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Updated 08-30-12
Caritas Pirckheimer /Charitas Pirkheimer /Barbara (1467-1532)
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"WE WANT TO BE FREE IN SPIRIT, NOT BODY."
=======================================================================Barbara Pirckheimer was born to a prominent and learned Nuremberg family, while her father in the service of the Prince-Bishop of Eichstatt. She was the eldest of twelve children, nine of whom would survive to adulthood. Until her mother's death in 1488, Barbara was given a humanist education at home, where she became fluent in Latin. Then, at 12, she went to school at the Franciscan monastery of Saint Clara in Nuremberg. When she was about 16, she joined the order, with the name of Caritas (or Charitas). The monastery, known for its extensive library and scriptorium, held about 60 women, all from the leading families of Nuremberg. By 1500 Caritas was head of the monastery school, as well as its librarian and chronicler. In 1503 she would be elected abbess by her fellow nuns.
We first hear of Caritas at the end of 1490s, when she began the correspondence with northern humanists that would make her known outside Nuremberg. That scholars came to know of her was due to the reputation of her younger brother, Willibald, who had returned from study in Italy to Nuremberg in 1495, and who would soon come to be considered one of the most important of German humanists. Willibald visited Caritas, lent her books and gave her Greek works that he had translated into Latin. He then reported to his friends her views on her reading, which led them to correspond with the enclosed nun whom few of them would ever meet (and to praise her in their published works). Only a few of her letters survive (e.g., letters to the imperial poet laureate Conrad Celtis, to the artist Albrecht Durer, and to Willibald himself), but her other correspondents' replies suggest that Caritas could hold her own in learned discussion. Five of her letters were published in Nuremberg in 1515.
The ideas of Martin Luther were being discussed in Nuremberg as early as 1517, and Willibald was one of his early admirers. Caritas was not, and brother and sister briefly quarreled when a letter she had written criticizing Luther's views was published (without her knowledge) in a 1523 pamphlet. But when in 1524 the city of Nuremberg began to take action against the two women's monasteries within the city, Willibald felt that the Reformers were going too far, and he became his sister's defender.
Early in her abbacy Caritas had contributed to and edited a chronicle of the Order of St. Clare and of the early days of her own Saint Clara monastery, so it was reasonable that when she now saw her monastery in danger, she would again compile a chronicle of the events that occurred. From late 1524 to the beginning of 1526, and then again at the end of 1527, she reported on what was happening, including letters to and from the city council and written transcripts of conversations. Later a final section was added, perhaps written after her death but including passages from Caritas' later letters. The chronicle was preserved in several manuscripts and published in the 1800s as Denkwurdigkeiten (literally, "things worthy of being remembered").
As Caritas reports, the women of Saint Clara's were finally allowed to stay in the monastery until their deaths but no novices were to be received. In 1591, the monastery church became a Protestant parish church; the former cloister served as the city's pawn house.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Correspondence
Denkwurdigkeiten
Information about secondary sources.=======================================================================
Online 1. In English:
(a) Use your browser's search function to go to "Charitas" (note spelling) for a cheerful 1518 letter to Durer and two Nuremberg city council members, all at Augsburg for a meeting of the Imperial Diet. Caritas jokes here about the council members' interest in reform, but Nutzel (Saint Clara's warden) and Spengler (the council secretary) would be those with whom she would have to argue six years later. The letter is translated by T. Sturge Moore.
(b) On five pages, excerpts from seven chapters of Denkwurdigkeiten, translated by Thomas A. Brady Jr.2. At Lina Eckenstein's book, Woman Under Monasticism (1896), link to the chapter near the end, "The Memoir of Charitas Pirckheimer." Eckenstein tells Caritas' story in detail and gives her own translations of passages from Caritas' letters and from Denkwurdigkeiten.
3. A much abridged 1926 German edition, by Hermann Joseph Schmidt, of Denkwurdigkeiten der Abtissin Charitas Pirkheimer. About one-half of the original is omitted, including most of the letters to and from the Nuremberg city council; what is left will, however, give a general overview of the narrative. "Inhaltsverzeichnis," at the bottom of the page, show you the table of contents, from which you can go to individual sections.
4. Essays, etc.:(a) The first half of Ute Mennecke-Haustein's essay, "Windows on Life: Women after the Reformation" (2002), uses the 1525 forced removal of one of Caritas' nuns to look at the Reformation's effect on women's freedom.
