The Dedicated Spiritual Life of Upper Rhine Noble Women

Sanctimoniales: Religious Women—Geistliche Frauen is a new series, presenting research on the history of religious women in the European Middle Ages, and fostering academic dialogue between English- and German-speaking scholars. The subject of this publication—the second in this series—shows just how many diverse types of “religious women” there were during this period, for the Lady Gertrude (1275–1335) and her lifelong companion lived a deeply spiritual and secular life in her own private, informal, religious household, first in Offenburg and then in Strasbourg in the cultural and economic heart of what we now describe as southern Germany in a time and place deeply influenced by the life and work of Meister Eckhart. (Meister Heinrich of Talheim, a little known Franciscan, also lived and worked in the same geographical area at this time.) Gertrude was not a Beguine, not a canoness, hermit, or recluse, but a widow living in a Gothus [a house of God] or a Seelshus [a house of souls], of which there were many mentioned in the city charters of many German countries. The fifteenth-century Dominican reformer, Johannes Nider, describes many such lives in his treatise De secularium religionibus (Laypeople living as religious in the world).Gertrude’s companion, Heilke of Staufenberg, describes the aristocratic household, reporting the many conversations that her mistress and other women had with fellow believers and learned mendicants, showing how they led a life of devotion in their own home while being full citizens of the city and participating fully in both the religious and civic sides of life in Strasbourg. This description is told to an anonymous amanuensis and biographer. The written account is found in Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, MS 8507–9, fols. 133r–239v, “Dis ist von dem heiligen Leben der Seligen Frowen genant die Ruckeldegen” (This is from the holy Life of the Blessed Woman known as of Rickeldey), and this was transcribed and all the available material on Gertrude and Heilke compiled by Hans Derkits in his unpublished doctoral dissertation, “Die Lebensbeschreibung der Gertrud von Ortenberg” (The biography of Gertrude of Ortenberg) (Vienna, 1990); they are now in the same library (there is a second copy in the city archives in Offenburg). The fourteenth-century Middle High German account was translated into modern German in 1980 by Siegfried Ringler and is here translated into modern English.Mulder-Bakker presents us with an introduction to this relatively unknown religious lifestyle with her latest book, which is in two parts. Part one, subtitled “Study,” is a series of six introductory chapters. The second part is a translation of an account of Gertrude’s saintly life and the wonders she accomplished.The first part, written entirely by Mulder-Bakker, discusses in detail the narrative and documentary sources, the Brussels Codex and the entry in the Acta Sanctorum, presently available concerning Gertrude and Heilke (chapter 2), their historical background with special reference to their noble upbringing, seen in contrast to those elements such as patrimony, fortune, and identity, which were considered “essential to the existence of the upper tier of medieval society” (38); their educational backgrounds and formation into “poor sisters” whose home provided a site for religious formation and a community for religious discourse (chapter 4); and their activity as “heralds of divine love” [Botten der götlichen Miltekeit] in response to the social and political changes experienced by Offenburg and Strasbourg during the first part of the fourteenth century as they became communities of Christian solidarity with the arrival of the Franciscans (1222) and the Dominicans (1224) (chapter 5)—a fascinating and vibrant discussion.Chapter 6 then gives all the foregoing a wider perspective with an analysis of the development of their religious life within the context of church law and society. Pertinent comparisons and contrasts between Gertrude and Heilke and rather better known women—Elisabeth of Thuringia, Mary of Oignies, Christine of Stommeln, and Queen-Dowager Agnes of Hungary—are presented before summarizing the lay religious culture of the German territories (including the Low Countries and northern France) from the late twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, epitomized by the rise of a nonmonastic and nonclerical religiosity, a growing literate practice, and a desire for face-to-face communication.Throughout the first part, quotations from the Middle High German text enhance the writing (accompanied by references to the relevant folio number, these quotations are quickly found, enabling those not able to understand Middle High German to read a translation of these).Although those chapters in the first part point to a more general trend—women living contemplative lives within a secular and domestic setting without ecclesiastical status, working for the salvation of their fellow Christians—we may also see that with the account of Gertrude and Heilke, a further characteristic is now made manifest: “women in houses of souls performing these activities in close consultation with their mendicant interlocutors and confessors” (108). Alongside this innovative phenomenon, as Mulder-Bakker clearly shows, we see the significance of The Saintly Life as a narrative. The writer of The Saintly Life captures the spiritual ideas percolating through Gertrude’s life in graphic exempla and short stories. And these create a parallel with the writings of Eckhart. As Mulder-Bakker argues, these do not create an aleatory collection coincidentally preserved but, rather, a written text meant to be retold or read to a circle of like-minded seekers, with Gertrude very much an active participant in that circle.Part two is the modern English rendering of the fifteenth-century manuscript. Here Mulder-Bakker works alongside Gertrud Jaron Lewis and her son Tillman Lewis in producing the translation, and alongside Freimut Löser and Michael Hopf in annotating it. Although this part of the book is the result of teamwork, there is a very pleasing homogeneity throughout. The division of the text into paragraphs and the chapter heading of groups of paragraphs is Mulder-Bakker’s work, which serves the Life well. Folio numbers are given in heavy print within the text, allowing easy reference. Until we have an edition of the Brussels Codex, of course, we may not critique the translation and we look forward to the publication of this. The footnotes are admirably comprehensive, as are the bibliography and index.In The Dedicated Spiritual Life of Upper Rhine Noble Women we have a commendable introduction to this way of living and the description of it, new both in their type and in the research of it. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker is to be warmly congratulated in her groundbreaking book and Brepols for their farsighted publication of it

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