The Portrayal of Late-Medieval Monks and Nuns in Satirical Texts

僧侣和尼姑的不道德行为--毕竟，他们应该过着最高美德的生活--引起了批评、嘲笑和嘲弄。在整个欧洲中世纪，讽刺作品成为批评修道院纪律失败的首选文学媒介。尽管这种讽刺批评传播甚广，但它的内容、读者群及其机制却没有受到现代学者的重视。因此，本申请的目的是开发一个项目，将允许系统分析的批评中世纪修道院的讽刺文本。该项目将侧重于拉丁文讽刺诗和散文写的，与白话（德语）讽刺的重要例子也被列入比较的目的。该项目的指导思想是讽刺论文的作者对当代宗教生活提出批评的方式，特别是将突出他们发现的问题，并研究这些缺点是如何表现出来的。从宗教批评的角度对讽刺文本进行分析，将对研究中世纪的宗教生活做出重要贡献。在这方面，14和15世纪提供了一个特别有前途的研究领域，因为这一时期讽刺作品的数量越来越多，而且许多传统的、前托钵会在中世纪晚期经历了危机的症状。鉴于衰落的迹象--被修会成员和“外部”批评者所感知--以及托钵僧的成功，对这些修会的有用性和存在理由的怀疑在这一时期变得特别尖锐。因此，该项目将主要集中在针对传统僧侣、尼姑和正规教会的讽刺攻击上。该项目的第一阶段将是调查有关资料来源，即对据称僧侣和尼姑放荡行为的讽刺性描述，以便选择具有代表性的讽刺作品样本，包括针对寺院机构的文本以及对社会等级制度的更一般性的批评（地产讽刺作品），其中含有关于男性或女性宗教社区的段落。以下的分析将开始与对象有关的问题，主要议题，和结构的反僧侣讽刺和考试有关的教学目标。对女性宗教生活的讽刺性描写将受到特别关注。这部作品的主要目的是强调讽刺作品所反映的对宗教秩序的特定批判性看法，并将它们与中世纪晚期更广泛的改革话语联系起来。

The immoral behavior of monks and nuns - who were, after all, supposed to lead a life of highest virtue - gave rise to criticism, derision, and mockery. Throughout the European Middle Ages, satires constituted a preferred literary medium for criticizing failures of monastic discipline. Despite their enormous dissemination, the contents of such satirical criticism, its readership and its mechanisms have not received much attention by modern scholars. The aim of this application, therefore, is to develop a project which will allow systematic analysis of the criticism of medieval monasticism in satirical texts. The project will focus on Latin satires written in verse and prose, with significant examples of vernacular (German) satires also being included for the purpose of comparison. The project is guided by the central question of the way in which the authors of satirical treatises voiced criticism on contemporary religious life and in particular will highlight the problems that they identified and examine how these shortcomings were represented. By taking into consideration the criticism directed religious communities, the analysis of satirical texts will provide a significant contribution to the study of the vita religiosa in the Middle Ages. In that regard, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries offer a particularly promising field of study due to the growing number of satires in the period and the fact that many of the traditional, pre-mendicant orders experienced symptoms of crisis in the Late Middle Ages. Given the signs of decline - perceived both by members of religious orders and 'external' critics - as well as the success of the mendicants, doubts concerning the usefulness and raison d'être of these orders became particularly acute in this period. The project will thus primarily focus on satirical attacks directed toward traditional communities of monks, nuns, and regular canons. The first stage of the project will be a survey of relevant sources, i.e. satirical representations of the alleged debauchery of monks and nuns, so that a representative sample of satires can be chosen, including texts directed against monastic institutions as well as more general criticism of social hierarchies (estate satires) which contain passages on male or female religious communities. The following analysis will begin with questions concerning the objects, main topics, and structure of anti-monastic satire and an examination regarding didactic objectives. Special attention will be paid to the satirical depictions of female religious life. The primary aim of the work is to emphasize specific critical perceptions of religious orders as reflected by satire and to relate them to broader discourse of reform in the Late Middle Ages.