Het klooster Maagdendries en de Moderne Devotie in Maastricht

Samenvatting

This contribution traces the medieval history of Maagdendries, one of the women’s convents in the city of Maastricht. It started as a community of beguines, situated near St Andrew’s Chapel south of the city walls and mentioned for the first time in 1264. The sisters earned a livelihood by weaving linen. In the 1430s the community changed both location and status, adopting the Third Rule of St Francis. The remaining part of the contribution investigates the relationship of Maagdendries with the Devotio Moderna. From an institutional point of view its position was peculiar. Maagdendries was ahead of most Modern Devout communities in combining Tertiary status with both enclosure and the three monastic vows. It was isolated insofar as it never appears to have joined the Chapter of Zepperen, which united the Tertiaries of the diocese of Liège. Its most important treasure is a collection of fifteen manuscripts, containing a great number of different texts. Maagdendries possessed quite a number of texts that were rare or even unique texts, but it also shared a considerable number of them with the nearby convents of Catharinadal at Hasselt (Tertiaries) and of Saint-Agnes at Maaseik (Regular Canonesses). In this respect, Maagdendries had a Modern Devout profile. '('