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CHAPTER 1

The Office in Dominican Legislation, 1216–1303

De florido orto ecclesie, rose quedam in Alemania prodiere [From the flowery garden of the church, certain roses blossomed forth in Germany].

—Hugh of St. Cher

My epigraph is taken from a letter written by Hugh of St. Cher, a Dominican friar who served as a cardinal and papal legate to Germany. The letter, sent to the provincial of the Dominican province of Teutonia in February 1257, urges him to replant the sweet-smelling roses back into the blossoming garden of the Order of Preachers. These roses, he explains, are none other than the sisters following the Rule of St. Augustine, who had been first placed under the care of the Friars Preachers and then cut off from the order by Innocent IV.¹ Hugh’s flowery language was meant to put a good face on a bitter controversy, namely the Dominican order’s battle over the cura monialium. This issue would come to an initial resolution in 1259, but the forty-year struggle was to have a lasting impact on the place of women in the Dominican order, their interactions with their brothers Preachers, and the expectations laid on their lives and spirituality.

The lengthy controversy over the cura monialium coincided with protracted debates over the Dominican liturgy. The order’s administrative procedures and Constitutions were largely finalized by 1228, and even the monumental intervention of Raymond of Peñafort in 1239–1241 entailed more reorganization than rewriting.² Despite the success of this effort to unify and centralize the international community, the friars were unable to agree upon a uniform liturgy until 1256. At the same time, the development of the Constitutions for Dominican women was hampered by the order’s continual efforts to be relieved of the cura monialium entirely.³ Both these controversies were finally laid to rest through the diplomacy and force of will of Humbert of Romans (1200?–1277), Master General of the order from 1254 to 1263. His involvement in finalizing the Dominican Rite influenced his formulation of the sisters’ Constitutions.

The main chapters of this study focus on didactic literature intended for German Dominican nuns from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the later Middle Ages, German Dominican convent literature would explore and develop a variety of ways to experience and foster devotion to the Divine Office. Yet this spiritual advice continued to draw on the legislation and regular documents that were hammered out in the early days of the order. In this chapter, I recruit Dominican legislative and normative documents in order to demonstrate that the Divine Office was central to the role of Dominican women from the very origins of the order.

Dominican Legislation

The Augustinian Rule constituted the foundational legislation for both the male and female branches of the Dominican order. Dominic himself had been an Augustinian canon before founding his own order. Once canon 13 of the Fourth Lateran Council dictated the selection of a previously approved rule,⁴ it cannot have been a difficult choice. The Benedictine Rule, which provided the major alternative, commands enclosure and delineates a comprehensive cycle of daily prayer and manual labor. Separation from the world does not accord with a preaching mission, and the full daily schedule leaves no time for the study that Dominicans understood to ground and nourish good preaching. The Augustinian Rule is far more flexible than the Benedictine in that it “outlines a disposition as much as a praxis.”⁵ Indeed, Humbert of Romans, the order’s fifth Master General and its great systematizer, argues in his commentary on the Augustinian Rule that the Rule’s great strength lies in its vagueness, which allows the Dominicans to follow its spirit while suiting daily life to their calling.⁶

The Augustinian Rule, in keeping with its apostolic inspiration, places the greatest emphasis on communal property. It lingers over the difficulty that formerly rich and poor will experience in learning to cohabit and specifies that even clothes are to be centrally held, cleaned, and distributed for use.⁷ The Rule thus stipulates individual poverty and encourages but does not mandate communal ownership, thus permitting the absolute poverty that the Friars Preachers would adopt in 1220.⁸ Regarding the separation of the community from the world, the Augustinian Rule merely enjoins that one should never go out alone but must always be accompanied by a fellow. This “buddy system” institutes mutual policing and reporting, which also receives lengthy exposition. Yet these stipulations are only necessary because the Augustinian Rule envisions an unenclosed community that does work in the world, an imagination that fits well with the Dominican mission to preach but is incommensurate with the strict enclosure increasingly imposed on women’s communities in the high and late Middle Ages. Dominic and his successors who codified the women’s legislation chose to write enclosure into the Constitutions for Dominican Sisters, rather than placing their second order under a different Rule.

The liturgical portions of the Rule are similarly vague. In comparison to the Benedictine Rule’s detailed psalm cycle, the chapter on prayer is extraordinarily short, enough so that it may be cited here in full:

II.1. Orationibus instate horis et temporibus constitutis.

