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3 - Mainz’s Hospital Sisters and the Rights of Religious Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2024

Lucy Barnhouse
Affiliation:
Arkansas State University
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter analyzes how Mainz's hospital sisters, and similar communities, can be understood as part of the history of women's religious houses. The late medieval history of the independent hospital formed by the hospital sisters has hitherto been virtually unexamined, and its administration has been misattributed to the cathedral chapter. This seriously distorts, I argue, the image of Mainz's decentralized hospital landscape. Although civic authorities and male religious leaders in Mainz sought to have the women incorporated into one of the city's Cistercian houses, the women themselves saw hospital service as central to their religious identity. That the management of their hospital was a communal priority for the women of St. Agnes is suggested by the fact that they funneled resources towards it and concentrated properties around it.

Keywords: medieval hospitals, religious women, canon law, Cistercians

On 14 August 1260, Hildeborg, elaborately identified as “the magistra of the convent of nuns of the hospital in Mainz,” on behalf of the community, made over to the hospital the house which the sisters owned “in the courtyard of the hospital, next to the cookhouse.” Temporary residence on hospital property could have been an attempt to satisfy civic and ecclesiastical authorities, without suddenly depriving the hospital of a significant number of its staff; or, indeed, a concession to the women as they sought a new place of residence. In the charter of 1260, the sisters still appear closely connected with the hospital. Six members of the community witness the charter: Godesman, the provisor, two hospital priests, and three lay brothers. This degree of specification concerning the roles of the men within the hospital is itself unusual; in documents of practice, the status of healthy and sick, staff and patients, are usually less distinct than in regulations. Despite the de jure separation, Hildeborg refers to the image of the Dove of the Holy Spirit, pressed into red wax, as “our seal,” used to affirm that the sale is permanent, and that the rights of the brothers must be undisputed. The division of Mainz's hospital staff along gendered lines was a response to increasing suspicion of mixed-gender religious communities, and marked the beginning of the sisters’ efforts to form a new community, managing a new hospital.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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