Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500

Müller, Annalena Book Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500 Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Müller, Annalena (2024) : Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500, ISBN 978-1-003-83825-8, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003299905 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/290383 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500 This book aims to rewrite the narrative of women and power in medieval society. Based on a rich corpus of sources – systematically collected for the first time – it reveals female monasteries as central and economically able agents in feudal society. With a chronological focus on the late Middle Ages, this book focuses on four powerful convents located in modern-day France, Germany, and Switzerland. Three of these institutions were aristocratic convents founded in the early Middle Ages. They were endowed with far-ranging feudal prerogatives that were largely, but not exclusively, derived from landed possessions. The fourth convent originated in the thirteenth century and disposed of a primarily monetary economy. Observed from a longue-durée perspective, Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe reveals strategies of adaptations that allowed these different institutions to weather the significant economic changes of the late Middle Ages. Within the context of medieval feudal society, these abbesses and prioresses were authoritative figures. They ruled over territories, dispensed justice, appointed priests, and even sent soldiers to war. Late medieval convents acted as urban landlords and gave credits – they were thus major economic players in the rising cities. These observations of this monograph will force medievalists to reconsider the traditional image of both the “male” feudal Middle Ages and medieval monetary economy. Annalena Müller holds a Master’s degree from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a PhD from Yale University. She has held academic positions in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Her previous publications include From the Cloister to the State: From the Cloister to the State (2021). LONDON AND NEW YORK Monastic Women and Secular Economy in Later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500 Annalena Müller First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Annalena Müller The right of Annalena Müller to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons AttributionNon Commercial-No Derivatives CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Müller, Annalena, author. Title: Monastic women and secular economy in later Medieval Europe, ca. 1200 to 1500 / Annalena Müller. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023041251 (print) | LCCN 2023041252 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032290706 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032290713 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003299905 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Monasteries—Economic aspects—Europe—History—To 1500. | Monasticism and religious orders for women—Europe—History—To 1500. | Europe—Economic conditions—To 1492. Classification: LCC BX2590 .M85 2024 (print) | LCC BX2590 (ebook) | DDC 271/.90040902—dc23/eng/20231124 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041251 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041252 ISBN: 978-1-032-29070-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-29071-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29990-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents List of Figures vii Glossary ix Acknowledgments xiii 1 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: AnIntroduction 1 PART I Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy 21 2 The Early Medieval Background: Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, and Fraumünster of Zurich 23 3 The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 40 PART II Monastic Economic Power inthe Late Medieval City 67 4 Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 69 5 Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 90 Conclusion 115 vi Contents Appendix 1: The Late Medieval Abbesses of Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, and Fraumünster of Zurich 123 Appendix 2: Tabular Content of Klingental’s Anniversary Book (Abridged) StABS Klingental H 125 Bibliography 177 Index 191 Figures 2.1 Schematic rendering of the Plan of St. Gall 24 3.1 Fraumünster and its patrimony in the thirteenth century. Map design: Agnes Schormann 45 3.2 Fraumünster and its late medieval patrimony (c. 1430). Map design: Agnes Schorman 46 3.3 (a) Buchau’s patrimony in the thirteenth century. (b)Buchau’s patrimony in the fourteenth century. (c)Buchau’s patrimony in the fifteenth century. Map design: Agnes Schormann 50 3.4 Buchau’s patrimony in the fifteenth century with jus patronatus. Map design: Agnes Schormann 52 3.5 Notre-Dame’s ninth-century possessions according to the confirmation by Charles the Bald (858). Map design: Agnes Schormann 53 3.6 Notre-Dame’s seigneuries and churches with jus patronatus. Map design: Agnes Schormann 55 3.7 Notre-Dame’s patrimony in the late fourteenth century. The vast majority of the abbey’s possessions were located in the vicinity of Soissons. Map design: Agnes Schormann 57 4.1 Map of Basel (Matthäus Merian, 1642) with Klingental 73 4.2 Klingental’s landed patrimony and tithes in the late thirteenth (left) and late fourteenth centuries (right). Map design: Agnes Schormann 79 5.1 Klingental’s house-economy in the late fifteenth-century Basel. Map design: Agnes Schormann 102 DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905-1 From her abbatial quarters, Abbess Odeline de Trachy (1256–1273) can overlook the borrow called Notre-Dame. She can see the houses of the Rue St. Pierre, the new hospital, and the church of St. Pierre au Parvis, home of the recalcitrant canons who are subject to her authority. The streets below the abbey are busy as usual. There are the regular crowds near the market, the taverns, and workshops. Construction-noise is echoing in the streets. A new prison is being erected. It is bigger than then old one which has become too small for the growing number of men and women from the abbey’s seigneuries awaiting trial. The abbess is mistress over 27 seigneuries. It is her responsibility to maintain the peace and ensure that justice is served. She is also responsible for her subjects’ protection from external harm. That is why, Elisabeth has commissioned a tunnel to be excavated. The tunnel will connect the abbey’s walled quarter with the rest of the city if the city of Soissons should see another siege. In that case, the abbess will have to order the gates of the borrow shut. But the tunnel will allow for smuggling food inside the abbey’s quarter. If there is any to be procured, of course. In reality, there is little Elisabeth can do to protect her subjects from the wars that have ravaged the area for as long as anybody can remember. And even less for those living outside of Soissons. But maybe the tunnel will bring a little safety, at least for the residents of the abbey’s borrow… Although this story is fictionalized, its key elements – the walled quarter, seigneuries, prison, and tunnel – are historically documented.1 From the seventh until the late eighteenth century, the abbess of Notre-Dame de Soissons was a powerful feudal lord in the region of Soissons. And she was no exception. At the time, innumerable abbesses exercised secular authority all across Europe. They administered territories where they collected taxes, dispersed justice, and even recruited soldiers for the king’s army. In addition to being places of feudal authority, medieval convents were economic centers. Monastic demesnes produced great quantities of grain, wine, and fruits, which fed both a convent’s inhabitants and employees, and surpluses were sold on regional markets. Bridges, quarries, mills, and ponds brought further revenues that in one way or another entered the local markets. 1 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography An Introduction This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license 2 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction While a common phenomenon in medieval Europe, abbesses and the institutions they administered rarely appear in textbooks on feudal Europe. The majority of studies that engage with medieval society at large continue to conceive of the Middle Ages as a period of male authority. To some degree, this has long applied to social historians and researchers of women’s and gender history alike. The latter, too, long considered medieval women as marginalized agents – and those women who yielded power – political or economic – as exceptions from the norm.2 In the mid-1990s, Georges Duby succinctly summarized the discipline’s prevailing perception when he wrote that “the Middle Ages were resolutely male.”3 And elsewhere, that “by reason of their physical constitution, of the nature of their body, and the sex which defines them, women were deemed incapable of exercising the power of command, potestas.”4 At the time, Duby was the most famous representative of this view, but he was not the only one. Rather, this notion remained dominant throughout the early 2000s. In recent years, this view has begun to change. Challenging the “inherited narrative,” a growing number of studies have revealed elite women to have habitually yielded authority, ruling counties and duchies alongside their husbands or alone and even raising armies.5 These studies have shown that powerful women were not so exceptional in medieval Europe after all.6 As a result, the traditional image of the male European Middle Ages has begun to crumble, as it is gradually being replaced by a new, more nuanced one. This monograph will contribute to rewriting the narrative of women and power in medieval society by focusing on the secular and, particularly, the economic authorities of female monastics. With a chronological focus on the late Middle Ages, the following chapters will center on four convents located in modern-day France, Germany, and Switzerland. The four institutions are Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, Fraumünster of Zurich, and Klingental of Basel. The first three were founded in the early Middle Ages. Notre-Dame’s origin dates to the mid-seventh century, Buchau’s to ca. 770, and those of Fraumünster Abbey to the year 853. All three were aristocratic convents which were endowed with far-ranging feudal prerogatives that were largely, but not exclusively, derived from landed possessions. The influence of the fourth convent, Klingental, a thirteenth-century foundation, was primarily economic and financial. It rested on an impressive portfolio which the convent’s nuns steadily built throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The four convents considered in this study are examples of top-tier female monasteries that existed all over Catholic Europe and that possessed both great economic and territorial authority throughout the Middle Ages and frequently beyond. Women and Power: Beyond the Extraordinary In the 1970s, feminist historians set out to show that women very much had had a history before the modern era, and that archives housed innumerable Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 3 sources testifying to the lives, deeds, and agencies of premodern women. They argued that the historiographical silence regarding women was not due to a lack of documents, but resulted from the dominant male view on history that had simply omitted these sources. In a second step, women’s historians set out to show that the overlooked histories of women from all ranks of society mattered. Scholars, such as Joan Kelly, argued that the bypassing of historical women had yielded a distorted perception of the distant past in general. And that taking into consideration female perspectives would force historians to reconsider the discipline’s master narratives, including its periodization.7 Kelly and others demanded that historiography as a whole needed to be overhauled and history be rewritten to include women. The then new field of Women’s History had departed from a defensive position. Its proponents sought to prove that women’s history mattered for the discipline as a whole, a quest that was met with much resistance. Moreover, this defensive position brought with it a paradox. On the one hand, feminist scholars argued against the notion of female invisibility in the medieval world. On the other hand, they did so while operating within the conceptual framework of male power and female subordination in premodern Europe. As a result, much of the field’s work tended to conceive of female agencies as exceptional and as having to be wrestled from a more or less encumbering patriarchy. In recent years, the field’s historiographical narrative has begun to change from a defensive one, where women had to fight for their space and independence, to a more affirmative one that readily assumes that elite women naturally partook in power. Operating with a more nuanced definition of power was the prerequisite for altering the narrative. When Georges Duby, and others with him, had argued that women were incapable of exercising power in medieval Europe, their assertion largely rested on a simplified version of the Weberian concept of power: Since women did not fight wars in medieval Europe, they were incapable of exercising power.8 The question of women and power has been revisited many times since the 1990s.9 In my view, one of its most useful reconceptions is that of German medievalist Christine Reinle. In her 2015 essay “Was bedeutet Macht im Mittelalter?,” she assumed a strictly structuralist perspective.10 Reine did not contend herself with the notion of power as the ability to command and punish. Rather, drawing on sociologist Michael Mann, she established a structural definition of power and rule first, which allowed her to answer the question about women and power, second.11 Max Weber famously defined power as the ability to impose one’s will within a social relationship despite resistance.12 The problem with such a broad definition of power is the same as Duby’s variation of it – it is too vague to be operable. Weber was keenly aware of the problem and shifted his attention to authority instead. Authority is closely connected to power, but it is structurally more tangible.13 Many sociologists after Weber have taken the same route, including Michael Mann. Mann defines authority as a form of power which the affected groups and institutions consider beneficial. 4 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction Legitimate authority, according to Mann, is based upon a set of shared values, such as notions of respect, adhesion to norms, and hierarchical structures. Like other sources of power, also authority is socially constructed. It is rooted, among other things, in economic, military, and/or political influence.14 Mann’s definition of authority also includes the aspect of imposing one’s will, which is central to any definition of power and authority. However, as Mann’s definition also considers the means through which the imposition of will is achieved, it opens the circle of those capable of exercising authority beyond men wielding arms. Christine Reinle used Mann’s definition and adapted it to make it operable for inquiries concerning medieval Europe. When applying sociological concepts of power and authority to the Middle Ages, one needs to take into consideration a number of prerequisites which a ruler had to meet. According to Reinle, these include physical integrity and marital legitimacy. In addition to such cultural requirements, Reinle identifies access to material and social resources as the sine qua non for the effective exercise of authority and rule in medieval Europe.15 Material resources include the discretionary disposition of land, money, warriors, horses, etc., while social resources comprise the ability to appoint individuals into (lucrative) offices.16 The effectiveness of authority in medieval Europe thus depended on its bearer’s structural, infrastructural, and social wealth. In other words, an authoritative ruler needed to possess the material resources to impose their will, to keep the peace among their people, and the social resources to grant favors and disfavors and thus to be able to effectively foster and regulate patron-client relationships.17 Whether women had access to such material and social resources depended on a number of things, including their social status and local laws of succession. However, the female sex was not a marker that excluded them from exercising authority.18 If women disposed of the social and material resources, they could, and indeed, they did, wield authority in medieval Europe, as the growing number of studies engaging with medieval queenship and female aristocrats show.19 Nevertheless, one needs to be careful to not go overboard. Although recent studies have demonstrated that authority exercised by a female was not exceptional in medieval Europe, it also remains true that the Middle Ages were uncomfortable with a female ruler. Especially where secular rule was concerned, medieval society always preferred a man on the royal or ducal throne.20 But, there was one vast area of dominion where women were the natural, even the only, choice: female monasteries. Early and high medieval abbesses were vested with much of the same authorities as secular lords. Just as secular lords, abbesses ruled over their convents’ seigneuries, they dispersed justice, levied taxes, and generally were the highest authority. This omnipresent “secular” aspect of female monasticism has hitherto largely escaped both scholars of medieval queenship and scholars of female monasticism.21 And this study sets out to contribute to filling this gap. Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 5 Female Monasticism and Their Forgotten Power in Medieval Europe Monasteries were the archives of the Middle Ages. Not only centers of religious, philosophical, and medical knowledge, their walls also guarded a convent’s chartered rights, privileges, and other legal documents. The wealth of written sources that has come down to us from monasteries is unrivaled. It is therefore not surprising that monastic history has long been a traditional field of medieval inquiry. However, here as elsewhere, historians of the nineteenth and of the first half of the twentieth centuries tended to focus on male orders.22 This is true in terms of both historical studies and source editions. Only over the course of the past 30 years, historical scholars have begun to take an interest in the overlooked influence of female monastic communities. This observation holds particularly true for Germanophone and Anglophone scholarship.23 In the latter, female monasticism has become a rich and diverse field of research since the late 1990s.24 Closely tied to the cultural turn and the rise of gender history, studies have engaged with monastic communities as places of cultural production and learning, gradually debunking the myth of unlearned nuns and even revealing their convents as places of politics.25 The focus of Germanophone historiography has been slightly different. Because of its traditional ties to Landesgeschichte, studies tend to be strictly empirical – sometimes bordering on the descriptive. Landesgeschichte can be described as regional history on an academic level with a distinct methodology which insists on considering every historical source available for the object or region under study.26 Landesgeschichte has a long tradition within German academia in general and the study of medieval monasticism in particular. Moreover, and going beyond the disciplinary limits of Landesgeschichte, German historians have long been interested in the early medieval foundations of female convents and their role for the Christianization of Central Europe and the stabilization of Frankish rule.27 A number of recent Landesgeschichte studies have begun to shed light on their later medieval fates and have shown that these aristocratic convents frequently remained socially and economically influential throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.28 However, resulting from its strict confinement to regional history and limited interest in comparison on a larger scale, scholars of the field frequently assume that these powerful convents of early medieval origin (Stifte) were a German specificity which fundamentally differed from nunneries elsewhere.29 As the following chapters will show, this assumption does not hold up to transregional scrutiny.30 While the geographical focus of Landesgeschichte is one factor for explaining the lack of transregional studies, the general lacuna of studies engaging with French nunneries is another. France is the natural region of comparison because of the shared Frankish origins of modern-day Germany, Switzerland, and France, and because Frankish Europe was the period to which date the origins of many powerful female monasteries.31 Apart from a few notable 6 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction exceptions, French historiography has traditionally paid little attention to female monasticism, although medieval France was particularly rich in powerful convents.32 The absence of source editions and reference works further complicates any research project on medieval French convents. And much work remains to be done here.33 Authority and Landownership This monograph engages with different types of authority held by female monasteries and enquires as to how these developed in the long durée. Moreover, it asks about the factors and strategies that determined the institutions’ long-term economic success or eventual decline. Especially for monastic institutions of early medieval origin, landownership was a central source of both their economic wealth and authority. Thus, the terms “feudalism” and “manorialism” immediately come to mind when wanting to put names on their economic nature. However, the concepts of “feudalism” and “manorialism” have seen a similarly exhaustive scholarly engagement as the notions of “power” and “authority.” While I do not wish to enter the debate, the terminological evolution along with a delamination of the terms’ usage in this study needs addressing.34 Scholarly debates about feudalism date back to the eighteenth century. At the time, the notion had been shaped by two centuries of academic discussions on feudal and agrarian laws.35 With the birth of the modern university and academic social and historical studies during the nineteenth century, social theorists and historians began to avail themselves of these previously strictly legalistic terms. The period’s scholars expanded their usage and gave them a broader meaning. They applied the terms to describe the economic and social constitution of the medieval political system.36 In other words, during the nineteenth century, feudalism (and manorialism) changed from legal terms as found in medieval charters to analytical categories meant to reflect the structure of medieval society and economy at large. That in itself is nothing unusual, as historians avail themselves of a great number of analytical categories, which are necessary to make the distant past intelligible to modern minds. This is also true for feudalism, which has brought about a number of groundbreaking studies that have allowed for a better understanding of the complexity and diversity of medieval societal structures, including, of course, Marc Bloch’s La société féodale (1939).37 However, after over a century of feudal and manorial studies, the categories have been criticized as having become so general that they fail to describe something in particular.38 It would be futile to engage at length in the criticisms and defenses of their continuous usage, as others have done so sufficiently.39 Instead, it shall suffice to briefly outline the meanings attributed to them in the subsequent chapters. As the concepts were only born in the “post-feudal ages” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is evident that no medieval man or woman would Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 7 have described their societal environment as feudal, nor would they have understood what such a description might imply. However, although the terminology is modern, the phenomena it seeks to describe are not. Along with the late Susan Reynolds, I will distinguish feudalism “in the narrower, feudovassalic sense of relations between lords and vassals within the noble class” from “seigneurie or manorialism, that is, relations between lords and peasant.”40 For the most part, the ties this study discusses fall into the category of manorial relations between lords (monasteries) and peasants. But naturally, it also touches on feudal ties whenever relationships between said monasteries and other nobles, such as kings or emperors, are concerned. All manorial relationships have land at their center. In medieval Europe, landownership usually came with a number of rights over the people who lived on it. The character of these rights was not static and changed over time, and manorial authority was the most exhaustive during the early and high Middle Ages. Authority derived from landownership is what is meant when the following chapters speak of manorial or seigneurial authority. However, not all prerogatives of a seigneur were tied to the land he or she owned. A seigneur’s suzerain could transfer additional authorities to a local representative. Such was the case when Henry III vested the abbess of Fraumünster with the regalia, which effectively allowed her to govern Zurich in the eleventh century. In that case, the abbess of Fraumünster yielded both, manorial authority over her peasants and feudal authority over the citizens of Zurich.41 Thus, a clear-cut distinction between feudal and manorial authority is not always easy to make, as they could and often would overlap. Moreover, the actual power a manorial and/or feudal lord exercised over people also depended on their individual status. A lord had more authority over serfs than over free peasants, and urban citizens frequently enjoyed greater freedoms than peasants, etc. Because of the inherent blurriness and complexity of both the terminology and its actual implications, I only imply the minimal definitions, that is, simply distinguishing between relationships of lord and vassal and lord and peasant. Such questions of terminology aside, landownership remained a central source of authority during the entire Middle Ages, not only in rural environments but also within cities. Throughout their existence, the three institutions of early medieval origin, that is, Notre-Dame, Buchau, and Fraumünster, drew their wealth and power primarily from their manorial and feudal authorities with which they had been endowed during the centuries following their foundations and which they kept throughout their existence. On the other side, later medieval institutions, such as Klingental of Basel, were usually not been given manorial rights upon their foundation. Nevertheless, also these younger institutions strove to acquire demesnes. While also late medieval landownership still came with a number of rights over the people working it, these were less comprehensive and not stricto sensu seigneurial. As a result, the objective behind amassing arable land was different for convents such as Klingental. As Chapters 4 and 5 will discuss in detail, it was primarily economic. 8 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction Top-Tier Female Monasticism The following chapters center on Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau am Federsee, Fraumünster of Zurich, and Klingental of Basel. While these institutions differed in many regards, they are nevertheless a representative sample of wealthy and powerful convents whose abbesses, and in the case of Klingental prioresses, managed diverse economic portfolios. They were elite institutions, and entry into any one of them required not only the payment of a significant dowry, but for the most part also noble lineage.42 All four of them were wealthy and did not have to worry about making ends meet. They did not depend on civic donations to maintain their convent nor was the community obliged to engage in paid labor to supplement their institution’s resources.43 In other words, Notre-Dame, Buchau, Fraumünster, and Klingental were upper tier convents. Considered in their upper-tier context, the nunneries of early medieval origin are typical, in that they were endowed with large territorial holdings which required long-term managing, whereas Klingental is an example of a late medieval urban convent whose influence was derived from its economic success. An important factor that all four communities shared was their self-government. Of the four, only the Dominican convent of Klingental was part of a larger monastic network. Generally, female houses within a monastic order were less independent in their actions, as they usually required their abbot’s (or prior’s) consent for economic and other important decisions.44 However, within some orders, such as the Dominican, individual houses enjoyed far-ranging independence. The absence of a paramount abbot or prior allowed these communities to act independently in matters concerning their convent and patrimony. At the same time, their independence allows us to discern their economic strategies and the scope of their actions more clearly in the sources than in those cases where they were mitigated through a superior abbot. However, independence from a superior abbot does not mean that the abbesses and their communities had no superiors or rivals. Quite naturally, they had to engage with bishops and negotiate with secular lords and city councils. The ways in which the institutions did so – if they were able to put family networks to use, and the ways in which they managed their ties to the citizenry over time – were crucial for maintaining their long-term economic health and independence. From a structural perspective, these monastic institutions shared a number of resemblances with the periods’ secular lords. As landowners and financial heavy weights, they were economically influential. The abbesses of feudal and manorial convents were the heads of seigneuries where they collected taxes and dispersed justice. In addition – and unlike their secular counterparts – these abbesses frequently also held religious authorities, as their patronage rights allowed them to appoint priests to the parish churches of their seigneuries. While the economic setup of later foundations differed from that of their early medieval siblings, their structure allowed them to venture in Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 9 the economic fields that opened up in the new cities. Provided they had the means to do so, they could generate wealth and economic power through financial investments. In this, they acted quite similar to the merchants and bankers who were on the rise in late medieval cities. Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau, Fraumünster, and Klingental thus represent types of elite female monasticism that continued to be omnipresent in the late medieval Europe. The basis of their wealth and authority either continued to come from their manorial origins, or, in the case of younger institutions, it came from the new markets which their urban environment provided. While not representative of late medieval female monasticism per se, the study of these top-tier institutions allows for drawing general conclusions about the often-overlooked influence of wealthy female institutions in late medieval Europe, where they continued to be ubiquitous. Due to their omnipresence, the number of possible institutions to choose from was vast, forcing me to select a manageable number. Originally, I had intended to consider a larger sample with an equal representation of Swiss/ German and French institutions. It was neither a lack of institutions which qualified for this genre of inquiry nor was it due to a lack of sources testing to their seigneurial and economic power that prevented their inclusion. Rather, it was the disparate state of research and, especially, of available editions that forced me to cut down the sample. Due to the scope of economic sources required for this project, the number of previously unstudied institutions for which no editions were available had to be limited in order to complete the study in a reasonable time frame. The problem lay primarily with the French institutions. While the source material for them was often tremendously rich, the respective corpuses not only lacked editions, but frequently even an archival inventory. Of my initial preselection of French convents, only Notre-Dame de Soissons made the final cut. The reason for this choice was twofold. For one, I selected Notre-Dame because of its blue print character for the imperial convent of Herford, which, in turn, served as an example for the foundations of many other convents, including Buchau and Fraumünster. This monastic lineage allows for establishing comparability between west and east despite geographical distances. The second reason was a more personal one. NotreDame’s history is rich and powerful. As we will see, its abbesses were impressively able governors who maintained and increased their institution’s wealth over the course of 11 centuries and succeeded in maintaining the abbey as an important local player until the French Revolution. And they did so in a region that was dense with influential players, that is, rivals. Yet, modern historiography has never engaged with the abbey’s history, although it is certainly relevant enough to be investigated. In other words, I chose to tell the story of Notre-Dame because it is a particularly poignant example of the many stories that to this day continue to be overlooked – presumably because its protagonists were women. 16 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women. Medieval Female Authority in Poitier’s Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); and my own From the Cloister to the State. Fontevraud and the Making of Bourbon-France (London: Routledge, 2021), 4–7. 10 Christine Reinle, “Was bedeutet Macht im Mittelalter?,” in: Zey (ed.), Mächtige Frauen, 35–72. 11 Duby, Women, 69. 12 Max Weber, Herrschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 5. Revidierte Auflage (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1980), 28. 13 This is not to suggest that sociology and sociologists have abandoned defining power, far from it. However, for the purposes of this study, a focus on authority and rule is more beneficial. Considering that sociological and historiographical engagements also with the concepts of authority and rule have been vast, the following is strictly limited to the factors relevant for the present inquiry which shares Christine Reinle’s concept of authority and rule. 14 Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginnings to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 22–32. 15 Reinle, “Macht,” 47–48. 16 Reinle, “Macht,” 45; 49–51. 17 Reinle, “Macht,” 49–50; 52; 54. 18 Reinle, “Macht,” 52 19 See, among others, Binachini, Queen’s Hand; for medieval Iberian queens in general: Nikolas Jaspert, “Indirekte und direkte Macht iberischer Königinnen im Mittelalter. «Reginale» Herrschaft, Verwaltung und Frömmigkeit”, in: Zey (ed.), Mächtige Frauen? 73–130; Kimberly A. LoPrete, Adela of Blois. Countess and Lord (c. 1067–1137) (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007); Rogge (ed.), Fürstin und Fürst; Fößel, Die Königin; and William Monter’s 2012 monograph The Rise of Female Kings in Europe captures the changing historiographical perspective on female power in its title. Monter’s choice to refer to woman sovereigns as female kings is more than an oxymoronic word play. It is meant to show that while their gender was different, their authority was the same: Women monarchs could govern effectively in most places at most times because most men adapt quickly to obeying orders from a legitimate commander who happens to be female. Today, in what is probably the closest approximation to absolute rule among civilians in a democracy, male crew members will unquestionably obey a female pilot. Her voice may sound different, but the messages it transmits are not. Monter, Rise, 41–42 20 Janna Binachini discusses this predicament of queenship being an inherent part of medieval monarchy and not a faulty deviation from it, and, at the same time, taking into account the discomfort of medieval society with a female ruler, which however did not necessarily lead to a diminished authority of the queens in question; Binachini, Queen’s Hand, 1–16; 19. 21 One important exception from this rule is Sigrid Hirbodian’s work engaging with the worldly dominion of women religious. Sigrid Schmitt (Hirbodian), “Die Herrschaft der geistlichen Fürstin. Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Äbtissinnen im Spätmittelalter,” in: Rogge (ed.), Fürstin und Fürst, 187–202; and Sigrid Hirbodian, “Weibliche Herrschaft zwischen Kirche und Welt. Geistliche Fürstinnen im 11–14. Jahrhundert,” in: Zey (ed.) Mächtige Frauen? 411–436. 22 To just name the illustrious examples of St. Denis in France or the abbeys and orders of Cluny and Cîteaux. All of which have seen centuries of historiographical engagement. Michel Félibien’s “Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint Denys en France” from 1706 was the first learned history on the important royal abbey. Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 17 Many more have followed since. BREPOLiS Medieval Bibliographies comprises 291 studies published since 1960 alone. The bibliography is similarly extensive for the famous monastic orders, and there seems little value in listing a more or less arbitrary selection. 23 Examples include, but are certainly not limited to, Sigrid Hirbodian, Geistliche Frauen und städtische Welt. Kanonissen – Nonnen – Beginen und ihre Umwelt am Beispiel der Stadt Straßburg im Spätmittelalter (1250–1525) (unpublished habilitation: University of Mainz, 2001); Fiona Griffiths, The Garden of Delights. Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Julie Hotchin and Fiona Griffiths (eds.), Partners in Spirit. Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, 1100–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014); Sabine Klapp, Das Äbtissinnenamt in den unterelsässischen Frauenstiften vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert: Umkämpft, verhandelt, normiert, Studien zur Germania Sacra, Neue Folge 3 (Berlin, and Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2012); and Jasmin Hoven-Hacker, Zo dat se eren ffurstliken stadt mede holden. Geistliche Töchter von Reichsfürsten im späten Mittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit (unpublished PhD dissertation: University of Greifswald, 2021). The important work of many years of Constance Hoffman on female Cistercians can be found brought together in Constance Hoffman Berman, The White Nuns. Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); similarly, the fruit of many years of research is Eva Schlotheuber’s “Gelehrte Bräute Christi”. Geistliche Frauen in der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018); Edwards, Superior Women; and my own From the Cloister to the State. 24 While somewhat dated, Jo Ann Kay McNamara’s Sisters in Arms. Catholic Nuns Through Two Millenia (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1996) was undoubtedly pathbreaking for this development. 25 Also, here the literature has grown extensive over the past 30 years. On literary production, see, among others, the works of Alison I. Beach, especially Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); the works of Fiona Griffiths referenced above, and Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patrizia Stoop (eds.), Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017); for memory building, see, among others, Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Amy G. Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past. Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Elisabeth Van Houts (ed.), Medieval Memories. Men, Women and the Past 700–1300 (London: Routledge, 2001); and Anne Winston Allen, “The Observant Reform Versus the Reformation: Women’s Scriptoria, Books and the Resistance”, in: Konfrontation, Kontinuität und Wandel: Selbstwahrnehmung und Ordnungsvorstellungen in geistlichen Frauengemeinschaften in Zeiten der Bedrohung durch die Reformation, ed. Sigrid Hirbodian, Tabea Scheible, and Agnes Schormann (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2022), 39–56. For late medieval female cloisters as places of politics, see Edwards, Superior Women; and Müller, From the Cloister to the State. 26 Sigrid Hirbodian defines Landesgeschichte as being: focused on a defined space but it is also interdisciplinary, drawing on history, archaeology, art history, cultural studies, and other areas. And Landesgeschichte works across historical periods. It is not bounded by the Middle Ages, but can reach into the early modern and modern periods in order to investigate the longterm formation or re-formation of the region under study across epochs. Regional 18 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction historical developments are always placed at the center, and comparison and the drawing of broader conclusions are only warranted when these can be based upon thoroughly researched regions. Finally, Landesgeschichte is committed to the intense study of every available piece of historical evidence for the region in question (…). The work that historians in the field of Landesgeschichte do is thus deductive; they first collect all of the available sources and then try to answer historical questions that have emerged during this source-intensive work. Sigrid Hirbodian, “Research on Monasticism in the German Tradition”, in: The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West. Vol II. The High and Late Middle Ages, ed. Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1143–1144. 27 See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion and historiographical references. 28 The research group Arbeitskreis Geistliche Frauen im Mittlelater (AGFEM) founded by Sigrid Hirbodian, Alison I. Beach, and others have played a central role in bringing later medieval convents somewhat into the historiographical limelight. The group’s annual meetings have supported a number of studies (dissertations and habilitations) in the field. Among others, Klapp, Das Äbtissinnenamt; Christine Kleinjung, Frauenklöster als Kommunikationszentren und soziale Räume. Das Beispiel Worms vom 13. bis zum Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts (Korb: Didymos Verlag, 2008); and, more recently: Tjark Wegner, Handlungswissen, Kommunikation und Netzwerke. Der Ulmer Rat im Konflikt mit geistlichen Einrichtungen, 1376–1531 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2023); Agnes Schormann, Identitäten und Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Kanonissen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020); and Hoven-Hacker, Zo dat. 29 The idea that Stifte were a German specificity has a long tradition within Landesgeschichte. It rests largely on a legalist distinction between nuns who followed the Benedictine rule and certain types of canonesses whose rule, written following the Synodes of Aachen (816–819), was more lenient, allowing the possession of private property, etc. For a classical (and typical) discussion of these legal differences, see, for example, Karl Heinrich Schäfer, “Die Kanonissenstifter im Deutschen Mittelalter. Ihre Entwicklung und Innere Einrichtung im Zusammenhang mit dem altchristlichen Sanktimonialentum,” in: Kirchenrechtliche Abhandlungen, vols. 43 and 44, ed. Ulrich Schulz (Suttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1907), 11–23. Within Landegeschichte, the strict distinction between canonesses and nuns remains a staple until today. See, for example, Sabine Klapp, “Geistliche Frauen – Mächtige Frauen? Die Äbtissinnen von Buchau im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit”, in: Frauen in Württemberg. Landeskundig. Tübinger Vorträge zur Landesgeschichte, vol. 1, ed. Sigrid Hirbodian, Sabine Klapp, and Tjark Wegner (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2016), 82–83. 30 See Chapter 2. 31 The methodological discussion about the merits of comparative history versus regional (or “national”) history is an old one. In the tradition of Marc Bloch, I advocate that the comparison between related, that is, structurally similar, societies can be a fruitful one, allowing to discern European phenomena and not falling prey to overestimating regional exceptionalisms, even if the regions are not equally thoroughly researched and thus do not meet the strict criteria of Landesgeschichte. Cf. above, note 27; Marc Bloch, La société féodale (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1939), 14–15. 32 Exceptions include Micheline de Fonette, Les religisieuses à l’âge classique au droit canon. Recherches sur les structures juridique des branches féminines des orders (Paris: Vrin, 1967); Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, Le monachisme féminin dans la société de son temps. Le monastère de La Celle (XIe-début du XVIe siècle) Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction 19 (Paris: Cujas, 1989); Jean-Marc Bienvenu, Les Premiers Temps de Fontevraud, 1101–1189. Naissance et Evolution d’un Ordre Religieux (unpublished doctoral thesis: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1980), along with a number of articles derived from his PhD thesis: the work of Jacques Dalarun which have, however, mostly focused on the male founder of Fontevraud. Jacques Dalarun, L’Impossible Sainteté. La vie retrouvée de Robert d’Arbrissel (v. 1045–1116), fondateur de Fontevraud (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985); Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest (ed.), Histoire de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers. Quatorze siècles de vie monastique (Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986); Catherine Letouzey-Réty, Ecrit et gestion du temporel dans une grande abbaye de femmes anglo-normande: La Sainte-Trinité de Caen (XIe-XIIIesiècle) (unpublished doctoral thesis: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2011); and most recently, Michel Melot, Histoire de l’Abbaye de Fontevraud. Notre-Dame-des-Pleurs (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2022). In recent years, English language studies have begun to engage with select French nunneries. Among these are Edwards’s Superior Women engaging with Sainte-Croix de Poitiers, my own work on Fontevraud, and certainly Constance Hoffman’s many years of studying female Cistercians. However, of these three examples, only Edwards centers on a nunnery of early medieval origin. For the model character of west Frankish convents for the foundation of east Frankish ones, see Chapter 2. 33 Fortunately, there are a number of inquiries on their way that will help start closing one of the most glaring lacunae in the field of female medieval monasticism. As this monograph is being written, several doctoral dissertations are underway that engage with medieval French convents. One of the projects is on Fontevraud’s economic history carried out by Julia Cole at the University of Toronto; Soumaya Daoussi of the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord is starting to work on a comparative study of powerful abbesses in the late medieval kingdoms of France and the Holy Roman Empire. 34 Similar to the earlier discussion of authority and power, this overview does not claim to be exhaustive. Rather, both are strictly limited to the factors relevant for the present inquiry. 35 Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3. 36 Klaus Schreiner, “‘Grundherrschaft’: Entstehung und Bedeutungswandel eines geschichtswissenschaftlichen Ordnungsund Erklärungsbegriffs”, in: Die Grundherrschaft im späten Mittelalter I, ed. Hans Patze (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1983), 65. 37 Bloch, La société féodale. 38 This observation is not new, of course. But the usage and meaning of feudalism, manorialism, and the German equivalent “Grundherrschaft” have been subject of much debate since the mid-twentieth century. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 1–14; and Schreiner, “Grundherrschaft,” 46–64. 39 In addition to Reynolds and Schreiner, see Karl-Heinz Spiess’s more recent introduction, along with Steffen Patzold, “Das Lehenswesen im Spiegel historiographischer Quellen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts”, in: Vorträge und Forschungen Vol. 76: Ausbildung und Verbreitung des Lehenswesens im Reich und in Italien im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Sigmaringen: Jan Thobecke Verlag, 2013), 9–16; 269–306. 40 Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, 2. 41 Cf. Chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of the abbess’ rights. 42 Noble lineage was a prerequisite for entry into Fraumünster, Buchau, and NotreDame. The dowry for Klingental was so high (100 gulden) that only very wealthy families could afford it. However, noble lineage was not an official requirement. 43 Especially in the late Middle Ages, with the number of mendicant convents growing, cities sometimes had to support their religious institutions with donations of 20 Female Monasticism, Power, and Historiography: An Introduction money of grain. Sherri F. Johnsons discusses this for the thirteenth-century Bologna: Sherri Franks Johnson, Monastic Women and Religious Orders in Late Medieval Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 136–143; 166–168. The same is true for Renaissance Florence, where some communities entered high-end textile production: Sharon T. Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 74–81; 116–126. 44 The Cistercians can serve as an example. Although it took a while for visitation rules and control to be established, as of 1240, father abbots frequently visited the order’s nunneries, and the local abbess was not allowed to contradict these abbots’ decisions to whom they were subjected; Berman, White Nuns, xi. 45 Rudolf Seigel, Eugen Stemmler, and Bernhad Theil (eds.), Die Urkunden des Stifts Buchau: Regesten 819–1500, Inventare der nichtstaatlichen Archive in BadenWürttemberg 36 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009). 46 For Fraumünster, this study relies primarily on the sources edited in Georg von Wyss, Geschichte der Abtei Zürich (Zürich: Zürcher und Furrer, 1851–1858), Beilagen. 47 AdA H 1506. 48 For a codicological discussion of the cartulary, see Annalena Müller, “Le ms ADA 1508: Le cartulaire de Notre Dame de Soissons. Une étude codicologique contextualisée,” in: Femmes et hommes d’Eglise dans l’Aisne, 115–132. Fédération des Sociétés d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de l’Aisne 65, Laon, 2020, 115–132. 49 Annalena Müller, “Totgesagte leben länger. Das Kloster Klingental als Verwaltungseinheit in der Alten Eidgenossenschaft,” in: Hirbodian, Scheible, and Schormann (eds.), Konfrontation, Kontinuität und Wandel, 57–74. 50 Efforts to structure the contents of the sixteenth-century registers have a long history of their own, dating back to the seventeenth century. At that time, the objective was to ensure that the city council obtained all revenues it was owed as Klingental’s heir. Efforts since the nineteenth century, however, have been aimed at making the registers’ content accessible in a structural way sensible for archives; Müller, “Totgesagte,” 66–73. 51 StABS Klingental H; cf. Chapter 5 for a more detailed discussion of the source. 52 Cf. appendix for the abridged tabular content of Klingental H. 53 For a brief discussion on some of the main challenges, albeit on a more general level, see Hedwig Röckelein, “Monastic Landscapes”, in: Beach and Cochelin (eds.), Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism, 825–827. 54 A case in point example for this is the online version of the Deutsche Rechtswörterbuch which lists 192 different types of Vögte – naturally only for the Germanspeaking areas: https://drw-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/drw-cgi/zeige?index=lem mata&term=*vogt&darstellung=u, DRW. Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch Online, https://drw-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/drw-cgi/zeige. 55 In 2021/2022, the Swiss National Science Foundation generously founded the development of the interactive website www.rulingwomen.ch which makes the history of female medieval monasticism accessible to a wider public. The website is available in German and English. 56 N.B, I used FileMaker to design my database. Due to the open-access character of Harvard Dataverse, the database’s content was exported into excel and those can be accessed under: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset. xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KTTSZ2. 57 The observation that the late Middle Ages need scholarly engagement free from preconceived notions of the era having been one of decline is certainly not new. Yet, it holds still true. For a discussion of that narrative and its legacy, see Kaspar Elm, “Verfall und Erneuerung des Ordenswesens im Spätmittelalter,” in: Untersuchungen zu Kloster und Stift, ed. Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 188–238. Part I Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905-3 Three of the four institutions at the center of this study are of early medieval origin. Founded between the seventh and the ninth centuries, Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, and Fraumünster Abbey were all endowed with important territorial holdings and far-ranging feudal and regal rights. All three were typical monastic foundations of this period – their communities were aristocratic and their patrimony plentiful. The latter especially was a sine qua non: in order for any monastery to prevail in the long run, to support its present and future inhabitants, it needed to be as self-sufficient as possible. While monasteries understood their patrimony as acquired for eternity, said patrimony was, quite naturally, subject to change over time. In order to appreciate the able management that allowed a monastery’s tenures to continue to yield income centuries after their initial acquisition and to evaluate the changes that they underwent in terms of structure, size, and connectivity, one needs to be aware of their origin and their original purpose. No religious community could live on faith and the love of God alone. No matter how small or large a convent, its economy was pivotal for its existence. The so-called Plan of St. Gall (Figure 2.1), a ninth-century map of an ideal Carolingian monastery, today housed in the Stiftsbibliothek of St. Gall, illustrates this well. About half of the depicted buildings do not serve a religious purpose in the narrow sense, but rather cater to the daily needs of a community of up to 350 souls.1 Smaller communities would likewise require a similar set of buildings: stables for different livestock, storage rooms, kitchens, a bakery, and a brewery. While the compound depicted on the Plan of St. Gall was never actually built, at least not in the Middle Ages,2 its ratio of religious to economic buildings may be considered typical of a medieval monastic complex of that period. Its stables and stockrooms were filled with the dues peasants owed to the monastery for working its land or using its forests, pastures, and quarries. The bulk of a monastery’s landed possessions was usually donated early in its existence by powerful patrons, who were often guided by a number of motives ranging from personal piety to more earthbound strategic considerations. As a result, the ties between the political elites and the foundation of monasteries in early medieval Europe tended to be close ones. In this regard, 2 The Early Medieval Background Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, and Fraumünster of Zurich This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license 24 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy Notre-Dame, Buchau, and Fraumünster were again quite typical, as were the circumstances and motives leading to their respective foundations. Notre-Dame de Soissons is the oldest of the three, founded in the midseventh century by Ebroin († 680/681), mayor of the palace of Neustria, and Leutrude, his wife.3 In his lifetime, Ebroin gained notoriety as a ruthless ruler who strove to subject Austrasia to Neustria.4 His founding a monastery in the Neustrian marches bordering Austrasia can be assumed to have stemmed from both a desire to claim power and a need for personal redemption. The origins of Buchau Abbey date to the late eighth century and were closely connected to the increasing Frankish penetration of Alemannia at that time.5 Scholars have long recognized how female monasteries served to entrench and solidify Frankish power in this period.6 Usually governed by a Frankish princess who administered the lands the monastery owned, these convents were places where the children of the local nobility were educated and where the memoria of their ruling Frankish patrons was kept.7 Both Buchau and Fraumünster were typical examples of such foundations. However, the foundation of Fraumünster-Abbey differed in both size and importance. In 853, King Louis the German founded the abbey and donated all of his territorial possessions in the region of Zurich and Uri to his monastery, and he vested its abbesses with far-ranging authorities.8 The abbess of Fraumünster acted as a royal governor who remained on-site while the king traveled his realm and who kept Zurich a safe curtis regia for the royal entourage on their way to Rome.9 Figure 2.1 Schematic rendering of the Plan of St. Gall. Source: Author. The Early Medieval Background 25 *** Whereas the general focus of this monograph lies on the later Middle Ages, this chapter will explore the early medieval origins of Notre-Dame de Soissons, Buchau Abbey, and Fraumünster Abbey. In order to evaluate their later development, which will be the subject of the following chapter, one needs to understand the context of their respective foundations, which provided them with the lands and regalia they would, for the most part, still dispose of half a millennium later. Notre-Dame de Soissons The historiography has all but forgotten about Notre-Dame de Soissons. No modern study sheds light on this once powerful nunnery whose abbesses appointed priests, wielded low, middle, and high justice, sent soldiers to war, and managed hundreds of serf-peasants, and again that many fief-holders of all social ranks. Today, only a single wall of the abbey church, bearing two large Romanesque windows, hints at the impressive dimensions of the former compound located in the heart of Soissons, close to the River Aisne. At the peak of its medieval wealth, the abbey housed an average of 200 women. In addition to the usual buildings – the abbey church and various living quarters and economic buildings – an aqueduct, built in the eleventh century, brought running water to Notre-Dame’s inhabitants.10 The thirteenth century saw the building of a new prison for abbey subjects awaiting trial and of tunnels which connected the cloister to the outside world, allowing for secret access or escape in case of a city siege.11 In its time, Notre-Dame was not only powerful, but also famous. It provided the blueprint for the foundation of the imperial abbey of Herford, the oldest imperial nunnery in the Duchy of Saxony.12 And Notre-Dame remained an important player in Soissonaise history throughout the Middle Ages. However, unlike Herford, Notre-Dame has received no scholarly attention in its own right.13 The reasons for this are twofold. As a general rule, historians of medieval monasticism once dismissed nunneries as having only secondary importance, and therefore long bypassed them. And although recent scholarship has shed more light on the long overlooked influence of female monastic communities, this process has only recently begun for French nunneries.14 What complicates things further in the case of Notre-Dame is that not only the abbey’s history has remained out of the spotlight, but also, for the most part, that of the city which was home to the nuns. Soissons was one of the most important cities of the Merovingian Empire. Together with Paris, it formed the political and strategical center of the Frankish subkingdom of Neustria.15 Therefore, the city’s early medieval history has been the subject of some study.16 However, although Soissons remained a cultural, economic, and ecclesiastical center of northern France throughout the Middle Ages, no comprehensive urban history of Soissons exists aside from Bourgin’s 1908 32 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy complex outlasted the Roman Empire, and, by the ninth century, Zurich had grown into a sort of capitol of southern Alemannia.65 At that time, a royal donation reflected Zurich’s growing strategic importance. On July 21, 853, Louis the German transferred his possessions in the area to a women’s monastery. The king’s endowment comprised the curtis Turegum, that is, Zurich, along with wide-reaching possessions located in the modern-day Swiss cantons of Aargau and Luzern, along with the Albisforst, consisting of vast swamp lands and forests in today’s canton of Zug and the lands of Uri. Fraumünster’s endowment formed a relatively connected territory which comprised 55 villages with about 120 serfs.66 The king appointed his daughter Hildegard as abbess and vested her with all the immunities customary for proprietary monasteries of the period.67 When Hildegard died only three years into her abbacy, her younger sister, Bertha, succeeded her on the abbatial throne and governed the abbey until 877. The abbey’s church was built during Bertha’s tenure, and her father, the king, donated further possessions, namely the curtis regia of Cham, located in the modern-day canton of Zug.68 In 877, Richardis succeeded Bertha. Fraumünster’s third abbess is another example of the close ties between royal households and convents and the ambiguous lay character of a great many noble Carolingian abbesses. Richardis was the wife of Charles III, who, in turn, was the son of Louis the German. She was thus the sister-in-law of her two predecessors. Like Bertha before her, Richardis simultaneously also served as abbess of Säckingen, another important Alemanni convent.69 Moreover, Richardis governed the Alsatian convent of Andlau, which was also her main place of residence, along with St. Marinus in Pavia and the male convent of Zurzach. And while Charles III famously tried to divorce Richardis in 881, they remained legally married until his death left her a widow in 888. Richardis was thus not a cloister-nun, but rather a lay governor of these five royal monasteries, all of which possessed vast territories in strategically important regions of the kingdom.70 However, let us return to Zurich and the foundation of Fraumünster Abbey. Why did Louis the German choose this location for the only personal monastic foundation of his reign?71 As for any aristocratic monastic foundation of that period, one key element was the concern to secure his dynastic memoria.72 But the choice of location was owed to strategic and practical deliberations.73 Louis needed reliable representatives of his authority in southern Alemannia, ones who would ensure his agency during his prolonged absences.74 Early medieval rulers had neither a capitol from which they ruled nor could they rely on an administration and bureaucracy in the modern sense. Instead, they were itinerant and their courts moved from palatinate to palatinate.75 In their absence from a given region, the rulers therefore depended on a network of people to ensure their authority, to collect taxes, and to keep the peace. As observed already in the case of Buchau, monasteries were favored representatives, as their community and their abbess or abbot tended to remain on site.76 The Early Medieval Background 33 While the geopolitical alliance between itinerant rulers and more local ecclesiastics was essential for early medieval government in general, this was particularly the case during the reign of Louis the German (843–876). Following the Treaty of Verdun (843), which divided the Frankish Empire into three subkingdoms, Louis the German became king of East Francia. However, his kingdom was economically and structurally underdeveloped in comparison to Middle and West Francia. Moreover, only a fraction of the political and ecclesiastical elites were loyal to Louis, while an important part remained in favor of his brother (and enemy) Lothar.77 In his new and as yet unstable kingdom, Louis needed trustworthy representatives and mediators of his power. Thus, the king’s ecclesiastical policy was to place loyal men and women in the most influential bishoprics and monasteries.78 Although Louis’ main territories were in Franconia and Bavaria, Alemannia was of particular strategic importance.79 His three daughters would all govern Alemanni convents: Irmengard presided over Buchau, and Hildegard and Bertha consecutively governed Louis’ only personal monastic foundation in Zurich.80 As alluded to above, Louis’ choice of Alemannia in general and Zurich in particular was the result of strategic deliberations closely tied to the geographical realities after the Treaty of Verdun. Agreed in 843, ten years before the foundation of Fraumünster, the said treaty divided the Frankish Empire among the sons of Louis the Pious. Charles the Bald, the youngest of the three brothers, obtained West Francia. Lothar I, the oldest and thus bearer of the imperial title, henceforth ruled Middle Francia, and Louis, whom his father had formerly disinherited, succeeded to win East Francia for himself in a bloody battle against Lothar.81 The 843 division of the empire made Zurich a place close to the border of Middle Francia, a border which Louis would quickly seek, and eventually succeed, to push further west.82 Moreover, Zurich was en route to the Gotthard Pass, one of the main routes to Italy.83 Both the proximity of the western frontier and its location on the road to Italy were thus crucial factors for Louis’ choice.84 The ties between the Fraumünster and the rulers remained close throughout the early Middle Ages, and they continued to be so under the Ottonian and Salian dynasties. During a visit on his Italian campaign, Otto I granted the abbey immunity in March 952, freeing it from any obligations to and legal claims of others, whether bishops or nobles.85 Fraumünster was subject only to the king (or emperor). And in his absence, the imperial Vogt, an office traditionally held by the duke of Alemannia, was to assist the abbess in juridical and administrative matters.86 The abbess of Fraumünster was thus legally more independent in her daily actions than the abbess of Buchau, who was under the authority of the nearby bishop of Constance. In Zurich, the abbatial position continued to be solidified throughout the first decades of the eleventh century, which saw a high number of royal visits as the kings traveled to Italy. Between 1045 and 1055, King Henry III often resided in Zurich and vested the abbess with the regalia during one of his visits.87 The abbess henceforth minted the city’s currency, which bore her portrait, she set 34 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy and levied duties, and held markets. By the mid-eleventh century, she was, effectively, the city’s royal governor. This first peak of power was but a short one. When Italy became less important within imperial politics in the second half of the eleventh century, the rulers’ interest in Zurich and the importance of the city as a palatinate declined accordingly.88 The royal absence and the resulting power vacuum in the region allowed the dukes of Zähringen and those of Staufen to contest hegemony in Swabia. In 1059, the Zähringer obtained the office of the imperial advocateship of Zurich (Reichsvogtei), which they used to expand their authority.89 Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Zähringer built their Swabian power on urban authority. They founded a number of cities, including Freiburg im Breisgau (1120), Fribourg (1151), and Bern (1191), and they sought to subject extant cities to their authority. In Zurich, they came to dispute the abbess’ right to mint coins which they claimed for themselves, along with the authority over the abbey’s own officers, including the iudices and villici.90 While the Zähringer failed to entirely strip the abbess of her secular power, she had lost most of her regional influence to the dukes by 1200.91 The political decline of Fraumünster might have continued if it hadn’t been for genealogical (mis)fortune. In 1218, the Zähringer dynasty died out, and this allowed the abbesses of Fraumünster to rise to power again. In a different area, the Fraumünster nuns actually had benefitted from the changing times of the twelfth century. In the context of the Investiture Controversy, the abbey succeeded in freeing itself from imperial patronage.92 Rather than being royally appointed, abbesses were henceforth elected from among the convent’s community of nuns, and the bishop of Konstanz consecrated the abbess electa, who after the act referred to herself as confirmata.93 As a result of their independence, the convent also attained complete control over the abbey’s revenues.94 This brought economic relief for the community, which was used to vast annual payments to the king, who had remained the proprietor of most of the abbey’s possessions until the twelfth century.95 Eventually, with both the Zähringer and much of the economic restraints gone, the abbey and her abbesses rose again to be the city rulers of Zurich – however, only for a short while. Notes 1 Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 170. 2 Near Konstanz, a team of enthusiasts and scholars are building a monastery according to the Plan of St. Gall using only medieval tools. The project is scheduled to take several decades. For more information, see https://www.campus-galli.de. 3 AdA H 1506, fol. 34 r. 4 Johannes Fischer, Der Hausmeier Ebroin (Chemnitz: Wilkau-Haßlau, 1954), 7–16. 5 Irmgard Dienemann-Dietrich, “Der fränkische Adel in Alemannien im 8. Jahrhundert”, in: Grundfragen der alemannischen Geschichte. Vorträge und Forschungen, The Early Medieval Background 35 vol. 1, ed. Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1952); for more specific references, see the section below engaging with Buchau. 6 Cf. bibliographical references throughout this chapter, especially in the contexts of the foundation of Fraumünster and Buchau. 7 Irene Crusius, “Im Dienste der Königsherrschaft. Königinnen, Königswitwen und Prinzessinnen als Stifterinnen und Äbtissinnen von Frauenstiften und –klöstern,” in: Nonnen, Kanonissen und Mystikerinnen. Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften in Süddeutschland. Beiträge zur interdisziplinären Tagung vom 21. Bis 23. September 2005 in Frauenchiemsee, ed. Eva Schlotheuber, Helmut Flachenecker, and Ingrid Gardill (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2008), 61–62; 68. 8 Bernhard Theil, Das (freiweltliche) Damenstift Buchau am Federsee, Germania Sacra. Neue Folge 32. Bistum Konstanz 4 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1994), 217. 9 Christine Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits und jenseits der Limmat,” in: Das Fraumünster in Zürich. Von der Königsabtei zur Stadtkirche, ed. Peter Niederhäuser and Dölf Wild (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2012), 18. 10 AdA H 1506, fol. 70v; 83, 84v. 11 AdA H 1506, fol. 81, 83 v; and Michel German, Histoire de l’abbaye Royale de Notre-Dame de Soissons, de l’Ordre de Saint Benoit. Divisée en quatre Livres. Avec les Preuves, et Plusieurs Titres, tirez des Archives de cette Abbaye (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1675), 91–92. 12 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 2. For Herford, see, among others, Rainer Pape, Sancta Herfordia: Geschichte Herfords von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Herford: Busse Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1979). 13 An article by Anne L. Clark engages with the precious relics the nuns of Notre Dame owned that were donated to them after the Fourth Crusade. Anne L. Clark, “Guardians of the Sacred: The Nuns of Soissons and the Slipper of the Virgin Mary,” Church History 76, no. 4 (2007): 724–749. 14 Some recent examples engaging with French female monasticism include Berman, White Nuns; Edwards, Superior Women; and Steven Vanderputten, Dark Age Nunneries: The Ambiguous Identity of Female Monasticism, 800–1050 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018). 15 Michel Rouche, “Remarques sur la Géographie Historique de la Neustrie (650– 850),” Beihefte der Francia 16, no. 1 (1989): 1–23. 16 Reinhold Kaiser, Bischofsherrschaft zwischen Königstum und Fürstenmacht. Studien zur bischöflichen Stadtherrschaft im westfränkisch-französischen Reich im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1981), 589–597, especially notes on pp. 590–591. 17 Georges Bourgin, La commune de Soissons et le groupe communal soissonnais (Paris: H. Champion, 1908). 18 Dominique Roussel’s excavation report from 2002 sheds some light on this interconnection. Dominique Roussel, Soissons. Documents d’évaluation du patrimoine archéologique des villes de France. Soissons (Paris: Editions du patrimoine, 2002). 19 It was long assumed that Ebroin was of humble origins. While this hypothesis is outdated, nothing is known for certain about Ebroin’s background. Fischer, Hausmeier Ebroin, 76–79; and Ingrid Heidrich, “Les Maires du Palais Neustiens du Mileu du VIIe au Milieu du VIIIe siècle,” Beihefte der Francia Bd. 16, no. 1 (1989): 217. 20 Heidrich, “Les Maires,” 217; 220. 21 Fischer, Hausmeier Ebroin, 176. 22 Heidrich, “Les Maires,” 222; and Friedrich Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich. Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am 36 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (München and Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1965), 128–129. 23 Rouche, “Remarques,” 7. 24 AdA H 1506, fol. 34 r. 25 Forgeries granting extended rights and legitimizing it with a long tradition were a common phenomenon in medieval Europe. In later times, Notre Dame’s exempt status would be subject of conflicts with the bishop of Soissons and the Cathedral Chapter – a fact that also suggests that this early charter may be a forgery. For forgeries in general, see Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historicae, München, 16–19. September 1986, vol. 1 (Hanover: Hansche, 1988), especially Elisabeth A. R. Brown, “Falsitas pia sive reprehensibilis. Medieval Forgers and Their Intention,” 101–119. And more recently, Constance B. Bouchard, Rewriting Saints and Ancestors. Memory and Forgetting in France, 500–1200 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 26 AdA H 1506, fol. 34 r. 27 AdA H 1506, fol. 35 v. 28 AdA H 1506, fol. 36 r and fol. 33 r., v. 29 AdA H 1506, fol. 33 r–v. See also Chapter 3. 30 A list of Notre Dame’s earliest possessions is found in the 858 confirmation of Charles the Bald, AdA H 1506, fol. 33 r., v. 31 This would have been a common policy to win the loyalty of institutions founded by defeated enemies. Crusius has shown this for Charlemagne after he overthrew Tassilo in Bavaria in the late eighth century: Crusius, “Im Dienste der Königsherrschaft,” 61–62. That both Merovingian and Carolingian nobles sent their daughters to Notre Dame and, along with them, made generous donations seems not only likely but is also suggested by Notre Dame’s seventeenth-century historian who had access to the abbey’s archives now lost. German, Histoire de NotreDame, 23–24. 32 According to Michel German, they were last mentioned in a treaty with the abbot of Laon in 1164. Histoire de Notre-Dame, 26–27. For the territorial politics of Notre Dame’s later medieval abbesses, see Chapter 3. 33 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 3–4; 15. 34 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 15; and Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum, 129. For a brief overview of the reform of Frankish monasticism, see Gert Melville, The World of Medieval Monasticism: Its History and Forms of Life, trans. James D. Mixson (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2016), 38–49. For a critical rereading of the reform, especially in regard to female monasticism, see: Vanderputten, Dark Age, 13–20. 35 ADA H 1508, fol. 33 r. 36 ADA H 1508, fol. 33 r. 37 ADA H 1508, fol. 56 r. 38 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 226. 39 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 118; 119–124. 40 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 49–50. 41 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 31; 36. 42 Vanderputten, Dark Age, especially the historiographical summary, 4–8. 43 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 54; 67–69. 44 Nevertheless, the distinction between nunneries and Stifte, as communities of canonesses are called in German, continues to play an important role in Germanophone historiography, especially within Landesgeschichte. Cf. Introduction. 45 Vanderputten, Dark Age, 11–36. 46 This is true in general, cf. note 44 above, but Theil has also shown it for Buchau in particular; Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 102. The Early Medieval Background 37 47 Rudolf Schieffer, Christianisierung und Reichsbildungen. Europa 700–1200 (München: C.H. Beck, 2013), 18; 21–22; Sönke Lorenz, “Die Alemannen auf dem Weg zum Christentum,” in: Die Alemannen und das Christentum: Zeugnisse eines kulturellen Umbruchs, ed. Sönke Lorenz and Barbara Scholkmann (Leinfelden-Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 2003), 66–68. For an overview in English of the Frankish expansion into and Christianization of Central Europe, see Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion. From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1997), especially Chapters 6–8. 48 Fletcher, Barbarian Conversion, 193–227; for Alemannia, Lorenz, “Die Alemannen,” 72–73. 49 Dienemann-Dietrich, “Der fränkische Adel,” 190. 50 There is an abundance of scholarship engaging with all aspects of the Frankish Empire, its expansion, and the close ties to Christian missions. For the region of Alemannia/Swabia in which Buchau was located, see, among others, Lorenz, “Die Alemannen,” 65–112; and Dieter Geuenich, “Alemannien im 6.–8. Jahrhundert,” in: Mission und Christianisierung am Hochund Oberrhein (6.–8. Jahrhundert), ed. Walter Berschin, Dieter Geuenich, and Heiko Steuer (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000), 23–34. 51 Eckhard Hauswald, Pirmin Scarapsus, Monumenta Germanie Historica. Quellen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters. Band 25. Pirmin Scarapsus (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2010), xiii–viv; xvii. 52 If missions refer to initial contact between a non-Christian population and the Gospel, Christianization refers to the process of gradual conversion of the population and the permeation of the land by ecclesiastical structures; Lorenz, “Die Alemannen,” 66. For Alemannia, the eighth century was a turning point. If Christianization had only been spotty before, by the mid-eighth century, Alemannia had become firmly incorporated into the Frankish Empire and its growing ecclesiastical infrastructures was an increasingly homogenous part of the Imperial Church; Lorenz, “Die Alemannen,” 88; 111. During Charles Martel’s tenure as majordomo, the rebellions of the Alemanni continued. It would be Martel’s sons Carloman and Pepin the Short who secured the final submission of Alemannia in 746. Geuenich, “Alemannien,” 32–33. 53 Geuenich, “Alemannien,” 31–32. 54 The Handbuch der Kollegialstifte in Baden-Württemberg, which covers all ecclesiastical foundations in Swabia, shows just how dense the Swabian network was. Sönke Lorenz, Oliver Auge, and Sigrid Hirbodian (eds.), Handbuch der Kollegialstifte in Baden-Württemberg (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbeke, 2019). For a map of monastic foundations in Alemannia until 730, see Alfons Zettler, “Fragen zur älteren Geschichte von Kloster Säckingen,” in: Berschin, Geuenich, and Steuer (eds.), Mission und Christianisierung, 36. 55 Michael Richter, “Neues zu den Anfängen des Klosters Reichenau,” in: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins, Bd. 144 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1996), 1–18, especially 3. 56 Crusius, “Im Dienste der Königsherrschaft,” 59. 57 Lorenz, “Die Alemannen,” 111. 58 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 45–46. 59 Siegel, Stemmler, and Theil, Urkunden des Stifts, 9. 60 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 88. 61 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 118. 62 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 123. This was the typical structure for these types of foundations. Jan Gerchow, “Die frühen Klöster und Stifte,” in: Krone und Schleier. Kunst aus Mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern. Katalog zur Ausstellung, ed. Kunstund Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn und dem Ruhrlandmuseum Essen (München: Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2005), 158. 38 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy 63 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 119–120; 125; 127; 144. 64 Annina Wyss Schildkencht (ed.), Die mittelund spätkaiserliche Kleinstadt Zürich/Turicum, Monographien der Kantonsarchäologie Zürich (Zürich und Egg: Baudirektion Kanton Zürich, 2020), 37–38. 65 Wilfried Hartmann, Ludwig der Deutsche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 91; for the development of the county of Zurich in Carolingian times, see Michael Borgolte, Geschichte der Grafschaften Alemanniens in fränkischer Zeit (Sigmaringen: Jan Thobecke, 1984), 78–110. 66 Judith Steinmann, Die Benediktinerinnenabtei zum Fraumünster und ihr Verhältnis zur Stadt Zürich 853–1524 (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 1980), 11; 15–16. 67 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 11. 68 Hartmann, Ludwig, 91. 69 For more information on Säckingen, see Friedrich Wilhelm Geier, Die Grundbesitzverhältnisse des Stifts Säckingen im ausgehenden Mittelalter (PhD dissertation: Universität Heidelberg, 1931); and Fridolin Jehle and Adelheid Enderle-Jehle, Die Geschichte des Stiftes Säckingen (Aarau: Sauerländer, 1993). 70 Simon MacLean, “Queenship, Nunneries and Royal Widowhood in Carolingian Europe,” Past and Present 178, no. 1 (2003): 20–24; Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 18; Guido Faccani and Philipp von Cranach, “Zurzach (Stift),” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS). Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/ articles/012124/2018-02-05/. That a lay abbess governed one or several convents was typical rather than exceptional in Carolingian times. 71 To be precise, the king granted these possessions to an already extant convent, about which we know no details other than that it existed. The transferal of Louis’ possessions and the investiture of his daughter as abbess has traditionally been seen as the refoundation of the nunnery; Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 11–12. 72 For a concise description of the nature and concept of medieval donations and memoria, see Michael Borgolte, “Der König als Stifter. Streiflichter auf die Geschichte des Willens,” in: Stiftung und Memoria, ed. Tillmann Lohse (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2012), 309–333, in particular 310–312. 73 Louis donated great wealth to a number of monasteries and convents. Indeed, such pious donations were an integral part of his kingship. However, Fraumünster Abbey would be his only royal foundation. Hartmann, Ludwig, 187–188; and Eric J. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire. Kingship and Conflict Under Louis the German, 817–876 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 96–97; 157–158. 74 Cursius, “Im Dienste der Königsherrschaft,” 64. 75 Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean, The Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 170–184. 76 Of course, this statement is relative. Royal abbesses of that period sometimes administered more than one convent at a time, as we have seen, and they partook in political life. For example, Matilda I (955–999), abbess of Quedlinburg, acted as regent of the kingdom (968–972 and 997–999) and accompanied her brother Otto II to Rome in 981. Moreover, she was present at and even hosted a number of Hoftage (imperial diets) throughout her tenure. While Matilda is certainly the most powerful and the best documented example of such a princess-abbess, she was not unique. And her example shows that abbatial life at the time was certainly not cloistered, nor was it firmly tied to one location. Nevertheless, in comparison to the bishops and abbots of that period who would accompany the king on military campaigns, abbesses were certainly more locally stable and present than their male counterparts. Gerd Althoff, “Gandersheim und Quedlinburg. Ottonische Frauenklöster als Herrschaftsund Überlieferungszentren,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25, no. 1 (1991): 123–144. 77 Hartmann, Ludwig, 40–41; 43–44; and Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 114–116; 119; 186–187. The Early Medieval Background 39 78 Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 96. 79 Hartmann, Ludwig, 88–93. 80 Hartmann, Ludwig, 77–78. Louis had a fourth daughter, Gisela, of whom nothing is known. Hartmann, Ludwig, 78. Outside of Alemannia, Louis’ three daughters governed additional monasteries in Franconia (Münsterschwarzbach) and in Bavaria (Frauenchiemsee); Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 197. 81 The war between the three brothers reached a climax in June 841 at the Battle of Fontenoy, where the combined armies of Louis and Charles decisively defeated that of Lothar. As a result of this battle, the Treaty of Verdun (843) divided the Empire among the three brothers; Hartmann, Ludwig, 37–38. 82 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 11; Costambeys, Innes, and MacLean, Carolingian World, 379–383; and Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 233–262. The division of Middle Francia between Lothar’s three sons in 855 made Zurich an even more strategical location, allowing access to a desired region with a weakened government. 83 Hartmann, Ludwig, 91. 84 In detail, see Goldberg, Struggle for Empire, 263–334; more cursorily, Hartmann, Ludwig, 101; 120–122. 85 Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 16. For an overview of Otto’s Italian policy and his kingship of Italy (951–973), see Gerd Althoff, Die Ottonen. Königsherrschaft ohne Staat (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2000), 96–108. 86 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 17–18. 87 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 13; 28; and Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 17–18. 88 Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 18. 89 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 23; and Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 18. 90 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 29; 32–34. 91 Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 18. 92 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 35. 93 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 36; the election procedure is described in detail for the first time in a charter from 1218, ZUB 13, nr. 387. 94 Barraud Wiener, “Diesseits,” 18. 95 Steinmann, Benediktinerinnenabtei, 16–17; 19–20. DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905-4 By the thirteenth century, societal and political structures had fundamentally changed from those of the early Middle Ages. Neustria had merged into the kingdom of France, while Alemannia had become Swabia and exchanged its frontier status for a position solidly within the Holy Roman Empire. Settlements had grown into towns and cities. Trade and an increasingly monetized economy allowed for the rise of new social groups seeking political influence and challenging existing structures. One of the central questions of this monograph is whether early medieval monastic structures fared well in late medieval society and economy – and if so, what factors allowed them to do so. To address these questions, I suggest to imagine success as a threetiered podium: The first tier of success was reached if a convent still existed several centuries after its initial foundation; the second tier, if a monastery maintained its status and wealth; and the third, if it, in fact, increased its wealth and influence in these changed circumstances. Fraumünster, Buchau, and Notre-Dame all attained the first tier – all three still existed in the late Middle Ages. And two of three climbed the top of the podium. *** This chapter will center on the territorial and economic evolution of the three convents in late medieval Europe. It builds directly on the previous chapter, and it will argue that while structural developments were an important factor, they did not determine a convent’s fate in the long term. To a large extent, an institution’s success depended on its leaders’ economic abilities and political foresightedness. Faced with fundamental economic changes since the thirteenth century, its administration needed to adapt the convent’s economy – a process that usually took more than a century and was therefore a multigenerational effort. Second, it was pivotal for a convent to establish and maintain external independence in combination with relative internal peace. Finally, a lasting identification of a convent’s members with their institution was important, especially in times of crisis. The following pages will look closely at the evolution of each convent in the period between ca. 1200 and 1450 while centering on those developments that proved determining. The following does not render a comprehensive account of the institutions’ 3 The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 41 late medieval histories. Rather, this chapter focuses on select developments and the institutions’ reactions to them. This is particularly true for the histories of Fraumünster and Buchau Abbey, as both have seen previous scholarly engagements. Fraumünster Abbey From its foundation, Fraumünster had been endowed with a comparatively contiguous territory stretching from Zurich along the shores of Lake Zurich deep into central Switzerland (see Figure 3.2). The abbey owned large demesnes, as well as rights over the people working them, and it received a large variety of tithes as revenues. As was common in the early Middle Ages, the majority of them were paid in kind. The most frequent currencies were grain, wine, wax, and livestock such as chickens and pigs. Cash payments, while extant, were usually small, and they made up only a fraction of the abbey’s incomes. Possessing vast lands and collecting plentiful revenues while having to maintain only about 11 nuns along with their servants, early and high medieval Fraumünster was by all means a wealthy and powerful institution. Historical reality was, of course, more complicated. As discussed in Chapter 2, prior to gaining its independence from royal patronage during the Investiture Controversy in the twelfth century, the abbey did not fully control its own income. Effectively a proprietary convent, the king or emperor could freely dispose over the abbey’s revenues. And the rulers would often do so, for example, to pay their daughters’ dowries.1 And while the abbey’s vast landholdings and its ownership of Zurich made the convent an influential agent in southern Swabia, the abbey’s political weight was closely tied to Zurich’s role as an imperial palatine. After the 1050s, Zurich lost its role as curia regis. Prolonged royal absences created a power vacuum, which was eventually filled by Berthold II of Zähringen whom Henry IV appointed imperial advocate in 1098.2 An imperial advocate, sometimes also referred to as imperial bailiff or reeve, was the local representative of the king or emperor. As such, he wielded the highest penal authority, including death sentences, and he was the patron, protector, and administrator of the local crown lands. The imperial advocateship made Berthold II the acting governor of the area. Seventy-five years later, Berthold’s grandson, Berthold IV, additionally obtained the ecclesiastical advocateship of Zurich’s churches, making the dukes of Zähringen the de facto lords over both secular and ecclesiastical Zurich.3 Meanwhile, the abbess of Fraumünster took a backseat and had to watch as the Zähringen dynasty sought to establish themselves not only as lords over Zurich, but also over the region at large. Although the dukes of Zähringen never obtained the ducal title of Swabia, they came to hold much ground in the region and in Burgundy during the twelfth century. Today, their heritage is still tangible in the architecture of the 12 cities they founded along the region’s main trading routes. These cities include Freiburg im Breisgau, along with the Swiss towns 48 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy mid-sized towns – Sigmaringen, Ulm, Memmingen, and Ravensburg – all of which were within 50 km of Buchau. By the late Middle Ages, Upper Swabia, roughly the area north of Lake Constance, was comparatively densely populated. The region benefitted from the overland trade routes leading to the important fairs of Frankfurt and Cologne to the northwest and via Lake Constance connecting to the major trade routes toward southern Europe.37 This network of trade routes allowed a high number of communities to prosper, while their density prevented any single town from predominating.38 Late medieval Buchau was situated in the heart of Upper Swabia, but at some distance from the region’s main trading towns. Although the abbey’s vicinity remained rural also in the late Middle Ages, the settlement outside the abbey had grown into a small town since the High Middle Ages. This town is first mentioned in a charter of St. Gall Abbey in 1020. Three centuries later, Buchau Town obtained imperial immediacy and became legally independent from Buchau Abbey in 1320.39 Although the citizenry was henceforth subject to royal authority only, the close proximity of abbey and town led to frequent conflicts. Usually, these conflicts concerned questions of jurisdictional delimitations, which peaked in the first half of the fifteenth century.40 With the help of 43 treaties that were concluded between 1376 and 1794, convent and town succeeded to settle into a coexistence with clearly established boundaries, effectively preventing either one of them to gain power over the other.41 Throughout the Middle Ages, Buchau Abbey maintained its independence and succeeded to regulate its internal and external relationship. Cultivating a network of different benefactors prevented one single patron to gain excessive influence. In this, Buchau differed from Fraumünster, which relied successively on the kings and emperors who were also the convent’s proprietors, and later on the city, which was nominally its subject. In the fifteenth century, Buchau’s main allies were the town of Ulm, the bishop of Constance, and the Council of Basel.42 In 1448, both Buchau Abbey and Buchau Town purchased the citizenship of Ulm in exchange for an annual payment of 20 gulden.43 Ulm’s citizenship brought them legal advantages, as it granted both Buchaus the right of counsel and support in legal matters.44 Naturally, Buchau Abbey also saw its share of internal