(b) A 1998 dissertation abstract by Joanne King Grafe, "Caritas Pirckheimer: Sixteenth century Chronicler," which speaks briefly of Caritas' c.1500 monastic chronicle, as well as of Denkwurdigkeiten.
(c) The individual pages of an 1876 article on Caritas from the periodical The Catholic World (pp. 170-85); the article is hagiographic but includes excerpts from her letters and from Denkwurdigkeiten.5. Reviews (for excerpts from the translations, see "In print"; for more on Woodford's treatment of Caritas, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) John Dahmus on Paul A. MacKenzie's 2006 translation, Caritas Pirckheimer: A Journal of the Reformation Years, 1524-1528; elsewhere, you can download a PDF file (504 KB) of another review, this by Alison More.
(b) Joan Gibson on the 1987 anthology of translations, Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation.
(c) Amy E. Leonard on Charlotte Woodford's 2002 study, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany.6. After a biography and a list of editions, a four-page bibliography of studies through 2010.
7. For historical background, an August 1524 letter from Martin Luther to several nuns, which illustrates the arguments used by the people of Nuremberg who wished to remove their daughters from Caritas' monastery; the translation is by Erika Bullmann Flores.
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In print [Gwendolyn Bryant has translated for this anthology a Latin letter sent by Caritas to the humanist scholar Conrad Celtis, as well as a chapter from Denkwurdigkeiten. Bryant's introduction is useful for background:]
Women writers of the Renaissance and Reformation / edited by Katharina M. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, c1987. (xl, 638 p.)
LC#: PN6069.W65 W63 1987; ISBN: 082030865X, 0820308668
Includes bibliographies and index.-----------------------------------------------------------------
"... a little book dedicated by your Excellence to me."
-----------------------------------------------------------------[Celtis had already sent to Caritas his 1501 edition of the works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim; then in 1502 he dedicated to her his Latin Noremberga, a work praising Nuremberg. When he sent her a copy, she wrote this thank-you note:]
"Remarkable master, doctor and most erudite in philosophy, I received with indebted respect and the greatest thanks once again a little book dedicated by your Excellence to me, an insignificant woman, along with your sweetest letter, which pleased me beyond measure.
"But since I, a pauper, can never repay so great a gift, I invoke Him from whom the best is given..., that He in His usual clemency may replace me with respect to your kindness, illuminating and inflaming your ardent mind with the splendor and love of true wisdom...." [p. 294]
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"...not to give up worldly philosophy, but...."
-------------------------------------------------------[But Celtis' brand of humanism saw more value in ancient philosophy and mythology than in Christian teaching. He and Caritas' brother had already had arguments about this; here Willibald's sister joins in:]
"In truth, your Dignity knows me as your unworthy little pupil, as your enthusiastic disciple, and I even add, as the lover of your spiritual health; and for this reason I ask you with my spirit most urgently not to give up worldly philosophy, but rather to exchange it for something better, that is, to turn from the writings of the pagans to the Holy pages, from earthly things to heavenly ones, from creatures to the Creator....
"That is why I exhort your Lordship, in the name of our special friendship, to lay aside the depraved fables of Diana, Jupiter, Venus.... Make friends of God for yourself now by venerating the saints and imitating their acts, so that when you have departed from this life they may receive you.... " [pp. 295-96]
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" If... I have gone too far...."
------------------------------------[If anyone is to be blamed for writing in this way to the empire's poet laureate, it is, of course, not the "ignorant little girl" but Willibald:]
"I have written these things more with the intention of conversing with you in a friendly way, than of instructing you. If, however, I have gone too far, or have not shown enough respect for your dignity, doubtless punishment and blame is due to him who ordered me, an ignorant little girl without experience, to answer you under pain of disobedience. And therefore I beg that my humble obedience excuse my error." [p. 296]
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[Paul A. MacKenzie has translated the 69 chapters of Denkwurdigkeiten; the first 55 are by Caritas; the others were added later but include several of her letters. MacKenzie's introduction and interpretive essay tell what is known of Caritas' life and what the work reveals about her. The book's notes and annotated bibliography (through 1997) are useful, the rather skimpy index less so. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Caritas Pirckheimer: a journal of the Reformation years, 1524-1528 / translated from the German with introduction, notes and interpretive essay, Paul A. MacKenzie (Library of medieval women). Cambridge [England]: D.S. Brewer, 2006. (189 p.)
