Passion, charisma and gender in an illuminated manuscript of Bonaventure's life of Saint Francis
- Statement of Responsibility:
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Flora, Holly
- Hlavní autor:
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Flora, Holly
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- Formát:
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Journal article
- Jazyk:
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English
- Forma / Žánr:
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text (article)
- Vydáno:
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2021
- V:
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Specula: Revista de Humanidades y Espiritualidad ISSN 2697-2484 Nº. 1, 2021 (Ejemplar dedicado a: A Don Ramón Arnau García), pags. 123-151
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Written by then-Master General of the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, the Legenda maior was declared the Order's only official account of Francis' life in 1266. Hundreds of surviving manuscripts of the Legenda maior attest to the text's popularity in the late middle ages and early Renaissance, but somewhat surprisingly, only a handful of such manuscripts are illustrated. Among these unusual, illuminated copies of the Legenda is a mid- fourteenth century codex known as MS 411, now kept in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome. The manuscript contains seventeen miniatures or historiated initials altogether, each introducing a chapter of Bonaventure's Legenda. Remarkably, a kneeling woman is shown in supplication before Francis on at least four folios; she is likely the book's primary reader. In this paper, I will discuss the repeated inclusion of this woman's image in the manuscript, arguing that her likeness reveals how the vita of Francis was uniquely appropriated as a devotional tool for her. Intended as a précis to a longer book project, my study here raises larger questions about Franciscan texts, illustrated manuscripts, and lay devotion in Italy in Trecento.
