The Pleasure of the Text

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The Pleasure of the Text: What TwoManuscripts Can Tell Us AboutBecoming God

Ben Morgan

University of Oxford, UK

This article presents two previously unrecognized Augsburg sources for thetransmission of the radical Eckhartian ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise. Acomparison with the earliest known version of the treatise in Munich BSBcgm 133 is used to demonstrate how individual statements in a codex shouldnot be assessed for their interest or radicality independent of context. Rather,the manuscript as a whole should be linked to the spiritual endeavours fromwhich it emerged. One of the two Augsburg codices in particular is situatedin the context of the copyist’s, Agnes Buhlerin’s, attempt to preserve aparticular model of spiritual life in the face of external interference by the newProtestant authorities in the diocese of Augsburg post-1539.

keywords Meister Eckhart in context, ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise, AgnesBuhlerin, Cistercian convent of Kirchheim am Ries, late medieval mysticism,post-Reformation spirituality

Two new ‘Sister Catherines’

This article will briefly introduce two previously unknown sources for thetransmission of the radical Eckhartian text, the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise:Augsburg Universitatsbibliothek III.2.8u.22 and Augsburg UniversitatsbibliothekIII.2.8u.46, for the discovery of which I am indebted to a tip from CharlotteWoodford of Selwyn College, Cambridge.1 Most of the article will then be

Medieval Mystical Theology mys13.3d 27/5/14 21:41:31

1 As well as being very grateful to Charlotte Woodford for the original tip, I have been greatly helped by insightfulcomments and practical advice from Racha Kirakosian, Claudia Lingscheid, and Nigel Palmer. Freimut Loser invitedme to present an earlier version of this material in Augsburg and his comments on that occasion greatly assisted thedevelopment of my argument. On the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise: the most up-to-date critical edition of the text, basedon Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek, Cod. St. Peter pap. 19, is Schweitzer, Franz-Josef, 1981. Further references to thisedition will be given parenthetically in the text using the abbreviation Schweitzer. A version of the text based onMunich BSB cgm 133 is published in: Pfeiffer, F.1857, pp. 448–75. Further references to this edition will be givenparenthetically in the text using the abbreviation Pfeiffer.

medieval mystical theology, Vol. 23 No. 1, June, 2014, 50–62

! The Eckhart Society 2014 DOI 10.1179/2046572614Z.00000000018

dedicated to placing one of these manuscripts, codex III.2.8u.22, for which weknow the scribe, in relation to other versions of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise. Theupshot of my argument will be that it is more productive to look at how the textwas used (by placing it in the wider compilation of which it is a part and relating itto the context of its production), than to focus on the particular version, more orless ‘distorted’, that the manuscript contains.2 When placed in their differentcontexts, manuscripts containing the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise allow us toreconstruct the changing place of a particular sort of spiritual longing in thereligious life of German-speaking areas from the 1320s right through to earlyseventeenth century — if we include the Cologne manuscript copied by DanielSudermann in 1614 — that in effect means from the time of Meister Eckhartthrough to the eve of the Thirty Years War.3 The same is true of the texts byEckhart himself, or by Seuse and Tauler. However, because the ‘Sister Catherine’treatise is short, but at the same time, in most existing versions, contains a verycompact expression of Eckhartian concepts that directly addresses questions ofwhat it means to actually live these ideas, it offers a useful way of tracking the sortsof practices, and indeed communities of practice, associated in the period beforeand after the Reformation with the aspiration of ‘becoming God’.4 Tracing thetransmission of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise can offer us a window onto thecompeting habits — habits that could be called techniques of self-fashioning, ofcoexistence, of longing, and of cultural transmission itself — out of which theways of behaving now associated in the West with modern, secular forms ofidentity emerged.5

The two manuscripts that I want briefly to introduce both belonged to theCistercian convent of Kirchheim am Ries in what is now Baden-Wurttemberg andwere produced on paper in the first half of the sixteenth century. They were bothdescribed in 1998 in Arnold Schromm’s study of the convent’s library, but withoutthe versions of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise they contained being identified.6

Codex III.2.8u.22 is written in the hand of the nun Agnes Buhlerin (d. 1562) towhom a note on the fly leaf states that the book belongs: ‘Iste liber est Agnetis’[‘This book belongs to Agnes Buhlerin’].7 The period of the manuscript’sproduction can be precisely given, since different quires, or gatherings of paper,include the dates 1550 (fol. 78r) and 1549 (fol. 97r). The codex, which comprises167 leaves, begins with the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise (fols. 2r–76r), followed by abrief text addressed by Agnes Buhlerin to a ‘Schwester Agnes’ (fols. 76v–78r).Folios 78v–81v are blank and take us to the end of the quire that started 73r. The


2 For a comparable approach to Eckhart’s texts, see Nemes, B. J., 2012, pp. 39–98.3 Hamburg Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek theol. 1886, copied by Sudermann from a manuscript belonging to theDominican convent of St Gertruden in Cologne produced in 1475, includes excerpts of ‘Sister Catherine’ folios 342–48, as part of the compilatio mystica first edited by Greith in 1861. For a more recent account of the compilatio seeCadigan, R., 1992. For further discussion of the earliest ‘Sister Catherine’ manuscript see Schneider, K., 2011, pp.165–76, and Morgan, B., forthcoming, 2015.4 For the origin of the term, ‘communities of practice’, see Lave J. and Wenger, E., 1991, and Wenger, E., 1998.5 The transmission of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise thus allows the development of a philologically grounded, moredetailed, and historically extended account of material presented in Chapters 5–7 of Morgan, B., 2013.6 Schromm, A., 1998, pp. 249–50, and p. 56. My comments add details overlooked by Schromm in his descriptions ofthe two codices.7 Ibid., p. 249.

THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT 51

‘Sister Catherine’ treatise and the text addressed to ‘Sister Agnes’ are thus part ofone production process. The new quire starting 82r opens with 23 of the 28 letterscontained in Seuse’s Das große Briefbuch (fols. 82r–164v). The codex closes withtwo as yet unidentified spiritual texts, the first starting fol. 165r with the incipit:‘ain gaistlich mensch will gehorsam thon oder die gehorsam die langst istgeschechen ernwyren gegen dein edlen gesponsen jhesu christo’; the second fol.166v with the incipit: ‘Es mag vnd soll auch ain mensch begeren von ihesu christodas er im geb augen gotlicher verstentnuß mit den es got vnd alles was zu seiner selselikait gehort erkennen’ (fol. 166v). For the argument that I want to present here,the primary interest of the other manuscript, Augsburg UB III.2.8u.46, is that, asSchromm has inferred, it contains the version of ‘Sister Catherine’ that AgnesBuhlerin used for her compilation.8 One reason for agreeing with Schromm’ssuggestion that the other manuscript pre-dates the Agnes Buhlerin codex is that, init, the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise is followed by texts with which it is foundtransmitted in other manuscripts. Codex III.2.8u.46 opens with a vernacularcommentary on the Lord’s Prayer (fols. 7r–30v), then comes the ‘Sister Catherine’treatise (fols. 31r–63v), followed by the short text known as ‘Die frommeMullerin’ (fols. 63v–65r), and another known as ‘Das Frauchen von 21 [22]Jahren’ (fols. 65r–67v).9 The codex closes with a longer, as yet unidentified text,fols. 67v–110v, with the incipit: ‘Die weil der mensch jn der zeit ist, so magerfallen, das sprechen die maister’. Bound into the book is a pamphlet entitledGuldin Regeln printed in Augsburg in 1510.10

The relation of these two versions of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise to othermanuscripts has yet to be determined. But a couple of pointers suggest that thestemma showing the relations between manuscripts developed by Franz-JosefSchweitzer, the Editor of the 1981 critical edition of ‘Sister Catherine’, building onOtto Simon’s study from 1906 investigating the transmission of the treatise, mightneed to be modified. The treatise recounts the spiritual progress of a religiouslyinclined woman who comes to her confessor looking for the quickest way to God.She quickly takes up, transcends, and becomes impatient with the advice the clericgives her, embarking on a spiritual journey that transforms her to the point thather confessor cannot recognize her. Then, after further discussions with the cleric,she goes into a meditative trance from which she returns declaring: ‘Herre, frowentuch mitt mir, ich bin gott worden’ [‘Sir, rejoice with me, I have become God’](Schweitzer, p. 334). The latter part of the text consists mainly in her answeringthe spiritual questions of her confessor. One way of grouping the texts is bylooking at the different ways the potentially heterodox idea of ‘becoming God’ isaltered: ‘Ich bin gott worden’ appears variously as ‘ich bin unße[r]m herren


8 Ibid., p. 250.9 ‘Die fromme Mullerin’ is transmitted with ‘Sister Catherine’ in Paris Ms. allem. 222. ‘Das Frauchen von 21 Jahren’ isfound immediately after a portion of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise in the Manchester codex John Rylands UniversityLibr., German ms 11, fol. 199v. For an edition of ‘Die fromme Mullerin’, see Schneider, K., 2006, p. 15. For an editionof ‘Das Frauchen’, see Pickering, F., 1940, pp. 121–37. Pickering discusses both texts in conjunction with ‘SisterCatherine’.10 Schromm notes that the copyist of Augsburg UB III.2.8u.46 produced other surviving codices from the library atKirchheim. Schromm, A., 1998, pp. 256–57. In a further study, I will be reconstructing the spiritual interests of thiscopyist and comparing them with those of Agnes Buhlerin.

