This essay examines the figure of Amadeo Peter Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy (later Bank of America), as an example of an _alternative_ banking model based on ethical and humanistic principles inspired by Franciscan socio-economic thought. The analysis explores how values such as fraternity, gratuity, simplicity, humility, and service - rarely found in the financial sector - can be integrated into _banking management_ to create a positive and democratic impact. The objective is to fill a gap in research (...) at the intersection of ethics, spirituality, and economics, demonstrating that an approach grounded in _human dignity_ and the _common good_ can be successful even in a profit-oriented context. This vision proved to have a significant impact during critical moments, such as the San Francisco earthquake and the Great Depression, showing Giannini’s deep _trust_ in human resilience and dignity. Furthermore, the _faithful banker_ supported emerging industries like film and wine and invested in infrastructure projects like the Golden Gate, contributing to California’s economic and social development. Through the analysis of historical sources and testimonies, it is highlighted that the humanistic model of the “_gentle giant_” not only promoted financial inclusion and democratization, inspired by the Monti di Pietà, and access to credit for working-class people and immigrants but also fostered a visionary role for the bank as a _trusted partner_ in social progress. This approach demonstrated that finance could be a tool for _community wealth_, uniting economic growth with human development. The legacy of this _humble banker_ confirms that corporate prosperity is not at odds with social justice and sustainable development. His “_moral_” banking philosophy, rooted in trust, humanity, and fraternity, represents a model for integrating economy and faith, rejecting individualism and promoting inclusivity and fraternity. (shrink)

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more (...) detailed examination of the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)

Franciscan biocentrism is the view that Francis of Assisi is a biocentrist who holds that all living things have intrinsic value. Recently, biocentric theorists Sterba and Taylor have modified biocentrism to accommodate holistic entities. I consider thinkers from the broader Franciscan intellectual tradition (Bonaventure and Scotus) to see whether Franciscan biocentrism can be similarly modified. I discuss notions from these medieval philosophers such as the Cosmic Christ and the concept of haecceitas. I also explore whether Franciscan biocentrism can provide a (...) satisfactory response to the problem of evil, since Franciscan biocentrism faces an issue that secular biocentrism does not: making sense of extinction. (shrink)

…Not without a providential design, the historical events of the thirteenth century led to the Holy Land, the Order of Friars Minor. The Sons of St. Francis have since then remained in the land of Jesus … to continuously serve the local Church and to preserve, restore, protect the holy places, and their loyalty to the wishes of the Founder and the mandate of the Holy See was often sealed by acts of extraordinary virtue and generosity…Holy Land guides mediate between (...) pilgrims and multiple Jerusalems. This article focuses on the roles played in this process of mediation by Franciscan human guides in two contexts: actual Jerusalem and the virtual Jerusalem of San Vivaldo.1 The longstanding, special relationship... (shrink)

Soon after arriving in Asia, Jesuit missionaries published apologetic and catechetical works for the immediate needs of conversion. Later on, they also introduced writings on spirituality to nourish the spiritual life of the Catholic communities. In Japan and China, the classic text Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola appeared in different versions. When the Franciscans arrived in China in the 1630s, they relied on the Jesuits' Chinese writings. At the end of (...) the seventeenth century, they even reprinted some Jesuit works in Canton. To foster their own mission, the Franciscans wrote also their own catechisms and spiritual works.This article presents Pedro de la... (shrink)

