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Reviewed by:
  • Das Zisterzienserinnen-, später Benediktinerinnenkloster St. Aegidii zu Münster
  • John B. Freed
Das Zisterzienserinnen-, später Benediktinerinnenkloster St. Aegidii zu Münster. By Wilhelm Kohl. [Germania Sacra, Die Kirche des Alten Reiches und ihre Institutionen, Dritte Folge, 1: Die Bistümer der Kirchenprovinz Köln, Das Bistum Münster 10.] (New York: de Gruyter. 2009. Pp. xxiv, 562. $182.00. ISBN 978-3-110-21254-9.)

Paul Fridolin Kehr—a Protestant—founded the Germania Sacra in 1917 to study the Church in the Holy Roman Empire, and eight volumes were published [End Page 754] in the original series under the auspices of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für deutsche Geschichte. In 1956 the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte assumed direction of the project, and another fifty volumes appeared in the new series. The latter institute closed in 2007, and the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen took over the undertaking. For unspecified reasons, the statutes of the Union of German Academies require fundamental changes in the program. Monographs currently in preparation have been grandfathered in and will appear by 2018, but additional work, to be completed by 2032, will be limited to bishoprics and cathedral chapters that existed in 1500 and that are situated in the Federal Republic. In the case of the Diocese of Münster, the Germania Sacra has published nineteen volumes, twelve of them by Wilhelm Kohl, including this one, the first in the third series, which appeared in conjunction with his ninety-fifth birthday. His study of the Cistercian abbey of Marienfeld is also due in 2009, and six more monographs are in progress, but twenty-five additional houses will remain unstudied.

The Germania Sacra provides a standard format, in which all the available, largely unpublished archival data are placed: sources, literature, and monuments; archives and library; historical overview; constitution; religious and intellectual life; possessions; and personnel. There is some repetition, and the narrative often needs to be pieced together. For example, in the case of St. Giles (Egidius in Latin, sunte Ilien or the ligature Tilien in Low German, or even Gillis, derived from the French), the fate of the church building after the dissolution of the convent in 1811, when Münster was part of Napoleonic France, is discussed before the foundation of the convent.

In spite of the massive amount of material assembled by Kohl, very little is really known about this rather undistinguished convent. Since he relies a great deal on visitation reports, the story may be unduly negative. The priest Lüdiger (whose distinct name suggests he was a kinsman of Alheidis, the first abbess and sister of Count Lüdiger II of Wöltingerode-Wohldenberg) founded shortly before 1184, within the city of Münster, a church dedicated to St. Giles. The convent was established around 1206 next to the church, and by 1229 the church doubled as a parish church. The provost, who was responsible for the nuns' spiritual welfare, acted on their behalf in secular matters, was appointed by the abbess, and served as the parish priest. The convent followed the Cistercian Rule, but it was never formally affiliated with the order; and the nuns' lifestyle from the start resembled that of secular canonesses. In the 1460s the bishop forced the convent to join the Benedictine Bursfeld reform congregation, and conditions improved. The majority of the nuns were enthusiastic supporters of the Münster Anabaptists in 1534-35, but some semblance of external order had been restored by 1571. However, the nuns never took enclosure or silence seriously. Discipline was particularly lax by the late-eighteenth century. For example, the nuns demanded in 1784 in an electoral capitulation that every nun be permitted to visit her relatives and friends three or four weeks a year [End Page 755] and to have her personal maid. In short, St. Giles was a comfortable asylum for women of the lower nobility.

It is unfortunate that more of the raw data was not analyzed and integrated into the brief historical overview, and the whole placed into the context of local and German history. Two examples would have been worth exploring. The most important provost was Otto Beckman (1529...

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