Humbert had devoted so much energy to the revision and organization of the Dominican Rite, it is baffling that he would not impose its observance on the sisters, as well. Perhaps Humbert felt that the concise Office of the brothers would not suit the women’s need for a longer, slower, and more contemplative service. I find it more likely that the concern was financial or practical: requiring the sisters to obtain all fourteen volumes of Humbert’s Rite would impose an unnecessary expense. The sisters did not need all of the books, since they did not perform Mass as the ordained brothers did.34 This situation must also be considered when interpreting the portion of the women’s Constitutions that Raymond Creytens takes as proof that the Dominican women did not use Humbert’s Office. The chapter on ingress and egress details the procedure for allowing a priest into the cloister to administer communion to a bedridden nun, “prout in ordinario continetur [as contained in the Ordinary].”35 Since Humbert’s Ordinary does not contain the rubrics for administering to the sick, Creytens argues that the nuns must have continued to use a pre-Humbertian Office in which these rites had not been displaced to another liturgical book.36 However, the priest would have had his own book and, especially in the early days of the order, may well have been a secular chaplain appointed by the friars but not belonging to them and therefore not bound to their Rite.37 This passage provides evidence for nothing further than that Humbert did not require the nuns to follow his exemplar.38
Nevertheless, after the decade of labor and strife that had gone into the creation of the Dominican Rite, it seems mad to expect that each individual convent should have begun the process for itself. Indeed, that this was ultimately not expected of them can be seen from surviving ordinances clarifying the implementation of Humbert’s female Constitutions in Teutonia. The anonymous author invokes the injunction from the Augustinian Rule (quod autem non ita scriptum est ut cantetur, non cantetur) but reverses it, enjoining that “quod cantare tenentur, non legant [what they are required to sing, they should not read].” Lest this injunction remain, like the Rule and the Constitutions, too vague to be enforced, he adds, “notulas et libros chorales habeant secundum ordinem [they should have notes and choral books according to the order].”39 The German sisters, at least, were thus expected to make an effort to conform to the same Office as that celebrated by the male branch of the order.40 Their ability to use the Latin text of this Office as a source for contemplative devotion is a different issue, to which I will now turn.
Women’s Literacy in the Constitutions
The Constitutions for Dominican Sisters prescribed a forma vitae in which the Latin-language Divine Office would provide the devotional centerpiece for women of the order. In order to evaluate this expectation fully, we must examine the place of Latin in the sisters’ Constitutions and clarify what we mean by “Latin literacy” among female religious. In the Introduction I surveyed the recent work that has been done to recover the levels and forms of literacy attained by medieval nuns through careful scrutiny of surviving manuscripts. Many of these studies have briefly addressed the issue of normative expectations but correctly conclude that the norms can tell us little about the reality.41 Furthermore, despite recognition of multiple levels of literacy, whether women knew Latin continues to be bound up with discussions of whether they read Latin theological treatises or whether they were capable of composing Latin documents, both of which are separate issues from the Latin of the Office.
With regard to the expectations for Dominican nuns in particular, the question is more difficult to answer, because Humbert of Romans’s final version of their Constitutions contains very little on the matter. Scholars of Dominican women’s literacy have taken recourse to other sources for more insight. Some have looked to the earlier stages of statutes for Dominican women which address the sisters’ education more explicitly and thoroughly.42 One may also turn to Humbert’s model sermon treatise, De eruditione praedicatorum, where he declares women inept for higher learning but advises parents to teach their young daughters the psalter, the Office for the Dead, and the Little Hours of the Virgin in order to prepare them for a religious career.43 It is not clear, however, that these statements affected or were even received by Dominican women.44 Recently, Julie Ann Smith has examined the expectations for literacy as they changed over the evolution of the women’s Constitutions.45 I follow her diachronic approach here but arrive at a different conclusion. Namely, the vagueness of the final Constitutions as regards literacy and learning is legible as something closer to positive encouragement when read against the earlier San Sisto Rule for Magdalenes and the Constitutions for Montargis.
In the 1259 Constitutions, the only instructions concerning teaching or learning within the community are to be found in the chapter on novices.
Item nouicie, et alie sorores que apte sunt, in psalmodia et officio diuino studeant diligenter, preter conuersas, quibus sufficiat ut sciant uel addiscant ea que debent pro horis dicere. Omnes uero in aliquo laborerio addiscendo uel exercendo occupentur.46
Item, novices and other sisters who are fit should apply themselves diligently to psalmody and the Divine Office, except for the laysisters, for whom it is sufficient to know or learn the things they ought to say for the hours. Certainly, in some workroom all should be occupied with learning or doing exercises.
Despite the brevity of this passage it reveals greater expectations than that the sisters would merely learn to sing the Office. True, the conversae simply should learn (addiscant) what they need for the hours, which the previous chapter of the Constitutions had specified as the Pater noster alone.47 Nevertheless, the novices who were to become choir sisters should apply themselves to (studeant) the psalms and the Office. The word choice is telling, as is the injunction that apt sisters should continue to do this after profession.48 Interested and intelligent women are expected to engage the Latin text of the psalms and the Office outside the times ordained for worship. The use of exercendo is also interesting, although ambiguous. Exercitia could refer to contemplative or even mortificatory spiritual exercises, but the Constitutions exclusively use the term disciplina to describe this kind of activity. It would seem, therefore, that some sort of schoolroom is foreseen where sisters may do educational exercises in Latin grammar.
In addition to the passage above, the chapter on prayers for the dead reveals some further information regarding what the laysisters are supposed to say for their hours instead of the Office: yet more repetitions of the Pater noster. “A festo sancti dyonisii ad aduentum pro anniuersario fratrum et sororum, litterate sorores psalterium, non litterate quingenta pater noster dicant [On the Feast of St. Denis in Advent for the anniversary of the brothers and sisters, literate sisters should say the psalter, illiterate sisters five hundred pater nosters].”49 These specifications regarding the prayers of the laysisters help explain why the laysisters must be taught enough to say their prayers. They are also expected to be praying in Latin, even if only the one prayer repeatedly.
Performance of the liturgy and the literacy entailed are briefly at issue in the chapters on punishments. Not paying attention during the hours, laughing in choir, being absent for a silly reason, and singing anything other than what is intended are all considered a medium fault. Not bringing the book with the appropriate reading to collation and, more interestingly, reading or singing badly are considered light faults, although the Constitutions specify that the offending sister is not to be publicly humiliated for her mistake immediately.50 The Constitutions reveal no further information concerning the time of day when learning or studying liturgical texts should occur, nor about appropriate reading or learning material aside from the Office.
In her study, Julie Ann Smith notes that the 1259 Constitutions introduce a clause not found in the earlier statutes. She interprets the passage as a restriction on the women’s reading material, stipulating that “no community was to be given books for reading or transcribing without permission of the Master General or provincial prior.”51 The clause she cites, however, is the last sentence in the section on receiving
