Medieval Nuns in the Light of Nature: Environmental Humility in the Upper German Sister-Books

Humility has been established as a social virtue, helping individuals navigating relationships and social hierarchies. More recently, it has been invoked in ecological discourse to promote a more respectful and sustainable relationship between humans and the environment. However, the historic dimensions of humility towards the environment remain largely unexplored. My dissertation aims to partially fill this gap by using the Upper German Dominican sister-books of the 14th century to analyze how these women perceived and interacted with their environment and whether this can be classified as humble. This group of texts detail the virtuous lives of former convent sisters, by imitating the hagiographical style predominantly in Middle High German. 

The study challenges dominant narratives of the post 1200 environmental alienation and proposes a nuanced understanding of the medieval human-non-human relationship – or at least their idealized, imagined forms. Furthermore, the dissertation expands the concept of humility by considering nature, animals, and landscapes as potential agents or loci of the virtue.