Copyright

Henrike Lähnemann; Eva Schlotheuber;

Published On

2024-06-21

Page Range

pp. 37–58

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

II. Education

Chapter of: The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents (pp. 37–58)

The nuns gave the girls entering the convent a demanding education, which lasted several years and included scholarly Latin, theology, and music for the choir services; knowledge of economic and organizational matters pertaining to convent administration; handicrafts and the production and decoration of books. The chapter starts with the example from the diary of the Braunschweig nun of an educational reform gone wrong, then discusses the ideal curriculum and concludes with the Heiningen Philosophy Tapestry as idealized example of a learned community centred around the figure of Lady Philosophy.

Contributors

Henrike Lähnemann

(author)
Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at University of Oxford
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1994-5157

Henrike Lähnemann is the first woman to be appointed to a chair in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, where she teaches German literature of the Middle Ages and works on textual and visual evidence from the women’s convents of northern Germany.

Eva Schlotheuber

(author)
Professor of Medieval History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3762-2818

Eva Schlotheuber is professor of Medieval History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where she researches and teaches on the education and lifeworld of religious women. She was the first woman to chair the Association of Historians of Germany from 2016 to 2021.