Mendicant Architecture – a Landmark in Urban Setting

Mendicant Architecture – a Landmark in Urban Setting
Anneli Randla (Tallinn)
Wolfgang Braunfels has asked: “How can art be produced when one re- nounces possessions? How can a monastery – a church and communal buildings – be built, when for St. Francis (1181-1226) the most miserable hut on its own plot of land already seemed a betrayal of Lady Poverty?”1 The answer is: it can- not. However, soon after the death of St. Francis the friars started building churches and friaries as it was obvious that even they needed rooms for preach- ing their mission as well as somewhere to stay more permanently. There were three general factors which determined the architectural style of the mendicants: first, the rules and building traditions of the orders; second, the response to older monastic tradition; and third, the local architectural context.
The most precise rules for architecture were set by the Dominicans. Their first extant Constitution (1228) states that their houses had to be modest and humble, the height of the single-storey buildings not rising above 12 ft, the ones with a loft not more than 20 ft, and the church not more than 30 ft. Vaulting was not to be used except for the choir and sacristy.2 In 1240, the General Chapter passed legislation on the construction of screens between the nave and choir. Several acts were passed on decorations, furnishings, vestments, and so on. A regulation of 1245 stated that the churches were also not to be cluttered up with sepulchral monuments, especially those with notable sculptures and those al- ready existing were to be removed.3
1 Wolfgang Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe. The Architecture of the Orders (Lon- don: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 125 (henceforth Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe).
2 Constitutiones antique ordinis fratrum predicatorum, ed. Heinrich Denifle, in Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidemannsche Buch- handlung, 1885), § 35, 225; Richard A. Sundt, “Mediocres domos et humiles habeant fra- tres nostri: Dominican Legislation on Architecture and Architectural Decoration in the Thirteenth Century,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 46 no. 4 (1987): 394-407.
3 William A. Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars Preachers, Institutum Historicum FF. Praedicatorum Romae ad S. Sabinae, Dissertationes Historicae, fasciculus 14 (Rome: S. Sabina, 1951), 126-127.
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The Franciscan General Constitutions of 1260 also have statutes on the architecture and decoration of the friaries. Elaboration of churches as well as ex- cessive size was to be avoided; no vaulting was allowed, except for the chancel; bell-towers were strictly forbidden; and the windows had to be plain, except for the ones over the main altar, where a restricted number of saints could be de- picted.4
However, these regulations were soon surpassed in Italy and France and the repeated urging of the General Chapters to “repair the mistakes” was in vain. The churches of the friaries became large in scale, of high quality and lavishly decorated (for example, San Francesco in Assisi, the Jacobin church in Tou- louse, the Regensburg Dominican church, and the London Dominican church). Furthermore, the chapter houses, refectories, cloisters and even individual cells were richly decorated.5 As the popularity of the friaries as burial places for lay people grew constantly, the churches were filled with monuments (for example, Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice).
Unlike the Cistercians, the mendicants probably did not have their own masons and depended on local craftsmen for the actual construction of their buildings. Thus the intentions of the friars and their benefactors were carried out by people who transformed them according to their own local architectural tra- ditions. This accounts for many of the regional differences in the architecture of the mendicants.
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In this article I will argue that the architecture of the mendicants played a significant role in the late medieval townscapes in Northern Europe. The exam- ples are chosen from Livonia, Scotland, and the northern Netherlands, which are the regions I have studied the most thoroughly.6 These geographical areas were selected because they were parts of the closely-knit network of the North Sea- Baltic Sea Raum and because they became Protestant after the Reformation. The friaries were dissolved and as a rule relatively little has survived of their build- ings.
The fate of their buildings has been unfortunate due to the role of the fri- ars in the Reformation. Not only did they suffer in the iconoclastic riots in 1523-
4 Constitutiones generales ordinis fratrum minorum, ed. Franz Ehrle, Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, 6 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshand- lung, 1892), chapter 3, 94-95; A. R. Martin, Franciscan Architecture in England, British Society of Franciscan Studies, vol. 18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1937), 11.
5 For the wall paintings and their iconography in the Italian friaries see Braunfels, Monaster- ies of Western Europe, 142-152.
6 Anneli Randla, “The Architecture of the Mendicant Orders in Northern Europe. A Com- parative Study of Scotland, the Northern Netherlands and Livonia.,” PhD diss. (Cam- bridge, 1998).
