ABSTRACT
Since the early Middle Ages communities involved outsiders – individuals and groups – in their religious and social practices. The confraternities of prayer were part of medieval memorial culture. According to Otto Gerhard Oexle the essence of memoria – commemoration of the dead – was to make the absent present, thus creating a community of the living and dead, separated in time and space; the presence of the absent was attained by evoking names during liturgy and secular commemorative practices. The partners involved in the confraternity commemorated each other’s dead using their own resources and the institutional character of this kind of memoria made it far more secure in the long term. The Cistercian nunneries in Livonia forged ties of confraternity with numerous partners and they bonded not only with other monastic communities, but also with lay institutions. The Cistercian nuns in Tallinn had also forged ties of confraternity with other religious communities.
