Franciscan Evangelization : Striving to Preach the Gospel [1 ed.] 9781576593325, 9781576591482

Citation preview

Franciscan Evangelization Striving to Preach the Gospel Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2007

Franciscan Evangelization Striving to Preach the Gospel Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2007

Edited by

Elise Saggau, O.S.F. The Franciscan Institute St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure, New York

©The Franciscan Institute St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure, NY 14778 2008

CFIT/ESC-OFM Series Number 7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher. The articles in this book were originally presented at a symposium sponsored by the Franciscan Center at Washington Theological Union, Washington, DC, May 25-27, 2007 This publication is the seventh in a series of documents resulting from the work of the Commission on the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition of the English-speaking Conference of the Order of Friars Minor. (CFIT/ESC-OFM)

Cover design: Jennifer L. Davis ISBN: 978-157659-1484

Library of Congress Control Number 2007942473

Printed and bound in the United States of America BookMasters, Inc. Ashland, Ohio

Table of Contents Abbreviations. ...........................................................................6 Preface.......................................................................................7 Vincent Cushing, O.F.M., S.T.D.

Chapter One..............................................................................9 Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life: Similarities and Differences Dominic Monti, O.F.M., Ph.D.

Chapter Two. ..........................................................................33 Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel among the Early Franciscans C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

Chapter Three.........................................................................55 Preaching Women: The Tradition of Mendicant Women Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

Chapter Four. .........................................................................79 The Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization Joseph Chinnici, O.F.M., D.Phil.

About the Authors...............................................................123

ABBREVIATIONS Writings of Saint Francis Adm BlL CtC CtExh LtAnt 1LtCl 2LtCl 1LtCus 2LtCus 1LtF 2LtF LtL LtMin LtOrd LtR ExhP PrOF PrsG OfP PrCr ER LR RH SalBVM SalV Test

The Admonitions A Blessing for Brother Leo The Canticle of the Creatures The Canticle of Exhortation A Letter to Brother Anthony of Padua First Letter to the Clergy (Early Edition) Second Letter to the Clergy (Later Edition) The First Letter to the Custodians The Second Letter to the Custodians The First Letter to the Faithful The Second Letter to the Faithful A Letter to Brother Leo A Letter to a Minister A Letter to the Entire Order A Letter to Rulers of the Peoples Exhortation to the Praise of God A Prayer Inspired by the Our Father The Praises of God The Office of the Passion The Prayer before the Crucifix The Earlier Rule (Regula non bullata) The Later Rule (Regula bullata) A Rule for Hermitages A Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary A Salutation of Virtues The Testament

Early Biographical Sources 1C 2C LJS 1MP 2MP ScEx AP L3C AC LMj

The Life of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul The Life of Saint Francis by Julian of Speyer The Mirror of Perfection (Smaller Version) The Mirror of Perfection (Larger Version) The Sacred Exchange The Anonymous of Perugia The Legend of the Three Companions The Assisi Compilation The Major Legend by Bonaventure

Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis Armstrong, Wayne Hellmann, William Short, three volumes (New York: New City Press, 1999, 2000, 2001)

Preface To be human is to search for meaning. Each of us, by nature, always asks “what does this mean?” So, whether we love, work, or create, we search for meaning. We want to know not only what is true, but also what meaning it carries so that we can consciously grasp, reflect upon, probe and integrate it into a way of living. Meaning grasped results from experience interpreted. Through language, experience is opened up in a revelatory way. In the lovely description by James Joyce, the experience of truth grasped and meaning discovered is an epiphany for us. By contrast, if neither experience nor language carries meaning, we feel diminished, and we describe such experience or language as empty, pointless, unenlightening. What is meaningless is repellent and distasteful. We have an inner dynamism that triggers a search for meaning; and when it doesn’t achieve its cognitional and personal end, we withdraw quickly from the quest. The Word of God and the correlative word preached play key roles in helping us understand our experience of God and in tracing out our spiritual and communal journey. In our most recent Franciscan Symposium (May 2007), we asked four premier scholars to lead us through the rich and varied history of Franciscan preaching: Dr. Dominic Monti, formerly professor of Church History at the Washington Theological Union, Dr. Colt Anderson, currently professor of Church History at St. Mary’s of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, Drs. Darleen Pryds and Joseph Chinnici, both professors of Church History who serve at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California. From varied viewpoints, their essays probe important facets of preaching and its history in the Franciscan tradition, as well as its import for the larger Church. These writings are insightful and critical, and they trace pathways into the future. We stand in debt to each author and to the Franciscan Symposium for the sound scholarship

and creative insights into what the Franciscan tradition of preaching means for us today. From their historical perspective, we appreciate, perhaps for the first time, what a creative impulse to preaching the Franciscan family—men and women—brought to the service of the Gospel. We see how ordinary Christian people experienced the impulse to unfold the work of God in Christian life, and we see the intrinsic ambivalence of the Franciscan tradition in working out its relationship to the role of clerical preaching in the hierarchical Church. This is rich fare, indeed, and we are invited to enjoy the feast prepared by scholarship and creative, critical thought. Vincent Cushing, O.F.M., S.T.D. President Emeritus Washington Theological Union Feast of Blessed Friar John Duns Scotus November 8, 2007 Washington, DC

CHAPTER ONE GOSPEL PREACHING AND GOSPEL LIFE: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Dominic Monti, O.F.M. Preaching by Word and Deed What do we mean by preaching the Gospel? How did the men and women of the early Franciscan movement relate this activity to their desire to “live according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel”? What are the similarities? What are the differences? As in many such cases, there is a short answer and a longer answer. The short answer seems obvious: for Franciscans, preaching the Gospel and a Gospel way of life are not only similar, but virtually identical. This point is illustrated by a story that is often told about St. Francis: Francis once called one of the brothers and said: “We are going to preach in the city today.” So the brother followed Francis and they walked through the city. It seemed there wasn’t a street they didn’t walk in that town. They greeted people, stopping occasionally to help someone in need, but never took time to actually give a sermon. When they arrived back at their hermitage, the brother said to Francis: “I thought you said we were going to preach in the city today.” Francis replied: “Brother, we have been seen by many people, and our Test 14. All my citations of early Franciscan sources are drawn from the three-volume Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999-2001), hereafter cited as FA:ED with volume number and page. This text is on FA: ED, 1, 125. 

10

Dominic Monti, O.F.M. behavior closely watched. It was thus that we have preached our sermon.”

This story has helped give rise to a popular saying that has been attributed to Francis: “Preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words.” Although as a scholar, I am forced to say that this saying—and even the little story as well!—are inauthentic, they verify the old Italian proverb, si non è vero, è ben trovato: “if it’s not true, it’s still a good story!” For these capture something Francis constantly emphasized, namely, that our lives must be the primary means of bringing the Gospel to people. In fact, it does no good to talk about Jesus’ message if we do not embody it. In a fine brief overview of medieval preaching, John O’Malley reminds us that “the most distinctive characteristic of preaching is that it is a speech-act.” Unlike a written text, which can take up a life of its own independently of the author, the spoken word is inseparably bound to the individual who utters it. Like Marshall McLuhan, Francis knew that “the medium is the message.”

 I give here a version of the story that I have often heard. As explained in the next note, this story does not occur in FA:ED.  This saying seems to have appeared within the last two decades. I have been unable to find any reference to it before that time. It does not occur anywhere in the writings of Francis nor in any of the early sources. In this sense, it is similar to the “Peace Prayer” popularly attributed to St. Francis, but which seems to have originated around 1910. The story about Francis and the brother walking through town is even more commonly circulated. I have heard this story since my earliest days in the Order and always considered it genuine. When preparing this talk, I searched high and low through FA:ED to locate the source, even consulting the three editors of that series for assistance. The four of us were forced to conclude that the story is indeed apocryphal.  For example, ER 17:3: “Let all the brothers preach by their deeds”; 2LtF 51: “We are mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ when we carry Him in our heart and body through love and a pure and sincere conscience; and give him birth through a holy activity, which must shine before others by example.” FA:ED 1, 75, 49.  John W. O’Malley, S. J., “Introduction: Medieval Preaching,” in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. Thomas L. Amos, Eugene A. Green, Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Medieval Institute Publications 27 (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1989), 2.  A point I developed in “Do the Scriptures Make a Difference in Our Lives?” in Franciscans and Scripture: Living the Word of God, Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2005, CFIT/ESC-OFM Series, 5, ed. Elise Saggau (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2006), 1-17.  This famous phrase was coined by McLuhan in his seminal study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 7.

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

11

The Ecclesial/Franciscan Evangelical Mission Several years ago at this symposium, Vincent Cushing, O.F.M., gave a well-crafted presentation: “A Church Evangelical, Catholic and Reformed.” By using the adjective “evangelical,” Cushing wished to emphasize that the Church’s “central message has to be Jesus and the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached.... The Church’s primary mission is to evangelize and serve the world in which we live through the lives of faithful disciples.” Cushing also wished to allude to one of the major historical divisions of Christianity: evangelical Protestantism, to make the point that a vibrant Catholic Church also needs to have an “evangelical” dimension. Historians generally say that the evangelical movement in Protestant Christianity has four characteristics. Two of these are traceable to its Reformation roots, which emphasize 1) the ultimate authority of the Bible as God’s revelation to humanity (sola Scriptura) and 2) salvation through personal faith in the atoning death of Christ (sola fides). But its two other characteristics are shared with the Franciscan tradition as an evangelical movement within the Catholic Church. Both traditions 1) lay stress on a personally-transforming conversion experience that 2) impels the disciple to share that experience with others so the whole world might be transformed by the Gospel. The evangelical tradition in Christianity—whether Protestant or Franciscan—would in fact emphasize that these latter two characteristics are mutually dependent. Attempting to preach or engage in social action without personal conversion is merely a spiritless exercise; on the other hand, experiencing a personal conversion to God without desiring to share that relationship with others is sterile. In a recent letter, the General Minister of the Friars Minor, Jose Rodríguez Carballo, reminds Franciscans: We have been called to evangelise.... We exist for the mission. We, as Friars Minor, who, moved “by divine inspiration” ... have embraced the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as our “Rule and life” ... feel that our mission, like that of Francis, is “to fill the earth with the Gospel of Christ.” Following “the footprints of Our Lord Jesus Christ”, we discover that our mission, our reason for being in the Church and in the world, is Vincent Cushing, “A Church Evangelical, Catholic and Reformed,” in Go Rebuild My House: Franciscans and the Church Today, Washington Theological Union Symposium Papers 2004, CFIT/ESC-OFM Series, 4, ed. Elise Saggau (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2004), 76-77. 

12

Dominic Monti, O.F.M. to live and proclaim the Good News to all human creatures.... Evangelisation is not a mission which we must carry out, but is the mission for which we exist.

If a person truly encounters the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it is a lifetransforming experience that impels that person to preach the Good News to the world.

Preaching as a Distinct and Authorized Ministry Nevertheless, there is a difference—or at least a distinction—between Gospel preaching and a Gospel life, once one begins to specify what the word “preaching” actually means. O. C. Edwards, a long time professor at Seabury Western Theological Seminary, recently completed a truly monumental 880-page history on the topic. Although Edwards is convinced that no activity is more characteristic of the Christian Church than preaching, he reflects the long history of the Church and his own academic discipline when he focuses on the formal act of preaching—the sermon—which he defines as: a speech delivered in a Christian assembly for worship by an authorized person that applies some point of doctrine, usually drawn from a Biblical passage, to the lives of members of the congregation, with the purpose of moving them by the use of narrative analogy and other rhetorical devices to accept that application and to act on the basis of it.10 Here Edwards reflects a more “catholic” understanding of preaching, if you will—one clearly shaped by ecclesial realities. Because it takes place within and for the benefit of the gathered Church, preaching must be shaped by the accepted “doctrine” of that faith community and delivered by a person “authorized” to speak in its name. In this context, not every person who lives according to the Gospel can claim the competency to preach the Gospel. Early Franciscans may have been an evangelical movement, but they were also committed to the Catholic Church, and that reality soon affected their understanding and practice of Gospel preaching. Preaching—at least in the technical sense as Edwards defines it—swiftly became an activity in which only With Clarity and Audacity, a report delivered to the Extraordinary General Chapter, 2006 (Rome: OFM Communications Office, 2006), 103-04. 10 O. C. Edwards, A History of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), 3-4. 

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

13

some Franciscans were engaged. And as we will later see in this symposium, that development risked making preaching a professional activity rather than a vital expression of one’s personal conversion to the Gospel. That is the short answer to the questions posed above. In the remainder of this paper, I will explore in more detail the similarities and differences between Gospel life and Gospel preaching in a way that might help set the stage for the papers that will follow. First I would like to examine the forces that shaped the Catholic understanding of preaching at the beginning of the Franciscan movement. Then I will look at how the men and women of that movement understood the relationship between their desire to lead a Gospel life and the Church’s mission of preaching the Gospel.

Preaching during the First Millennium From its very beginning, the Christian faith-community believed that God’s Word was being addressed to them in their current situation. However, during the first decades of the Church’s life, the individuals who preached that saving Word were not so much formally “authorized” by the Church itself—as implied in Edward’s definition—but rather directly commissioned by God. Their authorization was a charismatic one. As Paul relates in the Letter to the Ephesians (4:7, 11-12): Each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.... The gifts that he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Biblical scholars tell us that the Christians who held the first three of these roles—the apostles, evangelists and prophets—were viewed in a special way as the bearers of God’s Word. They possessed a charismatic authority. Unlike the pastors or community leaders—the incipient bishops and presbyters—they were not selected by the local community, but by the unmerited, gratuitous working of the Holy Spirit. For example, Paul was convinced that he himself had been “called to be an apostle and set apart for the Gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1), not through any “human commission or human authority” (Gal. 1:1), but

14

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

by “the will of God” (1 Cor. 1:1). The undeserved divine commission by the Risen Christ with which he was entrusted placed an “obligation” on him to preach the Gospel, one that he could not shirk (1 Cor. 9:16-17). The authority of his proclamation lay not in his own “persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2: 4-5). His hearers could attest that he was indeed “a servant of Christ” because of his unstinting labor and his integrity, “going about hungry and thirsty ... blessing when ridiculed, enduring when persecuted, responding gently when slandered” (1 Cor. 4:4, 1113). Indeed, ultimately Paul’s words had force because people could see that he had “been crucified with Christ,” so that it was “no longer he who lived, but it was Christ who lived in him” (cf. Gal. 2:19-20). In fact, in a recent study, Alistair Stewart-Sykes advances the thesis that during the first decades of the early Christian movement there was little if any formal preaching as Edwards defines it—that is, a sermon on the basis of a proclaimed biblical text.11 Rather, in the small house churches, gathered around the Eucharistic table, men and women gifted with the spirit of prophecy spontaneously voiced God’s message to the community. As Paul describes this dynamic in the First Letter to the Corinthians: “Those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.... So let two or three prophets speak and the others discern.... For you can all prophesy one by one, so all may learn and be encouraged” (1 Cor. 14:3, 29-31). Freedom to speak out was encouraged, but with a number of individuals voicing what they believed was God’s message, there was need for discernment. As Paul admonished the Church in Thessalonica: “Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances, but test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:19-20). A good part of the discernment focused on the would-be prophet’s life. Did he or she embody the Gospel of Jesus? The author of the early community manual called the Didache warns: “Not everyone making ecstatic utterances is a prophet, but only if he behaves like the Lord.”12 Hermas, a second-century prophet in the Church of Rome, spells this out in greater detail: “How, Sir,” I said, “is anyone supposed to know which of them is a prophet and which a false prophet?” “Listen,” he said, “about both of the prophets, and what I am about to tell Alistair Stewart-Sykes, From Prophecy to Preaching: A Search for the Origins of the Christian Homily (Leiden: Brill, 2001). 12 Didache, 11.8, from Early Christian Fathers, ed. Cyril Richardson, Library of Christian Classics 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 176-77. 11

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

15

ou is how you will discern the one who has the spirit of God by the way of life. First, the one who has the spirit from above is meek and tranquil and humble, and refrains from every evil and mad desire of this world, and makes oneself poorer than everyone else ...”13 But as the Church entered its second century, this picture of spontaneous sharing of the Word began to change. Too many voices claimed to be speaking in God’s name. Faced with many competing sects—Gnostic teachers like Basilides and Valentinus, Marcion’s radical rejection of the Jewish foundations of the movement, and the extreme apocalyptic “new prophecy” of the Montanists—many Christian communities rallied to maintain what was becoming known as the “Catholic” consensus.14 Two developments here were decisive for the future of Gospel preaching. First, the Catholic churches came to agree on a canon of apostolic writings they accepted as inspired by God and therefore authoritative. The reading of these written Scriptures in the assembly came to replace the living voice of God in the prophets. Second, the local community leaders, the bishops, came to exert control over the smaller house churches. The bishop, elected by consensus of the entire local community, was perceived as safe-guarding and proclaiming the authentic doctrine that had been handed on to the community.15 By the middle of the second century, when Catholic Christians gathered to pray, they first heard the proclamation of God’s Word in Scripture. Then the ordained leader of the Church interpreted that message and applied it to their current situation.16 Preaching became by definition, Hermas, The Shepherd, Mandate 11.7-8, in Shepherd of Hermas, edited by Helmut Koester, Commentary by Carolyn Osiek (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 139. 14 For an overview, see the classic study of Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 68-120. A good recent popular treatment is L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 407-58. 15 See J. L. Ash, “The Decline of Ecstatic Prophecy in the Early Church,” Theological Studies 37 (1976): 227-52. Stewart-Sykes gives the name “scholasticization” to this “process by which the loose organization of the communication of the Word of God in the earliest households through prophecy was replaced by systematic communication through the reading and interpretation of Scripture.” Through this process the “dialogue” of the sharing of prophetic insights was replaced by the “monologue” of the bishop’s sermon (pp. 27179). 16 Evident in Justin Martyr’s description of the Roman liturgy about the year 150: “On the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those 13

16

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

therefore, the role of the local bishop and of those others, especially presbyters of the Church, to whom he might delegate this task. I should emphasize here that if preaching came to be closely identified with the office of the bishop, this did not mean that other people could not preach. The issue at stake was not primarily one of ordination, but of proper delegation. Thus Origen, a layman, was invited about the year 230 to expound the Scriptures in the presence of the assembled bishops of Palestine, much to the consternation of Demetrius, his own bishop in Alexandria. The Palestinian bishops defended their invitation in these words: He (Demetrius) included in his letter a statement that it was an unheard-of, unprecedented thing that where bishops were present laymen should preach—a statement that is glaringly untrue. In cases where persons are found duly qualified to assist the clergy, they are called on by the holy bishops to preach to the laity.17 But there is no doubt that preaching was more and more identified as a priestly role. In 453, Pope Leo the Great voiced the classic expression of this emerging Catholic consensus with regard to preaching. With strong words, he urged Maximus, Patriarch of Antioch, to restrain unordained persons from public preaching: Apart from those who are the Lord’s priests, no one may dare to claim for himself the right to teach or preach, whether he be monk or layman, because he boasts a reputation for some learning. For although it is desirable that all the Church’s children be learned in what is right and sound, no one outside the priestly order is to be allowed to assume for himself the office of preacher. For it is necessary that all things be in order in God’s Church; that is, in the one body of Christ, the superior

who live in the city or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites us to the imitation of these noble things.” First Apology 67, in Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, 287. 17 Eusebius, The History of the Church, 6.19.18, trans. G.A. Williamson, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 197. There is also a reference to lay preaching in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions. Cf. Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace (New York: Continuum Press, 1997), 150.

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

17

members are to carry out their office, and the inferior members are not to resist the superior ones.18 Although Leo’s dictum has generally been viewed as definitively barring the door to preaching by non-ordained persons, careful scholars have pointed out that the Pope’s objections seemed to be directed against ordinary monks and laypeople claiming a right to preach. Thus, the possibility of their being commissioned to do so by competent authority still remained a possibility. Indeed, there are hints of a few instances of lay preaching in the centuries following Leo’s letter.19 But clearly, by the late patristic period, preaching had become almost entirely a clerical preserve.

Medieval Church Reform and the Revival of Lay Preaching However, during the central Middle Ages from the eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, an extraordinarily vibrant and complex era of Christian history, lay preaching once again became a burning issue.20 The eleventh century was marked by a widespread call for reform in the Church. This was something new. During the first Christian millennium the call to reform, echoing Jesus’ own preaching, was directed toward personal moral conversion. Now it was increasingly directed toward the community itself. A rising chorus of voices called for the re-formation of the values and institutional structures of Christian society because the form or pattern of the primitive Church had become de-formed. The reformers of the eleventh century thus challenged Christians to return to the way of life of the pristine “apostolic church.”21 Confronting the corruption rampant among the clergy of Leo, Epistle 119 c.6 (PL 54:1045c-1046a), in St. Leo the Great, Letters, FC 34, trans. Edmund Hunt (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957), 207-08. 19 See William Skudlarek, “Assertion without Knowledge? The Lay Preaching Controversy of the High Middle Ages” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1976), 49-50; Patrick F. Norris, “Lay Preaching and Canon Law: Who May Give a Homily?” Studia Canonica 24 (1990), 444. 20 The best general study of this topic remains Skudlarek, “Assertion without Knowledge?” 21 See the classic essays by M.-D. Chenu, “Monks, Canons, and Laymen in Search of the Apostolic Life” and “The Evangelical Awakening,” in Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 202-69; Gerhard B. Ladner, “Terms and Ideals of Reform,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Cen18

18

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

the day, their particular goal was for clergy to adopt the life-style of the primitive Jerusalem community (Acts 4), sharing prayer, lodging and possessions. Although the resulting Gregorian or papal reform movement has been rightly viewed as driving a wedge between the clergy and the laity and promoting centralized papal leadership within the Western Church,22 it paradoxically unleashed among the laity a revived sense of their dignity and mission as believers. Earlier medieval Christians had tended to view their faith as a “given,” not so much as a response of the individual or the community to the proclaimed Word of God. “Faith was seen as more of a possession than a vocation”; it was embodied in the traditional rituals and practices of Christendom.23 Now the call of reformers to return to the practices of the “apostolic church” demanded a personal response from all individuals—whatever their status in life—and from the Christian community as a whole. Ironically, reform popes like Gregory VII even called upon committed laity to challenge the entrenched habits of local clergy who engaged in such worldly practices as simony and concubinage. He encouraged them to boycott the services of such clergy and even remove them from office in favor of clergy who supported what the Papacy viewed as the more “apostolic” model of common ownership of goods and clerical celibacy. A striking example of this was the papal envoy Peter Damian (+1072), who did not hesitate to support the renegade Patarine movement in Milan. This was a kind of medieval “Voice of the Faithful” based among the common people and lower clergy that challenged the authority of their own bishop and senior clergy. Peter urged these lay people to speak up publicly on the basis that “each Christian, through God’s grace, is a priest, and rightly proclaims his power.”24 Although tury, ed. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 1-33. 22 As summarized by one scholar, “the distinguishing features of the Gregorian Reform were (1) that it derived from Scripture a pattern of life in which the priesthood was set aside from and over the laity in Christian society, and (2) that it taught a form of church unity that was indistinguishable from absolute papal headship. Sacerdotalism and the papal monarchy were guiding principles of the Gregorian movement. In time, they became self-justifying ends.” Karl F. Morrison, “The Gregorian Reform,” in Christian Spirituality I: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff, World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, Vol. 16 (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 177. 23 Skudlarek, 4. 24 Letter to Cynthius (PL 144: 461), cited in Skudlarek, 66-69.

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

19

he conceded that both learning and virtue are necessary qualities in a preacher, he emphasized that a good life is more important than learning. “After all, Christ did not send out philosophers and orators to preach the Gospel, but uneducated people and fishermen.” This fact proved that the power of example is greater than words in leading people to Christ.25 Peter was indeed quite radical in his opinion on the possible recipients of God’s call to preach. Often it happens that those people can engage in preaching with greater results and without hindrance who have received the grace of preaching not through their own efforts but from God. This grace of preaching can be given to simple men or holy women, as is shown by the victory of Samson who armed himself with the jawbone of an ass and slew 1000 Philistines.26 As the century continued, a rapidly developing economy drew more and more country people to the towns of Italy and the river valleys of France, the Low Countries and Germany. The situation became more complex. The new urban environment demanded a more sophisticated type of moral guidance, in which Gospel principles could be made relevant to individuals. In addition, the increasingly literate urban population hungered to approach the Scriptures directly and was drawn to a new affective piety that emphasized direct personal relationship of the individual to God, rather than simply through cultic worship. The existing structures of church ministry were ill-equipped to meet these needs. The typical secular priest was theologically uneducated and thus could hardly instruct the urban laity. In any case, virtually none of these clergy enjoyed permission to preach. The centers of spiritual vitality, the monasteries, were by definition withdrawn from the flux of urban life. In addition, as the new popular classes struggled to gain political power from the aristocracy, they found the institutional Church naturally allied with the old feudal order. For them, the contrast between the wealth and careerism of a largely inadequate clerical establishment and the life of Jesus and his first disciples reflected in the New Testament was all too apparent. Thus, paradoxiDe sancta simplicitate (PL 145:697), in Skudlarek, 69. Collectanea (PL 146:1151-52), in Skudlarek, 71-72. In an interesting note, Gregory IX was to employ this same image of Samson using the jawbone of an ass in his decree, Mira Circa Nos, announcing the canonization of Francis (FA:ED 1, 566). 25 26

20

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

cally, one of the great stimuli of new popular religious movements was precisely the failure of the Church to meet the high standards of Gospel renewal aroused by the Gregorian Reform. In response to this situation, a number of reformers began to proclaim another understanding of the “apostolic life.” It was not simply the holding of possessions in common, but a life more closely mirroring the Gospel image of Jesus and his first disciples. It was a simple, austere life, divorced from feudal wealth and power, in which evangelical preaching occupied a prominent role. The ideal of an individual’s becoming perfect by “following Christ” in total poverty (cf. Mt. 19:21) was coupled with that of sharing in the preaching mission given by Christ to his apostles (cf. Mt. 10). Thus, early in the twelfth century, a number of charismatic hermits emerged, wandering through much of Western Europe, claiming a mandate to preach on the basis of their personal following of Christ. Some of these—Robert of Arbrissel (+1117), Stephen of Muret (+1124) and Norbert of Xanten (+1134)—received papal authorization for their ministry. This was a significant development since, for the first time since the patristic era, the office of preaching was severed from the structures of normal pastoral care (the diocese and the parish).27 But as the expectations of the laity and many clergy went unmet, more radical voices began to emerge. In the words of R. I. Moore: “The more loudly the ideals of the apostolic church were proclaimed, the more vividly its shortcomings were advertised.”28 Renegade clerics like Henry of Lausanne (+ c. 1145) and Arnold of Brescia (+1155) urged an overthrow of the existing hierarchical system.29 But other challenges soon appeared. More and more, there was a tendency among the laity to seek salvation by their own paths, rejecting the mediation of a priesthood whose way of life provoked indignation and disgust. The most radical of these were the Cathars, a loose amalgam of sects that revived the old dualistic heresy of the Manicheans of late antiquity. The Cathars openly espoused dualism, flatly asserting the existence of two wholly separate creations, a spiritual one created by the good God and an intrinsically evil material world produced by Satan. The

27 L’eremitismo in Occidente nei secoli XI e XII. Atti della seconda settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 1962 (Milan: Miscellanea del Centro di studi medioevali 4, 1965); Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism (London, 1984). 28 R. I. Moore, The Origins of European Dissent (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 81. 29 R. I. Moore, 82-136.