2. In oratorio nemo aliquid agat nisi ad quod est factum, unde et nomen accepit; ut si forte aliqui, etiam praeter horas constitutas, si eis uacat, orare uoluerint, non eis sit inpedimento, qui ibi aliquid agendum putauerit.

3. Psalmis et hymnis cum oratis deum, hoc uersetur in corde quod profertur in uoce.

4. Et nolite cantare, nisi quod legitis esse cantandum; quod autem non ita scriptum est ut cantetur, non cantetur.⁹

II.1. Be constant in prayer at the hours and times appointed.

2. No one should do anything in the oratorium other than that for which it is intended and from which it takes its name. If perchance some want to pray there even outside the appointed hours, if they are free, one who thinks to do something else there should not be an impediment to them.

3. When you pray to God in psalms and hymns, consider in your heart what you offer with your voice.

4. Do not sing anything other than what you read is to be sung; moreover, what is not written that it should be sung, should not be sung.

As is characteristic of the Augustinian Rule more generally, these directives describe a prayerful disposition more than they lay out a specific prayer practice. Rather than defining the “horas constitutas,” the Rule protects the space of the oratory as a haven for prayer at any time of day. It enjoins devout and contemplative attention to the content of the prayers and denounces mere lip service.¹⁰ Curiously, however, despite the repeated mentions of the “appointed hours” and the final command to sing only “what is written” and nothing more, the Rule dictates neither what hours are to be observed nor what specifically is to be sung. Those observing the Augustinian Rule would need a supplementary document providing instructions for the observance of the liturgy in order to be able to observe the Rule fully.

Accordingly, both the Dominican friars and sisters possessed Constitutions which further regulated life within the order. Some sort of customary must have been developed at the order’s founding in 1216, but the earliest surviving set of Dominican Constitutions were ratified at the Most General Chapter in 1228.¹¹ The Constitutions detailed procedures for making changes and amendments, which was steadily and continuously done, especially in the early years.¹² The greatest revision of the Constitutions was completed by Master General Raymond of Peñafort, submitted to the General Chapter in 1239, and approved in 1241.¹³ Although the Dominicans continued to introduce small changes, the bulk of this version of the Constitutions would survive throughout the Middle Ages.

Raymond of Peñafort’s successor as Master General, John of Wildeshausen, initiated a similar revision, unification, and consolidation of the order’s liturgy.¹⁴ The General Chapter in 1245 appointed four friars, who were to assemble with all their liturgical books at the Dominican house in Angers to correlate and harmonize the Rite. Although their efforts won final approval at the General Chapter in 1248, implementation of the unified Rite proved difficult in the face of vigorous protest and dissatisfaction. A measure to make adherence to the uniform Rite part of the Constitutions was proposed in 1252 but was never passed into law.¹⁵ Only John of Wildeshausen’s successor, Humbert of Romans, would succeed both in creating a uniform liturgy codified in a master exemplar and in enforcing adherence to this Rite through an amendment to the Constitutions.¹⁶ From this point forward, Humbert’s Rite was treated as if it were legislation, and changes to the liturgy followed the same procedure of approval as amendments to the Constitutions.¹⁷

Having settled the issue of the Dominican liturgy, Humbert turned to the regulation of the women associated with the order. At the time there were at least two sets of statutes in use among the communities of women under Dominican care. In Teutonia many communities followed Constitutions derived from those Dominic himself had composed for the nuns of San Sisto in Rome and which had been imposed by papal bull on the penitent communities known as the Magdalenes.¹⁸ While serving as provincial prior of France, Humbert of Romans himself had formulated statutes based on the friars’ Constitutions for the women of Montargis.¹⁹ In the capacity of Master General, Humbert revised the Montargis statutes and, in an encyclical appended to the acts of the General Chapter of 1259, declared these Constitutions binding. Any community that refused to adopt Humbert’s statutes would lose affiliation with the Friars Preachers.²⁰ Any grumblings over Humbert’s Rite or his Constitutions for the sisters were silenced when in 1267 Clement IV issued two papal bulls which separately confirmed Humbert’s legislative legacies, the Rite and the women’s Constitutions, and forbade changes to them without papal approval.²¹

Both the male and female branches of the order accordingly had a number of different documents that laid out the Dominican forma vitae. In addition to the Augustinian Rule, each had a set of Constitutions, and the friars, ideally, also possessed a uniform liturgy. The Rule gave little opportunity for adjustment,²² but the composition of the Rite and the different Constitutions for friars and sisters was a fraught process that lasted decades and only achieved relative stability through the firm guidance of Humbert of Romans. The very energy with which the early Dominicans disputed the form of the Divine Office signals its importance to those who shaped the order’s practices, and the liturgy furthermore occupied a central place in the forma vitae of Dominican women.

