Rafał Kubicki

The Document Confirming the Agreement between the Franciscans and the City of Braniewo from 1301 Regarding the Changing of the Monastery’s Location

The subject of this study is the agreement between the Franciscans and the City of Braniewo from April 28, 1301, regarding the changing of the location of the monastery which was hitherto known only from the study by Eugen Brachvogel. Leonhard Lemmens’s register of sources on the history of the old Saxon province of the Franciscans and the Warmian Diplomatic Codex both fail to mention it. Today, the contents of the document are known from the copy drawn up at the end of the 16th century and currently stored in the Etats‑Ministerium collection in the Prussian Privy State Archives in Berlin‑Dahlem (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz).
The document provides important information helpful in reconstructing the dispute between the city and the Franciscans as well as in identifying the subsequent locations of the monastery. The Franciscans came to Braniewo due to the activities of the Warmian bishop Henry I Fleming in 1296. Several years later, a conflict arose  etween the monastery and the city. On April 14 in Elbląg and April 20, 1301, in Braniewo, negotiations were held to resolve the matter. According to the agreement, the Franciscans gave up a parcel in the city and in return received another one, located north from the city, near the river Pasłęka. It was decided, moreover, that the city would build a gate and a bridge above the moat which would connect the monastery with the city.
The dispute between the city and the Franciscans also became the source of the legend about the allegedly illegal destruction of the monastery in the city by the citizens or the Teutonic Order. The 1301 agreement turned out to be short‑lived and only the third location of the monastery proved to be the final one. On February 20, 1330, it was confirmed that the Franciscan monastery was moved back to the city. This decision was made due to the danger it would pose if its edifices were seized by enemy forces attempting to storm the city

The purpose of the school system organized by the Dominicans in the thirteenth century was to provide their congregation with a supply of preachers to further the mission expressed in the popular motto of the order: contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere. In the period when the first friaries were being organized, human resources for the order were the numerous friars recruited from university circles. This manner of acquiring educated friars would not, however, be a permanent solution especially in peripheral regions where there were not yet any universities. Hence, the order had to take upon itself the task of creating new personnel. This was the situation mostly in Northern and Central Europe, as well as in the Teutonic Order’s Baltic jurisdiction in Prussia, where Dominican friaries operated that belonged to the Polish province of the order. This paper presents the system of Dominican schools functioning mainly in the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century within the Prussian contrata, a lower auxiliary unit in the order’s administration, encompassing the Teutonic Prussia regions. In addition to the running of schools, the foreign studies of Dominican friars from this region will also be discussed.