Paradiesgarten oder Gefängnis?

The Dominican Convent of St. Katharina was one of the most important German convents in the late Middle Ages. After its reform in 1428, it became a pioneer in the Dominican observance movement. Just a hundred years after the reform, the theology and the practice of piety as well as the propagated ideal of spirituality were given a brusque rejection by Protestant theologians. One of the goals of the Reformation was the abolition of the convents. The biographies of individual nuns throw light on the circumstances and the consequences which the women faced when they left their convent. There were however far more women who stayed in the convent. Barbara Steinke shows that their resistance against the closing of the convent was nurtured by those ideals which had been defined and consolidated during the reform period.