Persecuted by the Unknowing. The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine (c. 1290 – c. 1350). Part Three
Résumés
Afin de définir les croyances et pratiques religieuses des swesteren et des lollards, ce troisième essai revient d’abord sur un document bien connu : la « confession » de Jean de Brünn (Brno) concernant sa vie dans une « maison des pauvres » de Cologne dans les premières décennies du XIVe siècle, puis s’attarde davantage sur une œuvre en moyen néerlandais, le « Dialogue entre Maître Eckhart et un laïc » , que je considère comme l'œuvre d'un lollard ou plutôt d'une swester vivant dans le Brabant (septentrional) et écrivant en 1333 ou peu après. Ce texte présente une affinité complexe avec la pensée de Maître Eckhart (présenté comme un compagnon martyr d'une Église "inconnue") sur des questions telles que l'union mystique et les bonnes œuvres. Je soutiens que les similitudes apparentes entre la doctrine du mouvement et les enseignements de Maître Eckhart, que l'auteur du Dialogue connaissait au moins en partie, ne sont pas dues à une dépendance directe, mais s'expliquent mieux par un contexte commun dans les discussions de la fin du XIIIe siècle sur la grâce et la volonté humaine ; j'explique également pourquoi la doctrine, sans être antinomienne, a pu susciter des soupçons de sympathies pour le libre-esprit. J'esquisse brièvement l'évolution de la situation après 1350 : poursuite de l'expansion, désormais également en France (les Turlupins), malgré une persécution encore plus intense, et transformation progressive des lollards et des swesteren en frères et sœurs cellites (alexiens) dans la seconde moitié du XVe siècle. L'essai se termine par des observations sur le rôle de l'idéal de pauvreté et l'utilisation possible de livres (en langues vernaculaires allemande et néerlandaise) dans le mouvement.
Plan
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Part Three: The Doctrine of the Swesteren and Lollards, and the Relationship to Meister Eckhart’s Thought
- 1 For abbreviations used in the notes, see Part One, note 1.
1In addition to the usual words of caution about the paucity of sources, an important caveat is in order: this movement was not directed by a single individual or institution, and doubtless customs differed across space and time1. Still, in what follows I will attempt to define certain principles and practices that were embraced by swesteren and lollards and inspired their conduct in the region under study. In the decades we are examining here, those principles also gave them a broadly collective identity, recognized by insiders and a few astute outsiders.
Sources
- 2 For Gallus’s inquisitorial activity, see Alexander Patschovsky, Quellen zur Böhmischen Inquisiti (...)
- 3 Wilhelm Wattenbach, “Über die Secte der Brüder vom freien Geiste. Mit Nachträgen über die Walden (...)
2Along with records from private law that documented the spread of the movement as well as the legislation of Church authorities aimed at stopping it, I will be relying on two other, more substantial sources that I have not mentioned before. The first is a famous one: the written confession of John of Brün made for Gallus de Novo Castro (or Neuhaus, or Jindřichův Hradec, d. 1353/1355), a Dominican inquisitor in Bohemia from 1335 until 13482. First published by Wilhelm Wattenbach in 1887, it has become a classic source for the history of “the Free Spirit” and is important for us because it recounts John’s long stay at a “house of the poor” in Cologne, where he became a “perfect” with a “Free Spirit”3.
The Confession of John of Brünn
- 4 Wattenbach’s edition has domus pauper, which I assume is a scribal error or misreading for domus (...)
3According to his confession, John of Brünn (Brno, in Moravia) was married already when he longed for a “more perfect” life. A friend of his, a “master Nicolas”, told him that “beghards living in poverty adhered to the gospel truth more perfectly than any others, whether they were clerics or religious [=monks or friars] or lay”, and that John could leave his wife without consulting a priest. After ceding half of his goods to his wife, John joined master Nicolas on a 900-kilometer trip west to Cologne. There he donated the other half of his goods to a “house of the poor4 beside the church of St Stephan” and was received in their midst to live “without any property, freed (vacuus) from all temporal things, like Christ on the cross”. After twelve years of much hardship and humiliation in this house, he reached perfection, placing him above any moral law, a state he enjoyed for eight more years. The rest of the confession, as that of his brother, Albert (a “beghard” in Brünn/Brno), further itemizes the many sins he and other “perfect” permitted themselves, including all kinds of sex and even murder. John ends with the statement that not only did he really believe in the liberty of the spirit, but so did “two hundred beghards”.
- 5 ABS, p. 170 (followed by Janssen, Das Erzbistum, p. 600); HFS, 112. See Part Four: Cologne, Loll (...)
- 6 Part Four: Cologne, Beghards.
- 7 Johag, Beziehungen, p. 143; Senner, “Meister Eckhart in Köln”, p. 223.
- 8 Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (b).
4It is hard to know what to think of this account, which has more than its share of exaggerations and fantastic elements. To start with the location and time: the source recognizes Cologne as the nerve-center of the “beghard” movement but John’s convent is not easy to pinpoint. Johannes Asen identified the group with the lollard convent zur Lunge in St Aposteln parish because a certain Nicolas served as master there in 1321-1326, but that seems like a stretch and, as Lerner noted, that same community can hardly have benefited from the largesse of Cologne’s elite if masses of “beghards” really misbehaved in the manner described here (on the other hand, can we believe John on that subject?)5. The convent of Olvunde6 of “traditional beghards”, who did not adhere to absolute poverty, is not a contender. Helga Johag, followed by Walter Senner, suggested there may have been another “beghard” convent, closer to St Stephan than zur Lunge, unknown from other sources7. Our findings summarized in Part Four confirm that in 1317 there existed at least one other convent of lollards besides zur Lunge in Cologne, at an unknown location, which might have been John’s home8. Another problem is that we cannot date precisely John’s confession within the chronological parameters of Gallus’s tenure as inquisitor of Bohemia, between 1335 and 1348. Depending on where one puts it and then counting back twenty years, John arrived in Cologne between 1315 and 1328, a relatively wide bracket. If we are to believe that part of John’s testimony, his community most probably survived the investigations of 1326.
- 9 See HFS, p. 110-112 and Alexander Patschovsky, “Freiheit der Ketzer”, in Johannes Fried, ed., Di (...)
5With Robert Lerner and a few others (but unlike Franz-Josef Schweitzer and Walter Senner), I suggest we dismiss the obscene lore in John’s account as stereotypical9. Some of the alleged antinomian arguments (for instance, that men may abandon their wives at will to follow God) mirror those listed in Ad nostrum and the Rhenish legislation against the Free Spirit of 1307-1310 and 1317. Testifying as a newly accepted lay brother in the Dominican order, John was under pressure to help Gallus, now his fellow Dominican, by confirming the inquisitor’s suspicions about the “sect of beghards and beguines”, suspicions that were surely based in part on those same texts.
- 10 Wattenbach, “Über die Secte”, p. 529-530, 532.
6Some of the story’s more mundane facets are plausible or can be confirmed by other sources. John’s picture of the brothers sharing goods and living in poverty in the image of Christ, but roaming widely, with new members coming and going, accords with the unimpeachable sources about the lollards’ movements described in Part Two. The confession speaks of the brothers begging subserviently, but of course it then denounces their meekness as a ruse: a brother eats secretely from the food he collected, concealed by his long hood, and to extort a sick man in their care is presented as routine10.
The “Dialogue between Meister Eckhart and a Layperson”
- 11 Frits van Oostrom, Wereld in woorden. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1300–1400, Amst (...)
- 12 SMEL, p. lxxxi–lxxxvii discusses the manuscripts. Since then VD, p. 79-96, demonstrated that the (...)
7A second, more important source has been the subject of a growing number of studies since its critical edition in 1997. Called “one of the great jewels of Dutch literature in the fourteenth century”11, the Middle Dutch “Dialogue between Meister Eckhart and a Layperson” has been preserved whole in one sixteenth-century manuscript and in fragmentary form in eight others, none older than the late fourteenth century12. It offers a sharp critique of the clergy and monks from the point of view of “good-willing” layfolk, best exemplified by the lollards (called “good-willing” beghards in the work) and swesteren.
Dating the text
- 13 Ende doen werdt hÿ confuselijken ghedooet ... ende dat es gheleden xiij C jaer ende wij hebben g (...)
- 14 For the various opinions, see SMEL, p. liii-liv and the essay by Van Engen cited below, note 49. (...)
- 15 C. G. N. de Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten uit de veertiende eeuw”, De XXe eeuw, 1903, p. 280- (...)
8It is a long text of some 70,000 words, which has not yet dispersed all of its riches. Indications of time and place have mystified scholars. The author states that history has proceeded through four stages of approximately 1300 years before the current one; at the end of each stage, marking the transitions, God has punished the world for human hubris with terrible scourges or “plagues”. Now, we have come at another such turning point: “1300 years have passed since Christ’s death […] . We have been eight years minus three months and there have been several plagues, as you know; God give we have endured all of them!”13. Assuming that Christ’s death is placed in 33 C.E., when is the author writing? What do we do with those seven years and eight months? Do we add them to the year 1333, or deduct them? Several scholars, including the editor, Franz-Josef Schweitzer, have chosen the former and suggest 1340–1341 as the date of composition, others, notably Geert Warnar and John Van Engen, opt for the latter and arrive at 1325 or 1326, while still others count from the birth of Christ and place the text “c. 1307”14. I suggest we apply Ockham’s razor and understand the passage as simply and directly as possible: the writer located the work in 1333, recalling, with the readers, the “plagues” they experienced in the prior seven years and eight months, and expressing the hope that they will see no more of them (the “plagues” could last twelve years and occurred “around” the transition, so the author says; I will discuss below what they were in this case)15.
Location
- 16 SMEL, p. lxxxvii–xcvi. Not noted by Schweitzer is one German form: Du bist verdoemt (p. 155; com (...)
- 17 I am working here on the assumption that most of the text was written by a single author, perhap (...)
- 18 SMEL, p. 173.
- 19 Joseph Daris, Notices historiques sur les églises du diocèse de Liège, vol. 15, Liège, Demarteau (...)
- 20 SMEL, p. 105 and 108; on p. 174, Cologne is imagined as far away.
- 21 SMEL, p. lv-lxv, lxxvi, and li (on Utrecht, see, however, below, note 59).
- 22 SMEL, p. 136-137.
9Since the dialectal traits of this Middle Dutch text seem to reflect the regional diversity of the manuscript copies (they point to Holland in the north as well as Flanders or Brabant in the southern Low Countries)16 rather than the original composition, we can use only internal clues for the author’s location17. The summer and winter solstices are located on sinte Odulphus dach (June 12) and sinte Losijen dach (St Lucia, 13 December)18, which might indicate proximity to Utrecht, where St Odulph’s day was a major feast day, although his cult was also celebrated in Borgloon and other parts of the diocese of Liège, and in Brabant19. One scene in the work involves a Dominican preaching in Rijnsburg, near Leiden in Holland (and in the diocese of Utrecht); in another, the author attends a public sermon on Good Friday by a “famous cleric”, who subsequently runs into trouble with Dominicans because of his opinions on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, causing great scandal “among clerics here and in the diocese of Utrecht”20. Schweitzer drew on those cues to place the writer near Rijnsburg or maybe in the bishop’s city of Utrecht itself21. While the latter option is possible (the city would then be contrasted to the diocese; Utrecht had a Dominican convent since 1232), I would argue that a location not far from Holland but outside the diocese of Utrecht is more likely. ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Brabant) in the diocese of Liège, comes to mind; Dominican friars were based there since 1286. A setting in that area also fits with the author’s point of view in another passage about pilgrimage sites in three wholly different directions, in Aachen, Aardenburg, and Katwijk, which are almost equidistant (90/120 kilometers) from ‘s-Hertogenbosch but not from Rijnsburg, a mere three kilometers from Katwijk22.
The voices in the Dialogue
- 23 Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 111r–116v (the manuscript dates from 14 (...)
- 24 VD, p. 97-128 revised Schweitzer’s attributions of speech parts to Meister Eckhart and the Laype (...)
- 25 HFS, p. 213, 215.
- 26 Analysis and edition in Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff.
10All of this is of some importance to assemble a profile for the author, undoubtedly a layperson. The work has been called “anti-hierarchical” and rightly so, because it negates the value of formal, institutional authority in religious understanding: lay folk, though unlearned, have just as much chance of receiving God’s grace, and thus illumination, as ordained clerics. And yet, in contrast to other “disputations” in the Middle Dutch vernacular, like the Flemish diatribe of a (lay) woman against a priest of c. 1400 in the so-called Wiesbaden Manuscript23, the two voices in this debate are not on opposite sides24: rather than defending unequivocally the magisterium of the Church, “Eckhart” appears here as a wise counselor who understands the needs and ambitions of “the Layperson”, and together – sometimes as master and student, at other times as partners in the quest for perfection – they search for answers. In that sense, as Robert Lerner wrote fifty years ago25, the tract bears similarities with the famous “Schwester Katrei” treatise (c. 1314–c. 1350), in which Schwester and Meister switch roles as teachers26.
- 27 SMEL, p. 17 and p. 186 for helpful references to parallels in Hadewijch’s work.
- 28 Early on, they ask: “Master, how shall young people live, when they have received from God a goo (...)
11The Dialogue’s Prologue explains how the cooperation began. The Master had invited the Layperson to speak about divine things before his colleagues, but the Layperson did not dare to do so out of fear of clerical reprisals. Now, however, in the form of an intimate, spiritual communication that recalls Hadewijch’s relationship with her circle of friendly souls in the “List of the Perfect”, the Layperson tells the Master: “my soul is free to speak before you about such things because you know me in the spirit and my soul knows you in God”27. They soon focus on a familiar question: how to lead the best possible life on earth? The Layperson – presented as an older individual – explains that young people “of good will” need guidance28, and the whole dialogue seems at first conceived as a pedagogical exercise for their benefit. But that goal is soon derailed by the author’s continued despair over the mistreatment that lay people “of good will” have suffered at the hands of unenlightened clerics, to the point of crowding out all other matters in large sections of the work.
Impersonating Eckhart
- 29 Het en es gheen cleyn mesdaet, goetwilleghe gheesteliken lieden onsculdichlijc te scandaliseeren (...)
- 30 Meester Eggaert, een wtgenomen licht van hemelscher wijsheit (SMEL, p. 17).
- 31 SMEL, p. 170, and for the condemned article, p. 236–237. Lievens, “Eggaert”, p. 19–20 objected t (...)
- 32 Robert E. Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter: Fourteenth-Century Uses of the Bull In agro domini (...)
12I think there can be no doubt that the Dialogue postdates the charges against Eckhart made at Cologne in 1326, and probably also Eckhart’s death (28 January 1328) and In agro dominico, the papal bull of 27 March 1329 that finally condemned several teachings attributed to him. The Master appears here as a fellow-victim, for he, too, has suffered from false accusations. It has not been noted before that the Master of the Dialogue speaks of his mistreatment in words that echo in part those of the historical Eckhart in his Verteidigungsschrift against the first allegations at Cologne, in late 1326: “It’s not a small crime”, he says, “to dishonor with lies innocent, good-willing clerics” for supporting the efforts of layfolk and enjoying “a good reputation among common people”. Driven by “evil pride”, those who punish them cannot bear “good-willing layfolk to talk of God or of heavenly things”29. Eckhart is here “an extraordinary light of heavenly wisdom”30, but his advice is often strategic: know when to be silent because the subject is too dangerous, he cautions several times. “Heaven and earth had a beginning, God is eternal; where was God before he created heaven and earth?”, the Layperson asks. The master worries: “No layperson should ask that, nor even think about it”, he says, perhaps in allusion to the first of the condemned articles of In agro dominico, regarding Eckhart’s concepts on the virtual eternity of creation, as Schweitzer suggested31. The point is not that the author had detailed knowledge of Eckhart’s writings (probably not), or knew the text of In agro dominico (not impossible, actually32), but rather that the author knew Eckhart had been condemned, and some of the reasons why.
- 33 SMEL, p. 39-40.
- 34 SMEL, p. 88 (see also p. 45); VD, p. 46.
- 35 SMEL, p. 34 and p. 196 for similar language in Meister Eckhart und der Arme Mensch; see now also (...)
- 36 SMEL, p. 80-81; for comparable passages in Hadewijch, Porete and Eckhart, see the references in (...)
- 37 Die rechte minnare die en soect sijns selfs voerdeel niet. Hi mint sonder waerom van rechter ede (...)
13“Eckhart” is most concerned about simplified talk of God’s being and of the Trinity, but he does not ignore questions about unification with God. The Layperson has reached the advanced stage of minne on earth and wonders, “Master, when the blessed soul (de saleghe siele) is united in the true love of God, does it then equal God?” “Yes, in so far that is possible,” the Master answers, “and it renders two materien into one, and it clarifies and illuminates what is dark”33. The question returns in different guises but the answer remains the same: “The blessed loving soul is ennobled and clarified and illuminated with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and higher divine knowledge”34. The dual process (the soul must liberate itself from earthly matters, and the will must align itself with God’s) is conventional, but the outcome is expressed in language that reminds us of Hadewijch, Porete, and the historical Eckhart: “The blessed loving soul has come to nothing into the rightful, true love of God” and “is completely molded into true divine love and no longer itself, totally not, down to the tiny things like particles; [… it] has become that, which it loves.” Elsewhere, the blessed soul “has left her own will so far behind her, into the will of God, that she does not will nor wish anything but what God wills. […] The divine minne has made one out of two, and that they never can part, God and the blessed soul, they will love forever, even if she were in hell”35. The bond is unconditional since the soul has lost its own self. Should “God throw it in the deepest abyss of hell, the blessed soul would still love him”36. The “rightful lover” also loves God “without a why”37, an Eckhartian turn of phrase.
Silence and persecution
- 38 SMEL, p. 17 and 105 (compare p. 28, 102, 182). VD, p. 149 refers to similar sentiments in Eckhar (...)
- 39 SMEL, p. 28, 102, 109, 123, 182 (VD, p. 108-111 reassigned some of the exchanges to Eckhart).
14Naturally, in this stage of minne, the Layperson cannot remain silent about the love’s object. Even though one’s “uppermost reason” argues for quiet, “every person likes to speak of what they love above all”38. The Master explains that the insight and joys achieved through God’s grace in this way require concealment from others. Humble silence is a sign of maturity (one learns to stay silent “for thirty years”) and puts a check on personal vanity, enabling “a heavenly life of contemplation” after such a long period of poverty and spiritual exercise. Above all, silence protects against “haughty people, who do not understand it” and will persecute “good-willing layfolk” who speak up on such matters, like the Pharisees persecuted Christ39.
- 40 SMEL, p. 17. It may be important to point out that paepscap does not refer to the office of the (...)
15Over and over again we circle back to harassment of the good-willing by clerics who “do not understand” and are “unknowing” (onbekent). “I am the foot-wipe of the clergy” (voetwisch der paepscap)40, the Layperson says at the start, and the feeling stays raw throughout the Dialogue:
- 41 SMEL, p. 96.
Master, what can you tell those traveling beghards and swesteren who wander through the land out of their good will and for their bread, and who do great penance without measure. When they are illuminated by heavenly wisdom and divine insight, they wish a little too much to speak to the unknowing, who do not want to understand, and then they are persecuted and put to shame and damned by clerics and monks (vander paepscap ende vanden abiten), because some of them wish to return to the world and make missteps: thus, [even] the good ones are shamed, whom God has chosen and who live by the uppermost reason of their souls!41
- 42 SMEL, p. 97.
- 43 SMEL, p. 105-106.
16When the master responds by praising the good-willing (“good will and holy desire are the beginning of all good works”42), his partner pushes him harder: “Master, I heard a friar of your order preach at the [Benedictine] convent of Rijnsburg [in Holland]. He said that the swesteren and beghards were heretics and unbelievers. I thought that was an unreasonable sermon to give among good religious people”. He should have spoken about love of God and how to achieve divine wisdom “rather than against the swesteren and beghards, who go to Cologne and other cities out of their good will and for their bread”43.
- 44 Geert Warnar, “Meister Eckhart, Walter van Holland en Jan van Ruusbroec. Historische en litterai (...)
17We are reminded of William Procurator’s gossip about the lollards of Cologne in his Chronicle, written in the late 1320s at the abbey of Egmond, just sixty kilometers north of Rijnsburg. Evidently news of Walter’s trial and demise in Cologne quickly traveled down the Rhine to Walter’s homeland of Holland, and like his contemporaries Jean de Hocsem and Gilles li Muisis, William used the occasion to tell his readers what exactly he thought of those deplorable lollards. The Dominican friar whose sermon our Layperson heard at Rijnsburg said much the same in those same years. The allusion to the trial prompted Geert Warnar’s ingenious (but untenable, alas) hypothesis that the Dialogue is a literary construction of an imaginary debate between Walter and Eckhart44.
- 45 SMEL, p. 169
- 46 Of course, the first half of the fourteenth century had no shortage of calamities, but the Dialo (...)
18The events at Cologne and the continuous oppression of these “good-willing” men and women since then triggers a long diatribe against hateful clergy in the Dialogue, never to be completely forgotten for the rest of the work. Having failed to assuage the Layperson’s distress over it, the Master suggests that the suffering may not be in vain because God sends his plagues every 1300 years and they herald an era of religious renewal45. If we were right to situate the end of the previous era (in the Dialogue’s periodization) in 1333 and the start of the “plagues” seven years and eight months earlier, that would bring us back to late 1325, or early 1326, the time when lollards and swesteren of Cologne were first rounded up in what became Walter of Holland’s trial. Perhaps the Master thought of his own trial as one of those plagues as well: as we have seen, the dossier against the historical Eckhart was opened in Cologne in the same year, 132646.
The author: lollard or (more probably) swester?
19Naturally one wonders if the author was one of those lollards and swesteren so much admired throughout the work. My answer is a moderately strong “yes” – absolute certainty being elusive. Not only does the Dialogue empathize repeatedly with their suffering, but one of those laments actually identifies the author (or, at least, the Layperson) as one of them:
- 47 SMEL, p. 102. The passage was first noted by Warnar, “Meester Eckhart”, p. 11–12.
Since the scribes and pharisees hated Jesus Christ, God’s son, so much … and deceived him, … it’s no wonder, oh master, that they persecute and despise and put to shame me and those like me—I, who often spoke foolishly and stupidly, in clumsy words and without knowledge47.
- 48 De Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten”, p. 61 (he believed both were equally possible); Wybren Sch (...)
- 49 John Van Engen, “A Woman Author? The Middle Dutch Dialogue Between a ‘Good-Willed Layperson’ and (...)
- 50 Hilde De Ridder-Symoens, “Education and Literacy in the Burgundian Netherlands”, Canadian Journa (...)
- 51 SMEL, p. 17-18.
- 52 SMEL, p. 62, 71.
20What more can we say about the author? Firstly, are we dealing with a man or a woman? Upon his discovery of the text more than a century ago, C.G.N. de Vooys had raised this question already, and in his 1999 review of Schweitzer’s edition, Wybren Scheepsma considered a woman author plausible48. More recently John Van Engen found grounds for female authorship in the relationship between the two figures, which he viewed as modeled upon that between a confessor/friar and his female (“beguine”) charge. He also pointed to statements reflecting a female perspective: Eve was Adam’s “heart’s love”, Jesus was Mary Magdalene’s, and humility is imagined as a mother nursing; there is also the saying “one always loves a man who is handsome”49. However, Van Engen may have overlooked the Layperson’s first speech, which begins with “Master, you have asked me whether I know any Latin. Well, I went to a ‘higher school’ since childhood and learned two words of Latin: ‘Pater’ […] and ‘noster’”. A (public) hogher scole, intended for pupils with a basic elementary education, existed in many cities of the Low Countries to teach Latin in preparation for university study; they were for boys only50. The purpose of the passage was of course to lay the groundwork for the larger argument that “[Latin] knowledge may teach you about good and bad, but only God’s elect will be gifted by the Holy Spirit”51. Yet, there is no denying that it identifies the Layperson as male from the start. Such incidental phrases as “the most horrible thing on earth is a haughty wife” and “if people search comfort in women, they will be tormented by impurity”, further evince a decidedly male perspective52. But then, what to do with the following episode?
- 53 SMEL, p. 109.
Master, once a most pious cleric of your order was preaching here, about something a good-willing layperson had said and that went against the preacher’s wishes but was nonetheless very true. No good person would have been rightly angry about it. But in that sermon the preacher put great shame on the layperson before the common convent. When good-willing women denounced the preacher for that, he said that it was just as impossible for a layperson to be at rest in God as it was to jump over the church building53.
- 54 Van Engen, “A Woman Author?”, p. 165 (who weighs the issues slightly differently). SMEL, p. lvii (...)
21Dat ghemeyn convent refers to a monastic or semi-religious (lay religious) community, meeting as a collective. Since the author calls them vrouwen (women), they were probably not nuns but laywomen – beguines or swesteren, which would also explain both their indignation and the preacher’s disdainful quip at the end. Could a man have been in the audience? Yes, especially if we were in a semi-religious rather than a monastic setting, but one starts to wonder (with John Van Engen), if our author was not a member of that community, and perhaps even the “layperson” whose statement (about resting in God? about intimate knowledge of God’s divinity?) instigated the confrontation54.
- 55 De Ridder-Symoens, “Education”, p. 7-12; Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 6-7.
- 56 SMEL, p. 121.
22In and of itself there would be nothing unusual about a woman writing on religious matters in the fourteenth-century Low Countries, where female literacy in the vernacular may have equaled that of men, especially in cities55. Our author, however, would have had more than enough reason to hide her identity, and what better way to do so than to pose as a male, with the mask slipping only here or there? The need to protect oneself surely accounts for the author’s insistence that they “did not see those poor swesteren and beghards [condemned in Cologne] with [their] own eyes, and probably never will” but loves them dearly because “they fulfill holy Scripture with their spiritual life, even without [an approved] habit”56.
- 57 In Dordrecht, on the southern edge of Holland, brootsusters may have settled in 1378; in Schoonh (...)
- 58 See Part Four: ‘s- Hertogenbosch, Swesteren, and Louvain, Swesteren.
23No houses of the movement are known in Holland proper until the late fourteenth century57, but swesteren and lollards had certainly reached Brabant by the 1330s. In the northern parts of that duchy, not far from Rijnsburg, a swesteren convent existed in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in 1335 but the community was clearly older, and if we were to speculate freely, their leader, Wunna of Utrecht, would actually be a good fit for our author because of her origins, judging by the name. Given the tendency of the brothers and sisters to travel widely, even Louvain (swesteren attested in 1333) could have been the author’s “home”58.
