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482 Antonio Mursia

conducted on the friar from Agrigento, during the first half of the twen-
tieth century aimed to clarify the role he played in the process of esta-
blishing the observance in Sicily. Nevertheless, the contributions that
appeared during this period were often based on unverified infor-
mation taken from works published during the seventeenth century
by ecclesiastical scholars or those belonging to the Franciscan order
itself . It was thanks to Agostino Amore’s investigations, conducted
1
within the Spanish historical archives, that a substantial number of
unpublished documents on Friar Matthew could be found. The scholar
thus succeeded in shedding new light both on the relationships that
subsisted between the friar from Agrigento and the Catalan-Aragonese
sovereigns and on the preaching activity that Matthew carried out in
a number of Iberian cities, where he was able to popularize the reli-
gious and ethical-social aims theorized within the Observant move-
ment . In the same years in which Amore conducted his investigations,
2
Jordi Rubió i Balaguer also expressed his opinion on the presence of
the Sicilian Franciscan in Catalonia and in the kingdom of Valéncia.
He contributed, in a decisive way, in highlighting the scope of the
preaching carried out by Brother Matthew in the Spanish city contexts
between the end of the 1420s and the 1440s .
3
About twenty years after the appearance of the studies of Amore
and Rubió i Balaguer, it was Serafino Gozzo who dealt with the figure
and activity of Matthew. His investigations, however, while they
demonstrated the Agrigento friar’s ability to still arouse particular in-
terest in Franciscan scholars, were unable to bring significant novel-

1 See the studies by A. Gioia, Notizie biografiche del Beato Matthew de Gallo da
Girgenti dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori, tipografia Istituto Gualandi, Firenze 1923; Id.,
I frati minori della regolare osservanza, Libreria Editrice Pantaleone, Palermo 1940,
and Id., L’apostolato del B. Matthew d’Agrigento nella Spagna, «Frate Francesco»,
13 (1940), pp. 38-42.
2 See the works of A. Amore, La predicazione del B. Matthew d’Agrigento a Bar-
cellona e Valenza, «Archivum franciscanum historicum», 49 (1956), pp. 255-335,
and Id., Nuovi documenti sull’attività del B. Matthew d’Agrigento nella Spagna ed in
Sicilia, «Archivum franciscanum historicum», 52 (1959), pp. 12-42. The scholar
was also responsible for editing the edition of Matthew of Agrigento’s sermons: B.
Matthaei Agrigentini OFM., Sermones varii, a cura di Agostino Amore, Edizioni
Francescane, Roma 1960.
3 Refer to J. Rubió i Balaguer, El beat Mateu d’Agrigento a Catalunya i a Valén-
cia: Notes sobre la vida religiosa en una Cort del Renaixement, «Spanische For-
schungen. Reihe 1. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens», 11
(1955), pp. 109-121. Regarding observance in Aragon, cf. the studies of C. Manci-
nelli, Teoria e pratica economica francescana. Il convento del Santo Spirito del Monte
(Gilet, Valencia), Aracne editrice, Roma 2017, and Ead., La observación franciscana
en la provincia de Aragón (1380c.-1517): aproximación a un estudio, «Archivo ibero-
americano. Revista de estudios históricos», 77 (2017), pp. 53-67.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)