The Reformation dramatically challenged the concept underlying mendicant religious life.Footnote ¹ Luther himself had been a mendicant friar who abandoned his vocation and his teachings gradually evolved into one which had no place for religious orders, let alone mendicants. A number of friars followed his call, left their convents and joined the reformers.Footnote ² These included many who had been disappointed by unsuccessful attempts to revive and purify the original mendicant ideals. Those who remained became targets of criticism or even physical attack. Critics often built their arguments on traditional anti-fraternal sentiments shared by both the elite and the common people.Footnote ³ Those friars who persisted gradually lost political and economic support from their local communities. Deprived of regular alms and lacking new vocations, many provinces north of the Alps were soon in ruins. In addition, a number of religious orders also faced their own internal crises. Only a few months before Martin Luther challenged the practice of indulgences, the pope divided the Friars Minor, one of the most popular and powerful mendicant orders, into two separate orders, thus admitting that attempts to reform and revive the entire order on Observant lines had failed.Footnote ⁴

The mendicants nevertheless proved to be remarkably resilient. Even during these times of crisis, new reform movements continued to sprout from the main bodies of the individual mendicant orders. Although they were briefly undermining the stability of their own institutions, they actually represented, over the long term, an important source of revival, reform and adaptation.Footnote ⁵ This plurality and the reform endeavours made the mendicants extremely flexible and helped them to defend their way of life even under rapidly changing social and economic conditions. They were able to maintain their positions up until the second half of the eighteenth century when they once again became the objects of criticism and many mendicant houses were dissolved. In the period between the Reformation and the Enlightenment mendicants flourished again in virtually all parts of the Catholic world. A life of strict poverty and begging continued to be a crucial element in their activities throughout the entire period.Footnote ⁶ Collecting alms remained a necessary activity for the maintenance of mendicant houses. It was at the same time, however, also an important activity in terms of the interaction between the friars and the public. As many scholars have recently observed, the development of Catholic confessional culture was far from being a strictly top-down process and the existence of competing groups within the Church and society was an important factor which contributed to the diversity and vitality of early modern Catholicism.Footnote ⁷ The mendicants, with their networks of supporters, were particularly influential and successful agents. The pragmatic alliances that they made with city councils or aristocratic benefactors were often more than a match for other players, including bishops or the Jesuits.

This article is not intended as a contribution to the economic history of mendicant convents or urban communities, nor does it have ambitions to discuss the changing approaches to poverty and the poor in early modern society. Instead, it deals with mendicancy in terms of interaction between religious orders and their environments, an interaction which the majority of the friars and many inhabitants of the early modern Catholic world experienced on an (almost) everyday basis. It presupposes that mendicancy, given its prominent role in those orders, significantly contributed to the shaping of the religious life of both the friars and their communities. Using the example of the Bohemian Franciscan Province, and its Olomouc convent in particular, several interconnected questions will be addressed. What did it mean to be a mendicant in early modern Europe? How were the original ideals of poverty and mendicancy applied in the changing conditions of early modern Europe? And how did they contribute to the shaping of religious life in early modern Catholic communities?

The early modern Bohemian Franciscan Province was a confessionally contested area located on the edge of the Roman Catholic world. It was originally established as an Observant custody in the 1450s during the trans-Alpine mission of John of Capistrano, who sought to mobilise the local Catholic Church and landlords against the Hussites.Footnote ⁸ Although the outcome of the mission itself was rather dubious, the introduction of the Franciscan Observance met with immediate success.Footnote ⁹ The houses established by Capistrano were soon joined by others and by 1517 the province consisted of twenty-seven houses with 700 friars eagerly supported by local communities. Yet success was short-lived. Most of the Observant houses were established in Moravian and Silesian royal cities, inhabited predominantly by a German-speaking population. After the spread of Luther's teaching, these former Catholic strongholds quickly changed into centres of the new movement. The friars gradually lost political and economic support and new vocations were rare. The province lost most of its houses and almost all its friars over the course of fifty years. With only five houses and seventeen friars left in 1571, the Observant Friars Minor in the Bohemian Lands were on the verge of extinction.

The crisis reached its peak just as the Catholic Church was beginning to regain its position. In 1556 the first Jesuits were introduced and five years later a new archbishop of Prague (after a century-long vacancy) was appointed. With the help of new Catholic elites the Franciscans succeeded in re-opening several of their abandoned convents at the end of the sixteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰ Renewal was none the less hindered by the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, so the province could fully recover only after the final victory of the Catholic forces in the Bohemian Lands, confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia.Footnote ¹¹ At the beginning of the eighteenth century the province, now officially dedicated to St Wenceslas, patron of the Bohemian Lands, comprised thirty male convents and one house of recollection inhabited by around a thousand friars.Footnote ¹² Besides the male houses the province was also in charge of three female convents (with approximately one hundred nuns) and twenty communities of Secular Tertiaries (each having several dozen members). The entire province and each of its houses were firmly established within the religious landscape of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.Footnote ¹³

Such overwhelming success after 1650 might appear to eclipse some of the issues and challenges that confronted the Franciscans. Renewal was a slow and complicated process, which was hampered, yet at the same time stimulated, by the mendicant character of the order. As mendicants the Franciscans had to rely on the support of local communities so could operate only in places where the local population was able and willing to provide alms. This originally limited their activities to major royal cities and several smaller towns belonging to Catholic noblemen. The situation only began to improve with the advance of Catholic restoration in the Bohemian Lands as a whole. Only then were friars able to cover the entire country evenly. This complication, and the consequences of the collapse of the province in the 1570s, impeded Franciscan activities and severely delayed their involvement in the process of the renewal of the Catholic Church in Bohemia.Footnote ¹⁴ It was particularly significant in comparison with the activities of the Society of Jesus. In the third quarter of the sixteenth century, when the Jesuits in Bohemia were already celebrating their first achievements, the friars were still struggling for survival. Moreover, the Jesuits were filling the void created by the disappearance of the Franciscans.Footnote ¹⁵ While the friars were beginning slowly and painstakingly to restore their medieval convents, the Jesuits had already developed a solid system of colleges (including two universities), which were supported by a broad network of benefactors. The Franciscans missed out on the first impetus of Catholic Reform and only began to play a more active role after the Peace of Westphalia. They consequently found themselves somewhat in the shadow of their more successful rivals. This new situation was particularly challenging. In the fifteenth century the Observant Franciscans had occupied a privileged place among religious orders. They had been seen as the spearhead of the Catholic Church. In the seventeenth century this prestigious position was taken over by the Society of Jesus. The emergence of the Jesuits was not the only factor which threatened their position. Another major complication was the transformation of the entire religious landscape in the early modern Bohemian Lands. In the fifteenth century the Observant Franciscans could boast of their strict observance of religious life, incomparable, as they claimed, to other religious orders, particularly in the matter of poverty. Now such an assertion of uniqueness could be effectively challenged by other reformed orders, especially by the Capuchins, fellow Friars Minor, who claimed to maintain an even stricter observance of the poverty and ideals of St Francis.Footnote ¹⁶

The Franciscans were forced to respond and search for an efficient means to legitimise their position. Their eventual success was the result of several interconnected strategies which promoted the Friars Minor as a unique and exclusive religious body. The friars could build their arguments and persuasive strategies on their own rich traditions and history, again both in general and at a local level. The cult of Franciscan saints, who in their number and quality allegedly surpassed saints of other religious orders, turned out to be a particularly efficient tool. This applied in particular to St Francis who was depicted as a very special saint of extraordinary qualities (akin to a Seraph or even Jesus Christ himself), whose sanctity was passed on to all of his followers (and potentially to every sympathiser of the order).Footnote ¹⁷ Apart from sanctity, the notion of exclusivity was primarily built upon the strict observance of apostolic poverty, the area in which the Capuchins could be their rivals. The Franciscans were forced to apply austere measures in order to keep pace with them.

