Beginen im Bodenseeraum by Andreas Wilts (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 261 Beginen im Bodenseeraum, By Andreas Wilts. [Bodensee-Bibliothek, Band 37] (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag. 1994. Pp. 508; 1 color plate. DM 78,-.) In this meticulously researched Habilitationsschrift Andreas Wilts has examined the Béguines from two methodological perspectives. First, he has employed a regional approach, that is, he has looked at all the houses of Béguines situated in the Lake Constance region, which he defines as the area which was under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan friaries in Constance, Lindau, Überlingen, and Schaffhausen. This analysis is based on a 169-page appendix that contains the histories of all known communities of Béguines in the region prior to the Reformation. Second, Wilts seeks explanations that do justice to the diversity of the movement, both geographically and chronologically . Previous scholars, in his opinion, have offered either general explanations that have concentrated on only one facet of the movement (for example, Karl Bücher's view that béguinages were asylums for unwanted women is based largely on late-medieval evidence) or have written descriptions of individual convents that have ignored the broader interpretive questions. The first appearance of the Béguines in the region in the second decade of the thirteenth century was part of the European-wide search for apostolic perfection. Wilts rejects Joseph Greven's thesis that the Béguines were frustrated nuns who were forced to develop their unique lifestyle because the older male orders refused to assume the care of additional nunneries. Rather, they were women who sought to live an active life in the world supported by their own work and begging but who were impeded by their gender from doing so. The movement's diversity was caused by the women's differing responses to Ulis conundrum. If anything, religious opportunities for women in the Diocese of Constance had declined in the twelfth century as the few existing double houses were dissolved. Here, I would have liked an explanation why the region was so inhospitable to women religious compared, say, to Saxony in the tenth century or the Archdiocese ofSalzburg, where Benedictine and Augustinian double houses flourished during the High Middle Ages. Communities of Béguines founded before 1230, normally by women inspired by the preaching of the Fifth Crusade, were transformed into Benedictine and Cistercian nunneries. The most important were affiliated with the Cistercian Abbey of Salem. After the appearance of the friars, die women gravitated toward them. The more traditional Dominicans with their emphasis on learned contemplation, at first reluctantly and after the 1250's deliberately, encouraged the Béguines' claustration. The Franciscans' own ideals were more attuned to the women's aspirations, and most of the remaining Béguines, roughly 80 percent in the Later Middle Ages, became Franciscan tertiaries. Wilts emphasizes that while there were significant differences in the social composition of individual houses, the majority of Béguines, whether or not 262 BOOK REVIEWS they became nuns or lived in the countryside, were of urban origin. He presents his findings about the Béguines' social origins in an appendix. The movement was thus a response to both the problems and the opportunities created by medieval urbanization. The publication of the Constitutions of Vienne in 1317 accelerated the institutionalization of the movement; the Béguines were forced to become Franciscan tertiaries to escape the suspicion of heresy. Some of die urban houses remained true to the original ideals of ministering to the needy but were closely supervised by the municipal authorities. The majority of new late-medieval foundations were established in the countryside, but these communities were small. These rural Béguines assumed many ofthe characteristics of inclusae whose cells were attached to a parish church or anchoresses. It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the complexity of Wilts's arguments, but his book is required reading for anyone with an interest in the Béguines. John B. Freed Illinois State University Eckhardus Theutonicus, homo docttis et sanctus. Nachweise und Berichte zum Prozess gegen Meister Eckhart Edited by Heinrich Stirnimann in collaboration with Ruedi Imbach. [Dokimion, Band 11.] (Freiburg/ Schweiz: Universitätsverlag. 1992. Fp. x, 312. 49 S.Fr. paperback.) In the 1980's...