52 BEN MORGAN

worden’ [‘I have become our Lord’], ‘ich wardenn gottes’ [‘I have become ofGod’], ‘ich bin goettelich worden’ [‘I have become divine’], ‘ich bin gotte zu teileworden’ [‘I have become part of God’], and ‘ich bin mit got ains worden vongnaden’ [‘I have become one with God through grace’].11 The two Augsburgmanuscripts contain the variant ‘ich bin mit got ains worden von gnaden’(III.2.8u.46: fol. 43r; III.2.8u.22: fol. 29r). This and other oddities of usage suggestthat they belong in the group of texts that includes the manuscripts fromEinsiedeln, Nuremberg, and Freiburg.12 However, another characteristic of thisbranch of the transmission is that it omits the part of the text in which, after thewoman has become God, roles are reversed and she starts to teach her confessor,talking at him to the point that he is himself taken into a meditative state.13 TheAugsburg texts do indeed seem to stop before we get to this point in the narrativewhen compared with Schweitzer’s critical edition. But, in fact, this moment hassimply been transferred to a point earlier in the text.14 The Augsburg ‘SisterCatherine’ thus, on the one hand, seems to rein in the most heterodox aspectsfound in other manuscripts, whilst, on the other hand, including elements thatradically challenge existing ecclesiastical hierarchies, presenting the woman’sexperience and knowledge as the force that takes the cleric beyond his bookishrelation to God to a more direct encounter with divinity. This ambivalencesuggests that it might not be useful to approach the text only in terms of thedoctrines or narrative elements that it does or does not include, as measuredagainst the standard of the purified text reconstructed in a critical edition. Rather,we should reconstruct instead the role the text played in the context in which itwas copied.

How was the text used in Kirchheim in the 1540s and 1550s? What techniquesand practices of spiritual life can it be seen to have been part of? For manymanuscripts, these questions would be hard to answer. But in the case of theKirchheim codices, many other manuscripts have survived, not only those copiedby Agnes Buhlerin herself, but others showing the aspects of the wider life of thecommunity. To follow up all these leads is too large a project for this short articleand will be something I undertake as part of a longer-term project to reconstructthe contexts in which the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise was copied, revised, andintegrated into people’s practices of togetherness, self-control, and self-abandon-ment.15 In the rest of this brief article, I can tackle only a fraction of this widerproject: the question of pleasure. In the remaining space, I will compare the waythe Agnes Buhlerin version of ‘Sister Catherine’ treats the issue with its treatment


11 Schweitzer gives the variants, 1981, p. 391.12 For instance, Schweitzer notes a variant found in the Nuremberg and Freiburg manuscripts that is also found incodex III.2.8u.22 on fol. 9r: ‘wann so der mensch von natur ie edler ist, so er ie zerter ist vnd ym daz leiden wyrser tut’(Schweitzer, F.-J., 1981, p. 382).13 For a discussion of the conservative aspects of the Einsiedeln text, see Bruckner, U., 2009.14 To give the text from codex III.2.8u.22: ‘mit der red kam die tochter in got, vnd kam alls gar von ir selber, das sytieffe ding reden ward, von der blossen gothait, das der beichter von allen seinen aussern synnen kam, vnd die tochtergieng von im in jr wonung. vnd da der beichter wider zu im selber kam, da bat er begirlich das man im hulf, daß dietochter wider zu im kem’ (Fol. 60r; Schweitzer, F.-J., 1981, p. 369; Augsburg UB III.2.8u.46, fols. 56v–57r).15 For an article that discusses Agnes Buhlerin’s spirited and amusing contribution to the musical life of the convent,see Eichner, B., 2009, pp. 93–115, here pp. 10–12.


in what is now thought to be the earliest surviving version of the ‘Sister Catherine’treatise: the Munich manuscript, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek cgm 133. The reasonfor taking this version as the point of comparison, apart from its intrinsic interestas the first surviving record of the text, is that the issue of pleasure in particularprompted marginalia by two separate generations of reader, giving us a furtherglimpse into the ways the text was responded to and lived with. Since the questionof pleasure is a practical one, the comparison should give us a first glimpse of thelived contexts in which the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise was read and re-read, and inwhich the aspiration to ‘become God’ took concrete form.

