L’ascesi narrata. Varia fortuna delle Vite dei Padri del deserto fra imitazione monastica e penitenza istituzionalizzata

The essay illustrates some episodes of the reception of the Vitae Patrum in Franciscan and Dominican hagiography. The founders of the two orders were given perfect conformity to the model of the ascetic life of the desert Fathers, to whom the friars of the religiones novae did not conform. As for Francis and Dominic, so for the desert Fathers there was no longer imitation but only veneration by the religious. This hermeneutical key allowed to present the stories of the ancient Egyptian monks to the laity illiterated through vulgarisations and preaching. While in the early Middle Ages the imitation of monastic life was indicated to the faithful desirous of a more intense religious experience, starting from the 13th century they had to draw from the model of the desert Fathers only an invitation to conversion, which involved the individual confession of sins and participation in the Eucharist. The ascetic ideal of the ancient hermitages was now only the object of veneration by the faithful and indicated the holiness of the religious who practiced it.