Franciscan Friars Research Articles

The Divine Dinner Party: Domestic Imagery and Easter Preaching in Late Medieval England

When Margery Kempe imagines each member of the Trinity sitting within the chamber of her soul on a cushion of an appropriate color, she uses familiar household furnishings to develop a metaphor that helps explain a complex theological concept, while at the same time creating the sense that these ideas are as natural and easy to accept as the objects from which the metaphor is constructed. Similarly, in an Easter sermon preached in 1431, her contemporary Nicholas Philip, a Franciscan friar of the convent in King's Lynn (Margery's hometown), uses household furnishings to prepare his listeners to receive the Eucharist at Easter. The sermon is built on the metaphor of the body as the house to which Christ has been invited for a feast, and, like Kempe's Trinity image, this house has furnishings — a carpet, a tapestry, a cushion, a seat cover — and the feast itself involves a variety of dishes along with music and entertaining guests. The sermon develops a multifaceted image that becomes a complete sensory experience, focusing not on the meaning of transubstantiation but on the communicant's proper disposition. While Nicholas Philip's Easter sermon may be unusual in using this imagery to shape an entire sermon, many late medieval Easter sermons preached in England employ such domestic imagery to elucidate for their audiences the significance of the Eucharist, the reception of which, for most of the laity living in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, took place only on Easter. In a process that can be called the domestication of the divine, such metaphors render this annual reception less distant and abstract, making an event with supernatural implications as natural and familiar as a dinner party. However, the rhetorical purpose of this domestication is not primarily to encourage feelings of comfort and easy familiarity with the theological underpinnings of the sacrament, but to promote virtue and responsibility in the recipient both in preparation for and following this event. Nicholas Philip's Easter sermon thus testifies to a homiletic concern of many late medieval English preachers as well as to the artistic license a preacher might take to effect that concern.

Giotto and his publics: three paradigms of patronage

This probing analysis of three works by Giotto and the patrons who commissioned them goes far beyond the cliches of Giotto as the founding figure of Western painting. It traces the interactions between Franciscan friars and powerful bankers, illuminating the complex interplay between mercantile wealth and the iconography of poverty. Political strife and religious faction lacerated fourteenth-century Italy. Giotto's commissions are best understood against the background of this social turmoil. They reflected the demands of his patrons, the requirements of the Franciscan Order, and the restlessly inventive genius of the painter. Julian Gardner examines this important period of Giotto's path-breaking career through works originally created for Franciscan churches: Stigmatization of Saint Francis from San Francesco at Pisa, now in the Louvre, the Bardi Chapel cycle of the Life of St. Francis in Santa Croce at Florence, and the frescoes of the crossing vault above the tomb of Saint Francis in the Lower Church of San Francesco at Assisi. These murals were executed during a twenty-year period when internal tensions divided the friars themselves and when the Order was confronted by a radical change of papal policy toward its defining vow of poverty. The Order had amassed great wealth and built ostentatious churches, alienating many Franciscans in the process and incurring the hostility of other Orders. Many elements in Giotto's frescoes, including references to St. Peter, Florentine politics, and church architecture, were included to satisfy patrons, redefine the figure of Francis, and celebrate the dominant group within the Franciscan brotherhood.

The Fra Giocondo Vitruvius at 500 (1511–2011)

