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The Vitae of Leading Italian Preachers of the Franciscan Observance:Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Hagiographical Constructions Ippolita Checcoli (bio) During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Franciscan regular Observance and its milieu produced a series of hagiographical portraits of its greatest and most renowned preachers:1 Bernardino da Siena (1380-1444), Giovanni da Capestrano (1386-1456), Giacomo della Marca (1394-1476), and Bernardino da Feltre (1439-1494).2 This biographical [End Page 281] material has been long disregarded by scholars or used only partially, and has rarely been compared in its entirety.3 The majority of these texts are virtually unknown, written by anonymous or little-known authors, and the goals and audiences of these biographies remain equally shadowy. All of these vitae stand in a tradition that began during the fifteenth century, but continued for some time,4 namely [End Page 282] that of first-hand testimonies, generally written by someone who had been close to the preacher and felt compelled or was invited to write an account of the preacher's life. Generally the assistant, secretary and life companion of the supposed saint, such men (for we know of no female authors) more or less spontaneously began to collect news, anecdotes and miracles, sometimes even before the preacher's death. The bulk of this material was used and reworked by Luke Wadding (1588-1657) in his Annales Ordinis Minorum, a history of the Franciscan Order from its origins to 1540, written between 1625 and 1654.5 As a result, most of these materials were only accessed through the work of Wadding, ensuring that the vitae themselves were neglected and practically unread in subsequent centuries. Later, the Bollandists collated some of the Observant lives in their monumental Acta Sanctorum, once again editing and reworking the biographical material to suit their project6. As André Vauchez7 and Bert Roest8 have pointed out, the majority of these biographies were geared towards possible canonization processes,9 compiled for the preliminary [End Page 283] examinations by the pope, or for the inquisitors of the beatification or canonization process, and they were often written in anticipation before the trial was even ordered. Unfortunately it is neither possible to establish whether these texts were actually read, and if so, by whom, nor whether they circulated outside this official context. In any case, it is clear that their authors often tried to make the subject and the story comprehensible and readable for the average reader: the biographies share the same material as the canonization proceedings, but are often written in a clear narrative form. Sometimes, the text itself could directly influence the process and the preliminary investigation, which were enriched by additional inquiries and by the accounts of eyewitnesses or those touched by the saint's miraculous powers.10 There are always many different forces, actors and interests behind the genesis of such hagiographical sources: the Church, the friars of the regular Observance, the dioceses where the preacher was born and died, and where his cult would presumably develop. Due to the scarcity of evidence concerning their composition, authorship and textual tradition, it is difficult to formulate hypotheses about the influences brought to bear to these texts. This makes it very complicated to grasp the individual context of the different vitae, and to calibrate the influences on them. Based on the evidence from a few dedicatory letters that preceeded some of these biographies, it seems that it was often the leadership of the regular Observance that ordered the lives to be written. The life of Giovanni da Capestrano (1457) by Girolamo da Udine11 is preceded by two letters: the letter of the general vicar of Veneto Pietro Morosini to the author Girolamo da Udine, and the reply of the latter. [End Page 284] Morosini's letter asks Girolamo, Capestrano's assistant for many years, to write the biography. The style of the letter, which is dated March 28, 1457,12 is a mixture: a perfect balance between persuasion and coercion. Morosini complains that after having himself consulted the collected biographical materials about Capestrano, he promptly realized that it was insufficient (est parvum volumen litterarum),13 and accordingly asks Girolamo to take up the...
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