Finding Women Recluses in the Archives: Examples from Strasbourg, Haguenau, and Obernai

The numerous non-cloistered religious women of the Middle Ages, who lived outside of monasteries, have often been difficult for historians to study due to a perceived lack of sources. This paper demonstrates that such women can in fact be located and traced through archival materials, focusing on the example of women recluses. Late medieval cities almost always included at least one recluse (or anchorite) living in a solitary religious life confined to a dwelling (anchorhold or reclusorium); as of the thirteenth century, the great majority of these recluses were women. Scholars have most often studied women recluses using saints’ lives and rules drawn up by their male confessors, with relatively little attention paid to archival sources. My research uses archival evidence from Strasbourg and two adjacent towns in Alsace to challenge and expand scholarly approaches to this ubiquitous form of late medieval women’s religious life. This paper will first discuss the usefulness (and limitations) of archival work for studying medieval women recluses. I will then present three different types of documents addressing recluses’ relationships to religious groups, regulation of their possessions, and customary practices within the reclusorium, all of which were written by women recluses. These serve as snapshots illustrating the usefulness of archival work for understanding the intricate social connections of women whose choice of religious life made them separate from the world.