Gone but not forgotten: Nuns pray for Yale

Virginia C. Raguin

In July 1984, in preparation for the publication of the first volume of the Corpus Vitrearum checklist for the USA, I visited Berkeley College, part of my alma mater, Yale University. The College possesses two period rooms given by Robert W. de Forest, installed in 1934 under the supervision of the architect James Gamble Rogers. The smaller room is recorded as originating in the region of Engadine in southeastern Switzerland. At the time of my visit, it contained two modern panels, recorded as having been given by Professor Shepherd Stevens. Two additional panels were historic, possibly gifts of de Forest. One was a roundel from the North Lowlands, dated 1593 on a modern replacement piece, showing a woman supporting a shield with three bugle horns (Fig. 1).¹ The other was a Swiss leaded panel showing six female donors from a religious institution (Fig. 2).² The latter was a small work, measuring only 16.0 x 17.5 cm, showing the repositioning of some elements but with almost no modern replacements.

Such small independent panels set into larger windows were prevalent in homes and public buildings such as town halls, law courts, inns, or even churches from the late fifteenth through to the seventeenth century in Switzerland, Southern Germany, and the Upper Rhine. Averaging around 38.1cm by 27.9cm (15 by 11 inches), these panes celebrated marriage alliances, trade guilds, and professions as well as representing municipalities. Many show scenes of everyday activities, recalling illustrations in medieval Books of Hours, and feature ploughing fields, the transport of goods, a counting house with businessmen or leisure distractions. They also demonstrate the interconnectedness of the arts: the stained glass shares common models and ideologies with prints and illustrated books. They became ubiquitous elements in a social exchange between members of families and associations such as religious communities. Panels in their original setting of uncolored glass can be seen today in some Swiss town halls and religious institutions, including the Benedictine abbey of Muri about 20 km southwest of Zurich.

Berkley’s “Swiss room” has undergone subsequent restorations during which the panel showing the female donors has gone missing. But we may think, gone but not forgotten. Since the initial visit, much more research has been accomplished by the Swiss Corpus Vitrearum team. Swiss regional archives have been exceedingly generous in helping to locate the identities of the donors named in these panels. A brief overview of the subject is found in a chapter in my Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time.³ In the ensuing campaign to enter all Swiss panels in American and Canadian collections into the Swiss opensource database Vitrosearch, the Berkely nuns were revisited.

The missing panel represents religious from the monastery of the community of Münsterlingen in the Canton of Thurgau, Switzerland. The inscription tells us that the donors are: “Magdalena,  Abtissen des Wirdige/ Gots His Munsterlingen, F. Thorathea Büellerin; F. Julliana Prechtin; Elizabetha Litick; F. Caecillia Weisserbechin; F. Maria Cleone Hoy/lin” (Magdalena [Peter], Abbess of the worthy monastery of Münsterlingen, Sister Dorothea Büellerin, Sister Juliana Prechtin; [Sister] Elizabeth Litick; Sister Cecilia Weisserbechin; Sister Maria Cleone Hoylin). The date is written 155[illegible]. The arms of the sisters are presented with crested helms: azure a stag rampant or (Büeller); argent a chief gules with three lozenges argent thereon (Precht); gules a curving cross argent (Litick); argent a king impaled argent/gules holding three flowers (Peter); azure a star or a bend indented argent (Weisserbech); sable antlers and fleur-de-lis or (Hoyl). In Switzerland, the carrying of coats of arms was not restricted to nobility. Most citizens carried coats of arms regardless of class.  Many of these “badges” even proclaimed the trade of the individual, a farmer’s plowshare, a vintner’s  pruning knife, a tailor’s pair of shears, or a baker’s pretzel.

Münsterlingen is located in northern Switzerland, only 10 km from of the German city of Constance. Friedrich Meichle has written on the history of the Bodensee (Lake Constance), explaining that tradition dates the monastery’s foundation to 986 when the sister of abbot Gregory of Einseideln (canton Schwyz) made a thank-offering for rescue in a storm.⁴ It was originally staffed with Augustinian religious from Kreuzlingen, located 4 km to the west of Münsterlingen. From the first quarter of the fourteenth century, their pastors were Dominicans from the monastery of St. Niklaus in Constance. During the Reformation, some religious left the monastery to marry. The monastery church served the new faith for a few years, but by 1533 both denominations were permitted.  In 1549, as part of Counter Reformation activity, Benedictine nuns from Engelberg, far to the south in the canton of Obwalden, arrived.

