Kin, Cash, and Convent: Providing for Nieces (and Nephews) in 1613 Bludenz

Excerpts of AT-VLA, BludenzStadtA, Charter 10255 of 1613

In Counter-reformation Bludenz in 1613, widow Catharina Zürcherin*, a citizen of the town, prepared her legacy with a special eye toward her female kin. Childless herself, and without the guidance of her late husband (Anton Marks of Braz), she gave all her funds to her siblings’ children.

The family was doing well. The male Zürcher siblings and cousins – Hans, Georg, Dietrich, Gabriel, Adam and Sebastian – had recently been elevated by Emperor Maximillian to the hereditary nobility just a few years before (1610 April 5, Innsbruck, AT-StaAB Urkunde 741). In the document, the emperor names the brothers and cousins alike for “in consideration of their services to the House of Austria.” But, of course, none of the females of the house were named. Such gendered recognition (and gendered absence) was common practice at the time.

So back to Catharina: As she makes her will, she chooses to recognize the children (of both genders) of her sister Anna Zürcherin by both husbands, and those of her brother Mathias Zürcher. As for the third sibling, Gabriel Zürcher, well, Catharina wrote in a special provision for his daughter, her niece, Elsbeth Zürcherin.

For Elsbeth, Catharina set aside 200 Rhenish guilders, and explicitly intended these funds to be used as a convent dowry. This would give Elsbeth access as a choir-sister to an elite Catholic institution of her choice. Given the location, Catharina probably had in mind Elsbeth’s joining St Peter’s in Bludenz, the Dominican women’s convent at the edge of town, though other nearby options included the Clares at Valduna in Rankweil, the Franciscan Tertiaries at Thalbach in Bregenz, or the recently founded Capuchin convent of St Anna’s, also in Bregenz.

Catharina has clearly thought about the situation, for while she is generous, that generosity is conditional. She stipulates that if Elsbeth decided not to enter a convent, the money would come to her only after Catharina’s own death.

If, however, Elsbeth were to predecease her such that the money might revert to her brother Gabriel, well, sorry, then that special legacy would be revoked, and the money be divided evenly.

In these provisions, Catharina is doing several things. She’s supporting the next generation of her natal family. She’s promoting the Catholic faith. She’s making possible a conventual lifestyle for a favored relative. And, given the conditions on her gifts, it seems she just might be thumbing her nose at her brother.

One wonders if niece Elsbeth felt a calling that went unsupported by her father. If so, Auntie Katharina may have been defying male expectations by stepping in here to be sure a favored niece was able to find her way into a religious life.

Either way, it’s clear that one determined woman could shape the lives – and privileges – of the next generation.

One afterwards to this story: while Elsbeth Zürcherin’s future is unknown to us, it seems likely that she was related to the Maria Magdalena Zürcherin of Bludenz, daughter of Adam  Zürcher and Elisabeth Leu – perhaps a cousin or a second cousin of our Elsbeth? – who took up the monastic calling at Thalbach in Bregenz about fifteen years later, in 1627, and took orders there under the name Maria Victoria (Fußenegger, 140). 

NOTES

I honor the early modern Austrian practice of naming women by their patronymics with the feminine “-in” ending. Women of the day did not typically adopt their husband’s surname.

* The name Catharina Zürcherin can also be rendered Katharina Zücherin. Spelling of the period is notoriously inconsistent, and the handwriting itself challenging to read. However, outside of the two documents cited here, the family surname spelled with the interior “R” – Zürcherin – is preferred (102 documents to 2, according to monasterium.net!), and I have adopted it here.

WORKS CITED

Documents, accessed through monasterium.net:

• Bregenz, Stadtarchiv, Urkunde 741 (5. Apr 1610, Innsbruck)

• Vorarlberger Landesarchiv - Bludenz, Stadtarchiv Charter 10255 (6. Nov 1613)

Secondary Literature:

• Fußenegger, Gerold. “Bregenz am Bodensee: Terziarinnenkloster Thalbach.” Alemannia Franciscana antiqua 9 (1963): 93-140.

Why illustrate a prayerbook?

Woodcuts from Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek Handschrift 17

So there she was, my scribe. She’d put all this effort into copying out all those individual prayers. In a manuscript of more than 300 folios, that’s a lot of writing time. And then, before binding the manuscript, she – or one of her sisters? Or the binder himself? -- ran through the visual images available and plopped in two woodcuts, one an image of Mary with child (derived, as it happens, from a plague image), and one a Mary as Mother of the Seven Swords.

I’ve written about both prayerbook images (Cyrus, 2020), but have been thinking more about their purpose, and found it helpful to put the Thalbach tradition of using devotional images into dialog with a non-Western practice of the same period.

