ebook img

The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis PDF

440 Pages·2001·3.2 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis

Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page i T (cid:1) F HE piritual RANCISCANS Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page ii Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page iii T (cid:1) F • HE piritual RANCISCANS • From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis D B AV I D U R R The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page iv Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burr, David, 1934– The spiritual Franciscans : from protest to persecution in the century after Saint Francis / David Burr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-271-02128-4 (alk. paper) 1. Franciscans—History. I. Title. BX3606.2 .B87 2001 271'.3—dc21 2001041171 Copyright © 2001 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper for the first printing of all clothbound books. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the mini- mum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page v C o n t e n t s Preface vii ONE The Franciscan Dilemma 1 TWO Protospirituals 11 THREE The Birth of the Usus Pauper Controversy: 1274–1290 43 FOUR Opposition in High Places: 1290–1309 67 FIVE The Council of Vienne: The Spiritual Franciscan Position 111 SIX The Council of Vienne: The Community and the Pope 137 SEVEN The Collapse of the Clementine Settlement 159 EIGHT John Acts 179 NINE Censure and Condemnation 191 TEN Southern France: Four Case Histories 213 ELEVEN Southern France: Some Generalizations 239 TWELVE Ubertino da Casale and the Controversy over Christ’s Poverty 261 THIRTEEN Angelo Clareno and Beyond 279 Conclusion 305 Appendix: Spirituals and Mystics 315 Notes 347 Bibliography 395 Index 409 Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page vi Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page vii P R E F A C E DURING THE LAST FEW DECADES, scholars have shown substantial interest in the spiritual Franciscans. The result has been a number of books and arti- cles, most of them on specific problems or figures. A single volume covering the entire movement now seems desirable. A topic like the spiritual Franciscans presents its own difficulties when it comes to deciding how narrowly the limits should be set. It is not easy to decide precisely what one means by the term and whether it can be applied to a single identifiable group. I will spend some time agonizing over these mat- ters in the course of the book and see no reason why I should do so at length in the preface as well, but some introductory remarks seem necessary. It should be noted at the outset that the term “spiritual Franciscans” as normally employed today is largely a construct of modern historians. Inquisitors in the 1320s could speak of “the spirituals” as a well-defined group in southern France who had just been put in their place by John XXII.1 The label hardly came into existence at that point. A 1316 document accused zealots in the order of insisting that they be called fratres spirituales, although the zealots themselves denied the charge in their response.2Whatever they thought they were deny- ing, it would have been inaccurate for them to claim that they never used such terms to describe themselves. In late 1310 or early 1311, during the round of accusations and counteraccusations leading up to the Council of Vienne, Ubertino da Casale could protest that strictures in the Franciscan rule against wearing shoes were being ignored by all “except a few who are called spiri- tuales.”3Called such by whom, though—themselves or their detractors? Shortly thereafter Ubertino provided an answer. Leaders of the order, he said, required brothers to wear more luxurious clothing than the rule allowed and subjected them to persecution if they protested, “nor can such spiritual men [viri spiri- tuales] find peace among the brothers.”4In response, Franciscan leaders insisted that the truly spiritual were honored, but not “some who pretend to be spiri- tual” yet “under the guise of the spirit act insolently.”5 Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page viii PREFACE Obviously, by this point, the term had become a party label applied to a group of rigorists in the order, and that label was used not only by those who opposed the group but also by those within it. Yet it is hard to go further back and still find the term used in quite this fashion. Even in the mass of polemi- cal literature generated in 1310–12, the term was used only sporadically. Ubertino da Casale, in his defense of the zealots, was more likely to describe his faction simply as those who were trying to observe the Franciscan vow. Others—referring to the group that Ubertino was defending—were likely to call them “Ubertino and his associates from the province of Provence” or simply “Ubertino and his adherents.”6 The term “spiritual” was certainly used before the first decade of the four- teenth century. As we will see, it had roots in the Franciscan rule as well as Joachite apocalyptic thought and was employed throughout the thirteenth century. Toward the end of the century, Petrus