3 Leaving the Convent? Nuns, Decision-Making, and the Persistence of Convent Congregations During the Early Reformation

When asked in 1533 whether she would follow the new evangelical convent rule, Margarethe von Zedwitz, a Saalburg nun, responded that she would accept “God’s Word” and leave “the shameful, irksome [convent] life.”¹ Her formulaic answer, as recorded by convent visitors, echoed statements six other Saalburg nuns made. However, Zedwitz also asked the visitors for a severance payment (Abfindung), so she could marry and remarked that she hoped that the other nuns would leave her alone after she removed her habit. She later complained about the lack of “food, drink, and clothing” in the convent and informed the visitors of her engagement to “Nickeln N. a noble from Brandenstein” before pressing them to open the convent soon.² Zedwitz’s request for funding, specificity about her marriage plans, and concerns about the congregation were unique among the Saalburg nuns’ statements.

A decade later, Margarethe (Zedwitz) Leupold petitioned for financial aid after her husband’s stroke left him unable to work as a tailor. She began by describing her decision-making process behind her departure from Saalburg. With remarkable precision, Zedwitz pinpointed her 1533 resolve to leave as a direct response to the elector’s command (Befehl) that women leave the convent and marry. She then mentioned that the elector had provided nuns remaining in the convent with all their necessities but that she had received nothing, not even the promised severance, despite her obedience to the elector’s “Christian command and consolation” to do “a good Christian work” by marrying.³ After reviewing the evidence, Duke John Frederick I, elector of Saxony (1532–47), recommended giving Zedwitz an annuity based on “her timely conversion” (zeitlichen bekerung) and her understanding that her monastic life was “against God’s Word.”⁴ His resolution occurred despite the absence of Zedwitz discussing any internal spiritual shift. He also ignored her residual bitterness about the reneged Abfindung that precipitated her marriage to a tailor rather than her affianced noble groom.

The variances demonstrated in Zedwitz’s stated goals, her changing emphasis, and the elector’s interpretation about the rationale for her departure highlight how different making a statement, recounting that decision-making process later, remembering how one made that decision, and interpreting that testimony can be from actually making a decision.⁵ The process by which cloistered women decided whether to leave the convent and adopt evangelical practices did not follow the same pattern as decision-making exhibited by political leaders, secular communities, or even male clergy.⁶ Histories of convent reform during the early Reformation often present nuns as taking firm, unwavering positions about their confessional belief when they stayed or left the convent.⁷ Such concentration on a seemingly distinct, steadfast moment of decision-making often mistakes personal survival strategy for a confessional choice and obfuscates indecision, underlying ambiguity, or ongoing considerations about the reform movement; and ignores pragmatic reasons of nuns when they remained in or departed the convent. Thus, a nun might explain her decision shortly before or after her departure based on situational rationales and current rhetorical expectations. However, she later might retell that memory as a decision made for different religious, political, or pragmatic reasons. Thus, a later reported memory of past decisions often showed a reorganization and elaboration of earlier events to fit the accepted decision-making model when a nun told her story. Alternatively, as in the case of Zedwitz, her account of the past might highlight her actions as an obedient subject, even as she subtly expresses her resentment about her ruler’s unfulfilled promise.

This chapter will explore the complexity of nuns’ decision-making process about evangelical teachings and monastic life during the early Reformation. Between 1523 and 1534, at least 366 nuns from twenty-three convents in Ernestine Saxony confronted multiple occasions when they faced a decision about whether to leave their convents. Fewer than half of these nuns, around 147, left (Figure 3.2).⁸ In addition, most convents housed nuns after the official 1525 reform declaration in electoral Saxony, with the majority (eighteen) open in 1530 and over a third (nine) still housing nuns in 1540. Nuns in Ernestine Saxony exhibited diverse strategies relevant to their personal and collective experiences, beliefs, and reactions that might appear to have been a decision without necessarily reflecting a firmness of conviction, a conversion, or a statement of faith.⁹

Evidence, including printed pamphlets, recorded testimony, reports, and petitions, from three distinct moments (1525, 1533/34, and between 1540 and 1560) offer a unique record from these women about their decisions. Their statements in petitions and during visitations in electoral Saxony in the mid-sixteenth century highlight an ongoing tension between their words and actions in response to the electoral convent policy. Similar complexities in nuns’ actions, opinions, and personal beliefs occurred in Hesse, Albertine Saxony, and other regions of the Holy Roman Empire. Shifting nuns’ testimony found in petitions and visitations from the mid-sixteenth century shows the impact theological and polemic ideals by Martin Luther and his followers about post-reform monastic life had on women’s explanation of their choices. Regardless of personal religious beliefs and practices, many nuns refused to leave their monastic houses, leaving staunchly evangelical rulers the task of managing the spiritual lives of confessionally-fluid, confessionally-ambiguous, and mixed-confessional convent congregations.

During an early evening in 1528, Ursula von Münsterberg (c.1491–c.1534), a middle-aged nun, fled the convent of Freiberg in Albertine Saxony together with two other nuns.¹⁰ She famously discussed her rationale for departure in a pamphlet published “from her own hand” and accompanied by a letter from Luther.¹¹ Neither Münsterberg’s subsequent life and decisions nor the decisions of the fifteen evangelical nuns and first evangelical abbess remaining in the convent of Freiberg have attracted much scholarly attention, as most studies focus on the fact of her departure without context.¹²

The first impulse of Münsterberg’s family and Duke John was to provide Münsterberg and her two companions with the financial means to laicize through marriage.¹³ Münsterberg did not choose to marry, although she gave no direct indication whether this choice was because of her inclination, age, or position as a former nun. Instead, she spent some time in Wittenberg before deciding to leave to live with her sister.¹⁴ Even as the pamphlet describing her flight circulated, Münsterberg made a third decision following her sister’s death in 1529 that discussions of female religious life during the Reformation also overlook. She sought an “honorable place” in Gernrode, an evangelical house of secular canonesses.¹⁵ Elisabeth von Weida, abbess of Gernrode (1501–32), granted Münsterberg’s appeal in 1530 only after Duke John supported her request and promised an appropriate sum for her care.¹⁶

A nun’s decision to stay in or leave a convent was seldom dichotomous, monocausal, or final. Münsterberg was cognizant of the theological debates over scripture and what regional reformers considered Christian. Perhaps she was even convinced by the evangelical position on religious and monastic matters. At the same time, Münsterberg’s desire to return to a formal religious life is beyond doubt, although her silence due to ill health and her subsequent death leaves it uncertain whether she ever entered Gernrode. Likely, these were not her only motivations for leaving or returning to convent life. Her need for care and lack of family to aid her may be part of the reason to return. In addition, Münsterberg’s decision to leave Freiburg may not have been solely for religious reasons as her former prioress’ testimony about Münsterberg’s conflicts in Freiberg suggests. Katharina Freiberg, prioress of Freiberg (1522–29) indicated that Münsterberg resisted her requests to participate in certain ritual aspects of convent life and complained about poor food and other matters. Thus, establishing a nun’s religious belief is often complicated by the political, social, and financial circumstances she faced.

Decisions made by nuns to leave or stay in their convents have become a significant part of a historical narrative on convent reform during the early Reformation. Then and now, observers often equate flight from the convent with acceptance of the evangelical position and remaining in the convent as an active resistance to those same teachings. The absence from historical discussions of some nuns’ reconsideration of their choices and the complexity and shifts in their rationale in favor of a single public decision has meant that later historians often miss the indecision, unique solutions, or changes of mind that many women experienced. In the case of women famous for their flights, such as Münsterberg, scholars did not mention their return to convents in later biographies or editions of published works. Fewer have considered why women may have left or stayed beyond religious belief.

What becomes evident upon reexamination the early sixteenth century is that many evangelical women remained in their convents with their traditional sisters, even when they accepted the evangelical theological arguments or followed the new evangelical church ordinances and convent rules. Traditional nuns also left their convents for diverse reasons, including lack of resources, fear of attack, and desire for traditional devotional practice. Some women changed their minds about leaving the convent and attempted to return to a religious house regardless of whether they accepted ongoing reforms. For these women, a single decision to leave or stay in a convent did not necessarily reflect their genuine spiritual beliefs or whole monastic experience. Such ambiguity and fluidity did not stop Luther and his followers from asserting that the nuns’ departure showed that they wholeheartedly supported the reform movement during the 1520s.

Published narratives of escape or departure from convents influenced women’s accounts describing their decision to leave the convent in their petitions for financial aid from the elector of Saxony. In 1527, Dorothea Merzsch, a former Sitzenroda nun, reported that she had entered the convent because her father knew no better way for her salvation than this “special service to God.” Through God’s illumination, she gradually recognized that human understanding made the convent a “prison” that bound “poor children” by their ignorance of God’s Word. Now that she had learned the truth, she requested the elector’s permission and financial support to leave the convent.¹⁷ Such memories recorded soon after the nun’s departure often presented her decisions in this form to display current expectations of religious conviction. Later accounts of such events often represented acts that were illegal at the time as heroic and motivated by religious reasons.

