Francis of Assisi: His Life, Vision and Companions (Medieval Lives) 9781789147834, 1789147832

Citation preview

FRANCIS

OF ASSISI

Covering one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood periods in history, the medieval lives series presents medieval people, concepts  and events, drawing on political and social history, philosophy, material culture (art, architecture and archaeology) and the history of science. These books are global and wide-ranging in scope, encompassing both Western and non-Western subjects, and span the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, tracing significant developments from the collapse of the Roman Empire onwards.  Series Editor: Deirdre Jackson Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature  Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life  Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm Andrey Rublev: The Artist and His World  Robin Milner-Gulland The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe  Taylor McCall Bede and the Theory of Everything  Michelle P. Brown Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy  Charlotte Cooper-Davis Francis of Assisi: His Life, Vision and Companions  Michael F. Cusato Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life  Anthony Bale

F RANC I S O F AS S I S I His Life, Vision and Companions michael F. cusato

REAKTION BOOKS

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2023 Copyright © Michael F. Cusato 2023 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn  978 1 78914 783 4

con te n ts

abbreviations   7

Introduction  9 1 The Formative Years, 1202–12  17 2 The Hidden Years, 1212–15  47 3 The Pivotal Years, 1216–19  79 4 The Years Overseas, 1219–20  109 5 The Years of Confrontation, 1220–21  133 6 The Years of Legislation, 1221–3  159 7 The Years of Decline, 1223–6  173 Epilogue  199 References  203 further reading  215 Photo Acknowledgements  219 Index  220

abbre viatio ns

Writings of Francis (in FAED)

er lr tpj

Early Rule Later Rule True and Perfect Joy

Medieval Sources (in FAED) 1Cel 1 Celano (Thomas of Celano) 2Cel 2 Celano (Thomas of Celano) ac Assisi Compilation dbf Deeds of Blessed Francis LegMaj Legenda maior (Bonaventure)

Contemporary Sources af  Analecta Franciscana, sive chronica aliaque varia documenta ad historiam Fratrum Minorum, ed. Patres Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 10 vols (Florence, 1885–1941) afh Archivum Franciscanum historicum (1908–) bf  Bullarium Franciscanum romanorum pontificum [1795], ed. Johannes Hyacinth Sbaralea, vol. I (Rome, 1983) caed Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. The Lady, ed. Regis J. Armstrong (New York, 2005) faed Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, 3 vols (New York, 1999–2003) sisf Società Internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi

Introduction

A

ndré Vauchez, one of the premier historians of religious movements in the Middle Ages and author of the most significant contemporary monograph on Francis of Assisi,1 opens his magisterial work on the Poverello – an epithet meaning ‘the Poor Man’ of Assisi by which he came to be popularly known – by acknowledging that a common reac­ tion among his readers might very well be: ‘Yet another book on St Francis?’ Vauchez was quick to point out, however, that his new work was not meant to be just another popular treatment of the saint of Assisi, who has become known to so many through­ out the world as a lover of animals and birds and the devotee par excellence of radical poverty. Rather, as Vauchez states in his preface, the task that he set himself was to attempt to synthesize the considerable amount of scholarship on the Poverello – which had been done at least since the Second Vatican Council (1963– 7) but stretching as far back as the landmark biography executed by Paul Sabatier in 1884 – into a cohesive and comprehensive treatment of the saint of Assisi. This contemporary revival of Franciscan studies in the 1960s, moreover, had been spurred by the call of the Second Vatican Council for religious institutes to retrieve the force of their orig­ inal charisms, that is, their particular and unique spiritual ‘gift’ Margaritone d’Arezzo, Francis of Assisi, 13th century, tempera on panel.

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10

to the Church, by going back and exploring the sources of their founding traditions. Indeed, the studies by scholars of the saint of Assisi – both Franciscan and lay, both male and female – have been particularly rich and fertile, most especially in Italy but also throughout Europe as well as in the United States. Vauchez’s magnum opus has offered us, first and foremost, a pro­ found and readable historical biography of the man, grounded in the sources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He did this by weaving his way through an immense array of materials which sometimes complemented and sometimes contradicted each other in their presentation of the saint. But the second merit of his landmark volume was to explore not only the life but the ‘afterlife’ of the saint as his memory lived on and formed, in diverse and differing ways, the next generations of the three orders of the Franciscan Family which he had founded during his lifetime. And third, the French historian gave us, in the latter half of his work, a rich set of scholarly reflections on various aspects of the spiritual vision of Francis of Assisi. Is there, then, any need for yet another volume on this char­ ismatic founder and spiritual figure? An answer in the affirmative is grounded not so much in a presentation of any new discoveries about Francis which might significantly alter our understanding of the Poor Man of Assisi. The issue here, rather, is one of a shift in perspective on these same realities. For, prior to Vauchez – with the notable exception perhaps of the 1980 work of Raoul Manselli – most treatments of Francis had tended to present this narrative as a story almost exclusively about Francis himself: the son of a merchant from the small town of Assisi who grew in the grace of God to be, a mere two years after his death, raised to the altars as a canonized saint in the Catholic Church and an exemplar of evangelical perfection for others to imitate or emulate in some manner. This is a perfectly legitimate approach, edifying in its orientation and content. But it is and can only be,

11

Introduction

like any version of this story, but a partial picture of the complex nature of an individual’s holiness and spiritual vision. The presen­ tation here will make no claims to being either exhaustive or definitive. Its originality lies in the specific perspective it adopts. For, although the hagiographical materials (upon which we base much of the story of Francis) largely concentrated on the person of Francis himself – his conversion from a worldly exist­ ence, his spiritual journey of faith, his gathering of followers around him, his support of Clare and her sisters, the efficacy of his preaching in the towns and villages of Italy, his striking encounter with the sultan of Egypt, his moments of conflict and struggle with his own brothers, his experience of the stigmata

Town of Assisi, street view.

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12

on La Verna and his eventual decline into sickness and death – there is another, largely untold part of this story: namely, that a few years after this solitary journey of conversion, his experience became a shared journey with a handful of others, mostly locals – men and women alike – who constituted the early minorite fraternity. This is a group of men and women who would soon become a veritable family of followers constituting the order of Friars Minor, the Poor Sisters of San Damiano and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance (more commonly known today as the First Order, the Second Order and the Third Order, respectively). In other words, before Francis became Saint Francis of Assisi, he was first of all a brother among brothers and a fellow seeker with others of the One who calls each and all of His creatures to fulfil their destiny as children of God. This story – the story of Francis and his early friars – is the overarching vision of this short monograph.2 The purpose is not so much to retell the story of the early fraternity in minute detail: this can be found in other, more searching studies in various monographs, articles and conference proceedings. Rather, it is to attempt to recapitulate how the charism of Francis evolved into a shared charism, first and foremost, among his earliest fol­ lowers as they set down, in writing, what they believed the Lord was prompting them to be and to do in the world of their time. The result of these deliberations and reflections was the Early Rule of the Friars Minor, a text which evolved in substance and depth from approximately 1208 through to the year 1221. Theirs was indeed, in the parlance of our day, a common evangelical project: an attempt to live out the inspirations derived from the voice of God heard in multiple ways around them and reflected in the gospel itself, which they intuited as being relevant for their own day. This is, in short, the formulation of what is generically called ‘the Franciscan charism’: which is to say, the specific gift that had been given to this group of individuals, incarnated in

13

Introduction

specific behaviours and attitudes and set down as a regula,3 first as an evolving guide for their lives as renewed Christian men and eventually fixed by Rome in 1223 as an unchangeable text, constituting the legal framework or boundaries for that same life within the context of the Church. In other words, this short study takes as its undergirding perspective that this particular religious charism, like any such charism within the Church, represents the incarnated inspira­ tion of the grace of God, set down in a given time and place. For, first, there is a divine inspiration, then its distillation into a writ­ ten document and, finally, its concrete application throughout the course of the ages. However, for the same charism to con­ tinue to be a dynamic force within not only the Church but the world at large – and this was the contention of Vatican ii – that same inspiration, though historically grounded, has to find its own expression in other ages, in other cultures and among other people similarly prompted to live out these same values and atti­ tudes in a new and different age. A religious charism – and the Franciscan charism is no exception here – is rooted in the histor­ ical experience of Francis and his early brothers but also must be able to transcend the particularities of historical time and space to address itself in other times and cultural matrices through the application of the inspired values which were transformative for the world of the thirteenth century (and beyond) and which, quite possibly, can be relevant to later ages and peoples. The minorite charism is thus both Francis and more than Francis; it is the shared experience of Francis and his early broth­ ers. And, by extension, to the degree that it is truly inspired of God and the gospel – that is, draws its inspiration from a spiritual relationship of its founder and his/her followers with Jesus Christ and his teachings – it also becomes the inheritance of others who believe that they, too, are being led to live out this same life and vision in their time and place. Hence, at the end of the day, it is

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not really a matter of an imitatio Francisci (an imitation of Francis); it is, rather, more profoundly, an imitatio Christi (imitation of Christ) – not in the sense of slavishly trying to repeat action-byaction the life of Christ but rather the values of that same life shared by and among others, both in the medieval historical fra­ ternity and elsewhere throughout time and history. This is what it means – I am convinced – to walk in the vestigia Christi: the footsteps of Jesus Christ. To arrive at these operative values within the life of Francis and his early brothers and sisters, it will be imperative for us to use carefully and judiciously the sources that have come down to us. We have at our disposal, in other words, not only the writ­­ ings of Francis himself (a significant corpus comprised of rules, letters, admonitions, prayers and poetry) but a whole series of reflections on the person and meaning of the founder, especially by the friars, which carry – as Vauchez has pointed out so sagely in the second part of his biography – various ‘agendas’ or ‘per­ spectives’ on the meaning and significance of their foun­der as they moved out in time and space into the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Some of these sources are marked by cer­ tain hagiographical agendas (that is, works which have been explicitly written to demonstrate to the Church the sanctity of the founder, thus meriting his canonization in 1228); Thomas of Celano’s various efforts reflect this perspective.4 Others are more theological in interpretation, placing Francis within the theological dynamics of Christian history and spirituality; Bona­ venture’s work – essentially his Legenda maior (or Major Legend) – is the classic exemplar of this approach. Still others derive from more personal reflections by those ‘who were with him and heard him speak’; these stories come from the testimonies of his companions who cared for Francis in his later years. But these lively episodes nonetheless mirror the historical environment in which these men lived, that is, out in the countryside in

15

Introduction

remote hermitages, which were in some tension with the milieu of the more clerically oriented members of the order. Taken together, however, and read with a keen eye on the particular dynamics of these same sources, the texts give us a fascinating and complex picture of how a medieval charism came to take shape, then evolve and even diversify so as to become one of the most formative spiritual energies in the history of the Church and surrounding societies. This volume aims to set out the narrative of the early years of Francis and his friars grounded, first and foremost, in the pri­ mary sources which come to us from the writings of Francis (his opuscula), most notably from the Early Rule: for herein lies the core vision of early Franciscan life. This provides our historical foundation for the charism. Only secondarily do we turn to the later hagiographical sources – written after the death of the founder and coloured by various and varying agendas – which support and bolster what we have been able to establish from the opuscula. In other words, we do not begin with the hagiog­ raphical narratives – pleasing though they may be – but use them only to expand upon the historical foundation. In this way, we avoid the pitfalls of building the story of Francis more upon the stylized themes (in Greek, topoi) and actions requisite for saints in Western hagiographical literature than on what can first be gleaned from the history.

Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi.

one

The Formative Years, 1202–12

A

ssisi is a small town set upon a rising hill in the Italian province of Umbria overshadowed by the presence of Mount Subasio, which towers over the region. Perhaps more than any other town in the world – with the possible exception of Nazareth – the city has come to be directly associ­ ated with the memory of one man: Francesco di Bernardone, known to history as St Francis of Assisi. Though Assisi is relatively off the beaten track, contemporary visitors to the country would be well advised to put it into their travel plans, for it is a beautiful and well-preserved medieval town, marked by picturesque streets, panoramic views and charming boutiques tributary to its central piazza, which still remains the hub of human energy and activity even today. But the most splendid Franciscan site is located at the extreme northern edge of the town: the magnificent Basilica di San Francesco. It is a double-church, whose majestic Gothic upper church sits superimposed upon a smaller lower church and its crypt, wherein lie the remains of the Poverello of Assisi sur­ rounded by some of his closest and most ardent associates. Though the interior walls were bare at the time of its elevation in the early 1230s, it is covered today with glorious frescoes orig­ inating from the artisans of one of Giotto’s most prolific work­ shops (as well as others – like Cimabue – of perhaps lesser fame). But the town as it stands today is not what it was at the time of the birth of Francis (c. 1182). For Assisi, as a small town

Town of Assisi.

francis of assisi

20

that was well off the main drag during the Middle Ages, was a latecomer to the revival of the commercial activities that had been transforming the towns of northern and central Italy into veritable cities since the mid-eleventh century. The so-called Agrarian Revolution, which gradually began to revivify the land­ scape of western Europe around the year 950 (with the advent of an extended period of relative peace across the region), eventually spurred the revival of the old Roman town system (especially in northern Italy) and the creation of newer towns along the trade routes criss-crossing the countryside. Such commercial activity spawned the re-emergence of a thriving middle class of artisans, traders and merchants in these same towns. Generally speaking, the dynamics of this Commercial Revolution marked the begin­ ning of the waning of the feudal system whereby the nobility had held the lower classes in the bonds of servitude through onerous taxation and obligatory military service to local or regional lords. Assisi’s rise, however, would occur nearly a full century later, in the last quarter of the twelfth century, when it became of strategic importance to the rising power of the Hohenstaufen, the German emperors whose claims over much of northern and central Italy became a critical prize for consolidating its power over the region. The extension of the power of the Holy Roman Emperor across Italy, however, was not uncontested: the papacy, equally intent upon recapturing some of its own lost territories in central Italy – lost in the wake of the Gregorian Reform – like­ wise had set its sights on this very same region, which lay north of the ancient boundaries of the Patrimony of St Peter. A brief survey of the key markers in Assisi’s rise to impor­ tance will therefore provide us with important background as to how Assisi became formative of the young Francis and the vision that would come to shape the Poverello and his early followers.

21

The Formative Years, 1202–12

Since the time of Otto i the Great, the duchy of Spoleto had been claimed as part of the realms of the German emperor – a claim that actually went as far back as the time of Charlemagne. In truth, however, the territory and others like it in Italy came to be used as pawns to be awarded in the disputes of the German king with his various contending rivals. In 1153, for example, Frederick i Barbarossa awarded the duchies of Tuscany and Spoleto to his uncle, Welf vi, of the rival Welf family in Germany. The political intent was to build a barrier in central Italy between the papacy and its allies in the northern cities. To this effect, in 1159, the Roman pope, Adrian iv, attempted to claim the duchy of Spoleto as his possession; and the same claim was reiterated by his successor, Alexander iii, the following year, during the time of the disputed papal election and the German support for antipope Victor IV. Thus, in the same year (1160), Frederick Barbarossa reasserted the imperial claim to the territory. Even­tu­­ ally, in 1173, to make this claim a reality, the emperor named Archbishop Christian of Mainz as his imperial vicar in the duchy of Spoleto. The following year (1174), the latter marched into Assisi, seized the town and was recognized by the emperor as ‘Count of Assisi’. This seizure became known in Assisi’s annals as the captio capitalis: the ‘moral blow’ that forced the population back into its feudal obligations to the imperial vicar (or his del­ egates), which consisted of heavy taxation as well as military service owed to the local lord. This feudal arrangement was known as the hominitium, whereby one became, literally, ‘another person’s man’. In 1177, Christian was replaced by the illustrious figure of Conrad of Urslingen. He then established his centre of power atop the city of Assisi in the famous fortress known as ‘the Rocca’. Conditions remained about the same until the 1190s. However, on the unexpected death of Frederick Barbarossa on campaign in Asia Minor at the start of the Third Crusade in 1190,

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Rocca Maggiore, Assisi.

his son Henry vi succeeded him as king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor. Through his marriage to Costanza d’Alta­­villa (known in English as Constance, queen of Sicily), Henry then also became king of Sicily: he was thus sovereign over an immense swathe of territory stretching from northern Germany to southern Italy including large sections of the Italian mainland over which the Hohenstaufen had been attempting to impose their rule (the Lombard League of anti-imperial cities, consolidated in 1167, being the major exception to this hegemonic claim). Henry, however, as a foreigner, was ill-accepted by the nobles of south­ ern Italy, who began fomenting rebellion against him. Hence, on his sudden death in 1197, Costanza – having given birth shortly before to an heir apparent, the three-year-old Frederick-Roger – became regent of the kingdom and made a defensive deal with the papacy of Innocent iii to protect her son and the lands inherited from her husband in exchange for a freer hand for the papacy to pursue its own policy of recuperationes (the retrieval of lost lands)

23

The Formative Years, 1202–12

elsewhere throughout central Italy. In short, by 1200, the situation in central Italy was in real flux and uncertainty. This dynastic uncertainty set the stage for the events that would unfold in Assisi. Then, in 1198, with the imperial forces in real disarray, Conrad of Urslingen was forced to withdraw from his stronghold in the Rocca. In the ensuing vacuum in the town, the middle class of merchants and artisans in Assisi rose up and, with its own militia – a typical development in the new Italian communes – threw out the members of the nobility who ostensi­ bly had been left in control of the city. The male members of the nobility were summarily ejected from Assisi and their possessions in town taken over by the newly empowered middle class. Indeed, it was precisely at this time that the scions of the Offreduccio family – Monaldo and Favarone (the uncle and father, respec­ tively, of Clare of Assisi) – as well as the leaders of the Ghislieri clan were all forced into exile, either in the countryside, where they held considerable lands, or in Perugia, Assisi’s proximate and more powerful rival. The rebellion of 1198 marks the beginning of the ‘commune of Assisi’ where its middle class, as in other northern Italian cities, at long last held sway. But not for very long. For after the crushing ambush of the Assisi militia (attempting to take over Ghislieri lands) out on the plain at Collestrada, the new middle class found itself rocked back again on its heels. Indeed, by 1203, certain elements of the nobility had pushed their way back into their native town and issued a joint charter – cobbled together by a clutch of disgrun­ tled nobles and merchants – intended for the future stability of Assisi. This has come to be known as the Carta pacis (‘The Charter of Peace’), struck between representatives of those who were now recognized in writing as the two main classes in town: the so-called boni homines (the town’s aristocracy: literally, Assisi’s ‘betters’) and the homines populi (the city’s rising middle class of merchants and artisans drawn from ‘the people’). This ‘Charter

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of Peace’ attempted to turn the clock back to before the turbu­ lent events of the last three decades. First, it legitimated the return of some of the nobles who had been evicted from their domiciles (though not including those who had taken refuge in Perugia and had become citizens of its rival). Second, it forced the middle class back again into the hominitium as well as making them pay reparations for damages inflicted on the properties of these returning nobles. In exchange, the latter received a sem­ blance of political representation in a local council now presided over by an annually rotating podestà (mayor). And third, it for­ bade both classes from entering into alliances with outside powers that would overturn the fragile truce. This arrangement, however – for reasons still not entirely clear – unravelled over the next seven years. Indeed, by 1210, a considerable evolution in the social and political structures of the town had taken place. The document forged at this time, called the Carta franchitatis (‘Charter of Enfranchisement’), clearly shows the middle class once again at the forefront of political life whereas the nobility had begun to lose its former grasp on power. Now, for the first time, the social classes in Assisi came to be referred to in this document under a new designation, loosely based on the amount and value of one’s inherited or acquired wealth. Hence, the old nobility was now referred to as the maiores (those whose greater wealth consisted primarily in inherited lands and properties), while the nouveaux riches in the town of Assisi – the rising middle class – came to be called minores (those whose lesser wealth had been accrued primarily through more recent commercial or mercantile endeavours and entrepreneurial ingenuity). This new middle class could, for a price, be absolved from the hominitium and thereby become free citizens of the ‘free commune of Assisi’. These two groups were the movers and shakers of the new commune of Assisi. It is to be noted that the two pivotal

25

The Formative Years, 1202–12

documents of 1203 and 1210 say nothing about the other 75 per cent of the population who, generally speaking, constituted ‘the poor’ of Assisi: those peasants and workers who, minimally employed and mostly forced to live out in the contado (the coun­ tryside), were prey to the elements – both physical (given the rude nature of their dwellings) as well as social (being at the mercy of criminals and brigands who had been driven to desti­ tution and desperation by their grinding poverty). This vast but voiceless social group also included in its ranks the sick, the leprous and the socially insignificant and forgotten of the town. None of these groups had any voice in the momentous changes in this town-on-the-rise, so they were not poised to benefit in any way from these turbulent events and documents.

The Conversion of Francesco di Bernardone This was the world into which Francis of Assisi was born around the year 1182 in the city of Assisi. We know that his father, Pietro di Bernardone, was a cloth merchant within the town. His mother may (or may not) have been from the north of France in Picardy, where she and Pietro might have met during one of his frequent trips to the fairs in northern France. As a prospering merchant, Pietro – and his son, Francis – would have belonged to the ris­ ing middle class of minores with all the dynamics associated with buying, selling, trading and the use and exchange of the various currencies in circulation in Europe at that time. Rather than attempting to summarize the various events of the early years of Francis, which can be found in the hagiogra­ phies of the thirteenth century (sometimes contradictory in themselves or at least offering varying details in service of the agenda of the hagiographer), let us isolate a few key aspects that will have a direct bearing on the life of Francis and his earliest companions.

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Although Francis was a member of the social class of minores, according to Thomas of Celano, his earliest biographer (1229), the young man also had a strong attraction to the military pan­ oply and adventures associated with the nobility. Indeed, we know that the young Francis had volunteered to be a part of the aforesaid militia that went out in November 1202 to plunder the properties of the Ghislieri family in the contado, near Collestrada. In the aftermath, Francis was one of those who found himself captured and imprisoned below the piazza comunale in the neigh­ bouring city of Perugia, pending the payment of a large ransom by his family back in Assisi. It is estimated that the young man languished in miserable conditions for about a year until his release could be obtained. As Paul Moses has rightly conjectured, this imprisonment was one of the most critical turning points in the life of the Assisian.1 Gradually debilitated by the insanitary conditions of prison life and with his high-minded knightly ideals upended by this dreadful experience, the twenty-year-old Francis seems to have begun reflecting on the future path of his life. Indeed, his is not alone among historic conversion stories (such as that of Ignatius of Loyola), in which incarceration and its resulting illnesses sometimes have the ability to shake individuals to their core and to force a reassessment of how and why they might have come to such an unpromising juncture. Not too long after this experience, the hagiographers tell us, Francis signed up and saddled up once again for a military adven­ ture in the south of Italy, this time led by a mercenary pledged to fight on the side of Tancred of Lecce, this local contingent being raised by a certain Gentile of Spoleto. However, not far from his native town, near Spoleto, the young Francis had already begun to regret his decision, his sleep filled with conflicting images of what he was doing and whom he was actually serving: the Master (Christ) or his servant (Gentile)? Distraught and

27

The Formative Years, 1202–12

unmoored by these nocturnal intrusions, Francis decided to return home to Assisi, in some shame and confusion about the direction of his life. Francis went through a long period of indecision and uncer­ tainty about his future (1203–5). At some point during this time of solitary wanderings and attempts at prayer and reflection out in the countryside, probably around 1205, Francis happened upon, out on the plain of Assisi below the city, a group of lepers who had apparently strayed from one of the two leprosaria (one male, one female) in this area. The encounter was both unexpec­ ted and startling, for Francis, by some accounts, who was of a relatively fragile constitution and psyche, had a particular abhor­ rence of (or even paranoia about) those carrying the dreaded disease. But suddenly now and without warning, rather than fleeing in the opposite direction, the hagiographical accounts tell us that he actually approached them and engaged them in

St Francis teaching the lepers, holding one on his knee and washing another’s feet, scene from Coppo di Marcovaldo, St Francis and Twenty Stories of His Life (‘Tavola Bardi’), 1245–50, tempera and gold on wood.

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some manner in a thoroughly human interaction wherein he perceived them to be suffering human beings not unlike him­ self. Moreover, we are told, he soon returned to where they were staying (the leprosaria) and began not only to touch these ‘untouchables’, rebandaging their decaying flesh; he also began to give care and comfort to those who were officially considered outcasts from the ostensibly Christian city of Assisi, whose leg­ islation and liturgy had banned them from the town in order to safeguard the health of the urban population. But these same conventions had also rendered these lepers invisible to this proud city-on-the-rise. This encounter among lepers, which is often depicted for dramatic reasons as a one-on-one encounter by certain hagiographers, became the most formative moment in the early life of Francis. Of the various stories relayed by these same biographers about this period of time in the life of Francis, for our purposes we should finally underscore one other important aspect of these solitary formative few years (1205–8). The exact outlines of what occurred to him are difficult to pin down chronologically; more impor­ tantly, it is imperative for us to try to sift out historical facts from their hagiographical (and theological) coloration and interpreta­ tion. Thus, at some point, having become increasingly alienated from his father – and his father’s plans to have his son succeed him in his business – Francis decided to make a formal break with the town of his birth. But, he then needed to find some kind of lodg­ ing out in the contado. He apparently landed, at least for a time, at the ramshackle and decrepit chapel of San Damiano, to the south of the city. There, he met a clergyman whom he asked to give him lodging in exchange for work on the repair of the dilapidated church. The delicate merchant now became, by dint of existential circumstances, a manual labourer. But he also must have asked the priest to take him under his guidance and protection (for his father was not about to take his son’s flight lying down).

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The Formative Years, 1202–12

Francis, in other words, through his months of reflection, had chosen to become a penitent under clerical protection, bound in some manner to a life of conversion signalled by a change in orientation of his values. In short, having lived what can be described as the life of a wandering hermit during these first years, Francis had now become a penitent. Indeed, having run afoul of his own father – through some outlandish design to dis­ possess him of some of his wealth (for he was already thinking of the marginalized poor of the contado) – his father hauled him before the city magistrates to demand justice and reparation for his possessions, which his son had given away to the poor. But they must have informed Pietro that Francis now existed under the protection of the Church and that it was to the episcopal authorities that he needed to address his complaints. This is where the famous confrontation before Bishop Guido i of Assisi fits into the overall picture of the conversion of Francis; for the hagiographers remind us how, by this time, as a penitent in pen­ itential garb, Francis was already living within the embrace of the Church. As Thomas of Celano will have Francis himself put it: ‘No longer do I call Pietro di Bernardone my father; but now I say: “Our Father, who art in heaven”.’ From this point on, Francis definitively made the contado his place of habitation as he set out to live the penitential life in earnest. As David Flood has often reminded us, Francis now ‘quit Assisi’ and its world of values.2

The Earliest Companions of Francis I would contend that these three experiences – the incarcera­ tion which opened the door to his rethinking of the values he had absorbed as a good socialized citizen of Assisi; his encounter with lepers which opened his eyes to a hitherto invisible world of the less fortunate; and his decision to enter into a life of penance

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which opened a path forward on to a new way of life – were the primary turning points in the early life and conversion of Francis. These changes in him did not go unnoticed. For, sometime around the year 1208, a handful of local men, having observed the transformation in one who had been known as a bon vivant during his youth in Assisi, began to approach Francis, individ­ ually, to enquire about the recent and troubling changes in his life and lifestyle. Apart from the one who had spent some time with Francis as he went in search of solitary places to be alone and pray, the first person who genuinely gave himself to the same lifestyle being lived by Francis was the nobleman Bernard of Quintavalle, who, in response to his questions about what he ought to do to quell the restlessness within his soul, was bidden by Francis, in line with the gospel dictum, ‘to go and sell his pos­ sessions and give them to the poor’. This was an act not merely of personal dispossession; it was also an act of what we might call today distributive (or redistributive) justice: giving away what one has in superfluity so that others with much less might have what they need. Bernard was then joined the next day, according to the Legend of the Three Companions, by one Peter Catanii (reputedly a lawyer of some standing) as he and Francis were on their way to the church of San Nicolò to consult the gospels. And shortly thereafter, a peasant from the area around Assisi, Giles by name, likewise approached Francis, who happened to be near the leprosaria out on the plain that day. Indeed, within a year, we are told by the hagiographers, by mid-1209 at the latest, the number of men gathering outside Assisi around Francis numbered eleven or twelve (although the resonance with ‘the Twelve’ in the gospels probably cannot be discounted as a kind of hagiographical overlay). It is this early group of men whom Francis will describe in the Assisi Compilation as being ‘penitents from Assisi’. These were men who, as a group, gathered in prayer and fraternity at the end

31

The Formative Years, 1202–12

of a long day out in the workplace attempting to secure their subsistence needs, and who began to discuss what it was that God seemed to be calling them to be and to do in the world around them. These were the earliest companions – not to be blurred with the later group called in the sources the ‘Companions of Francis’ – who, together with Francis, now began the arduous task of discerning and determining what God had been stirring up within them and putting down in writing the fruit of those reflections in the form of a statement of intention. The initial formulation of their way of life took the form of a short propositum vitae. Indeed, this may well be the very document – there is no way to be certain – that they took with them to the Lateran Palace in Rome in April 1209, seeking appro­val (and thus legit­ imacy) for their way of life within the Church. This will be the core of the Early Rule of the Friars Minor.

The Formulation and Development of the Earliest Layers of the Rule The history of the development of this earliest form of the Rule is both a complex and a hypothetical one. We have no such Ur-document; whatever we have of the original text is now either embedded in the document that we call the first layers of the Early Rule or has come to be subsumed into its later formula­ tions.3 The Early Rule of the Franciscan fraternity was a composite text; that is to say, it developed over a period of time, in succes­ sive stages, evidenced by our ability to hypothetically isolate its earliest layers (or strata) from later ones which then added to, deepened or in some way nuanced the previous elements initially presented in the text. As David Flood and (to a lesser degree) I have been able to demonstrate in our textual studies, one can more or less identify the first three layers of this earliest form of the Rule. The first layer most probably constitutes the propositum

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vitae brought by the brothers to Pope Innocent iii in 1209, and it represents a fairly generic statement of the positive ideals of their movement. One might even call them religiously inspired platitudes. This is not unusual for such religious movements of all times and places. This core proposal can be found within ele­ ments still present in chapters 1, 7 and 14 of the Early Rule, which attempt to lay out what the friars believed God was calling them to be (Chapter 1); how they were to sustain themselves day-today (Chapter 7); and then to make a general statement about the message that they felt they were being called to share with those around them out in the world (Chapter 14). Returning to the Umbrian Valley after their encounter with the pope and his Curia, the brothers then set themselves to attempt to live out these ideals in their daily existence. This became a time of testing for them that would force them to finetune their lofty, positive ideals in the concrete circumstances of life in the world. Indeed, it is here – in the second and third layers of the Early Rule rather than in the evangelical platitudes of the first layer – that we find the most pristine expression of what these men were about as followers of the gospel teachings of Jesus Christ. To espouse a principle is one thing; but to live it out in the real world, under duress and the scorn of their families, was another matter indeed. Hence, these additions to the Rule were often expressed as negative correlatives to their initial positive principles, now expressed as explications and specific warnings about what to do (and not to do) as spiritually renewed men. Now the content of these additions pivots on four basic exis­ tential issues (found in Chapter 7 and its eventual expansions in chapters 8 and 9). The first issue: work – what the friars allowed themselves to do for employment and what they prohibited themselves from doing. The second issue: money – their attitude towards money and the prohibition of its reception as a form of remuneration. The third issue: begging – their recourse to alms

33

The Formative Years, 1202–12

when compensation from work was not enough to cover their subsistence needs. And fourth: dwellings – what their attitude would be towards the places where they decided to live and towards the ownership of land in general. It is interesting to note that precious little of this concrete content survived into the definitive Later Rule of 1223 which, as a juridical document required by the Roman Curia, necessarily called for concision as to the motivations behind the core principles of the movement. And yet it is precisely here, in these earliest layers of the First Rule, that we see the original religious inspiration and purpose of the minorite movement. Indeed, the content is detailed enough to allow us to analyse the specific behaviour of the broth­ ers and the values underpinning and driving the choices that they were making under the impulse of the Spirit. So let us summarize this content and then examine why these themes appear within the founding document of the friars.

Francis espousing the poverty of the gospels, symbolizing his choice by removing his shoes, scene from Coppo di Marcovaldo, St Francis and Twenty Stories of His Life (‘Tavola Bardi’), 1245–50, tempera and gold on wood.

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(1)  Money. The friars determined that they would renounce all association with the monetary system by which commerce was normally conducted and wages were paid. The reason for this extraordinary rejection of the money system was not, as is often assumed, simply so that the friars would become poor. By refusing to have any association with the coinage then in use, they would indeed be poor; but this was not the rationale for its rej­ection. Rather, the brothers were aware that the monetary system itself, controlled as it was by local or regional authorities, was rigged in such a way by these same actors – through the periodic devalua­ tion of the coinage – as to lower the value of this money and thus to exploit the poor, who were often paid in this same coin (the pecunia piccola), thereby causing inflationary spirals in the econ­ omy, to the detriment of the poor whenever they went to market. Meanwhile, the powerful retained the unaltered coinage (the pecunia grossa). Money, in other words, was used as an instrument for the exploitation of the poor and profiteering by the powerful. Recognizing the injustice of such a system, the friars refused to be complicit by using it and thereby sanctioning its use. (2)  Work. As to the kinds of work that the friars were allowed to engage in so as to cover their needs, the Early Rule allowed them to do just about anything, provided that the work could be en­gaged in honestly (that is, without incurring sin or causing scandal). However, several occupations were explicitly prohib­ ited in the Rule. First, the friars were forbidden from functioning as camerarii or cellarii in the places where they worked. This pro­ scription was directly related to the fact that both of these occupations would have involved the friars in the handling of money for the places where they were working. Hence, once again, the overriding principle of refusing to ratify the unjust monetary system led them, by extension, to proscribe these par­ ticular activities associated with certain occupations. But the friars were also, curiously, prohibited from serving as overseers (that is,

35

The Formative Years, 1202–12

as administrators) in charge of these same places. Here, the value seems to have been that, whereas others could adequately func­ tion as administrators of such places – namely, in the leprosaria and hospices of the region where the terminally sick and the out­ casts lived out their lives – the friars would, on the contrary, take on the thankless and prohibitive tasks of the care of these unfor­ tunate people which few others, if any, would willingly do. The brothers would thereby commit themselves to exemplifying the loving and compassionate face of Christ to those shunted aside as untouchable by people in the city of Assisi. (3)  Alms. Having voluntarily distanced themselves from the normal, assured means of monetary remuneration for their work, the friars often found themselves at a loss as to how to provide for their bodily needs of food and clothing. Therefore, when penury and starvation became their lot, they allowed them­ selves to go out to beg, as other poor and destitute people were forced to do simply in order to survive. But now the brothers gained an important insight: namely, that the land and resources of the earth had been given by God, in fact, to all creatures, and were thus meant to provide sustenance not merely to the few but to all men and women, the great and the small alike. All, in other words, had a right to be sustained, they claimed, at ‘the table of the Lord’ – the bountiful creation placed at the disposal of all of humanity. Hence, the friar could go in search of suste­ nance in the form of food, alms and clothing, like the other poor. However, they should do so not with the usual shame experi­ enced by beggars but rather with heads held high, knowing that, possessing the sacred dignity of the creatures of God, they were inviting those better off than themselves to use creation in the manner in which it was intended by the Creator, namely, for the good of all. The shame in such begging was thus to be imputed not to the needy poor but to those who refused to give succour to the penurious among them.

