Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts)

Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions takes us behind the gates of six medieval Saxon convents and into the lives of rich and noble nuns going about their daily labour of religion just before the Lutheran Reformation. Drawing on writings by and about the nuns, as well as an analysis of the costly art and architecture of their monasteries, June Mecham reveals how monastic women wielded their wealth to create a ritual environment dense with Christian images and meanings. Mecham argues that nuns chose devotions and rituals within the framework of a distinct material culture, influenced by local religious customs, gender structures, and social protocols. She questions perceived differences between monastic and lay piety, emphasizing instead the shared religious culture in which monastic and laywomen actively participated, and the continuity that shaped female devotion. Looking through lenses of art, history, and spirituality, Mecham describes the spiritual and social tensions caused by women who vowed poverty but lived a seemingly lavish life funded by private income. Medieval reformers, as well as modern scholars, suggested that profligate nuns hastened the decline of medieval convents, but Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions proves that these women did not oppose reform. They simply fought to maintain their traditional devotions and religious environments even as they adapted to new religious sensibilities.

Dr. June L. Mecham received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Kansas in 2004. Her research interests included women's history and gender history, especially female spirituality and monasticism, as well as the interaction between material culture and devotional practices, space and performance in late medieval Germany. Selected for the 2008/09 Arts and Sciences Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award, she was also the recipient of an A.W. Mellon Posdoctorate Fellowship in Medieval studies spent at the Medieval Institute of Notre dame in 2006/07, and received the Neil Ker Memorial Fund Grant in 2007. She passed away March 1, 2009, after a long illness, at the age of 35.