Converse

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Converse portal on the south side of the Otterberg Abbey Church in the Palatinate

Converse (Latin plural: Conversi ) was another name in the monastic orders for lay brothers who did not receive ordinations and did mainly physical work. Konversen worked in the monastery as craftsmen, in agriculture and in the garden. In addition to simple activities, in the Middle Ages Konversen also exercised responsible activities as merchants, interest masters and administrators of town yards and offices . They were of lasting importance above all as builders and craftsmen. As administrators of Grangien, they relied on the work of monastery servants and wage laborers(mercenarii) and were accountable to the abbot and cellarer of the monastery.

Inside the monastery, the Converses ate and slept in a separate part of the building (Conversation Wing , Conversation House) . As a rule, the conversers were not allowed to enter the exam or to participate in the chapter . In the monastery church they were separated from the monks' choir by a rood screen (as in Maulbronn monastery ) and entered the church through a separate portal on the west or south side (e.g. in the Otterberg abbey church ).

Applicants who were not suitable for the vocation of the conversation were tied to the monastery as familiars after receiving the tonsure and putting on special clothing . Conversations who did not do their job could be transferred to the family.

The Hirsauer form from 1075 shows that the Konverseninstitut existed before the time of the Cistercians . In order to be able to supply the monastery sufficiently, one or two converses came to a choir monk during weddings of the Konversen Institute. For Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, 140 choir monks and 500 lay brothers are named for the year 1167.

In most monastic orders, the conversations were not previously considered full-fledged monks. This changed with the adaptation of religious life to the requirements of the Decree Perfectae Caritatis (on the contemporary renewal of religious life) of the Second Vatican Council. In many communities after 1970 they gained full chapter rights and duties.

literature

  • Guido Gassmann: The conversations of the Cistercians in the beginnings of the order. Patrium Cisterciense. Sources and research on the Cistercian heritage . Slightly revised master's thesis University of Lucerne 2005. Patrimonium-Verlag, Aachen / Mainz 2011, ISBN 978-3-86417-000-3 .
  • Guido Gassmann: Conversations of the Cistercians. A social, economic and religious history perspective based on the nine male abbeys in the area of ​​today's Switzerland . In: Georg Mölich, Norbert Nussbaum, Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck (Hrsg.): The Cistercians in the Middle Ages . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-412-50718-3 , pp. 255-269.
  • Michael Toepfer: The conversations of the Cistercians. Investigations into their contribution to the medieval flowering of the order (= Order Studies . Volume IV .; Berlin Historical Studies . Volume 10). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1983, ISBN 978-3-428-05429-9 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Konverse  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gudrun Gleba: Monastery life in the Middle Ages. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004, p. 127f.
  2. ^ F. Donald Logan: History of the Church in the Middle Ages. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, p. 151.