Ruling the Spirit. Claire Taylor Jones
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so that they are good at practicing the Divine Office; it is not appropriate, however, to learn grammar and the authorities. If sisters who are older than twenty-four do not know the psalter, they should not learn it from nothing. Those who are twenty and have learned nothing of song or music, even if they know the psalter, should not learn anything else.
The Magdalenes were expected to know enough Latin to perform the Office well, but further study is forbidden them. The injunction against grammaticalia et auctores encompasses even more than the corresponding warning in the friars’ Constitutions. In the chapter on students, the friars’ Constitutions enjoin that no one is to study “in libris gentilium et phylosophorum [in the books of the gentiles and philosophers],” and moreover “seculares scientias non addiscant, nec artes quas liberales uocant [they should not learn the secular sciences, not even those arts called liberal].”56 Whereas the young brothers are protected from pagan sources, the Magdalenes were forbidden even from reading Christian authorities.
Even more striking is that women beyond a certain age are deemed incapable of new learning, but that they nevertheless might be admitted as novices. The Constitutions of the friars stipulated that potential novices were to be carefully assessed for scholarly aptitude and, especially early on, the order zealously recruited men already educated at the universities.57 In contrast, the Rule for the Magdalenes displays no such concern for the relative intelligence of their novices. Moreover, this passage from the chapter on work outright forbids the education of women who entered the order at an older age, even in areas that supported the Divine Office.
Although they recognize that a certain amount of Latin education is necessary for the purpose of singing the Office, both the San Sisto Rule for Magdalenes and the Montargis Constitutions prohibit further study. In addition, the Magdalene Rule restricts access to education to the young entrants who can be taught from an early age. In comparison with these earlier statutes, the vagueness of the 1259 Constitutions becomes positive information. Ehrenschwendtner speculates that women’s literacy was controversial, and stipulations were cut out of the 1259 Constitutions in order to avoid the issue.58 Certainly, in the final version, Humbert did not explicitly encourage theological learning for the Dominican sisters. He did, however, delete all the passages placing restrictions upon them and included a provision for a schoolroom of sorts.
A set of late thirteenth-century ordinances survive which clarify the implementation of the 1259 Constitutions in Teutonia. These instructions expand upon the matter of the women’s education, largely absent from Humbert’s final version, by drawing on the obsolete Rule for Magdalenes. Although the admonishment not to teach old sisters new tricks is not repeated, this author clarifies the qualifier “que apte sunt” with regard to sisters continuing their education beyond the novitiate. “Item si aliqua recipitur XVIII annorum vel citra, si durioris est ingenii, non occupentur ad discendum amplius quam legere et cantare, ne declinando et huiusmodi faciendo tempus perdat [If someone eighteen years old or younger is received, if she is of a harder intelligence, such should not be occupied with learning more than reading and singing, lest she waste her time declining and doing similar things].”59 The reference to declinations suggests that some sisters were indeed doing grammar exercises as part of increasing their Latin comprehension. While this was something more commonly expected of the young (as indicated by the age), it was also difficult. Some women simply did not have the brain for it and, whatever their age, were not to waste their time and strain their devotion in a frustrating task.
Furthermore, although the 1259 Constitutions lack any reference to learning or education in the chapter on work, these Teutonic injunctions include two relevant instructions. First, despite the strict imposition of silence during work hours in the Constitutions, this document permits women to have someone read to them in the workroom, especially admonitions from order superiors and commentaries on the Rule.60 Second, we find a number of admonitions concerning scribes, including the previously lacking restriction on material.
Scriptrices sedeant cum aliis laborantibus in communi domo, sed hae non scribant aliis, donec conventus habeat libros necessarios. Scribentibus vero aliis taxetur pretium per librarium fratrem, sicut magister ordinavit, et in utilitatem conventus vertatur acquisitio. Quibus autem aliquid iniungitur scribendum, nullo modo supponant furtiva opuscula, immo hoc diligentibus caveatur.61
Scribes should sit with the other workers in the common house, but they should not write for others until the convent has the necessary books. A price should be assessed for the other writers by the Brother Librarian, as the master ordered, and the payment should go toward the use of the convent. Those charged with writing anything should by no means include secret little works, no—this is to be avoided by the diligent.
The scribes should not be segregated in a scriptorium dedicated to this work but rather must sit together with the women doing other sorts of work, for example, the seamstresses who shortly will be admonished not to embroider designs on the friars’ habits. Both this information about the seamstresses and the detail that the scribes are to be paid by the Brother Librarian reveal a close practical relationship between the two branches of the order. Furthermore, the sisters fulfilled an important ancillary role in the educational system of the friars. The men were supposed to spend all free time in study, and their Constitutions did not include manual labor. The friars therefore had no provisions for copying books on their own and evidently relied not only upon professional scribes but also on the sisters for their books.62 The warning against furtiva opuscula is likely to be understood in this context. The author forbids the scribes from including extraneous material, whether edifying meditations or personal notes, in commissioned books.
Such was the state of the legislation for the Dominican nuns at the end of the thirteenth century. Both the male and the female branches of the order were subject to the Augustinian Rule, which was so vague as to provide little guidance for daily conduct. Both men and women therefore had sets of Constitutions which determined the expectations for members of the order and detailed their structures of governance. The Constitutions of the friars included procedures for enacting changes in the legislation, whereas the sisters had no such mechanism for adaptation. On the other hand, the friars were bound by Constitution and papal decree to Humbert’s Rite, whereas the sisters were given free rein, at least nominally. Similarly, the friars were subject to a strict curriculum and a hierarchy of schools, degrees, and privileges, whereas the sisters had no legislation regarding their education except that they must devote themselves to liturgical study. These were the standards and expectations for literacy in the service of liturgical piety to which the early sisters presumably were held and to which the Observant reformers wished to return.
In the next chapter, I turn to Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Seuse, two fourteenth-century friars who occupy key positions in this history of Dominican female spirituality, both by virtue of their role advising women during their lifetimes and through the avid reception of their work by the Observants. Both friars promote a form of spirituality that soars to mystical heights while remaining grounded in the practices of the order. What they describe in theory is portrayed in narrative examples by the contemporary sisterbooks, the subject of Chapter 3.
CHAPTER 2
Detachment, Order, and Observance in Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Seuse
Der sang us dem grunde der gienge gar hoch [The song from the ground would rise high indeed].
—Johannes Tauler
The Dominican friars Heinrich Seuse (1295–1366) and Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) both served in the vicariate of Alsace within the province of Teutonia. Seuse’s writings, especially his Latin treatise the Horologium sapientiae, enjoyed an extraordinarily broad circulation, both complete and in excerpts. A fairly large number of extant manuscripts (fifteen) contain Seuse’s complete Exemplar, a compilation of four vernacular works: the Vita, the Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, the Little Book of Truth, and a collection of edited letters. In contrast, Tauler’s thought survives exclusively in German-language sermons, possibly