Franciscan Order Research Articles

Mexican Instauration: Devotion and Transformation in New Spain

‭This article interrogates the devotional histories and archival evidence related to Our Lady of Angels in Tecaxic and Tlatelolco. Both Marian paintings survived lengthy periods of neglect and dilapidated shrines. Throughout the late colonial period, the Franciscan Order and church elites exploited the notions of “incorruptibility” and “ruined spaces” in their desire to regulate piety and rogue religiosity. (In)corruptibility delineated the divine and sanctioned official intervention. Yet official support never proved enough—both histories draw our attention to the politics of patronage and the complex task of renovation and instauration; they ultimately demonstrate the instability of sanctuary structures and the precarious nature of icon devotion.‬

‘A Deed Agreeable to God’: Andrija Artuković and Croat Ustaše Connections with Ireland

A newly declassified file from the Department of Foreign Affairs archives shows that Andrija Artukovic, fugitive former minister of the interior of the Nazi puppet state of independent Croatia, gained entry to Ireland in 1947 under false pretences. He was not knowingly provided with a safe haven by the Irish state. Artukovic’s arrival in Dublin was part of a wider attempt by Croatian refugees to enter Ireland after the Second World War. State and hierarchy were generally strongly opposed to the entry of Croatian refugees into Ireland. The trial of Croatian Cardinal Stepinac in 1946 softened that opposition and created conditions whereby Artukovic, posing as a refugee from Yugoslav Communism, could enter Ireland using a false identity and with the support of the Franciscan religious order.

The Continuity of Sacred Urban Open Space: Facilitating the Indian Conversion to Catholicism in Mesoamerica

‭During the sixteenth century, the Spanish crown sent Mendicant friars of the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian monastic orders to evangelize and convert the indigenous people of America. With huge populations to convert, spread over an extremely vast territory, a limited number of friars had to find expedient ways to facilitate the conversion effort. Among the many conversion strategies used by the Mendicant friars under the early guidance of Fray Pedro de Gante were: to locate places of Christian worship over or near native ceremonial centers and continue the use of ceremonial open urban space; the incorporation of native religious rituals deemed compatible with Catholic liturgy such as processions, music, art, and dance; the creation of new architectural forms and open urban spaces to provide a setting for these rituals; and the substitution of native rituals for Catholic ceremonies including adjusting native and Catholic ritual calendric dates. Based on recent architectural field surveys and ethnographic documentation, this research focuses on the architectural and urban space adaptations that the missionary friars undertook to facilitate conversion efforts.‬

Kodeks magistra Hieronima Szwarca. Przyczynek do dziejów najstarszego księgozbioru bernardynów w Krakowie

Artykuł ma na celu pokazanie na przykładzie jednego kodeksu średniowiecznego wartości i znaczenia badań proweniencyjnych księgozbiorów historycznych. Przedmiotem charakterystyki jest średniowieczny kodeks ze zbiorów Biblioteki Uniwersyteckiej w Poznaniu − XV-wieczny odpis Catholiconu Giovanniego Balbi da Genova, popularnego w średniowieczu podręcznika gramatyki łacińskiej. Rękopis ukończony w 1457 roku, skromnie iluminowany, jest jedynym w zbiorach Biblioteki przykładem rękopiśmiennej księgi łańcuchowej (liber catenatus). Kodeks ten jest unikatowy i cenny ze względu nie tyle na treść, ile na osobę pierwszego właściciela (być może także kopisty księgi) – Hieronima Szwarca, magistra atrium Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego i późniejszego zakonnika w klasztorze franciszkanów obserwantów (bernardynów) w Krakowie na Stradomiu. Jak wynika z analizy zapisków proweniencyjnych odnotowanych na przedniej części wyklejki oprawy Catholiconu oraz ze źródeł historiograficznych, uniwersyteckich i zakonnych, Hieronim był synem znanego mieszczanina krakowskiego Jerzego Szwarca, który na przełomie 1453 i 1454 roku gościł w swojej kamienicy przy rynku sławnego włoskiego kaznodzieję pokutnego i reformatora zakonu franciszkanów Jana Kapistrana oraz towarzyszących mu braci. Powyższe badania źródłowe dowiodły, że prezentowany kodeks był własnością (może nawet dziełem rąk) absolwenta Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, a zarazem reprezentanta kapistrańczyków, tj. licznego grona krakowskich studentów, którzy pod wpływem kazań Jana Kapistrana wstąpili do zakonu franciszkanów obserwantów i pierwszego na ziemiach polskich klasztoru bernardynów, założonego w Krakowie w 1453 roku. Druga zapiska własnościowa na oprawie księgi przynosi z kolei informację, iż w 1466 roku kodeks magistra Hieronima został przekazany (przez właściciela?) do biblioteki krakowskiego klasztoru. Należy więc do najstarszego księgozbioru bernardyńskiego w Polsce.

