The English Province of the Franciscans (1224-c.1350) 2016058561, 2016059530, 9789004331617, 9789004331624

Table of contents :
‎Contents
‎Acknowledgements
‎List of Figures
‎List of Abbreviations
‎List of Contributors
‎Editorial Note on Critical Editions and English Translations
‎Introduction
‎Part 1. The Friars’ Arrival in England and Their Dealings with Bishops and Monarchs
‎Chapter 1. Thomas of Eccleston, the Chronicler of the Friars’ Arrival in England (Robson)
‎Chapter 2. The Friars in Secular and Ecclesiastical Governance, 1224–c. 1259 (Power)
‎Chapter 3. Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora and the Franciscans in England (Hoskin)
‎Chapter 4. The English Crown and the Franciscans in the Order’s Early History (Röhrkasten)
‎Part 2. The Rule of the Friars Minor and Its Preservation
‎Chapter 5. Elias of Cortona and the English Friars (Cusato)
‎Chapter 6. The Rule Commentary of John of Wales (Blastic)
‎Chapter 7. John Pecham’s Commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor (Godet-Calogeras)
‎Part 3. The Friars’ Preaching and Their Celebration of the Liturgy
‎Chapter 8. Harmony, the Fiddler, Preaching and Amazon Nuns: Glosses on De musica in Bartholomew Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (Loewen)
‎Chapter 9. Friars and the Preparation of Pastoral Aids (Smith)
‎Chapter 10. The Shepherd and the Flock: An Approach to the Preacher’s Role in Some Franciscan Sermon Collections (Lombardo)
‎Chapter 11. The Liturgical Manuscripts of the English Franciscans c. 1250–c. 1350 (Morgan)
‎Part 4. The Theological Luminaries of the Franciscan School
‎Chapter 12. The Scientific Basis of Robert Grosseteste’s Teaching at the Oxford Franciscan School (Panti)
‎Chapter 13. Alexander of Hales’s Theology in His Authentic Texts (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Various Disputed Questions) (Weber)
‎Chapter 14. “Wisdom Has Built Her House; She Has Set Up Her Seven Pillars”: Roger Bacon, Franciscan Wisdom, and Conversion to the Sciences (Johnson)
‎Chapter 15. Duns Scotus’s Christology: Foundations for Franciscan Christian Humanism (Ingham)
‎Chapter 16. William of Ockham’s Ecclesiology and Political Thought (Shogimen)
‎Part 5. The Friars’ Place in the Ecclesiastical Landscape
‎Chapter 17. Thomas Cantilupe in Franciscan Memory: The Evidence of the Canonization Inquiry (Ridyard)
‎Chapter 18. Richard FitzRalph and the Franciscans: Poverty, Privileges, Polemic, 1356–1359 (Haren)
‎Chapter 19. Monuments of the Dead in Early Franciscan Churches, c. 1250–c. 1350 (Steer)
‎Chapter 20. Franciscan Nuns in England, the Minoress Foundations and Their Patrons, 1281–1367 (Campbell)
‎Chapter 21. The Franciscan Heritage in England (c. 1240–c. 1350) (Robson)
‎A Select Bibliography of the English Province
‎Index

Citation preview

The English Province of the Franciscans (1224–c.1350)

The Medieval Franciscans General Editor Steven J. McMichael

volume 14

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tmf

The English Province of the Franciscans (1224–c.1350) Edited by

Michael J.P. Robson

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: William de Anglia, painted before 1250 in the margin of the Franciscan Rule transcribed by Matthew Paris (Benedictine chronicler of St Albans Abbey) in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ms. 16, fol. 71v. With kind permission of The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Robson, Michael J.P., 1946- editor. Title: The English province of the Franciscans (1224-c.1350) / edited by Michael J.P. Robson. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: The medieval Franciscans ; Volume 14 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016058561 (print) | lccn 2016059530 (ebook) | isbn 9789004331617 (hardback : alk. paper) | isbn 9789004331624 (E-book) Subjects: lcsh: Franciscans–England–History–To 1500. | England–Church history. Classification: lcc bx3616 .e54 2017 (print) | lcc bx3616 (ebook) | ddc 271/.3042–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058561

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1572-6991 isbn 978-90-04-33161-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-33162-4 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

In memoriam Dr Rosalind B. Brooke (1925–2014)

∵

Contents Acknowledgements xi List of Figures xii List of Abbreviations xiii List of Contributors xxi Editorial Note on Critical Editions and English Translations Introduction xxvi

xxv

part 1 The Friars’ Arrival in England and Their Dealings with Bishops and Monarchs 1

Thomas of Eccleston, the Chronicler of the Friars’ Arrival in England 3 Michael J.P. Robson

2

The Friars in Secular and Ecclesiastical Governance, 1224–c. 1259 28 Amanda Power

3

Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora and the Franciscans in England Philippa M. Hoskin

4

The English Crown and the Franciscans in the Order’s Early History 63 Jens Röhrkasten

part 2 The Rule of the Friars Minor and Its Preservation 5

Elias of Cortona and the English Friars 87 Michael F. Cusato

6

The Rule Commentary of John of Wales 109 Michael W. Blastic

7

John Pecham’s Commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor Jean-François Godet-Calogeras

130

46

viii

contents

part 3 The Friars’ Preaching and Their Celebration of the Liturgy 8

Harmony, the Fiddler, Preaching and Amazon Nuns: Glosses on De musica in Bartholomew Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum 147 Peter V. Loewen

9

Friars and the Preparation of Pastoral Aids 175 Lesley Smith

10

The Shepherd and the Flock: An Approach to the Preacher’s Role in Some Franciscan Sermon Collections 193 Eleonora Lombardo

11

The Liturgical Manuscripts of the English Franciscans c. 1250–c. 1350 214 Nigel J. Morgan

part 4 The Theological Luminaries of the Franciscan School 12

The Scientific Basis of Robert Grosseteste’s Teaching at the Oxford Franciscan School 247 Cecilia Panti

13

Alexander of Hales’s Theology in His Authentic Texts (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Various Disputed Questions) 273 Hubert Philipp Weber

14

“Wisdom Has Built Her House; She Has Set Up Her Seven Pillars”: Roger Bacon, Franciscan Wisdom, and Conversion to the Sciences 294 Timothy J. Johnson

15

Duns Scotus’s Christology: Foundations for Franciscan Christian Humanism 316 Mary Beth Ingham, csj

ix

contents

16

William of Ockham’s Ecclesiology and Political Thought 335 Takashi Shogimen

part 5 The Friars’ Place in the Ecclesiastical Landscape 17

Thomas Cantilupe in Franciscan Memory: The Evidence of the Canonization Inquiry 357 Susan J. Ridyard

18

Richard FitzRalph and the Franciscans: Poverty, Privileges, Polemic, 1356–1359 380 Michael J. Haren

19

Monuments of the Dead in Early Franciscan Churches, c. 1250–c. 1350 405 Christian Steer

20

Franciscan Nuns in England, the Minoress Foundations and Their Patrons, 1281–1367 426 Anna Campbell

21

The Franciscan Heritage in England (c. 1240–c. 1350) 448 Michael J.P. Robson A Select Bibliography of the English Province Index 489

471

Acknowledgements This volume was conceived during a fruitful conversation with Professor Timothy Johnson at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge during the summer of 2013. Within a few minutes many of the themes and potential contributors had been identified. A special debt of gratitude is due to Dr Julian Deahl, then the senior acquisitions editor of Brill, and Dr Kate Hammond, his successor. Mrs Marcella Mulder provided much experience and expertise and in the production and design of this volume. This book commemorates the rich contribution made to Franciscan studies across five decades by the late Dr Rosalind B. Brooke (1925– 2014).

List of Figures 8.1 8.2

De musica from De proprietatibus rerum, Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232r–233v 151–154 British Library, Ms. Royal 2.b.vii, fols 176v–177r 161

List of Abbreviations abma Auctores Britannici medii aevi. af Analecta Franciscana afh Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum Magistri Alexandri de Hales Glossa in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, nunc demum reperta atque primum edita, studio et cura pp. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 4 vols. bfsma 12–15, Quaracchi, Florence, 1951–1957 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae antequam Magistri Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae antequam esset frater, ed. Victorin Doucet, 3 vols. bfsma 19–21, Quaracchi, Florence, 1960 Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica iussu et auctoritate Rmi P. Bernardini Klumper, studio et cura Pp. Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad fidem codicum Edita, 5 vols. Quaracchi, Florence, 1924–1979 am Annales Monastici, ed. Henry R. Luard, 5 vols. rs 36, London, 1864– 1869 bav Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana bf Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. John H. Sbaraleae and Konrad Eubel, 7 vols. Rome, 1758–1904 bf, ns Bullarium Franciscanum, nova series, ed. Ulricus Hüntemann and Cesare Cenci, 4 vols. Quaracchi, Florence, and Grottferrata, Rome, 1929–1990 bfama Bibliotheca Franciscana Ascetica medii Aevi cura patrum Collegii Sancti Bonaventurae bfsma Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica medii Aevi cura patrum Collegii Sancti Bonaventurae Binski and Panayotova Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova, eds, The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, exhibition catalogue, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, London, 2005 Binski and Zutshi Paul Binski and Patrick Zutshi, Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011 bl British Library, London Bonaventure, Opera Omnia Doctoris Seraphici S.Bonaventurae Opera Omnia ed. studio et cura pp.Collegii a S.Bonaventura ad plurimos codices mss. emendata, anecdotis aucta, prolegomenis scholiis notisque illustrata, 10 vols. Quaracchi, Florence, 1882–1902

xiv

list of abbreviations

Bourdillon, Minoresses A.F. Claudine Bourdillon, The Order of Minoresses in England, bsfs 12, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1926 Brown, Fasciculus Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et Fugiendarum, ed. Eduardus Brown, 2 vols. London, 1690 bruc Alfred B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500, Cambridge, 1963 bruo Alfred B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to a.d.1500, 3 vols. Oxford, 1957–1959 bsfs British Society of Franciscan Studies Cal. Wills, Hustings Reginald R. Sharpe (ed.), Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London: Part 1, 1258–1358 London, 1889. cbmlc Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues ccccl Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library cccm Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis ccr Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1227– 1509, London cf Collectanea Franciscana cgccl Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College Library ‘The Chronicle of John Somer’ ‘The Chronicle of John Somer, ofm’, ed. Jeremy I. Catto and Linne R. Mooney, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, cs, Miscellany, 34, Fifth Series 10, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, 197–285 Chronicon de Lanercost Chronicon de Lanercost m.cc.i.–m.ccc.xlvi., ed. Joseph Stevenson, Maitland Club, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1839 clr Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1226–1260 Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii Constitutiones Generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, i (Saeculum xiii), ed. Cesare Cenci and Ramon G. Mailleux, af, xiii, nova series, documenta et studia, 1, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2007 Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiv Constitutiones Generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, ii (Saeculum xiv/1), ed. Cesare Cenci and Ramon G. Mailleux, af, 17, nova series, documenta et studia, 5, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2010 Convocation Records of Convocation, vol. 3: Canterbury 1313–1377, ed. Gerald Bray, Boydell Press in association with the Church of England Record Society, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2005 Conway, Defensio Roger Conway, Defensio Mendicantium, in Melchior Goldastius, Monarchia Sancti Romani Imperii, 3 vols. Hanover and Frankfurt, 1611–1614, vol. 2 1391–1410

list of abbreviations

xv

Councils and Synods, ii (1205–1313) Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, vol. ii: a.d.1205–1313, ed. Frederic M. Powicke and Christopher R. Cheney, 2 vols. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1964 cpl Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 1198–1521, ed. W.H. Bliss, C. Johnson, J.A. Tremlow et al., 20 vols. London and Dublin, 1901–2005 cr Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry iii Preserved in the Public Record Office, 14 vols. London 1902–1938. cpr Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1216– 1582, London cs Camden Society cul Cambridge University Library cys Canterbury and York Society De propriet. rerum Bartholomew Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, ed. Wolfgang Richter, Frankfurt, 1601, reprint 1964 Dobner, Monumenta Gelasius Dobner, Monumenta Historica Bohemiae Nusquam Antehac Edita, 6 vols. Prague, 1764–1785 Eccleston Fratris Thomae vulgo dicti de Eccleston, Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. Andrew G. Little, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1951 eea English Episcopal Acta ehr English Historical Review Etym. Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, Etymologiarum sive Originum, ed. Wallace M. Lindsay, Oxford, 1957, 1985 Expositio quatuor magistrorum Expositio quatuor magistrorum super regulam fratrum minorum (1241–1242), ed. Livario Oliger, Storia e Letteratura raccolta di studi e testi 30 Rome, 1950 Extra commun. Extravagantium Communium Liber, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Aemilius Friedberg, vol. 2, Bernard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1881 Extra Ioann. Extravagantium Ioannis xxii, in Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Aemilius Friedberg, vol. 2, Bernard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1881 ff Fontes Francescani, ed. Enrico Menestò, Stefano Brufani, Giuseppe Cremascoli, Emore Paoli, Luigi Pellegrini and Stanislao da Campagnola, Collana diretta da Enrico Menestò, Testi 2, Assisi, 1995 Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 3 Early Commentaries on the Rule of the Friars Minor, i, The 1242 Commentary, Hugh of Digne, David of Augsburg, John of Wales, iii, Angelo Clareno, ed. David Flood and David Burr, 3 vols. St Bonaventure, New York, 2014 Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera Fr. Rogeri Bacon opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. John S. Brewer, rs 15, London, 1859

xvi

list of abbreviations

Francesco d’Assisi Scritti Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, ed. Carlo Paolazzi, sb 36, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2009 Francis of Assisi: Early Documents Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. and tr. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, 3 vols. New York City Press, New York, London and Manila, 1999–2001 Frere, Bibliotheca Walter H. Frere, Bibliotheca Musico-Liturgica: A Descriptive Handlist of the Musical and Latin Liturgical Manuscripts of the Middle Ages Preserved in the Libraries of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols. London, 1894, 1932 (repr. Hildesheim, 1967) fs Franciscan Studies, new series Gesta abbatum Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani a Thoma Walsingham, regnante Ricardo secundo, ejusdem ecclesiae precentorte, compilata, 3 vols. rs 28, London, 1867–1869 gfc John R.H. Moorman, The Grey Friars in Cambridge 1225–1538, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1952 GFCant. Charles Cotton, The Grey Friars of Canterbury 1224 to 1538, bsfs, Extra Series, 2, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1924 gfl Charles L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London: Their History with the Register of their Convent and an Appendix of Documents, bsfs, 6, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1915 gfo Andrew G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (ohs 20), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1892 Gwynn, ‘Sermon-Diary’ Aubrey Gwynn, ‘The Sermon-Diary of Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh’, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 45 Section c No. 1 (1937), 1–57 Hammerich, Beginning Louis L. Hammerich, The Beginning of the Strife between Richard FitzRalph and the Mendicants, with an Edition of his Autobiographical Prayer and his Proposition ‘Unusquisque’, Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser, 26, 3, Copenhagen, 1938 jeh Journal of Ecclesiastical History John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia Doctoris subtilis et mariani B. Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia studio et cura commissionis Scotisticae ad fidem codicum edita, Civitas Vaticanis: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950– John of Wales, Commentary David Flood, ‘John of Wales’ Commentary on the Franciscan Rule’, fs 60 (2002), 93–138 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis Stimulus amoris Fr. Iacobi Mediolanensis, Canticum pauperis Ioannis Pecham, 2a, ed. Ferdinand Delorme, bfama 4, Quaracchi, Florence, 1949 John Pecham, Expositio ‘Expositio super regulam Fratrum Minorum’, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, viii, 391–448.

list of abbreviations

xvii

John Pecham, Letters Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham archiepiscicopi Cantuariensis, ed. Charles T. Martin, 3 vols. rs 77, London, 1882–1885 John Pecham, Quaestiones disputatae Ioannis Pecham Quaestiones Disputatae. Editionem curaverunt Girard J. Etzkorn, Jerome Spettmann, Livario Oliger, bfsma 28, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2002 John Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor Fr. Ioannis Pecham Quodlibeta quatuor. Quodlibeta i–iii nunc primum edita cura Girard J. Etzkorn, Quodlibet iv (Romanum) ed. Ferdinand Delorme and rev. Girard J. Etzkorn, bfsma 25, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1989 John Pecham, Register The Register of John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury 1279– 1292, ed. Francis N. Davis and Decima L. Douie, 2 vols. cys 64, 65, Devonshire Press, Torquay 1968–1969 John Pecham, Tractatus tres Fratris Johannis Pecham quondam archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Tractatus tres de Paupertate, ed. Charles L. Kingsford, Andrew G. Little, and Felice Tocco, bsfs 2, Academic Press, Aberdeen, 1910 Jordan of Giano Johannes Schlageter, ‘Die Chronica des Bruders Jordan von Giano. Einführung und kritische Edition nach den bisher bekannten Handschriften’, afh 104 (2011), 3–63 Ker, mlgb Neil R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: a List of Surviving Books, Royal Historical Society, Guides and Handbooks, 2nd edn, London, 1964 Kingsford, gfl Charles L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London: Their History with the Register of their Convent and an Appendix of Documents, bsfs 6, Academic Press, Aberdeen, 1915 Leland, De viris illustribus John Leland, De viris illustribus On Famous Men, ed. James P. Carley with the assistance of Caroline Brett, pims, Studies and Texts 172. Toronto, 2010 Leland, Itinerary The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–1543, ed. L. Toulmin-Smith, 5 vols. (London, 1906–1910) Le Neve, fea John Le Neve, Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, ed. Diana Greenway et al. Institute of Historical Research, London Letters of Adam Marsh The Letters of Adam Marsh, ed. C. Hugh Lawrence, 2 vols. omt, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006 and 2010 Letters of Robert Grosseteste Roberti Grosseteste episcopi quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae, ed. Henry Luard, rs 25, London, 1861 Light, ‘Pandect and Liturgy’ Laura Light, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy: Bibles with Missals’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Light, Brill, Leiden, 2013, 185–215 Little and Pelster Andrew G. Little and Francis Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians c. a.d.1282–1302, ohs 96, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1934

xviii

list of abbreviations

Little, Franciscan Papers Andrew G. Little, Franciscan Papers, Lists, and Documents, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1943 Little, ‘Franciscan School at Oxford’ Andrew G. Little, ‘The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century’, afh 19 (1926), 803–874 Little, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’ Andrew G. Little, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, in Franciscan History and Legend in English Medieval Art, ed. Little, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1937, 37–77 Little, Studies Andrew G. Little, Studies in English Franciscan History, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1917 lr Records of the auditors of the land revenue lrs Lincoln Record Society Lützelschwab, Flectat Ralf Lützelschwab, Flectat Cardinales ad Velle suum? Clemens vi. und sein Kardinalskolleg, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 2007 Mac Fhionnbhair, Cremonensis Guillelmi de Villana Cremonensis o. s. a. Tractatus cuius Titulus Reprobatio Errorum, ed. Darach Mac Fhionnbhairr, Corpus Scriptorum Augustinianorum 4, Rome, 1977 mf Miscellanea Francescana Matthew Paris, cm Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry R. Luard, 7 vols. rs 57, London, 1872–1883 Matthew Paris, ha Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Historia Anglorum, ed. Frederic Madden, 3 vols. rs 44, London, 1866–1869 Moorman, A History John R.H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1968 Morgan, egm, 1190–1250 Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190–1250, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 pt. 1, London, 1982 Morgan, egm, 1250–1288 Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1250–1288, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 pt. 2, London, 1988 odnb Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004 ohs Oxford Historical Society, first series, second series omt Oxford Medieval Texts Pächt and Alexander, vol. 1 Otto Pächt and Jonathan J.G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1, German, Dutch, Flemish, French and Spanish Schools, Oxford, 1966 Pächt and Alexander, vol. 3 Otto Pächt and Jonathan J.G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 3, British, Irish and Icelandic Schools, Oxford, 1973 Pfaff, Liturgy Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009

list of abbreviations pims pl

xix

The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina (Patrologia latina), ed. J.P. Migne, 221 vols. Paris, 1841–1864 Propertius, Elegies Propertius, Elegies, ed. L. Mueller, Sex. Propertii Elegiae, Leipzig: Teubner, 1898. Reading Abbey Cartularies Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. Brian R. Kemp, 2 vols. cs, Fourth Series 31, 33, London, 1986–1987 Register, Sutton The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton, 1280–1299, ed. Rosalind M.T. Hill, 8 vols. Lincoln Record Society, 39, 43, 48, 52, 60, 64, 69, 76, Hereford, Lincoln and Woodbridge, 1948–1986 Registrum Anglie Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, ed. Roger A.B. Mynors, Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, cbmlc 2, The British Academy, London, 1991 Roger Wendover, Flores Historiarum Rogeri de Wendover liber cui dicitur. Flores Historiarum ab anno Domini mcliv. Annoque Henrici Anglorum regis secundi primo, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, 3 vols. rs 84, London, 1886–1889 rs Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 99 vols. London, 1858– 1896 rtam Recherches de Théologie ancienne et Médiévale Salimbene de Adam Salimbene de Adam, Cronica a.1168–1287, ed. G. Giuseppe Scalia, 2 vols. cccm 125, 125a, Brepols, Turnhout, 1998–1999 sb Spicilegium Bonaventurianum s.d. Shillings and pence ss Surtees Society Sudor [The text of Richard FitzRalph’s Sermons 65–68 in] Summa Domini Armachani in Quaestionibus Armenorum, Paris, 1512, fols. 163–177 Thomas of Celano, ‘Vita brevior’ Jacques Dalarun, ‘Thome Celanensis Vita beati patris nostri Francisci (Vita brevior). Présentation et édition critique’, Analecta Bollandiana, 133 (2015), 23–86 Thomson, Corpus Rodney M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2011 Thomson, Merton Rodney M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Merton College, Oxford, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2009 Thomson, Worcester Rodney M. Thomson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral Library, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2001

xx tna

list of abbreviations

The National Archives, at Kew Gardens, London, formerly known as the Public Record Office Van Dijk and Walker, Origins Stephen J.P. van Dijk and Joan Hazelden Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century, Newman Press, Maryland and London, 1960 Van Dijk, Handlist Stephen J.P. van Dijk, ‘Handlist of the Latin Liturgical Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford’, 7 vols. (typescript), Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1951–1955 Van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’ Aureliano van Dijk, ‘Il culto di Santa Chiara nel medioevo’, in Santa Chiara d’Assisi. Studi e Cronaca del viii Centenario 1253–1953, Assisi, 1954, 155–205 Van Dijk, Sources Stephen J.P. van Dijk, Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Ordinals by Haymo of Faversham and Related Documents (1243–1307), 2 vols. Brill, Leiden, 1963 Walsh, ‘Friars’ Katherine Walsh, ‘Archbishop FitzRalph and the Friars at the Papal Court in Avignon, 1357–1360’, Traditio 31 (1975), 223–245 Walsh, Scholar Walsh, Katherine, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981 Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289 Records of the Wardrobe and Household 1286– 1289, ed. Benjamin F. and Catherine R. Byerly, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1986 William Woodford, ‘Biographical Register’ Eric Doyle, ‘A Bibliographical List by William Woodford, o.f.m.’, fs 35 (1975), 93–106 William Woodford, ‘His Life and Works’ Eric Doyle, ‘William Woodford, o.f.m.: His Life and Works together with a Study and Edition of His “Responsiones contra Wiclevum et Lollardos”’, fs 43 (1983), 17–187 Wyclif, De Dominio John Wyclif, De Dominio Divino, ed. Reginald L. Poole, Trubner for the Wyclif Society, London, 1890 xiiith Century Chronicles xiiith Century Chronicles, tr. Placid Hermann with an introduction by Marie-Therese Laureilhe, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, 1961 Zacour, Talleyrand Norman P. Zacour, ‘Talleyrand: The Cardinal of Périgord (1301– 1364)’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 50 (7) (1960), 1–83

List of Contributors Michael W. Blastic ofm, Ph.D., St. Louis University. His research and publications focus on the writings of Francis and Clare of Assisi, Franciscan hagiography, and early Franciscan theology and spirituality. Anna Campbell is a graduate of Oxford University and the University of Reading, where she has lectured in recent years. Her doctoral thesis focused on St Colette of Corbie and her place in the reforms of the Franciscan family in the fifteenth century. She is also compiling a register of Poor Clares in later medieval England. Michael F. Cusato ofm, is an ecclesiastical historian and a specialist in the history of the Franciscan movement, with special emphasis upon the first century of its existence. A number of these articles have been published in his The Early Franciscan Movement (1205–1239): History, Sources, and Hermeneutics, (2009). A former director of the Franciscan Institute and dean of its School of Franciscan Studies at St. Bonaventure University, he is currently a Distinguished Professor of St. Bonaventure University and an independent scholar living in Washington d.c. Jean-François Godet-Calogeras Ph.D., Saint Bonaventure University, is professor of Franciscan Studies. He studied classical philology and medieval studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He is internationally well-known for his publications on the early Franciscan documents, in particular the writings of Francis and Clare of Assisi, and for his lectures and workshops on early Franciscan history. Philippa Hoskin is professor of medieval studies at the University of Lincoln. She has worked extensively on the medieval English Church and is general editor of the British Academy’s English Episcopal Acta project. Mary Beth Ingham csj, Ph.D. is professor of philosophical theology at the Franciscan School of Theology, Oceanside, ca. Her extensive publications centre on medieval ethics and on the 14th century Franciscan Master, Blessed John Duns Scotus.

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Timothy J. Johnson is Craig and Audrey Thorn Distinguished Professor of Religion at Flagler College. A senior Fulbright Scholar and chair of the research advisor board of the Franciscan Institute, he has published extensively in the areas of Franciscan history, liturgy, and theology. He recently co-authored the Fonti Liturgiche Francescane (2015) and translated The Rediscovered Life of Saint Francis (2016). Michael J. Haren until retirement held appointment under the Irish Government editing the Calendar of Papal Registers for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. He graduated D. Phil. at Oriel College, Oxford. He has published widely in ecclesiastical and intellectual history, including on Richard FitzRalph. Peter V. Loewen Ph.D. (2000) is associate professor of musicology at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. He has published articles concerning medieval drama, Mary Magdalene, and Franciscan preaching, and is the author of Music in Early Franciscan Thought (2013). Eleonora Lombardo writes on medieval Franciscan sermons. Since 2010 she has worked on the development of devotion to Anthony of Padua through homiletic and hagiographical materials up to 1350. She is currently in a Portuguese fct postdoctoral position. Nigel Morgan is emeritus honorary professor of the history of art at Cambridge University. He has been lecturer and professor at universities in Norwich, London, Melbourne and Oslo, and Director of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University. Cecilia Panti is assistant professor of history of medieval philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Her studies concentrate mainly on medieval natural philosophy and the arts of the quadrivium. Her publications include books, editions and articles on the British scientific tradition related to the cosmology, theology and physics of Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and thirteenth century Oxford Franciscan masters.

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Amanda Power is associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford. Her first book was Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (2012), and she is now working on early English Franciscans, power and public rationality. Susan J. Ridyard Ph.D (1983), Cambridge, is professor of history at The University of the South, where she was for many years director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium. She is currently working on an edition and translation of the canonization process of Thomas Cantilupe. Michael J.P. Robson Ph.D, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, has written four books on St Francis, the Franciscan order and the history of the English province and has edited or co-edited four more. He is currently completing A History of the Franciscans in England, 1224–1539. Jens Röhrkasten Ph.D. (1987), Freie Universität Berlin, Habilitation (2004), Université de Fribourg, is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham. Among his publications is The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539 (2004). Takashi Shogimen is professor of history and head of the department of history and art history at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His publications include Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (2007). Lesley Smith DPhil, University of Oxford, is professor of medieval intellectual history. Her publications focus on the study and dissemination of biblical and theological knowledge in the Middle Ages, including her most recent book on the Ten Commandments (2014). Christian Steer is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He has published extensively on burial and commemoration in medieval London and has a particular interest in funerary monuments from lost city friaries.

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Hubert Philipp Weber Dr. theol., studied theology and philosophy at the University of Vienna. He is the theological assistant and secretary of the archbishop of Vienna with special interest in patrology, medieval theology, theology of creation, research and teaching in dogmatic theology.

Editorial Note on Critical Editions and English Translations Unless otherwise noted, references to the primary sources for the writings of St Francis of Assisi are taken from Carlo Paolazzi’s Francesco d’Assisi Scritti (Grottaferrata, Rome, 2009). Editions of the saint’s early biographies are found in Fontes Francescani, edited by Enrico Menestò, Stefano Brufani, Giuseppe Cremascoli, Emore Paoli, Luigi Pellegrini and Stanisalo da Campagnola, Collana diretta da Enrico Menestò, Testi, 2 (Assisi, 1995). An English translation is contained in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, edited and translated by Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short, 3 vols. (New York, 1999–2001). Commentaries on the Franciscan Rule have edited by various scholars, from Livario Oliger’s Expositio quatuor magistrorum super regulam fratrum minorum (1241–1242) (Rome, 1950) to Giovanni Bocccalli’s Expositio super regulam fratrum Minorum di Frate Angelo Clareno (Assisi, 1994). An invaluable contribution to this literature has been made by David Flood’s Hugh of Digne’s Rule Commentary (Grottaferrata, Rome, 1979) and his ‘John of Wales’ Commentary on the Franciscan Rule’, in fs 60 (2002), 93–138. These texts are edited and translated by David Flood and David Burr in Early Commentaries on the Rule of the Friars Minor, i, The 1242 Commentary, Hugh of Digne, David of Augsburg, John of Wales, iii, Angelo Clareno, ed. David Flood and David Burr (St Bonaventure, New York, 2014). English translations from the original Latin texts are identified in the critical apparatus. Translations of the early chronicles of the order are to be found in xiiith Century Chronicles, translated by Placid Hermann with an introduction by Marie-Therese Laureilhe (Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, 1961).

Introduction The penitential lifestyle and the pastoral ministry of the Friars Minor of the English province are the subject of this monograph. Attention centres on the friars’ arrival and their expansion throughout the country. When Gregory of Naples, minister provincial of France, considered the composition of the group of nine friars to be sent to Kent in the summer of 1224, there were several Englishmen available to him. Matthew Paris was a friend of William, an English friar, whom he described as the socius sancti Francisci and the secundus in ordine. In 1219, Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre, reported that Colin, an English member of his household, had resigned to follow St Francis. English friars were part of the relaunching of the mission to Germany in 1221 and Richard of Ingworth was the first friar to preach to the people north of the Alps. Several English masters were clothed as friars in Paris in the 1220s and one of them was Haymo of Faversham, a future minister provincial of England and minister general to whom the revision of the liturgical ordinal was attributed. The terminus ad quem of the volume is equally flexible. The year 1350 is a general dividing line, although Archbishop Richard FitzRalph’s polemics against the order continued throughout the 1350s until his own death in 1360. Anna Campbell’s study of the Minoresses briefly describes the foundation of a convent at Bruisyard in 1367. The opening part of the book is devoted to the friars’ arrival at Dover, the spectacular increase in their ranks throughout the country, their engagement with the Church and society at different levels and their relations with neighbouring religious communities as well as the crown. The four contributions start with Michael J.P. Robson’s ‘Thomas of Eccleston, the Chronicler of the Friars’ Arrival in England’, an analysis of one of the major sources of information about the province in its first three decades in the country. The testimony of the chronicler is evaluated and his reticence regarding the friars’ sometimes vexed relations with monastic communities is noted. Amanda Power’s ‘The Friars in Secular and Ecclesiastical Governance, 1224–c. 1259’, poses searching questions about the friars’ impact on secular and ecclesiastical governance and their spirit of detachment. The friars’ self-reflection is highlighted and the pervasive influence of Adam Marsh is considered. The beneficiaries of Adam’s recommendations included friars, members of the secular clergy and future prelates. A monastic perspective on the friars’ presence in England is supplied by Philippa M. Hoskin’s ‘Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora and the Franciscans in England’. While Matthew is frequently cited as a critic of the mendicants, there is ample evidence of a more even-handed treatment of the friars

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and their impact upon contemporary events. Despite his reservations about the second generation of friars, he did not hesitate to commend the friars for their prophetic role. Royal benevolence towards the friars is explored by Jens Röhrkasten’s ‘The English Crown and the Franciscans in the Order’s Early History’. Although Henry iii and Edward i provided the Franciscans with firewood, clothing, food, building materials, land and sums of money, they were equally generous to the monastic orders and other orders of friars. A salient feature of Thomas of Eccleston’s chronicle and Adam Marsh’s correspondence is the way in which the friars strove to model their lives on the Rule of St Francis. Eccleston incorporated accounts of dreams and visions in which the founder instructed the friars in England on how they should conduct themselves, particularly in relation to the pivotal virtues of humility and poverty. Unease and discontent over the friars’ buildings in Assisi and Paris had a ripple effect on the English province; warnings against excesses in building were frequent. Part ii consists of three studies in which the friars strove to remain faithful to their Rule. The conduct and policies of Elias of Cortona, minister general (1232–1239), occasioned scandal and controversy among the friars, triggering calls for renewal and greater fidelity to the order’s heritage. The opposition to Elias is chronicled by Michael F. Cusato’s ‘Elias of Cortona and the English Friars’, which offers some reasons why Gregory ix withdrew his support from the beleaguered Elias at a critical moment during the general chapter of 1239 at Rome. Elias was the first of four ministers general to be deposed by the papacy in the century following St Francis’s death. In the aftermath of this general chapter, groups of friars in the provinces were invited to expound vexed passages of the Rule. Regent masters of theology and lectors were prominent in such groups. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century at least two members of the English province compiled such commentaries. The first is studied by Michael W. Blastic’s ‘The Rule Commentary of John of Wales’ and the second, ‘John Pecham’s Commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor’, by Jean-François Godet-Calogeras, who situates the former Parisian master within the context of Pecham’s writings. The commentary on the Rule is then summarized, chapter by chapter. Part iii reviews the ways in which the friars communicated the Gospel in their preaching and in their celebration of the liturgy. St Francis’s love of music inspired his followers to embrace this medium as a way of reaching their audience. Bartholomew Anglicus had studied at Oxford before joining the order in Paris and his De proprietatibus rerum attracted a large English readership. Peter V. Loewen’s ‘Concerning Harmony, the Fiddler, Preaching, and Amazon Nuns: Glosses on De musica in Bartholomew Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum’ concentrates on one of the best-sellers in the Middle Ages, a volume that gives

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attention to the matter of expounding the Gospel and accentuates the role of music as an aid to the friars’ ministry. ‘Friars and the Preparation of Pastoral Aids’ by Lesley Smith surveys the array of theological and catechetical texts deployed by the friars in their preparation for the apostolate. She introduces a variety of texts consulted by the friars, from major theological treatises to hymns. While the survival rate of sermons preached by friars is relatively poor, unpublished materials yield sufficient evidence. Eleonora Lombard’s ‘The Shepherd and the Flock: An Approach to the Preacher’s Role in Some Franciscan Sermon Collections’ analyses sermons by William of Nottingham, minister provincial (1240–1254), and John Pecham, as well as the work of an anonymous friar. The liturgical life of the order, with its daily focus on the dignified celebration of the Divine Office and the Mass, has attracted little sustained scholarship since the death of the erudite Fr Stephen J.P. van Dijk. Nigel J. Morgan’s ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts of the English Franciscans c. 1250–c. 1350’ catalogues the extant breviaries, psalters, missals and Bibles known to have derived from the English friaries. The extant liturgical texts from this period constitute a mere fragment of the multiple copies acquired by the friars to serve the various altars at which Masses were celebrated. One fruit of such a study is the circulation of different legende in the century from 1250. For instance, a minor legend of St Clare, rather than the vita attributed to Thomas of Celano, was incorporated into one breviary. The friars’ scholastic activities peaked during the period covered by this monograph. Apart from interests in philosophy, science and mathematics, the friars’ theological writings ranged widely across the spectrum to incorporate the scholastic exercises of scriptural commentaries, the Sentences of Master Peter Lombard, disputed questions, quodlibetal questions and sermons preached in accordance with university statutes. They also produced treatises on the sacraments, vices and virtues, the Creed, the Decalogue, and they were drawn into polemical exchanges pertaining to the friars’ place in the schools, the pulpit and the confessional. Part iv considers the foundations of the friars’ schools at Oxford and Paris. The order’s theological tradition was established by two exceptional scholars and innovative theologians. One, Robert Grosseteste, was a secular master, who was appointed to teach the friars at Oxford, and the other, Alexander of Hales, was an English friar active in France. The former admired the friars greatly and once toyed with the idea of taking the Franciscan habit. His teaching influenced the first generation of friars at England’s oldest university and the contents of his library continued to provide friars with privileged access to his writings on the Scriptures, science, diverse theological topics and his translations and commentaries on the writings of Eastern Fathers of the Church. Alexander of Hales was a canon in the diocese of London and was the

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archdeacon of Coventry before becoming a friar in 1236. He was among the first Parisian theologians to comment on the Sentences and is credited with introducing this text into the theological curriculum at the University of Paris. He is inextricably connected with le grand couvent des Cordeliers de Paris, where English friars were among his pupils. The general chapter of Perpignan in 1331 exhorted friars to study the ‘dicta doctoris eximii Magistri Alexandri de Alis’. The impact of these two luminaries is explained by Cecilia Panti’s ‘The Scientific Basis of Robert Grosseteste’s Teaching to the Friars at Oxford’ and Hubert Philipp Weber’s ‘Alexander of Hales’s Theology in His Authentic Texts (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Various Disputed Questions)’. Although the scientific writings of Roger Bacon have fascinated historians of science for several centuries, his theological writings are now attracting closer inspection and this is illustrated by Timothy J. Johnson’s “Wisdom Has Built Her House; She Has Set Up Her Seven Pillars: Franciscan Wisdom, and Conversion to the Sciences”. John Duns Scotus was a member of the custody of Newcastle and the English province. The Scottish friaries regained a measure of independence in 1329, when a vicariate was erected. John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham overlapped briefly at the beginning of the fourteenth century and their theological heritage has inspired countless generations of students and commentators. They remain two of the most gifted scholars within the Franciscan school. They are explored in terms of two emblematic questions, questions, ‘Duns Scotus’s Christology: Foundations for Franciscan Christian Humanism’ by Sr Mary Beth Ingham and ‘William of Ockham’s Ecclesiology and Political Thought’ by Takashi Shogimen. The friars’ place on the ecclesiastical map shapes the fifth and last part of this volume. By the end of the thirteenth century friars were seemingly ubiquitous at several levels of ecclesiastical administration. During the summer of 1307 nine of them were summoned to testify before the commission of inquiry into the sanctity of Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford (1275–1282), at London and then Hereford. Three of the four friars of Hereford emphasized their close ties with the former bishop whom they had known at the schools of Oxford approximately four decades earlier; they had also encountered him as bishop of Hereford. The friars’ views carefully nuanced views regarding miracles varied from one to the other and these differences form the basis of Susan J. Ridyard’s ‘Thomas Cantilupe in Franciscan Memory: The Evidence of the Canonization Inquiry’. Criticism of the friars had a long history in England, reaching back to the close of the 1220s. Fears that the bishops at the first council of Lyons were planning to circumscribe the friars’ ministry were raised by Adam Marsh. Richard FitzRalph was one of many priests and prelates who had grown weary of excesses associated with the friars. Michael J. Haren’s ‘Richard

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FitzRalph and the Franciscans: Poverty, Privileges, Polemic, 1356–1359’, traces the course of this prelate’s polemics against the friars in London and then his presentation of the case against them at the papal court of Avignon. One barometer of the breadth of the order’s appeal was the growth in the number of people seeking burial in its churches and cemeteries. Registers of interments at the Coventry and London Greyfriars provide the materials for Christian Steer’s ‘Monuments of the Dead in Early Franciscan Churches, c. 1250–c. 1350’. Close attention was given to funereal monuments in London. There is minimal extant material regarding the friars’ dealings with the Minoresses. For instance, little is known of the relatively short-lived foundation at Northampton in the 1250s. Despite the fragmentary sources, Anna Campbell narrates the Minoressses’ subsequent foundations at Aldgate, Waterbeach and then Denny and Bruisyard in her ‘Franciscan Nuns in England, the Minoress Foundations and their Patrons, 1281–1367’, creating a picture of the order’s benefactors and its source of vocations. The final study, an epilogue entitled ‘The Franciscan Heritage in England, c. 1240–c. 1350’, by Michael J.P. Robson, points out that three of the earliest images of the saint of Assisi are in English manuscripts and demonstrates the ways in which the friars integrated themselves into the life of the local community and church. The friars were conspicuous on account of their ministry, their contribution to the nascent universities. Almost five centuries after the suppression of the mendicant houses, the name Greyfriars is found on plaques and the names of streets or buildings in the older towns and cities.

part 1 The Friars’ Arrival in England and Their Dealings with Bishops and Monarchs

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chapter 1

Thomas of Eccleston, the Chronicler of the Friars’ Arrival in England Michael J.P. Robson

The decision to plant the ideals of St Francis of Assisi on English soil was cloaked in the unrivalled spiritual authority of the founder, who appointed Agnellus of Pisa, custos of Paris, as the head of the mission. The nine friars,1 who sailed from Normandy to Dover, laid the foundations of the English province, a movement that was chronicled by Thomas of Eccleston, who attests that they arrived on 10 September 1224,2 although an alternative date of 24 August is cited by some Franciscan witnesses and sources well acquainted with the order.3 Facts are blended with exempla materials in the Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam and form a unique witness to the remarkable growth of the English province, incorporating copious references to the inspirational founder, his visionary teaching and the zeal of the first friars. Anecdotes and more conventional history jostle for the author’s attention and compete for space in his recollections. The virtues of the early friars were rehearsed to challenge their confrères in succeeding generations to excel in virtue. This study analyses Eccleston’s account, the English province’s fidelity to the teaching of St Francis, recruitment to the order, its pastoral ministry and its sometimes vexed dealings with the monastic world.

1 Grado Giovanni Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco: Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del xvi secolo (Padua, 2003), contrasts the small number of friars sent to England with those dispatched to Germany. 2 Eccleston, xxii, 21–22, 52. 3 Chronicon de Lanercost, 31; ‘The Chronicle of John Somer’, 265; Michael J.P. Robson, ‘A Franciscan contribution to the De gestis Britonum (1205–1279) and its continuation to 1299’, afh 107 (2014), 265–313, esp. 295; The chronicle of Walter of Guisborough previously edited as the chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Heminburgh, ed. Harry Rothwell, cs, 3rd series 89 (London, 1957), 151.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_002

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The Witness of Thomas of Eccleston

Echoes of St Luke’s Gospel (2.1 and 3.1) open the Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam. Like the evangelist, the chronicler writes for a community pledged to the global vision of St Francis, whose life and teaching injected new energy into the Church. Echoing monastic chroniclers,4 Eccleston proclaims the friars’ arrival during the pontificate of Honorius iii, within a year of the approbation of their Rule and in the eighth year of the reign of the 17-yearold monarch, Henry iii, who fostered the spread of the order throughout the country and become a major benefactor.5 The papacy, the crown and the saint were central to the life and development of the order in England. Just as St Gregory the Great had dispatched about forty monastic missionaries from Rome, St Francis, a man who worked closely with Innocent iii and Honorius iii, sent his followers across the English Channel to renew the Church some 627 years later. Eccleston, who was familiar with St Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, evokes images of the arrival of St Augustine and the rebuilding of Christianity. Both the monks and the friars landed in East Kent: St Augustine and the monks came ashore at Thanet in 597 and Agnellus and his confrères at Dover in 1224. Both groups settled at Canterbury and thence spread throughout the country. St Augustine had made it a priority to establish contact with Ethelbert, king of Kent, who authorized him to preach to the people of Kent.6 Similarly, royal support was a vital condition for the dissemination of the Franciscan ideal in England.7 The twentieth-century editor of Eccleston reflects that the chronicle’s veracity is frequently corroborated by external sources.8 Agnellus of Pisa’s ministry 4 E.g., E. Kitson Clark, ‘The foundation of Kirkstall Abbey’, in Miscelleanea, vol. 2: The Publications of the Thoresby Society 4 (Leeds, 1893), 169–208, esp. 179: ‘Anno incarnacionis m. c. quinquagesimo ij regnavit [sic] in Anglia rege stephano, presedente sedi Eboracensi Archiepiscopo Rogero xiiij kalend. Junii ipsa die potenciane virginis venit conventus monachorum de sede prima in grangiam redacta ad locum qui nunc Kirkestal nominatur …’; The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (London, Edinburgh and New York, 1900), vol. 4, 10–11, where Henry Esmond relates the traditions of the family seat at Castlewood Hall. Cf. David A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry iii (London, 1990). 5 clr, 1245–1251, 53–54. On 16 May 1246 the king made a donation of thirty marks for the fabric of the basilica of St Francis in Assisi. 6 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, vol. 1, no. 25, ed. Bertram Colgrave and Roger A.B. Mynors, omt (Oxford, 1969), 72–77. 7 Flores historiarum, ed. Henry R. Luard, 3 vols. rs 95 (London, 1890), vol. 3, 266. 8 Andrew G. Little, ‘Chronicles of the mendicant friars’, in Franciscan Essays, ii, bsfs, Extra Series, ed. Francis C. Burkitt, H.E. Goad and Little (Manchester, 1932), 85–103, esp. 87–88.

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of mediation between the crown and Richard Marshal in 1233, the existence of the short-lived friary in New Romney; the collapse of the friars’ church at Paris c. 1228/9 and Master Robert Grosseteste’s sermon to friars in chapter at Oxford are confirmed by Roger of Wendover,9 the Rôles Gascons,10 John of Garland,11 and manuscript copies of the homily.12 Professor David M. Knowles pays Eccleston the highest compliment in his assessment that the friar was ‘one of the last examples of that genius for historical writing that distinguished the countrymen of Bede for five centuries after his death’.13 The prologue explains the author’s methodology, that is, to encourage and inspire friars, rousing them to increase in virtue by citing examples of integrity and holiness, reminding them of the order’s mission. This editorial policy, however, left limited space for failures and scandals connected with the order and its members. There is, instead, a relish and freshness in rehearsing the simplicity and poverty of the nascent communities at Canterbury and Salisbury, sitting around a fire in the evenings, drinking the dregs of beer and exchanging words of edification. Friars were scrupulous about collecting only alms that were necessary for the day. In London they experienced real hardship and an erratic supply of food.14 Unlike the Cistercian monastery of Louth Park, which recorded the dates of the order’s foundations in England,15 Eccleston offers minimal information about the sequence of the order’s settlements. Thus, the chronicle does not purport to be a comprehensive history of the English province, despite its declaration that the older friars had been consulted. While there is ample information about the friaries of Oxford and London, the more distant foundations fare less well. This regional bias is complemented by the Chronicon de Lanercost, which is strongly rooted in the custodies of York and Newcastle, and, similarly, John Somer’s chronicle, which is moored in the custody of Bristol. A mixture of biographical data blends with details of the friars’ writings in the Catalogus illustrium Franciscanorum.16 Eccleston stands as a remarkable

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Roger Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 3, 64–69; Eccleston, 76. Rôles Gascons, Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, ed. FrancisqueMichel and Charles Bémont, 3 vols. (Paris, 1885–1906), vol. 1, 252, no. 1969; Eccleston, 4. Cf. Johannis de Garlandia, De triumphis ecclesiae libri octo, vi, ed. Thomas Wright (London, 1856), 99; Eccleston, 31. Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms. Lat. misc, c. 75, fols. 66rb–70va; Eccleston, 98–99. David M. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1948), vol. 1, 128, 164. Eccleston, 12. Chronicon abbatie de Parco Lude, ed. Edmund Venables, Lincolnshire Record Society 1 (Horncastle, 1891), 30–32. Cf. Leland, De viris illustribus, 452–453, no. 248.

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witness to the establishment of the order in England, although it was frequently left to antiquarians to identity the founders of particular friaries.17 The pioneering band of friars reached a country whose economy and population were increasing with the emergence of new towns.18 The expanding centres of population, encouraged by royal charters, welcomed the friars and their ministrations. Eccleston’s pride in the levels of religious observance and the theological traditions of the English province leaps from each folio. His account of the holiness of John of Yarmouth and Vincent of Worcester is matched by chroniclers in other provinces,19 who describe the cults of Adam Rufus at Barletta and William Anglicus at Assisi.20 The English province is depicted as being far from insular because it contributed to the order’s missions and the general administration in Rome, where friars served as chaplains and penitentiaries. Richard of Ingworth, Adam Rufus and Robert of Thornham left England for the Holy Land. William of Nottingham worked in the order’s general Curia in Rome and Arnulph, Henry of Burford and Augustine of Nottingham were active at the courts of Gregory ix, Innocent iv and Alexander iv and in the service of papal envoys. An unnamed pupil of Robert Grosseteste taught theology at the sacred palace in Rome and the second and third ministers provincial were elected as successive ministers general in 1239 and 1240. In contrast, the refusal of English friars to volunteer for the mission to Denmark is discreetly omitted.21 Eccleston, despite his reverence for Agnellus of Pisa, acknowledges the disadvantages of policies pursued by the first generation of friars, who returned surplus land to donors and thereby inadvertently created headaches for their successors.22 Religious orders in the Middle Ages spawned accounts of their origins, their collective vision and their projected place on the ecclesiastical landscape.23

17 18 19 20

21 22 23

Cf. Leland, Itinerary, vol. 4, 22–23, reported that Mabel Pateshull was the foundress of the Greyfriars of Bedford ( fundatrix huius loci). She was buried under a flat stone. David Carpenter, Magna Carta (London, 2015), 98–101. Cf. Richard Holt and Gervase Rosser, eds. The Medieval Town, Readers in Urban History (London-New York, 1990). Eccleston, 10, 63. Roberto Paciocco, Da Francesco ai ‘Catalogi sanctorum’. Livelli istituzionali e immagini agiografiche nell’Ordine francescano (secoli xiii–xiv), Collectio Assisiensis 20 (Assisi, 1990), 141; ‘Liber de laudibus Beati Francisci’, vii, in ff, 1253–1296, esp. 1282. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 1, 22–25. Eccleston, 45. Brian P. McGuire, ‘Constitutions and the general chapter’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. Mette B. Bruun (Cambridge, 2013), 87–99, esp. 89.

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The more successful the institution, the greater the temptation to draw a veil over ambivalent experiences or moments of frailty in the formative years. Franciscan hagiography candidly recounted some early uncertainty about the identity and motivation of the first friars in the Marches of Ancona and Tuscany.24 According to the Chronicon de Lanercost, some regarded the first friars with suspicion and dislike.25 In contrast, Eccleston presents a triumphal procession of one success after another and instances of unease over foundations by the friars are left to supplementary sources, rehearsing the negative response of Alexander Stavensby, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, to speculation about a Franciscan foundation in Chester; the prelate feared that there would be insufficient alms for two mendicant houses in the monastic town.26 The Benedictine historian of Selby Abbey was much less reticent in recounting some of the scandals associated with the early history of the monastery.27 Eccleston’s text is supplemented by additional sources. Fears among some discerning friars at the general Curia that the bishops at the first council of Lyons might try to curtail the order’s pastoral ministry were reported by Adam Marsh. The decision of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Wales, to build a church in memory of his wife, Joan (†1237), the illegitimate daughter of King John, and to entrust it to the friars, appears in a Welsh chronicle. The low morale among many English friars during the crisis precipitated by the policies of Elias of Cortona was communicated to Gregory ix and the cardinal protector by Bishop Grosseteste. Members of the province faced so many great dangers to their order and harm to their religious life. It was feared that many of the weaker friars would lapse and the stronger ones would be shaken and waver. Dissensions would sunder the order’s unity and many great men, who had decided to take their habit, would withdraw.28 Because Eccleston pays scant attention to English friars active in other provinces of the order, Jordan of Giano and Salimbene of Adam are left to chronicle the activities of Bartholomew Anglicus, the magnus clericus who lectured cursorily on the whole Bible at Paris and was

24 25 26 27 28

‘Anonymus Perusinus de inceptione vel fundamento ordinis’, v nn. 19–22, in ff, 1311–1351, esp. 1325–1328. Chronicon de Lanercost, 30–31. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 120–122. E.g., Historia Selebiensis monasterii, ed. Janet Burton with Lynda Lockyer, omt (Oxford, 2013), 57–61. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 514–515; Brut Y Tywysogyon or The Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth ms. 20 Version, ed. Thomas Jones, Board of Celtic Studies, University of Wales, History and Law Series 11 (Cardiff, 1952), 104; Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 180, 182.

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the author of the De proprietatibus rerum,29 Alexander of Hales, the archdeacon of Coventry and regent master of theology in the University of Paris and melior clericus de mundo,30 and Simon Anglicus, lector, custos of Normandy and then minister provincial of Germany.31 Similarly, there is no reference to the Minoresses, who had established themselves at Northampton by 1252.32

2

The Portrait of St Francis and Fidelity to His Rule

St Francis, one of the most colourful and influential figures in the Western Church, claims a central place in this chronicle. He knew some of the friars sent to England and this is exemplified by his warm dealings with Vincent of Beauvais to whom he gave his habit.33 Anecdotes about his conduct and teaching were brought to England by Martin of Barton, Ralph of Rheims, Albert of Pisa and Peter of Tewkesbury.34 These exempla promoted the highest standards among the English friars. Martin of Barton, for instance, recounted the way in which the people of Assisi constructed a stone building to accommodate the 5,000 friars attending the chapter of mats at the Portiuncula. St Francis’s wish to have the building razed to the ground was thwarted by the intervention of the commune of Assisi, whose seneschal of the chapter (seneschallus capituli) was Martin’s brother. A fuller version of this incident was incorporated into the Compilatio Assisiensis in the context of the founder’s determination to eschew any semblance of ownership, to keep the Portiuncula as a place where the highest ideal of evangelical poverty was enshrined and to avoid the use of stone in the buildings used by the friars.35 It is no coincidence that Eccleston devotes so much space to the vexed issue of building.

29 30

31 32

33

34 35

Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 138; Jordan of Giano, 57, 58, nn. 58, 60. John Le Neve, fea, xi, Coventry and Lichfield, ed. Christopher N.L. Brooke, Jeffrey H. Denton and Diana E. Greenway (London, 2011), 29; Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 62; Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 61. Jordan of Giano, 55–56 nn. 52–54, 58. Betty Hill, ‘The “Luue-Ron” and Thomas de Hales’, Modern Language Review 59 (1964), 321– 330, esp. 321, where the editor speculates that Thomas may have composed this text for a Minoress of Northampton. Maurice W. Sheehan, ‘St. Francis in the chronicle of Eccleston’, in Francesco d’Assisi nella storia secoli xiii–xv, ed. Servus Gieben, 2 vols. Istituto storico dei Cappuccini (Rome, 1983), vol. 1, 201–218. Eccleston, 32, 73, 75, 85. Eccleston, 32; ‘Compilatio Assisiensis’, in ff, 1471–690, esp. 1497, 1541, cc. 18, 56.

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The early friars in England were praised for their devotion and unswerving commitment to the Rule of St Francis. One perception was that the friars were set in the apostolic mould, as Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, implied, when he introduced Solomon as a member of the order of the apostles during the ordination ceremony. This commendation serves as an exemplum of the friar’s early simplicity, especially their rigour in walking back to Canterbury barefoot through the deep snow. The Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam points to the halcyon days of the province, when standards of religious observance were exemplary, commenting that: The friars of that time had the first fruits of the Spirit and served the Lord not by means of human constitutions but by the spontaneous outpouring of their devotion, being satisfied by the Rule alone. They were constant in their devotions; there was scarcely a time when one or another was not present in the chapel. They were told that by celebrating the Divine Office with fervour, they would be the apostles’ sheep.36 While Cistercian chroniclers lauded their abbots for contributing towards the construction of the monastic churches, the question of building was divisive among the friars, becoming a toxic issue,37 especially the basilica in Assisi for which the provinces were effectively taxed.38 Perhaps belatedly smarting from criticisms of the basilica, the general administration of the order strove to regain the initiative by proscribing unnecessary decorations in the friars’ churches. Thus, John of Malvernia, the second general visitator, punished a friar of Gloucester for painting a pulpit; the guardian was also castigated for this infringement.39 The deceased Henry of Reresby appeared to the custos of Oxford and warned him against excesses in building and Albert of Pisa removed the stone cloister at Southampton, despite strong local opposition.40 Mindful

36 37

38

39 40

Eccleston, 25, 31–32. Cf. Michael Carter, ‘Cistercian abbots as patrons of art and architecture: northern England in the Late Middle Ages’, in The Prelate in England and Europe 1300–1560, ed. Martin Heale (Woodbridge, 2014), 215–239, esp. 230–231. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 155, testifies that the minister provincial bore the cost of having six huge bells cast for the basilica. Jordan of Giano, 58, no. 61: ‘Frater vero Helias factus generalis minister opus ad sanctum Franciscum quod in Assisio inceperat, perficere volens fecit exactiones per totum ordinem ad inceptum consummandum.’ Eccleston, 38. Eccleston, 31–32, 79; ‘Compilatio Assisiensis’, 1502 c. 23, where the founder urged friars to dwell in places made of timber rather than stone.

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of the growing level of internal scruples and external criticism, the tenth collatio contains a plea for moderation in building materials and policies. While a fence was being erected to enclose the Greyfriars of Salisbury in December 1252, some friars preferred to build in stone and were not shy about promoting their ideas. For instance, when William of Nottingham, minister provincial (1240–1254), was threatened that he would be delated to the minister general for not constructing a wall around the friary in London, he thundered that he had not entered the order to build walls. In his zeal for poverty he removed the stone walls of the dormitory at Shrewsbury, arranging for them to be replaced by mud.41 The style and decoration of the friars’ new church at Valvert in Paris was another flashpoint, separating modernizers from conservatives. The controversial new structure mysteriously collapsed c. 1228–1229 in response to the prayers of Angeler, who had enlisted the celestial intercession of St Francis. Similarly, Robert of Slapton described how, while the friars were renting a property, it seemed to the guardian in his dream that St Francis visited them. When the friars met the founder, they led him to the solarium (in solarium), where he took a seat and silently considered the friars’ circumstances, commending the house that was made of twigs, mud and mire. The saint declared tales deberent domus fratrum minorum esse. The way in which distractions caused by building projects diminished spiritual gifts was illustrated by the public confession of a friar, who had been a distinguished preacher until the distraction of building had dampened his zeal in the pulpit. Similarly, William of Abingdon, a Dominican, had been an exceptional preacher before he became ensnared in building the priory at Gloucester.42 During the lifetime of the founder there were conflicting views about how his Rule should be fittingly observed.43 His death on the evening of 3 October 1226 removed the ultimate source of moral authority. As novel situations arose in the expanding order there was uncertainty about how the Rule should be applied. The vacuum in the leadership was exacerbated by the unseemly conduct of Elias of Cortona, whose prominence and authoritarian administration

41

42

43

ccr, 1251–1253, 297: ‘mandatum est custodi foreste de Clarend’ quod in eadem foresta faciat habere Fratribus Minoribus Sarr’ xvj carettatas clausture ad curiam suam ibidem claudendam de dono regis. Teste rege apud Winton’ xxvj die Decembris’; Eccleston, 23, 44–47. Eccleston, 44–47; Cf. Damien Vorreux, ‘Un sermon de Philippe le Chancelier en faveur des Frères Mineurs de Vauvert’, afh 68 (1975), 3–22, encouraged the laity to give alms to the friars for the construction of their church. E.g., ‘Compilatio Assisiensis’, c. 101, 1635–1636.

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deepened the spirit of insecurity. His clandestine translation of the saint on 25 May 1230 ruffled the friars’ feathers,44 even before the disorderly scenes witnessed by Agnellus of Pisa and Haymo of Faversham during the general chapter at Assisi. Such scandalous behaviour presaged Elias’s scandalous conduct in the office of minister general. For example, his high-handed treatment of the provinces is symbolized by his disdain for England after the death of Agnellus of Pisa. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the province was left without a minister provincial for several months merely because some friars had had the temerity to identify potential successors.45 Worse still was to follow with the arrival of the third general visitator, Wygerius, a canonist and a friend of Otto of Tonengo, cardinal deacon and papal legate to England. The controversial policies of this German visitator disturbed the friars and united the province against him.46 His harsh measures stirred up such a hornet’s nest that a unanimous appeal was launched against the minister general after a provincial chapter at Oxford in June 1238, although the chronicler does not fully explain why the conduct of the visitator should result in an appeal against the minister general, unless Elias was deemed culpable for sending unsuitable visitators armed with excessive powers to the provinces. Elias’s first instinct may have been to stand four-square behind his unpopular visitator, an interpretation that is bolstered by the appeal launched by the province of Saxony in 1238.47 Eccleston pithily remarks that Elias’s carnalitas et crudelitas had disturbed the whole order. The latter’s twelve faults were enumerated by Salimbene of Adam, who comments that the ministers provincial bided their time before moving against Elias.48 Eccleston offers a full account of the proceedings of the general chapter of Rome in 1239 and the mounting opposition to Elias. The role played by English friars, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, Arnulph,49 and Haymo of Faversham in top44 45 46

47 48 49

Thomas of Celano, ‘Vita brevior’, 68, 77, no. 96, miracula, no. 43. Eccleston, 4, 76–79. Eccleston, 38–40; Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 149, 151–152. Cf. Eccleston, 155, observes that the conduct of the visitators was oppressive (‘exactores, quam qui essent correctores, et qui sollicitarent provincias et ministros ad tributa solvenda et munera largienda’) and onerous, undermining the authority of the ministers provincial. Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 63: ‘fratres Saxonie contra visitatorem appellantes ad generalem ministrum missis nunciis ad ipsum nihil profecerunt omnino’. Eccleston, 65–67; Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 154–163, 243–250. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 244, attributes a significant role to Arnulph: ‘ad hoc autem, ut ista congregatio in generali capitulo fieret omnium ministrorum ad depondendum Helyas, multum laboravit frater Arnulfus Anglicus ex OrdineMinorum, homo sanctus et litteratus et zelator Ordinis et promotor; erat enim tunc temporis penitentiaries in curia domini

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pling Elias is highlighted. Although seven cardinals attended the general chapter, only one of them, Robert of Somercote, the English cardinal deacon of San Eustachio, is singled out for special mention because he ensured that Haymo was given the floor of the chapter for his case against Elias. This was no mere coincidence as the cardinal’s studies at the Universities of Paris and Bologna were funded by his parishes in the diocese of Lincoln in the 1230s. Both the cardinal and the friar knew the bishop of Lincoln, who had already voiced his misgivings about the negative impact of Elias’s administration. The substance of Haymo’s speech is reproduced by Eccleston,50 whose Anglo-centric report is not echoed by Jordan of Giano and Salimbene of Adam.51 Eccleston offers no explanation of why Haymo rather than Albert of Pisa was left to prepare the ground for the first deposition of a minister general in the history of the order. Following the election of Albert, the Te Deum was intoned by Arnulph and Mass was celebrated. The momentous nature of the occasion was emphasized by Albert, who informed the non-capitulars present that they had just witnessed the first ever Mass celebrated by a minister general. This occasion was a portent for the future direction of the order, as the balance began to tilt in the direction of the clerical members.52 English friars may have been energized by the democratic policies recently enunciated by the Magna Carta,53 a charter about the rights of the individual against the crown’s excessive exactions and the citizen’s rights against a despotic monarch.54 The deposition of Elias stimulated further debate on the Rule. The 1240s brought the first of the collective or individual commentaries on the Rule in response to the general chapter of definitors at Montpellier in 1241.55 The recommendation of the commission established by the English province was that the Rule should be observed, just as it was handed down by St Francis at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. This petition impressed the cardinal protector and generated both pride and admiration in various parts of the order. While masters of theology, such as Haymo of Faversham and Richard Rufus of Cornwall, were cast as agents of reform, and lectors were appointed to the provincial com-

50 51 52 53 54 55

Gregorii pape noni’. Elias feared the ministers provincial beyond the Alps lest they remove him from office. Eccleston, 67–69. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 244. Eccleston, 67–69. David Carpenter, The Reign of Henry iii (London, 1996). Carpenter, Magna Carta, 24, 26–28. Cf. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 1–212, introduces and translates the earliest extant texts composed by friars in France and Germany.

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missions of renewal, the prophetical voice of the lay brothers was reaffirmed by the founder, who appeared to John Bannister and suggested that such friars should be invited to expound the Rule.56 William of Nottingham exhorted the friars to remember St Francis’s mind and intention in the composition of the Rule lest accretions arise. The discerning spirit was displayed at the general chapter of Genoa in 1251, when William of Nottingham and Gregory of Bosellis prevailed upon their fellow capitulars to adhere to the terms of Gregory ix’s Quo elongati of 28 September 1230 rather than the more liberal provisions of Innocent iv’s Ordinem vestrum of 14 November 1245. Within nine years this proposal was adopted by the general constitutions of the order.57 Despite such laudable measures, dispensations from the Rule were sought as early as the spring of 1250, albeit at the instigation of Henry iii.58 There was a whiff of provincial independence against the decision of John of Parma to remove William of Nottingham from the office of minister provincial in 1254.59 Eccleston’s portrait of the role played by the English province in the defenestration of Elias of Cortona goes hand in hand with his comments on the friars’ firm commitment to the Rule and the commendations issued by Albert of Pisa and John of Parma, who both exalted the English province.60 Despite these compliments, the chronicler regards the Franciscan life as firmly centred on the cities and towns to the exclusion of the hermitages, which existed in the neighbouring provinces of France. His urban bias is at odds with the perception of Leo, Rufino and Angelo, who favoured the life of the hermitage. That may be the reason why he draws attention to the contemplative life led by Ralph of Rheims and William Cook.61 He acknowledges the need for renewal articulated by John of Parma during his general visitation in 1248, although no details are supplied.62 Shortly afterwards William of Nottingham was congratulated on his work for the reform of the order. Recurrent headaches were acknowledged within a couple of years by Adam Marsh, who expressed his dismay at the way in which novices were being denied appropriate formation.63

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Cf. Expositio quatuor magistrorum; Eccleston, 71. Eccleston, 99, 42; Ferdinand M. Delorme, ‘Diffinitones Capituli Generalis o. f. m. Narbonensis (1260)’, afh 3 (1910), 491–504, esp. 503, no. 13. bf, i, 542, no. 366. On 30 April 1250 friars were dispensed to ride on horseback when they accompanied the king abroad. Eccleston, 101; For a more circumspect tone see Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 394–395. Eccleston, 69–70, 79, 98. Eccleston, 73, 89. Eccleston, 73. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 408–409, 490–491.

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Vocations

A barometer of the health and vigour of new monastic foundations was the growth in the size of the community, reflecting the increase in the apostolic community (Acts 2.47).64 Such considerations moulded Eccleston’s third collatio, on the reception of novices. The three foundations made before the end of October 1224 were partially facilitated by the decision to form small communities and to seek reinforcements from other provinces, such as Italy and Spain. The ‘spirit of Jesus’ was described as bringing indigenous vocations to the order, in accordance with the second chapter of the Rule. The first recruit was Solomon, who subsequently exercised a priestly ministry in the capital city. The second was William, a member of the household of Sir Hubert of Burgh, lord justiciar of England, and the third was Joyce of Cornhill, a cleric. The fourth was John, another cleric, aged 18, and Philip of London, a priest, was the fifth. External sources show that secular priests were conspicuous among early recruits, including Walter of Wimborne, a canon of Wimborne Minster, c. 1225,65 Peter of Eport, rector of Stoke Prior in 1226,66 and William of Westwell, rector of Cosgrove, in 1227,67 and Clement of London, prebendary of Wellington, Shropshire, and a canon of Lichfield cathedral, in 1240.68 The new universities were fertile recruiting grounds for the order. The plurimi scolares entering the two mendicant orders in Paris were mentioned by Master Eudes of Châteauroux in a sermon preached on 18 March 1229.69 Among these vocations were several English scholars, including Haymo of Faversham, a distinguished preacher. In an attempt to ascertain his vocation Haymo celebrated Mass with three other like-minded masters and consulted Jordan of 64 65 66 67 68

69

The Foundation History of the Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx, ed. Janet Burton, Borthwick Texts and Studies 35 (York, 2006), 13. The Poems of Walter of Wimborne, ed. A. Rig, pims, Studies and Texts 42 (Toronto, 1978), 4–5. ‘Annales prioratus de Wigornia, a.d. 1–1377’, in am, vol. 4, 353–564, esp. 419. The Acta of Hugh of Wells bishop of Lincoln 1209–1235, ed. D.M. Smith, lrs, 88, 2000, 112, 129, nn. 231, 276. Lichfield Cathedral, Magnum Registrum Album, ed. J. Charles Cox, William Salt Archaeological Society, 6, part 2 (London, 1886), no. 363, p. 180; eea, 43 Coventry and Lichfield 1215–1256, ed. Jeffrey H. Denton and Philippa M. Hoskin (Oxford, 2014), no. 195, 222–223; Le Neve, fae, xi, Coventry and Lichfield, ed. Brooke, Denton and Greenway, 64. The resignation was tendered before 13 March 1240. André Callebaut, ‘Le sermon historique d’ Eudes de Châteauroux à Paris, le 18 mars 1229. Autour de l’ origine de la grève universitaire et de l’enseignement des Mendicants’, afh 28 (1935), 81–114, esp. 111.

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Saxony, the master of the Dominicans. The outcome was that the four masters were received at St-Denis by Gregory of Naples, minister provincial of France, on Good Friday 1224 or 1225. Many admirable English men entered the order in Paris and returned home during the scholars’ dispersal from the University of Paris in 1229. Master Richard Rufus, who was filled with zeal for the reform of the order, was a later recruit. One of the Parisian regent masters to be admitted was Ralph of Corbridge, who was sent to Oxford as a novice to become the second friar to lecture as regent master about 1243/4.70 A later witness, Nicholas Trivet, remarked that many masters, illustrious by learning and holiness, renounced worldly wealth to follow the poor Christ as Dominicans or Franciscans.71 During the friars’ first year at Oxford many bachelors entered the order,72 and they were duly followed by masters. Adam Rufus had studied under the tutelage of Robert Grosseteste before entering the order and setting out for the Holy Land as a missionary. Another member of this circle was Adam Marsh, rector of Wearmouth,73 who resigned his lucrative benefice in 1232 or 1233 to become a friar at the instigation of Adam Rufus.74 The fragmentary constitutions promulgated before 1260 imply that masters were especially welcomed to the order.75 This notwithstanding, descriptions of the recruits to the order contain hints of an inferiority complex regarding the postulants’ social and intellectual standing. The refrain that a particular vocation impressed contemporaries recurs in accounts of the admission of Walter of Burgh, Richard the Norman, Adam Rufus, Vincent of Coventry and Eustace of Normanville.76 A similar observation was made by Roger Bacon about the clothing of Alexander of Hales at Paris.77 Greater self-confidence appears in Hugh of Digne’s boast that his confrères had finally become equal to the Dominicans in their studies.78

70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78

Eccleston, 27–30, 50. F. Nicholai Triveti de ordine Frat. Praedicatorum, Annales sex regum Angliae, 1136–1307, ed. T. Hog (London, 1845), 211. Eccleston, 22. Chronicon de Lanercost, 58. The Durham Liber Vitae, London, British Library, ms. Cotton Domitian a. vii, ed. David and Lynda Rollason, 3 vols. (London, 2007), vol. 3, 103–104, 111; Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 619; Eccleston, 18. Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii, 22, no. 30. Eccleston, 14–17, 51. Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera, 325–326. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 383.

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It is to the immense credit of Eccleston that he pays the most cursory attention to the two most distinguished vocations to the order in England.79 It is probable that both prelates consulted Bishop Grosseteste about their plans to become friars. First, John of Reading, abbot of the Augustinian monastery of Osney, Oxfordshire (1229–1235), resigned on 2 July 1235,80 and was subsequently clothed as a friar at Northampton on 3 October; afterwards he exemplified all manner of perfection.81 Secondly, Ralph of Maidstone, a former Parisian master and then bishop of Hereford (1234–1239), was received into the order by Haymo of Faversham at Oxford and was assigned to the community at Gloucester. One recension of the Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam reports that he died at Gloucester, where he was buried in the friars’ choir.82 The Obit Book of Hereford Cathedral attests that his years as a friar numbered the same as his episcopate: he swapped his episcopal office for a life of penance among the friars. His death occurred on 27 January,83 probably in 1245.84 There is a hint of disapproval in Matthew Paris’s account of the resignation of these two prelates under the heading de quibusdam qui levitate animi ventilati ordinem suum mutarunt.85 Two sets of siblings who joined the order are identified. Master Vincent of Coventry took the religious habit not long after his brother, Master Henry. Augustine and William of Nottingham were brought up in a comfortable home with dainty food and their parents disbursed alms to poor boys.86 At an early stage some individuals expressed their disdain for the friars’ modus vivendi and went to some lengths to deter young men from entering the order, thereby creating the classical topos of choistrum versus mundum.87 An anchorite, for 79

80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87

Chronica xxiv Generalium Ordinis Minorum cum pluribus appendicibus inter quas excellit hucusque ineditus Liber de laudibus S.Francisci Fr. Bernardi a Bessa edita a patribus Collegii S.Bonaventurae, af 3 (Quaracchi, Florence, 1897), 26, testifies that the two prelates humbly carried stones and water to help in the construction of a wall. tna, c84, 1/9. Eccleston, 18; Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 422–423. Eccleston, 85: ‘Magster vero Radulphus de Maydenston episcopus Herefordensis existens suscepit habitum fratrum minorum ante quinquennium mortis suae. Stetit autem in conventu Gloverniae, ubi et obiit, et seputlus in choro fratrum presbyterario, in parte boriali in archu quodam.’ Le Neve, fea, viii, Hereford, ed. Julia S. Barrow (London, 2002), 104–105. eea, 35, Hereford 1234–1275, xxxiii–xxxvii; Roger Wendover, Flores historiarum, vol. 2, 232; ‘Annales prioratus de Dunstaplia 1–1297’, in am, vol. 3, 1–420, esp. 148. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 163–164. Eccleston, 16, 89, 102. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: a folio from a copy of Gratian’s Decretum, causa 20,

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instance, tried to deflect Adam Rufus from becoming a Franciscan, unsuccessfully ushering him in the direction of the Cluniac monks of Reading, the Cistercians and the Dominicans.88 Some wealthy families were happy to dispense charity to the friars, but drew the line at allowing their sons to take the habit of St Francis. Such was the case at Northampton where Lord Richard Gobiun, a knight, had first welcomed the friars outside the eastern gate of the town. When his son, John, became a friar, Richard responded by expelling the community. The guardian suggested that John should choose for himself and stand in the middle of the chapel between the friars and his family. John betook himself to the friars’ company. His father became tearful and subsequently relented, following his son into the order.89 There are similar anecdotes from the friars in France,90 Ireland,91 and Italy in chronicles and exempla materials.92 Although precise information about the age at which men were admitted to the order is sparse, Eccleston records practice prior to the constitutions of the general chapter of Narbonne in 1260. An unnamed friar was described as having entered as a puer tenerrimus. Warin of Orwell became a friar in his youth (iuvenis satis).93 Maurice of Derham was the confessor of an unnamed boy who entered the order around the age of 15.94 John of Banbury was described as a special friend of Adam Marsh from boyhood (a puero).95 Stephen, an English friar who filled the office of lector in his own province as well as at Genoa and Rome, joined the order as a puerulus,96 a term which is also employed by Roger Bacon.97 Many boys were admitted to the order by Agnellus of Pisa.98 Salimbene of Adam, too, testifies that pueri entered the order.99 Some

88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

executed at Bologna c. 1320, juxtaposes two scenes: to the right, a novice chooses to stay with the monks, while to the left, another abandons religious life. Eccleston, 16–17. Eccleston, 23–24. La Vie de Sainte Douceline fondatrice des béguines de Marseille, ed. Joseph H. Albanés (Marseilles, 1879), vol. 15, 240–244 nn. 35–39. Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium, saeculo xiii compositus a quodam fratre minore Anglico de provincia Hiberniae, ed. Andrew G. Little, bsfs 1 (Aberdeen, 1908), 69, 146–147, no. 117. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 55–60, 88–89, 140. Eccleston, 88, 97–98. Eccleston, 62. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 534–535. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 454. Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera, 327. Chronica xxiv Generalium Ordinis Minorum, 331. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 407.

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of the most distinguished theologians of the English province, William of Ware, Robert of Cowton, Walter of Chatton and William of Ockham, took the habit as pueri.100 The nine friars who landed at Dover in the late summer of 1224 were, with the exception of Richard of Ingworth, ill-equipped to play an effective role in the life of English parishes. The advent of priests, however, altered the order’s pastoral profile, taking it into the parish churches to preach and hear confessions. For example, within days of entering the order, Haymo of Faversham continued his priestly ministry in the parish church attended by the friars in Paris, although Eccleston carefully points out that this was done with the permission of the custos. This change of orientation before 1230 was reinforced by recruits from the schools, laying the foundations for the order’s scholastic development in the 1230s and its pastoral ministry, bringing it into line with Matthew Paris’s observation that friars went forth to preach on Sundays and holydays.101

4

The Friars’ Pastoral Ministry

As early as 1223/4 St Anthony of Padua, regarded as the first lector in the order, began to instruct the friars in theology at Bologna at the instigation of St Francis. The lector’s importance was underlined in 1228, when the minister general, John Parenti, learned that the friars of Magdeburg required a theologian and he appointed Simon Anglicus, the minister provincial of Germany.102 About two years later there was a comparable movement in England where Agnellus of Pisa constructed a small school at Oxford and engaged Master Robert Grosseteste, who was explicit about the links between teaching and preaching. Eccleston devotes proportionately more space to theological studies than either Jordan of Giano or Salimbene of Adam, who refer to the schools and their lectors en passant. The primary function of the school at Oxford was to prepare friars to preach and hear confessions and a subsidiary purpose was the intellectual formation of friars, who were to be appointed to teach theology to their confrères in the growing number of the order’s schools. Eccleston 100

101 102

Little, Franciscan School at Oxford, 866, n. 6, citing chapter 62 of William Woodford’s Defensiorium fratrum mendicancium contra Armachanum (Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Twyne, xxii, fol. 103c). Cf. Matthew Paris, ha, vol. 2, 109–110. Vita del ‘Dialogus’ e ‘Benignitas’, ed. Vittorio Gamboso, Fonti Agiografiche Antoniane 3 (Padua, 1986), 496–497, c. 13, no. 2; Jordan of Giano, 55, no. 54, 55, no. 54.

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names the lectors appointed to the custodial schools at Cambridge, London, Bristol and the local schools at Canterbury, Hereford and Leicester. By the later 1230s the English province was providing lecturers for studia across the Channel in the form of Philip of Wales and Adam of York, who were appointed to teach at Lyons, although the traffic was not only in one direction, as is shown by the presence of Walter, a future bishop, at the lectures of John of Parma at Naples.103 It was with provincial pride that Eccleston recorded the theological prowess of his confrères in the eleventh collatio: et ita inundavit in provincia Anglicana donum sapientiae. Virtually each convent was equipped with a lector who had been trained in a university environment. A threefold layer of theological schools was in place whereby students started their studies at their local friary; the more gifted scholars proceeded to the custodial schools, where a curriculum almost indistinguishable from the universities obtained. The most talented young scholars advanced to the studium generale of Paris for the lectors’ programme, with a small percentage later enrolling for the baccalaureate or doctorate. Paris stood at the apex of the order’s educational pyramid;104 just below it were Oxford and Cambridge. The academic development of young friars, their progression towards the studia generalia and the supply of lectors loom large in the correspondence between Adam Marsh and William of Nottingham. The offices of teaching and preaching were yoked in the order’s pastoral strategy, a bond exemplified by the bachelors of theology who distinguished themselves in the pulpit. In accordance with chapter nine of their Rule, the friars preached about vices and virtues. They applied the Gospel to contemporary life, recreating biblical scenes and exhorted the faithful to have recourse to the sacraments. The reforming canons of the fourth Lateran council were a particular focus for their urban and itinerant ministry.105 An insight into their preaching programme is afforded by the exempla assembled by English friars.106 These materials were invoked by two English friars, Stephen at Genoa and Richard in Naples, as Salimbene de Adam attests.107 While some friars expounded the Scriptures to the laity, William of Esseby and Walter of Ravenham preached 103 104 105 106

107

Eccleston, 48–49; Salimbene de Adam, vol. 2, 830. William J. Courtenay, ‘Early Scotists at Paris: a reconsideration’, fs 69 (2011), 175–229. Eccleston, 88, 96, 28. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 334–335; Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium, saeculo xiii; Le speculum laicorum: Edition d’une collection d’exempla, composée en Angletrre à la fin du xiii siècle, ed. J.Th. Welter, Paris, 1914. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 493, vol. 2, 855.

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to the clergy.108 Some of the distinguished preachers were identified: Philip of London, Haymo of Faversham, two unnamed friars, the first of whom become a praedicator egregius and the second a praedicator et lector egregius, Warin of Orwell and Robert Thornham. The decorum and gravity required of preachers were illustrated by a layman, who was scandalized by the jocular conduct of a friar whom he had heard preaching only a few hours earlier.109 Friars maintained that their Rule was exceptional in obliging them to preach.110 The friars’ colourful and resourceful preaching, buttressed by personal example, breathed new life into the Church’s mission. Their homilies were delivered on Sundays and holy days in parish churches and other places where people were accustomed to assemble.111 Imitating their canonized founder, they took the Scriptures to the cloisters, market squares, gardens, preaching crosses and other open places; they were trained to preach in a variety of situations, such as at fairs.112 Their portable pulpits facilitated what Professor Lesley Smith refers to as their ‘street ministry’.113 Miniatures depict the friars preaching outdoors,114 sometimes accompanied by a preaching cross.115 Their sermons were delivered in the vernacular, French and Anglo-Norman with Latin as the medium for clerical and scholastic congregations. About the middle of the century Thomas of Hales earned for himself a reputation for composing sermons in the vernacular and Anglo-Norman.116 The friars’ exemplary zeal in hearing confessions constitutes the twelfth collatio, opening with reference to Solomon, the general confessor of the citizens of the capital city and its court. The sensitivity and expertise of Maurice of Dereham and Geoffrey of Lynn stirred penitents to remorse. The former so moved an unnamed young boy that he was received as a friar by Agnellus of Pisa. The latter had so profound an impact on Sir Alexander of Bassingbourn 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Eccleston, 27; Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 536–537, 412–413. Eccleston, 15, 28, 32–33, 88, 97–98; Leland, De viris illustribus, 500–501, no. 283, describes Thornham as an eloquent preacher; Eccleston, 77. Felice Tocco, ‘Tractatus contra Fratrem Robertum Kilwardby, o.p.’, in John Pecham, Tractatus tres, esp. 127–128. Cf. Matthew Paris, ha, vol. 2, 109–110. Servus Gieben (Servus of Sint Anthonis), ‘Preaching in the Thirteenth Century: A Note on ms. Gonville and Caius 439’, cf 32 (1962), 310–324. Leslie Smith, Masters of the Sacred Page: Manuscripts of Theology in the Latin West to 1274 (Notre Dame, in, 2001), 147. Little, ‘Illuminated manuscripts’, 37–77, 45. Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 522, fol. 85r. Cf. Sarah M. Horrall, ‘Thomas of Hales, o.f.m.: his life and works’, Traditio 42 (1986), 287– 298.

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that he became truly penitent and conceived the proposal of becoming a friar. Vincent of Worcester was renowned as a confessor prior to his appointment to the office of preaching. Bishop Grosseteste commented that the laity hurried to confess their sins to the friars and to be instructed in the rules for conducting their lives.117 Friars served as confessors to countless individuals, such as Roger Weasenham, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield,118 Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry iii,119 William of Valence, earl of Pembroke,120 and Richard of Cornwall, king of Germany.121 During his visit to the papal court Bishop Grosseteste described the visitation of his vast diocese. Clergy and people were summoned to meet him to hear a sermon and to confess their sins. While he preached to the clergy, a friar, Franciscan or Dominican, exhorted the laity. The friar would be assisted by four mendicants who heard confessions and assigned penances.122 Bishop Grosseteste’s engagement with Franciscan confessors was not untypical of a number of prelates whose diocesan constitutions acknowledged the friars’ skill in the confessional. Mindful of the benefits of the friars’ ministries, several diocesan statutes or constitutions encouraged the clergy to welcome them as they passed through the parishes to hear confessions on an annual basis, particularly during Lent. They are exemplified by the diocese of Carlisle in 1258/9, which treats the friars’ visits under the heading de confessione.123 The antiqui fratres and prudent friars were, according to Hugh of Digne, mindful of St Francis’s wish that they should work closely with prelates and clerics.124 Richard Poore, bishop of Salisbury, is credited with the foundation of the friary in his cathedral city.125 From the outset the friars in England worked 117 118 119

120 121

122 123 124 125

Letters of Roberti Grosseteste, 180. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 63. Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in the Thirteenth-Century (Oxford, 1998), 76; clr, 1245–1251, 296–297. On 30 July 1250 Henry iii ordered that images of the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary in glass be made for the chamber of the Friars Minor at Clarendon. Cf. clr, 1267–1272, 45, 138 nn. 409, 1212. bf, ii, 60–61, no. 82. André Vauchez, La Sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age: d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’ Athenes et de Rome 241 (Rome, 1981), 649–650. Servus Gieben, ‘Robert Grosseteste at the Papal Curia, Lyons 1250: edition of the documents’, cf 41 (1971), 340–393, esp. 376 iv, no. 3. eea, 30, Carlisle 1133–1292, ed. David Smith (Oxford, 2005), 174, no. 6. Hugh of Digne’s Rule Commentary, ed. David Flood, sb 14 (Rome, 1979), 176. William Worcestre Itineraries edited from the unique ms. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 210, ed. John H. Harvey, omt (Oxford, 1969), 50–51.

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hand in glove with the local parishes, dioceses and the hierarchy of England and Wales. On his return to England, Haymo of Faversham gained the favour of the bishops through his disputations and preaching. The friars were closely associated with a group of scholarly prelates who strove to renew the pastoral life of their dioceses. One such was Ralph Niger, the saintly bishop of London, who was a friend of Solomon of London. The three secular priests, Peter of Ramsey, Roger of Weasenham and Thomas of Wales, who succeeded Robert Grosseteste as lectors at the Greyfriars of Oxford, were elevated to the episcopate and thence championed the order’s work.126 The synodal statutes of Bishop Robert Bingham for the diocese of Salisbury (1238× 44) recommended the itinerant preaching of the Dominicans and Franciscans, who were specially deputed to preach the Gospel. Accordingly, the clergy were instructed to receive them with all reverence and honour cum non modicum fructum in ecclesia dei eorum noscatur predicatio produxisse.127 Advent and Lent were the friars’ favoured seasons for preaching. Friars were associated with the pastoral work of a number of prelates and their ministry brought them respect from different quarters. Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury (1241–1270), was advised to surround himself at all times with Dominicans and Franciscans.128 Richard Wich, bishop of Chichester (†1253), showed his appreciation of the friars’ work in his and adjacent dioceses by leaving money and manuscripts to friaries.129 A protracted meditation on the episcopal office was prepared for Sewal of Bovill, archbishop of York (1255– 1258) by Adam Marsh.130 The two mendicant orders were associated with the efforts of Stephen Bersted, bishop of Chichester, and shuttled between the two armies at Lewes in May 1264, bearing messages of peace.131 One of the early benefactors of the order was Simon Langton, archdeacon of Canterbury (1227– 1248). Two early clerical wills voice their admiration for the friars and their ministry. Two friars, Richard Rufus of Cornwall and John, and eleven friaries benefited from the will of Martin of St Cross, a member of the household of

126 127 128 129

130 131

Eccleston, 20, 28, 62, 48–49. Councils and Synods, ii (1205–1313), vol. 1, 364–387, esp. 386, no. 56. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 335–336. Saint Richard of Chichester: The Sources for His Life, ed. David Jones, Sussex Record Society 79 (Lewes, 1995), 67–69; eea, 22, Chichester 1215–1253, ed. Philippa M. Hoskin (Oxford, 2001), 158–160, no. 188. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 574–647. bl, Cotton, ms. Julius, D.v, f. 46r: ‘barones … mandabant domino regi per episcopum cicestrie et quosdam fratres minores, … The chronicle of Walter of Guisborough previously edited as the chronicle of Walter of Hemingford or Heminburgh’, 196.

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Nicholas Farnham, bishop of Durham (1241–1249), master of Sherburn hospital and prebendary of Holme in the East Riding, who was also admitted into fraternity by the order.132 Roger of Thoriz, archdeacon of Exeter, compiled his will on 2 February 1267, placing books at the disposal of the Dominicans and Franciscans of Exeter. His portrayal of the friars’ ministry echoes Bishop Bingham’s synodal statutes.133

5

Greyfriars and the Monastic World

The Rules of St Benedict and St Augustine guided the lives of generations of monks and canons who were well established in England long before the friars’ advent. Although Eccleston utilizes anecdotes about the abbot of Chertsey chiding a Dominican for his endless requests for material help to build, and Lanfranc’s admission by the community at Bec,134 monasticism does not loom large in the chronicle. Relations between friars and monks were complex and varied, with both flashpoints and collaboration, and some friendships. The Benedictines are cast in a benevolent role in the birth of the province through the monasteries of Holy Trinity at Fécamp and Christ Church cathedral priory at Canterbury; the former paid the friars’ passage across the Channel and the latter gave them hospitality for two days on their arrival.135 The monastic cities of Norwich and Worcester received the friars within two or three years of their arrival in the country and a friary was established in Coventry at a later date. The order settled in many of towns adorned with noble monasteries. It fell to a Benedictine chronicler, Roger of Wendover, to supply an account of the life of St Francis, drawing on oral materials communicated by friars who visited St Albans Abbey.136 His successor, Matthew Paris, quoted from Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima and painted two miniatures of the saint.137

132 133

134 135 136 137

eea, 29, Durham 1241–1283, ed. Philippa M. Hoskin (Oxford, 2005), xxxvii–xxxviii, 97–101, no. 111; Le Neve, fea, vi, York, ed. Diana E. Greenway (London, 1999), 79. The Registers of Walter Bronescombe (a.d. 1257–1280) and Peter Quivil (a.d. 1280–1291), Bishops of Exeter, 79–80. This will was copied by William de Tukebire, guardian of the Exeter Greyfriars, and stitched to the end of the episcopal register. Eccleston, 47, 64. Eccleston, 6. Roger Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 2, 328–333. Cf. Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, California Studies in the History of Art, 21 (California, 1987), 314.

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In spite such an auspicious beginning, relations were soured at an early stage in some places, leading the Benedictine chronicler of Peterborough Abbey to exclaim retrospectively under the year 1224 that the friars’ arrival in England was a moment of horror and calamity. Vestiges of opposition to Franciscan foundations in monastic towns form the context for Eccleston’s remark that friaries were established at Chester and Winchester cum difficultate magna.138 The observation of Haymo of Faversham that the construction of churches and cemeteries had marred the friars’ relations with their clerical neighbours is cited, perhaps with a hint of culpability.139 The friars were perceived as presenting a threat to the ancient privileges, venerable traditions and vested interests of the monastic world. This was made explicit by the chronicler of the Augustinian Canons at Barnwell Priory, Cambridgeshire, who reported that the revenues formerly granted to the monastic community were being diverted to the mendicants by the middle of the thirteenth century.140 Despite Eccleston’s relative silence on the subject, monastic historians underlined the friars’ insensitivity, assertiveness and their willingness to enter into litigation. Within a dozen years of the friars’ arrival there were signs that the monks were stiffening their resolve to restrict the newcomers’ ministry in the vicinity of monastic towns. Some indisciplined Franciscans exalted their order above all others, leading some friars to lord it over what Matthew Paris describes as the ancient orders. Scorn was poured on the orders founded by St Benedict and St Augustine: the white monks were regarded as simple, semi-laymen and rustics; the black monks were deemed to be haughty and epicurean.141 Matthew’s claim that the white monks had built a school of theology in Paris to avoid baiting by the friars142 is contextualised by Cistercian voices expressing concern about low standards of theological knowledge in some monasteries.143 Moreover, Guy of l’Aumône, the first Cistercian master, seems to have enrolled in

138 139 140 141 142

143

E.g., Chronicon de Lanercost, 30, 31; Eccleston, 80. Eccleston, 86. Liber Memorandum Ecclesie de Bernewelle, 70. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 280. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 79–80, 528–529; Edmond Kwanten, ‘Le Collège Saint-Bernard à Paris: Sa fondation et ses débuts’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 43 (1948), 443–472; Philippe Dautrey, ‘Croissance et adaptation chez les cisterciens au treizième siècle: les débuts du collège des Bernardins a Paris’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 32 (1976), 122–198. C. Hugh Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (Harlow, 1984, 2001), 193; C. Hugh Lawrence, ‘Stephen of Lexington and Cistercian university studies in the thirteenth century’, jeh 11 (1960), 164–178.

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the school of the Cordeliers of Paris before serving as regent master in the College of St Bernard by 1256.144 In some instances the monks admitted the friars to dwell in monastic towns under certain conditions, effectively circumscribing their liturgical activities. The friars were, according to the Dunstable chronicler, initially abrasive and litigious in their approach to making a foundation at Reading, citing papal privileges. A chirograph between the Cluniac monastery and the friars was agreed on 14 July 1233 and bore the seals of the minister provincial, the archbishop of York and the bishops of Winchester, Coventry and Worcester. Within a few years there was a spirit of renewal afoot among the friars, when Albert of Pisa offered to withdraw the friars from Reading, should the monks wish it.145 Monastic sources indicate that such displays of humility on the part of the friars were not the norm. The monks of Durham cathedral priory ensured that the friars’ presence in the town was short-lived,146 although they later emerged among the benefactors of neighbouring friaries. Voices of reform within the order acknowledged that the friars had been proud, litigious and opportunistic in their dealings with fellow religious.147 The heading de insolentia minorum was used by Matthew Paris to summarize the mounting friction between the monastic and mendicant worlds in the year 1236. The Dominicans and Franciscans, oblivious of their profession, were accused of furtively intruding themselves into the old, respected monastic towns, claiming a papal licence to erect altars, celebrate Masses and hear confessions, to the detriment of the parochial clergy. The allegation that the friars operated stealthily was reiterated by the chronicler of Bury St Edmunds, who charts the monks’ sustained opposition to the establishment of a friary in that town. The friars tried to settle there under Abbots Richard of the 144

145

146 147

Pierre Michaud-Quantin, ‘Guy de l’ Aumône, premier maître cistercien de l’université de Paris’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 15 (1959), 194–219; Jacques G. Bougerol, ‘Le commentaire des Sentences de Guy de l’ Aumône et son “Introitus”: Edition des textes’, Antonianum 51 (1976), 495–523. ‘Annales prioratus de Dunstaplia 1–1297’, in am, vol. 3, 1–420, esp. 134, describes the friars’ abrasive manner and their approach to the bishop of Winchester ut eos protegeret contra inimicos Christi. Cf. Reading Abbey Cartularies, vol. 2, 207–209, no. 1024; eea, 9: Winchester 1205–1238, ed. Nicholas Vincent (Oxford, 1994), 139, no. 35; eea, 13: Worcester 1218–1268, ed. Philippa M. Hoskin (Oxford, 1997), 150–151, no. 3; Eccleston, 79–80. Cf. R. Barrie Dobson, Church and Society in the Medieval North of England (London, 1996), 16. Expositio super regulam fratrum Minorum di Frate Angelo Clareno, ed. Giovanni Boccalli, Pubblicazioni della biblioteca francescana, Chiesa Nuova, Assisi 7 (Assisi, 1994), vol. 1, 220– 221, no. 286.

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Isle (1229–1233) and Henry of Rushbrooke (1233–1248). Gregory ix’s bull of 21 December 1233 decreed, moreover, that abbatial consent was a prerequisite for the erection of an oratory or chapel within monastic jurisdiction. Their first attempt was in 1233 and their second, joined on this occasion by the Dominicans, in 1238. An appeal was made to Cardinal Otto of Tonengo, who visited the monastic town, personally inspected the boundaries and examined the monastery’s privileges. Judgement was given in favour of the monastery on 6 June 1238.148 The Franciscans may have initially accepted this decision, but, perhaps swayed by new and powerful allies, they renewed their attempt to make a foundation in the town. Like the friars of Scarborough, who were compelled to withdraw from the town to its northern boundary at Hatterboard to await more propitious circumstances, the East Anglian friars were no less persistent and opportunistic. Echoing the allegations made by the Dunstable chronicler and Matthew Paris, the Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds highlighted the friars’ clandestine behaviour: On 22 June [1257] the Friars Minor entered the town of Bury St Edmunds by stealth. They celebrated Mass in an audible voice in the house of Roger of Harbridge, knight, on the east side of the north gate, in the presence of all-comers, but unknown to the convent … Despite their covert arrival, the friars erected some buildings. This act of provocation, coupled with the celebration of Mass at the home of a supporter, galvanized monastic opinion. Led by the prior, Simon of Luton, the abbot-elect, the subprior, sacrist and others, they went to the king. On the same day, when Roger of Harbridge and the friars were beginning their dinner, the friars’ oratory and other buildings were razed to the ground; there is no hint that the conflagration was accidental. On 1 November Innocent iv instructed the minister provincial and friars not to act contrary to the monastery’s privileges.149 Despite this command, the friars were making further plans to return to the town. The monastic chronicle depicted them as making a forcible entry accompanied by royal authority and armed force on 25 April 1258, led by Gilbert of Preston, Justice of the King’s Bench. This was in violation of the rights and privileges of the liberty of the monastery and it concurs with the testimony of Matthew Paris, 148

149

Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 332–333; Antonia Gransden, A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds 1182–1256: Samson of Tottington to Edmund of Walpole, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion (Woodbridge, 2007), 183–184. bf, ii, 255, no. 376. Cf. Rodney M. Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Record Society 21 (Woodbridge, 1980), 49, no. 26.

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who adds that the friars were supported by the pope and the earl of Gloucester. Friars were expelled from the town, but the monks, nonetheless, granted them a site at Babwell, where a friary was built.150

6

Conclusion

The Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam paints portraits of the ministers general and provincial, maintaining a keen interest in the welfare of the wider order. Members of the English province attending the general chapters of Assisi in 1230 and Rome in 1239 communicated their recollections to Eccleston, who, along with Jordan of Giano and Salimbene of Adam, records criticism of the last wave of visitators, linking their excesses with a style of leadership favoured by the increasingly beleaguered minister general. Criticism of the friars’ involvement in promoting the Crusades is muted, as are their links with Simon de Montfort, the earl of Leicester. Information on intermittently strained relations with Benedictines and Cistercians regarding foundations rests primarily on the testimony of monastic chroniclers, who pinpoint the excesses of some friars; moderate voices within the order wearily acknowledged the validity of these monastic complaints. While few difficulties and scandals were recorded, Eccleston concedes that certain friars had lost their vocational way. Despite these omissions, historians of other provinces of the order bemoan the absence of such a remarkable resource.151 The chronicler remains a major source for the order’s settlement in England. He was a friar writing for the benefit and edification of his confrères and this regulated his selection of his contents. 150

151

Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 688; Gransden, A History of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds 1257– 1301, 15–22; Gransden, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Chronicle from the Grey Friars at Lynn’, ehr 72 (1957), 270–278, esp. 270–271; Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey, ed. Thomas Arnold, rs 96, 3 vols (London, 1890–1896), vol. 2, 263–270, vol. 3, 291–292; Thomson, The Archives of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, 126, no. 36. E.g., Francis J. Cotter, The Friars Minor in Ireland: From their Arrival to 1400, ed. Roberta K. McKelvie, Franciscan Institute Publications, History Series, 7, St Bonaventure, New York, 1994, 2.

chapter 2

The Friars in Secular and Ecclesiastical Governance, 1224–c. 1259 Amanda Power

William of Nottingham, minister of the English province of Friars Minor from 1240 to 1254, was an exemplary figure who, it was recorded, ‘assiduously avoided intimacy with great lords and with women’ and who fled with his companions into the wintery night rather than sleep in an episcopal palace.1 Through these acts of avoidance, he reinforced the idea of a moral distance between the friars and those involved in both secular and ecclesiastical governance. This was in keeping with his desire to live according to his understanding of the ‘mind and intentions’ of Francis, and his notoriously rigorous leadership of the English province.2 His behaviour provided his brethren with an additional model for a way of thinking about temporal affairs that was already deeply embedded in the self-conception of the order. We can see it in a variety of normative writings. The Rule required the friars to live in accordance with the life of Christ and his apostles, as described in the Gospels and the Acts. This meant itinerancy and visibility in society, preaching in public and entering the houses of the laity. At the same time, their attitude towards human interests was to conform to monastic ideals: the friars were to go ‘as pilgrims and strangers in this world’, standing apart from its concerns.3 The beginnings of the order were presented by Francis himself, and in the hagiographical tradition, as divinely inspired: distinct from, and preceding, any involvement by the papal Curia with all its worldly concerns. ‘No one showed me what I must do, but the Most High Himself revealed to me that I should live according to the pattern

1 ‘Familiaritates magnatum et mulierum maximo studio declinavit’: Eccleston, 100; Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 430–433. 2 ‘[M]entem sancti Francisci et intentionem in regula’: Eccleston, 99; his rigour, 86, e.g., 23, 45. 3 Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 322–323, 326–327, 328–329, 334–335, ‘Regula bullata’, i, iii.13, vi.2, ix.3. For the later medieval notion of ‘Gospel’ life see Ernest W. McDonnell, ‘The “Vita Apostolica”: diversity or dissent’, Church History 24.1 (1955), 15–31; Donald S. Prudlo (ed.), The Origin, Development, and Refinement of Medieval Religious Mendicancies (Leiden, 2011). In earlier periods it had been more associated with eremitism or the Benedictine Rule.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_003

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of the Holy Gospel,’ asserted Francis.4 The independence of the friars from episcopal authority was developed in a series of papal bulls from 1219 onwards and explicitly asserted in 1231. The pope warned the bishops not to hinder the work of the friars, and emphasized that it was precisely the friars’ detachment that enabled them to perceive and address the impediments to the salvation of the population.5 The alleged failings of the episcopate, and the secular clergy in general, were given as justifications for the expansion of the order’s activities.6 In the case of the secular authorities, there was no shortage of exemplary tales to remind the friars of the necessity of avoiding the courts of princes and restricting contact with the rich and powerful to matters of pastoral care.7 4 Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 396–397: ‘Testamentum’: ‘nemo ostendebat mihi quid deberem facere, sed ipse Altissimus revelavit mihi quod deberem vivere secundum formam sancti Evangelii’. 5 The earliest bulls (Cum dilecti, 1219, and Pro dilectis, 1220), instructing bishops to support the friars and their work, emphasized the role of the friars in ‘serendo semina Verbi Dei Apostolorum exemplo diversas circumeant mansiones’ and warned the bishops not to impede this (‘Quare monendos vos duximus, et hortandos per apostolica scripta’). In 1228, Gregory ix was already stating (Recolentes qualiter) that: ‘quod in deserto huius mundi sacrae Religionis honestas ab eodem ordine procedure videatur’. Honorius characterized the ‘populares tumultus’ as something that the friars needed to flee so that they could pray freely (‘ut in sancta quiete liberius oration vacare possitis’) and Gregory (Quo elongati, 1230) wrote of the benefits of the friars’ detachment. The bull Nimis iniqua freed them from the control of local bishops. bf, i, respectively 2, 5, 46, 20, 68, 74–77, nn. 2, 4, 29, 17, 56, 63–66. It is worth viewing this in the tradition of libertas Romana—described by Cowdrey as freedom under Rome from all claims of earthly lordship, freedom for: ‘complete dedication to spiritual ends and to the purposes of the Papacy’, which went back at least to Cluny. H.E.J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), esp. 4. 6 The notion of episcopal insufficiency was embedded in Lateran iv, constitution 10, and was used to make a variety of cases. For example, Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 122, 131–134. Cf. Frank A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (eds.), The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (Toronto 2010), 149, 159–162: ‘the way of life of the Friars Minor … generously makes good the deficiencies of the prelates under whose authority they live’. Grosseteste used this argument to justify receiving extra assistance from the friars in carrying out his episcopal role. On the agendas behind this presentation, see: Jeffrey H. Denton, ‘The competence of the parish clergy in thirteenth-century England’, in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donington, 2001), 273–285. See also the editors’ observations in the introduction to John S. Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones (eds.), Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2007), 1–20. Papal bulls such as Gregory ix’s Quoniam abundavit (1237) (bf, i, 214–215, no. 224), specifically positioned the friars as the remedy. 7 E.g., Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and tr. J. Monfrin (Paris, 1995), 326; Eccleston, 30–31.

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Finally, there was a strong emphasis in the friars’ early writings on the rejection of personal power, the cultivation of humility, and on unquestioning obedience and submission.8 Taken at face value, all this would suggest that there might be little to say on the subject of the friars’ involvement in secular and ecclesiastical governance. The order was to maintain a vigilant distance from anyone with authority in the temporal sphere. Even those who, in the course of their duties, needed to have contact with elites were to restrict themselves to offering spiritual guidance. They were not to engage with politics, the practices of governance or the exercise of power in any sphere. This was no mere convention, but was perceived as a fresh imperative, fundamental to the friars’ power to act as agents of human salvation. We can see these ideas in material produced both within and without the order: they were ubiquitous and clearly internalized by individuals. Yet if we return to the case of William of Nottingham, we find that even he—minister provincial and a consciously exemplary figure—was restricted in the extent to which he could exercise his keen desire to avoid harmful intimacies. We know about his flight into ‘the frightful rigours of winter’ only because one of his brethren, Adam Marsh, wrote a letter chastising him for it. Adam said that William’s reasons for distancing himself were ‘trivial’ and that he had been inflexible, disrespectful of the bishop’s status and had ignored the reasonable arguments of the other friars present—to the extent that he must be suspected of ‘an excessive desire to exercise power’. Furthermore, he had selfishly exposed his companions to the dangers of the bitter journey. ‘Will you not consider that you should have done differently?’ Adam asked.9 Rather surprisingly, perhaps, a similar process of evaluating a situation on its merits could be applied to contact with secular power. William had been summoned by Henry iii to spend Christmas at court, and was very unwilling to obey. Again Adam made pragmatic and quite specific arguments for going. The friars had lobbied hard for a commission to preach the crusade, and had received it. Adam considered that avoiding the court, and thereby appearing arrogant, insolent and ungrateful, might put this in jeopardy. This was very

Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 207; for an English translation see Mantello and Goering (eds.), The Letters of Roberti Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 233. Grosseteste stated emphatically: ‘When the Church’s dignitaries bury themselves in humble, worldly concerns, they are like stars that fall and submerge themselves in a filthy swirling abyss.’ 8 See Jacques Dalarun, François d’ Assise ou le pouvoir en question: Principes et modalités du gouvernement dans l’ ordre des Frères mineurs (Paris-Brussels, 1999). 9 Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 430–433. The bishop in question was Robert Grosseteste, which makes William’s gesture all the more striking.

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undesirable, since, Adam said, the crusade: ‘offers such great promise of salvation’. Furthermore, William was about to leave the country to attend the general chapter of the order, and should, Adam said, ‘bid farewell to the lord king and the lady queen, and commend our devoted religious order to their patronage’. Finally, observing the ‘brittle splendour’ of the court would transport William ‘to a noble contempt for the mendacious world’, and might even enable God to inspire him with ‘spontaneous words’ that would help the king find salvation.10 In both letters, Adam showed William that an insistence on acting according to a rigid moral stance without consideration of the circumstances was not valued in practice; that it served no purpose in itself, could involve the friars in unkindness to their friends and discourtesy to their allies and, as bad politics, could only hinder the achievement of the friars’ ends. Adam, it must be noted, was regarded by contemporaries as an exemplary member of the order: he resisted adulteration of the demands of the Rule, and was associated with brethren who were considered to uphold the highest standards.11 That William himself was capable of the same kind of pragmatism—and indeed, relations with powerful individuals—is plain from several sources, particularly letters discussing occasions on which Adam wanted to be released from royal or episcopal commands and William refused for similar reasons.12 At the same time, Adam’s letters show that there was continuing and unresolved debate about how the friars should involve themselves with elites. This was surely a manifestation of the order’s high level of ethical engagement with what it meant to be a Friar Minor. Finally, Adam’s suggestion that William’s contact with the court might have the spiritually elevating effect for all concerned that is more normally associated with avoidance is an interesting variant on the traditional expectations. What this evidence suggests, then, is that a study of the friars’ involvement in secular and ecclesiastical governance would produce a more complicated picture than one might expect. There is a tendency in modern writing on the Franciscans to accept—or, at least, not to reject—normative depictions of an order eschewing most kinds of contact with elites, preserving political neutrality as far as possible when contact was necessary, mediating rather than engaging in partisanship, and working for the salvation of the population largely through 10 11 12

Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 402–405. Eccleston, 18; Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 351–353. Eccleston, 86–87; Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 408–411, 528–529. See also Amanda Power, ‘The problem of obedience among the English friars’, in Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life, ed. Mirko Breitenstein et al. (Berlin, 2014), 129–167, esp. 153–155.

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direct and relatively successful relationships with the ordinary laity.13 This view is reinforced in the historiography by the influential notion of an ‘evangelical awakening’ in this period; of religious movements arising beyond the compass of the institutional Church and seeking to live the vita apostolica. This way of life, following the work of Herbert Grundmann, is imagined as a potent force whose purity was only captured and harnessed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy with difficulty.14 Such movements—the most successful of which is considered to be the Friars Minor—are either explicitly or implicitly contrasted with the older monastic orders, which are seen as stable loci of ordered, conventional spirituality, and as characterized by their close relations with secular benefactors and exercise of lordship over considerable territories and resources. All these interpretations have the effect of obscuring aspects of our understanding of the order of Friars Minor, the role that it played in thirteenthcentury society, and its modus operandi. The implication of novelty, even exceptionalism, in the ‘Franciscan’ way of life, has made it very difficult to see the deep continuities inhabited by the friars.15 These were not merely incidental continuities of thought and practice, artefacts of older traditions, conventional ways of living a virtuous life; but were an essential part of the dynamic process through which ecclesiastical power was defined and asserted in medieval Europe. Furthermore, there has been a tendency to understand this period in terms of a long struggle between ‘Church’ and ‘state’, rather than examining the close cooperation between secular and spiritual authorities in maintaining the interests of Europe’s elites.16 This might be why the solid support of the friars for secular lordship and their sanction, even pursuit, of a social order 13

14 15 16

C. Lawrence does discuss the ambiguity of the friars’ position at court, and describes situations in which they may well have been drawn into politics, but tends to consider that the friars generally ‘succeeded in walking the tightrope of political neutrality’. The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movements on Western Society (Harlow, 1994), 177. Examples of similar interpretations—involved but largely personally neutral—can be found in James M. Powell, ‘Mendicants, the communes, and the law’, Church History 77.3 (2008), 557–573; Francesca Joyce Mapelli, L’amministrazione francescana di Inghilterra e Francia: personale di governo e strutture dell’ordine fino al concilio di Vienne (1311) (Rome, 2003), e.g., esp. 70. M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1997), esp. 220–269; Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1935). As I have pointed out elsewhere (Power, ‘Problem’, 131–134), using the term ‘Franciscan’ to discuss thirteenth-century friars is anachronistic. For example, rich liturgical vestments were a manifestation of a ‘shared language of holiness and power’ between imperial and reforming parties. Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (New York, 2014), 182.

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characterized by acute inequalities and exclusions is rarely investigated by historians of the order.17 If it is recognized that we are speaking, here, of the effect on English society of a network of highly educated men, often of noble birth, who were fiercely committed to the promotion of a particular ideology, backed by the support of many powerful individuals, and possessing the authority to enquire into an individual’s beliefs and discipline non-conformity, we should be very cautious about describing their endeavours as ‘neutral’ or ‘detached’. In order to develop a more nuanced sense of the work and ambitions of the order, it is important to look at the deeper history behind the friars’ positioning of themselves in relation to those conducting the affairs of the world. The gap between their normative claims and their actions in practice was characteristic of the strategies of power of the period. This ideology of separation from society, of moral authority obtained through rejection and distance, had deep roots in Western monastic discourse. Foreshadowed in the early Church, it had been extended into the institutional Church and politicized by the tendencies in the central medieval period usually described as ‘reforming’.18 There was an effort at the highest levels of the Church, articulated in doctrine and practice, to harden distinctions between the clergy—now defined as exclusively male

17

18

Foote acknowledges this, but charitably: ‘it is fair to say that Salimbene and Francis share a conservatism towards the social and religious order that marks them as thoroughgoing children of medieval Christianity … taking social status for granted as the path one is given for working out salvation. To undermine the hierarchical order is to undermine the salvation of oneself and others.’ David Foote, ‘Mendicants and the Italian communes in Salimbene’s Cronaca’, in Prudlo (ed.), Origin, 197–238, esp. 218. However, it is evident from other studies that the friars were not simply conservative and ideologically passive, but actively strengthened earlier justifications of social hierarchy. See, for example, John van Engen, ‘Sacred sanctions for lordship’ and Philippe Buc, ‘Principes gentium dominator eorum: princely power between legitimacy and illegitimacy in twelfth-century exegesis’ both in Thomas N. Bisson (ed.), Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in TwelfthCentury Europe (Philadelphia, 1995), 203–230 and 310–328, esp. 228–230, 317. At times, they argued for greater social justice within the hierarchies. See David Carpenter, ‘English peasants in politics 1258–1267’, Past and Present 136 (1992), 3–42; Andrew Reeves, Religious Education in Thirteenth-Century England: The Creed and Articles of Faith (Leiden, 2015), esp. 177–178. Paul Beaudette notes that, at the end of the fourth century: ‘This increasing … dissociation from “the laity” … was in marked contrast to the social reality of the clergy, which was becoming more and more closely linked to the structures of the empire.’ ‘“In the World but not of It”: clerical celibacy as a symbol of the medieval church’, in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York, 1998), 23–46, esp. 31.

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and celibate—and the rest of society.19 The intention was to produce a clergy of unassailable virtue and to rid the Church of every kind of lay influence, whether the policies of emperors or the perspectives of women, characterizing all alike as a menace to necessary ecclesiastical ‘freedom’. These efforts were described and promoted in ecstatic terms—‘O truly renowned and freeborn service of God, which leaves no place for earthly service!’ rejoiced Peter Damian—but described those excluded in a language often hot with hatred and riddled with anxieties.20 Such mingled veneration for the ideal of a Church—or a spiritual state—‘free’ of the world and thus, perfect in servitude to God; internal critical appraisal of the actual state of the clergy, episcopate and even papal Curia; and unsettled contempt for the world itself was so influential and so widely diffused that these elements became the inheritance of anyone who sought to claim moral authority in the thirteenth century. They are palpable in the writings of the friars, but were also drawn upon by many others, including secular lords, who used them to legitimize their own ambitions and practices of governance.21

19

20

21

Useful for considering these tendencies are the essays by Ian Forrest, ‘Continuity and change in the institutional church’; Maureen C. Miller, ‘Reform, clerical culture, and politics’; Kathleen C. Cushing, ‘Papal authority and its limitations’, all in John H. Arnold (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity (Oxford, 2014), 185–200, 305–322 and 515–530 respectively. See also Giles Constable, ‘Renewal and reform in religious life: concepts and realities’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L. Benson et al. (Cambridge, ma, 1982), 37–67; Frassetto (ed.), Medieval Purity; R.I. Moore, The First European Revolution (Oxford, 2000). On the redefinition of ‘ordination’ in order to laicize, and thereby exclude, women, see Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2008). Peter Damian, quoted in Cowdrey, Cluniacs, xxi. On the hatred, see Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, pa, 1999); Gary Macy, Hidden History, esp. 89–127; R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987); Dominique Iogna-Prat, Ordonner et exclure. Cluny et la société chrétienne face à l’hérésie, au judaïsme et à l’islam (1000–1150) (Paris, 1998). These included Louis ix, who embraced an ‘apostolic’ spirituality (Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis (Paris, 1996)), a ‘redemptive’ mode of governance (William Chester Jordan, Men at the Centre: Redemptive Governance under Louis ix (Budapest and New York, 2012)) and thereby added great authority to his dynasty (M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, ny, and London, 2008)); Frederick ii, who drew on these ideas to defend himself from papal attacks (Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State (Toronto, 1988), 139–149), and at the baronial level: the De Montfort family (J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994)).

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These ideas served a particularly important function for the friars because they lived in the world, usually in urban spaces, rather than in the ‘freedom’ to be found behind walls or in remote regions. Their dispersal into society was symptomatic of the shifting techniques of papal governance, and, particularly, the intensification of various forms of ecclesiastical authority in the secular sphere. In these years, the papacy was engaged in defining what the population must believe; mandating annual confession of sins and penance; refining a centralized legal and administrative system which claimed jurisdiction over all Christians and even non-Christians; gradually asserting a right, even obligation, to interfere in secular matters pro ratione peccati.22 The friars were both a product, and among the agents, of these developments. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, a careful propaganda was written around the order: robust conceptual boundaries designed to set the friars apart both from the life of the cities that they inhabited, and from the exercise of power in the temporal world and the associated taint of ambition, corruption and veniality.23 These were important in shaping the conduct and ethical debates of the friars, and were certainly part of their positive image among the laity and their influence on the wider population. However, these efforts did not persuade the friars’ critics and rivals, who perceived them as worryingly close to elites, often unscrupulous in their use of patronage, and therefore difficult, even dangerous, for opponents to challenge.24 The moral distance between the friars

22

23

24

Lateran iv, constitutions 1, 3, 21; Tierney, Crisis, esp. 127–157; Sarah Hamilton, Church and People in the Medieval West (London, 2013); André Vauchez, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, tr. Daniel E. Bornstein (Notre Dame and London, 1993), esp. 97–106. On non-Christians see James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550 (Liverpool, 1979) and, for the implementation of this aspect of papal policy by secular rulers, see John Tolan, ‘The first imposition of a badge on European Jews: the English Royal Mandate of 1218’, in The Character of Christian–Muslim Encounter: Essays in Honour of David Thomas, ed. Douglas Pratt et al. (Leiden, 2015), 145–166. The distinction was made early in the well-known observations of Jacques de Vitry, collected in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 578–589. For the development of boundaries in the case of women, see Jacques Dalarun, Francesco: un passagio. Dona e donne negli scritti e nelle leggende di Francesco d’Assisi (Rome, 1994). On the friars’ response to the ambiguities of their presence in urban spaces, see Jens Röhrkasten, ‘The early Franciscans and the towns and cities’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J.P. Robson (Cambridge, 2012), 178–192. See Sita Steckel, ‘Narratives of resistance: arguments against the mendicants in the works of Matthew Paris and William of Saint-Amour’, in Thirteenth Century England xv: Authority and Resistance in the Age of Magna Carta, ed. Janet Burton et al. (London, 2015), 157–177.

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and other elements in society was perhaps principally performative and literary, and in practice, affected by strategic considerations and therefore unstable. With these considerations in mind, I want to return to England, and look at the evidence for the friars’ strategies and aspirations as they established the new province and began to build the order into something that could influence English society at every level. The order sent its first representatives to the kingdom in 1224, two years before the death of Francis and the year after the Regula bullata was issued in late 1223. The hagiographies had not been written and nor had Francis’s Testament. It is important to recognize that most of the materials now seen as describing an authentic ‘Franciscan’ spirit did not yet exist, that some of those who came to England had never met Francis, and those whom they recruited within the kingdom had even less direct contact with the order’s beginnings. It was the Rule, not Francis of Assisi, that gave these friars such guidance as they possessed on how to live, and, we can assume, also operated in dialogue with the rich inheritance of Christian thought on monastic life and the provision of pastoral care, as well as the innovations of Lateran iv.25 The extant sources for this early period are comparatively rich for an analysis of the friars’ attitudes towards, and involvement in, secular and ecclesiastical governance. For a rough indication of the stages of development, starting with the friars’ arrival in England, we have De adventu minorum, written c. 1257, by Brother Thomas, often called ‘of Eccleston’.26 It was based on his memories and those of older friars, and carried a very strong message of satisfaction with the various achievements of the province. This is usefully read together with the collection of letters written by Adam Marsh between 1241 and his death in 1259. Adam did not make the collection himself. It seems to have been put together from copies after his death, but it was never finished or, as far as we can tell, circulated. Adam was from an influential family—his uncle had been King John’s chancellor and bishop of Durham—and entered the order c. 1232. He became a renowned theologian, teacher and counsellor: close to the episcopal and baronial reformers in the years before the civil war of the 1260s.27 25

26 27

On the role played by ‘Francis’ in the imagination of the English friars, and its limits, see Power, ‘Problem’, 130–142. On the influence of Pope Gregory i’s pastoral writings on the friars, see Foote, ‘Mendicants’. On Thomas, see Andrew G. Little, ‘Introduction’ to Eccleston; Rosalind B. Brooke, ‘Thomas [Thomas of Eccleston]’, in odnb, vol. 54, 273–274. C.H. Lawrence, ‘The letters of Adam Marsh and the Franciscan school at Oxford’, jeh 42 (1991), 218–238; C. Lawrence, ‘Adam Marsh’, odnb, vol. 36, 787–788.

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His letters show us the mechanics of how the order worked: the travelling and correspondence, the endless lobbying, the giving of advice and warnings, the involvement in high politics and ecclesiastical governance; and also the psychological effects of living this kind of life. The writings of these men leave us in little doubt of the thinking behind what was publicly visible in the friars’ actions. Thomas began with a detailed account of the first group of friars to arrive in England and their early movements. It was laced with anecdotes about the holy joys of their privation, but also shows a rapid strategic advance through southern England. The group was supported by the pre-existing structures of religious life, but also quickly acquired influential and wealthy lay patrons. Some of the friars were described as having particularly attractive personalities: Agnellus of Pisa, who led the group, had held office in the Paris convent and had been much admired there by both friars and the general public.28 William of Esseby, another of the original party, was ‘especially endowed with charm and pleasing gentleness’, which made many laypeople come to love the order.29 Brother Solomon, the first to be admitted to the order in the new province, had ‘an elegant person’, was well connected— the bishop of London was an old friend—and became a popular confessor to the ordinary people of London and members of the royal court. We are left in little doubt of why he was so popular, at least in some quarters, when we read Thomas’s account of Solomon’s deathbed vision, in which Christ reproached him for not giving adequate penances, especially to the rich.30 The second entrant, William of London, had been a member of the household of Hubert de Burgh, one of the most powerful men in England under both King John and Henry iii.31 The next two were clerics, one ‘noble and fine’ and the other possessing ‘noble manners’. The fifth was a priest, and a skilful preacher ‘to the profit of many’. After them, came some university masters, ‘who increased the fame of the brothers’.32 Then came four knights.33 These growing numbers and the displays of holiness of such men led to increasing devotion from the population and support from high-ranking individuals, including the archbishop, Stephen Langton, his brother Simon and Loretta, countess of Leicester,

28 29 30 31 32 33

Eccleston, 4. Eccleston, 5: ‘blandimentis praeditus praecipue erat gratissimae lenitatis’. Eccleston, 12–14, 62. He was forgiven because he had requested and been given serious illnesses throughout his life in order to cleanse his sins and thereby avoid purgatory. Eccleston, 14. Eccleston, 15: ‘nobilis et delicatus’; ‘optimae conversationis’; ‘plurimos lucrifecit’; ‘qui famam fratrum magnificaverunt’. Eccleston, 12, 19.

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aunt of Simon de Montfort, and, by this time, an anchoress who used her considerable influence to secure for them the favour of ‘princes and prelates’.34 Thomas gave a great deal of space to these details, while asserting that even those of noble birth and worldly fame were wholly obedient to their superiors.35 In successive chapters, his sketch shows us how things went on. A school was set up in Oxford so that the friars could be trained as preachers, and Grosseteste taught at it until his elevation to the episcopate. His three successors in that role all became bishops, and two were noted reformers, pursuing the agendas of Lateran iv in their dioceses.36 Haymo of Faversham, already a renowned theologian and preacher, entered the order in Paris on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday, he was inspired to preach to the crowd of people in his parish church— fearing that they might take Communion in a state of sin—and was so eloquent that many postponed Communion until they had confessed to him. For three days he sat in the church, hearing confessions, and giving great comfort to the people. When he arrived in England, he gained the favour of prelates, which was useful to the other friars in their ‘primitive simplicity’. He was also so ‘agreeable and eloquent’ that he was popular even with the order’s enemies.37 The ‘extraordinary charisma’ of Ralph of Rochester’s preaching was the quality that brought about his intimacy with the king, and led to him spending much of his time at the royal and papal courts.38 More distinguished scholars joined: Eustace of Normanville, whose entrance was especially edifying, because he was noble, rich and had degrees in arts and law, was chancellor of the University of Oxford, and rapidly advanced in the study of theology.39 Many of the friars became confessors, even those who were not preachers, hearing the confessions of both laity and the religious. In this section, Thomas gave examples of the capacity of various friars to draw people, even flippant nobles, to holy repentance.40 The direct involvement of the friars in the affairs of the kingdom was not something that he discussed very often, but among other things, he mentioned the attempt by Agnellus of Pisa to make peace between

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Eccleston, 20: ‘principum et praelatorum’ On Loretta, see Maurice Powicke, The Christian Life in the Middle Ages and Other Essays (Oxford, 1935), 147–168. Eccleston, 26. Eccleston, 48–49 and n. d.; Mary Bateson, ‘Thomas Wallensis (d. 1255)’, rev. Marios Costambeys; M.J. Franklin, ‘Wesham, Roger of (d. 1257)’, both in odnb. Eccleston, 28: ‘simplicitati primitivorum’; ‘gratiosus et eloquens’. Eccleston, 30–31: ‘eximiam gratiam’; Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 118. Eccleston, 51. Eccleston, 63–64.

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Henry iii and Richard, earl of Pembroke, in 1233.41 It is, nonetheless, clear from his account that the friars were very interested in gaining traction among the higher nobility. They sought to attract members of this class, either to join them, or to live by their guidance. At the same time, the order was increasingly effective in asserting itself against any attempts to hinder its progress. In 1230, the province acquired a copy of Gregory ix’s bull, Quo elongati. This released the friars from observing Francis’s Testament or Gospel injunctions beyond what was explicitly included in the Rule.42 The following year, Brother Solomon refused to give canonical obedience to the bishop of London, and in support of his position, the friars sent to the papal Curia for a copy of the bull Nimis iniqua, which exempted them from the control of prelates.43 An anecdote of Thomas’s highlights the friars’ view of their standing in relation to the episcopate. Ralph of Maidstone, later bishop of Hereford, dreamed that he was arranging the clergy in their places for a synod when a boy came and threw water in his face. This changed him into a ‘miserable child’, and he went to the bed where Haymo was lying and asked to lie there too. Five years after he had become a bishop, he resigned his position and entered the order.44 The image of the friars throwing water in the faces of the clergy, shocking them out of their pomp and into the essence of their humanity, is a striking one. In this story, we see an example of the old reforming trope—the inadequacy of the secular clergy, including the episcopate—used to reduce their moral standing and elevate that of the order. In a series of stories, the friars are cautioned to avoid the company of the laity. In the first, their frugality angers a local priest; in the second, it is pointed out that they can only eat ‘in a relaxed fashion’ among themselves—in other situations they must eat frugally to set a good example; in the third, their reputation is likened to a mysterious sealed box, which is no longer an object of reverence or honour once it is opened and the contents revealed.45 The friars were well aware of how essential their reputation was in carrying out their social agenda, and gave thought to how best to present themselves to give the desired impression. It is yet another insight into the realities behind the

41 42 43

44 45

Eccleston, 76. This is better attested in Roger Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 3, 64–70. See also Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 251. bf, i, no. 56, 68–70. Eccleston, 62. For the bull: bf, 74–77, nn. 63–66. See Grado Giovanni Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco: Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del xvi secolo (Padua, 2003), 86–107. Eccleston, 85: ‘in puerum miserabilem’; Julia Barrow, ‘Maidstone, Ralph of (d. 1245)’, odnb. Eccleston, 82–83, 86: ‘secure’.

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public position that moral distance was necessary because contact with the world would corrupt the friars. Here the concern was rather that, if the laity had too much contact with the friars, people would be disillusioned, at cost to the order’s effectiveness. We find the same idea in a letter from Grosseteste to Gregory ix, asking for the pope’s help in addressing the crisis over Elias of Cortona in 1238. The bishop argued that unless something was done, the friars would waver in their vocations or lapse entirely, the glory of the order would vanish, the masses would be scandalized, and the Church would return to the ‘squalid abominations that the orthodox preaching and conspicuously pure way of life of these friars had already purged away’.46 Turning to the letters of Adam Marsh, we find some of the animating principles behind Thomas’s sketch of the province’s strategies. He described the order as: ‘the glorious profession which, to the astonishment of the whole world, God so powerfully raised up, so wisely illuminated and profitably enlarged to come to the help of the Church laid waste in the perilous times of the last days, that by gentleness and humility, by a spiritual quest for poverty, and by its pre-eminent observance of chastity it might “direct triumphant warfare against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”’.47 Here we find an urgent and wholly confident sense of the role of the friars in salvation history: one that was both widespread and officially endorsed in the 1250s.48 Adam considered that the Church had taken such a battering that it needed the friars to direct the war that had to be fought against the workings of evil at every level of society. This is precisely what his letters show him trying to do, in collaboration with various allies. There were two connected elements to his activities in the decades covered by the letters. One was to improve the system of pastoral care in England by trying to get the right sort of people appointed to positions with cure of souls and to prevent anyone from holding multiple benefices or being absent from their livings. The other element was more complicated: a concerted, coordinated effort to influence people responsible for both secular and ecclesiastical governance. In 1256/7, Adam wrote a treatise for the newly appointed archbishop of York, Sewal de Bovill. It was, in effect, a mirror for archbishops working in a time of deepening crisis. The archbishop’s job was to take: ‘indefatigable action for 46 47 48

Letters of Grosseteste, 179–181. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 564–567. See the joint encyclical of John of Parma and Humbert of Romans. Annales minorum seu trium ordinum a. s. Francisco Institutorum, ed. Luke Wadding, 25 vols. (Rome, 1731–1886), vol. 3, 380–383.

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the kingdom of heaven, that is, for the governance of churches, both defending it with his powers and reforming it with laws … against the savage violence of its enemies’. He must operate within, and in support of, established social categories: he should be loyal to the king, protect the bishops, offer his learning and understanding to the clergy, discipline to the religious, guidance to the nobles, instruction in peace to knights and gentle assistance to the people. To do this, he would need many helpers, for everyone in the diocese—lay and religious—would have to stand before the judgement of the archbishop and his assistants ‘to be led … to the homeland of the living’. To achieve all this, the archbishop needed to be an extraordinary man, but Adam reminded him that he also inhabited a celestial hierarchy in which the charisma of heaven was given to him so that he might impart it to everyone below him. This imparting would only be possible if he chose priests for his livings carefully—‘both to procure a regime of living virtues and to throw into confusion the enemy, that is the deadly vices’.49 Adam then described the qualities necessary in anyone charged with the governance of souls. They had to conform to Christ—which to Adam the Friar Minor meant humility, poverty and ‘saving severity’. They had to support all their flock as individuals, lead them from error, model for them how to live, pray for them, sacrifice their own desires completely and risk their lives if necessary.50 Again and again he emphasized that God would call to terrifying account anyone with responsibility in this area, from the pope to the parish priests. One of the striking things in all of Adam’s letters on pastoral care is that the general population had very little, if any, agency in his worldview. If the population had good pastors, it would conform to the teachings of the Church and find salvation; if it had bad pastors, or no pastors, it would be lost and damned. This had, as we have seen, long been the standard view of those pursuing ‘reform’ agendas, as it gave both legitimacy and urgency to their ambition of determining who was fit to exercise moral authority over the population. For all its political and rhetorical value, this understanding of the laity as largely passive, and the majority of the clergy as inadequate to their roles, imposed an appalling burden on those who shared it. Adam devoted enormous amounts of practical and emotional energy to the task of ensuring that the best possible pastoral care was provided. ‘For when the world presents itself to us as full of priests, scarcely anyone is found who can be judged as suitable to perform a priest’s office; so great is the mass of bad people in these very perilous times of the last days,’ he

49 50

Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 576–577, 584–585. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 584–585.

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wrote.51 Many of his letters were recommendations of men whom he admired and wanted to have livings; or conversely, were warnings against inappropriate appointments. He condemned the practice of using substitutes to deliver pastoral care, thundering: ‘From which part of a cure of a souls, I ask, will a vicar exonerate a rector, since before the dreadful judgement-seat both of them are gravely obligated by a solemn promise …?’52 He lobbied tirelessly, and sought to influence those who had power in the matter, constantly urging them to reflect on the dire consequences of failure in this matter. After very reluctantly acceding to the demand of Boniface of Savoy, uncle of the queen and archbishop of Canterbury—of whom he did not have a high opinion—to accompany him on his visitations of several dioceses in 1250, he was determined to exercise all his influence on the archbishop: ‘chiding, pleading, exhorting, promising, threatening, flattering, and frightening, striving, night and day, to interpose salutatory words of peace’.53 This was at a high personal cost—the business of the visitations sucked him into ‘the darkness of a vast abyss of worldly concerns’, away from ‘heavenly illumination … thoughts of eternity, truthful reasoning, or a tranquil will’, and into ‘the utter dread and pressure of endless business’.54 But it was here that the work of the friars had to lie—in both the moulding of those with authority, and the direct access to the whole population that could be obtained through participation in the exercise of ecclesiastical governance. Given this understanding of affairs, moral distance was a luxury that the friars could not afford. Adam’s efforts to persuade the powerful to adopt the agenda and values of the friars and allied reformers were not restricted to ecclesiastical affairs. He regularly advised the king and queen, sometimes so bluntly that he was banished from court, but also so successfully that his movements were restricted by their frequent need of him.55 In his letters to high-ranking nobles we see advice on their conduct and exercise of benefaction.56 Several times he wrote to the queen about her pastoral responsibilities as one involved in ecclesiastical patronage, telling her that he prayed that she might be ‘preserved in holy love and chaste fear of the divine name, for the building-up of the Church and the governance of the realm’.57 He was an intimate friend and counsellor of 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 562–563. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 1, 186–187. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 428–429. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 408–411. See Power, ‘Problem’, 154–160. For example: to Peter of Savoy, the queen’s uncle: Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 362–363. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 370–371.

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Simon de Montfort, brother-in-law of the king, and later leader of the baronial party during the civil war. Adam emphasized to Simon that God would be with him so long as he strove unceasingly: ‘to maintain your pious devotion to the Lord, both in yourself and your soldiers and in your servants and everything pertaining to your governance’; ‘Strive diligently and efficaciously, I pray you, unhesitatingly to carry out the divine will, as it is set before you by our letters.’58 In a series of letters to Simon’s wife, Eleanor, he reminded her, as he had her husband, that she needed to do for her salvation ‘those things that [I have] … often striven to impress upon your ladyship’s … memory’.59 He referred to her duties as a wife, which chiefly involved supporting her husband, and very gently ‘to direct him with quiet advice’.60 He also chastised her at length both for showing anger, and for a ‘demented zeal for superfluous adornment … which offends decent eyes, and pleases no one except shameless pimps’. He went on: ‘How I wish you would open your discerning heart to embrace the heartfelt anxiety I have … I beg you … let me not have brandished the weapon of heavenly zeal at your holy heart in vain.’61 These letters do not go far beyond the conventional relationship of friarconfessor and lay nobility, although, as pointed out, the fact that the friars were consistently promoting a specific ideology through their contact with the powerful must be understood as a factor in governance within the kingdom. In any case, other letters show that Adam almost certainly sought to influence the actions of individuals in their purely political affairs. He was present during the ‘frightful confusion and commotion’ of Simon de Montfort’s trial in Westminster Abbey for his handling of the affairs of Gascony in the preceding years. He reported to Grosseteste that ‘when even I had addressed some of the greater among [the prelates, earls and barons] myself about these matters, they did not hesitate to promise help and advice to protect the earl from danger, loss or disgrace’.62 His partisanship involved activities that might have been pure ‘mediation’, but sound as though they may have been more committed. He had interceded for Simon with Henry iii, writing to Simon: ‘The lord king has spoken to me about your matter. He would, I believe, freely give his consent to

58 59 60 61

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Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 324–325; author’s italics. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 376–377. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 384–385. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 380–381, 386–387. See Lars Kjær, ‘Food, drink and ritualised communication in the household of Eleanor de Montfort, February to August 1265’, Journal of Medieval History 37.1 (2011), 75–89, esp. 85–89. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 1, quotations at 84–85, 80–81. See Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, 106–120.

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what you advise, if his relatives gave their favour and support in this matter … I have also spoken earnestly to the lady queen about your proposals.’63 He told William of Nottingham that Simon and Eleanor had approached him, the one by letters and the other personally, ‘to cross to Boulogne without delay, to have a discussion in the Lord with the earl about the more difficult articles of their negotiations’.64 He collaborated with Simon on various projects that seemed to require a high degree of discretion: ‘But regarding the business, of which you know,’ he said, ‘it seems to me that nothing should be written this time, especially as we are dealing with a very great matter from which we may have on the one hand high hopes of safety, but on the other fear of great danger.’65 He wrote to Master Ralph of Canterbury that Simon: ‘pants with a burning desire for the honour of God and the public good, and we know that, for both obvious and secret reasons, the safety of very many people depends on him’. Very unusually, he was writing to urge Ralph, who had a position with cure of souls, to leave that work to join Simon’s household in Gascony.66 This striking divergence from his usual rigidity over pastoral responsibilities indicates the extent to which Adam was invested in Simon’s plans. The question of how far Simon’s actions later in the decade were influenced by Adam, Grosseteste and the others in their ‘circle’ is unresolved, but it is generally accepted that the thinking behind his efforts to reform royal governance, and his leadership of the baronial faction during the civil war, were likely to have been affected by these friendships.67 In Adam’s mind, secular and ecclesiastical affairs were connected; nothing could be laid aside. It was essential to take them in hand: to ‘direct triumphant warfare … “against spiritual wickedness in high places” ’. Yet if we can escape from his compelling imaginary, what the friars were trying to create was a world in which all powers, all elites—secular and ecclesiastical—worked in combination to impose upon the population a particular view of the cosmos and the absolute necessity of conforming to the doctrines of the Church and its rules for personal conduct. There was no room for debate, dissent or resistance; only the most limited critique was possible, and the population had to accept as its first principles those outlined by the Latin Church. If we appreciate this, I would

63 64 65 66 67

Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 336–337. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 448–449. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 350–351, 352–353. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 1, 250–251. The classic account is that of Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, 77–105; see also Sophie Ambler, ‘On kingship and tyranny: Grosseteste’s memorandum and its place in the Baronial Reform Movement’, in Thirteenth Century England xiv, ed. Janet Burton et al. (London, 2013), 115–128.

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suggest, we can develop a more realistic sense of the order of Friars Minor than we can from the current preoccupation with material focused on the figure of Francis of Assisi. The dynamics of the order, its daily business and its fierce aims, were much larger and more deeply embedded in Christian history than a single saintly figure could usefully encompass or represent. Nor were these aims and ideas the sole preserve of the order. In the English province, they were shared, in various ways, by many others: clerical and lay together; and consequently took many overlapping and interleaving forms. The friars were products and agents of a faith that existed in a permanent, intentional state of flux, between heaven and earth, between salvation and damnation, between laxity and renewal, with redemption as its goal and human nature as its enemy.

chapter 3

Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora and the Franciscans in England Philippa M. Hoskin

Matthew Paris’s reputation for anti-fraternalism and wholesale disillusionment with the Franciscans is increasingly difficult to sustain in view of recent work, which has reassessed his intent as a chronicler and his historical method. Thomson’s 1977 article was the first to move beyond earlier assessments of Paris’s comments on the friars as merely unreliable; a judgement which was, in part, embedded in a dispute about the objectivity and historical value of Matthew’s writing in general.1 Thomson traced Paris’s growing animosity to the friars and, placing this within the context of other contemporary reports of the new mendicant orders, concluded that Matthew’s account was not merely the polemical work of a resentful Benedictine, whose order was implicitly criticized by the mendicants, but should also be understood as representative of a wider thirteenth-century disappointment in the friars.2 Later historians have adopted this approach. Lewis talks of Matthew’s bitter disappointment with the friars,3 contrasting Paris’s Franciscan acquaintance, Brother William, who appears in the early years of Matthew’s work, and maintains the order’s high standards of dress and behaviour, with the friars of the later parts of the chronicle.4 Disillusionment is only one aspect of Paris’s attitude towards the Franciscans, however. This chapter will argue that although Paris certainly was disappointed in the Franciscans by the 1240s, and this is reflected in his work, 1 See, for example, Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages (New York, 1974), 161; Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), 134; John J. Bagley, Historical Interpretations: Sources of English Medieval History 1066–1540 (Harmondsworth, 1965), 56. Even those early writers who gave Mathew a more sympathetic hearing, such as Coulton, expressed their appreciation in terms of his honesty and historical accuracy in a modern sense. Cf. George G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion ii (Cambridge, 1927), 169. 2 Williel R. Thomson, ‘The image of the Mendicants in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris’, afh 70 (1977), 3–34. 3 Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley, ca, 1987), 66. 4 Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 62–64; Judith Collard, ‘Matthew Paris, Brother William and the Franciscans’, in Interpreting Francis and Claire of Assisi: From the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Constant J. Mews and Claire Renkin (Broughton, 2010), 92–110.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_004

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we must revise our understanding of Matthew’s view of them, particularly in the light of new understanding of his purpose in writing his great chronicle. A reconsideration of the Franciscans in the Chronica Majora—Paris’s greatest and largest work—demonstrates that, whilst it does contain evidence of the wariness of the old established monastic orders towards the mendicants, and of disappointed hopes as they fell from the high standards they set from themselves, it is also important not to separate his views of the friars from the purpose of the work as a whole. Matthew’s concern with the keeping and breaking of natural and divine law means that the critical appraisal of authoritative figures at all levels—from kings and popes to parish priests and friars—forms an intrinsic part of his narrative. His chronicle also seeks to document and understand the progress of the end times, in which he believed he was living, and presents an eschatological scheme in which the Franciscans, and the Dominicans, played an important part. Paris’s portrayal of the friars needs, therefore, to be contextualized within the overarching themes of his narrative. Such a reading also places Matthew’s views of the friars in the wider context of recent studies on thirteenth-century anti-fraternalism. In Europe, including England, the thirteenth century has been characterized as a period of reputational decline for the friars, as the result both of antagonism over particular material or political resources and of envy and anxiety amongst those who had most to lose from their competition: the secular clergy, the magistri of the universities and the established religious orders.5 Yet recent scholarship has queried the extent of this resentment. It has pointed to the limited evidence of violent hostility towards the friars, and to the complicated representations of the Franciscans in the literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Greyfriars are not always symbols of grasping cupidity. Instead they are often cast in more complex roles, neither all bad nor all good. Sometimes they serve to point up the failures of their order but on other occasions they represent truth or integrity.6 Matthew’s depiction of the Franciscans is equally complex and part of his own overarching narrative and purpose.

5 See, for example, Moorman, A History, 339–349; Peter R. Keon, ‘The status of the University of Paris as Parens Scientarum: an episode in the development of its autonomy’, Speculum 39 (1964), 651–675; Gordon Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1968), 34–47; Peter Linehan, ‘A tale of two cities: Capitular Burgos and Mendicant Burgos in the thirteenth century’, in Church and City 1000–1500: Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. David Abulafia et al. (Cambridge, 1992), 83–84; C.H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Order on Western Society (London and New York, 1994), 152–165. 6 For a recent and very useful overview see Guy Geltner, The Making of Medieval Anti-Frater-

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To fully understand Matthew Paris’s portrayal of the Franciscans requires a nuanced understanding of the Chronica. Recent work has highlighted the diversity of Paris’s aims in writing this great work, and emphasized that he, like his contemporaries and near contemporaries, privileged the moral over the historic truth.7 We can also go further and say that Matthew’s work is primarily concerned with understanding the ways in which the divine will plays out in world history and with how natural law (that is, the law underpinning the working of the natural world) and the law given by God had shaped events in the past and were shaping events in his own day. His preface to his chronicle sets out his purpose.8 The work is primarily designed to teach and instruct: through describing the actions of kings and other eminent men it will show its readers examples of both good and bad behaviour and the consequences of such actions. In particular, Paris says, it will set out how an individual’s actions are related to events in the natural and political world.9 Matthew understands human misdeeds both as upsetting the balance of the natural world and as contravening divine law. He compares his purpose and method with the purpose and method of Scripture: in composing the Chronica he is like Moses, the lawgiver and communicator of divine law, and other biblical authors who wrote down the details, and consequences of, the stories of Job, Esau, Joseph and others.10 By showing the reader how to keep the balance of

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nalism: Polemic, Violence, Deviance and Remembrance (Oxford, 2012), 28–43, and for specific examples see Susan Stakel, False Roses: Structures of Duality and Deceit in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose (Stanford, ca, 1991) on the use of the friar in medieval literature as part of the larger themes of falsehood and truth in the work; Guy Geltner, ‘Faux semblants: anti-fraternalism reconsidered in Jean de Meun and Chaucer’, Studies in Philology 101 (2004), 357–380; Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge, 1973), 38–40; Arnold Williams, ‘Chaucer and the friars’, Speculum 28 (1953), 499–513; Nicholas Haveley, ‘Chaucer’s friar and merchant’, Chaucer Review 13 (1978–1989), 337–345, and his ‘Chaucer, Boccaccio and the friars’, in Chaucer and the Italian Trecento, ed. Piero Boitani (Cambridge, 1983), 249–268. Challenging claims of anti-fraternalism in the fabliaux in a similar manner is David Salter, ‘ “He is ane Haly Freir”: The Freiris of Berwick, the Summoner’s Tale, and the tradition of anti-fraternal satire’, Scottish Literary Review 5 (2013), 34–37. Björn Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris on the writing of history’, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 254–278; Christopher Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London, 2004), 1–10, 57–78; Rebecca Reader, ‘Sweet charity and sour grapes: the historical imagination of Matthew Paris’, Medieval History 4 (1994), 102–118. Although the preface is based on that of his predecessor as chronicler, Roger of Wendover, this does not negate its importance for Paris’s views of his own work (Roger Wendover, Flores Historiarum, vol. 1, 1–2); Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris on the writing of history’, 258. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 1, 1. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 1, 1.

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nature—achieved by abiding by natural and divine law—Matthew also intends that his work will teach wisdom. This wisdom, understood in the biblical sense of understanding God’s will, will lead man to salvation.11 In providing examples of vice and virtue, Paris is using the methods of contemporary pastoral care, as promoted by the reforms of the fourth Lateran council;12 care which the friars themselves were ordered, by their Rule of 1223, to further through their preaching.13 Matthew does more than provide a set of moral examples, but he certainly does gather together the deeds of men and selectively deploy them, in an attempt to trace out a relationship between human achievements and errors and divine and natural consequences, such as earthquakes, famines, floods and storms. This attempt is not always successful: there are not always clear, direct connections drawn in the Chronica Majora between human actions and natural or supernatural events. This demonstrates something else about Matthew’s chronicle: it was a piece of ongoing research, the exploration of an hypothesis rather than a neat proof. Matthew’s audience has received some brief attention,14 but who was actually intended to see and use the Chronica Majora is still not entirely clear. Certainly there are passages which would only be of interest to the monks of St Albans: legal disputes over land, for example, were recorded for future reference and, in such instances, Matthew clearly writes as a fellow monk and stakeholder in the house. Other sections evidence a much broader national and international interest. Yet the way in which a chronicle would have been written on quires, and only bound as an easier to handle and navigate volume very much later, must have meant that access to his work was often 11

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‘[Q]uicquid humanae sapientie et saluti necessarium est, per memoriam invenire, per intelligentiam cognoscere et per facundiam proferre studiosus valeat indagator’ (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 1, 2). This is the meaning of sapientia found in the stories of Solomon’s request for wisdom (1 Kings 3), recorded as a suitable story for the edification of kings and priests in the early thirteenth century, for example in the thematic tabula of references drawn up by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 1235–1253. Cf. Philipp W. Rosemann, ‘Tabula’, in Opera Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis volumen primum, cccm 130, ed. James McEvoy (Turnholt, 1995), 303, 304. See, for example, handbooks for priests such as Omnis Etas, by Walter de Cantilupe, bishop of Worcester, and Templum Dei by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (Joseph Goering and Daniel S. Taylor, ‘The Summulae of Bishops Walter de Cantilupe (1240) and Peter Quinel (1287)’, Speculum 67 (1992), 576–594; Robert Grosseteste Templum Dei, ed. Joseph Goering and Frank A.C. Mantello, pims (Toronto, 1984)). Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 332–335. Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris and the writing of history’, 261–262, 272, 276–277; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 125–158.

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mediated by Matthew himself, even for those who could read its Latin. It is also pertinent that from when he began writing, up to at least 1250, Matthew believed that there would not be a future when his work would be read: for although historians have sometimes been reluctant to say it, Matthew’s farewell at the end of his entry for that year leaves little room for doubt that he believed the world was about to end.15 Much of the chronicle must have been composed for Matthew himself in the first instance. He intended to teach himself, as much as others, about the connections between human actions and divine or natural responses. And this was, at least in part, so that he could chart the coming of the end times: Hamilton has pointed out that many of the dire events he records lead forward to future actions, as well as looking backwards to what has recently happened.16 Matthew was familiar with work on the signs of the end times, such as that of Peter Comestor, who had compiled a list of indicative natural disasters.17 He set himself to watch and record, and the Franciscans— to whom Paris, like many of his contemporaries, gave a special eschatological significance—were inevitably kept within his sights. Paris was writing within a political and intellectual context where the nature and operations of divine and natural law were pressing matters for intellectual discussion in the schools, and secular rulers were held up to their measure.18

15

16 17

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 197–198; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 52–55, for evidence that there was a break in writing in the autograph copy of the Chronica at this point; Sara Hamilton, ‘Tales of wonder in the Chronica Majora of Matthew Paris’, Reading Medieval Studies 20 (2000), 129–131, claims to be controversial in stating that Paris believed the end of the world was coming. Prestwich considers the signs and wonders of the Chronica Majora—including their role as portents—without actually mentioning the possibility that Paris considered the end times had arrived, Michael Prestwich, ‘The “Wonderful Life” of the thirteenth century’, in Thirteenth Century England vii: Proceedings of the Durham Conference 1999, ed. Michael Prestwich, Richard Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1999), 167–170. Hamilton, ‘Tales of wonder in the Chronica Majora’, 126. He quotes him in the Chronica (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 77–78) and his notes are in the British Library copy of the Scholastic History which includes the signs of the end of the world (bl, Royal Ms 4 D.vii). In the twelfth century, Gratian’s Decretum had led to debate about what natural law actually was, and its relationship to divine and secular law: for this debate see, for example, Howard P. Kainz, Natural Law: An Introduction and Re-examination (Peru, il, 2004), 16; Michael Crowe, The Changing Profile of the Natural Law (Nijoff, 1977), 72–77. Anthony Black, Political Thought in Europe 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 1992), 34–41; Janet Coleman, The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1996), 15–16; Kenneth Pennington, The Prince and the Law 1200–1600 (Berkeley, ca, 1993), 122–158.

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Shortly after Matthew’s death, in the early 1260s, the Song of Lewes, possibly composed by a Franciscan, would declare that the baronial rebellion led by Simon de Montfort was intended to restore divine and natural law by ensuring that the king, and his subordinate officials, obeyed God’s will in ruling for the good of those under them, and in the interests of the nation.19 In the second half of the century, the great Franciscan, Bonaventure, presented the keeping of the Franciscan virtues as aligned with the keeping of natural law.20 In the 1240s and 1250s, when Matthew wrote, the king’s duty to rule for others not himself was already commonly articulated in terms of abiding by natural and divine law. Henry iii’s perceived favouring of his and the queen’s relatives, and his refusal, or inability, to ensure that lower officials administered justice fairly, was a concern.21 Matthew’s repeated references to the Magna Carta in his description of Henry’s reign, a document which was already seen in the 1230s as guaranteeing justice and liberty, demonstrate his attention to these issues.22 Many of his examples of good and bad actions are drawn from instances of those in authority who wielded their power well or poorly. Paris was concerned with how those in positions of authority fulfilled the standard obligations of rule: to use their resources wisely for those for whom they were responsible, to take advice from their natural counsellors and to respect God’s laws. Kings, barons, bishops and popes were all measured by Matthew against these ideals, as were the friars. In particular Matthew used the giving, receiving, spending and husbanding of money and material goods as a measure and indicator of good or bad governance. The good ruler, be he secular or ecclesiastical, whether responsible for a kingdom or a parish, must show obedience to his superiors and demonstrate care for his subjects. He gives material goods to his natural-born subjects, according to their needs not their desires. He spends carefully when it is necessary but seeks no more for himself than he requires. The bad ruler seeks or misuses material goods, spends income inappropriately and thus finds himself lacking resources when he requires them.23 The friars were, for Matthew,

19 20 21

22 23

The Song of Lewes, ed. C.L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1890), 28. Krijin Pansters, Franciscan Virtue: Spiritual Life and the Virtues in Franciscan Literature and Instruction of the Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 2012), 40–41. On this see H.W. Ridgeway, ‘Foreign favourites and Henry iii’s problems of patronage 1247– 1258’, ehr 104 (1989), 590–610; D. Carpenter, ‘Henry iii’s statute against aliens’, ehr 107 (1992), 925–944. For example, Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 260; vol. 4, 186; vol. 5, 360, 373, 494, 500, 520. For example, Paris’s record of Henry iii’s spending on the ill-fated Sicilian business (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 663–666, 676, 680) and his gifts to foreigners (Matthew Paris, cm,

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a particularly apposite example of the use and misuse of resources as a measure of obedience. Their Rule required obedience to divine law in concentrating not on the accumulation of physical resources but rather upon the salvation of the people: through preaching and teaching, and in the hearing of confessions. When the friars could be shown to have been motivated by material greed and the desire for worldly power and significance, they disobeyed not only their own Rule but God’s law. In terms of good and bad use of resources, the friars made very useful exemplars for Paris. The need for good spiritual guidance was a particularly urgent issue in a time of eschatological fears, and the Franciscans were popularly linked both with signalling the coming of the end and with a mission to lead people to salvation. The end of the world was widely expected, not just by Paris himself. A popular date of choice was 1260, but the 1250s also had their adherents and Matthew’s Chronica reveals that, for him, the relevant date was 1250. His chronicle had begun with the creation of the world and he clearly intended to continue it to what he believed would be the end: in 1250 he wrote a detailed description of the past twenty-five half-centuries and of recent events which presaged the end times, before composing his own farewell in verse.24 He took up his pen again no earlier than 1252,25 and it is impossible for us to know whether he had abandoned his belief in an imminent end, thought the end had come but was revealing itself slowly, or had merely revised the expected end date past his eventual death in 1259. But, for the majority of his work at least, he clearly expected to see the end of the world and he looked for signs within an international context. He noted the rise of the Tartars whom he, like other eschatological thinkers, connected with Gog and Magog,26 destined to appear at the end of the world. He saw the failure of the Crusades—of the Christian Church’s attempt to win back the Holy Land—and corruption within the Church, particularly in the papal Curia, as other signs, and would have acknowledged the role of the early friars’ humility and poverty in highlighting the need for reform.27 As Hamilton has noted, it is unlikely that his ideas were

24 25 26 27

vol. 4, 233; vol. 5, 450, 515, 674), and the pope’s declaration that England is his ‘garden of delights’ from which he can get anything he desires (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 546– 547). Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 197–198. Richard Vaughn, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), 61. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 6, 350. For context to this see N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Oxford, 1957), 31–32, 35–36. Amanda Power, ‘Franciscan advice to the papacy in the Middle Ages’, History Compass 5.5 (2007), 1550–1560.

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specifically Joachite,28 but his writing suggests that he still saw the Franciscans as fulfilling the role of Joachim’s predicted new spiritual order, which would discourage a love of worldly goods, encourage a concentration on the world of the spirit through poverty,29 and would preach the Gospel throughout the world, presaging the end times.30 He was also aware of other thinking that connected the Franciscans and the end times. By the middle of the thirteenth century the two witnesses at the Last Judgement, discussed in Revelations,31 were often interpreted as the Franciscans and Dominicans.32 The Chronica entry for 1241 notes the Abbess Hildegard’s prophecy foretelling the rise of a new order which would be famous for its preaching and would receive sudden advancement as the end approached, connecting it to the Franciscans.33 From the 1240s, parts of the Franciscan order itself encouraged this eschatological interpretation of their role.34 In 1250 Matthew lists the appearance of the

28

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Hamilton, ‘Tales of wonder in the Chronica Majora’, 124, describes him as definitely not a Joachite, based on the description of Joachim’s works found in the Liber Additamentorum (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 6, 335–339). This is the list of Joachite errors which were said, in the Chronica, to have been being taught at Paris by the friars in 1256 (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 598–599). They are not Matthew’s own thoughts on the subject and they do not cover everything the abbot taught, so Matthew’s personal views of Joachim’s statements cannot be drawn from them. Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachism (Oxford, 1969), 133–174; Marjorie Reeves, ‘Opponents of Anti-Christ: a medieval perception’, Consilium 200 (1988), 105–108. The introduction to the ‘Eternal Gospel’, which specifically identified the Franciscans as one of these orders and predicted the end of the world by 1260, and which was condemned by the pope and used in attacks on the friars by William of St Amour (see Guy Geltner, The Making of Medieval Anti-Fraternalism, 19–21; James Doyne Dawson, ‘William of Saint-Amour and the apostolic tradition’, Medieval Studies 40 (1978), 234–235), noted by Matthew in his entry for 1256 as having doctrines which are ‘not expedient to be mentioned’. This does not mean the date they recorded did not appeal to him and it does imply he knew what the volume said (even if he is confused enough to attribute it to the Dominicans) (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 599). Matthew describes the Franciscans’ international preaching in this Joachite, eschatological context (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 346). Revelations 11:3. Amanda Power, ‘In the last days at the end of the world: Roger Bacon and the reform of Christendom’, in Canterbury Studies in Franciscan History, vol. 1, ed. Michael J.P. Robson and Jens Röhrkasten (Canterbury, 2008), 135–151, esp. 136. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 280. David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, pa, 2001), 1–40.

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mendicants amongst the signs of the coming apocalypse along with many disasters and miraculous occurrences.35 Given his own beliefs, Paris would have had high expectations of the friars. Throughout Matthew’s Chronica there are occasions when high expectations of the order are fulfilled; the Franciscans are not depicted simply as a holy order in decline. Into the 1250s Matthew continues to use them as examples of obedience and of making the right use of resources. They prove particularly useful to his themes when their humility and simplicity provide a contrast to other contemporary events he describes. In Paris’s additions to Roger of Wendover’s description of the founding of the Franciscans he emphasizes their simplicity and holiness. His famous portrait of Brother William—whom Matthew probably knew—reveals him as a modest friar, with bare feet and knotted rope around his simple clothes, just as the Franciscans were meant to appear.36 After 1237, when Paris had moved beyond revising Wendover and had begun to compose the chronicle for himself, he recorded Archbishop Germanus’s letter to the pope concerning possible reunion with the Eastern Church; a letter which praises the Franciscans as holy and prudent men, barefoot, with only one garment each, whose works shine like lamps before men and who seek to bring peace within the Church.37 The friars, as depicted in this letter—still upholding the ideals of their Rule by maintaining their poverty and scorning material goods—provide a contrast to the descriptions of greed and division in the Roman Church recorded by Paris in other letters immediately preceding this one. The Franciscans perform a similar role in the work in the 1240s, as they are shown adhering to the Rule and calling attention to the others straying from the law. Paris choses to record a 1249 letter from Cardinal Remer against Frederick, the Holy Roman Emperor, noting how the Franciscans had attempted to bury the body of the bishop of Arezzo, martyred at Frederick’s hands for refusing to give fealty to this excommunicate emperor, and how the emperor had then ordered the death of those Minorites who had not taken the opportunity to escape the city as he approached, choosing instead to stay and hear confessions amongst the Christian troops and to bury the dead after the predicted slaughter.38 This example of humility and martyrdom follows directly on from another tale of poverty and execution. This time, however, the kingdom is England, the ruler Henry iii, and although it seems at first that the king is acting justly in punishing thieves by hanging, those thieves turn upon 35 36 37 38

Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 191–198. Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, 62–64. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 449. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 63–66.

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Henry and defend their actions. They are poverty-stricken, and have turned to theft only because the king has withheld the pay they deserve for serving him. This juxtaposition is interesting: Do the thieves deserve death any more than the friars? Certainly the fault lies not only with the thieves but also with the king, in his refusal to pay what is due.39 Similarly, late in the chronicle, in 1252, Matthew notes the Franciscans’ integrity with regard to material possessions when he records their rejection of a gift from Henry iii of cloth suitable for their habits after they discover that the king has extorted the goods unfairly from his merchants. This is a deed, Matthew says, which makes the ‘brothers commendable and the king reprehensible’. This time Matthew contrasts the Franciscans’ behaviour with that of the pope, who, in demanding and receiving unreasonable taxation, turns a blind eye to the unjust methods used to gather the tax, which is an unjust extortion from the Jews.40 The chronicle also records the actions of the friars as part of its more direct reporting of eschatological foreshadowings, noting the pious preaching of the Franciscans as the fulfilment of those prophecies of Joachim and Hildegard about the appearance of new spiritual orders. In 1244, when Matthew describes the Greyfriars as preaching to the ends of the earth, he goes farther than saying that they are fulfilling the great commission of Christ to his disciples. Their preaching is noted alongside the pagan invasion of holy places which Matthew glosses as a sign that the end times are near.41 a 1242 letter from an unnamed bishop of Hungary and one from the abbot of St Mary’s, Hungary, both given in full in the Liber Additamentorum, describes the harsh treatment and even death of the Franciscans as they preach to the Tartars, and, in the context of pagan invasion of the West, is probably meant to have a similar implication, as is their preaching campaign against the unspeakable heresy of the Patarenes in France.42 The Franciscans’ commitment to the faith, through the preaching of crusades,43 is used to provide a contrast to the sin of the regular clergy. In 1235, so effective and blessed is their preaching of the cross that one of them, Master Roger de Lewes, a ‘man of God’, is able to cure a woman who has lost the use of all her limbs. This has been preceded by a description of the worldly bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, who is said, in contrast, to have learnt 39 40 41 42 43

Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 61–63. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 275. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 346. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 361; vol. 6, 75–76, 78–81. On the friars’ role in this in thirteenth-century England and Matthew Paris’s information, see Christoph T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), 31–36.

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more of war than of preaching and who aids the pope in this year, not against the pagans, but against his own people.44 Interestingly, in Matthew’s post-1250 writing, the Franciscans still seem to fulfil the same role. In 1254 their preaching to the Saracens is presented as an example of the prophesied order’s work of spreading the Gospel throughout the world, and it serves as part of the context to the tale of two different kings: Henry iii, chained to his country by money and greed, and Louis ix of France, freed by his piety whilst in the Holy Land.45 These positive portrayals of the friars are not, however, the whole story: Paris frequently criticized both Dominicans and Franciscans in the Chronica. Some of this criticism clearly arose from the partisan hostility of a member of the established orders to two new, popular and very different mendicant orders. When the friars fail to abide by their Rule and seek material wealth, they provide a negative contrast to the older orders, or are seen as a threat to them.46 Matthew’s Chronica was a St Albans production, and a reworking and continuation of an established chronicle of that house. The history of his monastery was an important theme of the work, and the house’s concerns about potential threats the Franciscans posed to its own stability and established rights were reflected in it.47 So, for instance, the Chronica records Paris’s hostility towards Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, in the context of his involvement with, and admiration for, the Franciscans.48 Paris presents Grosseteste’s

44 45 46

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 310–312. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 425. Other English Benedictines saw the new orders similarly. In their chronicle for 1224 the monks of Peterborough lamented the friars’ arrival, as indicated in the chapter on Thomas of Eccleston. There were a number of Franciscan houses in the diocese of Lincoln with which they could have come into conflict (Michael J.P. Robson, ‘Grosseteste and the Greyfriars in the diocese of Lincoln’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition, ed. Maura O’Carroll (Rome, 2003), 302–309). For his involvement with the Greyfriars see Servus Gieben, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the evolution of the Franciscan order’, in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on his Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy (Turnhout, 1995), 215–232; Robson, ‘Grosseteste and the Greyfriars in the diocese of Lincoln’, 293–301, 310–317; Maura O’Carroll, ‘Robert Grosseteste, the English friars and Lateran iv’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition, 332–337; Frank A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (eds.), The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (Toronto 2010), 132. Paris’s negative attitude to the bishop abated after Grosseteste’s death when he could no longer worry the religious of his diocese. Then he says Grosseteste opposed the excesses of papal and secular power and notes signs of divine favour towards him: Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 407–408, 419, 429, 490–491, 496–497.

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stringent monastic visitation as an implied criticism of the Benedictines, and the bishop’s use of the friars in pastoral care as detrimental to parochial authority and parish priests’ incomes.49 Perhaps such complaints had been relayed to the house by the rectors of the parish churches in their patronage.50 Matthew’s critique of the mendicants also reveals other inter-order rivalry and his preference for his own black, rather than the white, monks. He claims that the learned Franciscans, and the Dominicans, who had become worldly, so scorned the Cistercians, that they, too, abandoned their own contempt of the world by obtaining a licence to establish schools at Paris in 1249. This is in contrast to the Benedictines’ reforming provincial chapter of that year which had sought to return to its own, less worldly, roots.51 Clearly, though, Paris’s general sympathies lie with the older orders. Twice he notes that the Rule of St Benedict, kept by Benedictines and Cistercians, does not allow monks to wander, an implicit criticism of the friars.52 He also records occasions when he believed the Franciscans had done the Benedictines, or other established orders, an ill-turn or slighted them. Franciscans consider the black monks greedy and proud, he says, and the Cistercians simple and rustic: half-laymen.53 In 1236 he describes Franciscan invasions of monastic property, in which they celebrated Mass secretly on the monks’ property, without permission, and heard confessions under false pretences.54 In 1244, he records a papal legate’s letter, which enclosed a rescript of a papal document forbidding anyone to enter the Benedictine order without a year’s probation, and noted that this had been sealed at the request of the Franciscans.55 In 1258, he says that the Minorites had intruded themselves into Bury St Edmunds’ property, where they built a house despite the abbot’s protests, overthrowing his privilege by showing one of their own containing the notorious ‘non obstante’ clause, which allowed all earlier papal grants of rights and privileges to be set aside without question.56 The friars’ eagerness

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 226–227. For a description of the way in which the friars went out into the parishes to preach from their churches on Sundays see Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 2, 109–110. Paris also attributed Grosseteste’s parochial visitation—another thorn in the side of parish priests—to the encouragement of the friars (Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 579). Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 79–81. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 332; vol. 4, 435. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 280. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 332. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 293. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 688. On the ‘non obstante’ clause see B. Tierney, ‘Bishop Grosseteste and the theory of papal sovereignty’, jeh 6 (1955), 1–17.

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to use legal forms in the interests of their own material gain, against their own Rule, is here contrasted to Matthew’s preceding description of the established orders’ horror and reluctance when they are forced, against the precepts of their Rule, to take on debts to fund the king’s papally sponsored campaign for Sicily. The irony is bought home when Matthew notes that the pope sends to those reluctant monks a Franciscan, enabled to absolve them for breaking their Rule. These examples of the misuse of power are presented in the context of the unbalance of nature: it is a time of unheard-of cold weather, famine and death.57 It is also hard not to suspect that there is a certain satisfaction for Matthew in seeing the new heroes of the Western Church failing to live up to their promises and committing the crimes of greed and extravagance of which the Benedictines were sometimes accused. In a broader sense, too, the Chronica portrays some Franciscans as greedy, disobedient to their Rule and to God’s commands, careless of the spiritual health of others and apt to cause discord in parishes. They are chosen as confessors, he says, by those who have reason to be ashamed to confess to their own priests, and who excuse their choice by slandering their own priests to the friars. Unlike the parish priests, the friars hear confessions carelessly and give penance easily, interested only in the monetary gifts they receive for their service.58 Even their lauded eagerness for learning leads them not to the advance of the teaching of scriptural knowledge necessary for salvation but instead to esoteric theological discussion, which leaves them in danger of heresy. This inappropriate academic study is also placed in the context of a far more solid, obvious concern for material wealth: the luxury of the Franciscans’ buildings.59 They have been led astray by the desire for unnecessary resources, both intellectual and material. Paris measures their behaviour against the deeds of the spiritual order mentioned in Hildegard’s prophecy, and finds them wanting. The Franciscans seek—and misuse—material goods in other instances too. Matthew’s report of the two English friars who travel through the diocese of Lincoln in 1247 wearing rich apparel rather than their habits, on horseback rather than walking barefoot, and demanding money on the pope’s behalf, until they are checked and rebuked by the bishop of Lincoln, is one of the clearest examples he gives of this desire for material goods.60 The two fri57 58 59

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 682–689. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 515. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 279–280. The luxurious buildings are documented elsewhere in a rather different context. Eccleston, 44, claims that they are necessary because of the great growth of recruits to the friars. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 599–601.

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ars, John and Alexander, are examples of the new messengers and legates whom the pope is said, in the same year, to have sent to France, England, Scotland and Ireland. Their greed and lack of care for divine law contributes to the upsetting of the balance of nature. Their travels occur in a year when Matthew records natural upheavals which reflect this breaking of law and misuse of authority, such as earthquakes which are said to foreshadow the end of the world.61 Matthew presents other examples of Franciscan errors in his exploration of the hypothesis that misdeeds can hasten or prefigure the end times. They disobey the law of the land when they receive a relation of the queen, accused of killing a prior, who has escaped from Newgate prison: they are said to receive him into their order ‘with outstretched hands’ and their eagerness seems to have little of Christian charity about it.62 Here they are contrasted with the lawabiding citizens of London who are justly angry at this jailbreak but, although powerless to respond, are nevertheless unfairly fined for it by the king. When the Franciscans plead for some of the Jewish prisoners accused of the murder of the boy Hugh in Lincoln, after receiving payment from the Jews of London in violation of their vow of poverty, their action is contrasted to the righteousness indignation of the Christian crowds. Here they are depicted as protecting the enemies of salvation who, like the Franciscans, are guilty of greed and the desire of worldly goods.63 The friars were also complicit in encouraging those who had taken the cross, that promise to go on crusade, to commute their vows to money to fund papal wars within Christendom. For Paris, these wars were distracting the international Church from the urgent fight against the enemies of God, and their expense only weakened England. In 1240, the Franciscans’ commutation of crusading vows and their sending abroad of the money raised are put in the context of King Henry’s breaking of his own coronation vow, as he ignores the pleas of his natural advisers that he resist the pope’s unfair demands for money from the country. The unbalance in power is reflected in nature, signalled by

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 601–602. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 486. On Matthew Paris and the Jews—whose depiction in the Chronica is also seen as more complicated than the straightforward anti-Semitism of which Paris has often been accused—see Sophie Menache, ‘Matthew Paris’s attitudes towards Anglo-Jewry’, Journal of Medieval History 23.2 (1997), 139–162. These events are described in the context of the king’s neglect of his own obligations towards the Church and God, as he seizes property to the detriment of, for example, the see of Rochester: Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 5, 545– 547.

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a violent storm that damages a church.64 The Franciscans were also amongst the collectors of resented papal taxes on the intestate in England.65 In 1246 the seizure of the goods of intestate clergy is tacitly compared to Henry iii’s weakening of the Church in England by his appointment of Boniface of Savoy, the queen’s uncle, as archbishop of Canterbury, an event connected by Paris to the sudden, unnatural and admonitory death of the king’s sons’ tutor.66 These failures are, for Matthew, the inevitable result of the Franciscan’s involvement in secular affairs. Not all friars were corrupt, but their involvement in worldly affairs was corrosive. The mendicants’ freedom to travel, and their general acceptance in the various courts, papal and secular, made them useful messengers and negotiators for popes, kings, emperors and bishops, but enmeshed them in human politics, rather than encouraging them to model lives lived according to the dictates of divine or natural law. The Franciscans recorded in the Chronica Majora as greedy and disobedient are often fulfilling the very secular commands of king or pope, or indeed of other authorities.67 They were valuable international intermediaries. When the English bishops tried to find messengers to travel on their behalf to propose peace to Frederick ii, they fell back upon the Minorites as the only possible choice, feeling that they themselves were in too much danger on such a journey.68 Where others feared to go, the mendicants were expected to venture.69 Such involvement was personally dangerous for the individual friars involved. It was their suspected involvement in papal plans against Frederick which led to two Fran-

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 9–10. W.E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327 (Cambridge, 1939), 276– 277. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 552. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 251, 627, describes the Franciscans as counsellors of kings, both English and French. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 638: both Paris and the French king’s biographer, Joinville, record that Louis ix made use of the Franciscans: according to Joinville, it was a Franciscan who preached to the king the importance of justice when he was recently crowned, a message Louis took to heart, and he was to hear many other Franciscan sermons as well as following some of their ascetic practices (Lester K. Little, ‘Saint Louis’ involvement with the friars’, Church History 2 (1964), 125–143; William Chester Jordan, ‘The case of St Louis’, Viator 19 (1988), 209–217). Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 173. The Franciscans were to become particularly embroiled in politics as the papacy of the mid-thirteenth century focused on trying to rid itself of Frederick ii, Holy Roman Emperor, making use of the Greyfriars amongst its envoys and messengers and linking them inextricably to papal policy (C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1989), 550–579).

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ciscans being hung in 1243 for carrying letters to stir up war, and which resulted in the torture of other of that order by the emperor’s son, Conrad, five years later.70 For Matthew, the Franciscans’ connection with secular concerns had led them away from their core purpose: from missionary work, pastoral care and the keeping of their Rule in apostolic poverty and humility. They had moved from a contemplation of the divine world to a concern for the secular, and had moved away from a right understanding of authority and obedience. When they had first arrived at the papal Curia, their simplicity and humility had underscored the importance of reform at the Curia. In the wake of the fourth Lateran council of 1215 they had inspired European bishops to reform their dioceses and to concentrate on pastoral care. As early as 1216, Jacques de Vitry, the new bishop of Acre, wrote admiringly of the simplicity and holiness of the Franciscans he had met at the papal Curia.71 In England in the 1230s and 1240s, Bishop Robert Grosseteste had asked for friars to be sent to him to help the spiritual life of his household and urged their use in pastoral care in his diocese.72 Their increasing involvement in secular rather than spiritual affairs, and in particular with the temporal wars being waged between the pope and the emperor, which distracted the papacy from the need to set its own house in order, clearly concerned and disappointed commentators.73 Their growing engagement with intellectual life was equally opposed, and internal disagreements within the order about the degree to which they were being diverted from their central aim of an itinerant preaching ministry, created divisions in the order, which further reduced the friars’ standing in the eyes of external observers.74 Matthew’s presentation of the friars in the Chronica Majora is complex. Those friars who fail their order, and neglect their Rule, form an important strand in Matthew’s grand narrative. Their decline reflects the decline of the world. The story of the last days is, for Matthew, a tale of the good going bad: a fallen world in free-fall in which trauma and natural disasters are increasing. Each Franciscan’s failure is a warning about how easy it is for individuals to stumble. If the Franciscans are indeed one of the holy orders expected 70 71 72 73

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Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 256, 278. Jacques de Vitry, ‘Letter i (1216)’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 587–580. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 133–134. U. Horst, The Dominicans and the Pope: Papal Teaching Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Thomist Tradition, tr. J.D. Mixson, (Notre Dame, 2006), 23–28; Power, ‘Franciscan advice to the papacy in the Middle Ages’, 1555–1556. Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, 1–41.

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before the end of the world, and yet individual members can fall so far from their ideals, how careful everyone must be to look to their salvation and the imminent end. The Franciscans’ fall is not, however, ever absolute for Matthew. The decline of the order is not his message about the Franciscans. Well into the 1250s they maintain enough of their reputation for holiness, humility and poverty to make them a useful counterbalance to the evil of the secular ecclesiastics and of the laity. A contextual reading of the Chronica does not allow the conclusion that Paris had a simplistic—or even a simple—view of the friars. Paris’s work does much more than trace a growing disillusionment with the Franciscans, or indeed the Dominicans. It is no more true to say that Paris mistrusted, and was disappointed in, all Franciscans on all occasions, than it is to say the same of the kings and popes he depicted. Certainly there are occasions, and many of them, in which Pope Innocent iv or King Henry iii of England acted, for Paris, in a way which demonstrated neglect of divine commands and of their own responsibilities. There are also, however, accounts of Louis ix, king of France, or Pope Gregory ix as examples of what a good ruler should be.75 Like popes and kings, friars in Paris’s work could be good or bad. But, significantly, Matthew’s handling of the record of the Franciscans was complicated by his concern about their eschatological significance. He uses the Chronica to test his hypothesis that the end times are coming, recording events which may support or disprove this, and in the process he measures the Franciscans against the new spiritual orders expected to prefigure the end of the world. When Matthew’s method seems to yield less than convincing proofs then, perhaps, we can see evidence that Matthew sometimes found it difficult to trace out a relationship between divine and secular history. Taken out of context, there is much in the Chronica which could support the view that this work is an example of genuine anti-fraternalism, but this misses the larger picture of the Chronica’s purpose and the context in which it was composed.76 The Dominicans and Franciscans, like others in the chronicle, must be put in the context of Matthew Paris’s understanding of the trajectory of world history and his investigation as to how human actions and divine law and natural law were related. Their depiction, seen in the context of Paris’s overall purpose, alerts us yet again to the complexities of contemporary attitudes towards the medieval mendicants. 75 76

Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 129, 309; vol. 4, 59, 60. Geltner, The Making of Medieval Anti-Fraternalism, 73.

chapter 4

The English Crown and the Franciscans in the Order’s Early History Jens Röhrkasten

There can be little doubt that the foundation phase of a religious order is among the most critical in the history of such institutions. At this stage there may still be uncertainty about the spiritual direction, and this lack of direction obstructs the creation of an institutional setting which could give stability to the group. Such phases occurred in the early years of the Premonstratensians and the Cistercians as well as the Franciscans, even though the nascent community had obtained an official confirmation.1 It is difficult to identify the factors which allowed one institution to survive, others to expand significantly, like the Cistercians or the large four among the mendicant orders, while other attempts to revive the vita religiosa were abandoned without leaving a trace. Yet few observers will doubt that among these factors, external acceptance—both by the Church and the laity—which translated into legal and material support, played a pivotal role.

1 The dynamics of religious change in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries have been studied by Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Hildesheim, 1961), esp. 129–133, an important alternative perspective being offered by Ernst Werner, Pauperes Christi. Studien zu sozial–religiösen Bewegungen im Zeitalter des Reformpapsttums (Leipzig, 1956), 13–15; Giovanni Tabacco, ‘Romualdo di Ravenna e gli inizi dell’eremitismo camaldolese’, in L’Eremitismo in Occidente nei secoli xi e xii, Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, serie terza, varia 4, Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali 4 (Milan, 1965), 73–119, esp. 95, 113–115; Johann von Walter, Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, 2 vols. (Leipzig 1903–1906), vol. 1, 23, 173; Leo Caals, ‘Prämonstratenser, -innen’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 10 vols. (Munich/Zurich, Artemis Verlag 1977–1999), vol. 7, cols 146–153; Charles Dereine, ‘Odon de Tournai et la crise du cénobitisme au xie siècle’, Revue du Moyen Âge Latin 4 (1948), 137–154, esp. 138, 149; Jacques Laurent, ‘Le problème des commencements de Cîteaux’, Annales de Bourgogne 6 (1934), 213–229, at 215, 225; Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe (Abingdon, Routledge, 2013), 14, 28; Franciscans: Gratien de Paris, Histoire de la Fondation et de l’ Évolution de l’ Ordre des Frères Mineurs au xiiie siècle (Paris, 1928), 33, 54, 121; Moorman, A History, 47, 50–57; Grado Giovanni Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del xvi secolo (Padua, 2003), 17, 22.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_005

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For the mendicants, and among them the Franciscans—the most dependent on external help—the providers are generally known: the urban elite, some prelates and members of the nobility, including royal families. Despite their origins as a lay fraternity whose focus on humility and poverty was projected initially to the population of Italian towns and villages, the appeal of the religious movement created by Francis of Assisi and Clara Offreduccio extended to all social groups, including several of the ruling houses of Europe.2 It is not surprising to find this support in Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean where Francis and his companions spent years travelling, preaching and offering a model of the perfect way to follow Christ. However, the movement extended far beyond the areas visited by Francis, and the experiences of the first friars in Germany and Hungary show that the Minorites were not welcome everywhere and to the same degree. Francis of Assisi never visited England and even though he had English followers, he was largely unknown in Western Europe, let alone a charismatic figure early in the reign of King Henry iii. The Chronicon de Lanercost contains a similar story of mistrust about the arrival of the first Franciscans in England, reporting that the nine friars were received as ignoti and mendici who were suspected of being spies or criminals and who were consequently locked up overnight.3 Although these members of an as yet obscure religious community had nothing in their appearance to recommend them, and, further, the harsh treatment meted out to foreign heretics in the reign of Henry ii may well have been still a part of living memory, they found novices and other followers as well as lay supporters within a few years, among them the king of England, in whose manor of Clarendon they had their own chamber by 1250.4 It is not known how the first contact between Henry iii and the small groups of Franciscans in Canterbury, London, Oxford and Northampton was established.5 In August and September 1224 the king was in Bedford where he spent almost three weeks, then in Dunstable, St Albans and London, between 22 and 29 August. In early September documents in his name were dated in London and Westminster; from there he travelled to Windsor on 12 September, then to

2 Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge, 2007), 205, 218–219, 222, 231; Margaret Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonisation in the Fourteenth Century, bsfs 15 (Manchester, 1919), 73–87. 3 Chronicon de Lanercost, 30. 4 Assize of Clarendon, c. 21, in William Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History (Oxford, 1913), 173; clr, 1245–1251, 296–297. 5 Eccleston, 6, 9, 10. Michael Robson, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), 30–33. GFCant., 4.

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Reading and on to Oxford, where he may have stayed for more than one day, arriving on 15 September. However, this was probably too early for a meeting at Oxford with members of the Franciscan group.6 The first official contact is dated almost exactly three years after their arrival in the kingdom, in August 1227, when Henry iii ordered Hugh de Nevill, his chief justice of the forest, to let the Franciscans of Northampton have twelve rafters for their chapel.7 This was modest material support for the new order. However, two factors need to be considered. First, it is possible that at this stage the Franciscans did not intend to create convents modelled on the topography of traditional monasticism.8 This is not only indicated by Jordan of Giano’s well-known reply to the question of whether the Minorites desired a cloister for their house in Erfurt but also by a royal writ of 1235 in favour of the bailiffs of Nottingham, who were excused the ground rent for as long as the Franciscans remained in a certain plot in the town, indicating that the latter’s presence might well be temporary.9 Secondly, at this stage the Franciscans are very unlikely to have accepted direct financial contributions, preferring instead donations in kind. These were modest beginnings well suited to the ideals of a religious community which advocated total poverty. Nevertheless, within a matter of decades, the friars were able to make their voice heard within the inner circles of power, although, unlike their Dominican fellow mendicants, they do not appear to have been able to maintain this level of influence for very long. Some aspects of this process, byproducts almost, which take the form of royal grants and material support for the emerging order, are known and well documented and this chapter is based on these traces. With their help it will be possible to show that, as the order developed and changed in this period, its relationship with the English kings was also transformed. Royal support for the Franciscans took different forms, there were grants of land, building material, fuel, food and money, and when the friars encountered resistance on some occasions, royal interventions were crucial in ensuring the province’s further development. The royal prerogative was first invoked on behalf of the Franciscans in 1231 when the bailiffs of Worcester were instructed

6 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. Thomas Hardy, 2 vols. (London 1833–1844), vol. 1, 614–622. 7 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, vol. 2, 196; cpr, 1225–1232, 139, 140, 150. 8 Jordan of Giano’s story about the origins of the convent at Erfurt in Thuringia is well known; asked by the order’s procurator whether the friars wanted a cloister he answered: nescio quid sit claustrum; tantum edificate nobis domum prope aquam, ut ad lavandum pedes in ipsam descendere possimus. Jordan of Giano, 50–51. 9 cpr, 1232–1247, 118.

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to enlarge a postern gate so that access to the Franciscan convent could be improved.10 Royal intervention enabled the friars to extract wood from royal forests without paying dues. It allowed the Greyfriars in Oxford to build a bridge across the Thames. It instructed the bailiffs of Scarborough not to obstruct the friars in their efforts to build their convent. It confirmed the decisions relating to the creation of a Franciscan house made by urban authorities in Bridgwater and it gave permission for the order’s representatives in Shrewsbury to make alteration to the town wall.11 However, despite frequent and sometimes generous support given to the friars by King Henry iii, few observers will agree with Hutton that the monarch established the Franciscans in England.12 The king made important contributions and may even have been the founder of the Winchester friary. In 1238 he exchanged a house with Bishop Peter des Roches, so that the property could be used to house them. However, subsequent royal support for this convent did not exceed the level of help given to other Franciscan houses.13 The provision of accommodation for the Franciscans sent to Bridgwater by the king in 1245 appears as an administrative act rather than the foundation of a religious house, and again there are no signs of further support beyond occasional and routine assistance.14 However, royal involvement in this form may well have had a legal purpose. Given the order’s refusal to accept ownership in this phase of its history, a transfer of property to the crown to hold for the use of the friars was a convenient legal arrangement which provided security for the donor as well as for the friars.15 At a time when ownership of land donated to the Franciscans was to be vested in the pope or had to remain with the benefactor, England developed separate arrangements. On the occasion of such grants, great care was taken not to disturb the urban economy and topography. When the bailiffs of Shrewsbury were instructed to find a suitable plot of land for the friars in 1245, they were to ensure that town life and the urban topography were not disturbed—ad minus tamen nocumentum (…) ville memorate.16 In a similar way, the transfer of land by the 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

cr, 1227–1231, 566–567. In 1246 there was a royal permit allowing the Franciscans to have their own gate, cr, 1242–1247, 417. cr, 1231–1234, 415; cpr, 1232–1247, 451, 470; cr, 1242–1247, 334, 445. Edward Hutton, The Franciscans in England 1224–1538 (London, 1926), 234. cpr, 1232–1247, 218. cr, 1242–1247, 367: Mandatum est Willelmo de Cantil’ quod assignet Fratribus Minoribus quos rex mittit usque Brigewalter ibidem hospitandos locum conpetentem in eadem villa ad fabricandum ecclesiam et edificia sibi necessaria. A transfer of land at Oxford in 1246 is an example, cpr, 1232–1247, 494. cr, 1242–1247, 367, 392. The land was provided ‘ad usum Fratrum Minorum’. clr, 1245–1251, 131.

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king in Bridgnorth was made dependent on the agreement of the town.17 This is reminiscent of the arrangements made at Reading, where ownership was vested in the original grantor, the abbey, but could also remain with the king; there was even a provision made for the case of a failure of the Franciscan settlement in the town.18 This focus on the English Franciscans’ province must not obscure the fact that Henry iii and his descendants were also dealing with the order at large. Henry iii made repeated financial gifts to the construction of the basilica in Assisi and stipends were made for meetings of the general chapter.19 As part of a larger political strategy, Franciscan houses in Ireland were also supported.20 As dukes of Aquitaine, the kings wielded political power in an area that largely overlapped with another Franciscan province which— with eventually fifty-nine convents of the first order and twenty convents of Franciscan nuns—was even larger than the province of England. Even during the foundation phase of the English Franciscan province royal grants of real estate—not merely designed to serve the legal purpose of establishing royal ownership—were relatively rare. In 1237 Henry iii purchased land for the Franciscans in Winchester and in the same year the friars of Colchester were able to extend their precinct with the help of a royal grant of a plot of land.21 In the following year the king donated the house formerly held by Benjamin the Jew to the friars in Cambridge.22 Further grants for the enlargement of existing convents followed in Oxford (1245, 1246) and Bury St Edmunds (1259).23 In 1271 Henry iii asked the citizens of Yarmouth to grant a plot of land to the Franciscans after his son Edward had noted their lack of space, while Edward ii transferred the Oxford site formerly held by the Friars of the Sack to the Minorites in 1319.24 In some instances, rents due from urban properties which had become part of a Franciscan convent were released by the king, the earliest example coming from Nottingham (1233).25 In Winchester a rent due to the bishop from the property given to the Greyfriars was exchanged in 1238

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

cr, 1242–1247, 517. Hutton, Franciscans in England, 66–68; Reading Abbey Cartularies, vol. 2, 207–210; Calendar of Charter Rolls a.d. 1226–1257 (London, 1903), 87. In 1245, cpr, 1232–1247, 450, and in 1246, clr, 1245–1251, 53–54; tna, e403/6 m 1. Francis J. Cotter, The Friars Minor in Ireland: From their Arrival to 1400 (St Bonaventure, 1994) 2, 16, 19, 24, 31–32, 54. cpr, 1232–1247, 180; cr, 1234–1237, 433. cr, 1237–1242, 61; gfc, 8–10. cpr, 1232–1247, 451; cpr, 1247–1258, 8; cpr, 1258–1266, 33. cpr, 1266–1272, 530; cpr, 1317–1321, 314. clr, 1226–1240, 209.

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so that the friars did not have to pay the bishop and did not suffer a loss in revenue.26 This kind of royal assistance was also provided for the friars in Cambridge and Gloucester.27 Land grants from other members of the royal family included an extension of the Chichester friary by Richard of Cornwall in 1252, its relocation to the site of the old castle in 1269 and the acquisition of three messuages from Queen Margaret by the London Greyfriars in 1321.28 An undisputed Franciscan foundation by members of the royal family is the convent of Minoresses in London, created and endowed by Edward i’s brother Edmund and his wife Blanche. The convent was modelled on Isabella of France’s nunnery at Longchamp, which permitted the communal ownership of property and enabled the founders to provide the precinct in London as well as an income in different English counties.29 Following two unsuccessful attempts to establish a house of Franciscan nuns in England, the London Minoresses were the first element of a small group of convents of the second order in England. Apart from the endowments, official support extended to include tax exemptions.30 However, this foundation did not provide a prominent place in the foundation of the English Franciscan province to the Plantagenets. Most of the land and the buildings provided for the Franciscans’ use was donated by members of the urban elite and by gentry families, a situation conforming to that in the order’s other provinces. Henry iii gained a more prominent role as a supporter of Franciscan building projects. In the first two decades after the Franciscans’ arrival in the British Isles, the royal contributions consisted, to a large extent, of building material, beams, rafters, tree trunks, lime, quarried stone and tiles. Many of these contributions were intended for a specific project, for the fabric of the Franciscan chapels and churches at Bridgnorth, Carlisle, Colchester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield, London, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Reading, Salisbury, Shrewsbury, Southampton and Winchester; for the friars’ stalls in Leicester, Nottingham, Reading, Salisbury and Stamford; for the dormitories in Bridgnorth, Nottingham, Reading and Newcastle-upon-Tyne; a chapter house in Not-

26 27 28 29

30

cr, 1237–1242, 49–50; cpr, 1232–1247, 218. clr, 1226–1240, 338; cr, 1242–1247, 447. cpr, 1247–1258, 168; cpr, 1266–1272, 369; cpr, 1317–1321, 599–600. cpr, 1292–1301, 170; Bourdillon, Minoresses, 12, 17; Jens Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539, Vita Regularis 21 (Münster, 2004), 64–66; Sean Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame, 2006), 74. clr, 1251–1260, 76, 231; cpr, 1266–1272, 255; ccr, 1343–1346, 54, 177; ccr, 1346–1349, 255; cpr, 1343–1345, 434.

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tingham; for infirmaries at Northampton and Winchester; a study house at Stamford; a conversation room in Northampton; a cloister at Stamford; for a quay of the Nottingham friary; and for an unspecified buildings at Carlisle, London, Nottingham, Preston, Oxford, Salisbury, Winchester, Worcester and York.31 In 1252 sixteen cartloads of fencing were provided for the convent at Salisbury so that the friars could enclose their courtyard; the Winchester convent received similar help for the same purpose in 1259.32 Royal officials were also commanded on occasion to participate in the construction effort. The sheriff of Berkshire was instructed to have wood panelling installed in the Franciscan chapel in Reading in July 1237; the work on the refectory there included the making of windows, a roof and a pulpit in 1244. An infirmary was added to the site by the local royal administration two years later.33 Such support, especially the granting of usually small quantities of timber or stones, given to a large number—though by no means all—the friaries, at Bridgewater, Bridgnorth, Bristol, Carlisle, Chichester, Gloucester, Grimsby, Lewes, Lichfield, Lincoln, Oxford, Northampton, Nottingham, Reading, Salisbury, Scarborough, Stafford, Stamford, Winchester, Worcester and York, continued into the reign of Edward i.34 While some convents were still under construction, the first repairs were necessary, for example, at Nottingham and Winchester in 1258 and in Reading in 1259.35 In the decades between c. 1240 and c. 1300 royal support for the convents of the English Franciscan province was gradually transformed. The provision of building material was gradually replaced by the disbursement of cash. This process had already begun in 1233 when the Greyfriars of Dublin were allocated 20 marks for their buildings, a donation supplemented by a further 50 marks three years later.36 The first 31

32 33 34

35 36

cr, 1227–1231, 169, 305, 310; cr, 1231–1234, 43, 45, 75, 115, 260, 370, 414, 415, 461; cr, 1234–1237, 22, 118, 138, 207, 224, 309, 493, 502, 504; cr, 1237–1242, 16, 38–39, 47, 64, 106; cr, 1242–1247, 100, 311, 404, 508, 529; cr, 1247–1251, 435, 461; cr, 1254–1256, 112, 244, 417; cr, 1256–1259, 71, 75, 94, 96, 268, 398; cr, 1259–1261, 120, 134, 326, 334, 335, 358–359; cr, 1268–1272, 12, 49; ccr, 1272–1279, 451, 543; ccr, 1279–1288, 215; clr, 1226–1240, 230, 291, 325, 404, 409–410, 441; clr, 1240–1245, 182; clr, 1245–1251, 4, 27, 35, 127; clr, 1260–1267, 18; cpr, 1266–1272, 339. cr, 1251–1253, 297; cr, 1256–1259, 440. clr, 1226–1240, 290; clr, 1240–1245, 235; clr, 1245–1251, 182. clr, 1226–1240, 171, 215, 328; clr, 1245–1251, 231, 299; clr, 1251–1260, 95, 235; cr, 1227–1231, 480, 510; cr, 1231–1234, 500; cr, 1234–1237, 207, 273, 282; cr, 1237–1242, 171, 424, 426–427; cr, 1242–1247, 517; cr, 1254–1256, 122, 141, 326, 335; cr, 1256–1259, 208, 221, 262; cr, 1259–1261, 335; cr, 1261–1264, 3; cr, 1268–1272, 347, 442, 478, 484; ccr, 1272–1279, 283, 311, 384, 435, 453; ccr, 1279–1288, 10, 33, 34, 35, 145, 146, 157, 251, 309, 390; ccr, 1288–1296, 82, 86, 102, 419. cr, 1256–1259, 224, 265, 367. clr, 1226–1240, 195; cr, 1234–1237, 287; cpr, 1232–1247, 198.

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English example dates from November 1238, when Henry iii instructed the sheriff of Northamptonshire to pay 10 marks towards the costs of the Franciscan chapel in the county town.37 In the following year beech wood for the foundations of the Greyfriars’ church in Winchester was combined with a payment of 10 marks sterling.38 Subsequently, royal financial contribution—rather than donations of building material—to Franciscan building projects became more frequent. The Franciscans in Chester were given £ 10 for their buildings in 1241, those in Northampton received 5 marks in the same year, the Bedford Greyfriars had the same sum from the local sheriff for the purchase of timber in 1242, and their confrères at York were even given 40 marks towards building costs in 1244.39 The examples of Bridgnorth, Shrewsbury and Stamford from the same year indicate that it had become quite common for royal support for the construction of Franciscan convents to be given in cash.40 In the summer of 1245 the sheriff of Berkshire was instructed to pay 60s. to the Oxford Franciscans instead of the timber they had received before.41 However, the shift from gift in kind to donations in cash was not clear-cut. The Greyfriars of Stafford were given twelve oaks fit for timber in 1295 and the Colchester convent received a consignment of timber even in 1306.42 In addition to the numerous royal contributions to the creation of the province, the king also made different payments for the friars’ maintenance. This consisted mainly in the provision of food, firewood, brushes and clothing. In parallel to the shift in the provision of building material, donations in kind appear to have been gradually replaced by the disbursement of cash, although gifts of firewood continued to be made on a regular basis deep into the second half of the thirteenth century.43 The distribution of this supply was very uneven. Only about a third of the English Franciscan convents and a single one from the province of Aquitaine benefited, and even within this group the largest share went to three or four houses. More than half of these donations (51%) went to three of the province’s convents, Oxford (22%) which received this support on an almost annual basis between 1231 and 1293,44

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

clr, 1226–1240, 1238. clr, 1226–1240, 394. clr, 1240–1245, 33, 115, 217. clr, 1240–1245, 253. For example: clr, 1240–1245, 313. ccr, 1288–1296, 419; ccr, 1302–1307, 392. The first such gift, to the Greyfriars of Stamford, was made in 1230, cr, 1227–1231, 283. cr, 1227–1231, 468 (1231); cr, 1231–1234, 178, 217 (1233), 391, 457 (1234); cr, 1234–1237, 104 (1235), 296 (1236); cr, 1237–1242, 45 (1238), 415 (1242); clr, 1226–1240, 398 (1239), 465 (1240); clr,

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Northampton and Salisbury, whose friars obtained 15 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.45 The convent at Winchester was granted c. 9 per cent of the royal fuel donations,46 while a further 22 per cent was shared evenly between the friars of Canterbury, Gloucester, London, Reading, Shrewsbury, Southampton and Stamford.47 The distribution of food and clothing shows the same pattern: only a small group of convents were supported by being allocated habits or different kinds of food. Cloth for habits appears to have been provided on a regular basis for the Greyfriars of London,48 Reading,49 and Winchester,50 and the small community of Franciscan nuns received similar royal support in 1252 and 1255.51 Individual instances of royal donations of clothing for Franciscans

45

46

47

48 49 50 51

1240–1245, 123; cr, 1242–1247, 400, 462 (1246), 541 (1247); cr, 1251–1253, 45; clr, 1251–1260, 25 (1252); cr, 1254–1256, 360 (1256); cr, 1256–1259, 32 (1257), 240 (1258), 395 (1259); cr, 1259– 1261, 320 (1260); cr, 1261–1264, 225 (1263), 343 (1264); cr, 1264–1268, 197 (1266), 318 (1267); cr, 1268–1272, 384 (1271); ccr, 1279–1288, 25 (1280); ccr, 1288–1296, 212 (1292), 304 (1293). Northampton: cr, 1231–1234, 32 (1232), 386 (1234); cr, 1234–1237, 65 (1235), 247 (1236); clr, 1240–1245, 219, 246 (1244); cr, 1242–1247, 379 (1245), 401 (1246), 520 (1247); cr, 1247–1251, 180 (1249), 284 (1250); cr, 1251–1253, 42 (1252); cr, 1253–1254, 41 (1254); cr, 1254–1256, 304 (1256); cr, 1256–1259, 75 (1257), 241 (1258); cr, 1268–1272, 199 (1270), 484 (1272); ccr, 1288–1296, 100 (1290), 467 (1295); Salisbury: cr, 1234–1237, 406; clr, 1226–1240, 249 (1236); cr, 1237–1242, 160 (1239); cr, 1242–1247, 492 (1246); cr, 1247–1251, 18 (1247); cr, 1251–1253, 124 (1252); cr, 1253– 1254, 66 (1254); cr, 1254–1256, 87, 251 (1255); cr, 1256–1259, 226 (1258); cr, 1259–1261, 112 (1260); cr, 1264–1268, 406 (1267); cr, 1268–1272, 10 (1268); ccr, 1272–1279, 143 (1275); ccr, 1279–1288, 143 (1281), 269 (1284); ccr, 1288–1296, 74 (1290), 290 (1293), 368 (1294). cr, 1237–1242, 83 (1238); cr, 1253–1254, 66 (1254); cr, 1254–1256, 50 (1255); cr, 1259–1261, 105 (1260), 388 (1261); cr, 1264–1268, 406 (1267); cr, 1268–1272, 310 (1270) 453 (1272); ccr, 1272– 1279, 452 (1278); ccr, 1288–1296, 213 (1292), 300 (1293); ccr, 1296–1302, 33 (1297). Canterbury: clr, 1240–1245, 72 (1241); cr, 1268–1272, 363 (1271), 484 (1272); ccr, 1272–1279, 482 (1278); ccr, 1288–1296, 296 (1293); Gloucester: cr, 1231–1234, 177 (1232); cr, 1234–1237, 283 (1236), 506 (1237); clr, 1240–1245, 65; cr, 1237–1242, 319 (1241); cr, 1242–1247, 332 (1245); cr, 1261–1264, 70 (1262); ccr, 1272–1279, 472 (1278); London: clr, 1226–1240, 213; cr, 1231–1234, 214 (1233); cr, 1234–1237, 97 (1235); cr, 1254–1256, 116 (1255); cr, 1256–1259, 378 (1259); cr, 1259– 1261, 392 (1261); cr, 1264–1268, 26 (1265); Reading: clr, 1240–1245, 235, 248 (1244); cr, 1256– 1259, 72 (1257), 256 (1258); cr, 1268–1272, 232 (1270); ccr, 1279–1288, 25 (1280); Southampton: cr, 1234–1237, 96 (1235); cr, 1237–1242, 423 (1242); cr, 1251–1253, 295 (1252); cr, 1256–1259, 358 (1259); cr, 1268–1272, 448 (1271); Stamford: cr, 1227–1231, 283 (1230); cr, 1231–1234, 32 (1232), 383 (1234); clr, 1240–1245, 246 (1244); clr, 1251–1260, 19 (1252); cr, 1264–1268, 475 (1268). In the years 1233, 1243, 1245, 1260, 1261: clr, 1226–1240, 233; clr, 1240–1245, 204; clr, 1245– 1251, 16; clr, 1251–1260, 531; clr, 1260–1267, 70. clr, 1226–1240, 420; clr, 1240–1245, 94. The years 1237, 1239, 1240, 1241, 1242, 1243, 1244, 1261: clr, 1226–1240, 412, 492; clr, 1240–1245, 72, 144, 191, 264; clr, 1260–1267, 45. cr, 1251–1260, 76, 231.

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are recorded for a further ten English convents and for the friars of Bordeaux in Aquitaine.52 While royal donations of food were more varied, consisting of fish, malt and wine, many entries in government records do not specify the nature of the gifts; there was a similar pattern of distribution: only a small group of convents benefited, among them Hartlepool and Newcastle-upon-Tyne,53 London,54 Oxford,55 Scarborough,56 and Southampton.57 An assignment of wood and wine is recorded for the friars of Oloron in the province of Aquitaine in 1253.58 Apart from this extensive support in kind there were direct financial subsidies. As mentioned above, they began in the form of payments for buildings, documented first in 1233 when the archdeacon of Dublin and a citizen of the town who acted as the friars’ spiritual friends were allocated 20 marks sterling.59 At this stage the money was not paid directly to the friars, who were forbidden by their Rule to receive coins and valuables. However, this practice seems to have changed in the English province. Only a few years later payments appear to have been made directly to the Franciscans. It is true that this may be an impression given by the sources, many of which were made for accounting purposes so it may have been easier to express the monetary value of certain items rather than to list donations in kind. It is also true that donations in kind continued for many decades and an entry into the Exchequer Memoranda Roll 1243–1244 provides important proof that the Franciscans were determined only to accept donations if they were really required: in this year the Greyfriars of Worcester, who had been offered £ 10, only accepted £ 4 because the larger sum was not needed.60 Nevertheless, the friars were iden52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Bordeaux: cr, 1253–1254, 186; Canterbury: clr, 1240–1245, 93; Chichester: clr, 1251–1260, 148; Coventry: clr, 1240–1245, 71; Hartlepool: clr, 1226–1240, 368–369; Lewes, Lichfield: clr, 1240–1245, 71, 85; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Oxford, Scarborough: clr, 1226–1240, 234, 368–369, 428, 447; Southampton: clr, 1260–1267, 50. clr, 1226–1240, 428. clr, 1240–1245, 307; ccr, 1247–1251, 331; cr, 1259–1261, 238. The first reference here dates from 1233: clr, 1226–1240, 234, 493; cr, 1247–1251, 47, 53. clr, 1226–1240, 447. cr, 1237–1242, 192. cr, 1253–1254, 180. See note 36. Jens Röhrkasten, ‘Mendikantische Armut in der Praxis—das Beispiel London’, in In proposito paupertatis. Studien zum Armutsverständnis bei den mittelalterlichen Bettelorden, Vita regularis 13, ed. Gert Melville and Annette Kehnel (Münster, 2001), 135–167, at 140. A similar rejection of royal alms occurred in the context of the 1297 provincial chapter where Edward i wanted to donate pittances to the friars assembled in London only to find

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tified as recipients of coins. Already in 1239 Henry iii had cash disbursements made to three Franciscan houses, at Canterbury, Lichfield and Newcastle-uponTyne. The Lichfield friars even received two assignments of 10 marks each out of the revenues of the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield, vacant after the death of Bishop Stavensby.61 Most of the eighteen convents which are known to have received royal financial support in Henry iii’s reign—among them the Irish houses of Castledermot and Kilkenny—are only recorded as recipients once,62 while eight, among them Bordeaux, London, Oxford and Winchester, were allocated payments more than once, amounting to up to 250 lb. of Bordeaux and £ 20 or more.63 The purpose and reason for the payments is only rarely given, a royal promise in the case of Bordeaux, the payment of the friars’ debts in the case of Chichester, Kilkenny, Lichfield, London, Salisbury,64 and Winchester.65 The chapters of the English province received regular royal stipends from at least 1238 when the friars held their meeting in the London convent. It seems that initially food was provided.66 The accounts for pittances from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards suggest that was replaced by standard amounts of money.67 There was another type of support where the king did not merely appear as the most prominent aristocrat but as sovereign. Royal letters of protection and other forms of assistance were important in different situations. When the friars in Scarborough were confronted with resistance by the Cistercians they obtained a royal licence to settle on a different site. Henry iii’s intervention on their behalf through his justice Gilbert de Preston, when they settled in Bury St

61 62

63

64 65 66 67

that they refused because other magnates had already provided for two of the three days, bl, ms Add. 7965 fol. 9v. clr, 1226–1240, 370, 373, 394, 407; tna, e403/1 m 1. The houses of the English province were: Chester (1247), Chichester (1253), Colchester (1247), Coventry (1244), Northampton (1269), Reading (1246), Southampton (1261); clr, 1240–1245, 258; clr, 1245–1251, 1, 28, 113, 140; clr, 1251–1260, 146; clr, 1260–1267, 50; cr, 1242– 1247, 513; cpr, 1232–1247, 492; cpr, 1266–1272, 320. Bordeaux: cpr, 1247–1258, 37, 412, 615; clr, 1245–1251, 277; clr, 1251–1260, 280; London: clr, 1226–1240, 443; clr, 1240–1245, 48; clr, 1260–1267, 70; tna, e403/1204 m 2; Oxford: clr, 1245– 1251, 28; clr, 1251–1260, 224; clr, 1260–1267, 12; Winchester: clr, 1240–1245, 25, 225; clr, 1245–1251, 28; clr, 1251–1260, 451. clr, 1245–1251, 62. At least two payments were made to the Franciscans at Lewes, clr, 1240–1245, 85; clr, 1245–1251, 138, and to the friars of Cambridge, clr, 1226–1240, 501; tna, e403/1204 m 2. cr, 1237–1242, 294 (London 1241); clr, 1245–1251, 70 (Cambridge 1246). tna, c47/4/4 fol. 45r, e36/202 fol. 63r; bl, ms Add. 7965 fol. 10r.

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Edmunds against the will of the abbey, is well known.68 The protection granted to the Franciscan convent of Bordeaux had a clear political connotation. The document was granted in 1249 after the friars had transferred to a new site; the possibility of resistance to this move gave the king the opportunity to wield authority in Gascony and he underlined his personal interest in the convent by having its new church dedicated to St Edward the Confessor.69 Following the civic uprising in Bury St Edmunds against the monastic lord in 1327, it was seen as necessary by the Franciscans to acquire another royal letter of protection.70 Nothing is known about the motives of the Lincoln Greyfriars to obtain a similar document in August 1321 although it is noteworthy that this occurred after the leaders of the baronial opposition had converged on London in the previous month.71 However, the request may have been prompted by tensions between the convent and its neighbours, which arose in Yarmouth on several occasions.72 When the Welsh friary of Llanfaes was under threat of an attack from English troops in Henry iii’s 1245 campaign against David ap Llewelyn because of its close affiliation with the prince’s family, it tried to protect itself with the help of royal letters.73 Similar royal letters could also be used in less dramatic circumstances, for example, when the friars at Reading wanted to collect timber from Windsor forest or when London Franciscans needed to transport building materials for their church.74 These signs of royal support have to be seen in context. Although Henry iii was quite willing to help the Franciscans, there can be little doubt that the Dominicans were his favourites among the mendicants. He began a tradition of having Dominican confessors which continued until the end of the fourteenth century. Consequently, the English province of the order of Preachers received

68

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cpr, 1232–1247, 459; cpr, 1247–1258, 623; cpr, 1258–1266, 50; cpr, 1266–1272, 736. Anne Müller, ‘Lokale Grenzen universaler Expansion: Fallstudien zu Geltungskämpfen zwischen Franziskanern und Benediktinern in der mittelalterlichen englischen Stadt’, in Bettelorden in Mitteleuropa: Geschichte, Kunst, Spiritualität, ed. Heidemarie Specht and Ralph Andraschek-Holzer (St Pölten, 2008), 182–197; Jens Röhrkasten, ‘Friars and the laity in the Franciscan custody of Cambridge’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 19, ed. Nicholas Rogers (Donington, 2010), 107–124. cpr, 1247–1258, 37. cpr, 1327–1330, 258. cpr, 1321–1324, 21. For example: cpr, 1266–1272, 530. cpr, 1232–1247, 460; cpr, 1247–1258, 575. The friars of this convent, their servants and proctors still received royal letters of protection in 1282, cpr, 1281–1292, 27. cr, 1231–1234, 415; cpr, 1266–1272, 339.

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the largest share of royal support.75 Furthermore, Henry iii was tied into a tradition of providing support for religious institutions which had already received favours from his ancestors. Regular payments to St Giles’s Hospital outside London appear to have originated in the reign of Henry ii, and the grant to the order of Tyron made by Richard i was still honoured in the late thirteenth century and beyond.76 The abbey of Fontevrault, which served as the Plantagenets’ burial site in the twelfth century, where several of the king’s predecessors as well as Isabelle of Angoulême, his mother, were buried, still received regular financial payments in the reign of his son, when even arrears of payments that had been stopped in times of war were paid.77 Henry iii also made regular payments to the Carthusians,78 and added annual stipends to the hospital at Burton Lazar and to the Teutonic Knights, who were to receive 40 marks and 80 marks sterling respectively. Through these payments he maintained and developed a rich pattern of support for a range of religious institutions and activities.79 Among them were Reading Abbey,80 the Benedictine nuns of Kington St Michael and Ankerwick,81 as well as the Cistercians at Wardon. Further stipends were granted to royal chaplains and to hermits in several locations, mostly in the London area and in Windsor.82 Chaplains were entrusted with 75

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78 79 80 81 82

cpr, 1232–1247, 450; William Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars Preachers (Rome, 1951), 72–85. Apart from payments for their provincial chapters, money was given to their London convent (1240, 1241, 1259), for the fabric of their church at Canterbury (1242, 1258): tna, e403/3 m 1, e403/1204 m 2, e403/4 m 1, e403/7 m 1, e403/17b m 2, e403/1217 m 2, e403/1219 m 1, e403/18 m 1. Payments to these institutions, very likely representing regular disbursements of fixed amounts of money, can be found in the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, tna, e403/3 m 1, e403/1204 m 2, e403/8 m 2, e403/52 m 1, e403/83 m 1, e403/270 m 12, e403/1239 m 1, e403/1244 m 1. William Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, nj, 2009), 49. Calendar of Charter Rolls 1226–1257, 64, 242; tna, e403/2 m 1, e403/1204 m 1, e403/1219 m 1d. Arrears were paid in 1308 because, during the war between Philip iv and Edward i, payments had been withheld; tna, e403/144 m 9: quo tempore inter eundem dominum patrem et Philippum regem Francie super guerra inter eos dudum mota pax fuit reformata usque ad diem obitus eiusdem domini patris per quatuor annos integros (…). Calendarium Rotulorum Chartarum et Inquisitionum ad quod damnum (London, 1803), 10, 42, 126; tna, e403/1204 m 1, e403/7 m 1, e403/13 m 1, e403/1210 m 1, e403/21a m 1. tna, e403/2 m 1, e403/7 m 1, e403/1203 m 1, e403/1205 m 1. tna, e403/2 m 1 (1240), e403/15a m 2 (1257). Only two references survive for the annual payment of 10 marks but the sources indicate that the amount was regularly disbursed. tna, e403/9 m 1, e403/11 m 2, 3, e403/18 m 1, e403/19 m 3, e403/1209 m 1d. tna, e403/1202 m 1, e403/2 m 1, e403/1204 m 1, e403/4 m 1, e403/1205 m 1, 2, e403/7 m 2,

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the celebration of Masses after the death of two of the royal couple’s children, Margaret and Katherine,83 and for the soul of Henry iii’s mother.84 The series of Masses for the latter were celebrated in Westminster Abbey and they were part of an elaborate arrangement which included celebrations in the chapel of St Stephen ‘pro animabus fidelium’,85 and the provision of candles for the shrine of St Edward the Confessor.86 The central place in this rich and varied array of individual donations and the payment of pensions and stipends to monasteries, chaplains and hermits, was occupied by Westminster Abbey. The rebuilding of its church was undoubtedly Henry iii’s greatest ecclesiastical construction project and the funds it demanded dwarfed the numerous but small subsidies set aside for the Franciscans.87 Between the beginning of the rebuilding in 1249 and October 1252 more than £10,000 was spent on the construction of the abbey church alone.88 Additional funds had to be provided for the king’s collection of relics, among them the holy blood, and for the furnishings of the church which may still have been under construction in Edward i’s reign. After all, the claims of lordship over territories which included the traditional Plantagenet burial place of Fontevrault had been relinquished in 1259, so Westminster Abbey became the dynasty’s new necropolis as well as a political centre.89

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84 85 86 87

88 89

e403/8 m 1, e403/10 m 1, e403/15a m 2, 3, e403/1217 m 1, e403/1219 m 1, 2, e403/18 m 1, 2, e403/19 m 1, 3, e403/21a m 2, e403/3 m 3, e403/17a m 3, e403/9 m 2, e403/11 m 4, e403/13 m 1, 2, e403/17b m 2, e403/1208 m 1, e403/1215 m 1. For Princess Margaret: tna, e403/9 m 2, e403/10 m 1, e403/11 m 4, e403/15a m 3, e403/17a m 3, e403/18 m 2, e403/19 m 3; for Princess Katherine: tna, e403/13 m 1; Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, 52–53. tna, e403/9 m 2, e403/11 m 1, e403/15a m 1. tna, e403/1202 m 2, e403/4 m 1, e403/9 m 2, e403/10 m 1, e403/13 m 2, e403/15a m 3, e403/17a m 3, e403/1218 m 1, e403/19 m 2, e403/21a m 2. tna, e403/2 m 1 (1240), e403/4 m 1 (1242), e403/7 m 1 (1252), e403/8 m 2 (1253). Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200–1400 (London, 1995), 56, 60–61, 86–101; Suzanne Lewis, ‘Henry iii and the gothic rebuilding of Westminster Abbey: the problematics of context’, Traditio 50 (1995), 129–172, at 131; David Carpenter, ‘King Henry iii and the Cosmati work at Westminster Abbey’, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, ed. John Blair and Brian Golding (Oxford, 1996), 178–195, at 179–180, 193; Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries, 40. Howard Colvin (ed.), Building Accounts of King Henry iii (Oxford, 1971), 202–210. Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry iii and the Westminster Book Relic (Cambridge, 2001), 171, 3; Carpenter, ‘King Henry iii and the Cosmati work at Westminster Abbey’, 193; Binski, Westminster Abbey, 56; David Carpenter, ‘Westminster Abbey in politics, 1258–1269’, Thirteenth Century England 8 (2001), 49–58.

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Henry iii’s donations for the construction of the burial church in Assisi and the support for the Franciscan provincial—and perhaps occasionally also general—chapters are not automatic proof of the king’s personal proximity to the new order, even though there is no doubt about his personal religiosity. The support of good religious causes was one of the monarch’s duties and it needs to be taken into account that many of the small donations were not given on his initiative. He probably will not have been able to monitor the evolution of the English Franciscan province; instead he reacted to petitions by the friars. With dozens of Dominican and Franciscan convents under construction it is unlikely that the king was aware of the need for two altars in the Franciscan church in Reading in August 1239, that timber needed to be carried to the church of the Gloucester convent in January 1240, that the debts of the London Franciscans amounted to 20 marks in June 1240, that the Worcester friars wanted a postern gate of their own in the town wall in 1246 or that friars’ church in Northampton needed a roof in February 1247.90 When such detailed information was not available, the king could simply set an upper limit, as in 1248, when victuals and clothing for two houses of the Irish province were to be made available ‘usque ad summam x. marcarum’.91 Many of the donations were made in response to the friars’ requests. A separate postern gate in the town wall of Worcester was granted ad petitionem fratrum minorum in 1231 and the king’s help was invoked by the Franciscans of Bordeaux when they wanted to move to another site in 1249.92 In 1255 the king’s sister Eleanor petitioned her brother on behalf of the Leicester Franciscans, and it seems that the friars had taken the initiative in many other instances and were continuing to do so in the reign of Edward i.93 Henry iii was happy to respond but he was not the founder of the English Franciscan province.94 In the records, maintenance for the mendicants could be subsumed under general royal alms for the poor and it is well known that the friars’ petitions were not always received well by a king under increasing financial pressure.95

90 91 92 93 94

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clr, 1226–1240, 404, 441, 443; clr, 1245–1251, 107; cr, 1242–1247, 417. cr, 1247–1251, 72. cr, 1227–1231, 566–567; cpr, 1247–1258, 37. cr, 1254–1256, 244; cpr, 1281–1292, 25–26 (1282), 124 (1284); tna, c81/1792 m 11, c81/8/731, c81/51/5085. He may have been inspired by King Louis ix of France also to give support to smaller mendicant orders, in particular the Friars of the Sack, tna, e403/14 m 1, e403/15a m 1, e403/1212 m 1, whose London convent was a royal foundation; Field, Isabelle of France, 93. clr, 1240–1245, 281, 324. Eccleston, 19, reports the king’s sayings as: ‘si non fueritis importuni in petendo’ (to the Franciscans): ut diceret ei dominus rex Angliae: ‘Frater Willelmi, tu

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By 1300 most foundations had been made and the main task was their consolidation, mostly the completion of building projects and the acquisition of additional plots of land.96 The creation of the province was coming to an end and the nature of royal support changed. There were three aspects to this trend. First, there was a shift from donations in kind to financial assistance, a feature which had already begun in Henry iii’s reign. Instead of grants of firewood, clothing or building material, royal alms were granted in the form of direct payments to named friars, often when the monarch visited the vicinity of a convent. This change in the order’s interaction with the monarch and his government also indicates a shift in its attitude to economic practices. While a stipend paid to the Oxford convent in April 1289 was collected by the parson of St Ebbe, the next instalment was collected personally by two Franciscans, John of Beckingham and John of Clare.97 Another such example, a payment to the Franciscan Roger of St John to release a Bible given as security by his confrère Walter of Kivilly, may have been made as early as 1287.98 Secondly, royal interventions gradually became a routine administrative activity rather than acts which required the monarch’s immediate personal involvement. Changes to convent precincts mostly appear in government records because local juries had to be instructed to investigate whether an extension of a precinct, the construction of a conduit or the inclusion of a road would disadvantage the king or the local community.99 Such inquisitions ‘ad quod damnum’ were purely administrative acts which reveal little about the monarch’s involvement with the Franciscans. Thirdly, this period saw the introduction of regular

96

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consuevisti tam spiritualiter loqui; modo totum, quod loqueris, est Da, da, da.’ Et alias, cum blanditiis ageret apud eum, petens aliquid ab eo, vocavit eum idem princeps serpentem (on the Dominican William of Abingdon, 46). Jens Röhrkasten, ‘The convents of the Franciscan Province of Anglia and their role in the development of English and Welsh towns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in Mélanges de l’ École française de Rome—Moyen Âge 124/1 (2012), 207–220. tna, c47/4/4 fol. 41r; Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289, 299–300, no. 2559. Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289, 263, no. 2408. Another royal payment to the Oxford convent, in September 1290, was received by a clerk ‘in presencia fratris Johannis de Bekingham’, tna, c47/4/4 fol. 46v, but the corresponding subsidy for the Cambridge studium was given to John de Clare, the custodian, ibid., 47r. Other examples of royal payments made directly to Franciscans are in: tna, e36/202 fol. 44r, c47/4/6 fol. 1r, v; bl, ms Add. 7965 fol. 6r, v, 8r, 9r, v, 10r. In 1298 two Franciscans were even entrusted with the payment of £ 160: ‘Domino Willelmo de Segwyn domino de Ryouns de prestitis per preceptum regis ad solvendum pro voluntate eiusdem regis per manus fratris Bernardi de Ryouns et fratris Reymundi de Burgo de ordine minorum’, tna, e101/354/10 m 3. Examples are: tna, c143/4/12, c143/4/18, c143/4/20, c143/5/1.

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royal subsidies for two convents of the English province, Oxford and Cambridge.100 Continuing royal support for the Franciscans by Edward i needs to be seen in the context of the king’s own monastic foundation at Vale Royal in 1277, and his continuation of his father’s practice of supporting a wide range of religious orders.101 Despite these qualifications, two significant additions were made by the royal family to the English Franciscan province from the late thirteenth century onwards: the foundation of the Franciscan nunnery in London and the construction of a new church for the Greyfriars in the capital. There remains the question of why Henry iii and his successors were prepared to support the creation of an English Franciscan province and to extend their support to other parts of the order. England saw no spectacular political reconciliation movements orchestrated by the mendicants—unlike some Italian towns—and the kingdom already had a rich monastic landscape with expressive symbolic reference points to royal power in Bury St Edmunds, Battle Abbey, Beaulieu and Westminster Abbey. Despite payments made to the burial church at Assisi, Henry iii was not especially focused on the Minorites. The support of religious institutions constituted a core element of a Christian king’s duties and it is well known that Henry iii was inspired by the model of King Louis ix of France, after his marriage to Margaret of Provence, who, like her father, Raymond Berengar v, count of Provence, was a keen supporter of the Franciscans.102 It is also quite striking that the king does not feature very prominently as a supporter or founder in English Franciscan historiography, notably the Lanercost Chronicle and Thomas of Eccleston’s important account.103

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tna, e403/51 m 1 (1285), e403/55 m 1, e403/57 m 1, c47/4/4 fol. 41r, v, 46v, 47r; Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289, 299–300, no. 2559. Michael Prestwich, Edward i (London, 1988), 113–114; Payments for Vale Royal: tna, e403/ 50 m 1, e403/57 m 1, e403/59 m 1, e403/61 m 1, e403/72 m 1, e403/77 m 1, in this period, between 1285 and 1292, at least £ 1215 1s. 4d. were spent on the construction of the Cistercian monastery. Vale Royal was also assigned an annual revenue of 790 marks from the proceeds of the county of Cheshire, tna, e403/1264 m 1. Examples of Edward i’s continuation of earlier payments to religious institutions: tna, e403/36 m 1, 2, e403/39 m 1, e403/45 m 1, e403/47 m 1, e403/48 m 1, e403/52 m 1, 2, 3, e403/53 m 1, e403/54 m 1, e403/64 m 1, 2, e403/74 m 1. Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998), 8. Michael Robson, ‘A Franciscan contribution to the De gestis Britonum (1205–1279) and its continuation to 1299’, afh 107 (2014), 270, 282.

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Despite these caveats it is clear that a symbiotic relationship existed between the Franciscan order and the English royal family at this time. The new order was respected by the king who, less than ten years after the friars’ arrival in England, was prepared to pardon an outlaw for an unlawful killing at the instance of a Franciscan friar.104 Henry iii’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, who maintained close contact with prominent friars like Adam Marsh, is likely to have influenced her husband, just as she is known to have transmitted her enthusiasm for the Minorites to her daughters, Margaret and Beatrice. Together with the Dominican provincial prior William de Hothum, the Franciscan friar Solomon was one of the witnesses of her will and, although she spent much of her widowhood in the nunnery at Amesbury, her heart was buried in the Franciscan church of London, where her daughter Beatrice had been interned in 1275.105 While Eleanor of Castile promoted the order of Preachers at the English court, Edward i’s second wife, Margaret of France, had a Franciscan confessor.106 The rebuilding of the London Franciscans’ church on a grand scale was begun on her initiative and, when she provided alms for the Northampton Greyfriars in December 1300, their London confrères responded with a donation of pears, apples and other fruit.107 Her niece Isabella, wife of King Edward ii, also petitioned on the order’s behalf.108 The role of the Franciscan order extended beyond the purely spiritual sphere. Franciscan friars were involved in some of the monarchs’ negotiations and dealings with the papacy: they were engaged in the political crisis in the reign of Henry iii, when efforts to reconcile the opposing parties were conducted even on the battlefield of Lewes (1264). Edward ii could be suspicious of elements in the Franciscan order, expressing his distrust of elements in the Irish province in 1316, and thanking the town of Bristol because it did not betray him, when a Franciscan was sent by the earl of Hereford to the bailiff and community at the beginning of the baronial rebellion.109 Corresponding to the shift

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105 106

107 108 109

cpr, 1232–1247, 11 (1233), perhaps also: 137 (1236). The canons of Amiens and the Franciscans of the town successfully prevailed upon the aged Henry iii to pardon a clerk who had abjured the realm in 1272, cpr, 1266–1272, 727; cpr, 1292–1301, 408. cpr, 1247–1258, 644. Howell, Eleanor of Provence, 63, 89, 92, 291, 301, 310; tna, e159/59 m 30: ‘fratre Salomone de ordine fratrum Minorum’. John Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (London, 1994), 9, 57, 139. bl, ms Add. 7999a fol. 30r, 46v ‘pro denariis solutis pro expensis fratris Ingelrami confessoris regine’ (1300); tna, e101/358/20 m 5d. bl, ms Add. 7966a fol. 23v, 66v. cpr, 1313–1317 (London, 1898), 166; cpr, 1338–1340, 467. Robson, ‘Franciscan contribution’, 271. ccr, 1318–1323, 377, 425. There continued to be sus-

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from donations in kind to donations in the form of money—an element of the order’s transformation observed earlier in this chapter—there was a gradual change in the relationship between the English monarchs and the Franciscans: while the friars were first seen as a religious community with purely spiritual aims, their wider significance emerged ever more clearly. The Franciscan order became a factor in European politics. In the 1250s John de Kantia, a Franciscan friar, acted as papal collector in England of the annual tribute of 1,000 marks due to Innocent iv, as papal nuntius, and was involved in the preparation of a new crusade.110 The prominent English Franciscan, Adam Marsh, had extensive contacts at the royal court and was involved in the attempt to manage the tensions in the deteriorating relations between Simon de Montfort and Henry iii.111 English Franciscans had obtained very prominent roles in the order since the 1240s, they were used as inquisitors in some parts of Europe, they acted as papal judges delegate and diplomats,112 and, as the examples of John Pecham and William of Gainsborough show, time and again the papacy saw prominent members of the order fit for the episcopal office.113 By the second half of the thirteenth century the order had expanded into all parts of Europe, its sophisticated study system producing educated and skilled friars, whose abilities were not restricted to the religious sphere. Franciscans came to be used as diplomats, not only by the Church but also by the political rulers of Europe. In England, Franciscan friars were received as ambassadors from the kings of France, Norway, Castile and Aragon.114 Adam Marsh was one of the negotiators in the peace agreement between Henry iii and Louis ix, leading to the treaty of Paris, and his confrère, William of Gainsborough, acted as one of Edward i’s negotiators with Philip iv in 1294.115 Franciscans were also involved in resolving local tensions in Aquitaine, helping to stabilize a potentially volatile sit-

110 111 112 113 114 115

picion of individual Franciscans by Edward ii’s government. Anne Müller, ‘Conflicting loyalties: the Irish Franciscans and the English crown in the High Middle Ages’, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section c: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 107c (Dublin, 2007), 87–106. clr, 1245–1251, 349; clr, 1260–1267, 20, 38, 100; cpr, 1247–1258, 470, 498, 631; tna, e403/1211 m 2d, e403/1220 m 1d. C. Hugh Lawrence, ‘Marsh, Adam (c. 1200–1259)’, in odnb, http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/95, accessed 15 July 2015. Adam Marsh held this role in 1256, cpr, 1247–1258, 522. On Gainsborough see: Roy Haines, ‘Gainsburgh, William (c. 1260–1307)’, odnb; online edn, September 2010, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10283, accessed 17 July 2015. tna, c47/4/5 fol. 10v; bl, ms Add. 35291 fol. 76r, ‘Nuncii Francie’; cpr, 1324–1327 (London, 1904), 245; ccr, 1323–1327, 457; Society of Antiquaries, London, ms 119 fol. 64v. cpr, 1292–1301, 81; ccr, 1288–1296, 440.

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uation.116 For the Plantagenet monarchs with their geographically extensive interests, members of the order were ideal tools of communication, allowing them to stay in touch with English affairs when they were abroad and to learn about events in their territories overseas when they were residing in their English kingdom. During Edward i’s second visit to Gascony, in May 1288, his mother sent the guardian of the Winchester Franciscans as a messenger to the king in Bordeaux.117 In 1297 Franciscans from Bayonne arrived in England as messengers from the earl of Lincoln, who was conducting military operations in the duchy in this year, while the king was dealing with the situation in Flanders, using Franciscans from the convent in Ghent as negotiators with the count of Holland. When the king’s brother Edmund commanded forces in the duchy in the following year, he also sent Franciscans from the convent in Bayonne.118 English royal support for the Irish Franciscan province was to acquire political significance in the second half of the thirteenth century, when ethnic conflicts between the Irish and the settlers erupted in 1285. While its founders had come from England, the creation of the Irish province would not have been possible on the basis of friars sent from England.119 The balance shifted over time, however. The material assistance provided by the English crown to the convents of Dublin, Waterford, Drogheda, Cork, Kilkenny, Ath Leathan, Dundalk, Castledermot and Carrickfergus, some of whom appear to have already been receiving regular subsidies by the mid-1240s, also presented a degree of influence over the Irish province.120 Ministers provincial of the Irish province usually were English. Despite a promise to do so, Henry iii does not seem to have heeded the request of the Irish cathedral chapters and the island’s Franciscan province not to confirm the election of a Franciscan to any Irish see unless the minister provincial gave his approval. In 1253 he agreed to the election of Tomás Ó Cuinn as bishop of Clonmacnois, in 1256 the postulation of Jams Hualagdnan to be archbishop of Tuam, and in 1269 the election of Ualter Ó Mithigéin as bishop of Ros.121 Such appointments presented important opportunities to influence Irish affairs. When Raymond Gaufredi, the order’s

116 117 118 119 120

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cpr, 1247–1258, 594, 608–609. tna, e36/201 fol. 29r; Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289, 98, no. 867. bl, ms Add. 7965 fols 10v, 25v, 31r, 53r. Cotter, The Friars Minor in Ireland, 24, 32–33. clr, 1226–1240, 195; ccr, 1234–1237, 287; cpr, 1232–1247, 461, 467, 492; cr, 1242–1247, 513; cr, 1247–1251, 72. For the continuation of regular payments to some Irish Franciscan convents see: cpr, 1292–1301, 56. cpr, 1232–1247, 444; cpr, 1247–1258, 179, 504; cpr, 1266–1272, 366.

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minister general, visited Ireland in September 1291, he was given the full support of English royal authority.122 Efforts were made by the government to win the support of the order’s leadership and general chapter in political issues, a degree of loyalty was expected from the friars in the three provinces under the king’s political influence, England, Ireland and Aquitaine. Donations and payments to the friars assembling at their provincial chapter meetings, of the king’s gift, ‘de dono regis’, had been made since the 1230s. By 1241 the royal contributions were to extend over three days, for the king, the queen and the children of the royal couple, presumably in expectation of the friars’ prayers for the donors.123 Similar arrangements were made for the order’s general chapters. In November 1294, after the breakdown in relations with France, while Edward i was already preparing the force he was going to send to Gascony, he asked the Franciscan general chapter to pray for peace and to pray for him and his children. In the following year William of Gainsborough was sent as the king’s ambassador to the general chapter of his own order, presumably to explain Edward i’s position. The friar’s expenses were paid by the crown.124 Upon his return Gainsborough came ‘per preceptum regis’ to the parliament held at Westminster from 1 August 1295.125 The king also requested prayers for peace from each Franciscan house in England.126 The English king clearly needed the Franciscans’ support and, when the order’s general chapter met in Lyon in 1299, he expressed his concern that those friars who had been favourable to his cause might not be disciplined.127 On the other hand, the emerging centralized state could exert control over those friars who lived under immediate royal authority. Like other religious, English Franciscans needed royal assistance for the arrest of apostates.128 The English as well as the Irish provincial ministers needed a royal permission to attend the general chapter of their order and, in times of crisis, Franciscans as well as other religious could be prevented from leaving the kingdom.129 Just as the Franciscan order and its requirements of support changed, the relationship between the Greyfriars and the English kings was also transformed. These pro-

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Cotter, The Friars Minor in Ireland, 37–38; cpr, 1281–1292, 444. ccr, 1237–1242, 208, 294; clr, 1245–1251, 70. ccr, 1288–1296, 438, 440; cpr, 1292–1301, 131; tna, c81/8/742, e403/90 m 3. tna, e36/202 fol. 44r. ccr, 1288–1296, 506–507. ccr, 1296–1302, 302. cpr, 1247–1258, 48; cpr, 1313–1317, 217; tna, c81/1792 m 11; Donald Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England c. 1240–1540 (Cambridge, 1990), 97–111. cpr, 1281–1292, 155; ccr, 1288–1296, 407; ccr, 1327–1330, 107.

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cesses reveal the degree to which an international ecclesiastical institution and a strong centralized monarchy could cooperate. The example of the Franciscans gives an insight into the complexities of the relationship between Church and state in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

part 2 The Rule of the Friars Minor and Its Preservation

∵

chapter 5

Elias of Cortona and the English Friars Michael F. Cusato

In 1232, for reasons uncertain, John Parenti, minister general of the order of Friars Minor, abruptly resigned his functions as head of the Franciscan fraternity. He had served as minister of the friars since the time of the general chapter of 1227, which took place approximately seven months after the death of the founder, Francis of Assisi (†1226). But John’s unexpected resignation now deprived the order of its administrative leader. Although information on these events is scant, it would seem that a representative group of friars hastily gathered at Rieti in 1232 in the company of Pope Gregory ix, and chose (or were given) a new leader for the order: the famous Brother Elias of Cortona.1 Elias was no stranger to the ranks of leadership.2 He had previously served as ‘minister and servant of all the friars’ since the general chapter of 1221, having been given the reins of governance upon the unexpected death of Peter Catania, a mere six months after the resignation of Francis at the emergency chapter of September 1220. Elias shepherded the order through the drafting of a new and official Rule (the Regula bullata or Later Rule of 1223) and the

1 The most important scholarship on the multifaceted career of Elias of Cortona includes: Eduard Lempp, Frère Élie de Cortone. Étude biographique, Collection d’études et de documents sur l’ histoire religieuse et littéraire du Moyen Age 3 (Paris, 1901); Giuseppe Odoardi, ‘Elia, di Assisi’, in Dizionario degli Istituti di perfezione (Rome, 1976), vol. 3, cols 1094–110; Giulia Barone, ‘Frater Elia’, Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano 85 (1974–1975), 89–144; P. Dallari, Frate Elia: architetto della Basilica d’Assisi e di Cortona, Collezione ‘Alfa’ (Milan, 1970); P. Dallari, Il drama di Frate Elia, Collezione ‘Alfa’, 2nd ed. (Milan, 1976); Giulia Barone, ‘Frate Elia: suggestioni da una rilettura’, in I compagni di Francesco e la prima generazione minoritica. Atti del xix Convegno internazionale, Assisi, 17–19 ottobre 1991, Atti dei Convegni della Società internazionale di Studi Francescani e del Centro interuniversitario di Studi Francescani. Nuova serie 2 (Spoleto, 1992), 59–80; Michael F. Cusato, ‘“Non propheta, sed prophanus apostata”: The eschatology of Elias of Cortona and his deposition as minister general in 1239’, in That Others May Know and Love: Essays in Honor of Zachary Hayes, ofm, ed. Michael F. Cusato and F. Edward Coughlin (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1997), 255– 283; and, most recently, the various essays in the volume: Elia di Cortona tra realtà e mito. Atti dell’Incontro di studio, Cortona, 12–13 luglio 2013, Figure e temi francescani 2 (Spoleto, 2014). 2 Cf. Jacques Dalarun, ‘Élie vicaire’, in Elia di Cortona tra realtà e mito, 17–59.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_006

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events surrounding the death of the poverello. Indeed, he served as minister until the chapter of 1227 when the fraternity turned to John Parenti as its new minister general.3 The setting aside of Elias was due to the fact that both he and Gregory ix were engaged in developing the ambitious plans for the building of the great basilica complex in honour of St Francis outside the city of Assisi. By the time of the next general chapter, held in Assisi in 1230—within the context of the translation of the remains of the saint across the city from the church of San Giorgio to the crypt of the rising basilica—the basilica project was well on its way. The outer skeleton of the great ecclesial structure was virtually completed by the time of John’s resignation in 1232. The feat of swift construction thus freed Elias to resume, as it were, his governance of the Franciscan order.

1

The Infamous Extraordinary Visitations of 1237–1238

One might assume that, though no longer serving as chief engineer on the great basilica project, proximity to the construction site in Assisi was probably still considered by Elias to be a desideratum, given the ongoing work being carried forward within the monumental structures.4 Hence, in this light, it does not seem surprising that Elias would not have set out on any lengthy peregrinations across Europe in order to encourage the life and work of his friars. Rather, he remained quite rooted in and around the area of Assisi, except for a handful of diplomatic missions carried out on behalf of his friend, Pope Gregory ix. However, this lack of peripatetic action—coupled with his failure to call a general chapter (as counselled by the definitive Rule)—would soon come to be viewed in a negative light by a number of friars, especially in the wake of the events which would unfold over the next years, from 1237 to 1239. In these tumultuous events, the English friars would play a significant and fateful role.

3 In the hagiographical writings of the period, Elias is traditionally referred to, during his first term of leadership (1221–1227), as ‘the saint’s vicar’ (rather than as ‘minister general’), out of respect for the founder while he was yet living. John Parenti is thus usually regarded and referred to, strictu sensu, as the first ‘minister general’ of the order. 4 On the matter of Elias’s involvement in the basilica, see the remarks of Fulvio Cervini, ‘Elia e l’arte del costruire’, in Elia di Cortona tra realtà e mito, 213–231. Due to its modern connotations, I prefer to use ‘engineer’ (or even ‘planner’) rather than ‘architect’ when referring to Elias’s involvement in the basilica project.

