Age and the Monastic Life at Thalbach in Bregenz

Age and the monastic life: age at entry visualized

BACKDROP:

When did convent sisters join a monastic community? There’s no one clear answer. During the Middle Ages, the church sought to regulate the age of entry; the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, for instance, set that age limit at 14 for girls and 15 for boys. Evidence from England suggests that, at least for men, the age of profession was set between 15 and 21 years (Hatcher, p. 26), and Knowles’s study on The Religious Orders in England finds that by the fifteenth century, there were “few late entrants” to the monastic life (pp. 230-31).

The circumstances are quite different in the Ukrainian orbit, where “secular women could enter a monastery... on a temporary basis” and might only later join the novitiate (Charipova, p. 267). For the convents that Liudmila Charipova has studied in the 18th century, the age of admission clusters between 15 and 22, with an average age at profession of 20. Outliers as young as age 12 and as old as 35, however, show that the age-range at entry was quite variable for these Ukraniane convents (Charipova, Table 1). She identifies a “clear distinction,” however, between profession of “virgins” and that of widows; those entries are listed separately in her source records and had different entrance requirements (Charipova p. 271 and Table 4). She finds the size of Catholic convents in the Polish region, however, to be substantially smaller than their Orthodox peers (Charipova p. 277); their demographics also seem to have followed patterns closer to those familiar from Western European convents.

In Western Europe in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period, one would typically start the monastic life as a postulant (a kind of testing period) and then be formally received as a novice in the community. Profession came later, at the time of maturity, which the Council of Trent set at age 16 as a bare minimum, after a minimum of a one-year novitiate. 

   

From Postulant to Novice to Professed Sister

Craig Harline shows that for the Early Modern period, the sisters of both active and contemplative orders in the Low Counties tended to be in their 20’s “when they began the religious life.” Eva Schlotheuber, on the other hand, sees a persistence of child oblation, noting that the girls had typically lived within the convent community already for several years prior to this more permanent dedication to the religious life. Whether as oblates or postulants, there is clearly a probationary period before the mature sister can make her profession. 

The term “oblate” doesn’t appear in the records at Thalbach in Bregenz, but the patterns of entry can tell us something important about the nature of the community. Thalbach had been founded, at least according to legend, in 1336 as a loose sisterhood, was brought into the more structured fold as Franciscan Tertiaries during the sixteenth century, and was closed during the Josephine reforms (the “Aufhebung”) in 1782, and the building passed to the Dominicans of Hirschberg a few years later.

The work that follows is based on Thalbach in its Franciscan identity, and draws heavily on the Thalbach monastic Chronicle, which frequently reports sisters’ age of entry as well as their age at profession (seen as two distinctive events), and sometimes gives age at birth. For other sisters, birth-year for these sisters can be back-calculated, for a number of entries give age at death. We should use these data with caution – are we sure that 75 year olds have secure memory of their birth year? – but it gives us a shape and profile to the monastic community at a specific Vorarlberg-area tertiary house in the early modern period.

AGE OF ENTRY

At Thalbach in Bregenz, we can determine the age at entry for 80 sisters – roughly half the sisters whose names are known. For 65 of these monastic sisters, the chronicle actually records the age of entry. For another 15, we have age at death plus death year, so we can roughly calculate birth year, and that can be subtracted from the date of entry to determine an approximate age of entry. 

Data profile: most evidence at Thalbach is 17th and early 18th c

 

There’s some bias to the Thalbach data; we have no age-related information for the first two centuries of the convent’s existence, picking up only in the middle of the 16th century. The bulk of the information on specific sisters comes from the 17th century, and the data drops off sharply at the mid-18th century, since the closure of the monastery in 1782 disrupted both lives and data-keeping for the convent community. But with data for at least half the sisters, there’s some utility in understanding how age intersects with convent entry.

 

The Tridentine clerics might have appreciated the overall profile of entry; 45% of Thalbach’s sisters entered at age 13 to 18 (shown in green), and another 25% entered as adults at ages 19 to 24 (in blue). Thus, self-election into the sisterhood was largely done at the ages legally empowered to make decisions, and for the youngest of the group (the 13-year-olds), profession typically held off for an extra year or two. There was a small “bump” of older entries above age 25, but this was not a house that had a large population of widows or late-in-life entrances. Once one hit age 30, life would take a different course than entry into this house of tertiaries.