Neslihan Şenocak: The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209-1310. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2012; pp. xiv + 276.

Saint Francis of Assisi left little specific advice to his followers regarding education. Early Franciscan documents simply enjoined the members of the order to possess nothing except a tunic and a breviary. Yet within a generation of its founder's death the order became embedded in the administrative and educational hierarchies of Western Christianity. Francis' successors readily filled in the blanks in his message and made scholastic learning, as Neslihan Şenocak demonstrates in The Poor and the Perfect, not an adjunct to their other functions but an essential element of the order's identity. Şenocak approaches the task through chronologically and thematically divided chapters. The first chapter, dealing with the formative years (1219–1244), is an introduction to contemporary issues and sources as much as to the extensive historiography of medieval and Franciscan education. Şenocak then examines the changes in Franciscan portrayal of learning from something problematic to a sign of evangelical perfection. As she explores the process she dismantles the assumption that Franciscans embraced scholasticism because it was essential for preaching and confession. Instead, advanced education provided a new kind of wealth and status together with the discourse to justify and further develop its use. In the fourth chapter, titled “Paradise Lost,” she breaks down the paradoxes and contradictions that arose from the friars' participation in educational institutions. The fifth chapter is an outline of the parameters of the Franciscan educational system around the year 1300. The Poor and the Perfect is an intelligent, engaging narrative of the history of Franciscan education. The book resolves several contradictions created by Franciscan historiography, and allows insight into a religious order in which the discourse of simplicity, mysticism, poverty, and cosmic renewal coexisted with pragmatic administrative and economic concerns, corruption, and insistence on social stratification. Şenocak vividly describes the attractions of Parisian education along with the educated brothers' increasing reluctance to participate in the lowly tasks of preaching and confessing. She also reminds us that poverty was not a heated issue among Franciscans until the generation after Francis' death — interestingly about the same time as the order began to develop a framework for distinguishing between “useful” and “useless” brothers. By focusing her attention directly on scholasticism and its impact, Şenocak avoids the Spirituals-versus-the-rest-of-the-community teleology common in Franciscan historiography. The change of focus results in another binary (educated versus uneducated) with its own limitations, but it allows for a fresh and unsentimental investigation of a little understood aspect of the formation of Franciscan identity. While Francis insisted on equality among brothers, his followers developed a stratification of usefulness and spiritual perfection in which a brother's level of learning came to play an important role. Learned brothers brought spiritual and social prestige, power, and wealth. By the early fourteenth century the friars introduced learning as a criterion of sainthood. The journey was neither easy nor inevitable, and Franciscan scholars faced the challenge of balancing seemingly contradicting ideals. Their resolution — a redefinition of simplicity and evangelical perfection as consistent with, rather than opposing, learning — irrevocably changed the order and Christianity itself. Apart from intellectual stimulation it also led to tensions, criticism, and was a factor in the order's fragmentation. In the end, Şenocak argues, it was the pursuit of learning that transformed the Franciscans, not the other way around. Given Senocak's excellent analysis of Franciscan scholars' reconciliation of learning with simplicity and humility, it would have been interesting to see her explore further on the uniquely Franciscan scholastic contributions, in particular regarding wisdom as granted freely by God, and the debates on virtues and the role of the will. Although the book's focus is explicitly Franciscan, it made me also want to know more about Franciscan scholars' engagement with their peers outside their order, especially Dominicans like Aquinas who aroused both enthusiasm and polemic. Similarly, the complex engagement with eschatology and Joachimism was not confined to the Franciscan order. As a historical narrative, The Poor and the Perfect is one of the most approachable recent works on Franciscan education and fits well into the growing corpus of works on the subject. Contributing to a debate which is retreating from the elusive search for an authentic, pristine Francis and his original intentions, Şenocak reveals the genius of an order that actively recreated the image of its founder along with its mission and priorities. Her recognition of the “gradual but relentless” progress of learning in the order will help historians move away from trying to discover what the Franciscan order could have been, towards understanding what it became.