Differences in the Constitutions for Friars and Sisters

In both the Constitutions for the Dominican friars and those of the sisters, the first chapter, simply entitled De officio ecclesie, lays the groundwork for liturgical practice within the order, although other chapters touch on liturgical matters, as well. This first chapter is nearly identical in the two sets of Constitutions, but slight differences have significant consequences for the status of the Office and liturgical observance in the lives of friars and sisters. Here I will consider three changes which concern the way of reciting the canonical hours and the matins of the Little Office of the Virgin, as well as the status of Humbert’s Rite. The regulations concerning the Divine Office in the Constitutions for the friars reveal that, although liturgical observance was important, study and preaching took precedence over communal prayer. Dominican women, however, did not share this calling, and the Office replaced formal study in their spiritual and intellectual lives.

For the friars, the prioritization of study and preaching over liturgical practice went beyond the dispensations from singing the hours in the church to affect the very manner in which the community was to perform the Office. The Constitutions specify that “hore omnes in ecclesia breuiter et succincte taliter dicantur, ne fratres deuotionem amittant et eorum studium minime impediatur [all hours are to be said in the church briefly and succinctly so that the brothers do not lose their devotion and their study is minimally impeded].”²³ Indeed, Humbert had composed his Office with these injunctions in mind, and, although it was not as abbreviated as the Franciscan Rite, it could be performed quite expeditiously. Prior to the institutionalization of Humbert’s Rite, the General Chapters had attempted to restrict ornamental singing.²⁴ Whether these denouncements stemmed from a fear of music’s sensuality or the recognition that complex singing took longer to perform, they limit the amount of energy and attention a friar should be devoting to the Office hours.

Since Dominican women neither preached nor studied, their daily agenda resembled that of Benedictine monastics more than that of their Dominican brothers. The sisters were expected to concentrate on the Office hours and spend their remaining time on handiwork and manual tasks in the workroom.²⁵ The introduction of a chapter De labore, On Work, represents a significant divergence in the Constitutions of the sisters from those of the friars.²⁶ Despite this and the major changes concerning enclosure, much of the chapter on the Divine Office is identical in the friars’ and sisters’ Constitutions, with the broad shift of focus taking place instead via smaller changes. The passage of the women’s Constitutions corresponding to the brothers’ injunction cited above reads, “hore canonice omnes in ecclesia tractim et distincte taliter dicantur, ne sorores deuocionem amittant et alia que facere habent minime impediantur [All canonical hours should be said in church slowly and distinctly so that that the sisters do not lose their devotion and the other things they have to do are minimally impeded].”²⁷ This passage repeats the friars’ Constitutions word for word, except for two very revealing substitutions. “Study” is replaced with the vaguer “other things they have to do” and, more importantly, saying the hours “briefly and succinctly” gives way to “slowly and distinctly.”²⁸ Unlike the friars, who speed through the Office, the sisters devote more time and thought to it.

This difference affects the expectations for matins of the Little Office of the Virgin. As soon as the friars heard the first bell, they were to start singing the Little Office of the Virgin while getting up (surgant fratres dicendo matutinas), apparently to save time.²⁹ The acts of the General Chapters show that this phrasing was debated for almost three decades, revealing disagreement over the level of respect and attention that was due this Office. The wording was finally changed in 1270, when the General Chapter passed a measure clarifying that the friars had to recite the Little Office standing after having gotten out of bed (surgant fratres et stando dicant officium de beata virgine).³⁰ Matins of the Little Office still was nevertheless said in the dormitory. The sisters, on the other hand, were required to assemble in the choir even for matins of the Little Office. Their Constitutions specify that “hore uero de beata virgine prius horas canonicas dicantur in ecclesia [they should say the Little Office of the Virgin before the canonical hours in the church].”³¹ Whereas the friars were permitted to say the Little Office while rising, the sisters were required to perform it with the same solemnity as the canonical hours. Late in the thirteenth century, an anonymous ordinance concerning the implementation of the women’s Constitutions in Teutonia permitted the sisters to sing the Little Office matins in the dormitory, as the friars did.³² The Constitutions of the sisters, however, were never updated, and this practice technically remained a deviation.

