{"id":1645,"date":"2024-06-09T06:11:05","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T06:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2025-01-24T19:50:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T19:50:57","slug":"coming-soon-the-life-of-nuns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/2024\/06\/09\/coming-soon-the-life-of-nuns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of Nuns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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‘The Life of Nuns’ is open access available via Open Book Publishers https:\/\/www.openbookpublishers.com\/books\/10.11647\/obp.0397<\/a>
For a 20% discout on paper copies, use the code LONHL_24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to a podcast about the volume on ‘Gone Medieval’<\/a> (aired 20 December 2024)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It all started with a mistake: \u2018Der Spiegel\u2019, a widely read news magazine in Germany, ran a double-spread article on the big research project which Eva Schlotheuber and I direct, the edition of 1.200 letters from the Benedictine convent L\u00fcne in North Germany. In the interview for it, we had talked about how important education by the nuns was for the \u2018Lehrkinder\u2019, children educated at the convent. The girls would come into the community, aged 7 to 9, and then get a thorough grounding in a wide range of discipline such as music, as pictured in the scene from a text book from Kloster Ebstorf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Teaching Music in the Convents (Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv V 3, 15th century, fols 200v\u2013201r)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Der Spiegel\u2019 turned our phrase of \u2018Lehrkinder\u2019 into \u2018die Kinder der Nonnen\u2019 (the children of the nuns) \u2013 hinting at sex and scandal behind convent walls (in 2\/2020<\/a> ‘So colourful was the life of nuns in the Middle Ages’). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This sparked further media interest and the Ullstein publishing house approached us because it had piqued their interest. When we explained that the attention-grabbing headline about “the nuns had children” was based on a misunderstanding, they were slightly disappointed \u2013 but then offered us the opportunity to set the record straight. And, arguably, what we could offer was much more exciting: the colourful and detailed accounts of lively, intellectual, strategic, argumentative, powerful women, shaping religion and politics of their times, looking after the girls (despite or even because they were their spiritual and not biological daughters!), negotiating business deals, writing, painting, composing and influencing the way we live today through their books, songs, and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Life of Nuns\u2019 tries to capture the richness of the life of these medieval nuns by incorporating as much primary source material as possible. Each of the big topics \u2013 such as Education, Music, and yes: Love and Friendship \u2013 starts with an account taken from the diary of a nun who lived at the end of the 15th<\/sup> century in the convent St Crucis in Braunschweig. The anonymous author covers the high feasts \u2013 celebrating the entry of new nuns, welcoming illustrious visitors \u2013  and the everyday mundane events \u2013 lice, Lebkuchen (gingerbread), laundry. And we end every of our chapters with the presentation of a significant art work from the convents: the impressive wall paintings done in the 14th<\/sup> century by \u201cthree nuns all called Gertrud\u201d in Wienhausen, the largest medieval world map in Ebstorf (30 goatskins sewn together), tapestries, statues, stained glass, the oldest spectacles in the world (fallen through the floorboard cracks in the nuns\u2019 choir) \u2013 an embarrassment of riches from a world that few people even know existed. That is particularly true for an Anglophone audience since so much of the evidence is lost due mainly to the dissolution of the monasteries but also a repurposing of surviving architecture and treasures. Compare Kloster Wienhausen and Godstow Abbey: in Wienhausen we have got the full set of monastic buildings, cloisters, huge grain stores, cells, corridors, imposing Gothic nuns choir and more \u2013 and everything that furnished it: stained glass, wall paintings, sculptures, down to the different set of dresses for the statues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Cistercian Convent of Wienhausen from the South: Magazine (left) and Nuns\u2019 Choir. Photograph: Henrike L\u00e4hnemann<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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