The Spiritual Franciscans
by David Burr
The Costs of Responsibility
This situation profoundly affected the order. It hastened the process of clericalization, taking the word clericus in its full medieval sense: not only in holy orders but also well educated. This was in itself an important change. Francis's order was originally open to priests and laity alike. The important thing was a willingness to live the Franciscan life, which was conceived in a way that made it equally accessible to cleric and non-cleric. Francis did not actually condemn education, but his early biographers suggest that he saw it as a danger, exposing the friar to pride and vainglory. When one of the earliest learned friars, Anthony of Padua, sought permission to teach the brothers theology, Francis sent a brief- one might call it terse-note giving permission as long as it did not destroy the spirit of holy prayer and devotion in them.16 Nevertheless, by midcentury the order was doing things that called for education and ordination. Thus the number of unlettered laymen entering the order was subjected to restriction, and most new friars were channeled into a highly effective education program.17
These new activities and the internal changes they inspired had some effect on the sorts of people who might want to join the order. It was not a question of intelligent, educated men wanting for the first time to become Franciscans. They were already entering the order. Otherwise, it would not have seemed so useful to popes and rulers. The difference was that once the Franciscans became established in important positions throughout Europe, the order became more attractive to those who wanted to hold such positions. If a younger son became a friar, his parents could see his choice not merely as a way of fleeing the world, but also as a way of advancing in it-in fact, as a way of advancing the family's interests in it. Even if we ignore the rewards to be gained from having a son serve as enqueteur for Louis IX, or rule a great diocese, and ask instead what could be accomplished within the confines of a single town, we find that there were advantages to be gained. If the son of an ambitious family joined the order and eventually found his way back to his hometown, he could become their man in the monastery, their link to an important institution within that town. If his route took him through Paris or some other educational center and he returned to fill an important position, such as guardian or lector, within the local Franciscan house, so much the better.
It follows, then, that the new activities accepted by Franciscans did more than make the order attractive to those who might wish to fill such positions. It also gave Franciscans power and thus altered their relation to society. Here again the comparison with Francis's aims is instructive. He wanted to obey, not to command. He saw this desire as entailed in the ordo fratrum minorum, the order of lesser brothers. This much is clear from the Testament. Once his friars accepted worldly power, though, they were exposed to temptations Francis would have wished to spare them. The Florentine chronicler Dino Compagni offers an arresting cameo of Cardinal Matthew of Aquasparta, O.F.M., sent to Florence in 1300 on a political mission by Boniface VIII. Compagni, who was one of the Florentine priors at that time, says that he brought Matthew two thousand florins in a silver cup and told him that it was the most the priors could offer him without opening the decision to public scrutiny. "He replied that he appreciated the offer; and he gazed at them for a long time, but did not take them."18 Matthew resisted temptation. Others did not. In 1302 the pope was so incensed by the corrupt practices of Franciscan inquisitors in Padua and Vicenza that he removed them from office and turned inquisitorial functions in those cities over to the Dominicans.19
That is hardly our only evidence that temptations presented by the new offices could occasionally prove overwhelming. Yet even the word "temptation" seems to understate the problem. The functions themselves often seemed to demand modes of behavior at variance with the original Franciscan ideal. A Franciscan bishop, for example, might ask himself whether he was in some sense condemned to accept the episcopal lifestyle, with all its pomp and circumstance, since that lifestyle represented not so much a perquisite as a symbolic reinforcement of episcopal authority. Even if that bishop decided to trim his own household down to a minimum, he still might not escape money problems. John Pecham, whom modern historians recognize as a strong advocate of poverty, was a Franciscan who took his vocation seriously; even so, when he became archbishop of Canterbury, the cost of going to Rome, getting mitred, and then traveling to England gave him debts that weighed him down for the rest of his life.20
Had Pecham eventually returned to the papal court as a cardinal, he would have seen, as Matthew of Aquasparta did, how much money changed hands there, and how much of it was pressed into the palms of cardinals. Matthew himself received two hundred florins per year from the Flemings in return for his advice and support in their battle with the French king. As one of the Flemings at Rome wrote to his prince, "the court of Rome is very desirous; it has many needs and one must give it many gifts." It is easy to say that Matthew should have rejected such gifts, but institutions are rather hard to defy once one accepts a place within them, and at least Matthew was not selling out to the highest bidder. The prince, Guy of Dampierre, himself observed that "if he who gives most gets most, the King of France has an advantage over us which we cannot regain, because he can outbid us by a hundred to one."21
The problem was hardly limited to those in more elevated ranks, such as bishop and cardinal. It repeated itself on a local level. A Franciscan confessor whose duties brought him to the homes of wealthy merchants might find himself dining well, since the rule instructed him to eat what was placed before him. A friar teaching at Paris might discover that his mission demanded a large, expensive library. Once Franciscans inserted themselves into the world, they found worldly comforts difficult to escape.
