Liturgical Manuscripts, Liturgical Practice, and the Women of Klosterneuburg

Abstract

For over a century, liturgical manuscripts from the Augustinian priory at Klosterneuburg have tended toward a misleading androgyny. While scholars have long known that Klosterneuburg was a double house, with separate precincts for men and for women, many have been content to regard the liturgical manuscripts preserved there as reflecting the institution as a whole, or of the men in particular. To be sure, some manuscripts have always been recognized as women's books. For other manuscripts, though, such gendered associations have proven elusive. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in discussions of Klosterneuburg's twelfth-century antiphoners (A-KN 1010, A-KN 1012, and A-KN 1013). Among the earliest musical manuscripts in German-speaking Europe to show pitches on a staff, these manuscripts have been seen by many scholars as reflecting the use of Klosterneuburg generally, if at all, while a few scholars have associated them with the women of Klosterneuburg specifically. Whether the result of an unusual placement for the feast of the Dedication of the Church or the conformance of the musical notation with that of manuscripts known to be associated with the women, the occasional assignments of the twelfth-century antiphoners to Klosterneuburg's women were more a consequence of what was not known about the women and their liturgical practice (the date for their church's dedication, for example) than of what was known. The very lack of information about the liturgical practice of Klosterneuburg's women, moreover, has cloaked an even larger obstacle to understanding the liturgical manuscripts used by the women and the liturgy that was expressed within them. For all the attention given these manuscripts, and for all the consideration given to the possible connection between these manuscripts and the canonesses, few scholars have considered the possibility that the liturgy celebrated by Klosterneuburg's women might have been independent from that of the men.