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1524 in Livonia, in 1559 in Scotland and in 1566 in the northern Netherlands, but they also lost their function soon afterwards. Only a few were taken over by the Protestant congregations, others were put to secular use for a while and abandoned later. Both the ruined friaries and the friaries abandoned later became subject to rapid redevelopment of towns, as well as just a source of building material. In this respect there is little difference between Scotland, the northern Netherlands and Livonia.
Having said that, with the help of all kinds of sources we can get a fairly good picture of what they were like and how they functioned in an urban setting. The main evidence used for this article is cartographic (early town plans and bird’s-eye-views) and dates from the time after the dissolution of friaries.
The selection of towns where the mendicants settled corresponds well to the general pattern: the friaries were founded in more developed and more populous towns. However, there are exceptions where a town perfectly suited for the mendicants according to this scheme did not have a friary. In these cases other factors became decisive: the saturation of the ‘mendicant market’ (two nearby towns would not each have a friary because of economic constraints) or the opposition of another powerful religious institution.
If the selection of towns displayed the same tendencies as elsewhere in Europe, the sites of the friaries in their respective towns in Northern Europe re- veal a somewhat different pattern. According to the papal bull of 1268 the friar- ies within any given town had to stand at least 600 m apart from each other.7 This was not always the case, as some towns were not big enough to keep this distance, while others seemingly ignored it. Because of economic as well as pi- ous reasons in Italy and France the friaries were located in suburbs, and as far apart as possible. In the three areas of Northern Europe discussed in this article, only the largest towns like Utrecht and Edinburgh comply with this pattern. In smaller towns, even if the friaries are located at opposite ends of the towns, the distance between them was inevitably considerably less, and in Tartu, for in- stance, all the mendicant institutions were clustered in one street. More impor- tantly, the sites of the friaries were not always on the edges of towns. There were a number of fairly centrally located friaries in Scotland, the northern Neth- erlands and Livonia, usually due to their foundation in the early stages of ur- banisation. Even the ones that were more marginal were close to main roads, markets and town halls and thus did not have insignificant locations.8
7 “Infra spatium trecentarum cannarum [c. 600 m] a vestris ecclesiis mensurandum per aerem etiam ubi alias recte non permitteretur loci dispositio mensurari,” Bull ‘Quia plerumque’ of 5 June 1268, Bullarium Franciscanorum Romanorum Pontificum, ed. J. H. Sbaralea, vol. 3 (Rome, 1765; facsimile 1984), no. 169, 158; the same was expressed in a papal letter of 30 November 1265, ibid., no. 58, 59-60.
8 See also Anneli Randla, “The Sites of Mendicant Friaries in Nortern European Towns. A Comparative Study Based on the Examples of Scotland, the Northern Netherlands and Livonia,” in The Medieval Town in the Baltic: Hanseatic History and Archaeology II, ed. Rünno Vissak and Ain Mäesalu (Tartu: Tartu City Museum, 2002): 133-144.
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The development of the mendicant orders and their architecture in the borderlands of their expansion was different from that of Italy, France and Spain, despite their unified organisation and speedy expansion all over Europe. Different geographical and climatic conditions, patterns of urbanisation and population density in general were objective reasons for these regional dif-fer- ences. However, the mendicant architecture in the outlying areas has several features in common, and they do share, of course, the ideology of the orders as a whole.
The architecture of the churches displays a common development pattern. The mendicants in all three areas started off in the thirteenth century with rec- tangular box-like structures. Later all of them developed their own local trad- itions which were recognisable in their respective architectural contexts. In Scotland the prevalent type remained the prolonged rectangle; in Holland the nave and single aisle scheme established the tradition. In Livonia, because of the relatively small number of mendicant establishments and their poor survival rate, such a strong local tradition cannot be seen. However, even there the Do- minicans in Tartu copied the design of the Dominican church in Tallinn almost exactly. Local building materials were used in different regions, leading to dif- ferences in building techniques and appearance.
