Summary By the late Middle Ages, mendicant spiritual confraternities had developed a poor reputation. Their spiritual status was ill-identified: somewhere between requests for intercession, necrological commemoration, and pious associations. In the hands of the mendicants, they seemed to resemble what indulgences had supposedly become in the hands of the papacy: bait that was handed out to extort funds from the faithful while offering an apparently immediate access to Paradise. Thus, like indulgences, they seem to have been gradually emptied of their substance and denounced (even before Luther) as glaring evidence of the corruption of the Roman Church. Much recent scholarship has followed this negative portrait of spiritual confraternities ? unless it has conflated them with other non-spiritual confraternities, or indeed ignored them altogether. This volume draws on the abundant number of letters of confraternity available from Hungarian sources in order to provide a more nuanced picture of mendicant spiritual confraternities. It sheds new light on the links between the mendicants and their supports among the laity, and emphasises the broader significance of the confraternity movement in late medieval piety in Central Europe and beyond. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Spiritual Confraternities of the Mendicant Orders - In a Blind Spot of Research An Elusive Object of Study The Link Between Confraternitas and the Monks Do Mendicant Spiritual Confraternities Exist? Established Historical Givens Unresolved Questions Central European Trajectories Chapter 2. The Hungarian Documentary Corpus Sources on The Spiritual Confraternities of the Mendicant Orders in the Middle Ages The Documentation Pertaining to Hungary: Overview 'Hungarian' Letters of Confraternity Chapter 3. The Success of Mendicant Spiritual Confraternities in Hungary until about 1530 The Hungarian Religious Context The Infatuation with Mendicant Spiritual Confraternities Sociography of the Affiliates Chapter 4. The Process of Spiritual Affiliation to the Mendicants A Nebula of Graces The Letter in Spiritual Affiliation From Individual to Confraternitas Chapter 5. Mendicant Uses of Spiritual Confraternity The Involvement of the Mendicants in the Development of Spiritual Confraternities The Interest of Spiritual Association for the Friars The Franciscans and Spiritual Confraternity The Other Mendicants Chapter 6. Confraternity and Salvation: The Affiliates' View The Value of Spiritual Confraternity on the Salvation Market Why Affiliate Oneself with The Mendicants? Three Itineraries of Spiritual Associates Conclusion Bibliography Tables, Maps, Graphs Appendix: Sixteen Letters of Confraternity Figures (Letters Of Confraternity, Seals) Index of Proper Names