Five hundred years ago, on 22 May 1511, the architect, engineer, scholar, and Franciscan friar Fra Giovanni Giocondo of Verona published his edition of the Ten Books on Architecture of Vitruvius. Printed in Venice (by Giovanni Tacuino da Tridino), Giocondo's was the fourth edition of Vitruvius to emerge in this new medium; the first, edited by Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, had been published in Rome, probably between 1486 and 1487, followed by a Florentine edition in 1496 and a Venetian edition in 1497; evidently Vitruvius was beginning to command a growing interest, at least in Italy, by the end of the fifteenth century.1 Giocondo, however, took special pains to make his version of Vitruvius more useful to readers than any of its predecessors: he provided woodcut illustrations—136 of them, a glossary of architectural terms, and a key to the curious symbols that Vitruvius uses for units of measure in his tenth book. Furthermore, Giocondo took a much more aggressive approach to what an editor can or should do with an ancient text. Both for the merits of its ancient author and for those of its early modern editor, the Fra Giocondo Vitruvius would turn out to be one of the most influential books of the sixteenth century. It served as a fundamental basis for the practice of architecture in early modern Europe, and through its circulation among European merchants, colonists, and missionaries, for the rest of the world.2 The book may also have been influential for more subtle reasons. Vitruvius wrote his Ten Books for the emperor Augustus as a demonstration that architecture should be included among the liberal arts. Made broadly accessible by printing, illustration, study, and a more intelligible Latin text in 1511, the ancient architect's philosophical statements about liberal education, aesthetics, and the status of …

Boticas & pharmacias: uma história ilustrada da farmácia no Brasil;by Flavio Coelho Edler

This article presents some interpretations on the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a dynamics of meanings in the social field. It departs from the empirical observation of the social work for people who live with HIV/AIDS, developed at Fonte Colombo House by Franciscan friars and volunteers. From the daily life at Fonte Colombo House, it tries to understand how this pastoral and assistance practice affects the traditional conceptions of the catholic orthodoxy on sexuality and human reproduction. The reflection we make points to a local process that tends to redefine the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church as to the normatization of the sexual act as fundamentally an act of human reproduction. The ethnographic method adopted in the research highlights the specificity of a Catholic and Franciscan style in the greeting rituals, in the experiences and information that are socialized and the forms of confrontation that are used in relation to the common problem of the House users.

Performative Reading and Receiving a Performance of the Jour du Jugement in MS Besançon 579

Performative Reading and Receiving a Performance of the Jour du Jugement in MS Besançon 579 Karlyn Griffith (bio) MS Besançon 579, a deluxe mid-fourteenth-century manuscript, contains the only known version of the French mystery play Jour du Jugement, which provides the most detailed and extensive dramatic account of the arrival, life, and destruction of Antichrist (fig. 1).1 In this version of the legend, Antichrist is conceived by the whore of Babylon and a devil in disguise. Later, Antichrist costumed as a Franciscan friar performs a variety of miracles to convert unsuspecting Christians. In response, the two Apocalyptic Witnesses, Enoch and Elijah, are sent to warn against the eternal consequences of succumbing to Antichrist's deceptions. After kings and cardinals have converted to Antichrist and the pope is imprisoned for refusing to do so, God sends to earth his seven avenging angels with vials of his wrath. Upon Antichrist's destruction, Mary and the saints implore Christ before his Final Judgment to spare those who had remained faithful. The drama is presented in the manuscript through the verbal, visual, and dramatic texts that construct a version of the performance text for the reader/viewer. The play's written, dramatic, and visual texts draw from a variety of sources to present a compelling and realistic portrayal of how and when Antichrist might penetrate contemporary Christian society, but it is also filled with humor, sex, dancing, fantastic miracles, and violence to delight as well as warn of the frightening reality of Antichrist. This essay investigates how the dramatic subject matter of the miniatures of Besançon 579 affected the way in which the manuscript was conceived and illustrated and the manner in which the reader/viewer receives not only the dramatic text, but also the performance text of the Jour du Jugement through the visual representation of the play. [End Page 99] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 579, fols. 27v–28r, c. 1330 (Cliché CNRS-IRHT, © Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon). For this mode of reception, imagine the owner of the Besançon manuscript inviting an acquaintance or distinguished visitors to sit and "read" the story of Antichrist. Turning the page, the dramatic performance begins with the preacher's opening sermon. In medieval drama, the narrator plays a critical role, introducing and often summarizing the story before it is enacted.2 Such a narrator is seen in the first small miniature warning of Antichrist's imminent arrival. From his pulpit the preacher, dressed in dark robes, raises an open palm and extends the index finger of his other hand as he addresses a large crowd that includes a king, bishop, pope, tonsured cleric, and several veiled women seated before him. This image, like the rest of the miniatures, introduces the characters and illustrates the mise-en-scene while pictorially advancing the dramatic text and providing a sustained visualization of the action. While the readers hear and look, they simulate the audience's experience of a theater performance. As the action begins, each participant could take a turn speaking the various parts, or one person could assume the task of animating all the speaking [End Page 100] roles. Now, instead of passively receiving the performance, the readers fully and actively participate in a new and original performance. The size and luxury of the manuscript that contains this play suggest an owner who desired a comprehensive and stimulating rendering of the Jour du Jugement within the folios of the manuscript. According to Graham Runnalls's classification of French drama manuscripts, the Jour du Jugement falls into type G: "a luxury manuscript recording the text of a past performance, belonging to a patron or guild, and not intended to be used as the basis of a performance; perhaps intended for reading."3 As a commemorative manuscript, however, the Jour du Jugement includes very little information about staging—only three very brief directions provide any information about the movement of the figures onstage. Any information concerning costumes, stage properties, or staged action can only be discerned in the visual text of the miniatures because the written text is limited...