The authorities within the order decided as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century that the Bohemian province, as well as other provinces north of the Alps, should abandon the Observant branch of the order in favour of the stricter movement of the so-called Riforma.Footnote ¹⁸ Although the official motivation was to implement strict poverty, there were other reasons too. As Megan Armstrong has demonstrated, many Observant communities in other countries had accepted certain concessions (akin to Conventuals) and resisted attempts at reform made by the central authorities.Footnote ¹⁹ The introduction of the Riforma (and regular visitations) into the re-emerging provinces of the North could avoid such problems and enable the central authorities to exercise closer control of the friars in the confessionally contested areas. It was none the less a complicated process (the Bohemian province eventually implemented the reform as late as 1662). It was hampered not only by the Thirty Years' War, but also by the need to adapt the principles of the Riforma to local conditions. While the original Reformati sought out a more austere and contemplative life in isolated houses of recollection, in the northern provinces the aim was to pursue stricter observance of the rule in busy urban convents. Moreover, the Riforma had meanwhile lost some of its specifics (such as the renunciation of apostolic syndics), so many friars were not sure about the purpose of the reform. An eighteenth-century Franciscan writer, commenting on the introduction of the Reform, felt the need to emphasise that ‘the Reform had more noble goal than just shaving of beards and shortening of mantles, as some think’ and reminded his readers (rather vaguely though) that its main aim was ‘to ensure that Holy Poverty shines in the Church and in the refectory’.Footnote ²⁰

In spite of this ambiguity the introduction of the Riforma helped to strengthen the collective identity of local Franciscans who seemed to be proud of their new name, Ordo Fratrum Minorum Strictioris Observantiae. The notion of the stricter observance of the rules and of apostolic poverty not only helped to reinvigorate religious life, but also promoted and legitimised the Franciscan order among other religious institutions. In this respect there was a need not only to implement the Reform, but also to communicate it to the public. The provincial chapters and other authorities indeed paid meticulous attention to all the areas in which the ideal of apostolic poverty could be compromised, particularly in the eyes of the laity. Franciscan churches and convents were supposed to be free of any luxury or valuables. It was repeatedly stressed that the altarpieces and the decoration of churches were to be simple, free of any decorative excesses. Particular attention was paid to the appearance and behaviour of friars in public. They were forbidden to ride horses, use weapons, play games or use tobacco. They were only allowed to use simple wooden crosses and rosaries. If any of the friars owned any devotional object made of silver (such as consecrated caravaca crosses), they were obliged to keep it hidden underneath their habit. The same applied to keys and pouches and other objects that connoted ownership and property.Footnote ²¹ Any direct contact with money was of course to be strictly avoided. Friar Damascenus Charvath, in his interpretation of the Franciscan Rule, meticulously listed all eventual offences and summarised that any friar ‘who in his thoughts, words, deeds or in any indication seeks or manifests the right or ownership of money’ violated the Rule of the St Francis.Footnote ²²

As Lee Palmer Wandel has remarked, visual and theatrical manifestations of poverty were deeply embedded in the Franciscan tradition.Footnote ²³ The friars of the Bohemian province followed Francis's example and closely adhered to the advice of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio to the effect that it was important not only to be poor, but to appear poor as well.Footnote ²⁴ At the same time, the provincial authorities had to deal with a number of practical issues which arose in connection with the strict observance of the Rule of St Francis. None of the Franciscan houses had, of course, any property in land. Although most of the convents had a small garden, a fish tank, a pharmacy and a workshop (producing, for instance, sandals or habits), such elements played only a marginal role in the convent's economy. Most of the resources had to be obtained by begging and by donations.Footnote ²⁵ This fact had to be taken into account each time the friars contemplated the establishment of a new house. The Franciscans were on the one hand ‘cheaper’ and could settle in places which other more demanding orders rejected. They had on the other hand to consider carefully whether the local populace (of the town and the broader region) would be willing and able to support the convent. Already in the second half of the seventeenth century, as the network of convents became denser, the authorities of the province had had to reject several offers. The entire issue was complicated by the fact that the Franciscans were not the only mendicants and had to share the space with other religious orders. The establishment of a new house was becoming a delicate project, which had to be carefully negotiated with other parties. It occasionally provoked an open conflict during which other orders created ad hoc coalitions which sought to halt such efforts. For example, the Franciscans had to face a coalition of Conventuals and Dominicans when they wanted to re-open their convent in Opava (Troppau) in Silesia.Footnote ²⁶ Of course, they did not hesitate to use the same tactic themselves. The Olomouc friars together with the Jesuits unsuccessfully tried to stop the Capuchins from obtaining a foothold in the city at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They were more successful in 1688 when they launched a campaign to prevent the Brothers Hospitallers from establishing a house in nearby Tovačov (Tobitschau). Their argument that a new mendicant house in the region would jeopardise the mendicants in the Olomouc convent met with a sympathetic hearing.Footnote ²⁷ The monasteries and convents that emerged so dynamically during the renewal of the Catholic Church in early modern Bohemia created an extremely complicated network of ties, alliances, hostilities and patronages. Its particularly fragile balance of power had to be constantly re-negotiated, often with the help of local ecclesiastical or secular authorities.

