ABSTRACT
This chapter also engages with Klingental and sheds light on the convent’s monetary policy. Klingental received large sums of money for post-obit services which the nuns used to invest in rents and realty in order to turn onetime foundations into yielding regular revenues. The rents and revenues these investments brought in, along with the interest from credits they granted to the town’s citizens, soon made Klingental Basel’s wealthiest convent. The nuns’ economic foothold in Basel made them powerful and even allowed them to win conflicts against influential opponents, such as the city government that tried to forcefully reform Klingental in the 1480s. This chapter closes with deliberations of wealth and debts and the medieval economy.
