Canonesses or nuns? Negotiating communal identity in Saxony around the year 1000

When looking at the observance of female monasteries in Saxony around the year 1000, scholars supposed a profound inability of women religious to adopt a clear institutional identity. This vision was largely based on a misinterpretation of the distinction between Benedictine nuns and canonesses, which scholars used as a means of clear classification within the female religious landscape. Since women religious mostly did not follow this presumed bi-polarity, historians postulated a state of chaotic diversity concerning female monastic communities. Nevertheless, contemporary source material shows a vivid intellectual debate culture. In addition, recent literature adjusted aforementioned older viewpoint by nuancing the rigorous partition between the canonical and Benedictine lifestyle. These new findings impede the former legibility of the institutional landscape. However, this dynamic and pluralistic institutional reality can be seen as an opportunity to deepen out the question how women religious debated an own credible narrative of the self. By radically prioritizing a broad range of contemporary sources, this paper aims to study in-depth how women religious participated in these institutional debates, and how they, in doing so, negotiated an unique communal identity. By re-interpreting the source material, this paper will enable bringing into focus those aspects regarding female religious life around the year 1000, which have been neglected so far in scholarship.