LC#: BX4705.P5 C285 2006; ISBN: 1843840766
Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-186) and index.---------------------------------------------------------------------
"The spirit wants to be and must be free and unfettered?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------[Unlike those in other cities, the monasteries of Nuremberg were under the sole control of the city council. In the latter part of 1524, the council ordered that Saint Clara's monastery should no longer be guided by priests of the "old church" but rather by those who had followed the Lutheran reform. Its members believed that the Franciscans, who had always been the nuns' confessors and preachers, had taught them evil things. What those evil things were can be inferred from a petition Caritas sent to to the city council in December:]
"...[A]re we to be burdened with incompetent priests or those whom we would really not want, but are forced to have? Do your honors realize what fruits and what benefit would result when the spirit wants to be and must be free and unfettered?...
"We can say to your honors in truth that we read and use the Old and New Testament in German and in Latin daily, and that as far as is possible we attempt to understand it correctly.... We also know that we should not attribute our own good works to ourselves, but if something good happens through us, it is not our work, but God's....
"We also do not despise marriage. For we know that whoever marries does the right thing.... In the event that we decide to serve God as virgins, truly no intelligent person can hold that against us.
"If, however, someone is not so inclined or does not want to join us, we have nothing against that. We, therefore, do not plan to to hold back any sister by force or to keep her from her parents.
"We also do not want to condemn anyone, but let every man judge himself; everyone will be judged when we all come before we God's judgment. But just as we do not want to force anyone, we also do not want to be forced, but instead we want to be free in spirit, not body." [pp.19-21]
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"May He have mercy on us."
--------------------------------------[On March 14, 1525, the council announced the conversion of the entire city to Lutheranism, and spoke of dissolving all of the monasteries under its jurisdiction. At first, however, it simply refused to allow Catholic priests to serve the women's monasteries. Being deprived of the sacraments was a serious loss to nuns whose lives revolved around the liturgy:]
After this the men went to the guardian of the Franciscans. ...[B]y authority of the City Council they ordered him and all his brothers to cease serving us and to have nothing to do with us from then on. The City Council would now provide for us themselves....
On the next Tuesday our confessor and preacher... held mass in the chapel with a sermon and renewed the Blessed Sacrament so that it might remain all that much longer....Since that time they did not return for a single day,... nor has any other Franciscan come....
Since then we have been deprived of confession, the Blessed Sacrament and all sacraments.... May this spiritual want be lamented to God in heaven. May He have mercy on us and send us a good solution through His boundless mercy. [pp,37-38]
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"...at a time in which the freedom of the Gospel is being preached."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------[During the next week the council decided that it would assign Lutheran preachers to the nuns. A week after that, Caritas had the prioress read aloud to Kaspar Nutzel, the council-assigned warden who had come to the monastery, a second petition to the whole council:]
"Your honors know well that in temporal matters we have always been subordinate and willingly obedient. But if the spirit and the conscience are to be free,... do not force us in matters concerning our conscience. It would be a terrible, pitiful affair if we, in addition to the physical enclosure to which we have willingly submitted, would also be imprisoned in our conscience at a time in which the freedom of the Gospel is being preached." [p.44]
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"Each believed the other was blind and mistaken."
-------------------------------------------------------------[Later that day Caritas spoke privately with Nutzel, an old friend who had acted for some years as the council's liaison to the monastery. He had accepted the Reform (although he regretted the loss of the Latin mass), but he would continue to try to protect the nuns from its worst excesses. On theology, though, the friends had to agree to disagree. Caritas tells him:]
"My wise friend. I like you and wish you well. I pity you from the depths of my heart because you have been led astray and blinded so terribly...."
Then he answered. "No. There is a thaw and more grace is raining down than in a hundred years."
In this way we argued with each other for a long time. Each believed the other was blind and mistaken. [p.49]
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"All should be alike."
----------------------------[The city moved swiftly to change itself from Catholic to Lutheran:]
On the Friday of Easter Week all the priests were summoned to the city hall and forbidden to celebrate the Latin mass. The council said they had learned from educated men that the mass was such an idolatrous, blasphemous thing that they could no longer permit it....
Then all income in every church, all offerings, all anniversary donations, all alms, all endowments were taken away from the churches and placed in the general fund....
