Mendicant Churches and Hybrid Roofs. The Case of Rieti

As early as 1971, Wolfgang Krönig emphasized that single-nave Franciscan churches with ribbed vaults constituted a distinct minority compared to those "semplicissime a navata unica senza volte (…) nelle quali si esprime dal principio la vera e propria tendenza dell'ordine." In this regard, the case of Rieti - and specifically the churches of San Francesco, San Domenico, and Sant'Agostino - was by no means an exception. Here too, wooden roofs with exposed beams were predominantly employed, while vaulted structures were generally limited to all or part of the presbytery area. This solution, increasingly adopted by mendicant orders, aimed to lend a monumental character at least to the most significant part of the church interior - the presbytery - which in some cases also served as the ecclesia fratrum. In the case of the churches in Rieti, determining the nature of their original roofing remains a complex and unresolved issue. This is due in part to the limited attention these foundations have received within the scholarly literature and in part to the extensive alterations they have suffered over time. Following the Napoleonic suppressions and those enacted after Italian unification, these churches experienced a prolonged period of neglect and uncertainty, a situation that persisted well into recent decades. As a result, they now appear devoid of their original ceiling and in a state of limited legibility, such that scholarship has not yet been able to determine the exact configuration of the original structures or the sequence of their construction phases - particularly with respect to the arrangement of the eastern area. This study aims to address these questions, proposing new reflections on their architectural development and aiming, more broadly, to restore scholarly attention to buildings that have long remained on the margins of academic discourse.