The Sacred and the City: Vienna, the Counter-Reformation, and Women's Sacred Space:The Example of Queen's Cloister

Vienna was a city under siege in the early sixteenth century. From one perspective, the besiegers were both Ottoman military specialists and Lutheran-oriented reformers. Both sets of besiegers obtained similar results: the cloistered life for women in the city was reduced to a few ramshackle houses in varying states of disrepair. In the early 1580’s, the widowed queen of France, Elizabeth of Habsburg, returned to her birthplace, Vienna, and, using incomes from her dower properties in France and monies due her from her unpaid dowry, created a new sacred safe space for women in the Habsburg residence city. This paper will place the creation of this new space near the ruling family’s city castle in the context of the shifting tides of Christian religious debate of the later sixteenth century. Beginning with Queen’s Cloister, a series of new women’s houses would be constructed. The gendered and sacred topography which would emerge would help form the religious landscape of Counter-Reformation Vienna, enabling if not ensuring this religious movement’s success.