Modelos e práticas de santidade feminina no Novo Orbe serafico brasilico, do frade Antônio de Santa Maria Jaboatão

O artigo pretende analisar a construção de modelos de santidade feminina no Novo Orbe serafico brasilico, a obra mais conhecida do frade franciscano Antônio de Santa Maria Jaboatão (1695-1779). No livro em pauta, são analisados três relatos de vida: o da viúva Antônia de Pádua de Góes (†1643), o da beata Catharina Paes Landim (†1748) e o da freira Maria da Soledade (1668-1719). A hipótese sustentada é a de que as diferentes narrativas serviriam como modelos de virtude para as mulheres coloniais pertencentes aos estados de casada, viúva, beata e religiosa. Por outro lado, os relatos transcritos e adaptados por Jaboatão provavelmente sofreram influências de modelos narrativos hagiográficos, particularmente aqueles inspirados nas vidas de Santa Isabel, rainha de Portugal, e Santa Clara de Assis.

Dynamics between Catholicism and AIDS: reproduction, transformation and (in) formation

This article presents some interpretations on the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a dynamics of meanings in the social field. It departs from the empirical observation of the social work for people who live with HIV/AIDS, developed at Fonte Colombo House by Franciscan friars and volunteers. From the daily life at Fonte Colombo House, it tries to understand how this pastoral and assistance practice affects the traditional conceptions of the catholic orthodoxy on sexuality and human reproduction. The reflection we make points to a local process that tends to redefine the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church as to the normatization of the sexual act as fundamentally an act of human reproduction. The ethnographic method adopted in the research highlights the specificity of a Catholic and Franciscan style in the greeting rituals, in the experiences and information that are socialized and the forms of confrontation that are used in relation to the common problem of the House users.

Dinâmicas entre catolicismo e AIDS: processos de reprodução, transformação e (in)formação

This article presents some interpretations on the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a dynamics of meanings in the social field. It departs from the empirical observation of the social work for people who live with HIV/AIDS, developed at Fonte Colombo House by Franciscan friars and volunteers. From the daily life at Fonte Colombo House, it tries to understand how this pastoral and assistance practice affects the traditional conceptions of the catholic orthodoxy on sexuality and human reproduction. The reflection we make points to a local process that tends to redefine the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church as to the normatization of the sexual act as fundamentally an act of human reproduction. The ethnographic method adopted in the research highlights the specificity of a Catholic and Franciscan style in the greeting rituals, in the experiences and information that are socialized and the forms of confrontation that are used in relation to the common problem of the House users.

Dinâmicas entre catolicismo e AIDS: processos de reprodução, transformação e (in)formação.

