Order and Disorder The Medieval

General Editor Steven J. McMichael University of St. Thomas

VOLUME 8

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tmf Order and Disorder

The between Foundation and Reform

By Bert Roest

  ᆕ 2013 Cover illustration: Francis of receiving Clare’s vows. Detail of the so-called Vêture de Sainte Claire (Clothing of Saint Clare) fresco cycle in the baptistery of the cathedral in Aix-en-Provence, created in the context of the foundation of the Poor Clare of Aix by Queen Sancia of Majorca and Robert of Anjou around 1337.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roest, Bert, 1965- Order and disorder : the Poor Clares between foundation and reform / by Bert Roest. p. cm. -- (The medieval Franciscans, 1572-6991 ; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-24363-7 (alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-24475-7 (e-book) 1. Poor Clares--History. I. Title. BX4362.R64 1013 271’.973--dc23 2012041307

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ISSN 1572-6991 ISBN 978-90-04-24363-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24475-7 (e-book)

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Lia van Midden (29 November, 1962–31 January, 2010) Gerben de Boer (18 September, 1960–11 January, 2011)

CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

1 , Cardinal Ugolino and the Emergence of a Damianite Order ...... 11 The Emergence of Clare’s San Damiano Community ...... 11 The Wider Context ...... 17 Attempts at Regularization: The Initiatives of the Papal Legate Ugolino of Ostia ...... 21

2 Damianites, Minoresses, Poor Clares ...... 37 The Franciscans and the Damianites after the Death of Francis ..... 38 The Rule of Innocent IV ...... 48 The Rule of Clare of Assisi ...... 51 Franciscan Order Policies after the Death of Clare ...... 54 Isabelle of and the Minoresses ...... 60 Urban IV and the Creation of the Ordo Sanctae Clarae ...... 62 How Uniform was the Order of Poor Clares? ...... 67

3 The Expansion of the Order Until c. 1400 ...... 75 Cautionary Remarks...... 75 Expansion Estimates ...... 78 Italy ...... 80 The ...... 88 France...... 104 Minoresses in France, England and Italy ...... 122 The German Lands (Including the Alsace Region) and the Low Countries ...... 128 Central and Eastern , Scandinavia, Greece and the Middle East ...... 145 Attempts at a Typology of Clarissan Houses ...... 154 Maps ...... 161, 162, 163

4 Implementing Reforms ...... 165 Tordesillas ...... 167 The Colettines ...... 169 Clarissan Reforms Under the Observantes Sub Vicariis in Italy ...... 176 viii contents

Observant Reforms in Alsace, Germany and Austria ...... 187 The Ave Maria Reform ...... 195 The Annonciade and the ‘Argentan’ or ‘Leonist’ Observance ...... 199 The Regular Observance in ...... 202 Spanish Conceptionists ...... 208 Order Expansion During the Era of Observant Reforms ...... 209 The Clarissan Expansion in the Northern Low Countries: A Case Study ...... 211 Closing Remarks ...... 224

5 Aspects of Community Life ...... 227 Socio-Economic Realities ...... 227 Social and Religious Aspects of Community Life ...... 248 The Position of the Abbess ...... 260 The ...... 269 Wayward ...... 275 Size and Shape of ...... 279

6 Forms of Literary and Artistic Expression...... 283 Preconditions: Literacy and Scribal Activities ...... 283 Poor Clares as Authors in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries ...... 297 Poor Clares and Minoresses as Target Audience ...... 301 The Impact of the Observant Reforms ...... 304 Epistolography ...... 312 Autobiographical Writings and Texts of Religious Instruction ...... 317 Writings on the Rule ...... 321 Observant Chronicles and Saints’ Lives ...... 325 Prayer Texts and Devotional Poetry ...... 335 Works of Passion Meditation ...... 337 Teaching and Preaching ...... 339 Performances, Music and the Visual Arts...... 342

Epilogue ...... 347 The Sixteenth Century: A Century of Crisis?...... 347 Ongoing Expansion ...... 359 Some Tentative Conclusions ...... 364

Bibliography ...... 371 Index of Places and Convents ...... 425 Index of Names and Subjects ...... 431 INTRODUCTION

This book offfers a general history of the order of Poor Clares from its ‘Damianite’ beginnings in the early thirteenth century until the transfor- mation of the Catholic world in the early sixteenth century. By writing it, I aim to explain the complicated origin of this order of religious women, its intricate relations with the Franciscans and the papacy, and the many transformations this order underwent in the course of the later medieval period. I try to elucidate the role of Clare of Assisi (after whom the order is named), and that of (founder of the Franciscans or order of Friars Minor). My wish is to put to rest a number of enduring myths concerning the order’s foundation. The book also sheds light on the order’s expansion, its dynamic revitalization during the so-called ‘Observant reforms’ in the later fourteenth and fijifteenth centuries, the shape of the religious life of the women involved, and their literary and artistic production. Traditionally, the beginnings of the order of Poor Clares are traced back to Clare of Assisi’s conversion to the evangelical life of poverty in 1211 or 1212, and her installation at San Damiano (near Assisi) by Francis of Assisi. This portrayal is backed up by the oldest legendary sources concerning Francis and Clare. It can also be read into Clare’s own written rule from 1253, which clearly states that her way of life was instituted by Francis of Assisi,1 and in many important visual representations, such as the fresco detail depicted on the cover of this book. Building on such documents and additional hagiographical and icono- graphical traditions, the order of Poor Clares has for a very long time been understood as a direct offfshoot of the Franciscan order, not unlike the so- called ‘Franciscan order of Tertiaries’, which also was linked in medieval documents and later hagiographical sources to the initiatives of Francis and his early companions. Thus, the neat but mythical concept of ‘three orders’ within one Franciscan order family has come into being, all due to the actions of Francis: the fijirst order of Friars Minor, the second order of Poor Clares, and the third order of Tertiaries. This became an enduring

1 Rule of Clare, Chapter I: ‘Forma vitae Ordinis Sororum pauperum, quam beatus Franciscus instituit, haec est….’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 253; Ecrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 124. 2 introduction image, not only because it was a strong hagiographical topos, but also because it was largely reiterated in influential historical master narratives on Franciscan history since Mariano of Florence (fl. c. 1500).2 However, from the later nineteenth century onwards, order historians interested in the Friars Minor and the Poor Clares re-engaged with the early history of these movements, which led to the critical edition of many medieval documents and source-based studies about individual friaries and Clarissan settlements. Through this process, it became apparent that the received historical picture was too neat. It had obscured the involve- ment of other parties. Most importantly, it had failed to show that the emergence of the order of Poor Clares had been a conflict-ridden process, and that the role of the order of Friars Minor had not always been very conducive to the creation of a ‘second order’. All this has slowly changed our vision of the early history of the Poor Clares, or Damianites as they were called in many sources until 1263. The studies by Maria Pia Alberzoni, which have thoroughly revised our inter- pretation of the early history of the Damianites/Poor Clares up till the end of the thirteenth century, have been very important in this regard.3 Yet more wide-ranging independent historical surveys on the order of Poor Clares covering the whole medieval period in a comprehensive fashion have been slow to appear. Such overviews are still frequently part of hand- books on the history of the Franciscan order, such as Moorman’s famous A History of the Franciscan Order from 1968,4 and the more recent handbook issued by Grado Merlo.5 Despite their great merits such surveys still give the impression that the history of the Poor Clares is primarily a chapter in the development of the Friars Minor. This merits a survey that focuses strictly on the Poor Clares. This desideratum also follows from an evaluation of the available spe- cialist works that have appeared on the history of the Clarissan order itself. Most of them focus heavily on the early period.6 Too often, they lack a

2 The fijirst Franciscan hagiographer who made Francis the founder of three orders might have been Julian of Speyer (c. 1200-c. 1250), who mentioned it in his Vita sancti Francisci, no. 23. See Fontes Franciscani, ed. Menestò, 1045. 3 Such as her works Chiara e il secondo Ordine. Il fenomeno francescano femminile nel Salento and La nascità di un’istituzione: l’ordine di S. Damiano nel XIII secolo. 4 Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517. 5 Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del XVI secolo, esp. 118–134, 187–200. 6 See for instance Chiara e la difffusione delle Clarisse nel secolo XIII. There are, of course, good reasons for this ongoing focus on the thirteenth century, as it still needs a lot of addi- tional scholarship. introduction 3 coherent, overall perspective,7 or retain a particular religious bias in their presentation of the historical developments.8 In the meantime, a great many in-depth studies on particular regions, individual monasteries, and ideological forms of Clarissan self-representation have become available, as well as scholarly editions of rules, vitae, house constitutions, chronicles and archival documents.9 Hence, it now is feasible to present students, scholars and interested outsiders with a largely comprehensive book on the history of the order of Poor Clares from its messy beginnings until the early sixteenth century, when the Poor Clares fijirst encoun tered the conse- quences of the reorganization by from 1517, and shortly after- wards faced the upheavals connected with the early . My book follows the history of the Clarissan order through the medieval period in light of the latest scholarship. In six chapters and an epilogue/conclusion, I have charted the complicated early beginnings of the Damianites (Chapter One), the slow emergence of a more or less unifijied order of Poor Clares and that of the related Minoresses of Isabelle of Longchamp (Chapter Two), the expansion of the order until c. 1400 (Chapter Three), the era of Observant reforms (Chapter Four), aspects of community life (Chapter Five), and forms of literary and artistic expres- sion (Chapter Six). The Epilogue touches upon some of the challenges faced by Poor Clare communities in the course of the sixteenth century. It also offfers in conclusion a short general evaluation of the medieval history of the Clarissan order. In chapters One, Two and Four, as well as in the second and third sec- tions of the Epilogue, my aim is to inform the reader as straightforwardly as possible about the main institutional developments and their immedi- ate contexts. These chapters should be read fijirst of all by those who wish to obtain an overall insight into the intricate history of the Damianites/ Poor Clares and the Minoresses and an understanding of the impact of

7 This also holds true for very important and insightful essay collections, without which the writing of this book would have been impossible, such as Sainte Claire d’Assise et sa postérité. Actes du Colloque international, published in 1995. 8 See for instance Gounon & Roussey, ‘Nella tua tenda, per sempre’ (Sl. 61,5). Storia delle Clarisse. Un’avventura di ottocento anni, which partly goes back to an older, unpublished French typescript. Its pious perspective notwithstanding, it is a goldmine of information on the Poor Clares. More balanced, but retaining a clerical outlook, is Omaechevarría, Las Clarisas a través de los siglos. 9 My debt to many such works, including the studies of Sean Field, Lezlie Knox and Mario Sensi will appear within the footnotes throughout this book. 4 introduction late medieval Observant reforms. Together, these parts form more or less the core of this book. Chapter Three is probably the most overwhelming part of this work, as it depicts in signifijicant detail the expansion of the order and the founda- tion of individual monasteries throughout Europe until the period of Observant reforms. Those who are not interested in these minutiae can limit themselves to reading this chapter’s fijirst and last sections, respec- tively on the problems involved with evaluating the order’s expansion, and on the possibilities to arrive at a typology of Clarissan houses. I thought it necessary to include the other, more thorough sections on the expansion in diffferent regions to shed additional light on the way in which individual houses came into being, and to provide readers interested in the history of individual houses with points of departure for additional research. For a variety of reasons, the expansion of the order during the Observant era has not been included, but elements of it re-surface in Chapter Four, which is completely devoted to that time period. Chapter Five zooms in on a variety of issues pertaining to the socio- economic and religious life in Damianite/Clarissan monasteries and houses of Minoresses. This includes remarks on the economic base of monasteries, and also on the position of the abbess, the novitiate, the fast- ing regime and related topics. I know that much more can be said, but I wanted to leave the reader at least with an inkling of the socio-religious and economic realities within monastic houses. I can well imagine that some of the information in this chapter can be confusing and unsatisfac- tory, as the historical evidence points out that these realities could difffer signifijicantly over time and from monastery to monastery. A lot of recent scholarship indicates that medieval Damianites/Poor Clares and Minoresses were subjected to the rule of silence, but this does not imply that the women were without a creative voice of their own. In Chapter Six, I have tried to come to terms with this; by evaluating the ‘pre- conditions’ of female religious authorship in the widest sense of the word, and by discussing the types of writing and artistic production the women engaged in. I do not offfer an all-inclusive treatment, but as in other chap- ters I hope to incite readers to further study. It goes without saying that this book is but a snapshot, based on my own interpretation of the sources and my avowedly limited forays into the quickly growing wealth of secondary literature. It also goes without saying that my perspective has been somewhat artifijicial in its diachronic focus on a single order conglomerate. It would make sense to pay much more attention to the connections between individual Clarissan monasteries introduction 5

(and individual Clarissan nuns) and other religious houses in their imme- diate surroundings than I have been able to do within the limits of my scholarly expertise. A critical reader can argue that such an approach might also have allowed me to uncover more instances of female agency. Due to its diachronic and partly institutional approach (notably in Chapters One and Two), and the (partly source-driven) emphasis on the attempts by the ecclesiastical authorities to create a coherent order of Poor Clares, this book probably still overstates male clerical initiative, even though I have tried to uncover the actions and ambitions of female participants as much as possible. Hence, there remains ample room for improvement. With all these limitations, I hope that this study provides its readers – graduate students, professional historians and interested out- siders – with a comprehensive overview, and guides them wherever pos- sible to more in-depth studies. For that reason, this book is rather heavily annotated. Hopefully, this work will induce others to take up the history of the Poor Clares and the history of female in general. I would fijind it very gratifying if, within the foreseeable future, this book were to need a thorough revision thanks to scholarly discussions and additional research. I would also be very glad if, a few years from now, it is possible to comple- ment this work with a book on the history of the Poor Clares and their vari- ous offfshoots in the early modern period. Whether or not I would be the one to write it remains an open question. Anybody writing on a topic that encompasses a great part of the European continent and roughly three centuries faces the problem of how to cope with names of locations and persons. In an earlier work, I tried to solve this issue by consistently using the names utilized in the language that is currently spoken in the region,10 but there were numerous com- plaints that this made the book less accessible to English speaking gradu- ate students. For that reason, I have sought a compromise. Several major fijigures will appear as they are commonly named in present-day Anglo- American scholarly literature. Hence, readers will encounter Clare of Assisi and Francis of Assisi, instead of their Italian equivalents. For most other people mentioned in this work, for whom English name equivalents are less uniformly used or completely non-existent, I have retained local (Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch etc.) traditions, without becom- ing overly purist, and retaining English propositions. As a consequence,

10 See Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent. 6 introduction readers will fijind Caterina Vigri/Caterina of Bologna, Jeanne of Jussie and Bernardino of Siena, instead of Caterina de’ Vigri/Caterina da Bologna, Jeanne de Jussie and Bernardino di Siena, and instead of completely Anglicized varieties, such as Catherine of Bologna, Joan of Jussie and Bernardine of Siena. For clarity’s sake, alternate names are sometimes given between brackets. The latter is particularly necessary for several geo- graphical locations, notably in Southern Tyrol/Northern Italy and in Middle and Eastern Europe, where towns and monasteries have under- gone name changes due to the vicissitudes of the early modern and mod- ern period. Good examples are Bressanone (Brixen), Trnava (Tyrnau), and Wroclaw (Breslau). Another issue pertains to religious nomenclature: are we to consider the Damianites, the Poor Clares and Minoresses as ‘sisters’ or ‘nuns’? Both terms are used in modern scholarship, sometimes indiscriminately, some- times to underscore a particular agenda. In the preparation of this book, I came to the conclusion that I had to make a choice based on my own interpretation of the nature of the religious life of the women involved. The available medieval terminological evidence is ambiguous. Some late medieval canon lawyers made a distinction between Benedictine and Cistercian women, who were nuns (moniales), and women from newer religious orders, including the Poor Clares, who were either nuns or sisters (sorores), depending on whether they had been properly consecrated or veiled by a or a clergyman of equal canonical standing.11 The earli- est texts addressing communities of what would eventually become the order of Poor Clares, right down to the Forma Vitae of Cardinal Ugolino from 1219, use a variety of terms (fijiliae, dominae, sorores). Other texts by the same Cardinal Ugolino (later Pope Gregory IX), call the women ‘poor enclosed nuns’ (pauperes moniales inclusae), whereas Franciscan hagio- graphical texts and constitutions from the 1230s or 1240s onwards some- times speak of ‘poor ladies’ (dominae pauperes). All later rules written for the Damianites and Poor Clares, however, quite systematically call the women ‘sisters’ (sorores). In the face of these diffferent options, I have chosen to address through- out this book the women known as Damianites, Poor Clares and Minor- esses as ‘nuns’, and not as ‘sisters.’ I know this might annoy those who think that the nomenclature in the rule of Clare of Assisi should be normative,

11 This played a role in the Bolognese court case concerning the abduction of the Poor Clare Antonia of Baldino da Logliano in 1432. See Dean, ‘Fornicating with Nuns in Fifteenth- Century Bologna’, 376–377. introduction 7 but there are two major arguments for doing so. First of all, we are dealing primarily with women who were supposed to live an enclosed life in a monastery, and who only left the walls of the in exceptional cir- cumstances. This is quite clear in all the rules that governed the lives of the women discussed in the pages that follow. In other words, the Damianites/ Poor Clares and Minoresses were supposed to live the monastic lives of nuns in the strictest sense of the word. Second, the words ‘sister’ and ‘Franciscan sister’ have very unclear meanings. In modern studies on medieval Franciscan women, partly echoing confusing ambivalences in medieval sources, ‘sister’ can mean: 1.) an enclosed in a Damianite, Poor Clare or Minorite monastery; 2.) a woman belonging to a regulated community of Franciscan Tertiaries (either a community under Franciscan oversight, or a community without any ties with the Franciscan order other than its allegiance to the Tertiary rule); or 3.) any female penitent, recluse or beata aligned formally or spiritually with the Franciscans. A lot of confusion has arisen from the lack of distinction between these difffer- ent categories, and there is ample proof that the indiscriminate usage of the word ‘sister’ in modern studies has not been very helpful in this regard. Because this book deals mainly with women of the fijirst category, I call them nuns. By doing so throughout the text, and only using the word ‘sis- ter’ when dealing with women from categories two or three, I hope to eradicate any confusion. The idea for writing this book emerged in the spring of 2004, when I was a visiting professor at the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University. The seed for it was planted through discussions with Athena and Jean- François Godet-Calogeras, with Margaret Carney, then Director of the Franciscan institute, and during a course on the early history of the Franciscan order presented by Michael Cusato. My debt to their generos- ity is immense. Over the years, Athena and Jean-François in particular have through their friendship encouraged me to continue, even when teaching obligations and changes in my work environment drew my atten- tion to other matters. Jean-François also commented on the penultimate version of the book, and has weeded out many mistakes and errors of judgment, especially with regard to the early history of the Damianite/ Clarissan order. I also owe a huge debt to Alison More, Anne Huijbers, and Pietro Delcorno, all of them participants in the research project Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation at Radboud University Nijmegen, with funding from NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/Netherlands Organisation for Scientifijic Research). Alison has 8 introduction painstakingly worked her way through earlier drafts of all chapters, and both Anne and Pietro have commented on passages pertaining to their own research expertise. All three of them have forced me with their ques- tions to clarify ambiguities and prevented me from making many errors. Thanks to them, and Alison in particular, this book has become much more focused than it would have been otherwise. When the writing process was nearing its completion, I was fortunate in the willingness of several additional friends and colleagues to comment on the book as a whole, or on individual chapters, namely Alison Beach, Nicole Schulman, Kor Bosch, Joost van den Oever, Heather Finley, and Lezlie Knox. All of them confronted me with textual inconsistencies that I had overlooked, and they helped me to re-think a number of passages that lacked clarity or obfuscated rather than supported the argument that I was trying to make. Their interventions have also made this book less repeti- tive and much more accessible. The completion of this work would not have been possible without the support of Isabelle Cochelin, my spouse and fellow medievalist. As a spe- cialist of the monastic world of the central , she has queried me ruthlessly on the implied and actual diffferences between the various rules and house constitutions according to which Clarissan houses orga- nized their religious life. She has also provided insights from the viewpoint of older religious reform movements, and helped me to place the Clarissan developments in a wider perspective. As our family home is in Toronto, I have been able to use several mag- nifijicent library facilities alongside of the Franciscan Institute Library at St. Bonaventure, NY. More specifijically, I have plundered the library of the Pontifijical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, the library of the Centre for Reformation and Studies and, of course, the stacks of Robarts. In all three libraries, veritable gems of the University of Toronto St. George Campus, I spent many hours hunting for books and articles. I received support in this by various librarians and graduate students. Special thanks are due to Miguel Torrens and Christian Knudsen, who procured for me hard to fijind Spanish and Portuguese materials. Without their help, my knowledge on the medieval Clarissan world in the Iberian Peninsula would have been much more limited. Technical support has been provided by Maarten van der Heijden, with whom I also manage the Franciscan Authors Website. As with previous books, Maarten has guaranteed me with dependable storage when com- puters died and university servers denied access as soon as my temporary labor contracts ended. Moreover, he has coached me once again through introduction 9 the process of transforming my many individual fijiles into a stable and coherent single document. The fact that this looks like a book is defijinitely due to him. This study has been seven or eight years in the making. In this period, I have lost my father, whom I still sorely miss as a parent, friend and fellow historian. I have also lost two good friends, who always put my feet back on the ground when I was becoming submersed in unwieldy medieval materials. They helped me to keep in touch with present-day literature and politics, teased me for my academic ambitions, and made me appreci- ate over and again the value of companionship. Their lives were cut short very cruelly, and they will always remain in my heart. To them: Lia and Gerben, I dedicate this book.

Bert Roest Nijmegen – Toronto, August 2012

CHAPTER ONE

CLARE OF ASSISI, CARDINAL UGOLINO AND THE EMERGENCE OF A DAMIANITE ORDER

The life and activities of Clare of Assisi seem a natural starting point for a history of the order of Poor Clares. After all, she is not only the person after whom the order eventually was named, but also a fascinating historical fijigure in her own right. In addition, she was the writer of a religious rule that is still used and discussed today. This makes her a member of a select group of women within the who succeeded in formulating an authoritative forma vitae for themselves and for the communities they guided. This chapter will therefore start with Clare of Assisi. Yet, as the reader will notice very soon, things do not appear to be as simple as can be presented in a straightforward historical narrative. The early history of the women and the communities that were the precursors to the order of Poor Clares was extremely complex, and cannot be reduced to the work of a saintly founder.

The Emergence of Clare’s San Damiano Community

Clare of Assisi was born around 1194 as Chiara di Faverone to the noble and rich Offfreduccio family, part of the group of the so-calledMajo res (the wealthy noble families who had been allowed to return to Assisi from after 1205, concluding a period of civil strife that had torn the town apart for nearly a decade).1 In Assisi, the young Clare lived in a household dominated by strong courtly and religious ideals. Her father, Faverone, was a nobleman and his immediate family included no fewer than seven knights. Clare’s mother Ortolana (Ortulana) was known for her religious devotions, her charity, as well as for her pilgrimages. She may even have completed the costly and risky pilgrimage de là dal mare to Jerusalem.2 After the family’s return from exile, Faverone and Ortolana probably provided Clare with a refijined yet shielded upbringing, with an

1 Bartoli Langeli, ‘La realtà sociale assisiana e il patto del 1210’; Fortini, ‘The noble family of St. Clare of Assisi’, 48–67. 2 Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, 42. 12 chapter one eye on a possible strategic marriage while at the same time stimulating her religiosity.3 For what they are worth, the later hagiographical traditions imply that Clare began to live like a penitent in her own house at a very young age.4 Clare would have heard rumors about the penitential preaching activi- ties of Francis of Assisi (Francesco Bernardone) as early as 1209 or 1210, when she was around sixteen years old. By then, she might already have decided not to marry.5 Shortly thereafter, Clare had several secret meet- ings with Francis without parental consent, but in the presence of her neighbor-friend Bona of Guelfuccio, to discuss matters of penitence, and the adoption of a poor life in agreement with the commands of the Gospel. These meetings were probably facilitated by one of her cousins, Rufijino of Scipione di Offfreduccio, one of Francis’s early male converts to the move- ment of Friars Minor.6 Clare had made up her mind by the end of Lent 1211 or 1212.7 In one form or another, she aimed to join Francis and his compan- ions. This implied a life in total poverty, without any possessions or stable means of income. Clare sold offf her personal goods in secret (and possibly the accessible parts from her dowry chest, closing both the road to matri- mony and also the road towards a traditional religious life as a nun in the cloister), and gave the money to the poor. With that act, she had become

3 Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 22: ‘Il ruolo della donna in seno alla famiglia aristocratica era in efffetti del tutto subordinato: sempre sotto tutela, prima del padre e poi del marito, era considerato un bene prezioso da tenere celato in vista di possi- bili alleanze matrimoniali.’ The only ‘space’ allowed women in that aristocratic context, according to Bartoli, was a religious one. And that is exactly what was exploited by the women of the Offfreduccio household. 4 The servant Giovanni of Ventura testifijied at Clare’s beatifijication process that Clare already as a young girl carried under her elegant vestments a ‘stamm(e)nga biancha’ [=maglia di stamigna biancha/a roughly knitted white woolen cloth], Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufffijiciali, ed. Boccali, Processo, 20,4. Later, would change this in his Legenda Sanctae Clarae into a ‘cilicio’: Legenda latina Sanctae Clarae Virginis Assisiensis, ed. Boccali, no. 4. This could very well be a hagiographical topos. At the same time, such hagiographical statements could indicate that Clare was moving beyond the religious and devotional examples set for her by her mother and other women in the household. Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 20; Peterson, ‘Like a Beguine. Clare before 1212’, 47–67. 5 It is signifijicant that, at the age of sixteen, she was not yet married or promised to a candidate to her parents’ liking. Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 24. 6 Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare and the emergence of the Second Order’, 116. Godet-Calogeras thinks that Francis might have taken the initiative for an actual meeting after friar Rufijino had mentioned Clare to him. 7 The choice for 1211 or 1212 depends on the way one wishes to read the available docu- ments. For an up-to-date discussion of this issue, see Mooney, ‘The ‘Lesser Sisters’ in Jacques de Vitry’s 1216 Letter’, 1 (note 1). clare of assisi and the damianite order 13 herself one of the poor: a conscious and dramatic break with her past as a member of a family of Majores.8 In cooperation with Francis, and apparently with the secret consent of Bishop Guido II of Assisi, Clare and her friend Pacifijica of Guelfuccio (Bona’s sister) left Clare’s parental home during the evening of Palm Sunday, after attending the Palm Sunday liturgy in Assisi’s Cathedral, on the eighteenth of March. Leaving town via the Porta Moiano, which pos- sibly was left open at the command of Bishop Guido, Clare and Pacifijica went downhill until they arrived at the little church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where they encountered Francis and a few members of his early brotherhood. Then and there, Francis accepted Clare’s profession by cut- ting their hair – giving her, as it were, the penitential tonsure – and provid- ing her with the simple sack-like habit of a penitent.9 Through these actions during a highly charged moment in the liturgical year (re-enacting, as it were, the entry into Jerusalem by leaving the world), Clare implicitly became a member of the young Franciscan fraternity. Yet, to avoid scandal and complications with Clare’s family and the local reli- gious authorities, Francis and his fellow friars Filippo Longo and Bernardo of Quintavalle brought Clare to the nuns of San Paolo delle Abbadesse in Bastia the same night. This monastery was also situated outside Assisi, and the nuns apparently had been informed about the events beforehand. They admitted Clare as a servitialis (lay servant, engaged for domestic tasks) and not as a nun – which Clare would not have wished and which also would not have been possible, as Clare no longer had a proper dowry to give.10 The next day, Clare’s family found out what had occurred and sent a search party to retrieve her. At San Paolo delle Abbadesse, these men tried to cajole Clare into coming back to the family, by suggesting that a lady of her standing should not debase herself to a state of servility. Yet Clare showed her family her shorn head, and clung to the cloths of the church, making it clear to her father’s men that she did not intend

8 Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 28. 9 Cf. Padovese, ‘La ‘tonsura’ di Chiara: gesto di consacrazione o segno di penitenza?’, 389–404; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 117. Godet-Calogeras suggests that all this took place with the active support of bishop Guido. 10 Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 14; Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 27–28. On the monastery, see Bigaroni, ‘I monasteri benedettini femminili di S. Paolo delle Abbadesse, di S. Apolinare in Assisi e S. Maria di Paradiso prima del Concilio di Trento’, 171–231. 14 chapter one to go back. Hesitant to use force in the abbey church and incur the wrath of higher religious authorities, they backed offf.11 Clare did not stay long at San Paolo delle Abbadesse. Once her family had been rebufffed, Clare felt confijident enough to fijind shelter in surround- ings more congenial to the penitential lifestyle she wanted. Again accom- panied by Francis and other friars, she transferred to the smaller reclusorio of Sant’Angelo in Panzo on the flanks of Mount Subasio (famous for its eremitic settlements) but closer to Assisi. This house had a more peniten- tial character, where women could live a communal life without a full vow of monastic profession.12 Clare was joined there by her younger sister Caterina (sister Agnes in religious life). The family reacted strongly to this second defection. This time, the party sent to reclaim Clare’s sister was led by Monaldo, an uncle of Clare and Caterina/Agnes. This party was less reluctant to use violence. Since Caterina/Agnes’s hair had not yet been cut, Monaldo and his men did not risk excommunication when they brought her home by force. Legendary sources relate that Monaldo tried to drag Agnes from the church by her hair. Yet the women’s tenacious resis- tance, supposed miraculous intervention thanks to Clare’s prayer, and pos- sibly some residual fear for committing overt sacrilege in a church by Monaldo and his group, caused them to withdraw.13 It was clear to both Francis and Clare that a more permanent solution had to be found. This arrived when Francis was able to obtain from Bishop Guido of Assisi permission to house Clare and her fijirst companions around the San Damiano chapel. This chapel was offfijicially still the property of the bishop and one of the fijirst home bases of the early Franciscan commu- nity.14 At San Damiano, Caterina’s hair was cut by Francis, who renamed her Agnes. Under Guido’s episcopal protection, Clare and her female

11 Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 26–27. The S. Paolo delle Abbadesse monastery had received the privilege of asylum from Pope Innocent III (with the penalty of excommunication for those who violated it), and had close connections with bishop Guido of Assisi. Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 117. 12 Cf. Sensi, ‘Incarcerate e penitenti a Foligno nella prima metà del Trecento’, 291–308 (esp. 305, note 41); Sensi, ‘La scelta topotetica delle penitenti fra due e trecento nell’Italia centrale’, 245–275. Sant’Angelo in Panzo eventually would become a Damianite and later a Clarissan house. A lettter by Pope Gregory IX from 1238 (Bullarium Franciscanum I, 258) shows that, by then, the monastery had joined the Damianite network (on this network, see the following pages). 13 For an encompassing socio-historical analysis of the attemps to retrieve Clare and her sister and the issue of family honor in thirteenth-century society, see Vetere, ‘La condizione femminile nell’età di Chiara e la sua esperienza di vita’, 9–51; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 14–15; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 118. 14 Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 118 explains that San Damiano was a small church with a little under the patronage of Saint Damian, who had practised the clare of assisi and the damianite order 15 companions could now live in close proximity to the friars at San Damiano, sharing as much as possible the early Franciscan ideals of minoritas inspired by the evangelical message.15 There, Clare gathered around her in a relatively short time span a group of women who supported her in her religious project. Among these were several women from the Offfreduccio household (including Clare’s own mother) and from other important Majores families – a sign that Clare’s relatives rather quickly came to terms with the situation.16 During the early period (c. 1212–1217), San Damiano was an important Minorite center, where friars (including a number of Francis’s close com- panions, such as Leo, Rufijino and Angelo) recuperated from their travels and did chores for the women. The major diffference between the life of these women and the Franciscan men in their neighborhood was the itin- erant preaching and begging activities of the latter. The women stayed closer to the San Damiano compound, combining physical labor and pos- sibly some type of service with a life of prayer and meditation. The remarks made by Jacques of Vitry, who passed through the Assisi region in the summer of 1216, are very suggestive in this regard. In his let- ters addressed to acquaintances back in Liège (in present-day Belgium), Jacques of Vitry commented on fratres minores et sorores minores near Assisi, and wrote that the women in question occupied and small shelters. There they lived by the work of their hands without asking for any payment, and shared the life of the poor and the outcast.17 It is tempting to identify the sorores minores in this testimony with the community of Clare at San Damiano. However, the scholarly verdict on this issue is far art of healing with his twin brother Cosmas in Asia Minor before their execution under Diocletian in 287. 15 Hence a life of service to others in absolute poverty and humility. Alberzoni, La nas- cita di un’istituzione, 14. 16 See Casagrande, ‘Le compagne di Chiara’, 381–425; Lazzeri, ‘Il processo di canonizza- zione di s. Chiara d’Assisi’, 403–507. Aside from Pacifijica of Guelfuccio, Agnes, Beatrice and Clare’s mother Ortolana, the hagiographical sources and the acts of the canonization pro- cess (which have survived in a fijifteenth-century Umbrian vernacular translation) mention by name fijifteen ‘sorelle’ living at San Damiano during Clare’s lifetime. 17 Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240), évêque de Saint-Jean d’Acre, ed. Huygens, 75–76: ‘Multi enim utriusque sexus, divites et saeculares, omnibus pro Christo relictis, saec- ulum fugiebant, qui fratres minores et sorores minores vocabantur. A domino papa et cardi- nalibus in magna reverentia habentur, hii autem circa temporalia nullatenus occupantur, sed ferventi desiderio et vehementi studio singulis diebus laborant ut animas que pereunt a seculi vanitatibus retrahant et eas secum ducant. Et iam per gratiam Dei magnum fruc- tum fecerunt et multos lucrati sunt, ut qui audit dicat: veni, et cortina cortinam trahat. Ipsi autem secundum formam primitive ecclesie vivunt, de quibus scriptum est: multitudinis credentium erat cor unum et anima una. De die intrant civitates et villas, ut aliquos lucri- faciant operam dantes actiones; nocte vero revertuntur ad heremum vel loca solitaria 16 chapter one from unanimous. Various specialists, such as Zarncke, Rusconi, Alberzoni, Mooney and Van Asseldonk, have suggested that Jacques of Vitry’s descrip- tion fijitted a larger and less defijined groups of religious men and women in North and Central Italy engaged in forms of eremitical and penitential experimentation in search of the primitive life of evangelical perfection, comparable with the beguine initiatives of Maria of Oignies and others that Jacques of Vitry knew from the Liège diocese. Jacques might have seen correspondences between such unregulated forms of religious engagement in Belgium and the fratres et sorores minores in Italy in respect to manual labor, service to the poor and the ill, the call for ongoing peni- tence, and the desire to combine the active life with periods of eremitical retreat and contemplation.18 Whatever the case may be, Jacques of Vitry’s words might still provide some insight in the life lived by Clare and her early companions. Around 1212, Francis of Assisi composed an informal and concise ‘Form of Life’ (Formula Vitae/Forma Vivendi) for Clare and her companions, which exhorted Clare and the other women with her to live a life of evan- gelical perfection akin to that of the Friars Minor (barring preaching and begging activities). In subsequent years additional admonitions were composed, which gradually developed into a set of ‘Regular Observances’ (Observantiae Regulares). This, at least, is the name by which these early attempts at regularization became known in several later documents (papal bulls and Clare’s own writings). Except for Francis’s ‘Form of Life’, the complete text of these early regulations has not survived.19 Based on the information in later documents, these ‘Observances’ and the initial ‘Form of Life’ probably addressed the life of evangelical poverty, the rela- tionship between the friars and the women, fasting practices and liturgical matters.20

vacantes contemplationi. Mulieres vero iuxta civitates in diversis hospitiis simul commo- rantur; nichil accipiunt, sed de labore manuum suarum vivunt, valde autem dolent et tur- bantur, quia a clericis et laicis plus quam vellent honorantur…’ 18 See Zarncke, Der Anteil des Kardinals Ugolino an der Ausbildung der drei Orden des heiligen Franz, 25–30; Rusconi, ‘L’espansione del francescanesimo femminile nel secolo XIII’, 272–274; Asseldonk, ‘Sorores Minores. Una nuova impostazione del problema’, 618– 621; Asseldonk, “Sorores Minores’. Chiara d’Assisi a San Damiano. Una scelta tra clausura e lebbrosa?’, 399–420; Mooney, ‘The ‘Lesser Sisters”, esp. 17–19; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 111fff. See also Andenna, ‘Dalla Religio’, 440–442. 19 Clare later included (a version of) the ‘Form of Life’ in her own rule. 20 See for instance Seton, ‘The Letters from Saint Clare to Blessed Agnes of Bohemia’, 513–519; Pozzi & Rima, Lettere ad Agnese: La visione dello specchio. See also the discussion of Clare’s own rule in Chapter Two of this book. clare of assisi and the damianite order 17

It is important to note that these early regulations were formulated at a time when the Franciscan rule for the Friars Minor did not yet exist in a defijinite form. It therefore seems likely that the rudimentary ‘Form of Life’ drawn up for the women and the evolving ‘Observances’ contained several elements of the emerging Franciscan rule.21 These normative ‘texts’ delin- eated the shared evangelical life of the women and the men at San Damiano. There can be no doubt that for Clare of Assisi, these early state- ments remained the foundation stones for her own interpretation of the Franciscan way of life.

The Wider Context

Despite whatever qualities were unique to San Damiano, Clare and her companions had adopted a lifestyle similar to other communities of women at that time. Like the voluntary penitents, recluses and semi- regulated monastics in North and Central Italy, these women lived a life that combined manual labor and prayer. This life was sometimes acted out in total seclusion and predominantly geared to the contemplative life. At other times, it was lived out in a more open religious setting with service to the ill in and leprosaria.22 For that reason it is very possible that Jacques of Vitry’s remarks con- cerning sorores minores in and around San Damiano referred to a much more extensive phenomenon, one that can by no means be reduced to the initiatives of Francis and Clare.23 During the last decades of the twelfth and the fijirst decades of the thirteenth century, North and Central Italy saw a plethora of female religious initiatives, in which groups of women from a socially heterogeneous but predominantly urban background wished to create forms of communal religious life that difffered from established types of female monasticism.24 Traditionally, female monastic

21 Asseldonk, ‘Sorores Minores’, 606; Pellegrini, ‘Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy’, 110–111. 22 Pellegrini, ‘Female Religious Experience’, 122; Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche tra e Marche, 4–5. 23 Mooney, ‘The ‘Lesser Sisters”, 17–29 even argues at considerable length that it is rather doubtful that the lesser sisters mentioned in the letter of Jacques of Vitry included the women of Clare’s San Damiano community. 24 Herbert Grundmann was one of the fijirst to draw attention to this phenomenon in his classic Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, fijirst published in 1935. It was taken up again by Leclercq, ‘Il monachesimo femminile nei secoli XII e XIII’, 63–90. Jacques of Vitry was struck by the parallels with the beguine movement in the Low Countries and the Rhine 18 chapter one houses in Italy were closely linked to aristocratic donor families, who used such monastic institutions as an instrument for augmenting familial power with strategic donations, and by populating them with younger daughters and widows whom they could not affford to (re)marry. Women could normally only enter these monasteries with substantial dowries. By the end of the twelfth century, some new religious movements in North and Central Italy, such as the Waldensians and the Umiliati, both of which had been inspired by evangelical ideals of religious poverty and social ser- vice, began to offfer a place to women with religious aspirations, specifiji- cally women who were normally not in a fijinancial position to leave the world and enter a monastery. Yet the Waldensians and the Umiliati were unable to absorb all of them, and very quickly were forced to adopt more traditional religious models.25 Around the same time, monastic orders that in the course of the twelfth century had accepted some responsibility for female religious commu- nities in Italy and elsewhere, such as the Praemonstratensians, the , and the English Gilbertines, began to object to any new obli- gations regarding the spiritual and material care for female houses, espe- cially when the latter did not adhere to traditional monastic models and lacked secure endowments.26 As a result, North and Central Italy saw the appearance of various unregulated groups of women intent on living a form of evangelically inspired religious life, which combined spiritual retreat with social service. Some of these women were drawn to the radi- cal life of evangelical perfection propagated by friars of the budding

Valley region. See on this also Mens, L’Ombrie italienne et l’Ombrie brabançonne. Deux cou- rants religieux parallèles d’inspiration commune & Guarnieri, ‘La ‘vita’ di Chiara da Montefalco e la pietà Brabantina del ‘200. Prime indagini su un’ipotesi di lavoro’, 303–367. 25 Merlo, ‘Religiosità e cultura religiosa dei laici nel secolo XII’, 52–56; Ambrosioni, ‘Gli Umiliati: punti di arrivo e prospettive di ricerca’, 67–71. See also the study of Andrews, The Early Humiliati. 26 The received papal permission to refuse the incorporation of additional female communities by 1198. Around the same time, calls for limiting the accep- tance of new female houses became very strong within the Cistercian order. This evolved into an offfijicial stop to further incorporate female houses by 1228. Within the German lands, however, this prohibition was not applied consistently. No less than 150 female houses were incorporated into the Cistercian order within the German lands in the fijirst half of the thir- teenth century. Ostrowitzki, ‘L’attitude des Cisterciens face aux moniales de Rhénanie aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles: problèmes d’incorporation et de surveillance’, 239–248; Canivez, ‘Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786’ I, 68; Thompson, ‘Le monache cisterciensi nei secoli XII-XIII’, 275–304; Degler-Spengler, “Zahlreich wie die Sterne des Himmels’. Zisterzienser, Dominikaner und Franziskaner vor dem Problem der Inkorporation von Frauenklöstern’, 37–50; Elm, ‘Le donne negli Ordini religiosi dei secoli XII e XIII’, 9–22. clare of assisi and the damianite order 19

Franciscan order, which began to make its presence felt during the second decade of the thirteenth century. Depending on their social status, con- tacts, and socio-economic possibilities, these women organized them- selves as (at fijirst non-enclosed) religious communities with or without direct Franciscan support or Franciscan direction. As we have seen, Clare of Assisi’s community at San Damiano (from c. 1212 onwards) counts among the ones that benefijited from close Franciscan contacts from early on. San Salvatore di Colpersito outside San Severino Marche (1217/1220) was another community of ‘women devoted to God’ (mulieres Deo dedicate) that might have been erected with Franciscan sup- port from the outset. Still under episcopal oversight, it received from the bishop of Camerino the right to choose its spiritual directors among local Friars Minor in 1223.27 Another example is provided by the actions of the noble woman Filippa Mareri. Partly inspired by Francis of Assisi, she cre- ated between 1221 and 1225 a penitential community, and she later stood at the basis of what eventually developed into the Poor Clare monastery of Borgo S. Pietro.28 Other women within the Franciscan sphere of influence were not able to shed their ties to society as radically. They remained in the world but espoused forms of active religious penitence that included almsgiving and other forms of charity and social work. Among the latter were women who appear in the early biographies of Francis, such as the recluse Prassede and ‘friar’ Jacopa of Settesoli (Giacoma Frangipane de’ Settesoli). Francis went as far as to accept Jacopa symbolically into the Franciscan order by giving her the habit and chord. These women might be seen as exponents of the lay penitential movements that in part would evolve into the so- called third order of penitents or tertiaries.29 In other cases, there is evidence for either independent, sui generis foundations, or the direct involvement of Clare’s San Damiano commu- nity, instead of Francis or his brothers. For instance, between c. 1217 and

27 Oliger, ‘De origine regularum Ordinis S. Clarae’, 199–201; Marano, ‘Le Clarisse nelle Marche. Gli insediamenti del XIII secolo’, 105–166; Borri, ‘Le pergamene del monastero di S. Salvatore di Colpersito (1223–1292)’, 7–84. The San Salvatore di Colpersito community did not follow completely the San Damiano model of absolute poverty. Early sources mention the activities of a Fra Paolo as the women’s fijinancial manager. 28 Chiappini, Santa Filippa Mareri e il suo monastero di Borgo S. Pietro de Molito nel Cicolano. Biografijia-Liturgia-Documenti; S. Filippa Mareri e il monastero di Borgo S. Pietro nella storia del Cicolano. 29 Dalarun, Francesco: un passagio. Donna e donne negli scritti e nelle leggende di Francesco d’Assisi, 61–88; Redondo, ‘Los movimentos femininos en tiempos de Francisco di Asís’, 197–239. 20 chapter one the early 1220s, this includes the Fonte Capelli community near Foligno (in 1217), Avegnente of Albizzo’s Monticelli community near Florence (around 1218), as well as communities in Arezzo, Spello, Milan and (possibly) Venice.30 Franciscan order historians have tried to connect the emergence of these houses to Francis’s travels through the Tuscany region in 1211 (passing through Arezzo, Florence, Pisa and Pescia), 1217 (again visiting Arezzo and Florence) and in the early 1220s. They extrapolate from Clare’s conversion story, her settlement at San Damiano, the close symbiosis between the women and the men at San Damiano up till the 1220s, and the possible involvement of San Damiano with various other communities, to envisage comparable creations of most other female houses. This is par- ticularly visible in Mariano of Florence’s Libro delle degnità et excellentie del Ordine della Seraphica Madre delle Povere Donne Sancta Chiara da Asisi from the early sixteenth century. This approach was taken up in the Annales Minorum edited by the Observant Franciscan Lucas Wadding, and since then became standard procedure in the works of a host of more recent Franciscan historians.31 But the women who organized themselves into as yet unenclosed reli- gious communities during the fijirst two decades of the thirteenth century, living a life of poverty without proper monastic endowments, were by no means limited to those who from the outset can be shown to have had close connections with the emerging Franciscan order. In North and Central Italy, a signifijicant number of other religious communities, fre- quently consisting of women from the highest social strata, emerged independently as the result of female initiatives.32 A case in point is the

30 Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara in Umbria’, 481; Idem, ‘Le compagne di Chiara’, 381– 425; Sensi, ‘Le clarisse a Foligno nel secolo XIII’, 349–363; Gennaro, ‘Chiara, Agnese e le prime consorelle’, 173–175; Lazzeri, ‘L’antico monastero di Vallegloria vicino a Spello’, 49–50; Sensi, ‘Il patrimonio monastico di S. Maria di Vallegloria a Spello’, 77–149; Sevesi, ‘Il monas- teri delle Clarisse in S. Apollinare di Milano (Documenti sec. XIII-XVIII)’, 343–344; Godet- Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 119 (who also mentions in this context the San Severino community in the Marches of Ancona). Lezlie Knox therefore states that there might have emerged in this period a ‘small network of “Clarian” houses that were linked to Clare and San Damiano by both personal connections and an adoption of their observances.’ Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 28. Maria Pia Alberzoni suggests that the assumed connection between San Damiano and the Monticelli monastery at this early date might have to be re-evaluated: Alberzoni, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 210. 31 See on this Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Fondazioni francescane femminili nella provincia tus- ciae del XIII secolo’, 181–182. 32 For information on such houses, see for instance Rigon, ‘Monasteri doppi e problemi di vita religiosa femminile a Padova nel Due e Trecento’, 226–233; Bartoli Langeli, ‘I peni- tenti a Spoleto nel Duecento’, 303–312; Sensi, ‘Incarcerate e recluse in Umbria nei secoli XIII e XIV: un bizzoccaggio centro-italiano’, 85fff; Benvenuti Papi,‘I n castro penitentiae’. Santità e clare of assisi and the damianite order 21

Sant’Agata leprosarium sub Aquario at Verona, where by 1210 several sorores minores were already living together with the affflicted, taking care of them and sharing in their fate. Only from 1224 was this semi-religious group more or less brought under Franciscan oversight and forced to accept monastic enclosure by the ecclesiastical authorities.33

Attempts at Regularization: The Initiatives of the Papal Legate Ugolino of Ostia

The early history of several such houses is predominantly known to us thanks to the letters exchanged by Pope Honorius III and his legate Ugolino of Segni (Ugolino dei Conti di Segni), cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who trav- eled through North and Central Italy in early 1217, between 1218 and 1219 and again in 1221. One of these letters, written by Pope Honorius on August 27, 1218 (Litterae tuae nobis), makes mention of virgins and other women of high noble or aristocratic standing, who desired to have simple dwell- ings (domicilia), so that they could live out their religious life according to their wishes without possessions.34 The exchange between the pope and his cardinal-legate indicates that, at least in some cases, the women or lay people speaking on their behalf had approached the papacy directly – bypassing the local bishop – and had spoken out for a form of religious life unfettered by ties of dependency upon local lay and ecclesiastical authori- ties, and by the patrimonies provided by donor families. These noble and patrician women sought to create communities free from such customary ties because they wished to enact a purer form of ‘evangelical’ communal poverty. In the past, female religious houses in Italy wishing to disconnect from local ecclesiastical interference fre- quently forged a link with monasteries of an existing male religious order (such as the Cistercians or the Praemonstratensians). But this was

società femminile nell’Italia medievale, passim; Casagrande, ‘Forme di via religiosa femminile solitaria in Italia centrale’, 51–94. See also Sandre Gasparini, ‘Lebbrosi e lebbro- sarri tra misericordia e assistenza nei secoli XII-XIII’, 239–268. 33 Varanini, ‘Per la storia dei Minori a Verona nel Duecento’, 92–125. 34 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 1–2 ‘Litterae tuae nobis exhibitae continebant quod quamplures virgines et aliae mulieres (…) desiderant fugere pompas et divitias huius mundi et fabricari sibi aliqua domicilia in quibus vivant nihil possidentes sub caelo, excep- tis domicilis ipsis et construendis oratoriis in eisdam. Cum ad hoc tibi fundi a pluribus Ecclesiae Romanae nomine offferantur (…), praesentium tibi auctoritate mandamus quate- nus huiusmodi fundos in ius et proprietatem Ecclesiae Romanae nomine ipsius recipias et Ecclesias construendas in ipsis soli Apostolicae Sedi subesse decernas.’ 22 chapter one precisely the time, as mentioned above, that many religious orders were reluctant to accept additional female religious houses, and in some cases decided to block the incorporation of new female monasteries altogether. The wish for communal poverty and the renunciation of a substantial monastic patrimony through donations from local patrons made such female communities poor candidates for integration within a traditional religious order. As a result, the papal curia and the papal legate Ugolino of Ostia were confronted with aspiring or already emerging communities of religious women that defijied the established categories. Some of these might have been remnants of former Umiliati, others were spontaneously formed penitential groups engaged in social service, recluses living an eremitical life in the forests, mulieres inclusae inside their family homes, and female conversae involved with activities in hospitals and leprosaria. Their common characteristics were that their subsistence and spiritual care were not fully guaranteed, and that they unfolded outside of tradi- tionally acceptable ecclesiastical structures. Their very existence violated one of the major decisions of the Fourth Lateran Council, which had ordered that all religious communities should abide by a properly recog- nized monastic rule. Faced with numerous unregulated female religious communities that defijied the Council’s rulings, but nevertheless convinced of their genuine religious inspiration, Honorius III and Ugolino decided to put a number of these budding religious communities under the direct protection of the papal curia, to impose on them a proper monastic rule, and to facilitate the acts and the deeds that provided these communities with the desired immunity from episcopal interference, and the basic donations needed to secure their subsistence. Cases in point are the erection of the Santa Maria di Monteluce house near Perugia in the summer of 1218,35 and the normal- ization or institutionalization in the summer of 1219 of Santa Maria fuori

35 By July 1218, Glotto of Munaldo donated the land necessary for the of a monastery, renouncing in the donation document all patronage rights. Later that month, the bishop of Perugia consented to Ugolino’s request for the creation of a church with a monastery for a group of religious women or conversae on this property, and renounced any episcopal rights to the monastery itself. These documents have been edited in Francesco d’Assisi. Documenti e archive. Codici e biblioteche. Miniature, 31–32 & 47–48. For Ugolino’s letters and the pope’s confijirmations, seeB ullarium Franciscanum I, 13–15. clare of assisi and the damianite order 23

Porta Camollia near Siena,36 and of the Santa Maria di Gattaiola commu- nity near Lucca.37 At fijirst, Cardinal Ugolino might not have intended to create a connec- tion between these ‘Ugolinian’ houses placed under direct protection of the papal curia, and those female communities that were evolving directly or indirectly under the umbrella of the Franciscan movement, such as Clare of Assisi’s San Damiano community and houses at Foligno, Arezzo, Spello, Milan, and near Florence (Monticelli). Nor did Ugolino necessarily wish the houses regulated by him to follow the lifestyle of evangelical poverty sought by San Damiano. The cardinal’s vision in regulating female religious communities was very much inspired by the way in which Cistercian nunneries had been organized in previous decades. Hence, it is no coincidence that Ugolino appointed the Cistercian Ambrogio as the fijirst general visitator of his growing group of houses under protection of the papal curia.38

36 Santa Maria fuori Porta Camollia (Santa Maria iuxta Stratam) near Siena had come into being some time before 1219 around the chapel of Santa Petronilla, with the women of the house possibly active in one of the nearby hospitals. The foundation of the house used to be ascribed by Franciscan scholars to Ginevra of Ugone di Tebalduccio, who later became abbess at the San Damiano community after the death of Clare of Assisi. Yet reli- able documents regarding the foundation and early development of the house are scarce. On 29 July 1219, Ugolino of Ostia freed the community from its dependency on the cathe- dral chapter of Siena and put the house with its donations by the Sienese burgher Vitale of Donicato under protection of the Apostolic See. Pope Honorius III confijirmed these privi- leges in September 1222. Bullarium Francisanum I, 11–13; Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Fondazioni francescane femminili’, 190. 37 The Santa Maria di Gattaiola monastery near Lucca was originally a hermitage-like structure in a wooded area, which subsequently was transformed into a proper monastery. This was made possible thanks to a land donation by Orlandino Volpelli and direct interfer- ence by Cardinal Ugolino, who placed this terrain and the community under protection of the Apostolic See. Ugolino’s letters regarding the Gattaiola house and their confijirmation by Pope Honorius III in 1222 have been printed in Bullarium Francisanum I, 10–11. For more information, see Borelli, Il francescanesimo femminile a Lucca nei secoli XIII e XIV. Il Monastero di Gattaiola, 31fff.; Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Fondazioni francescane femminili’, 194–195; Borelli & Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Gregorio IX e il francescanesimo femminile nel territorio pisano-lucchese’. 174fff. See on both the Siena monastery and Santa Maria di Gattaiola also Pellegrini, ‘Female Religious Experience and Society’, 106–107, who analyzes in more detail the actual process through which these monasteries were established and placed under papal protection. 38 It is also worth noting that many, if not all of the fijirst ‘Ugolinian’ houses were dedi- cated to the Virgin Mary. This was in line with Cistercian traditions. See on this Paris, Histoire de la fondation et de l’évolution de l’Ordre des Frères Mineurs au XIIIe siècle, 602; Alberzoni, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 212; Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco, 124. 24 chapter one

It could well be that Ugolino’s interest in forging a closer link between houses that he wished to bring directly under papal protection in North and Central Italy, and the nucleus of communities that had evolved more directly within the ambiance of the Franciscan order, was kindled due to his involvement with the normalization of the Monticelli community near Florence led by the aristocratic Avegnente of Albizzo degli Amidei. This community had started in 1216 or 1217. By 1218, Avegnente and her women had adopted the Observantiae Regulares from San Damiano, possibly in the context of a visit by Agnes of Assisi (Clare’s sister) to inform the women at Monticelli about the lifestyle at San Damiano, and they had started to organize themselves into a monastic community, with communal pov- erty as its hallmark.39 Already before this adoption of the Observantiae Regulares, Avegnente had been in touch with the papal legate, who legiti- mized her undertaking. In subsequent letters from 1218 and 1219, Pope Honorius III and Cardinal Ugolino received the lands destined for the con- struction of the monastery in name of the Apostolic See, and also recog- nized the community’s adoption of Francis’s Observantiae Regulares alongside of the Benedictine rule as the guiding documents for the women.40 Further motivation might have resulted from Ugolino’s direct acquain- tance with Francis and the Franciscan order from c. 1217 onwards. Soon, the cardinal began to take an active part in reshaping Franciscan legisla- tion in order to transform the Franciscan movement into a religious order that could be used to further the missionizing agenda of the papal curia. Hence, Ugolino’s interest in ‘normalizing’ female religious communities that were inspired by ideals of evangelical perfection became inter- twined with his increasing involvement with the transformation of the Franciscan movement into a well-ordered pastoral taskforce with a cleri- cal outlook.41

39 As said earlier, Maria Pia Alberzoni doubts Agnes’s involvement at this date, postu- lating a connection between San Damiano and the Monteluce monastery of Perugia instead: Alberzoni, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 210. 40 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 3–5. For more information on this foundation, see Di Stolfiji, ‘Le Clarisse a Firenze. Il monastero di Monticelli’, 81–87; Anna Benvenuti Papi, ‘L’insediamento francescano a Firenze: le origini’, 81–100; Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Fondazioni francescane femminili’, 186–187. 41 Lilly Zarncke was probably the fijirst modern scholar to give due weight to the role of Cardinal Ugolino in organizing the various newly emerged female religious houses into a new ‘order’ and to connect them with the female communities established under Franciscan inspiration. See: Zarncke, Der Anteil des Kardinals Ugolino, passim. Only in the 1980s and 1990s have Franciscan scholars begun to appreciate her insight in these matters. clare of assisi and the damianite order 25

However, the merger of the conglomerate of houses ‘normalized’ by Cardinal Ugolino (in the sources frequently mentioned as the religio Pauperum Dominarum or as the Pauperes Dominae de Valle Spoleti sive Tuscia) with the movement exemplifijied by Clare’s San Damiano commu- nity was not yet foremost on Ugolino’s mind between 1218 and 1219. In that period, he wrote the fijirst redaction of a specifijic Forma Vitae or Forma et Modus Vivendi to impose on the former a more uniform monastic life. This ‘Form of Life’ survives in at least three and possibly fijive subsequent redac- tions,42 and was predominantly inspired by the Benedictine rule. Ugolino’s text assumed that the women were proper nuns (in the sense of fully clois- tered women), but in principle gave the women the possibility to live a more extreme and more ‘evangelical’ form of religious life, in terms of pov- erty and , than the Benedictine rule prescribed. By referring to the Benedictine rule, Ugolino’s text made sure that the women could be said to follow regulations approved by the Fourth Lateran Council.43 It undercut possible criticisms that these women were engaged in illicit ways of religious experimentation (objections previously raised against the Umiliati, the Waldensians and others). Following a policy that can be traced back at least to the dealings of Pope Innocent III with religious penitents and semi-religious groups in the area around 1207 (and which were echoed by the Fourth Lateran Council held under that pope’s direction),44 Ugolino’s Forma Vitae/Forma et Modus Vivendi implied a very rigid form of monastic enclosure. The reli- gious houses had to conform to a fully monastic way of life, ideally along Benedictine or Cistercian lines, with a very heavy emphasis on fasting, silence and a proper performance of the daily liturgical cycles. This put a quick end to all kinds of physical labor and social service (to lepers and

The best modern treatments are probably given by Pásztor, Selge and, of course, Maria Pia Alberzoni. See: Pásztor, ‘San Francesco e il cardinale Ugolino nella ‘Questione francescana”, 209–239; Selge, ‘Franz von Asisi und Hugolino von Ostia’, 157–222; Alberzoni, ‘Curia romana e regolamentazione delle damianite e delle domenicane’, 501–537; Idem, ‘Gregorio IX e la vita religiosa femminile’, 145–178; Idem, ‘«Intra in gaudium Domini. Domini tui videlicet, Praedicatorum Ordinis». Diana d’Andalò e Chiara d’Assisi: da sorores a moniales’, 1–42. In these studies, Alberzoni also shows that Ugolino’s involvement with the connection of other female religous houses to the followed a nearly parallel trajectory. 42 Respectively dating from 1219, 1239 and 1245. There were probably additional redac- tions. Cf. Sainte Claire d’Assise, Documents, ed. Vorreux, 289–300; Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 217–232. See now also Boccali, ‘La ‘Cum omnis vera religio’ del cardinale Ugolino. ‘Forma vite’ primitiva per San Damiano ed altri monasteri’, 435–477. 43 Maccarone, ‘Le costituzioni del IV Concilio lateranense sui religiosi’, 38–39. 44 Maccarone, ‘Riforme e innovazione di Innocenzo III nella vita religiosa’, 272–278. See for a wider view also Pásztor, ‘I papi del Duecento e Trecento di fronte alla vita religiosa femminile’, 115–116. 26 chapter one others) for which the women before their ‘normalization’ used to go out. It also meant that possible ideals of living without proper endowments became problematic: full enclosure meant that the women either needed additional unenclosed personnel to beg and work in their place, or had to be provided with other kinds of permanent income (such as property rents, or annuities).45 The chronology of the incorporation of Clare’s San Damiano commu- nity into the Ugolinian network is difffijicult to pin down. However, it more or less ran its course between 1220, Ugolino’s fijirst visit to San Damiano, and 1228, when San Damiano was, at least from a papal perspective, fully incorporated into the network of monasteries subject to Ugolino’s Forma Vitae.46 Ugolino visited Clare’s community for the fijirst time during Holy Week in 1220, at a moment when Francis was in Egypt (where he had his famous encounter with the sultan). Ugolino visited San Damiano possibly to fijind out more about its adherence to Francis’sObse rvantiae Regulares, but more probably also to co-opt the San Damiano community into his network of religious houses and make it accept the regulations prescribed by his own Forma Vitae. The exact nature of the encounter between Ugolino and Clare of Assisi in 1220 escapes us, but there is evidence that Ugolino’s Forma Vitae was indeed presented to Clare on this occasion. The scholarly verdict remains divided as to whether Clare’s community accepted it at this point in time. The evidence in favor is a recently discovered early manuscript of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, possibly dating from shortly after the cardinal’s visit to San Damiano in 1220. That text mentions the San Damiano house alongside of those at Spello, Foligno, Perugia, Arezzo, Siena, Florence, Lucca, Tortona and elsewhere as belonging to the same religio (an organized group of reli- gious communities under a common rule).47 However, a document from

45 To ensure conformity, Ugolino placed communities that had been given his Forma Vitae under the disciplinary and spiritual oversight of a select number of visitators. At fijirst, as has been mentioned before, several of these were recruited among the Cistercians (such as the visitator Ambrogio). 46 Andenna, ‘Dalla Religio pauperum Dominarum de Valle Spoliti all’Ordo Sancti Damiani’, 428–492. 47 Tugwell, ‘The original text of the Regula Hugolini (1219)’, 512: ‘Ugo miseratione divina Ostiensis et Velletrensis episcopus, apostolice sedis legatus, dilectis in Christo fijiliabus monasteriorum sancti Damiani de Asisio, et beate Marie de Spello, de Fulineo, de Perusio, de Aretio, de Senis, de Florentia, de Lucca, de Terdona et aliorum monasteriorum eiusdem religionis abbattissis et sororibus universis salutem in Domino. (…) Cum omnis vera religio et vite institutio approbata certis constet regulis et mensuris (…) Quocirca vobis omnibus et singulis legationis auctoritate qua fungimur in virtute oboedientiae districte precipi- endo mandamus quatinus formam ipsam quam vobis dirigimus plene in sequentibus clare of assisi and the damianite order 27

1221, in which Ugolino regulated the way in which had to organize the exemption of new female communities put under papal protection, mentions the houses at Perugia, Siena and Lucca, but omits the communi- ties of San Damiano and Santa Maria di Monticelli near Florence. This would suggest that these latter houses were still seen to be diffferent from the Ugolinian monasteries.48 Still, some formal acquiescence to Ugolino’s Forma Vitae by Clare’s San Damiano community around 1220 may not have been such a big step. There are indications that the initial unenclosed lifestyle at San Damiano, characterized by physical labor and charitable work, was already changing into a much more enclosed form of monastic life prior to Ugolino’s visit. For in the wake of the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council, in or shortly after 1215, Francis forced Clare to accept the position of abbess, and possi- bly also to adopt elements of the Benedictine rule that would make her community more acceptable in the eyes of the religious authorities.49 Whatever the discussions about the monastic rules and forms to be adhered to, the meeting between Ugolino and Clare around Easter 1220 apparently amounted to an important spiritual experience for the cardinal. This is attested to in a letter he wrote to Clare shortly afterwards, in which he compared his sadness to be separated from Clare in deeply annotatam humiliter et devote recipere et inviolabiliter decetero studeatis vos et post vos omnes future perpetuis temporibus observare.’ The formal incorporation of San Damiano into the Ugolinian network by 1220 would also be indicated by the dedication of the church of the San Damiano community to the Virgin Mary. See: Bigaroni, S. Maria in San Damiano d’Assisi. Per una datazione dell’afffresco nel catino absidale. 48 Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco, 124–125. See also note 50. 49 Legenda latina Sanctae Clarae Virginis Assisiensis, ed. Boccali, no. 12; Fontes Franciscani, ed. Menestò, 2459. See also Fontette, Les religieuses à l’âge classique du droit canon, 132; Salvi, ‘La regola di S. Benedetto nei primordi dell’ordine di S. Chiara’. 77–121; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 119; Smith, ‘Observing the Gospel: Obedience in the Clarissan formae vitae (1212-53)’, 124; Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women, 17fff. It is in the context of these developments, which have regularly been interpreted as a commitment by Clare to follow the Benedictine rule, that Franciscan scholars used to situate a fijirst Poverty Privilege, issued during an alleged encounter between Francis, Clare and the aging Pope Innocent III in 1216. On that occasion, Francis and Clare would have been able to obtain a papal privi- lege, amounting to an approval of the evangelical lifestyle of the women at San Damiano. This would have meant that the women at San Damiano remained exempt from taking on the rule of Benedict wholesale (in line with the requirements of the Fourth Lateran Council), or at least that their willingness to adhere to the rule of Benedict at that juncture did not imply that they would have to abandon their life of evangelical poverty without possessions, and that they could live according to the evangelical precepts put forward in Francis’s initial ‘Life Form’ for the women. Since the publication of an in-depth source analysis by Werner Maleczek from 1995, the status of this ‘fijirst’ Poverty Privilege has become a topic of fijierce debate (see below & note 65). 28 chapter one evocative terms.50 Yet this letter also reveals very clearly how Ugolino saw the religious role of Clare and her companions at San Damiano, and of all the other women within the Ugolinian framework and within the Church at large. For Cardinal Ugolino, the women should be content with an enclosed contemplative life of prayer and devotion to the Eucharist. As such, they could be vessels of holiness, whose example could be a consola- tion for the clerics working in the world, and whose intercession would benefijit all.51 During the early 1220s, Ugolino seems to have been concerned primar- ily with the expansion and consolidation of his network of female houses, by now commonly called the religion of Poor Ladies (religio Pauperum Dominarum de Valle Spoleti sive Tuscia). Around that time, the process of normalizing unregulated female religious communities by putting them

50 ‘…Carissima soror in Christo! Ab illa hora, qua a sanctis colloquiis vestris me redeundi necessitas separavit et ab illo gaudio coelestium thesaurorum avulsit, tanta me amaritudo cordis, abundantia lacrymarum et immanitas doloris invasit, quod, nisi ad pedes Jesu con- solationem solitae pietatis inveniam, timeo, ne angustias illas semper tales incurram, qui- bus spiritus meus forte defijiciet et penitus anima liquefijiet. Merito quia, dum Pascha tecum et cum ancillis Christi ceteris celebratum, defijiciente illa laetitia gloriosa, qua vobiscum de corpore Christi tractaveram, sicut, cum Dominus a discipulis raptus et patibulo crucis afffijixus, immensa fuit tristitia subsecuta, ita remansi de vestra absentia desolatus. Et licet me usque modo sciverim et reputaverim peccator, intellecta meritorum praerogativa tuo- rum et rigore Religionis inspecto, modo pro certo didici, quod tot peccatorum sum sarcina praegravatus et in tantum universae terrae Dominatorem offfendi, quod non sum dignus electorum eius consortio aggregari et ab occupationibus terrenis avelli, nisi lacrymae et orationes tuae mihi veniam impretent pro peccatis. Committo igitur tibi animam meam et spiritum recommendo, ut sicut Jesus in cruce Patri suo spiritum commendavit, et in die iudicii mihi respondeas, si de salute mea non fueris sollicita et attenta; quia pro certo credo, quod apud summum iudicem impetrabis, quidquid instantia tantae devotionis et copia lacrymarum exposcit. Dominus Papa modo non venit Assisium, sed opportunitate captata te et sorores tuas videre desidero. Saluta Agnetem virginem et sororem meam et universas sorores tuas in Christo. Amen.’ Taken from Esser, ‘Die Briefe Gregors IX. an die hl. Klara von Assisi’, 277. 51 ‘…vos in claustris reclusistis, ut mundo, et quae in mundo sunt salubriter abdicatis, Sponsum vestrum incorrupto amplexantes amore, curratis in odorem unguentorum ipsius, donec vos introducat in suae cubiculum genetricis, amoris sui dulcedine perpetuo recrean- das (…) Verum quia inter amaritudines innumeras et angustias infijinitas, quibus afffligimur incessanter, vos estis consolatio nostra, universitatem vestram rogamus et hortamur in Domino Iesu Christo, ac per apostolica vobis scripta mandamus, quatenus, quemadmo- dum accepistis a nobis, spiritu ambulantes, spiritu et viventes, posteriorum oblitae semper ad anteriora vos cum Apostolo extendatis, aemulando charismata meliora; ut magis ac magis virtutibus ambulantes, Deum glorifijicari faciatis in vobis, et nostrum gaudium impleatis, qui vos tamquam speciales fijilias (immo, si fas est dicere, dominas, quia Domini nostri sponsas), intima complectimur charitate.’ Taken from Esser, ‘Die Briefe Gregors IX.’, 283–284. See on this vision of a contemplative life of prayer and Eucharist devotion for women by the cardinal also Alberzoni, ‘Gregorio IX e la vita religiosa femminile’, 161–166, and Idem, “Nequaquam a Christi sequela in perpetuum absolvi desidero’, Chiara tra carisma e istituzione’, 44–45. clare of assisi and the damianite order 29 under papal protection and making them accept Ugolino’s Forma Vitae had already become standardized, as we can see from the register of Ugolino’s third journey as papal legate through Central Italy in 1221.52 In addition, over the next six or seven years, quite a number of new houses were brought into the Ugolinian religion of Poor Ladies.53 Nevertheless, Ugolino’s involvement with the creation of the defijinitive Franciscan rule (the Regula Bullata of 1223), and his overall role in trans- forming the Franciscan order into a well-educated, clericalized pastoral taskforce, made him increasingly aware of the possibilities of using the Friars Minor as permanent visitators and priests for his growing network of female monasteries. As Clare’s house at San Damiano had secure ties with the Franciscans, the full incorporation of her community into the Ugolinian network could form a precedent for a more integral Franciscan involvement with the entire Ugolinian religion of Poor Ladies. While Francis was still alive, more intensive Franciscan involvement was problematic. Francis himself had accepted Clare of Assisi into the reli- gious life and had been closely involved with establishing her and her bud- ding community at San Damiano. Insofar as we can rely on the available source materials, it seems clear that he desired as well that his friars took some responsibility for the women at San Damiano. This, at least, is the impression one gets from the rudiments of Francis’s Forma Vivendi alleg- edly given to the women in or shortly after 1212.54 However, Francis of Assisi was apparently not keen to accept permanent responsibility for a

52 The formula from 1221 standardized the wording with which Italian bishops should concede the appropriate dispensations for new female communities in their diocese that would become part of the Ugolinian/Damianite network. These communities should receive complete liberty (plene libertas) from direct diocesan control and intervention. The bishop was in fact only allowed to dedicate their church, to consecrate the altar, and to bless the nuns. The election of the abbess and the correction of the nuns was no longer a diocesan matter, but was brought under the direct oversight of the Roman pontifff or of the legate appointed by the papacy. The model for this formula was taken from the wordings of the documents used previously for the legal dispensations granted to the communities of Perugia, Siena and Lucca (and not from the documents pertaining to the Florentine Monticelli monastery, which mentioned the Observantiae Regulares of San Damiano). Registri dei cardinali Ugolino d’Ostia e Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, ed. Levi, 153–154. See also Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 19. 53 A good example is the future Damianite/Clarissan house of Cortona, which in March 1225 received recognition as a house that followed the ‘Forma vitae et religionis pauperum dominarum de Valle Spoletana’. Cf. Andenna, ‘Dalla Religio Pauperum Dominarum’, 462; Rusconi, ‘L’espansione’, 275, n. 33. 54 In this rudimentary Forma Vivendi, later included in Clare’s own rule from 1253, Francis stated: ‘volo et promitto per me et fratres meos semper habere de vobis tamquam de ipsis curam diligentem et sollicitudinem specialem.’ RegCl. 6, 1–4, Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 263. 30 chapter one growing number of female religious houses, contrary to what older Franciscan order sometimes has claimed. There is considerable hagiographical and historical evidence for Francis’s acknowledgment of the validity of female religious engagement. In particular, this is shown by his cordial relations with several penitential women and their communities as mentioned. There is also evidence for the active involvement of individual Franciscan friars, some in close col- laboration with Cardinal Ugolino, in making female religious houses con- form to the Ugolinian model during Francis’s lifetime. Hence, in July 1224, a friar Bartolo acted on behalf of Ugolino in normalizing a group of reli- gious women from Faenza, and ensured that they accepted the cardinal’s Forma Vitae.55 The same year, local Franciscan friars and the bishop of Verona worked together in ‘normalizing’ a group of sorores minores who worked at a leprosarium. The sources mention that their Franciscan visitator Lionus (Leone of Perego?) indicated that, if they wished to main- tain their links with the friars, they had to discontinue their activities in the leprosarium, adopt the Benedictine rule in combination with the Ugolinian Forma Vitae, and live a fully cloistered life.56 This might have been an indication of what was to come: the friars only agreed to take responsibility under strict conditions. However, even such limited Franciscan involvement would have gone against the wishes of Francis of Assisi. The oldest hagiographical sources indicate that Francis was profoundly displeased when, returning from the Middle East in 1220, he found out that friars such as Filippo Longo and Giovanni of Conpello had committed themselves to the cura monialium (spiritual care of nuns) or visitation obligations with regard to female reli- gious houses.57 Whatever Francis’s initial commitment might have been to Clare of Assisi and a few other individual women who desired to live an evangelical life akin to his own, he was increasingly weary of contact with women and of responsibility for female houses as the years wore on. Traces of this can be found in the Franciscan rule completed by 1221

55 Lanzoni, ‘Le antiche carte del convento di Santa Chiara in Faenza’, 270–271; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 22f; Andenna, ‘Dalla Religio’, 459. 56 Varanini, ‘Per la storia dei Minori a Verona nel Duecento’, 92–125; Sandre-Gasparini, ‘L’assistenza ai lebbrosi nel movimento religioso’, 25–59. Hence, Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 23 states: ‘Leone da Perego sarebbe dunque da considerare uno stretto col- laboratore di Ugolino in quest’opera di normalizzazione delle comunità femminili…’ 57 Asseldonk, ‘Sorores Minores’, 1993, 410–412. We have to be careful in this assessment, as our ‘knowledge’ of Francis’s sentiments is nearly completely based on the Franciscan hagiographical tradition, which might reflect more the policies of the order leaders during the conception of the hagiographical texts than the actual convictions of Francis himself. clare of assisi and the damianite order 31

(Regula non Bullata), and in the fijinal rule from 1223 Reg( ula Bullata). Both of these texts severely curtailed the involvement of friars in accepting women into the religious life or creating female religious houses with close connections to the order.58 The wording of these texts might reflect anxieties by Francis, as well as by many other prominent friars in leader- ship positions during the 1220s (with friar Elias as possible exception, as will be clarifijied in the next chapter). They were afraid that close contacts with female religious and binding obligations concerning the cura monia- lium and the material support of female houses might become a heavy burden, and could easily cause scandal.59 Thus, serious attempts to make the Franciscan order responsible for the cura monialium of Ugolino’s growing network of female monasteries had to wait until after Francis had passed away. Hence, the normalization of all female religious houses into one ‘order’ of enclosed monasteries with Ugolino’s Forma Vitae as basic legislative text and the order of Friars Minor responsible for their cura monialium was largely brought to its fijirst conclu- sion in the fijirst two years after the death of Francis (on 3 October 1226). During this period Cardinal Ugolino ascended to the papacy as Gregory IX (19 March 1227), which allowed him to implement his policies from a bet- ter vantage point. The new pope thought the time ripe to impose his wishes on the Franciscan order, and to exploit the traditional connection between Clare’s San Damiano community and the friars, which had been sanctioned by Francis’s personal promises. By co-opting the San Damiano community more fully into his own network of exempt female religious houses, he could use the promises of the soon to be beatifijied Francis of Assisi towards Clare as a precedent to make the Franciscan order accept,

58 The Regula non Bullata states in chapter 12 (De malo visu et frequentia mulierum): ‘Omnes fratres, ubicumque sunt vel vadunt, caveant sibi a malo visu et frequentia muli- erum. Et nullus cum eis consilietur aut per viam vadat solus aut ad mensam in una parop- side comedat. Sacerdotes honeste loquantur cum eis dando poenitentiam vel aliud spirituale consilium. Et nulla penitus mulier ab aliquo fratre recipiatur ad obedientiam, sed dato sibi consilio spirituali, ubi voluerit agat poenitentiam.’ Regula non Bullata, ed. Esser, Cap. 12, 1–4 (italics in the source text are mine). See also the insightful discussion in Dalarun, ‘Francesco, Chiara e le altre’, 25–39. 59 Marco Bartoli has suggested that in the end, when Francis once again spent more time near San Damiano (also due to his illnesses), Clare herself did much to overcome Francis’s hesitations regarding the acceptance of the permanent material and spiritual care of the dominae pauperae, opening the road to the emergence of a more unifijied order of men and women: Bartoli, ‘Il movimento francescano delle origini e la donna’, 379–391. For a diffferent assessment, see Gennaro, ‘E nel nome di Chiara?’, 118 and Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 31, who concludes: ‘Francis therefore had little to do with organizing a female Franciscan order. Indeed, his behaviour toward female adherents of evangelical poverty was inconsistent over the course of his life.’ 32 chapter one under strict conditions, responsibilities towards all the other female com- munities as well.60 Shortly after his ascent to the papal throne, Pope Gregory IX sent out letters to several female houses of pauperes moniales inclusae that fol- lowed his Forma Vitae to announce that the coordination of their spiritual care had now been consigned to the Franciscan friar Pacifijico.61 Then, in December of 1227, he delegated the spiritual care of the pauperes moniales inclusae to the Franciscan minister general Giovanni Parenti, making it the direct responsibility of the Franciscan order and its leaders.62 In July 1228, Pope Gregory came to Assisi at the occasion of Francis’s festive canonization, where the new saint and the friars of his order were to be presented as obedient sons of the Church. During this visit, the pope also visited Clare’s community at San Damiano, to make sure that this commu- nity would become even more fully integrated into his ‘Ugolinian’ net- work. Thus, the connection between the Franciscan order and the women of his network of monasteries could be made to look more natural and seemingly in accordance with Francis’s own promises to his most famous female convert.63 The meeting between Gregory and Clare in July 1228, and the possible points of friction between their respective views on the core elements of female religious life, have been touched upon in the hagiographical tradi- tion devoted to Clare, and have been discussed at length by modern spe- cialists of Franciscan and Clarissan history.64 Most probably, the outcome was another compromise, but one tilted in favor of the pope’s wishes: Clare would accept, once and for all, incorporation into the ‘Ugolinian’ network. She would also accept the latest version of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae with its references to the Benedictine rule. Given that Clare might already have agreed to adhere to an older version of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae by 1220, and might even have accepted some fijive years earlier the Benedictine rule

60 For the following see especially Alberzoni, “Nequaquam a Christi sequela”, passim. 61 There are several redactions, sent out to the monastery of Sant’Appollinare of Milan in July and to the house in Siena in August 1227. See: Alberzoni, ‘Francescanesimo a Milano’, 209; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 33–34. Another redaction, sent to the Spello monastery on the fijirst of August, has been edited inA nnales Camaldulenses, ed. Costadini & Mittarelli, IV, 296. 62 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 36 (no, 16). Cf. Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 122. 63 As Maria Pia Alberzoni formulates it: ‘Gregorio, dunque, aveva assicurato ai monas- teri da lui istituiti la cura dei Francescani: per rendere più organica l’iniziativa doveva però ottenere che anche S. Damiano, la prima comunità alla quale Francesco aveva garantito l’assistenza sua e dei suoi frati, potesse essere annoverata tra le fondazioni dell’Ordo de Spoleto sive Tuscia.’ Alberzoni, “Nequaquam a Christi sequella”, 46. 64 See especially the reconstruction in Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, 172–173. clare of assisi and the damianite order 33 as an overarching guideline to appease the ecclesiastical authorities, including Francis, this did not necessarily imply a radical change. Clare probably had come to terms with a fully enclosed monastic life, which entailed the fijinal renunciation of any kind of charitable activity or labor for which the women had to leave the monastic compound. In return, the pope granted or reconfijirmed on 17 September 1228 a special poverty privi- lege (Privilegium Paupertatis) for Clare and her women. This ensured that the San Damiano community could continue to exercise a form of evan- gelical poverty without common possessions, in accordance with the pris- tine Franciscan ideals.65 A comparable privilege was granted a year later to the Santa Maria di Monteluce monastery near Perugia and possibly the Monticelli house in Florence (then led by Clare’s sister Agnes).66 From this moment onwards, it became customary for letters from the papal curia to address the conglomerate of houses following the Ugolinian Forma Vitae as the order of San Damiano. This nomenclature had been used intermittently during the early 1220s, alongside other designations (such as religio Pauperum Dominarum) that did not immediately imply a connection with Clare’s San Damiano community.67 After Pope Gregory’s visit to San Damiano in July 1228, however, nearly all documents issued by or on behalf of the papal curia concerning these communities would

65 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 771 (no. 346). As said earlier, Franciscan scholars used to trace the history of a fijirst papal Privilegium Paupertatis to an alleged encounter between Francis, Clare and the aging pope Innocent III in 1216. The Privilegium Paupertatis issued by Gregory IX in 1228 would therefore have been a confijirmation of an already existing papal promise. In 1995, this view was seriously undermined by Maleczek, ‘Das Privilegium pau- pertatis Innocenz’ III. und das Testament der Klara von Assisi. Überlegungen zur Frage ihrer Echtheit’, 5–82. Following this study, which negated the authenticity of the Poverty Privilege ascribed to Innocent III and even cast doubt on the authenticity of Clare of Assisi’s famous Testament, scholars have begun to see the Privilegium Paupertatis from 1228 as the oldest authentic papal poverty privilege issued on behalf of Clare’s community at San Damiano. However, more recent studies by Attilio Bartoli Langeli and Michael Cusato question some of Maleczek’s fijindings. Hence, the discussion lingers on, like many others in the dense fijield of Franciscan studies. See: Bartoli Langeli,Gli autografiji di frate Francesco e di frate Leone, 104–130; Cusato, ‘From the Perfectio sancti Evangelii to the Sanctissima Vita et Paupertas. An Hypothesis on the Origin of the Privilegium Paupertatis to Clare and Her Sisters at San Damiano’, 123–144. See also: Accrocca, ‘L’illetterato e il testimone. Considerazioni sull’autografo di frate Leone in margine ad un recente volume’, 337–355. 66 Analecta Franciscana III, 176; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 50 (no. 36) & 62 (no. 50). Mario Sensi denies that the privilege sent to Santa Maria di Monticelli in Florence in 1230 was a true poverty privilege along the lines of the document sent to San Damiano in September 1228 and to Monteluce in June 1229. Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 144. 67 For a more detailed analysis of the vocabulary used between c. 1221 and 1228, in the context of the erection of the S. Apollinare monastery in Milan and other houses, see Alberzoni, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile, 213–215. 34 chapter one speak about the order of San Damiano.68 Hence, Cardinal Rinaldo of Jenne (future Pope Alexander IV), the new cardinal protector of the communi- ties subject to Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, addressed 24 of them in a letter from 28 August 1228 as ‘convents of poor monasteries of San Damiano of Assisi’ (conventus pauperum monasteriorum S. Damiani de Assisio). In this letter, Rinaldo was marking his own position as their new cardinal protector since Ugolino’s ascent to the papal throne as Gregory IX, and announced that their new visitator was going to be the Franciscan friar Filippo Longo.69 Clare’s prestigious San Damiano community with its close ties to the Franciscan order had now fully become the fijigurehead of all the vari- ous communities in North and Central Italy that followed Ugolino’s Forma Vitae. Cardinal Rinaldo and Pope Gregory IX actively interfered on behalf of already existing and newly constituted ‘Damianite’ communities, pro- viding them with churches and monastic possessions, and securing their exemptions from local episcopal control. A case in point is the Ognissanti a Ripa d’Arno monastery near Pisa, which at the start was an unregulated community of ‘donne recluse’ and was regularized by papal intervention in 1227/1228, after which a number of papal bulls secured its exempt sta- tus.70 Moreover, by this time the normalization of newly created female religious communities with recourse to Ugolino’s Forma Vitae also began to touch houses outside Italy, as is shown by the implementation of this rule in Pamplona, Spain, by the spring of 1228.71 All these houses, required to follow relevant passages of the Benedictine rule combined with Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, were assumed to accept com- plete enclosure. The women involved were supposed to spend their life in liturgical prayer and adhere to a stringent fasting regime.72 With a few exceptions, this meant that these houses, now transformed into more ‘tra- ditional’ monasteries, were bequeathed with proper endowments to

68 See for instance Bullarium Franciscanum I, 149; Rusconi, ‘L’espansione’, 285. 69 Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 362–367; Oliger, ‘De origine regularum Ordinis S. Clarae’, 444–446. A listing of the 24 houses mentioned in Rinaldo’s letter is given in Chapter Three, note 11. 70 See Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Fondazioni francescane femminili’, 192–193. 71 In April 1228, the papal curia sent a version of Ugolino’s Forma vitae to Pamplona. For a modern edition of this text, see Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 217–232. 72 Still in spring 1228, the pope sent out a circular letter to all Damianite houses (Deus Pater, Bullarium Franciscanum I, 37), again making clear that for him, the regulated female religious life within the cloister implied complete enclosure: the nuns should lead the life of Mary Magdalene in prayer, supporting with their prayers the work of the papacy and the Church at large, represented as the active life of Martha. clare of assisi and the damianite order 35 secure the upkeep of the monastic compounds and the nourishment and further maintenance of the women. The exceptions were, for the time being, Clare’s own San Damiano community, thanks to Gregory IX’s pov- erty privilege of 1228, and a few other houses, such as the Santa Maria di Monticelli monastery in Florence and the Monteluce monastery near Perugia that were also able to obtain the same or a comparable poverty privilege in subsequent years. As we will see in later chapters, there would be ongoing pressure on these houses to accept properties and endow- ments so that they would be less dependent on the charity of believers. Ugolino’s policy as cardinal and subsequently as pope of turning Clare’s San Damiano community into the fijigurehead of all the communities sub- ject to the Ugolinian rule, was part of his strategy to align this new order of San Damiano with the Franciscans, and thus to secure the spiritual care of the women. Although many individual friars were involved in this process, it was not met with universal approval within the leading circles of the Franciscan order. Many friars saw the spiritual care and additional respon- sibilities for a growing number of female religious communities as a bur- den. With the exception of Friar Elias (vicar general of the Franciscan order between 1221 and 1227, and minister general between 1232 and 1239), nearly all the clerical friars who led the Franciscan order after the death of Francis through the 1260s were keen to limit as much as possible the order’s responsibility vis-à-vis the growing number of female houses com- monly known as the order of Damianites. They also tried to limit the num- ber of additional foundations, for fear that the burden of the cura monialium would become overwhelming and bring scandal to the order of Friars Minor. It also became clear rather quickly to Clare at San Damiano that her incorporation into the network of Ugolinian monasteries, now called the ordo Sancti Damiani, could make her relationship with the Friars Minor much more formal and limited. Clare and the women of her community were used to having close contact with the companions of Francis. This relationship was deemed vital to retain a link with the mendicant life, and to maintain the original Franciscan character of the life of evangelical pov- erty. The women at San Damiano now ran the risk of being treated as just another community within the ordo Sancti Damiani, with visitators and priests involved with the cura monialium selected and appointed by the cardinal protector and the Franciscan minister general. It is partly in the context of this prolonged and multifaceted interaction between Clare and her religious community, the other female communi- ties within the order of San Damiano, the Franciscans, and the papal curia 36 chapter one that we should understand the rather peculiar institutional develop- ments that in the course of the thirteenth century would bring into being the order of Poor Clares, properly speaking, alongside other types of ‘Minoresses’. In this process no less than four additional rules were pro- posed to guide the life of these women alongside Francis’s early guidelines from c. 1212–1215 and the Forma Vitae issued by Cardinal Ugolino for the fijirst time around 1219. The implementation of these rules and their trans- formatory role in the creation of the order of Poor Clares will be central to the next chapter. CHAPTER TWO

DAMIANITES, MINORESSES, POOR CLARES

In the previous chapter we have seen that the ‘normalization’ of female religious houses with recourse to the Ugolinian Forma Vitae and papal privileges concerning exemption from episcopal control was a reaction to a complex phenomenon that can not from the outset be completely reduced to Franciscan-inspired initiatives. Confronted by new forms of female religious life, more often than not initiated by local women motivated by a mix of religious and charitable ambitions and unfet- tered by traditional monastic bonds, religious authorities wished to regain control. Soon, the papal curia tried to make the Franciscan order commit to the spiritual care of these women, in part because of the spiritual afffijinities between the early Friars Minor and several of these new female religious houses, and also because of the clear connection between the early Franciscan brotherhood and Clare of Assisi’s community at San Damiano. We have seen that this quickly generated resistance among Franciscan order leaders, who tried to avoid assuming responsibility for the spiritual and in some cases also the material care for a growing number of Damianite settlements. Still, individual (communities of) Franciscan friars could be well disposed towards female religious houses at the local level, leading to forms of collaboration and even cohabitation that were seemingly at odds with the offfijicial order policies. It shows that the socio-religious reality on the ground was hard to capture in general prohibitions. In addition to the examples already mentioned, we can point to the Arcella monastery in Padua. This Damianite house probably came into existence between 1216 and 1220 with the assistance of local Franciscan friars and possibly also the townspeople of Padua. The community, the house of the visionary Elena Enselmini (d. 1241), appears in the letter issued by Rinaldo of Jenne in August 1228 mentioned in Chapter One. By that time, Arcella apparently could draw on the services of a group of resi- dent Franciscan friars involved with spiritual and material service to the women in question. Anthony of Padua stayed at Arcella during his preach- ing rallies of 1229–1230, and he died in the friars’ quarters there in 1231. Until the creation of the large Il Santo friary after 1234, the Arcella house was in fact the primary residence of the friars as well. We might even be 38 chapter two speaking about a double or dual monastery, where the women and the friars lived in some kind of symbiosis from the very beginning, to all appearances independent from and not inspired by Clare’s community at San Damiano.1

The Franciscans and the Damianites after the Death of Francis

Francis of Assisi died on October 3, 1226. At the Pentecostal general chap- ter of 1227 the Franciscan order chose Giovanni Parenti as its new minister general. Unlike Francis and Elias, he did not have any special relationship with the San Damiano community. Moreover, unlike Elias, Giovanni Parenti was inclined to keep the Franciscan cura monialium obligations towards the Damianites as formal and limited as possible, in line with the policies of other religious orders. Still, on 14 December of 1227, Ugolino, now Pope Gregory IX, offfijicially bequeathed to him the spiritual care of the Ugolinian/Damianite network.2 It is quite probable that Giovanni and the clerical friars in charge of the order with him saw this as a burdensome and even dangerous task. It hampered friars in their pastoral engagement in the world at large, and it could easily lead to accusations of improper conduct.

1 Rigon, ‘Monasteri doppi e problemi di vita religiosa femminile a Padova nel Due e Trecento’, 221; Sartori, ‘Il santuario dell’Arcella a Padova’, 553; Bortolami, ‘Minoritismo e sviluppo urbano fra due e trecento: il caso di Padova’, 79–95; Saracini, ‘La Cella del tran- sito di Sant’Antonio nel Santuario Antoniano dell’Arcella’, 337–372; Knox, ‘Clare of Assisi: Foundress of an Order?’, 20; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 91fff. Whereas older order histo- rians highlighted the possible role of Clare’s San Damiano community and the personal initiatives of Francis of Assisi in the creation of the Arcella settlement, these modern schol- ars no longer believe this. As Alison Beach pointed out to me, the ‘double monastery’ label has engendered all kinds of connotations concerning labor division, the common use of sacred space by and the equality between male and female religious. It might be better to speak of ‘dual monasteries’ or ‘dual sex monasteries’. In each case, the nature of the shared religious life needs (if possible) clarifijication. See on this issue also Jäggi, ‘Eastern or Western Gallery? The Problem of the Place of the Nuns’ Choir in Koenigsfelden and other Early Mendicant Nunneries’, 79–93. 2 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 36–37 (no. 16): Quoties cordis, erroneously dated in the edi- tion as being issued on 14 November 1227. Cf. Thomson, ‘Checklist of Papal Letters Relating to the Three Orders of St. Francis. Innocent III-Alexander IV’, 383 (no. 58). The text runs as follows: ‘…opportunum esse cognovimus, ut de persona provideremus eisdem, quae de ipsis sollicitam curam gerens, quod infijirmum viderit, consolidet; sanet aegrotum; fractum alliget; et reducat abjectum. Propter quod attendentes, religionem Fratrum Minorum gra- tam Deo inter alias et acceptam, Tibi, et successoribus tuis curam committimus Monialium praedictarum in virtute obedientiae districte praecipiendo mandantes, quatenus de illis tamquam de ovibus custodiae vestrae commissis curam et solicitudinem habeatis.’ damianites, minoresses, poor clares 39

Moreover, Clare became, as it were, an uneasy reminder of pristine Franciscan ideals. Her San Damiano community in particular presented the order with a commitment to evangelical poverty that was increasingly compromised among the Friars Minor.3 The history of her community, likewise, exemplifijied possibilities of comprehensive symbiosis between the women and the men. That was precisely what Giovanni Parenti frowned upon. Except for friar Elias and several other former companions of Francis, most Franciscan leaders wanted to keep contact with religious women to a minimum. They wanted possible relations with these women to be guided by carefully laid out formal rules, applicable to all dealings with female communities, including San Damiano and other houses that claimed special ties with the Friars Minor.4 In 1230, the Franciscan general chapter faced internal struggles over the interpretation of the Franciscan rule and the binding character of Francis of Assisi’s Testament. One of the issues was again whether the wordings of the Regula Bullata concerning women – namely that the Friars Minor were forbidden to enter female houses with the exception of those who had special papal permission – should apply to all female communities, including the community of Clare at San Damiano. That house always had a close relationship with the Friars Minor of Assisi. Moreover, it relied on the presence of lay friars for begging purposes (due to its strict adherence to a life of communal poverty, once again confijirmed by the papal poverty privilege of 1228). To resolve this and a number of other issues, the Franciscan order sent a delegation of friars to Pope Gregory IX, asking him to provide an authori- tative interpretation of the rule. The pope’s response was phrased in the papal bull Quo elongati, issued in September 1230. Among other things, it curbed the access of individual friars to female monastic houses in clear and general terms, re-emphasizing the regulations of the Franciscan Regula Bullata that carefully circumscribed the conditions for visiting these monasteries.5

3 This is also visible in her contacts with Elias, Leo and other former companions of Francis. Cusato, ‘Elias and Clare: an Enigmatic Relationship’, 94–115. 4 The attempt of the Franciscan friars to circumscribe carefully their responsibilities with regard to the women follows comparable initiatives by the Dominican general chap- ter in 1228. Cf. Alberzoni, ‘Curia romana e regolamentazione’, passim. 5 Grundmann, ‘Die Bulle ‘Quo elongati’ Papst Gregors IX’, 24–25. The delegation of friars sent to Pope Gregory included Leone of Perego and Antonio of Padua. See for details Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 29; Idem, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 218–219. 40 chapter two

Clare of Assisi saw this bull as a sign that her special bond with the Franciscan order and the spiritual relations between Franciscan friars (such as Francis’s former companions) and her own San Damiano com- munity were at risk. The papal decision might put an end to visits by spiri- tual guides known to Clare and chosen from among former companions of Francis. It also threatened to undermine the life of evangelical poverty maintained at San Damiano: supervised and restricted contacts between her community and a small number of papally approved spiritual supervi- sors could hamper the activities of begging friars. Clare relied on the latter for the daily sustenance of her women. Her fears might have increased when, following the publication of Quo elongati, the leaders of the Franciscan order allowed friars to withdraw from female houses that lacked enclosure and proper endowments to secure their upkeep without their assistance. It also would not have helped that the papacy, possibly to accommo- date the worries expressed by the Franciscan order, had begun to impose endowments on various houses that had also received a papal poverty privilege. This is visible, for instance, in the altercations between the papacy and the Monteluce Damianites at Perugia. In January 1228, Pope Gregory IX had ordered the nuns of Monteluce to accept the books and the portable altar donated to them by the Franciscan friar Angelo, under threat of excommunication.6 Not much later, the papacy bestowed on that same community a number of properties (a mill, lands, , vineyards and olive groves). Attempts by the women from Monteluce to get rid of these properties in later years were thwarted, even though that same mon- astery received in 1229 a poverty privilege that, in theory, would have allowed them to live without common possessions.7 It shows that the pope was keen to normalize the patrimony situation of monasteries in the San Damiano network. Soon, the Monteluce monastery was developing from a poor community into a large and well-endowed monastery.8 Clare’s reaction to the Quo elongati settlement was fijierce. She dismissed the Franciscan priests, as well as the begging friars still present at San Damiano responsible for gathering alms for the women. She argued that, if the Franciscan order was no longer willing to provide sufffijicient spiritual nourishment to the women in Damianite houses, she and her companions did not need their help for food either. It was a complete hunger strike that

6 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 38–39. 7 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 73 & 341; Escritos, ed. I. Omaechevarría, 230–231. 8 Höhler, ‘Il monastero delle clarisse di Monteluce in Perugia (1218–1400)’, 161–182. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 41 yielded some efffect. For, in the wake of this strategic move, Pope Gregory IX more or less ordered the Franciscan minister general to reappoint friars to female communities where they had withdrawn after the appearance of Quo elongati, and mitigated the new regime for the San Damiano commu- nity, allowing friars to continue to visit that monastery without explicit permission by the pope or the cardinal protector, as if that house was an intrinsic part of the order of Friars Minor.9 Shortly thereafter, the Franciscan order’s policies changed, due to the election of friar Elias to the position of minister general, one of Francis’s former companions with good contacts at San Damiano, as well as at the papal curia. Under his leadership, which lasted until his forced abdication in 1239, the Franciscan order was more willing to support female religious houses. This became apparent in the support for the initiatives of Agnes of Bohemia in Prague and Trnava in the course of the 1230s, and the further expansion of the Damianite order into Southern Italy (Alatri and the Donna Regina monastery in Naples), Spain (Burgos, Saragossa, Zamora and ), Southern France (Béziers) and in the South of the German lands (Ulm).10 It was also in this seven-year ‘interlude’ that Clare, possibly assisted by Elias and other former companions of Francis, might have considered pro- moting her interpretation of religious life within the Damianite conglom- erate. Indeed, she sent out nuns from San Damiano to newly erected or planned communities, and established epistolary contacts with houses that in the meantime had come into being outside the Italian peninsula. It is in this context of growing outreach on the part of Clare that we ought to situate the correspondence between Clare of Assisi and Princess Agnes, daughter of King Ottokar I of Bohemia, regarding the lifestyle in the newly erected Damianite house in Prague. After its establishment shortly after 1230, the Prague monastery was initially ‘informed’ by several Damianites

9 ‘Cum semel dominus papa Gregorius prohibuisset, ne aliquis frater ad monasteria dominarum sine sua licentia pergeret, dolens pia mater cibum sacrae doctrinae rarius habituras sorores, cum gemitu dixit: Omnes nobis auferat de cetero fratres, postquam vitalis nutrimenti nobis abstulit praebitores. Et statim omnes fratres ad ministrum remisit, nolens habere eleemosynarios qui panem coporalem acquirerent, postquam panis spiri- tualis eleemosynarios non haberet. Quod cum audiret papa Gregorius statim prohibitum illud in generalis ministri manibus relaxavit.’ Legenda Latina Sanctae Clarae Virginis Assisiensis, ed. G. Boccali (Santa Maria degli Angeli, 2001), XXIV, 7–9, 178–180. See also Alberzoni, “Nequaquam a Christi sequela in perpetuum absolvi desidero’. Chiara tra carisma e istituzione’, 47fff.; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 28–30; Bartoli, ‘Gregorio IX, Chiara d’Assisi e le prime dispute all’interno del movimento francescano’, 97–108. 10 For more information on these and other houses, see the following chapter. 42 chapter two from Trent, who introduced the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. By 1234, Agnes of Bohemia herself entered the monastery. She soon exchanged letters with Clare at San Damiano. The latter, apparently with active support of Elias, saw a chance to export her own model of evangelical life to non-Italian soil, and so strengthen her own position.11 Encouraged by her contacts with Clare, Agnes of Bohemia contacted Pope Gregory IX through her brother, King Wenceslas of Bohemia. The pope was asked to allow Agnes and her community to live their religious life according to the guidelines given by Francis of Assisi to Clare at San Damiano, that is Francis’s Formula Vitae from 1212/15 and the additional Observantiae Regulares. If this had succeeded, the community of Agnes in Prague would have been freed from the Ugolinian Forma Vitae, something that was not even the case in San Damiano itself. That, in turn, would have created a useful precedent to be used by Clare in her own negotiations with the papacy and the Franciscan order.12 By April 1238, the pope conceded that Agnes and her community would not be forced to accept property. This amounted to a poverty privilege akin to those previously granted to San Damiano and Monteluce near Perugia (and possibly also to the Monticelli monastery near Florence).13 But in two letters that followed shortly thereafter (De conditoris omnium and Angelis gaudium, written respectively on 9 and 11 May 1238), Gregory made it very clear that he wanted Agnes of Bohemia and her community to follow the relevant elements from the Benedictine rule in combination with the guidelines of his own Forma Vitae. Francis’s original guidelines were, to quote the pope’s letters, nothing but ‘liquid baby food’, whereas the Ugolinian Forma Vitae provided the solid food with which to shape a proper monastic community.14 Pope Gregory was probably not very pleased with the attempts by Clare and the Franciscan minister general Elias to export elements of the

11 Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 31f.; Idem, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 219–221; Felskau, Agnes von Böhmen und die Klosteranlage der Klarissen und Franziskaner in Prag I, 141fff &p assim. 12 Felskau, Agnes von Böhmen I, 293–321; Ungarelli, Agnese di Boemia, passim. On the religious aspirations envisaged by Agnes and Clare, see also Marini, ‘La ‘novità della scelta religiosa nelle lettere di Santa Chiara ad Agnese di Praga’, 323–335. 13 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 236–237: ‘…devicti precibus vestris et lacrymis praesen- tium auctoritate concedimus, ut invite cogi ad recipiendum de cetero possessiones aliquas non possitis.’ Mario Sensi is adamant that the privilege sent to the Santa Maria di Monticelli monastery near Florence in 1230 (Bullarium Franciscanum I, 62) is not a poverty privilege in the strict sense of the word. Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 144. 14 ‘…potus lactis non cibus solidus.’, Bullarium Franciscanum I, 242–244: Angelis gaud- ium. Cf. Ungarelli, Agnese di Boemia, 76–79; Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty, 78fff. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 43

San Damiano lifestyle. It could threaten the unifijication and monastiza- tion process that he and the cardinal protector of the Franciscan and Damianite orders envisioned. It is quite possible that this was one of the underlying reasons why Gregory convoked a general chapter of the Franciscan order in Rome in May 1239, where Elias was deposed. By then, Elias would also have lost the curia’s approval due to his ongoing contacts with the imperial court of Frederick II. In the mean time, Elias had fallen out of favor with the Franciscan clerical elite, which saw the policies of Elias as inimical to a further clericalization and professionalization of the Franciscan order. His deposition meant that San Damiano and other Damianite houses no longer had a direct connection with leading circles within the order and the papal curia. Clare’s Franciscan supporters were to be found predominantly among the former companions of Francis, who were rapidly losing influence in an order now run by highly educated cleri- cal professionals.15 We should not assume, however, that the friars in charge of coordinat- ing the cura monialium within the various Franciscan provinces from the 1240s onwards were all of the same mind. Quite a few friars remained will- ing to lend their support to Damianites and other communities of reli- gious women. Their viewpoint is expressed by Giovanni of Perugia, who wrote proudly around 1240 that in each and every town where the friars preached, they also established reclusories for female penitents (monaste- ria reclusa ad penitentiam faciendam), with Franciscan friars as correctors and visitators.16 From this perspective, the creation and sustenance of Damianite houses was a direct outcome of Franciscan pastoral success. This also opened up the possibility of supporting female houses that were not properly normalized into the Damianite network, such as the Santa Maria Maddalena community of Matelica in the March of Ancona. From its very beginnings, Santa Maria Maddalena was a penitential house with Franciscan connections. Counter to the communities fully incorpo- rated into the Damianite network, for a considerable time its women remained under episcopal oversight and did not follow the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. Hence, the noble woman Rosa of Ranno Alberti Gualterii

15 According to Thomas Eccleston, Elias continued to visit monasteries of pauperes dominae after his deposition, without having the authorization necessary for such visits since the promulgation of Quo elongati. Eccleston, Tractatus de Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. Little, 69; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 34–35. 16 Giovanni of Perugia, ‘De inceptione vel fundamento Ordinis et actibus illorum frat- rum Minorum qui fuerunt primi in religione et socii B. Francisci’, Fontes Franciscani, ed. Menestò, 1344–1345. 44 chapter two could enter the Santa Maria Maddalena house on 11 January 1237, simply by promising obedience and reverence to friar Peter (Pietro of Vercelli), provincial minister of the Friars Minor, and to the other sisters, and by promising to stay in the same house, to renounce the world, live in chastity and uphold the unity of the community.17 As Mario Sensi suggests, the Matelica Maria Maddalena community was not a Damianite house in the proper sense. It was, in fact, a community of penitential bizzoche or sorores minores guided by a Franciscan provincial minister, under protection and oversight of the bishop of Camerino, and its long-term evolution illus- trates this. By the mid 1270s, the Franciscans were apparently no longer involved and the community had been institutionalized under the Benedictine rule. It would seem that the monastery still followed that rule in 1518, when the women were expelled from their monastery and their place was taken by the Poor Clares of Santa Maria degli Angeli.18 On the other hand, we fijind overt reticence among many leaders of the Franciscan order to go beyond the obligations laid out in Quo elongati. They were particularly wary of accepting additional obligations to new female communities, and they also became increasingly nervous about the ongoing proliferation of non-regulated groups of semi-religious women in Italy and the German lands. Many of the latter sought an afffijili- ation with the Franciscan order, with which they shared a comparable dis- course of evangelical perfection. The problem was that such non-regulated groups did not adhere to the fully cloistered model advocated by both the papacy and the leadership of the Franciscan order. Friar Elias and his circle might actually have encouraged close contacts between Franciscan friaries and such non-cloistered groups, which can be interpreted as the most ambitious within a wide spectrum of lay men and women engaged in forms of penitential life. However, after Elias’s deposi- tion in 1239 the Franciscan clerical elite wished to impose clear boundar- ies.19 This clerical elite commanded Franciscan provincials and individual

17 ‘…promisit obedientiam et reverentiam fr. Petro ministro fratrum minorum et suis sororibus (…) quod numquam aliquo tempore discederet a dicta ecclesia eundo et servi- endo ad aliquem locum religiosum occasione standi vel permanendi, sed semper in eodem loco permanendo, et renunciavit mundo et promisit castitatem et unitatem retinere.’ Antonio Talamonti, Cronistoria dei frati minori della Provincia lauretana delle Marche, VII: 154–155. 18 Sensi, ‘Monachesimo femminile nell’Italia centrale (sec. XV)’, 135–168. 19 From the later thirteenth century onwards, several Franciscan spiritual factions would continue to have close contacts with unregulated groups of bizzoche and compa- rable communities of female penitents. See on such contacts the comments in Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, passim. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 45 friaries to avoid connections with female religious communities that had not or not yet fully conformed to the monastic way of life proscribed by Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, which was re-issued in its fijinal form around this time.20 Yet the Franciscan order’s leaders after Elias also tried to curb the erection of new Damianite houses, which would have offfered a legitimate way out for at least some of those communities. It is probably no coincidence that in those same years the papacy, pos- sibly petitioned to do so by leading friars in the Franciscan order, began to issue warnings against ‘illegal’ gatherings of non-enclosed women. These groups appear in the sources under diffferent names, such asso rores Sancti Damiani, discalceatae, chordulariae, mulierculae, sorores minores and minoritae, and many of them were engaged in forms of active charity and mendicancy that the papacy considered to be completely unacceptable. This shows that women continued to be attracted to penitential and men- dicant models of ‘evangelical’ life within the world, and that they were either unwilling or unable from an economical point of view to become fully enclosed, as had happened to the majority of those groups by then incorporated offfijicially into the order of San Damiano.21 Hence on 21 February 1241, the aging Pope Gregory IX wrote a circular letter to all bishops, warning against women who, clothed in the habit and with the cord of San Damiano, went through the towns calling them- selves sorores Sancti Damiani, discalceatae, chordulariae and minoritae. According to Gregory, the real Damianites were enclosed behind monastic walls. These other ‘wayward women’ damaged the reputation of both the real Damianites and the Franciscan friars. Therefore, the pope asked the bishops to constrain these women and force them to lay down their habits and cords, hoping to prevent this religio simulata from creating confusion and scandal.22 Between 1246 and 1250, Pope Innocent IV, Gregory’s successor, issued a number of comparable condemnations of those ‘little women’ and ‘minor

20 In May 1239, Gregory IX issued a new redaction of his Forma Vitae, sending it for instance to the Damianites of Ascoli Piceno on 14 May 1239. Bullarium Franciscanum I, 263–267; Mariotti, Il monastero e la chiesa di Sant’Angelo in Ascoli Piceno, 3; Giorgi, Le Clarisse in Ascoli, 66; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 35. 21 Alberzoni, “Nequaquam a Christi sequela”, 52–53; Gennaro, ‘il francescanesimo femminile nel XIII secolo’, 259–284; Alberzoni, ‘Sorores minores e autorità ecclesiastica fijino al pontifijicato di Urbano IV’, 165–194; Freeman, ‘Wanderklarissen: Über die verurteilten Minderschwestern, 1241–1261’, 40–77; Alberzoni, ‘Da Pauperes Domine a Sorores Pauperes’, 39–59. 22 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 290. See also Alberzoni, ‘«Intra in gaudium Domini …»’, 38–39, which provides the text of the letter in notes 85–86. 46 chapter two sisters’ (mulierculae, sorores minores) who were not bound by any disci- pline. In these letters, Innocent highlighted the diffference between the sanctity of the order of San Damiano, the origin of which the new pope now overtly linked to the wishes of Saint Francis, and the depravity of these irregular communities. They might claim to live a Franciscan life and seek relations with the Franciscan order, but they had transgressed the accepted canonical form of monastic life for women.23 As late as 14 March 1261, Pope Alexander IV sent a bull to all bishops in Germany, insisting on the importance of proper enclosure in established San Damiano monasteries, and attacking wandering women who claimed to be members of that order. This bull makes mention of an earlier docu- ment, in which the same pope had forbidden Damianite nuns from leav- ing their monasteries or visiting the Apostolic See to argue for their cause (pro suis negotiis). Notwithstanding that prohibition, women who were said to belong to the order of San Damiano apparently moved around in Germany and tried to construct houses under the name of that order with- out proper papal permission. The papal bull from 1261 warned bishops not to allow this, unless these women had received an explicit papal fijiat to do so and had the support of the Franciscan provincial minister.24 Such documents indicate that the proliferation of new religious com- munities by women inspired by unregulated ideals of evangelical perfec- tion had not come to a halt by the 1240s, and that it proved difffijicult to force all such initiatives into a ‘proper’ monastic direction. The position of the Franciscan order also had a bearing on this. Leaders of the Franciscan order between Albert of Pisa (1239–1240) and Bonaventura (1257–1273) petitioned the papacy to do something about the phenomenon of unclois- tered religious women. In any case, they wished to avoid having responsi- bility for and being associated with such unregulated groups. At the same time, they were very reluctant even to accept the cura monialium of com- munities that had become ‘normalized’ – that is to say, fully cloistered. Both within Italy and the German lands, some female communities, which were unwilling to live their religious life according to the conditions set by the papacy and the Franciscan order, even chose (or were forced to do so by local bishops) to adopt an older monastic rule (Benedictine or Augustinian), and to break offf pastoral relations with the Friars Minor altogether. Although some such communities took this step on their own

23 Cf. Bullarium Franciscanum I, 541–542, 556. 24 Bullarium Franciscanum III, 417. See also Hardick, ‘Le clarisse nel mondo tedesco’, 427–448. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 47 initiative, it tied in with the outright policy of both the order and the papacy of Innocent IV to force unregulated communities either to enter the order of San Damiano – adopting the Ugolinian Forma Vitae, accept- ing full enclosure, and the carefully circumscribed pastoral and visitation services of the Friars Minor – or to embrace another form of monastic life sanctioned by the regulations of the Fourth Lateran Council.25 The leaders of the Franciscan order were particularly disturbed by the use of the title sorores minores by unregulated female communities, as that would facilitate the identifijication of such groups (which sometimes lead a vagrant mendicant life) with the Friars Minor (fratres minores) among detractors of the Franciscan order in the . Francis’s alleged condemnation of the title sorores minores to address the early Damianites, which appears in the Franciscan hagiographical tradition from the 1240s onward, should also be seen in this light.26 Apparently, several monasteries within the order of San Damiano were also concerned that the identifijication of such unregulated sorores minores with their own order might be damaging. Hence, the San Damiano mon- astery at Salamanca called for the support of the papacy to block the aspirations of more unregulated communities of sorores minores in its

25 See on the troubles and discussions surrounding such developments also: Andenna, ‘Le Clarisse nel Novarese (1252–1300)’, 185–267; Penco, ‘Alcuni aspetti dei rapporti tra le prime comunità di Clarisse e le monache benedettine’, 21–23; Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 38–40. 26 This ‘condemnation’ was shaped into a confrontation between Francis and Cardinal Ugolino and situated in the 1220s. But the real context was probably the problem of the order with unregulated sorores minores in and after the 1240s, when the friars were also facing attacks by the secular clergy and Parisian theology masters on their way of life and the legitimacy of their role in the Church. This is mirrored in the hagiographical traditions concerning Francis’s reluctance to accept responsibility for sorores minores: ‘Dicebat idem frater Stephanus quod beatus Franciscus nulli mulieri familiaris esse volebat, nec familiari- tates muliebres a mulieribus acceptabat; ad solam beatam Claram videbatur afffectum habere. Nec tamen, quando cum ipsa aut de ipsa loquebatur, eam suo nomine nominabat, sed christianam appellabat eam. Illius et monasterii sui curam habebat. Nec unquam ipse aliud monasterium mandavit fijieri, licet tempore suo aliqua monasteria constructa fuerint, procuratione quorundam. Et cum intellexisset quod mulieres congregate in dictis monas- teriis dicebantur sorores, vehementer turbatus, fertur dixisse: ‘Dominus a nobis uxores abstulit, dyabolus autem nobis procurat sorores.’ Dominus Ugolinus episcopus Hostiensis, qui erat protector ordinis Minorum, ipsas sorores magna afffectione fovebat. Et cum quadam die beato Francisco, volenti ab eo recedere, eas recommendaret: ‘Frater, inquit, recommendo tibi dominas illas’; tunc beatus Franciscus ylari vultu respondit: ‘Sancte pater, de cetero non sorores nominentur Minores, sed dominae, sicut nunc recommendando eas dixisti.’ Et tunc dicte sunt domine, non sorores.’ This anecdote is found in Oliger, ‘Descriptio codicis Sancti Antonii’, 383. As Marco Bartoli suggests: ‘Questa traditione, seppure tarda, rivela però il perdurare di un imbarazzo, in area francescana, davanti al termine minores applicato alle donne. Un imbarazzo di cui conserva ancora un’eco fra Mariano da Firenze, all’inizio del XVI secolo,…’ Bartoli, ‘La minorità in Chiara d’Assisi’, 208. 48 chapter two neighborhood.27 Clare of Assisi, in turn, took care in her own writings to use the term ‘poor sisters’ (sorores pauperes) and not ‘minor sisters’ (sorores minores) to speak about the women in her own monastery, in recognition of Franciscan sensibilities and the papal condemnations in and after the 1240s.28

The Rule of Innocent IV

In August 1247, only two years after a fijinal edition of the Ugolinian Forma Vitae had seen the light,29 Pope Innocent IV issued a new rule for the order of San Damiano.30 The pope’s initiative should be seen against the back- ground of the tensions described above, and in the context of a growing unease among abbesses of San Damiano monasteries, who witnessed increasing reluctance by the Friars Minor to take responsibility for their spiritual care. These abbesses therefore wished to strengthen the formal link between the order of San Damiano and the order of Friars Minor, knowing quite well that Ugolino’s Forma Vitae never mentioned the Franciscan order or the Franciscan rule, but explicitly referred to the rule of Benedict. Faced by a Franciscan order that wished to retreat from its obligations regarding the cura monialium, the women sought authorita- tive documentation that confijirmed a proper connection with the Franciscan order and its religious ideals. A rule that merely confijirmed the Benedictine character of their monastic life was not very helpful. This anxiety shines through in several letters and papal bulls to indi- vidual San Damiano monasteries during the 1240s, in which Pope Innocent IV had to assure the women that the references to the Benedictine rule in Ugolino’s Forma Vitae only referred to the topics of obedience, individual poverty and chastity, which were central to a proper monastic life. It did not imply that they were, in fact, Benedictine monasteries to which the Franciscan friars did not have any obligation.31 This fear was not

27 Gennaro, ‘Il francescanesimo femminile nel XIII secolo’, 281–284; Maria Pia Alberzoni, ‘Sorores Minores’, 182–191. 28 Bartoli, ‘La minorità’, 209. 29 Vázquez, ‘La ‘Formula vitae’ hugoliniana para las clarisas en una bula desconocida de 1245’, 94–125. 30 Cum olim vera religio, issued on 6 August 1247. It has been edited in Bullarium Franciscanum I, 476–483, as well as in Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 242–264. 31 Letters of this kind were written by Pope Innocent IV in August 1244 to San Damiano and to the Sant’Apollinaro monastery of Milan. Bullarium Franciscanum I, 349–350. See on damianites, minoresses, poor clares 49 unfounded, for in 1245 the Franciscan minister general Crescentius of Iesi sought papal permission to release the friars from their responsibilities regarding the material and spiritual upkeep of female communities. The pope refused, and a year later he incorporated no fewer than fourteen new houses in Italy, Spain, and France into the order of San Damiano, for which the friars had pastoral obligations.32 Soon afterwards, Pope Innocent IV and the cardinal protector decided to address the various issues head on. In August 1247, the pope issued his new rule for the communities pertaining to the order of San Damiano.33 This rule took over many elements from the Ugolinian Forma Vitae (most particularly the stringent enclosure regulations), yet it was longer and more precise: In twelve chapters it dealt in a much more judicial way with all aspects of the daily religious life of the nuns. Most importantly, it expunged all references to the observance of the Benedictine rule, replac- ing them with concise references to the Franciscan rule of 1223, even if these were primarily limited to the three vows of personal poverty, chas- tity and obedience. The ‘Franciscan background’ of the order of San Damiano was now offfijicially encoded. This was also visible in the regulations pertaining to the liturgy, which from now on would be performed in accordance with the Franciscan rites. Moreover, all aspects of religious life within the monasteries of the order of San Damiano were put under the direct jurisdiction of the Franciscan minister general and his provincial ministers. The minister general or the provincial minister had to confijirm the abbesses elected by the nuns. Outsiders who wished to visit the nuns needed permission from the Franciscan minister general or the provincial minister, and the nuns received the sacraments solely from selected from or chosen by the Friars Minor. These chaplains would also be responsible for the other aspects of the cura monialium, such as preaching and hearing confession. And further, the minister general or the provincial minister chose the visi- tators to inspect the female monasteries (and not, as before, the cardinal protector) and supervise the activities of the male procurators involved

this house Sevesi, ‘Il monastero delle Clarisse in S. Apollinaro di Milano (Documenti, secc. XIII-XVIII)’, 338–364, 522–544. A comparable letter was sent to the Santa Maria monastery at Salamanca in August 1245, a few months after that monastery had been given the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. Cf. Vázquez, ‘La ‘Formula vitae’ hugoliniana’, 110–111. 32 Cf. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 39 & Bughetti, ‘Acta offfijicialia de regimine Clarissarum’, 90. 33 Cum omnis vera religio, Bullarium Franciscanum I, 476–483. 50 chapter two with the administration of the monastery’s possessions and the economic ties with the outside world.34 The rule of Innocent IV meant, in fact, a complete juridical association, if not incorporation, of the San Damiano monasteries into the Franciscan order. However, whatever the references to the Franciscan rule, Innocent IV’s rule clearly stated that the moniales inclusae ordinis S. Damiani could have communal property. Hence, for all its references to the Franciscan Regula Bullata, the rule of Innocent IV envisaged the nuns living a tradi- tional religious life with proper donations and communal ownership. Thus, the pope hoped to guarantee the material security of the nuns, and to take away the fear among the friars that they would become responsible for the material upkeep of female houses. Moreover, to address the anxiet- ies of the friars still further, the rule also stated that every new female foundation would have to be approved by the general chapter of the Franciscan order.35 The women of the order of San Damiano might have welcomed the explicit references to the Franciscan rule and the Franciscan order. Some of them would have been less pleased with the regulations concerning the acceptance of communal property. For San Damiano itself and several other communities that formerly had aspired to live in absolute poverty (such as the Monteluce monastery near Perugia, the Monticelli commu- nity near Florence and the monastery of Agnes of Prague), the rule’s assumptions concerning communal property and the management of endowments would have been difffijicult to stomach. For other San Damiano communities, the offfijicial link with the Franciscan order might have sig- naled some progress, yet the formulations of the rule made male Franciscan control over female communities so strong, that no autonomy whatsoever was left, and that was not what many San Damiano communities wanted either.36 Even more problematic from the point of view of the Damianites were the legalistic ways in which new foundations had to be approved beforehand by the general chapter of the Franciscan order. Given the friars’ apprehension towards the burden of responsibilities for female

34 Casagrande, ‘La Regola di Innocenzo IV’, 71–82. 35 ‘Nec aliquod Monasterium vestri Ordinis de cetero ab aliquo inchoetur sine Capituli Generalis Ordinis memorati licentia et assensu.’ Bullarium Franciscanum I, 483. 36 Casagrande, ‘La Regula di innocenzo IV’, 78: ‘Per assurdo (ma non tanto) che possa sembrare la forma ugoliniana era “aperta”; la regola innocenziana è precisa e vincolante; il legame con i Minori non solo è strettisimo, m’a s’impone come una sorte di controllo pres- sante e continuo. C’è da chiedersi se tutto ciò non fijinisse per limitare/annullare spazi di autonomia cui le comunità damianite erano in qualche modo “abituate”.’ damianites, minoresses, poor clares 51 communities, this rule could easily block the incorporation of further monasteries.37 Despite the pressure from the papacy, the Franciscan order and the car- dinal protector, a majority of the houses within the order of San Damiano, probably including the San Damiano community itself, refused to accept the rule.38 Within a few years, its lack of success was acknowledged by the papacy. On June 6, 1250 the pope sent Rinaldo, still the cardinal protector of the order of San Damiano, a notice that the monasteries would not be constrained to observe the new rule. Instead, they could observe the old rule with which they had started, if that better suited the welfare of their souls.39

The Rule of Clare of Assisi

Faced by this problematical rule from Innocent IV, which implied com- munal possessions, and confronted with additional papal attempts in 1251 to make her accept forms of stable income,40 Clare of Assisi sensed that her life of evangelical poverty, once guaranteed to her by Francis of Assisi and confijirmed in the poverty privilege from 1228, was again under siege. She must have felt that time was running out for her to secure this legacy, if not for the order of San Damiano, then at least for her community at San Damiano. In response, Clare, possibly with the help of some old compan- ions of Francis,41 began to compose her wishes in a spiritual testament

37 Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 40–41. 38 In the end, only a few Italian houses (such as the Damianites of S. Pietro di Cavaglio di Piacenza), and a few German and Spanish houses accepted the rule. Most of the others apparently continued to adhere for the time being to the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. Oliger, ‘De origine’, 427; Andenna, ‘Le clarisse nel Novarese (1252–1300)’, 236–237. Scholars disagree over the question whether Clare’s San Damiano community accepted the rule of Innocent IV (at least until 1251 or 1253). See also Smith, ‘Observing the Gospel’, 125, 129: ‘Between 1247 and 1251, Clare’s community was living according to the RB [=Regula Bullata] and the Innocentian forma vitae (with immunity to the authorisation to possess communal prop- erty through the confijirmation of the Privilege of poverty).’ It all comes down to the way in which one chooses to interpret the reconfijirmation of the poverty privileges in the docu- ments issued during the pontifijicate of Innocent IV. 39 Bullarium Franciscanum Epitome et Supplementum, 249: ‘…sed antiquam ab eis, quam institutione sui ordinis susceperunt, si per eam melius suarum procuratur utilitas animarum, facias inviolabiliter observari.’ 40 In November 1251, when the papal court once again was at Perugia, the cardinal bishop of Ostia was dispatched to San Damiano to persuade Clare to accept various con- cessions regarding the possessions of lands and rents. Clare’s only reply was to demand a further confijirmation of the poverty privilege. Cf. Moorman, A History, 206–207. 41 Such as Leo, Angelo and Filippo Longo, and possibly even through contacts with the disgraced Elias, who from 1244 onwards lived in Cortona and from there stayed in touch 52 chapter two

(compiled between c. 1247 and 1252),42 and a monastic rule of her own. Her work on the rule was completed by November 1251, when Cardinal Rinaldo passed by San Damiano and visited the now bedridden abbess.43 The latter asked the cardinal protector for his approval. It was given nearly a year later on 16 September 1252, but only for Clare’s house at San Damiano. It took almost another year before fijinal approval by Pope Innocent IV arrived, again only for the San Damiano community.44 The bull of approval reached Clare literally on her deathbed, as is related rather dramatically in the canonization proceedings.45 From its fijirst opening phrases, Clare’s rule presented her own religious life and the lifestyle at San Damiano as stemming directly from Francis of Assisi. She also took very good care to present herself as an obedient mem- ber of the Church, imitating the way in which Francis had phrased his own obedience in the Regula Bullata.46 Although Clare had since long accepted enclosure (probably since 1215), her rule adhered as much as possible to pristine Franciscan ideals of evangelical perfection through the choice of absolute poverty (which since the community’s enclosure necessitated fri- ars to beg for the nuns),47 and emphasized the link between the life at San Damiano and the religious vision of Francis of Assisi. Clare did this by inserting in the heart of her rule elements from Francis’s Forma Vivendi of 1212, and by citing numerous passages from the Franciscan rule of 1223.48 with Franciscan rigorists and maybe also with Clare at San Damiano. Cf. Alberzoni, ‘Chiara e San Damiano tra Ordine Minoritico e Curia Papale,’ 65–67. 42 Following Marti, ‘Sugli scritti di Chiara d’Assisi’, 5–18, I believe in the authenticity of Clare’s testament. For the doubts raised by Werner Maleczek and the reception of his views, see note 65 in Chapter One and notes 54–56 in Chapter Six. 43 Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, pp. 226–227. 44 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 671–678; Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 251–276. 45 ‘…et desiderando epsa grandemente de havere la Regola e l’Ordine bollata, pure che uno dì se potesse ponere epsa Bolla alla boccha sua, et poi de l’altro dì morire; et como epsa desiderava, così le adivenne, imperò che venne uno Frate con le lectere bollate, le quale epsa reverentemente pigliando, ben che fusse presso alla morte, epsa medesima se puse quella Bolla alla boccha per basciarla.’ Lazzeri, ‘Il processo di canonizzazione’, 459. 46 ‘Forma vitae ordinis sororum pauperum, quam beatum beatus Franciscus instituit, haec est: Domini nostri Iesu Christi sanctum Evangelium observare, vivendo in obedientia, sine proprio et in castitate. Clara indigna ancilla Christi et plantula beatissimi patris Francisci promittit obedientiam et reverentiam domino papae Innocentio…’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 253–254. 47 Evangelical poverty plays a great role in chapters two, six, eight and twelve. It is, as Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 41, indicates: ‘literally and spiritually the heart of this rule.’ It emphasizes the right to live without any material support and without any form of owner- ship. This interpretation of evangelical poverty was the core of Clare’s vocation, and an implicit reproach to the Friars Minor, who by the 1250s were no longer living that way. 48 Grau, ‘Die Regel der h. Klara (1253) in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Regel der Minderbrüder (1223)’, 211–273; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Structure of the Form of Life of Clare’, 1–9; Idem, ‘Clare and the Defense of Franciscan Identity’, 81–97. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 53

She was also very careful to add numerous references to Francis that entailed the responsibility of the Franciscan friars for spiritual and mate- rial care of the women.49 Clare’s rule fleshed this out by demanding that San Damiano and communities like it have a Franciscan , as well as two lay brothers for the collection of alms. Likewise, the fijinal chapter insisted that male visitators should always be Franciscan friars. To anchor the connection with the Franciscans even more, the same chapter empha- sized the role of the cardinal protector whom the women shared with the Franciscans. Clare’s rule made him the ultimate guarantor of both the women’s connection with the Friars Minor, and their life of evangelical poverty along Franciscan lines.50 At the time of Clare’s death in 1253, her rule had obtained papal approval only for the San Damiano community, soon transferred to a newly constructed Santa Chiara monastery.51 In subsequent decades, Clare’s rule was adopted (sometimes in combination with the papal Privilegium Paupertatis) with reluctant papal permission by a few other houses. Among these were the house of Agnes of Prague, its daughter houses in Breslau and Bratislava, the Monticelli convent near Florence (but not for very long), and a few communities sponsored by Queen Sancia of Naples (see below and Chapter Three).52 For the majority of Damianite houses, however, the adoption of Clare’s rule was not an option. For one, the Franciscan order leaders were opposed to the spread of Clare’s rule beyond San Damiano (and later Santa Chiara). They interpreted it as an attack on their own departure from the original Franciscan standards of evangelical poverty and objected to their obliga- tions towards the material upkeep of the women called for by it. Clare’s rule insisted that Franciscan lay brothers be present for the collection of

49 In chapter six of Clare’s rule this is formulated as follows: ‘Attendens autem beatus pater quod nullam paupertatem, laborem, tribulationem, vilitatem et contemptum saeculi timeremus (…) pietate motus scripsit nobis formam vivendi in hunc modum: Quia divina inspiratione fecistis vos fijilias et ancillas altissimi summi Regis, Patris caelestis, et Spiritui Sancto desponastis eligendo vivere secundum perfectionem sancti Evangelii, volo et prom- itto per me et fratres meos semper habere de vobis tamquam de ipsis curam diligentem et sollicitudinem specialem: quod dum vixit diligenter implevit, et a fratribus voluit semper implendum.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 263–265. 50 Several guidelines regarding the role of the abbess, the liturgical life, and the fasting regime, will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Five of this book. Otherwise, I can refer the reader to Conti, Introduzione e commento alla Regola di santa Chiara; Iriarte, La Regola di santa Chiara. 51 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 671–678 (no. 496, 9 August 1253). 52 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 44; Marini, Agnese di Boemia, 90–94; Sutowicz, ‘Przycznek do baran nad zyciem wewnetrznym klasztoru klarysek we Wroclawiu w okresie sredniowiecza’, 7. 54 chapter two alms and that visitators always be Franciscan friars. Although the friars were begrudgingly willing to accept these requirements for San Damiano/ Santa Chiara near Assisi, and a few other houses, they were certainly not prepared to commit themselves in a comparable fashion for all the other Damianite houses, which by that time numbered around 110 in Italy alone. The papacy likewise did not wish Clare’s rule to spread. The pope had to appease the Franciscans, as he needed them for the pastoral care of the Damianites. He might also have had genuine concerns about the material upkeep of a growing number of female religious houses. Clare’s rule would make them totally dependent upon day-to day charitable action. In the eyes of the papacy, that did not constitute a sufffijiciently secure foundation. Hence, most Damianite houses in the 1250s continued to adhere to a ver- sion of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, whereas some abided by Innocent IV’s rule of 1247 that had been put forward as an alternative without much success. Moreover, a number of houses gravitating towards the Damianite (and later the Clarissan) order would have adhered during their transition for a considerable time to other rules or combinations of rules (see below).