Pleasures of the texts

The most obvious way in which pleasure features in the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatiseis in a brief exchange that occurs between the woman and her confessor after shehas ‘become God’. She turns to him as someone who knows her well and asksadvice on how she should now live. He replies with a vernacular variant of theAugustinian: dilige et quod vis fac [love God and do what you will]:

Er sprach: Du solt essen, als dich hungret, vnd trincken, als dich durstet. Du solt senfte

hemde an tragen, du solt schlaufen an senften betten, vnd alles, das din hercze begert

von spise vnd kurczwile, das solt du an dich nemen [He said: you should eat when you

are hungry, and drink when you are thirsty. You should wear soft shirts, you should

sleep in soft beds, and you should take to yourself everything that your heart desires in

the way of food or entertainment] (Schweitzer, p. 345 [with some variations], Munich

BSB cgm 133, fols. 60r–60v and Augsburg UB III.2.8u.22, fols. 49r–50v).

To this licentious advice, the woman’s ascetic answer is that noone can take fromher the desire to stay wretched and poor: ‘Ich wil ellend vnd arm sin; das kan mirnieman benemen’ [‘I want to stay wretched and poor; no one can take that awayfrom me’] (Schweitzer, p. 345). The roles the two figures take up are a clearpedagogical strategy: the antinomian position that, in inquisitorial documents atleast, is associated with heretics of the Free Spirit, is here put in the mouth of thecleric only so that the woman religious might reject it.16 The brief exchange wasevidently a popular moment in the text since it is once of the sections that isreproduced in two manuscripts that contain only very short fragments from thetreatise.17 It is also one of the moments in the text that prompts a reaction from theearlier of the two hands that leave marginalia in BSB cgm 133. To put this responsein its context, I will give a brief survey of the two sets of responses, beforereturning in the end to show how Agnes Buhlerin dealt with this passage inAugsburg UB III.2.8u.22.

The version of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise contained in BSB cgm 133 includestwo sets of marginalia. The later hand, which Karin Schneider suggests is fifteenth-century, writes dagger-like emblems in the margin. Marginal clarifications in a


16 On this sort of heterodox antinomianism in the early fourteenth century see: Lerner, R. E., 1972; Patschovsky, A.,1974; Morgan, B., 2004.17 Munich BSB cgm 836 and Munich BSB cgm 4490. See: Wagner, B., 2011, p. 45.

54 BEN MORGAN

comparable black ink would seem also to stem from this hand.18 Above the term‘gebrechen’ the hand writes ‘sunde’ or ‘sin’ (cgm 133, fol. 54r; Pfeiffer p. 469).Similarly, an addition is made to a passage discussing the nature of hell that, in thewider transmission of the treatise, had a life of its own, since the passage wasincluded in some versions of the mystical compilation now known as Greith’sTraktat.19 In the Munich ‘Sister Catherine’, the clarification added to the passagein fact changes the meaning. The manuscript originally contained the words: ‘Ichsage uch wol waz die helle ist. iz ist anderz nicht den ein wesen sin’ [‘I will tell youwhat hell is. It is nothing other than being of one essence’] (fol. 34r; Pfeiffer,p. 455). In a manner that fits the general tenor of the treatise, this passage links areceived theological idea to current behaviour: hell entails being distanced fromGod because the individual is stuck in habits, or stuck with an essence, that he orshe is unable to relinquish. Underneath ‘wesen’ the fifteenth-century hand haswritten: ‘waysen’. The sense of the clarification is not immediately clear. Waysecan mean orphan (cognate with the modern Waise). But that makes little sense inthis context. Another possibility is an equivalent of ‘Weisen’ or ‘ways’, echoingdiscussions in Eckhart’s sermons of the degree to which one should be attached tospecific practices or ways of doing things. In both cases, the additions show anattempt to bridge a gap between an older text and a new context for which theterms of the treatise are not immediately obvious.

In this new context, the pleasure that attracts the attention of the reader is arhetorical pleasure. At one point in the text, the woman is explaining to the malecleric the spiritual use to which images can be put, saying: ‘Ir sult wissen alles dazman alsus wortiget und den luten fur leit mit bilde daz ist nicht dan ain raizen zugot. wisset daz in got nicht ist dan got’ [‘You should know that everything that oneputs into words and uses to lead people further with images is nothing butcharming people towards God. Mark that in God there is nothing but God’](cgm133, fol. 53v; Pfeiffer, p. 469). The text describes a form of rhetoricalpleasure — being charmed by images — that can lead towards God, even thoughthe images themselves cannot be God, since an analogy, simile, or metaphorassociates something with God that is other than God, and God is nothing butGod. This comment prompts a ‘dagger’ in the margin, and also a clarificatoryvertical line [|] between the sentences, separating the question of images from thestatement that in God there is nothing but God. Once again, the hand isintervening to explain, whilst demonstrating at the same time an interest in the useof language as a way of pleasurably stimulating an audience to move towardsdivinity.

