A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR: FORMING

LUTHERAN CULTURE IN
PLURICONFESSIONAL WESTPHALIAN
CONVENTS*

I
INTRODUCTION
In 1711, the Catholic canonesses of Schildesche accused the evangelical
(Lutheran and Reformed) canonesses of forcing them to read a psalter that
insulted their religion. As they explained, the mixed confessional group of
women had used the same texts while worshipping together in the nuns’
choir for decades. Previous agreements meant that Catholic women used
what some might consider Lutheran books and Protestant women participated
in a modified singing of the traditional canonical hours within the enclosed,
elevated choir space located above the nave. Officials and the women reached
these accommodations so that the women could worship together as members
of their convent congregation had for centuries. The fragile compromise fell
apart in 1702 when a Reformed nun serving as sexton bought a recently pub-
lished psalter to replace the tattered old book previously used in the choir.
Although the new book featured the same German translation of the Psalms by
Martin Luther as the old psalter, the Catholic women found the headers above
each Psalm in the new edition offensive and refused to attend the required joint
devotional services as long as that particular book remained in the choir. The
subsequent inquiries, first by officials in Ravensberg and then by royal officials
sent by Frederick I (1701–13), king in Prussia, illustrate the multiplicity of
experience and interpretation of the shared space and texts in this choir.
Although both congregations of women had separate devotional space outside
the choir where their confessional identity reinforced the vast differences that
had developed, the Schildesche canonesses understood the traditional
common worship in the choir as essential to their identity as members of a
religious community and sought its preservation.

* I would like to thank the Herzog August Bibliothek, Western Kentucky University’s
Office of Research, and the WKU Potter College of Arts and Letters for generous financial
and institutional support to complete the research for this essay.

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Recently scholars have argued for considering specific rituals, books, music
and even space as specifically Lutheran.1 Yet, the devotional practices in
mixed confessional convents such as Schildesche underscore the ongoing
confessional fluidity, devotional adaptability and multilayered cultures sur-
rounding the use of devotional objects and space from the early sixteenth to
the eighteenth century. The women in such religious houses situated in Lower
Saxony, Westphalia and other regions of the Holy Roman Empire negotiated
their own resolutions about how to worship together in shared choirs. The
women understood modifications in the choir as threatening their commu-
nity, even when their concern for community was discounted by officials
encouraging co-religious nuns to support conformity in confessional prac-
tices within the choir through mandates, convent rules and visitations.2
Despite their desire to enforce confessional compliance, secular and ecclesi-
astical officials, often reluctantly, accommodated such adaptations in re-
sponse to pressures from the women, their families, local communities and
secular and religious leaders well into the eighteenth century.
The resulting interplay between the nuns’ dominant cultures — one con-
fessional and one traditional — in the choir of these mixed confessional
convents created a tension that fostered a devotional hybridity that remained
unresolved long after scholars have argued that confessionalization prevailed
or that unique confessional cultures emerged.3 Tensions periodically erupted
in the choirs of pluriconfessional convents, especially after the late seven-
teenth century, when Protestant- or Catholic-identifying nuns introduced
new devotional practices, rituals, signs and objects that they understood as
separating them from non-coreligious nuns worshipping by their side. The
resulting records from these moments, which contain extensive discussions

1
For discussions of Psalter Davids editions designated as Lutheran, see Michael J.
Halvorson, Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy
(Farnham, 2010), 112–18; Christopher Boyd Brown, ‘Devotional Life in Hymns, Liturgy,
Music and Prayer’, in Robert Kolb (ed.), Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550–1675
(Leiden, 2008).
2
Manfred Wolf, ‘Konfessionell gemischte Stifte’, in Karl Hengst (ed.), Westfälisches
Klosterbuch: Lexikon der vor 1815 errichteten Stifte und Klöster von ihrer Gründung bis
zur Aufhebung, 3 vols. (Münster, 2003), iii, 245–93.
3
Peter Marshall, ‘Confessionalization, Confessionalism and Confusion in the English
Reformation’, in Thomas Mayer (ed.), Reforming Reformation (Farnham, 2012);
Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur: lutherischer Protestantismus in der zweiten
Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2006); Alexander J. Fisher, ‘Naming and
Singing the Psalter in Counter-Reformation Germany’, in Joel Harrington and Marjorie
E. Plummer (eds.), Making Words and Finding Meanings: Names and Naming in Early
Modern German (Oxford, forthcoming).

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 191

where these women seek to define their beliefs and explain their understand-
ing of rituals and objects in the choirs, make these institutions useful for
understanding the creation of confessional culture inside and outside of
these communities.4
Determining what defined a nun or devotional rituals as Lutheran in such
pluriconfessional convents is complicated by the essential role the choir ser-
vice played in preserving a convent community. As the women sought to
resolve potential conflicts, they adapted practices into the choir that allowed
them to maintain a cohesive identity even as the rules governing the convent
shifted. This adaptive strategy also may explain why the Lutheran confes-
sional culture outlined by early Reformation theologians was not realized in
many of the convents that survived in evangelical and mixed confessional
areas. A localized devotional culture blending elements of multiple confes-
sional practices and cultures allowed the convent community to function
even as it protected the existence of diverse confessional cultures. The
unique pattern of accommodation, devotional fluidity and continued trad-
itional practices in the common worship in the choir may explain why such
female religious houses persisted into the eighteenth century. Understanding
how unique mixed devotional cultures functioned in pluriconfessional con-
vents, therefore, will provide scholars with a better understanding of the often
overlooked or marginalized persistence of religious diversity and coexistence
in the Holy Roman Empire, as well as insight into the role played by women in
that process.5

II
FIRST ATTEMPTS AT REFORMING THE CHOIR
When trying to determine the confession of the congregations in the Welver
convent church in 1623, Peter von Schönebeck, a Protestant, recommended a
close investigation of the choir since ‘the nuns’ choir is in the church and

4
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages
(Princeton, 1996); Thomas A. Brady Jr, ‘The Limits of Religious Violence in Early
Modern Europe’, in Kaspar von Greyerz und Kim Siebenhüner (eds.), Religion und
Gewalt: Konflikte, Rituale, Deutungen (1500–1800) (Göttingen, 2006), 135; and
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 197–238.
5
For recent studies on religious coexistence and diversity, see, for example, David Luebke,
Hometown Religion: Regimes of Coexistence in Early Modern Westphalia (Charlottesville,
2016); Jesse Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration: A Refugee Community in the Age of Religious
Wars (Newark, 2011); Kaplan, Divided by Faith; and the essays in C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar
Friest and Mark Greengrass (eds.), Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe
(Farnham, 2009).

