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Contesting Authority and Community: Models and Practices of Monastic Reform in Late Medieval Central Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2010
Extract
In the middle of the fifteenth century, the Benedictine monks of Melk in Austria copied Hugh of Fouilloy's On the Wheel of True Religion, a moral treatise that contrasted well-disciplined and dissolute religious life. Two large images accompany the text. Atop an image depicting a dissolute cloister (Figure 1), an abbot reigns in pride and “curiosity.” He wears a red habit, a red tunic adorned with buttons at the wrists, a red beret, and red boots with golden spurs. A luxuriously adorned dagger hangs on a golden belt. The abbot also holds a falcon in his left hand, and nearby are a backgammon board and a lyre. To the left, a prior aspires to the abbot's glory. He wears fashionable long-toed boots and a red tunic adorned with buttons. He also clutches a blue bag, presumably filled with the cash that is said to fund his ascent “through simony.” To the right of the image, a deposed abbot, pulled down by a demon who clutches his habit, laments his fall from grace “through negligence.” A cloistered monk sleeps below with a pair of dice nearby. Atop the contrasting image of disciplined monks (Figure 2), a humbly clothed and properly tonsured abbot holds his office “in dignity, but humbly and with charity.” The abbot's successor, the prior, ascends reluctantly. His predecessor resigns his office out of true humility. A cloistered monk sits quietly below, reading diligently and embracing willingly his life of poverty and obedience.
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- Forum: Religion and Reform in “Late Medieval” Central Europe
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- Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2010
References
1 The Melk images are from MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 737, fols. 96v and 100r. They may have been copied from a thirteenth-century exemplar in nearby Heiligenkreuz. Cf. Constable, Giles, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar, plates 4 and 5 (MS Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, 226, fols. 146r and 149r).
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24 See, for example, the arguments rehearsed in Löhr, Gabrielle Maria, “Die Mendikantenarmut im Dominikanerorden im 14. Jahrhundert. Nach den Schriften von Johannes Dambach, O. P. und Johannes Dominici, O. P.,” Divus Thomas. Jahrbuch für Philosophie (1940): 385–427Google Scholar.
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33 MS Salzburg, St. Peter, a.III.15, fols.103v–107v.
34 Ibid., fol. 120r.
35 Ibid., fol. 117r.
36 Ibid., fol. 111r.
37 Cf. Pennington, Kenneth, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley, 1993), 53–54Google Scholar.
38 For these passages, see Wischler's text in MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 911, fol. 7r.
39 For these complaints, see MS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (hereafter BSB), Clm 19697, fol. 158r.
40 MS Salzburg, St. Peter, a.III.15, fol. 129r.
41 Ibid., 129v.
42 Ibid., fol. 125r.
43 Ibid., 130r.
44 Ibid., fol. 139v.
45 Ibid., fol. 141v.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 1094, fol. 276r. For Peter of Rosenheim, see Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon 7: 518–21, and Thoma, Franz Xaver, “Petrus von Rosenheim, OSB. Ein Beitrag zur Melker Reformbewegung,” Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 45 (1927): 94–222Google Scholar.
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50 Outlined in detail in Niederkorn-Bruck, Die Melker Reform (above, n. 2).
51 MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 1094, fols. 276v–279v. For Wischler's visitation to Lambach, see Niederkorn-Bruck, Die Melker Reform, 29 and 194. For the manuscript, see 42.
52 Martin of Leibitz, Senatorium, cited here from MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 193, esp. fol. 195r.
53 Cf. Pez, Bernard, Bibliotheca ascetica antiquo-nova (Regensburg, 1725) 8: 576–77Google Scholar. I am grateful to John Van Engen for this reference.
54 Griesser, Bruno, “Die Reform des Klosters Rechentshofen in der alten Speyerer Diözese durch Abt Johann von Maulbronn, 1431–33,” Archiv für Mittelrheinsiche Kirchengeschichte 8 (1956): 270–83Google Scholar.
55 Copies soon found their way across Bavaria and Austria — to St. Nicholas in Passau, for example (MS Munich, BSB, Clm 16196, fols. 121r–124r) and to Klosterneuburg (MS Cod. 1155, fols. 38–55).
56 MS Munich, BSB, Clm 16196, fol. 121r.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., fol. 122ra.
59 For Nicholas, see Alois Madre, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl. Leben und Schriften. Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Literaturgeschichte (Münster, 1965), 10ff., and the works cited in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon 4: 1131. For the Reformationis Methodus, see Madre, 269–71 and Meta Niederkorn-Bruck, Die Melker Reform im Spiegel der Visitationen (Vienna, 1994), 23.
60 Ibid., fol. 272v.
61 MS Vienna, Schottenkloster, 152, fol. 202v.
62 Ibid., fol. 199v.
63 Ibid., fols. 199v-200r.
64 Ibid., fol. 201v: “…domini visitatores possunt audire adhuc plures contra ipsum deponentes, videlicet laicos, vicinos, famulos etc. quoscumque.”
65 Ibid., fol. 202r: “et obiciatur sibi negligentia sua et omnium fratrum.”
66 Ibid.
67 The text is found in Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 959, fols. 189r-v, immediately preceding the Modus procedendi edited by Niederkorn-Bruck, Die Melker Reform (above, n. 2), 214–22.
68 Corpus Iuris Canonici 2: 601-2 (X 3.35.8).
69 Corpus Iuris Canonici 2: 745–47 (X 5.1.24). For context, see Kelly, Henry Ansgar, “Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses,” Church History 58 (1989): 439–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
70 Corpus Iuris Canonici 1: 509 (C 3 q. 2 c. 9).
71 MS Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, CM 959, fol. 189v: “Et sciendum quod quando de crimen simonie, periurii, dilapidationis, incontientie et similibus agitur contra prelatum regularem absque strepitu iuris potest deponi, quia ex facili causa potest a sua administratione removeri, ut patet in c. Qualiter et quando V.” Cf. Corpus Iuris Canonici 2: 747 (X 5.1.24).
72 Thoma, “Petrus von Rosenheim,” 135–37, recounted from Munich, archdiocesan archive, Cod. F. 64, fols. 432–33.