Preface

Special Issue "Mendicants, Humanists and the Aesthetics of the civitas"

Claudia Jentzsch and Katharine Stahlbuhk

Abstract
The title of this special issue invokes the concept of civitas, understood as the collective body of a town’s inhabitants bound together by a shared commitment to the common good. In contrast to the monastic orders, who typically lived apart from urban centers, the mendicant orders deliberately embedded themselves in the fabric of the city. Consequently, mendicant friars engaged in dynamic exchanges with the lay world, participated in humanist discourses revolving around the valori civici, and exerted both direct and indirect influence on conceptions of the "body of the city" – in its immaterial, imagined dimension as well as in its material, built form. Bringing together six case studies by scholars of art history, history, and the history of philosophy, this special issue explores how mendicant involvement shaped art, architecture, and urban space in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy.

Friars engaging with civic values

[1] The present RIHA Journal special issue is the outcome of a two-day-conference held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome in 2021 (October 5–6) and presents seven case studies by scholars from art history, history, and the history of philosophy. We seek to offer a 'kick-off' volume which, by addressing the mendicants' contribution to humanism from a multidisciplinary perspective, will inaugurate further inquiries into this theme. The hypothesis of the conference was that the friars played a significant role in the formation of cultural and social identity within their respective communities and, moreover, engaged in reciprocal exchange with the lay world regarding the aesthetics and the iconography of the city. The intention was to approach the topic from two angles: first, the mendicants' participation in (humanist) discourses in the context of the valori civici and their impact – directly or indirectly – on shaping ideas of the body of the city, both the immaterial one conceived in the imagination and the one built of brick and mortar (and other materials). Second, our focus lay precisely on the friars' appropriation of such an 'aesthetics of the civitas'.

[2] The contributions to this issue include studies on Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites, and span topics ranging from preaching activities and the organization of general chapters, through building campaigns undertaken in close collaboration with civic authorities, to the literary works of individual mendicant authors. The essays focus on questions and topics relating to the Italian peninsula, with an emphasis on Florentine as well as northern and central Italian examples. However, precisely in view of the networked structure of the mendicant orders – spanning all of Europe and even beyond, and necessarily involving the circulation of friars, books, objects, and ideas – we are committed to broadening the geographical scope of our investigation in future research and publications. Coming from an art-historical background, we as editors of the present issue are particularly interested in exploring whether and how the use of certain materials and iconographic features, as well as the conscious reception of antiquity versus local tradition, and even the construction and design of space within convents relate to discourses on community and civic values and to a fresh reading of ancient texts. With this in mind, this special issue interrogates, inter alia, the formation of identity, the transfer of knowledge, and the construction of history through rhetorical practices, mendicant sermons, and humanist texts.

Humanism(s): from civic to Christian to mendicant

[3] Today, we are faced with a seemingly endless list of scholarly publications on humanism, so-called humanisms, humanists, and the often highly debated interpretations and/or definitions produced over more than a century and a half of historiography.¹ The complexity is further increased by the range of disciplines engaged in the study of the humanist period (from the history of ideas to philosophy or philology, from sociology to political history), which, moreover, often fail to communicate with one another.

[4] It has been mainly historians who have critically questioned, negated, or refined the validity of the groundbreaking – even if sometimes opposing – theses formulated by scholars such as Hans Baron, Eugenio Garin, and Paul Oskar Kristeller; in its different aspects, this historiography reflects ideological stances, scholarly convictions, and the historical and documentary evidence.² But even in the purely historiographic realm, the debate is further complicated by different academic schools. Furthermore, many fundamental studies on this historical period have been written under the shadow of the darkest chapters of 20th-century history, and their appraisal of the actions and thoughts of Quattrocento humanists likely bears the imprint of ideological allegiances, even when this concerns merely the emphasis on their secularity. Regarding this last point, an often-overlooked study, Gestalt eines christlichen Humanismus by Herbert Werner Rüssel published in Amsterdam in 1940, introduces us to the so-called Christian Humanism.³

[5] Apart from these early contributions, the relationship between humanist thought and religion has been the focus of significant scholarship since at least the 1970s, with important studies, again by Kristeller and then by Kaspar Elm and by Charles Stinger. The relationship continues to arouse scholarly interest mainly in disciplines like the history of religions and the history of philosophy.⁴ What we recognized, however, in our own research is a clear deficit of art historical studies on this subject. Elm mobilized the term Verflechtung to describe the linkage and interlocking between the two realms, and, since the term captures this in such an apt and comprehensive way, we have likewise adopted it when referring to the 'intertwining of convents and the city'. Building on this foundation, this RIHA Journal issue seeks to examine humanism through the lens of a specific category of religious people: the mendicants. The first and utmost fundamental difference of these orders, which were relatively 'new' during the early stage of humanism compared with older monastic orders, lies exactly in their close relationship with urban centers. Instead of being built far away from highly populated areas, their convents and other structures were intimately embedded in the expanding towns and cities – a fact that on its own foregrounds the social and public impact of their actions.

The friars and the civitas

[6] It is here that the third key word of our title, the civitas with its different aesthetic programs, comes into play. The term civitas – and likewise its Greek counterpart polis – refers to the collectivity of the inhabitants of the city with clear implications regarding community and common good. The friars – as noted, in contrast to the monks, who lived apart from the cities – were explicitly and consciously active in both small and large urban centers.⁵ Since their orders were founded mainly in the early 13th century, the friars' extensive building campaigns across the Italian peninsula (and Europe) profoundly shaped the cityscape, playing a significant role in urban development and expansion and the stylistic orientation of the buildings. It is undeniable that the construction of convents had major repercussions on the commercial and artistic trades and crafts, i.e., on the 'ancillary industries' in general, by attracting financing from lay donors as well as from civic institutions. A vivid example of this early state of affairs and the naturalisation of convents within the new city walls can be seen in the well-known detail from the Allegory of the Misericordia in the confraternity of the Bigallo in Florence. Here, the ring of the city wall comprises a stack of buildings representing both civic and religious structures, and is eloquently labelled civitas florentie (Fig. 1: The Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella and the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce can be seen on the far left and right, respectively).

1 Bernardo Daddi, Allegory of Mercy, detail, 14th century, mural. Spedale del Bigallo, Florence (photo: authors)

The title of this special issue, Mendicants, Humanists and the Aesthetics of the 'civitas'. Rhetoric, Political Debates, and Cultural Identity in 14th and 15th Century Italy and their Impact on Art, Architecture, and Urban Space, invokes the concept of civitas, as it encompasses these various dimensions: the city as a physical, built 'body' corresponding to urban space; as a social body; and as a 'body of ideas'. The volume thus addresses the discursive negotiation of these notions of civitas in both written and oral discourse, including their rhetorical deployment and their incorporation into sermons, as well as their role in shaping the semantics of materials, artworks, and monuments. In summary, it examines how such discourses mediated between the city and the community.

Handling Editor
Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

Citation
Claudia Jentzsch and Katharine Stahlbuhk, "Preface: Special Issue 'Mendicants, Humanists and the Aesthetics of the civitas'", in: RIHA Journal 17, 2 (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2026.2.113750.

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