The Charterhouse of Cadzand and the serendipities of empire

Abstract
From the late 13th century, with gathering momentum in the early 14th, many parts of Latin Christendom experienced a marked upsurge in eremitical inclinations, which gained realization in ways of life offered by a range of religious orders both new and established: Paulines in Hungary, Celestines in central Italy and France, Olivetans in Tuscany, Jeronimites a little later in Spain, and not least the Carthusians. From the initial nucleus in the western Alps, the Carthusians during their first century had established some thirty houses, widening their network gradually further afield by attracting princely patronage to include 60 houses by the end of their second century. From the 1280s the Order generated a phenomenal expansion: ninety-one foundations in the course of its third century with a further sixty-seven from the 1380s, bringing the total of extant houses in 1520 to 194. The most intense phase of expansion came in the second quarter of the 14th century, with at least one new house founded almost each year. This chapter discusses patronage of the Carthusians as a somewhat paradoxical expression of cosmopolitan culture and identity during the Hundred Years War between England and France. – © Oxford Scholarship Online.