ABSTRACT
In writing words, Jacopone da Todi, the Franciscan friar and poet, gave an admirable summary of the vocation of a friar, studying, praying, suffering illness in patience and serving the poor. While the friars' study, prayer and service have received the close attention of historians, their attitudes and responses to illness are largely unknown. The Order of Preachers or the Dominican friars and the Friars Minor or Franciscans, two of the most important and successful of the new religious foundations of the thirteenth century, presented a distinctively different ethos and way of life and work from that of their monastic predecessors. The place of sick friars in the mendicant convent infirmary and the friars' relationship to contemporary medicine remained largely unexplored until the last quarter of the twentieth century, when two Italian works were produced concerning the Dominican convent of S. Domenico, Bologna.
