Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 brill.com/fra The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania Adinel C. Dincă Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania adinel.dinca@ubbcluj.ro Chris Schabel University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus schabel@ucy.ac.cy Abstract Just before 1200 and just after 1240 two Cistercian abbeys, first a male house at Cârța, not far from Sibiu (Sancta Maria in Kerz), and then a nunnery in Brașov (Sancta Katherina), were established in Transylvania, a borderland of the territories ruled by the Hungarian crown inhabited by Eastern-rite Christians, especially Romanians. Conventionally, often following the model of older historiography on Frankish Greece, modern scholars have understood the arrival of the Cistercian Order in this remote area as an effort at conversion initiated by the papal see. Reassessing older evidence within a new historiographical paradigm and adding newly discovered documentary sources, this paper argues instead that the Cistercian mission in Transylvania was tied to local factors, cultural, social, and economic, and thus the White Monks endured as long as their cooperation with the elite of the German colonists in southern Transylvania remained fruitful. In the light of the evidence, and similar to parallel developments in Frankish Greece, neither ethnic conflict nor a desire to convert non-Latins played a determining role in the historical evolution of the Cistercian presence in Transylvania. Keywords Middle Ages – Hungary – Transylvania – Cistercian Order – Cistercian nuns – Eastern-rite Christianity – Transylvanian Saxons – Romanians © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/25895931-12340007 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 32 Dincă and Schabel The dearth of sources for some periods and places necessitates contextualization within the prevailing paradigm. As the paradigm shifts, however, so must the contextualization, after a fresh examination of what few sources exist. The arrival of the Cistercian Order in Transylvania in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries has been interpreted as a papal effort to convert or at least control the non-Latin population,1 explaining the motivations in terms of the modern historiography of parallel developments in Constantinople and Frankish Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade of 1204. The past few decades have witnessed re-evaluations of Pope Innocent III, the Fourth Crusade, the history of the Cistercian Order, and Greek-Latin relations in the High Middle Ages, leading recently to a new portrait of the Cistercians in former Byzantine territories.2 With this new portrait in mind, this article sketches a different outline of Cistercian expansion into Transylvania, with the foundation of Cârța Abbey for men and, perhaps more tellingly, the establishment of the Cistercian nunnery of St Catherine in Brașov in the extreme southeast of the territory, on the political frontier with Eastern Christianity, an establishment the very existence of which scholars have questioned. Rather than a Catholic effort aimed at the Orthodox, to employ today’s terminology anachronistically, in terms of motivation we see the spread of the Cistercian Order into Transylvania as a typical manifestation of the spiritual and temporal outlook of the ruling class, just as with most new Cistercian foundations in the West.3 1 Ș. Papacostea, Between the Crusade and the Mongol Empire (Cluj-Napoca: Center for Transylvanian Studies, Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1998), 22, sums up the position of previous Romanian historiography: “The crusade’s extension to this part of Europe, the papacy’s permanent attempts at getting people to accept its supremacy by all means – including military force where it could not impose it by diplomacy – turned the opposition between the two centres of medieval Christian spirituality into a great political and ideological confrontation, which involved the entire Eastern Christendom. Antagonism extended from dogma disputes – the appanage of a small number of doctrinarians – to ritual – accessible to the large masses of followers of both religions; this way the consciousness of antagonism was deeply rooted, constantly fed into the Orthodox masses through a mixture of religious proselytism, aimed at by the Papacy, and conquest, aimed by its lay instruments.” 2 C. Schabel, “The Myth of the White Monks’ ‘Mission to the Orthodox’. Innocent III, the Cistercians, and the Greeks,” Traditio 70 (2015), 237-261, in dialogue with B.M. Bolton, “A Mission to the Orthodox? The Cistercians in Romania,” Studies in Church History 13 (1976), 169-181; repr. in Eadem, Innocent III. Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), no. XVII. 3 See, e.g., J.R. Lyon, “Nobility and Monastic Patronage: The View from Outside the Monastery,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, eds. A.I. Beach and I. Cochelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 848-864. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 33 Cârța Abbey The impressive remains of Cârța Abbey4 (Figs. 1-2) are still to be seen near the Olt River about 25 kilometers due east of Sibiu (Hermannstadt in German, Nagyszeben in Hungarian). The Kingdom of Hungary had conquered the area around Sibiu in the mid-twelfth century and by 1200 had reached the region of Brașov in the southeastern corner of the Carpathians. The territory was settled in the decades around 1200 by Hungarian-speaking people known as Székelys along with Germans called Transylvanian Saxons, who joined existing Vlachs, ethnic Romanians, to make up the multi-ethnic and pluri-linguistic population of the area. Until the twentieth century, Transylvania retained the character of a mixed cultural border region between the Latin West and the Byzantine-Slavic East (Figs. 3-4). The male monastery of Cârța (Kerz in German, Kerc in Hungarian, various spellings in Latin, such as Candela, all signifying “candle”) was a daughter 4 N. Knauz, “A Fogarasföldi kertzi apátság” [Cârța Abbey of Făgăraș], Magyar Sion 6 (1868), 401-415; F. Rómer, “Kirándulás a kertzi apátsághoz Erdélyben” [A Trip to Cârța Abbey in Transylvania], Archaeologiai Közlemények 11/1 (1877), 1-11; L. Reissenberger, Die Kerzer Abtei (Hermannstadt [Sibiu]: W. Krafft, 1894); A. Baumgartner, A kerci apátság a középkorban [Cârța Abbey in the Middle Ages] (Budapest: Stephaneum Nyomda, 1915); V. Roth, “Raport despre săpăturile făcute la mănăstirea din Cârța săsească” [Report on the Excavations Made at the Saxon Monastery of Cârța], in Anuarul Comisiunii Monumentelor Istorice. Secția pentru Transilvania 1926-1928 (1929), 224-227; H.R. Rosemann, “Kerz. Ehemalige Zisterzienser Abtei,” in Die Deutsche Kunst in Siebenbürgen, ed. V. Roth (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1934), 82-85; V. Vătășianu, Istoria artei feudale în Ţările Române [History of Feudal Art in Romanian Lands], 2 vols. (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1959), 1:98-105; G. Entz, “Le chantier cistercien de Kerc (Cîrța),” Acta Historiae Artium 9/1-2 (1963), 3-38; T. Nägler and M. Rill, “Monumentul cistercian de la Cârța” [The Cistercian Monument of Cârța], Materiale și Cercetări Arheologice 17 (1983), 489-493; M. Thalgott, Die Zisterzienser von Kerz. Zusammenhänge (Munich: Sudostdt. Kulturwerk, 1990); H. König, Die Zisterzienser Abtei von Kerz. Abbatia beatae Mariae Virginis de Candelis (Sibiu: Honterus, 1998); M. Kroner, “Die Kerzer Abtei in Siebenbürgen. 800 Jahre seit ihrer Gründung,” Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter 50/3 (2001), 289-296; D.N. Busuioc-von Hasselbach, Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XIII-lea. Mănăstirea cisterciană Cârța [Țara Făgărașului in the Thirteenth Century. The Cistercian Monastery of Cârța], 2 vols. (Cluj-Napoca: Fundația Culturală Română, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 2000); H. Schuller, “Zisterzienserspuren in Siebenbürgen,” in In honorem Gernot Nussbächer, ed. D. Nazare (Braşov: Editura Font, 2004), 369-387; B. Vida, “Foundation Process of the Order of Cistercians in Hungary,” Kultúrne dejiny/Cultural History 1 (2011), 7-32; Ș. Turcuș and V. Turcuș, At the Edges of Christendom. The White Monks’ Arts and Institutions in Transylvania (The Twelfth-Fifteenth Centuries) (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Academia Română, 2012); Ü. Bencze, “The Monastery of Cârţa: Between the Cistercian Ideal and Local Realities,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia 58 Special Issue (Dec. 2013), 17-30; Eadem, “On the Border: Monastic Landscapes of Medieval Transylvania (Between the Eleventh and Sixteenth Centuries),” PhD Dissertation (Central European University, Budapest, 2020). Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 34 Dincă and Schabel figure 1 Ruins of the east range of Cârța Abbey viewed from the east photo by monica brînzei figure 2 The chevet and ruins of the nave of Cârța Abbey viewed from the east photo by monica brînzei Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 35 The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania figure 3 Central Europe around 1500 map originally designed by andrei nacu, sibiu, romania figure 4 The Transylvanian Saxons (fifteenth century) map originally designed by andrei nacu, sibiu, romania Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 36 Dincă and Schabel house of Igriș Abbey5 in the extreme west of present-day Romania, between the borders with Hungary and Serbia, founded in 1179 by monks from Pontigny. It has been claimed that Igriș itself was established in a largely Eastern-rite area “because in general all the monasteries founded in Hungary and Poland at that time had a missionary purpose and because this area has not been ethnically altered throughout history,” with “a high density of Romanian population.”6 This article confronts directly and refutes the claim about the missionary purpose, but rather than examine the ethnic make-up of the population around Igriș in 1179, because Igriș was not in the medieval diocese of Transylvania, we instead focus on Cârța, which was definitely founded in an area with many people who were not of the Latin rite. We can date the foundation of Cârța with some precision. In September 1206 the Cistercian Chapter General decreed that “The abbot Beyond the Woods (abbas Ultra Sylvas) in Hungary, the [spiritual] son of the abbot of Igriș, shall present himself at Cîteaux at the next Chapter General, all pretext put aside, to ask forgiveness for never having come. The abbot of Igriș shall inform him of this.”7 It has been claimed both that the papal curia was confused in referring to the area as Ultra Sylvas and that the failure to name the abbey more specifically indicates that the abbot and monks had not yet settled in a particular place. In fact, Ultra Sylvas was a common way to refer to Transylvania at the time in the royal and papal chanceries, as we shall soon see, and there are 5 Ș. Turcuș, “O genealogie cisterciană enigmatică: Pontigny mama – Igriș fiica – Cârța nepoata” [An Enigmatic Cistercian Genealogy: Pontigny Mother – Igriș Daughter – Cârța Granddaughter], Anuarul Institutului de Istorie « George Barițiu » din Cluj-Napoca – Series Historica 55 (2016), 33-45. 6 Turcuș and Turcuș, At the Edges of Christendom, 123, an idea expressed also in Ș. Turcuș, Sfântul Scaun și românii în secolul al XIII-lea [The Holy See and the Romanians in the Thirteenth Century] (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 2001), 139-140. See also B. Romhányi, “The Role of the Cistercians in Medieval Hungary: Political Activity or Internal Colonisation?,” Annual of Medieval Studies at the CEU 180 (1993-1994), 180-204, at 204. 7 Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. J.