Common to all areas was the lack of transepts and towers (apart from small roof turrets) on the churches. Likewise, the size and level of decoration of the mendicant churches was rather modest in comparison with parish churches, a feature noticeably different from the situation in Italy. Surviving decorative de- tails are fragmentary but tracery designs, for example, do suggest possible con- tact between friaries in the three areas. Likewise, the walkway between the chancel and nave is a feature which appeared both in Scotland and the northern Netherlands. This does not mean that absolutely all churches would have con- formed to these patterns, but then it would be naive to expect them to con- sidering the versatility of medieval architecture as a whole.
Interestingly, in all areas studied the claustral buildings were located around a quadrangular garth thus employing the traditional monastic layout. Multiple cloisters, so typical in Southern Europe, were virtually unknown be- cause of smaller numbers of friars. Whether the location of different functional rooms was always traditional is harder to establish because most of the buildings have either been demolished since or, where surviving, do not always display characteristic features which would allow firm identification. However, where the function of the rooms can be identified, these complied with the traditional scheme. There was only one major difference: because many of the churches were located in the untraditional southern range of the buildings, the layout in these cases was a mirror image of the conventual one.
Having said that, it has to be admitted that these regular layouts were usu- ally the product of a long development, and achieved this design only in the fi- nal stages. Nevertheless, there is a conscious drive towards this ideal, in spite of difficulties of accommodating it on often cramped urban sites. There are, of
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course, differences among the friaries, but these do not rule out the general ten- dency of preferring the traditional monastic layout. It is rather odd, however, that the position of the church was so often altered, as in these northern climates it would have been more sensible to retain the northern location of the church to allow maximum sunlight and protection from cold winds.
From these general remarks I would like to turn to more specific exam- ples. The first example is from Scotland.9 St. Andrews was a very im-portant medieval ecclesiastical burgh with an influential abbey and university. The mendicant establishments were relatively late there: the Dominican friary was founded (or re-founded) in 1518 and the Observant Franciscan friary in the 1460s. They were both connected to the university colleges. A chapel of the Dominican church is all that has been preserved of their architecture. However, there is a wonderful source for understanding the significance of these buildings: the anonymous sixteenth-century bird’s-eye-view of St. Andrews (fig. 1).10 Drawn some time around 1580 it still shows the medieval town layout although the destruction of the cathedral has already begun. It is very accurate in its de- tails although its format caused some obvious distortions. More importantly, it shows the attitude of the mapmaker and his contemporaries towards the town and its buildings. The more important buildings are depicted larger and in more detail. Among these are the friaries, the cathedral and the colleges. The friaries are located at the western end of the burgh near the ports of the Market and South Streets respectively, forming a counter-balance to the cathedral at the eastern end. In a way they can be seen as welcoming houses of the burgh, the first step toward the more important cathedral at the other end of the town. Thus the position of the friaries near the ‘ports’ (gates) made them into real landmarks for the burgh. As can be seen from the view as well as the surviving remains of the Dominican church, the architecture of the friaries was quite elaborate in de- sign and of fine quality.11
9 For other examples of the sites and architecture of the Scottish mendicant friaries see Anneli Randla, “The Mendicants and Their Architecture in Scotland,” in Mendicants, Milit- ary Orders and Regionalism in Medieval Europe, ed. Jürgen Sarnowsky (Aldershot: Ash- gate, 1999): 243-281.
10 The map is kept in the Map Library of the National Library of Scotland. The accuracy, date and some other aspects of this map are discussed by N. P. Brooks and Graeme Whittington, “Planning and Growth in the Medieval Scottish Burgh: The example of St. Andrews,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 2 ns (1977), passim, and Margaret Wilkes, The Scot and His Maps (Motherwell: Scottish Library Association, 1991).
11 On the architecture of the friaries in St. Andrews see also Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Inventory, vol. 11, Fife, Kinross and Clack- mannan (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1933), 155 and no. 464, 249-250; Richard Fawcett, “Late Gothic Architecture in Scotland: Considerations on the Influence of the Low Countries,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 112 (1982): 490-491, idem, Scottish Architecture from the Accession of the Stewarts to the Reformation 1371-1560 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press & Historic Scotland, 1994), 131-132, 140-141, and idem, Scottish Medieval Churches. Architecture & Furnishings (Stroud: Tempus 2002), 125-126.