Franciscan Order Policies after the Death of Clare

Clare of Assisi died on 11 August 1253 in the company of the women of San Damiano and two former companions of Francis, namely Angelo and Leo. Immediately after the women of Clare’s community announced her death to the world and the monasteries of the order of San Damiano,53 her body was taken by the urban authorities of Assisi to the parish church of San Giorgio. The town saw Clare as a prospective saint, who should be buried in the vicinity of Assisi. The urban authorities found a powerful ally in the papacy, which for reasons of its own was keen to smooth the path towards offfijicial canonization. In the presence of several cardinals and other high prelates, Pope Innocent IV came to Clare’s public , where he invited the archbishop of Spoleto, Bartolomeo Accorombani, to start immediate canonization investigations. The women at San Damiano did not have any real part in this. Even though they supported a canonization process, it was clear that the actions of the town and the papacy had taken matters

53 See: Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufffijiciali, ed. Boccali, 25–33; Lazzeri, ‘La lettera di partecipazione della morte di S. Chiara’, 494–499, and the evaluation of Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 45fff. The women’s letter was possibly modelled on Elias’s letter at the occasion of the death of Francis, and also shows to what extent the women at San Damiano by then had become to see the order of San Damiano as a spiritual unity. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 55 out of their hands. More signifijicant was the near absence of the Franciscan order leaders, who did not have a strong presence at the funeral and did not play a role of signifijicance in the decision to start an investigation into Clare’s sainthood. The canonization proceedings were speedily carried out: the process itself took place at San Damiano and at S. Paolo (Assisi) between 24 and 29 November 1253. Twenty-one witnesses came forward (among whom four- teen women from San Damiano and four citizens from Assisi), all of who testifijied to Clare’s holiness on four themes selected beforehand by the pope himself. Once the process was concluded, offfijicial canonization fol- lowed in September 1255. It was promulgated by the new pope, Alexander IV (Rinaldo of Jenne, former cardinal protector of the order of San Damiano).54 Soon after, the fijirst offfijicial saint’s life was commissioned by the papacy.55 The nuns of San Damiano thereupon asked for pope Alexander IV’s permission and support to be moved close to the burial place of their founder saint. Papal permission came quickly. Yet the canons of the , who also had the church of San Giorgio under their control, and wished to claim the saint’s body for their own benefijit, resisted. Once this resistance was overcome, for a new monastic com- pound began, complete with a large new burial church. In October 1260, when the choir of the new Santa Chiara church was ready, the solemn translation of Clare’s body took place. The consecration of the completed church, with Clare’s relics, and the adjacent Santa Chiara monastery was celebrated in 1265. This new monastery was partly modeled on the San Francesco monastery on the other side of town, which housed the remains of Saint Francis. Therewith, Santa Chiara became the eastern counterpart of the San Francesco church on the western side, symbolically and physi- cally protecting the town of Assisi.56 For the remainder of the thirteenth century and long thereafter, the Santa Chiara church and the monastery

54 See Bullarium Franciscanum I, 684–685; Santa Chiara di Assisi. I primi documenti ufffiji- ciali, ed. Boccali, 234–237; La Grasta, ‘La canonizzazione di Chiara’, 314–317. 55 Her fijirst legend is attributed, not with total security, to Thomas of Celano. This text was written after the solemn beatifijication of Clare by Pope Alexander IV (with the bull Clara claris praeclara). See: Brufani, ‘Le ‘legendae’ agiografijiche di Chiara d’Assisi del secolo XIII’, 327–340; Bartoli, ‘Chiara d’Assisi, donna del secolo XIII’, 19. 56 See Bullarium Franciscanum II, 22–25; Bullarium Franciscanum II, 407; Bullarium Franciscanum III, 28f; Meier, ‘Santa Chiara in Assisi. Architektur und Funktion im Schatten von San Francesco’, 151–178; Meier, ‘Protomonastero e chiesa di pellegrinaggio’, 81–136; Bigaroni, ‘Origine e sviluppo storico della chiesa’, 13–19; Casolini, Il protomonastero di S. Chiara in Assisi, 1–67. 56 chapter two attached to it were the benefijiciaries of an impressive flow of testamentary bequests. This, of course, had repercussions for the women’s life of abso- lute poverty called for in Clare’s own rule.57 From the start of the canonization proceedings it had been made clear that the papacy was not going to promote the sainthood of a person who had been an activist of absolute poverty, and advanced a rule of her own with possibly subversive elements. The saint who emerged from the can- onization process and is depicted by the fijirst offfijicial Latin saint’s life was primarily a holy , famous for her cloistered virtues. As such, she could be displayed as a model of female monastic life within the papally set parameters for the Damianite order. References to her connec- tions with the early Franciscan movement were carefully edited, and Clare’s own rule was hardly mentioned at all.58 The papacy did exploit Clare’s connection with Francis, to secure the link between the Damianite order and the Friars Minor along the lines wished for by the papacy. With this in mind, the papacy had backed the construction of the new Santa Chiara monastery, and had supported the town of Assisi when it made Clare of Assisi a major patron saint of the town alongside of Saint Francis. Conspicuously absent in all of this had been the leaders of the Franciscan order. They had kept a low profijile during the public burial, and had not taken any signifijicant initiative in the canonization proceedings – a sign that, as this juncture, the friars and the papacy had fundamentally diffferent agendas. For the Franciscan leadership, Clare’s actions and writ- ings had been a disruptive factor. As a fully canonized saint, and acknowl- edged follower of Saint Francis, she now was being used by the pope to secure a permanent link between the friars and the Damianites.59 The Franciscan order still hoped to limit its cura monialium obligations, as would become evident during the years that the Franciscan order was led

57 Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara’, 488–495. After their re-settlement into the new Santa Chiara monastery, the nuns received in 1266 a confijirmation of the 1253 rule by Clement IV. Bullarium Franciscanum III, 107; Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 104. In 1278, Nicholas III reconfijirmed again all the privileges bestowed on the community by previous popes, including the Privilegium Paupertatis (Cum a nobis, 8 August 1278). See: Bullarium Franciscanum III, 334; Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 104. Yet matters were changing thereafter, In the 1280s, the women openly began to accept rents and possessions. Although the legal fijiction that the community did not accept material goods and properties appeared even in later decades, the bull Devotionis vestrae precibus of Nicholas IV (26 May 1288) shows that the nuns did, in fact, accept possessions, and might, by then, have accepted for all practical purposes the Urbanist rule. Bullarium Franciscanum IV, 26; Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 104; Gennaro, ‘E nel nome di Chiara?’, 134–136. 58 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 50–54. 59 Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 45; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 44–49. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 57 by the formidable Bonaventura of Bagnoregio. As long as this controversy continued, the Franciscans had little inclination to fully recognize Clare’s sainthood as something that they could use to their own advantage. The best illustration of this is the fact that the full liturgical recognition of Clare throughout the Franciscan order was not immediate.60 During Bonaventura’s leadership, between 1257 and 1273, it became very clear on what basis the Franciscan order was willing to engage in the cura monialium, and to which types of female monastic life it was willing to lend limited support. In one of his early letters to the women at San Damiano in 1259 (shortly before their transfer to the new Santa Chiara monastery), Bonaventura acknowledged that the Franciscan friars and the nuns shared a common spiritual foundation. Whereas this implied a posi- tive stance towards the connections between the Damianites and the Friars Minor, possibly due to a genuine admiration for the late Clare of Assisi, the Franciscan minister general was adamant that true Damianites lived an enclosed life of prayer, exercising the virtues of virginity and humility as traditional nuns. There are some grounds for assuming that Bonaventura saw the role of the women as spiritual supporters who could underscore the friars’ preaching and teaching activities through their prayer exercises and their life of ascetical discipline.61 Still, as the leader of the Franciscan order, Bonaventura was also keen to promote the interests of his friars, many of whom remained eager to curtail their responsibilities for the cura monialium with regard to Damianite monasteries. Hence, whatever his own convictions, Bonaventura was more than willing, in his position as the Franciscan minister general, to support the privileges and autonomy of his own order, and represent the majority opinion of the Franciscan general chapter. As many friars with influence in the order were apparently leaning towards negating all responsibilities towards the women of the order of San Damiano, Bonaventura could not accept too many binding obligations towards the Damianites. These friars had been frustrated by the policies of Pope Alexander IV who, since his ascent to the papacy in 1254, had incorporated numerous Damianite houses, and had more or less ordered local friaries to provide the manpower for the spiritual care of the women.62 Matters seemed to change under Alexander IV’s successor Urban IV (1261–1264), who early in

60 Dijk, ‘Il culto di Santa Chiara nel Medioevo’, 159; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 49. 61 Clasen, ‘Franziskanische Christusbrautschaft. Die Stellung des hl. Bonaventura zum Orden der hl Klara’, 296–317; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 65–70; Hammond, ‘Clare’s Influence on Bonaventure’, 101–118. 62 Lezlie Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 70. 58 chapter two his pontifijicate appointed separate cardinal protectors for the Damianites and the Friars Minor: Giovanni Gaetano Orsini for the men (at their request), and Stephen of Hungary for the women.63 No longer bound by the directives of their ‘own’ cardinal protector, many friars now thought they could retreat from ‘excessive’ pastoral obligations towards female houses if they wished to do so. However, although without any formal authority over the friars, Stephen of Hungary continued to demand that they take care of the Damianite houses. This caused an outcry among the friars.64 In the meantime, the Franciscans had begun to entrench their opinion within their own legislation. The order’s constitutions of 1260, promul- gated at the Franciscan general chapter at Narbonne, strengthened older sanctions against friars who engaged in conversation with religious women, or entered female houses without proper permission. The text stated clearly that friars should not engage in spiritual care of female houses, and countered this only with brief references to acknowledged visitators of Poor Ladies (visitatores Dominarum Pauperum) and to friars living at Damianite monasteries (which in fact contradicted the earlier general statement that no friar should engage in their spiritual care).65 Following the outrage over Stephen of Hungary’s demands, numerous friars, perhaps enticed to do so by their superiors, walked out on their spir- itual obligations towards the Damianites, claiming that these obligations jeopardized their liberty and their primary tasks as preachers and educa- tors in the world. They petitioned to the pope to allow them to withdraw completely from all responsibilities regarding the Damianite order. This was a development that the pope apparently had not foreseen. He reacted by relieving Stephen of Hungary from his tasks as cardinal protector of the Damianites. Once again, the cardinal protector for the friars and for the women would be one and the same person: the influential Gaetano Orsini (the future Pope Nicholas III). Pope Urban ordered Orsini to ensure that

63 Lazzeri, ‘Documenta controversiam inter Fratres Minores et Clarissas spectantia (1262–1297)’, passim; Idem, ‘Duae bullae ineditae Alexandri IV et addenda quaedam’, 389–392. 64 See the partisan description of this controversy by Philip of Perugia in the early four- teenth century. Philip of Perugia, Catalogo Cardinalium qui Fuerunt Ordines Protectores, Analecta Franciscana III, 708–712. 65 See Statuta Generalis Ordinis edita in Capitulis Generalibus celebratis Narbonae an. 1260, ed. Bihl, nos. 6:5–6, 7:8, 8:25 and 10:3, as well as the discussion in Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 69. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 59 the Friars Minor re-assigned friars to provide spiritual care to those Damianite houses from which they had withdrawn.66 In August 1262, Urban IV issued the bull Inter personas, asking the friars to continue looking after the women, at least until the matter had been properly discussed at the next Franciscan general chapter, promising that the provisional agreement to continue their activities would not be inter- preted as a legal obligation, and that the friars would be able to step down if an agreement could not be reached. The pope apparently tried to con- vince the Franciscans with moral and spiritual arguments. He emphasized the common spiritual origin of both movements, stressed the glory the friars could fijind in their spiritual service to the Damianites, and warned that the women would sufffer if they did no longer have the spiritual guid- ance of the friars. That, in turn, could lead to scandal, as the friars had encouraged many high noble and royal daughters to join the Damianite movement.67 The atmosphere at the 1263 Franciscan general chapter (held in Pisa) was not positive. This might be reflected in Bonaventura’s Legenda Major, approved at the same chapter as the new offfijicial biography of Francis of Assisi. That text hardly mentions Clare and the Damianites, and puts much emphasis on Francis’ reluctance to meet and deal with women.68 Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the Franciscan order, as was rec- ognized at the beginning of the Franciscan rule of 1223, was built upon obedience to the papacy and the order’s cardinal protector. Moreover, Bonaventura tried to live down serious attacks from vociferous Parisian secular masters of theology regarding the order’s status and activities within the Church. With this in mind, it was in the order’s interest to leave the Damianite conflict behind and to come to a workable solution that would not jeopardize the relations between the order and the Roman curia. Collaborating closely with the cardinal protector, Bonaventura sent out letters to the Franciscan provincial ministers that argued that the friars’ position had been totally vindicated, and that they could re-assume the spiritual care of the women without qualms. One such letter addressed to Lothario, the Franciscan provincial minister of Tuscany, suggests how

66 Cf. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 474–475; Bartolomei Romagnoli, ‘Il Francescanesimo femminile dalle origine al concilio di Trento’, 47. 67 Lazzeri, ‘Documenta Controversiam’, 671–672. 68 See the evaluation of Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 74, as well as Mario Sensi’s and Marco Bartoli’s judgment that: ‘…la biografijia bonaventuriana su Francesco quasi dimenti- cava Chiara.’ Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 330; Bartoli, Chiara d’Assisi, 247. 60 chapter two

Bonaventura was able to achieve this. He began his letter with the com- plaint that the friars had been plagued with threats and litigation by Damianite monasteries. According to Bonaventura, the women had even petitioned the pope and suggested that the friars were bound by law to provide spiritual care to the women. Bonaventura wrote that the friars had decided to cease their spiritual care completely until the women recog- nized that the friars were doing it on a strictly voluntary basis. Thanks to the intervention of cardinal protector Orsini, the Franciscan friars would receive this precise recognition, and therefore could take up the cura monialium without fearing infringement of their own liberties.69 On a formal level, Bonaventura was right: Giovanni Gaetano Orsini had begun to send out letters to Damianite houses, stating that they had to acknowledge in writing that their Franciscan spiritual caretakers provided their services on a voluntary basis, and that services provided in the past did not create a precedent for the future.70 In practice, it meant that most Damianite houses from the autumn of 1263 onwards would again receive spiritual care from the friars. Bonaventura demanded that provincial min- isters send two friars to each Damianite house to minister to the needs of the women. This ministry included hearing monthly confession, celebrat- ing the Eucharist, providing spiritual care to ill sisters, and conducting last rites and burial services. These friars also had to hear the confession of the chaplains assigned to the houses on a permanent basis. Furthermore, the provincial ministers needed to appoint visitators and provide preachers to preach to the nuns twelve times a year.

Isabelle of France and the Minoresses

It is interesting that, in the midst of these controversies, Franciscan lead- ers showed a strong willingness to engage with another form of monastic life for women. Contrary to what one would expect, Bonaventura and

69 Lazzeri, ‘Documenta controversiam’, 678–679. An English translation can be found in: St. Bonaventure’s Writings Concerning the Franciscan order, trans. Monti, 192–193. See for a more in-depth analysis Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 75. 70 Lazzeri, ‘Documenta controversiam’, 677–683. The nuns were equipped with a model letter to that purpose, stating: ‘Nos…talis abbatisa et sorores talis…monasterii …recognos- cimus, quod Ordo fratrum Minorum, vel fratres eiusdem ordinis nobis, seu monasterio, seu personis in eo degentibus, ad obsequialia monasterio adhibenda aliquatenus ex debito non tenentur. Ed idcirco dicti ordinis fratribus praecavere volentes, ne per aliqua obsequia, vel ministeria quae nobis dicti fratres de facto, sua liberalitate, vel mera gratia exhibebunt, ex quantacumque diuturnitate temporis possit eis praeiudicium generari, promittimus tibi fratri N. nomine Ordinis … quod ministeria, vel obsequia ab eis taliter exhibenda, nullo damianites, minoresses, poor clares 61 several other leading Franciscan theologians provided their active support from the late 1250s onwards to an initiative by Isabelle of France – the sis- ter of King Louis IX – to create a monastery at Longchamp (near Paris). Highly placed Franciscan friars even assisted Isabelle of France in drafting a rule to guide the aristocratic monastic way of life in this house and the others that were created in its wake. This rule received papal approbation by Pope Alexander IV in February 1259 and was reconfijirmed with altera- tions by Urban IV in 1263.71 This Franciscan involvement seems even more striking when we take into account that the rule of Isabelle assumed a very close relationship between the nuns of Longchamp and the Friars Minor, as if it were follow- ing the lead of Clare of Assisi’s writings. In the rule’s second and fijinal ver- sion, the nuns – probably at Isabelle’s insistence – were even called sorores minores inclusae. Even though this formula emphasized enclosure, it was an overt recognition of the link between Isabelle’s women and the Franciscan friars (fratres minores), and one that the friars until then had never wished to grant to the Damianites or other houses that had sought an afffijiliation with them.72 One plausible explanation for the willingness of the Franciscan order leaders to put their weight behind Isabelle’s foundation – beyond a reluc- tance to block the wishes of the sister of the French king, who was by far the most important royal patron of the Franciscans – was the specifijic appeal of the Longchamp monastic formula. Here was a form of female monastic life acceptable to Franciscan leaders who were afraid of scandals and uncontrollable burdens. Longchamp and its subsequent daughter houses were all securely backed by royal and/or high noble patronage. They were fijilled with daughters from the highest echelons of society, and did not have any association whatsoever with unregulated forms of non- enclosed mendicancy. None of these houses pursued a form of absolute poverty that could make the cura monialium burdensome.73 In accor- dance with Benedictine traditions, postulants at Longchamp had to bring substantial dowries, and nuns continued to own books and other personal umquam tempore, occasione procurationis huiusmodi, ex debito non petemus.’ Annales Minorum IV, 259 (ad an. 1264, no. 4). 71 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 477–486; Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 507–515. 72 As mentioned in a previous note, the offfijicial hagiographical tradition was very keen to stress that Francis of Assisi himself had from the outset denounced the title sorores/ sorores minores to designate the women living in the environs of the Franciscan order. See on this Bartoli, ‘La minorità in Chiara d’Assisi’, 203–216. 73 Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century, 61fff. 62 chapter two belongings after their profession. Certainly in comparison with the rule of Clare, the rule of Isabelle presented the cura monialium relationship between the women and the friars in conventional hierarchical terms. The election of the Longchamp abbess had to be confijirmed either by the Franciscan minister general or by his provincial minister in France. Moreover, the sorores minores inclusae of Longchamp and monasteries founded on the same conditions were to promise obedience to offfijicials of the Franciscan order. During the later thirteenth and fourteenth century, the Longchamp for- mula proved attractive to a number of royal and high noble monastic foundations in France, England, and Italy. These houses remained for- mally distinct from the Clarissan order properly speaking. These included the French monasteries of Saint Marcel, Moncel and La Guiche, the mon- astery of Minoresses ‘without Aldgate’ near London, the monastery of Waterbeach, which soon transferred to Denny (Cambridgeshire), Bruisyard (Sufffolk), and the Italian monasteries of San Silvestro in Capite and San Lorenzo in Panisperna, both of which were situated in Rome.74

Urban IV and the Creation of the Ordo Sanctae Clarae

The compromise arranged between Cardinal Orsini and Bonaventura with regard to the cura monialium of the Damianites and the alternative offfered by the parallel project of Isabelle of Longchamp, seemed to point the way to a more permanent settlement between the order of San Damiano and the Friars Minor. Key to this settlement was a new rule, which Cardinal Orsini, possibly with the advice of Franciscan leaders and with an eye to the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp, drew up at the request of Pope Urban IV.75 It was offfijicially published on October 18, 1263 (the papal bull Beata Clara), and was in principle meant to be imposed on all female houses connected to the San Damiano network.76 Hence, it was to replace Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, the rule of Innocent IV and possibly also Clare’s rule of 1253. Building on papal policies starting from the early 1250s, the new ‘Urbanist’ rule, which was actually a careful mix of elements taken from

74 For more information on these houses, see Chapter Three. 75 Cf. the diffferent opinions of Lazzeri and Oliger as to whether Bonaventura and Orsini worked together on this or whether Orsini was working alone. Lazzeri, ‘Documenta’, 74; Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 440. 76 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 509–521 (no. 98); Barone, ‘La regola di Urbano IV’, 83–95. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 63

Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, Innocent IV’s rule of 1247 and the rule of Long- champ, made the recently canonized Clare the order’s fijigurehead. Houses gathered under the umbrella of the order of San Damiano now constituted the order of Saint Clare (ordo Sanctae Clarae). Yet the new rule referred to an idealized, canonized Clare, not to the champion of Franciscan pov- erty, nor to the woman who had embodied a profound kinship between men and women engaged in the life of evangelical perfection.77 The choice of renaming the order the ‘order of Poor Clares’ raises the question of why Urban IV did not want to use Clare’s own rule of 1253. If the pope needed Clare’s charisma for his unifijied order, why did he not imple- ment the text written by the canonized saint? After all, that rule had received papal approval in 1253. Still, the Urbanist rule carefully avoided reference to it. The answer is that Clare’s rule, with its strong stance on the observance of poverty, and its ‘extreme’ emphasis on the material and spiritual rela- tionship with the Friars Minor, was totally unacceptable to the Franciscan order. Clare’s rule, with direct recourse to the words and promises of Francis of Assisi, claimed a life of absolute poverty for the women. This was problematic for two reasons. First of all, there was a serious concern within the curia and the Franciscan order that a life of absolute poverty was incompatible with a regulated cloistered life and could lead to starva- tion if, for one reason or another, daily almsgiving faltered. It required the Franciscan order to supply lay friars or terminaries to beg for all female monasteries, which was deemed unacceptable. Such a regime of poverty could maybe be allowed in some individual cases (such as the San Damiano monastery and later the Santa Chiara monastery in Assisi), but it was deemed unsuitable as a workable model for a large and still growing network of religious houses. Second, Clare’s embrace of absolute poverty, phrased in words ascribed to Francis himself, had become something of an embarrassment to the Franciscan order. The order probably did not want the Poor Clares to carry the flag of pure and undiminished Franciscan poverty when the Franciscan order itself had backed away from it. In this respect, the rule of Urban followed the Ugolinian Forma Vitae and the rule of Innocent IV, presenting the accumulation of landed possessions and rents as a normal way to safeguard the upkeep of the female monasteries and amplifying the role of external procurators to manage those posses- sions and rents. This was very much along traditional monastic lines.

77 Barone, ‘La Regola di Urbano IV’, 87f.; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 79. 64 chapter two

Clare’s rule also had assumed very close relations with the Friars Minor in matters of spiritual care. It insisted that visitators of her monastery should always be Franciscan friars and supposed that the cura monialium as a whole was in the hand of Franciscans, in line with Francis’s personal promises to Clare and her women at San Damiano. The Urbanist rule was less outspoken on this issue, probably to cater to Franciscan objections. It did not assume that chaplains for the daily liturgical cycles were Franciscan friars. It was outspoken about the presence of Franciscan confessors and visitators, and the right of women to receive the sacraments from a Franciscan priest, but the choice for appropriate chaplain candidates was left in the hands of the cardinal protector. As the cardinal protector of the Franciscans and the Poor Clares was one and the same person, it was apparent that he would normally choose Friars Minor for these tasks, yet it was not automatic. The spiritual care for the women was not an obliga- tion for the friars. It was a deed of generosity with (offfijicially) no strings attached. The cardinal protector was to use discretion in these matters, much along the lines of Bonaventura’s thinking. In addition to all this, Clare’s rule exhibited flexibility in matters of abbatial authority and other aspects of the religious life, including the fasting regime that made it problematic in the eyes of ecclesiastical authorities (see Chapter Five). Both the papal curia and the Franciscan order wished for a legislative text that was less ambiguous and left fewer matters to the judgment of the women.78 In all, Clare’s rule did not satisfy Urban’s project to create a uniform order of Poor Clares that would be acceptable to the Franciscan order, and catered to the wishes of external benefactors wishing to house their daughters in stable monastic commu- nities. All the same, the pope wanted to provide the female order with the charisma of Clare’s name, now the name of a canonized saint, and repre- senting a strong source of spiritual inspiration.79 The rule of Urban IV, very much in line with what influential Franciscan friars including Bonaventura wanted,80 described the order now named

78 Barone, ‘La Regola di Urbano IV’, 87f. 79 Alberzoni, La nascita di un’istituzione, 48; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 79: ‘This new institutional designation proclaimed that the enclosed Francisan nuns were no longer the “Poor Ladies (povere donne)”, as Clare’s fijirst followers were known. Neither were they Minoresses or Sorores minores – a name that emphasized that they were members of the Franciscan order – nor even Poor Enclosed Sisters or Damianites, as the communities that had been incorporated into the Order via the effforts of the papal curia were known. Rather they were Clarisses, enclosed women for whom Clare was meant to be a source of spiritual inspiration, but not a literal model for religious life.’ 80 Clasen, ‘Franziskanische Christusbrautschaft’, passim. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 65 after Clare of Assisi as a religio of completely enclosed women, fully absorbed in a life of abstinence, prayer and contemplation. Once the rule was issued, the papacy and the cardinal protector were very keen for all the Damianite, now Poor Clare, communities to adopt it right away. Between the promulgation of the rule on 18 October 1263 and the end of that year, the cardinal protector Gaetano Orsini sent out letters to all Damianite monasteries, telling them that, from now on, they would be part of the order of Poor Clares and that (with a few exceptions), they should accept the Urbanist rule.81 Papal documents from later years show that unifijication and standard- ization took time to implement. Urban’s successor, Clement IV, needed to warn communities in the Umbrian province that they would lose papal protection and Franciscan ministry if they continued to adhere to older rules.82 Documents indicate that some communities asked explicit per- mission to keep Ugolino’s Forma Vitae or to adopt the fijinal version of the rule of Isabelle of France. The latter was of particular interest because it called the women sorores minores (recognizing their ‘minorite’ status alongside of the Friars Minor) and required Franciscans to provide spiri- tual services. None of these points were as explicit in the rule of Urban IV (which called the women sorores Sanctae Clarae).83 However, in the end, most Damianite/Clarissan houses in Italy, as well as the majority of houses elsewhere, were obliged to adopt the Urbanist rule, albeit sometimes after a signifijicant delay.84 Perhaps, as Lezlie Knox has suggested, a gradually improving modus vivendi developed between the women and the friars in matters of pastoral care. This would have reassured many Poor Clare houses, making it less difffijicult for them to accept the new rule.85 In individual communities, matters could remain rather tense for a sig- nifijicant time. At Millau (Southern France) and Santarem (Portugal), for example, the relationship between the women and the friars responsible

81 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 260 (no. 7); Lazzeri, ‘Documenta’, 79fff. 82 Bullarium Franciscanum III, 62–68 & 82. 83 Field, Isabelle of France, 95–120. 84 The San Leo monastery at Burgo Sansepolcro (Italy), already mentioned as an Ugolinan/Damianite community in 1228, would have followed the Ugolinian rule until 1297. In that year, the nuns asked the abbey of Sansepolcro (which had helped create the female house and still had some say in the matter) permission to change their rule. Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro nei secoli XIII-XIV’, 133–188. Sant’Angelo in Panzo near Assisi would have kept the Ugolinan rule at least until 1292. Between that year and the year 1318, it changed to the Urbanist rule. Santucci, ‘S. Angelo di Panzo presso Assisi’, 83–112. 85 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 82. 66 chapter two for their spiritual care was so strained that the women decided in 1273 to subject themselves to episcopal oversight for some time, just to be rid of the friars.86 By the end of that decade, however, the conflicts of the 1250s and 1260s had cleared up signifijicantly. This found expression in the impor- tant papal bull Exiit qui seminat, issued by Pope Nicholas III in 1279.87 Along with the confijirmation of privileges on behalf of Franciscan order, it mentioned that the friars took responsibility for the spiritual care of the Poor Clares. The wording did not raise protests within the Franciscan order. Apparently, the Friars Minor were no longer so adamant about pre- senting the cura monialium as an act of benevolence from which they could withdraw at any moment. Further clarity about the offfijicial ties between the Poor Clares and the Friars Minor was provided by the bull Quasdam litteras of Boniface VIII, promulgated in July 1296. This bull revived and extended, in fact, the bull Licet olim of Innocent IV from July 1246 (issued in preparation of his 1247 rule), declaring that the Poor Clares had access to all the privileges given to the order of Friars Minor.88 Confijirmed once more in 1298,89 Boniface VIII’s bull put all Clarissan houses under the direct jurisdiction and respon- sibility of the Franciscan provincial ministers (whereas before the women had resorted directly under the cardinal protector). By then, the perfor- mance of monastic visitations and the curia monialium was organized according to detailed instructions, the gist of which was communicated in a set of explanatory letters published by cardinal protector Matteo Rosso Orsini in April and May 1297, and further streamlined in a version issued in 1307 by the next cardinal protector Giovanni of Murrovalle.90 Most importantly, these instructions assume that the Franciscan pro- vincial ministers in all the provinces of the order would take on direct responsibility for the visitation of all the Poor Clare monasteries within their jurisdiction and would ensure that Poor Clare houses had suitable assistance in their spiritual and temporal upkeep.91 This also included proper inquiries into the maintenance of the women’s cloistered way of

86 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 130–131 (an. 1273, n. 19). 87 Bullarium Franciscanum III, 404–416. 88 Bullarium Franciscanum IV, 396 & 431; Oliger, ‘De origine regularum’, 443. 89 Bullarium Franciscanum IV, 469. 90 The instructions by Matteo Rosso Orsini and other cardinal protectors have been edited in Bughetti, ‘Acta offfijicialia de regimine Clarissarum durante saec. XIV’, 89–135. 91 ‘…ac unicuique vestrum provincialium Ministrorum quoad ea de predictis monaste- riis tantum que fuerint infra limites Provinciarum commisarum vestro regimini vel com- mittendarum in posterum constituta, tenore presentium committimus exercendum.’ Bughetti, ‘Acta offfijicialia’, no. 2, 117. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 67 life, the economic viability, the size of the monastery, as well as the quality of the spiritual care offfered by the friars appointed as preachers and con- fessors. Moreover, the instructions contain interesting sections on the recruitment of prospective nuns (and the dangers of recruitment within family groups), and on proper and excessive punishments of transgres- sions. In all, they provide a rather complete spectrum of issues to check and, if necessary, to ameliorate, in order to ensure the socio-economic and religious health of the Clarissan houses in question. These visitation and cura monialium obligations assumed that the Franciscan friars had become rather closely involved with both the spiri- tual and socio-economic welfare of the nuns by the early fourteenth cen- tury. This is mirrored in the constitutions of the Franciscan general chapters and in several provincial chapter regulations from that period.92 It is also echoed in the 1336 reform constitutions of Pope Benedict XII, which stipulated that the friars would provide spiritual care to all Poor Clares and ‘Minoresses’: communities that followed the rule of Clare, those that professed the Urbanist rule, and those that followed the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp. These papal constitutions were particularly con- cerned with the adequate provision of female monastic houses, no doubt because this was at times a highly problematic issue (see Chapter Five).93

How Uniform was the Order of Poor Clares?

The concern for a proper endowment had been a major reason why the papacy and the Franciscan order tried to make Clarissan houses accept both the Urbanist rule, and the increasingly standardized packages of papal privileges connected with it. These privileges included exemptions from local ecclesiastical taxes, the right to accept donations, burial rights for donors, indulgences and the right to perform religious services in their churches during periods of interdict. Many of these privileges meant a

92 The Franciscan general chapter of Perpignan issued constitutions in 1331 that spoke about the ‘…monasteria sanctimonialium, quarum est nobis cura commissa…’. Constitutiones Generales ordinis Fratrum Minorum a Capitulo Perpiniani anno 1331 Celebrato Editae, ed. Mencherini, 595. It showed that the friars had by then come to terms with their obligations towards the Poor Clares. For provincial regulations in Franciscan provincial statutes, see for instance Delorme, ‘Documenta saeculi XIV Provinciae S. Francisci Umbriae’, 520–554. 93 For the way in which the regulations pertaining to female monasteries within the so-called Benedictine reform constitutions were codifijied in Franciscan legislation, see Ordinationes a Benedicto XII pro Fratribus Minoribus Promulgatae per Bullam 28 Novembris 1336, ed. Bihl, 309–390, cap. 29 & cap. 31: De monialibus seu Minorissis. 68 chapter two form of income and were thus a way to secure the economic viability of the monasteries. Although many houses obtained such papal privileges individually, there was a tendency to send out comparable privilege pack- ages to new foundations.94 We see therefore a steady movement towards standardization. This appeared in the way visitations and the cura monia- lium were organized (as is shown in the statements issued by Matteo Rosso Orsini and Giovanni of Murrovalle between 1297 and 1307), and with regard to the manner in which houses were supposed to organize them- selves in their socio-economic and religious life according to the same rule and a standardized package of privileges. Nevertheless, uniformity and standardization were never fully imple- mented. This is shown primarily in the variety of rules adhered to within the Clarissan order. Whereas a majority of houses eventually adopted the Urbanist rule, a few houses retained permission to maintain allegiance to or take up Clare’s rule of 1253. This was the case for the San Damiano com- munity itself, which for some time (until 1288?) continued to adhere to Clare’s rule after the transfer to the protomonastery of Santa Chiara in Assisi,95 as well as for the Poor Clare monasteries in Prague and Bratislava, where the use of Clare’s rule was inspired by the connections between Clare of Assisi and Agnes of Prague. Permission to use Clare’s rule was also granted to various houses established with the support of King Robert of Naples and his wife Sancia, such as the Clarissan monastery in Aix-en- Provence and the Santa Croce monastery (1342) in Naples, where Sancia retired after the death of her husband.96 However, at Santa Croce, the adherence to Clare’s rule was exchanged quickly for a modifijied version of the rule of Urban IV.97 Possibly about fijifteen highly aristocratic monaster- ies in France, England and Italy secured for themselves the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp for Minoresses and remained formally distinct from the

94 As can be gathered from the papal bulls directed at Clarissan houses edited in the Bullarium Franciscanum series and in articles such as Delorme, ‘Quatre bulles du XIIIe siècle pour les Damianites de Bordeaux’, 302–304. 95 As I mentioned in note 57, it remains a disputed question whether the Santa Chiara house at Assisi continued to adhere to Clare’s rule after the 1280s. The papal bull Devotionis vestrae from 28 March 1288 suggests that the community by then had opted for the Urbanist rule. Bullarium Franciscanum IV, 26. See on this discussion also Bihl, ‘Documenta inedita archivi protomonasterii S. Clarae Assisii’, 684–685; Casolini, Il protomonastero di S. Chiara in Assisi, 97; Casagrande, ‘Presenza di S. Chiara in Umbria nei secoli XIII-XIV, spunti e appunti’, 481–505; Alberzoni, ‘Chiara di Assisi e il francescanesimo femminile’, 229–230; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 10; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 124. 96 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 627–629, 632–633. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 119–120. 97 Sensi, ‘Clarisses entre Spirituels et Observants’, 105. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 69 order of Poor Clares properly speaking. Late medieval sources suggest that, until the fijifteenth century, some houses considered to be part of the Clarissan order still adhered to other rules, including Ugolino’s Forma Vitae or the 1247 rule of Innocent IV.98 Close scrutiny of individual monasteries indicates that this still did not exhaust the possibilities, due to the intricate beginnings of various houses constituting the order. Unlike most friaries of the order of Friars Minor, which emerged fijirst and foremost because of the actions of Francis and his followers, many Damianite and later the Clarissan monasteries had come into being in diffferent ways, sometimes completely autonomous from direct Franciscan or Clarissan intervention. The rule and lifestyle they followed at fijirst depended on their origin and their actual freedom from episcopal oversight (theoretical exemption notwithstanding). Many of these monasteries had their own past and traditions before being aggre- gated within the Damianite/Clarissan order. In some cases, we are dealing with already existing Benedictine houses that tried to obtain freedom from episcopal oversight by either adopting the Urbanist rule or by dedi- cating their community to Clare of Assisi without immediately changing the rule. Such an outward transition might not have had many repercus- sions for the daily life of the women in question, while giving them greater leeway in their dealings with the local ecclesiastical hierarchy.99 More fre- quently, the creation of a Clarissan house involved a gradual transforma- tion of a bizzocaggio (a community of bizzoche: beguines or penitents), or of a group of female tertiaries into a fully enclosed Clarissan house (fol- lowing the rule of Urban IV). This could be a protracted process, during which the communities stayed under episcopal oversight or followed a series of rules, or began by adopting the Clarissan identity in name or habit without adopting immediately any rule connected with the order of Poor Clares. Hence, the Santa Lucia monastery at Leonessa, which started as a peni- tential community, received in 1295 permission from the local bishop to erect an in honor of Saint Lucia, on the condition that it adopt one of the approved rules for female religious houses. The women apparently selected the ‘rule of Clare of Assisi’ (regulam beatae Clarae virginis ordinis beati serafijici rF ancisci) but did not demand to be recognized as a fully

98 Vázquez, ‘La ‘Formula vitae’ hugoliniana’, 111–114; Casagrande & Merli, ‘Sulle tracce degli insediamenti clariani scomparsi’, 25–27; Sensi, ‘Il patrimonio monastico di S. Maria di Vallegloria a Spello’, 77–149. 99 Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 13 & note 77, 209, 370fff (with information on the houses of and Spello). 70 chapter two exempt Poor Clare monastery. Instead, the house stayed under episcopal jurisdiction. This situation apparently continued until 1446, when Pope Eugenius IV incorporated the house completely into the order of Poor Clares.100 This is a perfect example of a ‘Poor Clare’ monastery that remained under episcopal oversight for a long time. Other houses exemplify the complicated trajectory towards Clarissan normalization in a diffferent way. The Santa Maria Maddalena del Castellare monastery in Montefalco, for instance, had started as a non-regulated biz- zocaggio. It had been transformed into a monastic community under the protection of local and with the Augustinian rule around 1270. Nevertheless, by 1329 the women had apparently adopted the Urbanist rule. They received papal recognition as a Clarissan community, as well as protection against the local Augustinian friars, who wished to dispossess the women of their house, now that they had chosen a diffferent rule.101 Likewise, a group of uncloistered penitential women in domo seu carcere Collispetrosi near Spoleto accepted the Augustinian rule at the instigation of the local bishop, yet named their oratory after Clare of Assisi. Thus a community of ‘Augustinian recluses of Saint Clare’ came into being by 1293: Santa Chiara di Colpetroso. Due to dwindling vocations, it fused with the Augustinian monastery of Santa Caterina di Colfijiorito by 1371.102 In many such cases we are dealing with ‘open’ tertiary communities, or gatherings of bizzoche who were pressured to become monastic and embrace full enclosure, especially after the papal constitution Periculoso (1298) reconfijirmed in the papal bull Apostolicae sedis (1309) – both of which demanded full enclosure for all female religious houses. In such a climate, the women sometimes began to call themselves Poor Clares or dedicated their house to Clare of Assisi, yet for some time followed a dif- ferent rule, such as the Augustinian rule or the tertiary rule of Nicholas IV

100 Sensi, ‘Monachesimo femminile nell’Italia centrale (sec. XV)’, 162fff. According to Sensi, the sources indicate that the women opted for Clare’s rule of 1253, and not for the Urbanist rule of 1263. He even suggests that this was a deliberate choice (pp. 146–147): ‘Ci si chiede se le religiose, pur rimanendo di obbedienza vescovile e non aderendo all’Ordine delle clarisse, abbiano seguito, sin dagli inizi, la regola si santa Chiara (regulam beatae Clarae virginis ordinis beati serafijici rF ancisci): se così è, come appunto reclamano le religi- ose, in un generale contesto di monasteri clariani, dove la regola scritta di santa Chiara, subito dopo l’approvazione, fu obliterata fijinché fu offfijicialmente riscoperta intorno alla metà del Quattrocento, Santa Lucia di Monteleone costituisce una singolare eccezione.’ I am not sure whether Sensi is right. The wording could also refer to the Urbanist rule. For a community without in-depth knowledge of the diffferent rules used in the Clarissan order, the ‘rule of Saint Clare’ could have been anything. 101 Bullarium Franciscanum V, 452 (no. 825); Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 47 (note 46). 102 Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 80f, 103 (note 137), 134–136 (doc. XXIX), 331–332. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 71 from 1289, which was never intended for use in enclosed monastic communities.103 This means that order afffijiliation at a given point in time could be highly ambiguous. This is also true, in a diffferent manner, for the Maria Mad- dalena monastery in Naples, created by Queen Sancia of Naples for reformed prostitutes between 1324 and the 1330s. It was from the outset under the spiritual care of the Franciscans, in accordance with Sancia’s wishes. Although it was sometimes perceived to be a Clarissan house, its women lived according to the Augustinian rule, and wore the Augustinian habit with the Franciscan rope belt.104 The Maria Maddalena monastery provides also a perfect example of how individual houses received privileges and rules specifijic to their local situation. These could be papal responses to demands of influential bene- factors. In the case of the Maria Maddalena monastery, the pope acqui- esced to a setup devised by Sancia of Naples to redeem prostitutes. Elsewhere, privileges could imply a waiver of the rules of enclosure or per- sonal poverty in otherwise ‘normal’ Poor Clare monasteries, for instance when royal or noble benefactors wanted papal permission for family members to visit and stay at the monasteries they had funded, or to secure an aristocratic lifestyle for their daughters who had taken the veil. Such special privileges could negate regulations of the rule and be in conflict with general reform ordinations, such as those issued by Benedict XII in 1336.105 To counter the profusion of independent cases and enforce regulatory unity, in several Franciscan order provinces, serious attempts were made to apply these reform ordinations of Benedict XII in combination with the rule of Urban IV. That, at least, is the impression gained from the Ripuarian translations of these legislative texts edited by Renate Mattick. They can be traced back to the of the Poor Clare monastery of Cologne. Apparently, the nuns of Cologne had based their translation on a Latin text of the rule of Urban IV and the 1336 reform ordinations that they had

103 Something along these lines happened among communities associated with the ter- tiary network led by the charismatic Angelina of Montegiove in the late fourteenth and early fijifteenth centuries, which we will encounter in Chapter Four. Mario Sensi puts for- ward that this might have been a nostalgic or belligerent endorsement of the poor lifestyle at San Damiano during Clare’s lifetime, in a period when most Clarissan houses had evolved into properly endowed monasteries. Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 331–332. 104 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 41 (an. 1324, no. 36): ‘Regulam observant, et habitum gerunt sancti Augustini, cingulum vero seu chordam sancti Francisci, ejusque asseclis sub- sunt.’ Cf. Facchiano, ‘Monachesimo femminile nel mezzogiorno’, 179. 105 Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 202f., 230. 72 chapter two received together with an introductory letter from Arnold of Neuss, the provincial minister of the Cologne province.106 A comparable package would have been sent in or after 1337 to other Clarissan houses in the Cologne province, as well as to Clarissan monasteries in the Upper Germany province.107 It remains unclear, however, whether all monaster- ies received the same package, and to what extent this had an impact on the religious life of the nuns in individual houses. It is also remarkable in and of itself that, more than seventy years after its approval, it was still considered necessary to distribute the text of the Urbanist rule together with the reform constitutions of Benedict XII. It suggests that the imple- mentation of the Urbanist rule might have been rather uneven.108 Divergences in lifestyle between the various Clarissan monasteries could also result from other causes. Individual monasteries could be sub- ject to additional regulations drawn up by Franciscan provincials. More importantly but still too little researched, many of them had also individ- ual house constitutions. Although those are sometimes alluded to, few such regulations for individual houses or groups of houses have survived from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, it is not always clear who composed them (members of the community, monastic founders, local bishops etc.), and to what extent they had legislative value alongside the rule. These issues need further study before any general con- clusions can be drawn.109 Even after the standardization process from the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the religious life in individual Poor Clare mon- asteries could still be influenced by the conditions of their foundation pro- cess, during which the founders, the local secular and ecclesiastical powers and other benefactors had tried to impose their views on the community. As said before, several houses had originally begun as poor penitential communities, at times connected with hospital work. In some cases, after

106 Mattick, ‘Ordensregel und Statuten für das Kölner Klarenkloster. Eine ripuarische Übertragung des 14. Jahrhundert’, 141–192. 107 Mattick, ‘Ordensregel und Statuten, 145–146; Ruh, ‘Klarissen-statuten’, 1187–1190. 108 That is also the impression one obtains from the surviving German translations of that rule. The oldest translation or rather adaptation seems to have been made around 1286 for the Poor Clares of Regensburg. All other surviving translations and adaptations date from the later 1330s or after. Schönbach, Mitteilungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften, 10. Stück: Die Regensburger Klarissenregel, 1–68. 109 One example concerns the statutes made in 1346 for the monastery of Cassés in Aude. Paris, ‘Les statuts conventuels d’un monastère de Clarisses au XIV siècle-Les Cassés’, 241–288. See also the regulations issued in 1303 by Heinrich of Ravensburg for Poor Clare monasteries in the Upper Germany province. Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 159–162. damianites, minoresses, poor clares 73 their transformation into properly enclosed Damianite/Poor Clare monas- teries, these communities remained indigent, either by choice or by fate. This was the case for many of the smaller Clarissan houses in Italy and France. They could be very dependent upon the charity of local benefac- tors, and the actual shape of their religious life could vary enormously.110 In Santa Maria del Paradiso (Spello), the women allegedly continued to adhere to their original beguine lifestyle decades after their house had offfiji- cially become a Poor Clare monastery in 1325. Counter to the provisions of the Urbanist rule, the women gained individual income through textile work and were supposed to provide for themselves, especially regarding vestments and medical supplies, much along the lines of the beguine com- munities in the North-West Europe.111 At the opposite end stood the big dual houses for Clarissan nuns and Franciscan friars established in Middle Europe and in Naples. These pres- tigious royal foundations, most of which will be presented in Chapter Three, were meant to display and legitimize royal power. Aside from very aristocratic recruitment practices, such houses were known for their litur- gical splendor. They also functioned as temporary abodes for royal courts, which could have an impact on the religious observances within the monastic compound.112 Other houses, particularly in France and Spain, came into being as retirement homes for local noble families and kept recruitment within one kin group. If a family were powerful, such a house was relatively free from interference by Franciscan offfijicials. Proper adher- ence to the rule or other requirements could be virtually nonexistent.113

110 The Poor Clares of Bordeaux were in such dire straits that they received under cer- tain conditions papal permission to go out begging and looking for food outside the mon- astery. Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 510–511 (Regestum, ad an. 1307, doc. VII): ‘Cum itaque, sicut asseritis, adeo premamini onere paupertatis, quod vos oporteat a Christi fijidelibus caritative quaerere victum vestrem: nos vestris supplicationibus inclinati, aucto- ritate vobis praesentium indulgemus, ut propter hoc, et pro vestris aliis negotiis honeste ac utiliter procurandis, cum licentia tamen Ministri Provincialis Fratrum Ordinis Minorum, vobis et vestro Monasterio praesidentis, vestrum exire locum, messium videlicet per unum mensem, et tantumdem vindemiarum temporibus, anno quolibet libere valeatis, quacumque constitutione Apostolicae Sedis, seu quibuslibet statutis, vel consuetudinibus vestri Ordinis contrariis, juramento, confijirmatione Sedis ejusdem, vel quacumque alia fijir- mitate vallatis, non obstantibus. Ita tamen, quod Soror juvenis sine Sorore sene aliquate- nus non incedat. Praesentibus post triginta annos minime valituris…’ 111 Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 372–375. Sensi implies that this might have been rather com- mon practice in Italian penitent communities monasticized with the Urbanist rule in the fijirst half of the fourteenth century. 112 Jäggi, ‘Liturgie und Raum in franziskanischen Doppelklöstern: Königsfelden und S. Chiara/Neapel im Vergleich’, 223–246. 113 The San Silvestro monastery in Rome was founded by Giovanni Colonna for his daughters, nieces and other female relatives. The Santa Chiara monastery at Pavia founded 74 chapter two

Finally, one should keep in mind that, at least until the later fourteenth century, Clarissan houses were not organized into congregations with pro- vincial and general chapters or a completely standardized visitation regime (other than the visitations organized by the Franciscan provincial minister) that imposed a more thorough legislative unity. In that respect, they difffered from the Cistercian nunneries in Burgundy, Castile and Leon that, in the course of the twelfth century, organized themselves in congre- gations, complete with annual chapters and visitations to secure disciplin- ary unity, under the leadership of the monasteries of le Tart in Burgundy and Las Huelgas in Castile and Leon.114 Until the advent of the fijirst reform- ist or proto-Observant Clarissan congregations in the later fourteenth cen- tury (see Chapter Four), each Poor Clare monastery was very much on its own and subject to local pressures that could have repercussions for the religious lifestyle of the women and the character of the community. In Verona, for instance, Santa Maria delle Vergini in Campomarzo, an Ugolinian house already in existence by the mid 1220s, grew into a flour- ishing Poor Clare community by the early fourteenth century. Around 1351, the local bishop asked the Clares to fuse with the allegedly undisciplined Benedictine Maria Maddalena convent, in order to restore religious disci- pline. Papal permission confijirming this fusion gave guarantees that the reformed house would have a Clarissan identity and be exempt from epis- copal oversight. Some twenty years later, in 1373, the pope transferred four women from the now Clarissan Maria Maddalena house to revive another Benedictine monastery in town (Santa Lucia). In doing so, they had to accept the Benedictine habit as well as the Benedictine rule.115 For reli- gious authorities, it would seem, order afffijiliations of women were less important than the overarching requirement of enclosure. It explains to some extent the complex history of many individual female houses and of individual religious women during the late medieval period.116 Some ele- ments of this will be alluded to in the next chapter. in 1379 by the Visconti family only accepted noble ladies of over 40 years old, who could retire there with a retinue of servants. Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 78. 114 Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality, 348–249; Conner, ‘The Abbeys of Las Huelgas and Tart and Their Filiations’, 29–48. There is also evidence for smaller groups of fijiliated Cistercian nunneries. Cf. Berman, ‘Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?’, 824–864. 115 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 160 & VIII, 89, 338, 489–492 (Regestum Pontifijicium, no. CI), 659; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 175–176 & Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 256–257, 299; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 682. 116 For some insights in this issue, see Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe, passim & Barone, ‘Come studiare il monachesimo femminile’, 1–15. CHAPTER THREE

THE EXPANSION OF THE ORDER UNTIL C. 1400

The fijirst two chapters dealt with the emergence of the Clarissan order and its institutional development until the fourteenth century. Readers will have noticed that, in this very same time period, the order saw signifijicant expansion in Europe. While Central and Northern Italy was and would remain the Clarissan heartland, a large number of Damianite/Poor Clare monasteries, as well as several foundations of Sorores Minores Inclusae along the lines of Longchamp came into existence in other areas. This chapter tries to chart this expansion until c. 1400, just before a variety of Observant reforms began to make their impact felt.

Cautionary Remarks

The actual expansion of the order is not easy to determine. For one, it is complicated to distill the historical facts regarding the foundation of many individual houses from the origin myths propagated by late medieval and early modern convent chronicles and by hagiographical accounts, or pos- tulated by early modern local erudites and Franciscan order historians. The latter had a sincere interest in the historical facts, and were adept gatherers of source documents, but they frequently had an intrinsic wish to connect the early history of specifijic Clarissan monasteries with the actions of Clare and Francis of Assisi. Only with the professionalization of order history from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, when countless studies on individual religious houses and order provinces began to appear, did it gradually become possible to obtain a diffferent per- spective on the expansion of the Poor Clares. Many of the results of this more professional scholarly engagement found their way into the 1954 commemorative volume on Clare of Assisi, which provided surveys of Clarissan order history in many European countries.1 Since then, additional works have been appearing on smaller regions and individual communities, based on a thorough investigation of the available archival and narrative sources. Such studies have fed several

1 S. Chiara d’Assisi. Studi e cronaca del VII centenario (1253–1953). 76 chapter three more recent catalogues of Clarissan monasteries and regional or general surveys of monastic foundations. Cases in point are the lists of monaster- ies compiled by John Moorman and Marie-Colette Roussey, and the regional or European surveys of Ignacio Omaechevarría, Roberto Rusconi, Anna Benvenuti Papi, and Lorenzo Bartolini Salimbeni.2 At present, attempts are being made to collect all the available information on indi- vidual monasteries from Clare’s conversion in 1212 to the beginnings of the French Revolution in a searchable internet database. However, work on that is far from complete.3 The database shows, for one, that the exact number of Clarissan mon- asteries at a specifijic moment in time is difffijicult to determine. The avail- able sources, even after careful scrutiny, can be very confusing, making it hard to fijind out when an individual house was founded or changed its order allegiance. In some cases, a female religious house began as an unregulated penitential community involved with charitable work, evolved into a tertiary house, thereafter adopted the Augustinian rule at the urging of the local bishop, and fijinally embraced the Urbanist rule, thus becoming a Clarissan house ideally exempt from episcopal control. Such a trajectory could take several decades (and in some cases nearly two centu- ries), and the sources do not always allow historians to determine when such a house offfijicially became part of the Clarissan order. Sometimes the available sources do nothing but augment scholarly confusion. An interesting late example pertains to a community of reli- gious women at Delft, which a source from 1415 refers to as ‘the house of Saint Clare of the penitential order in the eastern parts of the town of Delft’ (Tsinte Claren der oerden van penitencien int oesteynde binnen Delft).4 Several scholars have concluded on the basis of such confusing terminol- ogy that Delft housed a Clarissan monastery within its walls by the early fijifteenth century. According to more recent scholarship the house in question was probably dedicated to Clare of Assisi, but was either an

2 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, passim; Roussey, ‘Atlas du deuxième Ordre: étapes de l’expansion de l’Ordre’, 445–498; Omaechevarría, ‘Clarisse’, 1116–1131; Omaechevarría, Las clarisas a través de los siglos, passim; Rusconi, ‘L’espansione del francescanesino femminile nel secolo XIII’, 263–313; Benvenuti Papi, ‘La fortuna del movi- mento damianita in Italia (sec. XIII): propositi per un censimento da fare’, 58–106; Bartolini Salimbeni, ‘Gli insediamenti delle Clarisse in Italia nel XIII secolo: qualche osservazione sulla ricerca in atto’, 109–117. 3 http://franwomen.sbu.edu/franwomen/default.aspx. 4 Sloots, ‘De Clarissen in Nederland. De Clarissen te Delft’, 380; Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, 373. the expansion of the order 77 unregulated penitential community or a regulated tertiary settlement. In the latter case, it might have followed the ‘Franciscan’ tertiary rule of 1289.5 Such source ambiguities are rife, and in many cases such confusing source statements are all we have concerning the early history of religious settlements. In other instances, offfijicial foundation acts can be misleading, for example when scholars fijind papal letters that approve a new founda- tion about which nothing else is known. Are we, in that case, dealing with an abortive foundation, or are we just missing additional sources? The lat- ter is possible, as many archival collections pertaining to Clarissan monas- teries and those of other religious orders have been destroyed due to natural disasters, fijires, religious conflict, long-term warfare and revolu- tionary turmoil. In France, for instance, much was lost during the Hundred Years War, the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, and the upheavals of the French Revolution. In England, many monastic archives were damaged or lost during and after the Dissolution of 1537. Within the Low Countries and parts of Germany, many archives of individual Clarissan houses disap- peared partially or completely when houses were forced to close at the onset of the Reformation. In Spain, monastic archival materials were lost during the Napoleonic Wars, the Suppression of 1835, and the Civil War of the twentieth century. In areas under Austrian Habsburg rule, documents were lost during the actions against religious houses under Joseph II. This also afffected the Southern Low Countries and parts of Italy. After the Napoleonic Wars, many monasteries were again suppressed in and after 1866, following Italy’s unifijication. In addition, throughout Europe, monas- tic archival collections sufffered from severe losses during the World Wars of the twentieth century.6 Readers should therefore be conscious that any list of Clarissan monas- teries might miss houses that have left no documentary trace, and might include houses whose early status cannot be fully vouched for. For this reason, the numbers mentioned in this chapter should be understood as estimates. Additional research and diffferent interpretations might yield diffferent results.

5 Roest, ‘De Clarissen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ca. 1460–1572’, 43–68. 6 In an important article on the Poor Clare monastery of Ypres, Hugolin Lippens lamented the loss of the rich archive of the Poor Clares, which for the thirteenth century alone contained some 130 papal bulls and charters. Lippens had sampled parts of this col- lection just before the start of the First World War. The archive burned more or less com- pletely in 1914. Lippens, ‘L’Abbaye des Clarisses d’Ypres aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles’, 297–298. 78 chapter three

It is, of course, not feasible to provide a complete and exhaustive over- view of the Damianite/Clarissan expansion within the scope of one chap- ter. Yet it is possible to give a valid indication, garnered with a signifijicant volume of illustrative examples, both to provide the reader with a good sense of the expansion itself, and to furnish information that allows for a brief typology of Clarissan houses, as Poor Clare monasteries could difffer signifijicantly from each other. In the following sections, the expansion is dealt with most completely in regions where it was relatively modest. For the Clarissan heartland in Italy, and also for Spain, the information is more curtailed, due predominantly to the larger number of monasteries (which cannot all be discussed). At the end of this chapter, an attempt will be made to draw some conclusions concerning diffferences between monas- teries with a diffferent foundation history and with diffferent developmen- tal trajectories.

Expansion Estimates

The 1228 letter of Rinaldo of Jenne mentioned in the fijirst chapter lists 24 Damianite monasteries. It is unclear whether this number is comprehen- sive, but it probably gives a fair indication of the number of houses offfiji- cially under papal protection and bestowed with the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. Some 25 years later, around the time of Clare’s death, the ‘order of San Damiano’ had grown into a conglomerate of around 97 to 127 houses in Italy (of which 66 to 76 in the Umbria-Tuscany-Marches regions alone), 20 to 23 in Spain, sixteen to eighteen in France, about eleven in the German Lands and Middle Europe and two in the Holy Land (Antioch and Tripoli).7 The fijirst real ‘snapshots’ of the Clarissan order as a whole can be found in three administrative documents issued in the context of provincial and general chapter meetings of the Franciscan order. The documents in ques- tion are the so-called Series Provinciarum Saxonica, which might date from c. 1300, the list of Franciscan order provinces, Franciscan friaries and Poor Clare monasteries issued in the wake of the Franciscan general chap- ter held at Naples in 1316, and the Series Provinciarum Hibernica from c. 1320. All these documents probably list Clarissan monasteries for which the Franciscan order supposedly had concrete curia monialium and visitation obligations. They do not necessarily mention all houses that claimed to have a Clarissan or Minorite identity. The problem is that these

7 Roussey, ‘Atlas’, Carte 1. – 1253. the expansion of the order 79 documents give signifijicantly diffferent numbers. The survey from c. 1300 mentions as many as 413 Poor Clare monasteries, whereas the inventory from c. 1320 mentions only 331 Clarissan houses. Somewhere in between is the list issued in the context of the Franciscan general chapter from 1316, which ordered a census to be made of all Clarissan settlements. The ensuing document mentions 372 Clarissan monasteries, divided into 198 houses within fourteen Franciscan ‘Italian’ provinces (without the monasteries created in the Province of Dalmatia (Sclavonia)), and another 174 elsewhere. As this list was made on the basis of information provided at a general chapter with representatives from all order provinces, the 1316 document may be closest to the truth. Still, its numbers should not be taken at face value. Its compilers clearly overstated the number of female houses in Ireland and England, and probably failed to list monas- teries which, for one reason or another, did not receive their spiritual care from Franciscan friars (for instance those that had been forced or chosen to remain under episcopal oversight).8 During the fourteenth century, the expansion of the Clarissan order slowed but did not stop. It has been estimated that by around 1400, or shortly thereafter, the number of Poor Clare monasteries had risen to at least 480: around 248 or 251 in Italy alone, some 84 within the Iberian Peninsula, 70 in ‘France’, and another 82 divided between the German Empire, the Low Countries and Middle and Eastern Europe, with a total of about 15000 cloistered nuns.9 This estimate might even be on the low side, as a comparison between the fijigures provided by Roussey, Moorman and the Franciscan Women Internet database, suggests that the number of Italian monasteries around 1400 was closer to 290 (see below), although a number of them were short-lived and soon disappeared altogether or merged with neighboring monasteries. Such fijigures show that, outside Italy, the Clarissan order had consider- able concentrations in France and Spain by the end of the fourteenth cen- tury. The period thereafter, which will be central in the next chapter, saw a new growth spurt, reaching well into the sixteenth century. This accelera- tion was primarily due to the energies of the Observant movements and the (frequently forced) claustration of many formerly tertiary houses.

8 Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografijica dellaT erra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano II, 245–252 (Tabula VII: Series Provinciarum Saxonica; Tabula IX: Series Generalis Capituli Neapolitani; Tabula X: Series Provinciarum Hibernica). 9 Roussey, ‘Atlas’, Carte 3: début du XVe siècle (1406). Still, the so-called Series Ragusina from 1385 comes to a much lower total of 394 monasteries. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio- bibliografijica II, 260 (Tabula XIV). 80 chapter three

Despite the difffijiculties in obtaining accurate calculations for that later growth, it has been estimated that, by 1520, the order consisted of more or less 675 monasteries: about 340 Italian houses, 140 within the Iberian pen- insula, 98 in ‘France’, and another 97 or so in the other regions of Europe.10 In and of themselves, such numbers do not permit great insight. For one, they should be measured against the total number of female religious houses within Europe during the later Middle Ages (the houses of other monastic and , and the by far greater number of not- fully cloistered communities of beguines, tertiaries and grey sisters, sisters of the Modern Devotion, and a cloud of even less-clearly defijined groups). Although such a measurement is not possible within the scope of this book, it should nevertheless be kept in mind. Moreover, the geographic distribution of Clarissan monasteries was uneven. Whereas the Poor Clares were among the dominant forces of cloistered religious life for women in the later Middle Ages in central Italy and Spain, they were prob- ably more peripheral in other regions, notably in England, the eastern parts of the German Empire and Eastern Europe.

Italy

In its beginnings, the emerging Damianite order was unique to North and Central Italy (Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany and Umbria). All of the 24 ‘Damianite’ settlements mentioned in Cardinal Rinaldo of Jenne’s famous letter from 1228 were more or less from this area,11 as were most of the 27 to 40 Damianite houses established between 1228 and 1241.12 Only fijive to

10 Roussey, ‘Atlas’, Carte 4: En 1520. 11 These are: San Damiano (Assisi), Santa Maria di Vallegloria (Spello), Santa Maria di Monteluce (Perugia), Santa Maria ‘de charitate’ (Carpello di Foligno), Santa Maria di Monticelli (Florence), Santa Maria di Gattaiola (Lucca), Santa Maria a porta Camollia (Siena), communities near Arezzo, Acquaviva and Rieti, Santa Maria Maddalena (Narni), Santa Maria ‘de Popula’ (Città di Castello), Montecuti (), Santa Serafijina (Tortona), a house near Faenza, Sant’Apollinare (Milan), Arcella (Padua), Trent (Trento), Santa Maria di Campo Marzio (Verona), Orvieto, Gubbio, San Paolo (Terni), San Paolo (Spoleto), Santa Maria di Targia (Cortona). Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 362–367; Oliger, ‘De origine regula- rum Ordinis S. Clarae’, 444–446; Sensi, ‘Le clarisse a Foligno nel secolo XIII’, 349–363. 12 Some 40 Damianite houses might have emerged during this period, namely in Venice, Montesanto near Todi, Santa Maria Maddalena of Norcia, the Borgo S. Pietro de Molito monastery of Filippa Mareri (near Petrella Salto), Santa Caterina di Loculi (Genova), Santa Maria delle Vergine in Catania (Sicily), Santa Maria degli Angeli in Spoleto, Piacenza, San Giovanni di Val dei Varri, Santa Caterina di Alba, Cremona, Matelica, Bologna, Ognissanti at Pisa, Santa Maria di Rosanno Calabro, Parma, Treviso, S. Sebastiano in Alatri, Santa Maria delle Vergine (later Santa Chiara) in Faenza, Campolongo sul Brenta, Santa Maria in the expansion of the order 81 seven communities incorporated into the Damianite order within the Italian peninsula during this latter period were South of Umbria and the Marches, namely in the Abruzzo region (the houses of Val dei Varri (Marsica) and Pereto),13 or the far South (Naples, Salerno, Rossano Calabro, and possibly Sessa Aurunca and Santa Maria delle Vergine at Catania on Sicily).14 This pattern was maintained until 1253, the year of Clare’s death, when a possible 31 to 33 new Damianite houses had begun to emerge, again mostly in North and Central Italy.15

Valfregio (Nocera Umbra), Sessa Aurunca, San Cosmo e San Damiano (or San Cosimato) in Trastevere (Rome), Santa Elisabeta of Bressanone, Collazzone, Santa Maria Gavallione (later Santa Chiara) in Viterbo, Santo Spirito of Salerno, Santa Maria di Donna Regina (Naples), Offfijida, Alessandria, Conegliano, Castiglion Fiorentino, Asti, Mantua, Pereto, Montagnana, Sant’Angelo di Panzo (near Assisi), and Magliano Sabina. Most of these appear in Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, passim. See also: Romeri, ‘Le Clarisse nel territorio della minoritica provincia veneta’, 7–143; Cenci, ‘Le Clarisse a Mantova (sec. XIII-XV) e il primo secolo dei Frati Minori’, 7–33; Carelli & Casiello, Santa Maria Donnaregina in Napoli; Bigaroni, Montesanto di Todi: da monastero a rocca dell’Albornoz; Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Gregorio IX e il francescanesimo femminile: il monasterio di Ognissanti in Pisa’, 383–406; Barclay Lloyd, ‘L’architettura medievale di S. Cosimato in Trastevere’, 77–126; Fentress, Goodson, Laird & Leone, Walls and Memory. The Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri (Lazio) from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond; Calogero, ‘La ricostruzione della chiesa di S. Chiara a Catania’, 181–209. 13 Some scholars also count the Guardiagrele, Pescina and Agnone monasteries in the Abruzzo/Molise regions among the earlier foundations, yet their transformation from ‘open’ communities of penitents (in existence since the 1230s) into enclosed monasteries of Poor Clares probably only took place in the 1250s or signifijicantly later. Cf. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 595 & 646; Spalatro, ‘Le fondazioni francescane femminili in Molise ed in Puglia nel Duecento’, 217–243. 14 See: Benvenuti Papi, ‘La fortuna del movimento damianita’, 57–106. 15 Santa Maria di Luni, Turin, Santa Maria all’Aracoeli at , San Angelo in Ascoli Piceno, Santa Lucia near Norcia, Santa Agata of Pavia, San Vittore all’Olmo in Milan, Santa Maria at Massa Maritima, San Michele of Osimo, Ripa Transone, San Eustachio of Chiavari, Iesi, Santa Lucia (later Santa Chiara) of Arcevia, Modena, Volterra, San Stefano in Ravenna, San Guglielmo in Ferrara (between 1253 and 1256), Santa Maria da Paragnano and San Francesco near Todi (both of which apparently fused with the Montesanto monastery in 1251), Cascia, Santo Spirito near Città di Penne, Santa Agnese of Novara, Santa Maria dell’Eucharistia at Foligno, San Donato at Gubbio, San Filippo & San Giacomo (later Santa Chiara) in Fano, Castignano, Santa Lucia di Colle Alto at Rieti, Mercatello, San Blasio (sub- sequently S. Pietro in Vineis) at Anagni, Pinerolo, Sassoferrato, Santa Maria di Mirasole at Rimini and Santa Maria della Misericordia/San Stefano at Imola. See aside from Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, passim also Bughetti, ‘Documenta ad historiam monasterii S. Guglielmi prope Ferrariam Ordinis S. Clarae’, 91–113; Il monastero delle Clarisse di Sassoferrato; Giorgi, Le Clarisse in Ascoli; Andenna, ‘Le Clarisse nel Novarese’, 185–267; Brogliato, ‘Il primo monastero delle Clarisse di Vicenza, S. Maria all’Araceli’, 77–10; Mazzilli, ‘Chiesa e monastero di S. Agata: ricerche sul primo insediamento francescano femminile a Pavia’, 335–369; Bianchi, ‘Afffreschi duecenteschi nel S. Pietro in Vineis in Anagni’, 379–384; Carafffa, Il monastero di S. Chiara in Anagni delle origine alla fijine dell’ottocento; Emiliani, Montanari, & Pasini, Gli afffreschi trecenteschi da Santa Chiara in Ravenna. Il grande ciclo di Pietro da Rimini restaurato, 16–47; Baldini, Monasteri femminili degli ordini religiosi 82 chapter three

From the late 1250s until c. 1270, when the conflict over the cura monia- lium was at its height, the creation of Damianite/Poor Clare monasteries slowed down. It picked up again in the 1280s and 1290s, notably under the pontifijicates of Nicholas IV and Boniface VIII. By then, the relationship between the Franciscan order and the Poor Clares was improving, and it was understood that new female houses were proper monasteries along more traditional lines. In this period, the order not only continued to grow in North and Central Italy, but also made increasing headway into the less urbanized Southern parts of Italy. This further expansion to the South was marked by the erection of the Roccamontepiano monastery in the late 1250s and the creation of the Santa Chiara in Sulmona monastery in the late 1260s, both in the Abruzzo region. Numerous foundations followed further to the South in the decades thereafter.16 At the other end of Italy, after early settlements in Tortona, Alessandria, Asti, Turin and Novara, additional Poor Clare monasteries were created in the Piemonte and Liguria regions from the closing decades of the thirteenth century onwards.17 The vast majority of these new houses followed the Urbanist rule from 1263, which overtly allowed these houses to gather possessions and property. mendicanti in Ravenna; Superbi, ‘Primi decenni di vita di un convento ferrarese: San Guglielmo delle clarisse (1256–1337)’, 13–109. 16 Pellegrini, ‘Female Religious Experience and Society’, 118–119; Chiappini, ‘La Beata Florescenda da Palena e il suo monastero di S. Chiara in Sulmona’; Frascadore, Le per- gamene del monastero di S. Chiara di Nardò (1292–1508). See also Bartolini Salimbeni, ‘Gli insediamenti delle Clarisse in Italia’, 109–117. He provides more in-depth information on various Poor Clare houses in the Abruzzo area, namely L’Aquila (both Santa Chiara d’Acquila and the Eucarestia monastery); Gagliano Aterno (Santa Chiara); Sulmona (Santa Chiara, established by Floresenda of Palena between 1268 and 1269); Città di Castello (chiesa delle Murate). On Roccamontepiano, see also the notices in Inguanez, Carte medi- evali abruzzesi con fijirme in versi, 3–4: ‘Ne fu fondatrice la marchesa Tommasia di Schönburg, fijiglia di Gualtieri di Pagliara, conte di Manoppello, alla quale l’abate di Montecassino, il cardinale Richerio, concesse la chiesa di S. Pietro al 17 novembre 1258.’ 17 Gambiaso, ‘Le clarisse in Liguria’, 22–27; Andenna, ‘Le clarisse nel Novarese (1252– 1300)’, 185–267; Merlo, ‘Fondazioni monastiche femminili della stirpe marchionale di Saluzzo’, 53–78; Comba, ‘Le Clarisse a Cuneo e a Mondovi’, 99–116; Romanelli, ‘Insediamenti francescani femminili in Piemonte nel secolo XIII’, 705–752. Five early foundations in Piemonte can be signaled, namely Tortona (S. Serafijia, before 1228), Alessandria (S. Maria Maddalena, before 1235), Asti (before 1244), Turin (San Francesco/Santa Chiara, before 1244), and Novara (San Pietro di Cavaglietto/S. Nazaro/S. Domenico/S. Agnese, 1253). Thereafter, additional monasteries were established in Ivrea (Santa Chiara, 1300), Chieri (S. Caterina or S. Chiara, possibly 1300), Alba (Santa Chiara, possibly early 14th cent., but probably older), Carignano (probably from the 14th cent.), Vercelli (for a long time proba- bly a community of sorores minores without an offfijicial connection to the Damianite or Clarissan order), Pinerolo (S. Giacomo, before 1332), Mondoví (Santa Chiara, 1338), Cuneo (Santa Chiara, possibly around 1298 but in any case before 1348). the expansion of the order 83

Our information on the early history of many such Italian houses remains limited, although our knowledge has increased dramatically since the early 1990s. This has been partly in response to several bold attempts at sketching the spread of the order in Italy in more detail, fijirst by Roberto Rusconi, and thereafter by Giovanna Casagrande and Anna Benvenuti Papi. The latter two in particular tried to unearth information on Clarissan houses using all available sources. While Casagrande took her research into the Clarissan Umbrian heartland,18 Benvenuti Papi tried to track the available early evidence for all the 198 Italian monasteries mentioned in the census of the 1316 Franciscan general chapter. Based on her own research, Benvenuti Papi was able to provide source references for the existence of 158 of these monasteries.19 Following such groundbreaking forays, a fair number of more detailed regional surveys on Italian Clarissan monasteries have been embarked upon (alongside of a wealth of studies on individual Clarissan establish- ments or groups of houses in individual towns, some of which have already been mentioned in previous notes). Many of the more recent studies have been published in the journal Collectanea Franciscana and in the Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia. The 1990s saw the appearance of studies by Maria Pia Alberzoni on the expansion of Damianites in Lombardy,20 Alfonso Marini’s study on the female religious communities in Lazio,21 the survey of Maria Cristina Marano on Poor Clares in the Marches,22 and the works of Chiara Spalatro and Annamaria Fachiano on Clarissan houses in Molise, Puglia and other regions of the Italian Mezzogiorno.23

18 Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara in Umbria’, 481–505. 19 Benvenuti Papi, ‘La fortuna del movimento damianita’, passim. See also her 1994 arti- cle ‘Donne religiose e francescanesimo nella Valle Reatina’, 191–207. 20 Alberzoni, ‘L’Ordine di San Damiano in Lombardia’, 1–42. 21 Marini, ‘Le fondazioni francescane femminile nel Lazio del Duecento’, 71–96. This study contains for instance information on the short-lived monastery of Acquaviva (the nuns transferred to Foligno by 1236), Borgo San Pietro, Santa Croce in Magliano Sabina, SS. Cosma e Damiano (San Cosimato) in Rome, San Sebastiano in Alatri, Santa Rosa in Viterbo, the three monasteries of Santa Lucia di Colle Alto, Santa Chiara and San Fabiano in Rieti, Santa Chiara di Anagni, Santa Maria Maria de Gavallione near Tuscania (Toscanella), the ephemeric foundation of Sant’Aurenzio/Orenzio in Frosinone, San Matteo in Ferentino, San Michele Arcangelo of Amaseno, Giovanni in Votano (later San Michele) near Tivoli, Santa Chiara of Velletri, Castel San Pietro near Palestrina, San Silvestro in Capite in Rome (established in an empty Benedictine house), San Francesco in Trevi, Santa Maria in Silice of Valmontone, and San Francesco de Machilone (Posta). 22 Marano, ‘Le clarisse nelle Marche. Gli insediamenti del XIII secolo’, 105–166. 23 Spalatro, ‘Le fondazioni francescane femminili in Molise ed in Puglia nel Duecento’, 217–243. She provides information on Santa Chiara in Agnone (Anglone), Santa Chiara di Isernia, Santa Chiara in Nardò, Santa Chiara di Andria, S. Maria Maddalena di Giovinazzo, 84 chapter three

Since 2000, this has been complemented by detailed works on the Poor Clares in Sicily,24 Sardinia,25 Emilia-Romagna,26 the Trentino and Alto Adige areas,27 Piemonte,28 and again Tuscany (or rather the Tuscany prov- ince of the medieval Franciscan order).29 Such studies probably do not list the Poor Clare monastery of Bari, Santa Chiara di Barletto, and the elusive and question- able foundation of Poor Clares at Biseglie. Facchiano, ‘Monachesimo femminile nel mez- zogiorno’, 169–191 discusses for instance Clarissan and proto-Clarissan houses in Naples, Melfiji, Catanzaro and Nardò. 24 Milisenda, ‘I monasteri delle clarisse in Sicilia nel XIII e nel XIV secolo’, 485–519. She discusses the houses of Santa Maria delle Vergini in Catania (after 1228), the Santa Chiara and Santa Maria di Basico monasteries in the Messina area (resp. 1294 and 1318), the Santa Chiara monastery in Lentini (1312), the Santa Chiara monastery in Piazza Armerina (between 1320/1340); The Santa Chiara monastery in Siracusa (1338), The Santa Chiara monastery in Palermo (before 1341), the Santa Chiara monastery in Mazara del Vallo (before 1385) and the Santa Chiara monastery in Trapani (between ca. 1300 and 1385), showing that the Clarissan impact in Sicily was really a phenomenon from the fourteenth century – after the transfer of the island from the Anjou to the dynasty (and after the end of hos- tilities resulting from it), and was greatly stimulated by the sponsorship/foundational influence of the royal dynasty of Aragon. All these Sicilian houses were well-endowed. 25 Pisanu, I Frati Minori di Sardegna, Vol. III: I monasteri femminili dal 1260 al 1639. See also the reviews in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 96 (2003), 258–260 & Collectanea Franciscana 73 (2003), 454–457. Pisanu noted that Poor Clare settlements in Sicily followed those of the Franciscan friars. The oldest Clarissan houses were created in Oristano (c. 1260) and Cagliari (c. 1326). At least fijive more monasteries were eventually established under Observant obedience in the late fijifteenth and early sixteenth century. 26 See for example Badini, Guida alla documentazione francescana in Emilia-Romagna, III: Ferrara-Modena-Reggio Emilia. This is part of a larger series of inventories and listings of Franciscan, Clarissan and tertiary sources in Emilia Romagna, the fijirst volume of which appeared in 1986. 27 Tovalieri, ‘Damianite e Clarisse in Trentino e in Alto Adige nel XIII e XIV secolo’, 557–580 mentions San Michele in Trento, the Bressanone (Brixen) monastery in the Trentino area (c. 1235), and the Santa Chiara monastery in Merano, established before and in 1309 with strong support of Eufemia of Breslavia, the wife of Duke Otto III of Carinthia (also ruler of Tirol). On Bressanone (Brixen), see: Spätling, ‘Das Klarissenkloster in Brixen’, 365–388; Nothegger, ‘Brixen/Südtirol, Klarissen-Franziskaner-Terziarinnen’, 243–254; Wolfsgruber, ‘Das Brixener Klarissenkloster im 13. Jahrhundert’, 459–468; Andergassen, ‘Zur Bau- und Ausstattungsgeschichte des Brixner Klarissenklosters’, 57–83; Freeman, ‘Die Anfänge des Elisabethklosters in Brixen im Kontext der Entwicklung des Klarissenordens’, 37–40. On Merano, see also the older studies by Max Straganz and Martin Laimer: Straganz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Klarissenklosters Meran in den ersten 200 Jahren seines Bestandes (1309–1518)’, 117–158; Straganz, ‘Die Gründung des Klarissenklosters zu Meran im jahre 1309’, 250–251; Laimer, Das Meraner Klarissenkloster. Untersuchungen zur Klosterkirche. The San Michele monastery of Trento, which by 1228 was handed over to the Damianites by the local bishop Gerardo Oscasali, fijigures in the letter of Cardinal Rinaldo. See: Pamato, ‘Presenze francescane nelle diocesi di Trento e di Bressanone tra XIII e XV secolo’, 87–106; Polli, Il monastero di S. Michele in Trento dalla fondazione (1229) al secolo XV. 28 Namely the study of Silvia Romanelli mentioned previously. 29 Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Francescanesimo al femminile: la ‘Provincia Tusciae’ fra XIII e XIV secolo’, 217–235; Idem, ‘Fondazioni Francescane femminili nella provincia Tusciae del XIII secolo’, 181–206. She provides information on Oristano (Sardegna), Sarzana (Liguria), Florence, Siena, Lucca, Arezzo, Cortona, San Miniato, Castel Fiorentino, Pisa, Castiglione the expansion of the order 85 all the Italian houses, but they put the Damianite/Clarissan houses for which historical evidence can be found on the map. As stated earlier, estimates of the number of Poor Clare monasteries created in fourteenth-century Italy, in addition to the 198 houses men- tioned in the census of the 1316 Franciscan general chapter, vary consider- ably. According to the estimates of Roussey, the total number of houses would have risen to c. 248 or 251 by 1406.30 This would have meant an increase of at least 50 monasteries. However, the information compiled by Moorman and the collaborators of the Franciscan Women database sug- gests that the number of Clarissan monasteries established in the course of the fourteenth century might have been closer to 90. Part of this dis- crepancy is no doubt caused by uncertainties about the actual order alle- giance of various communities (see my remarks on that issue in Chapter Two) and the existence of more than one Poor Clare monastery in a single town. Other houses mentioned for this period were deserted rather quickly, as a result of outbursts of the Plague or other mishaps. Due to the lingering uncertainties concerning the founding date or the traceability of many fourteenth-century Italian foundations, I will refrain from listing them all.31 However, I would like to draw attention to several Clarissan monasteries which were (re)built in Naples with the support of the Anjou dynasty.32 The oldest of these is the large Santa Maria di Donna Regina monastery, which has origins going back to late antiquity. By the later eighth century, it had developed into a female Basilian convent known as San Pietro del Monte di Donna Regina. During the ninth century, it became a female Benedictine house (Santa Maria di Donna Regina). In 1236, the commu- nity adopted the Ugolinian Forma Vitae, and subsequently it integrated

Fiorentino, Volterra, Piombino, Massa Maritima, Montepulciano, San Gimignano, Prato, and Pistoia. 30 Roussey, ‘Atlas’, passim. 31 Aside from the overviews provided by Moorman and Roussey, see also the following studies on individual houses and towns: Lazzeri, ‘L’antico monastero di Vallegloria’, passim; Vittani, ‘L’archivio del monastero di S. Chiara Vecchia in Lodi’, 121–146; Zampino, ‘La chiesa vecchia di S. Chiara in Nola’, 437–450; Sevesi, ‘I monasteri delle Clarisse in Lodi’, 3–18; Cresi, ‘Le Clarisse di Arezzo’, 5–25; Salticchioli, Le Clarisse a Todi nei sec. XIII-XIV; Taglianetti & Trubiani, Il monastero di S. Chiara e la sua chiesa in Atri; Sensi, ‘Il patrimonio monastico di S. Maria di Vallegloria a Spello’, 77–149; Pecorini Cignoni, ‘Francescanesimo femminile a Pisa’, 371–395; Biondi, ‘Il francescano Andrea de Pace e il monastero di Santa Chiara di Lentini’, 75–82; Andenna, ‘Secundum regulam datam sororibus ordinis sancti Damiani’, 353–376. 32 For a complete survey of these Neapolitan foundations, see Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266–1343. 86 chapter three into the Damianite network, exempt from episcopal oversight. By 1269, this monastery had accepted the rule of Urban IV. The monastic com- pound was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1293. At the initiative of Mary of Hungary, the spouse and later widow of Charles II of Anjou, a substantial new monastery and a new church were built, which were more-or-less completed between 1316 and 1320. After Mary’s death, the church became the site of a monumental for her mortal remains, designed by Tino of Camaino. In this way, the house obtained an impor- tant function in the commemoration strategies of the Anjou dynasty, which secured the family’s long-term patronage of the monastery and was instrumental in the further adornment of the church and the living quar- ters of the nuns.33 Just when the Donna Regina monastery was being rebuilt, the new king of Naples, Robert the Wise of Anjou and his pious wife Sancia of Majorca supported the foundation of a second Clarissan monastery a short dis- tance to the Southwest. This house, fijirst known as the Corpus Domini and later as the Santa Chiara monastery, was to become even larger and more monumental, and was clearly envisaged as a both for the king, and for relics of his famous brother, the recently-canonized Louis of Anjou. The foundation acts go back to 1310, shortly after Robert had succeeded his father as king of Naples. The fijirst nuns were able to enter the monastery by 1317. Queen Sancia personally provided the constitutions for their com- munity, which they had to follow in conjunction with the rule.34 Initially, the monastery had been designed to contain a community of up to 100 choir nuns. During the building process, this maximum was increased, fijirst to 120, then to 150, and by 1342 to 200. The church con- nected to the monastic buildings was massive. It was (and still is in its current form) more than 110 meters long and 33 meters wide. The alone was 82 meters long, with walls of 47.5 meters high. It was and would remain the largest Clarissan church ever built.35

33 Bertaux, Santa Maria di Donnaregina e l’arte senese a Napoli, esp. 7–12; Carelli & Casíello, Santa Maria Donnaregina in Napoli; Genovese, La Chiesa trecentesca di Donna Regina, 7fff; The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina. Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples, ed. Elliott & Warr, passim; Bruzelius, ‘Hearing is believing. Clarissan ’, 83–91. 34 These constitutions received papal approval in 1321. Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 631–646. 35 Dell’Aja, Per la storia del monastero di Santa Chiara in Napoli. For papal indulgences issued by Pope John XXII on behalf of the monastery, see: Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 178f., 472, 483, 485, 506, 540fff., 562, 568, 631–646; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 87f. (no. 200), 102f (no. 236, 237 & 239), 104 (no. 241), 105 (no. 244), 137 (no. 301), 289 (no. 581), 190 (no. 407). the expansion of the order 87

To serve such a huge number of nuns, and to secure the religious ser- vices in this massive church, King Robert and Queen Sancia initiated the construction of an adjacent Franciscan friary, big enough to house 20 fri- ars (soon after increased to 50). This setup gave the Santa Chiara monas- tery from the outset the character of a dual monastery, with the female community as the dominant partner. In this, the Santa Chiara monastery reached back to the San Damiano model, but on a much larger scale, and also reflected the setup of various other large royal dual monasteries in Central and Eastern Europe (such as the large monasteries in Prague, Königsfelden, and Obuda mentioned below).36 To the annoyance of the papacy and Franciscan order leaders, the friary became a refuge of Spiritual Franciscans who elsewhere faced persecu- tion.37 In spite of their support for the cause of these dissenting friars, Queen Sancia and King Robert were initially less interested in their pur- suit of radical evangelical poverty (as is evident in the exorbitant size of the new Santa Chiara monastery), than in the close relationship between the friars and the nuns.38 Nevertheless, the growing familiarity with the San Damiano model and Clare of Assisi’s rule – which was also shown in the erection of the Clarissan monastery in Aix-en-Provence by the same royal couple in the 1330s (see the section on France) – eventually prompted Queen Sancia to support the creation of yet another Clarissan settlement in Naples, namely the monastery of Santa Croce (1338).39 This was a much smaller and more secluded foundation than the Santa Chiara monastery, and followed the San Damiano model much more closely, both in its dual monastery setup and with its adoption of Clare of Assisi’s rule of 1253. After the death of her husband, Sancia retired in 1343 at Santa Croce as a Clarissan nun, and received papal permission to visit with two Clarissan companions the various other religious communities she had helped cre- ate. She died in the Santa Croce monastery in July 1345.40

36 Bruzelius, ‘Queen Sancia of Mallorca and the Convent church of Santa Chiara in Naples’, esp. 74–78; Michalsky, Repräsentation und Memoria. Die Grabmäler des Königshauses Anjou in Italien, 129–146; Pryds, ‘Clarisses, Franciscans, and the House of Anjou: Temporal and Spiritual Partnership in Early Fourteenth-Century Naples’, 99–114. These studies also deal at length with the Donna Regina monastery. 37 Auw, Angelo Clareno et les spirituels italiens, 191. 38 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 118. See also Musto, ‘Queen Sancia of Naples (1286– 1345) and the Spiritual Franciscans’, 179–214. 39 Permission for this foundation came from pope Benedict XII on 19 March 1338. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 260–261; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 56. 40 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 627–629, 632–633; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 119– 120; Loconte, ‘Constructing Female Sanctity in Late Medieval Naples’, 109. Knox suggests 88 chapter three

The Iberian Peninsula

In the Iberian Peninsula, the order of San Damiano had already begun to spread during Gregory IX’s pontifijicate.41 The oldest Damianite commu- nity was Santa María de las Vírgines/Santa Engracia in Pamplona. It appar- ently existed in some form as an unregulated community of aristocratic urban beatas before 1228. By April of that year, it received papal exemption from episcopal control, as well as a revised redaction of the Ugolinian Forma Vitae (with the bull Cum a nobis petitur). Thus, it might have been the oldest Damianite house outside Italy.42 The further spread of Damianite, and later the Poor Clare monasteries in North-Central Spain was helped by the strong presence of female peni- tential communities, which followed a path of regulation comparable to those in Italy. Several of the new Damianite and later Clarissan houses appeared along the routes towards Santiago de Compostella from the North-East and from the South, possibly due in part to the presence of Franciscan friars and the desire of ecclesiastical authorities to enclose the that Sancia might have been influenced in her decision to built the Santa Croce monastery by Delphina of Sabran, one of the ladies at her court, and like her husband Elzear (an influ- ential counsellor of King Robert) a person with very outspoken religious ideals. Some scholars suggest that the adherence to the rule of 1253 was short-lived. Cf. Sensi, ‘Clarisses entre spirituels et observants’, 105. 41 There exist a fair number of studies on Damianite/Clarissan houses in Spain and Portugal. See: López, ‘Los monasterios de clarisas en España en el siglo XIII’, 185–190; Castro, ‘Los conventos de clarisas en la provincia de Santiago’, 246–250, 310–314; Santos, ‘Espansione delle clarisse nella Spagna’, 126–129; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas desde el siglo XIII al XVI’, 79–122; García Oro, ‘Orígenes de las clarisas en España’, II, 163–182; Montes Moreira, ‘Breve historia das clarisas em Portugal’, II, 211–232; Miura Andrades, ‘Las funda- ciones de clarisas en Andalucía del siglo XIII a 1525’, II/2, 705–721; Martínez de Vega, ‘Los conventos clarianos en España a luz del Archivo Iberoamericano’, 459–476; Graña Cid, ‘Franciscanos y franciscanas en el Reino de Granada. Panorama fundacional (ca. 1485– 1550)’, 105–119; Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas en Castilla durante la Edad Media: historia de un éxito’, 613–659; Triviño, ‘Clarisas y franciscanos catalanes hasta 1567’, 61–84; Jimeno Aranguren, ‘Clarisas y Franciscanos Conventuales en Navarra (s. XIII-XVI), con especial mención a las damianitas pamplonesas’, 197–217. 42 Lejarza, ‘Le Clarisse nel mondo Ibero-Americano’, 405–425; Ruiz de Larrínaga, ‘Las clarissas de Pamplona’, 242–277; Garcia Oro, ‘Origenes de las Clarisas en España’, 167, 169–170; Alberzoni, La nascità di un’istituzione, 46. The study of Ruiz de Larrínaga shows that the San Engracia de Pamplona settlement received no less than 78 papal bulls during the thirteenth century alone. The house was reformed along Observant lines in the early sixteenth century. See: Sagüés, ‘Las clarisas de Pamplona y sus reformas en el siglo XVI’, 301–368. Local and Franciscan chronicles from the later medieval and early modern period sometimes mention the foundation of a Damianite monastery at Andujár in as early as 1225. Yet that seems highly unlikely. See: Graña Cid, ‘Las primeras Clarisas andalu- zas. Franciscanismo femenino y en el siglo XIII’, 668–670 and Miura Andrade, ‘Las fundaciones de Clarisas en Andalucia del siglo XIII a 1525’, 707. the expansion of the order 89 existing female religious communities along such important pilgrim routes as much as possible.43 Not long after the normalization of the Pamplona Santa Engracia com- munity, a Damianite settlement was found at Zamora near the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua. Late medieval and early modern legend- ary sources attribute the creation of the Zamora Damianites to the activi- ties of women sent forth by Clare of Assisi from San Damiano. No historical evidence has been found to support this directly. Still, several papal docu- ments from 1237 indicate that, at that moment in time, this Damianite abode was lead by a woman who had been on a pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi.44 In the course of the thirteenth century, the Zamora monastery was renamed Santa Clara, and from this same house were founded at a later juncture the royal monastery of Allaris and the Santa Clara monas- tery of Coimbra (in the 1320s).45 Another Damianite settlement appeared at Ciudad Rodrigo (South- West of Salamanca) around 1230 or at least before 1240. Dubious sources make the identical claim that this house, like the community at Zamora, was founded by one of Clare’s disciples. Whatever the historical validity of this claim, it would tie in with the freedom given to the expansion of the Damianites while Elias of Cortona was general minister of the Franciscan order (1232–1239), and when Clare of Assisi was in touch with Agnes of Bohemia. The Damianite house at Ciudad Rodrigo was initially known as the Espíritu Santo monastery. It appears in documents issued by Bishop Miguel of Salamanca in April 1240. These documents sealed the founda- tion’s exemption from episcopal oversight. After Clare of Assisi’s canoniza- tion, it was likewise renamed Santa Clara.46

43 Along these routes we fijind Pamplona, Zaragossa, Calatayud, Zamora, and Santiago. Martínez de Vega, ‘Los conventos clarianos en España’, 460. 44 Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 72: ‘Es obvio que non se trata de compañeras de la Santa asisiense sino de ‘beatas’ españolas, con frecuencia de extracción burguesa o hidalga, que iniciaron un cambio en el estilo de vida informal que llevaban, sin duda por sugerencia de los frailes menores, que les ofrecián no sólo un nuevo estatuto de San Damián sino también y sobre todo la voluntad del papa Gregorio IX de convertirlas en monasterios de derecho pontifijicio.’ 45 Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 83; Omaechevarría, ‘Orígenes del monas- terio de Santa Clara, de Zamora’, 483–492; Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 173 (who mentions the monastery’s involvement with the foundations of Allariz and Porto); Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 69f. 46 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 327; Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 54 & IV, 131, 151, 548; VII, 151; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 83; Zamora, ‘Los conventos de Clarisas de en las Cronicas Franciscanas impresas’, 651. 90 chapter three

By 1231, an additional compound came into being at Carrión de los Condes (near Palencia). There, a chapel dedicated to Santa María del Páramo had become the center of a Damianite-like community. The exact date of the offfijicial incorporation of this settlement into the Damianite network is unknown. When the number of women grew, they moved to a larger building in the village of Carrión de los Condes. In this new setting, the monastery, by then already dedicated to Santa Clara, received a set of papal privileges from Alexander IV (In multam redundat, 3 June 1256).47 Again according to legendary sources, two disciples of Clare of Assisi were sent to Spain in 1234 and founded a monastery at , which they named at fijirst after the recently canonized friar Anthony of Padua. In reality, these ‘disciples’ were local Catalan women with a mercantile back- ground (Berenguela of Antich and Guillerma of Poliña), who worked in conjunction with the urban authorities. The Sant Antoni de Barcelona monastery probably received proper canonical recognition by 1236. In later years, the monastery adopted Clare of Assisi as its major patron saint.48 Around the time of the foundation of the Barcelona monastery, yet another Damianite settlement was created in Burgos. Allegedly, this house was founded by three women who had traveled to Rome (namely María Sanchez, María Míguez, and Juliana y Toda), and been given the Ugolinian Forma Vitae by Pope Gregory IX himself.49 On 12 April 1234, Pope Gregory conceded a penitential indulgence of 40 days to confessed believers who supported the Damianites of Burgos with alms, as these women had no other form of income at that time.50

47 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 106, XI, 61, 414 & XIII, 166; Castro, ‘Monasterios his- pánicos de clarisas’, 83–84. The uncertainties concerning its real offfijicial starting date explains why this house, as well as the Ciudad Rodrigo monastery mentioned earlier are not listed among the early foundations in Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 169–174 and in Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 211. 48 Wadding, Annales Minorum II, 405–406, VII, 25, 419; Fidel Fita, ‘Fundación y primer período de Santa Clara, de Barcelona’, 273–314, 436–489; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 84; Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 171–172. Garcia Oro still emphasises that the Barcelona monastery had close links with Clare’s San Damiano mon- astery. According to him, the Barcelona founders not only considered themselves to be disciples of Clare, but the fijirst known abbess of the Barcelona monastery, Maria of Pisa, would have been one of Clare’s companions. 49 Wadding, Annales Minorum II, 418; Omaechevarría, ‘Orígenes del monasterio de Santa Clara, de Zamora’, 485, 489; Castro, ‘Fundación del convento de Santa Clara, de Burgos’, 137–193; Gutierrez, El Monasterio de Clara, de Burgos; Martínez de Vega, ‘Los con- ventos clarianos en España’, 462; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 84; Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 171; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 184fff. 50 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 124 (no. 126). In 1270, the nuns received royal exemption from special taxes on meat and other consumer goods. Cf. Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas’, 654. the expansion of the order 91

The Damianite Santa Catalina monastery of Saragossa probably also dates back to 1234 (and not to 1226, as can be read in some older studies). It is mentioned in papal documents issued by Gregory IX in April 1234, which are addressed to the local bishop and to the noble woman Ermesenda of Celles, who used her material goods (viñas, campos, huertos, frutales, eras…) to start the building process. It was set up along the same lines as Pamplona, and received its fijinal exemptions once the local bishop had ceased his resistance by 1237. During the second half of the thirteenth century, the Santa Catalina monastery played a signifijicant role in the fur- ther expansion of the Clarissan order.51 Almost immediately after the creation of the Santa Catalina monastery, by 1238, a Damianite monastery was established in Salamanca. Information on the early history of this foundation can be gathered from a papal letter, sent by Gregory IX to King Fernando III el Santo. The pope asked for royal help and protection for doña Urraca and her group of penitential women living near the church of Santa María in Salamanca. Not long afterwards, Gregory IX granted 20 days of penitential indulgence to people who helped to construct the new Damianite monastery, which later in the century, like many others, adopted Clare of Assisi as its patron saint.52 The Salamanca Damianite settlement is remarkable in its speedy trans- formation into a well-endowed monastic house. On 18 June 1244, Innocent IV gave the community the rights of succession to any properties that freely professed nuns received as legitimate inheritance from their fami- lies, in line with the ius commune.53 As we have seen in the previous chap- ter, the Salamanca house proved very keen to protect its status as a legitimate Damianite monastery: in 1250, the abbess complained to the pope about the existence of unenclosed mendicant women calling them- selves Minorite sisters and Damianites.54 By the end of that decade, in 1259, the Damianites of Salamanca, once very poor, had obtained numer- ous possessions within three diffferent dioceses (Salamanca, Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora).55

51 López, ‘El monasterio de Santa Catalina, de Zaragoza’, 353–386; Ruiz de Larrínaga, ‘Las clarissas de Santa Catalina de Zaragoza. Su antigüedad y riqueza diplomática’, 351–377; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 84; Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 167, 170–171. 52 Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 17 & XI, 170; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 256–257; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 84–85; Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 168; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 150–155. 53 Vázquez, ‘Documentación pontifijicia medieval en Santa Clara de Salamanca’, 383 (doc. 7). 54 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 556. 55 Tunstall, ‘Santa Clara de Salamanca y el testamento de doña Gilota’, 283. 92 chapter three

In or around 1240, three additional Damianite monasteries were founded, namely at (Logroño, ),56 Tarazona (Santa Inéz),57 and at Calatayud (Santa Inéz). The latter foundation in particular received a signifijicant number of papal privileges to bolster its appeal to local benefactors. Hence, in 1244, it received permission to celebrate the Divine Offfijice during periods of interdict from Innocent IV, and Pope Benedict XIII would eventually grant the nuns a plenary indulgence in articulo mortis. The monastery was destroyed in 1348 and the abbess received permission to rebuild inside the city walls.58 In 1241, Pope Gregory IX sent to Queen Violante (Yolanda) of Hungary, wife of James I the Conqueror of Aragon, the bull Gratum gerimus, prais- ing the Aragonese royal couple for its effforts to establish a Damianite house in Lérida ( province). The monastery was soon ready for occupation, and in 1251 Violante donated a considerable sum to the Lérida Damianites in her will, securing further ameliorations of the monastic enclave.59 Over the next twelve years (until the death of Clare of Assisi in 1253), possibly ten other Spanish Damianite houses came into being. Eight of these were established before 1250, namely at Cuéllar,60 Valladolid,61 Medina del Campo (fijirst known as Santa Eufemia and later as Santa

56 Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 58; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 85. See also Riesco Terrero, Datos para la historia del Real Convento de Clarisas de Salamanca: catálogo documental de su archivo. 57 In August 1240, the bishop of Tarazona, Don García, gave a certain Susanna and sev- eral other women permission to create a monastery on a terrain donated by Doña María Lop. The foundation was confijirmed with papal privileges from Innocent IV in May 1244. Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 485–486; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 328; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 669; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 85. 58 Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 55, 58–598, VIII, 291, 621; López, ‘El monasterio de Santa Inés de Calatayud’, 161–184; Martínez de Vega, ‘Los conventos clarianos en España’, 463; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 85. 59 Wadding, Annales Minorum I, 167–177, II, 419, IX, 301 & XIII, 418; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 294; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 86. After Clare’s canon- ization, the Lérida monastery was dedicated to her. 60 This monastery would have been founded offfijicially by 1244. Five years later, it had been completely put under the oversight of the Franciscan provincial minister of the Castilia province. Castro, ‘Los franciscanos en Cuéllar’, 115–121; Velasco, ‘El convento de Santa Clara, de Cuéllar’, 457–482; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas, 86. 61 Also established by 1244 or shortly thereafter. It was a transformation of an existing ‘beaterio’. Its transformation into a monastery exempt from episcopal control caused con- siderable friction with the local secular clergy. Sarasola, El siglo XIII en Valladolid. Origen del convento de Santa Clara; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas, 86; García Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 173–174; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 195f. the expansion of the order 93

Clara),62 possibly Jaén in the South,63 Vitória (),64 Tarragona (South of Barcelona),65 Toledo,66 and . The creation of the Valencia monastery of La Puridad became possible around 1250 after a donation to abbess Catalina of the Tarragona Damianites.67 Several years later, in 1256, the Tarragona Damianites were instrumental in the erection of a monas- tery at Palma the Majorca.68 Earlier, two other monasteries had been established, namely at Reinoso de Cerrato near Palencia, around 1250, and at Almazán (Soria), before 1253. The fijirst of these was apparently older, as it was transferred from a previous settlement at Torrelobatón (Valladolid).69

62 Vázquez, ‘Documentación pontifijicia medieval’, 413; Wadding,A nnales Minorum III, 189; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 414; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas, 86. The cre- ation was made possible thanks to the support of King Fernando III. 63 Apparently founded in 1246. This date is contested by various modern historians. Hence, Miura Andrades dates its foundation to 1271. It was rebuilt as the Santa Clara mon- astery in 1371, after its destruction by Muslim forces. In 1486, the monastery was refounded under Observant control. Torres & Murillo, Crónica de la provincia franciscana de Granada, 404–412; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 86; Miura Andrades, ‘Las fundaciones en Andalucia’, 708. 64 In 1247, it received a papal bull from Innocent IV, according to which it was by then a Damianite house. The house was later dedicated to Santa Clara. Ruiz de Loizaga, ‘Santa Clara, de Vitoria, en la documentación pontifijicia más antigua’, 157–162; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 87. 65 Founded in 1248 and dedicated to Mary Magdalene. Although the monastic com- pound was only fijinished by the 1260s, the house became instrumental in the creation of two other houses soon after its own creation, namely the Puríssima Concepción monastery in Valencia (1249/50) and the Damianite/Clarissan house in Palma de Majorca (1256). The Taragona monastery was thoroughly renovated in 1326 and reformed along Observant lines in 1494. Wadding, Annales Minorum II, 419, IV, 315 & VII, 443; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 326; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 87. 66 The Santa María y San Damián monastery was established by a group of pious women between 1245 and 1250 outside the town walls of Toledo with permission of Innocent IV (initally given around 1245) and Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. The latter kept signifijicant authority over the election and removal of abbesses. In or shortly after 1370, the monastery was transferred into town with the support of doña María Meléndez and dedicated to Santa Clara. By 1376, it was placed under royal protection, after which it became known as Santa Clara la Real de Toledo. Castro, ‘El convento de Santa Clara, de Toledo, según documentos de los siglos XIV y XV’, 495–628; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 87; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 376fff; Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla la Nueva’, 457–458; Perez de Tudela y Buesco, ‘El con- vento del monasterio de Santa Clara la Real de Toledo (1247–1993)’, 485–494. 67 The Valencia monastery was initially dedicated to Santa Isabella (of Hungary). By 1402 it appears in the sources as Santa Clara. In 1534 it joined the network of the Purísima Concepcion. Ivars, ‘Año de fundación y diferentes advocaciones que ha tenido el monaste- rio de la Puridad o Purísima Concepción, de Valencia’, 435–464; Castro, ‘Monasterios his- pánicos de clarisas’, 87. 68 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 611. 69 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 337, 652; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clari- sas’, 87–88. 94 chapter three

The Almazán foundation may also have been established by one of Clare’s disciples. Yet reliable information on its early history is scarce.70 In all, about 20 to 23 Damianite houses had come into being in Spain before the death of Clare in 1253 (depending on which sources one believes). This shows that the Damianite order, from its fijirst installment in the Spanish realms by c. 1228 was quickly inserting itself as a viable form of enclosed female religious life alongside already existing (predominantly Benedictine and Cistercian) forms of female monasticism. This tendency was confijirmed, albeit at a somewhat slower rate, throughout the second half of the thirteenth century, when an additional 27 Damianite (and later Clarissan) settlements were realized, some of which with explicit support of the Salamanca monastery.71 As stated earlier, various early foundations of Damianites/Poor Clares emerged near towns along the pilgrim routes towards Santiago de Compostella, and more in general within the regions of the Duero valley. Moreover, we fijind early concentrations further to the North, along the Eastern coast (Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia), and to the South in the Guadalquivir area, close to regions still under Islamic control.72 With the exception of the Salamanca monastery,73 most if not all early Damianite

70 Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 364, XV, 337, 719–721 & XXI, 116; Martínez Muñoz, ‘El monasterio de Santa Clara, de Almazán, siete siglos de historia’, 137–151; Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 88. 71 For details see Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas, 88–94; Omaechevarría, Las clarisas a través de los siglos, 67–69, 83–85; Soriano Triguero, ‘La reforma de las Clarisss en la Corona de Aragón’, 188–189. Houses created according to these studies are for instance Palma de Majorca (Santa Clara, 1256), Mayorga de Campos (Valladolid, Santa Clara, 1258), Astorga (León, Santa Clara, 1258), Toro (Zamora, Santa Clara, 1258), Alcocer (Guadalajara, Santa Clara, founded between 1252 and 1260 by Doña María de Guillén), Castellón de Ampurias (Gerona, Santa Clara, 1260), (La Coruña, Santa Clara, c. 1260 or slightly later), Tudela (Navarra, Santa Clara, 1261), Córdoba (Santa Clara, 1265), Murcia (Santa Clara, between 1266 and 1284), Tortosa (Tarragona, Santa Clara, c. 1267), Pontevreda (Santa Clara, before 1271), Benavente (Zamora, Santa Clara, 1271), Santander (Santa Clara, ca. 1280), (San Antonio el Real, c. 1281), Allariz (Orenze, Santa Clara, 1282), (Santa Clara, before 1285), Ciudadela (Menorca, Santa Clara, 1285), Soria (Santa Clara, 1286), Oviedo (Santa Clara, before 1287), Rapariegos (Segovia, Santa Clara, 1287), Estella (Navarra, Santa Clara, before 1289), Antequera (Málaga, Santa Clara, before 1290), Ubeda (Jaén, Santa Clara, c. 1290), Sevilla (Santa Clara, c. 1293, or possibly as early as 1260), Orduña (Vizcaya, Santa Clara, 1296), Montblanch (Tarragona, Nuestra Señora de la Sierra (1298). Scholars still discuss the actual founding date of some of these houses. For the possible involvement of the Salamanca monastery in some of these foundations (Astorga, Mayorga de Campos, Toro and Santiago de Compostela), see Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 166–169. 72 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarissas en Castilla’, 617. 73 The Salamanca house was from the outset situated ‘inter Sanctum Romanum, Sanctum Thomam et Sanctum Christoforum, infra muros civitatis Salamantinensis…’ Vazquez, ‘Documentación pontifijicia medieval’, 389. the expansion of the order 95 houses had been founded outside the town walls, on or near the locations where many of them had started as unregulated beaterios, much along the lines of the early Damianite settlements in Italy and the French speak- ing areas.74 At least until the 1260s, most Spanish Damianite monasteries came into being because of the interplay between local devotional initiatives by reli- gious women, considerable cooperation by local Franciscans (in part, it seems, going against offfijicial order policies),75 and the keenness of the papacy to impose the Damianite model, which assured adherence to a ‘proper’ rule and a rather strict form of enclosure in formerly unregulated beaterios.76 As we have seen, the existing hagiographical and local histori- cal traditions frequently claim that disciples or even companions of Clare of Assisi were involved, yet this cannot be corroborated. The most that can be stated with any degree of certainty is that, in some cases, female pil- grims who had visited Italy came home inspired by the early Damianite houses or more loosely-organized communities of sorores minores, and tried to implement a comparable way of life at home.77 In the course of the 1260s and after, many of the, now Clarissan, monas- teries adopted the Urbanist rule – more or less around the same time that it became increasingly normal for Clarissan houses to obtain powerful noble and even royal patrons, changing both the socio-economic position of these houses, and their recruitment practices. This is in part the result of a systematic papal policy to engage territorial rulers, and ask them to take new Damianite/Clarissan houses under their wing and guaran- tee their endowment. The roots of this policy can be traced back to the 1240s. Hence, in July 1240, Pope Gregory IX granted Queen Violante of Hungary (wife of James I of Aragon) the privilege to visit the Barcelona Poor Clare monastery three times a year with her daughters,

74 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarissas en Castilla’, 618. 75 Garcia Oro, ‘Orígenes, de las Clarisas’, 177. Franciscan friars were, from very early on, sincerely involved with the religious and socio-economic development of the houses in Salamanca, Zamora, and Barcelona. Many of these initiatives were started when Elias of Cortona was minister general of the Franciscan order. The friars would become more reti- cent after Elias had been deposed. 76 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarissas en Castilla’, 643f.; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 78–835. 77 ‘…se puede suponer que las dichas discípulas de santa Clara son beatas españolas que quizá van en peregrinación a Roma y a Asís, y allí visitan a sor Clara, de quien aprenden el nuevo modo de vida religiosa contemplativa. Parece que por esos años hubo un mov- imiento intenso de peregrinaciones de este tipo entre España e Italia.’ Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas, 80–81. See also Omaechevarría, Las clarisas a través de los siglos, 53. 96 chapter three thus strengthening the link between the monastic house and the ruling dynasty. Still in the 1240s, Innocent IV beseeched the Castilian King Fernando II and his wife to take the Damianite monastery of Burgos under their wing. In return, they received papal authorization to enter the monastic compound on devotional grounds.78 Likewise, in 1257 Pope Alexander IV called upon doña Violante of Aragon to protect the Dami- anites of Salamanca against secular interference and secure their religious patrimony. She was also given the privilege to enter the monastic com- pound causa devotionis in the company of fijive or six ladies of her court two or three times a year.79 As has been pointed out by Gregoria Cavero Dominguez, such papal invitations to extend royal protection, which frequently went hand in hand with the bestowal of encompassing packages of privileges and exemptions, made it more and more common for monarchs within the Kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Leon to become important patrons of the Clarissan monasteries within their realm.80 This can for instance be charted under the rule of Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252–1284), and even more so under Sancho IV (r. 1284–1295). The latter was himself involved with royal patronage of at least fijive Clarissan houses: Valladolid (from 1285 onwards), Benavente (from 1286 onwards), Carrión (also from 1286 onwards), Oviedo (from 1287 onwards), and . Moreover, he con- ferred privileges and substantial donations on various other monasteries in his realm. Following the lead of their lieges, the Spanish also began to patronize Clarissan settlements on a large scale, not in the least to obtain prestigious burial places for their family members, and to fijind ways to settle their widows and unmarried daughters. In this way, the cre- ation and upkeep of new houses became less spontaneous and much more dependent upon high noble and royal initiatives.81

78 Castro, ‘Fundación del convento de Santa Clara de Burgos’, 157. 79 Terrero, Datos para la historia del Real Convento, no. 36. Violante of Aragon, daughter of Violante of Hungary, had also been instrumental in the creation of the Clarissan house of Allariz, transplanting Clarissan nuns from Santa Clara de Zamora. With regard to the relations between the Aragon royal dynasty and the Barcelona monastery, see also García Oro, ‘Orígenes de las Clarisas en España’, 173, note 38. 80 Cavero Dominguez, ‘Monarquia y nobleza: su contribución a las fundaciones de Clarisas en Castilla y Leon (siglos XIII-XV)’, 257–279. 81 García Oro, ‘Orígenes de las clarisas en España’, 163–182; Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarissas’, 618; Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 20–21. the expansion of the order 97

This tendency was strengthened in the fourteenth century.82 A few exceptions such as the Orduña and Castrogeriz monasteries notwith- standing,83 the majority of the approximately 25 additional Clarissan houses that came into being in Spain in the course of the fourteenth cen- tury were high noble or royal establishments.84 A few examples will suf- fijice, namely the Clarissan foundations of Guadalajara, Játiva, Santa Maria de Pedralbas, Astudillo, and Tordesillas. The foundation process of the Urbanist Guadalajara monastery, which meant the transformation of an existing beaterio, had started in the 1270s, but was only completed between 1300 and 1312. The fijinal push towards the creation of a proper monastery was mainly due to the initiatives of a lady from the Castilian court, María Fernández Coronel, and by the Infante Isabel. This secured a relationship of lasting patronage with the Castilian royal court. The foundation received canonical approbation by the bishop of Porto and Santa Rufijina, who was a noted patron of the local Friars Minor. He made sure that the monastery was properly embedded within

82 The Astorga monastery, erected in the thirteenth century, found from 1328 onwards a high noble benefactor in the count of Trastámara, Alvar Núñez Osorio. Cavero Dominguez, ‘Alvar Núñez Osorio dotador del monasterio de Santa Clara’, 37–59. 83 The Orduña monastery (Basque region) started as an unregulated community of unmarried women, which became fully monasticized with the adoption of the Urbanist rule in 1296. Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 398, 646. The Santa Clara de Castrogeriz mon- astery, established by 1325/1326, and not around 1315, as can be read in the chronicles of Gonzaga, Wadding and Matías Alonso, came into being thanks to initiatives by the citizens of the town. This, at least, is what comes to the fore in the letter from 14 June 1325 that Arnaldo, cardinal-protector of the orders of Friars Minor and the Poor Clares, wrote to the Franciscan provincial minister of the Castilia province concerning the erection of the monastery, the possibilities of securing its endowment, and the necessary permission from the bishop of Burgos. Omaechevarría, ‘Orígenes del monasterio de Santa Clara de Castrogeriz (Burgos)’, 473–483; Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarissas en Castilla’, 619. 84 Castro, ‘Monasterios hispánicos de clarisas’, 94fff. provides information on the erec- tion of Castro Urdiales (Santander, Santa Clara, before 1306), Guadalajara (Santa Clara, 1307), Villafranca del Panadés (Barcelona, Santa Clara, 1308), Medina de Pomar (Burgos, La Santa Cruz, 1318), Gerona (Santa Clara, 1319), Manresa (Barcelona, Santa Clara, 1322), Barcelona (La Asunción de Pedralbes, 1326), (Burgos, Santa Clara, 1326), Játiva (Valencia, Santa Clara, 1326), Moguer (Huelva, Santa Clara, 1338), Cervera (Lérida, Santa Clara, 1344), Villalobos (Zamora, La Asunción, 1348), Balaguer (Lérida, Santo Cristo, 1347), Astudillo (Palencia, Santa Clara, 1354), Belorado (Burgos, Nuestra Señora de Bretona (1358), Puigcerdá (Gerona, Santa Clara, c. 1360), Tordesillas (Valladolid, Santa María la Real, 1363), Ribadeo (Lugo, Santa Clara, before 1366), Teruel (Santa Clara, 1366), Tárrega (Lérida, Santa Clara, before 1369), Palencia (Santa Clara, 1373), Sevilla (Santa Inés, 1374/75), Carmona (Sevilla, Santa Clara, 1376), Baeza (Jaén, Santa Catalina (1382), Vich (Barcelona, Santa Clara (1383), Castil de Lences (Burgos, La Asunción, 1385). Another fourteenth-century founda- tion was probably Santa Clara de Pontevedra (1362). Cuadrado, ‘La iglesia de Santa Clara: estudio artístico’, 201–230. 98 chapter three

