ABSTRACT
Between 1435 and 1437, Pope Eugene IV dispatched the Franciscan Albert of Sarteano to Jerusalem to promote the Observant reform, establish contacts with Eastern Christianities, and support the Franciscans in the Holy Land. However, no evidence of Sarteano’s mission can be found in the archives of the Franciscan Holy Land Custody. In lieu of this there is a hujja, a legal document issued from the qāḍī’s court recording the Franciscan custodian’s endeavors to obtain authorization for the restoration of the Mount Sion convent. This raises questions about the role of the Custody, notably in the internal conflict within the Franciscan order between Observants and Conventuals, as well as in the universal claims of the Papacy. Additionally, however, it illustrates that the concerns of the friars of Mount Sion were distinct from the preoccupations of Franciscans in the Latin West and instead directed toward the Bilād al-Shām and the Mamluk authorities. Thus, this episode and the three years it occupies provide evidence of the reverberations of internal debates within the order on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the day-to-day lives of the Franciscans, who were fully engaged in Middle Eastern society.