In 1525, Elector John initially refused any repatriation requests from monks and nuns pushed out of their houses during the Peasants’ War, arguing that they had violated their oaths and shown marked immorality outside of their monastic houses.¹⁸ He found that voicing a resolute intention of de facto closure of those monastic institutions attacked and abandoned during the Peasants’ War, and facing displaced nuns were quite different matters. In early 1526, the Gotha city council requested assistance from Elector John on behalf of fourteen Holy Cross nuns, who had been unable to marry and whose families refused to care for them. After describing providing for the community over the winter, the council explained that the city did not possess enough resources to provide long-term care for the women “in their misery, hunger, and thirst.”¹⁹ Staying in or leaving the convent, choosing to leave or remain in the convent, and deciding about religious belief and practice were not necessarily the same for many nuns in 1525. Many women made this point in their appeals to the elector of Saxony in the aftermath of the Peasants’ War when they cited specific reasons as prompting their departure. In 1525, Margarethe Buchner asked to return to Oberweimar because her departure was not a personal choice but one that her fellow nuns had forced on her during the attack on the convent.²⁰ In many cases, John relented and allowed some women to return to their convent.

Some nuns attempted to return to their damaged convents despite John’s proposed restrictions.²¹ In her 1525 and 1526 letters to the convent’s patron Burggrave Sigmund von Kirchberg, Adelheid Rynnen, abbess of Kapellendorf (1509–26), explained that local clergy had advised the nuns to leave the convent when the local uprising threatened their region the previous year. Although the women had taken refuge in the village, they considered the situation to be a temporary, emergency measure. Despite the destruction of the building and lands, they affirmed their intention to return to their convent and accept whatever poverty that might entail.²² Despite Sigmund’s 1526 plea on their behalf that the women wanted to “return to the convent” to live out the remainder of their lives, Elector John of Saxony instead moved the remaining nuns to Heusdorf and confiscated the convent property in 1527.²³ In doing so, secular authorities continued to relocate nuns from different convent congregations into a single convent to manage the remaining nuns while sequestering convent property even when the crisis prompted the move.

The reality of these women’s vulnerability modified his policy even as he used their circumstances as leverage in negotiations to solidify control over the finances and devotional life in convents. Following the damage done to their convent, the Allendorf abbess and nuns petitioned the elector to return to their convent, citing their unprotected situation outside the convent and the resulting poverty that forced them to beg for food. After representing their departure as involuntary, they justified their desire to return as motivated by hunger and physical danger rather than religious convictions.²⁴ John threatened to deny their request unless they agreed to give up their old convent manager and attend evangelical sermons. After explaining that he was “unwilling to protect monastic life” and would not tolerate any rituals deemed “against God’s Word,” John offered to provide them with “food and drink” and the Salzungen pastor’s spiritual guidance to help them transition to the new evangelical teachings.²⁵ Many women who found themselves unexpectedly outside of the convent soon confronted the limited or non-existent alternatives to their monastic life, leading many to demand a return to the convents and discouraging others from ever leaving, regardless of belief. Other nuns refused to leave their convents, fearing losing financial security and the support of their fellow nuns.

Even as he gained partial financial and administrative control over some convents with this policy, John discovered that it did not mean nuns recognized his authority or cooperated in negotiations. In 1525, electoral officials reported that the abbess and four remaining nuns in Petersberg near Eisenach had very few provisions left after a recent attack.²⁶ When they suggested that the convent congregation relocate, the abbess expressed her concern that another convent would not accept or care for her because of her age and infirmity. Two other nuns, Weiers and Frenzck, said they wanted to stay until their relatives could take them. Another nun, Odelie von Einsiedel, reported that she owned a house in the town where she was willing to live with her relatives and would let Weiers come to live with them if the official provided her sufficient funds.²⁷ Ultimately the officials reported that they had been unable to resolve what they described as a chaotic situation.²⁸ In 1527, Katharina von Kolbe, abbess of St. Michael’s in Jena (1499–1527), requested that John return their convent treasury he had confiscated during the war as a “consolation in their poverty.”²⁹ Each argument given by these women provided a justification for remaining or additional financial assistance that the officials could not ignore. Together these arguments represented a multifaceted strategy that gained the women more time in the convent during negotiations, which they hoped would mean they could remain. As seen in Chapter 2, nuns were more than willing to use courts to challenge secular attempts at property confiscation. However, as Kolbe’s response indicates, pleas of poverty also provided significant leverage for individual nuns and convent congregations seeking to remain in their convents and maintain their authority.

While nuns responded evasively to questions in the mid-1520s, many women became less guarded in their responses as imperial legal protections secured their right to remain and allowed them to disregard some secular demands without losing financial support. Having already decided to stay, the women assumed the visitors could assess and improve their practical circumstances. During the 1527 visitation of Roda and Jena in the district of Leuchtenburg, the first indication emerged that nuns understood visitation’s function differently than the visitors did. Upon the visitors’ arrival, both convent congregations handed them a petition for financial assistance, emphasizing their age, frailty, and poverty to underscore the duke’s responsibility to look after and provide for them.³⁰ The visitors duly informed the elector that the “poor” nuns in Roda and Jena lacked even the most necessary provisions. Despite these distractions, visitors attempted to focus on assessing the convent clergy’s suitability for the congregation’s spiritual well-being and convincing the nuns to leave. At the end of their report, they recommended that John provide each convent with a well-qualified, well-compensated pastor, reminding him how vital preaching was for the convent’s spiritual well-being.³¹ Managing convent congregations that secular authorities assumed had been sacralized emerged as a common concern in evangelical areas throughout the Holy Roman Empire.

Even as visitors assessed convents and parishes in Ernestine Saxony, Hessian officials prepared for the orderly departures from monastic houses in the Landgraviate of Hesse. In late 1527, Christian Schmalstieg, the territorial steward, accompanied by Bernhard Klaut, a Kassel citizen and scribe, visited fourteen of twenty-three convents and fourteen of twenty-seven monasteries under Landgrave Philipp’s jurisdiction to make the financial arrangements for monks’ and nuns’ departure.³² As Schmalstieg asked each woman about her convent dowry and her intention to leave the convent, Klaut recorded her response in his notebook, including any additional comments she made.³³ Confident that the women would be enthusiastic about leaving, they had prepared a form letter renouncing any further rights to convent property (Verzicht Brief) for the women to copy and sign. (Figure 3.3 a, b) Landgrave Philipp’s confirmation response (also a form letter) stated that the woman in question had chosen to leave after “honorable consideration and [her] own Christian motivation.”³⁴ While thus the sequestration process slowed subsequent requests for funding from former nuns, it did not end them.³⁵ In addition, not all nuns were willing to sign such a document.

The Hessian nuns, especially those who had spent decades in the convent, expressed their unequivocal intent to remain in the convent and their unwillingness to make any decision during the visitation. In Ahnaberg near Kassel, Katharina Korbach declared that “she preferred to stay in the convent.” She then added that if that proved impossible, she would consider moving “to another convent because she did not want to be in the world.”³⁶ Most elderly Ahnaberg nuns followed her lead. Anna von Boyneburg, in contrast, asked for two weeks to consider her options and consult with her family. She qualified this response by adding that she was inclined to leave the convent, an opinion also expressed by Anna Schencken.³⁷ Although about half the nuns expressed willingness to leave and accepted the severance payment negotiated, the most common response was that the woman wanted to stay but offered to discuss the matter with relatives. Such responses left the negotiations open-ended. In most cases, it would be weeks and months before the majority of Ahnaberg nuns would eventually sign a Verzichtsbrief, with the last departing in 1528.³⁸

The collective decisions of the convent congregation played a role in whether women chose to stay or leave. After they discovered that most of the nuns agreed to leave Weissenstein near Kassel, Cylosa and Barbara (Beata) Meissenbusch declared that they “did not intend to stay if the others were moving out of the convent.”³⁹ The entire convent congregation of Georgenberg near Frankenberg responded as a group that they wished “to remain by their rule and statutes” in their convent. Schmalstieg warned the duke might move them to other convents.⁴⁰ In this case, most of the convent congregation remained adamant in refusing to negotiate, with the last six nuns finally signing a Verzichtsbrief in 1569 that permitted them to remain in the convent with financial support until their death in return for turning the convent properties over to the landgrave.⁴¹ Most of the convent congregations were not so uniform in their response as these two extremes. Perhaps because no one asked them, no nun mentioned any inclination toward the reform movement, although they freely discussed their illnesses, age, and frailties.

