Project G02: Female seminaries in the 15th and 16th centuries – Conceptions of order/threat discourses caught between (internal) reform and (Protestant) Reformation

Abstract

Project G02 studies two kinds of female seminaries in South-West Germany during the 15/16th c.: the first case is that of Württemberg nuns of the Dominican order living in voluntary seclusion; the second concerns nuns not sworn to seclusion. The lens through which these seminaries are studied is that of existentially threatening demands for reform of external provenance. By dint of the fact that these religious communities were confronted with a reform agenda and/or a (Protestant-derived) questioning of their monastic lifestyle, they may be said to reflect their own inner order as threat­ened. The re-ordering strategies of these religious women can be studied here in almost laboratory precision.