A Pilgrimage Through the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition

“Not a monolith with a single answer to any problem, but a tradition of enquiry and openness rooted in the insights of the Poor Man of Assisi.” — Philippe Yates

What makes an individual? What kind of government serves society best? How should an economy be run, and what place does experiment have in science? In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the followers of St. Francis debated these questions with insight, integrity and passion, within a theology both deeply orthodox and radical.

This book follows their tradition the way a pilgrim would, from place to place: from Assisi to the friars’ arrival in England, through Oxford, Canterbury and Greenwich, and on to Vézelay and the schools of Paris. More than twenty essays explore Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus and the primacy of Christ, the life, sermons and influence of St. Bonaventure, William of Ockham, and the twentieth-century Franciscan theologian Eric Doyle.

With a preface by Joseph Chinnici, OFM, an introduction by André Cirino, OFM, and contributions from scholars including Thaddée Matura, Michael Robson, Séamus Mulholland, Johannes Freyer, Hermann Schalück, Nicole Bériou and Philippe Yates.