Franciscan provincial structures, and oversaw the endowment of the house. The fijirst abbess of the Urbanist monastery was María Fernández’s own daughter, who prior to her appointment had been living with the Poor Clares at Toro.85 The construction of the important Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Játiva (Xativa) was made possible thanks to a testamentary bequest from 1325 by doña Saurina of Entenza, and the additional royal support of the elderly James II of Aragon, who took the house under his protection. The offfijicial foundation of the monastery apparently took place with a papal bull from Pope John XXII in 1326. Its construction was more or less com- pleted by 1336. In the meantime, a conflict arose about which Clarissan community should instruct the nuns of the new house at Játiva in their religious obligations. The Franciscan provincial minister of Aragon wanted Poor Clares from the Santa Clara de Tortosa monastery to inform the new monastery, whereas the (new) king, Pedro IV, preferred the women of Santa Isabel de Valencia. It caused a conflict that split the community, with two diffferent abbesses, until Pope Benedict XII decided in favor of the abbess from Valencia. The women from Tortosa had to leave within twenty days. Once the conflict had been resolved, King Pedro IV again placed the monastery and its inhabitants under royal protection, securing its patronage relations both with the ruling dynasty, and with dependent vassals.86 Nearly contemporaneous with the fijirst steps to found the Játiva monas- tery were the initiatives of Queen Elisenda of Montcada (last wife of James II of Aragon), to create a house at Pedralbes, on the outskirts of Barcelona. It received papal permission by 1326. The founding documents describe a house for approximately 60 cloistered nuns, and a team of twelve mendi- cant and secular priests to ensure the cura monialium.87 It is quite interest- ing that Pope John XXII gave Queen Elisenda explicit permission to draw up additional statutes for the community with regard to the daily life of the nuns and their fasting and prayer practices, as long as these did not

85 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 225–226 (an. 1312, no. 13); Bullarium Franciscanum V, 88–89; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 594; Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarissas en Castilla la Nueva’, 458; Castillo Redondo, ‘El convento de clarisas de la Piedad en Guadalajara’, 59–78. 86 Sendra, ‘Origen, fundadoras y vicisitudes del Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Játiva’, 252–263; Idem, ‘Testamento de la muy noble doña Saurina de Entenza’, 250–261. On the rule of a later abbess of the community and her own conflicts with the same Pedro IV, see: Idem, ‘Sor Cilia o Cecilia de Peralta, abadesa del monasterio de Santa Clara de Játiva (1370–1382)’, 252–263. 87 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 69–70 (a. 1326, no. 14). the expansion of the order 99 contradict the Urbanist rule. It shows to what extent Clarissan life could be organized according to wishes of powerful patrons.88 The foundation of new Clarissan houses was brought to a temporary halt in the late 1340s, especially during and after the outbreak of the Plague.89 Yet already during the early 1350s, additional new foundations appeared. Possibly the fijirst of these ‘post- Plague’ settlements was the Astudillo monastery (1354), established by doña María of Padilla (d. 1361), the new mistress of King Pedro I ‘el Cruel’ (who had left for her his wife Queen Bianca/Blanche). Backed by the king, María of Padilla was able to appoint an abbess of her own choosing (Juana Fernandez Fenistrosa/ Hinestrosa). She also maintained control over the acceptance of nuns into the monastery, monopolized its patronage rights, and regulated its eco- nomic underpinnings in great detail. As a result, the Astudillo monastery became very closely identifijied with the reigning Castilian dynasty.90 This also held true for the famous royal Clarissan monastery of Tordesillas. This foundation was made possible in 1362/3 thanks to the tes- tamentary bequests of Pedro ‘el Cruel’, on behalf of himself and Maria of Padilla. Partly motivated by a lack of building crews to construct a com- pletely new monastic compound, the king handed over the that had been built by his father at Tordesillas to commemorate the military Reconquista victory at Río Salado (1340). Pedro’s daughter Beatriz faith- fully executed her father’s wishes, as can be gathered from the donation documents issued by her on behalf of the new monastery. These show, among other things, that the new Clarissan foundation was given sufffiji- cient patrimony and economic and fijiscal rights on the Tordesillas village and the surrounding countryside to guarantee the upkeep of a community of thirty nuns from the upper echelons of the realm’s nobility (matching the number of nuns in Maria of Padilla’s Astudillo monastery).91

88 Castellano i Tresserra, ‘Las clarisas en la Barcelona del siglo XIV. El ejemplo del Monasterio de Santa Maria de Pedralbes’, 969–981. After the death of her husband, Elisenda entered the Pedralbes monastery as a nun. 89 Hence, the onset of the Plague hampered the erection of a new house at Villalobos (Zamora). Original effforts, supported by doña Inés of la Cerda go back to 1346, but the events in the years thereafter put a halt to the construction activities. On 22 January 1349, the bishop of Leon granted an indulgence of 40 days to properly confessed believers who contributed their manpower to the building work, as the construction crew had dwindled due to the high mortality rate. For more information, see Vaca Lorenzo, Documentación medieval del monasterio de Santa Clara de Villalobos, passim. 90 García Toraño, El rey don Pedro el Cruel y su mundo, 519–522; Orejón y Calvo, Historia de Astudillo y del convento de Santa Clara, 200. 91 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 119 (a. 1354, n. 12) & 218 (a. 1365, n. 19); Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 280, 285, 579, 580, 582; VII, 222–224, 264–265, 367, 596, 686; Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las carisas en Castilla’, 630. 100 chapter three

Houses such as Santa Clara de Astudillo and Tordesillas had much to lose when dynastic fates changed in the aftermath of the Castilian civil war (1366–1369), which brought the new Trastámara dynasty into power. The war itself, and notably the damage inflicted by French military com- panies fijighting for the victorious Enrique of Trastámara (Henry II of Castile), had forced a number of Clarissan houses to relocate from the countryside intra muros (contemporaneous with comparable develop- ments in France).92 The monasteries at Astudillo and Tordesillas also lost considerable properties. More importantly, they were associated with the power structure of the previous regime. Fortunately for them, after initial hesitation, the new dynasty was keen to strengthen its legitimacy by forg- ing its own ties of patronage with these monasteries: in part to make peace with important noble families and to further alliances with which to secure its rule.93 This willingness to invest in the religious patronage of substantial Clarissan houses is visible not only in the case of the monaster- ies of Astudillo and Tordesillas, but also with regard to the royal and noble involvement with other Clarissan settlements, such as Alcocer (trans- ferred into town by 1373 with royal support),94 Santa Clara de Valladolid (re-endowed in 1370 by Queen Juana Manuel),95 Santa Clara de Reinoso (transferred into Palencia),96 Santa Inés de Sevilla (created in 1374),97 and Aguilar de Campóo.98 In all, there were approximately 75 Clarissan houses in the Spanish territories by 1406, the year the Santa Clara monastery at Villafrechós

92 Hence, after sufffering heavy damage, the Burgos Poor Clares transferred into town. Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla’, 621. 93 The new dynasty allowed the family of María de Padilla, the famous lover of ‘el Rey Cruel’ to retain control over the Astudillo monastery. At least until the mid-fijifeenth cen- tury, abbesses and other leading offfijicials of the monastery were chosen from that family or those closely aligned to it. Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas en Castilla’, 622–623. 94 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarissas’, 620–621. 95 Agapito y Revilla, ‘Documentos reales del monasterio de Santa Clara de Valladolid’, 151. 96 In 1373, Pope Gregory XI authorized the transfer of the Santa Clara de Reinoso mon- astery into the town of Palencia, as the Reinoso area and its monastery had been destroyed by warfare. The transfer of the monastery, made possible thanks to support by the Castilian admiral Alfonso Enríques, was heavily contested by the bishop and the cathedral chapter of Palencia, who feared an infringement of their ecclesiastical rights. King Enrique II had to intervene to force a compromise solution. Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla’, 621–622, 627; Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 337, 652–653. 97 Created in 1374 with the support of doña María Coronel, widow of Juan de la Cerda. Miúra Andrades, ‘Las fundaciones de clarisas en Andalucía’, 711. See also the remarks of Miúra Andrades concerning the thirteenth-century foundation of Santa Clara de Sevilla. 98 Andres, ‘Breve fundacional del convento de Santa Clara de Aguilar de Campóo’, 535–539. the expansion of the order 101

(Valladolid) was created.99 In subsequent decades, this number continued to grow, both through ongoing investments by royal and high noble fami- lies, and more particularly under the impact of a variety of Observant reforms. To these houses in the Spanish kingdoms an additional nine houses created between the late 1250s and c. 1400 in Portugal should be added. The foundation of these houses followed the installment of the Franciscan friars (who established themselves in at least ten hermitages and friaries between 1217 and the later 1250s), and the support for the cult of Clare of Assisi after 1255 by the bishop of Coimbra (Egas Fafes of Lanhoso) and the Portuguese royal family.100 The oldest of these settlements was the Damianite monastery at Lamego (1258/9). It had a prior history as an anchorage or reclusory, which by 1258 received offfijicial approval and a fijirst series of privileges from Pope Alexander IV. These privileges notwithstanding, the monastery was not well situated. Hence, it was deserted rather quickly and re-established at Santarem (some 75 kilometers to the North of Lisbon), with the help of the Portuguese king, Alfonso III. The Portuguese royal family continued to support the Santarem monastery in the following decades.101 Almost contemporaneous with this foundation was the start of the Entre-ambos-os-Rios or Entre-os-Rios monastery (to the Northeast of Porto and Braga), which eventually transferred to Porto after 1416 or 1427.102 The Entre-ambos-os Rios monastery owed its existence to the

99 The beginnings of this foundation are known through a papal letter by Benedict XIII, which permitted the Poor Clare Urraca of Guzmán to create a new monastery at Villafrechós. Wadding, Annales Minorum IX, 431; Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 372 & Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 603–604; Ruiz de Larrinaga, ‘Primer ensayo de reforma franciscana en España’, 329–333; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 684; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 101. 100 Lopes, ‘O culto de Santa Clara em Portugal’, 356–364. For surveys of the Clarissan expansion in Portugal, see: Montes Moreira, ‘Breve historia das clarisas em Portugal’, 211–232; Carvalho Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional dos conventos de Clarissas no Portugal medievo’, 79–101; Idem, ‘As Clarissas em Portugal – Dimensões regionais de uma corrente de espiritualidade europeia (sécs. XIII-XIV)’, 109–127. 101 Both the short-lived Lamego compound and the new monastery at Santarem were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Later, to this was added a dedication to Saint Clare. Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 113, 130–135, 187; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 604–605, 660; Montes Moreira, ‘Breve Historia’, 211–213; Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 83, 85–88; Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 174–175. 102 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 582; Montes Moreira, ‘Breve historia’, 213– 214; Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 88–90. The fijirst steps towards the trans- fer to Porto were made in 1405, when the Franciscan visitator of the monastery (João of Xira) asked the queen of Portugal for help to relocate the women, as they were no longer secure. 102 chapter three initiatives of doña Châmoa Gomes and her husband Rodrigo Frojaz, who by 1256 had written to the pope for permission to use their family posses- sions to establish a monastic house. In the same year, the pope asked both the Zamora and the Salamanca Poor Clares to provide a number of women to put the new house on a proper religious footing.103 Two additional houses were created in Portugal by the late 1280s, namely the Santa Clara monastery in Lisbon, and the Santa Clara e Santa Isabel monastery in Coimbra. The fijirst of these came into being at the initiative of the Asturian noblewoman Inês Fernandes, widow of the Genovese merchant Vivaldo Pandulfo. Collaborating with various other women of commercial means, she obtained permission from Pope Nicholas IV in 1288 to erect a Clarissan monastery. The fijirst nuns were clothed and enclosed in the new compound by 1292, in the presence of the Franciscan provincial minister and other ecclesiastical witnesses.104 The Santa Clara-a-Velha monastery of Coimbra (Beira Litoral) had a more complex foundation history. The beginnings of this house date back to the initiatives of doña Mor Dias. This noble lady was a member of the ‘Mosteiro das Donas de S. João’, a female community aligned with the Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz. Mor Dias had not taken full reli- gious vows. Nevertheless, as soon as she tried to use her own possessions and properties to establish a Clarissan monastery on the left bank of the Mondego river near Coimbra in 1283, and succeeded in having the fijirst stones of the church being placed in honor of Santa Clara e Santa Isabel (of Hungary), the Augustinian canons of Santa Cruz intervened. They argued that the possessions of Mor Dias by right fell under their jurisdic- tion as she was a member of the ‘Donas de S. João’, which meant she could not dispose of her patrimony at will. The ensuing legal dispute lasted a long time and was not resolved until long after Mor Dias’s death in 1302. The conflict delayed the building process. Eventually, the Portuguese Queen Isabel (of Aragon) intervened. She pleaded on behalf of the Clarissan house in 1314 with Pope Clement V, and again in 1316 and 1317 with his successor, John XXII. For this reason, Isabel can be seen as the second founder of the monastery, and she certainly saw the community as her own creation. The monastery and the church were offfijicially conse- crated by Bishop Raimundo of Coimbra, and new nuns were brought in

103 Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 85, 88–90. 104 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 370 & XV, 472; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 607; Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 93–94; Montes Moreira, ‘Breve historia’, 216. the expansion of the order 103 from Zamora shortly thereafter. Nearby, the queen built a castle for herself and the other members of the royal family. After the death of her husband (King Dinis of Portugal) in 1325, Isabel retreated to the Coimbra monas- tery, taking the tertiary habit.105 Not unlike Elisenda, who had obtained permission from the pope to draw up her own regulations for the Santa Maria de Pedralbes monastery near Barcelona, Isabel of Aragon, the queen-widow of Portugal added a codicil to her testament on 12 March 1328 that amounted to a series of norms and prescriptions concerning the religious life in ‘her’ Urbanist monastery. During her lifetime, she also interviewed prospective novices, to decide upon their suitability for the religious life. With the permission of Pope John XXII, Isabel had already founded a hospital dedicated to Elisabeth of Hungary in 1327. This so-called Hospital de Santa Isabel served the poor and indigent of the town, and was situated not very far from the royal palace. The hospital stood under the jurisdic- tion and the supervision of the abbess of the Coimbra monastery, and had a statute drawn up by the elderly queen-widow herself. Two serving nuns from the monastery permanently worked in the hospital.106 Around the same time that Isabel of Aragon intervened with Pope Clement V on behalf of the Coimbra Poor Clares, another Poor Clare mon- astery was created at Vila do Conde (Duro Litoral, 1314–1318). This house was started at the initiative of Alfonso Sanches (natural son of King Dinis and his mistress Aldonça Rodrigues of Telha), together with his wife Teresa Martins Telo (daughter of the count of Barcelos). From the outset, this Urbanist house, built on lands owned by Teresa Martins, was meant to cultivate the liturgical commemoration of the founders and King Dinis, for which purpose it received a substantial patrimony and specifijic consti- tutions from the founding couple.107 Two additional houses were erected in the 1340s, namely the Beja mon- astery, some 60 kilometers to the South of Évora (c. 1345),108 and the Santa Clara de Guarda monastery (West of the Spanish town of Ciudad Rodrigo,

105 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 343 (a. 1317, n. 66); Montes Moreira, ‘Breve historia das clarissas em Portugal’, 214–215; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 574; Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 90–93; Vairo, ‘Isabella d’Aragona, Rainha Santa de Portugal e il monasterio di Santa Clara e Santa Isabel di Coimbra’, 147–193. 106 Bullarium Franciscanum V, 332 (no. 683). 107 Filomeno Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 94–95. See also Cartulário do Mosteiro de Santa Clara de Vila do Conde, ed. Silva Tarouca; Costa, ‘Sobre o ‘livro dos pergaminhos’ ou o ‘cartulário’ do mosteiro de Santa Clara de Vila do Conde’, 161–178. 108 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 554; Ponces Canelas, História dos Conventos de Beja; Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional dos conventos de clarissas’, 96. 104 chapter three c. 1344).109 Historical knowledge concerning the early history of Beja remains scarce. We know only that Pope Clement VI issued several papal bulls and letters on its behalf in 1345 and 1346.110 The Santa Clara de Guarda monastery had begun as a tertiary community of some kind (mantelatas), which was regularized and enclosed as a Clarissan monastery by 1346. At least, that is what can be drawn from the papal bull Exposuerunt nobis issued by Clement VI. The new Clarissan monastery was situated outside the city gates. This proved to be fatal in 1372, when the house was destroyed during the wars between Fernando I of Portugal and Henry II of Castile (Enrique Trastámara). New monastic buildings were erected inside the town walls by 1382.111 Just when Santa Clara de Guarda extra muros was destroyed, the pious ladies Elvira Eanes and Maria Fernandes began initiatives for the creation of another Clarissan monastery at Portalegre, still in the Guarda diocese but some 120 kilometers further to the South. Both Elvira and Maria opted for the Clarissan life and started a lobby among the nobility and the Portuguese royal family. In response, King Fernando I pledged his support. Economic and military difffijiculties required renewed pledges in and after 1377 by King Fernando I, Queen Leonor Teles, and subsequently by the new king, João I, before building activities actually began by the later 1380s.112 The fijirst attempts at creating a Clarissan monastery at Amarante (about 40 kilometers to the Northeast of Porto) can also be traced to around that time. That foundation was only secured, canonically and materially, by the 1440s.113

France

Let us now shift our attention to the territory encompassing the medieval Franciscan order provinces of Aquitaine, Provence, Burgundy, Touraine and Francia (roughly present-day France minus the Alsace region and French Flanders). The number of in-depth regional studies is in part more dated than for Italy and Spain. Nevertheless, there are sufffijicient secondary

109 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 595. 110 Esperança, História Seráfijica da Ordem dos Frades Menores II, 340–341. 111 Andrade, ‘O processo fundacional’, 97–98. 112 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 649. Wadding assumed that this community was founded as late as 1425. Wadding, Annales Minorum IX, 68; Andrade, ‘O processo fun- dacional’, 97. 113 See for this house the remarks and archival references in Andrade, ‘O processo fun- dacional’, 83f. the expansion of the order 105 sources to arrive at a more-or-less complete overview for the period until around 1400. We should keep in mind that in some cases our knowledge about foundations remains sketchy, and sometimes might entail assump- tions rather than verifijiable historical facts.114 The fijirst house of Damianites outside Italy might have been established at Reims (in the Franciscan Francia province). Legend holds that the arch- bishop of Reims, Albéric of Humbert, met Francis of Assisi at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and then and there asked for some women from San Damiano to be sent to his diocese. Although this request could not be fulfijilled, Clare of Assisi supposedly appointed Maria of Braye (a Damianite nun originating from Genoa) as the leader of a small expedition to Reims in 1219. The women and their retinue would have been received there in 1220 by Albéric’s successor, Guillaume of Joinville. Like other legendary accounts of early Damianite foundations, this story tries to connect the creation of early houses far away with the agency of Francis and Clare. In actual fact, the Damianite monastery of Reims seems to date from the 1230s. Its church, dedicated to the recently canonized Saint Elisabeth, was consecrated in 1237. The community grew to a number of 40 nuns by the 1250s. This number was considered as a maximum by order of Pope Alexander IV in 1255.115 Another early Damianite monastery was apparently established near Avignon. Building on early modern scholarly traditions, scholars have suggested that a fijirst community under a certain Antoinette-Marie was in place by 1230 or shortly thereafter, and that a monastic building capable of housing between 20 and 30 women had been constructed by 1239. Whatever the validity of such statements, the house does appear in papal documents from the 1240s onwards. It adopted the Urbanist rule shortly after 1263, and by the late 1270s it apparently ran a small school for girls, who lived as lay boarders within the monastic compound (sources

114 Aside from Moorman’s survey of Poor Clare monasteries, I have relied predomi- nantly on Sérent, ‘L’ordre de Ste-Claire en France pendant sept siècles’, 133–165; Sérent, ‘Le Clarisse in Francia’, 379–403; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation des monastères de clarisses en Aquitaine, au XIIIe s.’, 5–52; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’établissement des clarisses de la première règle dans le midi de la France’, 353–373; Paris (Bocquet), ‘Les monastères de cla- risses fondés au XIVe s. dans le sud-ouest de la France’, 1–34, 129–140; Cantin, Les monastères des Clarisses en Aquitaine (XIII-XVième siècles); Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité des premières Clarisses méridionales’, 261–280; Auberger, ‘Panorama de la présence fran- ciscaine et clarisse en Languedoc-Roussillon’, 75–106. 115 The monastery continued to flourish therafter, although a fijire in 1413 destroyed the community archives. Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 133; Midoux, Le manuscrit des remarques des antiquitez du monastère de Sainte-Claire de Reims, passim. 106 chapter three mention in 1278 the young Sainte-Roseline of Villeneuve, a niece of the monastery’s abbess Gérarde of Sabran).116 At Bordeaux, local Damianites were already recommended to the pro- tection of King Henry III by Pope Gregory IX on 28 July 1239. Shortly after- wards, the archbishop of Bordeaux, Géraud of Malemort, gave the women license to have a proper monastery and a cemetery. The sources indicate that this house was situated outside the town walls. By 1252, the women had taken over the (fijirst) Franciscan friary, also situated outside the city. On 21 January of that year, Pope Innocent IV confijirmed the transfer, asking the archbishop of Auch to assist in the process. Documents show that, at fijirst, the women received their spiritual care from a local secular priest. The Friars Minor took over after June 1246.117 Between 1238 and 1240, Clare of Assisi allegedly sent other women to Béziers (Aude) with the support of King Louis IX of France. As was the case with Reims, this installment of Damianites at Béziers on Clare’s ini- tiative, shortly after the Franciscan friars had settled there (including Angelo Tancredo, one of Francis’s fijirst companions), cannot be confijirmed. However, it is evident that the monastery did exist by 1254. That year, King Louis IX visited the Poor Clares at Béziers on his return from the crusade. He heard Mass in their church and provided them with a perpetual rent, in return for which the nuns were to commemorate Louis’s mother, Blanche of Castile (who had died in 1252). This suggests that the Béziers house was in full working order by that time.118 It is also mentioned in an offfijicial letter issued by Raymond of Valhauquez, bishop of Béziers in October 1259. This letter is addressed to the abbess, Marie, and nuns of Sainte-Claire established in the outskirts of Béziers, just outside the town walls in the Faubourg S. Jean (on a piece of land in the parish of Saint- Aphrodise called the jardins cagarauliers or hortus cagaraulerium). The letter acquiesces to a request by the nuns to confijirm the monastery’s privi- leges and exemption from direct episcopal oversight.119 This implies that

116 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 550; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 33. 117 Like so many other Clarissan houses, the nuns were forced to move into town by 1343, due to deteriorating security conditions, The new monastery intra muros survived until the sixteenth century, when its alleged decadence caused its forced unifijication with the Annonciade monastery of Bordeaux. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 380 & VIII, 409; Delorme, ‘Documenta quaedam’, 45–48; Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 155; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 27–28. 118 Azaïs, ‘Notice sur les soeurs minorettes ou de sainte Claire de Béziers’, 191–226; Soucaille, ‘Couvent de femmes: les Religieuses de Sainte-Claire ou clarisses et Clairistes’, 319–320. See also the remarks in Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 260, 270fff. 119 Barthèz, ‘Le monastère des Clarisses de Béziers au Moyen Age’, 228; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 5–26 (which includes the letter in full). the expansion of the order 107 papal approval had already been given (otherwise the episcopal letter does not make sense), yet the oldest surviving papal bull confijirming this exempt status dates from 25 or 28 February 1260. It shows that the monas- tery was part of the Damianite network and followed the Ugolinian Forma Vitae in combination with the Benedictine rule at that time.120 The Urbanist rule was introduced there in 1264.121 In the 1240s, a Damianite settlement might have been created near Nîmes.122 However, dependable documentary evidence concerning this house does not provide any information prior to the 1320s (see also further below).123 Foundations that can be traced more securely to the 1240s are the Damianite houses near Narbonne, Toulouse, and Montpellier. Near Narbonne, a group of unregulated women had settled in the early 1240s at Saint-Crescent, near the road to Perpignan. On 11 June 1246, Pope Innocent IV wrote to the archbishop to facilitate the transfer of the community to a better location closer to town, and to take part in the start of the stone lay- ing of the monastery and the church. The offfijicial transfer was realized in 1248.124 The early Damianite settlement of Sainte-Marie de Toulouse, in turn, is particularly well documented in papal bulls. They refer to a community of sorores reclusae outside the city gates that was put under papal protection by June 1247. After a period of insecurity, during which the cura monialium by the Franciscans seemed in jeopardy due to the policies of the Franciscan provincial minister of Aquitaine (in agreement with the guidelines of Franciscan order leaders), the foundation was completely normalized as a Damianite monastery with proper spiritual care from Franciscan friars by

120 The papal bull is addressed at the abbess and the nuns of the monastery, who were supposed to live ‘secundum deum et beati benedicti regulam atque institutionem monia- lium inclusarum sancti Damiani assisiastis et formulam vitae vestram a foelicis recordatio- nis Gregorio papa praecessore nostro ordini vestro traditam.’ Cited from Auberger, ‘Panorama de la présence’, 79. 121 Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 150; Vinas, ‘Les premières religieuses du monastère Sainte-Claire de Béziers’, 225–231. The initial house outside the city gates was abandoned during the military campaigns of the black prince, but it was rebuilt and aug- mented afterwards. The community was reformed along Colettine lines by 1434. 122 Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 51. 123 In 1443, the monastery would adopt the Colettine reform. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 85, 465; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 357 & VI, 289; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 632. 124 Bullarium Franciscanum VIII, 239; Devy, Les fijils de saint François à Narbonne du XIIIe au XXe s., 58. The house was destroyed by the black prince during the Hundred Years War, transferred to a terrain in the Saint Sébastien parish by 1376, and disappeared completely in the later fijifteenth century: before 1482 the nuns had transferred to Millau. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 42. Cf. also Auberger, ‘Panorama de la présence’, 93. 108 chapter three

1254 (thanks to a papal bull from July of that year). By then, the building of the enclosure and the living quarters for the nuns had started, leading to the papal consecration of the monastic house on 14 May 1259. Building activities continued well into the 1260s.125 According to information in the testament of Thomas Vézian, the Montpellier Damianites were already present by August 1247. Historical traditions claiming that the house evolved from an existing female Benedictine monastery are incorrect. It was in fact a new foundation of ‘pauvres dames’, resulting from local female initiative and approved by papal bull on 15 June 1250 (Quoniam ut ait). Pope Innocent IV granted the inhabitants of the dioceses of Maguelonne, Nîmes, Béziers, Narbonne, Arles, and Uzès a relaxation of 40 days of fasting if they provided adequate support for the creation of the monastic buildings. The building process itself started after the community founders Marie of Uzèz and Guillelme Manent succeeded in exchanging the initial property on which the mon- astery was to be erected for a more suitable piece of land close to town. Final offfijicial confijirmation of the monastic foundation as a Damianite house arrived in 1254 or 1255.126 It proved to be cumbersome, however, to make the Friars Minor accept their responsibilities for the spiritual care of the nuns – an illustration of how issues connected to the general struggle surrounding the cura monia- lium could play out in individual cases. For nearly a decade, the friars repeatedly objected to their supposed obligations with regard to the Montpellier Damianites. By April of 1255, the pope had to allow the women to use the services of another chaplain from the diocese. In October of that year, he wrote to ask the Franciscan minister general, the responsible pro- vincial minister, and the Franciscan custodians and guardians on the sub provincial level to fulfijill their obligations, but this did not lead to a perma- nent solution. By February 1262, the Damianites from Montpellier (like their colleagues in Avignon) had to renew their request to be placed

125 The monastery extra muros was demolished in the mid-fourteenth century, to help reconstruct the city walls. The monastery itelf was rebuilt by 1355 intra muros in the Salin quarters, where it remained until the French Revolution. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’Origine et la fondation’, 18, 49–52; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines dans l’espace Languedocien de la fijin du XIe à la fijin du XIVe s.’, 317. 126 Auberger, ‘Le monastère Notre-Dame de Paradis ou Sainte-Claire de Montpellier’, 183–211; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 266. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 39–40 mentions in this context the papal bull Religiosam vitam of 8 April 1254, reconfijirmed by Pope Alexander IV in March 1255. the expansion of the order 109 under the spiritual care of the Friars Minor. And on 2 March 1262, the abbess and the community of Montpellier wrote directly to Bonaventura and the Franciscan general chapter to have the matter resolved. This fijinally happened with a formal compromise hammered out in the after- math of the creation of the rule of Urban IV in the 1260s (see Chapter Two). In the meantime, the monastery itself seems to have flourished, obtaining sufffijicient lands and rents to secure the nuns’ material wellbeing.127 Two other Damianite houses were possibly established in the South during the 1240s, namely at Brive and at Carcassone. More to the North, a Damianite settlement emerged around the same time near Provins (between Troyes and Paris). In all three cases information on the early years is scarce. The Brive monastery might have come into being outside the city walls in 1243 due to the initiatives of the viscounts of Turenne. Medieval archival documents concerning the community date from the 1270s and after.128 Local historians have dated the origin of the Carcassonne monastery, likewise situated outside the city walls (near the Porte des Carmes), to 1246. Yet again, the oldest document pertaining to this house (the papal bull Licet is) dates from May 1290. This bull promised an indul- gence to visitors to the monastic church and to those who donated to the community.129 The origins of the Provins monastery, in turn, have been traced by some to the early 1240s (or even earlier), but documentary evi- dence only survives for the later thirteenth century and after.130

127 Auberger, ‘Le monastère Notre-Dame de Paradis’, 194, 200fff. The house survived as a Damianite and later Clarissan house until July 1525, when it became a Benedictine monas- tery. This was plundered by Protestant forces later in the 16th century. By the time the Poor Clares of Notre Dame du Paradis opted for a Benedictine existence, there existed already for some time an Observant Clarissan house in town (Les Clarisses de la Petite Observance). Agathange de Paris suggests that the transformation into a Benedictine house was facili- tated by the fact that the community had continued to adhere to the Ugolinian Forma Vitae, which presupposed adherence to the basic tenets of the Benedictine rule. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’Origine et la fondation’, 38–42. 128 The house was destroyed by Protestant forces in the sixteenth century. It was subse- quently rebuilt within the city walls. Delorme, ‘les Cordeliers dans le Limousin aux XIIIe- XVe siècles’, 240–241; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 22. 129 The Carcassone monastery was destroyed by the black prince in 1355/1356. It was rebuilt within the town in the 1370s. After two outbrakes of the Plague, the remaining nuns received permission to join the Urbanist Poor Clares of Azille between 1474 and 1478. Bullarium Franciscanum IV, 173; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 22. 130 Church and convent buildings were renovated around 1382. Wadding, Annales Minorum II, 493; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 561–562 & VII, 238–239; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 650–651. 110 chapter three

By the 1250s, the pace of new foundations was quickening. No less than eleven new houses were started (or appeared for the fijirst time in the sources) during this decade. For a number of these monasteries, notably Metz (Lorraine, 1249/50?),131 Alès (1250 or 1254),132 Cardaillac (Aquitaine, 1255?),133 Auterive (1256?),134 and Falaise (Normandy, c. 1257),135 our knowledge of the early history is very limited. In other cases, we have more information. For example we have an early papal bull (Majori et communi- tati) for the Périgueux monastery, addressed by Pope Innocent IV on 20 June 1251 to the mayor and the commune of the town. It informs us that several pious women had approached the Holy See, and expressed their wish to erect a Damianite monastery. Pope Innocent enlisted the aid of the local bishop to normalize the situation, and asked the town of Périgueux to assist in its proper foundation. Six years later, due to a lack of coopera- tion from the bishop and the local Friars Minor, the nuns were still living in provisional quarters without a cemetery and a proper church. Matters were fijinally settled by the 1270s, in part thanks to a substantial donation from the canons of Saint Etienne and the patronage of the Tallayrand-Périgord family, which put the Périgueux Poor Clares on a secure footing.136

131 Initially known as S. Cosmas et S. Damiano. In 1258, the nuns transferred to a new home, known as Le Tomboy. Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 98, 110; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 646; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 616–617. 132 In 1429, the nuns apparently opted for the Benedictine rule. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 539; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines dans l’espace Languedocien’, 318. 133 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 566. 134 It would go back to a foundation in 1256 by the last counts of Toulouse, or by Eléonore, the niece of Alphonse of Poitiers. The fijirst house, builtext ra muros, was attacked and plundered by the black prince in 1355 (as several other monasteries in the Languedoc- Roussillon area). It was plundered a second time by Protestants in the sixteenth century. The house was re-established in the seventeenth century in the town’s castle and remained there until the French revolution. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 21. Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 300; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 596. 135 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 584. 136 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 97, 505; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 29–30; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 10–11, 42–47 (providing an explanation for the hesita- tions on the part of the bishop and the local friars to support the new foundation whole- heartedly); Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 644; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 266–267. The available documentation shows that older historiographical traditions, according to which the Périgueux monastery was erected as early as 1220 with direct involvement of Clare of Assisi, cannot be correct. the expansion of the order 111

There is substantial evidence concerning the creation of Damianite settlements before or in the 1250s near Cahors,137 Marseille,138 and Beyries,139 and even more so for the Damianite monasteries of Arles and Montauban. Apparently, the fijirst attempt around 1255 by Damianites from Narbonne to erect the Arles monastery failed. However, a few years later, the women obtained the former Franciscan friary at La Roquette, also near Arles. This house was put on secure canonical footing by 1262. Partly thanks to generous donations by Queen Sancia and King Robert of Naples, the monastery flourished during the fijirst half of the fourteenth century. By 1365, the nuns were resettled within the town itself, after the La Roquette monastery had been demolished for defensive purposes.140

137 Local historical traditions trace the foundation back to the 1230s, during the episco- pate of Guillaume of Cardaillac, or even to 1219. Those proposing this very early date con- nect the foundation of the Cahors monastery to the actions of Cristoforo of Romagna, a disciple of Francis of Assisi and the fijirst Franciscan custodian of Quercy. Agathange de Paris supposes that a foundation in the 1230s is possible, yet he also remarks that the fijirst offfijicial surviving document concerning the monastery is the bullC um universitati, which dates from 25 August 1254. By then, the monastery was already established and followed the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’Origine et la fondation’, 9–10, 29; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines dans l’espace Languedocien’, 318. 138 It would have been founded by Angela and Beatrice of Assisi in 1254, at the request of Benedicta, the second abbess of the San Damiano monastery near Assisi. It shows up in papal documents by 1256, when Alexander IV gave an indulgence for those who visited the fijinished church. It adopted the Urbanist rule in the 1260s, and benefijited from the patron- age of Charles II of Anjou and the count of Provence. The latter notwithstanding, the eco- nomic situation of the monastery remained rather insecure. It was transferred into town after 1359. Amargier & Bertrand, Les Clarisses à Marseille. 139 It was created as a ‘mazon de Diu (…) ha honor de Dieu e a servitud deus paubres’ between 1256 and the early 1260s by Gaston VII, viscount of Béarn and Marsan, and his wife Mathe of Bigorre. Gaston put his natural daughter Gilette in charge of the new foundation, which was given a large patrimony. All the source evidence indicates that the women were at fijirst involved in hospital work, possibly without a proper order afffijiliation. This probably changed around 1270 or shortly thereafter, when documents start to mention Franciscan friars acting as representants for the women in matters of donations and bequests. An epis- copal charter from 1275 calls the women nuns of the order of Poor Clares. The community apparently continued to be involved with hospital work in a more indirect manner. Hence, by the end of the thirteenth century, when the house came under attack due to the military exploits of the count of Armagnac in the Marsan region, the women fled to a hospital owned by them near Mont-de-Marsan, not far from the Clarissan house near the Mont-de- Marsan that had previously exploited the same hospital. For more information on the con- nection between the Beyries Poor Clares and Clarissan house at Mont-de-Marsan, see further below. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 23–25; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 266. 140 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 545–546; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 68. 112 chapter three

The Montauban community (circa 50 kilometers North of Toulouse), in its turn, was founded extra muros in 1258 at the initiative of the elderly pious widows Genser of Carbonnel and Peyronne of Jean, who used their personal wealth to start a religious house. Their wishes materialized thanks to another widow, Géraude of Conques, who donated half of her substantial belongings, and to additional donations from the lord of Montmurat and his wife (Raymond and Giraude of Puycelsi) and from Count Alphonse of Poitiers (brother of Saint Louis) and his wife Jeanne of Toulouse. By 1262, under the abbatiate of Hélictz of S. Céré (probably brought over from the Damianite house at Cahors), the community already received its spiritual care from the Friars Minor. The monastery survived on the outskirts of town until 1363, when it was moved into town for security reasons.141 Throughout the 1260s and 1270s, new Damianite/Clarissan houses continued to appear at a slow but steady rate: Aubenas, Condom, and pos- sibly Annonay can be traced back to the 1260s,142 and the rather well-doc- umented but still confusing cases of Perpignan and Mont-de-Marsan can be traced to the 1270s. The fijirst Poor Clare monastery at Perpignan near the old Porte d’Elne or the Porte Saint-Martin (depending on one’s reading of the sources) came into being prior to November 1271, when Pope Gregory X put the existing community under his protection (Justis penen- tium, 28 November 1271), and the women were apparently following the Ugolinian Forma Vitae. By 1272, the local Friars Minor had become involved. This can be inferred from their presence at the canonical elec- tion of the fijirst abbess, Ermengarde of Botonach, in March 1272. Like other religious houses, the Clarissan monastery profijited from an economic upswing after 1276. That year, Perpignan became an important residence

141 The house was destroyed by Protestant forces in 1582, to be rebuilt in the seven- teenth century. Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 317, 399, 627–628, 631; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 574; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, 846; Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 156; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 29–34; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 622–623; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 318; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 267. It has been argued that the creation of the Montauban mon- astery should be seen in the context of the re-integration of formerly condemned Waldensian groups. Dossat, ‘De Vaudès à saint François à Montauban’, 403–413. 142 Hence, Aubenas (Ardèche) dates back to 1262 and Condom was already functioning by 1269. The Poor Clare monastery at Annonay (Ardèche) might have been established several decades earlier, but the sources are not very clear. See on these monasteries Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 22, 25–27, Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 549, 560, 575 (who also mentions the creation of a monastery in or near Brienne-sur-Aisne around 1263); Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 265. the expansion of the order 113 for the royal dynasty of Majorca (between 1276 and 1344), and developed into a center of costly tapestry fabrication. Later, under Aragonese domi- nation (1344–1462), the economic strength of Perpignan continued, for instance profijiting from the creation of a university. These developments led to increasing urban donations towards the monastery, and facilitated further fijinancial support by the ruling dynasty.143 The other monastery that can be traced back to the 1270s, the house at Mont-de-Marsan, had been a ’ hospital (on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostella), run by a mixed community of male and female penitents. In the aftermath of the Council of Lyon (1274), the bishop of Aire, Pierre Pocq, dissolved the penitential community and founded in the neighborhood a monastery of Poor Clares. The hospital itself was handed over for indirect exploitation to the Poor Clares of Beyries, who by the late thirteenth century used it as a refuge when their Beyries settlement came under attack. Around 1311, the Mont-de-Marsan Poor Clares and Poor Clares from Beyries (apparently still residing at the hospital site near Mont-de-Marsan) were unifijied within the Mont-de-Marsan monastic compound under a new abbess (Raymonde of Lescure). This unifijication was eventually confijirmed by Pope John XXII. Throughout the medieval period, Poor Clares from Mont-de-Marsan seemingly continued to use buildings from the abandoned Beyries monastery, possibly for purposes of temporary religious retreat.144 The pace of new foundations accelerated signifijicantly during the last two decades of the thirteenth century. Within the 1280s alone, possibly eleven new Poor Clare monasteries came into being. We only have substantial documentation for the foundation years for few

143 Wadding, Annales Minorum X, 169; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 143 & VII, 279–280; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 391–392 & 454–455; Tolra de Bordas, L’Ordre de saint François d’Assise en Roussillon, 389–392, 396; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 47–49; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 645; Cortade, ‘Le Monastère royal Sainte- Claire-de-la-Passion de Perpignan’, 277–305; Ros, ‘Le couvent des Clarisses de Perpignan’, esp. 264–267; Péronnet, ‘Les Clarisses de Perpignan à l’époque moderne’, 292fff. According to Péronnet, the house might already have existed as an unregulated community in the 1250s. He assigns diffferent locations to the successive monastic houses than most other authors, basing himself on an unpublished master thesis from 1977 by Françoise Molins defended at the Université Montpellier III. 144 The monastery of Mont-de-Marsan itself was destroyed by Protestant forces in the sixteenth century, but rebuilt inside town in the 17th century, to survive until the French Revolution. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 23–25, 28f, 34–38; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 555–556; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 266. 114 chapter three of these, namely for the houses at Manosque145 and Sisteron.146 This cannot be said for many others, such as those at Carcassonne, which in actual fact might date from the 1240s (see above),147 Clermont-Ferrand (1280),148 Lézignan (Aude, circa 1280?),149 Montigny-lès-Vesoul (Haute- Saône, 1286),150 Montignac (Dordogne, 1286),151 and Colonges (Touraine, 1288).152 It is interesting, however, that there is evidence of English patronage (by King Edward I) for several houses from the 1280s onwards. These include Dax153 and Bayonne154 in Aquitaine, and Lectoure

145 First mentioned in June 1282 as a community extra muros to the south of the Saunerie gate. It was set up as a small community of 10 or 12 nuns. In 1358, the nuns had to flee for the troops of Arnaud de Servoles, and in 1368, they bought a town house and a from the secular priest Guillaume Castellani. For a while a number of nuns returned to their old monastery, yet in 1382 they defijinitively settled in town, until the demise of the house due to lack of funding in 1479 (royal patronage notwithstanding). Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 247 & VII, 614–620; Bullarium Francicanum V, 95 & VI, 119–120; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 611. 146 Established with help from Alasie of Mévolhon (lady of Curbans) and Charles of Salerno (son of King Charles of Naples). It was started with the abbess Gérarde of Sabran and twelve other nuns from Avignon. At fijirst, the monastery was situated outside town, at a rather precarious location close to the Durance river. Donations by Robert and Sancia of Naples made the abbess of the house a direct vassal of the French crown. Around 1381, the nuns moved into town. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 85; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 336, VII, 233; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 752 & II, 551–552; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 664. 147 The Carcassone monastery existed in any case by 1290, when Pope Nicholas IV prom- ised an indulgence to those who visited the monastery’s church on certain feast days. A papal bull from Gregory XI, dating from 22 October 1372, shows that the monastery had been completely destroyed by warfare (during the military campaigns of the black prince in 1355/1356), and that the nuns (no less than 80 if we can believe the papal document!) had thereafter sought refuge in a small house without proper enclosure. The monastery was rebuilt, yet the community sufffered from repeated visits of the Plague. Between 1474 and 1478, the remaining nuns joined the Urbanist Poor Clares of Azille. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 22; Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 150–151; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines dans l’espace Languedocien’, 317. 148 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 574. 149 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 107; Collectanea Franciscana 28 (1958), 356; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 606. 150 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 318; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 625. 151 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 625. 152 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 574. 153 Although early modern traditions situate the foundation of Dax in the 1220s, the fijirst document pertaining to it dates from 1283, when the English king, Edward I, gave a dona- tion. Another document from 1286 mentions a bequest by the viscountess of Tartas. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 23. 154 Local historical traditions trace the foundation to the episcopates of Raymond of Donzac (1233–1257) or his successor Sanche of Haïtze (1259–1278). As is the case with the Dax monastery, the earliest documentary evidence goes back to a donation by Edward I of England in 1283. In February 1297, the Bayonne abbess Amate of Bizaudun acquired addi- tional lands for the monastery, which was established outside the city walls, near the Mousserolle gate. In subsequent centuries, the monastery had to move two times, to allow the expansion of the order 115

(Gers).155 This would indicate that by this time, these houses were sufffiji- ciently well regarded to be eligible for royal sponsorship. Yet another eight Urbanist Poor Clare monasteries were created before the end of the thirteenth century. Several of these were not created in the South (Provence, Aquitaine), which might have reached a temporary saturation point, but more to the North and to the East. Cases in point are the monasteries of Besançon (c. 1290),156 Lons-le-Saunier in the Jura (before 1294),157 Verdun (1293),158 Neufchâteau (to the South-West of Nancy, 1297),159 possibly Lyon (1296?) and Chambéry (between and Grenoble, 1294?),160 and Nogent-l’Artaud (mid-way between Reims and Paris, 1299).161 Millau (around 100 kilometers North of Montpellier) might have been the only major Clarissan foundation further to the South in this decade. It became possible when Ticbors (Tiburge) of Saint Maurice, daughter of Baron Guillaume of Saint Maurice (lord of Montpaon), received permis- sion from King Philip IV of France on 25 October 1290 to use her belong- ings, including a house, a garden and an orchard for the creation of a monastic house. In May of the following year, the bishop of Rodez acqui- esced to collaborate in the canonical erection of the monastery, and Duke Henri II of Rodez promised an ongoing delivery of bread for a community of twelve nuns. Several months later the Franciscan provincial minister of Aquitaine followed suit, albeit with stringent conditions concerning the material upkeep of the house and the caveat that Clarissan nuns from Cahors send a party of nuns to get the community started. However, for the extension of the town’s fortifijications. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 21–22. 155 This house likewise received a gift from Edward I of England in 1289. Gers was a substantial monastery, which sent out nuns to help the house at Auch. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 25; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 18–19; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 605. 156 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 555. 157 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 186, 519–520; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 56–57; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique des établissements de l’ordre de saint François en Bourgogne’, 494; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 605, 609. 158 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 354 & IX, 106; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 682. 159 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 442; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 631. 160 On Lyon, see Wadding, Annales Minorum XV, 338; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 580–581, 609; Les Pauvres-Dames de l’Ordre de Sainte-Claire ou les Clarisses dans la Cité Lyonnaise (1269–1501 et 1598–1898); Collombet, ‘Le couvent de la Déserte’, 266–274. On Chambéry, see Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Bourgogne’, 481; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 518; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 571. 161 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 471 & XIII, 382; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 613– 614; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 632–633. 116 chapter three

Ticbors did not wait for the approval of the provincial minister from Aquitaine. Via the provincial minister of the Provence, who was one of her kinsmen, she organized a party of Clarissan nuns from Montpellier, led by abbess Marie of Teyric, to help instruct her new community. The Franciscan provincial minister of Aquitaine reacted with a violent denunciation, ordering Ticbors to submit to his demands or sufffer the consequences.162 When she did not immediately comply with the provincial minister’s wishes, she was excommunicated. Ticbors of Saint Maurice and Marie of Teyric appealed to the Franciscan minister general and the cardinal pro- tector of the order. The immediate outcome of this episode is unknown, but it seems that the nuns of Millau had it their way in the end. Their monastery became a flourishing Urbanist foundation, although it had to transfer to a new location at least two times.163 At the end of the thirteenth century, the Urbanist Poor Clares had become well-established in France, with a total of about 47 monasteries. As was the case in Spain, the earlier houses were generally the result of a directed transformation of more penitence-oriented communities. This can be charted in particular within Aquitaine and Provence, where an effflorescence of non-regulated ‘cordelières’, ‘dechaussées’ and ‘minorettes’ living mendicant lives of penitence made the ecclesiastical authori- ties rather nervous. Not in the least because this same region still had a reputation for harboring heretical Waldensian and even Cathar groups.

162 In his harsh letter to Ticbors, the provincial minister stated: ‘…nisi prius hujusmodi peregrina abbatissa tam locum vestrum quam vos dimiserit et vos abbatissam Caturci et ejus socias receperetis tanquam inchoantes vobiscum monasterium et informatricem et directricem in hiis omnibus quae regularis exigit disciplina; et conditiones fijirmaveritis per provinciale capitulum ordinatos, quas custos dare debuerit et dabit vobis: nec vos in loco esse patiar, nec habere novum monasterium in tota provincia, nec fratres vobis in aliquo obsequentur. Si tamen predictam abbatissam recipere volueritis et alia facere quae supra sunt expressa, quod ibi facietis et habeatis tolerabo; et quod fratres vobis assistant et obse- quantur in spiritualibus quantum vobis sufffijicere debeat ordinabo, salva tamen mihi paena, in posterum infligenda, pro eo quod in principio conversionis vestrae tam graviter exce- dere praesumpsistis.’ Found in Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 31. 163 Initially situated near the Noline gate, the house was transferred after the 1324 flood to the deserted friary of the Sack Brothers in 1327 (near the porte de la Capelle). The mon- astery was brought into town in the 1360s, due to the military campaigns of the Hundred Years War. It was ruined during the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, but restored in the century thereafter as an Urbanist house by the Poor Clares of Limoges, which sur- vived until the French Revolution. Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 313, VII, 693–694, IX, 50, 503–504, X, 257; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 23–24; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique des établissements de l’ordre de saint François en Aquitaine’, 557; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 29–32; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 620–621; Brunel-Lobrichon, ‘Difffusion et spiritualité’, 263f; Girard, ‘La longue histoire des monastères successifs des Clarisses à Millau’, 176–184. the expansion of the order 117

The normalization of these houses under the Damianite/Clarissan umbrella therefore served a purpose understood by the papacy and local ecclesiastical authorities alike.164 This is one of the reasons, alongside the geographical dissemination patterns of the Franciscan order and the pil- grim routes towards Santiago de Compostella, that the South of France might have seen so many new Damianite/Clarissan foundations between the 1230s and the late thirteenth century. Nevertheless, as is indicated by the early creation of the monastery at Reims and by later foundations else- where in the North and the East, the Clarissan order was not solely a Southern phenomenon. Particularly later in the thirteenth century it became increasingly common for noble families in liege to the French royal dynasty to support the creation of Clarissan monasteries for tradi- tional reasons (prestige, dynastic politics etc). The expansion of the Poor Clares continued at a somewhat slower pace until the 1340s, and even thereafter (notwithstanding major disasters like the Plague epidemics of 1348/9 and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War). By the 1380s, when the expansion more or less came to a provisional halt (until the impact of the Colettine reform gave a new impetus for foun- dations in the second decade of the fijifteenth century), some 37 additional houses had been established, albeit not all of these were very successful. During this period, foundation patterns from the last decades of the thir- teenth century re-emerged, notably the further involvement of local noble families in search of ‘family monasteries’. At the same time, almost all of the Urbanist Clarissan houses in this period were again erected in the South, with the exception of the Clarissan house of La Rochelle (1305) cre- ated by the Talleyrand family for their daughter,165 the Migette monastery South of Besançon (around 1322),166 the house near Châlon-sur-Saône (to the South of Beaune, 1327),167 the foundation at Châlons to the South of Reims (by 1330), and fijinally the Evreux monastery to the South of Rouen in Normandy (around 1376).168

164 Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 7. 165 It was founded to provide a community for the marquise of Talayrand, who some years earlier had become a Poor Clare at Périgueux. With papal permission, her family built for her a house at La Rochelle. It was forced to close down due to Protestant pressure in the sixteenth century. Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire’, 139; Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 511–512; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 655. 166 A creation sponsored by Jean II de Chalon-Arlay and his wife. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 545 & 617. The same family was also involved with the creation of a Clarissan community at nearby Arlay, about which almost nothing is known. 167 Bullarium Franciscanum V, 322, 494–495; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Bourgogne’, 480; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 571. 168 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 583. 118 chapter three

All other fourteenth-century foundations were situated in the Southern heartland of Clarissan monasticism. The fijirst of these was at Peyrat de Marron (Gourdon), where Fayts of Thémines, the widow of the lord of Gourdon, established a house of Poor Clares as a retirement home for her- self in 1302.169 Later that same decade, monasteries were apparently cre- ated at Mende and Pamiers. The monastery of Mende was created with papal permission in 1309. It was a project of the noble Tournel family for unmarried daughters and other close family members.170 The foundation of the Pamiers monastery is obscure. Local historiographical traditions relegate it to the thirteenth century, yet the fijirst document (a vidimus of the rule of Innocent IV (!) issued at the request of Poor Clares from Pamiers) dates from 20 April 1313. The monastery as such is only men- tioned in unambiguous terms in 1338.171 Quite a few other houses in the South were established in the 1320s. Le Pouget (Castelnau-Montratier, in the Cahors diocese) started by 1321 in the family castle of Cardinal Bertrand of Pouget, with his sister Bernarde as its fijirst abbess.172 Another family monastery came into existence at Boisset (between Aurillac and Figeac) in 1324. It was created by Isabelle of Rodez, the daughter of Count Henri II of Rodez (the man who had previously helped the Poor Clares of Millau). The small community of about 10 choir nuns was primarily established to pray for the soul of Isabelle’s father Henri II and his family. To this purpose, the nuns received Isabelle’s resi- dence at Boisset: a large house with storage rooms, a courtyard, stables, gardens and fijields. Over the years, Isabelle endowed the monastery with a variety of additional means of income. The selection of nuns for the Boisset monastery was in the hands of Isabelle and her successors. The original provisions of the monastery were

169 The house was offfijicially recognized as a Poor Clare monastery by Pope John XXII in 1317. Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’Origine et la fondation’, 130–131; Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 557; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 594; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 320. 170 Not much is known about the further developments of this house. Older studies sometimes mention a founding date in the 1220s. Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 186, 521; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 61; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 614–615; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 320; Auberger, ‘Panorama de la présence’, 81–82. 171 Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (..) Aquitaine’, 563; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’origine et la fondation’, 23; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 640; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 320. The house was destroyed by Protestant forces in the sixteenth century. It was re-established a century later and survived until the French revolution. 172 The foundation charter mentions provisions of a monastery for 24 nuns. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 339, VIII, 32, 428–429 & XIV, 484; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 156; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Aquitaine’, 564; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 650; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 320; Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 198 & note 102. the expansion of the order 119 for the maintenance of ten nuns, so it could only grow by accepting nuns with substantial dowries. Isabelle not only kept a strict control over their selection, she also reserved the right, both for herself and those who suc- ceeded her as legitimate patrons, to select three candidates from whom the community was allowed to choose its abbess.173 Three other Clarissan houses that possibly date back to the 1320s were the monasteries at Auch (circa 70 kilometers to the West of Toulouse), Granayrac (Aveyron, near Salles-Courbatiès), and Nîmes. The fijirst of these was built around 1320 to ease overcrowding at Lectoure.174 The second one apparently needed a long incubation period. In the late thirteenth cen- tury, Eustache of Baumarchais (d. 1297) assigned funds for the creation of an Urbanist Clarissan monastery at Granayrac, one of his fijiefs. In 1326, one of his heirs, Jean Devic (lord of Calvinet) enacted this bequest, obtaining a papal bull from John XXII for the canonical creation of the monastery. It remains unclear when the monastery itself was up and running, and it took the interference of Piere of Vias, a cousin of the late John XXII, to secure the monastic fijinances by 1362.175 According to older scholarly tradi- tions, the history of the Nîmes monastery went back to the 1240s (see also above), and was linked to initiatives by the early Damianites at Narbonne, Aix, and Montpellier. However, the earliest attestation of the house at Nîmes near the gate of Saint Anthony dates from 1327, and a foundation in the 1320s seems far more realistic.176 Yet another seven houses were probably established in the course of the 1330s. Two of these foundations are a bit dubious, namely the monastery near Carlat or Cantal (Aurillac, ca. 1330), the actual location of which seems unsure,177 and the settlement at Oloron (present-day Oloron- Sainte-Marie, near the Pyrenees), the creation of which cannot be dated

173 Later the house transferred to Aurillac. See: Delmas, Le monastère de Ste-Claire de Boisset et sa translation à Aurillac, 1323–1625, passim. 174 It received papal permission to search for a more suitable location in 1326. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 549. 175 Exemption from local episcopal control was apparently only obtained by 1434. Thereafter, the monastery came under the protection of the princes of Monaco, who also appointed the abbess. The monastery transferred to Villefranche in 1677. Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 321; Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 71, 446–447; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Aquitaine’, 552; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 594; Flottes, ‘Les Clarisses de Granayrac – Villefrance’, 130; Blanc, ‘Granayrac’, 134–135. 176 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 85, 465; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 357 & VI, 289; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 632; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 320. 177 Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Aquitaine’, 547; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 567. 120 chapter three with any precision.178 Information on the early history of most of the other houses from this decade also remains rather limited. This holds true for the foundations at Grasse (near Nice, c. 1331),179 Chazeaux (near Aubenas, 1332),180 Lévignac (West of Toulouse, 1334),181 Figeac (Cahors diocese, 1335),182 and Samatan (40 kilometers to the South-West of Toulouse, c. 1335).183 More information can be obtained about the foundation of the impor- tant monastery at Aix-en-Provence (North of Marseille), which was cre- ated with papal approval from Benedict XII by Queen Sancia and King Robert of Naples around 1338. Initially, this house was situated outside the town walls in the ‘Jeu du Mail’ quarter, although it was destroyed almost immediately. The nuns moved into town by 1342, and rebuilt their house with support of the now widowed Sancia of Naples (who also bequeathed her crown to the community). Unlike almost all the other monasteries in Southern France mentioned thus far, the Aix-en-Provence monastery fol- lowed the rule of Clare of Assisi (just like one of Sancia’s other foundations in Naples). Its nuns lived a more austere religious life than was common in Urbanist monasteries of this period, and for some time apparently ran a pharmacy for the poor (reminiscent of the charitable origins of some of the early Damianite houses).184 From the 1340s onwards, the number of new foundations gradually began to dwindle, no doubt because of the increasing economic difffijicul- ties and the extreme forms of instability related to the onset of the Plague and the beginning of the Hundred Years War. Some fijive monasteries can be traced back to the 1340s, just before the arrival of the Plague: Saint- Remy (to the South of Avignon), Grenoble, Izeron (West of Grenoble), Saint’Emilion (near Bordeaux), and Les Cassés (to the South-East of

178 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 636. 179 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 135, 499; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 507; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 594. 180 Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Bourgogne’, 484; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 571. 181 This foundation was made possible thanks to a testamentary bequest from 1334 by Titburge, daughter of Jourdain IV, count of Isle-Jourdain. It was erected in 1335 with the help of Poor Clares from Toulouse. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 606; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 321. 182 This house would not have lasted very long. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 586; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 321. 183 Paris (Bocquet)’, ‘Les monastères de clarisses fondés au XIVe s. dans le sud-ouest de la France’, 29–30; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 660. 184 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 538; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, passim. the expansion of the order 121

Toulouse).185 Nearly all of these houses were heavily hit at the onset of the Plague. In the Grenoble community, for instance, most of the women fell victim to the illness. It took decades for some of these houses to recover, as bouts of the Plague were followed in the 1360s with losses from warfare. Such difffijiculties notwithstanding, at least seven other Clarissan monas- teries were established between the early 1350s and the end of the four- teenth century. These comprised a second Clarissan establishment in Toulouse founded around 1353 about which nearly nothing is known,186 a Clarissan retreat created in 1358 by the widow Marta of Armagnac for her and her two daughters in Nérac (between Bordeaux and Montauban),187 and a small house in Azille (near Narbonne), created by 1352 but only authorized by Pope Innocent VI in 1361.188 In the 1360s there appeared foundations at La Chambre (to the South-East of Chambéry, and North- East of Grenoble),189 and at nearby Saint Jean de Maurienne,190 as well as the more substantial Saint Catherine monastery of Digne (Alpes-de- Haute-Provence).191 Finally, a Clarissan house came into being at Lavaur (East of Toulouse) as a belated testamentary bequest from 1383 by Aimeric of Roquefort. He had wished it to be erected in his own castle (Pomarède), but his condemnation to death for high treason prevented the creation

185 See on these houses Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 539, 568, 594, 599, 657. Les Cassés was originally intended as a Benedictine house. It had been transformed into an Urbanist Poor Clare monastery by 1345, at the wishes of and with substantial material sup- port from Arnaud Duèze, viscount of Caraman (and cousin of Pope John XXII) and his wife Marguerite of l’Isle-Jourdain. Auberger, ‘Panorama de la présence’, 321. 186 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 106–107, 508–510; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 673. 187 Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’Origine et la fondation’, 130–131; Wadding Annales Minorum VIII, 164, 562; Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 22; Lemaitre, ‘Géographie historique (…) Aquitaine’, 561; Paris (Bocquet), ‘Les monastères de clarisses fondés au XIVe s.’, 23–24; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 631. 188 It was built in fulfijillment of a testamentary bequest by Isabelle of Lévis, widow of Count Bertrand of l’Isle-Jourdain. Sacré-Coeur, Les enfants de Saint François et de Sainte- Claire à Azille; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 550 (listing the abbesses); Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 321. 189 Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 384–385; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 571. 190 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 218, 595–596; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 658. 191 The earliest reference to the Digne monastery dates from 1367. The fijirst abbess, Isnarde Bondanère, rented a house in Digne to get the monastery started. In 1430, it took over the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Pierre de Sourribes. In 1462, both communities were transferred to Sisteron by their last abbess, the Poor Clare Jeanne of Mevolhon. Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, 515; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 551–552; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 581; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, passim. 122 chapter three until 1398, when Pope Benedict XIII recognized it at the request of Aimeric’s surviving family.192 With the exception of the Aix-en-Provence monastery founded by Sancia of Naples (which adhered, at least initially, to the rule of Clare), most of the houses discussed so far adopted the Urbanist rule after 1263 (either immediately or after a signifijicant delay). We should not forget, however, that from the 1250s a parallel network of monasteries of sorores minores also developed within the French realm (and beyond) following the rule of Isabelle of France (1225–1270).

Minoresses in France, England and Italy

Isabelle of France was the daughter of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, and the sister of King Louis IX. Very pious since her youth, after a severe illness she made up her mind to dedicate herself to the religious life, and refused to marry the son of Emperor Frederick II. After the death of her mother, Isabelle began to undertake initiatives to establish a house for religious women. She was supported by a group of Franciscan confessors and counselors. This resulted by 1255 in the creation of the famous l’Humilité de Notre-Dame monastery at Longchamp (Bois de Boulogne), near Paris. It was meant to house nuns from the highest noble back- grounds, who were recruited predominantly from the ladies of the French royal court. By 1261, just after the major building activities at Longchamp were completed, the fijirst inhabitants received religious instruction from four nuns from the Damianite monastery of Reims. As mentioned in Chapter One, as the founder and principal patron of the monastery (she never became a nun, and left the abbatiate position to trusted ladies from her inner circle), Isabelle was able to secure for this foundation a separate rule that seemed commensurate with the high aristocratic standing of the inhabitants of the house. This rule received initial papal approval in 1259. A modifijied version was approved again in 1263 by Urban IV.193

192 Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 314; Lemaitre, Géographie historique (…) Aquitaine’, 554; Paris (Bocquet), ‘Les monastères de clarisses fondés au XIVe s.’, 16–18; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 605; Gaussin, ‘Les Communautés féminines’, 321. 193 On the history of Longchamp and its rule, see especially Duchesne, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Longchamp 1255–1789, Second Edition; Mlynarczyk, Ein Franziskanerkloster im 15. Jahrhundert: Edition und Analyse von Besitzinventaren aus der Abtei Longchamp; Field, ‘The abbesses of Longchamp up to the black Death’, 237–244; Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century; Joudiou, Isabelle de France et l’Abbaye de Longchamp; Field, ‘The Abbesses of Longchamp in the Sixteenth cen- tury’, 553–559. the expansion of the order 123

The Longchamp monastic model proved appealing as an outlet for the pious ambitions of princesses within the Capetian dynasty. Hence, between 1268 and 1275, (another) Isabelle, daughter of King Louis IX of France, and the spouse of King Thibaud of Navarra, sponsored the cre- ation of the Notre Dame de la Pauvreté monastery at Troyes, which soon thereafter also received many endowments from the queen-widow, Marguerite of Provence. Four women from Longchamp were sent to introduce the rule and to provide the fijirst abbess of the community (Gilette of Sens). When, between 1287 and 1289, new properties in the Saint Marcel parish of Paris became available thanks to donations by the confessor of Marguerite of Provence, the Troyes community was trans- ferred completely to this new location. Saint Marcel de Paris grew into an important royal foundation, with signifijicant royal and high noble patronage.194 Two other large foundations that followed the rule of Isabelle of France were established at La Guiche and at Moncel. The La Garde de Notre Dame monastery at La Guiche (near Chouzy-sur-Cisse) was started in 1273, with substantial fijinancial support from the counts of Blois (especially Jean of Châtillon and his wife Alix of Bretagne). Its fijirst abbess, Julienne of Troyes, had previously been the fourth abbess of Longchamp. She came to La Guiche by 1277, when the major monastic buildings were completed. From the outset, it was conceived as a large monastic foundation, capable of housing up to 100 choir nuns.195 The house of Moncel (Pont-Sainte-Maxence, not far from Compiegne) was a creation of King Philip IV and his wife, near one of the royal . The fijirst plans to found the house were made as early as 1305, yet their execution took time. Building was fijinished by 1336, made possible thanks to the fijinancial support provided in the 1320s by Queen Jeanne of Burgundy, wife of Philip V, and papal assurances issued by Benedict XII in 1335. The Moncel monastery became large, well-endowed, and equipped with an impressive church. Among the fijirst nuns entering the compound on 17 July 1336 were a few women transferred from Longchamp, with Périnelle of Troyes as the prospective fijirst abbess. Although used to royal

194 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 366, V, 565–566 & VI, 226; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 304–305; Courtomer, ‘Les cordelieres de Saint Marcel-lez-Paris’, 561–621; Biver, Abbayes, monastères, couvents de femmes à Paris a la fijin du XVIIIe siècle, 203–207 (a bit confusing in its terminology); Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 641–642 (listing the abbesses). 195 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 30, 212, 568–572; Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire’, 139; Sceaux, Etude sur le monastère et l’obituaire des Clarisses de la Guiche; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 604. 124 chapter three sponsorship with all its possible implications, Périnelle was apparently not pleased with the papal privileges that allowed royal visitors to enter the compound with their retinue, and that gave some of the noble nuns permission to retain personal servants. This eventually enticed her to renounce the abbatiate and end her days in retreat within her own monas- tic community.196 The Longchamp model of a well-endowed royal or high noble founda- tion in combination with the rule devised by Isabelle of France proved to be attractive in England, where neither the Damianites nor the Urbanist Poor Clares made an impact, although an attempt was made to create a Damianite monastery at Northampton before 1252 (which was abandoned by the 1270s),197 and an Urbanist house at Newcastle-upon-Tyne around 1286 (which failed after the death of its patron John of Vesey, lord of Alnwick).198 When high noble and royal sponsors in England began to search for prestigious alternatives to the existing Benedictine or Cistercian varieties of female monastic life, they looked at the foundations created at Longchamp, Saint Marcel, Moncel and La Guiche by their rivals (and rela- tives) on the other side of the channel.199 Hence, by 1293, a monastery of sorores minores inclusae following the rule of Isabelle was fijirmly estab- lished ‘without Aldgate’ near London by Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henry III of and Champagne, and the wife of Earl Edmund of Lancaster. The fijirst inhabitants of the monastery were brought to England from France, probably from Longchamp itself, and the papal founding documents issued by Boniface VIII explicitly mentioned the women’s

196 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 226, 533 & VII, 553–562; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 80; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 622; Schmitt, Un pape réformateur, 288–289; Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 135–136. The close relationship with the French crown could also have other drawbacks: When King John II (Jean le Bon) was made pris- oner by the English after the battle of Poitiers in 1356, the nuns of Moncel sold a large part of their precious goods (tapestries, jewelry, gold) and donated money to contribute to the king’s ransom. 197 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 633; Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and Their Patrons, 59. 198 Bullarium Franciscanum III, 583–584; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 632; Francesco, il Francescanesimo e la cultura della nuova Europa, 60. 199 See in general Bourdillon, The Order of the Minoresses, and Lavery, ‘Le Clarisse nel mondo anglosassone’, 485–486. On the specifijic patronage relations of the English nobility with all kinds of religious houses, including the houses discussed here, see Hicks, ‘The English Minoresses and their Early Benefactors’, 158–170, and Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons, passim. the expansion of the order 125 adherence to the rule of Isabelle.200 From early on, the house enjoyed important royal and papal privileges. William Page indicates that the monastery was ‘at fijirst richer in privileges than in revenue’, for the nuns received major royal and papal exemptions from taxes and levies raised on all monastic lands in 1316, 1338 and 1348.201 But, as Page himself suggests, it may be that these exemptions were not a sign of the nuns’ poverty, but an indication of the powerful influence exerted on their behalf amongst the highest secular and ecclesiastical authorities. The latter seems corrobo- rated by the number of the monastery’s rich and high noble patrons, which included Queen Isabella in the 1340s, Elizabeth de Burgh (Lady Clare) in the 1350s, Countess Margaret of Norfolk (late fourteenth century) and the earls of Warwick (late fourteenth and fijifteenth centuries). After the death of one of the earls of Warwick, his widow Margaret Beauchamp received papal permission in 1398 to reside at the monastery with three matrons of her choosing as long as she wished.202 Nearly contemporaneous with the monastery of Minoresses ‘without Aldgate’ near London, was the construction of a second house at Water- beach. This foundation was made possible thanks to the donation of the Waterbeach manor by Denise of Munchensey, daughter and heiress of Nicholas Anesty and widow of Walter, the brother of the famous Archbishop Stephen Langton. After the death of her second husband (Warin Munchensey), Denise had obtained in 1281 royal permission to establish a community of religious men or women on her manor at Waterbeach. Subsequently, she obtained papal permission to bring in a group of Longchamp Minoresses. These fijinally came around 1293/4 under direction of their fijirst abbess Jeanne of Nevers, who previously had been the fijifth abbess of Longchamp. The Waterbeach monastery, which soon became known as Our Lady of Pity, was set up with a considerable number of secular servants and a bailifff (custos deputatus) responsible for the exploitation of the manor itself.203 The Minoresses were not to stay long in the Waterbeach monastery. Soon they were transferred to Denney (Cambridgeshire), using buildings

200 Scholars don’t agree about the actual founding date. Traditionally, the foundation has been situated around 1293, yet there is some evidence suggesting that a community of Minoresses was already (unofffijicially?) in existence by 1281. The church was in use by 1295. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 1221–1539, 64f; Watson & Thomas, ‘The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London’, 283–285. 201 Page, ‘Friaries: The minoresses without Aldgate’, 517. 202 Ibidem, 517f. 203 Annales Minorum V, 348 (an. 1292); Salzman, ‘Houses of minoresses: Abbey of Waterbeach’, 292–295; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 608. 126 chapter three originally constructed for a Benedictine cell dependent upon Ely. At one point in time, these buildings had been converted into a preceptory for the . Some years after the suppression of the Templars in 1312, however, the buildings had come into the possession of Mary of St. Pol, the widowed countess of Pembroke (and founder of Pembroke College, Cambridge). She decided to bring in Minoresses from Waterbeach, once she had obtained the large manor of Denney with its surrounding lands to secure their upkeep. By 1339, she had obtained the necessary papal and royal permissions to transfer the whole Waterbeach community of Minoresses to Denney. Although the Waterbeach abbess and the majority of the nuns had moved by 1342, some nuns apparently refused to move and held out until their forced transfer with military force in 1351.204 To house the Waterbeach Minoresses at Denney, the countess replaced the Eastern part of the existing cruciform church with a much larger church and choir for the Minoresses. The old nave and South were transformed into a building to provide the countess and her house- hold a place to stay during their prospective visits. After the death of Mary of St. Pol, parts of this building became the lodging for the monastery’s abbess, whereas a dormitory for the nuns was built to the North.205 According to the court rolls of Denney (preserved in MS British Library Add. 5837), the nuns were active in the commercial economy around them, and there is evidence that the monastery divided its properties and incomes into portions from which sisters individually received rents and other forms of revenue. The nuns were even allowed to act on their own in the management of their portions.206 The last successful foundation of Minoresses in England was realized at Bruisyard (Sufffolk).207 Its creation became possible when Lionel, duke of Clarence sought a new purpose for an already existing but not functioning chantry at Bruisyard. Following complaints, the duke obtained in 1364 royal and ecclesiastical approval to use the establishment for a monastery

204 Salzman, ‘Houses of minoresses: Abbey of Denney’, 295–302; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 685. 205 Bond, ‘Medieval Nunneries in England and Wales: Buildings, Precincts, and Estates’, 47–48. 206 Warren, Spiritual economies: female monasticism in later medieval England, 55fff.; Bourdillon, The Order of Minoresses, 20; Christie & Coad, ‘Excavations at Denny Abbey’, 138–279. 207 Another attempt to create a monastery of Minoresses at Kingston upon Hull in 1365 did not succeed: when the prospective patron, William of Pole, died in 1366, his son decided to grant the designated buildings and the necessary fijinancial underpinning to the . Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 601. the expansion of the order 127 for Minoresses following the lifestyle of the monastery of Longchamp. The fijinal arrangements were made by October 1366. The new house was quickly bequeathed with a substantial patrimony, with manorial posses- sions in Bruisyard, Winston, Hargham, South Repps, Badburgham and Alderton. By the 1380s, the monastery had apparently also begun to take in lay pensioners, who wished to spend their last years ex devotione in or near the monastic community.208 Beyond England, the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp also had a modest impact in Italy. There it informed the lifestyle of at least two monasteries in Rome, namely San Silvestro in Capite and San Lorenzo in Panisperna. Both were former Benedictine houses, which were transformed into mon- asteries of Minoresses with the support of Cardinal Giacomo (Jacopo) Colonna. Both could also be seen as ‘family monasteries’, to house women from the aristocratic kin group of the influential Roman Colonna family. The fijirst birth pangs of the San Silvestro in Capite community date to the 1270s, when Margherita Colonna started her religious career as a penitent recluse in the house of her brother, the future cardinal. Soon, Margherita gathered a community of followers around her. If we can believe the hagiographical texts written after her death by her brother and by Stefania (one of Margherita’s old companions), she was not only a very charismatic religious leader, but she also engaged in charitable effforts – providing material and even fijinancial support for those in need, and pro- viding medical assistance to sick people and invalids.209 By the time of Margherita’s death, on 30 December 1280 at the age of 25, her community neither lived in a properly enclosed monastery, nor followed a recognized rule. The women sometimes went out to visit Roman holy places. Although unenclosed, they attracted Franciscan preachers and confessors. Around fijive years after Margherita’s death, her former companions, including the above-mentioned Stefania, moved to the nearby San Silvestro in Capite monastery. This had been a Benedictine compound that now, with all its possessions, came under the control of the Colonna family. Under Giovanni Colonna’s continuing patronage, the women, led by the abbess Erminia, adopted the rule of Isabelle of France.

208 Page, ‘House of minoresses: Abbey of Bruisyard’, 131–132; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 562. The article of Page mentions as a lay pensioner the knight Nicholas Gernoun, who in the 1380s was allowed to dwell at the house of the Minoresses of Bruisyard ex devocione. 209 Le due vite scritte dal fratello Giovanni Colonna senatore di Roma e da Stefania monaca di S. Silvestro in capite, ed. Oliger, 134, 138–139, 144–145 & 201. See in general also Cadderi, La beata Margherita Colonna. 128 chapter three

In this way, the San Silvestro in Capite monastery became a monastery of Minoresses.210 Cardinal Giacomo Colonna strengthened the family’s con- trol over the monastery (including its extended possessions around Rome) and its aristocratic recruitment policies with a set of Constitutiones.211 The foundation history of San Lorenzo in Panisperna was very compa- rable. Like the San Silvestro in Capite monastery, it had been a female Benedictine foundation. After its desertion, Cardinal Giacomo Colonna handed it over to Poor Clares from the insufffijiciently endowed Santa Maria dei Monti monastery around 1308. The setup received papal confijirmation by 1318.212 Closely following the setup of San Silvestro, this house also opted for the rule of Isabelle of France.

The German Lands (Including the Alsace Region) and the Low Countries

To form an impression of the dissemination of Damianite and Poor Clare monasteries up till 1400 in the German lands and the Low Countries, or rather the territories covered by the three medieval Franciscan Provinces of Cologne, Strasbourg (also known as the Upper Germany province), and Saxony (minus its easternmost fringe), we can fijirst look to the surveys made for the 1954 commemorative volume Santa Chiara d’Assisi. Studi e cronaca del VII centenario.213 Beyond that, we can refer to the older surveys published by Edmund Alfred Wauer, David de Kok, Cunibertus Sloots and Albanus Heysse.214

210 Barone, ‘Le due vite di Margherita Colonna’, 25–32; Barone, ‘Margherita Colonna e le Clarisse di San Silvestro in Capite’, 799–805. 211 See Livarius B. Oliger, ‘Documenta originis Clarissarum’, 99–102: Constitutiones a Card. Jacobi de Columna pro monasterio S. Silvestri in Capite, Romae, conditae saec. XIII. Under the pontifijicate of Boniface VIII, who was an archenemy of the Colonna’s, the mon- astery was forced to adopt the Urbanist rule. Giovanna Colonna was deprived of her abba- tiate, and the house was put under direct supervision of Matteo d’Acquasparta, then cardinal-protector of the Franciscan order. After the death of Boniface, the monastery came back under the control of the Colonna family, and the monastery apparently returned to its allegiance to the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp. 212 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 578–580, IX, 547–548, X, 238 & XV, 536; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 155 & VI, 446; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 112; Rocca di Papa, Memorie storiche della chiesa e monastero di S. Lorenzo in Panisperna; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 656. 213 For the German lands properly speaking, see in this volume Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel mondo tedesco’, 427–448. This is an extended version of his article ‘Der Orden der hl. Klara in Deutschland’, 49–73. For the Low Countries, see in the same volume Meyer, ‘Le Clarisse nel Belgio’, 465–473; Meyer & Wely, ‘Le Clarisse nei Paesi Bassi’, 475–483. 214 Wauer, Entstehung und Ausbreitung des Klarissenordens besonders in der deutschen Minoriten-provinzen; Kok, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Klarissen en the expansion of the order 129

More recent literature that provides partial surveys on German houses have been published by Petra Groß and Ancilla Röttger, Carola Jäggi, and Jörg Voigt, while Heribert Roggen has tried to create a complete survey for the Low Countries (Belgium and The Netherlands). None of these publica- tions has been able to fijill in all the gaps, however, and some rely too much on biased statements by older Franciscan historians and overly pious local studies that wish to perceive more than the historical evidence allows us to see.215 Luckily, for the territory of present-day Germany, the scholarly literature is rich in more up-to-date regional monastic lexicons, both in print and as internet publications.216 Moreover, as is shown below, quite a number of individual houses or groups of houses in individual towns have received in-depth scholarly attention. When the friars expanded into the German lands, they were confronted with many beguine groups and emerging congregations of more monasti- cized penitential communities. Among the latter fijigured the so-called order of Mary Magdalene (also known as the Reuerinnen, Büßerinnen, Magdalenenschwestern or Weißfrauen): an amalgam of communities of former beguines, lay penitents and reformed prostitutes who, inspired by the preaching and exhortations of Rudolf of Worms, canon of St. Mauritius in Hildesheim, had moved from a semi-religious status to a more regulated form of monastic life. This conglomerate of houses fijirst adhered to Cistercian constitutions, and later, by 1231, was ordered by Gregory IX to take the rule of St. Augustine in combination with the Dominican consti- tutions of St. Sisto. This move by Gregory IX was part of a papal policy to create formal links between these Magdalene sisters and the new mendicant orders, if only to secure the cura monialium of the women. The Friars Minor in Germany tried at fijirst to steer free of such responsibilities as much as possible, and refused the cura monialium for the Magdalene sisters and comparable female communities that sought their support. As a result, numerous (but not all) communities of the order of Mary Magdalene would eventually

Tertiarissen vóór de Hervorming; Sloots, ‘De clarissen in Nederland’, 325–346; Heysse, ‘Origo et progressus Ordinis S. Clarae in Flandria’, 165–209. 215 Groß & Röttger, Klarissen. Geschichte und Gegenwart einer Ordensgemeinschaft; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter. Die Kirchen der Klarissen und Dominikanerinnen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert; Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften und Franziskaner – Klarissen, Beginen und Tertiarinnen in der Sächsischen Franziskanerprovinz’, 92–108; Moorman & Voorvelt, De Clarissen vroeger en nu. Geschiedenis van de Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden tot heden; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden. 216 Cases in point are Gechter & Kier, Frauenklöster im Rheinland und in Westfalen, and the internet lexikon Klöster in Baden-Württemberg (http://www.kloester-bw.de). 130 chapter three evolve into Dominican nunneries. Quite a few other female houses became regulated in the course of the thirteenth century as Cistercian monasteries (notwithstanding the reservations uttered by Cistercian order leadership concerning this development), whereas only a small number would even- tually transform into Clarissan houses (see below).217 The reticence of the Friars Minor hampered the expansion of the Damianites and later the Poor Clares.218 The pace of the expansion only became more rapid when the friars became more accepting towards cura monialium responsibilities after the compromise solution surrounding the promulgation of the Urbanist rule in 1263 (see Chapter Two). By the end of the thirteenth century, there were about 24 Poor Clare monasteries in the German lands. Most of these could be found in Bavaria, Schwaben, in the Alsace region (the West bank of the Rhine area, now largely part of France), the German speaking parts of Switzerland, and in Franken. To these can be added some six Damianite/Poor Clare monasteries that were erected in the Southern parts of the Low Countries (Flanders, Brabant, and Luxemburg, which were part of the Franciscan Cologne province). Some additional eleven ‘German’ foundations, as well as four houses in the Southern Low Countries emerged in the fourteenth century (not counting the houses within present-day Austria, which will be dealt with in the context of Clarissan foundations in Central- and Eastern Europe). If we do not count the Bressanone (Brixen) monastery in the Trentino/ Süd-Tirol area (present-day Italy), which had been established by 1235 or even earlier,219 the oldest Damianite foundation in the German provinces was situated ‘auf dem Gries’ near Ulm (around 70 kilometers West of Augsburg), where a house of Franciscan friars had been present since 1229. The oldest references from 1237 or thereabouts concerning this female

217 Cf. Ammerich, ‘Die Reuerinnen in der Pfalz’, 119–124; Tugwell, ‘Were the Magdalen nuns really turned into Dominicans in 1287’, 39–77. 218 Groß & Röttger, Klarissen, 31. 219 The nuns of Bresanone would have been ‘sorores conversae sub regula minorum fratrum’ round 1227. In 1236 they were called ‘moniales inclusae’, at fijirst under episcopal oversight but by 1239 completely exempt and under papal protection. On 6 June 1252 the Franciscan cardinal protector, Rinaldo, placed the house under the obedience of the Austrian Franciscan provincial minister, making him responsible for the visitation of the monastery and demanding from him six friars to instruct the nuns and to preach to the local population. Spätling, ‘Das Klarissenkloster in Brixen’, 365–388; Nothegger, ‘Brixen/Südtirol, Klarissen-Franziskaner-Terziarinnen’, 243–254; Wolfsgruber, ‘Das Brixener Klarissenkloster im 13. Jahrhundert’, 459–468; Andergassen, ‘Zur Bau-und Ausstat- tungsgeschichte des Brixner Klarissenklosters’, 57–83; Freeman, ‘Die Anfänge des Elisabethklosters in Brixen im Kontext der Entwicklung des Klarissenordens’, 37–40; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 91–93; Tovalieri, ‘Damianite e Clarisse’, 571f. the expansion of the order 131 settlement call it a community of ‘Sisters of Saint Elisabeth’, which had come into being thanks to a donation by the noble Ulrich of Freiberg. In the following years, the women were drawn into the Damianite orbit, pos- sibly inspired by the involvement of Damianite nuns from Prague, Trent or even San Damiano.220 In any case, Pope Gregory IX addressed the monas- tery in a papal bull from 1239 as a Damianite settlement following the Ugolinian rule, exempt from episcopal control and supported by the Franciscan lector Albert of Ulm.221 Some fijifteen years later, around 1255 or slightly earlier, the women received substantial possessions in nearby Söflingen from Count Hartmann IV of Dillingen, after which the commu- nity (of by then c. 72 nuns) moved more or less wholesale to this new loca- tion, which was better situated.222 Within a comparatively short time-span, the Damianite/Clarissan mon- astery of Ulm/Söflingen became very well-endowed. The fact that King Konrad IV placed the monastery under his protection undoubtedly played a role in this. The house at Ulm had already received extensive properties, including vineyards in Neufffen. After the transfer to Söflingen, the monas- tery obtained complete villages and large stretches of territory in various dioceses. By 1270, the monastery was also the owner of the Söflingen vil- lage and the surrounding countryside. As we can judge from the laws issued in 1392 by the Söflingen Poor Clares on behalf of ‘their’ village and its surroundings, this evolved into near complete jurisdiction. As such, the Söflingen monastery was probably the richest Clarissan house within the German lands, and nearly comparable with the large royal foundations founded in Prague and Naples.223 Söflingen was also instrumental in the creation of several other Clarissan houses in the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, such as St. Cäcilia in Pfullingen, S. Agnes in Würzburg, S. Maria Magdalena in Nuremberg, S. Klara ‘Auf dem Anger’ in Munich, Königsfelden, and possibly Seußlitz and Flein-Heilbronn.224

220 The supposed involvement of Damianite women is declared in the Chronica anon- yma Fratrum Minorum Germaniae, Analecta Franciscana I, 298 and in the famous Observant chronicle of Nicholas Glassberger: ‘Anno 1237 sancta Clara misit sorores aliquas sanctas virgines ad Bohemiam et Alemanniam, per Tridentum, ubi Monasterium pro eis erectum est; venerunt Ulmam, ubi aliquae ex ipsis remanentes, coeperunt aedifijicare pau- perculum quoddam monasterium sive habitaculum in quodam loco, dicto Ufff dem griess… ubi primum sub regula seu intitutionibus S. Benedicti vixerunt, observantes nihilominus constitutiones S. Clarae, matris sue.’ Analecta Franciscana II, 572. 221 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 260. 222 Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 17–37. 223 Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 93; Frank, ‘Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen bis zur Aufhebung 1803’, 163–199. 224 Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel mondo tedesco’, 436, 442. 132 chapter three

Until the later 1250s, an additional seven Damianite settlements appeared in the three Franciscan German provinces:225 These comprised three former beguinages, namely the Rossmarckt monastery in Strasbourg (Rhine Valley, c. 1250),226 St. Cäcilia in Pfullingen (also in Baden- Württemberg, c. 1252),227 and Sankt Agnes in Würzburg (Bavaria, before 1254),228 as well as Kloster Paradies near Konstanz (c. 1250), which soon thereafter transferred to Schwarzach (near Schafffhausen/Thurgau),229 Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg (in fact a long transformation of an undefijined non-regulated community under Franciscan oversight between 1246 and the 1280s),230 and two foundations made by the enigmatic Ermentrudis of Bruges in the Southern Low Countries. One of these was created in Bruges itself (Bethlehem, 1253/1260),231 and another foundation

225 Not counting the monastery of Breslau (Wroclaw), treated elsewhere. 226 Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 412, 442; Müller & Tschan, Chronica, ed. Sehi, 19; Wauer, Entstehung, 117; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 667. 227 Initially a beguinage supported by the noble ladies Irmengard and Mechtild Rempen of Pfullingen, and under some kind of Franciscan oversight. With the help of Damianites from Ulm/Söflingen, it became a Damianite monastery by 1252, fijirst following the rule of Innocent IV, and later taking on the Urbanist rule. Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 441; Johannes Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 169–216; Waibel, 750 Jahre Klarissenkloster der heiligen Cäcilie in Pfullingen; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen. Fromme Frauen zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit, 13–35. 228 An unregulated beguine community that between 1248 and 1250 moved into the abandoned Franciscan friary, supported in this by Bishop Hermann of Lobdeburg. Pope Innocent IV ordered the women to put themselves under Minorite control and approved them offfijicially as Damianites by 1254. Nuns from Ulm/Söflingen had already arrived in 1250 to help them shape their Damianite identity. Denzinger, ‘Geschichte des Klarissenklosters St. Agnes in Würzburg’, 1–110; Büchner, ‘Franziskaner-Minoritenkloster’, 120–122; Müller & Tschan, Chronica, ed. Sehi, 90–91; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 443; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 686; Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster im Mittelalter, 39–42. 229 This house was integrated into the Damianite network shortly before 1250, when the bishop of Konstanz (Eberhard II) and local aristocrats wanted the Friars Minor to take over the cura monialium. A papal document from Innocent IV, written in July 1250, calls it a ‘monasterium Monialium inclusarum Ordinis S. Damiani’. Shortly thereafter, the nuns received from Count Hartmann der Ältere of Kyburg and Dillingen a property in the village of Schwarzach near Schafffhausen. The nuns transferred to that site between 1256 and 1260. Stückelberg, ‘Der Friedenscameo zu Schafffhausen und das älteste Klarissenkloster der Schweiz’, 324–334; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse, 441; Gatz, ‘Paradies/Schafffhausen’, 158; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 661; Schib, Geschichte des Klosters Paradies. 230 Müller & Tschan, Chronica, ed. Sehi, 62; Uhland, ‘Esslingen: Clarissen’, 5–59; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 583; Fezer, ‘Die Konvente von Sankt Klara und Sirnau’, 45–100; Holzwart-Schäfer, ‘Das Esslinger Klarissenkloster’, 8–46. At fijirst, it might have been an unregulated community, which with Franciscan assistance and fijinancial sup- port from a noble widow (Clareta Amolang) was able to create a monastic compound. The formal incorporation into the Damianite/Clarissan order took place some time between 1255 and 1288. The fijirst charter that mentions the monastery dates from 1304. 231 Ermentrudis of Bruges created her fijirst house near the St. Bavo church between 1253 and 1255, yet in 1260 she obtained permission from Alexander IV to build a new cloister in the town. This was the start of the Bethlehem monastery, which developed under the the expansion of the order 133 started in Langemark (West Flanders, c. 1255), but soon transferred to Ypres (Ieper).232 There is evidence that Ermentrudis initially wished to emulate Clare of Assisi’s San Damiano model, but that idea was soon left behind. The Bethlehem monastery in Bruges followed the rule of Ugolino or that of Innocent IV, before it turned into an Urbanist house by 1264. A papal bull from 1260 indicates that the Bethlehem monastery was already in the pro- cess of obtaining substantial landed possessions and other material goods. This aggregation of wealth continued well into the fourteenth century, with support of many patrician and noble families, whose daughters made up the monastic population. This made Bethlehem a substantial eco- nomic force in Bruges and the neighboring area.233 Several of these early Damianite and later Urbanist Poor Clare houses in the German provinces of the Franciscan order had prior histories as non- regulated female communities. The Rossmarckt community at Strasbourg, as well as the houses at Pfullingen and Würzburg had been beguine settle- ments before they became cloistered as Damianite houses under Minorite control. Likewise, the Damianite monasteries at Konstanz and Esslingen had apparently also started as communities without a proper rule

Urbanist rule into a wealthy cloister with a high patrician lifestyle (reflecting the patronage situation and the background of most of the nuns). The cloister also maintained a scripto- rium. Goyens, ‘Documents sur les Clarisses de Bruges (1258–1591)’, 227–239; Hooglede, ‘Ermentrude et les origines’, 67–84; Caen-Cloet, De eerste Clarissenstichting in Vlaanderen: Brugge 1255–1265; Caen-Cloet, ‘De eerste Clarissenstichting in Vlaanderen: Brugge 1255– 1265. De latijnse pauselijke bullen’, 123–137; Caen-Cloet, ‘Nieuwe gegevens over Ermentrudis van Brugge en haar invloed in de Clarissenorde’, 3–30; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 37–44. 232 The Langemark foundation had been a leprosarium, and was given as such to the Poor Clares by the pastor of Langemark. Ermentrudis soon decided that maintaining a leper hospital did not agree with a Damianite lifestyle. When the opportunity arose, thanks to a donation by the noble woman Margaretha Boudravens and support from the count and the countess of Flanders, the community was transferred to the Roosendaele property in the outskirts of Ypres (Ieper, 1258/1260). Offfijicial papal permission was obtained in December 1259. Once Ermentrudis overcame (with the help of Pope Alexander IV) the opposition of the Saint Martin’s chapter of Ypres and the bishop of Terwaan (Thérouanne) against the arrival of the Damianites, the Ypres monastery soon became a flourishing house, at fijirst under the Ugolinian rule, and after 1299 under the Urbanist rule. From early on, the monastery would have housed a small Latin school for noble girls (at fijirst led by Ermentrudis herself). At the end of the century, the provincial minister and the Franciscan cardinal protector had to intervene when the community split into two rival factions, led by two opposing abbesses. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 279; Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 92–93, 112, 182, 537, 560 & V, 471, 673; Wauer, Entstehung, 85–86; Lippens, ‘L’Abbaye des Clarisses d’Ypres’, 298–330; Strubbe, ‘De Clarissenabdij te Langemark (1255–1259)’, 182–188; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 605, 687; Ooms, ‘Clarissen-Urbanisten te Ieper. Monasterium S. Maria in Bethlehem’, 167–184; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 44–57 (with addi- tional references). 233 Caen-Cloet, ‘De eerste Clarissenstichting’, 128f. 134 chapter three sometime before their transformation. It shows that, in the German lands, unenclosed female religious communities were increasingly feeling the same type of pressure as their counterparts in Italy, Southern France and Spain. This was in a period when, certainly in the Upper Germany province, the Franciscan friars were still very reluctant to take responsibility for female religious houses, in line with the hesitance demonstrated by the Franciscan order leaders. As late as 8 March 1255, the Franciscan provin- cial minister of the Upper Germany province received assurances from Pope Alexander IV that the friars had only pastoral and material obliga- tions towards the already existing Damianite monasteries in the province (Ulm/Söflingen, Strasbourg, Konstanz/Schafffhausen, and Pfullingen). He also guaranteed that they could refuse the spiritual care of all the other female communities, both those who just sought some spiritual support while retaining their penitential or beguine character and those that wanted to change completely into enclosed Damianite settlements.234 This is not to say that, at a local level, Franciscan friars could not have good relationships with female penitent, beguine, or budding tertiary houses. A case in point is the connection between the female tertiary com- munity at Augsburg and the local Franciscan friars long before the women became a fully regulated Poor Clare monastery. Susanne F. Kohl has shed some interesting light on this relationship in an article from 2007.235 It would seem that such connections could be forged as long as it did not lead to binding responsibilities related to the cura monialium. If this were the case, then local friars could expect opposition from their order superi- ors at the provincial level.236 All this changed in the aftermath of the compromise hammered out around 1263 concerning the Franciscan involvement with what from now on was renamed the order of Poor Clares (see Chapter Two). This appar- ently did much to weaken Franciscan opposition towards the creation of additional Clarissan monasteries in the German provinces of the Franciscan order. As a result, three Poor Clare monasteries were started before the end of the 1260s, namely the Luxemburg monastery (by 1264), the Gnadental monastery outside Basel (present-day Switzerland, in the ‘Spahlenvorstadt’, 1266), and the Seußlitz monastery (Meissen diocese,

234 Bullarium Franciscanum II, no. 27. 235 Kohl, ‘Barfüßer, Terziarinnen. Zur Frühgeschichte der Augsburger Franziskanerinnen von Maria Stern’, 77–101. 236 Cf. Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften’, 97fff. the expansion of the order 135

1268/1273). The fijirst of these had been established earlier, with the support of Countess Ermesinde of Luxemburg, as a community of sisters of Mary Magdalene (Reuerinnen). In 1264, it opted to become a monastery of Poor Clares, asking Poor Clares from Metz to facilitate the change in lifestyle under the Urbanist rule.237 The Gnadental monastery outside the Spahlentor of Basel was initially established in 1266 by nuns from Kloster Paradies (Schwarzach, near Schafffhausen). When, by 1279, a new location became available on the Kleinbasel side of the Rhine (the East side of the river), the nuns trans- ferred. For a while, the Gnadental monastery on the outskirts of Basel beyond the Spahlentor became the abode of a non-specifijied religious group. An episcopal document from 1289 indicates that these women by then had also become Urbanist Poor Clares.238 The Seußlitz monastery, in turn, was founded on the wish of Agnes, daughter of King Wenzel I of Bohemia. She was the second wife of Heinrich III ‘der Erlauchte’, Markgraf of Meissen and Osterland, Landgraf of Thüringen and Pfalzgraf of Saxony. Her wish to establish a Poor Clare monastery might have been inspired by her own upbringing in the Poor Clare monastery of Prague. Agnes’s wishes were eventually fulfijilled after her death on 20 October 1268. Within three weeks of her passing, her wid- ower and their sons established the monastery in the family’s hunting pal- ace at Seußlitz, complete with a patrimony of seventeen villages to secure its upkeep. The transformation of the palace was completed by 1271, and in 1273 the monastery was offfijicially incorporated into the order of Poor Clares.239 Aside from the Sankt Klara monastery in Klein-Basel mentioned earlier, created by the women transferred from the Gnadental monastery by 1279 (which meant that, by the end of the thirteenth century, Basel counted

237 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 77. 265, 586 & VII, 375; Wauer, Entstehung, 154; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 609. 238 Degler-Spengler, Das Klarissenkloster Gnadenthal in Basel, 1289–1529; Elm, ‘Klarissen und Beginen in Basel. Basler Beiträge zur Helvetia Sacra’, 316–332; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 438; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 553; Grübel, Bettelorden und Frauenfrömmigkeit im 13. Jahrhundert. Das Verhältnis der Mendikanten zu Nonnenklöstern und Beginen am Beispiel Straßburg und Basel, passim. 239 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 320; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 389; Wauer, Entstehung, 130–134; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 442; Markus, ‘Das Klarissenkloster zu Seußlitz’, 79–122; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 663; Butz, ‘Die Anfänge des Dominikanerklosters in Cronschwitz und des Klarissenklosters in Seusslitz im Spannungsfeld von Eigen- und Fremdbestimmung’, 525–554; Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauenge- meinschaften und Franziskaner – Klarissen, Beginen und Tertiarinnen in der Sächsischen Franziskanerprovinz’, 93–95. 136 chapter three two Clarissan houses, one on each side of the Rhine river),240 three other houses can be traced back to the 1270s. These are Sankt Klara in the out- skirts of Freiburg im Breisgau (1272), founded and funded by a group of well-established knightly local families,241 the Clarissan house of Mainz, which was a family foundation from 1272 by Humbert and Elisabeth zum Widder,242 and Sankt Klara at Nuremberg (1274/1279). The Nuremberg monastery had an extensive prior history as a community of sisters of Mary Magdalene since the 1230s or the early 1240s. In 1278, shortly after the construction of a new monastic compound outside the ‘Women’s Gate’ (Frauentor), the community was formally incorporated into the order of Poor Clares.243 The other two monasteries (Freiburg and Mainz) were new foundations, made possible by the donations of wealthy noble and patri- cian benefactors. Possibly nine Clarissan monasteries were founded during the 1280s, in addition to an abortive settlement at Haguenau (Hagenau, Alsace),244 not far from Strasbourg, and the permanent installment of Poor Clares

240 The Kleinbasel monastery was created by the bishop of Basel, Heinrich of Isny, in the former monastery of the Brothers of the Sack. Annales Minorum XIII, 197; Wauer, Entstehung, 120; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Gerz-von Büren, Geschichte des Clarissenklosters St. Clara in Kleinbasel, 1266–1529; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 602. The nuns of the Basel Gnadental monastery migrated to the Kleinbasel site. The Gnadental monastery was itself again occupied by Clarissan nuns by 1289 (see above). 241 Wohleb, ‘Beiträge zur Baugeschichte des Klosters St. Klara in der Predigervorstadt in Freiburg’, 49–56; Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 137–192; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 438; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 590; Denne, Die Frauenklöster im spätmittelalterlichen Freiburg im Breisgau, passim; Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 75–77. It took a while before the Freiburg settlement in the Lehenervorstadt or the Predigervorstadt of Freiburg, populated by female members of the founding families, had obtained all nece- sary permissions and exemptions. By 1284 it had been established as a fully enclosed Poor Clare monastery. 242 Schrohe, Geschichte des Reichklaraklosters in Mainz; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 610; Frank, ‘Die Bettelorden im mittelalterlichen Mainz’, 129–142. 243 The creation of the new monastery was made possible thanks to the donations of Eberard and Friedrich Ebner, who in later years both joined the Franciscan order. The deci- sion of the Reuerinnen or sisters of Mary Magdalen to become Poor Clares was connected with the decree of the Second Council of Lyon that forced smaller mendicant orders to dissolve. A minority apparently resisted the transformation, yet it was pushed through with the active support of King Rudolf of Habsburg, his wife Gertrudis of Hohenburg and a number of influential Nuremberg patrician families. In January 1279, nuns from Söflingen came over to instruct the Nuremberg women in the Clarissan lifestyle. Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 66, XIII, 476 & XIV, 133; Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts, 12–20; Fürst, ‘Das ehemalige Klarakloster in Nürnberg’, 323–333; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 634–635; Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 94; Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 43fff. 244 It would have closed down by 1299. Gatz, ‘Hagenau’, 175–177; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 596. the expansion of the order 137 previously lodged in a townhouse at Kientzheim into the former Bene- dictine monastery at Alspach by 1283.245 First of all, two monasteries were established around 1283 within the Rhine valley, namely Mülhausen (Mulhouse, present day France), and Neuss (not far from Cologne). The creation of the Mülhausen monastery became viable when the patrician donor Maria of Altkirch provided a house for a small community of reli- gious women in 1283. The following year, the occupants of the house con- tacted the Poor Clares of Basel (the Gnadental monastery) and adopted the Urbanist rule.246 The Neuss monastery (1283) was founded by the rich Kothausen family, and received additional support from Count Gerhard VII of Jülich and his kin. From the outset, it had close contacts with the Poor Clares of Luxemburg, who might have assisted in the religious instruction of the nuns at Neuss.247 Aside from monastery of Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg mentioned earlier (the roots of which go back to a religious community in existence since the late 1240s), two other monasteries were erected in this decade in the South and the East, namely in Munich and in Weißenfels (near Leipzig). The fijirst of these, known as the Sankt Jakob ‘am Anger’ monas- tery, was founded in the former Franciscan friary in 1284. The initiators of this Clarissan foundation were the duke of Bavaria, Ludwig II ‘der Strenge’ of Wittelsbach, and members of the influential patrician Sendlinger family. The fijirst nuns, including two women from the Sendlinger family, came from the Poor Clare house of Söflingen. The Urbanist Poor Clares of Munich became rather afffluent, also due to the ongoing support by the dukes of Bavaria.248 The Weißenfels foundation was initially erected

245 King Rudolf von Habsburg and his wife Gertrudis von Hohenburg, in tandem with the Franciscan bishop of Basel (Henrich of Isny) obtained for the Poor Clares the Benedictine house at Alspach with all its properties. The new Alspach monastery was under the cura animarum of the Franciscans of Kaysersberg, yet the monastery’s church, which was open to the public, had a secular pastor from Kaysersberg parish. For a long time, the visitations would have remained in the hands of . And it is suggested that these remaining contacts with Benedictine culture helped to stimulate the musical life of the nuns. The latter resulted in a considerable collection of instruments and sheet music. Gatz, ‘Alspach/Elsaß, Klarissenkloster’, 84–107; Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 28. 246 Gatz, ‘Mühlhausen’, 45–57 & passim; Thorr, ‘Das Clarissenkloster von Mühlhausen’, 41–57; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 626. 247 Wauer, Entstehung, 154–155; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 440; Tücking, Geschichte der kirchlichen Einrichtungen in der Stadt Neuß II, passim; Tücking, Urkunden und Akten aus dem Archiv der Klarissen zu Neuss; Felten, ‘Zur Geschichte des Neusser Klarissenklosters’, 91–93; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439, 440; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 632; Sauer, ‘Baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen am ehemaligen Klarissenkloster zu Neuss’, 37–48. 248 Forster, ‘Das Klarissenkloster St. Jakob in München’, 333–340; Gatz, ‘Klarissenkloster St. Jakob am Anger in München’, 195–272; Puchner & Schindlbeck, ‘Grundtext des 138 chapter three outside the town walls between 1284 and 1288 with support of Markgraf Dietrich of Landsberg. The fijirst nuns came from Seußlitz. However, the initial location was not very secure. By the early fourteenth century, Markgräfijin Helene of Landsberg, whose daughter was abbess at the Weißenfels community, supported its transfer into town. Like its ‘mother- house’ Seußlitz, Weißenfels was a noble Hauskloster.249 The Weißenfels nuns, Helena of Landsberg and her son Friedrich Tuta were involved with an abortive attempt at founding a Clarissan monastery at Dresden in 1291. Political struggles with the local bishop and the town authorities, as well as the untimely death of Friedrich Tuta apparently put an end to this initiative.250 Three houses were established in this same period within the Southern Low Countries. These comprised fijirst of all the large monastery of Gentbrugge (near Ghent, 1285)251 and the Clarissan monastery of Werken (1287), which soon afterwards transferred to Petegem-Oudenaarde (1290), where became known as the Beaulieu monastery (Beaulieu was the name

Klarissenbuchs’, 193–288; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 440; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 627–638 (listing the abbesses until 1507); Weichselgartner, Kloster und Stadt. Das Angerkloster in München im Mittelalter. For the history of the monastery during the Early Modern period, see Zwingler, Das Klarissenkloster bei St. Jakob am Anger zu München. The St. Jakob ‘am Anger’ monastery should not be confused with the St. Christoph monastery (also known as the Pütrich-kloster). This house of female tertiaries was also created around 1284 near the new Franciscan friary of St. Anton. See: Hufnagel, ‘Franziskanerinnenkloster der Pütrichschwestern z. hl. Christophorus in München’, 273–307. 249 Lepsius, ‘Historische Nachricht von dem St. Claren-Kloster zu Weißenfels’, 231–275 & Bildtafel XIV; Doelle, ‘Die Statuten der Klarissen zu Weißenfels’, 356–362; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 443; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 686; Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften’, 95–96. 250 Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften’, 96. 251 The new community received religious instruction by a group of nuns from Bruges. The fijirst monastic compound, realized as a common efffort of local Franciscan friars and the beguine Avezoete of Ameede (daughter of a rich patrician family), was not well-situ- ated: the area was too humid and sufffered from repeated flooding. It also came under attack by robbers. Consequently, the community transferred wholesale to the nearby ‘Guldenmeers’ location just outside the ‘Emperor’s Gate’ (Keyserpoort) of Ghent, where it flourished until 1578 (when it had to move to Ghent itself, due to an extension of the city defenses of Gentbrugge). The monastery housed on average 30 choir nuns, additional out- going sisters and a few Franciscan friars/priests with responsibilities for the spiritual care of the women. Cassiman, ‘De stichting van het klooster van de Rijke Claren te Gentbrugge’, 1–29; De Hemptinne, Diplomatieke en paleografijische studie van de oudste oorkonden van het klooster der Rijke Klaren te Gentbrugge (1245–1350); Waeytens, ‘Het klooster der Rijke Claren te Gentbrugge’, 150–155; De Hemptinne, ‘Het ontstaan van een lokaal scriptorium te Gentbrugge in het tweede kwart van de veertiende eeuw’, 3–12; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 593; Ghysels, Het Rijke Klarenklooster van Gentbrugge (1285–1450). Een prosopografijische benadering van de familia; Roggen, ‘Het klooster van de Rijke Klaren in Gentbrugge (1285–1450)’, 191–202; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 55–63, 108–114, 252f. (with additional references). the expansion of the order 139 of the artifijicial hill on which the monastery was built, partly on the foun- dations of a former castle of Isabelle of Namur).252 From the outset, both the Gentbrugge and the Werken/Petegem-Oudenaarde monastery recruited from the landed nobility and the upcoming urban patriciate in Flanders. Both houses apparently ran a scriptorium as well as a school for small children from early on. The third settlement, created at Sint Omaars (St. Omer, present-day France, 1288), was much more modest. It was alleg- edly founded at the initiative of Nicolaas of Gistel, the custodian (custos) of the Franciscan Flanders custody (Custodia Flandriae). He was sup- ported in this venture by the countess of Flanders and her husband. Not much is known about this monastery prior to the fijifteenth century, when it fijigured repeatedly in letters urging for its reform.253 Another six new monasteries were created in the 1290s. The oldest of these was the community at Flein near Heilbronn, which probably started around 1290 with nuns from Söflingen. Its emergence had become feasible thanks to the combined donations of several noble families from Thalheim. For security reasons, the monastery was transferred into Heilbronn itself by 1302.254 Around 1295 the second Clarissan house in Strasbourg (Auf dem Werth) was established with the assistance of nuns from Haguenau.255 The monastery in Strehlen (Strzelin, present-day Poland) was founded around the same time, in all probability by nuns from Breslau (Wroclaw).256

252 Established with support of Countess Isabelle of Luxemburg (Isabelle of Namur, wife of Gwijde of Dampierre). At fijirst, the community was housed in Werken, near Diksmuide. Around 1290/93 it was transferred to Petegem, near Oudenaarde, on a property close to Beaulieu castle (one of the residences of Isabella and Gwijde). Petegem was a highly aristocratic and rich settlement, with jurisdiction over seven parishes. De Ghellinck d’Elseghem Vaernewyck, ‘L’Obituaire de l’Abbaye de Sainte Claire dite Beaulieu à Peteghem- lez-Audenaerde’, 2–98; De Meulemeester, ‘Les archives de l’Abbaye de Beaulieu à Peteghem’, 169–200; De Meulemeester, ‘Les Archives de l’Abbaye de Beaulieu’, 24–31; Agneessens, Het klooster der Rijke Klaren of Klarissen-Urbanisten te Petegem, Beaulieu bij Oudenaarde, vanaf zijn ontstaan tot 1412; Verschaeren, Inventaris van het archief van de Abdij van Beaulieu te Petegem bij Oudenaarde; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 646–647; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 63–75 (with additional references). 253 The monastery was dedicated to Saint Louis. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 659; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 75–81. 254 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 359 & XIII, 436; Gatz, ‘Flein-Heilbronn’, 86; Hofffmann, ‘Aus der Geschichte des Heilbronner Klaraklosters’, 75–87; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 438; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 597; Ehrenfried, Barfüsser und Klarissen in Heilbronn, passim; Schrenk & Zimmermann, Neue Forschungen zum Klarakloster. 255 Wauer, Entstehung, 123–124; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 667. See also the literature mentioned in the footnote concerning the fijirst Strasbourg monastery of Poor Clares. 256 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 578–580; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 335–336 & VI, 327, 333; Wauer, Entstehung, 66, 68, 142; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 442; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 668. 140 chapter three

Shortly thereafter, a new Poor Clare monastery appeared in Regensburg, when the local Mary Magdalene community (which had existed since 1233 or even 1228) opted for the Urbanist rule in 1296.257 The same year or shortly thereafter saw the erection of the Klarenthal monastery near Wiesbaden (North of Mainz). This Poor Clare settlement was sponsored by Count Adolf I of Nassau and his wife Imagina of Isenburg-Limburg, and subsequently developed into a typical family mon- astery for younger Nassau daughters, other relatives and clients.258 Finally, a monastery of Poor Clares was also established at Speijer before 1299. It was in fact a transfer of a failed foundation at nearby Oggersheim. There a community had been initiated in 1289 at the request of Count Friedrich of Leiningen. Within a decade, the nuns had re-established themselves within the town walls of Speijer with substantial support from the urban authorities.259 Compared with the substantial growth in the 1280s and 1290s, the devel- opments in the fourteenth century were relatively modest. Only two or three Poor Clare monasteries were founded in the German provinces of the Franciscan order during the fijirst two decades of the fourteenth cen- tury. The oldest of these emerged near Cologne ‘am Römerturm’, and was initiated by Count Walram of Jülich and his wife Maria of Brabant. They had relatives in Longchamp, and wished to establish a Poor Clare monas- tery on their own lands, possibly also in line with the wishes of Walram’s parents (Wilhelm IV of Jülich and Richardis of Guelders). The fijirst steps towards the foundation were made shortly before Walram’s death in 1297. After some delays, it was taken up by Walram’s brother and successor Gerhard V and his wife Elisabeth of Brabant-Aarschot (the sister of Maria).

