Franciscan Landscapes of Identity and Violence

Abstract

This chapter goes beyond geographic spaces and thinks about how the corporal space of the body and the metaphysical space of the ideas and cultures can also be subject to coloniality. It explores the multidirectionality of this coloniality and the importance of the Middle Ages in the formation of complex colonial processes. This chapter also emphasises the specificity of the Franciscan position, highlighting their ambivalence towards violence and their participation in their own subjugation as well as of others. The Franciscans experienced both sides of the Inquisition, as victims and perpetrators, and this chapter uses the example of the transatlantic Inquisition and its medieval foundations in order to illustrate the Franciscans’ role in the complex power dynamics that spilled across the Atlantic.