Making magic with old texts – how one scholar uses Transkribus (2/16/25)

A snippet of the Thalbach Chronicle (Bregenz VLA Thalbach Hs 9) and the logo/motto from Transkribus: "Unlock the past with Transkribus"

I’m not a modern-day marvel; digital humanities *seems* cool, but it’s not my training and not my natural modality. I live on a farm, with all the attendant joys of rural internet. (Failed the ping test recently? Us too!) I have read a number of DH articles with interest, and adopted some of the intellectual practices that volume assessment allows for. But at last, the moment has come: it’s time to learn a new tool in order to make my regular work go faster.

There’s this monastic chronicle (Bregenz VLA Thalbach Hs 9), you see, and it’s unedited. That there is, in fact, data from within “my” convent is a wonderful thing, and I’m thrilled to have access. There are two big problems, however. First, it has not been digitized. And second, I don’t read (well, I didn’t read) 18th-century Kurrentschrift. So, here’s what I did.

STEP ONE: GET PHOTOS. With the permission of the archive, I was able to photograph the chronicle. My system relies on the step-basis auto-numbering of photos, and is woefully “brute force” for the more sophisticated user. It is also (I confess it now!) simply a set of photos on my cell phone. No fancy lighting, no high-tech imaging for the ages; these are functional photos for use as a musicologist, not reflecting the book-history elements (which may be interesting but are not my raison d’etre). Before I start, I prepare a written description of the object, with special note of handwriting changes, format changes (from 18 to 24 lines, for example), and so on.

To organize my photos, I start by taking a picture of the description of the MS that I prepared in advance, and of its gathering structure that I prepared on-site. Then I take pictures of the outsides of the MS and of the visually interesting bits that caught my early attention. (These pictures are for slidedecks for any talk I might give – they’re the visual capture of the “coolness” of the item.)

Then, I take a picture of the gathering description for the first gathering, prepared in pencil in the archive. For more complicated gatherings, that includes a gathering structure diagram, but it’s often just a few lines of text. That becomes my photographic “label” for the section. Then, I take sequential pictures of the pages in the gathering. Occasionally I repeat a page if I want to be sure that I captured some particular detail, but mostly I move from first page to last page in the gathering. When I’m done with the gathering, I take a picture of the wooden table as a marker. Why? Because that’s going to leap out at me when I’m looking at all these photos of handwritten pages on my phone!

Now, onto the next gathering, and the next, and the next after that. Each starts with a header photo; each is sequential; each ends with a picture of the wooden table. At the very end, I go back and take pictures of details – with a label card or paper-pad notation first telling what gathering and folio it’s from, and why I thought it important (“detail of the insertion in the right-hand margin showing a different hand”).

Lastly, I go home and back everything up into a file folder. At this point, the sophisticate would probably rename all the photos, but I let the assigned image number stand for the page. YMMV. [That’s the increasingly old-fashioned phrase “Your Mileage May Vary,” if we happen to live in different acronym worlds.]

ORGANIZING IMAGES ON MY HARD DRIVE

With a couple hundred images, managing the inventory can seem daunting, but I’ve developed some habits over the years. I’m a spreadsheet person; spreadsheets make my heart sing. I love me some useful spreadsheets. So, for each of the important manuscripts in my life, I have a translation table: Photo Image number, gathering, folio or page, content, commentary, and then columns of whatever I’m interested in (concordances or chapter number or dates or places or whatever – that’s for the assessment phase).

So with the Chronicle, I now had a mass of mostly indecipherable eighteenth-century text entries carefully organized into a folder and managed via spreadsheet. Now it was time to start reading. Except, I don’t (yet) read Kurrentschrift, so I’ve got a whole mess of gobblety-gook. Enter the wonderful world of technology! I know AI has its issues – not least of which is its ecological impact – but there are tasks for which it is exceptionally well-situated, and it turns out that teaching the novice how to read new scripts is, for me, one of those true talents.

TRANSKRIBUS

I’ve heard of Transkribus (at https://www.transkribus.org/) for years; the idea of an app that can decode various historical scripts is an attractive short-cut for handwriting styles I don’t know, particularly since my focus is the content more than its presentation. I’m an extractivist: I want to know what the chronicle actually says and add those data-points to the story I’m telling. Also, I’m not keen to prepare editions – a chronicle is a side-witness to the music for me, not a central focus of my work. Many of my decisions reflect that perspective. I didn’t seek out a colleague for collaboration, for one thing, nor go to a paleographic institute. Hooray for brute force, right?

