Abstract

The literary form De viris illustribus , first used by contemporaries of Cicero, enjoyed a widespread popularity in the Renaissance. The theme became so popular that the Florentine humanist Matteo Palmieri wrote that “history is nothing but the celebration of illustrious men.”1 During the second half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, various Carthusians, Cistercians, Benedictines, Carmelites and Dominicans adopted the same title for institutional writings on their respective orders. Strangely enough, the Observant Franciscans, while engaging in various types of institutional history around the same time, were more hesitant to adopt the title for such institutional ..