Orden und Klöster im Zeitalter von Reformation und katholischer Reform, 1500–1700 (review)

This final volume of a well-conceived and skillfully executed overview of religious orders within German lands during the Reformation era covers the Praemonstratensians (men and women), Augustinian Canons, Augustinian Canonesses, Williamite Hermits, Celestines, Antonite Hospitalers, Conventual Franciscans, Observant Franciscans, and Capuchins. Sadly, an article on Dominican nuns failed to materialize (Dominican friars were covered in volume 2). Volume 1 was reviewed in ante, XCII (July 2006), 315–17, and volume 2 in XCIV (January 2008), 216–17.

The longest chapters are given over to the Franciscan Observants and Capuchins. The former represent the only order that came out of the Reformation period larger and more widespread than it was in 1500 (c. 163 houses in 1500, c. 132 in 1555, c. 201 in 1648, and c. 260 in 1700). The chapter on the Observants underscores the strength of their role in resisting the attacks on monasticism in the 1520s and resisting Protestantism in general (p. 188ff.), whereas many other orders saw wholesale defections. The Capuchins, founded in the 1520s and 1530s in Italy, also experienced remarkable growth in German-speaking regions from the later sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Strikingly, the Observant upswing especially gained momentum late in the Thirty Years' War as the Observants moved into areas retaken by the Catholic armies, most significantly in the Saxon province (pp. 200–01).

The editors' foreword looks back over the three volumes and draws a balance sheet: in 1500, approximately 2550 houses of men and women religious existed in the German regions. By the mid-1600s, c. 1350 houses remained, to which may be added ninety-three Protestant women's houses (Damenstifte). In other words, about 1200 houses were dissolved during the Reformation era (a few of these were victims of the Turkish advance in the East and other vicissitudes). The valuable maps, one after the other, illustrate graphically the primary source of the losses, as in map after map, white space replaces a landscape once dotted with monastic establishments in the heartland of the Protestant movement in the area from Saxony north to the Baltic and in the northern Netherlands, contrasting with the ongoing, thickly populated religious order landscape along the Rhine Valley and in Westphalia and the more mixed picture in Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, the Main River basin, and Switzerland. The "clean sweep" phenomenon is seen most clearly in the maps of the Cistercian nuns (vol. 1), the Augustinian Canons, and the Augustinian Canonesses (including Windesheim Congregation, vol. 3).

But the story told in these volumes does not deal merely with losses. Approximately 700–800 new foundations were made in the Catholic regions of the Empire from the mid-1500s to about 1700. Here the new orders (Ursulines, vol. 1; Congregatio Jesu or Mary Ward Sisters, vol. 2; Jesuits, vol. 2; Discalced Carmelites, vol. 2; Poor Clares, vol. 2; Capuchins, vol. 3) are most prominent but also appearing are Franciscan Observants (vol. 3), which had an "astonishing development" (p. 8). The Capuchins made so many new foundations that a separate map was required to chart them all.

Surprisingly, as the editors note, a survey of the valuable bibliographies appended to each chapter throughout the three volumes indicates that the relationship of the religious orders to the Council of Trent remains inadequately studied. Not every chapter follows the set roster of topics more characteristic of the earlier volumes, but nonetheless, most chapters contain some information about spirituality and educational levels alongside the external fortunes of the various orders. The very interesting Williamites were given space disproportionate to the order's minuscule size. Human interest tidbits abound, such as the early-seventeenth-century Praemonstratensian abbot who was a "theologian, mathematician, organ-builder, and technician" (p. 12). The book concludes with an alphabetical listing of the chapters of all three volumes...