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(4)  Dwellings. And finally, having left the city of Assisi to live out on the plain with the outcasts of their locale, the friars endeavoured to find lodging wherever they could: in the various places where they offered their services or, failing that, in make­ shift shelters constructed out in the woods, hunkering down in caves or in one or another abandoned church structure in the area – the most famous of these being the chapel of Our Lady of Angels, which eventually came to be called their ‘Portiuncula’ (their ‘little portion’). But similar to their developing ethic regarding the proper use of the resources of the earth granted to all of God’s creatures, they likewise agreed to claim nothing as if it were their own possession, being willing to cede such places to others if those others’ need for shelter appeared greater and more pressing than their own. This is the substance of the famous Rivo Torto incident, reported by the hagiographers. For, accord­ ing to the friars’ ethic, the earth belonged to the Lord of this creation and human beings were but temporary tenants of this fertile and fruitful creation. Eventually, a few years later, as the fraternity grew, expanded and welcomed others from well beyond the original experience in the Umbrian Valley, this same ethic of creation would extend beyond the issue of the use of lands and places to all things in creation itself, becoming the essence of living in the world sine proprio – without claiming anything as one’s own.

This summary represents much of the primary content of the pivotal chapters 7, 8 and 9 in the Early Rule. Indeed, it is, quite simply, the raw material of the early Franciscan charism. Anyone who ponders this content for the first time may be struck by how lacking in ‘spiritual’ tenor this material seems to be. But such a reaction is conditioned by what we might be expecting a ‘spiritual’ document to look like: for example, the explicit use

37

The Formative Years, 1202–12

of God-language, specific references to Christ and the gospels as well as prayers addressed in praise and thanksgiving to the div­ine. Put another way: what do work, money, alms and lodg­ ings have to do with ‘spirituality’ or a spiritual vision? And yet this is precisely the point: the early brothers perceived spiritual realities – the presence of God – within the concrete conditions of their day and most particularly within the plight of those men and women who had been forgotten by the Christian soci­ ety from which they had been expelled, excluded or abandoned. Herein lay the call of the gospel for these men: to be attentive and responsive to the fate of their fellow human beings as sacred creatures of God and to pledge to work (and oftentimes live) among these very people as kindred souls: brothers (fratres) among their fellow brothers and sisters (fratres et sorores). These latter individuals were, in fact, the minores of their own day (though not in the sense of being the minores of the middle class, having less wealth than the landed nobility); rather, they were those on the very lowest rungs of the social ladder, having no standing or voice whatsoever. It is, therefore, not by accident – but by explicit and purposeful intention – that these evangeli­ cal men decided that they would call themselves fratres minores: brothers living among, as and for the minores of their own day. Hence, the essence of the early Franciscan charism was – in the wording used in the Later Rule of 1223 – essere minores: not in the sense of boasting of any kind of false humility (as if believ­ ing themselves to be somehow less holy or worthy than all others), but rather in the sense of living in specific social locations among the poor and minores of their own day. In more contemporary terms, the essence of the charism, therefore, was not originally paupertas but minoritas. Indeed, if one were first and foremost socially minor, one would by necessity be economically pauper. But as later Franciscan history would soon demonstrate, one could be economically pauper but without necessarily being socially

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minor. In short, minoritas is the primordial and foundational charism of Francis and his followers. Now, it is important to ask ourselves: where did this content come from – so unique by comparison with so many other religious rules, both medieval and modern? This concrete social content of the Early Rule, it must be said, was the fruit of Francis of Assisi’s initial encounter among the lepers out on the plain below Assisi: the moment when he came face to face, perhaps for the first time in his life, with genuine human suffering and the pain of human isolation. Indeed, it was through this graced experience that Francis came to the cardinal insight of his life, namely, the uni­ versal fraternity and sacred character of all creatures. Through this very encounter, Francis suddenly had his eyes opened by God to the revelation that each one of these creatures – each man and woman cast out from Assisi for fear of contamination – was a sacred vessel (a tabernacle, as it were, as Francis would later say) of God’s presence, possessed of a God-given dignity, worthy of respect and compassion as a member of this universal fraternity created by God. All without distinction were, as a result, brothers and sisters (fratres et sorores) one to another, bound together in this sacred fraternity which has come from the hand of God Himself. Such an insight would mark Francis for the rest of his life: it would be the crucible for his deepest spiritual insights and it would define the purpose of the group now gathering around him. It was probably at a slightly later moment of reflection – at some point between 1209 and 1212 – that the friars inserted a short paragraph, which has come down to us as the beginning of Chapter 9 of the Early Rule. This insertion would constitute a third layer of material to the original propositum and its initial expansions, representing a later and deeper reflection on the meaning of their religious vocation. I prefer to call this little insertion the ‘charter of minorite identity’. For, the two verses

39

The Formative Years, 1202–12

represent the most mature crystallization of what the friars believed God had called them to be in and for the world. Here is the critical passage: And let the brothers strive to follow the humility (humilitas) and poverty (paupertas) of our Lord Jesus Christ; and let them remember that we should have nothing else in the whole world except, as the Apostle [Paul] says: ‘having food and sufficient clothing, with these let us be content’ [1 Tim. 6:8]. And they should rejoice when they find themselves in the company of those considered vile and despised persons, among the poor and the weak, the sick and the lepers, and those who beg on the side of the road.4 This seminal passage in early Franciscan history has several component parts critical to our presentation. Let us examine the second verse first and then make a few comments about the first. In the years following the oral approval of the friars’ propositum vitae by Innocent iii in 1209, the life revealed to Francis and his earliest companions was apparently proving to be an ardu­ ous one, as the brothers had forsaken their previous status and occupations, most of them having come from the city of Assisi and its environs. In the extended passage of the Rule in chapters 8 and 9 (about the need for the friars to occasionally go out and beg for alms when the recompense for their work ended up being insufficient to cover the subsistence needs of the group), the friars found that, on returning to the city which they had previously forsaken, they were mocked and shamed by their families and former friends. The insertion of these verses at the beginning of Chapter 9 was intended to buck up the spirits of these same friars, by pointing to the fact that, in the Scriptures, Jesus Himself, as well as His mother and disciples, were likewise scorned for their

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humble manner of life. As noted earlier, the shame that was imputed to them by their former associates, however, was to be imputed not to them but to those denying them a share in the resources of the good earth. But now, at a slightly later time, some of the friars were once again despondent over their state in life, having chosen to live their lives among the minores of society. Here, in this pithy ‘charter of minorite identity’, they were being told – contrary to whatever they might be feeling – that they should actually rejoice (and not grouse) when they found them­ selves in the company of such men and women who were on the lowest levels of their society: the despised poor,5 the weak, the sick and infirm, the lepers and the beggars who were per­ petually found along the roadside. This new insertion (verse 2) reminds the friars of an important fact: that these poor and neg­ lected were their people; these were the men and women among whom they had chosen to live and work – precisely because no one else would. These were the isolated and forgotten of Assisi (and in towns all over Italy as well) who represented an unseemly mass of humanity whose occasional presence inconveniently reminded Christians of their duty to love and share with others out of their abundance. But this, too, was the social class among whom the friars had pledged to offer the compassionate face of Christ: attentive to their needs, caring for them in their debil­ itated state, joyful in spite of their plight since cognizant of the sacred dignity each one shared as a creature of God. These were the minores; and the brothers in this passage were being reminded once again of their primordial calling of living, like them, in minoritas. But the first verse was equally evocative. The brothers were urged to remember that, in this chosen vocation of theirs, they were, in fact, living out the ‘humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ’. In terms of the chronological development of the Early Rule, this is perhaps the first instance where the

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The Formative Years, 1202–12

person of Jesus Christ was actually mentioned in the text of the Rule. More important still, it is also the first explicit reference to ‘poverty’ in the Early Rule. And its appearance is not a refer­ ence to the poverty of the friars but, more fundamentally, to the poverty – and humility – of Jesus Christ. These two words would soon be intimately connected to each other in Franciscan his­ tory. But what was, in fact, the poverty of Jesus and that of the friars? The use of this important phrase must be read in connec­ tion with the social content of the Early Rule that preceded this later addition to Chapter 9.

Giotto, St Francis Giving His Mantle to a Poor Man, c. 1296–1300, fresco, Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi.

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Given that the content of the Rule was decidedly social in its specifics, the ‘humility of Christ’ refers, first and foremost, not so much to any interior virtue or disposition, but to Jesus’s pres­ ence among the minores in the society of His own time. Humilitas, in other words – consistent with our hermeneutic – is a social term. And the friars, walking in the footprints of this Jesus, have likewise embraced, along with Him, a kind of downward mobility to place themselves at the sides of the lowest, the most humble and vulnerable among them. It refers to the humble and lowly state of those with whom they are sharing their lot. But if this term (humilitas) is related to the social content of the Early Rule, so too the second term: paupertas. Drawing on the ethic of creation spelled out in chapters 8 and 9 concerning the quest for alms as well as the attitude of the friars towards their lodgings and their refusal to claim anything as their own, early Franciscan poverty connotes, first and foremost – before it came to be understood as the refusal to claim legal ownership of any­ thing – the just and proper use of the resources of creation so that all might have access, as creatures, to the goods of the earth. Just as the ‘humility of Jesus Christ’ referred to the decision by Jesus and his disciples to go and live among the poor and dispossessed of their society – those left behind even by the representatives of organized religion – so too did the ‘poverty of Jesus Christ’ point to the proper use of creation where men and women availed themselves of the bounty of creation on the basis of simple human need, leaving the rest for others more needy than themselves. Indeed, a contemporary slogan could be said to mirror this same spirit of poverty among the earliest friars: ‘to live simply so that others can simply live’. Or, in the scriptural wording of Chapter 9, they would ‘have food and sufficient clothing, with these let us be content’. This was the original essence of early minorite poverty.6 To live in this manner – among the minores and with an ethic of simplicity while sharing the blessings of the earth in the

43

The Formative Years, 1202–12

footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth and His disciples – is what Francis would call, at the end of his life in his Testament (but surely long before this time), the ‘doing of penance’ (facere penitentiam). To ‘do penance’ meant, for Francis and his friars, distancing them­ selves from all those activities and attitudes, as well as all those forms of neglect and wilful blindness, that were dividing and rupturing the sacred bonds of this universal fraternity of creatures through the perpetuation of the immiseration of the poor by the powerful, and, conversely as well, the forms of retaliation and hatred foisted in reaction by the poor upon the wealthy. For, in the mind of the early minorite fraternity, it was these kinds of attitudes and behaviours that constituted the essence of what Francis would call ‘sin’. Here again, sin has a decidedly social content mirrored in the ruptured relationships in the human community shattered by war, acquisitiveness and violence. Moreover, to understand what Francis meant by ‘sin’ is to under­ stand what he meant by the ‘doing of penance’. ‘To do penance’ was nothing less than the lifelong consecration of Francis and his followers to the attitudinal and behavioural values of Jesus Christ as exemplified in the gospels. This is why the friars dedi­ cated themselves to live first among themselves as a fraternity and second with those in the universal fraternity of creatures among whom they chose to dwell and work. Finally, this vision of the early Franciscan charism was not only a way of life to be lived among the minores in their midst; it also became the heart of their understanding of the essence of the gospel message of Jesus Christ itself. Hence, there was a second important component to their life: the sharing of this evangelical vision of life with others around them within the towns and cities where the members of the nobility and middle class of merchants and artisans lived and thrived. For if the plight of the poor and humble was ever to change for the better, this evangelical vision of a more just and equitable society – cognizant of the dignity not

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only of the movers and shakers of the world but of all creatures of God, great and small – had to be shared among those who had the wherewithal – the power and resources – to effect change in this ostensibly Christian society. In the words of the great French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, the friars had a ‘word’ for both the poor and marginalized as well as a ‘word’ for the wealthy and powerful. For these men engaged in the ‘doing of penance’, this was the substance of their penitential preaching: the exhortation for all Christians to likewise do penance (facere penitentiam): that is, to change the way they looked at the world – to see it, as it were, through the eyes of the poor – and to act accordingly unto the fashioning of a more just and compassionate society. This is the message the friars took well beyond the plain outside the town of Assisi, beyond the hills of Umbria, to the communes of central and northern Italy and eventually, after the so-called missionary chapters of 1217 and 1219, ‘over the mountains’ into France, Germany and Hungary and even across the ocean to the shores of the Levant.

The Oral Approval of the Propositum Vitae Francis and his small group of brothers travelled to Rome to present their propositum vitae to the pope and his Curia in April of 1209. During this same period, others of similar temperament and simplicity of life – men such as Durand of Huesca and Bernard Prim – had done likewise. What was at stake for the Friars Minor at this early stage was the necessity to obtain from the papacy permission not only to live out the values of their penitential lives in the vicinity of Assisi but to be allowed to take their unique ‘word’ beyond the confines of the diocese of Assisi into other dioceses of central and northern Italy. One could not simply presume permission by the local bishop to do so; one had to petition the proper ecclesiastical authorities – in this case

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The Formative Years, 1202–12

Giotto, Dream of Pope Innocent iii, 1300–1325, tempera and gold on poplar wood.

the papal court – to be able to cross into such territories as bona fide Christian religious in good standing with the Holy See. Hence, the hagiographers inform us that, during an audience with the pope, Innocent iii gave these brothers permission to ‘preach penance’ – the essence of their spiritual vision – far and wide, albeit with the assent of the local bishop. As they returned to their native lands around Assisi, the issue of where to find lodging became an important matter to settle.

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The nascent movement, it would seem, determined that it was imperative that they find a place that they could call home: a place of gathering to which they could return after their daily labours to reflect upon the charism that God had led them to put into writing – and which occasionally needed to be tweaked and added to as a result of their interactions with the populations in the surrounding areas – and a place from which they could be sent out once again to carry the message of penance to others far and wide. They eventually hit upon one place in particular: a small, ramshackle and abandoned chapel called Our Lady of Angels to the west of Assisi out on the low-lying plain. It was only a short distance from the location of the two leprosaria. The chapel, however, fell under the ownership of the Benedic­ tine abbot of the monastery of Subasio. As the hagiogra­phers tell us, Francis – after several failed attempts elsewhere – approached the abbot and asked for permission to rebuild the structure and to periodically reside there with his peripatetic brothers. Once permission was granted, the chapel came to be called their ‘Portiuncula’ – the little portion allotted by God to the friars on this earth which they could consider as ‘their own’: a fixed point in their common lives where they could gather and be sent forth again on their mission of peaceful reconciliation and mindful sharing of the goods of creation with those who had so little. Thus, as ‘pilgrims and strangers’ on an earth provided to them by God, from periodic wandering to having a veritable centre point for their movement, the early fraternity of Friars Minor had found a place here below that they could finally call, albeit tentatively, their home. They would not own it but they would be allowed to live there, protected and secure from the predations and acquis­ itiveness of others. It would function henceforth as the hearth of these ‘penitents from Assisi’.

two

The Hidden Years, 1212–15

O

nce the friars had returned from Rome in 1209, their forma vitae having been orally approved by the papacy of Innocent iii, they settled around the small church of St Mary of the Angels out on the plain below the town of Assisi. It is commonplace to imagine, from this point forward, the friars going out into the world to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. In point of fact, there is a real consistency between the substance of their ‘form of life’ – encapsulated in their pledge to live a life of penance – and the message that they felt impelled to share with the men and women of their times up in the towns of central Italy but also out in the contado among the lesser classes hunkered down in their small huts and households where the poor largely lived. As noted at the end of the last chapter, to understand what the friars meant by the ‘doing of penance’ is to understand the content of their ‘penitential preaching’. This was the message gleaned from their reflections upon the life of Jesus in the gospels among the poor and for the poor, constituting the core values of their evangelical vision. Even before the voyage to Rome to seek approval for their way of life, we get a glimpse of the substance of this message of penance captured first, in barebones fashion, in the text of the so-called Anonymous of Perugia of the early 1240s (which a few years later came to be absorbed into the more expansive source known as the Legend of the Three Companions). The manner in

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Giotto, Approval of the Franciscan Rule by Pope Innocent iii in 1209, 1300–1325, tempera and gold on poplar wood.

which the exchange between the friars and several nondescript citizens is presented is highly enlightening, moving us away from the pious platitudes of which the early form of Franciscan preach­ ing might have consisted and towards something more consonant with what we saw in our examination of the Early Rule as being the heart of their evangelical charism.

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The Hidden Years, 1212–15

Indeed, very early on, even before he had attracted compan­ ions, while yet alone at the church of San Damiano, whose repair he had undertaken, the narrator of Three Companions relates how, applying all the attention of his heart to observe the words of new grace as much as possible, [Francis] began, inspired by God, to be a messenger of evangelical perfection and, in simple words, to preach penance in public. His words were neither hollow nor foolish but filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, penetrating the marrow of the heart so that listeners were greatly turned to amazement. As he later testified, by the Lord’s revelation, he had learned a greeting of this sort: ‘May the Lord give you peace!’ Therefore, in all his preaching, he greeted the people at the beginning of his sermon with a proclamation of peace.1 The narrator then goes on to expand on his use of this greeting: ‘Immediately, therefore, filled with the spirit of the prophets, the man of God, Francis, after this [initial] greeting, proclaimed peace, preached salvation and . . . brought to true peace many who had previously lived at odds with Christ and far from salvific living.’2 Indeed, this kind of message, which combined the call to do penance (that is, to turn wholeheartedly back to God) with illustrations of acts of peace and reconciliation with one’s neigh­ bours, began to draw several other men to follow the way of Francis. The first of these, according to this source, was Bernard of Quintavalle; the second was Peter Catanii; the third was the priest Sylvester; and the fourth was Giles of Assisi. The four set­ tled for a time in a little hut which they constructed next to the ramshackle church of St Mary of the Angels. Intuit­ing the wider significance of the message that had been revealed to them (that is, beyond the immediate locale of Assisi and the Umbrian

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Valley), Francis then sent them out two-by-two, similar to the gospel injunction, with this same penitential message. Francis and Giles went off towards the Marches of Ancona, while the other two were sent into another, unspecified area. Francis, in particular, ‘encouraged everyone to fear and love God and to do penance for their sins’. But again: the phrase ‘to do penance’ means something quite concrete and particular in the Franciscan lexicon. It hearkens back to the content of the Early Rule and its perspective on the grinding down and marginalization of the poor of their time and the actions that their fellow Christians were refusing to take in order to alleviate the suffering of their fellow human beings, through inordinate greed, ambition and exploitative actions. But having shared their stirring message, our source then notes the curious reaction of their listeners: Those who heard [their words] would say: ‘Who are these men?’ and ‘What [is the meaning of] the words they are speaking?’ For at that time, love and fear of God were non-existent almost everywhere and the way of penance was not only completely unknown but it was also considered stupidity . . . [For indeed] there was a diversity of opinions about these evangelical men. Some said they were fools or drunkards; others maintained that such words did not come from fools . . . Although some among them were struck with fear at seeing their holy way of life, others would not as yet follow them.3 And then, on another preaching mission a short time later, now with six followers, they encountered similar consternation and even outright resistance. Here is how our narrator describes their reception:

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Whenever they entered especially a city, estate, town or home, they announced peace, encouraging everyone to fear and love the Creator of heaven and earth and to observe the commandments. Some people listened to them willingly; others, on the other hand, mocked them and many exhausted them with questions, asking them: ‘Where do you come from?’ . . . And they answered that they were simply penitents from the city of Assisi.4 In other words, as penitents, they were simply reminding their listeners what anyone who professes to be Christian ought to be doing in their own time and place. In short, the doing of pen­ ance was a message that had to have outward manifestations in the concrete lives of the people with whom they were sharing the evangelical vision that had first been revealed to the friars: peace, mutual forgiveness and reconciliation; sharing of their resources with the less fortunate around them; and redirecting their lives to the God of all living creatures whose gaze rests upon the just and the unjust alike. It was, according to this spiritual vision, incumbent upon their fellow human beings to address the imbalances and injustices which, through the vagaries of human history and the choices made by human beings, were dis­ figuring the good earth and marring the fate of its inhabitants. The first (and official) biographer of the Poverello and his movement, Thomas of Celano, likewise remarks upon the effects of this early Franciscan preaching. In line with his hagiographical task in the Vita prima, however, Thomas narrows his focus away from the penitential preaching of the brothers themselves to focus more on the specific deeds of Francis.5 But the effect was virtually the same: a transformative message for their fel­low countrymen to realign their lives to accord with the values of Jesus Christ found in the gospels so as to settle incessant internecine quarrels in the communes and avert the unseemly acquisition of wealth

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and profit to the exclusion of the poor and voiceless who tilled their fields and laboured in their shops. Thomas describes the effect of Francis’s preaching on his audiences in glowing terms, indicating the relative success of his words while muting the note of resistance encountered in the testimonies of the companions – those ‘who were with him’ – on the part of those who were being challenged to make the requi­ site changes in their lifestyles vis-à-vis their economic rivals and the forgotten poor. A case in point is the paean of praise penned by Thomas shortly after the fraternity had returned from Rome and were beginning their preaching of penance far and wide: Men ran, women too, Clerics hurried, and religious rushed to see and hear the holy one of God; People of all ages and both sexes hurried to behold the wonders which the Lord worked anew in the world through His servant. At that time, through the presence of Francis and through his reputation, it surely seemed that a new light had been sent from heaven to earth, driving away all darkness that had so nearly covered the whole region . . .6 After a laudatory digression, Thomas then resumes: Many people, well-born and lowly, cleric and lay, driven by divine inspiration, began to come to St Francis,

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for they desired to serve under his constant training and leadership . . . He is without doubt an ‘outstanding craftsman’, for through his spreading message, the Church of Christ is being renewed in both sexes according to his form, rule and teaching. And there is victory for the triple army (trina militia) of those being saved. To all he gave a norm of life and to those of every rank, he sincerely pointed out the way of salvation.7 This passage, filled with such praise, can be illustrative of the positive reception of Francis’s preaching by the various people to whom he addressed his message of the doing of penance, as long as we keep in mind the more pointed testimony of the Legend of the Three Companions (and its predecessor, the Anonymous of Perugia). For indeed, the very wording of this particular paean not only echoes the language of the bull of canonization of Gregory ix in 1228,8 but lays out for listeners and readers alike a reality that, in fact, did not materialize in full form until the early 1220s, as we will see. For here, Francis is praised for having created a ‘triple army’. The phrase might be intended by Celano to be a bit ambiguous, for it could generically refer to clergy, religious and lay members of the Christian Church. However, the very use of this exact phrase is redolent of what will have become, by the time of Thomas’s writing (1229), the three separate branches of the Franciscan family: the First Order of male friars, the Second Order of female contemplative nuns (under Clare of Assisi) and the Third Order of Franciscan lay penitents, male and female. For our purposes here, let us assume, at this early stage in the devel­ opment of the Franciscan phenomenon, that, although there

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were surely individual laymen and laywomen who decided to attempt to put into action the values being propounded by the members of the minorite movement in their preaching, there was no such phenomenon as of yet that would, in the next decade, constitute an organized (and papally recognized) order of peni­ tents gathered into confraternities and associated with one or more members of the Franciscan order. The origins of the Second Order of the followers of St Clare are closer in proximity to the period we are treating here – a subject we will address shortly. Nonetheless, it needs to be emphasized that the penitential preaching of the early friars – Francis in the lead – made signifi­ cant inroads into the consciences of the citizens and inhabitants of the communes of central Italy and beyond, as well as among the forgotten populations out in the countryside where and among whom, lest we forget, the friars had chosen to dwell and serve, even while out on the road during their preaching mis­ sions. Faithful to Chapter 9 of the Early Rule, the friars-on-mission still maintained a close proximity to the poor, the lepers and those destitute beggars who were often found along the roads. To both sectors of society, the friars brought a ‘new word’ – a ‘new grace’, to quote the phrase of Three Companions. That word was often challenging but also potentially transformative of the lives of Christians in medieval Italy. One final word needs to be added before we shift away from the penitential preaching of Francis and the early friars. In the Vita prima of Thomas of Celano, the hagiographer shifts away from the (more or less) chronological progression of his narrative in Chapter 58 to discourse on Francis’s relationship with repre­ sentative figures of the animal kingdom. This segue lasts for only a few short chapters (58–61),9 after which it moves on to cover a series of miracles worked by Francis among the people. But in the earlier series of pericopes, Francis famously preaches to a large flock of birds near the town of Bevagna who listen obediently to

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the words of his little sermon to them, urging them to live in accord with God’s intentions for their species. Next, in another small town, Alviano, his attempt to preach to another flock of birds is interrupted by a group of ‘shrieking and chirping’ swal­ lows whom he reprimands for not listening to the word of God. They eventually do settle down and, like the avian species in Bevagna, listen quietly to Francis’s little sermon. In Chapter 60, in Greccio, the narrator tells the story of two rabbits. One, caught

Giotto, Sermon to the Birds, 1300–1325, tempera and gold on poplar wood.

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in a trap but then freed by one of the brothers and grateful for being saved, nestles for comfort in the bosom of Francis. Another, near Lake Trasimeno, similarly snuggles next to the Poverello. The final chapter of the group, Chapter 61, mentions Francis’s predilection for releasing fish caught by various fishermen. One in particular, a large trinca, was actually offered as a gift to Francis, though he put it back into the water: a gesture repaid by the fish, who plays in the water near Francis before swimming off to freedom. These delightful stories have, of course, been the origin of Francis’s reputation for a love of animals and other creatures, great and small. It is difficult – even undesirable – to challenge or contest this aspect of the personality of the man from Assisi. It certainly fits into the portrait of a person whose pacific nature seemed to encompass ‘both man and beast alike’. Without deny­ ing this aspect of his personality, however, one can see a corre­ la­tion, even here, with the peace and reconciliation that he and his brothers preached in the towns and villages of central and northern Italy as part of the gospel mandate for all of God’s crea­ tures – human or otherwise – to honour the sacred fraternity into which each has been created and whose destiny ought to be marked by a similar mandate to cohabit in peace and security. Indeed, we would not be far from the truth of these pericopes, it seems to me, to assert that underlying them is the eschatological biblical vision of a creation at home and at peace with itself where, to use the imagery of the prophet Isaiah, the lamb and the wolf lie down together and a young babe plays in the adder’s lair (Isaiah 11:6, 11:8). This is how creation – all of creation: the human and animal kingdoms – has always been intended to coexist by the God who created it all. This is brought home by one final story which illustrates this same point. In 2 Celano 35, the hagiographer recounts the famous story of how Francis once pacified a pack of ravenous

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wolves that had been attacking both animals and citizens alike in Greccio, and also chased away damaging hailstorms which annually were destroying the citizens’ wheatfields and vineyards. It is indeed interesting that this famous tale also appears at a much later date in the Fioretti, but now transposed to the town of Gubbio and significantly expanded with charm and an extended dialogue between Francis and one wolf. The question contem­ porary historians like to ask is: is this a mere tale of a miraculous action on the part of Francis or is there a deeper meaning under the surface of the story? Given the line we have sketched out thus far – concerning the minorite charism as it has come to be encap­ sulated in the call for Christian people to ‘do penance’ – it seems quite clear that there is, in fact, an underlying moral to the story. For, as presented in its lengthier version in the Fioretti,10 the town of Gubbio is indeed being threatened by a ravenous wolf (here, in the singular). Fearing for their safety, the citizens take up weapons to defend themselves, ‘as if they were going to war’. Francis happens to arrive in the town and decides to go out with his companion to encounter the ravenous wolf. Ready to pounce on Francis, the wolf, however, stops short of the friar after he makes the sign of the cross over him. The wolf – now called ‘Brother Wolf’ in the account – then closes its jaws and comes over to Francis as he has asked. Francis then confronts him with his terribly destructive behaviour, which has led to the deaths of a number of citizens of Gubbio and the devastation of their crops. Francis then says to him: ‘But, Brother Wolf, I want to make peace between you and these people so that you do not harm them anymore and, after they have forgiven you all your past offenses, neither the people nor the dogs will persecute you anymore.’11 And then, when the wolf shows by his behaviour that he is willing to abide by this agreement, Francis again speaks to him:

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Cristofano di Bindoccio and Meo di Pero, St Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio, c. 1380, fresco, Chiesa di San Francesco, Pienza.

Brother Wolf, since it pleases you to make and keep this peace pact, I promise you that I will have the people of this town give you food every day as long as you live, so that you will never again suffer from hunger, for I know that whatever evil you have been doing has been done because of the urge of hunger. But, my Brother Wolf . . . I want you to promise me that you will never hurt any animal or any person again.12 After showing his agreement once again by nodding his head, the wolf holds out his paw to Francis and the two shake hands, as it were. Francis, with the wolf at his side, then re-enters the town and explains the agreement that has just been arranged between the now pacified wolf and the townspeople.

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Now, on one level, the story is a charming fable exemplifying Francis’s special way with animals. On another level, however, this is a typical and relevant story about one of the most bedev­ illing aspects of medieval Italian life: the violence endemic to rival parties between the ‘haves’ within the cities and the ‘havenots’ out in the contado.13 But the story examines the dynamics of this violence. The wolf represents the hungry poor, those with­ out the necessities of life. Driven by hunger, he goes looking to take whatever he needs from the self-satisfied citizens of the town. Blood has already been spilled. Fearful of his predations, they take up arms to defend themselves. The inhabitants of town and countryside, in other words, are set against each other in civil conflict and war. Francis arrives on the scene and sets out to reconcile the two warring parties by arranging that each group receives what it truly needs: the hungry poor are guaranteed what they need as human beings (food, shelter, clothing) while the inhabitants are assured that the attacks against them will cease – to use the language of the Early Rule – once the poor have ‘food and sufficient clothing, with these they are content’. Both versions of the story contain a moral. The account in 2 Celano is perhaps even a bit sharper in its language. Francis tells the townspeople (even before going out to meet the wolf): Listen to the truth which I proclaim to you. If each of you will confess your sins and bear fruits worthy of penance, I swear to you that all of these disasters will cease . . . But also hear this . . . If you are ungrateful for these gifts and you return to your vomit, the disasters will return, the punishment will double, and greater wrath will rage against you.14 The turmoil that was wracking the city of Gubbio/Greccio – the disasters both murderous and climatic – have been the result of

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intense economic inequalities in the region where a class of desperate and hungry poor have been threatening civil unrest and violence. The townspeople are on the defensive, unwilling to address the root causes of the unrest. What can turn the situ­ ation around – as Francis illustrates by his intervention – is to have both parties change something in their behaviour so that all the people of the region might live together amicably: the poor being assured of food security and the townspeople of their physical security. To change their habitual, selfish and destructive behaviours is, as Francis admonished them, to fulfil the gospel mandate of creating ‘fruits worthy of penance’ and to learn how to live together in peace – something that the world cannot give.

Clare of Assisi, Companion As we saw in his Vita prima, Thomas of Celano proudly pro­ claimed that Francis had been the father of a ‘triple army’ consisting of the three distinct branches of the Franciscan Family. In 1229, the year of the redaction of his first work, this was a pro­ jection backwards onto the early years of Francis of what would become the eventual achievement of the Poverello. This claim, made by Celano in his Life (as if its foundation occurred in the early 1210s), was certainly anomalous with respect to the order of penitents, whose organization – as we shall see – belongs more properly to the period after 1220. However, with respect to the Second Order – the Poor Ladies of San Damiano gathered around Clare of Assisi – the claim actually has historical merit. For their point of origin is the year 1212. The story of Clare faces similar difficulties to that of Francis when it comes to a reliable reconstruction of the events of her life, conversion and establishment of a group of devout women dedicated to the evangelical life. When comparing the hagiog­ raphical account of Thomas of Celano with the testimonies

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about her furnished at the time of her process of canonization (around the mid-1250s), one is sometimes left with conflicting facts, or, at the very least, emphases, regarding the events of her life. Suffice it to summarize and synthesize the following facts. By contrast to the social origins of Francesco di Bernardone, Clare was born into the noble class of Assisi in the Favarone family. As noted earlier, she was well aware in a personal way of the turmoil that had rocked her native city at the turn of the thirteenth century, resulting in the temporary banishment of the male members of her family. The best indicators culled from the testimonies of those who knew her is that even prior to the conversion of Francis of Assisi (c. 1206) she had already demon­ strated a sincere sensitivity to the plight of the marginalized poor of her area, distributing loaves of bread and giving succour to the weak, infirm and needy. In other words, even at a fairly early age, Clare’s vocation had already begun to germinate, independent of the events shaping that of her middle-class compatriot. Nevertheless, the more dramatic turnaround of Francis and his subsequent reorientation towards the poor and lepers of the surrounding region surely caught the eye of this young woman. An affinity between them based on a profound sensitivity to the plight of the underclass of their region was thereby born. This affinity took the form – if the hagiography is to be believed – of various colloquies whereby Francis became a kind of spiritual confidant of the young woman destined for marriage by her fam­ ily. The movement that had gathered around Francis had already received an oral approval by Rome in 1209. Over the next few years, Clare must have mulled the feasibility of her own vocation, which showed signs of similarity with the minorite movement beginning to slowly flourish in the Umbrian Valley and a little beyond. Pressured by the expectations of her extended family that she marry, her discernment reached a point of decision on the evening of Palm Sunday in 1212. Apparently with some

Giotto, St Clare of Assisi, 1317–25, fresco, Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence.

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Clare escapes from the paternal house and reaches the Portiuncula, where she is welcomed by Francis and his friars, scene from Benvenuto Benivieni, St Clare and Stories of Her Life, 1283, tempera on panel.

secret assistance (and even perhaps with the blessing of Guido i, bishop of Assisi, who had been favourably disposed to Francis himself), she was able to escape late that same evening through the locked gates of Assisi; and she headed directly to where the Friars Minor were then dwelling, most likely the Portiuncula. Clare’s minorite vocation had finally begun in earnest.

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But now Francis and his brothers had a problem. As is well known, medieval society would not countenance the presence of women wandering around in the countryside, even those want­ ing to pursue a vocation of itinerancy and care of the poor. Such women would be deemed of loose morals, in search of Godknows-what. Hence, although Clare – and, not long after, her own sister, Caterina (later called Agnes of Assisi) – had joined herself to the band of brothers out on the plain of Assisi, Francis knew that she could not long remain in their company. He there­ fore sought to place her first – as is well known – in the Benedic­ tine monastery of San Paolo delle Abbadesse. This placement created havoc for the cloistered community as her family went there demanding they turn their marriageable daughter over to them. She then became attached to a group of penitential women, in the hills to the east of Assisi, at Sant’ Angelo di Panzo. Eventually, Francis was able to arrange for them to settle in one of the places repaired and rebuilt by Francis himself: the church of San Damiano, to the south of the city. Here, they fell under the protection of the Benedictine abbot and, eventually, the bishop of the city. Clare, after several attempts, had found her home. However, I think that it is important to underline both the affinity between the vocations of Francis and Clare to be among and care for the dispossessed of their local area and the fact that, during her daring escape that first night, she seemed to have all the markings of making herself one of the companions of Francis and his brothers. Clare, in other words, was the first female com­ panion of the fraternity, having physically left her home environment to live a radically new and different life in the com­ pany of, and according to the values of, the ‘penitents of Assisi’. Indeed, in her own Rule, written and, at long last, approved just prior to her death in 1253, she herself described her life and voca­ tion in ways very similar to that of the brothers:

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After the Most High Heavenly Father saw fit by His grace to enlighten my heart to do penance according to the example and teaching of our most blessed father St Francis, shortly after his own conversion, I, together with my sisters, willingly promised him obedience. When the blessed Father saw that we had no fear of poverty, hard work, trial, shame or contempt of the world . . . moved by piety he wrote a form of life for us as follows . . .15 Two comments are in order here. First, she describes her way of life just as Francis and his brothers did theirs, namely, a life of the ‘doing of penance’. Once again, the penitential life espoused by the followers of Francis (and now Clare) implied having the same keen appreciation of the evangelical values, regarding jus­ tice, mercy, forgiveness, peacemaking and reconciliation for a world marred by its opposite vices, as shared and lived out by the brothers themselves. The foundational affinity was Clare’s own

Giovanni di Paolo, St Clare Receiving the Clothes of Her Order from St Francis, 1455, tempera and gold on panel.

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sensitivity to the overlooked plight of the poor and forgotten of her time. Clare and her sisters had chosen the life of being penitents and, in their own way, sorores minores.16 Second, beyond the profession of a life of penance, Clare and those who would eventually follow her in this early time, by virtue of their promise of obedience to Francis, were conjoining themselves to the friars not only by an affiliated vocation but by a type of religious submission which, to all intents and pur­ poses, made of them ‘companions of Francis’ in name and intent. Put differently, the companions of Francis and the minorite fraternity consisted now, at this time, of both male and female adherents. Clare, in the sixth chapter of her Rule, right after the words quoted above, inserted into its textual presentation a ‘form of life’ which Francis himself had written for the early sisters. It would serve as a kind of thumbnail summary – one might even say ‘charter’ (not unlike er 9, 1–2) for them – of the life they desired to profess as their vocation. For here, Francis charac­ terizes their way of life as ‘choosing to live according to the perfection of the Holy Gospel’.17 This rather general description points to the evangelical roots of their vocation (and all that the life of penance implied for them as well as for the brothers). What is suggested here at this early stage is what we have exam­ ined earlier in terms of the life of the brothers and the concrete evangelical values of a transformed vision of life for the better­ ment of the members of the universal fraternity of creatures. In short: as for the brothers, so too for the sisters. But herein lies the problem. For, although these women were now being welcomed into the early fraternity (of Friars and Sisters Minor), Francis knew that they could not continue to subsist out in the contado along with the brothers; hence his efforts to find them lodging somewhere where they could be safe (protected) from the predations of unscrupulous marauders. This

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necessitated that they find shelter in fixed settings and that they be protected by virtue of episcopal and even apostolic blessing. But this also necessitated a different form of the living out of the forma vita fratrum minorum. The latter life, to be sure, con­ sisted of a certain itinerancy and freedom to share with others the evangelical vision meant to be transformative of life in the communes and along the highways and byways of Italy. But now these same values would have to somehow be transposed into an interior space which would take on the characteristics of a cloistered environment where the mobility of the friars would not only be curtailed but denied to the sisters.18 Thus began a slow process of the transformation of the socially based minorite charism of the friars into a more contemplative, interiorized and cloistered version of the same charism for the sisters. Francis, in his ‘Exhortation to the Sisters’, embedded by Clare into her Rule, had also promised to show the same care and solicitude for Clare and her followers, binding himself and his followers to this same promise. The transposed living arrangements for these women – including a cloistered existence and the inability to go out and beg for alms – would obligate the men to help supplement what the sisters could grow themselves in their own small gardens by extending the field of their own begging on behalf of the subsistence of Clare and her sisters. Thus was established, even at this early date, the general out­ lines of a tenuous and not always easy relationship between these two forms of the minorite charism originating in the area of Assisi.

The First Attempt to ‘go among the Muslims’ With the difficulties of settling the feminine component of the minorite charism into several fixed dwellings and securing ade­ quate protection for them from outside harm now overcome,

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Unknown artist, St Francis Renouncing the World for the Cloister, c. 1500, oil on panel.

Francis and his early brothers were relatively free to resume their life of itinerant preaching of the message of penance. Whereas it remains difficult to trace with any kind of precision the earli­ est preaching missions of the friars throughout central Italy, there is solid information regarding a pivotal moment in this desire to take the message of penance and peace well beyond the confines of the Umbrian Valley. This was the decision to attempt to bring

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this same message to the Muslim world in two successive attempts in the late summer of 1212 and spring of 1213. Although we do not have any specific testimony in the sources that indicates with any precision the rationale for this sudden urge to connect with the Muslim world, we do have two possible avenues to explore in this regard. First of all, in the year 1212, information began to filter down into Italy of an unexpected upsurge of fervour from continental Europe, specifically from Germany and France and among groups of individuals spurred on by certain charismatic figures, to tra­vel towards the Holy Land to help re-establish the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem – lost to Saladin near the end of the twelfth century – through the peaceful conversion of the Muslim peoples in those lands. These efforts came to be known collec­ tively as the ‘Children’s Crusade’ of 1212. One group was led by a German shepherd by the name of Nicholas, who travelled on foot through Switzerland with his cohorts and ended up in Genoa in late August of that year expecting a miraculous pas­ sage to the Holy Land which never materialized. A second group, led by a mere twelve-year-old boy, Stephen of Cloyes, attempted to stir the crowds with a similarly pacific ideology in northern France. Philip ii Augustus being unconvinced, his group then hit the road and descended on the port of Marseille at the end of June of the same year, where they either simply disbanded or some were possibly sold off into slavery by unscrupulous sailors at the port. The intent of these efforts was pacific and their fervour genuine, even though both came to nothing. Given the timing of these events (and their reporting), it is not impossible that the peaceful inspiration of such ventures could have similarly fired the imagination of Francis and his brothers. For indeed, as we have seen, the group had become inflamed with the vision of the universal fraternity of all living creatures whose ‘members’ would encompass – in the spiritual

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vision of Francis, at the very least – not only friends and foes, rich as well as poor, saints as well as sinners, but Christians as well as non-Christians: Jews and Muslims alike. For such is the profound nature of the graced revelation of the sacred fraternity of creatures given to Francis in his encounter among the lepers. A pacific venture to embrace even those defined by the Chris­ tian faith as the enemy par excellence (the Muslim) fits into this vision of Francis of Assisi whose message of penance would have likewise – breathtakingly – embraced those in the Muslim world. It is Thomas of Celano, the first official biographer of the saint, who reports the two initiatives of Francis and a handful of nondescript companions.19 First, in the late summer of 1212, he set out for the Levant from the port of Brindisi. But having left too late in the season, contrary winds blew the ship eastward towards the coast of Dalmatia, where it crashed onto the shoals. The group of friars eventually returned to Italy. A second attempt was made the following year – this time overland and westward through the Spanish realms with the goal of meeting with the Miramamolin, the term used for the sultan in North Africa. Indeed, it is possible that the immediate motivation for the jour­ ney westward might have been news of the crushing Christian victory – under the direction of Alphonso viii of Castile, Sancho vii of Navarre and Peter vii of Aragon – over the Almohad forces of the Caliph al-Nasar at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in July 1212. Here again, Francis may well have been driven by an attempt (before or after the battle) to forestall any further blood­ shed between Christian and Muslim forces. But, as it turns out, whatever the precise motivations of Francis might have been, he fell ill during the journey to the Spanish mainland and eventually had to return to Italy once again, unable to realize his intentions among the Muslim rulers of the area. Prescinding from any speculation about the precise historical circumstances that may have impelled Francis to attempt these

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two voyages to ‘go among the Muslims’ (er 16, 3), Thomas of Celano offers us a highly interesting characterization of the intent of these missions: In the sixth year of his conversion [1212], burning with desire for holy martyrdom, he wished to take a ship to the region of Syria to preach the Christian faith and penance to the Saracens and other non-believers. But after he had boarded a ship to go there, contrary winds started blowing and he found himself with his fellow travelers on the shores of Slavonia [Dalmatia] . . . Not long after this, he began to travel towards Morocco to preach the gospel of Christ to the Miramamolin and his retinue.20 The passage describing both trips appears innocent enough. But a closer look reveals that Thomas has framed these expeditions in terms of Francis’s desire to ‘preach [the doing of] penance’ to these Muslims. If we were to interpret the meaning of this car­ dinal phrase – predicare penitentiam – as being simply to confess one’s sins in an act of confession or to engage in penitential exer­ cises to overcome the damage due to one’s sins, then this phrase, here, would not have much meaning. One cannot advocate to non-Christians that they need to go to confession, repent of their sins and then go forward to live a good Christian life. No, here, the meaning of this critical phrase, as we have been insisting, is much broader: to undergo a transformed vision of human exist­ ence so as to alter one’s behaviour in line with the deepest values of the gospel – indeed, of any of the world religions, including Islam – so as to create a society that is respectful of all of its cit­ izens and with a keen intent to especially be mindful to raise up the social conditions of the downtrodden and poor of each soci­ ety. This is precisely what Francis was intending to do as he went among the Muslims: to preach the message of penance unto the

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St Francis prevents the wreck of a ship, which sailed from Ancona, scene from Coppo di Marcovaldo, St Francis and Twenty Stories of His Life (‘Tavola Bardi’), 1245–50, tempera and gold on wood.

healing of the human fraternity of creatures so that all might have the necessities of life due all creatures of God. In 1212–13, he failed in both attempts; but the vision of the saint of Assisi would not die with these failures. He would try yet again at a later time, as we will soon see.

The Fourth Lateran Council (November 1215) The relationship between the Christian and Muslim worlds fig­ ured as part of the agenda at the great ecumenical council at the Lateran in November 1215. The council had three primary objectives: (1) the extirpation of the heresy of the Cathars in southern France and northern Italy, especially with respect to its dangerous ramifications upon belief in the Catholic sacra­ ments and, most particularly, the Eucharist; (2) the launching of the Fifth Crusade against Islam in the Levant; and (3) the call

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for a sweeping reform of Church life and a renewal of personal holiness. Lateran iv has been characterized as one of the great­ est pastoral councils of Church history, akin to the achievements of the councils of Trent and Vatican ii. How does the nascent movement of Francis and his brothers and sisters fit into the dramatic aims and energies of this great council? First, the question must be asked: was Francis even present at the council? Among the group of participants called to the council would have been the heads of the great and established religious orders of the Church. Therefore, it is sometimes assumed that, as head of the Franciscan order, Francis would have been present. And yet, there was not even, at this time, a ‘Franciscan order’ to speak of. The minorite fraternity was just that: a group of male penitents who had had their propositum vitae approved, orally, by Innocent iii and who had been authorized to preach penitential sermons to the people contingent on the permission of local bishops. They had no papal bull – an official document affixed with a papal seal (bulla) – signalling formal or official approval by the Roman Curia and possessing a recognized religious Rule. What they had, rather, was an evolving forma vitae with a general authorization to give simple (non-doctrinal, penitential) exhortations to the people of God. Francis would, in other words, not have been invited to the council. There is, however, a passing mention in an early Dominican chronicle that their founder, Dominic Guzman, had met Francis in Rome at the time of the council.21 Hence, Francis was, shall we say, in the vicinity of the council but not present there in any formal capacity. And yet, there is testimony in the Franciscan sources that something was indeed decided about the fate of the fraternity gathered around Francis of Assisi in one of the meetings held by the Curia adjunct to the main sessions of the council. It is in the aforementioned Legend of the Three Companions 51 – and repeated

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in the Speculum perfectionis 26 – where we read that Innocent had approved the propositum of the brothers (in 1209) and then ‘afterwards announced it [this approval] in consistorio’ (‘in con­ sistory’), that is, in a side-meeting of the Curia at the council. This was critical since the council itself, in its Canon 13,22 had expressly limited the approval of religious orders to those who already had an approved Rule. Without this additional statement on the part of the pope, the nascent fraternity probably would have been forced to adopt a pre-existing Rule and, thereby, lose the unique identity of its foundational charism. It should be said here, however, that the fate of the fraternity was apparently quite contingent on the good offices of two pre­ lates in the Roman Church. Already back in 1209, Cardinal John of St Paul, coincidentally a friend of Bishop Guido i of Assisi, had been able to advocate positively before Innocent iii in the Lateran Palace on behalf of the Assisi contingent of pen­ itents. One would have expected a similar vote of confidence at Lateran iv except that John had died just prior to the opening of the council. This unfortunate turn of events, however, was coun­ teracted by the providential intervention of a young cardinal, Hugolino dei Conti di Segni, a nephew of the reigning pontiff. Indeed, one should probably attribute the happy fate of the fra­ ternity ‘in consistory’ to the intervention of this Hugolino: an advocacy and friendship towards the friars that would continue throughout the lifetime of Francis and in the decade and a half to follow (even if one can question to what extent he actually understood the full measure of Francis’s radical vision). Lateran iv, in other words, had a profound effect on the continued existence of the minorite fraternity. But Francis him­ self was deeply affected by the council’s insistent advocacy of the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian life against the impreca­ tions of the Cathars. Indeed, it was during the early 1220s, when Francis began to communicate to the friars through the written

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Drawing of the Lateran Palace (4) and basilica (1) during medieval times, from Giovanni Ciampini, De sacris aedificiis a Constantino Magno constructis (1693).

word – being unable to travel due to illness and progressive weakness – that the founder wrote a number of letters in which he enjoined them to have a profound reverence and solicitude for the way the Eucharistic host and the vessels of the altar were to be regarded and cared for.23 But there was one other aspect of the council that deeply affected him as well. In his opening sermon at the council, using the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, Innocent iii had announced the three aims of the gathering, in that he, like the Lord, ‘desired to eat this Passover’ with them. Innocent went on to speak about a triple ‘Passover’: a physical ‘passing over’ of the sea in a Fifth Crusade; a spiritual ‘passing over’ through the renewal and re­­ gen­­­eration of Christian life from sinfulness to holiness of life; and an eternal ‘passing over’ through the reaffirmation of the reality and efficacy of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, which passed from the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord. These three aims came to be associated,

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opposite: Francis of Assisi, c. 1223, fresco, Santuario del Sacro Speco, Subiaco. This is the oldest existing portrait of St Francis, depicted without the stigmata. above: Francis of Assisi, c. 1223, fresco, detail of the Tau and book.

moreover, with one universal symbol: the Tau cross. The crusaders were to be marked with the sign of this cross on their clothing as they went into battle, protected by the cross of Christ; the Christian faithful were to be blessed by the sign of the cross as they moved from sin to holiness (especially with the sign of the cross in confession); and the sacramentary or Roman missal of the Church, at the start of the canon of the Mass, traced a large ‘T’ in the form of a Tau where the Latin words begin ‘Te igitur’. Thus was the Tau meant to encapsulate the triple aim of the great council.

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Now, in the aftermath of the council, Francis made the Tau cross an integral part of his spirituality. First, as we have just noted, he eventually championed a profound respect and rever­ ence for the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and all its associated vessels. He also adopted the Tau, almost as if it were his own personal signature, affixing it on several letters and sometimes even marking his presence on walls in the form of the Tau, the sign of the spiritual conversion of one’s life on the pattern of Jesus’s teachings in the gospel. However, what is remarkably missing in his absorption of the council’s use of the symbol of the Tau cross is its association of the Tau with the crusade. Indeed, nowhere in any of his writings is there any mention whatsoever of the crusade itself! Francis, in other words, remained deliberately silent on the association of the cross of Christ with the crusade and its aims of violent conquest of the Holy Land and the Holy Places. Indeed, consistent with the spiritual vision revealed to him in his encounter with lepers and its encapsulation in the conversion of life that he had adopted in the ‘doing of penance’, it was inimical to Francis to associate the salvific blessings of the cross and its outpouring of love for the human race with the violent and blood-drenched military campaigns that would only further, in his mind, the fracturing of the human fraternity of creatures whereby Christians and Muslims would fight to the death for the land made sacred by the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The Tau, his personal signa­ ture, signified life, blessing, conversion and reconciliation among the members of the human fraternity; and the Christian crusade to reconquer Jerusalem and the Holy Land was, for him, the exact opposite of its salvific power and truest meaning.

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A

lthough the Fifth Crusade was a project inspired and promoted by the papacy, the spiritual vision revealed to Francis in his encounter among lepers, whereby every human creature was perceived as a sacred being, placed him at some odds with the leadership of the Roman Church. We will see shortly where this vision would eventually lead him during the years 1219 and 1220. Before we arrive at that point, there is one incident that might shed some light on this same mentality. The incident is Francis’s request to the papacy to grant a plenary indulgence to the church of Our Lady of Angels, the Portiuncula. But there are some serious historiographical difficulties here. As is well known, the actual documentary evidence for the granting of this indulgence is attested to only in relatively late documents from the end of the 1270s on into the next century. These documents hearken back to permissions granted contem­ poraneously to Francis and his brothers; but their tardive nature renders any kind of definitive assessment of the veracity of the claims somewhat tenuous. Nevertheless, an examination of these claims in the context of the crusading project launched at the Fourth Lateran Council may help strengthen the interpretation of the indulgence I am proposing here. The information about the granting of such an indulgence comes to us essentially through an oral chain of two testimonies.

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The earliest – from a well-respected friar from the early days of the fraternity, Benedetto Sinigardi of Arezzo – claims that he had heard about the indulgence from Brother Masseo, who told him that he had accompanied Francis into the presence of Pope Honorius iii, requesting a full and total plenary indulgence valid for any visit on any day of the year to the Portiuncula chapel. The startled pope scaled it back to one day, 2 August, every year. Allegedly, the paperwork was to be worked up shortly thereafter by the Curia but, apparently, it never was. The second testimony comes from Angelo da Perugia, minister provincial of Umbria (1274–80), who claims that a certain benefactor of the friars, Jacopo Coppoli, had heard from Brother Leo on several occasions a similar story. Now, although there seems to be little evidence at all of any stream of pilgrims taking advantage of the grant of this indulgence to the Portiuncula until the 1260s, nonetheless tradition has always maintained – in spite of the total lack of documentary evi­ dence – that such a grant had indeed been made by Honorius iii. If we would give credence to this long-revered tradition within the Franciscan order, we might be able to conjecture on the rationale for such a request by Francis and his companion. The Fifth Crusade had just been launched by the Fourth Lateran Council in late November 1215 and preparations were already underway to begin the maritime passage over to Acre, the sole remaining toehold of Christianity in the Levant. Francis, by dint of his own spiritual vision of the inviolability of the univer­ sal fraternity of all creatures and as demonstrated by his total silence on the matter of the crusade in his writings as well as his refusal to associate the Tau cross with that same project, may very well have petitioned the papacy for a way in which to encourage Chris­tian men and women to receive the same spiritual benefit of going to the Holy Land as a crusader – the plenary indu­­l­­ gence – by simply remaining at home in Europe and piously

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visiting the chapel of Our Lady of Angels out on the plain of Assisi on 2 August of a given year. The requisite mindset to receive the spiritual benefits of the indulgence was a sincere and authentic contrition for past sins and a full confession to a local priest. In this way, Francis would have been accomplishing two aims central to his own spirituality: first, the encouragement of his fellow Christians to ‘do penance’ and produce in the aftermath the fruits worthy of such an act of penitence; and second, the conscious avoidance of participating in and contributing to the further rupturing of the sacred human fraternity willed by God through acts of violence and bloodshed in a crusade against their fellow creatures. Seen in this particular context, the Portiuncula Indulgence – if indeed it existed at the time of Francis himself – fits hand-in-glove with the spiritual vision being carried into the world by Francis and his companions.

The Testimony of Jacques de Vitry Slightly before this purported event, during the early summer of 1216, a prominent reform-minded cleric in northeastern France near Reims, Jacques de Vitry, had been named bishop of Acre in the Levant. He immediately began his voyage towards the Holy Land by way of the Italian peninsula to take up his charge. It is his experiences in Italy that interest those study­ing the Franciscan phenomenon, for he gives us a rare glimpse of and commentary on a number of religious movements (both ortho­ dox and heterodox) which he encountered as he was mak­ing his way southward. Indeed, his observations on the minorite pheno­ menon are both precious for their details and revelatory of an important dynamic that we will encounter within the order itself in the early part of the next decade. In an important letter which he penned on his way through Italy, not only does Jacques comment on the lifestyle of the

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Humiliati and the presence of heretics in areas of northern Italy, but, arriving in Perugia shortly after the death of Innocent iii in that city (16 July), he was appalled by the scandalous pillaging of the bejewelled vestments of the dead pontiff by people who had been invited to view the body lying in state. Shortly after­ wards, Jacques found himself in the area around Assisi and it was there that he encountered men and women attached to the movement of Francis of Assisi. In contrast to the absorption in worldly business of those clerics at the Curia currently in residence in Perugia, Jacques had highly laudatory things to say of what he encountered next across the valley: I did find, however, one source of consolation in those parts. Many well-to-do secular people of both sexes, having left all things for Christ, had fled the world. They are called ‘Lesser Brothers’ and ‘Lesser Sisters’. They are held in great reverence by the Lord Pope and the Cardinals. They are in no way occupied with worldly things, but with fervent desire and ardent zeal, they labor every day to draw from the vanities of the world souls that are perishing, and draw them to their way of life. Thanks be to God, they have already reaped great fruit and have converted many . . .1 He then goes on to describe, from his point of view, the lifestyle they were leading: They live according to the form of the primitive Church, about whom it was written: ‘The community of believers were of one heart and one mind’. During the day, they go into the cities and villages, giving themselves over to the active life in order to win over others; at night, however,

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they return to their hermitage or solitary places to devote themselves to contemplation. The women dwell together near the cities in various hospices, accepting nothing, but living by the work of their hands.2 He then remarks how, in conformity with the recent conciliar mandates requiring religious communities to hold regular chap­ ters (the Cistercian model) so as to maintain a watch over the integrity of their religious commitments, this movement – he was happy to say – did likewise: With great profit, the brothers of this order assemble once a year in a designated place to rejoice in the Lord and to eat together; with the advice of good men, they draw up and promulgate holy laws and have them confirmed by the Lord Pope. After this, they disperse again for the whole year throughout Lombardy and Tuscany, Apulia and Sicily . . . I believe that the Lord desires to save many souls before the end of the world through such simple and poor men in order to put to shame our prelates who are like ‘dumb dogs not able to even bark’.3 Now there are several important observations made by the newly consecrated prelate. First, he notes the presence of both male and female components of this one movement, bonded closely together by the term ‘fratres minores’ and ‘fratres sorores’. They seem to share common ideals, though they dwell in separate places. It is quite possible, once the male and especially the female members of the movement began to expand well beyond the Umbrian Valley, that this latter term – ‘Sister Minor’ – may have come to designate not so much those monasteries associated with Clare at San Damiano but other, more steadfastly lay, compo­ nents of the movement.4 Here, it seems to me, we are justified

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in assuming that the women whom he encountered ‘in various hospices, accepting nothing, but living by the work of their hands’, were indeed the earliest followers of Clare, living in a couple of different places in the area until accommodations could be arranged (or built) for them at the central location of what would become the monastery of San Damiano. Second, Jacques accurately describes the manner in which the brothers lived (at least those who lived in proximity to Assisi and its environs): shuttling between various places of work in ‘the cities and villages’ – in towns and throughout the contado – and then returning at night to their homestead (one assumes at the Portiuncula) for prayer, reflection and to subsist on what they have managed to bring to the table for their brothers. One gets the impression that the women did not have this kind of freedom to come and go but lived from the yield of their gardens. Third, it is interesting to note that already within seven months of the council, the community had put into practice the mandates of Lateran iv, structuring in an annual chapter meeting and deciding upon and drafting concrete statutes – assisted by able clerics from outside their numbers – concerning their life together; and that they submitted these to ecclesial authorities for comment and ratification. Thus did their rule of life, the Early Rule, continue to evolve and deepen over time. Their annual deliberations completed, off most of them would go in differ­ ent directions to resume their work of preaching penance in the various towns and villages in Italy. The fourth and perhaps most important observation concerns the way that Jacques, an outsider to the movement, read or inter­ preted the minorite movement. For what is highly interesting is that he describes them as incarnating the life of the first disci­ ples as spelled out in the Acts of the Apostles: ‘The community of believers were of one heart and one mind.’ This description of the vita apostolica was perfectly consistent with the form of life

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Church of San Damiano, Assisi.

that many of the newer forms of religious life throughout Europe had adopted and patterned themselves after. It was the way of life with which Jacques de Vitry, a reform-minded canon himself, would have been very familiar and one that would have resonated with him. However, note that this description of the apostolic life had never been used by Francis and the minorite movement to describe itself or its aims. In other words, Jacques is reading the minorite phenomenon through the lens and the categories that he knew well and which, for him, were the very essence of a reformed expression of religious life: sharing things in common, working with one’s hands, preaching the evangelical word among the people and so on. In other words, Jacques has captured aspects of this new form of religious life known as the Friars Minor but he, as an outside observer, has not in fact captured the very essence of their life among, for and as the poor of their region. Indeed, this ‘outsider’s view’ or perspective is going to be an important dynamic within the fraternity itself as others from well outside the Umbrian experience – with its socio-economic moorings in

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the life of the minores (the poor and lepers of their day) – would come to join the group but not entirely grasp the original aims and mindsets of Francis and his earliest brothers and sisters. These would consist especially of an influx of a new wave of clerics into the early minorite fraternity. Commensurate with the mandates of the Fourth Lateran Council for religious communities to hold annual chapters to closely examine their life in common, and consistent with a practice already begun by Francis and his brothers around Pente­ cost in 1216, the Friars Minor – whose legitimacy, as approved ‘in consistory’ at the council, had begun to spark an influx of new recruits into the community – held what is generally recognized as its first formal chapter meeting in May of 1217. It was a seminal gathering in several respects.

The Expansion of the Scope of the Preaching Missions First of all, the focus of the mission of penitential preaching had now become much wider than previously envisioned. Jacques de Vitry himself had mentioned four regions into which the friars had spread by the summer of 1216: Lombardy (northern Italy), Tuscany (central Italy), Apulia (south of Rome) and Sicily (southern Italy). But the gathering in 1217 would extend the parameters of these previous fields of mission. For the first time in Franciscan history, the friars were being sent well beyond the confines of the Italian peninsula: the first major push was going to be ‘over the mountains’, that is to say, well north of Italy over the Alps and into the territories known today as France, Spain, Germany and Hungary; the second push, much less limited, was to send a handful of friars across the Mediterranean to the Levant, settling in Jacques de Vitry’s episcopal see in Acre. It is impor­ tant to recall that the spiritual vision imparted to them in the

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earliest era through the encounter with lepers taught Francis and the brothers to see the world differently, namely, through the eyes of the poor and forgotten of Christian society, and to act accordingly. This optic afforded them the content, as it were, of the spiritual message that they now felt obliged to share with their fellow human beings so as to instil the desire and the will to transform human relationships through the concrete imple­ mentations of the gospel teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. No mere pious platitudes, the early friars had a ‘word’ to offer rich and poor alike unto the transformation of the human commu­ nity. This ‘word’ would henceforth no longer be limited to the Umbrian Valley or even the span of the Italian peninsula but would spread as wide as the known world, which was the sowing field of the gospel. A few salient details about these missions may help to fill out the picture of the friars’ activities during these years. First, we know that a mission was sent out to ‘France’. But there may be – as there is in several other instances – a slight con­ fusion about the exact area of this mission. It has often been assumed that it was Francis himself who intended to go to ‘France’ – and that this meant the area of ‘northern France’ and the vicin­ ity of the burgeoning city of Paris. And yet, this particular mission never got off the ground; for, en route to France, Francis and his companion(s) ran into Cardinal Hugolino, who – as the prelate now responsible for overseeing the welfare of religious commu­ nities in Italy – happened to be in Florence at the same time as the friars were traversing the area. But Hugolino, concerned about the disarray that the absence of the founder might cause within the fraternity, ordered Francis not to continue on his mission but to return home to serve as the centralizing anchor of the movement he had spawned. That said, however, it is quite possible that this aborted mission had as its real destination not northern France but

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southern France, that is, the area known today as Provence and Languedoc–Roussillon. If this was indeed the intended destina­ tion, it would make eminent sense. For southern France was the area being assailed by the heresy of the Cathars and its denigra­ tion of the sacrament of the Eucharist, as fully demonstrated at the Fourth Lateran Council. Indeed, the incarnational aspect of the mystery of Christ in the sacrament of the altar, as we know, would become central to the spirituality of the Poverello over the following years. For, if indeed Francis had encountered Dominic Guzman at the council in Rome, the latter could have easily informed him of the realities on the ground in that territory and the urgency with which Christian preachers were needed to reinforce the Catholic belief in the real presence of the Eucharist in that region. It is not without interest that there is a small detail conveyed in the Assisi Compilation coming from the tradition of the companions which attests that this very well could have been Francis’s motivation in hitting the road to southern France: At the time of the general chapter celebrated in that same place [St Mary of the Portiuncula], in which the brothers were sent for the first time to regions overseas, when the chapter had ended, blessed Francis, staying in that same place with a few brothers, said to them: ‘Dearest brothers, I must be a model and an example to all the brothers. If therefore I send my brothers into far distant countries where they will endure fatigue, shame, hunger and many other types of trials . . . Therefore, go and ask the Lord that He may allow me to choose that region which will give more praise to the Lord and for the profit and salvation of souls and Cardinal Hugolino and Francis of Assisi, c. 1228, fresco, Santuario del Sacro Speco, Subiaco.

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good example to our religion . . .’ And so the brothers withdrew to pray and when . . . they returned to blessed Francis, he said to them: ‘In the name of the Lord . . . I choose the region of France in which there is a Catholic people, especially because of the other Catholics of the holy Church. They showed great reverence to the Body of Christ . . .5

Portiuncula, Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli, Assisi.

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Although the passage had been written down in order to show a correlation between Francis’s devotion to the Eucharist and a similarly strong affinity towards it by ‘France’, still there are elements within the record – especially its echoes of the con­ cerns of the council – that point more directly to southern France rather than to the north. Indeed, once aborted, the north­ ern French mission would be entrusted (either in 1218 or even 1219) to Brother Pacifico, ‘king of verses’, who does eventually make the trek up to Vézelay and ultimately Paris itself. The push towards Spain echoes the first attempt by Francis himself to reach this land in 1213. We know very little about this journey, except that a certain friar, Zaccariah of Rome, apparently led this mission all the way over to Coimbra in Portugal. Mistaken for heretics, he and his brothers managed to secure the support and protection of both Queen Urraca and the princess Sanchia.6 The German experience is both instructional and amusing in its own right. Here, our source is the chronicle of Jordan of Giano, an Italian friar sent northwards ‘over the mountains’ after the general chapter of 1221.7 Jordan has a reservoir of stories to tell from his many years in the north, reaching as far back as to what he had heard about the first mission in 1217. He recounts a significant problem encountered by the friars sent into this part of Europe: the problem of language. No one in this group had a significant enough grasp of this non-Italic language to transmit their message, convey their needs or answer the queries of the populace, who were understandably suspicious, in this period of time, of the arrival of foreigners into their lands. But the friars had come to realize that the German word ‘Ja’ usually got them whatever they needed in terms of food and shelter. However, when asked by some of the people ‘Are you heretics?’, and being uncertain as to what they were being asked, they simply answered once again in the affirmative – with predictable consequences. Unable to communicate or even offer an understandable defence

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of themselves, having no official document from Rome, the friars simply left Germany for home. A similar disaster would meet them also in Hungary. This mission seems to have been launched at the initiative of a cer­ tain bishop of Hungary (perhaps Francis may have met him in Rome during the council), impressed with the integrity of the friars and their preaching. But here again the problem was the lack of a common language. Confronted by civilians, the friars thought they were being set upon by robbers. In a submissive gesture, they stripped off their habits and handed them over, first their outer tunics, then even their underwear. One hapless friar, frustrated at having repeatedly given up his undergarments, resorted to smearing them with cow dung so as to make them an undesirable object of plunder. Unable to make any headway, these friars likewise returned home to Italy. Thus the first three missions ended in failure. But in a fourth area they were more successful, probably because surrounded and supported by Christians who could speak and serve as translators of the local languages. That area was the Levant – and it was there that the chapter sent Brother Elias, a multi-talented and savvy friar who anchored the minorite mission in Acre for the next few years.

The Shaping of the New Territories into Provinces: The Creation of Structures of Authority The expansion into all of these new areas of the preaching missions of the friars, however, necessitated an unprecedented structuring of the way that the friars conceived of their frater­ nal relations with each other. This reconceptualization took two forms. The first was the physical subdivision of these large, hitherto unvisited territories into jurisdictional units called ‘provinces’. On the whole, these

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provinces were patterned after, or were coextensive with, preexisting ecclesiastical provinces. At the chapter of 1217, twelve such provinces were created. Italy itself was subdivided into the following provinces: Tuscany (including Umbria), Lombardy (northern Italy), the Marches of Ancona, Terra di Lavoro (including Rome), Apulia and Calabria. In France, two such provinces were created: one in southern France (Languedoc) and another in northern France (including Paris). And there were provinces created too in Germany, Hungary, Spain and the Holy Land (sometimes referred to in the sources as ‘Syria’). The purpose of these subdivisions was to ensure the good working order of the friars’ missions, being, as they were, far away from the centre point of the movement: that is to say, the Porti­ uncula. But more significantly, these provinces were overseen by a number of friars who were designated by Francis not only to watch over the organization and carry forward the preaching missions but to ensure that there was adequate lodging, suf­­ficient food and clothing for the friars under their care. These duties are set out at the very beginning of Chapter 4, verse 1, of the Early Rule: ‘All the friars who are appointed ministers and servants of the other brothers in the provinces and in the places where they live should give their brothers a place to live, visit them often and give them spiritual advice and encouragement.’ 8 But perhaps even more importantly, their main task was to watch over the integrity of their spiritual lives as friars vowed to a particular way of life as expressed in the evolving Rule. Indeed, the need to create such structures of governance that would hold together the life and work of the friars obliged the fraternity to formulate these roles to be consistent with the values at the heart of the movement itself. Hence, not only did the friars structure these new territories into provinces but they created a new role of authority within the order, namely, the custos. The name itself comes from the Latin verb custodire, which

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means ‘to watch over’ and ‘guide’. Essentially what this friar is being called to do is not only watch over the progress of the mission but be vigilant about the spiritual lives of his charges. The first term thus used in the developing Rule would be custos (custodes, in the plural); however, over time, it would eventually be replaced by the Latin term minister.9 But the essential notion that was preserved from the time of origins forward was that the charism revealed to them by the Lord in their forma vitae was not only foundational; it also had to be preserved and realized every­ day by the brothers themselves, since they shared a responsibility, together, for the integrity of their way of life.

A Spirituality of the Use of Power and Authority Indeed, the expansion of the areas where the friars intended to bring their message of the doing of penance and the reestablish­ment of peace among the people helped to spur a somewhat elaborate spirituality regarding the notion of how authority was to be used (and not used) among the brothers. For the issue was not merely what the friar leader had to do for the brothers, but the manner in which he exercised the authority placed at his discretion. Our earlier examination of the Early Rule showed that the friars had had a keen awareness of how power was used (and abused) both in society and sometimes also in the Church itself; and how the misuse of power often affected most negatively the poor, the weak and the powerless. This awareness made them sensitive to the use of power when they themselves had to create their own structures of authority. The deliberations among the friars when faced with the need to create governance structures eventually found their way into chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the Early Rule. A brief review of the content of these reflections will underscore both the originality of the minorite approach to

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the use of power and how consistent they were in their awareness of how power was used and misused beyond the fraternity in society at large. First, it should be noted that, during the earliest period of the fraternity’s existence (from 1208 until 1216), the community was small enough to be able to conceive of the roles of authority as a kind of shared responsibility. Francis was, of course, the undisputed founder of the movement. And yet, when the friars travelled down to Rome in the spring of 1209 to seek the approval of the papacy for their evangelical project, they designated Bernard of Quintavalle as the ostensible leader of this particular voyage. There was, in other words, a sense of shared responsibility for their life where roles could rotate depending on the skill or counsel needed. This kind of shared leadership – common even today among smaller forms of religious living – would necessarily have to find more structured forms as the fraternity expanded in num­ bers and across wider swathes of territory. This development occurred as a result of the historic chapter of 1217. For when the friars had to delegate someone to hold and use power or authority among the friars in these new provinces, they were keen to warn each other against the chief enemy for its use among them. They set forth the cardinal principle in the following way in Chapter 5 of the Early Rule: Likewise none of the friars is to have any power or domination, especially among themselves. For, as the Lord says in the gospel: ‘The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and the great ones exercise power over them’ [Matt. 20:25]. ‘It will not be’ that way ‘among’ the brothers [Matt. 20:26a].10 But how were Francis and his brothers going to ensure that the behaviour typical out in the world did not become part of

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their own exercise of authority? The corrective devised by Francis to such potential abuses of power was to orient the exercise of power explicitly towards the notion of service. Hence, the Early Rule, Chapter 5, continues: ‘And “whoever wishes to become great among” them, “let him become” their “minister” [Matt. 20:26b] and “servant” [Matt. 20:27b]. And he who is great among them, “let him become the least” [Luke 22:26].’11 The last word here is actually, in Latin, minor. In other words, just as one is minor among those in the world, so too one must be minor among one’s own in the order. Chapter 4 states it in a very concise manner, again citing the Lord’s own words: ‘And the ministers and serv­ ants should remember what the Lord says: “I have come not to be served but to serve” [Matt. 20:28].’12 Now the careful reader will notice that, in fact, Francis has created a somewhat awkward and ungainly phrase in order to describe what such a friar needs to be in the exercise of author­ ity among his own brothers. Indeed, he has combined two small words – ‘minister’ and ‘servant’ – from two separate phrases in the gospel passage from Matthew 20 (verses 26b and 27b) and combined them into one descriptive if ungainly phrase so as to emphasize that not only must the designated leader (custos) be a ‘minister’, he must also exercise that authority as a ‘servant’. This is the mino­­­rite response to the abuse of power out in the world and a bulwark against its existence among the friars themselves. Hence, when it comes to eventually putting down in writing this stage of the development of the Early Rule (er 4, 1), the names of these various roles within the community, the one who will later be called the minister provincial (the leader in each prov­ ince) will be described as the ‘minister and servant of the other friars’, whereas the minister general (or head of the order) will be described as the ‘minister and servant of the whole fraternity’. But the friars’ reflection on the spiritual nature of these roles of authority goes much further still. Impressive as is the

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develop­ment of these roles and the spirituality undergirding them, the proof was in the real challenges of daily life. For just as, in the earliest phase of the redaction of the propositum vitae, the positive platitudes first set down had to be refined, honed and concretized by virtue of the lived experience of the friars out in the world, so too, here, the elevated spirituality of authority had to be applied in the concrete daily experiences of the exercise of this power among the friars themselves. And the most daunting challenge that presented itself among the friars was when one of the brothers would have fallen into sin. But here again, the guiding principle of reciprocity applies especially when a minister finds himself in front of a friar who has sinned (or perhaps simply no longer even wants to live the life he has professed). It is the most profound challenge for a minister in such times to place himself in the position of the sinning or recalcitrant brother and to feel his pain (as well as his shame) so as to approach him out of a posture of mercy: ‘And let them do among themselves as the Lord says: “Whatever you want people to do to you, do likewise to them” [Matt. 7:12]. And: “what you do not want to be done to you, do not do to another” [Tobit 4:16].’13 The dynamic involved here is highly interesting. For, this is not simply a matter of charity or even compassion on the part of a minister to his brother. Rather, he is called to adopt a position of equality vis-à-vis the sinning brother and not to take a position of domination by virtue of any supposed moral superiority over the troubled friar. His com­ passion should lead him, instead, to listen and act in solidarity with his troubled brother. This is stated succinctly in Chapter 6 of the same Rule: ‘Indeed, let the minister strive to provide in such a way for them as if he himself were in a similar situation.’14 Indeed, the counsel within the Rule goes even a step further!