-M. Canivez, 8 vols. (Louvain: Bureaux de la Revue, 1933-1941), 1:323, no. 21: “Abbas ultra Sylvas in Hungaria, filius abbatis de Egris, in sequenti generali Capitulo, omni occasione postposita, Cistercio se praesentet, veniam quare nunquam venerit petiturus. Abbas de Egris hoc ei denuntiet.” Despite the blurb, Twelfth-Century Statutes from the Cistercian General Chapter, ed. C. Waddell (Brecht: Cîteaux, 2002), which goes down to 1201, does not replace the first volume of Canivez, which extends to 1220 and includes the documents cited here. For the records of the Chapters General, see A. Grélois, “Tradition and Transmission: What Is the Significance of the Cistercian General Chapters’ Statutes? (Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries),” in Shaping Stability. The Normation and Formation of Religious Life in the Middle Ages, eds. K. Pansters and A. Plunkett-Latimer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 205-216. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 37 contemporary parallels in Greece and in Cyprus where abbots or abbeys are first mentioned as “in Greece” (in Graecia) or “of Cyprus” (Cypri).8 It is important that the acts of the Chapter General remark that the abbot had never come, because the Chapter General of 1208 complained that “The Across-the-Woods abbot (abbas Transylvanus), who for ten years has not come to the Chapter, since last year the Chapter ordered him to come, shall come by Easter to Cîteaux. Otherwise he shall know that he has been deposed.”9 The fact that the Chapter General maintained that the abbot had been ordered the previous year need not detain us, because the published statutes do not come down to us in a unified form in complete manuscripts, but are to an extent compiled from fragmentary witnesses. Thus, it is possible that the 1206 order was repeated in 1207, although we have no record of it, or the attending abbots could have indeed made an error. In any case, since (a) in 1206 they said that the Transylvanian abbot had never come, (b) in 1208 they maintained that it had been ten years, and (c) the abbot is not recorded as having been given a partial exemption from attending the annual meeting, we can infer that Cârța Abbey was founded at least institutionally in 1198, give or take a year. This is all the more likely given that it was not until 1216 that the abbot was offered a partial exemption from attending the annual meeting in Cîteaux: “It is granted to the abbot of Karz (other manuscript: Cara), whose abbey is very far away from the other abbeys of Hungary, that he shall stay three years and come to the Chapter on the fourth.”10 Thus far, there is no mention of who, besides the abbot of Igriș, founded Cârța Abbey and why. The next document, a privilege of King Andrew II of Hungary (1205-1235) dated 1223,11 helps fill in this blank. The document concerns a large donation of land, which the king had “granted to his faithful and beloved cleric, Master Gocelinus, Mount Saint Michael (mons Sancti Michaelis) along with the church and land belonging to it, situated in areas Beyond the Woods (Ultrasilvane partes),” using the term we have seen before for the abbot 8 9 10 11 Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, 1:397, no. 36, from 1212 and referring to Isova, and 2:263, no. 22, from 1243 and pertaining to Pyrgos. Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, 1:349, no. 21: “Abbas Transylvanus qui per decem annos ad Capitulum non venit, cum anno praeterito praeceptum ei fuerat a Capitulo ut veniret, usque ad Pascha Cistercium veniat; alioquin sciat se esse depositum.” Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, 1:458, no. 41: “Conceditur abbati de Karz cuius abbatia multum distat ab aliis abbatiis Hungariae ut tribus annis remaneat et quarto veniat ad Capitulum.” Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, eds. F. Zimmermann, C. Werner, G. Gündisch, H. Gündisch, G. Nussbächer, K. Gündisch, 7 vols. (Hermannstadt [Sibiu] – Bucharest: Franz Michaelis – Ed. Acad. Române, 1892-1991) (= Urkundenbuch), 1:26-28, no. 38. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 38 Dincă and Schabel of Transylvania. “Afterwards, with the passing of time, divinely inspired, for the redemption of his soul with the view toward eternal reward that everyone in general needs, he [Gocelinus] granted it to the monastery of Kerch,” asking the king to confirm the donation, which the king does in perpetuity, describing the geographical limits of the grant of Mount Saint Michael (the present Cisnădioara) in great detail.12 The privilege continues by referring to another large grant of land: “Again, we [the king] confirm in the present privilege the land (terram) that we had granted earlier to the same monastery that was exemptam de Blaccis for the redemption of his soul, having it assigned by our faithful and beloved Benedict, who was at that time voivode,” again describing this other, earlier grant with precision, which he also confirms in perpetuity.13 Thus, in 1223 Cârța Abbey was extremely wealthy. More importantly, this wealth derived directly and indirectly from royal donations with no evidence of any papal involvement whatsoever. Andrew reigned as king of Hungary from 1205 until his death in 1235, and although he had ruled over some territories even before 1198, these donations date to his period as king. We have no precise idea when the king made his first, direct grant to Cârța, except that it happened before the second one and involved the Voivode Benedict (1202-1206 and 1208-1209).14 The second grant was in fact a regranting of formerly royal land by a cleric, which the king confirmed. The explicit motivation for each donation is traditional, both in the West and in the East: the salvation of the donor’s soul. Neither in Cistercian documents nor in this first surviving royal privilege is the pope mentioned in connection with Cârța. Yet the king’s first and direct grant, if not the second and indirect one, was of land exemptam de Blaccis. This phrase is obviously key and potentially controversial. Unfortunately, the meaning is not clear. Assuming that Blacci are Vlachs, ‘Romanian’ natives, probably Eastern-rite, the phrase could mean either “taken from the Blacci,” “land of the Blacci that was exempt (e.g., from episcopal jurisdiction),” as it would in contemporary papal letters, or even “exempt from taxes called Blacci.” Given what 12 13 14 Urkundenbuch, 1:27, no. 38: “… cum fideli et dilecto clerico nostro magistro Gocelino propter indeciduae fidelitatis obsequia montem sancti Michaelis cum ecclesia et terra sibi pertinente situm in Vltrasiluanis partibus … contulissemus, postmodum processu temporis divinitus sibi inspirante pro remedio animae suae intuitu aeternae retributionis quo unusquisque generaliter indiget, monasterio de Kerch contulisset …” Urkundenbuch, 1:27-28, no. 38: “Item etiam confirmamus in praesenti privilegio terram quam prius eidem monasterio contuleramus exemptam de Blaccis pro remedio animae nostrae per fidelem ac dilectum nostrum Benedictum tunc temporis vaivodam assignari facientes.” A. Zsoldos, Magyarország világi archontológiája 1000-1301 [Secular Archontology of Medieval Hungary 1000-1301] (Budapest: MTA, 2011), 37. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 39 we now know about the general myth of Cistercian expansion and the specific one about the order in Greek-rite lands, it is unlikely that the Cistercians would have wanted an uninhabited area, although, as we shall see, the Teutonic Knights, a military order, were expected to colonize their territory.15 A document from 1252 describes a region as being “between the lands of the Olaci of Kyrch, of the Saxons of Brașov, and of the Székelys of Sepsi.”16 Olaci and Blacci are no doubt the same and they probably do refer to the native population of the territory, as opposed to the Germans and Hungarians to the north and east. Interestingly, a royal document of 1240, also treated below, refers to fortified churches near Brașov as being exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, so this could also be the case with Cârța. In sum, it is probable that Cârța Abbey was founded in 1198, and although we have no idea about its original endowment, it was probably a donation from a secular ruler to the mother house. After 1205 the abbey was, in addition, given a substantial amount of land in an area generally inhabited by Romanians and simply took over the lordship from the king. Cârța had structures there ca. 1210/15,17 and in or just before 1223 it received a second large grant, this time from a cleric – but not one who was acting in a clerical capacity – who had received the land, at an earlier date, from the king. Thus, as with the Cistercians in Cyprus and Frankish Greece,18 Cârța was supported by the mother house and the local nobility and royalty. By the early thirteenth century, the conversi system had declined in the West, but in the East it probably never took hold, with monasteries (both Greek and Latin) depending in part on rents 15 16 17 18 For the myth of the Cistercian preference for deserted wasteland, see C.H. Berman, Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986), and more recent general works on the order. For the Cistercians in Greece, see the works cited in note 18 below. For the Teutonic Knights, see below. Urkundenbuch, 1:78-79, no. 86, at 78: “… inter terras Olacorum de Kyrch, Saxonum de Barasu et terras Siculorum de Sebus …” According to archaeological opinions, the abbey’s first buildings were erected around this time interval; see Busuioc-von Hasselbach, Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XIII-lea, 1:46-47, 55; 2:129-135. E.A.R. Brown, “The Cistercians in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and Greece, 12041276,” Traditio 14 (1958), 63-120; J. Richard, “The Cistercians in Cyprus,” in The Second Crusade and the Cistercians, ed. M. Gervers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 199-209; repr. in Idem, Francs et orientaux dans le monde des croisades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), no. XVIII; Schabel, “The Myth of the White Monks’ ‘Mission to the Orthodox’”; M. Olympios and C. Schabel, “The Cistercian Abbeys of Zaraka and Isova in the Principality of Achaia,” Frankokratia 1 (2020), 165-179; W. Duba and C. Schabel, “A Documentary History of St Theodore Abbey,” in A Cistercian Nunnery in the Latin East: The History and Archaeology of St Theodore Abbey, Nicosia, Cyprus, eds. M. Olympios and C. Schabel, forthcoming. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 40 Dincă and Schabel and servile labor. The single phrase exemptam de Blaccis does not suggest that the Cistercians colonized the area, let alone at the instigation of the papacy. This does not mean that the Church was uninvolved in the expansion of Latin Christendom in Transylvania, but to the extent that it was, the motivation and results are ambiguous. It is in this connection that we have the first papal references to Cârța Abbey. On 12 June 1225 Pope Honorius III wrote a letter to King Andrew,19 upset with what he had heard about the king’s treatment of the Teutonic Knights. Honorius explains that Andrew had granted the military order “the land of Boze and beyond the mountains of the snows,” according to the king’s privileges, and Honorius then took the land under papal protection, establishing that it would be “under the authority of no one but the Roman pontiff, so that it would be filled with settlers (coloni) quickly and your [the king’s] merit would rise as high as your gift would be fruitful for the Holy Land.”20 It is clear that King Andrew and the pope foresaw an important defensive role for the Teutonic Order in eastern Transylvania and an offensive and colonizing role beyond the Carpathians.21 Eventually, however, the king and the order had a falling out, and the pope had to intervene on the knights’ behalf to prevent Andrew from harassing them, but without success: Recently, however, we [the pope] received their [the knights’] complaint that, at the instigation of certain wicked men, you [the king] entered that land with a large and heavy number of horsemen and foot soldiers and so oppressed these brothers and their men with exactions and expenses that you obliged them to the value of a thousand marks and besides that you rendered that land, which they had populated with people and things 19 20 21 Urkundenbuch, 1:36-38, no. 45; also H. Zimmermann, Der Deutsche Orden im Burzenland. Eine diplomatische Untersuchung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), 186-188, no. 17; repr. as Idem, Der Deutsche Orden in Siebenbürgen. Eine diplomatische Untersuchung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011). Urkundenbuch, 1:36, no. 45: “… terram Boze ac ultra montes nivium fratribus domus Theotonicorum regia liberalitate donasti, unde terram ipsam sub apostolicae sedis protectione suscepimus et libertate donavimus speciali, adeo ut apostolico privilegio statuerimus, eam nulli nisi Romano pontifici subiacere, quatenus eadem colonis citius impleretur, tuumque meritum eo altius surgeret, quo donum tuum terrae sanctae uberius proveniret.” A similar role was envisaged for the Teutonic Knights settled in Slavonia and Croatia, yet they failed to attract popular support. Historians associate this failure with the establishment of the Cistercian Toplica (today Topusko, Croatia) Abbey during the reign of Andrew II; see A. Novak, “Croatia and the Borders of Christianity: The Fortified Cistercian Abbey of Castrum Thopozka,” in Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction, eds. E. Jamroziak and K. Stöber (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 49-80, especially n. 3. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 41 at great expense, completely useless to them and the Holy Land. You also occupied with violence a certain castle that they had constructed beyond the mountains of the snows with much labor and expense, their brothers having been ejected from it, and since your men killed some brothers and their men, wounded others, and imprisoned others, when they humbly asked you to make satisfaction for these things, you completely ignored their complaints and prayers.22 The king’s agents countered that the Teutonic Knights had exceeded their mandate, since they were “not content with your [the king’s] liberality, but left the confines of the possessions that you had piously granted to them and occupied some of your possessions.”23 Honorius commanded the military order to return those possessions, but the king decided to seize what he had earlier granted the knights, after papal confirmation, and continued to do so with threats against the order. Praising the knights and expressing concern for the king’s soul, Honorius pleads with Andrew to leave the Teutonic Order in peace, return what he has taken, make satisfaction, and defend the knights, although the knights were to restore to the king anything they might have unduly taken as well. Honorius assigned the implementation of his decision and the inspection of the limits of the lands donated to the Teutonic Knights in the royal privilege to three abbots, including Igriș in the diocese of Cenad and Kerz in the Ultrasilvana diocese.24 King Andrew then sent a nuncio to the pope complaining about the knights, apparently with a letter from “certain abbots of the Cistercian Order,” probably the three just mentioned, which backed up the king’s complaints about the knights’ ingratitude: “several people assert that to 22 23 24 Urkundenbuch, 1:37, no. 45: “Nuper autem querelam eorundem recepimus continentem, quod tu quorundam malignorum instinctu terram ipsam in grandi et gravi equitum et peditura multitudine intravisti adeoque gravasti ipsos fratres et eorum homines exactionibus ac expensis, quod eis damnificatis ad valentiam mille marcarum et ultra terram ipsam, quam cum multo personarum et rerum dispendio populaverant, eis et ipsi terrae sanctae pene penitus inutilem reddidisti. Quoddam quoque castrum, quod ultra montes nivium multis construxerant laboribus et expensis, occupasti per violentiam, fratribus eorum ab eodem eiectis, et cum homines tui quosdam fratres et homines eorundem occiderint, quosdam vulneraverint, et quosdam carceri manciparint, tu ab eis humiliter requisitus, ut super hiis eis satisfieri faceres, querimonias eorum et preces penitus obaudisti.” Urkundenbuch, 1:37, no. 45: “Denique cum ex parte tua fuisset propositum coram nobis, quod ipsi fratres liberalitatis tuo beneficio non contenti, sed egressi fines possessionum a te sibi concessarum intuitu pietatis, quasdam ex tuis possessionibus occuparant …” Announced in the letter to the king, but the letter to the abbots of the same date survives: Urkundenbuch, 1:38-39, no. 46. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 42 Dincă and Schabel the king these [Teutonic] hospitallers are ‘like a fire in one’s bosom, a mouse in the provision bag, and a serpent in one’s lap’, who repay their hosts with evil.”25 This time, on 1 September 1225, Honorius ordered two bishops to investigate, “notwithstanding the letter to the abbots of Nivelt, Igriș, and Querc.”26 By 17 February 1226,27 however, Honorius again had a change of heart, writing to King Andrew a letter that rehearsed the previous ones, and then continuing: But you [the king] moved us [the pope] against the brothers without cause, and without cause you obtained our letter to the bishops, since beforehand, while the report of the abbots was pending, at your will, you had not only deprived the brothers of the lands that you said they had occupied beyond the limits, but also those that you had donated to them, as their report later made clear. We gathered this from the fact that, on the second or third day after your nuncio received our permission to return to you, the preceptor of the houses of that hospital that are in that land came to our presence having been despoiled of that land, as he said, and having been violently ejected from it along with his brothers. So just as we warned your providence with fatherly affection at another time, so now we warn, exhort, and implore you in the Lord Jesus Christ to reject the suggestions of wicked men …28 25 26 27 28 Urkundenbuch, 1:40-41, no. 49, at 41: “… prout praesentatae nobis quorundam abbatum Cisterciensis ordinis literae declararunt … Propter quod a nonnullis asseritur, quod tamquam ignis in sinu, mus in pera et serpens in gremio, qui hospites suos male remunerant, sint eidem regi hospitalarii supra dicti.” Urkundenbuch, 1:41, no. 49: “non obstantibus literis ad … de Nivelt … de Egris et … de Querc abbates.” Urkundenbuch, 1:44-46, no. 53; also Zimmermann, Der Deutsche Orden im Burzenland, 194196, no. 22. Urkundenbuch, 1:45, no. 53: “Sine causa vero contra fratres nos commovisti praedictos, et sine causa nostras ad praefatos episcopos literas impetrasti, cum prius ipsos non solum terris, quas illos extra saepe dictos terminos occupasse dicebas, verum etiam hiis, quas eis donaveras, pendente praedictorum relatione abbatum, pro tuae voluntatis arbitrio spoliasses, sicut nobis eorum conquestio postmodum patefecit, et ex eo collegimus, quod praeceptor domorum ipsius hospitalis, quae in terra supra dicta consistunt, secundo vel tertio die, quo nuncius tuus a nobis licentiam ad te redeundi receperat, ad nostram venit praesentiam, spoliatus terra, prout dicebat, eadem et ab ea cum fratribus suis violenter eiectus. Sicut ergo tuam alias paterno affectu monuimus providentiam, ita nunc monemus et hortamur attentius, ac obsecramus in domino Jesu Christo, quatenus spretis suggestionibus malignorum …” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 43 Honorius gives Andrew a stern warning, reminding him of how important the Teutonic Knights are to the Holy Land, the main reason for papal support of the order in Transylvania and beyond the mountains. King Andrew did not reconcile with the Teutonic Knights. Instead, they were expelled from Transylvania. Andrew perhaps found a way to make amends six years after Honorius’ death: in response to local complaints and those of Pope Gregory IX relayed through his legate, the Cistercian James de Pecorara, cardinal-bishop-elect of Preneste,29 on 20 August 1233,30 King Andrew addressed Cardinal James, swearing to exclude “Jews, Saracens, or Ismailis” from royal and local administration and his personal company, having them marked with signs to distinguish them from Christians, preventing them from buying or having Christian slaves, and taking steps to avoid cohabitation and intermarriage between these groups and pagans, on the one hand, and Christians, on the other, on pain of seizure of the non-Christians’ property. There was thus no lack of conflict in the first years of the existence of Cârța Abbey, even more so in its geographical proximity, and differences of religion were prominent issues. Yet there is almost no evidence for strife between Christians of different rites at this juncture, certainly none that was attributed to any difference in rite. King Andrew, moreover, was not prepared to acquiesce to papal demands if they opposed his own interests, and he fought and eventually expelled the Teutonic Knights despite Honorius III’s vocal opposition. His attitude toward the Cistercians was different, but this was not because of any desire to please the pope, let alone in order to convert a subject population. There was no place for the Cistercians as missionaries, and no papal intention to use them as such. The royal and personal motivations for the foundation and support of Cârța Abbey are apparent in a privilege of King Béla IV (1235-1270), Andrew II’s son and successor, dated 21 March 1240.31 With an eye to his salvation, Béla wrote that he “supports regular men who live according to the evangelic truth and the rule of St Benedict … Thus, we [the king] have conferred on the monks of the monastery of Cîteaux, for its expenses that they undertake each year for the Chapter General of the entire order, certain churches in Burcia, in areas 29 30 31 Pope Gregory gives the background in a letter to King Andrew dated 12 August 1233, which could not have arrived before Andrew wrote to the cardinal eight days later: Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Slovaciae, ed. R. Marsina, 2 vols. (Bratislava: Slovenská Akadémia Vied, 1971-1987), 1:293-295, no. 406. Codex diplomaticus et epistolaris Slovaciae, 1:295-298, no. 407. See on this N. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000-c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 158. Parenthetically, the church of Kercz is among a long list of beneficiaries elsewhere in the 1233 documents. Urkundenbuch, 1:68-69, no. 76. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 44 Dincă and Schabel of Transylvania (in partibus Transilvanis).” What follows is a list of four fortified churches associated with the period of Teutonic presence in the area around Brașov – the present Feldioara, Sânpetru, Hărman, and Prejmer – exempt from episcopal jurisdiction and subject solely to the king.32 Rather than transfer the churches at once, however, Béla established a compromise: Because at the time of our [the king’s] grant these churches were not yet vacant, however, and the Cistercians were unable to receive their incomes in full, we have arranged and want to be observed without violation that those people who presently receive the incomes of these churches are obliged to pay to the Cistercian brothers or their nuncio one silver mark for each church every year on the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, without contradiction or delay, so that from this it is plainly clear that they hold these churches in the name of the Cistercians as long as they live and the ius patronatus pertains to these Cistercians perpetually. In the meantime, however, while these churches are being vacated, so that the Cistercians are able to possess fully their incomes, we will have 100 silver marks paid in full to these Cistercians every year on the Assumption of the Blessed Mary from our camera at Esztergom. But after the [Cistercians] possess these churches freely, we will be absolved of paying the 100 marks.33 32 33 Urkundenbuch, 1:68, no. 76: “ut regularium virorum, qui iuxta evangelicam veritatem et regulam beati Benedicti … mente devota famulantur, utilitatibus providentes … sancto ac venerabili conventui monasterii Cistercii in subsidium expensarum, quas annis singulis ad usum generalis capituli totius ordinis sunt facturi, quasdam ecclesias in Burcia in partibus Transiluanis videlicet castrum sanctae Mariae, montem sancti Petri, montem Mellis et Tartilleri, in quibus diocesanus episcopus nihil iurisdictionis obtinet, sed ad nos specialiter et immediate pertinet, cum proventibus, iuribus ac omnibus suis pertinentiis duximus conferendas.” Urkundenbuch, 1:69, no. 76: “Verum quia tempore nostrae collationis, ecclesiae praenominatae nondum vacabant, et ideo Cistercienses earum proventus ad plenum adipisci non poterant, ordinavimus et inviolabiliter volumus observari, ut hi, qui earundem ecclesiarum proventus ad praesens percipiunt, fratribus Cisterciensibus vel eorum nuncio unam marcam argenti de qualibet ecclesia singulis annis in assumptione beatae Mariae solvere teneantur, omni contradictione et dilatione cessante, ut ex hoc evidenter appareat, easdem ecclesias nomine Cisterciensium quoad vixerint detineri et ius patronatus ad ipsos Cistercienses in perpetuum pertinere. Interim autem, quod praefatis ecclesiis vacantibus Cistercienses earum proventus ad plenum valeant possidere, singulis annis in assumptione beatae Mariae de camera nostra apud Strigonium centum marcas argenti eisdem Cisterciensibus integraliter persolvi faciemus. Sed postquam praedictas ecclesias libere possederint, nos a solutione centum marcarum erimus expediti.” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 45 This grant did not involve the establishment of a new monastery to the east of Cârța, but merely constituted a source of income for distant Cîteaux.34 It seems that King Béla inherited his father’s love for the Cistercians and faith in their intercessory prayers. Béla’s own son and successor, Stephen V (1270-1272), already crowned in 1245 as iunior rex, followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, taking Kyrch Abbey under royal protection in 126435 following the devastating Tartar invasion (1241-1242).36 As sole king Stephen renewed this deed and the earlier royal privileges on 23 May 1272,37 only a couple of months before his death, and the royal backing continued afterwards. The Hungarian royal house supported the Cistercians in part because it was what everyone else was doing, for piety and for prestige. Transylvania, like all other territories under western rule, needed at least one Cistercian abbey,38 and Cârța filled that role. It is likely that the king and the monks thought little or nothing about the religious differences with the local population when it came to establishing the new house. Cistercian monks were hardly in a position to preach to ordinary people about obscure doctrinal differences between Eastern- and Western-rite Christians. If there are any doubts, the foundation of the Cistercian nunnery of St Catherine in Brașov should dispel them. The Abbey of St Catherine The walled city of Brașov lies in the extreme southeast of Transylvania and the Carpathians, a border area between various states for most of the period from the Middle Ages until just after World War I, when it was transferred 34 35 36 37 38 M. Tănase, “Avatarurile unui act de donaţie. Donaţia făcută Cistercienilor, în Ţara Bârsei, de către Bela IV, la 17 martie 1240” [Avatars of a Donation Act. The Donation Made to the Cistercians in Țara Bârsei by Bela IV on 17 March 1240], Revista Istorică 4 (1993), 55-80, at 73, surmises that the relationship between the Transylvanian estates and Cîteaux was mediated by Pilis Abbey; in turn, Turcuș and Turcuș, At the Edges of Christendom, 165 n. 36, reject this hypothesis. Urkundenbuch, 1:93-94, no. 107. See, for example, T. Sălăgean, Transylvania in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century. The Rise of the Congregational System (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 4-48. Medieval documents generally used the spelling ‘Tartari’, not ‘Tatari’. Urkundenbuch, 1:116-117, no. 154. L.J. Lekai, “Medieval Cistercians and their Social Environment. The Case of Hungary,” Analecta Cisterciensia 32 (1976), 251-280. On the motivations of the laity for founding Cistercian monasteries in general, see, e.g., E. Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe, 1090-1500 (London: Routledge, 2013), especially the chapter “Cistercian Communities and the Lay World,” and Lyon, “Nobility and Monastic Patronage.” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 46 Dincă and Schabel from Hungary to Romania. Once called Corona in Latin, and still referred to as Kronstadt in German and Brassó in Hungarian, Brașov and its surroundings have a population consisting of the same three ethnic groups as in the thirteenth century, although Romanians now make up the vast majority. Since Cistercian nuns were forbidden to have the kind of interaction with the local population that missionaries were required to have, the very existence of a Cistercian nunnery amidst a mixed population of Eastern- and Western-rite Christians would demonstrate that the Cistercian ‘mission’ in Transylvania was not directed at the ‘conversion’ of the local Vlachs. The place of nuns in the Cistercian Order was once downplayed, before decades of revisionist scholarship culminating in Constance H. Berman’s new book The White Nuns.39 We will argue below based on old and new evidence that there existed a Cistercian nunnery of St Catherine in Brașov that was probably founded in the context of King Béla IV’s rule, perhaps in connection with his 1240 privilege. Nevertheless, it should be noted at the outset that until now the only widely known explicit link between the chapel of St Catherine and the Cistercian Order has been a document dated as late as 26 June 1388, and this merely states that “Brother John of the Cistercian Order, rector of the chapel of St Catherine in the said city of Corona,” acted as witness.40 References to a chapel of St Catherine explained the name of the only surviving gate in the city’s medieval walls, St Catherine’s Gate (porta sancte Katherine), first mentioned in 1559, which was assumed to have been constructed close to the site of the demolished chapel. This has been confirmed by archaeological evidence uncovered less than 150 meters northeast of the gate in the area just to the southwest of St Mary’s parish church (nowadays known as the Black Church), the great fourteenth-century Gothic monument of Saxon Brașov.41 39 40 41 C.H. Berman, The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Urkundenbuch, 2:626-628, no. 1230; Documenta Romaniae Historica, vols. 10-17 thus far (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 1977-2020), vol. 17: C. Transilvania, eds. S. Andea, L. Gross, A.C. Dincă (2020), 329-331, no. 262, at 331: “fratre Johanne ordinis Cisterciensis rectore capelle sancte Katherine in predicta Corona.” G. Nussbächer, “Die Honterusschule in den ersten Jahrzenten ihres Bestehens,” in Idem, Aus Urkunden und Chroniken. Beiträge zur siebenbürgischen Heimatkunde (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1981), 118-124; D. Jenei, “Construcţii succesive pe locul Liceului ‘Johannes Honterus’ din Braşov. Capela cisterciană Sf. Ecaterina” “[Successive Constructions on the Site of Johannes Honterus High School in Brașov. The Cistercian Chapel of St Catherine],” in In honorem Gernot Nussbächer, 401-409; I. Băldescu, Transilvania medievală. Topografie și norme juridice ale cetăților Sibiu, Bistrița, Brașov, Cluj [Medieval Transylvania. Topography and Legal Norms of the Citadels of Sibiu, Bistrița, Brașov, Cluj] (Bucharest: Simetria, 2012), 238. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 47 Unaware of any explicit evidence that St Catherine’s itself was Cistercian, with no information for the chapel from before 1388, scholars have put forward alternative hypotheses over the past fifty years.42 The reference to a claustra sororum in the town of Brașov in the Catalogus Ninivensis or Ninove Catalogue of the Premonstratensian abbey of St Cornelius in the Flemish city of Ninove, dated 1236-1241, gave rise to the theory that St Catherine’s was a house of Premonstratensian canonesses.43 Alleged support for this thesis was found in the early thirteenth-century statutes of the Cistercian Chapters General concerning the legal process of affiliation and incorporation of female houses into the order, affirming that no other nunneries of the order were to be admitted after 1228, in addition to further uncompromising decisions of the Cistercian abbots to refuse granting the order’s privileges and liberties to female convents.44 In any case, the scholars opposed to the nunnery’s Cistercian identity generally assumed that Cistercian abbeys of monks and nuns were universally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, unlike St Catherine. Appeals to the legislation and the name are clearly invalid. Despite legislative attempts to avoid any legal commitments to women’s houses, practice circumvented these provisions, even if the low number of Cistercian nunneries in the Kingdom of Hungary (Brașov, Bratislava, Veszprémvölgy, Kloštar Ivanić, and the Sava Isle) can be compared to the paucity in the Latin East (Constantinople, Tripoli, Acre, Nicosia, Famagusta, and near Kalamata).45 42 43 44 45 P. Binder, “Unele probleme referitoare la prima menţiune documentară a Braşovului” [Some Queries Regarding the First Documentary Mention of Brașov], Cumidava 3 (1969), 125-130; L. Gross, “Dicţionarul istoric – reflexie a ‘rigorii şi maturităţii unei istoriografii’” [The Historical Dictionary – A Reflection of ‘the Rigor and Maturity of a Historiography’], Anuarul Institutului de Istorie « George Barițiu » din Cluj-Napoca – Series Historica 40 (2001), 361-368; H. Roth, Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010), 40-41; G. Nussbächer, “Corona 775 – Die erste urkundliche Erwähnung von Kronstadt,” in Idem, Aus Urkunden und Chroniken, 17 vols. (Bucharest: Kriterion [1-4]/Brașov: Aldus [5-17], 19812016), vol. 13: Kronstadt (2013), 24-25. N. Backmund, Monasticon Praemonstratense: id est, Historia circariarum atque canoniarum candidi et canonici Ordinis Praemonstratensis, 3 vols. (Straubing: C. Attenkofersche Buchdruckerei, 1949-1956), 3:402; K. Reinerth, “Ein bisher unbeachtet gebliebenes Verzeichnis der Klöster des Prämonstratenserordens in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen in der Zeit vor dem Mongolensturm,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 77 (4. Folge 15) (1966), 268287; G. Nussbächer, “Claustrum sororum … in Corona. Die älteste bekannte Aufzeichnung über die Zinnenstadt,” in Idem, Aus Urkunden und Chroniken: Kronstadt, 15-20. Statuta Capitulorum Generalium, 2:68, no. 16. See also G. Baury, “Émules puis sujettes de l’ordre cistercien. Les cisterciennes de Castille et d’ailleurs face au Chapitre Général aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” Cîteaux – Commentarii cistercienses 52/1-2 (2001), 27-60. B. Hamilton, “The Cistercians in the Crusader States,” in One Yet Two. Monastic Traditions East and West, ed. B. Pennington (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 405422; repr. in Idem, Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusades (900-1300) (London: Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 48 Dincă and Schabel Similarly, while Cistercian nunneries in Acre and Nicosia were named after St Mary Magdalen and St Theodore, more pertinently, St Catherine of Alexandria, one of the virgin martyrs and a role model for mulieres religiosae all around Europe,46 enjoyed a substantial role among the Cistercian nuns, who devoted mainly chapels to her patronage.47 Recent historiography has thus questioned the identification of the chapel of St Catherine with the Premonstratensian claustrum sororum … in Corona.48 Whatever happened to the Premonstratensian canonesses of Brașov, both a previously published but overlooked reference and a newly discovered 46 47 48 Variorum, 1979), no. X; G. Saint-Guillain, “Sainte-Marie du Perchay, abbaye cistercienne à Constantinople,” in Puer Apuliae. Mélanges offerts à Jean-Marie Martin, eds. E. Cuozzo, V. Déroche, A. Peters-Custot, and V. Prigent, 2 vols. (Paris: Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2008), 2:593-603; Idem, “Propriétés et bienfaiteurs de l’abbaye constantinopolitaine de Sainte-Marie du Perchay,” Θησαυρίσματα 41-42 (2012), 9-39; C. Schabel, “Pope Honorius III (1216-1227) and Romania,” in Bullarium Hellenicum. Pope Honorius III’s Letters to Frankish Greece and Constantinople (1216-1227), eds. W.O. Duba and C.D. Schabel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 9-87, at 78-81; Duba and Schabel, “A Documentary History of St Theodore Abbey”; personal communication with Guillaume Saint-Guillain, for Kalamata. K.J. Lewis, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000); St. Katherine of Alexandria. Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, eds. J. Jenkins and K.J. Lewis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003); C. Walsh, The Cult of St. Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Eadem, “Medieval Saints’ Cults as International Networks: The Example of the Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria,” in International Religious Networks, eds. H. McLeod and J. Gregory (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), 1-8; A. Simon, The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late-Medieval Nuremberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). One such example is highlighted by D. Uhrin, “The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Medieval Upper Hungarian Towns,” The Hungarian Historical Review 5 (2016), 557-586, at 535, citing the foundation of a Cistercian chapel dedicated to St Catherine in 1311 in Bratislava; see also National Hungarian Archives (Magyar Országos Levéltár), Budapest, Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény (DF) 238652: “capellam … in honore beate virginis Katherine”; calendared (in Hungarian) in Anjou-kori Oklevéltár, 50 vols. (Budapest-Szeged: Szegedi Középkorász Műhely, 1990-2020), vol. 3, ed. G. Kristó (1994), 59, no. 119. For additional aspects of Cistercian nunneries in medieval Hungary, see O. Székely, A ciszterci apácák Magyarországon [The Cistercian Nuns in Hungary] (Budapest: A Ciszterci Rend Budapesti Szent Imre-Gimnáziumána kévkönyve, 1942); B.K. Lackner, “Zisterzienser-Frauenklöster im mittelalterlichen Ungarn,” Studia monastica 33 (1991), 281-294; Idem, “Cistercian Nuns in Medieval Hungary,” in Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic Women, eds. J.A. Nichols and L.T. Shank (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 159-170. A.A. Rusu, N. Sabău, I. Burnichioiu, I.V. Leb, and M. Makó-Lupescu, Dicționarul mănăstirilor din Transilvania, Banat, Crișana și Maramureș (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară, 2000), 80; Turcuș and Turcuș, At the Edges of Christendom, 209-211 (nn. 315-316); A. Ștefan, “Saint Corona – a First Patron Saint for the Medieval Braşov?,” Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai, Historia 58/1 (2013), 201-226. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 49 document back up these doubts, making it all but certain that, rather than White Canonesses, St Catherine housed White Nuns. First, on 3 May 1406 Pope Innocent VII (1404-1406) issued an instrument in support of nuns described as “sisters of the house of the Cistercian Order situated in the town of Corona … near the chapel of St Catherine the Virgin in that town.”49 This at least demonstrated that there was a Cistercian nunnery in Brașov in the close vicinity of the chapel called St Catherine. A century later, on 15 May 1521, Pope Leo X (1503-1521) had a document drawn up that finally allows us to settle this century-old historiographical debate.50 The instrument in question adjudicates a grievance of “the abbess and convent of the monastery of nuns of St Catherine the Virgin of the Cistercian Order of the town of Corona” against their confessor, a representative of the abbot of the Cistercian abbey in Pilis, the present Pilisszentkeresz in Hungary.51 The specific identification of the ecclesiastical institution of St Catherine as a Cistercian nunnery headed by an abbess and affiliated with Pilis Abbey, a bit of information previously missing in all documentary evidence, allows new insight into the contextual data regarding the role of the monastic settlement in the urban community. If St Catherine’s was Cistercian in 1388, why do we posit that it most likely was founded as a Cistercian nunnery during King Béla IV’s rule (1235-1270) if there is no explicit documentary evidence in support? Although it is possible that, after the Tartar invasion of 1241-1242, the house of Premonstratensian canonesses joined or was taken over by the Cistercians, the fact that already in 1240 Béla had granted the fortified churches of Feldioara, Sânpetru, Hărman, and Prejmer to the Cistercian Order makes it likely that this resulted in the direct founding of St Catherine. This also accords with the archaeological 49 50 51 Città del Vaticano, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (hereafter AAV), Regesta Datariae Innoc. VII. Anno II. libro rosso, fol. 36v, calendared in Hungarian in Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, 13 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1951-2017), vol. 2, ed. E. Mályusz (1956), 576-577, no. 4698; partially published in F.L. Hervay, Repertorium Historicum Ordinis Cisterciensis in Hungaria (Budapest: Franklin Nyomda, 1984), 80-81: “… sororum domus site in oppido Corona, Cisterciensis ordinis, … prope capellam sancte Catherine virginis in eodem oppido consistentem …” See also C. Florea, “‘For They Wanted Us to Serve Them’: Female Monasticism in Medieval Transylvania,” in Women in the Medieval Monastic World, eds. J. Burton and K. Stöber (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 211-227. AAV, Reg. Lat. 1403, fols. 106r-107v. A full transcription of this source, together with a wider perspective on its specific topic, is in preparation by Adinel C. Dincă. AAV, Reg. Lat. 1403, fol. 106r: “… dilectarum in Christo filiarum abatisse moderne et conventus monasterii monialium sancte Catherine Virginis oppidi Corone, Cisterciensis ordinis, Milkoviensis diocesis …”; “… abbatem monasterii de Pelisig eiusdem ordinis, Strigoniensis diocesis …” On Pilis, see L. Gerevich, “Pilis Abbey, a Cultural Center,” Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1977), 155-198; Idem, A pilisi ciszterci apátság (Szentendre: Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 1984). Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 50 Dincă and Schabel evidence, which places the construction of St Catherine’s chapel around the same time as the building of Cârța’s Gothic choir, ca. 125052-1270,53 in the period of Brașov’s first wave of German settlers.54 In any case, the first half of the thirteenth century was the golden age for the foundation of Cistercian nunneries or the incorporation of existing convents into the order, and it is likely that St Catherine was part of this huge wave.55 52 53 54 55 D. Marcu-Istrate, “Arheologia bisericilor urbane din sudul Transilvaniei: o abordare preliminară” [Archaeology of Urban Churches in Southern Transylvania: A Preliminary Approach], in Cluj-Kolozsvár-Klausenburg 700. Várostörténeti tanulmányok. Studii de istorie urbană, ed. M. Makó-Lupescu (Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2018), 137-151, at 142 and Eadem, Redescoperirea trecutului medieval al Brașovului: Curtea Bisericii Negre/Unearthing the Medieval Past of Brașov/Kronstadt: The Black Church Yard (Brașov: Mega, 2015), 104-105 and 223, suggests that the vestiges preserved in the cellar of the Johannes Honterus Gymnasium may represent only a small fraction of the original Cistercian buildings, some of which were demolished around 1380, when the construction site of St Mary’s parish church was organized. The author considers that further investigation of the inner nave of the Black Church may unearth additional constructions belonging to a Cistercian abbey complex. Useful comparisons in F. WarnatschGleich, Herrschaft und Frömmigkeit. Zisterzienserinnen im Hochmittelalter (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2005). Busuioc-von Hasselbach, Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XIII-lea, 2:154-155; Jenei, “Construcţii succesive pe locul Liceului ‘Johannes Honterus’ din Braşov,” 404. For a broader discussion of this topic, see E. Fügedi, “La formation des villes et les ordres mendiants en Hongrie,” Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations 25/4 (1970), 966987; H. Roth, “Kronstadt – eine Gründung des Deutschen Ordens?,” in Generalprobe Burzenland: Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens in Siebenbürgen und im Banat, ed. K. Gündisch (Cologne: Böhlau, 2013), 99-106, at 102-104. See for example E.-G. Krenig, “Mittelalterliche Frauenklöster nach den Konstitutionen von Cîteaux,” Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 10 (1954), 1-103; B. Degler-Spengler, “‘Zahlreich wie die Sterne des Himmels’. Zisterzienser, Dominikaner und Franziskaner vor dem Problem der Inkorporation von Frauenklöstern,” Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 4 (1985), 37-50; Eadem, “The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns into the Order in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century,” in Hidden Springs, 85-134; C.H. Berman, “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?,” Church History 68 (1999), 824-864; Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes. Filiations, réseaux, relectures du XIIe au XVIIe siècle. Actes du quatrième Colloque international du C.E.R.C.O.R., Dijon, 23-25 septembre 1998, ed. N. Bouter (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2000); J. Burton, “Moniale and Ordo Cisterciensis in Medieval England and Wales,” in Female vita religiosa between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts, eds. G. Melville and A. Müller (Berlin: LIT, 2011), 375-389; F.J. Felten, “Abwehr, Zuneigung, Pflichtgefühl. Reaktionen der frühen Zisterzienser auf den Wunsch religiöser Frauen, zisterziensisch zu leben,” ibidem, 391-416; A.E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns. The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); B.P. McGuire, “Cistercian Nuns in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Denmark and Sweden: Far from the Madding Crowd,” in Women in the Medieval Monastic World, 167-184; A. Grélois, “Clairvaux et le monachisme féminin des Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 51 We may eventually discover other sources for the Brașov nunnery, but the lack of early documentary evidence for St Catherine should not surprise us all that much, since there were other Cistercian nunneries and even men’s houses in the East for which the written record is equally sparse, such as Isova Abbey in the Principality of Achaia, a men’s monastery probably founded in 1211 and destroyed in 1263, and, more strikingly, the nunnery of Mary Magdalen in Nicosia, the capital of the Kingdom of Cyprus, which became an abbey in 1222 and merged with a Benedictine nunnery in 1507.56 Yet just as recent studies on the White Monks in the East and in other border regions of medieval Latinitas helped fill the interpretative gaps for Cârța Abbey, recent parallel investigations of better documented White Nuns in other urban areas in the East can shed light on the origins and evolution of St Catherine’s in Brașov, for example Our Lady of Perchay in Constantinople and St Theodore in Nicosia, which was recently excavated.57 Similar to elsewhere in Europe, most references to the Cistercian affiliation of nunneries come from a later period, and the new evidence for St Catherine’s Cistercian identity sheds new light on other late mentions of the chapel. The foundation of a sacred space dedicated to women within the walls of the city in the earlier stages of Brașov’s existence suggests that the chapel played a larger role than just a secluded and confined space where women of various conditions could find shelter and dedicate their lives to imitating St Catherine’s status as sponsa Christi. European Cistercian nunneries were endowed by members of the nobility and are documented as active participants in their communities’ economic affairs,58 and the Brașov convent seems to fit into this general picture: around 1475-1480 the chapel’s additional Hof (courtyard) housed no less than nineteen women who were registered taxpayers and artisans, possibly belonging to a small Beguine (tertiary) group connected to 56 57 58 origines au milieu du XVe siècle,” in Le temps long de Clairvaux. Nouvelles recherches, nouvelles perspectives (XIIe-XXIe siècle), eds. A. Baudin and A. Grélois (Paris: Somogy, 2017), 155-182. On Isova, see Olympios and Schabel, “The Cistercian Abbeys of Zaraka and Isova,” and for St Mary Magdalen, see Duba and Schabel, “A Documentary History of St Theodore Abbey.” For Perchay, see Saint-Guillain, “Sainte-Marie du Perchay” and “Propriétés et bienfaiteurs de l’abbaye constantinopolitaine de Sainte-Marie du Perchay”; for St Theodore, A Cistercian Nunnery in the Latin East. M.