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These events were initially spurred by the sending out of an unexpected and unprecedented series of provincial visitations. It is the chronicle of Jordan of Giano—an Italian friar who had been part of the great missionary push to Germany sent north from the general chapter of 1221—that offers us the most succinct account of the sending out of these special visitators in (or around) the year 1237: In the year of our Lord 1237, Brother Elias sent visitators to the various provinces with the intention of furthering his own plans. And because of these irregular visitations (visitaciones inordinatas), the brothers were even more incensed against him than they were before.5 There are three things to note in this passage. The first is that these visitations were considered extraordinary or irregular (inordinatae) since they had not been commissioned as the result of any general chapter, that is, as the normal follow-up to the work of the chapter. Indeed, no chapter of any import had been convoked since the tumultuous assembly of 1230.6 Hence, the visitators had been sent out solely on the authority of the minister general.7 Secondly, the visitations were only conducted in certain provinces (ad singulas provincias) rather than in all the provinces. We have explicit information about these visitations from only four of them—those in Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland; it is unclear as to whether others may have been conducted elsewhere (in France or Italy, for example). And thirdly, given Jordan’s occasional lapses in memory, it might be advisable to posit that these visitations occurred at some point between the years 1237 and 1238. In Jordan’s recollection, however, what 5 Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 62. xiiith Century Chronicles, 17–77, esp. 65. Jordan was writing some twenty years after the mission. 6 Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 61: ‘Infra septem enim annos capitulum generale secundum regulam non tenuit …’. xiiith Century Chronicles, 64. 7 Unless we consider the chapter of 1232 as a general chapter. Jordan of Giano is unique in referring to this chapter (in which, he claims, Elias was re-elected general) as a generale capitulum. One should note, however, that he gets the city wrong (Rome); there is general agreement that it took place in Rieti. Cf. Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 61; xiiith Century Chronicles, 64. The previous chapter of 1230 witnessed the turbulent translation of the relics of St Francis to the crypt of the new basilica and the breaking down of the doors of the chapter house by the partisans of Elias—with the excluded friar hiked up on their shoulders, demanding he be a part of the proceedings—throwing the assembly into chaos. While Elias escaped the sentence of excommunication meted out to several actors in the botched translation debacle, he went to do penance in a hermitage for his part in orchestrating (or allowing to be orchestrated) the virtual attempted coup at the general chapter and the chaos of the translation.

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happened in 1238 (the delegations sent down to the Roman Curia against Elias) followed causally from what had preceded it (the visitations). Curiously, Jordan says nothing else about the visitation conducted in Germany. For a more detailed, if subjective, accounting of what might have occurred elsewhere to rile up certain friars against Elias, we have to turn to the chronicle of the English friar, Thomas of Eccleston. Indeed, Thomas will devote an entire chapter—the eighth—to, what he calls, the ‘chapters of the visitators’.8 This eighth chapter begins with a fairly innocuous statement of fact: ‘It happened after this that individual visitators (speciales visitatores) were sent to England who celebrated chapters as part of the visitation’.9 Eccleston then goes on to report, quite dispassionately, on two such visitations. The first was conducted by Brother William of Coleville the Elder who celebrated a chapter in London where the minister provincial, Agnellus of Pisa (the founder of the English province), was also present. This visitation had most likely been initiated at the conclusion of the general chapter of 1227. The second visitation was led by Brother John of Malvern who, it is said, brought with him the exposition of the Rule issued by Gregory ix in order to help explain its contents to the friars. This visitation had thus been planned for a number of months after the conclusion of the general chapter of 1230 and the subsequent issuance of Gregory’s bull, Quo elongati (28 September 1230), which attempted to address nagging doubts about the correct interpretation of the Rule of 1223. Eccleston then goes on to report that chapter meetings were held throughout the province in London, Leicester and Bristol.10 Nothing more of note is said about these first two visitators. Both had been sent out as a follow-on from a general chapter of the order; and both had been dispatched during the time of the minister general, John Parenti, the predecessor of Brother Elias of Cortona in this office. But the third visitation mentioned by Thomas is of another calibre altogether: The third visitator came from the minister general, Brother Elias, under Brother Albert.11 This visitator was Brother Wygerius, a German, a man 8 9 10

11

Eccleston, 38–40; xiiith Century Chronicles, 131–134. Eccleston, 37; xiiith Century Chronicles, 131. Eccleston, 38; xiiith Century Chronicles, 131–132. These cities do not conform to the custodial seats established after the chapter of 1230 and mentioned by Eccleston, 34–36; xiiith Century Chronicles, 128–130. Agnellus of Pisa, the founder of the English province, died in 1236. He was succeeded by Albert of Pisa, who had been provincial in a number of other provinces.

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very renowned for his legal knowledge, conspicuous for his integrity of conduct and a close friend of the cardinal Otto12, who was at that time legate in England.13 This third visitation is characterized as not having been authorized by the general chapter but rather as a result of the personal instance of the minister general, Elias. But Thomas goes on to give us his own opinion about this controversial— since extraordinary—visitation: He [Wygerius] had received a very strict and detailed mandate from the minister general and, especially, that those [friars] should be immediately excommunicated who in any way whatsoever hid anything from him or who revealed what he had said; and that, from this sentence, no one but himself could absolve; and above all, that he should report all accusations to the minister general.14 One such encounter in which Wygerius severely took one of the English friars to task is recounted in a telling testimony; it serves, for Thomas, as an example of the harshness of the examination being conducted by the visitator on Elias’s orders in the English province: In the chapter of the visitation of Brother Wygerius, Brother Eustace de Merc of happy memory was accused repeatedly and he was excluded from the chapter for a day and a half. A certain other brother, however, about whom less was believed, was immediately exonerated.15 This actually agrees with Jordan’s perception of the mandate given to his visitators by Elias and with the behaviour of the minister general himself as being vindictive or punitive against those who might run afoul of him: ‘he dispersed hither and thither the friars who resisted him’.16 12 13 14

15 16

Otto de Monteferrato (or also referred to as Oddone di Monferrato), cardinal from 1227– 1250 or 1251. Eccleston, 38; xiiith Century Chronicles, 132. Eccleston, 38–39; xiiith Century Chronicles, 133. Further on, Thomas adds to his comments about the power of the visitator: ‘For, over and above the visitation, the visitator had [been given] power, and in his mandate he had received instructions to do certain things that might have resulted in notable harm to the friars’. Eccleston, 40; xiiith Century Chronicles, 134. Jordan of Giano, 58–59, no. 61; xiiith Century Chronicles, 64.

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Thus, the overall verdict of the English friars on these visitations, according to Thomas, was uniformly negative: As a result, there was such a commotion among the brothers everywhere that nothing like it had ever been seen before in the order. For after he [Wygerius] had called together the brothers at London, Southampton, Gloucester and Oxford, they came in great numbers and protracted their stay unduly. And because of the mutual accusations within the order and the suspicions of the seculars without, an intolerable storm suddenly arose throughout the province.17 Eccleston then concludes his report with the following statement: In the end, when the visitation was somehow [utcunque] completed, the provincial chapter was celebrated at Oxford and a unanimous appeal was made against Brother Elias.18 This report comports fairly well with that given, in more succinct fashion, by Jordan of Giano: namely, that the result of the extraordinary visitation was that it stirred up strong negative feelings among the friars against the minister general. The Italian friar-chronicler, Salimbene, writing long after these events, adds another detail about the extra-capitular visitations. But due to his openly hostile attitude towards the minister general throughout the chronicle, the actual veracity of his account is sometimes difficult to determine. Salimbene prefers to highlight the perceived harm done to the provincial ministers whose territories were the object of these extraordinary visitations. Placing these events within the broader context of the case which he was compiling against Elias, Salimbene accused Elias of abusing the authority of these ministers:

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Eccleston, 38–39; xiiith Century Chronicles, 133. The ‘unduly protracted stay’ hints at the turbulence of the encounter and its loud and lengthy debates. Eccleston notes that Wygerius then went on to conduct a visitation in the province of Scotland. But the friars there, indignant over the very idea of an extraordinary visitation—since they had already been visited after the general chapter of 1230 by the minister provincial of Ireland— formulated an appeal against the visitation and presented it to Wygerius at the convocation. Angered, he took the appeal and returned to Germany, but not before appointing William of Ashby as visitator of the Irish province—an event which occurred in a seemingly perfunctory and tranquil manner. Eccleston, 39; xiiith Century Chronicles, 133.

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The sixth fault of Brother Elias was that he treated the ministers provincial harshly and abusively unless they paid him off with money and gifts … [Indeed], Brother Elias held such powerful sway over the ministers provincial that they trembled before him like a reed struck by the water or a lark terrified by the swooping of a hawk. And no wonder, since he himself was a ‘son of Belial’ … [1Kgs 25:17] … And thus it was that … a spirit of vengeance began to grow in the minds of his ministers; but they bided their time …19 A little further on, he summarizes the gist of his accusations: Under Elias’s governance, his ministers provincial were victims of the three abuses I have just described: they were slandered, they were subjected to harsh judgment, and justice was undermined in their provinces. This last abuse I saw clearly with my own eyes … Thus, whatever the minister ordained for his province, the visitator could completely disrupt, adding or subtracting as he liked … In truth, Brother Elias sent ministers who were extortioners rather than correctors, for they went around asking the provinces and the ministers for money and gifts …20 This is a highly charged passage, but is it true? The first observation to make is that, in assessing the impact of these extraordinary visitations, the Italian friar puts the emphasis on the effect which the presence of the visitators had upon the ministers provincial. In this, he sharpens the comments made by Eccleston with respect to a couple of friars who had come in for particular censure by the visitator Wygerius. Nonetheless, Sal-

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Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 153. Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 40, ed. and tr. Joseph L. Baird (Binghamton, ny, 1986), 84–85. This latter translation uses the Latin text established by Giuseppe Scalia of 1966, supplemented by the classic text of O. Holder-Egger (1905–1913). Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 155, reads: ‘Verum Helyas potius mittebat visitatores qui essent exactatores, quam qui essent correctores, et qui sollicitarent provincias et ministros ad tributa solvenda et munera largienda’. There seems to be an inference here that Salimbene either witnessed an Italian version of these visitations or a display of Elias’s alleged punitive temper. One should not forget the punishment meted out to Caesar of Speyer by Elias, between 1238 and 1239, for having dared to publicly criticize, in writing (= the text of the Sacrum commercium), the direction taken by the order during Elias’s generalate: a house arrest that unfortunately ended in Caesar’s untimely death. Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 86.

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imbene draws out the implication for sitting provincials having their provinces intruded upon by non-mandated visitations: by men with the authority to examine, critique and punish behaviour and activities which they deemed to be contrary to the Rule or, as Salimbene would have it, contrary to the whims or wishes of the minister general. A second touches on the issue of the nature of Franciscan authority at this time. Salimbene views Elias as authoritarian in the extreme, being able to make his ministers provincial cower before him. This, Salimbene claims, generated a spirit of revenge against Elias which would eventually bring him down in 1239. However, the testimony of Jordan should also be kept in mind, namely that: Brother Elias had the whole order in his power, just as Blessed Francis had had it and also Brother John Parenti who had preceded him; whence he arranged many things according to his own will rather than for the good of the order …21 In other words, according to Jordan, it was in the nature of Franciscan authority at this time to be centralized in the hands of the minister general, whoever he happened to be. And thirdly: What about the accusation that these visitators were not simply correctors (something which would have certainly been in their purview) but also ‘extortioners’ of money and gifts? Here, we have to turn once again to Jordan’s chronicle, where some specific information helps to bolster Salimbene’s more caustic claim: But Brother Elias, having been elected minister general, wishing to complete the building he had begun at Assisi in honour of St Francis, ordered levies [exacciones] upon the whole order to complete the work.22 Jordan makes this comment in the context of the changes set in place after Elias’s election as general in 1232 in Rieti. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable enough to conclude that one of the mandates of these visitators would have been, quite naturally, to bring back to Assisi the goodwill offerings gathered from the laity (but collected by the ministers provincial) for the basilica project, which was nearing its completion. Indeed, we know that Elias had ordered the

21 22

Jordan of Giano, 58–59, no. 61; xiiith Century Chronicles, 64. Jordan of Giano, 58, no. 61; xiiith Century Chronicles, 64.

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casting of a very large bell for the basilica’s tower—and perhaps five others like it—which would have needed funding to complete.23 In sum, then, these extraordinary visitations were regarded, at least by some of the friars and in particular by certain ministers provincial, as intrusive with regard to the regular affairs of the provinces and as trampling upon the duly constituted authority of the ministers. They seem to have been conducted, at least in the two places for which we have evidence, in a rather harsh and even punitive manner, forcing the friars—if Eccleston is to be believed—to divulge, under pain of punishment or even excommunication, the secrets of their hearts. This generated a great deal of resentment among the friars in general and the ministers in particular. And, thirdly, the added burden of having to inveigh upon the generosity of local benefactors would have only added to the sour taste left in the mouths of the friars in these same provinces. For another high-profile English friar, the papal penitentiary, Brother Arnulph, perhaps expressed most acerbically the opinion of his fellow countrymen, when Eccleston reports him as having said: [T]hat if the Devil himself were incarnate, he could not have found a more subtle or more forceful snare to catch souls than the visitation just completed!24 Such simmering resentment would soon be translated into retaliatory action led, most particularly, by the friars of English origin.

2

The Convergence at the Curia of Reform-Minded Appeals against Elias (1238)

For both Jordan and Thomas of Eccleston, the result of these visitations was that they spurred the urgent sending of delegations to the papal court to voice displeasure at what had just occurred. Jordan’s reportage is the most complete on this score, having been the leader of the German delegation: After taking counsel, therefore, the friars decided, as a group, to provide for the order … In the year of our Lord 1238, the brothers of Saxony

23 24

Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 155 [Engl. trans., 87]: ‘unam campanam grandem et pulchram atque sonogram, quam vidi, cum aliis v similibus ei …’ Eccleston, 39–40; xiiith Century Chronicles, 134.

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appealed to the minister general against these visitators. They sent messengers to him [Elias], but they gained nothing at all as a result. They were, therefore, forced to appeal to the Lord Pope [Gregory ix].25 After recounting that Gregory was not particularly pleased to see this group of complaining friars, Jordan then notes that: [T]he Lord Pope then became cheerful, arose and seated himself on the couch and, asking why we had come, added: ‘I know that you have [previously] appealed; Brother Elias, however, coming to me, said you would appeal by going over his head; and I replied to him that an appeal made to me trumps all other appeals’. After Brother Jordan had made clear to the Pope the matters about which the appeal [to Elias] had been made, the Pope replied that the brothers had done well to appeal.26 He then adds a somewhat cryptic statement: When, therefore, various brothers [ fratribus diversis] had come together to the Curia to pursue the appeal they had made, and after a long discussion had been carried on, in the end the advice of the majority was that nothing should be done except to put their hand to the root, that is, to proceed directly against Elias.27 It would seem from this testimony that Jordan is referring to certain friars in addition to those who had come with him as part of the German delegation. Apparently, there was another delegation (or even delegations) which he either knew about or whose paths might have criss-crossed with theirs at the Curia. Indeed, Jordan had already noted that there was another delegation being led by Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, representing the friars at the University of Paris. This was the French delegation. Alexander was an English friar and the leading intellectual of his generation at the university; John of La Rochelle was a friar of French origin who was Alexander’s disciple. This group had likewise come to the papal court to register their displeasure at the recent visitations.28 25 26 27 28

Jordan of Giano, 58–60, nn. 61, 63; xiiith Century Chronicles, 65. Jordan of Giano, 59–60, no. 63; xiiith Century Chronicles, 65–66. For the relevant text from the Rule of 1223, see: Later Rule, 8, v. 4, in fa:ed, i, 104. Jordan of Giano, 59–60, no. 63; xiiith Century Chronicles, 66. Jordan of Giano, 59, no. 61; xiiith Century Chronicles, 65.

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But there was more. A hint of the growing opposition that was fomenting in England against Elias was similarly voiced by Thomas of Eccleston, claiming that ‘when the visitation was somehow completed … a unanimous appeal was then made against Brother Elias …’.29 This seems to be a reference to an English delegation which now raised its voice at the Curia. But, in this particular passage, Thomas does not specify the leadership of this group. Rather, in a later section of his chronicle— in the thirteenth chapter specifically devoted to the minister general—he claims: Afterwards, because Elias had upset the whole order by his worldly living and his cruelty, Brother Haymo moved an appeal against him at Paris …30 What is interesting here is that, for the English chronicler, Haymo of Faversham seems to function both as a member of the French contingent (he was the leading custos of the province of France) but also, in a way, as the emblematic representative of the perspective of the English friars. Therefore, reading between the lines of these testimonies, there seems to have been a delegation from Germany (led by Jordan), one also from Paris (led by the likes of Haymo, Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle) and possibly one also from the English province.31 But the second group (the French delegation), with its strong contingent of English friars living at the studium in Paris, was essentially an Anglo-French delegation. Indeed, we can also add one other Englishman to the group, as Thomas attests: I myself saw, while still in secular clothing, namely Brother Richard Rufus, a renowned lector, who later, in his zeal for the reform of the order against Brother Elias, went to the curia on behalf of France with Brother Haymo.32

29 30 31

32

Eccleston, 39; xiiith Century Chronicles, 133. Eccleston, 67; xiiith Century Chronicles, 154. Nor should we forget that Robert Grosseteste himself, as bishop of Lincoln, but intimately familiar with the friars in Oxford—he taught the friars theology from 1229 until his acceptance of the episcopal see in 1235—wrote to Gregory ix as well as to the cardinal protector, Rainaldo di Segni, to complain about the heavy-handedness of the minister general in sending an extraordinary visitation to the province of England. Cf. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 179–182. Eccleston, 30; xiiith Century Chronicles, 123.

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In short, from all evidence available to us, the appeal brought against Elias to Gregory ix at the papal court was largely—though not exclusively—the work of the English friars. What happened as a result of these delegations? Jordan, once again, is the one who gives us the most comprehensive report of these gatherings of 1238.33 When the friars gathered to write down their case against Elias, they could not agree. Opinions among the friars were divided as to what the nub issues really were; and how—or in what order—they needed to be addressed. Different friars (or, more likely, groups of friars from different provinces) differed on where the root problem lay. Was it the person of Elias himself? Was it the absence of clear legislation (constitutions) in the order which might have helped establish parameters and guidelines for the behaviour of the minister general, the ministers and friars? They needed to clarify, for themselves, what needed reforming and what needed, perhaps, more drastic action. Thus, in a second moment, after a thorough discussion, their consensus document was presented to Gregory; and, this time, it received a more favourable hearing: He decreed that the brothers there assembled should now return to their provinces and that from the various provinces, and especially from those which had moved the question of the reformation of the order, twenty mature and discreet brothers should be sent to converse at Rome four weeks before the general chapter and frame regulations for the welfare and reformation of the order.34 The pope thus told the friars to return to their home provinces and elect among themselves a kind of steering committee which would meet one month before the general chapter in order to formulate a plan for the reform of the order. The writing was now on the wall for the beleaguered Brother Elias.

3

The Deposition of Elias by the General Chapter of Rome (1239)

Jordan is rather perfunctory in reporting what happened next at the chapter in May of 1239.35 But his reportage coincides with the issue which both he— and the English—were most concerned about: the good conduct of the order

33 34 35

Jordan of Giano, 60, no. 64; xiiith Century Chronicles, 66. Jordan of Giano, 60, no. 64; xiiith Century Chronicles, 66–67. Jordan of Giano, 60, no. 65; xiiith Century Chronicles, 67.

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according to proper legislation. Positions of authority—ministers provincial, custodes, guardians and, of course, visitators—had to act in accordance with clear mandates coming out of the general chapter and not according to the whims or desires of a given minister general. But it is Thomas of Eccleston who gives us the most fulsome accounting of the dramatic events that now unfolded in Rome. Though not an eyewitness— but ever the cleric representative of English Franciscanism—he reports a number of fascinating details to allow us to reconstruct the next events. First, he claims that Elias had been adamantly opposed to the calling of this chapter. Nonetheless: … Many ministers provincial and many of the best brothers from the Cismontane provinces gathered to celebrate a general chapter, [with] Brother Arnulph, penitentiary of the Lord Pope Gregory ix, acting on behalf of the order at the Roman Curia. Therefore, after a long consultation, friars were chosen from the whole order to provide for the reformation of the order. When this was done, an account of it was given in the general chapter before the pope, at which seven cardinals were also present.36 This passage tells us that, after the various delegations had returned home, a certain amount of coordination took place between the provinces and the curia. This coordination was apparently carried out under the auspices of the English friar, Arnulph, Gregory’s penitentiary. It is he who would make sure that a steering committee had been chosen and that it would come to Rome prior to the chapter in order to set the agenda for the chapter proceedings in accordance with what was perceived as being wrong in the order of Friars Minor. At this point in Eccleston’s narration comes the most interesting passage: the sermon delivered by Gregory ix to open the general chapter. He tells us that Gregory preached on the passage from Daniel 2:29: ‘Thou, O king, began to think while on your bed what should come to pass hereafter’. We shall return to this sermon shortly, for it will be a crucial datum for unravelling the complex motivations influencing the fate of the minister general. But first, the English chronicler relates how an argument broke out on the chapter floor. This is where Thomas puts his imagination to work in interpreting what happened— and why. Using an image culled from the biblical text of Daniel evoking the

36

Eccleston, 67; xiiith Century Chronicles, 154.

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famous statue of diverse metals (specifically, its golden head), he claims that members of the chapter launched into an assault on Elias’s alleged worldly behaviour: his eating of gold (an ancient remedy—though costly—for curing ill health) and then, moving beyond the Old Testament text, Elias’s reliance upon a large horse for getting around.37 In other words, the chapter discussion had immediately moved onto the plane of ad hominem attacks about Brother Elias’s lifestyle, which, apparently, had been giving offence to certain friars. Elias put up a staunch defence, pleading ill health. But then Brother Haymo arose to counter these self-serving arguments. At first, he was denied a hearing by the pope. But then Cardinal Robert of Somercote adamantly implored Gregory to allow Haymo to have his say.38 Haymo and Elias then faced off on the chapter floor: the Englishman launching into a spirited attack on Elias’s lifestyle and the minister general defending himself on the basis of his health. The chapter soon descended into bitter recriminations between the supporters and defenders of the famous minister general. The pope eventually silenced the tumult. The cardinal protector of the order, Rainaldo dei Conti di Segni (the future Pope Alexander iv), then got up and, given the divisions tearing the order asunder, suggested that Brother Elias resign. The general promptly refused. But then Gregory, having seen and heard enough, told Elias that he was being deposed as minister general, for, according to the wording of the Rule, he had obviously lost the confidence of his confrères.39 Eccleston then succinctly reports: And immediately [Gregory] released him from the office of minister general. There was then such immense and inexpressible joy that those who merited to be present said that they had never seen anything like it.40 After the pope interviewed each of the delegates to determine their will, Gregory announced the election of Albert of Pisa, the current minister provincial of England, who, along with his confrères Haymo, Richard Rufus and Arnulph had been the leaders of the anti-Elias party at the general chapter. He was the first ordained priest to hold the reins of authority as minister general of the order of

37 38 39 40

Eccleston, 67; xiiith Century Chronicles, 154. Eccleston, 67; xiiith Century Chronicles, 154. Eccleston, 68–69; xiiith Century Chronicles, 155. Eccleston, 68; xiiith Century Chronicles, 155.

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Friars Minor. In his place as provincial of the English province, Gregory would then install none other than Haymo of Faversham.41 As an ecstatic Eccleston would have it: Therefore, Brother Albert, conducted himself in a praiseworthy manner in the office of minister general by correcting the excesses of his predecessor; he occupied himself beyond the mountains where the greater deformation of the order had taken place.42 Albert’s generalate, however, was short-lived; he died not long afterwards in Rome on 23 January 1240, ‘commending the English above all for their zeal for the order’. He would then be succeeded by Haymo himself who, according to Thomas, would ‘carry on what Brother Albert had begun’.43

4

A Brief Assessment of the Reasons for Elias’s Deposition as Minister General

Historians attempting to come to terms with the turbulent events in the second half of the 1230s which led up to and culminated in the forced removal of Brother Elias of Cortona from his office as minister general, must always confront a problem regarding the sources concerning Elias. Certainly, his passing over into the camp of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick ii, within a few months of his deposition, has muddied the waters with respect to his relationship with the Franciscan order. Such an action earned him, ipso facto, immediate excommunication as well as the opprobrium of most of his former confrères. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to know whether—or to what degree— the chronicles that report on the events of this period (1232–1239) have been tainted by his post-capitular actions. Nevertheless, it is important for any critical observer to try to distance oneself from the events and their reportage in order to grasp, in a fuller way, the

41 42 43

Eccleston, 69; xiiith Century Chronicles, 156. Eccleston, 69–70; xiiith Century Chronicles, 157. Eccleston, 70; xiiith Century Chronicles, 157. Eccleston, 85. In the following collatio, Thomas writes, concerning Albert of Pisa: ‘After he had ruled nobly over England for two and a half years, he proceeded with many others against Brother Elias, and after serving as minister general, he died a happy death in Rome among the English friars. Brother Haymo succeeded him; he cared for the brothers in a kindly way …’ xiiith Century Chronicles, 172.

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various dynamics leading up to Elias’s deposition in 1239. Allow me to summarize these dynamics as four points or reasons, the last being the most crucial. The first thing which turned certain friars against Elias had to do with his lifestyle as a Franciscan. This was the primary objection raised from the camp of the companions of St Francis. Beginning with a profound unease among some of them—Caesar of Speyer and Giles of Assisi in the lead—about the building of the basilica complex and its attendant abandonment of the original posture of social minoritas vis-à-vis the world and the involvement of the order in the necessary activities of fund-raising and vast expenditures of money to honour the saint of Assisi, this drifting of Elias away from the minorite conscience incumbent upon a follower of Francis disturbed those friars closest to Francis in his latter days: those who had cared for him in the remote hermitages of the region. The text of the Sacrum commercium—a stinging, if veiled critique of the basilica project—stands as the most telling indictment against this perceived betrayal.44 But their unease opened the door to further, more personal critiques of Elias’s self-pampering in matters of personal comfort, food and general laxity of life. When all is said and done, however, these ad hominem attacks represented one of the strongest arguments which the fraternity could use to get rid of Elias, based upon the language of the Rule. For such behaviour had caused many to ‘lose confidence’ in him as a truly Franciscan leader of the Franciscan order. The second reason is, perhaps, the one which most contemporary observers of Franciscan history tend to assume was operative among those demanding Elias’s removal from office. Ever since the famous confrontation between Francis of Assisi and the clerical party within the growing fraternity at the emergency chapter of late September 1220, the clerics had been the ascendency— both in numbers and in influence—in the Franciscan order. For them, the primary purpose of this new evangelical movement was to be at the service of the Church and, effectively, of the papacy and its apostolic mission. This is the origin of the clericalization of the order of Friars Minor: the involvement of an ever-increasing number of its recruits in the clerical ministries of preaching, hearing confessions and burying the dead.45 Although Elias was support44

45

On my interpretation of this seminal document, see: Michael F. Cusato, ‘Talking about Ourselves: The Shift in Franciscan Writing from Hagiography to History (1235–1247)’, now reprinted in Cusato, The Early Franciscan Movement (1205–1239): History, Sources and Hermeneutics (Spoleto, 2009), 339–375, esp. 343–354. A much fuller exposition is forthcoming. Lawrence C. Landini, The Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor, 1209–1260 (Chicago, 1968); Raoul Manselli, ‘La clericalizzazione dei Minori e Bonaventura’, in Bonaventura francescano. Atti del Convegno, Todi, 14–17 ottobre 1973, Atti dei Convegni del Centro di

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ive of the development of studia throughout the order, he was, nonetheless, perceived by many clerics in the north of Europe as standing in the way of a wholehearted involvement—like the Friars Preacher—in the clerical apostolate. The English friar, Haymo of Faversham, in particular, represents this orientation within the order, as his activities as minister general would soon amply demonstrate (even to the point of limiting, in the first set of constitutions of the community, the entrance of lay brothers into the group). And the elaborate structure of studia within the English province testifies to the importance of this orientation as well. Salimbene, likewise, grouses repeatedly about Elias’s frequent appointment of lay brothers to significant posts throughout the order rather than, in his opinion, more useful clerics. Nevertheless, as significant as the subsequent evolution of the order into a highly clerical entity along Dominican lines is, it appears—at least in the documentary record—as less determinative of the replacement of the lay Elias with the cleric Albert of Pisa. On the other hand, the third reason that can be adduced for Elias’s deposition at the general chapter was, in reality, far more determinative. This factor pivots on the divergent conceptions of the purpose and use of power and religious authority in the order of Friars Minor. And it is primarily on the basis of this issue that the English friars in particular, drew a line in the sand against the minister general. For, as we have seen, the extraordinary visitations sent out into the provinces by Brother Elias were viewed by these friars as unnecessary, unwarranted and, indeed, abusive demonstrations of an authoritarian minister who was intent on shaping the order in accord with his own wishes. The fact of these visitations was indicative of the intrusiveness of the minister general in the local affairs of the friars which, according to this mentality, fell within the purview of the ministers, duly designated either at the general chapter (that is, under the authority of the chapter) or appointed—as in the case of Albert of Pisa in 1236—between such chapters. And it was but a small step to extend this sense of grievance to a number of other actions taken by Elias over the previous few years: namely, the appointment of ‘his own’ men to positions of importance in the provinces; his transfer of those who resisted his will to the far-flung regions; his refusal to convoke a general chapter in accordance with the counsel of the Rule; and his reluctance to draw up constitutions addressing the ambiguous nature of current Franciscan legislation. This perceived intrusiveness rankled with the English, in particular; and consequently it was they who led the charge on this front against the general.46 Two

46

studi sulla spiritualità medievale, 14 (Todi, 1977), 181–208; and, more generally, Rosalind B. Brooke, Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge, 1959). We have already mentioned Haymo of Faversham, Alexander of Hales, Richard Rufus

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reasons can be posited for this. First, as noted above,47 many of the clerical friars had become enamoured of the Dominican genius for their drafting of clear and precise constitutions and for their holding of regular (that is, annual) consultations in the form of general and provincial chapters in which a democratic form of governance was being practised as the normal course of business. Moreover, this more consultative form of shared authority on all levels of governance resonated with the nascent development of representative governmental structures that were emerging on the English political landscape. Lack of consultation, coupled with the more top-down, Italian form of designating (imposing) leadership and mandating action, was perceived as intrusive and abusive.48 Hence, the great resentment in the wake of the visitations of 1237–1238. And yet, whereas all three of these issues played some role in explaining the backlash of the friars against their minister general in 1239, it does not entirely explain the action taken by the pope, between mid-1238 and 1239, against the Franciscan minister general. For all testimonies agree: it was the action of Gregory ix which was ultimately determinative in deciding Elias’s fate. But for this, we must look to a fourth and decisive reason for Elias’s downfall: the irreconcilable clash of eschatologies on the part of the pope and the minister general.49

47

48

49

and Arnulph the penitentiary of the pope. The non-English friars named in the sources are Albert of Pisa (an Italian who was then minister provincial in England), John of La Rochelle (French) and Marquard the Short (German, from Mainz). Jordan mentions this last friar several times: Jordan of Giano (55–56), 61, nn. 54, 69 and 71; xiiith Century Chronicles, 60, 68 and 69. The testimony in no. 69 is the most telling: ‘In the same year [1239] after the Chapter at Rome, the brothers of Saxony held a provincial chapter at Magdeburg … and elected Brother Marquard the Short as minister … He incurred a permanent injury in carrying on the business of the order against Elias, but despite this infirmity he was elected minister’. See Rosalind B. Brooke, Early Franciscan Government, esp. 195–209 (her remarks on Haymo of Faversham). Indeed, her description of Haymo is now classic: “Unlike Albert [of Pisa] … [Haymo] was a priest and a theologian before he was a friar and neither was a profession he could renounce on becoming a Minor … He would have made an ideal Dominican … Intellectually he preferred Dominican methods, Dominican organization …” (pp. 202– 203). Cf. Michael F. Cusato, ‘ “Esse ergo mitem et humilem corde, hoc est esse vere fratrem minorum”: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and the Reformulation of the Franciscan charism’, in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Mittelalter, Vita Regularis 26 (Münster, 2005), 343–382. I have examined this issue quite thoroughly in my article: Michael F. Cusato, ‘“Non propheta, sed profanus apostata” ’, in That Others May Know and Love (cited note 1), 255–283

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It is well known that for at least sixteen years (1221–1237), Elias had maintained the trust, respect and friendship of Hugolino dei Conti di Segni, who become Pope Gregory ix. Indeed, even as late as February 1238, the pope was still entrusting Elias with important diplomatic missions on his behalf. In that month, Gregory had sent the famous friar to the court of Frederick ii, presenting him in the papal documentation as being ‘unus et idem’, as the pope himself.50 However, between the time of this mission and the general chapter of May 1239—indeed even by mid-1238 when Gregory had begrudgingly decided to give credence to the complaints of the various friar delegations—something had happened to turn the pope against his trusted servant. What seems to have occurred around this time was a rather marked change in the eschatological hopes of Elias of Cortona. It is commonplace to note how the minister general shared the perspective of many of his contemporaries in the first decades of the thirteenth century on these matters: namely, that human history was now entering upon its final epoch—the Last Days mentioned in scattered references throughout the Scriptures. What is often missed, however, is that Elias’s particular brand of eschatology had come, at some point, to resonate much more with the one being propagated at the Hohenstaufen court rather than with the more traditional eschatology of the papal curia. The crucial differences can be summarized as follows. Papal eschatological scenarios—at least the one adhered to by Gregory ix—were based on the traditional Augustinian scenario, and often used the image of the four metals of decreasing value and strength of the great statue mentioned in the book of Daniel 2. This image represented the appearance of four great empires in human history, the last of which— the fourth—now being identified with the Holy Roman Germanic Empire. In the Last Days, this final empire would be destroyed by a ‘stone not made by human hands’—a reference interpreted as describing the divine institution of the Church led by the papacy. In the papal eschatological scenario, Frederick ii, the Holy Roman Emperor, was viewed as the persecutor of the Church, indeed the awaited Antichrist, who must be confronted and destroyed by the forces marshalled by the papacy. Imperial eschatology, however, had a radically different inspiration—primarily the Pseudo-Methodius line of biblical interpretation and symbols—in which the leader of a revived Roman Empire would, at the end of time, play a positive and constructive role, on behalf of the universal Church, by defeating the enemies of the Church (by this time viewed

50

(rev. and rpt. in: Michael F. Cusato, The Early Franciscan Movement (1205–1239): History, Sources and Hermeneutics, Medioevo Francescano. Saggi 14 (Spoleto, 2009), 421–447). The reprinted version corrected a few important details in the argument. Cf. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 140 [Engl. trans., 74].

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as Islam and its allies). This was the positive role being attributed to Frederick ii. Indeed, the imperial court referred to Frederick—as he viewed himself, apparently—not as the Antichrist but rather as the preambulum Antichristo. This forerunner of Antichrist, once the forces of Gog and Magog will have been released through Alexander’s Gate shutting up the ‘unclean nations’—an event which would signal the final and definitive battle in human history and its triumphant conclusion—would then go out to confront and conquer them as well as the armies of Islam, thereby unifying Christianity, East and West, and handing back the Kingdom of God to Christ at his Second Coming. One can find ample evidence that Elias subscribed to this eschatology. Particularly revealing is the fact that the charged polemical exchanges between the papal and imperial courts occur in the very same period (April to July) as the opening of the Franciscan general chapter in May 1239. With such momentous events happening in the background, it becomes understandable why Gregory ix chose to open the chapter with a sermon based on the text from Daniel 2 evoking the great statue composed of metals of decreasing strength: the signal text of papal eschatology predicting the demise of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire. Gregory ix was now thoroughly engaged in a fight of apocalyptic proportions against Frederick ii whom, we now know, Brother Elias had come to view in a positive, salvific role as the last world emperor. While Gregory needed the help of groups like the order of Friars Minor to serve as preachers and champions of the papal cause in this battle, Elias stood squarely in the way of his ability to use the Franciscan friars in this definitive engagement. Whatever may have been the justice of the friars’ own complaints against his generalate, Gregory viewed Elias as the chief obstacle, which had to be removed from his position of leadership in the order for the good of the Church; he was, as a result, deposed. Shortly thereafter, Elias took refuge at the imperial court near Pisa, thus earning him ipso facto excommunication for publicly siding with the emperor. The question which must be asked, therefore, is what prompted this radical shift in Elias’s eschatological vision of human history, which caused him to view Frederick ii as the Last World Emperor? We have evidence that since early 1237 (if not earlier), the papal court had been made aware—by way of letters and eye-witness accounts—of preparations being made by the Mongol hordes to the north and east of Europe for a decisive incursion into Central and Western Europe led by Batu Khan. Moreover, these advances were then confirmed in early 1238 by other testimonies trickling westward, particularly from the court of Bela iv in Hungary.51 Thanks to Elias’s contacts with friars who were on 51

Cf. Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West (Harlow, 2005), 13 (n. 14) and 58–63 (esp. 59,

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mission in Hungary, and his own contacts at the papal court, it seems that the minister general began to believe that the great inrush of the unclean nations was on the verge of happening—led by these same Mongols—and that the Last Days were upon them. Defence of the Church could only be mounted by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick ii. He must be the longawaited Last World Emperor who would protect the Church by confronting and defeating these marauding enemies of Christianity, after which would come the great confrontation with Antichrist (Islam and its allies). The news of this Mongol advance—ultimately delayed—helps to explain several things: the radical change in Elias’s eschatology, posing a serious quandary to Pope Gregory ix by mid-1238; his sermon on Daniel 2 reported by Eccleston (who misunderstood it as a moral excoriation of Elias’s association with gold); his deposition by Gregory at the chapter; and Elias’s subsequent journey to and actions at the court of Frederick ii.

5

Conclusion

And yet, this shift in Elias’s eschatology might also help to explain one final datum which we have already covered: the visitations sent out to various provinces which had been so highly resented, especially by the English friars both within the province and those living at the Grand Couvent in Paris. These visitations had been viewed by the English in particular as abusive intrusions into their lives as friars and as unlawful, that is to say extra-capitular, missions sent out solely under the authority of the minister general. All three of our Franciscan chroniclers made remarks about the nature of these visitations as being a way for Brother Elias to maintain control over the life of the brothers and to ensure that his own policies were put in place and obeyed. But Eccleston, who gives us the fullest report of the tumultuous events at the general chapter of 1239, clearly did not understand the import of Gregory’s opening sermon. He merely reported a fact (the sermon) and added his own moralistic interpretation. Other witnesses contemporary to the events were equally ignorant of the eschatological and apocalyptic motivations which shaped Elias’s actions. This overlooked fact might also be germane to the matter of the visitations.

and n. 15); Jean Richard, La papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Age (xiiie–xve siècles) (Rome, 1977), 44–45 and 66–69.

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For, if we are correct in positing the importance of the radical turn in Elias’s eschatological vision between 1237 and 1238, which had been set in motion by the news beginning to trickle into the West about an imminent invasion of the Mongols, then perhaps we can view his sending out of these extraordinary visitations precisely as an attempt to prepare the friars under his care, as minister general, for the time of the Last Days. It was, in his view, imperative that the friars be found living faithfully the Rule which they had vowed and not grow slack at this time of imminent judgement. Such reasoning would help to explain the harsh and demanding examination of the life of the friars effected by his designated visitators, rather than to see the visitations as the act of an imperious and authoritarian minister general. This more benign interpretation of events seems to square with the larger picture of the events unfolding in the years surrounding and succeeding the general chapter. The apocalyptic motifs which were beginning to take hold of Italian (and then southern French) Franciscanism at this time were not particularly strong in England nor even in northern Europe. The English friars in particular were not partisans of the apocalyptic thought which, within a decade of these events, would grip the imagination of any number of Franciscans, especially through the dissemination of the authentic and glossed works of Joachim of Fiore. Appreciable knowledge of the imperial eschatology of the Hohenstaufen court, so determinative in shaping its approach to contemporary events and to the papacy itself, was still virtually non-existent in the British Isles. And yet they did shape these events and the actions of Elias of Cortona. But not being in a position to appreciate this, the Franciscans read the actions of their minister general through the lens of their own concerns for more representative and decentralized modes of authority within the order of Friars Minor, not unlike their correlatives in life, ministry and now education—the order of Friars Preacher. They thus moved to remove the one whom they perceived as damaging the fraternity and its fuller insertion into the pastoral mission of the Church at the service of the papacy. And one of those who led the charge in 1238 at the papal court and who bravely held the floor at the chapter in Rome in May of 1239, would soon be the one who would definitively reshape the order in the next few years along more exclusively clerical lines, in accordance with the English model: Haymo of Faversham, the English cleric par excellence. After this, Franciscanism would not quite be the same.

chapter 6

The Rule Commentary of John of Wales Michael W. Blastic

In chapter 13 of the Chronicle of Thomas of Eccleston, the author discusses the succession of ministers general after Brother Elias, who was deposed in 1239. Brother Albert of Pisa, a cleric and the minister provincial of England, succeeded Elias and led the order for less than a year. He was occupied primarily with the ‘deformation of the order’, as Eccleston explained. Albert was succeeded by Haymo of Faversham, who continued the work of restoring the order and convoked the only chapter of definitors held in Montpellier in 1241. From Montpellier a decree was issued that, in the provinces, brothers should list the problems with the Rule and send them to the minister general. These vexed passages in the Rule, connected to the ‘deformation of the order’ in Eccleston’s mind, were the basis for the origin of the constitutions issued by the general chapters, beginning in 1239.1 The list of disputed passages received by the minister general was the origin of the Exposition of the Four Masters on the Rule of the Lesser Brothers, the first commentary on the Rule, 1241–1242.2 A commission headed by Alexander of Hales, with members John of La Rochelle, Robert of Bascia and Eudes Rigaud, each of whom were educated clerics, were tasked with responding. They sent their Exposition to the minister general, Haymo, at the chapter of Bologna in 1242. For England’s response, Eccleston reported that: [T]here were elected in England Brother Adam Marsh, Brother Peter, the custos of Oxford, Brother Henry of Buford and certain other brothers. In that very night St. Francis appeared to Brother John Bannister and showed him a deep well; Brother John said to him: ‘Father, behold, the fathers want to explain the Rule; much better would it be for you to explain it

1 The research of Cesare Cenci, ofm, has brought to light ‘Pre-Narbonne constitution fragments’ from 1239. Constit. Gen. Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii, 3–63. 2 Expositio quatuor magistrorum; Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 1–29. For an interpretation of the history of the order at this period consult, David Flood, Francis of Assisi’s Rule and Life (Phoenix, 2015), 87–119.

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to us.’ The saint replied; ‘Son, go to the lay brothers and let them explain the Rule for you.’3 Here again, the friars listed were clerics connected to Oxford University, in contrast to the vision of John Bannister who suggested that the ‘deep well’ of the Rule should be explained not by those masters of theology, but by the lay brothers. How seriously John Bannister’s advice was taken at the general level is not known, but Eccleston goes on to say: Therefore, when certain doubts had been noted down, the brothers sent them to the [minister] general in a document without a seal, and they begged him, by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, to let the Rule stand as it had been set down by St. Francis at the dictation of the Holy Spirit.4 Though the English friars did send ‘aliquibus articulis’, at the same time they requested that the Rule be allowed to remain as it had been handed down by St Francis at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. Here Eccleston seems to be reflecting a story circulating at the time, describing the objection of the ministers to the Rule Francis was preparing at Fonte Colombo. As the story goes, Christ himself responded to the complaint of the ministers: ‘The voice of Christ was heard in the air, saying “Francis, nothing of yours is in the Rule: whatever is there is all mine,”’5 The point of the story is that everything in the Rule came from the Holy Spirit, and, since this is so, the Rule must stand on its own, apart from Francis. In this context then, there emerges one of the primary issues of debate regarding the interpretation of the Rule, one that would be discussed throughout the thirteenth century, and which would become a central point 3 Eccleston, 71 [Engl. trans., 158]: ‘In diebus suis venit mandatum a caputulo, ut eligerentur fratres per singulas provincias ordinis, quo dubitabilia regulae annotarent et ad ministrum generalem transmitterent. Electi sunt ergo ad hoc in Anglia frater A. de Marisco, frater Petrus custos Oxoniae, frater Henricus de Boreford et quidam alii. In ipse vero nocte apparuit sanctus Franciscus fratri Iohanni de Banastre et ostendit ei puteum profundum; cui cum diceret: “Pater, ecce patres volunt exponere regulam, immo tu potius expone nobis regula”; respondit sanctus: “Fili, vade ad fratres laicos, et ipsi exponent tibi regulam tuam”.’ 4 Eccleston, 71: ‘Igitur annotatis aliquibus articulis, mittunt eos fratres ad generalem, in cedula sine sigillo, obsecrantes per aspersionem sanguinis Jesu Christ, ut regulam stare permittat, sicut a sancto Franciscso, dictante Spiritu Sancto, tradita fuit.’ 5 Compilatio Assisiensis, no, 17, 1496: ‘Tunc audita est vox in aere Christi respondentis: “Francisce, nihil est in Regula de tuo, sed totum est meum, quicquiid est tibi”.’ A version of this story found its way into Bonaventure’s Legenda maior 4, 11, in ff, 777–961, esp. 821.

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of contention in later divisions within the order. These discussions, following upon the deposition of Elias in 1239, would give rise to both the development of the constitutions and a series of commentaries on the Franciscan Rule, beginning with that of the four masters, and that of Hugh of Digne, David of Augsburg and of John of Wales.

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John of Wales

John belonged to the custody of Worcester, which included the friary of Llanfaes. Nothing is known about his birth. He entered the order in Oxford before 1258, having completed a bachelor’s degree in theology there. He eventually became the fifth Franciscan regent master at Oxford in the years 1259–1262. Details of his life both before and after this date are scarce. He was active in Paris by 1270. Three extant sermons were preached by him in Paris in the years 1281–1283, the period during which he was the regent master of theology there. In 1282 he travelled to Wales as Archbishop John Pecham’s ambassador. Between 1282 and 1285 he was a member of the commission appointed by the order to study the works of Peter John Olivi, dying before the commission completed its work. It is presumed he passed away in 1285.6 John’s writings are primarily of a moral and spiritual nature. His works include sermon manuals and sermon collections, commentaries on books of the Bible, moral treatises and confession manuals. Today scholars identify at least twenty works as his. Among his most popular texts were preaching handbooks, such as the Breviloquium de Virtutibus, the Communiloquium, the Monoloquium and the Summa Iustitiae.7 John was a teacher and formator of young Franciscans and this role clearly determined the focus of his work. Bert Roest described why it was necessary to design a training programme, combining both ‘basic moral and religious training with grammatical instruction’ for these men.8 John’s Ordinarium sive

6 The information about John’s life is taken from Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar (Cambridge, 1989), 4–14; Little, Franciscan School at Oxford; William A. Pantin, ‘John of Wales and medieval humanism’, in Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn s.j., ed. J.A. Watt et al. (Dublin, 1961), 297–319, though dated still provide interesting insights. 7 Swanson dedicates much of her book to the first two of these texts. A complete listing of John’s accepted works can be found in Swanson, John of Wales, 229–231. 8 Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions (Leiden, 2004), 218–219.

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Alphabetum Vite Religiose,9 written in the late 1260s, is a good example of his writings, combining exempla from saints, philosophers and Fathers of the Church, intended both to form young men in their Franciscan vocation as well as to serve as a resource for their preaching. John wrote the Declaratio Regulae,10 or Commentary on the Franciscan Rule, for the purpose of explaining ‘some of the terms in the Rule’ for the occasion of junior formation, as he states in the prologue.11 In the text, he comments on the Rule chapter by chapter. David Flood dates the Commentary as written between 1283 and 1284 in Paris, though other scholars suggest an earlier date.12 John’s purpose is clear: ‘[T]hose who have professed the sacred Rule which the Holy Spirit both inspired in the blessed Francis and founded through him, who have voluntarily bound themselves to observe it, must understand: what it really says, always have it in mind, and carry it out perfectly.’13 John’s

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Roest, Franciscan Literature, 219. Composed of three parts, Dietarium, Locarium and Itinerarium, published as the Ordinarium Vite Religiosae in Venice, 1496. Consult Swanson, John of Wales, 157–158. John of Wales, Commentary, 93–138. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 213–263. John of Wales, Commentary, 97: ‘Ideo ad occasionem informationis iuniorum expositiones quorundam vocabulorum contentorum in regula subscribantur.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 218. John of Wales, Commentary, 93–94. Flood connects John of Wales’s Commentary with the text of the Meditatio Pauperis in Solitudine, ed. Ferdinand Delorme (Florence, 1929). Based on the presence of citations from the Meditatio present in the Rule Commentary without attribution, Flood suggests John of Wales as the author of the Meditatio. Since Delorme dates the Meditatio to 1282–1283, the Rule Commentary must, accordingly, follow it, and Flood dates John’s Rule Commentary as 1283–1284. If this late dating is correct, one of the questions which arises is why John did not cite Nicholas iii’s Exiit qui seminat, published in 1279, but only the papal interpretation of Gregory ix in Quo elongati of 1230? Pietro Maranesi, Nescientes Litteras: L’Ammonizione della Regola Francescana e la questione degli studi nell’ordine (sec. xiii–xvi), Biblioteca Seraphico-Capuccina 61 (Rome, 2000), 128, suggests a date between 1260 and 1270, because John cites Gregory ix, Quo elongati but not Innocent iv’s Ordinem vestrum. Recognizing this as a weak argument, Maranesi locates the text in long teaching career of John between 1259 and 1285. Swanson simply states that the Declaratio post-dates the Ordinarium, which was written in the late 1260s. The problem of the dating of the Commentary also has implications for the place in which it was written. If it was written before 1270, Oxford becomes its place of origin; if a post-1270 date is assigned, the place of origin would be Paris. John of Wales, Commentary, 97: ‘Professoribus sacrae regulae inspiratae beato Francisco et a Spiritu Sancto per ipsum institutae, qui voluntarie se obligaverunt ad eius observantiam, necesse est eam intelligere veraciter, de ea meditari iugiter, et ipsam adimplere perfectibiliter.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 218.

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comments are intended for the internal use of the brothers and his focus is on understanding the text; he does not engage in polemics regarding issues that were being discussed in the larger Franciscan world at the time.14 His primary focus is on the practice of the Rule which for John depends first of all on the correct comprehension of the text. John reiterates this in the conclusion to his commentary where he states: ‘This commentary was put together roughly to encourage the junior brothers to reflect seriously about their Rule and its precepts and labour in a manly fashion to carry out its precepts and warning and counsel.’15 Since the practice of the Rule depends on the ability to comprehend the text, John’s method will follow from this: To give the junior brothers further encouragement about perfect observance as they profess the Rule, I will write down the meaning of some words in the Rule, without modifying or changing any of its sacred words. Since they are oracles of the Holy Spirit, it is reckless and dangerous to soften or modify them or add words that are foreign.16 In a sense, as expressed here, John approaches his commentary as a work of translation, that is, explaining the meaning of the words in the Rule because they are ‘oracles of the Holy Spirit’. His intention is not to add or take away anything from the text itself, merely expose the meaning of the text for these neophytes to the Franciscan life. John recognizes the Rule is not understood and observed correctly by some: Contrary to these are some who do not have the Rule ahead of them, nor do they follow it; they have it behind them, either through dangerous

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Swanson, John of Wales, 158, ‘That John’s aim was to provide sound basic instruction is confirmed by his refusal to discuss such controversial points as the problem of Franciscan poverty’ in the Communiloquium, a part of which was dedicated to a discussion of the religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. John of Wales, Commentary, 132–133: ‘Haec ruditer sunt collecta ad exhortationem iuniorum fratrum ut de sua regula et eiusdem praeceptis iugiter cogitent et ad implenda eius preacepta ac monita et consilia viriliter laborent.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 263. John of Wales, Commentary, 102: ‘Ad maiorem autem exhortationem iuniorum regulam profitentium de adimplendo ipsam perfecte, conscribam epositiones quorumdam vocabulorum contentorum in regula, sacris sententiis eiusdem immutatis et invariatis. Cum enim sint oracula Spiritus Sancti, temerarium et periculosum est eas diminuere vel variare vel aliud extraneum superaddere …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 224.

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forgetfulness, or deceptive contempt, or irrelevant commentary foreign to the blessed Francis’s intention. They live contrary to the Rule, or explain its contents extraneously, fitting it to their wishes.17 John invokes the intention of Francis regarding the interpretation of the Rule here, and seems to be thinking of the words in his Testament that the Rule be interpreted without gloss and to the letter.18 Whatever John might have in mind here, he is clear that Francis intends that the Rule must be lived on its own terms. And for John, in order to do that, one must first understand the words in the Rule. The foundation for this approach to the text reflects the English province’s request to the minister general in 1241–1242, to let the Rule stand as it was, ‘set down by St. Francis at the dictation of the Holy Spirit’.19 John, too, approached the text of the Rule as an ‘oracle of the Holy Spirit’. This in large part determined the method employed by John to comment on the text—he proceeds primarily by way of explaining the meaning of the terms in the text by using other texts: Scripture, and works by secular authors and the Fathers of the Church.20

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John of Wales, Commentary, 101: ‘E contrario sunt aliqui qui habent regulam non ante, nec eam sequuntur, sed habent eam post se, sive per periculosam oblivionem, sive per praevaricatoriam contemptibilitatem, sive per extraneam expositionem praeter intentionem beati Francisci, et vivunt contra regulam vel contenta in ea extranee exponendo, trahendo eam post suum libitum.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 222–223. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 402: ‘Sed sicut dedit michi Dominus simpliciter et pure dicere et scribere Regulam et ista verba, ita simpliciter et pure sine glossa intelligatis, et cum sancta operatione observetis usque in finem.’ Eccleston, see note 4. See chapter 2 of Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of thirteenth century friar, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1989), 15–40. John has been criticized by some because of his long chains of quotations, leading to the charge that there is nothing original in his work. But Swanson, defends his method: ‘John was a writer of preachers’ handbooks. He wrote them on a variety of topics, but they were designed to help preachers, particularly young ones. The handbooks aimed to cover all sorts of topics, giving an authoritative view, a number of named authorities in support of this judgement, a series of exempla and appropriate extracts for use in preaching, and suggestions for further reading’ (p. 16).

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The Nature of the Rule

In the prologue to his commentary, John explains the meaning and purpose of the Rule. His approach becomes clear in the following extract: In order to draw out the Rule’s formative powers (perfectibilitas), let us turn to Galatians 6.16: ‘Peace to all who follow this rule.’ Insofar as we use these words to explain the way of life made known to the blessed Francis and turned by him into an order, we draw from them three points. First of all, ‘this Rule’ alludes to the singular formative ability (singularis perfectibilitas) of this way of life. Second, ‘who would follow’ indicates the character needed to follow this way of life perfectly. Third, ‘peace to all such’ points to the positive outcome of factually doing so.21 John takes the meaning of Rule from the text of Paul’s letter to the Galatians which he cites. He then divides this text into three parts to further define the meaning, namely, the required discipline needed to reach perfection, the character demanded to fulfil the demands of the Rule and the quality of love necessary to reach peace. In other words, the Rule is a formative text whose purpose is to provide a pattern of life that the friars must follow in order to reach perfection. He spends the remainder of the prologue developing each of these three dimensions of the meaning of the Rule in turn, using Scripture, classical sources such as Priscian, and authorities such as Isidore of Seville, Augustine of Hippo, and Gregory the Great. For example, he cites Isidore’s Etymologies to explain the use of the term Rule, because ‘it leads us along the right path …’,22 underlying the formative aspect of the text. In addition, the more perfect the Rule is, ‘anyone who professes the Rule must have it in his hand, that is, live by it, regulating everything of his inner and outer life by the norms of the Rule’.23 21

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John of Wales, Commentary, 97: ‘Et ut eius perfectibilitas appareat subsequens verbum exponatur: Quicumque hanc regulam secuti fuerint, pax super illos, ad Galatas 6:16. In his verbis prout exponuntur de modo vivendi inspirato beato Francisco et per ipsum adeo instituto tria insinuantur: Primum modi scilicet praedicti singularis perfectibilitas cum dicitur hanc regulam. Secundum est perfecte vivendi secundum illum modum debita qualitas cum subditur secuti fuerint. Tertium est huius adimpletionis fructuosa utilitas, ibi, pax super illos.’ Flood and Burr (eds.) ecrfm, vol. 1, 218. John of Wales, Commentary, 98: ‘Regula enim dicta quia “recte ducit nec aliquando aliorsum trahit. Vel quod regat, vel quod normam vivendi praebeat, vel quod distortum pravumque corrigat”, ait Isidorus Etymologiarum libro sexto, capitulo sexto decimo.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 219. John of Wales, Commentary, 99: ‘Quanto enim regula perfectior et rectior, tanto artifex

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In the prologue John is also interested in describing the relationship between Francis of Assisi and the Rule. As stated, Francis made known the way of life explained in ‘these words’ of the Rule. As John goes on to compare the way of life in the Rule with building a tower he affirms that Francis provides the blueprints.24 He underlines in this context the ‘total renunciation’ required to set the foundation, which, for John, is one of the characteristics of the Franciscan way that makes it the highest and most perfect of religious Rules.25 John also presents Francis as the exemplar of the Rule: Those who profess this Rule are held to follow it, keeping at a distance what it forbids, proceeding along paths which it shows and directs, reaching the land to which it leads. One follows something who proceeds in this way or otherwise. They are to follow the Rule by keeping it well in sight, never turning from the paths it shows, but progressing along them without turning aside. This is how one follows something so that, whatever it is, the line from Job 23.11 is confirmed: His footprints, that is the Rule, my feet have followed. To anyone who does so the Lord says in Exodus 25.40: ‘See that you work to the design shown you on the mountain.’ The blessed Francis is the mountain. As for the design, that is the Rule which is to be considered with a clear mind.26

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tenens regulam est culpabilior dum sint et appareant distorta sive curva in aedificio. Ideo quilibet professor regulae habeat eam in manu, id est in operatione, regulando omnia sua interiora et exteriora secundum normam regulae ut ei competat in figura quod dicitur Ezechielis 40:3 …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 221, modified. John of Wales, Commentary, 98: ‘Consequently those wanting to build a tower, that is this life of unimaginable sublimity and unconquerable security and unspoilable beauty described and instituted by the blessed Francis, based on the total renunciation described in Luke 14:28, … followed by Luke 14:33’; ‘Et ideo voluntibus aedificare turrim, id est sublimitatem inderehensibilem et securitatem inexpugnabilem et pulchritudinem indeformabilem vitae descriptae et institutae a beato Francisco, cuius fundamentum est omnibus renuntiare prout dicitur Lucae 14:28: Quis enim volens turrim aedificare etc., ubi sequitur (14:33): Sic qui non renuntiat omnibus quae possidet etc.’ What is interesting to note is that the second text cited here from Luke is not one of those texts traditionally associated with the opening of the Gospel book by Francis and his brothers to the missionary discourse identified by hagiographers at the outset of the brotherhood. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 219–220. John makes this assertion in his comments on chapter 6, the chapter dedicated to his explanation of ‘most high poverty’. John of Wales, Commentary, 100–101: ‘Hanc regulam debent sequi eius professores, ab illis quae prohibit elongando per vias quas monstrat et dirrigit incededendo, ad terram ad

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Here John connects the Rule with the footprints of Francis, which the follower is obliged to follow and keep always before his eyes. Francis is the mountain of revelation, the design for the Rule inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is interesting that here the image of ‘vestigia’ appears, a fundamental metaphor for the Rule as the text of the Regula non bullata indicates: ‘The Rule and the life of these brothers is … to follow the teaching and footprints of our Lord Jesus Christ …’27 For John, however, the ‘footprints’ are those of Francis, the design of the Rule. John does not appear to have any direct knowledge of the text of the Regula non bullata, as it is never cited or alluded to in his commentary. There is a final reference to Francis in the prologue which depicts his relationship with the text of the Rule: That is why he says in the preface: the Rule … approved and so on. We should keep in mind the majesty of God who inspired it; the vast holiness of Francis to whom it was given and through whom it was instituted; the evident truth of the sacred words contained in it, for it teaches to observe the holy Gospel; and its authentic and legitimate confirmation, in that the supreme pontiff approved, glossed, and ratified it.28 Here again Francis is presented as the mediator of the Rule which God inspired; he is simply the conduit for its content which is the truth of the Gospel as confirmed by the Church. While Francis will be invoked in the commentary that follows in almost every chapter, his role is simply that of guarantor of

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quam ducit accendendo. Ille enim sequitur aliquid qui post illud his modis procedit vel aliter. Debent enim sequi regulam ad eam jugiter aspiciendo, a viis quas ostendit nusquam divertendo, sed per easdem indeviabiliter progrediendo. Sic enim facit sequens aliquid ut de quolibet talium verificetur Iob 23:11: Vestigia eius, scilicet regulae, secutus est pes meus. Ad quemlibet enim talium dicit Dominus illud Exodi 25.40: Inspice, et fac secundum exemplar quod tibi in monte monstratum est. Per montem intelligitur beatus Franciscus. Per exemplar intelligitur ipsa regula quae debet inspici claro intellectu, et eam debet professor facere in effectum.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 222, modified. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 242; Regula non bullata, 1, 1: ‘Regula et vita istorum fratrum haec est, scilicet vivere in obedientia, in castitate et sine proprio, et Domini nostri Jesu Christi doctrinam et vestigia sequi …’ John of Wales, Commentary, 102: ‘Ait ergo in prooemio: Regulam approbatum etc. Considerantes enim Dei maiestatem a qua est ispirata; beati Francisci excessivam sanctitatem cui inspirata et per quem instituta; sacrarum sententiarum in ea contentarum evidentem veritatem (sanctum enim evangelium docet observare); et eiusdem authenticam et legitimam confirmationem, eo quod a summo pontifice est approbata, annota et confirmata.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 224.

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the content which comes from God as inspired by the Holy Spirit. In other words, John does not point to Francis as an example for the way the Rule should be lived or be put into action. He keeps Francis rather distant from the lived praxis of Franciscan life so that he can focus on the more traditional moral and spiritual teaching of the Rule in his presentation, which his sources supply.

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John’s Main Concern: The Rule as Guide to Virtuous Living

Beginning in chapter 1, John’s exposition of the Rule focuses on virtue. Since the Rule describes a heavenly way of living, ‘it proposes and requires the good and virtuous gifts that vivify the soul’.29 John identifies the meaning of ‘lesser brothers’ with the virtue of humility: ‘[lesser] denotes humility which lessens a man in his reputation and makes him little’.30 Humility becomes thus the foundation of Franciscan life for John ‘Humility is the basis of all virtues, charity their form and completion. On the other hand, one who professes this Rule without these virtues has the name without the thing … But those of whom we speak have a name from the virtues that perfect from within, as the name says.’31 The substance of the Rule is the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, which must be observed by living in obedience, without property and in chastity. John explains the vows as virtues which must be practised. He treats obedience here as an expression of humility, which he defines as: ‘The subjects are to obey their superiors by doing what they are told.’32 Francis demonstrates his humility, states John, ‘for he calls himself a brother whereas with reason he could call himself father’.33 29 30 31

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John of Wales, Commentary, 103: ‘Unde praecipit et consulit bona ac virtutum dona vivificantia animam.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 224. John of Wales, Commentary, 104: ‘In hoc autem quod ait minorum, notatur humilitas quae minorat hominem in sua reputatione …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 226. John of Wales, Commentary, 104: ‘In humilitate enim est fundamentum omnium virtutum, in caritate vero forma et perfectio. Professor vero huius regulae non habens has virtutes habet nomen sine re … Sed praedicti habent nomen a virtutibus intime perficientibus ut dictum est de nomine.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 226. John of Wales, Commentary, 105: ‘Subditi enim debent oboedire superioribus agendo quod iubent.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 228. John of Wales, Commentary, 106: ‘Et nota in hoc quod ait frater Franciscus notatur et sua humilitas ac sua caritas sive unanimitas, quia vocat se fratrem cum posset merito vocare se patrem.’ John concludes his comments on chapter 1 by arguing that underlying humility is the source of Francis’s ‘surprising holiness’, which made him a special sign in the world so that ‘he merited a designation that made him known in a singular way. Apocalypse 7:2

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John’s interpretation of chapters 3 and 10 focus primarily on virtue. In chapter 3 he comments on the Rule’s description of how the brothers should behave, which puts them ‘out of style with the world, abject and contemptible, censuring what the world approves, and approving and preaching what the world censures’.34 The brothers must be counter-cultural, and, as the Rule states, they should not ‘quarrel or argue or judge others’; instead, they are to ‘be meek, peaceful, modest, gentle, and humble, speaking courteously to everyone, as is becoming’.35 John spends a significant amount of text on describing each of these virtues in turn, citing authorities to explain the meaning of each virtue for the brothers. Francis returns to the virtues in chapter 10, beginning with obedience. He points out that ‘The obedience due those in charge is shown to God’, citing Bernard of Clairvaux’s comment on the Rule of St Benedict.36 John goes on to state that this obedience was ‘clearly exemplified in the Son of God who “became obedient to the point of death”’ (Philippians 2:8).37 He does not mention the conditions Francis places on obedience due to a minister, which are included in this chapter of the Rule, where he states that the ministers should ‘not command them anything that is against their soul and our Rule’.38 What John accents is more in keeping with monastic obedience than with

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fits him: “Then I saw another angel rising where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God”.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 228. This image of Francis, which Bonaventure used to describe him and his apocalyptic role, has lost all of its apocalyptic valence for John and simply points to humility! John of Wales, Commentary, 110; Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 234; [Regula bullata, 3:10–]: ‘Et quia fratres errant mundo difformes eet abiecti ac contemptibiles, reprobantes quae mundus approbat et approbantes ac praedicantes quae mundus reprobate …’ Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 326: ‘Consulo vero, moneo et exhortor fratres meos in Domino Jesu Christo, ut quando vadunt per mundum non litigant neque contendat verbis, nec alios iudicent, sed sint mites, pacifici et modesti, mansueti et humiles, honeste loquentes omnibus sicut decet.’ It is interesting that John does not include the phrase ‘quando vadunt per mundum’, and while he contrasts the brothers’ experience with the way things are in the world, what John describes is a spiritual path for friars living in a convent without a great amount of contact with the outside world. John of Wales, Commentary, 123–124: ‘Convenienter instruit subditos ut oboediant suis ministris. Unde ait in littera: Firmiter praecipio etc. “Ut enim ait Bernardus Libro de praecept et dispensatione, ante finem, repetens illud de regula beati Benedicti”: Obedientia quae maioribus detetur, Deo exhibetur.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 250–251. John of Wales, Commentary, 124: ‘Huius enim exemplar patuit in filio Dei qui factus fuit oboediens usque ad mortem: Ad Philippenses 2:8.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 251. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 334; Regula bullata, c.10, no. 1: ‘Fratres qui sunt ministri et servi aliorum fratrum, visitant et moneant fratres suos et humiliter et caritative corrigant eos,

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the fraternal obedience described in the Rule itself, and his choice of what to include and what to leave out of his commentary is telling here.39 Citing John Damascene, John states that obedience is the ‘full abnegation of one’s will’. He explains that this is necessary because, as Anselm taught, ‘the will is the origin of all bad things’.40 John follows with a lengthy exposition of the vices listed in chapter 10: pride, vainglory, envy, avarice, detraction and murmuring. For each vice he gives a detailed definition/description, drawing on authorities. John concludes, as the Rule itself continues, by stating that the remedies for such vices are constant prayer, and the virtues of humility, patience and love. The practice of the virtuous life is central to the ministry the young friars will take on—preaching. For John, ‘Preaching is perfect and full when it turns people from vice toward virtue and good things.’41 Later, in chapter 9, he underlines the importance of the preacher’s ‘exemplary life’, providing a clear link to the personal cultivation of virtue on the part of the brothers. Since the Spirit inspired prophets to preach in the way John described, ‘in that way also he breathed into the blessed Francis, and he instructed his brothers to preach in that same way’.42 Chapters 3 and 10 are the longest chapters in John’s commentary. The subject of each, as he interprets them, is the important role of virtue in Franciscan life. He understands the Rule to be a blueprint for the practice of virtue, with a focus on the perfection of each friar in the context of their shared life in a convent.

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non preecipientes eis aliquid quod sit contra animam suam et Regulam nostrum. Fratres vero qui sunt subditi, recordentur quod propter Deum abnegaverunt proprias voluntates. Unde firmiter precipio eis, ut obedeant suis ministris in omnibus que promiserunt Domino observare et non sunt contraria anime et Regule nostre.’ John’s explanation of obedience contrasts with the English friars’ practice of obedience. Consult, Amanda Power, ‘The Problem of Obedience among the English Franciscans’, in Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life, ed. Mirko Breitenstein et al. (Berlin, 2014), 129–167. John of Wales, Commentary, 124: ‘Nec mirum quia propria voluntas est origo omnium malorum prout ostendit Anselmus bene, De Similitudinibus, capitulo tertio et post …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 251. John of Wales, Commentary, 123: ‘Talis enim praedicatio est perfecta et plena quae dehortatur vitia et hortatur virtutes et bona, terret de suppliciis et consolatur de praemiis.’ Flood and Burr, (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 249. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 249–250.

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Most High Poverty

In chapter 6 John explains why Francis made poverty the foundation of his order: Human perfection lies in this, in the contempt and rejection of exterior things, in the contempt and abnegation of oneself, in serving God and in this way in the elevation of a man above himself, subject to God alone, and in the rejection and detestation of all worldly glory. For these reasons the blessed Francis made poverty the foundation of the order which means to have or possess nothing, and in that way founded it on God himself.43 This is ‘Most High Poverty’ according to John. The accent here is on the renunciation of all things in order to be raised above oneself subject to God alone and the virtuous life which follows from this. In other words, this is poverty understood in the context of spiritual perfection. To have nothing between God and oneself both as an individual and as a community, this is most high poverty because ‘it lifts itself above the world’, and ‘because poverty makes holy’.44 Further, this poverty is founded on Christ: ‘it is founded on the mountain of Christ, who is “on the highest of the mountains” (Isaiah 2.2)’.45 Commenting on the opening lines of chapter 6, which requires that the brothers appropriate nothing to themselves, John describes the life of the friars as pilgrims and strangers: 43

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John of Wales, Commentary, 117: ‘In his enim consistit humana perfectio, scilicet in rerum exteriorum contemptu et abrenuntiatione, in proprio despectu et abnegatione, in divino famulatu et sic hominis supra se elevatione et soli Deo subiectione, et in omnis gloriae mundanae abiectu et detestatione. Unde et beatus Franciscus fundamentum religionis statuit paupertatem que est nihil habere vel possidere et eo ipso eam fundavit supra Deum ipsum.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 242. John of Wales, Commentary, 117: ‘Et alia est paupertas nihil habentium nec in communi nec in speciali qualis est professorum istius regulae. Et ideo potest dici altissima paupertas quia sic elevat a mundo … Iacobi 2.5: Nonne Deus elegit pauperes in hoc mundo? Unde supra, proximo capitulo, ait: Sanctissimae paupertatis sectatores, scilicet quia sanctificat.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 243. John of Wales, Commentary, 117: ‘Et ideo merito sequitur hic: Haec est illa celsitudo altissimae paupertatis etc., quae sic fundata supra montem Chritusm, qui est in vertice montium: Isaiae 2.2.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 242–243. In the prologue, John identified Francis with the mountain, likening Francis to Mount Sinai where the Law was given to Moses. Here Christ the mountain is the highest mountain to which all nations shall come to be instructed in God’s ways, according to the prophet Isaiah.

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In poverty, etc., as if to say that such people do no tarry along on the roads by which they pass. Nor do they seek lascivious pleasures, nor bother themselves with heavy burdens, nor involve themselves in worldly affairs, nor busy themselves in building places to live, nor entangle themselves in games and amusements, nor go along with the practices of the regions through which they pass. They struggle to support themselves and proceed on course as they draw near the goal to which they tend.46 Here again one can see the otherworldly focus of poverty. The goal of the friar is heaven, and to reach heaven one must be perfect. A condition for perfection is leaving the world with all that it entails. John quotes Gregory the Great on the condition of a pilgrim and stranger, that is, a saint: ‘In this way they are refreshed by resting a while, as a traveller uses a shed for sleep. He pauses and hastens to rest. Physically he is quiet while mentally he is focused elsewhere.’47 Poverty thus facilitates the rest necessary for raising the mind to God, and in this way facilitates constant prayer, the remedy for vice, as John has argued. In this context, his comments in chapter 2 are appropriate. There he explained that Francis wanted the brothers ‘hatless and with shorn heads as a sign of limpid contemplation. He wished the brothers to have few and common clothes as a sign of poverty and personal self-abnegation.’48 Poverty serves personal self-denial and fosters contemplation. Here John emphasizes again how the Rule is a means towards personal perfection through self-denial and poverty. In this context of otherworldly poverty, John’s discussion of the mission to the Saracens in chapter 12 is significant. He presents a very optimistic approach to being sent on mission: ‘[Francis] knew that it was possible to live well

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John of Wales, Commentary, 116: ‘In paupertate etc., quasi dicat sicut tales in viis per quas incedunt non intendunt diu immorari, nec lasciviis voluptari nec ponderibus aggravantibus morari, nec negotiis saecularibus implicari, nec in erigendis habitaculis occupare, nec ludis vel spectaculis illaqueari, nec ritibus terrarum per quas incedunt conformari. Sed intendunt sustentari et indeviabiliter progredi et termino ad quem tendunt appropinquari.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 241. John of Wales, Commentary, 116: ‘Unde et de sanctis Gregorius Moralium octavo, in fine: “Sic temporali refoventur subsidio sicut viator in stabulo utitur lecto. Pausat et recedere festinat; quiescit corpore et al aliud tendit mente.”’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 242. John of Wales, Commentary, 107: ‘Et voluit fratres habere capita denudate et rasa in signum contemplationis. Et voluit fratres habere paucos pannos et viles in signum paupertatis et propriae despectionis.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 229, modified.

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and to work well and to find God everywhere.’49 However, those sent must be examined by the ministers, as the Rule states, because ‘[Francis] foresaw there would be some who loved moving about, …, for whom foreign travel did more harm than good.’50 John follows this with two long paragraphs describing the problems and dangers of travelling around, indicating that the mission ad gentes is a unique calling and not for everyone. Rather than seeking adventure, John urges the brothers to pursue a spiritual journey: ‘Peter (1 Peter 2.11) does not encourage that sort of travel but a spiritual journey: “I urge you as aliens and travellers to abstain from the desires of the flesh.” ’51 Here again John translates mission in the world as an interior journey towards perfection. Chapter 4 of the Rule prohibits the handling of money, but spiritual friends can provide for the friars as necessary. Here John cites Gregory ix’s Quo elongati, issued in 1230, as the text to be consulted for an interpretation of this prohibition. In addition, he indicates that, concerning acceptance of money by spiritual friends, the Constitutions of Narbonne, 1260, should be consulted. His commentary on chapter 4 is the shortest in his text. John does emphasize the importance of having nothing of one’s own, but at the same time indicates that ‘the poor of whom we speak by reason of their poverty pursue an abundance of necessary things, and in view of their poverty are given what they need’.52 The law of necessity appears, too, in chapter 3, where John explains that even though Francis proposes a moderate fast for the brothers, fasting can be mitigated in times of ‘obvious necessity’.53 In a similar way, necessity tempers the Rule’s prescription of wearing shoes in chapter 2. John also cites Bonaventure’s Legenda maior to describe how Francis took poverty as his spouse.54 49 50

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John of Wales, Commentary, 130: ‘Insuper scivit quod ubique est possibile bene vivere ac bene agere et Deum invenire …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 260. John of Wales, Commentary, 130: ‘Et praevedit in spiritu quod futuri erant alique diligentes movere pedes suos et ob hoc Deo non placentes, quibus peregrinationem magis obsunt quam prosunt.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 261. John of Wales, Commentary, 131: ‘Ideo non ad istam peregrinationem sed ad spiritualem hortatur Petrus, 1 Petri 2:11: Obsecro vos tamquam advenas et peregrinos abstinere vos a carnalibus desideriis.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 261. John of Wales, Commentary, 118: ‘Sicut enim divites saeculi assequuntur omnia necessaria divitiis suis, sic pauperes praedicti ratione suae paupertatis assequuntur necessariorum abundantiam et eis intuitu suae paupertatis conferuntur quae necessaria sunt.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 244. John of Wales, Commentary, 110. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 234. John of Wales, Commentary, 118: ‘Huius fervidus amator et sollicutus conservator et aemu-

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However, despite this lofty explanation of poverty which John provides, he also indicates that there are those who do not practise poverty as they have promised: But strange to say, many who profess it do not seem to love her or seek her or care for her. Rather, they hate her. They cannot suffer her in the same house, neither her, nor anything like her, nor anything pertaining to her, nor any sign of her. They want no hunger or need in the refectory, no cold nor penury in the dormitory, nor a lack of books in the study, nor tight living quarters in the world. And so it is with other things. On the contrary, they run away from all this and try to get rid of it, so that neither poverty nor anything that smacks of her can find a place under the same roof with them. If anyone would treat his wife this way, he would seem to repudiate her.55 This passage suggests that the observance of poverty was a challenge for many friars at the time; it also indicates that John was advocating real poverty for the brothers in the context of convent life.56

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Work and Preaching

For John, the primary purpose of work is to avoid idleness, because idleness ‘exterminates virtues’. Further, John explains, ‘One who cannot work exteriorly should work at the task of contrition and prayer in one’s inner life.’57 In fact,

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lus zelator fuit beautus Franciscus, de quo dicitur in vita sua quod nemo tam cupidus auri quam ipse paupertatis, qui etiam eam sibi desponsavit vinculo indissolubili et merito.’ The reference is to Bonaventure, Legenda maior, 7, 1. John of Wales, Commentary, 119: ‘Sed mirum in modum multi professores ipsius non videntur eam amare vel zelare seu custodire, sed potius odire, quia nec ipsam nec aliquid ei affine vel ad eam pertinens vel etiam eius signum possunt sustinere in eadam domo, quia nec famem vel indigentiam in refectorio nec frigus vel penuriam in dormitorio nec librorum carentiam in studio nec habitaculorum angustiam in mundo et sic de aliis; sed haec omnia fugiunt per contraria et exterminant, ita quod nec paupertas nec eius signa possunt habere locum sub eiusdem tectis cum eis. Quod si quis simile faceret aliquid suae sponsae videretur eam repudiare.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 244–245. This is the second of only two passages in John’s Commentary that critique the brothers in any way. The first critique is found in the prologue, where John criticizes those brothers who do not live correctly, according to the Rule. John of Wales, Commentary, 115: ‘Debet enim laborare labore contritionis et orationis in

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‘Those who work faithfully in this way at tasks and projects, and work and labour in a committed way, direct their work and doings to the honour of God’, are excused from manual labour.58 Work, too, takes on a spiritual role in the perfection of the friar for John. In explaining what the Rule meant, when it spoke about those brothers who are ‘not able to observe the Rule spiritually’ in chapter 10, John draws on the experience of the ‘older brothers’: At the beginning of the order, when they worked with their hands and resided among seculars, if they saw dangerous temptations threatening them and were not able to observe the Rule spiritually, that is by carrying out perfectly everything which the Rule prescribes and advises, then they were to turn to the ministers for help. Now, however, given that the brothers live together in convents and have clerical guardians and custodies and suffer no dire threat of temptation, it is not as necessary to turn to the ministers.59 Since times have changed and the friars are no longer working with seculars, they are not subject to temptations from that situation. And, given that they are living in convents with clerical superiors, they do not need to turn to the ministers since superiors are readily available. Here John describes a significantly changed experience of Franciscan life—he contrasts the ‘older brothers’’ life in the world working with people, with the life of the brothers living in convents with clerical guardians in the present. This explains why and how devotion can and should replace manual labour for the brothers. In fact, John explains in chapter 4 that the work the brothers are presently doing is more profitable: ‘In

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homine interiori qui non potest laborare in exteriori.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 239. John of Wales, Commentary, 115: ‘Et qui sic fideliter laborant quoad ipsa opera vel labores, et devote quoad modum operandi vel laborandi, ordinando opera et labores et Dei honorem … Tales inquam excusantur a labore manuum corporali.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 240. John of Wales, Commentary, 125: ‘Quando in principio ordinis laborabant manibus et habitabant inter saeculares, quod si tunc viderent imminere sibi periculosas temptationes nec posse observare regulam spiritualiter, id est, perfecte adimplendo omnia quae regula praecipit et monet, debeant tunc ad ministros recurrere. Nunc autem ex quo fratres sunt collegiate in conventibus et habent praelatos guardianos et custodes nec imminent tantum periculum temptationis, non est tanta necessitas recurrendi ad ministros.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 252–253.

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the salutary study of sacred Scripture, or in the ministry of preaching the holy Gospel, or in the fraternal service of charity, or useful business for the order …’60 Pastoral ministry, and the study necessary, have replaced the manual labour of the early days. In his comments on chapter 2, John already stated that necessity mitigated the prohibition of wearing shoes for those ‘who are compelled by age or by infirmity, or by their great and evident utility in saving souls or in carrying out the order’s business’.61 The order’s usefulness to the Church and its business of saving souls necessitated the abandonment of manual labour! Understanding the order’s purpose to be useful to the Church explains the almost complete lack of attention which John gives to an admonition in chapter 10 of the Rule: ‘Nor are those who know no letters to bother learning, but let them aspire to have the Spirit of the Lord.’62 For John, the interpretation of this admonition of Francis needs no comment, given the changed circumstances of Franciscan life, and is resolved by linking it to the exhortation which follows, directing the friars to what is essential—having the spirit of the Lord.63 In chapter 9, John underlines the fact that Francis wanted his brothers to preach, because he ‘preferred for himself and the others to be of use rather than to settle back for themselves alone …’64 To be ‘useful’, for John, means exercising some ministry connected with the salvation of souls. He emphasizes that the preaching of the friars must be pure and true, and that it must be done for the well-being of souls and not for self-glorification. Twice in this chapter John states that the preaching of the friars must ‘conform to the preaching of the apostles’.65 Indeed, says John, ‘the Holy Spirit inspired the blessed Francis to so instruct his brothers about preaching perfectly’.66 At the conclusion of his comments on chapter 9, John offers a theology of Franciscan preaching: 60

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John of Wales, Commentary, 115: ‘Debet etiam homo qui potest laborare in homine exteriori secundum ordinationem sui superioris, et hoc sive in salutari sacrae scripturae studio, sive in sanctae evangelicae praedicationis ministerio, sive in fraterno caritatis obsequio, sive in utili ordinis negotio.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 240. John of Wales, Commentary, 107: ‘Illi enim necessitate coguntur qui coguntur debilitate sive infirmitate vel magna et evidenti utilitate pro animabus salvandis vel negotiis ordinis expediendis.’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 230. John of Wales, Commentary, 128. Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 257. See the comments of Pietro Maranesi, Nescientes litteras, 128–131. John of Wales, Commentary, 122: ‘Quoniam beatus Franciscus praeelegit sibi et aliis proficere magis quam sibi soli vacare …’ Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 248. John of Wales, Commentary, 122: ‘Ut sic esset similis praedicationi apostolicae …’, and, ‘Ut sit conformis apostolicae praedictioni quae tendebat ad animarum salute …’ Flood and Burr (eds.) ecrfm, vol. 1, 249. Flood and Burr, (ed.) ecrfm, vol. 1, 249.

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In a wonderful way the Holy Spirit describes in these lines the qualities a sermon needs, that is, legitimate authority, the preacher’s exemplary life, sure truth well-considered and chaste, truth fruitful in effect and useful, full with various and useful information, agreeable to the listeners and well received by them.67 For John, this is the ministry to which the Franciscans have been called in the Church. A preacher’s life provides a foundation for effective preaching, and this means the practice of virtue, as he has described in his commentary. With this summary John has actually described his own ministry, that of a regent master whose task was to prepare friars to preach.

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Franciscan Life in John’s Commentary

John’s commentary on the Rule presents an image of Franciscan life that has evolved from its beginnings in Assisi into an organization that understands its purpose as being useful to the Church. This utility is expressed primarily through preaching to the faithful, supported by study. Thus, pastoral ministry becomes the primary means for the expression of the Franciscan charism in the Church. To accomplish this, the brothers must be trained in convents that have the resources to support this ministry in terms of study and teaching. John of Wales sees his role in commenting on the Rule to be that of a formator of the junior brothers as they prepare for service in the Church. His Commentary on the Franciscan Rule presumes this understanding of the nature and purpose of Franciscan life. For John, the Rule is primarily a blueprint for spiritual perfection—its focus is on the spiritual development of the brothers. For this, training in virtue is essential: John’s hermeneutic is the lens of virtue. All the commitments and practices that describe Franciscan life according to the Rule are interpreted as a means of spiritual progress. The convent becomes the primary arena for the living of the Rule; itinerancy and manual labour have been replaced by spiritual practice and devotion; engagement with men and women in the public square has become an asceticism of ascent to God. Life on the road in the world with

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John of Wales, Commentary, 123: ‘Miro ergo modo Spiritus Sanctus hic descripsit qualis debet esse praedicatio, scilicet autoritate legitima, ex perfectione vitae praedicantis, secura veritate, casta et sincera, effectu et utilitate fructuosa, varietate praedicabilium plena, audientibus grata et accepta’. Flood and Burr, (ed.) ecrfm, vol. 1, 250.

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all of its challenges and difficulties has been transformed into fraternal life in convents as a training ground for virtue. Most High Poverty is essential for the life of the brothers. It provides the foundation for the Franciscan life as interpreted by John—total expropriation in poverty becomes the condition for the ascent to God. The poverty that John describes is the poverty interpreted by Gregory ix in Quo elongati as well as in the Constitutions of Narbonne. John insists that poverty be real in convent life, and he even indicates that the practice of poverty has become somewhat of a problem to the brothers. But poverty here has become disconnected from the social context in which it was lived by Francis and the early brothers. Begging has become the highest expression of poverty, not simply a last resort when work did not supply the brothers’ needs, but as a means of ascetic abnegation of self. The original social context of the Franciscan Rule is no longer assumed or even understandable to the brothers addressed by John. The focus is on the otherworld, on raising oneself up to God by withdrawing from the exterior world. The work that is to be done is personal, spiritual work through engagement with the sacred Scriptures and the teaching of the authorities. John is addressing brothers who have both the ability to understand as well as to access the sources he proposes as keys for understanding the meaning of terms in the Rule. The Rule has become a text much like other sacred texts, though certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit and mediated through Francis. In only one instance does John point to the example of the historical Francis when he describes how Francis took poverty as his spouse. In every other invocation of Francis in the commentary, he is simply the guarantor of the divine origin of the Franciscan way of life. So, to understand the meaning of the Rule, one must understand the meaning of the words contained in the Rule and for this John uses the texts of the authorities: Scripture, secular authors and teachers of the faith; nowhere does John use the history of Francis or the order as a means for explaining the Rule.68 The Rule commentary of John of Wales fits very well with the location from which it was composed: whether in Oxford or Paris, it was composed in a studium of the order. This is not to say that John’s commentary is defective, but rather that it reflects its context of origin, as each commentary on the Rule throughout history has done. In interpreting the meaning of the text

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The one exception here, as described in section 5, is the situation of the ‘older brothers’ who did manual labor to explain the reason the Rule contained the procedure for brothers who could not observe the Rule spiritually.

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of the Rule, the interpreter is interpreted at the same time! John gives us a very interesting glimpse of Franciscan life in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. But his is just one approach to living the Rule, as the question of the ‘intention of Francis’ would become the source of bitter dispute and even division in the order as time went on.

chapter 7

John Pecham’s Commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor Jean-François Godet-Calogeras

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Introduction: Who is John Pecham?

As for most medieval people, we do not have John Pecham’s date of birth.1 We do know that he was born in Patcham, a village near Brighton in Sussex in southern England, probably around 1230. He received his first schooling at the nearby Benedictine monastery of Lewes, a Cluniac priory. Then, at a young age, according to one of Pecham’s letters, he went to Paris to study the liberal arts.2 He returned to England, and while in Oxford he joined the Friars Minor sometime in the 1250s.3 During those liberal arts years, Pecham may have studied under Roger Bacon. In any case, the influence of Bacon on Pecham’s scientific work is clearly recognized. In the late 1250s, Pecham was then sent to Paris to study theology. He obtained his doctorate in theology in 1269, and in the spring of 1270 became regent master in theology and lector at the Franciscan friary in Paris. Deeply influenced by Bonaventure and his disciples, John Pecham then taught brilliant young Franciscan friars like Matthew of Acquasparta—future minister general and cardinal—Peter of John Olivi—one of the leading figures

1 The most complete monograph on John Pecham remains Decima L. Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford, 1952). A detailed biographical sketch can be found in David Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics (Madison, 1970), 3–11. See also Benjamin Thompson, ‘The academic and active vocations in the medieval Church: Archbishop John Pecham’, in The Church and Learning in Late Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of Professor R.B. Dobson, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 11, ed. Caroline Barron and Jenny Stratford (Donington, 2002), 1–24, and Benjamin Thompson, ‘Pecham [Peckham], John (c. 1230–1292)’, in odnb, vol. 43, 362–368. A recent survey of Pecham’s life and works has been penned by Girard J. Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham, o.f.m. and Archbishop of Canterbury’, Modern Schoolman 86 (2009), 147– 160. 2 John Pecham, Letters, 873–874: ‘nos in Francis ab annis teneris educati’. Cf. John Pecham, Register. 3 Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 314–315, n. 126, suggests that Pecham entered the order c. 1252.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_008

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of the Spirituals—Vital du Four—future provincial minister of Aquitaine and cardinal—Roger Marston—later provincial minister of England—and John of Murrovalle—also future general minister and cardinal. Those years in Paris were a period of high academic activity and scholarly production for Pecham. His teachings gave birth to many writings. He was not shy about getting involved in various doctrinal controversies, and he became one of the most revered Franciscan theologians. In respect to the Augustinian tradition, it is safe to say that Pecham was rather conservative in displaying strong opposition to some of Thomas Aquinas’s propositions, which did not prevent the two from being allies in the controversy between the mendicants and the seculars.4 The last twenty years of Pecham’s life are much better documented. He left Paris around 1271–1272 to return to Oxford and take a teaching position in the Franciscan school.5 Even though his lectures have not been saved, documents suggest that Pecham was well respected and regarded ‘as a valuable member of the theological faculty’.6 He kept his Oxford teaching position for three years until he was elected minister of the English province of the Friars Minor in 1275; a move which may be considered as a consequence of his good reputation. As minister provincial he was known for being austere and ascetic. His fasts were rigorous. He walked barefoot to the general chapter of the order held in Padua in 1276. In his actions as well as in his writings, Pecham showed his concern for the Franciscan spirit of poverty and simplicity.7 In 1277 Pope John xxi appointed John Pecham lector in theology at the papal university in Viterbo. Pecham spent two years there, giving highly appreciated lectures and writing numerous works. Then, in January 1279, Pope Nicholas iii nominated Pecham archbishop of Canterbury.8 Pecham was to succeed some-

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Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 11–35. See bruo, 1445–1447. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 35. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 42. There is some variation in the dates provided by the sources. Chronicon de Lanercost, 100–101, attests that ‘a domino papa Nicholao publico sermone in conversione sancti Pauli Cantuariensis archiepiscopus denunciatus est, antequam factus’. Another Franciscan witness affirms the date of the papal provision, adding that the episcopal consecration took place on 19 February. Cf. Michael J.P. Robson, ‘A Franciscan contribution to the De gestis Britonum (1205–1279) and its continuation to 1299’, afh 107 (2014), 308: ‘Anno domini 1278 Nicholaus papa tercius fratrem Iohannem de Pecham, de ordine Minorum, ministrum Anglie, doctorem egregium sacre theologie, compulit per obedienciam suscipere archiepiscopatum Cantuariensem in festo conversionis Sancti Pauli et in prima dominica Quadragesime proximo sequente eun-

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one he knew well from his Oxford days, the Dominican Robert Kilwardby, who had moved on after being made cardinal bishop of Porto and Santa Rufina, a diocese outside Rome. Although Pecham was not the candidate of the king of England, Edward i received him courteously and granted him the temporalities of his office.9 As archbishop of Canterbury and primate of England, John Pecham worked tirelessly to maintain the balance between the Church and the state, fighting for ecclesiastical rights, but also opposing abuses and corruptions within the Church. He remained implacable in matters of doctrine, renewing in 1284 a list of condemned articles issued by his predecessor in 1277.10 In the last years of his life, Pecham’s health deteriorated, both physically and mentally, and it affected his function as archbishop. He had ups and downs, and became irascible and unpredictable.11 But he never gave up his duties. Finally, in early December 1292, he became seriously ill and, within a few days, on 8 December, died in his manor of Mortlake, outside London.12 His body was buried in the north transept of his cathedral in Canterbury, where his tomb remains today. What kind of man was John Pecham, the Franciscan friar, the schoolman, the archbishop? His biographer, Decima Douie, wrote: ‘In spite of his deep religious feeling, integrity, zeal, and conscientiousness, he somehow falls just short of sanctity, especially during his Canterbury period.’13

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dem consecravit.’ A monastic chronicle from Canterbury, bl, ms. Cotton Galba, E.iii, fol. 42v, reports that the provision occurred on 25 January and consecration on 26 February: ‘item papa providit ad archiepiscoptatum Cantueariensem Fratrem Iohannem de Phesham die conversionis Sancti Pauli, et consecratus est ab eodem in curia romana iiii kalendas martii’. Handbook of British Chronology, ed. E.B. Pryde, Diana E. Greenway, S. Porter, I. Roy, 3rd edn (London, 1986), 233, gives the dates of 28 January and 19 February 1279. bf, iii, 375–377, no. 97, has 28 January 1279. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 51. See Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham, o.f.m.’, 152–153 and 156–160, where the condemnations of both Kilwardby and Pecham are listed. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 322–323. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 338. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 339.

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Pecham’s Works

John Pecham was a prolific writer who left us over fifty writings, showing how broad and diversified his scholarly activity was.14 In the field of natural science, his most famous writings are arguably the Perspectiva communis on the science of optics,15 the Theorica planetarum,16 and the Tractatus de sphaera.17 Pecham’s scientific works show the influence of Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius.18 In philosophy he left a Tractatus de anima.19 He also wrote various Quaestiones quodlibetales,20 and Quaestiones disputatae.21 Among his theological and spiritual pieces, we find a Lectura super Iohannem,22 a Postilla in Canticum Canticorum,23 and a Tractatus de Trinitate.24 Pecham also wrote sermons and letters. The registers he meticulously kept as archbishop are the oldest ones in the archives of Canterbury. John Pecham was, furthermore, a poet, his most famous piece being Philomena, a meditation on the life and passion of Christ in which a nightingale, singing the hours, gets closer to Christ and finally dies in a mystical union with him.25

14

15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25

For an extensive list, see Amedeus Teetaert, ‘Pecham, John’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 12 (1933), cols 107–142. For additional bibliography see also Ignatius Brady, ‘Jean Pecham’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité viii (1974), col. 646. David C. Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics: Perspectiva communis. No critical edition of this work has been published yet. Manuscript copies of it can be found in the British Library, ms. Add. 15107 and 15108. Bruce R. MacLaren and Girard J. Etzkorn, John Pecham’s Tractatus de sphaera, a critical edition and translation with commentary (New York, 2015). Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 5; Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham, o.f.m.’, 147. Johannis Pechami Quaestiones tractantes de anima, ed. Jerome Spettmann, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, Bd. 19 (Aschendorff, 1918); Tractatus de anima Ioannis Pecham, ed. Gaudenzio P. Melani, Bibliotheca di studi francescani 1 (Florence, 1948). John Pecham, Quodlibeta quatuor. John Pecham, Quaestiones disputatae. Friedrich Stegmüller, ‘Der Johanneskommentar des Johannes Pecham o.m.’, Franziskanische Studien 31 (1949), 396–414; Friedrich Stegmüller, ‘Eine weitere Handschrift mit dem Johanneskommentar des Johannes Pecham o.m.’, Franziskanische Studien 35 (1953), 440– 442. See Victorin Doucet, ‘Notulae biliographicae de quibusdam operibus Fr. Ioannis Pecham o.f.m.’, Antonianum 8 (1933), 425–426. See edition of the text in Willibrord Lampen, ‘Jean Pecham et son office de la Sainte Trinité’, La France Franciscaine 11 (1928), 211–229. Maximilian van Moerdijk, ‘Philomena van John Pecham’, Neophilologicus 38 (1954), 206—

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And yet special attention should be given to a few pieces that John Pecham wrote in the context of the controversy between the mendicants and the seculars at the University of Paris, in order to explain, but above all to defend, the religious life of the mendicant orders in general, and of the Friars Minor in particular. The first writing is the Tractatus pauperis or Tractatus de perfectione evangelica; it is composed of sixteen chapters in which Pecham responds, without ever naming it, to the Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae et praelatorum et facultatum Ecclesiae of Gerard of Abbeville.26 In chapter 10 Pecham develops a fierce defence of the Rule of the Friars Minor. The Tractatus contra fratrem Robertum Kilwardby, o.p., was a response to the letter of the then provincial master of the English Dominicans that exalted the Dominican poverty at the expense of Franciscan poverty. Pecham’s response must have been written in Oxford, before 11 October 1272, when Gregory x appointed the Dominican as archbishop of Canterbury.27 Finally, the Canticum pauperis pro dilecto continues Pecham’s apology of the Franciscan life and was probably written in the same period. This writing has a rather positive tone, showing the beauty of a life that leads to wisdom through learning and contempt for material concern.28 It may have been autobiographical.29

26

27 28 29

217, 290–300; Maximlian van Moerdijk, ‘La ‘Philomena’ de Jean de Peckham’, in Miscellanea Melchior de Pobladura, vol. 1 (Rome, 1964), 197–214. The Tractatus pauperis still awaits a unified edition. It has been published in pieces. The prologue and chapters 1 to 6 have been edited by Anastase van den Wijngaert in Tractatus pauperis a fratre Johanne de Pecham (Paris, 1925). Chapters 7–9 have been edited by Ferdinand Delorme, ‘Trois chapitres de Jean Peckam pour la défense des Ordres mendiants’, Studi Francescani 4 (1932), 46–62, 164–198. The prologue, excerpts of chapters 7 to 9, chapter 10, excerpts of chapters 11 to 12 to 15, and chapter 16 have been edited by Andrew G. Little, ‘Selections from Pecham’s “Tractatus Pauperis”, or “De perfectione evangelica” ’, in John Pecham, Tractatus tres, 13–90. Delorme edited chapter 15 in his Fr. Richardi de Mediavilla quaestio disputata de privilegio Martini Papae iv (Florence, 1925), 79–88. The text has been edited by Felice Tocco, ‘Tractatus contra fratrem Robertum Kilwardby, o.p.’, in Fratris Johannis Pecham Tractatus tres de paupertate (Aberdeen, 2010), 91–147. John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, 133–205. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 5–6.

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Pecham’s Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum

3.1 The Text and Its Authorship The text of John Pecham’s Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum is found in volume viii of the Opera Omnia of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.30 For that critical edition, the editors, the members of the Collegio S. Bonaventura, used seven of the seventeen manuscripts they inventoried. Most manuscripts are from the fifteenth century. Of the seventeen manuscripts only one, the Florence Santa Croce Plut. xv Dext. 12, does not give the authorship to Bonaventure, but instead to his disciple John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury. The text of the Expositio begins on fol. 116v with the words, ‘Incipit expositio venerabilis patris et magistri fratris Iohannis de Pechiam super regulam fratrum Minorum’, and it ends on fol. 141r.31 The attribution of this Expositio to Bonaventure seems to go back to John of Capistrano in the Constitutiones Martinianae of 1430. There is no earlier evidence of such attribution, but it was likely due to the style of the text, which stresses the spiritual values of the Rule, a characteristic of Bonaventure’s writings. During the eighteenth century a few historians questioned the attribution of the Expositio to Bonaventure. But the editors of Quaracchi decided to keep it among the works of the seraphic doctor. However, a few decades after their publication, the noted Franciscan scholar, Ferdinand Delorme, in the introduction to his edition of the Meditatio pauperis in solitudine, rejected their conclusions and attributed the Expositio to John Pecham.32 Delorme’s arguments were endorsed by some scholars, but also encountered the opposition of partisans of the attribution to Bonaventure, the most eloquent of them being the Franciscan, Ephrem Longpré.33 The attribution of the Expositio to John Pecham was finally well established in 1969 by another Franciscan friar, Conrad Harkins, in what remains the most exhaustive study of the question.34

30 31 32 33

34

Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 8, 391–437. Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 8, lxxi–lxxiii. Meditatio pauperis in solitudine auctore Anonymo, ed. Ferdinand Delorme, bfama 7 (Florence, 1929), xxv. Ephrem Longpré, ‘Bonaventure’, in Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques ix (1937), col. 782; Ephrem Longpré, ‘Bonaventure’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité i (1937), col. 1771. Conrad Harkins, ‘The authorship of a commentary on the Franciscan rule published among the works of St. Bonaventure’, fs 29 (1969), 157–248. See the history of the authorship controversy on pages 161–173.

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The comparison of the Expositio and papal documents leads to the conclusion that the Expositio could not have been written after 1279.35 On 14 August 1279, Pope Nicholas iii released his famous and detailed declaration on the Rule of the Friars Minor in the bull Exiit qui seminat.36 While, in his argumentation, Nicholas iii uses, on several occasions, Bonaventure’s Apologia pauperum,37 there is no reference to a commentary on the Rule by the seraphic doctor. And while commentators cite other writings of Bonaventure on the Rule, they never mention the Expositio: ‘This silence concerning the Expositio greatly weakens the case for the seraphic doctor’s authorship.’38 If the external criticism tends to show that Bonaventure is not the author of the Expositio, the internal criticism—that is, a comparison of texts between Bonaventure and Pecham that Harkins meticulously conducted—establishes ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ the authorship of the latter, and that the manuscript of Florence was right to state that the Expositio is indeed the work of ‘venerabilis patris et magistri fratris Johannis de Pechiam’.39 3.2 The Context Commentaries on the Rule of the Friars Minor began to appear in the early 1240s. Since the order had definitely taken a turn towards a clerical institution in the service of the Roman Church, the gap between the Rule and the new reality generated explanations, justifications or harsh criticism. There was also a need to defend the order against attacks from the outside, whether they were coming from the secular clergy or from the Dominicans, and to criticize the evolution of the order.40 We know of six commentaries produced between the deposition of Brother Elias in 1239 and the end of the thirteenth century. Three commentaries origi35 36 37 38 39 40

Harkins, ‘The authorship’, 173–203. bf, iii, 404–416, no. 127. A better edition is found in Bullarii Franciscani Epitome, ed. Conrad Eubel (Florence, 1908), 290–300. Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 8, 233–330. English translation in Defense of the Mendicants, ed. J. de Vinck and R. Karris (St. Bonaventure, 2010). Harkins, ‘The authorship’, 246. Harkins, ‘The authorship’, 203–234. Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden and Boston, ma, 2004), 128–129: ‘Some of these commentaries were products of Franciscan “dissidents” concerned about the changes in the religious life of the Franciscan order. (…) Others were the product of champions of the Franciscan order against attacks from outside, or came from the pen of officially appointed commentators (by the general chapter or at the request of the papacy), who aimed to re-establish consensus and wanted to find solutions for new problems.’

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nated in France. The first one, in 1242, is commonly known as the commentary of the four masters. It was a response to a request of the general chapter of definitors in 1241 held in Montpellier, and was produced by Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Robert of Bascia and Eudes Rigaud.41 Hugh of Digne composed a commentary in the late 1250s,42 and Peter of John Olivi in the late 1280s.43 One commentary came from Germany and was written by David of Augsburg before his death in 1272.44 Finally, two other commentaries appeared in the Franciscan province of England: one written by John Pecham in the 1270s and the other by John of Wales in the early 1280s.45 The only commentary of Italian origin is the one written by Angelo Clareno in the 1320s.46 What compelled John Pecham to write a commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor? When he returned to Oxford from Paris in 1271, he found the Franciscans disturbed by the letter written by the provincial prior of the Dominicans, Robert Kilwardby, that criticized the Franciscan life. Having dealt in Paris with the secular–mendicant controversy, Pecham was already an experienced apologist. So he wrote a sharp response to Kilwardby,47 and, soon after, composed his Canticum pauperis.48 But there was a need for something positive and comprehensive, ‘an extensive up-to-date commentary on the Rule incorporating the developments given to its interpretation in the Franciscan writings’,49 and, at the same time, a definitive rebuttal of the contestants. Now that Bonaventure had died in 1274, and Pecham had become minister of the English province, his pre-eminence as apologist made him the right person to write such a commentary. If there is no question that Pecham wrote his Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum during his provincialate, one may wonder whether he wrote it 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49

Expositio quatuor magistrorum. See also introduction and English translation in Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 1–29. Hugh of Digne’s Rule Commentary, ed. David Flood (Rome, 1979). See Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 31–160. Peter Olivi’s Rule Commentary, ed. David Flood (Stuttgart, 1972). David Flood, ‘Die Regelerklärung des David von Augsburg’, Franziskanische Studien 57 (1993), 201–242. See also introduction in Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 161–212. John of Wales, Commentary, 93–138. See also introduction in Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 1, 213–263. Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum di Frate Angelo Clareno, ed. Giovanni Boccali, Pubblicazioni della Biblioteca Francescana Chiesa Nuova, Assisi 7 (Assisi, 1994). See also introduction and English translation in Flood and Burr (eds.), ecrfm, vol. 3. See note 27. See notes 28 and 29. Harkins, ‘The authorship’, 244.

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in England or in Italy, since he was at the general chapter of Padua in 1276, and then at the papal Curia between 1277 and 1279. Since the Expositio is clearly directed to the whole order, and there is no particular mention of the English province, there is a good chance that Pecham wrote it while in Italy. 3.3 The Content John Pecham’s commentary follows the various parts of the bull Solet annuere of 29 November 1223, containing the definitive Rule of the Friars Minor: the papal introduction, the twelve chapters of the Rule and the papal conclusion. It is good to remember, however, that studies have shown that the text of the ‘Rule and Life of the Lesser Brothers’ (regula et vita minorum fratrum) was originally composed as a continuous text. The twelve subtitles without numbers were introduced after the drafting of the text. Without those subtitles, the text comes across as the expression of the life of the lesser brothers, as the incipit states: Incipit vita minorum fratrum. The subtitles were introduced to create a text divided into chapters, and to give the text the appearance of a Rule.50 By the time John Pecham drafted his commentary, the word life was no longer getting much attention. Let us begin with a few statistics. A first look at Pecham’s Expositio shows quickly that all the chapters of the Rule do not receive the same attention. The whole commentary is roughly twenty times longer than the Rule itself. Of course, the division of the Rule into twelve chapters did not result in twelve chapters of equal length. The longest chapter of the Rule is chapter 2, ‘Those Who Want to Take This Life and How They Should be received’ (De his qui volunt vitam istam accipere et qualiter recipi debeant). That chapter occupies over 20 per cent of the whole text of the Rule. It is followed by chapter 10, ‘Admonition and Correction of the Brothers’ (De admonitione et correctione fratrum), 15 per cent; chapter 3, ‘On the Divine Office, and Fasting, and the Way the Brothers Should Go Around the World’ (De divino officio et ieiunio et quomodo fratres debeant ire per mundum), 12 per cent; and chapter 6, ‘The Brothers Are Not to Appropriate Anything; They Are to Ask for Alms; the Sick Brothers’ (Quod nihil approprient sibi fratres et de eleemosyna petenda et de fratribus infirmis), a little over 10 per cent. The shortest chapters of the Rule are chapter 1, Incipit vita minorum fratrum; chapter 5, ‘The Way of Working’ 50

See Kajetan Esser, Die endgültige Regel der minderen Brüder im Lichte der neuesten Forschung (Werl in Westfalen, 1965); Armando Quaglia, ‘A proposito dei dodici “capitoli” della Regola minoritica’, mf 77 (1977), 123–129; Jean-François Godet-Calogeras, ‘De la Forma vitae à la Regula bullata et le Testament de Frère François’, in La Regola dei Frati Minori (Spoleto, 2010), 31–59.

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(De modo laborandi), both representing some 4 per cent of the whole text; and chapter 11, ‘The Brothers Are Not to Enter the Monasteries of Nuns’ (Quod fratres non ingrediantur monasteria monacharum), 3 per cent. The importance of the Rule chapters according to their length is different in the Expositio. Although the chapter that is looked at in most detail in Pecham’s commentary is also the longest chapter in the Rule—chapter 2 on the admission into the order—this is followed, in length order, by chapter 4, ‘The Brothers Should Not Receive Money’ (Quod fratres non recipiant pecuniam) and chapter 3 on the Divine Office, fasting and travel. The shortest chapters in Pecham’s Expositio are chapter 8, ‘The Election of the General Minister of this Brotherhood, and the Chapter of Pentecost’ (De electione generalis ministri huius fraternitatis et de capitulo Pentecostes); chapter 7, ‘The Penance to Be Imposed on Brothers who Sin’ (De poenitentia fratribus peccantibus imponenda); and chapter 12, ‘Those who Go Among the Saracens and Other Infidels’ (De euntibus inter saracenos et alios infideles).51 Going deeper into those statistics, it appears that Pecham’s commentary on chapter 6 of the Rule is 225 times longer than the text of the chapter itself; the commentary on chapter 4, 100 times; the commentary on chapter 1, 50 times; and the commentary on chapter 9, ‘On Preachers’ (De praedicatoribus), 30 times. Meanwhile, the commentary on chapter 2 is only twenty-three times longer than the text of the chapter itself; the commentary on chapter 3, nineteen times; the commentary on chapter 5, seventeen times; and the commentary on chapter 11, thirteen times.52 In his commentary Pecham explains in detail the conditions and consequences of the entrance into the order, including a long argument—in scholastic style—on the superior virtues of sandals instead of shoes.53 He insists on the discipline of the Divine Office and fasting, giving us in passing a little commentary on the Our Father,54 and an interesting perspective on fasting.55 But the chapters on money and poverty (chapters 4 and 6), and the apostolic nature of the Franciscan life (chapters 1 and 9) are obviously his core concerns.

51

52

53 54 55

Sorted in decreasing order of length, the chapters of the Rule would be 2, 10, 3, 6, 8, 12, 7, 9, 4, 1, 5 and 11. In Pecham’s Expositio, the decreasing order would be ii, iv, iii, vi, i, x, ix, v, xi, viii, vii and xii. If we consider how much longer the commentaries of the various chapters are compared to the length of the chapters in the Rule, the decreasing order would be vi, iv, i, ix, ii, iii, v, xi, x, vii, viii, xii. Expositio, ii, 17–23. Expositio, iii, 3. Expositio, iii, 7.

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For John Pecham, the division of the Rule in twelve chapters shows clearly that the Friars Minor have to live ‘in imitation of the twelve apostles’.56 In that logic, the mission of preaching—vita apostolica—is at the core of the observance of the Gospel, and consequently those who profess the Rule profess the life ‘which the Lord commended to the apostles sent out to preach’, and—Pecham adds—are the only ones in the world doing it!57 That profession is made through the three vows of obedience, expropriation and chastity, with a special promise of obedience to the Church and the supreme pontiff. For the author of the Expositio, professing this Rule is the ‘summary perfection’.58 Pecham makes a direct link between the profession of the Rule as imitation of the apostles and the duty of studying and preaching. Although ‘pastoral care is not an ownership’,59 and must be exercised with respect and submission to bishops and local clergy, for Pecham, chapter 9 of the Rule makes Francis’s intention patent: preaching is necessary for the friars because of their profession of the Rule, and so is study ‘because without study they cannot examine their words the proper way’.60 He concludes: ‘Hence it is most certainly manifest that for no other religious is it more appropriate to preach by reason of their status than for those who profess this Rule.’61 At the time of the composition of the Expositio the Friars Minor had definitely evolved into an order of preachers of considerable importance; this had been put them more than once in tension with the secular clergy, but also in competition with the other mendicant order, the Dominicans, that is, the Friars Preachers. By demonstrating that, for the Franciscans, observing the Gospel meant imitating the apostles, Pecham justified the involvement of the order in study and preaching. And he went so far as to claim that the Friars Minor were the best and the most perfect order. But there was another question, no less delicate, that Pecham had to address: the poverty of the Friars Minor and particularly their problems with money. The question was not new. Chapter 4 of the Rule opens with the strong words of Francis himself: ‘I firmly command each and all the brothers

56 57 58 59 60 61

Expositio, i, 1: ‘ad imitationem duodecim Apostolorum’. Expositio, i, 3: ‘qui soli in hoc mundo vitam illam ad litteram profitentur quam Apostolis ad praedicandum missis Dominus commendavit’. Expositio, i, 9: ‘Haec est igitur huius perfectio summaria hierarchiae.’ Expositio, ix, 4: ‘Cura pastoralis non est dominium.’ Expositio, ix, 13: ‘quia sine studio non possunt verba modo debito examinare’. Expositio, ix, 13: ‘unde certissime constat quod nullis religiosis aliis plus competit praedicare ex ratione status sui, quam his qui hanc regulam profitentur’.

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to never in any way receive coins or money, either personally or through intermediaries.’62 However, after Francis’s death in 1226, it soon became clear that not all the friars shared the founder’s allergy for Mammon. Money and poverty quickly divided the order. In 1230, unable to reach an agreement, the friars took their dispute to the pope. In his bull Quo elongati, Gregory ix solved the question by first taking ownership of everything the friars would need and use. Regarding the use of money, he established the position of agent (nuntius) who would take care of the business for the friars, but not on their behalf.63 Far from solving the problem, Quo elongati opened the door to a long history of more tensions and disputes among Franciscans as well as to strong criticism from outside the order. A few decades after Quo elongati, commenting on Francis’s strict prohibition, Pecham warns against three dangers presented by money: ‘danger of Judas betraying the Lord for money … danger of a false religion by living in idleness … danger of a great number of clergy contending for common possessions’.64 Money divides and separates the human and God, the human and self, the human and the neighbour. So, quoting the Scriptures and the Church Fathers, Pecham gives seven main reasons to exclude money, the last one being ‘an undivided attention of the heart on preaching the word of God’.65 Pecham’s final words on money are clear and simple: ‘To receive money is to receive ownership.’66 This leads us to the other contentious prohibition, ownership and chapter 6 of the Rule: ‘The brothers shall make nothing their own, neither a house, nor a place, nor anything at all.’67 The commentary on chapter 6 of the Rule is the most extended of the Expositio. It follows the four points of the chapter: non-appropriation, begging, exaltation of poverty and mutual care. But the background of the commentary is different from the one of the Rule. Chapter 6 of the Rule was referring to the poverty and humility of Jesus as model and encouragement to the brothers who were living as pilgrims and strangers in a society from which

62 63 64

65 66 67

Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 328–329: Regula bullata, iv, 1: ‘Precipio firmiter fratribus universis, ut nullo modo denarios vel pecuniam recipiant per se vel per interpositam personam.’ See H. Grundmann, ‘Die Bulle Quo elongati Papst Gregors ix’, afh 54 (1961), 3–25. Expositio, iv, 1: ‘periculum Judae pro pecunia Dominum tradentis; … periculum fictae religionis in otio viventis; … periculum multitudinis cleri in fine pro appropriatis communibus contendentis’. Expositio, iv, 3: ‘indivisa cordis intentio circa praedicationem verbi Dei’. Expositio, iv, 20: ‘Recipere igitur pecuniam est recipere possessionem.’ Regula bullata, vi, 1, in Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 328–329: ‘Fratres nichil sibi approprient, nec domum nec locum nec aliquam rem.’

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they dissented. In the Expositio, the Church is seen as the continuation of the community of Jerusalem. Poverty is the absence of ownership and sharing in the possessions of the Church: ‘all the goods of the Church of Christ and all superfluous wealth are a public possession of the poor. But in sharing in this public possession everyone hurts others less, the more one is content with fewer things.’68 Nevertheless, if Pecham sees poverty as an individual virtue practised in common, he also sees it as down to earth: ‘It is not fitting for the truly poor to have large grounds, or expensive buildings, nor any similar things, not ornate vases, not cellars, not vineyards, not stocked supply rooms.’69 For the early Franciscans, money and poverty were seen in the context of their socioeconomic life, that is, in connection with their good work. We can see in the Expositio that the link has been lost. In Pecham’s time the Friars Minor were totally involved in ecclesiastical ministry, and they excelled at it. This was Pecham’s own experience. No wonder then that chapter 5 of the Rule, on work, does not receive much attention. There is no reference to any other early Franciscan writing, nor to Francis’s Testament where work is seen in the context of interaction with people. The approach is rather individual and ascetic. Pecham sees only three reasons for work: ‘exclusion of idleness, enkindling of devotion, and obtaining the necessary support of the body’.70 Besides that, there is no great esteem for work understood as manual labour: ‘The work of wisdom is simply better than bodily work.’71 That distinction can turn into a real classical statement: ‘Those who are not apt to greater things are … to be occupied in bodily work … It is impious to want to extend what is imposed on the lazy and the curious, to others who are intent on more sublime and more useful things.’72 Sentences like those do not go well with Francis’s own words at the end of his life: ‘And I was working with my hands, and I want

68

69

70 71 72

Expositio, vi, 23: ‘omnia bona ecclesiae Christi et omnes superfluitates divitum sunt una res publica pauperum. In participatione autem huius rei publicae tanto unusquisque minus alios laedit quanto paucioribus est contentus.’ Expositio, vi, 15: ‘Non ergo competit veris pauperibus habere magnas areas vel sumtuosa aedificia, aut quaecumque alia similia, non vasa ornata, non cellaria, non vinaria, non promptuaria instaurata.’ Expositio, v, 1: ‘exclusio otiositatis, inflammatio devotionis, adeptio etiam sustentationis necessariae corporalis’. Expositio, v, 3: ‘labor sapientiae simpliciter melior est corporeo labore’. Expositio, v, 4: ‘qui ad maiora apti non sunt … labore sunt corporeo exercendi … Impium est autem illud quod otiosis et curiosis imponitur, velle ad alios extendere, qui sublimioribus et utilioribus sunt intenti.’

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to work; and I firmly want all the other brothers to work in some work that is honest. Those who do not know how to work shall learn.’73 Other times, other places, indeed.