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

21

whole of Cathar religious practice was thus directed towards releasing the soul from the body, leading to an extreme form of asceticism. At first glance, it might seem that this dour, rigorist sect might have difficulty attracting followers. However, their preachers, “the Perfect,” appealed to many because their way of life challenged a wealthy and often corrupt Catholic Church. In striking contrast to the Church’s all-too-worldly clergy, Cathar preachers renounced all their possessions and sexual activity, adhering to a strict vegan diet. Their actions showed that they were the true “poor of Christ” who like him had renounced the world. Thus their preaching was compelling.30 Other lay movements, although originally orthodox in doctrine, found themselves outside the pale of the institutional Church. The largest of these were the Waldensians, followers of Valdez, a wealthy merchant of Lyons. In a striking parallel with St. Francis, Valdez, in the early 1170s, renounced all his possessions, giving the proceeds to the poor in order to lead a life of penance. Having commissioned a vernacular translation of the Bible, he immersed himself in the teachings of Jesus and then began to call others to conversion. He and his followers, the “Poor People of Lyons,” wanted no more than to “live according to the pattern of the Gospel.” Again, their preaching had force because people saw them “wandering about two by two, barefooted, clad in woolen garments, possessing nothing, holding all things in common like the apostles, naked following the naked Christ.” Although Valdez and his followers gained approbation for their way of life from Alexander III in 1179, the Pope ordered them not to preach except when requested to do so by the local clergy. However, they ignored this mandate and were therefore excommunicated. As a result, a large portion of the movement was radicalized, developing a theology in which ecclesial authority had to be based on personal holiness.31 The success of movements like the Cathars and Waldensians caused the Catholic Church to tighten the reins on popular preaching, re-emphasizing the authority of the bishops and the need for preachR. I Moore, 139-226; cf. Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Langue­doc in the High Middle Ages (London: Longman, 2000). 31 See Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Interestingly enough the quoted description of their way of life came from an English clergyman, Walter Map, who was not at all impressed by them when he encountered them at the Third Lateran Council in 1179. Walter Map, “On the Waldensians,” in Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 144-46. 30

22

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

ers to be licensed by them. At the synod of Verona in 1184, Pope Lucius III, with the support of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, took strong action to suppress illicit preaching: In the first place, therefore, we lay under a perpetual anathema the Cathars ... and the Poor Men of Lyons; and since some, “possessing the [outward] form of godliness,” but as the Apostle has said, “denying its power” (2 Tim 3:5), have assumed to themselves the office of preaching— though the same Apostle says, “how shall they preach, unless they be sent?” (Rom 10:15)—we include, in the same perpetual anathema, all who shall have presumed to preach, either publicly or privately, either being forbidden, or not sent, or not having the authority of the Apostolic See or of the Catholic bishop of the place.32 Catholic apologists attempted to give a rationale for this harsh official response to the upsurge of popular preaching. Their argument typically contained several elements: 1) that public preaching demanded a canonical mission, 2) that ordinarily such a mission was restricted to the ordained clergy, who 3) had received sufficient theological training. Other preachers fell under the Church’s ban because they lacked these basic requirements. Despite the outward holiness that wandering preachers might possess, they had not been given a mission to preach by the Pope or by a bishop because of their theological ignorance. Since they had not been educated in the true (i.e., Catholic) meaning of Scripture, their preaching only led others into heresy. The Calabrian mystic and abbot, Joachim of Fiore (+1202), writing in the 1180s, summarized this position well: Because of the appearance of pseudo-apostles, it has been decided that no one will be allowed to preach unless he has been made a cleric, that is part of the order of preachers, nor will anyone be admitted to this order who has not been examined.... Moreover, the person who is to be admitted to the clerical state is to receive tonsure so that he may be distinguished from the rest of the faithful.... Rightly (therefore) are the heretics of Lyons condemned for the casual and haphazard way, men and woman alike, lacking instruction, grace and orders, do not so much announce the word of God as adulterate it.33 “Pope Lucius III: The Decretal ab abolendam,” in Peters, 171 (modified). De articulis fidei, trans. Skudlarek, 175-76.

32 33

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

23

Joachim was typical of Catholic apologists in the late twelfth century who were increasingly emphasizing professional theological training—in addition to canonical ordination—as a basic prerequisite for being licensed for the ministry of preaching in the Church. At just about the same time, the Paris theologian, Alan of Lille (+1202), wrote an influential Summa “On the Preachers’ Art,” in which he defined preaching as “an open and public instruction in faith and behavior, whose purpose is the formation of believers; it derives from the path of reason and from the fountainhead of the ‘authorities.’”34 Clearly, this statement—“the first formal definition of preaching in the 1200 year history of the Church” [to that point]35—considered preaching primarily an exercise of the teaching ministry of the Church. Alan went on to say how, as “instruction in faith and behavior,” preaching involved two aspects of theology—“that which appeals to the reason and deals with the knowledge of spiritual matters, and the ethical, which offers teaching on the living of a good life.”36 Preaching must therefore be based on a thorough grounding in both divine “authorities” (biblical texts) and “reason” (systematic theological reflection on God’s revelation). Alan’s colleague at the University of Paris, Peter the Chanter (+1197), described an effective preaching ministry as the culmination of a thorough educational process (much as we would demand the would-be preacher to be first professionally grounded in schools like the Washington Theological Union): The practice of Bible study consists in three things: reading, disputation, preaching.... Reading (of the Biblical text) is, as it were, the foundation and basement for what follows, for through it the rest is achieved. Disputation is the wall in this building of study, for nothing is fully understood or faithfully preached, if it is not first chewed by the tooth of disputation. Preaching, which is supported by the former, is the roof, sheltering the faithful from the heat and wind of temptation. We

Summa de arte praedicatoria (PL 210:111): “Praedicatio est manifesta et publica instructio morum et fidei, informationi hominum deserviens, ex ratione semita, et auctoritatum fonte proveniens,” trans. Gillian Evans in The Company of Preachers: Wisdom in Preaching, ed. Richard Lischer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 4. 35 James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 307. 36 Lischer, 5. 34

24

Dominic Monti, O.F.M. should preach after, not before, the reading of Holy Scripture and the investigation of doubtful matters by disputation.37

Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) received a thorough theological education at the University of Paris and inherited his professors’ views. His writings emphasize that to hold the office of preaching in the Church, a person should possess both uprightness of life and soundness of doctrine. He illustrated this through the image of the “tongues of fire” that came upon the apostles at Pentecost: those who succeed the apostles must also share that two-fold gift of the Spirit: the “tongues,” symbolizing the gift of wisdom necessary to proclaim the Gospel message, and “fire,” symbolizing the gift of love, the inner transformation that motivates the pastor to love his charges rightly for the sake of God.38 Innocent’s theology of preaching was indeed quite sophisticated. He clearly recognized that a preacher’s vocation originated in God’s call and that it was the Holy Spirit who commissioned preachers through the divine gifts of wisdom and right conduct. But Innocent also emphasized that even people who might possess such gifts also needed a visible mission—a public licensing by the Church that enabled them to function as preachers within and for the benefit of the community.39

Authorization of Penitential Preachers This theology explains Innocent’s rather remarkable openness to lay preaching. Although the Pope was quite firm in maintaining the by-now traditional position that lay persons could not presumptuously usurp the office of preaching on their own authority, he also believed that obviously Spirit-led lay people could be entrusted with that role. The most famous example here was his treatment of the Humiliati. This evangelical renewal movement, largely centered among the cloth-workers of Northern Italy, was characterized by the members’ refusal to take oaths and their encouragement of lay preaching at their gatherings. Because they were viewed as a threat to established structures by conservative church leaders, they were included in the ban of the synod of Verona in 1184 mentioned above. However, Innocent Verbum abbreviatum (PL 205:25), trans. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984): 208. 38 PL 217:417 (Skudlarek, 256-57). 39 PL 217:1073 (Skudlarek, 272ff.). 37

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

25

recognized the fundamentally orthodox intentions of the group and, in 1201, gave them full canonical recognition. His approval of the way of life of the lay members of the movement, the “Third Order” who continued to live in their own homes, also recognized their practice of preaching. In fact, Innocent did not simply allow them to preach in their own meetings, but even publicly, if authorized to do so by the local bishop. Indeed, the Pope encouraged bishops to grant them such authority, on the grounds that “one must not stifle the Spirit.” The Pope justified this liberal decree by making a distinction between preaching in the technical sense and “penitential” preaching. The former was preaching as Alan of Lille described it—“teaching about faith and morals,” which required ordination and a theological education. The latter demanded only that the preacher manifest a deeply converted way of life.40 This same distinction would allow Innocent, a few years later, to authorize Francis and his first companions to exercise a ministry of penitential preaching in the Church. There is certainly no doubt that Innocent considered this approval of lay preaching a stop-gap supplementary measure. His long-range goal was that preaching should be done by a reformed and educated clergy, as is evident in the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Canon 10 of that Council recognized the dearth of effective preaching and mandated bishops to commission well-formed men to fill the need: Among the various things that are conducive to the salvation of the Christian people, the nourishment of God’s word is recognized to be especially necessary, since just as the body is fed with material food, so the soul is fed with spiritual food.... Now it often happens that bishops by themselves are not sufficient to minister the Word of God to the people.... We therefore decree by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint suitable men (viros) to carry out with profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are powerful in word and deed and who will visit with care the peoples entrusted to them in place of the bishops, since these by themselves are unable to do it, and will build them up by word and example.41 40 Brenda Bolton, “Innocent III’s Treatment of the Humiliati,” Popular Belief and Practice, ed. G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker, Studies in Church History 8 (Cambridge, 1971): 73-82. For more detail, see Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge: University Press, 1999). 41 Constitution 10, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), Volume I, 239-40.

26

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

This decree clearly reflects Innocent’s emphasis on both “word and deed.” Preachers must have a solid theological education (wisdom) and witness to a life converted to God (love). Indeed, the following decree, Canon 11, directs bishops to take measures to insure adequate facilities for theological education.

Franciscans and the Preaching Ministry Thus, the Church in the early thirteenth century saw revitalized preaching efforts by a reformed and educated clergy as key to the over-all renewal of Christian society. How did the desire of Francis and his brothers to live “according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel” fit into this picture? There is no doubt that being sent to go among people as a herald of the Gospel—preaching in a broad sense—was an integral dimension of Francis’s discovery of an evangelical way of life. As he recalls in his Testament, his conversion process or “life of penance” first began when the Spirit of the Lord led him among the lepers, accepting and turning in compassion toward a group of persons who had been marginalized by Assisi society. Because of this encounter, he came to view his life in an entirely different way and responded by renouncing his property, family and social status, literally “leaving the world” for the margins of Assisi society, devoting himself to a life of prayer and service. But Francis’s vocational path took a clearer direction several years later when “the Lord gave him brothers” and “revealed to him that they should live according to the form of the Holy Gospel.”42 There are two different accounts of this discovery: one in the first Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano, the other in the Anonymous of Perugia, (ultimately based on reminiscences of Brother Giles).43 Let me choose the latter as it probably bears a closer resemblance to what actually happened. The Anonymous reports how two men came to Francis, desiring to join him in a life of penance. Francis, “seeking direction from the Lord,” led them to a church in the town, where they opened up at random a book containing Gospel texts (probably a missal). Each time Canon 3 had reiterated the decree of the synod of Verona outlawing unauthorized preaching (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 234-35). 42 Test 14 (FA:ED, 1, 125). 43 1Cel 22-23; AP 10-11 (FA:ED, 1, 201-02; 2, 37-38).

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

27

they opened the book, they encountered a passage that spoke of the radical renunciation of possessions, power and social status demanded by Jesus if a person wished to follow the self-emptying path marked out by him. This path also included a commitment to continue Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the good news of God’s Kingdom.44 However, this same account goes on to remark that Francis and his brothers “did not yet preach to the people” in any formal sense.45 Rather, they continued to practice the trades they knew, but no longer for profit. Refusing to accept money as wages, they received only their necessities—food, clothing, shelter—which they shared among themselves and with the poor. In this way, with no property to defend and no agenda of material gain, they were free to approach all people as equals in God’s sight, worthy of attention and concern. It was out of this living paradox—working in the midst of a world whose values they rejected—that the early brothers began to encourage their neighbors to likewise “fear and love the Creator of heaven and earth and do penance for their sins.”46 When Francis and his first band of companions journeyed to the Papal Court to obtain approval for their new “religion,” Innocent III authorized Francis to preach penance publicly to the people “as the grace of the Holy Spirit was given him,” as well as any other brothers Francis so delegated.47 Of course, not every friar had received the grace of verbal preaching,48 but each of them had to see his entire life as a living embodiment of the call to Gospel conversion and thus offer a compelling message to others. 44 These three texts were: Mk. 10:21 (Jesus’ advice to the rich young man, “Go sell everything you possess, and give it to the poor, then come and follow me”); Mt. 16:24 (“If anyone wishes to be my disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me”); Lk. 9:3 (Jesus’ mission to his disciples to “proclaim the reign of God ... taking nothing for the journey”). This practice of randomly opening the sacred text to seek the Spirit’s inspiration, the sortes apostolorum, was frowned on by the Church as a superstitious practice, and hence Thomas instead locates God’s guidance to Francis in a Gospel text proclaimed during the Mass by a priest, who subsequently explains the text to him. 45 AP 15 (FA:ED, 2, 40). 46 AP 15 (FA:ED, 2, 40). 47 AP 36 (FA:ED, 2, 51). It is interesting that this early account of Innocent’s verbal approval of the brothers’ way of life also included giving them the tonsure, a sign of their being set apart, as mentioned in Joachim’s stated requirements for authorized preachers (see p. 22 above). 48 For example, this same account does not portray Brother Giles as preaching himself, but simply urging people to listen to Francis’s message: “What he says is very good. Believe him” AP 15 (FA:ED, 2, 40).

28

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

Under the influence of the reform agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council, more and more friars were formally commissioned to engage in the ministry of preaching. In his Rule, Francis urged his brothers to “exercise that trade they have learned,”49 so it is not surprising that, as more educated clerics joined the brotherhood, they wanted to do priestly work. Pope Honorius III, desiring to advance the reform agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council, enthusiastically recommended the new order to bishops, singling out the friars’ vocation to an apostolic life of “sowing the seed of the word of God.”50 Francis’s order was more and more seen as supplying those “suitable men, powerful in word and deed” needed to carry out the Church’s preaching mission. By the time the Rule of the Lesser Brothers was redacted in 1221, it was clear from Chapter 17 that “among the friars a special group was occupied with preaching formally, for which office they had to be approved by their provincial minister according to the guidelines of the Church.”51 Even so, Francis continued to insist that “all the brothers” were to “preach by their deeds.” Furthermore, he re-affirmed that “all my brothers” could engage in simple penitential preaching “whenever it pleases them.”52 In fact, he goes on to give an example of such penitential preaching: “Do penance, performing worthy fruits of penance, because we shall soon die. Give, and it will be given to you. Forgive and you shall be forgiven.... Beware of and abstain from every kind of evil and persevere in good till the end.”53 But, to judge from the final 1223 version of the Rule, the practice of preaching among the friars had become more central and focused in just two years. Of the twelve short chapters, Chapter 9 is entirely devoted to preaching. In his trenchant analysis of this passage, Servus Gieben remarks: “From the first sentence on, it appears that the Order is conscious of its apostolic [preaching] mission.”54 Although the chapter begins by stating that friar preachers must respect the authority of the local bishop, it is clear that the real authorization to preach ER 7:3 (FA:ED, 1, 68). Cum dilecti (1219), FA:ED, 1, 558. For an excellent brief summary of the move to a formal ministry of preaching among the friars, see Servus Gieben, OFMCap., “Preaching in the Franciscan Order (Thirteenth Century),” in Monks, Nuns, and Friars in Mediaeval Society, ed. Edward B. King, Jacqueline T. Schaefer, and William B. Wadley (Sewanee, TN: The University of the South Press, 1989), 1-27. 51 Gieben, 8. 52 ER 17:3; 21:1 (FA:ED, 1, 75, 78). 53 ER 21:3-5, 9 (FA:ED, 1, 75). 54 Gieben, 9. 49 50

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

29

does not come from the bishop. Rather, the preaching of the Gospel is a mission that has been entrusted to the Order itself and delegated to certain friars: “And let none of the brothers dare to preach in any way to the people unless he has been examined and approved by the general minister of this fraternity and the office of preacher has been conferred upon him.”55 With this prescription, Gieben says, preaching has become an official task in the Order.... It is no longer a task which is inherent in the evangelical life of each friar.... [Rather], preaching in the Franciscan Order has adapted itself to the ordinary rules established by the Church for the proclaiming of the Gospel.56 Even with this increasingly pastoral focus, Francis himself continued to remind all of his brothers, “from the first to the last,” of their common vocation to be heralds of the Gospel through their lives, as evident in his Letter to the Entire Order, in which he admonished them: Incline the ear of your heart and obey the voice of the Son of God. Observe His commands with your whole heart and fulfill His counsels with a perfect mind. Give praise to Him because He is good; exalt him by your deeds; for this reason He has sent you into the whole world: that you may bear witness to His voice in word and deed, and bring everyone to know that no one is all-powerful except Him.57 It is interesting to note that, although Francis went on in this letter to give a number of specific instructions to the “brother priests” of the Order, none concerned preaching. Francis clearly emphasized that the fundamental evangelizing mission, i.e., witnessing to the allgood God “in word and deed,” was a task shared in common by all the brothers. Francis affirmed this, even though preaching was then understood by the Church as a “public instruction in faith and morals” and limited to those brothers who had been formally delegated by their minister to preach. Francis’s “life according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel” demanded that his brothers preach the Gospel “in word and deed.” But as his instructions to them illustrate, only those whose lives have been LR 9:2 (FA:ED, 1, 104). Gieben, 10-11. 57 LtOrd 6-9 (FA:ED, 1, 116-17). I have followed the editors and left the pronouns here masculine, as the “He” refers not to God in the abstract, but specifically to Christ. 55 56

30

Dominic Monti, O.F.M.

transformed by the Gospel can truly preach it: “Incline the ear of your heart and obey the voice of the Son of God. Observe His commands with your whole heart and fulfill His counsels with a perfect mind.” Only then could his brothers and sisters “bring everyone to know” about the Gospel. Those who preach the Gospel must first hear it and embody it in their way of life.

Franciscan Preaching Rooted in Gospel Life Franciscan preachers must proclaim the Gospel “in word,” but we must be careful that this is Christ’s word, not our own. Thus in his Earlier Rule, Francis warns that we must “guard ourselves from the wisdom of this world and the prudence of the flesh. Because the spirit of the flesh very much desires and strives to have the words but cares little for the activity.”58 Preaching for the Franciscan is not simply passing on information, but emanates from a deep, transforming experience of God. As Thomas of Celano relates: Francis wanted ministers of the Word of God to be intent on spiritual study.... For they were heralds chosen by a great king to deliver to people the decrees received from his mouth. For he used to say, “The preacher must first secretly draw in by prayer what he later pours forth in sacred preaching. He must first of all grow warm on the inside ... or he will speak frozen words on the outside....” He had little love for those who would be praised as orators or who speak with elegance rather than feeling.59 Franciscans must also proclaim the Gospel “in deed” by “following in the footsteps” of Christ. Francis was “no deaf hearer of the Gospel,”60 but continually strove to embody the self-emptying of Jesus in his own life. Thus, in the Earlier Rule, Francis reminded the brothers to “strive to follow the humility and poverty of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” This meant that when they “go through the world ... let them not resist evil, but whoever strikes them on one cheek, let them offer the other. Let them give to all who ask of them.” And again, the brothers were “not to engage in disputes and arguments but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake.” It was in this way, as truly Lesser ER 17:10-11 (FA:ED, 1, 75). 2Cel 163 (FA: ED, 2, 352). 60 1Cel 22 (FA:ED, 1, 202). 58 59

Gospel Preaching and Gospel Life

31

Brothers, that all the brothers were to “preach by their deeds.” Any verbal proclamation of the Gospel had to be based on the reality of a life that embodied Jesus’ message of self-emptying love. Thus his early companions were to quote Francis as saying: “A religious is only as good a preacher as his actions show.”62 In conclusion, there is no doubt that preaching the Gospel is an integral part of Francis’s life according to the pattern of the Holy Gospel. On the other hand, he teaches us that only one who has taken that Gospel to heart can engage in authentic Gospel preaching. 61

ER 9:1; 14:1-6; 16:6; 17:3 (FA:ED, 1, 70-75). AC 105 (FA:ED, 2, 210).

61 62

CHAPTER TWO Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel Among the Early Franciscans C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D. State of the Question The clericalization of the Franciscan Order and its impact on the restriction of preaching to educated and ordained friars is generally presented as a sad story, but there is much more to the story that has been overlooked because of our preoccupation with official or doctrinal preaching. In fact, the clericalism of our own time tends to obscure the intent of Francis. Francis wanted his brothers and sisters to preach, but he did not want them to seek preaching privileges in order to be official or doctrinal preachers. In other words, he wanted them to be engaged in penitential preaching, which was open to all Christians. This is clear from both his words and his deeds. By placing the early Franciscans in their historical context, a different subplot begins to emerge—one that has serious implications for contemporary questions about Franciscan identity and about the nature of ministry in the Church. Restriction of the preaching function among the Friars Minor was a microcosm of a general trend to clericalize all preaching within the Church. According to the Assisi Compilation, Francis had foreseen the dangers of the brothers accepting privileges and gave them this warning: You, Lesser Brothers, you do not know the will of God, and will not allow me to convert the whole world as God wills. For

34

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D. I want to convert the prelates first by humility and reverence. Then, when they see your holy life and your reverence for them, they will ask you to preach and to convert the people. These will attract the people to you far better than the privileges you want, which would lead you to pride (AC 20).

This passage makes a distinction that is easy to miss, namely, that Francis was exhorting the brothers to do penitential preaching or preaching with the aim of conversion. The author of the Assisi Compilation wrote his narrative at the time when the Order was taking on privileges related to doctrinal preaching. His concern was to show that if the friars had ecclesiastical privileges, they would feel the need to protect them. Protecting privileges necessarily entails excluding others through claims of superiority, which the Assisi Compilation portrayed as directly contrary to the meaning of minority. In this way, the author indirectly charged the Friars Minor with losing sight of Francis’s admonition that they should “never desire to be above others” (2LtF 47). Francis’s desire that the brothers engage in common, penitential preaching betrays a problem. The laity of the Middle Ages are sometimes portrayed as purely passive members of the Church. Such portraits are so commonplace that Paul Lakeland felt free to state that, beginning in the third century and culminating in the twelfth, the laity were primarily conceived of as a people who lived in a lower state of holiness. Unfortunately, Lakeland does not justify such a sweeping thesis. While he raises this point in order to argue for a more active role for the laity, his rhetoric is likely to have the opposite effect. Bishops think in terms of precedents and of tradition. To the Roman-educated clergyman, Lakeland’s argument suggests that this idea is a part of tradition. Yet any close examination of church history reveals that the laity of the Middle Ages were actively engaged in penitential or popular preaching, which is why Francis saw such activity as consistent with being “lesser.” If the goal is to move the bishops to fulfill their duty to empower people, then theologians and ministers need to employ a differ All of my citations of Francis and the early lives are drawn from Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vols. 1-2, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 1999, 2000). These editions provide a wealth of bibliographic information on critical editions and secondary sources.  Paul Lakeland, The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church (New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2002), 10.

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

35

ent strategy to convert the hearts and to change the minds of these ecclesial leaders. By recovering a historically accurate understanding of penitential preaching and its place in the Church, we can see that the exclusion of those who are not ordained from preaching is a corruption of the tradition. Surprisingly, the arguments that Bonaventure presented to justify the extension of official preaching privileges to the friars also justify the extension of official preaching privileges to appropriately trained lay ministers and religious women. Further, the history of Franciscan preaching, in both its official and penitential forms, casts light on the dynamics that led to the restriction of preaching to the ordained. Three factors helped to create confusion over preaching in the thirteenth century. First, the Fourth Lateran Council’s canon restricting preaching to those who were approved by the local ordinary was ambiguous. It prohibited people from publicly or privately usurping the teaching authority of the bishop and was aimed at those who preach when they have been forbidden to do so. While the context makes it clear that the canon was concerned with official preaching, it failed to address how this was different from popular preaching. Second, most bishops were poorly trained and thus were not aware of the general distinction between preaching ex beneficio (popular preaching) and preaching ex officio (official preaching). Third, corrupt bishops exploited these ambiguities in order to shut down penitential or popular preaching because they recognized that it provided a public platform for reformers to present their critiques. Since preaching in the broad sense could be understood as any public statement of faith aimed at building up the body of Christ, a bishop could use this canon to silence all opposition to his leadership and policies. This leads to the question: “How were the two forms of preaching distinguished?”

Official and Popular Preaching Pope Innocent III had worked out a distinction between doctrinal preaching (articuli Fidei et sacramenta), which was restricted to the  Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 234-35.  Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching, trans. G. R. Evans (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 1: “Preaching is an open and public instruction in faith and behavior, whose purpose is the forming of people; it derives from the path of reason and from the fountainhead of ‘authorities’.” In this case, “authorities” would include scripture and tradition.

36

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

bishop, and preaching by means of exhortation (verbum exhortationis), which was a duty for every Christian. He did so because there were many precedents pointing to the legitimacy of lay people and monks preaching. When it came to missionary work, the Church had commissioned men and women who were not ordained to do both types of preaching. Further, he knew that the Waldensians, a lay movement, had been approved to preach. Of course, he was also involved in crafting, at the Fourth Lateran, the ambiguous canon on preaching which condemned the preaching of the Waldensians. Even so, Innocent III did not see the Waldensians as typical of all of the new lay and religious preaching movements. Before we can assess the significance of the restricted material, we must have some idea of what it was. Doctrinal preaching was the official public teaching of the bishop or his delegates on matters pertaining to the faith and sacraments. While the homily was a type of doctrinal sermon, because it had an exegetical component that explains doctrinal matters of faith and morals, it was not the only type of official or doctrinal preaching. For most people living in France or Italy during the early thirteenth century, doctrinal preaching would have been much more associated with large public events in the squares of the new towns than with hearing homilies. While there were exceptions, such as the diocese of Paris during Bishop Maurice of Sully’s tenure (1160-1196), most Sunday liturgies would not include a homily. The vast majority of priests had no preaching role. Popular texts on priesthood made this quite clear. The Stella clericorum, for example, portrays priestly duties in terms of cultic sacrifices and tends to refer the idea of priestly preaching to the bishop.   Marie Anne Mayeski, “New Voices in the Tradition: Medieval Hagiography Revisited,” Theological Studies, 63 (December 2002): 690-710.  See M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 260-61; Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, vol. 3, The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 7-8.  Ernest W. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With a Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1954), 26. McDonnell cites C. A. Robson, Maurice of Sully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily with the Text of Maurice’s French Homilies from a Sens Cathedral Chapter Ms. (Oxford, 1952). See also Bert Roest, “Female Preaching in the Late Medieval Franciscan Tradition,” Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 126.  The only edition that has been printed since the sixteenth century is Stella clericorum, ed. Eric H. Reiter (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute for Medieval

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

37

When bishops or priests were presenting doctrinal sermons, they would present the meaning of liturgical matters such as feast days, teach basic Christology, or explain the nature of the sacraments. Since explaining the sacraments included reconciliation, it entailed moral teachings on topics such as the nature of sin and culpability or the relationship between grace and free will. In effect, the areas of preaching reserved to bishops and their representatives were essentially catechetical matters. From Augustine, medieval preachers learned that the first objective of preaching was to teach. This included the areas of apologetics, polemics and catechesis. The bishop’s role as teacher meant that he should preach so as to answer questions raised by the readings, warn people of the stakes in spiritual life, instruct the ignorant and win over the hostile. Because the goal of teaching is to be clear, Augustine described it as marked by the calm style. Preaching then presupposed a certain degree of education in theology, which was the reason for restricting official preaching. The other objectives of preaching, according to Augustine, were to delight and to persuade. Whereas the bishops had the exclusive right to teach people about the faith, everyone was seen as having the duty to praise God and to persuade their neighbors to do good and to avoid evil. Thus everyone could engage in Augustine’s second and third moments of Christian preaching. Preaching with the aim of delighting could focus on a wide range of topics because its goal was to concretize the faith through appeals to personal and communal experiences of God’s grace. It used narratives and humor and praised the goodness of God. Augustine described this type of preaching as calling for a moderate style of presentation because it seeks to entertain as it covers material people already know. When a Christian preached this way, he or she sought to instill a sense of joy and wonderment about the faith. This model may seem famil-

Studies, 1997). This is not a critical edition, but is edited from one of the earliest manuscripts.  This material is drawn out of my chapter on Augustine’s approach to preaching in Christian Eloquence: Contemporary Doctrinal Preaching (Chicago, IL: Hillenbrand Books, 2005), 19-39. The critical edition is Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. J. Martin, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, XXXII (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), 1-167. All English citations are from the following edition: Augustine, Teaching Christianity: De doctrina christiana, trans. Edmund Hill, OP, (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1996). Hereafter cited as Teaching Christianity.

