Pirkheimer, Charitas

PIRKHEIMER, pirk-haim´er, CHARITAS: Sister of Wilibald Pirkheimer (q.v.) and abbess of the nunnery of St. Clara at Nuremberg; b. at Eichstätt (42 m. w.s.w. of Regensburg) Mar. 21, 1466; d. at Nuremberg Aug. 19, 1532. At the age of twelve she entered the nunnery of which she became abbess in 1503. In the same year she induced her sister Clara, who succeeded her in the headship of the cloister in 1532, to enter as a sister and to undertake the work of secretary and assistant. She was especially faithful in the maintenance 72of discipline and nurture of those committed to her care. By her brother she was led to the study of patristics, but was never reconciled to the Reformation, being a devoted daughter of her church. Her character was necessarily developed in a one-sided direction through her early entrance into the nunnery, and she was apparently quite morbid through continued contemplation of her sins and weaknesses. Her Denkwürdigkeiten pictures the misfortunes of her cloister (given in C. Höfler's Frankischen Studien, vol. iv., part 2, Vienna, 1853).

Bibliography: F. Binder, Charitas Pirkheimer, Freiburg, 1873.