I searched out the Transkribus website and read all the (very helpful) guides that were prepared. I even watched two of the introductory videos, though I had to go to town for them to download at playable speeds. And, they have a capacity to try a few sample pages lower down on the page (scroll down to “try it out”). I chose a representative image and uploaded it to see what it did. Magic! From the loops and lines of Kurrentschrift emerged words that were, for the most part, German dialect, and familiar in style and spellings from other texts from the area. Success! I admit that I scooped up the sample reading and dumped it into a document file; I wanted to be sure that whatever I had, I saved.

The next step of learning was a several day project. One of the best things about the Transkribus tool is that it has a lot of subsets that use certain sets of documents as training tools. These models are available to apply to your document(s), and some of them work better than others. I literally made a list of ALL of the models that covered German Kurrentschrift of the 18th century and tested them with two different pages from my chronicle. For each, I did A/B testing: was this model better than that one? I kept notes on which ones did well, and went back to a couple of the models three or four times until I settled in on the one that seemed the most accurate on a first pass. I know that I could train the model for MY project, but I wasn’t interested in that this first time through, in part because I was a complete script-reading newbie, and didn’t want to mis-train the AI.

Once I had a model in hand – and had taken careful notes on its model number and name for scholarly purposes – it was time to start the transcription project. So, I created a free account (which currently gives you 100 pages of transcription free per month), and priced out the subscription model I’d use once we’re in the new fiscal year at my University.

As I planned my project, I realized that organizing the materials is an important consideration. There are “collections” in Transkribus, and “documents” within the collections. As a reminder to the reader: I’m not aiming at edition prep; I’m working toward extracting my data. So I created a hodge-podge organization that made sense to me. Instead of a collection that was the entire chronicle – something that I believe would probably be best practice – I broke out my chronicle into its gatherings, so I can navigate to-and-fro easily.

And then, I uploaded subsections of the gatherings as documents, rather than the entire gathering at a go or (at the other end of the spectrum) the individual leaves of the chronicle. This is being created for my convenience, after all, and this first go-round I wasn’t certain how things worked. I have between 4 and 16 pages in each “document.” I did learn that the windows folder bugaboo, randomization, occasionally impacted my uploads, which is one of the reasons that I kept my “documents” short. I also decided to retain document naming based on image number; for me, my spreadsheet is the controlling document. Renaming is both time-intensive and an area in which error can enter. As a result, my documents are named such compelling things as “IMG_1421-1427.” It works for me. (On the other hand, my naming for the gatherings is a bit more obvious to the outsider: “ChronikGath3” works here, and continuously typing in “ThalbachChronikGath3” just seemed like more work than needful since I’m not contemplating doing this with other chronicles, at least not in the next three years.)

Finally, after uploading the first document in the first collection, it was time to drive. I selected my pages, hit the “Recognize” button, and was taken to the interface. I added the “public model” that I had selected through testing, then took a deep breath, and hit “recognize.” The job runs in the background, and eventually the selected pages will have header colors that turn orange, to signal that the draft text is ready to review.

USING AI TEXT RECOGNITION TO CREATE A SEAT-OF-THE-PANTS EDITION

Here’s the part where things get wonderful. The AI model I chose is actually pretty decent with my text. As a new reader of Kurrentschrift, it took me a while to get a hang of it, but I used the process to teach myself the reading skills which will be necessary to me for this document and a couple of others upcoming. (I’m a 14th-15th century scholar; our handwriting is MUCH more legible, thank you very much!) For those who are in my boat, here are a few things I did that made learning to read the script go quickly.

First, I pull the transcribed text into a document file so that it’s on my local machine. (Remember, I’m that “rural internet” guru; failure to reach the world as a whole is as regular an experience as is going grocery shopping.) Alas, I haven’t been using the export function, though it’s there; instead, I cut-and-paste. It’s a rube’s approach, I know, but it’s fast, and it puts everything in a space I can edit with my own tools and habits. (I’m on LibreOffice these days; again, YMMV. But it’s free, and it doesn’t keep trying to put everything in OneDrive. Which is out in cyberspace. And often unavailable here at the farm. I’m glaring at you, Microsoft.)