The convent of St Bernardino in Olomouc (Olmütz) in Moravia, one of the oldest houses in the Bohemian Franciscan province, was part of this system. Its history closely mirrored the fate of the province and the richness of its primary sources makes it a convenient case for a more detailed study of Franciscan mendicancy. Its foundation was initiated by Capistrano himself during his first visit to the city in 1451.Footnote ²⁸ Due to the fact that the city with its bishopric was a major centre of Catholicism (the Prague archbishopric being vacant at that time), the convent soon became one of the most important houses in the province. The spread of the German Reformation, however, brought about a sudden decline.Footnote ²⁹ The former Catholic stronghold became a centre of Lutheranism, the friars gradually lost the support of the local populace and the convent had to be closed down in 1571. Olomouc was actually the last convent abandoned during the crisis and was also the first one to be reopened twenty-two years later. As in the case of the entire province, renewal was hampered by the Thirty Years’ War when the friars were expelled twice (in 1619–21 and again in 1642–50). Only in the second half of the seventeenth century did the convent completely recover and flourish once more.Footnote ³⁰ At that time Olomouc was once again a strong Catholic centre with a rich religious life organised by a plethora of religious institution: apart from the bishopric, the metropolitan chapter and three parish churches, there was also a Jesuit college with a university and six other male house (Dominicans, Conventuals, Augustinian Canons, Carthusians, Capuchins and in a suburb Premonstratensians) and three female religious houses (Poor Clares, Dominican nuns and Ursulines).Footnote ³¹ In spite of this dense competition and occasional conflicts, the Franciscan convent secured for itself a firm position in the religious topography of the city and flourished until its dissolution by Joseph ii in 1785.

The convent of St Bernardino was one of the largest convents in the province, designed to house more than fifty friars within its walls. There were also several Franciscan clerics amongst them who were to be taught philosophy by senior friars. This placed high demands on the collection of alms. The city of Olomouc itself was relatively well-off, but it also contained several other religious institutions, including three other mendicant houses (Dominicans, Conventuals, and Capuchins). As in any other Franciscan convent, the friars also had to beg for alms in the countryside. The provincial chapter of 1673 decided to set boundaries between the individual convents to secure efficient collection of alms and cover the entire country evenly. Olomouc was allocated a vast area covering central Moravia. Given its size, the convent was also allowed to keep a horse or two and a cart for transporting alms collected from the countryside. This was a significant concession. In other cases the provincial authorities were afraid that this could compromise the observance of poverty: when the convent in Kłodzko petitioned for the same licence, for example, the request was denied.Footnote ³²

In the mid-eighteenth century, the mendicant region of the Olomouc convent comprised more than 350 settlements, mostly villages but also several towns.Footnote ³³ The majority of the villages and towns were located on the fertile plain surrounding Olomouc, within a forty-kilometre radius from the city. This area was divided into four districts (circaturae) for the better organisation of collections. Each of those districts stretched along one of the main roads running north, east, south and west from the city. In addition to these four districts, the mendicant region of the Olomouc convent included two mountain districts to the north. This area was quite large and remote but was allocated by the provincial authorities to the Olomouc convent as a ‘no man's land’ when it was realised that the region was too poor to sustain an independent house. Another remote district was located in south Moravia, a wine-growing region, where the Olomouc friars were supposed to beg for wine (other victuals were collected by friars of another nearby convent). Last but not least, the city of Olomouc was an independent district in and of itself.