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The following examples are from the northern Netherlands. The excellent corpus of town plans or rather bird’s-eye-views by Braun and Hogenberg Civ- itates Orbis Terrarum of 1572-161812 is the main source for the study of the sites of the friaries and their importance in the urban context. Like elsewhere in Protestant Europe, little of the buildings survive and thus these visual sources are invaluable even if they date from the time after the dissolution of the friaries. Coming back to the stereotype, one expects friaries to be situated on the periph- ery of towns, next to or outside town walls, in the quarters of the poor and needy – in general, to have marginal locations. This holds true for the fifteenth-century new foundations as by this time the centres of the towns were already fully built up and there was no space for relatively large new complexes. Again, here they were located near town gates and on busy main roads leading into or through the towns.
Most of the thirteenth-century foundations had sites that were to become fairly central in their respective towns by the sixteenth century, but this was due to the effects of later development (Dominican and Carmelite friaries in Haar- lem, the Dominican friary in Nijmegen and the Franciscan friary in Kampen, for example13). Later, the towns developed around these foundations and thus they acquired their central locations. For example, in Nijmegen the town hall was re- located in the fourteenth century to the site next to the friary.14 Thus, the loca- tion of the friaries made them stand out in the townscapes. This can be well seen on the view of Nijmegen in Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates (fig. 2). The roof turret of the Dominican friary rises proudly among the church towers in the centre of the townscape. The later Observant Franciscan friary is depicted on the edge of the town, but the size of the church is considerably larger in proportion to other buildings than in reality. Here, quite obviously this shows the map- maker’s attitude to it as a very important edifice.
The location of the Franciscan friary in Kampen further proves the point about the acquired centrality of the friaries. The location of the friary in relation to the other buildings in the town can been seen from a perspective map of Kampen of 1598 by Paulus Wttewael (fig. 3).15. The friary is located in the mid- dle of the main east-west axis of the town, in line with the road from Zwolle and the only bridge over the Ijssel on the east, and Broederpoort on the west leading to the main road towards the sea. It is hard to imagine a more central location. Some of the conventual buildings were still standing at the time and are depicted
12 Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cologne, 1572-1618).
13 P. A. Hendrikx, De oudste bedelordekloosters in het graafschap Holland en Zeeland, Hollandse Studien, vol. 10 (Dordrecht: Historische Vereniging Holland, 1977), 80-82, 107 (henceforth Hendrikx, Oudste bedelordekloosters); C. L. Verkerk, “Nijmegen en de dominicanen,” Gelre. Bijdragen en mededelingen, 69 (1976/77): 53-58 (henceforth Ver-
kerk, “Nijmegen”).
14 Verkerk, “Nijmegen:” 70-71.
15 Published in B. H. Slicher van Bath et al., ed., Geschiedenis van Overijssel (Zwolle:
Waanders, 1979).
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to the north of the church. The polygonal endings of both the nave and aisle can be well seen. This feature of a double-aisled church was probably deliberately emphasised by the mapmaker.
The architecture of the mendicant churches in the northern Netherlands exhibits a striking consistency in their layout. Nearly all surviving friary church- es, irrespective of the order, have asymmetrical ground plans, most typically consisting of a nave with chancel and a side aisle. This pattern was usually achieved through two or more different building campaigns, for instance by en- larging the church through adding an extra aisle.
This type of genesis from a simple aisleless nave and chancel structure into the hall church of nave and side aisle an be followed in the Dominican church (Kloosterkerk) in the Hague,16 the Franciscan and Austin friars’ churches in Dordrecht,17 the Dominican church in Groningen18 and several others. In gen- eral, out of the twenty three cases where at least the ground plan of the church is known for sure, fourteen had the nave and single aisle plan with one or two chancels by the late fifteenth century. Most of these arrived at this form through several building campaigns. Therefore it seems to reflect a deliberate choice by the mendicants (or their patrons) as a hallmark once the tradition had established itself, rather than that these churches had been built to this design from the start.
The nave and side aisle scheme developed in the older mendicant churches as a rule through extension of the existing church; by the late fifteenth century, however, it seems to have been so widely accepted that when the Do- minican church (Broerenkerk) in Zwolle was built in the 1490s it had the main nave and a side aisle planned from the start.19 This layout of the church is dis- tinctly depicted on the town plan by Braun and Hogenberg (fig. 4). Interestingly, the only other church in the town having the same type of design is that of the Augustinian canons – another monastic, although not mendicant establishment.
