Franciscan observance and sanctity strategy: Franceschina's manuscript of Giacomo Oddi and its social-political project (XV century)

• Grant number: 19/17537-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2020
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Maria Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira
• Grantee: André Luiz Marcondes Pelegrinelli
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/14786-6 - Writings on new worlds: a history of the construction of moral values in Portuguese, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 21/09541-0 - Development of a database of Franciscan manuscripts and images, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

The friars of the Franciscan observance threatened by the power increase of the conventual friars and in face of the failing of the Giovani de Capestrano canonization, needed to rethink their saint manufacturing strategy used for the identity construction and the group public image. It is in this background that Giacomo Oddi finished writing, in 1474, the Specchio dell'Ordine Minore, also known as Franceschina, a hagiographic compilation based on former traditions which narrates the lives of hundreds of dead friars with a saint fragrance, featuring the resemblances with Francesco d'Assisi and Christ, in order to point out his observing group legitimacy and integrity. Though, the influence that Giacomo Oddi's work would have in later texts, it was copied in just three medieval manuscripts, that not only didn't present the text author, but also are widely illustrated with water coloring images - a characteristic already on the prior manuscript. Through analysis of those three manuscripts - their texts, their images and its materiality - as well as former and contemporaneous works that relate with the piece, we'll discuss the sanctity instrumentalization set in practice by the observing group during that conjecture while, threatened, tried to present a harmonious continuity between new and former saints. (AU)