Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T17:33:13.898Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Communal Devotion and Piety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2017

Get access

Summary

The Choice OF life in the convent is a choice for the communal life. Many of the religious devotions required of the sisters of Windesheim were performed communally. The Diepenveen sisterbook speaks in awe of Elsebe Hasenbroecks, who continued to take an active part in the life of the convent at an advanced age.

For when she was eighty-six years old and nearly blind and deaf she nevertheless steadfastly continued to go both day and night to choir and refectory and chapel, and she would remain there until the end.

Elsebe's dedication to the life of the convent was apparent to her fellow canonesses by her participation in a number of important communal exercises. Generally speaking these may be divided into two groups, the religious and the material. First among the religious exercises to be discussed here are the choir services (§3.1). Strictly speaking these should not be considered simply one of the many devotions, because the performance of the office in choir constituted by far the canonesses’ most important duty. They devoted many hours each day to the choir office. The other religious exercises were the weekly chapter of faults or correption (§3.2) and adherence to silence (§3.3). Next came a number of physical exercises: manual labour (§3.4 and 3.5), congregating in refectory (§3.6) and the hours of rest and recreation (§3.7). Finally, I will consider the collation, a collective spiritual exercise characteristic of the Modern Devotion, the meaning of which within the Chapter is not entirely clear (§3.8).

Liturgical Celebrations

With their detailed rules for the celebration of the choir office and conventual mass, the Constitutiones monialium provide ample indication ‘Of the care bestowed upon the heart of the canonical communal life, the divine office, especially in the Windesheim convents’. In the Catholic service the life of Christ is repeatedly commemorated; its rituals render the events in his life visible once again. For this reason a solemn and high-minded celebration of the liturgy was the best thing the nuns could offer the Church of Christ. The recitation of the divine office was the very pulse of life in the convents of Windesheim. The oft-repeated psalms, antiphons, hymns, sequences, responsories, etc. from the divine office belonged among the texts most frequently read, sung and heard in this milieu.

Type
Chapter
Information
Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries
The 'Modern Devotion', the Canonesses of Windesheim, and their Writings
, pp. 51 - 82
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×