The Beguines of Cologne: A Social History of Urban Piety (13th-15th Centuries)

• Applicant: Dr. Letha Böhringer
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491803989

Subject of this application is the elaboration of a comprehensive monograph on the Cologne beguines of the 13th and 14th centuries and the provision of the research data on which it is based on the Internet. Investigating the Cologne shrine books and several archives of charters, the applicant has developed a free-text database with 2100 data records on beguines and their families, as well as full-text editions and registers for the approx. 160 convents. On this basis, 10 essays have so far been published, and the first overall presentation of the topic will also include chronical and hagiographic sources. The research data, which contain prosopographical, socio-historical and topographical information, will be freely available in the form of a database (digital component) by the Cologne Center of Digital Humanities (CCeH). The city of Cologne is uniquely suited for a micro-exemplary study, because the probably largest “beginner colony” in Europe lived here. At the same time, the city's dense and multifaceted body of sources is a unique feature. On a solid fundation, studies on the economic and social position of the beguines and their families in their urban environment can be carried out; in other city, this is only possible to a limited extent due to the fragmented source material. As the scholarly reception of the articles has shown, results from Cologne are valid and exemplary far beyond the city. The role of the beguines in the urban economy, their participation in the real estate and rent market, their relationship with secular clergy and members of the orders, the importance of their convents for the memorial culture and their connections to the institutions of urban welfare - these and other aspects can be explained investigating the Cologne source corpus comprehensively and in great detail, so that further research results for the phenomenon of the beguines can be expected. The monograph and the digital component are closely related to one another. The amounts of data can be evaluated more comprehensively with automated support than would be possible with analog methods. After completion of the project, the database will serve as a basis for research on beguines and other "pious women" as well as on the prosopography of the citizens of Cologne. It is also planned to make the database compatible for projects that aim to digitally index the Cologne shrine books. In addition to its research goal, this project is intended to demonstrate the benefits and conditions of success of the parallel development of an analogous monograph and its data in the form of a sustainable and networked research database.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants