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Persecuted by the Unknowing. The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine (c. 1290 – c. 1350). Part Two

Walter Simons

Résumés

Le deuxième des quatre essais consacrés aux swesteren et lollards examine les campagnes menées contre eux par les évêques de Rhénanie dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle, en particulier le procès intenté à un Walter “de Hollande” et d’autres à Cologne en 1326, qui précipita la diaspora du mouvement. Il s’intéresse également au soutien qu’ils reçurent de la part de patrons, parfois riches, qui les soutenaient et finançaient les logements de ces pauvres volontaires, tandis que leur mouvement s’étendait de la basse vallée du Rhin vers la Flandre et différentes régions d’Europe centrale et du nord-ouest, jusqu’en Pologne, mais presque exclusivement dans des régions de langue allemande.

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Part Two: The Ecclesiastical Campaigns Against the Swesteren and Lollards

Rhineland Measures, 1307-1320

  • 1 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 172-187, nr. 7 (see also Part One, note 17). For al (...)
  • 2 Zur Lunge, located in St Aposteln parish, is discussed in Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a).
  • 3 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 72, nr. 373. A brief biography of John Duns Scotus (who reportedly w (...)

1Archbishop Henry of Cologne’s call for action against beggardi et beggarde, at the synod of 13 February 13071, had immediate consequences for the lollard convent zur Lunge in the city, established less than a year before2. According to a charter issued by archbishop Henry on 3 September 1308, the priest of the St Aposteln parish had excommunicated the brethren a month after the synod, as prescribed by the synodal statutes, which imposed the sentence on all suspects who did not cast off their habits and resumed the life of ordinary lay people within that period. The brothers must have enjoyed public support, however, since “trustworthy men” vouched for them in a subsequent enquiry, prompting Henry to lift the excommunication. The archbishop declared the brothers “obedient and proven to be of good life and conduct”, took them into his protection as his “poor people” (pauperes homines nostrae), and requested the parish priest to support their activities3.

  • 4 Lohr, Beiträge, vol. 2, p. 76-77, nr. 152.
  • 5 Johag, Beziehungen, p. 146, and Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 177-178 doubt there was such an impact.

2The 1307 statutes may have affected attitudes of traditional beguines eager to distance themselves from the suspect men and women. In 1308 Katerina de Bunna, a beguine, left her house after her death to her sisters as long as they lived as beguines; their community should consist of twelve “good and poor beguines, and not ‘swestrisses’” (begginabus bonis et pauperibus et non swestrissis)4. Our documentation in the following years is too limited to determine to what extent those sentiments were shared and had an impact on donations to swesteren5.

  • 6 See Part One, notes 7 through 28.
  • 7 This famous source was edited anew shortly after the publication of HFS by PSB, p. 127-142, nr.  (...)
  • 8 The Trier statutes of 1310 had described their clothing as “tabards and long tunics with large h (...)
  • 9 The Trier status of 1310 also mentioned that these suspect beghards [=lollards] had started to f (...)
  • 10 There is a large literature on these allegations; I will refer only to HFS, p. 85-93 and Wehrli- (...)
  • 11 Wehrli-Johns, “Mystik”, p. 234, note 50, believes that use of the term beginis must mean that th (...)
  • 12 PSB, p. 140-141.
  • 13 Urkundenbuch der Stadt Strassburg, I, Strassburg, Karl J. Trübner, 1879-1900, vol. 3, p. 620; ju (...)

3The decrees of the Council of Vienne certainly hardened the position of the Rhenish bishops6. Even before the official publication of Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum, but probably with knowledge of their general content, on 13 August 1317, bishop John I of Strassburg (present at Vienne) instructed the clergy of his diocese to proceed against the groups that had been in the crosshairs of the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz since 1307-1310, “those whom the people call ‘beghards and sisters Bread by God’ (Bêgehardos et swestriones Brot durch got) and who call themselves ‘the sect of the Free Spirit’ and ‘children’ or ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters of voluntary poverty’”7. They are given three days to end their begging with the slogan Brot durch got, and to put away their special habits, described as tunics split in the front to their belt and loose hoods for the men8, hooded cloaks for the swestriones; if not, they will be excommunicated. They will be cast out of the houses where they hold their “convents”9 and their books will be burned. The bishop then rejects at some length several statements presented as an antinomian doctrine, elements of which Robert Lerner traced back to ideas attributed to the Swabian Ries heretics, albeit not without the usual contradictions and additional layers introduced by the “wise and elected men” whom the bishop had consulted and who were – Martina Wehrli-Johns has insisted – drawing on contemporary scholastic assumptions about the so-called Amalrician heresy of the early thirteenth century10. The bishop formally exempted from suspicion all Franciscan Tertiaries and “beguines who live rightfully in the world” (beginis honestis secularibus, a possible echo of the “escape clause” in Cum de quibusdam, soon to be published)11, along with “others in the entourage of the approved religious orders and living according to their counsel”12. Actual evidence for the presence of the suspect groups in Strassburg, other than this decree, is limited: I know of only one house called zu der willigen armut in the city at the time, mentioned in 1308, but there may have been more13. In any case, neither bêgehardos nor swestriones are referenced in the ecclesiastical or civic records concerning Strassburg in the immediate aftermath of John’s inquisitio of 1317.

  • 14 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 254, nr. 6.
  • 15 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 260-271, nr. 18, at p. 269 (statute 12). My reading (...)
  • 16 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 260-261, nr. 1159.
  • 17 Wolter’s edition of statute 10 of the 1319 synodal decisions (see above, note 15), p. 267, bears (...)
  • 18 Hartzheim, Concilia, vol. 4, p. 268 and CDIN, vol. 1, p. 169-170, nr. 174, with a wrong date; Ko (...)

4In Cologne, archbishop Henry published the Clementine decrees partially in the fall synod, on 2 October 1318. Summarizing Cum de quibusdam in terms that stuck closely to the text, he ordered beguines to disband, i.e. to end their quasi-religious life in community and to cast off their habits, since the becginasii statu[s] was now abrogated by the Church; however, “faithful women wishing to lead lives of penitence in their homes” could do so, but not “as an order” (non ut ordinem)14. When during the fall synod of the next year (2 October 1319), Henry returned to the issue, a note of exasperation may be detected in his new statutes: parish priests had complained, he stated, that certain women continued to wear the “condemned habit”, albeit under a different guise; an alternate version of this statute makes clear these were beguines who adopted the rule of the Franciscan Third Order without altering their way of life or their dress. The archbishop once again declared the beguine status abolished and their dress forbidden. People living according to the rule of the Third Order were free to do so, “but not in that beguine dress” (dicto habitu baginarii excluso), and women were also allowed to lead a penitential life at home, as long as they did not obey a [beguine] mistress and were subject solely to parish authorities15. On the other hand, when Franciscans of Soest and Dortmund complained that female Tertiaries had been excommunicated and friars who defended them were being threatened, Henry wrote to the clergy of those cities that the Third Order had received papal approval and did not fall under the provisions of Cum de quibusdam (13 January 1320)16. Henry’s decrees of those years do not mention Ad nostrum, which may have been the subject of a separate publication17 – Henry’s suffragan, bishop Frederick of Utrecht published both Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum on 31 March 131818.

The Clementines and the Beghards of Flanders

  • 19 Technically, the eastern edge of Flanders along the Scheldt was held by the count from the Germa (...)
  • 20 A Tertiary convent in Saint-Omer existed in 1346, but we do not know for sure that it was origin (...)

