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Early Modern Mendicancy: Franciscan Practice in the Bohemian Lands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2017

MARTIN ELBEL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Palacky University Olomouc, Na Hrade 5, CZ 71 47 Olomouc, Czech Republic; e-mail: martin.elbel@upol.cz

Abstract

Using the example of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, and its Olomouc convent in particular, this paper analyses mendicancy after the Reformation. In the early modern period mendicancy remained an important practice in the Franciscan Order. Apart from its economic function, begging was also an important means of interaction between the friars and the people. It was a complicated exchange of goods and services, which helped the friars to secure their position in society and export elements of their spirituality outside the walls of their convents.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 For the role of medieval mendicancies see Prudlo, Donald (ed.), The origin, development, and refinement of medieval religious mendicancies, Leiden 2011 Google Scholar.

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6 Mendicancy is traditionally seen ‘as a severe form of poverty in which, not only the individual religious possessed no personal property, but the order as a whole had, in theory, no fixed sources of income and very little if any corporate property’. It must be also noted that a mendicant order ‘was not merely a generic term, it was a canonical category, guaranteeing such religious particular rights, in particular that of begging publicly for alms without permission of the local bishop’: Augustine Thompson, ‘The origins of religious mendicancy in medieval Europe’, in Prudlo, Medieval religious mendicancies, 3–30 at pp. 18–19.

7 See especially Forster, Marc R., ‘With and without confessionalization: varieties of early modern German Catholicism’, Journal of Early Modern History i/4 (1997), 315–43Google Scholar, and Pollmann, Judith, ‘Being a Catholic in early modern Europe’, in Bamji, Alexandra, Janssen, Geert H. and Laven, Mary (eds), The Ashgate research companion to the Counter-Reformation, Farnham–Burlington, Vt 2013, 165–82Google Scholar.

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9 The late medieval Observance in late medieval Bohemia is discussed thoroughly by Hlaváček, Petr, Die Böhmischen Franziskaner im ausgehenden Mittelalter, Stuttgart 2011 Google Scholar.

10 Nevertheless only four friars assembled at the provincial chapter in Brno in 1601: Minařík, Klemens, ‘Provinciálové františkánské české provincie v letech, 1601–1750’, Sborník Historického kroužku xviii (1917), 54Google Scholar.

11 During the siege of Brno in 1644 the oldest convent in the province had to be razed to the ground due to fortification works: Wrbczansky, Severinus, Nucleus Minoriticus, seu vera, et sincera relatio originis, et progressus provinciae Bohemiae, conventuum, et residentiarium, fratrum, et sororum sancti-monialium, Ordin. Minor. S. P. Francisci Strict. Observ. Reform., Vetero–Pragae 1746, 231Google Scholar.

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16 On the Franciscan-Capuchin rivalry see Elbel, Martin, ‘The making of a perfect friar: habit and reform in the Franciscan tradition’, in Kontler, L. and Miller, J. (eds), Friars, nobles and burghers: sermons, images and prints: studies of culture and society in early modern Europe, Budapest 2010, 149–75Google Scholar.

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19 Armstrong, The politics of piety, 34.

20 The introduction of the Reform into the Bohemian province is recorded by Wrbczansky, Nucleus Minoriticus, 26–8.

21 The regulations of provincial authorities are summarised in the Statuta praecipua in Capitulis Provincialibus et Diffinitoriis Provinciae facta ab anno 1614,  Archives of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, National Archive, Prague, book no. 68, passim.

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25 Only some houses in the smaller towns were at least partly sponsored by the owner of the town (usually the annual revenue of victuals which covered the needs of twelve friars): Wrbczansky, Nucleus Minoriticus, passim.

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30 For the renewal of the convent see Archivum Conventum Olomucensis ad S. Bernardinum, Moravian Land Archive, E-21, Franciscans of Dačice, book no. 9, pp. 18–39.

31 Martin Elbel, ‘Consolidation, 1700–1750’, in Kalous, Transformation of confessional cultures, 135–57.

32 See Statuta praecipua.

33 Protocollum Archivi Conventus Olomucensis (part H: Collecturae Conventus), Moravian Land Archive, EH21, Franciscans in Dačice, book no. 10a, pp. 407–10.

34 The itinerary is recorded in the report for the bishop's consistory of 1773: Fassiones Conventus Olomucensis PP. Franciscanorum ad S. Bernardinum fideliter et obsequiosissime exhibitae, Land Archive, Opava, branch Olomouc, archbishopric of Olomouc, sig. Bb 38, inv. no. 2020.

