RESEARCH RESULTS BASED ON NON-TEXTUAL SOURCES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION FOR THE HISTORY OF MENDICANT ECONOMY
RESEARCH RESULTS BASED ON NON-TEXTUAL SOURCES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION FOR THE HISTORY OF MENDICANT ECONOMY

Summary/Abstract: This introductory paper does not summarize the existing literature about the subject. It only aims to sketch some milestones on the basis of examples coming mostly from “Western” researches as comparison tools, but also from remarks concerning “Central-Eastern” Europe. It tries to show which non-textual sources have been explored at present in order to study the economic management of the Mendicant friaries, with which approaches and which results. Few of them have been exploited by now from this point of view. Consequently, numerous issues of key importance still need to be properly addressed, such as: 1) could the Friars in Central Europe be considered by the faithful of the time as (voluntary) “poor”? 2) Did the Friars have a more important role in production and exchanges? 3) Do the non-textual sources give a different image of the social strata that materially supported the friaries than the one provided by texts?

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