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.

Arriving from Wealth: Rosina von Ems

Rosina von Embs (von Ems / von Hohenems) arrived at Thalbach in 1609 and was give holy orders a year later. As the honorific “von” shows, she comes from the Vorarlberg elite, and the chronicle names her parents as Count Johann Christoff von Hohenems and Christina Gutzkopfflerin von Guellenbach.

Her parents are presumably lesser-known relatives of more politically significant individuals known to us in history. While my answers to her lineage are only provisional – I haven’t (yet) found direct documentation – the timeline and circumstances provide the following "best guess" assessment of her background.

ROSINA’S FATHER, “GRAF” JOHANN CHRISTOFF VON HOHENEMS:

On her dad’s side, the “Graf” (“Count”) label and assignment to Hohenems suggests a relationship to Markus Sittikus von Hohenems (1538–1595, Bishop of Constance who later served at the Curia in Rome), and his brother Jakob Hannibal von Hohenems (1530-1587) who served general with the troops. In 1613 -- four years after Rosina’s entry to Thalbach – Jakob Hannibal’s oldest son Kaspar was to acquire the County of Vaduz and Lordship of Schellenberg from the Counts of Sulz, while his younger son, another “Markus Sittikus” became Archbishop of Salzburg. This was a family in ascendancy, as well as one firmly in a Catholic orbit (Niederstatter vol. 2, p. 48; Neumaier 2021, pp. 57-58).

And so it proves. Count Hans Christoph, as it happens, comes from the second branch of the Hohenems family, the children of Marquard V (d. 1533) and Veronika von Neideck. These include

Mark Sittich II, Vogt of Bludenz (d. 1565) m1. Eva von Dankertschwell, m2. Eva von Thun.

“From one of these marriages came Hans Christoph von Hohenems (d. 1603) who was married to Maria von Paumgarten zu Hohenschangau (d. 1633)” (Neumaier 2021, p. 58).

Sister Amalia von Hohenems m2. Hans Christoph von Ega (after death of m1. Sixt von Scheinen zu Gammerschang) (Neumaier 2021, p. 57)

progeny: Wolf Heinrich von Ega

Since Hans is the nickname for Johannes, the Hans Christoph (in yellow) is almost certainly the same as Johannes Christoph von Hohenems, Rosina’s father, and his death in 1603 aligns with what we know of Rosina’s financial timeline. If I am right, then Rosina’s dad is Hans Christoph (shown in yellow); her grandmother is Eva von Thun (shown in green); and her great grandsire is Marquard V of Hohenems. Quite a lineage!

von Hohenems (aka "von Ems"), a partial family tree

If things were easy, we wouldn’t recognize them, of course. Hans Christoph’s legacy is complicated, and here Helmut Neumaier’s research (2021) becomes invaluable; much of my discussion here follows his lead.

Count Hans Christoph names his powerful Hohenems cousin Kaspar in his will, but actually bequeaths the majority of his estate to his nephew Wolf Heinrich von Ega (Neumaier p. 59). This, politically, would not stick; the pressures to maintain Hohenems familial control over various properties and income-streams and the lesser political prowess of the lesser branch of the family meant that Wolf Heinrich was quick to pivot to a more politically feasible solution. Wolf Heinrich cashes out much of his claim jointly with Kaspar, and in part to resolve the many family debts, and with the remainder sets various income streams in place.

One of these income streams was negotiated in the 2 December 1603 meeting between Wolf Heinrich von Ega, Count Kaspar von Hoheneg, and the 2 imperial counselors, Johann Ludwig von Ulm and Johann Werner von Raitenau:

In fulfillment of Frau von Thun's will, Ega will insure and transfer to Rosina Embserin and Amalia Loring 3,000 florins belonging to the Bludenz estate, but in such a way that if Rosinle [“little Rosina”] dies first, the money will revert to him. (Neumaier 2021, p. 60)

In other words, as Neumaier explains, among these funds that Wolf Heinrich cedes to Count Kaspar is a deed of title from the Bludenz domain which amounted to 6,000 florins. These funds actually stemmed from Frau Eva von Thun’s will. As confirmed in a Kaspar’s legal summary of January 1, 1604, these funds were directed half to Cyprian von Thun (Hans Christoph von Hohenems’ uncle), and a quarter each to Rosina von Ems – our monastic sister – and to Amalia Loring. If I am right about Rosina’s place in the family tree, Eva was her grandmother, and is settling her legacy on her through her son, and with the assistance of Wolf Heinrich.

There was a further chapter in this unfolding drama: the division of funds was contested. The family of Hans Christoph’s chamberlain, Rudolf Embser, claimed nine years of back-salary to support him and his many children. Likewise, an unsuccessful petition came from Hans Christoph’s tutor, Johann Rem, for thirty years (!) of back salary, but in that instance the income of a mill had been in the tutor’s hands as imperial agents were well aware, and therefore no payout was made to the over-greedy former tutor. Still, it’s clear that Hans Christoph would not be characterized as the most financially well-grounded, and it seems that Rosina was lucky to get her (presumed) grandmother’s inheritance at all.

ROSINA’S MOTHER, CHRISTINA GUTZKOPFFLERIN VON GUELLENBACH

Why do we remain uncertain about Rosina’s father and her place in the family tree? That’s because Hans Christoph von Hohenems is certainly known to have married – but to Maria von Paumgarten zu Hohenschangau, who outlived him by thirty years. And that is definitively NOT the identity of Rosina’s mother, who’s known to us both through monastic chronicle and convent document as Christina Gutzkopfflerin von Guellenbach (or Quellenbach, depending on source chosen).