To do so, I’ve read Jahnabi Barooah Chanchani’s “Text, Image and Devotion,” (2018), looking at a Sanskrit devotional fragment, “two illustrated folios from a dispersed late 15th-century manuscript of the Bālagopālastuti (BGS) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.” I was drawn to the use of color in her fragments – so much more fun than mere woodcuts – but I was also drawn to her argument, which I put in dialog with my own material below.

In both cases, text and image work in tandem not to narrate a story literally, but to prompt affective and imaginative engagement. Each pulls its weight in its own way; and bundled together – literally! – word and illustration open up multiple pathways to the divine.

1) Chanchani tells us that in Sanskrit realms, looking at images “was a vital component of the devotional praxis…. The verses and paintings complement each other in helping a devotee envision” their target divine figure.

The same is true for the sisters at Thalbach – or for those at any of a host of women’s houses in late-medieval German lands. For Chanchani’s text, the reader cogitates on Kṛṣṇa,in the Thalbach prayerbook, it’s the suffering Mary of the Seven Swords. In both cases, the role of reader presumably toggles with that of viewer. Each act of engagement informs those that follow, so that meaning is additive across the multiple media being consumed.

2) Chanchani’s manuscript fragments are part of an illustrated “picture-book of songs,” drawing on familiar texts. Nevertheless, as she points out, the paintings don’t directly illustrate the verses. In the images of the first folio, for example, no flute appears, and the extra women of the songs are missing.

Likewise, in the Thalbach prayerbook, Mary’s suffering is represented as a totality; all seven swords piercing her at once, whereas other rendition of Mary’s sorrows become composites, with rondels to narrate the details of her individual sorrows, as Carol Schuler articulates. In the prayers that follow, we instead dwell on details of Mary’s losses. The images in both cases are weirdly both summative – here is a divine personage in the midst of activities – and reductive, in that we are faced with a reduced single-moment capture of that experience.

3) Chanchani explicates that darśan, the process of exchanging gazes with divinity, is at the heart of Hindu devotional practice. Seeing, as she articulates it, is a form of knowing.

For sisters in a monastic environment, the same could very often be true. Jeffrey Hamburger in particular has explored the ways in which images serve as vehicles of inspiration. “Images,” as he establishes, can “serve not as props, but as the principal protagonists” in ceremonies, for instance.(Hamburger, 429). Images could spark visions and other personalized experiences of the divine; many instances can be found among the Nonnenvitae in convent chronicles. Given their status as launching-points for individuated faith experiences, Hamburger argues, images called out for control, duly provided through regulation and admonitions over the later medieval period.

And yet, sisters continued to incorporate images into their worship practices, saying particular prayers at specific altars, gazing on their precious pages in the choir stalls. The two devotional pictures found during archaeological excavation at Wienhausen (Appuhn) are a case in point; worship and gaze are intertwined as practice.

4) Why? Why intermingle imagery and text? I think here Chanchani’s observations are apt. As she explains, reading and looking are (both) imaginative acts. They invite readers to hold multiple aspects of the God-reference in mind. For Chanchani’s text, it is Kṛṣṇa; for the Thalbach sisters it is Mary, apostrophized in multiple metaphors as a signal of the complexity inherent to the divine

Illustrating a prayerbook, then, is not a matter of ornament – instead, it’s about amplification. Just as Chanchani’s manuscript invites the devotee into a multisensory encounter with Kṛṣṇa, so too do the Thalbach images summon a similarly layered engagement with Mary -- not to explain the prayers, but to deepen the contemplative practice surrounding them. Read, look, think, intuit: the praxis of devotional reading is more, so much more, than just working through the words.

In other words, in both Hindu and Christian-monastic tradition image and text operate not merely in service to each another, but work instead through a process of dynamic tension, for each pushes the devotee toward a more expansive and imaginative apprehension of the divine.

WORKS CITED

Appuhn, Horst. Der Fund im Nonnenchor. Kloster Wienhausen, Bd 4. [Wienhausen]: Kloster Wienhausen, 1973.

Chanchani, Jahnabi Barooah. “Text, Image and Devotion in a 15th Century Western Indian Manuscript.” Aziatische Kunst 48/1 (2018): 42–53. Academia link.

Cyrus, Cynthia J. “Printed Images in a Thalbach Manuscript Prayer‑book of the Sixteenth Century.” Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 173–82.

Hamburger, Jeffrey. The Visual and the Visionary. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Schuler, Carol M. “The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: Popular Culture and Cultic Imagery in Pre-Reformation Europe.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 21 (1992):5–28.