The passages that interest the other hand are of a less rarefied order. This readerhas left crosses in the margin in a brown ink that is similar to the brown ink inwhich the manuscript was originally copied. The hand marks stages in thenarrative; for instance, the point when, once the woman has ‘become God’ andlives, as it were, constantly imbued with Him, the confessor seeks her out: ‘Hie


18 For Schneider’s dating, see Schneider, K., 2011, p. 166.19 The sentence on hell corrected in BSB cg 133 features in Hamburg Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek theol. 1886,fol. 342. For a collation of the manuscripts that include the passage from ‘Sister Catherine’, see Cadigan, R., 1992.


kumt der erbere bihter vnd suchet die tochter in ein vremden lande vnd bittet sigetreulich durch got daz si mit im rede’ [‘At this point the honourable confessorcomes looking for the daughter in a foreign country and bids her faithfully inGod’s name that she speak with him’] (fol. 51r; Pfeiffer, p. 467). That the handshould mark this point in the narrative because it is a new stage in the story’sdevelopment of course cannot be finally determined. Other more prosaic motivesmight be at work: for instance, this might be a point from which the hand intendsto copy a section of the text. Indeed, the version of ‘Sister Catherine’ contained inManchester John Rylands German ms 11 starts exactly here, suggesting that, toanother copyist at least, this seemed liked a good place to begin.20 At the sametime, Karin Schneider notes similar crosses for drawing attention to passages intwo other codices from the fourteenth century.21 Whatever the exact motivation,the crosses mark points of interest for the subsequent reader.

As well as noting stages in the narrative, the hand marks moments of generalspiritual advice, as when the confessor declares: ‘so wil ich dich nu wisen einenwech vnd einen niwen rat geben’ [‘thus I want now to tell you a method and to giveyou a new piece of advice’] (fol. 29R; Pfeiffer, p. 452). Marks are also made atpoints in the text that deal specifically with the topic of pleasure. There is a markalongside the question as to whether humans can reach a point in this life wheretheir body is incapable of sin (fol. 40v; Pfeiffer. p. 460); another alongside anexchange between confessor and ‘daughter’ as to what would count as allowingoneself the fulfilment of one’s needs (fol. 43r; Pfeiffer, p. 461); and a further onealongside a passage in which the ‘daughter’ declares that she has found more ofGod in the smallest humiliation than in all the sweetness that creation ever blessedher with (fol. 43v; Pfeiffer, p. 462). The reader is clearly interested in the physicalform that spiritual pleasures will take: that is to say, in a corporeal life that cantranscend sin, attend to bodily needs, and cultivate the sorts of experiences thatwill bring the individual closest to God. In this context, it is not surprising that thepassage should also be marked leading up to the moment in which the confessortells the ‘daughter’ that she should eat and drink as she desires, wear soft shirts,and sleep in soft beds, only to be told by the woman that she will not have herpoverty and wretchedness taken away from her (fol. 60r; Pfeiffer, p. 473).

Both readers of BSB cgm 133 are thus interested in forms of pleasure, but thesomatic focus of the earlier reader is replaced, in the later markings, by a concernwith the rhetorical forms that can charm an audience towards God. Does thisperhaps suggest a historical shift? A gradual abstraction of what was initially apractical concern for readers? The attitude to pleasure in the sixteenth-centuryAugsburg manuscripts will help us see more clearly the sort of historical narrativeit is possible to read from the material. The attitude to pleasure in the Augsburgcodices is expressed through modifications in the text, and through a slip of thepen, at the point where the ‘daughter’ asks her confessor for advice on how best to


20 The ‘Sister Catherine’ excerpt in Manchester John Rylands German ms.11 begins: ‘Hie chumpt Der erberg peichtvater Vnd sucht sein peicht tochter in fromden landen Vnd da er sy fand Pitt er sy durch got Daß sy mit jm redt’ (fol.191v).21 Schneider, K., 2011, p. 166.

