Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's Chronicle of the Dominican Observance by Claire Taylor Jones

Reviewed by: Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's Chronicle of the Dominican Observance by Claire Taylor Jones Cynthia J. Cyrus Women's History in the Age of Reformation: Johannes Meyer's Chronicle of the Dominican Observance. Translated by Claire Taylor Jones. [Saint Michael's College Mediaeval Translations: Mediaeval Sources in Translation, Volume 58.] (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2019. Pp. x, 306. $35.00. ISBN 9780888443083.) Claire Taylor Jones has provided a highly readable translation of Johannes Meyer's lively account of Observant reforms of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The sisters who mocked their prelate with their rude singing (4.20), the twelve noble maidens of Wijk who learned to sing and read in preparation for enclosure (5.3), the male reformers who protected themselves from assault by bringing handfuls of flour to throw in resistant women's faces at St. Catherine's in Nuremberg (4.5), and the evil spirit which resisted reform by ruining a kitchen attendant's beautiful Book of Hours by throwing it in a pot of boiling water (5.92): such anecdotes of enclosure provide a very human testament to the behaviors and thoughts of those who were facing significant changes to both spiritual practices and daily lifestyle with the adoption (or imposition) of a stricter religious practice. Meyer's Buch der Reformacio Predigerordens [Book of the Reformation of the Order of Preachers], written in 1468 and updated until 1477, was intended for the edification of an audience of Observant women, and takes spiritual renewal as a primary theme. Meyer's personal presence as a reformer makes him what modern scholars would designate a participant-observer in these processes. As Jones articulates, he supplements his personal knowledge of the Observance with a reliance on letters, treatises, documents, and witnesses' stories, making the chronicle an important source for our knowledge of the Observance. Divided into five books, the volume begins with the story of the women's house of Schönensteinbach from its foundation to its destruction by the English in 1375. Book 2 then turns to its successful refoundation as an Observant Dominican women's convent in a politically unsettled landscape. In Book 3, Meyer gives vitae for many of the convent sisters, echoing the woman's genre of the Sisterbook, and then expands his attention in Book 4 to treat the stories of the reforming Dominican friars. Book 5 concludes with a looser assembly of stories of the transmission of Observant reforms from one house to another, with prominent attention to women's agency in making those reforms. Jones translates directly from Strasbourg, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire, MS 2934 (available https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10235202h), the [End Page 207] oldest source for Meyer's account and the closest to the original, sidestepping the flawed edition by Benedict Maria Reichert (Leipzig, 1908–1909), which has served as the basis of scholarly research until now. She preserves the manuscript's chapter numberings and headers, and helpfully cross-references the folio numbers. (Happily, Christian Seebald's planned critical edition will draw from the same manuscript.) The translation itself is an important contribution to the field, and joins Sara DeMaris's translation of Meyer's Das Amptbuch (Rome, 2015) in making the works of this important Dominican reformer and chronicler available to an English-reading audience. Equally important, however, Jones's robust and nuanced introduction explains the complexities of the political and familial networks that shaped the course of such reforms, providing context for the challenges that Observance posed to the Dominican governance structure. She also attends to Meyer's sympathetic treatment of women's agency in the process, for he notes their strengths in liturgical practice, praises their devotion to the Observance, and has a deep appreciation for their intellectual capacity "from translation to copying to commission to conversation," as Jones puts it (p. 25). In keeping with the manuscript tradition, Jones provides chronological and historical lists that give an important context for Meyer's narrative, including a map of Dominican communities within the German province (Brabantia, Alsatia, Suevia, and Austria), and a list of Masters General and Provincial Priors of Teutonia. Footnotes throughout the volume identify...

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