Nuns of Mount Calvary

The Nuns of Mount Calvary appear briefly in an embedded account of a night when several strict religious communities could not sleep. Their collective discomfort contributes to the passage’s comic contrast between austere religious discipline and an experience that disrupts the sisters’ rest, but the text offers no broader account of the order or its members.

Appearance in the Narrative

The sisters are listed among the penitents of the Third Order of Saint Francis, the Premonstratensians, the Cluniacs, and the Carthusians, as well as other severe orders. The account says that these communities, sleeping in blankets or haircloth, fared worse than the Abbess of Quedlinburg during the same night.

The Sleepless Night

According to the embedded narrative, the sisters spent the night tossing and turning and did not sleep between Vespers and Matins. By morning, they emerged in a distressed condition. The episode presents their shared experience in a rapid catalogue of religious groups, making the disruption collective rather than focusing on any single nun.

Narrative Function and Limits

The Nuns of Mount Calvary help enlarge the episode’s comic scale: an ordeal affecting the abbess is extended to multiple communities associated with stringent observance. Their brief appearance supports this contrast between discipline and involuntary unrest, but no names, particular response, or later consequence are given for the order.