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 192 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

therefore [the church] is a place where the monastic rule [is carried out] and
the place for the exercise of various religious ceremonies’.6 As he recognized,
the choir continued to serve as a place for demonstrating individual faith and
remained a vital site to sustain the female monastic community from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The choir was where nuns sang the hours,
practised devotional rituals and participated in the most significant rites of
passage defining the community, such as the professing of a nun or the elec-
tions of an abbess. Staying away from the choir, changing its rituals or remov-
ing devotional objects from the space all had the potential to disrupt the
traditional cultural markers binding together the women living in such reli-
gious houses.
The traditional female ritual devotional space in medieval monastic
churches presented a uniquely gendered spatial complication during the
Lutheran reformation of monastic houses. Unlike the monks’ choir
[Hochchor] located near the high altar, most medieval nuns’ choirs
[Nonnenempore or Frauenchor] in Germany were located in the north or
west end of the church away from the high altar, often enclosed in a gallery
above the main floor close to the nuns’ dormitory. As such, this devotional
space was far removed and distinctly separate from the space inhabited by
male clergy and lay congregations in the nave and near the altar, and more
difficult to integrate into the new rituals.7 In addition, nuns and canonesses
gradually elevated their status within the convent and beyond the lay con-
gregation by emphasizing the canonical hours and limiting who belonged to
the congregation in the choir throughout the Middle Ages.8 The choir space
itself was filled with altars, paintings, tapestries, frescoes, choir benches or
stalls, bibles, prayer books, psalters, musical instruments, devotional objects
and even the convent’s archival records seen and used only by these elite,

6
Stadtarchiv Soest (hereafter StASoest), A6717, 12r–16v (27 Dec. 1623). Schönebeck was a
court secretary in Kleve for the Calvinist elector of Brandenburg and later a judge in Soest.
7
Petra Zimmer, Die Funktion und Ausstattung des Altares auf der Nonnenempore: Beispiele
zum Bildgebrauch im Frauenklöstern aus dem 13. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1991), 12–
21; Gisela Muschiol, ‘Liturgie und Klausur: Zu den liturgischen Voraussetzungen von
Nonnenemporen’, in Irene Crusius (ed.), Studien zum Kanonissenstift (Göttingen, 2001);
Carola Jäggi and Uwe Lobbedey, ‘Church and Cloister: Architecture of Female
Monasticism in the Middle Ages’, in Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Susan Marti (eds.),
Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Centuries (New
York, 2008).
8
Helen Hills, Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century
Neapolitan Convents (Oxford, 2004), ch. 6, ‘Conventual Optics of Power’.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 193

professed nuns and canonesses.9 The choir and these items came to define the
women as a unique devotional community, separate from the congregation
and clergy in the nave. Evidence suggests that clergy did not enter this
enclosed, female space. Instead they gave Communion or heard confessions
in other spaces in the convent, all of which would later present challenges to
evangelical reformers.10 Even as late medieval reformers advocated stricter
enclosure and spiritual norms for female religious houses, they also strength-
ened the unique role of the choirs. They set the times for the seven canonical
hours, determined where the women were to sit, and outlined songs and texts
the women were to sing and read during the sessions.11 They also reinforced
the rule that professed nuns were bound by their monastic vows and strength-
ened the custom of singing the hours by refusing to release nuns from these
devotional obligations. Thus, the choir service became part of the definition
of what it was to be a nun.12
Martin Luther criticized this exact emphasis on the choir’s unique, elevated
spiritual place when calling for the ending of monasticism. From the early
1520s, Luther ridiculed monks and nuns who built the ‘foundation of their
spiritual life’ on how they divided their time and days, calling it later ‘the work
of fools’.13 To emphasize his concern about the ‘reading and singing’ of nuns,
Luther specifically condemned the singing of Salve Regina (Hail Queen).14 An
early supporter of Luther’s reform movement, the theologian and monk
Johann Eberlin reproached his fellow monks, nuns and priests for foolishly
holding to the ‘unchristian’ canonical hours that are not even contained in the
rules of their orders, reminding them that they were only required to be in

9
June I. Mecham, ‘A Northern Jerusalem: Transforming the Spatial Geography of the
Convent of Wienhausen’, in Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (eds.), Defining the
Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2005).
10
Marilyn Dunn, ‘Invisibilia per visibilia: Roman Nuns, Art Patronage and the
Construction of Identity’, in Katherine A. McIver (ed.), Wives, Widows, Mistresses and
Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage
(Farnham, 2012); Staatsarchiv Würzburg, WK-Histor. Saal VII, 33/503, 7v, Ordnung
und Satzung das Kloster Kitzingen (1492). The Kitzingen convent order states that the
nuns took Communion in the chapter house only during the major church festivals.
11
Linda Maria Koldau, ‘Women, the Bible and Music in the Middle Ages’, in Kari Elisabeth
Børresen and Adriana Valerio (eds.), The High Middle Ages (Atlanta, 2015).
12
Staatsarchiv Würzburg, WK-Histor. Saal VII, 33/503, 6v–7r (1492).
13
See D. Martin Luthers Werke (hereafter, by custom, cited as WA for Weimarer Ausgabe)
(Weimar and Vienna, 1883–1999), 10.1: 317–18; WA, 10.2: 65–6, 81; WA, 24: 129b, 315b.
14
Martin Luther, Von ordenung gottis dienst yn der gemeyne (Wittenberg, 1523), A3r.

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 194 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

their choir when the laity were also in the church.15 Theologians and re-
formers published new texts and recommended new songs and rituals to
combat this trend, to make clear the difference between these works and
those of the ‘papists’ and, in the case of monastic life, to remove the distinc-
tion between the choir and the lay congregation. Veit Dietrich’s commentar-
ies on the Bible, published separately above a Luther translation of the
Psalms, is just one example of the way that a text constructed a polemical
distinction between evangelical and traditional practices during this early
reform period.16
Although these efforts were directed at all monastics and parishioners,
theologians began singling out nuns, many of whom refused to accept the
reform movement, for their continuation of traditional devotional practices.
Convents proved more resistant to change or closure than monasteries. Even
those women remaining in the convents who were inclined to accept elements
of the evangelical movement were not necessarily willing to give up specific
elements of their devotional lives, including the singing of the hours, the use
of Latin and daily services of worship.17 Throughout the 1530s and 1540s,

15
Johann Eberlin, Von dem langen verdrüssigen geschrey, das die geistlichen Münch, Pfaffen
und Nunnen die syben tag zeit heissen . . . Der .IIII. Bundtgnosz (Basel, 1521), A1v.
16
Veit Dietrich, Psalterium Davidis carmine redditum per eobanum Hessum. Cum annota-
tionibus, viti Theodori Noribergeñ quae commentarii vice esse possunt (Strasbourg, 1539);
Veit Dietrich, Summaria vber das alte Testament, Darinn auffs kuertzste angezeigt wird,
was am noetigsten vnd nuetzsten ist, dem jungen Volck vnd gemeinem Man, aus allen
Capiteln, zu wissen vnd zu lernen (Wittenberg, 1541); Veit Dietrich, Psalter mit summar-
ien (Nuremberg, 1547).
17
On the female Protestant and mixed confessional convents, see, for example, Hanna
Dose, Evangelischer Klosteralltag: Leben in Lüneburger Frauenkonventen, 1590–1710
untersucht am Beispiel Ebstorf (Hanover, 1994); Ida-Christine Riggert, Die Lüneburger
Frauenklöster (Hanover, 1996); Nicholas Heutger, Evangelische und simultane Stifter in
Westfalen, unter besonderer Berücksichtung des Stiftes Börstel im Landkreis Bersenbrück
(Hildesheim, 1968); and Gerhard E. Sollbach, Leben in märkischen Frauenklöstern und
adligen Damenstiften in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Herdecke, Clarenberg und Gevelsberg
(Bochum, 1995). On Lutheran monasteries and male monasticism during the
Reformation, see Hans Otte, ‘Einleitung’, in Hans Otte (ed.), Evangelisches
Klosterleben: Studien zur Geschichte der evangelische Kloster und Stifte in Niedersachsen
(Göttingen, 2013), 13, n. 9; Immo Eberle, ‘Die evangelischen Klosterschulen des
Herzogtums Württemberg: katholische Klostertraditionen in evangelischer
Theologenausbildung 1556–1806’, in Otte (ed.), Evangelisches Klosterleben, 21–3; and
Johannes Schilling, Klöster und Mönche in der hessischen Reformation (Gütersloh, 1995).
Some monasteries — Amelungsborn, Loccum, St Michaels in Lüneburg, and
Mollenbeck — survived the Reformation movement as Lutheran monasteries, retaining
some elements of their monastic structure, although predominantly as educational

