Lecture: The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in 1451–1456 and His Correspondence

John of Capistrano, a Franciscan friar and a famous medieval preacher and theologian, made a grand preaching tour in Central and Eastern Europe between 1451 and 1456. During his travels, Capistrano exchanged hundreds of letters with a number of correspondents, most of them men of power and authority: popes, cardinals, bishops, kings, and dukes, as well as Franciscan friars, noblemen and townspeople. Capistrano’s correspondence deals with current political and religious problems, but also with minor requests petitioned by various individuals. When treated as a single corpus, it is a gold mine of information relating to important religious, political and social developments in fifteenth-century Europe.

The lecture will overview the recent research on Capistrano’s correspondence that embraces around 700 letters. A special focus will be given to the recent Latin-English edition of letters related to the Polish-Kingdom and Silesia which is just one small step on the long journey to make the entire corpus of Capistrano’s correspondence widely available to international scholars and students.