IST 605: Women's Monastic Communities in Early Medieval Germany

Gandersheim and Quedlinburg, c 852-1024 by Sarah Greer

This dissertation is a reconsideration of the connection between Saxon convents and the ruling families of that duchy. It is widely considered to be the case that the development of women’s monastic communities in northern Germany was based on family memoria, or liturgical remembrance of the dead. However, the idea of shared masses for the Saxon dead does not align with their political activities. According to historical records, many of the ducal family members were often at odds with one another, vying for power. Through the lens of two convents, Greer argues that each branch of the family would act as a patron to multiple foundations, diversifying the chantry responsibilities. 

Hrotsvit's Legends as Redemptive Pedagogy by Sarah Bogue

East Frankish women’s communities benefitted not only from centuries of intellectual thought passed down from West Frankish and Anglo-Saxon centers, but also from the political machinations of the Ottonians. This dynasty presented their rule as connected to the divine, dependent on support of monastic communities, the latter of which often hosted the itinerant court. This, along with familial connections to many of the centers produced an environment where women religious wielded more authority. This is presented by Bogue as the background for the works produced by the nun Hrotsvit. According to Bogue, Hrotsvit’s writing style was uniquely educational and especially effective as she had the perspective of both student and a teacher. While Hrotsvit’s stories are retellings of earlier works, Bogue argues that in her renditions, the value of education is emphasized by rewarding studious and pious characters. 

Incest Disguised by Regula Evitt

It’s generally accepted that there were a multitude of reasons that women were sequestered away into monastic foundations across history, against their will and of their own accord. Evitt points out that the Church’s more stringent stance on incest in the 9th century restricted royal marriages. The author demonstrates how the Ottonian kings saw this as an opportunity to consolidate their power. Instead of marrying the daughters of their siblings and cousins to nobles who could threaten the throne, they sent many generations into monastic houses, many of which they founded. This also ensured that the valuables that would’ve traditionally been part of a dowry were transferred instead to the religious institutions. 

The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in East Francia by Scott Wells

In chapter six of Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe, Wells evaluates the purpose of one German women’s community, Gandersheim. With a review of the historiography, it can be seen that there are two conflicting theories. The first is that the foundation was of cultural importance to the early members of the Ottonian dynasty, as a place where memoria, or liturgical remembrance of the dead, were carried out. The second is that Gandersheim was of economic importance to the later rulers of that family, as demonstrated through its opportune location and the numerous grants of land made to the community. However, Wells argues that women religious were uniquely positioned to negotiate with the ruling families in a political capacity. He proposes that the prevailing thoughts on the community are not mutually exclusive, and should be viewed together, as neither cultural nor economic, but all at once cultural, economic, and symbolic, including Gandersheim’s function as a place to produce meaning through its legends, relics, and ability to host the itinerant royal family.

Reform and Resistance by Helene Scheck

In the first chapter of her book, Scheck argues that to understand the Christian influences on Germanic culture, and thereby the changes experienced by women, religious and otherwise, one must first understand how Christianity impacted and was impacted by Mediterranean culture. From there, it’s easier to see how the adaptation of Roman Christianity to the Germanic way of life often resulted in confusion, preventing, at least in the early days, any semblance of orthodoxy. Scheck refers to Tacitus’ Germania, and while acknowledging that the situation for women likely changed between the writing of ethnographic work and the first tribal laws, it’s well evinced that women held roles of religious importance in unconverted Germanic areas through the end of the early medieval period. Ultimately, in chapter one of this work, Women In/And Early Ecclesiastical Culture: An Overview, she argues that while women were being oppressed, they were still subjects in their own identity formation through the period in question.

Liturgy and Rite in Female Monasteries of the Middle Ages by Gisela Muschiol

Despite the fact that mass had a large impact on all aspects of life in the early medieval period, including private prayer, there has been little research undertaken on the liturgy of women’s monastic communities during that time. Muschiol, the author of chapter eight of Crown and Veil, shows how monastic rules affected women’s ability to worship autonomously. One of the intersections of worship, rule, and female monastics was prayer for the souls of the establishment’s founder and their family and mass in general. As a result of Carolingian reforms of the early 9th century, regular mass was thought to be as effective as such prayers, depriving convents of a vital source of income, just one of the many ways in which women’s communities were pressured by the church as the early medieval period drew to a close.

When Female Weakness Triumphs by Sarah Sutor

The medieval nun Hrotsvit composed a number of works that focus on the trials and tribulations of saints. These stories often place venerated women in situations so dire that they ultimately lose their lives through sexual and physical violence. Sutor points out that these works were often written by women, for women. Existing scholarship offers what Sutor considers to be less than satisfactory explanations for this consumption of media where violence against women features prominently, especially considering how close to the subjects of the stories the readers and listeners would have been. Instead, she uses the concept of Shadow Feminism to show that medieval women identified strongly with these struggles as they, too, were victims of a patriarchal system. Sutor further suggests that monastic women in hagiographic accounts reconciled the structural oppression they faced through masochism, or at least passivity, to literally or figuratively dismantle their femininity, and with it, the reason for their oppression. 

Woman and Power by Penelope Nash

Nash begins her talk with the early medieval context for the topic of women’s empowerment. She points out that in the time leading up to the 11th century, while patriarchal power structures did exist, they were by no means centralized, and therefore, in the early medieval period, some noble women had the opportunity to gain the same power that a man of the nobility might have. Specifically for women’s communities in Germany, Abbesses could wield similar social and economic power to queens. However, this began to change as the early medieval period came to an end. Nash points out that that land is a manifestation of power. As population increased and resources became scarce, the ruling class centralized their structures to maintain control. This resulted in the repossession of land from women’s communities as well as stricter stances on succession, making it even more difficult for widows (who often entered convents with them their wealth) to retain their entitlements, ultimately stealing autonomy and power from women who once wielded it. 

Woman under Monasticism by Lina Eckenstein

One of the first authors to write on women’s monasticism was Lina Eckenstein. In her book, she uses hagiographies, charters, and other documentary evidence to analyze and draw conclusions about the life of women religious. The topics of chapter five span hundreds of years, from the conversion of the Saxons in the late 8th century to the rise and eventual fall of the women’s community at Gandersheim in the 9th and 10th centuries. Eckenstein’s prevailing argument throughout the work was that monastic life gave most women a better opportunity for independence and education than marriage ever would.