This article presents some interpretations on the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a dynamics of meanings in the social field. It departs from the empirical observation of the social work for people who live with HIV/AIDS, developed at Fonte Colombo House by Franciscan friars and volunteers. From the daily life at Fonte Colombo House, it tries to understand how this pastoral and assistance practice affects the traditional conceptions of the catholic orthodoxy on sexuality and human reproduction. The reflection we make points to a local process that tends to redefine the doctrinal position of the Catholic Church as to the normatization of the sexual act as fundamentally an act of human reproduction. The ethnographic method adopted in the research highlights the specificity of a Catholic and Franciscan style in the greeting rituals, in the experiences and information that are socialized and the forms of confrontation that are used in relation to the common problem of the House users.

A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) (review)

Reviewed by: A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) Sean Otto Joe¨lle Rollo-Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417). Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 17. Boston: Brill, 2009. Pp. vii + 467. Cloth, US$225.00. ISBN 90-04-16277-8. This collection contains the following chapters: Joëlle Rollo-Koster, "Civil Violence and the Initiation of the Schism"; Stefan Weiß, "Luxury and Extravagance at the Papal Court in Avignon and the Outbreak of the Great Western Schism"; Philip Daileader, "Local Experiences of the Great Western Schism"; Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, "The Conceptualization and Imagery of the Great Schism"; Michael Hanly, "Witness to the Schism: The Writings of Honorat Bovet"; Michael A. Ryan, "Byzantium, Islam, and the Great Western Schism"; Cathleen A. Fleck, "Seeking Legitimacy: Art and Manuscripts for the Popes in Avignon from 1378 to 1417"; Christopher M. Belitto, "The Reform Context of the Great Western Schism"; David Zachariah Flanagin, "Extra ecclesiam salus non est-sed quae ecclesia?: Ecclesiology and Authority in the Later Middle Ages"; Thomas M. Izbicki, "The Authority of Peter and Paul: The Use of Biblical Authority during the Great Schism"; Philip H. Stump, "The Council of Constance (1414-18) and the End of the Schism." The volume also includes an introduction, jointly authored by the editors, as well as a conclusion written by Izbicki, a bibliography, and indices. This volume adds to an already large and impressive collection in Brill's series of companions to the Christian tradition, which cover mostly the medieval and Reformation periods, giving attention to such topics as quodlibetical disputations, prayer, penance, indulgences, and several important historical figures. This volume is a welcome addition to the series, gathering together as it does several intelligently written chapters by leading scholars engaging with the most up-to-date scholarship. The volume aims to be introductory, and it achieves this aim admirably. For instance, Joe¨lle Rollo-Koster's piece, which opens the collection, lays out in a very accessible way the problems surrounding the events and historiography of the disputed papal elections of 1378 that precipitated the Schism. In particular, the piece gives us the impression that the violence that accompanied the election of Archbishop Prignano to the papal throne might not have been as alarming as the cardinals later led others to believe, but was, in fact, part of the traditional way in which the Romans celebrated the election of a new pope. Rollo-Koster is very thorough in her assessment of contemporary evidence and lays out her case carefully and convincingly, giving a novel and refreshing interpretation of events. Whereas the violence in Rome in the spring of 1378 is often depicted as having a detrimental effect on the electors—an impression that the dissenting cardinals themselves [End Page 117] fostered—Rollo-Koster gives us every reason to believe that the crowds, although unruly and often drunken, were an expression of traditional Roman celebration at the election of a new pope, even when the crowds sacked one of the cardinals' palaces. This does not mean, however, that Rollo-Koster places the blame squarely on the cardinals; in the end she is much too even-handed to commit herself to blaming one party over another in so complicated a situation. Another aim of the collection is to discuss the Schism under a wide variety of topics, and again this aim is achieved quite successfully. The chapters range freely across several historical disciplines, giving us a very good overall picture of the effects that the Schism produced, not just in Western Europe where thy were felt most closely, but also in Byzantium and among the followers of Islam. These last two are covered in Michael A. Ryan's chapter, which, while it is somewhat limited as a result of a general lack of scholarly attention to the topics that it covers, gives us interesting insights into inter-religious relations of the period through a discussion of the figure of Anselm Turmeda / 'Abdallah al-Taryuman, a Franciscan friar who converted to Islam. As well as casting their net across a broad geography, the authors do so across the different social classes of...