257 Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 441 opts for 1286 as the year in which the community was transformed into a Clarissan house. In 1327, the monastery needed to be rebuilt after a large fijire. A lot of information on this foundation can be found in the convent chronicle of the prioress Christine Sauerzapf, partially edited in Engel, ‘Die Klarissen in Regensburg’, 46–48. See further Schratz, Kurze Geschichte des Klosters St. Maria Magdalena, passim; Wauer, Die Anfänge des Klarissenordens in den slawischen Ländern, 68, 121; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 653 (listing the abbesses). On the nuns’ German translation of the Urbanist rule see the remarks in Schönbach, Mitteilungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften, 10. Stück: Die Regensburger Klarissenregel & Ruh, ‘David von Augsburg’, 54. 258 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 63, 498 & XIII, 93; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 3–4; Otto, ‘Clarenthaler Studien’, 173–201 & passim; Otto, Das Necrologium des Klosters Clarenthal bei Wiesbaden; Wauer, Entstehung, 122–123; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Maag, ‘Die Klausurgebäude und die Kirche des Klarissenklosters Wiesbaden-Klarenthal’, 23–44; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 601–602; Czysz, Klarenthal bei Wiesbaden. Ein Frauenkloster im Mittelalter. 259 Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 442; Steiner, ‘Speyer, Klarissen’, 5–47; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 666. the expansion of the order 141

It was offfijicially founded as an Urbanist house with papal permission in 1304. Among the fijirst inhabitants of the monastery were several nuns from Neuss, who helped to establish the religious regime. New monastic build- ings were erected in the later 1330s, with recourse to the yearly stipends of Philippina and Elisabeth, daughters of the Count of Guelders, both of whom were nuns in the Cologne monastery. Although Franciscan friars had been involved with the foundation of this monastery, which followed the Urbanist rule (from 1336 onwards in combination with the reform stat- utes of Benedict XII), continuous Franciscan involvement with the cura monialium was formally regulated only in 1425.260 The second monastery that came into existence in the fourteenth cen- tury was the large dual monastery of Königsfelden (Koenigsfelden, Aargau, Switzerland). It had origins as a chapel, erected to commemorate the mur- der of Albrecht I of Habsburg (d. 1308). Around 1310, Albrecht’s widow Elisabeth founded a Franciscan friary alongside the chapel. In 1314, her daughter Agnes, queen-widow of Hungary, established in its immediate vicinity a large Poor Clare monastery that shared the monastic church with the friars. She brought in several nuns from Söflingen to start the community, and built a house for herself next to the monastic compound. She also wrote a set of convent statutes to regulate the life of the women and the responsibilities of the friars. The founders defijinitely wanted the Königsfelden monastery to become a ‘necropolis’ for the Habsburg family. To that purpose, they provided it with many donations in return for a large number of perpetual solemn masses to commemorate deceased family members of the Habsburg dynasty. Königsfelden became a very rich dual monastery, famous for its artistic patronage.261

260 Bullarium Franciscanum V, 22–23; Wauer, Entstehung, 155–156; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 437–438; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 574; Bellot, ‘Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 206–240; Jäggi, Frauenkloster im Spätmittelalter, 126, 162; Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation in hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Frauenkommunitäten, 257–259. 261 Liebenau, Geschichte des Klosters Königsfelden; Ammann, Das Kloster Königsfelden; Boner, ‘Die Gründung des Klosters Königsfelden’, 1–24, 81–112, 181–209; Idem, ‘Die Königsfelder Klosterordnungen der Königin Agnes von Ungarn’, 59–89; Idem, ‘Barfüsserkloster und Klarissenkloster Königsfelden’, 206–211, 561–576; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 603; Gerber, ‘Die Verwechslung des Männer- und des Frauenklosters zu Königsfelden. Bericht über die Untersuchungen am Mauerwerk der Klosterkirche 1982/3’, 105–120; Kurmann-Schwarz, ‘Die heilige Klara in den Glasmalereien der ehemaligen Klosterkirche in Königsfelden (Schweiz)’, 129–147; Jäggi, ‘Eastern Choir or Western Gallery? The Problem of the Place of the Nuns’ Choir in Koenigsfelden’, 79–93; Idem, ‘Raum und Liturgie in franziskanischen Doppelklöstern: Königsfelden und S.Chiara in Neapel im Vergleich’, 223–246; Kurmann-Schwarz, “..vrowen chloster sande chlaren orden und ein chloster der minneren bru(e)der orden…’ - Die 142 chapter three

If we discard confusing references to a Poor Clare monastery near Linz am Rhein in 1317,262 the next Clarissan house in the Franciscan province of Upper Germany was established at Ribnitz (Mecklenburg). It was founded around 1323 by Heinrich II of Mecklenburg and his second wife on their former ‘Burghof’ in Ribnitz. Despite considerable resistance from the town and the local secular clergy, papal confijirmation by John XXII was given on 22 October 1325. Four nuns joined the house from Weißenfels on Palm Sunday 1329. During the fourteenth century, most abbesses from the Ribnitz monastery came from the ducal family or their noble allies.263 The Bärbach San Salvator monastery near Schönborn was created sev- eral years later, in the 1330s. This monastery was situated East of Koblenz and approximately 40 kilometers North of Wiesbaden (and hence not very far from the Klarenthal monastery). It was initiated by the Gottschalk and Countess Agnes of Hessen, with ample support from Agnes’s spouse (Count Gerlach of Nassau), and Count Wilhelm of Katzenelnbogen. Around 1343, the monastic church is mentioned. In sub- sequent decades, it became rather afffluent thanks to donations of land and vineyards in the Aar valley and within Limburg an der Lahn.264 Somewhat surprisingly, a substantial number of houses appeared in the course of the 1340s, starting with the Clarenberg monastery at Hörde (near Dortmund). This monastery was begun shortly before 1340 with the back- ing of Conrad of the Mark (lord of Hörde) and his wife Elisabeth of Cleves, who asked Pope Benedict XII for permission to establish a house for 40 nuns. Once papal permission was secured, the monastery was quickly erected: its construction was completed in September 1341. Its fijirst abbess was Conrad’s sister Christina of Molenark. When her husband joined the Friars Minor at Dortmund, Elisabeth took the veil at Clarenberg in 1344, beiden Konvente in Königsfelden und ihre gemeinsame Nutzung der Kirche’, 151–163; Moddelmog, Königliche Stiftungen des Mittelalters im historischen Wandel, 111–203. 262 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 347; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 607. 263 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 59, 439–440; Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 98; Kühl, Geschichte der Stadt und des Klosters Ribnitz in Einzeldarstellungen; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 441–442; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 654; Wenzel, Die Beziehungen der Landesherren von Mecklenburg zu den Franziskanern/Klarissen; Huschner, ‘Heinrich II. von Mecklenburg, Anna von Sachsen-Wittenberg und die Klarissen’, 7–31; Idem, ‘Die Gründung des Klarissenklosters Ribnitz (1323/24–1331). Eine landesherrliche Stiftung gegen städtischen und weltgeistlichen Widerstand’, 333–352. 264 The monastery survived until the sixteenth century. Henche, ‘Das Kloster Bärbach’, 129–165; Die Klöster Bärbach, Beselich, Dirstein und Gnadenthal, Das Johanniterhaus Eschenau und die Klause Fachingen. Regesten [vor 1153] –1634, ed. Struck, passim; Meyer, ‘Gräfijin und Eremit gründeten das Klarissenkloster Bärbach’, 170–174; Güll, ‘Das fast verges- sene Kloster Bärbach’, 63–66. the expansion of the order 143 and went on to become abbess between 1348 and 1358. Female family members repeatedly held the abbatiate position in the decades thereafter.265 An almost contemporaneous foundation was the Clarissan monastery of Bamberg. It was created around 1340 outside the city walls in the south- ern part of the Zinkenwörth quarter by the Bamberg patrician families Zollner, Reichenitz and Hutwan, and with the explicit support of the Bamberg Bishop Leupold II of Eglofffstein. Four women from the Zollner family involved with the monastery’s creation were among the fijirst occu- pants. Nine nuns from Nuremberg, led by Gutta (Jutta) Ebner, came over to instruct the community in the Clarissan lifestyle. The house was meant to house approximately 24 nuns, yet it would seem that this number was quickly exceeded, due to the enthusiasm with which daughters of Bamberg patrician families flocked to the monastery.266 The same decade saw the appearance of the Clarissan monastery of Obbrussel (Bruxelles-St. Giles), established with the help of Willem of Duvenvoorde in 1343,267 the monastery of Den Bosch (in the far North of

265 Merx, Urkundenbuch des Klarissenklosters, späteren Damenstiftes Klarenberg; Reimann, ‘Konrad von der Mark (1353), Kanoniker, Ritter und Franziskaner’, 168–183; Schilp, ‘Clarenberg-Klarissen’, 181–185; Sollbach, Leben in märkischen Frauenklöstern und adligen Damenstiften in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, 186–256. 266 The monastery soon housed around 40 choir nuns. There are indications that the monastery had structural difffijiculties in supporting such a large community (with addi- tional lay sisters and servants). By the fijifteenth century, the number of choir nuns had been reduced to about 20. This number would rise again after Observant reforms had taken place in 1460. The initial founders were the young adolescent Katharina Zollner and her aunt Kunigunde Hutwan. The Zinkenwörth quarter, which was almost a little island, embraced by arms of the Regnitz river and the waters of the Weißgerbergraben, fell directly under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Bamberg, who wholeheartedly supported the erec- tion and maintenance of the monastery. Wittmann, ‘Zur Geschichte des St. Klara Klosters in Bamberg und dessen Äbtissin Dorothea, Markgräfijin von Brandenburg’, 65–66, 73–74, 81–83, 89–91 & passim; Götz, ‘Das ehemalige Klarissenkloster in Bamberg’, 341–345; Meyer, ‘Das Klarakloster in Bamberg’, 90–92; Maret, ‘Die Klarissen in Bamberg’, 613–616; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel Mondo tedesco’, 437; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 551; Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster im Mittelalter, 38, 61fff.; Göller, ‘Frauenklöster im Bistum Bamberg’, 177–186. 267 Offfijicial papal permission in the shape of a papal bull adressed to Willem van Duvenvoorde, came in January 1344 (Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 143). Three nuns from Neuss and three from Luxemburg arrived by October 1345 to introduce the Clarissan life- style in the new foundation, which became known as the ‘Nazareth’ monastery. Jan Ruusbroec from the nearby Groenendaal monastery wrote around 1350 several treatises for the nuns of Obbrussel (esp. for Margaretha of Meerbeek, then cantor of the monastery), who were highly literate and probably ran a scriptorium. Lindemans, ‘De pachthoven van het klooster der Urbanisten (Rijke Klaren) te Brussel’, 82–85, 237–240 & passim; Juvyns, Le couvent des Riches Claires à Bruxelles (1343–1585); Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 562; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 82–93 (with additional references). 144 chapter three the Duchy of Brabant), which was erected with the help of nuns from Cologne,268 as well as houses in Liège (c. 1345/49),269 Echternach (Luxemburg, 1346),270 and Hof in Vogtland (probably in 1348). The last house in this list was founded by an alliance of noble families, consisting of the wider Uttenhofen clan (bailifffs of Weida, Gera and Plauen), the counts of Orlamünde and the family of the viscounts (Burggrafen) of Nuremberg. This alliance was mirrored in the composition of the monas- tic population and the division of the monastic offfijices.271 After 1348, the creation of Poor Clare monasteries came to an abrupt halt. It would seem that the onslaught of the Plague and subsequent eco- nomic difffijiculties hampered further expansion in the German lands more than elsewhere. That, within the German lands, the nobility patronized female monastic houses from other orders as least as much as the Poor Clares, also played a role. The choice to support a Clarissan house was therefore not such a matter of course as in Italy or Southern France.272

268 This Urbanist Clarissan foundation was made possible through a testamentary bequest by Willem of Den Bossche (Guilelmus de Busco), lord of Erp. This deed from 1335 designated his property ‘De Nootboom’ to the building of a future monastery of Poor Clares. By 1344, all legal obstacles were taken and the construction could begin. In May 1348, papal permission was granted for the offfijicial canonical erection of the monastery with all the proper exemptions and priviliges. The fijirst nuns arrived the following year from Brussels or Cologne. Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 31–32, 426; Heel, ‘De Clarissen van ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 485–495; Idem, ‘Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van het Clarissenklooster van ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 230–238; Idem, ‘De Clarissen te ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 27–35; Idem, ‘Bijzonderheden over de Clarissen van ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 41–64; Juten, ‘Het klooster der Clarissen te ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 193–200; Hoekx, Het Archief der Rijke Klarissen te ‘s-Hertogenbosch, 1335–1668; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 663; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 93–101 (with additional references). 269 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 384, 673; Lippens, ‘Une bulle en faveur des Clarisses de Liège, restée inconnue’, 387–389; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 606. 270 Wadding, Annales Minorum XI, 196; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, no. 356; Schorn, Eiflia sacra. Geschichte der Klöster und geistlichen Stiftungen der Eifel I, 538–540; Wauer, Entstehung, 158f; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 438; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 582. 271 Most modern scholars state that the monastery was founded in 1348. Older literature sometimes traces its fijirst beginnings back to 1317, suggesting that the house was refounded in 1348. The recent study of Clift Boris negates this with convincing arguments. From 1348 date the most important surviving foundation documents, including the confijirmation issued by Bishop Friedrich of Hohenlohe. Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 439; Ebert, ‘Die Klarissen in Hof’, 101–120, 610–612; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 597; Moser, ‘Ausgrabungen im Klarissenkloster von Hof’, 184–186; Röttger & Groß, Klarissen, 48; Clift Boris, ‘Probleme der Gründung des Klarissenklosters St. Klara in Hof’, 31–36; Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 55–57. The monastery of Hof sufffered in 1430 from Hussite attacks, and underwent religous reforms in and after 1502, after which the monastery was only open to noble postulants. It was secularised in 1553. 272 Cf. the discussion in Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften’, 97f, which draws atten- tion to the presence of Beguines, Reuerinnen, female Dominican houses and Cistercian nunneries and points at the reluctant attitude of the Franciscans with regard to the cura monialium of potential new Clarissan monasteries. the expansion of the order 145

This became increasingly signifijicant when founding opportunities dwin- dled. Aside from an apparently abortive attempt at building a Poor Clare monastery at Esevelt in 1357,273 the only viable Clarissan foundation, or rather transformation of an existing house within the German Franciscan provinces during the second half of the fourteenth century, seems to have been the monastery of Wittichen (Schenkenzell, in the Black Forest). This house had started as a beguine or tertiary community in 1324, led by the charismatic Luitgard (Lutgard) of Wittichen, and with the material sup- port of the dukes of Teck and the counts of Geroldseck. By 1376, when it had evolved into a well endowed, yet not fully regulated monastic settle- ment (with substantial possessions in Wittichen, Kaltbrunn, and the more distant Rhine and Neckar regions), Pope Gregory XI more-or-less ordered it to be incorporated into the order of Poor Clares. This process was com- pleted by 1395, when a papal bull mentions it as a Poor Clare monastery following a slightly modifijied Urbanist rule. By that time the community would have numbered no fewer than 100 members.274 During the fijirst half of the fijifteenth century, the pace of Clarissan foun- dations in the German lands gradually increased again, even before the impact of Observant reforms. Still, the information on several houses erected during this period is extremely scarce.275

Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Greece and the Middle East

The Poor Clares also obtained a foothold in Central and Eastern Europe (roughly the medieval Franciscan provinces of Bosnia, Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, including the most Eastern fringes of the Saxony prov- ince),276 and even established houses further to the North (Scandinavia)

273 Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 304; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 582. 274 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 398, 693–694; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 572–573; Wauer, Entstehung, 125–126; Heizmann, Das Frauenkloster Wittichen; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 443; Gatz, ‘Wittichen/Schwarzwald’, 239; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 686. 275 Cases in point are two Clarissan foundations in the Paderborn diocese, namely Detmold (possibly erected in the early fijifteenth century, but closed before or in 1447) and Herford (a transformation of a beguine, later tertiary foundation, turned into a Clarisssan house before 1412). Not much is known on either of these houses. See: Wehlt, ‘Detmold – Klarissen’, 237; Renz, ‘Herford - Klarissen’, 429–430. 276 Informative overviews concerning Clarissan houses in Bohemia, Hungary and Poland are: Pandzic, ‘Le Clarisse nel mondo slavo-magiaro’, 449–463; Vanis, ‘Entwicklung der Frauenklöster nach Regeln in den böhmischen Ländern von ihren Anfängen bis zur Zeit ihrer Aufhebung’, 925–935; Pásztor, ‘S. Chiara e le clarisse in Ungheria’, 27–36; Gasiorowska, ‘Dzieje zakonu klarysek na ziemiach polskich’, 33–40. Moreover, the available architectonical and archaeological evidence concerning Poor Clare monasteries in Central 146 chapter three and to the East, in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. Still, these regions remained relatively marginal with regard to the number of monas- teries that came into being during the medieval period. The penetration of Central and Eastern Europe already began during Clare’s lifetime: Between 1231 and 1234, Princess Agnes of Bohemia (daugh- ter of King Premysil Ottokar I and sister of King Wenzel/Wenceslas) estab- lished a large Damianite monastery in Prague (‘Na Frantisku’), and engaged in an epistolary exchange with Clare of Assisi concerning the direction of the religious life to follow (see Chapter Two). Initially, the new Damianite house at Prague maintained a hospital. Yet when the monastery adopted the Ugolinian rule with its enclosed monastic lifestyle and tried to emu- late the monastic regime of Clare’s San Damiano community more closely, the hospital closed (its former caretakers (Crosiers of the Red Star) became a community under Dominican supervision). Instead, Agnes of Prague founded a new Franciscan friary adjacent to her monastery. The friars of this house, were meant to serve the large Damianite community and to take responsibility for the liturgical upkeep of the large convent church.277 Before Clare’s death in 1253, a total of seven Damianite houses had been erected in Central and Eastern Europe. Aside from the famous house of Agnes in Prague, the oldest of these was Sancta Maria Assunta near Trnava (Tyrnau) in the Carpates region (present-day Slovakia). Following the example of Prague, it transformed from an unregulated community into an enclosed Damianite monastery by 1238. Shortly thereafter, in 1241, the and Eastern Europe has received increasing scholarly attention since the 1970s: Entz, ‘Die Baukunst der Bettelorden im mittelalterlichen Ungarn’, 487–492; Grzibkowski, ‘Early Mendicant Architecture in Central-Eastern Europe. The present state of research’, 135–156; Idem, ‘Das Problem der Langchöre in Bettelordens-Kirchen im östlichen Mitteleuropa des 13. Jahrhunderts’, 152–168; Feld & Szeker, ‘Die neueren Ergebnisse der archäologischen Erforschung der Klöster der Bettelorden in Ungarn’, 239–250. Quite a few of the larger Poor Clare monasteries are also discussed in some detail in Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, passim. 277 Wadding, Annales Minorum II, 415–416, 689; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 134–136 (no. 138 and following) & 156 (no. 165); Mocker & Tomek, Das Agnes-Kloster in Prag; Münzer, Das Agneskloster in der Prager Altstadt. Ein Beiträg zur Geschichte der Frühgotik; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 650; Marini, ‘Chiara e Agnese di Boemia’, 123fff; Klaniczay,Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, 204fff, 238fff.; Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 40fff.; Felskau, Agnes von Böhmen und die Klosteranlage der Klarissen und Franziskaner in Prag I, 213–214, 230–321; Curry, ‘Clarist Double Monasteries in Central Europe’, 135–139. The new Franciscan friary (more or less completed by the late 1240s) and the Damianite house formed a dual monastery. By founding the new Franciscan com- pound, Agnes bypassed the Franciscans of the local St. James friary, who had proved to be reluctant in providing spiritual care to the women (in line with the offfijicial policies of the Franciscan order leaders after 1239). the expansion of the order 147 monastery was destroyed by Mongol forces. It was eventually refounded as an Urbanist Poor Clare monastery after the 1260s.278 Other houses from this early period were the John the Baptist monastery at Olomuc (Olomouc/Olmütz) in Moravia, founded by Princess Cunegunda between 1242 and 1248,279 the monasteries of Sandomierz (1242),280 Korczyn (c. 1250)281 and Lubichow (c. 1250),282 and Kloster Paradis in Judenburg (1253) in Styria (Steiermark, present-day Austria).283 By 1263, the year Pope Urban IV issued his new rule for what subse- quently became known as the order of Poor Clares, some seven to nine additional houses had been erected. The number depends on the way one wishes to count. Between the late 1240s and 1254, a Damianite house had begun to emerge at Cracow (Poland), dedicated to St. Andrew.284 Salomea of Poland, the sister of King Boleslaw and a niece of Elisabeth of Thüringen, had been involved with the preparations to establish a Damianite monastery near the Franciscan friary at Sandomierz, no doubt influenced by the activities of princess Agnes in Prague. In the mean time, she and her brother Boleslaw took initiatives to found a dual monastery at Zawichost. Building activities at Zawichost had begun in earnest by 1257, yet the monastery was hardly up and running, with the support of nuns from Prague, when it was abandoned, due to its vulnerability to Mongol attacks.285 The monastery was refounded at Skala (Grodzisko) around 1260, although a part of the monastic community from Zawichost found refuge in Cracow. The Cracow monastery also became the refuge for the

278 Wauer, Entstehung, 100; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 675; Orisko, ‘Kostol klarisiek v Trnave. Príspevok k problematike stredovekej architektúry mendikantov na Slovensku’, 353–368. 279 Pandzic, ‘Le Clarisse’, 451; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 636. The house seems to have been put on a proper footing by the end of the thirteenth century. 280 Monumenta Poloniae Historica III, 1; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 660. 281 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 603. 282 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 609. 283 Building preparations for the monastic Church of the Judenburg monastery started in the 1250s and it was fully completed in 1277. A bull by Innocent IV from 1254 to promote its construction has survived. Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 412; Bullarium Franciscanum II, 718–719; Analecta Franciscana I, 204; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 600; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 102. 284 In 1325, the community moved to a new site, to be joined there by the nuns from the Skala monastery (see below), which by then was no longer safe. Bullarium Franciscanum III, 343–344, V, 284–285; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 577 (with a list of abbesses); Wlodarek, Pax et bonum - Skarby klarysek krakowskich. 285 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 111; Monumenta Historica Poloniae III, 52 & IX, 99; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 688; Pleszczynski, ‘Fundacja opactwa klarysek w Zawichoscie w 1254 roku a aspiracje polityczne Boleslawa Wstydliwego’, 177–192; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 109fff. Curry, ‘Clarist Double Monasteries’, 142–144. 148 chapter three nuns who had resettled at Skala, when this latter house was destroyed in the early fourteenth century.286 The later 1250s also witnessed the building of the Sankt Dorothea mon- astery at Breslau (Wroclaw) in the Franciscan order province of Saxony. Plans for the creation of that monastery were apparently much older, but it took a considerable time before it was fijinally realized, starting from 1257 onwards. Like the monasteries of Agnes of Prague and Salomea of Poland, the monastery in Breslau had a dual monastery setup, and succeeded (at least for a while) in observing Clare’s Forma Vitae.287 Besides this foun- dation, additional Damianite houses were started in the later 1250s and the years thereafter at Kalisz (Pommern, Poland),288 Stary Sacz (Sandec, in the Cracow region),289 Bernassia,290 and Gniezno,291 The Stary Sacz and Gniezno monasteries were founded by sisters from the same royal family: the former came into being with support from Cunegunda of Poland (Kinga, d. 1292), daughter of King Bela IV of Hungary and also a niece of the famous Elisabeth of Thüringen; the Gniezno house was probably founded somewhat earlier (1276/84) by Cunegunda’s sister Jolenta of Poland (Yolanda, d. 1298). Both Cunegunda and Jolenta joined the monas- tery they had helped to found after the death of their respective husbands (Boleslaw V the Chaste and Boleslaw the Pious). Hence, Cunegunda retired

286 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 279–280, 605–606; Monumenta Historica Poloniae III, 99; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 664. 287 It had been envisaged as early as 1241 as a Damianite house by the sister of Agnes of Prague and her brother in law, Duke Henryk II Pobozny (Henry the Pious). These plans were thwarted by the fijirst Mongol invasions, during which Hernryk died in the battle of Legnica. Building started for real by 1257, with ample donations from Duke Heinrich III of Schlesia. The church was consecrated by the local bishop in 1260. Wauer, Die Anfänge, 71; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel Mondo tedesco’, 437; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 559; Reisch, Geschichte des Klosters und der Kirche St. Dorothea in Breslau; Sutowicz, ‘Fundacja klasztoru klarysek wroclawskich na tle fundacji innych placówek zenskiego zakonu fran- ciszkanskiego na ziemiach polskich’, 36–48; Curry, ‘Clarist Double Monasteries in Central Europe’, 139–141. 288 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 601. 289 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 667; Stefaniak, ‘Agnieszka z Sacza, zmarla w opini swietosci klaryska - reprezentantka pierwszego pokolenia mniszek starosadeckich’, 109–118; Sulkowska, Za klauzura: starosadecki klasztor klarysek od zalozenia do wspolczes- nosci. There is a lot of confusion in the available secondary literature on the actual found- ing date of the Stary Sacz monastery. Many scholars mix up Cunegunda’s or Kinga’s date of entrance in the monastery with its foundation date. Even when that is not the case, a large number of diffferent dates are mentioned, ranging from 1256 to 1280. 290 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 555. 291 Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 134; Monumenta Poloniae Historica III, 172 & V, 233; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 593; Szulc, ‘Klasztor klarysek w Gnieznie’, 49–66; Idem, ‘Dzieje klasztoru klarysek w Gnieznie’, 117–128. the expansion of the order 149 to Stary Sacz and was elected abbess a few years before her death. Jolenta, who initially had joined her sister, eventually became abbess in her own foundation at Gniezno. If we ignore the transformation of the female Benedictines at Zara (Zadar, Croatia) on the Adriatic coast into a Damianite and later Clarissan monastery by 1260, which can be said to fall within the orbit of the Italian Clarissan world,292 the Clarissan expansion in Central and Eastern Europe experienced a second wave from the early 1270s onwards. This wave started more or less with the creation of the monastery of Eger (Cheb, Bohemia). Offfijicially within the Eastern Leipzig custody of the Franciscan province of Saxony, it had begun before 1270 (and possibly as early as the 1250s) as a somewhat unregulated community (sorores minimum fratrum), patron- ized by King Ottokar of Bohemia. By 1278, the Franciscan cardinal protec- tor asked the Franciscan provincial minister of the Saxony province to regulate this house, which by then apparently presented itself to the world as a Poor Clare monastery, but was still not offfijicially recognized as such. With the help of Poor Clares from Seußlitz, the Urbanist lifestyle was introduced. Its transformation seems to have been completed by 1285 or 1287. Thereafter, the Clarissan house at Eger/Cheb continued to develop into a dual monastery (in conjunction with the adjacent Franciscan fri- ary), modeled organizationally and architecturally on the St. Franz mon- astery of Prague.293 Other houses created in the course of the 1270s were Znojmo (Znaim, Moravia, 1271/74),294 Pyzdry (Poland, 1277),295 and Sanok (Poland, 1279).296 This second wave of expansion continued through the remainder of the thirteenth century. By the end of the 1280s, Clarissan monasteries had been established or were in the process of being erected at

292 According to older legends, the Zara Benedictines would have become Damianites after Francis of Assisi had healed the abbess of the monastery. The historical evidence sug- gests that the transformation took place around 1260. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 398; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 687. 293 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 582; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 438; Vanis, ‘Entwicklung der Frauenklöster’, 928; Voigt, ‘Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften’, 96–97; Groß & Röttger, Klarissen, 44–48; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 110f. 294 Started with support of King Ottokar of Hungary by 1271 and completed three years later as a dual monastery. Four nuns from Assisi would have been brought in to give direc- tion to the religious life of the nuns. Wadding, Annales Minorum IV, 382, 470 & V, 473–474; Pandzic, ‘Le Clarisse’, 451; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 688; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 111f; Vanis, Entwicklung der Frauenklöster’, 928. 295 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 651. 296 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 660. 150 chapter three

Troppau (Opava, Schlesia, between 1288 and 1302),297 and Radom (Poland, 1288).298 The latter also absorbed the women from an apparently abortive attempt at creating a house at Brzeznica in 1286.299 Around the same time a tentative start was probably made with the Poor Clare monasteries of Dürnstein and Vienna in Austria. In the case of Vienna, a provisional community might have been in place before 1290, but the monastic church was only begun after 1303, when the Vienna Poor Clare project came under the protection of the Habsburg archducal family. The monas- tery itself was apparently not fully completed until the 1340s.300 The Dürnstein monastery was likewise a protracted project. Started around 1289 by Leuthold I of Kuenring, it was not fijinished until well into the 1330s.301 By 1300, initiatives for the building of at least another six Poor Clare monastic houses had begun, bringing the total of Poor Clare monasteries in Middle and Eastern Europe to around 28. These initiatives included a settlement in Transylvania (Rumania),302 and the better-documented houses of Dubrovnik (Croatia, 1290), Radziejów (Poland, c. 1290),303 Oborniki (above Poznan in Poland, 1292),304 Münchendorf (present-day Mekine, founded before or in 1300 by Siegfried of Gallenberg),305 and Bratislava (Pozsony/Preßburg). The latter was created in a Cistercian

297 Wauer, Entstehung, 98; Pandzic, ‘Le Clarisse’, 451; Vanis, ‘Entwicklung der Frauenklöster’, 928; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 675; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 110f. 298 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 652; Gasiorowska, ‘Dzieje zakonu klarysek’, passim. 299 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 563. 300 In all, it would have meant a very slow building process. Surprisingly enough, per- mission to create a new house of Poor Clares outside the town walls was given in 1363. Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 353; Zák, ‘Zur Geschichte des Frauenklosters Sankt Klara in Wien’, 353–358; Perger & Brauneis, Die mittelalterlichen Kirchen und Klöster Wiens, 207, 225fff.; Moorman,Medieval Franciscan Houses, 683; Stoklaska, Zur Entstehung der ältesten Wiener Frauenklöster, 69–71; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 143–144. 301 Donin, Die Bettelordenskirchen in Österreich, 178f.; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 581; Gröbl, Das Klarissenkloster in Dürnstein an der Donau 1289–1571; Idem, ‘Das personelle Umfeld des Klarissenklosters Dürnstein an der Donau im Spiegel seiner Quellen’, 150–164; Idem, ‘Das ehemalige Klarissenkloster’, 154–307; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 106–107. 302 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 679; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 636. 303 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 652; Gasiorowska, ‘Dzieje zakonu klarysek’, passim. 304 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 636. 305 Greiderer, Germania Franciscana I, 255; Wauer, Entstehung, 107–108; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 627. the expansion of the order 151 monastery that had been abandoned and destroyed by military skirmishes between Bohemia and Hungary around 1274. Poor Clares from Trnava repopulated it by 1297. A new church was built at the turn of the four- teenth century.306 Throughout the following century, some 20 additional houses follo- wed. As in previous periods, the creation of these houses occurred in concentrated waves. Some four houses were started during the fijirst decade of the fourteenth century, namely the ‘Italian’ monasteries at Capodistria (Koper) and Skradin on the Adriatic coast,307 the monastery at Gross- Glogau (Glogów, Silesia, 1307),308 and the Santa Chiara monastery of Split (again on the Adriatic coast, 1308).309 A second wave occurred around 1320, with houses at Brno (Tsjechia),310 Jungfernteinitz (Panensky-Tynec, Tsjechia),311 and St. Veit an der Glan (Austria).312 Another group of three came into being between 1334 and 1341, namely the tiny Poor Clare monas- tery at Szaszvaros (present-day Rumania), which was rebuilt in the 1370s,313 the monastery of Nagyvárad (Oradea/Großwardein, 1340),314 and the large monastery of Obuda (Altofen, before 1341). The Obuda monastery was a typical Eastern-European royal founda- tion. Queen Elisabeth of Hungary had received permission to establish a large Poor Clare monastery in or near Buda from Pope John XXII by 1334. After her son, King Ludwig of Hungary transferred the royal court more to the South and handed the Obuda or Altofen castle to his mother, Elisabeth began the monastic building process on the castle grounds in 1343. Three years later the construction was sufffijiciently advanced for the fijirst nuns to enter. Sources indicate that the Poor Clare monastery at Obuda and its church in particular, were veritable masterpieces of late medieval religious

306 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 650. 307 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 566 & 665. 308 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 501; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 17; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 594; Konopnicka-Szatarska, ‘Klaryski glogowskie’, 91–100. 309 Wauer, Entstehung, 102; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 665. 310 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 398; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 560. 311 Wauer, Die Anfänge, 71; Wauer, Entstehung, 99; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 600; Vanis, ‘Entwicklung’, passim. 312 Founded in 1323 by Konrad and Diemut of Aufffenstein. The fijirst nuns were able to enter the new monastic compound by 1326. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 71, 453–456; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 310–312; Wauer, Entstehung, 108; Ginhart, Die Stadt St. Veit an der Glan in Kärnten, 26–27; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 659. 313 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 668. 314 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 629. 152 chapter three architecture. To secure the upkeep of the monastery and its community, the royal family and other high placed nobles provided it with extensive landed possessions, including a number of villages in Hungary and Western Slovakia.315 During the late 1350s and early 1360s, there was yet another wave of Clarissan foundations, starting with Lack (Austria) in 1358,316 and followed around 1360 by Poor Clare monasteries at Brolio (Hungary),317 Skofijja-Loka (Bischoflak, Slovenia),318 and shortly thereafter at Kotor in Dalmatia (by 1364).319 Moreover, a large Poor Clare monastery had come into being by the late 1350s or early 1360s at Krumlov (Krummau, Bohemia). The founda- tion of this Clarissan house followed an initial settlement for Franciscan friars, efffectuated between 1347 and 1350. The Krumlov Clarissan founda- tion evolved quickly into a large dual monastery for men and women, probably inspired in its setup by the large dual monasteries erected by the Habsburg, Piast and Przemysliden dynasties in Prague, Breslau (Wroclaw), Königsfelden und Znojmo (Znaim).320 Finally, four houses were established at the very end of the fourteenth century. These were the monasteries of Sarospatak (Hungary, 1385),321 Valduna in Vorarlberg (Carinthia), which housed a community of women by 1391 that might not have become an offfijicial Poor Clare monastery

315 The church and the cloister were more or less completely destroyed in 1541 by the advancing Turks. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 463 (no. 175); Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 274 (no. 641); Altmann & Bertalan, ‘Obuda im Spätmittelalter’, 185–200; Bertalan, ‘Das Klarissenkloster von Obuda aus dem 14. Jahrhundert’, 151–176; Bertalan, ‘Das Klarissenkloster von Obuda (Altofen)’, 153–175 (Hungarian text with German and English summary); Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 151fff.; McEntree, ‘The Burial Site Selection of a Hungarian Queen’, 69–82. 316 Wauer, Entstehung, 108–109; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 604. 317 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 561. 318 Greiderer, Germania Franciscana I, 259; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 665. 319 This seems to have been a foundation initiated by town citizens, who obtained permission to acquire a ruined Benedictine house and transform it into a monastery of Poor Clares. Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 381–382; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 570. 320 Klimesch, Urkunden- und Regestenbuch des ehemaligen Klarissen-Klosters in Krummau; Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 311–312; Wauer, Entstehung, 99; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 603–604; Soukupová, ‘Kláster minoritu a klarisek v Ceskem Krumlove’, 69–86; Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 146fff. 321 Wauer, Entstehung, 168; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 661. the expansion of the order 153 before 1402,322 Sebeniko (Sibenik, Dalmatia, 1391),323 and Nin (on the Adriatic Coast, c. 1395).324 Poor Clares also ventured further to the North and the East. In the Franciscan Dacia province (present-day Scandinavia), two houses were built within the thirteenth century. The oldest of these was the Damianite (and later Poor Clare) settlement at Roskilde (Denmark), which was founded by 1258.325 This was followed between 1286 and 1289 by a royal Clarissan foundation in Stockholm by King Ladislaw (Magnus Ladulås), where his own daughter would enter at the age of six.326 Three and possi- bly fijive Poor Clares monasteries were furthermore established in Greek territory, which had become available for Italian Catholic exploits in the aftermath of the fourth crusade. Before the end of the thirteenth century,

322 Wauer, Entstehung, 127; Gatz, ‘Valduna/Vorarlberg’, 46–80; Ludewig, Das ehemalige Klarissenkloster in Valduna; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 678–679. The house was initiated by Count Rudolf of Montfort and the Franciscan custodian and preacher Marquard of Lindau. 323 Wadding, Annales Minorum IX, 122, 517; Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 16; Wauer, Entstehung, 103; Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 43 (1950), 166–167; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 662; Jurisic, Lisac & Zemljic, Knjigu od uspomene. Sibenik. This house had apparently already emerged as an unregulated community with support of Queen Elisabeth of Hungary in the 1340s. Yet it would only have become a Poor Clare monastery by 1391. 324 This monastery is listed in Roussey, ‘Atlas’, 479. As yet, I have not found any addi- tional information on the early history of this house. 325 Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 321; Bullarium Franciscanum Epit., 200; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 656; Rasmussen, Die Franziskaner in den nordischen Ländern im Mittelalter, 78–79. The Roskilde monastery (later known as St. Klara) was founded by the widow Ingerd of Reginstein, who had returned to Denmark after the death of her second husband, the German Count Konrad of Reginstein. During her married years, ‘Frau Ingerd’ had probably become acquainted with the monastic projects of Agnes of Prague. After her return to Denmark around 1246, she started initiatives to found a Damianite/Clarissan monastery. This eventually succeeded with the help of local ecclesiastics and with the assistance of nuns from Strasbourg. 326 In 1286, King Magnus Ladulås donated terrains in the western parts of the present- day Normalm city quarter of Stockholm. To these fijirst donations many more gifts and bequests of lands, villages and farmhouse complexes were added, including the island of Djurgården. When the fijirst nuns arrived in 1289, the king organised a tournament, also to celebrate the entry into the monastery for educational purposes of his young daughter Rikissa. She would remain in the monastery and ended up as its abbess by 1335. The mon- astery sufffered from fijire in 1446, and was forced to close its gates by 1527. Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 249; Wauer, Entstehung, 163; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 667; Rasmussen, Die Franziskaner in den nordischen Ländern, 97. For more information on these two settlements and the additional (short-lived) houses created in the wake of the Observant reforms by the early sixteenth century, see Rasmussen, ‘Die Klara-Schwestern im Norden Europas’, 63–68. 154 chapter three a Poor Clare monastery had started at Achaia (Northern Peloponnesus), then under the control of the Anjou dynasty of Naples,327 Yet another monastery was created at Negroponte (Chalkis, Euboea) before 1318,328 and there is also evidence from the fourteenth century for the existence of one or two houses on the Island of Crete.329 Sometime during the fourteenth century, the Poor Clares were appar- ently also present in the Genoese Colony of Cafffa (present-day Theodosia), on the Black Sea.330 Long before, the Poor Clares had obtained footholds in the Lebanese County of Tripoli (before 1255–1289),331 Antioch (c. 1257– 1268),332 and Acre (c. 1260?-1291),333 all of which were situated rather pre- cariously in the dwindling remnants of the crusader states. None of these three houses survived the loss of the last crusading strongholds in Outremer. Beyond these, there are references concerning the existence of two or three Poor Clare monasteries on the Island of Cyprus, namely in and near Nicosia and at Famagusta. These were all foundations from the later thirteenth century that eventually succumbed to the advance of the Ottoman Turks.334

Attempts at a Typology of Clarissan Houses

We have seen that quite a few of the oldest Damianite houses came into being as an expression of evangelically inspired ideals of a penitential communal religious life, which were frequently connected with social and charitative activities. The social background of the women involved was frequently rather elevated. Although there was signifijicant overlap with

327 This monastery has sometimes been erroneously situated in Sicily. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 537; Bullarium Franciscanum, Epitoma, no. 2165, 219. 328 This house lasted until 1470, when the Island fell into the hands of the Turks. Bullarium Franciscanum V, 143; Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia III, 43; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 631. 329 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 565. 330 Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia II, 547; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 564. 331 Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia I, 233 & II, 127; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 675. 332 This monastery grew out of a Benedictine settlement. In 1268 all the nuns would have been killed by Muslim forces. Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia I, 265; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 543. 333 Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia I, 350; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 537. 334 Golubovich, Bio-Bibliographia I, 270, 350–353, 397–398 & II, 264, 535–537; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 584, 632. If I interpret the documents published by Golubovich correctly, there might have been not only a Poor Clare monastery in Nicosia itself, but also another one (Santa Maria della Cave) in the neighborhood of the same town. the expansion of the order 155 the beguines in the Low Countries and the Rhineland, or the men and women that were gradually coagulating in the tertiary movements in Italy, on average Damianites and Poor Clares recruited from more elevated social strata. The ‘normalization’ of the Damianites, by which these communities came under papal protection, involved a thorough claustration. As a result, most Damianites and subsequently the Poor Clares quickly abandoned any active involvement in charitable activities, even though, as we have seen in the previous sections, a number of Clarissan houses retained for- mal oversight over hospitals and other charitable institutions for some time.335 This monastic normalization did not always occur immediately. In some cases the transformation of an unenclosed community of female penitents into a fully enclosed Clarissan monastery exempt from episco- pal oversight was a protracted process. Frequently, the Franciscan reluc- tance to take up the cura monialium for yet another Clarissan house played a role. In various other cases, a fully enclosed life ran counter to the reli- gious wishes of the women involved. For this reason they might have tried to stall their full incorporation into the Damianite/Clarissan network, or tried to reach a compromise that satisfijied both the ecclesiastical authori- ties and themselves. No doubt among these were to be found a number of the discalceatae, chordulariae, mulierculae, sorores minores and minoritae denounced in the ecclesiastical sources from the 1240s onwards (see Chapter Two), for whom the acceptance of a fully enclosed Clarissan iden- tity might have been difffijicult. The exemption from episcopal control did not always take the same form either. From papal privileges issued on behalf of Clarissan houses, one might obtain the impression that all fully ‘normalized’ Clarissan houses, especially from the end of the thirteenth century onwards, were exempt from episcopal control and subject to the authority of the Franciscan provincial minister. In fact, a number of Damianite/Poor Clare monasteries succeeded in acquiring full autonomy from episcopal control only gradually, even when papal bulls offfijicially recognizing the monastic

335 This transformation is for instance visible in the history of the Sorores Minores of Verona, which subsequently became a Damianite and later a Poor Clare monastery. It had started out as a leper hospice, fijinanced by ‘domina Garzenda’ and her close family mem- bers. Varanini, ‘Per la storia dei Minori a Verona del Duecento’, 92–125. The women from the San Michele house at Trento likewise managed a hospital, together with the Friars Minor. Varanini, ‘Uomini e donne in ospedali e monasteri del territorio trentino (secoli XII-XIV)’, 275–278. Other examples have been mentioned elsewhere in this chapter. 156 chapter three foundation and the adoption of the Ugolinian Forma Vitae or the Urbanist rule presupposed this autonomy from the outset. For instance, the San Damiano community near Assisi initially had strong links with the bishop of Assisi, which were only loosened institutionally in the course of time. Many other Damianite and subsequent Poor Clare monasteries were in a comparable situation. This also explains why some modern scholars postulate the existence of parallel networks of exempt and non- exempt Clarissan houses (under episcopal control). In many cases, it would seem, we are dealing with houses in diffferent stages of institutional emancipation. A good example is Santa Maria della Strada, to the South of Burgo Sansepolcro. The abbess and the nuns of this Sansepolcro monastery (not to be confused with San Leo or with San Francesco di Pozzuolo in the same neighborhood) still had to swear allegiance and obedience to the bishop on 31 October 1268. They only received exemption from this obedi- ence the following year, on the condition that they adhered fully to the Ugolinian (apparently not yet the Urbanist!) rule, and the bishop retained the right to dedicate the church, to consecrate the and to bless the nuns, the liturgical vestments and the other liturgical instruments. On top of that, the nuns had to give a token payment to the bishop every year on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.336 In principle, every Damianite/Poor Clare monastery stood on its own, albeit subjected to the (distant) control of the Franciscan cardinal protec- tor or the Franciscan provincial minister (depending on the period). The character and success of each and every monastery was very much deter- mined by local factors: the wealth and strength of patrons, urban ecclesi- astical policies and familial rivalries, or interfering bishops not willing to abide by the formal exemption of the Clarissan houses in their diocese. They all had repercussions for the adherence to the rule, the spiritual life of the nuns, and the ways in which the communal life developed over time.337 Aspects of this have already been touched upon at the end of Chapter Two. I will return to some of these issues in Chapter Five. Still, several monasteries apparently maintained close links with one another. Daughter houses established or transformed with considerable support from a ‘mother house’ could stay under the spiritual influence of the latter for a long time. This can be seen in the relations between the

336 Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 146–147. 337 For that reason, Giovanna Casagrande remarked that: ‘Si ha l’impressione di trovarsi di fronte a tante isole, ciascuna radicata nel proprio contesto cittadino-comunale.’ Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara in Umbria’, 497. the expansion of the order 157

Monteluce monastery at Perugia, the Monticelli monastery at Florence and their ‘mother house’ of San Damiano during Clare’s lifetime. The exis- tence of a prestigious house of Poor Clares could entice neighboring monastic communities (whether urged on to do so by the local civil and religious authorities or not) to adopt the same lifestyle, and to ask for nuns from such a prestigious ‘mother house’ to help with this transformation. Several examples have been mentioned in the course of this chapter. Especially within Italy, this sometimes led to a multiplication of Poor Clare monasteries in small areas, sometimes even within the same town, and with strong spiritual and kinship ties.338 As we will see in the next chapter, this phenomenon regained its relevance during the Observant reforms of the fijifteenth century. For those houses that were fully incorporated into the Damianite/ Clarissan fold, the future pointed towards the contemplative life, in which the nuns spent most of their time with prayer and liturgical obligations. As such, many Clarissan houses began to fijill the niche that previously had been occupied by female Benedictine settlements: monasteries where royal and noble families could bury their dead and place some of their female kin either temporarily or permanently: adolescent women that needed a safe before their betrothal, widows, and daughters that could not (or did not want to) be married offf. Houses thus fijilled could then function as mausolea, strategic repositories of family wealth, and centers of perpetual religious commemoration. Some aspects of this will again be considered in greater detail in Chapter Five. This development progressively limited the recruitment of Poor Clares to aristocratic, noble and royal families, although within the most densely urbanized areas Clarissan houses also recruited from among the urban patriciate. The origin and recruitment of individual monasteries had an impact on their size, their wealth and even on their religious character. This is another reason to say that there existed several ‘types’ of Damianite/ Clarissan monasteries, regardless of the rule followed by the houses in question.339 An important group was the one formed by the ‘high’ bourgeois/urban noble houses that we fijind in the Clarissan heartland in Central Italy and in other highly urbanized areas (such as the Southern Low Countries and the

338 Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara’, 498 explains that the Umbrian Poor Clare monas- teries in Assisi (San Damiano and later Santa Chiara), Perugia (Santa Maria di Monteluce), Citta di Castello, Gubbio, Todi (Montesanto), Foligno, Spoleto and Orvieto all had this impact on other female houses in their neighborhood. 339 This has been attempted in more detail in Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 183fff. 158 chapter three

Rhineland). Many of the earliest of these had begun as penitential com- munities started by well-to-do women (whether involved with hospitals and other charitable institutions or not), which sooner or later were ‘nor- malized’ to become Damianite or Clarissan monasteries. As said before, this normalization process could have taken considerable time, during which communities sometimes went through diffferent regulatory phases: moving from an unregulated or semi-regulated phase via a period under the Augustinian rule or the tertiary rule of 1289 towards a Damianite/ Clarissan identity. It should also be kept in mind that the Damianite/ Clarissan ‘outcome’ was not always a given, and that some monasteries down the line obtained yet another religious identity. For that reason, we should not have an overmuch teleological perspective on such develop- ments or think only in terms of orders. The single most permanent aspect was the ecclesiastical concern for enclosure of female religious communi- ties. The Clarissan format was very appealing in this regard, but by no means the only one. Based on local conditions and policy decisions, other (Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican etc.) ‘solutions’ could be enforced, sometimes without much concern for the wishes of the women involved. Closely resembling the ‘high’ bourgeois/urban noble houses from a per- spective of social stratifijication were smaller urban monasteries initiated, for instance, by individual widows of means. Sometimes, these houses were founded after a pilgrimage to Rome or the Clarissan heartland in Central Italy. These smaller houses did not always have the same peniten- tial and charitable background, and their founders might from the outset have been keen to accept a prestigious monastic model offfered to them. Thanks to the initiatives of the papacy or the local bishop, their transfor- mation into enclosed Clarissan monasteries was frequently rather smooth, although many of them remained small and sometimes poorly endowed. A third group was formed from those Clarissan houses that had a long history behind them as Basilian and/or Benedictine monasteries before they changed their rule. This was for instance the case with the Donna Regina Vecchia monastery in Naples (mentioned in the section on Italy), San Paolo near Spoleto,340 and also with the San Sebastiano monastery at Alatri (Lazio), which after more than 600 years of monastic development became a Damianite and later Poor Clare monastery. As has been said in Chapter Two, such a change was not always motivated by religious convic- tions. Sometimes it had more to do with the issue of securing spiritual care

340 This Benedictine settlement opted in or before 1226 (under the abbatiate of Abbess Ugolina) for a Damianite allegiance. Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 7, 141f. the expansion of the order 159 or with the need to escape from overbearing forms of local ecclesiastical oversight than with a total spiritual transformation. As the example of San Sebastiano indicates, the formal adoption of a Damianite and later Clarissan identity could go hand in hand with a striking indiffference to contemporary Franciscan and Poor Clare iconography.341 Starting with the Prague monastery founded by Agnes, the Damianite/ Poor Clare monastic model soon became attractive to high noble and royal patrons. This led to a number of massive monastic foundations that displayed dynastic wealth and prestige. In France and England, this fourth type followed mainly the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp. Hence, these were and remained communities of Minoresses rather than Poor Clares prop- erly speaking. Elsewhere, the majority of these royal or high noble houses came to follow the Urbanist rule. The monastery of Agnes in Prague and the Aix-en-Provence and Santa Croce monasteries created by Sancia of Majorca constitute, however, major exceptions, as they followed (to some extent) Clare’s rule from 1253. It is among this group of royal houses that we fijind some of the most impressive monastic compounds, with huge churches, and not infrequently a dual monastery setup (see the examples of Naples, Königsfelden, Obuda etc. mentioned in previous sections). As we will see in Chapter Five, it remains to be seen to what extent this resulted into an identifijiable ‘Clarissan architecture’. From the 1250s onwards, when the Clarissan model began to spread to more rural areas in Southern Italy, Spain and Southern France, we also see a signifijicant increase of smaller ‘family houses’, established or controlled by more locally entrenched noble and aristocratic families.342 Many mon- asteries of this fijifth type limited their recruitment almost entirely to the kin group of the main sponsor, and it would seem that such foundations were meant to function predominantly as storage places for unmarried daughters, and as retirement homes for other female family members and their immediate clients.343 Some of these houses later sought and obtained

341 Fentress, Goodson, Laird, & Leone, Walls and Memory, passim. In 1441, this monas- tery was taken from the Poor Clare nuns, to be given shortly thereafter as a rural villa- retreat to the humanist and papal librarian Giovanni Tortelli by Pope Nicholas V. 342 A good example is the small Genzano (Basilicato) monastery. This small community for eight nuns was founded before 1297 by an aristocratic lady of Monti Colicola, who made space in her own castle of Genzano (Lucania, then in the Kingdom of Naples). Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 460, 675–676 & VIII, 99, 501; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 322–323; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 592. 343 At Salerno, a noble lady restored a delapidated Benedictine house, and transformed it into a Poor Clare monastery, where her daughter could become the abbess. Wadding, Annales Minorum V, 651. Likewise, a cardinal created a Damianite/Poor Clare monastery at 160 chapter three royal protection, and as a result were able to develop into prestigious ‘royal’ monasteries with a wider aristocratic recruitment like the ones just mentioned.344 As I have already noted, the Damianite/Clarissan world catered from the outset to women from quite elevated strata of society. Yet, with the ris- ing interest of high noble and royal benefactors in the Damianites and the Poor Clares, especially from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards, this ‘aristocratization’ became even more pronounced. In some cases, as we again will see in Chapter Five, this could result in very relaxed forms of monastic life, and could have repercussions for the power bal- ance between the abbesses and the Franciscan friars responsible for visita- tions and the pastoral care of the nuns. At the same time, the religious regime in quite a few Clarissan houses could be stringent, as all rules to which Damianite/Poor Clares supposedly abided had very strict regulations concerning discipline and fasting. Moreover, as explained in Chapter Two, a minority of houses adhered for a shorter or longer time period to the ideals of absolute poverty propa- gated by Clare of Assisi. But even within a considerable number of Urbanist houses the lifestyle of the nuns could be rather austere, either out of ideal- ism or out of necessity. Failing support by lay benefactors, or the vicissi- tudes of war and natural disasters at times even led to starvation. This was more frequent after the 1340s, when the onset of the Plague and prolonged military conflicts began to have an impact, most of all in Spain and France. These aspects of the material realities in Clarissan monasteries will like- wise be contextualized in Chapter Five of this book. In short, monasteries of Poor Clares and Sorores Minores Inclusae could difffer signifijicantly from each other in matters of recruitment, outside interference, enclosure, poverty and other aspects of community life connected with endowment conditions and the observance of the rule. For late medieval religious reformers such diffferences could be signs of religious decadence and lack of religious discipline. The ways in which these perceived problems and defijiciencies were addressed are central in the next chapter.

Lavagna (Liguria) so that his niece, a Poor Clare from Parma, was able to become abbess. Wadding, Annales Minorum III, 412. The initiatives of the Colonna family on behalf of ‘their’ family monastery of San Pietro in Vineis mentioned earlier in this chapter were rather similar. 344 Such a move made sense, especially where monasteries became involved in con- flicts with the heirs of local patrons and with local authorities over possessions and privi- leges. See Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 211 for some French examples. the expansion of the order 161

Maps I. Italian Damianite Houses in 1228 162 chapter three o un d 1253 u ses A r II. Da m ia n ite Ho the expansion of the order 163 o un d 1400 esses A r ies a n d Ho u ses of Mi n o r r e Mo n aste r Cla III. Poo

CHAPTER FOUR

IMPLEMENTING REFORMS

Throughout the fourteenth century, there were calls for religious reforms and for a greater commitment to the exigencies of the monastic life. Such issues were central at the Council of Vienne (1311/1312), and formed the core of the famous reform statutes for the religious orders issued by Pope Benedict XII between 1335 and 1339.1 Gradually, from the closing decades of the fourteenth century onwards, attempts at reform within the vari- ous religious orders gained strength under the banner of the so-called Observant movements. In nearly all orders, these Observant movements advocated a return to an imagined pristine lifestyle. They postulated that the orders, both in capite and in membris, had succumbed to decadence by discarding loyalty to their rules, and by giving in to external pressures through which they had lost much of their initial spiritual ardor. In short, organized religious life was perceived to be in crisis.2 Within the Clarissan world, there were a number of indications of such a crisis. Adherence to the precepts of the rule, as well as a viable form of communal religious life were often conspicuously absent by the later four- teenth century. This was not solely due to failing religious stamina of a lukewarm generation, or the selling out of monastic life to the dynastic aspirations of interfering lay benefactors, who saw the monastery as a comfortable retreat for their less-deserving daughters and for widows who were unable to remarry. From the later 1340s onwards, many religious houses sufffered heavily from recurrent Plague epidemics and the efffects of prolonged military campaigns. This was particularly visible in some areas in France that were afffected by the Plague and the Hundred Years War. In the Clarissan house of Toulouse, the monastic community was reduced from around 80 women in 1330 to just four by 1370. Other houses essentially disappeared altogether because of the Plague, as was the case in Carcassone, Lavaur, Narbonne and Samatan, and had to be refounded. The Clarissan monasteries of Auterive, Béziers, Boisset, Les Cassés, Gourdon, and Le Pouget were

1 Felten, ‘Die Ordensreformen Benedikts XII’, 369–435. 2 On the general background of Observant reforms and the patterns of their unfolding, see Roest, ‘Observant Reform in Religious orders’, 446–457. 166 chapter four heavily damaged or completely destroyed by warfare, and needed to be resettled afterwards.3 In many cases, surviving nuns from destroyed monasteries extra muros moved into town. They had to restart their communal life under very dif- fijicult circumstances, due to loss of income. To make ends meet, the women sometimes had to engage in forms of economic exploitation of their goods that were not in line with the requirements of their rule. To make up for the extreme losses in population and revenue, they also had to resort to recruiting people ill-equipped to embrace a life of poverty, abstinence and obedience.4 Calamities and decline also occurred in Poor Clare settlements in other regions. Even the famous Monticelli monastery in Florence was seriously impacted. First, it sufffered from the Plague outbreaks of 1348/9, which reduced the number of nuns to 18 from more than 50 in the second half of the thirteenth century. Subsequently it was faced with a serious lack of vocations and was more or less completely depopulated by the mid fijif- teenth century. Nuns from elsewhere needed to come in to reform, or rather refound it along more Observant lines.5 The onset of the Plague and other crises did not have the same impact on the welfare of Poor Clare monasteries everywhere. Nieto has argued that, in Castile, the outbreak of the Plague and the civil war in the decades thereafter did not interrupt the long-term growth of various well-endowed Castilian Poor Clare monasteries.6 It might well be that in-depth regional studies will deliver comparable results for monasteries elsewhere. The fact remains that the urgency of reforms was felt at diffferent levels. From the closing decades of the fourteenth century onwards, a large variety of Observant reforms began to be implemented within the Clarissan world. These reforms and their results are central in this chapter. As we will see below, they did not always have the same outcome, and the type of reform chosen or imposed depended on a number of conditions. The disposition and initiatives of the women involved played a large role, as well as the rule chosen by the community, and the implementation of additional reform constitutions and convent statutes. Other important conditions included the positions taken by local secular and religious authorities, and by leading Observant and non-Observant (or Conventual)

3 Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’établissement des Clarisses’, 353, notes 3, 6, and 7. 4 See the next chapter. 5 Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità, ed. Boccali, 372; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Magliabecchiano MS XXV 595, p. 283. 6 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas en Castilla’, 620f. implementing reforms 167 friars of the Franciscan order. In many areas, Observant reforms went hand in hand with a progressive enclosure of former tertiary communities into diffferent types of Observant Clarissan monasteries, and caused a substantial number of completely new foundations. As a result, the Clarissan order, while retaining its diversity, witnessed a signifijicant expan- sion throughout the fijifteenth century and beyond.

Tordesillas

One of the earliest reforms with lasting consequences originated in the Castilian Clarissan monastery of Tordesillas. This Urbanist monastery had been founded around 1363, with the explicit task of performing interces- sory prayers on behalf of Pedro I of Castile, his mistress Maria of Padilla and their family. To this purpose, the house had received substantial endowments.7 In 1377, Pope Gregory XI freed the house from control from the Franciscan provincial minister.8 It could well be that this was motivated by thoughts of religious reform. The same pope had in 1373 appointed four Franciscan friars to reform all Poor Clare monasteries in the kingdom of Castile, although it remains unclear to what extent this measure was followed through.9 In any case, a later Castilian king, Juan I, found the nuns’ intercessory prayers on behalf of the royal family wanting. He therefore approached the Avignon pope, Clement VII, who issued several bulls between May 1380 and October 1382, which called upon the house to return to its former ‘observance’ of the Urbanist rule and to fulfijill its prayer obligations. They also made the Franciscan confessor of the king, friar Fernando of Illescas, perpetual visitator of the Tordesillas house, with full powers for the dura- tion of his life.10 This included the power to remove the abbess from offfijice and to enter the monastic enclosure to correct abuses. He could also absolve nuns and monastic personnel from sins and excommunication, as

7 Colección diplomatica de Tordesillas, ed. Castro Toledo, 76–87, 89–91, 97–98. 8 Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 582 (n. 1467). 9 This visitation was led by the Franciscan friars Arnaldo of Campania, Bernardo of Garrasona, Diego of Palencia and Juan González of Opta. It might have touched to some extent the monasteries of Sevilla, Córdoba, Jaén, Badajoz, Plasencia, Cádiz and Coria. Iriarte, Franciscan History, 451fff; Garcia Oro,F rancisco de Asis en la España medieval, 247, 408–409. 10 Bullarium Franciscanum VII, pp. 222–224 & 241–242 (nos. 599 & 660); Colección diplo- matica de Tordesillas, 136, 138, 143; López, ‘Fray Fernando de Illescas’, 241–252. 168 chapter four well as appoint and dismiss confessors and deliver punishments at his discretion.11 From 1410 onwards, Tordesillas’s reforms under its perpetual visitator began to spread. Thus emerged the congregation of Santa Maria la Real or Santa Clara de Tordesillas. By 1447 it included about fijifteen houses, with an additional fringe of communities that imitated its reforms without completely relinquishing their independence.12 The congregation itself was not built around a detailed body of legislation, but shaped predomi- nantly by the insights of the powerful visitator, who visited monasteries in person.13 When the so-called regular Observance sub vicariis (discussed more at length below) began to spread in Castile and Aragon in the later part of the fijifteenth century, the Tordesillas congregation gradually became viewed as part of this Observant movement, predominantly because several of its visitators were themselves Observant friars of that specifijic brand. The Tordesillas congregation, however, kept its distance both from the unre- formed (or Conventual) Franciscan provincial minister, and from the par- allel jurisdiction of provincial and general vicars of the emerging branch of regular Observants sub vicariis. Only under the Franciscan visitator Bernardino of Guaza (1488–1503), a friar of the regular Observance like his immediate predecessor, did Pope Innocent VIII establish a new legal framework for the Tordesillas congregation. This put the congregation nominally under the supervision of the Ultramontan Observant general vicar, to whom the Tordesillas visitator would report annually.14 Indeed, the ambitious leaders of the regular Observance sub vicariis did not consider the nominal supervision over the congregation as sufffijicient.

11 Uribe, “Primer ensayo de reforma’, 236fff. 12 Uribe, “Primer ensayo de reforma’, 240. Among the houses that became directly or indirectly part of the Tordesillas network were for instance Santander (1411), Villafrechós (1419), Palencia (1420), Rapariegos (1422), Zamora (1423), Medina del Pomar (1427), Zafra (1428), Briviesca (1438), Carrión de los Condes (1438), Valladolid (1440), Segovia (1440), Burgos (1440), Salamanca (1441), Placensia (1441), Molina (1441), Soria (1441), Amusco (1446), Moguer (1448), and Cáceres (1469). Cf. Colección diplomatica de Tordesillas, ed. Castro Toledo, xxxiv; Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 118fff.; Riesco Terrero, ‘Una intervención conciliarista’, 485–490. Lehfeldt and Riesco Terrero have shown that the reform of the Salamanca and Valladolid monasteries caused huge conflicts, and eventually did not lead to a complete subjection to the Tordesillas visitator. 13 Only in the face of pressures to incorporate the Tordesillas house into the movement of the regular Observance at the end of the fijifteenth century, did the visitator in question appeal, for strategic reasons, to Ordenaciones de la familia. These should probably be equated with the papal autonomy privileges issued in 1377. Uribe, ‘Primer ensayo de reforma’, 238, 242. 14 García Oro, La reforma de los religiosos españoles, 434–436. implementing reforms 169

Soon, the Tordesillas congregation became a target of the Observant Franciscan Cardinal Cisneros, who by the mid 1490s had been given large executive powers to promote Observant reforms within the Spanish realms. This included the authority to organize visitations to all Clarissan and tertiary houses. The Tordesillas visitator Bernardino of Guaza, who already had given up Tordesillas’s total independence, now saw his powers further curtailed. In the past, the Tordesillas visitator could always rely on the Castilian crown to support the congregation’s claims to autonomy against outside interference. But now the royal couple Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile had become convinced of the importance of religious unifor- mity under the umbrella of the regular Observance. Moreover, Cardinal Cisneros, the motor behind the regular Observance in Spain, was the queen’s confessor. By November 1503, Cisneros delegated the Castilian Franciscan provin- cial vicar and his own subordinate commissioners to reform all the female houses in his Observant province. When Guaza continued to object, with reference to the independent status of the monasteries of the Tordesillas congregation, Cisneros had him incarcerated. In response to further pro- tests, Pope Julius II decided to back the cardinal and his Spanish royal patrons. As a result, the Tordesillas congregation lost its independence. The majority of its houses now answered to the Observant provincial vicar and the visitators chosen by him. Some monasteries continued to resist and were subdued with force. A small group of houses only escaped Observant oversight temporarily by shifting allegiance to the Conventual Franciscan provincial minister.15

The Colettines

Further to the North, a diffferent Clarissan reform movement was initiated in the early fijifteenth century by Nicolette (‘Colette’) Boylet of Corbie (1381–1447). Colette was born in the Picardian town of Corbie in Picardy on 13 January 1381, as the daughter of Robert Boylet and Marguerite Moyon. Her father worked as a carpenter for the local Benedictine abbey. Colette’s parents died when she was seventeen years old. She sold all her posses- sions to join a beguine community, but this apparently did not suit her. She then joined a female Benedictine monastery as a conversa (lay sister),

15 Uribe, ‘Primer ensayo de reforma’, 299–306. 170 chapter four perhaps motivated not only by faith but also to avoid entering into a mar- riage arranged by her guardian, the Benedictine of Corbie. She later obtained a comparable position in the royal abbey of Moncel (a house of Minoresses that followed the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp).16 Dissatisfijied with the life of aco nversa, she soon looked for other options. One was apparently proposed to her by Jean Pinet, the reformist Franciscan guardian of the Hesdin friary. He strengthened her orientation towards the Franciscan family, and advised her to become a recluse.17 After obtaining permission to leave her conversa life at Moncel behind, and with the backing of Jean Pinet and her former guardian (the Benedictine abbot of Corbie), Colette donned in September 1402 the tertiary habit, and had a little cell built for herself between two buttresses of the local church of Saint-Étienne of Corbie. She embarked on what was supposed to be a secluded life of fasting, penitential exercises and prayer.18 Between 1402 and 1406, Colette obtained a reputation as a devout recluse and something of a visionary. Possibly stimulated by her contacts with reform-minded Franciscan friars such as Jean Pinet and, after his death, her new confessor Henry of Baume (1367–1444), a man who main- tained close contacts with the Burgundian dukes, Colette began to receive visions. In several of them, Francis and Clare of Assisi supposedly asked her to restore poverty and discipline within the Franciscan family.19 Thus inspired, Colette obtained permission from the bishop of Amiens, Jean of Boissy, to leave her cell in October 1406. Together with her Franciscan confessor Henry of Baume and several high noble ladies (such as Blanche of , the sister of the former Avignon pope, Clement VII),

16 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 47–48 mentions that this might have been not only a mat- ter of humility (as the biographers of Colette seem to indicate), but also a matter of money. Colette probably did not have a proper monastic dowry to offfer. Whatever might have been the case, there are some interesting typological correspondences with the early religious trajectory of Clare of Assisi. 17 As Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq has indicated, becoming a recluse was a viable road towards a religious vocation for those too poor to provide a proper monastic dowry. L’Hermite-Leclercq, ‘Reclus et recluses dans le Sud-Ouest de la France’, 281–298. 18 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 47: ‘La fonction du reclus est de prier pour la cité qui le nourrit; il est comme le bouc émissaire du peuple pécheur…’ See in general on the socio- religious roles of recluses also Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe, passim. 19 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 53–54 remarks that the hagiographical tradition concern- ing Colete is quite divergent on this topic. The hagiographical text composed by the Franciscan friar Pierre of Vaux hardly mentions Clare at all, and gives pride of place to Francis of Assisi, who as founder of the Friars Minor and the Poor Clares demands Colette to reform his family. In the Mémoire written by the Colettine nun Élisabeth of Bavière, on the other hand, both Francis and Clare ask Colette to reform their orders. In addition the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene are present. implementing reforms 171

Colette traveled to the reform-minded Benedict XIII, then residing in Nice. The pope clothed her in the Clarissan habit and gave her his permission to establish a community along the lines of Clare of Assisi’s ideals of poverty.20 Although this fijirst privilege was cautious, giving permission for only one community, it was remarkable in that it made reference to absolute poverty, and thereby reached back to the poverty privileges once granted to Clare of Assisi’s San Damiano community.21 It tied in to the reform agenda of the late Jean Pinet and Henry of Baume, both of whom belonged to a reformist party of Burgundian friars. The papal decision cohered with this agenda. Nearly two years prior to Colette’s visit to Benedict XIII, the same pope had already given the Franciscan minister general for the Avignon obedience special powers to reintroduce rigor and discipline into the Clarissan order. Benedict’s benevolence towards Colette might also have been motivated by the fact that two of his own sisters were Poor Clare nuns, both of whom had already shown reformatory ambitions in their own monasteries in Spain.22 Colette soon received permission to establish or to reform other reli- gious houses, and to draw on male Franciscan communities to assist her.23 The pope also assigned the Franciscan friar Henry of Baume the task of guiding Colette in her effforts. Although the actions of Benedict XIII can be contextualized, it remains difffijicult to pinpoint what motivated him to put his trust in the young Colette as the initiator of Observant reforms. In any case, backed by papal documents, Colette and Henry returned with their entourage to the Corbie area to implement their program.24

20 Bullarium Franciscanum, VII, 342 (n. 1004). Dated 29 April 1406, this bull adressed at Colette, ‘mulieri reclusae in loco de Corbie Ambianem’, gave her permission ‘…fundandi (…) unum monasterium monialium inclusarum ordinis s. Clarae per Innocentium IV papam approbati pro te et certis virginibus, cupientibus sub voto altissimae paupertatis virtutum.’ 21 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 63 ‘Lorsque Colette quitte le reclusage, elle a en sa posses- sion la bulle d’avril 1406 l’autorisant à fonder un monastère avec le privilège de très haute pauvreté: il s’agit donc d’un retour à l’idéal primitif des damianites car le privilège de très haute pauvreté fut concédé par Innocent IV au monastère de Saint-Damien et à quelques autres qui en fijirent la demande.’ 22 Cf. Lippens, ‘Henry de Baume’, 239. 23 Bullarium Franciscanum VII, p. 347 (n. 1015). 24 On the interaction between Henry and Colette, see Lopez, ‘Colette de Corbie. Réformatrice’, 171–179. Initially, Colette would have leaned very heavily on the advice of her spiritual guide and confessor. But: ‘…il apparaît que très tot les rôles s’inversent: l’élève dépasse le maître et frère Henry, comme d’autres frères de grande valeur, se met au service de l’abbesse picarde au point que naît le projet de créer une branche masculine, entière- ment au service des moniales,’ Ibidem, 173. 172 chapter four

Their fijirst attempt at creating a Clarissan house at Corbie was thwarted. After a temporary refuge in a castle of Blanche of Geneva, however, Colette succeeded in taking over a nearly derelict Urbanist Clarissan house at Besançon in the Spring of 1410.25 A second, completely new foundation was made at Auxonne in 1412. That same year, Colette and Henry visited the Franciscan friary of Dôle. Colette addressed the friars in chapter, ask- ing them to become part of her reform project. Thus was created the fijirst of the so-called male Franciscan ‘Coletan’ houses,26 which provided serv- ing friars for the Colettine nuns, initially under the guidance of friar Henry of Baume. By 1427, he was made general vicar of this emerging network of Franciscan friaries in the service of the Colettines.27 Following the transformation of the Besançon community, Colette’s reform movement gained signifijicant momentum, spreading throughout Burgundy, Savoy and into the Southern Low Countries. At least seventeen Colettine monasteries were created (both new foundations and reformed existing monasteries) before Colette’s death at Ghent on 6 March 1447. Many of these Colettine settlements (and others founded subsequently) came into being with support from important ruling families (notably the houses of Burgundy, Bourbon, Nevers, Lorraine, and Savoy).28 Colette was closely involved with the creation of all the monasteries established during her lifetime. This meant that Colette and her closest

25 Bullarium Franciscanum VII, p. 357. 26 I have chosen to use ‘Coletan friars/Coletans’ and not ‘Colettan friars/Colettans’ or ‘Colettin friars/Colettins’, in line with practices in recent studies on the subject matter, even though one speaks of Colettine nuns. 27 Lippens, ‘Henry de Baume’, 239fff.; Sérent, ‘Une nouvelle vie’, 426–442. 28 Some studies maintain that Colette created 22 monasteries during her lifetime. This discrepancy depends on the time-span between her fijirst initiatives at founding a monas- tery and the offfijicial foundation itself. Houses that were certainly founded offfijicially during Colette’s lifetime are: Besançon (Burgundy, reformation of an Urbanist house, 1410), Auxonne (Ave Maria d’Auxonne, Burgundy, 1412), Poligny (Notre Dame de la piété, Burgundy, 1414–1417), Décise (Nevers, 1419–1423), Seurre (Burgundy, 1421–1423), Moulins (Central France, 1421–1423), Aigueperse (Avé Maria d’Aigueperse, Central France, 1423– 1425), Vevey (Savoy/Savoie, 1424–1426), Le Puy-en-Velay (Central France, 1425–1432), Orbe (Savoy/Savoie, 1426–1428), Castres (Languedoc, 1426–1433), Lézignan (Languedoc, 1430– 1436, a former house of Magdalene Sisters), Béziers (Languedoc, a reform of an Urbanist house, 1434), Hesdin (Heusden, Picardy, 1437–1441), Heidelberg (Palatinate, 1437–1443), Ghent (Flanders, 1441–1444), and Amiens (Picardy, 1442–1445). After Colette’s death, other houses followed, such as Pont-à-Mousson (Lorraine, 1444–1447), Nantes (1457), Arras (c. 1460), Bourges (after 1468), Chambéry (1471), Liège (1474), Bruges (1479), Geneva (1479), Dinan (1481), Péronne (1481), Bourg-en-Bresse (1480/84), Rouen (1484), Cambrai (1496), Montbrison (1496). See aside from the works by Lopez also Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’établissement des Clarisses de la première règle’, 353–373; Fromentin, L’Histoire des Clarisses, passim; Goyens, ‘Documenta circa Clarissas Coletanas’, 106–145; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 102–108; Sérent, ‘Documenta de fundatione monasterii’, 291–300. implementing reforms 173 counselors had to do a lot of traveling. Her presence was frequently required to conclude negotiations with local authorities. Such travels were not without risks, as these territories were still riddled with roving bands of mercenaries and robbers. Information on these matters can be obtained from Colette’s surviving letters, and from the hagiographical tradition, notably the vernacular life written by Perrine of Baume (also known as Perrine de La Roche).29 Alongside the growing network of Colettine houses grew a parallel net- work of Coletan friaries. Henry of Baume wrote separate statutes for the latter, which explained how the Franciscan confessor and his socii should organize the spiritual support for the Colettine sisters and how these friars should maintain their own spirituality.30 Although Coletan friaries had Observant leanings, like the Colettine houses they remained within the traditional authority structures of the Franciscan order. Thus Colette and Henry remained formally under the umbrella of the Franciscan provincial and general ministers, and they fought hard to keep their distance from the emerging parallel hierarchy of Observant houses under the sway of the Observant provincial vicars.31 Colette ruled her network of female houses as a charismatic leader, who exercised a lot of control. Not only was she personally involved with the creation or reform of many of the early monasteries, she also gathered around her a group of trusted female companions, many of who became the fijirst abbesses of new foundations, with whom Colette kept up a cor- respondence on administrative and spiritual matters. Thus, Colette and

29 Her Cahier has been edited in: Les vies de Ste Colette Boylet de Corbie, ed. d’Alençon. 30 Lippens, ‘Henry de Baume’, 261–265. 31 From about 1440 until the fijinal merger of all Observant varieties by papal order in 1517, the Coletans and Colettines would struggle to keep their distance from the Observance sub vicariis. As early as 1448, Pope Nicholas V appointed a special lay protector (the fijirst one was Bernard of Armagnac) to watch over the Colettine houses. One of his major tasks was to protect Colette’s project from interference by Franciscan friars of the Regular Observance. Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 637–640. Not long before Colette’s death, the Observant gen- eral vicar Giovanni of Capistrano tried to convince her to join the regular Observance sub vicariis. Colette abided by her choice to remain (nominally) within the traditional Conventional Franciscan order structures, which in practice gave her much more legisla- tive freedom in the administration of her network of monasteries. After Colette’s death, spokesmen for the regular Observants would continue to insist that the Colettines and the Coletans, due to their Observant lifestyle, belonged to the branch of the regular Observance sub vicariis and not to the Conventuals. In Burgundy and Aquitaine, several Colettine and Coletan houses would come under Observant control. This process was brought to its con- clusion in 1517. See: Lippens, ‘Deux épisodes du litige’, 282–295; Degler-Spengler, ‘Observanten außerhalb der Observanz’, 360–361; Lopez, ‘Frère Henry de Baume’, 117–141. 174 chapter four her immediate counselors kept much control over the life in the various Colettine settlements.32 From the outset Colette aimed for legislative unity, also to ensure that the Colettine network would continue to expand along the lines she had devised with Henry of Baume. She had already obtained a copy of Clare’s rule from Assisi in 1410, when she was busy organizing her house at Besançon.33 This indicates that, within certain boundaries, Colette wished to reach back to Clare’s San Damiano experience and move away from the Urbanist tradition. She did not see Clare as a mere fijigurehead, and wanted to put Clare’s rule at the heart of her own reforms.34 Nevertheless, in Colette’s eyes, that alone would not sufffijice to guarantee religious unity. To address this issue, Colette compiled additional legislative texts. Most important of these are her Constitutiones, which were fijinalized by the early 1430s. With recourse to other rules (the rule of Innocent IV, the rule of Urban IV and the rule of Isabelle of France) and papal privileges issued on behalf of the Clarissan order, these constitutions regulated a plethora of matters left by Clare to the discretion of the nuns.35 Clare’s rule emphasized poverty, humility and sorority. Colette’s Consti- tutiones likewise emphasized humility and poverty (they renounced the practice of demanding monastic dowries, and forbade the acceptance of fijixed revenues and rents for the monasteries), but put more emphasis on correction, highlighting the authority of the abbess. Clare’s rule saw the abbess as the servant of the nuns. In Colette’s interpretation the power relationship was more hierarchical, with much focus on the nuns’ obedi- ence.36 The Constitutiones also extended the obligations of the Divine Offfijice with additional vocal prayers and communal devotions. This cur- tailed time for personal reflection and silent prayer, a shift in line with

32 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 169f. 33 Cf. Sensi, ‘Clarisses entre Spirituels et Observants’, 107–108. 34 Cf. Marini, ‘Il recupero della memoria di Chiara d’Assisi nell’Osservanza’, 525–526. 35 Colette’s Constitutiones can be found in the Seraphicae legislationis textus originales, 99–177. In addition to this substantial legislative text, Colette also wrote a series of smaller works. The longest of these is known as the Sentiments, written at Orbe in 1430. It might more closely reflect Colette’s spirituality. Other signifijicant texts by her are the Avis, the Intentions, the Petites Ordonnances, and the Ordonnances. The fijirst three of these focus on the Divine Offfijice, disciplinary punishment, novice training, poverty and the religious habit. The Ordonnances deal in more detail with the ceremonies of the Divine Offfijice, the comportment of community members during the Offfijice and within the refectory. The text as we have it might be a later codifijication, based on traditions from Colettine houses in Ghent, Poligny, and Besançon. To Colette is also ascribed a Testament (Seraphicae Legislationis Textus Originales, 298–307). This text might have been an attempt by six- teenth-century Colettines to put Colette on the same level as Francis and Clare. 36 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 206–214. implementing reforms 175

Colette’s overall attempts at uniformity in and control over the communal life. The same emphasis is visible in Colette’s sharpening of the enclosure regulations, building on requirements found in the rule of Isabelle of France and in papal directives concerning the enclosure of nuns issued by Boniface VIII in 1298.37 In September 1434, Colette and Henry of Baume obtained permission from the Franciscan minister general Guillelmo of Casale to observe the rule of Clare together with this detailed legislative text. Additional papal confijirmation from Pope Pius II was granted after Colette’s death by 1458.38 Ever since, Colette’s Constitutiones have been very important to the Clarissan order. Not only did this text constitute the basic legislative docu- ment together with Clare’s rule within the growing Colettine network dur- ing the fijifteenth century and after, it was also adopted – at times in an altered form – by numerous Observant Clarissan houses under the umbrella of Observance sub vicariis, and later by early modern Capuchin Poor Clare monasteries, both in Europe and beyond. After the council of Trent, bishops used Colette’s Constitutiones and texts based on them to reform female religious houses in their dioceses, frequently without acknowledging the Colettine background of the text as such.39 Due to Colette’s commanding charisma, her early adoption of Clare’s rule, and the detailed legislation put forward in her Constitutiones, the Colettine network became the fijirst group of Clarissan houses that orga- nized its life almost entirely according to one set of detailed regulations and directives. As such, it might have been the most uniform network within the late medieval Clarissan order. It was more unifijied in its reli- gious observances than the majority of traditional Urbanist houses or the emerging network of houses subject to the so-called regular Observance sub vicariis. After Colette’s death, a signifijicant number of additional Colettine settlements – both new foundations and existing Clarissan houses that underwent Colettine reforms – came into being in France, Spain, the Southern Low Countries and Portugal. Due to the ambiguity of the avail- able documentary and narrative sources and the lack of terminological accuracy in many modern studies, it is not always clear which were genu- ine Colettine houses and which were houses that used Colette’s

37 For a detailed comparison of the constitutions of Colette with the Forma Vitae of Clare of Assisi, see: Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 203–251. 38 Bullarium Franciscanum ns. II, 260–276 (n. 515); D’Alençon, ‘Lettres inédites de Guillaume de Casale’, 460–481, 668–691; Idem, ‘Documents sur la réforme’, 447–455. 39 Lopez, ‘Colette de Corbie réformatrice’, 173–174. 176 chapter four

Constitutiones but were nevertheless under the jurisdiction of the regular Observance sub vicariis (see below).40 This problem arises in particular when we try to chart the dissemination of Colettine houses into the Iberian Peninsula. There, the Colettine model spread fijirst in Spain (start- ing with the creation of the Colettine monastery of Gandía by 1457), and later in Portugal (where the fijirst Colettine monastery was erected in 1496 in Setúbal).41

Clarissan Reforms Under the Observantes Sub Vicariis in Italy

The reform of many Poor Clare monasteries in Italy, and later elsewhere, notably in Spain, the German lands and the Low Countries, was closely connected with the emergence of the Franciscan regular Observance sub vicariis. Thanks to a succession of strong and inspiring leaders, including the Italian friars Bernardino of Siena, Giovanni of Capistrano and Giacomo of Marchia (Giacomo della Marca), this Observant party gradually suc- ceeded in creating a network of Observant Franciscan friaries. These friar- ies became organized into Observant vicariates, guided by provincial vicars and both a Cismontan (for Italy) and an Ultramontan (for the other Observant provinces) general vicar. In the course of the fijifteenth century, provincial and general vicars alike acted increasingly independently from, and in rivalry with, the ‘Conventual’ Franciscan provincial ministers and the Franciscan minister general.42 After initial hesitations, Bernardino and his colleagues began to sup- port the reform of Italian Clarissan houses around 1420. This occurred partly in response to the Colettine successes in Burgundy and Savoy.

40 In all probability, ‘genuine’ Colettine monasteries were created at Gandia (1457), Nantes (1457), Arras (Atrecht, 1460), Bourges (1456/68), Nantes (1457), Perpignan (est. 1260, Colettine reform in 1461), Chambéry (1471), Grenoble (1478), Bruges (1473/79), Geneva (1479), Bourg-en-Bresse (1480/84), Péronne (1481), Rouen (1483), Dinan (1480/88), Cambrai (1496), Montbrison (1496), Gien (1500), Lisbon (1509), Aix-en-Provence (1516), Marseille (established in 1254, Colettine reform in 1516), and Montpellier (soon after, following seri- ous conflicts, it would transform into a Benedictine house). Lopez also mentions a Colettine house at Louvain. Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 448–449; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 115–116, 138–152; Lippens, ‘Inventaire analytique’, 171–185; Goyens, ‘Documenta circa Clarissas Coletanas’, passim; Roggen, ‘De Clarissen-Coletinnen’, 87–100; Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 399–406; Carneiro de Sousa, ‘A rainha D. Leonor e a experiência’, 23–52. 41 Initial overviews of the Colettine expansion are provided by Ivars, ‘Origen y propa- gación’, 390–410; Idem, ‘Origen y propagación (2)’; Idem, ‘Origen y propagación (3)’, 99–110; Soriano Triguero, ‘La reforma de las Clarisas’, 190–191. On the start of Colettine reforms in Portugal, see Carneiro de Sousa, ‘A Rainha D. Leonor e a introducão’, 1033–1063. 42 Nimmo, ‘The Franciscan Regular Observance’, 189–205. implementing reforms 177

The Colettines were creating a reformed Clarissan entity within the estab- lished ‘Conventual’ Franciscan authority structures, which Bernardino and especially his successor Giovanni of Capistrano wished to undermine. The Observant friars’ involvement with Clarissan reforms was also a reac- tion to the success of certain reform congregations of female tertiaries that the Observants of Bernardino’s generation found wanting in enclo- sure and deference to male authority.43 Already by the 1340s in central Italy, a number of reform activities had begun among women within the Franciscan tertiary ambiance, frequently in close contact with remnants of Franciscan Spirituals and with the new reformist Franciscan group around Giovanni of Valle (Giovanni della Valle). Despite repeated papal prohibitions over the use of the Franciscan tertiary rule of 1289 by unenclosed female religious houses,44 a number of tertiary groups in and around Foligno, Perugia, Assisi, Trevi, and Norcia nevertheless received papal protection when they organized themselves into unenclosed religious communities, adopting the tertiary rule and engaging in mendicant activities and/or charitable services to support themselves.45 By the late fourteenth century, the most spectacular developments in this regard took place due to the initiatives of the female Franciscan ter- tiary Angelina of Montegiove (Angelina da Montegiove dei conti Marsciano), who at fijirst closely collaborated with one of her relatives, the Franciscan friar Paoluccio Trinci, one of the initiators of what later would evolve into the Italian Franciscan Observant movement. In the Santa Anna bizzoche community of Foligno, established with Paoluccio’s help by 1388, the noble Angelina and her predominantly aristocratic sisters adhered to the tertiary rule of 1289, but interpreted their vow of poverty in a very pristine ‘Franciscan’ fashion, much as the Franciscan Spirituals had done before.46

43 Pazzelli, The Franciscan Sisters, passim. 44 In general, the papacy opposed the adoption of the tertiary rule by such groups, as such communities should opt for a proper monastic (Benedictine, Urbanist or Augustian) rule instead. This shows in Boniface VIII’s bull Periculoso, and again in John XXII’s bull Sancta Romana atque universalis Ecclesia of 1317. The latter forbade explicity ‘open’ monas- teries to follow the tertiary rule of 1289 for tertiaries. After all, that rule had been written for lay people, living in the world and not in a religious community ‘…in regula ipsius tertii ordinis talis vivendi ritus nullatenus sit concessus.’ Bullarium Franciscanum V, 134 (no. 297). 45 See especially Casagrande, Religiosità penitenziale, passim; Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 350–355. 46 The Santa Anna community was also known as ‘Il monastero delle Contesse’, due to the high social background of many of its members. Menestò, ‘Angelina da Montegiove: dalle nozze virginali al monastero delle contesse’, 179–196. 178 chapter four

Angelina succeeded in obtaining offfijicial papal recognition for the not fully enclosed and poor religious lifestyle in the houses that she and her sisters were able to establish or to bring into their orbit. The fijirst papal authorization, by Urban VI, came as early as 1388. Boniface IX issued another bull in support of Angelina and her communities on 14 January 1403 (Provenit ex vestre devotionis afffectu).47 By 1428, Pope Martin V offfiji- cially recognized Angelina of Montegiove’s group of communities as a proper congregation with Angelina as its female minister general. By then, the number of houses had grown to seven or more.48 Around the same time, the mainstream of the male Franciscan order, Conventual and Observant alike, decided that Angelina of Montegiove’s successes had gone far enough. The friars did not want a flourishing independent congregation of female tertiaries under the leadership of a woman, especially when its houses espoused ‘radical’ forms of communal poverty and did not hesitate to adopt the name of St Clare, therewith pre- senting themselves as the real inheritors of Clare of Assisi’s religious ide- als.49 From the 1420s onwards, both the Conventuals and the Observant friars worked hard to have Angelina’s congregation brought under their control. In the end, the Franciscan friars of the regular Observance sub vicariis gained the upper hand. By 1466, after a series of sometimes con- flicting papal pronouncements, multiple stratagems by the tertiaries to keep control over their fate, and a number of showdowns between the Observant friars and remaining tertiary communities in Foligno and its vicinity, the congregation lost its independence. It was the end of these women’s liberty to organize their religious life on their own terms.50 On the one hand, faced by the unsettling ambitions of female tertiary communities and, on the other, faced by the threat of Clarissan reforms

47 Sensi, ‘Documenti’, 171–172. 48 Sacrae religionis, Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 706–707 (n. 1826). 49 Hence, the ‘bizzocaggio’ of S. Girolamo, originally populated by ‘cristiane del sacco’, who lived a semi-enclosed mendicant life in great poverty, adopted near the end of the fourteenth century not only the observances of the tertiary congregation of Angelina of Montegiove, but by 1407 renamed their community into Santa Chiara, while continuing to adhere to the tertiary rule of Nicholas IV from 1289. Sensi even stipulates that the choice for Clare’s name by these and other tertiary women might have been a deliberate statement of adherence to the pristine lifestyle of San Damiano during Clare’s lifetime, at a time when most ordinary Poor Clare monasteries were endowed Urbanist settlements. Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 331–332. 50 Filannino, ‘La B. Angelina dei Conti di Marsciano’, 451–457; La beata Angelina da Montegiove, passim; Sensi, Storie di bizzoche, 349–359; Le terziarie francescane della beata Angelina, passim. implementing reforms 179 under the purview of the Conventuals (such as the successful French Colettine initiatives), around 1420 Bernardino of Siena and other Italian Observant friars understood that they should become more involved with reforms of Italian Clarissan houses. Control over Observant reforms in Clarissan monasteries, as well as the guided transformation of tertiary houses that lacked adequate supervision into enclosed monasteries, required a more profound involvement with the issue of reform in the Clarissan world itself. This new insight is visible in the sermons Bernardino preached at Milan in 1418, at Mantua in 1420, and at Perugia and Assisi in 1425.51 In these sermons, Bernardino insisted on the full enclosure of religious women. The sermons of 1425 from Perugia and Assisi were most explicit on this matter. Referring to Boniface VIII’s 1298 bull Periculoso, Bernardino argued that enclosure should be strictly enforced in all female monaster- ies. He gave very unflattering descriptions of unenclosed female religious houses (calling them loca porca et facinoribus plena), bringing up fears of wandering women and the dangers of unchecked intercourse between religious women and members of the other sex. Bernardino called upon the women to return to their religious origins, and abide by the enclosure regulations put forward in their monastic rule.52 Bernardino’s earlier preaching on this topic in Milan coincided not only with the creation of a new Observant Franciscan friary, but also with seri- ous initiatives to reform a Clarissan house, the Milanese Santa Orsola monastery. It had been founded around 1341, with possible ties to the Umiliati, and adhered to the Augustinian rule for some time. By the end of the fourteenth century it had changed into an Urbanist Clarissan house, after substantial restorations and enlargements of the monastic com- pound. The incorporation into the Urbanist fold was more or less com- pleted by 1405. In the following years, the community gradually adopted a strict religious lifestyle under the leadership of Caterina Caimi. Following Bernardino’s preaching in 1418, the women of Santa Orsola decided to place themselves under the care of the Observant friars. At fijirst, they retained their adherence to the Urbanist rule with a more rigorous inter- pretation. From 1425, the process was pushed forward by the dynamic abbess Felicia Meda.53

51 On Bernardino’s involvement with Clarissan reform in general, see: Casolini, ‘San Bernardino e la riforma’, 53–60. 52 Pacetti, ‘La predicazione di s. Bernardino’, 494–520. 53 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 293–294, X, 51, 385 & XI, 94; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 568–569 & n.s. III, 316–318, 481–484; Sevesi, ‘Il Monastero delle Clarisse in 180 chapter four

Bernardino of Siena’s performance at Mantua in 1420 apparently inspired the marchesa of Mantua, Paola Malatesta Gonzaga, to found an enclosed Poor Clare monastery under the spiritual direction of the Observants. To this end she transformed an existing house of bizzoche (established by the Malatesta family in 1416) with the help of the newly reformed Milanese Urbanist Santa Orsola monastery. The fijirst abbess of the new foundation was the Milanese nun Franceschina Guisana. In con- trast to two existing Urbanist monasteries in the same town, the new Corpus Christi monastery at Mantua did not accept endowments, but relied on the supplies gathered for it by its foundress.54 After the Observant reforms in the Mantuan Corpus Christi monastery, matters came up to speed. Unlike the Colettine situation described in a previous section, the reforms and creations of Italian Clarissan monaster- ies under the sway of the Observance sub vicariis were neither guided by a single unifying charismatic guide, nor fully steered by the male leaders of the Franciscan Observance. Instead, the spread of the Observance in Italy involved numerous centers which embraced reforms and subsequently began to export them elsewhere, either under strict oversight of Observant friars, or more independently.55 Eight centers in particular were very active as initiators of Observant reforms in other Italian Clarissan or would-be-Clarissan monasteries. These Observant ‘mother houses’ were the above-mentioned houses of Santa Orsola in Milan and Corpus Christi in Mantua, Santa Lucia of Foligno (itself reformed between 1425 and 1427), the Corpus Christi mon- astery of Ferrara (reformed with the help of the Mantua community in 1431), the Corpus Domini monastery of Pesaro (1439), the Monteluce mon- astery of Perugia (reformed in 1448), the Montevergine monastery of Messina (1457/8), and the Santa Chiara monastery of Urbino (1458).56

S. Apollinaro’, 526; Meda, ‘Una insigne Clarissa milanese’, passim; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 619; Sebastiani, ‘Da bizzocche a monache’, 193–218. 54 Bullarium Franciscanum VII, 542–545; Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 21 (1929), 338 & 23 (1930), 361. 55 Fantozzi, ‘La Riforma Osservante’, 361–382; Sensi, ‘Chiara d’Assisi nell’Umbria’, 215–239. 56 The Santa Orsola monastery of Milan was directly involved with the Observance of the Corpus Christi monastery in Mantua (1420), the Corpus Domini of Pesaro (1439), and the Santa Chiara de Migliarino or San Giuseppe in Mantua (1435). The Mantuan Corpus Christi monastery was involved with the foundation or the Observant reforms of San Giovanni della Valla/Santa Chiara of Verona (1424), Corpus Christi in Ferrara (1431), San Bernardino of Padua (1439–1446), La Cella in Treviso (1439), San Guglielmo in Ferrara (1439), Santa Chiara in Muriano (1441), and Santa Maria degli Angeli in Feltre (1492). Moreover, several other houses adopted its reform customs in the context of reforms of implementing reforms 181

After their own Observant transformation, such ‘mother houses’ sent out reform parties and kept in touch with reformed ‘daughter houses’ by means of letters and the exchange of works of spiritual edifijication (see Chapter Six). Houses reformed with such outside help sometimes adopted the reform statutes of their ‘mother house’ to shape their reform. Hence, the nuns from Mantua who were sent out to other monasteries introduced there the Mantua Osservanze. This was the case with Santa Chiara and San Paolo in Ravenna (1439), the Corpus Christi monastery of L’Aquila in 1447 (a for- mer tertiary house from Angelina of Montegiove’s congregation), the Poor Clares of Reggio Emilia in 1454 and the Poor Clares of Parma (former ter- tiaries) in 1458.57 Reforms undertaken by nuns from Santa Lucia at Foligno led to the creation of a specifijic set of Ordinazione for several of its daugh- ter houses. The best documented case concerns the Poor Clares of Monteluce near Perugia. Once reformed by nuns from Santa Lucia, it soon obtained a version of the Ordinazione, a text probably compiled by the community’s new confessor and chaplain Giovanni Bonvisi of Lucca, as well as a vernacular version of the 1253 rule of Clare. Soon afterward,

their own (see below). Santa Lucia of Foligno helped found the Santa Maria de Colomata monastery, and was involved with the reform of Monteluce (Perugia, 1448), San Cosmo e San Damiano (=San Cosimato) in Rome (1451), Santa Chiara in Urbino (1455), Santa Chiara in Naples (before 1470), and Santa Chiara in Narni (1504). The Ferrara Corpus Christi mon- astery helped found a Poor Clare monastery in Cremona (1449), and was furthermore involved with the creation of Corpus Christi in Bologna (1456), and San Bernardino in Ferrara (1510–1516). Corpus Domini in Pesaro, itself founded from Milan, was involved with the creation of San Bartolomeo at Ancona (1444). The Monteluce monastery in Perugia, reformed in 1448, helped create Santa Chiara of Urbino (1455), assisted in the reforms of San Cosimato of Rome (1451), and also was involved with the reform of Santa Chiara Novella in Arezzo (1492), Santa Chiara in Montefalco (1500), Santa Chiara in Gubbio (1517), and San Poniano in Spoleto (1520). The Montevergine monastery of Messina helped with the foundation of monasteries in Reggio Calabria and Palermo (1498). Santa Chiara of Urbino, in turn, helped establish the Observant Poor Clare monastery of Camerino (1484), which in turn helped with the creation of the Clarissan monastery of Fermo (1505). This process continued well into the sixteenth century, with the reform of additional houses, especially with the involvement of the Monteluce monastery. San Cosimato in Rome also sent out several reform parties (for instance to Santi Simone e Giuda in Viterbo and San Lorenzo in Panisperna). See on these connections the works of Fantozzi and Sensi mentioned in the previous note, as well as Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 318fff; Dominici, Il monastero di Santa Lucia, passim; Canonici, Santa Lucia di Foligno, passim; Sensi, Le osser- vanze francescane, 263–293; Lombardi, ‘I Monasteri delle Clarisse’, 27–34; Faraglia, ‘Il mon- astero di S. Chiara dell’Eucaristia’, 57–72; Thomas, Art and Piety, 44–45, 48–50; Lowe, ‘Franciscan and Papal Patronage at the Clarissan Convent of San Cosimato in Trastevere, 1440–1560’, 222f. 57 Wadding, Annales Minorum XI, 104 (an. 1439, n. 55), XII, 271 (an. 1454, n. 84) & 682, XIII, 93 (an. 1458, n. 46). 182 chapter four

Monteluce became active in sending nuns to other houses, along with Santa Lucia in Foligno and Corpus Christi in Mantua. In this way, Monteluce’s Ordinazione and its vernacular version of the rule of Clare began to spread.58 Thus, unlike the Colettines, Observant Clarissan houses sub vicariis did not all adopt the same house constitutions. Theirs remained a more piece- meal operation, in which houses could adopt customs or statutes (Osservanze, Ordinazione) from the monastery that had been involved with their reform, or receive texts of their own. This happened throughout Italy, as shown by the examples above and by texts issued during the reign of the Cismontan Observant vicar general Pietro of Naples (1475–1478, 1481–1484), such as the Memoria per lo regimento and additional Ordinationi compiled for Santa Chiara di Pesaro,59 and the concise Obedientia pro ser- vanda clausura issued for Santa Chiara di Sarzana.60 There is a comparable pattern to the reform of Clarissan houses under the Franciscan Observantes sub vicariis in the German speaking lands (see the next section). The adoption of reform constitutions there was also connected to a reforming motherhouse or the involvement of Observant Franciscan friars active as spiritual guides for motherhouses and daugh- terhouses alike. A case in point is the set of reform statutes compiled for the Poor Clares of Bressanone (Brixen, Tirol) in 1455. This house had always belonged to the Austrian province of the Franciscan order. When Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa attempted to implement reforms in the Clarissan Bressanone monastery during his visitation journeys in the early 1450s, he encountered resistance from the Conventual Franciscan provincial minis- ter. In response, he removed the Bressanone community from Austrian provincial oversight and put it under the authority of the vicar of the Observant Strasbourg province. The reform of the house became the responsibility of the Strasbourg provincial vicar Johann Lor (or Johann von Lare) and the Nuremberg guardian Albert Büchelbach (or Püchelbach). They sent fijive women from the recently reformed Sankta Klara monas- tery of Nuremberg. In addition, Johann and Albert drew up a set of reform

58 Oliger, ‘Documenta originis’, 79. 59 Sensi, ‘Un regolamento di vita’, 1203–1208. 60 These concise ‘Memoria’ and ‘Ordinationi’ for the Santa Chiara di Pesaro monastery are puzzingly incomplete. They should probably be seen in the context of the Pesaro mon- astery’s ultimate decline. In 1485, it was suppressed by papal order. Regestum Observantiae Cismontanae, Analecta franciscana XIII, 390–392; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV/1, 151–152 (n. 223). implementing reforms 183 statutes, which in all probability were inspired by religious practices at the Nuremberg house.61 An analogous piece-meal development can be discerned in the rules adopted by reformed houses within the setting of the Observance sub vicariis. Various reformed Poor Clare monasteries continued to adhere to the Urbanist rule for a considerable time. Indeed, reforms were fijirst directed towards implementing a properly enclosed life of prayer. The actual adherence to a specifijic rule was frequently not an immediate issue. Only gradually did it become fashionable to accompany the implementa- tion of reforms with the adoption of the rule of Clare of Assisi. Nevertheless, the adoption of Clare’s rule could be delayed, and in some cases never took place (especially in Observant Poor Clare monasteries outside Italy). Corpus Christi in Mantua was one of the fijirst Italian Observant houses to adopt Clare’s Regula Prima. This occurred between the fijirst Observant reforms of the monastery around 1420 and the year 1445, when its abbess, Elisabetta, asked the Observant Cismontan vicar Giovanni of Capistrano to explain some of the rule’s more intricate points.62 Elisabetta’s request was timely. In 1442, Giovanni of Capistrano (who became the general vicar of the Cismontan Observants between 1443 and 1446, and again between 1449–1452) had met with the elderly Colette of Corbie, no doubt with the aim to enlist the Colettine network to the cause of the regular Observance sub vicariis. Although this goal was not achieved – as we have seen, Colette and the Colettines remained nominally, albeit with a lot of autonomy, under the jurisdiction of the Conventuals – Giovanni had been very impressed by the Colettine adherence to Clare’s Regula Prima, and the way in which the Colettines had achieved normative unity through their adherence to this rule in combination with Colette’s Constitutiones.63 Following his meeting with Colette, Giovanni may have begun to con- template the possibility of using Clare of Assisi’s rule to ensure religious unity in the Italian Observant Clarissan houses under Observant control.

61 Straganz, “Die ältesten Statuten des Klarissenkloster zu Brixen (Tirol)’, 143–170. The statutes consist of a short introduction and fijive chapters, dealing with obedience (‘von der gehorsam’), poverty (‘von der heiligen armut’), purity (‘was zu reinigkeit mag fudern’), the liturgy (‘zu dem gotlichen dienst’), and silence (‘von stillikeit und sweigen’). Each chapter includes several adjacent topics. 62 It has been assumed that the Mantua monastery adopted the rule of Clare shortly after 1420, but this remains to be proven. The fact that Elisabetta asked for elucidation in 1445 would suggest that the women took their time in adopting it completely. 63 See the somewhat opiniated piece of Lippens, ‘Saint Jean de Capistran en mission’, 131f., which is a bit overly eager to discern a complete concordance between Colette’s pro j- ect and the ideas of Giovanni of Capistrano. 184 chapter four

After another showdown with the Italian Conventual factions at the Franciscan general chapter of Padua in 1443, Giovanni of Capistrano not only convinced the pope that the Observants under his direction needed more autonomy and that all Italian Observant Clarissan monasteries should be under their jurisdiction, but also instructed his provincial vicars to refuse pastoral care to Clarissan houses that failed to adopt the rule of Clare.64 When, in 1445, the Mantuan abbess Elisabetta came with her request for an elucidation of Clare’s Regula Prima, Giovanni of Capistrano thought the time ripe for an in-depth rule commentary: the Explicatio Primae Regulae S. Clarae.65 This commentary did not emphasize the Clarissan life of poverty (which had motivated Clare to claim an unbreakable bond with the Friars Minor) as the distinguishing element of the female Observant life. For Giovanni of Capistrano and many of his fellow Observant friars, enclosure and discipline were much more important, as was obedience to Franciscan pastors and visitators.66 Giovanni probably intended his commentary to complement his 1443 letter on the Franciscan Regula Bullata, which was directed to all the friars of the regular Observance. That text explained the obligations of the Observant friars in relation to the Franciscan rule, and the 1445 Explicatio Primae Regulae S. Clarae was meant to do the same for the women and the rule of Clare. For that purpose, it was circulated among the growing num- ber of Observant Clarissan houses.67 At least for Giovanni of Capistrano,

64 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 124–132, 134. For more details on the power struggle between the Italian Conventuals and the Observants over the cura monialium and the reform of Poor Clare monasteries in the 1430s and 1440s, see also Knox, “One and the Same Spirit”, 235–254, 239–240. As Knox and before her Paolo Sevesi have pointed out, the requirement to accept Clare’s rule could lead to difffijiculties. A good example is provided by the Santa Maria di Vedano monastery of Milan, which had been put under the spiritual care of the Franciscans, but continued to adhere to the Augustinian rule. When the by then Observant Milanese friars began to threaten to discontinue their pastoral duties, as the monastery in question did not adhere to the ‘proper’ rule, the community’s prioress, Paola di Premenugo, wrote to Pope Eugenius IV. The women did not want to take leave of their Augustinian rule, fearing that the rule of Clare would force them to accept an overly harsh poverty regime. The prioress begged the pope to confijirm their profession of the Augustinian rule, and to order the Observant friars to continue their pastoral ministery. After media- tion, a compromise was reached: the women willing to live according to Clare’s rule received a chapel for their religious services, whereas the other women kept the church. In the end (around 1454), the house was split into two separate communities. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 135–136; Sevesi, Le Clarisse in Milano, 225–240. 65 Adrichen, “Explicatio primae regulae S. Clarae’, 336–357, 512–523. 66 Knox, “One and the Same Spirit”, passim; Franceschini, ‘La ‘perfetta clarissa”, 423–427; Borzumato, ‘San Giovanni e le clarisse’, 155–161. 67 Knox, “One and the Same Spirit”, 243; Knox, Creating Clare, 137f. implementing reforms 185 the adoption of Clare’s rule could serve as a means of achieving religious uniformity. Whatever its author’s ambitions, the commentary did not immediately have the hoped-for unifying results. Giovanni’s harsh description of the nuns’ obligations, and rumors that he had intended his commentary as a new compulsory constitution for the order of Poor Clares, necessitated additional explications by Niccolò of Osimo68 and an additional papal declaration. The latter held the nuns sub gravi only to the vows of obedi- ence, poverty, enclosure and chastity, as well as to proper procedures regarding the election and deposition of abbesses. Other ‘precepts’ men- tioned by Giovanni of Capistrano were to be read as admonitions without binding power.69 Aside from unease about the content, the impact of Giovanni’s com- mentary was hampered by the slow and uneven implementation of Clare’s rule, despite the regulations requiring its adoption issued in 1443. Within the Foligno Santa Lucia monastery, for instance, there was probably a gap of more than fijifty years between initial reforms around 1424 and the fijinal adoption of Clare’s rule around 1476 or later. It is quite interesting that the Observant friars responsible for the cura monialium in that monastery tried very hard to forestall the change of the rule, as they were afraid of becoming responsible for the economic welfare of the nuns (who under the rule of Clare were not supposed to gather an income from extended monastic properties).70 Further to the South, in Sicily, the adoption of the rule of Clare was also an extended process, as can be gathered from Eustochia Calafato’s heroic quest to obtain Clare’s rule and to have it accepted for her Messina community during the 1450s and 1460s.71 These examples show that Giovanni of Capistrano’s wish to put Observant

68 Explicatio regulae S. Clarae auctore Fr. Nicolao de Auximio ed. Nuñez, 299–314. 69 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 524–526 (n. 1045); Knox, Creating Clare, 139–140; Marini, ‘Il recupero della memoria di Chiara’, 531–535. 70 The abbess Cecilia Coppoli worked towards adopting Clare’s rule in 1449. Her Observant confessors were reluctant, afraid of the possible implications of the poverty regime alluded to in Clare’s rule. They were placated by 1469, but then the Observant pro- vincial vicar objected to its adoption. Only in 1476, after a visit by Pope Sixtus IV, were the women able to implement Clare’s rule. Ricordanze del monastero di S. Lucia, ed. Scandella, 4 (n. 5–6). 71 Terrizi, “Documenti relativi alla ‘vita”, 280–329; Lazzeri, ‘La ‘Forma vitae”, 137–141; Ciccarelli, ‘Contributi alla recensione’, 347–374 & idem, ‘I manoscritti francescani’, 517–537. Sensi, ‘Clarisses entre Spirituels et Observants’, 116. The article of Sensi shows that nuns from Foligno explicitly asked their fellow nuns at Messina to send them the friars who had helped the Messina community to adopt the Regula Prima: ‘Ce que demandaient les clar- isses de Foligno, c’était en fait que l’un ou l’autre des pères spirituels ayant dirigé la com- munauté de Montevergine à Messine séjournâit quelque temps à Foligno pour initier les 186 chapter four

Poor Clares under Observant jurisdiction, and to obtain uniformity by advocating the universal adoption of the rule of Clare was by no means shared by all Observant friars within the Italian peninsula, and that the initiative for adopting the Regula Prima of 1253 could stem from ambitious abbesses and their female communities.72 Within the Italian peninsula, Observant reforms of Clarissan monaster- ies and the creation of new Observant Poor Clare foundations gathered additional speed in the closing decades of the fijifteenth and the fijirst decades of the sixteenth century.73 By the 1480s, it became Observant pol- icy to withdraw spiritual care from tertiary houses that were not ‘properly’ enclosed. This led to a wave of transformations of tertiary communities into Observant Poor Clare monasteries, for instance at Forlì (1484),74 Trino (Piemonte, 1492),75 Pistoia (Tuscany, 1496),76 Mantova (1500),77 Borgo San religieuses de cette communauté à la forma vitae de leurs consoeurs siciliennes. Cette requête est parallèle à celle adressée à soeur Iacopa, lui demandant de rédiger une Vie développée de la bienheureuse Eustochia [Calafato] qui mette en relief son rôle de modèle de vie pour les clarisses. Sans doute les soeurs de Foligno avaient-elles bien obtenu une dizaine d’années auparavant l’autorisation de professer la Première Règle [by pope Sixtus IV], mais la transition ne s’était pas faite sans des difffijicultés considérables [due to the opposition of the Franciscan provincial minister Fortunato Coppoli].’ 72 Various vernacularisations of the Regula Prima were made at the initiative of the Poor Clares themselves. The Poor Clares of Montevergine (Messina) and of Santa Chiara at Urbino, for instance, seemingly demanded their confessor to produce a faithful translation of the Latin text into the Italian vernacular. On the complex appropriation and translation history of the Regula Prima, see Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 110; Ciccarelli, ‘Contributi alla recensione’, 347f., 353fff; Ciccarelli, ‘Volgarizzamenti siciliani inediti’, 19–51. See also Chapter Six. 73 From this period also date several Observant foundations in the Camerino area, including the Santa Maria Nuova monastery of the famous Poor Clare author Camilla Battista of Varano. Camilla Battista had initially entered the Santa Chiara monastery of Urbino. Her father, Prince Giulio Cesare of Verano wanted her nearby, and organized the renovation of an old Oliveran monastery. By 1484, it was ready to become a Poor Clare monastery and to receive its fijirst nuns, including Camilla Battista, who was repeatedly cho- sen as abbess of the community. Many endowments were offfered to the house by local lords and wealthy urban patrons of Camerino, yet the nuns were able to turn many of them down and, thus, to maintain their Observant lifestyle in accordance with the rule of Clare and the rule commentary of Giovanni of Capistrano. In 1502 the town of Camerino was taken by the armies of Cesare Borgia. Giulio Cesare of Varano was strangled and three brothers of Camilla Battista were poisoned in captivity. Camilla Battista had to flee her monastery. She went fijirst to Fermo, and later to Atri. She could return a year later, when her remaining brother had succeeded in regaining the town. Camilla would later help with the creation of a new Observant monastery at Fermo (Santa Maria delle Grazie). Boccanera, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, 138–159; Cremaschi, ‘Da una corte rinascimentale’, 115–127. 74 The Santa Maria da Ripa monastery was originally a tertiary convent. It transformed around 1484. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 589. 75 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 675. 76 San Bernardino/San Giorgio. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 648. 77 Santa Elisabeta. See Cenci, ‘Le Clarisse a Mantova’, 7–33. implementing reforms 187

Sepolcro (1500),78 Viterbo (Lazio, 1492/1500),79 Chiavari (1513),80 Sarzana in Liguria (1462/1514),81 San Giovanni Valdarno (1515),82 and in the Venetian region (for example the San Sepolcro house in Venice, between 1499 and 1515).83 Increasingly, this went hand in hand with the adoption of Clare’s Regula Prima.

Observant Reforms in Alsace, Germany and Austria

In the German provinces of the Franciscan order, possibly the fijirst Observant reforms of Clarissan houses took place along Colettine lines, with Colette’s creation of a monastery in Ghent mentioned earlier. It was followed by Colettine foundations elsewhere in the Southern Low Countries (then still part of the Franciscan Cologne Province) and at Heidelberg in 1444. This last monastery had come into being with the assistance of Colettine nuns from Besançon. One of these, Elisabeth of Bavaria (Elisabeth de Bavière), became the fijirst abbess at Heidelberg.84 Outside the Southern Low Countries, most subsequent Observant reforms of Clarissan houses in the German and Austrian order provinces apparently took place under the control of the regular Observance sub vicariis, with the exception of a number of Clarissan houses in the Strasbourg and Cologne provinces that seemingly were reformed under the sway of the so-called ‘Martinian’ reform movement, which like the Colettines and the Coletans did not seek full autonomy from the Conventual order structures. A case in point is probably the Sankt Klara

78 Santa Caterina/San Sebastiano. A tertiary house in existence since c. 1420. It was transformed into a community of Observant Poor Clares, with the help of nuns from Monteluce (Perugia). Fantozzi, ‘La riforma’, 502–506; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 558; Banker & Lowe, ‘Female Voice, Male Authority’, 651–677. 79 Once a Basilian monastery, it had become a community of tertiary sisters by 1333. Between 1492 and 1500, it became a monastery of Observant Poor Clares and adopted the Regula Prima of 1253. Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 183; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 684–685; Porfijido, ‘Il monastero dei Santi’, 343–348. 80 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 571–572; C. Fichera, Il monastero di S. Bernardino di Chiavari. 81 Apparently subject to reforms in 1462 and again in 1514. See Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, 236, 616–617; Bughetti, ‘Tabulae capitulares Provinciae Tusciae OFM (sec. XIV-XVIII)’, 476–477; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 661. 82 Santa Maria degli Angeli. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 658. 83 Wadding, Annales Minorum XV, 225 & 675; Romeri, ‘Le Clarisse nel territorio della minoritica provincia veneta’, 57–59; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 682. The trans- formation of San Sepolcro took place under the leadership of the mystic Chiara Bugna. 84 Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, 550; D’Alençon, Documents sur la Réforme’, 452– 453; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 597. 188 chapter four monastery in the town of Cologne itself, which in its reforms during the 1470s and after took inspiration from the local Franciscan friars, who kept their distance from the regular Observance and opted instead for the ‘Martinian’ reform sub ministris.85 The same holds probably true for the Poor Clare monastery of Esslingen, which underwent reforms around 1482.86 The Poor Clare monastery at Alspach in Alsace (present-day France) might have been the fijirst Clarissan settlement within the German order provinces to be reformed under the guidance of the Franciscan friars of the regular Observance. It happened between 1441 and 1447. Observant friars from the Strasbourg province became responsible for the cura monialium, much to the annoyance of the Conventual provincial minister of the Saxony province, Matthias Doering, who as a partisan of the ‘Martinian’ route was in favor of reforms, but solely under the traditional ‘Conventual’ authority structures of the Franciscan order.87 In 1447, the Gnadental monastery in Basel followed suit, to which pur- pose its abbess, Clara Seckinger, asked the help of the Alspach Poor Clares.88 Both Alspach and Gnadental in Basel were thereafter involved with the creation of an Observant monastery in Trier (Franciscan Cologne province). This was a transformation of a tertiary community in decline. The last woman left in the tertiary house apparently invited the Poor Clares to move in.89 Shortly afterwards, in the early 1450s, the Observant reform of Clarissan monasteries in the German lands accelerated with the reformatory visitations of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the pontifijical legate for Germany, Bohemia and the surrounding lands. Nicholas of Cusa had good contacts with the Franciscan friars of the regular Observance, and he

85 The name is derived from the Franciscan reform constitutions issued during the pontifijicate of Martin V in 1430, which aimed to bring together vying factions within the Franciscan order. This attempt soon proved to be in vain. Nevertheless, these constitu- tions became a guideline for reforms in several German order provinces by friars unwill- ing to become completely autonomous from existing order structures. Degler-Spengler, ‘Observanten außerhalb der Observanz’, 365fff.; Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction, 148–150; Mersch, Soziale Dimensionen visueller Kommunikation, 366–369. 86 Uhland, ‘Esslingen: Clarissen’, 42; Holzwart-Schäfer, ‘Körperlich eingeschlossen, aber geistig frei?’, 244–245. 87 Gatz, ‘Alspach/Elsaß, Klarissenkloster’, 99f. On the reform initiatives of Matthias Doering, and his prolonged struggle with the friars of the regular Observance, see Weigel, Ordensreform und Konziliarismus, passim. 88 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 553; Degler-Spengler, Das Klarissenkloster Gnadenthal, 75f. 89 Wauer, Entstehung und Ausbreitung des Klarissenordens, 159; Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse’, 442; Degler-Spengler, Das Klarissenkloster Gnadental, 35. implementing reforms 189 systematically tried to involve them with the reform of Poor Clare monasteries. The early Observant reforms in the German order provinces frequently had no direct impact on the rule followed by the women. When the Poor Clares in Alspach (Alsace) came under the cura monialium of friars from the regular Observance between 1441 and 1447, the house kept its alle- giance to the Urbanist rule.90 This seems to have been true as well for the Gnadental monastery in Basel, and later to an extent for the important Sankt Klara monastery of Nuremberg. Successful Observant reforms were introduced in the Nuremberg house in 1452, more or less after 50 years of discontent. The nuns had longstand- ing complaints about the Conventual friars responsible for their spiritual care. They had already complained shortly after 1400 that these friars nei- ther kept up a proper communal religious life nor instructed them prop- erly. Instead the friars were leading them astray, and had no interest in their spiritual wellbeing. The Nuremberg monastery also sufffered from severe conflicts between diffferent monastic factions, which flared up at regular intervals, and repeatedly necessitated outside intervention by the Franciscan provincial minister and the Nuremberg city council.91 By 1452, the visiting Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa saw an opportunity to push through his reform agenda. He asked the Observant friars Nikolaus Caroli (vicar of the Strasbourg Observant province) and Albert Püchelbach (guardian of the recently reformed Nuremberg Franciscans) to become involved. With their help, the Nuremberg nuns came under control of the Strasbourg Observant province and quickly developed a stringent reli- gious life with careful attention to the interior life of prayer. They kept their allegiance to the Urbanist rule, but also took inspiration for their spiritual life from the 1253 Regula Prima, and from other hagiographical and devotional texts focused on Clare of Assisi. These texts, gathered in the Klarenbuch or Sankt-Klara Buch, were read by the Observant Nuremberg Poor Clares during their refectory meals and helped them to orient themselves on Clare of Assisi as a religious model.92 In the late fijifteenth century and after, the Observant Nuremberg Poor Clare monastery saw an intensive spiritual exchange between Franciscan religious guides and convent preachers, such as Stephan Fridolin and

90 Gatz, ‘Alspach/Elsaß, Klarissenkloster’, 99–102. 91 Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 19–46, 51fff, 154–162; Tkocz,Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 47–50. 92 Mattick, ‘Eine Nürnberger Übertragung’, 173–232. For more information, see Ruh, ‘Das Sankt-Klara-Buch’, 192–206. 190 chapter four

Nikolaus Glassberger, and the nuns of the monastery. The latter, led by a series of strong and cultivated abbesses,93 created for themselves a veritable humanist-religious convivium, with various women from the Pirckheimer family (Caritas, her sister Clara, and their niece Katherina) and their close friends Felizitas Grundherr and Apollonia Tucher at the center. As we will see in Chapter Six, this greatly facilitated the literary and artistic production of this monastic community. Shortly after their own Observant reform, the Nuremberg Poor Clares became involved in the transformation of the Clarissan monastery in Bressanone (Brixen), in the Franciscan Austria province (alluded to in the previous section). In Bressanone, the reform-minded Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa was confronted with two rival groups: on the one side the abbess and a number of nuns in favor of Observant reforms, and on the other side a group of nuns who were adamantly opposed to it, led by Maria of Wolkenstein (daughter of the ‘Minnesänger’ Oswald of Wolkenstein). With papal support, Cardinal Cusanus removed the Bressanone monas- tery from the Conventual Austrian province by August 1455, making it part of the Observant Strasbourg province, and sent for the Franciscan guard- ian of Nuremberg, Albert Püchelbach, and four choir nuns and a lay sister from Sankt Klara in Nuremberg. Together they overcame the resistance of Maria of Wolkenstein and her party, and implemented reforms.94 Soon afterwards, however, the now reformed Poor Clares of Bressanone were expelled as part of a conflict between the bishop of Bressanone, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and Duke Sigismund of Tirol. In 1460, the duke arrested Cardinal Cusanus. In retaliation, the pope placed his land under papal interdict. Thus, the nuns refused to have religious services held in their monastic church. In the face of their defijiance, a party of Bressanone townspeople and the duke came out in force and threatened to drown the nuns. Dorothea Koler, one of the Nuremberg nuns who had been involved with the Observant reforms and still resided in the Bressanone monastery, positioned herself in the church’s entrance and faced down the crowd alone, clapping her hands, and saying that such impious actions would not go unpunished by God. Eventually, the duke had the nuns evicted. Guided by Dorothea Koler and Cristina Reyseltin, who also had taken action against the duke’s wishes

93 Notably Margaretha Grundherr (1470–1488), Helena Meichsner (1488–1503) and Caritas Pirckheimer (1503–1532). Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 130f. 94 The letters by Maria of Wolkenstein to her brothers tell an interesting tale. See Kühn, Ich, Wolkenstein, 441; Hallauer, ‘Nikolaus von Kues und das Brixener Klarissenkloster’, 111. implementing reforms 191 to use the church during the papal interdict,95 31 nuns and eight wagons made their way to the Sankt Caecilia monastery in Pfullingen. There the refugees, supported by Mechthild of Austria (mother of Count Eberhard VI of Württemberg), nearly immediately helped to introduce Observant reforms.96 Thus, the Bressanone eviction became an incentive for the fur- ther dissemination of a Clarissan Observant lifestyle. When matters set- tled after the death of Nicholas of Cusa (11 August 1464), the surviving Poor Clares of Bressanone were able to return, which was indeed the choice of thirteen of them, whereas the Nuremberg Poor Clares who had come along stayed in Pfullingen.97 The Observance in Pfullingen in 1461 went hand in hand with the intro- duction of detailed convent statutes, consisting of a vernacular version of the rule of Urban IV and a range of additional regulations organized in fijive chapters, dealing with issues of obedience, poverty, chastity, religious commitment, liturgical matters and the maintenance of silence. These statutes were akin to the older regulations compiled by Johann Lor (Johann von Lare) in 1455 or 1456 for the Poor Clares of Bressanone. These, in turn, were in part based on materials produced for the Nuremberg Poor Clares some years earlier.98 In 1460, fijive years after Nuremberg nuns had set out for Bressanone, the women of the Nuremberg Sankt Klara monastery were asked by Bishop Georg of Schaumberg to help with the reform of the Clarissan monastery of Bamberg.99 Several years later, between 1465 and 1469, fijive nuns from Nuremberg led by Felizitas Trautmann helped with the reform of the Poor Clare monastery of Eger.100 In addition, in the early 1480s, Nuremberg

95 Cristina Reyseltin made sure that the bells of the cloister could not be used for reli- gious services by partisans of the duke, by climbing into the bell tower and removing the clappers. Cristina Reyseltin also played a leading role in the evacuation of the nuns to Pfullingen, especially with regard to the organization of victuals. After the return of the nuns to Bressanone, Cristina became active in the further introduction of the Observant lifestyle. Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 188; Tovalieri, ‘Clarisse in Trentino’, 573f. 96 The Observance of Pfullingen in 1461, pushed through with assistance from the exiled nuns from Bressanone and Nuremberg, found additional support from the Franciscan provincial vicar Johannes Lor (Johann von Lare). Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 183–184; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 104fff 97 Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 181–186. 98 On the Bressanone statutes, see Straganz, ‘Die ältesten Statuten’, 151–179. For the Pfullingen statutes, see Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 193–211. On the Clarissan scribe involved with the so-called ‘Pfullinger Statutenbuch’ (the oldest known manuscript is Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Hist 4° 177), see Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 105. 99 Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 50–51, 277fff. Four choir nuns (Anna Tintner, Margaretha Schelhorn, Barbara Rieter, and Elisabeth Lochner) and one lay sister (Elisabeth Mayer) from Nuremberg came over, accompanied by Georg of Schaumberg. 100 Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 60f. 192 chapter four became once more involved with Observant reforms, this time facilitating the transformation of the Clarissan ‘Angerkloster’ (cloister in the meadow) of Munich. This reform had been fijinancially supported by Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. He also intervened with force against those who stood in the way of reform, and paid the travel expenses for three Clarissan nuns from Munich to visit Nuremberg for additional religious training.101 Likewise in the 1480s, the Poor Clare monastery of Pfullingen, which had been reformed with the help of nuns from Nuremberg and Bressanone, sent out nuns to assist with Observant reforms elsewhere. A reform party of no less than eight nuns was sent out in 1484 to Söflingen, at the request of the from the monasteries of Hirschau and Blaubeuren, and again with the direct support of the Franciscan provincial vicar Johann Lor.102 Aside from Alspach, Nuremberg and Pfullingen, the monasteries of Freiburg and Valduna also took an active part in the spread of Observant reforms. The Freiburg monastery credited its initial Observant transfor- mation in part to the activities of the nun Magdalena Beutler (1407–1458), who as early as 1430 had convinced her fellow nuns to renounce private property. Magdalena Beutler was a strong personality whose mystical prowess had a hold over people both inside and outside the monastic compound. Yet her qualities were regarded with suspicion by others, such as the Dominican Johannes Nider, who condemned her visionary claims. As a result, several modern historians have judged her to be unbalanced and ‘un-womanly’.103 At least by 1470, the Freiburg monastery had become an acknowledged Observant center, for in that year it was asked to send out a party of nuns to help with the reforms of the Auf dem Werth monas- tery in Strasbourg.104 The Valduna monastery in Austria, a Poor Clare settlement since 1402 (on tertiary foundations), had itself undergone Observant reforms after 1449, under the abbatiate of the formidable Ursula Haider from Leutkirch. As an Observant house, Valduna became involved with reforms in Regensburg, Speyer, Wittigen and Villingen.105 The Observant reform of

101 Pickel, ‘Geschichte des Klaraklosters’, 193; Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 60fff. Felizitas Trautmann, who previously had helped secure Observant reforms in Eger, also took up abbatial responsibilities in the Munich monastery during its transformation. 102 Its fijirst Observant abbess was Elisabeth Reischlin. Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 193; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 113, 176f. 103 See for instance Schleussner, ‘Magdalena von Freiburg’, 207–216 and Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 137–193. For a more recent evaluation, see Backes, ‘Zur literarischen Genese’, 249–260. 104 Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 189. 105 Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel Mondo tedesco’, 443; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 678–679; Ludewig, Das ehemalige Klarissenkloster, passim. implementing reforms 193 the last mentioned monastery is relatively well documented, thanks to the survival of a convent chronicle. It relates that the Franciscan provincial vicar Heinrich Karrer asked Ursula around 1480 to reform the as yet unen- closed penitential community of Villingen ‘am Bickentor’, which had roots reaching back to the 1270s, and probably received some spiritual care from local Franciscans since the early fourteenth century. Ursula and a party of eight or nine additional nuns departed for Villingen and, overcoming sig- nifijicant local resistance, transformed that community into a fully enclosed and Observant Clarissan monastery which became famous for its spiritu- ality and literary production.106 In various cases, Observant reforms could lead to prolonged and at times violent struggles. This was certainly the case in Bressanone, and pos- sibly even more so in Söflingen, where the implementation of Observant reforms was marred by the question of whether the monastery should be under Observant or Conventual jurisdiction. This question was not resolved for several decades. In 1484 it was rumored by disgruntled order offfijicials that the Söflingen nuns were wearing special Shrovetide or carni- val costumes with pointed shoes and a ‘cleavage enhancing bodice’.107 Such accusations might have been exaggerated or completely invented. This probably was also the case with the claim, echoed by several histori- ans who mistranslated their sources, that there were numerous pregnan- cies in the cloister.108 Yet another monastery where Observant reforms only took hold after a prolonged struggle was that of Breslau (Wroclaw). When the Observant provincial vicar of Saxony, Ludwig Hennig, tried to impose reforms on it in 1508, he found the strong-willed abbess Margaretha of Tost on his path. She made it very clear to Ludwig that he should stop meddling in her afffairs. In response, the provincial vicar started a deliberate campaign to have Margaretha replaced by another, more pliable aristocratic abbess, namely the young Apollonia, who was not even a fully professed nun when Hennig pushed her candidacy. Hennig counted on the fact that Apollonia was related to several of the most important noble families of the area. This secured the support of many of the monastery’s most important benefactors.109

106 Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters, ed. Glatz, 25–30; Müller, ‘Die Villinger Frauenkloster’, 22–23. 107 Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 96–97. 108 Die Söflinger Briefe, ed. Miller, 40–41. See for a critical evaluation Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 101–102. 109 See: Doelle, Reformtätigkeit des Provinzials Ludwig Hennig, 45–79. 194 chapter four

Communities could be divided over the issue of reform itself, and over the changing power balance due to the implementation of reform with the help of outside actors, such as incoming nuns and local lay and eccle- siastical authorities. As elsewhere, Observant reforms in many German houses frequently meant that positions of power shifted. This could cause resentment. One way of dealing with this problem was to allow a trial period after which the women who did not want to accept the new regime could transfer to another, unreformed, house still under Conventual con- trol.110 Observant reforms therefore often caused an exodus of nuns. Frequently, a part of the old community departed, leaving the reformers in charge, whether or not they were led by reform specialists from a diffferent ‘motherhouse’. At Villingen, fijive of the six women present there before the arrival of Ursula Haider’s reform party decided to leave the compound for another non-Observant monastery.111 The exodus of nuns or their acquiescence to reform could also be caused by violence or intimidation. At Söflingen, the nuns unwilling to accept the Observance were expelled from the monastery by armed forces provided by the town authorities of Ulm. The women were confijined else- where and given two weeks to make up their minds. After that time, eight out of thirty-six women, including fijive of the novices, elected to accept the Observance after all.112 The women who continued to resist the reforms however, were not allowed to return to the monastic compound. They started a legal battle for their rights, appealing to the pope, the emperor and the local authorities. Finally, in 1486, they received a settlement of 5,300 guilders. The expelled women either remained in the world or trans- ferred to other houses, taking their dowries and personal belongings with them.113 The Pfullingen convent statutes mentioned earlier, like their Nuremberg and Bressanone counterparts, show that the introduction of Observant reforms in the German order provinces under guidance of friars of the regular Observance was by no means directly dependent upon the adop- tion of the 1253 Regula Prima.114 This remained the case well into the

110 The length of such a trial period varied from several months to a year. At the Bickenkloster in Villingen, reformed in 1480, it was three months. Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters, ed. Glatz, 34. 111 Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters, ed. Glatz, 34–35. 112 Die Söflinger Briefe, ed. Miller, 57. 113 Die Söflinger Briefe, ed. Miller, 38, 54–57; Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 95. 114 See also the convent statutes of Weissenfels from 1513: Die Statuten der Klarissen zu Weissenfels, ed. Doelle, 356–362. As I have stated earlier, it would seem that, in several reformed houses in the German lands, the Urbanist rule was used in combination with implementing reforms 195 sixteenth century. As late as 1515, it was possible to create a monastery under Observant auspices with adherence to the Urbanist rule, as is attested by the foundation of a Clarissan house at Louvain. What addi- tional constitutions or ordinations were added to secure an Observant regime in that house remains unclear.115

The Ave Maria Reform

Within the realm of the regular Observance sub vicariis in France and the Southern Low Countries attempts at ensuring Observant uniformity in Clarissan monasteries were pursued most forcefully where the friars felt the heat of Colettine expansion directly, or where religious reforms became a focal point of normative centering by the secular authorities (secular overlords or urban authorities of major cities) keen to streamline religious life within their jurisdiction.116 For instance, the emergence of the so-called Ave Maria group may be best explained as a reaction to the Colettine expansion. This gathering of houses primarily consisted of for- mer tertiary communities, which had been brought to a life of enclosed Clarissan monasticism under tutelage of the regular Observance, but with the use of Clare’s rule as well as Colette of Corbie’s Constitutiones. An early example of this reform model was the Observant Poor Clare monastery in Antwerp. In 1455, the Observant Friars Minor, who had obtained a friary in Antwerp by 1446, asked Isabella and Philip of Burgundy for permission to create an Observant Clarissan monastery in or near the specifijic reform statutes and other texts, at times including the rule of Clare. This was for instance the case for houses reformed by nuns from Nuremberg. Hence, after her return to Nuremberg, the Clarissan nun Barbara Freydung prepared for the Bressanone monastery a German manuscript in 1459 (or shortly thereafter), containing the Urbanist rule, an abbre- viation of the same rule with specifijic emphasis on issues pertaining to the reform of the Bressanone monastery, the rule of Clare, hagiographical excerpts and spiritual texts. Mattick, ‘Eine Nürnberger Übertragung der Urbanregel’, 179, 220. However, it is important to note that the vernacular version of Clare’s rule in this collection is the only known Middle High German translation of this text. Cf. Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 33, 284f. Tkocz suggests that the Poor Clares of Bamberg followed the rule of Clare after 1460, but the author refers to a German set of statutes ‘welche in 7 capitel abgeteilt seindt’. This suggests that we are dealing with vernacular statutes akin to those introduced elsewhere, alongside of the rules of Urban IV and Clare of Assisi. 115 The Observant guardian Dietrich Coelde asked the Louvain magistrature to give per- mission for the foundation of the new monastery. Its second abbess was Jeanne Scheyfs, the governess of the young Charles V. Henry Prevost, La vie exemplaire de neuf abbesses, ed. Reusens, 107–112; Schmets, ‘Urbanisten en Annunciaten te Leuven’, 26–48. 116 On the use of the term ‘normative centering’ in this context, see Hamm, ‘Normative Centering in the 15th and 16th Centuries’, 1–49. 196 chapter four same town on behalf of three women with plans to start a religious house. Duchess Isabella brought this request to the attention of Pope Callixtus III, who gave his consent in July of that year.117 The new foundation adopted the rule of Clare of Assisi together with the Colettine constitutions, yet was from the outset supposed to be under the cura monialium of the Observant Friars Minor from the Cologne prov- ince. The proof of this is found in the writings of the Premonstratensian abbot Johannes Fierkens from Saint-Michael’s Abbey of Antwerp. Fierkens had been appointed by the pope to survey the founding process and the development of the house, and explicitly stated that the monastery should not be under the jurisdiction of the Conventuals.118 In the presence of the three female initiators of the monastery (Mechthild Janssen, Catherina Henrici and Gerardina of Waesberghe), notarial acts were issued on 26 March 1456. Five years later, around August 1461, the monastery was ready to receive its fijirst nuns: six local women and four Poor Clares from the reformed Urbanist house of Trier. One of the latter, Elisabeth of Lindevelt, became the new abbess.119 The monastery soon flourished and built a substantial library collection. The community also played a role when the friars of the Regular Observance began to support the creation of Observant Clarissan monasteries elsewhere in the Low Countries and Northern France.120 In 1490, the Observant Poor Clares of Antwerp sent nuns to a new foundation in Gouda, and they were instrumental in the start of the Observant house of Malines (Mechelen) around 1500.121 As said above, the model of using Clare’s Regula Prima along with Colette’s Constitutiones under the supervision of the friars of the Regular Observance was used for a number of houses in French Flanders and

117 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 21 (n. 42). 118 He wrote to Duchess Isabella that the new house should be a ‘modelhuys (…) dat niet zou aansluiten bij die slappe Minderbroeders-Conventueelen…’ Cited from Muylaert, Het Arme Klarenklooster van Antwerpen I, 3–4. 119 The Trier monastery had itself apparently been founded in 1451. Hardick, ‘Le Clarisse nel Mondo tedesco’, 442. 120 There exists a so-called Fundatieboek concerning this Antwerp monastery, written by Hortulana of Farvacque. This work can be found in the Clarissan monastery of Stabroek, and a copy is present in the Archives of the Franciscans in Sint-Truiden. This Fundatieboek also formed the basis for the studies of several twentieth-century scholars, notably Schoutens, Geschiedenis van het voormalig klooster, the work of Muylaert mentioned in a previous note, and Roggen, ‘Het Clarissenklooster van Antwerpen’, 58–72. Cf. also Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 117–126. 121 Gevelers, ‘Eene bladzijde uit de geschiedenis’, 67–78; Idem, ‘Het voormalige klooster’, 407–412 & 2 (1914), 7–15 & 119–128; Idem, ‘Het voormalig klooster der Arme Klaren’, 9–15, 40–47, 78–82, 110–117, 142–147, 182–184, 212–216, 232–237; Backer, Het Arme-Klarenklooster te Mechelen; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 181–195. implementing reforms 197

Northern France (but also more to the South) that are known as the Ave Maria group (after the name chosen by many of these houses). Most of these Clarissan foundations came into being in and after the early 1480s. Sometimes after a long history as tertiary communities, they now moved towards claustration and were unwilling or unable to stay under the umbrella of the Franciscan Conventuals.122 An important monastery in this regard was the Ave Maria foundation in Metz. It was enclosed between 1480 and 1482, on the initiative of the young widow Nicole Geofffrey, who wanted to spend the remainder of her life in a community ‘…sou l’estroicte Observance de la première reigle de Madame Sainte Claire.’123 For this endeavor, she obtained the support of the Observant guardian of Metz, who appealed on her behalf to Pope Sixtus IV. Nicole Geofffrey was joined in her initiative by a group of tertiary sisters from Ghent. Moreover, a few nuns from the recently created Observant Clarissan house at Antwerp were brought in to inform the life- style of the budding community. As in Antwerp, the women of the Ave Maria monastery of Metz followed the 1253 Regula Prima together with the Constitutiones of Colette, but again without becoming part of the Colettine network sub ministris. Instead, the nuns received their cura ani- marum from the Observant friars (locally known as the Baudes). An offfiji- cial confijirmation of this state of afffairs was issued in 1502, promising the nuns that the guardian of the Observant friars or Baudes would provide them with the necessary preachers and confessors.124 The community of Metz was instrumental in the creation of various other Observant Poor Clare settlements of the Ave Maria group. Cases in point are the Ave Maria monasteries of Bar-le-Duc (1484),125 Paris (1484/85, a former beguine settlement),126 Albi (1487, a former house of Augustinian

122 See in general on this group Moracchini, ‘Entre Urbanistes et Colettines’, 237–253; Idem, ‘Les Clarisses de l’Avé Maria’, 4–17. 123 Cited from Moracchini, ‘Entre Urbanistes et Colettines’, 239. See also Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire’, 136. 124 Schmitt, ‘Accordo stipulato tra le Colettine di Metz e i Baudes il 20 agosto 1502’, 274. Schmitt still saw these nuns as Colettines. 125 See aside from the scattered remarks in the above-mentioned studies of Moracchini also Vincent-Dubé, Le monastère des Clarisses de Bar-le-Duc (1484–1792); Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 553. 126 Paris, ‘Fondation des Clarisses de l’Ave Marie’, 272–290, 504–516, 605–621; Biver, Abbayes, monastères, couvents de femmes à Paris à la fijin du XVIIIe siècle, 97–100. This was a former beguine settlement, already in existence during the thirteenth century, in which a number of Franciscan tertiary sisters had gathered with royal support after 1471. When Observant factions and the tertiary sisters tried to reform the house into an Observant nunnery, they received much resistance from the Conventual friars, the Minoresses of 198 chapter four

Canonesses),127 Lille (1490, formerly a community of tertiary Grey Sisters),128 Alençon (1501),129 Toulouse-Saint-Cyprien (1516, formerly a

Longchamp and Saint Marcel, the University of Paris, and other mendicant houses and religious institutions. Moreover, Anne of Beaujeu, daughter of the French king, wished to transform the house into a genuine Colettine settlement. Eventually the Parliament of Paris made it possible to go ahead, and to turn it into an Observant Poor Clare monastery of the Ave Maria congregation that followed the rule of Clare and Colette’s Constitutiones. In 1483, the French Queen Charlotte, backed up by a papal bull that allowed her and Margaret of York (widow of the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold) to create Poor Clare monasteries under Observant control, pushed through the monastery’s dependence on the regular Observance. Soon afterwards, in the summer of 1485, Nicole Geofffrey and Stefania of Saillaint came from Metz with several other nuns to help establish the Observant lifestyle. 127 In the 1470s, the bishop of Albi, Louis I of Amboise, had closed down a house of Augustinian Canonesses (Monasterium capitis Pontis Tarni), as he did not approve of their non-reformed lifestyle. He apparently wished to install Poor Clares in the monastic com- pound, obtaining a papal bull to this intent in May 1482 (Injunctum nobis, Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, n. 1590). Louis was fijirst inclined to bring in Colettines from Castres. But in the end, he did not want to support a Colettine house that remained nominally under supervision of the Conventuals, whom he found lacking in Observant ardor. Supported by Queen Charlotte of Savoy, Louis of Amboise thwarted Conventual opposi- tion. He was made offfijicially a protector of the Ave Maria Poor Clares, and obtained addi- tional papal confijirmation to create such a house in the town of Albi, with the help of nuns from the Ave Maria monastery of Paris. The fijirst of these nuns arrived in February 1487, together with two Observant friars. The fijirst abbess was Antonia Sangot, who previously had lived in Metz and Paris. The nuns of Albi also lived according to Clare’s Regula Prima in combination with the Constitutiones of Colette of Corbie. Wadding, Annales Minorum XIV, 685; Paris (Bocquet), ‘L’établissement des Clarisses’, 364–370. 128 Dancoisne, Monographie du couvent; Leuridon, ‘Epitaphier du Nord’, 468–471; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 173–178 (who still presents it as a genuine Colettine foundation). This house came into being after Margaret of York proposed a local house of Grey Sisters engaged in charitable work to transform itself into a house of fully enclosed Observant Poor Clares. The majority of the 32 Grey Sisters (and a novice) was not very enthusiastic. There was also some opposition from local Conventuals and secular cler- gymen. Yet, with the help of the Observant vicar Olivier Maillard and the prior of the Lille Dominicans, several papal bulls were obtained from Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII (Wadding, Annales Minorum XIV, no. 66 & 69), which approved of the Observant foundation, as long as it closely followed the Colettine lifestyle. These references to Colette notwithstanding, it became a house under the jurisdiction of the regular Observance. Several Grey Sisters who did not want to go along with these changes left the community. They were replaced by fijive nuns from the Ave Maria monastery of Paris, brought in by the Observant friar Olivier Maillard. Stefania of Saillant was part of this group. She had already been involved with the creation of other Ave Maria monasteries, and became the fijirst abbess of the Lille monas- tery. Subsequently, she would play a role in the creation of the Ave Maria Clarissan monas- teries in Alençon and Middelburg (East Flanders). 129 Guerin, La Bienheureuse Marguerite, passim. Once the Ave Maria monastery of Paris had been established, the duke of Alençon also wished to create a comparable house in his residence. His widow Marguerita of Lorraine continued the preparations in and after 1493. By 1501, eleven Poor Clares from the Parisian Ave Maria monastery and two from Lille, selected by the Observant general vicar Olivier Maillard entered the compound, which had been erected not far from the ducal palace. implementing reforms 199 house of tertiaries who had taken over a derelict monastery),130 and Middelburg in East Flanders (1515).131

The Annonciade and the ‘Argentan’ or ‘Leonist’ Observance

In the meantime, the Colettine dominance in Northern France, Burgundy and Savoy, as well as Conventual opposition to the creation of Observant Poor Clare houses outside this Colettine network, may have induced French friars from the regular Observance to lend their support to the wishes of Jeanne of Valois (Jeanne de France, 1464–1505), daughter of Louis XI and Charlotte of Savoy, to establish a completely new order: the so-called order of the Annonciade. Jeanne of France had been betrothed to Louis of Orléans. After ascending the French throne as Louis XII in 1498, he commenced a divorce procedure in order to marry Anne of Brittany, his predecessor’s widow and the political key to secure this region for the crown. Jeanne, who had been made Duchess of Berry by her former hus- band and king, retired to Bourges, where she began to play with the idea of establishing a number of double monasteries of Observant friars and nuns. To this purpose, she sought the advice of her Franciscan Observant confessor Gabriel Maria Nicolas, then guardian at Amboise.