4

Conclusion

For John Pecham, that the Rule had received a formal approbation from Pope Honorius iii in 1223, followed by the strongly favourable interpretation made by his successor, Gregory ix, in his bull Quo elongati in 1230, was the ultimate argument in favour of it: ‘From the papal confirmation, Pecham argued that the whole Rule was an apostolic mandate and branded as impious heretics and schismatics those who declared that the Rule could not be observed.’74 The text of the Expositio is an ongoing back and forth between a praise of the Franciscan life and a defence of the Rule against its detractors. But Pecham is also critical of the abuses within the order leading to a more comfortable life. Pecham was a man of his time. His understanding of Franciscan life was both monastic—asceticism—and apostolic—preaching. There is no mention of the vita evangelica. The model was to imitate the life of the twelve apostles as seen in the book of Acts, not the life of the disciples following Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. There had been a shift in the evolution of the order, and all Pecham had to do was to justify the new situation. One last question: What happened to Pecham’s Expositio? It disappeared for a couple of centuries until some scholars found it and resurrected it under the authorship of Bonaventure. How did that happen? In 1279, that is, just a few years after Pecham composed his Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum, Pope Nicholas iii published his constitution Exiit qui seminat,75 which is his own long and detailed explanation of the Rule of the Friars Minor. It is then likely that Exiit qui seminat replaced Pecham’s commentary and made it obsolete. However, in the end, Pecham’s Expositio remains the testimony of a sincere man, deeply religious, and certainly a passionate defender of his order. 73

74 75

Testamentum, 20–21, in Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 398–399: ‘Et ego manibus meis laborabam et volo laborare, et omnes alii fratres firmiter volo quod laborent de laboritio quod pertinet ad honestatem; qui nesciunt, discant.’ Conrad Harkins, ‘John Pecham and the mendicant controversy of the thirteenth century’ (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1973), 288. See note 36.

part 3 The Friars’ Preaching and Their Celebration of the Liturgy

∵

chapter 8

Harmony, the Fiddler, Preaching and Amazon Nuns: Glosses on De musica in Bartholomew Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum Peter V. Loewen

While recovering from illness at San Damiano in 1224, Francis made a discovery so revelatory that it would shake the apostolic mission of his fledgling order to the core. According to the author of the Speculum perfectionis, Francis emerged from his dark cell after more than fifty days of illness, impassioned with a desire to sing and preach. He composed the text and music of his Canticle of Brother Sun, and, after teaching it to his friars, struck upon the idea of sending Brother Pacifico and a ‘few good and spiritual brothers’ throughout the world, ‘preaching and singing the Praises of the Lord’. Francis enjoined them to tell their audience: ‘We are jongleurs of the Lord, and this is what we want as payment: that you live in true penance.’ And he said: ‘What are the servants of God if not His jongleurs, who must lift people’s hearts and move them up to spiritual joy.’1 It is but one of the many references to music in the early biographies, and a particularly potent witness to the biographer’s plan to represent Francis as a complex musical ‘persona’.2 Francis’s affective piety was performative in nature, ecstatic and volatile; but, when harnessed to preaching, it had a clearly defined purpose. It is a legend, of course, part of a bio-hagiographical construct; yet Rona Goffen observes that the Franciscans, unlike the Dominicans and other orders, fostered a ‘cult of personality’ of their founder that encouraged emulation:3 ‘Precisely because Francis provided the example for his friars, the way in which his character was presented in art and in literature became of the utmost 1 Speculum perfectionis, c.100, in ff, 1849–2053, 2010–2013; Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 3, 346–348; Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 121–123. 2 Peter Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Leiden, 2013), ch. 1. 3 Rona Goffen, Spirituality in Conflict, Saint Francis and Giotto’s Bardi Chapel (University Park, pa, 1988), xvi.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_009

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concern to the order, a matter requiring deep consideration and, eventually, careful control.’4 The Franciscan schoolmen of the thirteenth century would find inspiration in Francis’s model of singing and preaching. Reconciling their musical understanding within a system of scholastic theology, and disseminating that learning through their novice manuals, they would teach a burgeoning generation of Franciscans about the various applications of musical knowledge to a clerical avocation. Even casual observation of their literary output reveals that the English Franciscan schoolmen were in the vanguard of music education. William of Middleton, regent master at the Universities of Paris and Cambridge, offers simple clerics and priests a concise introduction to the rites and rituals of the Mass in his Opusculum super missam (mid-1250s), emphasizing their affective, performative characteristics.5 Although Robert Grosseteste never entered the order, his ideas clearly influenced students at the University of Oxford, where he was master of arts and then the first lector of the Franciscan school (1229–1235). Roger Bacon and Bartholomew Anglicus joined the Franciscan order after their time in Oxford, and later integrated Grosseteste’s ideas about the science of music and sound. Writing in his Opus maius and Opus tertium (c. 1268), on commission to Pope Clement iv, Roger Bacon exposes music’s complex relationship with the arts and moral and natural philosophy, while explaining how this knowledge should be applied to singing and preaching.6 Bartholomew Anglicus wrote De proprietatibus rerum for students, probably the ones in his care in Paris and Magdeburg; hence, he was in an ideal position to disseminate his knowledge about music among a very large audience of aspiring Franciscan clerics.7 De musica, from book 19 of De proprietatibus rerum, functions essentially as a kind of encyclopaedic novice manual when read through the lens of its many glosses. Examining them together, one acquires a better appreciation of the medieval reader’s rich understanding of music from a medieval interdisciplinary, and distinctly Franciscan, perspective. A selection of these will suffice to demonstrate how readers would have used musical knowledge: to make connections between concepts that unify disparate fields of science, to understand analogically the relationships between people and to comprehend the divine rhetoric of preaching.

4 Ibid. 5 Opusculum super missam, ed. A. van Dijk, Ephemerides Liturgicae 53 (1939), 310. See Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, ch. 3. 6 Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, ch. 6. 7 M.C. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia (Aldershot, 1992), 12–13.

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Bartholomew Anglicus was born in Suffolk in the late twelfth century. He studied at the University of Oxford under the guidance of Robert Grosseteste, and later moved to the University of Paris, where, according to Salimbene, he attained the status of ‘baccalaureus biblicus’.8 Soon after entering the order of Friars Minor, probably in 1224,9 Bartholomew was appointed lector at the studium in Magdeburg.10 He spent the latter decades of his career in administration, serving as minister for the provinces of Austria (1249), Bohemia (1256– 1257) and Saxony (1262).11 De proprietatibus rerum was completed in Magdeburg sometime between 1230 and 1240, and no later than 1247.12 Its broad transmission in over 240 manuscripts suggests that it was read widely throughout Europe.13 A strong tradition of incunabula and early editions, including an English translation by Stephen Batman, shows the work remained popular; but these books lack marginal glosses, which means that early modern readers lost touch with what medieval readers grasped about Bartholomew’s text.14 Heinz Meyer brought the glosses back to broad public attention in 2000, having catalogued approximately 188 manuscript sources of the Latin text. Some 100 of them, copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, include over 11,000 marginal notes, which suggested to Meyer that they might have formed part of the original text.15 Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, one of the earliest and most complete Parisian sources (Figure 8.1), shall serve for the purposes of this study.16 Markings in the

8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16

Salimbene de Adam, 138. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 6. Jordan of Giano, 104, no. 58. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 7–8. Ibid., 11. Seymour suggests a date sometime between 1242 and 1247. See Heinz Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie des Bartholomäus Anglicus: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von ‘De proprietatibus rerum’ (Munich, 2000), 13. See Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie, 41–119, for a description of the transmission of original versions of Bartholomew’s text. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 263. John Trevisa produced an English Translation of De proprietatibus rerum in the 1390s (see On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum: A Critical Text, 3 vols. [Oxford, 1975–1988]). The only modern English translation is Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke De proprietatibus rerum … (London, 1582). The frontispiece advertises that it is ‘profitable for all Estates, as well for the benefite of the Mind as the Bodie’. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 263. Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie, 206. Seymour, ‘Some medieval French readers of De proprietatibus rerum’, Scriptorium 28 (1974), 101; Meyer, Die Enzyklopädie, 96. Because my analysis relies on literal comparison, I have

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manuscript indicate that it was in the library of Pierre de Limoges (d. 1304), a canon of Évreux and master at the Sorbonne, before he donated it to the Sorbonne, along with other manuscripts, such as Jerome of Moravia’s Tractatus de musica (c. 1280–before 1304).17 In the University of Paris taxatio list of 1304, De proprietatibus rerum is listed among sources that would have been useful to preachers. It suggested to Juris Lidaka that ‘the encyclopedia was an important, basic work for materials out of which to compose sermons’.18 Examining Bartholomew’s De musica in light of its glosses should help to explain how musicians and scientists like Pierre de Limoges and aspiring priests might have used it. The first eighteen books of De proprietatibus rerum offer readers a broad examination of the natural sciences, compiling the knowledge of many earlier authors. De musica, in book 19, essentially transmits Isidore’s Etymologies, often verbatim. Bartholomew takes up Isidore’s examination of tone colours in the voice, the various types and uses of musical instruments mentioned in Scripture, and numerical ratios and proportions. Where Bartholomew digresses from Isidore, one may capture a glimpse of the Franciscan lector at work. Some of the marginal notes seem to do nothing more than mark the main subject in the adjacent text. But most of the fifty standard glosses on De musica offer pithy statements that add significantly to Bartholomew’s meaning.

17

18

retained all original texts. Batman uppon Bartholome, his Booke De proprietatibus rerum … is available in a reprint edition (New York, 1976), but all translations and paraphrases are based on my own reading of Bartholomew’s Latin text. As his De musica is so closely intertwined with Isidore’s Etymologies, sometimes repeating Isidore’s words verbatim, one might also consult the translation by Stephen A. Barney, The Etymologies of Isidore (Cambridge, 2006). Seymour, ‘Some medieval French readers’, 101. For further connections to Jerome’s Tractatus see commentary concerning the vielle in section 2. See also Danielle Jacquart, ‘Medicine and theology’, in Crossing Boundaries at Medieval Universities, ed. Spencer E. Young, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 36 (Leiden, 2011), 216–217. Juris G. Lidaka, ‘Glossing conception, infancy, childhood, and adolescence in Book vi of De proprietatibus rerum’, in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum: Texte Latin et réception vernaculaire: Actes du colloque international, Münster, 9–11.10.2003, ed. Baudouin van den Abeele and Heinz Meyer (Turnhout, 2005), 124.

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figure 8.1a

De musica from De proprietatibus rerum, Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232r

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figure 8.1b

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De musica from De proprietatibus rerum, Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232v

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figure 8.1c

153

De musica from De proprietatibus rerum, Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 233r

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figure 8.1d

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De musica from De proprietatibus rerum, Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 233v

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155

Harmony and Sound

Like Isidore, Bartholomew divides music into three parts: harmonic, rhythmic and metric.19 His definition accords at first with Isidore’s understanding of harmonica, as differentiating ‘high and low sounds’, but he later combines this with commentary about the rise (arsis) and fall (thesis) of the voice.20 Isidore proceeds to a threefold division of music into harmonic, organic and rhythmic, which distinguishes vocal music (harmonica) from the music played by wind (organica) and plucked (rhythmica) instruments.21 He then further divides harmonica into sung and spoken music,22 but Bartholomew removes these complications. He conflates Isidore’s various definitions of harmonica into one elaborate definition that eradicates distinctions, and promotes, rather, a unified understanding of harmonia as a sweet, consonant song consisting of diverse voices and various wind, string and percussion instruments or sounds. The marginal note ‘what armonia is’ seems to alert the reader to this important alteration to Isidore’s taxonomy. Nota quid sit armonia†

Et est harmonia dulcis cantuum consonancia,† proveniens ex proporcione debita in diversis vocibus, flatibus, pulsibus, sive sonis. Nam, ut dicit Isidorus, aut voce editur sonus sicut per fauces, aut flatu sicut per fistulam atque tubam, aut pulsu ut per cymbalum aut cytharam et huiusmodi, que percussa sunt canora.23

Bartholomew’s digression leads smoothly to Isidore’s definitions of symphonia and euphonia. These are glossed by a remarkable sequence of marginal notes that teach the reader, by analogy, that concordant behaviour within the chapter

19

20

21 22 23

Etym. 3.18.1. De propriet. rerum, 19.133, ll. 23–24. References are to book, chapter and line in De propriet. rerum. I am grateful to Juris Lidaka for sharing with me his unpublished Latin edition of Bartholomew Anglicus’s De musica (Turnhout, forthcoming). Until its eventual publication, one must resort to medieval sources such as Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fols. 232r–234v for the glosses and text (fig. 8.1). ‘Harmonica est quae decernit in sonis acutum et gravem’ (Etym. 3.18.1); and later, ‘Arsis est vocis elevatio, hoc est initium. Thesis vocis positio, hoc est finis’ (Etym. 3.20.9). Compare ‘Harmonica est que discernit in sonis acumen et gravem secundum arsim et thesim’ (De propriet. rerum, 19.133, ll. 24–25). Etym. 3.19.1. Etym. 3.20.1. Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232r (fig. 8.1A); 19.133, ll. 27–33.

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choir is preferred to ‘singular’ behaviour, because singularity is disquieting, as dissonance is to the sense of hearing.24 The concept of concordia was a favourite subject also of Robert Grosseteste, as I have shown in other work, and it is parsed extensively in later glosses.25 Grosseteste may also have inspired Bartholomew to make this particular distinction between sonus and vox: Omnis enim vox est sonus sed non econtrario. Nam sonus est obiectum auditus, quia quicquid auditu percipitur Nota quid sonus† sonus dicitur,† ut fragor arborum, collisio lapidum, strepitus fluctuum et ventorum, garritus avium, mugitus animalium, voces et clamores hominum, et percussiones organorum. Vox autem proprie dicitur sonus ab ore animalis pro‡ Nota quid vox latus.‡26 Both Isidore and Bartholomew define vox as a product of sonus, not the other way around (‘sed non econtrario’). Vox stems from the intellect, an utterance made by the mouths of humans and animals.27 But while Isidore goes on to parse the meaning (and misuse) of the word vox among the ancients, Bartholomew takes up the meaning of sonus—another favourite subject of his mentor at Oxford. Grosseteste deals at length with the science of sound in De generatione sonorum, and in several books (Tractatus) of his Summa philosophiae. Chapter 19 of Tractatus xii, for example, describes the natures, causes, and effects of sound. He begins, much like Bartholomew, ‘Obiectum proprium auditus est sonus.’28 Grosseteste’s commentary in the Summa is more highly nuanced, more detailed with regard to the transmission and reception of sound—conveyed to the listener’s sensory nerve through the medium of beaten air—but their emphasis on the generation of sound by natural objects is almost identical.29 Bartholomew writes, ‘it is said that every sonus is perceived

24 25 26 27

28 29

See Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, 180–184. Ibid., 179–184, 190–195. Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232v (fig 8.1B); De propriet. rerum, 19.133, ll. 67–72. Compare, ‘Haec ex animo et corpore motum facit, et ex motu sonum, ex quo colligitur Musica, quae in homine vox appellatur. Vox est aer spiritu verberatus, unde et verba sunt nuncupata. Proprie autem vox hominum est, seu inrationabilium animantium’ (Etym. 3.20.1–2). Die Philosophische Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, ed. Ludwig Baur (Münster, 1912), 508. ‘Ideo cum materia soni sit aer percussus, auditus accipit sonum, non aerem percussum.

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by the sense of hearing’, like the crashing of trees, collision of rocks, bellowing of animals and the beating of instruments. Grosseteste also cites the ‘collisio lapidis’, only his stone collides with iron to make fire. One wonders whether Bartholomew learned about the science of sound while reading Isidore under Grosseteste’s tuition.

2

Organs and Fiddles

The first chapter on music concludes with an enlightening sequence of largely original text and glosses in what amounts to a short essay, where the abuses of fiddle (vielle) playing are compared to the spiritual revelation that comes from hearing the pipe organ accompanying the chant.

Nota de perfectione gratie Spiritus Sancti†

Nota quare organis utitur potius ecclesia quam viellis‡

Est preterea armonia organica, que ex flatu constat, quando scilicet aliqua instrumenta artificialiter preparata flatu debito persufflantur, ex cuius flatus quantitate et organi varia qualitate diversi soni artificialiter procreantur,† ut patet in organis, tubis, fistulis, et consimilibus, que omnia varios sonos promunt. Organum est generale nomen vasorum omnium musicorum, specialiter tamen appropriatum est instrumento ex multis composito fistulis, cui follis adhibentur. Et hoc solo musico instrumento utitur iam ecclesia in prosis, in sequenciis, et hymnis propter abusum histrionum, reiectis aliis fere instrumentis.‡30

Isidore’s description of the organum forms part of his introduction to the second division of music, organicus, which encompasses all music made by wind instruments. Bartholomew eradicates this distinction. He prefers the term armonia organica, to preserve his earlier unified taxonomy, but he retains the part that differentiates between generic use of the term organum, to mean

30

Aer tamen percussus non alterat nisi tangat. Sonus namque alterat nervum sensibilem non motus, et licet generatio soni sit ab efficiente violento, est tamen naturalis, quia forma eius in materia per efficientem inducta naturalis est et a principiis naturalibus. Non est sic de forma aeris. Efficiens namque sonum nec dat ei esse naturale nec non-naturale, sed proportio, quam habet ad potentiam materiae, qua quandoque educitur ex collisione lapidis et ferri ignis, qui est res naturalis’ (ibid., 509). Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232v (fig. 8.1B); De propriet. rerum, 19.133, ll. 118–129.

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all musical instruments, and its particular use to refer to an instrument (of many pipes) with attached bellows ( follis).31 Isidore’s definition concentrates on Greek usage before carrying on with definitions of various other wind instruments (tuba, tibia, calamus, sambuca, symphonia and pandorius). Bartholomew, however, stops to elaborate on the use of the pipe organ in the contemporary Church. The notion of an instrument that artificially produces the sounds of a variety of wind instruments by the act of blowing ( flatu) seems to have reminded the glossator of the expansive exegetical tradition of associating breathing or blowing with the Holy Spirit.32 The following gloss (‘Nota quare organis utitur potius ecclesia quam viellis’) further complicates this view by introducing a fascinating dichotomy between the pipe organ and the vielle. Bartholomew writes, ‘This instrument alone [the pipe organ] is now used by the church in proses, sequences, and hymns, as the other instruments were entirely rejected because of the abuse of actors.’ This ostensibly negative view of the vielle developed in a period of change for the instrument. Late twelfth-century accounts of the viellator in troubadour literature would usually have endowed him with chivalrous demeanour, as Christopher Page has shown; but by the mid-thirteenth century, the fiddler had come to be associated with instrumental dance music like the ductia, and the accompaniment for low-style, possibly imported, dance music, such as the dansa or virelai.33 Johannes de Grocheio notes in his Ars musice (c. 1300) the broad application of the vielle in accompanied song, but emphasizes popular dance songs like the stantipes (i.e., estampie), and ductia, which he describes as a sort of cantilena, ‘light and swift in both ascent and descent, which is sung in caroles by young men and girls […]’.34 Furthermore, the ductia with its vielle 31

32

33

34

Compare, ‘Organum vocabulum est generale vasorum omnium musicorum. Hoc autem, cui folles adhibentur, alio Graeci nomine appellant. Vt autem organum dicatur, magis ea vulgaris est Graecorum consuetude’ (Etym. iii.xxi.2). Searching the pl database yields numerous associations between flatus and Spiritus Sanctus in the writings of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and Alain de Lille. See especially Alain’s Contra haereticus, in pl, vol. 210, 422d; and Rhabanus’s Commentaria in Ecclesiasticum, in pl, vol. 109, 1074d–1075a. Christopher Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France 1100–1300 (Berkeley, ca, 1986), 7–8, 23. See also Manuel Pedro Ferreira, ‘Andalusian music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria’, in Cobras e Son: Papers on the Text, Music and Manuscripts of the ‘Cantigas de Santa Maria’, ed. Stephen Parkinson (Oxford, 2000), 7–19. Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, tr. and ed. Constant J. Mews et al. (Kalamazoo, mi, 2011), 9.8.

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accompaniment was typically heard at ‘feasts and games in the presence of the rich’,35 which is what might have led Bartholomew’s glossator to rule out its use in musica ecclesiastica. To complicate matters further, it appears that even as the vielle seemed to lose status through its association with low-brow entertainment, it grew in fashion among thirteenth-century scholastics.36 The Dominican friar Peter de Palude, for example, raises the status of the vielle by comparing it to the psalterium in his own interpretation of Isidore’s Etymologies.37 Jerome of Moravia treats the vielle more practically in his Tractatus de musica (c. 1280–1306) when he subjects the instrument to a kind of scientific tuition. He appears to have written it for an educated audience of ‘brothers of our order or another’ (‘fratres ordinis nostri vel alii’) who were interested in learning how to play the vielle.38 As proof, one may note the marginal glosses Pierre de Limoges made in the unique manuscript copy of the Tractatus, which indicate that the Parisian master laboured over Jerome’s tunings for the instrument, and finger placement. The glossator of De musica seems disparaging of the vielle, but if Jerome’s esteem for the instrument may be considered representative of a larger community of musicians, learned and lay, one might attempt a more nuanced reading of the passage. The glosses and text, taken as a whole, may be construed as a narrative statement, something in the order of: the pipe organ is preferable (potius) to the vielle for the accompaniment of music inside the church because the organ breathes out the grace of the Holy Spirit inherent in hymns, sequences and proses, while the vielle is played outside the church, along with other instruments abused by histriones. Nowhere does it say that the vielle is by nature bad, only that it is associated with the low-caste actor—the very kind of avocation with which the early Franciscan biographers were in sympathy and, in fact, eagerly rehabilitating through the ‘persona’ of St Francis. On one occasion, they describe how Francis tried to rehabilitate the cithara as a devotional instrument, because ‘[h]uman lust has turned musical instruments, once assigned to divine praises, into enjoyment for their ears’.39 Even more remarkable is the account of how Francis would sometimes sing French songs about 35 36 37 38 39

Ibid., 12.2–3. Page, Voices and Instruments, 55. Ibid., 55–57. Christopher Page, ‘Jerome of Moravia on the Rubeba and Viella’, Galpin Society Journal 32 (May 1979), 80. Thomae de Celano, Vita secunda S. Francisci, no. 126; Compilatio Assisiensis, c.66, in ff, 443– 639, esp. 558–559; 1565–1567.

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Jesus while playing two sticks together ‘like a bow on a vielle [viellam]’.40 Such a strange pantomime conjures to mind the image of a jongleur accompanying himself in a cantilena—just the sort of figure the glossator invokes in De musica. Returning now to Bartholomew’s text, one may notice that the chant genres he considers most appropriate for organ accompaniment—proses, hymns and sequences—are those most closely related to secular song. Each of them has a strophic form with repeating melody, much like a trouvère song; and they sometimes include a refrain (e.g., the Palm Sunday processional hymn ‘Gloria laus et honor’), which is another feature associated with medieval dance songs like the virelai. Johannes de Grocheio notes that hymns are similar to trouvère chansons (‘cantus coronatus’) in their form and ornate style, which suggests that clerics might have performed them outside the church, in the hall or refectory.41 One might well imagine, then, that while the pipe organ would have been the preferred accompaniment for strophic songs in the church, clerics who had practised the art of the vielle might have supplied the perfect accompaniment for them outside the church. The remarkable depiction of Franciscans and Dominicans making merry in these bas de page illustrations from Queen Mary’s Psalter (Figure 8.2) seems an outstanding representation of just such a circumstance. The Psalter, commissioned from a French scriptorium (c. 1310) by Isabella of France or her consort, King Edward ii of England, contains many fanciful illustrations of carolers dancing to the accompaniment of vielles and guitars.42 This might be some illuminator’s idea of a depraved joke: Franciscan and Dominican friars and nuns dancing a carole (the most common dance for a ductia43) to the accompaniment of Franciscans playing the psaltery and guitar on the facing folio (Figure 8.2a–b). It is a fantasy, to be sure, but one that coheres with the ‘persona’ of St Francis—a pious, eccentric singer, dancer and fiddler. Cast in this light, Bartholomew’s reference to the vielle might have taught Franciscan students about the wholesome application of the instrument in the accompaniment of hymns and pious cantilenas outside the church. It may also have taught them something rather incisive about the venerable musical spirit and 40 41 42

43

Speculum perfectionis, c.93; Compilatio Assisiensis, c.38; Thomae de Celano, Vita secunda S. Francisci, no. 127, in ff, 2000, 1511, 559. Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, 27.6. See also Page, Voices and Instruments, 66. Girls and noblemen carole on fol. 178v; monkeys dressed as humans carole on fol. 179v; lower-class men and girls carole on fol. 181v; men carole to the beat of a drum on 196v–197r; etc. Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, 9.8.

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figure 8.2a–b British Library, Ms. Royal 2.b.vii, fols 176v–177r (lower details)

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practices of their order. Moreover, the visual illustration of Franciscans performing popular cantilenas may be verified in the facts of a robust Franciscan song tradition.44 The ninety-two authentic Italian laude of Jacopone da Todi (c. 1236–1306), and William Herebert’s (c. 1270–1333) twenty-two English contrafacta of Latin chants, several of them hymns, offer some tantalizing examples.45

3

The Buccina and Militant Preaching

Isidore’s definition of the buccina does not occur in book 3 of the Etymologies, but, rather, in book 18, among his definitions of ‘war and games’. Bartholomew places this horn with the little voice (vocina parva) among the other wind instruments, and the glossator borrows from its bellicose nature to expound a related function and quality of preaching. Buccina dicitur quasi vocina parva, scilicet tuba cornea vel lignea, sive enea, qua signum dabatur antiquitus contra hostes.† Nam, ut dicit Isidorus libro xviii, pagani agrestes ad omnem usum pariter sono buccine convocabantur. Unde proprie buccina agrestibus signum fuit, de quo Propertius: Buccina cogebat priscos ad arma Quirites. Huius clangor buccinum dicitur, ut dicit idem. Buccinis autem Nota de predicatione corneis utebantur Hebrei precipue in kalendis in memopassionis‡ riam liberationis Isaac,‡ pro eo cornuto ariete in sacrificio immolato, ut dicit glossa super Genesim.46 Nota de predicatoribus deputatis doctrine†

Bartholomew essentially repeats Isidore’s account of how the buccina was used in ancient times as a signal to advance against the enemy, and to convoke

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See Peter Loewen, ‘Franciscan hymns and hymnals’, in The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (Norwich, 2013), http://www.hymnology.co.uk/, accessed October 28, 2016. See The Works of William Herebert, ofm, ed. Stephen R. Reimer, pims, Studies and Texts 81 (Toronto, 1987). See also my discussion of Herebert’s ‘Wele, heriʒyng, and worshype’, a contrafactum of the Palm Sunday processional hymn ‘Gloria, Laus, et honor’, in ‘Mary Magdalene as Joculatrix Domini: Franciscan music and vernacular homiletics in the Shrewsbury Officium Resurrectionis and Easter plays from Germany and Bohemia’, in From the Margins ii: Women of the New Testament and their Afterlives, ed. Christine E. Joynes and Christopher C. Rowland (Sheffield, 2009), 99–101. Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 233r (fig. 8.1C); De propriet. rerum, 19.135.

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country people.47 He adds small details about the various materials from which it was made (horn, wood or bronze), and also preserves Isidore’s misreading of Pertius’s reference to the buccina as the horn that called the ancient Quirites to arms (ad arma) rather than to speak (ad verba).48 Bartholomew then departs from Isidore, using the Glossa on Psalm 80:4 to elaborate on the Jewish tradition of using the buccina to commemorate Abraham’s sacrifice of a horned ram instead of his son Isaac (Gen. 22:13).49 The adjacent note about the passion (‘Nota de predicatione passionis’) suggests that the glossator found this material particularly apt for the preacher, as it falls into a long exegetical tradition of linking Christ’s sacrifice with Abraham’s immolation of Isaac.50 Pairing the definition of buccina with a note that explicitly enjoins preachers to teach or instruct (deputatis doctrine) presents a more complex problem. Reminding preachers of their pastoral obligations seems clear enough, but admonishing them to teach as though they were blaring the war trumpet strikes an aggressive tone that may reflect the challenges of the day. By the mid-thirteenth century, preaching and pastoral care had become an essential concern of Franciscan life. According to Bonaventure, Pope Innocent iii put Francis and his companions on a mission ‘to preach penance’.51 Before the arrival of the mendicants, the cura animarum had been the exclusive preserve of the parochial and diocesan clergy, but the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) changed the dynamics of power among religious when canon 10 called for ‘suitable men, powerful in work and word’ in cathedral and conventual churches to preach, hear confessions, impose penances and generally serve in matters of salvation.52 The friars’ right to preach and hear confession was explicitly decreed by Pope Gregory ix in 1237 and later confirmed by Martin iv in Ad fructus uberes (1281).53 However progressive, the avoca-

47 48 49 50

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Etym. 18.4.1. ‘[B]ucina cogebat priscos ad uerba Quiritis’ (Propertius, Elegies, 4.1.13). Glossa Ordinaria, in pl, vol. 113, 979. Glossa Ordinaria, in pl, vol. 113, 139. Augustine makes this connection (pl, vol. 42, 851), but a number of medieval writers seem to prefer Gregory’s stark comparison in the Expositio Veteris ac Novi Testamenti (pl, vol. 79, 738). See Isidore, Quaestiones in Veterum Testamentum, in pl, vol. 83, 250–251. Legenda maior Sancti Francisci, c. 3, no. 10, in ff, 777–961, esp. 801–803. Lawrence C. Landini, The Causes of the Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor (Chicago, 1968), 12. H.J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary (St. Louis, 1937), 252. bf, ns, vol. 3, 480.

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tion to preach appears to have caused St Francis considerable frustration, as is clear in his lengthy admonition against vainglorious preaching in the Regula non Bullata of 1221.54 The Later Rule of 1223 removed Francis’s aggressive language, leaving a milder admonition that stressed the importance of teaching: ‘[T]heir language should be well-considered and chaste for the benefit and edification of the people, announcing to them vices and virtues, punishment and glory, with brevity, because our Lord when on earth kept his word brief.’55 Formative manuals written by Franciscans in the mid-thirteenth century echo this concern for edification and illumination. William of Middleton, for example, instructs his reader in the Opusculum super missam that the foremass (Introit to Offertory) ‘insinuatur illuminatio populi’.56 Whereas the Earlier Rule did not exclude the lay brothers from preaching, these instructions were clearly designed for clerics. Even for them, though, the difficulty of acquiring the knowledge necessary to satisfy their regular obligations would have been overwhelming. It would have required the kind of education De proprietatibus rerum could offer. In this light, ‘Nota de predicatoribus deputatis doctrine’ might be construed as another admonition against vainglory, similar to the ‘ignorantia predicantium’ the glossator warns against earlier, where the text describes the puffed up qualities of the vinnolenta vox.57 Linking preachers’ avocation to teach with the sound and purpose of a war trumpet seems to evoke the conflict and militancy inherent in the early Franciscan missions. Peter Binkley observes in medieval encyclopaedists a skewed understanding of the natural world as essentially ordered and peaceful.58 Such a worldview had limited value for preachers, because it would have prepared them little for the real conflicts with sin, disagreement and heresy they would face in the field. Yet the glossator for De musica seems to acknowledge the conflict, teaching by analogy about the ‘enemies’ against whom preachers might have to ‘blare like a buccina’ (‘clangor buccinum dicitur’).

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Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 268–271. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 332–335; Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 104–105. Opusculum super missam, 317. ‘Nota de ignorantia predicantium’ in Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 232v (fig. 8.1B); De propriet. rerum, 19.133. The gloss forms part of another complex series of connections that draw meaning from Cicero’s De oratore. See Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, 186–188. Peter Binkley, ‘Preachers’ responses to thirteenth-century encyclopaedism’, in Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts: Proceedings of the Second comers Congress, Groningen, 1–4 July 1996, ed. Peter Binkley (Leiden, 1997), 75–76.

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To review the many ‘enemies’ Franciscan preachers faced would lead well beyond the scope of this chapter, though one might acknowledge some ready examples in the sermons of Berthold von Regensburg and the hymns of John Pecham (c. 1230–1292). Berthold (c. 1210–1272) preached vehemently against heresy throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe shortly after Bartholomew completed De proprietatibus rerum. For example, Berthold rails against heretics in his sermon ‘Saelic sint die armen, wan daz himelrîche ist ir’ (Matt. 5:8), then teaches his audience, in a folksy sort of way, how to discern between a heretic and orthodox preacher.59 One might also consider the Muslim conflict that looms in John Pecham’s hymns. Particularly striking is the aggressive crusading language in ‘Exhortatio Christianorum contra gentem Mahometi’, tied probably to King Louis ix’s second crusade in 1270.60

4

Amazons, Nuns and the Sistrum

This brings us finally to the curious connection the glossator makes between nuns (moniales), and the Amazons in Bartholomew’s definition of the sistrum. Sistrum est instrumentum musicum sic ab inventrice vocatum. Nam Isis regina Egypciorum sistrum invenisse probatur, unde Iuvenalis: Isis et irato feriat mea lumina sistro. Ideo mulieres hoc utuntur instrumento, quia eius Nota de sanctis monialibus quae inventrix fuit mulier. Unde et apud Amazones sistro ad bellaudant deum† lum feminarum exercitus advocantur.†61 The text, taken verbatim from Isidore, falls ostensibly into some common misogynistic conceits.62 Quoting from Juvenal’s Satires (13.93), Isidore describes this probably metallic form of rattle as having a name derived from its inventor, Isis, the queen of Egypt. The anger of Isis imbues the sistrum with militant qualities, as is evident from its use among the Amazons to summon their armies of women. But what aspect of the Amazon ‘persona’ could the glossator 59 60

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Berthold von Regensburg: Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, ed. Franz Pfeiffer and Joseph Strobl, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1862, 1882; repr. Berlin, 1965), 405, ll. 30–38. See Emil Peeters, ‘Vier Prosen des Johannes Pecham’, Franziskanische Studien 4 (1917), 355– 367. See also Peter Loewen, ‘John Pecham’, in The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. http://www.hymnology.co.uk/, accessed October 29, 2016. Paris, BnF Cod. Lat. 16099, fol. 233v (fig. 8.1D); De propriet. rerum, 19.146. Etym. 3.21.12.

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be projecting on the sanctae moniales who praise God? And what about this relationship could be instructive to the aspiring preacher? Richard Stoneman points out that ancient historians had portrayed the Amazons as ‘other’, the ‘inversion of Greek society’.63 The legends of Alexander the Great, the histories of the Goths by Orosius and Jordanes/Cassiodorus, Isidore’s Etymologies, and the many redactors of these works, describe the Amazons variously as monsters of the Orient, exotic and frightening warrior maidens from the Caucasus region. In book 11 of the Etymologies, ‘De homine et portentis’, Isidore regards the Amazon as a ‘virago’—a heroic maiden who acts like and does the tasks of a man.64 And in book 18, he instantiates a gender-based distinction between the trumpet, which kings use to convoke their armies, and the sistrum, used likewise by the queen of the Amazons.65 For Isidore, then, the sound of the sistrum evokes themes of masculinity and heroism in women. It also seems noteworthy that the sistrum differs fundamentally from other instruments Isidore describes, like the trumpet, because it is incapable of playing melodies. By the time Bartholomew wrote about ‘Amazonia’ in book 15 of De proprietatibus rerum, conceptions of the Amazons had evolved considerably. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona have noted that more positive attitudes obtained in the twelfth century, during the Crusades and in crusading literature.66 In this era, references to Amazon queens might evoke the sort of female strength that was suitable for emulation. For example, Eleanor of Aquitaine was compared to the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, as Eleanor accompanied her husband on crusade to the Holy Land.67 Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160–1240), the bishop of Acre, describes the Amazons as monsters in the Historia orientalis, but in the Historia Jerosolymitana he portrays them as allies against the ‘Saracens and other infidels’, when he compares them to their Christian neighbours, the Georgians.68 He also praises the Ama63 64 65 66

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Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great, A Life in Legend (New Haven, ct, 2008), 129. Etym. 11.2.22. Etym. 18.4.5. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, ‘Amazons and Crusaders: the Histoire Universelle in Flanders and the Holy Land’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades (Baltimore, md, 2004), 206. Ibid. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Iherosolymitana, tr. Aubrey Stewart, The History of Jerusalem a.d. 1180 by Jacques de Vitry, Library of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society (London, 1896; repr. New York, 1971), ch. 79. Quoted in Vincent Di Marco, ‘The Amazons and the end of the world’, in Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, ed. Scott D. Westrem (New York, 1991), 73.

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zons for their ability to suppress their libido—‘since so much bodily energy is consumed in frequent copulation, so all the more rarely do they conjoin with their mates; in such a way are these female warriors stronger and greatly suited for fighting’.69 This rather sympathetic view of the Amazons persists in the narrative visual cycles accompanying the Histoire Universelle, commissioned in the early thirteenth century by Roger iv, the castellan of Lille. Crusader copies of the Histoire compiled in Flanders and the Holy Land depict the Amazons as courageous and highly moral women, so much so that Derbes and Sandona observe that they ‘are no longer transgressive threats to the social order but rather its defenders, avenging their sons and husbands, and coming to the aid of the Trojans’.70 By the time the Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré had incorporated Jacques de Vitry’s histories into his Liber de natura rerum, sometime between 1237 and 1240, the Amazons had become the ‘bulwark and last defence’ against the Saracens, and were fully integrated into the Christian fold.71 He says, ‘this most brave race of women … [are] called the name of Christians. Against the Saracens they fight fiercely. And indeed it was not long ago that the queen of the Amazons, coming in service from the regions of the east, gave herself title to the temple and sepulcher of the Lord.’72 A moralized French version of book 3 of Thomas’s Liber, known as the Liber de monstruosis hominibus orientis, says that the Amazons are ‘femes de grant valor … Si sont de si noble nature/Que vilonie ne luxure/Ne feroient por a morir’.73 Bartholomew Anglicus’s descrip-

69 70 71

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Quoted in John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, ma, 1981), 171. Derbes and Sandona, ‘Amazons and Crusaders’, 206. Di Marco, ‘The Amazons’, 74. The Liber de natura rerum is preserved in over 160 manuscripts. See Barbara Newman’s introduction to Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives (Turnhout, 2008), 3. Under the heading De ossibus: ‘Ossa masculorum fortiori sunt ossibus feminarum nisi tantum in genere Amazonarum mulierum, ubi fortitudo et robur feminarum prefertur fortidudini virorum, ut venerabilis Iacobus Aconensis episcopus in Orientali prodit historia, ubi etiam dicit, quod ille feminarum populus fortissimus sit et Christiano nomini dictatus. Contra Sarracenos acerrime pugnat. Et quidem non est diu, quod ipsarum Amazonarum regina veniens a partibus orientis servitio se mancipavit templi et sepulchri dominici’ (Thomas Cantimpratensis, Liber de Natura Rerum, ed. H. Goese Berlin, 1973, 1:31). Translated in Di Marco, ‘The Amazons’, 74. Alfons Hilka, Eine altfranzösische moralisierende Bearbeitung des ‘Liber de Monstruosis Hominibus Orientis’ aus Thomas von Cantimpré, ‘De naturis rerum’ nach der einzigen Handschrift (Paris, Bibl. Nat. fr. 15106), in Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu

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tion of ‘Amazonia’ contributes to this rehabilitated view of the Amazons by portraying them as a race of virtuous women who have a moral lesson to teach his students. Bartholomew cites only Isidore and the Historia Alexandri as sources for his ‘Amazonia’, but there were clearly others. For example, he draws on Jordanes/Cassiodorus’s De origine actibusque Getarum, or one of its redactors, when he situates ‘Amazonia’ at the divide between Europe and Asia, in the vicinity of Albania, and identifies the Amazons as Gothic women from lower Scythia.74 Bartholomew goes on to tell of how the Amazons avenged their husbands’ deaths, using their weapons to kill enemies, even old men and young boys, while preserving only the women. They decided to live without men, and chose from among themselves two queens to lead them, namely Marpesia and Lampeta.75 They live chaste lives, shunning all male company,76 except for annual conjugal visits with men from neighbouring tribes, through whom they propagate their race. Their sons they would kill or return to their fathers, but the daughters they would retain, raising them to be warriors like themselves,

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Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 3rd series 7 (Berlin, 1933), ll. 63, 67–69. Hilka dates the work between 1290 and 1315 (p. 5). ‘Amazonia est regio partim in Asia, partim sita in Europa, quae Albaniae est vicina et ab Amazonibus est vocata. Fuerunt autem Amazones Gothorum, qui exierunt de inferiori Scythia vel Syrtia uxores, ut dicit Isodr. lib. 9. quae maritis suis dolo interfectis, visorum suorum arma arripientes, hostes virili animo agressae, de maritorum suorum nece sumpserunt debitam ultionem, nam omnem masculum a sene usque, ad parvulum in ore gladii perimerunt, et feminas reservantes et hostium solia diripientes, deinceps pariter sine masculorum consortio vivere decreverunt, quae duas reginas scilicet Marsepiam et Lampetam maritorum exemplo […]’ (De propriet. rerum [Frankfurt: Wolfgang Richter, 1601; repr. Frankfurt, 1964], 628–629). The Richter edition is still the standard Latin edition of ch. 15 of Bartholomew’s text. Richter’s edition does not transmit glosses from the manuscripts, but there are no glosses in the manuscript sources for Chapter 15 to help one interpret the text. Isidore identifies the Amazons as women of Scythia from Albania (Etym. 9.2.62–63). Jordanes first identifies the Amazons as the wives of the Scythians— that is, the Goths who are ‘Amazonarum viris’ ( Jordanis De origine actibusque Getarum, ed. Francesco Giunta and Antonino Grillone, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 117 (Rome, 1991), 7.44); and later as ‘feminae Gothorum’ (Ibid., 7.49). See Jordanes, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, tr. Charles C. Mierow (Princeton, nj, 1908), 13 and 15. Jordanes describes Scythia: ‘Hic Asiae Europaeque terminus famosus habetur’ ( Jordanis De origine actibusque Getarum, 7.45). Jordanes’s knowledge of the Goths was later transmitted by Jordanes of Limoges (pl, vol. 69) and Ekkehard von Aura (pl, vol. 154). The names of the queens appear in Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos, 1.15; and Jordanis De origine actibusque Getarum, 7.49 (The Origins and Deeds of the Goths, 15). Etym. 9.11.64.

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burning off their right breast by the age of 7 to make them more fit for hunting with a bow.77 Following Isidore, Bartholomew parses the word Amazon to mean ‘without a breast’, or ‘one-breasted’, according to a separate tradition.78 Bartholomew concludes by repeating Isidore’s account of how the Amazons were vanquished by Hercules and partly by Alexander the Great;79 but, like a good enquiring scientist, he offers up a competing narrative, from the Historia of Alexander, of how Alexander the Great came to an amicable solution in his conflict with the Amazons. It entails a pithy synopsis of the correspondence between Alexander and Talistris (Bartholomew does not name her), queen of the Amazons, from the Historia de preliis Alexandri Magni. Alexander’s first letter to the queen is distilled into a demand for some tribute to be paid him in exchange for the freedom of her subjects.80 The queen’s eloquent response, in Bartholomew’s telling of the story, captures the essence of her rebuke in the Historia, but with less bravado. She writes to the king: One wonders at your prudence that you are determined to fight with women. For if fortune, favouring us, should happen to overcome you, you would be deserving of shame to have been conquered by women. And if you, through our gods’ anger, were to overcome us, it shall yield you little honour that you have triumphed over women.81 77

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‘[F]ilias vero sibi reservantes eas ad sagittandum vel venandum informabant, et ne in sagittarum ictibus mamillarum grossitie impedirentur, eis in septimo, ut dicitur anno, mammas exurebant, et ideo Amazones sunt dictae, id est, sine mamma, ut dicit Isid. lib. 9. Has unimammas antiquitus multi vocaverunt […]’ (Richter, 629). These details are preserved in numerous sources: Jordanis De origine actibusque Getarum, 7.56–57; Jacques de Vitry, Historia orientalis, 92; Etym. 9.2.64; and several sources for the Historia de preliis. See The History of Alexander the Great being the Syriac Version of Pseudo-Callisthenes, ed. E.A.W. Budge (Cambridge, 1889), 127–131; The Book of Alexander the Great, ed. Richard Stoneman (London, 2012), ch. 176, p. 120; and Leo of Naples, Historia de Preliis Alexandri Magni (c. 950), 3.25. Leo’s concise edition of Pseudo-Callisthenes is transmitted in three known recensions, and preserved in over a hundred manuscript copies, which attests to its particular importance for medieval knowledge of the Alexander legend, as D.J.A. Ross notes (George Cary, The Medieval Alexander Cambridge, 1956, 11). Etym. 9.2.64. Ibid. ‘Sed historia Alexandri hoc non dicit imo dicitur Amazonum regina Alexandro postulanti tributa per nuncios rescripsisse’ (Richter, 629). Compare Die altfranzösische ProsaAlexanderroman nebst dem lateinsichen Orignal der Historia de Preliis (Recension j2), ed. Alfons Hilka (Halle, 1920), ch. 82, p. 154. ‘De tua prudentia est mirandum, quod cum feminis confligere statuisti, quare si favente nobis fortuna succumbere te contingat, merito es confusus, cum a mulieribus sis devictus,

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The queen’s rebuke in the Historia de preliis is more aggressive; she threatens violence should the king come ready to fight.82 By comparison, Bartholomew’s Amazon queen comes across as philosophic, even rather Cynic in nature. Bartholomew captures the conciliatory flair of Alexander’s second letter to the queen, but he lacks the arrogance that obtains in the Historia. Alexander abstains from threats of extortion, and chooses, rather, the path of morality guided by the queen’s appeal to reason: The noble king wondered at her response and said it is seemly to subdue women not by the sword or with fury but rather through love. And so he granted them freedom and made them subjects of his empire not with violence but rather with friendship.83 These closing lines stand out from the rest of Bartholomew’s narrative, giving the preceding text an unexpected ethical spin. It is as though he had grafted a moral anecdote to the end of his ‘Amazonia’ to convert it into a parable about the futility of human pride and ambition. In fact, the passage comes across as a kind of ‘Alexandre moralisé’, akin to the exempla found in sources like the Disciplina Clericalis, Gesta Romanorum and Speculum morale, and in the Cynic anecdotes from the collatio tradition of Alexander the Great.84 For example, the anecdote at the end of Exemplum 24 of the Disciplina Clericalis (late twelfth century) places similar emphasis on the virtues of love, justice and friendship as does Bartholomew, when Aristotle counsels Alexander: ‘it is better to rule your subjects in peace with the aid of a few soldiers than to have a great army. […] Observe right and justice in your dealings with men, and they will love you. Do not be eager to exact reprisal for good or evil, for a friend will wait longer for you and an enemy will fear you longer.’85 Another manuscript

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quod si iratis nobis Diis nos deviceris, parum tibi poterit cedere ad honorem, quia de mulierculis triumphasti’ (Richter, 629). ‘Tu autem considera tecum et quod facere debes scribe celeriter, quia si pugnaturus venies, scias quia ad ipsos montes exiemus obviam vobis’ (Hilka, Die altfranzösische ProsaAlexanderroman, ch. 83, 156, ll. 33–38). ‘Super cuius responso ad admirationem ductus rex generosus dixit, decens fore, non per gladium et furorem mulieris vincere, sed potius per amorem propter quod libertatem eis concessit, et ipsas non violentia sed potius amicitia suo imperio subiungavit’ (Richter, 629). Francis Peabody Magoun, ‘Prague epitome of the Historia De Preliis Alexandri Magni (Recension j2)’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 16 (1934), 125. The ‘Disciplina Clericalis’ of Petrus Alfonsi, tr. and ed. Eberhard Hermes (Berkeley, ca, 1970), 146.

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assembled in the fourteenth century by an ‘armchair traveller’ (bl, ms. Arundel 123) recognized the affinity between such materials when he compiled book 15 of De proprietatibus rerum (including ‘Amazonia’) with some of Alexander’s dicta, accounts of his life and excerpts from the Disciplina Clericalis.86 To plumb the depths of such similar correspondences, however tantalizing, would be the cause of more digression. Suffice it to say that other medieval compilers of anecdotes and exempla found fertile ground in the correspondence between Alexander the Great and the Amazon queen. And just to prove that there was room for other interpretations, a late thirteenth-century compilation known as the Prague epitome spins their correspondence in a completely different direction, glossing chapters 82 and 83 of the Historia de preliis with a note to preachers that women are not so easily defeated by the ‘Verbum vitae’.87 Bartholomew’s exemplum seems readymade for the preacher. Hearing it delivered by an Amazon queen exposes her rational nature, a theme already present in the Historia de preliis; but by eschewing its aggressive language, Bartholomew presents the Amazons as highly moral beings, capable of teaching Alexander, and Bartholomew’s students, a lesson. Elizabeth Keen senses the message of humility embedded in this passage.88 I agree, but when one collates it with the definition of the sistrum and its gloss in De musica, an entire complex of related ideas emerges. Of course, one cannot rule out the possibility that the glossator’s connection between nuns and Amazons, through the analogy of a war rattle, should be read as bald misogyny, and that one should actually read Bartholomew’s reference to the nuns’ sanctified status as a cynical statement. After all, the Franciscans (and even more so the Dominicans) had been locked, since the 1220s, in a contentious debate with the papacy over the imposition of duties related to the cura monialium.89 But through Bartholomew’s definition of ‘Amazonia’, a more

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Mary Hamel, ‘An anthology for the armchair traveler: bl, ms. Arundel 123’, Manuscripta 41 (1997), 3–18. ‘Mulieres difficulter vincuntur Verbo Vite’ (Magoun, ‘Prague epitome’, 136). Elizabeth Keen, The Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra, 2007), 40. This problem has attracted considerable scholarly attention, beginning with Herbert Grundmann’s seminal work in Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd edn (Hildesheim, 1961). It is translated by Steven Rowan in Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, in, 1995). See also John Freed, ‘Urban development and the Cura Monialium in thirteenth-century Germany’, Viator 3 (1972), 311–327; and Lezlie Knox, ‘Audacious nuns: institutionalizing the Franciscan order of Saint Clare’, Church History 69.1 (March 2000), 41–62.

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nuanced, pro-feminine reading obtains. The glossator suggests that the adjective ‘sanctis’ may be applied to both nuns and Amazons. Hence, if the young cleric were to imagine the Amazon as holy or sacred like the nuns who sing God’s praises, he would have a view of them in line with Thomas de Cantimpré’s De naturis rerum. And if one were to parse ‘sanctis’ as ‘chaste’, this unique source of Amazonian strength and virtue might aptly project on to the nuns. It seems difficult to imagine how female chastity could form a model for aspiring young clerics, and yet this line of enquiry leads one naturally to consider the composite figure of the Amazon-cum-nun as a universal model of virtue. Although the Amazons’ and nuns’ ways of life set them apart as ‘other’—like the sistrum, bereft of melody—they nevertheless stand as forthright examples of moral behaviour. By means of the analogy in the sistrum, the glossator seems to suggest that the reader would do well to heed them as moral, courageous women, who sing God’s praises. At this point one might wonder whether the glossator had all nuns in mind, a particular community or, indeed, certain individuals. This is not the place to speculate about the myriad possible connections to various known female monastics who might have fitted the glossator’s description, but one would be remiss were one not to at least raise the possibility that he had the Poor Clares in mind. As Bert Roest and others have shown, the Clarissan movement experienced remarkable growth, too, during the thirteenth century, mainly through royal patronage. By 1300 the number of Clarissan communities stood at approximately 413 houses, almost half of them in Italy.90 Most of the forty-seven houses founded in France by the end of the thirteenth century were in the south, but Isabelle of France (1225–1270), the sister of King Louis ix, proved a powerful champion for the Minoresses in and near Paris.91 This support began with the foundation of l’Humilité de Notre-Dame monastery at Longchamp, c. 1255, and led to the development of an entire network of convents within France and England, following Isabelle’s Rule.92 As an indication of her influence within learned Franciscan society, we have three treatises by Guibert de Tournai, regent master of the Paris Franciscans between 1259 and 1261, written expressly for Isabelle around 1270: the Epistola ad Dominam Isabellam, Epistola Exhortationis de Virginitate and the Tractatus de Virginitate.93 In the Epistola ad Dominam Isabellam, Guibert gives us no reason to doubt his praise of Isabelle’s 90 91 92 93

Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden, 2013), 79. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 122–123. Ibid., 303.

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piety, nor his sincere interest in her spiritual formation. This is thus merely one illustration that some friars were devoted to the spiritual care of Minoresses, regardless of the controversy that raged between the Franciscans, Clares and the Curia.94 Therefore, it seems reasonable to speculate that a glossary reference to nuns singing God’s praises, in a formative manual like De musica, would reflect on the friars’ clerical obligations to them: to sing the Mass, to hear confessions and to perform other duties of pastoral care. One can hardly be surprised to find Bartholomew Anglicus teaching young clerics how to use music in this way—as both a sounding art form, and as a tool of analogic reasoning—because this fits with the scholastic tradition of the musicus. For Roger Bacon, writing some twenty years later, the powers of the musicus were broad and invaluable to the contemporary Church because the musicus had the ability to judge the causes and reasons behind the relationships that bind disparate fields of science: the motions inherent in mathematics, grammar, the divine rhetoric of preaching and logic, as well as moral philosophy.95 In short, a musicus had the capacity to explain the phenomenon of beauty in the sciences through what Nancy Van Deusen has called the ‘medieval interdisciplinary perspective’.96 Reading Bartholomew’s De musica through the lens of its glosses gives one a glimpse of the thirteenthcentury musicus in formation. Learning about the science of sound and harmony kept the reader abreast of current thinking on the natural causes and reasons behind the motions of concord and discord that could explain relationships among objects and people. De musica, with its glosses, would give any reader a more complete understanding of the musical practices of the Church; and it would give the cleric a more nuanced appreciation for his regular obligation to sing the Mass. At the same time, such knowledge would help young Franciscan clerics to work like jongleurs, to recognize the potential in musical practices outside the church that could be harnessed to the purposes of their mission to preach. De proprietatibus rerum was a veritable gold mine for preachers, supplying them with exempla from which they could create sermons. Even my cursory study of documents compiled with Bartholomew’s ‘Amazonia’ shows that medieval readers were comparing sources. The glossed De musica taught the

94 95 96

Sean Field, ‘Gilbert of Tournai’s letter to Isabelle of France: an edition of the complete text’, Medieval Studies 65 (2003), 57–97. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, ch. 6. See the preface to Nancy Van Deusen’s The Cultural Context of Medieval Music (Santa Barbara, ca, 2011).

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reader to think critically—to draw on connections between seemingly unrelated ideas to help them come up with creative solutions to problems. Remarkably, a study of music under Bartholomew and his glossator’s tutelage would teach the reader how to navigate complex networks of ideas linking sounding art with history, kingship, the nature of chastity, sex and gender, monstrosity and Christian identity itself. In an era when the Franciscans were busily educating clerics to meet the needs of a growing urban population, for the courts of the nobility to serve as confessors and advisors, for leadership positions in the episcopacy and the Curia, and for their ambitious future missions to the East, they clearly needed a musical education to help guide them.

chapter 9

Friars and the Preparation of Pastoral Aids Lesley Smith

It was a Dominican friar, Leonard Boyle, who pioneered the modern study of pastoralia. Boyle’s definition of what the genre comprised includes ‘any and every aid to the Cura animarum … [T]he term embraces any literary aid or manual which can be of help to the priest in the Cura animarum, whether with respect to his own education as pastor or to the education of the people in his charge.’1 Such an all-encompassing definition was understandable in staking a claim for pastoral materials as an object of study; but its inclusion of materials for priests and laity, from episcopal constitutions to a saint’s life or a devotional commonplace book, leaves a chapter such as this with an embarrassment of riches. Should we try to touch on everything, or is it better to focus on those types of literature which seem to represent a peculiarly Franciscan contribution to the subject? We are at least able to ignore sermons and aids to sermon preparation, Rules and Rule commentary, and biblical exegesis, since these are addressed by other chapters in this volume. Dominican examples predominate among those Boyle provides to illustrate his schema. Bert Roest’s specifically Franciscan compendium of the literature of religious instruction narrows Boyle’s definition and provides more pertinent material, but his examples are often European rather than English, and the majority were created much later than the mid-fourteenth-century terminus of this volume.2 Indeed, the English focus of the volume gives rise to other questions: May we include material written for English Franciscans but not by them? And what should be the status of English Franciscans working abroad? The answer to the first question is important for the space it affords Robert Grosseteste, first lector to the Oxford Franciscans from 1229 or 1230 to 1235.3

1 Leonard E. Boyle, ‘Summa Confessorum’, in Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales. Définition, critique, et exploitation. Actes du colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve 25–27 mai 1981 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982), 227–237, esp. 230. See also his annotated schema in ‘The fourth Lateran council and manuals of popular theology’, in The Popular Literature of Medieval England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville, tn, 1965), 30–43. 2 Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004). 3 Richard W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_010

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His is arguably the best-known name of any mentioned in this chapter, and it seems perverse to exclude him entirely, especially since the raison d’ être of the Oxford convent was to prepare brothers to be lectors in houses elsewhere.4 Although he never became a friar himself, Grosseteste taught theology to the brothers and shared their sense of the importance of the pastoral mission— something he vigorously put into practice when he was made bishop of Lincoln in 1235. His little treatise, Templum Dei (or Templum Domini) might indeed have been written just before he became Franciscan lector or as a response to his time with them.5 It was intended to provide a pocket guide for priests examining penitents, and about three-quarters of the text is presented in the form of diagrams, lists and charts; the rest of the work includes material on vices and virtues, the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogue, the Beatitudes and much else. Like many of Grosseteste’s works, its structure is not always simple to follow, but the little book was clearly popular: more than ninety manuscripts are still extant. Grosseteste admitted to his friend (and friar) Adam Marsh that he was not himself very suited to pastoral care; but he was perhaps better at the theory than the practice.6 The second question, on the status of Franciscans working abroad, is pertinent because of the number of Englishmen among the most important theologians who were based in the Franciscan convent at Les Cordeliers in Paris, the most important European centre for biblical and theological research in our period. Alexander of Hales (the first Franciscan to hold a teaching chair in theology in Paris), William of Milton or Melitona, Duns Scotus and Roger Bacon, among others, wrote sophisticated works of speculative theology and biblical commentary. These Englishmen abroad were the brightest of their respective generations of Franciscan scholars. They had either themselves gravitated to the academic life of Paris, and then joined the order in the city, or they were

2nd edn (Oxford, 1992); James McEvoy, ‘Robertus Grossatesta Lincolniensis: an essay in historiography, medieval and modern’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition, ed. Maura O’Carroll (Rome, 2003), 21–99. 4 Decima L. Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Oxford, 1952), 7–8. 5 In the introduction to their edition of the Templum Dei (Toronto, 1984), Joseph W. Goering and Frank A.C. Mantello argue for an early date of composition, between 1220 and 1230, although they acknowledge that the terminal date might be any before 1246. 6 Letter to Adam Marsh noted in Leonard E. Boyle, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the pastoral care’, in his Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200–1400 (London, 1981), no. 1, 5–6. For more of Grosseteste’s pastoral works see James R. Ginther, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s theology of pastoral care’, in A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (1200–1500), ed. Ronald J. Stansbury (Leiden and Boston, ma, 2010), 95–122.

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sent (or had themselves posted) to Paris by the order when their academic gifts became apparent.7 But how far was Alexander, who spent most of his life in Paris, and only joined the order when he was already an old man, an English Franciscan? He became part of an international order, whose members had a correspondingly international outlook and peripatetic careers. As Paris scholars, Alexander and the others were shaped by the university milieu. The schools had particular conventions of discipline and genre which those within them had to follow. Scholars working within the Paris syllabus are recognisably similar in their approach and methods, transcending their external ties. Although Alexander discusses the sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the articles of faith in his Summa Universae Theologiae, his focus is on the fashions of debate in the schools, rather than the conventual life of England.8 It is thus not clear that Alexander and his Paris confrères should be included in our survey as a specifically English contribution to the preparation of pastoral aids. Perhaps we can shed light on the nature of Franciscan pastoral material by looking at the contents of their English libraries? In his treatise of 1345 in praise of books, the Philobiblon, Richard de Bury gives us to understand that the libraries of the mendicants were treasure houses: ‘there we found heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom … [A]lthough they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the lord’s vineyard … they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of sacred books than all the other vine dressers …’9 Unfortunately, surviving medieval library lists do not reflect Richard’s excitement over the friars’ holdings. K.W. Humphreys’s inventory of English friars’ libraries details surviving library lists from thirteen houses.10 These enumerate only just over 200 volumes in total—the largest number (50) coming from the convent at Reading, with Norwich and Winchester both with only two books listed. This is a poor showing, and the figures cannot really reflect the situation on the ground; we know, for instance, that Grosseteste bequeathed at least some of his substantial collection of books to the Oxford house, following the example of his friend Adam Marsh.11 The numbers do

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C. Hugh Lawrence notes the case of Richard of Cornwall, who used the occasion of a visit from the minister general, John of Parma, to the Oxford convent, to plead his case for a transfer to Paris: ‘The Letters of Adam Marsh and the Franciscan School at Oxford’, jeh 42 (1991), 24. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae. Philobiblon Ricardi de Bury, ed. Ernest C. Thomas (Oxford, 1960), ch. 8. The Friars’ Libraries, ed. Kenneth W. Humphreys, cbmlc 1 (London, 1990). gfo, 57.

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not include liturgical books, which were probably stored and counted outside the ‘library’. More importantly, we know that friars had books as personal possessions or for personal use, and these, too, would probably not be included in the official inventory. The inventories themselves are a mixed bag and, if anything, are notable for their lack of pastoralia—so much so that the odd item such as Adam Marsh on the Ten Commandments (no. 28 in the Reading list, but now unknown) is exceptional. Homiletic aids are also missing; so it must be the case that these more practical works of pastoralia were kept elsewhere. But if we could imagine the library lists to be more forthcoming, what might we expect to find? Sermons and sermon aids aside, the most obvious type of pastoral literature is what became known as the confessor’s manual or Summa confessorum. According to Boyle, aids for confessors develop from earlier forms of penitential handbook, the development of which was massively encouraged by the pastoral canons of the fourth Lateran council of 1215. Famously, Lateran iv declared the care of souls to be the art of arts.12 Among many riches, it laid emphasis on the provision of teaching in cathedral churches, on preaching to and teaching the laity, on annual lay private confession and on annual reception of the Eucharist.13 If clergy were to be able to do this, they needed books to help them. In his Templum Dei, Robert Grosseteste included within the cardinal virtue of prudence docilitas—the ability to teach oneself and others through the written word (per res scriptas).14 This recognition of the importance of ‘book learning’ in a work of pastoral care is a sign of the role that such materials were to have in the spread of the aims of the council. Lateran iv, or the spirit behind it, gave rise to a number of popular works of pastoralia by Englishmen in the first quarter of the century, in particular the Summa ‘Res grandis’ (Liber poenitentialis) of Robert of Flamborough; Thomas of Chobham’s Summa ‘Cum miserationes Domini’; and Richard Wetheringsett’s Summa ‘Qui bene praesunt’, as well as Grosseteste’s Templum Dei.15 The latter

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‘[A]rs artium regimen animarum’: c. 27 of the council: see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols (London and Washington, dc, 1990), vol. 1, 248. For a good introduction to the situation before the council, see Joseph W. Goering, William de Montibus (c. 1140–1213): The Schools and the Literature of Pastoral Care, pims, Studies and Texts 108 (Toronto, 1992). Goering, William de Montibus, 74. Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes, ed. J.J. Francis Firth (Toronto, 1971): written c. 1208–1210; Thomas of Chobham, Thomae de Chobham Summa Confessorum, ed. Frederick Broomfield (Louvain, 1968): written c. 1215– 1222; Richard Wetheringsett, Summa ‘Qui bene praesunt’ in preparation by Joseph W. Goering and Greti Dinkova-Bruun (pims): written c. 1220–1229. Goering, William de Montibus,

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three authors were secular priests, and Robert of Flamborough was penitentiary to St Victor in Paris, a house of Augustinian canons with a special vocation to lay ministry. Thomas and Richard were both associated with Salisbury, a centre for pastoral reform. In contrast to these excellent productions, there seems to be little evidence for similar works by English mendicants, whether Franciscans or Dominicans. Perhaps Chobham and the others had cornered the market; perhaps, in these international orders, there was no need for any particular province to reinvent the wheel. Boyle suggests a rough division of pastoral summae: those manuals organized around canon law, which he describes as reflective rather than practical; and those which focus more on ‘the penitent and his education’.16 The epitome of the first sort is Raymond of Peñaforte’s Summa de poenitentia.17 The second type, the confessional handbook, is epitomized by John of Freiburg’s Summa confessorum of 1298—the first use, it seems, of what was to become the standard title for the genre.18 Both these examples are Dominican, and both works achieved international success. Each is well structured and comprehensive— virtues which would contribute to their popularity. In addition, however, the Dominicans were quick to organize the creation and distribution of the kinds of materials they needed to succeed in their peripatetic vocation of preaching and teaching. Much of the impetus for these works seems to have come from Hugh of St Cher, in charge of Dominican education in Paris in the second quarter of the thirteenth century. Under his supervision the convent at St Jacques seems to have developed an idea for what would constitute a basic working library for each Dominican house.19 Given the calibre of the men who joined the order, these were high-quality offerings. Works like Hugh’s Postilla on the Bible and Raymond’s Summa, though produced by Dominicans for Dominicans, nevertheless became popular with a far wider audience. Their success stifled competition from other orders or authors.

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has good descriptions and bibliography; an older but still good work is William A. Pantin, The English Church in the xivth century (Cambridge, 1955), esp. ch. 9. Boyle, ‘The fourth Lateran council and manuals of popular theology’, 34. He suggests the division is also in part chronological, with summae confessorum taking over from penitentials around 1260. Raymond of Peñaforte, Summa sancti Raymondi de Peniafort de Poenitentia et Matrimonio (Farnborough, 1967). Joannes Friburgensis Summa Confessorum (Augsburg: G. Zainer, 1476). M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow is Bent in Study …’: Dominican Education before 1350, pims, Studies and Texts 132 (Toronto, 1998); Lesley Smith, ‘Hugh of St Cher and medieval collaboration’, in Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians through History in Honor of Michael A. Signer, ed. F.T. Harkins (Notre Dame, 2010), 241–264.

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The closest English Franciscan equivalent to Peñaforte’s influential Summa was the Directorium iuris in foro conscientiae et iuridiciali of Peter Quesnel (or Quesuel).20 A substantial work in four parts, with capitula lists and substantial index (in all manuscripts), the Directorium’s selling point was its organization by audience rather than material. Thus the first book on the Trinity, Faith and the Sacraments is aimed at teachers of theology, but the third, on impediments to receiving the sacrament and errors that can lead to excommunication, is written for confessors and inquisitors. The focus throughout is on providing the relevant canon law materials for the reader to consider, many of which are drawn from Peñaforte and John of Freiburg. It is partly from Quesnel’s use of these sources that the Directorium has been dated to somewhere between 1320 and 1350, when it was in circulation in England. In comparison to the success of the two Dominican works, the number of extant manuscripts (fifteen) of Peter’s Directorium is somewhat thin.21 The height of his popularity seems to have been the fifteenth century, with manuscripts spread across Europe. No manuscript of English provenance survives. Indeed, the closer we look at Peter Quesnel, the more insubstantial his identity as an Englishman comes to seem. The evidence for his being an English friar is meagre, resting mainly on the fact that a copy of the Directorium is said to have been in the library of Norwich cathedral priory. Beyond the Directorium itself, we know nothing about him. Boyle’s second type of manual, the Summa confessorum, is even less easy to find among English Franciscans. Perhaps the closest we can come is Henry of Wodestone’s Summa de sacramentis of 1261. Henry was lector to the Oxford Franciscans, and he knew both Adam Marsh and the theologian Richard Rufus; but his Summa shows most clearly the influence of the greatest Franciscan theologian of the time, the order’s minster general, Bonaventure. Henry’s modern editor describes his work as ‘highly derivative … discursive, impersonal, academic, didactic … our author intended to produce a pastoral work most likely for the instruction of simple Franciscan clerics who might not have been able to attend the university or studia particularia’.22 Henry’s work might be more accessible to simple friars than Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary and Breviloquium, which it relies on for almost half of its text, but it was nowhere near as good. Once again, we might ask why, in an international order, we should look for local provision. 20 21 22

Jeremy Catto, ‘Quesnel [Quesuel], Peter’, in odnb; Roest, Franciscan Literature, 333–334. Richard E. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), lists fifteen manuscripts (one in two parts). Robert J. Mokry, ‘The Summa de sacramentis of Henry of Wodestone, OMin: a critical edition’, afh 94 (2001), 3–84, esp. 10. Henry’s Summa survives in only one manuscript.

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If Peter Quesnel is something of a shadow, the same cannot be said of John of Wales—not quite an Englishman, but of the English province—who produced, among other writings, a very popular quartet of pastoral materials.23 However, John sets us other questions to answer. The first is the difficulty of judging what might be counted as English work. John already had a degree in theology from Oxford when he joined the Franciscans, sometime before 1258, and he was made lector to the brothers there soon afterwards. But by about 1270 he had moved to Paris: he was regent master of theology from 1281 to 1283, and died there in 1285. About twenty surviving works can be ascribed to him, including the four immensely popular texts which are generally described as pastoral handbooks: the Breviloquium, Communiloquium, Compendiloquium and Breviloquium de sapientia sanctorum. The first of these was completed in Oxford and the latter two in Paris; but the Communiloquium may well have been begun in Oxford and finished in Paris. Can these be said to be English works? They are by a member of the English province, but perhaps their influences, conventions and genre are all the product of Paris? In fact, all John’s works are so idiosyncratic that the question of where they were written probably matters less than for most other writers. The mark of all these texts is their massive amount of quotation from an enormous range of ancient authors, especially the non-Christian classics. For as John says in the Breviloquium (full title: Breviloquium de virtutibus antiquorum principum et philosophum), the example of saints is already well known, but good behaviour by the ancient pagans can be more instructive. Although the Breviloquium (which still exists in about 140 manuscripts) is the shortest of these four pastoral works, it nevertheless quotes fifty-two works by thirty-five authors, not including the Bible. The much longer Communiloquium (extant in more than 200 manuscripts) has around 1,600 quotations from over 100 authors in 200 works, again excluding the Bible. The richness of these citations, which are carefully provided with detailed references to author, title, book and chapter, were presumably a gold mine for those who did not have access to the sources themselves. The second question highlighted by John’s bestsellers, is how they—and how so much of this pastoral material—can be categorized. Part of the reason for Boyle’s wide-ranging definitions is that what he includes is not as cut and dried as his schema might suggest to those who have not encountered it. Perhaps it is in the nature of new genres of literature that their boundaries

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Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge, 1989).

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are not clear-cut; but it may also be a result of the very notion of pastoral care. Could those whose task was the cura animarum say for certain where preaching ended and catechism began? Even if they could, those historians following in their footsteps find it more difficult. For instance, Jenny Swanson, intellectual biographer of John of Wales, describes his four great ‘loquia’ in terms of pastoral handbooks, advice books, mirrors for princes and preaching aids, but Roest places them alongside handbooks for confession. It is not always easy to see how some of these works would have been used in practice. With texts that addressed specific passages from Scripture, such as the Beatitudes or the Commandments, we can imagine them being used for a single sermon or a series of discussions on the text, or for advice in confession. But with these works of John of Wales, their vastness seems almost counterproductive; and yet used they seem to have been, with some hundreds of manuscripts still in existence, as well as a number of early printed editions. Nonetheless, the practical purpose of the loquia is hard to discern. In John’s case, the impetus behind his composition appears to be more his enjoyment of his sources, and the opportunity his creations gave him for reading them, than the specific use to which they might be put. Roest refers to a particularly English type of ‘curious combinatory works of predominantly English provenance that hold a middle ground between preaching manual, exempla collections, and catechistic handbooks’.24 A good example of the problems faced by modern scholars attempting a neater taxonomy is the text known as the Fasciculus morum.25 Described as ‘an aid in preaching’ by its editor, it might also be thought of as a confessor’s handbook or a clerical commonplace book, or indeed, a miscellany compiled by or for an interested and literate layperson.26 Known in thirty-one manuscripts, the Fasciculus was written probably between 1320 and 1340 by a friar from the Worcester custody called Robert Silke or Selk.27 In one manuscript it is called De vitiis et virtutibus, since the text is divided into seven parts, each dealing with a specific vice and the virtue to counteract it. Most of the text is Latin prose, but there are also some

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Roest, Franciscan Literature, 234. Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and tr. Siegfried Wenzel (University Park, pa, and London, 1989), and his Verses in Sermons: Fasciculus Morum and its Middle English Poems (Cambridge, ma, 1978); see also Andrew G. Little, Studies in English Franciscan History (Manchester, 1917), 139–157. Wenzel, Fasciculus Morum, 1. In one manuscript it is credited to a John Spiser, but the Franciscan Selk is generally accepted as the author, if that is the correct way to describe how the Fasciculus was produced. Sharpe, Handlist, adds three manuscripts to Wenzel’s list in Fasciculus Morum.

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sections of Latin and Middle English verse. The register varies widely, from high theology to discussions of everyday life. But although there is a core of material in manuscripts of the Fasciculus, there is not one single standardized text. Wenzel divides his twenty-eight manuscripts into no fewer than eight groups or subgroups which are ‘textually clearly distinct’. The material has been copied and redacted to suit the needs of the user. One topic common in pastoral material was the Ten Commandments, either in prose or verse, and the Decalogue appears more than once in the Fasciculus; but comparison of the text should cause the reader to question the level of teaching on offer. Here, for instance, is the versified Decalogue from the section on envy from the Fasciculus in Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Laud Misc. 568, fol. 24r: Tak noo god bot oon in heuyn; Neme noght hys neme in ydyl steuen; Kepe ryght wel þyn holyday; þy fadur þi modur þou worchyp ay; Loke þou be no man slever, Of fals wettnes no berrer; þou chalte do no lychory ne no thefft of felany; thy neyburs gode ne þou wyll Ne wyffe ne doghter ne mayden moren for to spul.28 Although the commandments are largely given correctly, they are not in the right order (false witness should come after adultery and theft), and the final two commandments, on coveting your neighbour’s wife and his goods, are transposed from the order agreed by medieval theologians, with goods coming first. Moreover, to the precept forbidding the coveting of the wife the author has added ‘daughter nor maiden’—perfectly admirable sentiments, but not part of the biblical text. However, in comparison with the Decalogue as it appears in other parts of the Fasciculus in the same Laudian manuscript, these are minor errors. Slightly earlier, on folio 23va–b, the commandments are listed and briefly explained, and numbered in the margin. Here, the commandments are correct up to the prohibition of killing (correctly numbered 5 in the margin), after which they are given as 6: you shall not steal; 7: you shall not bear false witness; 8: you shall

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Cf. the version from another manuscript in Wenzel’s edition, 184.

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not covet your neighbour’s goods; 9: you shall not commit adultery, which then elides to include not coveting your neighbour’s wife. No commandment 10 is listed in the marginal numbering. So here both number and order are incorrect. Shortly after this, the commandments are given again, this time in diagrammatic form, with very short interpretations. For instance, the first commandment is given as ‘worshipping one god’, besides which is noted ‘superstition’—a common scholastic addition to the interpretation of the first precept. However, though this list does manage to count to ten commandments, once again the order is wrong—but in yet another way, with killing and adultery changing places, and coveting of wives coming after coveting of goods. The Decalogue was a simple and central text of Christian belief; for the Fasciculus, a relatively popular handbook, not to get even this correct, raises questions about the quality of pastoral teaching on offer. Yet another problem of working with this genre of materials is that many of its original manuscripts must have been used to destruction. Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Laud Misc. 2 is a tiny late thirteenth-century pocket book that might be described as a pastoral miscellany. Its 176 folios began life as poor parchment, which subsequent wear and tear has not improved: it now begins at a folio numbered 87, suggesting a considerable loss of material. Some twelve items remain, some barely more than a folio, written in a number of different hands.29 The whole thing has been worked over by various owners, who have added subheadings, diagrams to explain the text, red notae and arrows for points of particular interest, as well as marginal numbers that may once have referred to an index. The two biggest texts are almost contemporary pastoral summae from Oxford: the Summa de sacramentis of the Franciscan Henry of Wodestone, that we have already encountered, and its Dominican equivalent, the Summa iuniorum of Simon of Hinton.30 An ex libris tells us this book once belonged to John Stamford, ofm, and it has Henry’s Summa; but does that make it a Franciscan book? Simon and his work were probably the better known. Both sit together in this compilation. The volume as a whole sums up the difficulty of these disparate sources. The question of categorization is equally evident in the letters of Adam Marsh (c. 1200–1259). Marsh was an Oxford scholar who joined the Franciscans 29

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Andrew Reeves, ‘Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: 1215–1281’, in A Companion to Pastoral Care, ed. Stansbury, 41–72; Henry O. Coxe, Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues ii: Laudian Manuscripts (Oxford, 1973). Simon of Hinton, Summa ad instructionem iuniorum is printed as ‘Tractatus penitentes ad fidei dogmata’, in Jean Gerson, Joannis Gersonii Opera omnia (Antwerp, 1706), vol. 1, pt. 3, cols 244–256.

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in Worcester in 1232. He was sent back to Oxford where he studied theology under Grosseteste (whom he seems already to have known; the two were great friends) and others, becoming a master of theology (the first Franciscan to do so in Oxford) and lector to his brethren around 1242–1243. Adam’s learning, character and good sense made him famous beyond the order; but his only literary remains are an incomplete collection of his letters covering the years 1241 to 1259 and surviving in a single manuscript.31 Roest includes the letters in his sections on ‘Guides to Prayer’ and on ‘Letters of Advice’.32 Both of these are problematic. The final letter in the collected series is not so much a letter as a short treatise written in 1256–1257 to Archbishop Sewal de Bovill of York, on the qualities necessary for a good bishop, amongst which is the capacity for prayer; and the text has six short chapters on the various forms of useful prayer.33 The remaining letters are a varied collection, with no literary or stylistic merit. Adam himself did not make the selection and does not seem to have considered publication. Many record routine business. Some complain of the uselessness of secular clergy, criticism from a mendicant that was commonplace in the thirteenth century.34 On the other hand, Adam writes to the Franciscan minister provincial, William of Nottingham, to claim that novices were being charged with pastoral care before they had had a chance to be properly trained.35 Where individual letters of advice survive, such as letter 159, offering domestic and conjugal advice to the countess of Leicester, they are directed at individuals rather than more generally. This might be said to be pastoral material, but of a very limited sort. The letters of another English thirteenth-century Franciscan, John Pecham, contain references to pastoral care, but they are not his major contributions to our subject. Pecham joined the order in Oxford around 1250, perhaps with a bachelor’s degree already under his belt. He continued his training in Oxford, but his intellectual gifts sent him to Paris before 1257, and he held a variety of positions before returning as lector to the Oxford convent around 1272. In 1279 he became archbishop of Canterbury; he died in 1292.36 Pecham was deeply concerned at the lack of education for parish priests, and the statutes of his council of Lambeth of 1281 are probably the most influential document of our 31 32 33 34 35 36

Lawrence, ‘The Letters of Adam Marsh’, and Letters of Adam Marsh. Roest, Franciscan Literature, 545, and 448–449. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 574–647, chs 11–17. The little treatise is in a different hand from most of the rest of the letters, and it is found independently in two other manuscripts. Lawrence, ‘The Letters of Adam Marsh’, 230. Lawrence, ‘The Letters of Adam Marsh’, 232. Douie, Archbishop Pecham.

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period on the question of what the laity should be taught. The Lateran council had decreed that the faith should be taught, but had not detailed what that might mean; it fell to diocesan legislation to fill out the practicalities, and English bishops were particularly conscientious in this task. Stephen Langton (council of Oxford), Robert Grosseteste (Lincoln), Alexander Stavensby and Roger Weseham (Coventry and Lichfield), Richard Poore (Salisbury) and Walter de Cantilupe (Worcester) all created local materials to put the Lateran pastoral decrees into practice.37 As is clear from its incipit, Ignorantia sacerdotum, the ninth canon of the Lambeth council, sought to rectify the ignorance of the English parish clergy.38 Borrowing from his old teacher, Walter of Bruges, Pecham laid down in detail what priests should know, in order to be able to teach their parishioners— knowledge which included the seven sacraments, the Lord’s Prayer, the articles of faith, the Ten Commandments and the gifts of the spirit. The canon is more a tiny treatise than a simple decree, and its influence was ‘immediate and immense. [It] became the standard manual for the instruction of the laity.’39 Pecham had been a theologian and biblical commentator for almost thirty years before he became archbishop. He was a man of many talents, and one of his gifts in particular was suited to the pastoral office: the writing of spiritual verse. Pecham wrote hymns, rhymed versions of the Office and meditative poetry for his brethren, including a Canticum pauperis, defending the Franciscan life of poverty, and his most famous poem, Philomena, an extended allegory in which a devout soul, in the form of a nightingale, sings the story of the Passion, before dying of a broken heart. The poem is an encouragement for the saying of the daily Offices, since each of the hours was given over to a scene from the Passion, designed to evoke an emotional response in its hearer.40 Decima Douie notes his ‘technical excellence and deep but restrained religious feeling’, while John Moorman judges that ‘[p]oems such as these show Franciscan spirituality and devotion at its best and highest, concerned with the noblest themes and handled by men of genius’.41

37 38 39

40 41

Christopher R. Cheney, English Synodalia of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1941). Ignorantia sacerdotum is translated in Pastors and the Cure of Souls in Medieval England, ed. John Shinners and William J. Dohar (Notre Dame, 1998), no. 70. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 133–142, esp. 138. For example, parts of Ignorantia sacerdotum were included in the fourteenth-century preaching manual Speculum christiani (ed. G. Holmstedt, Early English Text Society, os 182 [London, 1933]). Philomena: ed. G.M. Dreves, Analecta hymnica 50 (Leipzig, 1907), no. 398. Douie, Archbishop Pecham, 12; Moorman, A History, 269–270.

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Pecham was not the only friar to write Latin verse. The earliest known piece of poetry by a Franciscan in England is ‘Qui Minor es’, a meditation on what it means to be a friar, written by Henry of Burford, who came to England with a group of friars in 1229; the poem is quoted in Thomas of Eccleston’s De Adventu Fratrum Minorum, but it is not clear that Henry was in fact English.42 Much more Latin verse is credited to Walter of Wimborne, who was lector to the Cambridge Franciscans between 1261 and 1266, and whose substantial output included satire, as well as a series of Latin hymns and songs, especially devoted to the Virgin Mary, which adapted popular secular material for religious use.43 It should not surprise us that Pecham and his brethren produced theology in the form of poetry. We know that Francis himself was fond of poetry and music—his Canticle of Brother Sun, which he intended to be sung, is the first recorded writing in the Umbrian dialect.44 The tradition of Francis as a troubadour for God dates to his lifetime: he saw himself as a ‘new fool for the Lord’, singing in French and playing an imaginary violin.45 His first biographer, Thomas of Celano, is credited with the creation of the Dies irae, and the Stabat mater is thought to be a Franciscan hymn. It would be perfectly in keeping with the spirit of their founder for the English Franciscans to have evangelized through the medium of vernacular verse and song. John Wesley, who, with his brother Charles, was responsible for the revival of hymn singing in England, described their collection of hymns for Methodist congregations as ‘a little body of experimental and practical divinity’, adding, ‘[w]hen poetry thus keeps its place, as the handmaid of piety, it shall attain, not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away’.46 The peripatetic Wesleys, like the Franciscans, turned to hymn writing as a means of inculcating theology into their hearers: the combination of rhyme, rhythm and music make remembering that much easier, so learning happens unconsciously. It was natural for the Franciscans, who were masters of ‘the common touch’,

42 43 44 45 46

Eccleston, 31; A.G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066–1422 (Cambridge, 1992), 361, n. 8. A.G. Rigg, The Poems of Walter of Wimborne (Toronto, 1978); A.G. Rigg, A History of AngloLatin, 215–222. Moorman, A History, ch. 22(i). Summarized well by Michael Robson in St Francis of Assisi: The Legend and the Life (London and New York, 1997), 228–230. A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, ed. Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, with James Dale, in The Works of John Wesley, vol. 7 (Oxford, 1983): preface, section 4, 74; section 8, 75.

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able to speak to all levels and conditions of society, to choose the medium of verse, whether spoken or sung, to promote their Gospel message. Pecham’s verses might play well with the friars themselves, but how far would they be useful in the care of souls? Latin was the language of European legal, administrative and intellectual life, and it was the Latin textual community that allowed a friar in England to read his (Italian) superior, Bonaventure’s, Collationes de decem praeceptis for an understanding of the Ten Commandments. This Europe-wide textual community was perhaps a limitation on the English production of particular kinds of pastoral manual. So rather than considering Latin texts, for a particularly English Franciscan contribution to pastoral care, we perhaps need to look instead to the everyday languages of the period, Anglo-Norman (‘the French of England’) and Middle English. If we turn to these two English vernaculars, the story begins to broaden. We can begin once more with that friend of the brothers, Robert Grosseteste. Grosseteste wrote at least one major work in Anglo-Norman, his Château d’Amour—almost 1,800 lines of verse which tell the whole story of creation and redemption.47 The poem is no simplification of doctrine—‘it contained passages of considerable intellectual difficulty’48—which makes Evelyn Mackie’s suggestion that it was primarily written not for the laity but for less-Latinate members of the Oxford Franciscan house, whilst Grosseteste was lector there, very attractive. The friars’ own use of Anglo-Norman can be illustrated by two examples. A short prose exposition of the Lord’s Prayer is attributed to Adam Rufus (d. c. 1233; known also as Adam of Exeter or Adam of Oxford), a friend of Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh.49 Adam Rufus wrote his treatise for a group of women religious, which explains, he says, his use of the vernacular; but he is careful to note that their lack of Latinity does not at all mean a lack of ‘joy and devotion’.50 And in at least one other manuscript, Adam’s female pronouns

47

48 49 50

Le Château d’amour de Robert Grosseteste, Évêque de Lincoln, ed. Jessie Murray (Paris, 1918); translated by Evelyn A. Mackie, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman treatise on the loss and restoration of creation, commonly known as Le Château d’amour: an English prose translation’, in O’Carroll, Robert Grosseteste, 151–179. S. Harrison Thomson, The Writings of Robert Grosseteste (Cambridge, 1940), lists other possible Anglo-Norman works by Grosseteste (152–159), including a short text on hearing confession and a poem, ‘Purgatory’, which is edited and translated in ‘Cher Alme’: Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety, ed. Tony Hunt, tr. Jane Bliss, with an introduction by Henrietta Leyser (Tempe, az, 2010), 393– 421. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 229. The text (Pater Noster) is edited and translated in ‘Cher Alme’, ed. Hunt, 71–125. ‘Cher Alme’, ed. Hunt, 79.

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have been changed to suggest that he had non-Latinate male readers. It may be, following Mackie’s suggestion, that some of these might have been fellow Franciscans. We have much more material from the early fourteenth-century friar Nicholas Bozon, who was probably a member of the Nottingham convent after studying in Oxford. Nicholas has left Marian poetry, verse sermons and verse allegories such as Passion, in which the lover-knight, Christ, fights to rescue his beloved, Humanity, from the devil, Belial. Bozon’s best-known work, the Contes moralisés (c. 1320), is a collection of prose fables, anecdotes and exempla, which uses stories of animals and the rest of the natural world to draw moral lessons.51 A tale decrying greed, for instance, begins: ‘The nature of the onion is such that it engenders thirst in the mouth, swelling in the heart, pain in the head, tears in the eyes, horrible dreams while you sleep, sweating as you wake, and gives little nourishment to those who eat it.’52 Vividly presented, with a nose for the exotic and quirky, the Contes are entertaining as well as instructive. Nevertheless, it is for their use of the other English vernacular, and their place in the creation of verse and lyric, that the order has been credited with a fundamental role in the history of the language. The pioneer of Middle English verse studies, Rossell Hope Robbins, estimated that two-thirds of Middle English short lyrics produced before 1350 were written by Franciscans.53 David Jeffrey has gone further: ‘The Middle English lyric is, essentially, a Franciscan song.’54 Scholars have linked the invention of the Christmas carol to the order.55 We might have little in the way of pastoral handbooks, but the English brothers focused their energies on addressing the laity—and one another— through artistry. Their use of lyric combined entertainment, mnemonic, repetitive memory and pedagogy—all in the language understood by the people: 51 52 53 54

55

Les contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon, frère mineur, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith and Paul Meyer (Paris, 1889). Ibid. no. 88. Rossell H. Robbins, ‘The authors of the Middle English religious lyrics’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 39 (1940), 230–238. David L. Jeffrey, The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (Lincoln, nb, 1975), 261. Jeffrey has, somewhat controversially, revised Robbins’s figure for Franciscan authorship upwards to 85–90 %. The figures remain estimates because of the nature of the manuscripts in which this material is found—a question we will discuss later in this chapter. See also the essays by Reichl and Whitehead in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge, 2005). R.L. Greene, The Early English Carols (Oxford, 1935); Rossell H. Robbins, ‘The earliest carols and the Franciscans’, Modern Language Notes 53 (1938), 239–245; Rossell H. Robbins, ‘Father Herebert and the Carol’, Anglia 75 (1957), 194–198.

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a less precise method of teaching, perhaps, than the creation of confessors’ manuals, but one aimed at a different and arguably deeper part of the brain. Francis and the brothers knew that there were different types of learning, and as a result we have the English province to thank for the creation and preservation of much of the canon of Middle English verse.56 Much of this Middle English material is anonymous. However, we know at least two names. Thomas [of] Hales was the author of the poem, A Luuv Ron.57 Thomas, from Worcester, followed the familiar route to study in Paris, and by 1240 he was a recognized preacher in Normandy and England. Sometime between 1252 and 1272, he composed A Luuv Ron (Love Rune or Love Song), for an aristocratic woman religious, possibly from a monastery in Northampton. The poem contrasts the love of this world with the love of God, comparing stories of lovers such as Helen of Troy or Tristan and Isolde, which an aristocratic audience would have known well, with the more enduring love of Christ. Sharpe credits Thomas with a Latin Life of the Virgin, and possibly with an Anglo-Norman sermon, but he is another shadowy figure. William Herebert (or Herbert; d. 1333), lector of the Hereford convent, has left a series of seventeen Middle English verses, mostly translations of Latin office hymns, such as the Veni Creator spiritus, Vexilla regis and Conditor alme siderum.58 Their editor, Carleton Brown, suggests that William’s work is important not for any literary merit, but for the light it shines on the Franciscans’ desire to introduce such material into their preaching—the convention being that the friars sang these hymns from the pulpit, although there is no reason why they could not have been taught to the laity, or used in other pastoral situations. Contemporary responses to the use of ‘gimmicks’, such as this rhyming material, were mixed.59 But those who disapproved were, in effect, acknowledging the power of words (even without any accompanying music, which some of the material retains in the manuscripts).60 One does not need to be illiterate for the lyric to weave a spell. The effect goes far beyond the impart-

56

57 58 59 60

The English brothers were not alone in following Francis’s lead in the use of verse and song. Other early friars, notably Italians such as Jacopone da Todi, composed in their own vernacular languages: see Roest, Franciscan Literature, ch. 7. Edited in Carleton Brown, English Lyrics of the xiiith Century (Oxford, 1932), no. 43. Sharpe, Handlist, 659. Fourteen of William’s translations are printed in Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the xivth Century, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1952), nos 12–25. Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), 41–44; T.M. Charland, Artes Praedicandi (Paris, 1936). Jeffrey, Early English Lyric, 173–181.

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ing of basic knowledge; rather, it conjures up identification and sympathy in the listener—the literary equivalent of those Franciscan and Dominican illustrations where the viewer is intended to insert themselves into the scene, and think themselves into the biblical story, feeling alongside Christ, Mary and the disciples. Until very recently, learning poetry by heart was a common part of the English school curriculum, and poetic expression was part of the mental furniture of people from all parts of society. In his The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell details how cards and letters sent home by private soldiers in the First World War trenches would quote the language of The Oxford Book of English Verse, which they had known from schooldays—the lyrical expression of their feelings apparently at odds with their otherwise elementary education.61 The memorized poetry formed an indelible part of their mental furniture. This is evangelizing by a method far more visceral than learning stories or facts, or thinking one’s way around religion. This is learning by feeling the faith, reciting or singing, and sharing emotions and senses. The lyrics and the feelings they evoke leave a far deeper and more lasting form of belief, one that touches the heart as well as the head. In this way, these Franciscans produced pastoral material that was designed not only to teach what the commandments were or enumerate the articles of faith, but to involve the whole body, with responses beyond rationality: to teach, as Francis did, verbo et exemplo. Nonetheless, analysis of the order’s role in this material faces challenges, not the least being that we cannot always be sure whether Franciscans were themselves the authors of the lyrics, or whether they simply incorporated them into their manuscript collections. Thomas of Hales’s A Luuv Ron is regularly referred to and anthologized by modern scholars, but, like the works of Herebert, it exists in only one manuscript. Almost the whole body of Middle English lyric is found in a very small number of manuscripts, in comparison with the hundreds of copies of Latin theology still extant from the period. Even the longest of the verses take up only a few folios, so the manuscripts are baggy collections of mostly anonymous material, often in more than one language. No manuscript is a perfect copy of another; each draws, it would seem, from a common stock of material, put together to please the person who wrote it or caused it to be written. Herebert’s verses are written in a kind of commonplace book, in what seems to be his own hand.62 One or more Franciscan items in such a volume does not necessarily mean that everything in it is Franciscan; that it was once in

61 62

Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford, 1975). bl, Add. ms 46919.

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Franciscan possession can tell us little more than that.63 Additions and omissions are frequent. Moreover, some of the lyrics are found embedded within other sorts of pastoral material. Many of these manuscripts appear to be such commonplace books, the making of which Roest describes as a ‘British tradition’.64 Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Digby 86 is one of these. Made in the Worcester area in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, it contains prayers, miracle stories, verses on the Decalogue and the sacraments, satirical poetry, hymns, fables and much other material—some religious, some seemingly not—in Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English.65 The consensus of scholars believes its eighty-one separate items to have been compiled by, and mostly written out by, a single layman, although its later provenance has suggested to others that it was a Franciscan production.66 The material is disparate enough for either solution to challenge those predisposed to neatness in genre and audience. In a letter of 1238 to Gregory ix, Robert Grosseteste tells the pope how successful the English Franciscans have become at taking the word of God to the laity: ‘Oh that Your Holiness could see how devoutly and humbly the people run to hear the word of life, to confess their sins, to be instructed in the rules of living, and what advance the clergy and religious have made by imitating [the Franciscans].’67 Grosseteste was not an easy man to please; clearly, the friars were getting something right. But the technical manuals they used for all those pastoral works were not, it seems, mostly produced by their province, or even by their order. They were more likely to be guided by their secular brethren such as Thomas Chobham or Richard Wetheringsett. But when it came to practice, to ‘singing the Lord’s song in a strange land’, they played to their strengths in their willingness to embrace the power of poetry and the vernacular languages of England. Rather than reproduce what others had already done well, they followed Francis and became troubadours for God. 63

64 65 66 67

Julia Boffey’s essay in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. Duncan, has a balanced discussion of some of the debates between Middle English scholars on the contents of these manuscripts. Roest, Franciscan Literature, 300. Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Digby 86, with an introduction by Judith Tschann and Malcolm B. Parkes, Early English Text Society, ss 16 (Oxford, 1996). For the Franciscan case see David L. Jeffrey and B.L. Levy, The Anglo-Norman Lyric: An Anthology (Toronto, 1990). Quoted in Jeffrey, Early English Lyric, 169, slightly adapted.

chapter 10

The Shepherd and the Flock: An Approach to the Preacher’s Role in Some Franciscan Sermon Collections Eleonora Lombardo

While writing the first Rule for his confrères, St Francis of Assisi adumbrated the virtues and qualities of the office of preaching in churches and public places. The existence of unauthorized preachers in the order required a firm response from the founder and his first companions.1 To this end, chapter 17 of the Regula non bullata declared: Let no brother preach contrary to the rite and practice of the Church or without the permission of his minister. Let the minister be careful of granting it without discernment to anyone. Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds. No minister or preacher may make a ministry of the brothers or the office of preaching his own, but, when he is told, let him set it aside without objection.2 In the first expression of a statutory provision for preaching, some of those characteristics shown by the order’s chronicles and, above all, by biographies on St Francis, are deduced.3 According to the principles laid down by the fourth Lateran council in 1215, a preacher could be removed from the officium and was required to act humbly.4 These signs are common in the conciliar canons

1 ff, 501, 609, 783; Grado G. Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo fino agli inizi del xvi secolo (Milan, 2003), 38–40. 2 Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 268–269. Cf. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 75. 3 Neslihan Senocak, The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209– 1310 (Ithaca, ny, and London, 2012), esp. ch. 2; Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Boston, ma, and Leiden, 2000), 314–324. 4 See the chapter ‘De praedicatoribus instituendis’. John D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Venice, 1778), vol. 22, 998–999. On the subject: David L. D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford, 1985), 15–20; Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, Preachers Florilegia and Sermons: Studies on the Manipulus Florum of Thomas of Ireland, pims, Studies and Texts 47 (Toronto, 1979), 57. On the impact

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and in this chapter of the Regula non bullata. In fact, they both leave to the bishops the choice of preachers. As coadjutors of parish priests and bishops, these ordained friars would work for the parishes and dioceses by preaching, hearing confessions and assigning penances. To attain this goal, St Francis also envisaged what may be considered the model for sermons by his friars: chapter 21 of the Regula non bullata is an example of preaching, or rather of moral exhortation.5 In the same period, this advice is confirmed in the First Letter to the Guardians.6 Two years later, the Regula bullata significantly altered the preachers’ role and the content of their sermons. In chapter nine, in fact, the officium praedicationis was no longer a temporary commission, but a licence that could be revoked only in cases of serious misconduct on the part of the friar who exercised it inappropriately.7 In addition, it was no longer the preserve of the bishop alone to choose preachers; friars were to be examined and appointed to the office of preaching by the minister general. Prominent friars were selected to play particular roles in the life of the Church. The order was now ready to provide its own preachers for episcopal approval. Moreover, if the figure of the parish priest disappeared from the Regula bullata, the bishop still maintained his role, albeit a less central one, regarding the office of preaching. In fact, the Rule declared that friars must not preach in the diocese of any bishop who has denied them permission.8 The relationship with the episcopal authority was no longer constant and continuous, as the reports became more sporadic. The Regula bullata gave the bishop only the right of an occasional veto. Even the content of the friars’ sermons bears witness to the new status of the order. No longer comprised of simple priests and laymen, the order was recruiting more clerical students and therefore more and more men properly equipped to exercise the officium praedicationis. Such vocations were deemed suitable to proclaim the praises of the Lord (First Letter to the Guardians) or the penitential exhortation (Earlier Rule). Chapter 9 of the Regula bullata insisted that the friars’ language be well considered and chaste for the benefit and edification of the people ‘[…] Friars were to announce vices and virtues, punishment and glory, with brevity.’ And this is precisely the kind of preaching that emerges from early Franciscan sermon collections, even if

5 6 7 8

on medieval England: Durant W. Robertson, ‘Frequency of preaching in thirteenth century England’, Speculum 24 (1949), 376–388. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 274–275. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 146–147. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 332–335. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 332–335: ‘Fratres non praedicent in episcopate alicuius episcopi, cum ab eo illis fuerit contradictum.’

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the content lacks sophistication. The heart of such preaching was precisely the exposure of the vices and virtues in the lives of members of the laity and clergy. Above all, it was a preaching programme in which the Franciscan priest was the helper of the diocesan bishop. From that point onwards, the apologetic and homiletic texts within the order reflected on the position of the preacher in relation to the care of souls. The aim of this chapter is to consider the profile of the Franciscan preacher and his relationship with prelates through the medium of sermon collections compiled by English friars in the thirteenth century. For this purpose a beginning will be made with a sermon attributed to William of Nottingham, minister provincial (1240–1254), and then the focus will switch to John Pecham’s collection of sermons during his time at the University of Oxford in the first half of the 1270s. In order to obtain a more panoramic view, these homilies will be compared with a selected number of anonymous Franciscan sermon collections of the same period and area.9

1

The Emerging Figure of the Franciscan Preacher in the Order’s Legislation

A definition of Franciscan preaching can be found in the order’s incipient documentation, beginning with Gregory ix’s ruling, Quo elongati, on 28 September 1230, the first papal interpretation of the Rule of St Francis, at the request of the general chapter of Assisi a few months earlier. Quo elongati was the first document to explicitly underline the necessity of an appropriate theological education for friars appointed to the officium praedicationis. Chapter 9 of the Regula bullata declared:

9 Little, ‘Franciscan School at Oxford’, 860–862. Cf. Andrew G. Little and Franz Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians c. ad 1282–1302 (Oxford, 1934), 150–204, calendared academic sermons preached by Franciscans in the University of Oxford between 1290 and 1293; many of them were delivered at Greyfriars. This study focuses on Worcester Cathedral Library, mss. q.63 and q.74; Cambridge, Saint John’s College Library, ms. s.19. In manuscripts Worcester, Cathedral, ms. q. 46 and Oxford, New College, ms. 92, fols. 41r–115v. A good analysis is provided by Beryl Smalley, ‘Oxford University sermons 1290–1293’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. Jonathan J.G. Alexander and Margaret T. Gibson (Oxford, 1976), 307–327, esp. 308–309, and Bert Roest, Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650: Cum scientia sit donum Dei, armatura ad defendendam sanctam fidem catholicam … (Leiden and Boston, ma, 2014), esp. from 74.

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The brothers may not preach in the diocese of any bishop when he has opposed their doing so. And let none of the brothers dare to preach in any way to the people unless he has been examined and approved by the minister general of this fraternity and the office of preaching has been conferred upon him.10 Responding to conditions in a rapidly expanding order, Gregory ix considered whether the examination of candidates might be delegated to the minister provincial. His decision was that the friars nominated for the office of preaching should accompany the minister provincial to the general chapter, where they would receive the office from the minister general. In addition to this, however, the pope announced a second route for the recruitment of preachers. Those who had already been trained in a faculty of theology enjoyed an exemption from the examination by the minister general, who would speak only in case of a breach (possunt, nisi quibus minister generalis contradixerit).11 This last was a similar process to that already in place for the examination of candidates by the bishop. After 1230 the attention of both Franciscan and papal regulations (as in the bull of 1240, prohibente Regula vestra12) changed irreversibly, with attention passing from the form of preaching to a concentration of the recruitment of preachers. Having established that the Franciscan preachers were to be invested with the officium praedicationis, the preachers were obliged to observe its rules and conditions. The sermon collections in England reveal a more conservative perspective and address the form of preaching and obedience to the Rule and to the order’s ministers and ecclesiastical superiors.13 The latter question seems to have particularly affected the friars whose preaching carried the Gospel throughout the world and to study, as already echoed in the chronicle of Thomas Eccleston in a number of episodes. For example, Thomas describes the case of the novice Stephen, who, wanting to leave the order, was brought back to obedience by

10 11 12 13

Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 104–105. bf, vol. 1, 69–70. See also: Herbert Grundmann, ‘Die bulle “Quo elongati” papst Gregors ix’, afh 54 (1961), 3–25, esp. 23. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 574. bf, vol. 1, 287. Amanda Power, ‘The problem of obedience among the English Franciscans’, in Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life, ed. M. Breitenstein, J. Burkhardt, S. Burkhardt and Jens Röhrkasten (Münster, 2014), 129–170, esp. 144–146; Annette Kehnel, ‘The narrative tradition of the medieval Franciscan friars on the British Isles: introduction to the sources’, fs 63 (2005), 461–529, esp. 464–465.

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a sermon preached by Brother Peter of Spain, guardian of Northampton;14 the chronicler also proposed that the friars should reflect on the sayings of William of Nottingham, minister provincial.15 Eccleston’s chronicle presents William of Nottingham as a champion of zeal and probity, a vigorous defender of evangelical poverty in the order and an advocate of obedience to Francis’s intentions, as they were reflected in the Rule.16 Shortly before his death he was the object of a quarrel between the English province and the minister general on the matter of his re-election during the provincial chapter of 1254.17 William of Nottingham’s particular understanding of obedience is shown by the sole text attributed to him, a sermon ‘de obedientia’ preserved in Cambridge, Pembroke College Library, ms. 265.18 An ‘epistola de obedientia’ by William of Nottingham was at the friary of Cambridge at the Dissolution of the mendicant houses in 1538.19 This was probably the earliest extant sermon by an English friar for public consumption, or possibly a sermon for the friars’ benefit.20 Although William’s life is quite well known, thanks to Thomas of Eccleston’s chronicle and the correspondence of Adam Marsh,21 no other

14 15 16 17 18

19 20

21

Eccleston, 26. Eccleston, 59–60. Eccleston, 69. Eccleston, 70. p, fols 192r–195r: ‘Quia peregrini et aduene sumus in hoc seculo nec habemus hic manentem ciuitatem sed futuram inquirimus secundum apostolum: uigilanter prouidendum est quoniam caute ambulemus, scilicet per quam uiam ad patriam redire debeamus [expl.] Oratio nobis prestare dignetique qui uiuit et regnat per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.’ The Friars’ Libraries, ed. Kenneth W. Humphreys, cbmlc 1 (London, 1990), 209. The sermon traditionally attributed to Richard Rufus of Cornwall is contained in Cambridge, Pembroke College, ms. 87, fol. 217v. Cf. Schneyer, vol. 5, 149–150; Montague R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1905), 78–80; bruo, 1605–1606, believed that the sermon was either composed by this friar or one of his confrères; Richard Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), 503–505, considers other potential mendicant authors, such as Richard of Durham († 1297), Richard Knapwell, op (†1286) or Richard of Slekburne († 1302). Eccleston, 6, 32, 35, 38, 49–50; Letters of Adam Marsh. For the letters to and by William of Nottingham see the general index at the end of volume 2 in Letters of Adam Marsh. See also Charles Schmitt, ‘Guillaume de Nottingham, frère mineur (†1254)’, in Dictionnaire d’ Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. 22: Grégoire—Haeglsperger (Paris, 1988), 976; A. Kleinhans, ‘Guglielmo di Nottingham, senior’, in Enciclopedia cattolica, vol. 6: Geni—Inna (Città del Vaticano, 1951), 1261–1262.

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work by him is known.22 This sermon was first discovered in 1905 by Montague James,23 who recorded the attribution in his catalogue of the Pembroke College Library, but it was only in 1954, as a result of work by Beryl Smalley, that the attribution was confirmed.24 However, the English biblical scholar’s primary focus was not the sermon, but the distinction between two friars of the same name, William of Nottingham, and on the theological contribution made by the second one.25 Although frequently quoted by historians, Smalley’s article has generated minimal interest in the sermon found by James, whose contents still remain unexplored.26 The sermon is attributed to the minister provincial by a later hand, firstly in the table of the contents of the manuscript and then up to the text, maybe by the same Thomas of Wicford signing at the end of the contents. Although nothing is known about him, at a first palaeographic analysis it seems conceivable that this copyist inserted the name ‘Adam de Marisco’ in ccccl, ms. 459, fol. 132r–132v, a short ‘schema’ of a sermon lying unattributed in Cambridge until the second half of the fifteenth century.27 The common attitude of 22

23

24

25 26 27

Cambridge, Magdalene College Library, ms. 15, fols 119r–142v, contains short homilies for the Sunday cycle, beginning with the first Sunday of Advent, and continuing throughout the liturgical year. A late note attributes these sermons to William of Nottingham junior. This collection needs further study before it can be assigned to William of Nottingham, senior. I thank Michael Robson for the information. James, A Descriptive Catalogue, 78–80; bruo, 1605–1606; Schneyer, vol. 2, 525. Recently the notice was re-edited in William H. Campbell, ‘Franciscan preaching in thirteenth century England: sources, problems and possibilities’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 2007 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nicholas Rogers (Donington, 2010), 25–40, esp. 26 n. 4. Beryl Smalley, ‘Which William of Nottingham?’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954), 200–238, now in Beryl Smalley, Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning: From Abelard to Wyclif (London, 1981), 249–287. Studies in Medieval Thought, 249–252. The complete edition of the sermon is under way and will be soon published. ccccl, ms. 459, fols 132r–132v. The short text is based on the theme: Simon Onie filius quasi arcus relatus inter nebulas, taken from Eccli. 50.1, 8 throughout this chapter. It begins with the words: ‘Symon interpretatur exaudiens merorem et ita tenetur quibus etc. Et hoc tripliciter: sensu, affectu, tactu. Sensu, scilicet finitime lacrimas et merore et non tantum sensu, ut faciunt hii qui audiunt gesta proborum uirorum sicut Roulandus et huius, qui audiunt tantum quod ad sensualem merorem ducuntur, sed affectu, scilicet et quoad sensualiter agitur affectu appetatur. Et non tantum sensu et affectu, sed actu compleatur’, and concludes with: ‘Ultra semicirculum non apparet, ut nullus de ipso presumat in superiori, connexus ut superioribus reuereamur interius concautis ut intimis et inferioribus concauemur et dilatemur. Sequitur inter nebulas glorie. Est autem nebula

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fifteenth-century scholars was to attribute anonymous texts to famous scholars of an earlier age, thereby casting some doubt on the attribution to William. An examination of the contents and of the style, however, allows us to accept William’s authorship or, at the least, that of a contemporary friar.28 However, it must be admitted that the name of William of Nottingham should be considered as most probable, because what we know about his personality, thanks to Thomas of Eccleston and Adam Marsh, fits with the contents and the language of the sermon. In this sermon, ‘In esso’, William points out the three paths stretching in front of the religious man: those of disobedience, licence and obedience.29 In a colourful and rich example,30 the writer recognizes the perfection only of those walking in the last one, by acting against their will and even against

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caliginosa, suspensio serenitate perspicua, distillacio graciosa. Sunt autem nebule gratie devote contemplacionis, divine desideria, ad que nos etc.’ After this short text a later hand added one more preaching scheme: ‘Acunsione peccatoris: cum peccatus pugnando tunderis tria prospiciuntur: cor, sonus, atque manus. Per que tria significantur: cor recolens culpam, sonus est facta faceris, dat manus, ut fractus discretus post operis. Tres infelices dicit Sacra Pagina, qui scit nec discit, discit nec agit, nescit neque querit.’ Smalley, ‘Which William’, 252. p, fol. 192r: ‘Triplex enim est uia per quam incedunt religiosi: una est inobedientia, media licentia, tertia, uera obedientia.’ ‘Exemplum de aliquo qui dedit regi coronam auream, quam, processu temporis mutuo, querit accipere, qui eam regi dedit. Nullam facit ei rex iniuriam, si neget quod carius petit. Dicit beatus Anselmus, Libro de Similitudinibus: “Licentia multos decipit.” Is enim, quem obedientia egredi claustrum non costringit, uult tamen exire quamuis nolit. Illud sine licentia presumere et idcirco actum. Sine licentia qua preualet conatur defendere peccatum profecto habet ex illicita uoluntate. Non enim priusquam mortuus mundo claustrum subiit ad mundi negocia uel uoluntate nullitatem redire debuit. Mundialiter negocium potest appellari omne illud mundi ad quod monemus preter iustam neccessitatem, uel piam utilitatem’ (fol. 192r); ‘De primo, exemplum alicui iniungitur per obedientiam ut querat sibi Bibliam uel ut uisitet parentes suos uel huius quod facit cum labore et difficultate. Videtur quo ad homines obedire quod etiam facit si moueatur ordinate, scilicet amore obedientie principaliter, licet comunicatur propria uoluntas obedientie. Tamen, si desiderium habendi Bibliam uel uisitandi parentes uel aliud huiusmodi moueat eum principaliter et postponatur in animo amor obedientie, tali desiderio non est uirtus obedientie quo ad Dominum, licet uideatur, quo ad iudicium humanum, quod tibi ipsi melius poterit patere. Si aliquid tibi iungatur in aduersum et in uia obedientie, postea tibi accurrere aliqua aspera et dura, ut accipias interdum precepta multa quelibet salubria sint minus. Tamen suauia uidentur. Hic si moleste ceperis sustinere, si iudicare prelatum, si murmurare in corde tuo et si exterius impleas quod iubetur, non est hec uirtus obedientie, et pacientie, sed uelamen malicie’ (fol. 192v), just to quote two of them.

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their own ‘sensus’, that is, their own judgement.31 Among the religious men more vulnerable to such a danger, the first to be mentioned are those who desire a Bible—at that time, although a tool of knowledge by excellence, also one of social prestige—to visit their relatives (‘parentes suos’), for they are moved by greed and vanity. To this type of religious man, he adds all those studying and so lapsing into vanity. To William, they have to be removed from the schools and the studium (officium studendi) with no hope of ever returning. In order to coax them back into obedience, they may be employed in kitchen chores or in similar modest assignments.32 According to the author, obedience is even more fruitful than preaching or celebrating Mass.33 This brings us back to the role of the preacher in relation to the observance of the Rule in William of Nottingham’s thought. He repeats in several places the need for the friar to be obedient both during the exercise of his priestly ministry and his preaching. He assigns to the priest the role of guardian of science and law, for the priest would have learnt them directly from the mouth of God and then communicated them to the faithful. However, if he does not abandon his own will completely, being totally obedient and becoming a subject of God—as taught by St Francis—he may despair of ever grasping the truth of heaven or explaining it to others.34

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‘Sic enim quo ad Dominum sic proficiens in uia ad celum licet aliter sic quo ad iudicium humanum in hac uia duo sunt impedimenta que debet religiosus indesinenter amouere et dirimere, que sunt: propria uoluntas egrediens de effectu ipsius anime, et proprius sensus que egrediens de aspectu siue de ratione’ p, fol. 192v. ‘De primo, exemplum alicui iniungitur per obedientiam ut querat sibi Bibliam uel ut uisitet parentes suos vel huius quod facit cum labore et difficultate. Videtur quo ad homines obedire quod etiam facit si moueatur ordinate, scilicet amore obedientie principaliter, licet comunicatur propria uoluntas obedientie. Tamen, si desiderium habendi Bibliam uel uisitandi parentes uel aliud huiusmodi moueat eum principaliter et postponatur in animo amor obedientie, tali desiderio non est uirtus obedientie quo ad Dominum, licet uideatur, quo ad iudicium humanum, quod tibi ipsi melius poterit patere. Si aliquid tibi iungatur in aduersum et in uia obedientie, postea tibi accurrere aliqua aspera et dura, ut accipias interdum precepta multa quelibet salubria sint minus. Tamen suauia uidentur. Hic si moleste ceperis sustinere, si iudicare prelatum, si murmurare in corde tuo et si exterius impleas quod iubetur, non est hec uirtus obedientie, et pacientie, sed uelamen malicie’, p, fols 192v–193r. ‘Vnde licet uideatur quis posse facere aliquid fructuosius ut predicare uel missas celebrare, tamen a Domino meritorium est illud omittere propter obedientiam uel aliquid indifferens facere si adiungatur’, p. fol. 193r. ‘Quid enim interest uerum per se accipere suos ministros, siue homines, innotescat suum placitum Deus labia sacerdotis custodiunt scienciam et legem, ex ore eius requirent. Ange-

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Already underlined in William of Nottingham’s sermon is sensitivity towards the theological preparation of priests and preachers; this was one of the points that increasingly affected the ministers general and ministers provincial of the order after the death of St Francis, as a result of the friars’ increasing involvement in pastoral care, their promotion to positions of leadership in the Church and their dealings with local ecclesiastical authorities. A fragment of the earliest constitutions of the order in 1239 stipulated that the only candidates suitable for admission to the order were to be either a dean in arts or to have had a chair in medicine, decrees and law, or to have been recognized as responder in theology, or to be a famous preacher, or a real appreciated lawyer, or someone holding the chair in grammar schools in well-known towns and villages, finally he has to be such a clerk or a layman whose income may bring distinguished and renowned edification to laity and clergy.35 The order increasingly wished to attract such candidates with a strong scholastic profile. First of all, the need for a high level of scholastic training prior to entering the order was underlined; secondly, candidates should be of good reputation (ualde famosus predicator); and, finally, theology was only one of the possible disciplines that the future friar should have mastered. However, this situation did not persist for long. In the particulae, designed by the general chapter of Metz in 1254, the friars chose to lower the entry requirements for candidates, believing that it was no longer necessary for them to be rectores or responsores; rather, candidates should be competenter

35

lis enim Dominum exterituum est. Requirent, inquam, legem numquam uel autentica aliqua scriptura tradidit uel ratio manifesta probauerit. De huius⟨modi⟩ enim nec preceptor expectandus nec prohibitor auscultandus est, sed quam ita latere aut obscurum esse cognoscitur ut in dubium uenire possit uerum an Deus sit an aliter forte uolit. Si non Domini labiis custodientibus scientiam lex ore angeli Dominum exterituum certum reddatur ipsum proinde quam pro Deo habemus tanquam Dominum. In hiis que non sunt aperte contra Dominum audire debemus huic usque Bernardus, cui concordat beatus Franciscus: “Subditus, inquid, prelatum suum non hominem considerare debet, sed illum pro cuius amore subiectus est. Quanto autem magis contemptibilis possidet, tanto obedientis humilitas Domino magis placet.” Illi autem qui proprio sensui immittuntur querant a Domino cum Isa. (58.3): quare ieiunauimus et non aspexisti, humiliauimus animam nostram et nescistis. Et audire post annum respondere: quia in diebus ieiunii uestri inuenitur uoluntas uestra. Huic beatus Augustinus, in sermone de obedientia: “Si ieiunaueris diebus ac noctibus orationemque feceris, si in sacco fueris uel in cinere, si nichil aliud feceris nisi quidcumque preceptum est in lege, et cibi quasi sapiens fueris uisus et obediens patri non fueris omnes uirtutes perdidisti.”’ ‘Vna obedientia plus ualet quam omnes uirtutes’, p, fol. 193r. Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii, 10, no. 41.

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instructi.36 The reason for the change is a matter of debate, but it is more probable that it was due to the desire to provide an advanced education within the numerous studia of the order. This instruction was further reaffirmed by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio at the general chapter of Narbonne in 1260. What happened to the examination for preachers? At one point it was established what type of friar was deemed suitable for the office of preaching, so it has been possible to compare a number of cases. In the Fragmenta the prospects of avoiding the examination by the minister general were quite high. A partial remedy to this situation devised by Innocent iv in his bull, Ordinem vestrum of 14 November 1245, ordained that those who did not require prior examination must obtain a licentia seu mandato populo praedicare.37 The need for a closer oversight of preaching, however, was accompanied by a new definition in 1230, when it was expected that the minister provincial could confer the licentia or send the candidate to the minister general; in 1245 these two figures were flanked by vicars and definitors acting during the provincial chapters. This fluid situation is well reflected in the formation of friars writing collections of sermons. Many of them, in fact, had had previous training and enjoyed a good reputation. One such friar in England was John Pecham, who left us a small collection of sermons preserved in two manuscripts at Oxford.38 A number of studies have been published on John Pecham’s life and various writings.39 He was a famous and popular preacher prior to his appointment

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Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii, 22–23, no. 30. bf, vol. 1, 402. Although they may be considered one of the most interesting cases of this period, I am not undertaking the analyses of John of Wales’s sermons. The place of their composition in fact, is still debated, as it is not clear whether they are to be considered as a product of his Parisian period or of his Oxonian stay. See, on this, Jenny Swanson, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar (Cambridge, 1989); and Albrecht Diem and Michiel Verweij, ‘Virtus est via ad gloriam? John of Wales and Michele da Massa in disagreement’, fs 63 (2005), 215–269, for recent bibliography on the subject. Decima Douie, Archbishop Pecham (Cambridge, 1952); David Knowles, ‘Some aspects of the career of Archbishop Pecham’, ehr 57 (1942), 1–18, 178–201; J.J. Smith, The Attitude of John Pecham toward Monastic Houses under His Jurisdiction (Washington, dc, 1949); Decima Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars and the Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1954); G.J. Etzkorn, ‘John Pecham, o.f.m.: a career of controversy’, in Monks, Nuns and Friars in Mediaeval Society, ed. E.B. King et al. (Sewanee, tn, 1989), 71–82; R. Lambertini, ‘Polemica escatologica e governo della Chiesa in John Peckam’, in La cattura della fine. Variazioni dell’escatologia in regime di cristianità, ed. G. Ruggieri (Genoa, 1992), 89–112; A. Boureau, Théologie, science et censure au xiii siècle. Le cas de Jean Peckham (Paris, 1999).

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to the see of Canterbury in 1279 by Nicholas iii. His fame a scholar and an indefatigable exponent of the Scriptures preceded him, enabling him to move easily between the Universities of Paris and Oxford. Compared with the strong concentration on his theological writings and his polemical texts regarding the Franciscan order,40 comparatively little attention has been paid to his collection of sermons.41 The two scholars dealing with this subject labelled the collection of little interest on account of repetition and the scarcity of references to contemporary practice. Although in general we acknowledge the scope of Pecham’s collection, his writings offer a very interesting case study for preaching and the reception of the rules in England on the subject. As stated, John Pecham’s collection is quite small;42 it contains only 101 short sermons in 31 folios of the Bodleian manuscript at Oxford. His sermons are always based on a threefold schema that derives from long familiarity with the writings of Bonaventure of Bagnoregio in Paris.43 The image of the preacher presented by Pecham’s sermons may be derived from his extensive knowledge of Parisian sources. If Bonaventure taught that the preacher should disseminate his teaching more by his example than his words, surrendering even his own will,44 Pecham and other English preachers familiar with these texts emphasized that the preacher had to be distinguished in humility and obedience,45 penitence, assiduity and mercy.46 In this way he would attain the sweetness of contemplation,

40 41

42 43 44 45 46

For a complete bibliography on the subject see: http://users.bart.nl/~roestb/franciscan/ (accessed 15 September 2015). Decima Douie, ‘Archbishop Pecham’s sermons and collations’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. Richard W. Hunt, William A. Pantin and Richard W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), 269–282; G. Melani, ‘La predicazione di Giovanni Pecham, ofm’, Studi Francescani, s. 3, 13 (1941), 197–220; G. Melani, ‘Ancora sulla predicazione di Giovanni Pecham’, Studi Francescani, s. 3, 21 (1949), 116–123. The sermons are listed in Schneyer, vol. 2, 662–672. Cf. D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars, 151. b, fols 1r–31v; Oxford, Rawlinson, ms. c. 116, fols 30ra–39va. John Peckham, Canticum Pauperis, 133–2015, esp. 141–143. Bonaventura de Balneoregio, Sermones dominicales, study and edition, J.G. Bougerol (Grottaferrata, 1977), 216. Fol. 28vb: ‘puritate mundicie, largitate misericordie, humilitate obediencie’. q.74, fol. 34r: ‘pascere etiam debent exemplo penitentie, paciencie, diligencie, misericordie […] forma inquit facti gregis, quia exemplum penitentie in pastore resultat conformiter in grege. […] Si sacerdotes peccauerint, totus populus conuertitur ad peccandum. Vnusquisque enim christianus pro peccato suo reddet rationem. Sacerdos autem non tantum pro suis, sed etiam pro ouium peccatis.’