Fragments of Targum Onkelos of Exodus Recently Found in Rijeka, Croatia

During the research in the library of the Monastery of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars in Rijeka, Croatia, two folia of a parchment were found in the cover of a 15th century book. The parchments contain an interlinear Hebrew-Aramaic fragment of a manuscript from the Book of Exodus (Exodus 21:23-22:8a; 26:26b- 27:10). In relation to the calligraphic models of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, the origin of the manuscript may be dated between the 12th and 15th centuries, and it may be said to belong to the Ashkenazi Bible-copying tradition, while an examination of the parchment treatment and its preparation for writing places it into the late 13th or early 14th century. The Hebrew text, which is vocalised, does not seem to vary much from the accepted vocalised Hebrew text, except for a certain number of orthographic differences. The Hebrew text of The Book of Exodus is accompanied by a corresponding masora parva which mostly corresponds with what is common in other manuscripts, while masora magna is not legible enough to reach a final conclusion. The Aramaic text contains a vocalised Targum Onkelos, but with certain differences not only in orthography but also in the content. The number and types of differences in relation with the usual text of Targum Onkelos indicate that FgCap VlaTep differs from it in three ways: (i) it attempts to further harmonise the text with the Hebrew Bible, (ii) it avoids matres lectionis and (iii) it contains quite a few grammatical structures characteristic of Palestinian Aramaic. The manuscript was undoubtedly not used in synagogal liturgy, but was an aid in the personal (scholarly) study of the Holy Scripture, and the fragments were a part of a larger codex that could have contained either The Book of Exodus or the complete Torah.

Ein südfranzösisches Klagelied zum Correctorium fratris Thomae des Wilhelm de la Mare

Two manuscripts of the fourteenth century (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 5888, and Bamberg, Canon. 29) contain a hitherto unknown Latin poem in which an anonymous lector Tholosanus complaints about contemporary heresies. The text seems to be composed by a Dominican in Southern France at the beginning of the fourteenth century. As it is indicated by the acrostic contra corruptorium, the poet intends to attack the famous tract Correctorium fratris Thomae written by the Franciscan friar William de la Mare in 1277/79. This paper presents a critical edition of the Latin text and a historical interpretation.

Why Does History Matter to the Science Studies Disciplines? A Case for Giving the Past Back Its Future

Abstract Science and technology studies (STS) has perhaps provided the most ambitious set of challenges to the boundary separating history and philosophy of science since the 19th century idealists and positivists. STS is normally associated with ‘social constructivism’, which when applied to history of science highlights the malleability of the modal structure of reality. Specifically, changes to what is (e.g. by the addition or removal of ideas or things) implies changes to what has been, can be and might be. Latour’s account of Pasteur’s scientific achievement is a case in point. Two polar attitudes towards the world’s modal malleability are identified: over- and under- determination, which correspond, respectively, to a belief in the inevitability and the precariousness of science as a form of knowledge. The distinctness of these positions reflects a cordon sanitaire between the history and the philosophy of science. Consequently, historical agents are not given full voice as constructors of reality: They are either quarantined to a foreign realm called ‘the past’ by the historian or selectively assimilated to an imperial present by the philosopher. The second half of the essay explores what it might mean to restore a robust sense of reality construction to the historical agents. My case in point here is that of the 13th century Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, who has been alternatively seen as a mad medieval or a proto-modernist. To give Bacon full voice would involve taking the future that he envisaged as a normative benchmark for judging our own world.