From Sea Lions to Sight-Singing: What Sea Mammals Know About Music

Sea Lions of the Georgia Aquarium, April 2025

Pinnae, the externally-located parts of the sea mammal’s ear, are parallel to auricles in humans. As the Georgia aquarium explains, pinnae help sea lions (and by extension seals and walruses) with their directional hearing, especially when they're on land. And, when the pinnae are pinned back, the animals are streamlined, able to twist and turn in the water in what observers (my husband and I) might describe as a “caffeinated state.” So much motion! So little splash!

So, if sea lion pinnae and human auricles are alike, might not the sea mammal be the next freshman ear-training Wunderkind? It sure seems plausible, to judge by the scholarly literature of late!

For one thing, the more-mobile pinnae could readily serve to give sea mammals better concentration than your average freshman. How so? Well, if sea mammals have the ability to close their ears to keep out water, they might perhaps perform that same action to close out aquarium noise. With decibel levels hovering regularly in the mid-80s, the noise of the general public must surely be annoying to our mammal companions on display. Perhaps that’s why they spent so much time submerged; listening to the roar of an enthusiastic crowd may easily be imagined to “get old fast,” particularly when a mammal is capable of so much more. Close off the pinnae, reduce distraction. I bet freshmen wish they had a tool like that on tap?

Not only that, but sea mammals are also capable of changing vocal expressions in learned behavior (Reichmuth and Casey, 2014). They can imitate complex sounds. For instance, Hoover, a captive harbor seal, famously mimicked human speech with a recognizable New England accent, including favorite phrases like “Hey! Hey! Come over here!” That old expression monkey see, monkey do here becomes “Seal repeats phrases that trainer over-uses.”

Likewise, studies have reiterated that sea mammal vocabulary was volitional – done at will – and influenced by status, with dominant animals vocalizing more often than their subordinate peers. This “voluntary control over sound emissions,” the authors argue, “is likely related to respiratory adaptations for diving.” If I am following the argument here, a sea mammal might readily be moved into that sight-singing class, since they can learn to repeat what they hear, and the more self-important the beast, the better the outcome. Yup, sounds like freshmen to me!

Not only have the ear-to-voice translation capacity of our freshmen, sea mammals also are good candidates for voice department training. The elements of shaping a good singing voice are found in the “jaw, tongue, lip, and soft palate movements,” am I right? Oh wait, these “articulatory gestures” are exactly the ones that the captive harbor seal used in Goncharova’s study of the way that “wawa” sounds are shaped (Goncharova et al., 2024).

Teacher: Move that soft palate forward, and make it sound like this…
Captive Seal: like this? …
Teacher: That’s right, but give it a little more lift at the end…

So far our sea mammal student shows trainability, and the capacity for vocal shaping. But we all know that rhythm is a big bugaboo for the freshman ear training student. What of that?

Oh right, sea mammals have that covered as well! Yes, it turns out that sea lions can be taught both simple and complex rhythms. How so? Investigators (Rouse et al. 2016) taught Ronan the sea lion to nod her head in time to repeated rhythms. They then provided deliberate disruptions to her click-track. It turns out that Ronan could adjust to tempo changes and other disruptions, getting back on beat within a measure or two.

The authors suggest that the mechanism is one of auditory-motoric entrainment – that is, a coordination of the motor unit with rhythmic sounds – through neural oscillation. Moreover, because that capacity is so broadly found in the animal kingdom, they argue that “rather than being a derived ability, this faculty is instead broadly conserved.” From elephants to cockatoos to, yes, sea lions, many animal species can bop to the music. In other words, investigators found that musical skills might be much more natural and widespread in the animal kingdom than traditionally thought.

What does this say? It suggests to me that the ambitious ear training instructor might well look to their local aquarium for species-broadening outreach.

So, if your institution wants to know the public impact of your music school, just tell them this: from sight-singing, to vocal sound production, to rhythm, the sea mammal is a ready-made model for teaching and learning those modern-day ear training skills!

WORKS CITED

Goncharova, Maria, Yannick Jadoul, College Reichmuth, W. Tecumseh Fitch, and Andrea Ravignani, “Vocal Tract Dynamics Shape the Formant Structure of Conditioned Vocalizations in a Harbor Seal.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences vol. 1538, issue 1 (2024): 107-116.

Reichmuth, Colleen, and Caroline Casey. “Vocal Learning in Seals, Sea Lions, and Walruses.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 28 (Oct 2014): 66-71.

Rouse, Andrew A., Peter F. Cook, Edward W. Lage, Collegen Reichmuth. “Beat Keeping in a Sea Lion as Coupled Oscillation: Implications for Comparative Understanding of Human Rhythm.” Frontiers in Neuroscience (2016), DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00257