Observant Reforms and Cultural Production in Europe: Learning, Liturgy and Spiritual Practice

Pietro Delcorno studied theology and medieval history in Bologna and Nijmegen, and completed his PhD on late medieval exegesis and preaching in 2016 at Radboud University. Since 2021, he works as senior assistant professor at the University of Bologna and is visiting researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen. He is leading the project ‘Lenten Sermon Bestsellers: Shaping Society through Religious Communication in Late Medieval Europe (1470-1520)’, founded by a Veni Grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). His main research interests include medieval and early modern preaching, religious drama, and late medieval social history. His academic publications in the field include two monographs: Lazzaro e il ricco epulone: Metamorfosi di una parabola fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014) and In the Mirror of the Prodigal Son: The Pastoral Uses of a Biblical Narrative (1200-1550) (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018), as well as many articles on the Observant preachers, Italian confraternities, and Monti di Pietà.  

Bert Roest studied intellectual history and medieval studies at the Universities of Groningen and Toronto, and completed his PhD at Groningen on the intellectual contexts of medieval Franciscan historiography in 1996. Since 2008 he works as a lecturer at Radboud University Nijmegen, and he holds a Status Only position as Associate Professor at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. His research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of religious orders between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century. His publications comprise various monographs, such as A History of Franciscan Education (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2000); Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004); Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares Between Foundation and Reform (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013), and Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220-1650: Cum scientia sit donum Dei, armatura ad defendendam sanctam Fidem catholicam…(Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2015), as well as many articles and essays on mendicant preaching, Observant religious and literary culture, and demonology. Together with Maarten van der Heijden, he maintains the Franciscan Authors Website (https://applejack.science.ru.nl/franciscanauthors/).

Cécile Caby is now a professor in Medieval History at Sorbonne Université (Centre Roland Mousnier, UMR 8596). Her main research fields are in social, monastic and cultural history of late medieval Italy. More recently, she carries on research on penetration of humanistic practises in religious orders in Quattrocento Italy, with a special focus on oratory and transition from sermo modernus to humanistic oratory.

Silvia Serventi graduated in Classics at the University of Bologna in 1998 with a dissertation entitled Prediche per le monache di San Giorgio di Lucca; she obtained the PhD in Italian studies at the University of Turin in 2005; she has benefited from various scholarships including the “Borsa di studio Vittore Branca” at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa between 2008 and 2009. She edited Giordano da Pisa’s Avventuale fiorentino, the letters of spiritual direction by Girolamo da Siena and Bianco da Siena’s complete collection of laudi. She has dealt with the writings of the Poor Clares of the Observance, editing the volume with minor works by Caterina Vigri and the Latin and vernacular text of the Trattato della purità del cuore by Battista da Varano. She teaches Art history at the high school and deals with Italian religious literature of the late Middle Ages and the early modern age. She collaborates with the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo on the project for the edition of Catherine of Siena’s letters.

Roberto Cobianchi is Associate Professor at the Università degli Studi di Messina, Italy. He specialises in religious art and iconography in late medieval and early modern Italy. His publications include the monograph Lo temperato uso dele cose. La committenza dell’Osservanza francescana nell’Italia del Rinascimento (2013), and articles such as “Cithara Angelica’: experiencing God through music in Franciscan imagery (...)’ (2020), ‘Il lungo corso del «Fiume del terrestre Paradiso». Francescanesimo, immagini e iconografie nell’età della Controriforma’ (2017), ‘Printing a New Saint: Woodcut Production and Canonization of Saints in Late Medieval Italy’ (2015).

Haude Morvan obtained a PhD in the History of Medieval Art from the universities of Paris-Sorbonne and Roma La Sapienza in 2013. Her thesis was published in 2021 under the title “Sous les pas des frères”. Les sépultures de papes et de cardinaux chez les Mendiants au XIII^e siècle (Publications de l’École française de Rome). She was a research fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (2011-14) and at the École Française in Rome (2014-16). Since 2016, she is an Associate Professor (maître de conférences) in the History of Medieval Art at the Université Bordeaux-Montaigne. Her research interests center on the tombs monuments of the late Middle Ages, the Mendicant orders, the iconography of funerals, the changes in church interiors between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and antiquarianism. She has led three collective research programs: “Observer l’Observance” (2017-21), “Medieval Art Across Time” (2019-22) and “Dans l’œil des antiquaires” (since 2020). In 2022, the book Spaces for Friars and Nuns: Mendicant Choirs and Church Interiors in Medieval and Early Modern Europe and a thematic issue of the Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez untitled L’ordre dominicain dans la péninsule ibérique: nouvelles perspectives de recherche en histoire de l’art (XIIIe-XVI^e siècle) were published under her direction.

