PIRKHEIMER (Pirckheimer), Charitas. - Clarissan nun, b. at Eichstätt 21 March 1466, d. at Nuremberg 19 Aug. 1532.
Sister of the humanist Willibald P., she was most learned, a friend of many humanists, and held in veneration by Erasmus. Of outstanding piety, she entered the Clarissan convent at Nuremberg in 1478, was elected abbess there on 20 Dec. 1503, and was joined by her sister Chiara and the daughters of her brother. She attained deserved renown especially during the period when Nuremberg was the scene of the most violent Protestantism, when all convents were suppressed, churches closed, and priests driven out. Before the steadfastness of the Abbess of S. Chiara even the ferocity of the Protestants gave way. The influence of her Protestant brother did not spare the poor nuns, but it was chiefly through the moral greatness of the abbess that her convent was able to continue until its extinction, albeit without a priest, without Mass, and with a heroic life of sacrifice, sustained by the example and word of the abbess who assumed entire spiritual direction of the nuns. Notable are her memoirs: Denkwürdigkeiten (ed. K. Höfler, Bamberg 1852; then in 1926 in the series Religiöse Quellenschriften, vol. XXXI, by H. J. Schmitt; and finally by J. K. Gabler in Corpus Catholicorum, Münster 1936). She died in her poor monastery, admired by Catholics and Protestants alike.