However, I posit that Christina was, in fact, likely to have been Hans Christoph’s wife – a first wife, I would guess, making Maria von Paumgarten his second wife. It would be unsurprising if Christina were to have died early; most of the family actually seem to have had at least two marriages, and death in childbirth was all to common at the time.

Moreover, given an overlap of surnames and timeframes, I also posit that Rosina’s mom Christina might well have been a sister of the Lieutenant Colonel Hans Geizkopfler von Gailbach who served and fell at the Ottoman siege of Raab, Hungary (Brafman, pp. 47-48). (If his is the preferred spelling, as I assume, then her mother is actually Christina Geizkopfler von Gailbach.)

Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate more details of Rosina’s immediate ancestors or document her own birth, though other volumes of family history (not yet consulted) may have more details.

WHY DO WE CARE?

The question of Rosina’s parentage is interesting as a curiosity in its own right. It tells us something important about Thalbach’s reputation as a monastery that Vorarlberg nobility saw it as a home for their daughters. The deep counter-reformation Catholicism which saw the primary branch of the Counts of Hohenems into positions of churchly authority may well have trickled over into the devotions of a daughter of the secondary branch of the house. That is, her call to the monastic life may have been shaped by family dynamics and faith practices.

Also notable, however, is the impact of this noble affiliation on the circumstances of Rosina’s own entry into the convent. As we circle in towards identifying Rosina’s origins, we note three things from her convent membership file (VLA Klosterarchiv Box 16, file 225 03, Rosina Emberin):

• First, this is a thick folder. She has inventories and Quittungen and documents and even an inventory of the cost for copying all these various documents. She is well attested, in other words. She comes with money, and with money’s many complications.

• Second, unlike other sisters at the time, she’s not just represented by immediate family, but there are other individuals involved in her convent provisioning. And, happily for our story here, one of those individuals involved in her case is… Wolff Hainrich von Ega.

• Third, while all these documents circle around Rosina, we have remarkably little information about her actual service at the convent. She doesn’t seem to have emerged as a convent leader, nor do we have a testament to any sort of outstanding characteristics within the community. We don’t learn about her singing, for instance; we don’t know about her busy hands with garden work; we simply see her as one of the convent sisters, listed out by age in various inventories of convent membership at the time.

In other words, Rosina doesn’t seem to be important so much for what she did as for who she was.

WHAT DID THE CONVENT SISTERS THINK ABOUT THEIR WEALTHY COMPANION?

Rosina’s entry to Thalbach is notable to our chroniclist for the luxuries that she brings with her. She brought an ornate and embroidered red cloak decorated with golden bows and cibori. It is unclear from the context whether this was literally a richly-made liturgical vestment – a cope – or whether it was used as a votive offering to adorn a statue in the monastery, perhaps even that of the well-known Schutz-Madonna. Either way, the symbolism of gifting a cloak is one of protection, suggesting on ongoing relationship of family and convent.

This ongoing pledge of commitment with cloak as symbol was reinforced by the gift of wine that came with Rosina’s entry: for “No wine was given to the convent beforehand,” says the chroniclist. Moreover, it was an important enough gift to the sisters that they continued to gossip about it a century later. The chroniclist makes the point that she heard about the wine “from our old sister.” It was evidently that proverbial “gift that keeps on giving,” in a pleasant and rewarding way! 

And yet, other than these markers of her origins, Rosina has remarkably little impact on the convent's story. We can deduce a life of devoted prayer, but we have very little knowledge of her convent life from the surviving record.

A memorable bit of handwork and a recurring gift of wine; Rosina is honored in the convent memory primarily for her status at entry and the benefits it provided her fellow sisters. Perhaps her status and the honor it brought to Thalbach also explain her position in the necrology, for the other thing we know about Rosina is that she is one of the first five sisters named in the Thalbach obit as recorded in Father Franz Ransperg’s Anthropologium of 1660.

In sum, Rosina von Ems stands out to us less for the deeds she performed within the convent than for the legacy she carried with her into it. Her entry into Thalbach brought material wealth, a noble lineage and reputation, and symbolic gifts that resonated well beyond her lifetime – echoes of which shaped the memory of her among the sisters, and secured her a lasting place in the convent’s record. Her story reminds us that monastic life was not isolated from social hierarchy, but rather deeply entwined with the currents of family, faith, and fortune.

WORKS CITED

Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336-1629.

Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Klosterarchiv Box 16, file 225.03, Convent membership files: Rosina Emberin.

Brafman, David. “The Hapsburgs’ Man in Istanbul: The (not-so-secret) life and times of Johann Joachim Prack von Asch, 16th-century imperial spy.” Getty Magazine (Spring 2021): 46-48 https://www.getty.edu/about/whatwedo/getty_magazine/gettymag_spring2021.pdf

Neumaier, Helmut. “Reichsritter Wolf Heinrich von Ega zu Ober- und Unterschüpf: Ungelöste Fragen zwischen Vorarlberg und Schüpfergrund.” Württembergisch Franken 100: (Oct 2021): 45-72. DOI: 10.53458/wfr.v100i.817. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356744018

Niederstätter, Alois. Vorarlberg 1523 bis 1861: Auf dem Weg zum Land. Geschichte Vorarlbergs Bd 2. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2015.

Ransperg, Franz. Anthropologium seu specificatio numerica.[...] omnium Personarum, quae Parochiae Brigantinae sunt incorporatae, 1660 (Vorarlberger Landesarchiv Pharrarchiv Bregenz Handschrift 34, p. 177, item 04).

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.

Mapping Soundscapes: Applying Stratoudakis and Papadimitriou’s Measures to Memory and Place

A 3-way Venn diagram of Individual, Sound and Environment

Stratoudakis, Constantinos and Kimon Papadimitriou 2007. “A Dynamic Interface for the Audio-Visual Reconstruction of Soundscape, based on the Mapping of its Properties.” Proceedings SMC'07, 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 11-13 July 2007, Lefkada, Greece.