Begging for alms was far from an irregular, spontaneous activity. On the contrary, it was highly systematic. Each convent had a fixed itinerary which prescribed where, when and what could be collected. The Olomouc friars carried out most of the begging in the four major districts around the city. They set out on mendicant tours targeted at particular goods over the course of the year. They would consequently beg for butter in June and July, for poultry in August and September and for corn and vegetables in October and November. They would also take shorter tours to richer places for oil (January), hay (June) and eggs (once during Lent and again after the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary). As far as the mountain districts were concerned, friars would visit them for flax in February and March, for butter in July and August and for corn in December and January. Wine from south Moravia would be collected in October.Footnote ³⁴

The friars would go begging on an everyday basis in the city itself, although some of the alms were often negotiated in advance. Thus the friars would visit bakers for flour on Wednesdays and butchers for meat on Fridays (with the exception of Lent). Milk, fruit and vegetables would be collected on Saturdays. Every fortnight they would visit local wine merchants. Candles, frankincense, oil, ink and paper were begged for during Advent and Lent at local parishes or monasteries. Wealthier church institutions (the bishop, metropolitan chapter, Premonstratensian monastery) would also occasionally donate to the friars material for their building activities: stone, bricks and wood. The municipal council would donate beer to the local mendicants at Easter, Christmas and on the order's feast days.

The regular collection of alms placed demands on the organisation. Friars were always to beg in pairs both within the city and in the countryside. They were at times accompanied by a lay volunteer who helped them to carry the alms. It was not always possible to carry everything even with such help, which is why they had to regularly deposit the collected alms at certain safe places. Over the course of time the friars in all probability developed a fixed network of such depositories (manors of sympathetic landlords or parsonages where the friars stayed overnight), from which they would eventually collect the alms and transport them to the convent. Compared with the relatively regular and quiet life in the convent, the mendicant tours placed a major strain on the friars. When visiting one of the adjacent mendicant districts the friars actually had to cover more than 200 kilometres, wearing clogs or, later, sandals. Journeys to the mountain districts were even more demanding, particularly in winter. It is not surprising that some friars were not happy about this duty and the provincial authorities complained that ‘many fathers and young friars, and others agile enough, use made-up excuses to avoid collecting alms’ and instructed the superiors of individual houses to punish those ‘lazy and useless servants’ (1726).Footnote ³⁵

In spite of all those obstacles the friars were still able to collect an impressive amount of alms to cover the needs of the convent. In the 1773 report to the bishopric the superior of the Olomouc convent confirmed that the friars had collected within the city itself almost three tonnes of meat, 250 kilograms of candles and 2 kilograms of frankincense. In the countryside they had collected 7,000 litres of wheat, 15,000 litres of rye, 5,500 litres of barley and 1,000 litres of pulses. They had also collected 150 geese, 200 ducks, 320 chickens, 18,000 eggs and more than a ton of butter.Footnote ³⁶ Another version of the 1773 report provides an even broader picture. It enumerated the alms from all the individual districts and converted them into a monetary value.Footnote ³⁷ The central districts thus yielded 1532 fl. (Rheinisch Gulden), the mountain districts 393 fl. and the wine collection corresponded to 182 fl. The value of the alms collected within Olomouc was 966 fl. Along with ‘donations from various places’ of 961 fl., the overall value of the alms collected and gifts amounted to 4,034 fl. This sum represented only three-fifths of the total convent's revenues for that year (6,934 fl.). The balance of 2,900 fl. was provided ‘ex Sacristia’, a rather broadly defined category comprising various forms of mass stipends. While the collected victuals covered most of the everyday needs of the friars, the income from mass stipends was primarily used to pay for additional convent expenses (repairs, building activities, new devotional objects).

