Nuns and Lay Women
Women’s responses to Dominican friars’ preaching
were enthusiastic, but their position within the order
remained ambiguous throughout the Middle Ages.
While the friars themselves formed an organization
with a clear chain of command from master general
and general chapter to provincial leaders and priors
of individual convents, the arrangements concerning
women’s houses were varied and subject to frequent,
often disruptive, readjustments. In fact, the only fea-
ture consistently shared by all women’s houses asso-
ciated with Dominican friars was their adherence to
the rather vague Rule of St. Augustine. Many com-
munities were positioned under local bishops, but
enjoyed the spiritual care of the Dominicans, hence
the expression ‘‘nuns of the Order of St. Augustine
under the care of the Friars Preachers,’’ or moniales
Ordinis Sancti Augustini sub cura fratrum praedica-
torum. Some houses earned papal privileges that
placed them directly under jurisdiction of Dominicans
and enabled them to complement the Augustinian
rule with the constitutions inspired by the Dominican
ethos, but even these arrangements were markedly
varied. Master General Humbert of Romans modified
the friars’ constitutions for women’s use in 1259, but
he failed to produce the intended uniformity, for
many communities continued to follow the older con-
stitution originally used at San Sisto, Rome, or simply
abided by local statutes of various types.
The constitutionally complex histories of Domi-
nican women’s communities were matched by the
equally intricate origins of these communities. Many
houses began as communities for Beguines or other
independent religious women. Such was the case with
the vibrant German houses Engeltal and Katharinental
(Diessenhofen), both of which secured a position
within the order during the 1240s. Some were ac-
quired from other orders, among them the renowned
reformed monastery Corpus Domini (1394) in Venice,
originally a Benedictine community. A few monas-
teries resulted from royal or aristocratic bequests,
including King Bela IV of Hungary’s foundation for
his daughter Margaret (1242–1270), a future saint.
More typically, however, Dominican monasteries
were urban foundations by wealthy widows, signorial
rulers, or powerful merchant families.
As there was no central planning concerning the
administration of the houses for Dominican women,
the state of individual communities was a sum of
multiple variants, ranging from the resourcefulness
of the women themselves and the standing of their
secular patrons to the ever-changing reactions of the
friars and the conflicting stances taken by bishops and
popes. Some popes granted considerable favors to
women’s communities. Among them were Innocent
IV, who in the mid-1240s sweepingly incorporated
several women’s houses into the order, and Clement
IV, who in 1267 laid out clear guidelines concerning
Dominican friars’ spiritual duties toward nuns. But
these statements hardly closed the debate concerning
the cura mulierum (care of women) within the order.
The subsequent pronouncements by the popes,
bishops, and leaders of the order continued to adjust
or even reverse earlier privileges. A notable exception
in this pattern was the Observant Reform, which
was launched in the late 1380s and prevalent through-
out the fifteenth century. Within this movement,
aimed at reviving the religious rigor associated with
the early years of the order, some monasteries, such
as Corpus Domini in Venice, St. Dominic in Pisa,
Scho ̈nensteinbach near Colmar, and St. Catherine
in Nuremberg, received unprecedented institutional
stability in exchange for their prohibition of private
ownership, otherwise common in medieval nunneries,
and adherence to strict enclosure (clausura).
The question of women’s status within the order
was further complicated by the presence of lay-
women. While the friars welcomed the rich mystical
culture of the laity, and many groups met in their
churches or even wore the order’s colors of black
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and white, the friars were reluctant to formalize the
bonds with these mulieres religiosae, who were often
perceived as religiously heterodox and economically
unstable. It is therefore striking that Catherine of
Siena (1347–1380), who lived as a Dominican penitent
before Innocent VII approved the Dominican lay rule
in 1405, was the only woman associated with the order
to be canonized during the Middle Ages (1461). (The
canonizations of nuns Margaret of Hungary and
Agnes of Montepulciano [1268–1317] and the lay-
woman Zdislava of Lemberk [1220–1252] from
Poland all occurred in the modern era.)
Dominican nuns’ way of life was clearly distinct
from that of the friars. Whereas the friars were com-
mitted to the itinerant life of learning and preaching,
women’s piety was essentially shaped by the tradition-
al monastic ideal of communal prayer in seclusion.
The friars also received often considerable bequests
in exchange for their spiritual services, but women
were principally dependent on their dowries and
support from wealthy patrons.
