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• Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages: The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c. 1270–c. 1530) by Marie-Madeleine de Cevins
• Robert Curry

Mendicant spiritual confraternities have a bad reputation and the very term, so Marie-Madeleine de Cevins cheerfully forewarns us, inevitably engenders a certain malaise in the reader. Her dense, detailed and exhaustively researched study of an undoubtedly complex and poorly documented topic takes us into the competitive world of the medieval mendicants (Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinian Hermits and Carmelites) and shines light onto a practice they deliberately kept obscure. To meet their communal material needs, friars needed benefactions. Benefactors, to be encouraged, needed to be recompensed. In effecting recompense, the friars needed to tread warily to obviate accusations of simony that would sully the [End Page 193] essence of their appeal, their commitment to poverty. And so, in exchange for material benefits, the friars promised spiritual graces (bona spiritualia) accrued by their community, the incalculable value of which was ever accumulating. In this way, their unwritten indebtedness was discharged in the manner sanctioned by Rome (Urban V’s bull, Beneficia sanctorum).

Confirmation of membership of a spiritual confraternity took the form of a formal letter, a charter, the wording of which was largely formulaic and changed little over the centuries: ‘I, Friar […], hereby receive you into each and every suffrage of our Order, and into its confraternity, in life as in death, granting to you by the present document full participation in all the spiritual wealth that the clemency of the Saviour shall judge our brothers of the Kingdom of Hungary worthy to achieve’ (Franciscan, c. 1282–1320).

Membership entailed no ceremony of inclusion; no lists of members were kept; and no active solidarity was cultivated between confratres/consorores and the friars. In essence, mendicant spiritual confraternities were conceptual communities. And therein lies the challenge for the researcher: How to investigate a topic, amorphous in nature, the formal evidence for which is a repetitive monotony?

The phenomenon was by no means restricted to any one part of Europe; to date, however, the richest cache of inventoried material is found in Hungary. To these Hungarian sources, rarely discussed in West European languages, Cevins brings an impressive breadth of scholarship, the fruits of more than two decades’ research into Hungarian and Central-European ecclesiastical archives. She makes the point that while the mendicants were strongly represented in Hungary, they did not indulge in actively selling letters of affiliation of the ‘fill-in-the-blanks’-type that was common in England and Bohemia. As a consequence, Hungarian spiritual confraternities retained their currency for longer.

Cevins’s study provides fascinating glimpses into how the orders projected themselves to the faithful. We see, for example, the vigorous support of spiritual confraternities provided by the Inquisitor-General of Franciscan Observants, John of Capistrano, during his high-profile tour of Central Europe: ‘engaged in a fierce struggle against heresy and the infidels, [he] made spiritual confraternity into a weapon of “conquering pastoral care”’ (p. 193). His letters of affiliation make clear that admission to the Franciscan confraternity is to be understood as admission to the Three Orders of St Francis—nota bene—de Observantia: the Friars Minor of the Observance, the Sisters Minor of St Clare, that is, Damianites of the Observance [sororum minorissarum et sancte Clare seu sancti Damiani de Observancia], and the Third Order Penitents. At the time of his writing, however, the majority of Poor Clare houses in Central Europe, the grand foundations especially, were aligned with the Franciscan Conventuals. For their part, the Conventual Franciscans, with their calls to ‘follow, naked, the naked Christ’ (p. 191), were striving to present themselves as more reformed than the Observants. And although confraternal bona spiritualia extended equally to women and men, not a single abbess or [End Page 194] prioress appears in the role...

审核人：

• 中世纪的同情，服从命令和救赎：玛丽·马德琳·德·塞文斯（Marie-Madeleine de Cevins ）对匈牙利血统的贡献（约1270年至1530年）
• 罗伯特·库里

恳切的属灵信仰有不好的声誉，因此，玛丽·马德琳·德·塞文斯（Marie-Madeleine de Cevins）兴高采烈地警告我们，不可避免地使读者感到不适。她对一个毫无疑问的复杂且文献不多的主题进行了详尽，详尽和详尽的研究，将我们带入了竞争激烈的中世纪务工界（Franciscans，Dominicans，Augustinian Hermits和Carmelites），并为他们故意保持晦涩难懂的做法提供了启发。为了满足他们的公共物质需求，修道士需要捐助。需要鼓励的恩人需要得到补偿。在进行补偿时，男修道士需要谨慎行事，以消除可能会令人愧的End讽的指责[End Page 193]他们呼吁的本质，他们对贫困的承诺。因此，为了换取物质利益，男修道士们许诺了他们的社区所累积的属灵恩惠（bona spiritia），其不可估量的价值正在不断积累。这样，他们的未成文债务以罗马批准的方式解除（城市五世的公牛，Beneficia sanctorum）。

确认属灵兄弟会的成员身份以正式信件，宪章的形式进行，宪章的措词在很大程度上是公式化的，并且在几个世纪以来几乎没有改变：“我，修道士[...]按照本文件的规定，在生命中，以及在生命中，如死后一样，使您充分参与救世主的宽容应判断我们的匈牙利王国兄弟应实现的所有精神财富”（弗朗西斯坎（Franciscan，c）（1282-1320）。

成员资格不需要举行入学典礼；没有保留成员名单；在会议/领事和男修道士之间没有建立积极的团结。本质上，,悔的精神信仰是概念上的共同体。这给研究人员带来了挑战：如何研究一个主题，本质上是无定形的，其正式证据是重复的单调性？

这种现象绝不限于欧洲的任何一个地方。但是，迄今为止，匈牙利存货库存最丰富。塞文斯为这些匈牙利资料来源（很少用西欧语言讨论过）带来了令人印象深刻的广博学识，这是二十多年来匈牙利和中欧教会档案学研究的成果。她指出，虽然这些药物在匈牙利有很强的代表性，但他们并没有沉迷于积极出售英格兰和波西米亚常见的“填空”类型的隶属关系信。结果，匈牙利的精神信仰保留了他们的货币更长的时间。

塞文斯的研究使人们对订单如何投射给忠实信徒产生了令人着迷的印象。例如，我们看到方济各会观察员总检察长卡皮斯特拉诺（John Capistrano）在中欧的高调之旅中对精神信仰的大力支持：“与异端和异教徒展开了激烈的斗争，[ ]将精神上的友爱变成了“征服牧养”的武器”（第193页）。他的从属信清楚地表明，加入方济各会兄弟会被理解为是加入了圣弗朗西斯三级勋章-圣母玛利亚-观察员修士，圣克莱尔修女，即达米安主义者纪念日[sororum minorissarum et sancte Clare seu sancti Damiani de Observancia ]和三阶悔罪者。然而，在他撰写本文时，中欧的大多数克莱尔房屋（尤其是宏伟的基金会）都与方济各会修道院（Franciscan Conventuals）保持了一致。修道院方济各会主义者则呼吁“跟随，赤身，赤身的基督”（第191页），他们努力展现自己比观察者更加改革。虽然confraternal博纳spiritualia同样扩展到妇女和男子，不是一个单一的住持或[尾页194]中的作用修女院院长...出现