The first abbess, Magdalena Peter, who is named in the inscription, served from 1554 to 1611. The dating of the Yale panel to 1554-59 suggests that it was made as an early gift, possibly to the previous convent of Engelberg. It is clearly a part of the effort at Catholic renewal. At this time, the Rule of St. Benedict was reintroduced, the superior received the title of abbess, and four years later, she was placed under the supervision of the abbot of Einsiedeln. In order to have the church dedicated exclusively to Catholic use, Abbess Magdalena Peter had a separate church built for the Reformed Evangelicals in Scherzingen, which was completed in 1617. In 1633, in the midst of the Thirty-Years War and the presence of Swedish soldiers surrounding Constance, the nuns fled the monastery which was then occupied by Swiss soldiers and later rebellious farmers. Between 1711 and 1716, a new church for the monastery, Klosterkirche St. Remigius (Fig. 3), set slightly further inland, was built in the Baroque style. With the dissolution of the monastery in 1848, St. Remigius became a parish church. Since 1838, the original buildings of the monastery on Lake Constance have been used to treat the mentally ill. The former monastery is listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance and the entire village of Münsterlingen is part of the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites.

The monastery supported a local tradition of a winter pilgrimage believed by many to originate in 1573. A solemn procession with the wooden bust of St. John the Evangelist (Fig. 4), whose copy can be viewed at the entrance to St. Remigius, was carried across the lake to Hagnau am Bodensee in Germany and back, whenever the lake froze and the ice was thick enough. The original bust is in protective storage. A drawing by Franz Joseph Model gives an image of the procession from the Renaissance (Fig. 5). The tradition was firmly recorded by a photograph dated February 12, 1963 (Fig. 6). That procession was accompanied by thanksgiving services in which the Catholic priest Karl Hofmann addressed the faithful of both Christian denominations and called for prayers for world peace and ecumenism.

Berkeley College’s modern Swiss heraldic panel shows both historicist style and subject matter (Fig. 7).  Following the tradition of the “welcome panel,” the husband stands on the left holding a halberd. We see here the continuation of gender hierarchy, the male on the dexter (viewers’ left) and female on the sinister (viewer’s right).⁵ His prominent weapon is a reminder of civic pride, extending beyond service in trade corporations and government to the display of the readiness of all male citizens to answer a call to arms. The wife stands on the right holding out a cup of welcome. The mark of her status as mistress of the household is demonstrated by the purse dangling from her waist which carries cutlery and keys. The inscription on the panel can be translated: Casper Burkhart, master of shooting in Horgan and Margaret Muller his wife (Caspar Burkhart Schutz-/tzenmeister zu Horgen u./ Margaret Müllerin sin Ehegm:). Horgan is a municipality on the southern border of the Zurichsee, 15 km south of Zurich. The couple’s identifying family coats of arms are shown to the left and right of the inscription. Above is an image of shooting practice. The image is in the style of the second half of the 16^th  century with the majority of the glass achieved through pot metal colors, silver stain and vitreous paint. The panel can be compared to the Welcome panel of Kaspar Anderegg, dated 1589, Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern (Hasler, R., Keller, S., & Bergmann, U. (2016). Willkommscheibe Kaspar Anderegg (An der Egg). In Vitrosearch. Retrieved October 5, 2025 from https://vitrosearch.ch/objects/2471122 ). The upper scene of ploughing is a modern restoration. Compare also, especially for the female costume, the Welcome Panel with Farmer and Wife and their Four Daughters, 1600-1610, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Raguin, V., C. (2024). In Vitrosearch. Retrieved October 5, 2025 from https://vitrosearch.ch/objects/2721030).

These rooms in Berkeley College reflect the historicist architecture of Yale. It seems appropriate that they mingle the historic with the historicist in decoration. In this age of cell phone tours, it is hoped that more information on the great past of a great university is available to both student and visitor.

Footnotes

1. T. Husband in Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections: Silver-Stained Roundels and Unipartite Panels. Corpus Vitrearum Checklist I, (Studies in the History of Art, 39), Washington, 1991, p. 65.[↩]
2. V. Raguin in Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections: New England and New York. Corpus Vitrearum Checklist I, (Studies in the History of Art, 15), Washington, 1985, p. 32.[↩]
3. V. Raguin, The Illuminated Window: Stories Across Time, London, 2023, pp. 150-173. Book Review | Vidimus[↩]
4. F. Meichle: «Seegefrörne und Eisprozession in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart» in Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung. 81. (1963), esp. pp. 164–167. http://www.digishelf.de/piresolver?id=bsz014854767_1963)
   Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees u. seiner Umgebung 1963 – Bodenseebibliotheken[↩]
5. C. Schleif, “Men to the Right and Women on the Left: (A)Symmetrical Spaces and Gendered Places,” in V. Raguin and S. Stanbury, eds., Women’s Spaces: Patronage,  Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, Albany, 2005, pp. 207-250.[↩]