conflicts. These mainly concerned the relationship between chapter and the abbess.45 As with their external relations and again contrary to Fraumünster, Buchau found ways to regulate internal matters through legal agreements. Thanks to these regulations, conflicts between chapter and abbess did not tend to escalate. In the fourteenth century, the convent, that is, the canonesses and canons with voting rights in Buchau’s chapter, established itself as a second political body within the abbey. Upon the election of Anna von Weinberg (1303–1353), abbess and convent concluded a contract which detailed their respective prebends and rights.46 As of 1381, chapter and abbess disposed of separate seals, meaning that certain legal actions, such as the selling of land, henceforth required the confirmation (i.e., the seal) of both The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 49 monastic bodies. Such regulations effectively limited abbatial power, but they also introduced internal checks and balances. Through their right of codetermination, the body religious of Buchau ensured that decisions concerning the abbey’s patrimony were made consensually. A formal agreement for abbess and chapter to meet every Friday to discuss and decide jointly about current issues concerning the institution further bolstered this practice in 1427.47 In the long term, the division of Buchau’s internal power ensured a meditated patrimonial and economic policy. The story of Buchau Abbey differed from that of Fraumünster also in terms of its patrimonial evolution. Throughout the later Middle Ages, Buchau succeeded to affirm and intensify its territorial rule (Figure 3.3). Due to the loss of Buchau’s oldest documents, we know little about the abbey’s early possessions. However, its seigneuries, which were located in a radius of approximately 30 km around Buchau, were probably part of its foundational endowment.48 Buchau’s oldest comprehensive urbarium, a manorial land register, dates from the second half of the fifteenth century, and it allows insights into the abbey’s late medieval territorial development.49 During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Buchau sold a number of fiefs and land parcels to other monasteries.50 At that point in time, Buchau seems to have been steering down a similar path as Fraumünster – selling off land to meet financial obligations.51 However, contrary to Fraumünster, Buchau succeeded in turning things around. In particular, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Buchau actively acquired demesnes, cense rights, and even seigneurial prerogatives, including the right to appoint bailiffs and the right to exercise jurisdiction over a number of villages the abbey also acquired at the time. By 1499, the abbess exercised high justice in the villages of Kanzach, Dürnau, and Kappel, in addition to low justice, which she exercised in close to 50 farmsteads and villages.52 The fifteenth century marked a turning point in Buchau’s history: from a territorial convent in decline, Buchau reemerged as a local seigneurial authority (Figure 3.3a–c). Even at the height of its power in the late fifteenth century, Buchau’s area of influence remained geographically confined. The villages, demesnes, and the abbey’s other patrimony continued to be situated in the same radius of about 30 km around the abbey where also their earliest possessions had been located. However, within this circumference, Buchau’s abbesses and convent connected their individual possessions, expanded their judicial rights, and thus successfully affirmed their authority. The highest density of manorial possessions lay in the vicinity of Buchau itself and near the town of Saulgau, located about 12 km southeast of Buchau.53 In addition to the abbey’s late medieval territorialization, that is, its acquisition of land to form a connected territory, the evolution of abbatial jurisdiction best shows Buchau’s consolidation of authority. The oldest document shedding light on Buchau’s court days is a charter promulgated in the twelfth century, which defined the bailiff’s judicial rights over the abbey’s subjects. The charter stipulated the bailiff to hold court once 50 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy Figure 3.3 (a) Buchau’s patrimony in the thirteenth century. (b) Buchau’s patrimony in the fourteenth century. (c) Buchau’s patrimony in the fifteenth century. Map design: Agnes Schormann. The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 51 a year, but only with the explicit consent of the abbess. Of the fines collected on court days, he was to keep one-third, while the abbess received the remaining two-thirds.54 By the fourteenth century, the situation had changed, and Buchau’s abbesses now regularly sat court themselves. At least once a year, the abbatial court convened to dispense justice over Buchau’s subjects.55 One century later, the number of sessions had tripled. A 1434 charter by Emperor Sigismund reveals that the abbatial court sat three times a year at Buchau Abbey and that the abbess had the right to punish anybody, including by the use of force, who behaved in a disorderly manner on court days.56 While Buchau’s 12 mayors assisted the abbess, she often presided court herself.57 Abbesses and convent of late medieval Buchau actively consolidated their institution’s manorial and feudal authorities through the acquisition of further lands and the intensified exercise of the abbesses’ judicial rights. Also economically, Buchau was more proactive than the late medieval Fraumünster. In the fifteenth century, the vast majority of the dues rendered to the abbey by both its serfs and free peasants were paid in cash; and payments in kind only played a minor role.58 The abbey thus successfully transitioned into the new economic order. Moreover, throughout the fifteenth century, Buchau had consolidated and even increased the abbey’s authority. By 1500, the abbess appointed 11 priests, exercised jurisdiction over 40 farmsteads, six villages, and owned the advocateship of three towns by the late fifteenth century (Figure 3.4).59 Figure 3.3 Continued 52 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy Although Buchau successfully consolidated its authority throughout the fifteenth century, the area where the abbey exercised secular authority remained restraint. This was owed to the structural situation in Upper Swabia discussed earlier. The density of urban and monastic centers stymied the expansion of the territorial influence of any one of them. Whereas the possibilities of geographical expansion were limited, local institutions could focus on consolidating their territorial authority within their respective setting – and in this, the abbesses and convents of Buchau succeeded. Buchau’s fifteenthcentury abbesses, members of the powerful Swabian aristocratic families of Gundelfingen, Montfort, and Werdenburg, were particularly able managers – it was during their administration that Buchau saw its economic and territorial comeback.60 Of course, Buchau’s development was not a linear path to success. Unsurprisingly for an institution with more than 700 years of history by 1500, Buchau had seen a great number of internal and external challenges, most of which this chapter has only mentioned in passing.61 But Buchau’s remarkable territorial and economic resurrection in the fifteenth century testifies to its capable long-term and highly circumspect governments. This chapter’s conclusion will revisit the factors that led to Buchau’s success. But first, we will turn to Notre-Dame de Soissons, whose late medieval development is the most impressive of the three institutions under discussion. Figure 3.4 Buchau’s patrimony in the fifteenth century with jus patronatus. Map design: Agnes Schormann. The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 53 Notre-Dame de Soissons Early Notre-Dame de Soissons was more comparable to Fraumünster than to Buchau, as both institutions were endowed with vast territorial possessions. However, contrary to Fraumünster, Notre-Dame’s early patrimony did not form a connected territory (Figure 3.5). As discussed in the previous chapter, a bulk of the abbey’s possessions lay at a great distance from Soissons, in the Rhineland – seven fiefs in Alsace, a village in the lands of Worms, and 59 farmsteads near Cologne.62 About 350 km separate Soissons and Cologne. Even on modern roads, travelling this distance by foot would take more than 70 hours (according to Google Maps). In medieval Europe, with its unpaved and unsafe roads, travelling such great distances took much longer and came with many risks, and it therefore complicated effective administration. Despite these vast distances and the challenges that came with them, Notre-Dame only alienated its eastern patrimony after the twelfth century, at which point they disappeared from the abbey’s archives.63 More interesting than the fact that these distant possessions were eventually sold is the time frame when this happened – presumably at some point during the thirteenth century. The thirteenth century was a turning point for Notre-Dame’s manorial and seigneurial administration, and this turning point has left ample traces in the abbey’s cartulary. At the time, Notre-Dame’s abbesses intensified their traditionally active politics of territorialization. Already in the centuries following its foundation, the abbey had acquired more dominions. Between the ninth and the mid-thirteenth centuries, Notre-Dame obtained a total of 15 seigneuries, more than doubling its manorial possessions from the original 12 to 27.64 Although the exact dates of their respective acquisition are uncertain, Figure 3.5 Notre-Dame’s ninth-century possessions according to the confirmation by Charles the Bald (858). Map design: Agnes Schormann. 54 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy we can establish a rough timeline from royal and papal confirmations and other charters. In 858, Charles the Bald confirmed the abbey’s original 12 seigneuries. In 1147, a papal confirmation of the abbey’s possessions by Eugene III lists ten new seigneuries in addition to those confirmed by Charles three centuries earlier. Several charters, dating between 1187 and 1240 and concerning purchases and tithe rights inform us about the abbey’s ownership of five further seigneuries, namely Bassevelle, Coupru, Mercin, Vaux, and Saconin (Figure 3.6) – establishing their final number at 27 by the midthirteenth century.65 Because of the many regional differences, there is no universal definition of seigneurie. Most generally, a seigneurie is a territory under the authority of a given person or institution.66 In the cases of Notre-Dame and the other institutions discussed here, a seigneurie designates a territory comprising a number of different structures such as arable land, mills, ponds, or forests. This territory, which can vary in size from a few square kilometers to several hundred square kilometers, was generally under the administration of a mayor who, in turn, was appointed by and accountable to the abbess. Within its seigneurie, Notre-Dame enjoyed a number of legal prerogatives, including jurisdiction, which in all but two cases comprised the highest penal authority of wielding capital punishment.67 Abbatial high justice mostly remained legal theory, however. In practice, Notre-Dame’s abbesses appointed judges instead of sitting court themselves. The abbesses also had the right to pardon sentenced criminals, and that was a prerogative Notre-Dame’s abbesses repeatedly availed themselves of.68 In at least three seigneuries, NotreDame’s abbesses also chose the advocatus, and in two she had the status of viscountess – and thus enjoyed the highest secular authority.69 Abbatial authority was not limited to secular matters. Of the total 19 parishes where the abbess appointed the priest through her jus patronatus, seven were located within Notre-Dame’s own seigneuries (Figure 3.6).70 In those seigneuries, where the abbess had both seigneurial and ecclesiastical prerogatives, her authority was the most comprehensive: she wielded the legislative, judicial, and executive powers, and through choosing the parish priests, she also assumed spiritual responsibility for her subjects. Regarding the comprehensiveness of abbatial authority, Notre-Dame’s abbesses were as powerful as other seigneurs. Indeed, in certain regards, they were even more powerful, as lay seigneurs rarely nominated parish priests. While Notre-Dame’s cartulary sheds only spotty light on the life and administration at the abbey, it is an unusually rich source when it comes to Notre-Dame’s economic and territorial activities. Beginning in the waning twelfth century and continuing all through the thirteenth, Notre-Dame pursued a remarkably active politics of territorialization, at the end of which the abbey stood at the head of connected seigneuries which formed clusters of territorial and spiritual authority (Figure 3.6). Moreover, the nuns of NotreDame sought to connect their seigneurial lands also within. Within each seigneury, they acquired land parcel after parcel, purchased neighboring houses The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 55 Figure 3.6 Notre-Dame’s seigneuries and churches with jus patronatus. Map design: Agnes Schormann. and farmsteads, and thus consolidated their authority within them as they gradually established the abbey as the only landowner. Among Notre-Dame’s territorializing abbesses, Odeline de Trachy (1256– 1273) is particularly noteworthy. Odeline came to the abbacy as a compromise. The election of her predecessor, Agnes of Cherisy (1236–1256), had caused a stir, as Agnes was the third consecutive member of the powerful Cherisy-Bazoches family who climbed the abbatial throne. Fearing that the family would gain too much influence over the abbey, the nuns only accepted Agnes, after the latter made a significant concession to the convent. In 1239, the convent – that is the body of nuns eligible to vote in the chapter – received its own seal. Henceforth, the convent’s seal was required in addition to the abbatial seal for all contracts pertaining to the abbey’s temporalities. As at Buchau, also Notre-Dame’s convent thus secured itself a seat at the table when it came to patrimonial decisions.71 While the prerequisite of the convent’s consent to important decisions effectively limited abbatial rule, the introduction of this system of checks and balances did not impede NotreDame’s consolidation of territorial power. If anything, it helped secure it, as the consent of both abbess and chapter was necessary for any major acquisition (or sale), curbing potential excesses. Despite securing the rights of codetermination, the convent still wanted to avoid a Cherisy-Bazoches monopoly. Thus, after her death in 1256, they elected Odeline de Trachy rather than another member of the Cherisy-Bazoches family. Although a compromise 56 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy which briefly interrupted the Cherisy-Bazoches rule of the abbey, Odeline’s abbacy was central to the consolidation of Notre-Dame’s territories.72 The abbey’s cartulary lists 31 acquisitions during Odeline’s tenure alone, ten of them added lands within the seigneurie of Chaudun. By far, the biggest purchase was that of a 360-arpens-sized forest in 1270.73 Three hundred and sixty arpens are about 180 ha – or roughly the equivalent of 180 soccer fields. The possibility to make such a large acquisition was rare. And it was expensive. The price for the forest of Secannoy was at 4,100 livres – an impressive sum that even a wealthy abbey, such as Notre-Dame, was not readily able to pay all at once. To obtain the forest nonetheless, Notre-Dame joined forces with the monks of St.-Jean-de-Vigne, another wealthy Benedictine monastery in Soissons. Together, the two abbeys bought the forest, and all rights that went with it, from Raoul de Soissons. Raoul, brother of the count of Soissons, made the sale so that he could follow his king to the Holy Land, in what would later be known as the Eighth Crusade.74 Crusading was expensive, and Raoul needed the money, while Notre-Dame saw the opportunity to expand their seigneurie of Chaudun. Moreover, the forest of Secannoy was an investment that would yield regular income from wood and hunting rights that the two abbeys divided among themselves.75 Notre-Dame’s acquisitions were rarely of such an impressive size, however. For the most part, abbess and convent bought smaller units such as fields, ovens, and rights over individual roads. More typical were the purchases of a grange from the monks of St.-Jean-de-Vignes in 126176 or that of several small units of land bought from local landowners, often adjacent to fields already in the abbey’s possession.77 As in Chaudun, Odeline and her convent also acted in the seigneuries of Jaignes, Changy, and Ressons. Here, they purchased, among other things, nine arpents (about 4.5 ha) of land located in their censive, a manor with its arable land; pieces of land, including their cens, that is, the annual land rent; or just varying pieces of arable land, along with the roads connecting individual seigneuries and land holdings.78 Evidently, the objective of these endeavors was to gradually and lastingly establish a monopoly of possession and authority over all the lands, tithes, censes, and other revenues within the abbey’s seigneuries. If the abbey was the only land proprietor, the only one collecting tithes and censes, the only owner of the local infrastructure such as mills and ovens, then Notre-Dame was consequently the undisputed lord over their seigneuries and all of their parts. Although Notre-Dame’s territorialization policy peaked during the abbacy of Odeline de Trachy, it was a long-term strategy that abbesses before and after Odeline also pursued, spanning the entire thirteenth century and beyond.79 As a result of this multigenerational effort, the abbey established a network of fairly connected seigneuries, churches, and demesnes in which Notre-Dame collected a variety of revenues, appointed priests, and exercised justice in a radius of roughly 60–65 km around Soissons (Figure 3.7). The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 57 Figure 3.7 Notre-Dame’s patrimony in the late fourteenth century. The vast majority of the abbey’s possessions were located in the vicinity of Soissons. Map design: Agnes Schormann. In terms of structural similarities, Notre-Dame shared more traits with Fraumünster than with Buchau. This is true regarding the size of their patrimony, their rivalries with local potentates, and their general economic set-up. Similar to Fraumünster, Notre-Dame continued to collect a significant part of its rents in kind in the late Middle Ages. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these included hundreds of herrings, several hundred liters of wine, cakes, eggs, and of course, large quantities of grain.80 However, contrary to Fraumünster, Notre-Dame began to diversify its revenues in the thirteenth century by investing in the city of Soissons to increase their regular monetary income. Beginning in the 1240s, that is during the tenure of Agnes de Cherisy (1236–1256) and reaching a peak in the late thirteenth century, Notre-Dame started to purchase rents. A typical example for such a rent agreement is that between Robert and Izabelle Le Pignier and the abbey. In 1281, Robert and Izabelle sold 20 sous of perpetual annual rent to the abbess and convent of Notre-Dame.81 The price for this sale was at ten livres. In other words, the couple received a onetime payment of ten livres in cash from the abbey and in return, they agreed to pay Notre-Dame 20 sous annually. Twenty sous are the equivalent of one livre. That is, after ten years of annual payments from Izabelle and Robert, the convent broke even, and from year 11 on, Notre-Dame made a profit.82 The medieval system of selling and buying rents was similar to taking out a loan from a modern bank. Although de facto generating an interest, the rent 64 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy been only two canons, and also the number of canonesses was often below the marker of 12; Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 89–90. 46 StAS Dep. 30/14 T 1 Nr. 6. Regesten 819–1500, charter 19. 47 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 97. 48 For a map of Buchau’s early medieval possessions, see https://rulingwomen.ch/ topographien-der-macht/. 49 Buchau’s 1477 urbarium has not been edited. It is held by the Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, StAS Dep. 30/14 T 2 Nr. 1615. 50 Charters of such sales can be found in, among others, Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 200–206; 208–209; 211; Württembergisches Urkundenbuch Online Band V., Nr. 1366; Stand 17. January 2016 (http://www.wubonline.de/?wub=2018); StAS Dep. 30/14 T 1 Nr. 2; Regesten 819–1500, charters 6, 148. 51 Regarding the question as to whether Buchau faced economic hardship in the thirteenth century, see Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 86–88. 52 See note 59 for the complete list. 53 These mainly consisted of several fields and farmsteads, mentioned in StAS Dep. 30/14 T 1 Nr. 6. Regesten 819–1500, charters 27, 47, 83, 121, 135, 405, 448, 472, 927. 54 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 84. 55 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 85. 56 StAS Dep. 30/14 T 1 Nr. 6; Regesten 819–1500, charter 318. 57 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 92; Regesten 819–1500, charter 618 grants the abbess the right to convene a court comprising the abbey’s 12 mayors along with the 12 judged from Buchau. Examples for cases where the abbess ruled herself can be found in Regesten 819–1500, charters 294, 295, 534, and 630. Examples of cases that abbesses presided over together with her council of mayors: Regesten 819–1500, charters 688, 701, 708, 746, 770, 841. 58 Less than half of Buchau’s rents in the fifteenth-century charters mention payment in kind – usually in combination with money (75 out of a total of 167). Only 13 out of 167 entries mention payments purely in kind – usually in the form of grain and livestock. For payments in kind, see StAS Dep. 30/14 T 1 Nr. 6; Regesten 819–1500, charters 16, 21, 426, 432, 523, 580, 606, 607, 638, 725, 767, 876, 903. 59 The abbess of Buchau exercised jurisdiction over Buchau (partial), Assmannshardt, Attenweiler, Birkenhard, Brackenhofen, Braunenweiler, Bühl, Dietelhofen, Dietzenweiler, Dürnau, Einöde near Fronreute, Ellighofen, Ennetach, Frometsweiler, Fronstetten, Groth, Hagnaufurt, Hahnennest, Häusern, Hegheim, Kappel, Langenschemmern, Mietingen, Mittelbuch, Moosheim, Musbach, Oberwyler, Oggelshausen, Renhardsweiler, Reute, Riedhausen, Röhrwangen, Rüsseg, Schmalegg, Schweinhausen, Stafflangen, Stettberg, Straßberg, Tiefenbach, Ummendorf, Vollochmühle,Wifertsweiler, Willenhofen, Winkel, and Wolfhartsweiler. Buchau owned the advocateship of Kappel, Oberwyler, and Rüsseg. For complete source references, see database: https:// dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KTTSZ2. 60 Theil, Damenstift Buchau, 226. 61 For more detailed insights into Buchau’s history of events, see Bernhard Theil’s extensively cited monograph; Theil, Damenstift Buchau. 62 A list of Notre-Dame’s earliest possessions is found in the 858 confirmation of Charles the Bald; Ada H 1506, fol. 33r–v. 63 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 26–27. 64 In 1147, Matilde II de Toulouse (1143–1162) obtained a confirmation from Eugene III of Notre-Dame’s possessions. In addition to those already mentioned in the 858 confirmation by Charles the Bald, the pope confirms the possession of Molinchart, Laffau, Colesy, Morsain, Chaudon, Chacrise, Jaignes, Bacheval, Noiseauland, and Chavigny; Ada H 1508, 50–51. The Worldly Dominions of Women Religious in Late Medieval Europe 65 65 Of course, all of Notre-Dame’s seigneuries also continue to be mentioned outside of royal and papal confirmations. The seigneuries depicted in Figure 3.7 were thus all still in Notre-Dame’s possession in the late Middle Ages. The first mention of Bassevelle concerns tithes and dates from 1222; AdA H 1508, 165; Coupru is first mentioned in 1187 in a transaction confirming the juridical rights of the abbess; AdA H 1508, 179; Mercin-et-Vaux is first mentioned in 1213 in the context of the abbey purchasing a vineyard from the monks of Longpont; AdA H 1508, 254; and Saconin is first mentioned in 1240, equally in the context of a transaction with a neighboring abbey; AdA H 1508, 290. 66 A. Zangger, S. Grüninger, G. Egloff, B. Andenmatten, and G. Chiesi, “Grundherrschaft,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS). Online: https://hls-dhs-dss. ch/de/articles/008973/2013-10-01/. 67 In Jaignes, Notre-Dame only held low and middle justice; in Pargny, the abbey exercised high and half of middle justice; and in all other seigneuries, the abbey exercised all three degrees of justice. 68 See, for example, the pardoning of Henriet de Trois Fontaines in 1342; Ada H 1508, 73. 69 This was the case for Saconin, Pargny, and Charly; Ada H 1508, 289; 209; 169. She was viscountess of Saconin (Ada H 1508, 289) and Ressons (Ada H 1508, 305). However, considering the abbess’ far-ranging juridical rights over NotreDame’s seigneuries, it is probable that she at least influenced the choice of advocates of the other seigneuries also. 70 Notre-Dame exercised the jus patronatus in Courmelles, Morchain, and its affiliated church in Sommelens, Corcy, Couloisy, Chacrise, and Pargny; Ada H 1508, 4; 50–51; 209. As the abbey’s cartulary is the only source that has come down to us, it is possible that other, now missing, documents testified to the abbatial right of appointing priests also in additional seigneuries. 71 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 183–185. 72 When Odeline chose to retire in 1273 due to her advanced age, the convent led to a draw: 32 votes fell for the abbey’s treasurer, Marguerite de Canmenchon, and 34 votes for Adée de Bazoches. The nuns could not come to an agreement, and it took three years before Adée eventually secured the papal nomination with the help of her brother, Milon, bishop of Soissons; German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 197. 73 Ada H 1508, 192; 203–204; 207–209. 74 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 195. 75 German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 195. Alas, we don’t know how the two abbeys divided both administration and income from the forest amongst themselves. 76 Ada H 1508, 194–195. 77 In 1266, the abbey purchased 80 essins of land adjacent to their own property; Ada H 1508, 195–196; but smaller lands were also of interest to the convent. That same year, Notre-Dame bought three essins of land from “Henry, called Count of Croy, and his wife, Gilette”; Ada H 1508, 195. They also made such individual acquisitions in Chaudun; Ada H 1508, 196–197. All of them were acquired around the year 1266. 78 Ada H 1508, 186; Ada H 1508, 186–187; Ada H 1508, 186; Ada H 1508, 318– 320; and German, Histoire de Notre-Dame, 193. 79 Odeline de Trachy’s predecessor, Agnes de Cherisy, accounts for 14 entries in the cartulary, and her successor, Adée de Bazoches, for 13. For the acquisitions of Adée de Bazoches, see Ada H 1508, 65–66; 110; 172–173; 197–198; 260; for those of Agnes de Cherisy, see Ada H 1508, 63; 170; 180; 185; 192–194; 225–226; 243; 248. 80 AdA H 1508, 20; AdA H 1508, 26; AdA H 1508, 3. 81 AdA H 1508, 65. 66 Early Medieval Structures and the Late Medieval Economy 82 Of course, this schematic explanation does not consider inflation. In times of monetary depreciation, which were common in the late Middle Ages, the time it took an institution to become profitable might have been longer. For the notoriously instable monetary economy, see the classical and posthumously published study of Marc Bloch, Esquisse d’une histoire monétaire de l’Europe (Paris: Armand Colin, 1954). 83 Naturally, there was debate about the morality of the practice already in the Middle Ages, and medieval Church officials were quite aware that the rent economy did not actually differ from forbidden forms of usury. See, among others, Hans-Jörg Gilomen, “Das kanonische Zinsverbot und seine theoretische und praktische Überwindung? Mitte 12. bis frühes 14. Jahrhundert,” in: Die römische Kurie und das Geld: Von der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts bis zum frühen 14. Jahrhundert, ed. Werner Maleczeck (Ostfildern: J. Thorbecke Verlag, 2018), 405–449; Hans-Jörg Gilomen, “Christlicher Glaube und Ökonomie des Kredits im Spätmittelalter,” in: Ökonomische Glaubensfragen: Strukturen und Praktiken jüdischen und christlichen Kleinkredits im Spätmittelalter, ed. Gerhard Fouquet and Sven Rabeler (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2018), 121–160; and R. Génestal, Rôle des Monastères comme Etablissements de Crédit. Etudié en Normandie du XIe à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1901). 84 To my knowledge, no such account book has come down to us from Notre-Dame; thus, the only records of Notre-Dame’s rent economy are found in the cartulary, which was compiled in two stages: the first, presumably in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the second in the mid-eighteenth century. Müller, Le ms. ADA 1508, 120–126. 85 AdA H 1508, 165. 86 AdA H 1506, fol. 33r–v. 87 A partial list can be found AdA H 1508, 40. 88 AdA H 1508, 65–66. 89 Dominique Roussel, Soissons. Documents d’évaluation du patrimoine archéologique des villes de France (Paris: Editions du patrimoine, 2002), 44. 90 Roussel, Soissons, 49. 91 Roussel, Soissons, 49. 92 Bourgin, La commune de Soissons, 23–34; 79–83. 93 Of course, Notre-Dame was not the only monastery in Soissons. However, intra muros, it was the most powerful one. St. Médard and St. Jean-des-Vignes, two further wealthy monasteries, were located outside the city walls – St. Jean to the south and St. Médard on the right bank of the Aisne River. 94 Roussel, Soissons, 55–57. 95 Roussel, Soissons, 57. 