Editor’s note: During the spring 2026 semester, Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) will highlight examples of survival, contemplation, competition, protest and learning in their exhibition, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.” 

Curated by six faculty members from the Hesburgh Libraries and featuring pieces housed in six of RBSC’s distinct collections, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” showcases the universality of constructing community and cultivating hope across time and place.

Throughout the semester, the Hesburgh Libraries website will feature news articles about each of the six faculty curators, providing insight into the stories behind their individual exhibits. Previously, we featured stories about the exhibits “A Community of Learners in Colonial America and the Early Republic,” “The Gay Olympic Games: Community Through Sport,” “Ireland’s Idealized Community,” and “Transnational Communities of Resistance during El Salvador’s Civil War.”

______

The 15th-century manuscript page features a small notation in the margin. Centuries later, this subtle change offers scholars and researchers insight that is anything but marginal.

At the time of the item’s creation, more than 500 years ago, the words etched across the page in black and red ink would have been recited daily. Called “The Office of the Dead,” the prayer cycle, written in Latin, was intended for the repose of the souls of deceased individuals. In the upper right-hand margin lies a modification that turns the word “miserrimus,” the masculine form of “most miserable,” into its feminine form “miserrima.”

The seemingly inconsequential edit reveals something small but important—the individual who once held the book and chanted the prayer centuries ago was a woman.

The handwritten book is one of several items featured in “Women Religious in Male Spaces.” The exhibit curated by David T. Gura, Ph.D., curator of ancient and Medieval manuscripts, is one of six that comprise the exhibition, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.”

“Women’s religious communities in the Middle Ages cultivated their own educational, devotional, and ritualistic practices,” he said. “While maintaining these communal identities, they were still subject to regulation by various ecclesiastical offices held by men. This exhibit highlights how women in these communities carved out places for themselves in predominantly male-dominated liturgical spaces.”

In addition to highlighting these practices through a 15th-century manuscript’s marginalia, Gura’s exhibit includes a leaf excised from a manuscript originating from a Benedictine women’s community in England. The leaf uses the feminine form of the Latin word for cantor.

The display also features a Latin manuscript containing the chants for a liturgical procession performed by St. Katherine’s convent in Nuremberg during Holy Week to cleanse 10 altars dedicated to various saints.

“There’s a map in the exhibit that shows the layout of the church, where these altars were and how the nuns would process in a certain order during the ceremony,” Gura said.

This procession occurred until 1428, when the nuns became Observant, or cloistered, meaning they could no longer mix with men.

“Part of the processional required a priest, and because the women could no longer be in the same place as a man, they were unable to perform the ritual,” Gura said.

Even after becoming Observant, the cloistered community continued to use parts of the manuscript, reciting prayers and chants to enact a spiritual ritual in place of the physical one, Gura said

By highlighting small adaptations made by a community of cloistered nuns and by a group of women praying for deceased souls in purgatory, Gura’s exhibit provides insight into how women have historically carved a place for themselves in what is often considered a male-dominated space.

“It challenges the myths that women of this period were not literate, lacked proficiency in Latin, or were not always active participants in these types of liturgical practices,” he said.

“Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” is generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. The exhibition is open to the public and will remain on display in 102 Hesburgh Library, Rare Books & Special Collections, through June 15.