Hugo Perina is associated with the Centre de Recherches Historiques, Paris. His research focuses on late medieval and Renaissance religious musical culture, with a specialization in the development of the organ. His publications include the upcoming monograph L’orgue et le souffle dans l’Église italienne de la Renaissance (1400-1550), and essays such as ‘L’histoire religieuse aux frontières de l’histoire culturelle: orgue, patrimoine et historiographie’ (2019), ‘Les effets du son de l’orgue sur la société italienne de la Renaissance’ (2020), ‘Les contrats d’apprentissage et leurs alternatives dans la formation des organistes et facteurs d’orgues italiens (1400-1550)’ (2022).

Kristin Hoefener studied musicology, medieval philology, history and art history at the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht (Netherlands), at the University Paul Valéry of Montpellier, and at the EPHE of Paris (France), as well as singing and early ensemble music at the Conservatory of Tilburg (Netherlands). She concentrated in past research on liturgical monodies and their strong contextual anchoring (historical, hagiographic and liturgical), as well as on the inscription in a process of innovation (liturgical reforms, innovation in musical notation, composition of new chants, compilation of cycles with new and old elements). Investigating connections between texts and melodies by interweaving musicology and philology are specific features of her research. In 2019 she completed her Ph.D. intitled Studies on Origin, Development and Transmission of Office Cycles in Honour of the Holy Virgins from Cologne: Cult History as Music History at Würzburg University (Germany). She holds a position as Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at University Nova in Lisbon (Portugal).

Her vocal ensemble KANTIKA has performed sacred music at festivals in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Hungary and Poland and recorded six CDs. She also works as choir conductor and teaches workshops.

Pablo Acosta-Garcia is María Zambrano Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). His current project studies the materiality, composition, and censorship of the visionary book of sermons by the Franciscan abbess Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534). He was formerly Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2019-2021) at the Institute of Medieval History of the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (Germany), with the project ‘Late Medieval Visionary Women’s Impact in Early Modern Castilian Spiritual Tradition’. His research interests include, but are not limited to, mysticism, devotional and convent literature, female preaching in the Middle Ages, the European circulation and translation of religious writing authored by women, and manuscript studies.

Koen Goudriaan is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His main field of interest is the religious history of the Low Countries during the Later Middle Ages. In particular, he focuses on the Devotio moderna, paying attention to both institutional and spiritual aspects and to the wider horizon of rival religious movements such as Observant franciscanism. He has published many essays and articles on late medieval religious life in the Low Countries, and is co-editor of the volume Piety in Practice and Print: Essays on the Late Medieval Religious Landscape (Hilversum: Verloren, 2016). Over the last decade he compiled a Digital Census: Monasteries in the Netherlands until 1800 (https://geoplaza.vu.nl/projects/kloosterlijst/en/).

Patricia Stoop teaches premodern Dutch Literature in the Department of Literature at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her strongly interdisciplinary research focuses on women’s participation in the intellectual, religious, cultural and literary field of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Central themes in her work are (collective) authorship, literacy, authority and autonomy of women. In addition, she focuses on subjects such as the construction of book collections and (literary and intellectual) networks, memoria (both in the sense of memory techniques and the remembrance of persons), commercial book production, and sermon studies.

Ana Marinković is Assistant Professor at the Art History Department of the University of Zagreb (FFZg), holding a PhD in medieval studies from the Central European University in Budapest (2013). She is a founding member of the Croatian Hagiography Society Hagiotheca. Her current research focuses on the local contexts of church reforms and Observant cults, and the spatial responses to changes in political governing and ecclesiastical discipline in the medieval and early modern cities of the Eastern Adriatic.

Valentina Živković is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA (PhD University of Belgrade, 2007). Her research focuses on late medieval and early modern art and devotion in the Southeastern Adriatic city of Kotor, with a focus on cultural and religious ties between the two Adriatic coasts, cults of saints, Observant reform of the Dominican order, female monasticism, testamentary legacies for the salvation of the soul, the role of prayers and miracle-working images.

Emilia Jamroziak is a Professor of Medieval Religious History at the University of Leeds and an alumna of the Central European University. She has published 3 monographs and 3 collected volumes on various aspects of monastic social and cultural history in Northwest and East Central Europe. Her forthcoming book, under contract with Amsterdam University Press, explores Cistercian engagement with the cult of the saint between 1300 and the early 16th century. Jamroziak was a 2015-16 Humboldt Fellow at TU Dresden and a 2019-20 Marie Curie- and Horizon 2020-funded fellow at the University of Erfurt. She has been the recipient of 4 Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) grants and her current work focuses on the constructions of the historiography of Latin monasticism since the 19th century.