Imagine the following scene: solemnly a Dominican sister pursues her journey to the seven pilgrim churches of Rome. She visits San Pietro, San Giovanni in Laterano, San Paolo Fuori le Mura, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Lorenzo, San Sebastiano and Santa Croce, contemplating the images which provide her with vivid representations of Christ's life and passion and depict the spiritual achievements of the saints. She looks at their relics and meditates upon their unfaltering faith and devotion. And she prays, for she passionately wants to acquire all the indulgences that she can get for the remission of penance. The indulgences the Roman churches provided had prompted her to embark on this pilgrimage: she sees herself in desperate need of divine grace and forgiveness since she is fully conscious of the sins which weigh down every human being. However, this sister never actually leaves her convent since the rule of her order requires strict enclosure, thus preventing her from visiting the holy places for which she longs. So her travels involve but a few steps, from one church to the next, always within the same room: what she is ‘visiting’ are the paintings of the principal Roman pilgrim churches on the walls of the convent's chapter house.
II
In 1487 the sisters of St Katherine's in Augsburg, a wealthy Dominican convent, were awarded a papal privilege by Innocent viii (1484–92) granting them all the indulgences usually acquired through a pilgrimage to Rome and visits to the seven pilgrim churches. They could also acquire the indulgences linked to other Roman churches.Footnote 1 To qualify they simply had to recite three Paternosters and three Ave Marias at three different and specified localities within the enclosure. Old or ill sisters could fulfil the requirements, although remaining where they were, by saying nine Paternosters and nine Ave Marias. The sisters commemorated the privilege by means of a small memorial tablet, designed like a small altar,Footnote 2 the so-called Augsburger Ablasstafel.Footnote 3
The privilege had been negotiated on behalf of the communityFootnote 4 by Bartholomäus Riedler, a canon and dean of the monastery of St Moritz.Footnote 5 He may have been a relative, perhaps the brother, of a contemporary sister, Anna Riedler, later to be one of those who commissioned the chapter house paintings.Footnote 6 The memorial tablet mentions his name and calls him ‘most erudite’ (‘hochgelert’). He was a doctor of both laws; Leo Juhnke suggests that he may have been an erstwhile member of the papal Curia and still had influential contacts which helped him to negotiate on behalf of the sisters.Footnote 7 The introduction to the privilege gives as its rationale that ‘the prioress and the sisters’ who ‘live eternally enclosed and locked up’ will, so encouraged, offer themselves up with ever-increasing devotion to their Lord and bridegroom.Footnote 8 This seems to reflect the specific situation then prevailing at St Katherine's: the community's unwillingness to accept full enclosure and the attempts of their confessors, their superiors and the ecclesiastical hierarchy to compel them to adhere to the rules of their order. At the same time the privilege took into account the spiritual needs of religious women whose spatial environment and movements were rigorously restricted.
There is a further element to this story, however, for the sisters of St Katherine's seem not to have been content with being able to qualify for indulgences through prayer. Some years later, beginning in 1499, five sisters from wealthy backgrounds, two of them significantly named Riedler, commissioned the best artists in Augsberg – Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Burgkmair the Elder and a painter with the intials L. F. – to produce six monumental paintings for their newly-built convent which exuberantly portray the seven main pilgrim churches of Rome.Footnote 9
This study explores the reasons behind that commission, which seems to have been a belated consequence of the enforced introduction of strict enclosure in September 1441.Footnote 10 The events surrounding this, its aftermath and the significance of enclosure for the Dominican reformers in their quest for their spiritual roots will therefore be considered. An attempt will also be made to explain why strict enclosure was never really acceptable to the Dominican sisters of Augsburg, even if they resigned themselves to it in the end. This case study presents a rare opportunity to observe how the sisters managed to adjust to the changes in their circumstances. In other cases communities of Dominican nuns either complied with strict observance or rejected it.Footnote 11 Representatives of the reform movement such as the chronicler Johannes Meyer (Iohannes Meyger Turicensis op, 1422–85) often idealise the response of Dominican sisters to the introduction of strict observance.Footnote 12 The sources for St Katherine's, Augsburg, however, give a nuanced, even ambiguous impression; hence they provide the opportunity to catch a glimpse of how the situation developed over a period of some decades.
