ABSTRACT
This chapter follows these early medieval foundations into the late Middle Ages from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries and inquires as to how they fared politically and economically half a millennium after their respective foundations. This chapter centers on the convents’ economic and territorial administration. While Fraumünster’s original territorial setup had been the most elaborate, mismanagement and poor decision-making caused the convent to lose much of its economic and political power by the late Middle Ages. Buchau and Notre-Dame, however, experienced the inverse situation. Five centuries of circumspect territorial policy allowed Buchau to triple its area of influence. And Notre-Dame not only succeeded in establishing itself as one of three powers within Soissons alongside the bishop and the count but also in more than doubling its seigneuries from 11 to 25. Within these seigneuries, the abbess of Notre-Dame wielded low, middle, and high justice; she appointed priests and collected taxes both in money and kind. These developments reveal the convents and the women who led Notre-Dame and Buchau as extraordinarily able and strategic rulers. This observation challenges the historiographical narrative of the general decline of economic-political importance of monasteries in the late Middle Ages. Instead, this chapter argues that the success of an institution very much depended on the capabilities of its abbesses. And while there were cases of gradual decline, as at Fraumünster, the majority of convents fared well.