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310. By Neslihan Şenocak. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012. xvi + 280 pp. $49.95 cloth.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500 by Ottó Gecser (review)

Reviewed by: The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500 by Ottó Gecser Katherine L. Jansen The Feast and the Pulpit: Preachers, Sermons and the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235–ca. 1500. By Ottó Gecser. [Collana della Società internazionale di studi francescani, Saggi 15.] (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo. 2012. Pp. xvi, 462. €58,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7988-589-8.) In this study, a revised version of his dissertation, Ottó Gecser examines the cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (also known as Elizabeth of Thuringia), who died at the [End Page 783] age of twenty-four in the odor of sanctity in 1231. At her death she was already recognized as a saint. One of her hagiographers recorded the frenzy that took place as her body lay in state, when the crowd ripped pieces from her clothing, and others made relics by cutting off her hair, nails, and even—grotesquely—her nipples. Pope Gregory IX wasted no time in canonizing her; she was inscribed into the register of saints in 1235. In three chapters, Gecser takes us through the institutionalization of Elizabeth’s cult and its diffusion through preaching. Although Gecser’s main focus is on sermons, he lays the groundwork in the first chapter by treating the vitae, liturgy, institutional dedications, and the Marburg pilgrimage, each a cornerstone of the emerging cult. One interesting finding is that Franciscan hagiography was slow to adopt Elizabeth as one of its own; it was not until the fifteenth century that her affiliation as a Franciscan tertiary was stabilized. Another point, regarding institutional dedications, is that 24 percent of the hospital dedications in the Empire honored St. Elizabeth. Gecser sensibly hypothesizes that since noble women were frequently patrons of hospitals, this statistic suggests that Elizabeth’s role as hospital founder at Marburg may have provided inspiration for other women of her status to do similarly in the name of the saint. Chapters 2 and 3, thoroughly supported by the three appendices, are the heart of this study as they deal with the sermons, the means by which the cult was consolidated. Gecser has excavated 103 of them (well described in appendix I), 40 percent of which came from the territories of the Empire and were produced by the friars. Given that Elizabeth herself was associated with both Hungary and Thuringia, this conclusion is not altogether surprising, but we must also remember that Johannes Baptist Schneyer’s great Repertorium of sermons—the starting point for any work on medieval preaching—skews in that direction anyway as his research rested heavily on manuscript holdings located in the old imperial territories. That the great preachers of her cult were the friars is not particularly surprising either as they were the predominant preachers of the period. Indeed, although Caesarius of Heisterbach (a Cistercian) produced the first known sermon on Elizabeth on the anniversary of her canonization, Gecser finds that two-thirds of the thirteenth-century sermons on the saint were authored by either Franciscan or Dominican friars in roughly equal numbers, dispelling again any notion that from early days she was associated with the Franciscan Order. Indeed, the Friars Preacher had good reason to affiliate themselves with the saint as she was canonized in their convent in Perugia. Moreover, within decades of their foundation, the Dominicans also forged strong connections with the royal families in Hungary and Naples (not incidentally aligned by marriage), who were interested in promoting the sanctity of their common saintly ancestor. Samples of the sermons of the mendicants number among the eighteen skillfully edited texts that Gecser includes in appendix III, along with those by the Czech preacher Jan Milič and King Robert of Naples, among others. Robert’s sermon on the saint dwelled both upon her royal status and her marital status as widow, a thema taken from Rev. 18:7. Other themata pertaining to Elizabeth are catalogued in appendix II and admirably explicated in chapter 3. Ultimately Gecser’s is a careful and thorough study of the preaching on St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the later Middle Ages. We are, [End Page 784...