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And let the friars – the ministers and servants as well as the others – be wary not to become disturbed or angry because of the sin of another, for the Devil wishes to corrupt many through the sin of another. But they should rather do their best to help the one (spiritualiter adiuvent illum) who has sinned, for: ‘It is not the healthy who need a physician but the sick’ [Matt. 9:12].15 This counsel is then followed immediately by the aforementioned admonition about avoiding domination over and among the friars. Hence an astonishing connection is being made between anger, domination over another through an attitude of moral superiority and the division of the fraternity between supposed saints and sinners. Such anger implies that a moral judgement and condemnation will have been made by the minister against his brother, isolating the friar from his brothers while elevating the angry accuser above his wayward brother by virtue of a sup­ posed moral righteousness. Anger, in short, however humanly justified, is still a subtle form of power over a brother that risks separating the brother from his community whose willingness to forgive and reintegrate the offending friar actually provides the environment for the brother’s conversion and reintegration into the fraternity. These profound reflections on the nature and exercise of power among the friars themselves is summarized in a pithy phrase included in Chapter 6 of the same Rule: ‘And let no one be called prior, but all without exception are to be called Friars Minor. And let each one wash the feet of the other.’16 In other words, in a context that raises the danger of the exercise of power among the brothers, Francis and the discerning fraternity evoke the image of Jesus at the Last Supper where He, who was Lord and Master (in a position of supposed superiority), got

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down on His knees in front of His disciples to wash their feet (the quintes­sential image of humility and service given out of love). In the same way, the ‘ministers and servants’, in a position of superiority by virtue of their office, are called to figuratively get down on their knees before their brothers in this same pos­ ture of loving service and make themselves, as such, ‘minores et subditi omnibus’ (minores and subject to all): the quintessential posture of a Friar Minor in society is now extended to all the members of the fraternity.

The Transformation of the Clarian Part of the Minorite Movement The integration of the female followers of Francis and his broth­ ers – Clare of Assisi in the lead – was always going to cause a problem for the movement during the Middle Ages. This was an enigma occasioned by the very place of women in medieval society – and there was no easy solution. The very first actions of Francis with respect to Clare involved finding her (and her sisters) an adequate and protected place to live. Although a work­­ able solution was apparently arrived at not too long after several women had attached themselves to the movement (where San Damiano would become their quasi-permanent residence), Canon 13 of the Fourth Lateran Council was going to create further problems for the feminine component of the minorite movement. This canon, as we saw, had demanded that only those forms of religious life that had previously received official (curial) auth­orization to exist and which were following a recognized Rule of life would be allowed to continue to exist with the Church’s blessing. The precarious existence of the Friars Minor was resolved outside the council, ‘in consistory’. But the women connected to the movement had no such official recognition; all

Benvenuto Benivieni, St Clare and Stories of Her Life, 1283, tempera on panel.

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they had was an exhortatory few lines in which Francis described their way of life as consisting of ‘the perfection of the Holy Gospel’. This was not going to suffice going forward.

The ‘Privilegium Paupertatis’ Cognizant of the precarious position in which Clare and her sisters found themselves in the wake of the council, according to tradition Francis and another friar went across the valley from Assisi to Perugia, where the Roman Curia was then in residence, in order to petition Pope Innocent iii to find a way to safeguard the welfare of Clare and her Poor Ladies.17 It is my assessment that Francis would have had no case to make before the pontiff unless he could somehow convince Innocent of the unique and essential role that Clare and her sisters could play for the Church – justifying allowing them to continue to exist in spite of the mandate of the council. To accomplish this, it would have been incumbent on Francis to explicate for the pope a more concrete meaning of their forma vitae as being ‘the perfection of the Holy Gospel’. For, frankly speaking, on its face, the phrase sounded both pious and com­ monplace to any devout follower of the teachings of Jesus. But with the Poor Ladies being constrained to remain mostly confined to their dwelling at San Damiano, their religious life now began to take on a particular coloration or tonality which ended up heightening certain aspects of the minorite charism. Indeed, the aspect that came to the fore was not so much the minoritas of the followers of Francis (a life among the minores of society which was no longer an option for them) but rather their paupertas – that is to say, their physical simplicity of life and the lack of any claim of possession to their place or land. In a word, it was material poverty, which now emerged as the characteristic virtue of the sisters’ life together within the movement. Indeed, what is interesting is that near the end of his life, when Francis penned

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a final admonition to the Poor Ladies, he described their way of life no longer as ‘the perfection of the Holy Gospel’, but rather in the following manner: I, little brother Francis, wish to follow the life and poverty of our most high Lord Jesus Christ and His most holy Mother and to persevere in it until the end; and I ask you, my ladies, and I give you my advice, that you live always in this most holy life and poverty. And keep careful watch that you never depart from this by reason of the teaching or advice of anyone.18 One might even hazard a guess here that material poverty would become the watchword for the Poor Ladies even before it would be such for the friars themselves! Detached from the friars’ social minoritas, it was the resultant material paupertas that would become more pronounced and prominent for the Poor Ladies. But herein was the dilemma for everyone concerned. Clare and her sisters – due to the mores and constraints of medieval society – would have, to all intents and purposes, been charac­ terized as the cloistered religious. Not permitted to go in search of their subsistence beyond their monastery walls, how were they to survive? The Curia’s solution was to insist on the sisters’ clois­ ter but to equally insist that they live a form of mitigated poverty as their way of life, implying the acceptance of fixed revenues in order to provide for their daily needs. But this papal solution was totally unacceptable to Clare. She insisted on total (or absolute) poverty as her unique way of life. She would accept cloister; but she would not accept a moderate form of collective poverty. The solution reached between the principals involved was thus the following: cloister, total poverty – supplemented by vegetables from their own garden and those garnered from their sewing

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– and the promise of the friars to go out and beg for their other needs. Francis had already promised, in his initial exhortation to them, that he and his brothers would always have care and solici­ tude for the sisters. Now that promise came to be concretized in the solution reached between the parties. But if the papacy was willing to allow them to continue to exist due to their claim to total poverty as their unique gift to the Church, it was going to have to grant them a special exemption – a privilege – from current ecclesiastical law so that they could pursue this unique way of life. This, according to tradition, was the so-called privilegium paupertatis – the ‘Privilege of Poverty’ – which, according to tradition, would have been granted by Innocent iii before his death in July 1216. Now, this reconstruction is hypothetical. We have no such docu­­ment from 1216. What we do have, bearing this name, comes to us only from the early sixteenth century. However, according to Werner Maleczek, this so-called ‘Privilege of Poverty’ probably was fabricated around 1450 in service of a reform initiated by the Observant Poor Clares in Italy. This, in turn, would have been patterned after an actual document dated from the year 1228 which was indeed a ‘Privilege of Poverty’. The question then becomes: was this latter (real) document of 1228 patterned on a prior physical document or even just an oral concession granted previously in 1216? It is my contention here that such a privilege, in spite of our lack of a document, did, in fact, pre-exist the 1228 bull. And, maybe more importantly, this will help to explain the actions of the papacy vis-à-vis San Damiano during the events we are now going to follow. But it also serves as an important marker in the history of how material poverty began to come to the forefront first for the Poor Ladies and then for the Friars Minor themselves.

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The Institutionalization of the Poor Ladies, 1218–19 The opening lines of Canon 13 of the Fourth Lateran Council concerning religious orders indicate clearly the problem that the council fathers were attempting to address: ‘Lest too great a diver­ sity of religious orders lead to grave confusion in the Church of God, we strictly forbid anyone in the future to found a new order; but whoever would wish to enter an order, let him [or her] choose one already approved.’19 In the aftermath of the council, Cardinal Hugolino dei Conti di Segni, nephew of Pope Innocent iii, was delegated by his successor, Honorius iii, to undertake a vast exam­­ination of and, if necessary, reform of the various forms of religious life that had been proliferating throughout Italy over the previous several decades. This included both male and fe­­male forms of religious living; and, among the latter, the Curia was concerned about the various unapproved groups which were, at times, causing consternation among the hier­archy and the faithful as well. Clare and her sisters fell into this category. On 27 August 1218, Honorius wrote to Cardinal Hugolino, apparently in response to his own letter of enquiry, granting him, in Litterae tuae nobis, the authorization to take under the jurisdiction and protection of the Holy See unattached com­ munities of women throughout central Italy. To that end, with respect to the Poor Ladies of San Damiano, at the end of July 1219, in two separate letters, Honorius took under papal juris­ diction four monasteries ostensibly within the Clarian ambit. The first letter, on 27 July, was sent to Santa Maria di Monticelli (outside Florence). This was the group founded by Clare’s sister, Agnes of Assisi, a few years previously. Then, on 29–30 July, a second letter was addressed to several other monasteries: Monteluce (outside Perugia), Santa Maria fuori Porta Camolia (outside Siena) and Santa Maria di Gattaiola (outside Lucca).

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In strict accord with the dictates of the conciliar canon, all four monasteries – which hitherto had no approved rule of life – were now given the Rule of St Benedict as their way of life. The latter three monasteries (outside Perugia, Siena and Lucca) were also given certain institutiones regulares or constitutions which were meant to flesh out the specifics of the life they were hence­ forth to live as religious within the Church. This additional set of constitutions has also come to be referred to in history under the name of its author: the Constitutions of Cardinal Hugolino. And they were imposed upon three of the four monasteries mentioned in these letters. They would shape the life of the Poor Ladies at these places for the next half-century. Why are these important? Hugolino, it could be said, regarded the Poor Ladies as a particularly austere form of female Cistercian monastic life. Whereas the female Cistercians in Italy were marked off by their rigorous form of life of fasting, prayer and seclusion, Hugolino viewed the Clares as an extreme form of this same life: cloistered, dedicated to prayer and fasting, and similarly vowed to a life of moderate or modified physical poverty. And herein lies the rub. For, the type of poverty imposed on them in these regulations was precisely the same form that the Curia had attempted to impose upon Clare back in 1216, whereby they would receive stable sources of revenue since they were, as clois­ tered women, forbidden from venturing out to beg for the nec­ essities of life. And this modified form of poverty ensured that they would not have to depend upon other individuals, like the friars, to secure those necessities. In Hugolino’s mind, he was giving them a more secure and solid form of religious living in conformity with the desires of Lateran iv, with an approved and traditional rule of life – that of St Benedict, intended for cloistered religious. Henceforth, they would be referred to in papal docu­ ments as pauperae dominae inclusae (the Poor Enclosed Ladies). But the problem here was that this was not exactly the same forma

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vitae desired by Clare for her sister communities. Clare had agreed to enclosure but not to a mitigated form of poverty. And this problem is illustrated by the first of the four monasteries addressed. The first monastery – the one outside Florence at Monticelli – had been given a separate letter, different from the other three. It had been the first Clarian monastery founded beyond San Damiano and by Clare’s sister, Agnes. As such, it mirrored the same life as the one being professed by her sister outside of Assisi. Monticelli, in other words, like San Damiano itself, was spared having the Hugolino Constitutions imposed upon them. And the reason, it seems, is not that it had been founded by Clare’s sister but that they were already living an approved form of life formulated in the privilegium paupertatis, given to them by Innocent iii back in 1216. Hugolino, in other words, recognized that they already had an approved form of life that spoke directly to their manner of total poverty (not mitigated or modi­fied) which had been insisted upon by Clare herself and which Agnes took with her as well up to Florence. Both San Damiano and Monticelli would profess the Benedictine Rule, but the actual contents of their way of life would be dictated by the permis­ sion they had received to live in absolute poverty, with the friars questing the alms that would supplement what they needed for a stable life in cloister. As a result, Hugolino had ended up creating with this group of pauperes dominae inclusae two different tracts of observance: the one established and lived out by Clare and Agnes outside of Assisi and Florence, respectively, professing total poverty; and the others which would henceforth be bound to observe the Hugo­ lino Constitutions while observing a form of modified poverty. Most other Clarian foundations – there would be rare exceptions (like that of Agnes of Bohemia in Prague) – would follow this latter form of observance set out by the cardinal. Clare, however,

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for the rest of her life, would fight to maintain her ideal, lacking ownership of any possessions while living in the strictest simplic­ ity and poverty, within her cloistered condition. This was her way of living out the minoritas and paupertas of her shared charism with the brothers, where the former ideal would become increasingly interiorized or spiritualized since they had been de­­prived of the initial social component of the original movement. Unfortu­ nately, we do not have any direct reported reactions – only hints – given by Clare to these momentous changes. Perhaps the most telling is contained in the ‘Second Letter of Clare to Agnes of Prague’ – a noblewoman who had joined Clare’s movement in the nascent monastery in Bohemia which she herself had founded and funded prior to her entering. Aware of Hugolino’s constant attempts to integrate the monasteries of Clare (San Damiano) and that of her sister, Agnes of Assisi (Monticelli), as well as his efforts in 1235 (now as Pope Gregory ix), Clare expressed her caution to Agnes that she hue closely to the counsel given to her by Brother Elias of Cortona, who knew and understood Clare’s intentions for her Poor Ladies. As she writes: In all of this, follow the counsel of our venerable father, our Brother Elias, the minister general, that you may walk securely in the way of the commands of the Lord. Prize it beyond the advice of the others and cherish is as dearer to you than any gift. If anyone has said anything else to you or suggested any other thing to you that might hinder your perfection or what would seem contrary to your divine vocation, even though you must respect him, do not follow his counsel.20 Scholars believe that the person being alluded to here is none other than Gregory ix, whose campaign, since 1219, had been

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to channel the various monasteries of nuns attached to Clare’s movement under the umbrella of the Hugolino Constitutions. This was about as direct as Clare would get in her disagreement with the efforts of the cardinal-turned-pope. But having imposed these new institutionalized conditions of life upon the feminine component of the minorite phenome­ non, Hugolino had also subtly – or perhaps not so subtly – ended up cleaving a distance that was both physical and juridical between the male and female followers of Francis and his move­ ment. Having established the Poor Ladies as cloistered nuns, in separate locales and most of whom would no longer be strictly dependent upon the friars for their subsistence, Hugolino and the Curia behind him had separated off from the wider minorite movement a Second Order of Poor Ladies, now clearly dis­ tinguish­able from a First Order of male friars. This was not innovative or original; he simply employed the model already being used to distinguish the three different groups of Humiliati in northern Italy several decades earlier. But it transformed the sisters into cloistered nuns and effectively created a distance between the male and female components of Francis’s move­ ment (much to the relief of not a few churchmen) and hastened them a little further onto rather different trajectories of life: the one (feminine) steeped in the contemplative life and the interiorizing or spiritualizing of their life of poverty; the other (masculine), more prone to insist upon a presence out in the world and increasingly at the service of the Church. It would take another few years for Hugolino to work his magic, first, upon the increasing numbers of lay followers within the movement (the Third Order penitents) and then to address the imprecisions and ambiguities of the friars’ own Rule of Life.

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The Years Overseas, 1219–20

T

he Roman Curia’s monumental transformation of the Poor Ladies into a congregation operating on two separate tracks – those few monasteries following the way of Clare and those who had the Constitutions of Hugolino imposed on them – occurred at the very end of July 1219. It is dif­­ficult to know whether this transformation happened while Francis of Assisi was still in Italy, in the wake of the general chap­­ter at Pentecost in 1219. Indeed, it would be nice to know whether this action regarding an important component of his movement had been taken with (or without) his assent. We will pose the same rhetorical question about another change in Hugolino’s customary manner of acting in a few moments. The next two years would mark a critical turning point in the life of Francis himself and, by extension, in the life of his movement.

The General Chapter of 1219 Not waiting the recommended three years after the chapter of 1217 – according to the rhythm established at Lateran iv in Canon 121 – which had sent the friars ‘over the mountains’ and ‘overseas’ for the first time, Francis gathered the friars around him once again at the Portiuncula, in another momentous chap­ ter in the year 1219. Two important decisions occurred at this

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St Francis preaches to the Saracens in the sultan’s presence, scene from Coppo di Marcovaldo, St Francis and Twenty Stories of His Life (‘Tavola Bardi’), 1245–50, tempera and gold on wood.

chapter (actually one primary decision which had ramifications in several different locales). First, the general chapter sent several contingents of friars once again ‘over the mountains’. The aim was to send them back to destinations similar to those on the first unsuccessful missions two years earlier in France, Germany and Hungary. This time, however, the mission in France, led by Brother Pacifico, appears to have been sent much further north, past the pilgrimage church of St Mary Magdalen in Vézelay (in the region of Burgundy) and all the way up to the great city of Paris, where the friars would eventually settle north of the city on lands loaned to them that belonged to the abbey of St Denis. Another mission seems to have been directed once again towards southern France. This time, the mission reached its goal, establishing a new province further west in Aquitaine.

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The second area of focus, however, was not yet going to be Germany and Hungary. For obvious reasons, the delicate nature of this mission would have to be thought out a little more thor­ oughly (especially in terms of linguistic abilities) before another push could be made into German lands. Such a push would have to wait for the chapter of 1221. Indeed, the friars had learned some hard lessons from those initial thrusts ‘over the mountains’ in 1217. Learning from the poor reception they had received then, they took with them this time a papal letter, Cum dilecti filii, of Honorius iii, dated 11 June 1219. This was the first papal bull issued on behalf of the Friars Minor and it was addressed ‘to our venerable brothers, the arch­ bishops and bishops; and to our beloved sons, the abbots, deans, archdeacons and other prelates of the Church’.2 In other words, this was an important communiqué to the leaders of the Church attesting that the men coming into their dioceses and districts

Plan of Acre, c. 1630, after a map by Marino Sanudo and Pietro Vesconte, early 14th century.

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were in good standing with the Roman Church, had the blessing of both pope and Curia, and that the recipients were enjoined to receive these friars with welcome and kindness. The exact wording is as follows: Our beloved sons, Brother Francis and his companions of the life and religion of the Friars Minor, have rejected the vanities of this world and have chosen a way of life (forma vitae) deservedly approved by the Roman Church; after the Apostles, they go throughout different regions sowing the seeds of the word of God.3 And the apostolic letter continues: ‘We, therefore, beseech and exhort all of you in the Lord . . . when members of the afore­ said brotherhood (fraternitas) present themselves to you bearing these letters, to receive them as faithful Catholics, showing yourselves favourable and kind to them out of reverence for God and for us.’4 This first bull on behalf of the friars is remark­ able for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that they had learned something from their previous venture ‘over the moun­ tains’, espe­­­cially with regard to being able to demonstrate their bona fides by means of an official letter of approval; they were, in other words, not heretics or even intruders into the areas for which the various prelates had responsibility and jurisdiction. They could not simply assume welcome and permission but, by means of this letter, they had to ask for (and receive) episcopal, abbatial or local clerical approval for their preaching in such areas. Second, having been issued in such close proximity to the proceedings of the recent general chapter, it would appear that Francis had been persuaded (by Hugolino or others) that such a letter of introduction was necessary 5 to avoid the hostility of prelates in France and elsewhere, wary of wandering bands

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of undesirables and even heretics whose preaching had the potential to lead the faithful astray – as amply demonstrated over the previous century. No, here they were vouched for by pope and Curia as men ‘sowing the seeds of the word of God’ – and to be welcomed as such. This letter, one must assume, was carried with the friars as they went back into France, Spain and elsewhere.6 In addition to the two territories of France (north and south), there was another major push which needs to be treated as a sep­ arate matter. For, at this chapter, there was a deliberate attempt to connect once again with the Muslim world. This venture had three separate prongs: (1)  Five friars were sent to the city of Coimbra in Portugal, with the desire of reaching Muslim lands in the south of Spain and, as we will see, possibly even Morocco, across the Strait of Gibraltar. (2)  We also know that Giles of Assisi, one of the very earliest companions, was sent to Tunis, on the coast of North Africa. However, the Christian community there apparently warned him that the time was not propitious for any kind of public preaching. Indeed, it was overtly hostile – and so Giles quickly beat a retreat back to Europe. (3)  A final contingent of friars, this one led by Francis himself, was sent to the Levant. This mission would eventually travel to the port of Acre on the western coast of Palestine, where Brother Elias had been serving as minister of the friars in that last surviving Christian territory in the Holy Land. This threefold missionary thrust was indeed quite remarkable for a religious order at this point in the Middle Ages. It showed

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not only immense courage and innovation on the part of Francis and his brothers, but a single-minded purpose of interacting with those whom Christianity had very recently maligned (at Lateran iv) as ‘the infidel’ and the ‘enemy’ par excellence. We will want to explore the reasons behind this new push.

Francis’s Farewell to the Friars at the 1219 General Chapter Francis had made himself the head of the mission bound for the Levant. But given Hugolino’s objection to the absence of Francis from Italy back in 1217, it is quite possible that the cardinal may not even have been at the momentous chapter at all.7 Alterna­­ tively, there is another possible reason that Francis might have been allowed to go overseas. For, according to the chronicle of Jordan of Giano, prior to leaving he had delegated two friars to oversee the affairs of the order in his absence: Gregory of Naples and Matthew of Narni.8 The latter was to remain at the Porti­ uncula so that he could receive and give instruction to those wish­­ing to enter the fraternity. Gregory, however, was to travel throughout Italy visiting the friars and giving them support and counsel in their life and mission. This is another example of Francis’s desire to see authority shared out among the friars and used on behalf of the spiritual vitality of the brothers in their way of life. Francis, in other words, established one friar as the functional (or institutional) leader and another as the spiritual (or charismatic) leader. Together, they supervised the physical and spiritual needs of the brotherhood. It is also possible that, prior to leaving, Francis left a kind of farewell message to all the friars, laying out the purposes of his mission in the Levant as being wholly consistent with the values of the movement since the beginning. This falls within the realm of conjecture, since such a statement comes down to us attached

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to a much longer exhortation which came to be included in the Early Rule as Chapter 22. This lengthy chapter consists of fifty verses. But it is my surmise that it is only the first four verses that should be con­ sidered as this so-called ‘farewell address’ of Francis to his friars at the 1219 chapter.9 Let us examine these verses, for they are revelatory of the mind of the Poverello as he was preparing to set out for the East: All [my] brothers, let us pay attention to what the Lord says: ‘Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you’ [Matt. 5:44]. For even the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose footsteps we must follow [cf. 1 Peter 2:21], called His betrayer ‘friend’ and freely gave Himself up to those who crucified Him. They are our friends, therefore, all those who unjustly inflict on us trials and anguish, shame and injuries, suffering and torture, martyrdom and death. We should love them greatly, for it is out of what they inflict on us that we have eternal life.10 This is a powerful and pregnant statement of intention, requir­ ing closer examination on our part. The hagiographical sources (Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima in the lead) posit that Francis’s primary motivation for going among the Muslims in the Levant was to go ‘in search of martyrdom’. This is a rather standard topos in the hagiographical literature ranging back to late antiq­ uity. However, there seems to be something else more operative in Francis’s desire. Let us first recapitulate the four ideas in this address: (1)  Jesus’s injunction to his followers: ‘Love your enemies’; for even Jesus called those who handed Him over to death ‘friend’;

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(2)  Jesus gave Himself up to His torturers and crucifiers; (3)  Francis urges a shift of perspective: they are our friends who unjustly harm, torture and even kill us; and (4)  Francis urges: ‘Love them greatly for through them we will gain eternal life.’ First, it must be said that the context of the scriptural allusions in these four verses is the Garden of Gethsemane and the betrayal (the handing over to death) of Jesus by Judas. The con­ text is thus the potential for imminent danger, suffering and even death, as Francis and his handful of friars prepare to go to the Holy Land and, one assumes, to encounter the Muslims in some as yet unspecified manner. But Francis is alerting his brothers to a very different vision concerning the enemy ‘other’. For the one who you and all other Christians have been taught by medieval society and by repre­ sentatives of the Church is ‘our enemy’ is actually, at a deeper level, ‘our friend’.11 But in choosing to use this word – ‘friend’ (amicus, in Latin) – drawn from the Scriptures, in the context of Jesus’s being handed over to enemies, Francis does not intend to conjure up notions of friendliness and happy sentiments visà-vis one’s possible malefactors. Indeed, the passage is not meant to evoke emotions or sentiments at all. Rather, Francis is giving witness to a notion that we have already noted in the earliest time of the fraternity: the rediscovery of the marginalized other (the leper) as being a brother or sister (frater or soror). In other words, to use the word amicus here is to evoke, on the contrary, the concept of frater: a member of the universal fraternity of all creatures. Francis is indeed going to the Holy Land in order to show, by his very life and possibly even his own death, that even the enemy par excellence in the eyes of Christians – the Muslim ‘infidel’ – is, in fact, a brother or a sister to him, part of the sacred fraternity of creatures, just as was the disdained and marginalized

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leper of his own day. This is the witness – the reason – why Francis was burning with zeal to go among the Muslims in order to live out this forgotten and rejected fact about the nature of our crea­ turehood as human beings. All – even the Muslim other – are members of this sacred fraternity. And Francis was going among them to demonstrate this fact to them as well as to the Christian crusaders who had gone overseas with a very different purpose in mind. And here is where we double back on the notion of ‘martyrdom’. For even if, in the course of living out this com­ pelling witness in the midst of the Muslims of the Near East, he should find himself confronted with capture, torture and perhaps swift death, Francis – he assures his brothers – will gain eternal life in the process, not simply because he will have received the crown of martyrdom by his death but rather, more profoundly, by remaining faithful, unto death, to one of the fundamental values revealed to him at the start of his vocation in his encoun­ ter among lepers: the recognition of the universal creaturehood of all peoples before God.

Francis in the Levant At some point in midsummer, Francis, Peter Catanii and sev­ eral other friars set out from one of the ports on the eastern coast of Italy bound for the Levant. In all probability, they took ship with a contingent of crusading troops on their way to bol­ ster the Western forces in the Holy Land. The group would have put in oars at Acre, temporary seat of the archbishop of Jerusalem (Jacques de Vitry) and locus of the friars under Brother Elias in the Near East. At some point in the month of August, Francis and a companion – as we will learn much later (thanks to Bona­ venture), it was Brother Illuminato – set out with this contingent of soldiers, probably taking the coastal land route on their way to where the military engagements were taking place at that time:

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the fortress of Damietta, inland from the mouth of the Nile Delta. Damietta was the forward defensive bulwark impeding the crusaders from proceeding southward towards Cairo, seat of the Ayyubid dynasty ruling Egypt. Having arrived in the crusader camp outside the fortress of Damietta (actually, for the moment, across the river), Francis and his companion began to put into action the mission they had come to conduct. There were two aspects of this mission: the first aimed at the crusaders them­ selves, and the second involving the court of al-Malik al-Kamil hunkered down in an encampment to the south of the walls of Damietta, which had been under a crushing siege for numerous months. We will treat each in its turn. The sources are not plen­ ti­ful for the events that concern us; and those that we do have present several problems of interpretation (due to the nature of the sources or because they do not tell us much about the things we might want to know).

Francis and the Fifth Crusade The current situation in the Western world vis-à-vis Muslims, in the wake of 9/11, has drawn contemporary interpreters of the life of Francis towards the famous Encounter of Francis and his companion with the sultan al-Kamil in Egypt. But it is, in fact, the presence of the two friars in the camp of the crusaders that, in some respects, provides us with an unexpectedly rich text about this part of the events of August–September 1219. For while there are indeed a certain number of historical accounts and notices in chronicles about the events of the Fifth Crusade in and around Damietta, there is precious little about the pres­ ence of the two friars themselves in the crusaders’ camp in these texts. Indeed, in terms of the testimonies found in Franciscan sources, there is only one that emerges from the corpus of these latter texts. Interestingly, there is not a word about their pres­ ence in the camp of the crusaders in 1 Celano. It is only when

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we turn to his second major work (the so-called 2 Celano or Vita secunda but which now needs to be nuanced a bit given the recent discovery of the Vita brevior of the late 1230s) that we come upon the critical text. Since this one text, 2 Celano 30, is so crucial for understanding the dynamics of their presence at Damietta and since it is a text whose content requires close reading, I am going to lay out much of the text itself and then proceed to unpack its carefully constructed material: When the Christian army was besieging Damietta, the holy man of God was there with his companions . . . When the holy man heard that our forces were preparing for war, on the day of battle he grieved deeply. He said to his companion: ‘If the battle happens on this day, the Lord has shown me that it will not go well for the Christians. But if I say this, they will take me for a fool; and if I keep silent my conscience will not leave me alone. What do you think I should do?’12 After Illuminato counsels him to follow his conscience, the account continues: The saint leapt to his feet and rushed towards the Christians crying out warning to save them, forbidding war and threatening disaster. But they took the truth ‘as a joke’ [Tobit 3:4]. They hardened their hearts [Exod. 4: 21] and refused to turn back . . . In that moment of battle, the holy man made his companion get up to look . . . the massacre was so great that between the dead and the captives the number of our forces was diminished by six thousand.13 Thomas then concludes his narrative with a moralistic warning: ‘“Let the princes of the whole world take note of this” [1 Chr.

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28:21] and let them know: “it is not easy to fight against God” [Sir. 46:8], that is, “against the will of the Lord” [2 Cor. 8:5]. Stub­born insolence usually ends in disaster.’14 Now, in addition to this being the only account of the friars’ presence outside Damietta, it is also a very clever and complex pericope intended to carefully convey a particular viewpoint, namely, Francis’s opposition to the battle being waged in the Nile Delta and to the violence of the crusades themselves. Celano does this by constructing his narrative along two different themes. The first theme is ‘prophecy’. Indeed, this whole section, starting in Chapter 27 of the work, is framed by the heading ‘The Spirit of Prophecy Which Francis Possessed’. But one should recall that in the Scriptures ‘prophecy’ can mean two different but related things. First and most popularly, it can mean the ability to predict the future. More fundamentally, however, is the duty of the prophet to challenge his hearers to go back to the roots of the covenant made with God and to live according to the values that flow from that relationship. Indeed, the two aspects are interrelated: if people do not live in accord with such values, it becomes rather easy to predict the disaster that will eventu­ ally befall them. Prophecy, in other words, is another way of emphasizing the will of God in a particular time and place and the imperative to live in accord with His values. The calling of the Fifth Crusade – and the bloodshed that it was engendering especially here in Damietta – was, for Francis, a case in point. This is underscored by the second theme woven into the narrative: ‘time’. But here, too, there is a subtlety. For there is chronological time (kronos, in Greek) – the time measured in minutes, hours and days – and there is also christic time (kairos, in Greek) – the time that is measured according to Christian values and action. Both of these standards of measurement are at play in 2 Celano 30. The former standard (chronological time) presents itself on the surface of the account. Francis and

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Illuminato discuss the wisdom of this battle happening ‘on this day’, and that if it does, it will end in disaster for the crusaders. Since the account has been framed under the rubric of ‘prophecy’, one can get the impression that this is about Francis’s ability to predict on which day the battle will be propitious or not. But that is not the real intention of the pericope. Rather, one needs to recall that ever since Bernard of Clairvaux’s famous sermon at Vézelay in central France launching the Second Crusade in 1147, the sending off of the crusades had been framed by the scriptural passage he used in this sermon. Quoting the words of Paul to the community in Corinth (2 Cor. 6:2), Bernard had exhorted them: ‘For he says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, on the day of salvation I have helped you.” Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!’ But according to Celano, Francis is turning that clarion call to violence on its head: now is no longer (if it ever was) the acceptable time nor is it the time of salvation! Christic time demands otherwise! Even though these crusades were promoted and led by the papacy, the fact that their ultimate aim was conquest through immense blood­ shed rendered these ventures, according to Francis, no longer acceptable in the eyes of God. They were, indeed, contrary to the will of God. Hence, the more the Western crusaders continued on this path of violence – again, according to Francis – the more they were going to court disaster and would have to pay the price in their own blood for kicking against the goad. This was one of the main reasons that Francis and his companions went to the Levant: not to join up with the crusade in support of its objec­ tives against Islam, but to raise their voices against it. Once again, it is the vision of the universal fraternity of creatures, revealed to Francis through his encounter with lepers, that is fuelling his efforts to stop further bloodshed.15 Francis’s behaviour, in other words, even here, found itself shaped by the seminal experience of his conversion.

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The abstruse nature of Celano’s account could strike the casual reader as needlessly complex and oddly tardy (1247) with respect to his first effort in the Vita prima. But there are several things to consider here. First, one needs to recall that, in the late 1240s, as the official hagiographer of the Franciscan order, Thomas found himself in an awkward position vis-à-vis the papacy with respect to its promotion of the crusades. With one grand literary effort already under his cord (in 1229), Thomas was now designated to pull together additional testimonies about Francis and the early days, sent in to the minister general Crescentius of Iesi between 1244 and 1247. But this occurred precisely at the same time that the papacy was asking the Fran­ ciscan order to promote and even participate in a new crusade, the Seventh Crusade, being launched once again against the centre of Muslim power in Egypt and led by the king of France, Louis ix. Celano seems to have had strong misgivings about this new military venture in which the friars were being called on to serve as crusade preachers, whipping up the hatred of their Christian compatriots against Muslims and accompanying the crusaders to the Levant once again. But Thomas of Celano apparently knew something – something which he had chosen not to weave into his first Vita of the new saint. Now, however, the contradiction was palpable: Francis, he implies, was not fav­ ourable to these violent efforts and he depicts him, deftly and subtly, as being opposed to such efforts. Hence, the singularity of this account presented in 2 Celano 30. Both crusading efforts, the Fifth as well as the Seventh, would end in disaster for the aggressors from the West.