5As we saw earlier on, Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum were rather blunt instruments for bishops to act against beguines of all kinds, either to end any collective enterprise that resembled monastic life but did not follow an accepted rule, or to launch inquiries about orthodoxy. Since only the latter decretal was relevant for beghards (not mentioned in Cum de quibusdam), and Ad nostrum explicitly focused on beghards and beguines in Alemannia, the promulgation of the Clementines did not immediately affect beghards outside Germany. The brethren of the beghard houses of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres, the three largest cities of the county of Flanders (a French “fief”19), continued their life without disturbance. Well established by 1318 and controlled by the formidable weavers’ guilds, the beghard convents of those cities had become important auxiliaries in the distribution of charitable aid and other assistance to ailing and elderly weavers. So close was the partnership in Ghent that the weavers’ guild came to hold its regular political meetings at the beghard convent. One imagines bishops might think twice before initiating a procedure against those convents without a truly compelling reason. Only in 1374-1376 did the beghards of Bruges transition to the Franciscan Third Order, to protect themselves against new inquisitions in Flanders launched by pope Gregory XI in 1372-137320.

  • 21 Part Four, at the relevant cities.

6The situation was different across the Scheldt, in Germany, where the Clementines forced beghards into the same escape route almost immediately. On 8 July 1318, or eight months after Pope John XXII had promulgated the Clementines, eighteen beghards of Louvain (probably the entire community, evicted from their house), identified by name, took their vows as Franciscan Tertiaries in the presence of a notary who recorded the fact. Fourteen beghards of Mechelen did the same two years later, on 5 October 1320 (again, they may have formed the complete convent). For the other beghard houses the precise dates of such transitions are not always known, but the beghards of Antwerp certainly had done likewise by 1321, those of Cologne (Olvunde convent), Aarschot, Diest, Liège, Maastricht, Sint-Truiden, and Zoutleeuw by 1328, of Aachen by 1333, and those of ‘s-Hertogenbosch between 1332 and 1335. Of four others (Middelburg, Roermond, Tienen, Zierikzee) we have no information other than that they functioned as houses of Tertiaries in 1346. In other words, of the eighteen convents of beghards known to exist in the “German” territories of our region by 1317, a clear majority of them (eleven) certainly adopted the Third Rule before 1333 and it is quite possible that they did so in the decade following the introduction of Ad nostrum. The only real outliers were the beghards of Brussels, where the weavers’ guild, skeptical of the Tertiaries’ willingness to observe guild rules, held back their transition until 1359, and those of the small city of Nivelles, where there were possibly only a few beghards left (the convent was reduced to a small hermitage by the end of the century)21.

  • 22 See the vows of Tertiary, Jan van Borsele, in Mechelen in 1344, ed. Vannérus, “Documents…Malines (...)
  • 23 Part Four: Antwerp, Beghards.
  • 24 CDIN, vol. 2, p. 74–77, nr. 45; Koorn, Begijnhoven, p. 19.
  • 25 AA, Klooster van de Derde Orde Antwerpen, nr. 4, fol. 61r-v and Antwerp, Felixarchief, Kerkelijk (...)
  • 26 AA, Klooster Bogaarden Antwerpen, nr. 1, charter at date 6 August 1341 (vidimus), ed. J. Van den (...)
  • 27 Vannérus, “Documents…Anvers”, p. 529 mistakenly omitted Brussels and counted only seventeen hous (...)
  • 28 Antwerp, Felixarchief, Kerkelijke en Caritatieve Instellingen, nr. 468, fol. 68r-v, ed. Van den (...)
  • 29 AA, Klooster Bogaarden Antwerpen, nr. 1, charter at date 26 June 1367.
  • 30 AA, Klooster van de Derde Orde Antwerpen, nr. 4, fol. 61v-64r (3 July 1372).

7Acceptance into the Franciscan Third Order involved a prior examination of orthodoxy, a noviciate of one year (possibly waved for the beghards of Louvain in 1318!), and of course a change of the habit. The vow itself explicitly included obedience to all precepts of the Church22. One of these houses, perhaps that of the beghards (now Tertiaries) of Antwerp, was also quick to obtain an original expedition of Pope John XXII’s Etsi apostolice sedis of 23 February 1319, exempting Tertiaries from the provisions of the Clementine decretals and protecting Franciscan friars in their ministry to the Third Order, and a copy of Supra montem, the rule of the Third Order of 1289, authenticated by two cardinals at Avignon on 12 March 131923. We know that the bishop of Utrecht (the spiritual authority overseeing beghards of Middelburg and Zierikzee) promoted the Third Order among beguines of his diocese as early as 131824. The bishop of Liège codified regulations supplementing Supra montem for Tertiaries of his diocese, evidently intended for beghards who had adopted the latter rule, on 22 May 1323 (confirmed in 1340). On 29 June 1326 he commented on the injunction, contained in Supra montem, to carefully screen candidates to these houses: too many had been admitted who “were a cause for scandal or suspicion among common Christian people”, he argued, and therefore admission should be done only by ministers (the common title of superiors in the Third Order) and brothers “who work with their hands”. In an effort to suppress all possible infiltration by lollards, the bishop expressly demanded that brethren “who beg for alms, as happened in older times” should be removed by the officialis of the diocese, along with all those who had been admitted wrongly, “if necessary with the help of the secular arm”25. The same bishop issued a copy of Pope Alexander IV’s Intentos cultui divino (13 May 1256) allowing penitents of Germany to hear mass and receive the sacraments in time of interdict, and declared it applicable to Tertiaries of his diocese, on 15 April 133126. Finally, on 29 September 1346, ministers of the following eighteen houses of male Tertiaries met, perhaps in Cologne, to agree on a collaboration across diocesan borders: Cologne (Olvunde), Aachen, Maastricht, Sint-Truiden, Saint-Omer, Zoutleeuw, Tienen, Louvain, Mechelen, Antwerp, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Aarschot, Diest, Ghent, Middelburg, Zierikzee, Brussels, and Roermond (in the order they are listed). In some ways these convents were diverse, located in six different dioceses (Thérouanne, Tournai, Utrecht, Cambrai, Liège, and Cologne), in both the kingdom of France (Flanders) and Germany. Most of them were former houses of beghards but two were not (Ghent and Brussels). The one unifying factor was the dominant language: all of these were in German- or Dutch-language territories, which explains the absence of Liège, in French-speaking land27. The ministers vowed mutual assistance (even financial) on issues of common concern, to admit to their houses only those who made a profession as Tertiaries, and to appoint two representatives of each house who would meet once a year, though we do not know if they actually did so28. In one of the two sixteenth-century copies, the agreement is followed by undated statutes for Tertairies that may have been agreed upon at this time by the eighteen ministers. Representatives from nine convents in Brabant, namely Brussels, Mechelen, Antwerp, Louvain, Aarschot, Diest, Sint-Truiden, Zoutleeuw, and Tienen met in 1367 in Tienen and appointed five brothers who would collect money from houses of Tertiaries in the Church provinces of Rheims and Cologne (quite a large area) to support the Order in those provinces29; in 1372, the convents of Louvain, Tienen, Diest, Maastricht, Sint-Truiden, Zoutleeuw, Roermond, Aarschot, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and Aachen, all in the Dutch- or German-speaking parts of the diocese of Liège, once again were concerned about deviants: they petitioned their bishop for stronger measures against apostates of the order, who had fled to neighboring dioceses and led dissolute lives, they claimed30.

Trouble for Lollards and Swesteren

  • 31 It is a misconception that the brothers of Zur Lunge in Cologne adopted the Augustinian rule “ar (...)

8In contrast to the beghards, lollards rejected the Third Rule of St Francis, or any other rule31. In 1317, when implementation of the Clementines began, there were in Cologne at least two convents of lollards and eight (possibly thirteen) houses of swesteren, and in Aachen there was at least one house of swesteren. Our information about these and the later settlements in Cologne, Aachen, and the Low Countries in the first half of the fourteenth century is often patchy, yet it seems possible to sketch the outlines of what happened to them.

  • 32 Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 182.
  • 33 Part Three: Cologne, Swesteren (e).
  • 34 See Part One, note 29.
  • 35 Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 182 believes Johannes was still a beghard in 1320; ABS, p. 171-172, how (...)
  • 36 It is therefore not quite correct to say that “real beghards never ever claimed to be priests” ((...)

