'Acciò Le Anime Dei Fedeli Non Morissero Disperate': Capuchin Friars, the Plague and Plague Treatises in the Early Modern Period

Abstract

Francis of Assisi's embrace of a leper,² and the initial identification of the Friars Minor with the outcasts of society, was echoed in the renown of a number of Franciscan saints and beati as miraculous healers and patron saints for those suffering from certain illnesses.³ Some of them were also [End Page 237] known for hospital service during epidemics.⁴ All this has created a long-standing association between the Franciscan order family and the care for the sick. Yet despite significant involvement of individual friars, and some Franciscan friaries, Clarissan convents and associated confraternities with hospitals and comparable institutions during the medieval period and after,⁵ there was no systemic Franciscan engagement with caring for the sick beyond the convent walls.⁶ The main exception were different [End Page 238] groups of Grey Sisters (Sœurs grises) in the Southern Low Countries, Northern France and Scotland that followed the tertiary rule and provided hospital care. Yet it is not always clear to what extent such groups can be assigned to the Franciscan order family.⁷ At the same time, as a wide-ranging recent essay by Ottó Gecser has pointed out, the care for the sick, incurables and other sufferers, as well as illnesses like leprosy and the plague played a significant role in the medieval Franciscan hagiographic self-image, and as a polyvalent metaphor in Franciscan preaching and related treatises on societal reform, notably during the Observant period.⁸