- 59 VD, p. 171-174, 198-202 (weaker parts of an otherwise superb book), addressed the Dialogue’s vie (...)
- 60 There is only a warning to beguines and beghards, that putting on their “gray” (their habit) or (...)
- 61 For instance, the Dialogue advises against frequent communion (SMEL, p. 161) and says little on (...)
- 62 SMEL, p. 179.
24Our author was less likely a traditional beguine or beghard59. The Dialogue has praise for those who live in poverty and penance, following only Scripture (and not human-made rules) as their guide, but not for beguines and beghards who live by an internal rule in their beguinage or convent. By the 1330s, most of the “old-style” beghards (but not all) of the Low Countries had become Tertiaries; remarkably, despite the author’s deep admiration for a life of poverty, St Francis is never mentioned. Whenever the author describes beghards as “good-willing”, they are always qualified as “wanderers” (ongestadeghen); in other words, those references are to those we have called lollards, a term the author may have avoided because too many people considered it an insult. Of beguines, the author has nothing good to say60, and their opinion on devotional practices differs from what traditional beguines would favor61. The Master even states he would rather preach on heavenly matters and God’s being to a criminal than to “unenlightened beguines or unenlightened beghards or prideful clergy; they are idiots on the subject of divine insight”62.
- 63 SMEL, p. 67-68, 123, 160-161; see also VD, p. 170.
- 64 See above, note 3, as well as Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 92, summa (...)
25That is not to contend that the author reflexively approves of all lollards and swesteren: they admit that some of them have failed and repeatedly recommend a long apprenticeship, of thirty years spent in spiritual exercises and good works, before embarking on a contemplative life (which could include begging?)63. We do not know to what extent that sentiment was shared within the movement at large, but a two-tiered organization, consisting of younger apprentices and senior members, is possible. Such a division evidently marked life among the so-called “hooded sisters” of Świdnica, and John of Brün’s twelve years of training at the “house of the poor” in Cologne may point also in that direction64.
Jan van Leeuwen’s criticism
- 65 Jan van Leeuwen, Van tienderhande materien and Van vijfterhande bruederscap in KBR, ms. 667, fol (...)
26A comparison with the work of Jan van Leeuwen (d. 1378), a laybrother who entered Ruusbroec’s house of regular canons at Groenendaal after a wandering life as an adult, is instructive. When van Leeuwen wrote his treatises, in the mid-1350s, he must have been familiar with lollards and swesteren since they had then at least seven or eight settlements in Brabant alone: in Louvain (swesteren arrived there before 1333, lollards in 1345), Tienen (lollards before 1340), ‘s-Hertogenbosch (two houses of swesteren founded before 1333 and 1360, respectively), Antwerp (lollards and swesteren in 1345) and Brussels (swesteren in 1348–1350/1360); it is even possible that he had traveled with them along the roads of the Low Countries before joining Groenendaal. Both the author of the Dialogue and van Leeuwen criticized the higher clergy and traditional monasticism; both despised superficial or external piety; both wrote of mystical love. (The inclusion of the only complete text of the Dialogue in a sixteenth-century manuscript of van Leeuwen’s works is thus understandable.) But van Leeuwen condemned lollards and swesteren in the harshest terms: although they had “the external appearance of the poor and downtrodden” (dat si den armen verworpenen scijn van buten draghen), they were “called nor guided by God’s spirit” (niet en sijn gheeijscht noch gheleijdt sonder middel van Gods gheeste). They felt exalted “above all orders and all ways of life that have been set and founded in the Holy Church” (boven alle ordenen ende oec boven alle state van leven die inder heijligher kerke gheset ende ghefondeert sijn), but only followed “their own stubborn will” (eenwillich … na haer goetduncken). “They claim[ed] that those who take a vow and join an order no longer act, or can act, solely out of rightful love of God but only because of vows and obligations” (wanneer soe de mensche hem selven verbonden heeft in een ordene, dat hi dan voert meer alle sijn werke niet puerlijc uut gherechter minnen doen noch werken en mach omme des eijghens bants wille der ghelooften, dat hijt doen moet). But they were forgetting that all virtue starts with obedience, van Leeuwen wrote. He thought that it was “a thousand times better to follow the commands of my prelate in rightful obedience of the order” than to do “whatever I want” (mijns eijghens goetdunckens)65.
- 66 Patschovsky, “Freiheit der Ketzer”, p. 268-271 has a good, succinct synopsis of Augustine’s conc (...)
27Here, we are dealing, of course, with the fundamental opposition between a “free spirit” perspective (though the Dialogue never uses that term) and the traditional, monastic outlook, going back to Augustine, who wrote that both a spiritus libertatis and a spiritus servitutis compelled the human to follow God’s commands, but the latter was foundational and essential for the former to grow. For the Dialogue, and for many suspects of “free-spirit” beliefs in this age, liberation from enslavement to sin could be achieved through supreme love of God; in that state, and having abandoned all material goods (another form of liberation), lollards and swesteren relied on God to provide the necessities – hence the slogan “Brot durch Gott”. For Jan van Leeuwen and other opponents of such thought, that was a dangerous illusion; only knechtelike vrees (“servile fear”, the timor governing the spiritus servitutis in Augustine’s terminology), regulated by obedience training, could condition the will and nurture a proper love of God. Lollards and swesteren lacked that internal conditioning66.
- 67 SMEL, p. 97 and 117.
28The Dialogue dismisses those objections. The incidental failure of some to uphold high standards did not mean they were hypocrites, nor did it discredit the ideals. As to monastic rules and clerical ordination, they did not match the power of the (good) will and God’s love. The author invokes scriptural precedent: look at Peter and the apostles, the Dialogue argues, they were poor layfolk, neither wealthy nor high-born, but “Peter answered God’s call out of his own free will, and he folded his own will into God’s will in a perfect love until his death, and he became fully obedient to God and all His commands, although he was not a cleric or pope, nor did he wear a habit”. The Layperson concludes: “It is more noble to live spiritually, unconstrained, in free will and rightful love, than to do much that is imposed by a prelate and not done in love”. As we have seen, the author is not blind for human weakness: the long apprenticeship he advocated is intended to learn from and overcome those challenges. The real test is to keep the love of God alive and active, despite the setbacks. As the Master promises toward the end: “So long as the good will is burning in holy desire, humans are capable of all virtues”67.
Assessing the Doctrine of the Dialogue
People of good will
- 68 My analysis of the concept is indebted to SMEL, p. liii-lv and especially VD, p. 166-179, but de (...)
29The crux of the matter may lie in the concept of “the good will”, invoked multiple times in the treatise and associated most often with lollards and swesteren. Although the author never defines it, we can deduce its contours from various hints scattered through the work68. Naturally Luke 2:24 (“Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of goodwill”) is the source of the term “good will”, which is attributed to all human beings as God’s creatures. The Master explains:
- 69 SMEL, p. 96-97. The logic is pursued to its conclusion, and good-willing Jews and pagans may rea (...)
It has been said: good will is not a heritage; we share it with pagans and Jews. It is a mere beginning of God’s grace, and yet, it is more valuable than gold and silver. Just as bad will can lead to hell, even if one does not act upon it (when one dies without contrition and confession), so good will and holy desire will earn you heaven, even without acts, should one die immediately, as if one had completed forty years of penance69.
30The advice for young people wishing to keep that good will and godly desire alive comes through loud and clear - and repeatedly. The Layperson recalls:
- 70 SMEL, p. 105. A very similar sentiment is expressed elsewhere by the Master: SMEL, p. 89. Both r (...)
When I was young, I once heard in a sermon that our Lord said to the young man: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have a treasure in heaven. And come follow me” [Matt. 19:21]. But when the good-willing do this, and they make themselves voluntarily poor [willichlijc arm] for God, and they go and beg for their bread and they humiliate themselves often, well, then people of the cloth damn them70.
- 71 Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks. Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in (...)
- 72 SMEL, p. 77-78.
31The gospel reference alluded to is of course the one that inspired early Christian monasticism (and soon afterwards, the earliest examples of traveling monks who begged for alms and met with rejection in Syria, North Africa, and Constantinople71). Here, Christ’s call is directly applied to the lollards and swesteren who suffer from persecution, reminding us of another gospel text, the Beatitudes (Matt. 5: 3-12: “Blessed are the poor in spirit […], blessed are the meek […]”, ending with “blessed are they that suffer persecution”). Ootmoedicheyt (meekness) is the one character trait most praised in the Dialogue: “one walks best and in peace with the meek, who are illuminated by divine wisdom and love God with full desire”, and “blessed are the good-willing and innocent (onnosel)”, says the Master72.
- 73 SMEL, p. 64.
- 74 SMEL, p. 73, 138-139. For the Ten Commandments in the testimony of the Świdnica sisters, see Gał (...)
- 75 VD, p. 195-202; see also above, note 65; for Ruusbroec’s reservations about people “with good wi (...)
32The Dialogue appreciates and advises all people “of good will”, whatever their station in life, from simple workers (dorpers, uncouth country folk, but the author includes urban proletarians in that category73) to good-willing clerics. For everyone, only the Ten Commandments are law (as may have been true among the “hooded sisters” of Świdnica as well), with the first command prevailing over all others. Hence, one should not venerate the saints, and popular belief in the power of Mary is wrong-headed. One should honor Sunday as the day of rest ordered by God, but all other feast days were merely human inventions74. That said, implementing the program of renunciation, good works, and spiritual exercises proposed here, also required separation from ordinary societal engagement (but without joining a regular order), a calling best exemplified by the lollards and swesteren, according to the Dialogue. That was exactly what Jan van Leeuwen feared: so many good-willing people heard about God’s grace without truly feeling it inside. He maintained that “one or two sermons” on poverty of spirit were enough for them to sell all their possessions and give it to the poor, seduced by the siren-call of swesteren and lollards. Without the restraints of monastic discipline, all they gained was a false sense of freedom75.
- 76 See Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a) and Swesteren (d).
33If the concept of “good will” indeed formed one of the pillars of the “lollard-and-swesteren-project”, we may understand a name by which they became known early on in Cologne and which has not been properly explained: benevole pauper[es] que suester dicunter, they were called in 1299, and commun[es] pauper[es] benevol[i], scilicet swest[rices] et becgard[i] in 131776. If “voluntary poverty’ were the only defining quality here, the proper Latin expression would have been voluntarie pauperes, a term with an old pedigree that was surely known to any scribe. Benevole pauperes, on the other hand, is a literal translation from the German gutwillige arme, the “poor of good will”.
The value of good works and the parallels with Meister Eckart’s thought
- 77 SMEL, p. 19, 127-128, 137, 162, 164.
- 78 SMEL, p. 45. Compare with Eckhart’s saying that one can be closer to God on the street than in c (...)
34The interaction of human will and God’s grace had of course been part and parcel of Christian doctrine on sin, merit, and grace since Augustine. Thirteenth-century scholasticism gave it a new impetus, however, resulting in a variety of approaches. Of special interest to us here is surely that of Meister Eckhart. We have noted above that the Dialogue’s portrayal of mystical union is partly comparable with Eckhart’s views, and so is its critique of ecstatic visions and visual representation77. We also find here occasional thoughts on the primacy of internal conversion and prayer that sound Echartian. It is often better to be alone, the Master says: “the blessed loving soul is closer to God on her bed than in the church”78. But the similarities are limited. They are neither unique nor clearly textual, and we should remember that nothing about mystical love in the Dialogue alludes to an Eckhartian concept like the ground of the soul, nor does it adopt typically Eckhartian terms like abegescheidenheit (or its Middle Dutch equivalent) or others.
- 79 SMEL, p. 93-94 and 217-218. The comparison is with Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinisch (...)
- 80 Meister Eckhart (…) Die deutschen Werke, vol. 5: Meister Eckhart’s Traktate, ed. Josef Quint, St (...)
35In its thinking on grace and the superiority of interior over exterior acts, however, the Dialogue does lean in Eckhart’s direction. Both Franz-Josef Schweitzer and Yves Van Damme have drawn attention to the Dialogue’s position on the lasting value of good works. The Layperson relates how they heard a priest claim in a sermon that those merits would be lost in a state of mortal sin. When they and others present objected to those words, the priest first sought the support of other clerics and then angrily invoked his authority as an ordained priest to silence the layfolk. The Master agrees with the Layperson in terms that very closely resemble those we find in German Sermon 15 (Steer 105) of the historical Eckhart, explaining that contrition “revives” the value of those works79. The underlying argument was important because it supported the redeeming value of good works and especially the prevailing force of (good) intention. The historical Eckhart was a firm believer in the power of the will to do good: mit dem willen vermac ich alliu dinc, he wrote in the Reden der Unterweisung.80
- 81 VD, p. 69-70, and T.B.W. Kok, “Jan van Leeuwen en zijn werkje tegen Eckhart”, Ons Geestelijk Erf(...)
- 82 Sturlese, Acta Echardiana, p. 596-600, nr. 65, at p. 599.
- 83 See now Van Damme, “The Inevitable Eckhart”, p. 77–83. Satoshi Kikuchi, From Eckhart to Ruusbroe (...)
- 84 VD, p. 177-178; R. A. Ubbink, De receptie van Meister Eckhart in de Nederlanden gedurende de mid (...)