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the truth of the preaching and the acerbitas of penance. As for the doctor seraphicus, pastoral care elevates those who exercise it to a state of perfection much more than mere contemplation. Preaching to neighbours is a work of mercy in itself and it leads to obedience in penance and dominates the rational soul, namely that one in which all superior capabilities of man lay, thus finally bringing the faithful to the heights of salvation.47 Even action is not sufficient to guarantee the state of perfection. In this sense, it seems that preaching, that is, the exercise of pastoral care rather than listening itself, can replace good works in order to achieve salvation. Thus, the anonymous friar of Worcester, Cathedral Library, ms. q.74—writing shortly after Pecham—believes that it is the seed that nourishes the soul in the Lord’s vineyard. Without preaching, he says, the individual is arid and fruitless. The focus, however, is on who can rise from the drought that characterizes penitent souls. As the basis for every subsequent step towards perfection, it can be exercised only by a select number. They have to be few in number, poor, educated in wisdom and specialized in a single task to which they devote themselves completely.48 47

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b, fol. 28vb: ‘Recto autem ordinatur bonum ad Deum per suauitatem contemplacionis, ad proximum per ueritatem predicacionis, ad se ipsum per acerbitatem penitentialis afflictionis. Contemplacionis suauitas afficit concupiscibilem, predicacionis ueritas illustrat rationalem, penitencialis acerbitas inclitat irascibilem […] predicacionis ueritas largitati misericordie quia magnum opus misericordie est proximum informare; acerbitas penitencialis affliccionis humilitati obediencie. Verus enim penitens in omnibus debet esse obediens ut possit dicere cum Ps: paratum cor meum Deus.’ Worcester, Cathedral Library, ms. q.74 (= w74), fols 19ra–20rb: ‘licet autem multi uocentur, pauci tament ueniunt, Luc. xiv (14.16): homo quidam fecit cenam magnam et uocauit multos, et excusauerunt se. Pauperes autem intrauerunt et comederunt et nemo uirorum illorum qui uocati sunt gustabit cenam meam, dicit Dominus ibidem (Luc. 14.24). Malunt enim comedere sicut mulier pregnans utilia cibaria, ut carbones et cretum, et huius usi infirmatur quam utilia unde saluentur. Seipsi enim uerbum predicationis unde fit ranum et panis quo reficiantur et sicut terra non profert fructus utiles sine semine, sec cor bona opera non profert sine predicacione. Tunc enim profert cum semini uerbi additur humor deuocionis et calor gracie Spiritus Sancti. […] De secundo, Iob xix (19.16): meum seruum uocaui ad seruiendum mihi et dicendum uoluntatem meam. Sicut paterfamilias uocauit hodie seruos suos ut laborent in uinea sua (cfr. Matt. 21.33), uoluntas Dei est ut laboret unusquisque in uinea consciencie sue, ut bene fodia usque ad radices penetrando cor suum et inueniet radicem peccatorum que semper repudiatur nihil semper exstirpentur. […] Bonus autem operarius debet mane ad opus uenire si uult dietam plenam habere, nisi forte tarde ueniens reconpenset tarditatem per feruentem operacionem prout dicitur bonus operarius numquam tarde uenit ad opus. Eccle. ix (9, 10): quodcumque potest manus tua instanter operare; Eccli. xxxi (31.27): in omnibus operibus tuis esto uelox et omnis

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A son of his particular era and educated during the Parisian controversy between secular and mendicant masters, Pecham argued that the friars were entrusted with pastoral care that they are called to exercise by divine choice.49 By acting on this, they become perfect imitators of Christ and his disciples:50 they travel,51 preach peace,52 tolerate adversity,53 and dissipate the darkness of ignorance,54 thanks to their knowledge and doctrine. In turn, the anonymous author’s sermon on the good sower in ms. Worcester q. 74 provides a definition of the preacher that clearly reveals that a religious order should take care of this task. According to him, the preacher should be characterized by a humble spirit,55 and, above all, he must be young and poor. Indeed, Pecham maintains that the preacher has to know the season in which to scatter the seed, that is, when to engage in this activity. Then, he has to consider the type of soil that will germinate the divine word. Regarding the first item, Pecham favoured a generation of young, newly educated preachers while, for the second, he declares that the best fruit can be harvested in the gaunt (‘macilenta’) land, that is, in the poor, whose actions will provide much fruit.56

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52 53 54 55 56

infirmitas non occurret tibi cum Dominus dabit uirtutem. […] iste est usus mortalium, ut quamdiu in hoc mundo sumus diuersis operacionibus occupemur.’ ‘Diliges proximum tuum. Rom. 13 (13.9), fol. 3ra–3rb: 3ra: Sciens beatus apostolus nullum opus de genere bonorum quo ad uitam ecclesiasticam optinendam prodesse sine superna dilectione, in hiis uerbis duo facit: primo nobis recommendat caritatis acceptum distantium et […] diuini amoris receptationem; diuine legis adimpletionem’; fol. 7vb: ‘[rex] quia sapientissimus ad consulendum uenerari eum debemus opere uiriliter ministrando; feruida dilectio transfformet amantes, deuota laudacio reddet iubilantes; officiosa ministracio exercet operantes’. b, fol. 29rb–va: ‘Nos perfectos esse imitatores introducit in nostri exemplum Christi discipulos qui ibant cum illo (Luc. 7.11) […] ut proximos edificauerunt libere predicando ut seipsos exercitarent strenue operando […] Matt. Dicens (10.7): euntes predicate docentes quia appropinquabit regnum celorum, et Luc. (cfr. 8.11): ibant per castella et ciuitates euangelizantes et curantes usque ibant.’ The same idea is expressed by an anonymous friar in. q. 63, fol. 46v. On the contrary, q. 74 denounces the practice of those ‘questuarii predicatores’ selling their own work for gifts and vows from the people (fol. 25v). Such a use is well appreciated outside the order, as another anonymous preacher, possibly a secular one, writing at the very end of the thirteenth century, addresses his audience asking for alms in ‘payment’ for his preaching (cgccl, ms. 439 /233, fol. 67va). b, fol. 22ra. b, fol. 19va: ‘Bona operando me sequatur, scilicet aduersa fortiter tollerando.’ b, fols 14va, 14vb. q. 74, fol. 81r: ‘occulte facienda est’. q. 74, fol. 81r: ‘Et nota quod seminans debet considerare tempus. Fatuum enim est semi-

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The theme of evangelical poverty is a distinctive symbol of the good preacher and it is a recurring motif in Franciscan collections of sermons in England; its appearance is perhaps more persuasive in texts written in this region than in those of the continent. Vibrant with Franciscan elements, such persuasive text can be found, for example, in the sermon on St George in a manuscript at St John’s College, Cambridge, s.19. Composed by an anonymous Franciscan about the middle of the thirteenth century, the manuscript is a pocket-sized book, a handbook both for measures and for content. Hence, the attention to preaching is constantly associated with that for the observance of poverty, making thus clear which Rule the preacher is invited to follow. The author says, for example: I have chosen you in the path of poverty. So in the Epistle of James, 5 (2.5): has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to possess the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? So he was the twelfth one in the assembly of those who declared, Gospel according to Matthew (19.27): We have given up everything and followed you, Christ the poor. So his holy poverty has to be appreciated and desired because poverty must be voluntary in order to be more conformed to Christ himself, for he always was poor in his birth, growth and death.57

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nare in tempore quo debet metere contra eos qui uolunt seminare et opera misericordie uel alia interiora facere post mortem uel in fine uite sue. Eccli. xi (11.6): mane seminanda in iuuentute et in uespere non cesset manus tua, id est in senectute. Seminator enim non seminat post tergum suum, sed ante faciem suam. Eccli. xviii (cfr. 18.17): ante iudicium para iusticiam. Secundo considerandum est locus in quo seminatur. Semen enim misericordie et pietatis fructificat in terra macilenta, id est in pauperibus. Vnde Gen. xxvi (cfr. 26.12): Isaac seminauit in gentis, quod interpretatur auena, et inuenit in illo anno centuplum. Quarto considerandum est quantitas seminis. Fatuum enim esset pro grano seminis expectare plenum horreum messis. Gen. xlvii (47.23): accipite seminata et serite agros ut fruges habere possitis’. Cambridge, Saint John’s College, ms. s.19, fols 350v–351r: ‘Elegi te in camino paupertatis. Vnde et Iac. v (2.5): nonne Deus elegit pauperes in hoc mundo diuites in fide heredes regni? Vnde iste xii erat de consortio dicentium, Matt (19.27): ecce nos reliquimus omnia et secuti sumus te, Christum pauperem. Vnde sancta paupertas eius apprecianda et appetenda, quia paupertas uoluntaria uite Christi est conformior, qui semper pauper extitit in uite sue ingressu, progressu et exitu.’ In another passage he declares (fol. 389r) that the preacher has to be: ‘insignitum castitatis mundicia, humilitatis obediencia, paupertatis obseruancia’.

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While Pecham uses a descriptive tone and his words fluently flow from one sermon to another, the anonymous friar of Worcester ms. q.74 targets contemporary preachers more directly. Thus, the latter’s sermon collection is written more to expose and criticize preachers’ faults than to teach them how and what to preach.58 In doing this, the anonymous friar becomes a sort of subsidiary to Pecham, for he offers a summary on customs and looks at the friends of preachers, which he divides into material and spiritual ones, and Franciscan friars. He declares, for example: I have chosen you in the path of poverty. So in the Epistle of James, 5 (2, 5): has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to possess the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? So he was the twelfth one in the assembly of those who declared, Gospel according to Matthew (19, 27): We have given up everything and followed you, Christ the poor. So his holy poverty has to be appreciated and desired since poverty must be voluntary in order to be more conformed to Christ himself, for he always was poor in his birth, growth and death.59 Although scattered throughout several sermons, echoes of the Franciscan constitutions appear in these collections. Hence, these friars sketch an image of the exemplary preacher, presumably a Franciscan one, fitting the more ancient prescriptions of rules and apologetics.60

2

On Preaching Techniques

Writing for the benefit of future preachers, John Pecham concentrates on some technical aspects regarding preaching, going further than the simple

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q. 74, fol. 34v: ‘canes sunt predicatores qui circuerunt ciuitatem latrantes contra diabolicam rapacitatem. Sed exemplum negligencie degenerat in seipsum et corporem. […] […] cuius pastores per negligenciam sunt quasi consopiti et quasi uiui sepulti quia quasi nihil faciunt quidam in officiis suis. Procurant enim suam absenciam ut excusentur a residencia, recommendant ecclesias suas capellanis firmariis.’ Fol. 35r: ‘in hoc proditores sunt quod stipendia non militaturi accipiunt’. q. 74, fol. 20v. For example, Pecham often uses the word ‘nos’ for the preacher, while q. 74, fol. 34r, declares that to be a good shepherd, i.e., a good preacher, the Lord recently called two religious orders to pastoral care and preaching, two mediators and two staffs.

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description. In these passages his didactical attitude reaches a higher level. As in the Narbonne constitutions, preachers should be properly instructed (‘competenter instructi’),61 that is, sufficiently groomed in theological teaching to expel vices and exalt merits.62 To the anonymous friar of ms. q. 74, such an attitude is not enough to guarantee the right course of pastoral care. As a matter of fact, preachers can fall prey to two opposite and parallel temptations: excessive zeal, which turns into real fury, and fear of denouncing sins affecting wealthy friends, when they are public sinners or misers.63 To Pecham, ‘dispositio’ is the main focus of preacher’s activity and this involves either the preacher himself or his public.64 In several places Pecham returns to this concept, which is intended either as an order of the members of the Church in the exercise of their duties,65 such as preaching, or as an attitude

61 62

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Constit Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec xiii, 83. b, fols 12va–vb, 14ra–14rb. b, fol. 1ra–rb: on learning: ‘eruditione doctrinali proximus informatur, dilectione supernali Deus honoratur, uicia homo precipit et merito delectatur. Primo ergo gaudent electi propter equitatem bone operationis prout facetur Salomon Prov. ii. […] gaudium est iusto facere iustitiam auditium scilicet rectum quod est opus laudabile et meritorium. Gaudent et electi propter ueritatem eruditionis, scilicet uerbum Dei predicando degno uerbo dicitur Pe. 19 (cfr. Eccli. 1.12; Ps. 50.10): datum est uerbum Domini in gaudium et letitiam cordis nostri gaudent tandem electi propter suauitatem dilectionis. Est enim amor pro Deus solus gaudiosus et delectabilis sicut ait commentatio ubi supra sit de gaudere profitetur apostolus.’ q. 74, fol. 33v: ‘Si modus excedis, caueas ne spiritus furoris agitetur sub pallio zeli et feruoris. Set hodie uerbum hoc conuertitur in seductionem, Jer. (50.6): grex perditus factus est populus meus. Pastores eorum seduxerunt eos, quia publicos usurarios uel peccatores notorios non corripiunt ut deberent quidam, sed fouent pro pecuniis, excomunicatos absoluunt preter ordinem iuris.’ b, fol. 8rb: ‘disposicionis doctrinalis congruencia uel auditor congrua enim disposicio percepctionis est libenter audire et diligenter. Pro. i: audiens sapiens sapiencior erit.’ b, fol. 2ra: ‘Gaudens per ipsum conuersos in ecclesiastica cons … eterne unitate et sub Christo capite militare. In hiis uerbis militandi modum insinuat dicens unum corpus etc. In quibus tria de nobis ingerunt consideranda. Primum est ad uitam spiritualem congrua dispositio, ibi unum; secundum est membrorum dispositorum miscita compaginatio, ibi corpus; tertium est capitis insilientis genita uegetatio, ibi: in Christo. […]. Congrua dispositio que quidem dispositio sit per membrorum unitatem sicut enim anima non informat aliud membrum nisi corporis orgaminati nisi ceteris membris uiuatur, sic ut prout alicui membro in corpore ecclesie prestat beneficium influencie sic ceteris per unitatem commendetur. Habet propter unitatem ex tribus. Resultat uidelicet ex conformi fidei confessione, ex concordi Dei laudatione, et ex unanimi in domo Dei cohabitatione. Primo inquam resultat haec unitas ex conformi fidei conforme, quam unitatem in preminentia

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of the soul both of the giver and of the receiver the Word of God. He manages to stimulate his listener’s disposicio percepcionis to humbly accept his teaching, remembering it in his daily life and desiring more of it.66 In a short sermon for the Sunday within the octave of the Ascension, beginning with the thematic verse: ‘Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God’ (siquis loquitur quasi sermones Dei, 1Pet. 4:11), John Pecham gives the formal arrangements to the preacher. Although these kinds of particulars are not unusual in thirteenthcentury homiletics, especially among the Franciscans, the Oxonian magister refers to a university education based on a purely Aristotelian lexicon, which he mentions in several places.67 Here the basis of teaching is the distinction between form and act or rather expression (‘expressio’), while working with the Word of God. The preacher, as a new St Paul, is invited to address the public in an appropriate manner (‘quo ad sibi congruum’), grounded on humility, wisdom and zeal. Each of these three characteristics must then be reflected

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ecclesie sumerunt illi de quibus dicitur Act. […]. Resultat etiam ex concordi Dei laudatione. Ad contrariam unitatem inuitat apostolus, Rom. iii dicens (15.6): unanimes uno hore honorificens de una quod quidem honorificans consistit in laudis preconio pro ut ipse dominus fatetur. Per psalmum dicens sacrificium (fol. 2rb) (49, 15) laudis honorificabiT me. Resultat tandem ex unanimi in domo Dei tolleritatione quod ostendere uolens primo loquens de Domino ait (Ps. 67, 7): habitare facit unanimes ⟨h⟩uius moris in domo et quia sic habitare est ualde iocundum et delectabile, ideo dicit. Sed quia dispositio ducit ad actum, ideo secundo additur membrorum dispositorum miscita compagnia. Ideo inportata in hoc … corpus de quia compaginatione dicit apostolus ad Eph. 4 (4, 16): totum corpus compactum et connexum per omnem […] et sequitur (4, 16): in edificationem sui in caritate, et loquimur transsumptiue de corpore ecclesie per comparacionem ad corpus habundantiam. Dicatur ergo uiuum corpus inquam baptizandum spirituali, iustificatione mortificandum penitentiali afflicione et reformandum in generali afflictione et reformandum in generali resurrectione. Baptizandum, dico, spirituali iustificatione prout scriptus […] filiis ecclesie loquens ait uno spiritu baptizati sumus in unum corpus etc. Est iterum illud corpus mortificandum penitentiali afflictione quod omnis corpus Rom. 8 (8, 10): corpus inquit mortuum est. Propter peccatum mortuum, id est penitentia mortificandum de qua mortificatione dicit illud Cor. ii (Cor. 4, 10): semper mortificationem Iesu in corpore circumferentes. Est tandem corpus illud reformandum in finali resurrectione. De qua reformatione dicit apostolus ad ad Philip. 3 (3, 20): Saluatorem expectamus etc. Qui et reformabitur etc’. Fol. 8rb: ‘Audiri debet intelligenter ut in corde strenuo recordatur, concupiscibiliter ut ueritatis feruoris spiritus appetatur; humiliter ut gracia diuina suscipiatur.’ Fol. 8va: ‘Verbum diuinum ab ore doctoris prolatum triplicem habet effectum quia illuminat audientes intelligenter, inflammat audientes concupiscibiliter, letificat audientes humiliter.’ We may remember that John of Pecham’s sermons are often based on the distinction among the three Aristotelian souls, as his questions on the soul are.

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while expounding the Word, that is, when it is presented to the public within a rhetorical act. At that moment the good preacher reaches a triple effect in the soul of the listeners—purgative, illuminating and perfective—as Pecham expects the message to have its effect.68 The repetition of content from one sermon to another, a feature of these texts, multiplies the impact of every precept imparted to the reader/listener by the preacher/writer. At the end of the reading, we may almost regard the handbook as fairly basic in form and content, as a volume that aims at firmly fixing in the user’s mind concepts extrapolated from Aristotelian ethics and from the artes of his time.69 Thus, the idea of congruitas also returns in the sermon for the tenth Sunday of Pentecost, when Pecham gives another short lesson to the future preacher. If the invitation to humility is a frequent motif in these texts, an invitation to speak only to those who want to hear the Word is almost unique. This should be rare, dictated by humility, where the preacher himself should be discreet, because discretion is synonymous with wisdom. He shall not lose the taste for variety (varietas), which makes listening a pleasure.70 In the sermon instructing his public, Pecham recalls the need to adapt and modulate the Word according to the sinners that the preacher is facing. Meanwhile, he should not lose effectiveness and skill in denouncing bad attitudes and failings.71

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b, fols 8vb–9ra: ‘quoad actum sibi congruum […] expressiua quo ad actum sibi congruum ordinatur cum bono loquitur reuerenter, sapienter et feruenter siue humilitas ab irascibili excludit timorem, sapientia a rationali eliminat errorem, feruor a concupiscibili euacuat torporem. Loquendum est humiliter siue reuerenter […] frequenter exemplo beati Pauli […], sed quia lingua in lubrico posita uel sita de fertili labitur, ad illicita formans tribuit directiuam dicens (1 Pe 4, 11): quasi sermones Dei. Circa quod sciendum quod sermo Dei diligenter est loquendus quia triplicem actus rethorici continet effectum. Habet enim uim purgatiuam, illuminatiuam et inflammatiuam. Purgat enim incipientes, illuminat perficientes, inflammat peruenientes […] propter sermonem quem locutus sum uobis.’ This is the case, for example, in the sermon on the nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (b, fols 13ra–13vb). Starting from the middle of the sermon text, it literally repeats the Si quis loquitur one. b, fols 11rb–11va: ‘predicacio congrue dispensatur et effectum debitum sorciatur. Oportet quod sermo noster sit optimus, rarus ut humilitas ostendatur, et discretus ut audientibus anima conferatur. Debet, inquam, sermo noster esse oportunus quanto profertur audire uolentibus. Ideo dicit Sapiens in Ecclesiasten ubi: non est auditus sapientum (cfr. Eccli. 32, 6) non sequaris quia despicient doctrinam tuam (Prv. 23, 9) et eloquium tuum debet esse rarus ut humilitas ostendatur. […].’ q.74, fol. 33v: ‘De secundo Jer. iii (3, 15): dabo uobis pastores qui pascent uos sciencia et doctrina. Non enim fructibus materialibus pascuntur homines, sed uerbis spiritualibus.

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But what are the themes to offer to the flock? Even on this issue John Pecham speaks openly. The preacher challenges people to repentance, to the rejection of sins (including the bad habits of his students: idleness, sloth, lust, vainglory and pride). He shall defend poverty, and especially invites people to experience inner and outer peace.72 In turn, the task of the congregation, especially if it is made up of Franciscan friars, is to hear the Word of the Lord and the preaching, because obedience is part of their vow (audire est obedire).73 Conversely, deafness is synonymous with disobedience and pride and is cured through the exercise of humility.74 To deal with such issues the preacher must be learned (eruditus), because scholarship is salvific in itself. And specialized instruction, enough to dispel ignorance, is one of the constant features of the sermons of the English Franciscans of this period. In John Pecham’s sermons, learning—sufficiently distinguished from science and doctrine—leads to truth and properly belongs to those elected to the heavenly kingdom. However, it should in no way be regarded as complete in itself, for it has to be used to publicize the greatness of the Lord, to correct others and to expose their malevolence (nequitia), too. ‘Dumb dogs have no value’ (cani muti non ualentes) refers to preachers who fail to implement the lessons they have received.75 The same image is also echoed in manuscript q. 74 where the Franciscan author remembers that preaching is composed of several elements: learning the Word, memory, authority, correction, fear and hope, and each one is repre-

72 73 74 75

Sap. xvi (16, 26): non natiuitatis fructus pascunt homines, sed sermo tuus Domine eos qui in te crediderunt conseruat. Et sicut qui pascuntur diuersis cibis indigent pro diuersitate complexionis quia hiis opus est lacte, hiis solido cibo, ita pro uarietate peccancium opus est uarietate sermonum. Panis enim qui hominem nutrit accipitrem interimit, leuis sibilus equos mitigat et catulos istigat. Sed uerbum hoc conuersus est in taciturnitatem, Is. lvi (56, 11): ipsi pastores ignorauerunt intelligentiam, et implet illud Jer. x (10, 20): non est qui extendat ultra censorium suum et erigat pelles meas, quia stulte egerunt pastores et Dominum non quesierunt. Propterea non intellexerunt et omnis grex eorum dispersus est. Conquerit Dominus de modernis pastoribus sub quibus restringitur ecclesia que per predicacionem antiquorum patrum creuit, et sunt implicita. De tertio Eccle. Ultimo (12, 11): uerba sapientum quasi stimuli et quasi claui in altum defixi que per magistrorum consilium data sunt a pastore uno. Sapientes pastores non palpant, sed pungunt et stimulus uerborum penetrat intima cordium quos Christus uerus pastor instruxit ut caueant eterna supplicia.’ b, fols 21va–22ra. b, fol. 20va. b., fol. 20rb. b, fol. 19va.

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sented by an attribute of the good shepherd (bread, dog, stick, horn and pipe).76 In turn, the author of the collection Worcester, q. 74, reiterates the warning regarding the usefulness of studying for preaching, although he reminds readers (maybe other theologians) that this task should not be entrusted only to young people in training. Ideally, it has to be exercised also by those who are already trained as doctors, for they have been paid for their pastoral care.77

3

Conclusions

Both John Pecham and the anonymous friar fit well into a broader literature that sees the great figures of the British Isles, such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Adam Marsh,78 and even William of Nottingham,79 involved in achieving a higher education in the wider areas of medieval knowledge.

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q. 74, fol. 33v: ‘Vasa pastoris sunt panis in pera uerbum, scilicet predicationis, in memoria canis in fine, id est zelus cum discrecione, baculus cum uirga auctoritas grauis et correpcio mediocris cornu cum fistula, timor extremi examinis, et spes diuine miseracionis que auferuntur a pastore stulto et ignorante. Et ideo officium suum non extraente, sed dissimulante.’ q. 74, fol. 20v: ‘Io. xv (15, 16): elegi uos ut eatis et fructum afferatis, et fructus uester maneat, quia ex lumine sapientie debent subditos erudire. Non est sapiens qui cecum facit ducem sue uie, et medicum infirmorum facit egrum inexpertum medicine. Prelatus enim imperitus est, sicut nubes sine aqua, lucerna sine lumine, spado sine semine, thuribulum sine igne. Propter quod aliquin a uirorum de istis episcopis et patronis qui conferunt beneficia et animarum curas in iuuenibus imperitis, sed dicunt iuuenis est bene poti addicere. Ad quod dico rediculosum est ut medicus infirmi iam suscepta cura, iam recepta pecunia, dicit: ibo ad montem pessulanum ut addiscam medicinam et post reditum te curabo, Thamar. ii expectatus quod nuper sola cresceret, interim fornicata est (cfr. Gen. 38, 27).’ Cecilia Panti, ‘Scienza e teologia agli esordi della scuola dei Minori di Oxford: Roberto Grossatesta, Adamo Marsh e Adamo di Exeter’, in I Francescani e le scienze, Società internazionale di studi Francescani, Centro interuniversitario di studi Francescani, Atti del xxxix Convegno internazionale Assisi, 6–8 October 2011, Spoleto, 2012, 328; Frank A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering, ‘In libro numerorum scriptum est de Levitis: Robert Grosseteste on clerical orders’, Medieval Studies 75 (2013), 1–34; William H. Campbell, ‘“Dyvers Kyndes of religion in Sondry partes of the Ilande”: the geography of pastoral care in thirteenth century England’ (PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 2007), http://hdl.handle.net/ 10023/238 (accessed 15 September 2015), 2–5. Eccleston, 63; Gratien de Paris, Histoire de la Fondation et de l’èvolution de l’ordre des Frères minseurs au xiiie siècle (Rome, 1982), 134.

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In their words, these preachers welcome and rework the general rules enacted by the triennial general chapters and the annual provincial chapters as well as the debates within the order,80 adapting them for use by a wider audience. Compared to their confrères on the continent, especially in Paris, these authors are particularly careful to use a simple vocabulary, thoroughly permeated by Franciscan-like ideas, and they barely reach the highest complexity of theological debate. Although it may be considered without doubt that their sermons were composed, if not preached, to an audience close to the academic world—probably other friars and students—such sermons thus prove to be attractive and understandable even for those who were not trained in theological matters. Often kept in small, poor, pocket manuscripts, these short texts, well represented by the examples discussed here, reveal a world of preaching and daily learning more alive than the one emerging from the study of the great collections of sermons on the continent. They all reflect an environment where meditation on the meaning of Franciscan choice and on the friars’ work among local communities was the subject of ongoing discussion and reflection. In practice and writing, the authors required a good deal of skill in juggling among secular friends and the needs of the soul. Such mastery had enabled John Pecham to preside over the most important episcopal office of England without losing his own deep Franciscan identity and inspiration.

List of Abbreviations q. 63 q. 74 p b

Worcester, Cathedral Library, ms. q. 63 Worcester, Cathedral Library, ms. q. 74 Cambridge, Pembroke College, ms. 265 Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. 85

Biblical abbreviations are based on the conventions of the École des Chartres in Conseils pour l’édition des textes médiévaux, fasc. 1: Conseils généraux, Paris, École des Chartres, 2014, pp. 85–88; Schneyer: Johann Baptist Schneyer, Repertorium der Lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit 1150–1350, 11 vols, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 43/1–11, Münster, Aschendorff 1969–1990. 80

Cf. P. Maranesi, Nescientes Litteras. L’ammonizione della regola francescana e la questione degli studi nell’Ordine (sec. xiii–xvi) (Rome, 2000), 79–80.

chapter 11

The Liturgical Manuscripts of the English Franciscans c. 1250–c. 1350 Nigel J. Morgan

During the Reformation, books of the orders of friars in England belonging to the religious orders were particularly targeted and many were destroyed; most particularly, liturgical books. As to be expected, in view of the comparative numbers of houses friars had in England, the Dominicans’ and Franciscans’ liturgical books survive in larger numbers than those of the Austin Friars and Carmelites, but even for the first two orders the survival for each is only about twenty-five books containing liturgical texts. This is a fraction of the survival of liturgical books of the English Benedictines and Augustinian Canons. The houses of the friars were mostly established in towns and thus were much more in danger of plunder at the time of the Reformation than Benedictine and Augustinian houses, which were often in rural settings. Although only about twenty-four English Franciscan liturgical manuscripts survive it is very fortunate that by far the majority fall into the early period c. 1250–c. 1350.1 These are seven missals (two only as fragments), four breviaries, (one only a fragment), three hymnals, of which one is in a breviary, four litanies, of which three are in the breviaries, and fourteen calendars, of which five are in the missals and breviaries, and the remainder in psalters, books of hours or non-liturgical texts.2 Some of the surviving manuscripts have many additions and corrections to their calendars and other parts of their texts, making each

1 From the period c. 1350 to 1450 there are the following English Franciscan mss: Bristol, Baptist Coll. Z.d.38 (now sold at Sotheby sale catalogue, 17 December 1991, lot 66)—Book of Hours c. 1450; Oxford, Bodleian Digby 5—Calendar c. 1380/1400; Oxford, Bodleian Rawl. d.238—Calendar c. 1386/1400; Reigate, Parish Church 2322—Book of Hours c. 1450; bav, Ottob. lat. 91—Martyrology c. 1450. To these should perhaps be added a Sarum Book of Hours of c. 1400/25 which belonged to the Franciscan nuns of Bruisyard (Suffolk) now in Bucharest, Rumanian Academy of Sciences ms 70: R. Constantinescu, ‘Western manuscripts in Rumanian libraries: Bucharest (viiith–xvith centuries)’, Revista arhivelor 37.3 [52], 1975, 314. 2 It should be noted that one of the calendars is an adaptation of a non-Franciscan calendar to Franciscan use. This is: Oxford, Bodl. liturg. 407.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_012

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one of them worthy of a stand-alone article, and I must emphasize that what follows needs further research on these features.3 The earliest of these English Franciscan books with liturgical texts are from the third quarter of the thirteenth century, four in number. Eight are from the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and four of the first half of the fourteenth century. In his extensive fundamental studies of the early Franciscan liturgy Stephen van Dijk only mentions seven of these English manuscripts, and very briefly:4 cul Hh.1.3 (Missal); London, bl Harley 5037 (Breviary); Oxford, Bodleian Auct. d.5.11 (Calendar); Oxford, Bodleian Digby 2 (Calendar); Oxford, Bodleian lat.liturg.f.26 (Missal); Oxford, Bodleian Rawl. liturg.e.1 (Calendar); Oxford, Bodleian Tanner 334 (Missal); Paris, BnF lat. 1332 (Missal). Richard Pfaff, in his The Liturgy in Medieval England, discusses only the thirteenth-century manuscripts:5 cul Hh.1.3 (Missal); cul Add. 7622 (Breviary); Liverpool, Cath. Lib. 27 (Psalter); London, bl Harley 5037 (Breviary); London, Univ. Coll. 6 (Breviary/Missal); Oxford, Bodleian Auct. d.5.11 (Calendar); Oxford, Bodleian Digby 2 (Calendar); Oxford, Bodleian Rawl. liturg. e.1 (Calendar).

1

Missals (Appendix Nos 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 16, 17)

Of these manuscripts only nos 1, 3, 13, 16 and 17 are reasonably complete texts, three from the second half of the thirteenth century and two of the first half of the fourteenth. All seem to present the text following the revision of the Ordinal by Haymo of Faversham, completed before his death in 1244; however, not all the manuscripts contain all the expected feasts in their calendars and sanctorals.6 One of these missals was evidently intended for a Scottish house in the diocese of Glasgow (no. 1) and another probably for the Greyfriars of 3 Particularly difficult in regard to their calendars are: cul Add. 7222 (Breviary); Bodleian lat. bib. d. 9 (Calendar); Bodleian lat. liturg. f. 26 (Missal); Bodleian Rawl.liturg.e.1 (Calendar). Brief catalogue descriptions of all eighteen manuscripts are given in the Appendix at the end of this chapter. 4 References to his citations will be given later for the individual manuscripts. Unfortunately, the very important Breviary, cul Add. 7622, only came to light after his death in 1971. For his work and publications see J.H. Walker, ‘Stephen J.P. (Aurelianus) van Dijk, o. f. m. (†)’, afh 64 (1971), 591–597. 5 Pfaff, Liturgy, 320–327, for a brief but succinct and judicious account. He says nothing on those of the first half of the fourteenth century, and I have to disagree with much of what he has said about the thirteenth-century manuscripts. 6 J.H. Walker, ‘Franciscan influence on Roman liturgy’, Sobornost, ser. 3, 19 (1956), 344–361; R.B. Brooke, Early Franciscan Government (Cambridge, 1959), 208–209; and van Dijk, Sources,

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London (no. 17). A third (no. 13) later belonged to a friary whose name begins with a, possibly Aylesbury, but the English saints added to its calendar do not support this and do not clearly point to any particular region of the country. A fourth (no. 3), which is attached to a slightly earlier English Bible of c. 1240–1250, might have belonged to a friary in the diocese of Chichester, that is Chichester, Lewes or Winchelsea, from the presence of Richard of Chichester and Wilfrid in its calendar.7 The remaining missal texts have no clear evidence of provenance.

2

Breviaries (Appendix Nos 2, 4, 7, 9)

Of the four breviaries only no. 4 contains a full text. One is only of the summer season from Pentecost to the last Sunday after Pentecost in the temporal, 13 June to 25 November in the sanctoral (no. 2), and another (no. 7) lacks the temporal, calendar and most of the psalter. The last (no. 9) is a fragment only. The most complete text (no. 4), on the evidence of the additions to its calendar, moved around between Franciscan houses, one in the diocese of Worcester, as evidenced by the additions of Kenelm and the very rare Kyneburga of Gloucester, and the other in the diocese of Norwich, confirmed by the added dedication of the friary of Babwell on the outskirts of Bury St Edmunds. The only breviary with elaborate illumination (no. 2) was made in Paris for Mary de St Pol, countess of Pembroke, as it bears her arms and there are kneeling figures of her before Sts Mary Magdalene, Clare and Cecilia in the miniatures. She was foundress of the nunnery of Denny (Cambs.), which followed the use of the French royal Franciscan abbey of Longchamp, so the text of Mary de St Pol’s breviary, in effect, is that of Denny Abbey.

3

Psalters—Excluding Those in Breviaries (Appendix Nos 5, 8)

The first psalter (no. 5) was originally intended for Franciscan use but seems to have passed into ownership of people connected with the parish church of St Michael, Seavington (Somerset), as evidenced by obits added to the calendar, for Haymo’s liturgical work. One conclusion from this present study is that the absence of some feasts in the texts is unreliable evidence for establishing a terminus ante date. 7 The shrine of Richard of Chichester, canonized in 1262 at the time of the making of this missal, was at Chichester cathedral. The cult of Wilfrid in the diocese of Chichester is discussed by Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘St Wilfrid in Sussex’, in Studies in Sussex Church History, ed. M.J. Kitch (London, 1981), 1–17.

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one of which was of the parish priest instituted in 1297. Similarly, the second psalter (no. 8) was evidently made for a layperson and contains no evidence of ever belonging to a friary. Its owner very probably acquired the book as a result of having a Franciscan confessor, and perhaps was Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward iii. Both these books have illuminations, that of the second being of very fine quality by the Queen Mary Psalter workshop, perhaps made in London.

4

Hymnals (Appendix Nos 4, 5, 14)

The psalter, with the hymnal, were parts of the breviary, but the hymnal is also sometimes found attached to the psalter as an independent book. As to be expected these hymnals include hymns for Francis (nos 4, 5, 14), Anthony of Padua (nos 4, 5), Clare (no. 14), Reception of the Stigmata (no. 14) and Louis the King (no. 14).

5

Litanies of the Saints (Appendix Nos 2, 4, 5, 7)

The litany of the saints is found in breviaries at the end of the psalter section and in independent psalters. Characteristic saints of the Franciscan litany among the confessors and virgins are Francis (nos 2, 4, 5, 7), Anthony of Padua (nos 2, 4, 5, 7), Louis of Toulouse (nos 2), Louis the King (nos 2), Elizabeth of Hungary (nos 2, 4 (added), 7), Clare (nos 2, 4 (added), 7) and Dominic (nos 2, 4, 5, 7). From the evidence of these four texts it seems these English Franciscan litanies were never supplemented by the addition of local British saints.

6

Sanctorals (Appendix Nos 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 16, 17)

In the sanctorals of missals and breviaries only some saints in their calendars have proper texts, such as a collect in the missal or readings for the Matins lessons in the breviary. In the English Franciscan books of the 1250–1350 period, such propers only relate to the saints of the Franciscan order, Francis, Anthony of Padua, Louis of Toulouse, Louis the King, Clare and Elizabeth of Hungary. Otherwise, the only non-Franciscan and non-Roman feast days with propers are those of Thomas of Canterbury (both 7 July and 29 December) and Dominic (4 or 5 August). This contrasts with the calendars which often contain British saints, some added as the book passed to a Franciscan house in another part

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of the country from its original owner. It can but be assumed that if the feast days of these British saints were celebrated in the liturgy of the Mass or Office then the texts had to be supplied from the Common of Saints. The occurrence of the main Franciscan saints in the English manuscripts is most clearly demonstrated in the lists in section 7 and following.

7

Franciscan Saints with Propers in the Sanctoral

25(24) May 13 June 20 June 12(11) August 19 August 25 August 4 October 11 October 19(18) November

8

Other Saints with Propers in the Sanctoral

7 July 4(5) August 5 August 29 December

8

9 10 11

Translation of Francis: 3, 4, 7, 9 (breviary part at end), 13, 16, 17 Anthony of Padua: 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 (breviary part at end), 13, 16, 17 Octave of Anthony of Padua: 2, 3, 13, 16, 17 Clare:8 2, 7, 16 Louis of Toulouse: 16 Louis the King:9 2, 17 Francis: 2, 3, 4, 9 (m), 13, 16, 17 Octave of Francis: 2, 4, 13, 16, 17 Elizabeth of Hungary:10 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 (b), 13, 16, 17

Translation of Thomas of Canterbury: 16 Dominic: 2, 3, 4, 7, 13, 16, 17 Maria ad Nives:11 2 Thomas of Canterbury: 3, 4, 7, 13, 16, 17

For the introduction of the liturgical texts of Clare into the Franciscan liturgy see van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’; Giovanni Boccali, ‘Testi liturgici antichi per la festa di santa Chiara’, afh 99 (2006), 417–466; Giovanni Boccali, ‘Testi liturgici antichi per la festa di santa Chiara’, afh 100 (2007), 149–220; and Anna Welch, ‘Presence and absence: reading Clare of Assisi in Franciscan liturgy and community’, in Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Catholic Church in Britain and Europe 1200–1900, ed. L. Lux-Sterrit and C.M. Mangion (Basingstoke, 2011), 19–37. St Louis, Louis ix of France, was a Franciscan tertiary and great patron of the Franciscans, who was canonized in 1297. St Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia was a Franciscan tertiary, canonized in 1235. Among the many feasts of saints of the city of Rome in the Franciscan calendar, that

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Calendars (Appendix Nos 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18)

In regard to any attempt to localize the Franciscan house which might have owned the manuscript it is very fortunate that the English Franciscan calendars, in most cases, contain local British saints, some of them very rarely found.12 It seems that the English Franciscans were much more sympathetic than the other main mendicant orders, the Austin Friars, Carmelites and Dominicans, to introduce British saints in their liturgy, although, until detailed study is done of the liturgical manuscripts of these other orders, this judgement may be preliminary. The Franciscan calendar contains many Roman saints of the calendar of the papal court and these have not been listed below.13 Most of the calendars contain all these Roman saints but on occasions some are lacking and were added in subsequent corrections. Also, there are minor differences between the calendars and sanctorals of the missal and the breviary in their contents of some of the less important of these Roman saints. Many of the British saints in these calendars are later additions, in most cases by many different scribes, and conclusions are complicated by the difficult task of dividing their hands.

10

Franciscan Saints and Feasts in the Calendars

16 January 15 February 20 May 25(24) May 25 27 May

12 13 14

Five Franciscan Martyrs (canonized 1481):14 15 (added) Translation of Anthony of Padua: 4 (added), 9 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) Bernardine of Siena (canonized 1450): 15 (added) Translation of Francis: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 Octave of Bernardine: 15 (added)

of Maria ad Nives is singled out because it was introduced late into the calendar—in the first half of the fourteenth century—and is of some help for dating. For editions of Franciscan calendars of the thirteenth century see van Dijk and Walker, Origins, 424–447; and van Dijk, Sources, ii, 365–384. For the Franciscan calendar at the end of the Middle Ages see H. Grotefend, Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, vol. 2: Ordenskalender (Hanover, 1892–1898; repr. Aalen, 1997), 37–41. Evidence from the calendar for possible ownership by particular Franciscan houses is discussed in the brief descriptions of the manuscripts in the Appendix. See citations in note 11 for Franciscan calendars with these Roman saints. Berard, Peter, Accursius, Otho and Adjustus, martyred in Morocco in 1220 when preaching for the conversion of the Moors.

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13 June 20 June

Anthony of Padua: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 Octave of Anthony of Padua: 3, 8, 9, 11, 13 (added), 15 (added) 2(3) July Visitation:15 4 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) 14 July16 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (canonized 1482): 15 (added) 16 July Commem. Francis (his nativity): 10, 15, 21 July Off. defunct. ofm: 13 (added) 2 August Dedication of the Portiuncula (S. Maria de Angelis): 14, 15 (added) 5 August Maria ad Nives: 4 (added), 8 12 August Clare (canonized 1255): 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (added), 10, 11, 13 (added), 14, 17 19 August Louis of Toulouse (canonized 1317): 4 (added), 8, 9 (added), 13 (added), 14, 15 (added) 19 August Octave of Clare: 4 (added) 25 August Louis the King (canonized 1297): 4 (added), 8, 9 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added), 14, 15 (added), 17 26 August Octave of Louis of Toulouse: 13 (added) 18(16, 17) September Reception of the Stigmata: 4 (added), 9 (added), 14, 15 (added) 28(27) September Eleazarius (canonized 1369): 9 (added), 15 (added) 28 September Commem. fratr. et benefact. defunct. ofm: 13 (added) 2 October Translation of Clare: 4 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) 4 October Francis: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 11 October Octave of Francis: 4 (added), 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 27 October Ivo of Brittany (canonized 1347):17 13 (added) 8 November Translation of Louis of Toulouse: 4 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) 9 November Dedication of the Basilica Salvatoris: 4 (added), 10, 13, 14, 15 (added) 18 November Dedication of the Basilica of Peter and Paul: 4 (added), 5, 10, 13, 14, 15 (added) 15 16 17

I have not been able to determine the date when the Visitation entered the Franciscan calendar. In the one calendar in which he occurs, it is noted that the feast is celebrated the Sunday after the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury on 7 July. Ivo of Brittany was controversially considered by some to have become a Franciscan tertiary, although this is disputed, but explains why he was introduced into the Franciscan calendar.

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19(18) November 28 November

11

29 April 24 May 5 (or 4) August 12 August 20 August 11 September

Translation of Thomas Aquinas: 12 (added) Thomas Aquinas (canonized 1323): 4 (added), 9 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added), 14, 15 (added) Peter Martyr (canonized 1253): 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (added), 11, 12, 13 (added), 14, 15, 17, 18 (added) Translation of Dominic: 12 (added) Dominic: 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18 (added) Octave of Dominic: 12 (added) Bernard: 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 (added), 11, 12, 13 (added), 15, 17 Nicholas of Tolentino (canonized 1446): 15 (added)

British Saints in the Calendars

5 January 19(18) January 1 February 4 February

18

Elizabeth of Hungary (canonized 1235): 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 (added), 13, 14, 15 Off. defunct. ofm: 15 (added)

Cistercian, Dominican and Austin Friar Saints in the Calendars

28 February 7 March

12

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Octave of Thomas of Canterbury: 10 (added) Wulfstan: 4 (added), 9 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added) Brigid of Kildare: 10 (added), 12 Gilbert of Sempringham:18 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18

Gilbert of Sempringham was incorporated into the calendar of Rome and of the Franciscans by c. 1250 and should not to be regarded as an ‘addition’ in calendars of the English Franciscans. He is included in the calendar painted on the walls of a sacristy beside the S. Silvestro chapel in the church of the Quattro Coronati in Rome: T. Klauser, ‘Ein Kirchenkalender aus der römischen Titelkirche der heiligen Vier Gekrönten’, in T. Klauser, Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte, Kirchengeschichte und Christlichen Archäologie, ed. E. Dassmann, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Ergänzungsband, 3 (1974), 54; and A. Sohn, ‘Bilder als Zeichen der Herrschaft. Die Silvesterkapelle in ss. Quattro Coronati (Rom)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificae 35 (1997), 15–20. These paintings have been dated to 1246/7 by Sohn, ‘Bilder als Zeichen der Herrschaft’, 21–22, 29. Other British saints in this wall painting calendar are Hugh of Lincoln, inexplicably on February 7, William of York (June 8), Laurence of Dublin (November 14) and Thomas of Canterbury (December 29); it is interesting that these saints in this Roman calendar are also found in the English Franciscan calendars.

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12 February 13 February 28 February 1 March 2 March 8 March 11 March 17 March 18 March 20 March 3 (or 4) April 19 April 29 April 30 April 7 (or 6) May 19 May 26 May 6 June 8 June 17 June 22 June 23 June 23 June 25 June 2 July 7 July 15(16) July 17 July 5 August

19

Translation of Frideswide: 12 (added) Ermenilda: 4 (added) Oswald Bishop: 4 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) David: 4 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added), 18 Chad: 4 (added), 9 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added), 18 Felix of Dunwich: 4 (added) Invention of Oswin: 15 Patrick: 4 (added), 11, 13 (added), 15 (rewritten) Edward Martyr: 4 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (rewritten) Cuthbert: 4 (added), 8, 15 (rewritten), 17, 18 Richard of Chichester: 3, 4 (added), 8, 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (rewritten), 17 Alphege: 12 Translation of Edmund Martyr: 4 (added) Erkenwald: 17 John of Beverley: 4 (added), 9 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added), 17, 18 Dunstan: 4 (added), 10 (added), 12 (added), 15 (rewritten), 18 Augustine of Canterbury: 4 (added), 12 (added), 15 (added) Godwal: 13 (added) William of York: 4 (added), 9 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) Botulph: 12 (added), 13 (added), 18 (added) Alban: 4 (added), 8, 12, 13 (added), 18 Etheldreda: 4 (added), 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) Translation of Winifred: 13 (added) Kyneburga of Gloucester: 4 (added) Swithun: 12 (added), 13 (added), Translation of Thomas of Canterbury:19 3, 4 (added), 5 (added), 8, 11, 13 (added), 15 (rewritten), 17, 18 Translation of Swithun: 5 (added), 15 (rewritten) Kenelm: 4 (added), 5 (added) Oswald Martyr: 15 (added), 18

This feast was introduced into the universal Franciscan calendar in the second half of the thirteenth century and is not significant as an English addition.

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18 August 20 August 4 September 2 October 12 October 13 October 19 October 3 November 14 November 16 November 17 November 17 November 20 November 29 December

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223

Helen: 4 (added), 15 (added), 18 Oswin: 15 (added) Translation of Cuthbert: 15 (added) Thomas of Hereford: 4 (added), 15 (added) Wilfrid: 3, 13 (added), 15 (added) Translation of Edward Confessor: 4 (added), 8, 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added), 17 Frideswide: 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added) Winifred: 4 (added), 12 (added), 15 (added) Laurence of Dublin: 11, 13 (added) Edmund of Abingdon (canonized 1247): 3, 4 (added), 8, 10(?), 11, 12 (added), 13, 15 (added), 18 (added) Hilda: 15 (added) Hugh of Lincoln: 3, 4 (added), 8, 10(?), 15 (added), 18 (added) Edmund Martyr: 4 (added), 8, 10(?), 12 (added), 13 (added), 15 (added), 18 Thomas of Canterbury:20 All

Conclusion

As always with studies of English liturgical manuscripts, a caution must be added to any conclusions by commenting on the paucity of survival. There were approximately sixty houses of Franciscan friars and five of nuns in medieval England, each of which would have had several copies of the various liturgical books. Yet only eighteen such books survive from the period c. 1250–1350, barely more than the number which might be expected to be owned by the larger friaries alone. In the light of this observation, whether the manuscripts which have come down to us are typical or exceptional it is impossible to say.

Appendix: Brief Descriptions of the Manuscripts Further details of features such as codicology and post-medieval ownership can be found in some items of the bibliographies.

20

In the Franciscan calendar from its origins and not significant as an English addition.

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1 Brussels, Bibliothèque des Bollandistes 692 c. 1275–1300 Missal A Franciscan missal from the last quarter of the thirteenth century destined for a friary in the south of Scotland.21 The Mass of St Kentigern was entered by the main hand as an appendix to the sanctoral before the common of saints. Additions by later hands include a service for St Ninian. In view of the Kentigern text, this missal was probably prepared for one of the friaries in the diocese of Glasgow at Berwick, Dumfries or Roxburgh. As, at this time, the Scottish houses were part of the northernmost English Franciscan province—the Scottish province was established in 1329—it merits inclusion in this chapter.22 Also, the framed miniature of the Crucifixion preceding the Canon Prayer seems likely to have been by an English artist, suggesting the missal might have been made in England. Bibliography: A.P. Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern (Edinburgh, 1874), xxiv–xxv, xciii–xciv; S.M. Holmes, ‘Catalogue of liturgical books and fragments in Scotland before 1560’, Innes Review 62 (2011), 145. 2 cul, Dd.5.5 c. 1330/40 Breviary Fols 438 (lacking fols 1–12, 36, 90, resulting in 424 leaves remaining) 197mm × 135mm. Text area 130mm × 85mm in two columns of 30 lines. Fols 13r–84r psalter beginning imperfectly at Psalm 25:6—manus meas; fols 84r–87r Canticles; fols 87r–89v Litany and Collects; fols 91r–195r Temporal from Pentecost to last Sunday after Pentecost; fols 195r–198v Rubrice generales (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 114–121); fols 199r–401v Sanctoral from Anthony of Padua (13 June) to Katherine (25 November); fols. 403r–438r Common of the Saints. This luxury book contains the offices for the summer and autumn seasons and was probably the second volume of a two-volume set. It lacks the calendar and Psalms 1–25 at the beginning and the final page of the sanctoral, and the common of the saints at the end. Although made in Paris, probably by the illuminator Mahiet, a follower of Jean Pucelle, it was destined for Marie de St Pol, countess of Pembroke, whose heraldry it contains, perhaps intended for her foundation of the Franciscan nunnery of Denny, near Cambridge. The nuns of Denny came from an earlier foundation at nearby

21

22

I have not yet been able to examine this missal and cannot provide details of its textual contents. I would like to thank Dr Warwick Edwards for sending me information on this manuscript. Moorman, A History, 175.

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Waterbeach, and both foundations followed the special use of the French royal nunnery of Longchamp in Paris.23 Sanctoral: only of the summer and autumn seasons June–November: Anthony of Padua (13 June); Octave of Anthony of Padua (20 June); Dominic (5 August); Maria ad Nives (5 August); Clare (11 August); Louis the King (25 August); Francis (4 August); Dedic. Eccl. (10, 11 or 12 October);24 Octave of Francis (11 October); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November). Bibliography: H. Jenkinson, ‘Mary de S. Paulo, foundress of Pembroke College, Cambridge’, Archaeologia 66 (1915), 420, 425–426, 433; Frere, Bibliotheca, ii, no. 772; A.G. Little, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts’, 63–64, pls. 9, 13; L.L. Gee, Women, Art and Patronage from Henry iii to Edward iii 1216–1377 (Woodbridge, 2002), 18, 65, 124; Binski and Panayotova, 122 fig. 23, 132–134, no. 49; N. Morgan, ‘A French Franciscan breviary in Lisbon and the breviaries by Jean Pucelle and his followers’, in Quand la peinture était dans les livres. Mélanges en l’ honneur de François Avril, ed. M. Hofmann and C. Zöhl (Turnhout, 2007), 211, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 219 (sigl. Cam); R. Rouse, ‘Mahiet, the illuminator of Cambridge University Library ms Dd.5.5’, in The Cambridge Illuminations: The Conference Papers, ed. S. Panayotova (London and Turnhout, 2007), 173–186; Richard and Mary Rouse, ‘Marie de St-Pol and cul, Ms Dd.5.5’, in The Cambridge Illuminations, 187–191; B. Stocks and N. Morgan, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, exhibition catalogue, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008, no. 17; Binski and Zutshi, no. 326. 3 cul Hh.1.3 c. 1262/75 Bible/Missal Fol. 405 (with 41 leaves missing so only 364 leaves remain) 200 mm × 150 mm. Text area of missal section 160–180mm × 116–128 mm in two (fols 352v–354v, 392r–404v) or three (fols 373v–391v) columns of 47–67 lines. Fols 6r–352v Old and New Testaments beginning imperfectly in Prologue of Jerome; fols 352v–354v Ordo Missae; fols 355r–373r Index of Hebrew Names; fols 373v–387r Temporal; fols 387v–388v Calendar; fols 389r–397r Sanctoral; fols 397r–403r Common of the Saints; fol. 403r–v Masses for the Dead (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 330); fol. 403v Alia missa ad poscenda suffragia sanctorum (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 321); fol. 404r Votive Mass of the Holy Cross (van Dijk, Sources, ii,

23 24

Bourdillon, Minoresses, 17–22. Presumably this is the dedication of Longchamp rather than Denny.

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319); fol. 404r–v Masses of the b.v.m.; fol. 404v Gospel Loquente Iesu (Lk 11:27– 28) of Votive Mass of the b.v.m. (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 320). The Index of Hebrew Names is interspersed between the end of the Ordo missae section of the missal text, making a total of thirty-three pages in all, and the somewhat abbreviated remaining missal text.25 A full missal text, even if written in very small script, would be expected to take up well over a hundred leaves. Several English and French thirteenth-century Bibles contain abbreviated Franciscan and Dominican missals.26 These missal texts in Bibles seem to be in too small script to have been used for the celebration of Mass, but may have been used for the reading of the missal texts as part of daily prayer. The significant British saints in the original hand of the calendar are Richard of Chichester, canonized in 1262, and Wilfrid, which perhaps suggest a friary in the diocese of Chichester as a possible intended recipient.27 The others, Thomas of Canterbury, Edmund of Abingdon and Hugh of Lincoln, are so widespread across England that they are not significant for localization. Calendar: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Richard of Chichester (2 for 3 April); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Bernard (20 August); Francis (4 October); Wilfrid (12 October); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh of Lincoln (17 November). Sanctoral: Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Dominic (5 August); Francis (4 October); Elizabeth (19 November); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December). Bibliography: Frere, Bibliotheca, ii, no. 825; van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’, 201 n. 89, 202 n. 126; van Dijk, Sources, i, 131 n. 4; Pfaff, Liturgy, 325; Binski and Zutshi, 115–116, no. 123; Light, Pandect and the Liturgy, 193 n. 25, 204, 211; E. Poleg, Approaching 25 26 27

It would need a longer chapter to detail the ways in which this Franciscan missal text is abbreviated and regrettably this is beyond the scope of this present study. Light, Pandect and the Liturgy, provides a good discussion of these missals in Bibles. Nigel Morgan, ‘The introduction of the Sarum calendar into the dioceses of England in the thirteenth century’, in Thirteenth Century England, viii, Proceedings of the Durham Conference 1999, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 2001), 190, 201, 204, on saints characteristic of thirteenth-century diocese-of-Chichester calendars.

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the Bible in Medieval England (Manchester, 2013), 143 n. 13, 214; A. Welch, Liturgy, Books and Franciscan Identity in Medieval Umbria (Leiden, 2016), 61. 4 cul Add. 7622 c. 1280/1300 Breviary Fols 572 120mm × 82mm. Text area 85mm × 58mm in two columns of 31 lines. Fols 4r–204r Temporal; fols 204r–205v Rubrice generales; fols 206r–208r Office of the Trinity; fols 208r–209v Tabule of antiphons before Christmas (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 401–408); fols 210r–215v (added section) Office of the Trinity (by John Peckham);28 fols 216v–217r (added section, fifteenth century) Absolutio extracta de registro domini pape Nicholai quinti pro indulgencia quibus dedit fratribus min … anno domini 1430; fols 217v Hymn Sacris solemniis for Matins of Corpus Christi (added); fols 218r–225r Office of Corpus Christi (added section); fols 225r–229r Office of Nativity of b.v.m. (added section); fols 229v–231v blank leaves; fols 232r–243r abbreviated Ordinal (different scribe than for fols 4r–209v); fols 243v Easter Table 1280–1340 (different scribe than fols 4r–209v, 244r–249v); fols 244r–249v Calendar; fols 250r–299r Psalter; fols 299r–v Canticles; fols 299v–301v Litany and Collects; fols 301v–311r Hymnal; fols 312r–350r (added section probably of the fifteenth century) Matins lessons for major feast days including Reception of Stigmata, Visitation, Clare, Louis of Toulouse, Helen, Elizabeth of Hungary, Edmund the Martyr; fols 351r–530v Sanctoral; fols 530v– 553v Common of Saints; fols 553v–556r Dedication of a church; fols 556r–559r Office of the b.v.m.; fols 559r–562r Office of the Dead; fol. 562v Ordo ad communicandum infirmum (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 387–388); fols 563r–564r Ordo ad inguendum infirmum (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 388–390); fols 564r–568v Ordo commendationis anime; fols 569r–570v (added section from another breviary including computistica datable to 1312–1366) This is the most complete breviary of the English Franciscans to survive. It has several added sections of text of various dates but the original text comprises the temporal, calendar, psalter, sanctoral and votive offices.29 The problem of dividing and dating the scribal hands in the additions to the calendar, and

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There were two offices of the Trinity current in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Franciscan liturgical manuscripts, one of them by John Pecham. On the issue of the introduction of the feast of the Holy Trinity see W. Lampen, ‘Jean Pecham o.f.m. et son office de la Trinité’, La France franciscaine 11 (1928), 211–229; A. Klaus, Ursprung und Verbreitung der Dreifaltigkeitsmesse (Werl, 1938); and P. Browe, ‘Zur Geschichte des Dreifaltigkeitsfestes’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 1 (1950), 65–81. This important manuscript is worthy of much more detailed study than I have been able to devote to it.

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that of dating the several added sections of the breviary text, make analysis of the various ownership of this book very difficult. It apparently passed into ownership of at least two friaries, one in the diocese of Norwich, confirmed by the dedication of Babwell, and other of the diocese of Worcester, suggested by the additions of Kenelm of Winchcombe and the exceedingly rare Kyneburga of Gloucester. The added Dedic. ecclesie de Por(tiuncule) must have post-dated the re-dedication of the church of the Portiuncula, which probably occurred in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Bernard (20 August); Francis (4 October); Elizabeth (19 November). Calendar additions by at least four scribes: Wulfstan (19 January); John Chrysostom (27 January); Valerius (29 January); Ermenilda (13 February); Transl. Anthony of Padua (15 February); Oswald Bishop (28 February); David (1 March); Chad (2 March); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Felix of Dunwich (8 March); Patrick (17 March); Edward the Martyr (18 March); Joseph (19 March); Cuthbert (20 March); Richard of Chichester (3 April); Transl. Edmund the Martyr (29 April); Quirinus (30 April); Iuvenalis (3 May); John of Beverley (7 May); Servatius (13 May); Dunstan (19 May); Augustine (26 May); William of York (8 June); Alban (22 June); Etheldreda (23 June); Kyneburga of Gloucester (25 June); Visitation (2 July); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Anacletus (13 July); Kenelm (17 July); Margaret (20 July); Anne (26 July); Martha (30 July); Dedic. ecclesie de Por(tiuncule) (2 August); Maria ad Nives (5 August); Oct. Laurence (17 August); Helena (18 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Oct. Clare (19 August); Louis the King (25 August); Reception of Stigmata (18 September); Thomas of Hereford (2 October); Transl. Clare (2 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Transl. Edward the Confessor (13 October); Dedic. ecclesie Babwell (15 October); 11,000 Virgins (21 October); Winifred (3 November); Transl. Louis of Toulouse (8 November); Dedic. Basilica Salvatoris (9 November); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh of Lincoln (17 November); Dedic. Basilica of Peter and Paul (18 November); Edmund the Martyr (20 November); Catherine (25 November); Conception b.v.m. (8 December) Sanctoral: Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Dominic (5 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Elizabeth (19 November); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December).

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Bibliography: Christies Sale Catalogue, 13 December 1962, lot 193; Pfaff, Liturgy, 323. 5 Liverpool, Cathedral Library 27 c. 1290–1300 Psalter/Votive Masses Fols 191 244mm × 162mm. Text area 152mm × 98 mm in single column of 21 lines. Fols 3r–132v Psalter; fols 132v–136v Canticles; fols 132v–136v Litany and Collects; fols 141r–159v Hymnal; fols 159v–164v Masses of the b.v.m.; fols 164v–170v Masses of the Holy Spirit, Holy Trinity, St Michael and for the Dead; fols 171r– 177r (added) Ordo missae; fols 177r–182v (added) Votive Masses of Sarum use; fols 182v–187v (added) Masses for the Dead; fols 188r–193v Calendar. The section fols 171r–187v is added by a different scribe. The original illuminated psalter, on the evidence of its litany, hymnal and calendar, was intended for Franciscan use. The missal texts, which are by a different scribe to that of the psalter, are for Sarum use. On the evidence of the added obits the book came into the possession of a person associated with Seavington parish church in Somerset, although this is nowhere near the only Franciscan house in that region, at Bridgwater. The original Franciscan text includes a Mass for St Michael, and it happens that Seavington is dedicated to Michael. This might mean that a patron connected with the parish of Seavington had ordered a Franciscan psalter, perhaps because their confessor was a Franciscan. This might be Richard de Spina, who was instituted as parish priest there in 1297 and whose obit has been added to the calendar. At a later date some of the Franciscan entries in the calendar were erased. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Peter Martyr— but later erased (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Dominic—but later erased (5 August); Clare (12 August); Bernard (20 August); Francis—but later erased (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Dedic Basil. Peter and Paul (18 November); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November). Calendar additions by several scribes: Obit of Isabel de Laston (6 April); obit of Alice, wife of John de Spina 1300 (27 April); Transl Martin (4 July); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Transl. Benedict (11 July); Transl. Swithun (15 July); Kenelm (17 July); Margaret (20 July); obit of Magistri Ricardi de Spina persona ecclesie de sevenhamton anno domini mcccxi (11 August); obit of John atte Stone 1319 (11 November); obit of Petronilla atte Stone 1348 (3 December).

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Hymnal: Ker notes that the hymns are as in Haymo’s breviary. This contains hymns for: Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Francis (4 October). Bibliography: Ker, mlgb, iii, Lampeter–Oxford (Oxford, 1983), 185–187; N.R. Ker and A.G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987), 74; Pfaff, Liturgy, 326. 6

London, British Library Harley 2813 c. 1230–1250 Bible with Missal Texts Fols 508 183mm × 133mm. Text area 114mm × 74mm in two columns of 51 lines. Fol. 2r Added list of the books of the Bible; fols 4r–226r Prologue, Genesis to Psalms; fol. 226v List of books of the Bible with some omissions; fols 227r– 228v Votive Masses; fols 228v–229r Prefaces; fols 229r–230v Canon of the Mass; fols 230v–232r Votive Masses including one for St Francis; fols 232r–233r Masses for the Dead; fols 233r–235v Masses for the Common of Saints; fol. 235v Mass for St Katherine; fols 236r–v Sequences for the Holy Spirit and b.v.m.; fol. 236v Apostles’ Creed; fol. 236v Mass for St Mary Magdalene; fols 237r–388r Proverbs– Maccabees; fols 388r–485r New Testament; fols 485r–504r Interpretation of Hebrew names. This is another example of a Bible with some texts of the missal included, unusually, in this case, placed at the end of the book of Psalms. The illumination is by an artist close to William de Brailes, who was based in Oxford, and Peter Kidd has proposed that it was made there for a Franciscan owner. The only clear argument for the missal section being Franciscan is the inclusion of a votive Mass for St Francis, and that does not necessarily mean that its intended owner was a Franciscan. Bibliography: P. Kidd, ‘A Franciscan Bible illuminated in the style of William de Brailes’, British Library Journal (electronic) 8 (2007), 1–20; Light, Pandect and the Liturgy, 192 n. 20, 211; N.J. Morgan, Leaves from a Psalter by William de Brailes: Commentary (London, 2012), 52, 92; E. Poleg, Approaching the Bible in Medieval England (Manchester, 2013), 219; A. Welch, Liturgy, Books and Franciscan Identity in Medieval Umbria (Leiden, 2016), 61. 7 London, bl Harley 5037 c. 1250/1300 Breviary Fols 274 174mm × 118mm. Text area 148mm × 94 mm in two columns of 32 lines.

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Fols 1r–20v Psalter beginning imperfectly at Psalm 100:6 and lacking its final page; fols 21r–23r Canticles; fols 23r–25r Litany and collects; fols 25r–28v Office of the Dead; fols 28v–30v Ordo missae (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 3–14); fols 31v–174r Temporal; fols 174r–175v Rubrice generales (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 114–121); fols 176r– 274v Sanctoral ending imperfectly with Protus and Iacinctus (24 September). Unfortunately this breviary lacks the whole of the first part of the book which would have contained the calendar and the psalter up to Psalm 100:6 (the first leaf begins ut sedeant mecum), and the latter part of the book containing the sanctoral after Protus and Iacinctus (24 September) and the votive offices. Of the latter, however, the Office of the Dead occurs earlier in the book, after the litany. In effect, only about two thirds of the complete breviary has survived. As the calendar, which might have contained local British saints, is lacking, nothing can be said about its possible ownership. Sanctoral: only 30 November–24 September; Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Margaret—added (20 July); Anne—added (26 July); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December). Bibliography: S.J.P. van Dijk, ‘Some manuscripts of the earliest Franciscan liturgy’, fs 14 (1954), 227; van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’, 200 n. 52; S.J.P. van Dijk, ‘The authentic Missal of the Papal Chapel’, Scriptorium 14 (1960), 286 n. 4; van Dijk and Walker, Origins, 400 n. 5; Pfaff, Liturgy, 323–324. 8 London, Dr Williams Library Anc. 6 c. 1330 Psalter Fols 192 102mm × 70mm. Text area 68mm × 45 mm as single column of 18 lines. Fols 7v–19r Calendar; fols 20r–178v Psalter; fols 178v–194v Canticles; fols 195r– 196v Collects of the litany only (the major part of the litany has been removed from the manuscript). The owner of this finely illuminated book may have been of the high aristocracy, or even of royal connection, because in the original hands of the calendar are the obits of Jeanne, queen of France, and Philip, king of France; that is, either Philip iv (d. 1314) or Philip v (d. 1322), the former married to Jeanne de Navarre and the latter to Jeanne de Bourgogne. It is tempting to suggest that Edward ii’s wife, Isabella, might have been the owner as she was the daughter of Philip iv and Jeanne of Navarre, but the heraldry on the Psalm 1 page unfortunately makes this unlikely because it contains the arms of England, France and Hainault. This suggests the owner is more likely to be Philippa of Hainault,

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who married Edward iii in 1328; hence the dating of the book would be subsequent to 1328. Both Isabella and Philippa were patrons of the Franciscans.30 The artist is a member of the Queen Mary Psalter workshop, some of whose manuscripts were made in London. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Cuthbert (20 March); Richard of Chichester (3 April); obit of Jeanne, queen of France (4 April); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (30 June); Alban (22 June); Transl. Thomas (7 July); Martha (29 July); Maria ad Nives (5 August); Clare (12 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Bernard (20 August); Louis the King (25 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Edward the Confessor (13 October); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh of Lincoln (17 November); Elizabeth (19 November); Edmund the Martyr (20 November); obit of Philip king of France (29 November). Bibliography: N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, i, London (Oxford, 1969), 428–429; L. Dennison, ‘An illuminator of the Queen Mary Psalter: the Ancient 6 Master’, Antiquaries Journal 66 (1986), 287–314; L.F. Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1280–1380, Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5, 2 vols (London, 1986), vol. 2, 81–82, no. 74; L.L. Gee, Women, Art and Patronage from Henry iii to Edward iii 1216–1377 (Woodbridge, 2002), 10. 9 London, University College lat. 6 c. 1280/1300 Breviary/Missal Part 1 Breviary: fols 18 136mm × 80mm. Text area 88 mm × 58 mm as two columns of 49 lines. Fols 1r–6r Common of the Saints beginning imperfectly; fols 7r–8v Calendar; fols 9r–v Hymns for the week; fols 10r–17r Sanctoral from 9 October–25 November. The two parts of this book, from fragments of a breviary and a missal by different scribes, were bound together at a later date, perhaps in modern times. Additions to the calendar of John of Beverley and William of York suggest that the breviary belonged at some time to a Franciscan house in the province of York. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June);

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L.L. Gee, Women, Art and Patronage from Henry iii to Edward iii 1216–1377 (Woodbridge, 2002), 10.

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Dominic (5 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Elizabeth (18 November). Calendar additions: Wulfstan (19 January); Transl. Anthony of Padua (15 February); Chad (2 March); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Peter Martyr (29 April); John of Beverley (6 May); William of York (8 June); Clare (12 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Bernard (20 August); Bartholomew (24 August); Louis the King (25 August); Stigmata of Francis (18 September); Elzearius (28 September); Conception b.v.m. (8 December). Sanctoral: Transl. Francis—at end after Katherine (25 May); Anthony of Padua—at end following Transl. Francis (13 June); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November). Part 2 Missal: fols 9 136mm × 83mm. Text area 117mm × 71 mm of two columns of 61 lines. Fols 19r–v Canon Prayer of the Mass; fols 20r–24r Sanctoral from 21 March–21 December; fols 24v–25v Common of the Saints; fol. 25v Mass for the dedication of a church; fol. 25v Votive Mass of the Trinity (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 318, no. 2); fols 26r–v Masses of the b.v.m. and other Votive Masses; fol. 27r Masses of the Dead. Sanctoral: (of missal) 21 March–21 December only—Francis (4 October). The missal seems to be French or Italian from the style of the framed miniature of the Crucifixion on fol. 19r; it contains no clear evidence of English provenance or ownership. Bibliography: N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, i, London (Oxford, 1969), 340; Pfaff, Liturgy, 324. 10

Oxford, Bodleian Auct. d.5.11 c. 1275/1300 Bible with a Franciscan Calendar Fols 468 127mm × 90mm. Text area Bible 86mm × 63 mm as two columns of 50 lines. Fols 4r–7v Calendar (leaves out of order); fol. 8r Calendarial notes; fols 9r– 17v Esdras book iv; fols 18r–21v Epistle and Gospel lists secundum consuetudinem ecclesie Romane; fols 22r–468 Old and New Testaments. This, perhaps French, Bible has many red and blue pen-flourishing initials with large extensions into the borders. The Franciscan calendar by a different scribe which it contains includes the English saints, Edmund of Abingdon, Hugh of

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Lincoln and Edmund the Martyr, possibly additions but close to the hand of the original scribe; the Octave of Thomas of Canterbury, Brigid and Dunstan have been added. As all these saints are celebrated all over the country they do not provide any evidence localizing the ownership. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Commem. Francis (16 July); Clare (12 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Dedic. Basilica Salvatoris (9 November); Edmund of Abingdon—possibly added (16 November); Hugh of Lincoln—possibly added (17 November); Dedic. Basilica Peter and Paul (18 November); Elizabeth (18 November); Edmund the Martyr—possibly added (20 November). Calendar additions by three fourteenth-century scribes: Oct. Thomas of Canterbury (5 January); Lucian (8 January); Brigid (1 February); Vedast and Amandus (6 February); Juliana (16 February); Mary of Egypt non Sarum (2 April); Dunstan (19 May); Anne (26 July); Martha (29 July); Machutus (15 November). Bibliography: F. Madan and H.H.E. Craster, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, ii Part 1, nos 1–3490 (Oxford, 1922), 577; van Dijk, Handlist, iii, 126; van Dijk and Walker, Origins, 229 n. 3; B. BarkerBenfield, O. Pächt and J.J.G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford: Concordance of Bodleian Shelf-Marks for Vols. 1–3 and Addenda (Oxford, 1974), 58 (as French); Pfaff, Liturgy, 326. 11

Oxford, Bodleian Digby 2 c. 1281–1300 Miscellany with Franciscan Calendar Fols 152 105mm × 73mm. Text area 75mm × 50mm single column of 22–25 lines. Fols 1r–4r Forecasts of eclipses 1281–1300; fols 4v–5r Noted hymn to the b.v.m. and song on the bad behaviour of the clergy; fols 5r–v Hymn to St Mary Magdalene; fols 6r–v Middle English poem on the Passion and prayer and hymn to the b.v.m.; fols 7r–13v Calendar; fol. 14r Easter table beginning 1282; fol. 15r Middle English poem on forsaking the world to become a Franciscan; f. 15v Anglo-Norman hymn to the b.v.m.; fols 16–25v Tractatus de kalendariis componendis; fols 26r–45v Treatises on Logic; fols 46r–67v William of Montreuil, Fallacie; William of Montreuil, commentary on Porphyry, Isagoge; fol. 79v Formula for making a will; fols 80–84v Summa super Predicamenta; fols 85r–94v Summa super Interpretatione; fols 95r–v Metrical computus; fols 96–110v Tractatus de divisione temporis; fol. 111r–v; Charms against flux in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman; fols 112r–121v De compositione quadrantis; fol. 122r Porphyry’s

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tree; fols 123r–140v Richard Rufus (?), Sophismata; fols 141r–147v Roger Bourth, commentary on Aristotle, Physiognomia; fol. 148r On the logic of plural prepositions; fol. 149r–v Formula epistolarum; fols 150r–152v Commentary on Priscian. This miscellany of scholarly works, mainly on philosophy and logic, but with some liturgical material, was probably made in Oxford for a Franciscan involved with the university. In view of the calendar containing St Laurence of Dublin, who has no cult in England, this friar may have been an Irishman who requested the insertion of both Laurence and Patrick into the Franciscan calendar. There are no additions or corrections to this calendar, which is a good text, despite lacking gradings of the feast days, which van Dijk, Sources, collated with other manuscripts containing the 1260 calendar of the papal court. Calendar: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Patrick (17 March); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (30 June); Transl. Thomas (7 July); Margaret (20 July); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Bernard (20 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Laurence of Dublin (14 November); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Elizabeth (19 November). Bibliography: W.D. Macray, Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae pars nona, Codices a viro clarissimo Kenelm Digby (Oxford, 1883), 2–3; van Dijk, Handlist, iii, 125; van Dijk and Walker, Origins, 230 n. 5, 231 n. 2; van Dijk, Sources, i, 222–223, and ii, 364–384 (ms b); A.G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols (Oxford, 1984), 66, no. 416; R.J. Dean and M.B.M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications, 3 (London, 1999), 430, no. 805; J. Boffey and A.S.G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005), nos 1066, 1365, 2293; Pfaff, Liturgy, 325– 326; R.M. Thomson, Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts of Latin Commentaries on Aristotle in British Libraries, i, Oxford (Turnhout, 2011), 117–119. 12

Oxford, Bodleian lat.bibl.d.9 c. 1250–1275 Bible and c. 1300/25 Calendar and Litany Fols 328 227mm × 158mm. Text area of litany 179mm × 123mm in two columns of 33 lines. Fols 1r–315r Old and New Testaments beginning imperfectly in Genesis 5; fols 316r–318v Calendar; fols 319r–320v Litany; fols 321r–328v Interpretation of Hebrew names.

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This thirteenth-century English Bible had a calendar and litany added in the early fourteenth century. The calendar is Franciscan but was later very carefully adapted to Dominican use for their Oxford priory, resulting in the erasure and rewriting of many of its Franciscan entries. Paradoxically, the litany, which is part of the same added section, is of the Benedictines of Gloucester, and no explanation can be put forward for this. If it ever was at Gloucester it possibly could have come to Oxford with one of the monks studying at the Benedictine Durham College and eventually passed to its final owners, the Dominicans of Oxford. The additions and corrections to the calendar seem all to be by the scribe who adapts to Dominican use save for the single entry of Chad. The original Franciscan calendar contains the British saints Alphege and Alban, both widely celebrated across the country and thus not helpful with any localization. Calendar original entries: Alphege (19 April); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Alban (22 June); Bernard (20 August); Francis (4 October). Calendar additions, many over erasures: Hilary (13 January); Remigius (13 January); Wulfstan (19 January); Julian (27 January); Transl. Thomas Aquinas (28 January); Agnes (29 January); Brigid (1 February); Anniv. patr. et matr.—over erasure of Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Vedast et Amandus (6 February); Transl. Frideswide (12 February); David (1 March); Albinus (1 March); Chad (2 March); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Edward Martyr (18 March); Richard of Chichester (4 April); Ambrose (4 April); Adalbert (24 April); Alexander, Eventius and Theodulus (3 May); Crown of Thorns (4 May); Servatius (13 May); Dunstan (19 May); Transl. Dominic (24 May); Augustine of Canterbury (26 May); Medard (8 June); Dedic. Eccle. op Oxford (15 June); Ciricus and Julitta (16 June); Martial (16 June); Botulph (17 June); Etheldreda (23 June); Processus and Martinianus (2 July); Swithun (2 July); Procopius (8 July); Anniv. in conv. (9 July); Martha (27 July); Pantaleon, Nazarius and Celsus (28 July); Felix, Simplicius, Faustina and Beatrice (29 July); Germanus (31 July); Maccabees (1 August); Dominic—rewritten over erasure (5 August); Oct. Dominic (12 August); Oct. Assumption, Timothy and Symphorian (22 August); Bartholomew—rewritten over erasure (24 August); Louis the King (25 August); Rufus (27 August); Egidius (1 September); Oct. Augustine (4 September); Marcellus (4 September); Anniv. famil. et benef. (5 September); Cornelian and Cyprian (14 September); Oct. Nativity b.v.m. and Nicomede (15 September); Lambert (17 September); Wenceslas (28 September); Michael—rewritten over erasure (29 September); Leodegarius (2 October); Marcellus and Apuleius (7 October); Anniv. fratrum

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(10 October); Transl. Edward the Confessor (13 October); Frideswide (19 October); 11,000 Virgins (21 October); Crispin and Crispinian (25 October); Quentin (31 October); All Souls (2 November); Winifred (3 November); Theodore (9 November); Martin and Menna (11 November); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh (17 November); Oct. Martin (18 November); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November); Edmund Martyr (20 November); Catherine (25 November); Agricola and Vitalis (27 November); Oct. Andrew (7 December); Conception b.v.m. (8 December). Erasures of feast days of original ofm calendar: for example, Hyginus (11 January); 40 Martyrs (9 March); Sother and Gaius (24 April); Pius (11 July); Quiricus and Iulitta (15 July); Symphorosa (18 July); Pastoris (26 July); Justinus (4 August); Eustace (20 September); Linus (23 September); Cyprian and Justina (26 September); Melchiadis (10 December) and several others. All but Chad (2 March) of the added entries seem to be by the same scribe who adapted the Franciscan calendar very carefully to Dominican use, although possibly some of them were written by a closely related assistant scribe. Bibliography: Ker, mlgb, 142; Pächt and Alexander, vol. 3, no. 1317; N.R. Ker and A.G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. Supplement to the Second Edition (London, 1987), 52; N.J. Morgan, English Monastic Litanies of the Saints after 1100, i, Abbotsbury–Peterborough, Henry Bradshaw Society, 119 (London, 2012), 28–29, 123–127. 13 Oxford, Bodleian lat.liturg.f.26 c. 1260–1275 Portable Missal Fols 157 151mm × 103mm. Text area 125mm × 78mm in two columns of 38 lines. Fols 1–6v Calendar; fols 7r–70v Temporal from Advent to Holy Saturday; fols 70v–71r Rubrice generales (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 249); fols 71r–76v Ordo Missae; fols 77r–103v Temporal from Easter Sunday to twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost; fols 104r–130v Sanctoral; fols 130v–145r Common of the Saints; fols 145r–146r Masses for the dedication of a church; fols 146r–152r Votive Masses; fols 152r–155r Masses for the Dead; fols 155r–156r Masses for the Holy Trinity, Holy Spirit and Holy Cross; fols 156r–157r Masses for the b.v.m.; fols 157r–v Blessing of salt and water. This is the most complete surviving English Franciscan missal of the early period, with a complete text of calendar, temporal, Ordo missae, sanctoral, common of the saints and votive masses. Regrettably, its calendar is full of additions by at least six different scribes, which makes tracing the history of its

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ownership extremely complicated. Even the added dedication of a Franciscan church on 2 August is almost illegible but might be read as Aylesbury, as the word begins with a and that is the only English Franciscan house whose name begins with that letter of the alphabet. Additions to the calendar suggest the book passed between two or three Franciscan houses, one of them in the diocese of Worcester as is likely due to the additions of Wulfstan, Oswald the Bishop, and the very rare saint Godwal, who was venerated at Worcester cathedral priory.31 However, other additions suggest other regions of England and no clear interpretation of the wanderings of the manuscript can be offered. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Francis (4 October); Dedic. Basilica Salvatoris (9 November); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Dedic. Basilica Peter and Paul (18 November); Elizabeth (19 November). Calendar additions by at least eight scribes: Martina (2 January); Hilary (13 January); Wulfstan (18 January); Julian (27 January); Ignatius (1 February); Transl. Anthony of Padua (15 February); Oswald Bishop (28 February); David (1 March); Chad (2 March); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Patrick (17 March); Edward the Martyr (18 March); Richard of Chichester (3 April); Peter Martyr (29 April); Alexander, Eventius and Theodulus (3 May); John of Beverley (6 May); Dunstan (19 May); Urban (25 May); Godwal (6 June); William of York (8 June); Botulph (17 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Alban (22 June); Etheldreda (23 June); Transl. Winifred (23 June for 22 June); Swithun (2 July); Visitation (3 July); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Ruffina (10 July); Nabor and Felix (12 July); Ciricus and Julitta (15 July); Commem. fratrum defunct. (21 July); Christopher (25 July); Pastoris (26 July); Nazarius and Celsus (28 July); Seven brothers (1 August); Dedic eccl de angl. min. a … (2 August); Justinus (4 August); Sixtus (6 August); Ciriacus, Largus and Smaragdus (8 August); Tiburtius and Susanna (11 August); Clare (12 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Bernard (20 August); Timothy and Symphorian (22 August); Helen (23 August); Bartholomew (24 August); Louis the King (25 August); Oct. Louis of Toulouse (26 August); Hermetis (28 August); Sabina (29 August); 12 brothers (1 September); Adrian (8 September); Cornelius and Cyprian (14 September); Nicomede

31

On the evidence of Godwal and Ivo see Van Dijk, Handlist. Van Dijk, not knowing of Godwal’s Worcester association or that Ivo of Brittany was incorporated into the late medieval Franciscan calendar because some considered him to be a Franciscan tertiary, suggested that cults of these saints could be found in Cornwall.

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(15 September); Lucy, Geminian and Eufemia (16 September); Justina (26 September); Commem. fratr. et benefact. defunct. ofm (28 September); Transl. Clare (2 October); Mark (7 October); Cerbonius (10 October); Wilfrid (12 October); Edward the Confessor (13 October); Frideswide (19 October); Ivo (27 October); Transl. Louis of Toulouse (8 November); Theodore (9 November); Tryphon, Respicius and Nympha (10 November); Menna (11 November); illegible addition perhaps Laurence of Dublin (14 November); Pontianus (19 November); Edmund the Martyr (20 November); Felicity (23 November); Catherine (25 November); Peter of Alexandria (26 November); Birinus (3 December); Conception of b.v.m. (8 December); Anastasia (25 December). Sanctoral: Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Dominic (5 August); Francis (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Elizabeth (19 November); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December). Bibliography: van Dijk, Handlist, i, 138; van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’, 199 n. 456, 201 n. 89; van Dijk, Sources, i, 117 n. 5; Pächt and Alexander, vol. 3, no. 461; A.G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435–1600 in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols (Oxford, 1984), 90, no. 551; Pfaff, Liturgy, 324–325. 14

Oxford, Bodleian liturg.407 c. 1200–1210 Psalter and c. 1300–1350 Hymnal Fols 255 140mm × 100mm. Text area 95mm × 61 mm as a single column of 15 lines. Fols 1r–6v Calendar; fol. 7r Added paschal table 1237–1257; fols 8r–v Added hymns Primo dierum omnium and Nocte surgentes; fols 9v–204r Psalter; fols 204r–222v Canticles; fols 223r–250r Added hymnal ending imperfectly. The original early thirteenth-century psalter was probably intended for the Fontevrault nunnery of Amesbury but passed, in the fourteenth century, to a Franciscan house, possibly also a nunnery. When this transfer of the book took place the calendar was adapted to Franciscan use and a Franciscan hymnal added. Calendar Franciscan additions excluding the Roman saints: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Dedic. S. Maria de Angelis (i.e., Portiuncula) (2 August); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Louis the King (25 August); Impress. stigmatae (17 September); Francis (4 October); Dedic. Basilica Salvatoris (9 November); Dedic. Basilica Peter and Paul (18 November); Elizabeth (19 November).

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Hymnal: Hymns for the feasts of Clare, Louis the King, Francis and the Reception of the Stigmata. Bibliography: Frere, Bibliotheca, i, no. 178; F. Madan, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, v, nos 24331–31000 (Oxford, 1905), no. 29070; van Dijk, Handlist, ii, 14b–14c; Ker, mlgb, 3; R.W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), 24 n. 4, 123 n. 1; Pächt and Alexander, vol. 3, no. 360; Morgan, egm, 1190–1250, 75, no. 27 (with full bibliography on the early thirteenth-century part). 15

Oxford, Bodleian Rawl.liturg.e.1 c. 1275/1300 Franciscan Calendar in a c. 1400 Sarum Book of Hours Fols 176 166mm × 108mm (Hours) 148mm × 98 mm (added Franciscan Calendar). Text area (Hours) 102mm × 68mm as single column of 17 lines. Fols 3r–8v Calendar; fols 9r–14v added Franciscan calendar from an earlier manuscript; fols 15r–16v Office of the b.v.m. for the first Sunday in Advent; fols 17r–66v Sarum Hours of the b.v.m.; fols 68–103v Office of the Dead; fols 104r–119r Commendation of the Soul; fols 119r–127v Penitential Psalms; fols 128r–136r Gradual Psalms; fols 136v–151r Ferial litanies; fols 151r–161r Prayers; fols 161v–163v Litany of the Virgin; fols 163v–176v Prayers ending imperfectly. The Franciscan calendar of c. 1275–1300 from a smaller-sized book was, at some date, added to a c. 1400 Sarum Book of Hours. An inscription on f. 9r Memorandum quod istud breviarium pertinet conventui Richmund ex testimonio venerabilis patris fratris Johannis Hardyn qui obiit anno domini 1460 qui hoc affirmavit tempore mortis sue has led to the conclusion that the calendar was once in a breviary of the Franciscans of Richmond (Yorks.) Although this is confirmed by several northern saints being added to the calendar, the destination of the original ownership of the book has largely been ignored. The presence of the Invention of Oswin (11 March), a rare saint whose relics were at Tynemouth, and the dedication of the church of Novum Castrum/Castellum (Newcastleupon-Tyne) on 30 July makes it certain that the breviary was first destined for the Franciscan house of Newcastle.32 Some additions were made while at Newcastle, and the book probably did not reach Richmond until the fifteenth century.

32

Van Dijk, Handlist, misread the place of dedication as No’ ta’ and suggested Northampton or Nottingham.

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Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Inv. Oswin (11 March); Peter Martyr (29 April); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Commem. Francis (16 July); Dedic. eccl. ofm No’ ca’—perhaps added by a contemporary hand (30 July); Dominic (5 August); Bernard (20 August); Francis—rewritten (4 October); Oct. Francis (11 October); Elizabeth (19 November). Calendar additions by at least four scribes: Five Martyrs Ord. ofm (16 January); Transl. Anthony of Padua (15 February); Oswald Bishop (28 February); David (1 March); Chad (2 March); Thomas Aquinas (7 March); Patrick—rewritten (17 March); Edward the Martyr—rewritten (18 March); Joseph (19 March); Cuthbert—rewritten (20 March); Richard of Chichester—rewritten (3 April); John of Beverley (7 May); Dunstan—rewritten (19 March); Bernardine of Siena (20 May); Augustine of Canterbury (26 May); Oct. Bernardine of Siena (27 May); William (8 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Etheldreda—added (23 June); Visitation (2 July); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury—rewritten (7 July); Dominica post sancti Thomas Bonaventure ep. (8 July); Transl. Swithun— rewritten/erased (16 July); Margaret—rewritten (20 July); Anne (26 July); Dedic. S. Marie Portiuncule (2 August); Oswald the Martyr (5 August); Helena (18 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Oswin (20 August); Louis the King (25 August); Transl. Cuthbert (4 September); Nicholas of Tolentino (10 September); Oct Nativity b.v.m. (15 September); Stigmatization of Francis (16 September); Eleazarius (27 September); Thomas of Hereford (2 October); Transl. Clare (2 October); Wilfrid (12 October); Edward the Confessor (13 October); Frideswide (19 October); Winifred (3 November); Transl. Louis of Toulouse (8 November); Dedic. Basilica Salvatoris (9 November); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh (17 November); Hilda (17 November); Dedic. Basilica of Peter and Paul (18 November); Edmund the Martyr (20 November); Offic. defunct. ofm (28 November); Concep b.v.m. (8 December). Bibliography: van Dijk, Handlist, ivb, 140; van Dijk, Sources, i, 134 n 5; Ker, mlgb, 159; R.W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), 123; Pächt and Alexander, vol. 3, no. 726; vol. 3, 69, no. 965. 16 Oxford, Bodleian Tanner 334 c. 1325/50 Portable Missal Fols 198 160mm × 112mm. Text area 118mm × 81mm in two columns of 30 lines. Fols 1–121v Temporal; fols 121v–122r Collects, secrets and postcommunions for Louis of Toulouse and Clare; fols 122r–131v Ordo Missae; fols 131v–132v Mass of Corpus Christi; fols 133r–145r Common of the Saints; fol. 145v Mass for the dedication of a church; fols 146r–151v Votive Masses; fols 151v–153v Masses for the

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Dead; fols 153v–154v Masses for Holy Spirit, Holy Cross, Holy Trinity; fols 154v– 155v Masses of b.v.m.; fols 154v–155v Mass of Holy Trinity; fols 157r–188v Sanctoral; fols 188v–189v Blessing of salt and water; fols 189v–191r Ordo ad communicandum infirmum (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 387–388) and Ordo ad inguendum infirmum (van Dijk, Sources, ii, 388–390); fols 191r–196v Ordo commendationis anime; fols 197v Three proses of the b.v.m. As one of two English Franciscan missals of the fourteenth century, this is an important text with only its calendar lacking. It lacks any evidence of provenance. Van Dijk’s suggestion that it might be from Canterbury in view of the Translation of Thomas of Canterbury being in the sanctoral is not acceptable because this feast is quite often found in English Franciscan books whose ownership was from other parts of the country. It seems of too small size to have been used as an altar missal, but as the script is relatively large this would have been possible. Sanctoral: Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Louis of Toulouse (19 August); Francis (4 October); Oct Francis (11 October); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December). Bibliography: Frere, Bibliotheca, i, no. 273; van Dijk, Handlist, i, 139; van Dijk, ‘Santa Chiara’, 201 n. 89; van Dijk, Sources, i, 117 n. 5, 234; van Dijk, Sources, ii, 386; Pächt and Alexander, vol. 1, 72 (as French). 17 Paris, BnF lat. 1332 c. 1320 Portable Missal Fols 520 121mm × 76mm. Text area 168×114mm in two columns of 24 lines. Fols 1–3v Prayers and ordo for the purification of the b.v.m. for nuns (added fifteenth century); fols 4r–9v Calendar; fols 10r–332v Temporal; fols 333r–427v Sanctoral; fols 428r–472r Common of the Saints; fols 473r–474v Dedication of a church; fols 475r–517v Votive Masses including those for the Dead and the b.v.m.; fols 518r–520r Preparationes misse (added fifteenth century); fol. 520v De quinque sanctis privilegatis—Denis, George, Christopher, Blaise and Giles (added fifteenth century). This is the most complete surviving English Franciscan missal of the fourteenth century, with fine illumination by the Queen Mary Psalter workshop. It seems of too small size to have been used as an altar missal, but as the script is clear and the lines well spaced this would have been possible. It contains many English

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saints in its calendar. One of these is Erkenwald, quite rarely found in English fourteenth-century calendars. As the Queen Mary Psalter artists are considered to have worked some of the time in London the presence of Erkenwald, whose shrine was at St Paul’s Cathedral, may suggest it was made for the London Greyfriars, probably the largest Franciscan friary in England, for whose use such a fine-quality book would have been appropriate. The added section on fols 1– 3v suggests that it later passed to a house of nuns. Calendar: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); Cuthbert (20 March); Richard of Chichester (3 April); Peter Martyr (29 April); Erkenwald (30 April); John of Beverley (7 May); Transl. Francis (25 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Dominic (5 August); Clare (12 August); Bernard (20 August); Louis the King (25 August); Francis (4 October); Transl. Edward Conf. (13 October). Sanctoral: Transl. Francis (24 May); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Oct. Anthony of Padua (20 June); Dominic (5 August); Louis the King (25 August); Francis (4 October); Oct Francis (11 October); Elizabeth of Hungary (19 November); Thomas of Canterbury (29 December). Bibliography: V. Leroquais, Les Sacramentaires et les Missels manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1924), vol. 2, 218–219, no. 392; van Dijk, Sources, i, 117 n. 5; F. Avril and P.D. Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’ origine insulaire viie–xxe siècle, Bibliothèque nationale (Paris, 1987), 142–143, no. 178, pls. lxxi, lxxii; L. Dennison, ‘“Liber Horn”, “Liber Custumarum” and other manuscripts of the Queen Mary Psalter workshops’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in London, ed. L. Grant, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, x, 1984, (Leeds, 1990), 128, pls. xxxixa and b. 18

Vienna, Museum für angewandte Kunst s.5 (cod. lat. xiv) c. 1260 Sarum Book Hours with a Franciscan Calendar Fols 201 158mm × 108mm. Text area 92mm × 58mm as single column of 12 lines. Fols 1v, 2r, 3v Fifteenth-century drawings of Sts George, Etheldreda, Katherine and Anthony Abbot; fols 4r–9v Calendar; fols 10r–11r Blank; fols 11v–24r Fourteen full-page miniatures of the Life of Christ; fols 25r–151v Sarum Hours of the b.v.m.; fol. 152v Fifteenth-century drawing of St Leonard; fols 153r–173r Penitential Psalms; fols 173v–190r Gradual Psalms; fols 190v–201r Litany and collects. This Sarum Book of Hours was provided with a Franciscan calendar by a different scribe than the rest of the book, and a set of full-page miniatures of

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the Life of Christ by a different artist than the rest of the book, probably French. This suggests the original manuscript was adapted for an owner connected with the Franciscans who had fols 4r–24v especially made for the beginning of the book, to precede the Sarum Hours. The calendar contains, in the original hand, the British saints Chad, John of Beverley, William of York and Helen, all suggesting an original destination for a Franciscan house in the province of York. The other British saints included have cults across the whole of England. Calendar original entries: Gilbert of Sempringham (4 February); David (1 March); Albinus (1 March); Chad (2 March); Cuthbert (20 March); Theodora (1 April); Eufemia (13 April); John of Beverley (7 May); Dunstan (19 May); William of York (8 June); Anthony of Padua (13 June); Alban (22 June); Transl. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July); Oswald the Martyr (5 August); Helen (18 August); Francis (4 October); Edmund Martyr (20 November). Calendar additions: Peter Martyr (29 April); Botulph (17 June); Dominic (5 August); Edmund of Abingdon (16 November); Hugh (17 November). Bibliography: Morgan, egm, 1250–1285, 66–67, no. 104; C. Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (London, 1991), 146, 151, 155–156, 184–186.

part 4 The Theological Luminaries of the Franciscan School

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chapter 12

The Scientific Basis of Robert Grosseteste’s Teaching at the Oxford Franciscan School Cecilia Panti

Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170–1253) was the first master of the school of the Friars Minor at Oxford in the years 1230–1235 and later, as bishop of Lincoln (1235–1253), he was a fervent supporter of the Franciscans in the early phases of their expansion in England. His special relationship with the friars was documented in Franciscan chronicles, starting with Thomas of Eccleston and continuing in the letters of his dearest friend, Brother Adam Marsh, and in the writings of Roger Bacon. In modern times, several studies have analysed and celebrated this multifaceted association, which had important effects on pastoral achievements, political action and the spiritual growth of both the English Franciscan community and their sponsor. Yet two different opinions have directed modern historiography with reference to Grosseteste’s teaching to the friars and his intellectual influence on the institution that became the order’s most prestigious school in England. On one hand, the English master has been considered the first promoter of the friars’ long-lasting interests in experimental science, optics and mathematics. On the other, it seems that Grosseteste’s teaching was essentially theological and based on the Bible as a preparation for evangelization and preaching; and this training failed to create a durable educational model.1 What follows challenges these two views by presenting Grosseteste as a scholar, who, far from being interested in promoting mundane sciences, took seriously the task of grounding his pupils in biblical instruction for the benefit of their preaching. Nonetheless, it is true that his writings and sermons from this period made extensive use of scientific references, mainly connected to the behaviour of light and the nature of colour. My intention is to demonstrate that these references were not related to a curriculum in sciences, but 1 Bibliographical details are given at section 1. For a brief sketch on Grosseteste’s legacy to the Franciscans see James McEvoy, ‘Robertus Grossatesta Lincolniensis: an essay in historiography, medieval and modern’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition: Papers delivered at the Grosseteste Colloquium held at Greyfriars, Oxford on 3rd July 2002, ed. Maura O’Carroll (Rome, 2003), 21–99, esp. 25–32.

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were a sort of didactic tool to illustrate how to deal with theological issues in readily understandable language. This device, which obviously reveals only one aspect of Grosseteste’s teaching methodology, was an exemplification of how to preach to laymen and laywomen, that is, the fundamental purpose of the friars’ theological learning. Paragraph 4 explores whether this feature of Grosseteste’s didactic method was communicated to subsequent Franciscan masters and whether it was consistent with Roger Bacon’s assertions about Grosseteste’s theological use of sciences. The substantially negative response is, in my opinion, an indication of the distance between Grosseteste’s initial objective in the guidance of the school and the subsequent developments of Franciscan learning in England.2

1

The Modern Debate on Grosseteste’s Theological Teaching and Scientific Legacy for the English Franciscans

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the major research by Andrew George Little on the English Greyfriars and their early schools opened a notable season of studies on Franciscan learning in the Middle Ages. In charting the rapid development of the Oxford school to a position of importance in the broader scenery of the thirteenth-century intellectual milieu, Little underlined how influential the figure of Robert Grosseteste was in stimulating ‘a special tradition of learning’, which ‘prevailed for several generations’.3 In agreement with Little, Hilarin Felder claimed that a noteworthy aspect of this heritage was the scientific imprint that placed the natural sciences at the service of theology.4 Both scholars, in fact, attached immense importance to Roger Bacon’s often-repeated remarks that Grosseteste and his friend and successor at the Franciscan chair, Friar Adam Marsh, promoted three fields of study: the Bible, the ancient languages and the mathematical sciences.5 Their shared conviction 2 What follows develops and partially synthesizes three recent papers of mine, referred to in subsequent footnotes, on the theological use of science by Grosseteste and early Franciscans at Oxford. I wish to thank Michael Robson for his precious help and suggestions for the improvement of this study. 3 gfo; Little, ‘Franciscan School at Oxford’; and Little, Franciscan Papers, 55–71, esp. 59. 4 See Hilarin Felder, Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Studien im Franziskanerorden bis um die Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1904), 254–316. Italian translation: Storia degli studi scientifici nell’ordine francescano dalla sua fondazione fino circa la metà del xiii secolo (Siena, 1911). 5 For a last enquiry on Bacon’s remarks and previous bibliography see Cecilia Panti, ‘The theological use of science in Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh according to Roger Bacon:

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reinforced the view that Grosseteste had exercised an enduring influence upon Franciscan learning in England, an interpretation that subsequent historiography continued to circulate. In the middle of the last century, Alistair Crombie significantly shifted direction in explaining Grosseteste’s legacy. His volume on Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science gave the English bishop an original place on the medieval intellectual landscape and an outstanding role, not only as a pioneering explorer of the Aristotelian and Arabic science, but also as a forerunner of the modern conception of scientific method.6 In camouflaged polemics against Pierre Duhem’s ‘French roots’ of the evolution of modern science,7 Crombie insisted on the existence of an experimental method for scientific knowledge first elaborated by Grosseteste. For Crombie, the aim of this innovative method, transmitted to and worked out mostly by English Franciscan philosophers, among whom were Adam Marsh, Thomas of York, Thomas Docking, Bartholomew the Englishman, Roger Bacon, John Pecham, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, ‘was to discover and define the necessary and sufficient conditions for producing the experimental facts’.8 Although subsequent scholars have questioned Crombie’s interpretation, the view that Grosseteste promoted scientific studies has inevitably overshadowed the enquiry into the corpus of his theological writings and their goal. The query is not whether English Minors might have used the scientific works of Grosseteste—the books were left by Grosseteste to the Oxford convent9—or

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the case study of the rainbow’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages, ed. Jack P. Cunningham and Mark Hocknull (Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016), 143–163. For the study of Greek, see James McEvoy, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Greek scholarship. A survey of present knowledge’, fs 56 (1998), 255– 264, and James McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 2000), ch. 8, 113–121. Alistair C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100–1700 (Oxford, 1953). See Pierre Duhem, Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci. Les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée (Paris, 1913), vol. 3, xiii: ‘Cette substitution de la Physique moderne à la Physique d’Aristote a résulté d’ un effort de long duree … pris appui sur la plus ancienne et la plus resplendissante des Universités médiévales, sur l’ Université de Paris … Ses promoteurs les plus éminents ont été le picard Jean Buridan et le normand Nicole Oresme. Comment un français n’en éprouveraitil pas un légitime orgueil?’ Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins, 135–188. Richard W. Hunt, ‘The library of Robert Grosseteste’, in Robert Grosseteste: Scholar and Bishop, ed. Daniel A. Callus (Oxford, 1955), 121–145. Nicholas Trivet asserted that the bishop bequeathed his books to the Oxford convent because of his love for Adam Marsh. A detailed inspection of these books was made by Thomas Gascoigne before their disappearance, which shortly preceded the suppression of the mendicant orders in 1538–1539.

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whether they cultivated scientific interests as such, but whether these scientific interests were the effect of a direct Grossetestian legacy. Crombie’s positive response was credited to the extent that, although the traditional historiography depicted Grosseteste as a master of theology since 1214 (the official date of birth of the University of Oxford and of his alleged chancellorship),10 this portrait remained largely subordinated to the idea of him as a natural philosopher and promoter of scientific interests; a view still disseminated in recent studies.11 This view, however, has gradually changed since the early 1980s, when theology emerged as the ‘last frontier’ in the study of Grosseteste,12 under the impulse of two opposing outstanding scholars, Professors James McEvoy and Richard Southern. McEvoy launched a new direction for subsequent investigations on the philosophy of Grosseteste by maintaining the strong theological background of all his philosophical writings.13 He argued that Grosseteste had taught theology since 1214 and that his scientific production was a sort of ‘literary hobby’; yet, only a few of his ideas exerted a real influence among the next generations of learned Franciscans: the denial of the eternity of the world, the Incarnation and the Immaculate Conception.14 Southern, conversely, proposed in his new biography of the English scholar the view that Grosseteste’s involvement in theology was only a late development in his career.15 These debates caused a re-examination of Grosseteste’s life and the chronology of his writings, a task that engaged scholars in answering the questions of when and where Grosseteste had studied theology, for how long he taught it and how he conceived his task as a master in sacra pagina. Joseph Goering was the first to observe that there is no concrete evidence that Grosseteste’s teaching in the secular schools at Oxford before c. 1229 was in theology; thus, up to that time

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12 13 14 15

See Daniel A. Callus, ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar’, in Robert Grosseteste: Scholar and Bishop, 1–69. See, for instance, Dominique Raynaud, ‘La faveur de l’optique à Oxford: Discussion de trois thèses de sociologie de la connaissance sur l’ explication de l’intérêt scientifique’, Llull 24 (2001), 727–754. See James R. Ginther, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the theologian’s task’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings, ed. O’Carroll, 239–263, esp. 239. James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1982). McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, 51–61, esp. 55–57. See also James McEvoy, Gli inizi di Oxford. Grossatesta e i primi teologi (Milan, 1996). Richard W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe, 2nd edn (1986; Oxford, 1992), 170–181, holds that Grosseteste did not start lecturing in theology until 1225, when he obtained his first ecclesiastical benefice. This conclusion was firmly rejected by McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste, 22–26.

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he was likely lecturing in the faculty of arts.16 According to this view, which has been corroborated in further studies, the Franciscan school at Oxford was in all likelihood the first and only institution where Grosseteste spent his five years as a master in divine science, before his episcopal election.17 In addition to this, a better and increasing knowledge of Franciscan learning over the last decades has finally raised doubts among scholars on both the real extent of Grosseteste’s impact on Franciscan science and the assessment of the scope of studies at the Oxford school.18 Therefore, we may reasonably conclude that Grosseteste’s teaching in the Franciscan school was an essentially theological experience. This conclusion, however, raises a question, which is particularly relevant if we accept the tenet that Grosseteste had no prior experience as a lecturer in sacra doctrina before his appointment to the friars’ school. Given that he could have not developed his theological method before teaching the friars, how much did the Minors’ community contribute to shaping his idea of theology and the methodology of its teaching? The following section aims to answer this question.

2

Robert Grosseteste at the Friars’ School

Agnellus of Pisa, minister provincial, invited Grosseteste to teach the friars of Oxford about 1229/30, at a time when the Franciscans were organizing their first centres of study in many university towns of Central Europe.19 In this process, 16

17 18

19

Joseph Goering, ‘When and where did Grosseteste study theology?’, in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy (Turnhout, 1995), 17–51, holds that even Grosseteste’s brief chancellorship may indeed be placed in the late 1220s, while he was still a master of arts. See also Cecilia Panti, Moti, virtù e motori celesti nella cosmologia di Roberto Grossatesta. Studio ed edizione dei trattati ‘De sphera’, ‘De cometis’, ‘De motu supercelestium’ (Florence, 2001), 3–38. See James R. Ginther, Master of the Sacred Page: A Study of the Theology of Robert Grosseteste, ca. 1229/30–1235 (Aldershot, 2004). Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, Boston, ma, and Cologne, 2000), 142–144. These doubts originated with Stewart C. Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York, 1952), 206–209: ‘Appendix a: The Lectures of Robert Grosseteste to the Franciscans 1229–1235’; Camille Bérubé, De la philosophie à la sagesse chez Saint Bonaventure et Roger Bacon (Rome, 1976), 63–64. See also Michael W. Sheehan, ‘The Religious Orders’, in The History of the University of Oxford. 1220–1370, vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools (Oxford, 1992), 193–221, at 197. This reconsideration is also the subject of my ‘The theological use of science according to Bacon’. See Roest, A History of Franciscan Education. Among the most recent studies see Neslihan

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which eventually transformed the original fraternity into an intellectual order, the growing number of learned friars readily acknowledged the poverello’s anxieties about intellectual pride and sought to safeguard his vision as they formulated the requirements of popular preaching and evangelization promoted by both Innocent iii and Honorius iii. In confining our view to the Oxford friary, this hesitation is probably explained by the fact that, after a brief period in which the friars who ‘were versed in all disciplines’ (studerent in omnibus) and were allowed to attend ‘theology and to participate in scholastic exercises’ at the secular schools for the sake of preaching,20 Agnellus founded an independent institution, as he had already done at Paris. The monk Matthew Paris, who witnessed the early phases of the friars’ expansion in England, offers a vivid picture of this fervent interest in learning: The friars carry constantly their books, indeed libraries, in sacks hanging from their necks. In time they built schools, afterwards houses and cloisters … Then, establishing schools of theology within their confines, lecturing and disputing, and preaching to the people, they carried much crop to the barn of Christ, ‘where the harvest is rich, but the laborers are few’.21 Although the Franciscan novices came from all social ranks, the convent at Oxford attracted a growing body of clerics, bachelors and masters to join the order. It is clear that this was the reason why Agnellus located the first school in the university town.22 As Bartholomew of Pisa attests, those who studied

20

21 22

Şenocak, The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order, 1209–1310 (Ithaca, ny, and London, 2012); Bert Roest, Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650 (Leiden, 2014). For English friars see Michael Robson, The Greyfriars of England (1224–1539): Collected Papers (Padua, 2012). Eccleston, 27: ‘Licet autem fratres … studerent in omnibus, in audienda tamen lege divina et scholasticis exercitiis ita fuerunt ferventes, ut scholas theologiae, quantumcumque distarent, adire quotidie nudis pedibus … non pigritarentur. Unde … ad ufficium praedicationis infra breve tempus plures promoti sunt.’ Eccleston does not refer to any specific convent or town where these scholae were situated. See Roest, Franciscan Learning, 26 n. 19. Matthew Paris, ha, vol. 2, 110. Translation by Şenocak, The Poor and the Perfect, 1. The biblical reference is Matt. 9:37. Michael Robson, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Greyfriars in the diocese of Lincoln’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings, ed. O’Carroll, 289–317, esp. 294. Thomas of Eccleston registers how attractive the message of Francis was for scholars, a tendency that can be registered everywhere in the rapid spread of the order in the 1220s. See also Şenocak,

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there were already experienced in academic teaching techniques, so that the institution seems to have been initially ‘self-regulated’: But afterwards he [Agnellus] had reason for regret, when he saw the friars spending their time on frivolities and neglecting needful things. For one day, when he wished to assess the progress they were making, he entered the schools whilst a disputation was going on, and hearing them wrangling and questioning Utrum sit Deus, he exclaimed ‘Woe is me, woe is me! Simple brothers enter heaven, and learned brothers dispute whether there is a God at all.’ Then he sent £ 10 sterling to the court to buy the Decretals, that the friars might study them and abandon frivolities.23 We cannot know whether the anecdote is accurate, especially on account of the introduction of the Decretals (‘Decretales’) in the friars’ curriculum of studies.24 Yet, it suggests that theology and canon law did not form a structured educational programme. Unfortunately, Thomas of Eccleston is disappointingly brief on the organization of the school; yet, although he agrees that the friars needed to improve their skills in questions and in moral matters useful for preaching, he reports that Agnellus found a master capable of meeting these requirements: After the place had been enlarged where the principal seat of studies flourished in England and where scholars from all over were wont to gather, Brother Agnellus had a sufficiently suitable school built at the place of the brothers, and he asked the master Robert Grosseteste of saintly memory to lecture to the brothers there. Under him they progressed immeasurably within a short time both in theological matters and in preaching with suitable and subtle moral examples.25

23 24

25

The Poor and the Perfect; Roest, A History of Franciscan Education and Roest, Franciscan Learning, ch. 2. Bartholomaeus Pisanus, De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu. Liber i: fructus i–xii (Florence, 1906), 331. English translation in gfo, 30. Bartholomeus probably refers to the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretales, a Carolingian compilation of papal decrees, and not to the Decretales (Liber Extra) by Pope Gregory ix, issued in 1235. According to the Franciscan hagiographical tradition, Francis condemned the initiative that allowed friars at Bologna to receive courses in canon law and theology. His regret was directed in particular towards canon law. See Roest, Franciscan Learning, 22. Eccleston, 27; English translation in xiiith Century Chronicles, 142. There is another translation in Little, ‘Franciscan School at Oxford’, 58.

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Although it is commonly held that Grosseteste was chosen by Agnellus on account of his outstanding position as master of theology in the University of Oxford, Eccleston was silent on the matter. This omission is relevant because he does not hesitate to underline the academic prowess of the friars serving as regent masters. For instance, Ralph of Corbridge, who had been ‘a master of theology at the University of Paris’ before he entered the order, was sent to Oxford ‘to occupy the same post’, and similarly Brother Eustace of Normanville, a subsequent regent master of theology at the school, had previously been ‘a noble and rich laymen, master of arts and canon law, and chancellor of Oxford’.26 The career of Eustace confirms that the requirements for teaching theology to the friars did not necessarily include previous teaching in sacra pagina at secular schools; and it also makes clear that it was possible to be chancellor without having been master of theology, as per (probably) Grosseteste.27 These remarks suggest also that, in the 1220s and 1230s, the faculty of theology at Oxford was in its infancy, with a developing structure.28 Master Grosseteste, who had probably lectured in the faculty of arts until 1229 and had started his theological formation about 1225, was well prepared for his new responsibilities. As early as c. 1190, during his service in the diocese of Hereford, he was regarded as a scholar of great competence in temporal affairs and liberal arts, ‘laudably illuminated and ornamented by the addition of his outstanding virtues’, strong faith and unfailing loyalty.29 In the 1220s, he was one of the first masters to comment on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Physics, and one of the major English scholars in optics and astronomy. When he was asked to instruct the friars, he had already written the majority or perhaps the totality of his surviving scientific works.30 Besides, another field in which he had successfully operated was ecclesiastical administration, and 26 27 28 29

30

Eccleston, 27. See also Roest, Franciscan Learning, 40. Goering, ‘When and where’, 44–45, esp. 47–50. See also Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 171. This is what Gerald of Wales writes in a letter of c. 1195 to commend Grosseteste to the service of William de Vere, bishop of Hereford. Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, ed. John S. Brewer, James F. Dimock and George F. Warner, 8 vols. rs 21 (London, 1861–1891), vol. 1, 249 (rpt. Cambridge, 2012, 197–198). See also Goering, ‘When and where’, 18. The dating of Grosseteste’s scientific works is a matter of debate, mainly because of its dependence upon his rather obscure mid-life. For the most recent reconsideration of the matter and previous bibliography see Cecilia Panti, ‘Robert Grosseteste and Adam of Exeter’s physics of light: remarks on the transmission, authenticity and chronology of Grosseteste’s scientific Opuscula’, in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu: New Editions and Studies, ed. John Flood, James R. Ginther and Joseph W. Goering (Toronto, 2013), 165–190, at 180–185.

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his writings on penance and confession are undoubtedly the fruit of his lifelong administrative employments at the bishoprics of Hereford and Lincoln.31 Thus, even if Grosseteste had not been a theologian, this does not mean that he was not a suitable candidate for the friars. As mentioned, Grosseteste may have started to study theology after 1225, when he obtained his first ecclesiastical benefice, the parish of Abbotsley in Huntingdonshire. Perhaps part of his formation took place at Paris, probably by taking advantage of his personal friendship with the notable theologian, William of Auvergne, later bishop of Paris, and some English scholars who studied or taught there.32 At the end of the 1220s Grosseteste was a priest and scholars assign his early theological writings to this period.33 Thus, while these writings inaugurated a new chapter of his intellectual speculation, his concomitant teaching at the Franciscan school enriched his human experience. To be master of the poor followers of Francis was an unusual post, both because the friars’ schools had not yet developed an academic structure and because the friars’ education was something special in itself. Grosseteste, rather than teaching future theologians or diocesan administrators, found himself addressing a new religious body whose service to the Church was still evolving. As Eccleston reports, the friars’ school was a modest building and the friars were particularly attentive in observing poverty and walking barefoot, and were bereft of any physical comforts.34 Yet, the presence of masters and bachelors among the novices of this humble fraternity made it undeniably a vibrant

31 32 33

34

Goering, ‘When and where’, 26–35. Goering, ‘When and where’, 35–42. See Ginther, Master of the Sacred Page, 13–24 and James R. Ginther, ‘The super psalterium in context’, in Editing Robert Grosseteste: The Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference on Editorial Problems. University of Toronto Nov. 3–4, 2000, ed. Evelyn A. Mackie and Joseph Goering (Toronto, 2003), 31–60, esp. 48–49. The latest enquiry on the dating of Grosseteste’s major theological treatise, the De libero arbitrio, is by Neil Lewis in the introduction to his edition and translation of the work (British Academy, in course of publication). Lewis presents a detailed discussion concerning the relations of sources and contents between this treatise and other theological opuscula (De scientia dei, De veritate and others) and exegetical works by Grosseteste, mainly De cessatione legalium and the Hexaëmeron. This enquiry demonstrates that the years of Grosseteste’s teaching to the Franciscans were when his theological production starts and converges. I wish to thank Neil Lewis for his kind permission to refer to this study. The Chronicon de Lanercost states that, in the thirteenth century, the master of the school had a chamber of his own, which sounds as if it would provide a minimum of comfort and privacy. See gfo, 27. However, Little also reports a note by John Wyclif, saying that in his time masters had ‘chamber and service as lords or kings’.

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intellectual community. When Grosseteste was asked to lecture there, he was already familiar with daily examples of the hardship borne by the friars, especially through his friendships with Adam of Exeter and Adam Marsh, the wealthy nephew of the bishop of Durham. He was struck by the power of the Franciscan vocation, whereby illustrious men renounced their social status, as a couple of sermons on humility, preached to the friars during his teaching years, clearly corroborate.35 This is probably one of the reasons that induced him to resign the benefices of his archdeaconry at Leicester and parish of Abbotsley.36 According to Matthew Paris, Grosseteste had considered the possibility of joining the order.37 Academic achievements were manifestly a sign of wealth and a stimulus for intellectual pride, but this did not signify ipso facto that the Minors ceased to be learned men with strong cultural and political interests. Early Franciscan documents, indeed, do not register a special concern about culture and the sciences;38 this depended upon the fact that the friars’ scientific capacities and intellectual gifts could be exercised in laudable non-scholastic activities and in everyday occupations, such as medical assistance, missionary activities, political and ecclesiastic advice and other forms of charitable help. The friars that Grosseteste met at the school, in sum, were not men in search of a scientific formation, which many of them already possessed, but of a training for the mission that they had embraced. A single example can suffice to illustrate this attitude, namely the case of Master Adam of Exeter or Rufus. Adam had been a celebrated master (toto famosus orbe) and the secretary of his beloved friend Adam Marsh, before the latter entered the Franciscan order; it was Adam of Exeter who first joined the friars, probably in 1229, and introduced Marsh into the community.39 As a master, Adam wrote a treatise on tides formerly ascribed to Grosseteste or Marsh, a treatise on solar heat commonly attributed to Grosseteste and, perhaps, even a set of glosses to Boethius’s De 35

36

37 38 39

Michael Robson, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s two sermons to the Friars Minor in commendation of evangelical poverty’, in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu, ed. Flood, Ginther and Goering, 102–127. Frank A.C. Mantello and Joseph Goering (eds.), The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (Toronto, Buffalo, London 2010), 43–45, Grosseteste tells his sister Ivette and Adam Marsh that he resigned omnes redditus except his canonry at Lincoln cathedral, which remained his only income when he taught the Franciscans. See also Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 112. Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 4, 599–600. See Robson, ‘Two sermons’, 105. On the vexata quaestio of the Franciscan attitude towards learning and for its historiography see Roest, A History of Franciscan Education and Roest, Franciscan Learning. Eccleston, 16–17. See Robson, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Greyfriars’, 295.