To manage these texts, I insert headers for each individual page in all caps (to stand out from the transcribed text). For my purposes, the image number and the MS gathering and folio numbers suffice – along the lines of “PHOTO 1363 CHRONICLE GATH3 p. 34”. Also, like the AI transcription, I honor the line breaks of the original, so that toggling from transcription to image and back is easy. (Also, I insert my cut-and-paste as unformatted text; others might want the line numbers, but there were enough errors in line identification that I found it easier to do without.) This was a good cross-check to that randomizing ordering that windows puts on file transfer; by checking each image against its image number and page or folio number, I was able to ensure that the order of my text was in fact the order of the chronicle (except that the chronicle gatherings are actually out of order, but that’s a fault in the manuscript, not the editor nor the technology!).

Second, I got myself a couple of tables of cursive letterforms compared to Fraktur letter forms, so that the basic shapes were something I could puzzle through. I admit that my first pass awareness-level was so low that on the first four pages I read, the only word I could decode independently was “septuagesima.” However, once I learned that those really precise looking “n’s” were actually the letter “e,” I started to see the handwriting emerge from the page.

Third, it is my practice to work through systematically, allowing “bad readings” in order to get from zero to literate. I mangled my way through the first four pages, by which time the d’ as “der” and the dß as “das” was pretty clear. I go line by line, and I’ve learned to highlight the relevant information in different highlighter as I go. (For me, yellow is people, green is liturgy, blue is date or place, red is music, sweet music.) My goal is extraction, not perfection. It’s embarrassing to note that neither the AI nor I at first recognized the swoop at the end of words as an “-n.” Likewise, it took a while before I was confident enough to simply obliterate the AI’s suggestions for my own reading of a word. That said, it’s truly a case of learn-by-doing; as I hit page 20, I was starting to read each word instead of decoding it letter by letter.

Fourth, as a matter of process, I’m comfortable leaving in uncertainties. This work isn’t directly for publication, so if I wasn’t sure of a word, I would simply accept it or type in my best guess, then put in square brackets another possible reading, and frame things with question marks. For instance: “unser lieben Erbar [? frawen?] officii” – even as a newbie reader, the word “erbar” makes no sense here, but rather than worry about it at length, I put in my contextual reading and then moved on. I can search those up and revisit them after I’ve plowed through the first time.

Finally, as I indicated before, I reward myself with the “ping” of a data finding by using those highlighter buttons liberally. As I look back now over less than a month of intermittent work, I’ve got a long roster of people and events to code into my other note-taking systems. I haven’t harvested them yet, but they’ll be easy to identify as I finish up the process. Having those rewards in sight makes the days of “ugh, I can’t DO this” more bearable. And each time I return to the document, more and more of it looks like German instead of just “ink scrawls.”

MY TAKEAWAYS: THE MAGIC OF TECHNOLOGY

The reality is, the technology is remarkably impressive. Even without training it on my manuscript, it’s getting 75 to 80% of the text down properly. (It confuses Q for G, though: Quardian is not a word. Maybe next time I’ll try training the model.) That’s amazing!

It’s working from manuscript, and that’s an imperfect environment. Every so often, particularly when the scribe’s lines have a waver to them or when the page was curved in the photo, it mangles lines and mixes up word order – the manual corrective is absolutely necessary. 

The benefit is that as a scholar, I’m a factor of ten times more competent with the script now than I was at the end of the first week. Having learned to read a cursive 16th-century hand without AI assistance, I can testify to the massive jump-start that having a plausible transcript makes, as long as I’m working systematically, letter by letter and word by word. 

It’s just like practicing. If you work on the details and the techniques, there comes that moment where all of a sudden your perspective shifts from notes on the page to the sounds of the past. And that, my friends, is magical.

ACCESS
https://www.transkribus.org/
https://www.youtube.com/@transkribus
 

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?

---

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.

 

Singing Tubercular songs with Fader Movitz (Fredman’s Epistles 1790) (Feb 11, 2025)

Image of Fader Moviz playing the viol with text bubble, "Movitz, your Consumption, it pulls you into the grave..."

While those of you in New York City might be lucky enough to attend the book-launch for John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis (Mar 18, 2025), the rest of us are hanging around with “old TB” – its readings, its meanings, and its character.

Musically speaking, there’s a lot of literature on tubercular heroines (Violetta in La Traviata; Mimi in La Boheme; Antonia in Tales of Hoffmann)

• Hutcheon, Linda, and Michael Hutcheon. “Famous last breaths: The tubercular heroine in Opera.” Parallax, 2:1 (1996): 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/13534649609362002

• Kasunic, David. “Tubercular Singing,” Postmodern Culture 24:3 (May 2014).

• Morens, David M. “At the Deathbed of Consumptive Art.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 8:11 (Nov. 2002):1353-8.

