Copyright

Henrike Lähnemann; Eva Schlotheuber;

Published On

2024-06-21

Page Range

pp. 103–126

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

V. Music and Reform

Chapter of: The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents (pp. 103–126)

The monastic reform of the fifteenth century led to a blossoming of society and spiritual institutions and to a profounder religiosity, discussed in conjunction with musical practice and its role for the community. The opening example shows how permission to sing secular songs while breaking flax was revoked in the Heilig Kreuz Kloster; then convent reform is discussed in terms of renewed liturgy and music instruction in Kloster Ebstorf; an illuminated manuscript of the nuns playing the organ and instructing the girls provides a detailed visualisation.

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.