Religious Women and Liturgy in a Fifteenth-Century Portuguese Codex: Gendering the Reception and Profession Ceremonies in the Dominican Convents

1 Dominican Women and the Friars’ Uniform Liturgy

In the mid-thirteenth century, Humbert of Romans, Master of the Dominican Order from 1254 to 1263, worked towards standardisation of the order’s liturgical practice.^[1] A definitive version of the Dominican liturgy was issued in 1256 and prototypes encompassing fourteen official liturgical books were made to disseminate Humbert’s liturgical revision in the order’s convents.^[2] It is still not clear if, or to what extent, these obligations were extended to Dominican women.^[3] As Smith has explored in an article themed around this question, the statutes of San Sisto, arguably composed by Saint Dominic himself around 1220 to regulate religious life in female communities affiliated with the Dominican friars, prescribed a diligent religious practice without binding the nuns to a specific rite.^[4] In turn, the Constitutions of Montargis, composed for the homonymous French nunnery by Humbert of Romans in 1250, clearly state the nuns’ obligation to comply with the friars’ liturgy.^[5] However, this information is absent from the General Constitutions for Dominican nuns, composed by Humbert of Romans in 1259 after the standardisation of the order’s liturgy in 1256 and destined to be observed in all the Dominican nunneries. As Smith has pointed out, the reason behind this absence is still not clear, but might be connected to the institutionalisation of a uniform liturgy in the order, which would make that obligation implicitly expected.^[6]

Evidence shows that some Dominican nunneries were bound to Humbert’s rite. In the Province of Teutonia, surviving ordinances clarifying the institution of the nuns’ General Constitutions declare that the sisters should have notes and choral books according to the order.^[7] The same happened in France, in the convents of Saint Louis de Poissy and Thieuloye, where production of liturgical books was under the care of the friars of Saint Jacques, responsible for dissemination of the revised rite in France.^[8] A Ritual written in 1491 in the Dominican convent of Jesus in Aveiro (north of Portugal),^[9] shows that this particular community also embraced the friars’ liturgy, as it comprises ordines that either fully reproduce the Dominican prototype or adapt it to a female convent. This last case corresponds to the ordines for the reception and profession of nuns, whose rubrics are written in Portuguese and feminised and are thus of particular interest for this study. Representing a rare testimony revealing the nuns’ practice, these ordines enable an analysis of the processes behind the adaptation of the friars’ ceremonies to the female branch of the order. Beginning with these two cases, this study focuses on the development of the reception and profession ceremonies in the Dominican nunneries through comparison with similar texts from other convents. This is important not only to complement the brief and general guidelines recorded in the nuns’ Constitutions but also to reveal the different ways in which these ceremonies evolved inside the female branch of the order, which was based on distinct traditions and levels of autonomy.

2 Liturgical Books for Nuns: The Ritual of the Convent of Jesus in Aveiro

With a foundation bull from 1461, the Convent of Jesus in Aveiro originated from a lay religious community of women that was founded circa 1458 and taken under the protection of the neighbouring Dominican friars of Nossa Senhora da Misericórdia. Preparations to start life as Dominican women were closely overseen by the friars and included the future nuns’ training in book production, which started in 1463, one year before the community’s official claustration.^[10] This training continued at least during the first year of enclosure, as noted in the convent’s early-sixteenth-century chronicle.^[11] The surviving liturgical books show that the nuns produced their own volumes at least until the first quarter of the sixteenth century.^[12] Dominican liturgical books should be made according to Humbert of Roman’s prototype to conform with the order’s official liturgy. The rules redacted in the opening of the prototype’s Antiphonary prescribed that newly written books followed a revised volume and that no deliberate alterations be made to the official text or music.^[13] Some Antiphonaries copied in Dominican convents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries open with these rules, including two exemplars from the nunnery of Saint Louis de Poissy, which shows that these requirements were also applied to female communities.^[14] In order to keep up with changes in the order’s liturgy, these books should be continuously updated by the convent’s cantrix, as shown by the instructions redacted in Johannes Meyer’s Das Amptbuch (1454), an adaptation of Humbert of Romans’ Liber de instructione officialium Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum (1257–1267) to the female branch of the order.^[15]

This meant that, in order to produce their own liturgical books, the nuns from Aveiro needed to borrow revised volumes from another convent, for which the friars’ support would have been paramount. The fact that a fifteenth-century Processional from the convent of Misericórdia survives among the liturgical books used by the nuns might indicate that the friars provided the sisters with volumes from which they could copy theirs.^[16] Furthermore, most rubrics in Aveiro’s liturgical books use the masculine form, which indicates that the nuns copied their books from volumes used in a male Dominican community.^[17] This is the case for the majority of the ceremonies included in the convent’s Ritual. Surviving books from other Dominican provinces often show that both friars and nuns used the same ordines. A Collectar from the Dominican convent of Unterlinden in Colmar shows the use of masculine forms in the main text with superscripts of the feminine equivalents.^[18] Other surviving volumes show direct adaptation of the ceremonies’ instructions and collects, as described in the prototype, to the feminine form, as can be seen in fifteenth-century ordines from the Dominican nunneries of Maria Medingen in Mödingen and St Katharina in Nuremberg.^[19]

Finished in 1491 by Isabel Luís, a nun responsible for writing various liturgical books in the convent, Aveiro’s Ritual is a portable book containing instructions for the celebration of several rites that shaped the community’s daily life.^[20] Setting out instructions for the celebration of rituals connected to the start of a nun’s religious life, care of the sick and burial rites, this book was intended to be used by the celebrant while conducting the ceremonies. Although the Ritual is not encompassed in the fourteen liturgical books that formed the Dominican prototype, most of its contents appear in this model. With the exception of the profession, which is only summarised in the Constitutions, the remaining ceremonies are distributed across the prototype’s Ordinary, the Processional and the Collectar.

This kind of volumes were arguably developed in order to facilitate the celebrant’s performance by gathering, in one portable and easy-to-read volume, several ceremonies and elements dispersed across different books.^[21] This was especially relevant when conducting ceremonies that required the celebrant’s mobility, such as care of the sick and burial rites, which make up the majority of the volume analysed here. In the Dominican prototype, most of these ordines appear in the Collectar, a type of book which originally contained the readings and collects pertaining to the celebrant in the Divine Office.^[22] In some cases, Collectars append to this the ordines for care of the sick and funerals, as in the Dominican Collectar.^[23] That a few fifteenth-century volumes devoted mainly to care of the sick and the last rites survive in Dominican nunneries suggests that smaller, more specific, books started to be developed to guide the performance of these rites.^[24]

Aveiro’s Ritual opens with the ceremonies that marked the beginning of a nun’s religious life: the reception of novices and the profession. Contrary to the rest of the book, which is fully redacted in Latin and composed by ordines that follow the prototype thoroughly, often ignoring the gender adaptations of the rubrics, in these two rites the rubrics were written in Portuguese and adapted to a female community. However, both parts appear to be contemporary as they are written in homogeneous handwriting.^[25] This is also suggested by the fact that a fifteenth-century Processional made in the convent also contains these two ordines with vernacular rubrics.^[26]

As no other exemplars of these ordines came down from the Portuguese Dominican nunneries, it is not possible to assess whether these translations were made for the nuns of Aveiro or whether these texts were copied from an existing vernacular version. It is possible to document the commission of translations by Aveiro’s nuns as early as in the beginning of the sixteenth century, demonstrated by a codex from 1510, the colophon of which registers that prioress Maria de Ataíde and the nun Margarida Pinheira commissioned the translation of Saint Augustine’s Sermones ad fratres in eremo.^[27] Margarida Pinheira was also responsible for copying, in the same period, the oldest surviving Portuguese version of the nuns’ General Constitutions (1259).^[28]

3 The Dominican Reception Ceremonies

The reception of novices into the Dominican order was a solemnised ceremony that took place in the convent’s chapter-house and the church. This act was described in both the friars’ Constitutions and the order’s official Ordinary.^[29] The ceremony started with the scrutiny. After the novice was brought to the chapter-house, he prostrated himself in front of the prior, who would ask him about his intentions and explain to him the hardships of religious life. Then, vestition would follow. The novice would be undressed of his secular clothes and take the religious habit, an act accompanied by the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus.^[30] The Ordinary extended the ceremony with a second part developed in the church: while the convent was still singing the hymn, when the novice was dressed, the friars formed a procession to go to the church, where the rest of the ceremony took place.^[31] Here, the novice would prostrate himself at the altar while the prior initiated a sequence of verses, responsories and prayers, read from the Collectar, before the novice was sprinkled with holy water and welcomed to the community with a kiss of peace.

After a successful probation period, the novices professed their vows. Unlike in the reception, Dominican profession was not solemnised.^[32] While in monastic orders this ceremony was rooted in the Benedictine practice of professing in the church’s main altar, where the novice presented his written vows during mass (professio super altare), the Dominican profession was a quick ceremony in the convent’s chapter-house. The Dominicans’ itinerant nature prevented their connection to a specific abbey or church, meaning that they diverged from the monastic tradition of promising stabilitas and focused instead on the vow of perpetual obedience, professing their vows in the convent’s chapter-house instead of the church.^[33] As a result of its simplicity, the Dominican profession is not described in the order’s Ordinary (1256). Likewise, the friars’ Constitutions record only the formula of profession and the texts for the blessing of the habit by the Master General.^[34] The first full description of the ceremony can only be found in the Directorium, written circa 1300, as part of the Codex Ruthensis, possibly compiled for the friars of the Province of France.^[35] While the professio super altare was made to God and not directly to the abbot, Dominican profession was directed to the Master General or his representative, to whom the novice promised obedience. Instead of presenting a written petition for deposit in the main altar, the Dominican novice kneeled in front of the Master General, placed his hands inside the superior’s hands (immixtio manuum) and professed his vows directly to him (professio in manibus). Back on his feet, he then received the kiss of peace, followed by the blessing of the habit.

The case of women is less clear. As indicated, Humbert’s official liturgy, approved in 1256, does not include a version for the female branch of the Dominicans, with the order’s Ordinary providing only instructions and prayers for the friars’ ceremonies. Both the Constitutions for the nuns of Montargis (1250) and the General Constitutions for Dominican nuns (1259), composed by Humbert of Romans, provide only general descriptions of how these ceremonies should be held.^[36] From these texts it is possible to learn that the nuns were expected to follow the same guidelines offered to the friars, with the prioress assuming the role of the Master General. This included the blessing of the habit, attributed to the prioress in the nuns’ statutes and representing an unusual degree of female clerical leadership for this period. By the thirteenth century, religious women were excluded from priestly duties.^[37]

Unlike with the friars, in the case of nuns, these ceremonies do not appear in the Ordinary or the Directorium, preventing us from knowing further details about their enactment. For such details, we have to turn to the few surviving Rituals containing the ordines for these ceremonies.

4 The Dominican Profession Ceremonies

As already noted, the Dominican profession ceremony, as described in the Directorium (c. 1300) for the male branch of the order, was a quick and simple ritual in which the novice professed their vows to the Master General or their representative in the convent’s chapter-house. The brief instructions in the nuns’ Constitutions let us know that, as with the friars, Dominican novices professed to the prioress responsible for blessing their habits.^[72] This outlines a ceremony distant from the ritual observed by female religious houses that followed the monastic professio super altare. As shown by the Ritual from the Cistercian nuns from Lorvão, in these cases, instead of professing directly to the abbess, the novices read a petition to God at the altar, in a ceremony conducted by the abbot, during mass.^[73] To learn more about the enactment of the Dominican ceremony for nuns we need to turn, once more, to the surviving ordines.

