FOSTER Project: Rules and Realities. A Comparative Study of Ideals, Ways of Life, and Duties in the Communities of the Franciscans, the Knights of St. John, and the Cistercian Nuns

Project Participants: Rebecca Hoppe, Laura-Marie Lang, Philipp Marko

Religious orders were among the defining elements of social and intellectual life in the Middle Ages. This makes it all the more important to examine the fundamental norms of these communities and, through a comparative analysis, to identify commonalities, differences, and order-specific characteristics. Three students aim to tackle this task as part of the project “Rules and Realities: A Comparative Study of Ideals, Lifestyles, and Duties in the Communities of the Franciscans, the Knights of St. John, and the Cistercian Nuns,” funded by the Funds for Student Research (FOSTER) program at TU Dresden.

To this end, the project participants are focusing on three distinct communities, whose fundamental rules will be examined: Rebecca Hoppe is exploring the ambivalent conceptions of solitude among the Cistercian nuns as reflected in normative texts. Laura-Marie Lang is preparing a contribution on the Order of St. John, in which she will examine its influence on the development of medieval hospitals. Philipp Marko analyzes the interplay between monetary concepts and the Franciscan Order’s ideal of poverty. The results of these analyses will be published on the academic blog “Middle Ages: Interdisciplinary Research and History of Reception.” At the same time, a project bibliography will be compiled and published on the FOVOG website. These publications will be accompanied by a podcast in which the central themes of the study will be discussed in a dialogic format. The project thus combines humanities research with modern forms of communication and, through the analysis of the selected religious orders, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the respective medieval communities.