The Tree of Jesse and the “Relación de Michoacán”: Mimicry in Colonial Mexico

When the Spanish viceroy Antonio de Mendoza first visited Michoacán, Mexico (about 1539), he commissioned a Franciscan friar to record the indigenous customs of the region. The friar, together with local native nobles and artists, produced the illustrated manuscript known as the “Relación de Michoacán.” One of these indigenous artists transformed the European Tree of Jesse, a motif depicting Christ's genealogy, to represent the local indigenous noble family. Such an act of mimicry and appropriation allowed the artist to represent the native nobles as the rightful rulers of Michoacán and to communicate this conviction to the manuscript's colonial audience.

Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting Education

Luca Pacioli, was a Franciscan friar born in Borgo San Sepolcro in what is now Northern Italy in 1446 or 1447. It is believed that he died in the same town on 19 June 1517. He is best remembered for his 615-page mathematical compendium, Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportioni et Proportionalità, published in 1494; and for his friendship with Leonardo da Vinci. Many accountants perceive his greatest contribution as being the 27-page treatise on double-entry bookkeeping and business contained within his Summa. Today, we still teach doubl-entry bookkeeping following the principles set down by Pacioli, and all manual and computerized accounting systems owe much of their processing logic to the principles and processes he described. However, there is another aspect to this treatise that has been largely overlooked: in it, Pacioli set down not only the principles of double entry bookkeeping but also presented an approach to teaching the subject that is unique and largely forgotten. This paper considers Pacioli's pedagogic approach within the educational environment in which he worked. It concludes that Luca Pacioli was a man of pedagogic insight and expertise who knew how to pitch his presentation so as to engage his students and maximize their likelihood of learning and understanding the material he presented using techniques that, even today, would be considered innovative. In doing so, he brings a subject (double entry bookkeeping) to life that is in sharp contrast to the abstract and often meaningless (in terms of context) way in which it is often taught today.

About the cover: Luca da Pacioli and Leonardo’s drawings of polyhedra

Luca da Pacioli (1446/7–1517) was a Franciscan friar and Renaissance polymath, traditionally thought to be a protege of Piero della Francesca (1420–1492), one of the foremost painters of the Florentine-Umbrian school. There is no doubt that Pacioli was a mentor to Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1520), though there are conflicting views on the relationships and the influence of any of the three on the others [1]. Luca da Pacioli and Piero della Francesca were born in the same small town, Borgo di Sansepolcro, southeast of Florence and on the border between Tuscany and Umbria. Piero della Francesca, because of his eminence as a Renaissance painter, is usually referred to only as Piero, just as the name Leonardo usually refers to Leonardo da Vinci, not one of the other Leonardos of history. Piero, like Leonardo, combined his ability as a painter with an interest in science and mathematics. Unlike Leonardo, his contributions in mathematics were primarily relevant to art—perspective, proportion, and, by extension, architecture. Leonardo’s work is well known, touching on mechanics, hydrodynamics, anatomy, architecture, music, military engineering, and even ideas anticipating human flight. Luca da Pacioli’s contributions were more modest. His first published book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportionalita, was published in Venice in 1497 and was widely used as a textbook. Highly peripatetic, early in his career Pacioli moved to Urbino, where he tutored the son of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, immortalized by one of the most famous portraits of Renaissance Italy. This profile portrait by Piero hangs in the Uffizi. Federigo’s image is so striking that Piero used it on at least one other occasion, in his Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels (and incidentally, with Federigo da Montefeltro himself kneeling in the foreground). It is sometimes called the Montefeltro Altarpiece since it was commissioned by the Duke, and it is now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. Some have

The Lapidation of Giuseppe Baretti and the Invective of His Lettere familiari from Portugal and Spain

