7 - Two Spiritual Friends from Facons

Summary

In 1490, pope innocent VIII felt the need to acquaint himself with the isituation at the Windesheim convent of Facons. He sent Lubbert Vyncke, abbot of the Benedictine dual monastery of Dikninge (near to the village of Ruinen in the province of Drenthe), to Antwerp as his delegate. Reports of what Abbot Vyncke found at Facons do not survive. The seventeenth-century chronicler of Facons, Rector Christophorus Caers (†1673), mentions the arrival of the abbot in 1490 only briefly. As to the reasons behind this visitation he notes only – perhaps advisedly – that the Pope had received word that life at Facons was somewhat undisciplined.

Caers does mention incidents at Facons elsewhere in his chronicle that suggest a laxness in monastic discipline there. In 1451, Sister Angela van Zuylen brought with her an annuity as a gift to the convent on the occasion of her profession, which was to be used to provide the entire convent with a meal, twice a week, of ‘good, freshly salted and boiled mutton, a respectable portion on every plate’. And in 1460 the magistrate of Antwerp decided to absolve Facons of the obligation of paying the tax on sweetened wine. Because the nuns were often weak or ill and lived in cold lodgings, they often had to drink mulled wine. If we compare both of these instances to the prevailing indifference at Diepenveen to the quality of food consumed – which undoubtedly represents the Diepenveen ideal – then it would seem as if Facons, too, was clearly less strict in this regard. Finally, an unmistakable sign of the erosion of the spiritual life at Facons was the initiative of Catharina Steeyncx, who at her profession bought off the wollenwerck, or manual labour in textiles. The prior superior of the Chapter of Windesheim did, it is true, vehemently protest at this unheard of interference with the observance, but he was not successful in reversing what amounted to the undermining of one of the pillars of the Windesheim monastic way of life.

It appears, then, that the Pope had ample reason to send a visitation to Facons, for the spiritual life there was of a rather low standard. But in 1489, before Abbot Lubbert could pay his visit to Facons, it was struck by the scourge of God.