If we follow artistic assertions, to be consumptive is evidently to be a soprano, since so many of the roles are in the Leading Lady idiom. And, of course, these narratives blend into those of the cautionary tale, where the fallen woman and the consumptive prove to be one and the same. That latter theme remains common, with an added whiff of poverty – just think of Fantine from Les Mis, or Satine from Moulin Rouge, not to mention Violetta herself.

TB / Consumption accounted for up to one in six deaths in France 

by the early twentieth century.

The prevalence of the disease made the it and its social consequences quite topical, of course. Though weirdly, not for men, at least not as artistic representation. There are hosts of deaths of artistic men from consumption – Boccherini, Chopin, Keats, George Orwell… But women feature in much of the music, both before and after the baccilus’s discovery in 1882.

Take, for example, this abbreviated list of tubercular characters. Lots of women, and our passionate consumptive Chopin.

• Fader Movitz (Freman’s Epistles by Carl Michael Bellman, 1790)

• Chopin dies of consumption, 1849

• Violetta Valery (La Traviata, Giuseppe Verdi, 1853)

• 1865 Jean-Antoine Villemin: proved TB was contagious (not heritable)

• Antonia (Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Jacques Offenbach, 1881)

• 1882: Robert Koch announces discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

• Mimi (La Bohème,  Giacomo Puccini,1896)

• Lady Madeline (La Chute de la Maison Usher, Claude Debussy, [incomplete] 1918)

• Sister Benedict (Bells of St Mary's, 1945)

• Fantine (Les Misérables, 1980)

• Satine (Moulin Rouge, 2001)

   

 “In the 18th century in Western Europe, TB had become epidemic with a mortality rate as high as 900 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, more elevated among young people. For this reason, TB was also called ‘the robber of youth.’” -- Barberis et al (2017)

On the list, the odd man out – the odd MAN – is that 18^th century character, Fader Movitz. He, and his illness, features in Epistle no. 30: “Till fader Movitz, under dess sjukdom, lungsoten. Elegi” [To Father Movitz, during his illness, consumption. An elegy]. Fader Movitz might not be young, but he is definitely characterized as one of the 900 consumptives per year; we learn various of his symptoms, and know from early on inn stanza 1 that he is terminally ill, though in TB’s typical slow motion fashion. Unlike the ethereal soprano heroines of later operatic tradition, however, Fader Movitz is neither young nor transfiguring; instead, his illness is woven into a bawdy, bittersweet world of drinking songs and resignation.

The composer of the work, Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795), was a Swedish composer, musician, and lyricist. His song collection, Fredman’s Epistles, contains 82 songs. “To Father Movitz” is relatively typical of the song types; they mix themes of drinking with character sketches and scenes ranging from the pastoral to the poignant to the saucy. Movitz appears in 28 of the settings, so this isn’t his only appearance! He is a composer with a famous Concerto, we learn from the book’s character list.

Coming in the middle of the pack, “To Father Movitz” is clearly a song about his consumption (“Lungsot”). Death is coming, but there may be some time (line 4) – after all, TB is a slow-moving disease. Nevertheless, it is an active disease, one that “pulls you into the grave” (line 5). In fact, it’s so effective at drawing you toward death that the first part of the next line belongs not to the singer but solely to the instrumentalists. There’s a bit of a musical pun on the striking of the octave, and then we move upwards (finally) to sing about the fond memories one had.

Drink from your glass, see Death waiting for you,
Sharpen his sword, and stand at your doorstep.
Do not be alarmed, he only glares at the grave door,
Beats it again, maybe even in a year.
Movitz, your Consumption*, it pulls you into the grave.
- - - Strike now the Octave;
Tune your strings, sing about the Spring of life. : |||

(stanza 3): Heavens! you die, your cough scares me;
Emptiness and sound, the entrails make a sound;
The tongue is white, the saving heart hatches;
Soft as a fungus are late marrow and skin.
Breathe. - Fie a thousand times! what fumes are your ashes.
- - - Lend me your bottle.
Movitz, Gutår! Bowl! Sing about the God of wine. : |||

The song is strophic, but sets its mood effectively; all those descending lines, the minor mood, the simple harmonic language, the largely syllabic setting – we aren’t singing of triumph but instead of the inevitable outcome in the local cemetery. And the active agency of consumption is signaled musically by the shift from the predominantly step-wise treatment to the more dramatic leaping, as the illness personified pulls poor Movitz toward the grave.

