Pope John XXII and the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty

267 Pages·2010·17.13 MB·English

Pope John XXII
and the
Franciscan Ideal of Absolute Poverty
Melanie Brunner
Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Leeds
Institute for Medieval Studies
February, 2006
The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit
has been given where reference has been made to the work of others.
This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that
no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.
11
On a personal note, I would also like to thank my parents for making my
first year in Leeds possible, for keeping my feet on the ground, and for doing so
much to make sure that I could undertake yet another degree in a foreign country.
And last, but by no means least, I would like to thank Geoff, for food, inspiration
and his remarkable willingness to share his life with a dead pope for such a long
time.
1
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to express my feelings of gratitude to my current and
former supervisors: Dr James Ginther for accompanying the project in its early
stages, Dr William Flynn for stepping in and giving shape and structure to the
thesis, and Dr Anthony Wright for staying with the project all the way through.
Their encouragement, advice and sense of perspective have been invaluable.
The International Medieval Bibliography has not only provided a steady
source of income without which I could not have undertaken this project; my
colleagues at the bibliography have also offered encouragement and support at
every opportunity. I would like to thank especially the editor, Dr Alan Murray, for
a generous supply of books that I would not otherwise have been able to access, as
well as for his willingness to let me rearrange my working schedule to
accommodate the requirements of my thesis.
I would also like to thank my advising tutor, Dr Graham Loud, and my MA
supervisor, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, for their advice in the very early
stages of this project. The Brotherton Library in Leeds has greatly facilitated my
research and has come through in supplying even the most obscure texts. Special
thanks are also due to Dr Suzanne Paul for undertaking the thankless task of
proof-reading the entire thesis, including all the Latin footnotes, and for her
perceptive comments on a number of issues that would have remained very
confusing otherwise.
The Institute for Medieval Studies has provided a very encouraging and
supportive environment in which to carry out my research, and it made what could
have been a very lonely undertaking much more enjoyable than I could ever have
anticipated. Without mentioning a long list of names, I would like to thank all of
the regular users of the Institute's Le Patourel Room for all their practical help,
offers of coffee and chocolate, and their surprising willingness to listen to my
stories of John XXII.
111
Abstract
My thesis offers an investigation into Pope John XXII's view of the Franciscan
poverty ideal and his reasons for rejecting the doctrine of the absolute poverty of
Christ in the bull Cum inter nonnullos (1323). After establishing the state of the
question in the introduction, the first two chapters situate John XXII's discussion
of Franciscan poverty in the context of his pontificate and the process of decision
making at the curia. Chapter I presents a historical overview of the course of the
poverty controversy and of the curial debate, while chapter II focuses on the
development of the pope's approach to some of the issues he encountered during
his pontificate. This chapter examines John's legal training, his suppression of the
Franciscan Spirituals and the role of the Spiritual crisis in shaping his view of
Franciscan poverty. I also compare the pope's treatment of the Spirituals to his
reform of the order of Grandmont.
The Spiritual crisis can be interpreted as having focused the pope's
attention on the implications of the Franciscan poverty ideal for the structure of
the church, and chapter III therefore moves to a discussion of the ecclesiological
implications of Franciscan poverty and John's reaction to this (potential) threat. It
is shown, however, that the pope's unease about the Franciscan ideal went beyond
the ecclesiological problems posed by the Franciscan order, and the final two
chapters turn to a discussion of John's specifically theological and legal
objections to the Franciscan poverty ideal as they are set out in his Franciscan
bulls. Chapter IV examines the theological reasons behind the pope's
condemnation of the Franciscan ideal and especially his discussion of the
scriptural title of Franciscan poverty. It is demonstrated that the pope rejected the
idea that evangelical and apostolic poverty could be defined as non-ownership of
material goods. Chapter V then explores John's discussion of dominium and the
Franciscan ideal from a legal perspective. John's definition of dominium as an
essential part of the human condition marks his most fundamental disagreement
with the Franciscan order, and I suggest that this disagreement over the role of
dominium in the history of salvation was at the heart of John XXII's unease about
the Franciscan poverty ideal.
IV
Contents
Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................
1
Abstract .....................................................................................................................
