2020/01/30 by Christopher MacEvitt · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient history #Christianity #Classics #Early Christianity #Early Modern Women Writers #History #Medieval Literature and History #Order (exchange) #Period (music) #Philosophy #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Theology
paper · doi:10.1002/9781119100072.ch22
openalex publication_date 2020/01/30 · openalex created_date 2022/01/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Franciscan martyrdom began in the early days of the Order, and was a vital marker of Franciscan values at different periods within Franciscan history. In the thirteenth century, the desire for it functioned primarily as a marker of individual sanctity and as part of an idealized path to union with God. As the Order fractured in crisis in the fourteenth century, martyrdom was used to unite the quarreling factions and mark out the holiness of the Order as a whole. The early modern period saw the emergence of a distinctively Franciscan conception of martyrdom linked with mission, and the first canonized Franciscan martyrs. The expansion of Christianity in Asia and the Americas as well as the conflicts of the Reformation gave new opportunities for martyrdom, but many of the honored dead of the Order did not receive papally-sanctioned recognition until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.