The Franciscan church in Kampen, which is still standing, was probably begun soon after the fire of 1472, but construction halted during the troubles of reform and was only completed in 1490.20 It was designed as a nave plus aisle structure, both ending in polygonal apses. The same happened in Weert, where
16 Jan Goossensen, De geschiedenis van de Kloosterkerk ‘s-Gravenhage, (‘s-Gravenhage: Stichting Duinoordkerk, 1982).
17 Excavation reports by Herbert Sarfatij published in Holland, vol. 16 (1984): 317-322, and vol. 17 (1985): 358-362; Hendrikx, Oudste bedelordekloosters, 56, 100-101.
18 S. P. Wolfs, Middeleeuwse dominicanenkloosters in Nederland. Bijdrage tot een monas- ticon (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984), 36.
19 Dirk J. de Vries, “Kerk en klooster tot 1580,” in De Broerenkerk te Zwolle, ed. A. J. Gevers and A. J. Mensema, (Zwolle: Waanders, 1989), 9-36; Dirk J. de Vries, Bouwen in de late middeleeuwen. Stedelijke architectuur in het voormalige Over- en Nedersticht (Utrecht: Matrijs, 1994), 260-275.
20 Michael Schoengen, Monasticon Batavum, Verhandlingen der Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, afdeeling Letterkunde, ns, vol. 45 (Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Holland- sche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1941-1942), vol. 1, 122-123 (henceforth Schoengen, Monas- ticon).
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the present Franciscan church, which was completed by 1526, was also designed as a nave plus aisle structure.21 This, again, suggests recognition of a strong lo- cal typological tradition by this date.
It can be argued that the cause for only one side aisle being built instead of the symmetrical two, had more pragmatic reasons like lack of space on the side where the claustral buildings adjoined the church so that the aisle could only be built on the other side. This was definitely sometimes the case. How- ever, there are several occasions where the side aisle is built on the cloister side (for example, the first extension of Leeuwarden Dominican church,22 Nijmegen Dominican church, Weert Franciscan church) and therefore it was not the lack of space alone that dictated this particular design of the churches. On the other hand, it would be more likely that in a built-up urban environment it was diffi- cult to enlarge a church at the expense of public land, a street for instance, or on neighbouring plots if these already had buildings on them. This would have led to any enlargements being accommodated on the existing property. Either way, it still seems most likely that at least by the fifteenth century there was a deliber- ate choice behind the design of these nave and single aisle churches.
The last example for this paper is from Tartu in Livonia. Tartu was an im- portant Hanseatic town with an influential bishop where the Dominicans had settled as early as the thirteenth century and the Franciscans are first mentioned in 1417.23 Curiously, all mendicant foundations – Dominican and Franciscan fri- aries and the convent of Poor Clares – were located in one street, thus ignoring completely the papal bull about the necessary distance between establishments.
The lot that belonged to the Dominicans was situated on the edge of the town, next to the town wall. On one side it was bordered by Munga (Monk’s) Street which led to the Monk’s Gate in the town wall, and on the other side by Magasini (Armoury) Street. The Franciscan friary and the convent of the Poor Clares also had their houses in Magasini Street. The exact location of the Fran- ciscan friary is not known, but it must have been somewhere between the Do- minican friary and the convent of the Poor Clares at the end of the street, close to the next gate in the town wall.
Little is known of the architecture of the friaries and the convent as all three have disappeared since. The Franciscan friary was probably completely demolished during or shortly after the Reformation, the Dominican friary church
21 Schoengen, Monasticon, vol. 1, pp. 197-198.
22 H. Halbertsma, “Leeuwarden,” Archeologisch Nieuws. Niewsbulletin van de Koninklijke
Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond, 71 no. 2 (1972): *23-*26.
23 Richard Otto, “Ueber die Dorpater Klöster und ihre Kirchen,” Verhandlungen der Gelern-
ten Estnischen Gesellschaft, 22, no. 2 (1910): 54 (henceforth Otto, “Ueber die Dorpater Klöster”); Gertrud von Walther-Wittenheim, Die Dominikaner in Alt-Livland. Die Natio Livoniae, Institutum Historicum FF Praedicatorum Romae ad S. Sabinae, Dissertationes historicae IX (Rome: S. Sabina, 1938), 12-13, Leonhard Lemmens, ed., Urkundenbuch der alten sächsischen Franziskanerprovinzen I. Observantenkustodie Livland und Preussen (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1912), 72.
