Abstract
When the Ottoman forces arrived at the gates of Vienna in 1529, they came against a city defined in part by its Catholic heritage, a landscape in which church, cloister, and cathedral shaped not only the skyline but also mental maps with their enumerations of important civic structures. In this time of army embattlement, the sisters, nuns, and canonesses of the city appeared as part of the citizenry, but only as members of the background realm of daily life and prayer, for the women themselves were securely tucked away. As churches and convents were repurposed for the war effort, the displaced women religious joined up with other groups of nuns from suburban institutions who had fled inside the city gates for protection.1
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Notes
The women of various convents took refuge together during the crisis as churches were taken over as hospitals and as staging ground for military endeavors. The clearest summary of the impact of the siege on Vienna’s convents can be found in the visitation records afterward. Excerpts of these records are available in Theodor Wiedemann, Geschichte der Reformation und Gegenreformation im Lande unter der Enns (Prague: F. Tempsky, 1879, 1880), vol. 2.
Denis Wood and John Fels, “Designs on Signs: Myth and Meaning in Maps,” Cartographica 23 (1986): 54–103.
For collections of images, I have relied particularly on the resources of the Wien Museum and on the published collections by Alfred May, Wien in alten Ansichten: Das Werden der Wiener Vedute, Österreich in alten Ansichten, 2 (Vienna: Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1965);
Ferdinand Opll, Wien im Bild historischer Karten: die Entwicklung der Stadt bis in die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Böhlau, 1983); and the portfolio of maps published as Historischer Atlas von Wien, ed. Felix Czeike, Renate Banik-Schweitzer, Gerhard Meissl, Ferdinand Opll et al., Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Wien, and Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institut für Stadtgeschichtsforschung (Vienna: Holzhausen Druck & Medien, n.d.), but have added other images of the city as I have encountered them.
Klaus Laermann, “Raumerfahrung und Erfahrungsraum: Einige Überlegungen zu Reiseberichten aus Deutschland vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Reise und Utopie: Zur Literatur der Spätaufklärung, ed. Hans Joachim Piechotta (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976), pp. 57–97.
See also Franz Posselt’s 1795 assessment of travel in the Apodemik oder die Kunst zu reisen, in which he asserts “Das Reisen ist also die Schule der Menschen-Kenntnis … In der Geschichte lernen wir nur die Todten kennen, auf Reisen hingegen die Lebenden.” [Travel is the school of human knowledge … In history we learn only to know the dead, when traveling, however, [to know] the survivors.] Quoted in Uli Kutter, “Der Reisende ist dem Philosophen, was der Arzt dem Apotheker—Über Apodemiken und Reisehandbücher,” in Reisekultur: Von der Pilgerfahrt zum modernen Tourismus, ed. Hermann Bausinger, Klaus Beyrer, and Gottfried Korff (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1991), p. 47 [38–47]. On the shifting nature of the readership for this literature,
see William E. Stewart, Die Reisebeschreibung und ihre Theorie im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts, Literatur und Wirklichkeit, 20 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1978).
Stewart, Die Reisebeschreibung und ihre Theorie; Françoise Knopper, Le regard du voyageur en Allemagne du Sud et en Autriche dans les relations de voyageurs allemands, Collection “Germaniques” (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1992); Grete Klingenstein, “The Meanings of ‘Austria’ and ‘Austrian’ in the Eighteenth Century,” in Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory of Ragnhild Hatton, ed. Robert Oresko, G. C. Gibbs, and H. M. Scott (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 423–78;
and Kai Kauffmann, “Es ist nur ein Wien!” Stadtbeschreibungen von Wien 1700 bis 1873: Geschichte eines literarischen Genres der Wiener Publizistik, Literatur in der Geschichte, Geschichte in der Literatur, 29 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1994). If we are to uncover the “experience of the townscape interpreted in its ideological context,” however, as Richard Dennis and Hugh Prince advocate, we should attend to the category of gender in reading this literature.