Nuns often sought to improve their circumstances whenever possible, even if that meant requesting a move to another convent to continue their monastic life. In 1528, visitors, including Philipp Melanchthon, reported that three of the five remaining nuns in Oberweimar begged to move to another convent, preferably in Jena, because they did not have enough provisions in their current situation. Duke John complied with the wishes of the three elderly nuns and ordered the Jena provost to provide them with all their necessities, including food and clothing.⁴² More striking in such petitions and requests from nuns, regardless of their position on evangelical teachings, is how nuns negotiated ways to remain in a convent, even if it involved a move. In 1526, magistrate Hans Bohmer and convent guardian Balthasar Lusche sought to convince two nuns to leave St. Nicholas in Eisenach, promising them a portion of their inheritance. In response, the self-described “old and weak,” sixty-six-year-old Agnes Zweifel, a nun for forty-nine years, eventually only agreed to leave if she could enter the convent at Gotha, receive an annuity, and retain full access to her former dowry.⁴³ In the aftermath of the Peasants’ War, many nuns remained cautious about making any decisions about leaving their convents since the process of exit was far from secure at that time.

Financial considerations were not always the stated, or even the real, motivation for decisions about returning to the convent or moving to another. In 1529, two nuns from a convent in Gotha asked that they be allowed to return to their convent, promising to give up their severance in return for the right to live out their days in the convent.⁴⁴ In 1528, six Oberweimar nuns who had moved to Jena asked to return to their convent because “they were poor, old, and sick,” and needed the care and provisions available in their convent.⁴⁵ John ordered the local authorities to provide the “old, weak, and feeble monastics with clothes, food, drink, wine, and other life necessities” but did not approve their return to Oberweimar.⁴⁶ His repeated requests to local officials to respond to this and similar claims indicates his concern in ensuring that the women were safe and did not starve.

Secular officials expressed suspicion about such arguments even as they balanced the public concern about the well-being of nuns. In 1526, Elector John wrote to Johann Donati, provost of Sitzenroda, to discuss an elderly nun’s care after the abbess requested additional funds to pay a doctor or apothecary. John asked Donati whether the nun was genuinely ill and ordered him to provide her with the appropriate medical care if he confirmed that she was in need.⁴⁷ As nuns faced doubts about whether they were using ill health to get around attempts to either move them to other convents or get them to leave, they added additional information into their petitions. In 1529, Martha Burghartz wrote to the elector that she had been a Kapellendorf nun for sixty-five years, from her childhood through old age until her move to Heusdorf with several other nuns in 1527. She explained her decision to remain a nun as motivated by her age and ill health and that she had “no one to flee to,” even as she described how it saddened her that “all [her] friends” had left for the “secular life.” After confirming her account, the Heusdorf prior and the Roßla magistrate recommended that the electoral officials consent to her remaining in the convent.⁴⁸ Deciding to leave the convent was not always an option for many nuns, so many tried to negotiate a continued, precarious existence in convents.

By the late 1520s, evangelical reformers and officials considered the flight from convents and marriages, which they previously considered signs that nuns embraced the reform movement, as questionable motives. Despite her letter to the elector and setting aside her habit, Dorothea Merzsch had remained in Sitzenroda because she promised to marry Johann Donati, the convent administrator (Probst). In 1528, convent visitors commanded her to leave immediately and go to her relatives in Torgau.⁴⁹ Nuns changed their argumentation in petitions in response to such concerns. In a 1529 plea for financial assistance, Anna von Wald explained that she had fled Heusdorf after the peasant troops’ arrival forced her to flee in 1525. She arrived in Weimar, where she stayed with Hans Keller, a relative, until the following year when she married Jörg Nortwin, a local barber “sent by God.” She explained that only his illness and the birth of a child forced her to request her dowry back from the convent and a raise in her annuity, promising that she would renounce any future claims on the convent. She then signed herself first as “a Weimar citizen” and then “once was in the convent of Heusdorf,” avoiding the terms nun or former nun. She emphasized her honorable marriage long after departing the convent and her legitimate position in the community as worthy of the elector’s “mercy and kindness.”⁵⁰ In their petitions, nuns now concentrated on their post-convent lives to deflect questions about their motivations for departure.

Some nuns refused to leave their convents despite their stated willingness to follow evangelical teachings. In 1525, five evangelical-leaning, Cronschwitz nuns requested the elector’s assistance to help them reform their convent. Using polemical language to condemn monastic life, they described how as children, they had not realized that the convent life was “a tyrannical, Babylonian captivity of their conscience, souls, and bodies.” They asserted that they now understood and accepted the new teachings.⁵¹ Rather than seeking to leave the convent and marry, they requested that the elector send them an evangelical pastor to confront six Dominican monks, including two serving as nuns’ confessors, living in the convent after having fled their monastery. They explained that the monks’ dismissal of the new teachings jeopardized the nuns’ souls and fostered discord among the nuns.⁵² Living side by side in the convent meant that some nuns continued traditional practices while others followed the new rituals introduced by reformers. Some convent congregations showed signs of developing distinct hybridity as they continued to practice together. At the same time, other nuns and convent congregations developed a fluid spectrum of unique religious practices and beliefs when women of diverse beliefs remained in the convent together. In 1527, Sebastian von Kötteritz discovered some Brehna nuns reading the reformer Luther, the reform critic Hieronymus Emser, and a mixed-confessional group of additional authors. He expressed concern that they did so without guidance, thus leaving the nuns to their own “conscience and accounting to God.”⁵³ The continued presence of traditional and evangelical nuns in convents after 1525 created effectively mixed-confessional convents in Saxony.

As shown in Chapter 2, Luther had unequivocally advocated the principle of not using force in matters of faith, a position that informed secular policy toward nuns who refused to leave convents after 1525. Nuns still made individual, often spontaneous decisions to leave their convents, fleeing in secret, often at night, without previous consultation with fellow nuns, family and friends, or rulers. Although Luther and his clerical and political supporters initially encouraged all nuns’ departures from the convent as necessary and encouraged it regardless of method, they regarded nuns who left their convents and reentered secular life for other than spiritual reasons as questionable. Even in 1525, Luther had argued against allowing the departure of any woman who had not come to a genuine understanding of God’s Word because she would escape the ability of preachers and secular leaders to educate them by leaving. Luther also shifted his responses to questions about what decisions the nuns could make on their own. In 1528, Luther joined the visitors to Sitzenroda in overruling the abbesses’ right to remove the convent pastor.⁵⁴ He and other reformers also stopped advocating that nuns should be free to leave the convent without consulting family and friends.

During the decade between the Peasants’ War and the conclusion of the second convent visitation in 1534, nuns left, reentered, and stayed in convents without any formal process. Many women became adept at presenting their current circumstances as in line with the overall spiritual expectations without expressing open acceptance or resistance to specific reforms. Some nuns even negotiated for financial assistance to stay in their former convents based on their circumstances and obedience. At the same time, reformers and officials expressed concerns about under what circumstances a woman had left a convent. Was it honorable for a woman to leave the convent without permission, or in the middle of the night? What if she decided to return to the convent? Could a woman decide to stay in the convent if she accepted the Augsburg Confession and followed the evangelical church ordinance? Who should determine whether a nun could leave the convent and with what criteria?

Although Luther and his supporters accepted decisions made by nuns such as Münsterberg as spiritually necessary, leaving the convent remained controversial even among followers of the evangelical movement.⁵⁵ In some cases, a nun’s action during the early reform movement later became problematic in hindsight. The many women remaining in or returning to convents created new concerns for secular leaders and communities. As these women continually renegotiated their financial settlements inside and outside the convent, they told the story of their departure in new ways to meet these changing political and religious concerns. Leaving the convent was not an autonomous decision or independent choice for many nuns, especially when events, threats, and external expectations decided for them.

During a renewed attempt to empty St. Michael’s convent in Jena in 1533, Elector John told his officials to offer the nuns additional funds and grain from the convent goods to leave.⁵⁶ Rather than departing the convent, the nuns reaffirmed their intention to remain in the convent. After describing themselves as “obedient and dutiful subjects,” they reminded John of his duty to assist “old, weak, sick, and feeble” women. They then requested that he reinstate their annuities and their control over convent incomes.⁵⁷ The nuns’ unwillingness to follow the evangelical church ordinance annoyed local citizens and clergy. In 1538 and again in 1543, the Jena city council asked Elector John Frederick to move the city preacher into the convent building because of its proximity to St. Michael’s church, now serving as the city’s parish church. After reminding him that only “three or four” nuns remained and the parish repaired the convent at its own expense, they mentioned that caring for so few women, as John had promised in 1525, would be less expensive elsewhere.⁵⁸ John Frederick explained that he had promised that the nuns could remain in their convent and would “be tolerated” there by the city. He then offered to help the town identify another location for the pastor’s house.⁵⁹ Although unable to convince the nuns to leave, John Frederick rejected the city council’s attempts to evict the women from the convent even as he had inventoried and confiscated the financial administration of the convent’s incomes and property.

