University of Galway History Seminar: Alms-Collecting and Information Gathering: Spanish Franciscan Commissioners and the Global Expansion of Holy Land Devotion

University of Galway History Seminar: Alms-Collecting and Information Gathering: Spanish Franciscan Commissioners and the Global Expansion of Holy Land Devotion

Professor Megan Armstrong (McMaster University)

The next University of Galway History Research Seminar of the semester will take place at 4.00pm on Wednesday, 21 February 2024. The speaker will join us online, but colleagues are welcome to join us in Room G010, Hardiman Building, where the talk will be livestreamed, via Zoom: https://universityofgalway-ie.zoom.us/j/93981848717

Please note the change of date. This talk has been brought forward from 28 February.

Following the seminar, at 5.15pm, will be the in-person launch of Bríd McGrath’s The Operations of the Irish House of Commons, 1613-1648 (Four Courts Press, 2023). The book will be launched by Professor Nicholas Canny, MRIA, FBA. For those of you joining us online, you can use the same Zoom link as above to access the book launch.

Abstract

This paper explores the commissioners of the holy land, a unique alms-gathering institution affiliated with the Custody of the Holy Land.  The Custody, based in Jerusalem, has overseen Catholic pilgrimage to the Holy Land since the fourteenth century. Since that time it has also been under the governance of members of the Observant Franciscan Order.  Through their circulation of alms and religious mementoes, commissioners played an active role in promoting Catholic devotion to the Christian holy places between Jerusalem and a global Catholic tradition. My talk explores one dimension that is critical for understanding its role in promoting holy land devotion—and that was its partnership with the Spanish state. The Spanish monarchy was the single most important patron of the Custody by the fifteenth century. From the sixteenth century onwards, commissioners boarded Spanish ships headed for the farthest reaches of its expanding empire, carrying religious mementoes and returning with monies and other forms of religious donations in support of the Holy Land pilgrimage.  Correspondence produced by the commissioners reveals a mutually beneficial partnership, one that pivoted upon the dual functions of these Franciscan officials as information gathers as well as alms-collectors. On the one hand, Spanish patronage of the commissioners extended the spiritual geography of the Custody in its efforts to keep the Christian holy places at the centre of Catholic devotion. On the other hand, the Spanish monarchy saw its own political and religious authority enhanced through its material and ideological association with the Custody, a Franciscan institution that by virtue of its traditional mobile character and location within the boundaries of the Ottoman empire extended Habsburg reach more deeply into the eastern Mediterranean.

Speaker Biography

Megan Armstrong is Professor of History at McMaster University. She is a specialist on religion and politics with a special focus upon Early Modern Catholicism and the Holy Land. Her most recent publication is The Holy Land and the Early Modern Reinvention of Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). She is presently working on three research projects: Global Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 1450-1700: Sacred Space and Cultural Interactions (Under contract with Routledge), Easter Processions and Religious Coexistence in Early Modern Jerusalem, 1500—1700, and Collecting for the Holy Land: The Commissioners of the Holy Land in the global expansion of the Early Modern Catholic Church.