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MONK, THIEF, ARSONIST: THE ADVENTUROUS FATE OF A RUNAWAY RELIGIOUS Milena Svec Goetschi Was it thoughtlessness, adventurous desire or a certain violent disposition? Half a millennium later we cannot know why a certain Johannes Opser (Oppseer/Opasser1), a Premonstratensian canon, escaped from the monastery of Weissenau in the diocese of Constance and joined predatory mercenary troops. Two supplications in the Penitentiary registers from the years 1450 and 14512 refer to his escape and his adventurous fate and shall be examined in the course of this article. In one of his supplications, Johannes explains that he was enticed to escape by carelessness and by the cajolery of the devil.3 Not only did Johannes commit apostasy by illicitly abandoning his monastery without permission of his superior, but he subsequently made himself guilty of such misdeeds that only one person could grant him absolution and dispensation – it was speciali modo reserved to the pope, in his case Nicholas V. Interdiction and transgression, order and disobedience, crime and punishment often go together in human history. Not surprisingly monastic communities were also susceptible to temptation; all the more when considering that the persons of the reli1 Although the name Opasser/Oppseer is spelt slightly differently, the first name, origin, order and date of the supplications clearly indicate that the same person is meant. See also Ludwig Schmugge, Kirche, Kinder, Karrieren. Päpstliche Dispense von der unehelichen Geburt im Spätmittelalter (Zurich: Artemis und Winkler, 1995), 126-127 (henceforth: Schmugge, Kirche). According to Schmugge, complaints about sloppy register entries were an everyday occurrence at the curia. In addition, Italian-speaking writers had difficulties spelling German names correctly. Because the Italian phoneme system does not support the consonant cluster, they inserted vowels so as not to violate the phonotactic constraints of their language. 2 Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum. Verzeichnis der in den Supplikenregistern der Pönitentiarie vorkommenden Personen, Kirchen und Orte des Deutschen Reiches, vol. 2.: Nikolaus V. (1447–1455), ed. Ludwig Schmugge, Krystyna Bukowska and Alessandra Mosciatti, indices by Hildegard Schneider-Schmugge and Ludwig Schmugge (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999) (henceforth: RPG II), 723 (11. 12. 1450 for Johannes Opasser) and 878 (20. 10. 1451 for Johannes Oppseer). 3 RPG II, 878. MILENA SVEC GOETSCHI 96 gious orders were obliged by their vows and strictly committed to obedience, self-abandonment and the conversio morum. Religious people had to abandon all secular belongings and relations and die a symbolic death. They were strictly bound to their communities through the stabilitas loci and were not allowed to leave the convent without the consent of their superiors.4 Escaping from the monastery – and thus re-entering secular life – represented a serious offence against their vows and canon law. A legal means of leaving a religious house was by being sent to another community of the same or a different order (transitus ad alium ordinem). But this had to be artioris vitae causa, that is, of an equivalent or stricter monastic rule. However, the general trend was that monastic orders tried to limit the transitus of members of mendicant or canonical orders. The Carthusians were considered the severest and, therefore, a valid destination order, although they restricted transfers from other orders by resolutions of their General Chapter.5 Illicit and illegal changes of convents and monasteries (even caused by ignorance) were treated almost like apostasy. From the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1295–1303), leaving a monastery without permission and disposing of the habit caused excommunication latae sententiae reserved to the pope. The ban became immediately effective (ipso facto) by committing the act of apostasy.6 Whether from an old, canon or mendicant order, whether monk or nun, common to all religious fugitives was that they were ipso facto excommunicated and as casus reservati reserved to the pope. Apostates therefore needed a papal letter of grace if they wanted to serve in compliance with the rule. 4 As was already stated in the Rule of St. Benedict; Adalbert de Vogüé (ed.), La Règle de s. Benoît, vol. II, SC 182 (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1972), c. LXVII, 662: De fratribus in viam directis […] 7 […] qui praesumpserit claustra monasterii egredi vel quocumque ire vel quippiam quamuis parvum sine iussione abbatis facere. See also Thomas Füser, Mönche im Konflikt. Zum Spannungsfeld von Norm, Devianz und Sanktion bei den Cisterziensern und Cluniazensern (12. bis frühes 14. Jahrhundert), Vita regularis. Ordnungen und Deutungen religiösen Lebens im Mittelalter , ed. Gert Melville, vol. 9 (Münster: LIT, 2000), 314. 5 See, in...

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