Many evangelical leaders, including Luther, assumed that the women would be receptive to the release from their vows and convent life. They did not count on so many nuns unwilling to “go out into the world.” In the decades after 1525, John, John Frederick, and other secular rulers grappled with the continued presence of nuns in convents and legal restrictions preventing them from forcibly removing the women. Secular officials assumed the unexpected responsibility for the women’s spiritual and financial well-being when nuns refused to depart. Despite the resolute, devotionally-fluid remaining nuns, they still expected the women to conform to new church regulations. They also developed new tactics to encourage departures and processes to regulate departures, laicize nuns, and desacralize convents for those nuns willing to leave. To facilitate these changes, rulers developed new methods to achieve spiritual and fiscal compliance. As the case of St. Michael’s in Jena shows, these efforts often left visitors negotiating with nuns as they insisted that officials accept their decision to stay.

Using Hesse as a model, electoral officials in Saxony developed a convent reform policy and the necessary administrative structure in the late 1520s and early 1530s. They established two institutions for managing the spiritual and financial implications of women staying in or leaving the convent: convent visitations and sequestration.⁶⁰ The visitors, the superintendents, and secular officials conducting the convent visitations assessed compliance with church ordinances and made recommendations about convent administrators and clergy. The sequestrators dealt with the fiscal management of confiscated convent and church goods. In Ernestine Saxony, they also oversaw the distribution of funds and provisions for nuns leaving the convent and those remaining in the convent with the help of convent stewards and local secular administrators where the nuns settled.

These were not the only changes they sought. During the late 1520s before the creation of the office of sequesters, the visitors in Saxony served fiscal and religious functions when visiting convents. To assure that someone fulfilled these functions in accordance with the electoral church ordinance in their absence, they sought to appoint their chosen clergy and secular convent administrators. In 1529, the visitors to Jena outlined expectations for a newly installed secular convent steward to “ensure that the nuns were provided with worship services [and] sacraments” and manage the convent’s financial and legal affairs.⁶¹ When new convent administrators were not installed by 1533, John Frederick informed the sequestrators that they must confirm that nuns in Jena “and in all convents” received their promised provisions and annuities on time so that they suffered no deprivations.⁶² As the frequent complaints from nuns and former nuns about non-payment or missing provisions indicate, administrative consistency proved elusive for decades.

Life for remaining nuns was often precarious as they entered the complicated situation where officials intended the convent congregation to die out over time and made few substantive investments. In 1533, the two still living Oberweimar nuns—Margarethe Eger and Kunigund Berlisdorf—explained that they had moved to Jena because of “need and great poverty” and that Melanchthon had promised to provide them with clothing and other necessities. They acknowledged that the convent administrator provided them with the same food and drink as the other nuns but that he had not given them clothes because the other nuns received their clothing from their relatives. After reminding the elector that they had been in Oberweimar for forty and fifty years, they requested funds to live out their “last days” well, pointing out that the elector provided twelve gulden to two nuns who went to Erfurt.⁶³ Officials gave the women six gulden, which led them to renew their request for additional funds to the new elector, John Frederick, the following year. This time their plea was that their fellow nun, Susanna Schumann, who was barely able to provide for her own “daily bread” after leaving the convent, was now an “old, sick, and weak” woman. They explained that Schumann wanted to spend the rest of her days in Jena and needed financial assistance for clothing and food.⁶⁴ Although he did not grant her the right to enter Jena, John Frederick ordered the sequestrators to ensure she received ten gulden per year.⁶⁵

After the Diet of Augsburg (1530), the elector and his officials concentrated on requiring the remaining nuns to follow the evangelical church ordinances. They still encouraged nuns to leave but more cautiously because of concern among pastors, theologians, and the laity about the illicit connotations of nuns leaving in secret or at night without official permission. Visitors created a stepped, public process, which involved secular participation when nuns decided to leave the convent. The 1531 instructions to visitors proposed that Brehna nuns, especially the younger ones, should leave the convent and “give themselves into marriage” only after getting advance permission from their relatives or the local administrator and abbess. John promised to provide a severance payment “for their welfare and honor” only to nuns following this requirement.⁶⁶ In this supervised exit process, a nun announced her decision to leave, asked for official permission, and ceased wearing her habit in the convent. Only then would the electoral officials negotiate a stipend or pension and sign a formal renunciation agreement (Verzichtsbrief) with a nun.

As confessionally-fluid and mixed-devotional congregations developed, visitors faced a new function: keeping harmony within the convent. During the 1531 visitation, Justus Jonas, Benedikt Pauli, Hans von Taubenheim, and Sebastian von Kötteritz declared their intention to restore the “unity of their monastic peace” in Brehna so that the nuns could worship together.⁶⁷ Accomplishing their goal proved challenging, leading visitors to focus on incremental changes that might visibly reunify the congregation and improve internal dynamics. In a 1533 letter to the Thuringian sequestrators, Elector John Frederick asserted that providing the Heusdorf nuns with regulation would help them to “renounce the mischief and contempt” within the convent congregation without external interference.⁶⁸ By placing the burden of negotiating their differences on the nuns, the officials hoped to avoid using force to influence the nuns’ behavior or decisions, a tactic that had unexpected results.

Saxon visitors implemented their convent reforms during their 1533–34 visitations to five convents (Altenburg, Cronschwitz, Nimbschen, Remse, and Saalburg). They interviewed seventy-one of the seventy-seven remaining nuns (six were sick or did not appear) and demanded that each nun state whether she intended to remain in the convent. They then asked whether she would set aside “papist ceremonies,” accept “God’s will,” and abide by the territorial church ordinance. After this, they asked for verbal confirmation of each woman’s acceptance of evangelical devotional rituals and markers of laicization, most notably donning lay clothing.⁶⁹ The visitors handed each abbess a convent rule outlining the required spiritual and devotional practices in her convent.⁷⁰ The visitors expected the remaining nuns to adopt the new rituals and liturgy once they had these documents. They also explained the formal process by which they could leave with an annuity, dowry, or severance payment if they received the elector, visitors, or abbess’s permission. Twelve of the seventy-seven women left their convent, and ten women moved to another convent. The majority remained firm in their earlier decision to stay in the convent, regardless of their stated willingness to follow the territorial church ordinance and convent rule.

While the visitors did not transcribe what each woman said verbatim and certainly redacted their testimony for official review, they record unique testimony in their reports to indicate the sources of non-compliance. Overall, the nuns’ responses were mixed: eighteen adamantly refused to comply; eight stated they would pray to God for guidance; nine promised to give up their habits or ask family members for advice; fourteen reported that they would cease wearing their habits but gave no other promises; sixteen expressed acceptance of select aspects of the church ordinance and convent rule such as willingness to listen to the gospel, accept communion in both kinds, or even leave the convents; four avoided answering any questions at all; and visitors described some women as “old,” “weak,” “bad,” or “willful” with no recorded comments. The overall diversity of responses suggests individual decision-making about compliance with the visitors’ demands. The non-answers and requests for time to think also demonstrate nuns’ willingness to obfuscate or stall by using vague or indirect responses.

In addition to changes in questions, the visitors’ recording methods changed as they reacted to these mixed responses. During the 1533 convent visitation to Saalburg, the visitors portrayed their interviews as negotiation and provided detailed notes from the meetings. All nine nuns interviewed expressed their willingness to listen to “God’s Word,” with six stating that they intended to stay in the convent and wear their habits. After a lengthy explanation about why she did not want to go into the world, Anna Knobloch made an atypical direct statement about why she refused to take communion in both kinds by asserting that it was not “the old custom.” Three nuns expressed some willingness to consider the new teachings: Fronica von Drachsdorf thought she might give up her habit; Catharina Roder stated that she would wear her habit in the convent but would give it up if her brother removed her from the convent; and, as seen at the outset of this chapter, Margarethe von Zedwitz enthusiastically declared her decision to leave.⁷¹

With the problematic internal dynamics previously found in Roda and Brehna in mind, the visitors also asked the nuns to describe what problems existed in Saalburg. The responses included complaints about the Dobeneck sisters’ dividing the position as abbess (twice), the chronic lack of sufficient food and clothing (four times), and a request to appoint an administrator to keep the local lord from stealing wood (once). Some additional responses pointed to personal animosity. Roder complained that Zedwitz “had stripped off her veil an hour previously” while bragging that a “beautiful man” would take her away from “the poverty of the convent.” Then she pressed the visitors to ask her brother about allowing her to leave.⁷² Many nuns’ unwillingness to engage with the new teachings and others’ use of the visitation to sort out the internal problems was not an auspicious start for convent reform.

