Paths of Dominican erudition : reflections on the work of the eighteenth-century historian Ermanno Domenico Cristianopulo
Résumé
In the middle of the eighteenth century, at the request of the General master of his Order, Friar Ermanno Domenico Cristianopulo left Dalmatia to join the group of historians runt by Tommaso Maria Mamachi in Rome, at the convent of Santa Sabina. Did Cristianopulo have the impression to leave a ‘marginal’ province to get to the centre of his Order? Today, the province of Dalmatia has undoubtedly a peripheral place in the academic research on the mendicant orders. However, the perception of the friars who lived during the early modern period was certainly different. How were the different provinces included in the Dominican history at the time of Cristianopulo? Reflecting further on the notions of ‘central’ and ‘marginal’ subjects, we can also ask which topics and which sources were of central interest for Cristianopulo and the other early modern Dominican historians. In this chapter, the work of Ermanno Domenico Cristianopulo will be a starting point for questioning the historical depth of the notions of ‘centre’ and ‘margins’, both considered in their geographic and historiographical meaning and applied to the Order of Preachers.