The third strophe gets into even more graphic details: the cough, the disruption to the guts, the gradual falling apart of health into pallid skin and grotesque forms of mucus-coated tongue. Ick. But, think back on happier times, and toast the God of wine. The inevitable is, well, inevitable.

                           

“About 10 million people around the world do fall ill with the disease. And even though it is preventable and curable, about 1.5 million people die. So it is known as the world's top infectious killer according to the WHO.” -- AMA report, 2/5/25

In this current moment, TB has taken on special poignancy. We know that TB is still “the world’s top infectious killer” under normal circumstances. It doesn’t need to be; there are treatment courses that take 4 to 12 months, depending on drug and dosage. If it isn’t one of those (scary) resistant strains, it’s treatable. And yet people continue to die.

And some of them are dying today in America.

Today, we are experiencing the country's highest-ever TB case numbers over a one-year period. -- AMA report, Feb 2025 and Kansas Civic Alert, Feb 2025

With the Kansas City outbreak doing its best to set records, we should remember that an illness like TB is both PREVENTABLE and TREATABLE. 

Don’t be “that” character in song or story; redemptive endings and transfigured souls are all very well in fiction. But in real life, we’d rather spend our time like Fader Movitz, focused on wine and happy memories.

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.
 

Singing & Change on World Leprosy Day (1/26/25)

Images from three Indian Leprosy awareness videos

Leprosy (now more properly designated Hansen’s Disease) is a disease of almost overwhelming stigma. It can cause disfigurement and is associated with poverty, all the more so now that treatment is readily available. It is a disease that also causes us to attend to our social response, highlighting the tension between charity and revulsion, inclusion and fear.

The work that goes on around the globe on World Leprosy Day seeks to create social change – to reduce stigma, emphasize treatment and inclusion in community, and break the inter-generational cycle in which leprosy leads to isolation leads to reduced education and livelihood opportunities leads to poverty which leads again to leprosy.

While it’s early yet to see what will be issued for THIS year’s world leprosy day, I’d like to take up three examples of the campaign from previous years which provide a glimpse into the power that music has in these socio-medical campaigns. It is, in other words, an example of music as public health, and one that I like to talk about with students in my Music, Pandemics, and History class.

EXAMPLE 1: A Leprosy Awareness song
“Gandhi’s dream: India should be Leprosy Free”

The song conveys straightforward yet impactful messages.

One theme is that of awareness. “It does not spread by touching”; treat early; it’s eradicable. Also, finish your course of treatment, “medicine has to be given till the end.”

A second is working toward a more inclusive society: “We should get a little more, we should get all the rights, we should get a sense of belonging in the heart, the society should accept us from the heart, leprosy has to be eradicated from the body, mind and thought also.” Likewise, eliminate discrimination and avoid stigma by adopting a caring attitude -- “Avoid grudges or bad mouthing”; “Keep the patient happy with a loving face.” 

A final message is the fact that we are all implicated in this work: “Through a joint effort we can all make India free from leprosy.”

The music reinforces this vision in several ways. It adopts traditional Indian idioms and instrumentation. The musical style is approachable, trending toward pop. The presence of a lilting, danceable percussive backbeat, for instance, gives the performance energy. There’s a good deal of musical and verbal repetition, and sections are marked with dramatic gestures such as a rising swoop in the strings. There is a chorus that comes in to add richness to the texture. Put together, these choices are signaling that theme of collective effort together; just as this is “our music,” so is its challenge “our problem.”

EXAMPLE 2: Sparsh Awareness Campaign (A governmental educational program)
Theme: United for dignity

This initiative was a government-sponsored campaign to use a festival model to facilitate education and awareness of the disease. The performances include skits, dance, and song, in between giving speeches about the disease. The (edited) example here comes from Vellore district, and condenses the cultural offerings to focus in on the speeches that convey this 2022 message:

“The disease will not spread through treated persons. Hence all cured leprosy persons should not be neglected or disliked. The WHO Theme for SPARSH Leprosy Awareness Campaign 2022 is "UNITED FOR DIGNITY". Therefore, let us strive to uphold the honour and dignity of leprosy cured persons.” (Excerpt of the YouTube description)

At the beginning of the clip, we again get singing, this time by a woman singing in the traditional Indian style, celebrating the local region, Tamil Nadu. The song depicts the importance of local culture and the importance of state initiatives. This is followed by a traditional circle dance to sung accompaniment which visibly expands to include the community gathered in an outdoor venue. 