The visitors found equally complex dynamics within other convent congregations. Focusing initially on the clergy serving in Cronschwitz, they reported that Wolfgang Calixtus, the convent pastor, conducted “the sermon and teachings, and devotional rituals and practices” in a “Christian” way according to the church ordinance.⁷³ Since he intended to leave, they recommended finding a married pastor to bring the “papist” nuns to the gospel and foster some “unity and friendliness” within the convent.⁷⁴ Because of the ongoing disunity among the Cronschwitz nuns, the visitors either did not question them or record their responses, choosing instead to list who wore habits to the interview: thirteen had removed their habits while fourteen, including the abbess, had not (Figure 3.4 a and b).⁷⁵ Like Saalburg, the nine Remse nuns interviewed gave diverse responses to the visitors’ questions about whether they would comply with the convent rule. Openly hostile to changes, Abbess Veronica Grüner vowed that she would “hinder the other nuns from hearing God’s Word” in any way she could. Elisabeth Holeuffer declared that she was unwilling to exchange her habit for secular clothing in any circumstances. In contrast, Margarethe Wolframsdorf testified that she would follow the church ordinance and would gladly leave the convent. None of the remaining nuns expressed any opinion one way or another, other than to state their intent to pray for “God’s mercy.”⁷⁶ Most responses showed that the women still made decisions within their convent congregation, and some women remained unwilling to state their confessional position to the visitors or their fellow nuns.

When the visitors interviewed the nuns in 1534, they encountered distinctive local convent cultures. The visitors praised the Nimbschen convent congregation as “entirely Christian” (ganz christlich) for diligently attending sermons and taking communion in both kinds.⁷⁷ They also realized that their interventions influenced convent dynamics but as they had expected. When they returned to Saalburg, they discovered that the nuns had made their compliance or non-compliance visible: five nuns still wore their habits while four had adopted lay clothing. In addition, those unwilling to comply now forcefully expressed their opinion to the visitors. Still wearing her habit, Helena Dobeneck, one of the two sister abbesses, demanded that the visitors respect “her belief,” including wearing her habit and receiving the Eucharist in one kind.⁷⁸ The visitors admonished Dobeneck and the rest of the congregation to follow the territorial devotional practices but took no action against her.⁷⁹ A similar visible shift in compliance occurred in Cronschwitz. After replacing the pastor, another five nuns set aside their habits, and two women left the convent.⁸⁰ Not all changes pleased visitors. The Brehna nuns exhibited increased discord about devotional differences after the 1531 visitation. In 1537, Conrad Glischen, pastor of Brehna, reported that some traditional nuns continuing their “malicious” (mutwillig) rituals in the convent prevented evangelical nuns from worshiping according to the new rituals.⁸¹ The varied responses in these convents showed that nuns still made public declarations that balanced their beliefs with those favored by visitors, pastors, and influential members of the convent congregation.

The preeminence of internal, communal decision-making processes for a convent congregation is most evident in the consensus reached among the Altenburg nuns between 1534 and 1538. They were more outspoken in their responses on devotional practices than nuns in the other regional convents. In 1534, the eleven nuns interviewed gave diverse responses: six adamantly refused to accept the ordinance, with the visitors describing several as “stubborn” (halsstarrig). One nun, Anna Bresen, answered that she would take communion in both kinds but would not follow other aspects of the church ordinance. The four remaining nuns would consider taking communion in both kinds only if God, or, in one case, her parents, approved.⁸² Disappointed by these responses, the visitors disrupted the convent customs by requiring the nuns to attend devotional service at the parish church, expecting this move to bolster their acceptance of communion in both kinds.

Objecting to this order, the nuns’ relatives requested that the city provide a pastor for the convent, noting that some women were unable to walk that far and worrying that the “common man” might “curse or mock” the women as they walked through the streets to church every day.⁸³ The former electoral secretary, Georg Spalatin (1484–1545), now pastor of Altenburg, dubbed the women the most “stubborn” group of nuns in electoral Saxony. After reminding the duke that the women had refused to accept the “Christian rituals and ordinance,” he argued that requiring them to hear God’s Word in the city church would force them to confront their “damned monastic life.”⁸⁴ In 1536, the nuns contacted Georg of Albertine Saxony about this treatment. In response, he praised them for upholding the Christian church and standing firm despite the pressure to conform they faced.⁸⁵ His unwillingness to provide funds or public support had more to do with the politics of crossing territorial boundaries than with any lack of support for the nuns.

By the late 1530s, the nuns’ choices about convent life diminished as the dukes in both Saxonies asserted control over convent property and devotional practices. In 1538, John Frederick sent local visitors to question the Altenburg nuns again to assess the level of the “unchristian” nuns’ recalcitrance. They instructed the nuns to prepare to move to Cronschwitz, where they would be “provided with all necessary provisions, … hear God’s Word, and receive the Christian sacrament.”⁸⁶ With little room to negotiate, the women gave unequivocal responses to the questions. The nuns almost uniformly denied the efficacy of communion in both kinds and remained adamant about retaining key elements of their monastic lives. Barbara Reich, the previous abbess, refused to take communion any way except how “she had been instructed from her childhood up.” Stating that “she wanted to follow God’s Word,” Barbara Stein confirmed her refusal to renounce her convent vows. Elisabeth Gross declared communion in both kinds as “against her belief and conscience” and stated she would “stick to her gospel.” Even Anna Bresen explained that she would do nothing “against her heart,” including taking communion in both kinds, a significant change from her equivocation in 1534.⁸⁷ Anna von Schönberg argued that although she did not think it mattered what form of communion she took, she intended to remain in Altenburg until the convent congregation decided otherwise.⁸⁸ Despite evidence of some differences in responses, the reluctance of even the evangelical-leaning Altenburg nuns to break rank with their traditional sisters highlighted the entrenched convent culture. It also demonstrated how external threats to destroy that culture drew the nuns together as they identified common beliefs and practices.

This reaction from the convent congregation did not escape the visitors. Spalatin reported his suspicion that these “stubborn” responses showed that the women had rehearsed them. He also noted that none of the women were willing to move to Cronschwitz even though it also belonged to the order of Mary Magdalene.⁸⁹ The confirmation of his assumption came indirectly. As two nuns’ relatives reported, the visitors informed the nuns that they would no longer tolerate the nuns’ “unchristian, papist ways,” and gave them four weeks to vacate the convent. If they wanted to continue a monastic life, they could go to Cronschwitz, where they would “hear God’s Word truly preached.” If not, they should expect to leave convent life altogether.⁹⁰ Ultimately, the nuns’ families announced that they consented to the visitors moving their daughters and sisters to Cronschwitz.⁹¹

Even as their relatives negotiated on their behalf, the convent congregation devised their own plan to preserve their convent congregation. They again contacted Duke Georg, asking him to permit the entire convent congregation, including the lay sisters, to join a convent in his region.⁹² Although documentation about what happened is lacking, the convent congregation’s decision to remain in Altenburg prevailed, although not as they might have hoped. In 1540, they faced a new challenge when officials moved nuns from Riesa in Albertine Saxony into their convent.⁹³

They would not have faced a much different fate in Cronschwitz as Saxon rulers used strategic convent consolidation to decrease convent congregations. In 1543, the eight remaining Cronschwitz nuns explained that while they, as “poor, world-abandoned women,” would welcome an annuity for their upkeep, they still intended to remain in the convent for the rest of their lives.⁹⁴ In a later letter to the sequestrators, they described finding a letter in their church outlining the visitors’ intention to move them to another location. The nuns pleaded that they were too old to change their lives and feared being taunted without protection outside of Cronschwitz.⁹⁵ In a separate letter, former Prioress Anna von Gera expressed her hope that this order did not include her house located near the convent where she planned to live for the rest of her life.⁹⁶ John Frederick responded that he understood the upheaval his command entailed but explained that he considered these actions as necessary to “comfortably” house them. He then “mercifully” permitted the nuns in the convent and Anna to remain in their current location for the “remainder of their lives.”⁹⁷

This setback did not stop John Frederick from attempting such a consolidation elsewhere. In 1544, he ordered the Thuringian comptroller and bailiff for Jena to negotiate with the last two nuns, Ursula von Dölen and Katharina Rinckers, in St. Michael’s in Jena. He suggested they find the women housing after they agreed to reconsider the city’s offer. Their most urgent request was that their accommodation should be “comfortable” and that it should be near the convent, a sign that their current housing no longer was and that they intended to leave on their terms.⁹⁸ A later report revealed that they, like Anna von Gera, continued to live “as if they were still in the convent.”⁹⁹

A similar dismantling of monastic life followed in Albertine Saxony when the evangelical Duke Henry of Saxony succeeded Duke George. Henry ordered the inventorying, visitation, and sequestration of the territorial convents almost immediately, using the personnel from electoral Saxony.¹⁰⁰ Some nuns received the news enthusiastically. When asked if she would be willing to leave during the 1540 visitation, Cecilia von Haugwitz, abbess St. Georg in Leipzig (1537–40), asked the visitors to relieve her of her office immediately because she was ready to leave.¹⁰¹ However, most nuns were guarded in their responses, answering, like former abbess Margarethe Pflug, that they did not want to do anything or refusing to answer the question “without first consulting the bishop and relatives.” Like Anna Widemann and Margaretha Winkler, others stated that they “just wanted to be obedient.”¹⁰² This deference to family and bishop in 1540 marked a dramatic shift from the first groups of nuns who often left in defiance of their families’ wishes or opposition to the ruler’s wishes.

Crossing boundaries and temporary assimilation as a strategy to remain in the convent proved difficult as nuns sought ways to skirt regulations while securing a stable existence. Numerous reports, including one from their brother Hans Meckler, reached the elector that Elisabeth and Margarethe Meckler, two former nuns from Oberweimar, had returned to monastic life in Albertine Saxony.¹⁰³ Meckler explained that his sisters left Oberweimar, where they had been nuns for forty years, during the “unchristian peasants’ rebellion.”¹⁰⁴ While they lived with him in Naumburg, the two women had removed their habits, attended evangelical services, taken communion in both kinds, and received an annuity from the duke. After they left his home, perhaps at his insistence, the women returned to their “godless ways” and wearing their habits when they entered the convent of Zscheiplitz as guests. They eventually moved to the convent of Beuditz, located in Albertine Saxony, which Hans Meckler described as being in the grasp of “a godless papist sect,” to “do papist works” and “hear God’s Word” as they pleased.¹⁰⁵ Hans Munch, the Oberweimar provost, confirmed that the women had followed the territorial church ordinance while in Oberweimar but “shamed and blasphemed” God’s Word in Beuditz. He then reported that the two women had visited Oberweimar to convince the remaining nuns to join them in Beuditz, where they lived a “papist life and customs” according to their consciences.¹⁰⁶

As happened after 1525, nuns returning to convents needed to demonstrate a non-religious reason for returning to monastic life, lest authorities suspect the women of lapsing into “the Roman superstition.” In 1539, Elisabeth Meckler explained that she and her sister had fled the convent because of threats to Oberweimar, where she was abbess, during the Peasants’ War. She then described how they had wandered around “like pilgrims” and suffered great poverty until a convent in “Duke George’s land” accepted them as guests.¹⁰⁷ She placed implicit responsibility for their decision to return to the convent on the elector for failing to provide them with necessary protection and financial support. Using this approach could be problematic when the confessional situation changed. During the 1540 visitation of Langendorf, where she ended up after Beuditz went bankrupt, Elisabeth Meckler admitted to receiving the Eucharist in Merseburg from a monk driven from Chemnitz by reformers.¹⁰⁸ This incident confirmed the reports of her following traditional devotional rituals and an underground group of monks and priests willing to assist with maintaining traditional sacraments. Both continued to concern visitors and ducal officials.

The calculated responses of Meckler and the many other nuns in Saxony demonstrate these women’s comprehension of the consequences of staying and leaving and the necessity of external support for their decisions. In Albertine Saxony, as previously in Ernestine Saxony, the complex reactions of the nuns necessitated a process that defied a simple dissolution of convents. Whether nuns decided to leave or stay in the convent, they insisted that officials respect their decision and provide them with the financial support and protection they needed. Legal decisions on convent property that uniformly upheld the women’s right to their convent dowries strengthened their requests at least through the first decades after reform. Other evangelical regions showed a similar shift, particularly when accommodating elderly nuns. However, what these women did in those convents continued to concern officials throughout the mid-sixteenth century.

The evolving memory in accounts of past deeds, as seen in the varied responses of Zedwitz, occurred as nuns reorganized and explicated past events to fit the accepted model on why they chose to leave. At the same time, establishing a formal procedure for deciding to stay or leave in 1534 left former nuns who had exited the convent before that date in a precarious position when petitioning for funding from sequestrators. Their resolve in leaving their convents before any official legalization of the evangelical movement or official protocol later left them vulnerable. Although early reformers had heralded these women’s actions as heroic, rulers, families, and church officials later viewed these same actions as violating their new expectations about how nuns should leave convents. Between the 1530s and 1550s, former nuns crafted shifting narratives on remaining in, returning to, and leaving convents that reflected current attitudes toward convent life. Thus, they might present their past decisions as motivated by spiritual enlightenment, polemical discussions of monastic life, obedience to rulers or family, pragmatic concerns, or demonstrations of confessional adherence to avoid any potential interpretations of their actions as immoral. Instead of focusing on their reasons for staying in the convent, remaining nuns made funding appeals that avoided discussions of monastic life. They also demonstrated their morality and obedience in the convent to counter remaining stigmas from early reformation polemic and rhetoric about monastic life. Both groups incorporated rhetorical tropes and countered prevailing negative polemic about their current state (nun or former nun) discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 to strengthen their argument for additional financial assistance from secular authorities.

One group of former nuns, those leaving the convent first, emphasized their early departure from the convent before it was forced, legal, or expected as evidence of swift understanding of the dangers in convent life and unqualified commitment to the reform movement. In 1538, Ave von Grosse, who left the Nimbschen with Katharina von Bora in 1523, reminded the elector that she was among the “first nine nuns out” and sacrificed everything when she fled. She also mentioned that she had waited to marry, underscoring that her motivation was theological rather than concupiscence as reform critics often accused.¹⁰⁹ Although Anna von Schaurodt, a former nun from St. Michael in Jena who left and married in 1525, did not make this argument when asking for additional funds for her household needs and her son’s education, the sequestrator did. He noted that Schaurodt was “just about the first to leave” and that she did so after the “true announcement and illumination of God’s Word.”¹¹⁰ These narratives utilized the wording and content of early reform rhetoric denouncing monastic life much like that they would have heard in the early 1520s when making their decisions. In 1544, Elisabeth Steinbrecher of Arnstadt described her decision to leave Oberweimar as beginning with God’s “opening of his heavenly treasure of the divine word.” After she learned that the “falsely named religious, monkish and nunnish, estate was godless,” she decided with her pastor and the elector’s support to leave to marry in 1525. During the intervening years of poverty, she never doubted God even as the “godless papists heeded married priests, monks, and nuns as motivated by impertinence and lust.”¹¹¹ In these narratives of the decision-making process, the early former nuns deflected attention from actions not consistent with the later process by focusing on the spiritual reasons for departure and the former nuns’ virtuous and Christian behavior rather than marriage. In doing so, they also countered lingering polemic criticizing what reform critics perceived as departures by lascivious nuns.

Former nuns and their supporters used scriptural justification, permission from the authorities, and their decision to marry with their parental involvement to demonstrate these women’s earlier actions as motivated by personal morality and deference to textual and spiritual authority. In 1533, Christoph Goldacker zu Tennenberg wrote on behalf of Claus Werner, a Waltershausen burgher, and his wife, Elisabeth Hoffmeister, a former lay sister from St. Nicholas in Eisenach. Goldacker explained that Hoffmeister had learned about the dangers that the cloistered life presented to her soul from God’s Word and chose to leave the convent and marry for “this and many other Christian reasons.” He confirmed that she had many health problems (ihre leyb vhast ermattet soll) that stemmed from her arduous work in the convent. In addition, the couple had many small children, which resulted in severe poverty despite their diligence, virtue, and honor. He recommended the elector grant the couple a decent sum to help them, which the Waltershausen city council seconded.¹¹² Their statements echoed Luther’s words in 1523 and followed the new process expected for a formal decision to leave the convent. In 1533, Katharina Trenk, a former nun from Creuzburg, wrote that the word of God “freed” her and “many other souls” from the “human prison” (menschliche versteckunge). Once she was out, she decided to marry because marriage was of greater “spiritual esteem than the monastic life.”¹¹³ Her stepped process emphasized evangelical scriptural interpretation and expectations of marriage found in secular convent rules and evangelical sermons.

Former nuns departing around 1534 attributed their decisions to clerical instruction on monastic life or reading scripture and highlighted their acceptance of the laicization. In a 1534 petition to the sequestrators, four former Cronschwitz nuns described their departure from “unfemale burden” in the convent for the “benefit of their soul” and “conscience” and their entrance into “god ordained, Christian” marriage “with the permission and previous knowledge” of the elector. They then requested a severance to maintain their honor and avoid suffering scarcity for themselves and their minor children.¹¹⁴ In her 1537 request to increase her annuity, Katharina (Schöpperitz) Reichman, formerly a nun in Cronschwitz, explained that she had left the convent around 1534 after visitors taught her what an unchristian life she lived in the convent. She then described how she married as “ordered by God” following her convent departure.¹¹⁵ Utilizing the rhetoric found in evangelical sermons and convent rules from the 1530s that the monastic life was not the way to salvation, even women who had entered the convent without a convent dowry or inheritance could request compensation.