- 85 Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter”, p. 125-126 (those ideas had little to do with questions of (...)
36Eckhart’s position on good works was one more reason for Jan van Leeuwen to attack him in his Van meester Eckaerts leere daer hi in doelde (“On the Erroneous Doctrine of Master Eckhart”). For Jan, it proved that Eckhart placed himself above and beyond the teachings of the Church. The stakes may have been even higher, as Van Damme has argued: Jan may have understood that for Eckhart (and for the Dialogue?), good works by themselves did not last, but their spiritual, purifying effects did. For Jan, such subordination of external acts to interior acts would inevitably lead to dispensing with practicing the virtues—in other words, to the “false inactivity” of the Free Spirit81. The charge also bears relation to article 18 of In agro dominico, that interior rather than exterior acts “bring forth the fruit that make us good”82. We know that in Van menegherande goeder leeringhen (“Various Good Teachings”), van Leeuwen accused swesteren and lollards of holding Eckhart’s teachings, partly because of Eckhart’s doctrine on grace in his famous sermon, Beati pauperes spiritu83. When some years later, a canon at Groenendaal, Godfried van Wevel (d. 1396), incorporated portions of Reden der Unterweisung into his Middle Dutch tract Vanden twaelf dogheden (“The Twelve Virtues”), he softened and questioned the primacy of the (good) will taught by Eckhart84. Finally, we will remember from Robert Lerner’s work that around the same time, at Metz in 1337, “beghards” were accused of holding Eckhartian opinions on the will condemned by In agro dominico85.
- 86 MRHCL, ms. 479, fol. 218-246, ed. Robrecht Lievens, Het evangelie van de Wilde Adelaar, Louvain, (...)
37It is true that the Dialogue lacks references to specific elements of Eckhart’s Armutslehre that are expressed in his terms. There is after all not much on poverty of the will that resonates with phrases from the Beati pauperes spiritu sermon or Reden der Unterweisung, at least in comparison with vernacular texts circulating later in the Low Countries, for instance the so-called “Gospel of the Wild Eagle”, a text of unclear provenance and date but possibly created in a lollard or swesteren community of Maastricht86. This, as well as the lack of typically Eckhartian terminology of mystical union noted above, should give us pause before we imagine the author of the Dialogue as a “follower” of Eckhart, someone who had directly engaged with his thought in written form. The resemblances to the Meister’s work are too broad and, in instances where they seem closer, could be explained by oral transmission of Eckhart’s ideas. But that the author was aware of those ideas, particularly on grace, good works, and the will, seems probable to me.
- 87 Marcus Enders, “Die Reden der Unterweisung: Eine Lehre vom Richtigen Leben durch einen Guten und (...)
38I will leave it to specialists of Eckhart to determine more fully in what sense the concept of the good will that emerges from the Dialogue is related (or not) to Eckhart’s views on the will. Naturally we would all like to know more about possible contacts between Eckhart and swesteren and lollard communities in Cologne and/or Strassburg, but no such information has come to light yet. However, if the concept of the good will was central to what I have called the “movement” of lollards and swesteren, and if – I realize that both are big “ifs” – it was already present in 1299, when swesteren were called benevole pauperes in Cologne, as we have seen, that would be long before Eckhart’s stay in either Strassburg or Cologne, usually dated from c. 1314 to 1322, and from late 1322 until 1327, respectively; it would be practically contemporaneous with Eckhart’s Reden der Unterweisung, the oldest of his treatises that has been preserved, written in 1294–1298, when he was teaching in Thuringian Erfurt87. The parallels we perceived here between the lollards and swesteren’s references to “good will”, and Eckhart’s views, may thus point to a shared basis in debates on the will and grace of the last quarter of the thirteenth century, rather than to any dependence on the Meister’s teachings.
Free Spirit tendencies?
- 88 HFS, p. 213 and 215.
- 89 SMEL, p. 24 and 42; de Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten”, p. 59 cites those statements as dubiou (...)
39To what extent does the Dialogue betray the thinking we associate with “the heresy of the Free Spirit”? Robert Lerner classified the text “among the clearest original expressions of the Free Spirit”. As we have seen, the Dialogue adopts a Free-Spirit-like stance by affirming faith in the freely given love of God and the benefits of absolute poverty. The preeminence of layfolk directly illuminated is a favorite theme throughout and its mystical doctrine may be called (somewhat) “of a Free-Spirit complexion”88. No doubt several statements on clerical ordination and institutional authority of the Church, or on the cult of Mary and the saints, would raise more than one inquisitorial eyebrow. To those looking for signs of “Amalrician” (or possibly, again, Eckhartian) teachings, certain phrases would look suspicious and could possibly also indicate Free-Spirit tendencies: “All that is good in creatures, that is God in all the creatures”, or “God is the life and being of all He created in heaven and earth”89.
- 90 HFS, p. 215.
- 91 SMEL, p. 122. It is momentary: see SMEL, p. 52-53. For a parallel (vriheit der consciencien) in (...)
- 92 SMEL, p. 28 (compare with p. 52-53 and 97; less clear is p. 75).
40But is the Dialogue antinomian? The phrase vrij worden van consciencien, which Lerner perceived as potentially problematic, should probably not be understood as aiming for “freedom from conscience”90 but rather as enjoying a “free conscience” or “a clear conscience”. That is undoubtedly the case when the Dialogue speaks of the blessed soul in its (momentary) union with God91. Elsewhere the Dialogue applies it to the good-willing fully “burning” with the love of God and exercising their capacity for virtue issued forth from the good will. In those cases, the Dialogue emphasizes how tenuous such a position always will be. The Layperson asks how one can come to sin, if one is “free of conscience and unblemished by sin”. The Master answers: “No one can be without sin! That is how fragile God has made humans”. One can live “free of conscience and unblemished by sin” only on these conditions: “by living according to the uppermost reason of the soul, by practicing the virtues and the most holy spiritual life, in knowledge of oneself [=with contrition], and by following one’s divine calling”92. This is hardly an example of antinomian freedom from sin.
- 93 SMEL, p. 53–56 and 170–180; their examination in VD, p. 210–252 shows that although the author’s (...)
- 94 SMEL, p. 55.
- 95 SMEL, p. 43-44, 47, 50, 177, 180.
- 96 VD, p. 248-252.
41The Dialogue celebrates the otherworldliness of the soul in terms that seem unique and should be explored further, but they may not be as controversial as they appear at first glance. I am thinking in particular of two long sections on humanity, earth, and the cosmos, in which the author displays their considerable scientific knowledge, not directly traceable – so it seems – to scholarly Latin or vernacular works of the era93. The ultimate goal is to underscore the fundamental contrast between the physical and spiritual worlds: everything under the firmaments belonged to the former, but the stars (including the sun) did not have “the crude matter that is on earth” and were purely spiritual94. They were intrinsically invariable, just as the human soul never changes in substance. While the soul and celestial bodies thus share the same spiritual substance, the Master explains that the blessed soul is superior to all of these in nobility and subtility, superior even to the sun, God’s ondermeester (assistant master). However, that is not our own work: it is due to God’s grace, given to all human beings95. No Free-Spirit (or Amalrician) principles are in play here: employing science to shed light on the divine plan, the Dialogue again foregrounds the potential of the human soul to absorb God’s grace. Coupled with the Dialogue’s confidence in the capacity of the human will to align itself with God’s will, the text projects an overall “optimistic” view of humanity and salvation96.
The issue of poverty
- 97 Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter”, p. 125; Courtney Kneupper, “Reconsidering a Fourteenth-Cent (...)
- 98 For a few observations on the Dialogue’s periodization, see SMEL, p. 233-236 (exploring a percei (...)
- 99 I disagree with the identification of certain “heretical” beghards or lollards as Waldensians in (...)
42The commitment of lollards and swesteren to strict poverty and their begging practices might seem to betray Franciscan (or Spiritual) origins but they do not. Given the salience of the usus pauper question in the Franciscan order around 1310, one would expect echoes of it among devotees of religious renunciation in the Low Countries and Lower Rhine as well, but if they can be found, it is not among the lollards and swesteren, except perhaps if we were to move as far south as Metz and include certain “beghards of poverty” who seem to have been followers of Olivi and were condemned there in 1337. They are not known to have traveled further north97. Nor does the Dialogue display any pronounced Spiritual sympathies. Although some scholars have argued that its periodization of history evokes Peter of John Olivi’s or Ubertino da Casale’s use of the year 1300 as a crucial moment, the resemblance is superficial, and the Dialogue lacks any interest in apocalyptic thought, prophesy, or St Francis98. That lollards and swesteren were affected by Waldensian teachings seems also unlikely to me. Waldensians may have been active in northern France for some time in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but there is no trace of their doctrine in the Low Countries or the region of Cologne around 1290-1330, and I cannot find any in the Dialogue either99.
- 100 Julia Burkhardt, Von Bienen lernen. Das Bonum universale de apibus des Thomas von Cantimpré als (...)
- 101 All we know about this preacher comes from the Brabantine priest-historian, Lodewijk van Velthem (...)
- 102 BnF, lat. 15954, fol. 263v: Item quod nullus potest dare elemosinam de superfluo (ed. CDIN, vol. (...)
43A more profitable approach lies in acknowledging that a wide stream of religious movements based on the liberating force of poverty sprang forth more than a century earlier. The ideal certainly animated the first beguines and proto-beguines, like Mary of Oignies (d. 1213), even if it became muted in later generations of that movement. Belief in the cleansing effects of poverty and doubt about the reigning doctrine on grace supposedly characterized a heretical group at Antwerp around 1250. William Cornelis, the dean of the local collegiate chapter, was identified posthumously as its leader, and a confraternity of Antwerp priests was dissolved in 1248, which indicates that suspicion centered on clerics rather than layfolk, although the latter may not have been totally absent. Among the errors attributed to them were the beliefs that no wealthy person could be saved but all the poor would, and that it was “lawful to steal from the rich in order to give to the poor”, one of those “Robin Hood”-sentiments one finds occasionally in the literature of the Free Spirit100. Somewhere in the following decades (c. 1248-1263?), a “brother Ysewijn”, a penitential preacher from Germany, came to Maastricht and Louvain (both in the diocese of Liège), where he fulminated against usury and the sinfulness of the wealthy elite. He was ultimately defrocked by “brothers of his own order” and sent back eastwards (to Germany?), but left writings in Latin, in which he stated that true “generosity consisted of ceding to the poor that which you cannot bear to miss”101 – a claim that is very similar to one made by the “heretics” of Antwerp102. I am not arguing here that these cases were related or that they anticipated the lollards and swesteren. They are simply reminders that in these lands of cities ripped apart by labor unrest, religious ideals naturally were brought to bear on contrasts between rich and poor, and that consequently both laity and clergy, regardless of their “order”, must have reflected on the ethics of wealth.
Looking Backward, Looking Forward
44The lollards and swesteren represented a new stage in the beguine and beghard movement, carrying to its logical conclusions its ambition to shape a new religious life for lay people “in the world”, without monastic vows or clerical leadership. They went further, also, in applying more strictly the principles of apostolic poverty. As it had been for some beguines (and perhaps also some beghards), mystical union of the soul with God formed a powerful source of inspiration, informed by new trends brewing in the Rhineland in the last decade of the thirteenth century. New, too, was the belief in the power of the (good) will as a force for personal salvation. Poverty was both a material and spiritual good for those graced with good will. Further research will need to clarify how those beliefs relate to scholastic thought of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, including of course the teachings of Meister Eckhart. I would suggest, though, that in exploring those intellectual contexts, we do not axiomatically assume lollards and swesteren were applying doctrines developed at the university or Mendicant studia, or that they were following the directives of this or that master. The chronology of their origins may also indicate that the movement came into its own before Eckhart’s influence was palpable.
After 1350
45In the preceding pages we traced the growth and expansion of the movement in the Low Countries and the Lower-Rhine until about 1350. I chose those limits deliberately, for in the following decades, lollards and swesteren spread across an even greater part of northern and central Europe, a territory so large that I could not possibly cover it responsibly, however much I could rely on the friendly help of others. Only a truly collaborative project involving specialists working with different language sources (and excavating local archives) can do that.
Renewal of persecution
- 103 Iohannes Laurentius Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus Commentarius, Leipzig, Libraria Weidmann (...)
- 104 His letter to the Rat of Aachen about the closing of the convents, preserved in the local city a (...)
- 105 A dossier of those events is in MRHCL, Kapittelkerk van Sint-Servaas, inv. nr. 159, fol. 29r-30r
- 106 Gregory IX, Perduxit ad audientiam, to bishops of Germany, Poland, and Silesia, 27 July 1372: Gu (...)
- 107 Paul Lecacheux and Guillaume Mollat, eds., Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Urbain V se rapp (...)
- 108 See HFS, p. 53 and now also Thomas Werner, Den Irrtum liquidieren: Buchverbrennerungen im Mittel (...)