9That swesteren were troubled, either on the basis of Cum de quibusdam, of Ad nostrum, or still because of the earlier Cologne proclamation of 1307, which had condemned their errors, dress, and public begging, is demonstrated by a remarkable deed, first noted by Letha Böhringer32, involving the convent of Zederwald in Cologne, founded in 1302 for “voluntary poor beguines” who were called “swesteren” in 131533. In 1320, the priest Johannes de Curia Burchgravii gave them a rent of 8 s. per year, but his description of the beneficiaries is remarkably vague: they form a societas pauperum feminarum (no “convent of swesteren”), and, in language reminiscent of that used by Giles of Repen when he worried about the fate of the beguinage of Tongeren in 131634, Johannes stipulated that, should “this community be destroyed and the women could no longer stay in that house”, the gift should evolve to the hospital of Allerheiligen, of which Johannes was a procurator. The deed further neglects to say that Johannes was not only a priest but also a “beghard” – or at least he was called that in 1313; documents from later years, until 1320, mention him as a priest but without the qualification “beghard”35. (We will encounter later other beghards who were priests, and early lollard communities also counted clerics or priests among them36.)

The Cologne trial of 1326: Walter “of Holland”

  • 37 Cronica regia Coloniensis, ed. George Waitz, MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholaru (...)
  • 38 On the stories recounted by John of Vicktring and John of Winterthur, see HFS, p. 30-31.
  • 39 Willem Procurator, Kroniek, ed. Marijke Gumbert-Hepp, Hilversum, Verloren, 2001, p. 368-370, dis (...)
  • 40 CDIN, vol. 1, p. 172-173, nr. 177, reproduces the passage from Trithemius’s Annales Hirsaugiense (...)
  • 41 HFS, p. 31 note 54.

10The most difficult years were indeed still to come. We are informed of one or more trials for heresy that occurred in the mid-1320s by several narrative sources and one official document. The most important of the narratives, and perhaps the only reliable one, is a Continuatio of the Chronica regia Coloniensis written shortly after the events, which offers a brief and relatively serene account. In 1326, it states, there was a heresy in Cologne that had started some years before and, at the request of archbishop Henry, was examined by learned men (“Dominicans, Franciscans and other religious”). After a long deliberation these men brought some of the heretics back to the correct faith, but “two priests, one layman, and six women persevered in the falsehood”. One of the two priests, called Walter and “the leader of the heresy”, was burned, while the others received a sentence of life in prison37. Other chroniclers, more distant from the events and offering slightly different dates in the 1320s, draw on the usual heresy paraphernalia (subterranean meetings, orgies) to produce sensational accounts that have been repeated ad nauseam in scholarship on the Free Spirit. We can safely discard them38, except to note that in far-away Holland, William “Procurator” (d. after 1332), a Benedictine at the venerable abbey of Egmond, left a quasi-contemporary narrative about the trial that is just as lurid and fantastic but identifies the heretics as beghards (and lollards). William believed that the events revealed “the evil of beghards, who emerged in Cologne after hiding in various parts of the world”, and one of the characters in his story joins a night-time orgy “dressed like a lollard”39. A very late source, Johannes Trithemius (d. 1516), also called Walter a lollard (as well as a fraticello!). Perhaps more importantly for us, he maintained that Walter came from Holland and wrote “little books” (libellos) in Dutch (Teuthonico); Walter supposedly knew little Latin or French but shrewdly misled simple people40. Normally we would safely ignore Trithemius, the renowned fabulist, and not try to “winnow out grains of truth from the chaff of such fables” (to quote Robert Lerner’s warning, about another tale41), were it not that some of this information is confirmed by other sources, as we will see.

  • 42 EQ, vol. 4, p. 115, nr. 130 (with the wrong date of 24 April 1326); Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p.  (...)
  • 43 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 384, nr. 1587 listed the (undated) beginning of Eckhart’s trial in C (...)
  • 44 ABS, p. 172-173, 175-176; Part Four: Cologne, Beghards and Cologne, Lollards (a).
  • 45 See Part Four: Cologne, Swesteren (k) and above, note 35.
  • 46 ABS, p. 175-176; Johag, Beziehungen, p. 102, 142. Part Four: Cologne, Beghards.
  • 47 Beziehungen, p. 146, note 283.

11With a decree issued by Archbishop Henry on 5 April 1326, we find ourselves on safer ground. Alarmed by the finding that “several individuals, both ecclesiastical and secular, of both sexes, of whom some are living as priests in the city of Cologne, were making many horrible and ungodly statements against the Christian faith”, Henry asked all secular authorities of the city for help in capturing all those “suspected of this evil”42. Historians have understandably been intrigued by the fact that Meister Eckhart’s first trial in Cologne must have started around the same time as Henry’s decree, and much attention has been devoted to a possible correlation between the two events43. For now, let’s simply note that the decree itself does not give any indication of a relationship: Henry’s call for aid obviously concerned only the trial against the “heresy” featured in the Chronica regia Coloniensis. Henry’s portrayal of the suspects (clerics, some of whom were priests, as well as lay people, both men and women, were involved) conforms exactly with what we learn from the Cologne chronicle about those convicted, and of course the dates correspond. The typology of the suspects also fits with what we know about the world of lollards and swesteren. The lollard community of zur Lunge was founded by a “beghard priest” (beggardus sacerdos), John of Krefeld, who probably lived at the convent as a member of the community; Gerardus dictus Jhesus, the chaplain of the beghards of Olvunde, resided in the convent in 131044. As we have seen, John de Curia Burchgravii, a priest and beghard, was a patron of the swesteren house of Zederwald; a priest founded the “Keppler” convent of swesteren on the Kattenbug in 131545. Likewise, Henry’s broad call for help from “the secular arm” makes sense in a situation were suspects could potentially be found in a dozen houses of lollards and swesteren, all of which were legally secular institutions. There are even signs of significant changes in some of these houses in the mid-1320s, possibly in consequence of the archbishop’s investigation and trial. At zur Lunge, all known superiors up to and including the year 1321 were chosen among the “beghards” (lollards) but in 1326, Rutger Overstolz de Vilzengraven, a patrician burger and member of the Enge Rat, and his wife Sophia, were appointed as procuratores et conservatores in an obvious attempt by the authorities to tighten control over the community (and to protect it?). The beghard convent of Olvunde was transformed into a community of male Tertiaries by 1328, which was the classic means by which “traditional” beghards demonstrated their orthodoxy and warded off criticism, as we have seen46. References to houses of swesteren in the Cologne documents of private law and civil administration between 1323 and 1333 are few and far between. Helga Johag’s claim that the term “swesteren” disappears from Cologne property records during that decade may need further corroboration47, but patronage of the sisters appears to have been less overt than before.

Evidence from Maastricht

  • 48 Madeleine Mabille, “Les manuscrits de Gérard d’Utrecht conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale de (...)
  • 49 The commentary on the Rule and profession formula, but not the Speculum, were published by Anast (...)

12One new piece of evidence should be added to the historical dossier about this episode. Paris, BnF, lat. 15962 is a miscellaneous collection of sermons and works of theology assembled by Gerardus de Traiecto, probably during studies at Paris in the early fourteenth century. Gerard, a theologian of modest renown who is usually called Gerard of Utrecht (Traiectum inferior or ad Rhenum) but really should be called Gerard of Maastricht (Traiectum superior or ad Mosam), was socius of the Collège de Robert de Sorbon between 1299 and 1315. He left at least seventeen manuscripts to the Sorbonne that can still be identified and show evidence of his use as a student and scholar, with heavy annotations in his own hand48. Folios 208-217 of lat. 15962, clearly distinguished from the rest by script, lay-out, and scribal hands, are of interest to us. They contain: a) a commentary in Latin on the Rule of the Third Order of St Francis issued by Pope Nicolas IV as Supra montem of 1289 (fol. 208r-216r), with extracts from the Rule at various intervals; b) a profession formula for new Tertiaries in Maastricht (penitisten van Maestricht, i.e. members of the Ordo de Penitentia [sancti Francisci] in the city), in the Maastricht dialect of Dutch (fol. 216r-216v); c) a so-called Speculum Regule de Tertio Ordine beati Francisci, essentially a summary of the previous commentary (fol. 216v-217v)49. This quire seems to have originated separately, but it was certainly appended to the body of the manuscript during Gerard’s lifetime, since the folios following texts a, b, and c were used to copy part of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on John (fol. 218r-221r) and Gerard himself added an analytical table for the entire manuscript on fol. 222r-224r. That the whole manuscript, including folios 208-224, was bequeathed to the Sorbonne in the form we still have today is confirmed by a fourteenth-century note made by the Sorbonne’s librarian on fol. 224v, which identified the manuscript as a bequest from Gerard and summarized its content with a reference to the part that concerns us (Sermones magistrales plures cum quibusdam aliis et cum regula tertia).

