Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The focus of this dissertation is the Franciscan church of Santa Caterina (ca.1385-1391) at Galatina in the Salento, an area of Italy characterised by the presence of Greek language and/or rite communities. Scholars have described it as an emblematically 'Latin' church, decorated with 'Giottesque' frescoes, commissioned by a ruthless and ambitious signore, built with the papacy's approval, donated to the Franciscan order and founded with the aim of providing mass in Latin for those who did not speak Greek. This dissertation argues that that view needs to be considerably nuanced, if only because the relationship between the Graeci and the Latini in late-medieval Salento is much more complex than often acknowledged. I place Santa Caterina in its context, exploring how the frescoes themselves are evidence for transculturation and how the experience of both communities must be re-centred in order to fully understand the creation and reception of the fresco programme. Before doing this, however, this PhD focuses on the history of the foundation by restoring agency to two of the three main patrons: Raimondello del Balzo Orsini (d.1406) and his wife Maria d'Enghien (d.1446). I argue that the foundation of Santa Caterina was the first sign of Raimondello's interest in south-eastern Italy, which would allow him to become the first person outside of the royal family to be crowned Prince of Taranto in 1399. I explore the possibility the church may have been built ad instar of St Catherine's on Mt Sinai, and how this may in turn explain some of its unusual architectural features. This dissertation then takes on the second phase of the church's history, during which Maria, now Queen of Naples, commissioned the extensive mural decoration. I date the fresco decoration ca.1415-23/5, discuss in detail their iconography, reconstruct lost scenes, and present - for the first time - a holistic interpretation of the mural programme.

The survival and success of religious reform groups in the late medieval period was often due to the efforts of an ecclesiastical patron, a powerful and often wealthy individual who exerted their influence on behalf of the group or their leaders and spokesmen. This thesis uses the wealth of documentation available on the Spiritual Franciscans to explore the origin, development and wider effect of the relationships between the most powerful ecclesiastical patrons of the reformers and their clients, spokesmen for the Italian Spirituals at the papal court who were taken into the patrons’ households for years or even decades. During that time, the political fortunes of the different groups of Spiritual Franciscans fluctuated dramatically: in only a handful of years they went from hopeful expectation at the Council of Vienne c. 1311 to heresy trials, imprisoned spokesmen and friars burned at the stake c.1317-1318. Using testaments from the patrons’ families and the patrons themselves, the thesis explores the possible reasons for the patrons’ initial attraction to their Spiritual Franciscan clients. Letters, chronicles and exegetical texts written by the clients during and after their time in the patrons’ households are examined along with papal registers and other narrative and epistolary sources to develop models of the nature and progression of the patronage relationship, and how it survived in the face of periods of intense disapproval and harassment from the papacy, other prelates and some members of the Franciscan hierarchy. After establishing a framework for the progression of the patronage relationship, evidence of art patronage and other religious and patronage interests that the patrons and clients shared is used to develop a deeper understanding of how the patrons’ choice to involve themselves with the Spiritual Franciscans positively or negatively affected others in their orbit, especially their other clients.