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

38

iar because it is essentially the proclamatory model upon which most contemporary homilies are based. The final goal of preaching, persuasion, was perhaps the most expansive in terms of its content. It included any effort to persuade others to do something concrete. It encouraged people to give alms to the poor, exhorted warring factions to follow the path of peace, urged believers to participate in the sacraments and warned sinners to abandon injustice. Augustine and his heirs understood this goal in terms of exhortation and admonition, which are the primary aspects of penitential preaching. Exhortation and admonition need to be distinguished from accusation and denunciation. An exhortation is a way of encouraging someone to do something difficult. It is the way that coaches push their athletes to work harder or the way that good teachers challenge their students. St. Paul used exhortation when he wrote: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it” (1 Cor. 9:24). Admonition is a form of warning. Christ warned people that they should repent and that they should be vigilant because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. But this type of warning is not the same thing as the judgments he pronounced concerning the scribes and the Pharisees. The nature of penitential preaching demanded what Augustine called the grand style, which he described as “the impetuous expression of very deep feelings.”10 Because of its power, Augustine advised preachers to be very brief when employing this style. Various fragments of sermons by early Franciscans reveal how adept they were at using the grand style to call people to a sense of penance. Presenting themselves as penitents exhorting and admonishing others to embrace the sacraments provided the early Franciscans with quasi-legal status in the early thirteenth century.

Sources For Justifying Franciscan Preaching Francis and his clerical supporters needed to find traditional sources in order to justify to skeptical clergymen the Franciscan form of life and penitential preaching ministry. Many of these skeptics were already feeling threatened by the proliferation of new orders and by wandering preachers who followed the model of apostolic life. Of course, their fears were reinforced by the fact that a large number of Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 4.40.42.

10

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

39

wandering preachers were perennial sources of trouble. Some groups were heretical, others denounced the clergy publicly and still others sparked pogroms against the Jews. The ferment that generated a return to the model of apostolic life produced a heady brew, but a brew that had quite a bit of detritus as well.11 The Franciscans resembled two groups of wandering preachers that had become a problem for the Church—the Cathars and the Waldensians. The Cathars promoted a dualistic religion that competed with the Church and sent out missionary pairs dressed in simple habits. Like the Franciscans, they frequently began their sermons by publicly reading the Lord’s Prayer. The Waldensians were Christians, but they denied the necessity of the sacraments and tended to attack the lives of the local clergy. They also dressed in simple habits, professed lives of poverty and sent out preachers in pairs. One thing that distinguished Franciscans from their more problematic contemporaries was their identity as penitents. Framing the identity of the order in terms of penance made Francis’s intention of being obedient to the Church absolutely clear to his contemporaries. By its very nature, penance denotes submission to the sacramental authority of the Church. This was precisely the message the Church needed to promote as it struggled against the Cathars. Just as the Cathars had men and women preachers, Francis’s earliest efforts included men and women working together as preachers of penance. Jacques de Vitry, who is one of our earliest independent witnesses to Franciscan ministry, reported that both the men and women were preaching. Unfortunately, there is little literary evidence attesting to the content of their sermons. Jacques de Vitry’s reaction was one of admiration.12 Like many of the most prominent churchmen of his day, he supported the new lay movements following the apostolic form of life because of his experience of the Beguines in France and Belgium. Jacques de Vitry had studied in Paris with the best theologians in medieval Europe. The Parisian schools had been heavily influenced by the theology of Hugh of St. Victor, who had strongly supported The classic study on the various movements is still R. I. Moore, The Origins of Medieval Dissent (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1994). There are two earlier editions available, but the 1977 edition by Allen Lane was corrected in the 1985 edition by Basil Blackwell Ltd. 12 There is a translation in Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. and trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 245-46. The critical edition is Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, ed. R. B. C. Huygens (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), 75-76. 11

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

40

preaching by the laity in the first half of the twelfth century.13 This idea was preserved by Peter the Chanter in the second half of the century at the Paris Cathedral school. He advocated the patristic belief that any Christian who is inspired to speak by the Holy Spirit can do so without official permission. He wrote: Where did Paul get his preaching certificate? He started to preach right after his conversion. That convinces me that each Christian can preach if he sees his brother in error. Not in the church, unless the local bishop or the local priest has granted him permission. But otherwise it is enough to be guided by the Holy Spirit, even if one is not licensed by a human or by any ecclesial authority. It has been said that no one should preach without being ordered to do so by man. But should I not give alms to a poor person even if I am not commissioned to do so by the church? Preaching is very similar: it is a work of charity, and thus the Gospel itself was preached to many without any commission.14 If any Christian can preach when he or she sees someone sinning, then any Christian can speak out against clerical sins from pride and greed to fornication and simony. The only restriction Peter the Chanter placed on preaching was in the liturgical context. Even here, Peter allows that any Christian could preach a homily if commissioned to do so. The idea of a universal Christian duty to preach by means of exhortation and admonition can be traced back to the theology of Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory’s third homily in his Forty Gospel Homilies, which was a primary sourcebook for training ordained preachers, described St. Felicity preaching.15 He concluded by urging all Christians to become mothers of Christ through their preaching. In the sixth homily, Gregory described how all Christians can, after receiving divine inspiration, preach a holy message to those who need to be recalled

McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, 34. As cited by Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 126. (This published translation and the one in footnote 16 do not use inclusive language. The original Latin is more inclusive.) 15 Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. Dom David Hurst (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990), p.6. The critical edition is Gregorius Magnus, Homiliae in Evangelia, ed. and trans. Raymond Étaix, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), p. 21. 13 14

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

41

from sin, to those who need to hear about the eternal kingdom and to those who need to be encouraged to do good.16 Since the better educated clergy of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries were familiar with these homilies, in fact were taught to imitate them, they generally supported popular preaching by men and women in the lay state. Jacques de Vitry incorporated into his own sermons many preaching strategies and techniques he learned from Mary of Oignies. Since his early career was spent exhorting people to confess, to embrace Christian life, or to take up the Cross, the preaching that had made him famous was not official, doctrinal preaching.17 Due to his fame, clergymen requested that de Vitry explain his technique. He wrote that it consisted in citing scripture and providing examples (exempla) that would make the text concrete. He gave this advice to the clergy: Rough preaching converts more lay people than the elaborate sword of a subtle sermon. Leaving behind affected and polished speech, one ought to turn the mind to the edification of simple people and the education of peasants to whom he must present again and again the tangible and concrete which they know from experience.18 His use of exempla included his own religious experiences, personal knowledge of holy people like Mary of Oignies, events, folklore, beast fables and lives of the saints. All of these elements were aspects of preaching ex beneficio, because they have no direct bearing on doctrinal matters. 16 Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, p. 32: “No one should say, I am unable to give counsel, I am not qualified to encourage anyone. Do as much as you can, lest you be tormented for having badly kept what you have received. He who was given only one talent was more eager to hide it than to distribute it (Mt 25:18). We know that in God’s tabernacle not only bowls, but ladles too, were made at the Lord’s bidding (Ex 37:16). The bowls signify a more than sufficient teaching, the ladles a small and limited knowledge. One full of true teaching fills the minds of his hearers and in this way provides a bowl by what he says; another cannot expound what he perceives, but because he proclaims it as best as he can he truly offers a ladleful to taste. You who are in God’s tabernacle, in his holy Church, if you cannot fill bowls with the wisdom of your teaching, give to your neighbors ladles filled with a good word, as much as you can from the divine bounty. Draw others as far as you consider you have advanced; desire to have comrades on your way toward God.” 17 McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, 28. 18 Translation cited from McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, 29. I adjusted his translation slightly to make it conform to current standards.

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

42

Whereas Jacques de Vitry was clear that he had learned his techniques from a laywoman, the clergy who took his advice soon forgot about Mary’s role. Their source was a man they knew as an important bishop. Within a generation, many priests and bishops began to associate these forms of preaching with clerical privileges. The Friars Minor paralleled and fed into this unfortunate development as they became clericalized. However, my concern is to establish what Franciscan preaching was like before this corruption set in so firmly among the Friars Minor and to show how their work to extend preaching rights might be applied today. To do so, we must begin with the founder and the first generation of Franciscan brothers and sisters.

Early Franciscan Preaching The best way to get an idea of the nature of early Franciscan preaching is by studying the early lives of Francis. While the material was redacted to address the issues facing the brotherhood after the death of Francis, these early accounts preserve fragments of his sermons.19 Further, many of the stories about Francis were intended to be used as sources for Franciscan sermons. As exempla, they provide evidence of what could be communicated without resorting to official preaching. The picture that emerges as we examine these stories is that, in addition to being inspired by the Holy Spirit, Francis and some of his early disciples had a developed sense of rhetoric.20 While contemporary scholarship frequently describes penitential preaching as either simple or restricted, Francis and his early disciples were able to apply it to a host of social and religious issues. Michael Cusato describes penance as “nothing more—but nothing less—than to live in Truth, not as the world teaches it but as it is revealed by Christ in the Gospel.”21 If we can accept this definition of penance, then preaching penance is nothing more and nothing less than preaching the Gospel. It is Christ’s own preaching: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). The call to love our neighbors as Michael F. Cusato, “Hermitage or Marketplace? The Search for an Authentic Franciscan Locus in the World,” Spirit and Life: A Journal of Contemporary Franciscanism, 10 (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2000): 14. 20 Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210-1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 273-74. Roest pointed out Francis’s use of the rhetorical principles and methods of Italian civic leaders. 21 Cusato, “Hermitage or Marketplace?” 11. 19

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

43

ourselves, to replace our hard hearts with hearts of flesh and to serve personally those who suffer from the oppression of sin should not be lightly disregarded.22 The early lives of Francis make it clear that his penitential preaching rested on the foundation of the fear of the Lord. The Anonymous of Perugia, written around 1240, described his preaching this way: “Filling him with His Holy Spirit, He put into his mouth the words of life that he might preach and announce to the people judgment and mercy, punishment and glory, and to recall to their minds the commandments of God they had forgotten” (2:8). The fear of the Lord justified Francis’s preaching because it is a gift of the Holy Spirit and thus provided a charismatic legitimization for his ministry. His focus on the fear of the Lord, understood in terms of judgment, gave birth to both the desire and the mission “to work for the salvation of many” (AC 4:18). The fear of the Lord had long been used by reformers to justify their activities and their ministry. Fear of the Lord dissolves all other fears. So when figures like Peter Damian or Bernard of Clairvaux spoke out against their superiors, they claimed that they had to speak out for fear that they would be condemned by God if they did not. Fear of the Lord provided them with a disarming rhetoric, because it allowed them to present their admonitions and exhortations in terms of their desire to save their audiences. At the same time, fear of the Lord prevented them from subordinating the mission of salvation in order to promote their personal agendas.23 Perhaps the most important effect of the fear of the Lord is that it heals those who have suffered by the hands of their neighbors. For those who have been oppressed and abused by their wicked neighbors, God’s justice is a consolation. It is trusting in God’s justice that allows people, over time, to let go of anger and pain. Fear of the Lord engenders a deep appreciation of humanity’s accountability before God. It leads people to imitate Christ by weeping over the sins of those who hurt them. The core of early Franciscan ministry was the recogniSee Bert Roest, “Female Preaching in the Late Medieval Franciscan Tradition,” Franciscan Studies 62 (2004): 126. Writing about lay preaching, Roest states: “Their only venues to express religious engagement were pious behaviour and exhortatio: the simple call for repentance and the admonitioning of fellow believers to adhere to the Christian virtues and the articles of faith.” Though I disagree with Roest as to the significance of popular preaching, this is an excellent article. 23 For more information, see C. Colt Anderson, The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007). 22

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

44

tion that divine justice teaches us that we must urgently attempt to save those who have sinned against us. This is how we learn to obey the injunction of both the Rule and the Gospel to love our enemies and to do good to those who have harmed us (LR 11:10). Francis founded an order with the mission of penitential preaching, but he also understood the importance of presenting penance in a positive and even joyful manner. The early brothers were described as rejoicing in poverty and in the Lord as they preached their message to fear and to love the Creator (L3C 10:37 and 11:45). According to The Legend of the Three Companions, the friars were able to rejoice because they did not have “within themselves nor among themselves anything that could make them sad” (11:46). In preparing to preach the way of salvation, the early Franciscans believed it was important to dedicate themselves most of all to prayer and thanksgiving.24 The technique of beginning penitential sermons by announcing peace was a way to draw out the delightful aspects of penance. Peace, which most people see as desirable, is the fruit of penance and reconciliation. Thus the friars were impelled to model such peacefulness in both word and deed (L3C 10:36). Preaching to the brothers, Francis gave this advice: As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that greater peace is in your hearts. Let no one be provoked to anger or scandal through you, but may everyone be drawn to peace, kindness, and harmony through your gentleness. For we have been called to this: to heal the wounded, bind up the broken, and recall the erring. In fact, many who seem to us to be members of the devil will yet be disciples of Christ (L3C 14:58). From the perspective of the early community, concentrating on the importance of peace was a way to prevent them from forgetting about mercy and gentleness when they called people to repent. The stories about Francis’s preaching show how he used these popular preaching techniques, but he also preached through symbolic acts (such as being dragged through town as his friars insulted him), through songs (such as the Canticle of Creatures) and through prayers. As the Assisi Compilation tells us, Francis added verses to his Canticle and sent friars to sing or recite them for different rhetorical purposes such as restoring relations between the mayor and the bishop of As-

See L3C 13:55.

24

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

45

sisi or consoling Clare and her sisters.25 This was an effective way to preach, because the medium allowed the message to be repeated and disseminated widely. For a modern example, compare how many people are able to sing along with a song like “Blowing in the Wind” to the number of people who recall even an excellent homily a month after hearing it. The use of prayer for admonition or correction is probably still a common experience for those who live within a religious community. The Assisi Compilation gives us a wonderful picture of the way Franciscans used prayer to preach: As blessed Francis got up, he joined his hands and, lifting his eyes to heaven, said: “Lord, I give back to You the family which until now You have entrusted to me. Now, sweetest Lord, because of my infirmities, which You know, I can no longer take care of them and I entrust them to the ministers. If any brother should perish because of their negligence, or example, or even harsh correction, let them be bound to render an account for it before You, Lord, on the day of judgment” (AC 39). In this case, Francis slightly softened his admonition by giving it the indirect form of a prayer that commends its hearers to the Lord. Of course, Franciscans employed more direct means of preaching as well. One of the earliest stories of Francis presenting a sermon in what Augustine called the grand style demonstrates the persuasive nature of penitential preaching. When the brothers failed to follow Francis’s example of begging for alms, he gave this brief sermon: My dearest brothers and sons, don’t be ashamed to go for alms, because the Lord for our sake made Himself poor in this world. Therefore, because of His example, we have chosen the way of the most genuine poverty and that of His most holy Mother. This is our inheritance, which the Lord Jesus Christ acquired and bequeathed to us and to all who want to live in holy poverty according to His example.... I tell you the truth: many of the noblest and wisest of the world will come to this congregation and they will consider it a great honor to go for alms. Therefore, go for alms confidently with joyful hearts with the blessing of the Lord God. And you ought to go begging more willingly and with more joyful hearts than someone who is offering a hundred silver pieces in exchange The story can be found in AC 84.

25

46

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D. for a single penny, since you are offering the love of God to those from whom you seek alms. Say to them: “Give alms to us for the love of the Lord God: compared to this, heaven and earth are nothing ” (AC 51).

This exhortatory sermon is wonderfully balanced in its rhetoric. Recognizing the problem to be one of vanity, Francis adapted his words to the condition of his hearers. He associated their poverty with that of Christ and the Virgin; but Francis saw that the friars were more concerned with the opinions of contemporary people, so he assured them that the people who were honored by the world would soon join their company. Further, he reached out to delight them by pairing the idea of the inheritance of Christ with poverty and to amuse them with the comical image of a man offering a hundred pieces of silver for a penny. In this way, the sermon aimed to instill a sense of confidence in Francis’s disciples. Penitential preaching was also a useful tool for addressing political and social concerns. The Assisi Compilation gives us this account of Francis speaking as a prophet to the knights of Perugia: The Lord has exalted and elevated you above all your neighbors.... Because of this, you must acknowledge your Creator all the more, and humble yourselves not only before almighty God but also before your neighbors. But your heart is puffed up by arrogance in your pride and your might. You attack your neighbors and kill many of them. Because of this I tell you, unless you quickly turn to Him and compensate those whom you have injured, the Lord, who leaves nothing unavenged, to your greater punishment and disgrace, will cause you to rise up against each other. You will be torn apart by sedition and civil war, suffering by a far greater calamity than your neighbors could ever inflict upon you (AC 75). In this case, Francis was unable to convince the knights to change their behavior. According to the legend, a civil war broke out as a result of the knights’ failure to heed Francis’s warning. This short sermon demonstrates how easily popular preaching extended into civil affairs, and the entire story was almost certainly used by friars who were preaching peace in the context of violence. Whereas a spirit of prophecy could be the source of a sermon, so could dreams and visions. Francis recounted his dreams and visions in his preaching, but the dreams and religious experiences of other Franciscans were used in sermons as well. Brother Pacifico’s vision

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

47

about Francis was a classic source for Franciscan preachers even after the Order moved into doctrinal preaching. The story was that Brother Pacifico had a vision that Francis was going to be given the throne that Lucifer gave up when he fell. After the vision, he asked Francis for a self-evaluation, to which Francis responded: “It seems to me that I am the greatest sinner in the world.” Immediately following Francis’s response, another revelation was given to Brother Pacifico’s heart: “In this you can know that the vision you saw is true. For as Lucifer was cast down from that throne because of his pride, so blessed Francis will merit to be exalted and to sit on it because of his humility” (AC 65). These early accounts of Franciscan preaching demonstrate that penitential preaching was powerful and effective. The Franciscans and the other groups inspired by the vita apostolica, such as the Beguines, were so successful at preaching that they generated a reaction from the diocesan clergy and the older monastic communities. Gautier de Coincy (1177-1236), for example, was outraged by the spirituality and preaching of lay groups. He described popular claims to inspiration as the cloak of subterfuge and hypocrisy. According to Ernest McDonnell, the friars particularly provoked the French bishops, who had shifted their understanding of priesthood from that of a ministry of service to that of jurisdiction (iurisdictio) and power (potestas). The French clergy had bound up their claims to power with their teaching or preaching functions in a way that made the friars and other nonordained and non-diocesan preachers a threat to their position in the world.26 Opposition to popular preaching was one of the forces that drove the clericalization of the Friars Minor and, to some extent, the enclosure of the Poor Clares. Even though the friars were transforming into an order of priests, they still had to justify their preaching as priests. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century, many friars continued to support popular lay preaching, especially Third Order women such as Douceline of Digne (1214-1274), Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297) and Angela of Foligno (ca. 1248-1309). However, other friars, such as Guibert of Tornai, a Franciscan master at Paris, attacked women who read vernacular Bibles and who discussed their faith publicly.27 Over the subsequent three hundred years, the tide shifted in favor of those McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, 457. See Simons, Cities of Ladies, 125. The best Latin edition is Gilbert of Tournai, “Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae,” Nova editio. Ed. Autbertus Stroick in AFH 24 (1931): 33-62. 26 27

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

48

who sought to marginalize the voices of the laity. This process culminated in the Counter-Reformation policies established by Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), who as a priest had been inspired to become a Theatine by the lay preaching and activities of Oratories of Divine Love. Understanding the penitential preaching of the early Franciscans gives us a model and a precedent for empowering the laity to take up the role of evangelization and reform today. But the friars’ defense of their mission to do official or doctrinal preaching may also point the way forward on the question as to whether lay ministers could preach homilies on a regular basis. Arguments that justified extending official preaching privileges to the Friars Minor rested on two foundations: the moral principle of utility and the legal concept of commission. Bonaventure, the most significant apologist for the friars’ mission to preach, used the notion of hierarchy to show that the pope and the bishops can delegate or commission people to preach officially.

Bonaventure’s Defense of Mendicant Preaching At the core of Bonaventure’s arguments for extending preaching privileges to the friars was his awareness of the urgency of the mission of the Church to save souls. The Fourth Lateran Council had reinforced this idea in its opening canon, which made it clear that the purpose of the Church was to open the path to salvation that comes through sacramental ministry.28 A great deal of emphasis has been placed on Canon 10, which called for suitable men to preach. But most treatments of this canon tend to overlook the fact that it also wanted these men to hear confessions and to perform other sacramental functions. This obscures the fact that the clericalization of the friars was not primarily related to the task of preaching but to that of hearing confessions, celebrating the sacraments and serving as coadjutors in governance.29 While the friars’ ability to hear confessions and to perform these other Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 230-31. In Bonaventure’s early writings concerning the nature and integrity of the sacrament of holy orders, he did not mention preaching at all. See Bonaventure, Breviloquium, ed. and trans. Dominic Monti, Works of St. Bonaventure IX (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 254-58. However, he certainly saw preaching as integral to holding pastoral office. For Bonaventure, the issue of who can preach had more to do with papal and episcopal jurisdiction than with ordination. The critical edition of Bonaventure’s works is Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, vol. 1-11 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1882-1902). 28 29

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

49

functions required the sacrament of holy orders, the ability to preach simply required a commission to do so. One of the key points of contention in the Mendicant Controversy was whether a lower member of the hierarchy could exercise a prerogative or function of a higher member. In this case, it is important to keep in mind that medieval theologians generally understood the ecclesiastical hierarchy to include all the members of the Church. William of Saint-Amour, the implacable enemy of the friars and of the various lay movements, wrote that it was impossible for lower members to perform the functions of their superiors in the hierarchy. He based his argument on Dionysius the Areopagite’s interpretation of Isaiah 6:6, which recounts how Isaiah was purified by a seraph. Dionysius held that a seraph could not have purified Isaiah, since the order to which it belonged was too high to be engaged in such a mundane task. Dionysius stated that lower orders cannot exercise the office of higher orders. Thus William concluded that it would be improper for regulars to exercise the office of priests. In one stroke, William undermined both the ministry of the friars and the legitimacy of Francis’s vision of the cruciform seraph.30 Bonaventure responded to this damaging critique by citing Gregory the Great’s interpretation of Isaiah 6:6. Gregory had refrained from determining whether Isaiah was actually visited by a seraph, but he argued that lower angels in the hierarchy can perform the functions or ministries of the higher angels when they act under the authority of their superiors. If angels sent for service carry the authority and function of those who sent them in the heavenly hierarchy, then, Bonaventure argued, the same would be true in the earthly hierarchy.31 For his audience, the implications were clear: members of religious orders could take on the ministerial functions of the diocesan clergy if they were given the mission to do so by legitimate authority. Since the Fourth Lateran Council had identified the pope and the local ordinary as the two authorities that could delegate such a mission, Bonaventure firmly grounded the preaching ministry of the friars in canon law without prejudicing episcopal privileges.32

30 For more information and bibliographical resources see C. Colt Anderson, A Call to Piety: St. Bonaventure’s Collations on the Six Days (Quincy: Franciscan Press, 2002), 163-70. The next several paragraphs are abbreviated from A Call to Piety. 31 Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexäemeron, 21.30, in Opera Omnia V, 436. 32 See Bonaventure’s Quare fratres minores praedicent et confessiones audiant in Opera Omnia VIII, 375-81.

