Religious Life Between Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World
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Religious Life between Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World <UN> Studies in the History of Christian Traditions General Editor Robert J. Bast (Knoxville, Tennessee) Editorial Board Paul C.H. Lim (Nashville, Tennessee) Brad C. Pardue (Point Lookout, Missouri) Eric Saak (Indianapolis) Christine Shepardson (Knoxville, Tennessee) Brian Tierney (Ithaca, New York) John Van Engen (Notre Dame, Indiana) Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman† VOLUME 180 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/shct <UN> Religious Life between Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World Selected Essays by Kaspar Elm Translated by James D. Mixson LEIDEN | BOSTON <UN> Cover illustration: Detail from Andrea di Bonaiuto (fl. 1346-1379). The Militant Church (Via Veritatis). Fresco from north wall (post-restoration 2003-2004), Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy. Photo Credit: Scala/Art Resource, NY. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elm, Kaspar, 1929- [Essays. Selections. English] Religious life between Jerusalem, the desert, and the world : selected essays by Kaspar Elm / translated by James D. Mixson. pages cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; VOLUME 180) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-30777-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Europe--Religious life and customs. 2. Europe--Church history--600-1500. 3. Monastic and religious life--Europe--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Title. BR735.E3813 2015 270.5--dc23 2015036686 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1573-5664 isbn 978-90-04-30777-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30778-0 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Translator’s Preface vii Introduction 1 1 Francis and Dominic: The Impact and Impetus of Two Founders of Religious Orders 28 2 Fratres et Sorores Sanctissimi Sepulcri: Reflections on Fraternitas, Familia and Women’s Religious Life in the Circle of the Chapter of the Holy Sepulcher 55 3 Mendicants and Humanists in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: The Problem of Justifying Humanistic Studies in the Mendicant Orders 111 4 Decline and Renewal of the Religious Orders in the Late Middle Ages: Current Research and Research Agendas 138 5 Canons and Knights of the Holy Sepulcher: A Contribution to the Origins and Early History of the Military Orders of Palestine 189 6 The Status of Women in Religious Life, Semi-Religious Life and Heresy in the Era of St. Elizabeth 220 7 John of Capistrano’s Preaching Tour North of the Alps (1451–1456) 255 8 Vita regularis sine regula. The Meaning, Legal Status and Self- Understanding of Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Semi-Religious Life 277 9 The “Devotio Moderna” and the New Piety between the Later Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era 317 Index 333 <UN> <UN> Translator’s Preface The essays translated here are but one attempt to draw together the richness of Kaspar Elm’s decades of scholarly publication. They are chosen with an eye to capturing something of his tastes and interests, and the recurring themes that characterized his research. They are arranged chronologically, and they attempt to strike a balance across earlier and later work. Those who know that work best will recognize many crucial omissions, and will perhaps have made different choices. Such criticism is fair enough. These essays are by no means fully representative of the full range of Professor Elm’s work. They are only one collection that hopes to speak to some of the interests of the Anglophone audi- ence for which this volume is primarily intended. The translations themselves are based on the original publications of Professor Elm’s essays, and preserve the notes and bibliography largely in their original form, with only slight modi- fications to suit the conventions of Brill Academic Publishers. I am grateful to the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Alabama for their support of my work on this translation, as well as to Robert Bast, Ivo Romein and the editorial staff at Brill for their patience and assistance in helping bring the project to conclusion. My thanks as well to John Van Engen, Robert Lerner and Michael Bailey for their careful reading and criticism as I struggled with the many challenges of crafting a proper introduction, as well as to Valerie Roberts for her diligence and care in proofing the full manuscript. As ever, I am grateful to my wife for her faithful patience and companionship. And I am grateful above all to Veit and Susanna Elm for their support, insight, encouragement, and hospitality. I offer the fruits of these labors to their family and to their father, in honor of his inspiring scholarship. Introduction For most of the twentieth century, the story of medieval religious life was writ- ten by and for those who lived it. Monks, canons, friars and nuns wrote about their own orders, as part of a larger church history focused on institutions and dogma. But that story, as even those with a passing interest in medieval religious history are aware, has long since been transformed. Medieval reli- gious life is now unthinkable apart from the context of the world beyond the cloister—the world of the nobility, kings and princes, of commerce, merchants, and cities, of lay piety and heresy. The story is also unthinkable apart from a comparative view that considers religious life across the boundaries of indi- vidual orders and institutions. And few medievalists of the later twentieth cen- tury have contributed more to these scholarly transformations than Kaspar Elm. Over the last half century his reflections, now a monumental corpus of books, essays and other publications, have explored how the life of the cloister, canonry and convent intersected with the world beyond, and how that story reflected the broader sweep of European history. Elm’s work was among the earliest to explore topics and themes that have been commonplace in Anglophone scholarship on medieval religious life over the last generation: the eremitical tradition that shaped what became the order of Augustinian Hermits; the piety and institutional traditions of religious life nurtured by the crusades; the connections between mendicant religious life and the cities; the history of lay women and men who were drawn to religious life’s ideals, and who appropriated its practices; the story of the reforms of the later middle ages that became known as the Observant movement. Until now, however, relatively few Anglophone scholars and students have had access to Elm’s work. The reasons are many, but four stand out. First, across Europe itself, a certain scholarly parochialism tended to fragment the broad vision Elm advocated. He drew from the work of religious life in England, France, Italy, and Germany alike, and authored both synthetic accounts and local studies that moved gracefully from Spain to Germany and the Low Countries to Italy. Yet most of his colleagues remained content, naturally enough, to work within their own national, local, or regional traditions, or within the traditions of particular orders or congregations. Second, the particu- lar status of Germany and German scholarship after 1945 worked against any broader influence. Few in France, England or Italy read or worked extensively with German scholarship, and among Anglo-American scholars in particular, the neglect of medieval Germany was even more pronounced. Anglophone scholars looked instead to England, France and Italy. And whether in Europe or © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/9789004307780_00� <UN> 2 Introduction North America, to note a third reason, for almost everyone the story of medi- eval religious life simply ended around 1300. The later middle ages, still a youth- ful field of serious inquiry as late as the 1970s, remained a period of darkness and confusion. For most, the supposed “golden age” of the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries remained at the center. Finally, Elm’s own rigorous standards of thoroughness and nuance, and the complexity of the landscape he surveyed in his work, made any attempt at a single broad synthesis seem at best unwise, at worst impossible. As a result, apart from two volumes of collected essays, there is still no single major book that captures his five decades of scholarship. The present translation of several of Professor Elm’s most important essays offers itself as a modest remedy to this circumstance. Here for the first time in English is a collection of essays that presents his contributions to an Anglophone scholarly audience. The purpose of this introduction is not merely to offer a detailed summary of what the essays themselves make quite clear. Rather, it is to recover the originality of Elm’s scholarship in the context of his life and career, and to draw attention to the particular strengths of his contributions. These considerations will then allow some concluding remarks on the reception of Elm’s work, the critical issues these essays have engaged, and their continuing resonance for modern scholarship.