Thesis (doctoral) - Technische Universität, Berlin, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 244-268).

In 1290, members of the de Viane family donated a six-volume set of large, deluxe liturgical manuscripts to the Cistercian nuns of Beaupré in Grimminge, East Flanders. The three extant volumes and a later supplement are now known as the Beaupré Antiphoner (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 759-762). The nuns used, extensively revised, and supplemented the antiphoner for the next five hundred years until the abbey was suppressed in 1796 during the French Revolution. The manuscript offers a bottom-up perspective on the history of Cistercian chant in a women’s community. It also fills lacunae in the documentary sources related to reform and change in the history of the abbey. Revisions made in the late fifteenth century under the Observant movement suggest a revival of interest in St. Bernard and the “Bernardine” recension of Cistercian chant. Further alterations in the early modern period demonstrate that the nuns did not abandon their medieval chant tradition and adopt post-Tridentine versions until the late eighteenth century, approximately two hundred years after the publication of the Roman breviary of Pope Pius V (1568). The nuns viewed their carefully considered revisions as a necessary condition of continuity, not as a threat to it.

The diploma thesis is devoted to the abbess focusing on her spiritual and secular duties, on the powers in the administration of the convent and in the care of the nunnery property at the turn of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era. For describing the ideal conception of the post of the abbess the study uses legislative regulations of various levels: the statutes and rules of women's contemplative and mendicant religious orders as welll as the decrees of the Council of Trent. On the example of three selected women's monasteries of three different orders - the Benedictine convent of St. George at Prague Castle, the Cistercian nunnery in Pohled, the monastery of the Poor Clares in Panenský Týnec - illustrates how the real influence of the Mother Superior differs from the ideal one. The text is based on an exploration of the written archival materials of the monasteries, from which were selected individual cases, that illustrate what the abbess had to deal with. According to the regulations, the authority for solution disputes inside the convent should be the Prague Archbishop, the King of Bohemia and his officers on property matters, but the archival sources show that secular and ecclesiastical law was very often intertwined. The most frequent sources for the diploma thesis were letters written...

This thesis examines the intricacies of women's vowed life in the High Middle Ages with regard to key aspects of contemporary religiosity. Vowed women are studied in their connection and interaction with the male world of authorities and spiritual guides. The diachronic approach is employed with a focus on the ideals and spirituality of three different types of vowed women's groups; traditional monastic groups living according to the Benedictine rule, namely Benedictines and Cistercians, Mendicant groups, which include Poor Clares, Dominicans and tertiaries of both orders, and finally groups of non-conformist vowed women, including beguines, anchoresses and recluses. This thesis serves as a probe into the proclaimed ideals of these groups in the view of male authorities, and points out the tendencies in the spirituality of specific vowed women. The principal method is the analysis of several types of sources with the categories of analysis being three key aspects of the religious life of the society of the High Middle Ages, namely the relationship to asceticism, the relationship to Christ and the Eucharist, and the Marian devotion. The introductory chapter presents the preconditions for constructing the role and position of the female gender in medieval society and subsequently discusses the origin...