If new functions seemed to encourage and even demand relaxed standards of poverty, that compromise was only one aspect of a more general compromise with minoritas. What was at stake was the nature of the Franciscans' relationship with their fellow human beings. In assuming positions of power, Franciscans entered the power struggles that characterize worldly activity. If they were largely successful in these contests, it was not because they were powerful in themselves, but because they had powerful backers. In their battles with university masters, secular clergy, and purported heretics, they could rely on the pope. When performing inquests for Louis IX, they were backed by yet another powerful authority. One could go on.
Those who found themselves bullied into compliance by that power might have long memories. Secular masters who had unsuccessfully opposed the friars' establishment at the University of Paris certainly had excellent powers of recall. So did the secular clergy who had fruitlessly contested the friars' right to exercise pastoral duties. So, perhaps, did any number of French royal officials once Franciscan enqueteurs accepted complaints against them as valid, or any number of plaintiffs when the same enqueteurs rejected their complaints as spurious. Indeed, one can imagine that Florentines who knew of Franciscan involvement in the plotting that led to the 1260 slaughter at Montaperti emerged from the experience with a new caution about accepting Franciscans at their word. Here again it is worth citing Dino Compagni's description of Matthew of Aquasparta and his 1300 mission to Florence. He was ostensibly there to reconcile opposing factions. It was a very Franciscan thing to do. According to Thomas of Celano, Francis's first biographer, Francis had performed a similar task at Arezzo.22 Unfortunately, it soon dawned on the priors that Matthew had been sent not to mediate even-handedly between the factions (as he claimed) but to work for the victory of one over the other. "His wishes were understood by many, and disliked thoroughly. And so someone who was not very bright picked up a crossbow and shot an arrow at the window of the bishop's palace [where the cardinal was staying]; it stuck in the shutter. The cardinal left there out of fear, and for greater security he went to stay across the Arno at the house of messer Tommaso dei Mozzi."23 Matthew had been thrust into a political contest that involved the pope, and as the pope's agent, he could not easily extricate himself from it. He might have encountered the same problem as a bishop or even as an inquisitor. The Franciscans began to assume such duties at a moment when Italy was divided between Guelfs and Ghibellines, and the pope was very Guelf. Thus it was often hard to exercise ecclesiastical duties, including inquisitorial duties, without becoming a player in the Guelf-Ghibelline contest. Matthew's story shows that even at moments when the Guelfs dominated, the problem did not disappear.
The Franciscans' power affected the way in which they were regarded- not only by those on whom that power was exerted, but also by those who had given them that power in the first place. In a book on Louis IX, William Jordan notes that "as the traditional mendicant orders became more staid and sophisticated in the course of the thirteenth century, Louis sought out those offshoots of the great orders which seemed more effectively to be preserving the original fervor of the movements," groups like the Sack Friars and Crutched Friars.24 The old question-"yes, but will you still respect me in the morning?"-was one the mendicants might well have considered.