46But the nature of ecclesiastical opposition to the lollards and swesteren also changed after the mid-fourteenth century. After several decades of episcopal inquests had failed to root them out, new investigations were launched on a larger scale by papal inquisitors appointed with the support of the highest authorities in Church and State. Beginning in 1364, several Dominican inquisitors operated in Germany, from 1368 onward backed by Emperor Charles IV, against “the sect of beghards and beguines or convent sisters commonly called wilge armen or conventswestern who beg with the slogan Brot dorch god”103, obviously a new effort to root out the lollards and swesteren. Two inquisitors, Louis of Caliga and his successor John of Boland, both Dominican friars of Cologne, acted against them in the archdioceses of Cologne and Trier, and in the diocese of Liège. There, Louis closed down the lollard and swesteren houses in Aachen in late 1369, early 1370104; a newly established lollard house of Maastricht folded under his pressure in 1371105. At the same time the hunt was expanded both to the east (Poland)106 and west (France), where inquisitors fought “the male and female children of Belial, the beghards and beguines” since 1365. On 29 January 1373, Pope Gregory XI encouraged inquisitors to intensify their search for “beghards…known as turlupins or lollards” (begardi… turlupini seu lolardi alias nuncupari dicuntur) who spread heretical errors “in the county of Flanders and neighboring parts of France”107. The French king Charles V also lent his financial support to the whole enterprise. The Grandes Chroniques report that a trial was held in Paris in July 1372, ending with the burning on the Place de Grève of the vestments and books of the turlupins, also known as the “company of poverty” (compaignie de povreté); the next day a young woman, called Peronne, from Aubenton (Aisne), was burned in the same place (like that other northerner, Marguerite Porete, a good sixty years earlier), along with the body of a man who had died in prison two weeks before (3–4 July 1372). They were most likely female and male “lollards” from Flanders and/or Picardy, whose advance into France was stopped with royal help108. By the 1370s, then, the fight against the movement in both Germany and France figured prominently in the minds of the leadership in Church and state—which explains why around this time “lollard” as a derogatory term crossed the English Channel and became applied to followers of Wyclif, perceived as religious and political threats.
New defenders
- 109 Ex iniuncto nobis, ed. PSB, p. 190-195, nr. 21 (whose interpretation of this text must be revise (...)
- 110 For those copies, see Huyskens, Die Anfänge”, p. 205-206 and PSB, p. 190-191 (the latter was una (...)
- 111 EQ, vol. 5, p. 88-90, nr. 82.
- 112 CDIN, vol. 1, p. 237-238, nr. 225 (Ad audientiam nostram). HFS, p. 54, perhaps misled by MBB, p. (...)
- 113 The documents, mostly in the archives of the Alexian brothers of Cologne, are discussed in Huysk (...)
47Meanwhile, the new campaigns to repress the continental lollards and swesteren also met with resistance, as defenders of the movement began to raise their voices as well. Protest against the conduct of inquisitors surfaced in several places. Four men, no doubt lollards, from the dioceses of Liège, Trier, and Strassburg, petitioned Pope Gregory XI for protection of their movement some time before 6/7 April 1374, when Gregory wrote the archbishops of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, as well as “all bishops of Germany, Brabant, and Flanders”, that he was informed about “people of both sexes [the terms lollards and swesteren were not used] who lead humble and rightful lives in poverty and chastity, and who out of love of God wish to take care of each other”. He asked the prelates to examine the orthodoxy of such people in their dioceses and, if they were found faithful, to protect them109. Copies of those instructions demonstrate that lollards submitted the pope’s letter to clerical authorities in the dioceses of Liège, Cambrai, Strassburg, Trier, Worms, and Halberstadt in 1374–1375; surely they did so in others as well110. In 1375 the Rat of Cologne wrote to Pope Gregory in support of “the men and women who go begging according to the counsels of the gospel”. According to the Rat, people of Cologne considered them orthodox and “true worshippers of Christ” (pro veris christocolis), and secular priests agreed with that opinion. The Rat denounced “a certain Dominican inquisitor” (John of Boland) for his duplicitous questioning of “poor lay people, wholly illiterate” (=not knowing Latin) in such a way that “even a great theologian could not find an answer”111. In the end, on 2 December 1377, pope Gregory sent another letter to the same recipients in Germany, Brabant, and Flanders asking them to lift the excommunications of those who were wrongly punished, and to protect the “poor of both sexes […] as long as they [were] found faithful and Catholic”112. The bishop of Worms declared two houses of lollards and swesteren in his city (with a combined total of thirty-eight men and women) orthodox in 1377, and the parish priest of St Catharine in Mechelen vouched for lollards who had been living there for several years to his bishop of Cambrai in 1378. The archbishop of Cologne ordered an inspection of ten swesteren houses and the lollard house of zur Lunge in his city, which his official, John de Cervo, found orthodox in 1382–1383113.
Further attacks
- 114 Discussion in HFS, p. 57-60, 145-157, 163-174; Kurze, “Die festländischen Lollarden”, p. 58-68; (...)
- 115 Current scholarship says that these terms first appeared in 1376 (Christopher J. Kauffman, Tamer (...)
- 116 Kauffman, Tamers, p. 83 and 88; Niebes, Les frères cellites, p. 11 and 37, and Part Four, at the (...)
48Nevertheless, it is far from certain that Gregory’s “protection” letter of 1377 had a lasting impact because new waves of persecution swept up lollards, swesteren, and some “traditional” beguines and beghards in the 1390s, a high point (or rather, “low point”) in the treatment of such groups, as Robert Lerner and others have shown. Church leaders produced an impressive body of writings against them that were mined by inquisitors on the ground, from Wasmud of Homburg’s Tractatus contra hereticos beckardos, lulhardos et swestriones of 1398, over Jean Gerson’s De theologia mystica of 1402–1403 and various works by the Swiss canonist Felix Hemmerlin written in 1438–1439, to Heymeric de Campo’s Millelogicon of 1450114. The challenges only abated in the latter half of the fifteenth century, as lollards and swesteren of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine transformed themselves into a new order of “brothers and sisters of the Cell” or Cellites (the terms fratres and sorores celle had first appeared in Antwerp in 1349 but did not become common until the fifteenth century115), a slow process that concluded with the acceptance of a monastic rule: in 1461, the male and female Cellites of Antwerp adopted the Rule of St Augustine and began construction of a chapel; the brothers in Cologne did the same in 1473116. By the sixteenth century, “brothers of St Alexius”, their new patron saint, became the preferred name of the male branch; swesteren were then usually called Cellitinnen, “Cell sisters,” or “black sisters”, after their habit.
Continuous popular support
49This excursion into later developments confirms our previous finding, that these men and women enjoyed a great deal of popular support throughout those crises, and some of that support seems to have come from prominent citizens. The same is true, of course, for traditional beguines and beghards, but in their case, the charges against them could be understood as the fallout from a suspicion of heresy that originally targeted lollards and swesteren, or even as collateral damage in skirmishes between the secular clergy and the Mendicant friars. That the willige armen received public backing all the same indicates that few lay people believed the allegations. We also took note of clerics charged with pastoral care who sometimes acted as early sponsors or were involved in the early lollard and swesteren communities; we can only assume they, too, considered them good Christians.
- 117 One example out of many: Kauffman, Tamers, p. 52-58.
- 118 Ex iniuncto nobis (modeled in part on Gregory XI’s bull of 1374), ed. CDIN, vol. 1, p. 254–256, (...)
- 119 For such care among beguines of the Low Countries and Rhineland, see Simons, Cities, p. 34, 39–4 (...)
50Those endorsements cannot be explained by the heroic assistance that lollards and swesteren supposedly provided to the victims of the Black Death, as claimed by modern historians of the Alexian order (the late fifteenth/early sixteenth-century successors of the lollards)117, or more generally by their social contributions as caregivers for the sick. There is no evidence that they played such a role during the first great epidemic of 1347-1353, or even in the plague years 1360-1363, 1369, or 1374-1375. If they had, the supportive statements that we discussed above would have mentioned it. Nor is there any sign that the brothers or sisters stood out in their care of the weak and infirm in this period. The earliest source of it is in a (highly conditional) approval letter issued by pope Boniface IX on 7 January 1394118. Perhaps lollards and swesteren offered such care earlier (surely it was part of their “good works”), but that was not unusual among the lay religious; many convents of beguines and of male or female tertiaries did the same119. Alexian brothers and Cellite sisters routinely buried the dead during epidemics in the late fifteenth through eighteenth centuries, and they were well known for their homecare of the infirm in Germany and the Low Countries in the early modern and modern era, but we should not project that life onto the very different one led by their predecessors two or more centuries earlier.
- 120 Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-industrial Eur (...)
- 121 Kate Crassons, The Claims of Poverty: Literature, Culture and Ideology in Late Medieval England, (...)
- 122 Augustine Thompson, “The Origins of Religious Mendicancy in Medieval Europe”, in Donald S. Prudl (...)
51Popular support of the movement can also be called remarkable in light of the consensus among historians of religion and poverty that late medieval Europe witnessed a decisive turn against public begging, especially when coupled with vagrancy. As Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly put it, debates about religious renunciation of the thirteenth century centered on the Mendicant orders generated conflicts and reflection on private ownership and radical poverty at “a time when growing numbers of lay people were experiencing the consequences of commercialization, urbanization, and social differentiation, which made the place of the poor in – urban – society an issue”120. During periods of contraction in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, social policies in many parts of Europe hardened, limiting public assistance only to the deserving poor. In that context, the mendicancy of the friars became a detraction from actual poor relief121. That the itinerant lollards and swesteren continued to beg in public throughout the fourteenth century, against Church opposition but with some measure of popular and elite approval, complicates our understanding of the process. It also casts a stark light on the role of the friars in the ecclesiastical fight against lollards and swesteren, which we may interpret as one last effort on the part of the friars to monopolize religious mendicancy: after the successful elimination of the brothers of the Sack, the Pied Friars, and others in the final decades of the thirteenth century, lollards and swesteren were the friars’ only competitors left in the domain of religious begging. That fact, and the public stance some of the lollards seem to have taken against the friars, may have helped the former in the arena of popular opinion, but balancing all those contrary forces made them vulnerable nonetheless122.
Mysticism
- 123 Wolter, Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 172-187, nr. 7, at p. 178; Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguin (...)
52Historians of lay religion of the Middle Ages will once again have noted how thin a line separated heretical mysticism from its acceptable forms. If the “Dialogue Between Meister Eckhart and the Layperson” is a reliable guide to their doctrine, as I have argued in these pages, lollards and swesteren were poised close to the edge, yet within orthodoxy, on matters of mystical love, but the apparent affinity of their thought to Eckhart’s teachings on grace and the will may have been more problematic. The same could be said of their skepticism of clerical authority and the rejection of ecclesiastical regulations not rooted in Scripture. Several scenes from the Dialogue discussed above reveal the lollards (and perhaps even more the swesteren?) balking at the words of a preacher and confronting him in public. That practice (one wonders what happened to their commitment to meekness) seems to have been common enough: archbishop Henry of Cologne’s statutes of 1307 already complained about them interrupting sermons by Dominicans and Franciscans and arguing with them in public, and the interrogation of the “hooded sisters” at Świdnica in 1332 alludes to similar encounters in Silesia123.
Literacy
- 124 Compare the very similar assessment of Free-Spirit suspects in HFS, p. 231-233.
- 125 For examples, see Part Four: Cologne, Lollards; Cologne, Swesteren; Maastricht, Swesteren (c), w (...)
- 126 Part Four: Aachen, Lollards, and Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 201, note 1.
- 127 See above, note 107. I am discounting the reference to book burning in the trial of Walter “of H (...)
- 128 See now the introduction of Hopf, Mystische Kurzdialoge, p. 1-55; of course I do not want to sug (...)
53We should also consider the relative diversity of this population; they were workers, male and female, and urban craftsmen of all kinds, certainly, but possibly also members of professional groups; given the caliber of their supporters, one suspects at least a few of the men and women came from the urban elite124. The author of the Dialogue may not have known much Latin but wrote with ease (and at length) in the vernacular; the author’s theological and scientific knowledge was profound and varied. We know little about those “good-willing” clerics who advised them or joined a house for the men. Judging by the incidental data we have about individual communities, some of those clerics were well established as parish priests or as chaplains serving in urban churches125. Others may have been young men without fixed clerical appointments: at Aachen, the lollard convent appears to have housed “students”, who received a subsidy from the city along with the lollards in 1344, and who, again with the lollards, were targeted by inquisitors in 1369-1370126. Usage of books in these communities is thus likely, although they are rarely mentioned (the burning of the books of the turlupins in Paris in 1372 is an exception)127. The Dialogue may be representative of a genre typical of this kind of milieu: formatted as a conversation between teacher and student, or between partners, it reflects oral discussion, discursive in its treatment of various subjects and easily excerpted or turned into “sayings”. The “Schwester Katrei” treatise, another example of the genre and just one of many such works featuring a “Meister Eckhart”128, may have come from similar communities in the Strassburg region.
Networks
- 129 See the studies collected in Wybren Scheepsma, et al., eds., Friends of God. Vernacular Literatu (...)
- 130 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 70 E 5 (from Maagdendries; see Part Four: Maastricht, Sweste (...)
- 131 London, British Library, MS. Egerton 2188 (from the Tertiaries/Beghards of Aachen), an epistolar (...)
