An overall consideration of Manselli’s historiography of Pietro di Giovanni Olivi and Franciscan spiritualism shows it to be a fundamental page in the Italian historiography of the 20th century. Manselli’s reflections between the 1940s and 1980s had their origins in the intuitions of Morghen and uses them as a general point of reference, but Manselli deepened a theme which Morghen had only touched upon; and he did so with coherence, placing it in its historical context and with a fluency that cannot be forgotten. One could regret a certain repetitiveness in Manselli, perhaps a reflection of how busy he was, with many commitments, but one should never forget the new tone which he gave to research which until then had been the exclusive patrimony of a certain Franciscan erudition and line of study (Buonaiuti, Benz) which by its own characterization, confirmed its marginality. The almost indignant surprise of the “great maestro of Greek literature,” who during the vacation of 1943 discovered Manselli in the State Library of Lucca immersed in the reading of the Expositio super Apocalipsym of Joachim of Fiore and the negative evaluation of Manselli’s work by scholarly judges in 1955-1956, says much about the attitude which was typical of Italian historical culture. Manselli, who from the beginning was a true pioneer, fought to demonstrate how Joachim and Franciscan spiritualism – that which he called in 1973 the “Joachimite-spiritual,” were essential components of Medieval Christianity. Its historical fecundity went beyond the conflicts and monastic quarrels and informed many aspects and personalities of the late medieval centuries, beginning with Joachim of Fiore, re-interpreted in light of the Franciscan event and from Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, through Ubertino da Casale, Angelo Clareno, the Spirituals and Provencal and Italian Beghards, but also Dante, Petrarch, Cola di Rienzo, feeding the movement of Franciscan Observance and even the Protestant Reform and Christopher Columbus, while accompanying the Franciscan missions, from those still medieval in the Orient to those at the beginning of the modern age towards the new world.

The historical fecundity of this vein, in the end, seemed to Manselli more important than defending his “orthodoxy”; the theme, which had interested Manselli from the beginning of his work became in time an observation of the movement of these ideas in their continual and changing incarnation in the lives of the men who were inspired by these ideas …But – and this is another important factor to consider – Franciscan spiritualism and its most important theological and spiritual proponent, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi, did not represent for Manselli a conclusive horizon, a closed chapter, to probe and analyze in new ways. The themes studied by Manselli from the 1940s are an observatory, a particular point of view to consider, through a larger overview of the events in the late medieval Church. His study of Franciscan spiritualism thus naturally was enlarged to include not only eschatology (which in spiritual reflection could have been understandably eliminated), but also ecclesiology, the conception of the Church, the relationship between hierarchy and faithful, pastors and people. The crisis within the Order of Friars Minor and the failure of spiritualism seemed to Manselli the premise of the crisis of medieval Christianity which gave way to the Protestant Reform (in which certain themes of the Spirituals re-emerge: of the mystical anti-Christ, the heretical pope and as anti-Christ), just as the seeds planted through Franciscan Observance and Bernardine of Siena (with his “selective” reading of Olivi, which conserves the rigor of the Franciscan practice while eliminating the eschatological-apocalyptic elements, with the new rapport between priesthood and faithful) represent the answer to the distressed prayer of Olivi that asked the Lord for pastors who would be authentic and true guides of their flock…