The Encounter of Francis and Illuminato with al-Malik al-Kamil In spite of the failure of the two friars to dissuade the spiritual and military leaders of the Fifth Crusade – Cardinal Pelagius

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and John of Brienne, respectively – from engaging the Muslim army outside Damietta, Francis and his companion, during a temporary (unofficial) ceasefire, asked permission from Cardinal Pelagius to cross over to the Muslim camp in an effort to carry their message of peace to the other side.16 Although we have sev­­ eral accounts of the events that followed, none of them is an eyewitness account and each of them is coloured in some manner by the agenda of its authors, be they hagiographers (Thomas, Bonaventure), prelates (Jacques de Vitry) or disinterested chron­ iclers (like Oliver of Paderborn). Interestingly, there is barely a ripple of this momentous event in the Muslim sources. While crossing unannounced into the territory between the two camps, Francis and Illuminato were roughly accosted by the guards of the Muslim encampment, for they did not appear to be emissaries of the Christian army. By some accounts, their out­ ward dress likened them to being a kind of Christian Sufi: men of simplicity and pacific demeanour. Roughly escorted upon their request into the presence of the sultan al-Kamil and his counsellors, it seems safe to conclude that there was some kind of interchange – facilitated by translators – between Francis and his interlocutors. Precisely what transpired we do not know. But the very fact that the two friars were allowed to remain for several weeks in the encampment is testimony enough that the exchanges must have been relatively amicable. By some accounts, there was a sentiment – justified by a strict interpretation of Islamic law regarding proselytizing – to dispatch the two intrepid friars. On the contrary, the two interlocutors seem to have found some com­ mon ground. Indeed, the court of al-Kamil was known – thanks to the religious interests of its leader – to be a place open to reli­ gious interchange, especially if conducted in an amicable and non-threatening manner. For this reason, one can conclude that whatever Francis’s approach and testimony might have been, the sultan found in him a kindred spirit. Indeed, the remarks made

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by Jacques de Vitry – no friend of the Muslim other – about the events which transpired seem quite apposite: We have seen the founder and master of this order, Brother Francis, a simple uneducated man beloved by God and his fellow human beings . . . He was so moved by spiritual fervour and exhilaration that, after he reached the army of Christians in front of Damietta in Egypt, he boldly set out for the camp of the sultan of Egypt . . . When the Saracens captured him on the road, he said: ‘I am a Christian. Take me to your leader.’ They dragged him before the Sultan. When that cruel beast saw Francis, he recognised him as a man of God and changed his attitude into one of gentleness; and for some days, he listened very attentively to Francis as he preached the faith of Christ to him and his followers . . . he then ordered that Francis be returned to our camp with all reverence and security. At the end, he said to Francis: ‘Pray for me that God may deign to reveal to me the law and the faith which is most pleasing to Him.’ In fact, the Saracens willingly listen to all these Friars Minor when they preach about faith in Christ and the gospel teaching, but only as long as in their preaching they do not speak against Muhammed as a liar and an evil man . . . Such is the holy order of Friars Minor: a religious way of life which should be admired and imitated.17 This seems to be a fairly accurate assessment of the course of events (even though it completely omits the presence of Francis’s companion). While it demonstrates the typical Western Christian antagonism towards those of an alien faith,18 it also underscores the unexpectedly positive nature of the encounter, the lively discussions which took place (over several days) and the mutual respect which these two figures apparently had for each other.

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If the tradition regarding the sultan’s gift to Francis upon his departure – a horn for calling the people to prayer – is indeed true, it would be emblematic of the common ground they shared regarding the act of prayer and praise to God as being of the essence of the human person and membership of the universal fraternity of creatures.

Resonances of this Remarkable Encounter To conclude this summary of the events that transpired in the Levant, we can make several brief comments on how the experi­ ence, especially the encounter with al-Kamil, affected Francis once he had returned to the camp of the crusaders and even­ tually returned home to Italy.19 I will limit myself to four such indications.

‘A Letter to the Rulers of All Peoples’ The first resonance of the impact of the encounter is evidenced in a letter which Francis drafted at some point after his departure from the East. It is a letter intended, as its title conveys, for those individuals whose actions, as rulers, could shape the religious con­­duct of their subjects. As the salutation has it: ‘all mayors and consuls, magistrates and governors throughout the world and to all others to whom these words may come’. Framed as a warning that the End-Times were approaching, Francis’s letter enjoined such rulers to use their authority to inspire their sub­ jects to enter daily into a spirit of prayer. In addition to urging their subjects to be mindful to receive the Eucharist, he goes on: ‘May you foster such honour to the Lord among the people entrusted to you that every evening an announcement may be made by a messenger – or some other sign – that praise and thanksgiving may be given by all the people to the all-powerful Lord God.’20 This admonition seems redolent of something he

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had observed during his time in the camp of the sultan. For one of the things he and his companion would have observed is that Muslims, men as well as women, were called to prayer by the muezzin not only daily but five times a day. Indeed, whereas in the West prayer was more or less reserved to a spiritual elite of monks, canons and clergy, Francis noticed that among these so-called infidels in Damietta, prayer was performed by every­ one on a daily basis thanks to a vocal reminder through the call to prayer. The Poverello, in other words, was demonstrating that he had learned something important about prayer as being constitutive of every creature; and he is urging those with civil authority to take it upon themselves to have their own people called into prayer. If the so-called Muslim ‘infidels’ could do this, why not Christians who have been baptized into the One who taught us ‘how to pray’.

‘The Letter to All the Faithful’ (Long Version) Similar in optic but wider still in scope is a second writing from the pen of Francis: the Long Version of ‘The Letter to All the Faithful’.21 In this instance, he had the help of a new recruit to the fraternity who had entered the group in the Holy Land: Caesar of Speyer.22 Here, my purpose is simply to underscore the universal scope of the letter. As we just noticed above, one of the things that seems to have impressed Francis during his sojourn in the encampment of the Muslims outside the fortress city of Damietta was the allembracing praxis of prayer among them: men and women, at several points in the day. This perspective made a strong impres­ sion upon the Poverello, for it mirrored the revelation offered to him, during his encounter with lepers, of God’s all-encompassing embrace of the fraternity of creatures which He Himself had created. Once he had returned to Italy and addressed a number of pressing issues at hand, one of the very first things he decided

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to do was address a wide-ranging exhortation, as we see in the salutation of the Long Version that has come down to us: ‘Brother Francis, their servant and subject, sends esteem and reverence, true peace from heaven and sincere love in the Lord: to all Christian people – religious, clergy and laity, men and women – and to all who live in the whole world.’23 Much as Muslim prayer was practised by all adults in their societies, and much as Francis had reached (or would reach) out to all civil rulers who held the power to call their own subjects into prayer, here, too, Francis’s aim is to reach out literally to all (Christians) in the entire world with a sweeping call to attend to the words of life given by the Lord Jesus Christ so as to ‘produce fruits that are worthy of penance’. Once again, we double back on a form of penitential preaching, but this time in the form of a circular letter – as he himself puts it, ‘realizing that I could not visit each one of you personally because of sickness and the weakness of my body’.24 The letter contains a cascade of specific admonitions and exhortations to its recipients unto a more fully realized form of Christian living – a stunning piece of spiritual counsel and instruction.25 The long and somewhat rambling letter concludes with an addendum which seems to serve as a kind of outline of a model penitential sermon to be used by those who carry this message forward to those out in the world.

‘Early Rule’ 23 This universal scope which we find in Francis after Damietta is also reflected in another exhortation which came to be inserted near the very end of the final redaction of the Early Rule. This third exhortation now forms Chapter 23. Here again we find Francis reaching out to all levels of society with an inclusive message intended to inspire all who are within range of his words to live out, to the best of their ability, their Christian calling. Indeed, he announces this message – this penitential sermon

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– in the name of the very movement that he had initiated and formed by way of the revelation given to him at the moment of his conversion: And all of us, Friars Minor, useless servants, Humbly ask and beseech All those within the holy, catholic and apostolic Church Who wish to serve the Lord God; And all the following orders – Priests, deacons, subdeacons, Acolytes, exorcists, lectors, porters and all clerics, All religious, male and female, All penitents and youths, The poor and the needy, Kings and princes, Laborers and farmers, Servants and lords, All virgins, continent women and married women, All lay people both male and female, All children and adolescents, Both the young and the old, The healthy and the sick, The great and the small All peoples, races, tribes and tongues, All nations and all people everywhere on earth Who are and who will be – To persevere with us [Friars Minor] In the true faith and in penance. For without [the doing of penance], No one can be saved.26 We come back, yet again, to the theme of the doing of pen­­ ance: the transformation of the way that one sees the world

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consistent with the gospel values of Jesus Christ so as to honour and respect the sacred human fraternity created by God, which can only be preserved through holy and righteous deeds of jus­ tice by all members of the human race. Even as he began to decline in health and vigour, this yet remained the core of Francis’s evangelical message to all in the world.

The ‘Early Rule’, Chapter 16 There is a fourth and final testimony to consider here. When Francis and Illuminato rejoined the camp of the crusaders after the historic encounter, it was not too long before they retraced their steps and returned to the Christian city of Acre. It seems likely that it was here, probably sometime in March or April 1220, that they received the distressing news that the five friars who had constituted the mission to Spain and Portugal had been executed by Muslims in Morocco on 20 January that year. If the accounts regarding their actions during this mission are accurate – the most complete being quite late (almost two centuries) after the events themselves – it appears that these friars, even while on the Spanish mainland, had so antagonized the Muslims whom they were attempting to proselytize that they had to be restrained by the Christian authorities and Peter ii. Once released, however, and having crossed over the Strait of Gibraltar, they continued their harangues in Morocco itself. Ultimately, refusing to change their tactics, they were again arrested – this time by Muslim authorities – and executed for defaming the Prophet and the religion of Islam. Even though these men have been lionized as martyrs – indeed, the ‘Proto-martyrs’ of the Franciscan order – given what we know now about Francis’s approach to the Muslims in the Levant, the founder was probably distressed by the news and also dismayed at how these executions had come about, seemingly prompted by the antagonistic preaching of the five friars. This

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was neither the approach that Francis wanted his friars to take vis-à-vis the Muslims, nor was it the manner that he wanted his brothers to adopt in the future. They may indeed have courted martyrdom, but they had apparently displayed a typically Western disdain towards those of another faith tradition. Francis decided something more formal needed to be written down and added to the Early Rule of the friars. This took the form, we now believe, of a significant addition to Chapter 16 of that text (about mission among the Muslims). Herein, the founder lays out a kind of missionary strategy which he wanted his brothers to adopt and live whenever they went among ‘the Saracens and other non-believers’.27 The brothers who go can conduct themselves spiritually (spiritualiter) among [them] in two ways. One way is not to quarrel or dispute but to be subject to every creature for God’s sake [1 Peter 2:13] and to acknowledge that they [the friars] are Christians. Another way is to proclaim the word of God when they see that it pleases God in order that they might believe in God the Almighty Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the Creator of all and in the redeeming and saving Son.28 This counsel sketches out a unique missionary strategy among the Friars Minor. It not only prioritizes what is called today a ‘ministry of presence’, among whom one is sent to live, over any form of proselytizing or preaching, but is reflective of the minorite posture which honours the sacred fraternity of crea­ tures, placing oneself at the service of those in one’s midst. The object, in other words – as it was among the lepers – is simply to live in solidarity with one’s neighbours, rendering service where needed, and acknowledging to the other that their over­ riding inspiration for living in this loving and caring manner is

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the example of their master, Jesus of Nazareth, who went among the people doing good and healing those ground down by the vicissitudes of life. This is what it means to live the Rule spiritualiter, that is, in accord with – faithful to – the values exemplified in both the Rule and, ultimately, the gospel.

Friars in a leaf from Barbavara Book of Hours, c. 1440.

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I

f one follows the accounts of the two main hagiographers of the life of Francis of Assisi (Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio), one gets the impression that the mission to the Levant ended in failure, since Francis had been unable to convert the sultan (or any other Muslims) to the Christian faith. And, according to these same accounts, God would subsequently reward the saint of Assisi with the ‘crown of martyrdom’ through the gift of the stigmata in 1224 on Mount La Verna. But mute this hagiographical topos of the ‘desire for martyrdom’ and accentuate the historical reasons for his pres­ ence in the camp of the crusaders and under the tent of the sultan, and then the mission takes on a rather different colora­ tion, largely consistent with the ideals and values formed in the crucible of his experience among the lepers.

The Return to Italy Chronological precision once again eludes us when attempting to follow the progression of activities of Francis and his friars. But at some point, having left the area of Damietta (certainly before some of the fiercest fighting that would occur the following year in 1221), Francis and his companion turned up once again in Acre. Here, according to the chronicle of Jordan,1 probably in late spring or early summer 1220, a certain friar – we learn his

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name quite late to be Stephen of Narni – arrived unannounced and outside of obedience at the port city with disturbing news. Apparently, the two vicars in charge back in Italy, abetted by unnamed clerics, were beginning to make several decisions that would have gone against the wishes of the founder and the spirit of the early fraternity. Deeply agitated, Francis began to prepare his return home to attempt to right the ship of state. What was happening? There were three main areas of concern.

Developments and Deviations The primary issue that exercised Stephen was the fact that shortly after Francis’s departure for the East, the two vicars whom he had left in charge of the movement – Gregory of Naples and Matthew of Narni – had called together an assem­ bly of the friars (possibly as soon as late September 1219 in a chapter for the province of Tuscany (Assisi) or perhaps in May 1220 for all the provinces of Italy) in order to develop a set of new, more austere fasting regulations for the community. This legislative act, however, was quite at variance with the existing fasting mandated by the Early Rule. The object of these new reg­ ulations was to align the Friars Minor with the more austere and fixed fasting regimes followed by the traditional monastic orders: to transform the friars, in other words, into bona fide religious in the Church! Francis and his earliest friars would have objected to this change in their customs. Indeed, as itinerants on mission in the world, the friars had observed two days of abstinence from meat per week (Wednesdays and Fridays) and two lengthy peri­ ods of fasting that were customary throughout the Church. Unlike the monastic orders who followed a fixed daily horarium with precise times for their abstinence and fasting, the early friars had established a few markers for their asceticism but then, following the gospel mandate, ate whatever they managed to receive as compensation for their labours or from their begging.

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Indeed, this was the ‘rhythm’ observed by the involuntary poor; neither they nor the friars – the voluntary poor – had the luxury, like monks, of determining a daily regimen for their eating. They would, like the poor, eat whatever was before them. The aim was for the friars to live as the poor lived. The new regulations, in other words, flew in the face of this important and deliberately chosen posture for the life of the friars. Second, regarding the Poor Ladies, the friar who had been put in charge of overseeing their welfare, Philip the Tall, out of an abundance of solicitude for their welfare, approached the Roman Curia hoping to obtain a letter of protection for them. The aim of this privilege would have been to ensure that neither their places (loca) nor their persons could be infringed upon by any outside entity – be it a local bishop or powerful civil authority – to seize their lands or to interfere with their lives in any way, under pain of excommunication.2 Although no such official privilege has ever been found, the very fact that it was being considered went against Francis’s preference to quietly persuade contrary voices by virtue of the rectitude of one’s cause and way of life and to live – once again, like the poor – at the mercy of others. This is con­ sistent with the posture laid out in the Early Rule (and as we just saw in the reformulation of Chapter 16, 6) to live as ‘minores et subditi omnibus’ (as at the mercy of and subject to all).3 Third, a similar dynamic to that operative in the aforemen­ tioned papal letter of protection to the prelates and religious leaders in the Church at large4 seems also to be at work in a new letter specifically addressed to ecclesiastical dignitaries in France, Pro dilectis filiis (29 May 1220).5 This bull represented additional protection for the friars and their mission in these territories, but it also threatened the sanction of excommunication. Moreover, Jordan reports on an interesting development in the area of Assisi. According to the chronicler, at the same time, a certain John Capella (or in other sources: de Laudibus) allegedly

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took it upon himself to gather around him a certain number of lepers and decided to leave the order so as to become the head of his own congregation constituted by such individuals. But it might also be possible – if not far more plausible – that all that John was actually doing was gathering together a group of these marginalized and disaffected Christians out on the plain of Assisi in the two leprosaria into an early form of lay penitents, uniquely composed of those forbidden to be a part of any such penitential group that may have been developing in or around Assisi. For such would certainly have been in the spirit of the early minorite fraternity and a novel solution to addressing the religious needs of those isolated from their fellow Christians in the town itself or out in the contado. For, once reprimanded, John continued hereafter to live in the good graces of Francis and the order.6

An Unwelcome Surprise in Bologna Disturbed by the news brought by Stephen of Narni, Francis and his companions in Acre, in all likelihood, would have found passage back to Italy and arrived up in the north in late August or early September 1220. On their way down towards Assisi, they would have passed through the town of Bologna, site of a thriv­ ing university where the Friars Minor had established a place well outside of the town a few years earlier. The Dominicans, by contrast, had made the city one of their central residences, not far from the university quarter. Arriving in the area, Francis was astonished to find that the Friars Minor, led by a wellrespected lawyer who had entered the fraternity, Peter of Stacia, had moved their residence into the town (or possibly at the wall of the town), having abandoned their original site out in the forest. The ostensible reason (one would surmise) was to be, like the Dominicans, more proximate to the university and thereby better placed to attract new recruits to their movement. Francis, as we know, was appalled that his friars had forsaken their

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original site out among the villani of the area and moved into the developing town, and he refused to even enter the new convent. Here was another new development occurring in his absence. This was not an overreaction to any involvement of the friars in studies per se (although the new place was indeed styled as a primitive studium); rather, the point at issue was the abandonment of the friars’ proximity to the minores of the area in order to draw closer to the hub of the university town. This was yet more evidence of a drifting away from the friars’ origi­ nal choices, due to a lack of understanding of the rationale undergirding those same choices.

An Unexpected Reprimand in Viterbo Vexed at the development in Bologna, Francis and his brothers left the city in order to return home to Assisi. It may be that, en route, he had learned that the Holy See was calling him to the papal court, sojourning at that time in Viterbo. He may have passed through Assisi on his way southward where, it seems, he probably confronted the situations already stirred up by the actions of Philip the Tall (regarding the Poor Ladies) and John Capella (with respect to the leper-penitents outside Assisi).7 Arriving in Viterbo, however, he was confronted with some dis­ pleasure being felt at the Curia about certain reports – including one from Jacques de Vitry himself8 – regarding the alleged lack of discipline and wayward freedoms being exercised by the friars both in the Holy Land and more pointedly in Europe. For the fraternity – now a full five years after its legitimation at Lateran iv – was attracting scores of new recruits into the movement but, according to the judgement of the cardinals, without hav­ ing received proper instruction from the leaders of the order regarding religious discipline and decorum. Indeed, as we have seen, this new phenomenon of Friars Minor – not bound to any one monastery or convent, nor limited necessarily by borders

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demarcating dioceses or ecclesiastical provinces – was indeed an exceptional entity. And one of its most exceptional aspects was its freedom to roam about, allegedly on mission to preach penance and peace. This would not necessarily have been a prob­ lem among those schooled in the foundations of the movement from its earliest times; but it was proving to be irksome when new recruits, lacking proper instruction, religious discipline and matu­ rity, were perceived as wandering about as vagabonds or worse. Hence the confrontation with the fraternity’s founder, Francis, at the papal court in Viterbo. Perhaps without warning, he was handed a solution: the bull Cum secundum consilium (22 Sep­­t­ember 1220).9 This letter mandated that the fraternity establish some kind of probationary period (a latter-day novi­ tiate, if you will) during which time the new recruits would be obliged to spend a year being properly informed about the charism of the community but also – and most especially, in the eyes of the Curia – about the normal workings of standard reli­ gious life and behaviour. If they were going to maintain their itinerancy and preaching throughout the various dioceses of Europe and beyond, it would henceforth be imperative that they do so only if they had received an obedience (permission) to travel about from their legitimate superiors (ministers). Hence, Francis was commanded to be less carefree about the conduct of his brothers and to adhere more closely to the obediential relationships of approved forms of religious life. It might also be observed, however, that the proper (because most foundational) crucible of religious formation for the forma vitae fratrum minorum was, in fact, to share in an experience among the lepers of a given time and place. Although this plunge into the formative experience par excellence of the followers of Francis was going to slowly start to disappear over the next decade (as we will see), at this moment it seems that it still remained an important part of the initiation into the lived

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experience of the charism requisite for new recruits entering into the fraternity. In other words: to see and touch the faces of the involuntary poor of the world had to remain an essential element of their friar-identity.

The Emergency Chapter of Late September 1220 Upon returning home from the Middle East to the Italian main­ land in the early autumn of 1220, if not already before then, Francis must have determined that he was going to call the friars together for an ‘emergency’ chapter at the Portiuncula in order to address pressing issues facing the fraternity. Diverted for a brief moment to Viterbo to address the concerns raised by the Curia regarding the unchecked wandering of some of the friars and the need for the fraternity to be firmly grounded in the norms of religious life while remaining faithful to their own unique charism, Francis decided to use a mechanism already provided in the Early Rule for provincial chapters (at the time of the feast of St Michael the Archangel) and call all those friars who could find a way to be present to attend an emergency meeting at which he intended to confront and address serious issues about the future direction of the fraternity. This was indeed going to be a pivotal chapter in the life of the fraternity. Now there is still some debate about the specific timing and the content of the following several gatherings of the Friars Minor. We know that there was some kind of assembly in late September 1220. We also know that there was a general chapter held at Pentecost in May 1221. And we have evidence of an additional chapter held the next year as well, in 1222. Here, I am going to put a strong emphasis on this first gathering on the feast of St Michael in the late autumn of 1220. I am going to further characterize it as an ‘Emergency Chapter’. And I am also going to speculate that this was quite likely the famous ‘Chapter of Mats’

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(or one of them): that is, when friars streamed to Assisi, at the call of their founder, irrespective of their roles (or lack of roles) in the order, to address urgent matters facing the fraternity. Not all may agree with the confluence of issues that I believe were going to be treated at this gathering. But these same issues – when­ ever they would be addressed – would be highly pertinent to the future life of the minorite fraternity. Francis came to this assembly disturbed and even angry, for he felt that the fraternity he had founded was beginning to spin out of his control and, even more critically, was drifting away from the cherished ideals of the earliest years. Jordan of Giano – even though he may have jumbled the events of this gathering in late 1220 with those that would occur the following Pentecost in 1221 – reported the momentous events of this gathering in the following manner: Blessed Francis held a . . . chapter at St Mary of the Portiuncula and, as was the custom of the order at that time, both professed friars and novices came to this chapter. It was estimated that there were some three thousand brothers who came together . . . The Lord Raynerius,10 cardinal deacon, was present at this chapter, together with many bishops and other religious. At his command, one of the bishops celebrated Holy Mass and Blessed Francis is believed to have read the gospel and another brother the epistle. Since there was no dwelling place for so many brothers, the brothers lived, ate and slept in tents of branches on a spacious and enclosed field: twenty-three tables were arranged in an orderly manner . . . The people of the neighbourhood served very willingly at this chapter, handing out bread and wine in abundance and rejoicing over the gathering of so many brothers and over the return of blessed Francis.11

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He is probably describing, therefore, what will come to be called the ‘Chapter of Mats’. He then goes on to report that Francis, deeply unsettled about the state of the order, delivered to the friars an opening sermon in which he established an unmistak­ ably serious tone for the gathering: ‘In this chapter, Blessed Francis preached to his brothers upon the theme: “Blessed be the Lord my God, who trains my hands for battle and my hands for war!” . . . He likewise preached a sermon to the people and the people and clergy were edified.’12 The text upon which he chose to speak is drawn from Psalm 143, verse 1. A quick glance at some of the other verses of this psalm is instructive. Immedi­ ately after the opening line cited above, the psalm continues: ‘My refuge, my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, my shield in whom I trust, who subdues peoples under me’.13 As minister general of the order, Francis was calling upon God to bring to heel those who, by virtue of their vow of obedience, ought to be subject to the will and mandates of their minister in conformity with the Rule of Life which both had professed. More­ over, further down in the biblical text, we read an impassioned plea which represents, we can imagine, the frustrated sentiments of the ‘minister and servant of all the friars’: ‘Reach out your hand from on high – deliver me and rescue me from many waters, from the hands of alien sons, whose mouths swear false promises, while their right hands are raised in perjury.’14 And virtually the same plea is repeated in verse 11: ‘deliver David, your servant . . . and rescue me from the hands of alien sons, whose mouths swear false promises while their right hands are raised in perjury.’15 Finally, in verse 13, we hear one final prayerful supplication: ‘May our sons be like plants, well-nurtured in their youth; and our daugh­ ters, like wrought columns, such as stand at the corners of the temple.’16 Francis, in other words, has not only come to this chapter gathering irritated and angry with some of the brothers; he is

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actually pointing out during this opening sermonic salvo the problem that he has come to confront: those friars whose attitudes and subsequent actions have shown them to be ‘strangers’ to the forma vitae which they professed upon entering into the commu­ nity. They are, by their very deeds, ‘alien sons’ to the charism who had once raised their hands, as it were, during their profes­ sion and ended up perjuring themselves by following paths that were not in line with the minorite charism. The dark tone of Francis’s opening words is mirrored also in an account of the confrontation that the founder intended to have – and did have – with his followers. This is the famous account handed down to us from the testimony of those who would later be called ‘the companions of Francis’. It appears in the Assisi Compilation, though the memory of this occurrence ought to be traced back to the mid-1240s, when such anecdotes were being collected for posterity’s sake. It is a critical text, hence I cite it in full: When blessed Francis was at the general chapter called the ‘Chapter of Mats’ at St Mary of the Portiuncula, there were some five thousand brothers present. Many ‘wise and learned’ brothers told the Lord Cardinal, who later became Pope Gregory (and who was present at the chapter), that he should persuade blessed Francis to follow the advice of those same wise brothers and allow himself to be guided by them for the time being. They cited the Rule of blessed Benedict, of blessed Augustine, and of blessed Bernard, which instructs how to live in an orderly fashion in such a way. Then blessed Francis, on hearing the Cardinal’s advice about this, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers assembled in chapter and spoke to the brothers in this way: ‘My brothers! My brothers! God has called me by the way of humility and showed me the way

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of simplicity. Do not mention to me any Rule, whether of St Augustine or of St Bernard or of St Benedict. The Lord has told me what He wants: He wants me to be a new fool (novellus pazzus) in the world. God did not wish to lead us by any way other than this knowledge; but God will confound you by your knowledge and wisdom . . .’ The cardinal was stunned and said nothing, and all the brothers were afraid.17 This passage represents a crossroads in the history of the early minorite fraternity. And it serves as a kind of echo, in narrative form, of the tone and content of the opening sermon of Francis to his friars at the start of the Emergency Chapter. For here, at this assembly, a certain number of newer recruits to the fraternity sought to have pressure brought to bear upon Francis through the auspices of Cardinal Hugolino to cede to them the reins of his authority over the community – they being ostensibly ‘wise and learned’ in the ways of religious life. But this phrase used in the account is not meant to be laudatory. It is, on the contrary, a sarcastic and not-so-veiled reference to the phrase used in the gospels to refer to the Pharisees – those hypocrites who say one thing and then do another. Or, as the psalm cited by Francis in his opening sermon would have it: ‘whose mouths swear false promises and whose hands are raised in perjury’. Whence this serious tension? By late 1220, the early minorite fraternity – definitively approved outside the sessions of Lateran iv and now attracting new recruits from far and wide due to its compelling spiritual message of personal conversion to the ideals of gospel living and the reconciliation of antagonistic social and political trends in medieval communal society – had reached a turning point in its history. It had now come to embrace two rather divergent inter­ pretations of its meaning and purpose. On the one hand were

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those newer recruits – one assumes, increasingly clerics – who, trained in the schools well beyond the bounds of the Umbrian and Spoleto valleys, believed that they were well instructed in the structures and customs of religious life and thus able to direct the energies of this nascent community of men towards a more appropriate and efficacious renewal of the Church. Hence, they wanted Cardinal Hugolino, papal legate in charge of the refor­ mation of religious congregations in Italy, to bring pressure to bear upon Francis either to hand over the reins of the authority he was exercising over the movement he had founded, or, failing that, at least to allow himself to be guided by the great religious masters of Christian history in the very best of classic religious life. They would have, in other words, regarded Francis as being either somewhat naive or certainly lacking in experience and awareness of the structures and customs of religious life. Hence, their intention was to have him either step aside and let wiser hands guide the new order in the post-Lateran era, or, at the very least, to allow the hallowed founders of the history of Western religious life – Benedict, Augustine and Bernard – to reshape, through them, the contours of minorite life so as to better (in their minds) serve the needs of the Church. But Francis would have none of this. Instead, he led Hugolino into the midst of the gathered friars and reminded them – indeed, schooled and scolded them – that God had revealed to him and his earliest brothers how they were to be and to act in the world. And this was, in the words of the Assisi Compilation, the way of humilitas and simplicitas: perhaps an echo of the ‘humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ’ as laid out in the minorite charter of identity in Early Rule 9, verses 1–2. He then declares that God revealed to him that he was to be a ‘new fool’ (novellus pazzus) in the world. Now commentators usually interpret this phrase as an expression of the carefree, unfettered joyous spirit of Francis, traipsing through the Umbrian hills, playing an

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imaginary violin, preaching to awestruck birds and animals. This is reflective of our own contemporary readings of the Poverello. But the truth is to be found elsewhere and it is indeed more profound. For the passage, on the contrary, is conveying a central bib­ lical concept found most evocatively in two passages of St Paul. The first passage, from 1 Corinthians 4, echoes the wording used in the narrative of the companions: As I see it, God has made us apostles in these last days . . . We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and human beings alike. For we are fools (stulti) for Christ’s sake. Ah, but in Christ you are wise! We are the weak ones, you the strong! They honour you, while they sneer at us. Up to this very hour, we go hungry and thirsty, poorly clad, roughly treated, wandering about homeless. We work hard at manual labour. When we are insulted, we respond with a blessing. Persecution comes our way; we bear it patiently. We are slandered; and yet we try conciliation. We have become the world’s refuse, the scum of all. I am writing to you in this way not to shame you but to admonish you.18 The passage in Corinthians contrasts the apostolic lifestyle espoused by Paul with that of others who seem confounded by the way chosen by these wandering disciples. This contrast is underscored as well in a further Pauline passage, from his Letter to the Philippians: ‘But the things I used to consider gain I have now reappraised as loss in the light of Christ. I have come to rate all as loss in the light of my Lord Jesus Christ. For his sake I have forfeited everything; I have accounted all else as rubbish (stercor = human waste) so that Christ may be my wealth.’19 These two biblical passages help us to understand the stark contrast that

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Francis is insisting lies at the foundation of the forma vitae which had been revealed to him and his earliest brothers at the incep­ tion of the minorite movement. Their calling, Francis says, is to present a definite contrast with the normal valuing set forth by and in the world. And yet now there are brothers within the fraternity who are advocating for a move away from this pri­ mordial posture. Francis, therefore, is being forced to counter their desires (and values) with those of the earliest time which represent the forma vitae fratrum minorum. We find ourselves, in other words, in front of one of the first instances of what will later be called ‘the clericalization’ of the order of Friars Minor. Strictly speaking, the phrase does not nec­ essarily refer to the increasing numbers of clerics within the community, although this was already starting to become a trend in the order. Rather, the deeper meaning of this term refers to the fact that the recent influx of new recruits consisted increas­ ingly of men who were attracted to the fraternity from well outside the Umbrian and Spoleto valleys: those who had received their training and instruction about the Church and religious life in the established schools of northern Italy (and beyond) and which can be characterized as being more classic or traditional in their orientation. In short, such men had been schooled in a more traditional understanding of what constituted a religious community and how ‘real’ religious ought to comport themselves. This was the schooling received, for example, by Jacques de Vitry or even Cardinal Hugolino dei Conti di Segni. Consequently, when they and others looked at the Friars Minor, they were puz­ zled, perhaps even disappointed, by the loose amalgam of these wandering friars who preferred to remain in their hermitages at a distance from the growing communes of Italy. This, according to them, was where the gospel needed to be preached and sown, rather than remaining out in the contado among the sick, the poor and the lepers.

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By contrast, the primordial revelation to Francis and his friars was the commitment to do just that: to remain among the minores of society while at the same time making occasional forays into the towns and cities, carrying the evangelical vision of a changed attitude towards the poor and dispossessed in their midst. We saw this flare up already in Bologna the previous month when Francis discovered to his dismay that the friars under Peter of Stacia had decided to move away from these same minores into the confines of the city in order to be closer to the university quarter as well as to larger crowds of Christians. The confrontation at the Emergency Chapter thus represents a point of crisis in the early history of the fraternity. The contrast between two rather different visions of the purpose of the order came into full view for all to see: the one increasingly active and apostolic in the urban centres as handmaids of the papal mission to revitalize spiritual and ecclesial life; the other being more eremitical in their locales, penitential in their preaching and attentive to the needs of the villani out in the contado. Herein were the seeds of what would eventually become the great con­ trast in the order between its original social posture and mission of presence and its more clericalized activities and presence in the towns and cities of Europe.

The Resignation of Francis and the Designation of Successors Francis had certainly had his say. We do not know whether his confrontation with the new recruits and Cardinal Hugolino had changed anyone’s mind or convinced anyone that their under­ standing of the orientation of the charism was off-kilter. The tide had probably already turned towards a more active posture vis-à-vis the cities, more in line with the desires of the papacy. But Francis had returned to Italy not only disenchanted with

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what had begun to develop within the fraternity; he was also quite ill. His health had begun to falter. He had apparently developed serious stomach issues but also an aggravating eye disease. At this chapter, Francis realized that the task ahead was going to be challenging if not supremely daunting. The new recruits, oriented as they were more fervently towards the cities and away from the existence of the friars out in the contado, were going to be problematic. Francis knew, it would seem, what to do; but was he willing – and had he the strength – to put the genie back into the bottle? Apparently not. It was at this Emergency Chapter, therefore, that, after having said his piece, Francis resigned his position as ‘minister and servant of all the friars’. A close reading of the texts scattered throughout the hagiographical sources reveals that all of these elements – disappointment, exasperation, resentment and illness, as well as a fear of his own desire to forcefully impose his will upon the friars to drag them back to the original posture of the earliest fraternity – were involved in Francis’s decision to hand over the reins of authority to another. But what he did was to designate for the friars one who he believed might be best placed to carry on the founding vision, at least to some degree, of the early fraternity. To this end, Francis asked the friars to accept his designation of Peter Catanii to serve henceforth as the minister general of the order. Indeed, if a few indications in the hagiographical sources are accurate, Peter may well have had some training as a lawyer. As such, he would be able to deal competently with the various ecclesial auth­orities who were pressing the community to better insert itself into the structures and customs of the Church. He would also, one assumes, be able to interface with the person of Cardinal Hugo­lino who, as we have seen regarding the Clares, had been taking particular interest in the development and subsequent

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organization of the Franciscan movement. Indeed, it may be precisely at this time, in the aftermath of the Emergency Chapter, that Francis would have asked the Roman Curia and Honorius iii to designate Cardinal Hugolino to henceforth serve as – what will be called – the ‘cardinal protector’ of the order of Friars Minor. The latter had not only shown himself solicitous of the friars and sisters, but apparently Francis – pace Paul Sabatier20 – must have believed and trusted that he had the best interests of the friars and its founder at heart. Whether this would be borne out in fact is one of the most interesting facets of the history of the order in the aftermath of the death of its founder. Peter, however, died within a matter of a few months after he had begun his tenure; he is deftly and respectfully referred to in the sources as Francis’s ‘vicar’. Hence, at the Pentecost Chapter in May 1221, someone else needed to be found to serve as ‘the minister and servant of all the friars’. Once again, the chapter seems to have assented to a successor chosen by the increas­ingly ill Francis. This time, the founder turned to a remarkably talented friar whose entrance into the fraternity went back to the midteens. That friar, Elias of Cortona, would prove to be a contro­ versial figure in later Franciscan history. However, for the moment, it was incontestable that Elias, most probably from the Umbrian region, possessed obvious talents as an organizer and adminis­ trator. One should not forget that, shortly after the death of Francis, Elias would be replaced as minister general and put in charge of the construction of the vast basilica project of San Francesco outside Assisi. And he would be a prominent inter­ locutor with the likes of Pope Gregory ix (the former Cardinal Hugolino) and Emperor Frederick ii. However, in addition to his undeniable talents as an admin­ istrator, there is another aspect of Elias’s character – and, indeed, of Peter Catanii’s – that is often overlooked. For we usually forget that Peter Catanii was the companion par excellence of Francis

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150 Brother Elias of Cortona, early 18th-century engraving.

on the friars’ mission to the Levant in 1219, and that Elias him­ self had been named in 1217 as the first provincial minister of the friars in the new province of Syria, centred in Acre. In other words, both men who would succeed Francis as minister general shared with Francis – we must assume – a similar approach to the all-important mission among the Muslims that the founder him­ self had initiated and promoted. For this critical reason, both Peter and Elias would have been designated by Francis to carry on his own unfinished work as leader of the order and spearhead of this mission. At least this appears to be one of the overriding qualities of both men.