56 BEN MORGAN

arrange her life now that she has ‘become one with God through grace’ (to give thetoned down formulation used in both these codices). The confessor’s advice, inboth Agnes Buhlerin’s text, Augsburg UB III.2.8u.22, and the manuscript sheworked with, Augsburg UB III.2.8u.46, regulates bodily pleasure by insisting it willalways be taken through God Himself, thereby weakening the rhetorical contrastbetween the antinomian advice of the confessor and the insistence by the womanthat she retain her poverty and wretchedness. The confessor states: ‘du sollt durchgot essen trincken vnd schlaffen vnd solt durch got ain senfter leben han, dann dubis her gehebt hast, vnd solt niemant leben dann got vnd dir selber’ [‘you should,through God, eat, drink and sleep, and should, through God, have a softer life thanyou have had thus far, and should live no-one but God and yourself’] (AugsburgUB III.2.8u.22, fol. 49v). The only major difference between the Agnes Buhlerinmanuscript and the other Augsburg codex is a slip of the pen in the latter. Theearlier codex reads: ‘du sollt durch essen und trincken und schaff schlaffen’ [‘youshould through eating and drinking and do sleeping’] (Augsburg UB III.2.8u.46,fol. 52r). The word ‘got’ is added in the same hand in the margin. The copyist ofthe source text thus starts writing that something (never specified) will be achievedthrough the very acts of eating, drinking, and doing or creating something. But thisidea is corrected to the more orthodox advice that the ‘daughter’ can eat, drink,and sleep through God. A moment of inattention can thus produce the formulationthat eating and drinking could be themselves spiritual acts. But the model ofpleasure finally presented in both manuscripts limits the antinomian appeal of thetext even before the woman insists on her poverty. This change suggests a contextin which ideas associated with the Heresy of the Free Spirit have little circulationas much as it does a toning down of the text. But even if the manuscripts are lessadventurous on the question of pleasure than all the earlier versions consulted bySchweitzer for his critical edition, that does not in itself tell us how the text wasused in the mid-sixteenth century.22 A cautious formulation may in fact offer morefreedom, or different sorts of freedom, as compared with a position that exhaustsitself in an open declaration of heterodoxy. We can see this in the way Eckhart’ssermons take up and change the focus of ideas associated with the Heresy of theFree Spirit.23 In the case of Agnes Buhlerin’s version, the compilation, and indeedaspects of the codex itself, give us further evidence of the way of life of which thetext was a part that it is worth including in our considerations before we dismissthe cautious formulations only as evidence of forms of spiritual conformism.

Re-appropriating the tradition

If we want to reconstruct more of the spiritual horizon within which the ‘SisterCatherine’ treatise was copied by Agnes Buhlerin, one key piece of evidence is thetext she added to the quire on which the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise ends. The fact


22 Schweitzer gives variants for this passage, pp. 407–08, and none of the texts he draws on includes the qualification‘durch got’ that we find three times in the Augsburg versions. It is also not found in a codex Schweitzer omitted fromhis edition: Manchester John Rylands German ms. 11 (the passage on pleasure is found to be found in this manuscriptfols. 195r–195v).23 Morgan, B., 2004, pp. 37–50.


that it is written on the same quire shows that the juxtaposition is more than acoincidence produced by subsequent binding. The shorter text that follows onfrom ‘Sister Catherine’ has been specifically placed there by the copyist, Buhlerinherself. The text is addressed to a ‘Schwester Agnes’ and opens with the words:‘Schwester Agnes, wann dir ain vngedullt her gat, so sprich allso zu dir selber’[‘Sister Agnes, if you are troubled with impatience, speak to your self thus’] (fol.76v). The close of the text is worth quoting at length since it gives a sense of thespiritual advice addressed to Sister Agnes, and contains an interesting switch fromthe second to the first person:

du armer ellender mensch wo denckstu hin oder was uberhebstu dich nun ach wie

unrecht ist dir was bistu nun ia ain schnoder sark nach den leib vnd ain sel voll

untugent und andervil grosser brechen. du tregst dich ain schefflins klaid ob dem

schalk der in dir verborgen ist allso mit solchen worten oder der gleichen solltu der

ungedult und andern gebrechen widerstan. got verleich mir sein genad darzu. amen.

1550. Mit gedult uberwindt man alle ding [You poor, wretched person. What were you

thinking of or how can you now be so proud? O, how wrong you are. What a meagre

coffin your body is and how full of vice and many other great weaknesses is your soul.

You wear a sheep’s clothing to hide the rogue hidden within you. With such or with

similar words should you resist impatience and other weaknesses. May God grant me

his grace to do this. Amen. 1550. Through patience one can overcome all things] (fol.

78r).

The text partly reads as an answer to the spiritual ambitions articulated in the‘Sister Catherine’ treatise in which the woman wishes to be told the quickest wayto God and who adopts an itinerant version of the apostolic life against the adviceof her confessor. The appended text does not dispute what is said in the ‘SisterCatherine’ treatise but counsels someone left aspiring in real-time, rather than inthe compressed time of the narrative, in which steps in the spiritual narrative aretraversed in little less than a single folio. A brief consideration of the context inwhich the manuscript was copied can help us understand what the widersignificance of this counsel.24

By 1550, when Agnes Buherlin produced the quires that include ‘SisterCatherine’ and the short text addressed to ‘Schwester Agnes’, the convent atKirchheim was in the middle of a 30-year struggle with the secular powers tomaintain its independence, which started after Count Ludwig XV Oettingen-Oettingen converted to the Protestant cause in 1539 and that was only finallyresolved in 1570. The rules drawn up after a visitation in 1543 can, according toSchromm, be read as suggesting a number of problems in the convent: a flouting ofregulations pertaining to the enclosure; quarrels amongst the nuns and also debtsaccumulated by the Anna von Oettingen, who was Abbess in 1535–45. When thenuns resisted external interference, Ludwig XV imposed a protestant cleric asoverseer backed up by 24 men to enforce enclosure. The 17 women who lived inthe convent were still able to practice their catholic religion. But in 1546 both the


24 The following account draws on the overview of this period of the convent’s history to be found in Schromm, A.,1998, pp. 110–14.