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 195

secular and church authorities in Saxony, Lower Saxony, Westphalia and

other evangelical territories faced unexpected resistance, complications,
and pragmatic obstacles in many convents because many women simply
could or would not leave, due to age, lack of family support or confessional
opposition to the reform. Local officials also found themselves allowing some
houses to remain open for such women, regardless of confessional leaning.
This decision necessitated establishing alternative ways to deal with religious
transformations within those convents.
In keeping with Luther’s recommendations to end any distinction between
the nuns and the lay congregation, evangelical authorities and clergy author-
ized and sought to establish the same liturgy and rituals for the nuns as those
outlined by Luther in the regional church ordinances for the laity.18 The
initial changes in devotional practices in the choir in Electoral Saxony, for
instance, began with a reordering of the day to follow the evangelical liturgy.
The 1533–4 convent orders replaced the seven canonical hours with two daily
services of worship in the choir, required the nuns to read and sing from ‘a
German Bible, a German psalter translated by Luther, as well as his Postille,
both Catechisms, and other of his good little books’, and limited singing to
specific songs in German.19 As reforms spread into firmly evangelical neigh-
bouring regions, local authorities attempted to expand these reforms. The
1552 Mecklenburg church order commanded that all canonical hours cease
and nuns worship with the lay congregations.20 Thus, theologians and evan-
gelical officials advocated removing devotional separation in the convents by
ending unique, separate devotional rituals in the choir.
Implementation, however, proved difficult even in Saxony. Visitations and
appeals from the convents show that reducing the canonical hours to two
services of worship and demanding German as the predominant devotional
language in the choirs met with opposition. As their policies faltered,

institutions and clerical seminaries. As Otte, Eberle, and others have pointed out, scholars
still need to study these male houses and several groups of mixed confessional canons
such as those in Osnabrück to see the degree to which they follow the same confessional
patterns as the female houses do.
18
See Thomas Kaufmann, ‘Luther and Lutheranism’, in Ulinka Rublack (ed.), The Oxford
Handbook of the Protestant Reformation (Oxford, 2016), 161–4; and Susan C. Karant-
Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany (London,
1997).
19
Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Ernestinisches Gesamtarchiv, Reg. Ii, no. 6,
Remse (1533), 10v–13v, esp. 12r.
20
Eduard Viereck, Die Rechtsverhältnisse der vier Mecklenburgischen Jungfrauenklöster nach
ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1875), ii, 1.

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evangelical authorities in other regions resorted to adapting the space, rituals,

devotional objects and texts in the choir. In 1542, for instance, Duchess
Elisabeth permitted the Calenberg nuns to continue their canonical hours
in the choir and allowed them to make a gradual transition from singing in
Latin to German. She did require modifications in the texts and songs used,
advising her visitors to provide all convents with a German Bible and
Lutheran books and to direct the convent pastor to choose the texts and
songs used in the choirs.21 By the mid sixteenth century, many evangelical
regions faced similar resistance, a factor complicated by the uncertain polit-
ical circumstances of the Schmalkaldic War and Interim. Thus, Elisabeth’s
gradual approach soon was followed in Braunschweig-Lüneburg and
Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and then adopted by evangelical officials in
the counties of Schaumburg, Ravensberg, and Mark, where reformers
based their church orders, convent rules and devotional texts for use in
local convents on those found in their neighbouring regions.22
The resulting attempts at modifications in the choir in these areas de-
pended on redefining traditional forms, rituals and texts in a way that ap-
pealed to the diverse confessional groups ranging from firmly evangelical to
equally convinced traditional nuns within the choir by emphasizing commu-
nity. Thus, local religious and secular authorities were forced to work with the
women in order to establish a confessional culture in these spaces that did not
necessarily match what they had intended, as they negotiated and adapted in
response to the women’s actions and reactions. As efforts by Lüneburg evan-
gelical officials demonstrate, attempts to limit the canonical hours met with
minimal success even when the requirement was limited to reading specific
books, avoiding certain songs, or undertaking minor architectural changes
rather than ending the canonical hours, the use of Latin, or devotional prac-
tices in the choir as a whole.23 The location of the choir presented a particular
problem for reformers because the enclosure of the women in the choir space

21
Emil Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vi, 1 (Tübingen,
1955), 851–2; Karl Kayser, Die reformatorischen Kirchenvisitationen in den welfischen
Landen, 1542–1544 (Göttingen, 1897), 255–6.
22
See Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz, Kirchenordnung Unnser von Gottes Genaden,
Julij, herzogen zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg (Wolfenbüttel, 1569), 393–4; Sehling, Die
evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vi, 1, 281–336; Katharina Talkner,
Singen und Sammeln: Liedpraktiken in den Lüneburger Klöstern der Frühen Neuzeit
(Hanover, 2012), 130–62; ‘Ordnunge vor dat frye Strict S. Walpurg (1543)’, in Ulrich
Löer, ‘Stadt und Frauenkloster während der Reformation: Zum Reformationsgeschehen
in St Walburgiskloster in Soest’, Soester Zeitschrift, xciv (1982), 45–54.
23
Urbanus Rhegius, Ein Sendbrieff an das gantz Convent des Jungfrawen Closters Wynhusen,
wider das unchristlich Gesang Salue Regina (Wittenberg, 1537), A3r–A5v; Carol Piper

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 197

enabled them to continue traditional devotional practice unobserved. To

prevent this, the reformers sought to transform the female space and make
it accessible to the clergy and evangelical officials visually and then later
physically. The Calenberg visitors, for instance, ordered the nuns to open
up the enclosed female space of the choir by adding windows or cutting holes
in the floor so the evangelical pastor and the congregation could see as well as
hear them.24
The perseverance with traditional rituals and liturgy continued even as new
women entered supposedly evangelical female religious houses.25 In Lower
Saxony, complaints about the failure to alter the texts, language, content of
the services and devotional objects continued long after evangelical officials
stated these convents were evangelical. The introduction of a Latin–German
psalter in the late sixteenth century hints at one way that items such as books,
songs, hours, and decoration of choirs could blend practices and remain in
place largely unchanged. Although the book firmly introduced Luther’s
German translation of the Psalms into choir service in Lüneburg, its hybrid
nature allowed religious fluidity, by permitting women of varied confessional
stances to worship together using different languages directly within sight of
the pastor without overt resistance.26 Lüne and other Lüneburg convents did
begin reluctantly to use a German edition of Veit Dietrich’s Psalter with
Summaries by the middle of the seventeenth century, but also retained the
dual language version.27 As visitors to the Lüneburg convents noted well into

Heming, Protestants and the Cult of the Saints in German-Speaking Europe, 1517–1531
(Kirksville, 2003), 71–2.
24
Kayser, Die reformatorischen Kirchenvisitationen in den welfischen Landen, 380, 383.
25
On the resistance of women in the convent to changes in devotional life and entrance of
new women into the convent see, for example, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, ‘Neither
Nun nor Laywoman: Entering Lutheran Convents during the Reformation of Female
Religious Communities in the Duchy of Braunschweig, 1542–1634’, in Alison Weber
(ed.), Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (Oxford, 2016); Amy Leonard, Nails
in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, 2005); and Lyndal Roper,
Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1991), 206–51.
26
Christian, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, ‘Chapter XX. Stifft: und Closter-Ordnung. Das
ist: Wie es in den Stifftern vnd Clöstern zuhalten’, in Des Hochwürdigen, Durchleuchtigen,
Hochgebornen Fürsten und Herrn, Herrn Christians . . . Kirchenordnungen und Befehl . . . Und
in den Clöstern, etc. . . . unnachlessig gehalten werden sol (Celle, 1619), 529–32; and
Klosterarchiv Lüne, Bestand A, C9, no. 38, Document #6 (c.1619), question 10–12.
27
Talkner, Singen und Sammeln, 130–40, 149–54, 157; Henrike Lähnermann, ‘Bilingual
Devotions in Northern Germany: Prayer Books from the Lüneburg Convent’, in
Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lähnemann and Anne Simone (eds.), A Companion to
Mysticism in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages (Leiden, 2014), 317–41.