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was in poor condition and used as an armoury, the convent of the Poor Clares was ransacked and abandoned.24
In spite of this, the two latter structures were depicted on a town plan of Tartu dating from the seventeenth century.25 (fig. 5) This is even more striking because only six buildings are marked within the town walls and the ruins of two mendicant foundations are among them.
It can be argued that here, although architecturally relatively modest, the mendicant friaries and convent were not only major landmarks during the exis- tence of these establishments, but remained so long after their dissolution.
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These examples have shown that the significance of mendicant architec- ture in medieval towns is greater than is usually thought. The sites of the friaries are less marginal than one would expect regarding the principles of the orders. Likewise, the design of the churches in particular was distinct from other eccle- siastical establishments and definitely noticeable in urban context. What is even more interesting, the buildings of the friars did not lose their significance as ur- ban landmarks even several centuries after the dissolution of the friaries.
24 Otto, “Ueber die Dorpater Klöster,” 24, 51-60.
25 The plan is kept in the Swedish Military History Archives in Stockholm.
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Figure 1: St. Andrews. A bird’s-eye-view of St. Andrews, c. 1580. The Franciscan and Dominican friaries are at the far left marked Franciscanorum aedes and Dominicanorum aedes, respectively.
Figure 2: View of Nijmegen from Braun and Hogenberg. The Dominican friary is marked Ten broeren,
the Observant Franciscan friary Die Apsterfanten (sic!).
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Figure 3: Plan of Kampen by Paulus Wttewael, 1598. The Franciscan friary is in the centre, next to the road leading onto the bridge over the Ijssel.
Figure 4: Plan of Zwolle from Braun & Hogenberg.
The Dominican friary is at the far left marked Das Predigers Cloester, the Augustinian monastery in the upper centre marked Bethlehem.
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Figure 5: Plan of Tartu by Franz Carl Friesen, 1683.
The Dominican church and the church of the Poor Clares
are at the bottom of the plan marked by rectangular ground plans.
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MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
47
KREMS 2003
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON GERHARD JARITZ
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER KULTURABTEILUNG DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Titelgraphik: Stephan J. Tramèr
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, 3500 Krems, Österreich. Für den Inhalt verantwortlich zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. – Druck: Grafisches Zentrum an der Technischen Universität Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, 1040 Wien.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
The Public (in) Urban Space, I
Papers from the Daily Life-Strand
at the International Medieval Congress (Leeds, July 2003) Edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Judith Rasson
Einleitung ………………………………………………………………………. 5
Rebecca Müller, Constructing Fame in a Town:
The Case of Medieval Genoa …………………………………………… 8
Lucie Doležalová, The Lack of Self-Praise:
A Search for Laudes Urbium in the Medieval Czech lands …………… 33
Käthe Sonnleitner, Gender and the Fame of a City …………………………… 44
Thomas Kühtreiber, The Town Wall: Sign of Communication
and Demarcation (the Example of Hainburg, Lower Austria) ……….. 50
Anneli Randla, Mendicant Architecture – a Landmark in Urban Setting …… 69
Einleitung
Alltag ist mit ‚privatem‘ Raum bzw. den verschiedenen Ebenen und Graden von ‚Privatheit‘ in Verbindung zu setzen, genauso jedoch mit Öffentlichkeit und öf- fentlichem Raum. Dies ergibt sich vor allem auch dadurch, dass ‚privater‘ und öffentlicher Raum zwar einerseits als voneinander verschieden, andererseits je- doch immer als miteinander verbunden anzusehen sind1. Vermeintliche Tren- nungen sind als relativ zu behandeln. Dies gilt für gegenwärtige Lebenswelten in gleicher Weise wie etwa für den Zeitraum des Spätmittelalters und jede andere historische Epoche. Verknüpfung, Überlappung, Interdependenz und Vernet- zung sind als Regel anzuerkennen2.
