Medieval Franciscans prayed in hermitages and churches, on the road and in the piazza, with song and silence. The unique stories of these men and women, as their engaging texts, stunning architecture and breath-taking artwork suggest, are narratives of souls, enfleshed in their respective worlds of the leprosarium, university, or itinerant preaching. The essays in this book foster a nuanced perspective on Franciscan beliefs and spiritual practices by resisting the temptation to reduce their myriad accounts of prayer to an exclusive, univocal spirituality. By displaying the breadth and depth...

Earlier scholarship has characterized female Franciscanism as an institution established by Clare of Assisi in collaboration with Saint Francis. This understanding is anachronistic, however, and overlooks the more complicated disputes over what it meant for enclosed women to have a mendicant vocation. This book clarifies Clare's contributions to these debates by distinguishing the historical figure from the uses made of her legacy by the papacy, the Friars Minor, and, most importantly, the enclosed sisters between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. By examining the diversity of female...

The essays in this volume present a fresh approach to the different and shifting ways that the Franciscan Order and its apostlolic activities were perceived - positively and negatively - by men and women in Europe in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.

In Liturgy, Books and Franciscan Identity in Medieval Umbria, Anna Welch explores how Franciscan friars engaged with manuscript production networks operating in Umbria in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries to produce the missals essential to their liturgical lives. A micro-history of Franciscan liturgical activity, this study reassesses methodologies pertinent to manuscript studies and reflects on both the construction of communal identity through ritual activity and historiographic trends regarding this process. Welch focuses on manuscripts decorated by the ateliers of...

In Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform, Bert Roest provides an up-to-date and comprehensive history of the Poor Clares from their early beginnings until the sixteenth century. With recourse to the available secondary literature and a wealth of primary sources, this book shows how the early history of the Poor Clares cannot be reduced to Franciscan initiatives, and that the institutionalization of the order was characterized by prolonged conflicts and a series of important papal interventions. The work also provides insight in the expansion of the order,...

Music in Early Franciscan Thought is an interdisciplinary study exploring the broad relevance of music in Franciscan hagiography, art, theology, philosophy, and preaching between the founding of the Order in 1210 and 1300--a period covering their rapid ascendancy in medieval society as an Order of clerics. The book covers representations of music in visual and literary hagiography, the inspiration of Pope Innocent III, and the formative writings of William of Middleton and David von Augsburg. Later chapters examine the science and practice of music and its relevance to the ministry of...

The World of St. Francis of Assisi: Essays in Honor of William R. Cook seeks to enrich our collective understanding of the world in which Francis lived and the ways in which Francis, together with his followers, has shaped the world ever since. Composed of thirteen essays by scholars from diverse academic disciplines, The World of St. Francis of Assisi considers Francis's legacy in art, literature, and spirituality, and many of the contributions to the volume focus on the perennial application of Francis's insights to the ills of contemporary society. Contributors are Greg...

Returning to themes first discussed in his book A History of Franciscan Education (Brill, 2000), Bert Roest discusses in this volume a wide range of issues pertaining to the organization of learning in the Franciscan order in the late medieval and early modern period, and the ways in which this order engaged in pastoral and missionary activities in confrontation with the rise of Protestantism. The essays in this volume break new ground in their treatment of school formation, the chronology of educational developments, and the transformation of Franciscan schools between the mid...

This volume deals with the transformative force of Observant reforms during the long fifteenth century, and with the massive literary output by Observant religious, a token of a profound pastoral professionalization that provided religious and lay people alike with encompassing models of religious perfection, as well as with new tools to shape their religious identity. The essays in this work contend that these models and tools had an ongoing effect far into the sixteenth century (on all sides of the emerging confessional divide). At the same time, the controversies surrounding Observant...

This volume explores the rich diversity of the Franciscan contribution to the life of the order and its ministry throughout England between 1224 and c. 1350. The 21 contributions examine the friars impact across the different strata of English society, from the parish churches, the missions, the royal courts and the universities. Friars were ubiquitous in England throughout this period and they participated in various programmes of renewal. Contributors are (in order of appearance) Amanda Power, Philippa M. Hoskin, Jens Rohrkasten, Michael F. Custato, OFM, Michael W. Blastic, OFM,...