Stripping the Veil: Convent Reform, Protestant Nuns, and Female Devotional Life in Sixteenth Century Germany

Protestant nuns and mixed-confessional convents in early modern Germany defied expectations by surviving into the seventeenth century. Stripping the Veil explores their daily existence, rituals, and individual actions, highlighting the complex and locally constructed devotional life of these convents. It challenges the traditional categorization of nuns as Lutheran, Catholic, or Reformed and emphasizes the fluidity and hybridity of religious practices during the sixteenth century.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 24 March 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Protestant nuns and mixed-confessional convents in early modern Germany present an unexpected anomaly. According to the theological positions of sixteenth-century evangelical reformers and the institutional efforts of reform-minded rulers, monastic life in Protestant regions was expected to have ended by the mid-sixteenth century. However, many convent congregations in Protestant areas continued to thrive into the seventeenth century and beyond. This raises several questions: How did these convents survive? What defines a Protestant nun? How many convent congregations housed nuns with diverse belief systems and devotional practices, and how did they coexist and worship together? Exploring these questions leads to surprising revelations.

Stripping the Veil delves into the daily lives, rituals, and individual actions of nuns in surviving convents across different political and confessional contexts in Protestant regions. It also showcases how incremental shifts in practice and belief led to the emergence of a complex and often locally constructed devotional life. The continued presence of nuns and the survival of convents in Protestant cities and territories of the German-speaking parts of the Holy Roman Empire provide evidence of a more nuanced lived experience of religious reform, devotional practice, and confessional accommodation than traditional histories of early modern Christianity suggest.

Internal differences and the emerging confessional hybridity, blending, and fluidity within these convents serve as a cautionary note about categorizing nuns or groups of nuns as Lutheran, Catholic, Reformed, or even more broadly as Protestant or Catholic during the sixteenth century. The complexities and nuances of religious identity and practice during this period warrant further exploration and understanding.

Weight: 726g
Dimension: 243 x 162 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192857286