The maximum number of inhabitants of the convent, as approved by the state authorities, was fifty-one persons, respectively thirty-eight priests and clerics and thirteen lay friars. According to the instructions of the minister provincial in 1768–71, each convent should have been able to collect annual alms of an approximate value of 150 fl. per priest or cleric and 130 fl. per lay friar. The Olomouc convent was therefore supposed to collect alms corresponding to 7,260 fl. The superior of the convent none the less argued that the discrepancy, amounting to 325 fl., was caused by the fluctuating price of corn and that the alms that had been collected were perfectly sufficient. Compared to the incomes of other monasteries, living costs were therefore relatively low. It was certainly less than the state authorities considered appropriate at that time for a religious person. When Joseph ii abolished religious mendicancy in 1785, he decided that friars should receive a remuneration from the state at a flat rate of 200 guilders per person per year.Footnote ³⁸ Additional documents related to the dissolution of the convent none the less appear to confirm the relative poverty of the friars. The officials making the inventory noticed the simple furnishings of the cells, utensils in the kitchen and other convent property (including two fairly worn-out horses: the clerk meticulously noted that one was blind in the left eye, the other in the right eye). They eventually valued all the movable assets of the convent at a mere 1,192 fl. The only value attached to the convent (and strictly speaking not in the property of the friars) was the capital of several pious bequests, whose interest was intended to sponsor annual masses for the founders. The capital had been deposited with several individuals and institutions and totalled 10,491 fl. The overall profit from the dissolved convent was therefore 11,683 fl.Footnote ³⁹ Compared to other religious houses abolished in Olomouc, this sum was negligible. Most of the other monasteries were valued at more than 200,000 fl., the large Premonstratensian monastery at a staggering 1,400,000 fl.Footnote ⁴⁰ The dissolution of the Olomouc Franciscan convent was therefore less than profitable for the Religious Fund. Particularly so since it had to continue paying remunerations to the remaining thirty-six friars who were not secularised but transferred to other convents at a rate of 7,200 fl. a year.

The records concerning the dissolution of the Olomouc convent (1785) confirm two things. First, that the friars were able, albeit with complications, to maintain the mendicant way of life up until the reforms of Joseph ii. Second, up until the very end the inhabitants of Olomouc were interested in the spiritual services that the friars provided. In the second half of the eighteenth century mendicant convents were still important assets to Catholic urban communities. It would seem that the critical voices labelling friars as vampires sponging on the poor and spreading superstition, however scorching they were, addressed only marginal audiences.Footnote ⁴¹ There was a lively interaction between the convent and its surroundings and many of those ties were based on the mendicant character of the order. As one of the officials at the Olomouc city council remarked, ‘although [the Franciscans] depend entirely on alms, they themselves distribute alms mercifully’.Footnote ⁴²

Poverty and mendicancy indeed helped the friars (re)negotiate their position in society and legitimise their existence. Mendicancy also enabled them to enlarge their client base. When entering a mendicant church, believers made a deliberate choice based on their previous sympathy, experience or expectations. Mendicant practice, in contrast, brought the friars to the believers, even those without any intentions or inclinations to visit a Franciscan church. This form of interaction enabled the friars to address a much broader spectrum of people and eventually recruit new, albeit occasional, visitors to their churches. It also enabled them to overcome their distinctly urban character and export their spirituality not only outside the walls of their churches, but also outside the walls of the cities. The mendicant region of every convent was to a certain extent identical with its sphere of spiritual influence where other Franciscan activities could take root.Footnote ⁴³ In the community of the Third Order established at the Olomouc convent, there were, apart from inhabitants of the city, many people from the mendicant region, including nine parish priests.Footnote ⁴⁴ Their affiliation with the Friars Minor helped to promote elements of Franciscan spirituality in the rural parishes.Footnote ⁴⁵ The devotion of the Stations of the Cross had an even wider dissemination which in the 1730s rapidly spread from Franciscan churches to other localities.Footnote ⁴⁶ The consecration of the Stations none the less remained a prerogative of the superior of the nearest Franciscan convent (from which the friars would come to collect alms). Almost five hundred Ways of the Cross were erected in Bohemia and Moravia alone between 1735 and 1786.Footnote ⁴⁷ The devotion became immensely popular and its Franciscan origin and connotations helped, as in the case of the Third Order, to transform the contact that the friars initiated during begging into a more permanent relationship.

