HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

294 BERT ROESTtexts were concerned with pushing a certain form of holiness, butalso to connect this holiness with the evangelical lifestyle of theDominican order itself.From the outset the Dominican order as a whole was representedas an authentic subject of historiographical writing. This shows inthe Dominican production of order saints’ catalogues and order histories,in which individual friars are presented as witnesses of aninstitutionalised Dominican sainthood, with learning and pastoral careas constitutive elements. 55 The exemplary institutional Dominicansaints’ catalogue is Gerard of Fracheto’s Vitae fratrum ordinis praedicatorum(ca. 1260). Gerard produced the work on request of Humbertof Romans, who had asked on the general chapter of 1255 to collectmaterials on the virtuous and saintly deeds of friars preachers. 56Gerard of Fracheto deliberately modelled his Vitae fratrum on thefamous Vitae patrum, a strong token of the Dominican group-imagein church-historical perspective, and tried to establish the order’sidentity as a body of friars preachers with a specific evangelical formof life over against the traditional orders and the regular canons. 57Throughout the late Middle Ages, Gerardo’s Vitae fratrum, which inthat regard was more successful than the comparable FranciscanDialogus de gestis fratrum minorum mentioned before, remained the dominantmodel of Dominican collective institutional hagiography. Seefor instance the works of Peter Gui († ca. 1347), Peter Gallo (†1348),John Meyer from Zurich (†1485), and Jean Martin of Valenciennes(†1495). 58The mendicant orders also engaged into the production of hagiographictexts on non-mendicant saints. As said before, the friars hada vested interest in promoting the cult of saintly fellow travellers;whether they were exemplary lay tertiaries or saintly royals. Mendicanthistorians composed many individual saints’ lives for the purpose ofcanonisation, and for the edification of novices, female religious andaligned penitential groups. 59 Moreover, they embarked on the pro-55Canetti (1996b), 24.56Vitae fratrum ordinis praedicatorum, ed. B. M. Reichert, MOPH 1 (Paris, 1896).57Kaeppeli (1970–93), 2:35–38, 4:94. Cf. Canetti (1996b), 26. On the Vitae patrumas model for Dominican order hagiography see Boureau (1987), 79–100.58Kaeppeli (1970–93), 2:474–75, 3:220–21, 229.59It is not possible to mention all the individual texts. For more information thereader is directed to the catalogue of Kaeppeli (for the Dominicans) and to the surveysof Roest (1996) and Pacciocco (1990) (for the Franciscans).