III
St Katherine's, founded in 1239, had adopted the Dominican rule in 1246. Initially the sisters had lived outside the city walls. Around 1250 they moved into the town, their house being situated in a fashionable quarter of Augsburg.Footnote 13 Many of the choir sisters came from high-status families or the local gentry;Footnote 14 indeed, it seems that by about 1515 half of the sisters were descended from wealthy patricians.Footnote 15 Their main duties – according to the rule of St Augustine and the constitutions of the Dominican sisters – were prayer and contemplation.Footnote 16 Menial tasks were performed by lay sisters (conversae) from mostly modest backgrounds since the choir sisters were not to be deflected from praise and intercessory prayer. At the same time the lives of these nuns seem not to have been overly rigid and austere,Footnote 17 and in line with their origins the dowry of many of them consisted of goods which would make convent life more comfortable. Despite the ideals of poverty and simplicity of life which determined daily routine within the community the nuns were allowed to use all the household items, furniture, linens, fur and suchlike that they had brought with them into the convent.Footnote 18 The demands of poverty had never been taken particularly seriously, since from the beginning the sisters had retained full command of all their possessions.Footnote 19 Nor did taking the veil involve severing all links with families and society outside the convent walls. In 1357/58 the sisters decided that members who had left the convent without the prioress's knowledge could not returnFootnote 20 – a clear indication that the sisters sometimes left the community to visit their families. All they needed was the prioress's consent.Footnote 21 Another indication that life at St Katherine's was not particularly rigorous is that members of the community sometimes left to join the strictly observant convents of the Dominican reform movement.Footnote 22 The latter began when Conrad of PrussiaFootnote 23 founded the convent of Schönensteinbach near Guebwiller in Alsace.Footnote 24 The call to follow the rule and the constitutions without compromise and exception appealed to many women who had not been content with traditional convent life. They were usually allowed to move to one of the reformed houses. Several sisters transferred from Augsburg to a strictly observant community or, although from Augsburg chose to enter the religious life in a reformed convent in another city. Johannes Meyer tells of five sisters, born in Augsburg, who chose Schönensteinbach. The most prominent member of St Katherine's to transfer there was Katharina Langmentlin (d. 1442),Footnote 25 cellarer (schaffnerin) and prioress (for twenty years) before she finally decided to move.Footnote 26 Another was Elisabeth Herwertin, ‘driven by God and her conscience’ to change her lifestyle; later she became the first subprioress of Kirchheim, a convent where reform initially met with fervent opposition.Footnote 27 Two other women from Augsburg shunned the insufficiently reformed Dominican convents of their home town and took the veil at Pforzheim.Footnote 28 They seem not to have been the only ones to prefer the reformed way of life.Footnote 29
In 1441 Nicolaus Nottel, the prior-provincial of Teutonia (the southern German province of the Dominican order) and a fervent advocate of the Dominican reform movement, tried to introduce the observant way of life into St Katherine's.Footnote 30 The Augsburg city council had appealed to him, arguing that the sisters of St Katherine's did not obey the Dominican rule and constitutions as they were obliged.Footnote 31 Nottel had already sent a copy of the order's regulations to the convent but to no avail.Footnote 32 The sisters continued to welcome guests within their enclosure and even left the community to live with friends outside the convent, with the permission of the prioress.Footnote 33 Nottel promised to help; he obtained authorisation from the Dominican general Bartholomäus Texier to enforce enclosure as was prescribed in the constitutions of the female branch of the order.Footnote 34 This was usually the first step towards introducing reform into a convent;Footnote 35 stricter observance of the rule and the constitutions as a whole would follow more gradually. To encourage the inexperienced sisters, nuns from previously reformed convents were often sent to demonstrate the new way of living:Footnote 36 this was the best way to ensure lasting success.
Reform at St Katherine's followed the same pattern but no ‘foreign’ sisters were introduced.Footnote 37 The sisters did not like strict enclosure. First they resisted the bricklayers and labourers who had been ordered to raise the walls around the convent and to destroy the iron bars through which, without much supervision, the nuns had communicated with the outside world.Footnote 38 However, all gates and windows which were not in accordance with the Dominican constitutions had to be closed. Since the sisters used long poles (‘Stangen’) and kitchen utensils (‘Bratspiesse’) as weapons the workmen had to be protected by the municipal guards until they had finished. As soon as the sisters realised that there was no way out they rang their bells in protest and appealed to the bishop who was able to settle the conflict by suggesting a compromise: the community should agree to live according to the rule and constitutions for two years. Those who were not willing to do so could leave the convent taking with them all the possessions that they had brought with them on entering.Footnote 39 Some sisters left for other convents.Footnote 40 The rest seem to have resigned themselves to strict enclosure. However, the convent did not join the reform movement and – so it seems – tried to avoid close contact with representatives of strict observance. When five sisters from Schönensteinbach, fleeing war-stricken Alsace, sought refuge with them in 1444, the Augsburg women were not enthusiastic about welcoming them. In fact before they would agree to receive them into the house they renegotiated the terms of their own enclosure. The city council was forced to concede that an additional gate to the outside world – in addition to those mentioned in the constitutions – could be opened in the convent walls. Thus the sisters' price for welcoming the refugees was less harsh enclosure.Footnote 41 Their conduct was so far from being strictly observant that the Schönensteinbach nuns carried out their choir duties (the central spiritual focus of their lives) in a separate place and maintained this practice even though, in the end, the sisters of the two convents managed to live together reasonably amicably.Footnote 42 This incident emphasises that the women of St Katherine's remained antipathetic to the strict enclosure that had been imposed upon them. Although Johannes Meyer claimed that the convent practised enclosure,Footnote 43 a document published in 1476 proves that he was being optimistic: the Dominican master-general Leonard de Mansuetis (1474–80) thought it important to remind the women of their obligation to follow the rule and the constitutions and to uphold enclosure: ‘Under the punishment which must be borne by transgressors the prioress and the present and future sisters of St Catharine's in Augsburg are ordered to observe enclosure, liturgical chant, the rule of living, as they did up to now, and they may not change their afore-mentioned rule of living.’Footnote 44 There must have been a reason for this warning. In their letters the order's superiors were always reacting to requests or complaints. It may therefore be assumed that de Mansuetis had received information which urged him to admonish the sisters to comply with the order's regulations, the more so since this is the only example of this sort of letter in his register.