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institutione musica; he is also credited with the authorship of a lengthy exposition of the Pater noster in Anglo-Norman.40 Grosseteste had probably been his master when Adam studied the arts, and they were in correspondence on philosophical and theological questions.41 It is probable that Adam started his theological studies at the Franciscan school of Oxford as soon as he entered the order, approximately at the time Grosseteste was engaged to teach. Adam, however, cherished a dream, namely to preach to the infidels, and secured permission to go to the Holy Land. Grosseteste helped his resolution with a letter to Agnellus of Pisa, in which he underlines that, in spite of Adam’s still incomplete theological preparation, his faith, humility, firm will and remarkable intellectual gifts would perfectly inform his preaching: And no one should be concerned that Adam has studied Sacred Scripture for only a short time. For he has the articles of faith firmly fixed in his humble heart … He has a quick and keen intellect, he has the anointing (confirmatio) that teaches about all things, he has the Paraclete as his master, who teaches him all the truth ( Jn 16, 13). Your order could not be more adorned or honoured by so glowing a jewel than by setting it against the darkness of unbelief.42 Adam left England, but died at Barletta, in southern Italy, c. 1232–1233. In another letter written a few years later, Grosseteste sketched Adam’s short life with these words: ‘a former pupil so very dear to me in Christ. At that time he was a very special friend, but now, as I piously hope, he is my patron at the court of the supreme judge.’43 40

41

42 43

Panti, ‘Robert Grosseteste and Adam of Exeter’. Cf. ‘Cher alme’: Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety, ed. Tony Hunt, tr. Jane Bliss, with an introduction by Henrietta Leyser, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 385 (Tempe, az, 2010), 71–125, for an edition of the exposition, plus an English translation. His doctrinal letter De prima forma omnium-De intelligentiis, probably written c. 1225–1227, was addressed to Adam Rufus, who has been identified with Adam of Exeter, in response to the latter’s queries concerning God as the first form of every thing, and the nature of angels. gfo, 178–179, distinguishes between Adam Rufus and Adam of Exeter, while bruo, 660, identifies the two friars. See also James McEvoy, ‘Der Brief des Robert Grosseteste an Magister Adam Rufus (Adam von Oxford o.f.m.): ein Datierungsversuch’, Franziskanische Studien 63 (1981), 221–226, and Richard Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540 (Turnhout, 1997), 15. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 17–21. For an English translation see Mantello and Goering, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 49–53, esp. 52–53. Mantello and Goering, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 129–130.

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As the example of Adam illustrates, the friars’ theological preparation needed attentive consideration. It could not be cultivated as a speculative science or a mere scholarly undertaking, as occurred in the secular schools and universities, as well as in the Dominican studia, but should be turned into a ‘practical’ science, an instrument indispensable for preaching, or, as it has been recently said, a sort of ‘existential investment’.44 Besides, this teaching had to be directed to a scholarly audience that included people of different status, age, experience and education. Grosseteste, therefore, was solicited to elaborate his peculiar theological vision, entirely based on the pivotal role of the Bible and the centrality of Christ, to fulfil these expectations.45 Consequently, the view that he might have been interested in, or required to promote the friars’ scientific attitude, is completely anachronistic and must be definitely rejected. Conversely, as examined in the following section, it seems that he was able to ‘use’ the friars’ scientific background as a fresh and perhaps unexpected resource to enhance an educative strategy suitable for their special requirements.

3

The Theologian’s Task for the Friars’ Education

Grosseteste’s writings in sacra doctrina, compiled during his teaching at the Franciscan school, include commentaries on the sacred Scriptures (the Hexaëmeron, De cessatione legalium, De decem mandatis), several theological opuscula and the Dicta.46 The latter, as Grosseteste remarks in the preface to this collection of ‘sayings’, is a compilation of his teaching notes (dum in scolis morabar), which consist of brief exegetical enquiries, moral remarks and records of sermons delivered to the clergy and people in the same period (sermones quos eodem tempore ad clerum vel ad populum feci).47 In this variegated

44 45

46 47

Roest, Franciscan Learning, 76. See Cecilia Panti, ‘Scienza e teologia agli esordi della scuola dei Minori di Oxford: Roberto Grossatesta, Adamo Marsh e Adamo di Exeter’, in I francescani e le scienze. Atti del xxxix Convegno internazionale. Assisi, 6–8 ottobre 2011 (Spoleto, 2012), 311–351. See note 33. The preface is present in the majority of the manuscripts transmitting the Dicta. Here, Grosseteste asserts: ‘In this volume are contained 147 chapters, some of which are short formulations, which I wrote down in note form whilst I was still lecturing in the schools. They were composed to assist the memory … Some of them, however, are sermons, which I addressed to the clergy or to the people at the same time.’ English translation is from Robert Grosseteste, The Complete Dicta in English, ed. and tr. Gordon Jackson (Lincoln, 1972–2003), vol. 1, v. See also Joseph W. Goering, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Dicta: The state of the

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‘anthology’, we can find a fresh insight into what theology and theological teaching were for Grosseteste. Dictum 118 presents theology as a science equipped with a specific methodology and a proper subject, which marks its distance from the mundane sciences. Grosseteste asserts that ‘syllogistic sciences are constructed like a net in the manner of triangular figures’ and that this similitude gives us two possible terms of comparison or perfection: by form ( forma) and by function (operatio). While mundane sciences are like a triangular net by perfection of form alone because of their use of the syllogistic discourse, theology is such because of both perfections. In fact, the ‘net’ of theology is not only woven according to solid argumentations, but ‘it is also used for rescuing people from the sea of earthly mutability and for securing them to the sewing (sutum) of eternal stability’.48 This image is further developed in Dictum 2 on compassion (misericordia), in which Grosseteste asserts that both doctrine and preaching are works of compassion for human relief, because whoever exercises them promotes ‘the enlightening of the mind and the straightening of the will’. Now, he continues, all mundane sciences, such as medicine, alchemy, music or natural philosophy, illuminate the mind of the students and enable learned men to obtain the capacity and admiration for working ‘miracles’, such as raising the dead, turning all things into gold, healing mental disorders, mastering the forces of the nature.49 Yet, they lack something in comparison to theology: The man who takes real delight in these and similar admirable things goes on to study theology, because all such things are better known in that science, more clearly, more effectually. And all imitations, and by imitations I mean whatever nature makes or the artificer in any of the sciences or arts, are what the theologian has to raise from a low to a higher order by his art of preaching, proportionally better, more clearly, more effectually than nature or any artist can fashion … He will proportionally produce only imitations from a low to a higher plane. For he will cure … from the leprosy of heretical deformity … He will transmute men … into

48 49

question’, in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu, ed. Flood, Ginther and Goering, 64–86. See Ginther, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the theologian’s task’, 240–243. All these sciences were cultivated by friars mainly as practical support to everyday life. See Michela Pereira, ‘I francescani e l’alchimia’, Convivium assisiense 10 (2008), 117–157; Peter V. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought (Leiden, 2013). See also the miscellaneous volume I francescani e le scienze.

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the clarity and splendour of gold … to a heavenly quality … He will put evil spirits to flight, as if by the modulations of David’s harp, and snatch the oppressed from the direst fits of madness … He will understand and represent all things in due proportion, and in his representing will render them better than nature does.50 In brief, the theologian’s task is to illuminate all sciences better than they are in themselves by the light of Christ’s misericordia, and to deploy this ‘new’ knowledge for the benefit of preaching. In such a way, theology can ‘accomplish a true work of compassion’.51 Moreover, this action of misericordia ‘is not to be attained by skipping steps; on the contrary, it is most readily approached by the steps of the other sciences’.52 This last requirement is particularly remarkable, because it makes clear that Grosseteste thought of the mundane sciences as reliable and necessary steps to theology, although he clearly separates the latter on account of its exclusive role and peculiar methodology in approaching the real good for humanity, namely the salvation in Christ, which the theologian fosters through his preaching. It is this specific role, woven in the ‘net’ of the sacra doctrina, which makes Grosseteste’s idea of theology particularly apt to be addressed by Franciscans. Their special gift was compassion by means of imitation of Christ; accordingly, preaching the Gospel for the sake of human salvation would preserve them from the intellectual pride of mundane learning. If this is the framework which illuminates Grosseteste’s idea of a theological scholarship useful for the friars, another matter is how sciences, such as alchemy, music, medicine or natural philosophy, can raise the mind ‘from a low to a higher order’. To address this problem, it is helpful to observe that Grosseteste’s exegetical works and sermons make use of a rich symbolic and metaphorical structure based on an idea of nature in which, as McEvoy asserts, ‘the universe and all its interlocking parts are assumed to function with regular order and intelligible purpose’.53 This is particularly evident, for instance, in his interpretation of the Fiat lux, proposed in the Hexaëmeron, which includes a long chapter on the properties of physical light, because ‘from the properties of physical light it should be possible to understand the properties of the things that are mystically signified by physical light’.54 This means that, for 50 51 52 53 54

Grosseteste, The Complete Dicta, vol. 1, 11. Grosseteste, The Complete Dicta, vol. 1, 11. Grosseteste, The Complete Dicta, vol. 1, 12. On Grosseteste’s use of metaphors and symbolism see McEvoy, The Philosophy, 354–368. Robert Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben, abma 6 (Oxford,

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Grosseteste, any aspect of the created world must retain its own epistemological concreteness in order to express its spiritual reference. If the object’s natural consistency, operative functions and physical characteristics were not considered, the object itself would be unintelligible and, consequently, incapable of being used symbolically. Thus, it is exactly the reference to this physical mechanism that is operative in the shift of a scientific example to the ‘higher order’ of theology. As Richard Southern states, when Grosseteste started teaching theology, ‘he seems to have thought that the best contribution he could make was to bring his extensive scientific knowledge to bear on the study of the Bible, and to enlarge the understanding of Scripture by exploring the content of its natural symbols’.55 Hence, his approach to the study of the Bible, which was for him the foundation stone of theological teaching,56 should include this transition ‘from the low to a higher order’ of his scientific erudition. The symbolic use of the explanation of natural phenomena turned into an inspirational tool in Grosseteste’s theological writings, especially for making complex questions such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, grace and free will accessible to a larger and less erudite audience. A couple of examples taken from the works belonging to his years at the Franciscan school may suffice to clarify this methodology. In the Hexaëmeron he states that the effort to comprehend the Trinity is absolutely necessary for human salvation, and a learned person can be helped in this task by reasons ‘that prove there to be a trinity in the unity’; yet, he continues, ‘to help us form an image of what has been proved, let us bring in some illustrations’.57 In other words, Grosseteste is saying that a ‘true image’ helps everybody to sharpen the good arguments understood only by the learned person.58 The example taken from the self-generative power of

55 56

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1982), 2, 10.1–5, 97–100. For a discussion of this passage see Cecilia Panti, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s cosmology of light and light-metaphors: a symbolic model of sacred space?’, in Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral: Tracing Relationships between Medieval Concepts of Order and Built Form, ed. Nicholas Temple, John S. Hendrix and Christian Frost (London, 2014), 59–80, esp. 69–70. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 176. Mantello and Goering, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 346–347. When, as a bishop, Grosseteste ruled over the university, he advised the Oxonian masters in theology to lecture on the Bible, as only the sacred Scriptures provide the foundation stone of theological learning. Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, viii.4.1, 222. For an English translation see Robert Grosseteste, On the Six Days of Creation, tr. Christopher F.J. Martin (Oxford, 1996), 226. On true imagination see James Ginther, ‘Robert Grosseteste and the theologian’s task’, esp. 261–262.

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light is the best image of God’s Trinitarian essence, since, if God is light more essentially than light itself, this means that God engenders his splendour from and within his proper essence. Yet much more properly than physical light, the engendering light, which is the Father, and the begotten splendour, the Son, necessarily embrace each other and breathe from themselves the heat of the Holy Spirit. As it happens in visible light, the coincident although easily distinguishable presence together of light, splendour and heat offers a useful demonstratio per exemplum of the Trinity.59 Another Trinitarian example is in De libero arbitrio, in which Grosseteste proposes an analogous comparison: since light is not prior in time to splendour, but as its cause, so the eternal divine light of the Father does not precede in time or nature the Son, but as His cause.60 These passages involve the use of the idea of the expansive and self-diffusive nature of light, while other light metaphors employed by Grosseteste are grounded on the mechanism of colour generation and diffusion. Still, in the De libero arbitrio Grosseteste elaborates the discussion on free will by using light and colour as an exemplum for the argument that divine grace does not act independently from free will. Grosseteste takes inspiration from his theory that light incorporates within elements for producing effects such as colour and sound. Colour generation, for him, needs light incorporated within a diaphanous body, while an external light is needed to make the colour visible.61 Thus, as light passing through a coloured window becomes coloured itself while the window radiates its own colours, so the unique divine grace ‘passing through’ every human soul makes it ‘coloured’ by free will in its own way. Accordingly, since each different colour is perceived thanks to the unique external light, the grace which diffuses itself over all souls will make each one shine with its own tint, namely its special way of expressing free will.62 This particular feature of Grosseteste’s theological magisterium gradually developed in his theological writings from a rich ‘blossom’ up to a more bal-

59 60

61

62

Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, viii.3.1, 220. These and the following light metaphors are presented and discussed in Panti, ‘Scienza e teologia’, 321–325. See Neil Lewis, ‘The first recension of Robert Grosseteste’s De Libero Arbitrio’, Mediaeval Studies 55 (1991), 1–88, esp. 55–56. This metaphor comes from Eriugena’s Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, which Grosseteste attributes to John Chrysostom. McEvoy, The Philosophy, 278–289; Cecilia Panti, ‘L’incorporazione della luce secondo Roberto Grossatesta’, Medioevo e rinascimento 13, n.s. 10 (1999), 45–102; Greti DinkovaBruun et al., The Dimensions of Colors: Robert Grosseteste’s De colore (Toronto, 2013), 21–25. Robert Grosseteste, De libero arbitrio, in Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bishofs von Lincoln, ed. Ludwig Baur (Münster, 1912), 150–240, esp. 202.

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anced and mature use of the scientific discourse. The evidence of this lies in his first comments on the Psalter belonging to his early theological teaching, in which a great variety of natural, medical, astronomical, physical observations and remarks illuminate his exegesis of the biblical text;63 a metaphorical style, in turn, which could be easily detached and adopted by the friars for preaching to people unfamiliar with the vocabulary of the schools.64 As indicated in this section, the symbolic use of natural examples illustrates complex theological matters with easily readable images; nonetheless, it extends far beyond this goal by illuminating various aspects of human behaviour, lifestyle and exemplifications of virtues and vices. A noteworthy example concerns the very significance of the friars’ preaching. Grosseteste regarded preaching as one of the highest duties of pastoral care; once elected bishop, he requested friars to assist him in preaching throughout his diocese and was so proud of his pastoral innovation that he described it to the pope in enthusiastic terms.65 In a sermon (Dictum 35) on preaching, Grosseteste says that the preacher’s life ‘should shine more brightly than that of the faithful layfolk, as much as the light, perspicuity and purity of the eye outshine the colour of other organs’,66 while in his letter to the cardinal bishop of Ostia, commending the ministry of the English Franciscans, Grosseteste remarks that they ‘illuminate our land with the clear light of their preaching and doctrine’ that is ‘like a new light which illuminates and makes plants grow up’.67 The theme of colour inspired Grosseteste to draw parallels also with the topic of humility, so central for the Friars Minor. In his Dictum 141, he explains how true humility varies in its effects according to the person by whom it is exercised, and proposes, again, the example of the coloured glass to clarify this view: In order to clarify what I mean, I give the following example. Sunlight is unadulterated light both in the sun and in the atmosphere, since it has in itself nothing but the very nature of light; and, as much as it pertains to its own nature, it can exist in itself, without being ever incorporated in these inferior natures. Nonetheless, when sunlight is added to a colour which is in the diaphanous medium through which ⟨sunlight⟩ passes, for instance 63 64

65 66 67

See Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 170–181. See Panti, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s cosmology of light and light metaphors’. Though, in his writings of the episcopal period, this device is used in a more sober way, it remains a mark that characterizes the whole breadth of his preaching and pastoral activity. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 258. Grosseteste, The Complete Dicta, vol. 3, no. 35, 28. Mantello and Goering, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 181–182.

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to the colour of glass, it necessarily incorporates itself to that colour, and it transports that colour together with itself, and that colour turns to the nature of ⟨that luminosity⟩ and the luminosity to the nature of colour, and the ray turns to yellow, or green, or red, according to the colour it passes through. And that ray cannot be but a coloured ray, although in the atmosphere and in the sun it is separated from any colour.68 The idea of the incorporation of light into matter and the theory of colour generation is used also to show how created things manifest their nature not in themselves, but thanks to God’s enlightenment, as Grosseteste states in his treatise De veritate. The potency of celestial light, which diffuses over all things, making them shine from their own light, is God’s enlightenment of the universe, which shows the truth of everything, because divine light is like sunshine, not when it obfuscates the other celestial bodies, but when it enlightens (illustrat) colours.69 Further examples can be detected in Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman poem known as Castle of Love (Château d’Amour). This work has been described by Richard Southern as a sort of vernacular theological summa, written for a knightly household, very late in Grosseteste’s life.70 Yet a more recent study challenges this view and proposes a re-dating of the poem to the period of Grosseteste’s teaching of the friars, who were probably its intended audience.71 The Franciscans might well have contributed to the wide dissemination and popularity of the work, which offers a concise survey of the redemption history: God’s work of creation, the Fall and the human restoration thanks to God’s Incarnation are narrated through allegories and exempla. The castle imagery is the core of the work and symbolizes the Virgin Mary, the highest icon of human redemption. The metaphor, based on medieval description of the celestial city in the book of Revelation 21–22, is enriched through the employment of symbolisms of colours and numbers. The aim of this meticulous descriptive account is to lay stress on all features of an intrinsically symbolic building.72 Light and colours play a central role in the allegorical narrative because they

68 69 70 71

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See Dictum 141. English translation and discussion of the passage are in Dinkova-Bruun et al., The Dimensions of Color, 36–37. Grosseteste, De veritate, in Die philosophischen Werke, ed. Baur, 130–143, esp. 137–138. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 225–230. Evelyn Mackie, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman treatise On the Loss and Restoration of Creation, commonly known as Le château d’amour: an English prose translation’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings, ed. O’Carroll, 151–179, esp. 151–156. Mackie, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman treatise’, 166.

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denote Mary’s virtues and, in conformity with the Hexaëmeron, their use discloses a spiritual meaning that indicates God’s radiating action upon human soul. Even though the ‘castle of Love’ is a figurative building, its symbolic description retains metaphorical features similar to that envisaged in the light metaphors considered in this section.73

4

Science in Theological Discourse and the Grossetestian Heritage Philosophy makes nothing but explains natures and properties of natural things, which are contained in the Holy Scriptures from the height of the heavens down to their ⟨lowest⟩ boundaries, and of all artifacts and moral claims, as I declare there [in the Opus maius] by means of the example of the rainbow. Consequently, this is the proper way of knowing the Holy Scriptures, and the way of the blessed men and ancient sages, such as the bishop of Lincoln and Brother Adam [Marsh], and others; so that, in such a way, the complete wisdom of philosophy is known in the divine book.74

With these words, Roger Bacon aims at exemplifying how Grosseteste and his friend and follower at the Franciscan school, Adam Marsh, intended to use philosophy and the sciences for theology. As mentioned in section 1, this and other similar passages had been considered proofs that the methodology of the first master of the Oxford friars left an enduring heritage to his pupils, which Bacon acknowledged and followed in turn. Actually, Bacon deplores the fact that Grosseteste’s and Marsh’s attitude has no more followers in his time and considers himself as the witness and disciple of a theological teaching that was supplanted, in his time, by the scholastic Sentence method. Under this perspective, another statement by Bacon concerning Grosseteste offers a possible hint of what theology originally was, for Bacon, at the friars’ school of Oxford: For forty years [since 1230] the secular clergy have neglected the study of theology and philosophy along the true paths of those studies … to such an extent that they have completely left the paths of the wise men, some of whom I have seen in my own time, namely the lord Robert, formerly bishop of Lincoln of holy memory, the Lord Thomas, bishop of St. David’s

73 74

See Panti, ‘Robert Grosseteste’s cosmology of light and light metaphors’, 73–74. Roger Bacon, Opus tertium, ed. John S. Brewer, in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, vol. 1 (London, 1859), ch. 24, 82, my translation.

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in Wales, Brother Adam Marsh, Master Robert Marsh, Masters William Lupus and William of Sherwood, and others like them.75 Here Bacon mentions Grosseteste and other five masters associated with his circle at Oxford, two of whom, namely Thomas le Waleys and Adam Marsh, succeeded him as regent masters of the Friars Minor.76 Grosseteste himself groups together in his Letter 17 the names of Adam Marsh, his brother Robert Marsh and Thomas le Waleys—to whom he adds the Dominican Robert Bacon and John of Basingstoke, archdeacon of Leicester—as witnesses of his sincere sense of friendship and gratitude.77 Moreover, Eccleston adds that also Thomas le Waleys laudably taught the friars.78 Thus, these hints seem to indicate the existence of a fraternal community and of a common intent at the early Franciscan school, which, however, gradually disappeared. This, for Bacon, was due to the change in the methodology of university learning, which implied a separation between philosophy and theology and the related destruction of the Christian sense of the unity of wisdom. According to him, however, up to the 1250s Oxford preserved the seeds of the right model of learning, and his list of teachers testifies that the early Franciscan school and the circle of Grosseteste were fundamental in promoting this. It seems that this very model survived, as Bacon implicitly asserts, approximately up to the middle of the 1250s, a decade that coincides with the death of both Grosseteste in 1253 and Marsh in 1259; they both heavily influenced the management of the school, as their letters plainly disclose. Thus, the conclusion by James McEvoy (see section 1) that Grosseteste’s influence was limited to a few theological teachings, such as the centrality of Christ and free will, upon his immediate followers, seems correct. But what about Bacon’s specific 75 76

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Roger Bacon, Compendium philosophiae, ed. Brewer, in Opera, vol. 1, ch. 5, 428. Robert Grosseteste was the first, from 1229 to 1235, Thomas le Waleys the third, from 1238 to 1242, immediately followed by Adam Marsh, the first Franciscan master of the school, who taught in 1242–1245 and again about 1247. As regards the other three masters, they were all active in Oxford in the 1250s. Robert Marsh was Adam’s brother and incepted in theology in 1250 in the presence of Grosseteste. William Lupus was archdeacon at Lincoln under the jurisdiction of Grosseteste and master in law and arts in the early 1250s. William of Sherwood was a Parisian master of logic who returned at Oxford in 1249. See Panti, ‘The theological use of science according to Bacon’, 150–151. Mantello and Goering, The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 63–65. The letter, written c. 1235, is addressed to the treasurer of Exeter cathedral, whose candidate for a parochial benefice was rejected by Grosseteste, because of his youth. gfo, 30, translating from Eccleston: ‘after he had lectured laudably at the Friars in the same place, was appointed (in 1247) to the bishopric of St. David’s in Wales’.

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remark on the application of science to theology? It is possible to find traces of this aspect of Grosseteste’s methodology in an anonymous abridgment of his Hexaëmeron and Marsh’s lost work on light and angels.79 Another sign of continuity can be detected in Thomas of York, the follower and pupil of Marsh, whose vast and unfinished summa of metaphysics, the Sapientiale, proposes a knowledge of God entirely based on the progression of human knowledge in sciences (per scientiarum perfectionem maior est appropinquatio ad creatorem), in which rational investigation has a value in itself, being the surest way for ‘looking directly into the king’s face’, as Thomas asserts in reporting the similitude of the servants at the king’s palace proposed by Moses Maimonides.80 Another example of continuity as regards Grosseteste’s idea of how to apply science to theology can be found in friar Bartholomew Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum, the popular encyclopaedic work ranging from God to natural accidents, written partly at Paris, partly at Magdeburg between 1230 and 1245, and later read, well beyond the Franciscan order, as a moralized compendium of knowledge useful for sermon writing and biblical exegesis.81 Bartholomew’s idea of natura is a mix of observation and allegory, which reveal the two senses of the ‘properties’ of things: natural and spiritual. All natural arguments in his compilatio are a source for symbolism, which illuminates the moralizing purpose openly proposed in marginal glosses accompanying the manuscript transmission of the work. Robert Grosseteste was among the many sources used by Bartholomew. Specifically, the latter reproduces Grosseteste’s De colore in book 19, chapter 1, and quotes extensively from the Hexaëmeron—read through an anonymous compilation known as Experimentator—in the course of book 8, on the structure of the universe.82 Hence, for Bartholomew, phys79 80

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See, also, for bibliographical details, Panti, ‘Scienza e teologia’, 326–339. See also, for the biographical notes on Thomas, Fiorella Retucci, ‘The Sapientiale of Thomas of York, ofm: the fortunes and misfortunes of a critical edition’, Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52 (2010), 133–159, esp. 147, at 156–159 there is an appendix by Joseph Goering concerning a projected edition of the Sapientiale. See Elizabeth Joy Keen, Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra, 2007), esp. 35–36, http://www.oapen.org/download?type=document &docid=459303, accessed 30/06/2015. The identification and discussion concerning this source is by Isabelle Draelants and Eduard Frunzeanu, ‘Introduction à l’ édition du De mundo et corporibus celestibus’, in Edition critique et commentaire du livre viii, De mundo et corporibus celestibus dans le cadre de l’ édition internationale du De proprietatibus rerum de Barthélemy l’Anglais, ed. Chr. Meier-Staubach, H. Meyer, B. Van den Abeele and I. Ventura, Académie internationale d’ Histoire des sciences (Turnhout, forthcoming). I thank both authors for kind permission to refer to their study.

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ical light and its behaviour are the primary symbols of the divine unity and Trinity, as well as an inexhaustible source for moralization; and it is not a surprise that Grosseteste was his source for exemplifying how light is the highest ‘demonstration by example’ of the Holy Trinity (summe Trinitatis per exemplum est demonstratio manifesta).83 Although these few examples cannot suffice to measure how long-lasting Grosseteste’s methodology on the use of science for theology was, if we turn again to Bacon’s words, it clearly emerges that his own approach in the application of mathematics and natural philosophy to theology differed substantially from that of Grosseteste. As seen at section 3, the latter considered the sciences and the study of light a source for developing images, examples and allegories useful in enlightening the tenets of the Christian faith and in allowing the passage to the ‘higher level’ of theological knowledge. For Bacon, indeed, sciences have much more space within theological discourse because they were tools to be systematically used both in interpreting the Scriptures and as instruments for preaching, evangelization and the defence of Christendom. They were, in other words, steps of a global reform of knowledge that had in theology his highest achievement.84 Thus, when Bacon refers to Grosseteste’s method, he actually describes his own idea of theology and its relation to science. In a recent study, I have extended the enquiry on Grosseteste’s heritage by examining the commentary on Deuteronomy by Thomas Docking, the seventh regent master of theology at the Oxford convent in the early 1260s, who made use of Grosseteste’s works and was in contact with Bacon.85 The comparison of the exegesis by the three masters of the same biblical passage, namely Ecclesiasticus 43:4 (tripliciter sol exurit montes), has shown that each of them developed his own line of reasoning and manifested a different sensitivity in 83

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See ibid., with reference to De proprietatibus rerum 8, 29, l. 196–199, Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, ii.10.4, 100, l. 8–14, and an identical passage in the so-called Experimentator. For this work, see also Janine Deus, ‘Der “Experimentator”. Eine anonyme lateinische Naturenzyklopädie des frühen 13. Jahrhunderts’ (History diss., Hamburg University, 1998), http:// ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/1998/90/pdf/Disse.pdf, accessed 30/06/2015. For a detailed exploration of this subject see Amanda Power, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Cambridge, 2013); Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon and the moralization of science: from Perspectiva through Scientia Experimentalis to Moralis Philosophia’, in I francescani e le scienze, 371–392. Cecilia Panti, ‘The theological use of science at Early Oxford Franciscan School. Thomas Docking, Roger Bacon and Robert Grosseteste’s works’, in St Francis and his followers: Studies in memory of Dr John Moorman, ed. Michael Robson and Patrick Zutshi (Taylor and Francis, in publication). The following passages synthesize the conclusions of this study.

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applying mathematics to theology. Moreover, Docking’s employment of scientific arguments does not satisfy even Bacon’s view of how science can illuminate the literal significance of the Holy Scripture. Grosseteste proposes his exegesis in the so-called De operationibus solis, probably one of his earliest biblical expositions, written c. 1228–1230, and manifests the purpose of his interpretation by presenting the literal sense of the biblical passage as a way to illustrate ‘the dignity and utility of natural sciences as a key to the understanding of God’s word’.86 Here, in particular, the explanation of the first verses of Ecclesiasticus 43 manifests the power and glory of God reflected in nature, especially in the activity of the sun and its light. The fully sun-centred doctrine is the same as that of Grosseteste’s major exegetical work, the Hexaëmeron, where the universal causality of light and sunrays is exalted as an expression of the divine Trinity. Hence, all reasons adduced in the De operationibus solis for explaining why ‘the sun is a threefold cause of heat on mountains’ point to clarifying a single concept, namely that in the sun are the causal reasons of all natural phenomena, which in turn show the similitude of the sun to the Trinity.87 The triple cause of heating is due to the action of sunrays at sunrise, sunset and at noon, to the threefold capacity of the sun in producing heat at the top, the core and the base of a mountain, but also to the action of sunlight, moonlight and starlight, to the sun’s ability to provoke floods, earthquakes and evaporations, and finally to its production of fire through the convergence, deviation and multiplication of rays.88 All these causes and reasons have a physical interpretation, but the goal of the exegetical discourse is in evidencing the tripliciter, which symbolically represents the divine Trinity. Thomas Docking totally misses the point of Grosseteste’s exegetical method, and simply accumulates materials from his writings to demonstrate how a phenomenon happens, but not what it means. If a biblical verse does not match with common sense, such as the verse concerning the heat on mountains, all reasons in favour of its rational explanation, which include two long verbatim quotations from Grosseteste’s De lineis, angulis et figuris and Hexaëmeron, may be replaced by others that seem more reasonable. Specifically, among the reasons that make the top of mountains hotter than flat places, Docking discusses Grosseteste’s theory of the relation between the strength of solar rays and the closeness to the sun of their place of incidence. This cause is the most important, because it implies the application of the science of perspectiva. 86 87 88

James McEvoy, ‘The sun as res and signum: Grosseteste’s commentary on Ecclesiasticus ch. 43, vv. 1–5’, rtam 41 (1974), 38–91, esp. 46. McEvoy, ‘The sun as res’, 86–87. McEvoy, ‘The sun as res’, 78–84.

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However, Docking, in quoting from Grosseteste, omits the reference to the width of the angle of the pyramid of rays coming from the sun as the cause of a stronger action; conversely, he suggests that more rays fall on a base when it is closer to the sun than when it is more distant from it. This is patently false according to Grosseteste’s explanation, because infinite rays fall upon any surface, independently of the distance, so that the major strength of the rays cannot depend upon their quantity. Friar Thomas is unaware of this, and confidently evokes perspective to prove his tenet. Nonetheless, after a long discussion, he pragmatically concludes that mountains cannot be hotter than valleys: if the biblical verse sounds wrong, this does not trouble him. The distance from Grosseteste’s goal in the application of science to theological discourse is, consequently, clear and evident. Also Bacon’s exegesis deals directly with the efficient cause of the heat on mountains and addresses perspective as the science in charge of solving this apparent paradox. However, the biblical verse is for him a factual statement, asserting that the sun exerts a triple burning action on mountains. This, consequently, needs to be explained by means of three efficient reasons, which in turn come from mathematics and perspective. More specifically, for Bacon the exegete understands by means of mathematics only the right efficient cause of a phenomenon described in the Bible, given that the final cause of every event is always openly expressed there. Thus, the good exegete must find the appropriate efficient cause that perfectly fulfils the final cause given in the Bible. This tenet is openly tested by Bacon in discussing the nature of the rainbow, and in so doing he does not hesitate to point out the incorrectness of Grosseteste’s theory expounded in the De iride, notwithstanding that this very work is commended by Bacon for its utility in theology.89 In searching for the causes of the major heat on mountains, Bacon implicitly refers to Grosseteste’s De operationibus solis and De lineis.90 His disquisition can be reduced to a clear symmetrical scheme. The sun exerts a triple burning action because of: (1) the solar rays, which propagate, reflect and refract themselves in the proximity of a mountain; (2) the angles formed by the incident and reflected rays, which are oblique, right or direct (i.e., reflected back); and (3) the geometrical figures formed by solar rays, namely the sphere, the pyramid with the apex on the mountain and the pyramid with the apex on the sun.91 Thus, although both Grosseteste and Bacon offer a series of explanations of the word 89 90 91

See again my ‘The theological use of science according to Bacon’, 151–156. Roger Bacon, Opus maius, ed. John H. Bridges (London, 1900), pars 4, vol. 1, 214; McEvoy, ‘The sun as res’, 58–60, and the text at 79. Roger Bacon, Opus maius, 214–216.

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tripliciter, the former adduces a plurality of phenomena as manifestations of God’s Trinity, exalted through a physical explanation that evokes the ‘triplet’ of causes, while Bacon underlines the literal significance of tripliciter in recalling the actual correspondence of the unique efficient cause, namely the sunray, to the three possible ways of propagation, each of them based in turn on three kinds of radial action. As a matter of fact, the spiritual meaning of the direct, reflected and refracted rays as a symbol of the divine Trinity is openly treated apart from the literal exposition of tripliciter sol exhurit montes.92 Hence, for Bacon, if the Bible attests that the sun exerts a triple cause in heating mountains, this must be considered a truth to be factually explained, not a statement subject to the accommodation of common sense, as in Docking’s view. Thus, it cannot be inferred, as Little did, that ‘Bacon regarded Docking as one of the few model theologians among his contemporaries’.93 Accordingly, the references by Bacon to Grosseteste (and Marsh), as far as they intend to qualify both masters as leaders of a tradition of thought that puts science at the service of theology, must also be considered as expressions of Bacon’s own ideal tradition. Bacon regarded Grosseteste as a valid methodological guide for the relevance that he attributed to the science of perspective in the solution of specific natural problems and in understanding the efficient cause of every phenomenon, always explained in terms of the geometry of radial forces. However, for Bacon this science is fundamental in a broader and deeper sense, namely because its correct use gives evidence also to the final cause of the observed phenomenon, the aim of which is openly given in the Bible. Thus, Bacon does not hesitate to criticize Grosseteste’s solutions when they are deemed to be wrong. In conclusion, Grosseteste’s teaching at the Franciscan school of Oxford was directed to develop the special requirements of the early fraternity, namely preaching to laymen. In addition to their own exemplum, namely the imitation of Christ, the friars required a way of presenting the dogma and the deposit of Christian faith in a plain and easily accessible way, and, in my opinion, Grosseteste’s examples from science and nature, presented for the first time in the theological writings of his teaching years at their school, could be easily imitated to fulfil this task. Yet, after Grosseteste’s death in 1253, approximately at the time when the Minors became an intellectual order, this requirement was no longer regarded as a mission. Even if the Franciscan school of Oxford continued to consider the Bible as a fundamental tool of theological teaching, as attested by Docking’s huge exegetical production, and science as a valuable

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Roger Bacon, Opus maius, 216–217. Andrew G. Little, ‘Thomas Docking’, in Franciscan Papers, 98–121, at 118.

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means for its exposition, and even if ‘Lincolniensis’ became an authority to admire, the examples of Docking and Bacon demonstrate that the English Franciscans had largely departed from the teaching of their first master.

chapter 13

Alexander of Hales’s Theology in His Authentic Texts (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Various Disputed Questions) Hubert Philipp Weber

As the first teacher at the University of Paris to become a Franciscan friar, Alexander of Hales has an honoured place in the history of the order. The greater part of his theological work was already completed while he was a secular master. It is therefore more correct to call him an important theologian who influenced Franciscan theology. However, it is not easy to distinguish what makes him a ‘Franciscan theologian’. I will begin by offering some historical remarks on his life and his authentic writings, most of which were discovered in the twentieth century. Then I will continue by giving an impression of his thought with a few examples from his writings. The final section contains a very short outline of the Summa Universae Theologiae (also known as the Summa fratris Alexandri or Summa Halensis) connected with his name.

1

Historical Remarks: Alexander’s Life and Work

We do not know very much about Alexander’s early life.1 His surname indicates his origin, Hales in Shropshire, England, where he was born around 1185. He stayed in contact with England all his life. In the first years of the thirteenth century he arrived at the University of Paris, where he studied and taught artes liberales. From about 1220 he lectured at the theological faculty. During the conflict between the university and the bishop of Paris in 1229/31 he went into exile. In 1241/4 he took part in the condemnations of Aristotle. He held important benefices in England. He was canon of St Paul’s in London until 1230, and from then on canon and archdeacon of Coventry.

1 A more detailed biography can be found in Hubert Philipp Weber, Sünde und Gnade bei Alexander von Hales. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der theologischen Anthropologie im Mittelalter (Innsbruck, 2003), 11–41.

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In 1236 he gave up all these offices and became a Franciscan; from this point on the friars held a chair at the theological faculty. As there were many friars among Alexander’s students, it was possibly through them that he came into contact with the order, which he entered when he was about 60 years of age. Furthermore, after the general chapter of definitors at Montpellier in 1241, Alexander, Jean of La Rochelle and two other theologians were invited to write a commentary on the Rule of St Francis. Alexander remained an influential teacher of the friars until his death. In 1245 he participated as a theologian in the first council of Lyons; on his return to Paris, however, he died suddenly and was buried in the church of the Franciscans. Although the famous Summa Universae Theologiae has generally been considered Alexander’s principal text,2 it is the work of a whole school. Furthermore, several texts were the fruit of his lectures in Paris. As magister regens he was the first to use the Lombardian Sentences as the textbook for his main lectures. This commentary was, for generations, considered to be lost, in 1946, during research on the sources of the Summa Universae Theologiae, FrançoisMarie Henquinet discovered a manuscript containing the commentary, which is one of its main sources. Three main manuscripts provided the basis for the edition of the Glossa in iv libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi that was published between 1951 and 1957 in four volumes.3 In addition, some of Alexander’s biblical commentaries are extant, for example, on the four Gospels, Job and Isaiah.4 Alexander also gave lectures on the Bible, which he had no intention of replacing with the Sentences. He left over two hundred Quaestiones disputatae on various topics, the first series, held before he entered the order, is edited in three volumes.5 He also authored 2 Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae; the prolegomena to vol. 4 forms a separate volume. 3 Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum. See Hubert Philipp Weber, ‘The Glossa in iv libros Sententiarum of Alexander of Hales’, in Medieval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, vol. 2, ed. Philipp W. Rosemann (Leiden, 2010), 79–109. 4 Only the introduction to the commentary on the Gospel of John is edited: Abigail Ann Young, ‘Accessus ad Alexandrum: The Praefatio to the Postilla in Johannis Evangelium of Alexander of Hales (1186?–1245)’, Medieval Studies 52 (1990), 1–23. See Aleksander Horowski, ‘I prologhi delle ‘Postillae’ ai vangeli sinottice di Alessandro di Hales’, cf 77 (2007), 27–62; Beryl Smalley, ‘The Gospels in the Paris schools in the late 12th and early 13th centuries: Peter the Chanter, Hugh of St. Cher, Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle’, in Beryl Smalley, The Gospels in the Schools c. 1100–c. 1280 (London, 1985), 99–196; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 34–36. 5 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’. Some later questions are edited in various places. A complete list can be found in the prolegomena, cli–cciii.

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a small series of sermons.6 An early work, probably from Alexander’s time in the faculty of arts, is the small Exoticon,7 a textbook containing twentytwo Greek verses with translations and explanations. Soon after he became a friar, he started, together with his school, to work on the Summa Universae Theologiae. The exposition on the Rule of St Francis was written in 1241– 1242.8 Mainly as a result of Bonaventure having called Alexander of Hales his teacher,9 the well-known Englishman is usually considered to be a Franciscan theologian, part of the ‘older Franciscan school’. The Summa Universae Theologiae undoubtedly became a famous handbook for many later generations of Franciscan theologians. However, twentieth-century research showed that the book was the work of a whole school; only parts were written by Alexander himself. And the authentic texts were already written when he joined the Franciscans. Is Alexander really a ‘Franciscan theologian’ at all? And if he was, what would this mean? He did not grow up in the Franciscan movement, but studied theology at university. On the other hand, he taught many students from the order, and was inspired by them. In this sense, it can be said that Franciscan theology as a way of thinking drew inspiration from him. From this viewpoint, his theology may better be called ‘pre-Franciscan’, though this is not to deny that it made a significant contribution to the development of theology in a Franciscan form in the thirteenth century. Alexander was a great theological teacher of the scholastic era. A work on Franciscan theology would be incomplete without him.

6 See Johannes Bapt. Schneyer, ‘Eine Sermonesreihe des Mgr. Alexander von Hales in der Hs. Pavias, Univ. Aldini 479, f. 128ra–180vb’, afh 58 (1965), 537–551; Johannes Bapt. Schneyer, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters für die Zeit von 1150–1350. Vol. 1 (Münster, 1969), 269–270; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 36–37. 7 Alexander of Hales, ‘Exoticon’, in Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth Century England, vol. 1: Texts, ed. Toni Hunt (Cambridge, 1991), 298–322. See Victorin Doucet, ‘Alessandro di Hales’, in Enciclopedia cattolica 1 (Vatican City, 1948), 785; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 37. 8 Expositio Quatuor Magistrorum. See Dieter Berg, Armut und Wissenschaft. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Studienwesens der Bettelorden im 13. Jahrhundert (Düsseldorf, 1977), 72–73. 9 Commentarium in quatuor libros Sententiarum, vol. 2, praelocutio; d. 23 a. 2. q. 2, (Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 2, 2.547); Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, prolegomena n. 13, p. 20*.

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Selected Texts

A selection of different texts will be used to shed light on Alexander’s thought, including examples and arguments relating to themes that were to become important: the concept of ‘person’, conscience and synderesis, and the question on the reason for the Incarnation. To draw a more detailed picture of Alexander’s thinking, I will cite a few texts. 2.1 What is Theology? Nowadays we have a certain idea of what is theology. In the thirteenth century, however, the discussions on theology itself had only just started. Alexander does not examine the term theologia, which he does not even use in a technical sense in the Glossa, and only once as a synonym for the Holy Scripture,10 although he was to investigate it in the later Quaestio de theologia,11 which is the source for the relevant question in the Summa Universae Theologiae.12 The Glossa introduces students to the master’s systematic approach, also making some remarks about the method and content of the work. Alexander begins his lecture course with a brief introitus in which he outlines his views on the first book of the Sentences and on the work as a whole. At the beginning of the fourth book Alexander provides another introduction, which looks back at the first three books and then ahead to the sacraments, which constitute the ever-present and ever-renewing participation in salvation. These two texts give an insight into his understanding of theological work. The introitus to the first book opens with a discussion of its materia,13 its content, taking inspiration from two words from Exodus. The content of the first book is God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, who revealed himself in the burning bush (see Exodus 3:14–15: ‘And God said to Moses: “I am whom I am”, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,

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‘The first book of theology, that is to say, Genesis …’—‘Primus enim liber theologiae, Genesis, licet …’ Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, dist. 1 n. 3, p. 1. Edition: Francisco Chaverio Blanco, ‘La Quaestio de doctrina theologiae del manuscrito Vat. Lat. 782. Introducción y edición’, Carthaginensia 15 (1999), 31–72. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, nn. 1–7, pp. 1–13. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, introitus, pp. 1–4. Also see Ulrich G. Leinsle, Einführung in die scholastische Theologie (Paderborn, 1995), 143; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 45–46; Weber, ‘The Glossa’, 93–98; Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Peterborough, Ont., 2007), 64–67. Conversely, Ulrich Köpf, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie im 13. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 1974), 67–69, does not use this text.

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the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’). The other three books treat God as the saviour of Israel, the poor and oppressed people, in accordance with Exodus 3:7–8: ‘And the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt …”.’14 From this first paragraph Alexander draws two conclusions. First, the content of theology, its materia or subiectum,15 is always God, who is known because he made himself known in his self-revelation. He is the God testified to in Holy Scripture, the God of Israel, and the God of Jesus Christ. Secondly, Alexander conceives of theology as based upon the history of salvation. God reveals himself by having mercy on his people, giving them the promise of salvation and leading them into freedom in the promised land. Thus, the experience of God and the faith following from it precede any reflection. The order of the four books is explained by an exegesis of the biblical quotation cited in the first paragraph. Theology is salvation history, telling the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt as the story of the liberation of humanity from the slavery of sin by grace.16 Alexander pursues his argument with two Augustinian distinctions from De doctrina christiana, which play a prominent role in Peter Lombard’s Sentences.17 The fundamental division between ‘things’ and ‘signs’ allows us to understand the task and formal object of theology. This distinction does not imply an essential incompatibility between things and signs: signs are also things, though things are not always signs. ‘Things’ are distinguished by means of another Augustinian division, namely, that between ‘using’ and ‘enjoying’. Some things should only be enjoyed—as Augustine says, they should be loved for their own sake. Only the One and Trinitarian God belongs in this category. Other things should only be used, that is, they should be loved for God’s sake. This applies to creation. Alexander goes on to distinguish a third group of things which should be both enjoyed and used: Christ, the God-Man and the gifts of God, that is to say, the virtues and commandments.18 The first three books of the

14

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Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, introitus, n. 1, p. 1. See Hans Kraml, Die Rede von Gott sprachkritisch rekonstruiert aus Sentenzenkommentaren (Innsbruck, 1984), 91; Leinsle, Einführung, 143; Italo Fornaro, La teologia dell’immagine nella Glossa di Alessandro d’Hales (Vicenza, 1985), 48–51; Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 45–46. See Kraml, Die Rede von Gott, 78–79; Köpf, Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie, 82–86. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, introitus, nn. 3–7, pp. 2–4. See Peter Lombard, Sentences, i, dist. 1, ch. 1, n. 1, p. 55. This third group differs from the Augustinian original. The bishop of Hippo distinguishes things to be used, things to be enjoyed, and things both using and enjoying; see Augustine, De doctrina christiana, i 3, 3.

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Sentences are concerned with things, while the fourth deals with signs, that is, the sacraments of the Church.19 Once again we see Alexander’s tendency to view theology through the lens of salvation history. The theologian speaks about God, but about a God with whom humanity wants to be in communion. Human life as Christian life is aimed at this communion with the Trinity. Thus the first and fundamental question is not how to know something about God, but how to live and to reach beatitude. Theology speaks about God from an existential human point of view. This also means that theology speaks about man as a creature, as a being made by God; it speaks about man from God’s point of view, as it were. Alexander introduces another organizing principle in the last paragraph of the introitus: There is a twofold order. There is an order of things as they emerge from the Creator or Recreator or Renewer, and this is how this work proceeds. And there is an order of things as they are led back to the Creator …20 The idea of exitus and reditus, creation and recreation, opus creationis and opus recreationis, serves as the structuring pattern of Hugh of St Victor’s De sacramentis christianae fidei.21 The order of theology is God’s own order. Thus God is the ‘subject’ of theology in both senses of the word, the medieval and the modern: God is its subject matter, but is also the one who reveals the truth. That is why Alexander can use the term theologia as a synonym for Holy Scripture. The introduction to the fourth book contains an outline of the structure of the Sentences as a whole,22 including the topics of the four books. The doctrine of God thus forms the subject matter of book 1, beginning with God’s unity and Trinity. The terms ‘essence’ and ‘person’ describe the immanent Trinity, whereas ‘knowledge’, ‘will’ and ‘power’ identify God’s economic relation to the created world. The first book, then, discusses God as the creator.23

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Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, introitus n. 2, p. 1. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, introitus, n. 8, p. 4. See Hermann J. Weber, Die Lehre von der Auferstehung der Toten in den Haupttraktaten der scholastischen Theologie von Alexander von Hales zu Duns Scotus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1973), 47–48. Hugh talks about opus conditionis and opus restaurationis as the materia of Holy Scripture. See Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis christianae fidei, i, prologus, c. 2 (pl, vol. 176, 183– 184). See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 4, introitus, pp. 1–8. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 4, introitus, n. 2, p. 1.

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Book 2 is dedicated to creation. Creature, Alexander explains, is either material or spiritual, or it unites both dimensions. Common to all forms of creation is that they come from nothing, so that creature itself produces nothingness. The human’s contribution to salvation history, therefore, is sin, which shows its effect only in damage. The second book ends with a detailed discussion regarding the origins and forms of sin. The central idea of the third book is called ‘renewal’, ‘restoration’ or ‘reparation’. Only the human creature, however, is capable of being renewed—purely spiritual creatures (the angels who have fallen) cannot be renewed, nor are purely corporeal creatures subject to renewal, since they do not require it. Christ, of course, is the renewer, and renewal is brought to humanity through grace and the commandments: Since these [graces and precepts] are not yet sufficient for salvation, this fourth book deals with the sacraments and the graces of the sacraments. These graces of the sacraments do not only concern what flows directly from God, but also what [comes] through the Mediator; and it deals with beatitude and the punishment [opposed to it]. This is first touched upon at the beginning of the authority, where it is said, ‘Go and wash in the Jordan seven times’ (ivKings 5:10), and secondly it is touched upon by this [word] which says, ‘Your flesh will receive cleanness’ etc.24 The last book, finally, is devoted to the sacraments, that is, to the concrete signs of grace in life and in faith. The grace of the sacraments flows through the Mediator, so that the theology of the sacraments is connected both with Christology and with the theology of grace. The last part of this book should contain a treatment of last things, but Alexander’s Glossa ends with distinction 39 of book 4 dealing with the sacrament of matrimony, the last part is missing. The following paragraphs of the introitus offer an exegesis of the story of Naaman’s salvation in the Jordan in relation to the sacraments.25 Although Alexander quotes Aristotle a few times in the Glossa, at this time the term science was not discussed from an Aristotelian point of view. This, however, was to change when Alexander disputed, after 1236, the Quaestio de theologia. Science deals with causes and caused things. The object of theology is God, who is the cause of all causes. Theology is, strictly speaking, metaphysics, for it deals with the first principles. It is sui gratia, it does not build upon any

24 25

Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 4, introitus, n. 3, p. 2. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 4, introitus, nn. 2–3, pp. 1–2.

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other science; it stands on its own. For this reason it can, with Aristotle,26 be called wisdom.27 This means that theology deals with the last origin or the deepest root of everything that has its origin with God itself. Therefore it stands above any other science. A second aspect is that theology deals with the path of the human, its life, its beatitude. This aspect can be called ‘practical’ or ‘affective’: ‘So theology which fulfils the soul in regard to the affect onto the good through the principle of love and fear is proper wisdom.’28 Alexander sees theology as metaphysics but also as the history of salvation that is human’s own history. So theology shows salvation and moves the faithful to take part in salvation themselves by increasing in virtue and doing good. Finally, theology has a universal aspect that can be found in the Bible as a whole. It is full of relations from Scripture to things, things to each other and effects. The human is object and hearer of the preaching. The people in the Bible are representative of others. The blind stand for every kind of blindness, and Job for everyone. Also, sentences and phrases often have a deeper sense that leads to another meaning. Many times Scripture shows readers their inner selves. This is significant for salvation. The first and most important object of theology is God, the creator of the whole world, heaven and earth. God’s relation to all things is in causation.29 This short description of two arguments shows a development in Alexander’s thinking from the early period where he worked very closely with Peter Lombard’s collection of sentences and biblical texts through to a time when he developed a more systematic overview with a metaphysical interest. But his theology did not lose the more ‘practical’ aspect of the history of salvation. According to this view, theology is not solely a logical process but part of the dialogue between God and the faithful. In this respect it exemplifies the differ-

26 27

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Aristoteles, Metaphysics, a 1, p. 981b. Alexander of Hales, Quaestio de theologia, n. 11, p. 51, vgl. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, 2, n. 1 sol. See Venicio Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte. Untersuchung zum dogmatischen Verständnis des Alten Testaments als heilsgeschichtlicher Periode nach Alexander von Hales (Münster, 1970), 20–22; Kraml, Die Rede von Gott, 104–105. Quaestio de theologia n. 12, p. 51. See also: ‘So theology which fulfills the soul in regard to its affects, moving it through fear and love onto the good, is proper and in principle wisdom.’ Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, n. 1 sol. 2, p. 2. See Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte, 22–24; Kraml, Die Rede von Gott, 153. Quaestio de theologia, n. 14, p. 52, see Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, n. 1 ad 2, p. 3.

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ence between science and wisdom. Furthermore, this gives us good reason to describe this form of theology as an early example of a genuinely Franciscan theology. 2.2 The Definition of ‘Person’ Alexander’s contribution to the definition of ‘persona’ is well known in the history of philosophy.30 But he uses the word in a strict theological way. Although the use of the term ‘person’ in theology is full of difficulties, it is crucial for the Christian doctrine of God. In Alexander’s Glossa the term occurs in the first three books. He defines ‘person’ in his own way, adding an original part, the third definition (later called the definitio magistralis), and marks out the fields of its use. This aspect of his theology thus has its own specific history of reception. The first book contains a threefold definition. Alexander does not reduce the three ways to one. In fact, the three definitions have a standing of their own and are therefore used in various contexts. The first definition is taken from Boethius. Here is the full text of this paragraph: But here is asked. Boethius [writes] in the book On Two Natures: ‘Person is the individual substance of a reasonable nature.’ But although three persons—still not three substances but three hypostases. Hence Boethius [writes] there: ‘With this definition of persons we determine what the Greeks called hypostasis.’ And further: ‘And the Greek language is not weak in words, but for essence, subsistence, substance, person they have also nouns: essence is called ousia, subsistence ousiosis, substance hypostasis, person prosopon. Therefore the Greeks call individual hypostases substances because they underlie other things and are themselves supposed and subjected like accidents.’ But this is understood about created hypostases.31 The question here, in the context of Trinitarian theology, is the extent to which Greek terms can be successfully transferred into Latin. The triune God is one and three. Theology has to distinguish the one God and the three—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. To designate the three the tradition uses the term persona, which must not be understood as the verbal translation of prosopon, but as equal to hypostasis.

30 31

See Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 119–141; Weber, ‘The Glossa’, 99–104. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 29 n. 9a, p. 226.

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Boethius’s definition emphasizes two fundamental aspects of what being a person means. Only a reasonable being can be a person, that is, God, angels and humans. And individuality is indispensable for being a person. In various places Alexander uses only the authority of Boethius if his designations are sufficient.32 Nevertheless, this argument is, as a whole, not sufficient. This gives a reason to elaborate another definition, which is found in Richard of St Victor’s small treatise De Trinitate: ‘Master Richard: “Person subsists through itself alone just as a mode of a certain rational existence”.’33 Richard also gives another definition which Alexander uses synonymously: person is ‘an individual substance of a reasonable nature’.34 Here there are three elements that are strongly connected. The first one is that the person is ‘incommunicable’, as Richard literally says.35 That means, in a positive sense, that the person is, itself, independent and self-contained. This is the condition of relationship to another. Existence, literally ek-sistere, means that the being owes itself to another. Alexander uses ‘subsistence’ synonymously, which in this place should correspond to the Greek hypostasis. This shows that the argument is an ontological one. The person is an ens distinctum that can be qualified by Boethius’s or Richard’s definition. Richard explains the Trinity as being three in one substance. Therefore, the Boethian definition seemed to be insufficient for the task of talking about divine persons. The first definition ‘gazes at the thing’ and shows person as it is in itself. The second one gazes ‘at the reason of the noun’ and elucidates the sense of the noun, as it is used in the context.36 32

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So in Trinitarian theology, e.g., Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 26 n. 1ii, p. 250, or in Christology, Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 3, d. 10 n. 2b, p. 114 (Red. ae). ‘Magister Richardus: “Persona est subsistens per se solum iuxta singularem quemdam rationalis exsistentiae modum”.’ Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 29 n. 9a, p. 226. ‘Rationalis naturae individua substantia.’ Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 25 n. 1c, p. 238. See vol. 3, d. 5 n. 18, p. 63 (Red. ae); n. 47, pp. 69–70 (Red. l); in different way cited from Richard of St Victor, De Trinitate iv c. 24, ed. Jean Ribaillier (Paris, 1958), 189. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 25 n. 1c–d, pp. 238–239. Here Richard’s definition only is used. Richard’s second definition is: ‘Person is an incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature’—‘Persona est exsistentia incommunicabilis intellectualis naturae.’ Richard of St Victor, De Trinitate iv c. 24, ed. Ribaillier, 189. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 23 n. 9b–c, p. 226. Alfons Hufnagel, ‘Die Wesensbestimmung der Person bei Alexander Halensis’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 4 (1957), 148–174, esp. 152, will answer this question using

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While Richard points out the relationship between persons, Alexander places emphasis on identity and separation from each other. The definition is used in a metaphysical way. And so it becomes more important for the Christological question of the union of two natures in one person. In Alexander’s view it can only be used in Trinitarian theology with more differentiations. The definition should also include the ‘properties’ of each person. For this reason, Alexander adds a third definition, in the Summa Universae Theologiae, called definitio magistralis.37 There are good reasons to suppose that it is of Alexander’s origin: ‘After that it can also be defined this way: “A person is a hypostasis with distinct properties which belong to dignity.” ’38 Divine persons must not be defined with their own substance, because there is the one substance for three persons. Alexander goes another way and marks out the ‘accumulation of properties’.39 This idea is found in Porphyrius,40 and can be used for divine as well as for created persons. These definitions differ this way: The first one gazes at the thing of this noun ‘person’; the second at the reason of the noun: for ‘persona’, as Isidore says, is ‘res per se una’; the third at the use of the noun, and it can be elicited from Boethius’s definition, where he connects reason to person. For he removes the noun person from the accidental being; from the being of a substance of incorporeal parts like the soul; from the being of an inanimate, senseless, unreasonable and every substance which does not subsist except in singulars and they are called second substance; similar from the being of human nature in Christ. From this follows the last reason of person: a distinct hypostasis …41 Alexander asks in which position ‘person’ is in the order of being. Philosophy is classically divided into three fields, rational philosophy, natural and moral. This can be exemplified through the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ. Human

37 38 39 40 41

the parallel text in Alexander of Hales’s Summa Universae Theologiae, where ‘ratio’ and ‘natura’ can be used synonymously. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, n. 387, p. 570. ‘Potest autem et sic definiri: “Persona est hypostasis distincta proprietate ad dignitatem pertinente.” ’ Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 23 n. 9b, p. 226. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 19 n. 24c p. 203; see also Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, n. 337 ad 6, p. 501. See Porphyrius, Isagoge, ed. Adolf Busse (Berlin, 1887), 7, 21–23, esp. the translation of Boethius, ed. Busse 33, 4–6. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 23 n. 9c, p. 226.

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individuality or essence means the rational being, nature or subject means the natural, person the moral. Therefore, a person is a ‘moral thing’, namely a person has dignity. Moral being does not solely mean an ethical dimension but is rather used in an ontological way. Dignity points out the concrete ability of man to act arbitrarily and to go his way, taking responsibility for himself. There is only one centre of acting in humanity, also in Christ, the God-Man. That ensures the unity of the person and is the presupposition of dignity as a necessary condition of personal being:42 There are these three opinions shown according to a threefold being: natural, moral, rational. And according to these three occurs a threefold way to talk about Christ. Person is a moral thing, because it names the property of dignity. To speak personally about him means to speak morally. Whenever we speak according to the essence that is man, if the rational form is common, we speak rationally. [Whenever] one speaks about the union of natures, in which way the natures are two, we speak naturally. Morally Christ is one, not one thing; rational one thing, just as he participates in the unity of person; natural he is two natures. According to the rational being, whatsoever is added beyond the species, are the individuants. So the humanity of Christ and his accidents are like accidents of the divine hypostasis.43 The unity of God and man in Christ, described as two natures in one person (hypostasis) by the council of Chalcedon,44 proves the concept of ‘person’. Another union than a personal (that is, ‘hypostatic’) one would not allow the divinity to be unified with a perfect humanity.45 The term ‘person’ is located 42

43

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See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 3, d. 6 n. 18, p. 80 (Red. ae), n. 38, p. 87 (Red. l). Redaction e uses this threefold scheme and places a new emphasis. The noun ‘subiectum’ belongs to natural, ‘individuum’ to rational, ‘person’ to moral philosophy. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 1, d. 25 n. 7, pp. 236–237, note (Red. e). Hufnagel, ‘Wesensbestimmung der Person’ 165–166, uses this text and doesn’t mention the doubts raised by textual criticism. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 3, d. 6 n. 38, p. 87 (Red. l). This text is brought in different versions, probably both authentic. Red. l is more extensively elaborated than ae (Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 3, d. 6 n. 18, p. 80) and focuses on the hypostatic union. See Weber, ‘The Glossa’, 86–87. See Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, 37th edn (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1991), n. 302. Theo Kobusch, Die Entdeckung der Person. Metaphysik der Freiheit und modernes Menschenbild (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1993), 23–25, sees in this division in three parts the crucial

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in three contexts: the doctrine of God, the theological anthropology and the theology of hypostatic union. Because the Incarnation is the height of being human, discussions on the hypostatic union are strongly connected to the Christian doctrine of human beings.46 2.3 Conscientia and Synderesis Alexander’s comment on conscience in the Glossa is different from most other parts of this work. In the second book, fortieth distinction, Alexander gives a self-contained treatise on conscience, pointing out the term synderesis. The passage from the Sentences is only a starting point for the systematic argumentation. The two terms, conscientia and synderesis, by others most often written synteresis, are used to distinguish various aspects of conscience. At first there is an outline of the various problems: After that is to add about the acts … Whether synderesis is a power or a habit; [and] if a power, whether it is part of reason or not; and whether it pertains to judgement or to will in the free choice; and whether there is sinning following the synderesis; and whether it is extinguished in someone who is on the way; and whether it is extinguished in the damned.47 The discussion starts with Jerome’s exegesis of Ezekiel 1:10, the vision of four living creatures each having four faces: an eagle’s, a man’s, a lion’s and an ox’s. The eagle flying above all stands for the ‘spark of conscience’, that is called the synderesis. So conscience is common and synderesis is the term that gives a specification. The other faces represent the three potencies of the soul, so the synderesis should be understood as potency. Alexander answers the question whether it is habit or potency as follows: To the first is to say that the term synderesis is used in a material and a formal way, in a formal way, if it is called a co-natural habit; in a material way, if it is called an inborn judgement. For if the soul is to be not entirely

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point of designation of being a person. See also Corinna Schlapkohl, Persona est naturae rationabilis individua substantia. Boethius und die Debatte über den Personbegriff (Marburg, 1999), 173–174. See Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 118–141; Hufnagel, ‘Die Wesensbestimmung der Person’; Brigitte Th. Kible, ‘Person. ii. Hoch- und Spätscholastik; Meister Eckhart; Luther’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie 7 (Basel, 1989), 283–300. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, d. 40 n. 1, p. 380. See Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 107–117; Weber, ‘The Glossa’, 104–107.

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deprived of the good, so that it doesn’t have a help against the tinder, and in this way the tinder declines downwards from the corrupted nature, so synderesis above is neither extinguished in them nor misled. And in this way there is some certain material light in the sense to be seen and in the intellect to be recognised, on account of which in the moving power there would not be a light in the good which turns away every time from the bad?48 Alexander does not want to specify synderesis formally as potency for it is nothing in the human being. But the designation as habitus is specified with the term connaturalis and shows that this habit is not extraneous but comes from the human himself. The ‘inborn judgement’ helps human reason to identify the ‘tinder’, that is, how evil has an influence on human acting. So synderesis deals with human acting. Is it therefore a part of human reason? There is to say that reason can be considered how it is reason or how it is a certain nature. In the first manner the synderesis is above reason and not in reason; in the second manner it is in reason and not in free choice because it is above reason.49 It is not a part of reason and also not of free choice, but stands above them. Reason and free will are the fundamentals that carry synderesis. The latter is the light that shows the right way to the practical reason. So is it possible to sin according to the synderesis? In other words, can the ‘conscience’ be in error? This question shows the first difference: synderesis as ‘spark of the conscience’ cannot be erroneous, conscience can.50 The fourth question is whether synderesis can be extinguished in anyone. Alexander designates two functions, namely, to guide to good and to advise against evil: To the first is to say that it is according to synderesis to give precepts but only according to free choice to sin. Hence, is to say that one does not acquire merit according to synderesis ‘per se’ but merits in the free choice itself, and that occurs similarly to every other power.

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Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, d. 40 n. 1if, p. 382. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, d. 40 n. 1iid, p. 383; see 217, d. 24 n. 14c, p. 217. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, d. 40 n. 1iii, pp. 383–384; d. 24 n. 14c, p. 217.

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To the other one is to say that it is extinguished in someone who is on the way concerning some thing and not concerning some other. Because synderesis every time grumbles at evil, and this is not extinguished. But it does not stimulate to good every time. Hence according to this part, it is extinguished in someone who is on the way. To the other one is to say that it is extinguished in the devil in a twofold manner, because it never grumbles at evil nor ever stimulates to the good. But nevertheless this is not extinguished, in fact it grumbles every time at evil as punishment.51 Synderesis shows the evil and the way to the good. Being on the way it helps one to act in a good way, while when one is falling into sin it warns. In the damned it is itself the punishment, the knowledge of having lost the good. Years later Alexander was to discuss the other term conscientia in a Quaestio disputata de conscientia.52 The term conscientia can mean three things. First, it can mean the content of the decision of conscience. Secondly, it can mean that knowledge by which a decision is possible at all, the scientia which makes the decision of the conscientia. In this sense it is the law of our knowledge and the scale of human acting. This meaning, which corresponds to the original understanding of the word, can be either the result or the condition of free will. Finally, the term stands for the moving force behind the decision. Here Alexander sees synderesis as the spark of conscience. In other contexts he understands conscientia more generally as the ordering of the human being towards the good, the pure and the just. 2.4 The Reason for the Incarnation Revelation shows that the second divine person became a human being. Following St Paul, the Incarnation occurred to redeem humanity from sin: ‘God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons’ (Galatians 4:4–5). From a soteriological point of view the answer to the question why God sent his Son is clear. The Incarnation of the Son is necessary for the redemption. But is the Incarnation necessary in itself? From the twelfth century onwards

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Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 2, d. 40 n. 1ivd–f, pp. 384–385; see vol. 3, d. 3 n. 12iib.f, pp. 41–42. For quotations from the Quaestio de conscientia see Lottin, Psychologie et Morale aux xiie et xiiie siècles, vol. 2 (Gembloux, 1948), 183–184 and 356–357. See also Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 2, n. 421, p. 496. See Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 107–117.

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this question was also discussed in an abstract and speculative way. Is it possible that God would have sent his son, even if the sin had not occurred? Later John Duns Scotus would solve this problem with the thesis of absolute predestination. But the history of this solution goes back two centuries. Alexander deals with this theme especially in two Quaestiones disputatae, discussed before 1236.53 In the third book of the Glossa this theme is given attention. A short text from the first distinction shows Alexander’s way of solving that problem: There are many reasons why the Son was made incarnate. The first is that it is the showing of the greatest charity of the Father, from which he did not forbear his own son (Romans 8:32). The second reason is that the name of the Son should not be transferred to the Father or to the Holy Spirit, because, if the Father or the Holy Spirit had been made incarnate, he would have been the Son of Man. The third reason is that, because everything was created in the Word of God, the recreation must occur in a meritorious way by the same by whom the creation had occurred. The fourth reason is that humanity was lost by that one who wanted to know good and bad (Genesis 3:5) and so through wisdom; hence it is worth being redeemed by wisdom and so by the Son. The fifth reason is that, because humanity was made according to the image and according to the likeness (Genesis 1:26; Wisdom 2:23), it is not possible for the image of God to be restored to the same one it belongs to, except by the image of the Father; but the Son is the image of the Father; therefore by the Son. Yet by redemption we are all adoptive sons (Romans 8:16); but that cannot occur except by the natural son; therefore the Son has to be made incarnate.— Yet we are by redemption joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17); but only the Son can confirm the inheritance; therefore it is by him that it will be confirmed for us.54 Here solutions are given to a number of questions related to the problem of why the Incarnation is the mission of the Son. This is the most fitting and most worthy manner of redemption, for the Son by whom everything is created is the same by whom everyone and everything is redeemed. So there 53

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Quaestio de incarnatione (Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae antequam esset frater, vol. 1, 193–223) and the Quaestio de praedestinatione Christi (Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae antequam esset frater, vol. 1, 151–159). See Weber, Sünde und Gnade, 270–278; Weber, ‘The Glossa’, 107–108. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 3, d. 1 n. 4, pp. 12–13 and n. 24, pp. 19–20.

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is a connection between the creation and the redemption, and both are seen in a Trinitarian context. And the redeemer brings back humanity, the fallen image of God, and gives the human race community with the Trinity. These concepts lead back to motives found in the New Testament such as the Son letting the humans participate in his ‘inheritance’ (see Romans 8:17; Galatians 4:7) or letting humans become sons of God (see Galatians 4:4; Matthew 5:45). Alexander collects arguments for the fittingness of the Incarnation of Christ: ‘In the most congruent way the unification happened in the person of the Son.’55 The creation tends to a union of all creatures and a union with God, its Creator. The hypostatic union is the perfection of this union between corporal materia and spiritual essence, which would otherwise remain incomplete. So if there were no sin, Christ would not have become human to be the saviour but to fulfil the destiny of creation. So the Incarnation would make sense also without sin. But to redeem humanity from sin is the mission of Christ and seems to be the most appropriate way of salvation. However, as we know that sin is in the world, this question is totally speculative. Alexander asks whether the Incarnation would make sense too if sin had not occurred.56 He makes very careful use of arguments of convenience. Asked directly whether the Son would have become a human being in every case, he seems to agree. It is more fitting to say that the Son of God is foreseen to be the Son of Man. And that means the hypostatic union is a predestined union. And otherwise the Son of Man is predestined to be the Son of God.57 It is the one person, the Son of God and the Son of Man, sent into the world to elevate the human nature and redeem from sin. The question whether the Incarnation is necessarily a consequence of sin or also could have occurred without the first sin is discussed in detail, but, finally, left unsolved by Alexander.

3

Alexander and His School: The Summa Universae Theologiae

Alexander was a well-known theologian who influenced a few contemporary theologians and many scholars. The first of these scholars is Jean de la Rochelle, who was already a friar when he started to study with Alexander (and with the other famous masters, Philip the Chancellor and William of Auxerre). Later he was magister regens himself, though it is not known whether instead of

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Quaestio de incarnatione, n. 72, p. 216. See Quaestio de incarnatione, n. 47–48, pp. 208–209. Quaestio de prædestinatione Christi, n. 10, p. 153, see n. 11, pp. 153–154.

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Alexander or together with him. In 1238 he disputed publicly with the bishop of Paris on the accumulation of benefices by clergymen. Later he took part in the preparation of the first council of Lyons, but he died in February 1245 in Paris, a few months before the council convened. His commentary on the Sentences is lost, but there are a few quaestiones, commentaries on the Bible, sermons, the Summa de anima and the Summa de vitiis. Eudes Rigaud, born around 1205, entered the Franciscan order between 1231 and 1236, was magister regens in Paris from 1245 to 1248, and from 1248 he was the archbishop of Rouen. In 1270 he was on the crusade to Tunis with King Louis ix, in 1274 he was a member of the second council of Lyons; he died the following year. He was the author of a commentary on the Sentences, quaestiones and many sermons. William of Melitona, who was a regent master teacher in Paris from 1248, belongs to the next generation of scholars. Together with Eudes Rigaud, he took part in the condemnations of the Talmud in Paris. He was put in charge of continuing the work on Alexander’s Summa Universae Theologiae, but was unable to finish it before his death in 1260. Finally, no less than a person than Bonaventura calls himself a student of Alexander. He also made contributions to the fourth part of the Summa Universae Theologiae. The Summa Universae Theologiae is the main work of Alexander and the whole Franciscan school in Paris. For hundreds of years, it was regarded as Alexander’s principal work and he was thought to be its sole author. However, when, in the nineteenth century, the Franciscan friars of Quaracchi started the critical edition of St Bonaventure’s works, the first doubts regarding Alexander’s authorship appeared. Book 4 of the Summa Universae Theologiae was completed by William of Melitona after Alexander’s death. This fact had been well known before, but now it was discovered that the other books included texts by William of Melitona and Bonaventure.58 In 1924, when the Quaracchi edition of the Summa Universae Theologiae was started, however, the patres editores did not pay attention to these historical facts.59 Their prolegomena to the first book still defended Alexander’s sole authorship of the first three books. Subsequently, this approach came under much criticism, and some of the Summa Universae Theologiae’s varied sources—texts by Alexander himself, but also by Jean de La Rochelle and others—were identified, so that in the 1930s the editors took a radical step. The printed sheets of the fourth volume (which was 58

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Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, nn. 262, 333, and 514–518; vol. 2, nn. 427–523. See Friedrich Pelster, ‘Literaturgeschichtliche Probleme im Anschluß an die Bonaventuraausgabe von Quaracchi’, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 48 (1924), 500– 532, esp. 500–506. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, xxvii–xxviii.

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to contain book 3) were not released and the editors devoted themselves to a new extended introduction. This process lasted until 1948, when a fresh volume of prolegomena appeared, with over three hundred pages written by Victorin Doucet.60 In it, the editors succeeded in identifying sources for the first three books. Alexander can be called the author as it seems that he started the work and probably gave it its structure. But only a part of the text came from his hand and even this part was maybe revised by his scholars. So the first three books of the Summa as a whole are not representative of his authentic theology. Even for those parts that have sources in the Glossa or Alexander’s Quaestiones disputatae, it is not clear whether they were written by himself or not. So the Summa Universae Theologiae should be studied as the work of a school in itself. For many questions in the Summa Universae Theologiae the editors were able to find sources. These are from Alexander, Jean of La Rochelle, Eudes Rigaud, anonymous authors, Philip the Chancellor and William of Auxerre. The editors attribute the redaction of the first and third book to John of La Rochelle (Inquirens), for the second book an anonymous compiler ( fr. Considerans). The work started after 1235; many parts were ready in 1245 and were even copied. After Alexander’s death, the Summa Universae Theologiae remained unfinished until 1255 when pope Alexander iv gave William of Melitona the task of completing the work. He added a few parts to the first three books (lib. 1 n. 514– 518; n. 333, ev. n. 262; lib. 2 n. 427–523) and the fourth book, which also includes texts by Bonaventure. Finally, before William died, he elaborated the question on the effect of alms at least 1260. For this was the last question, the Summa Universae Theologiae is unfinished.61 Summa theologiae (Summa fratris Alexandri, Summa Halensis) First book (vol. 1) Introductory treatise—a. On the unity and trinity of God ordained to the creed of the heart: 1. On the substance of divine unity of God; 2. On the plurality of divine trinity—b. On the unity and trinity of God ordained to the confession of the mouth: 1. On the names of God in general; 2. On the names of God in detail. 60

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Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, prolegomena. Also see Victorin Doucet, ‘De Summa fratris Alexandri Halensis historice considerate’, Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 40 (1948), 1–44; Victorin Doucet, ‘Autour des Prolegomena ad Summam fratris Alexandri’, afh 43 (1950), 196–200; Ignatius Brady, ‘The Summa Theologica of Alexander of Hales (1924–1928)’, afh 70 (1977), 434–447. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, prolegomena, cccliv–ccclxx.

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Second book A. First part (vol. 2): 1. On the creatures in general; 2. On the angels; 3. On the corporal creatures; 4. On the human being—b. Second part (vol. 3): 1. On evil; 2. On the sin of the angel and the human; 3. On venial and mortal sin. Third book (vol. 4) a. On the incarnate word—b. On laws and precepts: 1. On the eternal law; 2. On the natural law; 3. On the law of Moses; 4. On the law of the Gospel—c. On grace and virtues: 1. On grace; 2. On the formed faith. Fourth book (missing in the critical edition, here following the print Venice 1576) On the sacraments in general—On the sacraments of the natural law and the law of Moses—On the sacraments of the Gospel: in general; On the sacrament of Baptism; On the sacrament of Confirmation; On the sacrament of Eucharist; On Penance. Only a few passages can show the theology of the Summa Universae Theologiae, which is, in some aspects, written at a further remove from Alexander’s theology. The introductory treatise (‘On theology’) has Alexander’s question on theology as its source. Theology is science because it deals with the cause of all causes, with God. In leading the soul to perfection, theology is proper wisdom.62 The first part of the Summa Universae Theologiae’s doctrine of God contains the first distinction between a treatise on the one God and a second treatise on the Trinity. These are the faith of the heart. The second part is called the confession of the mouth.63 The Summa Universae Theologiae deals with the reason for the Incarnation on the basis of Alexander’s considerations. The Incarnation would have been appropriate also without sin, because it tends to the ‘assumption and unibility’ of the human nature with God. This possibility was lost with the Fall.64 The extended theology of grace derives mostly from texts of Jean of la Rochelle.65 By contrast with Peter Lombard, who locates it in the doctrine of the original state, or Thomas Aquinas, it can be found after Christology and 62 63 64 65

See Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, n. 1, p. 2. See above 2.1 What is theology? See Elisabeth Gössmann, Metaphysik und Heilsgeschichte. Eine theologische Untersuchung der Summa Halensis (Alexander von Hales) (Munich, 1964), 323–370. See Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 4, n. 23, pp. 41–42. See Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 4, nn. 606–672.

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the treatise on the precepts in the third book. The ‘grace freely given’ is as ‘uncreated grace’ the Holy Spirit himself, is the love in which God turns to the humanity. The ‘created grace’ means the gifts that make this love concrete in human life. It helps fallen human nature and puts humans on their feet again. The effects of grace are explained in a very detailed manner and with differentiated terms.66 Alexander was a distinguished theologian and a friar. His authentic works give an insight into his theological teaching. Before he entered the order he was already teacher of many friars and prepared what later will be called Franciscan theology. The Summa Universae Theologiae, a work of Alexander and his school, is the first book that shows this special Franciscan form of thinking of God. Theology, in this view, is more than science, it is wisdom. 66

See Johann Auer, Die Entwicklung der Gnadenlehre in der Hochscholastik mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kardinals Matteo d’Acquasparta. Erster Teil: Das Wesen der Gnade (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1942), passim.

chapter 14

“Wisdom Has Built Her House; She Has Set Up Her Seven Pillars”: Roger Bacon, Franciscan Wisdom, and Conversion to the Sciences* Timothy J. Johnson

At the outset of the Canticum pauperis (1269–1279),1 John Pecham recounts how his rejection of Epicurean delights and thirst for truth and goodness prompted his study of the liberal arts and sciences.2 These disciplines, however, left him evermore disappointed, and promoted a conversion or turning away from the wisdom of the ancients to the wisdom of the mendicants.3 The followers of Francis exemplified the most famous philosophers: in poverty they were like the Socratics, with their bare feet and politeness they were like the Platonists, in their seriousness like the philosophers of the Academy, in their ceaseless search for wisdom they were similar to the Peripatetics; and they claimed they did all of this out of love for (the Lord) Jesus Christ.4 Throughout the Canticum pauperis, Pecham refers to ‘the senior’ who directed his intellectual–spiritual discernment process. Scholars suggest this guide was his Parisian professor, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.5 * I would like to express my gratitude to the University of Dresden for the opportunity to undertake the initial research for this chapter as a Senior Fellow in the Humanities in the summer of 2014. I owe a debt of thanks to Dr Jeremiah Hackett for his critical reading of an earlier version of this chapter and the constructive comments and rich bibliography he shared with me. Thanks are in order as well to Ms Peggy Dyess at Flagler College for her assistance in securing much of the research material used in this chapter. 1 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis. 2 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, 134. The terms ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’, together with ‘doctrina’ will be used interchangeably throughout this chapter in accord with the entry ‘ars, scientia, disciplina’ in Mariken Teeuwen, The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2003), 358–360. 3 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, 135–139. On Pecham’s ‘emancipation’ of Christian wisdom from pagan wisdom, see Leonardo Sileo, ‘I maestri di teologia della seconda metà del Duecento’, in Storia della teologia nel medievo, vol. 3: La maturità del sapere scolastico (1274–1312), ed. Giulio D’Onofrio (Casale Monferrrato, 1996), 19–20. 4 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, 139–140. 5 John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, xviii.

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Pecham’s appeal to his revered professor on the issue of wisdom is by no means a surprise, given Bonaventure’s concerted effort to delineate the nature of wisdom from within the Franciscan tradition while at the University of Paris. His Collationes in hexaëmeron (1273) although incomplete, remain a magisterial exposition on the heights and depths of Christian wisdom.6 With reason, scholars speak of Franciscan theology as a ‘wisdom theology’ or even a ‘wisdom tradition’.7 Bonaventure’s own ‘senior’ in Paris was the English friar, Alexander of Hales, who also closely examined the question of wisdom as the first Minorite chair of theology. The study of Roger Bacon’s writings against the background of his confrères’ perspectives and the context of thirteenth-century reflection on the nature of theology, philosophy and ecclesial reform in general, discloses that the conception of Christian wisdom among Minorites was nuanced, if not contested.8 This chapter asserts that Roger Bacon’s Opus maius, Opus minus, Opus tertium (1266–1268), and Compendium studii philosophiae (1271/2) are Franciscan wisdom texts;9 they argue, however, for a conversion to the liberal arts in a manner distinct from the wisdom trajectory illustrated by John Pecham’s reflections in the Canticum pauperis.10 The nature of wisdom, theology and the sciences was a vibrant concern in the Minorite community and beyond— especially in the wake of the introduction of select Aristotelian works into

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Collationes in hexaëmeron, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 329a–449b. Zachary Hayes, ‘Franciscan tradition as a wisdom tradition’, Spirit and Life: A Journal of Contemporary Franciscanism 7 (1997), 27–40. Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Preaching precedes theology: Roger Bacon on the failure of mendicant education’, fs 68 (2010), 83–95, esp. 85–86. On the views of various thirteenth-century Franciscans vis-à-vis philosophy and theology, see Sophie Delmas, Un franciscain à Paris au milieu du xiiie siècle: La maître en théologie Eustache d’Arras (Paris, 2010), 127–171; see also Bert Roest, ‘Scientiae and Sapientia in Gilbert of Tournai’s (E)Rudimentum doctrinae’, in Le vocabulaire des écoles des Mendiants au moyen âge, ed. Maria Cândida Pacheco (Turnhout, 1999), 164–179. For Guilbert’s text, see Gilberto di Tournai, De modo addiscendi, intro. and ed. Enrico Bonifacio (Turin, 1953). Roger Bacon, Opus maius, ed. John H. Bridges, 3 vols (London, 1900). The Elibron Classics Replica edition is utilized here. For the Opus tertium, Opus minus and Compendium studii philosophiae, see Fr. Rogeri Bacon, Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita, Vol. 1, ed. J.S. Brewer (London, 1859), 3–519. Consult Roger Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, ed. Eugenio Massa (Zurich, 1953). On the life and works of Roger Bacon, see Amanda Power, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Cambridge, 2013), esp. 44–53, with regard to the wisdom motif. On Bacon and the sciences, see Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden, 1997).

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the university curriculum in 1255.11 Alexander of Hales treats this thematic at the outset of his seminal commentary on the Libri quatuor Sententiarum of Peter Lombard.12 Bonaventure demonstrated a similar interest as well. The De reductione artium theologiam (1254) is but one example.13 In the later Collationes in hexaëmeron he treats the liberal arts and claims that the locus of mendicant wisdom is in the middle of the ecclesial assembly,14 and ultimately revealed in the poverty of Francis of Assisi.15 Bacon opts for the middle of the world by recounting the story of the poverello making music in the forest.16 His effort to embrace and promote wisdom in and through the liberal arts shifts the focus of Minorite evangelical engagement into the ‘cloister of world’ in a unique academic and pastoral fashion. The ramifications of this alternative or perhaps concomitant Franciscan wisdom tradition are many; they include an enchantment with the splendours of divine revelation, the human capacity to experience them and the necessity to live out their

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Parisian university inception or inaugural sermons of new masters of theology in the mid-thirteen century regularly included an examination of the relationship between theology and other fields of study. See Nancy Spatz, ‘A newly identified text: the inception speech of Galdericus, first cluniac regent master of theology at the University of Paris’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 61 (1994), 133–147. Perhaps the most well-known effort to categorize and systematize the sciences in this period was De ortu scientiarum (circa 1250) by Robert Kilwardby. On this text, see Alfonso Maierù, ‘Richard Kilwardby on the division of sciences’, in A Companion to Robert Kilwardby, ed. Henrik Lagerlund and Paul Thom (Leiden, 2013), 353–389. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae. Alexander’s role in the composition and redaction of the opus is complicated, as the critical reception of the Quaracchi volumes attested. On this controversy, see Kenan B. Osborne, ‘Alexander of Hales: Precursor and Promoter of Franciscan Theology’, in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed. Kenan B. Osborne (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1994), 5–18; Jacek M. Wierzbicki, Alexander de Hales Quaestiones disputatae de gratia (Rome, 2008), 37–39. De reductione artium ad theologiam, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 329a–449b. On the literary genre and historical context of this text, see Joshua Benson, ‘Identifying the literary genre of the De reductione ad theologiam: Bonaventure’s inaugural lecture at Paris’, fs 67 (2009), 149–178. Benson argues persuasively that Bonaventure’s work dates to 1254 and was the second part of his inception ‘principium’ as master of theology, with the first being the text Omnium artifex docuit me sapientiam. Furthermore, he identifies Pecham’s possible ‘principium’ in ‘An unedited principium: Fons sapientiae verbum Dei in excelsis’, cf 81 (2011), 71–100, and ‘Fons sapientiae verbum Dei in excelsis: John Pecham’s Inaugural Sermon?’ cf 81 (2011), 451–478. Pecham incepted in the period 1269/70. Collationes in hexaëmeron, coll. i, no. 1, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 329a. Collationes in hexaëmeron, coll. xx, no. 30, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 430b. Bacon, Opus tertium, 298.

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truths in the world. In this light, Bacon’s title of doctor mirabilis is most fitting. At the outset this chapter examines perceptions of wisdom, theology and the sciences in Western Christendom. Moving forward, it explores in turn, Bacon’s hermeneutic of sapiential reform and the epistemological conversion evident in his wisdom writings. The concluding section studies the reflections of the doctor mirabilis on the Eucharist, which are frequently overlooked or marginalized in Bacon scholarship, yet are nevertheless essential to his religious project.

1

Wisdom, Theology and the Sciences

Roger Bacon’s Opus maius, together with other wisdom works, displays a distinctive literary genre that is neither strictly philosophical nor theological. The historical context of the Opus maius, Opus minus and the Opus tertium is the request of Pope Clement iv in the late 1260s, while the Compendium studii philosophiae appeared in 1271/2, well after the pontiff’s death on 29 November 1268. Intense desires for personal and ecclesial reform, together with a profound appreciation of the myriad expressions of divine wisdom in the world, inscribe Bacon’s reflections on religion and society. Permeated with the knowledge he acquired through decades of wide-ranging reading, writing and teaching in the liberal arts, Bacon engaged the challenges to Western Christianity that he perceived to be of immediate and eternal import. The doctor mirabilis did not offer readers of his Opus maius and other wisdom texts a specific philosophical treatise intended for the Parisian or Oxford aula alone, nor did he address his topics in a standard theological fashion—if the categories of contemporary scholarship that speaks in terms of monastic, scholastic and vernacular theology are utilized.17 Nevertheless, Bacon’s efforts to understand the dynamic of reform within the categories of revelation and experience suggest that the anthropological–religious aspects of his insights are crucial to understanding the genre of his wisdom works. Bacon’s efforts to elaborate on wisdom per se are not surprising inasmuch as a survey of the thirteenth-century academic culture of Western Christianity demonstrates that this thematic was at the centre of philosophical and theological reflection inside and outside the Minorite order.18 Earlier writers had

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Bernard McGinn, ‘Theologia quondam’, Speculum 83 (2008), 817–839. Andreas Speer, ‘The vocabulary of wisdom and the understanding of philosophy’, in L’ élaboration de vocabulaire philosophique au moyen âge, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse and

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also inquired into the theological import of the liberal arts and philosophy as wisdom.19 Augustine rejected Tertullian’s dismissal of the classical arts and held that they were useful in the educated pursuit of wisdom, yet the bishop of Hippo remained wary of logic. Cassiodorus argued for an academic–Stoic understanding of wisdom that encompassed knowledge of material reads better to me than of the material and spiritual realties. The received wisdom of the liberal arts, he wrote, should be integrated into theology, and the trivium, in particular, employed in scriptural exegesis. While the overall influence of Cassiodorus must be scrutinized,20 the later Carolingian educational reform manifested a profound appreciation of this perspective while continuing Augustine’s restraint vis-à-vis logic. Closer to the thirteenth century, Bernard of Clairvaux argued that Peter and his fellow apostles did not fall short as Christians despite having no philosophical and rhetorical training, while Hugh of Saint Victor’s Didascalicon (1130s) laid out a masterful synthesis of the arts in the service of Christian wisdom, which also embraced the Stoic perspective evident earlier in Cassiodorus’s writings.21 As the texts of Roger Bacon reveal, the appeal of a Stoic definition of wisdom continued in the rapidly evolving context of philosophical and theological debates in the thirteenth century. With the introduction of previously unavailable or unknown Aristotelian texts and Arab commentaries into Europe through Spain and elsewhere, a shift took place in thirteenth-century deliberations, as previous authors had approached the question of wisdom from an Augustinian–Platonic perspective.22 Mindful of Augustine’s discerning appreciation of classical wisdom and challenged by the Aristotle’s metaphysics and methodology, scholars across the medieval spectrum of thirteen-century schoolmen, took up numerous questions regarding the origin, nature and practical application of wisdom. Among the confrères of Roger Bacon was Alexander of Hales, who was the first to craft an initial response of a Summa Universae Theologiae (sometimes known as the Summa Minorum to reflect the corporate nature of the project completed by the Parisian school of the Cordeliers) as early as 1238–1240, in concert with

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Carlos Steel (Turnhout, 2000), 257–280; Andreas Speer, ‘The power of wisdom: four case studies of a late 13th century debate’, in Knowledge, Discipline and Power in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of David Luscombe (Leiden, 2011), 177–199. Christoph Kann, ‘Sieben säulen des Weisheit: Die artes-Tradition zwischen Kloster und Universität’, in Monastiches Leben im urbanen Kontext, ed. Anne-Marie Hecker and Susanne Röhl (Munich, 2010), 131–152. See, for example, James J. O’Donnell, Cassiodorus (Berkeley, ca, 1979). Speer, ‘The vocabulary of wisdom and the understanding of philosophy’, 261. Speer, ‘The vocabulary of wisdom and the understanding of philosophy’, 259.

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another confrère, John de la Rochelle. Both brothers died in 1245. Another English Minorite, William of Melitona, brought their work, which represents the fundamental theological positions of the first Franciscan scholastic theologians, to completion.23 When the doctor mirabilis entered the order of Minors, perhaps between 1255 and 1257,24 Alexander’s entire Summa Universae Theologiae, albeit in the redacted form, was known far and wide. Although Bacon famously derided Alexander’s opus as heftier than a horse and ignored by contemporaries,25 the issues raised at the outset in the section De doctrina theologiae of the Summa Universae Theologiae are salient to the discussion of wisdom.26 Theology as science, which is grounded in grace, transcends the other sciences and alone merits the proper name of wisdom, according to the sacred Scriptures. To a lesser degree, metaphysics, or first philosophy, is a sapiential science as it treats the first principle, or the cause of causes, through the utilization of the arts and reason. Other sciences are simply sciences, and thus are not equated with wisdom because their realm is that of secondary causes. After establishing the status of theology as wisdom, Alexander and his confrères examine the nature of the discipline among the other sciences. One of the initial arguments against the Minorite position contends that all wisdom comes from God, as Ecclesiastes 1:1 establishes; thus, every science concerns theological or divine matters, and sacred Scripture and the first philosophy of the metaphysicians are comparable. Furthermore, truth originates in the Holy Spirit and revelation is manifest, according to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, in the knowledge of the philosophers; hence, their science is theological as well.27 The nuanced response of the Summa Universae Theologiae established the essence of theology as a science that originates in God (a Deo), is about God (de Deo) and leads back to God (ductiva ad Deum). While all sciences begin in God, they are not concerned with the gratuitous good equated with the Holy Spirit. The subject of first philosophy includes the divine, but only theology speaks of the Trinitarian mystery and human restoration. The return to God, which is grounded in divine mercy and justice and guided by the principles of fear and love, is the domain of theology and is simply not appropriate to the other sciences. Referencing Augustine’s De Trinitate, the Summa Universae Theologiae defines 23 24 25 26 27

Giulio D’Onofrio, History of Theology ii: The Middle Ages, tr. Matthew J. O’Connell (Collegeville, mn, 2008), 305. Power, Roger Bacon, 52. Fr. Rogeri Bacon, opera, 327–328. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, q. 1, 1a–18b. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, q. 1, c. 2, 4a–5b; Rom. 1:20.

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theology not as a science distinguished by comprehension and human intellect, but as a mysterious wisdom that informs humanity as to what is required for salvation.28 That the wisdom of sacred Scripture is both mysterious as well as multiform is integral to the Minorite understanding of theology in the Summa Universae Theologiae.29 One of the redactors of this text, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, further developed the nature and content of this sapiential science in the Collationes de septem donis spiritus sancti. Delivered at the University of Paris during the Lenten season of 1268, this series of evening sermons falls in the period of the late 1260s when Roger Bacon was compiling and redacting the Opus maius, Opus minus and Opus tertium.30 It is quite conceivable both Bacon and John Pecham were in attendance as the minister general addressed their confrères in the company of other professors and students. If present, they would have heard a vigorous defence of Christian wisdom as a gratuitous, affective encounter with the Holy Spirit that exceeds the delights of reason noted by Aristotle and prepares a dwelling place for the divine. This domus sapientiae is the seven-pillared house of Proverbs 9:1.

2

The Hermeneutics of Sapiential Reform

At the outset of the Opus maius, Roger Bacon identifies for Clement iv the fourfold errors that impede the acquisition of the knowledge needed to govern God’s Church, regulate the life of the faithful, foster the conversion of infidels and protect the frontiers of Christianity against malicious enemies without shedding the blood of the faithful.31 Bacon’s intent in identifying these ills and their remedies is not, he claims, to stir up controversy about the ecclesial curriculum of study. Instead, he tells the pontiff, whom he addresses at times as ‘Your Wisdom’, that he intends to illuminate the path to goodness and perfection by gathering the crumbs that fall from the Lord’s table into the

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Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, q. 1, c. 4, art. 1, resp., 8a. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 1, q. 1, c. 4, art. 3, ad 3, 10a–b; art. 3, resp., 11a. The Collationes de septem donis spiritus sancti were preceded by the Collationes de decem praeceptis in the Lenten season of 1267. Bonaventure returned to preach the unfinished Collationes in hexaëmeron in the spring of 1273. On these texts, see Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Bonaventure as preacher’, in A Companion to Bonaventure, ed. Jay M. Hammond, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and Jared Goff (Leiden, 2014), 421–432. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 1–35.

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dishes of wisdom. His efforts to promote sapiential reflection, in turn, will allow Clement to persuade the studious and wise to reject the ways of the ignorant multitude. This is not an easy task, and Bacon does not expect the pontiff to complete it, but to labour so as to lay a foundation, recover the sources and strengthen the roots of reform that his successors require to finish the task. Bacon’s identification of errors impeding the faithful takes place in an atmosphere rife with accusations, denunciations and condemnations. At issue in Paris in the period between the 1250s and 1270s were questions as far ranging as the cura animarum, papal authority, evangelical poverty and the integration of Aristotle’s philosophy and the liberal arts into the university curriculum. The well-documented simmering struggle between the seculars and mendicants erupted around the time of Bacon’s entrance into religious life with the publication of Gerard of Borgo San-Donnino’s Liber introductorius ad evangelium aeternum in 1254.32 The eschatological Joachmite claims of this Minorite, and the combined secular and ecclesial response, set in motion a series of events that would lead to the condemnation of both Gerard’s work as well as William of Saint Amour’s polemical attacks on the mendicants. William’s attempt to identify heretical elements in the Liber introductorius, combined with his specific critique of the friars, mitigated Pope Innocent iv’s previous positive view of the friars. On 21 November 1254, he issued Etsi animarum, which severely restricted the mendicant commitment to the cura animarum. Any subsequent celebration by the secular masters in Paris was shortlived. The death of Innocent iv and ascension to the papal throne by Rainoldo di Segni, who took the name of Alexander iv, signalled a reversal in mendicant fortunes. The former cardinal protector of the Minorites moved quickly to annul Etsi animarum with his own bull, Nec insolitum, and to confirm the condemnation of Gerard of Borgo San-Donnino’s Liber introductorius. On 4 July 1256, Alexander iv again sided with the mendicants against the secular masters, and denounced William’s De periculis novissimorum temporum. In the wake of the controversy, the pontiff moved to replace the Minorite minister general, John of Parma, who was viewed as too closely aligned with Joachmite ideals.33 In February of 1257, Bonaventure, who had earlier argued in the company of Thomas Aquinas against the seculars, became the seventh minister general.

32 33

Luigi Pellegrini, L’incontro tra due ‘invenzioni’ medievali: Universitá e Ordini Mendicanti (Naples, 2005), 154–179. Dominic Monti, ‘Bonaventure as minister general’, in A Companion to Bonaventure, ed. Hammond, Hellmann and Goff, 552.

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In the intervening years leading up to and including Bacon’s composition of the Opus maius, Opus minus, Opus tertium, a relative period of tranquillity prevailed between the mendicants and secular masters. The climate took a turn for the worse on the first day of the new year, 1269. Less than two months after the death of Clement, the noted Parisian theologian, Gerard of Abbeville, preached to the Minorites in their own church on possessions and perfection.34 His offensive against the mendicant conception and practice of evangelical poverty continued in the summer with the publication of Contra adversarium perfectionis christinae. John of Pecham joined Bonaventure in rushing to defend religious mendicancy as a path to perfection. While Bacon supported his confrères, his particular critique of their educational strategy and general disgust with the entire mendicant–secular struggle is well documented in the Opus minus and Compendium studii philosophiae.35,36 Although the mendicants prevailed against the secular masters in Paris, the educational environment was poisoned. In the shouting match each side accused the other of allegiance to the Anti-Christ, while young boys were scarred by early admittance to religious life and academic instruction that ignored the very sciences that would assist them in the cura animarum and cultivate wisdom. According to Bacon, the real crisis facing the mendicants, and indeed the entire ecclesial community, was not the relative perfection of individuals but the spiritual well-being of the faithful throughout Western Christendom. Wisdom informs and constitutes sanctity and, as he claimed in the Opus maius, it is difficult to acquire given the reality of human fragility after the exile from Eden. For this reason Bacon opens his papal missive with an anthropological– religious argument delineating the fourfold human errors that are obstacles to wisdom: reliance on weak and worthless authority, established custom, the perceptions of the ignorant masses and the masking of ignorance under the guise of apparent knowledge.37 His analysis, when seen in the light of his later comments in the Opus maius on the nature of religion, affords a hermeneutic for reading both philosophical and religious texts. Quoting Cicero’s De natura deorum, he notes that to be religious is to reread texts concerning the divine. This process guides the reader away from superstition and promotes proper choices

34

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An English translation of this sermon is found in Bonaventure, Defense of the Mendicants, intro. and notes Robert J. Karris, tr. José de Vinck and Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, ny, 2010), 368–386. Bacon, Opus minus, 322–357. Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae, 425–433. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 1–35.

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and understanding.38 Bacon’s methodological approach to religion as reading across a broad spectrum of literature differentiates him from John Pecham, as the future archbishop of Canterbury appeals to Lactantius’s De divinis institutionibus and maintains that to be religious is to bind oneself. In his case, this entails the choice to turn from the world’s concerns and the wisdom of the ancients to bind the mind to the divine light that reveals what human effort can never discover.39 When identifying trustworthy sources in the search for authoritative wisdom, Bacon notes four sources in the Opus maius: the Church, individual saints, perfect philosophers and expert scientists.40 Ecclesial resources such as Scripture, saintly doctors and canon law are clearly recognized and frequently employed against error, but the arguments of philosophers are also crucial to the critique albeit not well known. Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Adalardus, Averroes and others take the same stand against flawed authority, unquestioned customs and the opinions of the multitude found in the writings of Cyprian, Jerome, John Chrysostom and Augustine. What emerges from this balanced textual approach is a sapiential hermeneutic that appeals to the writings of saints and philosophers, while at the same time subjects these same ecclesial and philosophical resources to an ongoing critique. This modus legendi is a religious rereading that offers the critical stance necessary given the damage original sin wrought at the anthropological–religious reality of human existence. While remaining the image of the divine, reason is blinded, memory is feeble and the will is corrupted in every person. Deference, of course, precedes criticism. Quoting Seneca, Bacon reminds Clement iv that the views of the ancients deserve a close hearing.41 Whatever discoveries later scholars may uncover, they owe a debt to their predecessors who first sought to pierce the darkness of ignorance. Those worthy of grateful reverence include both the saints and philosophers who laboured to construct a viable foundation and structure of authoritative wisdom. Nevertheless, due to human frailty, even the positions of the earlier saintly doctors and leading philosophers should be critically examined.42 Seneca’s earlier bow towards the ancients in the Naturales Quaestiones is followed by the general observation, 38 39

40 41 42

Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 32. John Pecham, Canticum pauperis, 139. On the medieval use of religio and synonyms for religion, see Peter Biller, ‘Words and the medieval notion of religion’, jeh 36 (1985), 351– 369. Bacon, Opus majus, vol. 3, 11–13. Bacon, Opus majus, vol. 3, 13. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 13–16.

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which he shared with Aristotle, that their precursors in philosophy inevitably fell short, given the vastness of the subject matter. Even Aristotle’s teaching was later reworked by Avicenna and Averroes. This rereading of the received tradition, Bacon contends, also extends to the teaching of the saints. To begin, Augustine and Jerome admitted to their shortcomings, and each one likewise vigorously challenged the other. Even Paul disagreed with Peter. Origen, arguably the greatest doctor, held flawed positions that were roundly rejected. This hermeneutic continued in Bacon’s own day in Paris and elsewhere, as he notes that doctors of theology engage the saints of old with reverence, with an eye towards the truth, and rework their teachings. From Bacon’s perspective in 1268, the inability or unwillingness of the faithful to reread the ecclesial wisdom tradition exemplified by the works of the saints and philosophers promoted the fourfold errors of the day. The question of how to interpret or to read these sources is not restricted to Bacon. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, John Pecham spoke in the Canticum pauperis of his intellectual–spiritual journey through the liberal arts in the company of the ancients, which culminated in his rejection of their limitations and his transition into the wisdom community of the mendicants. Bonaventure’s position evolved through the 1250s and 1260s and crystalized in the Collationes in hexaëmeron. According to the minister general, everyone wants to be wise and knowledgeable, but they often succumb to the beauty of this passing world. Failing to cross from Egypt, they are drowned in the water of the Red Sea. The transition from knowledge to wisdom, that is to say, from Egypt to Israel, requires the medium of sanctity, but study is essential in this dynamic. The longing for knowledge alone is dangerous as it breeds curiosity and pride, yet the faithful must cultivate the salvific knowledge found in the garden of biblical texts through the use of the intellect.43 Bonaventure posits four ‘books’ available to students: sacred Scripture; the works of Augustine, Jerome and others; the summae of the masters; and philosophical texts. Once study veers from the inspired biblical authors, readers are at risk. Saints like Augustine and Jerome provide assistance in understanding the Bible, but their works are difficult and their language is, unlike the scriptural texts, deceptively beautiful. The summae of the masters can be beneficial but employ philosophical concepts at times; thus, some readers may be deceived and drown in the waters of philosophy, instead of savouring the wine of sacred Scripture. To drive home this argument, 43

Collationes in hexaëmeron, coll. xix, ns. 3–19, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 420a– 423b. See also, coll. ix, ns. 19–23 (v, 375b–376a). On Bonaventure’s position within the Parisian university context, see Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge, 2012), 161–166.

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Bonaventure recounted a story about Jerome to illustrate just how dangerous philosophy can be even for the saints. The famed biblical scholar blamed his distaste for the prophets on his study of Cicero. Bonaventure’s highly influential, albeit incomplete, Collationes in hexaëmeron confirmed his earlier insights in the Collationes de decem praeceptis by delineating the limits of the sciences in general, and philosophy in particular, within theological enterprise in a period of dispute evidenced by a series of ecclesial condemnations of epistemological positions.44 Bacon’s own efforts in the Opus maius, Opus minus and Opus tertium during this same time period were furthered by the composition of the Compendium studii philosophiae. While theologians like Bonaventure and Pecham (who incepted in 1269/70), argued that the sciences were clearly useful for scholastic study, philosophy was, nevertheless, suspect and often guilty of deceiving those in search of wisdom. In the midst of the Aristotelian–Averroist controversies in Paris between 1270 and 1280 and accompanying condemnations, another student of Bonaventure, Peter of John Olivi, vehemently castigated his contemporaries for their admiration of the philosophers’ works,45 and their erroneous conception of sapientia.46

3

Epistemological Conversion and Wisdom Theology

Roger Bacon was no less ready to critique philosophers, but his religious project and concomitant methodology signal an epistemological shift in which theology looks to philosophy and the other arts and sciences for a new systemization of wisdom and culture. This required a conversion of sorts to the liberal arts and sciences. He believed the writers of his day were in a better position than Hugh

44

45

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Bonaventure’s efforts in this regard already come into view in the Collationes de decem praeceptis. See Leonardo Sileo, ‘La ‘via’ theologica di bonaventura di bagnoregio’, in Storia della teologia nel medievo, ed. Giulio D’Onofrio (Casale Monferrato, 1996), vol. 2, 753– 756. Peter of John Olivi, De perlegendis philosophorum libris, ed. Ferdinand Delorme, Antonianum 16 (1941), 31–44. On Olivi’s position and the thirteenth-century theological context, see François-Xavier Putallaz, Figure Francescane alla fine del xiii secolo, tr. Costante Marabelli (Milan, 1996), 21–62; and François-Xavier Putallaz, ‘Le métier de théologien selon Olivi. Philosophie, théologie, exégèse et pauvreté’, in Pierre de Jean Olivi. Philosophe et théologien, ed. Catherine König-Pralong, Olivier Ribordy and Tiziana Suarez-Nani (Berlin, 2010), 17–85. José Antonio Merino, Storia della filosofia francescana (Milan, 1993), 197–200.

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of St Victor,47 even though his Didascalicon evinced a Stoic perspective shared by Bacon. The accessibility of Aristotelian texts and the ensuing hermeneutical controversies provided Bacon, who lectured on the Stagirite at the University of Paris as master of arts perhaps as early as the 1230s,48 the opportunity to reconsider the role of philosophy and culture. He neither separates philosophy and theology into separate and distinct realms of truth, as in the case of Boethius of Dacia, nor does he dismiss the authority of the philosophers like Olivi. Bacon is interested in the unity of wisdom,49 and Aristotle prepared the way by organizing the branches of philosophy.50 Absent the appropriation of the revealed truths of Christianity, Aristotle could never achieve what Bacon believed was alone possible in the interdisciplinary cultivation of philosophy and theology. This effort, of course, does not make the philosopher into a theologian per se in Bacon’s day, but it does align and intertwine these respective disciplines. Although he is quick to assert that theology is the mistress of the sciences, the other sciences are yet necessary if theology is to share the truth of Christ and thus fulfil the ecclesial task of leading humanity to salvation.51 Philosophy is an integral element of this process since the sacred writers spoke as philosophers as well as theologians.52 The arts and sciences are not stepping stones leading to theology but the means whereby the fullness of theology, which is already acknowledged in the critical study of sacred Scripture, is brought to light within Christian culture and beyond.53 This sapientia is comprehensive and inclusive; it is certainly mystical but, more significantly, it is revealed in the broad arch of human history and eminently practical since it is grounded in experimental knowledge.54 According to the Opus maius, a correct understanding of philosophy is essential to theological wisdom. In a complimentary manner, both philosophy and theology treat the revelation and experience of the divine with reference to the conceptualization and practice of religious faith within and beyond the

47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54

Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 33. On the chronology and authenticity of Bacon’s philosophical works, see Silvia Donati, ‘Pseudopigrapha in the Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Bacon? The commentaries on the physics and on the metaphysics’, in Les début de l’ enseignement universitaire à Paris (1200– 1245 environ), ed. Jacques Verger and Olga Weijers (Turnhout, 2013), 153–203. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 69. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 8. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 36. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 78. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 68. D’Onofrio, History of Theology ii: The Middle Ages, 415–422.

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borders of Christianity; consequently, the outline of what might be termed ‘fundamental theology’,55 and even at times a ‘mystical theology’,56 is visible in the wisdom writings of the doctor mirabilis. Any simplistic, anachronistic retrieval of Bacon’s project within these contemporary categories should be avoided; nevertheless, his religious concerns in the Opus maius, Opus minus, Opus tertium, Compendium studii philosophiae and the later Compendium studii theologiae (1292) lie distinctly in the areas most proper to fundamental theology: Offenbarung (revelation), Erfahrung (experience) and Praxis (practice). Fundamental theology studies the question of the revelation of divine wisdom in history and the variety of human responses to this initiative within cultural contexts.57 The purpose of this academic discipline is to propose the reasonable credibility of faith.58 At the same time, philosophy must consider and, at times, even embrace other witnesses to the divine wisdom, regardless of their cultural, historical or religion origin. Bacon posits a similar approach since the fullness of philosophy, when understood correctly, includes the critical examination and integration of the divina sapientia, found in the theological truths and authoritative sacred writings proper to the lex christiana, that is, the Christian religion.59 Bacon expressed his understanding of theology in the Opus maius with his appeal to the Stoic image of the unity of wisdom and the open hand.60 Theology is the exegesis of sacred Scripture, which is the palm in which the arts and science are held.61 By this reasoning, theologians should grasp the arts

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57 58 59 60 61

Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Philosophy and theology in Roger Bacons’s Opus maius’, in Philosophy and the God of Abraham: Essays in Memory of James A. Weisheipl, o.p., ed. James Long (Toronto, 1991), 67. For a treatment of the distinctive and overlapping dimensions of philosophical theology and fundamental theology, see Gerald O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology (Oxford, 2013), 4–11. Given O’Collins’s definition, Bacon’s wisdom works could not be considered a philosophy of religion since faith is a sine qua non of his religious project. Bacon’s treatment of the Eucharist is considered among the richest reflections in medieval mystical writing on the subject, see Ephrem Longpré, ‘Eucharistie et expérience mystique’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité: ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. Marcel Viller, Charles Baumgartner and André Rayez (Paris, 1960), vol. 4/1, cols 1599–600. For Bacon on revelatory wisdom, experience and practice, see Compendium studii philosophiae, 96. Harald Wagner, ‘Fundamentaltheologie’, Theologische Realenzyklopädie 11 (1983), 738–752, esp. 750; and O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 12. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 76. D’Onofrio, History of Theology ii: The Middle Ages, 422. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 36.

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and sciences since theology clasps the sciences. In the current environment of crisis and confrontation, philosophy must come to the fore to challenge theological praxis and articulate the significance of the arts and sciences. An attentive reading of Bacon’s sapiential opus shows he upholds the primacy of theology as scriptural exegesis; yet, he is dismissive of the actual praxis of theology because it ignores the biblical text in favour of a profoundly flawed, even fatal philosophical reasoning that is complicit in the ethical shortcomings and impoverished preaching evident throughout Latin Christendom.62 He was joined in this critique by his fellow Englishman and confrère, William de la Mare, whose shared interest in biblical texts appears in the Correctio textus bibliae and the De Hebraeis et Graecis vocabulis glossarum bibliae. Bacon’s friendship with William, who incepted at Paris in 1275, may have influenced the stance he adopted towards theology, philosophy and the arts found in the Prologus of the Scriptum in primum librum Sententiarum.63 William, who was a student of Bonaventure, follows Bacon’s programme of educational renovation in the Opus maius, at times literally, as he delineates the role of philosophy in service to ethical–religious practice and the exposition of the lex christiana proper to theology. The study of language, grounded in logic, together with mathematics and grammar, solidify this effort. In the Opus maius, Bacon placed language studies at the beginning of the five sciences essential in the exposition of the one perfect wisdom found in sacred Scripture. Mathematics, perspective, experiential knowledge and moral philosophy, which are elements of philosophy, rounded out this quintivium.64 As he treats each science, there is no strong sense that Bacon is passing through lower to higher metaphysical realities reminiscent of Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum,65 or moving from the inferior to the superior lights or sciences, as suggested respectively by Bonaventure in the De reductione artium ad theologiam,66 and by Olivi in his Principium quinque in sacram scripturam.67 While 62

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Johnson, ‘Preaching precedes theology’, 83–95, and Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Roger Bacon’s critique of Franciscan preaching’, in Institution und Charisma: Festschrift für Gert Melville, ed. Franz J. Felten, Annette Kehnel and Stefan Weinfurter (Vienna, 2009), 541–548. On Bacon’s influence on William de la Mare, see Hans Kraml, ‘Einleitung’, in Guillelmus de la Mare, Scriptum in primum librum Sententiarum, ed. Hans Kraml (Munich, 1989), 71–83; see also Sileo, ‘I maestri di teologia della seconda metà del Duecento’, vol. 3, 22. In the Compendium studii philosophiae, 433, Bacon lists language study (scientia linguarum sapientialium), mathematics, perspective, alchemy and experiential knowledge. Itinerarium mentis in Deum, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 295a–313b. De reductione artium ad theologiam, in Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 319a. Peter of John Olivi on the Bible, ed. David Flood and Gedeon Gál (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1997), 27.

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moral philosophy stands at the apex as the mistress of the sciences,68 all five are necessary in their own right since each science, through interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange, assists theology in the apprehension, comprehension and instantiation of wisdom. With regard to language studies, Bacon is straightforward in his claim that divine revelation is found in cultures and languages that are foreign to Latin Christendom.69 The inability or unwillingness to address this challenge impedes the acquisition and expression of wisdom. He finds strong evidence to promote language studies in that translations do not retain the exact sense of the original language, Latin does not have a scientific vocabulary adequate for translation and few scholars other than Bacon’s fellow Oxford professor, Robert Grosseteste,70 possessed the scientific skills necessary for the translation of Hebrew and Greek texts. In addition, many philosophical and theological texts are beyond the reach of Christians in the West and thus their knowledge suffers together with the ability to promote and defend the faith among believers and unbelievers alike. Without language studies, the Latin translations of sacred texts like the Vulgate, which so often are corrupted, cannot be perfected. Indeed, the deeper meanings of Latin words themselves remain veiled since their etymological roots are entwined in the cultural–linguistic soil of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean. In the years that followed the Opus maius, Bacon’s commitment to language studies and theology remained and grounded his biting critique of the reigning theological methodology. In the Compendium studii philosophiae (1271/2) he notes that an unbelievable stupidity marks philosophical and theological studies and the first sign of this intellectual corruption is the neglect of the aforementioned wisdom languages.71 Even after his vision of a universal curriculum built around the sciences faded in the light of ecclesial realities, Bacon revisited the question of language study in the Compendium studii theologiae (1292). Evidently he still dared to hope that theologians might appreciate the significance of languages given the intrinsic relationship between theology and sacred Scripture.72 Mathematics, understood as geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music, is of equal import for theologians; it is absolutely necessary for the sacred sci68 69 70 71 72

Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 4–5. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 80–125. While Bacon may have not met Grosseteste, the latter influenced him in several ways. See Power, Roger Bacon, 48–49. Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae, 432. Roger Bacon, Compendium of the Study of Theology, ed. and tr. Thomas S. Maloney (Leiden, 1988), 12–13.

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ence because comprehension of both the literal and spiritual meaning of the Bible rests on the knowledge of the nature and property of created realities.73 The science of perspective plays a similar role in Bacon’s methodological quintivium. The study of mathematics is in complete accord with the lex divina, as God granted this science to holy individuals from the time before the flood, through the prophets, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs, and up to the present.74 Within the ranks of the Latin sacred doctors, the Stoicinspired Cassiodorus, in particular, strongly argued in favour of mathematics as a field of study since it sharpens perception, removes the filth of ignorance and leads to speculative contemplation driven by an affective desire for divine matters. In particular, music and astronomy delight and enlighten the mind turned towards the heavens above. The science of perspective is equally enlightening; vision is the primary mode of revelation in the Scriptures.75 The grasp of this science of optics—a discipline in which Arabic authors are recognized authorities—is incumbent on the theologians of Western Christendom. For example, Bacon argues they should know quite well that that petitionary prayer from Psalm 17:8, ‘Guard us, Lord, as the pupil of your eye’, is best interpreted when the physical process of sight forms the basis of spiritual exegesis. The literal text opens to cascading levels of meaning if scholars of the sacred text chose to integrate optics into their methodology and recognize the seven ways the pupil is naturally protected. With this foundation in the material world, they can speak convincingly of the spiritual virtues, gifts, beatitudes, senses, fruits, revelations and graces that flow from the crucified Christ and shield the soul, that is, the pupil of a person. When it comes to revelation and sight, the science of perspective or optics facilitates and confirms that the human vision of reality is, as the Apostle James suggests, as fleeting as a reflection in a mirror.76 Nevertheless, those who neither wander far from belief in sin nor presume a familiarity with the divine will recognize the riches of God’s wisdom as their spiritual vision is sharpened by grace.77 This theological claim is supported by experience since the clarity of physical perception is determined by how near or distant a person is to the viewed object. Practical experience is the operative term in the next science, bearing the fitting title of scientia experimentalis, as well as the fifth and final science,

73 74 75 76 77

Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 1, 175. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 1, 176. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 159–161. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 163. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 162.

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moral philosophy.78 In the Opus maius Bacon points out that knowledge is acquired through reasoning and experience.79 While the cognitive process leads to well-considered conclusions, these rational results do not necessarily remove doubts unless they are accompanied by experience. For example, a person with theoretical knowledge of a fire may not be dissuaded from touching a flame, but the practical experience will most likely do so by confirming, albeit painfully, what was initially learned. The benefits that arise from the incorporation of experimental science into the culture of Western Christendom are manifold. The wisdom of the ancients, which originated in the divine, can be retrieved to promote the health of all, young and old, in preparation for the resurrection.80 In addition, attestation to the credibility of the faith is well served by an appeal to the works of nature as well as the ability to discern miracles from magic. Given Bacon’s understanding of theology as biblical exegesis, the most significant benefit is the acquisition of the literal meaning of Scripture. Moral philosophy is also necessary for theology; indeed, like Scripture it lays out the laws of life with regard to others, God and self, and assumes the metaphysical truths underpinning religious doctrine.81 With a predilection for Seneca’s writings and the assurance of divine grace, Bacon dwells at length on how an individual Christian ought to practise a life marked by virtue. He confesses that the Stoic insights he gleans and interprets alongside Scripture are the richest part of moral philosophy, yet the revelation of divine wisdom dictates he treat the loftier issues of religion and universal salvation. As he surveys the broad panorama of beliefs and practices among the Saracens, pagans, idolaters and Jews, he appreciates their points of convergence and divergence with Christianity.82 Despite the failings of the faithful, the lex christiana is the most virtuous religion and the surest guide as to the truths of eternal salvation.

4

Eucharistic Turn and Mystic Inferences

What strikes Bacon as particularly noteworthy in his analysis of religious cultures is the balance Christianity displays when it comes to the relative weight of material and spiritual realities.83 What he admires about the lex Christi is 78 79 80 81 82 83

Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 167–404; Bacon, Moralis Philosophia. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 166–168. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 204–213. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 2, 224; Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 4. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 189–192. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 191–192.