The Lapidation of Giuseppe Baretti and the Invective of His Lettere familiari from Portugal and Spain Robert Bufalini, Independent Scholar In the late summer of 1760 we find Giuseppe Baretti attending a "festa dei tori" in Lisbon. After the last dead bull has been dragged away, the Italian traveler heads toward the "palchetto reale," where he manages to get close enough to the ladies of the Portuguese Royal Family to be able to describe their attire down to the jewelry and lace. The extremely myopic Baretti must have seemed an unabashed investigator. The only one of the ladies he could examine without his eyeglass was a modestly dressed one standing right next to him, who in fact turned out to be the Queen—and he examined her, as he says, from head to foot.1 Baretti's intention, in his Lettere familiari a' suoi tre Fratelli, Filippo, Giovanni, e Amedeo (1762-63), is to be a "vero viaggiatore," to travel as a philosopher "che osserva ogni cosa" (129). He admits that wanting to know which countries produce the best wine and which the worst may be a frivolous matter, but then adds that he does not see why he should not acquire such knowledge if he can (194). To be sure, Baretti, as he made his way back from England to Italy via the Iberian Peninsula, had encouragement and advice on traveling from no less [End Page 141] an authority than Samuel Johnson. The learned doctor, who had the highest respect for truth even in its most minute particulars, insisted that the traveler keep an exact journal.2 Along with meticulousness and encyclopedic fervor, the Lettere familiari reveal nearly unbounded linguistic exuberance. In an age when the necessity of learning several modern languages was coming to be seen as a burden, now that Latin had passed away as the universal scholarly medium, Baretti mastered no less than five of them.3 It is in English that he will write, in 1768, An Account of Manners and Customs of Italy, with Observations on the Mistakes of Some Travelers with Regard to that Country—combating the vituperative Samuel Sharp.4 In his Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur de Voltaire of 1777, he will argue against the great philosophe in French.5 It is not surprising, then, that [End Page 142] Baretti, as he sails off from England, throws himself into the study of Portuguese. Or that in Lisbon, as he visits a convent of English nuns whose "parlatorio" is filled with guests, his thoughts turn to plurilingualism. How useful it would be, he muses, to set up in Turin several convents, one of English nuns, one of French nuns, one of German nuns, one of Florentine nuns, and to send the noble young ladies of the town from one to the other, so that in no time they would learn all four of the languages. Baretti is an optimistic pedagogue, certain that in knowing many languages one would be assured of having a large quantity of ideas, and that having those ideas would make life more enjoyable than not having them. Ignorance, he says, is nothing other than a paucity of ideas (111-12). Amid all of the curiosity, vivacity, factuality, delight in the variety of things, however, one comes across hints of weakness and of disappointment in Baretti's letters. After presenting a "storiella" about Alexander Pope and two friends trying to distinguish between an ear of wheat and an ear of rye, he adds that such reverence for minimal facts can render life comfortable and pleasing so far as "l'umana miseria" permits (130). After a careful presentation of the merits of British manufacture and of it demerits, he concludes: "Pure ognuno tengasi la sua opinione, chè al fin del fine poca felicità v'è in questo mondo, pigliala al modo loro, o pigliala al mio modo" (50-51). Outside of Lisbon his traveling companion Edward Southwell, the young aristocrat that Baretti conducts to Italy, is so taken by the Franciscan friars that he thinks of converting to Roman Catholicism and becoming one of them. Baretti does not hesitate to exploit the comicality of this youthful rashness. He then adds...

Franciscans and Medieval Serbia: Evidence of Art

Sporadic presence of the Franciscans in medieval Serbia was due to the latter’s strict Orthodox Orientation. However, during the 13th C. their activity has been significant as their main benefactor was the Serbian queen Helen, herself of the Western origin. The sources provide various data on her restoring Roman Catholic monasteries in the Littoral, and she built her own foundation, the monastery Gradac, in Gothic style. The friars assisted royalty to combat heretics. In the 14th C. contacts would lessen although the chief architect of Decani was Vita, the Franciscan friar again. In the 15th C. with the Ottoman advance, the religious strife between the Orthodox Christians on one side and the Roman Catholic Christians on the other unfortunately became more serious which may have resulted in extreme visual propaganda as argued by an enigmatic fresco in the monastery Josanica. On the other hand, there were other, more interesting examples with mixed Eastern and Western elements as in the Virgin’s church in M...

