After having been available as a digital resource in preliminary form for a number of years, the definite version has now been published in a hefty but handsome volume by the altehrwürdig Tübingen-based publisher Mohr-Siebeck:
Netzwerke der Nonnen. Kritische Edition der Briefsammlung der Lüner Benediktinerinnen (Hs. 15, ca. 1460-1555), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2025. Open access pdf of the volume.
This is the culmination of a six-year project funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung to make the letter books of the Benedictine nuns of Lüne accessible. The edition of the first of three volumes, comprising overall more than 1800 letters, is also available as a side-by-side facsimile with both a diplomatic transcription and a critical edition and an extensive commentary in the Digital Library of the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. There is also a Documentary “The Nuns’ Network” of the project in six episodes.
The letter books of the Benedictine nunnery of Lüne represent a rich source for exploring late medieval devotion, scholarship, and communication networks. The women vividly recount both everyday life and feast days in the convent, their relationships with the provost, their families, and the councillors of Lüne, as well as spiritual friendships with women from neighbouring convents. A particular feature is the preservation not only of letters from office-holding nuns but also from all members of the convent, including the convent schoolgirls. For the first time, it is also possible to trace the community’s internal grappling with emerging Reformation ideas from the perspective of a Benedictine convent.
The edition comprises over 450 letters written in Latin, Low German, and a distinctive code-switching language used particularly for internal communication between the women. It illuminates the social, linguistic, historical, and rhetorical context of these learned nuns and their communication networks. The Lüne letter books significantly expand the corpus of texts independently authored by women in the late Middle Ages. In doing so, the nuns developed a language tailored to their needs—one capable of expressing both their monastic daily life and their religious aspirations.
Photograph: The monograph in the cloisters of Lüne; photographed by Amélie Gräfin zu Dohna, Abbess of Kloster Lüne