The compromise negotiated by the bishop of Augsburg with the sisters of St Katherine's in 1441 was renewed and reinforced in 1485 – after more than forty yearsFootnote 45 – another indication that enclosure was a permanent issue on the convent's agenda. Their superiors even introduced some new measures to make it more rigid: the nuns were required to incorporate a double iron grill into the room where they received visitors. Furthermore, they could not enter this room unless accompanied by an older and, as it was assumed, more experienced nun.Footnote 46
It seems that enclosure remained an issue at St Katherine's because the community would not be reconciled to it.Footnote 47 They never really came to terms with the obligation to follow the rule and constitution of the Dominican order according to observant interpretation.Footnote 48 This is confirmed by their attitude to books. Whereas observant convents started to collect books to further devotion, prayer and insight into the meaning of the divine service,Footnote 49 nothing of this kind happened at St Katherine's during the fifteenth century. There were, of course, sisters who were interested in books,Footnote 50 and it is known that two sisters were able to copy manuscripts themselves.Footnote 51 However, these were isolated examples, and there is no evidence that the convent had its own scriptorium. Apart from Elisabeth Warausin, who may well have been writing books for her own use, some sisters did bestow or bequeath money to commission books. Some of the few extant books that may have belonged to the convent libraryFootnote 52 were written by scribes from outside the convent.Footnote 53 The small number of books that can accurately be traced were usually private possessions of the sisters.Footnote 54 In other convents privately owned books were often bequeathed to the convent library so that they could be used by the whole community.Footnote 55 This did happen in Augsburg, but such books – especially the liturgical ones – were often considered valuable assets and sold off.Footnote 56
Nevertheless, the compromise, as reissued in 1485, seems to have settled the situation for good; there are no more indications in extant documents that their superiors were dissatisfied with the sisters' lifestyle as far as enclosure was concerned.Footnote 57 The next move the women made confirms this even if it can be understood in different ways: as an act of defiance or as compliance? Had the sisters abandoned their resistance, acknowledged defeat but thought of another way to jump the convent walls? Or had they finally accepted enclosure as a monastic obligation?
IV
In order fully to understand the issues which were at stake,Footnote 58 the theory and the practical consequences of enclosure in the context of Dominican convent life and its regulations require examination.Footnote 59 The enforcement of strict enclosure was one of the main aims of the Dominican reform movement. The intention was to restore the original ideals of female Dominican convent life as represented in an exemplary manner in the Augustinian rule and the constitutions. Enclosure was understood as a necessary pre-requisite to life in accordance with the rule and the constitutions in their original and thus purest forms. All modifications and dispensations, introduced in later decades, had to be abolished.Footnote 60
From the very beginning enclosure was one of the main features of the life of a Dominican sister but St Dominic and his successors did not invent it. Clausura had always been an issue in female religious life:Footnote 61 ‘Physical segregation from the temptations of the secular world was an integral element of the coenobitic tradition in Western monasticism from its inception.’Footnote 62 Or, as Roberta Gilchrist puts it, comparing monks' with nuns' houses, ‘The nunneries … had a higher degree of segregation from their precincts than the monasteries … it was more difficult to gain access to the nuns’ cloisters from their surrounding precincts.'Footnote 63 However, strict Dominican practiceFootnote 64 added a new element and did so nearly a century before Boniface viii's Periculoso (1298) was promulgated to ‘set a new and stricter standard’ for the isolation of all religious women:Footnote 65 ‘This [i.e. Periculoso] meant that strict active and passive enclosure for every nun, regardless of the rule under which she lived, and regardless of her rank within the community, was henceforth to be the norm for religious women everywhere.’Footnote 66 The Dominicans had attempted to do this in the early thirteenth century.Footnote 67 Their official constitutions, finally ratified in 1259,Footnote 68 deal exhaustively with the issue:Footnote 69 the question of how enclosure was to be kept and to be defended against detractors from within or without is a topic which is repeated again and again in different contexts.