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 198 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

the eighteenth century, rituals and devotional objects retained a ‘Papist’ elem-
ent with the continued use of Marian images, Latin, songs such as the Salve
Regina, and the canonical hours in choirs even by self-avowed Lutheran
women.28 In response, Lutheran theologians continued their criticisms of
the canonical hours and the nuns’ choir throughout the sixteenth century
and decried both the slow pace of ending such practice and those that accom-
modated the canonical hours as forms of adiaphora or nicodemism.29

III
DEVOTIONAL PRACTICE IN WESTPHALIA DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND EARLY
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
After the mid sixteenth century, the vacillating legalization, acceptance and
enforcement of specific ritual practices within the convents and convent
churches complicated the situation in Westphalia. The confessional shifts
by political leaders such as the archbishop of Cologne, the alternately neutral
and confessional position upheld by Duke William V of Jülich-Cleves (1539–
92), and the Jülich-Cleves-Berg succession crises after 1609 only added to the
uncertainty.30 In the absence of consistent religious policies, nuns resolved
confessional issues in the choir themselves leading congregations to adopt
flexible devotional practices that favoured continuity rather than innovation.
Over the next decades, authorities periodically sought to establish a single
dominant confessional culture within the convent by mandate.
Opportunities offered by the political or military successes of a confessionally
co-religious leader often empowered nuns to reconfigure the choir or to
protest against previous curtailment of their devotional practices.
Although magistrates in locations such as Soest had made some efforts at
reforming convents and convent choirs in the 1530s, these efforts made little

28
Landeskirchliches Archiv Hanover, A12i, no. 9, 23r (1625), no. 10a (1669), 67v–69v;
Riggert, Die Lüneburger Frauenklöster, 336–7.
29
Nicolas von Amsdorf, Horas Canonicas in Klöstern un[d] Stifften singen, Und gebotene
Adiaphora halten, ist eben so wol Abgötterey, Als die schentlichste Opffermesse (Jena, 1562).
30
On the complexity of the confessional politics of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, see Susanne Becker.
Zwischen Duldung und Dialog: Wilhelm V. von Jülich-Kleve-Berg als Kirchenpolitiker
(Bonn, 2014); Antje Flüchter, Der Zölibat zwischen Norm und Devianz: Kirchenpolitik
und Gemeindealltag in Jülich und Berg im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2006);
Christian Schulte, Versuchte konfessionelle Neutralität im Reformationszeitalter: die
Herzogtümer Jülich-Kleve-Berg unter Johann III. und Wilhelm V. und das Fürstbistum
Münster unter Wilhelm von Ketteler (Münster, 1995); and Otto Redlich, ‘Zur
Kirchenpolitik des Herzogs Wilhelm V (Verordnungen aus den Jahren 1562–1574)’,
Zeitschrift des Bergischen-Geschichts Verein, xlii (1909), 174–90.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 199

headway and were hampered by the confessional reversals during the

Interim. Under pressure from the emperor to implement the Interim
decree in his territory, Lutheran Duke William of Jülich-Kleve-Berg ordered
all the convents in Soest to restore the Catholic liturgy and rituals, including
the use of Latin for the canonical hours and readings in the choir.31 This
reverse in previous policy meant all nuns were required to return to trad-
itional practices and empowered traditional nuns to recover items lost
during the previous implemention of the local evangelical church and con-
vent ordinances. In 1548, the Catholic abbess of Welver near Soest asked
that several items, including a monstrance, removed by Lutherans from
their convent church in the 1530s, be returned. Such requests show
how nuns did perceive removing or returning devotional objects and
sacred art as one way to establish confessional identity in a shared
church.32 It also shows that the devotional rituals did not remain static
during these shifts.
Attempts at regulating choir service began in earnest after the Interim as
political leaders and confessional groups within the convent attempted to
institute or maintain dominant confessional cultures in the choir. Some
nuns sought outside assistance in their conflicts by citing treaties, com-
mands or mandates to argue for their right to practise their confessional
rituals in the choirs. Shifting confessional edicts and mandates reinforced
the need to compromise within the choir, and allowed different groups
within the convent to protect their right of worship. Around 1578, the
evangelical Paradiese nuns explained that they were no longer willing to
participate in ‘papist’ ceremonies and used the the Peace of Augsburg
(1555) to confirm their right to hear sermons and sing psalms in German
because they were subjects of a Lutheran duke.33 In 1583, the newly evan-
gelical Archbishop of Cologne granted freedom of conscience and protected
religious practice in his electoral principality of Cologne. The Catholic
Clarenberg nuns immediately interpreted this statement as confirming
their right to practise ‘the old apostolic religion . . . now and for all time’
in the convent and so warned that any (Lutheran) woman attempting to
hinder them from singing in the choir would lose a portion of her grain
allowance.34 In both cases, the nuns cited agreements ostensibily designed

31
Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Westfalen (hereafter LAV-NRW-W),
Kleve Märkische Regierung, Landessachen (hereafter KMR-LS), no. 208 (25 Sept. 1548).
32
LAV-NRW-W, Kloster Welver, Urk. 560.
33
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 727, 17r–18r (n.d.).
34
StASoest, A6319 (16 Jan.1583); A6321, 6r (20 May 1583); A6320 (10 Aug. 1583); LAV-
NRW-W, Stift Geseke, no. 203 (20 Mar. 1583); LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 278, 3r–v

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 200 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

either to protect religious plurality or the opposing confession to argue for

uniformity in liturgy and ritual based on their confessional beliefs. Thus,
rather than a top-down process implementing confessional clarity, political
mandates offered the nuns the ability to participate in the process of nego-
tiating and to interpret religious practice.
Despite such efforts, maintaining community remained a primary con-
cern. Thus, abbesses and local officials expected most nuns, regardless of
confession, to attend the common worship held in the convent choir.
Despite efforts to remove the women from this unique female space, the
choir remained central to devotional practice and communal identity. As
evidence from numerous convents demonstrates, many abbesses saw failure
to attend required choir services, whether singing the hours or attending
major holiday services, as a failure to uphold the vows and responsibilities
expected in convents. Around 1553, for instance, Anna von Edelkirchen, the
evangelical abbess of Herdecke, withheld funds from Catholic nuns who did
not attend choir.35 Such efforts by abbesses were often designed to force non-
coreligious or evangelical-leaning women out of the convent or into compli-
ance with specific confessional obligations. A 1615 visitation report for
Flaesheim even recommended that the abbess counter evangelical influence
in the convent by fostering the ‘old christian Catholic religion’ through sing-
ing the hours, celebrating all important ceremonies and rituals together in the
choir according to the ‘old customs’, and requiring all conventuals to be
present in the choir and church.36 Being banned or staying away from the
choir caused a significant loss of the convent’s cultural markers for nuns and
canonesses, regardless of confessional leaning.
Since such regulations meant that non-coreligious nuns had to accept the
choir’s dominant devotional culture or abandon monastic life, minority non-
coreligious congregations used them to demand the right to follow their own
rites within the convent choir. In this way, they hoped to avoid exclusion from
the choir because of absenteeism when attending devotional services in
nearby co-religious churches. In 1594, the Lutheran Clarenberg nuns used
their noble status to demand the right to hear divine services in the convent