More challenging, however, is the presence in the convent of pre-teens, who made up 23% of the convent entries (teal and orange in the pie chart above). As the saying goes, every life has a story, and there are some stories to be told about these early entries. We shall return to them below.

A different visualization of the same data shows that the distribution of entry into Thalbach really did center on the 13 to 18 year olds. The “bell curve” skews a bit to the older population, with 20 sisters entering in the 19-to-24 range vs only 13 in the 7-to-12 range. This is, of course, as it should be from a legislative standpoint for convent life.

The challenge is, if one isn’t supposed to be able to “enter” the convent until maturity, what are all those younger girls doing in the house?

YOUNGSTERS OF THE CONVENT

Part of the answer lies in the education that Thalbach provided. Like so many other women’s convents, it provided a community service, functioning as a school though not formally labeled as one. Some of these early entries might be school-girls who wound up drawn to the monastic vocation. That is borne out in many of the endowment documents, which show several youngsters’ affiliation with the convent started as an educational one, before converting to a profession-track novitiate at some time in the teen years.

The call to spirituality could be a powerful force, and it’s important to recognize its import for the life of the Thalbach community. Two of the mid-18th century sisters were, in fact, given profession on their deathbeds. Maria Augustina Müller made her vows on her deathbed in 1752, and Maria Justina Secundin from Weingarten did likewise in 1765. The latter was a music student, and had been looking forward to her profession. When she became ill, the sisters rallied around her, and let her take her vows of profession early in order to be joined to the Order before her death. She was buried in the garb of a full-fledged sister, in keeping with her wishes. (Details on both sisters can also be found in Fußenegger (1963), 137 and 139.) 

There were exceptions to the rule, however. Take Anna Kläfflerin (Kläfler / Kläffler), for instance, who had joined as an infant. She was, to quote the Chronicle, “found in the chapel on the altar.” An abandoned foundling, the sisters clearly had a duty to care for her, even if, in 1532, her entry was without precedent (see Fusseneger 137 and Chronicle fol. 13r). Nearly a century later, in 1616, Amalia Rehmin, who eventually took the monastic name Felicitas, entered at age 4. Her father, however, was an administrative secretery at Mehrerau, and her mother, Euphrosina Öltzin, was equally well-connected, so her early entry may have been a matter of political maneuvering. But as represented in the chronicle, the majority of the early entries are simply noted without further commentary. A sister arrived young, stayed for a period of years, and then professed when of the age to do so. For Thalbach, at least, this seems to have been a relatively standard practice. 

What the convent’s membership files suggest (but the Chronicle does not say), given the presence of numerous paying youngsters over the years, is that the educational offerings of the convent may have been among their strongest recruiting tools. As an institution serving pre-teen girls in Bregenz, the Thalbach sisters had relatively little institutional competition. Some students took their education with the Sisters and returned fully to secular life; others became part of the convent’s sisterhood themselves. 

AGE AT PROFESSION

Given the variable age at entry at Thalbach, it is perhaps reassuring to see that the age of sisters at profession is in the more mature years. With two notable exceptions, none of the sisters professes before age 13, and there are peaks at age 15, 19, and 21 as sisters choose the permanence of community over the possibility of a secular lifestyle. The average age of profession at Thalbach is 18 years old. 

What of those two exceptions? Both are unusual cases. The first is Barbara von Ach of Wolfurt. Her noble status and the needs of dowry, marriage alliances, and the politics of noble life may have led to an early decision based on family need more than a mature monastic calling. In other words, she might be truly categorized as an oblate, with family decision as a stand-in for her independent choice. The second, however, is 8-year-old M. Dorothea Mayer. Her situation – like the infant Anna discovered on the altar mentioned above – is one of charity, for she enters at age 5, already a “righteous and motherless” (Rechten vnd Mutterloß) candidate. Dorothea’s permanent affiliation to the convent is inevitable, and the decision was evidently made to allow her to profess formally before the normal age of decision in light of personal circumstances.