Every place, argues Stratoudakis &  Papadimitriou (2007), has its own distinctive sound picture. That is, it had a unique identity, “not only in terms of geography or physical-temporal aspects, but also in its acoustic properties.”

In their map of understanding (Fig. 1), the individual intersects directly with sound through meaning-making and can also listen and/or emit, shaping sound as it exists. Sound likewise interacts with the environment through coloration and direct/reflected sound. Thus, the three worlds interact with sound as one of the mediators of the individual’s relationship to the broader environment. That is, the “inner reality – inner sounds, thoughts, feelings and memory,” as Stratoudakis & Papadimitriou put it, takes in environmental information through sound.

Figure 1: Sound as Meter, derived by Cynthia Cyrus from Stratoudakis and Papadimitriou (2007)

This is an interesting point, since the shape of experience AS memory is heavily dependent on sensory memory. I wrote recently about the memory of a 1614 snowball fight and of the 13th feet of snow of one terrible winter that Sister Anna Wittweilerin attests to in her Tagebuch (absorbed later in the Thalbach Convent Chronicle). (Sister Anna Wittweilerin Looks Up)

As we follow her memory (Thalbach Chronicle, Gath 4 p. 86; Rapp p. 625), we actually superimpose sound details without her naming them. We can imagine the “thwuck” of a snowball thrown and successfully landed on its target; we can hear in our inner soundtrack the laughter of the sisters engaging in a bout of unusually fine fun. I can hear the clucking hens, their day disturbed by the unusual activity, and perhaps a single rooster crow to establish inner territory within the hen-house while the outer world manifests these unusual games and noises. I imagine the trees whispering off to the right of the convent yard in the hillside between them and the parish church as the inevitable winter breeze rolls down the afternoon mountainside. And we know from experience that the broader landscape would be hushed, since snow deadens sound. All of these elements were present in my inner landscape as I read Wittweilerin’s passage, though she uses no sound words at all. Her nouns – snow, snowball, hen-yard – become my soundtrack through an associative linkage of my own inner memories of these things.

My projection of this past environment, in other words, DOES appear to be mediated in part by sound-memory as well as by the convent sister’s narrative. Readers bring their own experiences to the things they are reading; that includes their own experiences of sound-as-mediator.

The second big contribution that Stratoudakis & Papdimitriou make is to model one approach to considering sound. Since “soundscape is an ever-changing version of a given environment [and thus] presents great spatio-temporal variability,” they provide a model for considering changes over time. They ask that we consider sampling positions as well as recording periods. For them, sound (and its attributes), space (geographical coordinates) and time (annual and daily cycles) are the three main elements for describing a soundscape. They suggest a day divided into three hour chunks, and consider a variety of individual parameters. 

They also caution that one should note “places of particular geo-morphological interest.” The gurgling stream, for instance, that is close to Thalbach’s back property in summertime, would shape the soundscape as a kind of acoustical dent (or would it be hill?), a natural feature that would deform the experience of other sounds as its summer-time omnipresence shades and colors the other sounds in its proximity.

Measures from their study that could be particular useful for other projects (like my own) are these:

• Source (bird, frog, car…)
• Area sampled
• Timestamp
• Origin: biological, geological, anthropological
• Meaning: background, foreground

I gave some thought to those measures as I trod through graveyards on my research trip. Birds: check. Crickets: Also check. Stream: Yep. Fountain: noted. Bell peals: Cool, I mean, yep. Cars are, of course, historical anachronisms, but they function too as a reminder that the wagons and carts of former time should be accounted for in a historical re-imagining of the past.

To be fair, Stratoudakis & Papadimitriou’s ultimate interest lies in the mapping and manipulations that computer modeling allows, and it is indeed fascinating stuff. But for me, at this point, the pragmatic elements of parsing the sound-world had more ready applicability, and it is that more humanistic element of their study that I have shared here.  A link to their full study is in the notes below.

TAKE-AWAY
Stratoudakis & Papadimitriou offer a handy model for thinking about sound as measurable yet deeply experiential. While their research is oriented toward computational modeling and A-V replication, its implications extend beyond technical applications. Their framework provides a useful lens for humanistic inquiries, helping us parse how environments, past and present, are aurally constructed and mediated. In particular, their model of a sound-mediated understanding of environment emphasizes the importance of spatial and temporal variability in soundscapes. It also inadvertently underscores the ways in which individual memory and perception shape our understanding of sound. My own reflections on convent narratives and historical re-imaginings highlight how memory itself can function as an imagination-informed soundscape—one in which readers contribute their own inner sonic realities to narratives that seem on the surface to be silent.

In short, whether addressed to the recorded sounds of a contemporary Grecian landscape (them) or to the imagined echoes of historical spaces (me), Stratoudakis & Papadimitriou’s measures offer a method for attending more carefully to the role of sound in shaping experience.

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WORKS CITED: 

Cyrus, Cynthia J. “Sister Anna Wittweilerin Looks Up” [Blog post]. Silences and Sounds Blog, https://silencesandsounds.blogspot.com, 19 Feb 2025.

Rapp, Ludwig. Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, Bd. 2. Brixen 1896.

Stratoudakis, Constantinos and Kimon Papadimitriou 2007. “A Dynamic Interface for the Audio-Visual Reconstruction of Soundscape, based on the Mapping of its Properties.” Proceedings SMC'07, 4th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 11-13 July 2007, Lefkada, Greece. Digital copy available here.

Thalbach Chronicle (consulted from manuscript): Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336–1629.

