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Dissertation Information for Pegeen Mary Connolly

NAME:
- Pegeen Mary Connolly

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1999)

ADVISORS:
- Richard Rouse

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Scott L. Waugh
- Bengt Lofstedt

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Servare unitatem spiritus in vinculo pacis: The first century of the Bursfeld Congregation, 1433-1530

Abstract: This study is a history of the Bursfeld Congregation in the first century of its existence. It examines the creation of the Congregation itself and the definition of the most important aspects of its monastic life: its administrative structure, its liturgy and its spirituality. Formed in 1433 with the election of John Dederoth as abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Bursfeld in Lower Saxony, the congregation originally consisted of two houses, Bursfeld and Klus, united under the leadership of Dederoth. Within a few years, other monasteries in the area began to imitate the observance of these two houses. After 1450, what came to be called the Bursfeld Union grew rapidly, with membership in the Union increasing to over seventy houses between 1450 and 1500.

The Bursfeld reformers sought to create, and then to enforce and sustain, an observance as completely uniform as possible in its liturgy, administration and spirituality. This well-structured observance, under the patronage of the German episcopate, succeeded in establishing a long-lasting reform. The period under consideration here reaches from 1433, the year of Dederoth's election, to the first decades of the sixteenth century. These years saw the establishment of the Congregation's liturgy and its statutes. The Ceremonial and the Ordinarius , which regulated the administration and the liturgy of the Congregation, were printed in 1474. In 1498, the Congregation approved and published John Trithemius' De triplici regione claustralium , which concluded the foundation period of the reform Congregation. With the adoption of these works, the Congregation had established all the important aspects of its observance. This present study is an account of how the Congregation grew in its first century, reviewing the problems facing monastic life in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and how the Bursfeld Congregation was able to remedy them. The administration, liturgy and spirituality of the Congregation are explained and their character and content discussed, and the links these aspects of the Congregation's observance had to the Carthusian Order. Finally, the reasons the Congregation so valued uniformity, choosing it as the primary goal in obtaining and retaining a good observance are investigated. This study examines the ways in which one institution struggled with the problem of how to legislate institutional reform--a universal and timeless problem not limited to the fifteenth century or monasticism.

MPACT Scores for Pegeen Mary Connolly

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-09-23 11:56:39

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Students under Pegeen Mary Connolly

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None