Fixing the Liturgy

Friars, Sisters, and the Dominican Rite, 1256-1516

Claire Taylor Jones

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781512825695
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

A new history of the medieval Dominican liturgy, from the perspective of women's communities In Fixing the Liturgy, Claire Taylor Jones opens a window into the daily practice of medieval liturgy, uncovering the astounding breadth of knowledge, the deep expertise, and the critical thinking required just to coordinate each day's worship. Focusing on the Dominican order, Jones shows how changes in medieval piety and ritual legislation disrupted the fine-tuned system that Dominicans instituted in the thirteenth century. World-historical events, including the Great Western Schism and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, had an impact on the practice of liturgy even in individual communities. Through a set of never-before-studied records from Dominican convents, Jones shows how women's communities reacted and adapted to historical change and how their surviving sources inform our understanding of the friars' lives, as well. Tracing the narrative up to the eve of the Protestant Reformation, this study culminates in a multi-media reconstruction of the sounds, sights, and smells of worship in the rightfully famous southern German convent of St. Katherine in Nuremberg. Fixing the Liturgy makes this late medieval world accessible through clear introductions to medieval liturgy and to the Dominican order's governance. Jones illustrates how Dominican friars and sisters reconciled their order's rules with their own concrete circumstances and with the changing world around them. On the way, a new history of the medieval Dominican liturgy unfolds, told from the perspective of women's communities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Note on Terminology and Transcriptions
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Complex Layers of the Dominican Liturgical System: The Translation of Dominic, 1256
• Chapter 2. Liturgy, Legislation, and Institutionalized Gender Disparity: The Rule, the Constitutions, the Ordinarium
• Chapter 3. Manuscripts, Legislation, and the Materiality of Liturgical Change: The Latin-Language Ordinaria
• Chapter 4. Gendered Prohibitions and Regional Diversity in Women’s Liturgies: The German-Language Ordinaria
• Chapter 5. Women Implementing and Resisting Liturgical Change: The German-Language Directoria
• Chapter 6. Liturgical Change, Local Piety, and Gendered Adaptation at St. Katherine in Nuremberg: The Translation of Dominic, 1516
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1. Calendars
• Appendix 2. Psalms over the Office Hours
• Appendix 3. Structure of the Office Hours for a Totum Duplex Feast: The Translation of Dominic Outside of Paschal Time
• Appendix 4. The German-Language Ordinarium Translations
• Appendix 5. The German-Language Directorium Manuscripts
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments