Franciscan Organization in the Mendicant Context

‘The effectiveness of any institutional body largely depends on the way in which it organizes itself, the processes used for taking decisions and for executing them as well as the ability to respond to change’ (p. ix). Taking this matter-of-fact statement as its starting-point, the fifteen essays gathered in this book, edited by Michael Robson and Jens Röhrkasten, cast a wide net to capture a sense of what might be called organisational principles in practice, rather than the slightly more static (and more exhaustively studied) legal-constitutional forms and regulatory structures that characterised the medieval Franciscan order. An opening contribution by Hans-Joachim Schmidt on the friars’ innovative territorial organisation for their universal mission of pastoral care (i.e. provinces and custodies) sets the stage for the remainder of the volume, which focuses on the Franciscans, but includes other mendicant organisations for comparative purposes. Eschewing stabilitas loci, the authors—much like the medieval friars themselves—range across diverse parts of Europe, exploring the establishment and activities of friars in Ireland (Niav Gallagher), Prussia (Jürgen Sarnowsky), England (Richard Copsey and Michael Robson), Ypres (Paul Trio), and Naples (Cristina Andenna). Other offerings take a more thematic tack, including Franciscan education (Bert Roest and Bronach Kane), communication (Annette Kehnel, Ludovic Viallet, and Jens Röhrkasten), and episodes of intervention by outsiders—above all the papacy—in the organisational life of the friars (Lars-Arne Dannenberg and Melanie Brunner). An essay on ‘system rationality’ and the Dominicans (Gert Meville) rounds off the volume

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