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

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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.