Baroque Homiletics

Misionářky mikrokosmu - řeholní ideál v kázáních při příležitosti vstupu žen do olomouckých klášterů / Missionaries of the Microcosmos. Religious Ideal in the Sermons over the Entry to Female Convents in Olomouc

by Veronika Capska

The paper is about to be published in Czech language in the book Olomouc Baroque I: A City´s Ambitions Transformed (Olomoucké baroko I: Proměny ambicí jednoho města)

Missionaries of the Microcosmos. Religious Ideal in the Sermons over the Entry to Female Convents in Olomouc
more Missionaries of the Microcosmos. Religious Ideal in the Sermons over the Entry to Female Convents in Olomouc

Early modern female monasticism in the Czech lands has long been under-researched in comparison to the foreign scholarly interest in the topic. The article focuses on the celebratory orations that were pronounced at the occasions of taking the veil or religious vows in the female convents. In the course of the last third of the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth century it became increasingly popular to put these sermons to print. They constitute a distinct type of sources that has so far been largely disregarded.
Although the initiation rituals connected with the entry to a convent were quite precisely regulated by both the Canon law and the rules of the respective convents, we can suppose that the preachers´orations had an important role in the explanation of the ceremony to the wide audience. The spiritual orators mediated the idealized image of the monastic life. They could therefore attract the interest of the new potential candidates or their families and also gain the support of new patrons. The printed sermons can thus be regarded as part of the celebratory discourse on early modern nuns.
Framing the rites of passage the sermons publicized the change in social status of the individual women that were initiated into the convent life. The texts contributed to the public representation of the nunneries and of the families related to the entering sisters. The kin also usually took care of the sermons´release and at least partial distribution. It seems that the city of Olomouc provided conveniant conditions for the resonance of the printed sermons commemorating the entries to the female convents. In the town there were situated nunneries of three religious orders (Dominican Sisters, Poor Clares, Ursulines), however the overall network of ecclesiastical institutions was quite dense and besides the wide range of male monasteries it included the bishopric with the metropolitan chapter.
As the post-tridentine church reinforced the emphasis on the enclosure of female convents, most preachers made use of the festivities of nuns´ initiation in order to accentuate that the priviledged space of operation of the enclosed sisters was the landscape of their soul, where they could fight the vices, support the church militant and even act as imaginary missionaries by means of their prayers and ascetic practices.