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This article discusses the Franciscan theme in Polish literature, which was apparent from the 19th century onwards, and especially towards the end of that century. This trend involves the works of many authors and an enormous variety of texts. Therefore, this article focuses on two writers—Józef Wittlin and Roman Brandstaetter—who clearly inherited the broad Franciscan tradition, and also developed and popularised the Franciscan message. The Franciscan revival in Polish literature was initiated by Protestants, which often meant a departure from the figure of St. Francis established by the Church in favour of an individual understanding and presentation of him. The first Polish centre of the revival of Franciscanism as a literary and cultural formation was Lviv. Józef Wittlin grew up in this environment; moreover, he authored, inter alia, the first Polish unfinished novel about St. Francis Salt of the Earth, which refers to Franciscanism, as well as a number of smaller texts with a Franciscan message. Wittlin was a mentor to Roman Brandstaetter, who, after World War II, became the greatest bard of Assisi and St. Francis in Polish literature. Unlike Wittlin, who was Protestant-inspired, Brandstaetter clearly placed the Assisi saint in a Catholic context. This writer greatly expanded references to Franciscan tradition and art in his work. He wrote essays on Assisi, wrote a drama about St. Francis, and combined Franciscanism with biblical themes, as evidenced by his Jesus of Nazareth tetralogy. Despite their differences, what both writers shared is that the saint from Assisi was neither an object of devotional worship nor an outdated figure, but a representative of ideas and layers of spirituality that had remained fresh for people living in that conflicted era. Although they emphasised other aspects of the Franciscan ethos, they both accepted it as a counterbalance to a cold and indifferent world, an idea for living addressed not only to Christians, but also to people of other faiths and agnostics.

Karol Szymanowski’s Little Solemn LitanyTwo fragments op. 59 (1930–33) was the last vocal work in Karol Szymanowski’s oeuvre. Its writing marked the end of Szymanowski’s adventure with poetry, which had lasted throughout his activity as a composer. Composed to fragments of Jerzy Liebert’s poem with the same title, from the collection Gusła (1930), it was also a tribute to the young poet-who died prematurely of tuberculosis in 1931-paid by Szymanowski, who was moved by Liebert’s fate. Meeting Liebert became one of the most important spiritual experiences for the composer in the last few years of his life. What brought the two men close on the creative level was Franciscanism as striving for simplicity in art and their attitude to artistic craftsmanship, to the métier. Liebert, who experienced a fervent religious conversion and who introduced a new tone into Polish religious poetry, touched a religious chord in Szymanowski’s soul and helped him to extract more music from the reserves of his religiosity, apparently already exhausted in the opinion of the author of Stabat Mater. In doing so, he contributed to a revitalisation of the composer’s spiritual life and provoked him into carrying out an “examination of conscience”, as it were, which ultimately led to the writing of the Litany. A small masterpiece of vocal lyricism showing new perspectives in Szymanowski’s oeuvre and at the same time a prayer, like Gioacchino Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle.

Over the centuries, the dynamic and fluid charism labeled “Franciscanism” has evolved, changed and morphed well beyond the vision of St. Francis and St. Clare. There is ample evidence to suggest that, after Vatican II and its mandate for religious communities to renew themselves (Perfectae caritatis, nn. 2 et passim), Franciscans of various stripes have done just that. On the other hand, the majority of First Order friars in the world are yet clerics, often minister in diocesan settings (e.g., parishes), and frequently self-identify more as “Fr”. than “Br”. Recent developments in postcolonial and decolonial theory provide valuable lenses for discerning to what extent First Order Franciscans have actually recovered the founding charisms. While distinguished by genealogy, chronology and priorities—some argue that decolonization is about reasserting control of land and resources, while decolonialization is concerned with the epistemic control that continues long after foreign administrations have receded—these two frames are yet intimately linked. Together, they provide welcomed tools for discerning to what extent monasticized, clericalized and “diocesanized” stands of ministry, administration and thinking persist among First Order friars in the 21st century. This engagement with unexpected dialogue partners from critical theories, rather than with the more comfortable and traditional arenas of history and spirituality, promises fresh and maybe even unsettling insights about our enacted spirituality.

Bonaventure discerned the continuous presence of the problem of primary causality in contingent beings. From his perspective, full knowledge of the problem of primary causality emerges only when human reason is reduced to the first cause. In contrast, materialists do not consider primary causality because its empirically scientific epistemological method marginalises the idea of first cause (i.e., God). The zeitgeist of materialism and its entrenched reductionist ontology remains the core of physical and natural science in considering that all that has been is matter and holding that empiricist methods are the most reliable tools through which being can be investigated. These foundational premises are now reembraced in an in vogue ontology in the human and social sciences, New Materialism. In theology and religion, this paradigm has been applied too, despite the obvious perpendicularity in content and method of materialism when compared to metaphysical theorisations held as articles of Christian faith. Given that the human and social sciences are the natural home for expanding the conceptualisation of science, which might include faith, a case is developed that reductionist New Materialism influences against faith. Consequently, a twofold responsive model to New Materialism is made through Bonaventurianism: (1) by critiquing the absoluteness of materialist empiricism and (2) by arguing that reductionist epistemology is unreflective of multimodal being.Contribution: A contribution is made to Franciscan and Bonaventurian scholarship by the reintroduction of Bonaventure’s thought in the ambit of science and religion, focussing especially on ontological and epistemic questions.

This paper demonstrates that the figure of St. Francis of Assisi, as expounded by St. Bonaventure in his work Legenda Major (Major Legend), cannot be understood without certain philosophical and theological keys. Following an expository methodology, we point to Saint Francis as a theological aesthetic model. In this sense, we focus on five characterisations found in the Major Legend, introducing their aesthetic meaning, as well as the philosophical and theological significance of St. Bonaventure. We refer to St. Francis as a contemplator of nature, lover of poverty, an imitator of the crucified Christ, a brother of humankind and a Lord’s knight and minstrel, to conclude that the aesthetic model of St. Francis, as found in St. Bonaventure, can only be understood starting from theological (mystical) and philosophical ascension.

Eighteenth-century actor and playwright Eusebio Vela, long thought to be born in Mexico but actually born in Spain, dominated Mexico City's Coliseo theater for decades and has been variously interpreted as a creole patriot or as a Spanish propagandist. Velas four extant plays, which treat the fall of Spain, Telemachus's wanderings in the Mediterranean, the spiritual conquest of Mexico, and the life of Saint Francis, complicate overly rigid distinctions between Spanish and Mexican playwrights. They do not simply impose imperial ideologies; rather, they demonstrate Vela's engagement with Mexican history and social reality while simultaneously reenacting the playwright's own emigration from Spain and subsequent rooting in Mexico. The Francis play in particular, which was considered lost for centuries and has never before been analyzed critically, echoes the millennial apocalpticism of the first Franciscan missionaries while simultaneously questioning the institutionalization of Franciscanism in eighteenth-century Mexico. Vela's attunement to the themes of disaster, fluidity, and conversion reveals that his surviving corpus is complex, nuanced, and worthy of further study and inclusion in the colonial Mexican theatrical canon.

This article outlines some potential features of the profile of the redactor of the second version of the Chronicle of 1344. After a presentation of the state of the art, three thematic lines are referred to. These trends are evident in certain passages of the text, suggesting that such characteristics could be attributable to its author's preferences: a clerical penchant akin to the Franciscan models; a didactic trend, in line with specula principorum; and a taste for topoi and expressions similar to those used in courtly literature. KEYWORDS. Crónica de 1344 (2nd version), author, Franciscan, specula, chivalric novel