Scholarship, which largely grows out of a passionate longing for knowledge, ultimately demands substantial sacrifices of talent, time, and energy; such dedication also requires much of family and colleagues. June Mecham's devotion to studying late-medieval nuns, however, is exceptional. Diagnosed with cancer in 2007, Mecham worked through her illness and finished writing her dedication in 2009, just before her untimely death. When she acknowledges that the completion of her unfinished manuscript will not happen without the support of family and friends, her words take on a profound depth. Lisa M. Bitel, Alison I. Beach, and Constance H. Berman at Mecham's request finished this fine work adding their own sacrifices to the project, even though they confess, “None of us is expert on June's topic” (xvii). Despite this admission, Mecham's breadth of knowledge, attention to minute-scholarly detail, and appealing writing style shine forth clearly in an expert and engaging voice. Wolfgang Brandis likewise helpfully adds nearly 50 photographs to illustrate the book's major themes.
Mecham's work, a worthy addition to Brepols fine series on “Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts,” concentrates upon female monastic life in Lower Saxony, notably the Lüneburg Heidelklöster, six Benedictine and Cistercian communities, during 1300–1500. The Heidelklöster, says Mecham, have an “embarrassment of riches” of textual and material resources because they “adopted Lutheranism only slowly and incrementally, [and as a result] much of their medieval heritage survived” (22).
Organizationally the book includes a helpful introductory chapter and concluding epilogue. The chapters move back and forth between narrow and broadly focused topics. Chapter 2 convincingly shows how the Heidelklöster “melded ritual and drama in a theatrical spectacle” for themselves and laity. The liturgical reenactments combined biblical texts, relics, stained glass, painting, statuary, embroidery, and monastic space to create profound passion-centered spiritual experiences. Mecham concludes, “Like the holy women at the tomb, the women of Lüneburg's Heath convents embraced and exalted their responsibility to mourn for Christ and tend to his body—both publicly, by turning their churches into stages for the burial and resurrection, and privately, in the theaters of their minds and hearts” (56). The nuns perceived themselves as Christ's bride, mother, and lover on account of a deep mystical intimacy with the suffering Christ by identifying with him and the emotions of the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Veronica (262).
Chapter 3 on the “Art of Devotion” focuses narrowly upon the opus feminile, the work of the nuns, and the production of textiles. The nuns modeled themselves upon the Virgin Mary as temple virgin, bride, mother, and weaver in order to create by means of acts of pious devotion spectacular tapestries, Lenten curtains, and clothing for statues, which male clergy often criticized as inappropriately excessive (87).
Chapter 4 broadly examines the monastic dilemma of wealth and poverty and how the Heidelklöster remained financially solvent, despite the interference of many corrupt and self-serving male provosts. Mecham interestingly concludes that (1) private monastic wealth usually concerned only small amounts of personal property, (2) individual provisioning of nuns was commonly done by families, and (3) “individually controlled wealth did not lead to decadence or worldliness,” but encouraged heartfelt devotion, which produced appropriate artistic aids to piety (125f).
Chapter 5 focuses narrowly upon one exceptionally fascinating individual, Abbess Katharina von Hoya (1412–1474), in order to effectively illustrate previous themes, to analyze how spiritual monastic space is created, and to examine how a hierarchy of wealth and lineage in the secular world sometimes was carried over both negatively and positively into the monastery.
Chapter 6 states how male Observant reformers suggested that the individual property of nuns, proprietas, sometimes simply a catchword for female monastic abuses (147), retained connections with the secular world and thus violated tenets of the Rule of Benedict. Mecham notes that when private possessions involved art, a key component of female monastic piety, problems arose. Observant reformers were not iconoclasts, acknowledges Mecham, but they often were concerned about excesses of wealth manifest in artistic expression (161). The Heidelklöster regularly resisted such reforms and at times hid pious objects in the floorboards for safekeeping. Mecham's most interesting section explains how nuns used art to go on “mental pilgrimages” (171ff), for example with Veronica to an imaginative Jerusalem in order to help her wipe the face of Christ with her veil. In the end, Observant reforms of the late 1400s did eventually take hold and gradually art objects stressed reform themes such as community over individuality and the vanity of possessions.
Chapter 7 examines how nuns “walked in the footsteps of Christ” in both external and internal observances directed toward passion piety. Mecham notes that “theological imagination and devotional memory” combined with communal artwork in a performance space to create a “liminal space,” that is “a place where past and present united in devotional experience” so that they might know Christ's “appearance, emotions, and pain” thus allowing “mental and visual piety” to coalesce for the nuns (238f). As a result, “Because many religious women were banned from direct physical imitation of Jesus via the vita apostolica, imaginative meditation on Passion narratives and spiritual pilgrimages provided some of the few ways in which they could engage in the imitatio Christi” (259).
Mecham and her colleagues convincingly conclude that the Heidelklöster are unique for the amount of documentary and material evidence that has survived, but finally “the devotional practices observed by the nuns of this region were not unusual.” The performative devotional practices that they embraced, however, serve as a “hermeneutical model for female monastic devotion in communities from which far less information survives” (264). Indeed, Mecham's compelling and passionate desire to bring to light the hidden lives and struggles of the Heidelklöster nuns, along with her colleagues devotion to have Mecham's work be made available, has produced a worthy legacy of fine scholarship.