96 Throughout the Middle Ages, Soissons and the Soissonais experienced devastating wars. While not discussed here, these include Viking invasions, Ottonian conquests, and the Hundred Years’ War, to list just the most famous ones. 97 The numerous conflicts Notre-Dame fought with bishops and counts testify to both the rivalries and NotreDame’s turning to its rivals’ rivals. For summaries of the conflicts that have left traces in the cartulary, see database: https://dataverse. harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KTTSZ2 98 This is not to say that Buchau and Notre-Dame did not have debts – they did, as did most premodern institutions. However, as opposed to Fraumünster, their debts were not so heavy as to cause them to have to alienate core assets in order to repay their creditors. For a historiographical overview on debt in the later Middle Ages, see Gabriela Signori, “Einleitung,” in: Prekäre Ökonomien. Schulden in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Gabriela Signori (Konstanz and München: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2014), 7–14. Part II Monastic Economic Power inthe Late Medieval City DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905-6 The previous two chapters have engaged with early medieval foundations and inquired as to how they fared in the late medieval economy. Upon their foundation, early medieval convents were generally endowed with a territorial patrimony over which they exercised a number of manorial rights. In the later Middle Ages, this patrimony sometimes formed the basis of an active policy of territorialization. Similar to secular territorial lords, also abbesses and their convents sought to expand, affirm, and consolidate their areas of influence. Over the course of centuries, they not only attempted to enlarge the number of seigneuries, but also to establish economic and authoritative monopolies within their territories. At least, such tendencies can be observed among successful and economically able convents such as Notre-Dame and Buchau. While these manorial institutions could and did use their seigneurial prerogatives to effectively consolidate and even expand their territorial influence, they also needed to adjust to the significant political and economic changes in late medieval Europe. The rise of cities – and with them, the citizenry – and the emergence of the monetized economy were some of the most significant challenges these intuitions, and the women who governed them, had to confront. The convents’ traditional economic structure had been primarily agrarian. Landownership with vassals, tenants, or serfs who owed various degrees of services and different kinds of naturalia revenues were the pillars upon which the economy of these institutions had rested since the early Middle Ages. However, by the late Middle Ages, a solely territorial-agrarian set-up had become disadvantageous in a society increasingly dominated by a monetized urban economy. For institutions of early medieval origin to prevail in the long term, they had to diversify their economic portfolio. Buchau, a comparatively small convent – regarding both the size of its community and of its assets – shifted the majority of its economy from tithes paid in naturalia to revenues paid in money. Notre-Dame, a much larger institution than Buchau, diversified its economic portfolio and added monetary income through purchases of rent and realty. However, not all institutions succeeded in adapting and diversifying. Late medieval Fraumünster generated monetary income primarily through the 4 Economic Strategists Klingental in Basel I This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license 70 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City sale of land and regalia. The abbey actively contributed to its economic and territorial decline in the fifteenth century through the gradual alienation of the very basis of its wealth. If the previous two chapters have observed the long-term economic evolutions of convents of early medieval origin, the following two chapters will focus on a single monastic institution and its economic setup. Due to able financial investments, Klingental became the wealthiest of Basel’s 15 monasteries. Founded in 1233 by a group of well-to-do women who wanted to embrace the monastic life, the community’s first four decades saw a number of existential challenges. The convent, which originally established itself in rural Alsace, was forced to relocate twice to escape armed conflicts in their vicinity. After their initial settlement in Husseren became unsafe, they moved to Wehr in the Southern Black Forest, before they eventually sought the urban haven of Basel in 1274. An unusually rich corpus of sources, comprising close to 3,000 charters, numerous account books, and two necrologies, shed light on Klingental’s economic activities, especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The documents reveal the convent’s firm foothold in a number of economic ventures. As we will see, Klingental amassed a sizable patrimony of arable land during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On this land, the convent grew large quantities of grain and wine to both feed its community and to sell on the markets in and near Basel.1 In addition to the levies Klingental collected from its agrarian possession, the convent collected various types of rents along with compensations for the liturgical commemoration the nuns practiced (Chapter 5). Klingental’s comprehensive sources provide plentiful insights as to how a later monastic foundation successfully secured its long-term economic well-being, once more revealing female monastics as able financial managers. Because of its late medieval origin and the specific situation in Reformation-Basel, Klingental’s sources are so plentiful that they allow for much more detailed insights into the convent’s economic strategies than those of Buchau and Notre-Dame. This makes the study of Klingental particularly insightful, and it is the reason why two chapters are dedicated to this single nunnery. *** Divided into two sections, the first part of this chapter will engage with Klingental’s urban environment and its early institutional history. Part 2 will take a closer look at Klingental’s meticulous pursuit of acquiring an arable patrimony during the fourteenth century. In a comparatively densely populated region, it was not easy to amass clusters of arable land. And indeed, it was a long-term endeavor, taking Klingental the better part of the fourteenth century and much piece work to compile a sizable demesne. Both the effort and the money the convent invested in building its agricultural basis show the continuous importance of naturalia tithes also for late medieval urban institutions such as Klingental. Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 71 The Town: Basel in the Late Middle Ages Settled since Roman times and episcopal seat since the early Middle Ages, medieval Basel was located on the Rhine on the borders of Burgundy, Alemannia, and Frankia.2 By the late eleventh century, Basel had become an urban center, and Bishop Burkhard (r. 1072–1107) had the first city wall built which provided protection for the growing number of inhabitants.3 Around that time, merchants from Basel are mentioned in charters issued as far away as Constance, suggesting both economic growth and trading activities.4 The same is true for Basel’s currency – more and qualitatively better coins were being minted, and by the twelfth century, the Basel penny (Basler Pfennig) was so commonly accepted in the region that other towns began to imitate it.5 In terms of monastic development, Basel was a late bloomer of sorts. In 1083, Bishop Burkhard founded the city’s first monastery. St. Alban was located outside of the city walls and became the home of Cluniac monks.6 Considering Burkhard’s close ties to Henry IV during the early phase of the Investiture Controversy, his choice of installing a Cluniac community in Basel is at least interesting.7 The canons of St. Leonard were the second monastic congregation to settle in Basel at some point between 1118 and 1133. If the town’s monastic settlement had started slowly, it took up speed during the thirteenth century. In addition to chivalric orders, the new mendicants founded communities in Basel. By the late thirteenth century, the number of monastic houses had grown to 14, peaking at 15 with the arrival of the Carthusians in 1401.8 This count does not include the Beguines, who did not form an official order, but who were plentifully represented in the Rhenish region, including Basel, which was home of 20 beginages in the fourteenth century.9 By the late Middle Ages, the density of religious institutions was high – according to Werner Meyer, about 10% of Basel’s population lived a monastic life of some sort.10 In terms of population, late medieval Basel had also become an important city by the standards of the time.11 Based on fifteenth-century tax records, Hektor Ammann estimated the city’s population diverged between 8,000 and 11,000 inhabitants.12 This high fluctuation resulted from Basel housing the Council of Basel (1431–1449), which significantly increased the city’s population for a prolonged period, the foundation of its university in 1450, and the city’s role as a safe haven for many refugees from the wars that were endemic to Upper Alsace.13 With an average of about 9,000 people, late medieval Basel was thus smaller than nearby Strasbourg, but significantly bigger than Zurich and Bern.14 Politically, Basel’s later medieval history was marked by those struggles common to many late medieval towns. It had to deal with the realities ensuing from a number of local aristocratic families rivaling for domination. In the Basel region, those families were once again the powerful dukes of Zähringen (until 1218), the house of Hohenstaufen, and the counts of Habsburg. The death of Frederick II (1250) and the subsequent end of the Hohenstaufen 72 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City reign was followed by the so-called Great Interregnum (1250–1273), a period of quickly changing rulers that eventually saw the coronation of the first Habsburg king, Rudolf I (r. 1273–1291). When Rudolf was elected king in October 1273, his troops were in the process of besieging Basel. Rudolf and Basel’s bishop, Henry III of Neuchâtel (r. 1263–1274), had long been at odds about their respective zones of influence, especially in Alsace and Breisgau.15 However, feuding with the local count of Habsburg was different from rebelling against the king-elect of the Holy Roman Empire. Upon learning of Rudolf’s election, Basel opened its city gates to the new king, who in return abandoned his objective of conquest.16 To secure lasting peace, Henry III of Neuchâtel rendered Breisach, Neuchâtel, and Rheinfelden to the Empire. Rudolf’s election effectively put an end to the territorialization efforts of the bishop of Basel, and it marked the beginning of the city’s gradual transition from an episcopal to an imperial town.17 Internally, Basel’s later medieval history saw the rise of the citizenry, guilds, and trade. Under Bishop Henry II of Thun (r. 1216–1238), the city’s first bridge crossing the Rhine was built in 1225. The bridge henceforth facilitated regional and transregional trade toward the Gotthard route and the cities upstream such as Mainz and Cologne. Henry III of Neuchâtel in particular was important for Basel’s urban development. The bishop fostered the city’s growing artisanry, first allowing Basel’s furriers and subsequently others to organize in guilds.18 During Henry III’s government, urban sources also started mentioning a council and referring to the universitas civium, the citizenry, which the bishop formally recognized.19 During the thirteenth century, the rising citizenry did not yet pose a threat to episcopal authority. However, conflicts and rivalries between the two urban forces grew throughout the fourteenth century, eventually leading to Basel’s de facto independence from episcopal rule in the 1390s.20 Thirteenthand fourteenth-century Basel was a fast-growing and fast-changing city, where different elites strove for domination, where trade was on the rise, and where demographic growth was tangible in the fervent building activities on both banks of the Rhine. And it was this bristling urban environment of which the nuns of Klingental chose to become a part of when they relocated their convent to Basel in 1274. The Institution: From Alsace to Basel In 1274, the convent of Klingental moved to their third and final home. Their new convent building was erected on the right bank of the Rhine, in the fastgrowing town of Kleinbasel. We know little about Kleinbasel’s early history. Henry II of Thun granted the settlements the status of town sometime after 1220, and in 1392, Kleinbasel was incorporated into Basel.21 In the early thirteenth century, Henry’s interest in founding the town of Kleinbasel had been a strategic one. The settlement on the right bank was to serve as a base to regain influence over the Breisgau and the Black Forest, which Basel’s bishops had lost to the House of Zähringen during the twelfth century.22 Whereas the episcopal strive for territory eventually failed, Kleinbasel prospered.23 Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 73 The site of Klingental’s convent was located about 150 m downstream from the bridge connecting Basel and Kleinbasel. In 1274, the nuns first moved into a small stone house, which they had acquired four years prior and which they had reconstructed to cater to the needs of their monastic community.24 This first abode, later called Kleines Klingental (Klingental minor), was adjacent to the plot upon which the nuns’ permanent home, the Grosse Klingental (Klingental maior), was built and which Matthäus Merian would render on his famous map of Basel almost four centuries later (Figure 4.1). The nuns and lay sisters transferred to the new, spacious cloister in the early fourteenth century, while the Kleine Klingental henceforth housed Klingental’s lay brothers and pensioners.25 Moreover, it remained in service as an administrative complex – it was the home of Klingental’s bursary and grainary. While Basel became the nuns’ permanent home, it was not the place of the convent’s foundation. Its origins lay 60 km northwest of the city in Alsace. There, a group of wealthy women, possibly widows, had decided to embrace the religious life in 1233. With the legal support of the bishops of Basel and Strasbourg, the women founded a convent at Husseren and subordinated themselves to the Dominican congregation of St. Marcus in Strasbourg. Like any new congregation, the women required spiritual guidance, and the nuns of St. Marcus dispatched sisters to Husseren to instruct the new nuns.26 The young community prospered both religiously and economically. The 1240s Figure 4.1 Map of Basel (Matthäus Merian, 1642) with Klingental. 80 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City village of Gommersdorf “donated herself and all her possessions” to Klingental.78 Sometimes, entire families joined Klingental as pensioners. Thus, Mathis from Habsheim, his wife, Elsy from Lörrach and Mathis’ mother, Agnes Botzenhartz, transferred all their possessions, including about 1 ha of grapevines in exchange for Verpfründung to Klingental.79 The German terms Pfründe and Pfründner that are commonly used in this context are ambiguous as they may also designate a prebendary. However, in this specific context, Pfründner refers to pensioners. Monastic pensioners were a common sight in late medieval convents, and they were a source of income for them. In exchange for a valuable donation or annuity, the convent provided room, board, and care for its pensioners who lived out their lives in the community.80 In the case of Klingental, there are about 30 charters that testify to individuals or couples transferring their possessions – lands, vineyards, tithes, sometimes unspecified wealth – to Klingental.81 In other words, while pensioners were common also at Klingental, they weren’t a central source of the convent’s revenues. Rather than obtained through donation, the nuns actively purchased the vast majority of their arable patrimony. Of the acquired 57 vineyards to which the charters testify, the nuns bought 33. Klingental’s vineyards formed clusters near Sulz and Habsheim (Alsace) and Weil (Baden). Upon purchase, Klingental frequently returned the vineyard to its original owner as an inheritable fief in exchange for an annual rent of wine. The case of Ruediger, a vintner from Sulz, is typical in this regard. In January 1369, Ruediger and his son Ruetsche sold Klingental their grapevines for the sum of 140 gulden. In a second step, Klingental transferred the vineyards back to them as inheritable fief. In return, Ruediger and Ruetsche committed to annually deliver 24 ohm (c. 973 L) of white wine to Klingental.82 We don’t know the reasons as to why father and son made the decision to sell. Ideally, such arrangements bore benefits for both parties. The selling party received a large amount of cash and the protection of a powerful institution which was henceforth responsible for the farm’s upkeep. All the while, the sellers de facto kept both land and trade in the family. Klingental, on the other side, increased its annual wine revenues, which made the convent both independent from purchasing it and allowed the nuns to sell surpluses in the various markets around Basel.83 Moreover, by leasing the vineyard back to the original vintner, the convent did not have to worry about (i.e., hire and pay) the high number of day laborers which were needed in viticulture.84 This was the ideal scenario. However, there were also undeniable downsides, especially for the vintners or farmers. In addition to losing their independence, crop failure could cause tenants to accumulate debts with their overlord, thus increasing their dependence and potentially leading them into poverty.85 Although poor harvests became a recurrent problem in the fourteenth century, relations between peasants and landowners seem to have generally remained peaceful in the region.86 In addition to vineyards, Klingental acquired arable land on which fruit and especially grain was grown. As the acquisition charters reveal, Klingental Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 81 followed a policy of buying adjacent pieces of land in order to create large fields. The previous chapter has discussed a similar tendency in the context of thirteenth-century Notre-Dame de Soissons. However, it is important to distinguish between the two cases. While Notre-Dame sought to create seigneuries where the abbey held the monopoly of authority, Klingental’s objective was primarily economic. Founded after the classic feudal era, Klingental possessed none of the regal rights that early medieval foundations had been endowed with and which were frequently kept throughout their existence. Thus, Klingtental’s prioresses did not dispense justice and with the sole exception of Wehr, they did not appoint priests. Of course, also Klingental’s prioresses exercised a certain authority over their peasants who were tied to the land and thus required priorial consent in order to relocate or get married.87 However, Klingental’s authority over peasants was nowhere near as comprehensive as that of Notre-Dame, Buchau, or Fraumünster over their subjects. In other words, Klingental was an overlord, but not a seigneur in the feudal sense. Accordingly, Klingental did not strive for territorialization. Rather, the objective of buying adjacent land parcels was to create clusters and thus to ensure an effective agricultural production – which, naturally, is more lucrative on large connected fields than on a high number of unconnected smaller parcels. Klingental acquired a considerable number of fields just north of Basel in the surroundings of today’s towns of Weil am Rhein and Hésingue that face each other from opposite banks of the Rhine. There, Klingental bought field after field, on which primarily spelt was grown.88 Between 1300 and 1399, the convent’s charters testify to the acquisition of a total of 94 parcels of varying size.89 Almost every year, the convent bought arable land, often in very small installments of one or two jucharts, sometimes even less.90 For the period between 1320 and 1350, we can observe a higher frequency of purchases. During the 1320s, Klingental acquired 40 parcels amounting to a total of about 77 jucharts (ca. 26 ha) in and around Hésingue.91 The 1330s saw the acquisition of 13 parcels, most of them again near Hésingue, while the 1340s saw a shift to the other side of the Rhine with a total of 12 acquisitions near Weil.92 The remaining 29 land acquisitions were completed over the course of the remaining decades of the fourteenth century. The steady continuity of Klingental’s arable clustering is noteworthy in three regards. For one, the convent had an impressive amount of cash available to buy up parcels of land. Even for smaller pieces of land, Klingental frequently paid large sums of 50 gulden and more.93 Despite the convent’s two relocations and its building activities in Kleinbasel during the 1270s and 1280s, the convent always had large sums of money readily available. The following chapter will take a closer look at Klingental’s cash flow. Second, their knowledgeable investments of that money which allowed them to assemble a comparatively large demesnes in a region where most arable land had long since been cultivated. That is to say, a region where land was not easily available even for wealthy buyers.94 Nevertheless, Klingental succeeded to amass important clusters of fields over the course of a century. Finally, it is at least 82 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City worth remarking that Klingental’s continuous pursuit of establishing the convent as a major agricultural producer was not derailed by anything, not even the major natural and epidemic crises that marked the fourteenth century. In addition to a number of failed harvests, which brought great distress to the region in the first half of the fourteenth century, the 1340s saw a number of famines and epidemics, including the Great Mortality, which hit Basel in the summer of 1349. In comparison to other European cities, Basel’s plight seems to have been somewhat lighter. Werner Meyer estimates that “only” about 10% of the population succumbed to the plague in 1349.95 Seven years after the plague, a devastating earthquake and a resulting fire destroyed much of Basel in October 1456.96 However, these catastrophes, which marked the city and its population for generations, seem to have had little impact on Klingental’s agrarian policy. The convent continued its purchases in 1449/1450 and in 1456/1457, seemingly unaltered.97 If nothing else, this observation emphasizes once more the centrality of Klingental’s objective to acquire sizable and profitable demesne during the fourteenth century. An objective, the nuns saw through – no matter what. Interim Conclusion: No Land, No Economic Power Base Klingental’s story was not off to a good start. Not through any fault of the convent’s early community. Its early nuns brought everything to the table that the young congregation would need to succeed – financial means, extended political and ecclesiastical networks, and religious zeal, which had led these women to form a nunnery in the first place. However, the times were difficult, and within 21 years, the young convent had to relocate twice. In 1253, the nuns moved from their original location in Husseren to Wehr, and in 1274, from Wehr to Basel. While we lack narrative sources to shed light on this (or any other) phase of Klingental’s history, it is easy enough to imagine the challenges that came with every relocation. In each new place, the convent needed to build suitable housing for its community, ensure the nuns’ cura monialium, and find ways to administrate its patrimony that, with each move, became a cluster of lands that required management, but that was located outside the immediate vicinity of the convent’s current location.98 All this required influential networks, organizational skill, and most of all comprehensive resources. For a less wealthy community, these early challenges would have likely put an end to its existence. However, while these events certainly weighed heavily also on Klingental, the convent recovered quickly each time. For one, the nuns benefitted from their good connections, which they had from the beginning. Thus, their connection to Walter von Klingen provided them with a new convent building in Wehr along with close ties to the first Habsburg king. Recruiting from the wealthy upper class, many of its nuns enjoyed parental ties to council members, and Klingental was also free of financial problems. Its many acquisitions during the fourteenth century testify to this. Once settled in Basel, Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 83 the nuns began to use their money to acquire arable land, and they thus laid the agrarian foundation for a thriving monastic economy. They did so meticulously and patiently. In a region with a number of urban centers located in close proximity – namely, Basel, Colmar, Strasbourg, and Freiburg im Breisgau – accumulating arable land was not obvious as most of it had long been spoken for. In this regard, the situation was fundamentally different for Klingental than it had been for early Notre-Dame, Fraumünster, or Buchau. When Notre-Dame and Buchau began to enlarge their landed patrimony during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they did so from a structurally different outset. As feudal institutions dating back to the early Middle Ages, both nunneries already owned estates over which they held a number of legal rights, that is, seigneuries. Thus, territorialization, especially in the context of Notre-Dame, meant buying up land within territories over which the abbey had jurisdiction and within which the abbey already owned substantial if not the majority of land parcels.99 For Klingental, the situation was reverse. The land had long been owned by others, the convent did not hold any regal rights (nor could it hope to obtain any), and Klingental had to painstakingly acquire land piece by piece, often a juchart (ca. 0.34 ha) at a time. That they did so over an extended period of time, namely the entire fourteenth century, shows that Klingental followed an agenda. Similar to their successful monastic cousins of early medieval origin, the desire to be selfsufficient was certainly the one driving factor also for Klingental. In addition to fields and vineyards, the convent also bought several mills, a quarry, a forge, and a brickyard.100 By 1400, Klingental thus owned everything to maintain (and repair) large agricultural estates without having to rely on (and pay for) external craftsmen or infrastructure. However, unlike their older monastic cousins, Klingental was not a feudal institution. Other than the basic authority landowners had over those peasants who were tied to the land they worked, Klingental did not possess any seigneuries which they might seek to expand. Therefore, Klingental’s acquisition of land did not have an objective to build a little realm of their own. Rather, it was driven by economic considerations. Europe remained an agrarian society throughout the Middle Ages (and beyond). Consequently, agricultural holdings remained a crucial asset. To phrase it in somewhat dated but nevertheless catchy Marxist terminology, those who owned the means of production in premodern Europe – in this case, the land, the people, and the equipment – had the tools to produce economic stability along with lasting institutional wealth. In the case of Klingental, this meant that obtaining arable land to form large fields and vineyards allowed them to produce not only enough to feed their community and employees, but also to turn surpluses into money. The central place that both the grainary and the office of the grainary mistress assumed within Klingental’s administration is as revelatory for the importance of Klingental’s agricultural economy as is the meticulous process of land acquisition during the fourteenth century. 84 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City However, despite its central importance, agriculture was but one of Klingental’s economic pillars. As the following chapter will show, Klingental became Basel’s wealthiest monastic institution, thanks to its highly diversified economic portfolio. In addition to agriculture, the nuns generated an impressive income from praying for the dead, and they ensured regular revenues through the purchase of rents and over 100 houses in and around Basel. Combined, Klingental collected thousands of liters of grain and wine every year along with thousands of pounds silver. In other words, while Klingental’s nuns were no observant role models, they were very talented proto-managers. Notes 1 For the importance of regional and annual fairs in the greater Basel region in the late Middle Ages, see Dorothee Rippmann, Bauern und Städter: StadtLand-Beziehungen im 15. Jahrhundert: Das Beispiel Basel. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Nahmarktbeziehungen und der sozialen Verhältnisse im Umland (Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Helbing u. Lichtenhahn, 1990), 138–142. 2 Sources are rare for Basel’s early episcopal history. In the mid-fourth century, a certain Iustinianus was bishop of Basel. At the time, the bishop, along with the Roman elite, resided in Augusta Raurica, the Roman foundation located about 10 km west of modern-day downtown Basel. By the eighth century, the episcopal curia had moved from Augusta to Basel, which by then had grown more important than the old Roman settlement. Reto Marti, “Ein Leben im Aufbruch – Die Menschen der Region Basel im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert”, in: Gold und Ruhm: Kunst und Macht unter Kaiser Heinrich II.: Ausstellung, Historisches Museum Basel im Kunstentrum Basel, 11.10.2019–19.01.2020, ed. Marc Fehlmann, Michael Matzke, and Sabine Söll-Tauchert (München: Hirmer, 2019), 29–30; Jürgen Dendorfer, “Basel zwischen Burgund und dem ostfränkischen Reich”, in: Fehlmann, Matzke, and Söll-Tauchert (eds.), Gold und Ruhm, 62; and Reto Marti, “Die Anfänge des Bistums: Eine Geschichte in Fragmenten”, in: Pro Deo. Das Bistum Basel vom 4. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Jean-Claude Rebetz (Delsberg: Stiftung Archiv des ehemaligen Fürstbistums Basel – Pruntrut Editions D+P SA, 2006), 30–45. 3 Marti, “Ein Leben im Aufbruch,” 31; Martin Steinmann, “Von der frühen Besiedlung bis zur ersten Blüte der Stadt”, in: Basel – Geschichte einer städtischen Gesellschaft, ed. Georg Kreis and Beat von Wartburg (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2000), 24–27; 29–32; and August Bernoulli, “Basels Mauern und Stadterweiterungen im Mittelalter,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterturmskunde 16 (1917): 60–62. 4 Christoph Philipp Matt and Claudius Sieber-Lehmann, “Basilea – Eine Bischofsstadt findet ihren Platz”, in: Fehlmann, Matzke, and Söll-Tauchert (eds.), Gold und Ruhm, 274–275. 5 Michael Matzke, “Die andere Seite der Münze: Münzprägung in Basel,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterturmskunde 115 (2015): 96. 6 Albert Eisele, “Bischof Burkhard von Basel und seine Beziehungen zum Markgräferland,” Das Markgräferland. Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte und Kultur 27 (1965): 68; and Felix Ackermann and Therese Wollmann, Klöster in Basel. Spaziergänge durch fünf Jahrhunderte (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2014), 7. 7 Interesting in the sense that Cluny’s success was the result of a rigid monastic reform program that sought to end lay influence on the Church and was thus not easily reconcilable with the imperial defense of lay investiture. This apparent Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 85 contradiction has attracted notable scholarly attention among Basel’s historians; Hans-Jörg Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft des Balser Cluniazenser-Priorates St. Alban im Mittelalter (Basel: Kommissionsverlag Friedrich Reinhardt AG, 1977), 35–44. 8 Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “Die Klöster der Stadt Basel”, in: Rebetz (ed.), Pro Deo, 105–106; 109. 9 On Beguines in Basel see: Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “Die Beginen in Basel,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Alterturmskunde 69 (1969): 5–84. For the dissolution of the beginages following the Basler Beginenstreit in the first decade of the fifteenth century, see Sabine von Heusinger, Johannes Mulberg OP (†1414). Ein Leben im Spannungsfeld von Dominikanerobservanz und Beginenstreit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 39–90. 10 Werner Meyer, Da verfiele Basel überall. Das Basler Erdbeben von 1356 (Basel: Schwabe, 2005), 44. 11 For the standard typology of medieval cities according to their size, see Isenmann, Die deutsche Stadt, 31. 12 Hektor Amman, “Die Bevölkerung von Stadt und Landschaft Basel am Ausgang des Mittelalters,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 49 (1950): 30–31. 13 Amman, “Die Bevölkerung,” 31; and Hans Georg. Wackernagel, “Basel als Zufluchtsort des Elsasses (15.–17. Jahrhundert),” Annuaire de Colmar 2 (1936): 57–59. 14 Werner Meyer, “Basel im Spätmittelalter”, in: Basel. Geschichte einer städtischen Gesellschaft, ed. Georg Kreis and Beat von Wartburg (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2000), 42. 15 Matt and Sieber-Lehmann, “Basilea,” 277–278. 16 Matt and Sieber-Lehmann, “Basilea,” 278. 17 Markus Ries, “Heinrich von Neuenburg”, in: Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römischen Reiches 1198 bis 1448, ed. Erwin Gatz (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), 60–61. 18 Romain Jurot, “Thun, Heinrich von,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version vom 23.01.2012. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/013027/ 2012-01-23. 