ABSTRACT
The Servants of Mary, a thirteenth-century religious Order, founded in Florence, is one of the lesser-known Mendicant Orders. Little has been written on the Servites or their Legende in English, especially when compared to other Mendicant Orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans. The Order’s title implies the centrality of their dedication to the Virgin Mary. However, the Servites had a protracted early development; an examination of the early Legends of the Order and Saint Filippo Benizi (ca.1233–1285) reveals an evolution in Servite spirituality from a theocentric penitential–contemplative community to a Marian Order practising an apostolic lifestyle. Filippo Benizi was the fifth Servite Prior General, and it was halfway through his engagement in this role that the Servants of Mary risked extinction following the ruling of the Fourth Lateran Council (1275). Although aspects of the Order’s Marian spirituality had already been growing since the 1260s, it was considerably augmented and developed under Filippo Benizi as part of a broader strategy to preserve the Order until its formal approval by the papacy in 1304.
In this paper, the author briefly considers the varying spiritual tendencies evident in three early Servite texts: the Legenda de Origine Ordines – originally written as a prologue to a lost life of Filippo Benizi – and two Legende of Filippo – the ancient Christological/theological focused Legenda Arcaica, and the popular, markedly Marian Legenda Vulgata. The Vulgata was probably composed to replace the theocentric Legenda Arcaica. This discussion also serves to introduce aspects of the early history of the Order of the Servants of Mary that are not generally recognised in the English scholarship. Furthermore, the Legenda Arcaica, Filippo Benizi’s most ancient life, was only rediscovered in the second half of the twentieth century. Consequently, even within Italian scholarship reflection on the relationship of the Arcaica with other Servite hagiographic texts and archival documents is yet to be done.