Sister Anna Wittweilerin Looks Up

A comet and a winter scene from Bregenz, with the theme: Worry into joy

In the early 17th century, Anna Wittweilerin was a Thalbach sister when, at age 40, she found herself promoted to convent Maisterin in 1619.

She had joined the convent in 1589 at age 10, and was given holy orders in 1592 at age 13. She professed in 1595 on St Ursula’s day. Thus, she was a young and newly-professed sister – age 16 – in 1595 when the convent’s liturgical practices were reformed (Chronicle p. 31, P1360 and Gathering 6 #15, P1464). She served as convent Superior for 22 years, and died at age 62 in 1641. (See Chronicle p. 20 and Gath. 2 fol. 3r). The chronicle points out that she “endured a great deal of hardship,” (Gath 2, fol. 3r), not least of which was the 30-years war.

Wittweilerin’s personal interests add nuance and depth to the convent records, for it is thanks to her diary, much of which was incorporated verbatim or in close paraphrase into the Convent Chronicle, that we have accounts of the weather extremes and of the comet of 1619. She started the diary at age 33 in 1612 and continuing until 1641. For today’s post, we’ll concentrate on events before 1620.

We learn from Wittweilerin’s diary of the year that snow held off until Lent (1612), so that flowers were available on Christmas. The sisters used the extra-long season of greenery to make fresh wreaths for the statue of St Anna. Other years weren’t so lucky; a tree fell due to snow in 1613, and the winter of 1613 to 1614 was one for the record-books.  As the Chronicle tells it, “in the fall it was cold and wetter [than normal], on the 19th of September it began to snow, and the ground never became dry until St. George's Day (April 23) in 1614.”  That’s 31 weeks – 217 days – of muddy or snowy footing on the ground. The snow wound up going all the way up to the shutters of the gatehouse – and the Holunder account, drawing on her diary, says that “In front of the window in the hen garden the snow was 13 feet 7 inches high.”

An outdoors person by heart, she reports that “In Feb 1617 it was so fine and warm that people thought they should go out in the fields.” One can hear the desire to enjoy the unseasonable weather, and the joyful spirit with which she celebrates the various things of the outdoors: trees, fields, flowers. Later that same year, however, she finds the weather more oppressive, “it became so hot that people thought they would burn.” (Holunder 1934). Working in the heat can be enervating at the best of times; heat exhaustion could be a real fear.

Yet it is from Wittweilerin, too, that we have stories of fun. She tells the story of the sisters’ snowball fight (!), when the sisters went out into the still-snowy yard on the Thursday before Pentecost and pelted one another with their hand-crafted zingers (Chronicle, Gath 4 p. 86; Rapp p. 625). She tells as well of their wreath making, and of crop tallies from their work in the fields. The sisters themselves, for example, harvested the wine (that is, the grapes that would become wine).

And, we learn that they indulge in a ready bit of star-gazing:

In the month of December [1618] a comet was seen with a tail in the sky, which had appeared a short time before. We grant that the dear God may graciously turn it away from us, and have mercy on the Christian Church, which is in the greatest danger, as well as the noble house of Austria. [On the pamphlet-wars that this comet inspired, see: Stillman Drake and C.D.O'Malley, The Controversy on the Comets of 1618:Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler (U Penn Press 1960).]

To her, as to so many of her peers, the stars are still portents; she sees the “rod” – the comet tail – as a potential for God’s punishment. Through prayer and God’s grace, however, this pointed threat can be averted. By her account, the prayers worked, since the next year’s harvest was especially fine, though the political scene did not fare nearly as well. “We praised God that we may proclaim [our wine] with health and enjoy it in peace with one another since things are going very badly in the war. May the lord strengthen Christianity! It is well needed!” (Holunder 1934).

Sister Anna Wittweilerin’s diary and its close parallels in the Convent Chronicle offer a rare and intimate glimpse into the daily rhythms of convent life, framed by the larger forces of nature, faith, and war. Her observations remind us that even within a monastic environment, the world outside remained ever-present—whether through the creeping cold of a relentless winter, the heady promise of an early spring, or the celestial warnings streaking across the sky. She looked up, not only to track the stars but also in hope, finding solace in shared labor, seasonal celebrations, and the enduring rituals of convent life. Though she lived in a time of uncertainty (to which we’ll return in a future post), she answers her own worries with joy. To her, the snow becomes an occasion for play, and the comet an occasion to celebrate the peace of community, in hopes that such peace might ripple ever outwards. To Anna Wittweilerin, looking up is looking into the promise of a world touched by the divine.

WORKS CITED:

“Das alte Frauenkloster zu Thalbach (3. Fortsetzung),” Holunder: Wochen-Beilage für Volkstum, Bildung und Unterhaltung zur Vorarlberger Landes-Zeitung No. 38 (28 Sept 1934), from the series, Nos. 36-43 (8 weekly entries, 8. Sept to 27. Okt 1934). Quotes heavily from Wittweilerin’s diary. https://texte.volare.vorarlberg.at/viewer/fullscreen/Holunder1934/154/

Rapp, Ludwig. Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, Bd. 2.  Brixen 1896.

Stillman Drake and C.D.O'Malley, The Controversy on the Comets of 1618:Galileo Galilei, Horatio Grassi, Mario Guiducci, Johann Kepler (U Penn Press 1960).

Thalbach Chronicle (consulted from manuscript): Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336–1629.
 

A NOTE ON NAMING:

I typically use the "-in" suffix that designates females in surnames, following the conventions the sisters themselves used. Thus, her father was Herr Wittweiler, but she is Anna Wittweilerin.

