the Dominican order’s battle over the cura monialium. This issue would come to an initial resolution in 1259, but the forty-year struggle was to have a lasting impact on the place of women in the Dominican order, their interactions with their brothers Preachers, and the expectations laid on their lives and spirituality.
The lengthy controversy over the cura monialium coincided with protracted debates over the Dominican liturgy. The order’s administrative procedures and Constitutions were largely finalized by 1228, and even the monumental intervention of Raymond of Peñafort in 1239–1241 entailed more reorganization than rewriting.2 Despite the success of this effort to unify and centralize the international community, the friars were unable to agree upon a uniform liturgy until 1256. At the same time, the development of the Constitutions for Dominican women was hampered by the order’s continual efforts to be relieved of the cura monialium entirely.3 Both these controversies were finally laid to rest through the diplomacy and force of will of Humbert of Romans (1200?–1277), Master General of the order from 1254 to 1263. His involvement in finalizing the Dominican Rite influenced his formulation of the sisters’ Constitutions.
The main chapters of this study focus on didactic literature intended for German Dominican nuns from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the later Middle Ages, German Dominican convent literature would explore and develop a variety of ways to experience and foster devotion to the Divine Office. Yet this spiritual advice continued to draw on the legislation and regular documents that were hammered out in the early days of the order. In this chapter, I recruit Dominican legislative and normative documents in order to demonstrate that the Divine Office was central to the role of Dominican women from the very origins of the order.
Dominican Legislation
The Augustinian Rule constituted the foundational legislation for both the male and female branches of the Dominican order. Dominic himself had been an Augustinian canon before founding his own order. Once canon 13 of the Fourth Lateran Council dictated the selection of a previously approved rule,4 it cannot have been a difficult choice. The Benedictine Rule, which provided the major alternative, commands enclosure and delineates a comprehensive cycle of daily prayer and manual labor. Separation from the world does not accord with a preaching mission, and the full daily schedule leaves no time for the study that Dominicans understood to ground and nourish good preaching. The Augustinian Rule is far more flexible than the Benedictine in that it “outlines a disposition as much as a praxis.”5 Indeed, Humbert of Romans, the order’s fifth Master General and its great systematizer, argues in his commentary on the Augustinian Rule that the Rule’s great strength lies in its vagueness, which allows the Dominicans to follow its spirit while suiting daily life to their calling.6
The Augustinian Rule, in keeping with its apostolic inspiration, places the greatest emphasis on communal property. It lingers over the difficulty that formerly rich and poor will experience in learning to cohabit and specifies that even clothes are to be centrally held, cleaned, and distributed for use.7 The Rule thus stipulates individual poverty and encourages but does not mandate communal ownership, thus permitting the absolute poverty that the Friars Preachers would adopt in 1220.8 Regarding the separation of the community from the world, the Augustinian Rule merely enjoins that one should never go out alone but must always be accompanied by a fellow. This “buddy system” institutes mutual policing and reporting, which also receives lengthy exposition. Yet these stipulations are only necessary because the Augustinian Rule envisions an unenclosed community that does work in the world, an imagination that fits well with the Dominican mission to preach but is incommensurate with the strict enclosure increasingly imposed on women’s communities in the high and late Middle Ages. Dominic and his successors who codified the women’s legislation chose to write enclosure into the Constitutions for Dominican Sisters, rather than placing their second order under a different Rule.
The liturgical portions of the Rule are similarly vague. In comparison to the Benedictine Rule’s detailed psalm cycle, the chapter on prayer is extraordinarily short, enough so that it may be cited here in full:
II.1. Orationibus instate horis et temporibus constitutis.
2. In oratorio nemo aliquid agat nisi ad quod est factum, unde et nomen accepit; ut si forte aliqui, etiam praeter horas constitutas, si eis uacat, orare uoluerint, non eis sit inpedimento, qui ibi aliquid agendum putauerit.
3. Psalmis et hymnis cum oratis deum, hoc uersetur in corde quod profertur in uoce.
4. Et nolite cantare, nisi quod legitis esse cantandum; quod autem non ita scriptum est ut cantetur, non cantetur.9
II.1. Be constant in prayer at the hours and times appointed.
2. No one should do anything in the oratorium other than that for which it is intended and from which it takes its name. If perchance some want to pray there even outside the appointed hours, if they are free, one who thinks to do something else there should not be an impediment to them.
3. When you pray to God in psalms and hymns, consider in your heart what you offer with your voice.
4. Do not sing anything other than what you read is to be sung; moreover, what is not written that it should be sung, should not be sung.
As is characteristic of the Augustinian Rule more generally, these directives describe a prayerful disposition more than they lay out a specific prayer practice. Rather than defining the “horas constitutas,” the Rule protects the space of the oratory as a haven for prayer at any time of day. It enjoins devout and contemplative attention to the content of the prayers and denounces mere lip service.10 Curiously, however, despite the repeated mentions of the “appointed hours” and the final command to sing only “what is written” and nothing more, the Rule dictates neither what hours are to be observed nor what specifically is to be sung. Those observing the Augustinian Rule would need a supplementary document providing instructions for the observance of the liturgy in order to be able to observe the Rule fully.
Accordingly, both the Dominican friars and sisters possessed Constitutions which further regulated life within the order. Some sort of customary must have been developed at the order’s founding in 1216, but the earliest surviving set of Dominican Constitutions were ratified at the Most General Chapter in 1228.11 The Constitutions detailed procedures for making changes and amendments, which was steadily and continuously done, especially in the early years.12 The greatest revision of the Constitutions was completed by Master General Raymond of Peñafort, submitted to the General Chapter in 1239, and approved in 1241.13 Although the Dominicans continued to introduce small changes, the bulk of this version of the Constitutions would survive throughout the Middle Ages.
Raymond of Peñafort’s successor as Master General, John of Wildeshausen, initiated a similar revision, unification, and consolidation of the order’s liturgy.14 The General Chapter in 1245 appointed four friars, who were to assemble with all their liturgical books at the Dominican house in Angers to correlate and harmonize the Rite. Although their efforts won final approval at the General Chapter in 1248, implementation of the unified Rite proved difficult in the face of vigorous protest and dissatisfaction. A measure to make adherence to the uniform Rite part of the Constitutions was proposed in 1252 but was never passed into law.15 Only John of Wildeshausen’s successor, Humbert of Romans, would succeed both in creating a uniform liturgy codified in a master exemplar and in enforcing adherence to this Rite through an amendment to the Constitutions.16 From this point forward, Humbert’s Rite was treated as if it were legislation, and changes to the liturgy followed the same procedure of approval as amendments to the Constitutions.17
Having settled the issue of the Dominican liturgy, Humbert turned to the regulation of the women associated with the order. At the time there were at least two sets of statutes in use among the communities