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Resignation . . . But Not Retirement Whether Francis called the Emergency Chapter of late 1220 in order to resign, or whether events during the chapter prompted his resignation, is difficult to determine with any exactitude. But resign he did. And yet, there is no evidence that the founder simply stomped out of the room in a pique and went off to live the rest of his life in the shelter of a hermitage. Quite the con­ trary. Francis ensured that the order he had founded was placed securely in the hands of two friars, successively, who he believed shared in large measure the ideals and the perspectives that he himself cherished. But he did even more for his evangelical project, despite his increasingly fragile condition.

A Kind of Shared Leadership Officially, the Emergency Chapter approved the leadership of Peter Catanii as virtual head of the order. Indeed, out of def­ erence to the founder, the sources all refer to him – and his successor, Elias of Cortona – as the ‘vicar’ of Francis. Peter and Elias would therefore serve the friars as the titular head of the order in the eyes of the friars. Perhaps not unlike the very first form of authority set up within the fraternity as they journeyed to Rome in search of the approval of their forma vitae (it was a kind of shared authority, with Bernard of Quintavalle serving as functional leader of the group and Francis, of course, remain­ ing as the spiritual father of the movement), here too, in the aftermath of the chapter of late 1220, Peter and then Elias would serve as the functional (even titular) leaders of the movement known as the order of Friars Minor. A similar kind of arrange­ ment had been made by Francis when he left Italy for the Levant, setting up Gregory of Naples and Matthew of Narni as functional and spiritual leaders of the movement in his absence. Indeed, of the two, one might say that Gregory exercised the spiritual

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component of friar-leadership by visiting the friars, whereas Matthew acquitted himself of the functional role, overseeing the welcoming, examination and clothing (or rejection) of candi­ dates for the fraternity. But now Francis, having resigned to others his role as functional leader of the movement, continued to serve in several ways as its spiritual or charismatic leader. There are several anecdotes that emerge from the testimonies of the companions of Francis in which Francis explicitly states that in the wake of his own resignation he still intended to remain as the exemplar of what it meant to be an authentic Friar Minor. For example, in the Assisi Compilation, during a conversa­tion with a friar about the bad behaviour of some of the brothers, we read: ‘As long as I held office for the brothers and they remained faithful to their calling and profession, and although I was always ill from the beginning of my conversion to Christ, yet my poor attempts at pastoral care were sufficient to satisfy them by my example and preaching. But afterwards I realized that the Lord had multiplied the number of brothers daily and that they, through tepidity and lack of spirit, were beginning to turn away from the straight and sure way . . . not paying attention to their own profession and calling and good example . . . I then entrusted the religion to the Lord and to the ministers. Although at the time that I renounced and abdicated office over the brothers, I excused myself before the brothers at the general chapter on the grounds that my poor health made me unable to exercise responsibility and care over them. And yet, even now, if they had walked and were still walking according to my will . . . I would not want them to have any other minister except me until the day of my death’ . . . And he continued: ‘My office – that is

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to say my authority over the brothers – is a spiritual one, because I ought to overcome vices and correct them . . . Nevertheless, until the day of my death, I will not cease to teach the brothers by example and deeds to walk in the way that the Lord showed me, and which I showed them and taught them, so that they may be without excuse before the Lord and that I may not be held on the Last Day to render an account of them before the Lord.’21 Another account in the same source reports a similar attitude: A little later, when he was returning from prayer one day, he said to his companion with great joy: ‘I must be the form and example (formam et exemplum) of all the friars . . . We who were with him cannot say how many and how great were the necessities that he denied his body in food and clothing, in order to give good example to his brothers and so that they would endure their own needs with greater patience. At all times, especially after the brothers began to multiply and he resigned the office of prelate, blessed Francis had as his highest and principal goal to teach the brothers – more by actions than by words – what they ought to do and what they ought to avoid.22 In other words, even though Francis had officially resigned his functions as minister general, he continued to attempt to influ­ ence the friars, becoming the very exemplar of the intentio regulae.23

Letter-Writing But there was also a second way in which the founder attempted to maintain influence in the life of his brothers: he began to write to them. We have already noted how, upon his return from

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the Middle East, Francis began to reach out, in writing, to all Christians in Europe in his famous ‘Letter to All the Faithful’. This was the ‘Long Version’ of the text, the drafting of which was assisted in some measure by Caesar of Speyer. But Francis also began to write to his own friars as well. This, too, was a way of exercising spiritual leadership over the friars whom God had entrusted to his care. Any attempt to examine these writings would take us far afield. But perhaps we can summarize in some manner this stag­ gering achievement; for Francis (and his secretaries) left us an extraordinarily rich corpus of writings, covering several different literary genres.

The Rule of 1221. The Early Rule, as we have seen, began as a series of foundational chapters (1, 7 and 14) which then expanded into chapters 8 and 9. This core then expanded again between 1217 and 1219 to include materials related to govern­ ance and authority in chapters 4, 5 and 6, while chapters 18 and 19 concerned, respectively, the various levels of chapters (general, provincial and Italian) and the care necessary to dem­ onstrate their Catholic identity while on mission. These latter additions reflect both the new canons of Lateran iv and the difficult experiences of the friars ‘over the mountains’ prior to the departure of the Levantine mission. However, once Francis had returned from the Holy Land around the autumn of 1220, several other chapters dealing with matters pertinent to their friar-life were immediately added to the evolving Rule: Chapter 2, for instance, treating the issue of the acceptance and clothing of the friars (echoing concerns brought forward by the Curia in Viterbo); and Chapter 16 regard­ ing missions among Muslims and others not sharing the Christian faith. But then, after the confrontation with certain clerics at

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the Emergency Chapter and his subsequent resignation, Francis began to work with Caesar of Speyer on a rather sweeping ‘updat­ ing’ of other materials believed important for the instruction of the friars. First, it seems that the two men inserted a number of new chapters in the Rule in order to fill out the picture of the complex life of the friars that had been developing over the years. To wit: Chapter 20 concerns the friars’ reception of the Eucharist and the confession of their sins to legitimate priests or, failing that, to one another until such time as an ordained priest could be found; and Chapter 21 is an additional call for the friars to pro­ duce the fruits worthy of the ‘doing of penance’ and would serve as a kind of fervorino for the friars to use in their preaching among the people on this very same theme. Many of these themes, in fact, are woven into the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’ and even ‘Admonition 1’ (texts which I assume Caesar of Speyer had a hand in helping Francis to draft). But here now, in these chapters, the same themes are incorporated into the text of the Early Rule itself.24 Then, second, we come to two lengthy chapters which have subsequently been added to the back end of the Rule. Chapter 22, mentioned in passing above, consists of several different parts, representing a kind of pastiche of different texts and reflections.25 The first four verses (vv. 1–4), I believe, represent a reworking of the farewell message to the friars delivered by Francis to the general chapter of 1219 prior to his departure for the Holy Land. But the rest of the chapter contains the following sections: a reminder to the friars of the fragility of the human condition and its potential for leading to the making of wrong choices (vv. 5–8), building upon Mark 7 mostly but with a glance at Matthew 15; this is followed (vv. 9–17) by a reworking of the ‘Parable of the Sower’ (Luke 8, with phrases also from Matthew 13 and Mark 4); next (vv. 18–24) comes an additional short reflection on

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remaining faithful to the Christian call; this is followed by a long section on developing and maintaining a strong personal rela­ tionship, built on prayer, with God (vv. 25–40); and the final section (vv. 41–55) is a chain of quotations mostly from John 17, the farewell discourse of Jesus to his disciples. As such, this latter part – and perhaps some of the other materials that precede it – may indeed represent Francis’s second and definitive farewell message to his friars, given at the Emergency Chapter in late September 1220, when he announced his resignation as minister general of the movement. This long and rambling Chapter 22 is followed by another discursive one, Chapter 23.26 These verses consist of a soaring prayer to God (vv. 1–9), followed by a request (vv. 10–15) to have the fullness of the Trinity (as well as the communion of saints) intercede on behalf of the friars and their welfare. Next (vv. 16–22) comes a plea to the various levels and occupations of civil society to ‘do penance’, for without doing so ‘no one can be saved.’ The chapter concludes (vv. 23–34) with a passionate call by Francis to his brothers to live fully in the love of God. One can also include within this same genre of rule-writing the aforementioned Rule for Hermitages (drafted perhaps between 1217 and 1221),27 as well as the Later Rule (1223), which will be discussed in the next chapter.

The Letters. We have already mentioned in passing the work of Francis and Caesar on the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’. There is also a ‘Short Version’, which we shall also comment on in the next chapter. And we have also noted the ‘Letter to the Rulers of All Peoples’, penned with the Damietta experience in mind. But there are a number of other epistolary efforts addressed to the friars which need simply to be noted. They can loosely be characterized as follows:

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Several Exhortations for a proper and fervent devotion to and care of the Eucharist: ‘Letters to the Clerics’ (Earlier Edition before 1219 and a Later Edition, 1220) ‘First and Second Letters to the Custodes’ (1220) ‘Letter to the Entire Order’ (c. 1225–6) – on the Eucharist and much more There are also three distinct letters written to three different friars with specific purposes in mind: ‘A Letter to a Minister’ (c. 1223) – quite possibly to Caesar of Speyer as minister in Germany28 ‘A Letter to Anthony of Padua’ (c. 1224) ‘A Letter to Brother Leo’ (c. 1224–6) There is much matter for reflection to be gleaned from these letters. But one should remember that they are, in many ways, tributary from the larger texts (especially what is contained in the Early Rule and the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’) in terms of content and the values being espoused therein.

Prayers and Admonitions. This collection of texts is the most difficult to contextualize and categorize since they appear in a wide variety of contexts and cover so many different themes. Suffice it to merely list them. Several will be commented on briefly in the course of the rest of this book. ‘The Praises of God’ ‘Exhortation to the Praise of God’

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‘The Praises to be Said at All the Hours’ ‘The Office of the Passion’ ‘A Prayer Inspired by the “Our Father”’ ‘The Admonitions’ ‘A Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ ‘A Salutation of the Virtues’ ‘A Blessing for Brother Leo’ (c. 1224) ‘The Story of True and Perfect Joy’ (c. 1225) ‘A Canticle of Exhortation for the Poor Ladies of San Damiano’ (c. 1225) ‘The Canticle of Creatures’ (c. 1225) These marvellous texts resist easy contextualization or chrono­ logical dating. They show resonances of other texts in the corpus of the opuscula of Francis and they shimmer with aspects of the spirituality of the Poverello which, later in life, came to full maturity. It was a great legacy to hand on to his brothers, sisters and companions on the spiritual journey of the ‘humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ’.

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The Years of Legislation, 1221–3

F

or Francis and his earliest friars, the years 1219–21 were fraught with tension, resistance, confrontation and ulti­ mately resignation. The divergence of views between the early companions and the more recent recruits concerning the proper direction that the fraternity ought to take in the years ahead was just beginning to sow its seeds for the later history of the Franciscan order. Indeed, a bifurcation in the direction of the order – between a fully apostolically engaged entity at the service of the Church and papacy and a desire to remain as an in­­­visible leaven among the minores out in the contado and remote spaces, living out the call to do penance (the exhorta­ tion of Early Rule 23) – had indeed been planted and would bear fruit, both positively and negatively, in the years ahead, as the order oscillated between impressive and sal­­vific works of spiritual renewal among the faithful and corrosive divisions between groups within the order itself, representing the various contending visions of the charism. These divisions, somewhat latent at this early time, would burst forth in the years after the death of Francis and the further incorporation of the order into the ministerial embrace of the Church. But, for the moment, there was still work to be done. Although Francis was growing increasingly ill and debilitated, the Roman Curia, in the person of Cardinal Hugolino, continued to try to impose more proper shape and order on this unique

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entity known as the order of Friars Minor. In this period, there were two such concerted efforts being orchestrated on the part of the papacy. The question is: what role would the ailing former minister general play in these events?

The Lay Penitents Associated with the Minorite Movement The first effort had to do with the growing numbers of lay pen­ itents who had begun flocking to the fraternities as they extended their presence throughout Italy and even well beyond the moun­ tains. Clustered around the friars as they began settling into more fixed dwellings (convents), they represented a new challenge to the Curia.1 As with the phenomenon of the Poor Ladies – the female companions of Francis and his movement – who were not only physically but juridically segmented in 1219 from the male component of the movement, so now the same Curia endeavoured to bring organizational and juridical clarity to the sprawling groups of lay penitents increasingly associated with the minorite fraternity and its spiritual vision. The issue is not whether there were lay penitents prior to, say, the year 1220; there were indeed. The real issue now was that these penitents were becoming more numerous and forming themselves into entities – confraternities – associated with the friars in the areas where they had been present. It was this evolution – from indi­ vidual penitents into confraternities – that prompted the Curia into action so as to better channel these spiritual energies into something constructive rather than destructive or disruptive for Church and society. The Roman Curia did not have to reinvent the wheel. Indeed, there was a model which had already been created some twenty years earlier with respect to the phenomenon of the Humiliati, a group of devout men and women which had sprung up in

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northern Italy during the last decades of the twelfth century and which had generated three levels of membership: a First Order of priests, a Second Order of contemplatives (male and female) and a Third Order of lay penitents. It was the last grouping that would serve as the pattern for the lay penitents of the minorite movement. To this end, in November 1221, Honorius iii and the Roman Curia issued to unnamed and unspecified lay penitents a rule of life for the brothers and sisters of penance. Although the original redaction has not come down to us, what we have is a version issued a few years later, in 1228, bearing the title of a Memoriale propositi. Indeed, we know the approximate date of this docu­ ment since it contains a section (Chapter 17, on the prohibition of oath-taking in order to join local militias to go to war) that is dependent upon the papal bull Detestanda (21 May 1227).2 The assumption of scholars is that the version we have before us is fairly close to its original redaction a few years earlier.3 Upon closer examination, this text is a fairly generic set of constitutions for those vowing a life of penance. Indeed, given the absence of any mention of Francis in the text itself, one would be hard-pressed to identify this as intended explicitly for Franciscan penitents. As a result, the great Dominican scholar of the medieval penitents, G. G. Meersseman, concluded that this text was not necessarily addressed directly to them; it might have per­haps included them but that is about as far as he was willing to go. Franciscan scholars disagree. For the text was addressed to penitents in the region of Romagna (Bologna), and the first known group of Franciscan penitents organized into a confrater­ nity was indeed in the very same region.4 Hence, the current scholarly opinion is that the Memoriale propositi was probably intended for lay penitents associated with the Friars Minor and could be extended to other such groups beginning to coalesce more or less simultaneously in the thirteenth century.

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And it could also be extended to others, since the wording of the text was so generic. Indeed, it was written as a fairly generic text so that it could be used with other such groups as well. The document opens with a description of those who have dedicated themselves to a rejection of a worldly way of life while embrac­ ing a life of simplicity. There then follows an extensive section describing elements of the practice of a fervent spiritual life (daily prayer of the Hours or, for the illiterate, the Paters); frequenting the Eucharist; daily examination of conscience and frequent con­ fession; a regime of daily fasting and abstinence; and the regular reception of religious instruction. In terms of external activities, they were to engage in works of charity (visiting and care of the sick, especially their own; and the gathering of alms for those in the confraternity who may have fallen on hard times), as well as to assiduously work for justice and peace in their own towns. Internal structures are also addressed: the chief authority in the confraternity was a visitator appointed by the local bishop (under whose jurisdiction the confraternity existed). Interestingly, over time, confraternities began proposing their own candidates, who were predominantly and specifically Franciscan friars. A second official was someone entrusted with the role of giving religious instruction to the group. The issue of the swearing of oaths is an interesting one. The growing communes of northern and central Italy, involved as they were in the acquisition and expansion of their own territo­ ries by means of war and pillage, relied upon their male citizens to be part of the local militias that engaged in these bellicose activities. Participation required oaths of loyalty. Relying on the evangelical warrant against taking oaths, lay penitents often resisted such efforts to pull them into these activities – something which made them suspect in the eyes of the political authorities. Hence, the aforementioned papal bull of 1227 attempted to offer penitents the ability to swear oaths in a variety of circumstances

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but not for the purpose of bearing arms and joining such militias for such bellicose activities. The accent, rather, was placed on the establishment and maintaining of peace in the communes. Now, given the generic nature of this Memoriale propositi intended for the Franciscan penitents in 1221 – and, if Bernard of Besse can be believed, through the work of Cardinal Hugolino5 – this text was hardly an inspirational document for the men and women desiring to live out their Christian lives in accord with the evangelical ideas espoused by the friars of the minorite movement. Put more bluntly: there is scarcely anything explic­ itly ‘Franciscan’ in this Roman document for penitents. As a result, faced with what must surely have been a disap­ pointing document for the lay component of the movement that had gathered around him, it is my contention that Francis decided to address this lacuna in a surprising and creative way. For he already had at his fingertips a document that could serve as the basis of an explicitly minorite form of spiritual instruction to the penitents: the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’, recently compiled and redacted by himself and Caesar of Speyer.6 But Caesar was no longer around; he was now up in German lands as minister provincial of that mission. So it seems that Francis took his own text in hand, edited it extensively and streamlined it in such a way as to frame it in accord with the primary message for lay penitents. This is the ‘Short Version of the Letter to the Faithful’ drafted at some point in 1221 or 1222.7 It is neatly divided into two parts: Part I, ‘Those Who Do Penance’, and Part ii, ‘Those Who Do Not Yet Do Penance’. This is the essence of the spirituality of Third Order penitents. And the content is essentially the same as in the Long Version, only severely stream­ lined so as to focus on the doing of penance – with all that this phrase meant at the start of the minorite movement – as being of the essence of the Christian life; and to incite those who had not yet caught that same spirit to begin to do so. Gone are the

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more theological sections inserted by Caesar of Speyer; gone are the long expatiations of Francis; gone the uplifting paeans of praise ending the body of the ‘Long Version’; and gone, too, the exemplum appended to the very end of it for friar-preachers taking the text to ‘all the faithful’ of the Christian world. Now, thanks to this redaction, the laymen and laywomen who desired to live their Christian lives in the footsteps of the Friars Minor – who inspired such people with the marrow of the gospel of peace, mercy and reconciliation in the communes where they lived – had a truly minorite ‘word’ for their own sociospiritual lives. This text was to become the foundation for their minorite spirituality.

The Drafting of the Later Rule of the Friars Minor One of the editorial tasks that Francis and Caesar wanted to perform, in the wake of the Emergency Chapter of late 1220, was to bolster the Early Rule, which needed several new sec­ tions to not only bring it into conformity with the mandates of Lateran iv but inspire the friars to live with greater integrity and intensity the life which they had promised the Lord. We have already treated, in skeletal form, a number of these additional sections of the Early Rule. Faithful to their intentions, the two men had pulled out all the stops, including within this founda­ tional text soaring exhortations, profound reflections and necessary legislation regarding the nitty-gritty of accepting new candidates, establishing chapter norms and so on. But, in the process, the Early Rule had become a sprawling amalgam of inspi­ rational exhortations, suggested guidelines, invitations to prayer and praise as well as the requisite legislation mandated by the Church. It now comprised 24 chapters. This cardinal text, as important as it would be in the back­ ground of medieval Franciscan history, must have appeared to

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the canonists of the Roman Curia in 1221 as an ungainly and unwieldy mess. We do not know for certain but it would appear that someone in the Curia – most probably Cardinal Hugolino – probably told Francis and his various scribes: enough! This evolving seminal document, as inspirational as it might be and as instructive as it was concerning the development of the minorite movement in its various stages, had to now be re­­ thought. For if the Franciscan fraternity, now an approved reli­ gious order in the Church, was going to be able to move forward in the good graces of the Curia, its Rule of Life had to be brought into some structural conformity with the ways in which religious rules in the Church worked and operated. Thus was born the idea of reformulating the sprawling Rule into a much more concise, juridically satisfying form which we will know henceforth as the Later Rule.8 The key for Francis, one assumes, was that the new formu­ lation must contain the essential elements or themes previously laid out in the Early Rule but without, for all that, losing its dyna­mic inspiration. This would of course be easier said than done. And so Francis, having already withdrawn into the silence and remoteness of a number of different hermitages sprinkled throughout the Umbrian, Spoleto and Rieti valleys and increas­ ingly weakened in body if not in spirit, now set himself to addressing this daunting task with a couple of other friars, aided by legal experts. We know the name of one of them: Bonizo of Bologna, a friar. The Later Rule, not unlike its predecessor, has a long and involved history. For our purposes here, let me pull out just a few highlights to give a sense of the importance of this document. For indeed, it is the definitive Rule of the Franciscan order and the one which all members of the First Order still profess today. First, an obvious difference between the text of the Early Rule and that of the Later Rule is the concision of the latter. Whereas

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the former contains 24 chapters, the latter has been streamlined to half that number. Indeed, one wonders whether the number twelve might have been deliberately chosen to make a statement about the character of the minorite life. For, just as Jacques de Vitry saw the movement through the categories he was familiar with (most notably the lens of the vita apostolica), it is quite pos­ sible that members of the Curia similarly saw this new spiritual enterprise as mirroring the life of the early Christians in the Acts of the Apostles – that is to say, those holding all things in common. Thus, twelve chapters mirroring the evangelical life of the twelve apostles. But we also noted that the term was never used by the friars themselves at that early time as a descriptor of what they believed they were about. Hence, the subdivision into twelve chapters may be more reflective of the perceptions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy than of the friars themselves. But the number would become a template for all later commentaries on the Rule. Second, though remarkably concise, the Later Rule does manage to cover many of the prime themes treated in the Early Rule: (1) observance of the gospel as the fraternity’s ‘rule and life’; (2) acceptance and clothing of the friars; (3) praying of the Divine Office; fasting regulations; and behaviour among themselves and among those in the world; (4) refusal to accept money, as their ministers attend to the needs of the friars; (5) the manner and purpose of their work; (6) the lack of owner­ ship of all goods; and the fraternal care owed to one another; (7) the friars who sin; (8) the election of ministers and the hold­ ing of chapters; (9) the permission for and manner of preaching; (10) the relationship between friars and their ministers; a warn­ ing against studies; and an exhortation to love one’s enemies; (11) prohibition of entrance into female monasteries; and (12) going among the Muslims and others of a different faith; as well as a request to have a cardinal protector of the order while

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vowing obedience to the Church. The Rule is rounded off by an admonition not to tamper with the text. Now, although there is indeed an amazing concision to this text, a cursory glance at it reveals that its construction is occa­ sionally arbitrary and awkward. Several of the chapters contain two or even three different (and barely related) themes. One chapter (the tenth) seems particularly overloaded: almost as if Francis wanted to insist on a favourite theme of his – the love of one’s enemies – which, as we have seen, was the headliner for his first farewell address to the friars in 1219, explaining his rationale for going among the Muslims in the Levant. But it must also be said that, pace Sabatier, in addition to the appearance of various themes treated in both the Early and Later Rules, this is not a purely curial document foisted upon the friars of the order. Francis’s fingerprints are, in fact, all over the text itself. At eight different moments in the Later Rule, we read the Latin word ‘ego’ (‘I’) – wholly uncharacteristic in religious rules – where Francis as founder wants to insist on a particular point or idea by putting the weight of his own moral authority behind it. Third, no matter how much Francis wants to insist on the authority of the new Rule of 1223 and that it is not a ‘new rule’, any casual comparison of the two rule-texts reveals how much has been lost in the transition to a more juridical rule. Certainly, the soaring chapters 22 and 23 were not apposite to the genre of rule-writing. However, what has been lost is both a matter of critical content from the earliest time as well as the precious justifications or explanations of the rationales for these same activities. In other words, the wonderfully rich content, which we discussed early on, in the original chapters 7, 8 and 9 – the foundational chapters for understanding the original choices and postures of the friars among the minores – is now completely gone. Hence, all the material explaining the socio-economic moorings of the early movement has been removed and its vision

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eclipsed in favour of other more generic statements about the friars’ presence in the world. Similarly, the wonderfully evocative chapters dealing with the exercise of authority and power among the friars, with its insights about the mutual obedience to be practised between the friars, is, for the most part, gone. The whole reflection about the dynamics of the use of power among the friars has thus been buried in a more standardized view of the obedience expected of a subject to his minister. One surmises that the more fluid concept of mutual obedience – where several friars could actually call a minister to account – was simply too daring or messy for the ecclesiastical hierarchy to allow to stand. Its removal was a lost insight of the early community. Fourth, with the removal of most of the content of chapters 7, 8 and 9, the Later Rule not only ends up excising the whole concept of essere minores among, for and as the minores of soci­ ety; it puts in its place a more heightened role for the concept of paupertas. Similar to the emphasis upon the vita apostolica – one of the stock concepts of the Gregorian Reform and its after­ math – which reform-minded clerics saw as so important for the revival of the Church in the thirteenth century, it was the strik­ ing sight of the material poverty of the friars that caught the eye of both clerics and laypeople alike. Poverty was indeed the hallmark of many of the religious movements of the time – from the Poor Men and Women of Lyons, to the Poor Catholics, to the Poor Lombards and so on. But while sharing an ethos of the simplicity of life and the eschewing of calling anything their own, still the ‘humility and poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ’ which the Friars Minor were espousing had, we saw, a different orientation and emphasis. It was minoritas that held pride of place and only secondarily paupertas. Or, as we put it earlier: if one was socially minor, one would by necessity be pauper; but one could con­ceivably be materially pauper without necessarily being socially minor. This heightening of the virtue of paupertas

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in the Later Rule (almost to the exclusion of minoritas) was thus in the process of redefining the centrality of the Franciscan charism as it moved forward in time. Henceforth, the watchword characterizing Franciscan existence was going to be ‘poverty’ rather than ‘minority’. This is, indeed, what the great confron­ tation at the Emergency Chapter of late 1220 was all about. The ramifications of this transition probably could not be foreseen at the time. It was already evident among the Clares, whose oblig­ atory cloistered residency forced a reshaping of the minoritas of the movement into something quite different from what it may have been at the beginning: where ‘the perfection of the holy gospel’ came to be transformed into the ‘absolute poverty’ of their new life together. But, in terms of the friars themselves, as the history of the order will amply demonstrate, this transition was not a mere matter of verbal gymnastics or lexical disputation. It went to the very core of minorite existence as it began evolv­ ing more predominantly from a life among the minores to a min­ istry of spiritual revitalization of the Church out in the world. But, fifth, there is also a positive addition to the Later Rule which can easily be missed. The new element – actually it is a reinforcement of an earlier one – is found within Chapter 3 of the Rule concerning the prayer life of the community. The recent influx of new recruits which had begun swelling the ranks of the number of clerics within the fraternity apparently began having an impact on the way the friars prayed. For, while many of the lay brothers in the community were indeed illiterate – that is, they did not know how to read – not all of them were; some, even in the Early Rule, were permitted to have access to brev­ iaries. But the issue went beyond the matter of having breviaries or not; the issue was whether the lay brothers who were coun­ selled to pray a plethora of memorized prayers should actually pray such prayers with those friars praying out of breviaries. Francis insisted that the lay brothers, as full and equal members

Bartolomé del Castro, Pope Honorius iii Approving the Rule of Saint Francis of Assisi, c. 1500, tempera and gold on panel.

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of the fraternity, should indeed pray with their confrères – not apart or separately, as in some other religious communities. The Dominicans were a good counter-example of this.9 Moreover, this attempt to maintain the unity of the fraternity in their life of prayer, in spite of the difference in literacy and clerical status, is also borne out with respect to the clothing of the friars, noted in Chapter 2 of the Early and Later Rules. For again, in contrast to the practice of their Dominican counter­ parts, Francis, in the legislation of the Rule, insisted that all the brothers, whether they be lay or cleric, should wear the same habit of the order; their clothing, in other words, must never illustrate a difference in their status as religious within the order or the Church. In short, it was Francis’s firm intention to main­ tain that whether one was a lay brother or a cleric, each friar was a full-fledged member of the minorite fraternity and that their status within the community was based not upon their particular religious status but on whether (or not) they were dedicating themselves daily to the doing of penance.

The Later Rule of the Friars Minor was officially approved by Pope Honorius iii on 29 November 1223 in the bull Solet annuere.10 In contrast to the Early Rule, which had never received the official bulla of the Holy See, this Later Rule did indeed receive the papal seal and thus became – and remains – the definitive Rule of the Franciscan order.

Sanctuary of Greccio.

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The Years of Decline, 1223–6

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aving completed what surely was an exhausting task of condensing and reformulating the Rule of the order which he had founded some eighteen years previously, Francis resumed his life in the hermitages tucked away in the valleys of central Italy. Although he had officially resigned his position as minister general of the order, the Curia and papacy still looked upon him as a kind of ‘minister-without-portfolio’ of the whole entity he had founded and of the spiritual vision that had been revealed to him. But these next years – he barely had three years left to live – were going to be difficult and painful ones for him. For not only were his ailments beginning to take their toll upon his eyes and stomach, but he also had to witness, albeit at a distance, the slow drifting of a growing segment of the fraternity away from the pri­ mordial ideals which he considered to be of divine revelation and the way of life that God had wanted of him and his friars. Still, this last period of his life was marked by several key sign­ posts which not only figure into the story of Francis but flow directly from the spiritual vision that he had revealed and shared with his brothers.

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Christmas at Greccio (1223) One of the hermitages where Francis stayed in these latter years was located in the Rieti Valley outside the town of Greccio. It was here that Francis expressed a desire to celebrate Christmas in the midst of the people. The Poverello called to himself, about two weeks prior to the feast, a man of real spiritual integrity, John by name, and asked him to help him make preparations for a unique kind of Christmas celebration. Its uniqueness lay in the fact that, instead of being celebrated in the church in the town itself, Francis asked John to set up a manger near the place of the friars, strewing hay and bringing in oxen and asses to make the setting as realistic and rustic as possible. And above this construction was to be placed a makeshift altar table where the Eucharist could be celebrated that Christmas night. But this was not a private cele­ bration for the friars themselves; rather, anyone who wished could be a part of this unusual depiction of the birth of the Saviour. The account is given to us by Thomas of Celano in his Vita prima.1 Now, it is very easy to wax eloquent about what Francis’s intentions were in designing this event in the way in which he did. Not a few contemporary treatments tend to immediately theologize the moment, stressing Francis’s devotion to the mys­ tery of the Incarnation, as the theme does indeed appear in a number of the founder’s writings. However, I think such emphases may perhaps be slightly misplaced or, at least, premature. For I think that the overriding concern of the Poverello was to exem­ plify for the various participants in the Christmas Mass what it meant for the Word of God to become incarnate in our world and especially to be born into utter poverty. This seems to have been Francis’s primary intention in celebrating a living Nativity out­ side of Greccio that night. It was, in other words, to make as real and as concrete as possible what it meant to be born and then to live in the conditions of poverty and discomfort common to so

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Giotto, Institution of the Crib at Greccio, c. 1296–1300, fresco, Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi.

many in the world of the disadvantaged. Hence, shorn of some of its usual romanticism, the event celebrated at Greccio under­ scores once again Francis’s approach to the reality of the social minores of any time and place. As Thomas puts it clearly, in reporting Francis’s sermon to the assembled people: ‘He preaches to the people standing around him . . . about the birth of the poor King and the poor city of Bethlehem.’2 In other words, it is critical to keep ourselves focused on the primitive conditions into which the Lord of Life was born. Indeed, Francis was keen on awakening the nobility of the area to the reality that existed in their midst but which they often – just like in Assisi – chose to ignore or avoid seeing. But for Francis, if the Incarnation meant anything in our world, it is that

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the Lord incarnates Himself in the midst of the lowest, most for­ gotten levels of society. This is why Celano focuses on what Francis, both in his life as well as in his preaching, had awakened among the people. Hence, he reports on the effect of this moment, when ‘a virtuous man sees a wondrous vision. For the man saw a little child lying lifeless in the manger and he saw the holy man of God approach the child and waken him from a deep sleep.’3 The great Italian historian Raoul Manselli was very fond of underlining this ‘incarnational’ aspect of Francis’s spirituality: his genius for tapping into the concrete sensibilities of popular religiosity which is where most people actually experience and express their spiritual yearnings.4 Greccio is the quintessential expression of this spiritual impulse of Francis of Assisi.

The Events on Mount La Verna (1224) The following year, during the late summer of 1224, we find Francis’s physical condition continuing to decline. And yet, in early August, he decided to make the arduous journey from the Portiuncula up to a hermitage located on Mount La Verna in central Tuscany in the company of Brothers Leo, Illuminato and perhaps a few others. The sources tell us that it was his inten­ tion to observe ‘the Lent of St Michael’ – a forty-day fast from 15 August until 29 September (the feast of St Michael the Archangel). There are several accounts of this sojourn on La Verna. The first is the most foundational: 1 Celano 94–6.5 And yet, not to be entirely discounted is the much later (the late 1330s) and greatly expanded version found in the addendum to the Fioretti, known as the ‘Considerations on the Holy Stigmata’. This latter account adds information – fanciful or not, it is dif­ ficult to judge – about the journey from Assisi up to La Verna and discourses on the events that occurred there and in the immediate aftermath.6

Giotto, St Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, 1300–1325, tempera and gold on poplar wood.

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The Stigmata of Francis Thomas tells us that, once the group arrived at La Verna, Francis separated himself from the others so as to enter into prayer by himself in a cleft in a rock on the mountain. As several accounts would have it, ‘on or around the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross’ (that is to say, 14 September), Francis found himself sud­ denly swept up into some form of ecstatic prayer. Celano relates it this way: . . . two years prior to the time that he returned his soul to heaven, he saw in the vision of God a man, having six wings like a Seraph, standing over him, arms extended and feet joined, affixed to a cross. Two of his wings were raised up, two were stretched out over his head as if for flight, and two covered his whole body. When the blessed servant of the Most High saw these things, he was filled with the greatest awe, but he could not understand what this vision meant for him . . . but the fact that the Seraph was fixed to a cross and the bitter suffering of that passion thoroughly frightened him. And so he got up, both sad and happy, as joy and sorrow were in him alternately. Concerned over the matter, he kept thinking about what this vision could mean and his spirit was anxious to discern a sensible meaning from the vision. While he was unable to perceive anything clearly understandable from the vision . . . Signs of the nails began to appear on his hands and feet, just as he had seen them a little while earlier on the Crucified Man hovering over him.7 The account then goes on to give a rather detailed description of the appearance of these wounds:

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His hands and his feet seemed to be pierced through the middle by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on the inner part of his hands and on the upper part of his feet and their points protruding on opposite sides. Those marks on the inside of his hands were round, but rather oblong on the outside; and small pieces of flesh were visible like the points of nails, bent over and flattened, extending beyond the flesh around them. On his feet, the marks of nails were stamped in the same way and raised above the surrounding flesh. His right side was marked with an oblong scar, as if pierced with a lance, and this often oozed blood, so that his tunic and the undergarments were frequently stained with his holy blood.8 And Thomas concludes this part of his narrative by noting who was able to see these marks on the body of the founder: Alas, only a few merited to see the sacred wound in his side during the life of the crucified servant of the Crucified Lord. Elias was fortunate and did merit somehow to see the wound in his side. Rufino was just as lucky; he touched it with his own hands . . . [Francis] hid those marks carefully from strangers and concealed them cautiously from people close to him . . . He would never or rarely reveal his great secret to anyone.9 We find ourselves before a great mystery – one which captivated contemporaries of the Poverello, as it has done artists, poets, musicians and praying Christians ever since. But there are ways of penetrating it. Thomas of Celano, in particular, attempted to do just that in his narrative presented above. He did so,

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however, not in the form of reportage but rather in highly sym­ bolic – that is to say, biblical – imagery. Without an understanding of this imagery, the reader is left to his or her own interpretive devices, which risk either overplaying or underplaying the actual intent of Celano’s brilliant narrative. Let us start with a detail provided by the Legend of the Three Companions (and then picked up fifteen years later in the Legenda maior of Bonaventure), namely, that the event of the stigmati­ zation of Francis occurred ‘around the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross’. This provides a crucial framing of what was going to happen. Indeed, in all of the accounts, prior to this event Francis had opened the gospel book which was on a small altar nearby in his hermitage (probably an Evangeliary) and began meditating on the passion of Christ. Indeed, he became deeply immersed in the imagery of the passion account, dwelling on the pain and suffering of the Man of Sorrows. It seems that it was at some time during his meditation that he perceived hovering above him, as it were, what appeared to him to be a Crucified Man – Christ on the cross – enfolded within the wings of what Celano typifies – based on scriptural images – as a ‘Seraph’. Thomas of Celano then attempted to convey in some manner what Francis was ‘seeing’ in that moment of ecstatic prayer. To do this, the hagiographer proceeded to overlap three scriptural images. I will cite the rel­ evant passages so that we can see what Thomas was attempting to depict: John 3:13–17: ‘No one has gone up to heaven except the One who came down from there – the Son of Man [who is in heaven]. For just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that all who believe may have eternal life in Him. Yes, God so loved the world that He gave his Only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not die but have eternal life. God did

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not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.’ Numbers 21:4–8 (being the Old Testament origins of this same image in John’s Gospel): ‘But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses: “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!” In punishment the Lord sent among the people saraph serpents which bit the people so that many of them died. Then the people came to Moses and said: “We have sinned in complain­ ing against the Lord and you. Pray the Lord to take the serpents from us” . . . and the Lord said to Moses: “Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has bitten looks at it, he or she will recover.”’ Isaiah 6:1–2: ‘In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.’ What is the meaning of this complex image presented to us by Thomas? First, most commentators interpret the image as being that of a Seraph angel who then proceeds to imprint the five wounds of Christ’s passion onto the praying Francis. But this is inexact. The central image is indeed the Crucified Christ pre­ sented as lifted up, above Francis, just as the saraph serpent in the Book of Numbers was meant for the healing of all who had been bitten. The Seraph, in other words, is not really an angelic figure; rather, it is Christ Himself, crucified for the healing of

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the human race. Hence, the central figure is Christ Crucified enfolded within the wings of an angel. Indeed, it is this very person on whom Francis had been so profoundly meditating as a result of his meditation on the passion of Christ. Second, artis­ tic representations – as moving as they can be – can also be unwittingly misleading. For such depictions appear to show an angel zapping, as it were, the praying Francis in the same five parts of his body, replicating the wounds of Christ Himself on the cross. And this is probably about the only way that a medi­ eval artist could have conveyed the mystery. However, my contention is the following: what occurred in this mystical rap­ ture was that Francis had internalized so deeply and profoundly the image of the Crucified Christ on the cross that it literally, physically, exploded out of his psyche and onto his own flesh, marking him with the wounds of Christ, the stigmata. Hence, rather than the mystery being conceived as a movement from outside of Francis and onto him, the movement went, rather, from within him and out onto his own body. So powerful was his prayer and so visceral was his internalizing of the mystery of Christ’s healing grace from the cross for the world that it made its way onto his own body. The stigmatization was, in other words, the paradigm of a psychosomatic experience, in the most posi­ tive meaning of the term. Francis became what and to whom he was praying. The Poor Man of Assisi, we are told, experienced the pain and suffering as well as the joy and love of the saving events on Calvary. For ultimately, beyond the blood of the cross and the torn flesh of a human body, the result of the crucifixion was heal­ ing grace for the life of the world. Refusing to retaliate from the cross in an act of retribution for the profound and unmerited injustice perpetrated against Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, opened not his mouth but offered Himself to His Father so that the healing power of forgiveness

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and mercy could be shown, even to His malefactors. Francis of Assisi, who had been impelled in his encounter with lepers to do everything in his power thereafter to preserve the sacred bonds of the universal fraternity of creatures, even to the point of absorbing the violence of the world around him, was granted – in that moment on La Verna – the profound comfort of know­ ing that the path he had been shown during his conversion was the same graced path of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps this is the ‘great secret’ that had been disclosed to Francis in this mystical experience.

The ‘Chartula’ of Francis But there is a second moment in the La Verna experience. Immediately after this mystical rapture, Francis called out to Brother Leo to bring him something to write on, for he felt com­ pelled to try to put in writing what was coursing through his spirit. But Leo could only come up with a small piece of parch­ ment on which Francis penned two different things. First, we should note what we have. This small piece of parch­ ment, measuring approximately 23 cm × 15 cm (9 in. × 6 in.), has been written on both of its sides. We will use the terms ‘recto’ (to refer to the front side of the document) and ‘verso’ (to refer to the back side). The recto side has been almost completely oblit­ erated or rubbed away whereas the verso side is much more intact. The actual condition of the Chartula is due to the fact that, after Francis completed work on both sides of the parchment, he gave it to Brother Leo, who then used it, apparently, as a kind of tal­ isman, folded twice into four quarters and draped over his cord, where he wore it, on the outside of his habit, for the next four decades – hence, the wear and tear on the exposed side (the recto), which has virtually disappeared if it were not for infrared light bringing the text back to us.

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The Chartula, handwritten prayers on parchment by Francis of Assisi, 1224.

This front side (recto) contains what is called ‘The Praises of God’: a set of accolades in praise of the virtues inherent in God Himself. We know that, in the immediate aftermath of the mys­ tical rapture resulting in the appearance of the stigmata on the body of Francis, Francis penned these phrases as an act of praise and thanksgiving to the One to Whom he attributed the gift of the stigmata: the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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The verso side is much more complex. There are seven dis­ tinguishable components: four are attributable to the hand of Francis; three to the hand of his scribe, Brother Leo. First, there are three explanatory comments by Brother Leo about what is on the page. These lines were added in red ink at a much later time, perhaps in the early 1260s. The first comment, at the very top of the page, gives us some context as to the jour­ ney to La Verna and the experience of the stigmata. The second comment – below the scriptural quotation from the Book of Numbers – attests that Francis had penned this passage with his own hand. And the third comment is wedged onto the Chartula at the very bottom of the page, informing us that, similarly, Francis also sketched the figure of the head and Tau in between the second and third comments. As to Francis’s original contribution to the verso side, we can identify four elements: (1) a blessing drawn from Numbers 6, 24–6: ‘May the Lord bless you and guard you! May the Lord show you His face and be merciful to you! May the Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace’; (2) below Leo’s second comment there is a sketch which depicts what appears to be a ‘recumbent head’, and out of this head emerges a Tau cross (emphasized by Leo in red ink); (3) through the shaft of the Tau cross are several words; and (4) a few other words (in larger lettering and on two lines) wedged under the left arm of the cross (to the right, from the perspective of the reader). Leaving aside Leo’s later commentary and turning to the rest of the components on this verso side – between Leo’s first and second comments – we first find Francis’s quotation of the Blessing of Aaron from the Book of Numbers: ‘May the Lord bless you (benedicat tibi) and guard you (custodiat te).’ Now, the standard interpretation of the choice of these words is that this is a blessing intended for Brother Leo, who had come to him after the experience of the stigmata with some kind of crisis of

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conscience, and that, to console him, Francis wrote for him, on parchment provided to him by the good brother, a few words through which God would not only bless him but ‘guard’ – that is, protect – him.10 Next, the cartoon below Leo’s second com­ ment is then said to represent Leo himself being blessed by Francis, depicted as a recumbent head with a Tau cross emerging from the mouth of this head. This is essentially a visualization of the Aaronic blessing, written above and intended for Leo.11 Finally, the words that intersect the shaft of the Tau can possibly be construed to read: “May the Lord bless you, Brother Leo.” This is the standard interpretation of these elements. But this ensemble of images and texts can be read in a very different way. I have suggested elsewhere – in a much more involved exposition – that what is being portrayed on this verso side of the Chartula has little to do with Brother Leo but is, in fact, a fervent prayer for the sultan, Malik al-Kamil. Let us set the context before we review the individual components on this side of the Chartula. In April of 1223, a new phase of the Fifth Crusade was announced by Honorius iii. The project seemed promising in the West for it was now to be led by the German emperor, Frederick ii. Preparations were currently underway and, by the summer of 1224, things were moving forward. It is my contention that this imminent campaign of bloodshed in Egypt – and in Damietta specifically – profoundly disturbed and unsettled Francis. For the ‘enemy’ on the other side had a human face: al-Kamil, whom Francis had approached as both a frater and an ‘amicus’ and who had unexpectedly and courteously welcomed him under his tent. With this in mind, Francis journeyed to La Verna with a few trusted associates – including his companion in Egypt, Brother Illuminato – weighed down by both his declining health and his dejection at the new, more apostolically active direction being taken by the clerics. Francis was a man deeply depressed at the seemingly unending cycle of violence that was tearing apart the

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fabric of the universal fraternity of creatures which he had spent much of his life attempting to heal and reconcile. And so, having emerged from a profound experience of mys­ tical prayer in which the healing power of the cross was once again confirmed for him so indelibly (on his very person), Francis pens a prayer, drawn from the Book of Numbers, on behalf of the safety of his brother, al-Malik al-Kamil: ‘May the Lord bless you and guard you!’ He then sketches out a crude image of a recum­ bent head (a head positioned looking upward) on which, if one looks closely, one can see follicles (as in a beard) dotting the chin of this figure, who is also wearing a three-tiered hat that resembles a turban. The image, in other words, is that of a Muslim! But out of his lips there then emerges a Tau cross (emphasized by Leo in red ink). The cross, however, is not blessing him; rather, it is the sultan confessing the cross of Christ. Indeed, it represents the hope and the prayer of Francis for him, lest he be killed and thus lost to perdition for not having confessed Jesus Christ before his death.12 Finally, through the shaft of this cross, there are actually two sep­ arate phrases. The first, in a slightly different size, intersects the cross and might be read, in Latin, as fleo: ‘I am weeping for you!’ Alternatively, and perhaps more probably, the word is an imper­ ative – fletote = ‘weep’ – a call to the sultan to repent, do penance, and turn to Christ.13 Francis, in other words, is shedding tears in his prayer for the safety and ultimate fate of al-Malik al-Kamil. Indeed, on the recto side of the Chartula, the nearly invisible ‘Praises of God’ would seem to confirm this reading of the backside of the parchment. For these praises can be construed as Francis’s own version of a prayer he may well have been exposed to during his weeks in the sultan’s encampment: namely, ‘The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God’. For the titles ascribed to God (in Francis’s text) mirror quite closely many of the titles or attributes of God found in traditional Islamic prayer. Francis, in brief, seems to have had the powerful experience of his time in Damietta – and

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all that he had learned there – in his heart and on his mind as he made his way to La Verna that autumn to make a ‘Lent of St Michael’ (he who was ‘Defender in Battle’). And, finally, Francis was praying assiduously that the way of peace, healing and re­­ conciliation, which he had been championing since the time of his encounter with lepers, might at last win the day. It was at this point that Brother Leo came to Francis with his crisis of conscience. And having nothing to hand in order to give comfort to his beleaguered brother, Francis took the Chartula and added, awkwardly, under the right arm of the Tau cross, the fol­ lowing words: ‘Dom(inus) benedicat fleo te’ = ‘May the Lord bless you, Brother Leo!’ This is a clever rendering, based on the verb fleo but which can be read as f (for frater = brother) and then his name, leo. I say awkward because the bene-dicat has been wedged into the picture on two different lines and the te is actually incor­ rect Latin since, as he would know from the lines above from Numbers, the verb benedicare takes the dative (tibi), not the accu­ sative (te). But the resonance and similarity was close enough. Thus, this is where the so-called ‘Blessing to Brother Leo’ comes into play (under the right shaft of the cross, not in the Aaronic prayer above). Comforted, Leo went away from Francis, his tal­ ismanic blessing in hand. In short, Francis had ended up penning a profound prayer on behalf of his Islamic brother al-Malik al-Kamil. In point of fact, Frederick’s crusade never did get off the ground: he remained in Europe and the sultan lived on until 1239, actually reaching a ten-year pacific truce with the German emperor in 1229.

Two Late Writings His health failing him during his last two years, Francis still managed to dictate a number of late writings whose exact dating remains difficult to ascertain. Here, I want to mention but two,

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especially since they dovetail with a number of selected themes we have treated in this volume.

The Story of ‘True and Perfect Joy’ Although once associated exclusively with the Fioretti, more recent studies14 have surmised that the core of the story itself goes back to an authentic saying or anecdote told by Francis him­ self. The version presented here, due to its very specific details near its ending, should likewise be considered authentic. The same brother [Leonard] reported in the same place that one day at St Mary’s [the Portiuncula], blessed Francis called Brother Leo and said: ‘Brother Leo, write . . .’ He responded: ‘I am ready’. ‘Write’, he said, ‘what true joy (vera laetitia) is.’15 So then Francis spins out a number of scenarios to test his listen­ ing brother. First, he tells Leo that a messenger has arrived and told them that all the masters of Paris have entered the order. ‘Write: “this is not true joy”!’ Or that all the prelates, archbish­ ops and bishops beyond the mountains as well as the kings of France and England have also entered the order. ‘Write: “this is not true joy”!’ And he goes on again, telling his brother that the friars have gone overseas and converted all non-believers to the faith; and that he has received the power to do miracles and heal the sick. Francis then says: ‘I tell you: true joy does not consist in any of these things.’ The query then comes: ‘What then is true joy?’ Francis now warms to the real purpose of his instruction: I return from Perugia and arrive in the dead of night. It’s winter time, muddy and so cold that icicles have formed on the edges of my habit . . . Freezing, covered with mud

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and ice, I come to the gate and, after I have knocked and called for some time, a brother comes and asks: ‘Who are you?’ ‘Brother Francis,’ I answer. ‘Go away!’ he says. ‘This is not a proper hour to be wandering about! You can’t come in!’ When I insist, he replies: ‘Go away! You are simple and stupid! Don’t come back! There are too many of us here like you and we don’t need you!’ I stand again at the door and beg: ‘For the love of God, take me in tonight!’ And he replies: ‘No! Go over to the Crosiers’ place and ask there’!16 Then Francis brings the story to a conclusion: ‘I tell you this: If I had patience and did not become upset, true joy as well as true virtue and the salvation of my soul would consist in this.’17 Now this story, charming in its own right, actually brings forth a wonderful nugget in this particular version. A contrast is being made, of course. The glories and vanities prized by those who live and make their living out in the world are conjured: social status, education and titles, royal and noble bearing, extraordi­ nary feats of ministerial prowess, especially among non-Christian peoples, even the possession of the charismatic gifts of healing and miracle-working. Yet in none of these highly prized achieve­ ments and titles is the deepest kind of Christian joy to be found. On the contrary, vera laetitia would seem to consist in the expe­ rience of rejection and marginalization: the fate of many of the involuntary poor of the world who can never seem to pass through the door to opportunity, let alone warmth and a good night’s sleep. This is Raoul Manselli’s eloquent take on the story – and he is not wrong. It is indeed part – a large part – of the truth contained in this anecdote.18 But there is more. For in this particular version of the story, Francis is not only rejected by a friary which should have offered him welcome and hospitality; he is told to go over to the Crosiers.

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This would seem to be a relatively inconsequential detail, except that it was precisely these religious who comprised a community near Assisi and who, at this very time, were faithfully caring for the lepers of the area. Moreover, one gets the impression from this little detail that even prior to the death of the founder the order of Friars Minor had already begun to abandon the primor­ dial and quintessential life with and among the lepers who had been ejected and abandoned by Christian Assisi! This, therefore, seems to be the root message of the story of vera laetitia, namely, that the friars’ true (and perfect) joy is to be found in going back to the roots of their original vocation and to dwell as minores among the very lowest – the lepers who were the outcasts of society, left with no one but the most evangelically attuned indi­ viduals to tend to their wounds, comfort their isolation and show them the compassionate face of Christ. Francis was wor­ rying, in this pericope, that his friars had abandoned an essential and primordial aspect of their vocation.

The Canticle of Creatures A second text we need to consider is similarly quite well known to many. Some know it as ‘The Canticle of Brother Sun’ because of its opening verse. Others may know it by the title which is now in vogue because it is more descriptive of the whole, namely, ‘The Canticle of Creatures’. This text represents the very first exam­ ple of poetry in vernacular Italian literature. But not only was it the first such example in the Italian language; it was one of the most astonishing texts crafted by someone with the eye of a true mystic – one who not only saw the world as originating in the mind of God but saw it being expressed outwardly in the world as nature so as to lead men and women into the praise of God. There have been some outstanding studies and reflections on this most magnificent of texts fashioned by Francis.19 I will leave it to others to plumb the depths of his mystical insights

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into the relationship between God and all creatures. Indeed, it is not hard to become rhapsodic when discoursing on the insights contained within this text. Here, however, I want to, much more simply, provide the particular context for its redaction as illustra­ tive of several other themes highlighted in this volume. It is the account given to us in the Assisi Compilation that tells the story most concisely and eloquently:20 Two years before his death, while he was already very sick, especially from the eye disease, he was staying at San Damiano in a little cell made of mats . . . Blessed Francis lay there for more than fifty days, and was unable to bear the light of the sun during the day or the light of a fire at night. He stayed in the house in the dark, inside that little cell. In addition, day and night he had great pain in his eyes so that at night he could scarcely rest or sleep. This was very harmful and was a serious aggravation for his eye disease and his other illnesses. Sometimes he was on the verge of resting and falling asleep but there were many mice in the house and in the little cell made of mats where he was lying . . . They were running around him, and even over him, and would not let him sleep. They even disturbed him greatly at the time of prayer. They bothered him not only at night but also during the day, even climbing up on his table when he was eating . . . One night, as blessed Francis was reflecting on all the troubles he was enduring, he was moved to pity himself and he said to himself: ‘Lord, make haste to help me in my illnesses so that I may be able to bear them patiently.’21 There follows a little dialogue between God and Francis about whether it is better to be free of infirmities and thus be joyful or to endure its opposite. The account then continues:

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The next morning on rising, he said to his companions: ‘If the emperor were to give a kingdom to one of his servants, should he not greatly rejoice? But what if it were the whole empire, would he not rejoice even more?’ And he said to them: ‘I must rejoice greatly in my illnesses and troubles and be consoled in the Lord, giving thanks always to [the Trinity]. For such a great grace and blessing, in His mercy, He has given me, His unworthy servant still living in the flesh, the promise of His Kingdom. Therefore for His praise, for our consolation and for the edification of our neighbour, I want to write a new “Praise of the Lord” for his creatures.’22 He then goes on to praise these same creatures: ‘These creatures minister to our needs every day; without them we could not live; and through them the human race greatly offends the Creator. Every day we fail to appreciate so great a blessing by not praising as we should the Creator and Giver of all these gifts.’ He then sat down, thought for a moment, then cried out: ‘Most High, all-powerful, and good Lord . . .’ And he composed a melody for these words which he then taught to his companions.23 Finally, he adds another interesting detail: His heart was then full of so much sweetness and consolation that he wanted to send for Brother Pacifico – who in the world had been called ‘The King of Verses’ and a most courtly master of song – to go through the world with a few pious and spiritual friars to preach and sing the praises of God. The best preacher would first deliver the sermon; then all would sing ‘The Praises of

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the Lord’ as true jongleurs of God. At the end of the song, the preacher would say to the people: ‘We are the jongleurs of God and the only reward we want is to see you live in penance.’24 And so we return, once again, to the penitential preaching of the friars: the ‘word’ that they offered to the world, flowing from the revelation given to them in the experience of living among the lepers and downtrodden of society: namely, that all men and women have been called to do penance. And we return as well to the spiritual insight that Francis had derived out of the cru­ cible of the stigmatization experience whereby both suffering and joy are often commingled during life’s journeys in the foot­ steps of the Saviour Himself but where a joy that is rooted in God can ultimately triumph over the pain of the world.

The Testament and Death (1226) The searing pain of Francis’s eye ailment, compounded by the weakness brought on by his other illnesses, took its toll upon the Poverello, inhibiting his mobility and forcing him to travel, in cases of necessity, by donkey or on horseback. Eventually he had to confine himself to the area around Assisi. At first, he accepted accommodations in the palace of Bishop Guido ii, who had at that time become involved in a nasty imbroglio with the podestà of the city over their conflicting claims over some local properties. Dismayed by the unseemly squabble between the two leaders of his native town, Francis composed a new stanza, which he added to his ‘Canticle’. When he had several brothers sing it – as a form of prayer – before the two men, they were moved to tears, embraced, and publicly reconciled.25 Sensing his time on earth was hastening to its end, Francis had his companions move him back to the Portiuncula, passing

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Giotto, Francis Mourned by Clare, c. 1296–1300, fresco, Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi.

by Clare’s monastery of Poor Ladies at San Damiano, where he greeted his sisters for a final time.26 But the founder now summoned one last surge of energy in order to draw up for his brothers a final message which he himself would charac­ terize as ‘a reminder, an admonition, an exhortation and my testment which I, Brother Francis, unworthy as I am, leave to you, my brothers’.27 It is, and will remain, one of the most important writings left behind by Francis. For, in it, he – for the first time – discloses the seminal experi­ ence that led to his conversion to a life of penance: his encounter with the lepers. As we saw in the story of vera laetitia, it was important for Francis to call his brothers back to the primordial formative experience of their lives as Friars Minor: to see the world, always, through the eyes

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of the forgotten, the neglected and the disdained. Without an experience of this type forming the minorite conscience, there could not be a Franciscan vocation or charism. The rest of this Testament is a cascade of reminders about aspects of their life which, together, constitute the unique forma vitae which God had revealed to him and to them over the years: the kinds of dwell­­ings appropriate to their state, the eschewing of all owner­ ship and possession of things, the wearing of clothing consistent with their life among the poor, the care and veneration for the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a respect consequently for ministers of the Church, their prayer being done together and always united with the Church, obedience to one’s ministers and so on. He cautioned them that his statement was not to be con­ sidered as yet another Rule but that they should receive it, rather, in the spirit in which it was intended: as a solemn reminder to remain faithful to what they had professed before God.28 The text would go on to be one of the most enduring and yet controversial texts in the opuscula of the Poor Man of Assisi.29 As he sensed his imminent passing on 3 October 1226, Thomas of Celano tells us that Francis asked his brothers to place him, naked, upon the ground – an unusual gesture, reported only by the hagiographer and only in his Second Life.30 It is a gesture that calls to mind the famous phrase of Job in the Old Testament: ‘Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb and naked I shall go back again . . . blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21). How­ ever, it is quite possible, given the impact that his experiences in Damietta had had upon him, that Francis had something else in mind. While in Egypt, Francis had surely observed devout Muslims performing their daily prayers with the accompanying postures of praise, repentance and surrender (the latter, in Arabic: islam). In his last moment of prayer, Francis asked to be placed upon the ground – not face down with his forehead touching the earth in the most profound gesture of Muslim surrender (islam)

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to God, but rather face up in a gesture of praise – in order that he might greet the one he called in his ‘Canticle of Creatures’ ‘Sister Death’ so as to offer to God his own final and deeply per­ sonal act of surrender into His hands: poor, humble and crucified.

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Epilogue

T

he Emergency Chapter of late September 1220 marked a watershed moment in the early history of the order of Friars Minor for it marked the emergence into the open of two different conceptions of the forma vitae fratrum minorum. On one side stood Francis and his earliest companions and their spiritual vision, grounded in Francis’s encounter with lepers and, consequently, a life of penance to be lived among the minores of their world. On the other were the newer recruits, mostly reform-minded clerics, who saw in the movement a vital spiritual energy for the reform and transformation of citizens in the burgeoning communes of Italy and elsewhere through­ out western Europe and beyond. Both of these approaches to the Franciscan charism represented positive contributions to the life of the medieval Church and to society at large. But the former could be characterized as being ‘minorite’, that is, rooted in a socio-spiritual vision that viewed the dynamics of the workings of the world through the eyes of its lowliest and most neglected (the social minores of their time) to whom the friars offered fra­ ternal presence, loving service and the compassionate face of Christ. The latter, however, believed that ‘the world’ was to be found predominantly in the urban conglomerations where the word of God needed to be addressed and the sacrament of Coppo di Marcovaldo, St Francis and Twenty Stories of His Life (‘Tavola Bardi’), 1245–50, tempera and gold on wood.

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penance administered. And this orientation and approach was destined to be the predominant face of the order – the ‘Franciscan’ face – in time and history. These were competing, albeit some­ what complementary visions, of the spiritual movement birthed by Francis of Assisi. From this point forward – thus, even before Francis’s own death in 1226 – these two visions would continue to grow and develop within the heart of the order. The banner of his vision of social and spiritual minoritas would be carried forward in the

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Epilogue

Giotto, Death of St Francis, c. 1296–1300, fresco, Upper Church of the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi.

tradition of the ‘Companions of Francis’ – and later still, near the end of the thirteenth century, those known as the ‘Spiritual Franciscans’ – largely remaining in the remote hermitages and outside the urban centres, nurturing that part of the charism which fostered a more hidden presence among the lowly of soci­ ety while insisting on the theme of penance in their preaching and in their own lives. They would consequently come to be

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associated with a more rigorous form of material poverty. The other side, while attempting to remain faithful to the form of paupertas that came to be viewed increasingly in legalistic and spiritualized (or ascetic) terms, became a highly visible presence in the cities and towns of Europe where their preaching and other ministerial activities were largely transformative of the spiritual and even material landscape where they passed and eventually settled. The word ‘poverty’ came to be, through them, virtually synonymous with ‘Franciscan’. These two contrasting visions in the order would occasionally clash and contend with each other, vying for pre-eminence. Ultimately, it was the latter vision that would emerge triumphant as the predominant face of Franciscan life and ministry. However, the minorite vision – which insisted upon a presence among, for and as the poor of their time – would live on somewhat below the surface, always providing a reminder to the friars of the pri­ mordial core of their charism and a constant goad as to how to reconceive of and reshape their life as ‘little ones’ in Church and society. So it was in history and so it remains even today.

References Introduction 1 André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, trans. Michael F. Cusato (New Haven, ct, 2009). 2 I will concentrate mostly on the early Franciscan fraternity, weaving in only occasionally the roles played by Clare, her sisters and the lay penitents, since it is illustrative of the primary emphases of this monograph. 3 The Latin word regula here refers to a religious rule, a document drawn up either by members of the religious community itself or imposed upon it by canonists at the Roman Curia. As the word itself connotes, it is intended to be a kind of ‘measuring stick’ (a ruler) by which members of a religious community can judge the fidelity of its actions against the ideals which it has set out for itself. 4 Thomas of Celano, native of the Abruzzi region, composed four works concerning the life and holiness of Francis of Assisi: his ‘First Life’ (Vita prima = 1Cel) of 1229 in the aftermath of the canonization; the recently rediscovered ‘Shorter Life’ (Vita brevior) between 1235 and 1238 for friars to carry with them on the road; another ‘Life’ (the so-called Vita secunda or, more exactly, Memoriale = 2Cel), a second attempt to include more recent testimonies gathered about Francis in the latter half of the 1240s; and a ‘Treatise on the Miracles’, which came to be appended to 2Cel (and is sometimes referred to as 3Cel).

1 The Formative Years, 1202–12 1 Paul Moses, The Saint and the Sultan (New York, 2009), chap. 2 (‘Shattered’), pp. 25–34. 2 David Flood, Frère François et le mouvement franciscain (Paris, 1983), chap. 1 (‘Quitter Assise’), pp. 13–58 (Eng. trans. David Flood, Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement (Quezon City, 1989), pp. 7–68). 3 This Early Rule (1208–21) is to be distinguished, therefore, from the later, quite different, juridical or official rule of the order (1223).

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This First or Early Rule is sometimes referred to as the Regula non bullata (or non-approved Rule) or sometimes as the Rule of 1221 – the date at which it ceased to evolve and be added to. The Later Rule of 1223 is thus referred to as the Regula bullata (the rule approved by the Holy See with the papal seal – the bulla). We will use the simplest designations ‘Early’ and ‘Later Rule’, even though the nomenclature can be more nuanced. 4 er 9, 1–2, in faed i, p. 70. 5 The Latin word often used in the Middle Ages to refer generally to ‘the poor’ was villani or, as it appears here in adjectival form, viles. Such people were often considered ‘vile’, that is, of low and despised condition. er 9, 2 thus reads, in Latin: ‘Et debent gaudere quando conversantur inter viles et despectas personas, inter pauperes et debiles infirmos et leprosos et iuxta viam mendicantes.’ 6 This, more positive, appreciation of and approach to the ‘poverty of Jesus Christ’ would be overtaken by another, more ascetic, self-denying understanding, beginning in the early 1220s and continuing throughout Franciscan history.

2 The Hidden Years, 1212–15 1 Legend of the Three Companions 25–6, in faed ii, pp. 84–5. 2 Legend of the Three Companions 26, in faed i, pp. 84–5. iCel 23 (faed 1, p. 203) puts it this way: ‘Accordingly, many “who hated peace” as well as salvific works . . . wholeheartedly embraced peace. They became themselves “children of peace”, now rivals for eternal salvation.’ The young Francis, who had seen strife and warfare in his own town while growing up, knew the world in which he lived. 3 Legend of the Three Companions 34, in faed ii, p. 88. 4 Legend of the Three Companions 37, in faed ii, p. 90. 5 One always needs to be a bit wary when reading the narrative of a hagiographer like Thomas since it is of the nature of the hagiographer to concentrate on the deeds and virtues of the saint (or soon-to-be-made saint), to the exclusion of other actors in the story. And one also needs to be reminded that not infrequently the hagiographer is consciously mirroring passages in the gospels, thereby paralleling the saint’s actions with those of Christ Himself, rendering the actual historical veracity of such descriptions (albeit edifying) as somewhat dubious. 6 1Cel 36, in faed i, p. 215. At this point in the narrative, Celano segues into laudatory language drawn from the bull of canonization

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of Francis (Mira circa nos), alerting us that the hagiographer is simply deploying his skills in service of his task. 7 1Cel 37, in faed i, p. 218. 8 A similar phrase is used in one of the hymns composed in the wake of Francis’s death by Gregory ix, in faed 1, p. 338 (for its Latin original, see af 10, p. 383: ‘Tres ordines hic ordinat: Primumque Fratrum nominat Minorum, pauperumque Fit Dominarum medius, Sed Poenitentum tertius Sexum capit utrumque’). 9 2Cel 58–61, in faed i, pp. 234–6. 10 Fioretti 21, in faed iii, pp. 601–4; initially, in its Latin version, in dbf 23, ibid., pp. 482–5. 11 Ibid., p. 602. 12 Ibid. 13 One can recall the agitation within Assisi itself, between the last years of the twelfth and early decades of the thirteenth century summarized above in Chapter One. 14 2Cel 35, in faed ii, p. 270. The Fioretti has Francis tell the people ‘that God allows such things and pestilences because of sins’. And Francis then tells them: ‘So, dear people, come back to the Lord and do fitting penance for your sins and God will free you from the wolf in the present, and the fire of hell in the future’ (Fioretti 21, in faed iii, p. 603). 15 Clare of Assisi, Rule, chap. 6, in caed, pp. 117–18. 16 This designation has been contested by several highly respected scholars of the Clarian tradition. I will argue for its justification, at least here in the area around Assisi, in the earliest time. 17 Clare of Assisi, Rule, chap. 6, in caed, p. 118. 18 There is still some scholarly debate today about whether or to what extent the early sisters may have preached beyond the walls of their monastery and continued to minister in some way to the local poor. 19 1Cel 55–6, in faed i, pp. 229–30. 20 Ibid. 21 John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to 1517 (Oxford, 1968), p. 29 n. 2, cites the Dominican chronicle, the Vitae fratrum. 22 Canon 13, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. i, gen. ed. Norman Tanner (London and Washington, dc, 1990), p. 242. 23 In particular, we can cite the ‘Exhortation to the Clerics’ (Earlier and Later Editions); a ‘First’ and ‘Second Letter to the Custodes’; ‘A Letter to the Rulers of the Peoples’; and even adumbrated in the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’.

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3 The Pivotal Years, 1216–19 1 Jacques de Vitry, Letter 1, in faed i, p. 579. 2 Ibid., pp. 579–80. 3 Ibid., p. 580. 4 This is indeed the assessment of the esteemed Italian scholar of Clare and her movement, Maria Pia Alberzoni. 5 ac 108, in faed ii, p. 214. 6 This information comes from Moorman’s History of the Franciscan Order, p. 71, which states that it was during this time that Zaccariah and his team consolidated a number of places that had been established during Francis’s first venture into Spain in 1213. The same claims are repeated, without any references, in his presentation in Assisi (‘L’espansione francescana dal 1216 al 1226’) in the volume Francesco d’Assisi e francescanesimo dal 1216 al 1226 (Assisi, 1977), pp. 265–77. 7 Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, chap. 3–7, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago, il, 1961), pp. 21–4. A critical edition of the Latin text has recently been established by Johannes Schlageter, ed., in afh 104 (2011), 3–63, esp. (for the text) pp. 33–63 and here specifically, 34–6. 8 er 4, 1, in faed i, p. 66. 9 Later on, the term minister would frequently be used to describe the ‘minister provincial’ whereas the term custos would increasingly be used to describe one of several of his assistants in each province, as each province was subdivided into smaller units (custodies). And, finally, at a later time still, the leader of each local convent or friary would come to be referred to as a guardianus or guardian, retaining the notion that his principal responsibility was to watch over or guard the spiritual lives of his brothers. 10 er 5, 9–10, in faed i, p. 67. 11 er 5, 11–12, in faed i, p. 67. 12 er 4, 6, in faed i, p. 66. 13 er 4, 4–5, in faed i, p. 66. 14 er 6, 2, in faed i, p. 68. 15 er 5, 7–8, in faed i, p. 67. 16 The Latin word prior probably has two meanings here. First, it is a common title in religious life for the superior (or one of the authorities) within the hierarchy of the governance structures of an order. The Dominicans, for example, used the title to refer to their own religious superiors. But, second, it also can simply mean ‘one who is above or before another’. The meaning here is that no

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minorite friar is to consider himself, even by virtue of his designated office as a custos or minister, as if he were over and above his brother in this fraternity of creatures equal in the eyes of God and, therefore, as the name implies, of his confrères. er 6, 3–4, in faed i, p. 68. 17 Innocent III died in Perugia on 16 July 1216, hence this putative event would have occurred prior to this date. 18 Clare of Assisi, Rule, chap. 6, vv. 7–9, in caed, p. 118. 19 Canon 13, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. i, gen. ed. Tanner, p. 242. 20 Clare of Assisi, ‘Second Letter to Agnes of Prague [1235]’, in caed, pp. 48–9.

4 The Years Overseas, 1219–20 1 Canon 12, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. i, gen. ed. Norman Tanner (London and Washington, dc, 1990), pp. 240–41. 2 bf 1, p. 2 (Eng. trans. in faed i, p. 558). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 We will see a little later how Francis became increasingly resistant to such letters promising protection to the friars and others in the movement. 6 One year later, a second bull, Pro dilectis filiis, of Honorius iii (29 May 1220, in bf 1, p. 5), was sent specifically to the prelates and other ecclesial and religious dignitaries of France, probably in response to further questions having been raised in northern France regarding the Friars Minor and their itinerant preaching throughout the realm. Concerned that their previous admonition on their behalf was not being heeded to date, Honorius reiterates his previous advocacy of their life and ministry but then adds, more strongly: ‘Therefore, we want all of you to take note that we hold their order [to be] among those approved by us and that we regard the brothers of this order as truly Catholic and devout men. We, therefore, take this occasion through apostolic letters to warn and exhort you – indeed we prescribe and command you – to admit them into your dioceses as true believers and religious and to hold them . . . as having been favourably recommended.’ 7 One should remember that the Dominicans likewise held their general chapters (annually) during Pentecost; and it is possible that Hugolino may have been in attendance at their chapter rather than that of the Friars Minor.