The Life and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247–1297) by Fra Giunta Bevegnati (review)

Reviewed by: The Life and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247–1297) by Fra Giunta Bevegnati David Burr The Life and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247–1297). By Fra Giunta Bevegnati. Translation and Introduction by Thomas Renna; edited by Shannon Larson. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications. 2012. Pp. 344. $44.95 clothbound, ISBN 978-1-57659-301-1; $29.95 paperback, ISBN 978-1-57659-207-6.) St. Margaret of Cortona packed a great deal of adventure into her early life. As an adolescent, she ran away and lived out of wedlock with a young nobleman. When he died, she and their son were rejected by both sets of parents. They went to Cortona, where she was given lodging and eventually employment as a midwife. During the following years (c. 1272–89) Margaret became a Franciscan tertiary, lived in a cell near the Franciscan house, sent her son off to be a Franciscan, adopted Fra Giunta as her spiritual guide and eventually her amanuensis, had regular conversations with Christ, founded a hospital, arbitrated disputes, and came to be recognized as arguably Cortona’s most eminent resident. This period yielded to a final one when she moved to a more remote cell near the highest point in Cortona, persuaded the bishop to rebuild the nearby church of St. Basilio, and was buried there (thus disappointing the Franciscans) when she died in 1297. Giunta compiled the Life by 1308, mainly with an eye toward the canonization proceedings that seemed justified by the flourishing cult around Margaret’s tomb. (Canonization was actually delayed until 1728.) His work is a heterogeneous collection of recurring themes. Major ones are discussed below. There are seemingly endless conversations between Christ and Margaret, his spouse. Often he asks her if she loves him; then the conversation proceeds in surprising directions, often resembling the imperfect communication of an actual couple. Margaret’s desire to share Christ’s suffering plays an important role in these conversations, as do her future heavenly bliss and worldly renown. Sometimes Christ engages in social criticism, often in the form of apocalyptic prophecy forecasting tribulation for Margaret and/or the Franciscans. Christ periodically states his qualified approval of the Franciscan Order. Much attention is paid to Margaret’s taxing devotional practices, which lie at the headwaters of a long tradition running through the fourteenth-century Meditations on the Life of Christ, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, and the contemporary Vineyard Church as described recently by T. M. Luhrmann. In effect, Margaret relives the gospel story, often crossing the line between meditative recollection and a visionary state in which she becomes an actual participant (often St. Mary Magdalene). [End Page 785] Giunta/Margaret/Christ acknowledge that some of the detail encountered in these imaginative recapitulations cannot be found in the New Testament. There are generous hints that some Franciscans (and other Cortonesi) had doubts about both Margaret’s credentials as a mystic and the wisdom of her move up the hill. Thomas Renna’s introduction is instructive, although more on two issues would have been welcomed. First, how should we deal with the fact that the experience of a relatively uneducated female mystic is mediated through an educated male mendicant? Who is the author here? Second, what is the connection between Giunta/Margaret and the spiritual Franciscans? Renna sees signs of Giunta’s spiritual Franciscan sympathies; yet this reviewer remains skeptical. These issues come together in recent scholarship, including Maria Caterina Jacobelli’s argument that we know little about Margaret and what we read is largely Giunta’s spiritual Franciscan polemic; Mario Sensi’s suggestion that what we have is Giunta trying to put the best face on Margaret’s drift away from the Cortona Franciscans toward a more spiritual Franciscan stance; and this reviewer’s contention that there is little evidence that either Giunta or Margaret harbored spiritual Franciscan sympathies. All three scholars are cited in the same footnote without any acknowledgment that they differ sharply. Renna is a good translator. Combining accuracy with readability is no mean feat. David Burr Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Copyright © 2013 The Catholic University of America Press

