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Die Bettelorden in Mecklenburg: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Franziskaner, Klarissen. Dominikaner und Augustiner-Eremiten im Mittelalter. By Ingo Ulpts. [Saxonia Franciscana: Beitrage zur Geschichte der Sachsischen Franziskanerprovinz, Band 6.] (Werl: Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag. 1995. Pp. xiv, 556.)
Die Franziskaner im mittelalterlichen Luneburg. By Silke Logemann. [Saxonia Franciscana, Band 7.] (Werl: Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag. 1996. Pp. xii, 106.8 black-and-white photographs.)
In response to Jacques Le Goff's 1968 charge in the Annales, both Ingo Ulpts and Silke Logemann attempt to place the mendicants in their urban context. They examine such issues as the foundation of the houses, the convents' topographic location, the social origins of the friars and nuns, relations with the princes, municipal authorities, the burghers, and the secular clergy, the use of the convent buildings for public purposes, the Observant reform, and the dissolution of the convents during the Reformation. After the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, Ulpts obtained access to the relatively extensive latemedieval archives of Mecklenburg to write the first modem history of the mendicant orders in that German state. He incorporates many of these documents directly in his text and publishes seventy-nine documents for the first time in an appendix. His monograph is divided into three major sections: the foundation of the eleven houses, a third of all the religious foundations in the medieval duchy; the late-medieval accommodation with...