For those women who were not among the first to leave their convents but still left in the 1520s, many emphasized diverse aspects of their departure story to justify additional funding. Some discussed scriptural and clerical guidance as bringing about their departure. Barbara Sixt of Eisenach explained that her parents had forced her into the convent in Eisenach to appeal for an annuity. During the Peasants’ War, evangelical teachings convinced her to leave the convent and marry, an account confirmed by the magistrate in Eisenach.¹¹⁶ Many nuns who departed their convents later suffered crushing poverty after leaving their convents and added this to their petitions. In 1541, Elisabeth Techwitz, a former nun in Nimbschen, described her discovery of the gospel after thirty years as a nun. She asserted that her subsequent convent departure in 1525 occurred with Duke John and her abbess’s permission and her family’s understanding. After leaving her convent with nothing, her illnesses and weakness made her a burden to her child-rich brother who already had many minor dependents. This situation led to her petition for the same annuities given to her fellow nuns from Nimbschen.¹¹⁷ In both cases, the women used arguments that emphasized the role the evangelical teachings and secular authority had facilitated their decision, emphasizing territorial responsibility for their departures and their subsequent well-being.

By the late 1530s and 1540s, many former nuns who left in the 1520s emphasized their Christian lives as wives and mothers after departure. In her 1537 petition for funds to send her five small children to school, Elisabeth Dering, a former nun from Roda, claimed she remained a nun “until [she] learned through the Holy Scripture … of another way to holiness … and decided to enter marriage.”¹¹⁸ In 1540, Margarethe Blankenburg, a former nun from the Holy Cross in Gotha, wrote to explain that she had left the convent “a year or two” before the Peasants’ War to marry. Although she admitted that she had received a small compensation, she described the poverty faced by her large family. She then explained that she had given birth to seven children, four of whom survived, including one significantly disabled child. Hans Fledner, representing the city of Gotha, confirmed that Blankenburg was “one of the first” to leave the convent without mentioning her family circumstances.¹¹⁹ In 1542, Dorothea von Zettwitz, a former noble nun from Cronschwitz and a Weida city secretary’s wife, requested a portion of her 600-gulden convent dowry. She explained her 1526 departure as occurring with the permission of the elector and noted that she was “obedient to God’s Word as the first who left the convent to marry.” She concluded that she intended to use the funds to send her fifteen-year-old son Michael to study theology at Wittenberg.¹²⁰ In their later petitions, many former nuns mentioned how they came to understand that the convent life was not acceptable, their reasons for choosing marriage, and their virtuous actions under all circumstances.

Sometimes these narrative shifts and rhetorical emphasis in seeking aid become obvious when following a group of nuns over a few decades. When the Ichtershausen nuns became homeless after the brutal storming of the convent in 1525, Abbess Katharina Frenckel asked Count Günther of Schwarzburg for permission for herself and four other nuns to settle in Arnstadt and support themselves by making and selling handicrafts.¹²¹ Their arguments and petitions in 1525 were pragmatic as they were seven years later but with a change of emphasis on who should support them. In 1532, the surviving nuns from Ichtershausen asked for additional compensation to supplement what they had received in 1525 because some were now “old, weak, and poor” while others were “married, and so burdened with children that they suffered need.”¹²² In 1534, Dorothea Spättler’s brother complained to the sequestrators about his fruitless attempts to reclaim his sister’s inheritance from the convent provost.¹²³ That their requests were not tied to memories of departure or their spiritual state, although some mentioned marriage, does hint at concern about meeting the expected laicization process. By the 1540s, nuns’ recitations of how they left the convent became a vital part of the petition. In 1540, Volkstädt stated that when Katharina Gebhardt, a former Ichtershausen nun, left the convent during the Peasants’ War, she did not do so “secretly or silently” but with the permission of her parents, with whom she then resided until she married honorably. He elaborated that she and her husband had raised their children as Christians.¹²⁴ Gebhardt thus took the time to make her decision, consulted with her parents, and then lived an honorable, Christian life first as a dutiful daughter and then wife, quite different from the sense of confusion and privation in the earlier petitions.

The former nuns’ narratives describing their decisions to leave the convent evolved to reflect currently accepted reasons, as petitions submitted in different years from the same nun show. In 1538, Margarethe von Böse, a former nun from Cronschwitz, who had left the convent just prior to the 1533 visitation, described how the death of her husband Joachim von Steinsdorf, the administrator of Cronschwitz, left her homeless. She asked to remain on the convent property in an old fisherman’s cottage for the remainder of her life.¹²⁵ Her 1540 petition described how she had entered the convent as a four-year-old child and lived there twenty-five years as a nun until she “honorably” requested permission to leave her monastic life to marry in 1533.¹²⁶ In 1552, she again appealed to the elector after the house she and her sister lived in had burned down, killing her sister. This time she emphasized that she and her sister “recognized” that monastic life was wrong from “God’s teaching in the gospel,” after which she decided to leave “such cruelty” and “enter marriage,” living as a good wife until the death of her husband.¹²⁷ The development of her narrative shifted as she moved from citing poverty to describing her early entry into the convent and her later departure process to finally emphasizing her departure from monastic life as motivated by understanding the gospel. In this way, she reshaped over time the narrative of her decision to leave to emphasize a solely spiritual motivation for departure.

Nuns returning to the convent also crafted narratives of their decisions to defend against moral improprieties or confessional failings. Part of the reason for this was an expectation that the elector would not welcome such requests. The Oberweimar provost explained that he thought it was the elector and sequestrator’s policy not to provide former nuns with any financial support if they returned to monastic life.¹²⁸ After rumors circulated that she had entered a convent in Erfurt to practice the “old evil traditions,” Katharina Sanders responded that she and her sister had been nuns in Oberweimar for “a long time.” In her request for an annuity, she described how she had held the office of bursar until being forced to leave the convent in 1525, providing evidence of her virtuous and stable life as a nun.¹²⁹ Sanders explained that she had decided to return to the convent because of her illness, her sister’s death, and crushing poverty, which meant she could no longer care for herself.¹³⁰ She presented her decision to return as one based on pragmatic reasons alone, avoiding any discussion of her religious belief. Despite his avowed policy, the elector accepted Sanders’ explanation and granted her request due to her “age and feebleness” so that she could survive.¹³¹ In doing so, he prioritized his policy of caring for elderly nuns. These women could only counter suspicion that they had religious reasons for seeking out convent life by highlighted their non-religious reasons for returning.

Some women added a new narrative form to their reasons for leaving or returning to the convent: suffering for belief. This argument emerged as the financial situation of former nuns, married or not, disintegrated. The term “honest poor” soon included former nuns and their families. Despite previously foreswearing all future claims on convent property upon receiving lump-sum severance after their departure, numerous former nuns fell into poverty because of personal crises, health issues, and financial shortfalls. Unable to depend on family or community networks, many former nuns petitioned the elector for additional funds well after they departed from the convent. These petitions increased as women entered middle age, on the death or disability of a spouse, the arrival of numerous children, when funds were needed for the apprenticeships or education of children, and when personal illness in middle age increased financial demands on them. As they aged, their situations became even more precarious. In these petitions for aid, the former nuns’ post-monastic vignettes emphasized spiritual and physical suffering resulting from their adherence to evangelical teachings. Those petitions written later in life also included the sufferings brought on by personal tragedies, poor health, and social isolation.

This approach was most evident in petitions from nuns and lay sisters who had entered the convent with little or no funding because the initial sequestration policies pegged severance payments to convent dowries. Those women with modest claims to this compensation often went without if they left early in the reform process. For those who returned to their families, the death of relatives brought renewed financial need. In her 1534 appeal for help, Margarethe Gebenn explained that her brother had retrieved her from St. Nicholas convent in Eisenach during the Peasants’ War. His recent death left her impoverished and sick without any resources.¹³² Her poverty was not enough; she had to explain why she had left the convent and establish that she had done it with a relative’s permission. Whether or not they married did not necessarily improve the financial situation of former nuns, and circumstances could change rapidly due to the death of a husband, sibling, or parent.