130 Paris, Le Monastère des Clarisses, 15fff.; Idem, ‘L’établissement des Clarisses’, 370–373. This was a transformation of a community of tertiaries, who had taken over an abandoned house of Urbanist Poor Clares. On 20 July 1462 their house was devastated by fijire, and the tertiaries moved into a vacant religious house (in the Saint Cyprien quarter of Toulouse). This had once been a Benedictine monastery, and thereafter had functioned as a hospital, run by the Hospital Sisters of Notre Dame de la Daurade, before its demise during the Plague epidemics. After the tertiaries occupied the compound in 1461, they came under increasing pressure to subject themselves to the Observant Friars, and become fully enclosed Poor Clares. In 1507, the sisters fijinally accepted the jurisdiction of the Obervant provincial vicar and in 1516 Clare’s Regula Prima was introduced. Four Poor Clares from the Ave Maria house of Albi came in to push through additional reforms. 131 Lippens, ‘Le Monastère des Pauvres Claires à Middelbourg en Flandre’, 60–84; Diplomatum Belgicorum nova Collectio, ed. Foppens III, 456–457; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 228–235. The creation of this monastery in Eastern Flanders was due to Guillaume Hugouet, count of Saillant (and the brother of Stefania of Saillant, the Poor Clare abbess of Lille). Guillaume established the new foundation in one of his mansions in Middelburg, Flanders. After the necessary permissions by the pope and the local religious and ecclesiastical authorities had been given, Stefania of Saillaint and fijive of her fellow nuns came over from Lille by 22 June 1515. The women also obtained in September 1515 from Pope Leo X a Privilegium Paupertatis (Exponi nobis nuper), which allowed the women to live from ‘eleemosynis et manuum labore’. The nuns not only adhered to the rule of Clare but also adopted the Colettine constitutions, again without joining the Colettine network. Although the monastery did not have external sisters, the women had access to a desig- nated ‘Martha’, who lived near the community’s gate, and who went out for begging and shopping rounds. Lippens, ‘Le Monastère des Pauvres Claires’, 82–83. 200 chapter four

Jeanne was not able to convince the Observant leadership to accept her ideal of double houses (which was possibly partly inspired by the Colettine situation, or her acquaintance with the order of Fontevrault). Yet the ini- tiatives of Jeanne and Gabriel Maria Nicolas resulted into the creation of an order for religious women, known as the Annonciade, or as the order of the Ten Virtues of the Virgin Mary. Its houses were to receive the cura ani- marum from Franciscan Observant friars, and partook of all the papal privileges normally granted to monasteries of Poor Clares. The fijirst house was established with twelve young adolescent girls (some apparently taken from a boarding school) and aristocratic ladies from Jeanne’s house- hold in Bourges. At Jeanne’s request, and with permission from his order superiors, Gabriel Maria Nicolas wrote a rule for this new order. This text borrowed from both the Franciscan Regula Bullata of 1223 and Clare’s Regula Prima of 1253. After some serious opposition, Jeanne and Gabriel Maria were able to secure support for this new rule and the whole monastic setup of the Annonciade from the pope and the papal curia by 1502.132 By that year, the Annonciade already had fijive houses: at Bourges, Albi, Béthune, Bruges and Rodez.133 After the death of Jeanne of Valois in 1505, her former female courtly and religious companions collaborated with Gabriel Maria Nicolas to erect additional monasteries, profijiting from the fijinancial bequests of Jeanne, as well as from the personal wealth and social networks of the order’s highly aristocratic nuns. According to the chronicle of Françoise Guyard, various nuns from the fijirst Annonciade monastery in Bourges were particularly active in promoting their order. In this context, the chronicle mentions initiatives by Catherine Gauvinelle, Marguerite Blandine, Marguerite Bodine, Marie Garelle, and Louise of Aventigny, who were instrumental in fijirst creating a monastic house in Albi, and from there facilitated new foundations in Rodez, Bordeaux and Agen. The development of the order profijited from the fact that French friars of the regular Observance were keen, at least until 1517, to use the Annonciade alternative to reform houses of female tertiaries that, for one reason or another, could neither be transformed into normal Observant

132 Many of Gabriel Maria’s writings on the Observance and for the Annonciade have been edited in Delorme, ‘Documents pour l’histoire du bienheureux Gabriel-Maria’, pas- sim. See also: Chronique de l’Annonciade, ed. Bonnefoy. 133 For the Annonciade women of Notre-Dame de Fargues at Albi, the scholar Nicole Caling provided translations of devotional works, such as Le sentier et l’adresse de dévotion et contemplation intellectuelle. See: Lacger, ‘Histoire de Annonciades’, 134. implementing reforms 201

Clarissan monasteries, nor into monastic houses associated with the Ave Maria congregation.134 In 1517, Pope Leo X ordered all remaining Observant groups still under the jurisdiction of the Conventuals (sub ministris), such as the Colettine nuns and the Coletan friars, to join the regular Observance, and he made the latter the offfijicial heir of the order started by Francis of Assisi. The Observant provincial vicars now offfijicially became provincial ministers, and the Observant branch obtained the right to choose the Franciscan minister general. The remaining Conventuals became a subordinate branch under a master general. With this move, the Colettine monasteries were offfijicially brought under the same Observant jurisdiction as the other Observant Clarissan houses. As such, the friars of the regular Observance gained a much stronger position to push through their own models of reli- gious reform, and cater to the wishes of the order’s lay benefactors without any fear of playing into the hands of the Colettines or Conventuals. It is against this background that should be observed the emergence of the peculiar ‘Argentan’ or ‘Leonist’ Clarissan houses. This congregation began to take form when Franciscan Observant leaders, supported by Duchess Marguerite of Lorraine (who previously had helped establish the Ave Maria monastery of Alençon and after the death of her husband René of Alençon had retired into a semi-religious life at her castle of Assai, imi- tating a Clarissan lifestyle with her circle of women in attendance), installed in 1517 a group of cloistered tertiaries at Argentan (Basse- Normandie). These tertiary women had been Franciscan hospital sisters, but had accepted full enclosure in 1510. With the help of the Observant provincial minister Jean Glapion (future confessor of Emperor Charles V) and the Observant general commissioner Gabriel-Maria, this community was transformed into a community of Poor Clares, for which an adaptation of Clare’s rule from 1253 was made.135 Pope Leo X approved this modifijied rule of Clare in December 1519 (hence the name ‘Leonist’ Poor Clares). Soon thereafter, on 22 April 1522, the Franciscan provincial chapter of Avesnes issued supplementary statutes. Marguerite of Lorraine had died a year before, shortly after joining the

134 See aside from the remarks in the studies of Moracchini mentioned previously, espe- cially Annaert, ‘Le père Gabriel-Maria Nicolas’, 27–64; Bonnefoy, ‘Les intentions de la bien- heureuse Jeanne de Valois’, 3–16; Idem, ‘Notules sur Sainte Jeanne de France’, 44–59. 135 ‘…avec les modifijications faictes sur icelle par Urbain & Eugene papes.’ Yves Magistri, Mirouers et Guydes forts propres pour les Dames et Damoiselles de France (Bourges, 1585), 286, found in Moracchini, ‘Entre Urbanistes et Colettines, 247. See also Laurent, Notice his- torique sur l’abbaye royale de Sainte-Claire d’Argentan, passim. 202 chapter four

Argentan monastery. In her will, she appointed her son and her daughter- in-law Marguerite of Navarre as protectors and benefactors of the Sainte- Claire d’Argentan monastery and the other houses established in its wake. The Argentan foundation was the fijirst of a series of so-called ‘Leonist’ Observant Poor Clare monasteries, or monasteries of Sainte-Claire d’Argen- tan. The transformation of the tertiary community at Argen tan was fol- lowed by that of the tertiary house at Mortagne (like Argentan a community established by Marguerite of Lorraine) and Laval between 1520–1530, no doubt stimulated by Pope Leo X’s permitting Marguerite of Lorraine to accept into this congregation all tertiary houses in her lands that wanted to become fully enclosed.136 In the seventeenth century other groups followed, for instance at Fougères and Beaumont-le-Vicomte. The most signifijicant diffference between the ‘Leonist’ Clarissan houses and other Observant Clarissan monasteries concerned the poverty regime. Glapion’s modifijied rule of Clare missed Clare’s central chapter on poverty (chapter 6). It had been replaced with a text based on the Urbanist rule. Essentially, Glapion took out what Clare would have seen as the heart of her rule. In this way, the ‘Leonist’ Poor Clares could access rents and prop- erty. Likewise, the statutes were more lenient than some of Clare’s and Colette of Corbie’s prohibitions, especially with regard to fasting and the possibility of wearing shoes. These statutes also emphasized the distinc- tion in status between choir nuns and lay or serving sisters. Consequently, the lifestyle of the Leonist Poor Clares might not have difffered much from their non-reformed Urbanist counterparts.

The Regular Observance in Spain

As mentioned above when discussing the Tordesillas movement (under the guidance of a perpetual visitator), the Spanish peninsula had its own reform initiatives, contemporary with and even older than those of Colette. After her death, her model of Observant reform began to spread towards the South, starting with the arrival of Colettines from Lezignan at Gandia (Gandía), fijirst in the 1430s and more successfully in 1457. From the Gandia house, the Colettine model was introduced to a number of other tertiary and Clarissan houses in Portugal (such as in Setubal by 1496) and in Spain: Gerona (1488), Valencia (1497), Castellón de Ampurias (1505) and Alicante (1518). However, it remains difffijicult to judge which houses only

136 Guerin, La bienheureuse Marguerite de Lorraine, passim. implementing reforms 203 adopted the Colettine lifestyle and which houses were Colettine in the juridical sense and hence not under the authority of the regular Observance sub vicariis.137 From roughly the 1450s onwards, the regular Observance sub vicariis also began to make an impact within the Spanish peninsula.138 For exam- ple, this is visible in the transformation of the Andalusian tertiary community of Santa Iñes de Andújar. Founded around the 1430s, it was transformed into a Clarissan monastery by 1450, and accepted an Observant visitator by 1452.139 In the 1460s, similar processes took place at Andalusian tertiary houses in Carmona140 and Cumbres Mayores,141 although the exact date and nature of Observant involvement is not totally certain. Observant involvement can also be traced in two foundations in the area, namely the Observant Visitación de Nuestra Señora mon- astery (created with the assistance of Catalina Núñez of Toledo between 1460 and 1464), and the Salutación monastery in Rejas (also near Madrid) around 1468, with support of Pedro Zapaya and his wife Catalina Lando.142 During the reign of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile (married in October 1469), the advance and completion of the Reconquista coincided with the promotion of new Observant foun- dations in the South, as part of the program to reclaim the recovered lands for .143 Nearly from the start, and progressively from the early 1490s onwards, Ferdinand and Isabella complemented this project with religious policies intended to advance religious uniformity throughout their respective realms. This resulted into a more systematic promotion of

137 Ivars, ‘Origen y propagacion’, passim; Amorós, ‘El monasterio de Santa Clara’, 441– 486; Soriano Triguero, ‘La reforma de las Clarisas’, 191. 138 It started following the famous Barcelona chapter of the Ultramontan Observants of 1451, which resulted in important statutes: Statuta generalia observantium ultramontano- rum an. 1451 Barcinonae condita, ed. Bihl, 106–197. 139 Wadding, Annales Minorum X, 205, XII, 620; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 729–730; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 542; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 102; Miúra Andrades, ‘Las fundaciones de Clarisas’, 712. 140 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 567; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 99; Miúra Andrades, ‘Las fundaciones de Clarisas’, 713. 141 Founded by the sisters María and Leonor Bejarano, with papal approval from Paul II in 1466. Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, 451, 643; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 668–669; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 579; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 104; Miúra Andrades, ‘Las fundaciones de Clarisas’, 713. The last author mentions the trans- formation of several other Andalusian tertiary houses between the 1470s and the early six- teenth century, yet he does not indicate systematically whether this occurred under Observant oversight. 142 Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarissas en Castilla la Nueva’, 460. 143 See on this especially Escribano Castilla, ‘Fundaciones franciscanas’, 331–351; Graña Cid, ‘Reflexiones sobre la implantación’, 523–538. 204 chapter four

Observant reforms in the religious orders, and particularly the variety pushed forward by Franciscan Observants sub vicariis. With royal support, these friars were involved with the further creation and reform of Clarissan monasteries. This caused, among other things, a confrontation with the Tordesillas group (as we have seen in an earlier section of this chapter). It also meant the support for new Clarissan foundations along Observant lines (with and without the application of the Constitutiones of Colette of Corbie), and the progressive transformation of existing beaterios and ter- tiary houses into fully enclosed and Observant Clarissan monasteries. A case in point is the transformation of the Santa Isabel de los Reyes monastery of Toledo. Initially conceived as a beaterio or a tertiary founda- tion by 1477, it was transformed under pressure from above into an Observant Poor Clare monastery by 1484.144 An interesting other case, this time influenced by reformist Spanish friars around Juan of la Puebla who wished to steer free from the regular Observance, is the foundation of Santa Clara de Belalcázar. This monastery emerged from a ‘beaterio’ situ- ated close to San Francisco of Belalcázar, and erected at the initiative of doña Elvira Manrique de Stúñiga. After her death in 1483, her daughters Leonor and Isabel decided to transform the ‘beaterio’ into a proper mon- astery. After some delays due to inheritance issues, this project was put forward with Juan of la Puebla’s personal intervention, and with assistance from the reformed Urbanist Nuestra Señora de Consolación monastery of Calabazanos.145 This latter house had once been integrated in the Tordesillas congregation, but by 1459 had placed itself under the obedi- ence of the reformist Franciscan custody of Santayo.146

144 See on this monastery and the role of its founder María ‘la Pobre’ Suárez de Toledo. Gonzaga, De Origine, 636; Wadding, Annales Minorum XIV, 212; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 671; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 105; Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla la Nueva’, 460–461. More in general, see on the Clarissan monaster- ies in and around Toledo and their major means of income Rodríguez, ‘Los conventos de clarisas en Toledo’, 473–483. According to this study, a comparable trajectory from a beate- rio/tertiary house to an Observant Clarissan monastery was followed by the Toledo monas- tery of San Miguel de los Angeles around 1491. 145 Graña Cid, ‘Autoría femenina y carisma religioso. Orígenes de las Clarisas Descalzas en Andalucía’, 178–180, 183–190. The Santa Clara de Belalcázar monastery kept the Urbanist rule, in combination with additional statutes put together with the assistance of Juan de la Puebla. Seven of the eight chapters of these statutes concentrated on a spiritual regime of prayer and penitence. One chapter dealt with the admission and formation of novices. 146 Meseguer Fernández, ‘El capitulo custodial de Cuéllar (1472) nombra un visitador con facultades especiales para los monasterios de Calabazanos y Segovia’, 239–252. In the early 1470s, the Segovia Poor Clares had followed the example of Calabazanos, so that a small congregation akin to that of Tordesillas had come into being under a Franciscan implementing reforms 205

Another example, this time with a more indirect link with the reform initiatives of Juan of la Puebla, is the transformation of Santa María de los Ángeles community (Córdoba), which in 1483 likewise had started with papal recognition as a community of ‘beatas de la tercera regla’ by doña Marina of Villaseca, widow of García of Montemayor and daughter of the knight Martín Alfonso of Villaseca, both of whom had been vassals of the Catholic monarchs. Due to conflicts with the local Clarissan monastery of Santa Cruz, the community moved towards the Santa Marina parish by 1489. In December 1491, Innocent VIII responded positively to doña Marina’s request to transform the community into a fully enclosed Clarissan monastery following the regula prima of 1253. It was placed under supervision of the Ultramontan regular Observants. The house, now known as Santa Isabel de los Ángeles (after its new patron saint), received permission to take in Urbanist Clarissan nuns from other houses without permission from their superiors. These nuns could make their profession under the fijirst rule without probation.147 Observant initiatives accelerated after the Franciscan Observant friar Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros became the confessor of Isabella of Castile in 1292. In March 1493, in close collaboration with the queen’s confessor, Isabella and her husband Ferdinand obtained papal permission from Alexander VI to appoint reforming visitators, with the power to interfere where deemed necessary. This enabled the royal couple and Cisneros to initiate a full-scale reform program, which included dispatching visitation parties to a large number of female religious houses.148 One of the most successful of these consisted of Juan Daza, dean of the church of Jaén, and Miguel Fenals, Observant guardian of the Mallorca friary. Between 1493 and 1495, Daza and Fenals visited all of the female religious houses in Catalonia. These included about seventeen Clarissan communities of all types. According to the notarial acts of these visits, there were still Poor Clares (in this case the houses of Balaguer and Conques) following the 1247 rule of Innocent IV!149 visitator dependent upon the Franciscan Santoyo custody. In 1493, the Calabazanos mon- astery left the Santoyo umbrella and was more fully integrated in the even more strict reformist Franciscan Los Ángeles custody of Juan de la Puebla. 147 Graña Cid, ‘Autoría femenina y carisma religioso’, 175–178. 148 For the larger context of the program of religious reform pushed through by Cisneros, see García Oro, Cisneros y la reforma del clero español; Soriano Triguero, ‘La reforma de las Clarisas’, 192fff. 149 Azcona, ‘Reforma de las Clarisas de Cataluña’, 25, 26, 28. Other parties of visitators were sent out to reform monasteries in Aragon and in the Valencia region. See on these visitators (Sancho of Aceves, Martín García, and Alfonso of Guadalajara for Aragon; 206 chapter four

As with several other visitation parties sent out at the instigation of the Catholic monarchs and Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Daza’s and Fenals’ visitations were streamlined undertakings. After entering a religious com- munity, they presented the women with concise reform ordinations, which regulated internal and external enclosure, the performance of the liturgy and the quality of the communal religious life (demanding a com- mon dormitory and forbidding personal serving sisters). Depending on the resistance encountered, Daza and Fenals would replace the abbess and other functionaries and return for additional visits to monitor the changes. In several Clarissan houses, such as the Barcelona monasteries of San Antonio y Santa Clara and Santa María de Pedralbes, resistance was fijierce. Abbesses appealed to the pope, referring to existing rights and customs. Probably to the frustration of Daza and Fenals, the papacy sometimes gave in, and allowed women to bypass the new regime. The reformers did not back down, and this led to prolonged conflicts with repeated appeals, as well as dismissals and re-appointments of abbesses. The Poor Clares of San Antonio y Santa Clara de Barcelona eventually decided to leave the Franciscan fold altogether and to join the Benedictine congregation of .150 In the Pedralbes community the visitators were up against Violante of Moncada, who elicited the support of papal, urban and royal patrons for nearly a decade in order to regain her abbatial authority after her replacement in November 1494 at the hands of Daza and Fenals.151 Attempts at uniformity notwithstanding, the reforms imposed by Daza and Fenals did not necessarily imply a change of rule: above all it meant more strict enclosure measures and a demand to adhere to the professed rule (whether this was Clare’s Regula Prima or the Urbanist rule). In sev- eral cases, as part of a policy of standardization, Daza and Fenals followed their initial reform ordinations with a complete set of Constitutiones, which were meant to regulate all aspects of the religious life in detail and to be followed along with the monastic rule adhered to by the women.152 Although the constitutions as we now have them are meant for the

Antonio of Rosas, Juan Francisco of Avingó, Pedro Bañols for Valencia) Omaechevarría, Las clarisas a través de los siglos, 114. 150 Carreras & Vinyoles, ‘Agregación del monasterio’, 581–583; Azcona, ‘Paso del monas- terio de Santa Clara’, 78–134. 151 Azcona, ‘Reforma de las Clarisas’, 10–20. See also Sanjust i Latorre, ‘El edifijicio del monasterio de Pedralbes’, 731–745; Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 149–160. 152 For an edition, see Azcona, ‘Reforma de las Clarisas’, 31–51. implementing reforms 207 community of San Antonio de Barcelona, the Acta visitationis by Daza and Fenals indicate that comparable texts were imposed on various other Clarissan houses. For instance, they are mentioned in the visitation deeds for the houses of Pedralbes, Santa Clara of Perpignan and Santa Clara of Puigcerdá.153 The Acta do not indicate their adoption by other Poor Clare communities reformed by the pair. Perhaps this depended on the pres- ence of pre-existing house constitutions that were deemed acceptable, or on the question whether a community lived up to expectations without additional legislation. Daza’s and Fenals’ Constitutiones were modeled on those of Colette of Corbie, akin to what happened around the same time with the Ave Maria communities further to the North. It is a sign of the growing impact of the Colettine model in Southern France and Catalonia by the end of the fijif- teenth century, and of Daza’s and Fenals’ admiration for the Colettine monastic life. The Colettine house of Gerona was one of the few houses they did not fijind wanting in religious fervor. Nevertheless, the Constitutiones issued by Daza and Fenals were sufffijiciently flexible as to allow their adop- tion by houses that followed other rules, and introduced new elements with regard to the tasks of the novice mistress (magistra novitiorum) and the importance of mental prayer (which did not receive much emphasis in the Colettine legislative texts).154 Although reforms within Spain could occur without abandoning the Urbanist rule, this became more common by the end of the fijifteenth cen- tury and in the decades thereafter. The reform initiatives of Cisneros, which he maintained until the very end of his life, played a role in this,155 as well as the spread of the Colettine lifestyle, sometimes in combination with strict reform ideals advocated by the followers of Juan de la Puebla, Juan of Guadalupe and their Alcantarine successors. These friars tried to maintain their autonomy vis-à-vis de friars of the regular Observance, which brought them in conflict with Cisneros. Nevertheless, their rigorist lifestyle continued to have an impact on the Clarissan world, beyond the

153 Azcona, ‘Reforma de las Clarisas’, 19, 25, 26. 154 See for more details Azcona, ‘Reforma de las Clarisas’. 28–30. 155 As is shown by the transformation of the beaterio of San Miguel de los Angeles in Toledo between 1513 and 1515, and that of the pilgrims hospice/tertiary house of Alcala de Henares into the Santa Clara monastery (which was completed by 1516). On the former, see Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 672; Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla la Nueva’, 460; Canabal Rodríguez, ‘Los conventos de clarisas en Toledo’, passim. On the latter, see Gonzaga, De Origine, 642–643; Wadding, Annales Minorum XV, 226, 669; Meseguer Fernandez, ‘El cardenal Cisneros’, 505–549; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 539; Castro, ‘Monastérios hispánicos de clarisas’, 106. 208 chapter four transformations of the tertiary community of Marina of Villaseca in Córdoba and that of Santa Clara de Belalcázar mentioned above.156

Spanish Conceptionists

A further development within the Spanish Franciscan Observance was the emergence of the Conceptionists (Sisters of the Immaculate Conception). This new ‘order’ started around 1484, when Beatriz of Silva was able to found a highly aristocratic religious community in Toledo devoted to the Immaculate Conception with the support of Queen Isabella and her Observant Franciscan confessor Juan of Tolosa. Papal permissions from 1489 allowed this house to follow Cistercian regulations but kept it under local episcopal control. The same documents allowed the women to dem- onstrate their particular devotion to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary by wearing a very distinctive sky-blue mantle and a white scapular. After Beatriz’s death, in August 1491, the monastery became subject to the Observant reform politics of Ferdinand and Isabella. Lobbying by the queen, her confessor and Felipa of Silva (Beatriz’s successor as the abbess of the community) ensured that the house was liberated from episcopal oversight and brought under the spiritual care of the Franciscan Observant vicars. Three years later, the house seemingly adopted the rule of Clare. Special devotion to the Immaculate Conception, however, enticed the women to obtain a diffferent status. They received support from the Observant Franciscans Cisneros and Francisco of Quiñones, who devised a new rule, partly based on Clare’s text but allowing for communal posses- sions and creating diffferent regulations concerning the liturgy, prayer obli- gations and the women’s habit. This rule received papal approval in 1511.157 Between 1512 and 1527, Francisco of Quiñones drew up additional stat- utes for the Toledo Conceptionists and other Conceptionist houses estab- lished in its wake, such as Cuenca (1504), Torrijos (1507), Madrid (1512), and others in the years thereafter. These statutes reached back to the Colettine Constitutiones, but difffered in matters of liturgy and spiritual formation, and they had an even stronger emphasis on monastic enclosure.158

156 Wadding, Annales Minorum XIV, 753–756; Omaechevarría, Las Clarisas a través de los siglos, 101–102. 157 Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain, 162–164. 158 Gutierrez, ‘Tradición de una historia’, 1–23; Muñoz Fernandez, ‘Las Clarisas en Castilla la Nueva’, 469–470. By 1527, the Conceptionists would already be an order of implementing reforms 209

Order Expansion During the Era of Observant Reforms

Complete legislative uniformity within the medieval order of Poor Clares was never achieved. From the start, as we have seen in Chapters One and Two, Damianite and Clarissan houses, as well as houses of Sorores Minores Inclusae could adhere to diffferent rules, at times combining them in vari- ous ways with a plethora of papal privileges and local statutes. With the onset of Observant reforms one can discern strong uniforming tendencies, especially within the Colettine world, among the monasteries of the Ave Maria group and in the new Conceptionist order. Nevertheless, unre- formed houses that followed diffferent rules (notably the Urbanist rule and that of Isabelle of Longchamp) and diffferent customs continued to exist. Moreover, among Poor Clares under the Observance sub vicariis, reforms did not automatically mean the adoption of the same body of legislative texts. The papal decree of 1517, Ite Vos, made the regular Observance offfijicially the dominant force within the Franciscan order. Nominally, most Clarissan houses were henceforth under Observant oversight. Although intended as a step towards further standardization, it soon would lead to a whole series of new conflicts and the appearance of new Clarissan order branches with their own reform agenda (see the Epilogue). The manifold Observant reforms discussed in this chapter gave a new impetus to the expansion of the Clarissan order. All over Europe, Observant initiatives led to a signifijicant number of new foundations, along with the reform of existing Clarissan houses and the transformation into Observant Clarissan monasteries of many other religious communities, such as previ- ously unregulated beaterios and beguinages, communities of Grey Sisters and Reuerinnen, as well as houses with a prior Augustinian, Benedictine, Cistercian, Romite and Servite background. The ‘net growth’ of the number of Clarissan houses in this period – roughly from the early fijifteenth century until c. 1517 (the year of Pope Leo X’s overhaul of the Franciscan order) or c. 1520 (roughly the beginning of the Reformation) is very difffijicult to judge. Following Roussey, the number of Poor Clare monasteries increased during this period by an additional 200 to 210 houses, bringing the total up from about 480 around 1406 to 675 monasteries by 1520.159

46 monasteries. By the end of the sixteenth century, another 60 monasteries were created. Hernández Sanchez-Barba, Monjas ilustres en la historia de España, 73–96. 159 Rousey, ‘Atlas’, Carte 4. - En 1520. Roussey counts around this time some 340 houses in Italy, 140 in the Iberian Peninsula, 98 in the territory of modern day France, and 97 in the 210 chapter four

The problem is that, as with the expansion of the order in previous peri- ods discussed in Chapter Three, these numbers are probably not accurate. According to the Franciscan Women Database, the number of Clarissan monasteries founded in the fijifteenth and early sixteenth centuries – either as completely new foundations or as transformations of existing religious communities – was closer to 360, with around 141 new foundations in Italy, 128 in the Iberian Peninsula, 55 in the territory of present-day France, and an additional 46 in the rest of Europe. This is a much higher number – about 150 more than Roussey’s. To an extent, it is based on a wider foray into the available secondary literature. However, in some cases this esti- mate probably errs in its interpretation of the available sources. First of all, we have to evaluate the tendency of the late medieval and early modern narrative sources to exaggerate in hailing the impact of the Observance on the Clarissan world. This should be taken into account in dealing with the chronicles and annals of Mariano of Florence, Francisco Gonzaga, Lucas Wadding, and local chroniclers concerning the founda- tion of Observant monasteries for which there are no other records, like papal bulls or archival sources. The considerable terminological confusion, both in the available sources from the period itself, and in the bulk of available secondary lit- erature up till the 1990s, is another problem. This confusion can make it incredibly difffijicult to judge whether a house mentioned in the sources was a community of tertiary sisters under Observant oversight or a com- munity of Observant Poor Cares, or when the transformation from a ter- tiary to a Clarissan status had actually occurred. Even when such a transformation can be pinpointed, much confusion can still remain con- cerning what kind of Clarissan house it was. Neither contemporaries nor modern scholars have always been very careful in distinguishing between, for instance, unreformed and reformed Urbanist houses, houses following the ‘Martinian’ reform, Colettine houses, ‘regular’ Observant houses with or without Colettine constitutions, and Ave Maria foundations.

remainder of Europe. The Clarissan expansion would also have touched Scotland, where a house was apparently created at Aberdour by 1486. It remains to be seen whether or not this was a tertiary community. That is at least the impression one gathers from the confus- ing remarks in local historical works, such as Ballingal, The shores of Fife, 38: ‘Then there is the St. Martha Hospial (…) presided over by four sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, or Poor Clares, as they are sometimes called….’ The same confusion is still present in Cowan & Easson, Medieval Religious Houses, which on page 154 refers to the women as Franciscan nuns ‘Otherwise called the Grey Sisters, the Minoresses, the Poor Clares or the Third Order of St. Francis…’ Cf. Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 537. implementing reforms 211

The complicated fluidity of female monasticism in this period is con- nected with this. Order leaders, ecclesiastical authorities, territorial rulers and urban governments all encouraged Observant reforms. At the local level, this could mean that female houses could change their adherence to a rule and even their nominal order allegiance if it suited the Observant agenda of higher placed clerical or lay overlords. It is a valid question whether we should strictly consider ‘Clarissan’ all the houses enticed to take on one of the Clarissan rules in the context of Observant reforms; especially when such houses retained spiritual guidance from diocesan priests, or when house constitutions and/or devotional allegiances contin- ued to show other, non Clarissan elements.160 For these reasons, and because of the relative lack of recent local and regional studies that deal with the abovementioned problems for this period in an adequate manner, it is hard to provide a coherent panorama of all new foundations in the fijifteenth and early sixteenth centuries without running into serious difffijiculties. The previous sections outlined the important developments concerning the expansion of the various Observant branches in some detail. This provides an idea of the dynamics of religious reforms, and the impact they had on the creation of Observant monasteries, either as completely new foundations, or as transformations of existing religious communities. In order to show how difffijicult it can be to understand the Observant process and the concomitant expansion of the Clarissan order, let us review the example of Clarissan foundations in the Northern Low Countries.

The Clarissan Expansion in the Northern Low Countries: A Case Study

Within the Low Countries (present-day Belgium and the Netherlands), some seven Poor Clare monasteries had come into being in the course of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, namely Bruges, Ieper (Ypres), Gentbrugge/Ghent, Petegem-Oudenaarde, St.-Omaars (St. Omer), Obbrussel, and ‘s Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch).161 All of these houses had

160 The fluid character of order identity with regard to female religious houses before and after Observant reforms has for instance been thematized in Muschiol, ‘Die Gleichheit und die Diffferenz. Klösterliche Lebensformen für Frauen im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter’, 66–77. 161 Some short-living foundations existed at Langemark and Werken. See Hooglede, ‘Ermentrude et les origines’, passim; Heysse, ‘Origo et progressus’, 173–195; Roggen, ‘Het klooster van de Rijke Klaren’, 191–202; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 37–93. 212 chapter four been established South of the Dutch Meuse-Rhine estuary, and all of them had developed as Urbanist foundations. The most northern of them was situated at ‘s Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), just South of the Meuse river in the duchy of Brabant. Its creation was made possible by a testamentary bequest in 1335 of Willem of Den Bossche, lord of Erp, and it was fijinally realized between 1344 and 1348.162 Compared with other forms of female religious life in the Low Countries, notably the many beguine and tertiary houses, the Clarissan presence was modest, apparently in accordance with the wishes of the male branches of the mendicant orders in these realms, who were reluctant to take on the many logistical and spiritual responsibilities for a large number of female monasteries.163 Both in the Southern Low Countries and further to the North, female religious ideals predominantly found expression in beguinages and in diverse penitential and tertiary initiatives, some of which had limited for- mal connections with the Franciscan order. Hence, the so-called Grey Hospital sisters obtained a signifijicant presence in the South of the Low Countries during the fourteenth century, just as they did in Northern France. Unlike the contemplative and highly aristocratic Urbanist ‘rich’ Clares, these Grey Sisters made a living through hospital care until they too were pressured to retreat behind the cloister walls, and adopt an enclosed monastic lifestyle.164 By the closing decades of the fourteenth century, the Northern Low Countries saw a new phenomenon, namely the emergence of the so-called Modern Devotion movement, which went back to the initiatives and writ- ings of the Dutch reformer Geert Grote, who offfered his parental home at Deventer to a female religious community by 1374.165 Over the next cen- tury, the Modern Devotion movement was able to become an important player in the Northern parts of the Low Countries and the adjacent German territories, with male and female communities of the ‘common life’, more monastically oriented canons and canonesses in houses that adopted the Augustinian rule, and groups of tertiaries without any formal ties with the Franciscan order. Most of these tertiary communities in the

162 Heel, ‘De Clarissen van ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 485–495; Idem, ‘Bijdragen tot de geschie- denis’, 230–238; Idem, ‘De Clarissen te ‘s-Hertogenbosch’, 27–35; Juten, ‘Het klooster der Clarissen’, 193–200; Hoekx, Het Archief der Rijke Klarissen; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 93–101. 163 Trio, ‘Begijnen en bedelorden’, 35–50. 164 Lemaitre, ‘Statutes des Religieuses’, 713–731; Goyens, ‘Passage des Soeurs Grises’, 227– 234; Goyens, ‘Chapitres des Soeurs Grises’, 199–208. 165 Nissen, ‘Christus navolgen in eenvoud’, 51–57. implementing reforms 213

North adopted the ‘Franciscan’ tertiary rule (that is to say the rule issued in 1289 by pope Nicholas IV), but many of them were organized in the so- called Utrecht Chapter (established in 1399). This body or congregation was heavily inspired by the ideals of the Modern Devotion movement, and completely independent from the (as yet not Observant) Franciscan order in the Cologne province, which in the eyes of Modern Devotion spokes- men had become decadent.166 The majority of the tertiary communities in the North inspired by the Modern Devotion movement had a contemplative character. At fijirst sight they might have had more in common with the monastic life espoused by Clarissan monasteries than with the oldest tertiary communities that had focused much more on the vita activa. Elsewhere in Europe, such contem- plative aspirations frequently went hand in hand with the adoption of enclosure and the transformation of such tertiary houses into Clarissan monasteries. Yet in the Northern Low Countries, the Urbanist Poor Clare alternative seemed out of the question, as the close links with the Modern Devotion movement, with its critical stance towards the established men- dicant orders, made such a move improbable. Moreover, the economic underpinnings necessary for the creation of viable Urbanist Clarissan monasteries might for several such tertiary communities have seemed insurmountable. We do fijind that a number of tertiary communities in the Northern Low Countries were named after St. Clare, and in contemporary sources they were sometimes alluded to as ‘Sisters of Saint Clare’ (zusters van Sint Clara/penitentiezusters van Sint Clara). Yet when such communi- ties made the step towards more complete claustration, they did not adopt one of the existing rules for the order of Poor Clares. Likewise, the majority did not become dependent for their spiritual care on the Friars Minor. Instead, such communities frequently opted for the rule of Augustine, and aligned themselves with the Augustinian Chapters of Sion or Windesheim, which also had close links with the Modern Devotion movement. This only began to change with the onset of the Franciscan Observance in the Netherlands, and with the impact of the Colettine reform move- ment. Between the 1430s and the late 1470s, four and possibly fijive Colettine monasteries were established in the Southern part of Low Countries, namely Hesdin/Heusden (present-day France 1437),167 Ghent (1441/42,

166 Goudriaan, ‘De derde orde van Sint Franciscus’, 205–260; Idem, ‘De derde orde als onderdeel’, 9–32; Engen, De derde orde, passim. 167 Fromentin, L’Histoire des Clarisses; Sommé, ‘Ste Colette de Corbie et la réforme fran- ciscaine’, 255–264; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 102–108. 214 chapter four alongside of older Urbanist foundations in the same town),168 Arras/ Atrecht (present-day France, 1457/60),169 Bruges (Brugge, 1479),170 and possibly Liège (Luik, 1474).171 Partly in reaction to these Colettine successes, the friars of the regular Observance, who had begun to build Observant friaries in the Low Countries from the 1440s onwards, also became involved with the creation of Observant Clarissan houses, with support from the pope and the Burgundian rulers.172 At fijirst, this led to the foundation of a few Observant Clarissan monasteries (such as Antwerp, 1455/61) and the reform of Urbanist monasteries under Observant control (such as Hoogstraten) in the South.173 But now, partly following the creation of Observant friaries, a series of Observant Poor Clare monasteries also came into being further to the North, namely in Wamel (1461), Haarlem (1471), Veere (1478), Delft (1475/1481), Brielle/Den Briel (1483), Gouda (1490), Alkmaar (1492/1509), Boxtel (1512), and Amsterdam (1513). The oldest Poor Clare monastery North of the Meuse was established in Wamel, not far from Tiel. Like several later Clarissan foundations in the North, it had been a tertiary community that can be traced back to the 1440s. Already by 1445, the community voiced aspirations to transform into a Clarissan monastery. A papal bull issued by Pius II on 20 May 1461 sealed its new status under the cura monialium of the regular Observance.174

168 Lippens, ‘Inventaire analytique (…) Gand’, 17–33, 37–49; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 108–114. The fijirst papal bull giving permission to create the monastery was issued as early as 1427. 169 Situated in present-day France. Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 115–116. 170 Roggen, ‘De Clarissen-Coletinnen van Brugge’, 87–100; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 138–152. 171 Some sources also suggest that a Colettine house was erected at Diest, and that the Clarissan monastery in Louvain had a Colettine signature. Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 353fff.; Lippens, ‘Inventaire analytique (…) Bruges’, 171–185; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 102fff.; Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 581, 606, 609. 172 See the bull from December 1458, in which Pius II gave the Observant Franciscans permission to create six Observant Clarissan monasteries in the lands governed by the House of Burgundy. The bull refers to a prior papal permission to establish a Clarissan monastery in Haarlem. Bullarium Franciscanum, n.s. II, no. 549. 173 The Hoogstraten monastery was created between 1489 and 1494 with the Urbanist rule but under the supervision of the Observant friars. Schoutens, Geschiedenis van het voormalig klooster; Roggen, De Clarisssenorde in de Nederlanden, 117–126, 161–169; Meyer, ‘De Klarissen-Urbanisten te Hoogstraten’, 367–403; Baetens, ‘Kloosterlexicon. 34. Hoogstraten’, 117–129. See Roggen, De Clarisssenorde in de Nederlanden, 161–169 & passim for the foundation of other Observant Clarissan monasteries in the Southern Low Countries. 174 Lucas Wadding, Annales Minorum XIV, 570; Ten Boom, ‘Clarecamp te Wamel’, 1–6; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 126–129. implementing reforms 215

Until quite recently, Franciscan scholars assumed that the new Clarissan monastery in Haarlem was also a transformed tertiary community already under the spiritual guidance of the Franciscan Observants. The sources provide ample occasion for confusion, as a tertiary community known as Saint Clare (Sint Clara) did exist in the Barrevoetstraat by 1454. In that year, a local pastor of the St. Bavo church gave the sisters permission to have their own churchyard with a proper cemetery. Another document from 1461 concerning the Schiedam tertiary community of Leliëndaal indicates that the Haarlem tertiaries of Saint Clare were under the spiri- tual care of the Franciscan Observants at that time. As the Saint Clare ter- tiary house disappeared from the sources after 1472, and as various initiatives were taken between 1458 and 1471 to establish an Observant Clarissan monastery in Haarlem, historians assumed that the Saint Clare tertiary house had, in actual fact, changed into a Poor Clare monastery by the early 1470s. However, more in-depth research by Florence Koorn indicates that the Saint Clare tertiaries had not disappeared at all, but were simply addressed diffferently in the sources from the 1470s onwards. The tertiary house apparently continued to exist, but was by then more commonly known as the House of Magdalene Sisters or the Sisters of Akersloot (connection with the Reuerinnen?), perhaps to distinguish these tertiaries from the new Poor Clare monastery that in the meantime had come into being.175 The oldest documents pertaining to this Clarissan house date from 1458, when Pope Calixtus III gave permission for the creation of a Poor Clare monastery in a letter to the Utrecht bishop, David of Burgundy, and in response to requests from the Haarlem urban authorities. This papal bull of foundation makes clear that the monastery was to be under the authority and the spiritual care of Franciscan Observant priests.176 This was a clear token of the conflicts between the Observants and the Conventuals in those years. Lack of funding and ongoing conflicts over parochial rights and forms of monastic income hampered the building process in the Grote Houtstraat in Haarlem. Construction accelerated when the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold and the bishop of Utrecht put their weight behind the foundation of the new monastery in 1469 under strict conditions, and when the wealthy patrician woman Gisberta

175 Koorn, ‘Drie Haarlemse kloosters’, 60–71. 176 ‘…sub regimine et cura praelatorum ordinis minorum de observantia (…) et nonnul- lius alterius oboedientia cura et regimine, retinendi…’ Piis fijidelium, 9 May 1458. Bullarium Franciscanum, n.s. II, no. 456; Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, no. 44 (an. 1458). 216 chapter four of Heussen provided additional funding. The fijirst nuns entered the com- pound on April 7, 1471. Three of these women had come over from Antwerp at the request of the provincial Observant vicar Hendrik Herp, to instruct the new community in the life according to Clare of Assisi’s Regula Prima.177 A third Clarissan monastery under the spiritual guidance of the Franciscan regular Observance was created in or shortly after 1470 in Veere (in the county of Zeeland). This is a clear case of the transformation of a tertiary community. Its change into a fully enclosed Clarissan house at a new location became possible when Lord Hendrik of Borselen bought a piece of land outside the Zanddijk Gate (Zanddijkse Poort). At his request, and with the support of the urban authorities of Veere, the tertiary com- munity of Veere transferred to the new location and a number of Poor Clares were invited to settle there as well, to facilitate the monastic trans- formation of the community. In June 1478, Pope Sixtus IV stated that those tertiaries unwilling to become Clarissan nuns could remain under their old rule in the new monastic compound. This implies that, at least for some time, the new house outside the Zanddijk Gate of Veere was home to a dual community of tertiaries and Poor Clare nuns. It could be that such a situation was more common in this type of monastic transformation than we might think.178 At Delft, it was again a tertiary community under the guidance of the Observant Franciscans that changed into a fully enclosed Clarissan mon- astery. The tertiary house, known in the sources both as Saint Mary in Nazareth, and as Saint Clare of the order of penitence (Tsinte Claren der oerden van penitentien int oesteynde binnen Delft) had been in existence since 1415.179 By 1421, the community had opted for a more enclosed life under the rule of Saint Augustine, as was rather common for tertiary houses independent from Franciscan oversight in the Northern Low Countries during this period. A document from 1421 described the com- munity as the ‘…convent of the poor sisters of Saint Augustine, which is

177 See in addition to Koorn also Gonnet, ‘Het Clarissenklooster te Haarlem’, 421–448; Verschueren, ‘Leven en werken van Hendrik Herp’, 355; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 129–133. Roggen still adheres to the theory that the house evolved from a prior tertiary house. 178 De bul Etsi juxta (10 juni 1478): ‘…Sororibus Tertii Ordinis de Veris, Traiecten. Dioec., indulget, ut earum monasterium in coenobium Clarissarum erigatur, facta facultate sorori- bus Tertii Ordinis nolentibus regulam S. Clarae profijiteri, ut ibidem in clausura quoad vix- erint, sub Tertio permaneant’, Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, no. 359; Wadding, Annales Minorum XIII, 218 (no. 68). Cf. Sloots, ‘De Clarissen te Veere’, 107–108. 179 Sloots, ‘De Clarissen in (…) Delft’, 380; Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, 373. implementing reforms 217 called Saint Clare inside town…’ (den Convente der armer zusteren van sinte Augustinus regel, diemen hiet tsinte Claren binnen der stede…). As one can imagine, this reference has caused a lot of confusion among Franciscan scholars.180 Around 1475, this Augustinian house had come under the spiritual care of the Observant friars, and was in the process of transforming into a proper Poor Clare monastery. The papal documents from April 1475 con- cerning this process indicate that the monastic compound of the female tertiaries was already well prepared for the move towards full enclosure under Clare of Assisi’s Regula Prima. The papal letter from Sixtus IV ordered the abbot of Marienweerd Abbey, representants from the diocese of Utrecht, and the provost of the Church of Saint John in Utrecht to assist in the monastic transformation.181 The women would make their profession in the hands of the bishop of Utrecht or his representative. Moreover, both the bishop and the territo- rial overlord of Holland would retain a measure of control over the house. Both parties could, for instance, present candidates for the monastic com- munity under certain conditions. Nevertheless, the nuns would be under the cura monialium and the visitation of the Franciscan Observants, and they would have the service of a Franciscan chaplain who lived outside the monastic enclosure, as well as a Franciscan confessor and two Franciscan lay brothers to serve the women in spiritualibus et temporalibus.182 By April 1482 fijinal agreements had been reached between the town, the Friars Minor, and all the other relevant parties. This enabled canon Johannes de Witte, who represented the bishop of Utrecht, to efffectuate the offfijicial establishment of the monastery. On this occasion, eighteen choir nuns and three ‘outgoing’ serving sisters made their profession. According to the Annales Ministrorum Provincialium of Adam Burvenich, several Poor Clares from Veere were also brought in, to acquaint the nuns in Delft with the requirements of Clare’s Regula Prima.183 It was only on June 8, 1483 that the fijinal papal permissions were issued that regulated all

180 The document has been included in Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, Appendix II, 406–407. 181 Included in Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, Appendix IV, 408fff. See alsoB ullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, no. 688. The bull mentions explicitly the adoption of the lifestyle of San Damiano: ‘…cupiunt domum ipsam in monasterium ordinis sancte Clare erigi et in illo sub regulari habitu iuxta primevam dicti ordinis sancte Clare institutionem sub perpetua clausura ad instar monialium monasterij sancti Damiani prope Assisium eiusdem ordinis sancte clare altissimo famulari.’ 182 See also Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, 397–403 & Appendix V, 412. 183 Heel, ‘De Clarissen van Delft’, 376. 218 chapter four topics concerning the possessions of the former tertiary community.184 That same year, the house was asked to help with the implementation of Observant reforms in the town of Brielle. Not long afterwards, the Franciscan provincial vicar also asked the Poor Clares of Delft to take an active role in the creation of a Clarissan house in Amsterdam.185 The Brielle monastery was not a transformation of a tertiary settlement. Its foundation went back to the initiatives of Duchess Margaret of York, who exercised seigniorial rights over Brielle (also known as Den Briel) and the lands of Voorne after the death of her husband, Charles the Bold. Margaret corresponded with the pope about the creation of an Observant Clarissan monastery in Brielle. Sixtus IV acquiesced on 16 April 1483 with the bull Inter caetera.186 Pope Innocent VIII reconfijirmed this decision three years later.187 The nuns were supposed to live according to Clare’s Regula Prima. To facilitate their instruction, a number of Poor Clares from Delft were to come over and provide from their midst the fijirst abbess of the new community. The papal bulls also indicate that the Brielle monas- tery was to have the services of four Observant Franciscan friars (two priests and two lay friars), and was to be put under the jurisdiction of the Observant provincial vicar.188 After Brielle, yet another new Clarissan foundation appeared at Gouda. That town already had an Observant Franciscan friary since the 1440s. As had been the case in Delft, the new Clarissan house at nearby Gouda was again a transformation of a tertiary house, which was known as Our Lady of Nazareth or as the tertiary sisters of Saint Clare. This tertiary commu- nity had been in existence since at least 1429, and initiatives to provide these women with a proper monastery had commenced after a visit of Duke Charles the Bold to the town of Gouda in 1466.189 By 1475 the building process was in full swing. The Gouda city council took the house under its protection, on the condition that the women would never seek additional properties beyond what was immediately

184 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, no. 1753; Heel, ‘Oprichting van het Klara-klooster te Delft’, 290–305. 185 See also Heel, ‘Handschrift over de Clarissen van Delft’, 301–306; Heel, ‘Archivalia omtrent de Klarissenkloosters’, 199–204; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 153–158. 186 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, no. 1732. 187 11 April 1486, Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 1 no. 400. 188 Breidtfeldt, ‘De Clarissen in Brielle’, 8–23; Jager, ‘Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Brielse kloosters’, 136–162; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 158–160. 189 Taal, De Archieven, 66–68; Lampen, ‘Van Brabantse Clarissen’, 23–25; Taal, De Goudse kloosters in de middeleeuwen, 50–53, 83–85, 105–107, 138–140; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 169–173. implementing reforms 219 necessary for the maintenance of the house. This mirrored the conditions under which the town had accepted the creation of the Observant Franciscan friary some fijifty years earlier. By 1483, initial papal permission was obtained to transform this now monasticized tertiary house into a Poor Clare monastery along Observant lines. It is still an open question whether the women had been the driving force in this transformation, or whether it had been more or less imposed upon them by the local Observant friars and the town authorities.190 Pope Innocent VIII formally acknowledged the transformation on 25 June 1486. He wrote to the Franciscan Observant provincial vicar Hendrik of Berghe, requesting that he put the women under his obedience and ensure their adherence to Clare’s Regula Prima.191 The offfijicial deeds of enclosure of the monastery by the provincial vicar had to wait until 1490, when the bishop of Utrecht fijinally acquiesced to its foundation. Around the same time, Hendrik of Berghe invited four nuns from Antwerp to guide the Gouda Poor Clares in their new religious life.192 The fact that the provincial vicar invited women from Antwerp led sev- eral scholars, including Roggen, to believe that the Gouda settlement had a Colettine start.193 This is due to a misinterpretation of the actual nature of the Antwerp monastery. This view is also belied by the fact that the Gouda monastery was under the jurisdiction of the regular Observance sub vicariis from the outset. It might be true, however, as Elizabeth Lopez has suggested, that the Gouda monastery was aligned with the Ave Maria group.194 Later, when the Gouda Poor Clares helped with the reform and foundation of other monasteries in Brussels and Alkmaar, they presented themselves as Observant Poor Clares within the orbit of the Franciscan regular Observance.195

190 Taal, De Goudse kloosters in de middeleeuwen, 51f. 191 Wadding Annales Minorum, XIV, 702–703; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV no. 6.; Taal, De archieven, no. 192 & no. 665. 192 These were Hedwig of Molengracht, Maria Rissel, Elisabeth of Den Perre, and Antonia of Hoochstraten. Schoutens, Geschiedenis van het voormalig klooster der Arme Claren te Antwerpen, 23. 193 Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 172. 194 Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 373–375. 195 Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 172–173. On the creation of the Observant Clarissan monastery of Brussels in and after 1503, which was a transformation of an existing community of Grey Sisters, see Wadding, Annales Minorum XV, 589–591; Dun, ‘Het klooster van de Arme Klarissen’, 71–77, 187–117; Goyens, ‘Passage des Soeurs Grises’, 227–234; Juvyns, Le Couvent des Riches Claires; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 195–204. 220 chapter four

The Alkmaar foundation concerned a completely new house. The old- est offfijicial document concerning this monastery dates from April 6, 1492. It is a papal letter from Innocent VIII asking the abbot of the large Abbey of Egmond, as well as the dean of Nijmegen to start initiatives towards a new Clarissan settlement in Alkmaar. Apparently, a request to this end had been made by the bishop of Utrecht, Count Jan of Egmond, the city council of Alkmaar, and a few other individual sympathizers. It took six years to construct the monastery. According to an eyewitness account from the Alkmaar nobleman Adriaan Westphalen, the complex was ‘…dig- nifijied and very extensive, bordering on the town walls to the East, the Egmond channel to the South, and the city’s drive way to the North’ (… deftig en van een groote uitgestrektheid palende tegen de Stadswallen ten Oosten, ten Zuyden de Egmondervaart, en de stads rijweg ten Noorden).196 After the monastic church was consecrated by August 1508, the fijirst nuns arrived in 1509. Among them were also several nuns from Gouda, who had been asked to instruct new postulants from Alkmaar. The long delay between the initial papal permissions and the arrival of the fijirst nuns might have been caused by renewed qualms on the part of the Observant friars of the Observant vicariate of Cologne, who began to express misgivings about the growing burden of the cura monialium from 1493 onwards. Following their provincial superiors, the Alkmaar Franciscans might have been slow in acknowledging their obligations for the spiritual care of the Alkmaar Poor Clares.197 Three years after the foundation of the Poor Clare monastery of Alkmaar, a Poor Clare monastery came into being in Boxtel. This town was situated somewhat more to the South, in the Northern fringe of the duchy of Brabant. As had been the case in Wamel, Veere, Delft, and Gouda, the Boxtel foundation was a transformation of a tertiary community (St. Elisabethsdal) that had been in existence at least since 1472. That con- vent had been established with material support from Viscount (jonker) Hendrik of Ranst, lord of Boxtel, and his wife Hendrika of Haaften, with the permission of the bishop of Liège. At the request of the Observant Franciscan preacher and provincial vicar Dietrich Colde, Pope Julius II gave his permission to transform this tertiary house into an Observant Clarissan monastery on 27 January 1504. The pope invited the abbot of the

196 Cited after Lampen, ‘De Clarissen van Alkmaar en Veere’, 329. 197 According to the decisions of the Observant provincial chapter of October 8, 1493, discussed in Sloots, ‘De Clarissen in Nederland’, 333. Cf. Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 207. implementing reforms 221

Norbertine abbey of St. Michael, Jacob Embrechts, to guide the process. By January 1512, all tertiaries received the command to adopt the Clarissan habit – there was, apparently, some resistance among the women – and in the same year Poor Clares from Hoogstraten were brought in to introduce the lifestyle of the Regula Prima.198 The fijinal Clarissan foundation in the Northern Low Countries before the onset of the Protestant reformation was realized in Amsterdam. That upcoming commercial center had housed several tertiary communities since the early fijifteenth century, some of which became enclosed during the following decades. This frequently meant the adoption of the rule of Augustine.199 Then, in 1494, the rich merchant Jan De Wael wrote to Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg and his son, Duke Philip the Handsome (Philippe le Beau), for permission to create an Observant Clarissan mon- astery. To further this goal, Jan De Wael had reserved several houses and pieces of land. Both the emperor and the duke gave permission on 6 October 1495, followed by papal permission from Alexander VI, who approached the dean of the Saint Salvator Church and other high placed clerics of the Utrecht diocese to set matters in motion, and to organize the transfer of four Clarissan nuns from Delft.200 Then the Amsterdam urban authorities objected. On 23 November 1496, they forbade the new foundation in an offfijicial decree. It argued that the town already had enough religious houses and that it would not be able to bear the economic costs of yet another one.201 It took a legal pro- cess at the Court of Holland and additional arbitration before the town fijinally gave permission on 30 April 1513 to Jan Benninck, who was by then the spokesman for the project, to bring in nuns from outside and start the new community. This concession only came on the condition that the house remained modest, with a maximum circumference of 60 rods (c. 800 square meters), and a maximum occupation of 30 choir nuns and four uitgancksters (lay sisters allowed to leave the compound for begging

198 The Memorieboeckske of the monastery can be found in the archive of the Poor Clares of Megen. It has been described in Kok, ‘Inventaris van het Archief’, 84–119. Cf. Wadding, Annales Minorum XV, 627–629; Nieuwenhuizen, ‘Het Clarissenklooster van Boxtel’, 27–28, 201–203; Juten, ‘Het Clarissenklooster te Boxtel’, 64–66; Kok, ‘Bijdragen tot (…) Boxtel’, 100–112, 227–237, 271–284, 301–319; Lampen, ‘Van Brabantse Clarissen’, 23–24; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 221–228. 199 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. III, no. 7707; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II no. 623. See also: Sine Nomine ‘Het voormalig Tertiaris-klooster’, 71–72. 200 Bont, ‘De voormalige Amsterdamse vrouwenkloosters’, 67–79; Vermeulen, Geschiedenis van de Clarissen; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 214–220. 201 Cf. Eeghen, Vrouwenkloosters en Begijnhof, 147. 222 chapter four and other forms of service). The town also stipulated that all nuns who wished to live in the house in accordance with Clare’s Regula Prima had to sell all their possessions and alienate all their income within three months after taking their solemn profession. All of this was agreed upon by notar- ial deed on 6 May 1513 by representatives of 24 nuns (including the com- munity’s fijirst abbess Beatrix Jansdochter from Delft), who were then already residing in the monastery.202 Including the older house of Den Bosch (‘s Hertogenbosch) and the monastery in Boxtel, the Poor Clares claimed ten foundations in the Northern Low Countries before the onslaught of the Dutch revolt. This implies that the Poor Clares remained a relatively marginal phenomenon in that region, especially when we compare this number with the 130 or more tertiary communities in the same territories that might have been aligned with the Utrecht Chapter (the aforementioned congregation inspired by the ideals of the Modern Devotion movement) during the fijif- teenth and early sixteenth centuries. The strong position of this Utrecht Chapter ensured that only a few tertiary houses fell directly under the jurisdiction of the Friars Minor. The pool of tertiary houses that might have been available for transformation into enclosed Clarissan monaster- ies was therefore not very large. For houses within the much larger group of tertiary communities aligned with the Utrecht Chapter that wished or were asked to become enclosed, it made more sense to join the congrega- tions of Regular Canons of Sion or Windesheim, which were likewise inspired by the ideals of the Modern Devotion movement. Recurrent doubts among the Observant Franciscans in the Low Countries to support actively the establishment of Clarissan houses (before c. 1450 and again for a while after 1493) would also have hampered further expansion. Overall, one obtains the impression that the Observant Friars Minor in the Northern Low Countries were mainly supportive of new Clarissan founda- tions out of fear of losing influence. They wished to prevent a further expansion of the Colettine model in the North, and tried to discourage tertiary houses under their control from embarking on the road towards claustration with a non-Franciscan rule, although in a somewhat luke- warm manner. Once houses had become fully enclosed Clarissan monas- teries, the friars did show concern for regulatory unity, as can be deduced from the enclosure ordinances drafted for Observant Clarissan monaster- ies in the Cologne province, (including those erected in the Northern Low Countries), which were, for instance, implemented in the Observant

202 Monasticon Batavum I, 149; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 217–218. implementing reforms 223 houses of Trier, Antwerp, Haarlem, Veere, Brielle, Gouda, Hoogstraten, Boxtel, Louvain and Wamel.203 Within the Northern Low Countries, the Poor Clares were not present in all the towns where the Observant Friars Minor had settled. Normally, Clarissan houses only appeared in centers, such as Gouda, that already had a signifijicant number of male and female religious communities. Around 1550, just before the onset of the Dutch Revolt, Gouda counted no less than eleven monasteries, eight of which housed religious women.204 According to the famous Informacie of 1514, Amsterdam had no fewer than twenty monasteries, Haarlem nineteen monasteries and a beguinage, Delft ten, and Alkmaar fijive. It is interesting to note that an important tex- tile town such as Leiden had at that moment seventeen religious houses, but not one Clarissan monastery.205 After the emergence of the Clarissan houses at Amsterdam and Boxtel around 1512/13, no new Poor Clare foundations were initiated until the start of the Dutch revolt. On the one hand, this might have been in line with a more general stagnation in monastic foundations in the region dur- ing this period, influenced both by upcoming reformatory and humanist critiques of the monastic life, and by socio-economic realities. On the other hand, the introduction of a new tertiary rule might also have had an impact. After the Franciscan regular Observance had offfijicially become the dominant faction within the Franciscan order by 1517 (confijirmed by the papal bull Ite Vos), its leaders lobbied successfully for the promulgation of a new tertiary rule, which was approved in 1521. One of the characteristics of this new rule was that it would supposedly bring all tertiary communi- ties in Europe under closer Franciscan Observant supervision.206 From that moment onwards, the Franciscan Observants, and especially those in the Low Countries, saw even less need to help transform existing tertiary houses into Clarissan monasteries. Instead, Dutch Franciscans became quite assertive in enlarging their influence on the network of male and female tertiary houses of the Utrecht Chapter. In reaction, that body issued new regulations in 1524 that forbade its tertiary communities to engage Friars Minor to take confession or to preach.207

203 Kok, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 29–61 (based on MS Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek hs. 133 G I.). 204 Cf. Taal, De Goudse Kloosters in de Middeleeuwen, 1–8. 205 Informacie up den staet, ed. Fruin, 12f. 206 For the rule of 1521, see Andreozzi, Il Terzo Ordine Regolare I, 253–254. 207 Engen, De derde orde van Sint-Franciscus, 32–33 & 148fff; Heel, ‘De strijd tusschen de tertiarissen van het Utrechtse Kapittel en de minderbroeders’, 91–110, 141–164. I don’t know 224 chapter four

Closing Remarks

Especially in the fijifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the enclosure of tertiary houses, and the emergence of new Poor Clare monasteries took place in a very dynamic context of religious reform. This was the period in which many existing orders experienced Observant initiatives and in which a variety of new religious movements made an impact on the topo graphy of female monasticism. The impact of the Modern Devotion movement and the congregations of Sion and Windesheim have been alluded to within the section on the Northern Low Countries. Elsewhere, new orders and congregations such as the Hieronymites and the Jesuati also had an impact on the claustration trajectory of female penitential and tertiary houses. This means that the choice for a Clarissan route was not always a given. Much depended upon the attitude of local friars and the alternatives available to communities pushed towards an enclosed monas- tic life. We sometimes do not fully understand the claustration trajectories of individual monasteries. This can make it hard to decide whether or when a particular house became an Observant Clarissan monastery. We also do not have an adequate perspective on the existing Clarissan houses that refused reforms and clung to their Urbanist identity,208 or that underwent Observant reforms of some kind without necessarily changing their rule or their obedience.209 Although Urbanist houses were criticized for their what influence the introduction of the new tertiary rule had elsewhere in Europe. To my knowledge, this issue has not yet been studied in depth. 208 To give an example: After 1447, when the Friars Minor of Brussels became Observant, there was also pressure on the large Urbanist Poor Clare monastery in the same town to accept Observant reforms. Yet apparently this never really happened. A papal bull of Pius II from 23 January 1459, which asked the nuns to accept a Franciscan visitator from the Cologne Observants, did not change matters very much. Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, no. 567. Even Dietrich Coelde, the energetic guardian of the Brussels Observants in the early sixteenth century who helped introduce many reforms elsewhere, was not able to sway the Urbanist Poor Clares of Brussels. They kept their comfortable religious lifestyle, and used their relations among the urban patriciate and the ecclesiastical authorities to hamper Observant interference. In the mean time, a new Observant Clarissan monastery was cre- ated in Brussels by 1503, which meant that the town housed from that moment onward two diffferent Clarissan settlements, one following the Urbanist rule and the other Clare’s Regula Prima. 209 Several examples have been mentioned earlier in this chapter. Not yet discussed are the cases of Petegem-Oudenaerde, St. Omer and Hof im Vogtland. At Petegem-Oudenaerde, Observant reforms took place in 1503. Yet by 1628 it was still known as an Urbanist monas- tery. Goyens, ‘Documenta circa Clarissas Coletanas’, 136–138. Already in the 1440s, Pope Eugenius IV and the leadership of the Franciscan Observants expressed their concern about the lifestyle of the nuns at St. Omer (St. Omaars), and the nuns were called upon to implementing reforms 225 laxity, it would be a mistake to assume that late medieval Urbanist houses were all lacking religious discipline. I have tried to provide a more detailed description of Clarissan expan- sion within the Northern Low Countries during the Observant period. To do something comparable for Europe as a whole, much more in-depth research is necessary. For now, a balanced evaluation of the growth of the entire order until the early sixteenth century remains out of reach.

observe their statutes. Giovanni of Capistrano wrote on 18 February 1443 to the magistra- ture of St. Omer to support the reform of the Poor Clares (Bullarium Franciscanum n.s I, nos. 32 & 46). Yet the eventual reforms took place under Conventual oversight. The house remained Urbanist until its destruction by warfare in 1478. In the 1580s, it was refounded, this time along Observant lines with adherence to Clare’s Regula Prima, by nuns from Veere who had fled the Protestant takeover of Zeeland. Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 79–80. The Sankt Klara monastery in Hof, which had remained under Conventual oversight, was reformed by Viscount Friedrich IV in 1502. He wrote for the monastery a series of reform statutes that emphasized enclosure, forbade private property, and stipulated the creation of a common dormitory. These statutes also ensured that, from that moment onwards, the monastery would only accept noble girls and women. Clift Boris, Communities of Religious Women, 117fff, 196–197.

CHAPTER FIVE

ASPECTS OF COMMUNITY LIFE

The previous chapters have focused predominantly on the ‘exterior’ his- tory of order and convent development. Chapters One and Two have charted the emergence of the Damianites and (subsequently) the Poor Clares, the setup of the monasteries that followed the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp (the Minoresses), and the respective roles of Franciscan order offfijicials, the papal curia, and a variety of secular authorities. Chapter Three has dealt with matters of order expansion on a European scale, and Chapter Four aimed to shed light on the spread of Observant reforms that started to make an impact from the late fourteenth century onwards. In passing, it has become clear that the creation and subsequent devel- opment of monasteries was dependent upon a variety of factors, and that monasteries could follow quite divergent trajectories with regard to recruitment and wealth, enclosure and interference by outside parties. This chapter approaches these issues from the ‘inside’, drawing attention to factors that shaped the community life intra muros in the course of the late medieval period.

Socio-Economic Realities

In the earliest days of the Damianite movement, several communities pur- sued a very austere life of penitence and charitable works, which did not difffer signifijicantly from the lifestyle of either the beguines in the Low Countries and the Rhineland, or the earliest Franciscan friars. With regard to the latter, the main diffference might have been that the women of San Damiano and in comparable communities elsewhere in Northern and Central Italy did not beg in the streets, and did not habitually engage in public preaching. However, none of this is absolutely certain. For one thing, we know of charismatic women on the fringes of the Franciscan movement who did engage in some kind of public ministry, such as the fascinating Rosa of Viterbo. A number of later Clarissan abbesses were at least known for their homiletic prowess intra muros. If the remarks of Jacques of Vitry can be relied upon, and if we can iden- tify the sorores minores around Assisi he mentioned with the early women 228 chapter five at San Damiano, then these women tried to maintain themselves ‘with the work of their hands’.1 This might have included forms of hospital work.2 In fact, as we have seen in previous chapters, various communities of peni- tential women that evolved fijirst into enclosed Damianite and later into Poor Clare monasteries, had started as penitential groups serving local hospitals on the outskirts of the towns for the destitute and the ill. This also holds true for numerous other penitential and tertiary groups (such as the Grey Sisters and Sisters of Mary Magdalene (Reuerinnen) in the German lands and the Southern Low Countries) that could later be drawn into the Clarissan fold. In addition to such social services, women in early Damianite settle- ments earned their living with handicrafts and gardening. Moreover, from the very beginning they would have relied on the charity of their neigh- bors: spontaneous donations, or gifts in return for spiritual rewards. The latter was quickly institutionalized. As we have seen in Chapter Three, many Damianite and subsequent Poor Clare monasteries received special papal privileges, which ensured indulgences for all lay people who pro- vided donations to the nuns. Clare’s San Damiano community, and possi- bly a few others, also benefijited from the service of friars who begged for them. In other cases it became common to organize such begging through outgoing sisters, and a support network of lay confraternities and lay proc- urators who organized a more permanent stream of donations to main- tain their local Damianite/Poor Clare monastery. The Forma Vitae of Cardinal Ugolino, and all the other rules that subse- quently guided the Damianite/Poor Clare monastic life, unambigu- ously put the women behind the cloister walls.3 They implied that any

1 ‘Mulieres vero iuxta civitates in diversis hospitiis simul commorantur; nichil accipi- unt, sed de labore manuum suarum vivunt, valde autem dolent et turbantur, quia a clericis et laicis plus quam vellent honorantur….’ Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 76. See also Chapter One of this book and the sceptical analysis of Mooney, ‘The ‘Lesser Sisters’, passim. 2 In fact, as Jean François Godet-Calogeras has pointed out, San Damiano was a small church with a little hospice under the patronage of Saint Damian, the saint who had prac- tised the art of healing with his twin brother Cosmas in Asia Minor before their execution under Diocletian in 287. Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 118. 3 The 1228 version of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae states: ‘Omni namque tempore vitae suae clausae manere debent; et postquam claustrum huius religionis intraverint aliaque, regula- rem habitum assumentes, nulla eis conceditur licentia vel facultas exeundis, nisi forte causa plantandi vel aedifijicandi eamdem religionem ad aliquem locum aliquae trasmittan- tur.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 219; Bullarium Franciscanum I, 395. The issue of enclosure is strongly emphasized in the other rules as well, see for instance Chapter XI of Clare’s own rule (Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 272–273), and Chapter II of the rule of Urban IV (Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 510). On the issue of active and passive enclosure in the early Damianite aspects of community life 229 economically viable activity that required the professed women to leave the monastic compound and come into contact with outsiders would have been curtailed. Work in leper houses or comparable institutions out- side the monastic walls would have become very difffijicult, limiting the women to more indirect methods of hospital management, using interme- diary procurators and employing lay people and outgoing lay sisters to stafff the hospital. There are several examples of Poor Clare monasteries involved with this type of ‘indirect’ hospital management. In fourteenth- century Spain we come across connections between the Clarissan Coïmbra monastery and the so-called Hospital de Santa Isabel. A century later, the Carríon de los Condes de Castañeda monastery had ties with the urban Trinidad hospital. Likewise, the abbess of the Clarissan Tordesillas monastery was responsible for the administration of the local Mater Dei hospital.4 Moreover, ongoing involvement with medical care could also take a diffferent shape. Hence, in the fourteenth century and possibly thereafter, the Poor Clares of Aix-en-Provence had a small pharmacy, serving the neighborhood.5 The claustration of the women, fijirst under the regime of Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, and thereafter under the rule of Innocent IV, the rule of Clare of Assisi, the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp or that of Urban IV, encour- aged other forms of income through commissioned handicrafts that could be carried out without leaving the monastic enclosure. To a certain extent, this is reflected in the rules themselves, notably Clare’s Regula Prima from 1253. Hence, at San Damiano and houses connected with it, all professed nuns were supposed to work with their hands, and to occupy themselves with handicrafts and forms of menial work for the benefijit of the commu- nity, at least during Clare’s lifetime.6 Within most Urbanist houses and world, see Lainati, ‘La clôture de sainte Claire’, 223–250; Grau, ‘Die Klausur im Kloster S. Damiano’, 311–346. 4 Peral Villafruela, Los hospitales de Carrión; Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas’, 659; Bullarium Franciscanum V, 332. The Bamberg Sank Klara monastery also exploited a ‘Siechhaus’. Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 187, 303. 5 Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 87. 6 Clare’s rule indicates: ‘Sorores, quibus dedit Dominus gratiam laborandi, post horam tertiae laborent et de laboritio quod pertinet ad honestatem et communem utilitatem, fijideliter et devote, ita quod, excluso otio animae inimico, sanctae orationis et devotionis spiritum non exstinguant, cui debent cetera temporalia deservire. Et id quod manibus suis operantur, assignare in capitulo abbatissa vel eius vicaria coram omnibus teneatur. Idem fijiat si aliqua eleemosyna pro sororum necessitatibus ab aliquibus mitteretur, ut in com- muni pro eisdem recommendatio fijiat. Et haec omnia pro communi utilitate distribuantur per abbatissam vel eius viacariam de consilio discretarum’, Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 265–266. This was partly a literal transcription of the fijifth chapter of the Franciscan Regula 230 chapter five

Longchamp settlements, where the division between choir nuns, and serv- ing sisters or lay sisters (serventi, servitiales or conversae) was more promi- nent, the former would be engaged predominantly in the performance of the Divine Offfijice. Their manual labor would for the most part have been limited to fijine handicrafts (needlework), and manuscript work (in houses where a scriptorium of some kind was present), whereas the serving sisters and/or lay sisters would be engaged in menial jobs and physically more demanding tasks. More than for monasteries following the rule of Clare, monasteries that adopted the rule of Isabelle or of Urban IV saw manual labor primarily as a means to fijight idleness oti( um/otiositas).7 Commissioned handicrafts and manuscript copying could generate income, but in most cases that would by no means have sufffijiced to feed the community and pay for the upkeep of the monastic compound. As spontaneous charitable donations could not always be relied upon, more permanent solutions needed to be found from early on. From the outset, Clare’s San Damiano community found a partial solution in the promise made by Francis of Assisi to take responsibility for begging to support the nuns. In the eyes of Clare of Assisi, the concomitant precari- ousness of sufffijicient incoming gifts was an intrinsic part of the life of evan- gelical poverty. She fought for the right to be poor, and to have that aspect of her way of life codifijied in a specifijic papal privilege (See Chapter One). However, by the 1220s, it had already become apparent that the Franciscan order was unwilling to extend its begging activities to support all Damianite houses for which it obtained cura monialium obligations. As a result, the papal curia and the cardinal protector of the Friars Minor and the Damianites were keen to provide Damianite houses with a proper monastic patrimony, partially to accommodate the Friars Minor (who were necessary for the spiritual care of the growing number of Damianite monasteries), and partially to ensure the material upkeep of the Damianites. Only a few monasteries were able to obtain papal poverty privileges akin or comparable to those granted to Clare at San Damiano. All the other houses were supposed to accept rents and landed property, to secure a proper income from which the nuns could be fed and the mon- astery maintained. For this purpose, from the very beginning, the pope and the cardinal protector endeavored to fijind appropriate income-generating properties

Bullata. Cf. Flood, ‘Chiara, S. Damiano, e Assisi’, 402–408; Accrocca, ‘Verso il getsemani?’, 72–73. 7 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 480, 513. aspects of community life 231 for Damianite and subsequently Clarissan houses. A good early example is the organization of a series of grants by Ugolino, before and after his ascent to the papacy, to the Sant’Apollinare monastery of Milan in the 1220s and 1230s. These cumulative grants of buildings and landed properties gener- ated various kinds of monetary and non-monetary income, and the com- munity soon had to use the services of four lay proctors, as well as lay friars to act as agents and rent collectors on its behalf.8 The accumulation of properties even afffected houses that had been granted a special privilege of poverty. The Monteluce monastery at Perugia, which was within the spiritual ambit of the San Damiano monastery, and had obtained a privilege of poverty in 1229 (or at least a comparable pro- positum altissimae paupertatis), was unable to rid itself of the properties and incomes that had already been handed over to it. Moreover, it contin- ued to accrue additional properties and incomes in the course of the thirteenth and the fijirst half of the fourteenth century.9 By the later thirteenth century, the cardinal protector and the papal curia would not customarily grant permission to build a Poor Clare mon- astery unless they had been given proof that the community could be pro- vided for. Furthermore, the 1336 reform constitutions issued by Benedict XII declared that Clarissan monasteries keep a proper inventory of endow- ments. Such inventories had to be checked and updated with the election of each new abbess.10 One surviving document that resulted from that rul- ing is the 1337 inventory of the Poor Clare monastery of Bologna. In addi- tion to properties held by individual nuns, lay sisters and lay brothers, this document lists no fewer than 153 items (lands and buildings) owned by the monastery as a whole. The existence of personal property among the choir nuns shows that much had changed since the early days of the Damianite movement.11 The papal curia was not only actively involved in fijinding and bestowing properties and incomes on newly created monasteries, but also in stimulating donations of rents and landed property to such houses by lay benefactors, partly with recourse to the indulgences mentioned earlier. The latter policy would have been in accord with the wishes of many

8 Sevesi, ‘Il monastero delle Clarisse’, passim. For a discussion of comparable papal grants to other Damianite and Clarissan houses (such as Vallegloria (Spello), Santa Maria degli Angeli (Spoleto)), see also Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche, 7. 9 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 38–39, 50, 73, 341; Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 230–231; Höhler, ‘Il monastero delle clarisse di Monteluce’, 161–182. 10 Moorman, A History, 409; Ordinationes a Benedicto XII, ed. Bihl, 309–390. 11 Gaddoni, ‘Inventaria Clarissarum’, 307–327. 232 chapter five benefactors involved with the creation of Damianite and subsequently of Poor Clare monasteries. Many of these benefactors were wealthy, and wished to endow a monastery with lands and properties in order to ensure its continuity. After all, their motivations did not difffer signifijicantly from those of their predecessors who had supported the erection of Benedictine or Cistercian monastic settlements: they probably wanted some assurance that family members who had taken the veil would not be destitute. More importantly, they wished to ensure that the monasteries would be able to act for the foreseeable future as spiritual intercessors for, and as guaran- tors of the spiritual welfare of their donors. In the course of time, Poor Clare monasteries became owners of hospi- tals (exploited indirectly via proctors and a lay stafff), houses, arable land, vineyards, olive groves, woodlands, fijishing ponds, oil and grain mills, as well as bridges and toll roads. The Sainte-Claire monastery of Avignon, for example, was literally circled by a chain of small houses in adjacent streets, which the monastery rented out.12 The San Leo monastery in Sansepolcro not only had lands and other properties, part of which had been given by the local Camaldolese monastery that had been instrumental in its cre- ation, but also co-owned a water mill. This mill was rented out to a miller on a year-to-year basis, and the Poor Clares shared the income from this mill with the hermitage of Montevicchi.13 In England, several houses of Minoresses, such as the monastery ‘without Aldgate’ near London, obtained a substantial income from renting out rows of houses and com- mercial spaces for shops and craft ateliers, and from the rents paid by ten- ants for lands held via a variety of lease constructions.14 By the later thirteenth century, the St. Cecilia monastery in Pfullingen drew income from market fees, from renting out more than 50 houses in diffferent towns, and from considerable acres of land. This property included forests, individual parcels of agricultural land, vineyards, and a number of complete manors. The monastery also drew substantial fees from annual masses said ‘in perpetuity’ for urban and noble benefactors. In the fourteenth and fijifteenth centuries, the monastery extended its pos- sessions even further and obtained complete villages (including parochial benefijices). Furthermore, the same monastery gathered income from pensioners who gave all their landed and fijinancial possessions to the

12 Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 35. 13 Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 154. 14 Power, Medieval English Nunneries, 99. aspects of community life 233 monastery, and in return lived out their lives as permanent guests on or near the monastic compound.15 Monastic possessions could also include other monasteries, churches and church benefijices. In 1319, the Poor Clares of Königsfelden received the income of the church of Winesch, which previously had been reserved for its rector. The income, about 60 Marks, was handed over to the Poor Clares, and the serving vicar had to make do with a much smaller stipend.16 Some 30 years later, in 1348, the nuns at Le Pouget received the revenues of a disused priory that had previously been under the control of the Benedictine abbey of Conques.17 In some cases, such possessions included seigniorial rights, which brought the right to appoint justices, to coin money, or to exert influence in specifijic matters of local jurisdiction. The latter happened, for instance, to the Santa Chiara monastery in Naples by the end of the Middle Ages.18 Likewise, in addition to many other possessions, the Poor Clare monastery of Lévignac-sur-Save in Aquitaine obtained the seigniorial rights of the neighborhood, which meant that its inhabitants had to perform regular labor for the Poor Clares.19 As mentioned in Chapter Three, a comparable situation existed at Söflingen, where by 1270 the Poor Clare monastery had become the complete owner of the Söflingen village and the surrounding countryside. This evolved over time into near complete jurisdiction, enabling the Söflingen Poor Clares to issue laws on behalf of ‘their’ village and its surroundings.20 In many Poor Clare monasteries, income was directly tied to the religious policies of the town near or in which the communities were situated. Urban authorities could provide monasteries with tax exemp- tions, reserve a percentage of urban taxes for the upkeep of monastic com- munities, or facilitate in various ways the donations to the Poor Clares and other houses of nuns, and friars. In Assisi, the cult of Clare was taken up very quickly, and she became one of the town’s saintly patrons. In this way, her cult became embedded in the socio-religious life of Assisi’s citizens, which included communal liturgical commemorations.21

15 Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 174–177; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 17, 93–98, 187–191. 16 Moorman, A History, 410, referring to Bullarium Franciscanum V, 171, 187, 316. 17 Moorman, A History, 410, referring to Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 211. 18 D’Andrea, ‘Ciò che resta dell’antico archivio’, 128–146; Idem, ‘Il monastero napoletano di Santa Chiara’, 39–78. 19 Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 214, 649. 20 Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 93; Frank, ‘Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen’, 163–199. 21 Dijk, ‘Il culto di Santa Chiara’, 162–181. 234 chapter five

The acknowledged importance of Clare, and thereby the importance of the monastery where her remains were kept, gave rise to regulations, codi- fijied in the 1319 Assisi statutes, to stimulate testamentary bequests as well as periodical donations by guilds, individual citizens and the town itself.22 Comparable socio-religious policies in favor of monastic houses can be found elsewhere, especially when nuns had close family ties with mem- bers of the urban elite. Support from the urban authorities and important urban families could evolve into a complex reciprocal relationship of donations, prayer services, burial rights, and public manifestations of socio-religious prestige.23 Clarissan churches could double as parish churches. This was not true of all communities, but even those monastic churches that did not serve this function were open at regular intervals to the public to hear mass and to go to confession, or to celebrate specifijic feasts. Depending on suc- cessful negotiations with the local bishop, the weight of papal privileges, and the clout of urban authorities and wealthy donors, such churches could accrue private chapels and burial rights, and indulgences might be granted to their visitors and supporters.24 The close links between town

22 These statutes provided special guarantees concerning donations given to the mon- astery of Saint Clare and its nuns, ‘ut ipsa virgo intercedat pro comuni et populo universo civitatis Assisi et syngularibus personis civitatis eiusdem et comitatus coram Creatore celi et terre.’ Documentazione di vita assisana, ed. Cenci, I, 64–65 & Casagrande, ‘Presenza di Chiara in Umbria’, 491. 23 For examples from Castile, see Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas’, 656f. See also Jäggi, ‘Gräber und Memoria in den Klarissen- und Dominikanerinnenklöstern des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts’, 689–705. 24 In various instances, bishops and other members of the secular clergy objected to burial rights and exemptions from interdicts granted to Clarissan churches by the papacy. Notwithstanding papal bulls in which such exemptions and privileges were guaranteed, in many cases it proved necessary to engage in local negociations, and to fijind a compromise acceptable to all parties involved. This could mean that part of the incomes from burial rights and commemorative masses had to be handed over to the secular clergy, or that local secular clerics gained control over chapels and burial ceremonies in Clarissan churches, or even were given the right to use the public part of the church as a parish church through- out. For an example of such a compromise concerning the church of the Clarissan monas- tery of Viviers, see: Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 207–208. Burial rights within the monastic enclosure itself (for instance in the nuns’ choir) could cause diffferent concerns, namely fears about the breach of the monastic enclosure regime, as and festive commemorations in the presence of family members meant the entrance of ‘strangers’. Cf. Jäggi, ‘Gräber und Memoria’, 701–703, who also discusses the permission given to the Sankt Klara monastery of Freiburg by the Franciscan provincial minister of the Upper Germany province to bury the son of the count of Freiburg and his wife within the monastery, to conclude (p. 703): ‘Da Frauenklöster mehr noch als die Niederlassungen ihrer Brüder auf fromme Stiftungen angewesen waren, konnten sie es kaum leisten, den Wunsch nach einem Grab und die damit verbundenen Zuwendungen auszuschlagen, selbst wenn damit bisweilen eine etwas weite Auslegung des Klausurgebots verbunden war.’ aspects of community life 235 and monastery also manifested themselves in a diffferent way: monasteries became archival repositories and places where wills, deeds and transac- tions were brokered, sealed and kept.25 While town authorities facilitated donations, or engaged in periodical distributions to female monastic houses of food (grain, fijish and other vict- uals) and commodities (including wool, wax, linen, oil, wood and peat), other ecclesiastical and secular authorities granted privileges and exemp- tions that helped to bolster the socio-economic position of monastic houses. In part, this resulted from the freedom from local episcopal inter- ference papal bulls often granted new Damianite, Minorite and Clarissan foundations. Such initial papal privileges had fijinancial repercussions. Hence, the papal bulls granted in 1295 and 1296 to the newly established house of Minoresses in London not only exempted it from all kinds of episcopal and archiepiscopal jurisdictions, but also freed it from the nor- mal payments for consecrations, chrism oils, sacraments, and local eccle- siastical fijines.26 More than a century later, in 1404, King Henry IV exempted the same house from all lay jurisdiction, except for cases of high treason and severe felonies that fell under the authority of the crown itself. This meant that the town and other lower governing bodies could not impose fijines on the monastery (for breaches of town regulations etc.).27 Throughout Europe, this type of royal involvement was not limited to legal privileges, incidental gifts,28 or periodical donations or stipends paid to

25 Jäggi, Frauenklöster 189fff. In 1235, the papacy granted an indulgence of a year to those who visited the church of the Monteluce monastery and took part in the celebratory pro- cession for Mary’s ascent into Heaven. Soon thereafter, an additional indulgence followed for people who visited the church on the church’s consecration day. Bullarium Franciscanum I, 177; Höhler, ‘Il monastero delle clarisse’, 168. In 1245, the pope asked the local bishop to preach four times a year in the Clarissan church to urge the gathered flock to donate to the nuns. Bullarium Franciscanum I, 543. The Munich Clarissan church of St. Jacob received in the anniversay year of 1392 weekly no less than 6000 pilgrims, who received an indulgence for visiting the church. Brosch, ‘Die Münchener Jakobskirche’, 225. 26 Warren, Spiritual Economies, 58. 27 Warren, Spiritual Economies, 58. 28 Incidental gifts could occur, when highly placed visitors of religious houses found the fijinancial or material situation in need of improvement. When Queen Maria de Medici vis- ited the Lyon monastery and found it too poor to her liking, she gave large gifts, and so did members of her household, both in coin and in kind. Gounon & Roussey, Nella tua Tenda, 599. Many cloister chronicles mention extraordinary gifts, asked or given for specifijic pur- poses, such as roof repairs, major renovation works etc. In 1474, the Poor Clares of Nuremberg wanted to do some serious building work. To that extent they allowed thirty (potential) donors to tour the compound so that they could observe the state of disrepair. The donors were offfered a special indulgence of 10 years, absolving them from all sins. There was apparently a great willingness to engage into this deal, for the city council in the end had to select the thirty ‘lucky’ donors. All those who had not been chosen but had 236 chapter five monasteries put under royal protection,29 but frequently also implied specifijic tax exemptions, either to individual Clarissan houses or to all Clarissan monasteries in the realm.30 As indicated by the Pfullingen example mentioned earlier, another source of income was provided by pensioners: frequently mature or elderly women who wished to live within the compound or in special houses as paying guests. Considering the strictures in the various rules concerning visitors, this was, in fact, an anomaly. This practice meant the presence of semi-permanent or permanent non-religious residents/visitors, some- times with a retinue of their own. Such pensioners were not fully part of the monastic community and therefore threatened the quality of the communal religious life.31 Nevertheless, the available sources indicate that many Poor Clare mon- asteries did accept such paying pensioners (sometimes called commoran- tes or commesse).32 In some cases, the right to live within or near the monastic community was granted by papal bull to female founders or their family members.33 In many cases, paying pensioners were women of a mature age, sometimes widowed, who wished to live a religious life with- out abandoning their lay status (and without becoming completely sub- ject to the harsh monastic regime). Although such pensioners were sometimes given permission to wear a habit (or to be buried in it), they were not fully bound to the rules of enclosure. Their integration into the monastic community and their freedom of movement might have difffered from monastery to monastery.34 Several Poor Clare monasteries became, in fact, retirement homes for wealthy or high noble widows who received nevertheless done some service to the monastery or the convent church were given a smaller indulgence of forty days. Kist, Das Klarissenkloster, 78–81. 29 The chronicle of the Béziers monastery mentions a yearly donation of fijish or its mon- etary equivalent by the French king. Gounon & Roussey, Nella tua Tenda, 599. 30 Examples of such exemptions and related privileges in Castile are discussed in Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas’, 654–655. 31 Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 113fff mentions that Pope Innocent VIII (1489–1492) alone granted more than 100 requests by noble women to visit Poor Clare monasteries together with their chamber maids and other women of their household, giving them per- mission to by-pass the consent of the Franciscan provincial minister: ‘…quoties voluerit, licentia ministri provincialis O.F.M., vel aliorum, minime requisita.’ With reference to Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 1186. 32 For information of such commorantes in the San Francesco di Pozzuolo monastery (Sansepolcro), see Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 160. Chapter Three of this book mentions the presence of lay pensioners in the Bruisyard monastery of Minoresses. 33 At Meran the foundress Euphemia lived with two daughters in the monastery, but remained outside the enclosure. Straganz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Klarissenklosters’, 132. 34 Cf. Thomas, Art and Piety, 37, 315. aspects of community life 237 permission to retreat, permanently or temporarily, into the monastery with servants and additional family members.35 Caterina of Rio (Caterina dal Rio), who asked the pope in 1491 for per- mission to fijind refuge among the Poor Clares during the proceedings of her divorce, is an interesting case. Caterina was allowed to live among the Poor Clares at Segovia, ‘together with a maid (…) so that she could live (there) quietly and honestly for the duration of the divorce proceedings’ (cum una famula, vel ancilla (…) ut quietus et honestius vivere possit lite pen- dente).’36 Although such visits could have a disrupting influence, they are also an indication of the multifaceted spiritual and social roles of Poor Clare monasteries in late medieval society.37 Aside from adult pensioners, the sources sometimes mention another type of ‘boarders’ known as pensioners, oblates, or ‘scollers’. These terms could all be used to designate young girls who were sent to the monastery by their parents either for safekeeping or to be educated. This was often, but by no means always, a prelude to a monastic career. This practice went hand in hand with the provision of funds to pay for lodgings for these girls, and for the education they received in the monastery. It was a legacy inherited from older forms of female monasticism. In traditional monastic houses, it had become quite common to receive daughters from noble families. These daughters were thus kept safe and received some form of education until they might marry and take on the responsibilities of their new households. After the mid thirteenth century, when the Poor Clares came to obtain a position akin to that of the Benedictine houses in earlier periods, the same phenomenon made its appearance in the Clarissan world.

35 See Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 620–621 for the case of Marguerite, the widow of Richard of Brittany, who received papal permission to retreat into a Poor Clare monastery of her choosing with her daughters and three female servants to look after them. In Mainz, the widowed queen mother Adelheid lived in the Clarissan monastery, wearing the Clarissan habit. Renkhofff, Geschichte der Stad Wiesbaden, 183. It remains unclear whether she was subject to the same enclosure regime as the other nuns. More examples are men- tioned in passing in Chapter Three (for instance concerning the monastery of Minoresses ‘without Aldgate’, near London). 36 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 2165. 37 Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 117: ‘Si ebbe, inoltre, un affflusso di anime pie che chiedevano di trascorrere un po’ di tempo in monastero, per cogliere una percezione piú ferma della propria spiritualità, per rinnovarsi nei santi propositi e vivere in modo piú consapevole il rapporto con Dio e gli uomini; è indubbio che lo storico della pietà ha qui uno dei gangli su cui l’interscambio di esperienze spirituali, tra il chiostro e il secolo, fu molto attivo e profijicuo.’ 238 chapter five

Many Poor Clare monasteries were sponsored by aristocratic families. They began to see these religious houses, which frequently included a number of their family members as choir nuns, as ideal boarding schools for their young girls, both those who eventually were to be betrothed and those for whom the family had planned a monastic career. In the latter case, the education in the monastery became a preparation for the novi- tiate. The presence of these girls within the monastic compound did not always necessitate the presence of a school in the proper sense of the word. The education of young girls could have been a very informal afffair: a small number of them would be under the care of one or two nuns, who were frequently relatives of the girls in question, or of the designated nov- ice mistress, who was also responsible for the religious education of pro- spective adolescent nuns. The girls would be taught reading skills and domestic handicrafts. In addition, the girls would be exposed to the litur- gical rhythms of the monastery, and to a thorough internalization of reli- gious values.38 The impact of the Observance in the fijifteenth century might have caused a temporary decline in the acceptance of young girls for educa- tional purposes, just as it might have stopped the intake of lay pensioners. Observant reformers generally disapproved of monasteries accepting chil- dren or other ‘outsider’ elements that could have an impact on monastic enclosure and the quality of the religious life.39 Yet by the later fijifteenth century, adolescent and even younger boarders reappear in the sources. The need to provide ‘proper’ religious and social education for girls could even be an argument for the creation of a completely new Clarissan foun- dation. Hence, on 13 November 1463, Pope Pius II gave permission to Queen Juana of Portugal, wife of Enrique IV of Castile, to build an Observant Poor Clare monastery in the royal stronghold Aranda de Duero (Osma diocese) to house and educate 15 young women (quince niñas) to be selected by the queen herself. The young women remained under the supervision of Poor Clare nuns from their seventh until their twentieth

38 For several medieval examples, see Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 120–122; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 34; Viader Serra, ‘Santa Clara de Santiago en los siglos XIV y XV’, 63–78. One special case is worth mentioning: Queen Isabella of Castile, who wished to take an orphan into her service, asked the pope in 1490 ‘ob eius tamen teneram aetatem (…) indultum quod per certum tempus, ut bonis moribus possit educari, cum una honesta domicella valeat, in habitu saeculari, morari in monasterio (…) Ordinis S. Clarae.’ Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 2028. For a more general discussion of the schooling of young girls in monasteries, see Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, 70fff. 39 Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, 71. aspects of community life 239 year, when they could either take their profession or return to their par- ents to be married.40 By the early sixteenth century, it had become very common for Poor Clare monasteries of nearly all types to accept young women for such for- mative purposes. This eventually caused the creation of separate school- houses and the development of a more comprehensive curriculum.41 A study by Jutta Sperling has shown that patrician girls in sixteenth- century Venice were sent to female religious houses ‘as soon as they could walk, speak, and eat on their own.’42 They would remain there until they were deemed old enough to marry or to take up a position of responsibil- ity in the family household. If marriage or another secular role could not be arranged, the girls remained in the monastery where they had most of their friends and normally also a number of female relatives. The term ‘oblate’ was sometimes used for young girls brought to the monastery temporarily for educational or formative purposes. Yet this term also hinted at another, related practice with a long pedigree in medi- eval monasticism, namely placing young children in a monastery to remain there permanently. They would take their profession as soon as it was canonically legitimate, at the age of fourteen or fijifteen. The distinc- tion between the two types of oblates was not always very strict. A change in marital prospects, the alteration of family fortunes, or an oblate’s choice to adopt a monastic future could transform a temporary stay into a perma- nent one. A substantial number of girls sent to the monastery to be edu- cated eventually embarked upon a formal novitiate.43 The acceptance of novices itself brings us to yet another form of income. Among the Minoresses that followed the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp, and also in many Clarissan houses that followed the Urbanist rule, it gradually became common for the acceptance of novices to be dependent upon both a dowry and additional promises of sustenance. Parents or other relatives of prospective novices negotiated with the abbess or her representative over the size of the dowry. They frequently had to promise to provide additional annuities (monetary or in kind) for the lifetime of the young woman in question. The actual size of the dowry

40 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 604–606 (no. 1172); Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas en Castille’, 653–654. 41 For subsequent educational developments in Early Modern Poor Clare monasteries, see for instance Roest, “Scollers Bredd Vp in the Monastery”, 179–209. 42 Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 19. 43 A lot of information on this can be gathered for the Early Modern period. Roest, “Scollers Bredd Vp in the Monastery”, 180–185. 240 chapter five and additional donations necessary for novices to be accepted varied from monastery to monastery, and sometimes also from novice to novice. Variations within a community could indicate a signifijicant social diffferen- tiation, a question to which I will return below. Dowries normally remained linked to the woman for whom they had been paid, and were refunded when she left the monastery, or transferred with her if she entered another house. Dowries became the property of the monastery upon her death. In some cases, however, for example in Söflingen, they could be willed to a relative in the cloister.44 In some monasteries, formal dowries were absent. Observant reforms along Colettine or Observant lines could imply the abolition of dowries (at least temporarily). Based on archival studies, Brigitte Degler-Spengler has concluded that the Poor Clare monastery of Gnadental (Basel) did not, at fijirst, demand a dowry properly speaking. Instead, choir nuns or their fami- lies had to pay an annuity. By the fijifteenth century, an entrance fee of some kind had appeared. Most girls or women entering the monastery had to pay at least 100 guilders, whereas the daughters of the wealthiest fami- lies in town could pay as much as 500 or 600 guilders. A higher entrance fee could be a matter of family prestige and could ensure a more promi- nent position of the prospective nun within the monastic community, even if the latter was not intended by the house constitutions regulating such afffairs.45 The diffferentiation among choir nuns, which sometimes was visible in the size of their dowries and the additional bequests made by their fami- lies, could be enhanced by the personal incomes of individual nuns. This was in violation of the rule: all rules guiding the lives of Poor Clares during the Middle Ages assumed personal poverty and emphasized equality in community life.46 However, by the early fourteenth century, it was not uncommon for individual Poor Clares in larger monasteries to retain con- trol over their personal property and fijinances. The reform constitutions issued by Benedict XII in 1336 noted that all donations or bequests given to individual nuns were to be used for the common good at the discretion of the abbess, but this seems to have had a limited impact.47

44 Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 76. 45 Degler-Spengler, Das Klarissenkloster Gnadental, 33–34. 46 Cf. for instance Chapter VII of the rule of Clare. Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 265–266. There is nothing in the Urbanist rule to suggest that the choir nuns were not seen to form one body in their observance of personal poverty and in their acceptance of donations from outside. Cf. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 517–518. 47 Ordinationes a Benedicto XII, ed. Bihl, 381–382. aspects of community life 241

The above-mentioned 1337 Bologna inventory provides evidence of per- sonal possessions, and indicates that the papal guidelines were not univer- sally followed.48 Likewise, in 1328, the nun Muciarella obtained control over an annual rent of 15 lires in the Santa Maria di Populo monastery of Città di Castello.49 In April 1372, the mayor and the citizens of the town of Nuremberg sold rents (‘Zinsen’) to two individual Poor Clares of the Sankta Klara monastery of Freiburg, namely Margaretha Sorner and Catharina of Biberach. After the death of these nuns, the ‘Zinsen’ for Margaretha Sorner went to the monastery. Those sold to Catharina of Biberach, however, were willed to the nun Anna of Konstanz and were only inherited by the mon- astery after her death.50 In larger Urbanist houses, individual nuns often retained ownership of personal possessions and income, ranging from bedclothes, books and jewelry to rents derived from land and houses. At Marseille, individual nuns appeared to have had total control over the inheritance left to them by their families. The Poor Clare Jeanne Atoux (abbess in 1407) managed no fewer than 48 houses and 77 diffferent pieces of land as her personal property. Her independent wealth and freedom of movement did not go unnoticed, but were not curtailed.51 According to the studies of Mario Sensi, the nuns of Santa Maria del Paradiso at Spello also had possessions and money of their own, and obtained individual income from textile work. Although the abbess received part of the profijits, the nuns used the remainder to acquire addi- tional food, necessary clothing and medical supplies. It would seem that this regime at Spello was a vestige of an older beguine-like bizzocaggio mode rather than a sign of laxity. The community had transformed offfijicially into a Clarissan monastery by the early fourteenth century, but it retained older practices, in which the individual women remained responsible for their own maintenance. Perhaps this phenomenon was not unusual in Clarissan houses that had started as beguine-like communities.52

48 Moorman, A History, 409. 49 Cf. Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 166. 50 Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster’, 182, nos. 78 & 79. 51 Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 229. 52 Sensi, Storie di Bizzoche 372–374. As we have seen before, the nuns of the Freiburg monastery also maintained control over individual incomes. Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster’, 152 interprets this as a vestige of a possible tertiary lifestyle during its foundation period. 242 chapter five

As has already been mentioned in Chapter Three, the house of Minoresses at Denney apparently used a prebend arrangement. The com- munity as a whole developed a system to divide the monastic property into portions for the individual nuns. They received rent individually and acted on behalf of their own portions. Thus the Denney community did not solely act as a corporate body but also allowed individual nuns to man- age their economic interests in their own names. In the case of Denney, and possibly elsewhere, the abbess and the individual nuns acted as prop- erty managers, in part independent of lay stewards or lay proctors. Through these activities, the nuns ensured their personal fijinancial security, which enabled them to procure additional food or obtain more advanced medi- cal services for themselves than the monastery was prepared or able to offfer. Nuns who successfully increased the value of their own possessions were seen as being competent managers, and therefore as good candidates for leadership roles (such as the abbatiate). One such competent manager- abbess was Joan Ketteryche of Denney (fl. late 15th century), who used the prevailing belief in female frailty and incompetence to achieve her aims.53 The same papal curia that ruled against individual incomes at times gave explicit permission to noblewomen who joined the order to keep in their own name important family possessions and forms of income that they had been entitled to in the world. In this way, the women would not have to leave behind all worldly adornment when they opted for the monastic life.54 On the other hand, many nuns depended upon family soli- darity to take care of them in times of illness or want, when the monastery was unable or unwilling to pay for doctor’s visits or medical treatment.55 Sometimes, the marginal situation of nuns without proper external sup- port enticed outside benefactors to provide specifijic donations for the ‘poorer’ nuns in the cloister, who did not have an extended familial sup- port group. Hence, in 1330, Bonavere of Ranieri del Giotto organized an annual bequest of 10 soldi in favor of the ‘sore più povere de San Francesco’, the ‘sore de San Leo più bisognose’, and a comparable group of nuns in the Santa Maria della Strada monastery (all three in Sansepolcro).56

53 Warren, Spiritual Economies, 59–62. 54 Moorman, A History, 409, referring to Bullarium Franciscanum V, 164, 336 & VI, 118– 119, 181. See also Papalini, ‘La vita quotidiana’, 236–237. 55 Moorman, A History, 410; Bourdillon, The Order of the Minoresses, 41. This was, of course, totally against the letter and the spirit of the rules, all of which stress the responsi- bility of the community and the abbess to take care of ill members. 56 Quoted from Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 173. aspects of community life 243

Depending on the local situation, and in particular in cases in which dominant lay benefactors asserted themselves, social stratifijication and diffferences in disposable income within Urbanist houses could be signifiji- cant. In such monasteries, there was not only a huge gap between the fully professed nuns and the lay sisters or serving sisters from a lower social background,57 but also a gap between the richest nuns and the others. In such cases, the richer nuns, frequently those with a more elevated noble or patrician pedigree, might have monopolized monastic offfijices. They also might have had better food and clothing, more spacious personal cells (sometimes comprising several chambers, a separate kitchen and even a personal servant), and private devotional works of art.58 The abolition of these practices became a major issue in the era of reforms. In many monasteries, Colettine and Observant reforms not only implied an alienation of ‘superfluous’ monastic patrimony, but also cur- tailed personal incomes, and forced all nuns to adhere to a more equal and more frugal form of communal life. However, the repercussions of such reforms varied between individual monasteries. We should not automati- cally assume that the introduction of Colettine or Observant reforms efffaced all diffferences between choir nuns, or between choir nuns and lay sisters. Social standing and family prestige remained very important. This overall sketch of the accumulation of possessions and other forms of income by Poor Clare monasteries and individual nuns should not lead us to think that all Damianite/Poor Clare monasteries were very well offf. They were by no means all in the same league as Pfullingen, Söflingen, and the Santa Chiara monastery of Naples. To be sure, the large royal houses in France, Spain and Central Europe could be very rich. The Znojmo monas- tery (Moravia) and the Gniezno monastery (Poland) more or less pos- sessed entire regions, with large agricultural properties, vineyards, forests,

57 The role of lay sisters/serving sisters, lay brothers and other servants in Clarissan monasteries needs additional study. Most administrative sources only mention these groups in passing, and the normative sources predominantly mention their obligations and the obedience due to the abbess. Yet they formed a substantial group in the monastic household and were essential for the survival of the monastery. It would be interesting to reconstruct the stratifijication of service in Clarissan monasteries, to compare the position of diffferent groups of servants in Clarissan houses with those in other monastic environ- ments, and to fijind out to what extent Clarissan monasteries inherited existing monastic traditions of lay service and familiaritas. For a fijirst introduction, see Orlandis, Tr‘ aditio corporis et animae. La familiaritas en las iglesias y monasterios españoles de la Alta Edad Media’, 95–279; Graña Cid, “La familia de fuera’. Aproximación a las clientelas de los mon- asterios de Clarisas (Córdoba, siglos XIII-XVI)’, 317–343. 58 Moorman, A History, 409–410; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 305–306. Jäggi mentions in this context the private altarpiece of a nun in the Cologne Sankt Klara Kloster. 244 chapter five villages and mills. The houses of Játiva (Southern Spain) and Valencia even had a number of Moorish slaves to perform menial tasks.59 The Königsfelden monastery in Switzerland was also very rich (see Chapter Three). Still, even relatively well-endowed houses could run into debt, if only because the maintenance of extensive monastic compounds could be expensive. The communities were obliged to pay for the services of lay servants and proctors responsible for business transactions and property management. The same was true for the services of confessors, priests and other clergymen, which were necessary for the daily religious routines. All this was an ongoing drain on the monastic resources.60 In the long term, a major problem was that many of the rents and incomes assigned to the monasteries were fijixed. The real value of such fijixed rents dwindled over time, due to inflation. In the end, the upkeep of rental property could out- weigh the income obtained from it.61 The uncontrolled increase in the number of nuns, which forced the monastery to pay expenses it could not affford, was an additional problem. This issue had been addressed in Benedict XII’s famous reform constitu- tions of 1336. By then, it was apparently seen as a major threat to the reli- gious life in many monasteries.62 Nevertheless, it proved difffijicult to deny entry to postulants from influential families. A good example concerns the Gerona monastery, which complained about this situation to the pope in 1343. The papacy normally replied to such complaints with binding guide- lines concerning the maximum number of nuns.63 Comparable regula- tions were passed by local secular authorities. Nevertheless, in many cases it proved very difffijicult to withstand external pressure to allow the entrance of additional women. Formal possession of lands and other properties did not always mean access to them. Monasteries could experience signifijicant difffijiculties in securing their rights to rents and tithes. Not only were they confronted by rival claims from family members of donors (which could necessitate

59 Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 213. 60 The constitutions of the Poor Clare monastery ‘Auf dem Werth’ in Strasbourg indi- cate that each sung mass cost the monastery about one schilling. Rüther, Bettelorden in Stadt und Land, 285. 61 Cf. Tüchle, ‘Süddeutsche Klöster vor 500 Jahren, 112. The houses of Millau/Milhau and Gourdon in Aquitaine, as well as Sant’Angelo di Panzo had insufffijiciently productive prop- erties to cover the costs for the maintenance of their monastic compounds. Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 213. 62 Ordinationes a Benedicto XII, ed. Bihl, 381 63 Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 102, 166, 167. aspects of community life 245 lengthy and costly court procedures), they also faced difffijiculties in enforc- ing established claims on lands and other possessions. Tenants and neigh- bors could appropriate lands for themselves, and if a monastery neglected to re-assert its rights on a regular basis, or if the administrative records were lost through fijire or flood, monasteries could lose such properties altogether. Wars and natural disasters could wreak havoc on the economic resources of monastic communities. During the fourteenth century, the Poor Clares at Sisteron were repeatedly victims of floodwaters. This caused great damage to the monastic compound and even led to casualties among the nuns.64 The Sankt Klara monastery of Bamberg also sufffered occasion- ally from floodwaters. Moreover, like its sister house in Hof, it was heavily damaged during the Hussite attacks of 1430.65 The Hundred Years War, which brought about the destruction of crops, bridges, mills and remote properties, was a veritable disaster for many Poor Clare monasteries in France, and could mean an almost complete annihilation of their income. In addition, during this conflict many monastic houses were razed to the ground. This brought on huge relocation expenses, just when most of the income from existing sources had disappeared, either temporarily or per- manently. When a monastic archive had not survived the destruction or the relocation, proofs of ownership were lost as well, making it very hard to re-establish claims.66 Many Clarissan houses, especially the smaller monasteries in Italy and France, had never been rich, either by choice, or because of an insufffijicient initial patrimony. Perhaps a number of the more ephemeral Poor Clare monasteries mentioned in Chapter Three were among these. Indeed, sev- eral such communities diminished over time, or disappeared without leaving any documentary trace. The socio-economic realities within such houses are difffijicult to fathom. Historians frequently have only a few scattered anecdotal remarks, some of which seem to indicate outright desperation.67

64 Munier, et al. Claire en Provence, 78. 65 On the fijinancial difffijiculties of the Bamberg Sankt Klara monastery, due to over- crowding, water damage and the Hussite attacks of 1430, see Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 142–143, 270–276. 66 Cf. Denifle, La désolation II, 239, 631. A case in point is the Béziers monastery. When the armies of the Black Prince were drawing near in 1355, the nuns evacuated to a location intra muros. For additional details, see Barthèz, ‘Le monastère des Clarisses de Béziers’, 238fff. 67 In 1308, the abbess of the Bordeaux monastery obtained special permission to leave the monastery and to go begging, in order to obtain the necessities of life for the starving 246 chapter five

Observant reforms in their various forms could also be a fijinancial blow, as they frequently entailed the divestment of property and the departure of dissatisfijied nuns (and with them their dowries and family connections). Such divestments could take diffferent forms, and in some cases did not mean completely surrendering control over the accumulated properties.68 Nevertheless, it meant that many reformed monasteries had to make do with fewer possessions and less security than before. This could have seri- ous consequences. The Poor Clares of Lucca were described in a papal bull from 1487 as living pauperrimae et calamitosae.69 Likewise, the ‘Poor Observant Sisters of Saint Francis’ (sorores pauperes S. Francisci de Observantia) in Cortona were, according to a papal document from 1489, heavily burdened by debts. The women had to sell most of their remaining possessions to raise the funds to perform necessary repairs on their ruined cloister.70 During the same decade, the Observant Poor Clares of L’Aquila and Sarzana were facing starvation and needed to ask papal permission to break their vow of enclosure in order to beg and search for food.71 On the other hand, the Monteluce monastery seems to have embarked on a veritable socio-economic renaissance in the wake of its Observant reform. The implementation of new strictures went hand in hand with a reorganization of the monastic administration and the implementation of a new bookkeeping system, arranged in an extant register. This source indicates that, after adopting Observant reforms, the monastic population quickly rose from around 15 nuns in the 1440s to 40 or 50 a few decades later. The monastery was able to absorb this growth through a substantial increase in donations, and the generation of new types of monetary income. The monastery continued to flourish, possibly also thanks to its implementation of a numerus fijixus to prevent a further increase in the population of choir nuns.72 Kate Lowe’s study of the patronage relations between the Clarissan monastery of San Cosimato in Trastevere (Rome), nuns. Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 510 (an. 1308, doc. 7); Bullarium Franciscanum V, 53; Moorman, A History, 408. 68 Various Poor Clare houses transferred their holdings to charitable institutions, and through them, the monastery sometimes kept a voice in the exploitation method. Cf. Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 84. 69 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 781. Found in Guidi, ‘Le Clarisse nella società’, 105. 70 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 1646; Found in Guidi, ‘Le Clarisse nella società’, 105. The nomenclature raises the question whether this was a Clarissan house or a community of female Franciscan tertiaries. 71 Guidi, ‘Le Clarisse nella società’, 107, 108, with reference to Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. IV, 271 & 379. Their situation was comparable to that of the monastery in Bordeaux dur- ing the early fourteenth century (see note 67). 72 Oliger, ‘Documenta originis Clarissarum’, 78–79, 93–98. aspects of community life 247

Franciscan order offfijicials and several popes from the late fijifteenth and early sixteenth century, shows that Observant houses could be quite suc- cessful in gaining substantial fijinancial support by ‘invoking a rhetoric of gendered helplessness’, which apparently appealed strongly to clerical feelings of masculinity and power.73 As was already mentioned concerning the actions of abbess Joan Ketteryche of Denney, the upkeep of monasteries demanded substantial managerial skills. Since the early 1990s, interesting research has been done on this issue, by scholars such as Roberta Gilchrist and Marylin Oliva.74 Still, it remains unclear to what extent Poor Clare abbesses and their female counselors could act independently. For many Italian monasteries, the cardinal protector and later the Franciscan provincial minister appointed distinguished local churchman to look after the nuns as conser- vatores. These could be representatives of the local bishop, abbots of nearby monasteries, or the guardian of the local Franciscan friary. These conservatores could act as trustees on behalf of the nuns, or they could appoint their own notaries and proctors to assist.75 At Genoa, the conser- vatores of the Clarissan monasteries could be laywomen. Those who held this offfijice needed to make all important property decisions in consulta- tion with the local friars.76 Many Urbanist houses and houses of Minoresses had proctors/procura- tors and lay stewards of their own for the day to day business. These offfiji- cials appear in the various rules, according to which they answered to the abbess and the monastic community.77 This system was most fully

73 Lowe, ‘Franciscan and Papal Patronage’, esp. 239. The Bamberg Sankt Klara monas- tery also saw a substantial amelioration of its fijinancial situation after its Observant reform in 1460, which helped in fijinding new benefactors. This allowed for an increase in the num- ber of choir nuns and substantial building activities in the closing decades of the fijifteenth century and after. Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 297fff, 343. 74 See Gilchrist & Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia. 75 Moorman, A History, 410. 76 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 311. 77 The revised rule of Longchamp states: ‘…liceat eis [sororibus] in communi redditus, & possessiones recipere; ac eas libere retinere; pro quibus possessionibus modo debito pertractandis Procurator unus prudens, & fijidelis in dicto Monasterio habeatur, qui per Abbatissa de consilio, & consensu Conventus constitui debeat; & etiam, quan- documque eis videbitur, amoveri; ac de omnibus sibi commissis tam receptis, quam etiam expensis Abbatissae, & aliis quibusdam Sororibus ex parte Conventus ad hoc specialiter assignatis, & Visitatori etiam, cum hoc voluerit audire, rationem reddere teneatur. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 485. The Urbanist rule describes the way the procurator had to function as follows: ‘Ad haec, licet vobis in communi redditus, & possessiones recipere, & habere, ac ea libere retinere. Pro quibus possessionibus, & redditibus Monasterii modo debito pertractandis Procurator unus prudens pariter, & fijidelis in singulis Monasteriis vestri Ordinis habeatur, qui per Abbatissam, & Conventum constitui, & amoveri debeat, 248 chapter five developed in England, where each monastery of Minoresses had stewards and understewards to present the nuns in manorial courts, as well as receivers to collect rents and fees, and a general bailifff to manage their estates.78 It is very hard to judge the extent to which such offfijicials answered to the abbess, as the rules seem to indicate (and as the situation in England seems to imply). In some cases it seems that such stewards or procurators were predominantly subject to the authority of the Franciscan provincial minister, as the situation in various smaller Italian houses seems to suggest (see also the discussion further below).79 Elsewhere, the urban authorities seem to have had a substantial say over their appointment and responsibilities.80