The poor and the perfect. The rise of learning in the Franciscan order, 1209–1310. By Neslihan Şenocak. Pp. xv+276. Ithaca–London: Cornell University Press, 2012. $49.95. 978 0 8014 5057 0

The poor and the perfect. The rise of learning in the Franciscan order, 1209–1310. By Neslihan Şenocak. Pp. xv+276. Ithaca–London: Cornell University Press, 2012. $49.95. 978 0 8014 5057 0 - Volume 64 Issue 4

Reconsidering reputation through patronage: Cardinal Napoleone Orsini and Angelo Clareno at the Avignonese papal court

The changeable politics of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (c.1262/3–1342), negotiator and pope-maker, have been explained for over a century as the expression of his independent character and antagonistic relationships. Significant moments in his early career are interpreted as deliberate opposition to his own family's policies. This generalisation does his political acumen and familial loyalty a disservice. In particular, the rationale for his political decisions has previously been relied upon in explanations for his support of the Spiritual Franciscans, reformers and sometime separatists within the Franciscan Order. The cardinal's impact on the group has likewise been understated, as scholars have largely focused on their spokesmen's intellectual output, with limited investigation of the political support that enabled their survival. Orsini was connected to the group's spokesmen at the papal court at Avignon, including the prolific author Angelo Clareno (c.1250–c.1337). Close examination of Clareno's letters allows for a reinterpretation of the relationship. Orsini family documents reframe the relationship as part of an established familial tradition of Franciscan patronage. In this larger picture, the impetus for the cardinal's idiosyncratic patronage of the Spirituals becomes, instead, a small strand in the much larger network of familial obligations and patronage responsibilities. This also sheds further light on the fourteenth-century papal curia.

Book Review: The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310

Book Review: The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310

Between Desire and Passion: Teresa de Cartagena by Yonsoo Kim (review)

KIM, YON SO O. Between Desire and Passion: Teresa de Cartagena. Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2012.185 pp.In Between Desire and Passion, Yonsoo Kim introduces Spanish writer Teresa de Cartagena (c. 1425-?) to a nonspecialist audience by, in large part, situating Teresa among other female Castilian and European intellectuals and authors of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. The book is a wonderful introduction to Teresa's life and texts, and to the field of women writing in the Middle Ages, and will be particularly useful to early graduate students looking for an overview of the possibilities of these fields. A work such as this about the other Teresa serves to remind us that Teresa de Avila is neither the only Teresa, nor the only Spanish woman to write before 1600.Probably in the 1470s, Teresa, a deaf nun of converso heritage, writes to voice her suffering in her first treatise, Arboleda de los enfermos, and later, in Admiracion Operum Dey, addresses a virtuosa senora in response to the prudentes varones who marveled at the fact that a woman had written a treatise. Kim argues that because Teresa's second treatise is an explicit defense of women's intellectual faculties and their ability and right to write, we must consider Teresa's work as a contribution to the querelles de femmes. Although important, this is not a novel position, since Luis Miguel Vicente Garcia (1989), Maria Milagros Rivera Garretas (1992), and others have argued for Teresa's inclusion in this debate.Kim's book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a helpful appendix containing the Bulario petitions of 1449 (also in translation) in support of the plausibility arguments she constructs about Teresa's life.Chapters One and Two serve to present Teresa the woman and her socioreligious context. While reviewing previous scholarship, Kim reiterates and emphasizes the fact that Teresa belonged to the Cartagena family: she was the granddaughter of the illustrious converso rabbi Selomo ha-Levi/bishop Pablo de Santa Maria Additionally, based on Seidenspinner-Nunez and Kim's 2004 publication and study of the Bulario documents, Kim argues for possible dates for the onset of Teresa's deafness and the writing of her treatises.Attempting to present a more complete picture of Teresa's life, Kim convincingly argues that after leaving the Franciscan Order, Teresa belonged to the Cistercian Order, a detail that until 2004 had been very much in question. In support of her argument, Kim calls attention to the importance of the Cistercian convent of Las Huelgas in Burgos and to the power held by its abbess (e.g., she reported directly to the Pope until 1873), making it the logical choice for a daughter of the Cartagena family. As Kim points out, it is noteworthy that the petition to move Teresa to the Cistercian order, granted by a Papal bull, is dated the same year as the 1449 anti-Jewish and anti-converso Toledan Rebellion. Kim cogently marshals relevant and supportive evidence (such as Papal bulls, testaments and Teresa's own writings), while critically discussing the speculations and interpretations of other scholars, in order to make plausible conjectures about Teresa's life.In opposition to Rivera Garretas (1997) and M. Mar Cortes Timoner (2004), Kim's Chapter One interestingly argues that Teresa was not a mystic. In Chapter Two, Kim argues that Teresa was principally an intellectual by examining the traditional patriarchal Christian discourses that influenced Teresa's thinking and writing, the two ideological tendencies that developed in the medicoreligious history of the Middle Ages (pro-woman and misogynist), and the Christian rites that typically appealed to women, such as the imitatio Christi. Additionally, Kim sketches the religious and social constraints imposed on women and the origin of these ideas, which she traces back to Greek philosophy and medicine and the Church Fathers. Given that she is setting the stage to study Arboleda, she focuses on the human body, suffering and healing, and their religious significance to orthodox Catholicism. …