(1 Aug. 1591); Otto Merx, Urkundenbuch des Clarissenklosters, späteren Damenstifts

Clarenberg bei Hörde (Dortmund, 1908), 353–4, no. 482 (2 Dec. 1583), no. 496
(1 Aug. 1596).
35
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Herdecke, Urk. 103, 9v–10a (1 Aug. 1553). See a similar approach by
the Catholic Freckenhorst abbess: LAV-NRW-W, Stift Freckenhorst, no. 0 I 46b (1606)
and Urk. 488 (15 July 1606). On the phenomenon of Auslauf (walking out), see Kaplan,
Divided by Faith, 145–71.
36
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 1189, 5v–6v (12 Mar. 1615), nos. 5, 6, and 8.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 201

choir according to their Lutheran devotional practices, thereby countering an

attempt by the Catholic nuns to force them to leave the convent to attend
divine services.37 In this case, they successfully negotiated a shared service. By
1597, Franciscan visitors reprimanded the Clarenberg Catholic abbess and
nuns for allowing, among other things, the ‘public practice of Lutheranism’
and Communion in both kinds for Lutheran nuns in their convent.38
In some cases, the inability to compromise on the choir in the late sixteenth
century indicated deep fissures in the community as ongoing battles triggered
by attendance and non-attendance heightened tensions within a pluriconfes-
sional congregation. In late 1578, the Catholic abbess of Paradiese described
the Lutheran nuns as ‘violent’, ‘rebellious’ and ‘unruly’ for failing to attend
Mass and choir and then seeking to push their devotional rituals onto the
choir.39 Accusations of confessional coercion worked both ways. In 1590, the
Lutheran Paradiese nuns complained that the Catholic nuns required them to
participate in the liturgical hours in an attempt to force them to return to
Catholic religion. They protested that singing ‘papist’ songs with the Catholic
nuns would be ‘against their religion’, belief and ‘good conscience’.40 Such
unwillingness to compromise accompanied by identifying their opponents’
unmistakable devotional markers often threatened, as seen in Paradiese, a
growing hostility in the convent if the nuns could not reach a compromise
concerning the choir.
For other congregations, the desire for common worship in the choir over-
came such differences and became a powerful argument for confessional
accommodation, or at least its fiction, once non-coreligious nuns confirmed
their right to remain. Despite initial conflicts leading to the formation of
distinct borders and the resulting tensions, at least some convents found
ways to share choirs and mediate confessional differences in ways that were
particular to the local congregation. In 1563, despite their pastor’s objection,
the Herdecke convent congregation insisted on taking Communion in both
kinds and singing hymns in German to maintain ‘Christian unity’ in the
choir.41 A single priest or pastor could conduct a service of worship for a
congregation of mixed confessional nuns sharing a choir, or nuns and lay

37
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 282, 15v (24 June 1594). See also Paradiese, LAV-NRW-W,
KMR-LS, no. 727, 10r–v (5 Oct. 1578), 37 (10 Apr. 1579).
38
Merx, Urkundenbuch, 400, no. 512 (18 Apr. 1597), 402.
39
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 727, 13r–v (9 Oct. 1578); 24r–26v (28 Mar. 1579); 34r–36v
(Apr. 1579); 46r–47v (22 May 1579).
40
StASoest, A6687, 16–17 (28 Jan. 1590); 18 (6 Feb. 1590); LAV-NRW-W, Stift Walburgis,
no. 2, 3r–v; LAV-NRW-W, Stift Geseke, no. 1335.
41
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Herdecke, no. 39 (27 Apr. 1563).

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 202 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

congregations of differing confessions sharing a church, if that individual

allowed simultaneous religious practice. In 1575, Helena von Hovel, the
abbess of Fröndenberg, responded to the archbishop of Cologne’s inquiry
about worship in the convent choir by stating that their clergy held Mass and
preached in the proper form. She pointed out that ‘common man’ did sing
German songs, and that the clergy offered Communion in one or both kinds
freely to anyone who wanted it in compliance with the duke of Cleves’ 1563
order. She notably avoided describing the practices of the mixed confessional
nuns in the choir.42 Such incidents indicate that at least some congregations
allowed hybrid worship, including song and language, within their choir.43 It
also highlights the importance of lay congregations in the process.
Nuns were not the only ones participating in the process of accommoda-
tion, hybridity and confessional fluidity within the choir by the late sixteenth
century. Although evangelical authorities ultimately desired uniform devo-
tional practices, they needed to achieve changes without alienating any nuns
in pluriconfessional convents, their powerful relatives, or the emperor, or
introducing new problems. The precarious balance in achieving these goals
can be seen in attempts to come up with single rituals for convents such as for
the election of abbesses.44 Such ceremonies blended elements of new and
traditional rituals, texts and customs in a way that allowed all the nuns to
participate. Such attempts by officials to celebrate important rituals in the
choir in a way that upheld both traditional and evangelical practices compli-
cated the creation of a unified Lutheran or evangelical choir by permitting the
continuation of Catholic rituals, or at least some elements of traditional de-
votional practices, in Westphalian choirs during the sixteenth century.
Remnants of traditional worship underlying many congregations’ devo-
tional practices often indicate how superficial compliance with regulations
masked non-coreligious or fluid confessional identity. Such fluidity of reli-
gious beliefs allowed congregations to retain traditional rituals as did the
continuing official or unofficial presence of non-coreligious women in the
choir. Even these initial observations show that some controversy remained
even when seeming outward compliance to the Lutheran devotional space
and texts make it easy to overlook the growing hybrid and post-reform mixed
confessional practices forged in these convents. Some aspects changed, such
as the increasing use of German rather than Latin and the shift of times of

42
LAV-NRW-W, Herzogtum Westfalen Landesarchiv, no. 802, 47v–48r (7 July 1575), 52r–v
(11 July 1575), 13r–14v (21 Aug. 1575).
43
Alexander J. Fisher, Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Reformation
Bavaria (Oxford, 2014), 32–41.
44
LAV-NRW-W, Fürstabtei Herford, Landesarchiv, no. 1106.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 203

services, while others such as the continued singing of the hours and use of
forbidden objects continued. Thus, the devotional practices and the women
in the choir were not always recognizably Lutheran or Catholic.