58 BEN MORGAN

celebration of Catholic mass and the wearing of the habit were briefly interdicted,only to be reinstated after the Emperor Charles V re-established Catholicism in thearea in October 1546 and the convent gained the Catholic Count Friedrich V ofOettingen-Wallerstein as its protector. Since the convent was forbidden fromadmitting new nuns, by April 1553 their number had shrunk from 17 to eightwomen.

Faced with these troubles, the nuns drew up an inventory of their library in1545, which lists 143 volumes, 120 of which are in Latin and include works byAugustine and Bernard of Clarivaux; the remaining 23 volumes in Germanincluded liturgical codices, Thomas a Kempis’s De Imitatione Christi, and one ormore copies of a vernacular Bible.25 The convent thus preserved a flourishing bookculture right into the 1540s, despite the financial and other problems. At the sametime, the records contained in the fly leaves of many of the books show that theconvent housed many privately owned books that were not registered in theinventory but seem to have been passed from nun to nun, as Agnes Buhlerin’sversion of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise confirms, naming Barbara Schwerdtfuhreron the flysheet and another nun, Margareta Unflerin, fol. 1r. Accompanying theshared liturgical habits evident from the entries to the convent’s inventory, thereseems to have been a culture of literate, personal piety.

The form of this personal piety has been the subject of some critical debate. Inhis recent discussion of the versions of Eckhartian legends to be found inKirchheim manuscripts, Michael Hopf suggests that that radical impulses offourteenth-century mystical texts were toned down to fit an observant piety forwhich humility and obedience were more important than mystical union.26

Schromm, meanwhile, noted that the version of fourteenth-century mysticismtransmitted in Kirchheim is shaped very much by Heinrich Seuse, that is to say byan author who himself presented a model of mystical life that discouraged asceticexcesses as well as strictly policing interest in Eckhartian aspirations towardsunion with God.27 So, following Schromm’s comments, it could be argued that thetoning-down is not something added by sixteenth-century observant piety, but isalready part of the complex legacy of the fourteenth century. At the same time, theidea of a toned-down mysticism does not seem the best description of the material,even if we add the qualification that the element of conformity is not itself new.One of the very manuscripts containing a re-worked version of Eckhart legends,Augsburg UB III.1.4u.36, is written in the hand of Agnes Buhlerin.28 If, in thetransmission of the legends or of the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise, Agnes Buhlerin isreproducing texts that qualify heterodox aspirations for union with divinity, orthat restrain the desire for forms of spiritual practice that do not ascetically policephysical experience, the codices she produced nevertheless bear witness to an


25 Ibid. pp. 123–25. On the amount of Latin understood by nuns, including Agnes Buhlerin, in the early sixteenthcentury, see Woodford, C., 2002, pp. 16–18.26 Hopf, 2011, pp. 195, 204.27 Schromm, A., 1998, p. 109. For an account of Seuse’s response to Eckhartian mysticism, see Morgan, B., 2013, pp.125–47.28 Karin Schneider corrects Quint’s assertion that the codex is written in multiple hands in Schneider, 1988, p. 341. Iagree with Schromm’s assessment that the hand is that of Agnes Buhlerin. Schromm, A., 1998, p. 128.


active desire to shape her own religious life. Schromm notes an obituary of the nunVeronika Ainkurnin (d. 1546) that is to be found on the fly leaf of codexNeresheim Ne 8 written in Agnes Buhlerin’s hand in which she notes that the nunnot only copied texts but also was herself an author.29 The distinction betweenschreiben, the copying texts, and dichten, writing them oneself, is thus one thatmeant something to Agnes Buhlerin, and that is worth bearing in mind whenassessing her own codices. I have not yet traced possible sources for the brief textaddressed to ‘Schwester Agnes’ and appended to the ‘Sister Catherine’ treatise, andit is possible that it turns out to be composed of borrowed fragments in typical,late medieval fashion. At the same time, the positioning after the ‘Sister Catherine’treatise and the closing switch from second to first person show a degree ofpersonal involvement in the text that cannot be described as mere conformity.Spiritual aspirations are being taken over and appropriated, and that in a contextin which to insist on such practices was itself a form of resistance to the ascendantProtestant hegemony in the diocese of Augsburg.

