Forced Vocation or Not?: The Case of the Abducted Poor Clare of Wamel (1464)

Abstract

In 1884 the Provincial Archives of Dutch province in Arnhem (known today as the Guelders Archief) obtained a collection of archival materials from the former ducal Buren castle in the so-called Betuwe region, between two branches of the Rhine river. At present, this batch of archival materials forms part of the large archival collection of the Counts and Dukes of Guelders. Those who want to study these materials still need to start from the handwritten provisional summary catalogue, compiled by the Dutch archivist Van Riemsdijk at the end of the nineteenth century. Due to the vicissitudes of history, the archival pieces from Buren castle are in a deplorable state.1 The Buren castle had been a residence of the Dukes of since 1435. As such, it housed, more or less from that moment on, one of the ducal archival depots at a time when a central archive was still out of the question. In 1472, Duke Arnold of donated the property of Buren to his cousin Frederick of Egmond, and later, the same property, by then known as the County of Buren, ended up in the possession of the House of Orange-Nassau. All this time, the archival materials from the period remained at Buren castle, possibly augmented with additional archival materials formerly kept at the castle of Grave. This castle had been part of the Duchy of until 1473, and likewise