Iohannis Olivi tied it to an existing faction when he suggested that he and his contemporaries stood at the beginning of a contest pitting a small group of viri spirituales against the forces of carnality—and he was not the first to use the term in that way. The problem comes when we try to relate that theoretical faction described by Olivi to a concrete group that labeled itself (and was labeled by others) as “spirituals,” as was the case with those rigorists of 1310–12. We find thirteenth- century rigorists, and we find some of them described as pretending to be more spiritual than others, but we will see that such evidence is rendered prob- lematic by the fact that it is found in substantially later documents that may reflect later terminology.7 In short, we can speak of the “spiritual Franciscans” from the early four- teenth century on and enjoy at least some degree of confidence that we are using a category that would have made sense to those in the order at that time, but we should have remarkably less confidence that this would have been the case in the thirteenth century. Why use the term “spiritual Franciscans” at all, then, much less write a book about them? Because, problematic as the name might be, we see the reality it describes taking shape before our eyes from the 1270s on. What we find is not a single group but several of them, each with its own history and peculiarities. But by the late 1270s, these groups were already meeting and discovering mutual interests. By the Council of Vienne, they would be seen as having enough in common to be considered a single problem in search of a single solution. The spiritual Franciscans were on their way to becoming a movement well before contemporaries found a name for it. (It would never be a completely homogeneous movement, but few move- ments ever are.) One can circumvent the term entirely, speaking instead of viii Burr/book 9/13/01 3:47 PM Page ix PREFACE “zealots” or “rigorists,” and at one point I attempted to do just that, yet such terms have their own difficulties. They, too, obscure the varieties of opinion and behavior encountered by anyone who examines the subject closely. In the end, one might just as well use the term “spiritual Franciscans” accompanied by the necessary warnings. One could express similar reservations about terms normally used for the spirituals’ opponents. “The conventuals” is particularly anachronistic. “The community” is less anachronistic than confusing. What does it mean? Does it imply that the entire rest of the order was united against the spirituals? In what sense? Those who opposed them certainly preferred to see matters in this way—but should we? We could avoid this problem by speaking of the spirituals’ opponents as those who preferred to settle for a lower standard of poverty than the spirituals desired, and that would be partly accurate, but, as we will see, not entirely so. At Vienne the spirituals were opposed by those currently running the order (not by “the community” in any inclusive sense), and it might be better, then, to speak of “the leaders.” Nevertheless, by that point in the narrative, I too will speak of “the com- munity” and will feel that I am uttering something more than nonsense. Here, as in the case of the spirituals, we have a group in the process of defining itself. By the time the inquisitors were at work in the 1320s, the leadership group had won its battle, and the order had taken a general shape that excluded the spirituals and their aims. Here, again, the result was not entirely homogeneous, and before the century was over an element espousing many of the same ideals the spirituals had held would gain permission to realize them within the order. When dealing with words like “spirituals” and “community,” I suppose that the important thing is not to define precisely what the terms mean but to recog- nize that they cannot be used all that precisely. All events have both causes and effects and thus are part of a continuous thread of historical development spun out over a much longer period. Writing a book about anything at all means cutting out a section of that thread and presenting it as if it had some integrity, as if it constituted a story with some- thing resembling a beginning and an end. In the following pages, I will pre- sent my bit of thread in the full knowledge that it could be substantially longer. I depict the spiritual Franciscan movement as beginning to take some recog- nizable form in the 1270s and 1280s, but I do so knowing that the fathers of the movement had fathers themselves—not all of them Franciscan. While I devote limited attention to that family tree in the first two chapters, I nonethe- less feel that there is some virtue beyond brevity in commencing my detailed account in the 1270s. At this point we see factions forming—groups whose ix

Description:
When Saint Francis of Assisi died in 1226, he left behind an order already struggling to maintain its identity. As the Church called upon Franciscans to be bishops, professors, and inquisitors, their style of life began to change. Some in the order lamented this change and insisted on observing the
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.