  • 50 Van den Wyngaert, “Stukken”, p. 63 mentions in passing that “the Speculum was made contra hollan (...)
  • 51 Readers unfamiliar with the region and its history might be advised that although Maastricht is (...)
  • 52 Part Four: Maastricht, Beghards.
  • 53 Mabille, “Les manuscrits”, p. 172.
  • 54 Item de hac digna papali pagina tota apostolica regula loquente de penitencie statutis regularit (...)

13The Speculum is of interest because of a note at the end: Explicit Speculi regule penitistarum contra Hollandum et sui sequacium (fol. 217v)50. The term “sequacium” (“following”) is relatively rare; it usually has a negative connotation, as “faction” or even “sect”. In other words, the Speculum is offered here “against the Hollander and his followers” or “sect”, which I can only understand as referring to Walter “of Holland” and the others condemned in 1326 at Cologne, 100 kilometers east of Maastricht51. We already know that the bishop of Liège, in whose diocese Maastricht was located, propagated the rule of the Third Order (at least from 1323 onward, possibly sooner) as a means to keep beghards in his diocese within the fold. As I show in Part Four, the beghards of Maastricht transitioned to the Third Order between 1316 and 132852. This part of lat. 15962, written in hands that can be placed at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, bears no firm chronological markers other than the presence of Supra montem, providing a terminus post quem of 1289. Gerardus was still alive in 1326 but died before 1338, when the manuscript was certainly owned by the Sorbonne53. All of this means that the Speculum Regule contained here could have been used in Maastricht around 1326, while Gerard was at Maastricht, to bring the local beghards into the Third Order as a bulwark against the influence of Walter, the lollards, and swesteren, radiating from Cologne. The Speculum’s emphasis on the orthodoxy of the Tertiaries as well as the holiness of its presumed author, St Francis, and its vision of the Rule as the most perfect form of life for lay men and women living “in the world”, would have bolstered its value in the fight against Walter and the other suspects. But unlike the beghards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine, the lollards and swesteren did not adopt the Rule of the Third Order. Commenting on the final article of the Rule and its “binding force”, the Speculum responds to the accusation that it was “burdening” (onuste) and declares it benigne54: did Walter himself reject the Rule?

The campaign of 1336 in Cologne

  • 55 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 382-384, nr. 49. See also the comments by Böhringer (...)
  • 56 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 2, p. 505-507, nr. 91 (25 February 1357); Böhringer, “Mer (...)
  • 57 See Part Four.

14No doubt the lollards and swesteren of Cologne endured several years of hardship in 1323-1333 but they were not completely suppressed. Henry of Virneburg’s successor, Walram of Jülich (1332-1349), took up Henry’s campaign “to eradicate … the evil sect” again in synodal statutes of 25 February 1336, reprising language from Henry’s earlier decrees to demand that his clergy continue to denounce, in sermons and while taking confession, all those excommunicated by his predecessor or by himself, and to do the same for all supporters or anyone who would assist the culprits. He urged parish priests to be vigilant about “houses” that were closed after the eviction of excommunicated lollards or swesteren, because new people are being admitted in them who call themselves “poor children” (nominatione puerorum pauperum) but were not dissimilar from those bechardi et suestriones55. Nevertheless, public support of the targeted groups notably rebounded in the following years, requiring further archiepiscopal decrees against them in 135756 and when that did not help, several larger-scale inquisitorial operations after 136457.

Expansion

  • 58 For Strassburg, see above, note 13.
  • 59 See Part Four, entries for those cities.

15The investigations at Cologne must have spurred the diaspora of lollards and swesteren from Cologne, nearby Aachen, and possibly Strassburg58. In their westward and most important expansion, we find the men in Ghent, the largest city of northwestern Europe after Paris, in 1321, and in the following decades both men and women put down settlements in other cities of Flanders (Saint-Omer, Bruges, Veurne), Brabant (Louvain, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Tienen, Antwerp, Brussels), Hainaut (Mons), and probably also in Maastricht, although the many houses of swesteren in that city are difficult to date59. These regions, along with Cologne, became their main base of operations between 1350 and 1400.

To the east

  • 60 See Part One, notes 4, 93, and 103, and Part Four: Cologne, Swesteren (b); see also Gałuszka and (...)
  • 61 Harrer’s tract, preserved in a single manuscript from c. 1400, now at the University Library of (...)

16Expansion from Cologne also went in other directions, to the east and south. An inquisitor’s interrogation of the so-called capuciatas moniales of Świdnica, Silesia, of September 1332, revealed that one of the sisters had previously lived in swesteren houses of Aachen, Cologne, Mainz and Strassburg before coming to Silesia. Another woman had lived in the community of Świdnica for twenty-eight years, or since 1304, and a third had joined it after stays with similar sisters in Leipzig and Erfurt. They thought of themselves as “daughters of Udylinde”, whom Letha Böhringer, as we have seen, identified as Odelind of Pyrzyce (300 kilometers north of Świdnica), the founder of a beguine house in Cologne in 1291; this house appears in Cologne sources as a swesteren convent from 1323 onward. We may recognize in those “hooded sisters” of Świdnica the Silesian counterpoints to the Rhenish swestriones with the “hooded cloaks” denounced by John of Strassburg in 1317, but whether their practices and beliefs were entirely identical is doubtful60. It seems also possible that lollards reached Kraków in southeastern, “lesser” Poland around that time. In 1328–1334, the Czech Dominican, Henry Harrer, accused a group of laymen at Kraków of being “beghard heretics”. Although the evidence is ambivalent, some of the suspect features he invoked, such as their radical poverty, distinct clothing, private prayer outside the church, and a reference to their houses “in major cities” like Cologne, may point toward lollards61.

Central and southern Germany

  • 62 Phillips, Beguines, p. 125, 200-204, 211; Sigrid Wegner, Beginen, Klausnerinnen und andere Fromm (...)
  • 63 Heinrich Reimer, ed., Hessisches Urkundenbuch. II. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Herren von Ha (...)
  • 64 Joseph A. Steiner, ed., Synodi dioecesis Augustanae collectae, vol. 1, Mindelheim, Joannes Stein (...)