This resourceful book presents an extensive approach to Mariology in the Middle Ages unifying Medieval, Franciscan and Marian reflections on the Virgin Mary as presented in the catholic tradition in Theology, Meditation, Art and Sermons.In the introduction, the General Editor of the Collection: The Medieval Franciscans, Steven J. McMichael, introduces Vol. 16, Medieval Franciscan Approaches to the Virgin Mary, Mater Misericordiae Sanctissima et Dolorosa. First, McMichael presents a perceptive résumé of each of the five sections of the book, which (...) he identifies as five different disciplines: early foundations of the Order, sermons and theological reflections, meditations, medieval art, and Franciscan preaching. He... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A few years ago the esteemed Franciscan scholar David Flood argued that when early Franciscans used the term subditi in early texts to describe their work relationships, they "imagined a new way of working" and "gave work a new definition." To them labor was "a social act;" it was for others as well as self; it offered "the possibility of being a complete person," and "the possibility of (...) a human order marked by abundance and justice." It was refreshing to see a neglected subject receive proper scrutiny, and his conclusion, that the first Franciscans had "a particular idea of labor: a way of extending others recognition, proposing solidarity, and contributing more to production that they took from it," is a most welcome addition to Franciscan history. I agree wholeheartedly with the core of Flood's conclusion but believe it needs to be qualified. My primary intention here is offer the needed correction by placing Franciscan work theology in its larger historical context. Once monastic theology prior to Francis is documented I conclude that while early Franciscans did present society with a varieties of possibilities, these were not, as Flood maintains, either new or unique. Their ideas about work were but a continuation of a theology of work first articulated by Peter Damian and fellow reformers. After this main task is completed I offer some further speculation about the role Franciscan behavior and attitude toward work played in the anti-Franciscan criticism of the Late Middle Ages. I suggest that the Franciscan failure to keep abreast with society's expectations regarding work was in part responsible for that criticism.Christian attitudes toward labor are rooted in the Old Testament. Genesis establishes work as an activity proper to God and prelapsarian humanity. In the presence of sin labor becomes difficult and punitive, but continues to be simultaneously redemptive . Jesus "the Carpenter" says little directly about work, but the canonical authors do. Work has intrinsic value and is necessary for self-survival and the community . It is the basis for social justice and salvation . Early Christian literature deals with work in a similar manner. It is infrequently discussed, but when it is mentioned it is given due respect. Tertullian and Origen hint at a theology of work, but one has to wait for monasticism to see work theology become substantive. The Desert Fathers and Mothers and the rules of Pachomius, Basil, Augustine, Macarius, Four Fathers, Caesarius of Arles, the Master, and Benedict all discuss the spiritual necessity of work and mandate its inclusion in the daily life of monastics. During the first millennium Western society was more concerned with working than with thinking about work, but by the eleventh century conditions were more conducive to reflection. Peter Damian recognized the opportunity and responded creatively. Within his voluminous writings is the first sophisticated Christian reflection on the concept of work. It is, we shall see, the foundation for future theologies, including Francis's.Born in Ravenna in 1007 Peter Damian was educated in the liberal arts at Faenza, Parma, and probably Ravenna. Upon completion of his studies he enjoyed immediate success as a teacher, but he retired soon and entered Romuald of Ravenna's Camoldolesian monastery at Fonte Avellana ca.1034. Instead of ending his intellectual career the move actually propelled him into the limelight. By his death in 1072 Damian was a leading intellectual force throughout the West. He was also revered as a pioneering leader of the religious renewal and reform movement of the High Middle Ages. His influence was vast, a fact fully appreciated by Dante and the reason why he chose Damian as his ideal man. Although today Damian's creativity and originality is often overlooked it is hard to ignore these traits in his work theology. The theology is not, however, systematically.. (shrink)

The Franciscan Movement in the Netherlands is an association of people who are moved by the evangelical ideal of Francis and Clare of Assisi. Its members are lay and religious people who aim to live a spiritual life characterized by solidarity and simplicity. In this article, I will describe the lively spirituality of the "Franciscaanse Beweging", a movement that started as a "Franciscan Cooperation" seeking to deepen Franciscan spirituality within religious communities in the 1950s but that changed its course and (...) expanded rapidly after the Second Vatican Council.63In 1987, Gerard Pieter Freeman, staff member of the Franciscan Cooperation, explained in an article on Franciscan spirituality and... (shrink)