The sources do not reveal much about what was actually happening when the friars arrived at the doorstep of their eventual sponsors. Nor do they communicate a great deal about the attitude and motivation of the donors. Apart from eager supporters of the friars, there were apparently other people who simply viewed the giving of alms as their Christian duty or a custom enforced by social pressure. Others might have refused to give alms at all. However, one thing seems certain: alms-giving was not a one-way interaction. The friars and the donors were instead involved in a complex exchange of gifts and favours.Footnote ⁴⁸ There were donors who provided material goods on the one hand and friars who provided various spiritual services on the other. This is particularly apparent in the case of mass stipends, but also applied to the donations of victuals and other gifts. Giving was first of all an act of charity which could help a Catholic Christian attain salvation. It could at the same time initiate additional favours (mediated by the friars) either related to salvation or more mundane affairs. It would seem that some of the alms might have had the character of an offering, as was the case with peasants who maintained the custom of donating the first-born calf of their stock to the convent. Other alms might have been ‘exchanged’ for prayers, blessings, small devotional objects and other sacramentals. Bernhard Sannig, a Minister Provincial and one of the leading scholars of the Bohemian province, published his Rituale Franciscanum in 1685 which became a popular handbook even outside the Franciscan order.Footnote ⁴⁹ Republished more than a dozen times not only in Prague, but also in Venice and Rome, the book provides insight into the broad range and variety of ‘lesser rites’. Apart from absolutions and professions of faith, it contained numerous blessings, conjurations and exorcisms for various occasions. The blessings covered not only various devotional objects (crosses, rosaries, holy water, candles), but also objects of everyday use (houses, breweries, boats etc.). Conjurations could be used against fever or tempests, exorcisms against pests, birds and, of course, demons. Many of the sacramentals apparently had a rural character and were performed by friars on their mendicant tours.Footnote ⁵⁰

Sacramentals indeed seem to have been an extremely valuable currency in the mendicant interaction, as even the critics of the mendicants confirm. Ignaz von Born, in his satirical Monachologia (1783), a quasi-Linnaean catalogue of monks as an animal species situated between humans and apes, mentions a specific quality of the Franciscan species who ‘possesses a most wonderful art of transmuting little images, square bits of paper, amulets, and other similar trifles, into wine and meat’.Footnote ⁵¹ The mass stipends were of no less importance, however. The number of people seeking the intercessory services of the friars was high throughout the entire eighteenth century. Every year the friars of the St Bernardino convent were obliged to recite 5–10,000 masses for the donors' intentions. The fact that two-fifths of the convent revenues originated from this source manifests how important and sought-after these services were. Although, technically, the mass stipends should have been voluntary alms, they became virtually a fixed fee of half-a-guilder per mass at this time. It was here where the principle of mendicancy was at stake and where the function of an apostolic syndic became indispensable. In order to avoid violation of the Rule, the friars could not accept the money directly. Instead all the mass stipends, as well as other monetary donations, were brought to the syndic who accepted them on behalf of the Holy See and consequently used them for the benefit of the convent. As a result of this complicated and rather precarious scheme, the friars themselves did not come in direct contact with the money, nor did it come into their possession.Footnote ⁵²

The institute of the apostolic syndic, rather vaguely defined in the Rule of St Francis, became crucial for the implementation of mendicant ideals in changing social and economic conditions. Certain reform movements within the Friars Minor had originally refused to have syndics. By the time the Riforma was introduced into the north-alpine provinces, the movement had already rejected its original intention to refrain from appointing apostolic syndics. The first syndic mentioned in the Olomouc convent chronicle was Johann Mandelius, a member of a new Catholic establishment in the city after the suppression of the uprising of the non-Catholic Estates in 1620.Footnote ⁵³ When elected syndic, he had already been a town councillor and mayor. The second syndic was Mandelius' son-in-law Tobias Schwonauer, also a town councillor and mayor. The chronicle mentions a succession of eleven other syndics, all but one of whom were members of the city council.Footnote ⁵⁴ The syndics were not only vital for the economy of the convent, but were also central figures for interaction with the city. The syndics were affiliated with the order and as members of the Franciscan family they virtually became the friars' ambassadors on the city council. Although the Franciscans were not the only religious institution regularly sponsored by the city council, their position was indeed in many ways privileged. This was manifested among other things by their official appointment as chaplains of the city hall. Although the priest of the main parish church of St Maurice bitterly complained against their appointment, the intervention of the apostolic syndic in the council was decisive.Footnote ⁵⁵

