Does 1500 Matter? The Case of John of Capistrano

This paper addresses the question our panel raises through an investigation of a crucial fifteenth century figure, the reforming Franciscan Friar John of Capistrano. There is much about his life that is particular to the fifteenth century, before the Reformation and its aftermath rendered him more difficult to decipher in subsequent generations: he was a highly trained civil and canon lawyer; a stunningly popular preacher whose tours took him throughout central Europe; a stern reformer of his own religious order; a persecutor of heretics and Jews; a devout mentor of religious women; leader of a crusade before the walls of Belgrade. But Friar John also enjoyed an afterlife that itself speaks to the ruptures and continuities of early modern religious culture. Consider especially his canonization, after several failed attempts, in 1600; his long-lived cult, which endured for generations; and a memory that still lives today in Mexico and California.  This paper will explore various soundings in John of Capistrano’s life and afterlife to speak to questions of continuity and change, questions of the transformation from the “late medieval” to the “early modern,” and questions of the (im?)possibility of biography as history.