Diligent Devotion: Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s Leadership at Thalbach

Image of the Annunciation as a Thalbach monastic seal (from the hand of Euphrosina Vöglin)

The women’s tertiary monastery of Thalbach in Bregenz benefited from a series of long-serving and devoted leaders. A peek into the short narrative descriptions of their convent efforts provides a glimpse into the varied emphases these convent administrators placed on spiritual life, governance, and the material well-being of the community. Some prioritized the stability of the convent’s finances, others focused on the education of the sisters, while still others devoted their attention to the aesthetics and soundscape of worship. In her thirty years of convent service, Maria Euphrosina Vöglin (r. 1683–1713; d. 1716) had a chance to embody all three. She shaped the convent through her personal devotional practices, her canny skills on the administrative front, and a marked sensitivity to the role of music and ritual in the convent’s spiritual life.

Diligently Devoted

At the end of the seventeenth century, Sister Maria Euphrosina Vöglin was elected Maisterin at Thalbach by the sisters and duly endorsed by the appropriate male clerics, including the Order’s Provincial. Euphrosina was a particular devotee of the Virgin Mary, for the Chroniclist tells us that she prayed her office fervently on a daily basis. Since, in a post-Tridentine environment, the Little Office of the Virgin – her presumed prayer focus – was normally assigned only to Saturdays and special feast days, we learn from this introduction that she was enacting a more-is-better faith practice, for she performed privately what was done more publicly in the convent’s regular cycle of prayer. In other words, the first thing we learn about Euphrosina is her exemplary faith; as convent leader she serves as a model to the other sisters, who should prioritize prayer even if it should fall outside of the bounds of performed liturgy.

Not only was she a faithful Catholic; according to the convent’s Chronicle, she served “laudably and well” as Maisterin for 30 years. Given her length of service, she developed skills as an able administrator. Some of her attention was architectural. It was during her reign that the monastery building refurbishment was completed, for instance, and she also expanded the choir; this may be the time when the interior window was added. Ludwig Rapp reports that she drafted a letter to the Mayor and Council of inner Bregenzerwald, in which she begs them for a “generous” contribution for her monastery. She points out that their need was great both architecturally and spiritually: “so that it does not fall into disrepair and the divine service and holy order's discipline do not disappear” (Euphrosina Vöglin petition, as quoted in Rapp 634).

She also focused on the nuances of the divine service “because of the music and the chorale,” as the Chronicle tells us. This I take to mean that she oversaw both the instrumentalists and the sisters’ own performances in services. The chroniclist confirms that “She also paid diligent attention to the fact that the divine service was held properly.” She was, in other words, a stickler for the forms and orders of the church, and also for the richness of their living and resonant sounds. She must have appreciated the multimedia appeal of the services. She also evidently recognized beauty itself as an element of spiritual life, for she also “had many beautiful vestments, antipendia and other things made for the church,” as we learn near the end of the Chronicle chapter.

I stress the distributed nature of the Chroniclist’s account, focused early on prayer placement and sound, and only later on visual splendor, since that suggests to me an element of hierarchy in the description of Euphrosina’s devotions. The assessment offered emphasizes what I suspect was the more unusual capacities that she brought – the aural and devotional – and left more stereotypical contributions of feminine handwork for the close of the entry. This also could reflect a gradual shift of Euphrosina’s physical efforts over time. Her active engagement with liturgy and prayer coincides in the account with her emphasis on bricks-and-mortar projects, a spiritual match to the physical enhancements of the cloister. The feminine handwork, in contrast, coincides with text focused on her  charitable work and her resignation of office at age 74.

In addition to her advocacy for prayer and worship, Euphrosina also led the sisters in more educational endeavors, for we know from Leroy Shaw’s theatrical research that she produced at least one Latin play (“De Theophila a mundi voluptatibus abstracta”) during her years in service. She also acquired Gallia vindicata (1594/r.1702) by Paolo Sfondrati, a defense of the Catholic Church’s position against the political and religious turmoil in late 16th-century France, demonstrating her interest in the broader landscape of Catholic counter-reformation polemics (Fechter). (She is not, however, the same Euphrosina Vöglin responsible for the book of prayers published in Augsburg in 1682; that Euphrosina was a widow, a Lutheran, and of the previous generation, dying the year before our Euphrosina ascends to the role as head of convent.)

Managing in Times of Hardship

Given the historical circumstances, Maria Euphrosina was required to guide the convent through hard economic times. The cost of grain skyrocketed, and a series of war taxes were imposed, so that the coffers ran thin. In response, she did two things. She appealed the taxes, which were bitterly high, and would have confiscated 1/3 of the convent’s lands (Thalbach Chronicle Gathering 2 fol. 6; Rapp, p. 633-4). As she wrote to a convent advocate in Constance, “we (the nuns) have no foundation, nothing superfluous, but we, 24 professed nuns, are barely able to provide the necessary maintenance of our order and poorly managed cloister, and we have no daily mass and no dedicated confessor." (As quoted in Rapp 631). We learn from other documents that some relief was awarded, perhaps because the sisters were able to demonstrate that they had to help with the farming by bringing in their own crops (!) (Rapp, p. 633), but ultimately they had to pay 40 fl. in war contributions in 1686, and pay the Turkish tax again in 1708 (Fussenegger, 123).

Euphrosina also indulged in some creative fundraising, and her own mother donated to the convent to help stabilize their finances. Well, sort of. Technically, her mom repurposed her brother’s funds for Euphrosina’s own use, and Euphrosina gave them outright to the convent (Thalbach Chronicle, gathering 2, fol. 6r). We have no evidence that her brother was happy with this outcome, but he didn’t try to retrieve the funds, either.