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order 1209-1310. By Nelihan Şenocak. Cornell University Press. 2012. xiv + 276pp. $49.95/£30.95.

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order 1209-1310. By Nelihan Şenocak. Cornell University Press. 2012. xiv + 276pp. $49.95/£30.95.

Roger Bacon and the beginnings of experimental science in Britain

Roger Bacon is something of an enigma. He has been called many things – ‘Britain’s first scientist’, ‘wonderful doctor’, ‘conjurer’ and ‘magician’. Many of the details of his life are uncertain and they have been discussed and argued about by scholars for centuries. He is generally thought to have been born in Ilchester, Somerset, around 1214, although some authors have put his date of birth as late as 1220. There is good evidence that he was in Paris in 1245 and 1251, but it is uncertain if he ever actually studied in Oxford. If he did, he would have met Robert Grosseteste, often described as Oxford University’s first Chancellor (although his role is better described as ‘master of students’ (magister scholarium). Bacon’s entry into the Franciscan order, plausibly in 1257, is also conjectural; but it is clear that his relationship with the Franciscan hierarchy was, at times, rather stormy.1 He was openly critical of some of their values and beliefs and it was not surprising that they sometimes tried to muzzle him. Again the details of his alleged ‘imprisonment’ are unclear. It is likely that Bacon spent the last years of his life in the Franciscan House in Oxford, where he died and was buried in 1292.

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310. By NeslihanŞenocak. Pp. xiv, 276, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2012, $49.95/£30.95.

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310. By NeslihanŞenocak. Pp. xiv, 276, Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2012, $49.95/£30.95.

СИРОМАШТВО И ФРАЊЕВАЧКИ РЕД У ЈУГОИСТОЧНОЈ ЕВРОПИ

Оснивачи фрањевачког реда прописали су потпуно, апсолутно сиромаштво за своје следбенике нормама које регулишу њихов начин живота. Прописи су забрањивали поседовања личне имовине и регулисали да једини вид стицања средстава за живот буде просјачењем. У југоисточној Европи, Мађарској и у оквиру Балканског полуострва, овај правилник је било немогуће применити због неадекватног протока новца. Као резултат таквог економског стања, владари и феудалци су давали Фрањевцима омања имања. Таква пракса је довела до ситуације да је овај монашки ред поседовао кметове, водио имовинске и оставинске расправе, претварајући се у владајућу властелинску класу, са свим последицама тог статуса. Таква деформација Фрањевачких правила сиромаштва у југоисточној Европи је запанлила савременике развијених градских средина Медитерана и западне Европе. Овај феномен је уз сагласност врховне црквене и световне власти преживео до дубоко у двадесети век.

