ABSTRACT
The wider the variety of sources we can study the fuller and deeper our understanding of a historical problem is likely to be. These sources include not only documents but paintings and buildings and other physical remains. The medieval Orders of friars have left physical traces: churches, conventual buildings, place and street names. They have been painted in frescoes, altar pieces, crosses. Anyone who goes to Albi, or to Caleruega, or to Assisi, can discover, from the buildings and localities connected with the saints, and from the countryside itself and its inhabitants, an imaginative insight into the life and work of St Dominic or St Francis. If we cannot travel, photographs are helpful. Excellent pictorial biographies, with photographs especially taken by von Matt provide a vivid and evocative introduction. 1
