Maribo Kloster og by - Forholdet mellem kloster og by i Maribo med udblik til andre købstadsklostre på Lolland-Falster og Sydsjælland

[Maribo Abbey and town - The relation between monastery and town in Maribo with comparative views to other urban monasteries on Lolland-Falster and southern Sjælland] Although medieval Denmark as a whole was a predominantly rural society, its monasticism was for the greater part an urban phenomenon: 80 (or 60 per cent) out of the 134 Danish monasteries were situated in towns and cities. Especially in the period 1050-1250, urban monasteries were founded in already well-established cities, while those following from around 1250 to 1500 more often were placed in newly established towns, apparently partly to help securing the young and growing towns their urban status. A third sub-group within urban monasteries in medieval Scandinavia, distinct from all others, was the houses belonging to the Brigittine Order. The convent foundations in Vadstena (1384), Maribo (1416), Nådendal/Naantali (1441-43) and Mariager (1440-46) all took place in originally rural sites, but after Queen Margrethe I in 1400 ordered the foundation of an actual town with urban privileges outside the Abbey of Vadstena, the establishing of similar urban settlements seem to have become an integrated part of the subsequent monastic foundations in Maribo, Nådendal and Mariager right from the beginning (only for Munkeliv in Bergen, where the Brigittines took over a former Benedictine house, there was obviously no need to found a new town). The reason for this apparently systematic foundation of towns adjacent to new Brigittine monasteries has, to my knowledge, never received any scholarly attention. Based on a case study of the foundation in Maribo, with comparative use of evidence from the other Scandinavian houses, this article presents the suggestion that the towns first and foremost were meant to facilitate the extensive pilgrimage, which the Brigittine churches could be expected to attract - a traffic that not least Queen Margrethe and her successor Erik ‘the Pomeranian’ were inclined to endorse, as they eagerly aimed to promote St. Brigitte as the great pilgrim saint for the United Kingdoms of Scandinavia. The article, which is written in Danish, is published in the jubilee anthology “Maribo Domkirke : Kloster-, by- og domkirke gennem 600 år”, ed. Henrik B. Frederickson (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2016), pp. 22-33. The book (with ISBN 9788776749590) can be purchased from Syddansk Universitetsforlag/University Press of Southern Denmark for DKK 299 (or currently DKK 239 online): http://www.universitypress.dk/shop/maribo-domkirke-3518p.html.