Aveiro’s Ritual shows some deviation from the Directorium in the ritual of profession (see Table 3). Instead of professing their vows in the chapter-house, in the convent of Aveiro the nuns did this in the lower choir.^[74] As well as being stated in the ordo, this location is also revealed in the convent’s chronicle, where the lower choir grille is referred to as “the profession grille.”^[75] According to Aveiro’s chronicle, the first professions in this convent were exceptionally made in the church’s main chapel, where the founder, Beatriz Leitão, covered with her black veil, received the vows of the novices. The reason for this was the presence of King Afonso V (r. 1438–1481), who came with his entourage to attend the ceremony.^[76] It is not clear if professions continued to be open to the public in Aveiro as no other records survive. The possibility of the public having access to the church might therefore be connected to the choice of this ceremony taking place in the lower choir, as the chapter-house was located inside the enclosure. Nevertheless, Dominican nuns also observed the friars’ custom of professing in the chapter-house, as in the case of the Dominican nuns of Segovia in Castile.^[77] During this ritual, the Castilian nuns professed in the chapter-house and processed to the church’s main altar, replicating the second part of the friars’ reception ceremony.^[78] This demonstrates that different approaches to enclosure in the same religious order influenced the development of ceremonies.

Aveiro’s ordo suggests that, in this convent, nuns remained in the lower choir for the entire ceremony of profession. The role played by the prioress in this ritual might have decreased in importance over time. The instructions reveal that, after the daily mass, Aveiro’s nuns, holding candles, descended from the upper choir, where they attended the mass, to the lower choir. The priest approached the choir grille and handed the blessed veils to the prioress, who received them inside the choir.^[79] As in the reception, a scrutiny then took place to ascertain the novice’s will to join the order permanently. However, according to these instructions, this scrutiny should be conducted not by the prioress, as in the reception, but by the prior.^[80] The folio containing this rubric shows that the original text was erased, raising the hypothesis of this being an alteration to the original wording. As mentioned, the same ordo appears in one of the convent’s fifteenth-century Processionals. Nonetheless, this copy remains unaltered, recording, instead, that this should be done by “the prioress or the prior.”^[81] This suggests that the same words were present in the Ritual’s original version. A similar situation is presented in the Ritual’s following line, where what was previously “the prior or the prioress” (diga o prelado ou a prelada) was later replaced by “the prior,” with the word prelada (the feminine form of “prelate” in Portuguese) crossed out.^[82] This instruction refers to the person in charge of uttering the formula Dominus qui incipit, ipse perficiat, which is said by the prioress after the scrutiny in the ordo for the novices’ reception. Once again, the Processional keeps the original wording.^[83] This was followed by the profession of vows, in which the duality disappears for both sources, with the prioress taking charge of receiving the vows from the kneeled novice.^[84] However, both sources again register that the subsequent blessing of the habit should be conducted by “the prioress or the prior.”^[85] This case is particularly striking since, as mentioned, according to the nuns’ Constitutions, the prioress should bless these garments.^[86] Thus, unlike in the reception of novices, Aveiro’s ordo for profession appears to reduce the centrality of the prioress in the ceremony, offering the possibility of this being conducted by the prior.

The description of Aveiro’s first professions in the convent’s chronicle contrasts with the ordo, showing the importance of respecting the centrality of the prioress in this ceremony. After all the women went through a year of probation, the founder Beatriz Leitão professed her vows, along with two other nuns, to the prior of Misericórdia, with the rest of the women professing to her a few days later, after she was elected vicar, a position she held before the convent could elect her prioress.^[87] The ordo from the Dominican nunnery of Segovia also shows the prioress’ authority in the ceremony of profession, attributing the blessing of the garments solely to the prioress.^[88]

It is possible that the duality presented by Aveiro’s ordo, both in the Ritual and the Processional, was born from the close proximity kept between this community and the friars of Santa Maria da Misericórdia since before the convent’s foundation. The nuns were trained by the friars who, during the convent’s first year, often entered the enclosure to guide them.^[89] Such proximity might have led to the custom of having the prior sometimes conducting this ceremony. However, it appears that, at some point, the task of inquiring the novice was attributed solely to the prior, at least according to the Ritual. This change might have been influenced by the Tridentine decree demanding that all novices be interviewed by the bishop or their representative before joining a religious order.^[90] The fact that it appears only in the Ritual and not in the Processional might be explained by the detail that the former was used by the celebrant – to which this rubric referred – and the latter by the nuns.

