jerome's letter to Marcella (no. 44): "You send us gifts, we send you back letters of thanks" (Wright, Select Letters of Jerome, p. 177).
44. Archdeacon Theophylactus of Rome wrote to Boniface in a letter of 746-47 that he was sending spices, cinnamon, and storax as "tokens of sincere affection and blessing." See Emerton, Letters of Saint Boniface, p. 157.
45. For a historical survey of the practice of child abandonment, see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York, 1988).
46. Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995), p. 81.
47. Newman, Virile Woman, pp. 80-81.
48. Paul J. Archambault, ed. and trans., A Monk's Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent (University Park, Pa., 1996), pp. 45-46.
49. The window to which she refers may be the same window that Abbot Irimbert described as the nuns' only point of contact with visitors and spiritual advisers, unless their door to the enclosure, which was normally locked with three keys, was opened for the entry of a new recruit, the entrance of a priest for the administration of last rites, or the removal of a body for burial. Irimbert describes preaching to the nuns through this opening. Irimbert's account is printed in Pez, Bibliotheca ascetica antiquo-nova (above, n. 5), pp. 454-64.
50. See "Vita magistrae," pp. 363-64, where the text signals the presence of small children at the monastery.
51. See Bruce L. Venarde, "Praesidentes negotiis: Abbesses as Alanagers in Twelfth-Century France," in Portraits in Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy, ed. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., and Steven A. Epstein (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996), pp. 204-5, for a call for greater attention to the evidence that can be provided by sources of this nature.
52. See Franz H. Bäuml, "Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy," Speculum 55 (1980), 246, where he refers to those who cannot themselves read or write but who have access to literacy as "quasi-literate."