CHAPTER TEN

LOSS AND GAIN IN A SALZBURG CONVENT: TRIDENTINE REFORM, PRINCELY ABSOLUTISM, AND THE OF NONNBERG 1620 TO 1696

Barbara Lawatsch Melton

In 1620, the Benedictine nuns of Nonnberg Abbey were confronted with a fresh initiative by Salzburg’s prince- urging them to complete the implementation of reforms based on provisions of the (1545–63).1 The abbey’s delay in fully complying with instructions communicated forty years earlier by the papal - cio illustrates the convent’s resistance, a posture it shared with many others. But Nonnberg, like other convents, eventually complied and carried out the requisite measures, including the architectural changes necessitated by them. Scholars have extensively documented the restrictive impact of Tridentine reform on early-modern convents, especially the effects associated with strict enclosure. They point to the reduced personal freedom of nuns, decreased autonomy and visibility of convents, expenses of construction necessitated by strict enclosure, disruption of customary forms of worship, and burdensome conflicts with authorities.2 Nearly all of these effects occurred to some degree at

1 Franz Esterl, Chronik des adeligen Benediktiner-Frauen-Stiftes Nonnberg in Salzburg. Vom Entstehen desselben bis zum Jahre 1840 aus den Quellen bearbeitet (Salzburg: Franz Xaver Duyle, 1841), 110–11. 2 Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Discipline, , and Patronage: Spanish Religious Women in a Tridentine Microclimate,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30. 4 (1999): 1010; Silvia Evangelisti, “‘We do not have it, and we do not want it’: Women, Power, and Convent Reform in Florence,” Sixteenth Century Journal 34.3 (2003): 689–91 and throughout; Mary Laven, “Cast Out and Shut In: The Experience of Nuns in Counter- Venice,” in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Pre-Modern Italy, ed. Steven Milner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 93–110; Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 74–83; Ulrike Strasser, “Bones of Contention: Cloistered Nuns, Decorated Relics, and the Contest over Women’s Place in the Public Sphere of Counter-Reformation Munich,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. Archive for Reformation History 90 (1999): 261–67. 260 barbara lawatsch melton

Nonnberg. However, the difficulties and hardships were at least par- tially offset by effects that were experienced as positive by some nuns, if not the entire convent. Among the beneficiaries were former domes- tic servants accepted as lay sisters and musically talented nuns, while the entire convent profited from the innovations resulting, sometimes indirectly, from reform measures, which were also reflected in the architectural transformation of the convent. Moreover, Tridentine impulses, particularly as reflected in Nonnberg’s musical culture and new forms of venerating its sainted first , allowed the entire convent to reassert its significance within the community. Reform measures thus helped lay the groundwork for Nonnberg’s continued survival and connected the convent to some of the modernizing trends associated with confessionalization. The Council of Trent, initiated by Paul III in 1545 to counter- act some of the effects of the Protestant Reformation and bring about a renewal of the Church, published a number of decrees aimed at the reform of Holy Orders, primarily reaffirming regulations already proclaimed before or contained in Benedict’s sixth-century rule. Among the most far-reaching of these reforms was a range of measures designed to enforce clausura, or strict enclosure, which severely restricted nuns’ contacts with the outside world. The provi- sion for strict enclosure of nuns is explicitly identified as an affirma- tion of the constitution Periculoso, which had been published by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298.3 Formulated during the twenty-fifth session of the Council, the decree sets forth that no professed nun will be allowed to leave the convent, except for a lawful reason to be approved by the . Similarly, no one will be allowed to enter the enclosure without written permission of the bishop or the . While in principle nuns had long been enclosed, in practice the requirement had not always been strictly enforced. The Council, however, urged to call upon the aid of the “secular arm” to enforce the pres- ervation of enclosure, and Christian princes and civil magistrates were obliged to provide this assistance under penalty of excommunication.4 Although some voiced strong reservations, eventually clausura was widely enforced, and at many convents this enforcement did represent a radical change involving resistance and . Since the Council

3 H.J. Schroeder, ed. and trans., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Original Text with English Translation (St. Louis, MO: Herder Books, 1955), 220. 4 Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, 220–21.