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problematic for the faithful, however, due to the doctrine of corpus Christi. Bread and wine, body and blood, that is to say, the material dimension, is evident, but the spiritual truth revealed by God eludes many at both the theoretical and practical levels. Medieval sermon studies attest to widespread scepticism towards the sacrament in the thirteenth century.84 Bacon’s usage of two exempla in support of the real presence suggests a rhetorical, if not homiletic, background for this frequently overlooked last section of the Opus maius.85 Bacon’s ‘Eucharistic turn’ in the moralis philosophia section may be unexpected,86 but it is not surprising in light of the Minorite tradition. In the very first of his Admonitiones, Francis of Assisi raises the issue of Eucharistic belief and practice.87 Reflecting on the mystery of the consecration at the altar, he urges the brothers to contemplate the unfolding scene with spiritual eyes, for their salvation hangs in the balance. To see these material realities spiritually and hold firmly to the belief in Christ’s presence is to welcome the Son of God who comes among the faithful in a most humble way; indeed, this is what he meant when he promised his disciples in Matthew 28:20 that he would be with them always. The doctor mirabilis, for his part, finds this presence to be necessary since the law of grace follows the law of nature. Just as a creature requires the ongoing presence of the Creator for continued existence, so too, those recreated by grace depend on the sustaining presence of the ReCreator.88 The question of Christ’s sapiential presence is central to Bacon’s wisdom theology. He locates the wisdom of Christ in the Scriptures; theology, working hand

84

85 86

87

88

Nicole Bériou, ‘L’ eucharistie dans l’ imaginaire des prédicateurs en Occident (xiiie–xve s.)’, in Pratiques de l’ eucharistie dans les Églises d’Orient et d’Occident (Antiquité et Moyen Âge): Actes du séminaire tenu à Paris, Institut catholique (1997–2004), ed. Nicole Bériou, Béatrice Caseau and Dominique Rigaux (Paris, 2009), 888–893. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 225–227. See also Moralis Philosophia, 240, for the story of the woman who saw a young boy in the elevated host. The ‘Eucharistic turn’ is an essential element in theological–philosophical hermeneutics. See Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, tr. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago, 1991), 139–182, esp. 149–152. Bacon’s own Eucharistic–mystical insights and inferences lie much closer to Marion’s than to the line of thought presented by Alexander R. Pruss, ‘The Eucharist: real presence and real absence’, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (Oxford, 2009), 512–540. Francesco d’Assisi Scritti, 352–355. On Francis, materiality and the Eucharist, see Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Francis and Creation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael J.P. Robson (Cambridge, 2012), 144–145. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 227–228.

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in hand with philosophy and canon law, is the studious reading of the sacred text with an emphasis on the literal sense.89 The desire for the veiled meanings of the literal draws Bacon beyond the written word to the sacrament of the altar, where, in a most wonderful revelation of the infinite goodness and wisdom of God, Christ is encountered in a particular church throughout the universal Church under the specific forms of simple bread and wine.90 The power of the spoken word to confect the sacrament in this moment exceeds the power to create a universe, or indeed, an infinite number of universes. In the dialectics of finite and infinite, humility and majesty, visible and invisible, the categories of dimension, place and time are together confirmed, subverted and transcended as humanity is raised up into divinity.91 In what have been described as the most beautiful medieval reflections on the Eucharist prior to the Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis,92 Bacon praises the mystical transformation whereby the faithful’s participation in the mystery brings about their conversion into God and Christ through a process of ‘deification’ and ‘Christification’.93 While the senses are unable to sustain the unveiled presence of the God, experience teaches that the sacramental encounter, when framed by reverence, devotion and admiration, may evoke ecstatic moments when people forget where they are and what they are doing.94 However marvellous these ecstatic encounters may be—and Bacon certainly believes they are—he does not assume that the sacrament of the altar should lead the faithful to turn their back on others and seek somehow to leave the world behind. Quite the contrary, the divine presence stands in opposition to the seven deadly sins and infers the framework for a virtuous life in this world.95 For example, Christ’s humility in what the Opus maius terms the sacramentum amoris is a rebuke to pride, and his generous goodness, a censure of avarice. Consequently, the virtues are not incidental to the acquisition of mystical wisdom but, as the ‘Christification’ dynamic demonstrates, the requisite first step.96 Since the practice of these virtues

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90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 31. On Bacon, exegesis and the literal sense of Scripture, see Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Franciscan bodies and souls: Bonaventure and Bacon on Scripture, preaching and the cura animae’, in Franciscans Preaching, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden, 2013), 73–89. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 235. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 230, 241. Etienne Gilson, Les métamorphoses de la Cité de Dieu (Paris, 1952), 87 n. 1. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 233; Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae, 400–401. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 231–232. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 237. Bacon, Moralis Philosophia, 233, 239.

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is essential, it must be proclaimed; thus the moralis philosophia concludes with a treatment of rhetoric.97 Bacon’s impassioned turn to the Eucharist within the moralis philosophia section of the Opus maius reveals a Christocentric reductio that is grounded in the biblical text, cultivated by a commitment to the sciences and marked by a transformative conversion into Christ. In contrast to Bonaventure’s classic De reductione artium ad theologiam, Bacon’s reductio highlights revelation, experience and praxis in the cultural–religious cultures of Christendom and beyond. This process underscores how difficult it was for him to separate philosophy and theology into distinct scientific disciplines given his commitment to the biblical text and the search for universal wisdom.98 As Bacon notes in the Compendium studii philosophiae, those who reverence and honour the Eucharist will be preserved from errors and vice and come to know all wisdom and the truths of salvations in this life.99 The emphasis here is decidedly on an earlier notion of theology. While Bacon may not have been a master of theology, he would have attended lectures in Oxford by the sapientes mundi who did not represent the theologia nova.100 His confrère Adam Marsh and possible master, Robert Grosseteste, aligned themselves with an earlier theological tradition formed first and foremost by the sacred text rather than the increasingly abstract commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Bacon rejected both the technique and pastoral implications of scholastic methodology. As a consequence, it is difficult to situate him within the theological milieu of Paris, since his writing lies outside prevailing constructs of theological discourse found, for example, in attempts to define theology as a science per se. Similar to his confrère Alexander of Hales,101 Bacon did not propose the subalteration of philosophy to theology, but cultivated an appreciation of their relationship.102

97 98

99 100

101 102

Bacon, Moralis Philosophia. On Bacon’s view of philosophy and theology within the context of wisdom and religion, see Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon’, in History of Western Philosophy of Religion, ed. Graham Oppy and Nick Trakakis (Durham, 2009), vol. 2, 151–166. Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae, 401. Bacon, Opus minus, 329–330. On comparing Roger Bacon to scholastic theologians, see Franco Alessio, ‘Simplicitas e paupertas da Ruggero Bacone a Guglielmo di Occam’, Richerche storiche, 3 (1983), 679–680. See also, Kraml, ‘Einleitung’, 69. Philotheus Boehner, ‘The system of metaphysics of Alexander of Hales’, fs 26 (1945), 368. Hans Kraml, ‘Ancilla vocanda ad arcam: Zum verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie’, in Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Berlin, 1998), 612–613.

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Conclusion

A reading of his wisdom works evinces, however, that Roger Bacon theologized as he interpreted the life of faith, with the assistance of the sciences, through the lens of revelation, experience and praxis. While holding fast to a firm belief in the world to come, he preferred a Stoic emphasis on the hic et nunc of this present world,103 where the salvific wisdom of God was on full display to those who turned towards, rather than away from, the serious study of philosophy and concomitant sciences and entered into the Eucharistic mystery. How crucial is this conversion for theology? For Roger Bacon, the answer is simple, for ‘what a man is in philosophy, such is he proved to be in theology’.104 103

104

Bacon’s stance is tied to his understanding of ‘locus’. See Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Locus, analogy and transcendence: Bacon and Bonaventure on the Franciscan view of the world’, in Innovationem durch Deuten und Gestalten: Kloster im Mittelalter zwischen Jenseits und Welt, ed. Gert Melville, Bernd Schneidmuller and Stefan Weinfurter (Regensberg, 2014), 89–95. One interdisciplinary area where Bacon demonstrates a preference on the here and now is in his treatment of medicine and the biblical Adam, see Johnson ‘Franciscan bodies and souls’, 82–88. ‘[Q]ualis homo est in philosophia, talis in theologia esse probatur’. Bacon, Opus maius, vol. 3, 45.

chapter 15

Duns Scotus’s Christology: Foundations for Franciscan Christian Humanism Mary Beth Ingham, csj

In his seminal essay, ‘Medieval Humanism’,1 Richard Southern distinguishes two senses of the term humanism: on the one hand, there is that humanism which is a revival of classical literature and, on the other, there is a humanism that proclaims the key ‘humanist’ ideals of human dignity, moderate rule, peace and self-restraint. While the former type of humanism clearly belongs to the Renaissance, the latter can be found in an earlier age, Southern argues, and most notably in the thirteenth century. This earlier humanism emerged as part of the movement of Christian moral education and pastoral care initiated by the fourth Lateran council. The texts related to it belong to the ‘pastoral revolution’ that this council provoked.2 English friars played a significant role in this pastoral revolution. One of them, as I hope to show, played a particularly important role in laying the metaphysical foundations for its success. While the imago Dei imagery from Genesis 1:26 has often been used to ground human dignity, Franciscans would be particularly captured by the fuller imago Christi insight.3 John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) would use Christ as the foundation for a threefold metaphysical grounding: in creation, in human nature and in human destiny. Duns Scotus mines key elements of the Franciscan spiritual vision for their deeper philosophical and theological foundations. They include, first, the centrality of love and a focus on the will, secondly, a life of daily self-examination and conversion, and, thirdly, a developed self-mastery for religious perfection. All these give birth to the transformative dynamic into the fulfilment of love: that is, to love God above all things with a love of friendship (amor amicitiae). 1 Richard Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), 29–60. 2 See Leonard Boyle as cited in Albrecht Diem, ‘A classicising friar at work: John of Wales’ Breviloquium de Virtutibus’, in Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, ed. Alasdair MacDonald, vol. 42 (Leiden, 2009), 95. 3 See Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 131, admonition five: ‘Be conscious … of the wondrous state in which the Lord God has placed you, for He created you and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body, and to His likeness according to the spirit.’

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_016

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This type of generous and other-centred love is, for Scotus, the goal of all moral living. This act of love is rational, free and eternal, thereby completely fulfilling human desire. In addition, it constitutes the happy life which will only be completely realized in heaven. And the exemplar for this vision is Jesus Christ, human and divine. The centrality of Christ focuses Scotus’s reflection on human dignity, human willing and selfless love. Indeed, Christ’s human nature serves as the paradigm upon which the Franciscan articulates a vision of human dignity and destiny.

1

Franciscan Christocentrism

Scotus lays the foundation for his teaching on human dignity with his focus on the centrality of Christ for salvation history. This dimension of Scotist thought reflects the Anglo-Saxon Franciscan tradition and has methodological antecedents in Scotus’s teacher, William of Ware, as well as Anselm and the tradition that followed him.4 Indeed, William’s influence on Scotus was substantial as well as methodological. From William, Scotus learned the three-step methodological argument based upon logical possibility and suitability to conclude with the affirmation of fact:5 Potuit: It is possible for God to do such a thing Decuit: It would have been fitting had God done so Fecit: Therefore, God did act in this way Such a threefold methodological argument relies on a principle of perfectibility: that is, God’s actions, if possible, are always the most fitting and most pleasing. Thus, in any situation, God can always be counted on to act in a way that is most fitting and pleasing. As Scotus reasons, since human error can always be

4 Anselm of Canterbury authored the influential treatise De conceptu Virginali. Eadmer, his disciple, authored the equally influential Tractatus de conception B. Mariae Virginis (pl 159, 305, 307). This treatise is generally regarded as the first to connect her sanctification in the womb with conception. Eadmer used this connection as the rationale for the celebration of the feast. As late as the fourteenth century, this treatise was attributed to Anselm. Migne printed the treatise under the spurious works of Anselm (pl 159, 301–318). See the discussion provided by Allan B. Wolter, John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary (St. Bonaventure, ny, 2000), 11–12. 5 On the influence of William’s methodology for Scotus, see Allan B. Wolter, ofm and Blaine O’Neill, ofm, John Duns Scotus, Mary’s Architect (Quincy, il, 1993), 62–65.

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counted on in judging divine actions, it is better to err on the side of generosity! Often cited as his ‘Marian principle’, it is also Scotus’s Christological principle, found in his teaching on the Incarnation,6 as well as in his position in favour of the Immaculate Conception.7 It has implications as well for his discussion of human dignity and rational freedom. Scotus’s discussion of the Incarnation makes use, as well, of an early logical distinction that recurs each time he presents the notion of merit. This distinction is that between two orders of viewing an event: according to the ordo intentionis (or order of intent) and according to the ordo executionis (or the order of execution). The two orders mirror one another, with the order of execution occurring in time. As such, it is the reverse of the intentional order. What is first in the order of intention is last in the order of generation or execution. For Scotus, the order of intention reflects the divine mind and constitutes the true teleological relationship among events. The ultimate goal of divine action is framed by love. As an ordered lover, God first wills the end and then those means which are ordered to promote the end. The end, Scotus affirms in Ordinatio iii, d. 32, is to have ‘co-lovers, and this is nothing else than willing that others have his love in themselves. Now this is to predestine them, if he wishes them to have this good finally and eternally.’8 In both Ordinatio i, d. 41 (where Scotus handles the question of merit in human action) and iii, d. 7 (where Scotus deals with the predestination of Christ), this distinction of the two orders plays a central role. The distinction, as it appears in i, d. 41, can be traced out in the following way: 1. 2.

In any artistic creation, the artist proceeds with a purpose in mind. This purpose serves as the goal for all steps that precede it within time but not within the order of perfection.

6 ‘In extolling Christ, I prefer to praise him too much than fail by defect, if through ignorance I must fall into either excess.’ Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, n. 53, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 406. English translation from Allan B. Wolter, ‘John Duns Scotus on the primacy and personality of Christ’, in Franciscan Christology, ed. Damian McElrath (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1997), 139–182, esp. 163. 7 ‘But which of these three possibilities is factually the case, God knows—but if the authority of the Church or the authority of Scripture does not contradict such, it seems more probably that what is more excellent should be attributed to Mary.’ Ordinatio iii, d. 3, q. 1, n. 34, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 181. English translation from Wolter, John Duns Scotus, Four Questions on Mary, 45. 8 Ordinatio iii, d. 32, n. 21, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 10, 136–137. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 157.

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God’s creative action follows one single purpose: that all creation enjoy beatitude Events that appear to precede and give [temporally] prior reasons for the realization of the goal are actually to be understood in view of the goal. Their eventuation is ordered to the goal.

Human actions that appear to promote salvation or retribution actually mislead. In fact, no human action merits divine reward. Divine intentionality alone explains why Peter is saved. Given this, however, human actions do help to explain retribution or punishment. This means that Peter’s actions do not cause his reward; Judas’s actions, however, do explain his punishment. And, while God does not love the punishment of Judas qua damnation (this would make God cruel), God does love the justice that the punishment represents. Indeed, this punishment follows from Judas’s free choice. In the Lectura (the earliest and simplest) version of this question, Scotus places the burden of damnation solely on the shoulders of the human agent. When he asks whether or not human merit plays a role in salvation, Scotus uses the two cases of Peter and Judas. Does Peter merit the reward he receives? Does Judas? Is divine reward measured by human action? In his response, Scotus slices the two cases according to divine intention (that both be saved) and human free will (that Judas chose to reject God). In other words, Peter does not merit his reward, since God had intended the reward. Judas, however, does merit punishment since he turned away from God’s will. So we might call this an early ‘negative’ theory of merit: we only get what we deserve if we turn from God. Otherwise we get more than we deserve!9 The Ordinatio version of the same question is far more elaborate, with a focused discussion of Thomas Aquinas (who argued that general predestination belongs to God and particular reward or punishment belongs to human action) and Henry of Ghent, whose emphasis on human free will reinforces how human actions merit reward or punishment. In reply to both, Scotus again distinguishes between the two orders (intent and execution) to defend God’s responsibility for all reward and human responsibility for all punishment. In fact, God neither desires nor delights in punishing the sinner: the good of this punishment is the good of justice. 9 This is textually asserted by Scotus at i, d. 17, n. 149: ‘And so it is well said that God always rewards beyond worth, universally beyond certain worth which an act merits—since that such be worthy of merit, this is beyond nature and its intrinsic goodness. It is from gratuitous divine acceptance; and even more, beyond that other which normally would reward the act according to common law, whenever God rewards by pure liberality.’ In John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 5, 210–211.

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In the Parisian Reportatio version of this question, Scotus reprises the Ordinatio argument and, in conclusion, elaborates more clearly upon the corollaries that flow from his position. One of them touches upon the reason for the Incarnation. Scotus states: From this another corollary follows: no one is predestined on account of the fall of someone else, nor is anyone’s salvation dependent upon a chance event; hence Christ did not become incarnate, and thus superior to all in merit and reward, on account of sin. Nay, even if no one had ever sinned, he would still have been superior to all creatures in merit and reward.10 Here, in this version of the question, we find something new that had not appeared in earlier versions. While it is new to this question, it is not, however, new to Scotus’s teaching. The Franciscan had already presented this position in his Ordinatio teaching on book iii, d. 7, where he asks: Was Christ predestined to be the Son of God? There he elaborates more fully on the nature of the incarnation: that the Word would take up (assume) human nature in order that human nature would be (in the Word) glorified. Here too we find the foundational distinction between orders of intent and execution. Scotus states: I reply: Predestination consists in foreordaining someone first of all to glory and then to other things which are ordered to glory. Now the human nature in Christ was predestined to be glorified, and in order to be glorified, it was predestined to be united to the Word, in as much as such glory as it was granted would never have been conferred on this nature had it not been so united. Now if it would not be fitting to ordain one to such glory if certain merits were absent, whereas it would be fitting if they were present, then such merits are included in the predestination. And so it would seem that this union by way of fitness is ordered to this glory, although it is not exactly as merit that it falls under this predestination. And just as it is foreordained that this nature be united to the Word, so it is predestined that the Word be man and that this man be the Word.11

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Reportatio i, d. 41, n. 72, in John Duns Scotus, The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture: Reportatio i-a, ed. Allan B. Wolter and Oleg Bychkov (St. Bonaventure, ny, 2008), vol. 2, 506. Ordinatio iii, d. 7, q. 3, n. 58, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 284. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 147.

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In reply to a doubt that this predestination depended on the fall of human nature, Scotus once again recurs to his distinction among the orders of intention and execution: Without passing judgment it can be said that so far as priority of objects intended by God is concerned, the predestination of anyone to glory is prior by nature to the prevision of the sin or damnation of anyone (according to the final opinion given in distinction forty-one of the first book). So much the more then is this true of the predestination of that soul which was destined beforehand to possess the very highest glory possible. For it seems to be universally true that one who wills ordinately, and not inordinately, first intends what is nearer the end, and just as he first intends one to have glory before grace, so among those to whom he had foreordained glory, he who wills ordinately, would seem to intend first the glory of the one he wishes to be nearest the end, and therefore he intends glory to this soul [of Christ] before he wills glory to any other soul, and to every other soul he wills glory before taking into account the opposite of these habits [namely, the sin or damnation of anyone].12 Up to this point in the question, Scotus had been pursuing the question of the rationale behind the Incarnation and not specifically the question of whether or not the Incarnation would have taken place had Adam not sinned. Nevertheless, this question has to be addressed in light of all the authorities who appear to contradict Scotus’s position. He agrees that, in the absence of sin, there would be no need for redemption. However the Franciscan continues: Still it does not seem to be solely because of the redemption that God predestined this soul to such glory, since the redemption or the glory of the souls to be redeemed is not comparable to the glory of the soul of Christ. Neither is it likely that the highest good in the whole of creation is something that merely chanced to take place, and that only because of some lesser good. Nor is it probable that God predestined Adam to such a good before he predestined Christ. Yet all this would follow, yes, and even something more absurd. If the predestination of Christ’s soul was for the sole purpose of redeeming others, it would follow that in foreordaining Adam to glory God would have had to foresee him as having fallen into

12

Ordinatio iii, d. 7, q. 3, n. 61, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 287. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 149.

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sin before he could have predestined Christ … No one therefore is predestined simply because God foresaw another would fall, lest anyone have reason to rejoice at the misfortune of another.13 A final recall of the difference between the two orders completes the argument: Which did God intend first, the union of this [human] nature with the Word or its ordination to glory? Now the sequence in which the creative artist evolves his plan is the very opposite of the way he puts it into execution. One can say, however, that in the order of execution, God’s union with a human nature is naturally prior to his granting it the greatest grace and glory. We could presume, then that it was in the reverse order that he intended them, so that God would first intend that some nature, not the highest, should receive the highest glory, proving thereby he was not constrained to grant glory in the same measure as he bestowed natural perfection. Then secondly, as it were, he willed that this nature should subsist in the Person of the Word, so that the angel might not be subject to a [mere] man.14 These texts, and the arguments that support them, reveal the power of the distinction between the orders of intention and execution. Thanks to this distinction, Scotus is able to recast the reason for the Incarnation. His recasting places Christ at the centre of human history, as exemplar of divine intent and as model for reflection on the perfections of human nature. A logical distinction reveals a theological insight. This theological insight will now play a central role in understanding human nature and the human will willing.

2

From Dignity to Freedom, Self-Mastery and Self-Restraint

Scotus uses the question of Christ’s experience as human to draw out implications for the dignity of human nature as created by God and as intended for beatific glory. In Ordinatio iii, d. 13, q. 4, Scotus asks ‘Could the human soul of Christ been given the highest grace possible for a creature?’ In response, Scotus distinguishes between highest as ‘exceeding all others’ and highest as 13 14

Ordinatio iii, d. 7, q. 3, nn. 63–67, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 288–289. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 149–151. Ordinatio iii, d. 7, q. 3, nn. 68–69, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 289. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 151.

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‘not exceeded by any other’.15 In the former sense, the statement is false, but in the latter it is true. Scotus proves that the supreme grace in the human soul of Christ could be created all at once and conferred on a creature. The factual point is not at issue: that God did or did not choose to confer such grace on another is not the point here. The point is that God could choose to bestow such grace on a creature. This possibility opens the door to the foundations for Christian humanism. I say that God could not confer the highest possible grace upon the soul of Christ as a grace that could not be equalled, for he could have and can assume a nature equal to this, and give to it an equal amount of grace. But he could have given to this soul a grace that is highest in the second sense.16 This means, first, that any human soul (qua soul) is receptive to the grace given to the soul of Christ. Secondly, it means that the human soul is equally receptive to God’s grace as the angelic soul:17 Furthermore, in regard to grace an angel and the soul are equally receptive, because grace as received is the same sort of form, and so far as they receive grace, the recipients are of the same sort … But the grace of a soul and that of an angel are specifically the same … In this way a soul could receive as much grace as an angel. But an angel could receive the highest grace that could be created. So too, then, could a soul and hence this soul could receive it.18 When he moves to the next question, asking ‘Was this grace given to Christ’s human soul?’ Scotus argues (as he does in other places) that such an action

15 16 17

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Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, n. 27, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 393. Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, n. 28, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 393–394. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 159. Scotus makes a similar point as it relates to angelic knowledge of God and human knowledge of God in Quodlibetal. q. 14, n. 12: ‘Still I maintain that if we consider the nature of our intellect as a power or potency, its adequate or commensurate object is no more restricted than that of an angel. Whatever can be understood by one can be understood by the other.’ In God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, ed. Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter (Princeton, nj, 1975), 327. Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, n. 47, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 403–404. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 161.

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would be better done than not. In other words, why not attribute such generosity to God? Here we see the potuit–decuit–fecit argumentation, noted in 1, that Scotus learned from William of Ware. A third question asks ‘Could Christ’s human soul possess the highest act of fruition, that is, the beatific vision?’ Scotus replies that formally, the human soul could have possessed the act in a passive manner, that is, merely enjoying it. Effectively, or actively, his soul could have participated in it as an active experience. Thus, the human soul of Christ was capable of receiving the beatific vision and, more importantly, playing a maximally active role.19 We shall return to this aspect of human dignity in the final section. A last question asks whether or not Christ’s human nature could have actively enjoyed this fruition naturally, or without the highest grace referred to. Scotus replies that, even though the will of Christ’s human soul could have been receptive without grace, it could not have been active (or effective) on its own. Of course, de potentia absoluta, God could have acted otherwise, nevertheless, de potentia ordinata, grace is required for such an affective experience. What is more: [T]he hypostatic union invests as such the soul of Christ with no greater fruition than another might have. Neither does any activity according to the preestablished order of secondary causes pertain to it in virtue of that union, but only if God were to supply for the action of grace, which is designed by nature to function as a secondary cause in the will’s production of this effect—something God could supply also in any other will. And the latter could also formally enjoy, if God immediately caused fruition in it. But all this does not stem from the force of the union, because God could immediately cause fruition in a soul … But if this fruition were immediately caused by God, it would be no cause for praise, because the enjoyment would not be within the power of the will …20 All of these questions point to a common conviction. In his humanity, Jesus Christ is just like us. The hypostatic union (divine and human in Jesus) gives Christ’s human soul no greater potential fruition than ours. Scotus’s sustained reflection on the human experience of Jesus Christ enables him to affirm and defend a theory of maximum human dignity. Not

19 20

Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, nn. 79–81, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 416–417. Ordinatio iii, d. 13, qq. 1–4, n. 91, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 9, 421. English translation from Franciscan Christology, ed. McElrath, 167.

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only does Christ share our human nature in all things but sin; we share in the dignity and ability of his human nature. In our cognition, we possess a natural capacity for the beatific vision and require no light of glory to see God directly. In our will, we possess the capacity for generous and other-centred love, the love of friendship. The Incarnation affirms, in the strongest possible way, the dignity of each human person and the continuity of this world with the next. When he turns to consideration of the human will, Scotus relies on the Benedictine authority of Anselm of Canterbury to defend its dignity. He argues that, insofar as the human will shares the same nature as the will of Christ, it possesses the same natural or native capacity for rectitude. Scotus highlights an important aspect, namely that the will’s natural dignity is constituted by its innate capacity for self-restraint.21 Scotus emphasizes (in Ordinatio ii, d. 6) that this ‘native freedom of the will’, constituted by its two metaphysical affections (affectio iustitiae/affectio commodi), is not lost through original sin. In his later Reportatio Parisiensis ii, d. 6, Scotus repeats this point when he identifies the affectio iusti with the will’s freedom as the specific difference of human nature.22 When the subtle doctor joins the will’s natural rectitude and self-mastery to Anselm’s insight about freedom (as the rectitude of the will propter se servata), he sets the stage for his more fully developed notion of the rational will. This rational will, by virtue of its capacity as uniquely rational, is alone capable of self-determination. This self-determination is possible precisely because of its innate independence from external causes that function in a deterministic manner. In other words, Scotus’s reflection on the innate indeterminatio of the human will reveals its sui generis capacity to direct its own choice and the actions of all lesser faculties, including the intellect.

21

22

See Allan B. Wolter, ‘Native freedom of the will as a key to the ethics of Scotus’, in The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams (Ithaca, ny, 1990), 148–162. ‘Ad primum horum dico primo, praemittendo quod affectiones commodi et justi non sunt sicut a voluntate libera, quasi superaddita; sed affectio iusti est quasi ultima differentia, ita quod sicut homo est substantia animata et animal, non tamen illae sunt passiones essentiae, sed per se de intellectu hominis; sic primo potest concipi appetitus, deinde intellectivus et cognitivus, et adhuc non concipiendo affectionem commodi et justi; et si esset unus Angelus, qui haberet appetitum cognitivum absque affectione justi, careret justo, et non esset appetitus liber … ideo affectio justi est ultima differentia specifica appetitus liberi.’ Reportatio ii, d. 6, n. 9 (Opera Omnia, Luke Wadding [ed.], Vivès edition: 1891, vol. 22, 621).

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In Scotus’s reworking of his own textual sources we recognize the particular approach of the English mind. Earlier, the Franciscan Peter of John Olivi had critiqued Anselm’s theory for losing sight of the power and dignity of free will. And, while Scotus uses Olivi’s approach to understand Anselm, his own insight regarding the natural dignity of the will post lapsum enables him to reframe both Olivi and Anselm in their affirmation of the dignity of freedom and the essential nature of self-restraint as part of the vow of poverty. Olivi had already (in his Sentences ii, q. 57) identified the important act of self-restraint that grounded the will’s freedom. He had also adverted to the Anselmian affections as important in our understanding of the will’s exercise of free choice. But Olivi did not, as Scotus does, affirm the importance of the affectio iustitiae as the innate freedom of the will, that by which the will is able to restrain itself (se refrenaret) in its present state. Thanks to the two affections, Scotus has laid the metaphysical foundations for human dignity and for the reality of spiritual transcendence. The natural or native dignity of the will, constituted by these two affections, expresses itself in its reflexive acts: self-restraint and, ultimately, self-mastery. Scotus continues in Ordinatio ii, d. 6, to explain the various modes of selfrestraint of which the will is capable. These deal with the intensity of the act of willing, the precipitance for the object or with appropriate means for obtaining the object. All three deal with the will’s relationship to itself and its own reflexive act of willing what is good: There are three ways, however, in which a will, able to moderate itself as regards the happiness befitting it, could fail to do so. As to intensity, it might love it more passionately than it deserves. Or through precipitance, it might want it sooner than is becoming. Or with disregard to the proper causal way to obtain it—for instance, it might want it without meriting it—or perhaps for other reasons, all of which one need not bother with here.23

23

‘Potest autem voluntas—potens se ipsam moderari—immoderate belle beatitudinem quae sibi congruit, tripliciter: vel quantum ad intensionem, puta volendo eam maiore conatu quam sibi congruat; vel quantum ad accelerationem, puta volend eam citius quam sibi congruat; vel quantum ad causam, puta volendo eam sibi aliter quam sibi congruat (puta sine meritis, vel forte modis aliis, de gradibus omnibus non oportet hic curare).’ Ordinatio ii, d. 6, q. 2 n. 52, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia vol. 8, 51. English translation from A.B. Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, dc, 1997), 299.

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Scotus develops this notion of freedom as self-mastery more fully in his Questions on the Metaphysics, ix, 14–15, with an eye to establishing the metaphysical framework of rationality within which the will operates.24 Significant for the development of his position on the rational will is the identification of a third act of the will, non velle, as that by which the will does not choose what the intellect presents to it. This sort of act is possible because of the two affections that constitute the will, and reveals a self-moving cause capable of the reflexive act of self-restraint. This is the act whereby the will holds itself back from choosing. Such a reflexive causal action appeared earlier in Olivi’s discussion of the will as free potency in Sentences ii, q. 57. But Olivi does not, to my knowledge, recognize this third act, a positive act of self-restraint that Scotus identifies within his Aristotelian reflection and as a development over his own earlier, Lectura ii, d. 25, treatment of freedom in the will.25 This third act of the will, non velle, is the philosophical key to Scotus’s position on the rational will as sole cause of its own acts of will. What’s more, it holds the key to Scotus’s affirmation of human dignity. The act of self-restraint reveals not just the will’s ability to choose among opposites external to itself, but to govern and restrain its own movement, including its own modality (intensity) of acting. Indeed, this important act of self-restraint is possible, as Scotus explains further in q. 15, and explainable because of the deeper metaphysical category of rational potencies at the heart of reality, a category to which the will alone belongs: But there is only a twofold generic way an operation proper to a potency can be elicited. For either (1) the potency of itself is determined to act, so that so far as itself is concerned, it cannot fail to act when not impeded from without; or (2) it is not of itself so determined, but can perform either this act or its opposite, or can either act or not act at all. A potency of the first sort is commonly called ‘nature,’ whereas one of the second sort is called ‘will’.26

24

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I develop this in greater detail in ‘The birth of the rational will: Duns Scotus and the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, Book ix, q. 15’ Medioevo 30 (2005), 139–170. See Mary Beth Ingham, ‘Self-mastery and rational freedom: Duns Scotus’s contribution to the Usus Pauper debate’ fs 66 (2008), 337–369. ‘Iste autem modem eliciendi operationem propriam non potest esse in genere nisi duplex. Aut enim potentia ex se est determinata ad agendum, ita quod, quantum est ex se, non potest non agere quando non impeditur ab extrinseco. Aut non est ex se determinata, sed

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Only when the will is undetermined by anything other than itself, lying thereby outside the order of natural causal determinism, can the act of selfmovement take place. Scotus’s attempt to outline the true nature of moral freedom by setting aside all other examples that are merely contingent (such as the intellect) in order to focus on those which are free (the will alone), enables him to move more carefully within the domain of the natural order and identify within that order a causal principle that is not determined by anything other than itself. This power alone is rational and can only be identified with the will. Indeed, if the will were not capable of such an act of self-restraint, all would happen ‘according to the manner of nature’ (per modum naturae) and in a determined matter. No true freedom (indetermination) would exist.27

3

Human Fulfilment: The Happy Life and the Love of Friendship

Human dignity in imitation of Christ’s human nature now gives birth to a vision of human perfection saturated with the optimism of Franciscan spirituality. Scotus’s depiction of human fulfilment is based on a vision of rational praxis as the perfection of a life of ordered loving, ongoing conversion, inner harmony and selfless love. This depiction of fulfilment is revealed through a reflection on the freedom and impeccability of the blessed in heaven. In Ordinatio iv, d. 49, q. 6, Scotus defends the freedom of the blessed in heaven. He considers the will’s freedom in its ability to turn the intellect away from the vision of the divine essence. Near the end of the question, however, Scotus wonders, ‘how is it that the blessed and the angels are not only free but impeccable?’ He explains that the phrase beatus est impeccabilis can be taken in a divided or in a composed sense. In the composed sense, the phrase would read as a tautology: the blessed person is now impeccable. In the divided sense, however, it would read ‘the blessed have no ability or possibility to sin’ and this could be understood in one of two ways. First, because of something intrinsic to the person that would exclude such a power (to sin) or secondly, because of an extrinsic cause that would exclude a proximate potency from the act of sin.

27

potest agere hunc actum vel oppositum actum; agere etiam vel non agere. Prima potentia communiter dicitur natura, secunda dicitur voluntas.’ Quaestiones in Metaphysicam ix, 15, n. 22 Ioannis Duns Scotus, Opera Philosophica (Washington, dc, 2004), vol. 4, 680–681. ‘Immo si solus—per impossibile—esset cum virtutibus inferioribus sine voluntate, nihil umquam fieret nisi determinate modo naturae, et nulla esset potentia sufficiens ad faciendum alterutrum oppositorum.’ Quaestiones in Metaphysicam ix, 15, n. 67, 696–697.

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In other words, either something internal to the person is missing or something external to the person prevents the operation of the internal agency. The end result, however, is that the person does not sin. To introduce his solution, Scotus makes use of a thought experiment. Imagine someone who has the power of sight and yet is prevented from seeing an object by the activity of an extrinsic cause. This independent cause makes it perpetually impossible for the vision of the object to take place. The object is indeed visible; however, it is blocked from view. It would be as if there were a perpetual distance between the eye and the object. The eye can still see; it just cannot see that particular object. In this way, Scotus explains, the angelic being Michael, in the presence of the beatific vision, would still retain the innate power to turn away. This would correspond to the eye’s innate ability to see. Nevertheless, this act (of turning away) is not possible thanks to the activity of an extrinsic cause. How? By means of an extrinsic praevenient action, a type of activity that so sustains the delight in the act of loving that the angel would not turn from it. In this state of intense delight, no other object is seen and no other object is willed. However, the power to will remains in the rational being, thanks to the presence of the two Anselmian affections. In this way, the blessed in heaven remain rational, remain free and yet never turn away from the experience of God. a 1972 seminal article by Robert Prentice, ofm,28 offered an analysis of this text that concluded to the affirmation that: There is no reason internal to the will which renders it impeccable, since internally it remains a free faculty. The reason for its impeccability is sought outside the will itself, namely in an action of God which restricts the zone of its activity: the will retains the potency to sin, but God prevents the realization of that potency.29 Prentice’s interpretation of human fulfilment hinges on the incapacity of the human will to function. In other words, the will’s perfection is based upon the absence of the act, rather than the presence of a more perfect act. Elsewhere, I have argued that, while this solution assures the will’s perfection, it does not confirm its freedom.30 28

29 30

Robert Prentice, ‘The degree and mode of liberty in the Beatitude of the blessed’, in Deus et Homo ad Mentem i. Duns Scoti, Acta Tertii Congressus Scotistici Internationalis Vindebonae, 28 September–2 October 1970 (Rome, 1972), 328–342. Prentice, ‘The degree and mode’, 338. Mary Beth Ingham, ‘La Vita Beata: Duns Scotus, moral perfection and rational freedom’, in

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My interpretation of Scotus on this point relies upon the foundational affirmation of human dignity in the rational will. In other words, I argue that the will’s freedom is established by virtue of the presence of the two affections explained in 2 earlier. These two affections make the will both rational and free. Therefore, the capacity of the will for self-restraint, its foundational rational constitution, is not absent in heaven. Rather, it is fulfilled by virtue of the presence of the divine object and the love of friendship. The love of friendship sustains the will’s act by virtue of divine love that returns the human love. Together, these two loves constitute eternal flourishing and satisfaction: the fulfilment of the two affections in a single act of love for the Highest Good. As my earlier study explains, Prentice had inadvertently overlooked a key portion of the original text. There, Scotus applies the visual analogy not to the angels or the blessed, but to the damned. These too still retain the faculty of vision, yet they are not able to see the object. It is as if, Scotus states, there were a perpetual obstacle between the empyrean heaven and the eye of the damned.31 Unable to experience the beatific vision, the will of the damned is unable to love God. The damned remain in hell precisely because they cannot see the divine essence. Additional texts support my claim that, first, a deeper reflection on the perfection of rational freedom and, secondly, upon its fulfilment in the act of ordered (and free) loving proper to the blessed in heaven, actually point to the foundations for Christian humanism in Scotist thought. Throughout his discussion of this question (Ordinatio iv, d. 49, a. 6 and Rep. Parisiensis iv, d. 49), Scotus refers the reader to a fuller treatment of this issue found in the first book of the Sentences.32

31

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Johannes Duns Scotus 1308–2008: Die philosophischen Perspektiven seines Werkes, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Hannes Möhle, Andreas Speer, Theo Kobusch and Susana Bullido del Barrio (Münster and St. Bonaventure, ny, 2011), 379–390. Here, of course, is an oblique reference to the parable of Lazarus and Dives: ‘But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone, if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours and to stop any crossing from your side to ours’ (Luke 16:26). ‘Contra secundam positionem arguitur lib. 1, d. 1, q. 4. et concedo quod licet intellectus naturali necessitate videat objectum praesens proportionatum, tamen voluntas non naturali necessitate fruitur illo objecto viso, sicut ibi dictum est. Neque etiam illa necessitas videndi est simpliciter necessitas, sed tantummodo necessitas, si objectum praesens moveat; et istud est sic mere contingens, quia objectum istud voluntarie et contingenter movet quemcumque intellectum creatum; sed etiam voluntas contingenter fruitur illo viso contingenter, et copulat intelligentiam cum memoria, si tamen ibi habet actum. Ad argumentum, quod in objecto non ostenditur aliquid mali, nec defectus boni, responsum est ubi prius.’ Ordinatio, iv, d. 49, q. 6, n. 9 (Wadding-Vivès 21, 187–188).

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Here, Scotus had considered the question of the necessary relationship between the intellect’s vision of the ultimate end and the will’s enjoyment or love ( frui) for it. In all three versions of this text, Scotus defends the following: 1. 2.

3.

There is no necessary relationship between vision of God and love for God; While the will cannot nolle (reject) an object in which there is no defect, there is no contradiction in the will’s turning the intellect away or exercising the act of non velle (self-restraint);33 Charity, the supernatural dimension of the beatific vision, is required for the complete realization of the will’s perfection (and here Scotus relies on divine conservation).

These texts confirm that, despite the fact that the will has the innate capacity to love God above all things and love God alone, there is still a difference between the happy life of a person pro statu isto and that of the beatitude of the blessed. The blessed enjoy the direct vision of the divine essence while the pilgrim (viator) does not. Were Scotus to defend a version of Prentice’s solution, he would have to argue that the perfection of freedom in heaven is somehow inferior (on his own terms) to the perfection on earth, since the will’s ability (its freedom) in heaven is overridden. In point of fact, at various places in his argument, Scotus defends his theory of the freedom of the blessed because it perfects and surpasses the freedom we experience on earth. Throughout his teaching, Scotus rejects the intellectualist and naturalist Aristotelian theory of happiness (eudaimonia of Ethics x, 6–9) that defines human perfection narrowly, in terms of the intellect and of only two affective experiences: desire and satisfaction. According to this approach, either the human person is in a state of desire/longing or in a state of repose/satisfaction. Scotus argues that this approach neglects the most important act of the will: the act of friendship. His discussion of human freedom in heaven is grounded

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‘Item dico quod duo sunt actus voluntatis positivi, scilicet nolle et velle; et licet nolle non sit nisi respectu alicuius quod habet rationem mali, vel respectu obiecti defectivi, tamen voluntas potest negative non velle obiectum in quo est nihil mali nec ratio obiecti defectivi quia sua libertas est ad contradictoria; unde licet non potest nolle beatitudinem, potest tamen non velle illud.’ Lectura i, d. 1, p. 2, q. 2, n. 118, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 16, 100. See also Ordinatio i, d. 1, p. 2, q. 2, n. 92, in John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. 2, 66–67, and Reportatio i-a, n. 35, in John Duns Scotus, The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture, 97.

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upon the possibility of acting out of the love of friendship (amor amiciticiae) rather than the love of possession (concupiscence). This act of love is an act of the self-reflexive will, one which the will continues (from its side) and God sustains (from the divine side). All this means that the human will in heaven, even with no other object present, still is capable of the act of non velle, the act by which the will refrains from loving God. Scotus confirms this position again in Quodlibet 16. 17–20,34 Ordinatio iv, d. 49, qq. 9–10,35 and Reportatio iv, d. 49, q. 5.36 The firmitas of the will in the presence of a cognized infinite good derives from the nature of the object itself and the will choosing it. By choosing to love the object, the will exercises its maximum rational freedom.

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36

‘Proof of the same minor [that the will of the pilgrim does not necessarily continue its act as long as it could] by a text from the Retractions: “Nothing is so in the power of the will as the will itself.” This should be understood as referring to the will’s action rather than to the will itself. It is in the power of the will that by its command another power act or refrain from acting, for example, that the intellect refrain from considering at least that object whose consideration is not required for issuing the command. Hence it is in the power of the will that it does not act regarding that specific object. I do not understand this in the sense that the will could voluntarily suspend all its activity. It could voluntarily not will that object and still have another volition, viz., one that reflects on its own act, for instance: “I will not elicit an act as regards that object.” This can well happen: otherwise the will could not suspend any act after deliberating. Now this holds for will and intellect alike, namely, that while the will cannot suspend such intellection as is necessary for the volition by which it suspends intellection, it can suspend any other intellections. So too it cannot at a given moment suspend all volition, for it cannot suspend the act by which it suspends, but it can suspend any volition that is not necessary for this.’ Quodlibetal q. 16.16–17 (God and Creatures, ed. Alluntis and Wolter, 373). ‘If you object: If the will of necessity neither wills happiness nor hates or detests it, then what sort of act can the will have when the intellect shows it happiness? I grant that in most cases it will have an act of volition, but it does not necessarily have any act. Hence, when it is shown happiness, it can refrain from acting at all. In regard to any object, then, the will is able not to will or will it, and can suspend itself from eliciting any act in particular with regard to this or that. And this something anyone can experience in himself when someone proffers some good. Even if it is presented as something to be considered and willed, one can turn away from it and not elicit any act in its regard …’ Ordinatio iv, d. 49, qq. 9–10 (English in Wolter, Will and Morality, 161). ‘Sed contra hoc sic arguo: Si voluntas perpetuo conjungat memoriam visioni, tunc videtur quod voluntas non posset se avertere a visione; sed hoc est falsum, quia non est contra rationem, et naturam voluntatis, quod possit se convertere, cum sit libera; igitur tunc non necessario vellet istam visionem, et per consequens non necessario conjunget memoriam visioni.’ Reportatio Par. iv, d. 49, q. 5, n. 8 (Vivès 24, 644).

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My interpretation locates the perfection of freedom in heaven completely within the will’s natural power to master its own actions, in its self-reflexive capacity. This reading links the perfection of the blessed in heaven more closely to the perfection of human dignity and the dignity of human action on earth. The freedom of the blessed is, in itself, as perfect as the will’s freedom pro statu isto. It is made more perfect by the immediate vision of the divine essence and the sustaining act of the divine will.

4

Conclusions

There are several implications that can be seen to flow from Scotus’s presentation of the dignity of human nature, the centrality of rational freedom in imitation of Christ, and its consequent link to human fulfilment and happiness in an act of friendship. First, a focus on the dignity of Christ’s human nature, with all its natural powers for love, enables Scotus to develop the rational will as key to a life of ongoing conversion. This points to a life of continuous transformation into right and selfless loving. Our shared excellence of human nature links this world to the next, and lays the foundation for spiritual transcendence and freedom upon which Scotus develops his optimistic Christian humanism. Secondly, as Scotus turns from an Aristotelian model of human fulfilment, with its emphasis on desire and satisfaction, he offers another model of fulfilment: friendship. Indeed, Scotus’s vision of the beatitude of the blessed is framed in the perfection of friendship, a free and rational act of love for another, an act that requires the reflexive freedom of self-mastery and self-gift. This relational act of fulfilment is within the natural capacity of the human will which, in imitation of Christ, is able to love in a selfless and generous manner. In other words, Scotus is working out of an alternative vision of the happy life, one whose perfection is not centred on the satisfaction of intellectual desire, but upon the will’s self-reflexive capacity for the love of friendship. Thirdly, what is true of the blessed is true of the damned. If, thanks to the will’s own internal constitution, the act of velle is free, then so is the act of nolle. This means that the damned may also have the chance for a change of heart; they might not be destined for eternal punishment. God sustains and conserves the act of the blessed; not the act of the damned. The opportunity for a change of heart would require, quite simply, a vision of the divine essence, or an objectum voluntarium. Like the blessed, the damned have no reason to stop willing as they do; they have no other object to love. All it would take is a divine act of self-revelation, a possibility Scotus recognizes elsewhere in Ordinatio iv, d. 49.

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Finally, Scotus’s own English Franciscan identity may indeed shed light on his defence of rational freedom in the human will. His defence provides the foundation for human dignity in the human nature of Jesus Christ, in the human ability for self-restraint and self-mastery, and in the human capacity for the beatific vision. This Franciscan emphasis on a life of ongoing conversion belongs to the pastoral revolution that was born after Lateran iv. Franciscan optimism affirms the continuity that belongs to the rational will pro statu isto and into eternity. The freedom of the blessed is also the freedom of the damned. This is another way of saying that saints and sinners enjoy the same capacity for freedom, for ongoing conversion and therefore the same dignity. To understand rational freedom and moral development in terms of the spiritual aspirations of human nature in imitation of Jesus Christ reveals how, for Scotus and for the Friars Minor, the deepest human fulfilment and satisfaction are found in the love of friendship. Here we find clearly the Franciscan foundations for Christian humanism.

chapter 16

William of Ockham’s Ecclesiology and Political Thought* Takashi Shogimen

William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347) is widely known as a giant of late medieval scholasticism who radically undermined scholastic theology by virtue of his nominalism. Born in the village of Ockham, Surrey, Ockham was a Franciscan theologian and philosopher who taught mainly at Oxford.1 His literary activities are bifurcated in two periods, before and after 1324, when he was summoned to the Avignon papacy. Before 1324, Ockham’s writings include nothing of a political nature.2 His works then were theological and logical, represented by the Summa on Logic and the Commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. However, after the sojourn in Avignon in 1324–1328, he never wrote anything purely academic. After departing from Avignon with a few Franciscan comrades, including Michael of Cesena, the minister general of the Franciscan order, and Bonagratia of Bergamo, a Franciscan canonist, Ockham wrote a series of anti-papal polemical works in Munich. What we deem his works on ecclesiology and political thought are all the product of his time in exile. Why did Ockham leave Avignon in 1328? Much ink has been spilt on this biographical question yet no definitive answer has been given.3 However, one thing is certain: in Avignon Ockham was subjected to inquisition as his academic views were suspected of heresy.4 This personal misfortune, however, did

* I am grateful to Stephen Conway for his help during the preparation of this chapter. 1 Léon Baudry, Guillaume d’Occam: sa vie, ses oevres, ses idées sociales et politiques (Paris, 1949); Jürgen Miethke, Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969); and V. Leppin, Wilhelm von Ockham: Gelehrter, Streiter, Bettelmönch (Darmstadt, 2003). 2 Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál, Stephen F. Brown et al. (eds.), Venerabilis Inceptoris Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum edita, 17 vols (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1974–1988). 3 F.E. Kelly, ‘Ockham: Avignon, before and after’, in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, Studies in Church History: Subsidia 5 (Oxford, 1987), 1–18; Leppin, Wilhelm von Ockham, 122. 4 The latest account of this is Andrew E. Larsen, The School of Heretics: Academic Condemnation at the University of Oxford, 1277–1409 (Leiden, 2011), ch. 5.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_017

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not have a direct impact on his later polemical career. What is noteworthy, however, is that Ockham’s stay in Avignon corresponds chronologically to the bitter conflict between the papacy and the Franciscan order over the orthodoxy of the Franciscan ideal of evangelical poverty.5 Pope John xxii declared that the Franciscan idea of poverty was heretical; thus, Michael of Cesena requested Ockham, who happened to be in Avignon, to scrutinize the papal bulls attacking Franciscan poverty. Upon inspection of the bulls, Ockham stated: In these [bulls] I found a great many things that were heretical, erroneous, silly, ridiculous, fantastic, insane, and defamatory, contrary and likewise plainly adverse to orthodox faith, good morals, natural reason, certain experience, and fraternal charity.6 This discovery determined the course of the rest of his life. In the same letter Ockham also stated: Against the errors of this pseudo-pope [i.e., John xxii], ‘I have set my face like the hard rock’, so that neither lies nor slurs nor persecution of whatever sort (that does not physically touch my person), nor multitude, however great, of those who believe or favour or even defend him will ever at any time be able to prevent me from attacking and refuting his errors as long as I have hand, pen, parchment and ink.7 Ockham never suspended his attack on the papacy, but continued it for two decades, until he died in Munich, in exile. These circumstances eloquently show that Ockham’s anti-papal polemical activity was motivated by the perception that the papacy of his time had fallen into heresy. Ockham was far from an armchair theorist; his first polemical work was intended to respond to actual issues within the Church surrounding the Franciscan ideal of evangelical poverty. From this, it also follows that Ockham did not conceptualize his ecclesiological and political thought as an abstract system; he was responding to specific issues. Thus, it is historically questionable 5 Malcolm D. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan Order 1210–1323 (London, 1961), 208–246; Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, vol. 1 (Manchester, 1967), 238–255. 6 William of Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, ed. A.S. McGrade and John Kilcullen (Cambridge, 1995), 3–4; William of Ockham, ‘Epistola ad Fratres Minores’, in Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, vol. 3, ed. H.S. Offler (Manchester, 1956), 6. 7 Ockham, ‘Epistola ad Fratres Minores’, 15.

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to presuppose his ecclesiology and political thought only as logical derivatives of his theology and philosophy, which he expounded before 1324.8 During the two decades after his departure from Avignon, Ockham produced numerous polemical works, large and small. Interestingly, only a few manuscripts survive of shorter works that constitute a brief and direct statement of his personal views, such as A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government and On the Power of Emperors and Popes. These writings were not influential in the late medieval and Reformation eras. A large number of manuscripts survive, however, for two substantial works: The Dialogue,9 and The Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope.10 It is known that conciliarists of later generations including Pierre d’Ailly, Juan de Segovia and Jacques Almain read these works.11 The Dialogue consists of three parts: part 1 discusses the problem of heresy with special reference to papal heresy. The works that have traditionally been known as part 2, John Kilcullen argues, are certainly not that Ockham actually intended to include as such; for one thing, unlike the parts 1 and 3, the ‘part 2’ does not take the format of fictional dialogue between a master and a student.12 Part 3 examines the origins and roles of papal and imperial power, and much 8

9

10 11

12

Richard Scholz interpreted Ockham’s political thought as a derivative of his theology, while Georges de Lagarde and Michael Wilks considered Ockham’s political thought to be deduced from his nominalist philosophy. This approach to Ockham’s political thought has largely been abandoned by experts since 1970s. On the historiography of Ockham’s political thought, see Takashi Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2007), 10–32. Ockham, Dialogus, in Monarchia Sancti Romani Imperii, ed. Melchior Goldast (Frankfurt, 1614), vol. 2, 392–889. Now, a critical edition of part two and part three (tract one only) has been published: William of Ockham, Dialogus, Part 2, Part 3, Tract 1, ed. John Kilcullen, John Scott, John Ballweg and Volker Leppin (Oxford, 2011). Currently, a critical edition and an English translation are in preparation; they can be viewed on the following website: http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/, accessed 14 October 2016. Ockham, Octo Quaestiones de Potestate Papae, in Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, ed. H.S. Offler, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1974), 15–217. On Pierre d’ Ailly, see Francis Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre d’Ailly (New Haven, ct, 1964) and Louis B. Pascoe, Church and Reform: Bishops, Theologians, and Canon Lawyers in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420) (Leiden, 2005). On Juan de Segovia and Ockham, see J.D. Mann, ‘William of Ockham, Juan de Segovia, and heretical pertinacity’, Mediaeval Studies 56 (1994), 67–88. On Jacques Almain’s use of Ockham, see Takashi Shogimen, ‘Ockham, Almain and the idea of heresy’, in Religion, Power, and Resistance from Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries: Playing the Heresy Card, ed. Karen Bollermann, Thomas Izbicki and Cary J. Nederman (Basingstoke, 2015), 153–168. John Kilcullen, ‘Introduction to two tracts traditionally counted as Dialogus, part 2’, in Ockham, Dialogus Part 2, Part 3, Tract 1, ed. Kilcullen et al., 8–9.

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of its content overlaps with that of the Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope. Given that these works were widely read by conciliarists, Ockham was known by late medieval intellectuals presumably as a theorist of heresy and the power of popes and emperors. Ockham’s ecclesiology and political thought may be characterized in a threefold way: first, he conceptualized a highly idiosyncratic theory of heresy that undermined the traditional idea of heresy and thus legitimized dissent from an allegedly heretical pope. Secondly, while he argued for the separation of ecclesiastical and temporal powers as a normal mode of operation, Ockham envisaged a theory of crisis management in response to the situation where governing institutions malfunctioned. Thirdly and finally, Ockham argued forcefully in defence of ‘rights and liberties given by God and nature’ to each and every individual, Christian or non-Christian. The present chapter is intended to highlight those aspects of Ockham’s polemical works. His polemical activity can be divided into two periods: the first half stretches from his departure from Avignon to 1337, and the second half covers from 1337 to his death in 1347. The first period is characterized by the acute focus on the problem of heresy, in particular papal heresy. The second period, on the other hand, shifted the focus to the discussion of the true nature of papal power and its relation to imperial power, thus revolving around the question of power.

1

The Question of Franciscan Poverty

As I have stated, Ockham’s polemical activity originates from the strife between the papacy and the Franciscan order. His first polemical work is today known under the title of The Work of Ninety Days.13 This work recited the papal bull, Quia vir reprobus, which denounced the Franciscan theory of poverty, and described the view presented by critics of the papal pronouncement. Ockham simply presented the two conflicting views, and did not state that the views of the ‘critics’ are his own; indeed, he did not make his personal opinions explicit anywhere in the work. Ockham deployed an argumentative style that merely reported diverse viewpoints without stating clearly which of the presented opinions were his own because he hoped that readers would judge the validity

13

Ockham, Opus Nonaginta Dierum, in Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, vol. 1, ed. H.S. Offler, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1974), 292–368; vol. 2, ed. H.S. Offler (Manchester, 1963), 307–509.

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of each opinion not by its author but by the quality of argument only. As Ockham was excommunicated in 1328, the revelation of the authorship of his own views probably did not do him any favours. From the viewpoint of modern readers of Ockham, such a literary style poses a considerable challenge in identifying the author’s personal views, which can only be revealed by reference to shorter, personal works in which Ockham stated his views directly. It is nonetheless largely safe to surmise that most of the views of the ‘critics’ in The Work of Ninety Days represent Ockham’s own. But does this mean that Ockham was a Franciscan ideologue?14 Recent study by Jonathan Robinson meticulously compared and contrasted the discussions on property rights by the so-called ‘Michaelist’ Franciscans—Michael of Cesena, Francis of Marcia, Bonagratia of Bergamo, and William of Ockham—to conclude that ‘there is no one Michaelist conception of Franciscan poverty’.15 While these Franciscans presumably worked together, there were considerable differences among their individual views. Also, it is worth underscoring that Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo only produced writings in defence of Franciscan poverty, while Ockham shifted his polemical concern from the vindication of the Franciscan cause to the larger question of papal heresy. Ockham should not be confined to the straitjacket of Franciscan ideologues. In appraising Ockham’s polemical standpoint, attention should be drawn to the fact that, in order to defend the Franciscan viewpoint, he attacked Pope John xxii’s ignorance of theology.16 Ockham argued repeatedly that the pope’s interpretation of the Bible was prejudiced by his legal mindset and therefore theologically unsound.17 This forms an intriguing contrast with Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo, who did not question the pope’s theological proficiency. Instead, in view of the fact that Pope Nicholas iii officially authorized the Franciscan understanding of poverty, they maintained that the pope did not have any authority to revoke the doctrinal decision-making by his predecessor, thus asserting the irreformability of the pope’s doctrinal decisionmaking in opposition to John xxii’s position of papal sovereignty: the idea that enables a past doctrinal decision to be revoked freely. The debated issue here concerns the legal authority of the pope in relation to the past doctri14 15 16 17

Malcolm Lambert and Jürgen Miethke understood Ockham as a Franciscan ideologue. See Lambert, Franciscan Poverty and Miethke, Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie. Jonathan Robinson, William of Ockham’s Early Theory of Property Rights in Context (Leiden, 2013), xi. See Ockham, Opus Nonaginta Dierum, cc. 33–58, in Opera Politica, vol. 2, 509–553. Patrick Nold argued that John xxii was a competent theologian. See his Pope John xxii and His Franciscan Cardinal (Oxford, 2003), 141, 161.

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nal decisions made by a predecessor.18 Ockham, too, discussed the question of the pope’s doctrinal authority; however, his polemical standpoint is clearly removed from that of Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo in that Ockham criticized John xxii’s theological competence. Ockham’s polemical viewpoint, therefore, was not so much legal as theological. Ockham’s theological standpoint deserves special attention because he was highly critical of canon law. According to Ockham, those who have true erudition and sound understanding of canon law are not canonists but theologians because theology is a discipline superior to canon law. This exaltation of theologians was shared by leading theologians, including Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. Ockham’s assertion of the superiority of theology over canon law motivated him to attack the theological ignorance of John xxii, who was a competent canon lawyer, and to view canonist discourse on ecclesiology critically from a theological perspective.19 It has been suggested that ‘Ockham did not like canonists but his argument was not directed specifically against their teachings.’20 This does not quite capture his intention. Ockham’s critical attitude towards canonists did not, of course, mean the total rejection of canonist teaching but certainly demanded that he scrutinize canonist theories from a theological perspective, which in some areas of ecclesiology and political thought resulted in agreement with canonist teachings but in others led him to reconceptualize canonist doctrines quite radically. The latter was the case for Ockham’s discussion of heresy.

2

A New Theory of Heresy

The dispute between John xxii and the Franciscan dissidents revolved doctrinally around the question of whether the Franciscan ideal of evangelical poverty was, as the pope claimed, heretical. What clearly differentiated Ockham from his Franciscan colleagues in this controversy was that instead of being fixated on the vindication of Franciscan ideals, Ockham shifted his attention to a more fundamental question: What is heresy? Part 1 of The Dialogue, which arguably has the largest scale of all Ockham’s works and exercised considerable influence on theologians of later generations, scrutinized, systematically and comprehensively, such questions as what is heresy and who 18 19 20

Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150–1350, 2nd impression (Leiden, 1988), ch. 5. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 1. Cf. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, ch. 1. Brian Tierney, Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800 (Washington, dc, 2014), 120.

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are heretics. After discussing heresy and heretics in general terms, the work exhaustively examined various ecclesiological problems arising from papal heresy. As I stated earlier, Ockham’s polemical activities had their genesis in his frightening discovery that the contemporary pope had fallen into heresy. Hence, the theory of heresy and heretics was paradigmatic to the entire corpus of his polemical works. In part 1 of The Dialogue, Ockham fundamentally reconceptualized and redefined heresy. The notion of heresy widely accepted among theologians and canonists in medieval Europe was markedly authoritative: heresy exists if, and only if, the Church declares an assertion to be heretical.21 The declaration of heresy is ipso facto the Church’s assertion of its own supreme doctrinal authority. Ockham strongly questioned this prevalent understanding. For him, heresy was an assertion that contradicted the sources of Christian doctrine such as the Bible. In seeing heresy this way, Ockham rejected the anchoring of heresy in the Church’s institutional authority and thereby reduced heresy purely into an interpretative category: a matter of understanding and interpretation of textual sources of Christian doctrine. Put another way, Ockham’s idea of heresy was no longer authoritative but exegetical.22 Thus, for Ockham, a judgement on whether a certain assertion contradicts the biblical text does not necessarily require intervention of ecclesiastical authority but is possible for anyone who has sound knowledge of Scripture.23 Likewise Ockham redefined heretics radically. The prevalent idea of heretics in the Middle Ages was the person who refused to obey ecclesiastical authority pertinaciously or obstinately. Pertinacity had been identified as a defining feature of heretical errans since Gratian: an idea that was widely accepted by both theologians and canonists in the thirteenth century, in particular Franciscans.24 The concept of pertinacity stems from the biblical notion that suspects of heresy are offered the opportunity to recant their alleged error three times and are deemed heretics after refusing many times. Thus they present themselves to be pertinacious.25 The fulcrum of this traditional idea is whether or not the suspect obeys the Church’s authoritative demand to correct him or herself. A tacit assumption is that the Church’s authority to command someone to 21 22 23 24 25

R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987), 68. See also Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 84–85. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 2, ch. 5. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 2. Cf. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 77–88. Alexander of Hales, Summa Universae Theologiae, vol. 3, 739; Bonaventure, Opera Omnia, vol. 3, 313–314. Matthew 18:15–17.

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correct error is always theologically sound, which is the point Ockham questioned. His project was thus to acknowledge pertinacity as the key feature of heretics,26 and to reconceptualize it: he denied that pertinacity could be determined by repeated disobedience to ecclesiastical authority precisely because the Church’s correction might be incorrectly informed. Hence, Ockham viewed pertinacity as deliberate failure to assent to a theologically correct proposition. More specifically, pertinacity—a distinct feature of heretics—was redefined by Ockham as the act of denying a manifestly true proposition that each and every Christian must know and understand correctly.27 Ockham’s strategy was to replace the authoritative and institutional meaning of pertinacity with a textual and exegetical meaning. This redefinition entails significant ecclesiological consequences. Obviously pertinacity concerns readiness to be corrected; however, readiness to be corrected, in Ockham’s view, should be ascertained in terms of the nature of the assertion made by the suspect of heresy, not in terms of attitude towards the command of ecclesiastical authority. What if the assertion made by the suspect denies the truth of the proposition that everyone knows is true? The rejection of the true proposition that everyone assents to is clearly deliberate and cannot stem from ignorance or different interpretation. Consider the proposition ‘Christ died on the cross.’ Each and every Christian knows that it is a true proposition; thus, rejecting that proposition cannot be excused on the grounds of ignorance or interpretative variation, but rather should be recognized as deliberate failure to assent to the proposition. Since such an act is deliberate, it is useless to enquire repeatedly whether the agent of the act is ready to correct him or herself. Therefore, those who reject a true proposition that Christians are bound to know concerning Christian faith should be determined pertinacious immediately.28 However, what must be known about Christian faith is not the same for every believer. Lay believers are only bound to know a set of plain propositions (such as ‘Christ died on the cross’), which, given the contemporary literacy level, was realistic. Since lay believers must know only what everyone knows, they are unlikely to be judged heretical; their duty of assenting to Christian truths is readily achievable. Churchmen, by contrast, are bound to know the most minute details of the sources of Christian faith, such as the Bible and

26 27 28

Ockham, i Dialogus, book 3, c. 6. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 100. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 4, chs 8–11. Also Ockham, Contra Ioannem, in Opera Politica, vol. 3, cc. 13–15.

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other canonical texts.29 The holders of high ecclesiastical office, for instance, are required and indeed assumed to have erudite knowledge about Christian doctrine because they have the capacity to teach and disseminate Christian knowledge. Since they bear the duty of knowing a great amount about Christian faith, they are also bound to be cautious and prudent in their official doctrinal decision-making. Conversely, high ecclesiastics who commit a manifest error concerning Christian doctrine would be judged heretical at once.30 Ockham packaged this argument by the concept of explicit faith. Explicit faith is a set of propositions that a believer is bound to know manifestly and publicly. Ockham argued that the content of explicit faith is commensurate with the ecclesiastical status of the individual. Thus, explicit faith for lay believers is only a small set of propositions every believer knows, while explicit faith for ecclesiastical officials constitutes a large body of knowledge about Christian doctrine.31 What permeates Ockham’s theory of heresy and heretics is clearly the removal of institutional authority from the process of discovering heresy and heretics. Heresy is not merely what ecclesiastical authority declared as such. Likewise, heretics are no longer those who disobeyed the authority of the Church repeatedly. Both heresy and heretics are to be discovered exegetically in light of the texts that define Christian doctrine. So heresy is an assertion that rejects true propositions about Christian doctrine, and heretics are those who manifestly reject true propositions that they must know about Christian doctrine. The problem of heresy is, for Ockham, no longer about institutional authority but about rational interpretive possibilities of doctrinal texts.

3

Papal Heresy

One important ramification of Ockham’s reconceptualization of heresy is that the hierarchical order of the ecclesiastical institution becomes irrelevant to correcting heretics. The act of correcting those in error in the ecclesiastical context is known as fraternal correction. The correction of heretics was widely discussed by theologians and canonists under the theme of fraternal correction in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.32 Generally, they considered 29 30 31 32

Ockham, i Dialogus, book 7, c. 18. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 88–101. Ibid., 96–98. The classic example is Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae antequam esset frater, vol. 3, q. 28, 497–515; Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Sententiarum, vol. 4, 342–347.

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that high ecclesiastics only, not lay believers, were authorized to demand coercive correction for those who commit doctrinal errors; lay believers were permitted only to advise.33 Ockham, by contrast, maintained that the corrector’s status or office is irrelevant to the correction of doctrinal errors.34 The correction is legitimate and binding if and only if the corrector’s correction is theologically sound. This applies no matter how low the social status of the corrector.35 The reverse side of this is that Ockham recognized a wide scope of tolerance for doctrinal errors committed by individual lay believers. Even if lay believers are commanded by a pope to correct their error concerning doctrinal matters that do not belong to their explicit faith, they are not bound to recant it. Indeed, acting against the dictate of conscience cannot be virtuous.36 Furthermore, Ockham insisted that the burden of proof concerning the alleged doctrinal error committed by lay believers lies with the corrector. Since the office of the corrector has nothing to do with the question of whether the correction is binding, the legitimacy of correction is solely dependent on logical demonstration of the error. Thus it is not necessary for the corrected to admit their error until they are manifestly shown by the corrector that their assertion contradicts the textual sources of Christian doctrine. What if the corrected one is the pope? Ockham’s response was in sharp contrast to the argument he advanced when the corrected was a lay believer. He maintained that, if a pope is suspected of heresy, his power should be temporarily suspended.37 Clearly the presumption of innocence does not apply to the pope. Why? Ockham responded: the pope has coercive power. Even if lay believers become heretics, they have no coercive power that compels others to subscribe to their heretical beliefs. The pope, by contrast, once fallen into heresy, can coerce all the believers to subscribe to his heresy, thereby posing a serious threat to the spiritual well-being of Christendom. This formed

33

34 35 36

37

See, for instance, Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between correction as act of charity and correction as act of justice. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 2a2ae, q. 33, a. 3, vol. 34 (2a2ae, 23–33): Charity ed. and trans. R.J. Batten, o.p. (London, 1975), 284. A.S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional principles (Cambridge, 1974), 57. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 4. Cf. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 118–123. I argued elsewhere that Ockham inherited the Thomist negative authority of conscience. Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 131–135. Ockham’s emphasis on the authority of an individual’s (erroneous) conscience is far removed from the Franciscan tradition that rejected the authority of erroneous conscience. Ibid., 123–131. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 6, c. 48.

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the basis of Ockham’s contention that a pope, once suspected of heresy, should not be allowed to exercise his authority.38 What follows from this is that faith belongs to the inner world of individuals, which cannot and should not be resolved by coercive power. On this point, Ockham differed markedly from Marsilius of Padua, who denied any coercive power to ecclesiastical office. But this does not necessarily mean that Ockham was more conservative than Marsilius; indeed, Ockham demanded that high ecclesiastics be extremely cautious and prudent in their doctrinal decisionmaking, lest they should communicate erroneous doctrines, thus imposing ethical constraints on the high ecclesiastics’ exercise of their doctrinal authority. This claim is perhaps no less radical than that of Marsilius. Ockham’s discussion of doctrinal correction is thus the reversal of the traditional hierarchical view: lay believers are not bound to correct their errors even if they are subject to papal correction, while a pope suspected of error must be subjected to correction no matter who the corrector may be. But is this feasible in reality? Ockham was not unaware of the practical viability of his theory. Indeed, it is unlikely that the pope would actually suspend the exercise of his authority simply because he was convicted of doctrinal error by a believer. Ockham insisted, however, that papal error must be corrected, because a heretical pope can poison Christendom and eradicate orthodox faith altogether.39 To tackle this dilemma, Ockham turned his attention to all other Christians. Thus far, Ockham’s discussion focused on two parties: one is the pope who has fallen into heretical error and the other is the individual believer who discovers and rectifies papal errors. The situation around the correction of papal errors is not irrelevant to all other Christians, however. Ockham maintained that other believers must not remain silent, especially when an individual who has orthodox faith dissents from a heretical high ecclesiastic, jeopardizing his or her own personal interests. Ockham’s view is that unless every Christian protects other Christians, the communal solidarity of Christendom is not sustainable.40 In arguing so, Ockham referred to St Ambrose’s On the Duties of Ministers,41 thereby appealing to the Ciceronian idea of negative injustice: ‘the man, who does not defend someone, or obstruct the injustice when he can, is at fault just as if he had abandoned his parents or his friends or his country’.42 Not only dissenting from, but also defending others who are subject to, 38 39 40 41 42

Ockham, i Dialogus, book 6, c. 66. Also book 7, c. 43. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 6, esp., c. 100. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 6, esp., c. 41. Ockham, i Dialogus, book 6, c. 37. Cicero, On Duties, ed. M.T. Griffin and E.M. Atkins (Cambridge, 1991), 10.

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injustice is among the duties of all believers.43 This way, Ockham laid the ethical foundation for resistance. Seen in this light, Ockham’s theory of heresy is a call for action against a heretical pope. He did not reduce the conflict between John xxii and the Franciscan order into the vindication of the theology of Franciscan poverty; instead he therein observed the grave danger of papal heresy— a problem much larger than the threat to the Franciscan teaching on poverty alone—and envisaged a systematic and comprehensive response to such a crisis in contemporary Christendom.

4

Papal Plenitude of Power

The second phase of Ockham’s polemical activity opens with the pontificate of Benedict xii, following the death of John xxii in 1334. What prompted Ockham to resume his anti-papal campaign was the issue of the papal bull Redemptor noster (1336). In it, Ockham observed the pope’s declaration that should any doubt or question concerning a matter of faith be brought for examination before the apostolic see, no one is to presume to approve any opinion on it until a papal decision has been given. Ockham denounced this as ‘the worst heresy’ he has ever heard.44 In his view, this declaration meant the papal monopoly on decision-making about doctrinal matters: no orthodox doctrine can be established before papal decision. If papal power is defined officially this way, any heretical doctrine could be pronounced as orthodox if the pope declares it as such: the papal monopoly on doctrinal decision-making, therefore, entails a serious danger to the preservation of true Christian doctrine. Why is this ‘the worst heresy’ Ockham has ever heard? John xxii’s attack on Franciscan poverty, for instance, was indeed heretical, but only stems from that pope’s theological incompetence: an individual’s contingent error. Benedict xii’s definition of the doctrinal power of the pope, by contrast, potentially enabled not only Benedict but also all his successors to change what constitutes true Christian doctrine.45 In this sense, Benedict’s heresy was not specific to his pontificate but would have a grave impact on posterity; thus, ‘the worst heresy’ that Ockham has ever heard. Since papal power was now redefined in a way that would pose a serious threat to Christendom, it was not enough merely to demonstrate that Bene-

43 44 45

Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 135–144. Ockham, Contra Benedictum, book 4, c. 2, in Opera Politica, vol. 3, 245. Ockham, Contra Benedictum, book 4, c. 9, 259–260.

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dict xii was a heretic. More important, and indeed urgent, was to show to all Christians that the contemporary understanding of papal power was a heretical error. Ockham thus embarked on rejecting Benedict’s claim as false and heretical and revealing the true notion of power, thereby demonstrating what the pope could and could not do by his power. It is clear that the focus of Ockham’s polemics has shifted from a heretical person (i.e., John xxii) to a heretical proposition (i.e., Benedict xii’s definition of papal power), but his concern still revolves around heresy. The task Ockham imposed on himself was to scrutinize the papal doctrine of plenitude of power (plenitudo potestatis). What he identified as the erroneous understanding of papal plenitude of power is the proposition that ‘the pope has plenitude of power from Christ in such a way that in matters both temporal and spiritual he can do by right all things not against natural or divine law’.46 According to this, the pope not only monopolizes the final authority on doctrinal matters but is also able to intervene readily in temporal matters. Ockham’s critique of the contemporary idea of papal power was acutely focused on that proposition. His discussions of this idea can be found in a number of his works, including part 3 of The Dialogue, Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope, A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government and On the Power of Emperors and Popes.47 It has been suggested that Ockham was thereby responding to the ‘papalist’ theologians such as Giles of Rome.48 However, there is no solid textual evidence suggesting Ockham was writing in response to Giles or any particular writer. Indeed, no historian has identified a possible source to which Ockham was responding in his discussion. Rather, a promising clue for understanding Ockham’s intention is discerned in his argumentative strategy. He attacked the excessive generalization of the scope of papal power based on Matthew 16:19 (‘Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven etc.’). Those who maintained that the pope could do anything unless he contradicts natural or divine law, according to Ockham, interpreted the word ‘Whatever (quodcunque)’ in a most general sense in order to include everything except those things which contradicted natural or divine law.49 The point of Ockham’s critique was to show that this was an overgeneralization. 46 47

48 49

Ockham, Breviloquium de principatu tyrannico, book 2, ch. 1, in Opera Politica, vol. 4, 111. Ockham, iii Dialogus i, book 1, c. 1; Ockham, De Imperatorum et Pontifucm Potestate, c. 1, in Opera Politica, vol. 4, 282–283; Ockham, Octo Quaestiones, book 1, c. 2, in Opera Politica, vol. 1, 17. Tierney, Liberty and Law, 120. Ockham, Breviloquium, book 2, c. 19, in Opera Politica, vol. 4, 150–155.

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Thus, Ockham’s response effectively took the form of biblical exegesis. This was a natural consequence of his polemical concern with heresy. As he denounced Benedict xii’s understanding of papal doctrinal authority as ‘the worst heresy’ he had ever heard, he was most interested in demonstrating that the papal understanding was heretical by showing the true definition of papal power. Obviously the ultimate authority that defines papal power is Scripture, and the academic discipline that can unlock the true meaning of Scripture is theology. Following the Aristotelian principle of logic that potency is defined by act, Ockham endeavoured to define papal power by Christ’s specific words and deeds in a wide range of biblical texts. As the result of this exegetical exercise, Ockham arrived at two major conclusions: one is that while spiritual and temporal powers operate separately from each other in principle (regulariter), one may interfere with the other in extraordinary circumstances (casualiter), that is, if one malfunctions and cannot restore its normal operation by oneself. The other is that individuals should enjoy rights and liberties granted by God and nature since ‘the Christian law is a law of liberty’. The former concerns the relationship between spiritual and temporal power, and the latter relates to individual liberty and autonomy. The rest of this chapter will discuss those points in turn.

5

The Relationship between Spiritual and Temporal Power

As indicated earlier, those polemical works of Ockham’s that were read widely from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century were The Dialogue and the Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope. A common ground between the two is that they both include substantial discussion on the relationship between spiritual and temporal power. It has been suggested that Ockham argued for separation between spiritual and temporal power: he distinguished the spiritual power from the temporal one to the extent that they barely overlap with each other.50 Thus, the pope will only handle spiritual matters, while the emperor exercises his power on temporal matters only. However, Ockham’s separatism entails an important condition: he insisted repeatedly that one power might interfere with the other in case of necessity or in accidental cases (casualiter). Ockham had in mind, for instance, the situation where the pope falls into heresy, thus bringing Christendom into a state of crisis. In such a critical situation, he maintained that papal heresy needed

50

McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham, ch. 3.

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to be tackled first by Christians within the ecclesiastical order: cardinals, the general council and even lay believers ought to rectify the errors committed by the pope. If such efforts fail one after another, Ockham writes, the emperor, in the capacity of the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire and a Christian, should intervene in order to bring the ecclesiastical turmoil to an end. Likewise, the pope cannot interfere with temporal matters unless ‘Romans and others [are] damnably negligent.’51 While Ockham clearly acknowledged the functional differences between spiritual and temporal power, he also recommended the interference of one order with the other in the event of a crisis. In elaborating on possible mutual interference, did Ockham intend to downplay the separation between spiritual and temporal power? The provision of extraordinary intervention by one order in the other was a commonplace in medieval political thought. Indeed, another separatist such as John of Paris also argued for mutual intervention in case of necessity. However, there is an important difference between John and Ockham; for John, misrule in the ecclesiastical order would be sufficient to justify and prompt intervention from the temporal order, and the corrective process of ecclesiastical disorder should be initiated by the ruler of the temporal order.52 For Ockham, misrule in the ecclesiastical order—such as papal heresy—would not immediately legitimize and prompt intervention from the temporal order because the corrective process of ecclesiastical disorder must be first initiated within the ecclesiastical institution. Thus, cardinals, bishops, the general council and finally lay believers must attempt to rectify the situation before the temporal ruler intervenes. Misrule in one order does not ipso facto legitimize the intervention of the other; the corrective process within one order must prove ineffective before the other order intervenes. Seen in this light, Ockham’s repeated discussions on exceptional circumstances did not downplay the separation between the two orders; rather, in highlighting extraordinary cases where one order breaks down, Ockham was proposing a theory of crisis management. The reverse side of Ockham’s serious attention to crisis management was that he did not propose any radical reform of ruling institutions. For instance, part 3 of The Dialogue clearly defended papal monarchy on the basis of its rationality.53 Ockham’s critique of the papal doctrine of plenitude of power revolves around a particular interpretation of the doctrine, not the idea of papal plenitude of power itself. As argued in 3, the problem for Ockham was papal heresy: 51 52 53

Ockham, Octo Quaestiones, book 2, c. 10, in Opera Politica, vol. 1, 87. Also Shogimen, Ockham and Political Discourse, 239–240. John of Paris, De regia potestate et papali, ed. Fritz Bleienstein (Stuttgart, 1969), 139. For instance, see Ockham, iii Dialogus, tract 1, book 4, c. 24.

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John xxii’s heretical rejection of the orthodoxy of Franciscan poverty and Benedict xii’s heretical definition of papal power. Ockham’s endorsement of papal monarchy and of the correctly understood doctrine of papal plenitude of power suggests that the ecclesiastical government of his time malfunctioned because of misrule by individual popes, not because of structural problems inherent in the institutional arrangement of the government of the Church. Hence, Ockham was certainly not a reformist. On this point, Ockham is far removed from his contemporary critic of the papacy, Marsilius of Padua. Marsilius was highly critical of the Church’s increasing influence on temporal matters since the Donation of Constantine; thus, he proposed the reform programme that reduced the Church to an organ of the political community.54 I also stated in 3 that Marsilius argued for the removal of coercive power from ecclesiastical office: a claim that Ockham never endorsed. While Ockham did not intend to reform the institution of the Church, nor did he actively support the imperial power. Nowhere did he assert the superiority of the imperial or any other temporal power over ecclesiastical authority. He only underscored the qualitative and functional difference between spiritual and temporal power. The function that Ockham attributed to temporal power was limited to punishing criminals in order to ensure peace and order in the temporal realm.55 Ockham’s secular politics do not entail any Aristotelian aspiration for philosophical perfection of citizens. Ockham’s notion of secular government is minimalist.56

6

Rights and Liberties Granted by God and Nature

What lies beneath Ockham’s discussion of ruling institutions, both ecclesiastical and secular, is that no ruling institutions can actively make any individual more virtuous. All the ruling systems can do is to provide an environment in which individuals pursue their moral life. The absence of the Aristotelian vision of the educational role of the civil community implicates the moral autonomy of individuals in the temporal sphere. However, the problem Ockham was faced by was not about the temporal order. In the preface of A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government, he passionately discussed the problem he observed in the Christian community: 54 55 56

Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacis, ed. C.W. Previté-Orton (Cambridge, 1928), vol. 1, xix, 8–9; vol. 2, xxii, 10, 19. Ockham, Octo Quaestiones, book 3, c. 8, in Opera Politica, vol. 1, 109–110. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham, 114.

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The anguish I feel is the greater because you do not take the trouble to inquire with careful attention how much such tyranny wickedly usurped over you is contrary to God’s honour, dangerous to the Catholic faith, and opposed to the rights and liberties given to you by God and nature; and worse, you reject, hinder, and condemn those who wish to inform you of the truth.57 In this statement, he was clearly criticizing the negative injustice performed by fellow Christians. Ockham deplored the fact that Christians did not even try to understand that they were subject to papal tyranny, nor did they listen to those (including Ockham himself) who endeavoured to bring that fact to their attention. Attention should be drawn to the fact that the ‘tyranny’ was not only ‘contrary to God’s honour’ and ‘dangerous to the Catholic faith’ but also ‘opposed to the rights and liberties given … by God and nature’. Ockham repeatedly claimed that the false understanding of papal plenitude of power violates inalienable rights and liberties granted by God and nature. He also appealed to another maxim, ‘the Christian law is the law of liberty’, by which he meant that Christians, who are set free by the New (Christian) Law from any more burdens than imposed by the Old (Mosaic) Law, are not subject to any supererogation imposed by the pope.58 Ockham’s emphasis on ‘rights and liberties’ is predicated on his ethics: volitional freedom is the first condition that is required to view human action in a moral perspective. Lucan Freppert wrote correctly: ‘since moral science, by definition, treats those acts which are free, the possibility and actual existence of human freedom or liberty is presupposed’.59 The rights and liberties granted by God and nature thus define the realm where human actions can be moral. Humans can be virtuous only if they can choose their action freely; one cannot be virtuous by compulsion. So what is the role of papal plenitude of power? In Ockham’s view, papal plenitude of power, correctly understood and exercised, does not deprive but safeguards rights and liberties granted by God and nature. In order for believers to be virtuous and meritorious, they must enjoy rights and liberties granted by God and nature. However, this is not to suggest, of course, that Christians 57 58

59

Ockham, A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government, ed. A.S. McGrade, tr. John Kilcullen (Cambridge, 1992), 3. See, for instance, Ockham, Breviloquium, book 2, c. 17; Ockham, De Imperatorum et Pontificum Potestate, cc. 3, 5. Ockham, Octo Quaestiones, book 1, c. 7; Ockham, iii Dialogus, tract 1, book 1, c. 17. Lucan Freppert, The Basis of Morality according to William Ockham (Chicago, 1988), 33.

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should enjoy total freedom without being ruled. Ecclesiastical administration is indeed necessary for creating the environment in which individual Christians can pursue a moral and spiritual life without being bothered by the mundane business of running the administrative institution. Thus, the pope must ‘prepare all those things which are necessary and proper to Christians for the attainment of eternal life’.60 Papal plenitude of power is therefore, according to Ockham, ‘care for all the Churches’.61 The role of the papal office is to condition the Christian community for the realization of the spiritual well-being of believers. Rights and liberties granted by God and nature define the realm of freedom required for individuals, and papal plenitude of power is envisaged as pertaining to everything that falls outside the scope of that freedom in order to allow individuals to pursue their moral life. It may well be argued that Ockham’s notion of rights and liberties granted by God and nature is anchored in his idea of natural law/right (ius). Recent studies of Ockham’s political thought have often situated him in the context of the history of natural law.62 This approach, however, should not be pressed too far, if one intends to reconstruct Ockham’s authorial intentions. As I have argued in this chapter, Ockham, as an ecclesiologist and political thinker, was primarily a polemicist who responded to changing issues of the time: first, John xxii’s heresy in terms of rejection of the orthodoxy of Franciscan poverty, and later Benedict xii’s heretical definition of papal doctrinal authority. In a nutshell, he responded to the problem of papal heresy in one way or another. This problem led him to conceptualize a legitimate extraordinary course of action: first, radical dissent from the papacy not only of a believer who is cognizant of papal heresy but also of other Christians who are aware of the believer’s dissent; and secondly, the extraordinary intervention by temporal power into the spiritual matters when all the internal mechanisms of rectifying papal errors fail. Ockham was not interested in designing a theory of political principles in normal circumstances. Rather, he envisaged a theory of legitimate actions in response to political crises. Ockham’s appeal to natural law, especially the idea of permissive natural law, is indeed meaningful in the context

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Ockham, De Imperatorum et Pontificum Potestate, c.10, in Opera Politica, vol. 4, 301. Ibid. In addition to Robinson’s William of Ockham’s Early Theory of Property Rights in Context and Tierney’s Liberty and Law, the key literature includes: Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625 (Atlanta, ga, 1997); Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature: The Language of Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge, 1997); and Virpi Mäkinen, Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion on Franciscan Poverty (Leuven, 2001).

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of theorizing crisis management because that determines the scope of permissive, not prescriptive or prohibited, public actions. Nonetheless, one should not overlook the fact that Ockham’s polemical works are permeated by a deontic theme: extraordinary actions are not merely permitted but needed. From the threat of John xxii’s heresy, Christendom’s spiritual well-being was not merely permitted but needed to be saved. Likewise, from the menace of Benedict xii’s heretical definition of papal power, the chance that individuals, both Christian and non-Christian, pursue moral lives was not merely permitted but needed to be preserved. Ockham’s own dissent from the papacy can be defended on the grounds of permissive natural law; however, Ockham also criticized contemporary Christians’ indifference to the problem of papal heresy as a breach of their ethical duty to the common good. This sense of public duty derives from Ockham’s ethical principle that volitional freedom is the first condition for the moral life. For Ockham, moral demands override the commands of institutional authority. Institutional authority was expected by Ockham to provide the environment in which individuals are free to be virtuous, since institutional authority cannot coerce individuals to be virtuous. His problem was, however, that malfunctioning ruling power was depriving individuals of rights and liberties granted by God and nature: the chance of pursuing the moral life. Thus, it is not accurate to describe Ockham as a political thinker. He was ultimately a moral thinker who grappled with the question: what we can and should do despite (sometimes failing) politics.

part 5 The Friars’ Place in the Ecclesiastical Landscape

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chapter 17

Thomas Cantilupe in Franciscan Memory: The Evidence of the Canonization Inquiry* Susan J. Ridyard

Between July and November 1307 three commissioners appointed by Pope Clement v questioned over two hundred individuals about the faith, life, reputation and miracles of Thomas Cantilupe, formerly bishop of Hereford (d. 1282).1 They heard of hair shirts infested with lice, of wine watered down until it was almost undrinkable, of tears shed during Mass, of drowned children resuscitated, and of a Welshman who was hanged twice but restored to life through Cantilupe’s intercession. Laypeople, secular clergy and religious eagerly shared their conviction that Cantilupe was a saint, that God worked miracles for him as for a saint and that people had recourse to him as they would to a saint. Only among members of the Franciscan order did the commissioners encounter less consistent, more critical—in both senses of the word— and more complex responses to Cantilupe’s potential canonization. First, four Franciscans from the order’s London convent made it clear that, in their eyes, Cantilupe, although a good man, was not a saint. A few days later, a further Franciscan, Richard de Insula, spoke of Cantilupe as a saint through whose intercession he himself had been miraculously cured. Finally, four men from the Hereford convent clearly regarded Cantilupe as a saint, but nonetheless showed some unease in their response to his miracles. Each of the friars, moreover, presented his view as that shared by the other members of the order, or at least by those with whom he had lived since Cantilupe’s death. In what follows, I offer a new analysis of these Franciscan depositions and the relationship between them. I build on the work of Patrick Daly in tracing the divergent attitudes to Cantilupe’s life to the regional and generational composition, experience and interests of the London and Hereford friars.2 And I consider in detail * I am grateful to Michael Robson for his assistance in the preparation of this chapter, and to Lydia Cook, my undergraduate research assistant at Sewanee: The University of the South. 1 The record of this inquiry in partibus is contained in bav, ms Vat. Lat. 4015. An edition and translation is currently in preparation by the present author. 2 Patrick Daly, ‘The attitude of the English Franciscans to St. Thomas Cantilupe (†1282)’, in Franziskanishe Studien 66 (1984), 251–264.

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some commonalities in the two groups’ responses to Cantilupe’s miracles; these raise some extremely interesting questions about Franciscan thinking on miracles, at least in England, at the turn of the fourteenth century. It is important first to form a clear picture of the context in which both London and Hereford Franciscans deposed in 1307. The three papal commissioners appointed to conduct the local inquiry into Cantilupe’s sainthood (inquisitio in partibus) were Ralph of Baldock, bishop of London, William Durand, bishop of Mende, and William de Testa, archdeacon of Aran. They began their work on 13 July, when they established a framework for the inquiry by creating a list of four articuli on which witnesses would be examined: these concerned Cantilupe’s life and virtues, his fama or posthumous reputation, his miracles, and whether the populus was devoted to him and had recourse to him as to a saint. These large topics would be examined by means of a series of more specific questions (interrogatoria).3 In practice, this framework was applied with some flexibility: the order and wording of interrogatoria sometimes varied, and supplementary questions were often asked, to clarify or fill out witnesses’ statements or to press them on problematic issues, such as contradiction of earlier witnesses. It was vital that this stage of the canonization process be conducted and recorded with great care, for it would be an essential foundation for the later stages of the inquiry, which, in the event, dragged on until Cantilupe was canonized by Pope John xxii on 17 April 1320.4 The commissioners worked in London from 13 July until 12 August and in Hereford from 28 August until 13 November, although de Testa was absent for much of the time, including for the Franciscans’ depositions. Most of the witnesses, and those with the most to say, were introduced by the proctor of the Hereford chapter, Henry de Schorne, or one of two successors appointed when he became ill.5 But the commissioners also summoned witnesses on their own authority, most of them drawn from the monastic or religious orders: the Augustinian hermits, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans and Benedictines. Unlike the witnesses produced by Schorne or his successors, these men had not necessarily known Cantilupe or ‘bought into’ his cult. Some of them, including the London Franciscans, could say little, if anything, about his life; what they could do—and this is clearly why they were chosen—was provide invalu3 Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 3v–5. 4 For the date of the canonization see R.C. Finucane, ‘Cantilupe, Thomas de [St Thomas of Hereford] (c. 1220–1282)’, in odnb, http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.catalog.sewanee.edu/view/ article/4570, accessed 21 July 2015. 5 Vat. Lat., fols 182–182v. These were Gilbert de Chevening, perpetual vicar of Much Marcle, and Thomas de Gynes.

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able information, from the perspective or perspectives of the Church in England, about the interrelated issues of fama, miracles and whether people had recourse to Cantilupe as to a saint. We know a great deal about how the formal inquiry was conducted; but what we cannot know is what went on behind the scenes. Put simply, who knew what, and when, about what others said or planned to say in their depositions? We can reasonably assume that each group of friars discussed Cantilupe among themselves,6 and that in each case a shared understanding emerged (although without submerging the individual voices). But was that shared understanding shaped by the knowledge that other members of the order had reached quite different conclusions? In other words, were the common threads in each group’s understanding conceived as an argument countering an opposing argument whose elements were, at least to some degree, known? In principle, this should not have been the case; each witness’s oath included a commitment to maintain secrecy about his deposition until such time as the proceedings were made public.7 But in practice, of course, people talk and rumours circulate, and we cannot ignore the possibility, even the likelihood, that they did so—and may indeed have done so for quite some time prior to the summer of 1307.

1

The London Franciscans: Constructing an Institutional Memory

The London Franciscans examined in 1307 were Hugh of London (aged around 62), Henry of Sutton, guardian of the convent (about 45), Walter of Canterbury (about 44) and John of Westwood (around 40).8 Not one of them had any personal memory of Cantilupe. Three of the four would only have been in their teens or early twenties at the time of Cantilupe’s death, while Hugh of London was a converted Jew, who might have known Cantilupe more for his insistence that Jews convert or be expelled from England than for anything else.9 In the absence of personal memories, three factors seem to have shaped the institutional memory on which these men drew: Cantilupe’s dispute with 6 For some evidence of such discussion, see below, section 3. 7 Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 3; the notaries’ oath included a comparable provision (fol. 3v). The oath of the Hereford proctor, however, did not, probably because he was not expected to be present during the interrogation of witnesses. 8 Hugh’s deposition occupies fols 45v–46v, Henry of Sutton’s fols 46v–47v, John of Westwood’s fols 47v–48, and Walter of Canterbury’s fols 48–48v. 9 Daly, ‘Attitude’, 264.

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the Franciscan archbishop, John Pecham; the influence of one highly regarded member of the order; and concerns about the miracles attributed to Cantilupe. Cantilupe’s jurisdictional dispute with Pecham was one of the most widely known episodes in his career.10 Only two of the London Franciscans mentioned it, and these only briefly, but their comments perhaps hint at a larger pattern. Hugh of London, when questioned on Cantilupe’s life, answered that he had heard no ill of him, ‘except only that he was said to have been excommunicated by brother John Pecham, then archbishop of Canterbury, some said justly and others unjustly’.11 Walter of Canterbury referred to the same episode but with a different emphasis; he ‘had heard from some people that he [Cantilupe] had been excommunicated, by the archbishop of Canterbury, he believes; and he had heard from others that he had been absolved from the said excommunication.’12 While multiple witnesses in 1307 spoke of Cantilupe’s dispute with Pecham, these two were alone in mentioning the issue of his excommunication. Their reasons for doing so are not clear—and in one respect are distinctly puzzling, for by the time they gave their depositions a separate inquiry had been held and the matter of whether Cantilupe had died excommunicate put to rest.13 We have to assume either—improbably—that they were unaware of the outcome of that inquiry or that they deliberately chose to keep the issue alive, casting doubt as they did so on Cantilupe’s integrity (and also, by implication, on that of the papal commissioners themselves, who conducted both inquiries). It is likely that the London Franciscans—though not necessarily these four individuals—had a particularly close relationship with Pecham or felt a particular responsibility to preserve a favourable memory of him, for it was in their church that his heart was buried, while his body remained in Canterbury. Located behind the high altar, the heart was clearly held in high honour and was possibly itself the object of an incipient cult.14 In this context it is worth

10 11 12 13

14

See especially R.C. Finucane, ‘The Cantilupe–Pecham dispute’, in St. Thomas Cantilupe: Essays in his Honour, ed. Maryl Jancey (Hereford, 1982), 103–123. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 45v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 48v. The record of this inquiry is contained in bav, ms Vat. Lat. 4016. The issue of whether or not Cantilupe was excommunicate at the time of his death was brought to the attention of Pope Clement v soon after his initial instructions to the commissioners, dated 23 August 1306, had been despatched. Supplementary instructions, dated 1 September 1306, required the three men to conduct an inquiry into the excommunication issue before proceeding to the canonization inquiry (bav, Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 2–2v, 309–309v; Vat. Lat. 4016, fols 2–2v). gfl, 70; Pecham heads a sixteenth-century list of monuments contained in the church

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noting the way in which the Cantilupe–Pecham dispute was, at this point, being used by Cantilupe’s supporters in the articulation of his sanctity. The dispute had been, indirectly, the cause of Cantilupe’s death; he had died in Italy while appealing against Pecham at the papal Curia. Those who supported Cantilupe’s canonization during the 1307 inquiry almost without exception referred to the dispute as one among a series of ‘persecutions and adversities’ he had endured. Some even spoke of him, though cautiously, in the language of martyrdom, casting Pecham as the persecutor or relating that Cantilupe’s bones bled as they were carried through the diocese of Canterbury en route to their final resting place in Hereford.15 One witness referred to the mental instability that characterized Pecham’s final months as divine punishment for his unjust treatment of Cantilupe.16 Another, Walter of Knulle—in fact one of the Hereford Franciscans—presented Cantilupe in his dealings with Pecham as a leader of all the suffragans of Canterbury, taking upon himself the burden of fighting for all.17 We cannot be sure, of course, that the London Franciscans were aware of this strand in the thinking of Cantilupe’s supporters. But if they were, they might well have considered his canonization to be damaging both to the memory of Pecham and to the reputation of their order more generally; this might have been reason enough to counter the memory of Cantilupe the victim with a reminder of Cantilupe the excommunicate. The second and apparently more important factor shaping the London friars’ understanding of Cantilupe became clear when they were questioned on his reputation and miracles. Three of the four remembered speaking to one man highly regarded in their order who had also known Cantilupe well. This

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of the London Greyfriars. The fourteenth-century Itinerarium of the Franciscan Symonis Semeonis likewise gives prominence to the location of Pecham’s heart in its account of the church: Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis Ab Hybernia Ad Terram Sanctam, ed. M. Eposito (Dublin, 1960), 26–29. Further evidence of the prominence accorded to the heart is found in Roberto Paciocco, Da Francesco ai ‘catalogi sanctorum’: Livelli istituzionali e imaggini agiografiche nell’ ordine Francescano (secoli xiii–xiv) (Assisi, 1990), 150. It is, of course, difficult to distinguish—and was probably difficult for contemporaries to distinguish— ‘high honour’ from ‘incipient cult’; but it seems more likely that Pecham was simply regarded as one of the order’s worthies than that there was any serious or sustained attempt to create a cult. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 17 (Nicholas of Warwick on the bones); fol. 115v (Richard, bishop of Hereford: ‘martyrizatus laboribus, angustiis, et expensis, diem … clausit extremum’); fol. 98v (Robert of Gloucester, chancellor of Hereford, interprets a dream as indicating that Cantilupe, persecuted by Pecham, had received the reward of martyrdom). Nicholas of Warwick, Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 16v–17. Walter of Knulle, Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 77v.

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was John of Clare (de Clara), who had served as Cantilupe’s steward, had been with him at his death, had accompanied his bones back to England and had been an executor of his will, entering the Franciscan order soon thereafter.18 According to Hugh of London: When it was heard that God was working miracles for the said lord Thomas, he himself on one occasion earnestly asked and pressed him [Clare] to tell him—since he knew the said lord Thomas’s life and conversation—if he knew of anything about him that might cause God to work miracles for him. And the said brother John then answered in French— ‘indeed he was a good man, and of good life, but I don’t know why miracles would be performed for him’.19 Henry of Sutton likewise cited John of Clare, whom he had asked, ‘when the fame of the said lord Thomas’s miracles was increasing,’ whether he knew of any special virtue that would cause God to work miracles for Cantilupe more than for ‘any other good man’. He remembered Clare as answering evasively, despite the fact that he ‘dearly loved the said lord Thomas and had been appointed to his benefices by him’.20 This man’s prevarication, especially in light of his own devoted service to Cantilupe, had evidently played a crucial part in shaping the London Franciscans’ institutional memory of and attitude towards the deceased bishop. In the absence of personal memories of Cantilupe’s deeds, the memory of John of Clare’s words had made an indelible impression. John of Clare’s words were cited in the context of the second article, de fama, which, when asked of members of religious orders, generally comprised several elements: Was it generally believed, both in their own order (or among members of their order with whom they had lived since Cantilupe’s death) and among the populus in general, that Cantilupe was a saint and that God worked miracles for him as he would for a saint? While members of other orders almost invariably answered clearly that both members of their order and the populus in general believed that Cantilupe was a saint,21 Hugh of London 18 19 20

21

Clare’s long association with Cantilupe was attested by multiple witnesses; Michael Robson, personal communication, on his entry to the Franciscan order. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 46. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 47. Cf. John of Westwood’s deposition, fol. 48; Clare had described Cantilupe as an ‘ordinary good man’. Walter of Canterbury did not mention Clare. For Clare’s influence, see also Daly, ‘Attitude’, 257–258. The only partial exception was the Dominican, Edmund of Aumari, who answered that

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set the tone for the Franciscans by making a crucial distinction. He acknowledged that Cantilupe was generally believed to be a saint and that God was generally believed to work miracles for him, but insisted that the brothers of his order, himself included, were more circumspect: ‘they are reluctant to believe that God works miracles for him, because they have not seen these miracles performed, although they have heard from others of their being performed’.22 This reluctance to believe without seeing arose, Hugh claimed, from the words of John of Clare already cited. But it also hinged on what these men knew, or thought they knew, about contemporary English miracles. Walter of Canterbury expressed their concern most bluntly: [T]he said brothers do not easily believe any miracles without proving them and seeing whether they are miracles or not—because there are many scoundrels who pretend for the sake of profit to have been miraculously cured of some illness or other, and they have heard that many such things have formerly been faked, although not in the matter of the said lord Thomas.23 Hugh of London gave quite a list of flawed or downright corrupt practices. He referred to ‘springs and crosses’, presumably sites to which healing powers were being ascribed. He spoke of miracles being attributed, presumably without authority, to a murder victim called Robert le Bursire. And he spoke of deliberate fraud, both by individuals who pretended illness and then faked its cure and by the promoters of saints’ cults. In the first of these categories, he had spoken to an Edinburgh woman who had misguidedly given hospitality to a beggar who claimed to have a withered or deformed arm. When she realized that this was a pretence, he had confessed that he was on his way to the Holy Cross of Peebles, where he planned to fake a miraculous cure and thus to attract alms from pilgrims. In the second and more sinister category, Hugh reported an episode that had taken place in the order’s convent at Oxford, following the burial there of Geoffrey of St Edmunds, a friar with a reputation for holiness. An individual had approached one of the friars there and told him that he could make a good deal of money for them if they were interested— by making sure that miracles took place at Geoffrey’s tomb. When the brother

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he had not heard anything said within the order about the working of miracles (though Cantilupe was believed within the order to be a saint); Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 45. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 45v–46. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 48v.

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naively asked how he would do this, he told him that he had twenty-four men obedient to him who would make miracles whenever he wished; he was running, that is, a form of organized crime.24 Henry of Sutton had a similar episode in mind. He remembered some members of the order telling him that they had been approached by people who offered to make miracles in the vicinity of a newly installed image in their church; this would make money for them and help them to build their new church.25 If these stories were true, there must have been some churchmen, somewhere in England, who would be willing to go to these lengths in order to have miracles worked for their communities. Furthermore, according to Sutton, the problem of fraud had been connected with Hereford. He remembered one of the canons of Hereford telling him that a boy with no tongue had received both a tongue and the power of speech at Cantilupe’s tomb; but, he said, some members of the Franciscan order had seen the same boy elsewhere, still pretending to be without a tongue and presumably intending to fake another miracle.26 These, then, were the concerns adduced by the London Franciscans. They saw no reason to think of Cantilupe as a saint; in Pecham he had made an enemy of a prominent member of their order, and another highly respected brother, who had known Cantilupe extremely well, had professed himself puzzled as to why God would work miracles for him. Furthermore, in a world where unauthorized cults and fraudulent miracles were not unknown, these men were generally reluctant to believe accounts of miracles they had not themselves witnessed. This was true, they stated or implied, of all the brothers of the order among whom they had lived since Cantilupe’s death.

2

Richard de Insula: Complicating the Issue

After questioning the London Franciscans, the papal commissioners went on to examine four Benedictines of London and then a number of further witnesses introduced by Schorne, most of them to depose concerning miracles that had taken place in London, but one, William Cantilupe, Thomas’ nephew, to testify also concerning his life. It was in William’s deposition that the commissioners first heard—or at least first formally heard—that Richard de Insula, a professor of civil law and member of the Franciscan order, had been cured

24 25 26

Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 46–46v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 47–47v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 47v.

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of severe warts through Cantilupe’s intercession.27 Richard himself was the next witness, having been sworn at the same time as William; he related that he had been afflicted with the warts from birth until his twenty-second year. They were so large that his hands appeared deformed, and he habitually wore gloves to conceal them; his fellow students at were horrified when, on one occasion, he removed the gloves in order to write more quickly. No medications had helped, although he had visited doctors in both England and France; nor had his efforts to remove the warts with hot iron or sulphur; on occasion, he had even been in danger of losing his hands. Then, while riding near Orléans one day in 1292, he had met an English pilgrim who told him of Cantilupe’s miracles. After their brief exchange, the pilgrim disappeared—so quickly that Richard clearly believed that the encounter was miraculous— and Richard vowed to make a pilgrimage to St Thomas if he would free him from the warts. Thereafter, beginning that very night, the warts shrank and disappeared, leaving only one, as testimony to the problem from which he had been cured. The commissioners and the notaries examined Richard’s hands, with the one remaining wart, for themselves, and they heard of a number of knights and churchmen who had been present when the mysterious pilgrim appeared.28 We cannot know whether it was good luck or good judgement that led Schorne to introduce William Cantilupe and Richard de Insula at this particular point in the inquiry.29 But Richard’s words could hardly have been better timed to counter the words of the London Franciscans. Here was a member of the same order who clearly believed Cantilupe to be a saint, who believed that ‘the brothers of his order in England’ shared that understanding, and who had experience in his own person of Cantilupe’s thaumaturgic powers. His account, with its clear hagiographical element, admits of no doubt, on his own part or on anyone else’s. The commissioners must have realized at this point, if not before, that there was more than one opinion among the English Franciscans. Indeed, it is possible that there was more than one opinion among the London Franciscans—for it was quite possibly in London that de Insula was living in 1307.

27 28 29

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 61. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 62v–64v. An apparently more logical moment would have been prior to the commissioners’ introduction of the representatives of the religious orders, when William Cantilupe would have been one of a series of people who had known Thomas well.

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The Hereford Franciscans: Memory and Miracle

While the London Franciscans introduced by the commissioners had never laid eyes on Cantilupe, three of the four brothers from the Hereford convent had been personally associated with him. These three were men of an older generation: Walter of Knulle and Walter of Risbury were about 66 and Robert de Herton around 63. Only Adam of Chadnor, aged 33, was too young to have known Cantilupe; but he was a kinsman of Hugh of Brompton, a former guardian of the convent, whose role in creating the memory of Cantilupe is discussed below.30 The three older men had known Cantilupe during his distinguished career at Oxford; Knulle, whose own career was not without distinction,31 had been present at one of its most memorable events—Cantilupe’s inception in theology, where his former confessor, Robert Kilwardby, then archbishop of Canterbury, spoke movingly of his virtue, and especially of his lifelong virginity.32 These older men’s acquaintance with Cantilupe had been renewed during the latter’s episcopate; all emphasized his personal virtues and his excellence as bishop. Knulle and Risbury spoke especially of one matter dear to the Franciscans’ hearts—Cantilupe’s readiness to work with the local friars, especially in a way that supported their preaching mission. Both noted that he had some limitations as a preacher, Knulle explaining that Norman-French came more naturally to him than English, Risbury that he was a little slow in speech. Accordingly, when Cantilupe visited his diocese, he often asked the Franciscan Henry of Bellington, a renowned preacher, to preach in his place and in his presence. Bellington, additionally, had been Cantilupe’s confessor, suggesting a close personal understanding between the two. One point made by Risbury is particularly telling: Cantilupe bore himself so humbly towards the brothers of the order that any one of them might have been a bishop.33

30 31 32 33

Knulle’s deposition is at Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 76–80v; Risbury’s at fols 81–83v; Herton’s at fols 83v–84v; Chadnor’s at fols 84v–86v. For Hugh of Brompton, see below, pp. 373–377. See below, n. 54. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 76v. Or the bishop; Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 78v (Knulle) and 82 (Risbury). Knulle also commented on Cantilupe’s feeding of poor religious (pascebat pauperes religiosos), noting that he had often seen this in the friars’ convent at Hereford. Risbury spoke of himself as often speaking with Cantilupe, being sent to various places by him, and, when he himself was guardian of the order’s Gloucester convent, acting as Cantilupe’s deputy in matters of penitential jurisdiction in the portion of the Hereford diocese that extended as far as that town’s bridge.

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Knulle and Risbury also offered an interpretation of Cantilupe’s virtue which has no exact parallel elsewhere. Knulle, questioned on Cantilupe’s fides, answered that he believed him to have possessed ‘all the virtues in his character’ but in his actions to have been distinguished most of all by ‘constancy and magnanimity’. Developing this theme, possibly in response to a supplementary question, he said that ‘he believed this because, after the said lord Thomas was raised to the episcopate, he did not avoid or shy away from struggling for the rights and liberties he believed were due to his church of Hereford, taking on personal danger and lawsuits’.34 This in turn led to a series of examples: Knulle spoke, in order, of Cantilupe’s disputes with the earl of Gloucester, the Welsh prince Llewellyn, the bishops of St Asaph and St Davids, his own kinsman John de Tregoz and, finally, with Pecham.35 The dispute with the latter takes its place as the last in a series of lawsuits pursued only for the protection of the rights of the church of Hereford. Deliberately or not, Knulle put the archbishop—a member, we must remember, of his own order—in the position of the sinner rather than the sinned against. Moreover, Knulle tied this lawsuit directly to the matter of Cantilupe’s cult: he presented Cantilupe as fighting for all the suffragans of Canterbury, while others did nothing, and he noted that he prosecuted this case at the papal Curia, with the result that ‘people said, and believed, that because he died in prosecuting the rights of the church of Hereford, this is the strongest reason why God worked miracles for the said lord Thomas’.36 In making this connection between the dispute with Pecham, Cantilupe’s death and his cult, Knulle is following a line of argument advanced only by the strongest and closest of Cantilupe’s supporters37—evidence that suggests that he may have been very close to the inner circle of Hereford clergy. The Hereford Franciscans, especially Knulle and Risbury, had clearly formed their own belief in and understanding of Cantilupe’s holiness. But like their counterparts in London they also cited men of standing within the order whose words had helped to shape their attitudes. Both Geoffrey of Sheppey and Henry

34 35

36 37

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 77. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 77–78. Risbury, fols 81–81v, cited only two examples and did not mention the dispute with Pecham. One of the examples cited was Cantilupe’s conflict with the monks of Leominster, ‘who are very powerful and rich’, and who were found to be keeping the door of their church locked, so that it could not be used, as intended, as a parochial church. One wonders whether this had particularly caught Risbury’s attention as an episode in which Cantilupe seemed more in tune with Franciscan values than with those of the Leominster monks. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 78. See above, pp. 360–361.

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of Bellington were said to be highly regarded and both were remembered as speaking of Cantilupe’s virtuous life and death.38 Most striking, however, is the fact that the Hereford friars had a quite different memory of John of Clare’s words about Cantilupe. Knulle had learned from John of Clare about Cantilupe’s virtuous death, while Robert de Herton had heard from him that Cantilupe’s special virtues included his love of truth, his unwillingness to tolerate any detraction even of his enemies and his humility.39 Walter of Risbury had heard the late brother John of Clare … say that he had never seen a man so honourable in every respect. And he said he had heard this from the said brother John in the order’s convent in Hereford. He also said that this brother John used to say, and swear on his conscience, when God was working miracles for the said lord Thomas, that he had never seen anything about him that would lead him not to believe he was a saint; and he had heard this too in the aforesaid convent.40 The contradiction between the Hereford friars’ reading of John of Clare and that of their London counterparts did not escape the commissioners, who immediately asked who was present when Brother John said this, only to be told that all the witnesses were now either dead or residing elsewhere. It is, of course, possible that John of Clare changed his mind about Cantilupe. But it is perhaps more likely that each of the two communities filtered his words in a way that accorded with and further strengthened an emerging institutional memory of the deceased bishop. In Hereford, that emerging Franciscan memory took shape among men who had known Cantilupe, worked with and for him, and appreciated both his personal piety and his work as diocesan. Not only were these men resident in the Hereford convent; they were local men in origin. Risbury, Chadnor and Knulle or Knill are Herefordshire place names, and there was a Horton in the diocese, from which Robert ‘de Herton’ may have come.41 As local men, residents of the local Franciscan convent and associates of the bishop, these men had every reason to be favourably disposed towards Cantilupe’s canonization. It is somewhat surprising, then, that their statements concerning Cantilupe’s reputation and 38 39 40 41

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 78. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 79v, 83v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 82. E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn (Oxford, 1966), 93, 252, 282, 388.

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miracles, while generally positive, do suggest that they shared, or had initially shared, some of the concerns voiced by the London friars. When the commissioners examined Walter of Knulle on the issue of fama, two points would have struck them as unusual. First, Knulle answered that it was generally believed that ‘the said lord Thomas is a saint and was a saint during his life’—these last words being unique to this witness. Second, when asked whether it was believed, both within his order and among the people in general, that God worked miracles for Cantilupe as for a saint, he replied that it was believed among ‘many in his order’, while among the people the belief was ‘common to all’42—a response which is reminiscent of the London friars’ approach, although since Knulle emphasized the ‘many’ in the order who did believe, the overall effect of his statement is significantly more favourable to Cantilupe. Perhaps the fact that Knulle made the distinction at all was a product of his awareness of the London friars’ attitudes. But perhaps it also reflected some concern on his own part regarding Cantilupe’s miracles. Furthermore, it is conceivable that Knulle felt the need to insist that Cantilupe was a saint during his life precisely because he was not generally associated with miracles during his life; and that this in turn might have been the grounds on which some in the order did not believe that God was working posthumous miracles for him. Whatever the case, Knulle continued to reveal some unease. Asked whether he knew anything about the miracles attributed to Cantilupe, his first response was that he himself had not seen any miracles, although he had heard of a thousand.43 Asked whether he was aware of any fraud being involved in the miracles or their signa, a term which probably refers to the offerings displayed at Cantilupe’s tomb, he answered that ‘he believed no good, wise, or worthy man would have faked or invented any of the aforesaid for the sake of shameful profit’ or to enhance the reputation of the saint. No other witness answered this question in quite these terms, which look very much like prevarication and were clearly taken as such by the commissioners. When pressed on whether he had heard such things even of people who were not good, wise or worthy, Knulle conceded that among so many people and incidents, he believed some would be faked—it was, essentially, only to be expected. Pressed further, he admitted that ‘he has often heard of such deception being involved in the working of the said miracles in Hereford cathedral’. Pressed yet again, he said that he had heard on many occasions of a little old beggar woman who ‘for many years had had

42 43

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 79v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 79v–80v, for this and the cross-examination that follows.

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herself carried, as one blind and crippled, to the porch of Hereford cathedral to beg for alms from passersby’. One day she ‘came up to the current bishop of Hereford and his companions at the door of the Friars Minor’ and claimed to have been cured by Cantilupe. At this, the archdeacon told her to prove her cure by walking in a straight line to the outer gate. Still blind, she walked straight into a hedge covered with thorns. Hearing this, the commissioners moved on to a yet more crucial question, one that concerned the integrity of Cantilupe’s kin and the Hereford clergy: Did the old woman act on her own initiative, or had she been prompted by others? On this occasion, Knulle believed, she had acted on her own initiative; but he did not know whether previously she had been suborned by others. And he added, apparently without being asked, that he did not know anyone from the city or diocese of Hereford who had been miraculously cured sub certa et debita forma miraculi; those of whose cures he had heard were all outsiders, of whom he knew nothing, not even the conditions from which they had been suffering. This statement is particularly puzzling, since it is clear from the canonization process and from two associated miracle lists that people from the city and diocese of Hereford were a significant majority of those cured at Cantilupe’s tomb,44 especially in the cult’s early stages. When asked whether people had recourse to Cantilupe as to a saint, Knulle’s answer was an unambiguous ‘Yes’—it was apparent from the crowds of pilgrims, including the king, two queens of England, and other prelates and nobles, and from the offerings made at Cantilupe’s tomb. Walter of Risbury had no difficulty in stating that Cantilupe was believed to be a saint, and God was believed to work miracles for him as for a saint, by all the members of the order among whom he had lived and among the populace in general.45 On miracles, he noted that he himself ‘had not been present at the working’ of any miracles but had heard of many. He went on, apparently without being prompted, to mention one miracle whose aftermath at least he had witnessed: a young girl from London, resuscitated after drowning, was brought to Cantilupe’s tomb by her mother and many others, all of whom attested to the fact that she had been dead for a whole day.46 In this case, it seems, almost seeing had led at least to almost believing; Risbury was willing to report the miracle without personally proving it. He was aware, however, of the possibility of fraud. While he knew of no example, he had heard that some people said more miracles were claimed than had actually happened (while

44 45 46

Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 247–263v (a typological list), fols 265–308v (a chronological list). Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 83. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 83.

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some, apparently, said the opposite); he could not remember any specific instances, he said, because he had heard such things often and had not troubled to remember them.47 Robert of Herton stated, on fama, that Cantilupe was believed to be a saint and that God was believed to work miracles for him as for a saint by the general populace and by all the members of the order with whom he had lived—that is, in the convents of Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, Bridgewater, Dorchester and Southampton.48 Questioned on ‘the truth of the miracles’ attributed to Cantilupe, he stated that he had heard of many, and then went on to describe the way in which he personally had ‘proved’ one of them.49 About fifteen years earlier (c. 1292), he had been in Hereford cathedral when the miraculous cure of a woman who had been paralysed for many years was made public. ‘In order to find out whether this was true’, he spoke to the woman, who said that it was. She also said that she came from Monmouth and had a sister, Matilda of Monmouth, who was precentor of the priory of Usk, in the diocese of Llandaff. Thereafter he visited both places and ascertained that the woman had indeed been paralysed for many years.50 He himself had seen her and tested her ability to walk at the time when the cure was made public. Herton had clearly gone to some trouble to ascertain the truth about this miracle; perhaps he was seeking to convince himself as well as others that this was a genuine instance of God’s working through Cantilupe. This does not necessarily mean that he was sceptical about Cantilupe’s sanctity; rather it might speak to a belief that a specific event should not be labelled as a miracle unless it had been proved visually or by some combination of visual experience and oral statements from reliable, in this case religious, sources. Adam of Chadnor, the youngest of the four Hereford Franciscans, spoke from the perspective of a man who had grown to maturity close to Hereford at a time when Cantilupe’s cult was flourishing. He had no difficulty in asserting that Cantilupe was generally regarded as a saint by those of his order among whom he had lived and among the people in general. Presented with the standard interrogatories concerning how he knew of this fama and what he meant by the terms fama publica and communis oppinio, he defined the former as ‘that which is generally said and proclaimed by the people’ and the latter as ‘that which people generally believe, since such belief is created in people’s hearts by what is generally said’. This answer clearly caught the commissioners’ attention; 47 48 49 50

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 83v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 84. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 84–84v. It is not clear whether the main purpose of his visits was to verify this miracle.