From the outset it is obvious from the constitutions that the convent building had to comply with the demands of strict enclosure. The architecture aims at separating the sisters from the surrounding world. The number of windows, equipped with iron bars, is prescribed, as are the doors, the number of keys and the so-called rota, the wheel.Footnote 70 The chapter ‘About the buildings’ (‘De edificiis’) begins with a summary explaining the reasons behind the regulations that followed: ‘All efforts must be undertaken to make enclosure very high and very strong so that no one has the opportunity of entering or leaving [sc. the convent] through the enclosure.’Footnote 71 To emphasise the importance of this point it later reiterates ‘That there cannot occur any contact between insiders and outsiders.’Footnote 72 Enclosure is understood as a prerequisite for leading a religious life according to the rule and constitution; all intrusions from the outside are unwanted interventions and disturb the concentration and contemplation which are supposed to be integral to a religious life. In order to safeguard enclosure it was necessary to ensure that no ‘stranger’ – this meant anyone who was not a member of the communityFootnote 73 – was able to speak to any of the sisters, to see any of them or to perceive a (possibly ambiguous) gesture without proper surveillance.Footnote 74 A long chapter is devoted to specifying precisely who was allowed to enter the enclosure and whose permission was needed to do so. All visitors had to be accompanied by three sisters. Every move was regulated in advance.Footnote 75
The author(s) of the constitutionsFootnote 76 tried to make sure that the enclosure was an insurmountable separation between the ‘world’ outside and the community within. Thus they saw it as a necessary protection against the perils of the world and human weaknesses,Footnote 77 but also as a prerequisite to a quiet ascetic life of prayer, penitence and the imitation of Christ.Footnote 78 Separation from the world generates spiritual liberty and so restores the primordial dignity of man. So life in enclosure resembles the garden of paradise.Footnote 79 Esteem of enclosure was not restricted to the mendicant orders; it is a subject upon which many medieval theologians dwelled.
There was much more to enclosure, however, than high walls, strong doors and a limited number of keys. The concept of enclosure had to be internalised or, as a twelfth-century Benedictine author wrote, ‘If the tongue is refrained, so that it is silent even about good things, and likewise all senses are guarded so that they do not succumb to vices, then the doors are closed the right way so that the enemies are not able to break in.’Footnote 80 ‘Enclosure’ involved the whole human being: the religious had to realise that patterns of behaviour had to be changed radically if he or she was to live up to the monastic vocation. What was acceptable outside the convent walls would not be appropriate inside the enclosed space.Footnote 81
The constitutions of the Dominican sisters reflect this attitude. After her novitiate every choir sister promises stability, common life and obedience,Footnote 82 or, in the words of the formula of profession which Humbert quotes in his constitutions: ‘I N. make profession and promise obedience to God, and blessed Mary and blessed Dominic: and to you prioress … according to the rule of blessed Augustine and according to the institutions of the sisters.’Footnote 83 This formula demonstrates the Dominican preoccupation with obedience. The Dominican sisters formally promised only obedience; it was assumed that everything else would follow. Submission to the rule and the authorities and control provide the framework of the sisters' lives: every sister is under continual supervision to ensure that she does not violate the regulations of the constitutions written down to protect enclosure. Living within enclosure requires a certain level of self-control, which is among the first things that the novices have to internalise.Footnote 84 Accordingly, every irregular move will be punished. Among the punishable offences against the constitutions, many are concerned with violations of an augmented concept of enclosure. It is forbidden to look around unguardedly,Footnote 85 to laugh out loud or make others laugh, to move or gesticulate in a way which was seen as disorderly.Footnote 86 There are, of course, worse offences against enclosure: secret exchanges of letters, talking about the internal affairs of the convent with outsiders and violating the vow of chastity.Footnote 87 The worst ‘crime’, however, is to leave the enclosure without permission.Footnote 88 Only in the event of imminent danger (‘periculum mortis’) were the sisters allowed to leave their convent.Footnote 89
During the first decades of the order there was another practice which enabled religious superiors to maintain tight control over the behaviour of individual sisters.Footnote 90 No inhabitant of a convent was to have her own cell – a prescription which was later abandoned and not reintroduced by the reformers of the fifteenth century even though they were concerned to strengthen the vita communis.Footnote 91 A certain ambiguity towards single cells is clearly expressed by Johannes Nider (c. 1380–1438), who wrote angrily about the introduction of ‘privatised space’ within a monastic community:
However, as to their boasting that they have erected small dwellings to live in – if they had been silent about this they would perhaps have been philosophers, because through these the whole destruction of religious life sprang up. For in such abodes there happen feasting, carousing and expenses of the community's belongings: where everyone does not set things communal before things personal but things personal before things communal … These are small cells which have in some monasteries already destroyed the common dormitory and the regular refectory, [which] vilify the [common] rooms, and what is worse, leave the oratory destitute: because in these everyone seeks what is his, not what is Jesus Christ's.Footnote 92
On the whole, however, the later reform movementFootnote 93 saw no contradiction between stricter observance of enclosure and individual cells. Reformers considered the single cell as an aid to deepening piety and contemplation.Footnote 94 Among a collection of extracts from letters which were exchanged between the prioresses of Nuremberg – a well-known and influential observant convent – and of St Gall – a convent which tried to emulate Nuremberg – the former praises the advantages of a single cell: as sole inhabitants of a cell the sisters have a retreat in which to pray, to contemplate, to learn or – as the Nuremberg prioress stresses – to copy manuscripts.Footnote 95
Enclosure involved the religious person as a whole, modified according to gender or religious lifestyle. A Dominican friar followed other regulations than a Benedictine monk; Poor Clares or Dominican sisters were subject to rules different from those of a Beguine. Even within the same order there were different ways of interpreting the rules and constitutions, depending on religious superiors and the customs of a geographical region or the order's province; habits could change within a short period of time if the spiritual or intellectual background changed.Footnote 96
The concept of enclosure and its practical consequences can be understood fully only if it is realised that for the founders of the Dominican order, as for the adherents of the reform movement, clausura was inseparably linked to obedience. Obedience was the central issue of the Dominican way of life, the vow of obedience lay at the root of everything. The obedient religious would without hesitation fulfil any obligation imposed upon him or her by the rule and the constitutions. Thus, ‘enclosure’ becomes almost a synonym for ‘obedience’: whosoever has internalised the demands of living within the enclosed space will willingly perform anything that he or she is bound to do by the promise of obedience. Living within the ‘sacred space’ of enclosure demands rigorous observance of the order's rules. The enclosed area can be described as a sacred space ‘for people to undertake some kind of personal transition’,Footnote 97 and it is distinguished by its ‘otherness’. Life within the enclosed sacred space is determined by the rule and the constitutions; thus their importance transcends that of ordinary legal instructions – ‘enclosure’ may be simultaneously understood as ideology and lifestyle. Accordingly, for reformed Dominican theologians whose ultimate aim it was to recover the spiritual zeal and fervour of their forerunners, a return to the principles in which all Dominican monastic life was rooted was crucial.
V
The sisters of St Katherine's did not share the aims of the reform movement. They managed to retain certain liberties.They avoided the strict regulations on personal belongings. They had individual cells furnished with their own possessions and were entitled to bequeath their cell and their goods to whomsoever they chose.Footnote 98 Their liturgical practice did not satisfy the reformed Dominican nuns with whom, for a time, they shared the convent building. Thus, the reformers' objectives were sharply at odds with the comfort the Augsburg sisters enjoyed: religious women were not supposed to indulge in comfort within the walls of the enclosure. Despite all their efforts, however, the Augsburg sisters could not rid themselves of strict enclosure. In the eyes of their superiors their conduct was intolerable, they were a disgrace to the order. They did not merely violate regulations on enclosure: enclosure was inseparably linked with obedience, the root of the specific Dominican lifestyle and to reject enclosure was thus to refuse obedience. This ties in with the reformers' understanding of strict enclosure, the reintroduction of which was seen as the key prerequisite to a return to the original evangelical fervour and devotion of the Dominican way of life.Footnote 99 Those sisters whose spiritual needs were met by the reformers' programme readily accepted the demands of strict clausura: thus the Nuremberg prioress encouraged the prioress of St Gall ‘to block all the “holes” through which the face of the world might look into the convent’.Footnote 100
Although the Dominican sisters of St Katherine's did not share these views and objected to the ways and aims of the reform movement, they did not want to reject the religious life as such.Footnote 101 As far as can be deduced from extant documents, the convent did not experience difficulties in recruiting postulants from wealthy Augsburg families.Footnote 102 The Registrum litterarum of Leonard de Mansuetis includes the names of a large number of sisters from St Katherine's who attempted to secure spiritual guidance.Footnote 103 In 1498 the sisters started rebuilding work on the convent, following a visitation that denounced their corrupt state.Footnote 104 From the 1520s onwards the convent survived all attempts by Protestants to disperse the community on the grounds of the sisters' fervent Catholic convictions.Footnote 105 The nuns were committed to their calling; they were simply not what their superiors expected them to be. The question of enclosure remained on the agenda. At the same time the community discovered ways spiritually to escape the walls of their convent.
