Contemporaneously with Diemud we find another Bavarian nun, Leukardis, active as a scribe at Mallersdorf; she is said to have been of Scottish origin and she knew Scotch (or Irish?), Greek, Latin, and German, and did so much good work that the monk Laiupold, who was also devoted to writing, established an anniversary in her memory[648].
The nuns of Admunt in Bavaria are also spoken of as devoted to transcribing, and Wattenbach comments on the neat and elegant way in which they mended the parchment leaves of their manuscripts with coloured silken thread[649].
Again a manuscript written for Marbach about the year 1149 by Gutta von Schwarzenthan is described as splendid. It contains the martyrology of Usuard, the Rule of St Augustine with the comments of Hugo of St Victor, the constitutions of Marbach and a homily for every day in the year[650]. We hear of Emo, abbot of Wittewierum (1204-34), a Premonstrant house which contained men and women, that ‘not only did he zealously encourage his canons (clericis) to write, acting as their instructor, but taking count of the diligence of the female sex he set women who were clever at writing to practise the art assiduously[651].’ Wattenbach considers that nuns were especially clever in copying books for choir use, and in decorating them.
These notices must suffice. They prove that women leading cloistered lives took an active interest in art-industry in all its branches and that productiveness in their houses was controlled by the same causes which led to the development and decay of art-industry in the houses of men. Excellent work was done in Benedictine houses during early Christian times, that is between the 8th and the 11th centuries; the revival of monastic life in the Middle Ages gave a new impulse to art-industry and the highest degree of excellence was reached in the first half of the 14th century. After that there are signs of a steadily accelerated decline. The reason of this, as a later chapter will show, lies chiefly in the changed conditions of life outside the convent, which made it easier for artisans in the townships to practise those arts and crafts which had hitherto been practised in religious settlements. Writing, decorating, and book-binding[652], as well as weaving and embroidering[653], were taken up by secular workers and were practised by them on a far larger scale; the spread of education in lay circles and the greater luxury in home surroundings having created a new taste and a new market for artistic productions. The taste of this wider public naturally influenced the character of the work which was produced; cheapness and splendour, if possible the combination of the two, were the qualities chiefly aimed at. These are valuable qualities no doubt in their way, but insistence on them had a discouraging effect on the productiveness of the convent. During the 14th and 15th centuries convents gave up their artistic pursuits. The self-denying industry and unobtrusive earnestness which set the stamp of excellence on the productions of the old hand-worker were no more, for the spirit which looked upon the production of things beautiful as a matter of religion had died out.
§ 2. Herrad and the ‘Garden of Delights.’
A work produced at Hohenburg, a nunnery in Elsass, in the 12th century confirms the belief that given favourable conditions it is possible for women to produce good work and to help to accumulate knowledge. Herrad, the abbess of this house, conceived the idea of compiling for the use of her nuns an encyclopædic work which should embody, in pictures and in words, the knowledge of her age. The importance of this work has long survived the attainment of its original purpose, for with its hundreds of illustrations and its copious text it has afforded a wealth of information on the customs, manners, conceptions and mode of life of the 12th century, to which many students of archæology, art and philology have gone for instruction and for the illustration of their own books. ‘Few illuminated manuscripts had acquired a fame so well deserved as the “Garden of Delights,” the Hortus Deliciarum, of Herrad,’ says the editor of the great collection of reproductions of the pictures which illustrated her work[654]. For the work itself is no more. The MS. was destroyed in the fire which broke out in the library of Strasburg when that city was bombarded by the Germans in 1870, and with it perished a complete copy of the text. Our knowledge of the work is therefore limited to the remarks of those who had studied it and to those portions of it which had been copied or transcribed previous to its destruction. The ‘Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Elsass’ is at present collecting and publishing a reproduction of all existing tracings and copies of the pictures or of parts of them, and this collection already numbers nearly two hundred. They are mere fragments of course of the work itself, and yet they are of the highest interest. For Herrad’s ‘Garden of Delights’ with its apt illustrations gave a complete picture of life in its domestic and out-of-door aspects as it presented itself in the 12th century. It showed what conceptions and ideas were then attractive to nuns and their estimation of knowledge, and it has given greater insight than any other production into the talents, the enthusiasm and the industry which were found at this period in a nunnery.