It is also interesting to note that, instead of replicating the friars’ immixtio manuum, Aveiro’s novices said their vows while resting their hands over a book containing the rule and the Constitutions, placed on the prioress’ lap.^[91] This gesture reinforced the words of the profession formula, in which the novices promised to follow St Augustine’s rule and the nuns’ Constitutions.^[92] This might not have been the procedure in all Dominican nunneries – it is not mentioned in the ordo from Santo Domingo el Real de Segovia, which records only that the novices should kneel to say their vows to the prioress.^[93] It was, nevertheless, observed in other religious orders, as shown by the Colettine Constitutions followed in some Clarissan convents from the mid fifteenth century onwards.^[94] Nevertheless, in this case, the nuns observed the gesture of immixtio manuum, also adopted by the Franciscans, with the abbess holding the novice’s hands over the book.

5 The Imposition of the Black Veil

In the convent of Aveiro, the imposition of the black veil was an integral part of the ritual of profession.^[95] This step is absent from the nuns’ General Constitutions arguably because of its affiliation with the consecratio virginum, a ceremony forbidden to Dominican women by the same statutes.^[96] As mentioned, in the consecratio, virgins were consecrated through the imposition of a veil performed by a bishop, to whom this right was reserved. In turn, Aveiro’s nuns, as in other nunneries, received their veils from a priest.^[97]

The instructions for the imposition of the veil in Aveiro mirror a consecratio in a number of ways. According to Aveiro’s ordo, after receiving the cloak from the prioress in the lower choir, the newly professed nun was presented by the mistress of the novices to the priest, before whom she kneeled in order to be veiled. This was accompanied by the antiphon Veni Sponsa Christi, started by the priest. Taken from the Song of Songs, this chant can also be found in the consecratio as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, when other bridal metaphors, such the imposition of a crown and a ring, were also added to the ceremony.^[98] The antiphon was sung by the bishop in the opening of the ritual – as in Aveiro, inviting the virgin to come to the celebrant.^[99]

However, unlike in the consecratio, Aveiro’s nuns did not appear to receive their veils at the main altar, rather by the grille dividing the church from the lower choir. Although nothing is said in the ordo about the place where the veiling should happen, the fact that the priest previously delivered the veils to the prioress in the choir suggests that the novices were veiled in this space, interacting with the celebrant through an opening in the choir grille.^[100] Given that Aveiro’s nuns performed the reception of novices inside the enclosure and not in the church, as predicted by the Dominican Ordinary, they would probably not have entered the church on this occasion. Some communities, such as the Clarissan nuns of Setúbal and the Bolognese Augustines of Santa Maria degli Angeli, professed and received their veils in the choir, interacting with the male celebrant through the choir grille (Setúbal) or through a turn (Bologna).^[101]

On the other hand, the nuns from the Dominican convent of Segovia, who, as mentioned, went to the main altar after profession, returned to this place to receive their veils from the celebrant, responsible for starting the antiphon Veni Sponsa Christi.^[102] At the altar, the priest veiled the nuns with the formula Accipe velamen sacrum puella, usually found in ordines for the consecratio from the twelfth century onwards and also shared with the sixteenth-century profession ordo from the Cistercian nuns of Lorvão.^[103] In turn, Aveiro’s nuns were veiled with the less common formula Accipe puella pallium quod preferas, which first appeared in an early rite for consecrating virgins included in the Missale Francorum, produced between the seventh and eighth centuries.^[104] In 1595, the reformed version of the Roman Pontifical abandoned the formula used in Aveiro in favour of the words used in Lorvão.^[105] The ordo from Segovia presents other elements that, despite being shared with the consecratio, do not appear in the text from Aveiro. This is the case for the chant Posuit signum – the nuns’ response to the formula Accipe velamen sacrum puella, or the singing of the responsory Amo Christum, sung in twelfth-century versions of the consecratio.^[106] This chant, taken from St Agnes’ office, functions as a metaphor for the nuns’ symbolic marriage to Christ, mirrored in this ceremony.^[107]

