Franciscan Studies: The Differerence Women Are Making

Women and Franciscan Studies: The State of the Question

87 Spirit and Life, 8 Women and Franciscan Studies: The State of the Question Margaret Carney, OSF In 1994 Kenan Osborne, OFM, invited me to prepare an essay on women’s contribution to Franciscan theology for the volume ultimately published by the Franciscan Institute entitled The History of Franciscan Theology.1 In that essay I explained why it was impossible to single out women as leaders in the various epochs of theological development and went on to suggest some changes that will help the Franciscan family to remedy this situation in the next millennium. Four years later another collection of studies addresses this topic in the present tense: What difference are women making today to the study of Franciscan theology, history, and philosophy? As I engaged in conversations with the organizers of this symposium and with my respondents, Roberta A. McKelvie, OSF, and Elise Saggau, OSF, it occurred to me that we tend to stress a common but limited understanding of the term “Franciscan studies.” Our talk returned in almost circular fashion to a few indicators, especially the recent emergence of a small number of women with doctoral degrees in Franciscan specializations. The more I pondered the evidence we referenced as signs of progress, the more concerned I became that we might find ourselves in two blind alleys. The first is the tendency to define Franciscan studies in too narrow a sense, thus risking oversight of many scholarly contributions that should occur in a complete catalog of Franciscan scholarship. The second is the temptation to ignore the fact that the recent emergence of a small group of women generally recognized as Franciscan scholars was made possible by the action of earlier generations of American Franciscan women. These women quietly—and, perhaps at times, unwittingly—laid the foundation for those of us who answer the call to scholarly pursuits today We can turn to our first temptation to begin our discussion. I would like to propose the following approach. Let us consider Franciscan studies as a wide range of disciplines involved in learning 1 The History of Franciscan Theology, ed. Kenan B. Osborne, OFM (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1994). 88 / Margaret Carney, OSF about the origins, tradition, and development of the Franciscan movement. Philosophy, theology, history, and spirituality play a prominent role, but other disciplines should be included in a comprehensive listing. As a method of determining what can be included in the term Franciscan studies, I believe that we should accept the categories of the Bibliographia Francescana, which annually provides notice of all published works pertaining to Franciscan scholarship.2 The ten divisions that marshal the works of hundreds of contributors year by year include numerous subdivisions . The entire range of possible approaches to Franciscan studies is really astounding seen from this vantage point. I have included a summary version of these categories in the Appendix to this paper. If the work of every woman scholar who has studied a Franciscan topic in any of these categories was to be listed, I suspect that our “honor roll” would grow much faster than we originally imagined possible. Those Who Have Gone Before Us Margaret Oliphant, a prolific nineteenth-century writer of fiction and history, published Francis of Assisi in 1870 in England, twenty-three years before Sabatier’s biography of the saint.3 Oliphant tells her readers in the Introduction that she based her research on the sources preserved by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum. She describes the importance of Celano’s First Life, the Legend of the Three Companions and the Legenda of Bonaventure. She utilized the Fioretti, convinced of its value to the tradition by the affection with which the Italian people transmitted it. She describes her debt to the painstaking scholarship of Father Suyskens who worked with Luke Wadding’s compilation and acknowledges studies by Karl Hase and Ozanam. She sternly warns her readers—most likely Anglicans who feared any form of Roman Catholic excess—of the dangers of those “biographies (of the 2 The Bibliographia Franciscana is published as a supplement to Collectanea Francescana by the Capuchin Historical Institute at Collegio San Lorenzo in Rome. It has been issued separately since 1944 and is the most complete bibliographic tool for Franciscan studies. 3 Margaret Oliphant, Francis of Assisi 1870 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1907). For additional information about Mrs. Oliphant, consult The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 3, 1800-1900, 500-501. [18.223.205.61] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 14...