Franciscan Legend Of The Immaculate

History of the origin and foundation of the Pontifical institute of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. This book spiritually chronicles the birth of the Franciscan-Marian religious community. Franciscan Legend of the Immaculate documents the history of the Franciscans of the Immaculate from their beginnings in an abandoned friary in Frigento, Italy, with two young priests in 1970, up to their erection as a Religious Institute of Pontifical Rite with around 600 friars and sisters throughout the world by 1998. It recounts the manifold goodness the Blessed Virgin has done to this religious order and the achievement the friars and sisters have accomplished for Our Lady. This inspiring story provides hope for the whole Church in these times of great difficulty.

In this third volume of Collected Essays, Peter Damian Fehlner traces the Franciscan Marian-ecclesiological vision and mission back to its sources in Francis and Clare of Assisi. Fehlner shows how the quintessentially Franciscan theological themes and their elaboration down the centuries find their roots in the Poverello, the “Man totally Catholic and Apostolic,” as well as in Clare, the “imprint of the Mother of God.” In thoroughly Trinitarian fashion, Fehlner unveils Francis’s understanding of Mary—type and exemplar, mother and member of the church—as the firstborn daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is, therefore, primordially the Virgin-made-Church. Flowering out into the Franciscan theological tradition, this volume features two studies where Fehlner unpacks this Franciscan, Marian-ecclesiological tradition in systematic and mystical theology. Fehlner takes St. Francis Anthony Fasani, his Conventual predecessor, as his guide in the spiritual exegesis of Scripture and Catholic devotion, unveiling the ecclesiological and Marian implications of the Song of Songs. In systematics, Fehlner analyzes the love song of the Son for his church in his definitive study of Bonaventure’s understanding of charity and the divine missions in the church.

This volume offers a sample of the many ways that medieval Franciscans wrote, represented in art, and preached about the ‘model of models’ of the medieval religious experience, the Virgin Mary. This is an extremely valuable collection of essays that highlight the significant role the Franciscans played in developing Mariology in the Middle Ages. Beginning with Francis, Clare, and Anthony, a number of significant theologians, spiritual writers, preachers, and artists are presented in their attempt to capture the significance and meaning of the Virgin Mary in the context of the late Middle Ages within the Franciscan movement. Contributors are Luciano Bertazzo, Michael W. Blastic, Rachel Fulton Brown, Leah Marie Buturain, Marzia Ceschia, Holly Flora, Alessia Francone, J. Isaac Goff, Darrelyn Gunzburg, Mary Beth Ingham, Christiaan Kappes, Steven J. McMichael, Pacelli Millane, Kimberly Rivers, Filippo Sedda, and Christopher J. Shorrock.

Prominently located on the Arx, the northern summit of the Capitoline hill, S. Maria in Aracoeli is the most significant medieval church of Rome to survive to the present day. Second major church of the Lesser Brothers or fratres minores in the Italian peninsula, and Roman headquarters of the Order, the Aracoeli played a vital role in the interaction between the Franciscans and the papacy, the friars and the laity, and the religious and civic authorities, as reflected in its art and architecture. On the basis of an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological analysis with the finding of new archival evidence, reinterpretation of documents and literary and epigraphic sources, this book offers a reconstruction of the original church, its monuments and its Benedictine as well as eighth/ninth-century predecessors, which differs radically from earlier hypotheses. This reassessment in turn allows the author to revisit a number of major questions, including the Franciscans’ physical and theoretical appropriation of the past, the adaptation of an ancient site by a ‘modern’ religious order, the use and functions of space, the interaction between friars, laity and artists, and the contribution of the Roman Franciscans to the development of Marian devotion, thus shedding new light on the social, political and religious history of late-medieval Italy and its impact beyond the peninsula, from England to Bohemia and the Holy Land.

Issues for 1941-44 include the Report of the 23rd-26th annual meeting of the Franciscan Educational Conference.

This book is a compelling and balanced history of the California missions and their impact on the Indians they tried to convert. Focusing primarily on the religious conflict between the two groups, it sheds new light on the tensions, accomplishments, and limitations of the California mission experience. James A. Sandos, an eminent authority on the American West, traces the history of the Franciscan missions from the creation of the first one in 1769 until they were turned over to the public in 1836. Addressing such topics as the singular theology of the missions, the role of music in bonding Indians to Franciscan enterprises, the diseases caused by contact with the missions, and the Indian resistance to missionary activity, Sandos not only describes what happened in the California missions but offers a persuasive explanation for why it happened.