The metaphor of a symbolic marriage to Christ was also present in Aveiro’s ceremony. The ceremony closed with the prayer Deus castorum corporum, one of two consecration prayers used in the consecratio virginum, the text of which emphasises the veiled nun’s status of virgin and Sponsa Christi.^[108] The ritual performed in Segovia, however, is more inclusive, missing this prayer and prescribing alternatives to the chants that refer to the nuns’ virginity, in case the veiled nun does not fit with this condition. This is the case of the antiphons Ista est virgo and Afferentur regi virgines.^[109] This does not mean, however, that only virgin nuns were veiled in Aveiro. As demonstrated by the case of the convent’s founders, Beatriz Leitão and Mécia Pereira, this convent was open to widows who, like the virgins, were veiled in their profession.^[110] This shows that Dominican nunneries found a way to include ceremonies rooted in the metaphor of a spiritual marriage to Christ on their ceremonial, without promoting the inequality brought by the consecration of virgins, rejected by the Constitutions, and feared by Dominic.

6 Final Remarks

When analysed in conjunction with other similar sources, the Ritual from the Dominican convent of Aveiro can provide important information on the processes through which Dominican liturgy was used and transformed to serve the needs of the female branch of the Order. The surviving ordines, along with other important accounts such as convent chronicles, help to complement the brief and general guidelines offered in the nuns’ Constitutions. For the particular case of Dominican nuns, it was thus possible to see that, despite being rooted in the order’s custom, the ceremonies varied from convent to convent, as revealed in the analysed sources. The communities’ different approaches to enclosure along with the influence of other traditions were paramount in the shaping of these ceremonies: the analysis of the surviving ordines revealed variations on procedures, formulas, spaces and also different levels of female autonomy. While, in the case of Aveiro, the reception of novices was arguably a direct adaptation of the friars’ liturgy to an enclosed convent – with the part corresponding to the church taking place in the upper choir – the Dominican ordo from Genova shows a ceremony that mixes the Dominican tradition with elements absorbed from the profession super altare and the ancient rite of the Church for consecrating virgins.

In what was perhaps the result of an austere enclosure, the community of Aveiro conducted this ceremony entirely in the nuns’ enclosure, without the presence of male celebrants, with the prioress assuming the role originally attributed to the Master General or the prior. Instead, the ordo from Genova reveals a greater dependence on men to perform the ceremony. As in the monastic tradition of professing super altare, according to this ordo, the novices were received in the church by the priest and then brought to the enclosure, where the prioress would conduct the rest of the ceremony. This procedure was shared with other religious orders, demonstrated by the cases of, for example, the Clarisses from Setúbal and the Cistercian nuns from Lorvão, where dependence on men to perform the ceremony went even further, especially with the latter. The ordo from Genova reveals the influence of local traditions in the development of these ceremonies through the imposition of matrimonial insignia on the novices and the use of vernacular chants.

Unlike with the ordo for the reception of novices, Aveiro’s instructions for the ritual of profession are not so faithful to Dominican custom, placing the ceremony in a different space and proposing an increased level of participation from the prior. This change, which might be connected to the community’s proximity to the friars in charge of their cura monialium or, in the case of the later corrections, the Tridentine decree that imposed that all women be interviewed by the bishop before joining a convent, reduced the prioress’s responsibilities in the ceremony, despite what is described in the nuns’ Constitutions. In the case of Aveiro, these peculiarities, along with the fact that both ordines were written in Portuguese, unlike the rest of the Ritual, suggests that these texts were adapted or possibly translated specifically to this convent.

Following the profession of vows received by the prioress, the ceremony for the imposition of the black veil showed, once again, that these communities had different views on enclosure. While the Dominican nuns of Segovia went to the main altar twice during Procession, the other analysed communities interacted with the male celebrant through the choir grille to perform the ceremony. The connections between the ritual for the imposition of the black veil and the ritual for consecrating virgins in the analysed Dominican convents show that, despite the Constitutions’ prohibition against the consecration of nuns, these convents developed traditions deeply inspired by that act.

This ceremony complements the simplicity of the Dominican ceremony of profession with bridal metaphors that spoke to the nuns’ condition and were, naturally, absent from the friars’ liturgy. Originally designed for men, ceremonies to receive new members into a religious community or to profess religious vows evolved, when used by female communities, to include elements reflecting their own reality. The resemblance between the Dominican ordines analysed and those followed in other nunneries demonstrates that some of those elements were shared by all the examined religious orders despite their different natures.