19 Matt and Sieber-Lehmann, “Basilea,” 277. Similar to the council of Zurich, Basel presumably first comprised ministeriales. In Basel, these were naturally the ministeriales of the bishop, who is head of the city. H. Sr., “Der mittelalterliche Adel und seine Burgen im ehemaligen Fürstbistum Basel,” Nachrichten des Schweizerischen Burgenvereins = Revue de l‘Association Suisse pour Châteaux et Ruines = Rivista dell‘Associazione Svizzera per Castelli e Ruine 35 (1962): 6. 20 Meyer, “Basel im Spätmittelalter,” 59. 21 Meyer, “Basel im Spätmittelalter,” 51. 22 Meyer, “Basel im Spätmittelalter,” 39; 49. 23 Meyer, “Basel im Spätmittelalter,” 39. 24 Dorothea Schwinn Schürmann, “Geschichte des Basler Klosters Klingental (1274–1529/59) und ihre Auswirkung auf die Bautätigkeit”, in: Walther von Klingen und das Kloster Klingental zu Wehr, ed. Stadt Wehr (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2010), 105. 25 Construction of the monastic complex was completed in the early fourteenth century. Ackermann and Wollmann, Klöster in Basel, 164; Brigitte Degler-Spengler and Dorothea A. Christ, “Basel, Klingental”, in: Helvetia Sacra, Abt. 4, Bd. 5 Teil 2, 537–538. For the later usage of Klein Klingental’s compound, see Schürmann, “Geschichte des Basler Klosters Klingental,” 108; and Elsanne Gilmon-Schenkel and Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “Basel, Klingental”, in: Helvetia Sacra, Abt. 4, Bd. 2, 65. 26 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 532. 86 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City 27 StABS Klingental 1, 3, 8, 38 and StABS Klingental 5, 5a, 6, 2809, 2811. 28 Since the eleventh century, Alsace had been one of the regions where papal and imperial factions fought each other, repeatedly leading to civil war-like situations. Christine Reinle, “Das Elsass im hohen und späten Mittelalter (10.–15. Jahrhundert)”, in: Das Elsass. Historische Landschaft im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. Michael Erbe (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002), 48; Christian Wilsdorf, “Comment Colmar deviant ville (8e–13e siècles)”, in: Histoire de Colmar, ed. Georges Livet (Toulouse: Privat, 1983), 35–39; and Philippe Nuss, Les Habsbourg en Alsace des origins à 1273. Recherches pour une histoire de l’Alsatia Habsburgica (Altkirch: Société d’Histoire du Sundgau, 2008), 324–336. 29 Reinle, “Das Elsass,” 55. 30 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 533; and Nuss, Les Habsbourg, 330–334. 31 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 533. 32 The convent received the church with jus patronatus on September 2, 1256, StABS Klingental 11, 11a, 11 b, 11c, 16. Erik Beck suggests that Walther’s motivation might have been the deaths of his young sons whom the nuns were to commemorate along with the rest of his family. Erik Beck, “Walther von Klingen, Wehr und die Verlegung des Klosters Klingental”, in: Wehr (ed.), Walther von Klingen, 53–54; 65. 33 The German word for valley is Tal – hence, Klingen-tal. 34 Thomas Zotz, “Der Bischof von Basel am Oberrhein”, in: Fehlmann, Matzke, and Söll-Tauchert (eds.), Gold und Ruhm, 281–284; and Jean-Claude Rebetz, “Der Bischof im Jura. Etappen der Entstehung des Fürstbistums”, in: Fehlmann, Matzke, and Söll-Tauchert (eds.), Gold und Ruhm, 288. 35 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 536. There is some debate as to whether the castle needed rebuilding after having been destroyed by Rudolf in 1252/1253 or whether it was simply in bad condition and the bishop of Basel refurbished to have an outpost in Habsburg lands. Whatever the reason, the restoration provoked the anger of his rival, Rudolf of Habsburg, and rekindled their warring. Beck, “Walther von Klingen,” 54–55. 36 Basel was the natural and traditional place to seek safety for people from Upper Alsace in times of war, Wackernagel, “Basel als Zufluchtsort,” 57. 37 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 536–537; and Beck, “Walther von Klingen,” 51. 38 StABS Klingental 45. 39 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 535. 40 Irmindrut, widow of Knight Hidelbrand von Tegerfelden, was the generous donor of Kleinhüningen (StABS Klingental 52); also in 1273, the nun bought a farm in Kleinbasel for 20 marks silver (StABS Klingenta 56), and they received further donations of land and vineyards in Basel and Lörrach (StABS Klingental 65, 71). 41 Renée Weis-Müller, Die Reform des Klosters Klingental und ihr Personenkreis (Basel and Stuttgart: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1956), 14; Reinhard Valenta, “Walther von Klingen: Eine biographische Skizze”, in: Wehr (ed.), Walther von Klingen, 21–22; it has been assumed that Walter von Klingen’s wife, Sophia, was a cousin of Rudolf of Habsburg. However, this is not certain. For the question of Sophia von Klingen’s lineage, see Christopher Schmidberger, “Ungleicher Freund oder Vasall? Das persönliche Verhältnis zwischen Walther von Klingen und Rudolf von Habsburg”, in: Wehr (ed.), Walther von Klingen, 35–36. 42 Matt and Sieber-Lehmann, “Basilea,” 278; and Romain Jurot, “Isny, Heinrich von,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/ de/articles/012710/2006-06-08/. 43 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 14. Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 87 44 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 537. 45 StABS KLA Klingental HH 5 mentions the sum of 100 gulden as being the customary one. 46 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 21 47 See, for example, the testament of Clara zu Rhein; StABS Klingental H 93 v–95r; and Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 22. 48 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 41. 49 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 30. 50 Recent scholarship on mendicants has engaged with this question. Thus, Angelica Hilsebein gives an overview over a number of mendicant convents whose members habitually enjoyed personal property and engaged in financial activities; Angelica Hilsebein, “Reiche Klöster – Arme Klarissen? Finanzielle Transaktionen zwischen der Welt, dem Kloster und seinen Konventualinnen”, in: Gelobte Armut. Armutskonzepte der franziskanischen Ordensfamilie vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Heinz-Dieter Heimann, Angelica Hilsebein, Bernd Schmies, and Christoph Stiegemann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014), 307–334, especially 321–334. Another example of a well-studied wealthy (and aristocratic) medicant women’s convent is Königsfelden, see Simon Teuscher and Claudia Moddelmog (eds.), Königsmord, Kloster, Klinik. Königsfelden (Baden: hier + jetzt, 2012), especially Chapters 3 and 4; for the close ties between aristocracy and mendicant communities – and the ensuing wealth of the latter, see Nikolas Japsert and Imke Just (eds.), Queens, Princesses and Mendicants. Close Relations in a European Perspective (Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2019). 51 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 30. 52 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 31. 53 The necrology StABS Klingental H mentions sales of cells for 20 gulden; see, for example, StABS Klingental H, fol. 114 v., 141 r, 141 v; the price of a bed and bedding seems to have been 10 gulden on average; StABS Klingental H, fol. 141 r. 54 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 31. 55 Testament of Clara zu Rhein, StABS Klingental H, fol. 94 r–95r; testament of Ursel zum Angen, StABS Klingental H, fol. 113; and the testament of Margarete Zschampi edited by Dorothea Schwinn Schürmann, “Nonnen und Laien des Klosters Klingental in Basel (1274.1529). Zeugnisse aus den Archiven zur Lebensweise, zum Privatbesitz und dessen Verebung,” in: Freunde des Klingentalmuseums. Jahresbericht (2001), 24–25. 56 StABS Klingental H, among others: fol. 113 v., 141 r. 57 StABS Klingental H 93 v–95r; and Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, “Zu Rhein, Clara,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version vom 24.02.2014. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/026595/2014-02-24/. 58 Testament of Clara zu Rhein, StABS Klingental H, fol. 94 r–95r. 59 For the recent scholarly debate about ambiguity and the tolerance of ambiguities in premodern Islamic and Christian societies, see Thomas Bauer, The Culture of Ambiguity. A Different History of Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019) (orig. German 2011); and Hillard von Thiessen, Das Zeitalter der Ambiguität. Vom Umgang mit Werten und Normen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln, Weimar, and Wien: Böhlau, 2021), especially 11–34. 60 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 48–56; Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles 77–86; and Bernhard Neidiger, “Observanzbewegung der Bettelorden in Südwestdeutschland,” Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte Bd. 11 (1992): 179–185. 61 Sybille Knecht, Ausharren oder austreten? Lebenswege ehemaliger Nonnen nach der Klosteraufhebung am Beispiel der Städte Zürich, Bern und Basel (PhD dissertation, University of Zurich, 2013), 169. 62 Cf. Glossary for more detailed descriptions of the various monastic offices. 88 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City 63 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 27. 64 Cf. Chapter 5. 65 Account books of these five offices have come down to us, showing the central importance of them within the convent economy; Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 25. For the translation of the offices, I have used Sarah Glenn DeMaris edition and translation of Johannes Meyer’s Amptbuch. Sarah Glenn DeMaris (ed. and trans.), Johannes Meyer. Das Amptbuch (Rome: Angelicum University Press, 2015). 66 For a detailed description of the bursaress’ office, see DeMaris, Johannes Meyer, 384–385. 67 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 27. 68 For a detailed description of the sacristan’s office, see DeMaris, Johannes Meyer, 390–393. 69 Cf. Chapter 5. 70 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 25–26. 71 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 41–43. 72 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 33. 73 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 41–43. 74 For examples, see the testaments of Klingental’s bursars Hans von Eschenberg and Hans von Höwingen, StABS Klingental H fol. 55 r and fol. 89 v. 75 There are a number of terriers that city representatives assembled during the Reformation – these were not considered here; nor were those pieces of land given to Klingental in return for memoria services. The reasons are simple; for one, the charters provide information as to when a piece of land was acquired – information not rendered in the terriers and not always rendered in necrologies. And this information is important in order to discern patterns of acquisition policy. Another reason is more mundane: while considering terriers, charters, and necrologies would certainly render a more exhaustive image of Klingental’s possessions, such an endeavor would take years due to the sheer number of Klingental’s possessions. And, as stated above, only considering the charters is sufficient in order to identify tendencies. 76 StABS Klingental 8, 97, 853, 856, 64, 71, 72, 115, 130, 133, 168, 186, 206, 235, 258, 266, 287, 323, 334, 340, 353, 487, 591, 1022, 1057, 1076, 1088, 1110, 1115, 1146, 1171, 1187, 1257, 1265, 1309, 1337, 1417, 1471, 1476, 1479, 1485, 1486, 1515, 1541, 1560, 1570, 1590, 1613, 1627, 1661, 2004, 2020, 2074, 2107, 2163, 2241, 2263; after 1400: StABS Klingental 1613, 1627, 1661, 2004, 2074, 2107, 2163, 2263. 77 This was the case in 1450, when Klingental bought 1 juchart (ca. 0.34 ha) of vineyard that had formerly belonged to a certain Hans Hegkler who fled Basel for unspecified reasons. Klingental purchased the abandoned vineyard for 46 gulden (StABS Klingental 2074); and in 1453, Klingental purchased 0.5 juchart of vineyard for 18 gulden that a certain Conz Tufel who left behind after dying without an heir (StABS Klingental 2107). 78 StABS Klingental 1228. 79 StABS Klingental 2004, the charter is dated February 13, 1441. 80 Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 39. 81 StABS Klingental 1, 62, 690, 897, 905, 973, 1145, 1228, 1241, 1306, 1410, 1460, 1472, 1603, 1704, 1823, 1979, 1980, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2096, 2126, 2148, 2151, 2249, 2528, 2529, 2549. 82 StABS Klingental 1146; for the equivalent of ohm in liter for the greater Basel region, see Dubler, Masse und Gewichte, 42. 83 For the annual calendar of markets in the Basel region, including Rouffach, Habsheim, and other locations where Klingental owned land and vineyards, see Rippmann, Bauern und Städter, 139. Economic Strategists: Klingental in Basel I 89 84 For medieval viticulture in the Basel region, see Dorothee Rippmann, “‘Frauenwerk’ und Männerarbeit: Formen von Leben und Arbeit im Spätmittelalter”, in: Arbeit im Wandel: Deutung, Organisation und Herrschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Pfister, Brigitte Studer, and Jakob Tanner (Zürich: Chronos, 1996), 35–37; and Albert Membrez, Geschichte des Weinbaus im Laufental (Biel: Chs. & W. Gassmann, 1947), 8–33. 85 This was a widespread phenomenon in late medieval Europe; see Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft, 211–213. 86 Meyer, Da verfiele, 42–43; for the region’s harvests from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, see Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft, 228–256. 87 This was typical for the region. Meyer, Da verfiele, 43. 88 A few of the charters mention spelt specifically. Usually, the specific type of grain is only mentioned if the seller of the land then re-obtained it as an inheritable fief. In such a case, the nature of the tithe was specified and it is usually spelt (e.g., StABS Klingental 1025, 1045, 1062, 1075). 89 Klingental also continued to buy arable land in the vicinity of Rouffach and Wehr, albeit in lesser number. For the list of charters, https://dataverse.harvard. edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KTTSZ2. The convent’s two former home bases were most probably transformed into large farmsteads from where the local agricultural production was managed. Beck, “Walther von Klingen,” 72–73. 90 One juchart is roughly the equivalent of 0.34 ha; Dubler, Masse und Gewichte, 24. 91 About 1.36 ha were located in Hésingue: StABS Klingental 494, 512, 525, 530, 536, 542; the other parcels were mostly located in neighboring Knœringue, Michelbach-le-Bas, and Blotzheim. 92 For Hésingue: StABS Klingental 551, 563 & 564, 589, 593, 622, 628, 641 & 642; the locations near Weil include Weil, Riehen, Ötlingen, Wehr, and others: StABS Klingental 682, 699, 706, 707, 723, 728, 734, 737, 744, 747, 748 & 749 & 893. 93 Thus, the convent paid 74 gulden for a “piece of grapevine,” StABS Klingental 1076; 273 Gulden for 6 ha of meadow, StABS Klingental 1269. 94 Bernhard Neidiger, Mendikanten zwischen Ordensideal und städtischer Realität. Untersuchungen zum wirtschaftlichen Verhalten der Bettelorden in Basel (Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, 1981), 196. 95 Meyer, Da verfiele, 49–52. 96 Meyer, Da verfiele, 52–95. 97 In 1449/1450, Klingental undertook six purchases (StABS Klingental 2069, 2071, 2072, 2073, 2081, 2085); in 1456/1457, five (StABS Klingental 2140, 2147, 2152, 2158, 2159); Klingental was not the only monastery whose economy remained stable despite the dire decades of the 1440s and 1450s. Also, the sources of St. Alban (and presumably other convents) leave to assume economic continuity during that period; Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft, 275. 98 As mentioned above, Klingental probably transformed its former convents into administrative buildings from where the local agricultural production was organized and supervised; Beck, “Walther von Klingen,” 72–73. 99 Cf. Chapter 3. 100 In 1315, Klingental bought a forge in Rouffach (StABS 309); in 1341, the nuns acquired a brickyard in Kleinbasel (StABS 684); and in 1379, they bought a quarry for 28 gulden (StABS 1295). Regarding mills, Klingental owned three in Kleinbasel since 1270 (StABS Klingental 45) and acquired another one in 1349 in Helfrantzkirch, near Hésingue, where Klingental owned vast fields of spelt (StABS 874, 878). 96 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City information about the commemorative services performed are too scarce to make any general assessment.37 Whereas wealthy families such as the Kilmans invested large sums for their anniversaries, less well-off people secured remembrance in the nuns’ prayers for a few shillings.38 Commemorative services rendered in exchange for shilling endowments generally consisted primarily in the founder’s names being recited during the day’s requiem mass.39 For the faithful in late medieval Europe, establishing post-obit services was like setting up a trust fund for their souls. The money invested during their lifetime was meant to yield a regular spiritual outpour in the future. Other than that, anniversary foundations naturally bore little resemblance to trust funds. Although they provided an important source of revenue for many convents, and while more elaborate services required a materially bigger foundation, offering commemorative services was not about maximizing profit. It was about alleviating the purgative ordeal of individual souls. That rich people paid more was not only because they arranged for more elaborate services – although this was certainly a part of it – but also because they had more need for redemption. In Christian belief, the honest poor have always been closer to God’s heart than the rich, and therefore they did not have to fear the hereafter.40 The testaments of members of Klingental’s community are particularly revelatory for the combination of money, eschatological concern, familial identity, and ties to the community that guided anniversary foundations. Klingental’s prioress, Clara zu Rhein (c. 1395–1455), invested considerable sums of money in both her own anniversary and in those of her siblings and parents.41 To the convent as a whole, Clara bequeathed a number of valuable objects. These included several books that were worth 12 gulden and a monstrance worth 28 gulden, which contained a precious relic that Clara also left to her nunnery: hairs of the Virgin Mary.42 Clara’s testament also made provisions for future investments. Thus, Clara left Adelheid von Telberg one gulden usufruct during Adelheid’s lifetime. After Adelheid’s demise, the money was to be added to the sum dedicated to Clara’s own anniversary.43 Clara made similar provisions for the nine cells she owned at Klingental.44 The prioress bequeathed her cells to fellow nuns for usage during their lifetime. However, after their deaths, the cells were to be sold and the money added to Clara’s own “anniversary fund.”45 Nothing indicates that this progressive growth of funds over approximately one generation was accompanied by more elaborate commemorative services. Rather, it seems to have been a way to make the most of her, admittedly excessive, funds – having loved ones benefit during their lifetime as well as one’s own soul in perpetuity. The case of Clara zu Rhein was not an exception, also other nuns foresaw similar progressive installments their testaments.46 The testament of Hans von Eschenberg († 1443), one of Klingental’s bursars, provides maybe the most balanced reflection of the concerns to provide care for their own soul, those of others, and of the institution that had been their home. In his testament, Hans bequeathed a total of 38 gulden, four Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 97 pounds, and six shillings. Five gulden were to be used for his own anniversary and that of his family, namely his “parents and ancestors.”47 He stipulated another four gulden for a collective anniversary for all faithful souls and all those people who had shown kindness to him during his lifetime. But Hans also left money to Klingental itself. The former bursar dedicated 14 gulden, four pounds, and six shillings for renovation works of the church and another gulden for “reading lights” (candles) in the choir. Moreover, Hans von Eschenbach left nine gulden to his biological sisters, Ennelin and Margret, who were both nuns in Klingental. After their deaths, the money was to be added to the von Eschenbach family anniversary fund, which then would also include the commemoration of his sisters.48 Even if running a profit was not the objective of a convent’s post-obit services, they brought de facto an important influx of money and goods that accumulated to significant wealth. However, it is usually difficult to provide a straightforward number as to the volume of income, as the material goods were too diverse in nature and the documentation is spotty. This is also true for Klingental. In addition to money, there were significant numbers of arable lands and rents in grain, along with valuable horses (one worth 100 gulden!), precious books, and even emeralds and rubies.49 If we leave all nonemonetary foundations aside – and that is a substantial fraction – Klingental H registers a combined monetary fortune of 3,742 gulden, 5,464 pounds, 1,653 marks, and 4.5 shillings.50 While this certainly sounds like a lot (and indeed it was), the amalgam of numbers and currencies, along with the uncertainties regarding their values, make it difficult to imagine anything concrete. As many others cities at the time, also late medieval Basel knew a number of different currencies. The classical one of was that of pound, shillings and pennies, where one pound equaled 20 shillings or 240 pennies. Of the three, only the penny was minted, while the pound was a money of account used for facilitated bookkeeping, that is, to avoid having to calculate with horrendously high amounts of pennies. The value of the currency was derived from its silver content. Theoretically, one pound equaled the value of one pound of silver.51 Thus, each minted penny nominally contained about 1.7 g of silver. However, over the course of time, the actual silver content tended to decrease, and this debasement caused an inflation of prices.52 A new coinage system emerged in the city of Florence in the mid-thirteenth century. There, the officials began to mint gold coins – the gold guilder or gulden. The gulden weighed 3.5 g. Originally, the value of one gulden was equal to that of one pound of silver money. However, this initial equality did not last and the gulden quickly exceeded the pound in value.53 Over the course of the following century, many other European cities began to mint gold coins, including Basel (1430). While both currencies coexisted, the gulden quickly became the more valuable and stable coin, and therefore the more trusted currency.54 In fifteenth-century Basel, one gulden was worth about one pound and three shillings.55 The third currency that enjoyed wide usage was the silver mark. The mark was, much like the pound, a book-currency 98 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City rather than an actual minted coin. In late medieval Basel, the mark of Cologne was used, which weighed 233.856 g of silver, and was thus roughly worth half a pound.56 Premodern currencies are not only complicated because of their multitude and the many regional differences, but also because it is impossible to “translate” their value into modern currencies. However, we can give some indications in terms of their purchasing power. Thus, we know that in 1317, one viertzel of grain (approximately 272 L) cost three pounds on Basel’s markets, while one viertzel of oat was traded at one pound ten shillings. The year 1317 was particularly expensive, as crop failures had caused grain prices to explode. Christian Wurstisen, Basel’s sixteenth-century chronicler, wrote that many people died because they couldn’t afford the high prices.57 The same chronicler informs us about a price on the other end of the scale – namely the purchase of an entire city. In the late fourteenth century, the council of Basel sought to buy the town of Kleinbasel which had hitherto been independent from the main city on the left bank of the Rhine. In 1391, Basel paid 29,800 gulden (or 35,000 pounds) to the Austrian Habsburgs who, in turn, had received Kleinbasel from Bishop Jean de Vienne († 1382) in 1375.58 Although grain prices in the early fourteenth century and those of an entire city by the end of that same century are little more than reference points, they nevertheless allow us to get a sense of the monetary fortune registered in Klingental’s anniversary book. The 3,742 gulden, 1,653 marks, and 5,464 pounds, that is, roughly 10,500 pounds combined, would be the equivalent of 1/3 of the price Basel paid to buy its neighboring town in 1391 or that of 2,720,000 L oats in 1317. Or, in more general terms – it was a lot of money. And that money needed managing. Of Rent and Realty In medieval Europe, the accumulation of wealth was only possible through literally hoarding coins in treasure chambers. This, however, was a practice which Craig Muldrew describes as being “considered unsociable and miserly.”59 Moreover, it was financially unproductive. Especially for wealthy individuals and institutions, it would thus have seemed natural to put their money to work rather than hoarding it.60 It simply made more sense to invest money into ventures yielding annual revenues than to draw on a hoarded fortune that, no matter how big, would inevitably shrink over time. In the absence of banks, there were essentially three ways of putting money to work in medieval Europe. The first was to exchange it for land which yielded regular crops or other revenues. The second was to buy rents, and the third, to use it to acquire properties or the tithes connected to properties, which then could be leased out. All of these capitalized on extant wealth being available to be invested into money-rendering endeavors. The previous chapter has amply discussed the first way, while the subsequent pages will engage with the other two, starting with rent acquisitions. Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 99 Rents were de facto a form of credit that circumvented the church’s ban of money lending.61 Similar to a modern-day mortgage, an individual, a family, or an institution would receive a certain amount of money from another individual or an institution. In exchange, the loaner agreed to make regular payments (“pay a rent”) to their creditor. Such an agreement was not simply built onto the trust that the loaners would be willing and able to pay. Rather, it required a material basis, such as a house, a vineyard, or a field as security. To avoid suspicion of usury, these agreements were not framed as credits or mortgages, but as rents that were purchased. The debtor was the seller and the creditor was the buyer. The agreement between Hans Franck along with the brothers Peter and Hans Thoman and the nuns of Klingental can serve as a typical example for such an exchange. In 1495, the three men sold an annual rent of one pound to Klingental. Hans, Peter, and Hans owned vineyards and fields, whose crops formed the material basis of the rent. In exchange for the annual rent, Klingental paid the three men 20 pounds.62 In the wording of the time: for the sum of 20 pounds, Klingental purchased an annual rent of one pound from Hans Franck and Peter and Hans Thoman. The rate of 1–20, that is, one pound or gulden of annual rent payment in exchange for the onetime payment of 20 pounds or gulden, was relatively stable throughout the fifteenth century. It was roughly 5% of the total value, which was the common rate for credit deals in the area at that time.63 However, prior to the fourteenth century, the rate used to be double – and sellers had to pay 10%, that is, annually 2 gulden for a 20 gulden credit.64 The decline of the interest rate from 10% to 5% may be indicative for credits having become a ubiquitous phenomenon of the late medieval urban economy.65 A substantial part of the rent purchases Klingental made exchanged a sum of money for regular naturalia payments. Of the 280 charters testifying to rent purchases, 86 arrange for rents in grain, wine, chicken, or a mixture of money and naturalia payments.66 In 1333, Klingental bought an annual rent from Unterlinden monastery in Colmar for 132 pounds. In exchange, Unterlinden agreed to deliver “16.5 viernzel minus 1 sester of spelt” (approximately 4,755 L) from their domain in Knoeringue, along with four chickens and one capon, every year.67 The volume of the exchange between Klingental and Unterlinden, two wealthy institutions, was high – both in terms of the money paid (132 pounds silver) and the volume of grain delivered in return. Most rental purchases were smaller in volume. And contrary to the post-obit arrangements discussed earlier, Klingental’s rent purchases followed a discernable price pattern. Thus, in the mid-fourteenth century, Klingental paid between seven and eight pounds for annual rents of one viernzel (ca. 145 L) of grain.68 The rate for white wine was about five gulden per ohm (ca. 136 liters). In 1358, Klingental’s nun, Margarete Metterin, paid ten gulden for an annual rent of two ohm of white wine, while the Konvent paid 32 gulden for an annual rent of 6 ohm of wine.69 In this regard, Hugo Ebschi cut a good deal, when he negotiated 140 gulden for a rent of 24 ohm of white wine.70 100 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City While such naturalia rents became less common by the fifteenth century, they did not disappear. And, at least in regard to grain and wine, the rate seems to have remained relatively stable. As late as 1512, Klingental purchased a rent of six ohm for 30 pounds, that is, approximately 26 gulden five shillings.71 Why did people enter such agreements – engaging in annual payments, often for unspecified lengths of time – in exchange for a onetime cash payment?72 Probably for the same reasons people take out a mortgage on their houses today or buy goods on credit: to make a large purchase for which they didn’t have the means at the time. While Klingental’s charters neither reveal the sellers’ motivation nor their intention of what they planned to do with the money, other sources do. Especially the so-called vergichtbücher, a sort of official account books of debts kept by Basel’s courts, sometimes provide some insights.73 Within the city, people borrowed money to pay for a new horse, a house, or new working tools and materials, such as leather, and some even had to sell a rent to pay outstanding food bills.74 For the rents sold to Klingental, we may assume similar motivations, although Klingental seems to only have done business with people who were financially better off than some of the debtors who appear in Basel’s vergichtbücher. Klingental’s sellers all owned land which served as security and the crops of which were either used as payment or their value in money. The smallest sum registered in the charters is that of 1.5 pounds (30 shillings), in exchange for which Hanneman Silbirsag from Rouffach agreed to give Klingental two capons per annum in 1347.75 The majority of rents were purchased for sums ranging between 8 and 20 pounds – thus, sums too big to pay four outstanding food bills. Klingental was not interested in small credit lines where the risk of default was high and the collected revenues small. Contrary to small credits, purchasing larger rents that were backed by landed possession was a less risky investment model, especially in a fast-growing commercial city like Basel.76 Due to the average sums registered in the charters, it seems likely that the sellers of rents would have used the money to buy a house, more land, or to finance expensive repairs on their farms. What was in it for Klingental? The regular rents, of course. Rather than hoarding the money that the convent received in the context of dowries, the intake of pensioners, sales from the grainary, and post-obit services, investing it in