Lappin, Clare

2013-06-26T12:45:12Z

2013-06-26T12:45:12Z

2000

This thesis examines the image, ideal and identity of the Franciscan Observance as it was represented in the literature of the congregation. The Observant friars emerged from the discredited Spiritual Franciscan tradition in 1368. The early brotherhood was devoted to the literal interpretation of the Rule, which entailed a quasi-eremitical life of austerity, poverty and prayer. However, from c. 1430 the community, now called the Regular Observance to distinguish it from the earlier Literal Observance, moved towards an extremely successful active preaching vocation. This mitigated the traditional austerity of the congregation but allowed it to become one of the most popular and influential orders in the Renaissance world. A study of the image, ideal and identity of the Observant congregation raises many questions about the self-perception of the Observant friars. To what extent were they conscious of their history and identity? How did the shift from the extremely austere, quasi-eremitical ideal of the Literal Observance to the moderate active life of the Regular Observance affect the brothers' perception of their congregation? Did the brotherhood propose a distinctively Observant model of sanctity and how did the Observance define itself within the Franciscan Order as a whole? In order to place these questions in context, the introduction to the thesis offers a brief discussion of the emergence of the Observant movement between 1334 and 1368 and the development of the congregation in the fifteenth century. The thesis itself is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the connection between image and identity, examining the Observant texts which aimed to cement public recognition of the community as a separate entity. Chapter Two examines the fundamental legislative texts of the community, the constitutions and expositions of the Rule, and shows how Observant legislation fostered the ideals propounded by the Regular Observance whilst reducing the influence of the Literal tradition. A study of the historiography of the congregation in Chapter Three shows how the Observants became keenly aware of their past, and both fascinated and alarmed by their radical roots. The chroniclers justified their brotherhood with appeals to a past which they were often careful to shape in their own image, and presented the Observance in unashamedly partisan terms. Chapter Four looks at the ways in which attacks on the congregation shaped its self-perception and vocation, examining the polemical tracts which flew between the Observance and the majority Franciscan Conventual party between 1415 and 1528. These tracts show that such controversies, particularly the crisis of the 1450s, were a crucible from which the Observants emerged convinced of the necessity of institutional separatism and a distinct identity. Part Two of the thesis looks at the ideal of the congregation and its influence upon the Observant sense of identity. Three chapters focus upon Observant hagiography and the model of spirituality nurtured by Observant writers. The first deals with the cult of Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444), showing how the Observance's first saint (cn. 1450) was promoted as a model for his fellow brothers and became a key symbol of the new Regular Observance. Chapters Four and Five concentrate upon two of the most important Franciscan hagiographers of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Giacomo Oddi (t1487) and Mariano da Firenze (c. 1477-1523). Their lives of the Observant brothers reveal a model of sanctity which diverges substantially from the Bernardinian pattern and is based more upon the traditions of the Literal Observance, indicating that such ideals remained alive in certain sections of the community.

530403

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6911

eng

University of Edinburgh

History

Literature

Mirror of the observance: image, ideal and identity in Franciscan Observant literature, c.1368-1517

The mirror of the observance: image, ideal and identity in Franciscan Observant literature, c.1368-1517

PhD Doctor of Philosophy