See Richard Dennis and Hugh Prince, “Research in British Urban Historical Geography,” in Urban Historical Geography: Recent Progress in Britain and Germany, ed. Dietrich Denecke and Gareth Shaw, Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography, 10 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 9–23.
Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, A Norton Critical Edition (New York: Norton, 1999);
Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004);
Adolfo Mussafia, Studien zu den mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden (Vienna: F. Tempsky; continued by Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 1887–1898);
and Heinrich Watenphul, Die Geschichte der Marienlegende von Beatrix der Küsterin, Inaugural Dissertation, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen (Neuwied: Heuser, 1904).
Karl Teply, Türkische Sagen und Legenden um die Kaiserstadt Wien (Vienna: Hermann Böhlau, 1980).
Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti, Theory and History of Literature, 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).
Troy Lovata, Inauthentic Archaeologies: Public Uses and Abuses of the Past (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007).
Richard Perger and Walther Brauneis, Die mittelalterlichen Kirchen und Klöster Wiens, Wiener Geschichtsbücher, 19/20 (Vienna: P. Zsolnay, 1977),
cited as Perger/Brauneis; Felix Czeike, Historisches Lexikon Wien, 5 vols. (Vienna: Kremayr und Scheriau, 1994), cited hereafter as HLW.
J. E. Schlager, Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter, 5 vols. (Vienna: Gerold, 1835–46); Theodor Wiedemann, Geschichte der Frauenklöster St. Laurenz und Maria Magdalena in Wien (Salzburg: Mittermüller, 1883);
Wiedemann HAI, “Zur Geschichte des Frauenklosters St. Jakob in Wien,” Berichte und Mittheilungen des Alterthumsvereins zu Wien 32 (1896): 53–86;
Alfons Žák, “Das Frauenkloster Himmelpforte in Wien (zirka 1131–1586),” Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich, N.F. 4 and 5 (1905 and 1906): 137–224;
N.F. 6 (1907): 93–188; Zák HAI, “Zur Geschichte des Frauenklosters Sankt Klara in Wien,” Monatsblatt des Vereins für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich, 4 (1908/9): 353–58.
Geschichte der Stadt Wien, 6 vols., ed. Heinrich Zimmermann, Albert Starzer, and Anton Mayer (Vienna: Adolf Holzhausen, 1897–1918).
A more recent history of the city is Peter Csendes, Ferdinand Opll, Karl Vocelka, and Anita Traninger, ed., Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt, Bd. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Ersten Wiener Türkenbelagerung, 1529; Bd. 2: Die frühneuzeitliche Residenz (16. bis. 18. Jahrhundert); Bd. 3: Von 1790 bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna: Böhlau, 2001–2006).
Gerhard Winner, Die Klosteraufhebungen in Niederösterreich und Wien, Forschungen zur Kirchengeschichte Österreichs, 3 (Vienna: Herold, 1967). For more complete details on the closing of the women’s houses and the disposition of their material goods, see P. P., “Verzeichnisse der in Ländern der westlichen Hälfte derösterreichischen Monarchie von Kaiser Joseph II. 1782–1790 aufgehobenen Klöster,” Archivalische Zeitschrift, 64, N.F. 6 (1896): 229–79 and 65, N.F. 7 (1897): 46–172; for the Viennese women’s houses in particular see N.F. 7, pp. 82–87. See also Razesberger, “Die Aufhebung der Wiener Frauenklöster.”
Anneliese Stoklaska, Zur Entstehung der ältesten Wiener Frauenklöster, Dissertationen der Universität Wien, 175 (Vienna: VWGÖ, 1986).
Janet K. Page, “‘A Lovely and Perfect Music’: Maria Anna von Raschenau and Music at the Viennese Convent of St Jakob auf der Hülben,” Early Music 38 (2010): 403–22; Page, “A Mid-18th-Century Devotional Book from the Viennese Convent of St. Jacob,” in Music in Eighteenth-Century Life: Cities, Courts, Churches, ed. Mara Parker (Ann Arbor, MI: Steglein Pub., 2006), pp. 3–25; Page, “Music and the Royal Procession in Maria Theresia’s Vienna,” Early Music, 27 (1999): 96–118.