17Lollards and swesteren also spread southward along the Rhine and from there further east, but much still needs to be done to map their advances through time and space. As we saw earlier, episcopal and synodal legislation alludes to their presence in Strassburg and more widely, in the Church province of Mainz, before 1310–1317. That campaign by Church authorities along the middle Rhine may have been effective because we lose track of them for some years. From a few administrative and legal records we learn that male gewillige armen had returned to (or were still present in) Strassburg in 1330, and willigen armen schwestern in 1336; other swesteren lived in Koblenz for a few years after 135062. Some of them may have migrated eastwards from Mainz: in 1341, a will from Frankfurt mentions a Brudergasse, which seems to derive its name from a house of “beghards”, later (in 1391) called armen bruder, who formed the Cellite convent in the fifteenth century. In nearby Gelnhausen (Hesse), a citizen and his wife gave in 1344 the use of their house to two men described as “good spiritual people and children, who are of good, pure life and wish to serve God” (gudin geistlichin ludin unde kyndirn, di da gutis renin lebins sin unde gote dinen wollin) and as “good children” (der gudin kynder). The term “children” recalls the warning by archbishop Walram of Cologne, of 1335, that lollards and swesteren were now hiding under the name of pueri pauperes, and we indeed find the expression “good children” in Cologne as well, in a will of 1343. Four years after the first settlement in Gelnhausen, the dwelling was occupied by two other “poor good people, beghards” (armin gudin ludin becherte) but they disappear from the record after that date63. In Augsburg, synodal decrees of 1321 warned against the “begging voluntary poor, called Wüllig Armut in the vernacular”, who have not received papal approval and should not be held “as religious or clerics”; they must abandon that way of life and those habits within a month or be excommunicated. The presence of lollards and swesteren in Bavaria in the mid-fourteenth century is confirmed by Conrad of Megenberg, canon of Regensburg, who fulminated against them in two tracts, written around 1354 and in 1362. Conrad claimed that one of the men, John of Mechelen (north of Brussels, in Brabant), whom he met in Regensburg, enjoyed great success there as a wandering preacher, even though Conrad found him totally ignorant of scripture64.

Northern Germany

  • 65 Ahasver Brandt, Regesten der Lübecker Burgertestamente des Mittelalters, vol. 1, Lübeck, Archiv (...)
  • 66 Brigitte Hotz, Beginen und willige Arme im spätmittelalterlichen Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Bernwar (...)

18Surely other parts of Germany were also touched before the middle of the fourteenth century, although exact dates are again hard to nail down. By 1344 swesteren (willige Arme) had reached Lübeck in northern Germany65. In the best study of early Cellite history in northeast Germany, Brigitte Holz traced the origins of a lollard convent in Hildesheim to about 1359, when the patrician Everd Galle is said to have ceded a house for the use of Willigen Armen. Although the information comes from a legendary account written more than a century later, the essentials can be partially corroborated66.

  • 67 See Part Four. Although Saint-Omer by the fourteenth century had become predominantly French-spe (...)
  • 68 See Part Three.

19Contemplating the map of their expansion around 1350, we will notice that virtually all of these foundations took place within the German or Dutch-speaking world. French-language regions were then almost untouched: the only exceptions were in places close to the language border such as Mons and Saint-Omer67. That observation suggests lollards and swesteren followed established migration patterns. In the late thirteenth and fourteenth century, speakers of the Ripuarian German of the Lower Rhine and the various Dutch dialects of Loon, Brabant, Flanders, and Holland, still understood each other with some ease, and mobility for commercial reasons or employment was consequently high across those lands. To the extent that written materials supported the spread of the movement, they could be in any of the spoken vernaculars without raising insurmountable obstacles (whether Latin materials were also used is not known). However, lollards and swesteren appear to have been unable to cross the language border and advance deeper into Romance speaking areas until the second half of the fourteenth century, when they spread into northern France, only to meet a vigorous reaction by inquisitors in the 1370s68.

20The data we gathered for the Low Countries and the Lower Rhine reveal the obvious significance of the main trade routes for their expansion: along the Rhine, surely, but also along the great land road from Cologne westward to Aachen and Maastricht, and then splitting up, in a northwestern direction to Antwerp and the Scheldt-Meuse delta, or heading westwards over Zoutleeuw to Tienen, Louvain, Brussels, and Ghent to Bruges and the Northsea. Lollards and swestern had houses in all of these by 1350.

Patronage

  • 69 Henn, Volker, “Heinrich Sudermann”, Internetportal Rheinische Geschichte, https://www.rheinische (...)
  • 70 His life and work is best covered in J. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, “Hendrik Zuderman, koopman uit Al (...)
  • 71 Part Four: Bruges, Lollards; Bruges, Swesteren. On Zuderman’s endowment for the Tertiaries of St (...)
  • 72 Van den Nieuwenhuizen, “Hendrik Zuderman”, p. 133.

21Doubtless the patronage of wealthy merchants and their international contacts helped. The best example of how this might have worked is provided by Henry Zuderman, a member of a merchant family from Dortmund (not to be confused with his more famous distant relative, Heinrich Sudermann, the sixteenth-century official of the Hanse69), who settled in Antwerp as an adult before 1339 and established a thriving business there as a draper and financier. He founded several charitable institutions in Antwerp, starting with an almshouse for women in 1343, followed by lollard and swesteren houses on 1 October 1345, a house for female Tertiaries established in 1351, and a second almshouse for women, probably in 1351-1353. He died before 25 September 1366, when the Antwerp magistrate oversaw the execution of his testament, now lost but known to have included further bequests for poverty relief in the city70. Historians of Antwerp who have examined Henry’s career have ignored the fact that his charitable work extended also to Bruges and that he died there. It is possible that he helped launch the convents of lollards (1348) and swesteren (1348) in that city as well71. Although little is known about Henry’s four brothers, who probably did not live in Antwerp or Bruges but joined him in at least one of his financial ventures in the county of Guelders72, we can assume that Henry’s family connections reached into several other locations within the Low Countries and Rhineland.

The logistics of absolute poverty

  • 73 All of the charitable foundations Zuderman set up in Antwerp placed ownership in the hands of th (...)
  • 74 Part Four: Antwerp, Lollards; Antwerp, Swesteren; Ghent, Lollards; van Acker, “Het ontstaan”, p. (...)
  • 75 ABS, p. 175-176.
  • 76 See above, note 63.
  • 77 Phillips, Beguines, p. 201.

22External patrons like these often played a crucial role in the special property regime governing the lodgings. In all of the cases where we can detail “foundation” matters, legal arrangements were made so that lollards or swesteren had perpetual use of the house without actually owning it – a twist on the formula pioneered by thirteenth-century Franciscans who lived in convents that were (theoretically) owned by outsiders. Not only did it resolve the problem of ownership of necessary living quarters for men and women devoted to radical poverty, it also offered a measure of stability for a largely itinerant and vulnerable population. When Henry Zuderman made two of his properties available for lollards and swesteren in Antwerp in 1345, he put the houses in perpetual trust “to lodge humble men called lollards/humble women called swesteren, going and coming from whichever country they may be” (in te wonene [ende herberghene] matemanne die men heet lollaerde gaende ende keerende uut wat lande dat si siin/matewiven die men heet swesteren gaene ende keerende uut wat landen dat si sijn). The trustees were three local men who kept the title and had authority to remove any individual upon advice of the brothers or sisters73. Henry made special provisions in case the lollards or swesteren were driven out and forbidden to live there (presumably by Church authorities): if that happened, the trustees could not alienate or mortgage the houses but must keep them available until the lollards and/or swesteren, “coming and going freely”, returned. In Veurne, in 1351, the local Poor Table received ownership of a house in 1351 for the use of lollards; if they left, the Poor Table could use it for other poor until the lollards came back. In 1433–1435, only a single lollard lived there; a lone lollard we meet in Ghent through archival materials from 1321 to 1324 may have been in a similar situation, holding on to a house until others joined him74. In a few cases, the house appears to have been held by one or two members of the community: in the first years after the founding of Cologne’s zur Lunge convent in 1306, title as well as governance over the house passed on from one brother to the next, and in 1310 one “owner” selected a second man, from Brussels, as co-owner and master75. In Gelnhausen, as we just saw, two brothers received ownership and passed the title over to two others when they left (1344-1348)76. In Strassburg, in 1330, one brother received the title of a house but was charged with lodging six other willige armen coming through the city, and membership was decided by majority vote77. All of this indicates that, although some of the convents may have had a sizable and stable population, many were surely small, housing only a minimal number of men or women who were in steady residence while others traveled.

  • 78 See above, note 74. A similar expression is found in the foundation charter of the swesteren hou (...)
  • 79 See above, notes 60 and 64; Part One, note 103.