35 Statuta praecipua.

36 Ibid.

37 Archives of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, inv. no. 2982.

38 Liber Raticinionum Conventus Olomucensis ad Sanctum Bernardinum inchoatus anno 1756, Moravian Land Archive, E-21, Franciscans of Dačice, book no. 10b.

39 The documents related to the dissolution of the convent are housed ibid. B2, Gubernium, sig. K20/36.

40 The value of the other monasteries dissolved in Olomouc was substantially higher in spite of the fact that they usually contained fewer people: Augustinian canons (17 canons), 209,000 fl.; Dominican nuns (36 nuns), 238,000 fl.; Carthusians (16), 280,000 fl.; Poor Clares (28), 187,000 fl.; Premonstratensians (90), 1,406,000. The value of the Jesuit college and seminary abolished in 1773 was 830,000. The Conventual convent (27) had a capital of 19,000 fl.: Bílek, Tomáš Václav, Statky a jmění kollejí jesuitských, klášterů, kostelů, bratrstev a jiných ústavů v království Českém od císaře Josefa II. zrušených, Prague 1893, 100358 Google Scholar.

41 The metaphor of mendicants as vampires appeared in Richter, Joseph, Bildergalerie klösterlicher Misbräuche: eine nöthige Beylage zur Bildergalerie Katholischer Misbräuche, Frankfurt–Leipzig 1784, 251Google Scholar.

42 Popis královského hlavního města Olomouce sepsaný syndikem Floriánem Josefem Louckým roku 1746, ed. Spáčilová, Libuše and Spáčil, Vladimír, Olomouc 1991, 56Google Scholar.

43 Cf. von Thiessen, Hillard, Die Kapuziner zwischen Konfessionalisierung und Alltagskultur: Vergleichende Fallstudie am Beispiel Freiburgs und Hildesheims, 1599–1750, Freiburg im Breisgau 2002, 224–51Google Scholar.

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45 It was the case with Bohumír Josef Hynek Bílovský, a popular preacher and writer, who co-operated with the friars and supervised a religious confraternity at a pilgrimage shrine at Jaroměřice initiated by the Franciscans: Bilowsky, Gottfried Joseph, Societas Jesu Salvatoris, die hochlöblichen Gesellschaft … Jesu Christi, Ollmütz 1708 Google Scholar.

46 Elbel, Martin, ‘Pilgrims on the way of the cross: pilgrimage practice and confessional identity in early modern Czech Lands’, in Andor, E. and Tóth, I. G. (eds), Frontiers of faith: religious exchange and constitution of religious identities, 1400–1700, Budapest 2001, 275–83Google Scholar.

47 Communicationes Viae S. Crucis, Archive of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, book no. 352.

48 On gifts see Mauss, Marcel, The gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies, London 1966 Google Scholar, and, more recently, Liebersohn, Harry, The return of the gift: European history of a global idea, Cambridge 2011 Google Scholar. For the early modern period see the inspiring study by Davis, Natalie Zemon, The gift in sixteenth-century France, Oxford 2000, 167–81Google Scholar.

49 Sannig, Bernard, Rituale Franciscanum, continens varias absolutiones, benedictiones etc. ad utilitatem Christi fidelium et praxim sacerdotum, maxime Ordinis S. Francisci ex variis Ritualibus coordinatum, Neo-Pragae 1685 Google Scholar.

50 Cf. von Thiessen, Die Kapuziner, 428–49.

51 I used a quotation from the English edition: von Born, Ignaz Edler, Monachologia; or, Handbook of the natural history of monks, arranged according to the Linnæan system, Edinburgh 1852, 57Google Scholar.

52 The practice is thoroughly discussed in Charvath, Fractio panis, 156–90.

53 Archivum Conventum Olomucensis ad S. Bernardinum, Moravian Land Archive, E-21, Franciscans of Dačice, book no. 9, p. 31. The chronicle was initiated after 1650 by Modestus Meerstein, superior of the convent, as an attempt to ‘reconstruct’ the memory of the old medieval convent in order to support the Franciscan restoration in Olomouc: Elbel, Martin, ‘Sacred re-enactments: representations of the Franciscan past after the Reformation’, in Arbeit, Marcel and Christie, Ian (eds), Where is history today? New ways of representing the past, Olomouc 2015, 91100 Google Scholar.

54 The only syndic who was not a member of the city council was the architect Matthias Kniebandel who supervised and partly sponsored the expensive reconstruction of the convent buildings in the 1740s.

55 Archivum Conventum Olomucensis ad S. Bernardinum, Moravian Land Archive, E-21, Franciscans of Dačice, book no. 9, p. 37.

56 Johannes Freyberger to the bishop's office, 6 Dec. 1773, Land Archive, Opava, branch Olomouc, archbishopric of Olomouc, sig. Bb 38, fo. 143r.