THE DATE OF LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, HARLEY MS 913 (THE 'KILDARE POEMS')

London, British Library, Harley MS 913 assumes a unique place in the sum of documents on which our understanding of the literary and religious culture of later medieval Ireland rests. The manuscript is without parallel there as a trilingual anthology of verse and prose, whose texts are in Latin, French, and Hiberno-English. Those in Hiberno-English comprise poems some of which originated in England and were subsequendy imported into Ireland, and many others of which were composed indigenously on Irish soil.1 These vernacular poems, as Michael Benskin has apdy observed, form 'the only substantial body of verse recognized as having been composed in the English of medieval Ireland'.2 Perhaps most famous among them is the parodie masterpiece The Land of Cokaygne.The Franciscan auspices of the manuscript admit litde doubt, and that it originated amongst the Franciscans of Waterford also seems highly likely.3 Though some earlier scholars championed the view that a number of scribes were responsible for copying it, the best current scholarly opinion holds, to the contrary, that it may actually be attributable to one principal scribe who over a period of time copied at least five (perhaps more) separate booklets which were later gathered together into a single codex; their having been copied at different periods is one of the factors that helps to account for a certain unevenness in the aspect of the script between different sections of the manuscript.4A further likely circumstance is that this principal copyist was himself a Franciscan friar who compiled his anthology perhaps in the first instance for personal use, but whose (modest) attention to layout and mise-en-page may also suggest that he had an eye to readers other than himself alone.5 There remains, however, a question to be pursued here about the date at which the booklets that comprise Harley 913 were copied. The manuscript contains internal evidence alluded to by Michael Benskin that I will press a litde further to narrow the date bands between which, or possibly a litde after which, at least one portion of the manuscript was written.6 The bands define a precise four-year period. The dating proposed below will not necessarily unsetde the dating of the manuscript as this is currendy received, but it will refine it and render its parameters more exact. Michael Benskin proposes a date f.1330 for Harley 913. Angela Lucas, in her edition of the Hiberno-English poems, has proposed c.13 30, or perhaps a litde later.7 This consensus that some time around the end of the first third of the fourteenth century saw the production of Harley 913 could conceivably be correct for certain parts of the codex, but the evidence presented here suggests that the date of at least certain of its folios, and most probably also of at least the larger part of that particular quire in which those foHos occur, should be brought forward by about a decade.Leaving aside the palaeographic and linguistic considerations, which by their nature cannot be used to fix a date precisely, two internal pieces of evidence need to be considered. One is found in a set of French proverbs which on fol. I5V are attributed to the Earl of Desmond. The first earl, Maurice fitz Thomas FitzGerald, received his title in 1329, providing a terminus post quern for the copying of this particular part of the manuscript.8 A second piece of internal evidence, on fols 41-3, permits the fixing of termini both post and ante quern for the particular part in which it appears. It is found in a Hst in Latin that enumerates the conventual houses of the Franciscan friars, along with those of the Poor Clares, the 'second order' founded for female reHgious between 121 2 and 1 214 by St Clare and St Francis. The Hst is comprehensive, and reports the current diaspora throughout the world of the Franciscan order. By the time it was compiled, the order had travelled widely afield from its place of origin in Italy, and had estabHshed houses in many regions and countries, aUowing the Hst's author to conclude with a flourish, a grand Summa locorum tocius ordinis ultramontane as well as cisalpine. …

Writing as Resistance: Maya Graphic Pluralism and Indigenous Elite Strategies for Survival in Colonial Yucatan, 1550-1750

This paper offers a revisionist viewpoint on the nature of colonial Maya literacy, showing that the colonial Yucatec Maya elite utilized both the traditional hieroglyphic script and the new alphabetic writing skills taught by the Franciscan friars. By adapting and utilizing both styles of writing, the colonial Maya elite created a system of graphic pluralism that enabled the Maya nobility to better defend their elite interests in a manner consistent with both pre-Columbian and colonial forms of writing, address, religion, and government administration.