THIS ESSAY SEEKS TO REDRESS THE SHORTCOMINGS OF CHRISTIAN ENVIronmental ethics by proposing Franciscan environmental ethics drawn from the affective and embodied experience of Francis of Assisi plus the Franciscan theological tradition that he inspired, as exemplified by Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus. Drawing its inspiration from the love Francis of Assisi had for nature, the Franciscan tradition holds that creation bursts with religious significance. This tradition interprets Francis' affective and direct sensory experience of the natural world with theological concepts (...) creatively reworked from scripture and patristic sources, especially the Incarnation and theTrinity.The Franciscan understanding of the Incarnation emphasizes continuity between humanity, creatures, and elements. The Franciscan vision of Trinity as community-ofpersons, inspired by Francis's Canticle of Creatures, supports a more inclusive vision of the moral community. Franciscan environmental ethics can inspire an enhanced moral imagination and the praxis of an ethic of care. (shrink)

Today’s crisis in the Western economy has led important economists to rediscover the moral and spiritual sources of their field; I will mention only Tomáš Sedláček, Thomas Piketty, Robert and Edward Skidelsky. The crisis is also an opportunity to look at the economy in a Franciscan perspective. This perspective is, as I will argue, one of perfection, undividedness, and the Franciscan way of seeing things in this perspective is a particular form of poverty. The early Franciscans, beginning with their (...) patron and example St. Francis of Assisi, had discovered this perspective by leaving the world, experiencing poverty, and accepting it – even this poverty – as a divine gift.1 By experiencing and enduring... (shrink)

In an oft-quoted letter, King James IV wrote to the Dominican Prior General that Scotland was "almost the most remote region in the world."1 Nevertheless, as scholarship of the past fifteen years has shown, later medieval Scotland played a central role in Latin Christendom.2 Perhaps most importantly for the current study, numerous religious orders were active in Scotland and had significant ties to the Continent.3 Many of the same questions pertaining to Continental houses also exist for Scotland. In particular, there (...) are many unanswered questions about the group known as the Franciscan third order. Sources indicate that there were a number of men and women known as... (shrink)

At first glance one might be tempted to count the Wycliffites among the bitterest opponents of the Franciscans, and thus part of the storied late medieval tradition of anti-fraternalism.1 There is much to support this conception, of course, given the bitter invective directed at the mendicants by John Wyclif himself and the Wycliffites who followed in his wake. Although the Wycliffites were certainly not the first to reckon the mendicant orders accomplices of antichrist, they leveled such charges throughout numerous (...) works. Yet this is only part of the story; it is the epilogue, the result of a gradual estrangement that had set in among likeminded friends. And even this later parting of the ways might not... (shrink)

The Latin religious text known in the Middle Ages as the Stimulus Amoris must be considered a key text of late-medieval Franciscan spirituality, and one of the texts from the Franciscan milieu that was most widely copied and disseminated throughout the Middle Ages among monastic as well as lay readerships.1 In a recent study, Falk Eisermann has demonstrated that the Stimulus Amoris was subject to a particularly productive reception with multiple adaptations through centuries, and that the text to a large (...) extent was without one clearly discernible, normative form. The Stimulus Amoris, in other words, appears to have been regarded as an open text that could be, and in fact was altered, excerpted, shortened and... (shrink)

The Prologue offers an overview of the Reformation of method from Augustine of Hippo through to the Ramist movement, providing an orientation to the rest of the book. It highlights and explains an important nexus of Realism, exemplarism and illumination fundamental to Ramism. Beginning with Augustine it shows how these themes coalesced into a distinctive Christian philosophy taken up and refined by Franciscans such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and John Duns Scotus, as well as by Ramon Lull, the Franciscan-inspired (...) encyclopaedist. It traces the continuation of this methodological impulse into the Platonism and Christian humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting especially the topical and Realist (Scotistic) reform of logic pioneered by Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola. It concludes by showing the reception of this topical and biblical reform in Philipp Melanchthon and the movement of Reformed scholasticism, revealing Reformed Scotism and Christian philosophy as important preconditions for Ramism. (shrink)

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more (...) detailed examination of the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)