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

50

The Friars Minor had always relied on papal primacy to justify their activities in pastoral care, but they still had to give a reason for their ministerial work. As Cusato has noted, Bonaventure saw the friars acting as “assistants to the bishops and the clergy to whom the pastoral ministry is first and foremost entrusted.”33 Thus the friars were useful for fulfilling the mission of leading the people of God to salvation. This idea would find its way into Canon 23 of the Second Council of Lyons, which justified the role of the friars by referring to their “manifest usefulness.”34 This should not be seen as prejudicial to the friars’ ministry, however, because it was a common assumption that the dignity or worthiness of priests was based on their usefulness as well. The Stella clericorum, a popular text that aimed to reform the clergy, identified useless clergy with the people who will come in the last days as described in 2 Timothy 3:1-5: You must understand this, that in the last days distressing time will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding outward to the form of piety but denying its power.35 This passage refers to those members of the clergy who love worldly honor and money more than God’s honor. It concludes that this is why so few priests wish to follow Christ in his poverty, in being despised and in suffering. The text makes it clear that such priests do not understand that pastoral care was not given as an honor (honeri) but as work (oneri).36 They are the sons of Belial, who provoke God through their ministry. Because they pollute their sacrifices, the Stella clericorum concluded that they are useless and should be removed from office.37 This rhetoric was fairly common and had been a mainstay of the Gregorian reformers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In his treatise, Quare fratres minores praedicent et confessiones audiant, n. 9,38 Bonaventure alluded to 2 Timothy 3:1-5 to build up an arguSee Cusato, “Hermitage or Marketplace?” 24-25. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, 327. 35 Stella clericorum, 1. The text simply alludes to the passage from 2 Timo33 34

thy. Stella clericorum, 1. Stella clericorum, 12. 38 Opera Omnia, VIII, p. 377. 36 37

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

51

ment from piety to justify Franciscan ministry. In this way, he seized the rhetorical ground of William of Saint-Amour, who had tried to identify the origin of the friars as the fulfillment of the prophecy about the last days. Bonaventure described the situation as one where confusion was being caused by a multiplication of sins, a large number of ignorant people, the seduction of heretics, many difficult rulers and a shortage of prelates. He claimed that the pope had instituted religious orders to take on the office of preaching and hearing confessions in order to rush aid to perishing souls. According to him, this was necessary because of the need of the people and the insufficiency of priests. Bonaventure justified Franciscan ministry in the context of the freedom that comes from love and piety. The primary identity of the Order, according to Bonaventure, required that the friars proceed by means of piety and speculation.39 He argued that piety, the second gift of the Holy Spirit, is generated out of the fear of the Lord. It is the only appropriate response to the mercy that God gives to sinners. Thus he argued that the spiritual meaning of piety is part love and part mercy.40 Bonaventure saw piety as inextricably tied to pastoral care. Perhaps the best way to understand piety is to consider its root meaning, which indicates the appropriate relationship between parents and their children. Bonaventure pointed to the way that parents work to gather more than they need so that they can feed their children. This indicates the fundamental nature of piety. Further, he saw piety in the way parents sacrifice their own needs for their offspring. He particularly identified piety with motherhood, because mothers digest their food and convert it into milk for their children. In the same way, Bonaventure maintained, the friars should feed their minds on the sweet fruits of scripture through speculation for the purpose of converting the words of life into a digestible form for those who are not able to devote their time to such study.41 Given the terrible state of affairs in the Church, Bonaventure charged anyone opposed to whatever pertains to salvation as being a new Herod who, in an attempt to persecute Christ, kills the children

Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexäemeron, 22.21, Opera Omnia V, 440. Bonaventure, Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti, 3.9, Opera Omnia VIII, 470. 41 Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexäemeron, 8.3 and 21.6, Opera Omnia VIII, 369 and 432. 39 40

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

52

of Israel. Comparing priesthood to parenthood on the basis of several Pauline texts, he wrote: 42

... and because it is not irksome at all, but desirable, sweet, and pleasing for a father, mother, or nurse, to sustain a little son who has nothing, to foster a weak child, or to give milk to a crying babe, so also for all holy and pious priests it must be a great consolation every time they bring salvation to the multitude of their subjects. For this reason, in the Gospel of Matthew (9:37-38), the Lord says to the apostles and to their successors: “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest,” suggesting that good priests should not only bear patiently with their assistants, but ardently desire co-evangelists to reap the multitude of the divine harvest.43 Just as it is a grievous crime to prevent people from doing the corporal works of piety, Bonaventure argued that it is an act of “much greater impiety and perfidy to throw obstacles in the way of worthy ministers of the divine word.”44 Bonaventure’s arguments that justified extending official or doctrinal preaching privileges to the religious were, as we all know, quite successful. As a result, official preaching privileges would gradually be extended to include virtually all priests. Yet, his position has farreaching implications that could be used to empower religious women and lay ministers to assist the ordained in the task of preaching homilies and evangelizing. In Bonaventure’s lifetime, there was a multiplication of sins, an increase of rude and ignorant people, seducers who led people into heresy, difficult rulers and a shortage of priests. In our own times, we also face a priest shortage, difficult political leaders (such as the Bush administration), seducers leading people into falsehoods ranging from radical fundamentalism to materialism and a large number of people who are ignorant about the faith. If it was impious for the priests and bishops of the thirteenth century to throw obstacles in the way of the people who were willing and able to help them in the mission of salvation, then wouldn’t the same be true today? Bonaventure, Apologia Pauperum, 12.2, Opera Omnia VIII, 316. The English translation I am using is Defense of the Mendicants: Apologia Pauperum, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1966). 43 Bonaventure, Apologia Pauperum, 12.7, Opera Omnia VIII, 318. 44 Bonaventure, Apologia Pauperum, 12.9, Opera Omnia VIII, 319. 42

Clerics, Laity and Preaching the Gospel

53

Contemporary Franciscans and Preaching The history of early Franciscan preaching, in both its popular and official manifestations, can shed light on contemporary discussions about Franciscan identity and provide direction in terms of mission. Michael Cusato poses these two questions to the friars: Should we simply try to do better and improve upon what we have inherited from our brothers in the light of new and urgent realities? Or could we dare to dream more boldly and actually consider a reform of the way we live (the identity question) so as to rethink where and how we do our work (the ministry question)?45 These questions could be and probably are being asked in some form throughout the Franciscan community. While Cusato opted for the second question seven years ago, it seems to me that the two questions cannot be separated. If the Franciscan community returned to its radical charism, it would be forced to dream more boldly and work to reform not only Franciscans, but also the Church and the world. First and foremost, Franciscans need to refocus on the meaning of penance. They need to create, as Cusato phrased it, “pen-intentional communities” to help them envision a way forward. Penance and the fear of the Lord gives birth to piety, the desire to save others and to share with them the good news that they can be reconciled to God and to one another. It was the deeply personal experience of being forgiven, which is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, that put early Franciscan men and women on their evangelical path. Penance reveals the dynamics behind sin and injustice. To help alleviate the sufferings of the poor and oppressed, one must preach penance to the wealthy and the powerful. The sins that bind up the privileged are the same sins that deprive the poor of their basic needs. If all wealthy people made satisfaction for their sins, the material needs of the poor would be met; and if the clergy let go of their claims to the privilege of preaching, the spiritual needs of the faithful to hear a good word would be satisfied. It is foundational to the Franciscan charism to understand sin as claiming possession of the property and privileges that God intends for all. Thus true poverty and true penance go hand in hand. If sin is claiming privileges or possessions that God intends for everyone, then the Friars Minor need to do penance for their role in Cusato, “Hermitage or Marketplace?” 25.

45

C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D.

54

suppressing the voices of the non-ordained members of the Church. To do penance for the sin of clericalism, the friars need to commit themselves to healing others of this pernicious sin. Given the urgent need for evangelization, the friars must work to recover the methods and techniques of penitential preaching that are an important part of their tradition. They should also attempt to help the rest of the clergy overcome their fear of allowing lay ministers to preach officially and encourage them “to ardently desire co-evangelists to reap the multitude of the divine harvest.”46 Finally, they must dedicate themselves to forming a new generation of non-official lay preachers. In other words, restitution is the appropriate satisfaction. Recovering the early Franciscan focus on penitential preaching and the way that the early brothers and sisters worked with diocesan clergy requires collaborative efforts. A properly Franciscan approach to ecclesial reform is grounded in language and categories that the bishops are able to hear. This is why Franciscan history and tradition are so important for leading the Church forward to embrace new ministries and to reinvigorate the apostolate of the laity. The aim of penitential preaching is to change hearts through the power of persuasion rather than through the prerogatives of privilege. Remembering the history of early Franciscan preaching will help all Christians to see that we have been called to this: “to heal the wounded, bind up the broken, and recall the erring” (L3C 14:58).

Bonaventure, Apologia Pauperum, 12.7, Opera Omnia VIII, 318.

46

CHAPTER THREE Preaching Women: The Tradition of Mendicant Women Darleen Pryds, Ph.D. Introduction When I was five years old, my mother would tell me to chew with my mouth closed. When I was eight, she told me to eat brussels sprouts. And by the time I was thirteen and already 5’11”, she told me to stand up straight. All you know from this is that when I was five, I ate with my mouth open; when I was eight, I would not eat brussels sprouts; and when I was thirteen, I slouched. These rules that my mother imposed reveal my behavior at various ages. They do not reveal whether or not I ever modified my behavior. The point of this personal introduction signals the premise of this paper: people in authority roles issue rules and regulations when they see behavior they want to modify. Issuing rules and regulations, however, means only one thing: that particular behavior being legislated against is occurring. Issuing regulations or laws does not mean these rules prevail. Sometimes rules are followed; sometimes they are benignly ignored; sometimes they are obstinately rejected; and sometimes everything in between those options prevails. When a person in authority reissues the same regulation, it is a good indication that people are breaking the rule or law. Sometimes, the authorities give in, like my mother did on the issue of brussels sprouts. I still will not eat them. Other times, the authorities dig in and are persistent, demanding adherence. I learned quickly that chewing with my mouth open was not going to be an option. Sometimes, there is a negotiation—formal or more frequently informal—between au-

56

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

thority figures with their need to control circumstances and people whose behavior is deemed in need of controlling. Such is the case with regard to laywomen and preaching in the first several generations of the mendicant traditions. Within a generation of the death of Francis of Assisi in 1226, there was a young girl who dressed as a friar and took to the streets of Viterbo as a street preacher. Canon laws, rules, guidelines and papal declarations from the late twelfth century existed prohibiting lay preaching in public and in private. Some declarations and warnings existed specifically targeting women’s preaching. Yet none other than Pope Innocent IV initiated a canonization process for this girl who was a street preacher upon her untimely death in 1251-1252. So was preaching by mendicant women accepted or rejected by ecclesial authorities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in other words in the first several generations of the mendicant movement? The short answer is Zen-like: Was preaching by mendicant women accepted or rejected by ecclesial authorities? Yes. Did mendicant women preach? Unequivocally, yes. This paper explores how it is that laywomen of the thirteenthfifteenth centuries could live out their vocation as mendicants while ecclesial legislation and prescriptive literature existed that seemingly prohibited women and all lay people from preaching. Preaching was, after all, the hallmark feature shared by the two main mendicant orders—the Dominicans and the Franciscans. So this paper really asks a more fundamental question: how could women be mendicants? My answer is two-fold: 1. Re-examining legislative and prescriptive literature from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries reveals some legal windows of opportunity for lay preaching in general, even by women. 2. By examining one case of a lay mendicant woman in detail—that of Rose of Viterbo—we find communities that rather matter-offactly accepted and even embraced the leadership of mendicant women, so that one finds mendicant women preaching when their immediate communities accepted this leadership. While I am a historian by training and vocation, I want to stress at the outset that I strongly believe there are practical applications and lessons to be learned from the past and applied today. The subject of lay preaching in general and women preaching in the Roman Catholic Church is not an abstract theoretical one for me. I study the history of lay preaching in order to find viable solutions to the challenges wom-

Preaching Women

57

en and all lay people face today in our Church in terms of expressing a public voice. While I may not always be explicit in making connections to today, I find practical applications throughout what follows.

The Legal Status of Lay Preaching Around 1180, two women from Clermont were disciplined for their public preaching. Geoffrey of Auxerre described their preaching as licentious escapades. After preaching every day, these women feasted sumptuously. Every night they took new lovers. “Who has brought that Jezebel back to life, a young woman after 1,000 years, so that she may run through the streets and squares like a prostitute preacher?” In contrast to the new Jezebels, Geoffrey then praised Mary for her silence and for her forbearance, keeping her burdens in her heart and uttering few from her lips. The condemnation of women preachers was so resolute and firm within the medieval Christian tradition that one may wonder how I could propose a reassessment of its legal status. In fact the flurry of legislation against lay preachers—both men and women—in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries has led many scholars to repeat the notion that lay preaching itself was heretical. But this understanding needs to be refined. It is not that any ecclesiastical authority in the Middle Ages, or today for that matter, went out of their way to promote preaching by lay men and women through legislation. No one ever legislated: “Let the laity preach!” But there was a tradition of licit lay preaching by both men and women, and mendicant women participated in this broader tradition. The papal legislation and the polemical literature that is often cited to demonstrate the illicit nature of lay preaching were all directOn the rhetorical strategy of defaming women preachers in dissident and heretical sects as prostitutes, see Beverly Kienzle, “The Prostitute-Preacher: Patterns of Polemic against Medieval Waldensian Women Preachers,” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 99-113.  See for example, O. C. Edwards, A History of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), 211, where his discussion of “irregular preachers” (i.e. lay preachers), is placed within a discussion of the apostolic revival of the twelfth century as an anti-clerical movement.  For a brief but nuanced discussion of this broader tradition of lay preaching, see R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 68-69, 104, 109, 239. 

58

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

ed against heretical lay preachers—especially the Waldensians in the twelfth century. The prostitute preachers that Geoffrey criticized were in fact Waldensians, whose heresy was not poverty in and of itself, even though poverty could be suspect; nor was it preaching in and of itself, although preaching could be suspect. Instead, it was disobedience—preaching without permission. The status of lay preaching was similar to the status of the practice of apostolic poverty. Despite its association with heresy since the twelfth century, apostolic poverty was not officially declared heretical until Pope John XXII condemned it in 1323. Lay preaching in and of itself was often associated with heresy and was never promoted, but the regulations appear to allow a window of opportunity for licit lay preaching throughout much of the later Middle Ages. As an aside, I am impressed by how timely this topic is, since today in the Roman Catholic Church, there is growing tension over preaching by laity, especially by women. As far as I can tell, the current legal status of lay preaching is the same as it was in the Middle Ages, although the restrictions seem stricter today because the Roman Catholic experience of preaching is usually limited to Eucharistic preaching—the kind of preaching performed within the liturgy of the Mass. Lay men and women have never been allowed to preach within the context of the Mass, but in late medieval Europe, the majority of preaching was performed outside the Eucharistic liturgy. Street preaching was a common sight. And, in the Middle Ages, it is as street preachers we find most lay people in general, and mendicant women in particular, delivering their sermons . Today, just as in the Middle Ages, the fundamental distinction between heretical and licit lay preaching remains permission from one’s bishop. This requirement of episcopal permission for lay preaching creates geographic and chronological pockets of licit preaching by laity depending on the holder of the see. Now, as then, there are some bishops who allow lay preaching; others who don’t. Some who allow it, do so selectively, for targeted parishes. My point in bringing up this twenty-first-century United States situation is to illustrate that lay preaching with episcopal permission was possible in the Middle Ages just as it is today, as long as it was  See William Francis Skudlarek, OSB, “Assertion without Knowledge? The Lay Preaching Controversy of the High Middle Ages,” PhD Dissertation (Princeton Theological Seminary, June 1976), esp. 113-53.  On the Poverty Controversy, see Malcolm Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210-1323, rev. ed. (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1998).

Preaching Women

59

performed by standards of orthodoxy and with permission. The requirement of permission assumes that the preaching is not inherently threatening to episcopal authority in theory. Preaching, however, was not a legal right to be claimed by laymen and women. Nevertheless, it appears to me that lay preaching was allowed and considered licit under certain circumstances.

Prescriptive Literature on Preaching In turning first to the prescriptive literature on lay preaching, we see various stances on the subject taken by individual theologians, whose intentions were never to speak for the Church universal but to shape the practice of preaching in their own immediate surroundings. The works discussed here all fall into the category of preaching handbooks or manuals on the practice of preaching. The genre proliferated in the twelfth century as a response to the growing need for and appearance of trained preachers as part of the apostolic movement, or vita apostolica. Like all “How To” manuals, these preaching handbooks were written at a time when many people were fulfilling roles they were unfamiliar with and so turned to manuals for instruction, helpful tips and advice. These preaching handbooks were not written for women preachers specifically; nor is there any hard evidence that women read these manuals. Instead, they were written for the most common users of this genre—clerics who were preparing for pastoral assignments in which they would need to know how to preach. Despite this male clerical readership, these manuals reveal important glimpses into the practice of preaching by women of the period.

Alan of Lille Alan of Lille wrote one of the most influential treatises on preaching in the late twelfth century. It defined preaching as the public and open instruction of faith, morals and good conduct. The nature and size of the audience, as well as the topics addressed in the discourse, distinguished preaching from other related speaking activities, such as teaching, prophesying and making a speech. Of these, only preaching was performed in public to a group of people with the purpose of forming and reforming faith and morals. Using reason and the citation of authority, the preacher preached to the faithful. Other forms of Alain of Lille, “summa de arte praedicatoria,” PL 210, col. 111.



60

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

discourse were to be used for converting. Preaching, which could take three forms—verbal, written and active—was to be done by prelates who were instructed in doctrine and who could set a good example. Alan’s is a classic definition of preaching. In his treatise, he does not condemn the idea of lay preaching. The only place he broaches the subject is in his tracts against heretics. Nevertheless, I do not want to overstate Alan’s stance on preaching. He wrote for a clerical audience and did not directly address the legality of lay preaching or women’s preaching.

Humbert of Romans Humbert of Romans was far more direct on this issue. Elected master general of the Dominican Order in 1254, he wrote his practical treatise on preaching for his fellow friars. In the section entitled “Who Should Preach?” Humbert begins in the negative—that is who should not be allowed to preach—and number one on his list is women. He cites Paul (1 Tim. 2:12): “I permit no woman to have authority over man; she should be silent” and makes four arguments against women preaching. First, they lack intelligence. Second, they are inferior to men. By their natural state, women are dependent, and no preacher should occupy a position of inferiority. Third, women may arouse concupiscence in male listeners. (This point sounds similar to Geoffrey of Auxerre’s insistence that the Waldensian women who preached were licentious.) Fourth, and most notoriously, Humbert raises the case of Eve, whom he says reminds us that that woman spoke once and threw the whole world into disorder. Humbert, as chief administrator of one of the two major mendicant orders, makes his position clear—women should not preach. His insistence on this point and his multifold argument show that, in the sixty years between the treatises of Alan and Humbert, women were preaching, probably at increasing rates. Humbert’s dogged rejection of women preaching reveals that, by the mid-thirteenth century, this had become perceived as a problem. It needed to be addressed. Clearly, women were preaching.

 Humbert of Romans, Treatise on the Formation of Preachers, trans. Simon Tugwell, OP, in Early Dominicans: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 183-370 at 223.

Preaching Women

61

Thomas of Chobham Between these two writers chronologically and ideologically, is a third writer, Thomas of Chobham, who wrote his handbook in the 1220s shortly after the legislation of Innocent III. Thomas reveals a greater latitude in the practice of preaching. He states clearly, at the beginning of a section on who could preach, that no one should preach unless he is a priest. Yet he allows some exceptions. “Generally, it is true that neither a layman nor a woman can preach publicly, namely in the church.” He continues with an account of a layman named Reginald, who was an exception. On the authority of Lord X [probably a bishop], Reginald commended virtues and renounced vices while speaking outside the church. He was not given an official license to preach, nor was he allowed to expound Scripture. Nevertheless, he was authorized to perform a kind of public preaching. The women mendicant preachers we know about are like “Reginald”—preachers who evangelize in public areas and attract crowds of listeners while discoursing on faith and morals. The exceptional case of Reginald is the kind we find most evidence for. And, according to some theologians and ecclesial administrators, this was licit preaching.

Legislation The prescriptive literature discussed above was being written at the same time as popes and bishops were issuing legislation directed against heretical lay preachers. Lay preaching did pose some challenges for control and supervision of the dissemination of doctrine during the twelfth century as interest in the vita apostolica, with its two-fold emphasis on poverty and itinerant preaching, flourished. As groups of religious enthusiasts formed around lay leaders such as Peter Waldo, ecclesiastical leaders faced unprecedented ministerial demands. Popes, such as Innocent III, found themselves in the middle between groups of enthusiasts who were essentially orthodox in their faith and clergy who were unprepared to meet the pastoral needs of their flocks. Thomas of Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi, ed. Franco Morenzoni, CCCM vol. 82 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), 57.  For what follows, see Skudlarek. Also see Rolf Zerfass, Der Streit um die Laienpredigt (Freiburg: Herder, 1974) and Herbert Grundmann, Religious Move

62

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

Starting in the 1180s, papal injunctions warned bishops to offer more services. Some bishops were criticized as “dumb dogs who don’t know how to bark,” and many were removed from office.10 Other bishops acted aggressively against essentially orthodox lay groups such as the Humiliati, and were chastised for it. The challenges of such institutional confusion led to a period of experimentation most clearly pursued by Pope Innocent III. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, he understood the need to restrain heretical tendencies and curb the spread of erroneous doctrine while not stifling religious enthusiasm. With this as his goal, he built on earlier papal declarations dealing with lay preaching, namely Alexander III’s authorization to Waldensians to preach but only with local permission (1179) and Lucius III’s Ad abolandam, which made preaching without authorization a heresy (1184). Meanwhile, Innocent offered opportunities to various groups to have public verbal expression of faith. We will not find in Innocent’s letters and bulls a consistent policy on lay preaching, because he did not want to stifle orthodox religiosity. His most famous allowance of lay preaching, of course, was with his verbal confirmation to Francis and his followers in 1210. While predominantly a group of laymen, this early Franciscan group received from Innocent the essential permission required to preach: a licentia praedicando ubique. In addition, Innocent made the group subject to his authority alone, so that they could preach without the possibility of an administrative glitch at the episcopal level. Francis gave an oath of obedience and reverence to the Holy See. One can only assume Innocent saw in Francis and his followers a supremely effective tool for spreading orthodox piety, so he superceded the earlier legislated requirement of local episcopal authorization for the group. As Brenda

ments in the Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995; orig. pub. 1935). On Innocent III’s concern over lay preaching, see Leonard Boyle, “Innocent III and Vernacular Versions of Scripture,” in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. K. Walsh and D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 97-107. For a more recent overview of the subject of lay preaching, emphasizing the heretical nature of it, see Beverly Kienzle, “Preaching as Touchstone of Orthodoxy and Dissidence in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Sermon Studies 43 (1999), 19-54. 10 The phrase comes from Isa 56:10 and was used by Innocent III in preaching on the ineptitude of some bishops, as cited by Brenda Bolton, “Tradition and Temerity: Papal Attitudes to Deviants, 1159-1216,” Studies in Church History 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 79-91, at 81.

Preaching Women

63

Bolton has commented: Without Innocent III there would have been no St. Francis.11 But Francis and his followers were unique. What limits did Innocent III set for licit preaching by the laity? And what was not licit? To answer the latter question first, there were two forms of preaching Innocent was dead set against—preaching of heretical doctrine and public preaching by nuns, even if they were abbesses. In 1210 Innocent wrote to the count of Toulouse regarding heretics who had been uncovered there. These heretics preached publicly against the faith and professed and defended their errors. Innocent’s primary concern was their belief and spread of wrong teaching more than the act of preaching itself. He condemned their beliefs more than their preaching, per se. In the same year, 1210, Innocent wrote to the bishops of Burgos and Palencia to express his concern over news that the abbesses in these dioceses blessed their own nuns, heard confessions, read the Gospels and preached publicly. Calling the situation absurd, he ordered the activity stopped. His concern here was an issue of female authority. Even the Virgin Mary, who was more worthy than the apostles, he argued, did not behave in such a way since she did not receive the keys to heaven. The apostles did. Whether or not Innocent implied a general condemnation of women’s preaching in this letter is unclear. Nuns in an enclosed order preaching publicly create a particular problem, not applicable to all women. In other letters to lay groups of men and women, Innocent does not address the subject specifically that the women should not preach; therefore it seems he was especially disturbed by nuns—even if they were abbesses—preaching publicly. In general, Innocent is not so rigid, as can be seen in the action he took in 1199 concerning a disturbance caused by lay people, both men and women, in Metz. Innocent, in a series of letters, zeroes in on the need to be sent to preach and the holding of the officium praedicandi— the office of preaching or duty to preach—to determine licit preaching. In 1199, just a year after his accession, Innocent links preaching and office (officium) within the context of dealing with the bishop’s aggravated efforts to control both laymen and women in the city of Metz. The lay groups had become suspect for reading Scripture in the vernacular, meeting in private groups, talking to one another and then taking turns preaching to one another. Innocent carefully worded his response in an effort to nurture their religious enthusiasm while carv11 Brenda Bolton, “Via Ascetica: A Papal Quandary,” Studies in Church History 22 (London: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 161-91, at 191.

64

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

ing out an area of activity to be controlled by ecclesiastical authorities. He assured the laity that they would not be chastised or reprimanded for their desire to understand and study Scripture. Their zeal was a good thing. But he expressed concern over their meetings in private groups where they usurped for themselves “the office of preaching.” He first argues against the privacy of their meetings, since God, the one true light, hates hidden works. So the apostles, when they were sent on their missions, preached to all creatures publicly (aperte). To preach in private or in closed groups is denounced as heresy. Second, Innocent stresses the profound nature of Scripture, which requires prudence and learning to understand it. Those who are simple and uneducated should not presume to try to study Sacred Scripture or to try to preach it to others. To set up his argument about officium, Innocent uses the comparison of the Church to the human body, which has several parts, all with different functions (actuus). Similarly, the Church has several orders, some of which do not carry this officium. Doctors as leaders of the Church should not have their office of preaching taken away from them. Thus, in normal cases, Innocent concedes that the educated members of the Church, the doctors, preach, having been commissioned or sent to do so. And yet, Innocent does allow for special cases of preachers sent by God and not by humans. After all, John the Baptist was sent by God (John 1:6). To be so sent is better and of higher honor than to be sent by man. But to be believed as having truly been sent by God, when one has had no human direction, there has to be a special sign from Scripture or some clear miracle. Just as when Moses was sent by God, he gave a sign of turning a stick into a snake and then reversing it back into a stick. Therefore, Innocent openly acknowledges the special cases in which someone preaches on divine authority alone, but affirms that such miraculous cases are rare and require detectable signs. It is tempting to see the influence of Peter the Chanter in this section of special cases, since, in the twelfth century, Peter argued for the licit status of lay preaching based on the preaching of Paul. “It is sufficient to be sent by the Holy Spirit even if one is not commissioned by a man or an ecclesiastical authority.” Being sent directly by God, Paul preached without any intermediary commissioning him. It is this same sentiment one finds in Innocent.12

12 See Philippe Buc, “Vox clamantis in deserto? Pierre le Chantre et la prédication laïque,” Revue Mabillon, n.s. 4.65 (1993), 5-47.

Preaching Women

65

To summarize, the accepted parameters of preaching for Innocent are:13 1. Preaching is usually performed by educated clerics of the Church who have been commissioned to do so. 2. Special cases occur in which God intervenes and directly inspires someone to preach. 3. Laity are allowed to preach when specially commissioned or authorized by local bishops or the Pope. 4. Heretical preaching is not tolerated. 5. Public preaching by nuns and abbesses is not allowed. Perhaps this has wider application to all women, but Innocent does not say this. What was the subsequent legacy of Innocent’s decisions? Most immediately, sections of his letter about the laity at Metz were entered into Canon Law with Gregory IX’s own changes. Deleted were the sections on special cases of preachers sent by God. Instead, a rigid formulation linking preaching and officium, which implied a clerical monopoly on preaching, was entered. This close link of the two—office and preaching—led to a technical use of the word praedicare that, at least in academic circles, narrowed its use to public preaching of clerics only. The few outspoken proponents of lay preaching, such as Hugh of St. Cher, discard the link between office and preaching altogether. Hugh argues that laity who preach do so not out of any office or duty but from charitable zeal (ex zelo caritatis). Officium applies only to clerics, but preaching does not. After all, a layman may be more erudite and therefore more qualified to preach than a cleric.14 Where does this leave us in our reassessment of the status of lay preaching? The legislation of Innocent III, especially in his letters to the Bishop of Metz, is usually taken to represent the legal repression of lay preaching. But, looking at the pontificate of Innocent III as a whole, I would reframe the question. Innocent’s primary concern was heresy and its control. Related to that, he was concerned with orthodox piety and its cultivation. Lay preaching touched on both of these concerns, so that in cases in which heretics preached, the act of Innocent’s evolving statements on lay preaching are discussed at length in Skudlarek, chapter 7. 14 See M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968), 156. 13

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

66

preaching was condemned because it was the means by which erroneous doctrine was spread. Preaching itself was not the target of condemnation. In cases in which orthodox enthusiasts preached, careful monitoring was put in place to ensure the spread of sound doctrine. There was a tendency to allow certain groups to pursue such a public apostolate. Only certain women were singled out for condemnation for their public preaching and they were nuns within enclosed monasteries. The public spectacle of a nun preaching—especially a nun who lived in strict enclosure—was astonishing to Innocent. After Innocent III, stricter and more rigid proscriptions of lay preaching were entered into canon law.15 Nevertheless, academic debates over the practice of lay preaching continued, and participants ranged in their views from condemnation to implicit support—the same range one finds during Innocent’s own reign. To conclude, then, all of this legislation and debate about the nature of preaching proves one thing—preaching was vitally important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and lay people were preaching. Especially in Italy from the late twelfth into the fifteenth century, it was common to see and hear both lay preaching and clerical preaching—particularly that done by the mendicants—not just in churches, but even frequently in the streets and piazzas. Preaching was a common phenomenon—one that the average person encountered daily. Most preaching was not done in the context of the Mass. It is, then, because of the commonness of preaching in the late medieval culture that we find so many people doing it, including women.

