Dante and the Franciscans
Poverty and the Papacy in the 'Commedia'

This study will appeal to scholars interested in medieval religious and intellectual history.

Nick Havely (Author)

9780521099042, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 January 2009

236 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.35 kg

'This is an important contribution to Dante studies and to the cultural and political dimensions of the controversies over Franciscan poverty.' Modern Philology

Nick Havely examines the connections between Dante, the Franciscans and the Papacy as they appear in the Commedia and presents the poem as one concerned with an often dramatic confrontation between authority and idealism in the Church. Havely draws on a wide range of literary, historical and art-historical sources relating to the controversy about Franciscan poverty during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This study will appeal to scholars interested in medieval religious and intellectual history, as well as to readers of Dante's poem.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on citations, translations and manuscript sources
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. From shame to honour: Tuscan and Franciscan poverty
2. Inferno: avarice and authority'
3. Purgatorio: poverty in spirit
4. Paradiso: poverty and authority
Epilogue
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]