“Many Good Small Books”: Archives, Lists, and Epistemological Instability in the Inventory of the Recluses of St. Katherine, Haguenau

Abstract

This article examines the sometimes fraught relationship between recluses and archives, both in terms of finding recluses in the archives and in terms of studying the records that they created. Medieval recluses (or anchorites), who pursued religious lives voluntarily confined to their dwellings (called cells, anchorholds, or reclusoria), are not well known as creators of archives and can be challenging to study through documentary sources. The archives of the recluses of St. Katherine in Haguenau, Alsace, represent a rare example of a collection of documents created by and for medieval women recluses. This article analyzes one inventory list from this collection in light of recent scholarship on the list as a meaning-making form. The St. Katherine inventory under study expresses the recluses’ priorities in the process of cataloguing their belongings. It also expresses a certain epistemological instability, announcing the inventory's incompleteness and the author's or authors’ inability to identify some of its contents. This instability brings into focus the constructedness of the list and the limits of our ability to know about the past.