PIRKHEIMER (PIRKHEIMER), CHARITAS. -
Poor Clare nun, b. at Eichstätt on 21 March 1466, d. at
Nuremberg on 19 Aug. 1532.
Sister of the humanist Willibald P., she was highly learned,
a friend of many humanists, and revered by Erasmus. Of pro-
found piety, she entered the Poor Clares of Nuremberg in 1478,
was elected abbess there on 20 Dec. 1503, and also drew to it her
sister Chiara and her brother’s daughters. She attained well-deserved
fame above all when Nuremberg became the scene of the
most violent Protestantism and all the convents were sup-
pressed, the churches closed, and the priests expelled. Before
the steadfastness of the abbess of St. Clare even
the ferocity of the Protestants gave way. Her brother’s influence
provided some protection for the poor nuns, but it was above all thanks
to the abbess’s moral greatness that her convent was able
to continue until its extinction, though without a priest,
without Mass, in a heroic life of sacrifices, sus-
tained by the example and words of the abbess, who assumed
the entire spiritual direction of the nuns. Noteworthy are her me-
moirs: Denkwürdigkeiten (edited by K. Höfler, Bamberg
1852; then in 1926 in the Religiöse Quellenschriften, vol. XXXI,
by H. J. Schmitt; and finally by J. K. Gabler in the Corpus
Catholicorum, Münster 1936). She died in her poor monas-
tery, admired by Catholics and Protestants.