The difference in both the solemnity of the Little Office and the speed with which the canonical hours were sung shows that the Constitutions for the sisters demand a far greater degree of devotion and attention to the hours than do those of the friars. The friars were expected to show up and fulfill their duty, but the primary font and wellspring of their devotion was the study to which they would devote the greater portion of their day. Their Office should be suitably concise. Dominican women did not share this intellectual vocation, and although their Constitutions make some provisions for brief moments of private contemplation and reading, the Divine Office remains central to its formation of their spiritual lives. While the brothers rush through the hours in order to get to their books, the sisters must linger in the choir singing “distinctly” in order to allow time to process the words that are their spiritual food.

The different place of the liturgy in the spiritual lives of Dominican men and women may ground the most surprising difference between the chapters on the Divine Office in their Constitutions. The General Chapter in 1256 had confirmed a clause imposing Humbert’s Rite on all friars. Since Humbert both organized the Dominican liturgy and wrote the Constitutions for the sisters out of a concern over disparity of practice, it seems logical that he would write his own Office into the Constitutions of the sisters, as well. Yet, in the place of this clause in the friars’ Constitutions, in the sisters’ we read, “aliquis autem locus statuatur, in quo ad preuidendum officium diuinum sorores conueniant, presente priorissa uel alia cui commiserit tempore oportuno [some place should be established in which the sisters convene at an appropriate time to review the Divine Office with the prioress presiding or another to whom she entrusts this].”³³ Instead of imposing his own Office on the women, Humbert simply includes a vague passage ordaining that each convent should have a committee to determine and prepare for its own liturgical practice. Not only were the sisters not bound to the same Rite as the friars, it would seem that they also did not need a unified liturgy among themselves.

Since Humbert had devoted so much energy to the revision and organization of the Dominican Rite, it is baffling that he would not impose its observance on the sisters, as well. Perhaps Humbert felt that the concise Office of the brothers would not suit the women’s need for a longer, slower, and more contemplative service. I find it more likely that the concern was financial or practical: requiring the sisters to obtain all fourteen volumes of Humbert’s Rite would impose an unnecessary expense. The sisters did not need all of the books, since they did not perform Mass as the ordained brothers did.³⁴ This situation must also be considered when interpreting the portion of the women’s Constitutions that Raymond Creytens takes as proof that the Dominican women did not use Humbert’s Office. The chapter on ingress and egress details the procedure for allowing a priest into the cloister to administer communion to a bedridden nun, “prout in ordinario continetur [as contained in the Ordinary].”³⁵ Since Humbert’s Ordinary does not contain the rubrics for administering to the sick, Creytens argues that the nuns must have continued to use a pre-Humbertian Office in which these rites had not been displaced to another liturgical book.³⁶ However, the priest would have had his own book and, especially in the early days of the order, may well have been a secular chaplain appointed by the friars but not belonging to them and therefore not bound to their Rite.³⁷ This passage provides evidence for nothing further than that Humbert did not require the nuns to follow his exemplar.³⁸

Nevertheless, after the decade of labor and strife that had gone into the creation of the Dominican Rite, it seems mad to expect that each individual convent should have begun the process for itself. Indeed, that this was ultimately not expected of them can be seen from surviving ordinances clarifying the implementation of Humbert’s female Constitutions in Teutonia. The anonymous author invokes the injunction from the Augustinian Rule (quod autem non ita scriptum est ut cantetur, non cantetur) but reverses it, enjoining that “quod cantare tenentur, non legant [what they are required to sing, they should not read].” Lest this injunction remain, like the Rule and the Constitutions, too vague to be enforced, he adds, “notulas et libros chorales habeant secundum ordinem [they should have notes and choral books according to the order].”³⁹ The German sisters, at least, were thus expected to make an effort to conform to the same Office as that celebrated by the male branch of the order.⁴⁰ Their ability to use the Latin text of this Office as a source for contemplative devotion is a different issue, to which I will now turn.