VI
From an early date pilgrimage to the city of Rome had been an important feature of Christian piety.Footnote 106 Visits to the tombs of the Apostles and martyrs and prayers in the seven Roman pilgrim churches were considered to strengthen the faith as well as conferring remission of penance.Footnote 107 In ever-increasing numbers, pilgrims visited Rome during the Middle Ages: a peak was reached in 1500 when hundreds of thousands flocked into the Holy City.Footnote 108 Manuals provided the pilgrims with information and gave them orientation: they described the pilgrim churches and gave advice as to which indulgences could be acquired at what times of the year. The most widely-available of these was the Indulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae which strongly influenced the popular view of Rome during the medieval and early modern periodFootnote 109 since it provided its audience not only with a description of the actual city but also with a definite ‘sacro-topography’.
However, not everyone who would have liked to travel to Rome (or to any other holy site) could actually afford to do so. Female religious in particular were not allowed to visit the Holy City corporaliter since they had to keep up the stabilitas loci enforced by the demands of enclosure.Footnote 110 Nevertheless, they could embark on a spiritual pilgrimage and visit the holy places spiritualiter since the veneration of saints and relics was not bound to the places where they were venerated and kept.Footnote 111 Critics of the ‘pilgrimage business’ preferred spiritual pilgrimage to pious visits to holy places, reminding all pilgrims ‘that real forgiveness depends on interior attitudes rather than exterior actions’.Footnote 112 In the work of the late thirteenth-century nun, Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241–98), in the Cistercian nunnery of Helfta, there is a description of a mental pilgrimage to Rome taken in order to express veneration towards certain saints and relics.Footnote 113 Adelheid Langmann (1306–75), a Dominican mystic living in Engelthal in Franconia, ascribed even higher merits to a spiritual pilgrimage than to a real one, considering that the faithful who travelled spiritually did so without a corporeal vision of the venerated locations. Their devotion was understood to be as deep as (or even deeper than) that of the real pilgrims. Adelheid also refers to enclosure as the reason for spiritual pilgrimages: it was the only way for religious to go on pilgrimage since they were not allowed to leave their housesFootnote 114 – they became ‘pilgrims without path’.Footnote 115
The idea that spiritual pilgrimages could actually replace the physical journey to a holy site and result in the acquisition of the ‘official’ number of indulgences originated in the fifteenth century.Footnote 116 Privileges such as that obtained by the Augsburg sisters enabled the faithful to go on a substitute pilgrimage which – in the case of laymen and laywomen – was usually located in a church not too far away. Unlike religious, the laity could not embark on substitute pilgrimages while staying at home. They had to move to locations designated as sacred to receive their indulgences, thus having some physical experience of pilgrimage. Having travelled to that place and said the prescribed number of prayers, they were rewarded with the same number of indulgences which they would have received had they actually travelled to the chosen destination (usually Jerusalem or Rome).Footnote 117 Such pilgrimages were often guided by pilgrim manuals,Footnote 118 together with prayers and devotional texts.Footnote 119
However, the Augsburg sisters and their counterparts in other convents were not supposed to leave their houses at all; they could not even travel short distances. Although they seem finally to have accepted the restrictions placed upon them they still longed fervently to embark on pilgrimages to achieve remission of penance.Footnote 120 However, the spatial quality of pilgrimages available to laymen, leaving the everyday environment and moving to an especially designated sacred area, was not for them. Instead they were given the opportunity of spiritual pilgrimages within the enclosed area. Accordingly, the bull of Innocent viii mentions this as the reason for granting the privilege of indulgences: the prioress and the sisters had been conceded this papal favour because they lived in ‘everlasting enclosure’, ‘being locked up forever’.Footnote 121 The pope affirms that he awarded the privilege to boost the sisters' devotion to Christ, their bridegroom, and to intensify their prayer.Footnote 122 There is no record of the Augsburg sisters' reaction but it may have been similar to that of the Poor Clares of Villingen: when their emissary showed them the papal document they fell to their knees, wept effusively and were unable to speak because of ‘their longing for this treasure of grace’.Footnote 123
After gaining their privilege, the sisters commissioned their little triptych to commemorate the event, the Augsburger Ablasstafel,Footnote 124 which not only provides a vernacular account of how the convent managed to obtain the privilege, but it also lists the indulgences to be gained by following the prescribed course of prayers.Footnote 125 Since the vernacular was used, the text was easily accessible to any member of the community who was able to read.Footnote 126 It follows two pilgrim guides – the Indulgentiae ecclesiae urbis Romae and the Stationes ecclesiarum urbis Romae Footnote 127 – and is illustrated by images of the pope issuing the bull and of the patron saints of the seven Roman pilgrim churches.Footnote 128 This little altar – or, more precisely the text to be found on it – could be understood as a ‘travel guide to salvation’ (‘Reiseführer zum Seelenheil’).Footnote 129 The locality in which to undertake the spiritual journey leading to the remission of penance was consequently the enclosed area of the convent buildings. The whole area was considered as sacred space. Thus marked off from the ‘world’, it was the appropriate place to seek remission from penance and forgiveness, not only through a devout daily convent life but also by embarking on a mental pilgrimage. To retain the spatial experience of a pilgrimage the papal decree, like all similar decrees, advises the prioress to designate three locations within the enclosure to which the sisters had to go in order to say their prayers, thus emulating ‘real’ pilgrimage.Footnote 130 Physical movement to such areas was introduced in order to strengthen the sisters' devotion to the venerated sites and saints.