IV
MEDIATING CONFESSIONAL DIVISION AFTER 1648
Attempts to restore order after the disruption and destruction of the Thirty
Years’ War and to implement the Peace of Westphalia after 1648 reveal how
intertwined the confessional cultures in the convents had become. Officials
struggled to ascertain the confessional composition of disputed Westphalian
convents on the normative date of 1 January 1624. In their investigations and
questioning of the nuns and witnesses, authorities used a series of key markers
to discover a convent’s confession, including the use of the choir, the con-
fessional identity of the convent’s clergy and nuns, and the devotional rituals
held within the convent church. Based on these criteria, authorities in the
counties of Mark and Ravensberg determined that only a few convents were
unquestionably either Lutheran or Catholic.45 In most others, they found that
uncovering a clear percentage of the practitioners of one of the three confes-
sions in most convents was problematic or even impossible because the de-
votional practices and confessional identity in the convent was so confused
[turbirt] during the previous decades. Local authorities found that religious
services in the convents of Fröndenberg and Gevelsberg, for instance, had
been conducted by both a Roman Catholic priest and a Lutheran pastor for at
least ‘fifty or sixty’ years.46 The Soest city council admitted that the confes-
sional situation in all the nearby convents was so confused during the 1620s
and 1630s and contested thereafter that they simply were unable to decipher
what the devotional practices or confessions of the women were in 1624 with
any real certainty.47 In other words, the nuns did not exclusively exhibit what
officials identified as the characteristics of Lutheran, Catholic or Reformed
confessional culture.
Diverse convent congregations used specific confessional rituals held in the
choir, or confessional designations, to dispute official reports that reduced
their number or returned non-coreligious nuns to the convent. The Catholic
nuns of St Walburgis testified that a priest celebrated Catholic mass continu-
ously within the convent church for the duration of the war and used a

45
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 152, 651v, 655v (18/28 May 1666), 633v, 638r–v (14 Mar.
1664), 642r–643v (8 Apr. 1664), 644r–646v (5 June 1666).
46
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 152, 34r, 61r (29 May 1666) [Fröndenberg]; 510r, 532r (31
May 1666) [Gevelsberg].
47
LAV-NRW-W, KMR-LS, no. 152, 640r–v (22 Mar. 1664).

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 204 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

Catholic abbess’s election, oath and installation in the choir in 1624 as evi-
dence of their exclusive right to use sacred space.48 Opposition temporarily
served to solidify, at least in petitions, what had previously been a more fluid
sense of confessional identity and congregations argued for the potential
ending of the common use of the choir as they fought for control of the
space.49 The evangelical Schildesche canonesses highlighted how they had
protected the convent in 1630 when imperial soldiers demanded the keys
of the convent from the evangelical abbess. When she resisted, the soldiers
broke into the choir with an axe in order to get at the location where she
stored the keys and documents, thereby violating the enclosed space. So,
while these women clearly continued to worship in the choir in opposition
to the attempts to get them to perform devotions in the nave with the laity,
they did identify as evangelical and as different from the Catholic nuns in their
congregation. Oppositional groups challenged such confessionally tinged
memories with equally confessionally tinged memories. The Catholic
Schildesche canonesses countered that a uniform Catholic devotional service
existed in the choir because most evangelical women left during the worsen-
ing situation after 1630, but that they had remained.50 Tensions created by
these two versions became evident in 1667 when the evangelical Schildesche
canonesses, now designated as including Lutherans and Calvinists, appealed
to the ecclesiastical court of Ravensberg to allow them to exclude the public
worship of their Roman Catholic sisters in their choir. What the court deter-
mined was that Catholic women had ‘held [daily services], read [texts], and
sung their Horas canonicas together with the evangelical women’ in the choir
in 1609 and 1624 and so they must continue to do so.51 To resolve the con-
fusion and disputes, Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg (1640–88)
proclaimed in 1668 that all convents in his Westphalian territories housing
Catholic and Protestant congregations should restore the simultaneous prac-
tice for all religious groups inside shared sacred spaces in the convents.52

48
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Walburgis, no. 2, 4v, 5v (1659).
49
Heutger, Evangelische und simultane Stifter in Westfalen, 46–9.
50
Ulrich Angermann, ‘Die Gegenreformation im Stift Schildesche (1630–1647): Über die
katholischen Restorations-Versuche in einem konfessionell gemischte Konvent, nebst
Edition und Komentar des Religionsvergleiches vom 5. Dezember 1647’, Jahresbericht des
Historischen Vereins für die Grafschaft Ravensberg, lxxviii (1990), 14–15.
51
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Schildesche, no. 116, 14r–v (7 Apr. 1667). During this stage of dis-
pute, the Catholic nuns, excluded from the choir, held private Masses with a Franciscan
monk in a separate chapel.
52
StASoest, A6329, 2r–v (26 Apr. 1668).

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 205

With the continued confessional tensions in many of these houses, external

intervention became necessary to set up the basic regulations necessary for the
many embroiled convents to function, including establishing specific times of
services and ringing bells, shared use of space, elections of alternating con-
fessional abbesses, and admonitions to respect the different rituals and lit-
urgies of non-coreligious nuns. Not all convents were able to do this. In 1660,
the city of Soest and the Elector of Brandenburg conceded the defeat of their
experiment in confessional coexistence in Paradiese by signing an agreement
to build a second set of convent buildings to house the Lutheran and
Reformed nuns on the convent property and to allow the evangelical nuns
to walk out to worship permanently in the nearby Schwefe church.53
For those convents unable to reach a resolution, the duke of Neuburg-Pfalz
and the elector of Brandenburg reached a compromise for the region in 1672,
confirmed again in 1695 that outlined a modified form of communal wor-
ship, with a specific section on the shared use of choirs, as a means of fulfilling
the dictates of the Peace of Westphalia.54 The result was that the women in
many female religious houses in the counties of Mark and Ravensberg now
officially shared their choir and convent churches with one, or even two, non-
coreligious groups in agreements set by officials. This represented a major
change from the informal negotiations in the choir before and immediately
after the Peace of Westphalia. In 1688, the Calvinist, Lutheran and Catholic
nuns at the convent of Fröndenberg signed an agreement brokered by ducal
officials, outlining the times when each group of nuns would occupy the choir
to sing hymns and hold religious services in order to preserve ‘love and
unity’.55 Such agreements theoretically settled the issues since parity and
religious freedom confirmed boundaries for these women and set a specific
number of prebends for each confession, thereby forcing the women to de-
clare their confession upon entering the convent.56 Yet, these agreements
brokered by political and church officials only partially addressed

53
StASoest, A6691 and A6692 (16 Mar. 1660).
54
Religions-Vergliech welcher zwischen dem Durchleuchtigsten Fürsten . . . Friederich
Wilhelmen, Margraffen zu Brandenburg . . . und Dem Durchleuchtigsten Fürsten . . .
Philip Wilhelmen, Pfalzgraffen bey Rhein . . . über Das Religions- und Kirchen-Wesen in
denen Herzogthumen Gülich, Cleve, und Berge, auch Graffschafften Marck und Ravenßberg
respective am 26. Aprilis 1672 zu Cölln an der Spree, und am 30. Julij 1673. zu Düsseldorf
auffgerichtet worden (Düsseldorf, 1695).
55
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Fröndenberg, Urk. 545a (7 Dec. 1688).
56
Harm Klueting, Reformatio Vitae: Johann Jakob Fabricius (1618/20–1673): Ein Beitrag zu
Konfessionalisierung und Sozialdisziplierung im Luthertum des 17. Jahrhunderts (Münster,
2003), 57; Johannes Kuntze, Bürgerliche Mitgliedschaft in Religionsgemeinschaften: Ein
Studien die Rechtsbeziehungen der Mitglieder zu den römisch-katholischen, evangelischen,