Some returning nuns stated that their religious belief remained in line with the church ordinance, even as they noted that their physical necessities drove them back into the convent. In 1567, Elisabeth Breul stated that during the Peasants’ War, Duke John permitted her and her fellow nuns to return to their convent in Eisenach after they agreed to give up “papacy and accept the teaching of the pure gospel.” When all the other nuns died, she agreed to move into a small hut with provisions enough to live, but a recent provost had curtailed those provisions. She asked the elector to give it back since, as ruler, he was the protector of “the poor, widows, and orphans.”¹³³ Her experience with a change in circumstances in the later sixteenth century was not unique. In 1560, a Jena official told Ursula von Dölen that she had to leave the house on the convent property she had lived in since she agreed to leave the convent in 1544 and move to what officials later described as a rundown property on the edge of the city wall.¹³⁴

Many women added additional discussion of the trials and tribulations outside of the convent and the suffering they endured in service and as wives and mothers as they aged. In 1543, Afra von Obernitz, a former Saalburg nun, stated that she had been barely seven years old when placed in the convent where she then lived for eighteen years and earned a reputation as a “spiritual nun.” She described her suffering as she read scripture and heard the preacher’s sermons about the “damned” and “irksome” monastic life, leading her to comprehend that life in the convent was not the road to salvation that she once believed. Her brother urged her to seek the local ruler and her abbess’s permission to leave the convent around 1528. Once out, she served as a maid for fifteen years and earned her way. However, as she got older and could not work, she found that her brother and sister were unable to support her. She then requested the same amount given to the nuns remaining in the convent.¹³⁵

This rhetorical shift in petitions is particularly striking in the later petitions from married former nuns. In 1546, Ursula (von Döhlen) Töpper described how her parents forced her “into the damned monasticism” as a child. She had lived a difficult life in Cronschwitz until she decided to marry a nobleman, Melchior Töpper zu Schönbach, twelve years previously. She described the challenges and “burdens” of her marriage, including her husband’s illnesses and their many small children, which left them destitute after using up his wealth.¹³⁶ Although women used evangelical polemic, sermons, and church ordinances circulating in the 1520s and 1530s to fashion descriptions of their pre-and post-convent decisions and lives, their emphasis on the suffering in their post-convent life was new.

Older nuns had difficulty finding marriage partners. Of more immediate concern, many worried about their lack of resources necessary for their care in old age without family and community networks to support them. In 1538, Margarethe Helwig, a former lay sister in Nimbschen, explained that she had worked hard in the convent kitchen and barn for many years before leaving the convent in 1523. Since her departure, she had searched for work but now was old and weak and had “no one” to help her. Gangolf von Heiligen confirmed that Helwig had “worked hard with diligence, without idleness, and with great loyalty” during her ten years of convent service and had been honorable and hardworking outside the convent. The elector recommended giving her an annuity of grain to help her, although she had brought nothing to the convent.¹³⁷

Having a family did not necessarily mean that daughters and wives found a sympathetic, supportive family willing to assist them. In her 1546 petition for an annuity in addition to her original severance payment, Barbara Röder, a former nun from Lausnitz, described how her father abandoned her into the convent when she was a child “who knew nothing of the world.” She remained there for fifteen years, with a reputation as a “chaste, obedient nun,” until she learned of God’s Word and realized that “her monastic life was not beneficial for her salvation.” During the Peasants’ War, she left the “corrupted life in the convent” with the elector’s permission and gave herself over to “the rule of Christ.” Because her family refused to give her a dowry, she served as a maid for her parents. Her sisters treated her like a “Cinderella” (Ascherbruedell), and the situation became intolerable after her father’s death. She was careful to point out that she entered a “Christian marriage” with a poor Weida citizen several years after her father’s death.¹³⁸ Regardless of their previous lives as nuns, Helwig and Röder showed how they exemplified the attributes of the “honest poor,” leading officials to provide them with financial assistance unavailable otherwise.

In later appeals, many former nuns, especially those in domestic service or whose husbands had died, noted that they could no longer work. Without children, family support, or property, they had little to fall back on in their later years. After the 1552 death of her husband, Anna Guldemundt, a former nun in Heusdorf, requested an annuity increase to the level of the other nuns. She described her current suffering resulting from several physical problems and reported her lack of wealth.¹³⁹ After thanking the elector for the five gulden awarded to her, she informed him that it was not enough for “a poor, old, and weak woman” to survive. She reminded him that she had spent “the best years of her life” in the convent and had brought in more than she had received. She concluded that remaining in Heusdorf would have meant getting the care she needed, but she had followed the scriptural example of the wedding of Cana and entered the married state.¹⁴⁰ Her statement made clear that the elector should take her earlier decision to leave the convent and marry into consideration when assessing her annuity. John Frederick responded by doubling her annuity to ten gulden and increasing her grain allowance.¹⁴¹

Many former nuns explained that a gradual shift in their understanding of the role the convent and marriage played in salvation motivated their convent departure. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, this dichotomy in the evangelical polemic and sermons circulating in the early 1520s had a damaging impact on convents. As these petitions indicate, the former nuns, at least by the time they were appealing for pensions, used this very dichotomy to defend their departures as demonstrations of a response to these warnings. Their accounts of a gradual process that led to a personal decision to leave the convent and marry are similar to the personal stories told by priests who decided to marry. However, the presentation differs in significant ways. The former nuns told the story of their decision as a multi-part process. First, they realized that convent life was “useless” or “a human construct” long before their subsequent decisions to leave the convent and marry. Second, they presented “God’s Word” or “Holy Scripture” as the source of their decision rather than doubt their personal ability to remain celibate. None of the nuns referenced a personal physical struggle that assisted in their decision. Finally, many of the nuns also mentioned that they did not leave the convent until they sought the permission of some authority to validate their decision, whether it was from a parent, pastor, or political authority. Even when a nun left her convent in the first wave of departures or during the Peasants’ War, most emphasized that they were virtuous before and after their decisions. Many also emphasized that they left during the daytime or in circumstances beyond their control.

Despite Luther’s assertion that nuns should be free to decide whether to leave the convent, the reality was quite different. Nuns were not free agents; they remained legally under the control of their abbesses, parents, and territorial rulers. Nuns faced additional public scrutiny meaning they could not choose to leave independently, or officials might consider their subsequent life and marriages suspect. This position may explain why nuns became so careful to explain that they left “in the light of day” with abbess, parental, or state permission. This rhetorical construction protected them and their families from the legal ignominy potential if someone involuntarily removed them or if some dispute over the action occurred. After the official creation of a formal petition process for funds, women and their supporters included her honor, decision-making process, and Christian behavior after her departure in their departure narratives. Their early entry and lengthy career as nuns made their transition to life outside of the convent difficult for many nuns. In these petitions, the emphasis on youth at profession of vows, permission of the authorities to leave the convent, and honorable marriage justified requests for additional funds. The women leaving later in life demonstrated a Christian life, even in the face of suffering, after departing the convent. They showed that they genuinely lived a spiritual life that had not existed within the convent, even as they had lived virtuously there as well.

Authorities and later confessional historians often grafted their expectation that nuns made clear choices to stay or leave on top of the reality of what amounted to micro-decisions or, in some cases, rhetorical strategies used by nuns to survive or achieve personal goals. What becomes apparent upon closer examination of the petitions and testimony of these women is that they did not make simple yes or no choices to embrace or resist the reform movement. In addition, factors other than religious belief or affiliation often went into these decisions, especially in 1525 and beyond. Faced with a myriad of options about specific religious rituals, external practices, and internal beliefs, most nuns underwent an ongoing process of confronting aspects of the reform movement based on their personal and collective social and financial circumstances. Letters to reformers, testimony to visitors, and memories and presentations of their decision-making process years, even decades, later in petitions to the elector of Saxony, convent provosts, and the sequestrators provide a unique window into exploring how women, particularly those in convents, confronted the Reformation. They also show how the women chose to present decisions to embrace or reject the new religious rituals and practices.

Although authorities and later historians accepted specific markers as defining confession, a closer look at the context indicates the women may not have viewed such moments as markers in that way. Even the exemplary women praised by Luther and other Lutheran pastors in pamphlets rethought their decision once they left the convent. As the changing arguments of Zettwitz show, the reason she gave for departure varied over time and circumstance as she struggled to survive the reality of life after departing a convent. The attempt to return to a convent life by Ursula von Münsterberg shows that the decision made was not final, even when published in a pamphlet. For Münsterberg, her sister’s death and her inability to find a stable home led her to seek a return to the convent. Her religious motives remain unclear, although she sought out an evangelical convent when she decided to return to monastic life. Elisabeth Meckler, who left and entered several convents for reasons beyond her control, shows a similar complexity in her choices when confronted by the Peasants’ War, poverty, her sister’s death, and her desire for a cloistered life and the Eucharist. Many nuns understood the discussions over theology, scripture, and regional religious politics and used that knowledge to present their reasons to leave, stay, or return. Nevertheless, the given rationale behind their decisions remained complicated, multifaceted, and changeable for most nuns and was often dependent on a narrative designed to achieve their goals.