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order 1209–1310 by Neslihan Senocak (review)

The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order 1209–1310 by Neslihan Senocak (review)

A educação em São Boaventura

Each time has its model, or rather, its models of education. While we can say that Western civilization, in one way or another, is liable to an entire Christian worldview, however, one must take into consideration how this influence played in society. Now, the medieval men hardly wrote treatises on the specific topic; between them there was no Piaget. Being theologians and living in a world surrounded by cultural placenta of faith, they were concerned with what should be taught and how it should be taught. Already St. Augustine, in De Catechizandis rudibus (On how to catechize the simple),wrote about both the problems of language and communication, as well as the content to be taught. In this text, I will stick with the teachings of St. Bonaventure. As the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, he wrote several treatises on the subject. I stick especially with Regula novitiorum (Rule of life for novices), De perfectione vitae ad sorores (The Perfections of the Life) supplementing occasionally with the Epistle continens viginti quinque momorialia (letter containing twenty-five topics to be remembered).

The Years of the “Compossibile”

The Years of the “Compossibile”1 Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (bio) The period, from the middle of the fifteenth century, and in particular the fruition of the Franciscan Observance under the leadership of Bernardino of Siena, John of Capistrano and James of the Marches, through the end of the Council of Trent (1563), lasts about a century. It is a century that has recently been the focus of much attention in our research group.2 The hypothesis in this essay is that this century was marked more by continuities than fractures, and in which many problems came to the fore. Therefore, this was a period of instability but also of great vitality:3 “not a starting point, but the climax,” as Paolo Prodi wrote.4 The booklet of Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini, the so-called Libellus ad Leonem5 combined previous experiences with the anticipation of what would take place later. It focused on a number of issues that, if faced with courage, could have opened new perspectives in different fields: [End Page 53] from the relationships between Christians and Jews to the treatment of the “idolaters” in the New Continent. Hence it dealt with both new and familiar problems. The transition from an awareness of the problems to proposing a project of reform is at the heart of this text, and also at the center of the period considered in this essay. But what kind of reform, and how radical?6 In hindsight, the Libellus sounds like an extreme appeal to prevent the future fracturing of Christianity by proposing all possible manners of reform. The wide range of issues addressed in this text makes it a sort of pivot, around which infinite analyses, reasonings and reactions rotated and are still rotating. This is a text, or more precisely a letter, that collects and poses themes of reform and renewal and questions that are essentially unavoidable. Both because of its chronological position in the period under discussion, and because of the many ideas contained in it, the Libellus was chosen as a common point of reference for the reflections in the last of a series of meetings of our international group of scholars.7 These reflections have resulted in this publication. The first meeting, held in Bologna in 2010, focused on the relationship between the preached word and its concrete consequences. The consequences studied could be moral or material as long as they were evident products of the preachers’ words. The idea was for reflection on the ability of preachers to induce their audience to action, starting from the Observant program to mold active Christians and reform Christian society. The second meeting, held in Nijmegen in 2011, focused on the methods and processes of formation of that kind of active Christian, who was soon called to face the hardships and the needs related to the break-up of Christian unity.8 We also decided to study both the lives of saints and the chronicles produced within religious orders, with the aim to discern the types of action that were identified in this period of religious confusion (or considered as such by the historians), resulting [End Page 54] in the construction of the type of person that historians now refer to as “modern.” This approach was useful in identifying the models that were forged and offered when there was a sort of renewal of the life of the religious orders with the Observance, and in the sixteenth century, when in addition to the fracture of Christian unity, there was also a significant breach within the Franciscan Order, resulting in three distinct branches (Conventuals, Observants, Capuchins). In this complex context, the incentives for memory formation and identity construction posed problems of choice and led to efforts of composition. Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, various models were proposed, such as that exemplified by Bernardino of Feltre (who was the subject of two biographies during the sixteenth century). In other cases, such models were more contradictory and disquieting, as were the times in which they arose. An example is the case of Bernardino Ochino, an Observant formed in the early sixteenth century, who became General of the Capuchins, but then left both...

The poor and the perfect: the rise of learning in the Franciscan order, 1209-1310

The poor and the perfect: the rise of learning in the Franciscan order, 1209-1310