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 206 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

confessional culture and devotional practice in the choirs of convents that

continued to share common worship after this. Official contracts established
no process for constraining internal compromise and conflict.
The separation of the confessional groups in the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries through such treaties did produce elements of a uniform
Lutheran devotional culture in some convents after the resolutions of 1672–
95. Worshipping in a new church as the evangelical nuns of Paradiese did
certainly indicated something distinctly new, since the women did not bring
either the devotional objects or rituals from their previous choir with them.
With the division of the whole community, the numbers of nuns in both
communities of Paradiese declined and both convents slowly dissolved.
Giving up the space and common worship broke the associations with trad-
itional devotional space deemed to be Catholic, but it also broke with the
monastic tradition. Such a move away from traditional devotional space did
not happen universally even within churches with a dominant Lutheran cul-
ture. Choirs complete with many of their traditional accoutrements and
mixed and modified devotional rituals remained in use in Westphalia well
into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

V
A LUTHERAN PSALTER? THE EXAMPLE OF SCHILDESCHE IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
By the eighteenth century, the public religious unity expected in the choir
between the non-coreligious nuns necessitated embracing shared objects that
had been agreed upon and that seemingly might be considered non-coreli-
gious. The introduction of a new text, as described at the beginning of this
essay, disrupted this fragile pragmatic tolerance and had the potential to
expose intolerance within the choir. So what caused a common psalter
used by a diverse confessional group suddenly to be designated as being
exclusively confessional? The answer rests in determining the specific actions
or content actively felt by the Catholics, or in other cases, Calvinists and
Lutherans, to exclude them or the possibilility of confessional hybridity or
fluidity from the choir.
The 1672 compromise, confirmed in 1686 and 1695, had outlined a modi-
fied form of communal worship in the Schildesche choir for all the women.57
This arrangement allowed each group of women to use their own confes-
sional liturgy, devotional objects and texts in their own separate sacred space.

jüdischen und islamischen Religionsgemeinschaften in Deutschland (Göttingen, 2013),

21–2.
57
Religions-Vergliech, 19–21.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 207

The Catholic women now worshipped with their own priest in a nearby
chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist, which the local authorities expanded
into a full Catholic church in 1694 with a choir for the Catholic canonesses.58
The agreement also designated that the former convent church was fully
evangelical, and the Lutheran and Reformed women sat in the nave with
the lay congregation during the regular worship services. In order to
remain part of the convent congregation and receive their prebendary
rents, all canonesses were still required to participate in two choir hours
(chordienst), now allowed in the evangelical convent order, to fulfil the resi-
dency requirement outlined in the foundation statutes.59 What resulted were
modified devotional services held in the original choir, using books accept-
able to all three groups of canonesses: a prayer book from Johann
Habermann, Johann Arndt, and Johann Gerhardt,60 Johann Arndt’s
Paradies Garten,61 Johann Habermann’s prayer book,62 and an unspecified
psalter translated by Luther.63 Thus, the women in Schildesche worshiped

58
Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Preussischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter GStA-PK), I. HA GR, Rep.
34, no. 4847 (22 Aug. 1697); Ulrich Angerman, ‘Das Kanonissenstift zu Schildesche von
der Reformation bis zur Auflösung: Ein gemischter Konvent im Zeitalters des
Konfessionalismus’, in Ulrich Andermann (ed.), Stift und Kirche Schildesche, 939–1810
(Bielefeld, 1989), 67–111.
59
Katholische Pfarrarchiv in Schildesche, Stift Bd. 1, Präsenzbuch 1697–1760.
60
Johann Haberman, Johann Arndt and Johann Gerhard, Allerhand Christliche Gebete . . .
sonderlich zusammen gelesen; Nebenst den 7. Buß-Psalmen (Lüneburg, 1673).
61
Johann Arndt, Paradiß-Gärtlein, voller Christlicher Tugenden . . . in wellchem alle artickel
unser christlichen Religion . . . begriffen seyn (Magdeburg, 1612); Susan C. Karant-Nunn,
‘Postscript on the Religious Emotions in the Late- and Post-Reformation Era: Path
Dependence and Innovation’, in R. Ward Holder (ed.), Calvin and Luther: The
Continuing Relationship (Göttingen, 2013). According to Karant-Nunn, Arndt’s work
was a standard Lutheran prayer book found in many Lutheran homes.
62
Johann Habermann, Christliche Gebet für alle Not vnd [und] Stende der gantzen
Christenheit ausgeteilet auff alle tag inn der Wochen zu sprechen . . . Gestellet vnd auß
heiliger Göttlicher Schrifft zusamen gelesen (Nuremberg, 1567).
63
LAV-NRW-W, Stift Schildesche, no. 95 (12 Feb. 1711); LAV-NRW-W, Minden-
Ravensberg, Regierung (hereafter MRR), no. 1410, 19r–24r (12 Feb. 1711), point #7;
GStA-PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34, no. 4847 (11 Oct. 1711); Dispositio Psalmorum ad horas,
ut vocant, canonicas: Disposition Ordnung und austheilung der Psalm uber das gantze jar,
zu jedem student, wie die in hohen Stiefft alhie gehalten warden (1570) [HAB: 285.2 Th.];
Philipp Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zu Anfang des
XVII. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1864), 789. It is not clear which edition the canonesses used
in Schildesche. One intriguing possibility is a 1575 version of the 1570 Latin–German
dual-language psalter contained with a Bible produced for the Elector of Brandenburg
mentioned by Wackernagel.

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with oft republished, popular prayer- and songbooks produced by Lutheran

authors and used by Lutherans across the Holy Roman empire in some form
since the late sixteenth century.
The Catholic canonesses accepted all these works, which they did not call
Lutheran, without comment until the Reformed nun purchased the new
psalter in 1702. In 1710, they cited the reading of ‘Lutheran books’, in par-
ticular a ‘Lutheran psalter’, later identified as an edition by Nicholas Selnecker
(1530–92), accompanied by summaries by Veit Dietrich (1506–49), as evi-
dence of hostility against them.64 The women claimed they were being forced
to endure readings from this ‘aggravating, off-putting’ book during their
common worship in the choir, and this broke all previous agreements by
making it impossible for them to attend worship in the choir. They affirmed
the need for common worship in the choir despite this provocation, but
insisted that all songs and prayers during the required residency be ‘as they
always had been’. They then demanded that the abbess remove ‘Lutheran’
books and return the previous version of the Psalter David, ‘without margi-
nalia’, to the choir.65 In other words, they meant the term ‘Lutheran’ here in
its older polemic and pejorative connotation.
The resulting investigations focused on whether the shared service in the
choir should include songs, what books were being used and, perhaps most
importantly, whether either of those two were confessional in any way. In
early 1711, the abbess interviewed all the canonesses in the presence of a
notary using questions sent by the king’s officials about controversies hin-
dering the common worship in the choir. All nuns agreed that they had used
no new books in the choir, with the exception of the new psalter. While the
Catholic nuns insisted that the new version had headers that they found
offensive, the evangelical canonesses denied that they had criticized books
used by the Catholics, slandered the pope, or forced compliance in devotional
rituals in the choir. In her own testimony, Anna Sybilla von Vincke, the

64
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 3 (16 Oct. 1710); GStA-PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34, no. 4853
(16 Oct. 1710), no. 4847 (12 Sept. 1712); Psalter des Königl. Prophethen Davids mit den
kurtz Sum[m]arin viti Diethrichs und D: Nicolai Selnecceri ein gebetlein auch mit nuzliche
registren der psalmen vermehret (Minden, 1699); Veit Dietrich, Der gantze Psalter, des
Königlichen Propheten Davids: Mit kurtzen Summarien, und einen ordentlichen Register
der Psalmen (Goslar, 1696), 19. I was unable to find the 1699 edition bought in 1702, but
the quoted texts are consistent with a 1696 edition published in Goslar, which I will use
here.
65
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 7r–8v (25 Oct. 1710); 9r–10r (26 Oct. 1710); LAV-NRW-
W, Stift Schildesche, no. 95 (7 Mar. 1711); Dietrich, Der gantze Psalter, des Königlichen
Propheten Davids, 19.