Barbara Schedl, Klosterleben und Stadtkultur im mittelalterlichen Wien: Architektur der religiösen Frauenkommunitäten, Forschungen und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte, Bd. 51 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2009).
The intellectual trends of late twentieth-century medievalist scholarship, particularly the emphasis on “the gothic” and its architectural and artistic resonance, can be seen in the categories applied in Edward Kaufman, Medievalism: An Annotated Bibliography of Recent Research in the Architecture and Art of Britain and North America, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 791 (New York: Garland Pub., 1988).
For a helpful survey of medievalist perspectives, see Michael Alexander, Medievalism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). A rich bibliography is also available online; see Richard Utz and Aneta Dygon, “Medievalism and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Studies,” Perspicuitas (2002): 1–107, http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/english_pubs/6/.
Kathleen Biddick, The Shock of Medievalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998).
Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli, 1987);
Scott G. Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
The widespread tale of the Himmelspförtnerin is recounted, for example, in Gustav Gugitz, ed., Die Sagen und Legenden der Stadt Wien nach den Quellen gesammelt und mit kritischen Erläuterungen herausgegeben, Österreichische Heimat, 17 (Vienna: Brüder Hollinek, 1952), story Nr. 92, pp. 107–9.
See also John Davidson, “The Ballad of a Nun,” The Yellow Book, 3 (1894): 273–79;
reprint as John Davidson, The Ballad of a Nun, illustrated by Paul Henry (London and New York: John Lane, 1905);
and the parody by Owen Seaman, “A Ballad of a Bun,” in The Battle of the Bays (London and New York: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1896), 22–26. For further bibliography, see the discussion of this legend in chapter 5.
[Johann Maria Weissegger von Weisseneck], Beyträge zur Schilderung Wiens (Vienna: [J. von Kurzbeck], 1781); Johann Pezzl, Skizze von Wien: ein Kultur-und Sittenbild aus der josefinischen Zeit, ed. Gustav Gugitz and Anton Schlossar (Graz: Leykam, 1923);
trans. from Johann Pezzl, “Sketch of Vienna,” in Mozart and Vienna, including Selections from Johann Pezzl’s “Sketch of Vienna” (1786–90), abridged and trans. H. C. Robbins Landon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 52–191. Note that such discomfort with women monastics’ callings as signaled through distancing vocabulary is often present whether that outsider be sympathetic co-practitioner or hostile witness with a reforming agenda.
Dietrich Denecke and Gareth Shaw, ed., Urban Historical Geography: Recent Progress in Britain and Germany, Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography, 10 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 18 and 20, citing in particular the work of Denis Cosgrove.
Wood and Fels, “Designs on Signs”; Matthew H. Edney, “Theory and History of Cartography,” Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 185–91;
Juergen Schulz, “Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography before the Year 1500,” The Art Bulletin, 60 (1978): 425–74;
and Geoffrey Broadbent, “A Plan Man’s Guide to the Theory of Signs in Architecture,” Architectural Design 47 (1978): 474–82.
Diane Favro, “Meaning and Experience: Urban History from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 58/3 (1999/2000): 364–73;
Albrecht Classen, “Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: Historical, Mental, Cultural, and Social-Economic Investigations,” in Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 4 (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 1–145.
Victoria E. Thompson, “Telling ‘Spatial Stories’: Urban Space and Bourgeois Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris,” The Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003): 523–56.
Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004);
Diane Yvonne Ghirardo, “The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 60 (2001): 402–31;
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, “The Politics of Body Parts: Contested Topographies in Late-Medieval Avignon,” Speculum 78 (2003): 66–98.
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© 2013 Cynthia J. Cyrus
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Cyrus, C.J. (2013). Setting the Stage. In: Received Medievalisms. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230393585_1
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