Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 9272
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Sullivan , Joseph M.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Brother Hermann's "Iolande": A Tale of Ideal Female Spirituality
  • Source: Monatshefte 90, 2 (Summer 1998): Pages 161 - 175.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Dominican Order Family Hermann, Brother, Author- Leben der Grafin Iolande von Vianden Literature- Verse Monasticism Noble Women Nuns Spirituality Women in Religion
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  • Abstract: Brother Hermann's "Das Leben der Gräfin Iolande von Vianden," a Middle High German verse biography from the last decade of the thirteenth century, presents the struggle of the young German noblewoman Yolanda of Vianden (1231-1283) to become a Dominican nun. This study analyzes several of the most central events that Hermann chooses to depict from his heroine's life and demonstrates how he relies upon the tradiion of medieval hagiography both to select and to represent those events. Moreover, this article proposes the audience of the biography to be the Sisters of Yolanda's home convent of Marienthal, where the poet intended the representation of their recently deceased abbess, Yolanda, to provide the nuns a model of ideal female spirituality suitable for their emulation. [Reproduced by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.]
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  • Author's Affiliation: University of Texas, Austin
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1998.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00269271