rents assured a regular influx of money and a gradual growth of the convent’s wealth.77 Another form of turning cash into regular revenues was buying houses or the ground taxes that were attached to them – or both. Gabriela Signori has coined the term “house-economy” (Hauswirtschaft) to describe the importance of real estate for Basel’s late medieval urban economy.78 In her study on debt in late medieval Basel, Signori analyzed 260 house sales between 1475 and 1480. The city’s late medieval housing market was a vivid one. Between 40 and 80 sales happened per annum, which is an impressively high percentage considering that fifteenth-century Basel comprised only approximately 2,000 houses in total. The majority of buyers were couples who, quite Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 101 literally, sought to set-up house after getting married. Moreover, the many immigrants who fluxed into Basel from the surrounding areas certainly also had contributed to the high fluctuation rates.79 The late medieval house-economy worked differently from today’s real estate market. In Basel, as in many other cities, house ownership did not imply that one also owned the land on which the house was standing.80 Frequently, house owners had to pay a ground tax to one of the local landowners – who were usually members of the city’s patriciate or ecclesiastical institutions. Revelatory for the complexity of ground vs. house ownership is the example of the couple Michel Iselin and Elsin Bischofin, his wife, which Gabriela Signori has come across. In 1475, the couple bought a row of six houses including gardens. The unity of the six houses was not only visible through the fact that they formed a row, but also through a shared perimeter fence. Nevertheless, the property tithe for each house went to a different landowner.81 Moreover, the tax rate varied significantly from house to house. The highest amount was owed to a squire named Thomas Sürlin, namely one pound and five shillings per annum. The other five landowners were ecclesiastical institutions who demanded lesser sums. The lowest of which was at six shillings which Michel Iselin and Elsin Bischofin had to pay to the bursar of the Basel Minster.82 The vast majority of house owners had to render such ground tithes.83 In Basel, as in many other cities of the Empire, a house and the land on which it was erected were legally and taxably separate. Thus, in addition to paying a given sum for a house, the buyer had to agree to pay an annual property tax to the individual, or, more frequently, the ecclesiastic institution that owned the land parcel on which the building had been erected. Additional payments, usually in form of chickens, pepper or special breads, called ringe, were to be made on the day of the annual visitation of the realty (weisung). A third type of payment was the erschatz, a fee charged when a property changed hands.84 Like the other parts of the pre-modern property economy, also the houseeconomy was complex as a number of different, yet parallel obligations were at play. And the frequent changes in house ownership, while ground ownership tended to remain more stable, added to both the “paperwork” and the risk of losing sight of who owed exactly what to whom, and when. Due to the complexity and multitude of claims, there was a risk of losing track even with the most diligent book keeping, and thus of gradually losing revenues. At least this frequently happened the case for the city’s old landowning institutions, such as the Minster or St. Alban.85 Nevertheless, Basel’s late medieval house market was worth investing in. Not so much in search for making a quick profit (for that house prices were too stable), but in order to turn monetary assets into regular revenues, especially for younger institutions such as Klingental. Klingental’s investments into Basel’s house-economy followed the same pattern as its other revenue generating endeavors. They were continuous, but with visibly increasing activity since the second half of the fourteenth 102 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City century. Between 1276 and 1550, Klingental acquired a total of 67 houses, 54 of which were located within Basel and 13 in the areas where Klingental owned most of its arable land and vineyards. Thus, three houses were located in Habsheim,86 five in the surroundings of Rouffach,87 and two near Mulhouse.88 Of the 54 houses located within Basel, we can identify the precise address of 48 of them (Figure 5.1, dark grey icons). Most of them were located within the inner walls of the city, and some even around market square, the borough, where Basel’s wealthy merchants lived. However, the convent also owned property in the city’s more peripheral quarters. In addition to revenues from leasing actual houses, Klingental also collected the ground tax for a number of grounds upon which houses stood. The distinction between the two – tithes from houses and ground taxes – is not always easy to make. In total, Klingental received payments from about 182 houses and/or the grounds they stood on. Within Basel, the location of 26 of the houses from which Klingental received ground axes could be identified (Figure 5.1, light grey icons). Similar to those houses in possession of Klingental, also those whose owners were obliged to make ground tax payments to Klingental, were dispersed across the entire city. The means of acquisition varied. Thus, Klingental received some houses in exchange for post-obit services, such as the house of the baker Wernlin von Figure 5.1 Klingental’s house-economy in the late fifteenth-century Basel. Map design: Agnes Schormann. Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 103 Kirchen in 1361.89 However, most often, the convent purchased houses, and, when possible, together with the rights to all other revenues connected to it. This was the case with a house on Spalenberg, which Klingental bought from Katherine Lotter in 1365. The house along with the ground had been Katherine’s dower, and she sold both to Klingental for 87.5 pounds. In addition to the house itself, Klingental thus received the 3.5 pounds of annual tithe and two breads for the annual visitation (weisung). The erschatz for the property was at five shillings.90 The houses in Klingental’s possession were often given as inheritable leases to individuals, and at times, even to the city. Thus, in 1302, Klingental leased a house, located next to the bridge to the city of Basel. In exchange, the council agreed to pay three pounds annual rent along with two breads and a rooster for the annual weisung.91 In 1383, the council leased another house for three pounds annual rent along with one pound of pepper to be rendered on the day of the weisung.92 The majority of houses were leased to individuals, however. The annual rents varied from several shillings to ten pounds, which Peter Schoenegg and Katherine, his wife, paid annually for a house located in the preferred area of Rheinsprung, an elevation above the river close to the Minster, in 1384.93 An erschatz of ten shillings was agreed upon, which would have to be paid when someone else, such as the heirs of Peter and Katherine Schoenegg, took over the lease.94 It sometimes happened that tenants of a house or a farm found themselves unable to render their dues. Faced with such a situation, the nuns of Klingental proved to be just as harsh as any secular property owner would have been. Eleven charters testify to fronungen, that is, foreclosures of houses whose tenants had been unable to pay. Upon return of the property to Klingental, the nuns then were free to forge an inheritable lease with new, more solvent tenants.95 While the nature of Klingental’s investments in rents, houses, and ground taxes has become tangible, the income the convent derived from them still needs to be assessed. The following is again based on the figures given in the charters – and thus neither takes into consideration possible losses, gaps of payments, nor additional contracts the convent or individual nuns concluded that were registered elsewhere. Finally, the revenues listed below do not reflect an individual year, but are the sum of the dues of all charters. They are thus more indicative for the convent’s revenues of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century rather than the early fourteenth century, at which time Klingental was only beginning to build its rent and house-economy. In other words, the following numbers are an orientation. However, even if only an orientation, they are quite impressive. The annual dues Klingental collected in the context of its rent purchases were the most diverse, comprising both money and naturalia. By the turn from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, the convent had the right to approximately 288.25 gulden, 164 pounds, and 28 pennies. Additionally, they collected 54.5 chickens, three capons, about 1,500 L white wine and more than 24,000 L grain – mostly spelt and oat.96 These were to be rendered every year, of course. From Klingental’s house-economy, the convent’s bursar 104 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City and bursaress could expect another 171.25 gulden, 125 pounds, and 24 shillings, along with 27 chickens. The combined monetary value would have been about 865 pounds per year, or about 1/12 of the total monetary value registered in the convent’s anniversary book. In addition to these dues came those from the annual visitations (weisungen), where realty was concerned, and the periodical payments of the erschatz, when a farm, house or other realty was passed on to a new owner. For the annual weisungen, Klingental had the right to 3.25 pounds of pepper (a luxury good), seven chickens, one rooster and 44 special breads (ringe) that were a typical form of payment for weisungen in Basel. The periodical erschatz brought another 24 pounds, five chickens and two breads. A few things are noteworthy – especially in regard to the structure of Klingental’s economy. The nuns used the advantages of the urban economy and put their money to work. One-time payments, such as those in the context of post-obit arrangements, were invested to yield regular revenues. By the sixteenth century, the revenues collected from rents and the convent’s house-economy reached 1/12 of the entire sum registered in the convent’s anniversary book. Meaning, every 12 years, Klingental regained the monetary sum the convent’s anniversary founders had endowed them with. In reality, they probably did so sooner as the numbers used here are only a fraction of Klingental’s annual income. Not considered are the revenues and dues Klingental collected in naturalia, diamonds, or other nonmonetary payments, nor those levies the convent received from its arable patrimony discussed in the previous chapter. Another observation is the continuous importance of naturalia rents even in the context of Klingental’s urban economic engagements. As the previous chapter has shown, grain and wine were a pivotal pillar of the convent’s economy. This was not only reflected in the convent’s focus to amass clusters of arable land during the fourteenth century, but also in the central place of Klingental’s granary and the influential office of the granary mistress.97 And revenues rendered in naturalia continued to be central also after the convent’s economic focus gradually shifted from land acquisition to rent and houseeconomy in the late fourteenth century. Having a regular influx of grain and wine made premodern institutions independent from the seasonally fluctuating market prices.98 Moreover, it allowed for the convent’s monetary income to be used for things other than basic alimentation. It thus made sense to have both also in an urban economic environment – naturalia and monetary revenues. And the nuns of Klingental were both financially and strategically able to build such a diverse and balanced portfolio over the course of two centuries, which allowed them to become Basel’s wealthiest convent by 1500. Rebellious Women: Klingental’s Final Years The nuns of Klingental were, without any doubt, very wealthy, and they knew how to use their personal and their convent’s wealth to generate more riches in the form of regular income in both crop and money. The nuns’ Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 105 lifestyle also reflected their social status and financial means – they lived in richly decorated cells, frequently enjoyed good meals seasoned with expensive spices, and even exotic fruits were a common sight in the convent’s dining hall. While not uncommon for a wealthy convent of the time, the nuns’ lifestyle was not without critics. When the observant movement gained momentum in the fifteenth century, external pressure on the nuns to adopt a more modest lifestyle rose. When the nuns of Steinen Convent and Basel’s Dominicans, Klingental’s long-term confessors, embraced observant reform in 1424 and 1429, respectively, the demands for Klingental to follow suit grew louder still. Between 1430 and 1480, Klingental accepted three minor reforms, which, however, seem to have been pro forma and remained without actual impact on convent life.99 Realizing that gentle pressure would lead to no results, a coalition of the Dominicans and members of the city council attempted to force the nuns to finally embrace the observant lifestyle in 1480. On January 8, 1480, these reformers entered the convent to inform the women about their impending reform. As the visit had been announced beforehand, the nuns were prepared. During the reading of the reform bill, which the men had obtained from Sixtus IV, the nuns made noise and sang out loud so that the urban reform party was unable to make themselves heard.100 While this may appear a childish reaction at first glance, it was presumably a well-meditated one. In order for a reform mandate to be implemented, those to be reformed had to be informed, instructed, and eventually, they had to voluntarily accept reform.101 Avoiding to even receive the information was thus a means intended to stop the entire process before it even began. However, also the reformers were prepared for the nuns’ resistance, which, at this point, hardly came as a surprise. Disregarding their noise, they informed the women that 13 observant Dominican nuns from Engelporten were on their way and that they would move into Klingental in five days’ time. The idea, here as elsewhere, was that the observant nuns would lead the spiritual way – they would show the recalcitrant residents the righteous path and eventually, the unreformed nuns would either embrace reform or leave the convent altogether.102 Far from accepting defeat, the announcement of the impending arrival of the Engelporten nuns caused the situation to escalate further. The women threatened to burn down their convent and even to strangle the reform nuns upon their arrival at Klingental. The men’s response to the nuns’ threats was no less harsh. They placed armed men around the monastic compound and locked the nuns within.103 Through this drastic measure, the reformers sought to both “convince” the nuns to accept reform after all and if that should fail, to at least prevent them from leaving the compound and taking Klingental’s valuable possessions and titles with them. This situation lasted for several weeks. Once the new nuns arrived, they took over the offices of the unreformed ones, who continued to refuse both reform and cooperation and therefore continued to be locked up. It quickly became clear that the women would remain steadfast in their refusal and that the situation at 112 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City 49 A certain sir of Bechburg gave the convent a “big horse worth 100 gulden” (Klingental H fol. 5 v); a priest named Ludwig Sinken left a “book of saints” worth 12 gulden (Klingental H fol. 68 v); Elsi von Rottersdorf, a nun at Klingental, bequeathed a “golden ring with an emerald” (Klingental H fol. 211 v); and Jacob von Eptingen gave a ruby for his anniversary foundation (Klingental H fol. 34 v). 50 This is an approximate value which only considers those foundations and inheritance actually paid in money, excluding those material goods whose monetary value is given. Foundations in shillings have been transformed into pounds – that is, the sum of 1,024.5 shillings equal 51 pounds and 4.5 shillings (20 shillings equal one pound). 51 John H. Munroe, “Introduction,” in: Money in the Pre-Industrial World: Bullion, Debasements and Coins Substitutes, ed. John H. Munroe (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 4. 52 Munroe, “Introduction,” 4–5; and Michael North, Das Geld und seine Geschichte. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H. Beck, 1994), 20. 53 Munroe, “Introduction,” 5; and North, Das Geld, 26–27. 54 http://www.basler-bauten.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&c atid=63:varia&id=263:waehrungen; generally, the gulden was less affected by debasement than the more locally used silver currency, its value was thus more stable and quickly outvalued the silver currency; Munroe, “Introduction,” 5. 55 Gustav Schönberg, Finanzverhältnisse der Stadt Basel im XIV und XV. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Verlag der H. Laup’schen Buchhandlung, 1879), 712–713. 56 Daniel Schmutz, “Mark (Gewicht),” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version vom 22.08.2008. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/013666/ 2008-08-22/. 57 Christian Wurstisen, Basler Chronik (1580), 157. Online: https://daten.digitalesammlungen.de/0008/bsb00089269/images/index.html?id=00089269&seite=1 83&fip=193.174.98.30&nativeno=&groesser=200%25. 58 Christian Wurstisen, Basler Chronik (1580), 197. Online: https://daten.digitalesammlungen.de/0008/bsb00089269/images/index.html?id=00089269&seite=2 24&fip=193.174.98.30&nativeno=&groesser=200%25; and René Teuteberg, Basler Geschichte (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 1986), 133. 59 Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation. The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 1998), 4. 60 For the role of rents for the “unhoarding” of wealth, see Hans-Jörg Gilomen, Der Rentenkauf im Mittelalter (habilitation: University of Basel, 1981), 29–30. Online: https://www.hist.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-e319-f1e9-ffff-ffff92c8b4ad/ Rentenkauf.pdf. 61 For an overview, see Gilomen, Rentenkauf, especially 32–33; 89–105; and Gilomen, “Das kanonische Zinsverbot,” 405–449. 62 StABS Klingental 2490. 63 Gabriela Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft. Konsumentenund Hypothekenkredite im spätmittelalterlichen Basel (Konstanz and München: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2015), 91; and Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 30–31. 64 There were a total of 29 such sales between 1346 and 1545; nine during the fourteenth century at the rate 20 gulden purchased for an annual rent of 2 gulden (StABS Klingental 766, 789, 792, 797, 810, 800, 877, 1007, 1428), and as of 1438, 20 gulden purchases for an annual rent of 1 gulden (StABS Klingental 1953, 2018, 2035, 2059, 2085, 2102, 2158, 2234, 2266, 2291, 2289c, 2413, 2484, 2490, 2515, 2534, 2597, 2618, 2652, 2197). The same ratio generally applied also for purchases of annual rents of 1 gulden (for which 10 gulden were paid until the turn of the century) and more. See also Chapter 3, the rent purchases of Notre-Dame were at a rate of 10%. Following the Money: Klingental in Basel II 113 65 Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 30–31; and Benjamin Hitz, Ein Netz von Schulden. Schuldbeziehungen und Gerichtsnutzung im spätmittelalterlichen Basel (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2022), 11. 66 This was common for rent agreements not only in Switzerland and the Empire, but also in France, Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 30–32; in medium-sized towns (such as Basel), rents in naturalia remained common also in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 50–53. 67 StABS Klingental 578. 68 In 1343, Klingental paid seven pounds ten shillings for an annual rent of one viernzel of spelt. The following year, they paid 20 pounds for 3 viernzel of spelt, and in 1345, an annual rent of 2 viernzel of spelt was worth 8 pounds silver. Thus, the prices seem to have been relatively stable ones (StABS Klingental 712, 722, 791). 69 StABS Klingental 990 and 1005. 70 StABS Klingental 1143. 71 StABS Klingental 2591. 72 In 1450, the council of Basel banned perpetual rents. However, before 1450, most rents were perpetual; Neidiger, Mendikanten, 204; for the different types of rents and their material basis, see Hans-Jörg Gilomen, “Die ökonomischen Grundlagen des Kredits und die christlich-jüdische Konkurrenz im Spätmittelalter,” in: Ein Thema – Zwei Perspektiven. Juden und Christen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, ed. Eveline Brugger and Birgit Wiedl (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2007), 144–148. 73 Vergichtbücher were official books of debt in which creditor and debtor had outstanding amounts registered. This made the debt both official and officially recognized by the debtor who could be made accountable if they failed to pay back their debt; Hitz, Ein Netz von Schulden, 178–180; and Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 25–27. 74 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 41–42; and Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 30–31. 75 StABS Klingental 843. 76 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 86. 77 For the general development of the rent economy, the backdrop before which convents such as Klingental acted, see Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 30–70. 78 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 87–119. 79 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 88–89; and Chapter 4. 80 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 93–94. 81 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 94 82 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 94 83 Gabriela Signori found this to be the case in 85% of house sales registered between 1475 and 1480; Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 93. 84 Signori, Schuldenwirtschaft, 93–96; and Wilhelm Arnold, Zur Geschichte des Eigentums in den deutschen Städten: Mit Urkunden (Basel: Verlag von H. Georg, 1861), 73. 85 Arnold, Zur Geschichte, 74–76; and Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft, 276–277. 86 StABS Klingental 786, 811, 2034. 87 StABS Klingental 532, 779, 816, 837, 852. 88 StABS Klingental 143, 1722. 89 StABS Klingental 1053. 90 StABS Klingental 1090. 91 StABS Klingental 192. 92 StABS Klingental 1330. 93 StABS Klingental 1360. 114 Monastic Economic Power in the Late Medieval City 94 StABS Klingental 1360. 95 StABS Klingental 1016/936, 1036, 1122, 1347, 1511, 1557/1559, 157, 2285, 2390, 606. 940. 96 I have gathered all information regarding Klingental’s income from rents and houses in a database, which is available open access: https://dataverse.harvard. edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/KTTSZ2. As Gilomen has shown in his by now classical landmark study, Basel was the region’s leading financial center in terms of both rent and house economy. Thus, Klingental was in good company; Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 83–85. 97 Cf. Chapter 4 – The Economic and Internal Structure. 98 Gilomen, Rentenkauf, 54. 99 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 41–42. 100 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 553; and Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 48–49. 101 Reforming a convent against their will was legally not easy; and reformers all over Europe sought to devise ways to impose reforms on recalcitrant communities, sometimes fabricating stories allowing them to impose reforms; Müller, From the Cloister to the State, 185–189. 102 This was a typical strategy of reform at the time; see also Müller, From the Cloister to the State, 157–158; 181–186. 103 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 49–50. 104 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 50–53; and Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 553–554. 105 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 52–54. 106 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 556. 107 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 55; 124–125. 108 Degler-Spengler and Christ, “Basel, Klingental,” 557. 109 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 56. 110 Gilomen-Schenkel and Degler-Spengler, “Basel, Klingental,” 65; and Knecht, Ausharren, 189. 111 Hitz, Ein Netz von Schulden, 11–12; and Muldrew, Economy, 103–110. 112 Double entry accounting was more common in Italian convents, albeit frequently with less wealth to account for; Sylvie DuVal, “Scrivere, contare, gestire. I libri di amministrazione dei monasteri femminili fiorentini (1320–1460),” in: Scritture, Carismi, Istituzioni. Percorsi di vita religiosa in età moderna. Studi per Gabriella Zarri, ed. Concetta Bianca and Anna Scattigno (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 2018), 85–104. 113 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 34. 114 Weis-Müller, Die Reform, 33–35. 115 For the premodern culture of credit, see Muldrew, Economy, 123–196. 116 Gilomen, Die Grundherrschaft, 111; 123–124. When I started researching this project, I did not expect to write a success story. In fact, the degree to which convents such as Klingental and NotreDame flourished in the late Middle Ages came as a surprise. I had long known, of course, that the old historiographical narrative of monastic decline in the late Middle Ages was faulty. A growing number of studies, including my own work on Fontevraud, have shown that there was no universal monastic decline in late medieval Europe – and many convents, such as Fontevraud, experienced a renewed rise to influence during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Innumerable convents of early and high medieval origin existed for many centuries, some even for more than a millennium. In those regions where the Reformation did not take root, it was the French Revolution and European Secularization which brought about the end of many medieval monasteries. To put it somewhat polemically, for any institution to exist for such long stretches of time as many female monasteries did, its administrators had to have a profound understanding of how to run their institutions. At the same time, considering the long period of their existence until the sixteenth (Reformation) or early nineteenth century (Secularization), any historian studying them in their longue durée will naturally come across periods of crises. That such periods of crisis are more easily discerned for the late than for the high Middle Ages does not come as a surprise either. It is only for this later period that account books provide detailed insights. Moreover, the period’s observant reformers were prolific writers who justified their intrusive reforms by portraying unreformed convent life in drastic, albeit frequently exaggerated terms, which have influenced also later perceptions of late medieval monasticism. Although still looming in the background of the field, the historiographical notion of a high medieval monastic peak and late medieval decline is not predominant in the field anymore. Therefore, it would not in itself justify writing a monograph aiming at debunking it. Nevertheless, its continuous looming was an incentive leading me to wonder about the structural setup(s) of convents and their long-term evolution. The phenomenon of monasteries as institutions that were firmly embedded in the society surrounding them, institutions that lived through wars, natural catastrophes, and profound Conclusion This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license DOI: 10.4324/9781003299905-8 116 Conclusion societal and economic changes, has long interested me. I wanted to know as to how they succeeded to weather the many storms of time, which factors allowed them do so, and which eventually proved structurally threatening. My specific interest in structural questions, longue-Durée developments, and strategies caused me to focus on charters as primary sources, while largely bypassing account books. Account books are a rich source for inquiries concerning everyday aspects of economic practices. However, for a focus on structures, charters are more revelatory, as they allow for discerning patters along with changes of policy and strategy. A second incentive was the question of women and power in medieval Europe. As discussed in the introduction, the question has received increasing attention over the course of the past three decades. However, this attention has been limited to queens and other lay noblewomen and the powers these wielded directly or indirectly.1 Women religious have hitherto been bypassed in this context,2 either because scholars interested in the question are not aware of the many secular sides inherent to medieval monasticism or because historians circumvent the question by treating monastic history as a subject apart from social history.3 Both views (or the absence of views) have not only produced an important historiographical lacuna, but also distorted scholarly perceptions of elite women’s agencies in medieval society. As the previous chapters have shown, there were many secular aspects to medieval monasticism. As any other medieval institution, also monasteries had to be able to sustain their communities. This necessitated them being economic entities that produced crops, collected revenues, and assumed responsibility for the men and women working their lands. Moreover, monasteries were ubiquitous in medieval Europe; they were the manorial lords, landlords, and rentbuyers of innumerable individuals in urban and rural environments alike. Monasteries were a central pillar of the medieval economy and an inherent part of society, which itself was deeply religious. Thus, it seemed interesting for a number of reasons to approach female monasticism from a social and economic perspective in order to reveal these institutions and the women who led them as powerful actors of medieval society. To do so, I selected four nunneries which are representative for top-tier convents north of the Alps. The chosen sample was to reflect the differences and similarities, while limiting the number of convents to allow for an indepth engagement with their histories and their economic sources. Three of the four convents were of early medieval origin, sharing a number of structural similarities, but also manifesting differences. Of the three, Buchau Abbey was the smallest in terms of patrimony and secular influence. Its authority primarily extended over farmsteads and small villages in an overall rural setting. As such, Buchau is the most typical representative of a manorial abbey. In premodern Europe, there were innumerable convents whose structure and setup made them part of the local ruling elite and allowed their community a comfortable life, albeit without making them powerful seigneurs of transregional importance. Feudal Europe provided ample room for many small Conclusion 117 and mid-sized manors and lordships, but had only limited capacities for big players – secular or religious. Whether small or large, early medieval foundations shared most of their structural traits; Buchau, Notre-Dame, Fraumünster, and others derived their authority and wealth from their landed patrimony which equipped them with far-ranging manorial rights. And they frequently enjoyed a number of feudal prerogatives – such as the right to collect taxes and dispense the highest degree of justice. Despite differences in size and location, their structural similarities make them comparable not only among each other, but they also allow us to think of Buchau, Notre-Dame, and Fraumünster as case studies representing this type of monastic institution in general. A formative factor for the possibilities and limits of an institution’s longterm development was its