Heilsbronn von der Gründung 1132 bis 1321: Das Beziehungsgeflecht eines Zisterzienserklosters im Spiegel seiner Quellenüberlieferung (review)

The Academy of Sciences in Göttingen has assumed oversight of the Germania Sacra (see ante, 96 [2010]: 755). In a welcome innovation, it is publishing supplementary historical monographs as well as the series’ well-known studies of specific institutions that arrange all the available evidence in accordance with a standard format. This first book of the new type is a slightly revised version of the dissertation of Miriam Montag-Erlwein (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2007). She set out to demonstrate that monasteries helped to integrate and shape the identity of the region where they were situated. The Cistercian abbey of Heilsbronn, southwest of Nuremberg, lends itself to such an examination because there are 384 extant charters—regrettably, only twenty-seven date from the twelfth century—for the period between the monastery’s foundation and 1321, the death of an influential abbot. A 1483 necrology, surviving tombs and coats of arms in the church, and the extensive abbatial library—which has been in Erlangen since the eighteenth century—supply additional information. Montag-Erlwein studies in almost stupefying detail the abbey’s relations with the papacy, the monarchy, the three Franconian bishops, the nobility, and nearby imperial cities, as well as what the provenance of its manuscripts—many originated in Paris—reveals about its intellectual horizons.

Bishop Otto I of Bamberg (1102–39) founded the abbey in 1132 in the Diocese of Eichstätt to strengthen Bamberg’s territorial influence in a region that also bordered on the Bishopric of Würzburg. After 1200 Heilsbronn freed itself from its ordinary and Bamberg, but maintained close ties to Würzburg, where it sold its surplus agricultural commodities. Otto appointed the nearby Count Rapoto I of Abenberg, who was the advocate of Bamberg, as the protector (defensor) of Heilsbronn; his son, Rapoto II, may have become a monk; and the first abbot, Rapoto, may have been an Abenberg. After the death, around 1200, of the last of the Abenbergs, who used Heilsbronn as their burial church and who were remembered as the founders, the Staufen assumed the advocacy. Heilsbronn benefited from the frequent stays of the post-Interregnum kings in Nuremberg, where the abbey acquired considerable property and where its dependents settled. The monks turned to Rome for protection when relations with the king deteriorated. The counts of Zollern (the ancestors of the later kings of Prussia), who became the burgraves of Nuremberg around 1192 and who descended from the Abenbergs, made Heilsbronn their necropolis a century later as they consolidated their power. Their noble relatives and ministerials were among the chief benefactors of the abbey. Between 1200 and 1321, at least thirty-six lower noble families made around seventy-four donations to assure their salvation. No other Franconian church enjoyed comparable support.

Although Montag-Erlwein has assembled a prodigious amount of information, her work will be of interest primarily to local specialists because she has not made it accessible to others. There is no introductory general history of the abbey; instead, she plunges into an examination of Heilsbronn’s relations with the papacy. She first discusses Bishop Otto on page 150 and the Abenbergs on page 266.There are no maps or genealogies. There is an extensive bibliography, but some more general works that might have been useful are missing. Constance Hoffman Berman’s The Cistercian Evolution (Philadephia, 2000) might have provided an insight into why it is unclear whether Otto initially intended to found a Cistercian house.The author lists an article by Joseph Morsel, but not his La noblesse contre le prince: L’espace social des Thüngen à la fin du Moyen Age (Franconie, vers 1250–1525) (Stuttgart, 2000). The Academy of Sciences should consider how the larger scholarly community might be better served.