Postgraduate Researchers, Andrea Mancini and Pawel Cholewicki, publish articles in an edited volume on Mendicant Orders

Articles written by Andrea Mancini and Pawel Cholewicki have been published in a recently published edited volume discussing the physical and spiritual journeys of Medicant Orders.

Path to Salvation: Temporal and Spiritual Journeys by the Mendicant Orders, c. 1370-1740 is an edited volume by Dr Benjamin Hazard which contains articles from multiple scholars whose research covers a wide range of topics regarding the four great Mendicant Orders - Augustinian, Carmelite, Dominicans, and Franciscans – from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. 

The volume, according to the description, is split into three main sections. The first section focuses on the writings of mendicants in the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe during the medieval period. The second section shifts focus to early modern Spain and the third moves on to the journeys of these orders in the New World. All three sections focus on the importance of travel in mendicant writings and to the orders in general, demonstrating how ‘travel contributed to religious development in many parts of the world’.
 
Andrea Mancini and Pawel Cholewicki, both of whom having successfully completed their PhDs at the University of Leeds, have made considerable contributions to this fascinating new volume. Their articles discussing the journeys of Italian Franciscans of the late medieval period make up much of the first section of the volume. 

Andrea’s article, entitled ‘Bernardino Aquilano’s Travels in his Chronicle of the Friars Minor of the Observance’, examines Aquilano’s journey as a vicar of the friars minor of the Italian Observance across Italy and the Adriatic sea. Andrea explains that, in the fifteenth century, the spread of the Observant movement within the Franciscan Order created an internal crisis that divided the order into two branches: the Conventuals and the Observants. Through his detailed analysis of the eyewitness account left by Aquilano in his chronicle, Andrea argues that it is possible to piece together not only the story of the Observant movement across Italy and Dalmatia, but also the internal dialectic of reform in the Franciscan Order. 

Andrea Mancini

Pawel’s article, entitled ‘Travels by St James of the Marches in East Central Europe. 1432-1440’, focuses on the exploits of St James of the Marches during his time traveling as a Franciscan preacher across Eastern and Central Europe in the 1430s. His travels have seen partial attention in Hungarian and South Slavic historiographical traditions, which have existed in isolation from one another due to the language barrier. Pawel provides a comprehensive overview of both traditions and examines St James’s journey as a great advocate for the reform of the Franciscan order, discussing the tensions this caused between him and other Bosnian Franciscans at the time. Pawel also explains how St James’s position as the vicar of Bosnia transformed through his tenure to become a position tasked with the dissolution of the Hussite movement in Hungary. 

Pawel Cholewicki

Path to Salvation is now available to buy. For more information, click this link.