23Lollards and swesteren thus operated through a flimsy yet functional network of lodgings, whose existence we just barely get to know but which were from the start intended to house traveling visitors, sometimes from far away, as Zuderman’s words about his houses in Antwerp show (“from whichever country they [=the men or women] may be”)78. It explains the remarkable mobility of the men—and of the women, for whom travel was always more dangerous. The cases, already mentioned, of the sister at Świdnica who had successively dwelled in various cities between Aachen and Silesia, or of the Brabantine lollard John of Mechelen “preaching” in Regensburg, Bavaria, may not have been all that exceptional79. In Part Three, we will meet John “of Brün”, who traveled from Brno in Moravia to Cologne (and back).

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Notes

1 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 172-187, nr. 7 (see also Part One, note 17). For all abbreviations used in Part Two, see Part One, note 1.

2 Zur Lunge, located in St Aposteln parish, is discussed in Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a).

3 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 72, nr. 373. A brief biography of John Duns Scotus (who reportedly was called to Cologne to fight the heresy of the Free Spirit) published in 1881, states that the archbishop’s intervention was described in “a charter preserved in the Alexian convent”. As the original was no longer present when Kisky visited the convent in 1915, he relied on an extract he found in a nineteenth-century archival inventory. By 1926 that inventory also went missing: neither Albert Huyskens, “Die Anfänge der Aachener Alexianer im Zusammenhang der Ordens- und Ortsgeschichte”, Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins, 48-49, 1926–1927, p. 190-256, nor Theodor Paas, Das Alexianerkloster in Köln-Lindenthal in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Cologne, Kloster der Alexianenbrüder, 1934, both of whom had access to the Alexian archives, mention the charter or inventory abstract, referring solely to Kisky. In a personal communication to me of February 7, 2023, Letha Böhringer kindly let me know she found a copy of the archbishop’s letter of 1308 in a notarized instrument of 1414, and that Kisky’s Regest summarized the content accurately.

4 Lohr, Beiträge, vol. 2, p. 76-77, nr. 152.

5 Johag, Beziehungen, p. 146, and Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 177-178 doubt there was such an impact.

6 See Part One, notes 7 through 28.

7 This famous source was edited anew shortly after the publication of HFS by PSB, p. 127-142, nr. 1, with on p. 144-148, nr. 2, a separate document, undated, providing another, but quite similar overview of the condemned doctrine. Already in 1965, Herbert Grundmann had pointed out that bishop John denounced beghards but deliberately avoided calling the female suspects “beguines”, using instead the “puzzling” term swestriones: “Ketzerverhöre des Spätmittelalters als quellenkritisches Problem”, translated into English as “Heresy Interrogations in the Later Middle Ages as a Source-Critical Problem”, in Herbert Grundmann (1902–1970). Essays on Heresy, Inquisition and Literacy, ed. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, Woodbridge, York Medieval Press, 2019, p. 126–179 at p. 138-140.

8 The Trier statutes of 1310 had described their clothing as “tabards and long tunics with large hoods”: Blattau, Statuta, p. 93.

9 The Trier status of 1310 also mentioned that these suspect beghards [=lollards] had started to form conventicula: Blattau, Statuta, p. 93.

10 There is a large literature on these allegations; I will refer only to HFS, p. 85-93 and Wehrli-Johns, “Mystik”, p. 221-239.

11 Wehrli-Johns, “Mystik”, p. 234, note 50, believes that use of the term beginis must mean that the bishop was not yet aware of Cum de quibusdam. I agree that he may not have known the precise text of the decretal, but I would argue that he was familiar with the thrust of the Clementine measures regarding beguines and beghards, and with the distinction between beguines who lived as “pseudo-religious” and those who lived seculariter.

12 PSB, p. 140-141.

13 Urkundenbuch der Stadt Strassburg, I, Strassburg, Karl J. Trübner, 1879-1900, vol. 3, p. 620; judging by the data collected in Phillips, Beguines, p. 202-203, 211, this house may have survived (perhaps with interruptions) until the fifteenth century, when I would identify it as a Cellite convent. I do not agree with Franz-Josef Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff der deutschen Mystik. Seine Beziehung zur Ketzerei der “Bruder und Schwestern vom Freien Geist”, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den pseudoeckardischen Traktat “Schwester Katrei” (Edition), Frankfurt a. M., Peter Lang, 1981, p. 118-119, who claims that Strassburg was the point of origin and center of the “Willige Armen”, but more research would be welcome.

14 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 254, nr. 6.

15 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 260-271, nr. 18, at p. 269 (statute 12). My reading of this text is slightly different from that in Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 180.

16 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 260-261, nr. 1159.

17 Wolter’s edition of statute 10 of the 1319 synodal decisions (see above, note 15), p. 267, bears a heading De religiosis, foventes bechardos et suestriones, which must be an erroneous addition. The statute deals with parish priests and Mendicant friars supporting beguines who refuse to lay down their habits, and does not concern or mention beghards, suestriones or Ad nostrum. As Wolter’s critical apparatus shows, the heading is not in several early copies of these statutes.

18 Hartzheim, Concilia, vol. 4, p. 268 and CDIN, vol. 1, p. 169-170, nr. 174, with a wrong date; Koorn, Begijnhoven, p. 18.

19 Technically, the eastern edge of Flanders along the Scheldt was held by the count from the German king and could therefore be considered part of Allemania, but it did not have any beghard convents.

20 A Tertiary convent in Saint-Omer existed in 1346, but we do not know for sure that it was originally a beghard house. The beghard convent of Ypres must have been very small by 1373 and disappeared before the end of the century. See Part Four: Bruges, Beghards; Saint-Omer, Beghards; Ypres, Beghards. For Gregory XI’s inquisitions in France, see Part Three.

21 Part Four, at the relevant cities.

22 See the vows of Tertiary, Jan van Borsele, in Mechelen in 1344, ed. Vannérus, “Documents…Malines”, p. 249-250, nr. 8. For the habits of the Tertiaries in the fourteenth century, see Hildo van Engen, “Niet wit en niet zwart. Het kleurloze habijt van de derde orde van Sint-Franciscus”, Madoc. Tijdschrift over de middeleeuwen, 15, 2001, p. 300-304, and for the fifteenth, Vannérus, “Documents…Anvers”, p. 645-647, nr. 30.

23 Part Four: Antwerp, Beghards.

24 CDIN, vol. 2, p. 74–77, nr. 45; Koorn, Begijnhoven, p. 19.

25 AA, Klooster van de Derde Orde Antwerpen, nr. 4, fol. 61r-v and Antwerp, Felixarchief, Kerkelijke en Caritatieve Instellingen, nr. 468, fol. 67r-v (with on fol. 67v-68r the 1340 confirmation of the regulations; the latter two texts are translations into Flemish or Brabantine Dutch). Because of errors in Raymaekers, Het kerkelijk en liefdadig Diest, p. 301 and Fredegand Callaey, “De Nederlandsche Beggaarden in St Franciscus’ Derde Orde en de Weefnijverheid tijdens de Middeleeuwen”, Neerlandia Franciscana, 1, 1914, p. 7-32, at p. 16, numerous historians since then have dated the Liège regulations to 1333 instead of the correct year 1323, and wrongly have claimed that the bishop imposed them on all beghards in his diocese, along with the Rule of the Third Order; see for instance the influential essay by Servus Gieben, “I penitenti di San Francesco nei Paesi Bassi (secoli XIII-XIV)”, in Mariano D’Alatri, ed., Il movimento francescano della Penitenza nella società medioevale, Roma, Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1980, p. 59-80 at p. 71; in reality, the bishop prescribed those additional regulations for Tertiaries only.

26 AA, Klooster Bogaarden Antwerpen, nr. 1, charter at date 6 August 1341 (vidimus), ed. J. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, Oorkondenboek van kerkelijke instellingen te Antwerpen (1232–1355), Antwerp, Provincie Antwerpen, 2006, p. 282-283, nr. 15. The bull is also in Wolfenbüttel 311 Helmst., examined by PSB, p. 62.