The Mendicancy of Women Most discussions of mendicant women begin with the figure of Clare of Assisi. She was the first woman to affiliate officially with either of the two main mendicant orders. From the time that she made her vows as a religious, she sought the right to take up the same form of mendicant life that Francis was making popular in cities throughout Italy—a life dedicated to poverty, humility and itinerant preaching. Itinerancy and preaching eluded Clare all her life,16 and the privilege The increasing restrictive stance of papal declarations over the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries on lay preaching is mapped out in Zerfass, cited above. 16 To note that itinerant preaching eluded Clare all her life is not to level criticism on her or her vocation. It merely points to her enclosed status as 15

Preaching Women

67

of poverty eluded her for much of it. She and her followers observed a more traditional model of enclosed monasticism as dictated by ecclesiastical officials.17 This model had become the normative religious life for Franciscan women during Clare’s lifetime. Her death inspired a vigorous effort to achieve her canonization as quickly as Francis’s had been achieved a few decades earlier. Leading this effort was Pope Innocent IV. In directing his energies towards Clare’s cause, another canonization procedure ground to a halt. A year earlier, in 1252, the death of a very different Franciscan woman had inspired the same pope’s enthusiastic effort to promote the canonization of a young woman named Rose from the city of Viterbo.18 Since childhood, Rose had experienced an unquenchable thirst for the Divine and had eagerly performed pious acts of self-mortification and prayer at home and in public. To the consternation of her parents, she had pursued, even as a young girl, her religious quest in the privacy of the family’s home. But she took on a public role of religious leadership when her experiences intensified. She began to witness graphic visions of the crucified Christ and was led into the streets of Viterbo by visions of the Virgin Mary. In uncontrollable righteous outbursts, Rose attracted large groups of people as she wandered through the city streets, leading her pious hoard to church. Along the way, she preached. She preached to praise Christ and Mary. In addition, she preached against the Ghibelline heretics who governed the city. When she was exiled for her public condemnation of these political heretics, she preached in the surrounding towns and countryside. She denounced Emperor Frederick II and prophesied about his death. Only after that prophecy had been fulfilled was she allowed to return to Viterbo.

a vowed religious. This enclosure marks a significant adjustment to what it meant to be mendicant for Clare and her sisters. 17 The most recent discussion of Clare’s struggle for mendicant identity is Lezlie Knox, “The True Daughters of Francis and Clare: The Formation of the Order of Saint Clare in Late Medieval Italy,” Ph.D. dissertation (University of Notre Dame, 1999). 18 What follows is based on my reading of texts edited by Giuseppe Abate, S. Rosa di Viterbo, Terziana Francescana: Fonti Storiche della Vita e loro Revisione Critica (Rome: Miscellanea francescana, 1951). On Rose, see also A. Vacca, La Menta e la Croce (Rome: Bulzoni, 1982); E. Piacentini, Il Libro dei miracoli di Santa Rosa di Viterbo (Viterbo: E. Piacentini Union Printing, 1991); and Darleen Pryds, “Proclaiming Sanctity through Proscribed Acts: The Case of Rose of Viterbo,” in B. Kienzle and P. Walker, eds., Women Preachers and Prophets, 15972.

68

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

The story of Rose from Viterbo is richly complex and requires interpretation on many levels. Since our sources are all hagiographic, we know only how the character of Rose was presented and manipulated as a saintly symbol of civic pride, papal politics and female mendicancy. We explore here how the theme of mendicancy was applied to Rose’s life in the two canonization processes dedicated to her cause. The stories that emerge about Rose among lay and clerical proponents of her saintly cause in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in the city of Viterbo reveal a very different model of religious life from the one forged by Clare. Rose’s path was outside the monastic walls but inside the city walls. It followed more closely the male model of an urban apostolate than Clare’s model. Testimonies to it are found in slight variations among the canonization witnesses and the two vitae written for the official procedures. These reveal a contemporary popular acceptance and appreciation of Rose as a preacher. This popular acceptance of her as a mendicant preacher continued alongside modern clerical efforts to suppress this image that started to emerge in the mid-fifteenth century.

Hagiographic Strategies and Rose, the Preacher The biography of Rose is veiled in hagiographic traditions dating from her death when she was eighteen years old. The image of Rose as a mendicant preacher comes from local efforts within Viterbo to see the girl canonized—namely, personal testimonies given for the fifteenthcentury procedure and the vitae written by anonymous Franciscans for each procedure. In the mid-thirteenth century and two centuries later in the mid-fifteenth century, anonymous Franciscan hagiographers crafted the girl’s life story to make her into a saintly urban apostle, stressing themes of mendicancy and preaching alongside more traditionally female saintly attributes such as fasting, obedience and penance. Innocent IV’s initial attempt to sanction Rose’s mendicancy through the title of saint ended unsuccessfully; but her cause was raised again two centuries later, championed by Pope Calixtus III, who achieved her canonization in 1457. Respectively and together the vitae and canonization testimonies reveal a new model and even a new expectation for female sanctity based on characteristics of mendicancy within the Franciscan tradition—an urban apostolate based on voluntary poverty, itinerancy and

Preaching Women

69

preaching. Clearly many people, usually lay people, openly associated this girl with a tradition of wandering preaching and promoted the holiness this reflected. In the popular mind of the citizens of Viterbo, the city’s holy woman was a street preacher.

The Vitae as Sources This new model of female sanctity emerges in the hagiographic works on Rose through themes of itinerancy, supernatural visions and political rhetoric in her public preaching. While the canonization witnesses never stated on what authority Rose spoke, her urban apostolate is depicted in both hagiographic vitae as emanating from unquestionable sources—a variety of supernatural authorities, including visions of the Virgin Mary, the crucified Christ and even souls of the deceased, all of whom supercede the authority of the girl’s parents. These sources order the girl to perform acts of piety in both private and public spheres. Thus, celestial authorities allow Rose to claim poverty, preaching and mendicancy in these vitae. For example, to claim a life of poverty for herself, Rose stripped herself naked and lay prostrate before her mother as renouncing all material possessions and pleading with her mother to let her wear only a tunic and cord, the traditional Franciscan garb. And she transgressed all norms established for women by the Clarisse model by asking that her hair be cut like a cleric. When her mother balked at these requests, the ever-obedient Rose backed up her desires with the authority of the Virgin Mary. “The Blessed Virgin Mary orders me to persuade you. Do what I tell you.”19 More attention is given in both vitae to Rose’s claim to a public apostolate in the city of Viterbo and in surrounding towns, but again, the appearance of supernatural authorities protect the image of Rose from any suspicions, appearing even in the form of holy childcare. In the middle of the night, Rose told her mother to go and wake all the women in the neighborhood and bring them to the house. In response to her mother’s concern for her safety while she was gone, Rose responded that the Holy Spirit would take care of her. Once the women arrived at the house, Rose took them outside, following her vision of the Virgin Mary. Outside, she sat among them and described to them her vision of the Bride of Christ, adorned in jewels and robes. She revealed that Mary told her to go around the city to adorn various saints, including St. Francis. So the next day, she wandered through Abate, S. Rosa di Viterbo, 120.

19

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

70

the streets of Viterbo carrying a maestas, a large painted crucifix, and visited the various churches. Those women who decided not to follow her she urged to go to church as soon as possible. The traditional Franciscan theme of parental rage at acts of piety is also found in the vitae. Rose’s behavior attracted large groups of people to her home, which aroused her father’s anger. But his repeated threats to cut her hair or tie her up were met with her insistence that she was acting on the Lord’s commands and nothing, not even his punishments could stop her. At which point her father broke down in tears and reassured her to “make a blessing of the Lord.” After a series of visions, including one of the crucified Christ, which reduced Rose to emotional self-mortification and wailing for three days, the girl took to the streets and roamed through Viterbo, carrying a cross and praising Christ and Mary. The Ghibelline leader of the city ordered “heretics” to exile the girl and her parents, which resulted in her continuing her public speech in surrounding towns where she announced prophecies told to her by an angel, quickly interpreted as prophecies of the death of Frederick II. Her public speech in exile was furthered by demonstrations of miracles. In one story, repeated frequently by witnesses, Rose’s disputation, argumentation and exhortation had been ineffective in convincing a heretical woman to return to the faith. Rose chose to demonstrate her own virtue of faith by walking into a raging fire from which she emerged unharmed. Where argumentation had failed, demonstration converted the heretic. Finally, the theme of exile and wandering continues throughout Rose’s life in the fifteenth-century vita. The prophesied death of Frederick and the restoration of Guelf governors to the city allowed Rose and her family to return to Viterbo. She immediately requested entrance into a monastery, but was foiled by the mother superior, who claimed the convent’s quota had been filled. Rose is quoted as saying: “I know this is not true, because you despise in me that which God accepts ... the wisdom of this world is stupidity to God. But take note: that which you refuse to have while living, you will delight in having when dead.”20 Her life of wandering ended soon thereafter, and her body, which originally rested in the church of Santa Maria in Podio, was transferred a few years later, at the order of Pope Alexander IV, to the convent that had declined her entrance. Significantly, it was a convent of the order of Saint Clare, and the translation of the body occurred after the first canonization process Abate, S. Rosa di Viterbo, 136.

20

Preaching Women

71

ended, sidetracked by the enthusiasm to achieve the canonization of Clare of Assisi. To this day, the sisters of the community in Viterbo continue to guard fiercely the body and reputation of the female Franciscan street preacher.

Canonization Testimonies Witnesses for the fifteenth-century process are nearly unanimous in their testimonies about Rose’s preaching. While they do not themselves specifically declare that Rose preached, they openly affirm other testimonies that do. This is the case in the two most learned witnesses, a priest from Viterbo and a doctor of law. The first goal of all of the witnesses was to establish the credibility and historic status of their testimony. Given the fact that the testimonies came two centuries after the girl’s death, the witnesses supported their claims about Rose with the legitimation of age, either their own or that of their own sources, who were usually elderly parents or fellow residents of the city. The witnesses ranged in age from fifty to eighty years old, although one testified having known about Rose from a man who lived until he was ninety years old. Thus, their sources go back as far as humanly possible in establishing links close to the actual person of Rose. The witnesses were all men with the single exception of a “distinguished woman;” all were described as being of great faith and distinction. They included a priest and a doctor of law, who claimed to affirm the other testimonies and the Legenda, while also contributing additional evidence. They all said that they had heard the stories about Rose either from relatives and elderly town residents or through preaching, indicating that local preachers had been actively promoting the cult of Rose by keeping the legend alive. In all cases, witnesses mentioned the catholicity of Rose’s parents and their role in teaching Rose the basic tenets of faith. And the single anecdote found in almost every account retells the particularly colorful miracle of Rose convincing heretics to abandon their false beliefs by walking through the flames of a raging fire and coming out unscathed. The specific nature of mendicancy that these witnesses stressed in their testimonies was her preaching, but the witnesses do not describe her as an itinerant preacher. Her physical displacement from Viterbo through political exile and her resulting itinerancy through the region around the city were emphasized in the vitae, but not in these personal

72

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

testimonies. Instead of displacement, many of the witnesses were eager to promote one of the city’s greatest relics—the girl’s house and, within it, her cell. Reminiscent of Francis’s Portiuncula in Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi, the house where Rose grew up had been placed inside the church of Santa Maria in Podio. The witnesses could speak with authority about this relic from Rose’s life, since they had all visited the house themselves, and some mentioned the pilgrims who came to Viterbo from around Christendom to visit the house. While the cell does not feature in the vitae, the witnesses claimed that Rose spent her youth there, performing acts of penance and distributing alms to the poor from a small window. A form of domestic monasticism, common among penitential women, had become associated with Rose among the citizens of Viterbo. In addition to the girl’s acts of charity, her urban apostolate was based on her reputation for holiness, which grew from her public speech; but the witnesses do not link her speech to any supernatural source of authority, such as visions of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Instead, witnesses state, as a matter of fact, that Rose “preached” and “announced” the Word of God; that she preached with reverence; and that she preached with great learning (magna scientia), faith and charity. They are much more open to the girl’s public preaching than the modern editor, a Conventual Franciscan from Viterbo, who repeatedly places in the footnotes cautionary explanations that Rose never expounded the Word of God. Witnesses also claimed that she prophesied, although they never link it to foretelling the death of the emperor. Instead of furthering the political character of her speech, the witnesses were satisfied to declare her status as a public speaker. In their testimonies they reveal their own acceptance of Rose as a preacher whose domicile was literally the base for her acts of piety, which attracted pious pilgrims to Viterbo.

Canonization Bull The canonization bull itself, issued by Calixtus III, refers to the girl’s public speech against heretics as “rebuke” and “refutation.” Her speech to the faithful is not mentioned, although much is made of her deep faith and miraculous and profound knowledge (miraculosae et profundae scientiae). In fact, in no papal document is she depicted as preaching. The most recent bull on Rose was issued in 1952 by Pope Pius XII to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of her death. This letter appears to be based on the bull of canonization,

Preaching Women

73

and her speech is referred to as “encouraging the people,” “rebuking errors” and opposing tyranny. According to papal authority, Rose endured in silence her tenacious adversaries. Thus, while the popular texts about Rose highlighted a willful, passionate preacher, the official papal version characterized her as silent.

Analysis of Sources Few would expect a case for the canonization of a young woman in the late Middle Ages to emphasize her public preaching, since all lay preaching, but especially that by women, had become legally suspect after the twelfth-century apostolic revival in the cities of Western Europe. The enthusiasts associated with this revival had practiced their religious faith in unprecedented ways, forcing ecclesiastical officials at all levels to develop clearer and stricter definitions of the boundaries of heresy and orthodoxy, especially with regard to the practices of poverty, public speech and personal interpretation of Scripture.21 Ecclesiastical authorities considered it especially urgent to limit lay preaching in order to control the public teaching of faith and doctrine; and yet popes, such as Innocent III, were concerned about the actions of overly zealous bishops who repressed activities of essentially orthodox religious enthusiasts. Innocent tried to harness this apostolic fervor in approving the foundation of the mendicant orders in the early thirteenth century. The rapid spread of these orders supplied an ecclesiastically sponsored and sanctioned version of popular preaching that had by this time become a “growth industry.”22 Both vitae of Rose of Viterbo, respectively and together, with the testimonies given by witnesses in the fifteenth century, reveal a new model for female sanctity based on the characteristics of mendicancy within the Franciscan tradition—an urban apostolate based on poverty, wandering and preaching. The model, of course, predates the Franciscans and is based in the penitential movements23 that had See n. 9 above for relevant bibliography. The term is used by Augustine Thompson in Revival Preachers and politics in thirteenth-century Italy: The Great Devotion of 1233 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 86. 23 The “penitential movement” was never a single, institutionalized and coherent movement. Instead, the term includes a variety of regional lay efforts to express religious vocations outside the traditional monastic options. G. G. Meersseman, Ordo Fraternitatis: Confraternite e pietà dei laici nel medioevo (Rome: Herder editrice e libreria, 1977); André Vauchez, “Ordo Fraternitatis: Confra21 22

74

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

flourished in Italy since the twelfth century. Katherine Gill and others have shown how penitential movements offered women options outside the monastic walls to fulfill religious vocations. Remaining in the city, women pursued private devotions and public religious vocations through acts of meditation, charity, health care and, what we might term today, spiritual direction, which at times could be preaching. 24 In thirteenth-century Italy, the penitenti provided opportunities for the laity to perform apostolic acts of devotion alongside and in cooperation with the mendicant orders. But the history of the penitential movements is not just about lay initiatives. It is also about ecclesiastical adoption and adaptation of new models. In some, but not all cases, these penitential groups were transformed into the third orders of the mendicant orders.25 The hagiographic efforts related to Rose of Viterbo point to another kind of clerical effort to co-opt the penitential fervor and to gain some level of control by upholding as exemplary a holy apostolic woman. As the reputation of Rose spread, the apostolic model she represented pointed to a ready, seemingly matter-of-fact acceptance by many people, at least in Viterbo, of the possibility of a holy woman who preached publicly. Rose is one in a limited tradition of saintly female preachers in the Middle Ages. Scholars usually treat the subject of medieval lay preaching in general and preaching by women more specifically within the confines of medieval heresy.26 Twelfth-century tirades against Waldensian female preachers, declaring their public speech a clear ternities and Lay Piety in the Middle Ages,” in The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel Bornstein, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 107-17. 24 Among the scholarly contributions to this area of study, see Katherine Gill, “Open Monasteries for Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy: Two Roman Examples,” in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig Monson (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 15-47. 25 For the Franciscans, the Third Order developed after 1289 when Nicholas IV placed the Italian penitents under obedience to the Franciscan Order. On the transformation from Penitent to Tertiary, see G. G. Meersseman, Dossier de l’ordre de la Pénitence au XIIIe siècle (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1961). 26 The subject of lay preaching continues to evoke tension. For a brief overview of the topic as approached by theologians and canon lawyers today, see Patricia A. Parachini, Lay Preaching: State of the Question, American Essays in Liturgy (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999). For an earlier theological formulation of the boundaries of ordinary and extraordinary preaching, in which lay preaching is considered “extraordinary,” see J. Frank Henderson, “The Minister of Liturgical Preaching,” Worship 56 (1982): 214-30.

Preaching Women

75

sign of their promiscuity, fall into the category of polemical literature. This re-enforces our impression that misogynistic and patriarchal legal structures and social expectations colored the treatment of women’s religious vocations. It is still commonly argued that medieval women found outlets for their intellectual thirsts and evangelical aspirations only in heretical sects. While it is true that the Waldensians and Lollards promoted vernacular translations of Scripture and its verbal explications even by women and the Cathars allowed women to rise as high as men in ecclesial rank, this assertion has been questioned by some scholars.27 The case of Rose of Viterbo, placed within the context of the thriving penitential movements of late medieval Italian cities, points to another avenue by which women claimed and were supported in their public apostolates. Lay preaching was not always heretical. While the medium of a lay preacher was always suspect, especially if she were a woman, the message was critical in her reception by ecclesiastical officials. In many ways, Rose was both reactionary in what she said and revolutionary in how she presented herself. While the papal promotion of her canonization would reel in the more radical image of female preacher, there was widespread recognition that she was orthodox and conservative in her devotions. Rose was never radical enough to warrant long term concern, especially after a sanitized account of her apostolic acts became the official version of her life. Her image eventually filtered down into hagiographic commonplaces, resulting in her becoming a rather obscure figure except around Viterbo, where her cult remains active. There is no doubt, however, that among the citizens of the city, a common understanding of her as an apostolic figure fueled her cult in the fifteenth century. Why would the papacy promote the figure of an apostolic woman? The answer is twofold. Clearly the penitential movements continued to attract women and laymen well into the fifteenth century, and finding a means to control apostolic activities through ecclesiastical co-optation allowed a papal sterilization of the image. By canonizing a female apostle, whose cult thrived at least in Viterbo, the pope was able to control the public perception of the kind of apostolate she undertook. She corrected heretics, but she did not preach. But the original decision to start a canonization procedure also had a political edge. Since the twelfth century, the city of Viterbo had been 27 See Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420-1530 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

76

Darleen Pryds, Ph.D.

vacillating in its allegiances between Ghibelline-Empire and GuelfPapal forces. Its political policies were not so much ambiguous as opportunistic, in what one scholar has called “political promiscuity.”28 At the time when Rose emerged as an apostle in Viterbo, Frederick had once again been named lord of the city; and part of Rose’s message was anti-Ghibelline. She raged against the heretical governors of the city. When she and her parents became political exiles because of her speech, she continued her anti-Ghibelline rhetoric in the surrounding towns. Rose was a powerful political image for papal forces to use against the infidel, Frederick. The figure of a mere girl rallying against the emperor and successfully predicting his death was useful in humiliating Frederick’s supporters. When Frederick died in 1250, the city returned to its Guelf lord, and the need for a persuasive political image to counter the mythic Frederick declined. Very quickly, the city transformed the bishop’s palace into a papal palace and, within a few years, helped fund the construction of a new papal palace. The political usefulness of Rose died out, and, at the same time, there was a reduced need to secure another canonization for a female Franciscan. In 1457, however, Pope Calixtus III found Rose’s image useful once again. Amidst the burgeoning observant movement among the mendicant orders and amidst other high profile cases involving women (most notably the nullification trial of Joan of Arc’s conviction of heresy in 1456), Calixtus supported the cause of Rose of Viterbo as a preacher against the infidel. This was precisely at the moment he began promoting his crusades against the Turks. The figure of a charismatic girl ranting against an infidel emperor proved an important tool for his crusading interests.

Conclusion We have now looked at some of the prescriptive literature on preaching, at a sampling of papal legislation on lay preaching and at various documents related to a particular female mendicant preacher, Rose of Viterbo. There are three main conclusions we can draw that have implications beyond the high Middle Ages for carving out paths to women’s full participation in the mendicant tradition.

28 Gary M. Radke, Viterbo. A Profile of a Thirteenth-Century Papal Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3.

Preaching Women

77

1. The role of ecclesial administrators is key in finding avenues for women to participate as mendicants. Innocent III was shrewd in his ability to recognize the nature of disciplinary problems with lay adherents of apostolic movements, separating issues of obedience and control from problems with heretical teachings. By seeing the inherent orthodoxy of the message preached by these lay adherents, Innocent legislated against unapproved lay preaching, leaving a door open for licit lay preaching. This administrative wisdom allowed women in the first generations of the mendicant movement to carve out paths of full participation in their vocations as mendicants. 2. Women such as Rose of Viterbo answered their personal calls or vocations to live as mendicants, even when they faced legal and cultural challenges. The personal strength and courage of individual women (and lay men) rest at the foundation of lay mendicancy. 3. And finally, lay mendicancy depends on immediate communities that recognize the special religious call of lay women as mendicants and accept the leadership of these women in their midst. Without the acceptance of communities, the administrative efforts of popes and the will of individual lay women bear no fruit.

CHAPTER FOUR The Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. Three decades ago a friar narrated to me one of the key events of his life, the turning point in his practice of Franciscan ministry in the Church and the world: When I was in my fifties, I went through a real crisis. It was during and immediately after the Council and the identities of the Franciscan friar and the ministerial priest were really up for grabs, at least compared with the certainties that had surrounded education and formation for ministry when I entered seminary. The laity, both men and women, had begun to take over many of the positions that I alone had held in the parish. Decisions were now supposed to be collaborative, and I really had little to say about the pressing issues of the time: the Vietnam war, birth control, ecumenism. Nothing seemed to work for me, and it all made no sense: the priestly vocation, the Franciscan mission, parish life, the sacraments, faith itself. During it all, and this went on for several years, I took refuge in routine. Too committed to leave, too unimaginative to see my way out of the impasse, too afraid to reach out, I simply went about my business day after day. Part of my job was catechizing would-be converts to the Church, and one day a young married woman, in her midthirties, came to the door and asked if I would give her instructions. I hardly believed what I taught, but dutifully I read the new catechism with her, studied the Council documents

80

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. and eventually received her into the Church with Baptism and First Communion. Then, on about my business. One day, about six months later, she came to the door again. A different kind of story this time. She had been diagnosed with leukemia and would be dead in six months. Her request of me: Would I please bring her communion as I made my weekly rounds in the parish. “Sure,” I said; “it won’t do much good,” I thought. And so for the next five months I did just that, tucked a visit to her house into my long list of Friday communions, going about my routine and not believing a thing I was doing. Towards the end of that last month she called me up and asked if I would come not just for communion but for a visit. Could I stay a little and chat with her. “Sure,” I said. “What could I possibly say?” I thought. When I arrived at the door that Friday, her three children met me and told me how excited their mother had been that I was coming. They led me into her room. It was the end, I could see that; her shrunken frame disappeared into the bed. “Come over here, Father; sit down.” And then she said to me the words that changed my life forever. “Father, I know you cannot do much for me; and I do not want you to speak; just listen. You have done everything for me: educated me in the faith, talked to me about God, baptized me into Christ’s Body, and now, for five months, given me the Bread of Life. I am so grateful, Father, so, so grateful. This communion with Christ has been my salvation. And I am at peace. I want you to know that from the time I was diagnosed with leukemia, I decided to offer up my sufferings for the continuation and fruitfulness of your priesthood. Thank you, so much.”

The priest who told me this story lived for another twenty-five years. He was one of the greatest pastors of our province on the West coast, and he lived those twenty-five years in joy bathed in the light of this experience. If we catch this story, we catch the underlying mission of the Franciscan friar and, I believe, the members of the entire family in the Church and world of our time. We must ask clearly and directly: Who in this story is being priest to whom? Whose body and blood is being expended on a daily basis? When communion is given, is it not also received? How is real presence demonstrated in this situation—in

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

81

word, in gesture, in example, in ministry? Who carries the “little form of the body of Christ” in their hands? Who begs meaning from whom? Is this not an illustration of the teaching of Lumen Gentium that the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of all the faithful are interrelated, the lay woman and the cleric ordered one to another: ad invicem tamen ordinantur. If we catch this story, we catch the definition of Church in our Franciscan tradition, its reality as a partnership “in the manner of giving and receiving,” its Trinitarian focus on the exchange of grace, communion and spiritual and material goods. If we catch this story, we catch also why the clericalization of the mission of the friars and its correlate of clericalism have been such an obstacle to our evangelical way of life in the Church and in the world. We catch finally a luminous example of the path we need to make straight in the world from our present to our future. To help us reflect from our tradition on the “impact of clericalization on Franciscan evangelization,” let me divide my remarks into two parts. First, I will concentrate on this issue as it has evolved in the last forty years since the Second Vatican Council and as it currently touches the mission of the Franciscan family. I will call this “An Anatomy of Clericalization.” I do not think we can develop a path to the future without some knowledge of how our problem has developed. This will be an historical section. In the second section, “Negotiating the Reality of Clericalization,” I will try to synthesize the challenges that our history has given to us and ask how we might deal with the problems that come in the wake of clericalization.

 For commentary on this passage of Lumen Gentium (10) see Kenan B. Osborne, OFM, The Permanent Diaconate, Its History and Place in the Sacrament of Orders (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007), 27-28.  The quotation based on Phil. 4:15 is from Bonaventure as cited in Quaestiones disputatae de perfectione evangelica, Q2, a2, d 8. (V, 137), Works of St. Bonaventure XIV (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008). I am indebted to Robert Karris, OFM, who has allowed me to use his translation of this important work by Bonaventure. The Latin may be found in Opera Omnia V (Quarracchi: Ad Claras Aquas, 1891), 117-98. Henceforth abbreviated as QDPE.

82

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

Part One An Anatomy of Clericalization in Our Present Circumstances The issue of clericalization and its impact on evangelization is entangled in the present circumstances with multiple strands of our own history. It involves both historical considerations about the Franciscan story and contemporary reflections about our own story. We must understand the entanglements between the two before we can begin to purify our witness. Let me mention very briefly three of the more important ones.

The Awareness of Our Origins: Lawrence Landini’s “Can of Worms” The modern Franciscan family first became aware of “clericalization” and its importance through the very thorough and sound work of the Cincinnati friar, Lawrence Landini, O.F.M. His study of the Order’s development from the time of St. Francis through the time of Bonaventure appeared in the immediate wake of the Second Vatican Council and coincided with the “democratic revolution” of the 1960s. Landini’s analysis of the internal changes occasioned in the Order by the primacy given to the demands of preaching in service to the Church and society opened up for consideration the discrepancy between the first reforming efforts of Francis of Assisi and the subsequent ascendancy of the evangelizing mission of the cleric friars by the 1260s. Landini defined “clericalization” as the historical process whereby the majority of the members of the fraternity became priests. On one end, he identified the evangelical basis of the fraternity in the Gospel texts, in the numerical ascendancy of the laic friars in Lawrence C. Landini, OFM, The Causes of the Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor, 1209-1260 in the Light of Early Franciscan Sources (Roma: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1968). For “democratic revolution” as an important cultural context see Kenneth Cmiel, “The Politics of Civility,” in The Sixties, from memory to history, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 263-90; Van Gosse, Rethinking the New Left, An Interpretive History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).  Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization, xxi. 