The Difficulties of Disengagement
If accepting these functions wrought such dramatic changes, why did the Franciscans accept them at all? Why didn't they just say "no"? It is tempting to invoke such perennial human attributes as greed and the lust for power in answering this question. While explanations of that sort undoubtedly have some truth to them, it is also true that from the Franciscans' viewpoint, these changes could seem regrettable by-products of activities that were in themselves valuable, even necessary. A number of mendicants thought that their orders ought to engage in activities like preaching, pastoral work, and teaching because these activities needed to be performed by competent, holy men, and the friars were just that. They should be bishops and cardinals for the same reason. Hugh of Digne, regarded by his contemporaries and modern historians alike as a model Franciscan and by some as a spiritual avant la lettre, observed that no one was more fit to become a Parisian master and teach the gospel than the Franciscans, who professed and observed it. He cited the case of Alexander of Hales, already a master at Paris when he joined the order. "What sane person would suggest that while he was rich Brother Alexander of Hales had a right to preach and teach on the text 'blessed are the poor in spirit,' but the moment he became a poor friar he should have retired from that task?"25 One of Hugh's associates, the chronicler Salimbene, addressed the matter of whether they should be cardinals in much the same way. "I absolutely believe-in fact, I'm firmly persuaded of it-that there are a thousand brothers minor in the Franciscan order . . . who, because of their learning and holy lives, are more suited to be cardinals than many who are currently promoted to that state by Roman pontiffs because of their family connections."26 One senses something resembling noblesse oblige here. The Franciscans should perform the duties because they are so good at them. If that means assuming authority, so be it. Having assumed the duties, they must have the resources to do them well. If that means compromising poverty, so be it. Limiting minoritas was the price paid for other benefits gained by the church.
In certain areas the limitations were, in some sense, identical with the benefits. For example, voluntary poverty was a good thing, but so was charitable giving to the poor-and whatever else the friars represented to their world, they were one especially attractive variety of the poor. Thus the laity, for the sake of their immortal souls, wanted to give them things. Prosperous burghers gave their local Franciscan houses money for special meals. King Louis IX and others provided sumptuous banquets at provincial and general chapter meetings.27
These gifts brought a variety of spiritual benefits beyond the merit of having given to the poor. Testators eager to make restitution for ill-gotten gains but unable to identify all their victims often left money to the "poor of Christ," who served as proxies for those unidentified victims. Who among the "poor of Christ" made better recipients than the local friars? Those same testators needed a place for themselves and their families to be buried, and they wanted prayers to be said for their speedy exodus from purgatory. All these things could be accomplished by giving the local Franciscans money to cover the construction and long-term endowment of a chapel in their church. Such gifts were designed to aid both the giver and the receiver. If the Franciscans rejected them as destructive to Franciscan poverty, they would in the process frustrate the givers' efforts at spiritual self-improvement.
Thus concern for their fellow human beings made it hard for the Franciscans to reject their new roles. So did their commitment to obedience. Francis envisaged a minoritas that would involve not only poverty and humility but obedience as well. The paradox of such minoritas is that it can be maintained toward all only so long as those in authority allow one to do so. In the thirteenth century the pope, the supreme authority, decided otherwise. He decreed that friars should maintain it toward him and selectively practice maioritas over certain others. By making them bishops, cardinals, professors, and inquisitors, he put them in a situation where, in order to obey him, they had to stop obeying others and start ordering them about.
16. Francis of Assisi, Opuscula.
17. On clericalization, see Lawrence Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization of the Order of the Friars Minor (Chicago: Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, 1968). Landini modified his position in a series of later articles, but I find his original presentation more convincing. For a concise introduction to mendicant education, see Dieter Berg, Armut und Wissenschaft (Dusseldorf: PÐdagogischer Verlag Schwann, 1977).
18. Dino Compagni, Dino Compagni's Chronicle of Florence, trans. Daniel Bornstein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 25. Latin text in Cronica (Florence: Successori Le Monnier, 1917), 51.
19. For example, see Gerolamo Biscaro, "Eretici ed inquisitori nella marca trevisana (1280-1308)," Archivio veneto 62 (1932): 148-72.
20. Decima Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 49.
21. T. S. R. Boase, Boniface VIII (London: Constable, 1933), 205. Boase says that the money was "half gift, half fee."
23. Dino Compagni's Chronicle, 25 (translation of Cronica, 51).
24. Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, 185.
25. Hugh of Digne (Hugo de Digna), Rule Commentary (Grottaferrata: College of Saint Bonaventure, 1979), 187.
26. Salimbene da Parma, Cronica (Bari: Laterza, 1966), 247.
27. Salimbene provides the menu for one of them (ibid., 322).
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© 2001 The Penn State University