Social and Religious Aspects of Community Life

Ideally, the monastic family was a community in the service of God. In the previous section, we have seen that this ideal did not always correspond to reality, as diffferences in social standing in the outside world were often replicated within the monastic enclosure. On average, the recruitment of choir nuns for the monasteries of Damianites, Minoresses and Poor Clares was limited to the more wealthy and aristocratic. This was the case almost everywhere, nearly from the out- set. Thanks to the research of J.G. Bougerol, we know that many of the earliest members of the San Damiano community near Assisi were sicut videbutur expedire. Hic vero taliter institutus de omnibus sibi commissis, receptis pariter, & expensis Abbatissae, & tribus Sororibus ad hoc per Conventum specialiter assig- natis, & Visitatori cum voluerit, rationem reddere teneatur; nihil omnino de rebus Monasterii vendere, commutare, obligare, vel alienare quoque modo valeat, nisi de licentia Abbatissae pariter, & Conventus. Et quicquid contra hic attentatum fuerit, irritum decerni- mus, & inane. Possit tamen de mobilibus parum valentibus aliqua parva ex causa licentia interdum aliis elargiri. Possit etiam per Visitatorem, cum expedire videbitur, amoveri. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 517–518. 78 Moorman, A History, 410–411; Bourdillon, The Order of the Minoresses, 33–34. 79 In 1508, the women of Santa Chiara di Nardò wished to reconfijirm their procurator in his offfijice, whereas the Franciscan provincial minister wished to replace him. Finally the latter asked the town authorities to provide the abbess with a list of ten possible candidates from which she could choose. Facchiano, ‘Monachesimo femminile nel mezzogiorno’, 185. The rule of Urban IV did suggest that procurators or stewards were to work in conjunction with the wishes of the abbess and the other nuns. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 517. 80 This was apparently the case in Bamberg, although many were chosen from families that had been involved with the monastery’s foundation or that had a number of family members in the monastery. See the detailed list of ‘Pfleger’ in Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 227–231, 269–270. The situation in the Clarissan monastery of Esslingen was probably comparable. Holzwart-Schäfer, ‘Körperlich eingeschlossen, aber geistig frei?’, 239f. aspects of community life 249 recruited from the more wealthy and influential families of Assisi and Perugia (and frequently families with a higher social standing than the families from which many early friars were recruited). At San Damiano, a substantial number of members of the early community consisted of Clare’s immediate family, including her sisters Agnes and Beatrice, her mother Ortolana (after she had been widowed), and her cousins Balvina Amata and Agnese Perauda. In addition, the early monastic community included several intimate friends from Clare’s early childhood, such as Illuminata of Ghislerio, Ginevra of Tebalduccio (who succeeded Clare as the abbess at San Damiano with the name Benedetta), and Pacifijica of Guelfuccio.81 A comparable pattern was recreated in many other Damianite and Poor Clare monasteries, which recruited a large number of nuns from founding families, and their wider kin group and friendship networks. As we have seen in Chapter Three, founders could exert considerable influence on the recruitment of nuns, and in some instances could block the entry of ‘unwelcome’ candidates.82 As the studies of Jeraldine Woods have indi- cated with regard to Observant Poor Clare monasteries in Italy, this meant that the monastic community could function as an extended family net- work. When other monasteries were created or reformed with the help of a substantial party of nuns, it could result in close ‘family ties’ between mother and daughter houses.83 The presence of such ties could enhance the sense of community, and at the same time help sponsor families in maintaining their political alli- ances. Yet it also brought rivalries and conflicts between powerful factions and clans from the region into the monastery. The entrance of various family members and dependent ‘friends’, in combination with donations from their kin outside the monastery could signifijicantly alter the balance of power in a monastic community, and could lead to overpopulation. Aside from stretching the economic means of a house, this could cause a disruption of community life through the formation of factions. Although the rules called for unity, they did not address these issues adequately. These matters were sometimes referred to by local statutes, by letters issued by the cardinal protector and by more wide-ranging regulations for groups of monasteries, such as those issued in 1303 by the provincial

81 Bougerol, ‘Il reclutamento sociale’, 629–632. 82 Chapter Three mentions several monasteries where founders kept a close eye on the recuitment of nuns or, as was the case in the monastery of Boisset, had full control over the selection of nuns. 83 Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, passim. 250 chapter five minister Heinrich of Ravensburg for the Poor Clare settlements within his jurisdiction. Heinrich’s regulations forbade the presence of more than six women from the same family up to the third degree of consanguinity in one and the same monastery.84 Some monasteries used the dowry as a means to ensure that only women from ‘desirable’ aristocratic circles were accepted as choir nuns.85 Other monasteries had other ways to ensure that only women from families of means could enter, or that only women with the ‘right’ family background had access to the most important monastic offfijices. This diffferentiation could mirror (albeit not always completely) the socio- economic stratifijication of nuns mentioned earlier. On the whole, the dif- fijiculty for women from lower social strata in becoming full choir nuns, and their relatively marginal position in cases in which they did succeed, was very much a result of ingrained feelings of superiority and inferiority, and the incompatibility of nuns with diffferent social backgrounds.86 When women of a lower social background entered the Urbanist Clarissan fold or a monastery of Minoresses, it was mainly as lay sisters or servants. They did not pay the normal dowry or the obligatory annual annuities,87 and did not have the same liturgical responsibilities.88 From

84 ‘Item, cum ex multitudine consanguinearum et earum colligatione in conventu plures paucioribus, etiamsi quandoque ampliori rationi nitantur, in quibuscumque capitu- lorum vocibus saepe prevaleant tam illicite quam damnose, quare et Dominus Cardinalis ordinis gubernator talem multiplicationem provide interdixit, per obedientiam prohibeo, quod in eodem conventu ultra VI personarum sibi infra tertium gradum inclusive adtinen- tium non procedatur, nec ab aliqua sorore quibuscumque personis extra ordinem exis- tentibus contra predicta veniendi possibilitas sed pocius mandatum Domini Cardinalis singulis hoc petentibus datur. Ideo autem non proponatur conventui de quacumque per- sona recipienda nisi de meo consensu, nec petatur meus concensus, si non fuero presens, nisi per literas, Gardiani loci vel confessoris ipsius consensum et iudicium et consanguin- earum eius pro qua scribitur in conventu numerum et meritum exprimentes, quo con- censu habito litera Domini Cardinalis legatur in communi et praecipiatur quod nulla faciat introductionem dolosam nec aliqua alteri suam voluntatem revelet, et sic voces omnium per disquisitionem trium, quas abbatissa nominaverit, et nomina integre conscribantur. Nec eodem anno pro aliqua sine mea licentia speciali petitio iteretur. Quae vero recipien- dae fuerint, examinationi se subiiciant et ad tempus determinatum veniant, in quibus si defecerint, ipsarum receptio sit inanis.’ Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 161–162. 85 Aguadé Nieto, ‘Las clarisas en Castilla’, 653. 86 As Thomas, Art and Piety, 40, points out: ‘Conventual women of good breeding and impeccable background no doubt regarded themselves as superior to former prostitutes or the artisan’s daughter or country girl with whom they may at times have been forced to live, work, eat, and sleep.’ 87 Reduced dowry payments for lay sisters continued long after the Middle Ages. Cf. Papalini, ‘La vita quotidiana’, 211. 88 The more limited liturgical obligations of illiterate lay sisters is already codifijied in the rule of Clare itself. Comparable regulations were issued for individual monasteries. Hence, aspects of community life 251 the moment they entered the monastery, they were probably trained to be deferential to the choir nuns, and to see them as their superiors, even though servants could be considered to be part of the monastic spiritual ‘famiglia’. In the sixteenth century, expected deferential attitudes even became codifijied in individual house constitutions.89 Originally, choir nuns did not have individual cells. In the thirteenth century, common dormitories were the norm, in accord with the Urbanist rule, which by the end of the thirteenth century had been adopted by the majority of Clarissan monasteries.90 In many such dormitories, the beds of the nuns were separated by simple wooden screens. Gradually, the com- mon sleeping hall was abandoned for individual cells. The 1336 reform statutes issued by Benedict XII denounced this development, but appar- ently to no avail.91 The disappearance of common dormitories was not necessarily an immediate sign of relaxation, or a sign of a decline in egali- tarian community life. With the ongoing monasticization, individual prayer exercises gained importance, on top of the communal participa- tion in the Divine Offfijice. In many monasteries, the introduction of indi- vidual cells might have been primarily a means to facilitate these and other individual religious exercises (private devotions, exercises in morti- fijication of the body etc.), for which a shared dormitory was not ideal.92 Yet, as stated above, the introduction of private cells could exacerbate the social diffferentiation of the monastic community, as it often allowed larger and more lavishly furnished cells (sometimes with additional chambers for in living servants) to the most privileged nuns.93 With the in the Poor Clare monastery in Nuremburg, lay sisters did not participate in the full cycle of the Divine Offfijice, Instead, they were instructed to pray 24 Pater Noster prayers at Matins, fijive at Lauds, seven at Prime, Terce, Sext and Nones, Twelve at Vespers and Seven at Compline. This resembles statements in the rules. Kist, Das Klarissenkloster, 105. In many houses, lay sisters were not strictly enclosed and could be sent out on errands. Sometimes, lay sisters could advance towards the status of choir nun. This is for instance the case with Christina Reyselt from Pfullingen, who started as a lay sister yet, working with the Observant party that set out to reform the monastery of Bressanone, succeeded in becom- ing a choir nun. See: Duae relationes, ed. Straganz, 542. 89 Cf. Orlandis, ‘Traditio corporis et animae’, 95–279; Graña Cid, ‘La familia de fuera’, 317–343. 90 ‘Omnes Sorores sanae tam Abbatissa, quam aliae vestitae, & cinctae jaceant in com- muni Dormitorio; & qualibet per se lectum habeat ab invicem separatum; lectus tamen Abbatissae in tali loco Dormitorii disponatur, quod inde caeteros Dormitorii Lectos sine obstaculo, si commode fijieri poterit, valeat intueri’, Rule of Urban IV, Chapter 5,B ullarium Franciscanum II, 511. 91 Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 25b-26a, 40b-42b (n. 51: de monialibus). 92 Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 305f mentions that individual cells enabled nuns to have art pieces and objects to focus their exercises of private devotion. 93 Moorman, A History, 409–410. 252 chapter five implementation of Observant reforms, the re-introduction of a common dormitory was frequently a benchmark change, indicating the new Obser- vant regime. The common dormitory was more in accordance with the exigencies of the rule, and better for facilitating the unity of the monastic community, in which all nuns were equal. This return to common sleeping quarters can be traced in many Italian monastic houses, such as those reformed under the influence of the Monteluce monastery. It also was a specifijic point in the reform statutes issued by Daza and Fenals for Catalonian monasteries at the end of the fijifteenth century discussed in Chapter Four. The ongoing need for spaces where nuns could engage in private prayer and devotional exercises was sometimes met in other ways. Hence in Bressanone (Brixen), the nuns obtained individual prayer stalls behind the seats of the nuns choir during the fijifteenth century. In this way, the nuns could devote themselves to their individual religious exercises after completing the communal celebration of the Divine Offfijice.94 Elsewhere, the return to common dormitories could lead to a devotional re-orienta- tion towards collective prayer, in accordance with the guidelines of the rule of Clare. Lezlie Knox has pointed out how the nuns of the Monteluce monastery took up the advice of their confessor Antonio of Assisi and adopted the Observant friars’ custom of coming together in church for communal prayer exercises in addition to the Divine Offfijice.95 The balance between the communal celebration of the Divine Offfijice, other communal prayer sessions, and private (vocal and mental) prayer exercises, as well as the nuns’ participation at Mass and communion changed over time, and difffered between communities. At the very begin- ning, most Damianite houses following Ugolino’s Forma Vitae observed well-established Benedictine rites with respect to their daily and weekly liturgical observances. In this period, Damianite houses already distin- guished between the liturgical obligations of the mainly literate choir nuns and the other, frequently non-literate, members of the community.96

94 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, 89. See also Volgger, Das Klarissen- und Franziskanerkloster, 38; Gruber, ‘Kunst im Klarissenkloster’, 1985, 474. 95 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 162–164. With reference to the Memoriale di Monteluce, ed. Nicolini, 78–81. 96 ‘De Divino vero Offfijicio tam in die quam in nocte Domino persolvendo hoc observe- tur, ut eae, quae Psalmos et (Horas) legere noverint, Offfijicium faciant regulare. Quod si etiam canere sciunt, liceat eis horis competentibus canendo Offfijicium dicere et universo- rum Dominum collaudare, cum summa tamen gravitate et modestia, cum humilitate et multa devotione, ut ad salutem aedifijicari valeant audientes. Quae autem Psalmos aspects of community life 253

The rule of Innocent IV of 1247, as well as the rules of Isabelle of Long- champ, Clare of Assisi, and Urban IV, replaced all the references to the Benedictine liturgy with that of the Franciscan order, which saw a major standardization of liturgical routines at this time under the leadership of Giovanni Buralli of Parma and subsequently of Bonaventura.97 The wom- en’s acquaintance with Franciscan liturgical practices also shines through in the surviving spiritual works written for the women by Franciscan friars (such as Bonaventura, Guibert of Tournai, and others) from the 1250s onwards. Depending on the type of Clarissan monastery and the introduction of new devotions over time, communal liturgical obligations could become more burdensome. This was the case in the Colettine network, and also in the monasteries of the Annonciade, which put considerable emphasis on the communal celebration of the Divine Offfijice. In various royal Urbanist monasteries and houses of Minoresses in France and England, where the king, additional members of the ruling family, as well as other important nesciunt, Orationem Dominicam in suis horis secundum morem suo devote studeant per- solvere Creatori’, Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 220. 97 Most important were the liturgical guidelines in the rule of Clare, the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp, and the rule of Urban IV. The rule of Clare states: ‘Sorores litteratae faciant divinum Offfijicium secundum consuetudinem Fratrum Minorum; ex quo habere poterunt breviaria, legendo sine cantu. Et quae occasione rationabili non possent aliquando leg- endo dicere horas suas, liceat eis sicut aliae Sorores dicere ‘Pater noster’. Quae vero litteras nesciunt, dicant viginti quatuor ‘Pater noster’ pro Matutino, pro Laude quinque, pro Prima vero, Tertia, Sexta, Nona, pro qualibet istarum horarum septem; pro Vesperis autem duo- decim; pro Completorio septem. Pro Defunctis etiam dicant in Vesperis septem ‘Pater nos- ter’ cum ‘Requiem aeternam’; pro Matutino duodecim: cum Sorores litteratae teneantur facere Offfijicium Mortuorum. Quando vero Soror Monasterii nostri migraverit, dicant quin- quaginta ‘Pater noster’, Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 257. The rule of Isabelle states: ‘Circa Divinum Offfijicium tam in die, quam in nocte ad laudem Dei, & gloriam celebrandum observantia talis fijiat: Eae Sorores, quae legere scient, & canere, Offfijicium secundum con- suetudinem Ordinis Fratrum Minorum cum gravitate tamen, & modestia celebrent rever- enter. Aliae vero dicant viginti quatuor Pater noster pro Matutino, quinque pro Laudibus, pro Prima, Tertia, Sexta, & Nona, et Completorio septem; pro Vesperis autem duodecim dicant. Hic idem modus per omnia in Offfijicio Beatissimae Virginis Mariae observetur; et orent pro Defunctis’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 480. The regulations of Urban’s rule are very similar to those of Isabelle of Longchamp: ‘De Divino Offfijicio tam in die, quam in nocte Domino persolvendo taliter observetur, quod hae, quae legere, & canere noverint, secun- dum consuetudinem Ordinis Fratrum Minorum cum gravitate tamen, & modestia Divinum Offfijicium habeant celebrare. Illiteratae vero dicant viginti quatuor Pater noster pro matu- tino, pro Laudibus quinque, pro Prima, Tertia, Sexta, & Nona pro qualibet istarum Horarem Septem; pro Vesperis autem duodecim; pro Completorio septem. Qui modus in Offfijicio Beatae Virginis per omnia observetur. Pro defunctis dicant in Vesperis septem Pater noster cum Requiem aeternam; pro Matutino duodecim tempore, quo Sorores Litteratae faciunt Offfijicium Mortuorum. (…)’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 512. Note that the rule of Clare dis- approves of liturgical singing, whereas it is allowed in the other rules. 254 chapter five guests could be among the churchgoers, the celebration of the Divine Offfijice and the Mass could turn into an impressive musical spectacle. Although the rule of Clare had stipulated that the nuns should recite the hours without singing, the other rules allowed the Divine Offfijice to be sung, so long as it was done with sufffijicient sincerity and modesty (cum gravitate tamen, & modestia).98 In practice, many monasteries, indepen- dent of the actual rule followed by the community in question, gradually developed an aesthetically more pleasing liturgy.99 This suggests that some choir nuns spent a considerable number of their waking hours pre- paring their liturgical performance.100 The statutes of the Poor Clares of Les Cassés and the Ordinanze com- piled for the Neapolitan Corpus Christi monastery stipulated that the nuns were supposed to spend a lot of time in communal and personal prayer in addition to the hours spent reciting the Divine Offfijice.101 Many individual Poor Clares became renowned for their personal ‘life of prayer’, and for the spiritual and even miraculous benefijits they allegedly reaped from it. Several fourteenth and early fijifteenth century examples have been collected by Marie Colette Roussey and Marie Pascale Gounon.102 In the context of the regular Observance, accounts of heroic feats of personal prayer emphasized the validity and triumphs of religious reforms, and the transformation of religious life in newly reformed communities. Hence, the Franciscan chronicler Mariano of Florence wrote that the nun Francesca of Assisi (d. 1440) spent entire nights praying in front of the altar in the nuns’ choir, until the sacristan’s bell announced the Matins service, when she would quickly return to her bed in the dormitory, so that she might return to church with the other nuns without drawing attention to

98 See the previous notes. 99 When Pope Sixtus IV visited the Clarissan monastery of San Cosimato in 1475, the vocal music of the vesper service moved him to tears. Lowe, ‘Franciscan and Papal Patronage, 228. 100 See for instance Alvarez, ‘Tradición musical’, 887–894; Nativig, ‘Rich Clares, Poor Clares’, 59–70; Mészárosova, ‘Klarissen und Musik’, 163–175; Sadgorski, ‘Zum Musikinventar’, 363–368. 101 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 631–646 (an. 1321, doc. 99); Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 224–225. 102 Roussey and Gounon mention for instance Rosa of Vaux, abbess in Reims between 1357 and 1381. Rosa was known for her daily prayer sessions to penetrate the mysteries of redemption. Later, Rosa of Buyron, abbess of the same Reims monastery between 1392 and 1420, engaged almost daily in personal mental and vocal prayer sessions from the seventh hour until Matins. Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 226. aspects of community life 255 her prayer vigils. He discussed comparable feats of personal prayer and devotion by other nuns from the Monticelli monastery.103 At fijirst, Clarissan nuns only took communion at special occasions dur- ing the liturgical year. At San Damiano, it was limited to seven times a year, corresponding with major feasts, namely Christmas, Maundy Thursday, Easter, Pentecost, Assumption, the feast of Saint Francis, and All Saints. This was codifijied in Clare’s rule from 1253.104 The seventh chapter of the rule of Urban IV from 1263 mentions nine specifijic communion days.105 On such occasions, the celebration of the Mass could take place at the altar within the nuns’ choir. Alternatively, the nuns would take communion through a special communion window, or through a hatch in the grille or screen that divided the nuns’ choir from the public part of the church, in conformity with the enclosure requirements of the diffferent rules.106 The opening of the communion window during Mass, just when the wafer was

103 Mariano of Florence, Libro delle dignità, ed. Boccali, 250, 375–375, 595, 615–623. See also the discussion of these women in Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 164. Quite miraculous examples concerning the efffijicacy of the prayers of Josina of Weerden, abbess of the Observant Poor Clares of Antwerp between c. 1503 and 1527 can be found in her vernacular life (Het leven van onse seer Eerwerdige Moedert Abdisse Suster Josina Van den Weerden), and in the Fondatieboek of the same monastery. Cf. Schoutens, Geschiedenis van het voormalig klooster, 29fff. 104 Communion normally followed confession (which at fijirst took place twelve times a year): ‘Duodecim vicibus ad minus, de Abbatissae licentia, confijiteantur in anno. Et cavere debent ne alia verba tunc inserant, nisi quae ad confessionem et salutem pertinent ani- marum. Septem vicibus communicent, videlicet: in Nativitate Domini, in quinta feria maioris Hebdomadae, in Resurrectione Domini, in Pentecoste, in Assumptione beatae Virginis, in festo sancti Francisci et in festo omnium Sanctorum. Pro communicandis sanis Sororibus vel infijirmis Capellano intus liceat celebrare’,E scritos, ed. Omaechevaria, 258. 105 ‘Confessionem autem Regulae omnes faciant ad minus singulis Mensibus, & sic confessione praemissa, in sequentibus solemnitatibus, videlicet in Nativitate Domini, Purifijicatione Beatae Mariae, in initio Quadragesimae, Resurrectionis Domini, Pentecostes, in Festis Sanctorum Petri & Pauli, Sanctae Clarae, Sancti Francisci, & omnium Sanctorum recipiant Dominici Corporis Sacramentum’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 512. 106 The heavy emphasis on enclosure in all approved rules for the Poor Clares also shines through in the descriptions of the choir screen and the communion window. Hence, the rule of Urban IV stipulates: ‘Volumus etiam, ut in muro, qui Sorores dividit a Capella, congruentis formae Cratis ferrea collocetur, quae sit ex crebris, & spissis contortis lineis fereis, diligenti, & forti opere fabricata, & clavis ferreis in longum protensis exterius fortiter communita; vel ex lamina ferrea parvis, & minutis foraminibus perforata, cum protensis clavis ferreis, ut dictum est; in cujus medium fijiat unum Ostiolum de lamina ferrea, per quod Communionis tempore possit intromitti Calix; & Sacerdos mittens manum possit Dominici Corporis tradere Sacramentum; quod quidem clavi ferrea sit semper fijirmatum; nec aperiatur, nisi quando proponi Sororibus contigerit verbum Dei, vel Sacramentum Dominici Corporis exhibetur’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 515–516 (Chapter 17). 256 chapter five consecrated, made the communion itself an even more dramatic moment, efffecting, so to speak ‘a physical union of the two worlds.’107 As Caroline Bruzelius has pointed out, on other days within the liturgi- cal year, the nuns experienced the Eucharist celebration either visually or aurally. In many Poor Clare churches, either the choir screen that divided the nuns’ choir from the public part of the church, or the positioning of the nuns’ choir itself (as a balcony or an elevated room with a special win- dow) was designed in such a way to allow the women to see the conse- crated wafer when it was raised above the church altar at the central moment in the Mass. In other monasteries, the choir was set up in such a way that the women in the nuns’ choir were able to follow aurally what was going on at the church altar. While participating aurally in the cele- bration, they would focus their spiritual attention on the devotional sub- stitutes available in their own sacred space (including wall , triptychs present in the nuns’ choir, or relic holders with consecrated hosts).108 The tendency towards more frequent communion was already visible in the rule of Longchamp (both the 1259 version, and its 1263 revision). It mentions communion every fourteen days, and even more frequently dur- ing Lent and Advent.109 In monasteries that followed the rule of Clare or Urban IV, which limited communion to seven or nine times a year, local constitutions could augment its frequency. Cases in point are Queen Sancia’s stipulations for the Santa Chiara monastery in Naples, which

107 Thomas, Art and Piety, 292. She continues: ‘For cloistered women, the opening of the grille that separated them from the conventual church, and the ingestion of the conse- crated wafer were also moments of personal, and even mystical, experience.’ The limited frequency of communion enhanced the mental response of the women to the moments when it was allowed. See on the psychological repercussions of this spiritual diet also Bynum, Holy feast and Holy Fast, passim, as well as Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, 81–87. 108 Bruzelius, ‘Hearing is Believing’, 83–91. Bruzelius, as well as Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 222fff discuss various architectonical ‘solutions’ to cater to the liturgical and devotional obliga- tions of the women during the late medieval period. These solutions could vary from mon- astery to monastery. With the implementation of the enclosure regulations of the Council of Trent, Carlo Borromeo began to formulate rather detailed instructions concerning the situation of the nuns’ choir behind the church’s main altar and the quality of the choir screen to steer both the communion practice, and the women’s spiritual experience of it. Cf. Testoni Volonté, ‘La chiesa monastica femminile’, 27–35. 109 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 480f.: ‘Sacratissimum autem Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi Sorores, Confessione praemissa, cum fuerit necesse, cum reverentia & devotione duabus vicibus quolibet Mense recipiant. In Quadragesima vero, & in Adventu Domini, si expedire videbitur, omni die Dominico; nisi ex causa rationabili aliqua ipsarum de Abbatissae licentia praetermittat.’ aspects of community life 257 mention communion nearly every Sunday,110 and liturgical guidelines for the Poor Clare monastery at Seußlitz from 1297, which enabled the Poor Clares to take communion once a month within the nuns’ choir itself.111 The nuns were not supposed to take on roles reserved for clergy in the liturgy. Nevertheless, for practical reasons, women fulfijilled minor clerical tasks. Hence, both in Dominican and Franciscan nunneries, we come across female sacristans, who provided the priest with the liturgical ves- sels during celebrations within the monastic enclosure.112 There are also references in medieval German Clarissan houses to female sacristans (Küsterinen or Wuchnerinen) who were responsible for the upkeep of the altar linens, candles and clerical vestments for use in the public church. In some of these monasteries, nuns took weekly turns to fulfijill these respon- sibilities. The nuns not only prepared the altar cloths and the liturgical vessels, but also performed some smaller liturgical acts, including the sprinkling (Besprengung) of the choir during the Antiphons. During Lent, the female Küsterin covered the paintings and statues, and installed the curtain that was raised on Sunday, Feast days, and during Mass to provide a view of the main altar. Female Küsterinnen occasionally also had a role in the ritual washing of the altars.113 The nuns were supposed to remain silent except for the prayers and recitals connected with the liturgy and with their more personal religious exercises. Building on a strong Benedictine tradition, all the rules that gov- erned Poor Clare monasteries during the medieval period had strict guide- lines concerning the maintenance of silence during the night hours, the refectory meals, and all other times except for the celebration of the Divine Offfijice.114 This being said, there was a considerable qualitative diffference in the way silence was dealt with in various houses. The issue of silence was discussed in more detail and with more emphasis in the Forma Vitae of Ugolino, the revised rule of Isabelle of Longchamp for the Minoresses and in the rule of Urban IV than in the rule of Clare, which mitigated the rule of silence in service of the welfare of individual nuns and the community

110 Wadding, Annales Minorum VI, 569. 111 Markus, ‘Das Klarissenkloster in Seußlitz’, 103. 112 In the Assisi Santa Chiara monastery. we have a reference to a ‘soror Mariotta de Mevanea sacrista’. Documentazione di vita assisana, 833. 113 See Jäggi, Frauenklöster, 253 (& note 74) and 316 (note 73). Such information can for instance be found in a 1347 charter for the Sankt Klara monastery of Esslingen, and in the house constitutions issued by Agnes of Hungary. Cf. Liebenau, ‘Urkundliche nachweise’, 1–192. 114 For the importance of silence in the Benedictine tradition, see Bonetti, ‘Dalla ‘tacur- nitas’ alle relazioni sociali’, 307–349. 258 chapter five at large.115 In many monasteries, the regulations concerning silence were complemented by more detailed instructions in house constitutions, or directives issued by external visitators or other offfijicials. For a proper understanding of the way the rules were implemented, such practical reg- ulations, which often contained exceptions and specifijic penalties in case of transgressions, need to be taken into account.116 Another striking feature of Damianite and Clarissan life was fasting. In particular the rules of Cardinal Ugolino and Clare assumed a more or less perpetual fast for healthy members of the monastic community. This meant limiting them to one proper meal a day, and an almost complete renunciation of meat and diary products. The main diffference between the two rules seems to have been that Clare’s was less detailed about the type of food the women were allowed to eat. This was probably a vestige of the original mendicant nature of the life at San Damiano, as the women would have had no control over the kind of alms (and hence the type of food) given to them.117

115 This is especially striking when we compare the rule of Urban IV with that of Clare. The rule of Urban stipulates (Chapter 9, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 513): ‘Silentium con- tinuum sic continue ab omnibus teneatur, ut nec sibi invicem, nec alicui alii sine licentia eis loqui liceat, exceptis iis, quibus magisterium aliquod, vel opus injunctum fuerit, quod non possit cum silentio exerceri; iis quidem simul loqui liceat de iis, quae ad offfijicium, vel opus suum pertinent, ubi, & quando, & qualiter visum fuerit Abbatissae. Sorores tamen debiles, & infijirmae, ac servientes eisdem, pro recreatione, ac ipsarum servitio in infijirmito- ria loqui possint. In duplicibus quoque Festis, ac Apostolorum solemnitatibus, & aliis qui- buscumque diebus, quibus visum fuerit Abbatissae, in certo loco ad hoc signato, ab hora nona usque ad Vesperam, vel aliqua alia hora competenti loqui possint de Domino Jesu Christo, ac solemnitate, ac piis sanctorum exemplis, & de aliis licitis, & honestis. Ab hora quoque Completorii usque ad Tertiam, exceptis servitialibus extra Monasterium, Abbatissa absque causa rationabili loquendi licentiam non concedat. In aliis vero temporibus, atque locis sic attendat sollicite Abbatissae de causa, ubi, & quando, & qualiter Sorores licentiet ad loquendum, quod Regularis observantia, quae non mediocriter silentio, quod est cultus Justitiae, dignoscitur, nullatenus relaxetur.’ Chapter 5 in the rule of Clare is more modest, suggesting the possibility of vocal communication during the day after Terce in the infijir- mary, and in locations not explicitly mentioned: ‘Ab hora Completorii usque ad Tertiam Sorores silentium teneant, exceptis servientibus extra Monasterium. Sileant etiam con- tinue in ecclesia, in dormitorio, in refectorio tantum dum comedunt; praeterquam in infijir- maria, in qua pro recreatione et servitio infijirmarum loqui discrete semper Sororibus liceat. Possint tamen semper et ubique breviter submissa voce quod necesse fuerit insinuare.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 261–263. 116 See for instance the letter sent by provincial minister Heinrich of Ravensburg to the Poor Clare monasteries in the Upper Germany province, in which he elaborated on direc- tions issued by his predecessors concerning the observance of silence, the frequency of communion and confession, and the quality of the religious habit. Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 160. For the situation in late fijifteenth-century Italy, see also Thomas, Art and Piety, 5. 117 For details see Omaechevarría, ‘La ‘regla’ y las reglas’, 93–119, and Freeman, ‘Klarissenfasten im 13. Jahrhundert’, 217–285, who believes that Ugolino’s strict fasting requirements might actually have been inspired by the example given by San Damiano. aspects of community life 259

The rule of Innocent IV from 1247, the revised rule of Isabelle of Longchamp, and the Urbanist rule of 1263 were on the one hand more lenient, and on the other hand more precise regarding the fasting regime. For instance, the rule of Urban IV stipulated that all the nuns, as well as serving sisters (with exception of those who were ill), should observe a continual fast from the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin to the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ, except for Sundays and Christmas day. Between Resurrection and the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, fasting was reserved for Fridays. The Poor Clares were to abstain from meat at all times, except in the case of illness. They could consume eggs, cheese, milk products and the like, but not between Advent and Christmas, nor between Sunday of Quinquagesima and Easter, on Fridays, or on specifijic fasting days issued by the Church. The abbess had considerable discretionary powers, however, in mitigating fasting obligations for the nuns and the serving sisters for a variety of reasons (illness, adolescence and old age, bloodletting days etc.), except for the fasting taking place in the Advent period and on Fridays.118 In some monasteries, such as Santa Maria de Pedralbes near Barcelona, the abbess could fall back on house constitu- tions that contained supplementary fasting regulations (see Chapter Three). The flexibility of house constitutions, the loopholes in the Urbanist rule, and the discretionary power of the abbess in these matters often meant that nuns in rich and privileged monasteries could eat very well outside normal ecclesiastical fasting periods. Monasteries following the rule of Clare, on the other hand, commonly had a more frugal diet. This being said, the actual application and content of fasting depended on

118 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 512–513: ‘Sorores autem omnes, & servitiales, infijirmis exceptis, a Festo Nativitatis Gloriosae Virginis Mariae usque ad Festum Resurrectionis Dominicae, nisi diebus Dominicis, & die Nativitatis Domini, continuum servent jejunium: a Resurrectione vero Dominica usque ad Festum Nativitatis Beatae Virginis teneantur sexta feria jejunare: omni quoque tempore ab esu Carnium abstineant. Cum debilibus autem dispensare valeat Abbatissa, prout earum debilitati viderit expedire; ovis vero, & caseo, & lacticiniis licite possint uti, praeterquam ab Adventu usque ad Nativitatem Domini, & a Dominica Quinquagesimae usque ad Pascha, necnon & sexta feria, & jejuniis ab Ecclesia generaliter institutis. Cum servitialibus tamen Sororibus circa praedictum jeju- nium, praeterquam in Adventu, & sexta feria, possit Abbatissa misericorditer dispensari; etiam possit circa praedictum jejunium cum adolescentibus, & debilibus, & senili aetate confectis; prout earum debilitati, & imbecillitati viderit expedire. Sanae quoque Sorores jejunare non teneantur minutionis suae tempore, quod in triduo terminetur, extra majorem Quadragesimam, & sextam feriam, Adventum Domini, & jejunia ab Ecclesia gen- eraliter instituta. Caveat autem abbatissa, ne ultra quam ter in anno minutionem permittat communiter celebrari, nisi certa necessitas plus requirat; nec a persona extranea maxime viro minutionem recipiat, ubi commode poterit evitare.’ 260 chapter five local practices, and on the frequency with which individual nuns received dispensations for motives of health, physical indisposition and the like. The extent to which such dispensations were granted by the abbess (for- mally after consultation with the Franciscan provincial minister), or by the papacy (who sometimes handed out extensive privileges to individual high-noble or royal candidates for the monastery, as we have seen before) remains a matter of conjecture.

The Position of the Abbess

At San Damiano, the role of abbess was more or less forced on Clare by 1215, around the time the community was required to accept full enclosure and a more traditional monastic lifestyle. Clare accepted this charge, but inspired by her evangelical ideals (which included the renunciation of authority in the sense of being ‘superior’ to others), she interpreted the abbatiate as an offfijice that should work through a combination of charis- matic leadership and an attitude of service to the community. At least, that is the impression given by the fourth chapter of her rule (De electione et offfijicio abbatissae, de capitulo, atque de offfijicialibus et de discretis). This stipulates that, as the abbess was elected by the community, she always remained a servant. As such, the abbess was always under the scrutiny of the community, which could depose her if her actions were not sufffijiciently guided by the spirit of service, or if they did not benefijit the community. The same chapter also makes clear that the abbess needed to work with her counselors (discreti) and all of the nuns. To this end, important mat- ters were to be discussed at the community’s weekly chapter, so the abbess did not make decisions alone. Abbatial authority and acquiescence to the decisions of the abbess were to be achieved primarily by demonstrating virtue and sanctity.119

119 ‘Qua decedente, electio alterius Abbatissae fijiat. Et si aliquo tempore appareret uni- versitati Sororum praedictam non esse sufffijicientem ad servitium et communem utilitatem ipsarum, teneantur praedictae Sorores iuxta formam praedictam, quam citius possunt, aliam sibi in Abbatissam et Matrem eligere. Electa vero cogitet quale onus in se suscepit, et cui redditura est rationem de grege sibi commisso. Studeat etiam magis aliis praeesse vir- tutibus et sanctis moribus quam offfijicio: ut eius exemplo provocatae Sorores potius ex amore ei obedient quam timore. Privatis amoribus careat, ne dum in arte plus diligit, in totum scandalum generet. Consoletur affflictas. Sit etiam ultimum refugium tribulatis; ne si apud eam remedia defuerint sanitatum, desperationis morbus praevaleat in infijirmis. Communitatem servet in omnibus, praecipue autem in ecclesia, dormitorio, refectorio, infijirmaria et vestimentis. Quod etiam simili modo servare eius Vicaria teneatur. Semel in hebdomada ad minus, Abbatissa Sorores suas teneatur ad Capitulum convocare. Ubi tam aspects of community life 261

Clare’s rule described the function of the abbess in terms of collabora- tion and moral example. The other rules by which Clarissan monasteries were guided, namely Ugolino’s Forma Vitae, the rule of Innocent IV, the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp and the rule of Urban IV, all had slightly more traditional ‘Benedictine’ conceptions of the abbatial role, in which the abbess was a more authoritative mother fijigure, who was to lead her community. Yet all rules emphasized that it was essential for the abbess to lead by virtue and example, and stressed the importance of compassion and love for the nuns in her monastery. None of the rules presented her authority as absolute. As was the case in the rule of Clare, the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp also contained clauses detailing when the nuns could depose the abbess and replace her.120

ipsa quam Sorores de communibus et publicis offfensis et negligentiis humiliter debeant confijiteri. Et quae tractanda sunt pro utilitate et honestate Monasterii, ibidem conferat cum omnibus Sororibus suis; saepe enim Dominus quod melius est minori revelat’, Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 259–260. See on Clare’s vision regarding her role and the consequences for the religious life in the san Damiano community also Accrocca, ‘Verso il getsemani?’, 71–80. 120 The revised rule of Isabelle reads: ‘Abbatissa vero, quantum potest, studeat continu- are Conventum, & vitam communem ducere; cum debeat esse speculum claritatis ceteris, et omnibus suis Sororibus in exemplum. Abbatissa tamen, quae communem vitam ducere non potuerit, nec voluerit, sine morae dispendio a suo regimine per Ministrum, seu per Visitatores Ordinis absolvatur; nisi de sua mora in offfijicio nullum dispendium Domus esset, sed grandis valde necessitas, & evidens utilitas appareret.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 481. Hence the abbess has to guide the community. The other nuns should be obedient, but not at all costs: ‘…per obedientiam injungimus omnibus Sororibus Religionis ejusdem, ut Abbatissae, postquam confijirmationem de offfijicio receperit, quamdiu in Christo perman- serit, pareant diligenter. Sed cum Conventus causa informitatis, vel quocumque casu regi- mine Abbatissae carebit; possint Sorores sibi eligere Praesidentem, cui obedire teneantur usque ad tempus, quo de suo offfijicio se intromiserit Abbatissa. Praesidens vero praetacta, quae ad Abbatissae offfijicium pertinent, interim exequatur.’ Ibidem, 485. The rule of Urban IV was less clear about the situations in which the abbess could be deposed, but neverthe- less hammered in the fact that she should be obeyed with love and not with fear: ‘Studeant autem Sorores talem eligere, quae virtutibus polleat, & sanctis moribus aliis praesit potius, quam offfijicio, & quae Communitatem servet in omnibus, vel in moribus: ut ejus exemplo provocatae Sorores ex amore magis ei obedient, quam timore. Quaeque singularibus amor- ibus careat; ne dum in parte plus diligit, in toto scandalum generet: Consoletur affflictas, sit refugium tribulatis, ne si apud eam remedia defuerint sanitatum, desperationis morbus praevaleat in infijirmis. Quae humiliter, & charitative visitet, & corrigat Sorores suas, non praecipiendo eis aliquid, quod sit contra animam suam, & vestrae professionis formam: non sit praeceps in praecipiendo, ne ex indiscretione praecepti ponat peccati laqueum animabus. Cui, postquam confijirmationem receperit, quandiu in offfijicio permanserit, Sorores universae, necnon & familia exterior Monasterii pareant, & obediant diligenter. Semel in hebdomada ad minus Abbatissa Sorores suas pro ipsarum monitione, ordina- tione, & reformatione teneatur ad Capitulum convocare; ubi secundum expressionem publicarum, & communium negligentiarum, atque culparum poenae misericorditer imponantur. Ibidem, 519. 262 chapter five

According to the rules, the professed nuns of the community had the right to elect the abbess without outside interference.121 The frequency of these elections was at fijirst not fully regulated. The rules more or less indi- cated that the nuns had the right to elect a new abbess if the reigning abbess died, wanted to step down, or if the nuns came to the conclusion that she no longer adequately fijilled her position. From the early four- teenth century onwards, it became more common to have limited terms of offfijice, most frequently a three-year term analogous with those of most offfijices within the order of the Friars Minor. Still, early fourteenth-century documents, such as the decree issued by the cardinal protector Arnaldo of Pelagrua and Heinrich of Thalheim, provincial minister of the Upper Germany province around 1320, were not very detailed about the exact term of offfijice for the abbess.122 The progressive adoption of a three-year term did not preclude much longer tenures, as some women were elected several times in succession and, on occasion, could receive papal dispen- sation to hold offfijice for life. That was apparently the case with the abbess of Aubenas in 1362 and the abbess of Perpignan in 1389.123 In other houses, the offfijices of abbess, discrete, bursar and novice mistress seem to have rotated among an inner circle of women within the community. Moreover, longer terms of offfijice for abbesses were not uncommon among the early Colettines. Colette herself was nearly completely sovereign, due to specifijic papal privileges. Many houses created or reformed by Colette were led by abbesses of her choosing.124

121 Cf. the rule of Clare: ‘In electione Abbatissae teneantur Sorores formam canonicam observare. Procurent autem ipsae festinanter habere Generalem Ministrum vel Provincialem Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, qui verbo Dei eas informet et ad omnimodam concordiam et communem utilitatem in electione facienda. Et nulla eligatur nisi professa. Et si non professa eligeretur vel aliter daretur, non ei obediatur, nisi primo profijiteatur for- mam paupertatis nostrae.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 259. Other rules phrased it difffer- ently, but also hammered on the free character of the election. Cf. the rule of Urban IV: ‘Electio Abbatissae libere pertineat ad Conventum: Confijirmatio vero fijiat per Cardinalem, cui fuerit iste Ordo commissus, vel auctoritate ipsius.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 518. 122 Their decree merely stated that new abbesses could be elected when the majority of the nuns saw reason to to do, or when the previous abbess had died. It also tried to come up with a voting procedure that gave some secrecy to the ballot, in order not to create unneccesary antagonism within the community. Only choir nuns who had lived for twelve years in the monastery after their profession had active voting rights, and nuns had to be 30 years or older before they could be eligible for the abbatiate. Once a new abbess was elected by majority vote, she was confijirmed in her offfijice by the provincial minister. Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 163. 123 Moorman, A History, 407. With reference to Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 346. 124 Lopez, ‘Colette de Corbie. Réformatrice’, 171–179. aspects of community life 263

Whatever the supposed authority of the abbess in a house of Minoresses or a Clarissan monastery, and her formal position vis-à-vis the nuns, lay sisters and servants under her command, her position was never fully autonomous, or merely limited by the strictures mentioned in the rules. To begin with, abbesses were subject to the control and sanction of the male visitators. In the early Damianite world, the communities were more or less directly under the control of visitators appointed by the papal curia. Clearly inspired by Cistercian models, the curia had bestowed consider- able powers of interference upon these visitators.125 Once the cura monia- lium of most Damianite and later Poor Clare monasteries had become the responsibility of the Franciscan order, abbesses normally had to deal with the structures set up for the oversight of monasteries, unless they obtained papal privileges that secured exemption from it.126 This oversight was ini- tially in the hands of the Franciscan cardinal protector, and later (more or less from the 1290s onwards), organized through visitations by representa- tives of the Franciscan provincial ministers. According to the 1297 and subsequent visitation guidelines, Franciscan provincial ministers had to appoint appropriate visitators, to set up annual visitations for all Poor Clare monasteries in their province in order to fijind out whether the nuns were living up to the standards of the rule and their house constitutions. As was already stipulated in the rule of Urban IV,127 abbesses became

125 See Zarncke, Der Anteil des Kardinals Ugolino, 36–44; Rusconi, ‘L’espansione del fran- cescanesimo femminile’, 277–278; Alberzoni, ‘la nascità di un’istituzione’, 115–116. Cf. also the Forma Vivendi of Cardinal Ugolino: ‘De Visitatore huius religionis illud est sollicite providendum, ut quicumque vel generalis vel etiam aliquando specialis constituendus fue- rit Visitator, talis debeat constitui, de cuius religiosa vita et moribus atque fijide notitia plena et securitas habeatur.(…) Sane de earum statu et observantia suae religionis ab omnibus generaliter et specialiter a singulis inquirat studiosius veritatem; et ubi aliquid reforman- dum vel corrigendum invenerit, zelo caritatis et amore iustitiae cum discretione corrigat et reformet tam in capite quam in membris, sicut melius viderit expedire.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 229. 126 The rich Clarissan Coimbra monastery obtained a papal exemption from oversight by the Franciscan provincial and his visitators in 1403. Garcia Oro, Francisco de Asis en la España medieval, 269. 127 ‘Visitator autem, Regula prius lecta, & exposita, ab Abbatissa sigillum recipiat, quod ipsa sibi assignare, & absolutionem, & concessionem ab Abbatissae ministerio petere absolute, ac libere teneatur. Quae si communem vitam non poterit ducere, vel noluerit, per eumdem Visitatorem a suo regimine absolvatur, nisi sua mora in offfijicio Monasterio dis- pendiosa non esset, sed necessaria, vel evidenter utilis appareret. Absolvatur etiam per eumdem, si alias non idonea, vel insufffijiciens ad Monasterii regimen videatur; & hoc fijiat secundum formam, & modum, quos a Cardinali supradicto receperit Visitator; qui tam de ipsius Abbatissae, quam Sororum statu, & observantia suae Religionis ab omnibus gener- aliter, & specialiter a singulis inquirat studiosus veritatem; & ubi aliquid reformandum, vel corrigendum invenerit, zelo charitatis, & amore justitiae cum discretione corrigat, & reformet tam in capite, quam in membris, sicut melius viderit expedire. (…) Caveat autem 264 chapter five temporarily demissionary during such visitations, and the visitator evalu- ated her performance. The visitator could have another nun elected abbess in her place largely at his discretion.128 During the period of Observant reforms, many abbesses faced visitators with far-reaching powers of inter- vention, as we have seen in Chapters Three and Four. Such visitators did not shrink from deposing abbesses and appointing their own protégées to further their own Observant agenda. In addition to enduring such periodical interference by external visita- tors, which put abbesses under scrutiny and curtailed their independence, they also had to show due deference to the clerics appointed to the cura monialium: their confessors, as well as the priests and preachers involved with the liturgy and the homiletic instruction of the nuns. Compared with abbesses of the high medieval period, the position of Clarissan abbesses (and for that matter abbesses of other orders) vis-à-vis these male clerics had deteriorated, due to the curtailment of their spiritual jurisdiction. Pope Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council forbade abbesses to take on magisterial homiletic roles and hear their nuns’ confession. Moreover, Gregory IX declared that abbesses could neither excommunicate, nor absolve excommunicated nuns. In all such matters, abbesses now had to defer to male clerics, although they retained some discretionary power regarding the appointment of the latter.129 In houses of Poor Clares and Minoresses, these clerics were primarily (albeit by no means always) Franciscan friars, who were frequently recruited from a nearby friary. Their selection was in the hands of Franciscan guardians and provincial ministers. It was to them that the clerics serving in monasteries of Poor Clares and Minoresses ultimately answered, although the rules of Urban IV and Isabelle of Longchamp indi- cated that chaplains had to promise obedience to the abbess and their appointment was dependent upon her consent. Obedience to the abbess seems to have weighed very heavily among the early Colettines, due to Colette of Corbie’s unprecedented powers to select and approve friars for the spiritual care of Colettine houses.130

Abbatissa, ne a se, vel ab aliis Sororibus status sui Monasterii Visitatori aliquatenus abscondatur; quia malum esset indicium, & offfensa graviter punienda.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 519. 128 Bughetti, ‘Acta Offfijicialia de Regimine Clarissarum’, 105–132. 129 Guerra Medici, ‘Sulla Giurisdizione temporale e spirituale della abbadessa’, 80f. See also L’Hermite-Leclercq, ‘Les pouvoirs de la supérieure au moyen âge’, 165–185. 130 Colette could appoint and dismiss confessors more or less at will, as is revealed by various of her letters in which she discharges friars and announces new appointments. Cf. Roest, ‘A Textual Community in the making’, 167. aspects of community life 265

The friars responsible for the spiritual care of the nuns could live in a separate serving house outside the female monastic compound, or they could be essentially living with the nuns (but in separate quarters).131 As mentioned in Chapter Three, some of the larger Clarissan houses were set up as dual monasteries, with a large female community and a smaller group of friars who shared the same monastic church. Such was the case at Corpus Christi in Naples, where a supporting friary of no fewer than 50 friars was envisioned for the cura monialium and additional services for the nuns.132 The presence of (clerical and lay) friars in such numbers implies that they were not only active as chaplains and convent preachers, but also took care of other business, such as the management of the monastic properties, and the negotiations with lay stewards and procurators described earlier. Such close involvement by Franciscan friars with the daily life of a Clarissan monastery could lead to their identifijication in local sources as full members of the female monastic community, as was the case in Ypres around 1308.133 Several German monasteries, such as the Sankt Klara monastery in Freiburg also used the services of fratres con- versi, which likewise were seen by outsiders as members of the monastic community. Counter to Franciscan friars properly speaking, however, such fratres conversi were completely subject to the authority of the abbess.134 Despite the supposed deference of chaplains and lay procurators to the authority of the abbess in accordance with the rule,135 they could usurp abbatial authority. In such cases, Franciscan friars or the procurators con- trolled by them could appear as the ‘guardians’ or ‘governors’ of Poor Clare monasteries. This seems for instance have been the case at the Poor Clare monastery of Faenza in 1305, of Santa Maria Maddalena in Naples in 1342,

131 Cf. Moorman, A History, 411. 132 After the Plague epidemics of 1348, this number of friars was reduced to twenty. Moorman, A History, 411, with reference to Bullarium Franciscanum VI, 284. For the situa- tion at the Bologna Poor Clare monastery, where the nuns needed to provide for the upkeep of thirteen friars and one male servant, see Gaddoni, ‘Inventaria Clarissarum’, 332–333. 133 At Ypres, friar Pieter Camerlinc was called ‘broeder van der Ordine van Sinte Claren’. Lippens, ‘L’Abbaye des Clarisses d’Ypres’, 321. Cf. also Moorman, A History, 412. 134 Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 166, 188–189. Ueding provides an edition of a statute for such fratres conversi, which clearly shows their obligations towards the abbess. 135 Hence the rule of Urban IV made a point of the chaplain’s obedience towards the abbess: ‘Capellanus, si voluerit se Monasterio obligare; & aliqui, qui Monasterii Conversi esse voluerint, & Abbatissae, & Conventui visum fuerit eos recipere; anno probationis elapso, promittant obedientiam Abbatissae, voventes loci stabilitatem, & perpetuo vivere sine proprio, & in castitate’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 517. 266 chapter five and the monastery of Arles around the same time.136 In certain cases, it would seem that the guardian of a nearby Franciscan friary was also called the guardian, or the ‘president’, of an adjacent house of Poor Clares.137 However much this involvement with the socio-economic manage- ment of Clarissan monasteries impacted upon the authority of the abbess, she certainly had to defer to confessors and priests in spiritual matters. In this context we should not forget that many Franciscan confessors and priests involved with the spiritual care of nuns expressed typical clerical condescension and mistrust of female authority. A good inkling of this can be gathered from the way in which several abbesses of Poor Clare monasteries were depicted by the famous thirteenth-century chronicler Salimbene. Commenting on the ‘fijive categories’ of people prone to be cruel and dishonest in positions of power, he fijirst mentioned women. In Salimbene’s opinion, women were keen to usurp positions of authority, without having the stable mental capacity to deal with it.138 For this rea- son, he denounced a number of abbesses. According to Salimbene, the abbess of the Poor Clares of Faenza manipulated the hearts of men with her words and ‘special presents’ (verbis et exeniis). He reproached her for having a particularly close link with Cardinal Ottaviano Ubaldini, suggest- ing that her dealings bordered on the scandalous. She was altogether too manipulative and charismatic for his taste.139 Salimbene passed a comparable verdict on the abbess of the Gattaiola monastery, in the Lucca province. She had a strong personality, and according to Salimbene did not have an appropriately humble disposition. This caused the Friars Minor involved with the cura monialium to seek her removal from offfijice. To their outrage, the abbess rallied the neighborhood and the commune to her defense. Salimbene remarked that this particular abbess was the daughter of a baker (fornaia), and therefore lacked the natural courtesy of the higher classes. This failing made her rude, brutal and dishonest.140 As is shown by his denunciation of the abbess Cecilia Sanvitale from the Chiavari monastery near Lavagna (who was apparently related to Pope

136 Moorman, A History, 412. With reference to Bullarium Franciscanum V, 56–57, VI, 96–97 & Lanzoni, ‘Le antiche carte’, 490. 137 This was for instance the case at Bordeaux, in 1308. Bullarium Franciscanum V, 53. Cf. also Hamburger, Marx & Marti, ‘The Time of the Orders’, 64. 138 Gatto, ‘Monachesimo al femminile’, 283. 139 Gatto, ‘Monachesimo al femminile’, 277–278. 140 Gatto, ‘Monachesimo al femminile’, 280. aspects of community life 267

Innocent IV), Salimbene’s criticisms were not solely class-based. According to Salimbene, the abbess Cecilia Sanvitale abused her position, and refused to accept the women pushed upon her by the Franciscan visitator Bonifacio. Bonifacio promptly excommunicated the abbess. Although the outcome of this particular incident remains unclear, Salimbene wrote smugly that she was punished with a mortal illness soon afterwards.141 If Salimbene’s comments are anything to go by, certain Franciscan provin- cial ministers, visitators and confessors found it difffijicult to cope with strong-willed abbesses that ‘lacked’ humility and deference to clerical authority. Earlier, I mentioned that major offfijices within a Poor Clare monastery could more or less be monopolized by a small group of nuns, who held the abbatial position in turn. This implies that free elections could be severely constrained. Many Poor Clare monasteries had been created with the strong support of noble or wealthy urban aristocratic families. It was gen- erally assumed that the pool of nuns from which abbesses and other monastic offfijicials could be elected, was limited to women related to these wealthy benefactors. In some cases, even the semblance of free elections was discarded. Various patrons or lay founding families obtained papal permission to fijind a suitable abbess, as well as select other choir nuns to their liking. Occasionally, this privilege was granted only for the duration of the foun- dation process, as was apparently the case at Echternach, where the king of Bohemia was given the right to select the fijirst nuns and the abbess.142 A comparable privilege was granted to the duke of Brabant with regard to the newly erected Clarissan monastery at Den Bosch.143 For other houses, such as the monasteries of Châlons-sur-Saône and Boisset, these privi- leges had a more permanent character.144 At the large Spanish Astudillo monastery established by Doña María of Padilla (the concubine of King Pedro I), the foundress and her offfspring more or less appointed the abbesses and other offfijicials, and retained close control over the monas- tery in other matters.145

141 Gatto, ‘Monachesimo al femminile’, 282–283. 142 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 692 (an. 1346, doc. 114). 143 Wadding, Annales Minorum VIII, 426 (an. 1348, doc. 26). Cf. Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 210. 144 Wadding, Annales Minorum VII, 84 (an. 1327, n. 18). On the patronage rights of Isabelle of Rodez, founder of Boisset, see Chapter Three. 145 García Toraño, El rey don Pedro el Cruel, 519–522. Orejón Calvo, Historia de Astudillo I, 200. 268 chapter five

Overall, the centralization policies and ambitions of secular rulers in the kingdoms of Western Europe manifested themselves in a growing interference in the management of large monasteries and the election of abbots and abbesses. In France, this culminated in the so-called Concordat of Bologna from 1516, when King François I, building upon prior privileges granted to King Philip IV, obtained the right to nominate candidates for bishoprics, priories, abbeys and a series of other ecclesiastical functions. Although monasteries of Poor Clares and Minoresses were considered to be exempt from such intervention, royal offfijicials tried to interfere in the election of Clarissan abbesses on more than one occasion, both in impor- tant Urbanist monasteries and in houses following the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp.146 The above-mentioned external pressures could interfere with the free election of abbesses and divided monastic communities in opposing camps. In some cases, factional rivalry split the community under rivaling abbesses, each supported by a substantial party of nuns. This apparently happened at the Poor Clare monastery of Ypres near the end of the thir- teenth century.147 To avoid internal strife, nuns in many communities voted for candidates most likely to be acceptable to spiritual guides, visi- tators and lay benefactors, or, in the words of Susan Broomhall, they ‘worked within the available choices for networks and power to secure a candidate who would be most benefijicial to their collective or individual interests.’148 Such interference had another side: Aristocratic abbesses appointed or ‘chosen’ directly or indirectly with the backing of important families had strong support networks. Certain of external backing should it be needed, such abbesses could be difffijicult to overrule by confessors, priests, the Franciscan provincial minister and his visitators, or even higher forms of ecclesiastical authority. The protracted conflict between the Franciscan visitators Daza and Fenals and the Poor Clare abbess of the Barcelona Pedralbes monastery at the end of the fijifteenth century mentioned in Chapter Four is but one illustration of this. In the large dual monasteries of Central and Eastern Europe, many abbesses were close family members

146 See in general Thomas, Le concordat de 1516, passim, as well as the fijirst chapter of Olivier-Martin, Le régime des cultes en France. 147 In 1295, after a contested abbatial election, the community was split into two fac- tions, each of which followed a diffferent abbess. In the end, the matter had to be resolved in the court of the Franciscan cardinal protector. For the details, see: Lippens, ‘L’abbaye des Clarisses d’Ypres’, 305–307. 148 Broomhall, Women and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France, 20. aspects of community life 269 of the ruling dynasties. Such women must have had a very strong position vis-à-vis Franciscan order offfijicials.149 In monasteries with extensive holdings, such well-connected aristo- cratic abbesses could wield signifijicant economic, legal and discretionary power. This ties in with some of the management issues discussed earlier. As mouthpieces and leaders of large landowning communities (particu- larly Urbanist houses and most houses of Minoresses), they had jurisdic- tion over laborers and sometimes over complete villages. When their extended properties included parish churches, abbesses could also have a say in the distribution of tithes, and the appointment of parish priests. As land managers, they approved sales and leases, they were involved with the organization of markets and fairs held on their terrain, and at times even wielded seigniorial rights and territorial governmental powers.150 The abbess of the Santa Chiara monastery of Naples had the title Regina di Pozzuoli, and she wore a royal mantle and a scepter on sol- emn occasions.151 In 1258, the Poor Clare Cattaiola monastery near Fucecchio, had received the Vallombrosian abbey with all its properties, rights and privi- leges. That abbey had a ‘mitred’ status. The Poor Clare monastery inher- ited that right. As a result, the Clarissan abbess had the right to carry a bishop’s stafff and to grant dispensations that normally were only the right of highly placed ecclesiastics. These privileges were only suppressed in the seventeenth century.152

The Novitiate

When Cardinal Ugolino drew up the fijirst version of hisFo rma Vitae for the female communities that he wished to normalize and bring under the pro- tection of the Roman curia, his major aim was ensuring their proper enclosure. This is reflected in his remarks concerning the intake of new community members. Suitable candidates had to be informed of the

149 Cf. Machilek, ‘Die Premysliden, Piasten und Arpáden’, 293–30. Likewise, in 1498, the nuns of the Bamberg Clarissan monastery chose as their abbess Viscountess Dorothea of Brandenburg, who at that time was only 27 years old. The nuns clearly hoped that Dorothea’s family connections would benefijit the monastery. Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 361fff. 150 In Chapter Three, such seigniorial rights have been alluded to in relation to the mon- astery of Söflingen. Cf. more in general Shahar, The Fourth Estate, 37. 151 D’Andrea, ‘Delia Bonito nella storia’, 220. 152 Lazzeri, ‘Alcune memorie Francescane’, 284; Moorman, A History, 407–408. 270 chapter five hardships of the religious life they were about to enter, and had to leave their secular clothing as soon as possible and make their profession within a few days. Once professed, they were to don the religious habit and remain enclosed within the monastic compound for the remainder of their lives.153 Subsequent rules had more to say concerning the novitiate. On the one hand, the fact that the novitiate was dealt with more explicitly was a direct result of Innocent IV’s introduction of an obligatory novitiate period for all those who entered a religious order (with the bull Cum secundum in 1220).154 On the other hand, it reflected the extent to which the Damianites had begun to attract young adolescent women and even children, who needed to be instructed properly before they could become professed members of the monastery. Hence the 1247 rule of Innocent IV stipulated that all novices entering the communities at the proper age should receive instruction from a magistra or novice mistress in matters of ‘regular discipline’ during their year-long novitiate period.155 Comparable passages can be found in the other rules, namely the 1253 rule of Clare,156 the rule of Isabelle of

153 Bullarium Franciscanum II, 219–220: ‘…Omni namque tempore vitae suae clausae manere debent; et postquam Claustrum huius Religionis intraverint aliquae, regularem habitum assumentes, nulla eis conceditur licentia vel faculta inde ulterius exeundi, nisi forte causa plantandi vel aedifijicandi eamdem Religionem ad aliquem locum aliquae trans- mittantur. Morientes vero, tam dominae, quam etiam servientes, quae professae fuerint, intra Claustrum, prout convenit, tumulentur. (…) priusquam habitum mutent et religio- nem assumant, dura eis et aspera praedicentur, per quae itur ad Deum, et secundum hanc Religionem necesse habuerint fijirmiter observare, ne de ignorantia postea se excusent. Non recipiatur aliqua, quae vel longiori aetate vel infijirmitate aliqua seu fatua simplicitate ad huius vitae observantiam minus sufffijiciens et ideonea comprobatur. Omnes vero ex more intra Claustrum receptae, si aetatis intelligibilis fuerint, citius deponant habitum saecula- rem, et infra paucos dies professionem faciunt (in manu) Abbatissae. Quod etiam de servi- entibus fijirmiter observetur.’ 154 Bullarium Franciscanum I, 60. 155 ‘Omnes vero ex more intra claustrum receptae, si aetatis intelligibilis fuerint, citius deponant habitum secularem; et intra paucos dies habitum, regularem suscipiant; quibus deputetur Magistra, quae ipsas informet regularibus disciplinis; et completo unius anni spatio professionem faciant…’ Bullarium Franciscanum I, 477. 156 ‘… si recipiendam viderit, diligenter examinet eam vel examinari faciat de fijide cath- olica et ecclesiasticis sacramentis. Et si haec omnia credat et velit ea fijideliter confijiteri et usque in fijinem fijirmiter observare (…) aetate etiam longaeva vel infijirmitate aliqua seu fatuitate ad huius vitae observantiam non impediente, diligenter exponatur ei tenor vitae nostrae (…) Finito vero anno probationis, recipiatur ad obedientiam promittens vitam et formam paupertatis nostrae in perpetuum observare.’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarria, 254– 256 & Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. & trans. Becker, Godet & Matura, 126–128. aspects of community life 271

Longchamp,157 and the rule for the order of Poor Clares issued by Urban IV in 1263.158 Both the rule of Clare from 1253 and the rule of Urban IV left room for the acceptance of postulants who were too young to make their profession (for which girls had to be at least fourteen or fijifteen years old). In particu- lar Clare’s rule made clear that both these youngsters and the other nov- ices had to be carefully instructed by a magistra.159 This suggests that, by the 1250s or 1260s, it was increasingly common for families to send their daughters at a very young age to Damianite/Clarissan monasteries.160 For some of these girls, their stay at the monastery was temporary (see the fijirst section of this chapter). Others were clearly entering as oblates in the tra- ditional sense of the word. The Ugolinian Forma Vitae did not include a complete profession for- mula. The existing Benedictine rule probably already provided ample guidance on that topic. Similarly, the 1253 rule of Clare did not contain a standard profession formula, which seems to have been the result of its

157 ‘Omnibus autem hanc Religionem in praetacto Monasterio, et in aliis de novo fun- dandis, in quibus hanc Regulam contigerit profijiteri, assumere cupientibus, priusquam habitum mutent, et Religionem assumant, praedicentur dura et aspera, per quae ad Patriam itur; et quae secundum hanc Religionem necesse habuerint observare. (…) Omnes vero volentes in hoc Monasterio, et in aliis in posterum fundandis, in quibus haec Regula professa fuerit, hanc Sacram Religionem assumere, abjectis vanitatum fastigiis momenta- nae vitae hujus, quam cito infra clausuram receptae fuerint, si intelligibiles existant, tonsis crinibus, mox deponant habitum secularem.’ (…) ‘Tunc etiam prudens Magistra conceda- tur eisdem ex devotioribus Sororibus una, quae ipsas Sorores in sanctis moribus instruat, et in fervore devotionis inflammet; ac ea, quae sunt secundum hanc Sacram Religionem ferenda, in suavitate caritatis ferre doceat; et in corrigendis corrigat diligenter. Verumtamen Capitulum nisi causa exhortationis, seu correctionis eis intrare non liceat infra annum.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 479. 158 ‘Omnes vero ex more intra Claustrum receptae tonsis crinibus citius deponant habi- tum saecularem, quibus deputetur Magistra, quae eas informet regularibus disciplinis (…) Completo vero unius anni spatio, si aetatis legitimae fuerint, professionem in manibus Abbatissae coram Conventu faciant.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 511. 159 ‘Iuvenculae in monasterio receptae infra tempus aetatis legitimae tondeantur in rotundum et deposito habitu saeculari induantur panno religioso, sicut visum fuerit abba- tissae. Cum vero ad aetatem legitimam venerint, indutae iuxta formam aliarum faciant professionem suam. (…) Et tam ipsis quam aliis novitiis abbatissa sollicite Magistram provideat de discretioribus totius monasterii, quae in sancta conversatione et honestis moribus iuxta formam professionis nostrae eas diligenter informet.’ Écrits, ed. & trans. Becker, Godet & Matura 128; Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 256. The Urbanist rule was less explicit but clearly acknowledged the existence of younger postulants, who could not yet be accepted as fully professed nuns after their novitiate period had been completed: ‘Completo vero unius anni spatio, si aetatis legitimae fuerint, professionem in manibus Abbatissae coram Conventu faciant…’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 511. 160 Two women of the early San Damiano community had entered the monastery as children, namely Lucia of Roma and Agnese of Oportulo. Both of them appear in the can- onization proceedings for Clare of Assisi. Cf. Casagrande, ‘Le compagne di Chiara’, 393. 272 chapter five following the Franciscan Regula Bullata. At San Damiano, the women fol- lowed the Franciscan examples available to them. The 1247 rule of Innocent IV, however, included a complete profession formula, which was elaborated upon in the rules by Isabelle of Longchamp and Urban IV. The latter provided the formula that was to be used in most monasteries until at least the fijifteenth century: ‘I, sister N., promise to God, and to the blessed Maria ever Virgin, and to blessed Francis and blessed Clare and all saints, and to you, my lady abbess, to live under the rule granted to our order by the lord Pope Urban IV, throughout my life, in obedience, without possessions, and in chastity, and also enclosed, in accordance with what is ordained in the same rule.’161 When Colette of Corbie adopted the rule of Clare for her budding reform congregation in 1410, she made up for the absence of a proper pro- fession formula in Clare’s rule by providing one of her own in her Constitutiones. It touched upon the same points as the formula in the Urbanist rule, although the rule that it referred to was not that of Urban but the Forma Vitae of Clare of Assisi. Colette’s revised form had a lasting impact on the Clarissan Observance and later, in the Early Modern period, was used by the female Capuchins.162 After the profession ceremony, a newly professed nun received her full monastic habit, but did not immediately become a full member of the monastic community. At least, that is the impression one gathers from the additional regulations and practices regarding the passive and active vot- ing rights for monastic offfijices. Apparently, there was some concern about the maturity of the newly professed, particularly when they were still in

161 ‘Ego Soror N. promitto Deo, & Beatissimae Mariae semper Virgini, ac Beato Francisco, & Beatae Clarae, & omnibus Sanctis, & tibi Dominae Abbatissae vivere sub Regula a Domino Urbano Papa Quarta Ordini nostro concessa toto tempore vitae meae in obedientia, sine proprio, & in castitata, & etiam, secundum quod per eamdem Regulam ordinatur, sub Clausura.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 510. For the profession formula included in the rule of Isabelle of Longchamp, see Ibidem, 479. Nancy Bradley Warren has argued that the profession formula of Benedictine nuns, which emphasied nuptial imagery emphasizes the nun’s submissive position in Benedictine patriarchical monasticism. The profession formula of the Minoresses, on the other hand, would have countered this with strong maternal images. Looking at the Latin profession formula in the rule of Isabelle, such a conclusion seems overly optimistic. The same holds for Warrens conviction that Franciscan (and Brigittine) nuns had more options to sidestep the authority of visitators than Benedictine nuns. Cf. Warren, Spiritual Economies, Part I, passim. 162 Colette’s profession formula reads: ‘Ego, Soror N., voveo et promitto Deo, et Beatae Mariae Virgini, et B. Francisci, et B. Clarae, et omnibus Sanctis, et tibi, Mater, toto tempore vitae meae servare formam vitae Sororum Pauperum S. Clarae, per eundem B. Franciscum eidem S. Clarae traditam et per dominum Innocentium Papam IV confijirmatam, videndo in obedientia, sine proprio et in castitate, servando clausuram.’ Seraphicae legislationis textus originales, 308. aspects of community life 273 their teens. For this reason, the early fourteenth-century regulations issued by Heinrich of Ravensburg for the Poor Clare monasteries of the Upper Germany province urged that all professed nuns under twenty should remain under supervision, not unlike the novices and nuns who were mentally impaired.163 Girls or women did not always enter the religious life voluntarily. Numerous papal documents provide us with information concerning involuntary recruitment. In most instances this happened when parents sent their ‘undeserving’ daughters to the monastery, be it younger daugh- ters for whom the family was unable to provide a proper dowry, or chil- dren with physical and mental problems.164 The rules stipulated that only those with sufffijicient physical and mental stamina should be accepted,165 yet it was by no means easy to prevent the influx of candidates ill-suited to the exigencies of monastic life, particularly in monasteries whose found- ing families and other important benefactors had a large say in the recruit- ment of candidates. The family of the founders of the Clarissan monastery of Azille had obtained a papal privilege to present two candidates for inclusion into the monastic community at any time. Comparable privi- leges were also given to the patrons of the monasteries of Les Cassés and Annonay. These patrons could either force their own candidates on the monastery, or had the fijinal say in the acceptance of candidates.166 The active role of the founders meant that the regulations regarding the suit- ability of prospective candidates could easily be circumvented. The influ- ence of patrons could, of course, also work in the opposite direction, namely when devout patrons only accepted candidates whom they deemed suitable for monastic life.167 There were also cases in which women were forced to leave the monas- tery to take on spousal obligations that they no longer felt obliged to fulfijill. One case is documented in the Memoriale di Monteluce of Perugia, which

163 ‘Pueri noviciae et aliae sub disciplina existentes infra XX annos, debiles quoque et infijirmae unam vel plures ab abbatissa determinatas tantum magistras, servitrices et infijir- marias habeant, nec aliae aliquatenus de hoc magisterio se vel ministerio intromittant.’ Ueding, ‘Freiburg i. Br., Klarissenkloster St. Klara’, 160. 164 Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 131fff; Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 29. 165 The rule of Clare mentioned very clearly the impedients of (mental) illness: ‘… vel infijirmitate aliqua seu fatuitate ad huius vitae observantiam non impediente…’ Escritos, ed. Omaechevarría, 255. The rule of Urban IV likewise indicated that: ‘Non recipiatur aliqua, quae vel longiori aetate, vel infijirmitate aliqua, vel fatua simplicitate ad hujusmodi vitae observantiam insufffijiciens, & non idonea censeatur.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 510. 166 Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 209–210; Paris (Bocquet), ‘Les statuts conven- tuels’, passim. 167 This might have been the case in the Astudillo monastery, founded by doña María of Padilla (see Chapter Three). 274 chapter five relates that in 1479 a certain Midea of Nargni had entered the Clarissan monastery, while her husband had joined the Friars Minor. Apparently due to his dissatisfaction with the Minorite life, the husband reversed his decision and demanded that his wife return to him. Midea was apparently obliged to go back to him, even though she had been content in the monastery.168 Surviving convent chronicles contain numerous other stories of girls and women who were married by parents against their will and were taken out of the monastery during their novitiate. Such chronicles also mention cases of women who had been married against their will, and returned to the monastery as soon as they were widowed.169 As widows needed to make a will upon entering the monastery, it is possible to gain some insight into what properties these women possessed (and had to dispose of) before the start of their novitiate.170 For some, the monastery was quite literally a safe haven. Serafijina of Montefeltro entered the monastery to escape assassination by her hus- band Alessandro Sforza.171 For Camilla Battista of Varano, daughter of the lord of Camerino, monastic life also provided protection, although it was not her motivation in entering the religious life. She had already been a nun for twenty years when her life was threatened by the Borgia clan, who had assassinated her father, three of her brothers, and subsequently tried to kill her as well. In her case, her order’s connections made a transfer to a safe location possible. She was secretly brought from the Camerino

168 Memoriale di Monteluce of Perugia, ed. Nicolini, 31: ‘pocho depo Pasqua, fu recevuta madonna Midea de Nargni, donna de messer Salvatore da Nargni, lo quale messere Salvatore se fece ftare minore et lei se vestí ssora in questo monasterio. Et mutato el nome se chiamò sora Alexandrina. Et non essendo anche fornito l’anno, cioè del mese de março, lo dicto messere Salvatore, sentendose enfermo corporalmente et vedendose non essere acto ad podere observare la dicta Regula delli frati minori, se retornò allo stato seculare et remandò per questa sua donna, la quale benché fusse sana et acta alla Religione, et stava contentissima, non di meno perché non era stata cauta de fare la separatione con la aucto- rità dello oveschovo secondo il dicto de piú doctori, fu constrecta de ragione contra omne sua voluntà de returnarse.’ Cf. Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 131, note 133. 169 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 27–28. This is not necessarily a topos developed to present the monastery in a positive light. Young women were generally given in wedlock at the age of fijifteen or seventeen to men who were on average thirteen to fijifteen years their senior. For many girls raised in the monastery, such a prospect might have been daunting. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 226. In the monastery, they were relatively free from male tutelage (and abuse), and they escaped the dangers of child-bearing. 170 Some examples from Sansepolcro in the fourteenth century are given in Czortek, ‘Damianite e Clarisse a Sansepolcro’, 177f. 171 Franceschini, ‘Di Sveva Montefeltro Sforza’, 133–157. aspects of community life 275 monastery to Fermo, only to return to Camerino after the death of Pope Alexander VI and the end of Borgia influence.172 During the fijifteenth century, most Colettine and Observant houses became stricter in maintaining fourteen or fijifteen years as a minimum age for the solemn profession of monastic vows. They also tried to limit the influx of elderly women, as they were attempting to create a monastic community capable of dealing with the exigencies of a more frugal monas- tic life under an Observant regime.173 Stricter regulations for admitting both groups were eventually adopted by the monastic reform program formulated during the Council of Trent.174 But neither the Observant reforms nor the regulations of Trent completely eliminated the entrance of very young postulants or elderly widows, aside from those who entered as ‘scollers’ or paying pensioners.

Wayward Nuns

From the outset, ecclesiastical authorities wished to ensure that the reli- gious communities in the order of San Damiano and later in the order of Poor Clares were fully enclosed. This is reflected in the rules, as well as in the additional statutes and regulations. Behind the emphasis on enclosure lay a deep clerical anxiety about the fijickle nature of women, which made them vulnerable to temptation, and also dangerous to the men involved in their spiritual care. Not surprisingly, infringements on enclosure and ‘scandalous’ behavior by individual nuns received much attention in ecclesiastical sources, and were also taken up with relish by late medi- eval chroniclers, moralists, and authors of fabliaux and related literary genres. Due to a general consensus about the importance of female reli- gious purity, local secular authorities also took alleged incidents very seriously.175

172 Cf. Cremaschi, ‘Da una corte rinascimentale’, 115–127. 173 Hence the statutes from the Pfullingen cloister state that girls under the age of fijif- teen and women over the age of forty-six should not be accepted. Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 106. 174 Papalini, ‘La vita quotidiana’, 201. 175 There is no scholarly concensus concerning the relation between, on the one hand, the representation of ‘wayward’ nuns in medieval normative and literary sources and, on the other hand, the historical realities they supposedly alluded to. See for instance the reviews by Penelope D. Johnson (Speculum 63:2 (April 1988), 388–390) and Janet Summers (The Journal of Religion 68: 2 (April 1988), 331–332) of Daichman, Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature. 276 chapter five

According to Guidi, it is not very difffijicult to fijind information in the Bullarium Franciscanum about women who fled the enclosure temporar- ily or permanently, and engaged in activities that were counter to the monastic vows of chastity and obedience. It is much more difffijicult to pin down the motivation behind such infringements, or (in some cases) the reality behind the accusations. What seems clear is that many of the women found wanting in this regard were quite severely punished.176 Such women could become social outcasts, rejected by both their own family and their monastery. If they were caught or returned at their own initiative, they could face long stretches in confijinement or other forms of punishment within the monastery. It also appears that, in many cases, the women in question had either not chosen the veil out of their own volition, or were unable to cope with the harsh constraints of enclosed religious life.177 Most of the information concerning such matters comes from the late fourteenth through the early sixteenth century, when the agendas of reli- gious reform by Observant and later early Protestant groups provided ample space to elaborate on incidents involving wayward nuns. Sigrid Schmitt’s study of monastic transgressions in Strasbourg discusses several incidents involving lay brothers and nuns, as well as Franciscan order offfiji- cials responsible for visitations and spiritual assistance. Among other things, her analysis seems to show that real and alleged transgressions had more severe repercussions for the nuns in question than for their male partners in crime.178 Other interesting cases pertain to accusations against Poor Clares in Genoa, Barletta and Söflingen. The fijirst of these implicated nuns of two monasteries within Genoa during the 1430s and 1440s. The Poor Clares in question repeatedly would have invited the company of men, using small

176 The most readily available overview of runaway religious in England, Logan’s Runaway Religious, suggests that both male and female religious were subjected to the same punishment, and frequently went through a process of rehabilitation after they had been caught. I believe that this picture is overly optimistic. 177 Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella società’, 134. 178 Schmitt, “Wilde, unzucht- und ungaistlich swestern”, 71–94. This study discusses the activities confessed in 1399 by the lay brother Kuffferhans, active in the Sankt Klara am Roßmarkt monastery, as well as his accusations concerning unacceptable contacts between choir nuns and various Franciscan friars. It also discusses a second scandal, this time regarding St. Klara auf dem Werth during the years 1411–1413. According to a surviving letter written by the deposed abbess Katharina Weißbrötlerin this would have invoved two nuns (Marharetha Alexandrin and Brunhild Hüffflerin) and two Franciscan friars, one of whom was the provincial minister. aspects of community life 277 boys as go betweens and working with love potions.179 The second case is known through papal sources from 1456. These indicate that Pope Calixtus III was asked to take a stance against the Poor Clares of Barletta, who were living such a merry life of song and play that the neighborhood was scandalized.180 The third case concerns a series of accusations made in and after 1484 against the monastery of Söflingen, which have already been mentioned in Chapter Four. According to some of these accucations, the Söflingen Poor Clares allegedly engaged in illicit relations with ‘friends’ outside the enclosure.181 Aside from misbehavior inside the monastery or outright elopement, there was a specifijic concern about the abduction of nuns. Forced abduc- tion, or attempts at abduction were of course a common topos within the hagiographical representation of female saints, both among the Damianites/Poor Clares (including Clare of Assisi) and in other religious orders. It became an issue once again in the representations of resistance against early Protestant attacks, as can be seen in convent chronicles depicting the forced removal nuns by Protestant family members. In both instances, successful and unsuccessful abduction attempts were part of a celebration of religious fervor and saintly tenacity. At the same time, the abduction of female novices and nuns was a real phenomenon in late medieval society, and was a substantial danger in a world that put much emphasis on female religious chastity.182 The avail- able sources can be very ambivalent in the way they describe such inci- dents, and often blur the lines between abduction, in which the nun was a victim, and voluntary elopement, which was considered to be scandalous behavior. Good examples of this are provided by the (incomplete) legal dossiers that describe the abduction and rape of Antonia Baldino of Logliano from the Poor Clare monastery on the via Santo Stefano outside Bologna in 1432, and the surviving fragments of court proceedings that deal with the abduction of the young nun Ide from the Observant Poor Clare monastery of Wamel in the Northern Low Countries in 1464.

179 Der Briefwechsel des Eneas Silvias Piccolomini, ed. Wolkan I, 9–10; Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. I, 1259, I, 732, I, 980, I, 1198. 180 ‘…quod (…) cum choreis, conviviis, cantibus saecularibus et aliis lasciviis ac iocula- toribus actibus et laicales personas (…) in ipso monasterio admittendo (…), mentes adeo propter praemissa ab eorum veneratione huiusmodi intepuerunt, ut exinde dicta ecclesia eadem die quodammodo in contemptu remanserit, et non modicum exinde sibi fuerit praeiudicium generatum.’ Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 178; Guidi, ‘Le clarisse nella soci- età’, 136. 181 Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 101–102. 182 See on this Weiler, ‘Bedreigde jonge dochters en weduwen’, 109–113. 278 chapter five

Antonia had been abducted from her monastery by the Bolognese spicer Giovanni of Giacomo Amicini. He subsequently made her preg- nant, after which she would have undergone an abortion. If the slightly later Bolognese statutes of 1454 are any indication, the statutory penalty for sexual relations with nuns was harsh: they called for the death penalty for abducting a nun and engaging in sexual activities with her, whereas the nun was to spend the remainder of her life in confijinement on a diet of bread and water. Whether or not comparable statutes were already in force in 1432, it was seemingly not very difffijicult for Giovanni of Giacomo Amicini’s defense ‘lawyer’ to destroy Antonia’s reputation. He depicted her as an indecent woman who had previously prostituted herself, even during her time in the monastery and had already given birth to a child as a result of one such encounter. He also created doubts concerning her reli- gious status, arguing that Antonia was not a nun (monialis), nor a sister (soror), as she had neither made her full profession nor received her con- secration or veiling when the accused had sexual intercourse with her. In the end, Giovanni of Giacomo Amicini was found guilty of abduction and sexual intercourse. However, he was fijined and not executed. Antonia’s ultimate fate remains unclear.183 Scrutiny of the available sources concerning the abduction of the young nun Ide from the Observant Poor Clare monastery of Wamel in the Northern Low Countries in 1464 likewise raises questions that cannot be fully answered. These concern the manner in which the young Ide was made to accept her monastic vows by her father, the abbess of Wamel and the monastery’s chaplain (their role raises questions about the pressure on Ide, and the extent to which her vocation could be considered genu- ine). Ide’s own role in her abduction is also unclear. She is presented both as a victim and as a willing accomplice. Another complicating factor in the episode is the extent to which friends of the alleged lover and abductor Gaert Egensz, lay and clerical alike, were willing to support his cause, even when he allegedly used violence to breach the monastic enclosure.184 Cases like these show that it is very difffijicult to break through dominant modes of representation and assumptions concerning the supposedly fijickle nature of women and the threat they posed to adult men. Rather than reaching the ‘bare’ facts, we frequently remain at the level of a poli- interpretable punitive discourse that reveals more about the assumptions and anxieties of society than about the actual incidents.

183 Dean, ‘Fornicating with Nuns’, 374–382. 184 Kuys, ‘Forced vocation or not?’, passim. aspects of community life 279

Size and Shape of Monasteries

It will be clear from reading Chapter Three that Clarissan monasteries came in all sizes: from small and simple dwellings with fijive to seven nuns, to massive monasteries, such as that of Cracow and the Santa Chiara mon- astery of Naples, which during their heydays housed close to 150 or 200 choir nuns and large numbers of enclosed and unenclosed lay sisters, servants, procurators, as well as a contingent of friars in charge of the cura monialium. The monastic population not only difffered enormously between monastic houses, but also could change dramatically over time. Population plummeted in many monasteries in the decades following the fijirst onslaught of the Black Death, sometimes causing them to empty out altogether. Houses that underwent monastic reforms frequently obtained a new lease on life, and witnessed considerable growth during the fijifteenth century.185 Various monasteries of Poor Clares that are now renowned among scholars were the outcome of deliberate architectural design. The Santa Chiara monastery in Assisi is a case in point. On the day of Clare’s death (August 11, 1253), her body was taken by the urban authorities and brought to the parish church of San Giorgio in order to be buried in the vicinity of the people of Assisi. For this reason, the nuns of San Damiano asked Pope Alexander IV for permission and support to relocate. Once the resistance of the canons of Cathedral of Assisi (who also had control over the San Giorgio church) was overcome, a new burial church was built (designed by Filippo Campello), to which the body of Clare was translated in October of 1260. The consecration of the church and the inauguration of the adja- cent monastery took place some fijive years later. The new Santa Chiara monastery and its church were modeled, in part, on the San Francesco monastery and church on the other side of town. Together, they more or less held Assisi in a protective spiritual embrace. Not unlike San Francesco, the Santa Chiara church was designed fijirst and foremost to facilitate pil- grimage to and veneration of Clare’s tomb.186 Both within and outside Italy, several other Clarissan monasteries and/ or churches were built according to an architectural master plan. Within

185 See Chapter Three in the present study, as well as the specialized studies on indi- vidual houses mentioned there in the footnotes. 186 Meier, ‘Santa Chiara in Assisi. Architektur und Funktion’, 151–178; Idem, ‘Proto- monastero e chiesa di pellegrinaggio’, 81–136; Bigaroni, ‘Origine e sviluppo storico’, 13–19; Righetti Tosti-Croce, ‘La chiesa di Santa Chiara ad Assisi’, 21–58; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 115. 280 chapter five

Italy, we can point to the San Stefano in Fondamento/Santa Chiara mon- astery in Ravenna, built between the mid-1280s and 1311, when the church was consecrated,187 and the Santa Maria Donna Regina and Santa Chiara monasteries in Naples.188 Outside Italy, we can point to, for instance, the impressive monasteries of Königsfelden,189 Obuda,190 and Prague.191 Scholars working on these large and well-laid out structures can easily be tempted to think that it makes sense to distinguish a particular ‘Clarissan’ architecture, either as a subset of ‘mendicant’ architecture, or as a varia- tion of female Cistercian architecture.192 Both Carola Jäggi and Lorenzo Bartolini Salimbeni have rightfully warned against this tendency. First of all, a proper examination reveals that many Clarissan monasteries more closely resembled other religious buildings in their own region than other Clarissan monasteries built far- ther away. Regional traditions seem to have had a larger impact than any specifijic institutional architectural identity. Secondly, many Damianite and Clarissan communities began in existing buildings: both old monastic buildings and a variety of other structures (houses, commercial dwellings, former hospitals, leprosaria, abandoned reclusories, and even discarded castles and palaces). A scrutiny of many of the monasteries that evolved from such existing structures reveals that it is nearly impossible to discern a ‘typical’ Poor Clare architecture or cloister layout. It was only over time that several such communities were able to reshape these compounds or to move into dwellings more specifijically designed for a fully enclosed monastic life. Clarissan churches in these monasteries did have some spe- cifijic characteristics that set them apart from ‘simple’ parish churches and churches of mendicant friars, namely the strict separation of the nuns’ choir from the public part of the church. Yet these characteristics were shared with churches of other (non-Clarissan) female monasteries with strict rules of enclosure. Many diffferent ‘solutions’ were found to construct

187 Emiliani, Montanari, & Pasini, Gli afffreschi trecenteschi, 16–47; Vasina, Storia di Ravenna III, 302–305. 188 Bruzelius, ‘Queen Sancia of Mallorca’, 74–78; Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples, passim. 189 Boner, ‘Barfüsserkloster und Klarissenkloster Königsfelden’, 206–211, 561–576; Maurer, Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kantons Aargau III, 15f; Jäggi, ‘Eastern Choir or Western Gallery?’, 80–85; Idem, ‘Liturgie und Raum’, 225–235. 190 Bertalan, ‘Das Klarissenkloster von Obuda’, 153–175. 191 Grzibowski, ‘Early Mendicant Architecture in Central-Eastern Europe. The present state of research’, 150–155. 192 See on the latter especially Mohn, Mittelalterliche Klosteranlagen der Zister- zienserinnen, passim. aspects of community life 281 a nuns’ choir that fulfijilled the liturgical needs of the nuns and at the same time ensured their complete separation from the outside world.193 A large number of Poor Clare monasteries were relocated at least once: from the semi-urban or semi-rural settings where many of them were founded, to a location within or very close to the town walls. Many such relocations were born out of necessity, as is indicated by the many reloca- tions in the South and the South-West of France during the Hundred Years War, which have been studied by Marie-Odile Munier.194 But such reloca- tions also reflect the way in which Clarissan houses became fully inte- grated into the urban religious landscape.195 Many houses that relocated out of necessity were forced to make do with existing buildings handed over to them, and only gradually obtained the means to transform these into proper monasteries with a church and a bell tower.196 We therefore have to be very careful in identifying a specifijic type of ‘Clarissan architec- ture’, and in linking local architectural styles directly with the spiritual identity of the nuns.197 However, we do see the gradual emergence of substantial regional architectural typologies. Hence, within the Rhine valley between Schafffhausen and Cologne, many late medieval Dominican and Clarissan churches tend to adhere to a specifijic type, combining ‘a relatively short nave, with one to three aisles (…) with an extended choir several bays in length terminating in a polygonal .’198 Elsewhere, other regional types dominated. For certain regions, this makes it possible to analyze

193 Bartolini Salimbeni, Architettura francescana in Abruzzo, passim; Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, 15fff, 222–223; Jäggi, ‘Architektur im Spannungsfeld zwischen Stiftern, Orden, Stadt und Bischof’, 223–238; Jäggi & Lobbedey, ‘Church and Cloister: The Architecture of Female Monasticism’, 119–126. 194 Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 57–69, 82, 87fff. 195 For an interesting case study of the latter, see Mazzilli Savini, ‘Tipologia insediativa dei monasteri delle Clarisse’, 219–230. 196 The bell tower not only announced to the nuns the start of subsequent liturgical moments, but also proclaimed the religious function of the house to the lay world beyond the walls. On the signifijicance of the bell tower for Clarissan monasteries see Thomas, Art and Piety, 109. 197 Such ventures are somewhat more feasable for the early modern period, notably when the architectonical setup can be connected more or less directly with written direc- tives concerning the layout of monastic space. Scholars have for instance studied with interesting results the directives of Carlo Borromeo and the Costituzioni of the Poor Clare Francesca Farnese, who was instrumental in the construction and/or renovation of the Clarissan monasteries of Farnese, Albano, Palestrina and Santissima Concezione in Rome. See Rubbi, ‘Architettura conventuale femminile’, 259–267; Idem, ‘L’architettura del monas- tero femminile: exempla’, 77–97. 198 Jäggi & Lobbedey, ‘Church and Cloister’, 126. 282 chapter five how specifijic and enduring solutions for the necessities of enclosure and the spiritual functionality of both the church and the various cloister buildings were found. It does not, however, allow for sweeping general verdicts concerning the characteristics of Clarissan monastic architecture. As in other matters, diversity remained the rule. CHAPTER SIX

FORMS OF LITERARY AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION

The community life dealt with in the previous chapter has left numerous traces, including a rather signifijicant number of literary and artistic prod- ucts. For a very long time, scholars for a variety of reasons did not pay much attention to such products, as they were either not recognized at all or interpreted as derivative and marginal in comparison with the written and artistic output within the male branches of the mendicant orders. Among specialists of the Clarissan world, this began to change for real in the 1970s, in part due to the effforts of Chiara Augusta Lainati,1 and also thanks to the constructive influence of women and gender studies. Currently, it would be impossible to pretend writing a general study on the Poor Clares without addressing the literary and artistic expression of the nuns. In this chapter, I try to do justice to this, and to offfer the reader a guide both towards the products involved and towards the contexts that made them possible and even necessary. Much more can be said than what I will be able to mention in the following pages, not in the least because a lot of scholarship is currently being devoted to issues of female religious agency and its material results in the late medieval and early modern period. What follows here is just an introduction and an invita- tion to further scholary engagement.

Preconditions: Literacy and Scribal Activities

Within the parameters of their religious life, Clarissan nuns had specifijic means to express themselves, to deepen their religious commitment and to vent their creative ambitions. This could take the form of personal prayer and a wide range of meditative and mystical exercises, all of which could have deep transformative efffects. Nuns also devoted countless hours to their liturgical obligations, and spent much time on refijined handicrafts (needlework, weaving, scribal activities and book production), meant to support the economic upkeep of their house, and to fijight the dangers of

1 See especially her work Temi spirituali dagli Scritti del Secondo Ordine Francescano from 1970. 284 chapter six idleness (otiositas). Although many of these spiritual, liturgical and man- ual activities had routine aspects that we do not automatically associate with self-expression, nearly all of them could give rise to substantial artis- tic and religious ‘production’, which ranged from texts and music, to intri- cate textile works and paintings. This production strengthened the women’s sense of self, helped bolster their communal identity, and more generally contributed to the religious, scholarly and artistic climate of the world at large. Anyone dealing with this production, which raises questions about access to learning, creativity and authorship, is faced with specifijic norma- tive discourses and strictures that limited self-expression. An examination of the rules, convent statutes, papal decrees and the large body of (ser- mon) literature addressed to Poor Clare communities reveals an impres- sive emphasis on submission and silence, and the imposition of limitations upon education and self-expression.2 This is not an issue that pertains to the Poor Clares alone,3 yet it is worth stressing that the Poor Clares, whether Urbanists or followers of other rules, were supposed to live in a state of nearly perpetual silence and self-negation. None of the rules the women followed envisaged much structural education beyond liturgical training and a thorough acculturation to the exigencies of the religious life. Chapter two of Clare’s rule merely indicated that new postulants and notably the young should be well-instructed in sancta conversatione et

2 Nearly all rules and commentaries exhibit a strong emphasis on silence and bodily and mental submission, which disqualifijied creative forms of self-expression almost from the outset. This was true for the 1219 Forma Vitae of Cardinal Ugolino, the rule for the Poor Clares issued by Innocent IV in 1247, the rules issued for the Poor Clares of Longchamp in 1259 and 1263, and the 1263 rule of Urban IV for the majority of Poor Clare communities. Even the rule of Clare of Assisi, which resurfaced during the fijifteenth-century Observant reform of Poor Clare monasteries in France, Italy and elsewhere, could not but embrace some of these elements, as did the various Observant rule commentaries on the text. Cf. Roest, ‘Education and Religious Formation’, 47–73. 3 It is worth mentioning that the Dominican general Humbert of Romans explicitly lim- ited the access of Dominican nuns to learning. In his De Eruditione Praedicatorum (c. 1260), Humbert provided four reasons for this: the women lacked the intellectual capacity (defec- tus sensus), they should be submissive to male preachers (conditio subiectionis), women that had access to intricate (theological) texts and were allowed to express themselves in public teaching or preaching encounters would only cause extravagant reactions (provo- caret ad luxuriam), and the stupidity of the fijirst woman should always be kept in mind (in memoriam stultitiae primae mulieris). De Eruditione Praedicatorum, ed. La Bigne, 435. Still, the Dominicans saw the (controled) education of female religious as an important task of Dominican preachers and priests responsible for their spiritual care. Cf. Schlotheuber, ‘Bücher und Bildung in den Frauengemeinschaften der Bettelorden’, 241–245. forms of literary and artistic expression 285 honestis moribus,4 and chapter ten echoed the Franciscan rule stating that illiterate members of the community should not aspire to become literate.5 The revised rule of Isabelle of Longchamp and the rule of Urban IV had comparable stances on the religious formation of novices.6 In addi- tion, these rules only mentioned that the abbess could provide more advanced liturgical training and singing to adept youngsters.7 There were additional limits imposed on female access to the doctrinal sources of the Christian faith (the Bible and theological literature), on tak- ing up magisterial roles, and on engaging in ‘frivolous’ artistic activities. In short, the normative literature available concerning the Poor Clares indi- cates that these women were not meant to engage in creative forms of intellectual, religious or artistic self-expression. The women were under the supervision of (predominantly Franciscan) male spiritual guides and confessors, many of whom were eager to point out that Clarissan nuns should neither aspire to any spiritual autonomy nor display autonomous literary or artistic initiatives. The surviving sermons and devotional writ- ings these spiritual guides composed frequently stress female frailty, and the necessity of female religious to submit to a higher authority. Such works, including the Opera devotissima ne la quale se continua el modo del vivere de una vera religiosa,8 as well as the writings of Jean Barthelemy

4 ‘(…) Et tam ipsis [namely: ‘Iuvenculae in Monasterio receptae infra tempus aetatis legitimae’] quam aliis novitiis Abbatiss sollicite Magistram provideat de discretioribus totius Monasterii, quae in sancta conversatione et honestis moribus iuxta formam profes- sionis nostrae eas diligenter informet.’ Escritos de Santa Clara, ed. Omaechevarría, 256. 5 ‘Et nescientes litteras non curent litteras discere. Sed attendant quod super omnia desiderare debent habere Spiritum Domini, et sanctam eius operationem (…)’, Escritos de Santa Clara, ed. Omaechevarría, 272. 6 The rule of Isabelle of Longchamp elaborated slightly on the acquisition of proper devotion: ‘Tunc etiam prudens Magistra concedatur eisdem ex devotioribus Sororibus una, quae ipsas Sorores in sanctis moribus instruat, & in fervore devotionis inflammet; ac ea, quae sunt secundum hanc Sacram Religionem ferenda, in suavitate caritatis ferre doceat; & in corrigendis corrigat diligenter.’ Bullarium Franciscanum II, 479. The rule of Urban IV phrased it more tersely, with an emphasis on the disciplinary aspects: ‘Omnes vero ex more intra Claustrum receptae tonsis crinibus citius deponant habitum saecularem, quibus deputetur Magistra, quae eas informet regularibus disciplinis’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 510. 7 The revised rule of Isabelle reads: ‘Si vero Sorores aliquae aptae & capacis ingenii fuerint; Abbatisa, si sibi videbitur, eas instrui faciat, Magistram eis deputans idoneam & honestam, per quam illae in cantu, & in Divinis Offfijiciis instruantur’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 480. This was taken over almost verbatim in the rule of Urban IV: ‘Si ali- quae juveniles, vel grandiores capaces ingenii fuerint, eas instrui faciat, si sibi videbitur, Abbatissa, Magistram eis deputans ideoneam, & discretam, per quam tam in Cantu, quam in Divinis offfijiciis instruantur’, Bullarium Franciscanum II, 513. 8 Described by Zarri: ‘La vita religiosa femminile’, 125–168 (esp. 139). 286 chapter six

(a French Conventual friar who acted as a counselor of the Longchamp Poor Clares around 1469),9 describe the religious life of women in terms of discipline, silence, obedience and the pursuit of basic devotional exercises. From this perspective, Clarissan nuns were on the receiving end of dis- course formation and confronted authoritative master narratives inform- ing them how to behave, how to be silent and – if allowed – how and what to say, to write, to sing and to behold.10 In some small sense, religious women could try to construct an authoritative discourse of their own, if only for use within the monastic compound. This was a strategy employed in strong textual communities able either to emancipate themselves from overly intrusive outside interference, or to use the codes of the latter for their own benefijit.11 Most early Poor Clare communities might not have had the opportunity to gain much discursive autonomy. Instead, insofar as it was possible, they empowered themselves by appropriating elements of the authoritative discourse available to them, creatively re-employing them through meth- ods of citation, re-emplotment, deference and praise. Hence they shaped their religious and even intellectual identity within the constraints that they could not escape, and in fact would not know how to escape, consid- ering that they were imbued with a culture that relegated women to posi- tions of subordination and confijinement.12 Early examples of this negotiation of constraints were present in the rule and testament written by Clare of Assisi for her San Damiano com- munity in the early 1250s. Almost as soon as her initial wish to live a life of evangelical perfection like Francis and his male followers was thwarted by the friars and the papacy, Clare made the very vestiges of these limitations

9 See his Livret de la triple viduité, the Traité de la vanité des choses and Le livret de la crainte amoureuse, all addressed at Jehanne Gerande, one of his ‘spiritual daughters’ in the Longchamp community. MS Paris BN français 9611 fff. 1r-39v (Le livret de la triple viduité), fff. 39v-104v (Le livret de la crainte amoureuse), and fff. 105r-140v (Le traité de la vanité des choses). 10 For the wider context of this marginalization of women in the fijields of religious learning and access to religious authority, see Blamires, ‘The Limits of Bible Study for Medieval Women’, 2–19; Lundt, ‘Zur entstehung der Universität als Männerwelt’, 103–118; Claudia Opitz, ‘Erziehung und Bildung in Frauenklöstern’, 63–77; Doris Ruhe, ‘Mönche, Nonnen und die ideale Frau’, 50–66. 11 On could argue that this took place in the early Colettine world. See Roest, ‘A Textual Community in the Making’, 163–180. 12 Warren, Spiritual Economies, 9–13; Cf. also Knox, ‘Clare of Assisi and Learning’, 171– 179. For a more in-depth discussion of the position of religious women in comparison with their male colleagues, see Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, esp. 19–75. forms of literary and artistic expression 287 into instruments through which she built a life of religious perfection with absolute poverty at its core. She used this re-emplotment to write her own rule, which while completely deferring to the existing rules, regulations and papal privileges granted to her, nevertheless within these boundaries formulated a convincing vision of the Clarissan religious life that she could rightfully call her own. Thus her rule incorporated at its core a text that was claimed to be Francis of Assisi’s rudimentary Forma Vivendi from 1215. It also appropri- ated core elements of Cardinal Ugolino’s Forma Vitae (1219), the Franciscan Regula Bullata (1223) and the rule issued in 1247 by Pope Innocent IV.13 She combined all these elements in such a way that she was able to maintain her own voice. In her own rule, Clare showed keen insight into what was acceptable in the eyes of male authority.14 As I pointed out in Chapter Two, she also provided a solution to the ongoing effforts of the Friars Minor to get rid of their cura monialium obligations to the Damianites, overtly binding her community into the Franciscan family, where she thought the Damianites belonged. The twelve chapters of Clare’s rule or Forma Vitae, which to a large extent mirror the chapters of the Franciscan Regula Bullata,15 provide good insight into the project of evangelical life as it was put into practice at San Damiano, even more so as the text was probably the outcome of forty years of religious experience in Clare’s community.16 Despite the explicit limitations on female self-expression, any serious foray into the available sources concerning Poor Clare literary and artistic output yields a substantial harvest of devotional texts, spiritual works, mystical treatises, diaries, sermon-like literature, letters and full-blown theological texts, as well as drawings, paintings, musical compositions and refijined artistic crafts. This shows that rules and norms cannot be relied

13 On the relationship between Francis of Assisi’s Forma Vivendi and Clare’s rule of 1253, see my remarks in Chapter Two, as well as Marini, ‘’Ancilla Christi, plantula sancti Francisci’’, 12: ‘I dodici capitoli della ‘regola’ di santa Chiara altro non sono che l’ampliamento giuridico e pratico di quello breve ‘forma vitae’ data da Francesco attorno al 1215.’ For the presence of the Regula Bullata in Clare’s rule, see: Lainati, ‘La Regola Francescana e il II° Ordine’, 227–249; Grau, ‘Die Regel der hl. Klara (1253)’, 211–273; Godet-Calogeras, ‘Clare and the Defense of Franciscan Identity’, 81–97. 14 Cf. Savey, ‘Les autorités de Claire’, 61–86; Sainte Marie, ‘Présence de la Règle Bénédictine’, 3–20. 15 As said before, the original version of Clare’s rule apparently did not have a chapter division. However, it was soon divided into twelve chapters, in analogy with the Franciscan Regula Bullata, and symbolising the evangelical origins of the sisters’ chosen way of life. 16 For more information on the daily religious life of the San Damiano community in relation to the rule of 1253, see Godet-Calogeras, ‘Structure of the Form of Life of Clare’, 1–9; Bartoli, ‘La pedagogia di santa Chiara’, 322–335. 288 chapter six upon completely. It is necessary to gain insight into the historical context to fijind clues to explain how Clarissan nuns, like their counterparts in other important late medieval female orders and non-regulated religious move- ments, were able to overcome their limitations or negotiate their self- expression within offfijicially accepted frameworks.17 The fijirst important element, alluded to in previous chapters, was the relatively high social status of many Poor Clare nuns. More often than not, Clarissan authors and artists were the daughters (and/or widows) of influ- ential high patrician, noble, and even royal families. Both within their family setting and within the monastery – where many of them were edu- cated from a very young age – these women were raised with a keen under- standing of their lineage, and had assumptions of their innate right to social prestige and leadership. Even within the cloister, this legacy was not to be denied; rather, it went hand in hand with signifijicant ambitions that found a variety of outlets, including literary and artistic expression. Due to their social background, Poor Clare nuns who had joined the monastery at a mature age were often relatively well educated, and many Clarissan houses also had a signifijicant tradition of literary formation for the young, if only because monasteries that took in young girls were often asked by their families to provide them with a proper education.18 Although this training was primarily geared to creating a devout religious persona, in accordance with the rule, most women who made their full profession in Poor Clare monasteries were literate, able to read both eccle- siastical Latin and their local vernacular. In many of these communities reading and other forms of cultural consumption were engaged in as a matter of course.19 The high social origins of Poor Clare nuns and their engagement in rela- tively elevated forms of cultural consumption are reflected in anecdotal evidence from external sources, such as the famous chronicle by Salimbene of Parma. He came across Poor Clare communities during his travels, acted as a spiritual guide to various Poor Clare nuns, and had a number of female family members in the order. Salimbene’s chronicle mentions in passing a

17 On the education and cultural expression of women in other orders, see for instance Ehrenschwendtner, Die Bildung der Dominikanerinnen in Süddeutschland vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert; Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, 61–87. 18 Schlotheuber, ‘Sprachkompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, 71. 19 The expectance that choir nuns were more or less fully literate (meaning a proper command of (liturgical) Latin), not only shines through in the rules and rule commentar- ies written for the Poor Clares, but also in regulatory writings for later offfshoots, such as the Annonciade movement. Its founder, Jeanne of France, stipulated that women of the order should be literate. Broomhall, Women and Religion, 79. forms of literary and artistic expression 289 signifijicant number of Poor Clares who were able to read Latin as well as the vernacular. In particular, he singled out his ‘niece’ Agnes, for whom, according to Salimbene’s own testimony, he undertook several of his own historiographical ventures. His Cronica relates that Agnes had developed a ‘very great understanding of Scripture, a good intellect and a good mem- ory, as well as the capacity to speak in an agreeable and clear manner’ (intellectum maximum in Scriptura et ingenium bonum atque memoriam, linguam etiam ad loquendum delectabilem atque disertam).20 All impediments notwithstanding, it must have been a relatively small step for more gifted nuns to create literary and artistic products, fijirst and foremost for their fellow nuns, but also for a wider world of interested out- siders. The latter phenomenon was stimulated by the necessity in many communities to add to the community’s income through refijined handi- crafts (the production of altar cloths and other liturgical textiles) and scribal activities. Their literary and artistic production received additional impetus when the women succeeded in building a strong textual commu- nity with shared religious ideals, coupled with sufffijicient self-esteem and justifijied pride concerning their community’s religious and cultural accom- plishments. This helped fuel an atmosphere in which literary and artistic production became a meaningful aspect of the quest for spiritual perfec- tion and identity formation. At times, literary and artistic engagement was facilitated by an interest- ing symbiosis between the nuns and their male spiritual guides – most frequently the Franciscan convent preachers and confessors, but also their external counselors and religious correspondents. From a traditional per- spective, these men were authority fijigures, who meted out discipline and pushed the women into their accepted role. The surviving literature from preachers and confessors certainly confijirms this aspect of male ecclesias- tical control, as I have pointed out above. Yet the high social background of many nuns, the day to day interaction of these men with their spiritual charges and a shared vision of religious commitment could lead to very

20 Gatto, ‘Monachesimo al femminile’, 295. Such eulogical statements can also be charted in the works of the Franciscan Observant friar Mariano of Florence. He mentions various highly learned Poor Clares, about whom we otherwise do not know very much. A case in point is Elia of Pulci, nun in the Monticelli monastery until her death in 1320, who coupled learning with a life of fervent prayer and contemplation and who would have pro- phetized the decay of the Poor Clares and the Friars Minor, and their revival in the Observant movement. Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità, ed. Boccali, 369–373. 290 chapter six diffferent, much less hierarchical, forms of interaction. The latter was espe- cially true within the Observant world but also in various other instances.21 Despite clerical condescension and concern about autonomous female religious expression, male spiritual guides could have signifijicant intellec- tual and spiritual ties with the women for whose spiritual welfare they were responsible. It appears, for example, in the transcriptions and ver- nacular adaptations made from their works in the female communities where they preached. This was true for the German sermons ascribed to the circle of Berthold of Regensburg in the later thirteenth century, which were meant to serve as material for devotional reading in female houses (during meal times and at evening collations).22 It also held for many homiletic and devotional texts associated with the regular Observance in the German lands, such as those of the late fijifteenth-century Observant preachers Olivier Maillard, Johannes Alphart, Stephan Fridolin, and Kaspar Schatzgeyer, all of who were active as preachers and spiritual guides to communities of Poor Clares in Nuremberg, Alspach, and Gnadental (Basel).23 Poor Clares were actively involved with the literary output of these preachers and spiritual guides. This was not limited to steering the homi- letic instruction with specifijic questions. It also meant that Poor Clare nuns, like their female counterparts in other religious communities, took on the roles of scribes, editors and even co-authors of the texts resulting from these teaching encounters.24 The sermons held at the Bicken cloister in Villingen by the Franciscan preacher Johannes Pauli between 1493 and 1494 are a case in point. These have survived thanks to their transcription by one of the choir nuns.25 Under the abbatiate of Ursula Haider, the tran- scription of sermons in this monastery had become part of the religious formation of novices. She required them to write down summaries of ser- mons given by the convent preacher as a grammatical and devotional

21 Such as in the San Damiano community during Clare of Assisi’s lifetime, in the mon- astery of Agnes of Prague during the same period, and in a diffferent way in some of the large Clarissan monasteries founded with royal support in Naples and Spain. 22 See Richter, Die deutsche Überlieferung der Predigten Bertholds, passim. 23 Kist, Das Klarissenkloster, 63. 24 Cf. Gill, ‘Women and Religious Literature in the Vernacular 1300–1500’, 72. Read in general: Ferrante, To the Glory of Her Sex. Thomas Mertens has argued that women-copyists reconstructed their written account of the sermons in a way that tried to recreate the style of their preacher or confessor. To boot, the women made important decisions regarding which matters to in- or exclude, and how to organize the written account. Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters’, 121–141. 25 MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Germ. Quart. 1069 fff. 1–240. Cf.Die Predigten Johannes Paulis, ed. Warnock, 3. forms of literary and artistic expression 291 exercise. The novices were to show their transcripts to the abbess, who corrected mistakes and made additional comments.26 Examples from other Observant monasteries indicate that it was rather common for novices and newly professed nuns to transcribe sermons held in the monastic church for their edifijication. Shortly after her entrance into the Nuremberg monastery, the young Caritas Pirckheimer wrote down the sermons of the Franciscan friar Stephan Fridolin, who preached regularly at the Clarissan house of Nuremberg between 1476 and 1492. Caritas also made a draft copy of the Predigten über die evangelische Räte, given at the Nuremberg Sankta Klara monastery by the Franciscan Observant preacher Heinrich Vigilis.27 In addition, she copied Die VII Gaben des hl. Geist, a spiritual work by the same author.28 As said before, Poor Clares’ involvement as scribes and editors of these texts and of additional works written for outside customers evolved partly in response to the necessity of earning an income. As such, it became a fundamental backdrop for further literary engagement.29 It created a ‘scribal culture’ in which it became acceptable to reserve time for writing and editing purposes, and to help furnish veritable scriptoria and monas- tic libraries, which in and of themselves provide insight into the literary diet of choir nuns.30 At times, the information concerning scriptoria in relation to library holdings in Poor Clare monasteries is ambiguous, especially for the period before the fijifteenth century. In the Humilité-de-Notre-Dame monastery of Longchamp, for instance, some internal copying of books did take place.