...[P]eople did not want the convents to be called cloisters anymore, but hospices. The sisters also should no longer be called sister, but pensioners, and not abbess or prioress, but manageress. There should be no difference between secular and religious persons, but all should be alike. [p. 74]
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"Out of its paternal concern for our well-being...."
--------------------------------------------------------------[In June three representatives of the council came to announce to the nuns what should be done; Caritas' narrative ironically paraphrases their statement (the phrase "the honorable City Council" is repeated several more times than in the excerpt given here):]
....[T]he honorable City Council as our faithful father is very worried about us as well as about themselves. With our nun's habits and our peculiarities we might give the community cause to attack us and this might spread out beyond us.... That would make them very sorry. Therefore out of its paternal concern for our well-being the honorable City Council had considered the issue and ordered them to present us five articles. If we accepted them and carried them out, they could protect us and guard us from the community that much better. However, if we did not accept them, something they certainly could not imagine, then they could not support us or the cloister any longer.
[The five orders:]
...I should release all the sisters from the vows they had taken so that... they could cease and desist whenever they wanted....
...I should not keep any sister within the convent against her will. I should also not keep parents from their children whom they did not want to stay here,... for children were obligated to obey their parents....
The third thing... was that we put aside our nun's habits and dress like other people. There was to be no difference between worldly and clerical persons and therefore no difference in their clothes.....
...[O]ur "speaking windows" should not be just speaking windows, but also transparent windows.... If someone wanted to speak with a sister alone, that should be allowed....
...[A]fter the honorable Council had undertaken an inventory in all the cloisters in the city and had had everything described, we should make one ourselves and turn it over to the Council....
They would give us just four weeks. [pp.77-79]
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"The cloister would die out anyway."
----------------------------------------------[Caritas responds of course that she had no power to release the nuns from their vows and that anyone who wished to leave could do so (the reader can almost hear the sigh when she repeats these things she has said so often before). She objects to removing the "speaking windows" (the grille separating the nuns from their visitors), and says nothing about the required inventory. But she does speak about the habits (the translator suggests that the council delegation may have been wearing camel hair coats):]
Concerning dress I said we knew very well that our habits did not assure us of salvation. We also knew, however, that in heaven there was no inappropriate attire such as coats of camel hair. I also brought up the costs this would entail... Up until now we had made our clothes and our coats ourselves. What should we do with the old clothes?
They said we should take apart our habits and have them died a different color. It would not matter if we spent 400 gulden on clothing this year. The cloister would die out anyway. There was no way they would allow us to continue to receive novices. [p. 80]
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"The lords wanted it done this way and that was it."
---------------------------------------------------------------[Caritas surely understood what the four-week deadline meant, but she continues to play the innocent as the meeting ends:]
As I was about to let them out, I asked them when the four weeks would be over that they had given us to consider these issues and whether they wanted to come back for the answer themselves or whether I should send for them.
They replied that in no way had they given us a month to deliberate since the matter did not need an answer.The lords wanted it done this way and that was it. The four weeks were given to us so that we could bring about the changes they had presented to us. [p. 81]
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"...like when a poor soul is being led to his execution."
-------------------------------------------------------------------[A week later a violent confrontation occurred when three women (including Nutzel's wife) came with male relatives to remove from the monastery their daughters (aged 20, 21, and 23). At first, the mothers and their relatives were in the public church that was adjacent to the monastery chapel; the nuns were in their chapel:]
With many tears we removed their veils and girdles and put shirts and worldly girdles and headwear on them.... In the meantime, word had spread to all the common people outside. They gathered in great numbers, like when a poor soul is being led to his execution....
I did not want to release them [the three nuns] from any place except where I first received them. That was through the chapel door.... ...[T]hey wanted me to use force and order the children to go out into the church alone. I did not want to do this either and left it up to the children. None of them would cross the threshold in any way....
The children embraced me, wept loudly and begged that I not let them go. But unfortunately I could not help them. I withdrew with the other sisters and left the poor children alone in the chapel. I locked the door from the chapel to the courtyard so that nobody could enter the convent. [pp.89-90]
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"The children would not give in."
------------------------------------------[Caritas may have left the chapel, but she apparently listened from the other side of the door:]
Then the angry women ran in.... Every mother argued with her daughter. For a while they promised them a great deal and then for a while they threatened them a great deal....