During these years of hardship, Euphrosina proved flexible: she might be a taskmaster in the context of the order of services, but demonstrated more compassion in the lives of the sisters. She arranged that during the 40-day fast of Lent when the convent was subsisting largely on fungi and herbs, they would have roasted meat on Sunday night (in contravention of the regular rules) in order to keep them hale (Thalbach Chronicle Gathering 2, fol. 6r). This practice seems to have been surprisingly common. The sisters of Kirchheim unter Teck similarly broke their fast when roasted meat was “all that was available” (Kirchheim Chronicle). Practical constraints meant that the choice of health with a few bent rules triumphed over near starvation in both contexts. Since many individuals paid their debts in the form of foods – a half a lamb, a basket of eggs, and so on –  pragmatism in a context of hardship might mean that the food available was the food consumed.

This pragmatism and empathetic management was rewarded by an increase in convent recruitment, particularly among the monied class. Large dowries were paid to the convent and material goods such as religious garments, bedclothes, breviaries, silver spoons and silver jugs were provided to the entering daughters, as mentioned in the dowry documents that Euphrosina so frequently signed in her role as Meisterin. (Bregenz KA 15 Schachtel 225A, Mitgleider).

Generous to traveling clerics and to the city’s poor, she was seen by the Chroniclist and convent alike as “a true child of the order” (ein getreyen ordnuß kind). After her death, the convent pledged to say a Pater noster and an Ave Maria for her every Sunday without exception, both a signal of their dedication to keeping her name in Convent memory and a curious observation about the ways in which conflicting demands could otherwise interfere with memorial practice (Chronicle Gathering 2, fol. 6r).

Life Context

Bregenz-born, Euphrosina had arrived at the convent in 1652 at age 13 under the birth name of Maria Franziska Vöglin. She lived there until her death in 1716. Curiously, these details (found in the Chronicle’s gathering 5) are separate from the discussion of her administrative service.  Her family was evidently poised for religious service, for her brother Anton Vogel was Abbot of Mehrerau (1681–1711) (see MehrerauKl, 2639)

What’s at Stake

Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s long tenure at Thalbach demonstrates how convent leadership in the early modern period was far more than a matter of spiritual devotion—it required financial acumen, political navigational skills, and an understanding of the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of worship. Her case challenges simplistic views of female monastic life as passive or cloistered away from the world; instead, she emerges as an active agent shaping not only her convent’s inner life but also their relationships to the civic and religious landscape of Bregenz.

By paying close attention to figures like Euphrosina, we gain insight into the lived realities of post-Tridentine monasticism, where prayer, administration, and survival strategies were deeply entwined. Her legacy, preserved in archival traces, folded in as an illustrative story in the house chronicle, and reiterated through convent memoria “without exception,” raises broader questions about the role of women in shaping institutional histories—who gets remembered, and how?

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Primary Sources 

Appointment of Antonius Vogel as abbot: Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Mehrerau Kloster, Charter 2639 (6. März 1681).

Kirchheim unter Teck Chronicle: edited in Christian Friderich Sattler, “Wie diβ loblich closter zu Sant Johannes bapten zu Kirchen under deck prediger-ordens reformiert worden und durch wölich personen,” in Idem, Geschichte des herzogthums Wurtenberg unter der regierung der herzogen, 5 vols (Tübingen, 1779–1783), vol. 4, Beilagen, Num. 42, S. 173–280. Note: Sattler 280 is also numbered 296.

Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s seal (e.g. from a document of 1686)

Thalbach Chronicle (consulted from manuscript): Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336–1629.

Thalbach membership documents: Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Klosterakten Schachtel 15, 225A–225C, Kloster Thalbach, Konventmitglieder, Aufnahmen und Abrechnungen, Erbschaften.

Secondary Literature 

Fechter, Werner. “Inkunabeln aus Thalbacher Besitz.” Biblos 25 (1976): 233–42.

Fussenegger, Gerold. “Bregenz: Terziarinnenkloster Thalbach.” In: Alemania Franciscana Antiqua 9 (1963): 93-140.

Jenisch, Georg Paulus. Davidischer Seelen [Funerary memoria for Fr. Euphrosina Vöglin]. Augspurg: Johann Jacob Schonigk, 1682. This book of prayers is dedicated to a different individual, one who had been married, lived in Augsburg, and died shortly before our Euphrosina took over as Thalbach’s Maisterin.

Rapp, Ludwig. Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, Bd. 2.  Brixen 1896.

Shaw, Leroy R. “Georg Kaiser auf der deutschsprachigen Bühne 1945–1960,” Maske und Kothurn, 9(1963-12): 68–96.

 

Not a Village, a Community: Building Thalbach’s Church (1609)

A glimpse of the Thalbach church and its windows

In 1609, it was time to raise the walls on the Thalbach convent church in Bregenz. Much labor went into the church, including that of the Tertiaries themselves, for the sisters helped haul stone, cleaned up the worksite, and generally contributed their own proverbial sweat of the brow to the project.

But supplies don’t come cheap, and the sisters turned to fundraising to meet their needs. Their reach was remarkably large, for contributions came from more than the local village and represented donors ranging from the princely to the servant. This suggests the importance of the Catholic network of the day, one which extended across social classes and geographical boundaries to connect the community of the faithful.

The Thalbach Chronicle records the gifts of 75 people, places, institutions, and families who supported the building enterprise. In the middle of the pack in terms of openness of purse fall the administrative gifts. The Lords of Bregenz-and-Hohenegg had their representatives pay for screens so that the sisters could be in seclusion in the church, and the representative of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria gave cash.

