John B. Freed

Medieval German Social History: Generalizations and Particularism

EIKE von Repgow commented around 1225 in the Sachsenspiegel : “Now do not be amazed that this book says so little about the law of the ministerials. It is in fact so diverse that no one can fully comprehend it. Under every bishop, every abbot, and every abbess the ministerials have a distinct law; therefore, I cannot describe it.” Eike identified here a fundamental problem in studying German social history: how does one generalize about diverse social institutions that were both a cause and a consequence of Germanys political fragmentation? How different things could be is illustrated by the structure of the estates in the eastern Alpine principalities. In the duchies of Austria and Styria the nobility was divided into two estates, the lords and the knights; but while there were about seventy or eighty families of lordly rank in Austria in 1280, there were so few lineages of lords in Styria—about twenty-five in 1300, of whom only ten survived by 1400—that they could not meet by themselves.

Das katholische Domkapitel zu Hamburg von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation und seine Wiedererrichtung 1996: Eine kanonistische Untersuchung (review)

to build in the future. Nonetheless, interest in what Jedin accomplished is at present at low ebb—the last two volumes of Trent have not been translated into English; only the first volume has been translated into French. Even in historians’ households he was never a household name in North America. The present volume does not add substantially to what was already well known about him, and it does not set him into a broader historiographical context. It will not find, I fear, a very large readership.

Die Prüfeninger Vita Bischof Ottos I. von Bamberg nach der Fassung des Großen Österreichischen Legendars ed. by Jürgen Petersohn (review)

Friedrich Thaners incomplete edition (1906-1915) of Anselms collection omits books 12 and 13, which are important for many of Cushings arguments. In Appendix 2, she provides a calendar (including inscriptions, rubrics, incipits, and expUcits) of the texts contained in these last two books of Anselms work. This listing wUl be very useful for continued research. Also useful for research and teaching is Cushings exceUent introduction, in which she outlines the use of law in the papal reform movement up to Anselm of Lucca.

Beginen im Bodenseeraum by Andreas Wilts (review)

In this meticulously researched Habilitationsschrift Andreas Wilts has examined the Béguines from two methodological perspectives. First, he has employed a regional approach, that is, he has looked at all the houses of Béguines situated in the Lake Constance region, which he defines as the area which was under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan friaries in Constance, Lindau, Überlingen, and Schaffhausen. This analysis is based on a 169-page appendix that contains the histories of all known communities of Béguines in the region prior to the Reformation. Second, Wilts seeks explanations that do justice to the diversity of the movement, both geographically and chronologically. Previous scholars, in his opinion, have offered either general explanations that have concentrated on only one facet of the movement (for example, Karl Büchers view that béguinages were asylums for unwanted women is based largely on late-medieval evidence) or have written descriptions of individual convents that have ignored the broader interpretive questions.