AGE AT DEATH

One more category of age-related data remains: age at death. What the statistics from Thalbach suggest is that convent life must have been relatively congenial. Of course, given that dates of profession precluded the years of early childhood mortality, we should be unsurprised that life expectancy ran longer than for the average population of the day. At Thalbach, average life expectancy was nearly 63 years, and a substantial portion of the sisters lived into their seventies and eighties:

 

CONCLUSION

The patterns of age at entry, profession, and death at Thalbach offer a window into the lived realities of its monastic community. While most sisters entered the convent in their teenage years, a significant portion joined as pre-teens, often for educational access. However, the presence of child entrants, some as young as infants, underscores the complex interplay between charity, family dynamics and decisions, and monastic vocation during the time. Meanwhile, the relatively high life expectancy of the sisters suggests that convent life was both structured and, in many ways, life-sustaining. By analyzing these age-related patterns, we gain a deeper understanding of how Thalbach functioned not only as a religious institution, but also as a social and educational space within early modern Bregenz.

WORKS CITED

Charipova, Liudmila V. “Virgins and Widows: Imperial Legislation and Practices of Admission to the Novitiate and Profession in Ukrainian Women's Monasteries (1722–86).” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 90 no. 2, 2012, p. 262-287. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.90.2.0262.

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

Harline, Craig. “Actives and Contemplatives: the Female Religious of the Low Countries before and after Trent.” The Catholic Historical Review 81 (1995): 541-67.

Hatcher, John. “Mortality in the Fifteenth Century: Some New Evidence.” The Economic History Review, N.S. 39 (1986): 19-38.

Knowles, David. The Religious Orders in England, vol. ii. Cambridge UP, I955.

Schlotheuber, Eva. “Die Klöster im Kreise der Familien. Orte der Erinnerung, des religiösen Kultes und der Feste.” Monastische Kultur Als Transkonfessionelles Phänomen 4 (2016): 239-248.

Schlotheuber, Eva. Klostereintritt und Bildung. Die Lebenswelt der Nonnen im späten Mittelalter. Mit einer Edition des ‚Konventstagebuchs‘ einer Zisterzienserin von Heilig-Kreuz bei Braunschweig (1484–1507). Tübingen 2004, especially pp. 175–221.

“Aged documents” in the Thalbach Monastery Chronicle (12/16/24)

 

1728, 1336, 1338, 1340, 1655, 1532, 1557, 1612, 1597: How old is your evidence?

The Chronicle of Thalbach is a mass of contradictions. (And what monastic chronicle isn’t?) For our chroniclist, history is a bit of a wrestling match, one that needs to reconcile institutional mandates with historical documentation in order to assert the convent’s enduring significance in a period of increasing bureaucratic scrutiny.

I’m starting back through for my fourth journey through the Thalbach Chronicle and its meanings. The chronicle is (largely) an early 18^th century contextual document. In her narrative, the chroniclist tried to do three broad things:

• show the ongoing importance of the convent (with its relatively strong array of incoming novices and postulants and its significant leaders over time),
• trace its history as the oldest women’s monastery in Bregenz, and
• stake its claim as one of the significant Catholic monasteries in the region.

She was writing, in other words, from a position of (justifiable) pride in the convent’s history and its linkage to other convents in the region – a reformer of Wonnenstein, Brunnenstein, and Grimmenstein, for instance. To put it bluntly, she’s writing a history of (women’s) Catholicism triumphant.

As I am studying her narrative this time, however, I’m struck by two areas of tension that the chroniclist faces, though I’ll focus today primarily on the first of these. Notably, our chronicle historian faced a significant Then/Now challenge. She’s writing under command – the chronicle has been commissioned, or at least commanded, by her superiors, she tells us – but she’s also grounded in the documents and legacies of the past. Her audience, in other words, is uncertain. Is it the Catholic leadership? Her future sisters? Some external audience (such as the increasingly involved Imperial audience)? The convent stems from two generations before the Aufhebung, the monastic closures of the end of the century, and already the bureaucracy is closing in. There’s a sense in which that pressure to prove the monastery’s importance shapes the narrative as delivered.

To that end, the author claims that she is writing in “the year 1728” (Gathering 1, p. 3), but she is also writing “as I found it in the old writings of the house of God” (Gathering 1, p. 1). She is laying claim to “found” information; her narrative, she asserts, is document-based. And if document based, it must be authentic, yes? Such grounding in the convent record is important to her, for she repeats those claims several times. She cites the “old documents” of 1655 (Gathering 1, p. 4) and the “old booklet” (p. 7). Oldness is evidently a virtue in documents. Plus, she is clearly concerned about showing her authority and research capacities.

