A number of the most recent posts on our blog have been concerned not
only with women, but with women who were agents of high cultural
productivity in the Middle Ages. I have been very glad to read about
these cases and more so about the fact that the idea of writing
medieval women does not seem like an anachronism anymore. It also
made me consider how the scholarly discourse on any given topic is
not exempt from preconceived ideas and how they may obstruct the way
for new ideas and findings. To illustrate this point I have chosen
the example of the scriptorium of the Cathedral in Essen, in the area
that is today known as the Ruhr Area, in Germany. Recently, this area has experienced a transformation from the
industrial to the commercial, from smoking chimneys to no-smoking
signs. Despite being highly defined by the industrialisation period,
the Ruhr Area’s roots go back to the Middle Ages. One of the most
well known parts of its history is the Cathedral of Essen, which was
used as the church of the Essen Abbey until the convent became
secularised in the beginning of the 19th century. This convent of
women, often from a noble background, was established in 845.
It became not only a centre of learning for women, but also played an
important role in disseminating Christianity. However, I do not
intend to give a full historical draft of the convent, but instead, I
will point out one particular development from the 9th to the 10th
century when the Abbey was not only home to numerous women, but also
to an established and highly productive scriptorium. We owe this recognition to Katrinette Bodarwe,
who gave convincing evidence for the scriptorium's existence by a
comprehensive palaeographic analysis of all the surviving material.
Its beginnings in the 9th century (first evidence dates from 874) can
only be asserted with difficulty, especially as a fire in 946
destroyed part of the collection. However, shortly after the fire, in
the second half of the 10th century, the scriptorium bloomed and
became more productive as ever before, and as it would ever be.1
This might have been due to the pure necessity of re-establishing the
library collection after the fire. However, it is also possible to
see a connection to the highly active abbess of the abbey: Mathilde
II, granddaughter of Otto the Great. Evidence shows that the Ottonian Abbess went
beyond the general organisation of the daily life of the abbey, she
established contacts from Rome to England and was patron to artefacts
as the famous Otto-Mathilde Cross. Furthermore, the scriptorium also had its most flourishing phase during her reign. After the fire, the
scriptorium did not only produce manuscripts for the basic needs of
an abbey. Instead, evidence suggests that the scriptorium additionally worked on
creating an extensive collection. The manuscripts that were created
in the scriptorium of Essen in the second half of the 10th century
are of a wide variety of texts, from liturgical to classical texts,
many of which go beyond what would have been considered a necessity
for the abbey. One might speculate here, that it was also one of
Mathilde's political aims to have the abbey become a centre of
learning under the Ottonian rule, an aim that was unfortunately not
pursued by later abbesses.2
However, my point here is neither to give a full account of Bodarwe's
finding on the existence of the scriptorium in Essen nor to speculate
about the role the Abbess might have had in its blooming, rather I
want to point out that Bodarwe's argument, though generally accepted
widely, also met
resistance in the scholarly sphere. As important as the criticism of
every new finding is, it struck me as interesting how estranging the
argument for a female scriptorium in the early Middle Ages seems to
have been at the beginning to some. And to my knowledge it is not the
only case where the culturally productive medieval woman is met with
resistance. For example, the nun and poet Hrotsvit has been discussed
with regards to questioning her authenticity, and the actual gender
of the author. Does an early medieval female author or female scribe
bring unease to the established image of the medieval woman? The
image of the past role of the women seems to need as much liberation
of preconceived ideas as women of more modern times needed and
unfortunately still need. And while without a doubt, new scholarship
needs to withhold the 'hot seat' as much as the old, it seems
noticeable that certain theories get called more into question than
others. An older academic, not without recognising the irony, noted
to me that the idea of writing an art historical PhD on pipe cleaner
estranged him as much as his own thesis probably estranged others
when he wrote it. It makes me wonder whether this is the normal
circle of life within the academic discourse. Each field does
constantly get expanded, reinvented, rediscovered, however, does this
by necessity mean that the old cannot embrace the new? Is the
estrangement unavoidable? I'd like to think not, but who knows what I
will say one day about the most recent developments and position I
will take towards new theories. Will I embrace the questioning of
established images or will I rush to their defence?
1Bodarwé,
Katrinette, Sanctimoniales
litteratae. Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottonischen
Frauenkommunitäten Gandersheim, Essen und Quedlinburg (Münster;
Aschendorff, 2004)
2 See
Falk,
Birgitta and von Hülsen-Esch, Andrea (eds.) Mathilde.
Glanzzeit des Essener Frauenstift
(Essen: Klartext, 2011) for a wider account of the activities of the
Abbess.
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