The intensity of the relationship between the convent and the syndics was motivated by the two-fold interest of the syndics. On a private level they attended sermons and services, sponsored new devotional objects and altarpieces (Schwonauer built a Holy Sepulchre chapel attached to the church), obtained numerous indulgences and were eventually buried in the convent church. On a public level they viewed the friars as important allies. Councillors saw the mendicants as, among other things, due to their economic dependence, much better partners than the bishop, the metropolitan chapter or, for example, the Jesuits. With their assistance the city elites could enter the process of Catholic renewal in a more vigorous manner. Together they could promote their ideas and interests and negotiate the patterns of local religious life more efficiently. The strength of this alliance became apparent in 1701 when the bishop's consistory excommunicated the city council after a quarrel about the competence of ecclesiastical and municipal courts. The Franciscans consequently sabotaged the excommunication and backed the council against the bishop's consistory, the Jesuits and other religious orders. Although the emperor soon forced the consistory to withdraw the excommunication, the risks were high. The behaviour of the Franciscans scandalised the clergy in the city and beyond, but it eventually paid off. When, in the following year, the ambitious plan by the Franciscans to build an imitation of the Lateran Scala Sancta met with resistance from other ecclesiastical institutions, the support of a grateful city council helped the friars overcome opposition and pursue their project.

Mendicancy played a truly crucial role in shaping the friars' relationship with their surroundings. It was a key factor which influenced all other Franciscan activities. From a practical point of view, it was without doubt a serious complication. It was one of the factors (together with apostasy of some friars, lack of new vocations and loss of political support) which contributed to the collapse of the mendicant network in the regions influenced by the Reformation. It also considerably hampered the restoration of mendicant houses. Dependence on local communities made it extremely difficult to operate in religiously mixed or even hostile environments. And even later, in the countries where the position of the Catholic Church was fully restored, the situation was often precarious. Individual mendicant orders and their houses had to compete constantly for the attention (and alms) of believers. By the beginning of the eighteenth century mendicant (and other religious) institutions in Central Europe created a dense network which often pursued a sort of the ‘balance of power’ policy – when one of the orders wanted to establish a new house or to enhance the position of an old one, a coalition of opposing institutions emerged.

In spite of these complications the mendicant system worked until its abolition in the 1780s. Although the friars had to make several concessions and compromises (most notably the channelling of mass stipends through the apostolic syndics), they none the less succeeded in maintaining the spirit of mendicancy according to their rule. They were entirely dependent on alms and the everyday support of their surroundings – as the superior of the Olomouc convent wrote to the bishop's office: ‘I testify with all my honesty, that the amount of our (by humble begging collected) alms is volatile, because it depends on the blessing of God and the generosity of our donors; if either or sometimes even both of these are lacking, then much of the alms (sometimes more than a half) are missing.’Footnote ⁵⁶ They had almost no regular means to sustain themselves and had to rely on the charity of the people.

At the same time mendicancy stimulated the friars’ missionary efforts. In particular, it took them out of their cloister. During their mendicant tours friars could address other people than the regular visitors to their churches. They also extended their mission from cities to the countryside, where they would regularly visit even remote hamlets. Due to the reciprocal character of alms, begging was for the friars an opportunity to offer their services. The close interaction with the public (and dependence on their support) also made friars more sensitive towards the needs and interests of common people. They could approach the local populace more efficiently and help to develop and foster their Catholic identity. And last but not least, in the long term the friars could create powerful alliances with their donors and patrons and significantly influence patterns of local religious life. Mendicancy has often been overshadowed by other religious practices: church attendance, sacraments, preaching, pilgrimage and processions, the cult of saints, various public or private devotions, pious vows and foundations, confraternities and last wills. It was nevertheless an important activity with strong religious aspects which stimulated interaction between friars and the public and which contributed remarkably to the religious diversity of early modern Catholicism.