Over a lifetime of scholarship John Moorman frequently profited from the publications of the ‘Quaracchi Fathers’, the Franciscan Friars whose Collegio San Bonaventura, originally located at Quaracchi, near Florence, later moved to Grottaferrata outside Rome. As he recounts in a letter from 1957, below, Moorman had benefitted from the study of these materials beginning with his years as a student in Cambridge. His 1940 Bachelor of Divinity thesis, Sources for the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, made good use of scholarship produced by the Quaracchi scholars, and his subsequent Franciscan publications frequently referred to their works, notably their historical journal, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (AFH). The correspondence of Bishop Moorman with its editor, Fr Clément Schmitt, ofm, has been carefully preserved in the Archive of the Collegio, and provides the material for this brief study.

A word about the Collegio San Bonaventura may be useful in order to put the Moorman correspondence into its context. The Collegio was founded in 1879 at Quaracchi (Ad Claras Aquas) outside Florence. Following the disastrous flood at Florence in 1966, the entire Collegio with its library moved to Grottaferrata, in the Alban Hills, some twenty kilometres from Rome, the location where Moorman spent time during his visits.