26 Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters, ed. Glatz, 40. 27 Her draft would later be used by Barbara Stromer (d. 1494 in the Nuremberg monas- tery) to make a more elaborate copy (Now MS Bamberg, Metropolitankapitel Man. 29 (=Sommerteil from Easter to the 24th Sunday after Pentecost). Another copy of the Predigten ueber die XII evangelische Räte, in MS Bamberg, SB Msc. Patr. 58 (B.V. 43) fff. 389r-603r, was written in 1492 by the Nuremberg nun Ursula Kollerin (d. 1508). See Kist, Das Klarissenkloster, 113, 116, 119–121, 134, 137; Kist, ‘Heinrich Vigilis’, 144–150. 28 This copy would form the basis for yet another copy by Barbara Mangoltin, Poor Clare in monastery of Söflingen, near Ulm: Bibliothek Georg Kloss 77 [now lost], see: Oppitz, ‘Georg Kloss und seine Handschriftensammlung’, 1–47 (no. 4591). 29 In this respect, the Poor Clares and Minoresses were not alone. For the overall female participation in the dissemination and transformation of works of devotion in the late medieval period, see especially Bell, ‘Medieval Women Book Owners’, 135–161; Gill, ‘Women and Religious Literature’, passim. 30 Some information on monastic libraries can be derived from visitations, such as the 1341 inventory drawn up during a visitation of the San Francesco monastery in Bologna. Gaddoni, ‘Inventaria Clarissarum’, 234–346. See for libraries in other houses for instance Spanò Martinelli, ‘La biblioteca del ‘Corpus Domini’ Bolognese’, 1–23; Mariangeli, ‘Il franc- escanesimo in Abruzzo al tempo di s. Giovanni da Capestrano’, 55–99. 292 chapter six

Moreover, in the course of time the monastery obtained a substantial library. By 1281, the nuns had 54 books, and by the late fijifteenth century, this number had increased to 193. The largest increase took place relatively quickly between 1305 and c. 1325, when the number of books nearly dou- bled from around 70 to 135. Consequently, the Longchamp monastery had one of the larger library collections among the female monasteries of the late medieval period. Even compared with many male monasteries, the number of books in the library of Longchamp was not insignifijicant. The library contained Bibles, liturgical works and psalters, breviaries, ser- monaries, a small collection of literary works, some Latin and translated patristic works with a moral emphasis, texts pertaining to the observance of the rule, and a lot of hagiography.31 The inventories include a number of basic grammatical texts, such as the Donatus, the Catholicon of Giovanni of Balbi and a series of related texts normally associated with language training of very young pupils: bes- tiaries and the Disticha Catonis. This might be an indication for the inter- nal schooling of young postulants before their novitiate.32 All this evidence points to a culture of literacy, yet it remains unclear whether the Longchamp monastery housed a professional scriptorium in the strict sense of the word, where books were produced for internal and external use.33 It would seem that many books came into the monastery’s possession because they were brought in by new postulants, or donated to the community by pious benefactors. This also means that the nuns did not completely control the contents of their library collection, so we should not conclude too much about the nuns’ spiritual and educational wishes on the basis of the titles listed in their library catalogue.34 The evidence concerning the existence of an important scriptorium in the Sankt Klara monastery of Cologne, established in the early fourteenth century at the initiative of the count and countess of Jülich, is more straightforward.35 This community did not simply commission altars,

31 Among female houses, only the Dominican Catharina monastery in Nuremberg (itself a center of book production) would have had more books during the fijifteenth cen- tury (with an attested library of 352 books). Mlynarczyk, Ein Franziskanerinnenkloster im 15. Jahrhundert, 139–142. Cf. also Geiger, Deux bibliothèques d’Abbayes féminines. 32 Mlynarczyk, Ein Franziskanerinnenkloster, 166: ‘Ihr Vorhandensein gibt einen deutli- chen Hinweis auf die Existenz einer inneren Schule im Kloster Longchamp.’ 33 Mlynarczyk, Ein Franziskanerinnenkloster, 147 & 251 (where the author seems to be more positive concerning the existence of a scriptorium). 34 For the wider context of such issues, see the studies of Bell and Gill mentioned in note 29. 35 On 9 March 1304, Pope Benedict XI gave the Friars Minor permission to establish nuns in this new community and to send to it three or four women from the Poor Clare forms of literary and artistic expression 293

Andachtstafeln, religious paintings and liturgical texts from outside. From around 1330 onwards it started to produce liturgical and devotional manu- scripts on a relatively large scale, both for internal use and for outsiders.36 The work of three fourteenth-century copyists and illuminators from this monastery, Hadwig of Horne, Gertrud of Vorst (Gertrud van dem Vorst), and Loppa of Spiegel (Loppa vom Spiegel/Loppa de Speculo), is still known today.37 With the ascent of the regular Observance, large-scale scribal activities became more common. They were an intrinsic aspect of the religious training of novices and nuns, a means to acquire additional income for the community, and an instrumental way to propagate the Observant reli- gious ideals and the writings of community members. This increased scribal involvement in the context of Observant reforms was directly reflected by the size of monastic libraries. It has been estimated that more than eighty percent of the manuscripts present in German Observant were produced or acquired following their Observant reform. This suggests a greater degree of control over the kind of books that ended up in the monastic library holdings.38 Likewise, although Observant monastery of Neuss, in order to instruct new postulants. Urkunden und Regesten zur Geschichte der Rheinlande, ed. Sauerland I, no. 138 & 152. See also Chapter Three of this book. 36 Cf. Benecke, Randgestaltung und Religiosität, 12fff.; Gerss, ‘Nachrichten über das S. Klarenkloster zu Köln’, 598–608; Gummlich-Wagner, ‘Neue Zuschreibungen an das Kolner Klarissenskriptorium’, 23–40. 37 Galley, ‘Miniaturen aus dem Kölner Klarissenkloster’, 22–27); Beer, ‘Literaturbericht: Gotische Buchmalerei’, 150; Mattick, ‘Choralbuchfragmente aus dem Kölner Kloster St. Klara’, 296f & 302, note 6; Kessel, ‘Frauen als Auftraggeberinnen von illuminierten Handschriften’, 205; Oliver, ‘Worship of the Word’, 108, 119, note 15; Mattick, ‘Drei Chorbücher aus dem Kölner Klarissenkloster’, 59–101. Loppa, as well as her fellow nun Gertrud of Vorst, seem to have specialized in Latin liturgical manuscripts. Scholars agree that they were mainly responsible for the creation of the so-called ‘Rennenberg-Codex’ (MS Cologne, Dombibliothek Cod. 149), and the two-volume missal now kept in Brussels (MS Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 209 & 212). 38 Williams-Krapp, ‘Observanzbewegungen’, 3. The books present in Observant Clarissan monasteries sometimes defy scholarly assumptions concerning the reading diet of the women. Hence, the Observant house of Bressanone (Brixen) owned at the start of the sixteenth century a considerable collection of incunable books on law (the Liber Sextus issued under Boniface VIII, the Decretum Gratiani, complete with a commentary by Bartolomeo of Bresanone), as well as large sermon collections and handbooks on moral theology (De Contractibus et Usuris of Bernardino of Siena, Astesano of Asti’s Summa de Casibus Conscientiae, Agostino of Ancona’s Summa de Potestate Ecclesiastica, Gerson’s De Arte Audiendi Confessiones, De Sex Alis Cherubini of Alain of Lille, and Antonino of Florence’s Decisio Consiliaris super Dubio Producto de Indulgentiis). Mauss, ‘Benedictus Füger und die Clarissen zu Runcuda bei Brixen’, 292–301 & passim. It is, of course, possible that these books were fijirst and foremost used by the preachers and spiritual directors active in the monastery, and that many of books entered the monastic library after their demise or departure. 294 chapter six houses within the various orders remained a relative minority throughout most of the fijifteenth century, almost ninety percent of the vernacular manuscripts once owned by religious houses in Germany originated from these reformed communities.39 A signifijicant number of female scribes are known by name from this period. One very interesting case is the Poor Clare Dorothea Scher- mann (fl. 1490–1534), choir nun in the Observant Gnadental monastery (Basel). She copied books for the monastic library, including a Psalte- rium Marianum. In addition, she worked as the monastery’s archivist and penned the so-called Rote Buch, a compendium of the monastery’s correspondence.40 Another important professional scribe was Sibilla of Bondorfff, active in the Clarissan monastery of Freiburg in the 1470s, and identifijied as the copyist and illuminator of a German version of Bonaventura’s Legenda Major and several other works.41 In the Bickenkloster of Villingen, there was not only transcription of sermons as part of the training of novices, as was mentioned earlier, but a culture of transcription on a much larger scale. Throughout the fijifteenth century, and especially after the implementation of Observant reforms, many nuns in the Bickenkloster were engaged in the compilation and transcription of histories and hagiographical texts, breviaries, and related liturgical books, which were often for external customers. On the one hand, this was still seen to be an intrinsic part of the activities which the nuns were supposed to engage in to fijight otiositas, and which included a range of other activities, notably textile works and other handicrafts. On the other hand, it was seen as a worthy way to generate income by the labor of one’s hands.42 In Italy, there is evidence of signifijicant scribal activity and the presence of veritable scriptoria in several Sicilian Observant houses and important centers of Observant reform elsewhere in the Peninsula.43 For some of the

39 Cf. Schiewer, ‘Sermons for Nuns of the Dominican Observance Movement’, 78. 40 From the period before the Observant reform of the monastery we know for instance the scribes Anna Flötzerin (later elected abbess) and Brigida Liespergin. Anna is described in a monastic document from 1438 as scriptrix superior and Liespergin as subscriptrix. This suggests a hierarchical labor division between scribes. Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents, 30f., 42. 41 Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents, 86. 42 Cf. Loes, ‘Villingen: Klarissen’, 60–61. Maybe the above-mentioned scribal activities of the Nuremberg Poor Clares also moved beyond transcriptions in the context of religious formation. After all, no less than sixteen women from that monastery are known as scribes to whom can be linked some twenty two manuscripts still surviving today. Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents, 69, 184, 205 (also on Villingen). 43 For the writing activities of the Observant Poor Clares at Sicily, see Ciccarelli, ‘Volgarizzamenti siciliani inediti’, 19–51. forms of literary and artistic expression 295 latter, scholarship has shed light on their output, the concomitant build- up of their monastic library holdings,44 and identifijied the ‘book-hands’ of individual nuns (some of whom combined such scribal work with literary compositions of their own).45 Thanks to studies by Dalarun, Zinelli, Vignuzzi and Bertini Malgarini we have gained an understanding of the thriving copying and translation activities of the Santa Lucia monastery of Foligno. One of the most impor- tant scribes/translators from that community was Caterina Guarnieri of Osimo (active between c. 1490 and the 1540s), who also was the compiler/ author of the fijirst part of the Libro delle ricordanze, which records the his- tory of the monastery. Comments by Sora Antonia, the chronicler who succeeded Caterina Guarnieri, indicate that Caterina also ‘wrote’ or trans- lated the Libro de sancta Melchiade (a vernacularization of the Liber Specialis Gratiae of Mathilde of Hefta), and a Libro de Hierusalem (proba- bly the Tratatello delle indulgentie de Terra sancta, which had been ordered by the Santa Lucia nuns from friar Francesco Suriano of Venice).46 In-depth studies by Ugolino Nicolini, Monica Benedetta Umiker and the modern editors of the Liber Memorialis created in the Poor Clare Monteluce monastery (Perugia) have not only shed light on book produc- tion in this Observant center (and its scribal connections with the above mentioned Santa Lucia monastery), but also have unearthed information about many female scribes, as well as the names of the Franciscan and non-Franciscan customers who commissioned their texts.47 Apparently, the Monteluce scriptorium already existed in the fourteenth century. However, after the Observant reform took hold, a symbiosis developed between the Monteluce Poor Clares and the neighboring Franciscan Observant friars in Monteripido (also near Perugia), one of the intellectual

44 The latter has been facilitated by the book inventories made in Italian monasteries in the wake of the Council of Trent. See: Compara, ‘I libri delle Clarisse osservanti’, 169–372. 45 On the writing ‘style’ and the scribal professionalism of Italian Observant Poor Clares, see Bartoli Langeli, ‘Scrittura di donna’, 81–96 (+16 illustrations). 46 For a detailed evaluation of copying and translation activities of Caterina and co- workers at Santa Lucia, which includes not only the Libro de sancta Melchiade and the Tratatello delle indulgentie but also an Umbrian version of Bonaventura’s De Triplici Via/ Incendium Amoris, copies of poems by Battista of Varano, the Sette armi spirituali by Caterina Vigri, various Laude, a long versifijied and as yet not edited Italian legend of Clare of Assisi ‘composta in rima da una sora del monasterio de Sancta Lucia de Fuligni’, a Lauda devota delli dolori mentali del Signiore composed by Hyeronima of Pesaro, and stage set- tings for Nativity and other religious scenes with dolls and poetic roles for various protago- nists, see: Dalarun & Zinelli, ‘Poésie et théologie à Santa Lucia de Foligno’, 23–30; Vignuzzi & Bertini Malgarini, ‘Le capacità linguistiche delle Clarisse dell’Osservanza’, 35–44. 47 Nicolini, ‘I Minori Osservanti di Monteripido e lo’Scriptorium’ delle clarisse’, 100–130; Umiker, ‘Codici di S. Maria di Monteluce e l’attività scrittoria delle monache’, 73–80. 296 chapter six centers of the Franciscan regular Observance in Italy.48 During that period, the Monteluce scriptorium, in addition to creating books for the community’s substantial library holdings, also became instrumental in spreading important texts concerning the Franciscan regular observance to other Observant communities in Italy. Likewise, it produced consider- able numbers of liturgical works, breviaries, antiphonaries, hagiographi- cal texts and works for private devotion among aligned confraternities and members of the lay urban patriciate. Among these texts also fijigures the famous Franceschina, which was produced by four Clarissan scribes, who worked on it intermittently for three years.49 Yet another signifijicant center of book production seems to have been the Observant San Lino monastery in Volterra. This had started as a ter- tiary house without much connection to the Franciscan movement. It only began to cultivate close ties with the friars of the Regular Obser- vance in 1496, and soon afterwards transformed into an Observant Poor Clare monastery.50 There we fijind yet another example of close symbiosis between the women of a recently transformed religious community and the Franciscan friars in need of scribal (wo)manpower for the dissemina- tion of their works. The best documented scribe in this house was Dorotea Broccardi, who became the close collaborator and secretary/copyist of the Franciscan historian Mariano of Florence. The latter was serving as the spiritual director of the Volterra monastery when he was fijinishing his Libro delle degnità et excellentie del Ordine della seraphica madre delle povere donne de sancta Chiara da Assisi. Considering the services rendered to him by Dorotea and her fellow nuns, Mariano had good cause to sing the praises of the Observant Poor Clares in this and his other historio- graphical works.51

48 See on this the study of Nicolini mentioned in the previous note, as well as Höhler, ‘Il Monastero delle Clarisse di Monteluce’, 161–182; Felicetti, ‘Apetti e risvolti di vita quotidi- ana’, 553–642. 49 Baldelli, ‘Codici e carte di Monteluce’, 387–393; Spanò Martinelli, ‘La biblioteca del ‘Corpus Domini’ bolognese’, 1–23; Gill, ‘Women and Religious Literature’, 89 and note 19 (with information concerning the library holdings and scribal activities in both the Monteluce and Santa Lucia monasteries. 50 The community changed its name in 1519 from Santa Elisabetta to San Lino (the fijirst Latin pope), at the occasion of their offfijicial recognition as a Poor Clare monastery and their occupation of a new monastic house, sponsored by the local wealthy humanist land- owner Rafffaello Mafffei. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 145. 51 Bianchi, ‘La gloria della serafijica Chiara’, 107–113. Dorotea worked on the Libro delle degnità (MS Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi 6146), and also transcribed a Vita di San Francesco (MS Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi 5966), a Via spirituale (MS Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi 6359), and participated in the production of a Vita del beato forms of literary and artistic expression 297

Scribal activities were further stimulated by cooperation with non- Franciscan male and female Observant houses. By the late fijifteenth cen- tury, there seems to have been a culture of manuscript exchange between the Dominican nuns at St. Gall and the Poor Clares of the Observant house at Villingen. It must be kept in mind that Clarissan houses were part of the wider world of female monasticism, which could have impacted on the cultural production of the nuns.52

Poor Clares as Authors in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

At the very beginning, the literary and artistic output of Poor Clare nuns (beyond their scribal activities) was relatively limited, probably due to the aforesaid restrictions on female monastic cultural expression. For a vari- ety of reasons, most modern scholarly attention is reserved for the writ- ings of Clare of Assisi at San Damiano. As previously noted, Clare took the initiative to develop a rule of her own. Like Francis of Assisi, Clare left a testament, retracing the origins of her life and her motivations; she wrote about herself, Francis, her fellow nuns, her life in absolute poverty, and her special relation with the Friars Minor. This testament was viewed as Clare’s fijinal statement. First, it indicated that she and her women had established themselves at San Damiano by the will of God and of ‘our father Francis’. Second, it stated that Francis himself not only had provided the women with an initial Forma Vivendi, but also with sermons, examples and written exhortations, to ensure that they would persevere and never swerve from their path of holy poverty.53 Third, like the rule, Clare’s testament ordered

Giovanni di Capestrano (MS Volterra, Biblioteca Guarnacchi 6147). For the creation of his Libro delle degnità, Mariano of Florence perused archives in Italian Poor Clare monasteries, complementing with the materials found there the rather meager references to the Poor Clares in existing offfijicial Franciscan historiographical texts, such as the Chronica XXIV Generalium, Bartolomeo of Pisa’s Liber Conformitatum and Bonaventura’s Legenda Major. For a more general analysis of the symbiotic relations between female and male scribes and authors, see Benedict, Empowering Collaborations. 52 Cf. Werner Williams-Krapp, ‘German and Dutch Legendaries’, 70. 53 ‘Et sic de voluntate Dei et beatissimi patris nostri Francisci ivimus ad ecclesiam Sancti Damiani moraturae, ubi Dominus in brevi tempore per misericordiam suam et gra- tiam nos multiplicavit, ut impleretur quod Dominus praedixerat per sanctum suum. Nam antea steteramus in loco alio, licet parum. Postea scripsit nobis formam vivendi et maxime ut in sancta paupertate semper perseveraremus. Nec fuit contentus in vita sua nos hortari multis sermonibus et exemplis ad amorem sanctissimae paupertatis et observantiam eius- dem, sed plura scripta nobis tradidit, ne post mortem suam ullatenus declinaremus ab ipsa, sicut et Dei fijilius, dum vixit in mundo, ab ipsa sancta paupertate numquam voluit declinare.’ Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 172. Cf. also Marini, “Ancilla Christi, plantula sancti Francisci”, 145fff. 298 chapter six the Friars Minor to continue their spiritual care for the women. It also beseeched the women to maintain a life of holy simplicity and poverty, and to aspire to the honestatem sanctae conversationis, in accordance with the teachings of Christ and Francis.54 Following Maleczek’s 1995 argument that this text was actually a fijifteenth-century forgery, various scholars argued that it should be posi- tioned within the circle of Observant Poor Clares active in the Monter- ipido and Monteluce monasteries, who were engaged in shaping a strong Clarissan identity for reformatory purposes.55 If so, these Observant Poor Clares were engaged in fabricating authoritative charisma in order to legit- imate their own ideals. However, some 17 years after Maleczek’s revolu- tionary article, it now seems that several of his philological arguments do not wholly withstand scrutiny. In his 2000 study on the autograph manu- scripts of Francis of Assisi and his early companions, Attilio Bartoli Langeli has shown that an autograph manuscript of Leo of Assisi contains a tex- tual witness of Clare’s testament, accompanied by the famous Privilegium Paupertatis of 1228 and related texts. This discovery, contextualized by Michael Cusato in 2006, makes it more feasible to position (a version of) Clare’s testament within her own lifetime. It could well be that Clare dic- tated the work to Leo near the end of her life, when he was serving her in a secretarial capacity.56 Clare’s four surviving letters to Agnes of Prague likewise have drawn signifijicant scholarly attention. Here too, their authenticity and authorship have been discussed heavily – showing once again that (male) scholars are

54 ‘Et sicut Dominus dedit nobis beatissimum patrem nostrum Franciscum in funda- torem, plantatorem et adiutorem nostrum in servitio Christi et in his quae Domino et beato patri nostro promisimus, qui etiam dum vixit sollicitus fuit verbo et opere semper excolere et fovere nos, plantulam suam, sic recommendo et relinquo sorores meas, quae sunt et quae venturae sunt, successori beatissimi patris nostri Francisci et toti religioni, ut sint nobis in adiutorum profijiciendi semper in melius ad serviendum Deo et observandam praecipue melius sanctissimam paupertatem. (…) Moneo et exhortor in Domino Jesu Christo omnes sorores meas, quae sunt et quae venturae sunt, ut semper studeant imitari viam sanctae simplicitatis, humilitatis, paupertatis ac etiam honestam sanctae conversa- tionis, sicut ab initio nostrae conversionis a Christo edoctae sumus et a beatissimo patre nostro beato Francisco.’ Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 178–180. 55 Maleczek, ‘Das ‘Privilegium paupertatis’ Innocenz’ III.’, 5–82. Many scholars initially accepted Maleczek’s arguments. See for discussions surrounding the immediate reception of his publication Alberzoni, ‘San Damiano nel 1228’, esp. 462–463. 56 Bartoli Langeli, Gli autografiji, 104–130; Cusato, ‘From the Perfectio sancti Evangelii’, 123–144. The manuscript in question contains transcriptions of the 1253 rule of Clare (fff. 1r-18v), parts of a papal letter confijirming the rule (fff. 18v-19r), aPrivilegium Paupertatis of ‘Pope Innocent’ (fff. 19v-21r), Innocent IV’s bullSolet Annuere (21r-22v), Clare’s Testament (fff. 23r-30r), and Clare’sBe nedictio (fff. 30v-31v). See also the evaluation by Knox,C reating Clare of Assisi, 12–14. forms of literary and artistic expression 299 much more inclined to doubt the authorship of medieval women than that of their male contemporaries. Qualms regarding the status of these surviving texts notwithstanding, they are revealing testimonies to the spir- itual friendship between these two champions of female evangelical life – one organized in accordance with the precepts of poverty, and with outspoken devotion to the sufffering Christ and the Virgin.57 These surviv- ing letters may have been part of a larger exchange between Clare and various male and female religious colleagues in Italy and beyond. However, aside from these four letters, we only have some fragments of alleged cor- respondence between Clare and Ermentrudis of Cologne,58 and a more spiritual Benedictio.59 Scholars have devoted far less attention to the surviving letters of Clare’s immediate disciples or of the other nuns writing from various monasteries in which they functioned as abbesses. Despite this comparative lack of scholarly interest, the epistolary genre was probably the dominant form of writing among Poor Clares throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies, in connection with the creation of monasteries and the desire to maintain contacts with daughter houses and female family members in various communities.60 This tradition was maintained despite censorship and control, such as the strictures upon epistolary activities set by the rules that governed the women’s religious life, or those imposed by male spiritual counselors.61

57 Litterae ad beatam Agnetem de Praga (four letters written between 1234 and 1253 to Agnes of Bohemia). These can be found in several omnibus editions of the works of Clare and Francis. I have used Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 82–119. See also Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes; Goorbergh & Zweerman, Light Shining through a Veil; Pozzi & Rima, Lettere ad Agnese: La visione dello specchio. 58 It would seem that Clare wrote at least two letters to Ermentrudis of Cologne, who after several pilgrimages initiated Damianite foundations in the Southern Low Countries. In the Annales Minorum, Luke Wadding presented a compilation in the shape of a single text, commonly known as the Littera ad Ermentrudem. This text can also be found in sev- eral omnibus editions, including Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 192–195. 59 Clare’s Benedictio is likewise included in most modern omnibus editions of her works. I have used Claire d’Assise, Écrits, ed. Becker, Godet & Matura, 27–28, 186–189. It is supposedly a benediction of the present and future nuns, composed by Clare shortly before her death. It resembles the benediction addressed to Agnes of Prague, which sur- vives in some medieval German manuscripts as an attachment to Clare’s fourth letter to Agnes. This benediction to Agnes in turn resembles a comparable blessing addressed to Ermentrudis of Cologne as found in a seventeenth-century Latin manuscript. 60 On the at times amazing epistolary culture of female monastic houses, see in general: Dear Sister. Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre; Classen, ‘Female Epistolary Literature’, 3–13; Idem, ‘Emergence from the Dark’, 1–15. 61 The earliest rule for the Longchamp community and the rule of Urban IV put limits to the nuns’s epistolary activies, insisting that nuns should not engage in letter writing 300 chapter six

Another genre in which Poor Clare nuns engaged from early on was hagiography, mainly to commemorate founding abbesses and community members through whom God’s grace was seen to be exhibited. A number of such texts are known to us as anonymous compositions. Others have not survived independently, but were absorbed in later compilations (more recent vitae collections and convent chronicles dating from the late medieval or early modern period).62 A few early hagiographical texts can be assigned to a specifijic author. Among these I would like to mention Agnes of Harcourt’s interesting life of Isabelle of Longchamp, probably written in the early 1280s (which fijigures prominently in the recent studies of Sean Field and Anne-Hélène Allirot),63 and Stefania of San Silvestre in Capite’s account of the life of Margherita Colonna.64 Throughout the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, alongside letters and hagiographical texts, we encounter a smattering of prayers, panegyric poems, religious songs and accounts of mystical revelations. As is the case with the hagiographical texts, many of these have survived anonymously in late medieval manuscript compilations, or in reports based on compilations from female houses incorporated in later Franciscan chronicles. The work of sorting out their dissemination has only just begun. Among the songs that can be assigned with some security to a specifijic author, it is worth mentioning the Gaudia Sanctae Clarae produced in the late fourteenth century by the Nuremberg Poor Clare Katharina Hofffmann.65 unless they had received explicit permission from the abbess (and by implication from the male spiritual guides), and that all letters should be censored and checked before they were sent out. Bullarium Franciscanum II, 486 & 518. 62 For such a collection from the Monticelli house in Florence, see Bughetti & Gaddoni, ‘Codices Duo’, 573–580. For the same phenomenon in female Dominican circles, see Lehmijoki-Gardner ‘The Women Behind their Saints’, 5–24. 63 The text has received several editions. The most recent are The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt, ed. Field, and Allirot, ‘Isabelle de France’, 55–98. Agnes, daughter of Jean I of Harcourt (long-time friend of Louis IX) and ‘dame de compagnie’ of Isabelle, had joined the Longchamp monastery in 1260. She was abbess of Longchamp between 1263 and 1279, and between 1281 and 1286. She compiled the text to promote Isabelle’s chances for canon- ization alongside of her brother Louis IX. In the early fijifteenth century, the Longchamp women commissioned Robert Messier to expand on Agnes of Harcourt’s narrative to create a new text that included additional miracles. See: Worcester, “Neither Married nor Cloistered”, 457–472. 64 La beata Margherita Colonna, ed. Oliger; Barone, ‘Le due vite di Margherita Colonna’, 25–32. When the Roman senator-aristocrat Giovanni Colonna started writing a vita of his deceased sister Margherita, he asked one of her former companions, the Poor Clare Stefania at the San Silvestro in Capite monastery (Rome), to prepare a miracle collection in support of his sister’s cult. 65 She was the abbess of the Nuremberg monastery in 1380 and in 1389. Chronik des Klarissenklosters Nürnberg, 179–180. forms of literary and artistic expression 301

At the Arcella monastery in Padua, the women recorded the revelations that Elena Enselmini (d. 1241) received while lying in bed, nearly com- pletely paralyzed. She apparently spelled out her visions by pointing to an alphabet in front of her. After her death, the nuns preserved her visions along with Elena’s allegedly uncorrupted body, and they functioned in the development of a local cult. Although the text itself has been lost, some parts of it eventually found their way into chronicles by Franciscan friars who visited Elena’s tomb and consulted the documents about her life and sayings. Bartolomeo of Pisa took notice of these materials when he studied at Padua in the 1370s, and later included some information on Elena in his De Conformitate. Mariano of Florence went as far as to copy complete visions from the community’s original account.66 Stories concerning her life and revelations were also included in the Vita della beata Elena Enselmini composed by the Paduan Humanist Sico Polentone in 1437. Sico also wrote about Anthony of Padua and Antonio Peregrino, two other saints from the Padua pantheon.67

Poor Clares and Minoresses as Target Audience

Although the literary production of Poor Clares and Minoresses during their fijirst two centuries probably remained relatively small, they were without any doubt the recipients of rather exceptional spiritual texts by Franciscan friars aside from the sermons and sermon treatises mentioned earlier. From the early days date for instance Francis of Assisi’s famous canticle Audite, poverelle, which exhorted the women of San Damiano to obey the precepts of evangelical poverty and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit to maintain unity and peace in their communal life. Francis wrote this text shortly before his death, when his illness forced him to stay in a little cell close to San Damiano.68

66 Bartolomeo of Pisa, De Conformitate, Analecta Franciscana IV, 358–359; In his presen- tation of Elena, Mariano of Florence transformed her into a faithful disciple of Clare and erroneously wrote that the Arcella community followed the original Forma Vivendi written by Francis for Clare and her women at San Damiano. It shows the extent to which Observant origin myths colored his judgment. Libro delle degnità, ed. Boccali, 51, 307–340. Mariano’s perspective is to some extent followed in Debiasi Gonzato, ‘Elena Enselmini clarissa pado- vana’, 37–68. A more cautious evaluation can be found in Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 90–91. 67 See: Acta Sanctorum 2 November, 509–517. 68 See the discussion of this text in Godet-Calogeras, ‘Francis and Clare’, 120–121. 302 chapter six

Another well-known text is Bonaventura of Bagnoregio’s treatise De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores seu de Forma Perfectionis Religiosorum.69 The Latin original, composed around 1260, is one of Bonaventura’s most impor- tant works of passion devotion and Christology, next to his Lignum Vitae and the Vitis Mystica. It showed Poor Clares how to live a true religious life in spiritual perfection through the crucifijied Christ (through self- knowledge, humility, poverty, silence, solitude in prayer, and remember- ing the passion of Christ, all of which would lead to a perfect love of God and the necessary endurance to persevere until the end). Bonaventura presented this religious way of life as a sapientia in service of future beati- tude. It is telling that Bonaventura downplayed the importance of reli- gious learning and in-depth access to the biblical text (other than the liturgical pericopes) for Poor Clare nuns.70 Bonaventura’s near contemporary Guibert of Tournai, a Franciscan regent master at Paris around 1260, wrote his Epistula ad Dominam Isabellam/Epistula Exhortationis de Virginitate/Tractatus de Virginitate for Isabelle of France (d. 1270), the foundress of the Longchamp monastery of Minoresses. Guibert’s ‘letter’, which takes much of its spirit from Pseudo- Dionysius and Bernard of Clairvaux, describes ten levels of detachment from worldly afffairs, which one could attain through the proper exercise of virginity, humility, and the related virtues of abstinence and self-control. By going through these levels, the soul could arrive at real contemplative joy, presented as a prelude to a full understanding of the Divine in the visio beatifijica.71 Another important text conceived within the context of the spiritual formation of Poor Clare nuns is the famous fourteenth-century Medita- tiones Vitae Christi. Traditionally, this text is ascribed to Giovanni of Calvoli (Johannes de Caulibus), although it also survives in early modern edi- tions under the name of Bonaventura and other spiritual authorities. This immensely popular Latin work, addressed to the Franciscan nun ‘Cecilia’ and her community of Tuscan Poor Clares, aimed to guide its readers down the road of spiritual growth through a series of imaginative

69 De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores seu de Forma Perfectionis Religiosorum, in: Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, Opera Omnia, VIII, 107–127 & Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventurae Decem Opuscula, 221–273. A modern Italian translation by Bernardino Garcia can be found in I Mistici I, 419–466. A modern English translation can for instance be found in: Works of St. Bonaventure, Vol. X: Writings on the Spiritual Life. 70 See the evaluation of Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, 23–24. 71 This letter was studied and partially edited for the fijirst time in Poorter, ‘Lettre de Guibert de Tournai’, 116–127. Recently, a new edition with a study of its signifijicance came out in Field, ‘Gilbert of Tournai’s letter to Isabelle of France’, 57–97. forms of literary and artistic expression 303 meditative encounters with the life and passion of Christ. Its astounding success, reflected in its massive manuscript dissemination (both the com- plete text, and a series of extracts focusing on the passion of Christ prop- erly speaking), made it highly influential as a transmitter of passion devotion sensitivities, and it seemingly had a lasting impact on the icono- graphical representation of the crucifijixion and its overall semiotic program.72 Recently, Sarah McNamer has argued that we might have to reconsider the origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi altogether. Rather than privi- leging the oldest Latin ‘long’ version as the Ur-Version of the text, McNamer suggests that it might have started out as a vernacular Tuscan text, and even hints at a possible Clarissan authorship. She goes so far as to put for- ward three Clarissan nuns as possible authors of this oldest vernacular version, a witness of which survives in the Bodleian library at Oxford (MS Oxford Bodleian Canon. Ital. 174). The fijirst candidate is the Poor Clare Cecilia of Florence, because the name ‘Cecilia’ was maintained in the main Latin version as the spiritual daughter for whom the text was sup- posedly conceived. In addition, Ubertino of Casale mentioned Cecilia of Florence as one of his spiritual guides in the introduction to his Arbor Vitae Crucifijixae Iesu, and Mariano of Florence’s Libro delle degnità men- tions her as a nun in the Florentine Monticelli monastery in 1286. The sec- ond candidate is the Poor Clare Elia of Pulci (d. 1320) who, according to Mariano of Florence’s Libro delle degnità, was a highly accomplished and gifted person as well as a champion of passion devotion. The third candi- date is an as yet unknown Poor Clare from the San Gimignano monastery, where the Franciscan preacher Giovanni of Calvoli was spiritual director, and where he could have become acquainted with her text. McNamer suggests that Giovanni of Calvoli reworked the original Italian version, changing it along the lines of more ‘desirable’ gendered patterns of devotion. The fijirst outcome of this reworking by Giovanni might have been the ‘short’ Italian version (consisting of a prologue and c. 40 chapters), known as the Italian testo minore or the italienische kleine Text in older manuscript studies on the Meditationes Vitae Christi. This ‘short’ version, which survives in MS Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana 1419 and other manuscripts, dates from 1336 or shortly thereafter. This, in turn, became the basis for a ‘large’ Italian version (consisting of a prologue and 94 chapters). McNamer proposes that on the basis of this large Italian text,

72 A critical edition of the complete Latin text appeared in 1997: Meditationes Vite Christi olim S. Bonaventuro attributae, ed. Stallings-Taney. 304 chapter six the famous large Latin Meditationes Vitae Christi came into being. This Latin text subsequently became the source for nearly all the other known Latin and vernacular adaptations.73 If Sarah McNamer is correct, our evaluation of Clarissan literary involve- ment from the later thirteenth century onwards will have to be thoroughly re-evaluated. For the moment, however, the fijinal verdict on the author- ship of the ‘primitive’ vernacular Ur-text of the Meditationes Vitae Christi still is out. If we are dealing with the repression of an original female ver- sion, subsequently replaced by a ‘tamed’ male version geared to steer female spirituality into acceptable devotional channels, this would be in line with the views of control over female monastic life expressed by several influential Franciscan theologians, including Bonaventura of Bagnoregio. Whatever the background of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, the produc- tion of texts for Poor Clare nuns continued, and was re-invigorated in the Observant period. By then, Poor Clares had also become the recipients of texts of religious instruction by influential non-Franciscan religious authors with an active interest in the life of cloistered women. Hence Margaretha of Meerbeek, a nun in the Urbanist Poor Clare monastery of Brussels around 1350, became the spiritual daughter of Jan Ruusbroec, who apparently wrote various spiritual treatises for her (for instance his Van den VII sloten (1346), Een spieghel der eeuwigher salicheit, and possibly also Dat boec vanden heylighen Sacramente and Van de VII trappen).74

The Impact of the Observant Reforms

From the early fijifteenth century onwards, we see a massive increase in Poor Clare authorship throughout Italy, followed a few decades later by a more modest but still signifijicant increase elsewhere in Europe. In Italy, this increase had begun by the 1420s and remained impressive until well into the seventeenth century, hence well beyond the scope of this book. In Spain and Portugal, where the Poor Clares began to appear as important authors of religious texts by the later fijifteenth century, the Poor Clare liter- ary renaissance was of a diffferent character. However, it seems to have

73 McNamer, ‘The Origins of the Meditationes vitae Christi’, 905–955. On the vernacular versions and authorship discussions, see also Phillips, The Meditations on the Life of Christ; Ragusa, ‘L’autore delle Meditationes vitae christi’, 145–150; Flora, ‘A Book for Poverty’s Daughers’, 61–85. 74 Ampe, ‘De bestemmelinge van Ruusbroec’s ‘Spieghel’ en ‘Trappen”, 241–289. forms of literary and artistic expression 305 continued well into the eighteenth century, following in outline the over- all cultural and artistic developments in Spain during its co-called golden age. Due to the Portuguese and Spanish expansion into the Americas and Asia, this literary renaissance also reached religious communities in the Philippines and the New World. In the German lands, the Poor Clare literary and artistic output also gathered momentum in the later fijifteenth century, most signifijicantly in the Observant Poor Clare monasteries of Villingen and Nuremberg. This production was more or less cut short by the beginnings of the Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion, which forced monasteries in these areas to close down.75 In many areas of France comparable conditions prevailed. There, the initial upswing in literary output must be connected to the emerging Colettine movement steered by Colette of Corbie (1381– 1447) in the Burgundian lands, Savoy, Northern France and Flanders. Colette was herself a productive author, as is evident in her constitutions, her various spiritual directives and her wide-ranging correspondence with the ruling dynasties in France, Burgundy, and Savoy, other high noble benefactors, fellow nuns, town councils and various Franciscan (Coletan) spiritual guides.76 As I have mentioned in passing in a previous chapter, Colette obtained a copy of Clare’s 1253 rule shortly after 1410. With the assistance of her con- fijidant Henry of Baume, Colette added her own constitutions to this rule (which were offfijicially confijirmed by the Franciscan minister general Guglielmo of Casale in 1434),77 and an array of admonitory writings.78 All these writings were composed to coach the nuns in the new Colettine

75 For the wider context, see Williams-Krapp, ‘Observanzbewegung, monastische Spiritualität und geistliche Literatur’, 3fff. 76 A range of Colette’s letters have been published in Lettres de Ste Colette, a non-critical edition issued by the Poor Clares of Paray-le-Monial. Others can be found in La Règle de l’Ordre de Sainte Claire, avec les Statuts de la Réforme de Sainte Colette. Such letters could become the occasion for religious instruction, albeit that Colette had to be careful to pres- ent herself with the humility and deference expected from a woman. 77 They are edited in La Règle de l’Ordre de Sainte Claire, avec les Statuts de la Réforme de Sainte Colette. These constitutions were approved and promulgated by the Franciscan min- ister general Guglielmo of Casale on 28 September 1434. They were confijirmed 24 years later by Pope Pius II. For more information, see Lopez, Culture et Sainteté, 203–251. 78 To Colette is ascribed a testament, a long spiritual letter supposedly written near the end of her life. This text has been published in the Seraphicae Legislationis Textus Originales, 298–307. For a modern French translation, see Lettres de Ste Colette, 54–66. The authentic- ity of other works is more secure. For information on these writings (spiritual admonitions, Sentiments, etc.), see also La Règle de l’Ordre de Sainte Claire, avec les Statuts de la Réforme de Sainte Colette, as well as D’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la réforme de sainte Colette en France’, passim. 306 chapter six monasteries towards the evangelical lifestyle of the early San Damiano community, now refurbished with a more elaborate liturgy, and very spe- cifijic guidelines about daily prayer, penitential activities, and devotional exercises centered on the sufffering Christ.79 Over time, the popularity of Colette’s constitutions went beyond Colettine communities and they were adopted within other Observant congregations in a modifijied form. They were also used in a slightly altered form to shape religious life in female Capuchin houses from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards. One could say that Colette’s constitutions were instrumental in reviving the 1253 Regula Prima as the Forma Vitae par excellence for nearly all types of Poor Clares (whether Colettine, Observant or Capuchin) who aspired or were pushed towards a more stringent observance of the Franciscan life of poverty and humility.80 Beyond Colette of Corbie, Colettine authorship seems to have remained relatively modest. However, nothing can be said with any certainty on this subject, as serious scholarship in this regard is limited to the work done by Élisabeth Lopez. Colettine authorship seems to have exhibited itself fijirst and foremost in hagiographical writings (such as thevita on Colette written by Pevrine of La Roche/Perrine of Baume), and in the lively letter exchange between Colettine nuns and abbesses within the Colet tine net work. We still have various letters written by fijirst- and second-generation Colettine nuns, such as Agnes of Vaux,81 Elisabeth of Bavière, Guillemette of Gruyère,82 and Catherine Rufijiné,83 aimed to emphasize the specifijic Colettine Minorite lifestyle of their newly estab- lished communities in Burgundy, France and the Southern parts of the

79 For the Colettine life of prayer, see Bisett, ‘St. Colette of Corbie: Mysticism as a life of prayerful discernment’, 196–203. 80 Lopez, ‘Sainte Colette’, 199: ‘Le succès et l’extension du texte colettin s’explique par sa nature même: ensemble structuré et précis, il offfre une base solide à toute réforme; en outre, il anticipe les exigences rappelées par le concile de Trente et sera entre les mains de la hiérarchie post-tridentine un instrument efffijicace; au point que, lorsque les évêques vou- dront réformer tel des monastères de leur diocèse tout en confijiant la jurisdiction aux observants - alors que de farouches colettines arguant de leur fijidélité à la réformatrice, refusent le gouvernement de ceux-ci -, ils utiliseront les Constitutions de sainte Colette sans les nommer.’ 81 Some of these are edited in La Règle de l’Ordre de Sainte Claire, avec les Statuts de la Réforme de Sainte Colette, 286–288. 82 For the seemingly unedited testimonies of sister Elisabeth of Bavière and Guillemette of Gruyère, the abbess of Hesdin, see the Archives of the Poor Clares at Amiens and at Poligny. 83 The letters of Catherine Rufijiné and her additional souvenirs (written c. 1492) on the fijirst disciples of Colette are edited by D’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la réforme’, 82–86. forms of literary and artistic expression 307

Low Countries. Some of these letters actively pursue the topos of writing as a means to record and recreate the history of the Colettine women.84 A major leap in Clarissan authorship and artistic expression began to take shape in Italy in the 1420s, shortly after the leaders of the Italian Franciscan Observant movement overcame their reservations against pro- moting religious Observance in Italian female monasteries. Subsequently, a whole series of Poor Clare monasteries became active centers of both religious reform – by sending out reform parties to other Clarissan monas- teries, or by establishing entirely new monastic foundations – and literary and artistic production. The female monasteries that drove Observant reform among the Poor Clares became the ateliers for the compilation of impressive convent chronicles and hagiographical ventures that docu- mented a new Observant identity. Beyond the stimulation of a strong scribal culture, these monasteries nurtured a fair number of our most important Poor Clare authors and artists. Many Italian nuns (like several of their German and Spanish Observant counterparts) had three elements in common. One, they were nearly always women from the nobility, or at least from the afffluent urban com- mercial classes, in which female literacy was growing more and more prevalent (if only for economic and related practical reasons). Second, nearly all of these women operated within a strong monastic support network that was often strengthened by both extended and intensive fam- ily ties (networks of mothers and daughters, nieces and cousins in the same and neighboring monasteries).85 This stimulated epistolary and related forms of cultural exchange. A signifijicant part of the cultural pro- duction within Observant houses was directly related to the demands of daughter monasteries, and connected with the common pursuit of reli- gious goals by women in diffferent houses who knew of each other’s inter- ests. Third, a considerable number of these women had been exposed to some form of humanist education, either from personal tutors before they joined the order, or from nuns who themselves were familiar with tenets of humanist education and passed it on in the monastery as novice mas- ters and teachers. By the fijifteenth century, it had become less exceptional for young aris- tocratic ladies in Italy to receive tutorials from humanist teachers, which was consistent with the contemporaneous defense of female education by Italian humanists, such as Leonardo Bruni and Vittorino of Feltre.

84 Roest, ‘A Textual Community in the Making’, 163–180. 85 Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, passim. 308 chapter six

Hence, before Camilla Battista Varano became an Observant Poor Clare, she received a humanist upbringing at the court of her father Giulio Cesare of Varano, prince of Camerino. The Poor Clare Caterina Vigri was educated in a comparable fashion at the court of Ferrara. Cecilia Gonzaga, the daughter of Paola Malatesta, was tutored alongside her brothers by the Italian Humanist Vittorino of Feltre, ensuring her prowess in Latin and Greek, and her acquaintance with the spiritual works of the Greek author Chrysostom. Battista of Montefeltro, the younger daughter of Count Antonio of Urbino, also received a humanist upbringing before she was married to Galeazzo Malatesta, lord of Pesaro. After years of involvement in regional politics and humanist culture, she ended her life as a nun in the Santa Lucia monastery (Foligno). Her intelligence and classical learning became a subject for praise in Leonardo Bruni’s De Studiis et Litteris (ca. 1223–26): a letter that proposed a program of female humanist perfection based on thorough grammatical training and reading of select religious and secular authors, with an emphasis on Scripture, patristic literature and history.86 The most famous example outside Italy is probably the Nuremberg abbess Caritas Pirckheimer, who had received a thorough training in languages in the Pirckheimer household. As an adult Poor Clare, Caritas had such an exemplary command of Latin and moral phi- losophy, that she was portrayed as a model fijigure of female learning in Erasmus’ colloquy Abbatis et Eruditae. The humanist tutoring that these women had received in their youth made them versatile in Latin, sometimes in Greek, in music and other dis- ciplines stressed by the humanist educational program.87 When they

86 The letter also proposed an education in the sciences of arithmetics, geometry and astrology, yet adviced against the study of rhetorics and advanced mathematical skills, as women should not speak in public and were still perceived to be unsuited for rigorous economic and scientifijic activities. Leonardo Bruni,O pere letterarie e politiche, ed. Viti, I, 243–279; Leonardo Bruni, De Studiis et Litteris, trans. Woodward, 119–133. The families from which many Observant Poor Clare nuns were recruited or that were actively involved with the creation of Observant Poor Clare monasteries to house their daughters and widows, were frequently the same as those families that patronized humanist educators. Several such educators praised the learning of women. A good example is the Gynevera de le clare donne of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, which contains a lofty description of the famous Observant poor Clare abbess and spiritual author Caterina Vigri. Cf. Zarri, ‘La vita religiosa femminile tra devozione e chiostro’, 147–150. 87 Sometimes, the women’s knowledge of Greek is mentioned specifijically in Clarissan convent chronicles. See for instance the remarks in the Ricordanze of the Santa Lucia mon- astery on the erudition, learning and demeanor of Cecilia Coppoli: ‘…donna notabile de grande virtù, de grande sentimento naturale et adornata de scientia acquisita, con ciò sia che ella era docta in lengua grecha e latina, et era adornata de indecibele belleçça et de nobile parentela…’ Ricordanze del monastero di S. Lucia, ed. Scandella, 506. forms of literary and artistic expression 309 joined the monastery, they never severed their ties with humanist culture, but maintained it through intra-conventual conversations, letter writing and the exchange of books. For these fijifteenth- and early sixteenth- century women religious self-fulfijillment was nearly automatically given shape through reading and writing. These women benefijited from the fact that the male leaders of the Franciscan regular Observance also began to acknowledge the necessity of proper learning for women as well as for men. Like contemporary secular humanists, these Observant friars did not envisage a full-scale emancipa- tion of lay and religious women. Yet preachers like Bernardino of Siena had discovered that they needed the urban woman to drive home the mes- sage of religious reform (for which reason so many sermons of Observant homiletic practitioners were geared towards women and the domestic life and its virtues), and that they could use the image of the virtuous and learned woman to shape religious life in the female monasteries for which they began accepting the curia monialium in the early 1420s. Observant spiritual guides actively sought to steer the religious development of their religious charges by imposing a program of religious reading that was much more ambitious than before, and by demanding that they produce an account of their religious development in writing. It is in this period that the spiritual autobiography as a religious and penitentiary exercise started to become a dominant genre in the female religious textual world (see below).88 The ideals of female religious virtue adopted by these Observant spiri- tual guides knotted together humanist ideals of learning with a patristic concept of female learned religiosity that had re-emerged by the fijifteenth century. The latter was due to the ‘rediscovery’ of the spiritual advice of the Church Father Jerome to high aristocratic female followers in Rome and Palestine during the fourth century. Jerome had, of course, never been absent from the patristic pantheon. Yet in the fourteenth and fijifteenth century there was a veritable ‘Jerome revival’, in which his image as an ascetic christocentric scholar in the Palestinian desert was emphasized. This led to new iconographic programs and even stimulated the creation of new orders inspired by the ‘eremitical’ Jerome (such as the Frati Gesuati di San Girolamo), which from the beginning had ties to spiritual Franciscan

88 For a characterization of this type of ‘religious’ humanism among Observant men and women, see Roest, ‘Rhetoric of Innovation and Recourse to Tradition in Humanist Pedagogical Discourse’, 115–148; Caby, ‘Oltre l’’umanesimo religioso’: Umanisti e chiesa nel quattrocento’, 15–34. 310 chapter six groups and later also to the budding Observant movements among the Dominicans and the Franciscans.89 When both humanism and the Observance began to make headway in the Italian peninsula around 1400, the image of a humanistically inclined ‘Observant Jerome’, who straddled religious learning and eremitical retreat, seemed to present a reconciliation between humanism and reli- gious observance, as well as a viable antidote against those kinds of humanism that went too far in their love for the pagan classics. Important Observant preachers, including the Augustinian friar Girolamo of Siena (d. 1420), Giovanni Dominici (d. 1419), and the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena (d. 144) saw Jerome as the principal source of inspiration for their own homiletic and wider edifijicatory activities, and styled themselves on Jerome or mentioned reading his work as a major impetus to join the Observant religious life.90 More to the point for our current purposes, the works of Jerome testi- fijied to his ongoing conversation with and teaching of women. After his return to Rome as an interpreter and advisor to Paulinus of Antioch and Epiphanius (bishop of Salamis) in 382, Jerome embarked on his revision of the Latin texts of the Gospel at the request of Pope Damasus. During the same period he also became the center of an ascetic circle comprised of several aristocratic women, such as Marcella, Asella, Paula and her daugh- ters Blaesilla and Eustochium. After the death of Pope Damasus in 384, Jerome was more or less forced to leave Rome. Soon Paula and Eustochium followed and joined Jerome, fijirst in Antioch and later in Palestine, near Bethlehem – where they and other women set up a monastery with Jerome as their spiritual advisor. Jerome corresponded with these women, and his letters included not only eulogies to virginity and chaste widowhood but also praise for the religious learning and knowledge of languages displayed by his female charges. He even unfolded a program of religious instruction built on lan- guage study and biblical readings that was much more in-depth than that envisaged by many medieval male authors after him. These elements were stressed in particular in Jerome’s letters to Eustochium, Furia, Paula, and Laeta. In the fijifteenth century, this image of Jerome as eremitical educator of cloistered women became a model for Observant preachers who were confronted by a quite literate aristocratic female audience for whom they

89 Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance, 73. See also Russo, Saint Jerome en Italie. 90 Gill, ‘Women and Religious Literature’, 81. forms of literary and artistic expression 311 acted as counselors and educators. These Observant preachers and educa- tors now called on these women to become themselves ‘preachers’ of Christian virtue and truth within the walls of their abodes. Like the humanist educators, these Observants used Jerome’s letters to flesh out their own models of religious learning for widows, married women and virgins in the cloister. Jerome was also attractive to women in search of a patron to champion their education in a more comprehensive way within a religious setting. A fascinating anecdote in this regard concerns the female humanist Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466). Isotta, who had studied under a humanist tutor in her youth and was celebrated for her Latin eloquence by the age of twenty, retreated into a book-lined cell in one wing of her house, devoting herself to perpetual virginity, modeling her own life on Blaesilla, Eustochium and Paula – retiring from the world, preserving her virginity and studying the Bible and the Church Fathers.91 There was an overt admiration for Jerome by fijifteenth-century Observant Poor Clares. Educated women valued Jerome not only for his Christian scholarship, but also because, unlike many other Christian authorities, and despite his sexism, Jerome took the spiritual and intellec- tual life of women seriously, and dedicated many of his works to them. What must have appealed to such educated women was the seriousness with which Jerome dealt with female learning (praising women for their intellect, their command of Greek, Hebrew and Latin), his advice to women to study large parts of the Bible in depth, and the way in which he permitted them to read his own biblical commentaries. While fijifteenth- century educators using Jerome did not necessarily stress these points, they would not have escaped the attention of the women who were read- ing his letters. These women would not have balked at Jerome’s emphasis on chastity and fasting, nor at the christocentric spirituality – for many of these women lived a cloistered life and were devoted to the sufffering Christ and the Virgin Mary – and found alongside those exhortations a genuine program of learning that gave them more credit than was nor- mally the case.92 It is no coincidence that Jerome’s model of religious learning for women as expressed in his famous letters to Eustochium, Paula and Laeta circu- lated among Observant Poor Clares and their fellow travelers. When Battista of Montefeltro, the spouse of Galeazzo Malatesta, and herself a

91 See King, ‘The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466)’, 807–822; idem, ‘Book- lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance’, 66–90. 92 Gill, ‘Women and religious literature’, 80–81. 312 chapter six woman of considerable learning and patron of the local Hieronymite community, joined the Observant Poor Clares in 1447, she drew up a testa- ment, in which she left her manuscript copy of Jerome’s letters to the Observant Franciscans in Pesaro.93 Another known reader and probable owner of a manuscript of Jerome’s letters is Cecilia Coppoli, who helped reform the Poor Clares of Perugia. The letters of Jerome also show up in library catalogues of various Observant Poor Clare monasteries, and the origin of a number of extant copies of Jerome’s letters may be traced back to the world of the Observant Poor Clares.94 It is probably no coincidence either that several female Franciscan ter- tiaries and Observant Poor Clares modeled their religious names on those of Jerome and the women addressed in his letters. When Battista of Montefeltro took the veil in Foligno, she adopted the name Girolama, and when her contemporary Smeralda Calafato Colonna entered the Santa Maria de Basicò monastery in Messina (Sicily), she chose to be named Eustochia. In-depth research into the choice of religious names in fijif- teenth century Italian monasteries might yield interesting results. The combined impact of humanism, specifijic Observant religious agen- das, and the rediscovery of an authoritative patristic model for female reli- gious learning, facilitated a literary renaissance, which was particularly impressive among the Italian Poor Clares, but also had an impact else- where. This renaissance, which continued well into the early modern period, included many diffferent genres, notably those of epistolography, forms of autobiography, normative writings (such as rule commentaries, constitutions and novice training manuals), hagiography and historiogra- phy, prayers and meditative texts, religious poetry, passion devotion trea- tises and larger spiritual and theological texts (sometimes linked to visionary experiences), sermon-like lectures, and a few more secular genres (in particular light verse and drama).

Epistolography

The Observant Poor Clares engaged in epistolary activities on a much larger scale than their non-Observant forerunners. This is no surprise,

93 See Cenci, ‘Il testamento della b. Cecilia Coppoli da Perugia e di Battista (Girolama) di Montefeltro’, esp. 222–231; Gill, ‘Women and Religious Literature’, 92 note 29: ‘Jerome represented for Battista not only a literary and spiritual patron, but also, as we know from her gifts to the Hieronymite community of Pesaro, an institutional client.’ 94 A possible candidate is Bryn Mawr College Library MS 49. forms of literary and artistic expression 313 considering the family networks of Observant nuns, and the way in which Observant reforms spread from house to house. These stimulated close epistolary exchanges between nuns (frequently but by no means always related both by religious and family ties), with patrons or benefactors and a wide array of religious authorities. It also seems clear that, as in the early Colettine network, the exchange of letters had a large role in personal and communal identity formation, strengthening ties of biological and spiri- tual kinship.95 Frequently, we have only indirect knowledge of the nuns’ epistolary activities. We know, for instance, that Eustochia Calafato from Santa Maria di Montevergine (Messina) kept up a lively correspondence with other Franciscan abbesses. Mariano of Florence mentions in his Libro delle deg- nità that Eustochia exchanged letters with the nuns of the Santa Lucia monastery at Foligno, above all with their abbess Cecilia Coppoli (who herself took major initiatives in the reform of Poor Clare monasteries in central Italy).96 Regrettably, not many of these letters have survived. A bet- ter fate was reserved for several letters to Cecilia Coppoli written by one of Eustochia’s fellow nuns and confijidants, namely Iacopa Pollicino, who engaged in hagiographic ventures as well.97 From the environs of the Foligno Santa Lucia monastery we also have a series of letters by Battista Girolama of Montefeltro, several of which were addressed to Paola Malatesta of Mantua.98 Other letters have reached us from Observant Franciscan nunneries in Urbino and Camerino (such as letters from the correspondence maintained by Camilla Battista Varani),99 and from Poor Clare houses in Milan and Bologna. Several of the letters

95 Cf. Miles, Carnal Knowing, 53; Miri Rubin, ‘Small groups: identity and solidarity’, 132– 150; Hutchison, ‘What Nuns Read’, 205–222; Rusconi, ‘Women Religious in Late Medieval Italy’, 305fff. 96 Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità, ed. Boccali, 349, no. 706. This correspon- dence, as well as her correspondence with others is again referred to in Jacobilli, Vite de’ santi e beati dell’ Umbria I, 15: ‘…B. suor Eustochia da Catania, abbadessa di gran perfettione et miracoli del Monastero del Monte delle Vergini nella città di Messina in Sicilia, molto la visitò con sue lettere et ella rispondendole con molta famigliarità…’ 97 Two letters from 1485 and 1489 shed light on the discussions between Cecilia and Iacopa about the necessity to collect all the materials on the life and death of Eustochia Calafato, in order to facilitate the production of a proper vita. Terrizzi, La beata Eustochia, passim; Costanza, ‘Ricerca bibliografijica sulla vita’, 157–174; Costanza, ‘Ricerca bibliografijica sulla beatifijicazione’, 3–20. Iacopa’sLette ra del transito della beata Eustochia has been edited in: La leggenda della beata Eustochia da Messina, ed. Magri, 164–175. 98 Fattori & Feliciangeli, ‘Lettere inedite di Battista da Montefeltro’, 196–215. 99 Her letters have been edited in: Battista da Varano, Opere Spirituali, ed. Boccanera, 337–358. According to Pietro Luzzi, at least the following of these are defijinitely authentic: Lettera a una suora vicaria (1513); Lettera a Muzio Colonna (1515); Lettera al medico ser Battista Pucci. See Luzi, Camilla Battista da Varano, 107–108. 314 chapter six from Bologna date from the late fijifteenth-century religious and cultural effflorescence of the Bolognese Corpus Christi monastery under the abba- tiates of Caterina Vigri and Illuminata Bembo. Archival collections from Corpus Christi, now kept in the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile of Bologna, still contain letters by Caterina, Illuminata and other members of the community, which were frequently copied with eulogies, hagiographic accounts, prayers and spiritual treatises.100 The generic flexibility of the ‘letter’ made it a perfect vehicle for more ambitious forms of spiritual teaching. This is shown, for instance, in Caterina Vigri’s more independent spiritual letters, now known as I dodici giardini (the title chosen by their fijirst editor). As it stands, I dodici giardini (also known as L’esodo al femminile) is a treatise in letter format addressed to an unnamed abbess.101 Another set of spiritual teachings in letter for- mat were written by the sixteenth-century nun Angelica of Milan (Paula Antoinetta de Nigris); they were gathered as a collection of Epistolae Spirituales and published for the benefijit of a wider public in 1576, and combine spiritual recommendations for fellow Poor Clares and external benefactors with (auto-) biographical accounts of Angelica’s own religious life.102 The haphazard nature of this list suggests that the survival of the pri- vate letters of Poor Clares in the Renaissance was by no means a matter of course. In most cases, letters were kept when the women involved were revered for other writings, or for their extraordinary spiritual prowess. Major exceptions are a few letter collections from the early modern period that fall beyond the scope of this book, such as the large correspondence between the Poor Clare Maria Celeste Galilei (d. 1634) and her father, the physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei,103 and the love letters of Dealta

100 For a general impression, see Zarri, ‘Écrits inédits de Catherine de Bologne’, esp. 222fff. 101 The work has been edited several times. See for instance I Dodici Giardini di Perfezione, ed. Sgarbi; I dodici giardini. L’esodo al femminile ed. Aquini & Faberi. Most schol- ars are convinced of the authenticity of the work, but some have expressed doubts based on the biblical knowledge expressed in the text, which seems larger than revealed in other works by Caterina Vigri. Cf. Caterina Vigri, Laudi, trattati e lettere, ed. Serventi, Appendix, 183; Gori, ‘La mistica comunione orante di Santa Caterina Vigri’, 107–130; Samaritani, ‘In margine alle recenti pubblicazioni’, 7–13; Delcorno, ‘Nuovi testimoni delle opere di Caterina Vigri’, 7–11. See for the work also MS Venice, Biblioteca Giustiniani-Recanati segn. 7 (I cod. IV). It has various hands but seems to go back to the Poor Clare monastery of Corpus Domini (Ferrara) between 1467 and 1470. I Dodici Giardini can be found on fff. 57r-66v. 102 Epistolae spirituales, ed. Fontana de Comitibus. Cf. Goyens, ‘Angélique’, 578. 103 See: http://galileo.rice.edu/fam/daughter.html#letters (checked on 15 August 2011); Una, Quattro lettere al Padre; Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter. forms of literary and artistic expression 315

Martinelli, a Poor Clare in the Poor Clare monastery of Carpi, who was accused of witchcraft in the late 1630s.104 Our knowledge of Clarissan letter collections beyond the Italian penin- sula remains scant. As mentioned before, letter writing seems to have been an important instrument in forging a Colettine textual community, as is indicated in the letters by Colette herself, and by a number of fijirst- and second- generation Colettine nuns and abbesses. Elsewhere, a few other letter collections stand out, although systematic research in these matters has not yet been done. These include for instance the correspon- dence of Anna Arias, a fijifteenth-century Poor Clare from the Guadalajara monastery, who exchanged letters with her male family members, such as the Franciscan friars Juan and Francisco Ortiz.105 There is also a very pecu- liar collection of epistolary exchanges between Maria of Wolkenstein, a Poor Clare in Bressanone, and her brothers from around 1455. These letters were part of a campaign to thwart Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa’s attempts to implement Observant reforms. The letters reveal that Maria and other nuns tried to depose a reform-minded abbess, who was well aware of the threat of outside alliances to her precarious position. According to Maria, the abbess literally tried to seal the monastery, so that no dissenting opin- ions could venture beyond the walls.106 A very particular case is formed by the so-called Söflinger Briefe (Söflinger Briefe und Lieder/Amores Soeflingenses). This is a collection of 53 German letters and some seven love songs exchanged from 1467 to 1484 between laypeople, nuns from the as yet unreformed Urbanist Poor Clare monastery of Söflingen, nuns from other houses, and external clerics and spiritual guides. Many of its letters touch on the themes of spiritual friend- ship and spiritual love. Others deal with the problems of communal dis- content, the right attitude towards death, what were appropriate forms of gift exchange, the value of labor, and monetary matters. The nuns did not shrink from highly personal topics, and some asked for portraits of their spiritual friends to hang in their cells.107 These exchanges were mostly of a highly pious nature. Still, they drew the attention of scandalized contem- poraries and became a bone of contention in the discussions about the

104 Watt, The Scourge of Demons, 26–33, 47–72. 105 Several of her letters have been gathered in: Cartas familiares de Fr. Francisco Ortiz, ed. Brocar. 106 On Maria’s correspondence, see Hallauer, ‘Nikolaus von Kues und das Brixener Klarissenkloster’, 117 (Appendix). 107 The letters of several nuns, such as Genoveva Vetter and Magdalena of Suntheim, have been edited in Miller, Die Söflinger Briefe, 80fff. & Appendix. 316 chapter six desirability of Observant reforms. The reforms were fijinally implemented in full by 1484, with the deposition of the abbess Christina Strölin, and the appointment of her successor Elisabeth Reichner (who not only strength- ened religious discipline, but in subsequent years would also guide an extensive renovation of the monastery).108 While the implementation of Observant reforms more or less ended ‘excessive’ epistolary exchanges in Söflingen, forcing the nuns to adhere to the strictures of the rule in matters of epistolary contacts with the outside world, matters were completely diffferent in the Clarissan monastery of Nuremberg. After Observant reforms had taken hold in Nuremberg, the nuns used Clare’s rule alongside the Urbanist rule, and in conjunction with directives from the so-called Sankt-Klara Buch, an intriguing in-house Nuremberg hagiographic compilation, dating from the fourteenth cen- tury. This booklet, which was read by the Observant Nuremberg Poor Clares during their refectory meals, presented letter writing as one of the twelve good and sanctifying works of Clare of Assisi: ‘…she loved to write and also engaged others to write letters to other virgins for purposes of conversion, support, amelioration and to function as spiritual alms’ (‘…sie schrieb gern und ließ schreiben prief andern iunckfrawen zu bekerung, zu sterckung, zu besserung und zu almusen geben’).109 The Nuremberg Poor Clares apparently took these exhortations to heart, for they have left us a rich corpus of German and Latin letters. These letters reveal a network of well-educated and partly humanistically schooled nuns, such as Felizitas Grundherrin (d. 1556, six of whose letters have been edited thus far), the famous abbess Caritas Pirckheimer, Caritas’s own sister Klara (1487–1533), and her niece Katharina, all of whom explored the epistolary genre to express both their humanist incli- nations and their religious stamina.110

108 See aside from Miller also Frank, Das Klarissenkloster Söflingen, 100f; Signori, Meine in Gott geliebte Freundin, passim. 109 As pointed out in Mattick’s study, ‘Eine Nürnberger Übertragung’, 173–232. For more information, see: Ruh, ‘Das Sankt-Klara-Buch’, 192–206; Meyer, ‘Junckfraw-Muter-Helferin’, 507–532 (the text quoted here has been taken from this article, p. 523). 110 Around 180 letters from Pirckheimer nuns to the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer have survived. See for instance Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Nachlaß Pirckheimer Nr. 542– 551. Many letters of Caritas, Klara, Katharina, Felizitas and other nuns (as well as replies from male and female correspondents) can be found in: Willibald Pirckheimer, Opera politica, historica, philologica et epistolica, ed. Goldast; Willibald Pirckheimer, Briefwechsel, ed. Reicke et al.; Caritas Pirckheimer, Die ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’, ed. Pfanner; Caritas Pirckheimer, Briefe, ed. Pfanner; Briefe der Äbtissin Caritas Pirckheimer, ed. Deichstetter; Felizitas Grundherrin, Briefe, ed. Locher, 378–395, 441–469. On the function of letters and communal authorship in the Nuremberg community, see Knackmuß, ‘Die Äbtissin und das schwarze Schaf’, 93–159; Hess, ‘Oratrix humilis’, 173–203. forms of literary and artistic expression 317

Caritas’s own letters include a signifijicant correspondence with her brother, the brilliant but quarrelsome Nuremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (who dedicated his translation of the works of Plutarch to her). Partly through her brother Willibald, partly through her own initia- tives, Caritas kept in touch with a number of learned men, such as Conrad Celtis (who also dedicated two of his works to her), Conrad Pellikan (Observant friar and humanist, to whom Caritas sent a Pentateuch in Hebrew), and Erasmus (who used Caritas as a model for his Colloquium Abbatis et Eruditae). She also seemed to have been well-acquainted with the ideas and spiritual letters of Sixtus Tucher, a Nuremberg doctor in Roman and Canon Law, who had obtained his degrees in Padua, Pavia and Bologna, and taught for 10 years at Ingolstadt University before taking up the charge of a secular priest in Nuremberg.

Autobiographical Writings and Texts of Religious Instruction

Several letters exchanged by Italian Observant Poor Clares during the fijif- teenth and sixteenth centuries contain more autobiographical reminis- cences than those from earlier periods. The choice for an Observant lifestyle as well as the need to legitimize it invited personal ruminations and forms of introspection that could easily transform into more genuine, albeit stylized, autobiographical statements and diary-like literary prod- ucts. This was a development that would become almost compulsory in the early modern period, as part of the penitential reconstitution of the religious subject by means of ‘autobiographical’ self-incriminatory writing. This evolved into a particularly important phenomenon in the Spanish peninsula. There, female religious expression came under closer supervi- sion by male spiritual guides in the decades following the death of Cardinal Cisneros. Rather than denying their spiritual charges access to writing, male spiritual guides began to use the spiritual autobiographical diary as a means to keep female religious expression under confessional and inquisi- torial control. Many Clarissan nuns were even ordered to maintain a diary, and to hand it over at regular intervals for inspection. Thus the nuns’ reli- gious orthodoxy and devotional attitude could be checked and, if need be, corrected by the confessor in charge or by external inquisitors.111

111 See Herpoel, Autobiografías por mandato; Poutrin, Le voile et la plume. In a wider set- ting, they fijigure in the study Arenal & Schlau, Untold Sisters. Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works. 318 chapter six

In the fijifteenth century, however, many nuns themselves took the ini- tiative to produce spiritual autobiographies as instruments to build and defend their religious persona. Among the most impressive examples of this are the programmatic Vita Spiritualis/Vita Spirituale and the Avvertimenti spirituali by Camilla Battista of Varano (1458–1524).112 Her Istruzioni al discepolo is another important text with autobiographical qualities, but which at times also comes close to a novice-training trea- tise.113 This work presents itself as a spiritual guide, written by a charis- matic nun to a religious man who calls himself her disciple, and asks for guidance along the path to spiritual perfection. The spiritual voyage out- lined by the nun has overt autobiographical elements, as the ‘mother’ communicates her life’s experiences to her spiritual ‘son’.114 The instruction of newcomers to religious life was at the center of another important spiritual guide with autobiographical overtones, namely Caterina Vigri’s Le sette armi spirituali, also known as the Le armi necessarie alla bataglia spirituale. The fijirst version of this text originated when Caterina was the novice mistress of the Ferrara monastery, and was more or less completed by 1438.115 After 1456, when Caterina went to Bologna to help found the Corpus Domini monastery, she took the work with her, and continued to fijine-tune it until shortly before her death, when she handed the manuscript to her confessor. She asked him to weed

112 The Vita Spiritualis can be found (together with the I dolori mentali di Gesù nella sua passione) in: Le opere spirituali della b. Battista Varani, ed. Santoni; Battista da Varano, Le Opere Spirituali, ed. Boccanera, 5–67. See also the English translation of the Vita Spiritualis: Camilla Battista da Varano, My Spiritual Autobiography, trans. Berrigan. For more informa- tion, see: Boccanera, ‘L’Osservanza francescana’, 138–159; Di Mattia Spirito, ‘Una fijigura del Francescanesimo femminile’, 295–314; Passini & Aringoli, Beata Battista Varano 1458–1524. Due biografijie editep er la celebrazione del Primo e Quarto Centenario della morte, passim. 113 The ascription is contested by Luzi, Camilla Battista da Varano, 108, 110fff, yet seems to be accepted by Gabriella Zarri, who has touched upon the work in a number of her scholarly writings. Cf. Zarri, ‘L’autobiografijia religiosa negli scritti di Camilla Battista da Varano’, 133–158. 114 For the seventeenth-century transformation of the text into a pseudo-biography without any references to spiritual motherhood and male discipleship, see Zarri, ‘Gender and Religious Autobiography’, 238. 115 In her function of novice mistress in the Corpus Christi monastery of Ferrara, Caterina Vigri provided her charges with a wealth of oral and written instructions concern- ing the Divine Offfijice, prayer and meditation techniques etc. The content and use of some of these spiritual lessons can be sampled via Illuminata Bembo’s Specchio d’Illuminazione. Others, such as the Quindici gradi della perfezione, can now be accessed in a critical edition. See: Caterina Vigri, Laudi, Trattati e Lettere, ed. Serventi, 81–83. The Quindici gradi, mod- elled on Bonaventura’s Lignum Vitae and his De Triplica Via, and in ways also reminiscent of David of Augsburg’s novice training treatises, teaches aspiring nuns the diffferent stages of the religious life, from that of beginners to that of the perfect. The more autobiographi- cal Armi spirituali is the crowning piece to these texts. forms of literary and artistic expression 319 out any errors, share its content with the Bologna community, and to make a copy available for her old Corpus Christi monastery at Ferrara. Once the nuns of the Bologna Corpus Domini monastery had access to the text, they seized the fijirst printing press they could fijind to have it published (1470). It was reprinted several times until the beginning of the twentieth century, after which a series of modern editions followed.116 The work as we know it, is clearly divided in two diffferent sections. The fijirst six chapters, as well as the beginnings of chapter seven are practical instructions to train newcomers to the monastic life. In all these parts, Caterina used the belligerent imagery of warfare to accustom her charges to the difffijiculties of spiritual progress. The arms necessary for this ‘battle’ are: the utmost diligence, distrust of the self, confijidence in God, the mem- ory of Christ’s passion, the certain knowledge of one’s own death, the memory of God’s glory and the authority of Holy Scripture, in particularly with regard to its description of Christ’s life and his temptations in the desert. All these weapons are important, but the fourth, the memory of Christ’s passion, is the ultimate weapon for vanquishing the enemy. In chapter seven, which begins with an explanation of the soul’s sev- enth weapon, the work transforms into a much more intense description of the temptations of the Devil that once hampered the author herself in being an obedient religious and obstructed her plans to create an Observant monastic community. For this part of the treatise, the author exploited autobiographical examples of her own doubts and the crises at the beginning of her own religious career. In this way, Caterina taught her novices through the example of her own battle, which she presented as an exemplar of the battle that all must fijight. In these autobiographical parts, Caterina reconfijirmed the centrality of obedience and the renunciation of self-will. The Devil appeared to Caterina in the shape of the Virgin and the crucifijied Christ. Although seemingly urging obedience, the Devil aroused in her all manner of contrary feelings and thoughts, and caused Caterina to be disobedient in obedience, when she should have used her own dis- cernment to determine God’s will.

116 Among the modern editions, see Le armi necessarie alla bataglia spirituale, ed. Puliatti; Le sette armi spirituali, ed. Foletti; Le sette armi spirituali, ed. Bentini, 101–168; Le sette armi spirituali, ed. Degli’Innocenti. A modern English translation appeared as The Seven Spiritual Weapons, trans. Feiss & Re. The 2000 edition by Antonella Degli’Innocenti is based on the autograph text. The work survives in a number of additional manuscripts (alongside of an impressive number of incunable editions). Cf. Degl’Innocenti, ‘Le sette armi spirituali di Caterina Vigri’, 73–78. 320 chapter six

The autobiographical examples are lessons for the implied readers (novices), to understand how the Devil does his utmost to subvert those who desire a life of perfection. In this context, obedience becomes the foremost virtue of Poor Clare nuns and the truest measure of Christian perfection, even trumping poverty as the central axis of Franciscan reli- gious life.117 For Caterina, the way of the cross, that is sufffering in obedi- ence just like Christ in his ultimate sacrifijice, was the sole guarantee for the sanctifijication of the self. It was a more secure route to perfection than the mystical experience of the divine. Even though she mentioned a number of mystical encounters that underscored her proximity to Christ, Caterina made it adamantly clear that the mystical state could be false, and that even the most profound mystical experience could be just a demonic illu- sion. In the end, mystical experience and the knowledge gained from it could only be given authority in a direct intellectual conversation within the mind with God (parlando intelectualmente).118 Caterina Vigri took care to embed her own visionary experiences in a discourse that distinguished carefully between divinely inspired insights and devilish counterfeit visions. Maybe it is not a coincidence that two visionary Poor Clares from the sixteenth century were in some ways linked to Caterina Vigri and her monastic community in Bologna. The oldest of these was Giulia, a Poor Clare from the Santa Orsola monastery in Milan. For about thirty years, beginning around 1510, Giulia experienced a long series of revelations involving Caterina Vigri (including apparitions of the saint and revelations inspired by thinking about her). In the course of time Giulia revealed these experiences to her fellow nuns, adding to them spiri- tual teachings of her own. Eventually, this amalgam was collected in the so-called Revellationi della B. Caterina alla B. Giulia da Milano, a three-vol- ume manuscript that was kept in the Milan monastery until its dissolu- tion. A copy of the text was obtained from the scriptorium of the Bolognese Corpus Domini monastery by the Franciscan minister general Francesco Gonzaga. This copy now survives in the Biblioteca Estense.119 The second, and younger, of these visionary authors was Valeria Campanazzi

117 See: Leonardi, ‘Caterina Vigri e l’obbedienza del diavolo’, 119–122. 118 See on this latter intellectual aspect Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 170–171. 119 Revellationi della B. Caterina alla B. Giulia da Milano/Visioni di S. Caterina da Bologna: MS Biblioteca Estense, Raccolta Campori App. 466–468, _.H. 734–736 (ca. 1540). For a description of this manuscript and later copies, see Caterina Vigri, Le sette armi spirituali, ed. Pulliatti, ixf., as well as Bartoli, ‘Giulia da Milano e santa Caterina da Bologna’, 177–199. The Revellationi/Visioni have sometimes been ascribed to Battista of Varano and a version has been published in the 1957 Boccanera edition of Battista’s works. forms of literary and artistic expression 321

(1501–1577), who joined the Poor Clares in Bologna in 1518 and like Caterina before her held the position of abbess more than once. Her Libro delle rev- elationi survived thanks to a copy made in 1680 by the Bologna Poor Clare Antonia Maria.120

Writings on the Rule

Many of the aforementioned letters and more ambitious spiritual writings of the Observant Poor Clares testify to the nuns’ engagement with issues of reform. One of these issues concerned the question of whether to adopt Clare’s rule from 1253, and how it might be implemented in the religious life of newly founded or reformed communities. As I have indicated in Chapter Four, many scholars working on the spread of the regular Observance have noticed the progressive adoption of Clare’s rule (which by the fijifteenth century had become known as the Regula Prima, to distin- guish it from the later rule of Urban IV from 1263) and have paid attention to the production of rule commentaries and specifijic reform constitutions written for women by male instigators of the regular Observance, some- times in answer to explicit requests. In this regard Giovanni of Capistrano’s Declaratio Primae Regulae S. Clarae (1445) is well known.121 This commentary was apparently written at the request of Elisabetta, the abbess of the Poor Clares of Mantua, who wanted to further religious observance in her community by means of a strict adherence to the Regula Prima of 1253. As scholars have acknowl- edged, Giovanni of Capistrano was not the only Observant leader engaged in writing guidelines for observing the Regula Prima in newly Observant communities of Poor Clares. In his Libro delle degnità, Mariano of Florence also mentions commentaries by Bernardino of Siena (which may be spuri- ous),122 Niccolò of Osimo and Guglielmo of Casale.123 Of these, the com- mentaries of Niccolò (a further Explicatio on the commentary by Giovanni

120 Cf. Lainati, Temi spirituali, 1617–1618; Libro delle revelationi: MS Corpus Domini di Bologna, Archivio s. segn. (a copy by the nun Antonia Maria from 1680). 121 Declaratio Primae Regulae S. Chiarae, ed. Adrichen, 336–357, 512–528. An introduc- tion to the text, replete with an edition of the introductory letter, can be found in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 5 (1912), 301fff. A Dutch version of the text can be found in Kok, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Klarissen, 62–84. 122 This commentary has not been found. Maybe it refers to a sermon or a sermon cycle in which Bernardino dealt with the rule of Clare. 123 Mariano of Florence, Libro delle degnità, ed. Boccali, 65. Cf. Sensi, ‘Clarisses entre Spirituels et Observants’, 110. 322 chapter six of Capistrano)124 and Guglielmo have survived.125 From a later date stem Francisco of Quiñones’s constitutions connected with the new Recolección movement in Spain,126 and the commentary on the rule of Urban IV and Clare of Assisi’s Testament written in the early 1530s by the Observant Leipzig lector and provincial minister Augustinus of Alveldt (at the request of Ursula, the abbess of the Poor Clares at Eger). The commentary of Augustinus, which focuses on ascetical instruction without much atten- tion to legal issues, shows us again that not all female Observant initiatives necessarily implied a return to the Regula Prima.127 At times, the commen- tary of Augustinus takes a strong stance against Luther and his partisans (against whom the same author would write a number of additional pam- phlets and treatises).128 It should be emphasized that neither the early Colettines nor the well- educated Observant Poor Clares in Italy and elsewhere left the spiritual and normative guidance on the observance of the rule entirely in male hands. Giovanni of Capistrano made ample use of papal decrees for his own Declaratio, but he also drew from the already existing constitutions

124 Niccolò of Osimo, Declaratio Preceptorum Regule Sancte Clare, ed. Núñez, 299–314. See also Lazzeri, ‘Novae animadversiones circa declarationes regulae s. Chiarae’, 445–447. 125 Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. II, 260–276 (which contains the commentary of Guglielmo of Casale as part of the bull Etsi ex suscepti regiminis offfijicio of Pius II, issued in October 1458). 126 Written when Francisco was minister general of the order. On these see Cf. Carrión, ‘Las casas de recolección’, 264–272 & I. Omaechevarría, ‘Fr. Francisco de Quiñones’, 61–75. Cf. also Wadding, Annales Minorum XVI, 193–197 (Latin version). 127 As I mentioned in a previous note, John Moorman already had noticed this. As I have also said elsewhere, the Poor Clares of Nuremberg, as well as those of Bressanone (under the fijirm abbatiate of Barbara Freydung) continued to follow the rule of Urban IV, yet com- bined it with appropriate ‘observantist’ elements from the rule of 1253 and the hagiographi- cal tradition. See Mattick, ‘Eine Nürnberger Übertragung der Urbanregel, 173–232. Renate Mattick’s article gives an edition of the fijifteenth-century German translation of Urban’s rule, as well as the German rule excerpts produced by Barbara Freydung and the German version of Clare of Assisi’s rule that functioned in the Nuremberg community alongside of the rule of Urban IV. 128 Augustinus’s Commentarius can be found in MSS Prague UB XVI E 20 (Latin, 1534); Prague UB XVI H 1 (German, 1535); Munich, Nationalmuseum 3751. In the early eighteenth century, Theodoricus Dinger, lector of theology and confessarius ordinarius of the Eger Poor Clares, published a German reworking of this text: Regul deren wohl-ehrwürdigen und geistlichen Closter-Jungfrauen Ordens der heiligen Jungfrauen und Mutter Clarae, welche Pabst Urbanus der IV in dem Jahr Christi 1264 denselben gegeben und zu halten anbefohlen. Sambt einer kurtzen Außlegung der Heil. Regul, der heiligen Mutter Clarae Testament und Segen (…) (Eger: Johann Frantz Fritschen, 1704). As said before, Augustinus also wrote a commentary on the Franciscan Regula Bullata: MS Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August Bibl. Cod. Guelf. 1905 Helmst. See: Oliger, ‘Zur Augustin von Alfelds Regelerklärung des Klarissenordens’, 220–222. forms of literary and artistic expression 323 produced by Colette of Corbie.129 In fact, Colette’s Sentiments and Constitutiones, mentioned in passing in Chapter Three, are among the fijirst systematic attempts in the fijifteenth century to embed the religious life as envisaged by the Regula Prima into a detailed setting of regulations per- taining to the liturgical, penitential and spiritual life of Poor Clare nuns.130 Among the Observant Poor Clares of the Italian peninsula, there seems initially to have been more deference to male authority in these regulatory matters. Nevertheless, in Chapter Four it was shown that in Italian Observant houses, such as the Santa Maria di Montevergine monastery in Pisa, the implementation of Observant reforms implied an active engage- ment with Clare’s rule, her Benedictio and Testament, her offfijicial vita, as well as the Privilegium Paupertatis from 1228 and other important papal bulls (such as Innocent IV’s Solet annuere).131 In various instances, Obser- vant Poor Clares approached such texts as interpretative translators, thereby creating the space to read the texts in light of their own wishes and circumstances, while providing their fellow nuns with accessible Italian versions of normative documents.132 A good example is the ver- nacular reworking of the Latin Legenda Sanctae Clarae Virginis by Battista Alfani. Battista was a nun in the famous Observant house of Monteluce outside Perugia for 72 years (between 1452 and her death in 1523). She had a distinguished career in the monastery. She was several times chosen to be the abbess of her community. She also acted as convent chronicler and as the copyist and translator of devotional texts.133 For her translation of the Legenda Sanctae Clarae Virginis, she also used the Privilegium

129 An interesting comparison between the Constitutiones of Colette of Corbie and the Explicatio of Giovanni of Capistrano has been made by Lopez, ‘Sainte Colette de Corbie’, 209–212. 130 As mentioned before, Colette’s Sentiments and her Constitutiones have been edited in: La Règle de l’Ordre de Sainte Claire, avec les Statuts de la Réforme de Sainte Colette. See also: Colette di Corbie, ed. Colette & Cremaschi, 683–738. A detailed comparison of the Constitutiones by Colette with the rule of Clare can be found in Lopez, Culture et Sainteté, 203–251. In a shortened version, this analysis can also be found in Lopez, ‘Sainte Colette’, 203–209. 131 Cf. Ciccarelli, ‘Contributi alla recensione degli scritti di s. Chiara’, 347–374; Lazzeri, ‘La ‘forma vitae’ di s. Chiara (…) Messina’, 137–141. 132 For a survey of Latin and vernacular versions of the legends of Clare, see: Boccali, ‘Tradizione manoscritti delle legende di Santa Chiara di Assisi’, 419–500; Accrocca, ‘I Codici romani della ‘Legenda di Santa Chiara in Volgare’, 55–70; ‘Vena vivida-Lebendige Quelle’. Texte zu Klara von Assisi und ihrer Bewegung I: Deutsche und niederländische Zeugnisse zur hl. Klara, ed. Werkstatt Franziskanische Forschung. 133 Battista is known to have copied passion devotion treatises by the Franciscan friar Gabriele of Perugia and other ‘lives’ of Christ and the Virgin. She also made a vernacular translation of Domenico Cavalca’s Vitae Patrum. See Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 173. 324 chapter six

Paupertatis, Clare’s Benedictio and Testament, and elements from the rule and the canonization process, combining them in such a way that their message cohered fully with the authoritative life of the canonized saint.134 As can be gathered from vernacular versions originating from or kept in Observant Clarissan houses including Santa Lucia in Foligno and Sant’Agnese in Florence, there were other, comparable interpretative translations by Observant nuns in Italy, especially during the second half of the fijifteenth and the fijirst half of the sixteenth century.135 Nevertheless, among the Poor Clares of the regular Observance, it was uncommon to follow them up with full-blown independent commentaries on the rule of Clare, in addition to, or to counterbalance the prescriptive interpreta- tions put forward by Giovanni of Capistrano and his male Observant colleagues. A major exception from the second half of the fijifteenth century is the, as yet unedited, Avertamenti della S. Madre Catterina da Bologna or Ordinazioni ascribed to Caterina Vigri and her fellow nuns at Bologna, which was produced in the 1460s or shortly thereafter. Although the titles under which this text has survived suggest something akin to the smaller house constitutions mentioned earlier, such as the Mantua Osservanze and the Ordinazione produced for the Monteluce monastery, Vigri’s Avertamenti or Ordinazione amounts to a veritable vernacular commen- tary on the rule of Clare in fourteen chapters. This work devotes special attention to the roles of the abbess and vicaress, and to the issues that afffected the day-to-day religious life of the nuns in the Bolognese Corpus Christi monastery.136 An exploratory study by Marco Bartoli reveals that the Bologna Poor Clares considered the Avertamenti to be an indispensable guide to the rule

134 Natali, ‘La “Leggenda della Seraphica vergine Sancta Chiara” di suor Battista Alfani’, 169–184; Knox, ‘What Francis intended: Gender and the Transmission of Knowledge in the Franciscan Order’, 143–161; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 171fff. Battista Alfani’sLegge nda della Serafijica Vergine Santa Chiara can be found in fijive manuscripts, all of which were once in the possession of a Franciscan house connected to the Observant reform of Monteluce. It has received its best edition as: Battista Alfani, Vita et Leggenda della Seraphica Vergine Santa Chiara, ed. Boccali. As said before, the Observant Clarissan nuns of Nuremberg had access to a fourteenth century Sankt-Klara-Buch with comparable materials. Ruh, ‘Das Sankt-Klara-Buch’, 192–206; Meyer, ‘Junckfraw-Muter-Helferin’, 507–532; ‘Vena vivida- Lebendige Quelle’, 29–64. See also Accrocca, ‘I codici romani’, 55–70. 135 Scandella, ‘Il manoscritto F dell’archivio del monastero di S. Lucia di Foligno’, 85–150 (which compares several of these vernacularizations, and provides a full transcription of the F manuscript from Santa Lucia). 136 Cf. Zarri, ‘Écrits inédits’, 223, who refers us to MS Archivio Generale Arcivescovile di Bologna, Archivio Beata Caterina carton 25, Libro 3, no. 2, fff. 175v-84v. Another copy of the text seems to be present in Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, cod. Ital. 269. forms of literary and artistic expression 325 of Clare. The rule itself was read every two weeks at the refectory table, and the text of the Avertamenti was read every three months.137 Moreover, the work contains evidence that the rule was re-interpreted by the women to bring it into alignment with the exigencies of their own times. This is apparent in the discussion of the role of the vicaress. The text of the Avertamenti also indicates that the nuns were concerned with the day-to- day implications of enclosure. At the same time, it mitigates Clare’s austere regime of poverty in matters of sleeping and clothing. Perhaps surprisingly, while this text makes no direct reference to Giovanni of Capistrano’s Declaratio, it contains an overt refusal to command adherence to its own precepts under pain of mortal sin. This suggests that Vigri and her fellow nuns used the Avertamenti to undercut Giovanni of Capistrano’s more legalist procedures.138 The Avertamenti also provides additional insight into Vigri’s ideas concerning the role of the abbess in teaching the nuns with sermon-like lectures, and stresses concerns to maintain the unity of the community and to prevent internal strife through gossip.139

Observant Chronicles and Saints’ Lives

Letter writing, spiritual guides and the production of constitutions and rule commentaries all served to underscore specifijic identities of religious reform, and in claiming a specifijic stake for women within and beyond the Franciscan Observant family. Another very important genre in this con- text was the monastic chronicle or the convent chronicle, in which Observant Poor Clares testifijied to their new reformed lifestyle, recorded the deeds of their founding members, and hailed the successes of their monastic communities. The same genre was also used to document legal agreements, gifts and commercial dealings on which the survival of the monasteries often depended. The Poor Clares were not trendsetters in this genre. From about 1300, Dominican nunneries and tertiary houses in Switzerland, Alsace and Southern Germany began to produce convent chronicles and so-called ‘sister books’.140 We do not have any substantial Clarissan convent

137 Bartoli, ‘Le ‘Ordinazioni’ alla regula delle monache di Santa Chiara attribuite a Caterina Vigri’, 79f. 138 Bartoli, ‘Le ‘Ordinazioni’ alla regula’, 79–80. 139 Bartoli, ‘Le ‘Ordinazioni’ alla regula’, 82–83. 140 See also the translation of the convent chronicle and necrology of the Corpus Domini monastery in Venice, written between 1395 and 1436 by the Dominican nun Bartolomea Riccoboni: Life and Death in a Venetian Convent, ed. Bornstein. 326 chapter six chronicle from that same period, although source references do indicate some fourteenth-century initiatives in this direction. A case in point is the chronicle of the Monticelli community. Some parts of this work have sur- vived in later antiquarian copies and can now be found in the Florentine State Archive and in the Biblioteca Nazionale.141 The Clarissan production of convent chronicles started in earnest in the fijifteenth century, and was clearly linked with the implementation of Observant reforms. Most general surveys of late medieval historiographi- cal writing and of chronicles by Observant reform movements ignore these texts.142 This can partly be explained by the fact that many chroni- cles produced in female monastic houses are more difffijicult to fijit into recognized historiographical categories than those of their male counter- parts. Whereas male convent chroniclers often tried to adhere to estab- lished conventions or used the Latin registers of the schools, Clarissan convent chronicles, written by women with a diffferent education, could be rather idiosyncratic, and could exhibit a distinctly ‘oral’ character. Another cause for the scholarly neglect of these texts lies in the rela- tively small number of surviving specimens, due to the vicissitudes of time. As many such chronicles functioned as works in progress within a community, disasters that befell that house or its archives – fijires, forced closures, floodwaters etc. – could easily destroy the only existing manu- script copy. Hence the body of texts known to modern scholars is probably a fraction of the works once in existence.143 Sometimes, we only know about them because they were used and mentioned by male order histori- ans, such as Mariano of Florence and Nikolaus Glassberger. The works of these historians were often commissioned for a wider audience, and were therefore eligible for the printing press. A number of groundbreaking studies by Gertrude Jaron Lewis, Lucia Sebastiani, Charlotte Woodford, Rebecca Garber, Anne Winston-Allen, James R. Banker and Kate Lowe have highlighted the importance of female convent chronicles for our understanding of the world of female Observant

141 MS Archivio di Stato, Carte Strozziane, II serie, no. 58, pp. 363–390; MS Archivio di Stato, Fondo Manoscritti 172; MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale II.IV.380 (formerly Cod. Strozzi XXV 595). Cf. Bughetti & Gaddoni, ‘Codices duo’, 576–580. 142 This holds true for my own work on late medieval institutional history, as well as for Constance Proksch’s large 1994 study Klosterreform und Geschichtsschreibung im Spätmittelalter. 143 One such chronicle that seemingly has ‘disappeared’ was produced by Cecilia of Valla (fl. ca. 1500), nun at the Santa Chiara monastery of Alessandria. Cf. Bandini Buti, ‘Cecilia Della Valle’, 220. forms of literary and artistic expression 327 reforms.144 These studies also help us to appreciate the communal voice of some of these texts, the writing of which seems to have been some kind of interactive process, resulting in a conglomerate of collective memories generated by oral interviews and discussions. The author of the text was almost the voice or at least the ‘pen’ of the community.145 The often hodge- podge quality of these chronicles did not necessarily imply a complete lack of stylistic acumen, or a complete ignorance of the basics of historical writing. Their shape resulted in part from their performative character in service of community formation, complementing other ‘genres’ of literary expression that fulfijilled similar roles. When men were commissioned to write the history of Observant reforms in a Clarissan house, their procedure and emphasis could be very diffferent. A good example is the chronicle of the Ribnitz Poor Clare mon- astery written by Lambrecht Slagghert, the confessor of the Ribnitz women in the 1520s. His text has a more exterior focus than most women’s chroni- cles, and notes many political events and conflicts that have little to do with the cloister itself. Moreover, this work does not say much about indi- vidual abbesses or the nuns. In contrast, women’s chronicles tend to cele- brate the community’s outstanding abbesses and nuns for their virtue, their spirituality, or their leadership abilities.146 Within Italian Poor Clare Observant circles, the most famous convent chronicle is the large Liber Reformationis vel Memorialis of Monteluce, composed by Eufrasia Alfani, a text already mentioned in the chapter on Observant reforms. Eufrasia was repeatedly chosen abbess of the Monteluce monastery between the early 1460s and the later 1480s, when Monteluce was a powerhouse of Observant reforms in Central Italy. Eufrasia became the chronicler of her community before, during and in between her abbatiate years. Her writings relate events pertaining to the

144 Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women. The Sister-Books of Fourteenth Century Germany; Sebastiani, ‘Cronaca e agiografijia nei monasteri femminili’, 159–168; Woodford, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany; Garber, Feminine Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers, 1100–1375; Winston-Allen Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the ; Banker & Lowe, ‘Female Voice: Male Authority’, 651–677; Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy. 145 See the discussion of this phenomenon in Bollmann, ‘Weibliche Diskurse: Die Schwesterbücher der devotio moderna zwischen Biographie und geistlicher Konversation’, 241–284. 146 See the analysis of Winston-Allan, Convent Chronicles, 220–221. For Slagghert’s chronicle itself, see Die Chroniken des Klosters Ribnitz, ed. Techen, 66–74. 328 chapter six

Observant life of the Poor Clares from 1448 onwards. After her death in 1489, other nuns continued her work until the eighteenth century.147 Of comparable importance is the Cronaca del monastero di S. Lucia/ Ricordanze del monastero di Santa Lucia, commenced by Caterina Guarnieri of Osimo (d. 1547), third daughter of Stefano Guarnieri of Osimo (chancellor of the Perugia Commune). Unlike her elder sisters Felicia and Susanna, Caterina did not join the Monteluce community but entered the Santa Lucia monastery at Foligno around 1488. She was vicar of the house around 1513/4 and again between 1527 and 1530. Later, between 1542 and 1544, she fijilled the role of abbess. Like Eufrasia, Caterina Guarnieri used her fijirst-hand knowledge of the community’s administration to edit a con- vent chronicle, which spanned the years between 1424 and 1536. She also produced a number of biographical notes on fellow sisters that eventually were inserted as supplements to the text.148 Aside from such biographical or hagiographical details, the work reveals Santa Lucia’s close links with other Observant houses (namely the Observant Clarissan monasteries of Messina, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara and l’Aquila).149 In some cases, convent chronicles were fijirst and foremost highly charged propaganda instruments, which defended the Observant take- over of a house in the face of fijierce opposition. This is apparent in Lorenza of Giovanni Baldino’s Libro della clausura, which depicted the transforma- tion of the tertiary Borgo San Sepolcro community into an enclosed Clarissan monastery around 1500. This work unabashedly downplays the signifijicance of the third-order background of the community, and whole- heartedly defends the hardheaded policies of the incoming reform party from Perugia.150

147 Memoriale di Monteluce, ed. Lainati. 148 Ricordanze del Monastero di S. Lucia, ed. Boccali. See also Faloci-Pulignani, ‘Saggi della Cronaca di Suor Caterina Guarnieri da Osimo’, 278–322. 149 Dalarun & Zinelli, ‘Poésie et théologie’, 22–23. 150 Lorenza’s Libro della clausura can be found in MS Florence, Archivio di Stato, Companie religiose soppresse da P. Leopoldo 3343, C, CCCI, no. 1, and has been analyzed by Banker & Lowe, ‘Lorenza di Giovanni di Baldino (or dei Baldini) da Perugia’s Narrative of Enclosure’, 443–457; Banker & Lowe, ‘Female Voice, Male Authority’, 651–677. The produc- tion of Observant convent chronicles by Italian nuns continued in the sixteenth century. Interesting specimens are the Memoriale della clausura di Norcia and Orsola Formicini’s late sixteenth-century Libro delle antichità di S. Cosimato. See: Turi, Il ‘Libro delle antichità di S. Cosimato’ di Suor Orsola Formicini (1548–1615): cronaca di un monastero di clarisse tra XVI e XVII secolo, esp. 97–396 (which provides a transcription of Orsola’s second version of the work). Cf. also Lowe, ‘Franciscan and Papal Patronage’, 219, 221 & passim; Lowe, ‘History writing from within the convent in cinquecento Italy: the nuns’ version’, 105–121; Cordelia, ‘Il ‘Memoriale’ della clausura di Norcia’, 163–193. forms of literary and artistic expression 329

The surviving convent chronicles from Clarissan houses in regions that underwent Observant reforms several decades after their counterparts in central Italy, largely date from the turn of the sixteenth century and after. Cases in point are the short chronicle written by a Poor Clare from the Bressanone monastery in the 1520s,151 the slightly older chronicle of the Bicken monastery at Villingen, which also includes many sayings and rev- elations of the renowned abbess Ursula Haider,152 and the convent chron- icle of the Pfullingen monastery, compiled by an anonymous nun around 1525, starting with the monastery’s thirteenth-century foundation at the initiative of two noble women (Irmengard and Mechthild Rempen of Pfullingen).153 The historical dossiers from the monasteries of Nuremberg and Bamberg are also of signifijicant interest. The fijirst of these is the so-called Deutsche Chronik of the Nuremberg Sankt Klara monastery. This is a col- lection of translated charters, connected by an intermittent narrative. It was put together between the closing decades of the fijifteenth century and 1503, partly following the model of the Latin historical works of the Franciscan confessor Nikolaus Glassberger.154 In the Bamberg Sankt Klara monastery, a comparable dossier of historical notices (chronikalische Notizen) was put together by Magdalena Kastner, Dorothea of Brandenburg and other abbesses in the so-called Zinsbuch, which also contained copies of charters, other legal pieces and detailed information about the monas- tery’s possessions.155

151 This German work has been edited in Straganz ‘Duae Relationes circa Monasterium Brixinense’, 538–545. 152 Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters zu Villingen, ed. Glatz. See also Ringer, ‘Ursula Haider’, 402–403. 153 Johannes Gatz, ‘Pfullingen, Klarissen’, 170fff.; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 37fff. 154 MS Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum 1191; Nuremberg Staatsarchiv, Kloster St Klara, Akten und Bände Nr. 1, Konzept der ‘Deutschen Chronik’ des Nürnberger Clarissenklosters (entst. um 1490, mit Nachträgen bis 1503). Cf. Schlotheuber, ‘Sprach- kompetenz und Lateinvermittlung’, 64; Schlotheuber, ‘Bücher und Bildung’, 251–252: ‘Das Ergebnis ihrer gemeinsamen Bemühungen [namely of Caritas Pirckheimer and other nuns] war ein außergewöhnlich professioneller Zugrifff auf die eigene Geschichte: Jede Urkunde ist mit einem historischen Kommentar versehen, der die jeweiligen Entstehungsumstände erläutert. Ein kurzes Kopfregest faßt den Rechtsinhalt des Dokuments zusammen, ehe der Text im vollen Wortlaut in Übersetzung geboten wird. In manchen Fällen beschreibt eine abschließende Würdigung den Ausgang von Streitigkeiten mit dem Nürnberger Rat, den Franziskanerbrüdern oder dem Bamberger Bischof. Die ‘Konventschronik’ bot den Nürnberger Klarissen deshalb nicht zuletzt Beispiele für Konfliktverlauf und Lösungsstrategien. Diese Form der Selbstvergewisserung war durch- aus erfolgreich.’ 155 Tkocz, Das Bamberger Klarissenkloster, 18, 356, 366. 330 chapter six

During the 1520s, Caritas Pirckheimer and her fellow nuns at the Nuremberg Sankt Klara monastery also produced a historical compilation to chronicle their resistance against attempts by the local authorities to impose Lutheran reforms. This work is nowadays known as the Denkwürdigkeiten. Depending on their interpretation of its conception, scholars have described it either as a communal efffort of monastic resis- tance, or as a more autobiographical text reflecting the strategic struggles of the abbess Caritas with Lutheran interventions.156 The Nuremberg Denkwürdigkeiten are not the only witness of the con- frontation with early Protestantism. Comparable documents were com- piled elsewhere in the Low Countries, France, and the German lands, in cases where Clarissan monasteries faced intervention and even downright expulsion by Protestant forces. A good example is the diary-chronicle compiled by the Poor Clare Jeanne of Jussie, which describes the exodus of the Poor Clares of Geneva in the 1530s in a highly dramatic style. According to this text, the troubles of the Geneva Clarissan monastery started with the Calvinist preaching of Guillaume Farel, Antoine Fromient and in the 1520s. By 1529, the nuns were forbidden to ring their bells to announce the liturgical hours. Soon thereafter, Catholic religious services were completely outlawed, leading up to the fijinal forced dismantlement and destruction of the monastery in 1534.157 There was signifijicant overlap between the late medieval convent chron- icle and the genre of hagiography. It is certainly no coincidence that an upswing in historiographical writing went hand in hand with, or rather was partly propelled by, a hagiographical engagement. Within French Colettine circles, nuns from the fijirst and second generation were keen to gather information on their charismatic founder Colette of Corbie, to

156 Grafe, Caritas Pirckheimer: Sixteenth Century Chronicler; Strasser, ‘Brides of Christ, Daughters of Men: Nuremberg Poor Clares in Defense of Their Identity (1524–1529)’, 193– 200; Knackmuß, ‘Die Äbtissin und das schwarze Schaf’, 93–160; Lane, “Not for Time but for Eternity’, 255fff.; Schlotheuber, ‘Humanistisches Wissen und geistliches Leben. Caritas Pirckheimer und die Geschichtsschreibung im Nürnberger Klarissenkonvent’, 89–118. 157 Jeanne’s text is now kept in the University Library of Geneva. It was edited in a reworked polemical version at the beginning of the seventeenth century by a Capuchin friar and confessor of the Annecy Poor Clares: Le Levain du calvinisme ou commencement de l’hérésie de Genève. This edition was re-issued in the nineteenth century. Parts of the text can also be found in Les Clarisses de Genève-Annecy et les protestants d’après la relation de l’abbesse Jeanne de Jussie, 15–118. A scholarly edition on the basis of the autograph manu- script is Jeanne de Jussie, Kleine Chronik, ed. Feld. For a critical assessment of this edition, see: Nicollier, ‘Jeanne de Jussie, Petite Chronique’, 761–765. Another edition with transla- tion has appeared as Jeanne de Jussie, The Short Chronicle, ed. & trans. Klaus. See also Feld, ‘Eine Klarisse als Augenzeugin der Genfer Reformation’, 73–90; Solfaroli Camillocci, ‘Ginevra, la riforma e suor Jeanne de Jussie’, 275–296. forms of literary and artistic expression 331 write hagiographical texts that could complement or vie with the ‘offfijicial’ texts written by male spiritual counselors, with far more attention to daily life and signifijicant anecdotes than can be found in the more program- matic vitae written by Colette’s offfijicial biographers. The Colettine text par excellence in this context is the saint’s life created by Perrine of La Roche, one of Colette’s former companions. She testifijied during Colette’s fijirst canonization process, and between 1471 and 1477 wrote her own biography of the saint, fijilled with personal reminiscences.158 Unlike the Colettine world, which started out as a rather centralized phenomenon, in which the authority and charisma of Colette was very pervasive, the more regionally organized Observant reforms in Italy, which spread from a variety of centers, produced a more diversifijied hagiographi- cal corpus around a number of important fijigures. Beyond that, a signifiji- cant number of Observant Poor Clares received biographical attention in the abovementioned convent chronicles, such as the Ricordanze del mon- astero di Santa Lucia. A major focus for Italian Observant nuns was the life of Clare of Assisi, as part and parcel of the appropriation mechanisms concerning Clare that we have also encountered in the interpretative encounter with the rule and Clare’s Testament. In that context, I have already pointed to the Legenda Sanctae Clarae Virginis by Battista Alfani. Throughout the second half of the fijifteenth century, Italian Observant Poor Clares produced ver- nacular translations of Clare’s offfijicial Latin Vita, complementing them with additional texts, which highlighted elements of Clare’s life that could be used to support the spiritual agenda of the Observant world. Specifijic large-scale hagiographical ventures were devoted to important Observant Clarissan abbesses, such as Eustochia Calafato. Earlier I men- tioned the correspondence between Cecilia Coppoli of Perugia and Iacopa Pollicino over the necessity to collect all the materials on Eustochia’s life and death. After Iacopa had fijinished a fijirst draft of Eustochia’svita , she included revisions by her fellow nuns Girolama Vaccari and Cecilia Ansalone (an indication to what extent writing could be a communal undertaking), before she sent her fijinalized text to Cecilia Coppoli shortly before 1489. The book combines information from the letters of eyewit- nesses, the writings of the deceased abbess (parts of which were included ad litteram in the text), and additional memoirs about her by women who

158 Perrine’s text can be found in Les vies de S.te Colette Boylet de Corbie, ed. D’Alençon. See also Roest, ‘A Textual Community in the Making’, 163–180. 332 chapter six had known her personally, into a dialogue format.159 In contrast with the stylized vitae written for canonization purposes, Iacopa’s life of Eustochia is an account of the daily life and spiritual actions of the abbess and her colleagues at the Messina monastery, and dwells on their mutual support in spiritual formation (not unlike the non-offfijicial vitae written about Colette of Corbie in fijifteenth-century France). A very interesting specimen of this kind of literature is the Specchio di illuminazione produced in various stages by Illuminata Bembo (d. 1496), the life-long friend of Caterina Vigri. Illuminata, a woman of Venetian ori- gin, had entered the order of Poor Clares at Ferrara between 1430 and 1432. She was recognized as so brilliant, lively and educated, that her novice mistress at Ferrara for a while doubted the sincerity of her religious voca- tion.160 Illuminata followed Caterina Vigri when the latter established the Corpus Domini monastery at Bologna by 1456. After Caterina’s death, Illuminata followed in her footsteps as a community leader. She was abbess for three terms and like other Observant abbesses combined her leadership role with the production of normative religious texts. The most important of these is the Specchio d’illuminazione (written between 1463 and 1469), the autograph of which can still be found in the library of the Corpus Christi monastery. Illuminata initially composed her Specchio to celebrate the life and death of Caterina Vigri. The work started out as no more than a spiritual letter describing the death of Caterina in 1463, which the new abbess of Corpus Domini sent to poor Clares in other monasteries. Subsequently Illuminata developed it into a hagiographical account, as can be surmised from a manuscript witness from Brussels.161 Eventually, she transformed it into a spiritual treatise addressed to a wider public of Italian Observant Poor Clares, nowadays known as the Specchio d’illuminazione.162

159 The original Libretto containing the life of the beatifijied Eustochia Calafato does no longer exist. Yet two copies have survived, one by Felicità of Perugia, dating from 1510 (Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale MS 1108), and one copy from July 1493 that probably had its origins in Foligno (Ariostea di Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale MS II/199). See: Pispisa, ‘Calafato, Eustochia (al secolo Ismaralda), beata’, 402–403. 160 Vita della Venerabile Sr. Illuminata Bembo Monaca di santa Chiara, in: Mazzara, Leggendario francescano IX, 434–435. 161 Ortroy, ‘Une vie italienne de sainte Catherine de Bologne’, 386–416. 162 It was printed in 1679 in the Posizione written at the occasion of the canonization of Caterina. Since then, it has been printed and edited several times, most recently as Illuminata Bembo, Specchio di illuminazione, ed. Mostaccio. The work contains a Proemio and nine chapters: 1.) Hora apriamo le orechie de lo intelecto et vediamo lo suo amore essere stato solo in Dio e ponerelomo per lo primo capitolo; 2.) Quanto questa beata e felicissima spoxa de Ihesu Christo amava lo proximo e maxime le loro anime. Capitolo forms of literary and artistic expression 333

In this fijinal version, in which Illuminata presents herself clearly as the text’s author,163 the teachings and sayings of Caterina are related in a form of direct speech; the reader is transformed into a pupil who receives direct instruction from the magistra, by engaging in a form of sacred conversa- tion as it were. Episodes and experiences from the life of Caterina are interpreted with reference to a spiritual reading of Vigri’s own teachings, notably those in the Sette Armi. Thus the work became a real mirror of Caterina’s example of virtue and holiness and of her role as a teacher within a monastic setting, emphasizing Caterina’s instructions about the love of God, the importance of charity, the qualities of humility and obedi- ence, the proper devotion in liturgical matters, as well as more specifijic exercises that she developed to reach higher levels of mystical ascent. Chapter six of the Specchio contains a veritable treatise on prayer, building on instructions found in Caterina Vigri’s writings, and referring to the visions of Thomas of Canterbury and Francis of Assisi.164 The text also includes a number of Caterina’s Laude or religious poems.165 In some cases, vitae had the vindication of a controversial fijigure as their clear objective. A case in point is the Magdalenen-Buch. The original ver- sion of this text, a defense and hagiographical eulogy of Magdalena Beutler (Magdalena of Freiburg, 1407–1458), known for her mystical Pater Noster explanation and mysterious ‘disappearances’,166 might have been written secondo; 3.) Et qui sta attenta e vederai alta e nobile humilità de desprecio profundo in sesu feminile. Capitulo terço; 4.) Della sua notabile e perseverante obedientia. Capitulo quarto; 5.) Quanto che frequentava divotamente lo divino offfijicio. Capitulo quinto; 6.) Cum quanta asseduità se dava alla oratione. Capitulo sexto; 7.) Como che per permissione div- ina fu ellecta abadessa del sacro monasterio du Bologna. Capitulo VII; 8.) Della devotissima morte e fijine de questa beata madre. Capitulo VIII; 9.) Come che la beata Katerina fu cavata della sepultura in capo de giorni XVIII. Capitulo IX. See also Bartoli, ‘La costruzione della memoria di Caterina’, 195–209. 163 ‘Ego soror Illuminata de Bembis de Venetia serva Dei indigna composui hunc librum pro veritate pura, pro veneranda Katerina matre nostra et pro contemplatione mea.’ Specchio di illuminazione, ed. Mostaccio, 108. 164 Caterina’s Sete conditione che se rechiede a degnamente prepararse alla oratione (which can be found in Caterina of Bologna, Laudi, trattati e lettere, ed. Serventi) were reworked by Illuminata in a passage entitled Cum quanta asseduità se dava alla oratione. Capitulo sexto, in: Specchio di illuminazione, ed. Mostaccio, 33–52. 165 Seen in total, her biographical eulogy on Caterina ‘…nella sua totalità fijinisce per presentarsi come un manuale di vita devota per religiose, capace di soddisfare, proprio grazie alla sua ricchezza, le dotte monache di santa Chiara di fijine Quattrocento.’S pecchio di illuminazione, ed. Mostaccio, Introduzione, xxvii. See also: Delcorno, ‘Note su biografía, agiografía e autoagiografía’ I, 42–66. 166 See: Greenspan, Erklärung des Vaterunsers, 105–298. Greenspan also ascribes to Magdalena Die goldene Litanei and several other pieces that Dinzelbacher & Ruh, ‘Magdalena von Freiburg’, 1118–1120 do not want to attribute to her. For very negative ver- dicts on Magdalena, see o.a. Schleussner, ‘Magdalena von Freiburg. Eine pseudomystische 334 chapter six by the contemporary nun Elisabeth Vögtlin. Although the original version of this text does not survive, two diffferent elaborations still exist, one in a manuscript copy from 1491, and the other from 1656/57.167 The 1491 copy suggests to modern readers that Magdalena used the power of para-mystical events to gain influence over others, and imple- ment a program of reforms. In 1429 Magdalena vanished miraculously for three days. During her absence, a blood-written letter by her suddenly appeared out of nowhere, telling the nuns that she was a prisoner of God, and urging them to adopt voluntary poverty. On the third day, Magdalena was found at matins before the altar, appearing dead. She only revived from her trance three hours later. She told her fellow nuns that deceased community members sufffered punishment for their lack of poverty. With such divine ‘backing’, Magdalena was able to enforce reforms. In 1431, Magdalena even prophesized her own death. Somehow, her reputation survived her failure to die on the announced day, even though the Observant Dominican Johannes Nider judged her to be the victim of self-deception.168 Both the offfijicial vitae devoted to fijigures such as Clare and Colette, and the hagiographical works and spiritual eulogies produced by Observant Poor Clares such as Illuminata Bembo’s text mentioned above, place a lot of emphasis on the Clarissan life of prayer. Elements of this are also visible in the saint’s life of Louise of Savoy (d. 1503), written by Catherine of Saulx, one of her former ladies of honor. Catherine had followed her mistress into the Poor Clare monastery at Orbe, and compiled a record of Louise’s religious deeds and virtues in 1503. Along with Louise’s religious virtues, Catherine also emphasized Louise’s submission to her dynastic duties, which forced her to marry Hugues de Châlons. Only after the death of her (rather pious) husband was she able to fulfijill her own wishes and join the strict Observant house of Orbe, taking several women from her retinue of ladies of honor with her.169

Erscheinung’, 201. See also: Backes, ‘Zur literarischen Genese frauenmystischer Viten und Visionstexte’, 251fff. 167 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 223–228. 168 The 1491 copy of the Magdalenen-buch, produced by the Cistercian Margarethe Alden can be found in Mainz, Stadbibliothek Cod II 16. The 1656/57 version is to be found in Freiburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS 185. 169 Catherine of Saulx, Vie de tres Haulte, tres puissante et tres Illustre dame, madame Loyse de Savoye, ed. Fick; Broomhall, Women and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France, 54–55. forms of literary and artistic expression 335

Prayer Texts and Devotional Poetry

The attention to prayer in hagiographical texts reflects the fundamental importance in the Clarissan world attached to the life of liturgical and per- sonal prayer, both for the sanctifijication of the self and for intercessory purposes. In many Damianite and subsequent Poor Clare communities, the nuns spent many hours in prayer and meditation, focusing on the mystery of Christ’s incarnation and Christ’s work of redemption through sufffering, as well as on the suffferings and special graces received by the Virgin Mary in particular. House constitutions and library inventories of Observant poor Clare houses (like their Colettine counterparts) provide an inkling of the centrality of the breviary and related texts in this domain. Nuns (such as Caterina Vigri) copied breviaries for their own use, and used such copying activities as a starting point for prayer-like spiritual reflections.170 The production of breviaries was complemented by a wealth of addi- tional prayer texts, meditative pieces and religious poetry with highly devotional contents. A large number of these texts are anonymous compi- lations, which combine standard prayers and short meditative pieces taken from existing authorities (Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, Ubertino of Casale, Clare of Assisi etc.) with more personal prayers, meditations and religious poems produced by the women themselves. A thorough study of such Clarissan compilations is still wanting, and would necessarily have to start with a thorough inven- tory of surviving convolute manuscripts from Poor Clare monasteries. Only in a minority of cases can we assign authorship, normally for more deliberately composed texts by authors known for a variety of other works, like Das Gebetbuch of Caritas Pirckheimer,171 or those with specifijic poetic literary qualities that made them stand out. The latter is the case with the Latin and Italian prayers and devotional poems produced by Girolama Battista of Montefeltro,172 and the deliberately more archaizing poetic works of the omnipresent Caterina Vigri and her successors in Bologna.

170 Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 160–161. She refers to the constitutions prepared for the Monteluce monastery after its reform in 1448 and to the late fijifteenth-century statutes for San Guglielmo in Ferrara. She also provides evidence for prayer routines in the context of menial tasks at San Cosimato in Rome. 171 Deichstetter, Aus dem Gebetbuch der Äbtissin Caritas Pirckheimer; Das Gebetbuch der Caritas Pirckheimer, ed. Pfanner. 172 Battista, the daughter of Antonio of Montefeltro (count of Urbino) had received a humanist education and married Galeazzo Malatesta (lord of Pesaro). After the death of 336 chapter six

A signifijicant part of Caterina Vigri’s poetic legacy is gathered in a Laudario, which contains twelve main pieces, divided between poetic prayers for the main liturgical feasts and specifijic poems in honor of the Virgin and saints such as Francis, Clare and Bernardino of Siena.173 Both in their subject matter and in their stylistic use of the lauda-ballade form, these texts allude in more than one way to the Franciscan tradition of reli- gious poetry (recalling Jacopone of Todi and Ugo Panziera).174 As a meditative poet, Caterina had a number of followers and succes- sors in the Bologna house. These women transcribed Caterina’s own Laude, together with other devotional poems and prayers. Not all of these texts are equally impressive, and to some extent, many simply owed much of their success to the function they performed in the lived religious life of the community.175 Nevertheless, various texts composed by the educated Illuminata Bembo and Anna Morandi of Ravenna are of outstanding qual- ity, and at times made it to the printing press in the early sixteenth century.176 When speaking of poetic forms of religious expression, it is also worth- while to recall the emblematic poetry on birds and fijish, through which abbess Ursula Haider and other nuns from the Villingen Bicken monastery depicted aspects of religious virtue, and connected them to the specifijic devotional qualities of individual nuns in the Bicken community in the her husband, she entered the Poor Clares at Santa Lucia di Foligno (1447), taking the name Girolama. She died within a year (1448). Both before and after her entrance into the order, she engaged in literary activities. She is fijirst and foremost known for her Latin and Italian prayers and poems (Rime & Laude), as well as letters to her relative Paola Malatesta of Mantua. Battista of Montefeltro’s Italian poetical oeuvre has received various partial edi- tions, none of them critical: Laude ed altre rime spirituali di Madonna Battista Malatesta, ed Zambrini; Vanzolini, ‘Tre sonetti di Battista da Montefeltro e due di Malatesta Malatesti Signore di Pesaro suocero di lei’, 242–248; Degli Abbati Olivieri Giordani, Notizie di Battista di Montefeltro moglie di Galeazzo Malatesta; Fattori, ‘Rime inedite di Battista da Montefeltro’, 337–351. The study of Fattori gives more general information on her literary oeuvre, which included letters, laude, prayers, sonnets and sermons. Some of these texts can be found in MSS Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria 1739 f. 207; Biblioteca Magliabechiana VII, 3 f. 1009; Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat.Lat. 3212; Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Chigi L,IV f. 131. Cf. Dalarun & Zinelli, ‘Poésie et théologie à Santa Lucia de Foligno’, 35fff., which ends with an analysis and edition of the Laude devota delli dolori mentali del Signiore (inc: O mediator verace). 173 See: Caterina Vigri, Laudi, trattati e lettere, ed. Serventi, 3–29. 174 See the analysis of Serventi, ‘Le laude di Caterina Vigri’, 79–90, and Sberlati, ‘Tradizione medievale e cultura umanistica in Caterina Vigri’, 91–114. 175 Zarri, ‘Écrits inédits’, 223 & idem, ‘La ‘bottega’ del Corpus Domini’, 30–31. 176 Graziosi, ‘Poesia nei conventi femminili: Qualche reperto e un testo esemplare’, 47–72. A collection of poems by Bolognese nuns was published in the sixteenth-century: Devotissime compositioni rhythmice e parlamenti a Iesù Christo nostro redentore de una Religiosa del ordine de S. Clara de osservantia, ed. Hieronimo di Benedetti. forms of literary and artistic expression 337 closing decades of the fijifteenth century.177 The poems or devotional songs gathered and possibly partly composed by a nun from the Clarissan mon- astery of Pfullingen probably date from roughly the same period.178

Works of Passion Meditation

Many of the prayers and religious poems within Clarissan Observant cir- cles centered on Christ’s passion, or on the sorrows of the Virgin Mary, reworking well-known elements from the late medieval passion devotion tradition, notably those put forward in the early fourteenth-century Meditationes Vitae Christi mentioned earlier in this chapter (which might have to be seen as a Clarissan production from the outset). Camilla Battista Varani’s reflections on the mental anguish of Jesus in the context of his passion, known as the Dolori mentali di Gesù nella sua Passione (1488) stands out among texts produced by Poor Clares at the end of the Middle Ages.179 Camilla produced this extraordinary collection of ‘mental sor- rows’ at the request of her fellow nun Pacifijica of Urbino, and shaped them as long conversations between Christ and an unnamed nun at her Santa Chiara monastery.180 Some important smaller works, such as the Rosarium Metricum de Mysteriis Passionis Christi Domini et de Vita B. Marie Virginis, which some ascribe to Caterina Vigri,181 and the surviving fragments of a spiritual

177 A collection of these poems was sent as a gift to the Dominican house of St. Katharina at St. Gall. See: MS St. Gall Stiftsbibliothek cod. 1919 fff. 304v-316r. 178 These texst, with titles as Ein geistlicher Meige, Ein geistlich Ernte, Ein geistlicher Herbst, Von einem süssen Most, Ein geistliche Winachten, Ein Winacht Lied, Vom näwen Jar, Ein geistlich Oster-Flädi etc., survive in a paper quarto manuscript of 177 folia in the Landesbibliothek Stuttgart. They are described in Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 213–216. 179 She dedicated the work to her spiritual counselor Pietro of Mogliano. Camilla later commemorated Pietro with a special vita-like treatise on his last days and death which has recently been edited separately (Battista da Varano, Il felice transito del beato Pietro da Mogliano, ed. Gattucci). There are several more or less complete opera omnia editions of her works that include her Dolori mentali di Gesù. See: Le opere spirituali della b. Battista Varani, ed. Santoni; Battista da Varano, Opere Spirituali, ed. Boccanera. This latter edition contains for instance La vita spirituale/Vita Spiritualis, Ricordi di Gesù, I dolori mentali di Gesù nella sua passione, Del felice transito del B. Pietro da Mogliano, Memoria del monaco olivetano, Istruzioni al discepolo, Trattato della purità del cuore, Considerazioni sulla Passione (spurious?), Lettere, and the lauda Quando serà che possa contemplare (spuri- ous?). Cf. also La purità di cuore, ed. Cremaschi. An English translation of the Trattato dei dolori mentali appeared as: The Mental Sorrows of Jesus Christ, trans. Berrigan. 180 Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, 118. 181 Nuñez, ‘Gli Scritti di Santa Caterina da Bologna’, 41–71 denies the ascription. More positive in this regard is Zarri, ‘Écrits inédits de Catherine de Bologne’, 223–224, who refers 338 chapter six libretto by Eustochia Calafato were within the same tradition. Remnants of Calafato’s text can be found within the hagiographical texts compiled by her fellow nuns between 1487 and 1490. In its original form, it com- prised a substantial Libro de la Passione and a Monte de la orazione (a Christocentric prayer guide for spiritual life of nuns).182 Passion devotion treatises were also produced outside Italy. One such text was apparently written around 1460 by Margaretha of Kentzingen, a Poor Clare from Alspach, but it is unclear whether this text survived.183 The most impressive of these texts stems from the Iberian Peninsula, namely the massive Vita Christi, written in a refijined and courtly Catalan vernacular by the abbess Isabel or Elionor Manuel of Villena (1430–1490). It was published at the request of Queen Isabella of Castile by Isabel of Villena’s successor, the abbess Aldonça of Montsoriu.184 The Vita Christi contains 291 chapters in its surviving form, and is based on a wide range of sources, revealing the erudition of its author.185 It deals in general with the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary, emphasizing spe- cifijic themes in the process. Isabel developed in particular the theme of man’s frailty and his dependence upon the work of reparation. Not sur- prisingly, the text focuses on the signifijicance of Christ’s passion and his insurmountable sufffering for mankind, and dwells at length on the mean- ing of the Eucharist, and on the role of Mary as co-sufffering mother of Christ and as loving intercessor for mankind. This was all consistent with established tradition. However, Isabel put an extraordinary emphasis on the Virgin Mary as the authoritative informant of, and bedrock support for the apostles, due

the reader to the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile di Bologna, Archivio Beata Caterina, car- ton 28, Lode spirituale e Regole di San Gerolamo, Libro 6, no.1 f. 18 & carton 25, Devozioni, lodi e altre diverse cose spirituali, Libro 3, no. 1 fff. 67–68v. For a modern translation, see: Rosarium, trans. Sgarbi. 182 Il libro della Passione, ed. Terrizzi; Costanza, ‘Ricerca bibliografijica sulla vita di Eustochia Calafato’, 157–174. 183 See Herrgot, ‘Necrologium von Alspach’, 62. 184 The fijirst printed edition of the Vita Christi appeared in 1497. Since then, it was regu- larly reprinted in a variety of versions. The standard critical editions are from 1916 and 1995: Vita Christi, ed. Barrera & Miquel i Planas; Vita Christi, ed. Hauf. For more information, see the bibliography. 185 The author had in any case access to the Meditationes Vitae Christi. She not only used the text ascribed to Giovanni of Calvoli, but also the Vita Christi written by Francesc Eiximenis and the Vita Christi of the Carthusian author Landulfus of Saxony. She added to such materials comments taken from the Church fathers and medieval theologians (including Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm, Hilarius of Poitiers, Isidore of Sevilla, and Bonaventura). At times, she included citations from pagan authors, such as Seneca, Horace, Juvenal and Ovid. forms of literary and artistic expression 339 to her special revelations and communications with the Divine. In Isabel of Villena’s Vita Christi, the Virgin is the immaculate master and ultimate doctor of divine love, as well as the perfect embodiment of both the active and contemplative life. Contrary to the opinion of male theologians that Mary had obtained the gifts of wisdom, miracle working and prophecy for contemplative purposes only, chapter CCLXXII of the Vita Christi implies that the Virgin organized veritable classes of theology for the apostles as a stand-in for her son. In the context of this portrayal, the Vita Christi highlights the dignity of woman. In connection with this, the work points to the greater charity and piety of women in general. It puts words in Christ’s mouth confijirming these superior female qualities, through which women surpass men in love, just as the Virgin surpassed the apostles in this matter.186 This theme is fleshed out with reference to other female biblical fijigures, such as Judith, Esther, Abigail, the two Annas, and in particular Mary Magdalene. It is the Magdalene who proves the most loyal disciple, not Peter and his male companions. She shows her steadfastness through her extraordinary vir- tue of ‘amór’ towards Christ, which reaches a climax in her encounter with Christ after his resurrection. In passages like these, the Vita Christi suggests that the curse laid on Eve was totally gone from the women surrounding Christ. Moreover, Eve herself seems redeemed through unmitigated penitence and humility.187

Teaching and Preaching

The nuns’ self-confijidence in matters of spiritual and outright theological reflection is shown in a number of substantial treatises, clearly meant for the teaching and the instruction of others. The most important author among the Italian Observant Poor Clares in this regard is, again, Caterina Vigri, who wrote as a relatively young woman the mystical I dodici giardini, and a work that has already been mentioned, namely the large Le armi

186 Isabel wrote the Vita Christi partly in response to the strongly mysoginist Llibre de les Dones of Jaume Roig. Isabel’s immediate audience consisted of her fellow nuns. Yet the author envisaged a wider public. See: Fuster, J. ‘Jaume Roig i sor Isabel de Villena’, 175–210. 187 In chapter 205, Eve addresses Mary as a devout penitent: ‘Io he llançades les mies fijilles en dolors e misèries: vós, senyora, les haveu tant exalçades e dignifijicades que per sola amor vostra seran per tot lo món estimades, que molta més honor les serà feta que als hòmens.’ This might go back to the Libre dels àngels of Francesc Eiximenis. See: Francesc Eiximenis, De sant Miquel Arcàngel, ed. Wittlin, 58, l. 3. 340 chapter six necessarie alla battaglia spirituale, a lengthy treatise for the instruction of novices and nuns in the Ferrara and Bologna monasteries. Caterina’s legacy is also an important window to another aspect of Observant Clarissan life, namely the production of sermon-like presenta- tions on a wide variety of religious and theological issues. Despite the offfiji- cial ban on female preaching, various remarks in convent chronicles, letters and hagiographical accounts indicate that it was not uncommon for Clarissan abbesses to address their nuns in a homiletic fashion, not unlike the great abbesses of the high medieval period. Clare of Assisi her- self was known to engage in these activities, and both the hagiographical and historiographical traditions mention interesting episodes, when Clare performed homiletic style lectures, or acted as a commentator-evaluator of lectures by important guest speakers.188 Verifijiable information on such activities is limited. The teachings them- selves rarely survive, and we must make do with stereotypical references in hagiographical sources, or try to extrapolate the homiletic message from other surviving works. The latter is for instance our only recourse to approach the preaching voice of Isabel of Villena. Whereas her massive Vita Christi survived, most of her sermons are lost. In the case of Caterina Vigri, information is more substantial. If we can rely on the testimony of Illuminata Bembo, Caterina gave sermons as the abbess of the Corpus Domini monastery during chapter meetings and other in-house gather- ings with a para-liturgical or celebratory character.189 Until recently, these sermons more or less escaped scholarly attention, as they did not survive in an identifijiable sermon manuscript, but found their way into theVita of Caterina written by the canon Paolo Casanova around 1605.190 That work did not see the printing press. Later hagiographers and biographers of the saint apparently did not bother to take a closer look at these passages in Casanova’s Vita. Most probably, the existence of these sermons did not fijit in with the post-tridentine depiction of female sainthood these later hagi- ographers were looking for. It was only in 1971 that the Franciscan scholar

188 For the wider context of these activities, see for instance Zarri, ‘Places and Gestures of Women’s Preaching in Quattro- and Cinquecento Italy,’ 177–197. 189 Zarri, ‘Écrits inédits’, 224fff. Shortly before her death, Caterina presented in this con- text a two-hour discourse on humility and self-knowledge. Cf. Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality, 248–249 (note 11). Aside from the work of Zarri, Caterina’s role as a religious educator has also been remarked upon by several studies mentioned in previous notes. 190 The text bears the title Vita, costumi, morte e miracoli della Beata Catherina da Bologna. forms of literary and artistic expression 341

Chiara Augusta Lainati acknowledged the importance of the sermons,191 and they were fijinally published in 1999.192 It is difffijicult to say whether Casanova’s transcription of the sermons (35 in all, covering some 171 pages in Casanova’s Vita manuscript) is faithful to Caterina’s teachings to her fellow nuns.193 Several of these sermons in their surviving form are full-blown theological treatises in their own right. Others are more straightforward invitations to prayer and the proper per- formance of the religious life. Yet others are carefully organized exposi- tions on issues raised by the nuns of Caterina’s own community (such as sermons 23 to 25, which answer the following pressing question by a nun in her community: ‘I would like to know from you, sister Caterina, how can we ever liberate, flee and remove ourselves from sin, if we are born in it?’ (Vorrei sapere da voi, suor Caterina, come mai possiamo liberarci, fuggire et allontanarci dal peccato, se in questo nasciamo?). The sermons do not leave much room for ecstatic experiences as a source for religious knowledge, maybe because of Caterina’s own caution- ary experiences. Instead, they advocate a more analytic style of theologi- cal thinking, and privilege the scholarly methods of biblical exegesis, combining the standard tools of literal and fijigurative exegetical reading with recourse to the authority of the Church Fathers and the major theo- logians of the via antiqua, not unlike the much-praised sermons found in the Opera Omnia editions of Bernardino of Siena and the other male ‘pillars of the Observance.’ Caterina’s sermons show a comparable didactic and highly structured narrative architecture, using numbers both as mnemonic instruments and as emblematic and signifijicant symbolic enti- ties to develop the homiletic argument.194 At times, no doubt to legitimize her exegetical undertakings, Caterina declared that God had given her special gifts of knowledge and wisdom, referring in such instances to visionary insights she had received with regard to the mysteries of the incarnation and the passion. Yet she devel- oped these references within an argumentative framework, and her description of visionary insights has more in common with the estab- lished scholastic concept of infused intuitive cognition (as a source of

191 Lainati, Temi spirituali, 122 & passim. 192 Caterina Vigri, I Sermoni, ed. Sgarbi. 193 At several occasions, the sermons included in Casanova’s text cohere in their spiri- tual and doctrinal teachings with remarks concerning these teachings made in the Specchio di illuminazione by Illuminata Bembo. 194 Cf. for instance sermons 1, 4, and 28, as well as the editor’s remarks in the introduc- tion: Caterina Vigri, I Sermoni, ed. Sgarbi, xviii, 5f., 52fff, 213fff. 342 chapter six secure knowledge) than with the all-consuming experience of ecstatic mysticism (about which she was skeptical). Some of Caterina’s sermons deal with important epistemological issues in relation to the notion of grace. Others attack conciliarist ideas. Caterina was particularly keen to teach her nuns that the knowledge of God could be lost through ignorance and negligence (ignorantia et negligentia), and her text presents the fijirst of these as the mother of all evils (ignorantia est mater omnium malorum). The pursuit of theological knowledge and the thorough cultivation of memory through reading and reflection are part of the salvifijic project. The road towards reconciliation with God includes the systematic training of the higher faculties of the soul, to thereby become worthy of God’s illumi- nating grace that leads to understanding. All this should, of course, be pre- pared with an adherence to virginity and a proper ascetic lifestyle, in order to overcome the distractions to the pursuit of learning.195 Within the setting of in-house chapter and refectory meetings it is important to consider the Ansprachen of Ursula Haider to the Clarissan nuns of the Bicken monastery at Villingen from the 1480s,196 as well as many of the learned expositions held by Caritas Pirckheimer at the Nuremberg monastery at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The case of Nuremberg is particularly interesting, in that we still have a consider- able number of the sermons preached there by Franciscan friars (such as Petrus Christiani, Johann Einzlinger, Stephan Fridolin, Heinrich Vigilis and Olivier Maillard). It could be revealing to compare the religious teach- ings of these friars - many of which have survived because they were tran- scribed by the nuns of the Nuremberg community – with the issues dealt with and the language used in Caritas’s own lectures.