Women’s Literacy in the Constitutions

The Constitutions for Dominican Sisters prescribed a forma vitae in which the Latin-language Divine Office would provide the devotional centerpiece for women of the order. In order to evaluate this expectation fully, we must examine the place of Latin in the sisters’ Constitutions and clarify what we mean by “Latin literacy” among female religious. In the Introduction I surveyed the recent work that has been done to recover the levels and forms of literacy attained by medieval nuns through careful scrutiny of surviving manuscripts. Many of these studies have briefly addressed the issue of normative expectations but correctly conclude that the norms can tell us little about the reality.⁴¹ Furthermore, despite recognition of multiple levels of literacy, whether women knew Latin continues to be bound up with discussions of whether they read Latin theological treatises or whether they were capable of composing Latin documents, both of which are separate issues from the Latin of the Office.

With regard to the expectations for Dominican nuns in particular, the question is more difficult to answer, because Humbert of Romans’s final version of their Constitutions contains very little on the matter. Scholars of Dominican women’s literacy have taken recourse to other sources for more insight. Some have looked to the earlier stages of statutes for Dominican women which address the sisters’ education more explicitly and thoroughly.⁴² One may also turn to Humbert’s model sermon treatise, De eruditione praedicatorum, where he declares women inept for higher learning but advises parents to teach their young daughters the psalter, the Office for the Dead, and the Little Hours of the Virgin in order to prepare them for a religious career.⁴³ It is not clear, however, that these statements affected or were even received by Dominican women.⁴⁴ Recently, Julie Ann Smith has examined the expectations for literacy as they changed over the evolution of the women’s Constitutions.⁴⁵ I follow her diachronic approach here but arrive at a different conclusion. Namely, the vagueness of the final Constitutions as regards literacy and learning is legible as something closer to positive encouragement when read against the earlier San Sisto Rule for Magdalenes and the Constitutions for Montargis.

In the 1259 Constitutions, the only instructions concerning teaching or learning within the community are to be found in the chapter on novices.

Item nouicie, et alie sorores que apte sunt, in psalmodia et officio diuino studeant diligenter, preter conuersas, quibus sufficiat ut sciant uel addiscant ea que debent pro horis dicere. Omnes uero in aliquo laborerio addiscendo uel exercendo occupentur.⁴⁶

Item, novices and other sisters who are fit should apply themselves diligently to psalmody and the Divine Office, except for the laysisters, for whom it is sufficient to know or learn the things they ought to say for the hours. Certainly, in some workroom all should be occupied with learning or doing exercises.

Despite the brevity of this passage it reveals greater expectations than that the sisters would merely learn to sing the Office. True, the conversae simply should learn (addiscant) what they need for the hours, which the previous chapter of the Constitutions had specified as the Pater noster alone.⁴⁷ Nevertheless, the novices who were to become choir sisters should apply themselves to (studeant) the psalms and the Office. The word choice is telling, as is the injunction that apt sisters should continue to do this after profession.⁴⁸ Interested and intelligent women are expected to engage the Latin text of the psalms and the Office outside the times ordained for worship. The use of exercendo is also interesting, although ambiguous. Exercitia could refer to contemplative or even mortificatory spiritual exercises, but the Constitutions exclusively use the term disciplina to describe this kind of activity. It would seem, therefore, that some sort of schoolroom is foreseen where sisters may do educational exercises in Latin grammar.

In addition to the passage above, the chapter on prayers for the dead reveals some further information regarding what the laysisters are supposed to say for their hours instead of the Office: yet more repetitions of the Pater noster. “A festo sancti dyonisii ad aduentum pro anniuersario fratrum et sororum, litterate sorores psalterium, non litterate quingenta pater noster dicant [On the Feast of St. Denis in Advent for the anniversary of the brothers and sisters, literate sisters should say the psalter, illiterate sisters five hundred pater nosters].”⁴⁹ These specifications regarding the prayers of the laysisters help explain why the laysisters must be taught enough to say their prayers. They are also expected to be praying in Latin, even if only the one prayer repeatedly.

Performance of the liturgy and the literacy entailed are briefly at issue in the chapters on punishments. Not paying attention during the hours, laughing in choir, being absent for a silly reason, and singing anything other than what is intended are all considered a medium fault. Not bringing the book with the appropriate reading to collation and, more interestingly, reading or singing badly are considered light faults, although the Constitutions specify that the offending sister is not to be publicly humiliated for her mistake immediately.⁵⁰ The Constitutions reveal no further information concerning the time of day when learning or studying liturgical texts should occur, nor about appropriate reading or learning material aside from the Office.

In her study, Julie Ann Smith notes that the 1259 Constitutions introduce a clause not found in the earlier statutes. She interprets the passage as a restriction on the women’s reading material, stipulating that “no community was to be given books for reading or transcribing without permission of the Master General or provincial prior.”⁵¹ The clause she cites, however, is the last sentence in the section on receiving new houses and therefore in the entire Constitutions. It reads “nulli eciam libellus iste tradatur ad transcribendum uel uidendum sine licencia magistri uel prioris prouincialis [this book is to be given to no one for transcribing or viewing without permission of the Master General or the provincial prior].”⁵² The clause refers to one book alone, “this book,” that is, the book of the Constitutions, which is not to be circulated without the permission of male superiors. The passage therefore does not regulate the reading material of Dominican nuns, but rather attempts to restrict the affiliation of new convents.

Smith is correct in noting that only one passage regarding learning is added to the 1259 Constitutions, although the particular passage she chooses to focus upon is puzzling. The chapter on novices in the Montargis Constitutions includes the injunction that sisters should diligently study the psalter and the Office. This earlier version lacks the different regulations for laysisters and the mention of the workroom, which first appear in the 1259 Constitutions.⁵³ Otherwise, the final Constitutions are primarily interesting for their deletions, which Smith does not address.

Namely, both the San Sisto Rule for the Magdalenes and the Constitutions for Montargis contain regulations concerning learning in the chapter on work. In the Montargis statutes, we read that “sorores postquam officium ecclesiasticum didicerint diligenter, addiscere poterunt tantum ut quod legitur intelligant, ut maiorem habeant devotionem [after they have diligently learned the Office of the church, sisters will be able to learn enough that they understand what is read, so that they may have greater devotion].”⁵⁴ No mention is made of grammar, exercises, language learning, or theological texts, so the content of this instruction remains vague. Nevertheless, the tantum limits the extent as well as the purpose of this further learning.

The Rule for the Magdalenes provided more thorough stipulations, which not only dictated the content and purpose of the convent education but also restricted who qualified to benefit from it.

Iuniores discant legere et cantare, ut divinum officium valeant exercere; grammaticalia vero et auctores discere non oportet. Sorores que viginti quatuor annos transcenderunt, si nesciunt psalterium, de novo non discant. Que viginti annos compleverunt et nichil adhuc de cantu vel musica didicerunt, etiamsi sciant psalterium, de cetero non addiscant.⁵⁵

The young should learn to read and sing, so that they are good at practicing the Divine Office; it is not appropriate, however, to learn grammar and the authorities. If sisters who are older than twenty-four do not know the psalter, they should not learn it from nothing. Those who are twenty and have learned nothing of song or music, even if they know the psalter, should not learn anything else.

The Magdalenes were expected to know enough Latin to perform the Office well, but further study is forbidden them. The injunction against grammaticalia et auctores encompasses even more than the corresponding warning in the friars’ Constitutions. In the chapter on students, the friars’ Constitutions enjoin that no one is to study “in libris gentilium et phylosophorum [in the books of the gentiles and philosophers],” and moreover “seculares scientias non addiscant, nec artes quas liberales uocant [they should not learn the secular sciences, not even those arts called liberal].”⁵⁶ Whereas the young brothers are protected from pagan sources, the Magdalenes were forbidden even from reading Christian authorities.

Even more striking is that women beyond a certain age are deemed incapable of new learning, but that they nevertheless might be admitted as novices. The Constitutions of the friars stipulated that potential novices were to be carefully assessed for scholarly aptitude and, especially early on, the order zealously recruited men already educated at the universities.⁵⁷ In contrast, the Rule for the Magdalenes displays no such concern for the relative intelligence of their novices. Moreover, this passage from the chapter on work outright forbids the education of women who entered the order at an older age, even in areas that supported the Divine Office.

Although they recognize that a certain amount of Latin education is necessary for the purpose of singing the Office, both the San Sisto Rule for Magdalenes and the Montargis Constitutions prohibit further study. In addition, the Magdalene Rule restricts access to education to the young entrants who can be taught from an early age. In comparison with these earlier statutes, the vagueness of the 1259 Constitutions becomes positive information. Ehrenschwendtner speculates that women’s literacy was controversial, and stipulations were cut out of the 1259 Constitutions in order to avoid the issue.⁵⁸ Certainly, in the final version, Humbert did not explicitly encourage theological learning for the Dominican sisters. He did, however, delete all the passages placing restrictions upon them and included a provision for a schoolroom of sorts.

