The swift intellectual achievement of medieval Franciscans conveyed a fundamental question: should friars possess books in an apparent departure from the rule established by the founder? This question remained one of the fundamental topics of discussion for the friars of the Community, as well as for the movements of Franciscan reform, including the Observance of the late fifteenth century. This article assesses the role of manuscript miscellanies as a tool to solve the question of ownership of books within the Franciscan observance. The analysis of manuscript evidence coming from the observant convent of San Francesco Grande in Padua shows how manuscript miscellanies, usually written by their own readers, on the one hand were personal tools for learning, preparation for preaching and pastoral care and, on the other, played a decisive role to solve, from the observant standpoint, the question of exercising ownership of books while maintaining a reasonable adherence to the Franciscan rule.
