{"title":"Bernardino's Rotting Corpse? A Skeptic's Tale of Capestrano's Preaching North of the Alps","authors":"J. Mixson","doi":"10.1353/FRC.2017.0004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Over the last two decades scholars have transformed our approaches to the religious history of the later middle ages. Setting aside older models of crisis and decline, reform and (pre-) Reformation, they now engage an era shown to be sparkling with energy and variety. A religious landscape once viewed through sharp dichotomies (elites against commoners, Latin against vernacular culture, clergy against laity, and so on across a wide range), now challenges scholars to think in terms of paradox, tension, and unpredictability, and to balance broad generalization with regional and local complexity. Moreover, scholars now confront more fully than ever the challenge of the sources an unexplored wilderness of manuscripts and texts, of genres and dynamics of authorship, publicity and circulation that defy easy categorization.1 In ways resonant with this scholarship, the last two decades and more have also witnessed a reconsideration of the life and career of Giovanni of Capestrano. Though Johannes Hofer’s monumental two-volume biography in many ways remains a standard, its early-twentieth century Catholic vision of ‘a life in the fight for the reform of the Church’ now yields to a wide range of new perspectives and approaches. From the pioneering conferences organized by Edith Pasztor and the essays of Kaspar Elm to the contributions of this volume of Franciscan Studies, scholars have transformed our image of the friar in ways that reflect and reinforce our changing view of his era.2 Capestrano’s preaching, writing, and trav-","PeriodicalId":53533,"journal":{"name":"Franciscan Studies","volume":"75 1","pages":"73 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2017-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/FRC.2017.0004","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Franciscan Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/FRC.2017.0004","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Over the last two decades scholars have transformed our approaches to the religious history of the later middle ages. Setting aside older models of crisis and decline, reform and (pre-) Reformation, they now engage an era shown to be sparkling with energy and variety. A religious landscape once viewed through sharp dichotomies (elites against commoners, Latin against vernacular culture, clergy against laity, and so on across a wide range), now challenges scholars to think in terms of paradox, tension, and unpredictability, and to balance broad generalization with regional and local complexity. Moreover, scholars now confront more fully than ever the challenge of the sources an unexplored wilderness of manuscripts and texts, of genres and dynamics of authorship, publicity and circulation that defy easy categorization.1 In ways resonant with this scholarship, the last two decades and more have also witnessed a reconsideration of the life and career of Giovanni of Capestrano. Though Johannes Hofer’s monumental two-volume biography in many ways remains a standard, its early-twentieth century Catholic vision of ‘a life in the fight for the reform of the Church’ now yields to a wide range of new perspectives and approaches. From the pioneering conferences organized by Edith Pasztor and the essays of Kaspar Elm to the contributions of this volume of Franciscan Studies, scholars have transformed our image of the friar in ways that reflect and reinforce our changing view of his era.2 Capestrano’s preaching, writing, and trav-