Happy January from the Teutsch Römisch Breuier (1535): Of Calendars, Convent Books, and the Lives They Touched

It is the first day of the second quarter of the 21st Century, and thus a time for a fresh new start. I’ll begin here with a bit of material from a sixteenth century print – an interesting one for my current chapter-segment. This is the top of the January entry from its calendar:

Top of January Calendar entry with poem & images (pouring from pitcher, taking medicine [?]; roasting on a spit on the hearth)

Multimedia, sixteenth-century style, right? Pictures and poetry, and calendar instructions, and the start of the daily list of feasts and saints. So many things to look at! 

Take the short ditty that starts our page-reading:

Im Jenner man nit lassen soll. Warin feucht speyss die thut dir wol. Auff warm bad magstu haben acht. Meyd artzney ob du magst

In January, one shouldn't let things run unchecked. Warm food will do you good. Be careful with hot baths. Take medicine if you like.

Warm food, don’t take a chill, take two tablets and call me if that hangover doesn’t get better: it’s like your mom is welcoming you into the new year. Well, greetings to us all from this new century-quartile; I’m sure we all have wishes for how it will turn out. May the good ones come true!

The Teutsch Römisch Breuier of 1535

And now a bit about the book itself:

I found myself down an interesting rabbit hole as I was expanding a discussion in my current chapter. As it happens, I was curious about the circulation of memorial prayers (well, the chapter does need finishing), which took me on a brief excursus to the realm of early print. For vernacular-centric tertiary sisters of the period, there are an awful lot of liturgy-adjacent books to choose from.

This particular book interested me because the Teutsch Römisch Breuier is the first translation of the Roman Rite to circulate in regions central to my work. It is also, delightfully, a nuntastic find: the title makes explicit that it is aimed at monastic women (Klosterfrawen). Also, as the title promises, it provides a gute verteütschung, a good German translation—not only of the liturgical texts themselves, but also of the rubrics that govern their use. 

In other words, it is a practical book for navigating liturgical life in the generation immediately before the edicts of the Council of Trent, when many convents were compelled to return to exclusive use of the Latin rite.

Title page of Teutsch Römisch Breuier in red and black

It's a lovely and quite informative long-format title:

Teutsch Römisch Breuier vast nutzlich vnd trostlich: Nämlich den klosterfrawen, die nach dem lateinischen Römischen breuier, als die clarisserin vn[d] ander, jre tagzeit bezalen: Auch der priesterschafft weltlich vnd ordenßleüt, die Römisch breuier brauchen, so yetlicher ding der Collecte[n], Capitel, Responsen, Antiphen, vn[d] der gleich, gute verteütschung auch zu[m] gotswort dienstlich, begerte[n] … Augsburg: Alexander Weyssenhorn [=Weissenhorn], 1535. VD16 B 8092.

German Roman Breviary, very useful and comforting: Namely for the monastic women who recite their daily prayers according to the Latin Roman Breviary, such as the Poor Clares and others; also for the secular and regular clergy who use the Roman Breviary, as it contains good German translations of all matters relating to the collect, chapters, responses, antiphons, and the like, which is also useful for the service of God's word

Not only is the content of interest, so are the copies themselves. You see, both surviving copies reflect the target audience: monastic sisters! First, a bibliographic orientation:

BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE TEUTSCH RÖMISCH BREUIER (1535): Here is the VD16 entry. (VD16 is the standardized census of all known sixteenth-century printed works produced in the German-speaking lands. VERY handy when you life at the edge of the early printing world). And the two surviving exemplars are München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- 4 Liturg. 123 d (Munich exemplar) Regensburg, Staatliche Bibliothek -- 999 IE/4Liturg.18 (Regensburg exemplar)

The Munich exemplar comes from a sister of the Pütrichhaus, Susanna Gartnerin, as she says on the flyleaf:

Das pryfier [= brevier] Jst gewessen S susa / anna gartnerin jn der pitterich / reyehaus got der almachtig / pegnadt Jr hie vnd thort / ewigklich amen

This breviery belonged to Susanna Gärtner in Pitterich Regelhaus, may God Almighty bless her here and there forever, amen.

Susanna Gartnerin is an interesting case; she was a scribe and book owner (Kramer Scriptores), served the convent as librarian, and eventually became “Oberin” of the tertiary house. So she was both book- owning and book-loving, and hereby provisioned with a vernacular breviary that she could use and follow. Not a bad model for our happiest of New Years!

The Regensburg copy also was passed from sister to “mit sch[wester]” – I only wish I knew of which convent! A chain of ownership unfolds in the flyleaf area:

We actually have two different inscriptions here. The first: 

Anno 1538 an sant Mathias tag hat mir mein / lieber brueder Hanns Langawi disen brevier geschickt

In the year 1538, on St. Matthias's Day, my / dear brother Hanns Langawi sent me this breviary.

And then, with a change of ink:

Jryet [=Ihr gehört?] der Barbara Sedlmaierin hatt / mirs mein liebe mit sch Richila ^obsinerin^ im Jar / 1590 den 7 Junius geschencken gott / geb mir vnd alle den Jenigen ge / nadt die es Brauche vnd eines des / ander vmb gottes wile darbey ge / denokhe mit ainen pn nr / und Ave

It belongs to Barbara Sedlmaier, and was given to me by my beloved co-sister [mitschwester] Richila Obsinerin in the year 1590 on June 7th. May God grant grace to me and to all those who use it, and may we remember one another for God’s sake with a Pater Noster and an Ave [Maria].

What we’re getting here is a chain of ownership, common to convent books. The brother of one of the sisters sent this book when it was just three years old in 1538 – practically new! -- and it passed first to Richila, and then to Barbara by 1590.

Hanns Langawi > Sister X > Richila [Richildis] Obsinerin > Barbara Sedlmaier

And along the way, how many prayers were offered, and how many different Januaries did those convent women look at the January calendar and think about the meat roasting on a spit by the fire?

Happy New Year!

---

RESOURCES

• Sigrid Krämer, Scriptores possessoresque codicum medii aevi (database, Augsburg: ERV, 2003–2025).
• VD16 entry: https://gateway-bayern.de/VD16+B+8092

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.