MENDICANTS, HUMANISTS, AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE 'CIVITAS'
Rhetoric, Political Debates and Cultural Identity in 14th and 15th Century Italy and their Impact on Art, Architecture, and Urban Space

guest-edited by Claudia Jentzsch and Katharine Stahlbuhk

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2026.2

The title of this special issue invokes the concept of civitas, understood as the collective body of a town’s inhabitants bound together by a shared commitment to the common good. In contrast to the monastic orders, who typically lived apart from urban centers, the mendicant orders deliberately embedded themselves in the fabric of the city. Consequently, mendicant friars engaged in dynamic exchanges with the lay world, participated in humanist discourses revolving around the valori civici, and exerted both direct and indirect influence on conceptions of the "body of the city" – in its immaterial, imagined dimension as well as in its material, built form.
Bringing together six case studies by scholars in art history, history, and the history of philosophy, this special issue highlights how mendicant involvement shaped art, architecture, and urban space in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy.

Preface
(Claudia Jentzsch and Katharine Stahlbuhk)

"Arma praedicatorum sunt auctoritates sumptae de libris". Visual Expressions of the Mendicant-Humanist Dialectic among the Friars Preachers
(Katharine Stahlbuhk)

Humanistic Rhetoric and the Aesthetics of Cities in the Chapter Preaching of Mendicant Orders (Italy, Late 14th–15th Centuries)
(Cécile Caby)

Una reggia nel convento: gli appartamenti papali di Santa Maria Novella nel Quattrocento
(Gaia Ravalli)

Giovanni Caroli and the New Humanist Aesthetics
(Amos Edelheit)

"L’Aquila, magnifica citade": Fashioning a Center of Franciscan Observance in the Abruzzo Region
(Pavla Langer)

Karmeliterpredigten und -reden des 15. Jahrhunderts und ihr Einfluss auf die civitas
(Ralf Lützelschwab)

The RIHA Journal welcomes submissions on any topic in the history of art throughout the year. Please contact an editor at one of the RIHA member institutes worldwide (https://www.riha-journal.org) or the Managing Editor at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich:
Dr. Andrea Lermer
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte
Katharina-von-Bora-Str. 10
D-80333 München
riha-journalzikg.eu