The Choice OF life in the convent is a choice for the communal life. Many of the religious devotions required of the sisters of Windesheim were performed communally. The Diepenveen sisterbook speaks in awe of Elsebe Hasenbroecks, who continued to take an active part in the life of the convent at an advanced age.

Elsebe's dedication to the life of the convent was apparent to her fellow canonesses by her participation in a number of important communal exercises. Generally speaking these may be divided into two groups, the religious and the material. First among the religious exercises to be discussed here are the choir services (§3.1). Strictly speaking these should not be considered simply one of the many devotions, because the performance of the office in choir constituted by far the canonesses’ most important duty. They devoted many hours each day to the choir office. The other religious exercises were the weekly chapter of faults or correption (§3.2) and adherence to silence (§3.3). Next came a number of physical exercises: manual labour (§3.4 and 3.5), congregating in refectory (§3.6) and the hours of rest and recreation (§3.7). Finally, I will consider the collation, a collective spiritual exercise characteristic of the Modern Devotion, the meaning of which within the Chapter is not entirely clear (§3.8).

Liturgical Celebrations

With their detailed rules for the celebration of the choir office and conventual mass, the Constitutiones monialium provide ample indication ‘Of the care bestowed upon the heart of the canonical communal life, the divine office, especially in the Windesheim convents’. In the Catholic service the life of Christ is repeatedly commemorated; its rituals render the events in his life visible once again. For this reason a solemn and high-minded celebration of the liturgy was the best thing the nuns could offer the Church of Christ. The recitation of the divine office was the very pulse of life in the convents of Windesheim. The oft-repeated psalms, antiphons, hymns, sequences, responsories, etc. from the divine office belonged among the texts most frequently read, sung and heard in this milieu.