Oblation (monastery)

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Oblation (unknown Bolognese painter, 14th century). In: Decretum Gratiani , Causa XX . Leipzig University Library, Rep. II 9b (CCXLIII), fol. 200v

Oblation has been a publicly recognized legal act of canon law since late antiquity , but especially from the early to the high Middle Ages , which brought about the entry of a child into a monastery and its irrevocable determination for life in the monastery through its offering by the parents or guardians .

In late antiquity, various social institutionalizations of long separation of children from their parents emerged, including the oblate system (oblatio) . Boys and girls were usually put into a monastery by their parents when they were seven years old, where they grew up to become monks or nuns . Any existing assets of the child had to be legally assigned beforehand, but in most cases it fell to the monastery. The prospect of further inheritance was nullified in a legally binding manner by the parents on behalf of the child through a declaration of renunciation as part of the petitio and through the handover ritual. “With the petitio, any hope of the candidate for later disposal (in his favor) is taken away. If, in addition further donations provided to the monastery, it requires independent, documentary securitized instruments . The parents [...] have the opportunity to reserve a temporary use ( usus fructus ) of the donation. ”While Basil the Great still granted the final decision on the puer oblatus coming of age , the Regula Benedicti looked like of the first half of the 6th century in chapters 59, 63 there was no longer any possibility of withdrawing from the parental authority. It allowed parents of all walks of life to put their children of any age in a monastery. The Latin name of this process describes the act as sacrificing the child to God . The 4th Council of Toledo of 633 followed this regulation by providing for entry into the monastery either through ordination by the father or through profession . Nevertheless, the oblation remained controversial in canon law . For example, Gottschalk von Orbais was initially successful with his lawsuit to challenge his Oblation to the Fulda Monastery at the Synod of Mainz (829). For the immutability of the parental decision, however, his abbot Hrabanus Maurus vigorously advocated the trials against him and substantiated his opinion in detail in the Liber de oblatione puerorum . In the further course of the argument, Hraban seems to have prevailed with his position. In any case, Gottschalk later appears as a monk in Corbie and Orbais . In the 12th century, Gratian decided in the Decretum Gratiani of approx. 1140 (Secunda pars, causa 20, quaestio I, c. I – X) with reference to Pope Gregory I , Isidore of Seville , the Paenitentiale Theodori , the 4th Council of Toledo and the Synod of Trebur (from 895) in favor of the binding nature of the parental decision, leads in c. IX and X, however, also divergent decisions by the Synod of Rome (826) carried out by Pope Eugene II and by Pope Marcellus I (308-309). The reform orders of the High Middle Ages turned away from the practice of the oblation, but in the Benedictine order it was maintained until the late Middle Ages . The transfer was generally considered irrevocable under canon law until the late 12th century.

The transferring fathers vowed according to a formula from the 9th century:

"And so that this surrender remains unshakable, I promise under oath before God and his angels that I will never give him [the child] any opportunity to leave, neither myself nor through an intermediary or in any way through my property."

- Peiper

Should the child later violate this, there was a threat of excommunication, as laid down in the 4th Council of Toledo, canon 48, in 633. A oblation was rigorously enforced even if sufferers were about to leave the monastery and as adults against the obligations imposed on them by their parents forced remedies men casting, as in the case of Gottschalk of Orbais . The oblation was also used by parents to get rid of deformed children and "redundant" daughters. Oblations became rarer in the second half of the Middle Ages . The Council of Trent (1545–1563) prohibited the oblation of children and prescribed a minimum age of 16 years for compulsory profession (Session XXV c. 15).

Examples

Persons who came to the monastery through oblation:

literature

  • Gabriele Archetti: “Sub virga magistri”. Custodia e disciplina nell'educazione carolingia dei pueri oblati. In: Studi Medievali 3rd series 57, 2, 2016, pp. 527-578 (with an English summary).
  • John Eastburn Boswell : The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance . New York 1988.
  • Georg Jenal : Sub Regula S. Benedicti. A story of the sons and daughters of Benedict from the beginning to the present. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019 ISBN 9783412514433
  • Markus Karl von Pföstl: Pueri oblati. A historical-anthropological study of the age of maturity. 2 volumes. Solivagus, Kiel 2011, ISBN 978-3-9812101-9-4 and ISBN 978-3-943025-01-9 .
  • Andreas Rüther : Oblate . In: Lexikon des Mittelalters, Vol. 6, 1993, Sp. 1336-1337.
  • Eva Schlotheuber : Entry into the monastery and education. The world of nuns in the late Middle Ages . (Late Middle Ages and Reformation. New series. Volume 24). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-16-148263-8 , pp. 175-267.
  • Kerstin te Heesen: Pueri Oblati - monastic education in the Middle Ages. Reflections on a monastic pedagogy. In: Quarterly Journal for Scientific Pedagogy 8, 2008, pp. 278–294.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Georg Jenal, Sub Regula Benedicti (see literature below) p. 39, the quotation ibid.
  2. ↑ a b John Eastburn Boswell: Exposure and Oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family . In: The American Historical Review , 89, 1984, pp. 10-33.
  3. ^ A b c d e John Eastburn Boswell: The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance . New York 1988.
  4. ↑ Chapter 59: The Admission of Children.
  5. ↑ Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. 107, Col. 419B-440B.
  6. ^ A b Albrecht Peiper: Chronicle of paediatrics . 4th edition. Leipzig 1966.