Marginality, Economy and Christianity. The Material Running of Mendicant Friaries in Central Europe (c.1220 - c.1550) – MARGEC

This multidisciplinary project is also multi-period, since it crosses the conventional frontier between Middle Ages and modern times to fit both Central Europe historical context and archival material. The third novelty of the MARGEC proposal lies in the close association of French and foreign researchers, whose a three-level, federative structure ensures optimal synergy: a “scientific board” gathering every coordinator of each institutional permanent partner (2 French partners and 1 self-supporting foreign partner); “geographical” teams based on mendicant districts, each coordinated by representatives of the (5) foreign associate institutions; last, individual contributors recruited according to needs. All participants will use the same methodology, namely an inductive approach allowing to get rid of the value judgments conveyed by polemical and normative sources, always comparative (at regional scale, as well as with Germany and with ancient orders’ monasteries), diachronic (in order to spot the chronological turning points, such as the Observant movement, the spread of Reformation or the Ottoman conquest) and synchronic (bringing differences between religious orders or provinces to light, together with those related to the friaries’ socioeconomic context).

The members of the group already succeeded in performing the first task of the programme (historiographical balance, in press). The MARGEC project, divided into 5 tasks performed for 48 months, will deliver before the end of 2016 the following results: a selective survey of the textual and non-textual sources, “open” (online) to forthcoming discoveries; a database providing a note per friary (also accessible online) and comprehensive maps; 2 thematic workshops (1. Mendicant Friaries and the Land, 2. Everyday Poverty) and a synthetic conference (The Friars in the Economy of the Sacred); intermediate balances published in 3 scientific journals and a large-scale volume including the proceedings of the three symposia, published both in French and English.

This programme opens wide research perspectives in several ways :
- first, it creates new institutional bounds between the partners, based on concrete results ;
- it reniews the approach of the topic of the economical and social insertion of the mendicant friars in a crucial period for Occidental Christianity.

The MARGEC project has already presented (in a scientific journal) an historiographical balance of the topic.

The second workshop («Towards an Inventory of Textual Sources«) took place in Prague on (2013) March 25th ; the proceedings are now published.
Workshop 3 took place on November (21-22) 2013 in Budapest about the iconographic and archaeological sources (under press).

The first thematic Workshop («Mendicants and Land«) planned for (23-24) June 2014 in Clermont-Ferrand is now over.
The next one («Everyday poverty«) took place in 21-23 May 2015 in Wroclaw.
The final symposium («The Economy of the Sacred«) has arrived in 2-3 June 2016 in Rennes.

Besides, the construction (ad hoc) of the database is now completed and this database is available in open access (margec@univ-bpclermont.fr).
The members of the team are filling it, each friary after the other, according to the frame set up in October 2012, at the beginning of the programme. One can query it already. Each note can be later achieved (with new texts or images).
The maps are ready and connected to the database.
The English translation of every note is on the way and will be continued after the offical end of the program (30 September 2016)

The MARGEC proposal is the new version of the “ANR Blanc” application submitted in 2011. Bériou and Chiffoleau’s “Economy and Religion” inquiry, run from 2001 to 2009 to explore the economy of the mendicant friaries during the 13th-15th centuries and mainly based on French and Italian examples, showed that voluntary poverty could be a factor of economic and social regulation, due to the friars’ practices and to their discourse recommending the circulation of goods. Is this statement valid for (East) Central Europe, in spite of its lesser urbanization, the power of the nobility and the disruption caused by the hussite movement? The MARGEC project aims to start answering this question, by moving East the previous inquiry and extending it to the middle of the 16th century in order to study a period which his, in this area, coherent.

Its ambition is not to systematically analyze the material running of the nearly 450 male mendicant friaries erected in Central Europe between the 1220’s and the 1550’s – though only ten or fifteen per cent among them still have documents dealing with this topic –, but to set the milestones that will help to clear up three major issues: the state of the communities’ properties; the friars’ living environment; finally, their contribution to the exchange of material and spiritual goods. The study will be based on a thoroughly delimited corpus of documents, small enough to stick to the schedule but including archaeological reports as well as iconographical hints, and sufficient to allow comparisons.

This multidisciplinary project is also multi-period, since it crosses the conventional frontier between Middle Ages and modern times to fit both Central Europe historical context and archival material. The third novelty of the MARGEC proposal lies in the close association of French and foreign researchers, whose a three-level, federative structure ensures optimal synergy: a “scientific board” gathering every coordinator of each institutional permanent partner (2 French partners and 1 self-supporting foreign partner); “geographical” teams based on mendicant districts, each coordinated by representatives of the (5) foreign associate institutions; last, individual contributors recruited according to needs. All participants will use the same methodology, namely an inductive approach allowing to get rid of the value judgments conveyed by polemical and normative sources, always comparative (at regional scale, as well as with Germany and with ancient orders’ monasteries), diachronic (in order to spot the chronological turning points, such as the Observant movement, the spread of Reformation or the Ottoman conquest) and synchronic (bringing differences between religious orders or provinces to light, together with those related to the friaries’ socioeconomic context).

The members of the group formed in 2011 already succeeded in performing the first task of the programme (historiographical balance, in press). The MARGEC project, divided into 5 tasks performed for 36 months, will deliver before the end of 2015 the following results: a selective survey of the textual and non-textual sources, “open” (online) to forthcoming discoveries; a database providing a note per friary (also accessible online) and comprehensive maps; 2 thematic workshops (1. Mendicant Friaries and the Land, 2. Everyday Poverty) and a synthetic conference (The Friars in the Economy of the Sacred); intermediate balances published in 3 scientific journals and a large-scale volume including the proceedings of the three symposia, published both in French and English.