Amicia de Montfort

Amicia de Montfort († February 20, 1252 ) was a French monastery founder of the 13th century. She was a daughter of Simon IV. De Montfort and his wife, Alix de Montmorency .

She was married to Gaucher de Joigny († before 1237, House Joigny ), Sire of Châteaurenard, with whom she had two children:

• Petronille († 1289), 1st ∞ with Pierre de Courtenay († 1250); 2. ∞ with Henri II. De Sully († 1269)
• Gaucher († before 1249), monk

Amicia's father was the leader of the Albigensian Crusade and established close contacts with Domingo de Guzmán and his newly founded Dominican order . Amicia kept this connection. Allegedly she had stated that if, even as a woman, she could not serve the order as a preacher brother, she would like to do so as a sister. After the death of her husband, she founded a monastery for 50 women for the Dominican order near Montargis , which she was the first abbess to head. She operated a constitutional adjustment of her sisterhood to the constitution laid down by Raimund von Peñafort . However, the order master Johannes von Wildeshausen refused to incorporate the monastery into the order. Amicia therefore turned in 1245 to Pope Innocent IV , who was staying in Lyon , who in a bull dated April 8, 1245 ordered the legal incorporation of the monastery into the order. As a result, Amicia broke a lance for Dominican women's convents in general, which were subsequently recognized by the order and accepted into its ranks.

literature

• Edeltraud Klueting : Pious women - uncomfortable women? Feminine religiosity in the Middle Ages. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 2006, ISBN 3-487-13073-4 .

annotation

1. ↑ Cronica posterior: Ipsa quoque, sicut dixit, quia homo non erat, nec poterat esse frater, vel saltem soror fieret, fecit dorum sororum de Montargis et bene dotavit. Edited by Raymond Creytens: "Les Constitutions primitives des Soeurs dominicaines de Montargis (1250)." In: Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 17 (1947), p. 44