Women’s History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer’s Chronicle of the Dominican Observance by Johannes Meyer (review)

Claire Taylor Jones offers a contemporary English translation of Johannes Meyer’s narrative of the late-fourteenth-and early-fifteenth-century Dominican Reform movement, a narrative that focused on women’s monasteries within German regions. The word Reformation in the book’s title refers not to the Protestant Reformation but to a late-medieval effort to reform Dominican monastic communities. Those practicing what was called the Observance desired to return to the austere way of life and deliberate religious devotion, perceived as being the original ways of the order. For women’s monastic communities, enclosure— separating the community from the outside world— accompanied reform.

Jones’s introduction warns that Meyer’s narrative style, although perhaps bizarre to a modern reader, is typical for a late-medieval Dominican friar. Meyer includes copious references to historical figures but also impresses with his detailed accounts of specific communities, the sisters there, and how these communities were reformed. Woven into historical accounts are depictions of miracles that come to those advocating the reform. Accounts of sisters’ visions and divine ecstasy coexist with narratives of the practical duties of their offices and the bureaucratic and political obstacles they face.

Entrusted for a great deal of his career with pastoral care in women’s monasteries, Meyer writes specifically for his primary audience, Dominican nuns. For his narrative, he chooses the genre of the Schwesternbuch (sisterbook), a genre containing writings by nuns with nuns as the intended audience. Meyer makes women visible not only by telling their stories and by directly addressing his female audience but also by deliberately naming the nuns involved in starting the reform: “I have recorded here the names of these thirteen devout mothers because they were the holy foundation [ . . . ] one also reads the names of distinguished holy fathers worthily commemorated in this way” (68).

The lives of monastic women are being given more visibility by an emerging corpus of editions, translations, and secondary sources. Through her translation, Jones adds to this body of literature and provides access to a specific moment in women’s history in German-speaking regions. Her translation of the original (late) Middle High German is formal but deliberately not archaic. Her thorough introduction and copious footnotes offer ample scaffolding to the modern reader in order to give maximum access to the author’s world. She explains specialized terminology, gives essential information for historical figures, provides reference information for other works to which Meyer refers, gives references when certain nuns are mentioned in outside sources, and corrects Meyer’s information when it is not consistent with other sources. Beyond building a historical context, Jones also explains the meaning of certain religious practices and the significance of the religious imagery within the narrative.

For scholars, connections between the translation text and the corresponding locations in the main manuscript used (Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 2934) provide orientation points for comparison. Also for ease of comparison, Jones has written her translation in anticipation of a possible modern critical edition of Meyer’s text. Concise footnotes mark variations among manuscripts.

Because of the book’s accessible style, it can be used in lecture and discussion material. Meyer’s book includes both positive and negative aspects of these women’s lives. He mentions different offices women held for self-governance. He praises female scribes, talented in copying both text and music. However, behind his recounting of God’s aid in reforming difficult nuns, one sees that communities were often enclosed against their will, facing excommunication and, ironically, imprisonment if they refused. Thus, in a gender studies course, one can use the text to teach about women’s autonomy, yet also about abuse.

German instructors teaching cultural history must often begin in the Middle Ages with the feudal pyramid including the nobility, ministeriales, and serfs. This book offers a way to...