That trend of reference to “older” sources continues:

• There are “old records” which attest to Dorothea Kelhofferin’s role as Mater in 1532 (Gathering 2, p. 1).
• There are other unspecified “old writings” regarding Regula Weisin’s ascension (in 1557) as convent leader (Gathering 3, page 36). Regula was to serve in the role for forty years (1557-1597), so her selection was indeed a matter of significance for the convent
• In Gathering 4, p. 74, we learn about a gift of fish (!) that Amalia Loherin “then wrote this with her own hand in the old good book, which still exists” – one that dates back to 1612.
• Gathering 5a p. 102 suggests that Loherin may have been a kind of genius of accounting practices, since the 100fl, given “30 years ago,” was documented as coming due in 1627, a timely infusion of much-needed cash for the convent!

Oldness and designated leadership – the convent heroes who shaped the successes of the monastery over the centuries -- are thus intertwined. The venerable documentary record – the very stuff of “old records” -- reinforces the idea that significant people and significant documentation are coextensive. Oldness is, by implication, trustworthy. Thus, if an old record says something is so, it has authority.

Such references to Old Records draw us into the realm that Steven Colbert has designated as “Truthiness.” We trust the purported fact or story as much for how it makes us feel and how it explains historical happenings as for any external evidence of its reality. For instance, Amalia Loherin, our beloved financial wizard, is otherwise unattested by that name in the Thalbach record. This is perhaps a slight hiccup in the chroniclist’s pathway of argumentation; we only have her word that the documents (or the person) once existed. On the other hand, names do change; Amalia’s absence may be amended by future findings. And the vividness of the fish story is vivid enough to fit the category of stories that should  have been true; she is telling a story here of how the convent came to be financially self-sufficient. The name may be wrong, but the implications – a fully funded and financially secure convent – are demonstrated through these anecdotes.

Even if she is sometimes telling anecdotes on slender evidence, our chroniclist does get frustrated with the absence of information in what convent documentation does survive. She found, for instance “in an old booklet… that the trustworthy and well-loved Mr. Hiltbrand-Brandenburg of Biberach had traveled to Rome in his post, but it is not written in which year it happened.” (Gathering 1, p. 7). As a researcher trying to tack-and-tie the details of her story, our chroniclist finds that the habits of earlier writers can be frustrating But she’s also sure that his actions were important; she exhorts her fellow monastics to say 3 rosaries on his behalf every year.

The second area of tension is that of convent identity. She’s sure, on the one hand, that the convent was founded by devout sisters, and supported by an unnamed widow. She is also equally convinced (or should that be, she is equally devoted to convincing us as readers) that the convent had always belonged to the Franciscan third order (p. 3), as early as 1338, or perhaps 1340 when the sisters went back to Constance. This is, of course, pish-posh – a historical fabrication generated on political grounds in a moment of intense political need. The convent only became Third Order when commanded to do so after the Council of Trent in the late 16^th century. But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

TAKE-AWAY:

The Thalbach chronicler’s narrative invites us to consider how historical memory is shaped—not only by the documents themselves, but also by the pressures of the moment in which the author writes. The Thalbach chroniclist is concerned that we readers understand her reliance on written records from the convent archives. She did not, in fact, need to tell the reader that documents were old, so her framing of the age of her sources reflects her own intentionality. She is calling to the reader's attention this tension of past and present, historical story and living tradition. And she is doing so by naming her heroes, telling their stories, and even accounting for the convent’s annual gift of fish.

 

CHRONICLE SOURCE:

Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336-1629. References are to pagination where it exists, but to gathering and page number where formal pagination is missing. One gathering is out of order, and another (omitted entirely from the Vienna copy) has been separated in the archival record.

The Vienna copy (ÖNB Cod. 7406: Chronicle and Necrology) largely accords with the VLA copy on the points discussed above.

 

NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: I use the gender-neutral label “chroniclist” rather than the masculine gendered “chronicler” to reflect the reality of women’s agency in the creation of such monastic chronicles. Though un-named, the chroniclist also served as convent archivist for several years; her hand is found frequently in the surviving archive records of the early 18^th century.