54Historians of religious literature in Dutch and German will find here ample evidence of intense cultural, religious, and social contact between the Rhineland and the Low Countries in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, manifested by the flow of people, ideas, and texts. In the last two decades several scholars have scrutinized ties between Groenendaal in the days of Ruusbroec (d. 1381) and the Rhenish “Friends of God” (gottes frunden), a somewhat nebulous group of devout laymen and clerics of the Upper Rhine centered on Ruhlman Merswin (d. 1382). Whether a similar “circle” of elite laypeople existed on the Brabantine side of the equation is uncertain, but several texts were clearly exchanged129. The web of lollard and swesteren houses we have studied here suggests yet another way in which new works of spirituality aimed at a lay audience migrated between the Low Countries and the Rhineland. In that light I would draw particular attention to the houses of lollards and swesteren (but also of traditional beghards/Tertiaries) in Maastricht and Aachen, straddling the border between Dutch and Ripuarian German dialects. Manuscripts from these locations have brought us – to give just two examples – the Limburg Sermons (late thirteenth century)130, based in part on the Sankt Georgener Predigten, and extracts from Eckhart of 1353, in Middle Dutch, with Ripuarian German elements131. Maastricht and Aachen, the two easternmost cities of the diocese of Liège, enjoyed close contact with both Brabant and the Lower Rhine, and despite their modest size they counted an unusually high number of lay religious houses.
Conclusion
55There is little or no hard evidence of antinomian ideas among the communities we have studied here, although some of their beliefs could be bent that way by a determined inquisitor – or by a charismatic leader, free to impose his or her opinions on a group allergic to overarching rules and regulations. The freedom with which they moved about may also have attracted characters unsuitable for a truly ascetic religious life. Still, more needs to be done to examine the extent and religious profile of the lollard and swesteren movement in northern Europe. One of the many questions that remain concerns their spread in Strassburg, where in my imperfect view they appeared somewhat later than in Cologne and were less numerous, but that is where they supposedly called themselves “sect of the Free Spirit”, if we can believe bishop John in 1317. If the findings shared in these pages will encourage historians of religious movements and dissent to take up that challenge––and others, many others––maybe, as dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, we will complete the work that Robert Lerner began.
Notes
1 For abbreviations used in the notes, see Part One, note 1.
2 For Gallus’s inquisitorial activity, see Alexander Patschovsky, Quellen zur Böhmischen Inquisition im 14. Jahrhundert, Weimar, Herman Bohlau, 1979, p. 16-18.
3 Wilhelm Wattenbach, “Über die Secte der Brüder vom freien Geiste. Mit Nachträgen über die Waldenser in der Mark und in Pommern”, Sitzungsberichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 29, 1887, p. 517-544 (edition of the text on p. 529-537). Schweitzer, Das Freiheitsbegriff, p. 123-127, has a partial translation. I am passing over another source published by Wattenbach, “Über die Secte”, p. 524-526, also undated, which describes anonymous fratres de paupere vita: without any clear provenance for the source, we have no way of identifying this group, but references to church service upon awakening from the dormitory do not conform with what we know about lollard customs in the period under study.
4 Wattenbach’s edition has domus pauper, which I assume is a scribal error or misreading for domus pauperum. HFS, p. 108 silently made the same emendation.
5 ABS, p. 170 (followed by Janssen, Das Erzbistum, p. 600); HFS, 112. See Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a).
6 Part Four: Cologne, Beghards.
7 Johag, Beziehungen, p. 143; Senner, “Meister Eckhart in Köln”, p. 223.
8 Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (b).
9 See HFS, p. 110-112 and Alexander Patschovsky, “Freiheit der Ketzer”, in Johannes Fried, ed., Die abendländische Freiheit vom 10. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert, Sigmaringen, Thorbecke, 1991, p. 265-286 at 283; compare Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff, p. 127-128, Senner, “Meister Eckhart in Köln”, p. 222-226 and idem, “Rhineland Dominicans, Meister Eckhart and the Sect of the Free Spirit”, in Joan Greatrex, ed., The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour. Essays on the Interests, Involvements and Problems of Religious Communities and their Members in Medieval Society, Turnhout, Brepols, 1998, p. 121-133.
10 Wattenbach, “Über die Secte”, p. 529-530, 532.
11 Frits van Oostrom, Wereld in woorden. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1300–1400, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 2013, p. 205-209, quotation from p. 208.
12 SMEL, p. lxxxi–lxxxvii discusses the manuscripts. Since then VD, p. 79-96, demonstrated that the complete, sixteenth-century version in KBR, ms. 888-890, fol. 205r-285v, is not the result of cumulative layers added over the centuries to a nucleus represented in Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 104r-108r, of 1410, as Robrecht Lievens, “Eggaert en de (nog steeds) onbekende leek”, Leuvense Bijdragen, 88, 1999, p. 15-49 maintained (see also the reply by Franz-Josef Schweitzer in the same journal, p. 447-452), but instead must be close to the fourteenth-century original.
13 Ende doen werdt hÿ confuselijken ghedooet ... ende dat es gheleden xiij C jaer ende wij hebben gheweest viij jaer ende oeck drij maenden min hebbender eenighe plaghen gheweest, dat hebdÿ wel ghehoert; vergave Godt, dat sij al gheleden waren!, ed. SMEL, p. 169, and for the duration of the plagues, p. 10. I have changed the punctuation somewhat to clarify my understanding; ende oeck means “about” or “around”. VD, p. 19, adds or deducts “eight years and three months”.
14 For the various opinions, see SMEL, p. liii-liv and the essay by Van Engen cited below, note 49. HFS, p. 213, advances “around 1336”, following Stephanus Axters, Geschiedenis van de vroomheid in de Nederlanden, vol. 2, Antwerp, De Sikkel, 1953, p. 452, who (oddly) imagined that medieval people placed Christ’s birth in 5 B.C.E. VD, p. 19 seems to accept Schweitzer’s date (see for instance p. 29–30).
15 C. G. N. de Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten uit de veertiende eeuw”, De XXe eeuw, 1903, p. 280-310, reprinted in idem, Letterkundige studiën. Verzamelde opstellen, Groningen, J.B. Wolters, 1910, p. 1-64, at p. 35, was the first to propose this date. Such a reading does not disregard the reference to “eight years minus three months”, as Schweitzer maintained.
16 SMEL, p. lxxxvii–xcvi. Not noted by Schweitzer is one German form: Du bist verdoemt (p. 155; compare Ghi sijt verdoomt, p. 49), which could indicate a German model for this passage (on the nature of work, with a digression on love of God without a “why”!).
17 I am working here on the assumption that most of the text was written by a single author, perhaps with ideas and themes suggested by collaborators. That is not quite certain.
18 SMEL, p. 173.
19 Joseph Daris, Notices historiques sur les églises du diocèse de Liège, vol. 15, Liège, Demarteau, 1894, p. 17 and 73, and the Kalendarium Antwerpiense, ed. William H.J. Weale, Analecta Liturgica, vol. 3, Lille, Desclée, De Brouwer, 1889, p. 267; those examples show that Lievens, “Eggaert”, p. 43 wrongly believed the saint was unknown in the southern Low Countries.
20 SMEL, p. 105 and 108; on p. 174, Cologne is imagined as far away.
21 SMEL, p. lv-lxv, lxxvi, and li (on Utrecht, see, however, below, note 59).
22 SMEL, p. 136-137.
23 Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, fol. 111r–116v (the manuscript dates from 1410), ed. Hans Kienhorst and Kees Schepers, Het Wiesbadense Handschrift. Hs. Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, Hilversum, Verloren, 2009, p. 544–577.
24 VD, p. 97-128 revised Schweitzer’s attributions of speech parts to Meister Eckhart and the Layperson, resulting in a more balanced structure, in which criticism of the clergy is sometimes voiced by the former rather than the latter.
25 HFS, p. 213, 215.
26 Analysis and edition in Schweitzer, Der Freiheitsbegriff.
27 SMEL, p. 17 and p. 186 for helpful references to parallels in Hadewijch’s work.
28 Early on, they ask: “Master, how shall young people live, when they have received from God a good will”?: SMEL, p. 19 (see also p. 105, doen ic ionc was, for a memory from the Layperson’s own youth).
29 Het en es gheen cleyn mesdaet, goetwilleghe gheesteliken lieden onsculdichlijc te scandaliseeren, ende haer eer te benemen met loghenachtighe woerden, om dat sise leet hebben. Ende dat comt al vander quader houerdicheit, dattet hen alsoe zeer onweert es, dat goetwilleghe leken yet van god spreken oft van hemelsche saken, ende dat si enighen goeden naem hebben onder dat ghemeyn volc: SMEL, p. 108-109. I am following the emendation in VD, p. 150, where “Eckhart” rather than the Layperson is speaking, but I disagree with Van Damme’s reading in one place: in my view, those who enjoy “a good reputation” among commoners are the good-willing clerics (like Eckhart) mentioned in the previous sentence, not good-willing lay people. Compare Eckhart’s Verteidigungsschrift, ed. Loris Sturlese, Acta Echardiana (Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke: Die lateinischen Werke, vol. 5), Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 2007, p. 275, nr. 48, I: [C]ommissio vobis facta […] nullius est vigoris, utpote ex falsi suggestione, radice et arbore mala, procedens. Quin immo si minoris essem famae in populo et minoris zeli iustitiae, certus sum quod contra me non essent talia ab aemulis attemptata. Eckhart’s Verteidigungsschrift did circulate, see Sturlese, Acta, p. 608-612, Appendix VII, nrs. 1, 2, 3.
30 Meester Eggaert, een wtgenomen licht van hemelscher wijsheit (SMEL, p. 17).
31 SMEL, p. 170, and for the condemned article, p. 236–237. Lievens, “Eggaert”, p. 19–20 objected that, in this passage, the Dialogue did not draw on In agro dominico but rather on the Middle Dutch translation of Honorius of Autun’s Lucidarius, which treats of a similar question. However, it is not certain that this translation was yet available; VD, p. 229-237, does not believe the Dialogue was based on the translation (or on the Latin Lucidarius).
32 Robert E. Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter: Fourteenth-Century Uses of the Bull In agro dominico Including a Newly Discovered Inquisitorial Text of 1337”, Mediaeval Studies, 70, 2008, p. 115-134, showed that the bull was more widely known, at an early stage, than previously thought. For laybrother Jan van Leeuwen’s knowledge of Eckhart (and of In agro dominico) directly or indirectly in the mid-fourteenth century, see now Yves Van Damme, “The Inevitable Eckhart: The Critical Reception of Eckhartian Motives in the Work of Jan van Leeuwen”, The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 47, 2021, p. 74-102.
33 SMEL, p. 39-40.
34 SMEL, p. 88 (see also p. 45); VD, p. 46.
35 SMEL, p. 34 and p. 196 for similar language in Meister Eckhart und der Arme Mensch; see now also Michael Hopf, Mystische Kurzdialoge um Meister Eckhart. Editionen und Untersuchungen, Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 2019, p. 233.
36 SMEL, p. 80-81; for comparable passages in Hadewijch, Porete and Eckhart, see the references in VD, p. 48-50.
37 Die rechte minnare die en soect sijns selfs voerdeel niet. Hi mint sonder waerom van rechter edelheit: SMEL, p. 49; see also above, note 16.
38 SMEL, p. 17 and 105 (compare p. 28, 102, 182). VD, p. 149 refers to similar sentiments in Eckhart’s Predigt 13 and Sermon 31 of the “Limburg Sermons”.
39 SMEL, p. 28, 102, 109, 123, 182 (VD, p. 108-111 reassigned some of the exchanges to Eckhart).
40 SMEL, p. 17. It may be important to point out that paepscap does not refer to the office of the pope (the papacy) but denotes the (secular) clergy. The papacy as such does not play an important role in the Dialogue.
41 SMEL, p. 96.
42 SMEL, p. 97.
43 SMEL, p. 105-106.
44 Geert Warnar, “Meister Eckhart, Walter van Holland en Jan van Ruusbroec. Historische en litteraire betrekkingen in de Middelnederlandse mystiek”, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 69, 1995, p. 3-25. As we will see, the “Layperson” of the Dialogue claims never to have been to Cologne; the historical Walter was probably not a layman. On Walter [of Holland] and his trial, see Part Two, notes 37-54.
45 SMEL, p. 169
46 Of course, the first half of the fourteenth century had no shortage of calamities, but the Dialogue mentions none of them. A passage about the possible lessons to be drawn from sickness ignores the Black Death (SMEL, p. 140; this is of course understandable if our suggested date, 1333, is correct), famine is never touched upon, and war only in very general terms; laments about the clergy’s repression, in contrast, are everywhere; they resume after the master’s historical exposé and last until the very end. On the (erroneous, in my view) assumption that the text was composed around 1340-1341 in or around the convent of Rijnsburg in Holland, SMEL, p. lxv–lxix, thinks the “plagues” refer to the political instability in Holland after the death of Count William III (1337) or the conflict between Holland and Utrecht starting in 1332, or noble feuds in the same period. This seems impossible to me: none of this affected life in the region much until decades later.
47 SMEL, p. 102. The passage was first noted by Warnar, “Meester Eckhart”, p. 11–12.
48 De Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten”, p. 61 (he believed both were equally possible); Wybren Scheepsma, review of SMEL, Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 115, 1999, p. 374-377 at p. 376.
49 John Van Engen, “A Woman Author? The Middle Dutch Dialogue Between a ‘Good-Willed Layperson’ and a ‘Master Eckhart’”, in Kathryn Kerby-Fulton et al., eds., Women Intellectuals and Leaders in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, U.K., D.S. Brewer, 2020, p. 155-168, at p. 163-164. The listed passages are on SMEL, p. 31 and 77. I am omitting two possible reversals of conventional male-female imagery that seem not unusual to me.