Unfortunately, where these places were in the Augsburg enclosure or how they were decorated is not known.Footnote 131 However, a few other religious houses had similar privileges; they decorated the areas with images of the churches or the altars at the sites upon which the sisters' devotion was focused. One such convent, that of the the Poor Clares in Villingen, had 210 places for prayer within the enclosure,Footnote 132 devoted to holy places in Jerusalem and Rome.Footnote 133
At Villingen these locations were distributed throughout the enclosure so that the nuns could meditate upon the life of Christ and the places of pilgrimage alike while walking through the convent.Footnote 134 At St Katherine's, on the other hand, the sisters stuck closely to the text of their papal bull as far as spatial arrangements were concerned, physically moving to three places designated by the prioress. Thus the sisters stayed within the enclosure, not violating their vow of obedience, but at the same time travelling spiritually to the holy sites and earning their indulgences.Footnote 135
However, this was not enough for the Augsburg sisters. Hence the commissioning of the six paintings to decorate their newly-built chapter house.Footnote 136 The pictures seem not to have played any official role in acquiring indulgences through prayer since they were commissioned fifteen years after the privilege had been issued.Footnote 137 They were, however, a direct consequence of that privilege which may therefore be assumed to have been a great spiritual success among the sisters, adding a new quality to their convent life. Like the illuminations of the Ablasstafel the pictures highlighted the benefits which could be acquired by saying certain prayers prescribed in the papal privilege and thus became an incentive to embark on a spiritual pilgrimage.Footnote 138 They are not, however, realistic portrayals of the Roman pilgrim churches, although the artists occasionally included details which might have been derived from pilgrims' manuals or from other sources:Footnote 139 Holbein included an image of the coronation of Mary in his painting of Santa Maria Maggiore,Footnote 140 possibly a reference to Jacopo Torriti's thirteenth-century mosaic in that church.Footnote 141 The farewell of St Peter and St Paul in his painting of San Paolo Fuori le Mura reminds Martin Schawe of Nikolaus Muffels's account of his visit to that church:Footnote 142 it may safely be assumed that Holbein had heard (or read) pilgrims' reports of their visits to the holy sites and was alluding to their descriptions in his work. A closer look at the other pictures confirms that each of the painters had some knowledge of the Roman places of pilgrimage. In the painting of San Giovanni in Laterano Hans Burgkmair alludes to the Porta Santa and a twisted marble pillar. An inscription included in the image refers to Pope Alexander vi who had the Porta Santa redesigned before the Jubilee of 1500. Again this is probably an allusion to Muffels's account which made a connection between the Porta Santa and two pillars nearby: Muffels claims that they once belonged to the temple of Solomon.Footnote 143 Burgkmair also refers to the Scala Santa near the Lateran Church: he is well aware that the Holy Stairway was in a separate building, not inside the church, and that pilgrims usually ascended it on their knees. Then, in his picture of Santa Croce, he includes carefully painted pilgrim badges, referring to Santa Croce (the crown of thorns) and St Peter (the crossed keys and the Holy Face) – key attractions in Rome. The monogrammist L. F. paints the entrance to the catacomb of San Sebastiano, located near to the church of that name. All the artists make reference to saints and relics connected with their subjects and thereby capture the characteristics of the place. In the eyes of the sisters the essentials of the Roman pilgrim sites were present; the essence of Rome is portrayed, a place made holy by its links to God's salvation history with men. Since the Ablasstafel refers to guide books and since the inhabitants of Augsburg and its monasteries there possessed pilgrim manualsFootnote 144 which would have provided fairly accurate descriptions of Roman holy sites, it must be assumed that the sisters were not really interested in accurate depictions of the churches and their architectural features; rather they were interested in the spiritual and devotional aspects of Rome. Thus the pictures painted for the chapter house at St Katherine's were largely the products of the painters' imagination – in collaboration with the sisters – insofar as the interiors or exteriors of the churches are concerned.Footnote 145 More important than architectural features were those elements that connected the buildings with salvation and redemption from sin, the main reasons for going on a pilgrimage and acquiring indulgences: every picture includes details from the passion of Christ and from the legends of the patron saints of the respective churches, sometimes combined with the legends of the sisters' individual patrons.Footnote 146
Sr Maria Dominica reported that several members of the convent commissioned images of the seven Roman pilgrimage churches ‘to decorate the chapter house’ (‘Zur Ziehrung dess Capitl hauss’).Footnote 147 What does ‘decoration of the chapter house’ actually mean? These paintings were much more than mere decoration – they were substitutes for the Roman pilgrim churches which the sisters could not visit in real life; they were guides to the contemplation of the passion of Christ and stimulants to an imitatio Christi. The pictures enabled the nuns to deepen their devotion by visually experiencing the holy places of Rome.