27 Vannérus, “Documents…Anvers”, p. 529 mistakenly omitted Brussels and counted only seventeen houses; this was repeated by Callaey, “De Nederlandsche Beggaarden”, p. 20, who thought all of them had been beghard houses; these errors have been passed on, see for instance McDonnell, Beguines, p. 263. The Ghent house represented here is not that of the beghards but rather a convent for male Tertiaries in the Veldstraat. Missing were of course also the beghard houses of Flanders (Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres), which had not adopted the Rule of the Third Order. For the Brussels convent, see Part Four: Brussels, Beghards.

28 Antwerp, Felixarchief, Kerkelijke en Caritatieve Instellingen, nr. 468, fol. 68r-v, ed. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, Oorkondenboek van kerkelijke instellingen, p. 305-307, nr. 38 (a second sixteenth-century copy is AA, Klooster Bogaarden Antwerpen, nr. 1, charter at date).

29 AA, Klooster Bogaarden Antwerpen, nr. 1, charter at date 26 June 1367.

30 AA, Klooster van de Derde Orde Antwerpen, nr. 4, fol. 61v-64r (3 July 1372).

31 It is a misconception that the brothers of Zur Lunge in Cologne adopted the Augustinian rule “around 1300”, as stated in Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 184; that happened only in the late fifteenth century, as discussed briefly at the end of Part Three.

32 Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 182.

33 Part Three: Cologne, Swesteren (e).

34 See Part One, note 29.

35 Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 182 believes Johannes was still a beghard in 1320; ABS, p. 171-172, however, lists a series of documents from 1313 to 1320 which omit any reference to his status as a beghard and suggests he abandoned his life as a beghard because of “the persecution”. Johag, Beziehungen, p. 329 and 345 identified him as Johannes de Ederne, chaplain of St Nicolas at the Burggrafenhof from 1305 to 1313.

36 It is therefore not quite correct to say that “real beghards never ever claimed to be priests” (HFS, p. 126).

37 Cronica regia Coloniensis, ed. George Waitz, MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum, Hanover, Hahn, 1880, p. 369. This is a famous case, much debated, see HFS, p. 29–34, with important comments and references to a few other contemporary sources; Senner, “Meister Eckhart in Köln”, p. 220–222.

38 On the stories recounted by John of Vicktring and John of Winterthur, see HFS, p. 30-31.

39 Willem Procurator, Kroniek, ed. Marijke Gumbert-Hepp, Hilversum, Verloren, 2001, p. 368-370, discussing events of 1326. In this part of the chronicle, covering the years after 1321, William wrote “contemporary to the events until 1332” (https://www.narrative-sources.be, ID nr. NL0545, last consulted August 28, 2022). Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff, p. 121-122, thought that William’s stories about nude parties in this lollard “paradise” were factual.

40 CDIN, vol. 1, p. 172-173, nr. 177, reproduces the passage from Trithemius’s Annales Hirsaugienses, where the event is set in 1322, misleading McDonnell, Beguines, p. 319-320. Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff, p. 122-123 took Trithemius at face value but in SMEL, p. lxxi-lxxiii, he is more cautious.

41 HFS, p. 31 note 54.

42 EQ, vol. 4, p. 115, nr. 130 (with the wrong date of 24 April 1326); Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 384, nr. 1586, has the correct date.

43 Kisky, Regesten, vol. 4, p. 384, nr. 1587 listed the (undated) beginning of Eckhart’s trial in Cologne immediately after Henry’s decree and gave the two “Regesten” consecutive numbers. The trial of “Walter” followed next, as nr. 1588, although its precise date is unknown as well. See also the treatment of these events in, for example, Herbert Grundmann, Ketzergeschichte des Mittelalters, 3rd ed., Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978, p. 48; Winfried Trusen, Der Prozeß gegen Meister Eckhart. Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Folgen, Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 1988, p. 71 (where Walter’s trial is not mentioned, however); Wilhelm Janssen, Das Erzbistum Köln im späten Mittelalter (Geschichte des Erzbistums Köln, II), vol. 1, Cologne, J.P. Bachem, 1995, p. 225; Walter Senner, “Meister Eckhart’s Life, Training, Career, and Trial”, in Jeremiah M. Hackett, ed., A Companion to Meister Eckhart, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2013, p. 7-84, at p. 44.

44 ABS, p. 172-173, 175-176; Part Four: Cologne, Beghards and Cologne, Lollards (a).

45 See Part Four: Cologne, Swesteren (k) and above, note 35.

46 ABS, p. 175-176; Johag, Beziehungen, p. 102, 142. Part Four: Cologne, Beghards.

47 Beziehungen, p. 146, note 283.

48 Madeleine Mabille, “Les manuscrits de Gérard d’Utrecht conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris”, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 129, 1971, p. 5–25 (with a brief description of the manuscript and its content on p. 15); at least one of those manuscripts was then passed on to the Petite Sorbonne: Claire Angotti, “Mort et vie du collège dit de la ‘Petite Sorbonne’”, in Martin Morard et Cédric Giraud, eds., Universitas Scolarium. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Verger, Genève, Droz, 2011, p. 171-199, at p. 187 and 189, note 94. The identification as Gerard “of Utrecht”, adopted by Mabille and Angotti, was first made by Palémon Glorieux, Aux origines de la Sorbonne. I. Robert de Sorbon, Paris, J. Vrin, 1966, vol. 1, p. 161 and 302, on the flimsiest of grounds: a presumed association with Siger of Courtrai, and the assumption that a charter of 1314 issued by Gerardus de Traiecto, dean of St Peter of Utrecht and vicar-general of the bishop of Utrecht, of 1314, was written at Courtrai. We do not know, however, if this Gerard (of Ummen, dean from 1313 to 1316), studied in Paris and resided at the Sorbonne, and the charter in question was not issued at Courtrai but simply in Utrecht (see J. W. Berkelbach van der Sprenkel, Regesten van oorkonden betreffende de bisschoppen van Utrecht uit de jaren 1301–1340, Utrecht, Broekhoff, 1937, p. 116-117, nr. 285). Conclusive evidence that Gerard was from Maastricht comes not only from the profession formula in lat. 15962, made for use in Maastricht, but also from Gerard’s autograph notes, in Dutch, in BnF, lat. 15255, front coverleaf verso, and lat. 15966, fol. 47v, where he uses ich and mich instead of ic and mi (“I” and “me”) – a dead giveaway for his origins in Maastricht rather than Utrecht. I have not, however, been able to identify him with a particular cleric in Maastricht.

49 The commentary on the Rule and profession formula, but not the Speculum, were published by Anastaas van den Wyngaert, “Stukken betreffende de Derde Orde (afkomstig van Maastricht, aanvang der XIVe Eeuw)”, Neerlandia Franciscana, 4, 1921, p. 60-75, at p. 67-75.

50 Van den Wyngaert, “Stukken”, p. 63 mentions in passing that “the Speculum was made contra hollandum” (my translation from the Dutch) but omits the phrase et sui sequacium. Unaware of the local context, he never asked nor explained what contra hollandum might have meant.

51 Readers unfamiliar with the region and its history might be advised that although Maastricht is now in the Netherlands and Dutch is and was the local language, it is not located in “Holland”. In fourteenth-century Maastricht, Hollandus would refer to a “foreigner” from the county of Holland, 225 kilometers northwest of Maastricht.

52 Part Four: Maastricht, Beghards.

53 Mabille, “Les manuscrits”, p. 172.

54 Item de hac digna papali pagina tota apostolica regula loquente de penitencie statutis regulariter constitutis sufficientibus non onuste sed benigne et libere omni penitiste nulli ergo hominem licet hanc infringere; paraphrasing the anathema formula of Supra montem, the Speculum continues that punishment shall be experienced not only in foro conscientie but also in foro ecclesie non solum militantis sed etiam triumphanthis (BnF, lat. 15962, fol. 217v). I thank Koen Goudriaan for drawing my attention to this passage.