The religious settlement at Hohenburg[655] was an ancient foundation situated on the flat summit of a spur of the Vosges mountains, which here rise abruptly to a height of over two thousand five hundred feet from the wide expanse of the valley of the Rhine below. The wooded heights on either side of the Rhine were the favourite haunts of missionaries in early times, who settled there and appropriated sites in close proximity to the castles or strongholds of the landed gentry. At one time there were as many as sixty religious settlements in the Rhine valley between Basel and Mainz and over a hundred castles or burgs. The nunnery of Hohenburg was of high rank among these religious settlements owing to its extensive property and to its commanding situation. The summit of the hill was surrounded by an ancient wall dating from pre-Christian times which is still known as the heathen wall; it enclosed a wide clearance of fields and meadows, and the numerous buildings of the convent settlement. This height was the goal of numerous pilgrimages and had various associations dating from heathen times. It is at the present day a favourite health resort on account of its aspect and romantic surroundings.
From historical information recently collected by Roth[656] we gather that a religious settlement of women existed on the Hohenburg as early as the 9th century. Judith, the wife of Ludwig the Pious († 1840), took some interest in it. Legendary lore has spun many webs about the religious settlements in the Rhine district including that of Hohenburg, and the majority of modern historians have taken no trouble to unravel them. Legend[657] tells us that a holy maiden St Odilia fled from the persecution of a cruel father and came to the Hohenburg, where she settled and gathered many women about her. Various stories more or less fanciful are told of her. She was cured of blindness and baptized by Archbishop Hildulf of Trier and Bishop Erhard of Regensburg—who are unknown to history; she was carried down the river in a chest and educated at the convent of Beaume or Palma; and she has been given as a relative to St Leodgar bishop of Autun († 678) and as a daughter to Eticho duke of the Allemanni. Besides these stories we find the name Odilia locally associated with a cave, a well, three linden-trees and a stone of peculiar shape which are obviously heathen survivals, and encourage the view that Odilia is the representative of some pre-Christian divinity. Roth has shown that the name Odilia is nowhere on record in these districts before the 10th century, and it occurs in connection with Hohenburg only in the 11th century, that is three or four hundred years after the saint’s reputed foundation of the house. When Pope Leo IX (1048-1054), who was an Alsatian, visited his home he was presented with a rhymed ‘responsarium’ on the local saints of the district. Among them was Odilia, who at that time was directly associated with the nunnery. A hundred years later when the convent was better known through the influence and activity of its abbesses Relind and Herrad, St Odilia was looked upon as the daughter of Duke Eticho and the founder of the house—this will be shown from pictures preserved in Herrad’s work. But evidently this abbess had no knowledge of the saint’s blindness and sufferings, nor of her connection with St Leodgar and other prelates, which are all described in her legend written another hundred years later.
In the year 1154 Relind[658], abbess of Berg, a nunnery near Neuburg on the Danube, was appointed abbess at Hohenburg in accordance with the wish, it is said, of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa (1152-1190). Her influence was most beneficial; many daughters of the surrounding gentry came to study under her, and among them Herrad of the family of Landsperg. The term nun must be applied to these women with a reservation; some writers speak of them as Austin canonesses on account of the liberties they enjoyed. In Herrad’s ‘Garden’ the picture of her nuns represents them wearing clothes that differ little from those worn by women in other walks of life. Their dresses are of different colours, their cloaks are generally brown, and their veils are always brilliantly coloured, some red, some purple[659]. The only detail of dress which they have in common is a white turban or head-dress, over which the veil is thrown. They wear no wimples. The establishment of the house under Herrad’s rule consisted of forty-seven nuns and thirteen novices (or lay sisters?) who are represented as wearing clothes similar to those of the nuns.
Herrad’s admission to the house furthered its prosperity in every way, for besides literary and artistic abilities she had considerable powers of management. She succeeded Relind as abbess in 1167, and in 1181 she founded a settlement of Austin canons at Truttenhausen, and later another at St Gorgon, both of which are situated not far below the summit of the hill. The canons of these settlements took it in turn to read mass in the women’s chapel. Roth speaks of other improvements which Herrad carried out with the help of her diocesan, the bishop of Strasburg.