La Vita del povero et humile servo de Dio Francesco: una memoria negata.

Abstract

The Vita del povero et humile servo de Dio Francesco is a fourteenth-century compilation, the volgarizzamento of some latin franciscan sources including the Liber Chronicarum written by Angelo Clareno. It was probably assembled in the circles of the friars called “fraticelli”: after the declarations of Pope John XXII, they were persecuted and declared heretics for their profession of absolute poverty. The text did not have great success in the world of Franciscan studies. This article aims to retrace its editorial history and propose new hypotheses about its genesis and circulation methods, starting from the analysis of the manuscript tradition – which counts four manuscripts. The purpose is to reconsider this compilation in the light of the most recent studies about medieval translation and the history of dissidence, in order to reconstruct an historical-literary framework born under the influence of Angelo Clareno and Pietro di Giovanni Olivi.