-M. de Cevins, “Les implantations cisterciennes en Hongrie médiévale: un réseau?,” in Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes, 453-483, at 466; E.L. Jordan, “Transforming the Landscape: Cistercian Nuns and the Environment in the Medieval Low Countries,” Journal of Medieval History 44/2 (2018), 187-201. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 52 Dincă and Schabel the Cistercian nunnery.59 Yet, the nuns themselves were no humble women, accustomed to hard physical work, and their complaint sanctioned by Pope Innocent VII on 3 May 1406 suggests their higher upbringing.60 These five women, who are the only Transylvanian seculares mulieres known by name to have embraced the Cistercian habit,61 came from small German villages surrounding Brașov, like Rotbav (Ruffaripa) and Ghimbav (Widenbach), and may have been, as elsewhere in Europe, unmarried daughters and widows of well-off landowners, urban merchants, and artisans who sought devotional expression and spiritual refuge in a socially prestigious space. While it would be difficult to substantiate a direct economic connection between this Brașov chapel and Cârța Abbey, still, the management model common to Cistercian convents throughout Europe – in the Kingdom of Hungary as well – implies that the White Monks must have had houses, manors, or at least a fundus in Brașov, similar to Sibiu,62 as urban properties connecting the monastery to the network of trading routes.63 The so-called urban curiae (Stadthöfe in German) functioned since the last two decades of the twelfth century as administrative and economic hubs for abbeys, usually comprising a guesthouse, a cellar, a warehouse, stables, and even a chapel, and were situated close to one 59 60 61 62 63 Quellen zur Geschiche der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen, 11 vols. (Kronstadt: various presses, 1886-2016), vol. 3 (In Kommission bei H. Zeidner, 1896), 691-692. Due to their claustration, Cistercian nuns relied first on the financial revenues from tenants’ rents; see Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe, 140; additional details in E.M. Panzer, “Cistercian Women and the Beguines: Interaction, Cooperation and Interdependence,” PhD Dissertation (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994); J.-B. Levèvre, “Deux cas conjoints d’une évolution du monde béguinal au monde cistercien: la communauté des Awirs – Aywières (1195-1211) et sainte Lutgarde (1194-1211),” in Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes, 281-295; B.F. Romhányi, “The Ecclesiastic Economy in Medieval Hungary,” in The Economy of Medieval Hungary, 450-1450, eds. J. Laszlovszky, B. Nagy, P. Szabó, and A. Vadas (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 307-334, at 333. AAV, Regesta Datariae Innoc. VII. Anno II. libro rosso, fol. 36v; Hervay, Repertorium Historicum Ordinis Cisterciensis in Hungaria, 80-81; Florea, “‘For They Wanted Us to Serve Them’.” Hervay, Repertorium Historicum Ordinis Cisterciensis in Hungaria, 80: “… que tunc seculares mulieres erant …” Urkundenbuch, 4:413-414, no. 2099. Urban properties have been documented for Cistercian abbeys throughout the Kingdom of Hungary: Pilis Abbey had no less than ten such houses in various towns and markets; see W. Bender, Zisterzienser und Städte. Studien zu den Beziehungen zwischen den Zisterzienserklöstern und den grossen urbanen Zentren des mittleren Moselraumes (12.-14. Jahrhundert) (Trier: THF, 1992); L. Ferenczi, “Estate Structure and Development of Toplica (Topuszko) Abbey,” Annual of Medieval Studies at Central European University Budapest 12 (2006), 83-99, at 86. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 53 of the town’s gates.64 This may have been the initial, late-thirteenth- to earlyfourteenth-century destination of St Catherine chapel’s surrounding buildings that formed roughly a century later the curia Sancte Katherine (various spellings in German, such as Sendt Kathrinen Hoff, Send Kathrynen hoff, Send Katherinen hoff ) and became, after the dissolution of Cârța Abbey in 1474, a courtyard whose tenants were registered and subject to municipal taxation. The above-cited documentary context from 1406 also offers a clue regarding this function, mentioning a Brașov house of sisters belonging to the Cistercian Order, established near the chapel of St Catherine, in which dwelt lay women who sought to observe the monastic path.65 The request for canonical intervention serves as indirect evidence of the nuns’ education and literate culture. In the case of Brașov’s Cistercian community, they appealed not once, but twice (from what we know so far) to the juridical mediation of apostolic representatives in their conflicts with the monks from neighboring Cârța Abbey in 1406 and with their spiritual overseers from Pilis Abbey in 1521. The solicitation of the highest court of canon law for solving household disputes indicates a certain familiarity of St Catherine’s female residents with the intricate legal procedures involved in any judicial process, thus hinting that they were accustomed to the Transylvanian Saxon pragmatic view of legal matters, specific to urban environments.66 These two documents offer some of the few insights we have into the inner functioning of Cistercian nunneries, which were mostly (one-sidedly and negatively) presented in the light of visitation reports issued by their male, hierarchically superior, counterparts. Perhaps in connection with St Catherine of Alexandria, a student of the liberal arts and a role model who may have encouraged women to expand their intellectual horizons, one of the residents of Brașov’s Curia Sancte 64 65 66 R. Schneider, “Stadthöfe der Zisterzienser: zu ihrer Funktion und Bedeutung,” Zisterzienser-Studien 4 (1979), 11-28; W. Schich, “Die Wirtschaftstätigkeit der Zisterzienser im Mittelalter: Handel und Gewerbe,” in Die Zisterzienser. Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit. Eine Ausstellung des Landschaftsverbandes Rheinland. Rheinisches Museumsamt, Brauweiler. Aachen, Krönungssaal des Rathauses 3. Juli-28. September 1980, eds. K. Elm, P. Joerißen, and H.J. Roth (Bonn: Habelt, 1980), 217-236. Hervay, Repertorium Historicum Ordinis Cisterciensis in Hungaria, 80: “… sororum domus site in oppido Corona, Cisterciensis ordinis, … prope capellam sancte Catherine virginis in eodem oppido consistentem …” and “que tunc seculares mulieres erant et fervore devotionis accense, in aliqua religione per sedem Apostolicam approbata, virtutum Domino famulari desiderarent …” A.C. Dincă, “Urban Literacy in Medieval Transylvania,” in Between Public and Private. Writing Praxis in Transylvania during the XIII-XVII Centuries, ed. S. Andea (Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2016), 77-190. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 54 Dincă and Schabel Katherine was registered in the last two decades of the fifteenth century as a scribe (Schribern).67 Another historiographical debate that is resolved by the Vatican document of 1521 concerns the identity and affiliation of the spiritual curators of St Catherine’s nuns after the break-up of the patronage link with Cârța Abbey on 27 February 1474.68 Since the assets of the Cistercian abbey were taken over by the parish church of Sibiu and, just a few months later, Johannes, plebanus of the church of St Mary in Sibiu, confirmed the appointment of a chaplain in Brașov, it was assumed that this capellanus or monachus administrator belonged to Sibiu’s religious establishment.69 Additionally, Brașov’s municipal records register various amounts directed to St Catherine’s chapel and its provisor from 148370 until 1539.71 Even though in 1477 the Brașov town council was allowed by royal grant to elect an ecclesiastical supervisor and a churchwarden for the chapel (rector and vitricus), the municipality of Sibiu would contribute annually to the administrator’s wages.72 Between 1509 and 1539 spiritual assistance for St Catherine’s nuns was provided by a monk named Paulus, who, in two letters addressed to Sibiu’s municipal authorities in 150973 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 Quellen zur Geschiche der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen, 3:691. Urkundenbuch, 7:5-6, no. 3986. This chaplain is registered on Sibiu municipality’s payroll from 1497 until 1508; see Quellen zur Geschichte Siebenbürgens aus sächsischen Archiven, 5 vols. (Hermannstadt: various presses, 1880-2016), vol. 1: Rechnungen aus dem Archiv der Stadt Hermannstadt in der Sächsischen Nation, 1380-1516 [no named editor] (Buchdruckerei der von Closius’schen Erbin, 1880), 328: “capellano sanctae Katherinae flor. 12”; 236: “Item capellano apud sanctam Katherinam Brassowie existenti solvit dominus magister civium ex parte abbatiae Kercz flor. 12.” Urkundenbuch, 7:394, no. 4547, casual annotation of Brașov’s town notary on the verso of a letter: “Item propter pecunias ad sanctam Katharinam.” Quellen zur Geschiche der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen, vol. 2 (In commission bei Albrecht & Zillich, 1889), 638: “fratri Paulo monacho ad s. Catharinam magister civium civitatis Cibiniensis deputavit hic penes nos flor. 11 asp. 25.” Urkundenbuch, 7:128, no. 4169. In this document, St Catherine’s chapel is referred to as “capella sive sacellum sub honore beatae Katherinae virginis in eadem civitate Brassoviensi fundata, quae alias ad abbatiam de Kerz pertinuisset,” the only instance when the term sacellum, a small shrine, is used to describe its physical appearance. The only contemporary image of the chapel’s building is encountered in the mural painting from the southeastern portal of Brașov’s Black Church depicting the Virgin Mary, St Catherine, and St Barbara; see D. Jenei, “Imaginea ‘Fecioara cu Pruncul între Sfinte’ de la Biserica Neagră din Brașov” [The Image of ‘Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints’ Painted in the Black Church in Brașov], Buletinul Comisiei monumentelor istorice 12-16/1 (2005), 86-94. Romanian National Archives, Sibiu, The Collection of Medieval Documents, U. V, no. 100. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 55 The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania and 1511,74 entitled himself overseer of the nuns (provisor monialium). A year later, as a witness in a legal instrument issued by a notary public,75 he even claims the position of abbot of the convent of St Catherine: Paulo Abbate ad S. Catharinam. Paul’s precise affiliation was open for debate until recently, when the above-mentioned, unpublished, letter from 1511 brought a new element of identification: his signature as frater Paulus de Pilys, provisor monialium apud Sanctam Caterinam in Corona. A decade later, the same spiritual guardian, representative of Cistercian Pilis Abbey in Hungary, seems to be the cause of the monastery’s moral decay. Two separate documentary sources, confirming that St Catherine’s nunnery was subject to visitations from the abbot of Pilis Abbey after the dissolution of Cârța, confirm the Transylvanian nunnery’s place in the hierarchy of the Cistercian filiation network. After 7 September 1526, when the Ottoman Turks destroyed Pilis Abbey and the surrounding villages, it seems that Paulus settled in Brașov, carrying on his activities at St Catherine’s and receiving wages from the municipality up to 1539, but no additional documentary evidence designates the Cistercian line of obedience76 observed by Paulus or by the Brașov nuns in this decade. In 1541 the nunnery was dissolved, its assets were taken over by the town’s Lutheran parish church, and its buildings were transformed into a school for a short period, until they were demolished in 1559.77 Conclusion: Cistercians in Transylvanian Society The Cistercian sisters of the nunnery of St Catherine in the walled city of Brașov were clearly not papal or royal instruments to promote the ‘conversion’ of the Romanian population to the Latin rite and Roman obedience, but neither is there any evidence that this was by intent or by deed the purpose of the establishment of the isolated Cârța Abbey of monks in the countryside. This does not mean that Cârța did not interact economically with the Eastern-rite population, or that this interaction was always peaceful. Just as Cistercian abbeys 74 75 76 77 Romanian National Archives, Sibiu, Brukenthal Collection, 40, RS 1-10, no. 547. J. Benkő, Milcovia sive antiqui episcopatus Milkoviensis explanatio, 2 vols. (Vienna: Typis Iosephi nobilis de Kvrzböck, 1781), 1:200. By 1532 Paulus was still registered in Brașov’s municipal records as belonging to the Cistercian Order: “solvimus fratri Paulo ordinis Cisterciensium,” in Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbürgen, 2:239. Jenei, “Construcţii succesive pe locul Liceului ‘Johannes Honterus’ din Braşov,” 404. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 56 Dincă and Schabel in France suffered directly from the Hundred Years’ War,78 as times changed, Cârța Abbey experienced the hostility of high- and low-born neighbors covetous of the monastic property, income, rights, and liberties, first mentioned after pleas for mercy in 1322.79 Since Cârța was situated among a mixed population near a natural border, the abbey even suffered from the depredations of both Western- and Eastern-rite Christians as well as infidels from beyond the Carpathians. In 1343 the archbishop of Esztergom in Hungary wrote that “the church of the glorious Virgin of Kercz, constructed in the area of the schismatics at the far end of the Hungarian kingdom, has been indescribably dilapidated both by these schismatics and by evil followers of the Christian faith and entirely deprived of its properties.”80 In 1430 the abbot of Cârța himself lamented the devastation and despoliation wreaked by the “furious madness of rotten members, namely the schismatics and Vlachs,” who had brought the monastery almost to total annihilation.81 In 1439 there were further complaints about “Turks, Vlachs, and other enemies of the cross of Christ, indeed, what is worse, by said monasteries’ own subjects and iobagiones” (the Latin term for ‘serfs’ in medieval Hungary), who had even burned and destroyed the abbey several times.82 Yet even in these three late documents, the only ones alluding to conflict with Eastern-rite Romanians, there is absolutely no hint of any Cistercian mission regarding the ‘schismatics’. The purpose of this paper has not been to emphasize the peaceful coexistence of Christians of different rites, Jews, and Muslims in Transylvania, but to reassess the raison d’être of the Cistercians in the area. Any reassessment of the Cistercian presence in medieval Transylvania and the founding, evolution, and later dissolution of their monastic communities, both monks and nuns, must 78 79 80 81 82 The fate of the Cistercians in France during the Hundred Years’ War needs more attention, but see for example the brief remarks in P. King, “The Cistercian Order 1200-1600,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. M.B. Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 38-49, at 40-41. Urkundenbuch, 2:356-360, no. 388. Urkundenbuch, 2:10-11, no. 593, at 10: “… ecclesiam virginis gloriosae de Kercz in extremo confinio regni Hungarici a parte scismaticorum constructam, quae tam per ipsos scismaticos quam etiam malos Christianae fidei cultores indicibiliter dilapidata exstitit et suis proprietatibus funditus desolata …” Urkundenbuch, 4:413-414, no. 2099, at 413: “… conventus nostri ordinis praenominatus per furiosam rabiem putridorum membrorum scilicet schismaticorum et Olachorum novercantium et praedictum monasterium in Kercz ignis voragine ac spoliis, devastationibus multiplicibus atque indicibilibus in detrimentum et vilipendium dei omnipotentis ac suae genitricis virginis Mariae fuit et est quemadmodum quasi per totum annihilatum …” Urkundenbuch, 5:28-30, no. 2342, at 29: “… a Turcis et a Walachis ac aliis crucis Christi inimicis immo quod peius est a propiis dicti monasterii subditis et iobagionibus …” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 57 focus not only on the political, but also on the social and religious-cultural climate of the emergent urban centres in the southern area of the province.83 While written evidence for the history of the Cistercian houses in Transylvania down to the fourteenth century is indeed scarce relative to many abbeys in the West, a closer look at later data and development (ca. 1400 to 1541), reconstructed with the help of documentary and archaeological sources, may facilitate a deeper understanding of the initial mission and purpose of the two Cistercian monasteries in the local context in which they existed for hundreds of years. Given their closely intertwined evolution with the local elite of the Transylvanian Saxons, the traditional interpretation of the Cistercian Order as a papal instrument of conversion in the territories inhabited by non-Latins should now be challenged and changed. The monastic episode ultra silvas must be viewed instead as a typical expression of a particular cultural environment, which, starting in the 1190s during the long thirteenth century, combined as everywhere else in Latin Christendom devotional aspirations with fashionable projections of social representation, both required by a local, martial elite, an elite that played an instrumental role in the German colonization of the peripheral province of the Kingdom of Hungary. Both Sibiu and Brașov were founded within the decades surrounding 1200 by a wave of German settlers (known in documents as Flandrenses or just Latini, later on Saxones and Theutonici) and emerged in the fourteenth century as commercial hubs, linking the Levant to Western European centers,84 which may very well have served the Cistercians’ economic interests. After all, as analysts of the Ostsiedlung phenomenon have noted, the Cistercians and the locatores proved to be the driving force of the German eastern settlement in the Middle Ages.85 The possible establishment of an urban manor (Stadthof ) 83 84 85 The best overview of the medieval development of the southern Transylvanian regions is K. Gündisch, in collaboration with M. Beer, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen (Munich: Langen Müller, 2005). M. Pakucs-Wilcoks, Sibiu-Hermannstadt: Oriental Trade in Sixteenth Century Transylvania (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007); A. Fara, La formazione di un’economia di frontiera: la Transilvania tra XII et XIV secolo (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2010). The topic is much too complex to address here. For the medieval German eastward expansion (Deutsche Ostsiedlung) and cooperation with the Cistercian Order, see K.T. von Inama-Sternegg, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte in den Letzten Jahrhunderten des Mittelalters (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1899), 15-17; J. Gottschalk, “Die Bedeutung der Zisterzienser für die Ostsiedlung, besonders in Schlesien,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 15 (1966), 67-106; R. Müller-Sternberg, in collaboration with W. Nellner, Deutsche Ostsiedlung – eine Bilanz für Europa (Bielefeld: Ernst und Wener Gieseking, 1969); I. Hantsche, “Die Rolle der Kirche bei der mittelalterlichen deutschen Ostsiedlung und ihre Darstellung in deutschen Schulgeschichtsbüchern der letzten hundert Jahre,” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 58 Dincă and Schabel in the still very young settlement of Brașov, later developed into a nunnery, needs to be considered also from the local perspective: if the colonists desired to replicate the landscape of their home settlements in the new country, the presence of Cistercian chapels and monasteries was a familiar feature, while a saint’s cult acted as an ‘ideological’ tool, channeling connections across borders. Even though the precise year of foundation of Cârța Abbey and even the approximate date of the establishment of St Catherine’s chapel in Brașov remain open for debate, the documentary and archaeological traces depict a complex web of mutual reliance with the neighboring settlements of the German colonists: while the abbots, at least, do not seem to have come from this local population,86 the Cistercian abbey received bequests from the Transylvanian Saxons, laypeople and clergy alike,87 and it acquired and sold plots of land and houses situated nearby;88 on the other hand, the Brașov chapel housed women from nearby market-towns and villages. Strangely enough, the wider context of the dissolution of Cârța Abbey (1474-1477) may shed some light on the monastery’s initial mission in the area and its actual place within local society. It is telling that the Cistercian monks 86 87 88 Internationales Jahrbuch für Geschichts- und Geographie-Unterricht 16 (1975), 35-49; C. Higounet, Die deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter (Berlin: Siedler, 1986); R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 153; M. Rady, “The German Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe during the High Middle Ages,” in The German Lands and Eastern Europe: Essays on the History of their Social, Cultural and Political Relations, eds. R. Bartlett and K. Schonwalder (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 11-47. Abbots such as Johannes de Flandria in 1368, Johannis de Bornequel, sacre theologie doctor and former chaplain of the Hungarian King Sigismund in 1439-1448, and Raymundus Perrenfuss de Vienna around 1463-1474 clearly originated from the West. Written sources do not mention the ethnic background of Cârța Abbey’s monks, but scholars assume that at least the first generation of monks was French, Walloon, and German; see Busuioc-von Hasselbach, Țara Făgărașului în secolul al XIII-lea, 1:130-131 n. 141. Aside from the above-mentioned donation made by Gocelinus, the Cârța monks also received in 1300 five marks, bequeathed by Elisabeth, widow of comes Herbordus, from Vințu de Jos; see Urkundenbuch, 1:214-216, no. 286. Urkundenbuch, 2:121-122, no. 704, attests in 1356 to the dependency of the villages of Criț/Kereztur, Meșendorf/Mesche and Cloașterf/Zenthmiclosteleke on Cârța Abbey; Urkundenbuch, 2:173-174, no. 760, ratifies in 1359 the verdict of a trial regarding the possession of the village of Săcădate/Zeckat, lost by the monks of Cârța to the municipality of Sibiu; Urkundenbuch, 2:435-436, no. 1036, authenticates the purchase in 1375 of some land curiae in the nearby Saxon village of Poienița/Konradsdorf; Urkundenbuch, 4:413-414, no. 2099, attests in 1430 to the sale of a plot of land in Sibiu/Hermannstadt: “particula terrae, quae in civitate Cybiniensi praedicta est situata … in qua certa curia cum suis aedificiis posset aedificari.” Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 59 were placed under the patronage of the administrative unit of the so-called Sieben Stühle (“seven seats”) in 146989 and then subordinated to the parish church of Sibiu,90 only a few years after the failure of the rebellion of 1467 against King Matthias, a rebellion led by descendants of the old military ruling elite of the German colonists, the so-called Gräven.91 The end of the traditional military role of the German elite in Transylvania was thus followed closely by the end of the main Cistercian settlement in the region, clear proof of the monks’ collaboration with and dependence on the military class and, at the same time, an indication of the rise of a new urban, entrepreneurial ruling elite that favored the teachings of the mendicants, especially the Dominican friars.92 The dissolution of Cârța Abbey brings into sharper focus the initial purpose and call of the Cistercians in this frontier region of medieval Latin Christendom almost three centuries earlier, which was not a mission directed toward the ‘schismatic’ Vlachs of southern Transylvania or part of a larger geopolitical scheme of conquest and conversion conceived by the papacy and the European princes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.93 Once the analysis 89 90 91 92 93 Urkundenbuch, 6:421-422, no. 3746. The act is issued by King Matthias, and the Sibiu authorities are granted the administration of Cârța Abbey due to their ancient patronage of the monastery (422): “magistris civium ac iudicibus et iuratis senioribus septem sedium Saxonicalium, qui ex antiquo eorum privilegio veri patroni eiusdem abbatie esse dicuntur.” An ecclesiastical administrative unit exempt from the bishop of Transylvania’s jurisdiction and subject to papal protection, similar to Cârța Abbey. King Matthias also made the transfer of assets conditional on the consent of the Holy See; Urkundenbuch, 7:5-6, no. 3746, at 6: “ipsi cives civitatis nostrae Cibiniensis sedis apostolicae consensum obtinere debeant et teneantur.” See K. Gündisch, “Participarea saşilor la răzvrătirea din anul 1467 a transilvănenilor împotriva lui Matia Corvin” [The Saxon Engagement in the Transylvanian Rebellion of 1467 against Matthias Corvinus], Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai, Series Historia 2 (1972), 21-30; Idem, Das Patriziat siebenbürgischer Städte im Mittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993); A. Fara, “Il ‘Gräfenpatriziat’,” in Idem, La formazione di un’economia di frontiera, 147-160; Idem, “Rivolte sociali e fiscali nella Transilvania medievale (XV-XVI secolo). La rivolta della nobilitas contro Mattia Corvino (1467),” in Cel care a trecut făcând bine – Nicolae Edroiu, eds. M. Motogna, M. Hasan, and V. Vizauer (Cluj-Napoca: Școala Ardeleană, 2019), 79-82. C. Florea, “The Third Path: Charity and Devotion in Late Medieval Transylvanian Towns,” in Communities of Devotion: Religious Orders and Society in East Central Europe, 14501800, eds. M. Crǎciun and E. Fulton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 91-120, and M. Crǎciun, “Mendicant Piety and the Saxon Community of Transylvania, c. 1450-1550,” ibidem, 29-69. Parallel Cistercian foundation documents in frontier areas of Latin Europe, such as Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, the Slavic realm beyond the river Elbe, or Frankish Greece, warn of the heathen or pagan presence, yet the interaction with the local laity has been interpreted differently; see R.E. Sullivan, “The Medieval Monk as Frontiersman,” in Idem, Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994), Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 60 Dincă and Schabel of the White Monks’ local impact bears in mind their involvement in society and interaction with autochthonous and alien elements alike, the image we see is parallel to the Greek one, which illustrates not only how the lay authorities encouraged the Cistercian migration eastwards, in this case to Frankish Greece, but also how wherever and whenever the Latin-rite ruling class was eliminated the monks had to withdraw.94 By maintaining close ties with the aristocracy and supporting their regime, the Cistercians established a standard strategy for dealing with ventures in frontier territories. For the eastern part of the Kingdom of Hungary, this meant neither the Teutonic Order’s armed approach nor the Dominican mission in the newly-created episcopatus Cumaniae,95 but it did entail negotiating the emergence of nearby urban settlements and commercial trade routes,96 staying aware of the challenging and changing dynamics of the Romanian population, and, not least, keeping the internal management of spiritual discipline. Perhaps this last task helps us interpret the presence of the only surviving manuscript that can be linked to the Cistercian library of Cârța due to an annotation on its inside cover:97 ad Kerz, comprising biblical commentaries on the Gospels, on the Book of Ecclesiastes, etc., compiled quite probably around 1300 in a university setting, in Paris.98 Although the Matricula Plebaniae Cibiniensis99 lists from the late fourteenth century to 1442 almost two hundred 94 95 96 97 98 99 26-49; Berend, At the Gates of Christendom; E. Jamroziak, Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval Scotland and Pomerania from the Twelfth to the Late Fourteenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). N. Tsougarakis, “On the Frontier of the Orthodox and Latin World: Religious Patronage in Medieval Frankish Greece,” in Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe, 193-210. V. Spinei, “Episcopia cumanilor. Coordonate evolutive” [The Bishopric of the Cumans. Evolutionary Coordinates], Arheologia Moldovei 30 (2007), 137-180. This aspect is valid for the entire Kingdom of Hungary, where Cistercian foundations were the result either of royal initiative or of donations from local ecclesiastical dignitaries and secular landlords situated in marginal areas (forests, river valleys, hilltops), but in the vicinity of commercial hubs or along trading routes; see Vida, “Foundation Process of the Order of Cistercians in Hungary.” Sibiu, Brukenthal Museum Library, Ms 660: a. Commentarius in Marcum (fols. 1r-87v) – b. Commentarius in Lucam (fols. 88r-159v) – c. Bonaventura, Commentarius in Johannem (fols. 160r-243v) – d. Commentarius in Ecclesiasten (fols. 244r-249v). See Manuscrisele medievale occidentale din România. Census, eds. A. Papahagi, A.C. Dincă, and A. Mârza (Bucharest: Polirom, 2019), 163, no. 471. The Cistercians had established a house in Paris in 1245, sanctioned as a studium for student monks from all over Europe; see Le Collège des Bernardins, ed. B. Derieux (Poissy: Collège des Bernardins, 2008) and M. Sternberg, Cistercian Architecture and Medieval Society (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 237-260. Alba Iulia, Batthyaneum Library, Ms II.135. This historic source is not a catalogue of the library itself, but an inventory of the parish church of St Mary in Sibiu, in which all its Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access The Cistercian Mission in Transylvania 61 books (fols. 27r-v, 28r-v, 29r-v, 30r) extant in the library of the parish church of Sibiu, neither of the recorded items that came from Cârța Abbey (fol. 28v: sermonis de sanctis per circulum anni, de Candelis, and fol. 44v: summam confessionum habet abbas in Candelis) has been securely identified among surviving manuscripts.100 These three scraps from the former manuscript library of the Cistercian house indicate the intellectual, pastoral, and sacramental orientation of the abbey. Although the sources are not so loquacious about the chapel of St Catherine in medieval Brașov, this religious institution was more tightly woven into the local devotional, social, and economic fabric than Cârța Abbey, a cultural relevance that allowed the nuns to persist for two more generations, until the Protestant Reformation. There is no evidence that Cârța Abbey or St Catherine ever had any missionary task against dissident Christians. Whatever may have been the case in the struggle to convert pagans in the Northeast and correct heretics in the West,101 the non-Latin-rite population around Cârța and Brașov were orthodox Christians, schismatics perhaps, but not heretics, from the papal perspective. Most of the ‘errors’ of Byzantine-rite Christians were related to their disobedience, their schism, and to the extent that the adherents of this brand of Eastern Christianity committed any serious doctrinal error in Western eyes, it was in denying the Filioque. Nevertheless, the popes avoided confronting non-Latin Christians under Latin secular rule over the Filioque, and focused their efforts to secure obedience on the non-Latin higher clergy, not the general population.102 One could always claim – without evidence – that the mere presence of Cistercian monks and nuns was intended to set an example to attract the non-Latin population of Transylvania to the jurisdiction and doctrine 100 101 102 possessions are recorded from the second half of the fourteenth century until 1442. The research history of Matricula was considered to be of the utmost importance from a linguistic perspective, especially in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth; for an overview see A.C. Dincă, “Der Buchbesitz der Marienkirche in Hermannstadt um die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 41 (2018), 17-32. The last of the three may correspond to Sibiu, Brukenthal Museum Library, Ms 603, Johannes de Friburgo, Summa confessorum, written in Paris in the first half of the fourteenth century; see Hervay, Repertorium Historicum Ordinis Cisterciensis in Hungaria, 117; A.C. Dincă, “Three pecia Manuscripts from the Brukenthal Library, Sibiu (Romania),” Pecia. Le livre et l’écrit 20 (2018), 143-174, at 146-150. See B.M. Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania, 1145-1229. Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (York: York Medieval Press, 2001); C. Krötzl, “Die Cistercienser und die Mission ‘ad paganos’, ca. 1150-1250,” Analecta Cisterciensia 61 (2011), 278-298. See Schabel, “The Myth of the White Monks’ ‘Mission to the Orthodox’,” 256-261, and the literature cited there. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access 62 Dincă and Schabel of the Latin Church, but this appears unlikely: as impressed as the non-Latinrite people of the immediate vicinity of Cârța and St Catherine might have been by the life of the cloistered monks and nuns in their neighborhood, why would anyone expect a change of religious identity and belief to come from this even on the local level, let alone in the region as a whole?103 In the absence of any real evidence to the contrary, the conclusion must remain that the motivations for the establishment of the two Cistercian abbeys did not much differ, if at all, from the motivations of founders in the West. The scarcity of traditional written sources should no longer frighten scholars away from the thorny topic of Cistercian expansion into Transylvania, one of the eastern extremities of Latinitas. There is still much to learn about the inner life, patronage, liturgical practices, and place of the Transylvanian Cistercians within the broader social developments of the later Middle Ages. More than any other time in history, the accessibility of the Vatican Archives, popular fascination with the subject of the White Monks’ complex impact on Europe’s frontier areas, and the digital availability of the latest opinions of academics active in this global field facilitate a thorough, multi-layered, and multiperspective approach to the historical narrative, an opportunity enhanced by dialogue, debate, and comparison.104 103 104 One could speculate, as Brian Patrick McGuire does in a case on the pagan periphery, that while “it was simply too dangerous to send a group of monks into the territory of potential enemies,” since the Cistercians “were not missionaries in the traditional sense, for they did not normally preach in public nor administer the sacraments to lay persons,” they could encourage devotional behavior by personal example; see B.P. McGuire, “Cistercian Origins in Denmark and Sweden: The Twelfth Century Founders,” in Itinéraires du savoir de l’Italie à la Scandinavie (Xe-XVIe siècle). Etudes offertes à Elisabeth Mornet, ed. C. Péneau (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2009), 85-97. In areas that were already Christian and orthodox, however, it would be prudent to have positive evidence before such speculation. We thank our two anonymous readers for their comments. Frankokratia 2 (2021) 31-62 Downloaded from Brill.com05/12/2023 02:19:38AM via free access