At first glance, the Chroniclist’s donor list appears fragmented, but a closer examination reveals patterns in the record. Most donors are identified by place, but 28 people are identified without geographical markers, including all of the donors who gave in Hellers rather than in florins. That probably reflects the convent’s (or at least the chroniclist’s) bookkeeping habits, since she clusters her entries by type of payment: florins, in kind, women’s donations (!), hellers. Some of the inconsistencies of identifying details simply reflect different decisions made at different times for the separate chapters that list donors.

A different situation holds, I think, for the women donors, who are separated into a chapter of their own (as if their cash were somehow different from their male peers). About half of the women donors lack geographical placemarkers, and are identified instead by marital status (wife, widow) and/or natal identity. This decision seems more gendered; marital affiliation “names” the woman, whereas for men, their community serves as part of their defining characteristics. This is perhaps confirmed by the fact that the unmarried women -- “noble and virtuous maidens” in the language of the chronicle – are tied to place. It seems an X+Y kind of equation: as a person one needs a name and either a place or a social connection – to be sure that the reader knows whose gift is being recorded.

For the remaining two-thirds of the gift-related entries, geography is part of this identity equation. Some donations might be predicted. Two former Thalbach sisters, now serving as leaders of convents elsewhere, sent contributions, as did the prioress of Hirschthal and a canonness from Lindau Abbey. Similarly, collective gifts came from several churches/monasteries and the city of Feldkirch, from whence many of the sisters came.  

Yet the donor pool extended far beyond the expected circles of monastic and clerical supporters. Of the 38 individual donors with geographical markers, nine are from Bregenz and five from Wolfurt – the “local citizenry” contributing their piece to the sisters whose prayers were said on their behalf. Two donations come from Hohenegg, which, though farther away, sent multiple sisters to Thalbach. But beyond these strongholds, the chroniclist records gifts from a whopping 22 other locations, one-off contributions from a mix of secular and sacred donors – the local parish priest, a member of the lesser nobility, a particular family, the mayor, an abbot.  Many donations come from Vorarlberg or the Allgäu, but others came in from places as far afield as Schwartzenburg, Zweifalten, and St Moritz in Augsburg.

What this pattern of support shows is the strength of the Catholic network, not just amongst clerical folk, but also, and especially, amongst the laity in the early seventeenth century. True, five individual parish priests donated to the building of the church. But so did widows, and tax collectors, and even a servant. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but evidently, it takes a whole Catholic community to raise a church.
 

When a 6-year-old brought a Marian Icon to Thalbach (1/22/25)

Bregenz Parish church (E) and, perhaps, Thalbach (yellow), from Copperplate of M.Meriam, 1643

In July of 1588, Catarina Haidenhoferin from Ravensburg arrived in the monastery of Thalbach in Bregenz. She was, at the time, six years old, but her monastic career was auspicious. She eventually became the convent’s Meisterin in 1641, at age 59 (by my calculation), and served until her death in May 1664. She took holy orders at age fourteen or fifteen in August of 1596, and made her profession on 27th of October 1599, tucking her in among the monastic sisters of the 16th century.

The story of Catarina arrival’s is seen by the convent chroniclist as remarkable, since her natal city of Ravensburg was at the time mostly Lutheran. Nevertheless, the family’s Catholic faith remained staunch, as witnessed not just through Catarina’s monastic dedication, but also through the story of her arrival, as the chroniclist tells it:

A Lutheran baker wanted to throw our dear lady's Vespers picture into the oven and burn it, but the mother of this 6-year-old child saw this and asked the baker not to do this but to give her this little Marian picture, and she would give him other wood if he wanted, which was also done.

Afterwards she sent the original Mary or Vespers picture with the child to the monastery, which is still in the church on the right hand side, in the choir of the same place in which St. Ursula is grouped with four virgins, of whom the eleven thousand had been previously venerated, but this Vespers picture was recently kept and venerated. (Bregenz VLA, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9 Thalbach Chronicle, p. 19. Transcription/translation by the author.)

Our chroniclist is doing several things here. She is first telling a story of the miraculous rescue of an image of the Virgin, the so-called “Vesperbild,” rescued by a devout family in a “remarkable” intervention. (Such pictures were frequently the focus of specific prayers, and particularly, of Vesper services, when the singing of the Magnificat could be enhanced by the contemplation of the Virgin's image.) The Catholic hero of the story, Catarina’s mother, had to be in the right place at the right time; had to convince a Lutheran tradesman not to consign the picture to the flames; had to bribe him with substitute wood. Moreover, this mother’s faith was evidently strong enough to rescue the picture from this hotbed of Lutheranism and send not just it but her small child to a Catholic sanctuary – and not just any monastery, this monastery of Thalbach, one in a Catholic stronghold.

This, of course, raises important questions of gendered agency in the context of contested religious identity. We hear of the mother’s actions, but not the father’s. We also learn here of the young age of Caterina’s arrival as a six-year-old Catholic girl finding home with Catholic sisters of Thalbach. Notably, the Chroniclist centers the age of arrival in many of her reports of Convent sisters, and the majority of these “early arrivals” (pre-14 year olds), at least in her telling, choose a monastic vocation upon maturity. It is also interesting that the only man in this particular story is the baker, who was about to perform an act that Catholics would consider sacrilege. The women of the story – the mother, child, and arguably the Virgin herself – turn what could have been a crisis of his making into a pivot-point towards Catarina’s future monastic success.

The chroniclist is also telling a story of Catholic persistence in regions that are (from her vantage point) uncomfortably Lutheran. Since, at the time, Bregenz was firmly positioned in the Counter-reformation camp and was Catholic to the near-exclusion of other faith practices, she’s telling a story of “our side’s” success in the face of oppression in other lands. That Catarina – eventual leader of the convent – came from Lutheran lands shows, suggests the Chroniclist, a hint of divine providence. The 10-hour walk from Ravensburg to Bregenz might only have been a few hours on horseback, but the arrival of a 6-year-old from a place as remote as Ravensburg is itself worthy of mention, even without the gift of precious artwork that accompanied her.