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

83

the early days of the religio, in Francis’s focus on creating a fraternity of equals, his identification with the poor, his stress on teaching by word and example and his subservience to the demands of the Roman Church. On the other end, Landini identified a different character in the Constitutions of Narbonne—a fully developed Order consisting primarily of educated clerics with a “useful” mission (i.e. preaching and hearing confessions), privileges granted the friars because of their alliance with the Roman curia, legislation discouraging the acceptance of the unlettered, exclusion of laic friars from office and governance in the fraternity, focus on a high liturgical spirituality and the overall insertion of friars into the juridical and hierarchical structures of the Church. This process of clericalization touched issues of recruitment, formation, education, prayer, fraternity, mission and the interpretation of poverty. In both subtle and overt ways, clericalization shaped the practical operations within the fraternity and its external locations and modes of evangelization. It impacted the integrity of the fraternity’s witness to the vision of Francis of Assisi, the relationship between the inner life of the brothers and their outer life in Church and society. In one place, Landini spoke of the development of “the clerical mentality,” a style of thinking and living focused on the “rights, privileges, and obligations” of clerics. This mentality valued the spiritual world of the clergy as above and in judgment of the material world of the laity. It very much followed one of the dominant and hierarchizing motifs of the Gregorian reform: spiritalis autem iudicat omnia et ipse a nemine iudicator (1 Cor 2:15), “the spiritual person, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment by anyone.” The spiritual person was the cleric. Landini was a dedicated friar priest and scholar and devoted to the Church. In his initial book, he took a very mild stance towards the development of clericalization in the Order. He emphasized the importance of the friars becoming pastorally useful to the institutional Church, particularly to the papacy. He rooted these developments in both external and internal forces, and he interpreted clericalization as Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization, 123-26. For the importance of this citation in the Gregorian reform and its relationship to church orders, see Yves Congar, “Les Laics et L’Ecclésiologie des ‘Ordinés’ chez les Théologiens des XIe et XIIe Siècles,” in I Laici nella ‘Societas Christiana’ dei Secoli XI e XII (Milano: Centro di Studi Medioevali, 1968), V, 83-117; see also Giovanni Miccoli, Chiesa Gregoriana, Richerche Sulla Riforma de secolo XI (Firenze, 1966), 255-99 for the reconstruction of the hierarchical society during the Gregorian reform.  

84

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

a partial consequence of Francis’s own commitment, for himself and his successors, to be “always submissive and prostrate at the feet of the same holy [Roman] church, and steadfast in the Catholic faith ...” (LR 12:3-4). Landini argued in the same fashion some thirteen years later: “Francis did establish, from a ministerial perspective, a clerical Order,” he wrote. He would always insist that the clerical dimensions of the Order, expressed particularly in ministry and jurisdiction at the highest levels, were intricately connected with its loyalty to “the apostolic ordering [of] ministry in the Church.” Yet Landini’s subsequent work also began to see the wider implications of his study. He argued that the issue of clericalization was connected with the linkage being established in the thirteenth century between “priestly/sacramental orders” and jurisdiction, “the public authority to govern and teach the people of God as well as to sanctify.” The movement of the Friars Minor posed a profound question for the Church: “Could jurisdiction in governing and teaching the faithful be exercised only by those endowed with priestly/sacramental orders?” Francis had assumed the contrary and answered “no”: a laic friar could exercise jurisdiction over a cleric friar in a fraternity of equals; the Gregorian Church, on the other hand, was moving to answer “yes,” to exclude the laity from governance and leadership roles. There was an irrevocable tension between the Order and the Church in this area. Landini summarized the problem in 1981: “The crisis of equality within the Friars Minor was part and parcel of the larger crisis within medieval society that had to do with the threatening emergence of an

 This rooting of the problem in Francis’s own intention is stated even more clearly in Landini’s “The Clerical Character of the Order of Friars Minor—Then and Now,” The Cord 31 (September 1981), 235-43.  Landini, “The Lay Ministry Explosion and the Presbyteral Mission of the Friars Minor,” The Cord 31 (November 1981), 300-06, with quotation from 305. See also Landini, “The Franciscan Priest in the Midst of Renewal,” in Studies Honoring Ignatius Charles Brady, Friar Minor, ed. Romano Stephen Almagno, OFM, and Conrad Harkins, OFM (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1976), 332-40.  Landini, “The Clerical Character of the Order of Friars Minor—Then and Now,” 240. It appears from his writing that the issue of decoupling orders and jurisdiction became clearer to Landini in the wake of the revision of the Code of Canon law being proposed in 1981 and finally adopted in 1983. Confer Code of Canon Law, 129.2: “Lay members of the faithful can cooperate in the exercise of this power [of governance] in accord with the norm of law.”

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

85

educated laity free of clerical tutelage and control.”10 Clericalization of the Friars Minor was a sign “of the failure of Western Europe to transcend the existing order of things and achieve a new synthesis” in the relationships between clergy and laity in Church and society. Significantly, Landini had pointed out that an internal stance on clericlaic relationships had external and apostolic consequences, and the reverse was also true. New scholarship has moved beyond the pioneering studies of Landini to reveal the even deeper complexity of the issues involved in clericalization and the development of the Order.11 We know much more about the origins of the movement in the popular evangelical awakening among laity and clergy alike. Poverty, the reclaiming of the Gospel, and preaching were at the center of the new vision and practice.12 Among women’s popular movements, the authorities objected most to public preaching sine ordine.13 In a 1973 thesis, Damian Isabell showed conclusively that some practice of lay confession occurred in the early Franciscan movement; we can see traces of it in the Rule of 1221 and the Rule of Clare.14 The ministry of the Word and the ministry of forgiveness had resonances in the world beyond the clergy! With respect to the relationship between Francis, the brothers and the laity, both men and women, a host of studies have shown how the Franciscan movement emerged from within the lay penitential move10 Landini, “The Causes of the Clericalization Revisited,” The Cord 31 (October 1981), 272-78, with quotation from 276. 11 See for examples, Giovanni Miccoli, Francesco d’Assisi e L’Ordine dei Minori (Milano: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1999; first published 1974); Jacques Dalarun, Francis of Assisi and Power (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2007); Dominic Monti, “The Friars Minor: An Order in the Church?” Franciscan Studies 61 (2003): 235-52; Raoul Manselli, “St. Bonaventure and the Clericalization of the Friars Minor,” Greyfriars Review 4 (1990): 83-98. 12 See in particular Kurt-Victor Selge, “I movimenti religiosi laici del XII sec., in particolare I Valdesi, quale sfond e premessa del movimento francescano,” Protestantesimo 43 (1988): 71-92; “Caractéristiques du premier movement vaudois et crises au cours de son expansion,” Cahiers de Fanjeux, Vaudois languedociens et Pauvres Catholiques 2 (1967), 110-42. 13 See Giovanni Gonnet, “La Donna Presso I Movimenti PauperisticoEvangelici,” in Movimento Religioso Femminile e Francesanesimo Nel Secolo XIII, Atti del VII Covegno Internazionale, Assisi, 11-13 Ottobre 1979 (Assisi, 1980), 10329. 14 Lawrence D. Isabell, OFM, The Practice and Meaning of Confession in the Primitive Franciscan Community According to the Writings of Saint Francis of Assisi and Thomas of Celano (Assisi: Portiuncula, 1973). See Earlier Rule, 20, Rule of Clare, 9.

86

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

ment; how its interactions with the laity insured its vitality; and how the close relationship between the friars and evangelical communities of women in religious life and in the communes placed the Order in tension with ecclesiastical structures.15 All of this indicates two things: (1) that “poverty” and belonging to a pauperistic-evangelical movement was a code word for reform in multiple arenas; (2) that, for the purposes of our discussion today, the give and take of spiritual power in preaching, forgiving, working and relating was a real part of the early charism, an essential part of its contribution to the ecclesiastical structures of the time. In this context, we have also come to understand that reassertion of the structures of the Gregorian Church over against the evangelical awakening meant some denial of spiritual agency to the laity, both men and women, or at least its confinement to juridical and institutional categories which were organizationally safe. As a correlate, it also implied a constriction of the priesthood to its jurisdictional and differentiating elements, removing the priest himself somewhat from participation in a communal identity. Insertion into the structures of the feudal Church placed some limitations on the equalizing and communal building activity of the evangelical movement and began a long period of local lay-clerical conflict, mendicant-parochial struggle.16 Clericalization domesticated the prophetic elements of the charism and relegated to the margins some of its reforming intuitions. The mendicants survived in the clerical-episcopal Church by virtue of papal privilege; but, as historians have pointed out, this came at the price of its own brand of clericalization. Certainly connected to the debates were the extent or limit

15 See as indicative of these trends the numerous articles in Maria Pia Alberzoni et al., Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana (Torino: Einaudi, 1997); Giovanna Casagrande, Religiosità Penitentiziale e Città al Tempo dei Communi (Roma: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1995); La Conversione alla Povertà nell’Italia dei Secoli XII-XIV, Atti del XVII Covegno storico internazionale, Todi, 14-17 Ottobre, 1990 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull-alto Medioevo, 1991). 16 A very balanced presentation of the mendicant-parochial struggle is presented in Luigi Pellegrini, “Mendicanti e Parroci: Coesistenza e conflitti di due strutture organizative della ‘cura animarum’,” in Francescanesimo e Vita Religosa dei Laici nel 1200, Atti dell VIII Covegno Internazionale (Assisi, 1981), 131-67. For a later period see R. N. Swanson, “The ‘Mendicant problem’ in the Later Middle Ages” in The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life: Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, ed. Peter Biller and Barrie Dobson (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1999), 217-38.

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

87

of spiritual agency and the relationship between power and orders, hierarchy and community. There are numerous ways of interpreting these developments from the standpoint of our Franciscan family. Many historians today emphasize the tormented experience that marked Francis in his relationship with these clericalizing forces of the Gregorian Church.17 It was he, in fact, who had accepted into a fraternity of equals people from distinct orders in society and Church and placed them on a trajectory towards public ministry! This destabilizing constellation of loyalties elicited by a single gift, which included brothers, sisters, clerics and the sacramental church in the same field of God’s grace, became the crux of his suffering. In other words, we have a problem because Francis never really reconciled his own contraries. His concept of obedience cut in both horizontal and vertical directions and has placed his followers on a tragic trajectory of perpetual struggle.18 There is some truth to this statement. Other historians, looking at developments within the Order, would heighten the gap between the intentions and actions of Francis, the early life of the fratres minores and the later work of Haymo of Faversham and Bonaventure. Clericalization here means the betrayal of the charism, the loss of a distinctive mission, not simply in the practice of poverty but also in the witness to a communal understanding and practice of Church.19 In other words, this view claims that we have a problem because we have departed from the ideal. I do not think it is quite that simple. A perspective focusing on Francis as tormented by contraries and one focused on the betrayal of his charism, while not the same, certainly

A good summary would be Roberto Rusconi, “’Clerici secundum alios clericos’: Francesco d’Assisi e l’instituzione ecclesiastica,” in Frate Francesco D’Assisi. Atti del XXI Covegno Internazionale Assisi, 14-16 Ottobre, 1993 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1994), 71-100; Grado G. Merlo, “Intorno a frate Francesco: uomini e identità di una nuova ‘fraternitas’,” in I Compagni di Francesco e La Prima Generazione Minoritica, Atti del XIX Covegno internazionale, Assisi, 17-19 Ottobre 1991 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1992), 315-38. 18 At least this is how I read Roberto Lambertini and Andrea Tabarroni, Dopo Francesco: L’Eredità Difficile (Torino, 1989). 19 Most notably Théophile Desbonnets, From Intuition to Institution, The Franciscans (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988); David Flood, Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement (Quezon, Philippines, 1989); “The Order’s Masters, Franciscan Institutions from 1226-1280,” in Dalla ‘sequela Christi’ di Francesco d’Assisi all’apologia della povertà, Atti del XVIII Covegno Internazionalem Assisi, 18-20 Ottobre 1990 (Spoleto, 1992), 41-78. 17

88

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

indicate to us that we can expect institutional trouble once we commit ourselves to the Poverello! I am not sure we need to take a definitive position on all of these issues. In fact, I am more inclined to think that continued preoccupation with the historical origins of the Order’s clericalization simply distracts us. Instead, I think the whole issue, once we understand its development and take it as a fact of life, simply serves as a warning to us. Saying something about clericalization forces us to enter into the character of Francis himself, the problem of development, the issue of fidelity to our founding charism and the attitudes we take towards the papacy, hierarchy and Church order. In short, we are faced with interpreting Franciscan identity, ecclesiology and sociology. Foundationally, the problems are theological and not just institutional. In this way, any position on clericalization stands at the symbolic center of our current debates and involves a number of questions: who are we? where do we minister? how do we relate to the hierarchical elements of the Church? what types of ministry do we engage in? with whom and how do we choose to witness to the Gospel? Clericalization, as historians have unfolded it, focuses for us the problems of our evangelical and evangelizing identity, the structure of relationships within our community called Church and the exercise of power. Landini’s “can of worms” has caught a whole load of rather large fish. As if the issues stemming from our own history were not enough, they cannot even be looked at dispassionately. Clericalization is now entangled with two other explosive flashpoints that have developed, not within the lifetime of Francis and Bonaventure, but within our own lifetime.

The Expansion and Confinement of Spiritual Power Occasions Clericalism While forces internal to the Order occasioned Landini’s study of clericalization, forces within the Church and society have restructured the relationships between the cleric and laic elements of the Church and between men and women in ministry. The emergence of the new ecclesiology of the people of God and everyone’s baptismal share in the tria munera of Christ provided a foundation for an explosion of

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

89

ministries in the post-conciliar period.20 The laity themselves share in the priestly, ruling and prophetic or teaching grace of Christ.21 Paul VI’s Ministeria Quaedam (1972), while barring women from the formal ministries of lector and acolyte, expanded the concept of ministry and extended participation in ministry to the laity.22 This restriction on the boundaries of formal ministry coupled with the expansion of participation in ecclesial ministry would prove a powder keg for the future. On the one hand, driven by insights from scripture and theology and using the new name of “ministry” to apply to a host of activities, the participation of the laity in the internal liturgical and teaching activities of the Church marked a major development in the Church’s history. Our discussion of lay preaching can only be seen and understood in the light of these larger developments. In November 1980, on the fifteenth anniversary of Vatican II’s Decree on the Laity, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued Called and Gifted, in which they addressed the emergence of the plethora of new ministries in the Church. Fifteen years later, another reflection reinforced these same developments.23 By 1986, three out of every ten parishes in the United States included lay ministers on staff, and programs for training grew by 80% between 1976 and 1986.24 In 1988, the U.S. bishops tried to establish guidelines for lay preaching, being careful to note that “the preaching of a homily during the eucharist is strictly reserved to the ordained, and preaching by a lay person, when it occurs in a church or oratory, requires authorization by the diocesan bishop.”25 20 No one has more consistently explored the meaning of ministry in today’s Church than Kenan B. Osborne, OFM. See for an introduction within the context of globalization, Orders and Ministry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006) with accompanying bibliography. For a good commentary on the laycleric distinction and its implications for ecclesiology, see Richard R. Gaillardetz, “Shifting Meanings in the Lay-Clergy Distinction,” Irish Theological Quarterly 64 (1999): 115-39. 21 See Lumen Gentium 10-13, 30-37; Dei Verbum 8. 22 For background, see Thirty Years of Liturgical Renewal: Statements of the Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, ed. Frederick R. McManus (Washington, DC: Secretariat, Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, 1987), 121-28, 134-37. 23 See Called and Gifted: The American Catholic Laity in Pastoral Letters of the United States Catholic Bishops, IV, 1975-1983, ed. Hugh J. Nolan (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference,1983), 417-23; Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1995). 24 See Zeni Fox, “The Rise of Lay Ministry in the Years Since Vatican II,” in The Church in the Nineties: Its Legacy, Its Future, ed. Pierre M. Hegy (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 230-41. 25 “Guidelines for Lay Preaching,” Origins 25 (December 1, 1988): 402-04.

90

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

Although these national guidelines were not approved in Rome because of technicalities, the lay sharing in the prophetic grace of Christ continued to find institutional expression. Formal norms were finally passed in 2001.26 By 2004, “the number of Catholic parishes in the United States entrusted to deacons, religious sisters and brothers, and other lay persons” had grown to 566.27 In November 2005, the U.S. bishops approved an official statement on this entirely new development, summarizing the state of the question by offering the following statistics:

Lay Ministry Statistical Summary, 200528 Number of lay ecclesial ministers

Increase of paid parish ministers

30,632 work at least 20 hrs per week 2,163 work 20 hrs per week 53% since 1990

Increase in number of parishes with salaried lay ecclesial ministers

From 54 to 66% since 1990

Percentage of lay women

64%

Percentage of lay men

20%

Percentage of religious women

16%

Ministers in hospitals, colleges, health care settings, prisons, seaports etc.

2,000

Membership, Association of Pastoral Musicians

8,500

Membership, National Catholic Educational Association

5,466 lay principals

Number of volunteers

26 See “Decrees Promulgated on Lay Preaching and Radio, TV Teaching,” Origins 31 (January 31, 2002): 550-52. The whole development of lay preaching was contested in law (canons 761.1, 766) and practice. For background see Patricia A. Parachini, Lay Preaching, State of the Question (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999); John M. Huels, Disputed Questions in the Liturgy Today (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1988), 17-27; “Lay Preaching at Liturgy,” in More Disputed Questions in the Liturgy (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1996), 179-92; Sarah Ann Fairbanks, “Displaced Persons: Lay Liturgical Preachers at the Eucharist,” Worship 77 (September 2003): 439-47. 27 For an overview see “Understanding the Ministry and Experience: Parish Life Coordinators in the United States,” Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), Special Report (Summer 2005). 28 As taken from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Co-workers in the Vineyard of the Lord,” Origins 25 (December 1, 2005): 408-09.

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

91

This expansion of lay ministry, representing as it does the reality of day-to-day participation in the life of the Church, professionalization of standards and an increased consciousness of structures of decision making and organizational policies, could not but change the power relationships between the clergy and laity. It went hand in hand with a growing awareness among many of the laity at large of the gap between their experiences and beliefs and the experiences and positions of the clerical elite, especially in the areas of birth control, reproductive ethics and sexuality.29 “Clericalization,” in our present context, now carries an even more intense connotation of institutional control of the laity by the clergy. On the other hand, the restriction of the official orders of the Church to men by Ministeria Quaedam began a long and tortuous journey of conflict over the role and authority of women in the Church. Women have established themselves in the new ministries of the Church and in its decision-making processes in exceptional ways since Vatican II.30 Yet in the last forty years it is also the maleness of ministerial containment which has come face to face with the Church’s demand in the Synod of 1971 that “while the Church is bound to give witness to justice, she recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes. Hence we must undertake an examination of modes of acting and of the possessions and life style found within the Church herself.”31 Added to the social forces of the new feminism, such a seeming contradiction between just structures and policies of gender exclusion stretched the community bonds of unity to their maximum. The question of male-female relationships and the explosive question of gender now overlay the issue of clericalization. Perhaps the tipping point for real dissatisfaction and subsequent polarization can be represented by events that took place in the Church .

A good summary of the current perceptions of the laity is contained in William V. D’Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, Mary L. Gautier, American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 105-22. See also Jon Nilson, “The Divided Mind of American Catholicism,” in Hegy, The Church in the Nineties; “Is polarization pulling the Church apart,” U.S. Catholic, 63 (March 1998): 10-16. 30 A good overview may be found in Mary Ellen Sheehan, “Vatican II and the Ministry of Women in the Church: Selected North American Episcopal Statements and Diocesan Practice,” in Vatican II and Its Legacy, ed. M. Lamberights and L. Kenis (Leuven: University Press, 2002), 469-86. 31 Synod of Bishops, “Justice in the World,” III (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1972), 44. 29

92

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

in the United States between November 1975 and November 1978, between the first Women’s Ordination Conference and the second. Precisely during this period society became polarized over gender issues in the workplace, in reproductive ethics and in sexual orientation.32 Then, in 1977, the Vatican published a declaration on “Women in the Ministerial Priesthood.”33 In such an atmosphere, understandably enough, the national women’s conference of 1978 was much more divisive than its predecessor, with several speakers applying a feminist structural hermeneutic to the Church itself. It was a radical call for a change in church order based on the Gospel call for equality interpreted through a feminist lens. For some, sexism and patriarchy had now joined racism as a cardinal sin in the Catholic lexicon of evils.34 To add intellectual and theological wood to the social fire, a task force of the Catholic Biblical Association published its conclusions about ministry in the New Testament in 1979: ... there is positive evidence in the NT that ministries were shared by various groups and that women did in fact exercise roles and functions later associated with priestly ministry; that the arguments against the admission of women to priestly ministry based on the praxis of Jesus and the apostles, disciplinary regulations, and the created order cannot be sustained.35 The distinction developing in the Church was no longer simply cleric-laic, but male-female. The subsequent decade of the eighties would see the Catholic community split on issues of the Equal Rights A good review of the decade may be found in Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Specific gender issues are treated in Beth Bailey, “She ‘Can Bring Home the Bacon’,” in America in the Seventies, ed. Beth Bailey and David Farber (Lawrence, KA: Kansas University Press, 2004), 10728. 33 “Vatican Declaration: Women in the Ministerial Priesthood,” Origins 6 (January 3, 1977): 517-23. A good analysis of the change may be found in Mary J. Henold, “’A Matter of Conversion’: American Catholic Feminism in Transition, 1975-1978,” American Catholic Studies 116 (Winter 2005): 1-23. 34 Compare Women and Catholic Priesthood: An Expanded Vision, Proceedings of the Detroit Ordination Conference, ed. Anne Marie Gardiner, SSND (New York: Paulist Press, 1976) with New Woman, New Church, New Priestly Ministry: Proceedings of the Second Conference on the Ordination of Roman Catholic Women, ed. Maureen Dwyer (n.d., n.p.). 35 “Women and Priestly Ministry: The New Testament Evidence,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979): 608-13 with quotation from page 612. 32

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

93

Amendment, inclusive language, family values and liturgical practice. The disaster of the national pastoral on women in Church and society, shipwrecked on polarized understandings of the importance of gender in social construction and fully discarded by November 1990,36 was emblematic of the whole development. It appeared to some that the Gospel itself was squared off against the magisterium. To others, Church and society, in their very ordering, were breaking apart on the shoals of gender equality and the assertions of individual rights. In the 1980s, the growing participation of the laity in the Church, the exclusion of women from orders and the juxtaposition of Gospel and magisterium set the stage for the emergence within people’s awareness of the link between clericalization and its evil twin “clericalism.”37 Institutional authority over against Gospel witness had become the critical arena of contestation. We have already seen a structural analysis of the Church that first emerged with the women’s movement. In 1980, spurred on by Sister Teresa Kane’s speech before John Paul II in Washington DC38 and the growing dissatisfaction of lay brothers in clerical orders, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) decided to take a serious look at the issue of clericalism. A Task Force was formed and two years later, in April 1983, a study paper circulated. It was an important work, one of the most astute and indicative of the decade, but one almost forgotten in the wake of the controversy over the Vatican document “Essential Elements in the Church’s Teaching On Religious Life,” dated just a month later, May 31, 1983.39 The Task Force defined clericalism as “the conscious or unconscious concern to promote the particular interests of the clergy For the end of the process see “Vote on Women’s Pastoral Delayed,” Origins 20 (September 27, 1990): 249-51. Good reviews may be found in Karen Sue Smith, “Catholic Women: Two Decades of Change,” in Church Polity and American Politics: Issues in Contemporary American Catholicism, ed. Mary C. Segers (New York: Garland Publishing 1990), 313-33; and in The Inside Stories: 13 Valiant Women Challenging the Church, ed. Anne Lally Milhaven (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1987). 37 “Clericalism” began to enter into the perception of American Catholics during the 1950s and was deeply connected with the debate over the intellectual status of the community and the rise of an educated laity. I am indebted to Dr. Jeffrey Burns for his comments in this area. 38 See “Women in Ministry: Response to Sister Theresa Kane and Pope John Paul II,” Theology in the Americas, Documentation Series, Archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Sister Theresa Kane spoke October 7, 1979. 39 For background see Robert J. Daly, SJ, Michael J. Buckley, SJ, Mary Ann Donovan, SC, Clare E. Fitzgerald, SSND, John W. Padberg, SJ, Religious Life in the U.S. Church: The New Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1984). 36

94

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

to protect the privileges and power that have traditionally been conceded to those in the clerical state.”40 Clericalism, the paper argued, was marked by an authoritarian style of ministerial leadership, a rigidly hierarchical worldview and the virtual identification of the holiness and grace of the Church with the clerical state. It had attitudinal, behavioral and institutional dimensions; it touched issues of group bias, the existence of patriarchal social structures, the function and interpretation of law and the fundamental relationships between men and women. Describing the contemporary atmosphere in the Church the report opined: Women and men are caught in the ambiguity created by two conflicting sets of claims. One claim is the power of traditional roles to structure expectations and vision. The other claim is the community building potential of a theoretically attractive but as yet sociologically unrealized vision of church. The Task Force concluded with a series of suggestions for the future, most of which went unrealized but which perhaps might continue to provide some guidelines: • • • • • •

Avoid polarization. Accept mutual responsibility. Involve all members of the Church in the discussion of the question. Be clear about the complexity of the issue. Look for new forms of solidarity for the sake of the Church’s mission. Realize that an analysis of the problem has consequences for priests, religious and lay people, and for men and women in ministerial relationships.

The CMSM Task Force and its appearance in 1983 require some longer and more interpretive comments. At its base, clericalism is indicative of a violent social structure. It is not the same as the more neutral term “clericalization,” which marked Landini’s work of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Task Force Report, “In Solidarity and Service: Reflections on the Problem of Clericalism in the Church,” 1983, manuscript in author’s possession. The paper was an attempt to apply Paul VI’s Call to Action to a critical examination of the Church’s internal witness to justice. See The Ministerial Priesthood: Justice in the World (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1972), Part III of “Justice in the World.” For background see Ronald N. Carignan, OMI, President, CMSM, “My dear brothers in Christ,” March 30, 1983, paper in author’s possession. 40

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

95

immediate post-conciliar period. “Clericalism” rather represents a distortion in relationships between people who are equally made in God’s image and are equally marked by the rich poverty of being a creature. Things such as institutional offices, positions, states and even gender, which are simultaneously different, individualized, multiform and gifts of God and theoretically marked by reciprocity, mutuality, dialogue and service to each other, implode. They are experienced as mutually contradictory. The forces of social oppression suddenly collide with a person or group’s awareness of its minority status. Frustration with the pace of change or the reality of too much change reaches a tipping point; the elite and popular classes in society become antagonistic; political parties align themselves by factions; community fractures. There ensues a corresponding need to defend one’s own identity by identifying one’s opponent in absolute terms. In this highly charged atmosphere, the search for justice, giving to each what is due, is no longer partnered by patience and charity, but is now accompanied by the distorted impulse of the libido dominandi, the drive to dominate. People turn on each other. They discover an instinct towards the private and reposition themselves into relationships marked by isolation, caste-think, dominance, possession, uniformity, mistrust and the totality of one perspective.41 Although “clericalism” is used exclusively to refer to the ministry of the ordained in the Church, it arises as an historical phenomenon only in the context of shifting power relationships. Linguistically, it is accompanied by its brother and sister diseases. They all feed off of each other and identify each other as absolute enemies: clericalism, laicism, patriarchy, feminism, elitism, group bias, racism, class domination. Words like these surface only when the social body itself has turned to absolutisms. Abstractions, clericalism and its family members give names to structural, linguistic and organizational tendencies that suddenly become visible when the passions of people run amuck in a fearful society of competing values. When clericalism and its cognates enter into I pen this definition of clericalism after having read R. A. Markus, “Conversion and Disenchantment in Augustine’s Spiritual Career,” Saint Augustine Lecture, Villanova University, 1984, reprinted in Sacred and Secular: Studies on Augustine and Latin Christianity (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1994). See also Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 68-69, on the turn to the private and the illusion of self-sufficiency. I choose this approach because Augustine’s influence on Bonaventure’s De Perfectione Evangelica is so extensive. 41

96

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

the language, we can be certain that we have lost a social sense of human limitation and sin. We can see these developments operative in the Church since the culture wars of the 1980s. Virulent disagreement over gender issues and the role of the laity in the Church have been translated into an increasingly depersonalized language of abstractions and rights. In all cases, this represents the critical truth of a social loss of human dignity and a departure from a model of the human community based on a Trinitarian God and an Incarnate and Crucified Lord. The small presence of the person-as-individually-graced lies hidden in the language of ideology. Today, when we speak about “clericalization,” can we do so without averting to the reality and fact of “clericalism”? Our own history would indicate that we cannot. And we see in this issue how deeply our own Franciscan discussion of lay-cleric ministerial relationships touches deeper and much wider issues of both ecclesiological importance and affective conversion. To some extent, the developments I have described set up an historical dynamic similar to that of the evangelical awakening of the thirteenth century, except this time there is a well developed theology of the Church, a large body of educated Catholics and official institutional approval for the role of the laity and women. And the problems now are not confined to the United States; they have gone global.42 Consciousness of the Church’s political and sociological structures has permeated our Catholic identity in a new way. Knowing our own history, we might expect what would happen— the reassertion by both lay and clerical forces within the Church of the separate, unique, male character of the priesthood and the hierarchical structuring of the Roman Church. This comprises our third major historical strand entangled with the issue of clericalization and evangelization.