This initial set-up emphasizing music and dance creates a bridge between cultural pride and public health awareness messaging that follows. There is the familiar sound of local musical practice. The performances, though polished, are not unduly professional; they seem to stem from within the community. This is reinforced in the dance, where the circle of women visually segues into the circle of the listening audience, many of whom bob and sway to the sounds they are hearing. We have been brought from the joys of cultural expression into community, “United for Dignity,” which shares its appreciation for such beauty. The implication is that they will share as well in the understanding from the day’s educational program.

There’s a bit of slippage here: enjoyment of song, and enjoyment of message are portrayed as somehow equivalent. This is an important public health messaging strategy that we see on a variety of fronts (see AIDS awareness in Uganda, for instance). Music, dance, and other cultural expression draws in the crowd, garnering attention and preparing them for the harder-hitting messaging about disease safety, treatment, and the need for change.

Here in the Vellore video, that stratey is made explicit. After these initial song and dance excerpts, we cut to a series of speakers each of whom speaks from a seat in front of a poster about leprosy awareness. The poster behind the series of speakers is busy delivering text. It mentions symptoms (“loss of feeling”) but also seeks to normalize the disease; we should “treat it like TB.” Lastly, it makes the point that clinics will provide evidence-based care, there is “no experimentation” (!) in delivering treatment for the disease. As a backdrop, the poster is a bit overwhelming; the amount of text and the array of type-faces and colors seem to function more like a flag backdrop than a conveyance of information. Tired eyes might prefer instead to focus on the speaker, and maybe that’s part of its purpose. It is “official” without being “interesting.” Reading is work; listening is easier.

Indeed, what IS interesting, in contrast to the poster, are the series testimonials from individuals who have had the disease. These testimonials make up the central portion of this “Leprosy awareness day.” The first [in a google translation based on a notta.ai transcript], reads:

My name is Shafuddin. I am speaking from Vellore. My body has been damaged since 2001, so I went to the hospital. They said it is leprosy. In the hospital they said it will be cured by treating it. I took similar medicine for two years. The body recovered to some extent. Hands and feet are very nerve affected, there is a lot of pain, so they said that by doing an operation the hands will be cured. After doing the operation it got cured. I do my work myself. I can eat. I do all the work myself. There is no problem. Feeling good. Leprosy is not a bad disease. If you take the right medicine you will be cured.

This shared personal experience helps the audience understand the multiple treatment options. There were the meds, and then afterwards a surgical intervention. The success of his treatment and his subsequent independence would be important to anyone who fears that they themselves might be suffering. Moreover, his story demonstrates personal resilience and also the societal support needed to uphold dignity for those affected by leprosy. Shafuddin’s journey from diagnosis to recovery directly embodies the campaign’s call to honor the dignity of those affected by leprosy. Likewise, his ability to regain independence challenges stigmatizing narratives. His message, as I see it, reinforces the hope embedded in the festival's music and dance.

Later in the video (1.59) there is a masked and costumed dancer and supporting chamber ensemble; the elaborate costume and intricate steps contrast with the packed-earth dance circle and the backdrop of cow and crops. A second and then third character come in to enliven the skit. This cultural offering too is followed by impassioned speakers.

Alternation of entertainment and education keeps the audience engaged. Such alternations also subtly suggests that there is a “whole-life” experience in illness treatment. Just as we (here the we of the community audience and its internet echo) enjoy the singing and dramatic action, we – the united “we” of community – should enjoy our support for these companions who have suffered with the disease, and for their invisible compadres.

The video ends with a medical overview of symptoms and treatments, and an emphasis that treatment is free. The government is working to support eradication, and anyone who has the disease should be treated.

Here, we see music as an attention-getter, valuable for its entertainment value, and providing a forum in which other socially-critical messages can be sent. We also see music as a community-building element, identifying the “united we” of the messaging campaign. The visual placement – an outdoor festival setting, with birds and other nature sounds – create an ironically “homey” atmosphere, in which you are hearing from neighbors and compatriots about what is possible. And throughout, the upbeat music goes along with the upbeat message: Leprosy can be cured. That message is worth celebrating.

In short, I think this approach – blending traditional cultural expressions with modern health messaging – creates a shared space for education, empathy, and celebration of civic progress in a significant public health initiative. Like “Gandhi’s Dream,” the message here is simple: just as we collectively respond to the music, we should collectively respond to the disease itself. Through its blend of traditional cultural forms and modern health education, the Sparsh Awareness Campaign demonstrates the potential of music and other performative arts to transform public health initiatives into inclusive, community-driven movements.

