New directions in Franciscan studies

Abstract

Since modern research on medieval thought first began to gather momentum in the late nineteenth century, scholars have held fast to a number of key assumptions about the Franciscan intellectual tradition, which was founded early in the thirteenth century and continues to flourish to this day. In recent years, ground-breaking research has increasingly called these assumptions into question, opening up new directions in the field of Franciscan studies for assessing long-neglected aspects of the Franciscan intellectual tradition and nuancing its supposed relationship to the ‘origins of modernity’.