Life in the Pauline Monasteries of Late Medieval Hungary

Abstract

The Pauline order emerged in the second half of the thirteenth century and became one of the most popular religious communities of medieval Hungary. Due to their mixed – hermitic, monastic and mendicant – character, their monasteries developed an economic system and a social network that was unique in the fifteenth and sixteenth-century kingdom. Their repudiation of higher education was coupled with the prestige of manual work and literary creativity. The main supporters of the order were members of the lesser nobility and the aristocracy.