Abstract

The paper analyses the events that took place during the interdict issued by the cardinal legate Giovanni Caetani Orsini against the city of Florence in May 1331 from the perspective of a specific religious community. The study is essentially based on the examination of the Servites’ accounting register of the local convent and aims to identify the interdict’s consequences on the friars’ pastoral action and the strategies they adopted during the period. The case study can help us to clarify the role of the mendicant friars within a conflictual context where the ecclesiastical institutions, the Communal authorities and the magnates families of the time vied for dominance with one another