The Reassertion of Difference and the Role of Hierarchy Pressured to share institutional power and authority and caught between the forces of right and left, bishops and priests found their In this essay I have concentrated on developments in the United States, but it is important to recognize that the issues are global in nature. See for parallel examples Jan Grootaers, “The Laity within Ecclesial Communion,” in Pro Mundi Vita Bulletin 106 (1986); Marc Luyckx, “The Situation of Women in the Catholic Church,” Pro Mundi Vita Bulletin 83 (October 1980). 42

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

97

hierarchical position, teaching function and ritual identity questioned and their responsibility to maintain unity with the past critiqued. They themselves have experienced a crisis of morale and collective identity in the last forty years.43 The social surfacing of a long-standing problem of sexual abuse of minors, perhaps symbolic of the underlying issues of relationality, power and identity, has only compounded the issue and intensified the problems we associate with “clericalization.”44 In addition, and this is most significant, these pressure points on priestly identity have occasioned both a generational and institutional reaction. It has come in the form of both the reassertion of the differences between the clergy and the laity and an emphasis on the authoritative role of the hierarchy. The reaction began almost simultaneously with the ideologies I have described under the heading of “clericalism.” The most recent study of “the new priests,” that is those educated and ordained after 1980, notes a considerable ecclesiological shift and concludes with the following description: A specific issue felt with urgency by these priests is the theology of the priesthood. The young men hold to a sacramental and cultic theology of the priest. They reject a theology defining priesthood as merely a matter of function in church life. They insist that the priest is distinct from the laity, and that emphatically includes ontological as well as institutional distinctiveness. The priest-lay distinction of the pre-Vatican II era needs to be reconsidered and probably reinstated. The new priests are less enthusiastic than their elders about lay ministers and the possibility of working with lay ministers as equals.45 This generational focus on the priest’s sacral and cultic identity, his unique place within the hierarchy, has corresponded to the popular rise of the new evangelical Catholics, more concerned about tradition, stability and external counter-cultural witness in their ecclesial life.46 43 The clearest statement occurs in Priestly Life and Ministry Committee, “Reflections on the Morale of Priests,” Origins 18 (January 12, 1989): 499-505. 44 For the best overview of these developments among the priests, see Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger, Evolving Visions of the Priesthood: Changes from Vatican II to the Turn of the New Century (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 7-18. 45 Hoge and Wenger, Evolving Visions of the Priesthood, 69. 46 See William L. Portier, “Here Come the Evangelical Catholics,” and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, “Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic: Five Theses Related to Theological Anthropology,”and others in Communio XXXI (Spring 2004).

98

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

Once again, we should note, our image of what it means to be laic and cleric in the Church is deeply affected by broader social developments. During the pontificate of John Paul II, the challenges posed by secular individualistic liberalism also occasioned a shift from an emphasis on rights to an emphasis on fidelity to objective truth and from an emphasis on equality and participation to an emphasis on role and function within the social system.47 This has been paralleled by the support among some sectors of the laity of a traditional family structure with different roles for men and women and a focus on unchanging moral norms. Ideological values associated with the feminist movement of the 1980s have come under critique and no longer carry the same explosive charge among a younger generation.48 Internal to the Church, a whole series of documents have tended to reinforce its more hierarchical elements. The role of the clergy configured to Christ, the Head and Shepherd, is a central metaphor in Pastores Dabo Vobis (1992).49 An emphasis on objective truth and the Church’s absolute moral norms mark the twin encyclicals Veritatis Splendor (1993) and Evangelium Vitae (1995). In 1997, eight Vatican congregations published an instruction examining the distinctions between the “ministries specific to priests and the ministries of lay people.”50 An explanatory note argued in the following fashion: Our modern frame of mind leads us to understand far more easily the concept of function, and far less easily to understand what is meant by ontological configuration. It is easier to under47 Most instructive on this issue is Herménio Ricco, SJ, John Paul II and the Legacy of Dignitatis Humanae (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002). 48 A good survey hinting at the complexity of these developments is Sara M. Evans, “Beyond Declension: Feminist Radicalism in the 1970s and 1980s,” in The World the Sixties Made, Politics and Culture in Recent America, ed. Van Gosse and Richard Moser (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003), 52-66. 49 I Will Give You Shepherds, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, March 25, 1992 (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1992), nos. 21-23. Note the discussions of freedom in no. 37, with the backdrop of cultural individualism, and the definition of “pastoral charity” (no. 23), certainly picking up a different element of “pastoral” than that of the Council. This approach should be compared with As One Who Serves: Reflections of the Pastoral Ministry on Priests in the United States (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1977). 50 “Some Questions Regarding Collaboration of Nonordained Faithful in Priests’ Sacred Ministries,” Origins 27 (November 27, 1997): 397-409.

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

99

stand that there is a task related to the word, and less easy to understand that there are sacramental actions. We are very sensitive to the demands of functionality and good organization and might be inclined generously to entrust to others among the faithful anything which does not directly require the ad validitatem powers of the priesthood. However, the ordained ministry of bishops, priests and deacons belongs to the very structure of the church. Which is the same as saying the image of the church. This image reaches beyond the categories of canonical validity. To attempt to resolve what are practical problems by pushing what is possible canonically to its very limits would not be to give a true image of the church.51 The ontological distinction between clergy and laity, and necessarily therefore between ordained men and women who may not be ordained, has been reinforced in subsequent instructions on the liturgy. In 2000, the third General Instruction of the Roman Missal appeared; in 2001, Liturgiam Authenticam; in 2004 Redemptionis Sacramentum on matters “to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist.” The General Instruction ritually prescribed a stronger separation between clergy and laity. Only the priest or deacon could place the gifts on the altar; the breaking of bread was reserved to the priest or deacon; lay ministers could not approach the altar to receive until after the priest had received the sacrament; the priest must hand the ciboria and chalices to the lay ministers; the priest or deacon consumes the blood and brings the chalices to the tabernacle.52 Liturgiam Authenticam was widely interpreted as a significant departure from the inclusive language norms of the previous decades.53 Redemptionis Sacramentum defined as “reprobate” the practice of priests present at

“The Instruction: An Explanatory Note,” Origins 27 (November 27, 1997): 400-01, with quotation from 400. 52 See John M. Huels, “The New General Instruction of the Roman Missal: Subsidiarity or Uniformity,” Worship 75 (November 2001): 482-511, with listing of new developments on page 506. 53 See for example Helen Hull Hitchcock, “A New Era in the Renewal of the Liturgy,” in The Catholic Imagination: Proceedings from the Twenty-fourth Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, ed. Kenneth D. Whitehead (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2003), 140-50, and subsequent articles by others, 151-58. For a critical review, see Peter Jeffery, OblSB, Translating Tradition: A Chant Historian Reads Liturgiam Authenticam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005). 51

100

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

the celebration of the Eucharist refraining from distributing communion and handing the function over to the laity.54 Lastly, the new edition of the Program of Priestly Formation, the national norms governing seminary education in the United States, makes little mention of collaborative ministry and relies almost entirely on John Paul II’s Pastores Dabo Vobis. The emphasis on the distinct and separate role of the priest in teaching, ruling and sanctifying is readily apparent. His formation, his relational status, his education and his mission are all unique.55 Where is the rest of the Church?

Excursus: The Order of Friars Minor and the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin In the last twenty years I have watched the Order of Friars Minor struggle with the many challenges of its identity in history. The issues of our origins, questions of our ministerial relationships with the laity, the promotion of women in the Church and the emphasis given to the diocesan model of priesthood and hierarchy have all surfaced in provincial and general chapters. Let me give just four examples. First, article three of our General Constitutions, definitively approved in 1987, affirms: 1. The Order of Friars Minor is made up of clerical friars and lay friars. By their profession, all friars are completely equal in their religious rights and obligations except for those that arise from Sacred Orders. 2. The order of Friars Minor is included by the Church amongst the clerical Institutes. Subsequent gatherings of friars have repeatedly attempted to have this modified in such a way as to give witness to a fraternity of equals in terms of office and jurisdiction. To no avail. Are we a clerical order? Are we a fraternity? It depends on where you stand. Secondly, in the early 1990s, just as the Franciscan friars were feeling the institutional pinch of the reassertion of hierarchy through the parochialization of our ministries, the English Speaking Conference made a concerted effort to stake out a claim for a distinctive vision of priesthood within our religious tradition. In a conscious attempt to For Redemptionis Sacramentum, see Origins 33 (May 6, 2004): 801, 803-22. Program of Priestly Formation, 5th Edition (Washington DC: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2006), passim. 54 55

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

101

avoid clericalism if not clericalization, a theological commission published the small booklet Religious Priesthood within the Franciscan Tradition. It highlighted the tensions I have outlined between fraternitas and priesthood, between office and the non-appropriation of office, between position and the fundamental value of minoritas.56

Religious Priesthood within the Franciscan Tradition: An Initial Statement and Theological Outline (Chicago: Croatian Franciscan Press, 1991), 24,1-3. In 1988, John O’Malley, SJ, identified for the first time and in a systematic way an emerging conflict between the ministerial foci of diocesan and religious priests. He noted that the documents of Vatican Council II dealing with the specific status of priests and religious located priesthood within the context of a dominant parochial model. This presumed: a) ministry to the faithful; b) ministry in a stable community of faith, the parish; c) ministry done by clergy in hierarchical union with the order of bishops; d) ordination as the warrant for ministry. The Code of Canon Law has enshrined this model of church order. Developments in the next decade with respect to the relationship between clergy and laity in ministry, the centrality of the Eucharist, ritual practice and language were to enhance the distinctions between clergy and laity, religious and diocesan priests. Between 1988 and 1993 the English Speaking Conference, Order of Friars Minor (ESC), noted a growing divergence between the models of life and ministry that were developing in the Church between diocesan models and religious models. Conversations revealed the following areas as particularly difficult: 1) Broad questions of church order: the relationship between the religious and the structures of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops; the movement on the part of the U.S. bishops to stress a single model of parochial priesthood; the public promotion of the priestly vocation at the expense of the religious priesthood; the uncertain juridical status of the primary places where the friars were being educated in the three unions (Washington, Chicago, Berkeley); the model of “consecrated life” being promoted for the Synod on Religious Life; the growing number of priestless parishes and the pressure on religious orders to supply priests for the diocesan church. 2) Societal issues: the lack of status experienced by priests in society; the stress on the institutional emancipation of women in society and church; the questions engendered by the sexual abuse scandal, etc. 3) Fraternal tensions: growing conflict between parish duties and community life; loss of the place of the laic friar within parochial life; an approach to mission focused on sacramental life; inability of friar priests to let go of institutional commitments; divergent life styles in the areas of money, possessions, prayer, freedom to travel. 4) Formation: lack of positive support for priesthood within formation programs; lack of distinction between clericalism and a positive view of priestly vocation; institutional stress on fraternity and equality and cultural inability to deal with differences; changing ethnic profile of candidates and changing cultural role of the laic and cleric friar. This situation, as it surfaced in the ESC, was also present in the worldwide dimensions of the Order in Asia (the issue of caste), in Latin America and Africa (the issue of parishes), in the newly revitalized 56

102

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

Thirdly, the tensions embedded in our vision and history were given eloquent expression and focus in General Minister Hermann Schalück’s 1996 letter on evangelization, “To Fill the Whole Earth with the Gospel of Christ”: Francis did more than simply reproduce what was customary in the Church of his day. He reintroduced Gospel elements of living and showed how fruitful they could be for following in the footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ. Francis preferred poverty and humility to riches, security and institutional stability. Francis knew that the Church of his day had control over part of the world and exercised temporal power, yet he wanted to have only the privilege of minority. His only reference to power was to remark that the friars should never exercise it.57 Fourth and finally, in the last ten years the Minister General has noted that the within the Order the number of lay brothers was decreasing more rapidly than the number of priests. We could say that Landini’s “can of worms” has only deepened!58 General Chapters of the new millennium have continued to grapple with the same issues embedded in clericalization and evangelization.59 The friars have conducted but never published a large survey of their own parochializa-

provinces in Eastern Europe after 1989, and in the declining fortunes of the Order in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. 57 Hermann Schalück, OFM, “To Fill the Whole Earth with the Gospel of Christ” (St. Louis, MO: English Speaking Conference of the Order of Friars Minor, 1996), no. 94. 58 See for example “A Study Guide for the General Chapter Documents,” in Iacobi Bini, OFM, Acta Capituli Generalis Ordinarii, Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Rome: Curia Generalis Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, 1998), 254-57. The reports from each sector of the Order also indicated the continued pressure on the Order to engage in diocesan sacramental work; the tension between older, monastic forms of life and the newer emphasis on fraternity; the cultural barriers to becoming a laic friar; the issue of individualism, which worked against “re-fraternization.” 59 See for examples Capitulum Generale Assisi, 2003, May the Lord Give You Peace (Rome: General Curia, 2003), 28-32, 37-41; Extraordinary General Chapter, The Lord Speaks With Us On the Road (Rome: General Curia, 2006), nos. 28-40. On page 40, this latter document makes recommendations on dealing with bishops and articulates the need for an “expert elaboration of the ecclesiological implications of our Franciscan identity as a fraternity-in-mission in service to the Church and the world.”

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

103

tion.60 In 2004, the Order published You are All Brothers, a section of which called explicit attention to the new temptations of inequality.61 The recent history of the Capuchin Franciscan friars, who have been even stronger in their refusal to include elements of clericalization in their constitutions, indicate that these same issues confront all of us together.62 What does one do with the tensions? How does one live the Gospel life?

Part Two Negotiating the Reality of Clericalization Our historical survey has indicated to us that we cannot really consider the issues of clericalization and evangelization outside of a whole series of other issues that condition our thinking and shape our responses. We are in much the same position as the fraternity was in its first hundred years. At one time I believed that many of these issues could be resolved through hard work, well-directed cooperative commitments and clarity of vision. I no longer think so. In fact, I think the problems embedded in clericalization are something we must try to manage, but cannot change. We are intricately connected to the Roman Catholic Church by profession and tradition, and the lay-clergy distinctions canonically enshrined and institutionally enforced, especially in terms of jurisdiction, will not simply dissolve. Theologically there is a difference between the cleric and the laic, as is taught by Vatican II. In addition, we are now a global order, encompassing cultures and experiences that do not lend themselves easily to communal and participative forms of government; the situation of laic-cleric relationships has too many mutations to undergo a single ordering. I doubt 60 For background and some conclusions see Benedikt Mertens, OFM, “Franciscans and Parochial Ministry: Past and Present Aspects of a Debated Question,” Antonianum LXXV (2000): 523-54. 61 See The Order of Friars Minor, You Are All Brothers: An aid for ongoing formation on Chapter III of the General Constitutions (Rome: OFM General Secretariat for Formation and Studies, 2004), 77-84. 62 For the Capuchin history see John Corriveau, “The Institutionalization of the Franciscan Charism: The Issue of Clericalization,” The New Round Table 41 (March 1988): 2-18; Justin J. Der, “The Capuchin Lay Brother: A JuridicalHistorical Study,” The New Round Table 37 (Fall 1984); 38 (Winter 1985).

104

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

that we will ever reach the point globally where the number of laic friars would form a critical mass greater than the influence of the cleric friars. The tensions encoded in the trajectory I have outlined seem to be the permanent precondition for our own vocation.63 What does this mean? I believe, above all, that knowing our own history, being realistic about its inherent ambiguities, means that we must be self-conscious about our tensions and work within them. We must not become, intellectually and practically, passive participants in a silent but inexorable process of clericalization. The weight of institutional life will always move in its own self-interested direction. The needs of the people and the structures of the local and universal Church will always pressure the Franciscan family to be “pastorally useful.” Knowing this, we must counterbalance the prevailing atmosphere by an institutional commitment to and practice of our evangelical vocation. We must try to create an alternative to the dominant way of thinking and acting. We have the resources. Do we have the intellectual insight and the pastoral courage to do this? I believe we do. In conclusion, I describe some dimensions of our task that have occurred to me as I meditate on our own sources and try to retrieve them in the light of our contemporary history. I am not attempting to recover the historic Francis or Bonaventure so much as to appropriate them for our twenty-first century world. Today, we have, after all, a more developed theology of lay ministry and the Church has proclaimed the equality of women. These realities are far beyond the ecclesiastical horizon of Francis, Bonaventure or Scotus.

Some interesting observations on these inherent tensions were made by Don Felice Acrocca at the Extraordinary General Chapter of 2006. After noting the tension between the “two souls of Franciscanism” (those attached tenaciously to the memory of the origins and those resolutely lined up with insertion into the pastoral activity of the Church), he concludes: “Not only manual work, but itinerant evangelization ..., a fundamental element of the primitive experience, was kept alive thanks, above all, to the non-priest religious. There is a lot of discussion today, at least in the West, about non-priest Friars and about the nature of the Order. However, as long as liturgical-pastoral activity continues to absorb almost all our energies, every possible discourse is destined to fail.” See mss. in author’s possession, “The Rule of the Friars Minor, A Rule of Life in Tension between Memory and Prophecy.” 63

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

105

Recovering a Theology of Church Order First, our origins bequeath to us not a set of contradictories but a whole set of contraries: laic and cleric as brothers and sisters in mission; a fraternitas of equals embedded in an ecclesial structure of hierarchical unequals; very diverse men and women with different gifts in relationship under a single call to penance and work; a call to affirm the unity of all creatures under God while recognizing the uniqueness of each; a continual struggle within the course of history to create and imagine new ways of institutionalized charismatic presence to both the believer and the unbeliever. These contraries act like magnetic poles within a given historical field to keep us alive as an organism constantly stretching and growing. We have life as long as we have a multiplicity of relationships, cutting simultaneously in different directions. Order, therefore, for us, is not simply connected with management and logic, with institutional and canonical clarity, with role definitions and ontological differences, with the creation of separate cocoons for fraternity and mission, for cleric and laic, for men and women. Order, rather, is primarily manifested in “fittingness,” in the correlation of parts in a harmonious fashion, in the energy field created when contraries begin to interact not oppositionally but tensively, as partners who choose each other in a dance.64 At times, of course, the Church as a community needs severe hierarchical ordering for the purposes of discipline and stability. This is a result of our own sin. Still, it is not the major image dominating our sources nor the documents of Vatican II. Generally, order is not arranged through a hierarchy of dominance/ subordination, teaching 64 One of the best expositions of how the Franciscan universe uses a method of correlation is contained in Louis Mackey, “Singular and Universal: A Franciscan Perspective,” in Peregrinatons of the Word: Essays in Medieval Philosophy (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 147-80. For further reflections on order in Bonaventure’s thought, see J. A. Wayne Hellmann, Divine and Created Order in Bonaventure’s Theology (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2001), 1-29. This does not deny a hierarchical ordering, but the focus is on the Trinitarian order that exists in God. It is an order of persons, which implies relationship, the ordering of one thing to another. Creation is ordered vertically but also horizontally because in each created thing is a trace of the order of persons in God. As Bonaventure writes of the Trinity in the Breviloquium (I.2): “... it includes the highest fecundity, love, generosity, equality, relationship, likeness and inseparability.” As translated in Dominic Monti, OFM, Works of Bonaventure IX (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 30.

106

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

and learning, but in a horizontal field of equality, difference and mutual exchange.65 Order occurs when fullness, wholeness, plentitude and abundance are symphonically expressed in an infinite diversity of low and high notes. Fundamentally, the Church is not ordered hierarchically; it is ordered beautifully when its parts harmonize to create something that stirs the soul. This type of ordering makes all the difference in the world. It structures our imagination first to rejoice in diversity and multiplicity, to see as a primary category of being the uniqueness of each thing. “The divine reality itself lies hidden within everything which is perceived or known,” Bonaventure writes.66 In the Apologia Pauperum in response to detractors, Bonaventure presents a graphic and imaginative picture of this charismatic horizontal ordering as it includes a vertical structuring: It was not out of spite, but as a manifold sign of his bounty, that the Creator of the Universe had distinguished creatures according to their genera, and organized their several levels of nobility according to the relative perfection of their natures, powers, and operations. He would have known also that neither had it been out of spite, but as a manifold sign of his bountiful love, that the Re-creator of the human race had offered distinct charismatic gifts, revealed distinct secrets of the mysteries, conferred distinct honors of offices and prelacies, and finally, displayed examples of distinct virtues, proposing the imitation of one example to one man and of another to another, as the Apostle says, speaking of continence: Each one has his own gift from God.67 65 See here the study of Marietta Jenicek, OSF, “Franciscan Vision of the Notion of Hierarchy,” Analecta TOR 34 (2003): 811-30, where she argues: “Hierarchy assumes a community shaped by relationship, communication, mutual respect and love, which allow flexibility and movement within the community. The purpose of hierarchy is to support persons in helping each other reach the goal of the journey. This is mediation. Hierarchy is a tool for spiritual formation and growth.” While fundamentally correct, the notion of church hierarchy as providing stability and discipline is underplayed. 66 De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam 26, in Sister Emma Thérèse Healy, Saint Bonaventure’s De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam: A Commentary with an Introduction, Works of St. Bonaventure I (Saint Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1955), 41. 67 Defense of the Mendicants, The Works of Bonaventure IV, trans. José de Vinck (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1966), 109-10. The biblical citation is 1 Cor. 7:7.

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

107

For our tradition, unity between diverse things is established by tracing their existence back to their origin in the generous God (reductio), by rooting their possibility for unity on this earth in the operative power of the one mediator Christ in the multiform expressions of his presence and by aiming to achieve the fullness of diversity in unity by working towards the plentitude of the Trinitarian life.68 It is as if we observed all the different creatures in the world on the same table of life—bishops, priests, laity, men and women, creatures of all kinds, each an individual—and asked: What type of grace does each thing have? What type of ordering principle makes them one? It is an explicitly God-centered vision. Without denying the ordering granted by position, which itself is a gift from above, this starting point is designed to cut through every sociological, geographical and cultural division we set up amongst ourselves. It is most popularly expressed in Francis’s great presentation of all the orders in the Church, which he unifies by subordinating them to the same calling to “persevere in the true faith and in penance, for otherwise no one will be saved.”69 The unifying functional category for this vision is that of “creature,” a category all things share in common. In short, we all have a grace given from above; but our share in Christ’s fullness is limited. The quality of our fullness and the quality of our unity is directly dependent on our ability to see the traces of 68 Note the following passage from Defense of the Mendicants (II.12), 30: “From this single and undivided eternal Exemplar there flows such a variety of created natures, and such a variety of perfections in these natures, according to the degree of their participation in the supreme Good itself, that all cannot be possessed together by any given creature—for which reason God established diverse species of beings so that the universe should be complete. And likewise, the diverse states, levels, and orders are derived in their exemplarity from the Incarnate Word as from the original principle of grace of whose fullness we have all received, and as from a mirror in which and from which shine forth all the fullness and beauty of holiness and wisdom. These states, levels, and orders are derived from him according to the various distributions of the gifts and the various manners in which the Exemplar is to be imitated. Within them, the manifold perfection of Christ is distributed according to a multiform participation, in such a way that it is found at the same time in all things. And yet it does not glow in any one of them in the fullness of its universal plentitude....” 69 Earlier Rule, 23:7 from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, OFMCap. and Ignatius C. Brady, OFM (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 7. For a very important commentary recognizing the social significance of this vision see Jacques LeGoff, Saint Francis of Assisi (London: Routledge, 2004), 74-79, where the author notes that Francis employs the term “order” only in a technical sense.

108

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

God in each other, to bow before this grace of diversity as a reflection of the multiform influences of Christ and to manifest and be open to the mutual sharing of gifts among ourselves. Bonaventure calls it a “balanced interconnectedness.” He makes an explicit response to the objection that his vision of a pluriformity of graces is incompatible with hierarchical ranking: Concerning the objection that the law of nature dictates that love be preserved, it is to be said that just as a balanced interconnectedness is required for the perfection of a living body, in which all the members are conformed and there is a pluriformity of organization in which members are distinguished and ordered and some members are set over others according to various functions, so too is this to be understood about the Mystical Body of Christ. And so the unity of love does not exclude the pluriformity of charisms and the determination of dignities and offices, according to which one member would have to be subjected to another and governed by another in accordance with the law of authority and subjection.70 Is this not what was happening between the protagonists in our story at the beginning? The priest cannot live without the lay person, the man without the woman. She is for him priestly in her actions; he is for her priestly in his office. Looked at one way, the situation is hierarchical; looked at another way, it is subversive of hierarchy. We see diversity in the unity of their sharing the one priesthood of Christ. Diversity is unified when the love of Christ, the sharing of his body and blood, is made manifest between individuals.

Power and Reciprocity The preservation of this type of order, where diversity is unified in Love, has an accompanying ethic. It carries with it an asceticism of condescension,71 or as Bonaventure will argue in his work on Evangelical

70 QDPE, QIV a1, d6 (V, 182). The biblical reference is to 1 Cor 12:12, central to a Franciscan ecclesiological approach. 71 For some beautiful reflections on “condescension” as primary actions of God, see St. Bonaventure’s Collations on the Ten Commandments, Works of Saint Bonaventure VI, ed. Paul J. Spaeth (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1995), IV.7, VI.15-17.

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

109

Perfection, humility, a virtue joined in our lexicon with poverty72 and intimately related to the sequi Christi. The major outlines of the approach occurred in the context of the defense of the distinctiveness of the Order in the midst of a dominant ecclesiological style alien to its nature.73 In the 1250s, in the midst of a clericalized Order and Church, whose members were locked into positions of proprietary self-interest, Bonaventure’s task was to defend the “balanced interconnectedness” of his Franciscan heritage. Condescension, humility, poverty and the imitation of the poor Christ were explosive in their reforming implications.74 The Franciscan vision subverted any attempt to own power and exercise it as if it was one’s own. I find very interesting the fact that one of the objections to the evangelical vision which Bonaventure identifies is that it is subversive of ecclesiastical order: “When a superior subjects himself to an inferior,” Bonaventure’s opponent William notes, “then there are disorder and a perversion of order. Therefore, this is not a work of virtue.” And Bonaventure responds by recalling the primal order to which everything should be subordinate: To the objection that virtue is the order of love, it must be said that the order of love that is attained in virtue has this principally, radically, and essentially in view: God is preferred to the creature. Every other order is connected and ordered to the divine order as its principal order. In such ordered love that Augustine describes it is opportune that the Creator becomes sweet to the heart and that the creature diminishes his worth. Since the creature that acts most contrary to this order is the individual person with his private good, it is most fitting that For the anthropological foundations of poverty and humility, see Timothy J. Johnson, The Soul in Ascent: Bonaventure on Poverty, Prayer, and Union with God (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2000), Chapter 1. 73 Our fundamental approach in relationship to the ecclesiological order dominant at the time is noted in Ambroise Nguyen Van Si, OFM, “The Theology of the Imitation of Christ According to St. Bonaventure,” Greyfriars Review 11, Supplement (1997): 36-40. The insightful pages of Zachary Hayes, The Hidden Center, Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2000), 128-30, also indicate the relationship between reform, ecclesiology and the image of Christ. For the historical background I have relied on Roberto Lambertini, La Povertà pensata, Evoluzione storica dalla definizione dell’identità minoritica da Bonaventura ad Occam (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 2000). 74 The context and theme are explored for Bonaventure’s Hexaemeron in C. Colt Anderson, A Call to Piety: Saint Bonaventure’s Collations on the Six Days (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2002). 72

110

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. a person humble himself to preserve the perfect order of virtue. And this happens when a person subjects himself to another and places someone else ahead of himself for the sake of God, guarding all the while the dignity of ecclesiastical order which true humility does not pervert, neglect, or relegate to a secondary position. On the contrary, true humility preserves the ecclesiastical order as long as humility is kept interiorly in the heart, while exteriorly the structure of authority remains intact.75

The praxis of God’s love is the humility and poverty of the incarnate and crucified Lord. And the praxis of the evangelical life dictates the infusion of the virtue of humility into the ordering of the Church. This must be appropriated interiorly at all times by everyone. To practice humility is “to recognize one’s own defect, to bring oneself back to a certain integrated littleness, and to expel a divisive spirit of selfimportance and pride, to subject and present oneself to the influence of heavenly grace.”76 To practice humility is to receive. A little later on, in this same controversy, Bonaventure will explicitly relate this practice of condescension, or humility, or poverty to the issue of ministerial rights and power. The argument is simple: Voluntary poverty makes one a beggar before one’s neighbor. Here, his exposition as applied to a clericalized Church and Order has continuities with Francis’s notion of being minor in the Church and society, i.e. rejecting power. It has Gospel roots and is contrasted with “being over.”77 For William of Saint-Amour, with whom Bonaventure argued, there can be no reception of alms, no begging, in the relationship between a superior in office and one whom he pastors: The relationship is one of power and rights, whereby the inferior is obliged to support the superior who ministers. “The asking by a prelate of a subject, to whom he is ministering spiritual matters, is not begging, but power,” he argues.78 This is the hierarchical ordering of things.

QDPE, QI, a1, d.2 (V, 123). QDPE, QI, a1, d.1 (V, 122-23). 77 See Fernando Uribe, “Omnes Vocentur Fratres Minores, (RegNB 6.3), Verso un’ Identificazione della minoritá alla luce degli Scritti di S. Francesco d’Assisi,” in “Minores et Subditi Omnibus” Tratti caratterizzanti dell’identitá francescana, ed. L. Padovese (Roma, 2003), 119-60. 78 William of Saint-Amour, Quaestio de mendicitate, d25, as found in Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection, Works of St. Bonaventure XIII, translated by Robert Karris, (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008), 304. I am grateful to Father Karris for sharing his translation. 75 76

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

111

But Bonaventure is more deeply interested in rooting the power inherent in Church structures in the radical following of Christ, “who made himself poor for us in this world” (Later Rule 6:3; 2Cor. 8:9, a classic text for Franciscan identity). Bonaventure argues: The Gospel also explicitly says that he begged both water and hospitality, clearly not by reason of his power and dominion and authority, for otherwise he would not have given an example of poverty.—Also he would have been speaking falsely when he said that he had nowhere to lay his head, when he had subjects from whom he could have demanded provisions. He would have acted even less justly in that he preached in Jerusalem and was fed in Bethany, namely, by gathering fruit by preaching in one place, and receiving his compensation in another.... And it is clear that he was needy because he chose to be. He did not beg unless he chose to do so, since he could have changed stones into gold whenever he wanted to. 79 Put another way, all of us, men and women, cleric and laic, made in Christ’s image, are beggars. In following the poor Christ, our Franciscan mode of evangelizing injects into the Church and into our work outside the Church the question of reciprocity. It inserts into social hierarchy the disturbing elements of equality; it places in the middle of the professional and pastoral world the elements of dependence and inter-dependence. One has office and position, but one has these as a beggar not claiming rights over others because of office!80 Bonaventure cites Chrysostom: It was necessary for the disciples to be fed by those to whom they preached. Otherwise, they might have thought they were doing all the giving and were receiving nothing in return, resulting in an exaggerated image of themselves vis-à-vis their

QDPE, QII, a2, reply to the subsequent arguments (V, 150). Bonaventure will argue that the type of mendicant priesthood that begs from people “was not done to harm parish priests, but to help them. Nor is the Church dishonored if God provides help for pastors so that they might preserve incorrupt more perfectly the souls whose welfare is entrusted to their care from every corruption of sin, availing themselves of the help of spiritual men, who act not as lords or those who are charged with the care of souls, but rather as slaves on account of the love of Christ.” QDPE QII, a2, reply to subsequent arguments (V, 149). 79 80

112

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. listeners, who would then feel their disdain and distance themselves from their teacher.81

Against those who object to this reciprocity, he argues: “The person who attacks the humble petition of alms by those who are in need ... attacks the bond of charity, which creates a partnership ‘in the manner of giving and receiving.’”82 Again, referring to 2 Corintinians 8:14 (“That your abundance may supply their need, and that their abundance may in its turn be a supplement to your need”), Bonaventure argues that the Church is brought to perfection if “the members of the Lord’s body exchange among themselves ‘in the manner of giving and receiving.’”83 The image of the Church that emerges for him is that of a body with many members, a society of friends, neighbors sharing with neighbors, a community created by the law of charity: Again, when a friend asks for a gift from his friend, he violates no law; neither the first friend by his asking nor the second by his giving, nor again the first by his accepting. But the law of charity and divine love involves a greater exchange than the law of society. Therefore, should someone ask that something be given him for the love of God, he commits no offense, nor does he in any way withdraw from the path of perfection.84 Although not fully developed, it should be noted that this reciprocal exchange is not simply the spiritual gift of the clergy given in exchange for the material support of the laity. Referring to the laity, Bonaventure notes that the practice of poverty on the part of the preacher “enkindles mercy in him [her].”85 The Latin has “provocet ad pietatem.” Pietas is a gift occasioned by the minister but enkindled by the Spirit of God in the person, clearly a reciprocal ministry of one to

81 QDPE, Q II, a2, concl., citing Chrysostom on Matthew, Homily XXXII (V, 141). 82 QDPE,QII, a2, reply to subsequent arguments V (V, 155). The biblical citation is Phil. 4:15. 83 QDPE, QII.a2, d.8 (V, 137). 84 QDPE, QII, a2, d36 (V, 139). These analogies for the Church, based in the tradition, are also rooted in the Franciscan heritage. Why are they used except that they are also socially constructed from Bonaventure’s communal experience? 85 QDPE, QII, a2, concl. (V, 140).

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

113

another.86 I would interpret this to mean that the person who is giving mercy to the preacher is performing a hierarchizing priestly act.87 There is no question that Bonaventure has an understanding of the ministerial priesthood as something that is shaped by “spiritual power” conferred on the person ordained. His definitional understanding of ministry is spelled out clearly. It is a Church teaching also present in Francis’s own writings.88 Yet we have discovered that there is more to the situation than simply this type of power. Coupled with minoritas, poverty and humility, priesthood takes on a relational structure; power is shared.89 Let me come back to the example at the beginning: Who is poor? Who is exercising spiritual power in this story? Who is doing the ministering? Who is performing priestly acts? Who is preaching the Word in speech and example?

The Power of Reciprocal Virtue to Heal the Vice of Clericalism Living in a clericalized institution, Bonaventure was well aware of the disjunction between an ordering based on God’s Love and an ordering based on “preoccupation with the things of this world.”90 The clericalizing tendencies of his Church brought with them the pitfalls of clericalism and its cognate diseases: arrogance, See for example the centrality of pietas as a gift of the Spirit in Saint Bonaventure, Les sept dons du Saint-Esprit (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1997), Conference III. Piety has its origin in God and is available to all Christians. Again, it is a question of exchange among members of the same body, or, in another analogy, it is a manifestation of a relationship between brothers! 87 For Bonaventure’s explanation of the “sevenfold hierarchical” action of the ministerial priest, see Defense of the Mendicants, XII.3-13. The significance of this passage for the ministerial priesthood is analyzed in Luc Mathieu, OFM, “Le Ministère des Religieux-Prêtres, d’après Saint Bonaventure (Apologia Pauperum, XII.n. 3-13),” in Bonaventuriana, Miscellanea in onore di Jacques Guy Bougerol ofm, ed. Chavero Blanco, OFM (Roma: Edizioni Antonianum, 1988), 431-47. 88 For a brief summary see Monti, Breviloquium VI.12. 89 A very fine exposition of this reality in Francis may be found in Bernhard Holter, “’Sacerdotes Fraternitatis in Christo Humiles’ (EpOrd 2), Il sacerdozio minoritico nella vision di S. Francesco,” in “Minores et Subditi omnibus,” ed. L. Padovese, 161-74. 90 I take the phrase purposely from Francis’s writings. Bonaventure’s knowledge of the disjunction between Gospel and Church is well analyzed in Peter D. Fehlner, OFMConv., The Role of Charity in the Ecclesiology of St. Bonaventure (Rome: Miscellanea Francescana, 1965), 160-73 et passim. 86

114

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

avarice, isolation, ambition, selfishness, anger and severity. These characteristics penetrated the ranks of all those who participated in such a proprietary socialization process. Franciscan reform, then, cuts two ways—it challenges both the Church and the Order. For the Church, the virtuous practice of the friars is medicinal. Opposites are cured by opposites: arrogance by humility, avarice by poverty, the turn to the private by generous service, ambition by the acceptance of humiliation, selfishness by the law of reciprocity, anger by patience, severity by condescending mercy.91 So Bonaventure writes: Again, the virtue of perfect humility reforms what the vice of pride has deformed. But pride disorders knowledge through presumption, affection through arrogance, speech through boasting, and deeds through ostentatiousness and insolence. Thus, no one has perfect humility unless she possesses what is contrary to these deformities of thought, affection, speech, and deed.92 Since the disease that corrupts human nature the most is the conceit of pride and arrogance and since the medication should be the application of their opposites, demeaning of self, which leans to the other extreme, brings one back to the middle.93 To the criticism that the way of poverty and humility practiced by the friars is entirely new and departs from the proven way, Bonaventure responds by an appeal to God’s providential ordering of history to defeat its ongoing ills by new weapons of virtue: Concerning the objection that has the premise that it is safer and more perfect to follow men who are more proven and wiser, it must be said that according to the disposition of divine wisdom God disposes and orders all things in his own times.... So in the last time he has introduced men who beg voluntarily and are poor in worldly things. And this indeed was entirely appropriate, so that idolatry and the portents of idols might be destroyed through the first men, heresy through the second group of men, and avarice through the

The healing of contraries by contraries is central to Bonaventure’s redemptive schema. See Monti, Breviloquium, IV.3.3 , fn. 28; IV.9.4. 92 QDPE, QI, a1, d24 (V, 119). 93 QDPE, Q1, a1, argument against the negative 3 (V, 123). 91

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

115

third group of men, avarice that reigns above all at the end of the world.94 Bonaventure well recognized the problem of arrogance in the exercise of ecclesiastical office. This too was cured by the practice of a reciprocal obedience: Also perfect ordering according to the rule of abundant righteousness consists in this that not only the inferior voluntarily subject himself to a superior and an equal to an equal, but also a superior to an inferior according to what is said in Matthew 3.15: “So it becomes us to fulfill all justice.” The Glossa thereon comments: “So,” by subjecting oneself to a slave and an inferior person, “all justice,” that is, humility which is all justice, “it becomes us to fulfill.” ... So since a person is perfectly subject to another human being when he binds himself voluntarily to obey the commands of another person in those things which are according to God, especially when that person is not greater than he but either equal or even sometimes lesser (since every person in some way excels another, at least in the realm of the soul), it follows that the obedience that is shown one person by another contributes greatly and collaboratively to the perfection of ordered righteousness.95 While the poverty, humility and obedience of the friars was providentially raised up to cure the ills of the Church, so also the friars themselves, socialized into the same society, needed reforming. To use the terms of our discussion, they too participated in clericalism. That was only too obvious to everyone. And here the power of coercion and the severe judgment of the Church, the grace given to the hierarchy and within the Order to its superiors, was providentially designed to keep the sin of the friars in check, to cure their propensity to claim perfection as their own private good. I would put it this way: The arrogance and anger which hierarchical ordering elicited from the friars pointed not to the failures of the hierarchy, but to the imperfection in virtue of the friars, their own failure to follow the poor crucified one, he who was subject to all. Still, the whole process was reciprocal. God’s grace supplied the pluriform virtues necessary to cure the vices in the Body of Christ; the vices, in turn, called forth the practice of increasing virtue. Clericalism, it turns out, was only the backdrop for the explosion QDPE, QII, a2, argument against the negative 20 (V, 147-48). QDPE, QIV, a2, concl. (V, 186).

94 95

116

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

of a Franciscan supernova. The Franciscan life is a call to the practice of virtue, sometimes heroic. Over all of this we are to put on Love.

Practicing Identity through Strategies of Embodiment While I have concentrated on the theology and spirituality developed within the context of the problem of clericalization, it is important to recognize that the recovery of our distinctiveness on an educational plane is not enough. Conviction and identity need to be carried out in practice, and practice in turn needs to reshape reflection. What strategies of embodiment do we find in our sources that might point a way to action? We see some of these emerging from within our own thirteenth-century sources; others we have already developed in accordance with our new knowledge. First, it is clear from Francis’s own writings that he struggled even within his own lifetime with the laic-cleric relationship in the single fraternitas. This comes out clearly in the Letter to the Entire Order. It begs for careful analysis, but here I would like to point out three clear strategies: Linguistic strategies: Francis is careful in this letter how he uses words. (a) The Letter begins with a Trinitarian invocation (vs. 1): All is subordinate to this primary ordering of Love. (b) Note the friars to whom it is addressed: “all the reverend and much beloved brothers ... sons of the Lord and my brothers ... my brothers ... brothers ...” (vss. 2, 5, 12, 21, 28). Everyone is encompassed within this category of relationality. (c) Then the specific coupling of terms that do not go together: “Brother A, the Minister General ... its lord” and specific directives given to “my brothers who are priests ...” (vs. 2, 14, 17). Language itself is here revelatory of how our speech presupposes unity, how our speech directs our practice: “Brothers who are priests” captures both equality and distinction in the same language field. How do we use language to reveal our evangelical calling? Liturgical strategies: In this letter Francis gives the clear directive:

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

117

“Therefore I admonish and urge in the Lord that only one Mass according to the form of the holy Church be celebrated each day in the places in which the brothers stay. If, however, there should be more than one priest in that place, let one be content, for the sake of charity, to assist at the celebration of the other priest; for our Lord Jesus Christ fills those present and absent who are worthy of Him. Although He may seem to be present in many places, He nonetheless remains indivisible and knows no loss. One everywhere, He works as it pleases Him with the Lord God the Father and with the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, forever and ever. Amen” (vss. 30-33). Perhaps the directive existed in order to witness to poverty and keep the sacraments free of monetary value; or perhaps, the practice was encouraged to promote charity among the brothers. The point is simple however: do we develop in our liturgical practice an embodied reflection of our convictions about Church? Or, do we simply drift with the crowd? Eucharistic interpretive strategies: In this letter, Francis speaks to the priests about the dignity and honor of their ministry. “Look,” he says, at this honor given to you (vs. 23). Then he challenges them and others to contemplate the way in which the Lord is present in the eucharist: “Look, brothers, at the humility of God” (vs. 28). And finally, he calls the friars to follow this exemplum of presence: “Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, so that He who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally” (vs. 29). Here the eucharist, celebrated each day, issues an ethical challenge: How are we present to the world? What are we holding back? It is the sequi Christi for the priest and for the laic friar; it is the sequi Christi of evangelization. The sacrament itself has become revelatory of our path in the world. Do we interpret it this way? Second, let me turn to Bonaventure. We are all aware of how the Constitutions of Narbonne built into our legislation a severe distinction between the cleric and laic friar in the fraternity. This situation Bonaventure inherited. The situation was definitely that of clericalization. Here I would simply like to point out that given the situation there is also more to be said. Two specific strategies that might be helpful for us today emerge from Bonaventure’s work:

118

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. Formative strategies: While Bonaventure is dealing with a clericalized order, it is remarkable that his real argument is designed to insert into church structures a reforming view of the priesthood and Church. As we have seen, it is a view focused on Gospel ideals and very much in the spiritual tradition of Francis of Assisi. When the body of his work is examined we find embedded in it formative instructions such as The Itinerarium or The Triple Way.96 These are theological argumentation, popular preaching, rhetorical strategies and symbolic interpretations of great significance. Bonaventure was an educator and pastor. He was committed to the twin paths of Word and Example, neither of which was specifically clerical but rather open to all.97 We need to see these avenues and others as public paths of evangelization beyond the constrictions of clericalization for members of the family. Are they not ways of sharing as brothers and sisters in the teaching and sanctifying ministry of Christ? Legal strategies: It would take us too far afield to examine all of the canonical strategies that Bonaventure employed in order to defend the mendicant Gospel calling in the Church. But it would be unhistorical were we not to recognize that he struggled against the weight of custom and legalism in the Church, consistently rooted his argument in Scripture, pushed for the new times calling for new legal possibilities and creatively applied current norms so as to make room for his evangelical reforming vision. He snuck the evangelizing activities of the Order into the structures of the Church through the use of categories such as reductio ad unum and subauctoritas. Recognizing that the friars needed to break the strangle hold of local custom and territoriality, he exalted the power of the papal role—it was the only way out of the established juridical system.98 As he noted in the Apologia Pau-

96 Many of the formative spiritual treatises have been made available in Writings on the Spiritual Life, Works of St. Bonaventure X, ed. F. Edward Coughlin (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2006). 97 See as one example Anthony M. Carrozzo, OFM, translation and annotation, “Being a Franciscan Priest: An Evangelical View, An Interpretive Translation of St. Bonaventure’s Apologia Pauperum, 12.3-8,” The Cord 44 (December 1994), 326-32. 98 See here the famous Q4, a4, of QDPE: “Concerning the obedience owed to the Supreme Pontiff.” See Lambertini, Povertà pensata, Chapter I, for historiographical overview. But the insights of Ovidio Capitani are important for

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

119

perum, by approving and supporting the evangelizing mission of the Friars Minor, the pontiff “adorned the hierarchy of the church without disorganizing it.”99 Bonaventure was unafraid to raise the banner of a distinctive religious vision that reached beyond the boundaries of current institutional possibilities. In short, he attempted to create a public institutional space where no space previously existed. Do we have the energy and intellectual imagination to do the same? Strategies of presence: On the level of the base, Francis’s linguistic, liturgical and interpretive strategies and the formative and legal strategies of Bonaventure had significance only inasmuch as they reflected a broader lived reality and helped people shape their personal lives and communal institutions. There is plenty of evidence that the Franciscan family, with some successes and some failures, presented concrete forms of local ecclesial living and an alternative to the dominant economic and political structures of society. The lay penitents associated with the evangelical-pauperistic movements helped reconcile religious life with the emergence of the new society. “New religious persons,” they practiced penance and entered into the economic and communal life of the city. Placing themselves under the clerics in the Order and associating with the fraternity in its communal mission helped them break from military service and “certain fiscal obligations.”100 The friars themselves, in the practice of their poverty, entered into a network of relationships, both among the poor and the emergent middle classes, thus forming a bridge between peoples. Preaching and hearing confessions placed them in a uniquely formative position with respect to the world around them.101 Certainly clericalization adversely affected the friars and the penitents, structuring as it did their internal inanalyzing Bonaventure’s intention: “Il francescanesimo ed il papato da Bonaventura a Pietro di Giovanni Olivi: Una reconsiderazioni,” in Figure e motive del francescanesimo medievale (Bologna: Pàtrom Editore, 2000), 31-45. 99 Defense of the Mendicants, XII.8, p. 262. 100 Some summary of the activities of the lay penitents and the “new religious persons” may be found in Giovanna Casagrande, “An Order for Lay People: Penance and Penitents in the Thirteenth Century,” Greyfriars Review 17.1 (2003): 39-57. For a full exposition see Casagrande, Religiosità penitenziale e città al tempo dei comuni (Roma: Instituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1995). 101 A good synthesis may be found in Antonio Rigon, “The Friars Minor and Local Societies,” Greyfriars Review 17.1 (2003): 59-84.

120

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M. stitutionalization and making them agents of the dominant confessional practices. The association with the Inquisition is only one example. But the attachment to the structures of the universal Church also provided them with an important normative pole from which to criticize local society. The movement existed between the local and the universal, a significant element that may give us an insight for today. In short, strategies of presence, through word, example, relationships and institution-building, tried to bridge the shifting power relationships between the clergy and the laity, between the secular and ecclesiastical worlds.

Today, of course, in our vastly different economic and social system, now a global world, the local strategies of presence developed in the thirteenth century may seem hopelessly out of date. And they are. However, we must get underneath the picture and examine the emergence of popular political structures and how participants in the vision gravitated to the underclass’s newfound liberties. We need to catch the economic consequences of the lived proclamation of poverty and the practices of solidarity with the poor and between all peoples. We need to understand how people supported new formative instruments—such as lay preaching, confraternities, parochial “free spaces” for the ecclesially disenchanted—for the cura animarum. We need to catch the alliances made between the friars, the women preachers and the lay professionals. We need to understand how allegiance to a universal pole of authority such as the papacy—certainly a species of clericalization—provided an international perspective and prophetic critique of local dominance. The older structures may not be transferable but their patterns indicate to us that we belong between the local and the universal, the lay and clerical worlds. We are called to inhabit the shared space between men and women, between the Church and the unchurched. Recently the Franciscan family has begun to address, in a systematic way, the question of new forms of presence in education, urban ministry, health care and other areas. In my own province, we have tried to imagine new institutional configurations in our work with the poor, in work with lay boards and in parochial life.102 This is happenWhat does it mean to be a Franciscan institution? I have tried to address part of this issue in Franciscans in Urban Ministry, ed. Roberta A. McKelvie, OSF (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002), 10928; see also, as other examples, Franciscans and Health Care, Facing the Future, ed. Elise Saggau, OSF (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 2001); 102

Impact of Clericalization on Franciscan Evangelization

121

ing all over as people feel called to imagine new forms of ecclesial and extra-ecclesial presence. We are rediscovering our own tradition of a moral methodology suited to this presence in a “zone of ambiguity.”103 Ideas about global organizational structures, how to govern ourselves in a Franciscan fashion in a polycentric world, are developing.104 Today, as the laity take on more and more prominence and as secularity grows, we have become socially poor. Yet still we are called to share power and teach people that real power is rooted in Christ. Perhaps embracing our poverty and reaching out to our neighbors will enable their spiritual power to come forward. Situations such as the one in which we find ourselves, forty years after the Council, breed clericalization by way of reaction; such situations also breed the real spirit of our evangelical calling. We must get used to the tension and be selfconscious about our negotiation and strategies of embodiment.

Conclusion With our well-developed theology of ministry, with the reclaiming of the Word of God among the laity, with the explicit recognition of charismatic gifts by the Church, with the public teaching that women share in the priestly, teaching and sanctifying office of Christ, with the social emphasis on solidarity with the other, we would push the notion of reciprocity in spiritual agency and power much further than our forebears.105 As Franciscans we can honor the Church’s discernment and teaching with respect to the ministerial priesthood, and we can The Franciscan Perspective in Higher Education, The AFCU Journal 4.1 (January 2007); From the Signs of the Times to the Time of Signs, Testimonies (Rome: General Curia, 2002). 103 See as a beginning Thomas A. Shannon and Mary Beth Ingham, CSJ, The Ethical Method of John Duns Scotus: A Contribution to Roman Catholic Moral Theology, Spirit and Life, a Journal of Contemporary Franciscanism 3 (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1993). 104 OFM Plenary Council, Fraternity-in-Mission in a Changing World (Rome: Curia Generale, 2001). 105 In this sense we need to relate the Franciscan charism to the type of ecclesiology outlined in Bonaventure Kloppenburg, OFM, The Ecclesiology of Vatican II (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1974), 309-29. Richard R. Gaillardetz, The Church in the Making: Recovering Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 2006), 52-55, notes the ambiguity in the Council documents. In this context, the Franciscan family by nature would gravitate towards the ”intensive view.” In terms of our vocation in the Church, do we not have the obligation to defend this understanding without denying differences between clergy and laity?

122

Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M.

honor the office and calling of the priest. We recognize institutional presence as a form of sacramentality. We need this hierarchy. But perhaps we would also do well to ask: Is this the whole story? Should we not broaden out the audience for Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection and his Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, with their masterful calls for the reform of the Church in the area of “giving and receiving.” Should we not work even more intentionally to provide an ecclesial space for an alternative to clericalization? How, I ask, in the light of our evangelical mission, can we pretend that the priest does not need the spiritual gifts of the laity for his own salvation or that the brother who is a priest does not beg a priestly grace from the brother who is a laic? How is it possible today that the brother can evangelize without the sister or the sister without the brother? In the presence of all creatures “in whom God lies hidden,” how can the Church pretend it does not need our Franciscan evangelical way of life? Yet how can it even know that need unless we begin ourselves to hear, in both Church and society, the cry of the poor, i.e. those who are without power? Might it not be possible that, if we are true to this vision, we will in fact show a path forward for others in our twenty-first century world?

Authors C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Church History at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago. He specializes in church history from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries, including both Catholic and Protestant reform movements. He served as a lay resource person for the 2005-2006 Apostolic Visitation of Seminaries and Houses of Formation and is author of A Call to Piety: St. Bonaventure’s Collation on the Six Days (Franciscan Press, 2002), Christian Eloquence: A History of Doctrinal Preaching from Augustine to Trent (Liturgical Training Publications, 2004) and The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day (Paulist Press, 2007). He contributed to Rebuild My House: Franciscans and the Church Today, WTU Papers 2004 (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2004) and makes ongoing contributions to several theological journals. Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M., D.Phil., presently serves as professor of history at the Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, California. He is a widely-respected scholar, teacher and speaker in the history of American Catholicism and the development of Franciscan theology and spirituality. He is the author of Living Stones: the History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States (Macmillan, 1988). He co-edited Prayer and Practice in the American Catholic Community (Orbis books, 2000). He is currently working on Church, Society, and Change, 1965-1996, a history of the post-conciliar period in American Catholicism, and teaches occasional courses at the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University. He has served in various administrative posts throughout his career, nine years as Provincial Minister for the Saint Barbara Province. At the helm of the movement to retrieve the Franciscan intellectual tradition, he is especially interested in a contemporary understanding of the evangelical life.

124

Franciscan Evangelization

Vincent Cushing, O.F.M., S.T.D., a friar of Holy Name Province, was president of Washington Theological Union from 1975 to 1999. He served on the board of the National Catholic Education Association Seminary Committee, on the Formation Committee of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, as well as on the Steering Committee of the Bishops’ Committee on Priestly Formation. In addition, he was president of the Association of Theological Schools from 1982 to 1984, was founding chairperson of the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center and founding chairperson of In Trust, a journal devoted to leaders of theological education in the United States. He also served as Director of Keystone Seminary Associates and was a research fellow of the Louisville Institute of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. Dominic V. Monti, O.F.M., Ph.D., is Vice-Provincial of Holy Name Province, New York. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Bernard McGinn. He taught at Washington Theological Union from 1979 to 2002 in the Department of Ecclesiastical History and was chair of the department. From 2002 to 2005, he was a member of the Theology Department at St. Bonaventure University, serving as interim President of the University for one year (2003-2004). He contributed translations of Bonaventure’s Writings Concerning the Franciscan Order as part of the Works of Saint Bonaventure series, Vol. V (The Franciscan Institute, 1994). He made significant contributions to Francis of Assisi: Early Documents (New City Press, 1999-2001) and produced a new translation of Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005). Darleen Pryds, Ph.D., a Catholic laywoman, is associate professor of Christian Spirituality at the Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, California. She did her doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is especially interested in teaching and researching historical cases of lay religious leadership. She is author of The King Embodies the Word: Robert D’Anjou and the Politics of Preaching, Studies in the History of Christian Thought (Brill, 2000). She has received many research grants, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, a Research Fellowship at the Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Research grant at the Vatican Film Library, St. Louis University. She has given presentations at medieval conferences in the United States and internationally and published a number of articles in medieval journals and collections.