Reformen vor der Reformation

The city of Augsburg was among the principal urban centres at the forefront of cultural change across later medieval Europe. It was also home to the venerable Benedictine abbey of St Ulrich und Afra, first founded in the early eleventh century and from 1441 onwards a leading light in the observant movement known as the ‘Melk Reform’; the enormous church that still stands today was begun in 1474, and enjoyed the considerable patronage of the Emperor Maximilian. The interplay between the imperial city and its abbey is the central focus of this provocatively titled collection of some twenty-one articles, together with a short introduction and conclusion. The reader unfamiliar with the city, and perhaps better acquainted with towns south of the Alps, would be advised to begin with the late Rolf Kießling’s fine survey of urbanisation and urbanity in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Augsburg (pp. 101–24). Albeit synthetic of his many earlier publications, it offers a clear sense of just how significant Augsburg really was on the European stage, and how the city as a corporate body of citizens came to secure a level of predominance vis-à-vis its religious institutions in the course of the fifteenth century

Art · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Medieval European History and Architecture