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Fit to Preach and Pray: Considerations of Occupational Health in the Mendicant Orders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Following their foundation in the thirteenth century, the mendicant Orders came to occupy an increasingly important role in the religious life of the medieval city. The mendicant spiritual mission and way of life was arduous, and the prayer and preaching which filled (or ought to have filled) a friar’s working and waking hours demanded both strength and stamina. As a result of these demands, the leaders of the Orders had to ensure that those men whom they admitted as their brothers were physically capable of undertaking their intended duties. This paper accordingly considers the idea of the ‘use and abuse of time’ by approaching some of the questions concerning health and fitness as requirements for the friars of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 95 - 106
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
References
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2 Humbert of Romans, ‘De eruditione praedicatorum’, in his Opera de vita regularis, ed. J. J. Berthier, 2 vols (Rome, 1888–9; reprinted Turin, 1956), 2: 373–484.
3 Ibid., 2: 431.
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18 X 1.20.2: CIC, 2, cols 144–5.
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22 Bartholomew of Pisa, ‘Liber de conformitate’, in Analecta Franciscana, 12 vols (Quaracchi, 1885–1983), 4: 290.
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24 ‘Fratres leprosi infra scepta sui conventus seorsum ab aliis procurentur. Quod si altitudo illius loci vel alia causa legitima non permiserit per priorem provincialem ad conventum alium nostri ordinis transferentur’: Galbraith, Constitution, p. 211. The interpretation of fratres leprosi is problematical and may refer to the sick in general rather than the leprous.
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27 ‘frater Jacobus de Yseo, qui in locis inguinaribus et membris genitalibus totaliter erat confractus’: Salimbene, Cronica, 96 (1: 99).
28 Ibid.
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30 ‘Chronica XXIV generalium ordinis minorum’, in Analecta Franciscana, 3: 241.
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32 Account books from the convents of S. Domenico and S. Francesco at Bologna record payments made to physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries for medicines and treatment for their friars during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; Bologna, Archivio di Stato, S. Domenico, Demaniale 294/7574; Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, MS B. 490–2.
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36 ‘Praedicationes et Minores infra annum probationis quemquam ad sui ordinis professionem recipere non possum’: VI 3.14.2 (CIC, 2, col. 1051).
37 ‘Raimundus Attanulfi …. fuit miles in século et fuit in Ordine fratrum Minorum, sed in novitiatu fuit licenriatus et emissus de ordine quia infirmus erat’: Salimbene, Cronica, 368 (1: 387–8).
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39 Humbert of Romans, Opera, 2: 214–16.
40 Ibid., 1: 196.
41 ‘Et super omnia cavere debet ne res corruptae vel putridae, quae sunt in periculum sanitatis, fratribus unquam dentur’: ibid., 2: 283.
42 See above, n. 8.
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45 ‘Iohannes Haussy …. qui austeritatem ordinis fratrum minoram in quo se voto professionis obstrinxerat propter corporis et complexionis debilitatem sustinere non valens’: Sbaraglea and Eubel, Bullarium Franciscanum, 6, no. 532.
46 ‘Corporis sui, quod non solum est suo, sed communitatis servitio deputatum’: Humbert of Romans, Opera, 1: 391.
47 Cited in Ballester, L. Garcia-, ‘Changes in the Regimina Sanitatis’, in Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner, eds, Health, Disease and Healing in Mediaeval Culture (Basingstoke, 1992), p. 120.Google Scholar