Katya Mouris, ACHA grant-recipient, recounts research in Germany

Katya Mouris
Katya Mouris

Thanks to a grant from the American Catholic Historical Association, I was able to travel this summer to Nuremberg, Germany to complete the archival research for my dissertation. My project is an examination of the life and times of a German nun, Caritas Pirckheimer, from the late fifteenth century into the early years of the Reformation (1520s).

Caritas incorporated a number of personae: a humanist who corresponded with Conrad Celtis and was praised by Erasmus; the abbess of the Poor Clare convent in Nuremberg; and latterly, a passionate defender of the Catholic faith in the face of the rising tide of Lutheranism. Although the Denkwürdigkeiten, her “journal” (really a series of letters) is not unique in detailing its opposition to the Reformation, it is probably the best-known female-authored chronicle of the era. My objective in studying this text and the numerous other letters Caritas left is to demonstrate a continuum in her thought. Having been part of the Observant reform movement in the fifteenth century, she saw no need – and indeed found it spiritually dangerous – to be further “reformed” in the Lutheran sense. While Luther was excoriating the Catholic monastic tradition, Caritas boldly defended it. The intellectual equal of the theologians and the patrician Council members trying to have her convent closed, Caritas was able to match argument for argument. She was, if not the most effective Catholic apologist, certainly an articulate and memorable voice, one worthy of greater study.

In my archival work I was able to find four separate copies of Caritas’s chronicle, which will be useful understanding how the narrative of being oppressed by civic officials, yet still defiant, was constructed. I was also able to locate lists of abbesses of the Nuremberg Poor Clares, which revealed new information about Caritas’s successors. Finally, I found a short series of sermons preached by the convent’s friar-confessor, as well as two Christmas orations by Caritas herself. These texts will do much to enrich my dissertation, providing both previously-unexamined source material and greater chronological breadth than my project previously contained.

Since returning to the USA I have been writing about the Denkwürdigkeiten, discussing its genre and comparing the composition of its narrative with other convent chronicles from the Reformation era. These elements will form the basis of the fourth chapter of my dissertation. Earlier chapters will focus on the role of Observantism in Caritas’s formation, the Renaissance as experienced in Nuremberg, and Caritas’s vision of what humanism ought to look like.

I count myself fortunate not only to have been able to complete my research abroad, but that I was able to be in situ and experience something of Caritas’s life: the chiming bells of St. Lorenz parish church, the busyness of the market square, the timbered medieval buildings. Having read so much about Caritas and her life, it was exciting to be able to behold the “real thing” in person. I am grateful for the financial support of the American Catholic Historical Association that made this trip possible.