If they [the three nuns] did not want to to go with them [the mothers] and thought they would give up, they should understand that they would not leave them inside. In short, they would have to go and that was that. They would send people who would be strong enough. They would have to tie their hands and feet together and drag them out like dogs. But all that did not help. The children would not give in. [pp.90-91]
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"Even soldiers who had gone along said...."
------------------------------------------------------[Eventually the three young women were pushed or carried outside; since Caritas remained in the cloister, her report of the later happenings is hearsay (rarely used in the chronicle):]
When they were about to place them in the coaches before the church there was great weeping. The poor children cried out loudly to the people and complained that they were suffering abuse and injustice and that they had been taken from the cloister by force....
As they rode away many hundreds of boys and other people ran after each coach.... Even soldiers who had gone along said that if they had not been afraid of a riot and of the city police who were also present, they would have drawn their swords and helped the poor children. [p.93]
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"He was more moderate than any other Lutheran I had ever heard."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------[Although the Lutheran preachers continued to come to the monastery (at one point, Caritas writes that "we have now heard 111 of these sermons"), the violence of June and the fear of mob action appears to have caused the Council to act more moderately; although the nuns were criticized, there was no overt action taken against them. In November, things got better. Nutzel wrote to ask Caritas to meet with Philipp Melanchthon, a leading Reformer with a reputation as a conciliator, whom she already knew of through her brother Willibald. She describes the meeting in her narrative:]
After a few days the superintendent came to the confessional house [adjacent to the cloister] with Philipp. The latter said a great deal about the new doctrine. However, when he heard that we relied on God's Grace and not on our own works, he said we could attain salvation just as well within the cloister as in the world outside, if we did not put faith in our vows. On both sides we agreed in all points. Only in the matter of vows we could not agree. He felt, of course, that they were not binding... I...felt that what we had promised to God we were obliged to keep with His help.
He was more moderate than any other Lutheran I had ever heard. He was deeply offended that our people were being subjected to force. He left us on friendly terms....
I hope that God brought this Lutheran man here at the right time. For at the same time it had again been decided that we were to be driven from the cloister.... There were many very angry attacks against us, but Melanchthon rejected them all. He said it was extremely contrary to God to compel people with such force....
And so he brought it about that the people calmed a little and did not attack us violently any more. [p. 141]
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"For God's sake have pity on our poverty."
-----------------------------------------------------[If the monastery could not be destroyed directly, the council seems to have decided to tax it out of existence. In a group of letters added to the document in later years, after Caritas' narrative had been completed, she writes to Nutzel about the new --- and retroactive --- taxes. First, in October 1527:]
...[A] few days ago the tax collector sent us the bill for the last two years along with that of the present year 1527. I am terribly shocked, for it contains a considerable sum, namely 301 florins... Your honor knows very well that it is impossible for us to pay such a large sum. [p.166]
[And then in January 1528:]
I earnestly implore your honor for God's sake have pity on our poverty, since we wish no more than the bare necessities. Please help us poor, miserable women to find favor from the honorable City Council so that a longer extension is given until we can get advice and sell some of our possessions during Lent. Without this we cannot pay. [p.168]
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[One chapter of Charlotte Woodford's study is "Caritas Pirckheimer's Denkwurdigkeiten in the Context of Convent Historiography," which discusses how and why the chronicle was written. In the process, Woodford illustrates Caritas' use of rhetoric to convey her views. Quoted passages are not translated, but their meaning is usually made clear in the discussion. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Woodford, Charlotte. Nuns as historians in early modern Germany (Oxford modern languages and literature monographs). Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. (xiv, 229 p.)
LC#: DD86.5 .W66 2002: ISBN: 0199256713
Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-223) and index
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[Paula S. Datsko Barker's article focuses chiefly on Caritas' correspondence with male humanists and on how she was viewed by them. In speaking of Denkwurdigkeiten, Datsko Barker sees Caritas using her humanist learning to press her cause. Passages quoted from Latin or German are given in the author's own translation:]Datsko Barker, Paula S. Caritas Pirckheimer: A Female Humanist Confronts the Reformation. Sixteenth Century Journal, 26: 2 (Summer, 1995), 259-272.
LC#: D220 .S57; ISSN: 0361-0160=======================================================================
Updated 08-30-12
