Margareta Karthäuserin was a mid-15th century nun at the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg and an exceptionally skilled scribe.[1]
According to some historians, Karthäuserin was part of a group sent from Schönensteinbach to help the Nuremberg convent with the Dominican reform movement.[1] The library at Saint Catherine's was so large that it is believed to have served as a lending library for the whole province of Teutonia.[2] Many of the texts the nuns had copied themselves,[3] possibly up to half of the library holdings.[2] Karthäuserin is considered to have been one of the most skilled scribes of the thirty-two nun-scribes at that convent whose names are known to historians. According to C. G. von Murr, between the years of 1458 and 1470, she copied eight large choir-books which in later years could be found in the Nuremberg town library.[4] Aside from this, she also wrote the Pars Aestivalis of a Missal (1463) and the Pars Hiemalis. The latter was copied with the help of another nun from the same convent, Margareta Imhof (1452).[4]
Karthäuserin is one of the 999 notable women whose names are displayed on the Heritage Floor of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party art installation (1979).[5]
References
edit- ^ a b Taylor, Jane (1997). Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence. University of Toronto Press. p. 125. ISBN 0-8020-8069-3.
- ^ a b Wilson, Katharina M., and Nadia Margolis, eds. "Scribes and scriptoria." Women in the Middle Ages: an encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004, p. 835. (Internet Archive)
- ^ Taylor, Jane (1997). Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence. University of Toronto Press. p. 129. ISBN 0-8020-8069-3.
- ^ a b Dodgson, Campbell (1903). Catalogue of early German and Flemish woodcuts preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. London: Printed by order of the Trustees. p. 139. hdl:2027/mdp.39015015678140.
- ^ "Margareta Karthauserin." Heritage Floor, The Dinner Party. Brooklyn Museum. Accessed 5 Feb. 2023.