50 Hilde De Ridder-Symoens, “Education and Literacy in the Burgundian Netherlands”, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, 16, 1995, p. 6-21, at p. 10-11. A “Latin” school for girls may have existed in Brussels in 1320 but is not certain and in any case was unusual. Readers would have understood this passage as signaling a male persona.
51 SMEL, p. 17-18.
52 SMEL, p. 62, 71.
53 SMEL, p. 109.
54 Van Engen, “A Woman Author?”, p. 165 (who weighs the issues slightly differently). SMEL, p. lviii-lix, thinks the convent is the Benedictine abbey of Rijnsburg, but I doubt that the author would have described the nuns of this distinguished monastery (all of high noble descent!) as (lay) goetwillighe vrouwen (Schweitzer’s German translation, “gutwilligen Damen”, is not quite right). Once again, I must acknowledge that doubts remain: a beguine convent may have existed in Rijnsburg at this time, see below, note 57.
55 De Ridder-Symoens, “Education”, p. 7-12; Simons, Cities of Ladies, p. 6-7.
56 SMEL, p. 121.
57 In Dordrecht, on the southern edge of Holland, brootsusters may have settled in 1378; in Schoonhoven and Gouda lollards are mentioned in 1393 and 1395: Saskia M.C. Leupen, “De kloosters van de cellebroeders en -zusters in het graafschap Holland en Zeeland tot aan de Reformatie”, Holland. Historisch Tijdschrift, 30, 1998, p. 63-93, at p 67-68. We must keep in mind, however, that sources potentially informing us about such communities (wills, for instance), were then still rare in this region, where the urbanization process ran about a century behind that of the southern Low Countries. We know very little, too, about convents of conventional beguines in Leiden and (possibly) Rijnsburg, see Koorn, Begijnhoven, p. 10, 15, 24-29, 35.
58 See Part Four: ‘s- Hertogenbosch, Swesteren, and Louvain, Swesteren.
59 VD, p. 171-174, 198-202 (weaker parts of an otherwise superb book), addressed the Dialogue’s views on these groups but did not correctly distinguish lollards and swesteren from beghards and beguines. SMEL, p. xlii-li is somewhat better informed about the historical context but not about the situation in the Low Countries. Schweitzer (p. lii) believed that a charter issued by the bishop of Utrecht on 9 August 1323 informs us about a “religious group” that may be similar to the “good-willing” favored by the Dialogue, apparently unaware of the fact that the document in reality dealt with the (conventional) beguinage of Utrecht, see Berkelbach van der Sprenkel, Regesten, p. 234, nr. 578 and Koorn, Begijnhoven, p. 19-20.
60 There is only a warning to beguines and beghards, that putting on their “gray” (their habit) or clothes for work is not enough to be spiritual: SMEL, p. 163.
61 For instance, the Dialogue advises against frequent communion (SMEL, p. 161) and says little on the passion of Christ.
62 SMEL, p. 179.
63 SMEL, p. 67-68, 123, 160-161; see also VD, p. 170.
64 See above, note 3, as well as Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 92, summarizing the sisters’ testimony of 1332.
65 Jan van Leeuwen, Van tienderhande materien and Van vijfterhande bruederscap in KBR, ms. 667, fol. 108v-141r and fol. 203r-256r (quotations from fol. 126v, 127r, 127v, 219v, 220r). For his criticism of lollards and swesteren (especially about their itinerant begging) in other works, see below, notes 66 and 83, as well as VD, p. 197-202 and Patricia Stoop, “Dboec vanden tien gheboden van Jan van Leeuwen. Een kritische tekstuitgave,” Ons Geestelijk Erf, 75, 2001, p. 182-235 (p. 224, l. 1500-1512). Geert Warnar, Ruusbroec: Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century, Leiden, Brill, 2007, p. 215, was the first to suggest that van Leeuwen met lollards and swesteren while still a vagabond.
66 Patschovsky, “Freiheit der Ketzer”, p. 268-271 has a good, succinct synopsis of Augustine’s concepts (see especially his Sermo 156, Contra Pelagianos, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completus, vol. 39, col. 849-859) and their influence through the fourteenth century. For Jan van Leeuwen’s knechtelike vrees, see his Van menegherande goeder leeringhen die seer orberlijc sijn, and Een rolle van richters, KBR, ms. 888-890, fol. 163v and 185v, and for his charge that lollards’ and swesteren’s devotion to God was superficial because they did not know monastic or clerical obedience, Van tienderhande materien and Van vijfterhande bruederscap, KBR, ms. 667, fol. 126r-127v and 219v-220v.
67 SMEL, p. 97 and 117.
68 My analysis of the concept is indebted to SMEL, p. liii-lv and especially VD, p. 166-179, but deviates from their findings in applying it specifically to lollards and swesteren and arguing that, along with several gospel texts that speak to it, it may have formed the basis of their program.
69 SMEL, p. 96-97. The logic is pursued to its conclusion, and good-willing Jews and pagans may reach heaven, too: SMEL, p. 129.
70 SMEL, p. 105. A very similar sentiment is expressed elsewhere by the Master: SMEL, p. 89. Both refer to willeghe[r] armoede/armen, terms associated with lollards and swesteren.
71 Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks. Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002.
72 SMEL, p. 77-78.
73 SMEL, p. 64.
74 SMEL, p. 73, 138-139. For the Ten Commandments in the testimony of the Świdnica sisters, see Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 192. We should note here, however, that the Silesian swesteren held the Virgin Mary in high regard and ignored Sunday rest (see p. 173, 181, 191), two of several ways in which their expressed beliefs diverged from the doctrines defended in the Dialogue.
75 VD, p. 195-202; see also above, note 65; for Ruusbroec’s reservations about people “with good will”, see VD, p. 179-187.
76 See Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a) and Swesteren (d).
77 SMEL, p. 19, 127-128, 137, 162, 164.
78 SMEL, p. 45. Compare with Eckhart’s saying that one can be closer to God on the street than in church, cited and discussed in Freimut Löser, “‘Der niht enwil und niht enweiz und niht enhât’. Drei übersehene Texte Meister Eckharts zur Armutslehre”, in Claudia Brinker et al., eds., Contemplata aliis tradere. Studien zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Spiritualität, Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 1995, p. 391-439, at 403. For the Kraków “beghards” (possibly lollards) who prayed outside the church, to the chagrin of Henry Harrer in 1328-1334, see Part Two, note 61. The “hooded sisters” of Świdnica disparaged the need to attend church services and believed prayer in their own house was just as effective, see for instance Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 244.
79 SMEL, p. 93-94 and 217-218. The comparison is with Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke: Die deutschen Werke, vol. 4, 1: Predigten, ed. Georg Steer, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2003, p. 637-638 (nr. 105). VD, p. 62-67. demonstrated that the doubts about the parallels with Eckhart’s sermon, expressed in Lievens, “Eggaert”, p. 19-27, were unfounded.
80 Meister Eckhart (…) Die deutschen Werke, vol. 5: Meister Eckhart’s Traktate, ed. Josef Quint, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1963, p. 216. Schweitzer’s edition of the Dialogue did not refer to this passage by the “real Eckhart” as a point of comparison but VD, p. 177 noted it. See also note 67.
81 VD, p. 69-70, and T.B.W. Kok, “Jan van Leeuwen en zijn werkje tegen Eckhart”, Ons Geestelijk Erf, 47, 1973, p. 129-172 at p. 152-172.
82 Sturlese, Acta Echardiana, p. 596-600, nr. 65, at p. 599.
83 See now Van Damme, “The Inevitable Eckhart”, p. 77–83. Satoshi Kikuchi, From Eckhart to Ruusbroec. A Critical Inheritance of Mystical Themes in the Fourteenth Century, Louvain, Leuven University Press, 2014, discusses only a part of Jan van Leeuwen’s objections to Eckhart. Valuable though his analysis might be in many respects, Kikuchi ignores lollards and swesteren (see for instance p. 74, where their coming to Brabant is misdated to c. 1370, following Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden XII beghinen, ed. Mikel M. Kors [Opera Omnia, vol. 7], Turnhout, Brepols, p. 18 and Mikel M. Kors, “Ruusbroecs Unvollendete. Tekstgeleding in de handschriften en de compositie van Vanden XII beghinen”, Nederlandse Letterkunde, 4, 1999, p. 330-343, at p. 341, confusing the continental lollards with the English Lollards) and wrongly assumes (p. 34-36) that by and large beguines and beghards adhered to the heresy of the “Free Spirit”.
84 VD, p. 177-178; R. A. Ubbink, De receptie van Meister Eckhart in de Nederlanden gedurende de middeleeuwen, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1978, p. 182-192; and most recently, Wybren Scheepsma, “Das mittelniederländische Nachleben der Erfurter ‘Reden’ Meister Eckharts”, in Dagmar Gottschall and Dietmar Mieth, eds., Meister Eckharts Erfurter “Reden” in ihrem Kontext, Stuttgart, W. Kohlhammer, 2013, p. 131-151.
85 Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter”, p. 125-126 (those ideas had little to do with questions of grace, however); see also HFS, p. 185-186.
86 MRHCL, ms. 479, fol. 218-246, ed. Robrecht Lievens, Het evangelie van de Wilde Adelaar, Louvain, Peeters, 2003, see especially p. 146-148. The manuscript, written at the convent of male tertiaries (beghards) of Maastricht c. 1470-1480, also includes texts by Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler. For the influence of Eckhart on the thought of the “hooded sisters” of Świdnica, see Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 121-144.
87 Marcus Enders, “Die Reden der Unterweisung: Eine Lehre vom Richtigen Leben durch einen Guten und wollkommenen Willen,” in Jacobi, ed., Meister Eckhart: Lebensstationen, p. 69-92. For the latest surveys of Eckhart’s years in Strassburg and Cologne, see Senner, “Meister Eckhart’s Life, Training, Career, and Trial”, as well as the essays in Andrés Quero-Sanchez and Georg Steer, eds., Meister Eckharts Straßburger Jahrzehnt (=Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch, 2, 2008); Dietmar Mieth and Marie-Anne Vannier, eds., Meister Eckhart in Paris and Strasbourg, Louvain, Peeters, 2017; and Freimut Löser et al. eds., Meister Eckhart in Köln (=Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch, 14, 2021).
88 HFS, p. 213 and 215.
89 SMEL, p. 24 and 42; de Vooys, “Twee Christen-Demokraten”, p. 59 cites those statements as dubious; Ubbink, Receptie, p. 197 deems them problematic only when examined in isolation.
90 HFS, p. 215.
91 SMEL, p. 122. It is momentary: see SMEL, p. 52-53. For a parallel (vriheit der consciencien) in Beatrice of Nazareth’s “Seven Manners of Love”, see SMEL, p. 191, and for Hadewijch’s vrie consciencie, see Warnar, “Meester Eckhart”, p. 13-14.
92 SMEL, p. 28 (compare with p. 52-53 and 97; less clear is p. 75).
93 SMEL, p. 53–56 and 170–180; their examination in VD, p. 210–252 shows that although the author’s knowledge of astronomy seems broadly in line with contemporary vernacular (Middle Dutch) works on natural science, it deviates from them in important places. No textual similarities with vernacular or Latin works have been established.
94 SMEL, p. 55.
95 SMEL, p. 43-44, 47, 50, 177, 180.
96 VD, p. 248-252.
97 Lerner, “Meister Eckhart’s Specter”, p. 125; Courtney Kneupper, “Reconsidering a Fourteenth-Century Heresy Trial in Metz: Beguins and Others”, Franciscana, 8, 2006, p. 187–-27.
98 For a few observations on the Dialogue’s periodization, see SMEL, p. 233-236 (exploring a perceived parallel to Olivi and Ubertino) and Lievens, “Eggaert”, p. 40 (who suggests a possible influence of the De Adventu Christi et Antichristi et fine mundi of Nicolas of Strassburg, Eckhart’s colleague in Cologne).
99 I disagree with the identification of certain “heretical” beghards or lollards as Waldensians in Jean-Claude Schmitt, Mort d’une hérésie. L’Église et les clercs face aux béguines et aux béghards du Rhin supérieur du XIVe au XVe siècle, Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1978, p. 66–67 (see below, note 108).
100 Julia Burkhardt, Von Bienen lernen. Das Bonum universale de apibus des Thomas von Cantimpré als Gemeinschaftsentwurf. Analyse, Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, vol. 2, Regensburg, Schnell & Steiner, 2020, p. 815 (lb I, c. 3). The list of those errors, preserved in a manuscript of Robert de Sorbon (who was a canon at Cambrai, the episcopal see that oversaw Antwerp), BnF, lat. 15954, fol. 263v, ed. CDIN, vol. 1, p. 119-120, nr. 125 (with some transcription flaws; my quotes are based on the BnF manuscript), suggests that internal disputes within the clergy may have been involved. Franciscans did not have a convent in Antwerp at the time but Dominicans did; beghards did not settle there until four decades later. The dissolution of a priestly confraternity in Antwerp can be deduced from bishop Guiard [de Laon] of Cambrai’s charter for the beguinage of Antwerp, of 11 March 1248, ed. J. Van den Nieuwenhuizen, Oorkondenboek van de Antwerpse kapelanieën (1210–1355), Bornem, n.p., 2017, p. 30-31, nr. 15. On “Robin Hood” justifications of theft at this time, see HFS, p. 238-239.
