Das Zisterzienserinnenkloster Fraubrunnen: von der Gründing bis zur Reformation 1246–1528 (review)

Jürg Leuzinger’s study of the Cistercian nuns of Fraubrunnen is typical of German-language monographs on individual Cistercian houses. After a survey of the recent publications on German Cistercian economies, including the almost obligatory citation of John Freed’s “Urban Development and the Cura Monialium in Thirteenth-Century Germany” (Viator, 1972), it turns to a discussion of surviving sources (charters, necrologies, and property survey of 1380) for the abbey of Cistercian nuns at Fraubrunnen and its affiliation in 1246–49 into the Cistercian order.

Leuzinger in chapter 2 traces the origins of the Cistercians in the eremitical movements of Ss. Romuald of Ravenna, John Gualbert, Bruno of Cologne, and Norbert of Xanten, before turning to the story of St. Robert of Molesme and the foundation at Cîteaux. A standard discussion follows of the order’s constitutional organization (dated to 1115), and of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and his writings. A third section turns to the expansion of the communities of Cistercian monks and nuns into the German-speaking realm by way of the abbeys of Morimond and Clairvaux—an expansion laid out in family trees; figure 2 features Morimond’s foundation of Bellevaux in 1119, which in turn founded Lützel in 1124.

Lützel would be prolific in its foundations, with three daughter-houses of monks at Frienisberg (1131), Salem (1134), and St. Urban (1194); and five women’s houses at Olsberg (1234), Rathausen (1245), Michelfelden (1250), Wurmsbach (1259), and Engental (1450). That first daughter-house of Frienisberg in turn founded three houses of nuns, including the object of the present study: Fraubrunnen in 1246, Steinen bei Schwyz in 1262, and Tedlingen in 1282. Salem would have three daughter-houses (two for nuns) and St. Urban one daughter-house, for nuns. In contrast, Clairvaux had only three houses of nuns in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland among the total of fifteen houses of Cistercian nuns in that region.

After an excursus on the development of Cistercian colleges and educational institutions in the thirteenth century (one that does see change over time), Leuzinger turns to “Cistercian Nuns and Their Order.” This discussion follows the usual trajectory: beginning with Grundmann, Krenig, Kuhn-Rehfus, Degler-Spengler, Lekai, and Gerd Ahlers’s study of Cistercian nuns in Lower Saxony (Berlin, 2002). He argues that only after the Norbertines had expelled their nuns at the end of the twelfth century did the Cistercian order begin to accept women. Earlier than that, foundations at Jully, le Tart, and elsewhere were the private initiatives of individual abbots, not of the General Chapter. This section concludes with the standard citations of what that General Chapter had to say about nuns in the published statutes from the thirteenth century. The author does not engage with the notion that there are so few statutes from the twelfth century that one cannot argue from their silence (that there were no Cistercian nuns then), nor does he entertain the idea that the order’s early history or its engagement with nuns were both evolving over time.

The rest of the volume describes Fraubrunnen itself and its foundation in 1246 by the Kyburger family, which had also founded a house of Dominican nuns in 1233 and would later found the house of Cistercian nuns at Maigrauge in 1259. The Cistercian General Chapter incorporated Fraubrunnen in 1249–50, and a functioning community and abbess existed there by 1258. It had the usual range of properties and visitors. Fraubrunnen was reformed by the city of Berne in 1528, the point at which the author ends his study. This is solid work based on surviving sources, but not entirely engaging with recent debates over the order or its nuns.