Das Interesse für die Zusammenhänge zwischen öffentlichem und ‚priva- tem‘ Raum hat sich in den letzten Jahren gerade für die Periode des Spätmittel- alters deutlich gesteigert3. Dabei zeigte sich oft recht deutlich, wie auch beson- ders die verschiedenen Ebenen des Öffentlichen und der Öffentlichkeit in vie- lerlei Hinsicht alltagsbestimmend und alltagsbestimmt waren. Dies gilt wohl vor allem für solche Bereiche und Räume, die in starkem Maße durch umfangreiche Kommunikation größerer Gruppen der Bevölkerung gekennzeichnet waren. Vor allem der städtische Raum des Spätmittelalters ist derartig zu charakterisieren.
1 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford und Cambridge, Mass. 1991, Nachdruck 2000), 167: “Private space is distinct from, but always connected with, public space. In the best of circumstances, the outside space of the community is dominated, while the indoor space of family life is appropriated..”
2 Ibidem 153, mit Bezugnahme auf Japan: “The ‘public’ realm, the realm of temple or palace, has private and ‘mixed’ aspects, while the ‘private’ house or dwelling has public (e. g. re- ception rooms) and ‘mixed’ ones. Much the same may be said of the town as a whole.”
3 Vgl. z. B. Gert Melville and Peter von Moos (Hrsg.), Das Öffentliche und Private in der Vormoderne, Norm und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit 10 (Köln, Weimar und Wien 1998); Michel Hebert, Vie privée et ordre public à la fin du Moyen-Age (Aix-en-Provence 1987); Bernard Vincent, “Espace public et espace privé dans les villes andalouses (XVe-XVIe siècles), ” in D’une ville à l’autre: structures matérielles et organisation de l’espace dans les villes européennes (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), hrsg. von Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, Collection de l’École française de Rome 122 (Rom 1989) 711-724; David Austin, “Private and Public: An Archaeological Consideration of Things, ” in Die Vielfalt der Dinge. Neue Wege zur Analyse mittelalterlicher Sachkultur, hrsg. von Helmut Hundsbichler et al., Forschungen des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mit- telalters und der frühen Neuzeit – Diskussionen und Materialien 3 (Wien 1998) 163-206. Philippe Ariès und Georges Duby (Hrsg.), Histoire de la vie privée II: De l’Europe féodale à la Renaissance (Paris 1985) widmeten sich jener Verknüpfung von privatem und öffentli- chem Leben nur in relativ geringem Maße.
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Chroniken, Reisebeschreibungen, Normen, Bilder etc. verweisen regelmäßig auf die entscheidende, typische und allgemeine Relevanz des öffentlichen städti- schen Raumes und die vielfältigen Diskussionen und Diskurse, die diesbezüg- lich geführt wurden4.
Dies war einer der Hauptgründe für die Organisation von fünf Sektionen des Sachbereiches ‚Alltag‘ beim International Medieval Congress 2003 in Leeds zum Themenkreis „The Public (in) Urban Space.“ Dieselben sollten die vielfältigen Varianten und Variationen aufzeigen, in welchen sich Öffentliches und Öffentlichkeit als bestimmend für und bestimmt durch das städtische Leben des Spätmittelalters herausstellten5. Zwei Bände von ‚Medium Aevum Quotidia- num‘ vermitteln ausgewählte und für den Druck überarbeitete Beiträge aus den genannten Sektionen.
