L’intervento che presento va visto come una sorta di work in progress:  la fonte particolare che ne costituisce il fondamento all’inizio sembrava familiare e “addomesticata” e si è invece complicata con altre non previste, perché al di là della sua natura una fonte risente sempre dei suoi fini o scopi momentanei, come pure del significato e dei convincimenti  che ad essa sono  stati di volta in volta attribuiti . Si sono quindi  aperti nuovi indirizzi di ricerca che urgono per la necessità di approfondimento. Il lavoro corre su due filoni di indagine, fino a un certo punto paralleli e poi sovrapposti: il contesto in cui lavoravano gli inquisitori e le fonti, con le scelte di metodo e di analisi che esse comportano.

Nel mio intervento cercherò di indagare la raffigurazione degli ottomani nella committenza artistica dei francescani osservanti, analizzando non solo come essi vengano rappresentati, ma anche quale sia la testimonianza delle immagini e cosa emerga dallo scarto tra queste e il testo. Mi limiterò all’analisi di un solo esempio, affrontato come caso di “storia delle immagini”: l’iconografia di Giovanni da Capestrano alla battaglia di Belgrado contro gli ottomani, avvenuta nel 1456. Intendo analizzare in particolare come lo scontro con gli ottomani passi figurativamente, tra XV e XVIII secolo, dai “margini” dell’immagine al “centro” e come, grazie alla battaglia di Belgrado, Giovanni da Capestrano si muova in un certo senso dalla “frontiera” (abruzzese e balcanica) alla capitale dello Stato Pontificio, divenendo protagonista di impegnative pale romane in luoghi strategici dell’Osservanza. Vorrei altresì mostrare come in età moderna Giovanni da Capestrano sembra esser progressivamente diventato un modello per costruire la santità di esponenti di altri ordini, come ad esempio i domenicani.

Throughout the fifteenth century, the most widely revered holy men in Southern Europe were Observant Mendicant friars. Many of these saintly reformers were famous for their attacks on religious minorities, and their cults were tied to the surge in persecutory impulses directed against the Jews. Some of the names that immediately come to mind as instigators of anti-Jewish violence and of calls for the expulsion of the Jews include the Observant Dominicans Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) and the Observant Franciscans Bernardino da Siena  (d. 1444), John of Capistran (1386-1456), and Bernardino da Feltre (1439-1494).

Even before the Bohemian reform movement known as Hussitism was condemned at the council of Constance, the Hussite teachings became subject of intensive religious polemics. From the first decade through the end of the fifteenth century, more than 250 polemical treatises contra Hussitas were produced. Due to the dynamics of the development in Bohemia, the Church authorities failed to eradicate the Hussite heresy by means of inquisition. The repression of Hussitism included two waves of crusades in 1420-31 and 1467-71, as well as a number of executions of Hussite sympathizers outside the Kingdom of Bohemia. The extermination efforts were interrupted by attempts at a reduction of the heretics by way of disputation, famously at the Council of Basel in 1433-37.

Communication à Weingarten, le 30 novembre 2018

La notion même de «congrégation», pour désigner des regroupements institutionnalisés de religieux, est surtout utilisée par les historiens modernistes et contemporanéistes, pour lesquels elle renvoie à des réalités institutionnelles dont le Moyen Âge n’a offert que les prémices. Encore emploient-ils d’ailleurs souvent le terme de façon presque interchangeable avec celui d’«ordre». À partir des définitions que l’on peut rencontrer, mais aussi des réalités tardo-médiévales qui vont nous intéresser, on va ici entendre, par congrégation, une association de communautés religieuses (des couvents) appartenant à un même ordre religieux (dont ils suivent la règle ou les coutumes et reconnaissent l’autorité du supérieur général) et qui, à l’intérieur de cet ordre, se regroupent dans une autonomie institutionnelle partielle en fonction d’un projet spirituel (celui d’une observance plus stricte de la règle ou des coutumes). C’est l’objectif commun qui donne sa raison d’être à la «congrégation» et en modèle les contours.

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Talk to be presented at Weingarten, November 30 2018

Im Spätmittelalter entwickeln die Benediktiner Kongregationen als neue Institutionen. Aufbauend auf päpstliche Modelle, wie sie etwa die ‚Benedictina‘ Benedikts XII. entfaltete, sollten dadurch Klöster miteinander verbunden werden, um in ihnen ein einheitliches reformiertes Leben zu gewährleisten, etwa in der italienischen Kongregation von S. Giustina (Padua) oder der Bursfelder Kongregation in Mittel- und Norddeutschland. Andere Reformgruppen wie die um die Klöster Kastl und Melk verzichteten hingegen auf den Zusammenschluss der einzelnen Häuser.

Le Expositiones super Regulam, chiamate anche Commenti alla Regola, sono dei prodotti culturali che si occupano dell’esegesi di un testo normativo, la Regola, alla base del diritto e dell’identità di un Ordine religioso. I Commenti si contraddistinguono per la più grande varietà di autori, contesti e finalità il cui unico elemento in comune sembra quello di porre al centro del proprio discorso l’osservanza della Regola.

Talk to be presented at Weingarten, December 1st 2018

Die Einführung der Observanz und die damit zusammenhängenden Streitigkeiten stehen in Mitteleuropa bereits länger im Fokus der Forschung. Allerdings fand die Perspektive der Stadträte, die die Reformmaßnahmen unterstützten, bisher weniger Beachtung.

Talk to be presented at Weingarten, November 30 2018

In his Buch der Reformacio, the observant confessor and convent writer Johannes Meyer compared himself to the biblical Rut to describe his work in the Observance. Like Rut, there former went out to support his family, the Dominican order, and did not leave a part of his relatives, the female branch of the order, behind. By comparing himself to such a great character well-known for her loyalty and caring, Johannes Meyer wanted to create a new image of the observant confessors thus proving that at the time of the convent reforms, confessors like Johannes Meyer had to rethink their notions of the relationship between the female convents and the order.

Talk to be presented at Weingarten, November 29 2018

The architectural norms enacted by regular orders are not only indicative of the way the orders “represent themselves in architecture” (cf. Dominique Donadieu-Rigaut, “Penser en images les ordres religieux), but also of their administrative framework (their level of centralisation in particular) and of their relationship with the laity. They might help us answer the following questions: What was the laity’s place in the monastic space ? To what extent did religious communities follow the artistic changes of their time?

Talk to be presented at Weingarten, November 30 2018

The multifaceted Observant movement was one of the driving forces in the attempts to reform the fifteenth-century Church. Yet the direct and permanent institutional involvement was not an obvious choice for Observant leaders.

Talk to be presented in Weingarten, November 30 2018

Entgegen einer Auffassung, die die Selbstwirksamkeit und Selbstregulierungskompetenz der Orden als Quelle von Reformen voraussetzt sollen Akteure vorgestellt werden, die von außerhalb die Orden reformierten.

Talk to be presented at Weingarten, December 1st 2018

The desire to lead a pure and intense spiritual life was very present among the late medieval society. The Observant movement had important consequences on the identity and charisma of the monastic and religious orders that aspired to recover a splendor that they considered lost, through the (re) construction and the (re) creation of the past. 

Talk to be presented in Weingarten, December 1st 2018

The support that Italian elites lavished on the new religious foundations of the fifteenth century, and especially the houses of the Observant movement, is well known. The Este family’s patronage of the Poor Clares of Corpus Domini in Ferrara and Cosimo de’ Medici’s financial backing for the Dominicans at San Marco in Florence are just two examples that can stand for many dozen such major construction projects.  Most patronage, however, was conducted at afar less spectacular level, through the exchange of prayers, letters, religious objects, and liturgical books.  

Talk to be presented in Weingarten, November 29 2018

John Capistran is an emblematic figure of the Franciscan Observance in the fifteenth century Italy. Son of a baron who came to Italy following Louis I. of Anjou, he obtained licentia in iure civili in 1412 in Perugia, where he served as iudex ad civilia during the following years, when the city was subjected to the king of Naples Ladislas I. of Anjou Durazzo. He was, therefore, involved in the political and social conflicts which characterized the decline of the Comuni and marked the affirmation of the lordships in central Italy. Following the occupation of Perugia by Braccio da Montone (1416), he was imprisoned and, according to his oldest biographers, this experience would have determined his conversion. In 1416 he took the Franciscan habit, and the next year he made his religious profession in Monteripido, one of the main branches of the Observance movement in Italy. He was, therefore, one of the protagonists of the project to reaffirm the regimen christianum in Europe, which the Franciscan Observants pursued in the service of the Papacy, while universalism on the political and juridical level was fragmented due to spreading of particularisms and the schism of the Western Church (1378-1417).