A Cloister on Trial

In 1517, the usually tranquil friary in Körmend, Hungry found itself at the centre of controversy when its Augustinian friars, charged with drunkenness, sexual abuses and liturgical negligence, were driven out and replaced with Franciscans. Based on the surviving interrogations of a papal enquiry into these events, this book illuminates the tensions that lurked within the religious culture of a seemingly unremarkable town. By focussing on the trial documents, the book reveals the spaces of individual and communal action within the dynamic of lay-clerical relations negotiated in a friary reform at the beginning of the 16th century.