Men in the Communities of Dominican Nuns - Sister-Books Discussing Priests and Friars

This article discusses the relationship between Dominican nuns and their caregivers (priests and friars) with the help of sister-books written by the Dominican nuns themselves in the first half of the fourteenth century. My main focus will be on analysing the way religious men were described in thes...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Heinonen, Meri (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2016]
In: Journal of religious history
Year: 2016, Volume: 40, Issue: 4, Pages: 589-609
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Dominikanerinnen / Sister-books / Office-holder / Church / Man
RelBib Classification:KAF Church history 1300-1500; late Middle Ages
KCA Monasticism; religious orders
RB Church office; congregation
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article discusses the relationship between Dominican nuns and their caregivers (priests and friars) with the help of sister-books written by the Dominican nuns themselves in the first half of the fourteenth century. My main focus will be on analysing the way religious men were described in these books and asking how this discussion was related to the everyday life of the nuns in the Dominican convents. I will suggest that the sister-books can give a new and perhaps unexpected view of the relationships between Dominican nuns and their spiritual caregivers, as these texts suggest that nuns preferred local secular priests over the friars, even though they accepted the religious authority of the latter. I will argue that although the sister-books were literary products, they had a close connection to the lived reality of nuns and that they can tell us about the interaction between nuns and religious men in their service. However, these texts also formed the ideas of nuns and kept the old attitudes towards priests and friars live, even when the interaction might have already taken other forms in practice.
ISSN:1467-9809
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religious history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12347