To my family for giving me life and love - Bilkent University

Following Hilarin Felder, the first, and until recently, the only comprehensive
work on the subject, many historians have tended to treat the Franciscan and
Dominican educational organizations in common, by virtue of the fact that they
were both mendicant orders. 2 Since Dominican evidence is much more
comprehensive when compared to the relative scarcity of surviving Franciscan
constitutions, the Dominican system has been accepted as an exemplar of
mendicant school systems in general.
This was the general approach at the 1976 conference on mendicant
schools in Todi, and in subsequent collections of papers. As Giulia Barone
asserted as recently as 1999: “D’altronde tutti quelli che sono passati alla storia
come ordines studentes hanno imitato il modello domenicano nel campo
dell’organizzazione scolastica.” 3 Bert Roest’s recent work on Franciscan
educational organization between 1210 and 1517, which presents a concise and
very useful summary of what has been written so far, also draws attention to this
tendency. 4 The students of Dominican educational organization likewise have
suggested that the Franciscans merely copied the results of Dominican
experience. 5 The strength of historians’ conviction that this assumption is true is
surprising, since so far no study has been made which performs a thorough
2
H. Felder, Die Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden bis um Mitte
des 13. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg, 1904).
3
G. Barone, Da frate Elia agli Spirituali (Milano, 1999), p. 130. In the footnote to her argument,
she writes that this was the impression given by the readings of the colloquium in Todi in 1976 on
the subject of the mendicant schools. The papers presented at this colloquium are published in Le
scuole degli Ordini mendicanti (sec. XIII-XIV), Convegni del Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualita
Medievale, 17, Todi 11-14 ottobre 1976 (Todi, 1978).
4
Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (1210-1517) (Leiden, 2000), p. 1.
5
M. Michèle Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in study…” Dominican Education before 1350
(Toronto, 1998).
4