A set of late thirteenth-century ordinances survive which clarify the implementation of the 1259 Constitutions in Teutonia. These instructions expand upon the matter of the women’s education, largely absent from Humbert’s final version, by drawing on the obsolete Rule for Magdalenes. Although the admonishment not to teach old sisters new tricks is not repeated, this author clarifies the qualifier “que apte sunt” with regard to sisters continuing their education beyond the novitiate. “Item si aliqua recipitur XVIII annorum vel citra, si durioris est ingenii, non occupentur ad discendum amplius quam legere et cantare, ne declinando et huiusmodi faciendo tempus perdat [If someone eighteen years old or younger is received, if she is of a harder intelligence, such should not be occupied with learning more than reading and singing, lest she waste her time declining and doing similar things].”⁵⁹ The reference to declinations suggests that some sisters were indeed doing grammar exercises as part of increasing their Latin comprehension. While this was something more commonly expected of the young (as indicated by the age), it was also difficult. Some women simply did not have the brain for it and, whatever their age, were not to waste their time and strain their devotion in a frustrating task.

Furthermore, although the 1259 Constitutions lack any reference to learning or education in the chapter on work, these Teutonic injunctions include two relevant instructions. First, despite the strict imposition of silence during work hours in the Constitutions, this document permits women to have someone read to them in the workroom, especially admonitions from order superiors and commentaries on the Rule.⁶⁰ Second, we find a number of admonitions concerning scribes, including the previously lacking restriction on material.

Scriptrices sedeant cum aliis laborantibus in communi domo, sed hae non scribant aliis, donec conventus habeat libros necessarios. Scribentibus vero aliis taxetur pretium per librarium fratrem, sicut magister ordinavit, et in utilitatem conventus vertatur acquisitio. Quibus autem aliquid iniungitur scribendum, nullo modo supponant furtiva opuscula, immo hoc diligentibus caveatur.⁶¹

Scribes should sit with the other workers in the common house, but they should not write for others until the convent has the necessary books. A price should be assessed for the other writers by the Brother Librarian, as the master ordered, and the payment should go toward the use of the convent. Those charged with writing anything should by no means include secret little works, no—this is to be avoided by the diligent.

The scribes should not be segregated in a scriptorium dedicated to this work but rather must sit together with the women doing other sorts of work, for example, the seamstresses who shortly will be admonished not to embroider designs on the friars’ habits. Both this information about the seamstresses and the detail that the scribes are to be paid by the Brother Librarian reveal a close practical relationship between the two branches of the order. Furthermore, the sisters fulfilled an important ancillary role in the educational system of the friars. The men were supposed to spend all free time in study, and their Constitutions did not include manual labor. The friars therefore had no provisions for copying books on their own and evidently relied not only upon professional scribes but also on the sisters for their books.⁶² The warning against furtiva opuscula is likely to be understood in this context. The author forbids the scribes from including extraneous material, whether edifying meditations or personal notes, in commissioned books.

Such was the state of the legislation for the Dominican nuns at the end of the thirteenth century. Both the male and the female branches of the order were subject to the Augustinian Rule, which was so vague as to provide little guidance for daily conduct. Both men and women therefore had sets of Constitutions which determined the expectations for members of the order and detailed their structures of governance. The Constitutions of the friars included procedures for enacting changes in the legislation, whereas the sisters had no such mechanism for adaptation. On the other hand, the friars were bound by Constitution and papal decree to Humbert’s Rite, whereas the sisters were given free rein, at least nominally. Similarly, the friars were subject to a strict curriculum and a hierarchy of schools, degrees, and privileges, whereas the sisters had no legislation regarding their education except that they must devote themselves to liturgical study. These were the standards and expectations for literacy in the service of liturgical piety to which the early sisters presumably were held and to which the Observant reformers wished to return.

In the next chapter, I turn to Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Seuse, two fourteenth-century friars who occupy key positions in this history of Dominican female spirituality, both by virtue of their role advising women during their lifetimes and through the avid reception of their work by the Observants. Both friars promote a form of spirituality that soars to mystical heights while remaining grounded in the practices of the order. What they describe in theory is portrayed in narrative examples by the contemporary sisterbooks, the subject of Chapter 3.