The thirteenth century was a dynamic period in intellectual history which witnessed the establishment of the first universities, most famously at Paris and Oxford. At these and other major European centres of learning, English-born Franciscans came to hold prominent roles both in the university faculties of the arts and theology and in the local studia across Europe that were primarily responsible for training Franciscans. This volume explores the contributions to scholarship of some of the leading English Franciscans (...) or Franciscan associates from this period, including Roger Bacon, Adam Marsh, John Pecham, Thomas of Yorke, Roger Marston, Robert Grosseteste, Adam of Exeter, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, and Bartholomew of England. Through focussed studies of these figures' signature ideas, contributions will provide a basis for drawing comparisons between the English Franciscan school and others that existed at the time, most famously at Paris. (shrink)

Almost 22 years ago the Franciscan Authors Website: A Catalogue in Progress was published on-line for the first time. This internet site, which is a co-production of Maarten van der Heijden and myself, and which can still be found at its original internet address, is meant to develop into a digital successor to the Franciscan authors catalogues of Lucas Wadding and Sbaraglia. The site is by no means complete, but it does contain biographical information, bibliographical references, and information on the (...) works produced by a large and growing number of Franciscan authors... (shrink)

In March 1323 two Franciscan friars, Simon Semeonis and Hugo Illuminator “inflamed with seraphic ardor” left Ireland to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, having attended the provincial chapter in Clonmel in October the previous year. 1They sailed across the Irish Sea, and travelled via London, “the most famous and wealthy city under the sun” to Canterbury, where they venerated the relics of Thomas Becket. In France having made their way through Amiens and Paris, they travelled down the (...) Saone and the Rhone. From there they passed through the mountainous area of Lombardy to Bobbio, where “reposes the body of the blessed Irish abbot Columbanus,” and then went to Padua and Venice. From Venice they traversed through .. (shrink)

Traditional Franciscan history holds that Francis of Assisi founded an order of lay penitents, which was given both a rule and official approval by Pope Nicholas IV in 1289. In this accepted version of events, the 1289 rule was followed by houses of men and women until the sixteenth century, and only replaced when a desire for greater unity within the Franciscan third order led Leo X to issue a new rule in 1521.2 Despite not standing up to historical scrutiny, (...) studies of the third order seldom question this official narrative.3 Moreover, although the 1521 rule is generally mentioned, little attention is given to either its context or significance.4 When the historical circumstances of this new rule are .. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste.--Thomas of York.--Roger Bacon.--John Pecham.--Richard of Middleton.--Duns Scotus.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. [409]-412).

This paper analyses Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, showing how it should not be confined to the field of a negative critique of biopolitics. In his work, Agamben cautiously delineates a positive figure of homo sacer, whom, according to him, we all virtually are. Such figure would be able to subvert the form in which the relation between bare life and political existence has so far been both thought and lived in the West. How and when is this passage from (...) negative to positive sacredness historically accomplished for Agamben? Is such transit after all thinkable? These are the two basic questions he both unintentionally formulates and leaves undecided in his book Homo Sacer . Agamben further elaborates his investigation of biopolitics in the book he dedicates to Saint Paul, The Time That Remains . Chiesa suggests that, in this volume, the figure of homo sacer as earthly hero is transposed onto that of the messianic man. This can only be achieved by means of a detailed Christian—and more specifically Franciscan—development of the ontological notion of ‘form of life’. Problematically enough, Agamben is able to carry out a transvaluation of biopolitics only in the guise of a bio-theo-politics. (shrink)

The paper places in context some anonymous questions on book I of the Sentences, distinctions 1-28 with three prologue questions, found in Oxford, Merton College Library, ms. 103. They were most likely written at Oxford, probably by a Franciscan author, in the period 1295-1305. In addition to discussing possible authors and those cited in the text and margins, the list of questions is provided.

(There are occasional changes to the text. "F" refers to A. Friedberg, Corpus iuris canonici, Leipzig, 1879. "S" refers to Seraphicae legislationis textus originales iussu Rmi Patris Ministri Generalis totius Ordinis Fratrum Minorum in lucem editi (Ad Claras Aquas, 1897).).