This story is also an explanatory story which tells of convent treasure and its derivation. It is a specific image, identified not by internal visual clues but by location. It is that image which stands in the corner of St Ursula, “on the right hand side in the choir.” It is, moreover, an image of the virgin, acquired at nearly the same time as the convent came to own the miraculous statue of the Virgin (the 13th century Gnadenmutter) which still adorns their chapel. The Virgin, in other words, is being made visibly manifest through these miraculous arrivals. (The story of the statue’s arrival at Thalbach is told in a number of places, and perhaps I’ll retell it in a later post. Stay tuned.)

And lastly, this is an anticipatory story, for Caterina Haidenhoferin was to feature in the reform of Thalbach’s liturgy. But that is a story I will tell another day.

NOTE:
I use the term chroniclist rather than the masculine-gendered chronicler that abounds in the literature. I follow Catarina’s own spelling of her name from Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv Klosterarchiv Box 15, Folder #225, document of 1649.

THALBACH CHRONICLE: Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336-1629.

THALBACH’S GNADENBILD: A story told several places, including these: 

• “Wie das alte Bild der Gnadenmutter von Mehrerau nach Talbach kam,” Holunder Wochen-Beilage für Volkstum, Bildung und Unterhaltung zur Vorarlberger Landes-Zeitung, Jg. 15 (1937), Nr. 40, S. 1 – 2. 
•  “Das marianische Gnadenbild zu Thalbach bei Bregenz.” Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria 14 (1884-5): Heft 1, Beilage, pp. 48-53. https://books.google.com/books?id=kKPi0ihULl4C

(I need to dig up the rest of my bibliography on the Thalbach Gnadenbild from my files from pre-pandemic days, and am putting that on my to-do list now!)

Summer’s Soundscape Research--by the Numbers (10/6/24)

Sampling of frescoes, St Nikolaus, Ludesch, Vorarlberg, Austria

My summer’s research was focused on Thalbach, a women’s convent of “devoted sisters” founded in 1336 in Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria. I was working on the women’s soundscapes, for the sisters were involved in town ceremonies and had lively -- and acoustically active lives inside their convent as well. I was in Austria, mostly, though with side trips to a number of countries. 

Research included frescoes and artworks, along with the standard array of manuscripts and incunabula (early prints), documents (so many documents) and a certain amount of standing around in cemeteries waiting for bells to ring. No, really. 

I drafted up my “account” of “summer successes” as a bit of a joke (yay, count all the things!) and then, unjokingly, fell silent as I went through a month (ugh!) of viral bronchitis. 

Here, rather belatedly, is my assessment of a summer of delightful research on soundscapes in Vorarlberg, Austria. 

1.1 million steps. That’s actually only an average of 7.3 miles a day. But it's still a lot.

16,677 photos. Mostly of documents, manuscripts, and books, but also some absolutely stunning scenery. Best hike: the Rappenlochschlucht outside of Dornbirn, Vorarlberg– a moss-bedecked gorge hike, noted for its wooden walkways hooked into the canyon sides. Waterfalls, a natural bridge, forest, and serenity: it was a great way to start a day! 

The Rappenlochschlucht, Dornbirn, Austria--zigging and zagging back through the gorge...

125 “Akten” – archival folders – across 21 boxes. Kind of like going through your great-aunt’s attic; the box may be labeled but you’re never quite sure what you’re going to find. Best find of the summer: a book-list from a local farmer who paid his taxes with books rather than with cash. The sisters were so happy with his books that they waived the third round of taxes that year! 

108 manuscripts and early prints.This was the core of my research. These materials are undigitized, and a number of the books had readers’ marks so you could see what the nuns had found interesting. My favorites were of two types. In one, books were bound by recycling old unwanted manuscripts – this means I could see physical evidence of 14th and 15th century liturgical practices in Thalbach, exactly what I had hoped to find! And the other type were the ones with illustrations; I admit that opening a book and discovering it had pictures – some of them colored! -- was one of the great joys of the trip.

Museum Exhibitions I have loved, Summer 2024 version

25 museums in 6 countries. Altarpieces, artwork, and three fantastic special exhibits. “Wir, Schwestern” (We, sisters) was on nuns and the book arts, and another was on the scriptorium at Reichenau, and a third was on Hans Holbein the Elder, Hans Burgkmair, and Albrecht Dürer. 12 abbeys and monasteries In addition to Thalbach itself, this included the Swiss monasteries of Grimmenstein and Wonnenstein, both of which were interconnected with the Bregenz monasteries in reform practices. 

8 churches with 15th c. frescoes. This was the special treat of my trip. These churches had full or partial programs of illustrations with sacred content – saints; judgment day; the life of Jesus; the life of Mary; and various builders’ marks and early modern graffiti. There were a number of visual parallels to illustrations in the Sisters’ books. And there’s nothing like standing in a church listening to the church bells and looking at the visual reminders of religious practices of the past to make the content of one’s research come to life. 

Random and planned events. And yes, I accidentally attended the inauguration ceremonies in Bratislava, Slovenia; talked church politics with a nonagenarian Swiss school-teacher outside the Bischofszell city hall; shared travel advice with a Czech pilgrim who is walking the long version of the Camino de Santiago; and had breakfast with Blair alumni in Vienna. Plus, there were the innumerable coffees and conversations with librarians and archivists, historians, curators, musicologists, composers, performers, and friends. 

TL/DR: Summer research success for me boils down to the “four P’s”: paper, parchment, pictures, and people.