LCIS Lecture: Dr. Malgorzata D'Aughton

'Institutional Ideals and Identity: the Image of St Francis of Assisi in Late Medieval Ireland'

Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, University College Cork

Faculty of Arts, MSI 02.08

Less than twenty depictions of St Francis of Assisi survive from medieval Ireland and can be dated to the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries. In the Franciscan context, they are found as stone carvings in public areas of friary naves, where they were seen by the laity, and in private areas of cloisters, where they would have been viewed by the friars. Striking iconographic similarities between late medieval Irish stone sculptures of St Francis and early Franciscan panels from Italy support the suggestion about the transmission of Franciscan iconography into Ireland which would have happened alongside the transmission of hagiographical, liturgical and devotional Franciscan texts.

Despite their paucity and limited iconography, the surviving medieval images of St Francis stress the cultural connectivity between Ireland’s Franciscan Province and other provinces of this international Order. This presentation explores the iconography of St Francis and suggests how the Irish images of the Saint expressed the key values of the Order: preaching, prayer and poverty. It looks at how these images helped to recall the foundational ideals of Franciscanism as well as the story of the founder, how they formed part of the liturgical movement through friary spaces, how they may have been viewed and how they interacted with the friars and their lay followers.

https://ghum.kuleuven.be/lcis/news-events-publications/lcis-lecture-malgorzata-daughton-institutional-ideals-and-identity-the-image-of-st-francis-of-assisi-in-late-medieval-ireland

You may also like the following events from Leuven Centre for Irish Studies - LCIS:

• This Wednesday, 12th November, 07:00 pm, LCIS/EFACIS Book Club November: The Bee Sting (2023) in Leuven, Belgium
• Next month, 10th December, 04:30 pm, LCIS/CERES Lecture: Dr. Thirthankar Chakraborty in Leuven

Also check out other Arts events in Leuven, Fine Arts events in Leuven.