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8 Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, chap. 11. An English translation is available in xiiith-Century Chronicles, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago, il, 1961), based on the text produced by Heinrich Boehmer in 1908. Here, references to Jordan will be made to the Hermann translation with pagination indicated in the Schlageter edition: Johannes Schlageter, ed., ‘Die Chronica des Bruders Jordan von Giano. Einführung und kritische Edition nach den bisher bekannten Handschriften’, AFH 104 (2011), pp. 3–63. 9 David Flood has contended that the entire chapter represents the farewell address. It is my contention, however, that the remaining 46 verses belong more properly to a second ‘farewell’ which Francis delivered to his friars after his return from the Levant and his unexpected resignation as head of the order at the Emergency Chapter in late September 1220. I will address this lengthy composite statement in due course. 10 D. Flood and T. Matura, The Birth of a Movement (Chicago, il, 1975), p. 95; and in faed i, p. 79. 11 The passage from Matthew 26:50 regarding the approach of Judas with the Roman guards in the Garden: ‘And Jesus said to him: “Friend (Amice), why are you here?” Then they came up and laid hands on him.’ 12 1Cel 30, in faed ii, p. 265. 13 Ibid., pp. 265–6. 14 Ibid., p. 266. 15 It is interesting to also point out Celano’s use (twice) of the word ‘fool’ in this account with respect to Francis and his perceived behaviour. It is interesting because, as we will see shortly, the term will reappear, under the pen of one of the companions of Francis (in the Assisi Compilation), as a self-description by Francis of his own posture in this world ever since the time of his conversion among the lepers. 16 1Cel 57b, in faed i, p. 231; and LegMaj ix, 7–9, in faed ii, pp. 601–4. 17 Jacques de Vitry, Historia occidentalis, in faed i, pp. 584–5. 18 I have left out of the passage some of the more inflammatory language that the prelate used regarding Muslims, staying focused on the picture of these events which Jacques was presenting. 19 I use the word ‘brief’ since I have treated of these resonances in several longer publications which are referenced in the Further Reading list in this volume. 20 ‘A Letter to the Rulers of All Peoples’, in faed i, pp. 58–9. 21 There are two versions of this writing. Scholars tend to distinguish them by length and the approximate date of their redaction. The

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latter date, however, is derived from what one assumes is the purpose of both redactions. It is my contention that the Long Version is the first and original redaction, composed between 1220 and 1221. Its purpose will briefly be set out here. The second redaction, the so-called Short Version, has been derived from the Longer Version; but its purpose, as we will see, was to supplement the spiritual orientation of the lay penitents and it was written probably between 1221 and 1222. 22 Caesar of Speyer was a friar who had entered the order, probably through the preaching of Elias of Cortona, in Acre. He had gone to the Levant either as a crusade-preacher or, perhaps more likely, as one who preached against the crusades. He encountered Francis in the Holy Land and they returned to Italy together, where Caesar would collaborate with Francis on a number of important writings prior to his departure for Germany, after the chapter of 1221, to serve as its minister. On this friar, see M. Cusato, ‘Caesar of Speyer: Redactor, Author, Exegete, Polemicist’, Laurentianum, LXII/3 (2021), pp. 257–310. 23 ‘The Letter to the Faithful [Long Version],’ in faed i, p. 45. I have altered the translation here. 24 Ibid. 25 It is my belief that the first part (vv. 4–13 or even 4–17) – due to its finely nuanced theological meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation (from the heart of the Father into the womb of Mary and on to the sacrament of the altar) – was most likely the part redacted by Caesar of Speyer. We find numerous resonances in the parts thereafter, in the series of writings bearing Francis’s name in the tradition, which attest to their centrality to his own spirituality. 26 er 23, 7, in faed i, pp. 83–4. 27 This is the language of the text of the er that comes down to us in the manuscript tradition. 28 er 16, 6–9, in faed i, p. 74.

5 The Years of Confrontation, 1220–21 1 Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, chaps 11–15, in Johannes Schlageter, ed., ‘Die Chronica des Bruders Jordan von Giano. Einführung und kritische Edition nach den bisher bekannten Handschriften’, AFH 104 (2011), pp. 37–9. Girolamo Golubovich, Biblioteca bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente francescano, 1 (Florence, 1906), pp. 96–7, identifies this messenger – but without exact attribution – as Stephen of Narni.

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2 At present, we have no documentary evidence as to what might have impelled Philip into such action on behalf of the Clares. 3 er 7, 3 (in the context of the friars’ work at various places); and er 16, 6 (in the context of living among others of a different faith: ‘subditi omni humanae creaturae proper Deum [1 Peter 2:13]’). The same idea is retained in the conclusion to the Later Rule 12, 4 (in the context of being subject to the Roman Church: ‘semper subditi et subiecti pedibus eiusdem sanctae Ecclesiae stabiles in fide’). 4 See Cum dilecti filii, in BF 1, p. 2. 5 bf 1, p. 5, in faed i, pp. 559–60. If issued as a result of the deliberations alleged at a chapter for all Italian provinces, then the legislation regarding fasting regulations may well have been finalized here as well. 6 Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, chaps 13–14 (Schlageter edition, pp. 38–9). 7 On these incidents, see Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago, il, 1961), chap. 13, pp. 28–9 (Schlageter edition, p. 38). 8 Jacques de Vitry, Letter vi, in faed i, pp. 580–81. Although the small section concerning the Friars Minor in the Holy Land was not included in the version sent directly to Honorius iii, it would appear that the sentiment contained therein may well have found its way into the hands of certain influential churchmen who reported the observation to the relevant authorities: ‘But to our way of thinking, this order is quite risky because it sends out two-by-two throughout the world not only formed religious, but also immature young men who should first be tested and subjected to conventual discipline for a time.’ 9 bf 1, p. 6, in faed i, pp. 560–61. 10 Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni was a cousin of Hugolino (in the extended family of Innocent iii) who later became the cardinal protector of the Minors and the Clares and, eventually, in 1254, Pope Alexander iv. 11 Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, chap. 16, pp. 30–32 (Schlageter edition, pp. 39–40). 12 Ibid., p. 32 (Schlageter edition, p. 39). 13 Psalm 143:2. 14 Ibid., 143:8. It is interesting that in some modern translations of the Bible the word ‘alien’ is missing whereas in the Vulgate it is definitely present in the Latin text (de manu filiorum alienorum). And it is indicative of why Francis has chosen to preach on this very text. 15 Ibid., 143:11. 16 Ibid., 143:13. If accurate, this final verse turns the fulmination into a prayer of thankfulness and hope for those sons who remain faithful

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to the way of life they have promised as well as to their female companions (the Poor Ladies) in this common evangelical project, though recently segmented from the undifferentiated followers of the way of Francis (see our remarks on this in Chapter Three). 17 ac 18, in faed ii, pp. 132–3. 18 1 Cor. 4:9–14a. 19 Phil. 3:7–9. The attentive reader will notice that the word used by Paul is, in fact, in Latin stercor (literally, excrement). The use of this term underscores the stark contrast between the values of the world and the values deriving from Christ’s teaching in the gospels. 20 In his classic work on the Poverello, Saint François d’Assise (Paris, 1894), Sabatier forwards the premise that the movement of the order away from its original ideas – and the intention of Francis – was instigated and promoted most particularly by Cardinal Hugolino and his colleagues in the Curia. While there is some truth to the perspective, it was a thesis which was in need of a thoroughgoing nuancing and revision over the years in Franciscan historiography. 21 ac 106, in faed ii, p. 211. 22 ac 111 in faed ii, p. 218. 23 I use this phrase deliberately since it is the same phrase – and the title of a text – written at some point in the mid-1250s by Brother Leo, laying out what he believed to be Francis’s understanding of and intention for the forma vitae. 24 I have treated these issues in an article about the work of this friar: M. Cusato, ‘Caesar of Speyer: Redactor, Author, Exegete, Polemicist’, Laurentianum, LXII/3 (2021), pp. 257–310. 25 er 21, in faed i, pp. 79–81. 26 er 23, ibid., pp. 81–6. 27 ‘Rule for Hermitages’, ibid., pp. 61–2. 28 After having completed his editorial work with Francis on the Early Rule, the ‘Long Version of the Letter to the Faithful’ and ‘Admonition 1’, Caesar hastened to catch up with the group of friars commissioned by the general chapter of 1221 to go back into German lands. Caesar had been chosen by Francis as minister for this group. Indeed, his editorial work forced a delay in his departure with the rest of the group, obliging him to catch up with the other friars around Trent in northern Italy (see Jordan of Giano, Chronicle, trans. Placid Hermann (Chicago, IL, 1961), pp. 18–19 (Schlageter edition, pp. 40–43)). Both Thomas of Celano and the reluctant Jordan of Giano were also part of this mission to Germany. Jordan tells us about the reinvigoration of this mission (chap. 17) and its aftermath.

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6 The Years of Legislation, 1221–3 1 The Roman Curia consisted of the reigning pope, his cardinals and their assistants – many of whom, at this time (that is, after the midtwelfth century and its revival of canon law), were expert canonists, skilled in the law of the Church. 2 See G. G. Meersseman, Dossier de l’ordre de la Pénitence au xiiie siècle, Spicilegium Friburgense, 7 (Fribourg, 1982), p. 7; the Latin text itself is found on pp. 43–5. 3 The Latin text of the Memoriale propositi and its English translation can be found now in History of the Third Order Regular Rule: A Sourcebook, ed. Margaret Carney, J. F. Godet-Calogeras and Suzanne Kush (St Bonaventure, ny, 2008), pp. 62–71. 4 If one discounts the apparently aborted attempt of John Capella with lepers outside of Assisi. 5 Bernard of Besse, Liber de laudibus beati Francisci, in af 3, p. 686. 6 See M. Cusato, ‘Caesar of Speyer: Redactor, Author, Exegete, Polemicist’, Laurentianum, LXII/3 (2021), pp. 257–310. 7 This text is referred to in the faed collection of texts as the ‘Earlier Exhortation to the Brothers and Sisters of Penance’ = ‘The First Version of the Letter to the Faithful’ (1209–15), pp. 41–4. I have argued in the previous chapter that the Long Version precedes (not post-dates) this Short Version and that the latter version (1221–2) is tributary from the Long Version (1220). The Short Version is also available (both in Latin and English) in the above-mentioned History of the Third Order Regular Rule, pp. 42–61. 8 The Later Rule (lr) is found in English translation in faed i, pp. 100–106; its original Latin text, within the bull Solet annuere, is in bf 1, pp. 15–19. 9 See Augustine Thompson, Dominican Brothers: Conversi, Lay and Cooperator Friars (Chicago, il, 2017). I have written a lengthy article on the challenges posed to the unity of the fraternity, especially regarding the influx of clerics and its impact upon the prayer and clothing of the fraternity, in M. Cusato, ‘The Minorite Vocation of the fratres laici in the Franciscan Order (13th–14th Centuries)’, afh 112 (2019), pp. 21–124. 10 bf 1, pp. 15–19, in faed i, pp. 99–106.

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7 The Years of Decline, 1223–6 1 1Cel 84–7, in faed i, pp. 254–7. 2 Ibid., chap. 86, p. 256. 3 Ibid. 4 Raoul Manselli, ‘Appunti sulla religiosità popolare in Francesco d’Assisi’, in Pascua mediaevalia. Studies voor Prof. dr. J. M. De Smet, ed. R. Lievans and E. van Mingroot (Louvain, 1983), pp. 295–311. 5 1Cel 94–6, in faed i, pp. 263–5; LegMaj xiii, in faed ii, pp. 630–39. Bonaventure’s account (LegMaj xiii) is largely built upon Thomas’s narrative in terms of the concrete specifics of the event. The Legend of the Three Companions, chap. 69, offers only a very brief notice. 6 The famous tableau of Giovanni Bellini, San Francesco nel deserto (housed in the Frick Collection in New York City), uses the imagery deployed in the narrative found in the ‘Considerations’ to fill out the story. 7 1Cel 94, pp. 263–4. 8 1Cel 95, p. 264. 9 Ibid., p. 265. 10 Recall the important use of the word custos (the noun form of the verb custodire) in describing the duty of the ministers in the order, namely, to watch over and guard the spiritual lives of the friars entrusted to them. 11 Alternatively, some have theorized that the recumbent head is either Adam or Christ, the New Adam, on what looks like a hill (Golgotha). 12 One has to remember that in the Middle Ages, the Christian belief was that the human person had to confess Christ as his/her Lord or suffer, in death, eternal damnation. 13 The word fletote is formed through a combination of the verb fleo and the pronoun te, with the shaft of the cross providing the first ‘T’ in the imperative form of the verb. 14 K. Esser, Die Opuscula, pp. 459–61 (with the text on p. 461); and Benvenutus Bughetti, ‘Analecta de S. Francisco Assisiensi saeculo xiv ante medium collecta (e codice Florentino C. 9. 2878)’, afh 20 (1927), pp. 79–108. 15 I am using the text found in Francesco d’Assisi, Scritti, ed. Carlo Paolazzi [Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 36] (Grottaferrata [Rome], 2009), pp. 416–18. English translation can be found in faed i, pp. 166–7 (here at p. 166). 16 tpj, in faed i, p. 166. 17 Ibid., p. 167.

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18 Raoul Manselli, ‘San Francesco dal dolore degli uomini al Cristo crocifisso’, Analecta tor, xvi/137 (1983), pp. 191–210. 19 To mention only a few: Eloi Leclerc, The Canticle of Creatures: Symbols of Union. An Analysis of St Francis of Assisi, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Chicago, il, 1970; orig. publ. in French: Paris, 1970); Eric Doyle, St Francis and the Song of Brotherhood (New York, 1981); and, most recently, Jacques Dalarun, The Canticle of Brother Sun: Francis of Assisi Reconciled, trans. Philippe Yates (St Bonaventure, ny, 2016; orig. publ. in French: Paris, 2014). 20 The account given in the Assisi Compilation, chap. 83, may very well be the original which other texts drew on. For example, ‘Legend of Perugia’, chaps 42b–43a, in Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli sociorum S. Francisci, ed. and trans. Rosalind B. Brooke (Oxford, 1970), pp. 162–7. A very abbreviated account of the same is also found redacted in 2Cel 100, in faed ii, p. 313. A greatly expanded version is also found in ‘The Mirror of Perfection [Sabatier edition]’, chap. 100, in faed iii, pp. 346–8. 21 ac 83, in faed ii, pp. 184–5. 22 Ibid., pp. 185–6. 23 Ibid., p. 186. I have slightly varied the faed translation here. 24 Ibid., with a slight variation of the faed translation. 25 ac 84, in faed ii, pp. 187–8. 26 Around 1225, Francis had written a ‘Canticle of Exhortation to the Ladies at San Damiano’ in which he urged them to translate their current sufferings (as he was doing) into great spiritual effect. He also wrote at this same time his ‘Last Will and Testament to the Poor Ladies’, which came to be incorporated into the Rule of Clare. It is in this text that he characterizes their way of life as following ‘the life and poverty of our Most High Lord Jesus Christ’. On these texts, see ac 85, in faed ii, pp. 188–9. 27 ‘Testament’, in faed i, p. 127. 28 Ibid., pp. 124–6. 29 It became controversial at the general chapter of 1230 when, after heated debate, Gregory ix (the former Cardinal Hugolino) eventually ruled – in his monumental bull, Quo elongati (on 28 September) – that the ‘Testament of Francis’, no matter how inspirational for the friars’ edification, did not have any juridical weight to make it binding on the consciences or behaviours of the friars since it had not been agreed upon by the friars in any previous chapter assembly. Hence, the pope rendered it null and void and non-binding on the friars. 30 2Cel 217, in faed ii, p. 388.

further reading Primary Sources Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. The Lady, ed. Regis J. Armstrong (New York, 2005) Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, 3 vols (New York, 1999–2003) The Writings of Clare of Assisi: Letters, Form of Life, Testament and Blessing, ed. Michael W. Blastic, Jay M. Hammond and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, Studies in Early Franciscan Sources, iii (St Bonaventure, ny, 2011) The Writings of Francis of Assisi: Letters and Prayers, ed. Michael W. Blastic, Jay M. Hammond and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, Studies in Early Franciscan Sources, i (St Bonaventure, ny, 2011) The Writings of Francis of Assisi: Rules, Testament and Admonitions, ed. Michael W. Blastic, Jay M. Hammond and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, Studies in Early Franciscan Sources, ii (St Bonaventure, ny, 2011)

Secondary Sources Alberzoni, Maria Pia, Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (St Bonaventure, ny, 2004) ––, ‘Il concilio dopo il concilio. Gli interventi normativi nella vita religiosa fino al pontificato di Gregorio ix’, in The Fourth Lateran Council: Institutional Reform and Spiritual Renewal (Affalterbach, 2017), pp. 289–318. This volume contains many valuable essays on the council. Bartoli, Marco, Clare of Assisi, trans. Sister Frances Teresa (Quincy, il, 1993) Bartoli Langeli, Attilio, ‘Il patto di Assisi. Ritorno sulla Carta Pacis di 1210’, Franciscan Studies, lxv (2007), pp. 1–7 Blastic, Michael W., ‘Minorite Life in the Regula bullata: A Comparison with the Regula non bullata’, in The Rule of the Friars Minor, 1209–2009: Historical Perspectives, Lived Realities, ed. Daria Mitchell, Spirit and Life, 14 (St Bonaventure, ny, 2010), pp. 99–120

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––, A Study of the Rule of 1223: History, Exegesis and Reflection, revd edn, Greyfriars Publications, Series 42 (Kerala, 2004) Buffon, Giuseppe, Le Renouveau franciscain au 20e siècle. Le Premier ‘Totum’ des sources franciscaines, trans. Jacqueline Gréal (Paris, 2011) Cardini, Franco, ‘Il concilio lateranense iv e la fraternitas francescana. A proposito di un problema aperto’, Studi francescani, 78 (1981), pp. 239–50 Carney, Margaret, The First Franciscan Woman: Clare of Assisi and Her Form of Life (Quincy, il, 1993) Cusato, Michael F., ‘Caesar of Speyer: Redactor, Author, Exegete, Polemicist’, Laurentianum, LXII/3 (2021), pp. 257–310 ––, ‘The Democratization of Prayer: What Francis Learned in Damietta’, Collectanea Franciscana, LXXXV (2015), pp. 59–82 ––, The Early Franciscan Movement (1205–1239): History, Sources and Hermeneutics, Medioevo Francescano. Saggi 14 (Spoleto, 2009) ––, ‘The Early Franciscans and the Use of Money’, in Poverty and Prosperity; Franciscans and the Use of Money, Washington Theological Union, Symposium Papers, 2009, cfit/esc-ofm Series 9 (St Bonaventure, ny, 2009), pp. 13–37 ––, ‘Francis and the Franciscan Movement [1181/2–1226]’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J. P. Robson (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 17–33 ––, ‘Francis of Assisi, the Crusades and al-Malek al Kamil’, in Michael F. Cusato, The Early Franciscan Movement, 1205–1239 (Spoleto, 2009), pp. 103–28 ––, ‘From Damietta to La Verna: The Impact on Francis of His Experience in Egypt’, in Daring to Embrace the Other: Franciscans and Muslims in Dialogue, Spirit and Life, 12 (St Bonaventure, ny, 2008), pp. 83–112 ––, ‘From the “perfectio sancti Evangelii” to the “Sanctissima vita et paupertas”: An Hypothesis on the Origin of the Privilegium paupertatis to Clare and Her Sisters at San Damiano’, Franciscan Studies, LXIV (2006) [= Essays in Honor of Margaret Carney, osf] ––, ‘The Gathering Storm: The Emergence of Evangelical Poverty as a Contentious Issue in the Franciscan Order (1236–1250)’, in ‘Non enim fuerat Evangelii surdus auditor’ (1Cel 22), Festschrift for Michael W. Blastic, ofm, ed. M. F. Cusato and Steven J. McMichael (Leiden, 2020), pp. 119–66 ––, ‘The Gospel, According to Francis’, in Expériences religieuses et chemins de perfection dans l’Occident médiéval. Études offertes à André Vauchez par ses élèves (Paris, 2012), pp. 257–76

217

Further Reading

––, ‘Guardians and the Use of Power in the Early Franciscan Fraternity’, in Michael F. Cusato, The Early Franciscan Movement, 1205–1239 (Spoleto, 2009), pp. 249–81 ––, ‘Highest Poverty or Lowest Poverty? The Paradox of the Minorite Charism’, Franciscan Studies, LXXV (2017), pp. 275–321 ––, ‘The House That Peter Built: Bologna and the Origins of the Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor’, Frate Francesco, lxxxiv/2 (2018), pp. 261–82 ––, ‘Letters to the Faithful’, in The Writings of Francis of Assisi: Letters and Prayers, ed. Michael W. Blastic, Jay M. Hammond and J. A. Wayne Hellmann, Studies in Early Franciscan Sources, 1 (St Bonaventure, ny, 2011), pp. 149–207 ––, ‘The Loneliness of Francis of Assisi: The Reception by the Franciscan Order of the Encounter of Francis with the Sultan in the First Half of the 13th Century’, Muslim World, cix/1–2 (January/April 2019), pp. 14–68 ––, ‘The Minorite Vocation of the fratres laici in the Franciscan Order (13th–Early 14th Centuries)’, in afh 112 (2019), pp. 21–124 ––, ‘Of Snakes and Angels: The Mystical Experience behind the Stigmati­ zation Narrative of 1 Celano’, in The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies, New Perspectives (St Bonaventure, ny, 2006), pp. 29–74 ––, ‘To Do Penance/Facere poenitentiam’, The Cord, lvii/1 (February/ March 2007), pp. 3–24 Dalarun, Jacques, The Canticle of Brother Sun: Francis of Assisi Reconciled, trans. Philippe Yates (St Bonaventure, ny, 2016) Flood, David, Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement (Quezon City, 1989) Flood, David, and Thaddée Matura, The Birth of a Movement: A Study of the First Rule of St Francis, trans. Paul Schwartz and Paul Lachance (Chicago, il, 1975) Fortini, Arnaldo, Francis of Assisi: A New [Partial] Translation of 1981 di San Francesco, trans. Helen Moak (New York, 1981) Leclerc, Eloi, The Canticle of Creatures: Symbols of Union. An Analysis of St Francis of Assisi, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Chicago, il, 1970) Manselli, Raoul, ‘From the Testament to the Testaments of St Francis’, Greyfriars Review, ii/2 (1988), pp. 91–9 [orig. publ. in Italian in Collectanea Franciscana, LXVI (1976), pp. 121–9] ––, ed., La ‘Questione francescana’ dal Sabatier ad oggi. Atti del Convegno della Società Internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi, 18–20 ottobre 1973 (Assisi, 1974) ––, St Francis of Assisi, trans. Paul Duggan (Chicago, il, 1988)

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Merlo, Grado Giovanni, In the Name of Saint Francis: History of the Friars Minor and Franciscanism until the Early Sixteenth Century, trans. Raphael Bonnano (St Bonaventure, ny, 2009) Mooney, Catherine M., Clare of Assisi and the Thirteenth-Century Church: Religious Women, Rules and Resistance (Philadelphia, pa, 2016) Moorman, John, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968) Moses, Paul, The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace (New York, 2009) Peterson, Ingrid J., Clare of Assisi: A Biographical Study (Quincy, il, 1993) Riley, Paul V., ‘Francis’ Assisi: Its Political and Social History, 1175–1225’, Franciscan Studies, XXXIV (1974), pp. 393–424 Robson, Michael, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006) Sabatier, Paul, Life of St Francis of Assisi, trans. Louise Seymour Houghton (New York, 1930) Tolan, John V., Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian–Muslim Encounter (New York, 2009) Trembinski, Donna, Illness and Authority: Disability in the Life and ‘Lives’ of Francis of Assisi (Toronto, 2020) Vauchez, André, Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, trans. Michael F. Cusato (New Haven, ct, 2012) ––, ‘Jacques de Vitry, témoin des origines franciscaines’, in Frate Francesco e i Minori nello specchio dell’Europa. Atti dei Convegni della Società internazionale di studi francescani e del Centro interuniversitario di studi francescani, Assisi, 17–19 ottobre 2014 [sisf 25] (Spoleto, 2015), pp. 3–26 Zafarana, Zelina, ‘La predicazione francescana’, in Francescanesimo e vita religiosa dei laici nell’200 [sisf 8] (Assisi, 1981), pp. 203–50 Zelina Zafarana, ‘Predicazione francescana ai laici’, in I Frati Minori e il Terzo Ordine. Problemi e discussioni storiografiche [Convegni del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale 23] (Todi, 1985), pp. 171–86

photo acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the below sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it. Some locations of artworks are also given below, in the interest of brevity: AdobeStock: pp. 16 (milosk50), 18–19 (Richard Semik), 22 (mdlart), 85 (Ivan Abramkin), 90 (Angelo Chiariello), 172 (flafabri); Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi: pp. 41, 175, 184, 195, 200–201; Basilica di Santa Chiara, Assisi (photos tauav/AdobeStock): pp. 63, 100; Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence: pp. 27, 33, 62, 72, 110 (photo Silvio/AdobeStock), 198; Chiesa di San Francesco, Pienza: p. 58; from Giovanni Ciampini, De sacris aedificiis a Constantino Magno constructis (Rome, 1693), photo eth-Bibliothek Zurich: p. 75; Gabriella Clare Marino/Unsplash: p. 11; Musée du Louvre, Paris: pp. 45, 48, 55, 177; Musei Vaticani, Vatican City: p. 8; Philadelphia Museum of Art, pa: pp. 68, 170; private collection: pp. 65, 111; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: p. 150; Santuario del Sacro Speco, Monastero di San Benedetto, Subiaco: pp. 76, 77, 88; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, md: p. 132 (ms w.323, fol. 113v).

Index Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations Acre (Akko) 80, 86, 111, 113, 117, 129, 133 Agnes of Assisi (Caterina) 64, 104, 107 Agnes of Prague (Bohemia) 106 al-Kamil, al-Malik, sultan 118, 122–5, 133, 186–7 alms 35 Alviano 55 Anthony of Padua 157 Assisi Basilica of San Francesco 16, 17 Rocca Maggiore 19, 22 Sacro Convento 18 town 17, 19, 20–25, 44–6, 51, 63 authority, Franciscan 94–9, 114, 151–3 Barbavaro Book of Hours (artistic work) 132 Bartolomé del Castro (artist) 171 Benvenuto Benivieni (artist) 63, 100 Bernard of Clairvaux 121 Bernard of Quintavalle, Brother 30, 49, 151 Bevagna 55 Bologna 136–7, 161 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio 117, 133, 180 Bonizo of Bologna, Brother 165

bulls, papal Litterae tuae nobis (1218) 104 Cum dilecti filii (1219) 111 Pro dilectis filiis (1220) 135 Cum secundum consilium (1220) 138 Solet annuere (1223) 171 Detestanda (1227) 161 Caesar of Speyer 154–6, 157, 163–4 Carta franchitatis (1210) 24–5 Carta pacis (1203) 23–4 Cathars 74, 89 chapters, general (Franciscan) 84 Chapter of 1217 86–92 Chapter of 1219 109–17 Chapter of 1220 (Emergency Chapter) 139–47, 148, 150, 156, 169, 199 Chapter of 1221 149 Chapter of Mats see Chapter of 1220 Chartula see Francis of Assisi, writings Christian of Mainz 21 Cimabue (artist) 17 Clare of Assisi major events 54, 60–67, 94–108, 195 Poor Ladies (Poor Clares) 54, 60, 83–4, 104–8 Rule 64–6, 102

221 clericalization 146–7 Collestrada 23, 26 Conrad of Urslingen 21, 23 Coppo di Marcovaldo (artist) 27, 33, 110, 198 Costanza d’Altavilla (Constance of Sicily) 22 Councils, Fourth Lateran (1215) 72–8, 86, 89, 104, 114, 143, 154 Canon 12 109 Canon 13 74, 99, 104 Cristofano di Bindoccio (artist) 58 Crosiers 190 Crusades Second (1147) 121 Children’s Crusade (1212) 69 Fifth (1215–21) 79–80, 118–25, 186 Seventh (1247) 122 Custos/Custodes 93–4 Dalmatia 70 Damietta (Egypt) 118–20, 122–4, 126–7 Dominic Guzman (of Caleruega) 73, 89 Dominicans 136 dwellings 36 Elias, Brother 107, 113, 117, 149–50, 150, 151 enclosure (cloister) 105–7 Eucharist 72, 74–5, 89, 125, 157, 196 fasting 134–5 Flood, David (historian) 29, 31 Fonte Colombo 165

Index France 25, 86, 87–90, 93, 110, 112–13 Francis of Assisi, major events imprisonment (1203–4) 26 conversion (1205) 26–8 writing of the Early Rule (1208–12) 31–46 journey to Rome (1209) 44–5 welcome of Clare (1212) 60–67 mission among Saracens and Moors (1212–13) 67–72 presence at Lateran iv (1215) 72–8 events in Damietta (1219) 117–31 confrontations at Emergency Chapter (1220) 139–50 writing of the Later Rule (1223) 164–71 Christmas at Greccio (1223) 174–6 events on La Verna (1224) 176–88 death (1226) 194–7 Francis of Assisi, writings Early Rule (1208–21) 12, 31–46, 47, 54, 84, 93, 108, 115, 127–31, 134–5, 141, 144, 154–6, 159, 164–6, 167–8 ‘Rule for Hermitages’ (1217–21?) ‘Letter to the Faithful [Long Version]’ (1220) 126–7, 154 ‘Letter to the Rulers of All Peoples’ (1220) 156 ‘Letter to the Faithful [Short Version]’ (1221) 160–64 ‘Exhortation for the Penitents’ (1221) 160–64

francis of assisi Later Rule (1223) 13, 33, 37, 165–71 ‘Praises of God’ (1224) 184, 187, 193–4 Chartula (1224) 183–8, 182 ‘Exhortation to the Sisters’ (1225) 67 True and Perfect Joy (1225) 189–91 ‘Canticle of Creatures’ (1225) 191–4, 197 Testament (1226) 43, 195–6 Frederick i Barbarossa (Hohenstaufen), German emperor 21 Frederick ii (Hohenstaufen), German emperor 22, 149 Gentile of Spoleto 26 Germany 20–23, 86, 93, 110–11 Ghislieri (Assisi family) 23, 26 Giles of Assisi, Brother 30, 49, 113 Giotto (artist) 17, 41, 45, 48, 56, 62, 175, 177, 195, 200–201 Giovanni Ciampini (artist) 75 Giovanni di Paolo (artist) 65 Greccio 57, 172, 174–6, 175 Gregory of Naples, Brother 114, 134, 151 Gubbio 57–60 Guido i, bishop of Assisi 29, 63, 74 Guido ii, bishop of Assisi 194 habit, Franciscan 171 hagiography, genre of 14–15 Henry vi (Hohenstaufen), German emperor 22

222 hominitium (vassalage) 21 Honorius iii see popes Hugolino dei Conti di Segni 74, 87, 88, 89, 112, 114, 143–4, 147–9, 159, 163 cardinal protector 149, 166 Constitutions (for Clare) 104–8, 109 pope see Gregory ix 149 Humiliati 160–61 humilitas (humility) 40–42 Hungary 92, 110–11 Illuminato, Brother 117–23, 129, 176 Jacques de Vitry, archbishop and cardinal 81–6, 117, 123–4, 137 John Capella (de Laudibus) 135–7 John of Brienne 123 John of St Paul, cardinal 74 Jordan of Giano, Brother 114, 133, 135–40 La Verna, Mount 176–88 Le Goff, Jacques (historian) 44 Legendae (hagiographical sources) 1 Celano (1229) 51–3, 54, 118, 122, 174, 176, 178–80 Vita brevior (1234–8) 119 Anonymous of Perugia (1241) 47, 53 Legend of the Three Companions (1244) 30, 47, 49, 51–3, 54, 73, 180 2 Celano (1247) 119–22, 196 Assisi Compilation (1246/1310) 30–31, 89–90, 142–3, 152–3, 192–3

Index

223 Speculum perfectionis (1318) 74, 76 Fioretti (1338/1378) 57, 189 Leo, Brother 80, 157, 176, 185–8, 189 lepers 25, 27–8, 27, 30, 39–40, 70, 79, 116, 126, 130, 133, 137–8, 191 Louis ix, king of France 122

Navas de Tolosa, Las 70 ‘The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God’ 187 novitiate 138

Maleczek, Werner (historian) 103 Manselli, Raoul (historian) 10, 176, 190 Masseo, Brother 80 Matthew of Narni, Brother 114, 135, 151 Meersseman, G. G. (historian) 161 Memoriale propositi (Rule for Penitents, 1221) 161–3 Meo di Pero (artist) 58 Michael the Archangel 139, 176, 188 minoritas (to be minores) 36–8, 101, 107, 146, 159, 168–9, 175–6, 191, 200–201 Miramamolin 70 money 34 Monteluce (Clarian monastery) 104 Monticelli (Clarian monastery) 104, 106–7 Moors see Muslims Morocco 71, 113, 129 Moses, Paul (historian) 26 Muslims 68–72, 78, 110, 113–14, 115–17, 126–7, 129–31, 150, 196

Pacifico, Brother 110, 193–4 Pelagius, cardinal 122–3 penance, doing of 43–4, 47, 49–51, 65–6, 94–9, 128–9, 159, 194, 201 penitents 25–30, 46, 51, 136, 160–64 Perugia 23, 26, 189 Peter Catanii 30, 49, 117, 148–51 Peter of Stacia 136 Philip the Tall (the Long) 135, 137 Pietro di Bernardone 25, 29 Poor Clares (Poor Ladies) see Clare of Assisi popes Adrian iv 21 Alexander iii 21 Innocent iii 32, 39, 75, 101, 103 Honorius iii 80, 104, 111, 149, 161, 170 Gregory ix 88, 107 Portiuncula Chapel (St Mary of the Angels) 36, 46, 47, 49, 79, 90, 140, 194, 196 indulgence 79–81 poverty Clares 101–3

Offreduccio (family of Clare) Favarone 23, 61 Monaldo 23 Oliver of Paderborn (chronicler) 123

francis of assisi Franciscans 33, 34–6, 41, 42, 68, 169, 175–6, 202 prayer, Franciscan 169, 171 preaching (of the friars) 54–5, 68, 86–7, 89–90, 90, 91–2 Privilege of Poverty see poverty, Clares Proto-martyrs 129–30 provinces (Franciscan), creation of 92–4 Rivo Torto 36 Rufino, Brother 179 Sabatier, Paul (historian) 9, 149, 167 San Damiano 28, 84, 101, 103, 106–7, 192 San Paolo delle Abbadesse 64 Santa Maria di Gattailo (Clarian monastery) 104 Santa Maria fuori Porta Camolia (Clarian monastery) 104 Sant’Angelo di Panzo 64 Saracens see Muslims

224 Seraph (Saraph) 178, 180–82 Sister Minor see Poor Clares Spain 70, 86, 113, 129 Stephen of Narni, Brother 134, 136 Stigmata of Francis 178–83, 177 Subasio, Mount 17, 46 Sylvester, Brother 49 Tancred of Lecce 26 Tau 75–8, 76–7, 80, 185–7 Tavola Bardi 27 Third Order Secular see penitents Thomas of Celano (hagiographer) 26, 29, 51, 60, 70–71, 118–22, 133, 174, 178–80 Vatican Council, Second 9, 13 Vauchez, André (historian) 9–10, 14 Vézelay 91, 110, 121 Viterbo 137–9 Wolf of Gubbio 56–60 work 34–5