The early part of the project focussed on a few key areas of foundational research. One involved identifying any early Franciscan texts which were not critically edited, studying their manuscript traditions, and gaining a sense of the work that would be involved in producing editions. While this work fell outside the scope of the project, we were nonetheless able to produce not only a catalogue of unedited early scholastic (including Franciscan) sources, critical editions of 4 works of John of La Rochelle, a study of the manuscript tradition as well as a preliminary critical edition of the unedited fourth volume of the Summa Halensis (the collaboratively written early Franciscan Summa of theology on which the project focussed), as well as a study of the manuscript tradition of Odo Rigaldus’ Sentences commentary and a proposal for the work to edit it. Much of these results were thanks to the incredibly hard work and ingenuity of one of the project postdocs, Riccardo Saccenti, who is now Associate Professor of Medieval Philosophy at Bergamo University.
In addition to work on the relevant manuscript traditions and critical editions, the PI focussed in the early years of the project on organizing a series of conferences which brought together nearly 100 of the leading experts in medieval thought from around the world, who work in a wide range of disciplines (Islamic and Jewish studies, history, paleography, ancient philosophy, medieval theology, philosophy and so on). She invited these experts to apply their knowledge of the field to the exploration of the completely neglected Summa Halensis, which is the flagship text of the early Franciscan tradition and one of the first texts of its kind. This work provided a prototype for Aquinas’ more famous Summa Theologiae, which he began to write twenty years after the Summa Halensis was completed. The conferences explored the early scholastic context of the Summa, its Greek philosophical and patristic, Arabic, Jewish, Islamic, as well as medieval sources, and above all, its teachings and doctrines, in order to make the case that the text is not merely an ‘old-fashioned textbook of Augustinian ideas’ but a pivotal work in the medieval history of ideas which shaped not only the theological method of the new universities but also the theological thinking of the subsequent generations. Eight conferences were organized between 2018 and 2021 and resulted in 4 major edited volumes published by De Gruyter (open access).
During this same time frame, the PI commissioned a subcontractor to produce an open access digital edition of the Summa Halensis. Together with Oleg Bychkov, moreover, she translated key selections from the Summa Halensis and published them as a Reader in Early Franciscan Thought with Fordham University Press (2021). The PI’s own publications formed the crux of the context in which the key arguments of the project were developed. These publications include two major monographs with Cambridge University Press, published in 2019 and 2023, which also comprised the submission for her Habilitation, which was awarded in 2021 by the Humboldt University of Berlin.
The final stage of the project focussed on producing general reference resources on the Franciscans and the surrounding scholastic tradition which would draw on project findings to redefine the field of research and provide a foundation for further study and innovation. The main resources include a reference volume for Cambridge University Press, published in 2025, called, The Origins of Scholasticism: Philosophy and Theology in Paris 1150-1250, which situates the early Franciscan developments in the wider context of the establishment of the first medieval universities in which the Franciscans served as founding members. Another reference volume is the Oxford Handbook of Medieval Franciscan Thought, which the PI co-edits with Drew Rosato. All chapters have been received for this volume; currently they are being copy edited with a view to submitting the volume to OUP in August 2026. In the last phase of the project, the PI organized workshops for contributors to both these projects as well as to a special issue of the Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, which was published in 2024.