111
Contents .....................................................................................................................
IV
Abbreviations ............................................................................................................
VI
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
I. The Theoretical Poverty Controversy: Historical Overview ........................... 16
1. The Start of the Controversy .............................................................. 17
2. Papal Decisions: Ad conditorem canonum and Cum inter
nonnullos ........................................................................................ 38
3. The Early Reactions to John's Franciscan Bulls ................................ 44
4. The Break with the Papacy ................................................................. 54
II. The Pontificate of John XXII ............................................................................ 61
1. Legal Training .................................................................................... 61
2. The Spiritual Crisis ............................................................................ 67
3. The Reform of the Order ofGrandmont. ........................................... 87
4. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 97
III. The Franciscan Threat to the Structure of the Church .............................. 101
1. The Question of Episcopal Status and Authority ............................. 102
2. John XXII's Ecclesio10gica1 Concerns: Franciscan Litigation ........ 116
3. The Authority of the Pope ................................................................ 124
4. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 136
v
IV. John XXII's Theological Response to the Franciscan Ideal of Absolute
Poverty .................................................................................................................... 138
1. The Spiritual Value of Poverty ........................................................ 141
2. Poverty and Perfection ..................................................................... 145
3. Counsels and Precepts ...................................................................... 153
4. The Scriptural Title of Franciscan Poverty ...................................... 158
5. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 181
V. John XXII's Legal Response to the Franciscan Ideal of Absolute Poverty 185
1. The Question of usus in Law ........................................................... 187
2. The Act of Using .............................................................................. 204
3. The Relationship between ius and iustum ........................................ 208
4. The Origin and Function of dominium ............................................. 213
5. The Legal Status of the Franciscan Order ........................................ 223
6. Conclusion ....................................................................................... 227
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 231
Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 239
VI
Abbreviations
Baluze-Mansi, Miscellanea Miscellanea novo ordine digesta et non
paucis ineditis monumentis opportunisque
animadversionibus aucta, ed. by Etienne
Baluze, rev. by Johannes Dominicus Mansi, 4
vols (Lucca: Vincent Junctinius, 1761-64)
Bullarium Franciscanum Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum
pontificum constitutiones, epistolas, ac
diplomata continens tribus ordinis minorum,
clarissarum et poenitentium, 7 vols (Rome:
various publishers, 1759-1904)
Chronica Nicolaus Minorita: Chronica. Documentation
on Pope John XXII, Michael of Cesena, and
the Poverty of Christ with Summaries in
English: A Sourcebook, ed. by Gedeon GaJ
and David Flood (St. Bonaventure, NY:
Franciscan Institute Publications, 1996)
CIC Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. by Emil Richter,
rev. by Emil Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig:
Tauchnitz, 1879-81)
CICiv Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. by Paul KrUger,
Theodor Mommsen and Rudolf Scholl, 3 vols
(Berlin: Weidmann, 1900-1904)
GCN Gallia Christiana Novissima: histoire des
archeveches, eveches et abbayes de France, ed.
by J. H. Albanes, Ulysse Chevalier and L.
Fillet, 7 vols (Montbeliard and Valence: Societ(
anonyme d'imprimerie Montbeliardaise and
Imprimerie Valentinoise, 1899-1920)
MGH Monumenta Gennaniae Historica
Const. Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum
etregum
SS rer. genn. Scriptores rerum gennanicarum nova
senes
1
Introduction
It was the basis of the Franciscan way of life that the order, following in the
footsteps of Christ and the apostles, had no individual or communal property, and
that the renunciation of property rights was an integral part of evangelical
l
perfection. This ideal of absolute poverty was called into question by Pope John
XXII in 1322, and, after about a year and a half of debate at the curia, was
condemned by him in November 1323. During this debate, both the opponents
and the supporters of John XXII used a wide array of scriptural, theological, legal
and ecclesiological arguments in order to support their views on the poverty of
Christ and the status of the Franciscan order within the church. The pope's
decision to declare the concept of the absolute poverty of Christ heretical in 1323
undermined the Franciscan way of life as well as the order's claim to occupy a
unique position in the church, and it caused a dangerous rift between the
Franciscan leadership and the papacy. The Minister General of the Franciscan
order, Michael of Cesena, together with a number of prominent Franciscans,
broke with John XXII and, seeking refuge in Munich with Emperor Ludwig the
Bavarian, became embroiled in a prolific and acrimonious exchange of treatises,
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pamphlets, accusations and counter-accusations that lasted for decades.
The seminal work and standard discussion of the Franciscan concept of absolute poverty is
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Malcolm Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the
Apostles in the Franciscan Order 1210-1323, 2nd rev. edn (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 1998).
General studies of the theoretical poverty controversy include Ulrich Horst, Evangelische Annut
2
und piipstliches Lehramt: Minoritentheologen im Konflikt mit Papst Johannes XXII. (J 316-34)
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1996) and Andrea Tabarroni, Paupertas Christi et apostolorum: L'ideale
francescano in discussione (J 322-1324), Nuovi Studi Storici, 5 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per
il Medio Evo, 1990), as well as Malcolm Lambert, 'The Franciscan Crisis under John XXII',
Franciscan Studies, 32 (1972), 123-43; Thomas Turley, 'John XXII and the Franciscans: A
Reappraisal', in Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages, ed. by James Ross Sweeney
and Stanley Chodorow (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 74-88; and John Oakley,
'John XXII and Franciscan Innocence', Franciscan Studies, 46 (1986),217-26. Detailed
discussions of various aspects of the controversy can also be found in Brian Tierney, The Origins
ofP apal Infallibility 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts ofI nfallibility, Sovereignty and
Tradition in the Middle Ages, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1972),
especially pp. 171-204; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of
Heterodoxy to Dissent, c. 1250-c. 1450 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967),
especially pp. 230-55; Virpi Makinen, Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion on
Franciscan Poverty, Recherches de theologie et philo sophie medievales: Bibliotheca, 3 (Leuven:
Peeters, 2000), especially pp. 143-90; and Johannes Schlageter, 'Wurde die Annutsauffassung des
Franziskus von Assisi von der "offlziellen Kirche" schlieBlich abgelehnt? Francisci
Armutsverstandnis und der Streit tiber "dominium Christi" und "paupertas Christi" unter Papst
Johannes XXII. (1316-1334)', Franziskanische Studien, 60 (1978), 97-119.
2
This highly dramatic event within Franciscan history had far-reaching
consequences even outside the order. The theoretical poverty controversy played
an important role in the development of later medieval ecc1esiological, political
and legal theory, and it has always attracted a lot of attention from modem
scholarship. The debate between John XXII and the Franciscan order has been
discussed from a wide variety of angles, and studies have variously examined its
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significance for the history of the order itself, the participants in the controversy
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and their contributions to the debate, and the influence of the debate on the
development of natural rights theories, the doctrine of papal infallibility, later
5
medieval economic thought and conciliar theory. While valuable in themselves,
See especially John Moonnan, A History oft he Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year
3
1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval
Franciscan Order: From Saint Francis to the Formation oft he Capuchins (Rome: Capuchin
Historical Institute, 1987) and Raphael M. Huber, A Documented History of the Franciscan Order:
From the Birth ofS t. Francis to the Division of the Order under Leo X, 1182-1517 (Milwaukee:
Nowiny Publishing Apostolate, 1944). There is also a brief account of the controversy in Philip
Mulhern, Dedicated Poverty (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1973), especially pp. 105-107. This,
however, suffers from a problem shared by a number of more general accounts of the controversy,
in that the author does not distinguish between the Spiritual Franciscans and the Michaelists (see
especially pp. 106-107).
Some studies of the participants of the debate and their contributions include Jiirgen Miethke,
4
'Das Votum De paupertate Christi et apostolorum des Durandus von Sancto Porciano im
theoretischen Annutsstreit: Eine dominikanische Position in der Diskussion urn die
franziskanische Annut', in Vera Lex Historiae: Studien zu mittelalterlichen Quellen. Festschrift
for Dietrich Kurze zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 1. Januar 1993, ed. By Stuart Jenks, Jiirgen
Sarnowski and Marie-Luise Laudage (Cologne: B6h1au, 1993), pp. 149-96; Patrick Nold, Pope
John XXII and his Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty
Controversy, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); Eva Luise
Wittneben, Bonagratia von Bergamo. Franziskanerjurist und Wortfiihrer seines Ordens im Streit
mit Papst Johannes XXII., Studies in Medieval and Refonnation Thought, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2002);
Ulrich Horst, 'Raimundus Bequin OP und seine Disputation "De paupertate Christi et
apostolorum" aus dem Jahr 1322', Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 64 (1994), 101-18;
Sigismund Brettle, 'Ein Traktat des K6nigs Robert von Neapel De evangelica paupertate', in
Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der mittleren und neuesten Geschichte und ihrer Hilfswissenschaft:
Eine Festgabe zum siebzigsten Geburtstag Geh. Rat Prof Dr. Heinrich Finke,
Vorrefonnationsgeschichtliche Forschungen: Supplementband (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1925), pp.
200-208; and Charles T. Davis, 'Ubertino da Casale and his Conception of altissima paupertas',
Studi medievali, ser.3, 22 (1981), 1-56.
Examples of investigations into the impact of the controversy on later medieval ecc1esiology
5
include the works of Brian Tierney who has interpreted the theory of infallibility as a by-product
of the Spiritual crisis and of the theoretical controversy: see especially Tierney, Infallibility and
Brian Tierney, Foundations oft he Conciliar Theory: The Contribution of the Medieval Canonists
from Gratian to the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), as well as the
response of James Heft, John XXII and Papal Teaching Authority, Texts and Studies in Religion,
27 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1986). For legal developments, see especially Annabel S. Brett,
Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought, Ideas in Context, 44
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Maximiliane Kriechbaum, Actio, ius und
dominium in den Rechtslehren des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Ebelsbach: Aktiv, 1996). For
economic thought, see especially Langholm who has focused on the foreshadowing of modem
economic theories in the controversy: Odd Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth,
3
most of these studies have not focused specifically on the arguments of the
participants of the debate or the context in which these arguments were made.
Rather, they examined the arguments employed by the opposing sides in the
controversy in order to establish their significance for later developments. This
means that despite the vast amount of literature on the controversy very little work
has been done on the question of how the various arguments functioned within the
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debate, and the occasion of the controversy is still better known than its reasons.
The person of John XXII himself has been curiously absent from many
of these studies, and there have been few attempts to discover what exactly John
XXII objected to when he condemned the Franciscan view that Christ and the
apostles had held no communal property. Few studies have tried to place the
pope's arguments into the context of his relationship with the Franciscan order,
and John's bulls have generally been used as a source and starting point for
discussions of later developments in law, political theory and ecclesiology rather
than having been studied as a coherent set of documents within their context in
the poverty debate. While the question of John XXII's motivation has repeatedly
been raised in studies of the controversy, there have been few systematic attempts
to investigate the pope's reasons for raising the question of Franciscan poverty
7
and for attacking the order's ideal.
Most modem discussions of John's intentions can be grouped into two
main strands of opinion: one has attributed the outbreak of the poverty
controversy essentially to John's dislike of the Franciscan order and its poverty
ideal. This follows largely the account and character portrait of the pope given by
Michaelist sources, and it is closely linked to the view that the pope was heavily
Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350
(Leiden: Brill, 1992).
This assessment by Gordon Lefffrom 1967 still holds true: see Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle
6
Ages, p. 162.
See for instance Oakley's view that not enough attention has been paid to John's reasons for
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opening the question of Franciscan poverty to discussion (Oakley, 'Franciscan Innocence', p. 216)
as well as Lambert's statement that nothing is known of John's motives; although he has since
presented a more nuanced view of the pope's motives and aims (see Lambert, 'Franciscan Crisis',
especially pp. 137-38), he expressed this view especially forcefully in the fIrst edition of his work
on Franciscan poverty (see Malcolm D. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine oft he
Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order 1210-1323 (London: Clowes,
1961), p. 243. Future references to Lambert's work will be to the second version of Franciscan
Poverty unless otherwise noted). Thomas Turley has provided a review of the modem discussion
of the possible reasons for the outbreak of the poverty controversy up to the year 1989: Turley,
'John XXII and the Franciscans', especially pp. 77-80, although he has not attempted to give a