Female abbatial leadership and the shaping of communal identity in ninth-century Saxony : the Life of Hathumoda of Gandersheim

By looking at the Life of Hathumoda, a ninth-century biographical account about the first abbess of the female monastery of Gandersheim in Saxony (d. 874), this article deepens out how women religious in ninth-century Saxony made use of normative legacies to create an own corporate identity by which they could respond to challenges in the society. I argue that the Benedictine portrayal of Hathumoda and her community was not a top-down stimulant to convince the women religious of Gandersheim to adopt a strict Benedictine observance, as older literature assumed, but the Gandersheim community's attempt to shape a distinctive identity in an increasing dense and competitive female monastic landscape.

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