55 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 382-384, nr. 49. See also the comments by Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 183 and Janssen, Das Erzbistum Köln, p. 590-592. Jan van Leeuwen, writing his “Van tienderhande materien” in the early 1350s (before 1355), also associated “poor children” (arme kindere) with swesteren and lollaerde: KBR, ms. 667, fol. 126.

56 Wolter, ed., Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 2, p. 505-507, nr. 91 (25 February 1357); Böhringer, “Merging”, p. 184 and Janssen, Das Erzbistum Köln, p. 239, 592.

57 See Part Four.

58 For Strassburg, see above, note 13.

59 See Part Four, entries for those cities.

60 See Part One, notes 4, 93, and 103, and Part Four: Cologne, Swesteren (b); see also Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 180-198, 230, and p. 246.

61 Harrer’s tract, preserved in a single manuscript from c. 1400, now at the University Library of Wrocław, I F 292, is examined and edited in Tomasz Gałuszka, O.P., Henry Harrer’s Tractatus contra beghardos. The Dominicans and Early Fourteenth Century Heresy in Lesser Poland, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Esprit, 2015 (the critical edition with facing English translation is on p. 115-173); for lollard prayer outside the church, see our Part Three, note 78. It is true that one element of Harrer’s description of the men (they claim to also have a house in Rome: Gałuszka, Henry Harrer’s Tractatus, p. 166-167) is at odds with my suggestion. Gałuszka, whom I warmly thank for graciously sending me a copy of his work, believes the accused were simply faithful Christians, but he also mentions (p. 50-51) the presence of suspect beghards in Silesia and Pomerania earlier in the century.

62 Phillips, Beguines, p. 125, 200-204, 211; Sigrid Wegner, Beginen, Klausnerinnen und andere Fromme Frauen im Raum Koblenz. Geistliche und weltliche Netzwerke im späten Mittelalter, Mainz, Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 2017, p. 68.

63 Heinrich Reimer, ed., Hessisches Urkundenbuch. II. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Herren von Hanau und der ehemaligen Provinz Hanau, vol. 2, Leipzig, S. Hirzel, 1892, p. 635-636 and 744-745, nrs. 648 and 760 (see also p. 748-749, nr. 764); for archbishop Walram’s statute, see above, note 55, and the Cologne will of 1344 is quoted by Friedrich-Arnold Lassotta, Formen der Armut im späten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit. Untersuchungen vornehmlich an Kölner Quellen des 14. bis 17. Jahrhunderts, Cologne, n.p., 1994, vol. 1, p. 149. “Good children” (goede kindre) also appears in the statutes for the beghards of Bruges of 1292 (and in the statutes of beghards of Middelburg, derived from the former in 1331), see Simons, “Lives of the Beghards”, p. 238 and 244, and above, note 55. The information about Frankfurt and Gelnhausen comes from the very useful work by Wolfram Heitzenröder, “Geschichte der Begarden (Alexianer) in Frankfurt am Main”, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 31, 1979, p. 55-74 at p. 57. In Germany, where the term “lollards” was slower to impose itself than in the Low Countries, they continued to be called beghards for a long time.

64 Joseph A. Steiner, ed., Synodi dioecesis Augustanae collectae, vol. 1, Mindelheim, Joannes Steiner, 1766, p. 95 (see also Polonyi, “Synodale Gesetzgebung”, p. 44); for the presence in Augsburg, by 1348, of swesteren related to the Cologne convent of Odelind of Pyrzyce, see Part One, note 103. The first of Conrad of Megenburg’s two treatises does not mention John’s name but calls him a beghard “from the lower Rhine” whom Conrad “recently” confronted in Regensburg: Yconomica, lb. III, c. 21, ed. Sabine Krüger, in Konrad von Megenberg, Werke, MGH, Staatschriften des späteren Mittelalters, Bd. 5, Leipzig and Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann, 1973-1984, vol. 3, p. 352-353 (see also lb. I, c. 13, vol. 1, p. 336). In the second, Conrad identifies him as Iohanne[s] de Mechelinia, a “beghard or lollard” who “preached to the populace in upper Germany (in superioribus Alamanie partibus) as if he were a priest”: Konrad von Megenberg, Lacrima ecclesie, c. 12, ed. Katharina Colberg, MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 26, Hanover, Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2010, p. 15-16. When speaking in general terms, Conrad called the men and women “beghards” and “beguines”, but his description of them as well as his references to lulhardi (p. 10, 32, 79, 101), bone filie (p. 32), and voluntarie/-ii pauperes (p. 31, 36), suggests he was primarily troubled by the lollards and swesteren, whose mendicancy he denounced (my interpretation differs from HFS, p. 55-57, but I agree with Lerner that Conrad’s clichéd statements about their theological doctrines are unreliable). Colberg notes (Lacrima ecclesie, p. 31, note 62), that a domus der willigen armen existed in Regensburg in 1370. Her new date for the Lacrima, fall 1362 (see Lacrima ecclesie, p. xiv), rather than 1364 as previously thought, allows for the possibility that Conrad’s tract, submitted to the Curia in 1363, contributed to the establishment of the inquisition against lollards and swesteren in Germany in 1364 (see Part Three).

65 Ahasver Brandt, Regesten der Lübecker Burgertestamente des Mittelalters, vol. 1, Lübeck, Archiv der Hansestadt, 1964, p. 114-115, nr. 225.

66 Brigitte Hotz, Beginen und willige Arme im spätmittelalterlichen Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Bernward, 1988, p. 104-106.

67 See Part Four. Although Saint-Omer by the fourteenth century had become predominantly French-speaking, many of its residents would still have understood the Flemish dialect of Dutch. A springboard for expansion further south was thus available.

68 See Part Three.

69 Henn, Volker, “Heinrich Sudermann”, Internetportal Rheinische Geschichte, https://www.rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de/Persoenlichkeiten/heinrich-sudermann/DE-2086/lido/57c9595c96bad6.60738451 (accessed 7 September 2022).

70 His life and work is best covered in J. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, “Hendrik Zuderman, koopman uit Almaengien”, Antwerpen, 12, 1966, p. 133-139; many of the sources discussed there were later published in Van den Nieuwenhuizen, Oorkondenboek van kerkelijke instellingen.

71 Part Four: Bruges, Lollards; Bruges, Swesteren. On Zuderman’s endowment for the Tertiaries of St Barbara in Bruges, see Simons, Bedelordekloosters, p. 161-162 and J. Goyens, “Soeurs du Tiers Ordre à Bruges. Textes inédits,” Franciscana, 5, 1923, p. 181-193, at p. 181-185, nr. 1. The document about Zuderman’s gift to the Bruges Tertiaries states that at his death he was a resident of the diocese of Tournai, where Bruges was located, and not Cambrai, which covered Antwerp. Bruges housed a large contingent of Oosterlingen (Rhineland merchants) in the fourteenth century.

72 Van den Nieuwenhuizen, “Hendrik Zuderman”, p. 133.

73 All of the charitable foundations Zuderman set up in Antwerp placed ownership in the hands of the aldermen of Antwerp (this was sometimes also done for beguine and beghard convents in the Low Countries and the Rhineland) except for these two—perhaps a sign that he was not entirely convinced city authorities would rally behind his initiative for long.

74 Part Four: Antwerp, Lollards; Antwerp, Swesteren; Ghent, Lollards; van Acker, “Het ontstaan”, p. 139, 155-156.

75 ABS, p. 175-176.

76 See above, note 63.

77 Phillips, Beguines, p. 201.

78 See above, note 74. A similar expression is found in the foundation charter of the swesteren house in Lier, of 1395: P. J. Goetschalckx, “Lier: ‘t Swesterenhuis”, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van het aloude hertogdom Brabant, 2, 1903, p. 138-140.

79 See above, notes 60 and 64; Part One, note 103.

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Walter Simons, « Persecuted by the Unknowing. The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine (c. 1290 – c. 1350). Part Two »Oliviana [En ligne], 7 | 2023, mis en ligne le 22 juillet 2023, consulté le 02 octobre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1563

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