101 All we know about this preacher comes from the Brabantine priest-historian, Lodewijk van Velthem, writing in 1316: Herman vander Linden et al., eds., Lodewijk van Velthem’s voortzetting van den “Spiegel historiael” (1248–1316), Brussels, Koninklijke Commissie voor Geschiedenis, 1906-1938, vol. 1, p. 141-152 (Vijfde partie, Bk 1, ch. 31-34) and p. 253 (Bk 2, ch. 2). The quotation is on p. 146: Hets miltheit, dat ene die dinc geeft / Daer hi altoes mede leeft. The context clarifies that Christ was the most generous, giving his own blood, and that sharing the Word for the salvation of humanity was the highest form of generosity; the message thus celebrated the task of preachers. Wybren Scheepsma, “Het venijn van broeder IJsewijn. Velthem over een obscure boeteprediker en het einde der tijden”, in Bart Besamusca et al., eds., De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering, Hilversum, Verloren, 2009, p. 143-159, suggests IJsewijn was perhaps a “brother of the Sack”, the mendicant order abolished in 1274. Saccites indeed reached the Low Countries from Cologne, where they had a convent by 1260, but since Velthem wrote that IJsewijn was active in Maastricht/Louvain for 15 years and apparently died around 1263, the chronology may not fit. He was certainly a priest, could have been a Franciscan or Dominican, but he might have been a beghard, too (we know some beghards were priests). The question, of course, is how reliable a witness we can call Velthem.
102 BnF, lat. 15954, fol. 263v: Item quod nullus potest dare elemosinam de superfluo (ed. CDIN, vol. 1, p. 119).
103 Iohannes Laurentius Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus Commentarius, Leipzig, Libraria Weidmann, 1790, vol. 1, p. 350–355, at p. 352.
104 His letter to the Rat of Aachen about the closing of the convents, preserved in the local city archives, was published by Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 200, note 2. For the possible influence of Conrad of Megenberg’s Lacrima ecclesie on this campaign, see Part Two, note 64. The general context of these Inquisitions is also discussed in HFS, p. 131-134; PSB, p. 78-92, 114-118, 161-171; Michaël Tonsing, “Contra hereticam pravitatem. Zu den Luccheser Ketzererlassen Karls IV. (1369)”, in Friedrich B. Fahlbusch and Peter Johanek, eds., Studia Luxemburgensia. Festschrift Heinz Stoob, Warendorf, Fahlbusch, 1989, p. 285-312; and Voigt, Beginen, p. 334-403 (whose interpretations I do not always share).
105 A dossier of those events is in MRHCL, Kapittelkerk van Sint-Servaas, inv. nr. 159, fol. 29r-30r.
106 Gregory IX, Perduxit ad audientiam, to bishops of Germany, Poland, and Silesia, 27 July 1372: Guillaume Mollat et al., eds., Lettres secrètes et curiales du pape Grégoire XI (1370-1378) intéressant les pays autres que la France, Paris, E. de Boccard, 1877-1968, nr. 914.
107 Paul Lecacheux and Guillaume Mollat, eds., Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Urbain V se rapportant à la France, Paris, E. de Boccard, 1902-1955, nr. 1947 (Super custodiam gregis, 3 September 1365); Mollat, Lettres secrètes, nr. 1425 and Léon Marie Mirot et al., eds., Lettres secrètes et curiales du Pape Grégoire XI (1370-1378) relatives à la France, Paris, E. de Boccard, 1935-1957, nr. 108 (Perduxit ad audienciam). For French royal support and the terms turlupins and turlupines, see HFS, p. 52-53; I agree that they were sometimes used loosely as a synonym for beghards and beguines, but technically they referred to lollards and swesteren.
108 See HFS, p. 53 and now also Thomas Werner, Den Irrtum liquidieren: Buchverbrennerungen im Mittelalter, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007, p. 463-465, with an exhaustive discussion of all the sources. The connection with the search for lollards and swesteren in Flanders and “adjacent” lands (Aubenton was a small town in the Thiérarche, about forty kilometers south of Mons) has not been explored previously. By 1372, they had houses in at least four Flemish cities: Ghent (1321?); Saint-Omer (1333), Bruges (1348), and Veurne (1351); a swesteren house existed in Mons, in Hainaut, since 1351 (see Part Four at those place names). A misinterpretation of a bull by Pope Gregory XI (Christianorum principum of 27 March 1373) led Schmitt, Mort d’une hérésie, p. 66 to claim that the Turlupins were Waldensians from southeastern France. Lucy Sandler kindly informs me that one manuscript of the Grandes Chroniques has a miniature illustration of the burning of the lollard books and vestments in Paris: London, British Library, MS Royal 20 C vii, fol. 189r.
109 Ex iniuncto nobis, ed. PSB, p. 190-195, nr. 21 (whose interpretation of this text must be revised); also in CDIN, vol. 1, p. 228-231, nr. 220. This notarized copy of the bull explains that the four men, Henry of Koblenz (Trier), Dieter of Brussels (identified as residing in the diocese of Liège), Otto of Neuwiler (?) and Hugo of Zabern (Strassburg) submitted the original text to the official of Strassburg because they needed authentic copies on their travels through various territories. When another copy was made in Trier, on 30 March 1375, by the same Henry of Koblenz and a certain Henry of Hünsfelt, the men were called pauperes Deo servientes (Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 205-206.). HFS, p. 99, appears to misinterpret the identity of one of the pauperes: no Dominicans were involved. I think Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, p. 43 is mistaken in believing the pauperes were “beguine sympathizers” and the bull concerned beguines, but from ibid., p. 87-118, we learn that supporters of the first female “modern Devout” used Ex iniuncto in the women’s defense starting in 1385 (which actually exposed them to confusion with swesteren later on).
110 For those copies, see Huyskens, Die Anfänge”, p. 205-206 and PSB, p. 190-191 (the latter was unaware of Huyskens’s documentation).
111 EQ, vol. 5, p. 88-90, nr. 82.
112 CDIN, vol. 1, p. 237-238, nr. 225 (Ad audientiam nostram). HFS, p. 54, perhaps misled by MBB, p. 568-570 (though critical of McDonnell’s interpretation), errs in believing that beguines and beghards were the subject of the letter; as the documents invoked here indicate, the discussion concerned the lollards and swesteren only. Gregory’s bull was therefore not a milestone in the history of beguines and beghards, as MBB, p. 570 and others have maintained. As will be obvious from this note and note 108 above, the events of 1374-1378 have been misunderstood in beguine scholarship generally.
113 The documents, mostly in the archives of the Alexian brothers of Cologne, are discussed in Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 207-211; Paas, Das Alexianenkloster, p. 17-19, and Theodor Paas, Das Cellitinnenkloster zur hl. Maria in der Kupfergasse zu Köln, Cologne, J. P. Bachem, 1909, p. 133-136. They confirm that in 1377-1378, lollards and swesteren were still begging, using the slogan panem pro Deo. John de Cervo was one of the examiners of Martin of Mainz (a disciple of Nicholas of Basel), executed in Cologne in 1393 (HFS, p. 151-152). See also Part Four: Cologne, Lollards (a) and Cologne, Swesteren.
114 Discussion in HFS, p. 57-60, 145-157, 163-174; Kurze, “Die festländischen Lollarden”, p. 58-68; Schmitt, Mort d’une hérésie; Luciano Micali, “La Glosa bullarum de Félix Hemmerlin dans le contexte historique et théologique de la Rhénanie à la fin du Moyen Âge”, Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica, 4, 2021, p. 113-127. Despite the attacks, aldermen of Antwerp publicly extended protection to the lollards in their city in 1399, citing Gregory XI’s bull of 1377 (Floris Prims, Geschiedenis van Antwerpen, vol. 5, Bk 2, Antwerp, Standaard Boekhandel, 1935, p. 267).
115 Current scholarship says that these terms first appeared in 1376 (Christopher J. Kauffman, Tamers of Death. The History of the Alexian Brothers, vol. 1, New York, The Seabury Press, 1976, p. 67; Pierre-Jean Niebes, Les frères cellites ou alexiens en Belgique. Monasticon, Brussels, Archives générales du Royaume, 2002, p. 10), but they are older, as Antwerp sources of 1349 (Latin) and 1350 (Dutch) demonstrate, see Part Four: Antwerp, Lollards and Antwerp, Swesteren. Jan van Leeuwen wrote of sellebroeders in his Vanden seven teekenen der sonnen, which dates from 1356: KBR, ms. 888-90, fol. 50r.
116 Kauffman, Tamers, p. 83 and 88; Niebes, Les frères cellites, p. 11 and 37, and Part Four, at the entries for the relevant houses.
117 One example out of many: Kauffman, Tamers, p. 52-58.
118 Ex iniuncto nobis (modeled in part on Gregory XI’s bull of 1374), ed. CDIN, vol. 1, p. 254–256, nr. 239 (especially p. 255). For its use by the lollards of Cologne and Aachen, see Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 211-214. In a letter of protection for the lollards of their city of 1399, the aldermen of Antwerp mentioned the brothers’ charity: Prims, Geschiedenis, p. 267 (see also above, notes 113 and 114).
119 For such care among beguines of the Low Countries and Rhineland, see Simons, Cities, p. 34, 39–42, 78-80, 84-85, 106, 108, 117 and Letha Böhringer, “Beginen und Schwestern in der Sorge für Kranke, Stervende und Verstorbene. Eine Problemskizze”, in Artur Dirmeier, ed., Organisierte Barmherzigkeit. Armenfürsorge und Hospitalwesen in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Regensburg, Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2010, p. 127-155, who observes (p. 148) that the oldest archival reference to such care by swesteren of Cologne dates from 1401.
120 Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-industrial Europe, Leiden, Brill, 2012, p. 124.
121 Kate Crassons, The Claims of Poverty: Literature, Culture and Ideology in Late Medieval England, Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 2010; Guy Geltner, The Making of Medieval Antifraternalism. Polemic, Violence, Deviance, and Remembrance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.
122 Augustine Thompson, “The Origins of Religious Mendicancy in Medieval Europe”, in Donald S. Prudlo, ed., The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies, Leiden, Brill, 2011, p. 3-30, has argued that “as religious concepts, ‘mendicancy’ and ‘mendicant order’ first appeared in the 1280s” and were legally secured afterwards (p. 30). Giacomo Todeschini, Au pays des sans-nom. Gens de mauvaise vie, personnes suspectes ou ordinaires du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2007, p. 229 offers insightful thoughts on the dynamics that would have weighed on the irregular religious poor.
123 Wolter, Die Synodalstatuten, vol. 1, p. 172-187, nr. 7, at p. 178; Gałuszka and Kras, The Beguines of Medieval Świdnica, p. 178 and 254.
124 Compare the very similar assessment of Free-Spirit suspects in HFS, p. 231-233.
125 For examples, see Part Four: Cologne, Lollards; Cologne, Swesteren; Maastricht, Swesteren (c), whose founder, Elizabeth de Molendino, supported a young cleric from Sint-Truiden, Christianus, who lived with her many years, eventually adopting her name (de Molendino) and becoming a chaplain at the collegiate church of St Servatius (see Pierre Doppler, “Nécrologe de l’église collégiale de Notre-Dame de Maestricht”, in PSHAL, 52, 1916, p. 246-315 at p. 252, note 3, and for his life with Elizabeth, the sources listed in Part Four: Maastricht, Swesteren).
126 Part Four: Aachen, Lollards, and Huyskens, “Die Anfänge”, p. 201, note 1.
127 See above, note 107. I am discounting the reference to book burning in the trial of Walter “of Holland”, only mentioned by Trithemius (see Part Two, note 40). We will recall that bishop John of Strassburg planned to burn books of condemned “beghards” and swesteren in 1317, see Part Two, note 7. For fifteenth-century references to lollard (“beghard”) books, see Micali, “La Glosa”, p. 120.
128 See now the introduction of Hopf, Mystische Kurzdialoge, p. 1-55; of course I do not want to suggest all of them were written for, or by, lollards and swesteren. Related, not by format but by subject, are such tracts as On the Poverty of the Spirit (see HFS, p. 212).
129 See the studies collected in Wybren Scheepsma, et al., eds., Friends of God. Vernacular Literature and Religious Elites in the Rhineland and the Low Countries (1300–1500), Roma, Storia e Letteratura, 2018, with further references.
130 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 70 E 5 (from Maagdendries; see Part Four: Maastricht, Swesteren (e)); Wybren Scheepsma, The Limburg Sermons: Preaching in the Medieval Low Countries at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century, Leiden, Brill, 2008.
131 London, British Library, MS. Egerton 2188 (from the Tertiaries/Beghards of Aachen), an epistolarium with other texts, including Eckhart extracts, see Ubbink, Receptie, p. 117–120 and most recently Wybren Scheepsma, “Meister Eckhart, Köln und die Niederlande. Auf der Suche nach Eckhartisten in Brabant”, Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch, 14, 2020, p. 117-140, at p. 125. Scheepsma argues that the Dominican convent of Louvain may have played a role in the distribution of such Eckhartian materials in the Low Countries during the fourteenth century. As I mentioned above, the network of houses of lollards, swesteren, and beghards/tertiaries described here must be part of the discussion as well.
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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 Three », Oliviana [En ligne], 7 | 2023, mis en ligne le 21 juillet 2023, consulté le 02 octobre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1568
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