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Eine wichtige Rolle innerhalb der städtischen Alltags spielten Ruf, Ruhm und Ehre von Einzelpersonen, Familien und Gruppen innerhalb der urbanen Gemein- schaften sowie natürlich auch der gesamten Kommunität. Viele unterschiedliche Versuche lassen sich nachweisen, dieselben zu kreieren, aufrecht zu erhalten und zu verstärken. Im vorliegenden ersten Teil der Veröffentlichung der Refe- rate beschäftigt sich Rebecca Müller an Hand des spätmittelalterlichen Fall- beispiels Genua mit dem Ruhm von Familien innerhalb der Stadt und ange- wandten Varianten seiner öffentlichen Visualisierung. Lucie Doležalová widmet sich dem Problemkreis, inwieweit für Böhmen und Mähren das Phänomen des ‚Städtelobs‘ in bezug auf eigene Kommunitäten nachgewiesen werden kann und stellt dabei jedoch fest, dass dasselbe im Vergleich zu anderen Gebieten des
4 Vgl. z. B. Helmut Hundsbichler, “Stadtbegriff, Stadtbild und Stadtleben des 15. Jahrhun- derts nach ausländischen Berichterstattern über Österreich,” in Das Leben in der Stadt des Spätmittelalters, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für mittelalterliche Realienkunde Öster- reichs 2 = Sb. Ak. Wien, phil.-hist. Klasse 325, 3. Aufl. (Wien 1997), 111-133; Gerhard Ja- ritz, “Das Image der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt. Zur Konstruktion und Vermittlung ihres äußeren Erscheinungsbildes,” in Die Stadt als Kommunikationsraum. Beiträge zur Stadtge- schichte vom Mittelalter bis ins 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Karl Czok zum 75. Ge- burtstag, hrsg. von Helmut Bräuer und Elke Schlenkrich (Leipzig 2001) 471-485; ders., “‚Straßenbilder‘ des Spätmittelalters,” in Die Straße. Zur Funktion und Perzeption öffentli- chen Raums im späten Mittelalter, Forschungen des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittel- alters und der frühen Neuzeit. Diskussionen und Materialien 6 (Wien 2001) 47-70; Charles Burroughs, “Spaces of Arbitration and the Organization of Space in Late Medieval Italian Cities,” in Medieval Practices of Space, hrsg. von Barbara A. Hanawalt und Michal Kobi- alka (Minneapolis und London, 2000), 64: “In medieval Italy, city statutes typically in- cluded detailed provisions regarding the maintenance and, to a degree, improvenent of public space. ”
5 Vgl. Keith D. Lilley, Urban Life in the Middle Ages 1000-1450 (Basingstoke 2002) 241: “The medieval townscape was, at one and the same time, both constituted and constitutive: that is, it was shaped by the actions of townspeople, while it also shaped the activities of townspeople.”
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spätmittelalterlichen Europas nur wenig zu erkennen ist. Käthe Sonnleitner geht an Hand der Quellenüberlieferung des deutschsprachigen Raums der Frage nach, inwieweit Rolle geschlechtsspezifische Komponenten für den ‚guten Ruf‘ der Stadt bestimmend sein konnten. Thomas Kühtreiber und Anneli Randla verwen- den die Beispiele der Stadtummauerung bzw. der Bettelordensarchitektur zur Vermittlung der entscheidenden Relevanz, welche die variantenreiche öffent- liche Zeichensetzung im städtischen Raum mit Hilfe von Bauwerken erlangen konnte.
Im zweiten Teil der Veröffentlichung (‚Medium Aevum Quotidianum‘ 48) setzen sich Juhan Kreem und Judit Majorossy mit Fragen des notwendigen Öffentlichkeitscharakters verschiedener Bereiche und Handlungen der städti- schen Verwaltung auseinander. Danach beschäftigt sich Ingrid Matschinegg mit der Rolle von Universitätsstudenten im öffentlichen urbanen Raum. Florence Fabianec untersucht für Dalmatien die bestimmenden Einflüsse, welche die öffentliche Hand auf das städtische Wirtschaftsleben ausübte. Gordan Ravančić zeigt für Dubrovnik das Maß auf, in dem das Phänomen ‚Alkohol‘ auf den öffentlichen Raum der Stadt und die darauf bezogene Diskussionskultur wirken konnte6. Thomas Pettittt verdeutlicht schließlich am Beispiel des Theaters im städtischen Raum die unabdingbare Wichtigkeit öffentlichkeitsbestimmter und – bestimmender Gestaltungsprinzipien.
Die Beiträge vermitteln damit eine Reihe aussagekräftiger Beispiele, wel- che die vielfältige Bedeutung des öffentlichen Raums und der Öffentlichkeit im städtischen Alltag widerspiegeln. Trotz ihrer mitunter deutlich hervortretenden Unterschiedlichkeit lassen sie sich dennoch häufig verallgemeinern und auf ei- nen gemeinsamen Nenner bringen, durch welchen Kultur und Lebenswelt des Spätmittelalters entscheidend bestimmt wurden.
Gerhard Jaritz und Judith Rasson
6 Dieser Beitrag wurde nicht beim ‚International Medieval Congress‘ in Leeds präsentiert, aber dennoch hier aufgenommen, da er sich in starkem Maße mit der Rolle des öffentlichen städtischen Raums und seiner Beinflussung sowohl auf als auch durch einen ausgewählten Aspekt der materiellen Kultur des Spätmittelalters auseinandersetzt.
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