The fact that they did not accurately portray the architectural reality of the Roman churches did not detract from their value; rather the reverse: the pictures were representations of the holy places, or more precisely representations of what the pilgrim churches stood for. They captured the reasons why Christians revered these places, referring back to the saints' legends and to the passion of Christ. The sites and buildings were not of interest for themselves, but only insofar as they were connected with divine and ecclesiastical provision for the salvation of the faithful. Dwelling upon such details, the sisters could imagine participating in the events portrayed and thus being included in the dramatic proceedings as if they had actually travelled to the pilgrimage destinations in question.
These pictures may be understood as a transgression of the enclosure. The Basilikabilder, with their voluptuous imagery, were on the cusp of what was considered suitable in a monastic context. Enclosure was intended to be internalised; it was not a superficial restriction of movement and contact. In consequence, following the older monastic tradition, Dominican reformers were especially concerned with the ‘control of the eye’, trying to introduce measures which were meant to limit the sisters' visual imagination in order to further the imitation of Christ.Footnote 148 How to move, what to do, where to go, what to hear and what to see, all were prescribed.Footnote 149 According to the theory that a person will be what he or she sees,Footnote 150 every sister obtained an image of Christ crucified upon which to meditate when enclosure was introduced to newly reformed convents.Footnote 151 The reformers intended that the sisters should focus on a very few images – if possible, the same for all of them – in order to concentrate attention on the most important aspects of the religious life. They rejected the idea that it might be of value to look at many different images lest they should distract or even undermine contemplation and devotion.Footnote 152
The Augsburg sisters did not accept these restrictions. They had managed to gain the privilege of acquiring the Roman indulgences because they were locked up inside the convent walls; however, they added paintings which helped them to transgress the limits of enclosure. They could pay a virtual visit to the holy city of Rome, partake spiritually in the dramatic stories of martyrs and saints connected with the Roman churches and, at the same time, deepen their devotion to the passion of Christ, the sacrifice at the heart of human salvation.
The Basilikabilder are intrinsically connected with the privilege of 1487.Footnote 153 Paradoxically they are also the result of the enclosure under which the sisters had to live and may be seen as an expression of a rooted unwillingness to accept its limitations.Footnote 154 Embarking on their virtual pilgrimage the sisters were finally able to transcend the walls of the convent, the Basilikabilder becoming a powerful expression of their spirituality, as the location of the images of Rome's seven pilgrim churches within the chapter house confirms. As Heidrun Stein-Kecks has observed, ‘with regard to spiritual matters the chapter house embodies the monastic ideal, here the community is constantly reminded of it, here the gulf separating one's own life from the ideal is admitted, and following confession and penitence, it is striven after again’.Footnote 155 The Augsburg sisters managed to combine ‘the identification of the chapter house with confession and penance’Footnote 156 with the comforting aspect of remission of penance, thus encouraging present and future sisters to embark on a spiritual pilgrimage. The convent walls were no longer an obstacle hindering a fulfilled spiritual life; the sisters may transcend them mentally, and the depictions of the Basilikabilder are guides to doing so.
In the painting dedicated to the Basilica of Santa Croce are several pilgrims, among them a female figure wearing the crossed keys of the pilgrim to Rome. Her dress closely resembles the black-and-white habit of the Dominican nuns: she wears a white dress with a black mantle, perhaps an allusion to a possibility now available to Dominican nuns – in their imagination.Footnote 157
I would like to thank the anonymous reader for this Journal whose remarks and suggestions helped to corroborate and clarify my argument.