environment. This included its vicinity (urban or rural), size and structure of its patrimony, number and nature of local competitors, along with access to markets, and the like. While such factors did not solely determine whether a convent would flourish or decline, they did set the frame in which the institution’s leaders acted. Thus, in the case of Buchau, the density of cities and monasteries in Upper Swabia in the late Middle Ages put limits to the abbey’s possibilities of territorial expansion. At the same time, this density of neighbors was not bad for Buchau’s long-term development. Rather, it brought stability to the region, as it established an equilibrium of power among local actors. No single actor in the region could have hoped to gain overall dominion, and the density of institutions and cities allowed Buchau to forge alliances without risking to become dependent on the goodwill of any single patron. Thus, Buchau’s late medieval abbesses benefited from an environment which allowed them to affirm their territorial and juridical authority relatively undisturbed, even if this authority remained geographically confined. The environments of both Notre-Dame de Soissons and Fraumünster of Zurich were at a time more complex and more allowing. Equipped with vast and outstretched patrimonies since their respective foundations, both institutions faced a number of similar challenges. Powerful local rivals in the form of dukes, bishops, or a rising citizenry vied for hegemony. Moreover, both abbeys needed to consolidate their respective territorial possessions which stretched over much bigger areas than those of Buchau. Finally, located in fast-growing urban centers, Notre-Dame and Fraumünster had to adapt to the changing urban economy of which they were also an integral part. None of these were minor challenges. The aptness of the institutions’ governments – their long-term economic and territorial strategies – was the most determining factor for their longue durée-development. The previous chapters have shown that for a convent to be economically thriving in late medieval Europe, it had to dispose of a diversified economic portfolio. This applies for both early and later medieval foundations. Depending on their respective period of origin, a convent’s economic basis was either built to be diversified from the start (Klingental) or actively adapted to become so over a 118 Conclusion prolonged period between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries (Notre-Dame and Buchau). It is appropriate to speak of economic strategies in this context, as both the setup and the adaptations of the monastic economy were gradual procedures that happened over the course of several generations. When observing the strategies followed by individual institutions and the similarities between them, it becomes obvious that the convents and their leaderships understood economy and gave it ample attention. However, as we have also seen, this economic understanding was unequally dispersed or at least the actions that one would expect to follow from such an understanding differed markedly. Buchau, Notre-Dame, and Klingental mastered their economic challenges by implementing proactive policies, while Fraumünster eventually lost control. If the charters of Notre-Dame, Buchau, and Fraumünster only shed light on general tendencies of their respective territorial and economic strategies, the wealth of Klingental’s economic sources grants more detailed insights. These insights confirm, in return, the general tendencies observed for the institutions of early medieval origin: in the late Middle Ages, a sound institutional economy rested on two pillars: (1) agrarian possessions and revenues and (2) financial investments and revenues. In the cases of feudal institutions, notarial and juridical acts brought additional revenues, provided the institution in question had not alienated these prerogatives. Despite the increasingly monetized urban economy, revenues in kind remained central also in the late Middle Ages as they ensured the institution’s alimentary autonomy. Klingental’s discernable focus on amassing clusters of arable land during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reveals the continuous importance of agrarian possessions, even for an urban convent with ample financial means and access to an elevated number of regional markets (Chapter 4). Although never becoming all-encompassing, money did become central to the late medieval economy, including the monastic economy. Monasteries needed money to pay for goods purchased on markets, to pay for building materials, and to remunerate the craftsmen, confessors, and priests in their service. Moreover, convents needed to manage their institution’s monetary revenues which also became more frequent at that time. In the absence of modern banks, they needed to find ways to turn the growing number of financial donations and foundations into regular revenues. Contrary to arable land, an endowment in shillings or gulden did not by itself bear fruits. An institution thus had to choose between the (unproductive) hoarding of coins in a treasure chamber and the investment of said coins to make them produce a regular influx of money, just as land brought an annual influx of crops. As the cases of Klingental, and to a lesser degree those of NotreDame and Buchau, have shown, the convents invested their cash to purchase rents and realty (Chapters 3 and 5). Klingental’s charters even allow to put approximate numbers on the revenues the convent annually collected from rents and leases: 865 pounds silver by the waning fifteenth century. This was Conclusion 119 a lot of money and the equivalent of 1/12 of the entire monetary foundations registered in Klingental’s anniversary book. Every 12 years, the convent thus regained the sum with which hundreds of anniversary founders had endowed Klingental over the course of two centuries (Chapter 5). Of course, these 865 pounds were but a fraction of the annual revenues Klingental collected from foundations, rents, grain fields, and vineyards. In addition to money, there were many thousand liters of wine, grain, and spices, along with livestock of various kinds. The total went far beyond the amounts needed to feed Klingental’s inhabitants, pensioners, and the men and women in its service. Considering Klingental’s great wealth, both in the form of agricultural possessions and revenue assets, the city’s efforts to procure them for Basel after the convent’s dissolution is hardly surprising. *** From a structural perspective, the institutions under consideration were successful – albeit reaching different degrees of success. To reuse the image of success as a three-tier podium, all four convents easily reached the first tier. They all existed for numerous centuries through which they provided comfortable living for the members of their community. Three out of four, i.e., Notre-Dame, Buchau, and Klingental, reached the top tier. One may indeed describe their economic development in terms of a success story. These convents and their leaderships very much understood the prerequisites for economic soundness – and they acted accordingly, adapted where necessary, showing tenacity and long-term perspectives. Institutional success therefore did not result from the government of one particularly able abbess (or prioress), but it was the fruit of generations of able leaders. The same is true for the reverse. The territorial and economic decline of an institution did not happen overnight. As the case of Fraumünster has illustrated, decline took similarly long as stabilization. The reasons for this are twofold. First, the alienation of important structural resources, such as the abbey’s coinage rights and Fertigungen had no immediate negative effects. Rather, these only became visible when Zurich’s council de facto and de jure became independent from the abbey during the fourteenth century, at which point these rights along with the income and influence attached to them were lost to the abbey for good (Chapter 3). Second, the selling of land to the city and to other monastic institutions to meet immediate financial obligations was neither uncommon nor per se problematic. Many institutions repeatedly sold parts of its patrimony, thirteenth-century Buchau being one of them. However, in the long run, the alienation of patrimony decreased the territorial and economic foundation of the institution in question, unless its leadership found strategies to counterbalance the losses and generated different sources of income. The consequences became only visible in the long run, long after the facts. It is important to remember that structural success is not the same as generating short-term profits. The monastic economy aimed to generate an 120 Conclusion equilibrium between revenues and expenses. And as these institutions were thought of as being founded for eternity, the equilibrium had to be achieved in general, not in the short term. Therefore, periods of crises when expenses exceeded revenues, and when a number of assets had to be alienated, were considered normal. However, recognizing the point when a critical mass of alienated patrimony had been reached was not always easy – the nuns and abbesses of Fraumünster certainly missed it, while Buchau’s convent recognized it and succeeded to turn things around. At the end of this book, I return to the question of power, or more precisely as to whether the convents under consideration and the women who led them were, in fact, powerful. In her essay, Christine Reinle identifies material and social resources as central factors of authority in medieval Europe.4 According to Reinle, effectiveness of authority depended on structural, infrastructural, and social wealth. The person or institution in charge needed to possess the material resources to impose their will, to keep the peace among their people, and the social resources to grant favors and disfavors and thus to effectively foster and regulate patron-client relationships.5 Applied to NotreDame, Buchau, Fraumünster, and Klingental, the answer is definitely an affirmative one. All three convents of early medieval origin disposed of the material and immaterial resources, including jurisdiction and the right to pardon, to enforce their will, and to keep rivals at bay. While Klingental did not wield any seigneurial authority, its nuns also were powerful. Their power was derived from their economic foothold in Basel, which allowed them to repel the combined reform efforts of the city council and the Dominicans. They even succeeded to oblige the monks to pay hefty reparations for the financial losses Klingental had endured during the brief period of enforced observance (Chapter 5). Contrary to this, the case of Fraumünster may serve once more as an example of gradual decline – also in regard to the abbey’s authority. After having been set up as a palatine and representative of royal authority in the Zurich area (Chapter 2), Fraumünster’s vast patrimony continuously shrank since the fourteenth century. By the fifteenth century, the abbey had lost most of its feudal prerogatives to the city council and, with them, most of its former authority. When the convent was plagued by internal and financial crises during the fifteenth century, the women were not able to solve these conflicts by themselves but had to call on Zurich’s council and eventually subject themselves to the pfleger the council dispatched to the abbey (Chapter 3). Deprived of its former material and social resources, the abbess had lost most its effective power by the early sixteenth century. However, the case of Fraumünster seems to have been the exception, not the norm. As this study suggests, the majority of convents consolidated their authority rather than lost it during the waning Middle Ages. Moreover, one should not make the mistake to see all of Fraumünster’s history in the light of its eventual decline. While certainly inadequately managed during its two final centuries, Fraumünster Abbey was nevertheless a powerful institution in Zurich throughout the Middle Ages. Conclusion 121 *** Whatever their names – Odeline de Trachy of Notre-Dame (1256–1273), Elisabeth von Wetzikon of Fraumünster (1270–1298), Anna von Gundelfingen of Buchau (1402–1410), or Clara zu Stein of Klingental (1447–1452) – these monastic women, like uncountable others over Europe, habitually wielded authority. The impact of their decisions, found solely or in consensus with their convent, extended far beyond the walls of their individual nunnery. These women were responsible not only for the inhabitants of their convent – nuns, pensioners, and servants – but also for hundreds of peasants, vintners, and stewards in their service. And most of all, they bore the responsible for their institution’s well-being, short and long term. They had to ensure that convent buildings, churches, but also farms, mills, and communal ovens were well maintained, and that their economic decisions of selling or acquiring land would bring benefits for their monastic community, present and future. This book opened with a fictitious scene, and it will likewise close with one that illustrates abbatial responsibilities and the many activities going on in a cloister on any given day: If Odeline, Elisabeth, Anna, or Clara looked out of the window of their respective abbatial or priorial office, their eyes would always meet fervent activities: Grain being measured when it was delivered to the grainary; next to the church they could see the craftsmen who were engaged in repairs or in erecting a new building on the monastic compound. They might observe handmaids helping the cooks to carry ingredients to the kitchen for the day’s main meal, ingredients which the servants had procured on the town market or collected from the convent’s stock rooms that were filled with the dues the peasants had delivered. At the gate, they might see mayors and stewards arriving from the surrounding villages. Maybe, the men had come to see the abbess to discuss the wine harvest or to report on the situation on the farmsteads and villages, or maybe they had come to inform her about the settlement of a dispute between villagers, or yet, to ask her consent so that a wedding between two serfs could take place, or again, they had come to prepare the upcoming court days to be held at the abbey. In the courtyard, an onlooking prioress might see her bursaress and cellaress discussing the state of the pantries before winter, while the calendarian hurrying a number of nuns to the choir to perform that day’s post-obit services. Maybe, while watching all this, the abbess or prioress was pondering over the question whether the acquisition of a vineyard or if buying an annual rent from a certain citizen would be the better long-term investment for her institution. Whatever the name of the abbess or prioress watching from her office window, wherever her convent was located, and whichever the precise object of her concerns at that moment, we may be certain of two things. First that she was aware of both her authority and responsibilities and second that neither she nor any of her contemporaries thought these to be strange. Monastic women wielding power were an ubiquitous sight in medieval Europe, a sight so common that only modern students of the Middle Ages may come across them with surprise, whereas none of the contemporaries did. 128 Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book Page Anniversary Founder Endowment Notes 9 v. Morning Die Schalerin 37 pounds and 1 pound of money 10 v. Christmas Eve Die Helblingerin 11 pounds and 7 pounds money Each sister should be given 1 shilling, the rest for anniversary and „über den tisch geben“ 10 v. Christmas Rudolf von Lengenberg and his wife 3 schatz vine 15 v. S. Stephen A man 1 eygen (?) 15 v. Sister Elsinen von Tagsdorf 1 gulden 15 v. S. John Die Oflatterin 18 shilling 15 v. A woman 19 pounds 16 v. Gred Schulmeisterin, pensioner at Klingental 130 gulden when she was alive, after her death another 97 gulden from her household items, and 100 pounds and 8 pounds and 2 gulden money for her anniversary 17 v. Am Kinlein Tag Die von Baldegk 34 pounds 17 v. Die von Stein 10 shilling 17 v. Vogt von Brambach and his wives 10 pounds 17 v. Meister Heinrich Keller 2 pounds „über den tisch geben“ 18 v. S. Silvester Die am Weg and her son 19 pounds 18 v. Wernly am Rein 1 gulden money Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book 129 19 v. Hans von Habkhusheim – Bursar of Klingental 11 pounds and 8 pounds money, vines worth 150 pounds, and after his death: 73 pounds and 20 viernzel grain, 1 viernzel money “Andem ior war Bruder hans von habkhushein unsers schafners iorzit von des begrebt ward uns 11 Pfund und 8 Pfund geltz und reben warent 150 Pfund wert. Er gab uns öch an sinen tod 73 Pfund und 20 viernzel Korns und ein virnzel Geld. Zu einer speng (?). er hett uns öch geben 3 Viernzal Roggen und 4 Viernzal Habren und 29 Hüner von dem sol man 3 Pfund zu der Mes des von Wagen Pfünd geben und das übrig zu sinem iortzit uber tisch gen. Er hett uns och geben 4 Pound Geld zu siner vordren iortzit dz sol man began uff annuciacio domica. An dem tag waz Heinrich Brunadren und siner fröwen iortzit die gabent uns 1 Pfund Geld sol man uber tisch geben. An dem Tag war swester Metzy von Werr iortzit die gab uns 2 Pfund an dem tag war der von egringen iortzit die gab uns 8 Pfund und 10 Schilling geltz. An dem Tag war her Cunrat Gypsers iortzit. von dem ward uns 68 marck wert von dem sol man 2 Pfund uber tisch geben. An dem tag war der Gibserin und ir Mume iortzit, die gab uns 55 Pfund.” 19 v. Der von Wagen prebendary (founded by Hans von Habkhusheim?) 3 viernzel rye und 4 viernzel oats und 29 chickens, 2 pounds for mass 19 v. Annunciatio dominica Hans von Habkhusheim 4 pounds money for his first anniversary 19 v. Heinrich Brunadren and his wife 1 pound 19 v. Sister Metzy von Wehr 2 pounds 19 v. Those von Egringen 8 pounds and 10 shilling 19 v. Cunrat Gypsers 68 marks 19 v. Die Gibserin and her relatives 55 pounds 20 v. Those zur Kinden/ Zerkinden 9 marks while alive, and after her demise: 9 pounds; after her husband’s death: a good worth 40 marks and 1 pound of money 20 v. Cuntzmann von Waltpach 23 pounds 20 v. Die Zielempin 37 shilling 20 v. Morning A Woman 1 mark 20 v. Die Rötenen 5 pounds 20 v. Hans Helblings 55 pounds and 30 shilling 30 shilling „über den tisch geben“ 21 v. Kindleintag Hans Ulrich von Hus– villicus of Basel Minster 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ (Continued) 130 Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book Page Anniversary Founder Endowment Notes 21 v. 12 eve A man 8 schatz vine and 4 shilling 21 v. Die Gasserin and her husband 100 pounds (minus 5 pounds and 10 shilling) 21 v. Der Keller 2 pounds and 1 pound 21 v. Brother Peter Yselis 1 gulden “sol man halben uber tisch gen und halben in der Schafnerin kisten” 21 v. Ulis von Münster and his wife 1 gulden, 32 pounds “uns ward noch in baren Geld von inen 32 Pfund” 22 v. Two men 9 schatz vines A light to be lit in chapel on their anniversary 22 v. A woman 3 pounds 22 v. Die Geyslerin 6 schatz vines 10 shilling „über den tisch geben“ 22 v. A man and his wife 5 shilling 22 v. Herr Hans von Liel and his wife 5 pounds 22 v. Die von Tegerfeld 11 pounds, 3 shilling, and 5 viernzel spelt money, 9 viernzel oats money, 3 viernzel rye money, and for her anniversary: 5 viernzel rye money, 5 viernzel oats money, 1 viernzel barley money, and 2 pounds 5 shilling and 4 gulden money For three anniversaries: 1. For herself 2. For her husband and son 3. Her parents and ancestors 22 v. Morning Der Keilenen (?) 20 pounds, 9 viernzel grain money, 30 shilling 22 v. A man 2 schatz vines 22 v. Die appoteggerin (the (female) pharmacist) 40 marks worth of silver Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book 131 23 v. 1. January 13, 1442 2. Nativitatis Marie 3. S. Mathew 4. Kirchweihe Sister Gred von Eptingen 4 gulden, 5 viernzel spelt money, 1.5 saum winemoney, 2 pounds of perpetual money, 4 gulden, and 4 gulden 1. 8 shilling to be paid to the eight priests who celebrate requiem mass 2. For the anniversary of Hans Pyhantz von Eptingen and all his children: 5 viernzel spelt money and 1 viernzel of which to be added to Adelheid von Eptingen’s anniversary, another viernzel for her own parents’ anniversary 3. 4 gulden for the anniversary of her parents and her relative, Verena von Olsberg 4. 4 gulden for the anniversary of all her siblings and of Verena von Olsberg 24 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 25 gulden 25 gulden for Sister Elsy and Sister Ennelin Zergeltin; if one of them dies, the other will receive the 25 gulden minus the 4 gulden which should be added to the deceased sister’s anniversary; upon the death of the second, another 4 gulden (of the remaining 21 gulden) for the second sister’s anniversary 25 r. ? Sister Anna Zergeltin 4 gulden For Sister Fran Roilin and Ludwig von Eptingen during their lifetime, afterwards for Klingental 25 r. Sister Gred von Eptingen 5 gulden For the anniversary of Sister Verena Roilin 25 r. Sister Gred von Eptingen 3 pounds To sacristy 1 pound to Verena Roilin 1 pound for anniversary of Clara zu Rhein, 5 shilling for anniversary of Gred von Eptingen, 5 shilling for anniversary of Els Zergeltin Jahrzeit, and 5 shilling for her own anniversary (Anna Zergeltin) 25 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 4 gulden (Continued) 132 Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book Page Anniversary Founder Endowment Notes 25 v. Marian Feast Day (S. Marien) Sister Gred von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of Sister Elsin zu Rhein, 4 shilling for the priests who celebrate requiem mass 25 v. S. Martin Sister Gred von Eptingen 3 gulden For anniversary of Vitztume and Verena von Olsperg 25 v. S. Andrew Sister Gred von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of all faithful souls buried at Klingental 25 v. S. Egidius Sister Gred von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of her brother Peter Mas von Eptingen, her sister Anne von Eptingen, and her relative Schalerin 26 v. Carnival Sister Gred von Eptingen 2 gulden For anniversary of Metzena zum Wighus, Clara Kuchimeisterin, and Verena (a relative) 26 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 1 shilling to the priests celebrating the requiem masses of the aforementioned anniversaries 26 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 10 gulden For the chest of the bursaress 27 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 5 gulden For Mathias Schreiber during his lifetime, and after his death: money to be added to anniversary fund of her sister Adelheit von Eptingen and Mathias Jahrzeit, five shilling of which to the priests celebrating requiem masses 27 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen 8 shilling, 4 chickens For Elsin Zergeltz during her lifetime 28 v. Sister Gred von Eptingen Gred von Eptingen has given a total of 77 gulden 29 v. ? Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 8 gulden For her own anniversary 29 v. S. Lucius Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 2 gulden For anniversary of Brother Germann Schollen 29 v. Tuesday or Thursday after All Saints Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 5 gulden For anniversary of Sister Engeltrud and everyone who has been good to her 29 v. Gordiani and Epimachii Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of her brother Verena von Eptingen Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book 133 29 v. Tuesday or Thursday after S. Martin Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of Sister Engeltrud von Eptingenund and all her siblings 30 v. Morning after S. Servacius Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 4 gulden For anniversary of Sister Gredlin von Friesen 30 v. S. Elizabeth Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 2 gulden For anniversary of Sister Elsy von Eptingen 30 v. S. Kaiser Heinrich Tag (Henry II, July 13) Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 3 gulden For anniversary of her brother Sister Engeltrud and everyone who has been good to her 30 v. S. Martin Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 19 gulden 19 gulden for Sister Brid zu Rhein during her lifetime, four of which to be used for her anniversary after her death, the remainder to be added to her own anniversary (Engeltrud von Eptingen) 30 v. Octa Assumpcionis Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 5 gulden For anniversary of her parents 30 v. ? Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen 5 gulden For anniversary of Sister Engeltrud von Eptingen and her relative Verena Schallerin von Olsperg 31 r. Sister Bridly zu Rhein 5 gulden For Sisters Katherin Waldin, Bridly, and Magdalen during their lifetime; after their deaths: money to be added to their anniversary fund 31 r. Sister Bridly zu Rhein 20 gulden To be used to feed the poor on the anniversary of Sister Verenen von Eptingen 31 r. Sister Bridly zu Rhein 12 shillings, 100 eggs, and 2 chickens For her own anniversary and that of her ancestors 31 v. Sister Bridly zu Rhein 5 gulden For Mathisen Schriber and Hansen Obrest during their lifetime, and upon their death: for their anniversary and that of Sister Adelheid von Eptingen 33 v. ? Sister Bridly zu Rhein 5 gulden For the anniversary of von Eptingen who lost their life during the Battle of Sempach (1386), Junker Petermas, Junker Burkhard, Junker Hans, Junker Cüntzlis, Junker Thi…?, Junker Heinrich, and Adelheid von Grandwik and Agnes von Windegg (Continued) 134 Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book Page Anniversary Founder Endowment Notes 33 v. ? 2 gulden For the anniversary of Neslin von Eptingen 33 v. ? 2 gulden For the anniversary of Junker Thurings von Eptingen and Junker Bernhard von Eptingen and his son 33 v. S. Sebastian 2 gulden For the anniversary of Grede von Landberg 34 v. Wednesday before Maria Asumptionis (1460) Veren von Eptingen 3 gulden For her anniversary 34 v. Monday after Peter and Paul (1451) Junker Jacob von Eptingen 2 gulden, 1 ruby 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 36 v. John Baptist To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 10 gulden Die city of Masmünster (Masevaux) gives the money on St. John Baptist 36 v. S. Martin To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 4 pounds, 5 shilling Klingental gives annually 36 v. To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 2 viernzel spelt, 9 viernzel rye, 2 viernzel oat Prior and the convent of Rotenhaus give annually 36 v. To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 10 viernzel half spelt and half oats Peter Teken gives annually 36 v. To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen one-eighth of the tithe from Knoeringue, 6 of 8 vierzel Money Annually 36 v. To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 1. 11 viernzel and 4 sester 1/3 oats, 2/3 spelt, and 5 chickens 2. 6 viernzel and 3 chickens 3. 3 viernzel and 2 chickens Give annually 1. Cuntz von Sept, called Brun 2. Lienhart Böglis 3. Wernli Riechers von Hegeheim 37 v. To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 2 viernzel spelt, 2 small sester of oats, and 2 chickens Röw von(?) gives annually Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book 135 37 v. Der 4 Kornfasten To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 10 viernzel rye The Miller of Hamerstein gives annually 37 v. S. Martin To be added to the prebends of von Eptingen 5 shillings and 2 chickens Wernli Hurnlis zu Barsheim gives annually 37 v. The prebends of von Eptingen The sum of the prebends: 10 gulden 10 pounds, 40 viernzel spelt, rye, and oats, and 9 chickens 46 v. S. Katharine Sister Grede von Munsingen 5 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 47 v. S. Benedictus Those von Rosenstein 7 viernzel money 4 viernzel for anniversary, 1 viernzel for Dominicans, 1 viernzel for Franciscans, 1 viernzel for Augustinians, and 1 viernzel for the women of S. Klara 47 v. Marian Feast Day during Lent Sister Clara Zeringerin 2 viernzel money „über den tisch geben“ 47 v. Gordiani and Epimachii Frau von Bucheck 85 viernzel money 47 v. Gordiani and Epimachii Frau von Usenberg 2 viernzel money „über den tisch geben“ 48 v. Between Easter and Pentecost Hans von Westerhofen 9 pounds and 4 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 48 v. Candlemas Those von Maggenburg 4 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 48 v. Candlemas Sister Clara and Sister Anne von Ramstein 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 48 v. S. Margrete Sister Anna von Neuenburg 4 gulden 48 v. S. Jacob Frau von Budren(?) 1 pound „über den tisch geben“ 50 v. S. Jacob Those von Kestelen 1 pound and 1 gulden 50 v. Yppolliti Brother Remmunt and (?) 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ (Continued) 136 Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book Page Anniversary Founder Endowment Notes 50 v. Yppolliti Frau von Biel and Frau von Neuenstein 1 pound tithe money 50 v. Between Christmas and Carneval Sister Gred Brennerin 1 pound money 51 v. S. Anthony Herr von Pfirt 5 pound 51 v. Morning A woman 14 pound and 1 viernzel grain money „über den tisch geben“ 51 v. A man 5 schatz vines 4 shilling of which “„über den tisch geben“” 51 v. A priest 47 pounds 51 v. A man 3 pounds 51 v. Frau zur Blumen 10 shillings „über den tisch geben“ 52 V. ? Sister Elsme zum Thor 4 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 52 V. S. Agnes Sister Metzina von Haus und ihre Mutter 2 pounds and 2 shilling „über den tisch geben“ 52 V. S. Agnes Hedine von Aspach 20 marks and 15 shilling „über den tisch geben“ 53 V. S. Agnes Meister Simon von Marx(?) and Ursel Binigerin, his wife 4 gulden + (?) money 26 pounds 53 V. S. Agnes A woman 1 viernzel money 53 V. ? Frau Ursel von Waltpach die Wegenstetterin 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 53 V. S. Paul A man 8 pounds while alive, and after his and his wife’s deaths: 2 fields worth 20 pounds 54 V. ? S. Paul A man 3 pounds 54 V. ? S. Paul Frau von Pfirt 30 pounds 54 V. Morning Herr Hug Munch 6 shilling „über den tisch geben“ Tabular Content of Klingental's Anniversary Book 137 54 V. A woman 2 viernzel grain money 54 V. Wernher Bartz 30 pounds 55 r. Thursday before Our Lady at Candlemas Testament of Hans von Eschenberg, bursar of Klingental On this day died Hans von Eschenberg, his bequest is rendered here 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 5 gulden For the anniversary of his father, mother, and ancestors; two shilling of each gulden for the masses 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 4 gulden For the anniversary of the faithful and all those who were good to him 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 14 gulden, 4 pounds, and 6 shilling For the maintenance of the church and where it is needed 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 1 gulden For reading lights (candles) in the choir 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 9 gulden For Sisters Enelin and Margretten von Eschenberg; upon one of their deaths: 4 gulden to the convent, half of it for her anniversary; when both have died: the entirety for the anniversary of the two sisters and Hans von Eschenberg’s parents. If the sisters leave the convent, the entirety will be given to the convent 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 5 gulden For Barbara, his wife, during her lifetime, and upon her death: for her parent’s anniversary 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg His grain money: for the grainary 55 r. Testament of Hans von Eschenberg 2 wiger, 2 j(?) for the convent 55 v. Candlemas, eve A woman 10 shilling „über den tisch geben“ 55 v. Candlemas, eve Frau von Hus, Frau von Baldegk 25 pounds and 2 gulden Anniversary for Frau von Hus, 2 gulden „über den tisch geben“ 55 v. Candlemas, eve Herr Burkard von Muntzigen, chaplain at Klingental 10 gulden 20 pounds and 4 viernzel money for the grainary, along with 4 pounds minus 5 shilling (Continued)