In Pastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany, Deeana Copeland Klepper sheds light on the process of Augustinian canons’ clerical training and its impact on pastoral care in late medieval Bavaria and Swabia. Her close study of Albert of Diessen's Mirror of Priests—facilitated by the survival of three autograph copies of the manuscript—reveals not only the ideals that the canons hoped to impart to their communities, but also Albert's continued engagement with the text over time. More than a theological compendium or how-to book for clerics, Albert's Mirror was a dynamic text meant to edify clerics through their pastoral duties.
Klepper's close reading of the autograph manuscripts demonstrates Albert's logic for digesting and adapting material from his sources and the ways he used this material to address both his personal theological interests and local pastoral concerns. Klepper provides helpful tables that outline Albert's source material, his interpretation of this material, and his revisions over time. The tables both clarify Klepper's arguments and give the reader extensive samples of Albert's text for which, at present, there is no published critical edition. In Klepper's view, Albert's purposeful selection and revision of content provides unique insight into how Albert's community conformed to the traditions of elite, orthodox Christian practice, but also illustrated the lived experience of pastors and their parishioners. Klepper concludes that Albert wrote for a community that had been greatly impacted by the Black Death and the waves of anti-Jewish violence that followed in its wake, by changing views of “superstition” and “witchcraft,” and perhaps even by the early stirrings of late fourteenth-century apocalypticism.
In the introduction and first chapter, Klepper introduces us to Albert, his manuscripts, and his sources. Klepper outlines the key texts in the Summa and priests’ manual traditions (including John of Freiburg, Thomas Aquinas, and Hostiensis, among many others) that formed the basis of pastoral discourse in later medieval German monastic centers. She notes that Augustinian canons were largely products of the order's convent schools rather than universities, and that Augustinian houses provided personnel for local parishes in villages, towns, and market centers such as Diessen itself.
In Chapter 2, Klepper paints a vivid picture of Albert as an important figure in Diessen's sociopolitical landscape. Prior to completing the Mirror, Albert had composed a lengthy record of the convent's property holdings known as the Urbar (52–53). His name also appears in various documents detailing negotiations over jurisdictions for revenue and grazing rights (57–58). “Dominus Albertus” was likely noble and a prominent community member. Reliable, respected, and astute about local politics and power struggles, Albert was uniquely familiar with the region and the communities in which his brother canons served as priests. Klepper demonstrates that the Diessen canons served parishes all around the Ammersee and Starnbergersee (78–79) and that the town of Diessen had a thriving market and at least at one time had a Jewish quarter or group of families (69). Thus, this seemingly remote, provincial town and its canons shared in the concerns about inter-religious violence that affected larger cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg in the later fourteenth century—concerns that, Klepper argues, Albert directly addresses in the Mirror.
Chapters 3–5 examine the text and manuscripts of the Mirror of Priests and the ways that the content of the Mirror reveals aspects of communal identity. Albert shared his 1370 and 1377 editions, respectively, with the Augustinian houses of Rottenbuch and Tegernsee, but his 1373 manuscript remained at Diessen as an “evolving, interactive sourcebook” (94). Responsive to the local community and determined to elevate the practice of pastoral care, Albert made conscious choices when composing and revising. He cited (and amplified) authorities who affirmed his disapproval of superstition and extrajudicial violence. While working firmly within established theological bounds, Albert applied the wisdom of Christianity's established authorities to local problems. For example, he emphasized that people should not misguidedly believe that women can fly through the air (147), or use the Eucharist as a talisman to enhance or protect crops (according to climate records, a plague of locusts actually afflicted the community in 1366, making this point particularly relevant; 149–150).
Albert tackled issues that were timely and sometimes controversial. He frequently reiterated the Augustinian dictum of “slay them not” to discourage extrajudicial Christian violence toward Jews (164), pondered at length the impact of demonic obsession (153), and devoted a significant and original part of his manual to consideration of the end times (182). Albert expanded his treatment of these topics in his 1373 and 1377 editions of the Mirror, tailoring each autograph copy to the monastic house that was its destination. Significantly, his first revised manuscript from 1373 remained at Diessen as a working copy that archived Albert's revisions and his community's responses to the text.
Klepper's work raises interesting questions about local responses to developments in wider Christendom, especially concerning the later medieval persistence of the Augustinian paradigm of Jews’ role in salvation history. She might have situated her discussion of Albert's indebtedness to the Augustinian viewpoint more firmly within the extensive historiography on this topic; for example, Jeremy Cohen argues that themes of blood libel largely supplanted Augustine's emphasis on the importance of Jewish witness in the later Middle Ages. Albert's Mirror offers a counterpoint to this interpretation in its firm assertion of the Augustinian tradition, both in Albert's original manuscript and in his persistence on this point in later editions of the Mirror, a theme that would benefit from further development in Klepper's arguments.
Overall, Klepper persuasively concludes that the Mirror is “an exceptionally rich and distinctive example of the insufficiently appreciated genre of parish-oriented pastoral literature” (194). Her meticulous study of Albert and his community at Diessen suggests possibilities for how developments in broader Christendom resonated locally in pastoral care. She provides a valuable introduction to and interpretation of a fascinating and under-studied text, helpfully encouraging further research on Albert and his Mirror of Priests.