EXAMPLE 3 An Award-winning leprosy awareness short (from 2003)

Dungarpur Films' 2003 award-winning short, recipient of the Indian Documentary Producers’ Association (IDPA) Gold for the best public service film for leprosy awareness, delivers a powerful yet simple message: 

One intervention can make a difference. 

The film follows a woman and her son as they navigate the stigma surrounding leprosy and move toward the hopefulness of seeking treatment. It begins with the village headman’s stark declaration: “There’s no place in the village for leprosy patients.” This sets the stage for conflict, as the family’s diagnosis has sparked fear among the villagers, who seek to exile him and his mother so that the disease stigma doesn’t pass to the broader community.

Yet, one woman raises her hand and calls to the mother and son. She speaks out against exclusion, commanding them not to leave the village, but rather to go straight to the health center. She reinforces this message by publicly inviting the mother’s touch, hand to head. Her intervention shifts the focus from judgment to action and the narrative from vague crowd mutterings to crucial public health information: “A disease-free body… Leprosy is completely cured with MDT [Multi-Drug Therapy]. And this MDT is available completely free at every government health center.”

The film ends with a resolution—the mother and son are welcomed at the clinic, where they receive treatment. The final frame features the National Leprosy Eradication Programme (NLEP) symbol: four connected stick-figure hands alongside the message, “Join hands: eradicate leprosy.” This visual reinforces the short’s central theme of connection and collective responsibility.

At its core, the film frames stigma as a more pervasive and damaging issue than the disease itself. We initially sit with the discomfort of an unhappy village; we are grounded in the reality that the ill one might be ostracized. The disease is contagious, but attitudes are even more contagious. The woman’s intervention not only counters this stigma but also demonstrates the courage and compassion needed to enact change. By touching and interacting with the family, she visibly defies the rumor and shunning which had seemed increasingly normative. Her actions embody the film’s call for inclusion and understanding.

This act of bravery is pivotal. It transforms a moment of potential exclusion and banishment into one of connection and hope. The journey to the clinic becomes a metaphor for the broader societal journey—from ignorance and fear to knowledge and action. The message is clear: intervention, grounded in education and empathy, can dismantle stigma and pave the way for healing.

Her intervention is successful; we follow these characters as they move toward the clinic, receiving crucial public health information. Leprosy is completely curable. Treatment is free at all government health centers. There is a solution. We end with an arm around the shoulder in support – connection, not stigma, will solve the disease.

The film’s music underscores this narrative journey, amplifying the emotional stakes and reinforcing the thematic arc. At the start, the suspenseful score reflects the villagers’ tension and hostility. There’s a traditional voice, and threatening intermittent and unpredictable drum. We hear discussion and crowd noise. This is the acoustical chaos of bad things happening.

Yet, after a woman intervenes, we move toward acceptance and a resultant shift of musical idiom. A more hopeful lyrical voice emerges, as well as more instruments playing in a coordinated and more predictable way. We have a reiterated drone pitch to provide a harmonic reference point, making the point that stability comes from seeking treatment. So does optimism, for a series of arched phrases accompany images of the journey to the clinic – the boat, a bike and walk into the clinic. The highest of these vocal phrases is delivered as our patient receives her packet of medicine, not only a climax, but a happy one. Throughout this section, there is also more complexity in the drum rhythms, accompanied with the tinkle of high bells – a brighter timbre, with more interesting patterns. This is music that we want to listen to. It is music as “accompaniment to action.”

The music of this 90-second short, in other words, tells us that inclusion and intervention are the right choices, the ones that will lead to a positive, major-key kind of place. We have, in the final frame, the joy of treatment with the final high arched phrase. Layered over that is the visual cut-in – the NLEP symbol, and four connected stick-type figures, with the words of the final message: “join hands: eradicate leprosy.”

Dungarpur Films’ offering blends narrative, music, and public health messaging together in order to inspire change. By addressing stigma through a compelling story of intervention – by illustrating the transformative power of knowledge and empathy – the film leaves viewers with a clear and actionable message: inclusion and education can eradicate both the disease and its associated stigma.

The music, serving as both a narrative driver and an emotional guide, amplifies the film’s impact. From the acoustical chaos of exclusion to the lyrical harmony of hope, the soundtrack underscores the journey from fear to acceptance. Storytelling and music here foster understanding and community-building. The film's call to “join hands” remains as resonant today as it was in 2003: just as we collectively respond to music, we must collectively respond to disease and its societal implications.

