Genealogy as a heuristic device for Franciscan Order history in the Middle Ages and Early Modernity: Texts and trees

This paper explores the significance of spiritual genealogy as a historiographical device in Franciscan representations of the order's past during the medieval and early modern period. Certain visual exponents of this heuristic – murals, engravings, and manuscript paintings of Franciscan family trees – have been the subject of increasing scholarly attention. I argue that these visual family trees are only one manifestation of a broader tendency to represent and analyse Franciscan order history in genealogical terms. Other manifestations include written historiography, as well as genealogical images other than trees. The versatility of these visual and verbal genealogical representations of the Franciscan past made them into an adaptable means for communicating a variety of messages, apart from emphasizing Franciscan community in a general sense.