Margareta Karthäuserin was a mid-15th century nun at the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg and an exceptionally skilled scribe. [1]
According to some historians, Karthäuserin was part of a group sent from Schönensteinbach to help the Nuremberg convent with the Dominican reform movement. [1] The library at Saint Catherine's was so large that it is believed to have served as a lending library for the whole province of Teutonia. [2] Many of the texts the nuns had copied themselves, [3] possibly up to half of the library holdings. [2] Karthäuserin is considered to have been one of the most skilled scribes of the thirty-two nun-scribes at that convent whose names are known to historians. According to C. G. von Murr, between the years of 1458 and 1470, she copied eight large choir-books which in later years could be found in the Nuremberg town library. [4] Aside from this, she also wrote the Pars Aestivalis of a Missal (1463) and the Pars Hiemalis. The latter was copied with the help of another nun from the same convent, Margareta Imhof (1452). [4]
Karthäuserin is one of the 999 notable women whose names are displayed on the Heritage Floor of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party art installation (1979). [5]
The Order of Preachers abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right founded in France, by a Spanish priest, saint and mystic, Saint Dominic. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally carry the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans. More recently there has been a growing number of associates of the religious sisters who are unrelated to the tertiaries.
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
Jeanne-Paule Marie "Jeannine" Deckers, better known as Sœur Sourire and often called The Singing Nun in English-speaking countries, was a Belgian singer-songwriter and a member of the Dominican Order in Belgium as Sister Luc Gabriel. She acquired widespread fame in 1963 with the release of the Belgian French song "Dominique", which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and other charts. Owing to confusion over the terms of the recording contract, she was reduced to poverty, and also experienced a crisis of faith, quitting the order, though still remaining a Catholic. She died by suicide with her lifelong partner, Annie Pécher.
Scriptorium, literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes.
Æthelburg was Queen of Wessex by marriage to King Ine of Wessex. Perhaps most famed for her act in 722, when she destroyed the stronghold of Taunton in an attempt to find the rebel Ealdbert.
Christina Ebner, was a German Dominican nun, writer and mystic.
Catherine of Bologna [Caterina de' Vigri] was an Italian Poor Clare, writer, teacher, mystic, artist, and saint. The patron saint of artists and against temptations, Catherine de' Vigri was venerated for nearly three centuries in her native Bologna before being formally canonized in 1712 by Pope Clement XI. Her feast day is 9 March.
Claricia or Clarica was a 13th-century German illuminator. She is noted for including a self-portrait in a South German psalter of c. 1200, now in The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. In the self-portrait, she depicts herself as swinging from the tail of a letter Q. Additionally, she inscribed her name over her head.
Sister Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588) was a self-taught nun-artist and the first ever known female Renaissance painter of Florence. She was a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena located in Piazza San Marco, Florence, and was heavily influenced by the teachings of Savonarola and by the artwork of Fra Bartolomeo.
Clara Hätzlerin was a professional scribe in 15th century Augsburg. Her 1471 Liederbuch (songbook), a varied collection of love poems and an important literary manuscript, was among the sources used by composer Carl Orff for his tragic Die Bernauerin (1947).
Chelles Abbey was a Frankish monastery founded around 657/660 during the early medieval period. It was intended initially as a monastery for women; then its reputation for great learning grew, and with the afflux of men wishing to follow the monastic life, a parallel male community was established, creating a double monastery.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger is an American art historian specializing in medieval religious art and illuminated manuscripts. In 2000 he joined the faculty of Harvard University, where in 2008 he was appointed the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture. Hamburger received his B.A., M.A and Ph.D from Yale and has previously held professorships at Oberlin College and the University of Toronto. Elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy in 2001, he has won numerous awards for his publications, among them: the Charles Rufus Morey Prize of the College Art Association (1999), the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize in Art & Music (1999), the Otto Gründler Prize of the International Congress on Medieval Studies (1999), the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History of the American Philosophical Society (1998), the John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America (1994), and the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities of the American Council of Graduate Schools (1991). His research has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2009 Hamburger was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2010, of the American Philosophical Society. In 2015 he was awarded an Anneliese Maier Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2022 he was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the Internationale Gutenberg-Gesellschaft.
Julia Catherine Beckwith was credited as being Canada's first novelist.
The Queen Mary Psalter is a fourteenth-century English psalter named after Mary I of England, who gained possession of it in 1553. The psalter is noted for its beauty and the lavishness of its illustration, and has been called "one of the most extensively illustrated psalters ever produced in Western Europe" and "one of the choicest treasures of the magnificent collection of illuminated MSS. in the British Museum".
The Isabella Psalter, also called the Psalter of Queen Isabella or the Psalter of Isabella of England, is a 14th-century volume containing the Book of Psalms, named for Isabella of France, who is herself depicted in it; it was likely a gift upon her betrothal or marriage. The illuminated manuscript is also notable for its bestiary.
Aemilia Hilaria was a Gallo-Roman physician. She practiced medicine, and wrote books on gynecology and obstetrics. She was called "Hilaria" due to her cheerfulness as a baby.
Agnes d'Harcourt was an author and the abbess of the Abbey of Longchamp.
Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States have played a major role in American religion, education, nursing and social work since the early 19th century. In Catholic Europe, convents were heavily endowed over the centuries, and were sponsored by the aristocracy. Religious orders were founded by entrepreneurial women who saw a need and an opportunity, and were staffed by devout women from poor families. The number of Catholic nuns grew exponentially from about 900 in the year 1840, to a maximum of nearly 200,000 in 1965, falling to 56,000 in 2010. According to an article posted on CatholicPhilly.com, the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, National Religious Retirement Office statistics showed that number as 47,160 in 2016, adding that “about 77 percent of women religious are older than 70.” In March 2022, the NRRO was reporting statistics from 2018, citing the number of professed sisters as 45,100. The network of Catholic institutions provided high status lifetime careers as nuns in parochial schools, hospitals, and orphanages. They were part of an international Catholic network, with considerable movement back and forth from Britain, France, Germany and Canada.
Eufrasia Burlamacchi (1482–1548) was an Italian nun who practiced the art of manuscript illumination.
Maria Ormani degli Albizzi, was an Italian Augustinian Hermit nun-scribe and manuscript illustrator. Her real name was Maria di Ormanno degli Albizzi, born in 1428 in Florence.