TAKE-AWAYS

As we have seen in these three examples of leprosy intervention, music plays a vital role in public health. It bridges the gap between complex medical messaging and community engagement. Its ability to evoke emotion, foster community, and reflect local cultural values makes it a powerful tool for reducing stigma, promoting awareness, and encouraging positive collective action.

Whether through traditional idioms, modern compositions, or community-driven performances, music transforms abstract health messages into relatable, memorable experiences. By integrating music into campaigns, public health initiatives transcend mere information dissemination; they build empathy, solidarity, and hope, empowering communities to confront challenges together. Music, in essence, resonates not just in sound, but in its capacity to inspire societal change.

THANK-YOU'S

For more on Hansen’s Disease, see Documenting Lepers’ Lives: The House is Black (1962)

I would like to thank Avagail Hulbert, whose seminar contributions on India’s leprosy eradication programs introduced me to these and other compelling examples of music in public health. I would also like to thank my colleague and friend Gregory Barz, whose work on medical ethnomusicology was my first introduction to the topic. Lastly, I’d like to thank all those many people – musicians, film-makers, dancers, educators – whose capacity for empathy and commitment to optimistic service is the active force for good that makes real change happen in the world.

#pandemic #leprosy #music #PandemicMusic #India #PublicHealth #advocacy #WorldLeprosyDay #HansenDisease #PublicHealthCampaign

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!)

Margery Kempe Listens (1/19/25)

 

Image of female pilgrim with "sounds," "melodies," and "Hallucinations" as responding themes

"Sum-tyme sche herd wyth hir bodily erys sweche sowndys & melodies that sche myth not wel heryn what a man seyd to hir in that tyme less he spoke the lowder."

Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she might not hear effectively what a man said to her at that time unless he spoke louder.

Here we see attention as commodity in the Book of Margery Kempe, that most idiosyncratic of medieval mystics.

Richard Lawes (2000) shows that Margery distinguished between the inner sound of visions (“hire gostly undirstondyng” (her ghostly understanding) and the external ear-based sounds. He believes that her passing experience (Sum-tyme) betokens an “auditory hallucination.” This, to him, is a signal of brain misfirings, and an acoustical experience generated from an interior rather than exterior source.

I wonder, however, if she describes here instead a kind of gendered listening. Margery describes herself as hearing those details of the surrounding landscape, attending to the “trivial” sounds of background noise, instead of to the details of the in-person conversation to which she, particular as a woman, is supposed to be attending. Just as parents yell, ahem, increase their volume to garner the attention of their inattentive offspring, so too Margery’s interlocutor increases his volume to drown out the distracting if more distant noises. Is the story, then, about a mystical vision? A medical moment? Or an (admittedly difficult) woman defying expectation? We should pause and consider context, I think, before deciding that she’s just hallucinating.

Similarly, Lawes names the “rushing sounds, likened to a bellows” that are one-sided, present only in her right ear. As a long-term sufferer of tinnitus, I suspect that she’s just describing the distracting internal ear noise to which all such sufferers might be vulnerable. Again, there are gendered implications; Margery is letting her experience of self dominate her perceptive world. Would a man, describing a “rushing like unto a river” be chided for the experience? Or might it more be wrapped up in assumptions of memory and experiential displacement?

That is not to say that Lawes was intending ill by Margery. Rather, I find him an empathetic reader, if a bit over-fond of his own temporal lobe epilepsy diagnosis that he believes to be her underlying medical condition. Still, his assessment and the care he gives to her sensory details did, IMHO, help to move forward the field of interpretive writing about her experiences. It’s just that we all come to our reading with the cultural habits of thought and unconscious biases of our own generation. And here, picking apart these examples a bit further does, I think, have something to tell us about the sound experiences of an important late-medieval laywoman.

Ultimately, Margery Kempe’s auditory experiences—whether mystical, medical, or mundane—make me, at least, want to reconsider how we approach sensory perception and identity in the medieval world. Margery’s “bodily ears” and their contested sounds challenge us to think about how gender, culture, and personal experience shape not only what we hear but also how we interpret it. Was Margery’s listening “misdirected,” as her contemporaries might have thought, or was it reflective of a richer and more complex sensory engagement with her world? Was she, in other words, simply hyper-aware of the world around her—and if so, shouldn’t we prize that?

RESPONDING TO:

Richard Lawes, “Psychological Disorder and the Autobiographical Impulse in Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve,” in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, edited by Denis Renevey and Christiana Whitehead (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2000): 217-243.