Stiftsbibliotheken und Kirchenschätze: Materielle Kultur in den Augustiner-Chorfrauenstiften Steterburg und Heiningen by Britta-Juliane Kruse. and: Rosenkränze und Seelengärten, Bildung und Frömmigkeit in niedersächsischen Frauenklöstern ed. by Britta-Juliane Kruse. (review)

In 2013, an exhibition at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany) displayed some of the most valuable books and manuscripts from the fifteenth century in the library's collection. Their provenance and the way in which they were acquired by the library made these books unique. Originally they had been the property of women's convents (Heiningen, Steterburg, Wienhausen, Lamspringe, Dorstadt, and others) that dotted the medieval countryside of Lower Saxony. The first Protestant duke of the region, Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1528–89) did not force the closure of these convents in his territory as other German rulers had done. Four years after succeeding his Catholic father as ruler of the duchy (1568), however, he ordered visitations which resulted in the confiscation of most of the convents' treasures (reliquaries, chalices, and vestments) and books of devotion, including missals, song books, and hagiographies, with the justification that these embellishments of the old religion were no longer needed in the newly reformed convents. Most of the gold and silver treasures have disappeared. But the books became part of the library of the University of Helmstedt, founded by Duke Julius. After the closing of that institution in 1810, the volumes returned to Wolfenbüttel and became a part of the permanent collection of the Herzog August Bibliothek. Some of these convents continued to exist as Protestant Stifte, that is, religious institutions with no permanent vows and a more relaxed set of rules regarding private property and residence, until the early part of the nineteenth century; even today there are Protestant convents for women in Lower Saxony.

The two volumes under review here focus on the medieval books and manuscripts and the historical information that can be gleaned from their "biographies," that is, from a close inspection of their form, content, possible additions, writing or printing, illustrations, the name of their owners, and so on. This examination thus results in a clearer picture of medieval convent life and the role of reading material in the daily life of cloistered women. The exhibition for which the catalog was composed displayed many of the books and manuscripts. Although the exhibition closed in 2013, the many illustrations in the catalog and in the recently published Stiftsbibliotheken und Kirchenschätze fill the void admirably.

The title of the catalog, Rosenkränze und Seelengarten ("rosaries and garden of the soul") reflects the fact that devotional exercises in the cloisters were literary as well as non-literary: Hortulus animae ("little garden of the soul") was a favorite title—indeed, it is often used to describe a whole genre of prayer books. Rosaries were used for private and communal devotion. In a collection of articles, contributors describe the original founding of some cloisters; the education and literary habits of the nuns, which were not confined to reading but also included collecting, copying, and similar activities; medieval convent reforms and the resulting refocusing of existing collections; devotional practices both literary and non-literary; the popularity of certain books and genres; and the Reformation and its consequences for the convents in Lower Saxony. From these in-depth articles we learn that most of the books and manuscripts in the convents originated in the times between the Windesheimer Reform among the Augustinian orders (c. 1450) and the Reformation. The convents had embraced this earlier Reform although it insisted on enclosure (clausura). Most of these convents prospered in the century before the Reformation. Inscriptions in the books show that some nuns belonged to the highest aristocracy while others were...