The Canticle of the Creatures at 800: Franciscan Cosmology and Contemporary Environmental Ethics - Professor Simonetta Milli Konewko

Abstract: This article examines the 800th anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi's Cantico delle Creature (1224) as a resource for rethinking contemporary environmental ethics. Using a qualitative method of close textual analysis situated within material ecocriticism, particularly the work of Iovino and Oppermann (2014), I argue that Francis's text offers a proto-materialist sensibility that recognizes agency in nonhuman matter and unsettles anthropocentric divisions implicated in climate change, biodiversity loss, and ecological degradation. Drawing on Italian ecocritical scholarship (Iovino, 2016; Fargione, 2015; Armbruster, 1998), this study demonstrates how the Canticle's kinship language and vernacular accessibility model what I term "material kinship"—an ethical orientation that extends recognition of agency and narrative capacity to nonhuman entities, and that I distinguish from related concepts such as material agency, relational ontology, and deep ecology. By situating Francis's medieval cosmology in conversation with contemporary debates on the Anthropocene, climate justice, and posthumanist ethics, the article considers how his integration of social and ecological concerns resonates with the environmental humanities' call for "integral ecology," without claiming that Francis anticipated these frameworks in any strong sense. The article closes by considering, more selectively, what Franciscan material kinship might offer to climate policy, environmental education, and multispecies justice, treating medieval texts as a resource for contemporary ecological reflection rather than a template to be applied directly. The Canticle of the Creatures at 800: Franciscan Cosmology and Contemporary Environmental Ethics Keywords: St. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures, material ecocriticism, environmental humanities, Anthropocene, climate justice, Italian ecocriticism, posthumanism, material agency Department of World Languages and Cultures University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3243 North Downer Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA Email: smilli@uwm.edu Contact Number: 414 8819222 (Simonetta Milli Konewko is Professor of Italian & Director of Italian Program, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee )