
Stripping the Veil
Convent Reform, Protestant Nuns, and Female Devotional Life in Sixteenth Century Germany
Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 24. March 2022
Book
Hardback
372 pages
978-0-19-285728-6 (ISBN)
Description
Protestant nuns and mixed-confessional convents are an unexpected anomaly in early modern Germany. According to sixteenth-century evangelical reformers' theological positions outlined in their publications and reform-minded rulers' institutional efforts, monastic life in Protestant regions should have ended by the mid-sixteenth century. Instead, many convent congregations exhibiting elements of traditional and evangelical practices in Protestant regions survived into the seventeenth century and beyond. How did these convents survive? What is a Protestant nun? How many convent congregations came to house nuns with diverse belief systems and devotional practices, and how did they live and worship together? These questions lead to surprising answers.
Stripping the Veil explores the daily existence, ritual practices, and individual actions of nuns in surviving convents over time against the backdrop of changing political and confessional circumstances in Protestant regions. It also demonstrates how incremental shifts in practice and belief led to the emergence of a complex, often locally constructed, devotional life. This continued presence of nuns and the survival of convents in Protestant cities and territories of the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire is evidence of a more complex lived experience of religious reform, devotional practice, and confessional accommodation than traditional histories of early modern Christianity would indicate. The internal differences and the emerging confessional hybridity, blending, and fluidity also serve as a caution about designating a nun or groups of nuns as Lutheran, Catholic, or Reformed, or even more broadly as Protestant or Catholic during the sixteenth century.
Stripping the Veil explores the daily existence, ritual practices, and individual actions of nuns in surviving convents over time against the backdrop of changing political and confessional circumstances in Protestant regions. It also demonstrates how incremental shifts in practice and belief led to the emergence of a complex, often locally constructed, devotional life. This continued presence of nuns and the survival of convents in Protestant cities and territories of the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire is evidence of a more complex lived experience of religious reform, devotional practice, and confessional accommodation than traditional histories of early modern Christianity would indicate. The internal differences and the emerging confessional hybridity, blending, and fluidity also serve as a caution about designating a nun or groups of nuns as Lutheran, Catholic, or Reformed, or even more broadly as Protestant or Catholic during the sixteenth century.
Reviews / Votes
Plummer is able to tease out the diversity of convent reform, lending voice and agency to the women who negotiated for their communities and their selves. * Claire Taylor Jones, History: Review of New Books * Plummer's impressive text is accessibly structured, abundantly supported, and compellingly argued,...the book is invaluable. It should join the list of essential monographs in the field. * Austrian History Yearbook * Stripping the Veil is a welcome contribution to a growing body of studies that expand understanding of the multifaceted ways in which nuns' interactions with the outside world contributed to their crafting of devotional practices, spaces, and identities. * Camilla Kandare, Renaissance Quarterly * Stripping the Veil asks what the development of mixed-confessional convents can reveal about how such houses were understood in the sixteenth century and argues that studying such houses and their histories can shed light on aspects of Reformation history that have been more widely studied. * Lucy Barnhouse, EMW Vol. 19 *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
39 black and white figures/illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
722 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-285728-6 (9780192857286)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer
Stripping the Veil
Convent Reform, Protestant Nuns, and Female Devotional Life in Sixteenth Century Germany
E-Book
03/2022
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€62.99
Available for download

Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer
Stripping the Veil
Convent Reform, Protestant Nuns, and Female Devotional Life in Sixteenth Century Germany
E-Book
03/2022
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€62.99
Available for download
Person
Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer is the Susan C. Karant-Nunn Professor of Reformation and Early Modern European History in the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona. She is co-editor of the Archive for Reformation History and the author of From Priest's Whore to Pastor's Wife: Clerical Marriage and the Process of Reform in the Early German Reformation. She has been a James K. Cameron fellow at St. Andrews University, a Solmsen fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institutes for Research in the Humanities, a William D. Loughlin member at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and guest professor in the Interconfessionality in Early Modern Period research group at the University of Hamburg.
Author
Susan C. Karant-Nunn Professor of Reformation and Early Modern European HistorySusan C. Karant-Nunn Professor of Reformation and Early Modern European History, Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, University of Arizona
Content
Introduction
1: 1. 'No Better than a Brothel': Verbal Abuse, Removing Nuns, and the Destruction of Convents, 1520-1525
Part I. Laicization and Secularization: The Enduring Convent after 'Dissolution', 1521-1546
2: 1. The Fight for Keys: Extending Secular Control Over Monastic Houses in an Age of Religious Uncertainty
3: 1. Leaving the Convent? Nuns, Decision-Making, and the Persistence of Convent Congregations During the Early Reformation
4: 1. New Habits: Negotiating Desacralization, Liturgical Space, and Convent Jurisdiction in Women's Religious Houses
Part II. The Birth of the Mixed-Confessional Convent: Devotional Practice and Religious Diversity, 1546-1590
5: 1. 'Old, Stubborn Nuns': Secular Convent Reform between Imperial Politics and Freedom of Conscience After the Schmalkaldic War
6: 1. The New Evangelical Nun: Monastic Investiture and Petitions for Convent Positions
7: 1. Singing Hymns, Removing Madonnas: Devotional Culture in Mixed-Confessional Convent Congregations
Conclusion
1: 1. 'No Better than a Brothel': Verbal Abuse, Removing Nuns, and the Destruction of Convents, 1520-1525
Part I. Laicization and Secularization: The Enduring Convent after 'Dissolution', 1521-1546
2: 1. The Fight for Keys: Extending Secular Control Over Monastic Houses in an Age of Religious Uncertainty
3: 1. Leaving the Convent? Nuns, Decision-Making, and the Persistence of Convent Congregations During the Early Reformation
4: 1. New Habits: Negotiating Desacralization, Liturgical Space, and Convent Jurisdiction in Women's Religious Houses
Part II. The Birth of the Mixed-Confessional Convent: Devotional Practice and Religious Diversity, 1546-1590
5: 1. 'Old, Stubborn Nuns': Secular Convent Reform between Imperial Politics and Freedom of Conscience After the Schmalkaldic War
6: 1. The New Evangelical Nun: Monastic Investiture and Petitions for Convent Positions
7: 1. Singing Hymns, Removing Madonnas: Devotional Culture in Mixed-Confessional Convent Congregations
Conclusion