The Apostolic Penitentiary in Local Contexts

...Monasterium Ipsum (Sie Licentia) Excavit: A Familiar Image for the Fifteenth-Century Dioceses of Passau and Salzburg?

... MONASTERIUM IPSUM (SINE LICENTIA) EXIVIT A FAMILIAR IMAGE FOR THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DIOCESES OF PASSAU AND SALZBURG? Gerhard Jaritz The phenomena of ‘stability’ and ‘mobility’ played an important role in any medieval discourse about monastic space. The highest number and largest variety, however, can be traced in the sources of the fifteenth century. Concentrating on the dioceses of Passau and Salzburg, this contribution will deal with the role of vagrant monks and apostates in the supplications to the Apostolic Penitentiary1 from the thirties to the eighties of the fifteenth century, comparing it with the respective source evidence of some individual religious houses, monastic statutes and General Chapter decisions. I will trace contexts for the general or ‘global’ discussion of the phenomenon and the ‘local’ situation that concerned individual areas and communities .2 Thus, the information taken from the Penitentiary records can be recognised and evaluated in wider contexts and interrelations, of quantity as well as quality.3 1 Concerning apostasy and transitus in the registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary see, for the German areas, Ludwig Schmugge, Patrick Hersperger, and Béatrice Wiggenhauser, Die Supplikenregister der päpstlichen Pönitentiarie aus der Zeit Pius’ II., Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 84 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996), 117-125 (henceforth: Schmugge, Supplikenregister); Milena Svec, “Apostasie und Transitus in der Registerüberlieferung und in partibus,” in The Roman Curia, the Apostolic Penitentiary and the Partes in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Kirsi Salonen and Christian Krötzl, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae 28 (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2003), 184-200 (henceforth: Svec, “Apostasie”). 2 Concerning the problem generally, see Laurent Mayal, “Du vagabondage à l’apostasie. Le moine fugitif dans la société médiévale,” in Religiöse Devianz. Untersuchungen zu sozialen, rechtlichen und theologischen Reaktionen auf religiöse Abweichungen im westlichen und östlichen Mittelalter, ed. Dieter Simon, Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 48 (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1990), 121-142 (henceforth: Mayal, “Vagabondage ”). For the German area, see, e. g., Gerd Heinrich, “Klosterflucht und Klosterzucht im 15. Jahrhundert ,” Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 12 (1963), 195-206; Thomas Füser, Mönche im Konflikt : Zum Spannungsfeld von Norm, Devianz und Sanktion bei den Cisterciensern und Cluniazensern (12. bis frühes 14. Jahrhundert), Vita regularis. Ordnungen und Deutungen religiösen Lebens im Mittelalter 9 (Münster, Hamburg and London: Lit Verlag, 1990), 260-324; for England, Christopher Harper-Bill, “Monastic Apostasy in Late Medieval England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 32 (1981), 1-18; Francis Donald Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England (c. 1240-1540) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); for Italy, Ora- ... MONASTERIUM IPSUM (SINE LICENTIA) EXIVIT 86 Checking, for instance, the statutes of the General Chapters of the Cistercians and the Carthusians that refer to monachi vagantes and problems they raised, one can trace an obvious development. Generally, these monks were clearly seen as destabilising factors of monastic life.4 Until the end of the fourteenth century and again from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards one occasionally comes across statutes condemning the migration of monks into the secular world. Their number, however, was rather low.5 One was aware of the problem, but it did not seem to be of major importance . In the first half of the fifteenth century one comes across a rising number of statutes on monachi vagantes that concerned entire orders; moreover, increasing numbers of cases of individual monks were also treated by the General Chapters. These cases are almost regularly dealt with in a similar way: A monk had left his community and had provoked scandal, either in another monastery or in the secular world. The Chapter ordered him to be sent back to the monastery where he had made his profession, and the abbot there was advised to handle the situation.6 The late medieval Cistercian and Carthusian General Chapter statutes compared such mobile monks with the gyrovagi of the rule of Saint Benedict: … semper vagi et numquam stabiles, et propriis voluntatibus et gulae illecebris servientes … .7 zio Condorelli, Clerici peregrini. Aspetti giuridici della mobilità clericale nei secoli XII-XIV (Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galilei, 1995). 3 The source material of the Penitentiary used here are the entries from the dioceses of Salzburg and Passau in the registers published in the Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, vol. 1: 1431-1447 – 6: 14711484 , ed. Ludwig Schmugge et al. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996-2005) (henceforth: RPG). 4 See, e. g., Kaspar Elm and Peter Feige, “Der Verfall des zisterziensischen Ordenslebens im sp...