Performances, Music and the Visual Arts

Convent chronicles and surviving artifacts indicate that Clarissan commu- nities also staged devotional productions at several times in the liturgical year, and engaged in collective imaginary ‘pilgrimages’ that used the topography of the monastery. The chronicle of the Bicken monastery of Villingen indicates that the nuns organized pageants and built parchment models of pilgrimage stations, so that the nuns could re-enact within their

195 Caterina Vigri, I Sermoni, ed. Sgarbi, xlviii: ‘L’uomo per Caterina no ha da afffijidarsi passivamente alla grazia di Dio. Deve piuttosto impegnarsi con tutte le forze come se tutto dipendesse da lui…’ 196 Loes, ‘Villingen, Klarissen’, 46–76. forms of literary and artistic expression 343 monastic enclosure the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They were motivated by the papal indulgences of 1489 and 1491 for visits to the seven churches of Rome and the holy places in Palestine. Through their re-enactment of the pilgrimage circuit within their own monastery, the nuns likewise hoped to earn an indulgence.197 Comparable information can be gathered from other monasteries.198 It was a small step from such stagings and devotional pageants towards forms of convent theatre. Nearly all evidence concerning such activities dates from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when vari- ous Poor Clares obtained a name for themselves as playwrights.199 For the later medieval period, however, the information remains limited to dis- persed utterances in convent chronicles, and it is nearly impossible to identify individual Clarissan nuns as playwrights or actors. Medieval Clarissan composers and visual artists are likewise hard to identify, although evidence concerning musical and artistic productions as such is more forthcoming. In Chapter Five, reference was made to musi- cal performances in the context of the liturgy. This could reach high levels of professionalism, and led nuns to compository initiatives. Partly on the wave of an increased interest in the works of female composers in general, the study of religious music created by nuns is now beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. With regard to the Poor Clares, studies have appeared on music production and its functions in various individual monasteries, such as Bressanone (Brixen), Alspach, Bologna, Bratislava (Preßburg), Stary Sacz, and Trnava (Tyrnau).200 Yet there seems ample room for additional research. Abbesses and nuns of important Clarissan monasteries took initiatives to adorn their churches and monasteries. In most cases, the available information situates the nuns as instigators of artistic commissions. Abbesses of important late medieval Clarissan houses, such as the Santa Maria di Monteluce monastery at Perugia, the Donna Regina monastery of Naples, and Santa Chiara Novella in Florence, instigated architectural and

197 The abbess Ursula Haider obtained such an indulgence from Pope Innocent VIII, thanks to the lobbying of the pontifff’s old classmate Conrad of Bondorfff. Juliana Ernst, Die Chronik des Bickenklosters, ed. Glatz, 65–85. 198 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 159–166. See also Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent: Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages. 199 See for instance Weaver, ‘Convent Comedy and the World: The Farces of Suor Annalena Odaldi (1572–1638)’, 182–192. 200 Mészárosova, ‘Klarissen und Musik’, 163–175; Sadgorski, Daniela, ‘Zum Musikinventar des Klarissenklosters in Brixen (Südtirol)’, 3–26; Curry, Fragments of Ars Antiqua Music at Stary Sacz, 83–240. 344 chapter six decorative projects, chose builders and artists, and channeled money and other gifts from lay benefactors to specifijic decorative programs both in the public part of the church and within the monastic enclosure. As the public part of the church was where the outside world needed to be impressed and instructed, where the monastery’s doctrinal and political allegiances were projected, and where memorial cults for benefactors found expres- sion and recruitment was encouraged, the art work commissioned for it was frequently much more expensive and glamorous than that for the use of nuns in the choir or the monastery. The artwork meant for the public part of the church was also less gendered to the female gaze, as it was meant to support stylistically and iconographically the activities of the offfijiciating priests.201 Moreover, this type of ‘public’ art could cater to local devotional interests, sometimes without overmuch emphasis on specifijic Franciscan and Clarissan themes. The Clarissan enclosure regulations, the limited budget for infra- monastic decoration, and the specifijic devotional wishes of the nuns implied that many nuns became themselves active as artists, whether as producers of the paintings and frescoes, or as book illuminators and craftswomen involved with other forms of visual embellishment.202 In the Clarissan scriptoria mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, copyists and book illustrators worked side by side.203 Although some Clarissan illu- minators and painters have been studied, including the Freiburg nun Sibilla of Bondorf (1483–1524), Dorotea Broccardi from the San Lino

201 Wood, ‘Breaking the silence: the poor Clares and the visual arts in fijifteenth-century Italy’, 262fff.; Caviness, ‘Anchoress, Abbess and Queen: Donors and Patrons or Intercessors and Matrons?’, 105–154; Thomas, Art and Piety, 7; Genovese, La Chiesa trecentesca, passim; Michalsky, Repräsentation und Memoria, passim; Jäggi, “Sy bettet och gewonlich vor únser frowen bild…’ Ueberlegungen zur Funktion von Kunstwerken in spätmittelal- terlichen Frauenklöstern’, 63–86; Jäggi, ‘Wie kam Kunst ins Kloster?: Überlegungen zu Produktion und Import von Werken der Bildenden Kunst in den Klarissen- und Dominikanerinnenklöstern der Teutonia’, 91–109. 202 For a fijirst orientation on this issue, see Hamburger,N uns as Artists; Idem, The Visual and the Visionary. See also Thomas, Art and Piety, 9fff. 203 Brett-Evans, ‘Sibilla von Bondorf-Ein Nachtrag’, 91–98; Zinke & Karasch, Verborgene Pracht: Mittelalterliche Buchkunst aus acht Jahrhunderten in Freiburger Sammlungen, 116– 119; Clara und Franciscus von Assisi: Eine spätmittelalterliche alemannische Legende der Magdalena Steimerin, ed. von Heusinger; Bruins, Chiara d’Assisi come ‘altera Maria’: Le min- iature della vita di Santa Chiara del manoscritto Tennenbach-4 di Karlsruhe; Bodemann, ‘Sibylla von Bondorf - Buchmalerin der Klarissen’, 115–118. In one of Sibilla’s illustrations (MS Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek Thennenbach 4, f. 157r), Clare is depicted with pen and scraper. She is gazing at the crucifijied Christ, who seems to speak, as if he is instructing her on the text (the rule?) she is writing. forms of literary and artistic expression 345 monastery in Volterra,204 and the ubiquitous Caterina Vigri,205 additional research on this topic is necessary. It might overcome the ingrained ver- dicts of previous generations of art historians, who tended to dismiss the nuns’ paintings and illuminations as ‘childish’, ‘naïve’ and ‘unskilled’ Nonnenmalereien, and who have ascribed accomplished works of convent art to publicly known male artists, ignoring the possible role of women, even when contextual evidence pointed the other way.206 The latter has hampered, for instance, a proper evaluation of the artistic prowess of the previously mentioned Clarissan book illuminator Loppa of Spiegel from Cologne. Ongoing research will help us to get a much more balanced overall pic- ture of the Clarissan involvement with music and the visual arts. As with the study of late medieval monastic handicrafts, the best results will be obtained when art historians and codicologists, music historians, liturgy specialists and scholars of religious archaeology and architecture work together. After all, works and artifacts, now frequently found in a ‘dismem- bered’ state in archival depots, or manuscript libraries, reveal their quality and nature only when issues of function, location and intended audience within or beyond the monastic enclosure are taken into account.

204 Bianchi, ‘La gloria della serafijica Chiara e del suo ordine’, 107–113. 205 Cf. Biacchi della Lega, ‘S. Caterina da Bologna Scrittrice, Miniatrice e Pittrice’, 41–70; Arthur, ‘Il breviario di santa Caterina da Bologna e l’‘arte povera’ clarissa’, 93–122; Biancini, ‘La leggenda di un’artista monaca: Caterina Vigri’, 203–219. 206 Gerchow & Marti, “Nuns’ ‘work’, ‘Caretaker Institutions’, and ‘Women’s Movements’; Some Thoughts About a Modern Historiography of Medieval Monasticism’, 133fff.

EPILOGUE

The Sixteenth Century: A Century of Crisis?

The formal re-organization and division of the Franciscan order in 1517 by Pope Leo X offfijicially made the friars of the regular Observance the domi- nant branch. This meant that they chose the Franciscan minister general, and that they became responsible for the cura monialium of all Observant communities of Poor Clares and the Observant tertiary houses aligned with the order. This also meant that the friars of the regular Observance now had a say over the Colettines and comparable Observantist female groups that had wished to remain under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan Conventuals. The latter only retained (at least temporarily) a say over a number of non-reformed houses of (Urbanist) Poor Clares and Minoresses.1 In the very same year that the pope issued his reform decrees regarding the Franciscan order, the Augustinian canon issued his the- ses against the power and efffijicacy of indulgences. Luther’s action was partly a reaction to the sale of papal indulgences in the German lands by the Dominican Johann Tetzel to fijinance the new church of St. Peter in Rome. Once Luther’s theses had been translated and published, the alter- cations over indulgences quickly escalated into a huge controversy, lead- ing to Luther’s public denunciation of the papacy, his excommunication on 3 January 1521, and his being declared a heretic at the Diet of Worms, which was presided over by Emperor Charles V of Habsburg. By then, Luther and his supporters had already begun to receive the support of various German secular rulers, including Frederick III, the prince elector of Saxony. These secular rulers saw the controversy as an opportunity to express their autonomy from Habsburg imperial power or perceived ecclesiastical interference in matters of state governance. Luther and other early reformatory or ‘Protestant’ authors catered to their wishes by stating in writing that secular rulers were responsible for the purity of Christian faith in their realm and could, if necessary, usurp the authority of bishops to ensure religious reform. Soon, German

1 Wadding, Annales Minorum XVI, an. 1517, 53 (n. 23) & 60 (n. 30). Individual Colettine monasteries almost immediately appealed to the pope to escape direct Observant over- sight. It would seem that at least some of them, such as the important Colettine monastery in Ghent, did indeed retain some measure of autonomy. 348 epilogue principalities, as well as various independent imperial cities, began to actively support the reformation programs proposed by Luther and his followers, as well as those of far more radical anti-clerical groups. By the early 1520s, it had become apparent that the Lutheran reform program questioned the validity of monastic vows and the intrinsic value of the monastic life. These issues also became important elements in the doctrines of the reformatory groups around Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Calvin and others. The theological disqualifijication of monastic vows and the concomitant denial of the validity of clerical and monastic celibacy were used as arguments both to pressure monks and nuns to leave the monastery, and to forcefully close monastic houses in the regions where these reformatory or Protestant doctrines were condoned or embraced by the local secular authorities. These developments had a huge impact on Clarissan houses in the German lands and Scandinavia. Many Poor Clare communities in Saxony, Prussia and the Rhineland area were either forced to close down com- pletely, or were no longer allowed to accept new novices, which in the long term had the same result. The latter happened for instance in Nuremberg, in the wake of the famous showdown between the Nuremberg city council and the Clarissan abbess Caritas Pirckheimer in and after 1524.2 A major exception proved to be the Clarissan monastery in Heilbronn. After the Lutheran takeover of the town, the monastery survived against all odds until the nineteenth century.3 In Scandinavia, began to take hold as early as 1523. Sweden and Denmark issued laws that brought all religious houses and their pos- sessions under control of the crown. Between 1527 and 1537, both the Clarissan monastery of Stockholm (established in 1289), and the recently created Observant monasteries of Copenhagen and Odense were forced to close down. Only the Roskilde monastery survived until around 1560, when its lands and other possessions were handed over to the budding university and the monastery itself was destroyed.4

2 For a survey of the German monasteries forced to close down see Schindling, ‘Franziskaner und Klarissen in süddeutschen Reichsstädten im Zeitalter der Reformation’, 95–111; Wiesner, Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany, passim; Frank, ‘Klarissen (OSCL)’, 125–137. 3 Schindling, ‘Franziskaner und Klarissen in süddeutschen Reichsstädten im Zeitalter der Reformation’, 107. 4 Rasmussen, ‘Die Klara-Schwestern im Norden Europas’, 63–68; Rasmussen, Die Franziskaner in den nordischen Ländern, 116–117. The Copenhagen monastery had been founded in 1497, and the Odense house had just been created between 1519 and 1522. Both houses owed their existence to the initiative of Queen Christina of Saxony. epilogue 349

Comparable developments took place in German speaking Swiss can- tons, where the Protestant initiatives of Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Calvin began to take hold from 1523 onwards, leading for instance to the demise of the two Clarissan monasteries in Basel, Kloster Paradies near Schafffhausen and the famous Königsfelden monastery. Further to the West, in the French speaking Swiss areas, Protestant attacks on monaster- ies in and after the 1530s met with more resistance. But there too, Clarissan houses in Vevey, Orbe and Geneva were eventually forced to close or to relocate (for instance towards Poligny, Evian and Annecy).5 The forced evacuation of the Geneva Poor Clares in 1535 gave rise to the famous expul- sion narrative of Jeanne of Jussie, thanks to which we are relatively well informed about this particular exodus (see Chapter Six). By the early 1530s, reformatory turmoil of a diffferent kind touched reli- gious life in England, when King Henry VIII broke with the papacy over his desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Beyond forcing the English ecclesi- astical hierarchy to acknowledge the king as the protector and overlord of the English Church, king and parliament pushed through the so-called Supremacy Act in 1534, which offfijicially stated that the king was the high- est authority on earth and the leader of the Church in England. This was followed in 1536 and 1539 with two Suppression Acts. Together, the Supremacy Act and the Suppression Acts declared all monasteries and religious houses to be goods of the crown, to be used according to the king’s wishes. Between 1536 and 1541, the monasteries, priories and friaries in England, Ireland and Wales were disbanded on a large scale. These properties were used in part to create a landed gentry that was obedient to the crown. Other parts were used to strengthen the crown’s fijinancial posi- tion, and to bolster the patrimony of the universities. The suppression and dissolution of monasteries also afffected the houses of Minoresses of Bruisyard (Sufffolk), Denney (Cambridgeshire), and Aldgate (London). The abbesses and individual choir nuns from these disbanded monasteries received pensions for life, but it is not known what happened to the lay sisters, servants and other dependents. The former abbess of Denney, Elisabeth Throckmorton, took refuge with other nuns in a house owned by her family at Coughton Court, where they tried to keep up religious obser- vances and continued to wear the habit.6

5 For details, see Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua tenda, 522–524; Backus, ‘Les clarisses de la rue Verdaine’, 20–39. 6 Cf. Bourdillon, The Order of Minoresses in England, 82–83. 350 epilogue

During the second half of the sixteenth century, new rounds of confes- sional confrontation in parts of Germany, the Low Countries and France brought additional waves of violence against monastic houses as well as outright closures. In the Southern Low Countries Protestant agitation had a severe impact in the 1260s and 1270s. Several towns came under Protestant rule temporarily. As a result, monasteries were damaged, totally destroyed or closed down. Such mishaps afffected Clarissan houses in Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and Ypres. Yet after about 1585, the major towns in the Southern Low Countries had been brought back under Catholic Habsburg rule. In subsequent years, most Clarissan houses were able to rebuild, and to take in Catholic nuns who had fled from elsewhere. The situation was diffferent in the North. There, the Calvinist Protestant takeover proved to be permanent, causing a defijinitive demise of all the Poor Clare monasteries in what was to become the Dutch Republic, namely the monasteries of Brielle (1572), Veere (1572), Alkmaar (1572), Gouda (1573), Delft (1573), Clarencamp near Wamel (1574), Amsterdam (1578), Haarlem (1581), Den Bosch (1630/1650), and Boxtel (a prolonged demise that unfolded between 1648 and 1717).7 An apparent anomaly is the 1621 transformation of a tertiary community in Oldenzaal (in the Eastern province of Overijssel) into a new Clarissan foundation that fol- lowed Clare’s rule of 1253. Shortly thereafter, this seemingly flourishing house was forced to close down like the others between 1633 (when the acceptance of new novices was forbidden) and 1650. In that year, the mon- astery was bought for 2500 guilders from the remaining nuns by the so- called ‘knightly estate’ (ridderschap) of Overijssel. The women were transferred to Vreden and Haselünne in German Westphalia.8

7 For an overview, see Roest, ‘De Clarissen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden’, 62–67. See also: Strijp, ‘Van Veere naar St. Omer’, 172–178; Lampen, ‘Les Clarisses de Veere en exil’, 66–69; Lampen, ‘De clarissen van Alkmaar en Veere in het noodjaar 1572 en daarna’, 329– 341; Eeghen, ‘De drie clarissenkloosters van Amsterdam’, 33–43; Boom, ‘Clarecamp te Wamel. Een Gelders klooster van de Tweede Orde van St.-Franciscus (Clarissen), van ca. 1445 tot 1574’, 1–6; Kemperman, Van Boxtel naar Hoogstraten, van Hoogstraten naar Megen. Various nuns of the threatened monastery of Wamel lived between 1572 and 1592 in Nijmegen, before they retreated to the Cleves area. For that reason some scholars postulate the existence of a Clarissan monastery in Nijmegen near the end of the sixteenth century. 8 Bruna, ‘De Klarissen van Oldenzaal’, 349–350; Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 249–250. Once the boundaries between the emerging ‘Protestant’ Republic and the Spanish Low Countries more or less stabilized, additional Clarissan houses would appear in the South in the early seventeenth century, for instance in Roermond (1614) and Douai (1616). Roggen, De Clarissenorde in de Nederlanden, 243–248. epilogue 351

In France, forms of Lutheran and Calvinist agitation began to make their mark as early as the 1520s. Yet, notwithstanding sympathy for the Protestant cause among several members of the high nobility, during the reigns of François I and Henri II, the French authorities reacted violently. This made it difffijicult for Protestantism to establish itself in the French heartland, or to pose a more permanent threat to Catholic monastic life. It was only possible in the eastern and southern regions that bordered on Protestant centers such as Geneva. This town became a hub of Protestant activism that supported the cause of French Protestant preachers. Further to the South, Protestantism made some headway in the Dauphiné, leading to temporary Protestant take-overs of towns.9 Religious conflicts resurfaced with vigor fijirst around 1557 and then from the early 1560s onwards, after the death of King François II. These conflicts were intertwined with the political ambitions of Prince Louis of Condé and King Henri of Navarre, the attempts by Caterina de Medici to secure the unity of the French realm and the position of her royal sons (fijirst Charles IX and later Henri III), and the staunch anti-Protestant policies of the Guise faction. After nearly thirty years of protracted warfare, during which many regions and cities were alternately held by Catholic and Protestant forces, a new era of religious stability was reached when the former Protestant champion Henri of Navarre ascended to the throne as the Catholic King Henri IV in 1589, followed by the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The latter provided the French Protestants liberty of conscience, limited rights to celebrate their cult, and near legal equality with Catholic citizens. During the long and violent conflicts in France, many towns and regions came under the control of Protestant factions for shorter or longer peri- ods, at which time Catholic religious houses, including a fair number of Clarissan monasteries, were pillaged and destroyed. Millau was probably the fijirst Poor Clare community that felt the full brunt of the wars of reli- gion. The nuns were forced out of their monastery in 1561, and the monas- tery was more or less demolished. The same year saw the destruction of monasteries and the forced exodus of nuns from other cities, such as Nîmes, Montauban, and Montpellier. The Clarissan monasteries of Castres,

9 In 1555, the Protestant town authorities of Montélimar were disturbed by the teaching activities of a former Poor Clare, Marguerite Nivette. She ran a school for girls and she was rumored to engage in illegal preaching. The authorities later found ‘suspect’ literature in her house. Broomhall, Women and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France, 82 & Hemardinqueer, ‘Les Femmes dans la Réforme en Dauphiné’, 386. 352 epilogue

Bézier, Alençon (Normandy), Montbrison, Lectoure and the Annonciade monastery at Bourges shared a comparable fate in 1562.10 A temporary ceasefijire allowed the nuns of Castres to rebuild, but in 1567, the Calvinists once again gained power. This time a number of friars were killed. The Clarissan nuns were expelled and found refuge in Toulouse and Albi. A new wave of expulsion and destruction began in the 1570s. Between 1574 and 1580, the Poor Clare monasteries of Pamiers, Auterive, Le Pouget, Brive, Boisset and Cahors were pillaged and/or burned to the ground. Many houses that were not destroyed sufffered great fijinancial distress, such as the Clarissan monasteries of Aix, Saint Cyprien (Toulouse) and Bourg-en-Bresse. Nevertheless, it would seem that the destruction was hardly ever permanent. In most cases, the nuns were eventually able to return, even if it took a long time for their communities to recover (such as in the case of Cahors). In some cases, such as in Auterive and Aubenas, the monastic compound was destroyed to such an extent that a new monas- tery had to be created before the nuns could return in the early seven- teenth century.11 The destruction of monasteries and forced evacuations were also issues in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Some Poor Clare monasteries had already been under duress as a result of the Hussite wars of the early fijif- teenth century. These forced the closure of the famous Clarissan monas- tery of St. Agnes in Prague and the temporary evacuation of the monasteries of Bamberg and Hof. In Prague, the Dominicans took over the monastic buildings in 1556. It was only in the early seventeenth century that Poor Clares from Panensky Tynec, who were fleeing the violence of the Thirty Years War, regained possession of the Prague monastery. They remained there until the house was forced to close in the eighteenth century during the reign of Joseph II. The advancing armies of the Ottoman Turks, which already in the fijif- teenth century caused monasteries to be abandoned, forced the evacua- tion of the Poor Clare monastery of Bratislava (between 1526 and 1541). This monastery was re-occupied by nuns fleeing from Buda, which was

10 At Bourges, the Huguenot forces violated the grave of the order founder Jeanne of Valois, throwing her body and other relics in the river Cher. Broomhall, Women and Religion, 49. 11 For more information on the closure and the evacuation of Clarissan monasteries in France, see Serent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 149, 156; Auberger, ‘Le monastère Notre-Dame-De-Paradis ou Sainte-Claire de Montpellier’, 205, 208, 210; Dolan, Entre Tours et Clochers: les gens d’Église à Aix-en-Provence au XVIe siècle, 42fff.; Munier et al.,Claire en Provence, 69, 71f.; Broomhall, Women and Religion, 133–137. epilogue 353 taken by Ottoman forces in 1541. Prior to that, the Poor Clare monastery of Zara was abandoned during the siege of the city in 1531. Most of the nuns were sent to Venice for safety. Some nuns were able to return in 1540, but by 1570, the monastery had to be evacuated again as it was taken over to function as a garrison until c. 1590. In the Eastern Mediterranean, the Poor Clares had to abandon their monasteries in Nicosia and Famagusta on Cyprus, when the island came under Ottoman rule after 1571.12 In Moravia, the monasteries of Troppau (Opava) and Znojmo were closed when Protestant forces temporarily took over. The Lutheran infijil- tration of the city council of the Austrian town of Judenburg hampered the intake of novices. Elsewhere in Austria and Slovenia, such infijiltration apparently caused a serious decline in monastic vocations between the 1530s and the start of Catholic counter reformatory initiatives. In Zagreb, on the other hand, the fear of the growing influence of Protestantism induced the local bishop to invite Poor Clares from Bratislava to settle in order to provide a necessary counterweight through their example of exemplary Catholic piety.13 In many instances, the demise of their monasteries left nuns with few options: they could return to their families and embark on a secular life, which could include (voluntary or forced) marriage; they were sometimes given the opportunity to remain in the monastery or on the monastic grounds with a pension as non-enclosed celibate women, which some- times allowed them to live out their religious ideals in a semi-clandestine fashion. They could also depart and resettle elsewhere in a new or existing monastery. When towns or regions came under Protestant control, female monas- teries lost the Catholic chaplains responsible for their spiritual care almost immediately. Instead, the women were forced to listen to Protestant preachers who denounced the women’s monastic vocation as unsubstan- tiated by the Gospel and as inimical to the ‘natural’ role of good Christian women as spouses and mothers. Backed by secular authority, the preach- ers declared the rules of enclosure null and void, and encouraged novices and nuns to leave the monastery. They also urged families that had con- verted to Protestantism to take their daughters and nieces out of the mon- astery, with violence if need be, and secure a proper marriage for them.14

12 Moorman, Medieval Franciscan Houses, 570, 584, 632, 661; Bertalan, ‘Das Klarissenkloster von Obuda’, 164fff. 13 Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter, passim. 14 For an in-depth discussion of the Protestant condemnation of the ‘yoke’ of monasti- cism and the manner in which Protestant spokesman encouraged and pressured nuns to 354 epilogue

The speed and manner in which such ‘secularizations’ of monastic communities evolved difffered from place to place. In some towns, such as Strasbourg, the demise of monasteries could be quick. The Poor Clare monasteries of Roßmarkt and Auf dem Werth were sufffering verbal and other forms of abuse from Protestant agitators in the early 1520s. In 1524, the town council of Strasbourg accepted the Protestant faith. It proposed the nuns to leave their monastic enclosure and, if possible, to accept suit- able marriage partners. The council also offfered the women who agreed to leave the monastery a pension for life fijinanced by the confijiscated monas- tic possessions. The nuns gave in (as did the Franciscan friars in the same town) and the two Poor Clare monasteries closed in 1525.15 Elsewhere, the process was more protracted. After the exiled Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, who had converted to Lutheranism by 1523, regained control over his lands after the battle of Laufffen in 1534, all the cloisters in Württemberg were forbidden to accept novices. This afffected the Poor Clares of Pfullingen, whose monastic patrimony came under the management of a Lutheran procurator. The nuns lost their Franciscan priests and confessors, and had to listen to Lutheran preachers who belit- tled their way of life. The Catholic liturgy was forbidden, and the liturgical books, vestments and relics connected to it were taken away or destroyed. The abbess lost her authority over the nuns, the nuns were no longer allowed to wear their religious habit, and both the rule of silence and the enclosure regulations were discarded, so that Lutheran preachers and lay people could enter the compound at will. The nuns resisted. Therefore, in the 1540s, the duke ordered the majority of the nuns and lay sisters to leave. They moved to the abandoned Franciscan friary of Leonberg. In 1551, eighteen of the surviving nuns were given permission to return to Pfullingen, but they were not allowed to have Catholic services, and were continually beleaguered by Protestant preachers. The last nun (Anna Reischin) would have converted before she died in 1595. Thereafter the dukes of Württemberg confijiscated the remaining monastic possessions. During the Thirty Years’ War, in 1629, Emperor Ferdinand II restored these possessions to the nuns, enabling a new start for the monastery. The Peace

leave their monastery, see: Muschiol, “Ein jammervolles Schauspiel…’? Frauenklöster im Zeitalter der Reformation’, 95–114. 15 See: Baum, Magistrat und Reformation in Strasbourg bis 1529, 117fff; Vierling,Das Ringen um die letzten dem Katholizismus treuen Klöster Straßburgs, passim. It is interesting that the Dominican nuns of Strasbourg were more belligerent than the Poor Clares and continued to fijight for their survival for a signifijicant time period. epilogue 355 of Westphalia, however, allocated Pfullingen to Württemberg, and the monastery had to close for once and for all in 1649.16 As the Strasbourg example indicates, many towns tried to appease the nuns when their monasteries were closed both by offfering them pensions or other means of existence, and by organizing individual or communal housing. This could mean that former nuns continued to live near or even in the secularized monastic compound, albeit bereft of their community life and its liturgical and penitential structures. A good example of this can be found in Amsterdam, where the Poor Clare monastery and other monastic houses were closed after the so-called Altercation (Altercatie) of 26 May 1578. Although most nuns departed for Antwerp and (eventually) Malines (Mechelen), an unknown number of Poor Clares remained in Amsterdam, like many of their female colleagues from other suppressed monasteries. Provided with a town pension, several secularized Poor Clares continued to live in a part of the monastic complex, alongside women of another suppressed house, namely the Cell Sisters (Cellezusters), for whom the city had built a series of small single units on the compound of the partly dismantled Clarissan monastery.17 To its dismay, the town discovered that the Poor Clares remaining in the surviving monastic buildings became a focus point for clandestine Catholic worship. Town people went ‘to the Poor Clares, to retain their devotion, or to speak with the God-fearing virgins about divine matters…’ (te Clarissen, om haer devotie wat te houden, ofte meet die godtvruchtige maechden wat te spreken van godlike saken…).18 For this reason, the town evacuated all Poor Clares from the still existing monastic structures between 1589 and 1590. These buildings were later transformed into a workhouse for criminals (the Amsterdam Rasp house). The evacuees were given small one-person houses, partly on and partly to the south of the old monastic lands, adjacent to the units already built for the aforemen- tioned Cell Sisters. Nevertheless, this did not quell the role of these women in the ongoing survival of Catholicism. At the beginning of the seven- teenth century, clandestine Catholic missionaries working for the secret missio hollandica still encountered former Poor Clares in Amsterdam and other towns in Holland (such as Gouda and Haarlem), either living alone in or in small communities, and sometimes still wearing their habit.

16 Gatz, ‘Pfullingen’, 230fff.; Bacher, Klarissenkonvent Pfullingen, 26–35. 17 Eeghen, ‘De drie Clarissenkloosters van Amsterdam’, 38–43. 18 Levensbeschrijving van Jannetgen Dirks, cited from Eeghen, ‘De drie Clarissenkloosters van Amsterdam’, 33–34. 356 epilogue

In 1617, the last surviving Poor Clare from Amsterdam sent the documents she had guarded regarding the foundation and the religious life of her now-dismantled monastery to the Franciscan provincial minister in Brussels (in the Catholic South of the Low Countries).19 Particularly in Germany, female monasteries that traditionally fulfijilled a clear function in the matrimonial and inheritance policies of dominant local families were allowed to transform into non-enclosed or secular communities of celibate women, called Damenstifte. For instance, this was the fate of the Poor Clare monastery of Weißenfeld (of old a noble Hauskloster) and the Clarenberg monastery in Dortmund-Hörde. The lat- ter case is of particular interest, as it transformed by 1584 into a non- enclosed Damenstift with a mixed confessional signature, where Catholic and Protestant women from families of means lived in the same complex. The Clarenberg Damenstift survived until 1805 or 1811.20 In many instances, however, nuns were either forced to flee, or decided to evacuate and head for regions that remained under Catholic control. Such a decision could result from the aggression they experienced from Protestant troops and gangs of lay people recruited by fanatical Protestant preachers. When a monastery was completely pillaged, or burned to the ground, and the community faced serious harassment, there was not always a viable alternative.21 Their options also seem to have been depen- dent upon the leadership abilities of the abbess or other individual nuns. Such qualities could ensure that the community continued to speak and act with a single voice in its confrontation with Protestant leaders, local secular authorities and military commanders, and that individual novices and nuns could resist external pressure to renounce their vows and return to their families. The support of local people dismayed by events and concerned for the welfare of female religious should also not be underestimated.22

19 Meyer & Wely, ‘Le Clarisse nei Paesi Bassi’, 477. 20 Schilp, ‘Kloster und Stift Clarenberg bei Hörde (1339–1812)’,), 20; Schilp, ‘Clarenberg- Klarissen’, 181–185; Sollbach, Leben in märkischen Frauenklöstern und adligen Damenstiften, 127–128. 21 Sérent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 156 writes that the Poor Clares of Montauban (Lot-et-Garonne) were forced to leave their monastery in 1561. The monastery was pillaged and burned, and the women were apparently chased through the streets, half naked. Therafter, various nuns were cajoled into marriage. When they refused, they were put to work on the fortifijications and eventually forced to leave the town. Outside the city walls, they were met by an envoy led by Bishop Jean Desprez, who guided them to Montech. 22 According to the surviving sources concerning the Poor Clares in the Northern Low Countries, the abbesses Maria of Huckele of the Veere monastery and Maria Hendriks of epilogue 357

The impact of these closures, and the complete disappearance of Poor Clare (and all other) monastic houses in regions and countries which had become Protestant (Lutheran, Anglican and Calvinist) gives the impres- sion of the sixteenth century as a long period of crises and setbacks for the order of Poor Clares. The many complaints about religious laxity in female religious houses in the decades leading up to the Council of Trent strengthen this impression. Protestant spokesmen dwelt on the depravity of female monastic houses in their attacks on the Catholic religion, and this was also echoed in the writings of Catholic reformers keen to counter the Protestant challenge. From that perspective, the reforms of Trent themselves are sometimes depicted as an almost desperate attempt to stem the tide, and to salvage as much as possible from a monastic world that was in total jeopardy.23 The Council of Trent issued a series of measures to reform female monastic houses. These insisted on the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, and the implementation of full enclosure. It issued rules concern- ing the election of abbesses and other monastic functionaries, the accep- tance (and minimum age) of novices, and the sacramental and overall religious life of nuns. The last of these comprised stipulations concerning the practices of confession and communion, and subjected the women to a more closely monitored regimen of approved texts and approved devo- tions, to prevent female access to texts and religious roles that now were, more than ever, reserved for the male priest. The regulations of Trent also clarifijied the issue of monastic oversight and visitation, with a more clearly defijined role for the local bishop alongside or in lieu of members of the religious orders.24 The Tridentine reform agenda was taken up by the Franciscan leader- ship, which had obtained control over many Clarissan houses previously under Conventual control (in particular in Spain, where the Conventuals were completely suppressed by 1566 and where the remaining Urbanist

Brielle were resourceful in securing safe passage and in guiding their communities to Antwerp, Malines, Cologne or elsewhere. The abbess of the Poor Clares of Gouda was even implicated in the (failed) attempt at regaining the town for the Catholic cause. The sources also indicate that the majority of the population was still Catholic and, if not, still frowned upon the molestation of female religious. See Roest, ‘De Clarissen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden’, passim. 23 For an analysis of these positions, see Muschiol, “Ein jammervolles Schauspiel”, 96–98. 24 Creytens, ‘La riforma dei monasteri femminili dopo i Decreti Tridentini’, 45–83; Muschiol, “Ein jammervolles Schauspiel”, 108–110 & Idem, ‘Die Reformation, das Konzil von Trient und die Folgen. Weibliche Orden zwischen Auflösung und Einschließung’, 172–198. 358 epilogue

Clarissan houses came under Observant oversight). Hence, the reform decrees of Trent were mirrored in several reform constitutions issued by the bureau of the Franciscan minister general and that of its Cismontan and Ultramontan regional representatives, such as the Constituciones generales para todas la monjas y religiosas, prepared by the Franciscan minister general Francisco Gonzaga in 1582 and frequently re-issued until the early twentieth century.25 Numerous houses that had resisted Observant reforms came under renewed scrutiny and were forced to adhere more closely to the disci- plined form of enclosed monasticism envisaged for female religious. For example, this afffected the Santa Chiara monastery of Naples, the Sant’Apollinare monastery of Milan (which was confronted with the reform statutes of Bishop Carlo Borromeo), and the Santa Chiara monas- tery of Assisi. Santa Chiara of Assisi had long since abandoned its adher- ence to Clare’s Regula Prima, and had apparently lost some of its religious vigor, mainly under the influence of important families from Assisi and its environs who forced postulants with insufffijicient religious vocations on the monastery and blocked the entrance of ‘strangers’.26 Much scholarly literature is devoted to the resistance of such houses to the implementa- tion of the reform agenda of Trent, but it is too easy to interpret such resis- tance as a general sign of ongoing decadence and lack of religious stamina. Instead, it is necessary to understand the social makeup and roles of indi- vidual houses in their local context.27 Rather than interpreting these attempts at reform within the Catholic world solely as a last-ditch defense of a world under siege, we should not

25 See for instance Francisco Gonzaga, Constituciones generales para todas las monjas y religiosas, ed. Rodriguez. 26 For details of the reforms imposed on these and other houses, see Nella tua Tenda, 672–695; Casolini, Il protomonastero di Santa Chiara in Assisi, 119–120; Bigaroni, “Casa’ dei frati’, 552–553; D’Andrea, ‘Il monastero napoletano’, 63–67. See also the reform booklet issued by the minister general Archangelo of Messana in the wake of his reform attempts of the Urbanist monastery of Salins in 1609 and that of other Aquitanian houses. The work contains the Urbanist rule, relevant statements issued by subsequent provincial and gen- eral chapters concerning Poor Clare monasteries, and an additional 28 regulations to guide the monastic life of the Urbanist houses in accordance with the guidelines of the Council of Trent, with an emphasis on communal eating and sleeping arrangements, the proper formation of novices, the maintenance of strict enclosure, and the proper administrative care of monastic possessions. By order of the minister general, the provincial minister of Aquitaine had this collection printed in 1610 at the cost of the Poor Clares of Salins. It was re-issued in 1622 and again in 1743. This later edition can still be studied: La Règle de Sainte- Claire suivant la constitution du Pape Urbain IV, ed. Boyer. 27 For in-depth studies on the implementation of reforms in the aftermath of Trent, see for instance Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Renaissance Venice; Evangelisti, “We Do Not Have It, and We Do Not Want It’: Women, Power, and Convent Reform in Florence’, 677–700. epilogue 359 forget that many of the reforms proposed at Trent, and subsequently incorporated in many diffferent reform statutes, built on initiatives that had already been set in motion by the Observant reforms of the fijifteenth century, or had been part of the Clarissan regulatory structures since the very beginning. In particular, this is true for the enclosure regulations pro- moted by Trent. On inspection, they seem very much inspired by the regu- lations issued for Clarissan monasteries since the thirteenth century. Their imposition after Trent would therefore not have automatically meant the introduction of a completely new religious regime. For many Poor Clare monasteries, the reforms of Trent confijirmed monastic regulations and practices already adopted since the era of Observant reforms, if not earlier.

Ongoing Expansion

All the evacuations and losses of monasteries in newly Protestant coun- tries notwithstanding, the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were, in many ways, a period of widespread expansion of female monasticism. It was towards the end of this period, around 1650 or shortly thereafter, that the order of Poor Clares may have reached its largest size, with respect to the number of monasteries and the total number of nuns.28 Whereas in some areas, monastic houses were forced to close, else- where the process of Observant reforms and new monastic foundations continued, notably in the Spanish peninsula, where Protestantism was never able to gain a serious foothold, and in Italy and the extended Austrian lands, where budding Protestant movements were suppressed rather efffectively by Catholic secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Within the Iberian Peninsula alone, possibly 83 new Observant and Colettine foundations were established during the sixteenth century, with an addi- tional 66 in the century thereafter.29 From the 1550s onwards, the Clarissan expansion included new foundations in the Americas.30 It is telling that the Colettines, who had lost their formal autonomy vis-à-vis the regular Observance in 1517, continued to play a role in France, Spain and the

28 This can be estimated on the basis of the houses presented in the Franciscan Women Database, and also on the basis of the monasteries and snapshots provided by Roussey. According to her, the order grew to a maximum of 1120 monasteries around 1700. The bulk of this growth took place between c. 1580 and c. 1650. Rousseu, ‘Atlas’, Carte 6. – En 1700. 29 Martínez de Vega, ‘El convento clariano de la Concepción de Mérida’, 11. 30 Burns, ‘Apuntes sobre la economia conventual. El monasterio de Santa Clara de Cuzco’, 67–96. More in general, see Chowning, ‘Convents and Nuns: New Approaches to the Study of Female Religious Institutions in Colonial Mexico’, 1279–1303. 360 epilogue

Southern Low Countries and, led by the monasteries of Besançon and Ghent, were able to maintain a distinct spiritual identity.31 In part, the creation of new monasteries was stimulated by the need to house communities that had fled persecution elsewhere. Hence Poor Clares from the Northern Low Countries were instrumental in creating new monastic houses in and around Cologne (for instance Sankt Maria im Tempel and Zu den hll. Schutzenengeln), Münster, Mainz (Töngeshof), Vreden, Mons, and Lisbon (such as the Domina Nostra de Quietudine monastery). The second generation of ‘English’ Minoresses and Poor Clares in exile helped create new monasteries in Flanders and Northern France from the early seventeenth century onwards at Saint’ Omer (which soon transferred to Gravelines), Aire (1619/1627), Nieuwpoort (1627), Rouen (1644) and Dunkerque (1626/1652).32 Another factor was the ongoing transformation of tertiary communities and, partly connected with this, a veritable resurgence of Urbanist Clarissan monasticism. Outside Spain, the increase in the number of Clarissan monasteries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in large part due to the creation of ‘reformed’ Urbanist houses. Notwithstanding the Observant reforms of the fijifteenth century, Urbanist houses were not by any means phased out. In the sixteenth and early sev- enteenth centuries, many of them either came under Observant control or became subject to episcopal oversight, without completely losing their Urbanist character. In that very period, the Urbanist model experienced both a renaissance and a transformation. This was due to various factors. Most importantly, many towns in the Early Modern period had become weary of the proliferation of Observant houses without a minimum endowment to keep them afloat. Urbanist houses, with a patrimony of their own and a dowry system for incoming nuns, could be relied upon to educate the daughters of the bourgeoisie and the urban nobility without becoming a burden to the town.

31 The Colettine attempts at keeping their distance from Observant spiritual oversight after 1517 are complex. These also included recourse to Capuchin and Recollect spiritual guides, as well as submission to episcopal supervision. Additional research on this matter is desireable. Cf. Lopez, Culture et sainteté, 384f.; Gounon & Roussey, Nella tua tenda, 618–632. 32 See for instance Kullmann, ‘Das ehemalige Kloster der Armen Klarissen in Mainz’, 88–168; Looten, ‘Les Clarisses Anglaises de Gravelines’, 206–209; Pasture, ‘Documents con- cernant quelques monastères anglais’, 214–217; Looten, ‘Les Clarisses Anglaises de Gravelines’, 222–225; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 238–242; Göcking, ‘Münster – Klarissen’, 96–98; Terhalle, ‘Vreden – Klarissen’, 413–416. epilogue 361

In the fijifteenth century many town authorities supported Observant reforms to fijight religious decadence. By the early sixteenth century, it had become clear that reforms of Poor Clare monasteries were possible with- out abandoning the Urbanist rule. Many of the houses that survived into the sixteenth century under an Urbanist rule, yet under Observant over- sight, as well as many of the new Urbanist foundations that appeared in Italy and France during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were hardly less austere than the Observant Clarissan houses. Their disci- pline and religious service benefijited the urban community without draw- ing on the funds needed for charity and poor relief. Contrary to the non-reformed Urbanist houses of old, which sometimes had huge patri- monies, these smaller reformed houses frequently depended on a modest patrimony, supplemented by dowries, additional gifts, and legacies. They were, so to speak, commensurate with the religious needs and lifestyle of a commercial bourgeoisie, and had a highly practical attitude in their negotiations for the dowry and annuity contracts connected to the accep- tance of female schoolchildren and novices.33 The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries also saw a substantial number of new Clarissan branches and offfshoots. A few of these have already been mentioned in passing in Chapter Four, namely the ‘Leonist’ Clarissan houses (also known as the monastères de Sainte-Claire d’Argentan), the order of the Annonciade, and the Spanish Conceptionists (Sisters of the Immaculate Conception). Both the Annonciade and the order of Conceptionists underwent an expansion during and after the six- teenth century. The Conceptionists also established monasteries in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World.34 Other new offfshoots that made their mark were fijirst the Capuchin Poor Clares, and later (after the 1620s) the so-called Clarisse Farne- siane (Poor Clares of the strictest Observance),35 the Poor Clares of the

33 For a survey of the new ‘reformed’ Urbanist houses established in this period, see for instance: Sérent, ‘L’ordre de Sainte Claire en France’, 141–145, 158; Paris (Bocquet), Les monastères des Clarisses fondés au XVII siècle dans le sud-ouest de la France, passim; Roggen, De Clarissenorde, 251–251; Munier et al., Claire en Provence, 114–117; Roussey & Gounon, Nella tua Tenda, 631fff, 650fff, 706–708, 814–817. See more in general also Le Gall, Les Moînes au temps des Réformes. 34 Arenas Frutos, ‘Nuevos aportes sobre las fundaciones de conventos femeninos de la Orden Concepcionista en la ciudad de México’, 261–284. 35 On the Clarisse Farnesiane, established to a large extent thanks to the initiatives of Francesca (Isabella) Farnese, see De Dominicis, Suor Maria Francesca Farnese dell’ordine di S. Chiara; Rubbi, ‘Architettura conventuale femminile’, 259–267 (on Francesca’s legislation concerning the setup of monastic space). 362 epilogue

Riformati movement,36 and the small group of so-called ‘Clarisse Eremite Alcantarine’ (a branch that in the sources is also referred to as ‘Discalceatae’, ‘Solitarie di S. Pietro d’Alcantara’ or ‘Scalze’ of Fara Sabina).37 The latter three movements belonged squarely to the world of the Counter- Reformation. The same is not completely true of the Capuchin Poor Clares, the ori- gins of which go back to the erection of a hospital for the terminally ill in Naples in the 1520s. This hospital was founded by the Catalan noblewoman Maria Lorenza Longo (d. 1542), widow of Giovanni Longo (a magistrate for the Spanish king in Naples). At some point, Maria Lorenza Longo and her helpers at this hospital, known as Santa Maria del Popolo degli Incurabili, adopted the Franciscan rule for tertiaries. Around the same time, they began to receive support from a newly established community of Capuchin friars and from a group of Theatine monks. Enticed to go into contemplative retreat, Maria Lorenza Longo ceded the governance of the hospital in 1533 to her friend Maria Ayerba (Duchess of Termoli, who earlier had founded a convent of Magdalene sisters for converted prostitutes), and organized adjacent to the hospital a monas- tery for conversae living very austerely according to the tertiary rule. In February 1535, Maria Lorenzo obtained a papal bull that permitted her monastery to retain third order status while adopting the rule of Clare of Assisi, and that made her abbess for life.38 The growing number of postulants forced the community to transfer to a new building, the so-called Monastero delle ‘Trentatrè’. Following delib- erations with her departing spiritual counselor, the Theatine Gaetano of Thiene, Maria Lorenza demanded papal permission to trans- form her house into a Poor Clare monastery under the spiritual care of the local Capuchin friars, combining Clare’s Regula prima with the constitu- tions of Colette of Corbie, and elements taken from early Capuchin legis- lative texts. Permission was granted in December 1538.39 The community envisioned a life of complete material as well as spiritual poverty, with much attention to prayer and a strong emphasis on Passion meditation

36 McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 496–497. 37 Cerafogli, Le Clarisse Romite di Fara Sabina; Sbardella, ‘L’origine del monastero di Fara Sabina’, 11–18. 38 Debitum pastoralis offfijicii, in: Bullarium Ordinis fff. minorum s.p. Francisci capucinorum III, 5fff. 39 Cum monasterium (10 December 1538), Bullarium Ordinis fff. minorum s.p. Francisci capucinorum, III, 9–10. epilogue 363 and penitential activities. Incoming nuns did not have to bring a dowry and everybody lived offf the alms collected by the Capuchin friars.40 Maria Lorenza never envisaged the creation of a network of female Capuchin monasteries. Nor were the male Capuchins very eager to become responsible for an indeterminate number of female religious houses (par- allel to the reluctance displayed by the Friars Minor in the thirteenth cen- tury to care for the Damianites/Poor Clares). Nevertheless, Maria Lorenza’s monastery at Naples proved to be the beginning of a female Capuchin branch, which inherited much of the Observant and Colettine legacy, yet was guided as well by the Capuchin spirituality of simplicity.41 In the wake of the reforms of Trent, which emphasized the necessity of religious observance within female religious monasteries, the example of Naples began to be followed elsewhere. This resulted in the foundation of an additional eighteen Capuchin Poor Clare communities within Italy before the end of the sixteenth century, including monasteries in Perugia (1553), Gubbio (1557/1561), Rome (1575), and Milan (where several female Capuchin monasteries were created between 1576 and 1626). In many cases, the founders were female tertiaries, who wished or were encour- aged to live a more secluded and austere religious life. The transformation of their communities into fully enclosed Capuchin Poor Clare monasteries was made possible through the organization of a support network of lay confraternities (which organized the collection of alms for the enclosed nuns), and the active support of bishops, who saw in the Capuchin Clarissan model an exemplary way of implementing the reform program of Trent. This also meant that new Capuchin Poor Clare monasteries not successful in securing their spiritual care from Capuchin friars were fre- quently able to enlist clerics under episcopal jurisdiction.42 From the late sixteenth century onwards, Capuchin Poor Clare monas- teries began to spread outside Italy. In Spain, the fijirst houses were estab- lished at Granada (1588, by Lucía of Ureña) and Barcelona (1599, by Angela Margarita Serafijina Prat). From there, the Capuchin Poor Clare model

40 See: Mattia of Salò, Historia Capuccina, II, ed. Pobladura, 255–267; Brusciano, Maria Lorenza Longo e l’Opera del Divino Amore a Napoli & Idem, ‘Francesco S. da Brusciano, Maria Lorenza Longo e l’Opera del Divino Amore a Napoli’, 166–228. 41 The Capuchin constitutions of 1536 still declared that the Capuchins would not accept the spiritual care of monasteries, confraternities, or congregations of men or women. Cf. I Frati Cappuccini, documenti e testimonianze del I secolo, ed. Cargnoni, IV, 1760f. Yet soon the papacy intervened, transforming the male Capuchin order from a movement of solitude and prayer into a pastoral taskforce, with responsibilities towards female reli- gious communities. 42 I Frati Cappuccini, ed. Cargnoni, IV, 1743–1750, 1769. 364 epilogue spread to other cities in Spain, and also to the Americas. In France, the fijirst successful foundation was established in Paris between 1603 and 1606, after an abortive attempt in Bourges around 1601. Additional monasteries soon followed.43

Some Tentative Conclusions

As the fijirst chapter of this book has tried to show, the order of Poor Clares had a very complex beginning. It had its roots in numerous local initiatives steered by an enthusiasm for evangelical penitence. Initially, this brought about a large variety of communities: some engaged in charitable works, others with more eremitical streaks, some with and some without direct links to the emerging order of Friars Minor. It was by no means clear then that many of these communities would coagulate into an order under the spiritual care of the Friars Minor and with Clare of Assisi as its name giver and fijigurehead. That this came to pass was very much due to the effforts of Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia and the papal curia. After the problematical ‘normaliza- tion’ of the Waldensians and the Umiliati, and the ongoing struggle with other types of lay religious enthusiasm that, from the Church’s perspec- tive, could easily lead to large-scale heresy, the papacy wished to regulate lay religious initiatives as much as possible, especially where women were involved. As existing religious orders were loath to take responsibility for a quickly growing number of female religious communities, notably those that fed on new forms of evangelical enthusiasm and were not properly monasticized, the papal curia saw the need to take initiatives of its own. One such initiative unfolded in the context of Cardinal Ugolino’s travels through Central and Northern Italy as papal legate. During these trips he encountered several unregulated female religious communities. The out- come was that, supported by Pope Honorius III, Ugolino put such com- munities under papal protection and shortly thereafter, in 1219, began to

43 Starting with the houses of Amiens (1615, a transformation of a Colettine house eager to get rid of the spiritual oversight by Observant friars), Marseille (1622), and Tours (1637). For the further dissemination of Capuchin monasteries throughout Europe and beyond, see: Torrecilla, La primera y penitentíssima religión de madres Capuchinas en Espagña; Caltanissetta, Domus religiosae ord. Fr. Min. Cap. necnon monasteria monialium Capuccinarum cum directionibus tabellariis; Torradeflot Cornet, Crónicas de la Orden de las monjas Capuchinas en Espagña; Denis, ‘Les Clarisses capucines de Paris (1602–1792)’, 191– 203, 400–407; Mareto, le Cappuccine nel mondo (1538–1969). Cenni storici e bibliografijia, passim. epilogue 365 give these houses a concise rule or Forma Vitae. Thus, these communities were monasticized along well-established Benedictine lines. Cardinal Ugolino was also closely involved with the transformation of the early Franciscan movement into a canonically acceptable religious order, which adhered to a proper rule. By the time Ugolino formulated his Forma Vitae for women, he must have been aware that some of the female religious communities he had encountered had been evolving in the envi- ronment of the early Franciscans. He also saw that one female religious community in particular, namely that of San Damiano led by Clare of Assisi, had a very special relationship with the early Franciscan brother- hood. By co-opting Clare’s community, which was itself already on the path towards a fully enclosed monastic lifestyle, Cardinal Ugolino had a strong precedent to involve the Friars Minor with the spiritual care of the network of religious houses that followed his Forma Vitae. By 1228, the incorporation of Clare’s San Damiano community had been efffectuated. To appease Clare’s concerns about the mendicant poverty aspects of her chosen way of life alongside the Friars Minor, the pope issued or reconfijirmed a poverty privilege on her behalf. Around the same time, the Franciscan order was made offfijicially responsible for thecura monialium of the ‘Ugolinian’ network, by now conveniently renamed into the ‘order of San Damiano’. As I tried to point out in Chapters One and Two, the leadership of the Franciscan order was, on the whole, very reluctant to take up this respon- sibility, but was not in a position to completely resist the wishes of the papal curia. A long process of negotiations and conflicts ensued, during which the Franciscan order tried to limit its own responsibilities towards the Damianites, a growing number of female houses tried to secure their position, and the papacy tried to fijind regulatory ways to clarify the rela- tionship between these female communities and the order of Friars Minor. In this context Pope Innocent IV issued a new rule, which proved unsuc- cessful. Shortly afterwards, the ailing Clare of Assisi devised her own rule to guarantee the special relationship between her San Damiano commu- nity and the order of Friars Minor. Clare’s rule received papal approval in 1253, but was only allowed to function in a small number of houses, as it proposed a radical form of evangelical poverty and the intensive engage- ment of Franciscan friars. In the end, a compromise was reached that responded to the fears of the Friars Minor while also securing their responsibility for the spiritual care of most of the female religious houses that had been gathered under the banner of the order of San Damiano. The rule of Urban IV, issued in 366 epilogue

1263, and a series of additional papal decrees and regulatory statements by the cardinal protector of the Franciscan order served as major steps towards this compromise. The rule of Urban IV renamed the order of San Damiano as the ‘order of Saint Clare’, thereby naming it after the recently canonized Clare of Assisi, the acknowledged plantula beati Francisci. It was yet another means to solidify the connections between the friars and the women, yet a way that secured the limited responsibilities of the friars, thanks to the provisions of Urban’s rule concerning communal property and a system of proctors to take care of the economic side of things. Only a small group of houses, including the new Santa Chiara monastery in Assisi, which became the new abode of the San Damiano community, close to Clare’s tomb, was given the option to live out the more radical life of evangelical poverty formulated by Clare’s rule of 1253. Amidst these conflicts over the responsibilities of the Friars Minor and the kind of religious life deemed acceptable for the female houses under their spiritual care, the leaders of the Franciscan order acknowledged the initiatives of Isabelle of Longchamp, sister of King Louis IX, to create a monastery with a rule of its own. The friars needed the support of the French king for the further dissemination of the Franciscan order in France, and to strengthen the order’s position at the University of Paris. Hence, Franciscan order leaders were well disposed towards the pious ini- tiatives of his sister. Moreover, as I have argued in Chapter Two, in the eyes of Franciscan order leaders, Isabelle’s concept of female monasticism was much more acceptable than, for instance, that of Clare of Assisi. Isabelle’s foundation at Longchamp and the revised version of her rule, approved shortly before the rule of Urban IV was issued, inaugurated the order of Minoresses, a separate entity alongside of what would become known as the order of Poor Clares after 1263. By the end of the thirteenth century, therefore, the Friars Minor had accepted the spiritual care of both the Poor Clares (divided into a small group of houses that had received permission to follow Clare’s rule of 1253, a much larger group of houses that adhered to the rule of Urban IV, and possibly a fringe of houses that continued to adhere to older rules) and the Minoresses. This does not mean that all issues had been resolved. According to papal letters and other sources, alongside the recognized Poor Clares and Minoresses, an unspecifijied number of communities of discalceatae, chordulariae, mulierculae, sorores minores and minoritae continued to exist. It proved to be a protracted process to regulate such groups in a manner satisfactory to all parties involved. Some of them suc- ceeded in acquiring a tertiary status (sometimes adopting the tertiary epilogue 367

‘rule’ of 1289). Others eventually attained the status of Poor Clare monas- teries, habitually after a prolonged time interval during which they adhered to diffferent rules and local religious statutes. Although many of the houses brought into the Clarissan fold in the thir- teenth century had a penitential or charitable background, they were only allowed to develop as enclosed monasteries. Once this monastic model was fully implemented, the Poor Clares increasingly attracted the interest of high aristocratic and noble patrons who in previous times would have supported Benedictine nunneries. For them, fully enclosed Poor Clare monasteries fulfijilled many of the same functions. Thus, Clarissan monas- teries became locations for family commemoration and dynastic display, as well as temporary or permanent abodes for female family members. This was not only the case in areas dominated by rural noble families. In larger urban centers, Clarissan monasteries likewise became presti- gious monastic settlements, where the higher bourgeoisie and the urban aristocracy could send its daughters (and widows), notably for ‘safe’ edu- cational purposes, and as a proper alternative to (re)marriage. It is difffijicult to obtain a good insight into the religious lifestyle in many monasteries during the medieval period. The transformation of proto- Damianite houses into Damianite and later Poor Clare monasteries where many postulants entered as a result of family pressure rather than a sin- cere religious vocation, might have had serious repercussions on the qual- ity of religious life. Many complaints about laxity and lack of religious discipline from the fourteenth century and later were, no doubt, con- nected with this. Still, we should not underestimate the sense of religious duty of many of the women who entered the monastery. Many houses also saw a remarkable flowering of religious creativity in the period of Observant reforms. As I have tried to point out in Chapter Six, in such dynamic religious centers, women were genuinely engaged with issues of religious perfection, and used their talents to express themselves in numerous ways. Poor Clares and Minoresses, or at least the choir nuns, were frequently recruited from the highest social strata. This meant they could be rela- tively well educated, and had the capacity to engage in scriptorial, autho- rial and compositorial activities. It probably also had consequences for the ways in which these women engaged with the chaplains, confessors and other male authority fijigures in their monastic life. Although deference to clerical authority was a given, women of aristocratic and noble stock would have been conscious of their own social standing and the influence they might be able to wield through their family network. 368 epilogue

As Chapter Three and parts of Chapter Four indicate, the overall expan- sion of the Clarissan order (including the Minoresses) was impressive. The order grew from c. 146 or 180 houses around 1253 (the year of Clare’s death), to possibly around 372 houses by 1316, between 480 to 530 houses around 1400, and close to 700 houses at the start of the sixteenth century. As has been explained, these fijigures are tentative. They might also give a false impression of order identity. Modern scholarship has indicated that late medieval female religious houses shifted order allegiance quite easily, and if need be multiple times. Houses listed as Poor Clare monasteries at one time could be recognized as houses of tertiaries, Augustinian canonesses, or Benedictine nuns at another. Sometimes, the language of the sources makes it impossible to decide whether a house was (still) a tertiary com- munity, a house following the rule of Augustine (either exempt from, or under episcopal supervision), or a monastery of Poor Clares in the canoni- cal sense of the word. This being said, monasteries of Minoresses and Poor Clares might have been more stable from the point of view of order alle- giance than some other female religious houses, due to the processes of religious identity formation that came into play as soon as a community had adopted the rule of Clare, the rule of Urban IV, or that of Isabelle of Longchamp. All three rules imposed liturgical routines along Franciscan lines, and most monasteries following them would have been exposed to some level of spiritual care and/or visitation visits by Franciscan order offfijicials. Moreover, the nuns would have become acquainted with devo- tional texts and vitae that privileged Franciscan, Clarissan or Minorite saints and spiritual themes. The expansion of the Clarissan order was not uniform. The Italian heartland remained by far the most densely occupied area, with very sub- stantial coverage in the Iberian Peninsula and the French speaking regions as well. Elsewhere, the density of monasteries was much lower. In England, only a handful of houses of Minoresses were able to establish themselves. In the German world, the Clarissan presence became signifijicant over time, but never reached the dominance that the Poor Clares had obtained in Central Italy by the mid thirteenth century. Further to the East, a rela- tively small number of very large royal foundations were established, beginning with the monastery founded by Agnes of Bohemia in Prague. In Central and Eastern Europe, Poor Clare monasteries housed primar- ily women closely connected with the ruling dynasties. In regions with higher settlement densities, a more diversifijied typology of Clarissan houses can be discerned. Many of the earliest houses in Spain and France were founded through the initiatives of pious individuals and groups that epilogue 369 had a commercial urban background, some of whom were taken by ideals of evangelical life. This was not unlike the motivations of the early peni- tential communities encountered by Cardinal Ugolino on his legation journeys in Italy around 1217/1218. Gradually, when monastic enclosure had become standard and the order became more prestigious, important aristocratic families became involved, leading to foundations of a diffferent kind: both small and medium-sized ‘house monasteries’ and larger royal foundations. Diffferent foundation histories, diffferent recruitment policies and diverging types of monastic patronage all had consequences for the wealth, lifestyle, size, function and architectural setup of Clarissan monas- teries. Some aspects of this have been touched upon in Chapter Five. The late medieval Observant reforms had tremendous efffects. It should be underlined that these reforms were pluriform, and were by no means limited to houses under the supervision of the so-called Franciscan friars of the regular Observance sub vicariis. Chapter Four of this book discussed a number of diffferent reform initiatives, notably the reforms within the Tordesillas congregation, the Colettine network, the regular Observance sub vicariis and a few smaller initiatives. Additional research is necessary to see whether my emphases and evaluations are correct. Many diffferent parties could be involved with the implementa- tion of reforms. These included benefactors and urban authorities dissat- isfijied with religious standards, Observant Franciscan order leaders and papal visitators keen on imposing a specifijic model of female religious life, as well as abbesses and nuns with a reform agenda of their own. The reac- tion of religious communities could vary enormously from monastery to monastery. Whereas Observant reforms were embraced and pushed through with great enthusiasm by some communities, in other houses individual nuns or factions of nuns fought tooth and nail to undermine them, often appealing to the highest secular and clerical authorities to stop what they saw as outright interference, and as a violation of their well-earned privileges. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, just before the overhaul of the Franciscan order in 1517 and the fijirst upheavals connected with early Protestantism, the order of Poor Clares was highly diverse. Alongside large ‘unreformed’ houses of Minoresses and ‘rich’ Urbanist Poor Clares a pleth- ora of other Clarissan monasteries could be found: strict Colettine settle- ments nominally under Conventual control, reformed Urbanist houses, Observant houses sub vicariis, Ave Maria foundations etc. Although many houses faced serious socio-economic troubles and others seemed to lack religious vigor, the order of Poor Clares, as a whole, was not in crisis. 370 epilogue

After a century or more of Observant initiatives, many of its monasteries were, in fact, sufffijiciently resilient to endure the new challenges of refor- matory turmoil. During the Reformation and the Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, many Clarissan houses were damaged or closed, but many of them rebuilt or resettled elsewhere. Contrary to what one might expect, this same period was also a period of unprecedented expansion, both within and beyond the European conti- nent, and far beyond the scope of the present book. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Aberdour 210 Assisi (San Damiano, Santa Chiara, Achaia/Achaea 154 Sant’Angelo in Panso) 11–17, 19, 24–36, Acquaviva 80, 83 39–41, 51–56, 65, 67, 80, 81, 156, 179, Acre 154 227–228, 230, 233, 244, 248–249, 255, 260, Agen 200 271–272, 279, 286, 297, 301, 358, 365 Aguilar de Campóo 100 Asti 81, 82 Agnone 81, 83 Astorga 94, 97 Aigueperse 172 Astudillo 97, 99–100, 267, 273 Aire 360 Atri 85, 186 Aix-en-Provence 68, 87, 120, 122, 159, 176, Aubenas 112, 262, 352 229, 352 Auch 119 Alatri 41, 80, 83, 158–159 Augsburg 134 Alba 82 Auterive 110, 165, 352 Albi 197–198, 200, 352 Auxonne 172 Alcocer 94, 100 Avignon 105, 108, 232 Alençon 198, 352 Azille 121, 273 Alès 110 Alessandria 81, 82 Baeza 97 Alicante 202 Balaguer 97, 205 Alkmaar 214, 223, 350 Bamberg 143, 191, 195, 245, 247, 269, Allariz 89, 94, 96 329, 352 Alspach 137, 188, 192, 290, Bärbach 142 338, 343 Barcelona 90, 94–99, 206, 268, 363 Almazán 93–94 Bari 84 Amarante 104 Bar-le-Duc 197 Amaseno 83 Barletta 84, 276–277 Amiens 172, 364 Basel 134–136, 188, 240, 290, 294, 349 Amsterdam 214, 221–223, 350, 355 Bastia 13 Amusco 168 Bayonne 114 Anagni 81, 83 Beaumont-le-Vicomte 202 Ancona 181 Beja 103 Andria 83 Belalcázar 204, 208 Andújar 88, 203 Belorado 97 Annecy 349 Benavente 94, 96 Annonay 112, 273 Bernassia (same as Oborniki?) 148 Antequera 94 Besançon 115, 172, 174 Antioch 154 Béthune 200 Antwerp 195–197, 214, 219, 223, Beyries 111, 113 349, 355 Béziers 41, 106, 165, 172, 236, 245, 352 Aranda de Duero 238 Bisceglie 84 Arcevia 81 Boisset 118, 165, 249, 267, 352 Arras/Atrecht 214 Bologna 181, 241, 265, 277–278, 313–314, Arezzo 20, 23, 26, 80, 84, 181 318–319, 324–325, 328, 336, 343 Argentan 201 Bordeaux 73, 106, 200, 245–246 Arles 111, 266 Borgo San Pietro, Rieti 19, 83 Arras/Atrecht 172, 176 Borgo San Sepolcro 186–187, 328 Ascoli Piceno 81 Bourg-en-Bresse 172, 176, 352 Assai 201 Bourges 172, 176, 199–200, 352, 364 426 index of names and convents

Boxtel 214, 220–221, 223, 350 Chazeaux 120 Bratislava/Pozsony/Preßburg 53, 68, Chiavari 81, 187, 266 150–151, 343, 352, 353 Chieri 82 Breslau/Wroclaw 53, 139, 148, 193 Città di Castello 80, 82 Bressanone/Brixen 81, 84, 130, 182, 190–191, Città di Penne 81 193, 195, 252, 293, 315, 329, 343 Ciudadela/Ciutadella 94 Brielle/Den Briel 214, 218, 223, 350, 357 Ciudad Rodrigo 89 Brienne-sur Anse 112 Clermont-Ferrand 114 Brive/Brive-la-Gaillarde 109, 352 Coimbra 89, 102, 229 Briviesca 168 Colle Alto 83 Brno 151 Cologne 71, 140–141, 144, 188, 292–293, Brolio 152 345, 360 Bruges/Brugge 132–133, 172, 176, 200, Colomata 181 211, 214 Colonges 114 Bruisyard 126–127, 349 Collazzone 81 Brussels 224, 304, 350 Condom 112 Brzeznica 150 Conegliano 81 Buda, see Obuda Conques 205 Burgos 41, 90, 96, 168 Copenhagen 348 Burgo San Sepolcro, see San Sepolcro Corbie 169–172 Córdoba 94, 205, 208 Cáceres 168 Coria 167 Cádiz 167 Cortona 29, 80, 84, 246 Cafffa/Theodosia/ Feodosiya 154 Cosenza, Calabria Cagliari 84 Cracow/Kraków 147, 279 Cahors 111, 352 Cremona 181 Calabazanos 204 Crete 154 Calahorra 92 Cuéllar 92 Calatayud 89, 92 Cuenca 208 Cambrai 172, 176 Cumbres Mayores 203 Camerino 181, 186, 313 Cuneo 82 Campolongo sul Brenta 80 Capodistria/Koper 151 Dax 114 Carcassone 109, 113, 165 Décise 172 Cardaillac 110 Delft 76, 214, 216–218, 223, 350 Carignano 82 Den Bosch/’s-Hertogenbosch 143–144, Carlat/Cantal 119 211–212, 267, 350 Carmona 97, 203 Denney/Denny 125–126, 242, 349 Carpi 315 Detmold 145 Carrión de los Condes 90, 96, 168, 229 Diest 214 Cascia 81 Digne 121 Castel Fiorentino 84 Dinan 172, 176 Castellón de Ampurias 94, 202 Dôle 172 Castiglione Fiorentino 81, 84–85 Dortmund, see Hörde Castignano 81 Dresden 138 Castil de Lences 97 Dubrovnik 150 Castres 172, 351–352 Dürnstein 150 Castrojeriz/Castrogeriz 97 Dunkerque 360 Castro Urdiales 97 Catania 80, 84 Echternach 144, 267 Catanzaro 84 Eger/Cheb 149, 191, 322 Cervera 97 Entre-os-Rios/ Châlons 117 Entre-ambos-os-Rios 101–102 Châlon-sur-Saône 117, 267 Esevelt 145 Chambéry 115, 172, 176 Esslingen 132–133, 137 index of names and convents 427

Estella 94 Hesdin/Heusden 170, 172, 213, 306 Evian 349 Hörde 142, 356 Evreux 117 Hof in Vogtland 144, 224–225, 245, 352 Hoogstraten 214, 221, 223 Faenza 30, 80, 266 Huesca 94 Falaise 110 Famagusta 154, 353 Iesi 81 Fano 81 Imola 81 Feltre 180 Isernia 83 Ferentino 83 Ivrea 82 Fermo 181, 186, 275 Izeron 120 Ferrara 81, 180, 181, 318, 328 Figeac 120 Jaén 93 Flein/Heilbronn 131, 139, 348 Játiva/Xativa 97–98, 244 Florence 20, 23–24, 26, 33, 35, 53, 80, 84, Judenburg 147, 353 166, 255, 300, 303, 324, 343 Jungfernteinitz/Panensky Tynec 151 Foligno 20, 23, 26, 80, 81, 177, 180, 182, 185, 295, 308, 313, 324, 328, 336 Kalisz 148 Forlì 186 Kingston upon Hull 126 Fougères 202 Königsfelden 87, 141, 159, 233, 244, 280, 349 Freiburg in Breisgau 136, 192, 234, 241, 265, Konstanz 132 294, 333, 344 Korczyn 147 Frosinone 83 Kotor 152 Fucecchio 269 Krumlov/Krummau/Cesky Krumlov 152

Gagliano Aterno 82 La Chambre 121 Gandia 176, 202 Lack 152 Geneva 172, 176, 330, 349 La Guiche 123 Genoa 80, 244, 276 Lamego 101 Gentbrugge 138 Langemark 133, 211 Genzano 159 L’Aquila 82, 181, 246, 328 Gerona 97, 202 La Rochelle 117 Ghent/Gand 172, 187, 211, 213–214, 350 Lavagna 160 Gien 176 Laval 202 Giovinazzo 83 Lavaur 121, 165 Gniezno 148, 243 Lectoure 119, 352 Gouda 196, 214, 218–220, 223, 350, 355 Lentini 84, 85 Gourdon 244 Leonberg 354 Granada 363 Leonessa 69 Granayrac/Graneyrac 119 Le Pouget, Castelnau-Montratier 118, 165, Grasse 120 233, 352 Gravelines 360 Le Puy-en-Velay 172 Grenoble 120, 175 Lérida 92 Gross-Glogau/Glogów 151 Les Cassés 72, 120–121, 165, 254, 273 Guadalajara 97–98, 315 Lévignac 120, 233 Guarda 103–104 Lézignan 114, 172, 202 Guardiagrele 81 Liège/Luik/Lüttich 144, 172, 214 Gubbio 80, 81, 181, 363 Lille/Rijssel 198 Linz am Rhein 142 Haarlem 214–215, 223, 350, 355 Lisbon 102, 176, 360 Haguenau 136, 139 Lodi 85 Haselünne 350 London, ‘without Aldgate’ 124–125, 232, Heidelberg 172, 187 235, 349 Heilbronn, see Flein/Heilbronn Longchamp 61, 122–123, 286, 291–292, 300, Herford 145 302, 366 428 index of names and convents

Lons-le-Saunier 115 Mulhouse/Mühlhausen 137 Louvain 176, 195, 214, 223 Münchendorf/Mekine 150 Lubichow 147 Munich 131, 137, 192, 235 Lucca 23, 26–27, 80, 84, 246, 266 Münster 360 Luni 81 Murcia 94 Luxemburg 134–135 Muriano 180 Lyon 115, 235 Nagyvárad/Oradea/Großwardein 151 Machilone 83 Nantes 172, 176 Madrid 203 Naples 41, 68, 71, 81, 85–87, 158–159, 181, Magliano Sabina 81, 83 233, 243, 254, 265, 269, 279–280, Mainz 136, 237 343–344, 358, 362 Malines/Mechelen 196, 355 Narbonne 107–108, 165 Manosque 114 Nardò 83, 248 Manresa 97 Narni 80, 181 Mantua/Mantova 81, 179–183, 186, 313, Negroponte/Chalkis 154 324, 328 Nérac 121 Marseille 111, 176, 241, 364 Neufchâteau 115 Massa Maritima 81, 85 Neuss 137, 141 Matelica 43 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 124 Mayorga de Campos/Valladolid 94 Nicosia 154, 353 Mazara del Vallo 84 Nieuwpoort 360 Medina del Campo 92–93 Nijmegen 350 Medina del Pomar 97, 168 Nîmes 107, 119, 351 Mende 118 Nin 153 Merano/Meran 84, 236 Nogent-l’Artaud 115 Mercatello 81 Nola 85 Messina 84, 180, 185–186, 313, 328 Norcia 80, 81 Metz 110, 135, 197 Northampton 124 Middelburg (East Flanders) 199 Novara 81, 82 Migette/Crouzet-Migette 117 Nuremberg 131, 136, 189–192, 195, 235, 251, Milan 20, 23, 32, 33, 80, 81, 179, 184, 231, 313, 290–291, 294, 300, 305, 316–317, 329–330, 358, 363 342, 348 Millau 65–66, 115, 244, 351 Modena 81 Obbrussel/Bruxelles-St. Gilles 143–144, 211 Moguer 97, 168 Oborniki 150 Molina 168 Obuda/Altofen, Buda 87, 151–152, 159, Moncel, Pont-Sainte-Maxence 123, 170 280, 352 Mondovi 82 Odense 348 Mons/Bergen 360 Offfijida 81 Montagnana 81 Oggersheim 140 Montauban 111–112, 351, 355 Oldenzaal 350 Montblanch 94 Olomuc/Olomouc/Olmütz 147 Montbrison 172, 176, 352 Oloron/Oloron-Sainte-Marie 119–120 Mont-de-Marsan 112–113 Orbe 172, 334, 349 Montech 356 Orduña 94, 97 Montefalco 70, 181 Oristano 84 Montélimar 351 Orvieto 80 Montepulciano 85 Osimo 81 Montignac 114 Oviedo 94, 96 Montigny-les-Vesoul 114 Montpellier 107–109, 176, 351 Padua 37, 80, 180, 301 Mortagne 202 Palencia 97, 168 Moulins 172 Palermo 84, 181 index of names and convents 429

Palestrina 83 Rieti 80, 81, 83 Palma 93, 94 Rimini 81 Pamiers 118, 352 Ripa Transone 81 Pamplona 34, 88, 89 Roccamontepiano 82 Panensky Tynec 352 Rodez 200 Panisperna, Rome 181 Rome 25, 73, 81, 83, 127–128, 181, 246, Paris 123, 197, 364 254, 363 Parma 80, 181 Rosanno Calabro 80 Pavia 73, 81 Roskilde 153, 348 Pedralbes, see Barcelona Rouen 172, 176, 360 Pereto 81 Périgueux 110 Saint’Emilion 120–121 Péronne 172, 176 Saint Jean de Maurienne 121 Perpignan 112, 176, 207, 262 Saint’Omer/Sint Omaars 139, 211, 224, 360 Perugia 22, 24, 26–27, 33, 35, 40, 80, Saint-Remy de Provence 120 179–182, 235, 246, 252, 273–274, 295, 323, Salamanca 41, 47, 91, 94–96, 168 327–328, 343–344, 363 Salerno 81 Pesaro 180–182, 231 Salins 358 Pescina 81 Samatan 120, 165 Petegem-Oudenaarde 138–139, 211, 224 Sandec, see Stary Sacz Petrella Salto 80 Sandomierz 147 Peyrat de Marron 118 San Gimignano 85, 303 Pfullingen 131–132, 191–192, 194, 232, 236, San Giovanni Valdarno 187 243, 275, 329, 337, 354 Sankt Veit an der Glan 151 Piacenza 51, 80 San Miniato 84 Piazza Armerina 84 Sanok 149 Pignerolo/Pinerolo 81, 82 Sansepolcro 65, 156, 232, 236, 242, 274 Piombino 85 San Severino 19, 20 Pisa 34, 84, 85 Santander 94, 168 Pistoia 85, 186 Santarem 65–66, 100 Plasencia 168 Santiago de Compostela 89, 94 Poligny 172, 349 Saragossa 41, 89, 91 Pont-à-Mousson 172 Sarospatak 152 Pontevreda 94, 97 Sarzana 84, 182, 187, 246 Portalegre 104 Sassoferrato 81 Porto 101 Schwarzach/Schafffhausen 132, 135, 349 Prague 41–42, 53, 68, 87, 159, 280, 352 Sebeniko/Sibenik 153 Prato 85 Setúbal 202 Provins 109 Segovia 94, 168 Puigcerda 97, 207 Sessa Aurunca 81 Pyzdry 149 Seurre 172 Seußlitz 131, 134–135, 149, 257 Radom 150 Sevilla 94, 96, 97, 100 Radziejów 150 Siena 22–23, 26–27, 32, 80, 84 Rapariegos 94, 168 Siracusa 84 Ravenna 81, 181, 280 Sisteron 114 Regensburg 140, 192 Skala/Grodzisko 147–148 Reggio Calabria 181 Skofijja-Loka/Bischoflak 152 Reggio Emilia 181 Skradin 151 Reims 105, 122, 254 Söflingen/Ulm 41, 130–131, 141, 192–194, Reinoso de Cerrato 93, 100 233, 240, 243, 276–277, 315–316 Rejas 203 Soria 94, 168 Ribadeo 97 Spello 20, 23, 26, 32, 73, 80, 85, 241 Ribnitz 142, 327 Speyer 140, 192 430 index of names and convents

Split 151 Val dei Varri 80 Spoleto 70, 80, 158 Valduna 152–153, 192 Stary Sacz/Sandec 148, 343 Valencia 93, 94, 98, 202, 244 Stockholm 153, 348 Valfregio 80 Strasbourg 132, 139, 192, 276, 354–355 Valladolid 92, 96, 100, 168 Strehlen/Strzelin 139 Valmontone 83 Sulmona 82 Veere 214, 216, 217, 223, 350, 356–357 Szaszvaros 151 Velletri 83 Venice 20, 80, 187, 239, 353 Tarazona 92 Vercelli 82 Tarragona/Orästie 93, 94 Verdun 115 Tárrega 97 Verona 21, 30, 74, 80, 155, 180 Terni 80 Vevey 172, 349 Teruel 97 Vicenza 81 Tivoli 83 Vich/Vic 97 Todi 80, 81, 85 Vienna 150 Toledo 93, 204, 208 Vila do Conde 103 Tordesillas 97, 99–100, 167–169, 229 Villafranca del Panadés/Penedes 97 Toro 94, 98 Villafrechós 100–101, 168 Torrelobatón 93 Villalobos 97, 99 Torrijos 208 Villingen 192–194, 290, 294, 297, 305, 329, Tortona 26, 80, 82 336–337, 342 Tortosa 94, 98 Viterbo 81, 83, 181, 187 Toscanella 83 Vitória/Vitoria-Gasteiz 93 Toulouse 107–108, 121, 165, 198–199, 352 Viviers 234 Tours 364 Volterra 81, 85, 296, 344–345 Trapani 84 Vreden 350, 360 Trastevere, see Rome Trento 42, 80, 84, 155 Wamel 214, 223, 277–278, 350 Trevi 83 Waterbeach 125 Treviso 80, 180 Weißenfels 137–138, 142, 355 Trier 188, 196, 223 Werken 138, 211 Trino 186 Wiesbaden 140 Tripoli 154 Wittichen/Schenkenzell 145, 192 Trnava/Tyrnau 41–42, 146–147, 151, 343 Würzburg 131–132 Troppau/Opava 150, 353 Troyes 123 Ypres/Ieper 77, 133, 265, 268, 350 Tudela 94 Turin/Torino 81, 82 Zafra 168 Tuscania 83 Zagreb 353 Zamora 41, 89, 95, 96, 102, 168 Ubeda 94 Zara/Zadar 149, 353 Ulm, see Söflingen Zawichost 147 Urbino 180, 181, 186, 313 Znojmo/Znaim 149, 243, 353 INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abbatial authority 49, 62, 64, 103, 156, 193, Angela Margherita Serafijina Prat (Capuchin 242, 247–248, 260–269 abbess, foundress) 363 Abduction 275–278 Angelica of Milan (nun, author) 314 Adam Burvenich (friar, chronicler) 217 Angelina of Montegiove (Angelina da Adolf I of Nassau (count/king) 140 Montegiove dei conti Marsciano) 71, Adriaan Westphalen 220 177–178 Agnese of Oportulo (nun) 271 Angelis gaudium (papal letter) 42 Agnese Perauda (cousin of Clare, nun) 249 Angelo Tancredo (friar) 15, 106 Agnes of Assisi (Caterina) (sister of Clare, Anna Arias (nun, author) 315 nun) 14, 24, 33, 249 Anna Flötzerin (nun, scribe and Agnes of Austria (queen) 141 abbess) 294 Agnes of Bohemia/Agnes of Prague Annalena Odaldi (nun, playwright) 343 (princess, monastic founder) 41–42, 68, Anna Morandi (nun, author) 336 146, 148, 298–299 Anna of Konstanz (nun) 241 Agnes of Bohemia (countess of Anna Reischin (nun) 354 Meissen) 135 Anna Tintner (nun) 191 Agnes of Harcourt (nun, abbess and Anne of Beaulieu (princess) 198 author) 300 Anne of Brittany (queen) 199 Agnes of Hessen (countess) 142 Annonciade 199–200, 361 Agnes of Vaux (Colettine nun, Anthony of Padua (friar, preacher and author) 306 author) 37, 301 Aimeric of Roquefort (sponsor) 121–122 Antoine Fromient (Protestant Alasie of Mévolhon (sponsor) 114 preacher) 330 Albéric of Humbert (bishop) 105 Antoinette-Marie of Avignon (abbess) 105 Albert Büchelbach (Püchelbach) (friar, Antonia Baldino of Logliano guardian) 182, 189, 190 (nun) 277–278 Albert of Pisa (Franciscan minister Antonia Maria (nun, scribe) 295 general) 46 Antonia of Hoochstraten (nun) 219 Albert of Ulm (Franciscan lector) 131 Antonia Sangot (abbess) 198 Albrecht I of Habsburg (duke/king) 141 Antonio Peregrino 301 Albrecht IV of Bavaria (duke) 192 Antonio of Assisi (friar, confessor) 252 Aldonça of Montsoriu (abbess) 338 Antonio of Rosas (visitator) 205–206 Aldonça Rodrigues of Telha Antonio of Urbino (count) 308 (concubine) 103 Apollonia (of Breslau) (abbess) 193 Alessandro Sforza (lord) 274 Apollonia Tucher (nun) 190 Alexander IV (pope) 46, 55, 57, 61, 90, 96, Apostolicae sedis (papal bull) 70 101, 111, 133–134, 279 Archangelo of Messana (Franciscan Alexander VI (pope) 205, 221, 275 minister general) 358 Alfonso III of Portugal (king) 101 Architecture 86, 151–152, 159, 279–282 Alfonso X (king) 96 ‘Argentan’ or ‘Leonist’ Observance 200– Alfonso Enríques (admiral) 100 202, 361 Alfonso of Guadalajara (visitator) 205 Arnaldo of Campania (friar) 167 Alfonso Sanches (founder) 103 Arnaldo of Pelagrua (cardinal) 262 Alix of Bretagne (countess) 123 Arnaud de Servoles (military captain) 114 Alphonse of Poitiers (count) 112 Arnaud Duèze (viscount) 121 Alvar Núñez Osorio (count) 97 Arnold of Neuss (Franciscan provincial Amate of Bizaudun (abbess) 114 minister) 72 Ambrogio (Cistercian visitator) 23 Asella (disciple of Jerome) 310 432 index of names and subjects

Augustinus of Alveldt (friar, lector and Blanche of Geneva (dame) 170 provincial minister) 322 Boleslaw the Chaste (king) 147, 148 Autobiography 317–320 Boleslaw the Pious (duke) 148 Avegnente of Albizzo 20, 24 Bona of Guelfuccio (companion of Ave Maria reform 195–199, 219 Clare) 12, Avezoete of Ameede (beguine and Bonaventura of Bagnoregio (Franciscan sponsor) 138 minister general, author) 46, 57–60, 62, 64, 109, 302, 335 Balvina Amata (cousin of clare, nun) 249 Bonavere of Ranieri del Giotto Barbara Freydung (nun, author) 195 (sponsor) 242 Barbara Mangoltin (nun, scribe) 291 Boniface VIII (pope) 66, 82, 124, 128, 175, Barbara Rieter (nun) 191 177, 179 Barbara Stromer (nun, scribe) 291 Boniface IX (pope) 178 Bartolo (friar) 30 Bonifacio (friar & visitator) 267 Bartolomeo Accorombani (archbishop) 54 Brigida Liespergin (nun, scribe) 294 Bartolomeo of Pisa (friar, author) 301 Brunhild Hüffflerin (nun) 276 Battista Alfani (nun, abbess and Burial rights 67, 234 author) 323, 331 Battista of Montefeltro (nun, author) 308, Callixtus III (pope) 196, 215, 277 311–313, 335–336 Calvin (Protestant reformer) 349 Beata Clara (papal bull) 62 Camilla Battista of Varano (nun, Beatrice of Offfreduccio (companion of author) 274, 308, 313, 318, 337 Clare) 15 Canonization of Clare 54–55, 279 Beatrix Jansdochter (abbess) 222 Capuchin Poor Clares 361–364 Beatriz of Silva 208 Caritas Pirckheimer (nun, abbess and Begging/alms collecting 15, 16, 39, 53–54, author) 190, 291, 308, 316–317, 330, 335, 221, 228, 230, 245–246 342, 347 Beguinage/beguine lifestyle 17–19, 69, 73, Carlo Borromeo (cardinal) 256, 281, 358 80, 129, 132–135, 138, 144–145, 155, 169, Catalina Lando (sponsor) 203 197, 209, 212, 227, 241 Caterina Caimi (abbess) 179 Bela IV (king) 148 Caterina Guarnieri of Osimo (nun, scribe, Benedict XI (pope) 292 vicar, abbess and author) 295, 328 Benedict XII (pope) 67, 71, 98, 120, 123, 142, Caterina of Rio 237 165, 231, 240, 244, 251 Caterina Vigri/Caterina of Bologna (nun, Benedict XIII (pope) 92, 101, 122, 171 abbess, author and artist) 308, 314, Benedicta (abbess) 111 318–320, 324–325, 332–333, 335–337, Benediction of Clare 299, 323–324 339–342, 345 Berenguela of Antich (foundress) 90 Catharina of Biberach (nun) 241 Bernarde of Pouget (abbess) 118 Catherina Henrici (foundress) 196 Bernardino of Guaza (friar, visitator) 168 Catherine Gauvinelle (nun) 200 Bernardino of Siena (friar, preacher) 176– Catherine of Saulx (nun, author) 334 177, 179–180, 309, 310, 321, 336, 341 Catherine Rufijiné (Colettine nun, Bernard of Armagnac (protector) 173 author) 306 Bernard of Clairvaux (abbot) 335 Cecilia Ansalone (nun) 331 Bernardo of Garrasona (friar) 167 Cecilia Coppoli (nun, abbess & Bernardo of Quintavalle (friar) 13 author) 185, 308, 312, 313, 331 Berthold of Regensburg (friar, author) 290 Cecilia Gonzaga (nun, author) 308 Bertrand of l’Isle-Jourdain (count) 121 Cecilia of Florence (nun, author) 303 Bertrand of Pouget (cardinal) 118 Cecilia of Peralta (abbess) 98 Bizzoche/bizzocaggio 44, 69, 70, 177, Cecilia of Valla (nun, author) 326 178, 180 Cecilia Sanvitale (abbess) 267 Blaesilla (disciple of Jerome) 310 Châmoa Gomes (donor) 102 Blanche of Artois (foundress) 124 Chaplains 49, 53, 60, 64, 264, 265, 353, 367 Blanche of Castile (queen) 99, 106, 122 Charles II of Anjou (king) 86, 111, 114 index of names and subjects 433

Charles V (emperor) 347 Crescentius of Iesi (Franciscan minister Charles the Bold (duke) 198 general) 49 Charlotte of Savoy (queen) 198, 199 Cristina Reyseltin (nun) 190–191 Chordulariae 45, 155, 366 Cristoforo of Romagna (Franciscan Christina of Molenark (abbess) 142 custodian) 111 Christina Reyselt (lay sister, nun) 251 Cum a nobis petitur (papal bull) 88 Christina Strölin (abbess) 316 Cum universitati (papal bull) 111 Christine Sauerzapf (Clarissan nun, Cunegunda (Kinga) of Poland chronicler) 140 (foundress) 147–149 Chronicles 75, 140, 193, 200, 210, 236, 254, Cura monialium 18, 29–36, 38–41, 43, 274, 288, 295, 300, 307, 323, 325–330 46–49, 56–67, 78, 82, 98, 107–109, Clara Pirckheimer (nun) 190, 316 129–130, 134, 141, 155–156, 172–173, 185, Clara Seckinger (abbess) 188 189, 216–217, 220, 230, 263–265, 287, 309, Clare of Assisi (Chiara di Faverone) 347, 365 (foundress, abbess and author) 1, 11–17, 20, 23, 25–36, 39–43, 48, 51–56, 68, 89, Damenstifte 356 90, 95, 105, 106, 230, 233, 249, 279, David of Burgundy (bishop) 215 286–287, 297–299, 316, 331, 335–336, Dealta Martinelli (nun, author) 314–315 340, 365 De conditoris omnium (papal letter) 42 Clarisse Eremite Alcantarine/ Delphina of Sabran 88 Discalceate 362 Denise of Munchensey (sponsor) 125 Clarisse Farnesiane 361–362 Destruction of archives and monaster- Clement IV (pope) 65 ies 77, 245 Clement V (pope) 102 Diego of Palencia (friar) 167 Clement VI (pope) 104 Diemut of Aufffenstein (foundress) 151 Clement VII (antipope) 167, 170 Dietrich Colde (friar, provincial vicar) Coletan friars 172–173 195, 220 Colette (Nicolette) Boylet of Corbie Dietrich of Landsberg (margrave) 138 (abbess, reformer, foundress and Dinis of Portugal (king) 102, 103 author) 169–176, 183, 207, 262, 264, 272, Discalceatae 45, 155, 366 305–306, 315, 323, 330–331 Donations, see endowments Colettines 172–176, 202–203, 213–214, 347 Dormitories & cells 206, 225, 251–252 Commemoration 86, 103, 157, 232–234, 367 Dorotea Broccardi (nun, scribe) 296, Communion 252, 255–257, 357 344–345 Conceptionists 208, 361 Dorothea Koler (nun) 190 Confession/confessors 49, 60, 67, 234, 255, Dorothea of Brandenburg (countess, 264, 317, 357 abbess and chronicler) 269, 329 Conflict in the community 98, 133, Dorothea Schermann (nun, scribe) 294 193–194, 249–250, 268 Dowries & annuities 61, 239–240, 250 Conrad Celtis (humanist) 317 Dual monastery 38, 73, 87, 141, 146–149, Conrad of the Mark (lord) 142 152, 159 Conrad Pellikan (friar and humanist) 317 Conservatores 247 Eberard Ebner (sponsor) 136 Constitutions & statutes 67, 71–72, 86, 98, Eberhard II (bishop) 132 103, 128, 141, 165, 172, 181–183, 191, 194–195, Eberhard VI of Württemberg (count) 191 201, 206–208, 225, 231, 240, 244, 251, 252, Edmund of Lancaster (earl) 124 254, 256–257, 273, 281, 358 Education 153, 157, 237–239, 284–286, Constitutions of Colette 174–176, 183, 288–289, 307–312 195–199, 204, 207, 208, 272, 305–306, Edward I (king) 114–115 323, 362 Egas Fafes of Lanhoso (bishop) 101 Convent chronicles, see historiography Elena Enselmini (nun, visionary) 37, 301 Conventus pauperum monasteriorum S. Elia of Pulci (nun) 289, 303 Damiani de Assisio 34 Elias of Cortona (friar, minister gen- Council of Trent 175, 256, 275, 357 eral) 31, 38, 39, 41–43, 89 434 index of names and subjects

Elisabeth Lochner (nun) 191 Eustochium (disciple of Jerome) 310–312 Elisabeth Mayer (lay sister) 191 Exiit qui seminat (papal bull) 66 Elisabeth of Bavaria (Elisabeth de Bavière) Exposuerunt nobis (papal bull) 104 (Colettine nun, abbess) 170, 187, 306 Elisabeth of Brabant-Aarschot Fasting 4, 25, 34, 53, 64, 98, 160, 170, 202, (countess) 140 258–260 Elisabeth of Carinthia (duchess/ Faverone of Offfreduccio (father of queen) 141 Clare) 11 Elisabeth of Cleves (sponsor, later Fayts of Thémines (foundress) 118 abbess) 142 Felicia Meda (abbess) 179 Elisabeth of Den Perre (nun) 219 Felipa of Silva (abbess) 208 Elisabeth of Guelders (Clarissan nun) 141 Felizitas Grundherr (nun, author) 190, 316 Elisabeth of Hungary (queen) 151, 153 Felizitas Trautmann (nun) 191–192 Elisabeth of Lindevelt (abbess) 196 Ferdinand II (emperor) 354 Elisabeth of Thüringen (Landgräfijin) 147 Ferdinand of Aragon (king) 169, 203, Elisabeth Reichlin (Reichner) 205, 208 (abbess) 192, 316 Fernando I (king) 104 Elisabeth Throckmorton (abbess) 349 Fernando II (king) 96 Elisabeth Vögtlin (nun, author) 334 Fernando III el Santo (king) 91 Elisabeth zum Widder (foundress) 136 Fernando of Illescas (Franciscan friar, Elisabetta of Mantua (nun, abbess) 183– visitator) 167 184, 321 Filippa Mareri 19 Elisenda of Montcada (queen) 98, 103 Filippina of Guelders (Clarissan nun) 141 Elizabeth de Burgh (Lady Clare) 125 Filippo Campello (architect) 279 Elvira Eanes (foundress) 104 Filippo Longo (friar, visitator) 13, 30 Elvira Manrique de Stúñiga Floresenda of Palena (foundress) 82 (foundress) 204 Forma Vivendi of Francis 16–17, 29, 42, 52, Elzear of Sabran 88 287, 297 Enclosure/‘normalisation’ 21, 25–28, Forma Vitae of Ugolino 25–37, 42, 45, 33–35, 45–46, 74, 116–117, 155–158, 206, 47–49, 53, 62–63, 65, 69, 78, 85, 88, 90, 216, 222–225, 228–230, 236–237, 275–276, 107, 112, 131, 133, 156, 228–229, 252, 325, 328, 343, 344, 353–354, 357–359, 364, 269–271, 284–285, 287, 365 367, 369 Fortunato Coppoli (friar, provincial Endowments, donations and patron- minister) 186 age 34–35, 40, 63, 95–98, 110, 113–115, 118, Fourth Lateran Council 22, 25, 27, 47, 123, 127, 128, 131, 133, 135, 141, 142, 145, 152, 105, 264 155–159, 230–236, 243–246 Francesca Farnese (abbess, reformer) Enrique II/Enrique of Trastámara 281, 361 (king) 100, 104 Francesca of Assisi (nun) 254 Enrique IV (king) 238 Francesc Eiximenis (friar, author) 338, 339 Erasmus (humanist) 308, 317 Franceschina Guisana (abbess) 180 Ermengarde of Botonach (abbess) 112 Francesco Suriano (friar) 295 Ermentrudis of Bruges (nun, found- Francisco Gonzaga (friar, chronicler) ress) 132–133, 299 210, 358 Ermesenda of Celles (foundress) 91 Francisco Jiménez (Ximenes) de Cisneros Ermesinde of Luxemburg (countess) 135 (friar, cardinal) 169, 205–206, 208, 317 Erminia of San Silvestro in Capite Francisco of Quiñones (friar, vicar general (abbess) 127 and cardinal) 208, 322 Eufemia of Breslavia (sponsor) 84 Francisco Ortiz (friar) 315 Eufrasia Alfani (nun, author) 327–328 Francis of Assisi (order founder) 1, 12–16, Eugenius IV (pope) 70 19, 20, 24, 27, 29–31, 38, 52–53, 59, 63–64, Eustache of Baumarchais (sponsor) 119 105, 230, 301, 335, 336 Eustochia Calafato (nun, abbess) 185, 312, François I (king) 268, 351 313, 331, 338 Françoise Guyard (nun, chronicler) 200 index of names and subjects 435

Frederick II (emperor) 43, 122 Giovanni of Giacomo Amicini (spicer, Friedrich IV (viscount) 225 abductor) 278 Friedrich Ebner (sponsor) 136 Giovanni of Murrovalle (cardinal) 66, 67 Friedrich of Hohenlohe (bishop) 144 Giovanni of Perugia (friar, chronicler) 43 Friedrich of Leiningen (count) 140 Giovanni of Valle (Giovanni della Valle) Friedrich Tuta (margrave) 138 (friar) 177 Furia (disciple of Jerome) 310 Giovanni of Ventura 12 Giovanni Parenti (Franciscan minister Gabriele of Perugia (friar, author) 323 general) 32, 38–40 Gabriel Maria Nicolas (friar, Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (human- guardian) 199–201 ist, author) 308 Gaert Egensz (abductor) 278 Giraude of Puycelsi (lady) 112 Gaetano of Thiene (Theatine monk) 362 Girolama Battista of Montefeltro, see Galileo Galilei 314 Battista of Montefeltro Gaston VII (viscount) 111 Girolama Vaccari (nun) 331 García of Tarazona (bishop) 92 Girolamo of Siena (Augustinian friar) 310 Garzenda of Verona (sponsor) 155 Gisberta of Heussen (sponsor) 215–216 Geert Grote (reformer) 212 Giulia of Milan (nun, visionary and Genoveva Vetter (nun, author) 315 author) 320 Genser of Carbonnel (foundress) 112 Giulio Cesare of Varano (prince) 308 Georg of Schaumberg (bishop) 191 Glotto of Munaldo (sponsor) 22 Gérarde of Sabran (abbess) 106, 114 Gottschalk (hermit) 142 Gerardina of Waesberghe (foundress) 196 Gratum gerimus (papal bull) 92 Gerardo Oscasali (bishop) 84 Gregory IX (pope) 31–35, 38–45, 90–92, 95, Géraude of Conques (sponsor) 112 106, 129, 131, 264 Géraud of Malemort (bishop) 106 Gregory X (pope) 112 Gerhard of Jülich (count) 137, 140 Gregory XI (pope) 100, 114, 145, 167 Gerlach of Nassau (count) 142 Guglielmo of Casale (Franciscan minister Gertrudis of Hohenburg (queen) 136–137 general) 175, 305, 321–322 Gertrud of Vorst (nun, scribe) 293 Guibert of Tournai (Franciscan friar, Giacomo (Jacopo) Colonna master of theology and author) 302 (cardinal) 127–128 Guido II of Assisi (bishop) 13–14 Giacomo of Marchia (Giacomo della Guillaume Castellani (priest) 114 Marca) 176 Guillaume Farel (Protestant preacher) 330 Gilette of Marsan (abbess) 111 Guillaume Hugouet (count) 199 Gilette of Sens (abbess) 123 Guillaume of Cardaillac (bishop) 111 Ginevra of Tebalduccio (nun) 249 Guillaume of Joinville (bishop) 105 Ginevra of Ugone di Tebalduccio Guillaume of Saint Maurice (baron) 115 (abbess) 23 Guillelme Manent (foundress) 108 Giovanna Colonna (abbess) 128 Guillemette of Gruyère (Colettine nun, Giovanni Bonvisi of Lucca (friar, author) 306 confessor) 181 Guillerma of Poliña (foundress) 90 Giovanni Buralli of Parma (friar, minister Gutta (Jutta) Ebner (nun & abbess) 143 general) 253 Gwijde of Dampierre (count) 139 Giovanni Dominici (Dominican friar, preacher and author) 310 Hadwig of Horne (nun, scribe) 293 Giovanni Gaetano Orsini (cardi- Hagiography 127, 173, 300–301, 306, 313, nal) 58–60, 62–65 316, 323, 330–334 Giovanni of Balbi (author) 292 Handicrafts & labor 27, 229–230, Giovanni of Calvoli (friar, author) 176, 283–284, 298 302–304 Hartmann IV of Dillingen (count) 131, 132 Giovanni of Capistrano (friar, vicar Hedwig of Molengracht (nun) 219 general) 173, 177, 183–186, 321–323 Heinrich II of Mecklenburg (prince) 142 Giovanni of Conpello (friar) 30 Heinrich III ‘der Erlauchte’ (count) 135 436 index of names and subjects

Heinrich III of Schlesia (duke) 148 Innocent VI (pope) 121 Heinrich Karrer (friar, provincial vicar) 193 Innocent VIII (pope) 168, 198, 205, Heinrich of Isny (bishop) 136 218–220, 236 Heinrich of Ravensburg (friar, provincial Inter caetera (papal bull) 218 minister) 250, 273 Inter personas (papal bull) 59 Heinrich of Thalheim (friar, provincial Irmengard (foundress) 132, 329 minister) 262 Isabel of Aragon (queen) 102–103 Heinrich Vigilis (friar, preacher and Isabella of Castile (queen) 169, 203, 205, author) 291, 342 208, 238, 338 Helena Meichsner (abbess) 190 Isabella of Portugal (duchess) 195 Helena of Landsberg (marchioness) 138 Isabelle of Lévis (countess) 121 Hélictz of S. Céré (abbess) 112 Isabelle of Longchamp (princess, Hendrika of Haaften (viscountess) 220 foundress) 60–62, 65, 122–123 Hendrik Herp (friar, author) 216 Isabelle of Luxemburg (countess) 139 Hendrik of Berghe (friar, provincial Isabelle of Navarra (queen) 123 vicar) 219 Isabelle of Rodez (foundress) 118, 267 Hendrik of Borselen (lord) 216 Isabel (Elionor Manuel) of Villena (abbess, Hendrik of Ranst (viscount) 220 author) 338–340 Henri II of Rodez (duke) 115, 118 Isnarde Bondanère (abbess) 121 Henri IV (king) 235, 351 Isotta Nogarola (humanist) 311 Henry III (king) 106, 351 Ite vos (papal bull) 209, 223 Henry VIII (king) 349 Henryk II Pobozny (duke) 148 Jacob Embrechts (abbot) 221 Henry of Baume 170–176, 305 Jacopa of Settesoli (female penitent) 19 Hermann of Lobdeburg (bishop) 132 Jacopone of Todi (Franciscan poet) 336 Hieronymites 224, 312 Jacques of Vitry (bishop, chronicler) 15–16, Historiography 140, 193, 196, 325–330 227–228 Honorius III (pope) 21–22, 24, 364 James I the Conqueror (king) 95 Hortulana of Farvacque (nun, James II of Aragon (king) 98 chronicler) 196 Jan Benninck (sponsor) 221 Hospital work & management 15, 17, 22, Jan De Wael (sponsor) 221 23, 72, 103, 111, 113, 120, 146, 155, 228–229, Jan of Egmond (count) 220 232, 362 Jan Ruusbroec (mystic) 143, 304 Humbert of Romans (Dominican master Jean II de Chalon-Arlay (sponsor) 117 general, author) 284 Jean Barthelemy (friar, author) 285–286 Humbert zum Widder (founder) 136 Jean Desprez (bishop) 356 Jean Devic (lord) 119 Iacopa Pollicino (nun, author) 313, Jean Glapion (friar, provincial 331–332 minister) 201–202 Ide (nun) 277–278 Jeanne Atoux (abbess) 241 Illuminata Bembo (nun, abbess and Jeanne of Burgundy (queen) 123 author) 314, 318, 332–333, 336, 340 Jeanne of Jussie (nun, author) 330, 349 Illuminata of Ghislerio (nun) 249 Jeanne of Nevers (abbess) 125 Illuminators 293–294, 344, 345 Jeanne of Toulouse (countess) 112 Imagina of Isenburg-Limburg (countess/ Jeanne of Valois (duchess, foundress) 199– queen) 140 200, 352 Indulgences 67, 86, 90, 91, 108, 109, 111, 114, Jeanne Scheyfs (abbess) 195 228, 231, 234–235, 343, 347 Jean of Boissy (bishop) 170 Iñes Fernandes (foundress) 102 Jean of Châtillon (count) 123 Iñes of la Cerda (donor) 99 Jean Pinet (Franciscan friar, guardian) 170 Ingerd of Reginstein (countess) 153 Jehanne Gerande (nun) 286 In multam redundat (papal bull) 90 Jerome (Church Father) 309–311 Innocent III (pope) 25, 264 Jesuati 224 Innocent IV (pope) 45, 47–52, 54, 66, 91, Joan Ketteryche (abbess) 242, 247 92, 96, 106–108, 110, 132, 147, 267, 323, 365 João I of Portugal (king) 104 index of names and subjects 437

João of Xira (Franciscan visitator) 101 Landulfus of Saxony (Carthusian Johann Einzlinger (friar, preacher) 342 author) 338 Johannes Alphart (friar, preacher) 290 Leo X (pope) 201, 347 Johannes de Witte (canon) 217 Leonardo Bruni (humanist) 307–308 Johannes Fierkens (abbot) 196 Leone of Perego (friar, visitator) 30 Johannes Nider (Dominican reformer and Leonor Bejarano (foundress) 203 preacher) 192 Leonor Teles (queen) 104 Johannes Pauli (friar, preacher and Leo of Assisi (friar) 15, 39, 298 author) 290 Leprosarium 21, 30, 133, 155, 229 Johann Lor (Johann von Lare) (friar, Letter writing 41, 173–173, 298–299, provincial vicar) 182, 191–192 305–306, 312–317 John II (Jean le Bon, king) Leupold II of Eglofffstein (bishop) 143 John XXII (pope) 98, 102, 103, 113, 118, 119, Leuthold I of Kuenring (lord) 150 142, 151, 177 Libraries 291–297 John of Vesy (lord) 124 Licet olim (papal bull) 66 Jolenta (Yolanda) of Poland Lionel of Clarence (duke) 126 (foundress) 148–149 Literacy 283–297 Joseph II (emperor) 352 Liturgy 13, 49, 183, 206, 208, 252–258, 264, Josina of Weerden (abbess) 255 306, 343, 354 Jourdain IV of Isle-Jourdain (count) 120 Loppa of Spiegel (nun, scribe and Juan I of Castile (king) 167 artist) 293, 345 Juana Fernandez Fenistrosa (abbess) 99 Lorenza of Giovanni Baldino (nun, Juana Manuel (queen) 100 author) 328 Juana of Portugal (queen) 238 Lothario (Franciscan provincial Juan Daza (visitator) 205–207, 252, 268 minister) 59 Juan de la Cerda (sponsor) 100 Louis I of Amboise (bishop) 198 Juan Francisco of Avingó (visitator) 206 Louis VIII (king) 122 Juan González of Opta (friar) 167 Louis IX (king) 61, 106 Juan of Guadelupe (friar) 207 Louis XI (king) 199 Juan of la Puebla (friar) 204, 207 Louis XII (king) 199 Juan of Tolosa (friar, confessor) 208 Louise of Aventigny (nun) 200 Juan Ortiz (friar) 315 Louise of Savoy (princess, abbess) 334 Juliana Ernst (nun, chronicler) 291 Louis of Condé (prince) 351 Juliana y Toda (foundress) 90 Lucas Wadding (friar, chronicler) 20, 210 Julienne of Troyes (abbess) 123 Lucia of Roma (nun) 271 Julius II (pope) 169, 220 Lucía of Ureña (Capuchin nun, Justis penentium (papal bull) 112 foundress) 363 Ludwig Hennig (friar, provincial vicar) 193 Kaspar Schatzgeyer (friar, preacher and Ludwig of Hungary (king) 151 author) 290 Ludwig of Wittelsbach (duke) 137 Katharina Hofffmann (nun, abbess and Luitgard (Lutgard) of Wittichen author) 300 (beguine) 145 Katharina Weißbrötlerin (abbess) 276 Katharina Zollner (foundress) 143 Magdalena Beutler (nun, visionary) Konrad IV (king) 131 192, 333 Konrad of Aufffenstein (founder) 151 Magdalena Kastner (abbess, author) 329 Konrad of Reginstein (count) 153 Magdalena of Suntheim (nun, author) 315 Kunigunde Hutwan (foundress) 143 Majori et communitati (papal bull) 110 Küsterinen & Wuchnerinen 257 Marcella (disciple of Jerome) 310 Margaret Beauchamp 125 Ladislaw (Magnus Ladulås) of Denmark Margaretha Alexandrin (nun) 276 (king) 153 Margaretha Boudravens (sponsor) 133 Laeta (disciple of Jerome) 311 Margaretha Grundherr (abbess) 190 Lambrecht Slagghert (confessor, Margaretha of Kentzingen (nun, author) 327 author) 338 438 index of names and subjects

Margaretha of Meerbeek (nun) 143, 304 Mariotta of Mevanea (nun, sacristan) 257 Margaretha of Tost (abbess) 193 Marquard of Lindau (Franciscan custodian Margaretha Schelhorn (nun) 191 & preacher) 153 Margaretha Sorner (nun) 241 Marta of Armagnac (foundress) 121 Margaret of Norfolk (countess) 125 Martin V (pope) 178 Margaret of York (duchess) 198, 218 Martín Alfonso of Villaseca (knight) 205 Margherita Colonna 127, 300 Martín García (visitator) 205 Marguerite Blandine (nun) 200 Martin Luther (Augustinian canon, Marguerite Bodine (nun) 200 reformer) 322, 347 Marguerite Nivette (nun) 351 Mary of Hungary (queen) 86 Marguerite of l’Isle-Jourdain Mary of St. Pol (countess) 126 (viscountess) 121 Mathe of Bigorre (viscountess) 111 Marguerite of Lorraine (duchess) 198, Matteo d’Acquasparta (Franciscan 201, 202 minister general) 128 Marguerite of Navarre (queen) 202 Matteo Rosso Orsini (cardinal) 66, 68 Marguerite of Provence (queen) 123 Matthias Doering (friar, provincial Maria Ayerba (duchess, foundress) 362 minister) 188 María Bejarano (foundress) 203 Maximilian of Habsburg (emperor) 221 Maria Celeste Galilei (nun, author) 314 Mechthild Janssen (foundress) 196 María Coronel (donor) 100 Mechthild of Austria (countess) 191 Maria de Medici (queen) 235 Mechtild Rempen (foundress) Maria Fernandes (foundres) 104 132, 329 María Fernández Coronel Midea of Nargni (nun) 274 (foundress) 97–98 Miguel Fenals (friar, visitator) 205–207, Maria Francesca Farnese, see Francesca 252, 268 Farnese Miguel of Salamanca (bishop) 89 Maria Hendriks (abbess) 356–357 Minoritae 45, 155, 366 María Lop (donor) 92 Modern Devotion movement 212–213, Maria Lorenza Longo (foundress) 222, 224 362 Monaldo (oncle of Clare) 14 María Meléndez (donor) 93 Moniales inclusae/Moniales inclusae María Míguez of Burgos (foundress) 90 ordinis S. Damiani 6, 32, 50, 130 Mariano of Florence 20, 210, 254, 289, 296, Mor Dias (foundress) 102 301, 303, 313, 321, 326 Motherhouses & daughterhauses 138, Maria of Altkirch (sponsor) 137 156–157, 180–183, 194, 249 Maria of Brabant-Aarschot Muciarella (nun) 241 (countess) 140 Mulierculae 45, 46, 155, 366 Maria of Braye (Damianite nun) 105 Music 137, 254, 284, 343 Maria of Huckele (abbess) 356 Maria of Hungary (queen, foundress) 86 Niccolò of Osimo (friar) 185, 321 Maria of Oignies (beguine) 16 Nicholas III (pope) 66 María of Padilla (queen-consort & Nicholas IV (pope) 82, 102, 114 foundress) 99–100, 167, 267, 273 Nicholas V (pope) 173 Maria of Pisa (abbess) 90 Nicholas Gernoun (knight) 127 Maria of Wolkenstein (nun, author) Nicholas of Cusa (cardinal) 182, 188–189, 190, 315 191, 315 Maria Rissel (nun) 219 Nicolaas of Gistel (Franciscan custos) 139 María Sanchez of Burgos (foundress) 90 Nicole Geofffrey (reformer) 197, 198 María Suárez de Toledo (foundress) 204 Nikolaus Caroli (friar, provincial vicar) 189 Marie Garelle (nun) 200 Nikolaus Glassberger (friar, Marie of Béziers (abbess) 106 chronicler) 131, 190, 326, 329 Marie of Teyric (abbess) 116 Normalisation, see enclosure Marie of Uzèz (foundress) 108 Novitiate/novices 4, 103, 238–239, 269–275, Marina of Villaseca (foundress) 205 290–292 index of names and subjects 439

Oblates 237–239, 271 Pieter Camerlinc (friar) 265 Observantiae Regulares 16–17, 24, 26, 42 Pietro of Naples (friar, Observant Oecolampadius (Protestant reformer) vicar) 182 348, 349 Pietro of Vercelli (franciscan provincial Olivier Maillard (friar, preacher and minister) 44 author) 198, 290, 342 Pius II (pope) 214, 224, 238 Order of Minoresses 3, 36, 60–62, 366 Poverty privilege 27, 33, 35, 39, 40, 42, 51, Order of Poor Clares (Ordo Sanctae 53, 199, 230–231, 298, 323, 365 Clarae) 3–5, 36, 63–65 Prassede 19 Order of San Damiano/Damianites 3, Prayer & prayer exercises 34, 251–252, 34–35, 56–60 254–255, 257, 334–346 Orlandino Volpelli 23 Preaching/Preachers 67, 179, 227, 289–290, Orsola Formicini (nun, author) 328 339–342 Ortolana (mother of Clare) 11, 15, 249 Premysil Ottokar I (king) 146 Ottaviano Ubaldini (cardinal) 266 Privileges & exemptions 66–68, 90, 92, Otto III of Carinthia (duke) 84 95–96, 101, 106, 125, 234–236, 273 Ottokar of Bohemia (king) 41, 149 Procurators/proctors 49–50, 125, 242, 247–248, 265 Pacifijica of Guelfuccio (nun) 13, 15, 249 Provenit ex vestre devotionis afffectu (papal Pacifijica of Urbino (nun) 337 bull) 178 Pacifijico (friar, visitator) 32 , see visual arts Quasdam litteras (papal bull) 66 Paola Malatesta Gonzaga (foundress) Quo elongati (papal bull) 39–41 180, 313 Quoniam ut ait (papal bull) 108 Paola of Premenugo (prioresss) 184 Paolo (friar) 19 Rafffaello Mafffei (sponsor) 296 Paolo Casanova (canon) 340–341 Raimundo of Coimbra (bishop) 102 Paoluccio Trinci (friar) 177 Raymonde of Lescure (abbess) 113 Passion devotion literature 302–304, Raymond of Donzac (bishop) 114 337–339 Raymond of Puycelsi (lord) 112 Patronage, see endowments Raymond of Valhauquez (bishop) 106 Paula (disciple of Jerome) 310–311 Recruitment 156–160, 239–240, 248–251, Pauperes Dominae de valle Spoleti sive 273, 288, 367, 369 Tuscia 25, 43 Regula Bullata 29, 31, 39, 50, 52 Pedro I ‘el Cruel’ (king) 99, 167, 267 Regula non Bullata 30–31 Pedro IV (king) 98 Regular Observance, German Pedro Bañols (visitator) 206 Lands 187–195 Pedro Zapaya (sponsor) 203 Regular Observance, Italy 176–187 Pensioners 127, 232–233, 236–237, 275 Regular Observance, Northern Low Periculoso (papal bull) 70, 177, 179 Countries 211–223 Périnelle of Troyes (abbess) 123–124 Regular Observance, Spain 202–208 Perrine of Baume (Perrine de La Roche) Religio Pauperum Dominarum 25, 28, 33 (Colettine nun, author) 173, 306, 331 Relocation 100, 104, 106–108, 111–114, 116, Personal income 240–243 119–121, 125–126, 132, 133, 135–140, Petrus Christiani (friar, preacher) 342 147–148, 166, 280–281, 353–356, 360 Peyronne of Jean (foundress) 112 René of Alençon (duke) 201 Philip IV (king) 115, 123, 268 Rents 126, 230–236, 241 Philip V (king) 123 Reuerinnen/Magdalenenschwestern 129, Philip the Good of Burgundy (duke) 195 135–136, 140, 209, 215, 228 Philip the Handsome (duke) 221 Richardis of Guelders (countess) 140 Pierre of Vaux (Franciscan friar) 170 Riformati 362 Pierre of Vias (sponsor) 119 Rikissa Magnusdotter 153 Pierre Pocq (bishop) 113 Rinaldo of Jenne (cardinal) 34, 37, 51–52, Pierre Viret (Protestant preacher) 330 55, 78, 130 440 index of names and subjects

Robert Messier (author) 300 Scribes & scribal activities 290–297 Robert of Naples (king) 68, 86–87, 111, Scriptorium 71, 133, 139, 143, 230, 291–297 114, 120 Secularization and demise of Rodrigo Frojaz (sponsor) 102 monasteries 347–357 Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (archbishop) 93 Seigniorial rights 233, 269 Rosa of Buyron (abbess) 254 Serafijina (Sveva) of Montefeltro (nun) 274 Rosa of Ranno Alberti Gualterii 43–44 Series Generalis Capituli Neapolitani 78–79 Rosa of Vaux (abbess) 254 Series Provinciarum Hibernica 78 Rosa of Viterbo (female preacher) 227 Series Provinciarum Saxonica 78 Rudolf of Habsburg (king) 136–137 Servants 243, 349 Rudolf of Montfort (count) 153 Service and charitable work 27, 227–228 Rudolf of Worms (canon) 129 Serving sisters, lay sisters & outgoing Rufijino of Scipione di Offfreduccio 12, 15 sisters 138, 169, 228, 230, 243, 250, 349 Rule commentaries & translations 140, Sibilla of Bondorfff (nun, scribe and 184–186, 191, 195, 321–324 illuminator) 294, 344 Rule of Clare (Regula Prima) 51–54, 62–64, Sico Polentone (humanist, author) 301 68, 69, 87, 120, 122, 146, 148, 159, 174, Siegfried of Gallenberg (founder) 150 183–185, 189, 194–199, 201, 205, 216–219, Sigismund of Tirol (duke) 190–191 221–222, 229–230, 253–263, 270–273, Silence 191, 257–258, 284, 286, 302, 354 284–285, 287, 305, 321–325, 362, 365 Sixtus IV (pope) 185, 197, 198, 216–218, 254 Rule of Gabriel Maria Nicholas for the Sixtus Tucher (canonist and priest) 317 Annonciade 200 Solet annuere (papal bull) 323 Rule of Innocent IV 48–51, 54, 62–63, 69, Sorores minores (inclusae) 21, 30, 44–47, 61, 118, 132, 133, 205, 229, 253, 270–273, 65, 155, 366 284–285, 287, 365 Sorores reclusae 107 Rule of Isabelle of Longchamp 60–63, 65, Sorores Sancti Damiani 45 68–69, 122–128, 159, 170, 229–230, Statutes, see constitutions 247–248, 253–264, 270–273, 284–285, Stefania of Saillaint (abbess) 198, 199 299–300, 366 Stefania of San Silvestro in Capite (nun, Rule of Nicholas IV (tertiary rule) 70–71, author) 127, 300 77, 177–178, 213, 271–273 Stephan Fridolin (friar, preacher and Rule of Quiñones for the author) 189, 290–291, 342 Conceptionists 208 Stephen of Hungary (cardinal) 58 Rule of Urban IV 62–65, 68, 71–72, 82, 86, 95, 105, 107, 109, 122, 130, 132, 133, 156, 189, Teaching, see preaching 191, 195, 229, 253–264, 284–285, 299–300, Teresa Martins Telo (foundress) 103 321–325, 365–366 Testament of Clare 51–52, 297–298, 322–324 Sainte-Roseline of Villeneuve Testament of Colette 305 (scholar) 106 Theatre & plays 295, 343 Salimbene of Parma (friar, chroni- Thibaud of Navarra (king) 123 cler) 266, 288 Thomas Eccleston (friar, chronicler) 43 Salomea of Poland (foundress) 147 Thomas of Celano (friar, hagiographer) 55 Sanche of Haïtze (bishop) 114 Thomas Vézian (sponsor) 108 Sancho IV (king) 96 Ticbors (Tiburge) of Saint Maurice Sancho of Aceves (visitator) 205 (foundress) 115–116 Sancia of Naples/Sancia of Mallorca Tino of Camaino 86 (Queen, foundress) 53, 68, 71, 86–87, 111, Titburge of Isle-Jourdain (sponsor) 120 114, 120, 122, 256–257 Types of monasteries 67–74, 157–160, Sancta Romana atque universalis Ecclesia 279–282 (papal bull) 177 Saurina of Entenza (donor) 98 Ubertino of Casale (friar, author) 303, 335 Scholars & schools 105–106, 133, 139, Ugolino of Ostia (cardinal, later pope 237–239 Gregory IX) 21–32, 364–365 index of names and subjects 441

Ugo Panziera (Franciscan poet) 336 Violante of Moncada (abbess) 206 Ulrich of Freiberg (sponsor) 131 Virtual pilgrimage 342–343 Ulrich of Württemberg (duke) 354 Visitators/visitation 23, 26, 43, 54, 58, 66, Urban authorities & policies 221–222, 74, 130, 137, 160, 167–169, 224, 263–264 233–235 Visual arts 343–345 Urban IV (pope) 57–59, 61–65, 122 Vitale of Donicato 23 Urban VI (pope) 178 Vittorino of Feltre (humanist) 307–308 Urraca of Guzmán (Poor Clare, Vivaldo Pandulfo (sponsor) 102 foundress) 101 Urraca of Salamanca 91 Walram of Jülich (count) 140 Ursula Haider (abbess, reformer) 192–193, Wenceslas of Bohemia (King) 42, 146 290–291, 329, 336–337, 342–343 Wilhelm IV of Jülich (count) 140 Ursula Kollerin (nun, scribe) 291 Wilhelm of Katzenelnbogen (count) 142 Ursula of Eger (abbess) 322 Willem of Den Bossche (lord) 144, 212 Utrecht Chapter 213, 222–223 Willem of Duvenvoorde (sponsor) 143 William of Pole (patron) 126 Valeria Campanazzi (nun, visionary and Willibald Pirckheimer (humanist) 316–317 author) 320–321 Violante of Aragon (queen) 96 Yves Magistri (friar, author) 201 Violante (Yolanda) of Hungary (queen) 92, 95 Zwingli (Protestant reformer) 348, 349