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 A VIEW FROM THE CHOIR 209

evangelical–Lutheran abbess, reported that no one had introduced any in-

novations in the choir since the Reformation. She criticized the Catholic
women for their complaints, stating that their actions disrupted the goal of
the 1672 religious peace to establish coexistence ‘under the three religious
groups, with no differences’.66 She also stressed that the evangelical canon-
esses had made as many accommodations as possible within the choir so that
both they and the Catholic women could worship together so no one suffered
any loss of religious freedom.67 Turning to the Dietrich Psalter Davids, she
stated that the Catholic canonesses were not required to read the headers
above each psalm and that the texts of the Psalms were the same as they always
had been.68 Thus, she, like the other evangelical canonesses, did not see this
psalter as different from the previous version and, at least before the officials,
claimed not to understand changing the book as a confessional act.
What made one Lutheran translation of the Psalms acceptable and ecu-
menical, and the other ‘Lutheran’ and divisive to the Catholic canonesses, was
the presence and absence of the polemic and overtly anti-Catholic rhetoric in
the Dietrich psalter. In 1712, Elector Palatine John William (1690–1716) sent
Frederick I, king in Prussia, a list of a dozen passages in the Lutheran song-
book that the Catholics found offensive. These included headers that ‘the
pope with his great crowd are an enemy of God’s word’, ‘the Turks and popes
are the enemy of the Christian church’, and numerous others calling for
‘papists’ as well as Jews, Turks and pagans to be destroyed.69 Calling this
work hostile and ‘Lutheran’, the Catholic women refused to worship together
in the choir because they understood this particular edition of the psalter as
confessionally polemical in a way that excluded them from worship for not
being truly Christian. The Calvinist king admitted that ‘it would be very hard’
for these women to sing such Lutheran songs that criticized the pope even as
he remained firm that the statutes required attendance in the choir.70
The tense situation became even more strained as claims of accusations of
intolerance spread. In a statement exhibiting many layers of underlying ag-
gression between the groups, Abbess Vincke accused one of the Catholic
canonesses of ripping out the title page of the Psalter to remove the name

66
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 40r–v.
67
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 44v–45r.
68
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 44r (n.d.), 78r (17 Aug. 1712), 81r (19 Sept. 1712); GStA-
PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34, no. 4847 (19 Sept. 1712).
69
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 25r–26v (21 Dec. 1710); GStA-PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34,
no. 4847 (12 Sept. 1712). In 1710, the nuns listed the comments over Psalms 10, 44, 54, 59,
74, 83, and 109; in 1712, the elector added Psalms 14, 35, 42, 55, 79.
70
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 11r–14r (13 Jan. 1711).

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 210 PAST AND PRESENT SUPPLEMENT 12

of the Reformed canoness who had bought it in Münster. She called the action
‘dangerous’ and ‘evil’ since they intended that officials blame her the abbess,
for its presence.71 The concern about who was responsible for the growing
tensions spread beyond the convent when investigations uncovered that a
publisher favoured by the king had printed the new psalter edition. The
elector responded that such an assertion was a deliberate insult designed to
call into question the king’s efforts at religious tolerance and peaceful con-
fessional interaction.72 In order to resolve what were rapidly escalating con-
fessionally coloured accusations over the book and prevent these from
spreading from the Schildesche choir into the Prussian territories, the
Ravensberg consistory recommended compiling a list of psalms acceptable
to all the women regardless of confession and using a psalter without the
offensive summary in Schildesche. Then, they argued, the congregation could
re-establish harmony in the choir. They also dropped a pending libel case by
and against the king, stating that the two authors, Dietrich and Selnecker, had
been dead for well over a hundred years and hinted that their polemical ideas
were no longer relevant.73 Ultimately, the Schildesche canonesses returned to
common worship in the choir, which they maintained until the dissolution of
the convent in 1810.
* * *

Like many similar episodes occurring in convent choirs from the sixteenth to
the early eighteenth century, this event exhibited how coexistence and con-
fessional fluidity were possible for the nuns as long as they could reconcile the
shared space and devotional items with their own beliefs and limits of toler-
ation. The interaction between the Schildesche canonesses shifted only when
the Reformed sexton substituted the reprint of the Dietrich text for what even
the Catholic women viewed as a ‘traditional’ translation, causing each woman
to identify herself and others by confession based on their reaction to the new
psalter. Yet, the women were able to heal that division when they restored
confessional accommodation and an overarching sense of community in the
required choir service. Thus, like the practices in the choir, the older book of
Psalms translated by Luther had developed multilayered interpretations for
all the women and thus had lost confessional specificity in the face of the lived
devotional practice of the Catholic women, just as the singing of the hours
had lost its confessional connotation for the Lutheran and Reformed women.
That is not to say that tensions did not exist in Schildesche before these

71
LAV-NRW-W, MRR, no. 1410, 44v–45r.
72
GStA-PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34, no. 4847 (12 Aug. 1712). The person copying out the title
page emphasized that the publisher was ‘Churfürstl brandenburg privilegirte’.
73
GStA-PK, I. HA GR, Rep. 34, no. 4847 (19 Sept. 1712).

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moments, but intolerance remained largely hidden during common devo-

tional services in the shared space in the choir as long as they maintained the
adapted devotional rituals. The blow-up over the Schildesche psalter that
began this essay shows just how unpredictable the results of such actions
could be even long after the formation of blended devotional traditions. It
also demonstrates the willingness that ultimately extended to secular and
church leaders to compromise to retain common worship in the choir,
even if that meant retaining confessional hybridity and blended rituals.
By the eighteenth century, confessional identities and boundaries were
more defined, even in the convent choir of pluriconfessional convents, and
attempts to establish a unified confessional culture originated increasingly
from the women themselves. At the same time, faced with the now entrenched
and legal religious diversity in the choir represented by the Catholic and
Reformed women, the Lutheran women in these shared religious houses
balanced the need for peaceful co-worshipping within those choirs with the
requirements of church and convent orders and mandates issued by both
church and political leaders seeking to establish confessional conformity. The
transition process in pluriconfessional choirs and convents during the long
Reformation had necessitated re-envisioning monastic life, which ultimately
modified and partially rejected the demands of a reform movement where the
theological position of the early reform leadership had been consistently and
forcefully hostile to monastic life and ‘papists’ so clearly expressed in the
Dietrich text. Adaptation in the choir shows how resistant pluriconfessional
convents were to attempts to establish strict confessional separation and
boundaries. Developing workable compromises on potentially contentious
devotional practices and use of space within such a context proved a theo-
logical and pragmatic challenge for everyone involved. The result for many
choirs and pluriconfessional convents was the emergence of unique localized,
blended, multilayered confessional cultures. Adaptive mediation of conflicts
within the choir introduced a powerful dynamic that not only assisted con-
tinued coexistence in the convent, but also often cultivated religious diversity
beyond the convent walls within lay communities.

University of Arizona Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer

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