Copyright

Henrike Lähnemann; Eva Schlotheuber;

Published On

2024-06-21

Page Range

pp. 155–176

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

VII. Illness and Dying

Chapter of: The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents (pp. 155–176)

Caring for the poor and accompanying the sick and dying were an integral part of monastic life. The nuns’ networks enabled an exchange about methods of treatment as well as participation in the commemoration of the dead through prayer fraternities. While scholarly medicine was practised by doctors, healing methods and health advice was handed down within the convents. The chapter discusses a couple of cases of illness in the Heilig Kreuz Kloster, ending with the plague in which the diarist died, then details medicinal knowledge from sources in Kloster Wienhausen from which also the final illustrations of blood-letting and of the heavenly Jerusalem are taken.

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.