Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, Ca. 1420-1620 : Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement

This volume deals with the transformative force of Observant reforms during the long fifteenth century, and with the massive literary output by Observant religious, leading to encompassing models of religious perfection that had an effect far into the sixteenth century. Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420–1620: Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Notes on Contributors 9 1: Introduction 14 2: The Observance’s Women: New Models of Sanctity and Religious Discipline for the Female Dominican Observant Movement during the Fifteenth Century 26 3: Creating a Colettine Identity in an Observant and Post-Observant World: Narratives of the Colettine Reforms after 1447 45 4: Instruction and Construction: Sermons and the Formation of a Clarissan Identity in Nuremberg 61 5: Canonical Change and the Orders of ‘Franciscan’ Tertiaries 82 6: Transcending the Order: The Pursuit of Observance and Religious Identity Formation in the Low Countries, c. 1450–1500 99 7: Selections in a World of Multiple Options: The Witness of Thomas Swalwell, OSB 123 8: ‘The Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom’ (Der ewigen wiszheit Betbüchlin, 1518): Catechistic Shaping of Religious Lay Identity 139 9: The Vineyard of Saint Francis 165 10: The Name of God, the Name of Saints, the Name of the Order: Reflections on the ‘Franciscan’ Identity during the Observant Period 185 11: The American Inquisition and the Arabic Language: A Short Note about the Invention of the Moriscos in the Sixteenth Century 204 12: Grids for Confessing Sins: Notes on Instruments for Pastoral Care in Late Medieval Milan 214 13: Capuchin Reform, Religious Dissent and Political Issues in Bernardino Ochino’s Preaching in and towards Italy (1535–1545) 227 14: How to Write a Conversionary Sermon: Rhetorical Influences and Religious Identity 248 Index of Names 266 Index of Places and Subjects 269 This volume deals with the transformative force of Observant reforms during the long fifteenth century, and with the massive literary output by Observant religious, a token of a profound pastoral professionalization that provided religious and lay people alike with encompassing models of religious perfection, as well as with new tools to shape their religious identity. The essays in this work contend that these models and tools had an ongoing effect far into the sixteenth century (on all sides of the emerging confessional divide). At the same time, the controversies surrounding Observant reforms resulted in new sensibilities with regard to religious practices and religious nomenclature, which would fuel many of the early sixteenth-century controversies.Contributors are Michele Camaioni, Anna Campbell, Fabrizio Conti, Anna Dlabačová, Sylvie Duval, Koen Goudriaan, Emily Michelson, Alison More, Bert Roest, Anne Thayer, Johanneke Uphoff, Alessandro Vanoli, Ludovic Viallet, and Martina Wehrli-Johns.