Death and burial in late medieval women’s houses

ABSTRACT

The approaching death of a member of a women’s monastic community set a series of rituals in motion. These rituals accompanied the sister from the end of her life through her death and finally to her interment. These began with the community gathering for the last moments of the sister’s life, through the preparation of the body for burial, the procession to the church and rituals there. They end with the burial of the sister and a procession by the community back to their church. How the rituals were performed – and who performed them, whether the sisters themselves or a priest – varied based on the order to which the house belonged. Further shape of these rituals and the texts that they used reflect an order’s understanding of death. This paper considers the rituals for the dying and the dead described in books belonging to two medieval women’s communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Death
• liturgy
• ritual
• Dominican nuns
• Cistercian nuns

Acknowledgments

My thanks to David Burn and Marianne Gillion who read previous versions of this text. Any mistakes remain my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Women living in religious communities will be referred to as ‘sisters’ throughout this article following the Middle High German (swester) and Latin (soror).

2. This study relies primarily on the following manuscripts: for the Dominican sisters at Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, St. Peter Perg. [KBL SPP] 39 (available https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbhs/content/titleinfo/575148 1 July 2017 and for the Cistercian sisters at Heiligkreuztal, Karlsruhe Badische Landesbibliothek, St. Peter Perg. [KBL SPP] 30 (available https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbhs/content/titleinfo/574542 [accessed 01.07.17]).

3. Other known Cistercian sources include KBL Lichtenthal 122, which is imperfect, and Fille Dieu Romont Liturg. 7, whose origin is unknown.

4. This is confirmed by a colophon on fol. 76r of SPP 30: a monk named Cunrad Flandenschrot wrote the book.

5. See: https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbhs/content/pageview/4430743 10 December 2018.

6. This practice is found in the thirteenth-century Dominican manuscript London, British Library, Add. Ms. 23935, fol. 97vb.

7. See, the death of an unnamed sister recorded in the Sisterbook from the Dominican convent at Ulm. In this story the sister had a hard death. This caused some concern among the other sisters, and after her Requiem Mass, she appeared to Sister Adelheit to inform her that, because of the Mass sung for her, she was now on her way to God (Roth, 1893, p. 131).

8. This contradicts Binski’s (1996, p. 56) claim that women did not participate in the carrying of funeral biers: these sisters were the only people to carry the bier into the cemetery (St. Peter Perg. 39, fol. 58r).

9. Other manuscripts from the women’s house of St. Nicolaus in Undis show a similar use of masculine terms. See, also KBL, SPP. 4 and SPP 113.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [G0D5218N]; KU Leuven [C12 16 011].

Notes on contributors

Miriam Wendling

Miriam Wendling works for the Alamire Foundation at KU Leuven. She was a 2022-2023 long-term Fellow at the Newberry Library and prior to that, worked on the FWO funded Cantors and Catafalques project at KU Leuven.