Against the background of this active appropriation of inherited forms ofspiritual practice, it is worth returning to the presentation in Agnes Buhlerin’smanuscript of the moment when the spiritual ‘daughter’ ‘becomes God’. As wehave seen, the text contains the uncontroversial statement, ‘ich bin mit got ainsworden von gnaden’ [‘I have become one with God through grace’] (III.2.8u.22,fol. 29r). However, two additional points are remarkable. The first is a copyist’smistake. Agnes Buhlerin writes: ‘Ich bin mir mit got ains worden von genaden’ [‘Ihave for myself become one with God through grace’]. The second is that there is achange of pen a few words after this first climax in the progress of the narrative.30

The work-flow of the copyist thus follows the shape of the narrative; the scribedoes not break to change pens until after the woman has become God. In both theslip of the pen and the change of pen, we can see that the fate of the ‘daughter’retold in the text is not indifferent to Agnes Buhlerin. As with the appended text,we can see how the labour of producing the book is itself a form of spiritualinvolvement and that the question of authorship, and indeed the question oforthodoxy, is less illuminating than an investigation of what could be calleddegrees of participation. Copying and appropriating the text was one of thepractices by which a nun in Kirchheim could become an active member of aparticular sort of spiritual community preserving a lived tradition in the face of itsbeing challenged by social change in and around Augsburg. If we return to thequestion of pleasure, we can see, here too, that the important issue is not so muchpleasure but a form of active life: following Christ’s example. Even though inAgnes Buhlerin’s Kirchheim version, the confessor’s hedonist advice is qualified bythe insistence that pleasures are taken through God, the episode in fact onlyprepares the way for an account of Christ’s incarnation that presents the model forhow one can be both with God (without any separation), and also in the world


29 ‘Das buchlin ist der der andechtigen vnd gaistlichen frawen Veronica Ainkurn gewest, das hat sy auß der genad gotdes heiligen gaistz selbs gedicht, vnd auch geschriben’. Quoted: Schromm, 1998, p. 130. On nuns as authors notnaming themselves as authors, see Woodford, C., 2002, p. 30.30 ‘[fol. 29r] […] herr freent euch mit mir ich bin mir mit got ains worden von genaden. Er sprach’ [fol. 29v] ‘got seigelobt’ [change of pen] ‘nun gang von allen menschen wider in dein ainigung, da du beliebst ungehindert’.

60 BEN MORGAN

(Augsburg UB III.2.8u.22, fols. 52r–53r). Forms of pleasure are important only tothe degree to which they support participation in spiritual practices that arethemselves forms of participation in God.

To sum up: we have seen in detail how a manuscript that might appear to be alate epigone in a dying mystical tradition is, in fact, evidence of an active re-appropriation of texts and the associated habits. The earlier responses to the ‘SisterCatherine’ treatise contained in BSB cgm 133 suggested a shift from a concern withpractical questions of how physical life should be managed to a more distancedparsing of the text, combined with an interest in questions of rhetoric. However,the more abstract approach of the later annotations in the Munich manuscriptshould not encourage us to construct an historical narrative of decline. AsSchromm’s comments on Seuse remind us a more distanced and rhetorically awaremanagement of spiritual longings was already part of the religious landscape in theearly fourteenth century. Indeed, Seuse’s Buch der Wahrheit and the version ofspiritual life to be found in the Munich manuscript cgm 133 could be seen asbasically contemporary with each other. Nor should the radical Eckhartian ideas,on the one hand, and practical piety, on the other, be seen as successive stages inthe process of taming Eckhart’s influence. The Munich codex shows theengagement both of Eckhart’s own sermons and of the compiler of the manuscriptwith the question of the practical form that Eckhart’s teaching directs us to.31

Similarly, the emphasis on practical piety found in the advice to ‘Schwester Agnes’,but also in the Kirchheim versions of Eckhartian legends, and in the prayer booksand other compilations produced in the convent in the first half of the sixteenthcentury, does not necessarily replace Eckhartian mysticism with something lessinteresting. For mysticism can never be separated from the process of a communityof individuals appropriating a tradition for themselves and making it a form oflived practice. Even the most radical transcendence of fixed practices will be ahuman activity, situated in a world of shared habits that must be adopted, re-worked, and come to terms with in the process of spiritual transformation. AgnesBuhlerin’s Kirchheim version of ‘Sister Catherine’ is a moving testament to suchprocesses of re-appropriation.

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31 For more information on the relation between Seuse’s writings and texts reproduced in BSB cgm 133, as well as onthe relation between Eckhart’s teaching and practical piety, see: Morgan, B., forthcoming, 2015.


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Notes on contributor

Ben Morgan, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford,Oxford, UK. Email: [email protected].


62 BEN MORGAN

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