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they went on to ask how he knew that this belief had arisen in people’s hearts— since only God could see into the heart. For his answer, crucially, Chadnor drew on his own experience: ‘he had heard people say this, and … as a result of this common report the same belief had arisen in his own heart’.51 Intriguingly, then, Chadnor seems to have derived his belief in Cantilupe’s sanctity and his miracles at least partly from what we would now call hearsay. In this, he was of course closer to the great majority of witnesses than to those of his own order. Perhaps this is indicative of a generational difference among the Hereford friars. The three older men, who had known Cantilupe personally, needed the evidence of their own eyes or the results of their own researches, before the man they knew was transformed in their minds into a miracleworking saint. For a Herefordshire friar of Chadnor’s generation, on the other hand, it would have been virtually impossible not to believe what one heard about the miracles at Cantilupe’s tomb. And yet, like the other Hereford friars, Chadnor was familiar with the possibility, and indeed the reality, of fraud. He had heard, from his relative Hugh of Brompton, of a trickster who pretended to be cured of blindness at the shrine of the more famous Thomas Becket and then appeared in Hereford pretending still to be blind; when his fraud was detected, he tried to explain his coming to Hereford by stating that God had blinded him a second time.52 Chadnor, moreover, had seen or almost seen one crucial miracle, Cantilupe’s first, the cure of a mad woman, Edith Ironmonger.53 He had seen Edith mad and had seen her after her cure, weak but perfectly sane; he would only have been around 13 at the time, and the sight of Edith’s madness might have been rather frightening, and thus memorable, to one of his age. These depositions by the Hereford Franciscans suggest that, like the London friars, they were hesitant—more hesitant than other witnesses, either religious or lay—to express belief in miracles which they had not personally seen or otherwise tested.54 Where they differed from the London friars was in their

51 52 53 54

Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 85–85v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 86. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 85v–86. In this context, one statement made by Knulle may be more significant than is immediately apparent—the statement that he knew of no one from the city or diocese of Hereford who had been cured sub certa et debita forma miraculi. The phrase in italics is unique to this witness and its meaning is not entirely clear. It could be translated simply as referring to ‘a true miracle’; or it could be taken as suggesting that Knulle possessed a very specific idea of what constituted the proper form of a miracle or, possibly, of its proof. It is worth noting that Knulle was a theologian of some distinction, serving as regent master in both Oxford and Cambridge in addition to being lector in the Hereford convent (Michael

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physical proximity to Cantilupe’s tomb; this enabled them to seek out additional information or, perhaps more often, use their knowledge of a cured person’s former illness and transformed condition to settle the question of a miracle’s genuineness to their own satisfaction. And perhaps, having convinced themselves of its genuineness, they were in fact in a good position to promote Cantilupe’s cult by sharing their knowledge of and confidence in his miracles. It is in this context that Hugh of Brompton, late guardian of the Hereford convent and custos, is of particular interest. In late October the commissioners turned their attention to the miracle of John of Burton, a boy born without a tongue who was said to have miraculously received not only a tongue but also the ability to speak in both English and Welsh. This may be the miracle alluded to and dismissed as a fake by the London Franciscan, Henry of Sutton,55 although the information Sutton gives is too vague to allow a definite identification. It appears in the chronological miracle list, where it is dated to 1288.56 All but one of the witnesses examined on this miracle associated it in some way with Hugh of Brompton, during whose guardianship at Hereford it took place.57 John Moniword stated that in the first year of Cantilupe’s miracles he had himself seen, in the cathedral, a youth of 16 or more, who was said to come from near Ludlow and to have had no tongue. Hugh of Brompton had told him that he had seen the boy with no tongue and that he would not have missed the miracle that he later witnessed for a thousand pounds of gold. Moniword had heard it generally said, and had seen for himself, that the boy had received a small tongue, which enabled him to speak, but not well. Thereafter, Hugh of Brompton told Moniword, the boy had returned to Ludlow and Hugh himself had persuaded him to return and stay at the tomb for nine days, praying that a better tongue might be given him; having done so, Brompton had told Moniword, he received ‘a new, perfect tongue, with which he spoke Welsh and English’.58 Simon of Ludlow had seen the youth for seven years in Ludlow and had examined his mouth, which had no trace of a tongue. He later saw him in Hereford cathedral, by Cantilupe’s tomb, with Hugh of

55 56 57

58

Robson, personal communication); he would certainly have been familiar with academic thinking on the nature and proof of the miraculous. See above, p. 364. Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 272v. The first witness, Isolde Thurgrim, describes the miracle without reference to Hugh; Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 186–186v; but see also, below, p. 375, on her own daughter’s deposition. One further witness, Thomas Sandy, was sworn in but never actually examined; Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 186. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 187v–188.

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Brompton, who was saying publicly that he had known him since he was a child and that he had brought him from Ludlow in search of a cure. Moreover, it was Hugh of Brompton who made the miracle public when it did occur: ‘and the same brother preached on that same day, around terce, making the aforesaid known to everyone who would hear him’. Thereafter, according to this witness, John spent three days in Hereford and then took the cross from the hands of Brother Hugh, before departing on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.59 John Alkyn, who also deposed on Cantilupe’s life and on several other miracles, had seen John begging in Hereford one Lent and had seen that he had no tongue, just a small piece of flesh, about the size of a bean. The boy had often been beaten by royal officials in the town, in order to check whether he was able to talk; the beatings produced no recognizable sound. He had spent some time in the cathedral but received no cure and returned to Ludlow. Hugh of Brompton later brought him back to Hereford, and this time, as the boy kept vigil at the tomb, he received a perfect tongue with which the witness heard him speaking both English and Welsh. According to this witness too, it was Hugh of Brompton who made the miracle public, testifying that he had known him all his life without a tongue. Because of the miracle, the boy vowed to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, receiving the cross from Brother Hugh.60 Gilbert de Chevening, the Hereford proctor,61 recalled that he had seen John in Hereford for six months, had examined his mouth, seeing only a tiny stub of flesh where the tongue should be, and had even beaten him (and seen him beaten in the houses of some of the canons of Hereford), apparently to verify that he was unable to speak. In 1288, when Chevening was custodian of Cantilupe’s tomb, the youth had spent a long time in the cathedral, but without receiving anything more than the tiny bit of flesh with which he had arrived—although others were saying that he had a little tongue, with which he returned to Ludlow, barely speaking. Thereafter, Hugh of Brompton brought him back from Ludlow to the cathedral and told the witness to take care of him. After about three days, he saw John kissing the tomb and then falling asleep with his head on it; he woke up speaking both English and Welsh with a beautiful large tongue. The witness ran to tell Hugh, who returned to the cathedral and made the miracle public. John was then cared for by the almoner of the Hereford chapter for some time before leaving for the Holy Land.

59 60 61

Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 204–204v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 205v–206. Chevening was the last witness examined on this miracle; Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 208v–209v.

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In all of these accounts, and in the chronological miracle list,62 Hugh of Brompton appears as an effective promoter of Cantilupe’s reputation as a miracle worker. But two further witnesses who mentioned Hugh of Brompton’s involvement in this miracle cast a different—and fascinating—light upon it. Roger Tailor had often seen John, and verified that he had no tongue; he had come to Roger’s door begging maybe a hundred times and had sometimes stayed in his house. Like Alkyn and Chevening, he had witnessed the boy’s abuse as people beat him to test whether he was able to speak. And the same year he saw him in Hereford cathedral, with a normal tongue, and heard him speaking English and Welsh. Brother Hugh, then guardian of the Hereford Friars Minor, made the miracle public in the cathedral, ‘saying that he rejoiced greatly at this miracle and held it more dear than if he had been given a large amount of gold, because beforehand he did not believe that God was working miracles for the said St Thomas, and because of the said miracle he now believed, because he had seen him before without a tongue and had brought him to St Thomas’s tomb from … Ludlow, so that a tongue might be given him by the merits of the said St Thomas.’63 Margery Thurgrim had seen John in Ludlow when she herself was a child and knew that he had been persuaded by her own mother and others to seek a cure at Cantilupe’s tomb. After a little while, he returned with a small, malformed tongue, which he had apparently shown off one Sunday at the church door, and with which he could speak a little English. He was urged to return ‘by her own mother and other women and also by Brother Hugh of Brompton, of the order of Friars Minor, who said in her own hearing … that he did not believe God was working miracles for the said St Thomas’. On his return, John duly received a better tongue and the ability to speak English, although with some Welsh influence.64 Despite the inevitable inconsistencies between the depositions, we can make some interesting observations about Hugh of Brompton. He seems to have done more than anyone else to persuade the mute boy to try his luck, apparently for a second time, at Cantilupe’s tomb. And it seems to have been he, rather than any of the cathedral clergy, who made the miracle public and preached on it in the cathedral. And yet, if the last two witnesses discussed were correct—and it would have been a very odd thing to say if they were not correct—he was initially a doubter, someone who did not believe that God was 62 63 64

Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 272v, where John is reported as coming to Hereford ‘de consilio religiosis uiri fratris Hugonis de Bromptone’ and Hugh is credited with making the miracle public. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 206–206v. Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 207–207v.

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working miracles for Cantilupe. Indeed, his active intervention in John’s case might suggest that he was orchestrating events, especially the second visit to Hereford, in order to test what he was hearing every day about a man he may well have known: Was God really performing miracles for the deceased bishop? Especially if he had already met the fraud whose encounter with him was described by Adam of Chadnor, he might well have seized on John’s predicament as an opportunity to prove a miracle to his own satisfaction.65 If this were the case, the visible—and audible—transformation in John was a crucial moment for Hugh, one that brought him a gift of belief more precious than gold and prompted him to share that gift as he made the miracle public. As the examination of this miracle was winding down, one further witness surfaced. The commissioners heard that John of Brompton, a Hereford Franciscan who was serving as interpreter for them, knew the truth about this miracle.66 Accordingly, he was received as a witness and stated that he had been in Ludlow over twenty years earlier, with his associate (and perhaps relative) Hugh of Brompton. They had heard that John, born without a tongue, had recently received a small tongue at Cantilupe’s tomb. They had examined this together and had seen just a small piece of veined flesh. Together they persuaded John to return with them to Hereford, where he showed the fragment of tongue to others in the convent, and the witnesses and other brothers persuaded him to keep vigil by Cantilupe’s tomb and to pray for a better tongue. In the morning, John returned to the friary and showed everyone who would look that he now had a tongue just like other men. He had awoken from a dream or vision of St Thomas touching his throat to find this new tongue and to discover that he could speak English intelligibly, but with enough of a tendency towards Welsh that the witness and others concluded that he must originally have come from Wales. On the same day, John of Brompton added, he and Brother Hugh took the boy back to the cathedral and, after the usual preparations, Brother Hugh made the miracle public.67 What is particularly interesting here is the

65 66

67

But Chadnor places this encounter ‘fifteen years or so ago’, while the miracle of John of Burton is dated in the Hereford miracle list to 1288. Other residents of the Hereford convent who worked in this capacity for the commissioners were Walter of Risbury (his appointment and oath are recorded at Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 129–129v), Robert of Herton (Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 146), and, for one miracle, two friars who were said to come from Wales, John Young (iuuenis) and Maurice of Pencoyd (Vat. Lat. 4015, fol. 220). Two further witnesses, men summoned to depose on Cantilupe’s life, reputation and miracles, rather than specifically on a single miracle, described briefly what is very probably the same miracle. John of Leominster, a citizen of Hereford over 80 years old, gave the

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prominence accorded to the Franciscan convent of Hereford as a locus for the proof of the miracle. All of the brothers had the opportunity to see John with the small tongue and then again with the normal tongue, and all may have heard about what John saw—St Thomas himself performing the act that cured him.68 The London Franciscans thought of Cantilupe as a good man but not as a saint. With no personal memories of him and no personal connections to Hereford they had developed an institutional memory shaped by the words of John of Clare and, perhaps, by loyalty to the archbishop whose heart was resting in their choir. The experience of the Hereford friars, and therefore their institutional memory of Cantilupe, was quite different. He figured prominently in their memories of their student days, as a virtuous and wise scholar and chancellor at Oxford; they remembered him as a saintly bishop whose virtues included a close association with and support of their order; and as men of local origin and residents of the local convent, they had every reason to welcome the recognition of a new Hereford saint. And yet, when the matter of miracles was at issue, the distance between the two groups was less than one might expect. Both the London and the Hereford friars were deeply conscious of the rumours, and the reality, of fraudulent miracles; this shared concern stands out in particularly sharp relief when it is noted that no other witness in 1307 referred to such rumours or inci-

68

youth’s name as Philip, but gave essential details that suggest he may simply have misremembered the name. Most importantly for the purposes of this chapter, he stated that Hugh of Brompton—speaking in the Hereford convent of friars minor—urged the young man after the miracle to go around showing his new tongue in the places where he had formerly begged; he did so, according to this witness, for four years. The miracle took place, he said, around sixteen years earlier, so c. 1291 (fols 90–91, 91v). John Bute, a citizen of Hereford and former baker in Cantilupe’s household, described the cure of a youth whose name he did not know, from Ludlow, who received a tongue after being urged by ‘certain friars minor—he did not know who or from which convent’, to seek help at Cantilupe’s tomb. Bute said, however, that this miracle took place around seven years earlier, a significant difference from the other witnesses whose dating corresponds much more closely to the date of 1288 in the miracle list (fols 105–105v). The difference may be due to faulty memory or to scribal error—or, of course, this might be a similar but distinct miracle; whatever the case, Bute’s testimony gives further evidence of Franciscan involvement in encouraging people in need to seek Cantilupe’s aid. John of Brompton was also deposed concerning the miraculous cure of Agnes de la Hulle; Vat. Lat. 4015, fols 238v–239. He had seen Agnes arrive at the cathedral unable to walk and had later seen her walking and heard from her that she had been cured by the merits of St Thomas.

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dents. Both the London and the Hereford Franciscans accordingly showed some reluctance to accept either the general fama that God was working miracles through Cantilupe or the stories in general circulation about specific miracles. Both groups, although with different attitudes towards Cantilupe, emphasized the importance of personal experience, and especially of personally witnessing or proving the miracles of which they spoke. Hugh of Brompton may have made all the Hereford brothers witnesses to the transformation in John of Burton, but this did not mean that they or their successors uncritically accepted every miracle claimed for Cantilupe. Adam of Chadnor came closest to doing so, perhaps because he could barely remember a world that was not saturated with stories of Cantilupe’s holiness—and he was, we must remember, a relative of Hugh of Brompton. But even his approach might have been different had he not seen with his own eyes the transformation of a raving madwoman into nothing more dreadful than an ordinary invalid. Perhaps, it might be argued, the apparently shared concerns of the London and Hereford friars stemmed from each group’s interest in formulating an effective argument to counter the other.69 It is certainly possible that reservations about miracles were adduced by the London friars (other than Richard de Insula, if indeed he was one of them) only in order to justify an opposition to the canonization which originated in other concerns. And it is conceivable that the Hereford friars thought the most effective way to counter this argument was not by denying the possibility of fraud but by providing specific instances of miracles that had been satisfactorily proved. But this does not seem adequately to account for the consistent note of anxiety concerning the proving of miracles. Nor does it make sense of the evidence concerning Hugh of Brompton, who could not himself be examined and whose actions were reported primarily by witnesses who were not members of the order. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the Franciscan expressions of concern about Cantilupe’s miracles cannot be understood simply as rhetorical tools in an argument between ‘supporters’ and ‘opponents’ of his canonization—that they stemmed rather, or at least also, from a shared and distinctive religious sensibility. Key to that sensibility seems to have been a conviction that God’s actions within the world would be capable of visual or logical proof, as, for instance, their founder’s stigmata had been visible at his burial.70 The Hereford friars used their eyes and

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For the problem of how much each group knew about the other’s stance, see above, p. 359. Thomas of Celano, Tractatus de miraculis, no. 5, in ff, 643–754, esp. 648–650.

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their critical faculties to search for and find that proof; the London friars, with no personal memories of Cantilupe and no regional interest in his cult, found only unsubstantiated rumour.71 71

The findings in this chapter suggest at least three possible lines of future inquiry. First, do we see a similarly distinctive concern for the proof of miracles among Franciscan witnesses in other canonization processes? A brief examination of the printed processes of Yves of Tréguier (1330), Nicholas of Tolentino (1325), Peter Morrone (Pope Celestine v) (1306), Louis of Toulouse (1308) and Osmund of Salisbury (1233) suggests not; but significant numbers of Franciscans were not examined in any of these cases; A. de la Broderie et al. (eds), Monuments originaux de l’ histoire de S. Yves (Saint-Brieuc, 1887); N. Occioni (ed.), Il processo per la canonizzazione di S. Nicola da Tolentino (Rome, 1984); Processus canonizationis et legendae variae sancti Ludovici ofm, episcopi Tolosani, Analecta Franciscana (Florence, 1951); F.X. Seppelt, ‘Die Akten des Kanonisationsprozess in dem codex zu Sulmona’, in Monumenta Coelestiniana: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstes Coelestin v (Paderborn, 1921), 211–224; A.R. Malden (ed.), The Canonization of St Osmund (Salisbury, 1901). The process for St Clare of Montefalco (1318–1319) does reveal significant disagreement among members of the order concerning the instruments of the passion allegedly visible in Clare’s heart after her death; Enrico Menestò (ed.), Il processo di canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco (Florence and Perugia, 1984). Second, was there a similarly distinctive concern in Franciscan hagiography? Third, what was being said in the universities and Franciscan schools in this period about the need and criteria for the proof of miracles and how might such academic discourse have influenced Franciscan responses to individual saints and the miracles attributed to them?

chapter 18

Richard FitzRalph and the Franciscans: Poverty, Privileges, Polemic, 1356–1359 Michael J. Haren

1

Introduction

The relationship between the Franciscans and Richard FitzRalph (known throughout late medieval Christendom as Armachanus from the archbishopric of Armagh to which he was provided in 1346 by Clement vi and which he held until his death in 1360) was varied and complex. Students of FitzRalph’s intellectual progression have, indeed, to confront what his most comprehensive biographer, the late Katherine Walsh, identified as ‘one of the most problematic aspects’ in understanding him—his ‘apparently sudden change of heart with regard to the four orders of mendicant friars and their role in later medieval society’.1 Whatever explanation may be thought best to accord with the evidence,2 the effect is of a fault-line whose opening threatened peculiar devastation for the Franciscan structure—in England (and Ireland), of course, but no less for the role of the order generally and for its fundamental ideology and self-conception. Had FitzRalph succeeded in the objects that he finally set himself and that energized and dominated his last decade, Franciscans, had they survived at all, would have been left without a function other than that of a protest movement, a latter-day version of the ancient Cynics, rebuking society’s assumptions by the eccentricity of their own deviance from its norms. The perception of a kinship between FitzRalph’s developed outlook and that of the radical wing of fourteenth-century Franciscanism,3 may be admitted— but with a literally vital qualification. His was a radical Franciscanism bereft of the ideal of poverty. 1 Walsh, Scholar, 349. 2 For a review of the development of FitzRalph’s concerns on the pastoral issue, see Michael J. Haren, ‘Richard FitzRalph and the friars: the intellectual itinerary of a curial controversialist’, in Roma, Magistra Mundi Itineraria culturae medievalis: Mélanges offerts au Père L.E. Boyle à l’ occasion de son 75e anniversaire, i, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales, Textes et Études du moyen age 10, i (Louvain-la-neuve, 1998), 349–367. 3 See Walsh, ‘Friars’, 239.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_019

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The preoccupation with poverty is a relatively late development in FitzRalph’s outlook. An important point of reference for his earlier attitude is constituted by three sermons preached by him to the Franciscans of Avignon during his long second sojourn at the papal Curia from 1337 to 1344, litigating as dean on behalf of his cathedral church of Lichfield. In that delivered on the feast of St Martin of Tours, 1338, he describes the strict poverty practised by the saint and challenges his hearers on how well they imitate him. He reflects approvingly on the merit of work—this must in context include poverty— conducted under a vow, a merit attaching to the essentially voluntary nature of the obligation arising.4 His final sermon to the Franciscans was on 4 October 1349—the feast of St Francis—just months before his epiphany as a controversialist on the issue of pastoral privileges, in his proposition, Unusquisque, delivered before the papal consistory on 5 July 1350.5 Though not without edge, the tone of the sermon is highly respectful. The preacher has distinguished in the city around him four kinds of men: those who love the world and whom the world loves, even if in pretence; those who love the world and whom the world despises; those who hold the world in disregard and whom the world, although in pretence, loves; and those who hold the world in disregard and whom the world in turn holds in disregard. These last are, above all, the devout friars of the (sc. Franciscan) order, observing the Gospel counsels in all respects. St Francis was of this state, which is compounded of three elements, obedience cum humility, penitence cum chastity and indigence or highest poverty. St Francis, more than anyone else of the world, fulfilled the command to take up his cross, ‘in highest poverty’ (in altissima paupertate). Peace and mercy be upon those who have followed this Rule. The cardinals present in the audience are enjoined ‘to succour from your abundance them above all, since they rejoice, and above all, in the prerogative of greater poverty’.6 From the perspective of the order’s history, FitzRalph’s commendatory references to poverty are an exercise in ‘Newspeak’: the poverty is idealized as understood within the developed Franciscan structure and the parameters laid down by John xxii. This position stands, nonetheless, a remarkable intellectual distance from the point at which FitzRalph had arrived by the opening of his final campaign against the friars in 1356.

4 Oxford, St John’s College, ms. 65 [j], fol. 130r (b). 5 A text of the four sermons is in preparation for publication. 6 ‘Ita domini hic presentes ut quia prerogativa maioris paupertatis gaudent et pre ceteris, de vestra habundancia succurratis illis pre ceteris, ut vestra habundancia suppleat eorum inopiam.’ j, fol. 145v.

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The proposition Unusquisque is light on poverty. Its principal focus is the pastoral activity in respect of which the friars were privileged under Dudum and associated enactments,7 and the defence of the parish unit against their incursions. Such treatment as it does accord is formally positive. It asserts a community in the vocation of the uncircumcision (a state in Pauline terms charged with the nuance of complete enfranchisement through Christ), whose members are ‘we … prelates of churches, major and minor’, who ‘dispense the temporal goods of our mother, the Church militant, and have the rights and laws by which the goods are owed us’.8 The friars are called in the circumcision. The proponent still accords them the recognition of being constituted in a perfection, though it is a perfection limiting to them, in that by it they are cut off (circumcisi) from the temporalities and other laws by which such temporalities should be owed them were they not so circumcised.9 Having a right by which one has a claim to support (as in the right of preaching) lends a security incompatible with the ideal of highest poverty.10 The incompatibility has particular point in relation to the Friars Minor. The faculty of preaching—which could not be provided for by St Francis—is adventitious in their case and a violation of their profession, to which (a sharp observation that resurfaces in the later polemic) manual labour is not repugnant.11 Here too, though, the ideal of poverty is explicit. The major departure, rivalling in its significance even FitzRalph’s emergence as the friars’ opponent on the pastoral front itself, is constituted by the writing of De Pauperie Salvatoris—or more accurately, perhaps, the particular stimulus for that work. As will be suggested in 2 below, its effective achievement and the renewal of the campaign are so neat in their conjunction as to warrant the conclusion that the timing is connected. FitzRalph returned to the fray doubly armed. The purpose here is to read what ensued, so far as possible, from the perspective of grimly determined combatants in a struggle whose outcome was so uncertain that the straining of every resource was required to the last. Although no doubt a large element of plain rancour fuelled the complaints, the uncertainty of the outcome from the seculars’ perspective must be part

7 8

9 10 11

Michael J. Haren, ‘Friars as confessors: the canonist background to the fourteenth-century controversy’, Peritia 3 (1984), 503–516, esp. 510–512. Hammerich, Beginning, 54–55. The point of reference for the metaphor of circumcision is St Paul’s Letters, especially, Rom. 2:25–3:2; 3:29–31; 4:1–14; Gal. 5:2–6; Ephes. 2:11–16; Philipp. 3:2–5. Hammerich, Beginning, 55, ll. 36–39. Hammerich, Beginning, 70–71, ll. 434–442. Hammerich, Beginning, 72, ll. 475–481.

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of the explanation for those diversions from the main issues into what might seem bafflingly pointless criticism of the friars’ alleged recruitment practices.12 If a comprehensive settlement could not be reached at least the friars might be curtailed in number. The seculars’ uncertainty, however, has been largely taken for granted in the scholarly literature and hardly requires apology. Where correction is needed it is in suggesting that there were real grounds for the other side to fear detriment.

2

De Pauperie Salvatoris

De Pauperie Salvatoris was owed to a commission given by Clement vi in the eighth year of his pontificate. The termini for the pope’s intervention, if dated formally, are accordingly 19 May 1349 and 18 May 1350. The earliest point of reference for FitzRalph’s presence in Avignon is his preaching the proposition Domine salva nos perimus, on behalf of the English king, before a consistory in August 1349.13 Whether or not the commission was already in hand when he preached before the Franciscans in October 1349 is imponderable. If it were, a certain colour would be lent by it to that sermon, but it is quite possible that the power and range of the sermon itself was a factor. At all events, it is noteworthy that the commission preceded the delivery of Unusquisque. FitzRalph, with two other, unidentified, doctors of theology were to investigate disputed matters concerning ‘the proprietorship or the lordship, possession and right of use of things such as our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ held and as do the Friars Minor and their order, imitating (as they maintain) the poverty of our Saviour’.14 The Franciscans were thus specifically in view. The investigation was to include a survey of the pertinent papal rulings. The reconciliation of papal interventions was indeed to be a major focus of FitzRalph’s approach both to poverty and to the issue of pastoral rights in the later phase of his

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13 14

The propagandist Informacio Brevis pro Clero et Populo contra Abusum Mendicancium Fratrum listed as points three and four of the measures needed to satisfy the FitzRalph suit ‘quod super recepcione innocentium iuvenum per fratres statuatur notabiliter etas maior … quod provideatur racionabilis refrenacio multiplicacioni effrenate fratrum sine numero, pondere et mensura’. London, Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 1208 [l1208], fols 96r– 98v. Cf. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, 64 [s], fol. 105v. There is more than a hint of the paranoia that grips so many beleaguered minds, the conviction that those to whom they object are multiplying like rabbits. Sermon 89: here and subsequently numeration is as in Gwynn, ‘Sermon-Diary’. Wyclif, De Dominio, 273.

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polemical career. It is implicit that, among these three theologians, there was at least one participant representative of or at least sympathetic to the mendicant position. In fact, an inference is possible from the author’s particular reference to the business at issue as having been ‘shredded during many years among the two principal orders of mendicants’,15 that both these orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, were represented. If so, it would accord with the evident fact that the committee was ‘hung’. In FitzRalph’s dismissive retrospect, the parties were ‘dissecting—with stings of serpents rather than knives or blades— the bark, well up from the roots’.16 This—and notably, as he maintained, ‘the encouragements of certain of my lords cardinals’17—was his stimulus to tackle the roots himself, a hatchet job that he continued in Ireland in the intervals left him by his pastoral commitments. The claim to curial support is unverifiable but it could hardly have been made without foundation. It has plausibility too in its own right: the cardinals from possessioner orders would have had an obvious interest.18 The committee’s proceedings were conducted before Cardinal Étienne Aubert, the future Innocent vi. The dedication to him of the eventual product may be no abject currying of favour. The several invitations extended to FitzRalph to preach before the pope during the period of the great lawsuit suggest real esteem. The resulting treatise was conceived as a work of seven books. To its process of development the manuscript tradition bears witness in a fashion unusual for a composition outside the schoolroom. The text in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cvp 1430 [v]—a manuscript whose introduction to Bohemia by Adalbert Ranconis effected an early juncture between a momentous current of ‘English’ radical analysis and a scene of fervid reformist activity19—is studded with revisions and accretions that are evidently authorial in origin and that entered the final dissemination. The presumption that they are authorial in execution—that this is indeed FitzRalph’s own draft copy—is, however, unsafe.20 While overall judgement must be provisional pending com-

15 16 17 18

19 20

Wyclif, De Dominio, 273. Wyclif, De Dominio, 273. Wyclif, De Dominio, 273. There were three: the Cistercian, Guillaume Court and the Benedictines, Guillaume d’ Aure, and Hugo Roger, for notices on whom see Lützelschwab, Flectat, 463–465, 467– 471. See Walsh, Scholar, 458–459. For comment on copying errors in v, see Haren, ‘Richard FitzRalph of Dundalk, Oxford and Armagh: scholar, prelate and controversialist’, in The Irish Contribution to European Scholastic Thought, ed. James McEvoy and Michael Dunne (Dublin, 2009), 88–110, esp. 108.

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plete critical collation, the evidence—both, tentatively, from this manuscript in its own right, and from comparison of it with London, Lambeth Palace ms. 121 [l121], a fifteenth-century manuscript, also containing heavy revision of the type—prompts the conclusion that both the Vienna and Lambeth manuscripts are witness to (somewhat different stages of) the text’s evolution. Probably they reflect an economical alternative to recopying, whereby copies of the treatise, while still under elaboration, were corrected by reference to the finally approved version. Apart from the insight offered into the working of FitzRalph’s mind on the subject, the textual history revealed indicates a perception of lively demand at the primitive stage and hints at a coterie of early readers. The deduction gives particular point to the first reference to De Pauperie. This is contained in FitzRalph’s sermon, Dirigite viam Domini, of 18 December 1356,21 where he described it as having been directed for approval, discussion and, if necessary, correction to the pope and cardinals, and as having been ‘given over for communication’ to interested parties in Oxford.22 In the work as conceived, the first five books are devoted to the concepts of dominion or lordship, possession, title, proprietorship and use. The next two examine, respectively, apostolic poverty and the evangelical life, and address that vexed aspect of Clement vi’s commission, the relevant papal constitutions—especially of Nicholas iii and John xxii—as bearing on the Franciscan order. Eventually, during his final spell at the Curia, FitzRalph appended an eighth book, focused on mendicancy, again with reference to the papal legislation, including specifically that relating to the pastoral privileges which the controversy in its latest phase had as its principal focus. The form is a dialogue, conducted between Richard and a John, who I have surmised may portray the concern of FitzRalph’s earliest patron, Bishop Grandisson of Exeter (and his circle), with themes that are fundamental to the approach—the ethical dimensions of the exercise of office and the moral turpitude associated with lack of integrity in it.23 Underlying it is a premise with which Grandisson certainly would have been familiar both in terms of his Augustinian orientation and from his exposure to early fourteenth-century Parisian currents.24 The doctrine of dominion by grace, though present in thirteenth-century canonist thought, had received its major elaboration— appropriately, given its philosophical pedigree—from the Augustinian Giles of 21 22 23 24

Sermon 65. j, fols 76r(b)–77r. Cf. Haren, ‘Richard FitzRalph of Dundalk’, 105–106. The particular application of Giles of Rome’s adoption of dominion by grace gave it an evident topicality.

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Rome. A justification of the hierocratic thesis,25 it had been taken up by William of Cremona, prior-general of the Augustinians from 1326 to 1342, as a counterthrust to the views of Marsilius of Padua.26 The implication of FitzRalph’s analysis, as derived from the premise, had a twofold import within his remit. It subverted the primitive (now in practice outmoded) ideology that underlay the Franciscan vocation: a concept of apostolic poverty incompatible with his thesis of the common lordship of the just. It further developed a principle enunciated in the proposition Unusquisque: that abuse of privilege constituted a ground for its loss, as the transgression of our first parents resulted in their expulsion from paradise.27 The penalty becomes an insistent theme of FitzRalph’s polemic on the subject of pastoral privileges. So applied, it shifted the balance of advantage. If this was heavily in the friars’ favour while the argument rested on the legality of the source and interpretation of their privileges, rectitude of conduct was more nebulous—imponderable as regards the conclusion that might be reached when an option was offered that did not rend the straitjacket of high ecclesiological considerations. The double effect is so apologetically brilliant that it can hardly be thought incidental. It must have been intended from the outset. Outside of history, the main continuing interest of De Pauperie Salvatoris lies in the fields of political and legal theory, now that theology and ecclesiology have abandoned the central concerns which are its subject. The main historical interest—that which prompted its partial publication—has been in connexion with Wyclif’s thought. In concentration on the larger dimension, the work’s peculiar appositeness in 1356 could easily be passed over. FitzRalph tells us that, having begun it in Avignon, he continued in Ireland.28 A fair surmise is that the text was complete in draft at least by the time of his arrival from Armagh in England in the early summer of that year.29 According to his own account, he came on the business of his church of Armagh:30 the wording is elastic but it was evidently meant to convey that he had not come with

25

26 27 28 29

30

See Aubrey Gwynn, The English Austin Friars in the Time of Wyclif (Oxford, 1940), 35– 73; and for the broad intellectual context James D. Dawson, ‘Richard FitzRalph and the fourteenth-century poverty controversies’, jeh 34 (1983), 315–344. See Mac Fhionnbhair, Cremonensis. Hammerich, Beginning, 72, ll. 484–491. Wyclif, De Dominio, 273. It is impossible to know whether circulation of the early version or versions preceded FitzRalph’s re-arrival in England. As the timing of his re-arrival suggests, he is likely to have been in continuous contact with the English scene even while in Ireland. Brown, Fasciculus, 466.

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controversial intent. Nevertheless, he can hardly have been unaware beforehand that controversy was rife, for the Canterbury convocation had recently erupted against the mendicants.31 The complaints that the convocation articulated, while passionately advanced, were not such as to have been newly generated. They look distinctly propagandist. De facto they are the first salvo in what, when taken up by FitzRalph, rapidly escalated into an unrelenting bombardment. Even if impossible to answer with certainty, the question must be asked whether what followed was planned well in advance.32 Through Grandisson’s circle and otherwise, FitzRalph may be thought to have had a cadre of supporters in the higher sub-episcopal ranks of the English church. Mr William Doune, archdeacon of Leicester and official of both Lincoln and Worcester dioceses, is one example,33 Richard Kilwington, dean of St Paul’s, another. These, in turn, are likely to have been part of an influential nexus of peers. There is in all this reason to suspect a coordinated strategy. Convocation’s protest and the advent of a generalissimo, disposing not only of metropolitan and primatial authority but of an arrestingly radical thesis, which from the author of the Summa de Questionibus Armenorum could hardly be other than seriously taken at the highest levels, seem altogether too pat to suppose mere coincidence.

3

FitzRalph’s London Sermons 1356–1357

In England, FitzRalph’s engagement, other than whatever may have been his continuing elaboration of the text of De Pauperie, was through a series of public sermons. It is proper to describe them as a series. There are hints of overview. Besides occasional internal recapitulation, towards the end of Dirigite viam Domini there is a reference to further development of the same theme34—though this might just be an effect of editing in the writing up. Several, beginning with that on Sunday 26 June, on the text Qui diligit Deum

31

32 33 34

See William A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), 159, 267–268. The document’s date must be inferred from context. The episode is assignable to the convocation at St Paul’s 16–24 May 1356. See Convocation, 263–271. The writ for parliament went out the previous November. Convocation, 263. For his career, see Michael J. Haren, Sin and Society in Fourteenth-Century England: A Study of the ‘Memoriale Presbiterorum’ (Oxford, 2000), 10, 30–31, 39–44, 190–207. For Sermons 65–68, I refer to the text in Summa Domini Armachani in Quaestionibus Armenorum (Paris, 1512) (hereafter cited as Sudor), fols 163–177, which I have corrected on problematical points from the manuscripts of the sermon diary. Sudor, fol. 164 [recte 165]r(b).

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diligat et fratrem suum (Sermon 60), were preached in the full glare of London exposure, at St Paul’s Cross. (Such was FitzRalph’s confidence and skill that he seems to have delivered this sermon without notes, for the rubric describes its recording ‘as it could be recalled to memory’.35) But it is clear that even when the setting changed, the London sermons had a certain continuity of audience. Thus, in the sermon Quodcumque dixerit vobis facite, delivered at the Cross on Sunday, 22 January 1357,36 he could refer his listeners to that given to them before Christmas (Dirigite viam, in the bishop’s hall), about which he has heard ‘from some of you’ that it was not fully understood.37 The third of the winter series, Dic ut lapides isti panes fiant—given at the Cross on the first Sunday of Lent, 26 February 135738—certainly must have had a heavy contingent of merchants present, for their sins are especially dwelt on. The least overtly contestable, controversialist points—that the parish church is, in the normal course, the place for confession elected by God, as also for prayer and the offering to him of a troubled spirit; that the oratories of the friars are not so elected, merely conceded; that confession to the ‘ordinary confessor’ has the merit of being conducted under obedience; that the person of the ordinary is the safer as representing the spiritual physician who takes a holistic approach—could in context only have been viewed by the friars as an attempt to detach from them a constituency of burghers who must have been a major source of support as well as being a focus of their mission. The whole was related to the sermon’s text by the exhortation, ‘Tell your sins to your ordinary … that your stones become bread.’39 Wrapped up in a highly dubious (and no doubt deliberately opaque) differentiation from the views of Jean de Pouilli— the exact import of which cannot readily be determined even from its written version—it could hardly but be seen as offering substantial evidence for the course on which the friars now embarked.40 As for the Franciscans especially,

35 36 37 38 39 40

For the rubric see Gwynn, ‘Sermon-Diary’, 54. Sermon 66. See Sudor, fol. 164v [recte 165v]. Sermon 67. Sudor, fol. 161v [recte 171v]. The preacher repudiated the opinion of de Pouilli, which he recognized as erroneous on the grounds that it implied a repetition of absolution and as having mistaken the parish chaplain as the ‘proprius sacerdos’. He attempted to imply broadly disciplinary, organizational and structural considerations as the foundation of his own position. See Sudor, fol. 162v [recte 170v], which has the misprint ‘capitularium’ for ‘capellanum’ in the already obscure reference to de Pouilli. The effect on an audience would have been highly prejudicial to the friars and mystifying as regards the differentiation from de Pouilli.

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they were castigated for obtaining letters of privilege in the first place and using them in subversion of their founder’s Testament, and for failing to observe their Rule in substituting their faculties of preaching, confessing and burying as the means of maintenance, to the neglect of manual labour.41 The London public was being well exposed too to the central perspective of De Pauperie Salvatoris. In the course of Qui diligit, the preacher had taunted that if anyone could find in the Gospel that Christ had begged the necessities of life he would give him his Bible, to which the reply had been made—as was relayed to him—that he ought, for this, to consult the gloss.42 The issue’s early introduction is noteworthy. For all its abstraction, the newly elaborated thesis was demonstrating its value polemically. A prominent aspect of the friars’ Appellacio, referred to in the final paragraph of this section below, was to be that FitzRalph ‘criticised, rebuked and belittled the orders, their state, grounding and institution, and the life of their professors … and especially the poverty and mendicancy attaching to them … before a thronging and exceedingly numerous multitude, reproving the voluntary state of poverty’.43 This was no more than fair comment on their part. After a review of soteriology, in Dirigite viam, FitzRalph let his Gospel text lead him straight in, with an advertisement of his expertise (the reference to his having written seven books on poverty, and, significantly in view of what has been hypothesized about coordination, to his having been requested to expound the topic). He was already aware of attack on his doctrine.44 One objection raised may have been to do with gifting in the state of original dominion, for that is especially explained.45 Even to those layfolk (the sermon is specifically recorded as having been ad populum) tutored enough to know something of John xxii’s pronouncement on nearly related matters,46 the preacher’s perspective on the ‘way of the Lord’ must have startled—though it had surely the potential of raising interest among the burghers. Christ did not love poverty nor will it in itself. That he was not rich but poor was a consequence of his being under the law which

41 42 43

44 45 46

Sudor, fol. 162v [recte 170v]. See the reference in Sermon 65: Sudor, fol. 153v. ‘[O]rdines predictos statum fundamentum et institucionem eorumdem vitamque professorum in eisdem et presertim paupertatem et mendicitatem eis annexas … coram popolosa et copiosa nimis hominum multitudine iniuste contra canonicas sanctiones et sedis apostolice indulgencias temere increpavit reprehendebat et parvipendebat statum paupertatis voluntarium reprobando’. s, fol. 4v. Sudor, fol. 163v. Sudor, fol. 164v. In Cum inter nonnullos. Extra. Ioann. 14. 4, 1229–1230.

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restricted the primal dominion to which he had succeeded. He did not wish to be a mendicant, neither was he. Since Deuteronomy 15:4 says ‘There shall not be needy nor beggar among you’, Christ, who came to fulfil the law, would have broken it by begging. Christ’s state and spontaneous mendicancy were opposed and contradictory.47 Specifically for the mystified, the theme was restated in the following sermon (Quodcunque dixerit)—with a zest bordering on the spicy. If Christ had taught spontaneous begging as though constituting perfection of life, the Holy Spirit would have expressed that through one of the evangelists. Since, therefore, it is nowhere in the apostolic writings, it seems to follow that as a condition of the perfect life it is non-existent—or else the Holy Spirit forgot to hand it down. Those who spontaneously beg act contrary to the principle that it is better to give than to receive. A life commitment to spontaneous mendicancy cannot be worthily assumed under vow. It cannot therefore (sc. properly) pertain to the profession of the Friars Minor.48 Following the sermon of 26 February, the friars responded determinedly, in common session at the Greyfriars’ chapter house on 7 March. An Appellacio on behalf of all four orders but formally at the behest of John of Arderne, prior of the London Augustinians, was delivered to FitzRalph, listing his alleged errors, relating to evangelical poverty, the state of mendicancy and the friars’ pastoral activity.49 On the next Sunday, 12 March, two days after the notice served on him,50 FitzRalph was at the Cross again. In the great diatribe, Nemo vos seducat inanibus verbis,51 he tackled twenty-one points in series, ducking and weaving among them. Mostly he inflicts blows on the bruises already raised. Occasionally, a feint conveys substantive information. To the charge that he said that a greater occasion of sin attached to the state of mendicancy than to superfluity of wealth, he pleaded not guilty: ‘My colleague the dean [sc. Kilwington] said that, not I: and right neatly he put it.’52 The spectacle must have been more entertaining than the reader struggling through Sudor’s edition might suppose. It probably also carried the bonus of an indulgence.

47 48 49 50 51 52

Sudor, fol. 164 [recte 165]r. Sudor, fols 167v–168r [misprinted as fol. 160]. The unique source is s, fol. 4r–v. See Walsh, ‘Friars’, 233; Walsh, Scholar, 417. A process meticulously recorded in s, fol. 4v. Sermon 68. ‘Socius meus decanus hunc dixit, non ego, et satis eleganter illum suasit’. Sudor, fol. 174r. As in many of FitzRalph’s adversions in these sermons, there is a deliberate ambiguity. In case of need to disown the sentiment, this, as recorded in the Latin ‘minute’, might be said to mean no more than ‘and he urged the point with all courtesy’.

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Dirigite viam certainly did—and referred sourly to indulgences recently given by the friars after their sermons, in the presence of people of the archbishop’s party.53 (Both sides were keeping a watch, and clearly not concealing the fact.)

4

Proceedings at the Papal Curia

At this point, FitzRalph expected the friars to secure the king’s prohibition against his expounding further, as they were rumoured to have already in the case of ‘my colleague the dean’54—another valuable indication of the part being played by Kilwington, who was to feature prominently in the later proceedings. Despite royal impediments, however, the parties transferred their dispute in the course of the summer to Avignon, where it continued at the Curia of Innocent vi until FitzRalph’s death around November 1360. In Avignon, as well as prosecuting his case for restoration in its original force of the decree Omnis utriusque, requiring annual confession to the proper priest, FitzRalph had to defend himself against the action of the four orders, which denounced his errors and represented him as heretical and excommunicate. These last charges were technical manoeuvres, certainly, aimed at excluding him as a litigant but they had to be met seriously. ‘Who doubts’, asks Roger Conway, the Franciscans’ most able protagonist, in the second part of his tract (a version of the Defensio Mendicantium) against FitzRalph’s interpretation of Vas electionis, ‘that this is rankest heresy?’55 Kilwington, taken as the author of the Allegationes Magistri Ricardi in Causa Domini Ardmachani contra Fratres, defended his principal as submitting ‘all his sayings … to the correction of the apostolic see. Whence it is clear that he cannot be deemed a heretic.’ It is noteworthy, however, that he was circumspect enough to plead the secondline defence that not every heretic was excommunicate.56 When, on 23 July 1358, Cardinal Guillaume Court was commissioned by the pope in a heresy proceeding against a member of FitzRalph’s household, the archbishop was not in fact rendered immune.57 The pope, it was recorded, had forbidden the

53 54 55 56 57

Sudor, fol. 164r [recte 165r]. Sudor, fol. 161v [recte 171v]. ‘Quis enim dubitat hanc esse heresim pessimam?’ Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms. 3222 [p], fol. 137v(b). p, fol. 113v(b). Cf. Walsh, Scholar, 444. As understood by Walsh, ‘Friars’, 243; Walsh, Scholar, 444–445.

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inquisitor to proceed, as he would normally have done, but the cardinal’s power extended to whomsoever.58 The suspect articles, as they are recorded, have no relation to the issue between FitzRalph and the friars.59 Indeed, it is difficult to see how they could be entertained seriously as held by anyone with theological training.60 This may, though, be the point. The source for this and similar items in the Sidney Sussex manuscript must have been material preserved by FitzRalph’s side:61 the antepenultimate entry preceding this item is a list of cases in which the religious incur ipso facto sentence of excommunication. It might not therefore reliably transmit potentially damaging material.62 As regards an undeniably central issue, the argument advanced by FitzRalph in De Audientia Confessionum that many in the Church believed that parishioners were obliged to confess once a year to their proprius sacerdos and would sin mortally by not doing so,63 is an evident riposte to the attempt to isolate him. It was also distinctly arch: by then he was claiming the best company possible. Even without that solidarity, however, in practice the friars’ attempts to damn him or halt the suit by representing him as heretical and excommunicate can hardly have amounted to more than a relatively minor irritant to which every invitation to preach before the pope would have applied public salve.64 The very fact that FitzRalph had presented his review of the positions taken up in the London sermons—his proposition, Nolite iudicare, of 8 November 1357— personally before the pope65 (in token, perhaps, of his prestige, by the latter’s consent),66 was deployed to procedural advantage. Kilwington would briskly hold that by this circumstance as well as by committing the case and admitting FitzRalph to act in it the pope ‘is seen to have dispensed over any and every flaw in it’.67

58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67

l1208, fols 100v–101v; s, fols 108v–109r. Their tenor is purportedly given in s, fol. 109r. See Walsh, Scholar, 445 n. 122. (They are absent from the corresponding document in l1208.) Cf. Walsh, Scholar, 445. On its compilation, see Katherine Walsh, The ‘De Vita Evangelica’ of Geoffrey Hardeby, oesa (c. 1320–c. 1385): A Study in the Mendicant Controversies of the Fourteenth Century, Institutum Historicum Augustinianum (Rome, 1972), 66–70; Walsh, ‘Friars’, 224–226. s, fols 107v–108r. p, fols 82v–83r. One planned preaching before the pope (Sermon 69, for All Saints Day, 1358); one sermon actually preached before him (Sermon 88, on Epiphany, 1359). Sermon 91. See Walsh, ‘Friars’, 233; but cf. Walsh, Scholar, 422. ‘Unde papa videtur dispensasse super omni macula si qua fuit.’ p, fol. 114r(b).

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The broad lines of what ensued following the transfer to Avignon and the polemical literature generated have been well surveyed,68 and it will suffice to concentrate on aspects that are problematical or less well understood. There has been a near consensus that FitzRalph’s cause was desperate. Certainly, in the mid-fourteenth century it had no prospect of success if winning required overturning the papal capacity effectively to dispense from the force of a general council’s statute. Roger Conway, in his Defensio Mendicantium, clove to this safeguard resolutely. The Defensio exalts papal power. General councils cannot bind the Church fast by their legislation (concilia generalia non possunt ecclesiae legem praefigere) for the Church is the source of their authority. It is a marvel that his opponent does not see or remember this.69 At the root of Conway’s high ecclesiological frondescence is that what God can do the pope can do. This is the point of his citation of those biblical instances where God specially derogated the law. It is also the point of his summary judgement that FitzRalph’s contentions are an affront to authority on every level—the omnipotence of God, the truth of Scripture, the power of the Roman pontiff and ‘his’ bishops.70 As regards papal power generally, Conway cites the range of ‘common’ dispensations, where in no case is the law abolished.71 This argument, though, is incidental, for Conway can readily agree with the contention that the pope, by a succeeding constitution, does not remove in whole or part an established statute—especially of a general council—unless the latter be manifestly contrary to the former, without express mention’s being made of the earlier law. Conway’s reply is simply (and insistently) that confession to a licensed friar fulfils the requirement of Omnis utriusque from which, accordingly, there is no derogation.72 The arch-conservative ecclesiology of FitzRalph and those who putatively backed him was not, however, conceived in opposition to papal power. Their starting point was quite other and their endgame too. Grandisson was the pupil of a future pope and one of high temperament at that.73 Aubrey Gwynn was

68 69 70 71 72 73

See especially Walsh, Scholar, 421–451. Conway, Defensio, 1344/1439, ll. 16–24. Conway, Defensio, 1344/1439, ll. 33–36. Conway, Defensio, 1426–1427. Conway, Defensio, 1329/1435. For his study under Jacques Fournier, the future Benedict xii, see Michael J. Haren, ‘The influence on FitzRalph of Bishop Grandisson of Exeter: with a critical edition of Sermons 62 and 64 of FitzRalph’s Sermon Diary’, in Richard FitzRalph, his Life, Times and Thought, ed. Michael W. Dunne and Simon Nolan (Dublin, 2013), 30–55, esp. 32– 33.

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shrewd in pointing out that he would, in Paris, have been exposed to Jean de Pouilli’s championing of the seculars.74 By the same token he would have seen established the limits within which the argument could be advanced. In fact, Grandisson esteemed authority and upheld the hierocratic view.75 From his own pronouncements there is every reason to think that he would have been on easy terms with the outlook of Clement vi. The presumption that, as himself a fish of the first water, he would at Paris have swum in the same stream as the young Pierre Roger (later Pope Clement vi), is confirmed by his correspondence.76 (The pope was apt to have remembered. He had a soft spot for his student days.77) As for FitzRalph, it needs to be taken more seriously than is wont from where he received the stimulus that resulted in De Pauperie. It would be gratuitous to assume that this represented a deflection.78 A papal hierocrat had the strongest reason possible for seeing a path cleared through the jungle of his predecessors’ interventions on the subject of poverty. So had a monk, even one of seigneurial bent, in knowing how perfection of life might be defined. There is no need to suppose that had Clement lived to read what he had set off he would have found it anything but congenial, even exciting. Add to that what we must now infer regarding Clement’s outlook on the pastoral issue.79 In curial terms, FitzRalph is more readily seen as an insider than as an outsider. At the Curia there are signs both of initial predisposition towards him and of major shift to accommodate him as the case proceeded. That the evidence does not lie in eloquent pronouncement has caused it to be undervalued or even unnoticed. (All too often to the historian, mere actions do not 74 75

76

77 78

79

Gwynn, The English Austin Friars, 81. Haren, Sin and Society, 46. His defence of episcopal patronage in its vulnerability to papal provisions does not gainsay this perspective. The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (a.d. 1327–1369), ed. Francis C. Hingeston-Randolph, 2 vols. (London and Exeter, 1894), vol. 1, 111–112; Pantin, The English Church, 69–71. This was a tug of war without implication for the principle underpinning provisions. For Roger’s university career, see Diana Wood, Clement vi: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989), 7–10. For Grandisson’s acquaintance, see The Register of John de Grandisson, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, vol. 1, 272–273, 280–281. See his reminiscence on the occasion of promoting Cardinal Guillaume Court to the bishopric of Tusculum. Lützelschwab, Flectat, 123. I so understand Janet Coleman, ‘FitzRalph’s Antimendicant “Proposicio” (1350) and the politics of the papal court at Avignon’, jeh 35 (1984), 376–390, 386. It should be noted of her surmise there that, whatever about encouragement to write, the invitation to debate dominion preceded the preaching of Unusquisque. See below, 400–401.

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speak more loudly.) First, the constitution of the commission appointed to hear his case is instructive.80 The four members named by Innocent vi included two monks (the Cistercian Guillaume Court and Elias de Saint Yrieix a Benedictine): for the mendicants, unsettling choices surely. While Elias suffered illness during the proceedings,81 Conway was nervous enough, undoubtedly with Guillaume Court in mind, to identify his opponent’s tactic of driving a wedge between monks and friars: he declared his confidence that it would not succeed.82 As Katherine Walsh observed, Francesco degli Atti’s membership might have engendered ‘mixed feelings’ among the friars: that in the event he served only intermittently is secondary to the fact of his appointment.83 As she also observed, Pierre du Cros was a patron of FitzRalph’s ‘colleague’, Kilwington.84 Next, it is by no means evident that the curial politics which Janet Coleman has argued weighed against FitzRalph’s prospects in the presentation of Unusquisque did so,85 at least in this later phase. Cardinal Talleyrand, above all, was no stumbling block. He was a suave facilitator. He could spot a man in difficulty at twenty paces. Such was his encouraging reaction to Thomas de la Mare, abbot-elect of St Albans, who did not need to get so close (nor was so familiar) as to touch the brim of the cardinal’s hat before his problem was in course of resolution.86 The St Albans chronicler’s encomium that Talleyrand, from becoming cardinal, never willingly took gifts that could burden the giver need not attenuate Zacour’s finding on his sources of income.87 We know that Thomas de la Mare was one of FitzRalph’s most notable supporters.88 We know also that, on Talleyrand’s legation to England in 1357–1358, the abbot conspicuously plied him with hospitality. He was so gracious as to accept little:89 thus 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89

Its composition is considered in Walsh, Scholar, 427–428, with the comment that it ‘provokes the speculation whether Innocent vi might not have been prepared to reverse the policy of his predecessor’. This is just, except in the assumption as regards Clement vi. See Walsh, Scholar, 437. s, fol. 113r. Conway, Defensio, 1337/1433. Walsh, ‘Friars’, 235. Walsh, ‘Friars’, 234–235. Coleman, ‘FitzRalph’s Antimendicant “Proposicio” ’, 387–388. Talleyrand diagnosed him as he crossed the threshold of his chapel. Gesta Abbatum, vol. 2, 384. Zacour, ‘Talleyrand’, 16. Zacour, ‘Talleyrand’, 13. See Michael J. Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln, two Avignonese statutes and Archbishop FitzRalph of Armagh’s suit at the Roman curia against the friars’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 31 (1993), 275–292, esp. 278; and James G. Clark, A Monastic Renaissance at St Albans, Thomas Walsingham and His Circle c.1350–1440 (Oxford, 2004), 240–241. Gesta Abbatum, vol. 2, 385.

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runs the source, still in moralizing mode. We can only surmise what the episode signified. We have an interesting insight in this period into FitzRalph’s state of mind. It comes from a taunting letter to the Franciscan Giovanni Marignolo,90 bishop of Bisignano, who had intimated his intention of coming to the Curia and disputing with FitzRalph there. Marignolo, who was dead by 22 March 1359,91 must have been older than FitzRalph: FitzRalph twits him that, at his time of life, that of ‘venerable old age’, he should have more sense. Since he has conquered the flower of the bishop’s order—the sophisms, long since, of Ockham and Burley too—all that remains is that, as victor, he should receive the trophy92 and that the benignity of God should please to crown him whom (sc. himself) the desired triumph marks out. Although mere bravado may be allowed for, the letter’s cock-a-hoop tone is striking. Just possibly it reflects the defeat of a highpowered attempt by the friars to impetrate a letter from Innocent vi countering the campaign mounted, as they complained, against them in England. (That of FitzRalph was certainly embraced by the wording, which, however, encompassed a wider insurrection ‘against the Lord and against his Christ’). The letter sought would have specifically endorsed a list of eight points (three relating to poverty and mendicancy, the remainder to pastoral privileges, with particular stress on confession) in respect of which the bishops of the realm would have been ordered to suppress opposition, enjoining lower clergy to treat the friars ‘with benevolent affection, not showing themselves difficult, heavy, harsh or rough but rather, favourable, propitious and benign and liberal with pious munificence’ towards them and to receive them ‘with prompt benignity, in the office of preaching and the setting forth of God’s word and in the other matters referred to [this would have included confessions] as being fit fellow-workers and participants of their labours’.93 Those recalcitrant were to be advised that

90 91 92 93

See Dobner, Monumenta, vol. 2, 73–74, for text. Conrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, 4 vols. (Münster, 1898–1913), vol. 1, 136. The word used, “bravium”, echoes 1. Corinth. 9:24. ‘Ceterum universos ecclesiarum prelatos cuiuscumque preeminencie, status vel dignitatis existant eciam sacerdotes parochiales et curatos sive rectores earum ecclesiarum, presencium tenore rogare seu hortari attente districteque nihilominus precipiendo quatinus pro divina et apostolice sedis reverencia predictos ordines et professores eorundem habentes affectu benivolo commendatos, fratribus ipsis non se difficiles, graves, duros aut asperos set pocius favorabiles, propiciosos et benignos piaque munificencia liberales se studeant exhibere sic eos in predicacionis officio ac proposicionibus verbi Dei et in aliis supradictis tamquam cooperatores ydoneos et laborum suorum participes prom⟨p⟩ta benignitate recipere et affectuose admittere non omittant.’ s, fol. 125v.

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‘the benignity of the apostolic see, which pursues those orders and their professors with abounding favour and carries them in the bowels of charity will be, not without justification, provoked against them and will be unable to suffer with equanimity but that it apply the opportune remedy of provision in the matter’.94 This suit was presented by six masters of theology representing the four orders and including the Dominican and Franciscan English provincials, John of Tatenhall and Roger Conway, respectively, both supported by a confrère.95 Presumptuous as might be the appeal to papal favour, there was much in the text otherwise that was or should have been uncontentious, read against the history of papal support for the pastoral mission of the orders. The pope, however, replied—at least as he is recorded96—that ‘he neither would nor could grant those things, in that they were prejudicial to the cause of the Lord Armagh’. However, ‘at the instance of certain cardinals, he ordered the making of letters for the said friars … to the prelates of England, such though as should not be to the prejudice of the said cause’.97 On 1 October 1358, there issued the letter Gravem dilectorum, in standard form and explicitly as a holding measure.98 In face of the wording sought by the impetrants, it is difficult to accept Katherine Walsh’s judgement that Gravem dilectorum ‘must have represented something of a defeat for FitzRalph’.99 On the contrary, we know that it was the friars who were disappointed with the outcome, for they persisted in their efforts and pressed their draft upon the vice-chancellor, at which point FitzRalph’s party secured an inhibition.100 Though the source for this is again the dossier on whose provenance I have commented, the episode is highly unlikely to have been invented. Far from being a defeat, it could qualify as a triumph (especially since, as noted by Walsh herself, it was followed proxi94

95 96 97 98 99

100

‘Nec ipsos lateat quod si secus ab eis fortassis agi contigerit in hac parte sedis apostolice benignitas, que ordines et professores eosdem uberi favore prosequitur et gerit in visceribus caritatis, contra eos non inmerito turbaretur nec eadem equanimiter pati posset quin super hoc provisionis oportunum remedium adhiberet …’ s, fol. 125v. For the full list with biographical notes, see Walsh, ‘Friars’, 240–241 and n. 57. The same caution is required as expressed above, 392. s, fol. 113v. s, fol. 108v. Walsh, ‘Friars’, 242. No more so did the letter ‘Tenorem quarumdam …’ obtained by Roger Conway on 3 April 1359 (not, as in Walsh, ‘Friars’, 243, on 14 July), undoubtedly in an attempt to suggest innovation. It constituted not a reissue of Vas electionis but a simple exemplification of its enregistered text without more legal significance than the original. s, fol. 108r. The dating argued below for Conway’s Defensio excludes any connexion between treatise and letter. s, fols 113v, 126r. Walsh, ‘Friars’, 241.

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mately by an invitation to FitzRalph to preach before the pope101) and have justified the tone and language of the letter to Marignolo.102 If the association contemplated here is speculative and the timing narrow, at all events the letter to Marignolo is plausibly to be dated to the year 1358: the fruits of the pen to which FitzRalph refers in it were presumably those which he hoped to garner from Nolite iudicare. Buoyancy on FitzRalph’s part can be otherwise accounted for. Another triumph was in the offing. The development to be noted next was probably not sudden but the result of a crescendo of feeling that some concession must be made to the seculars’ case. If Talleyrand had indeed been brought to concede as much during his sojourn in England, FitzRalph and his party would certainly have been apprised and the expectation of results after the cardinal’s return to the Curia would have been lively. Talleyrand returned to Avignon in April 1359.103 On the feast of St Luke (16 October) there was an evidently staged re-enactment of synodal legislation highly significant of curial politics in the context of FitzRalph’s case. For the diocese of Avignon, on behalf of its bishop, the pope, it was laid down that the people must resort to their parish churches. Anyone above the age of 14 ‘contemning’ to confess at least once a year, ‘to his proper priest or to another by his licence’ was subject to sanction.104 Talleyrand acted as protector of the Franciscans, probably on pension.105 This measure is most unlikely to have been taken in the teeth of his opposition. Indeed, there is a sign of his complacence in the circumstance that one of the two notaries recording the event for FitzRalph was of Talleyrand’s livery.106 To whom else in the Curia one might 101

102

103 104

105 106

Walsh, ‘Friars’, 242. Even if, as is likely, the sermon—for All Saints—had been arranged earlier, the background must have been this tussle and the compliment a public signal. In the event, the pope did not attend—on grounds of illness. A caution against thinking this too a signal is that FitzRalph was re-invited for the following Epiphany. This contains one usage which might echo the friars’ drafts: ‘latratus eorum inutiles’ and ‘canum latrancium’ in FitzRalph’s boast about destroying Ockham and Burley. Cf. ‘latrantibus venenosis’ in the drafts: ‘poisonous barkings’ would have nettled, associated as it was with ‘erroneous sermons’. s, fols 125v, 126r. See Zacour, ‘Talleyrand’, 61. For the text and significance, see Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln’, 285–292; Michael J. Haren, ‘Diocesan dimensions of a die-hard dispute: Richard FitzRalph and the friars in evolving perspective’, in Ireland, England and the Continent in the Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. Howard B. Clarke and J.R. Seymour Phillips (Dublin, 2006), 164–176, esp. 167–170. In the meantime, I have found a version of the statutes, though without the valuable attestations and some other circumstantial detail, in s, fol. 131r–v. See Zacour, ‘Talleyrand’, 13. See Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln’, 292 n. 18. I am grateful to Mme Anne-Marie Hayez

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look for complicity is a matter largely of guesswork. That Cardinal Nicholas de Besse wrote a treatise on Vas electionis in FitzRalph’s support107 is unfounded. The statement is based on misunderstanding of a passage in the Replicaciones Ricardi Archiepiscopi Armachani,108 against Roger Conway’s Defensio. Conway had described himself as recently receiving a copy of FitzRalph’s tractate on Vas electionis and claimed that a ‘venerable father and master who could by mandate oblige me’ had asked him to use his best endeavours to tackle its author’s statements and calumnies.109 The Replicaciones countered fiercely. No doubt deliberately, Conway’s formulation was misconstrued to mean that the treatise had been presented to him. Not so: he had had to ask for the treatise. From whom? None other than Cardinal Nicholas. Conway’s bare-faced claim to his support needed smart riposte: ‘He received it from the said lord, at the asking, without those opprobrious words and altogether without mandate of the kind. All of this the said lord expressed not only to me [FitzRalph speaks here] but to several persons of credibility. Wherefore it [Conway’s claim as construed] contains three lies:110 as to the word “presented”; as to the word “mandate”; as to the words “the calumnies of the same”. The said lord, rather, said to him upon his making the request, that he was willing to pass to him a copy by the will of Armagh [sc. with FitzRalph’s consent], on condition that if he should wish to reply to the same he should pass his replies in writing to the said lord, for passing to Armagh.’111 The treatise thus associated with Besse was FitzRalph’s, not his own. But if no inference arises under this head, neither does it from Besse’s

107 108 109 110 111

for supplying the biographical detail containing this information. See Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln’, 289 n. 1. See Walsh, Scholar, 428. Contained in p, fols 159r–194v. Conway, Defensio, 1410. p, as quoted below (note 111), reads ‘continuat’ but this seems likely to be an error for ‘continet’. ‘Secundum mendacium eius immediate subsequitur scilicet quod recepit illum tractatum sibi presentatum cum eius qui potuit eum obligare mandato quod meis et similium mihi calumpniis pro viribus obviaret, quoniam illum tractatum a reverendissimo patre et domino domino Nicholao sancte Marie in via lata dyacono cardinali absque verbis huiusmodi minus honestis etiam sine omni mandato huiusmodi ab eodem domino petitum accepit que omnia idem dominus non solum mihi expressit set pluribus fidedignis. Unde quo ad verbum presentatum et verbum mandatum et verba illa eiusdem calumpniis mendacia tria contin⟨e⟩t [continuat ms.]. Idem tamen dominus dixit sibi petenti quod de voluntate Armachani copiam tradere sub condicione volebat: quod ipse si respondere vellet eidem responsa sua in scriptis eidem domino traderet Armachano tradenda.’ p, fol. 160r–v.

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later acting as protector to the Franciscans.112 Besse was probably in the default mode for a curial dignitary—on the fence. To conclude accordingly is as good a reconciliation as can be managed of the reports of his involvement. He is likely, however, to have had advance knowledge of the Avignon enactment: the official of Avignon was a Besse, whom Baluze made a relation of the cardinal.113 Regarding the pope, an inference can and must be drawn. Unarguably, the Avignon enactment required his consent, at the least. The surmise that the controversial import of the gambit must have been obvious to all114 is borne out by the literature.115 In his De Audientia Confessionum, FitzRalph trumpeted the synodal stipulation on confession, approved, he claimed, not only by the present pope but by his predecessor, as supporting his own position and as revelatory of the consciences of both Clement and Innocent.116 For a man accused of heresy this certainly was a triumph—as he did not fail to labour. That imagined heresy stems from the proposition that reiteration (sc. of confession) cannot be a matter of obligation. Those saying so condemn Pope Innocent iv, Martin iv, Boniface viii, Benedict xi, ‘the lord Clement vi, the present Lord Innocent, all of whom enacted or ordered or counselled accordingly, in their own or in antecedent formulation, as what is cited above shows, namely that notwithstanding confession made to an external priest, not the ordinary, every parishioner shall confess at least once a year all his sins to his proper priest … Therefore, according to the wisdom of the friars all those were heretics or at least holders of unsound doctrine.’117 The immediate point is not whether this was what Clement vi and Innocent vi had enacted (they—or at least Innocent—had certainly, and forcefully, enacted rather than counselled: whether the enactment formally embraced ‘all sins’ was left decently obscure) but that they were willing to confuse the issue in this way and lend themselves

112 113 114 115 116 117

See Walsh, Scholar, 429 n. 74; Lützelschwab, Flectat, 479. See Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln’, 289 n. 6. Again, I am grateful to Mme Anne-Marie Hayez for this information. Haren, “Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln”, 287. I was mistaken in thinking otherwise. Haren, ‘Bishop Gynwell of Lincoln’, 288 n. 65. ‘[I]n suis conscientiis iudicabant’: p, fol. 81v(b). ‘[Q]ui omnes illud statuerunt aut preceperunt vel consuluerunt in sua forma aut in suo antecedente sicut superiora ostendunt scilicet quod non obstante confessione facta sacerdoti extraneo scilicet non ordinario quisque parochianus semel saltem in anno confiteatur omnia sua peccata suo proprio sacerdoti. Quicumque enim illud fieri preceperunt aut consuluerunt sen⟨s⟩erunt illud posse sub obligatione venire et ita secundum sapientiam fratrum omnes isti erant heretici aut saltem non sanam doctrinam tenentes.’ p, fols 88v– 89r.

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to being interpreted as they were. Both Clement (by report) and Innocent were acting in episcopal capacity for the diocese of Avignon, but the episcopal and papal personae stood to be readily elided. This is precisely what FitzRalph did when surveying, later in the De Audientia, Omnis utriusque’s requirement of annual confession. There, while Clement was left in context as ‘Clemens vi episcopus Avinion’, Innocent was given his papal intitulatio: ‘Sanctissimus in Christo pater et dominus, dominus noster presens Innocentius vi illam constitutionem super eadem sententia in ista dyocesi scilicet ut quisque xiiii annorum et ultra semel in anno confiteatur suo proprio sacerdoti penam antiqui statuti et aliam novam adiciens publicari fecit mandando ut ab omnibus subditis huius dyocesis observetur.’118 No documentary evidence is so far known of Clement vi’s legislating. However, that he had was incontestable, for Roger Conway accepted as much in his Defensio. The latter was a reply to FitzRalph’s De Audientia rather than to the Defensio Curatorum119—the name generally given to the proposition Nolite iudicare. In chapter 7 of his Defensio, Conway quoted the passage referred to from FitzRalph’s De Audientia. His quarrel was not with the fact but with the interpretation FitzRalph placed upon it: ‘The synodal constitution was and is good and holy and enacting nothing other than what is contained in the statute of the general council and therefore those who have confessed to friars fulfil the precept of constitution and of statute and at once (consimiliter) avoid the penalty of both.’120 It is revelatory that, in quoting FitzRalph, he altogether omitted the phrasing in suis conscientiis iudicabant. That was ultra-sensitive territory. His bland evasion suggests that he could not have thought that he would derive advantage by surveying it. The printed edition of Conway’s Defensio contains a substantive error. The reference to Innocent vi has been omitted, evidently through homoeoteleuton,

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p, fol. 97v(a)–(b). ‘Our most holy father and lord in Christ, our present Lord Innocent vi, caused that constitution over that same sentence to be published in the said diocese, namely, that each person of fourteen years and over should, once in the year, confess to his proper priest, to which he annexed the penalty of the old statute and another, new, one, with command that this be observed by all the subjects of this diocese.’ I understand this to have been established by Paulinus Lavery, ‘De Fratris Rogerii Conway, ofm, Vita et Operibus deque eiusdem Controversiis cum Ricardo Radulpho, Archiepiscopo Armachano’ (Lic. Theol. diss., Pontificia Universitas Antonianum, Rome, 1930). The thesis was unavailable on interlibrary loan. I take the report of its conclusion on the point—which is certainly correct—from Walsh, Scholar, 441, and Walsh, ‘Friars’, 242; Walsh had been given access to it by the late Fr Lavery. Conway, Defensio, 1336/1432, ll. 48–50.

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so that the De Audientia’s ‘per dominum Clementem sextum et per dominum nostrum dominum Innocentium sextum presentem’121 reads in Conway (as printed)122 ‘per dominum Clementem sextum iam presentem’. Since what is actually a quotation appears incorporated in Conway’s text, the defect misled Katherine Walsh into supposing that this material was ‘written before 6 December 1352’.123 In fact, combined with the information of the Wolfenbüttel manuscript that Conway had preached his Defensio in the papal consistory in 1359,124 we now have a very tight dating for the work which consigns it to what must have been a frenetic interval between publication of the Avignon diocesan statutes on 16 October of that year, FitzRalph’s production of the De Audientia, Conway’s begging a copy and (probably at latest) mid-December for his reply: one may imagine that he prepared it expeditiously. Conway’s was a masterly, technically accomplished and, above all, welltargeted contribution. On the terrain whose contours were being established by FitzRalph, those vast plains of dominion over which his argument rolled relentlessly, no decisive counter-blow was possible. In the Defensio, Conway effectively bypassed poverty and mendicancy to concentrate on pastoral privileges. The judgement informing the approach was in itself strategically impeccable. First, the defence of pastoral privileges was a cause common to the four orders and susceptible of undifferentiated endorsement by them. Secondly, since John xxii’s condemnation of Jean de Pouilli, the pastoral dimension appeared as unequivocally established in support of the friars’ position as, by his Cum inter nonnullos, apostolic poverty had been determined against the primitive Franciscan ideology. Tactically, Conway chose to stand on the ground of ecclesiology. The strength of his position, as he was fully conscious, was its entrenchment in papal authority. From here he lobbed explosive charges, repeatedly forcing the consequences of his opponent’s argument to patently unacceptable, calculatedly shocking effect. The weakness lay in the danger of being, in turn, outflanked. On the evidence, his enemies were making inroads when by every legalistic point of reference they should have already been discountenanced (as a mere university master of theology like Jean de Pouilli would long since have been—and coercively). Whether in virtue of those inroads or simply from the astonishing energy which at every stage both sides to the con121 122

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p, fols 81v(b)–82r. Conway, Defensio, 1336/1442, ll. 43 et seq. The error was already in the editio princeps (Lyon, Jean Trechsel: 15 October 1496). p, fol. 148r(b) and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, ms. 333, fol. 111r, have the correct text. Katherine Walsh, ‘Conway, Roger’, odnb. See Walsh, ‘Friars’, 242 n. 62; Walsh, Scholar, 441.

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test summoned, there is no sign whatever of flagging on FitzRalph’s side. The sentiment of the Replicaciones—which has been adduced accordingly125—has been mistaken. The opening promise adverted to in it was not a promise of fidelity made to FitzRalph, such as might evoke continued adherence out of mere loyalty.126 It was a feisty taunt directed at the opponent, apparently Conway. ‘I promised him in London’, recalls the protagonist at this juncture (perhaps actually FitzRalph himself—though the shifts in the Replicaciones lead to uncertainty of voice)—‘that I would try what he had in his bag. And I think I will be found to be keeping my promise. So far I have found in it straw, with neither germ nor grain.’127 No sign of wavering there. Nor is the adversion to FitzRalph’s outlay of expenses related to his having ‘suffered … a crushing defeat at the friars’ hands’.128 These are, rather, the expenses incurred by him as Good Samaritan in his rescue of the errant parishioner.129 The expenses, though doubtless real enough in curial context, are here a trope. The fundamental weakness in the friars’ strategy was that a resolution might not be on the basis of existing law. If John xxii’s Vas electionis was in their favour,130 the principle of his Ad conditorem canonum was that what a pope might do a pope might undo.131 Such was the risk of reliance on sovereign authority, and such was the attrition threatened by the papal patronage of the Avignon synodal legislation. It and its exploitation is the latest of a number of indications, less explicit but latent in the evidence, that FitzRalph’s cause was far from destined to defeat. Much less had he, still by his death so far as the evidence goes, suffered defeat. To suppose that the clarification of Vas electionis that was his formal demand would have preserved the privileges of the mendicant orders intact, certainly in their practical effect, is to ignore strong pointers to the contrary. The unsparing ferocity, still breathtaking to the modern reader, of Roger Conway’s assault on a metropolitan archbishop and a theologian of European-wide reputation, is a statement of the grim seriousness which the titanic struggle still assumed in the Franciscans’ perspective. The tone of the Defensio Mendicantium warrants being taken the more seriously

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128 129 130 131

See Walsh, Scholar, 442–443. See Walsh, Scholar, 443 n. 113. ‘Sic puto quod ego fidelis inveniar in eo quod sibi promisi Londoniis videlicet quod experiri volebam quod in suo sacco habebat ubi iam repperi paleam absque adipe et frumento.’ p, fol. 159r(b). Walsh, Scholar, 435 and n. 89. p, fol. 113v(a). For text and context, see Haren, ‘Diocesan dimensions’, 171–172, 175. Extra. Commun., 5.3.2, 1291–1292. Extra. Ioann., 14.3, 1225–1229.

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for its convergence with the other evidence attesting the continuing reality by late 1359 of the crisis faced by them as—on pastoral privileges—by the other mendicant orders. This, even by then, was no sham fight. The resumption of the status quo ante on the extinction of the suit by FitzRalph’s death, the long subsequent role of the orders in church life, the relative harmony that eventually replaced conflict between them and the secular clergy make it difficult for the historian fully to grasp the contemporary urgency. Fourteenthcentury man had the fate of the Templars as a recent sermon on the theme that in institutional greatness is no trust.

chapter 19

Monuments of the Dead in Early Franciscan Churches, c. 1250–c. 1350* Christian Steer

Franciscan churches in England are but shadows of their former selves. Many are nothing more than broken pieces of a much richer legacy which endured for over 300 years: the partial remains from the ruinous houses at Dunwich and Walsingham are poignant reminders of this lost past. Others survive in part, for example, the guesthouse at Canterbury, the tower at King’s Lynn and the crypt at Lincoln.1 The majority, like those from Leicester and York, have been swept away and their monuments of the dead are long gone. This is in sharp contrast to a much richer commemorative heritage which has survived overseas, and in particular on the Italian peninsula, where, for example, an engraved tomb slab at San Francesco in Assisi commemorates Hugh of Hartlepool (d. 1302), formerly provincial minister of England. Recent scholarship on the churches at Santa Croce in Florence and San Lorenzo in Naples has revealed much material and documentary evidence on burials and monuments. Surviving ‘sepultuari’, or burial lists, compiled by the Dominicans at Santa Maria Novella in Florence and San Domenico at Bologna, show how the mendicant orders more generally took care to allocate graves within their convents.2 We are less informed on such practices in England. But three important accounts of now lost funer-

* In this chapter the term ‘Grey Friars’ is used to denote the building and ‘Greyfriars’ to describe the brothers. I am grateful to Professors Caroline M. Barron and Peter Coss for their comments on an earlier draft and to Dr. Paul Cockerham for his ever helpful generosity in providing copies of obscure references. 1 Deidre O’Sullivan, In the Company of the Preachers: The Archaeology of Medieval Friaries in England and Wales (Leicester, 2013), 90–94 (Canterbury), 137–140 (Dunwich), 188–191 (King’s Lynn), 209–211 (Lincoln) and 328–331 (Walsingham), which draws on and updates the observations of A.R. Martin, Franciscan Architecture in England (Manchester, 1937). For Canterbury, see also Hubert Pragnell, ‘New uses for old friaries: the Greyfriars and Blackfriars in Canterbury’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain, ed. Nicholas Rogers (Donington, 2010), 331–339. 2 Caroline Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, and Burying: Friars in the Medieval City (London, 2014), 160–166.

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ary monuments from the Grey Friars of Coventry,3 from London,4 and from York,5 have survived. These were compiled by different scribes with particular interests in the dead.6 The Coventry and London accounts reveal a number of memorials for early benefactors of these Franciscan churches. Elsewhere, testamentary sources, occasional references to memorials by William Worcester, John Leland and John Weever, and some archaeological remains, all shed light on an otherwise darkened arena. It is the purpose of this chapter to consider this archaeological and documentary evidence, and to take as case studies the Coventry and London convents where the record for these two churches reveals a number of important thirteenth- and fourteenth-century burials.7 These two different yet complementary burial lists—the only examples of English ‘sepultuari’ known to have survived—provide a rare opportunity to consider the extent of early commemoration of the dead in these Franciscan churches and to suggest how the English friars might have managed their grave space.

3 There are two copies of the Coventry burial list (with differences), William Dugdale, The Antiquaries of Warwickshire, rev. William Thomas, 2 vols (London, 1730), vol. 1, 182–183, reproduces a list of burials in the Hastings chapel. A second list is contained in bl, Harley ms 6033 fols 17r– 19r, printed and translated in Iain Soden, Coventry: The Hidden History (Stroud, 2005), 67–71, but with omissions from Dugdale’s account. 4 bl, Cotton ms Vitellius, f.12, fols 274r–316r, reproduced by gfl, 70–144. 5 College of Arms ms l.8a fols 72r–76v, printed by Charles G. Young, ‘Notices concerning religious houses in Yorkshire, with the names of their founders, and of persons buried therein’, in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica (London, 1837), vol. 4, 77–79. 6 On burial in English Franciscan churches, O’Sullivan, In the Company of the Preachers, 14– 16, for general observations and 123–125 (Coventry), 225–230 (London) and 360–362 (York). Dr O’Sullivan makes some preliminary remarks on the case of London in her chapter, ‘Burial of the Christian dead in the later middle ages’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. Sarah Tarlow and Liv Nilsson Stutz (Oxford, 2013), 259–280, esp. 271–274. On London see my ‘Royal and noble commemoration in the mendicant houses of London, c. 1240–1540’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Clive Burgess (Donington, 2010), 117–142; and ‘The Franciscans and their graves’, in St. Francis and His Followers: Studies in Memory of John Moorman, ed. Michael Robson and Patrick Zutschi (forthcoming). I shall shortly be preparing an updated study on burial and commemoration in the London Franciscans, drawing on the published register in gfl. Burial in York is discussed in Michael Robson, ‘The Grey Friars in York, c. 1450–1530’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. James G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), 109–120 at 114–116; and in L.M. Goldthope, ‘The Franciscans and Dominicans in Yorkshire: Part 1: The Grey Friars’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 32 (1936), 264–320, esp. 283–290. 7 The burial list from the York Grey Friars is predominately concerned with later monuments of the dead.

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Benefactors and Burials

In his account of their origins, Thomas of Eccleston (d. c. 1258) remarked, ‘as the number of the brothers grew, and their holiness became known, the devotion of the faithful toward them also grew: wherefore they took care to provide suitable places for them’.8 This is significant, because subsequent rebuilding work carried out at a number of sites inevitably damaged the structure of the original chapels and destroyed the funerary monuments for early benefactors. In Reading, for example, the Greyfriars arrived in 1233 but because their first home, close to the river Thames, was marshy and prone to flooding they closed up their first convent and moved in 1285 to a better placed site at the western edge of the town.9 The swampy area did not dampen their spirits and the structure of their first church had evidently been ornate enough to arouse the displeasure of Albert of Pisa (d. 1240), second provincial minster, who wished the Reading chapel to be struck by lightning, thus destroying the ‘extravagance’ therein.10 Ultimately it was not the elements from above but flooding from below which caused the friars to abandon their chapel and build anew on drier terrain. The combination of ongoing building works, coupled with this tension between the ideals of apostolic poverty and humility set out by St Francis and the perceived extravagance noted in particular Franciscan churches, inevitably led to the loss of many thirteenth-century furnishings, including tombs. The London Grey Friars provides a further example. On the orders of William of Nottingham, provincial minister (1240–1254) and scourge of ostentatious display, their church roof was taken down and rebuilt and the bosses in the cloister entirely removed.11 The subsequent acquisition of property given by wealthy Londoners was slowly consolidated and led to ongoing, and extensive, building work during the first one hundred years or so of the convent’s existence. The earliest construction was the chapel in the 1230s and 1240s, while the nave was completed around 1350. The choir was extended in the early fourteenth century and it is probably during this reconstruction process that at least two tombstones, those of Philip de Srepham, a monk from Ely, and Bernat de Jambe (whose identity is unknown), were removed from the floor of the choir and later used in the foundations of the new work.12 The lettering on these slabs suggests they were 8 9 10 11 12

Eccleston, 20; xiiith Century Chronicles, 112. O’Sullivan, In the Company of the Preachers, 290–293. Eccleston, 79–80. Eccleston, 45–46. These were discovered during excavation work carried out on the Newgate site in the mid1830s, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 2 (1853), 188–189. Both slabs were destroyed during the Blitz.

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carved in the late thirteenth century and are thus notable examples of swift reuse. Monuments of the dead in pre-Reformation London were not always permanent, and examples from other Franciscan churches suggest the removal of tombs as part of rebuilding projects. When the site of the Lichfield Grey Friars sites was excavated in 1746, a gravestone for ‘Richard the Merchant’ was discovered in the foundations of one of the friary walls. The Latin text is muddled but the shape of the lettering suggests it was composed in the latter part of the thirteenth century and it was perhaps removed following the 1291 fire during rebuilding works and reused as infill elsewhere in the friary buildings.13 It is unclear if gravestones found from other Franciscan sites were similarly taken out during later rebuilding projects or were lost at their suppression.14 The impermanence of early funerary monuments is also to be observed at Oxford. It was the townsmen, as a collective, who were the de facto founders of the convent by providing land in the south-east of the city, where the friars built their first chapel. Their site was later extended outside the city walls and the precinct rebuilt. It was during this rebuilding programme that the body of Agnellus, who had been buried in their first chapel, was exhumed and translated to a second grave (probably before the high altar) in the new church.15 A retrospective tomb was evidently commissioned by the brothers because a monument for Agnellus was later recorded as a ‘fair stone sepulchre’.16 The miracles ascribed to this friar suggest that a shrine-memorial may have been constructed as his funerary monument. Evidence for other tombs in the convent is less clear and limited to particularly important patrons. One such friend was the king’s younger brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall and king of the Romans (d. 1272), and an important benefactor of the friary. It was in the choir that his heart was buried, ‘under a sumptuous pyramid of admirable workmanship’; his body was taken to Hailes Abbey (Gloucestershire) for burial alongside his second wife Sanchia (d. 1261).17 Earl Richard’s third wife, Beatrix von Valkenburg (d. 1277), was buried near her husband’s heart before the high altar and presumably close to Agnellus’s shrine-monument.18 Other interments may be

13 14 15 16 17 18

Martin, Franciscan Architecture, 171. For example, at Berwick-upon-Tweed, Bodmin and Boston, see O’Sullivan, In the Company of the Preachers, 47 (Berwick-upon-Tweed), 52–53 (Bodmin) and 57 (Boston). Eccleston, 77. Bartholomew of Pisa, Liber Conformitatum (Milan, 1510), fol. 80, cited in gfo, 26, 176–177. Thomas Hearne (ed.), Joannis Rossi Antiquarii Warwicensis Historia Regum Angliae (Oxford, 1745), 199. gfo, 26.

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inferred from testamentary instructions but there are few records of any other monuments from Grey Friars.19 Anthony Wood referred to a gravestone for the celebrated friar Roger Bacon (d. 1292?), ‘his tomb-stone as I have heard, was dugg up about 63 years agoe with an inscription thereon, but what it meant or how it ran is not as yet to me delivered’.20 It was evidently lost by the time Wood wrote his account in the 1660s, and although he referred to ‘hundreds of eminent persons that wee meet with buried here’, he did not record their names or the form of their monuments. The burial of benefactors, particularly of patrons, in religious houses is well known, so Earl Richard and Countess Beatrix were not alone.21 Other members of the royal family were likewise buried in Franciscan churches such as Edmund, earl of Kent (ex. 1330), younger son of Edward i, who was briefly interred in the Winchester Grey Friars before he was exhumed and reburied in the royal necropolis at Westminster Abbey. The earl’s son, John (d. 1352), chose to be buried in Winchester where, in 1411, his long-lived widow Elizabeth was interred alongside him.22 Earl John’s cousin, the redoubtable Margaret, duchess of Norfolk (d. 1399) also favoured the Franciscan order, and it was in their London church that she chose to be buried. A description in their register suggests that she was commemorated by a sculptured effigy similar to that of her grandmother, Queen Margaret.23 It is likely that her cousin Earl John was similarly commemorated thus, as befitting a peer and cadet member of the English royal family. The years c. 1275–1325 are considered a ‘boom’ period in the development of funerary monuments, with a notable increase in the number of lay patrons commissioning effigial memorials. This change in fashion, alongside the development of figure brasses, led to some truly remarkable, and elaborate, products emerging from the London workshops, 19

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Two loose Lombardic letters ‘a’ and ‘r’ from lost inscriptions were found during excavations at the Grey Friars site in 1969–1970, Jerome Bertram, ‘The lost brasses of Oxford’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 11.5 (1973), 376–377. Andrew Clark (ed.), Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford Composed in 1661–1666, by Anthony Wood, 3 vols (Oxford, 1881–1899), vol. 2, 408. Karen Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300– 1540 (Woodbridge, 2007), esp. 112–146; Brian Golding, ‘Burial and benefactors: an aspect of monastic patronage in thirteenth century England’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1985), 64–75; and Joel T. Rosenthal, The Purchase of Paradise Gift Giving and the Aristocracy, 1307–1485 (London, 1972), 53–80. For the attractiveness of the new mendicant houses of the thirteenth century and beyond, see my ‘Royal and noble commemoration’, 117–142. N. Harris Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 2 vols (London, 1826), vol. 1, 179–180. gfl, 72.

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and provided greater choice when it came to commissioning a monument.24 And where the royal family led, the aristocracy followed. William Beauchamp (d. 1298), earl of Warwick, is an early example of a peer buried in a Franciscan church: in his case he was interred in the choir of the Grey Friars at Worcester, where he bequeathed the remarkable sum of £ 200 for the cost of his funeral, together with a mortuary offering of two horses, which were to carry his armour during the funeral procession.25 The nearby monks were clearly envious of this windfall and their hostile chronicler took the opportunity to comment waspishly on the apparent shortcomings of burial in this Franciscan church built on marshland. The Worcester chronicler noted that the brethren: [P]rocessed through the streets and squares of the city and made a show to the citizens, bearing the body as if carrying the spoils of war and so they buried him in a place which had not previously been used and where in winter time he could be said to be drowned rather than buried.26 His widow, Countess Maud, was buried with him in 1301. Leland recorded that the Beauchamp earls of Warwick were founders of the Worcester Grey Friars but nothing further has been found to confirm this and records of burial are slight.27 Sir Nicholas de Mitton (d. 1290) instructed that his heart be buried with the Worcester Grey Friars and left them £ 40 towards the construction of six altars.28 His body was to be buried nearby in Bredon church. Disputes over burial between the friars and the monks are revealed elsewhere in the Worces24

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Nigel Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009); Sally Badham and Malcolm Norris, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses from the London Marblers (London, 1999); John Coales (ed.), The Earliest English Brasses: Patronage, Style and Workshop 1270–1350 (London, 1987); H.A. Tummers, Early Secular Effigies in England: The Thirteenth Century (Leiden, 1980). Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, 52. There is uncertainty on whether Earl William’s father, also William (d. before 1269) was in fact buried in the Worcester Grey Friars as directed in his will. An entry for 1276 in the Worcester Chronicle recorded that Earl William ordered his father’s tomb in Worcester cathedral priory to be opened to ascertain whether the monks had removed the remains, as rumoured. See Peter Coss, ‘Beauchamp, William (iv) de, ninth earl of Warwick (c. 1238–1298)’, odnb, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/47242, accessed 17 August 2015. am, vol. 4, 537. Lucy Toulmin Smith (ed.), Leland’s Itinerary in England and Wales, 5 vols (London, 1964), vol. 2, 91. J.W.W. Bund (ed.), Register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard, September 23rd, 1268, to August 15th, 1301, 2 vols, Worcestershire Historical Society, 15 (1898–1902), vol. 2, 388–392.

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ter Chronicle: the unfortunate Henry Poche, who died in 1290, had directed in his will that he was to be interred in the Franciscan cemetery. Despite this, the monks had him buried in the cathedral priory. John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, intervened and ordered Poche’s reburial at the Worcester Grey Friars.29 These accounts do not reveal the type of monument Sir Nicholas or Henry Poche may have enjoyed: a heart-tomb for another knight of c. 1295– 1300 thought to be for Sir Giles de Berkeley (d. 1294) survives in the church of St Giles, Coberley, in Gloucestershire, and Sir Nicholas may have been commemorated by a comparable design. Poche’s burial in the cemetery, if marked, would probably have been a slab or temporary wooden marker. William Worcester’s (d. 1480–1485) account records other aristocratic monuments in the churches of the Friars Minor which were of special interest to him. In 1478 he visited the Franciscan house at Salisbury and it is from his description that we learn of the burial of Ralph Monthermer, earl of Gloucester (d. 1325):30 Worcester did not, however, record the tomb of Ralph’s wife, Isabel (d. 1334), previously the widow of John Baron Hastings (d. 1313), who was also buried in the Salisbury church. Her tomb was used in evidence submitted during the 1408 Court of Chivalry case between Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin (d. 1440) and Edward Hastings (d. 1438) on the right to bear the arms Or a manche gules with a silver label of three points. During this case evidence was submitted from Isabel’s funerary inscription copied from an epitaph at the feet of her monument. The countess was evidently commemorated by a monumental brass similar, perhaps, to the eye-catching composition for Margaret Camoys (d. c. 1320) in St George’s church at Trotton.31 William Worcester provides six further entries which name important benefactors and friars associated with the Salisbury convent, including the celebrated friar Adam Marsh (d. 1258) and Joan, wife of the Hampshire knight, Sir Walter de Escote (d. 1341), but none were buried at Salisbury and their names were evidently copied from the convent’s martyrology. Worcester also copied down the names of twelve benefactors from another Franciscan martyrology at their Bridgwater house, including Thomas, earl of Lancaster (ex. 1322), and Alice (d. 1384), wife of Sir Matthew Gournay, a daughter of Thomas, earl of Warwick, who ‘lies in the mid-

29 30 31

am, vol. 4, 499–504; Bund, Register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard, vol. 2, 371. John H. Harvey (ed.), William Worcestre: Itineraries (Oxford, 1969), 51. This case is expertly discussed in Julian Luxford, ‘The Hastings brass at Elsing: a contextual analysis’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 18.3 (2011), 193–211. On the Camoys brass see Paul Binski, ‘The stylistic sequence of London figure brasses’, in The Earliest English Brasses, ed. Coales, 69–132, esp. 78–83 and pl. 62.

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dle of the choir and died 26 October’.32 This is the only entry in this particular martyrology which recorded a beneficiary as specifically buried in the church. Her husband was interred elsewhere and Lady Gournay’s tomb was evidently a single composition for this aristocratic wife and daughter, without either of her two husbands.33 The early years of the Franciscan order in England were not without challenge. The censoring of elaborate decoration, ongoing building work and squabbles with monastic orders led to some setbacks, and monuments for early benefactors did not always lie still for long. But the Friars Minor soon became popular amongst the royal family and aristocracy who wished to be buried in their newly built churches. The evidence for such tombs is only slight and these early interments are for high-status benefactors. It is the chance survival of the Coventry and London burial lists which makes it possible to discuss the tombs of the ‘middling sort’ buried in Franciscan churches in the century or so after their foundation.

2

The Coventry Grey Friars

The use of special registers to record burials and tombs has been noted from Italian houses and there is likewise evidence of their use in England: William Worcester, for example, noted a register at the Bodmin Grey Friars which recorded almost 1,500 deaths in the town during the Black Death.34 A seventeenth-century town clerk of Great Yarmouth, Henry Manship (d. 1625), referred to a ‘Regestre of ye Friers Minors at Yarmouth’, from which he noted that many of the Fastolf family were buried in their church.35 A record of monuments in the Coventry church was compiled c. 1400. An abbreviated copy written in Latin was in the possession of the herald Robert Treswell in the 1590s, and this included particular entries copied out from a now lost register by an

32 33

34 35

Harvey, William Worcestre, 79–81. Sir Matthew Gournay (d. 1406) was also included in this martyrology but he was buried at Stoke-under-Hamdon, Somerset; on Sir Matthew see Michael Jones, ‘Gournay, Sir Matthew (d. 1406)’, odnb, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11163, accessed 17 August 2015. For Sir Matthew’s commemorative brass at Stoke-under-Hamdon, Somerset, see Leland’s Itinerary, vol. 1, 159. Harvey, William Worcester, 95. Charles John Palmer (ed.), The History of Great Yarmouth by Henry Manship (London, 1854), 420.

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earlier herald.36 The original Coventry register is lost but a second extract, written in French, recorded the tombs and heraldic arms in the Hastings chapel and was printed by Sir William Dugdale in his county history of 1656.37 In total there were 129 tombs recorded in the Coventry church, which included monuments for the nobility, gentry and burgesses. There were a handful of monuments for the clergy but none was recorded for the friars and the unknown scribe was evidently selective. The earliest entry in the Treswell manuscript was a record of the founder Ranulph Blundeville, earl of Chester (d. 1232). It was on the earl’s Cheylesmore estate, south-west of Coventry, that the Franciscans established their convent.38 Blundeville was not buried in Coventry and it was his niece, Cecily (d. after 1260), and her husband Roger de Montalt (d. 1260), who were the earliest burials recorded from the Coventry Grey Friars. They were interred in the middle of the choir before the high altar and Cecily was specifically recorded as buried on the left of her husband.39 The choir quickly became a mausoleum for the Montalt family and came to showcase a genealogy of heirs and their wives, namely, John de Montalt (who predeceased his parents Roger and Cecily); John’s younger son Robert (d. 1275); Robert’s own son, Sir Roger (d. 1296) with his wife Joan otherwise Juliana (d. before 1296); and concluding with Isabella, wife of Sir Robert de Montalt the younger.40 Sir Robert was the younger brother of Sir Roger and inherited the Montalt estate. He died childless in 1329 and was buried in Shouldham Priory, Norfolk. Curiously, the last entry in the choir recorded by Treswell was the tomb of Sir Thomas Hastang, described as miles strenuissimus, and his wife Elizabeth buried in the north part: their connection to the Montalts is unknown.41 The scribe does not describe any of the choir tombs but suggestions can be offered. If Cecily de Montalt was 36 37

38

39 40 41

bl, Harley ms 6033 fols 17r–19r. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 182–183; W.G. Fretton, ‘Memorials of the Franciscans or Grey Friars Coventry’, Transactions of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Archaeological Section, 9 (1878–1879), 34–53. This remarkable list is discussed in Peter Coss, The Foundations of Gentry Life: The Multons of Frampton and their World, 1270–1370 (Oxford, 2010), 154–163. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the investigative work of Professor Coss and for his identification of many of the burials in the Coventry house, from which I draw my comments. There are no surviving wills from medieval Coventry for the period under study. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17r; on Ranulph Blundeville, see George E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. Vicary Gibbs et al. 12 vols. (London, 1910–1959), vol. 3, 167–168. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17r. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17r. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17r.

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buried on the left hand side of her husband Roger, their monument can have been nothing other than recumbent effigies at prayer, resting on a tomb chest: figure brasses for the laity did not become fashionable until c. 1300. Carved effigies of the dead had developed from the mid-twelfth century amongst the upper clergy and royal family, and the popularity of such three-dimensional monuments was quickly copied by the nobility.42 The location of the other Montalt burials was not described, whether in relation to each other or to any fixtures, such as windows or other features of the choir. John de Montalt, as heir to his parents’ estate, was probably likewise commemorated by an effigy set on a tomb chest or in a wall recess. That lineage and succession were displayed by these tombs suggests that John’s own son Robert—and the heir of his grandparents Roger and Cecily—likewise enjoyed an effigy as his tomb. For the scribe to describe Robert as germanus (i.e., german, of the full blood) suggests this was copied down from Robert’s inscription and that his monument identified him as the heir. It is striking that the scribe did not mention either John or Robert’s wives and this suggests that these particular monuments were single compositions without a spouse. The description in the Treswell account suggests that the Montalt lords were represented by a succession of effigies, either as double-tombs or as single compositions representing their lineage in an unbroken chain. To the north of the choir was the Hastings chapel. The earliest burials were for Sir Henry de Hastings (d. 1269), Lord of Allesley, near Coventry, and his wife Joan (d. 1271). The scribe recorded Joan’s father, Sir William de Cantilupe and, rather unusually, her brother Thomas, bishop of Hereford. Their names were probably copied directly from the inscription on the tomb.43 This chapel quickly became an almost exclusive Hastings vault for, in spite of inheriting the lordship of Abergavenny from his mother Joan, Sir John de Hastings (d. 1313), created Baron Hastings in 1290, and his first wife Lady Isabel (d. 1305), were buried with his parents in Coventry. The Dugdale copy of the register noted their exact dates of death, Sir John (9 March 1312) and Isabel (3 October 1305), which, as Dugdale notes, were written on a ‘table’, En le table estoit escrit.44 This reference has been interpreted as the inscription copied from the circumference of the tomb chest. But the use of the word ‘table’ is striking for recent research has revealed the importance of written documents hanging in churches—usually referred to as tables or tablets—which contained an epi-

42 43 44

Saul, English Church Monuments, 26–35, 63–71. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183.

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taph for the dead prominently displayed near the funerary monument. These boards thus served as a component part, either temporary or permanent, of a much larger commemorative infrastructure. There is evidence of such tablets in the Grey Friars of London and occasional references to funerary texts on such tables elsewhere in the city of London.45 That Isabel—and by inference her husband John—were commemorated by effigies is shown through the Grey v. Hastings suit of 1408. During the proceedings, John Hervey, witness for the plaintiff Lord Grey, produced a ‘similitude’ (a drawing) of the effigy of Isabel de Valence wearing a mantel displaying the arms of Hastings and Valence. A second similitude was produced showing the Hastings arms painted on the monument (almost certainly a brass) of John’s widow, Isabel, countess of Gloucester, in the Franciscan church at Salisbury. The Hastings chapel contained monuments for cadet members of the family including married daughters who returned to their natal ‘home’. Sir Henry’s daughter Lora (also known as Lorna) de Latimer and his granddaughter, Lady Joan de Huntingfield, a daughter of Sir John, were buried near to their parents, presumably because they had willed it so.46 Nearby lay Robert de Shottesbrook, standard bearer of Sir Henry.47 The Dugdale account reveals the arms of Hastings and Huntingfield displayed on Joan’s gown with those of Valence (her mother’s family) on her arm. Her head rested on a pillow displaying the Hastings and Huntingfield arms. There can be no doubt that Lady Joan Huntingfield was commemorated by a sculptured effigy and that this richly painted display celebrated her heraldic identity as wife and as daughter. The Dugdale account also reveals that Joan Huntingfield’s monument was recorded to the right of the ‘table’ containing her parents’ inscription and therefore in close proximity to Sir John and Lady Isabel’s own monument.48 This account recorded the 45

46 47 48

John Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments (London, 1631), 388, where he discussed the ‘table’ attached to a pillar in the London Black Friars for Elizabeth de Bohun, countess of Northampton (d. 1356). On Queen Anne’s epitaph displayed on hanging boards in Westminster Abbey see Michael van Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2012), 12–36. Their didactic use in religious houses is discussed in Jeanne Krochalis, ‘Magna Tubula: the Glastonbury tablets’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, 2001), 435–567, and for their use in parish churches and cathedrals see 437–442. See also Vincent Gillespie, ‘Medieval hypertext: image and text from York Minster’, in Of the Making of Books, Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), 206–229. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183.

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burial of Lady Joan’s son, John, and her kinsmen, John, Edmund and Henry, the sons of Sir William Hastings,49 and also noted the existence of heraldic glass intended to complement the nearby family tombs. One of the east windows, for example, had the arms of Hastings, Cantilupe and Valence.50 Yet burial and commemoration in the Hastings chapel did not survive, and as the family rose from gentry to barons, and ultimately to earls of Pembroke, their burial places changed. Sir John’s son, John, 2nd Baron Hastings (d. 1325) was buried in Abergavenny Priory, Monmouthshire, where he was joined by his son and successor as Baron Hastings, Laurence, later earl of Pembroke (d. 1348).51 The Coventry burial lists record a further 113 tombs. In the presbytery, described at the entrance to the choir, there were fourteen individuals described as ‘other friends’ to the de Montalt family. Two were heart burials for local knights Sir Thomas de Bray, justice of oyer and terminer (d. c. 1290), and Sir Richard de Amundevill, Lord of Berkswell (d. 1299).52 County gentry were also buried near the choir entrance such as William Rivel (d. by 1325) and Sir John de Odingseles (d. 1337).53 There were at least eight tombs for wives and widows buried without their husbands and commemorated by single monuments similar to those for the Hastings women in their family chapel. These included Lady Margaret de Bradeston (d. after 1312), Lady Eleanor West (d. after 1333) and Lady Beatrice de Bishopton (d. after 1337).54 The Franciscans provided an alternative place of burial for these gentlewomen. Their monuments would have been flat and set into the paving on the presbytery floor: tomb chests or effigies would have obstructed the passageway and hindered processions to the choir. These tombstones would have been incised slabs with their names and perhaps their effigy engraved onto the marble stone or monumental brasses. Brasses may have included individual lettering fixed into the stone to form the epitaph or engraved onto brass plate which was fixed into the marble. Such memorials, like incised slabs, were adaptable to the buying

49 50 51

52 53 54

Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183. Dugdale, Antiquaries of Warwickshire, vol. 1, 183. Phillip Lindley (with an appendix by Carol Galvin), ‘New paradigms for the aristocratic funerary monument around 1300: reconstructing the tomb of John Second Baron Hastings (1287–1325) at Abergavenny Priory, Monmouthshire’, Church Monuments 21 (2006), 58– 93. The tomb for Lord Hastings was identified in Claude Blair, ‘The wooden knight at Abergavenny’, Church Monuments 9 (1994), 33–52. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17v. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17v. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 17v.

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power of the patron and could also include an engraved figure of the deceased. We cannot be precise on the form of these presbytery monuments other than concluding that they were flat and contained an inscription of the dead: several probably had engravings of the deceased carved into marble or onto brass plate. There were a further ninety-nine monuments recorded in the nave. These included other local families such as the Langleys: Geoffrey (d. 1274) and his wife Matilda (whose date of death is unknown), and their son Walter (d. 1280), were buried in the nave, although Walter’s widow, Alice (d. 1300) chose to be buried in the parish church of St Peter’s, Wolfhampcote, Warwickshire, one of her three manors.55 Other gentry families were buried in the nave, including Robert de Verdun, former sheriff of Warwickshire (fl. 1290) and his wife Margaret, and William de Aubeneye, Lord of Ashill (d. 1307–27).56 The Treswell burial account reveals a number of tombs for townsmen and their families also in the nave. The evidence is piecemeal and is set down as a list of names with an occasional comment, but some identifications can be made, for example, the townsmen Geoffrey de Whitley, John and Agnes de Maxstoke, and Simon Shepey buried with his wife, Margaret, were all active in Coventry affairs during the last decades of the thirteenth century.57 The popularity of the Coventry Grey Friars as a civic necropolis continued throughout the fourteenth century, with other burials such as the merchant Roger Bray, his wife Emma, their son Thomas and his family, and their contemporaries, Robert and Matilda de Shepey and Richard and Mary de Shipston.58 It was not until 1345 that Coventry received its charter of incorporation: the first mayor, John Warde, was buried in the Friars Minor, where his inscription recorded his civic office.59 Other mayors, such as Henry Dodenhale and Adam Botoner (1374, 1377 and 1385), were also buried in the nave.60 There is no doubt that many merchants in

55 56 57

58

59 60

bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 18v; Coss, Foundations of Gentry Life, 159 and 163. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 18r. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 18r; Peter Coss (ed.), ‘The early records of medieval Coventry’, Records of Social and Economic History, n.s. 11 (1986), 348–350 and 686 (Geoffrey de Whitley, active c. late 1280s–1303); 72, 74, 188–189, 299–300, 305, 307, 312 and 315 (John and Agnes de Maxstoke, active 1270s–1297); 163–164 and 171 (Simon de Shepey (active 1260s– 1280s)). bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 18v (Bray and Shipston) and 18r (Sheppey); William Fowler Carter (ed.), ‘The lay subsidy roll for Warwickshire of 6 Edward iii (1332)’, The Dugdale Society 6 (1932), 44 (Bray and Shipston) and 45 (Sheppey). bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 19r. bl, Harley ms 6033 fol. 18r.

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fourteenth-century England were commemorated by brasses, as demonstrated by the patchwork quilt of their brasses spread throughout the churches of rural England.61 The churches of fourteenth-century Coventry would have contained many such memorials for their wealthy merchants, alongside those known to have been buried in Grey Friars. The evidence for Coventry is insufficient to comment on the extent of this. Yet we can see that the Franciscan church was an important place of burial in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Coventry for the aristocracy, knights, gentry, notable daughters, wives, widows, and the townsmen and their families. The leading families of Montalt and Hastings were commemorated by splendid funerary effigies as befitting their status: we learn that those for the Hastings family were painted and contained their heraldic arms, which were repeated in the adjacent glass. Many of those buried in the presbytery and nave would have commissioned incised slabs and monumental brasses so as not to obstruct preaching space and processional routes. Monuments of the dead in the Franciscan mausoleum of Coventry were many and varied.

3

The London Grey Friars

The register of the Grey Friars of London is the most complete manuscript relating to the origins, history and community of any English Franciscan house. There are 46 folios which record 682 monuments for 765 people and there is nothing as complete for any other English house. The manuscript formed part of the collection of Sir Robert Cotton and was damaged in the 1731 fire: the upper left- and right-hand corners of each folio are singed. This rubricated burial list is written in Latin and was compiled in the mid-1520s. The handwriting suggests three scribes were involved in its composition and they were most likely friars from the London house. The account begins with the heart monument of the Archbishop John Pecham in the choir.62 There follows a list of other monuments for the prestigious dead also in the choir, followed by those in the four adjacent chapels of All Souls, the Blessed Virgin Mary (to the north of the choir) and the Apostles and St Francis (to the south). Monuments are then recorded to the west of the choir in the ambulatory, before the altars in the nave, the nave itself—including the north and south aisle—and conclud-

61 62

Saul, English Church Monuments, 248–253; Nigel Saul, ‘The wool merchants and their brasses’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 17.4 (2006), 315–335. gfl, 70.

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ing with the tombs which could still be read in the cloister and from which a ‘burial map’ has been created.63 The monuments are described in relation to each other and to other features inside the church: the tomb of Walter (d. 1336) and Joan de Bever, for example, were recorded beneath the window the de Bevers had paid for in the lady chapel.64 Many of the entries relating to older tombs are undated, suggesting that these monuments were in fact gravestones set into the floor which had become worn during the intervening centuries: the entry for Thomas Canynge, master of theology, does not contain his date of death (he died after 1347, as he received a bequest in the will of Hugh Hastings in that year) and was recorded as sub lapide in the ambulatory otherwise known as ‘the walking place’.65 The register also records the building programme during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.66 The friars’ first chapel was largely paid for by the Londoner, William Joynier, and begun in 1228.67 Joynier was an important benefactor and gave almost £200 towards the cost of building the London house.68 This early chapel formed the core of the later choir, which was extended and rebuilt during the early fourteenth century. During the thirteenth century, Londoners gave property adjacent to the site, and by 1300 a consolidated precinct was established in Newgate. Work on the cloisters and water supply was begun in the 1240s and 1250s, and as property was acquired other buildings were constructed, paid for by wealthy city merchants: the infirmary, for example, was paid for by Peter de Helyard, the chapter house and kitchen by Walter le Potter (d. c. 1289), the dormitory by Gregory de Rokesle (d. 1291) and refectory by Bartholomew de Castro (d. before 1311). Henry Frowyk (d. 1286) contributed towards the cost of the aqueduct.69 From the 1280s, the nave was enlarged under the patronage of Henry le Wayles and later by Queens Margaret (d. 1318) and Isabella (d. 1358). The glazing was completed by c. 1350.70

63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70

E.B.S. Shepherd, ‘The church of the Friars Minor in London’, Archaeological Journal 59 (1902), 238–287. gfl, 80, 169. gfl, 101. Nick Holder, ‘The medieval friaries of London: a topographical and archaeological history, before and after the Dissolution’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 2011), 77–109, drawing on and updating gfl, 27–52. See also Jens Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539 (Münster, 2004), 43–51. gfl, 27–52. Eccleston, 21. gfl, 27–52. Holder, ‘The medieval friaries of London’, 87.

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These thirteenth-century financiers were themselves members of the aldermanic class and had served the city either as mayor or sheriff: Joynier was sheriff 1222–1223 and mayor in 1238–1239;71 Rokesle also served as sheriff in 1263–1264 and mayor on seven consecutive occasions between 1274–1281 and again in 1284–1285;72 Frowyk was mayor in 1272–1273 and served as sheriff during Rokelse’s first mayoralty in 1274–1275;73 Le Waleys was mayor in 1273–1274 and 1281–1284.74 These ‘city fathers’ took a particular interest in the foundation of the London Franciscans and it is not surprising to learn that several of them chose to be buried and commemorated in this particular church: Frowyk in the north aisle of the nave, Rokesle in the choir and de Castro in the Lady Chapel.75 The monument for Frowyk is puzzling because it was recorded in the third bay from the western end of the nave, which was not built until many years after his death in 1286. Frowyk’s widow Isabella, and their son Reginald, both died in 1300, and they too were buried in Grey Friars, Isabella with her husband and Reginald close by.76 Given the extensive building programme of the nave from the end of the thirteenth and into the first decades of the fourteenth century, it seems likely that all three Frowyks were exhumed from the Grey Friars cemetery and reburied in the nave on the instructions of Reginald’s son, Henry (d. 1378). Rokesle and de Castro’s burials in the choir and Lady Chapel respectively show that the original church was already in use as a place of burial by the end of the thirteenth century and that the memorials of these special benefactors were kept untouched during subsequent rebuilding programmes. From their location in the nave and choir, the tombs for Frowyk and Rokesle could be nothing other than tombstones placed over their graves with an engraved inscription. Their deaths at the end of the thirteenth century came at a time when Lombardic brass lettering, fixed into marble slabs, had begun to compete with incised inscriptions made directly onto the marble as a new form of funerary monument.77 These rich city merchants may well have been so

71

72 73 74 75 76

77

Anne Lancashire, ‘The mayors and sheriffs of London 1190–1558’, in Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), 308– 355, esp. 313–314. Lancashire, ‘The mayors and sheriffs of London’, 318 and 320–321. Lancashire, ‘The mayors and sheriffs of London’, 320. Lancashire, ‘The mayors and sheriffs of London’, 320–321. gfl, 122 (Frowyk), 73 (Rokesle) and 85 (de Castro). gfl, 122. The family are discussed in further detail in Jessica Freeman, ‘The commemorative strategies of the Frowyks of medieval London and Middlesex’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society 18.5 (2013), 391–422. On these early monuments see Badham and Norris, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses.

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remembered. Bartholomew was similarly commemorated, but it is from the register we learn that he was in fact buried sub muro lapide albo, that is, below the wall in white stone. White marble was the most prestigious material used for funerary monuments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was particularly used for the commissions made by the French royal family.78 Castro went for the best his money could buy. The description of his burial in the register may also reflect the inscription, describing him as valens miles et civis Londonie: fecit Refectorium. Neither Frowyk nor Rokesle was so remembered on their tombstones, although Rokesle’s role as valens burgensis, et quondam Maior Londonie was recorded. These are the only memorials for members of the aldermanic class who can clearly be identified as benefactors amongst the early burials. The popularity of Grey Friars as a place of burial for royalty and the aristocracy has been noted elsewhere.79 But, for London, this took off on a spectacular scale following Edward i’s second marriage in 1299 to Margaret of France, who had a particular devotion to the Franciscan order.80 It was under Queen Margaret’s instructions that a new chapel was constructed at the London Grey Friars, dedicated to her saintly grandfather Louis ix of France.81 In 1306 a foundation stone was laid at Grey Friars on the queen’s behalf by Sir William Walden, and it was Margaret, as prima fundatrix, who gave 2,000 marks for the building of the nave.82 The queen was herself interred in the prime burial place immediately facing the high altar in the choir and although her tomb was not described in the register, it was probably, like many other monuments to the royal family, a sculptured effigy of the queen, recumbent and at prayer. The entry in the register recorded her as the daughter of Philip son of St Louis, kings of France, before noting her marital status as the second wife of Edward i and then her role as foundress. The entry concludes with her date of death on 14 February 1317 (recte 1318). The queen’s monument was all about her.83 Queen Margaret’s benefactions led to

78 79 80

81 82 83

This term was also used in England to describe alabaster marble; I thank Dr Kim Woods for her discussion on such marble. See above. On the French royal family’s patronage of the Franciscans, see Michael Robson, ‘Queen Isabella (c. 1295/1358) and the Greyfriars: an example of royal patronage based on her accounts for 1357/1358’, fs 65 (2007), 325–348 at 326–329. gfl, 202–203. gfl, 35–36 and 70–72, for the quotation taken from her tomb. For an interesting assessment on the relationship between the London Franciscans and Queen Margaret and her niece and successor, Queen Isabella, see Laura Slater, ‘Defining queenship at Greyfriars London, c. 1300–58’, Gender and History 27 (2015), 53–76.

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a succession of royal woman choosing to be buried and commemorated in the London Grey Friars: Queen Isabella, wife of Edward ii, their daughter Queen Joan of Scotland (d. 1362), granddaughter Isabella, countess of Bedford (d. 1379) and kinswoman, Margaret, duchess of Norfolk (d. 1399).84 The proximity of Grey Friars to workshops in St Paul’s churchyard manufacturing all types of funerary monuments provided patrons with access to craftsmen who could cater to every whim. It is no coincidence that much later, in 1500, John Smith, a gentleman of Coventry, commissioned a monument just like one he had seen in Grey Friars: he walked across the road and organized the construction with one of the marblers in St Paul’s churchyard.85 Monuments for aristocratic and noble women have been observed at Coventry and elsewhere, where these high-born ladies chose to organize their memorials as single compositions apart from their husbands. The earliest known monument in London, for another noble lady, Margaret de Redvers (d. 1252), described as countess of Devon, Lady Lisle and daughter of Warin Fitz-Gerald, provides a further example of a solitary female aristocratic burial.86 The entry in the register copied down Margaret’s biography from the inscription on the memorial facing the high altar. It is striking that a peeress, who does not seem to have been an important benefactor, was buried in the London church during or immediately after its construction. It was perhaps because of her marital woes that she was buried without either of her two husbands and set apart amongst a community of new religious and pious men.87 Her first husband, Baldwin de Redvers, had predeceased his father in 1216 and was never styled earl of Devon. And yet Margaret’s monument remembered her as countess of Devon. It is also curious that she was recorded as ‘Lady Lisle’ and not ‘Lady of the Isle of Wight’, a subsidiary title held by the Redvers family. The answer may be found in the action taken by Robert, baron de Lisle of Rougemont (d. 1344), who successfully petitioned for the Fitz-Gerald estate at Harewood, Yorkshire, which he claimed as heir of Margaret’s granddaughter Isabella, countess of Aumale (d. 1293). Lisle was successful and did homage to Edward ii for the Harewood inheritance in

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gfl, 74 (Queen Isabella), 75 (Queen Joan and Countess Isabella) and 72 (Duchess Margaret). I discuss these further in ‘Royal and noble commemoration’. tna, prob 11/13, fols 47v–48v. On the London workshops see Saul, English Church Monuments, 60–82; Badham and Norris, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses; Phillip Lindley, ‘Westminster and London: sepulchral centres in the thirteenth century’, in Studien zur Geschichte der europäische Skulptur im 12./13. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Beck and K. HendgevossDürkop (Frankfurt, 1994), 231–250; and Coales, Earliest English Brasses. gfl, 71. On this lady, see Cokayne, Complete Peerage, vol. 4, 316–318. Cokayne, Complete Peerage, vol. 4, 316–318.

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1310.88 Lord de Lisle was himself a generous benefactor of the London Grey Friars and entered the order shortly before his death in 1344. He was buried beneath an Easter Sepulchre.89 It seems likely that Lord de Lisle organized the tombstone—and perhaps the reburial near to the site of his chosen tomb— for Lady Margaret sixty years or so after her death, to enhance his claim on the Harewood inheritance, and to do this he changed her title.90 This meant that if Margaret was not the countess of Devon in her lifetime, she certainly was in death. The London burial list differs from the Coventry account in including one particularly important group of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century burials conspicuous by their absence at Coventry: the friars themselves.91 Over 100 burials and gravestones were recorded in the Newgate church, which offers a remarkable insight into the commemorative aspirations of the friars. The earliest recorded monument was for Brother Henry Wodestone (d. after 1285), whose entry in the burial register recorded his grave sub lapide insculpto litteris quondam legibilibus.92 The emphasis is on the phrase quondam legibilibus: how did the scribe know that the slab he was looking at was in fact for Wodestone? Other commemorative devices were evidently in use and it seems likely that a hanging board—or tablet—was placed nearby, similar to those in the Hastings chapel at Coventry. Wodehouse was buried before the entrance to the cloister and it is not surprising that his tombstone had become worn. There were hardly any dates of death noted for other members of the community buried in open places: wardens John Sellar and Thomas Westgate were buried in the walking place but we do not know when they died.93 A further forty-five friars were buried in the cloister and, like those in the ambulatory, very few can be identified by their year of death.94 The survival of the London register enables a more detailed examination of patterns of burial and commemoration than in any other Franciscan church in medieval England. It reveals parallels with Coventry, whereby tombs for the nobility were set alongside those for wealthy merchant benefactors. It is

88 89 90

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Cokayne, Complete Peerage, vol. 8, 71–73. gfl, 71. The tomb as ‘forensic evidence’ was employed in the Grey v. Hastings case of 1408. This use of the funerary monuments is discussed further in Julian. M. Luxford, ‘Tombs as forensic evidence in medieval England’, Church Monuments 24 (2009), 7–25. I discuss this in greater detail in ‘The Franciscans and their graves’. gfl, 103. gfl, 102 (Seller) and 104 (Westgate). It is likely that both men died mid-fourteenth century. gfl, 128–133.

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striking that the London aldermen were remembered as special patrons of the order in the pages of the register as well as on their epitaphs. Their tombs also suggest that not all of them were constructed immediately after their death: the Frowyk slabs in the nave and also the gravestone of Margaret de Redvers were evidently retrospective commissions, as was the monument in Oxford for Agnellus of Pisa. The discovery of the slabs for Philip de Srepham and Bernat de Jambe show that monuments for the dead in these early Franciscan churches were not permanent and that attitudes to commemoration were adapted as particular needs arose. An illustration of the tombstone for Richard the Merchant found at Lichfield was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1746, and those found at the London site were illustrated by A.H. Burkitt in 1851.95 There were no break marks across these slabs. Most tombstones found during modern-day archaeological excavations in the city of London are only fragmentary portions of the original composition. The sample of known thirteenth-century tomb losses from Grey Friars is small but the quality of their condition may suggest that the Franciscans were deliberately preserving monuments removed from older parts of the church during rebuilding and carefully resetting them down elsewhere within the new building as ‘hidden memory’ visible only to God. Foundation stones from the fifteenth-century Guildhall in London suggest private memoria was practised elsewhere in the city.96 Monuments for women in Franciscan churches are a distinctive characteristic to emerge from this study. The use of single tomb compositions to remember them as matriarchs, without their husbands, may be observed anecdotally in the accounts of William Worcester, for example, Alice Gournay at the Bridgwater convent. But this practice may also be found elsewhere, as at Coventry and London, where wives and widows preferred burial apart from their husbands. In some cases they returned to their natal family vault but for many of these pious ladies burial in a Franciscan church was an appropriate—and distinguished—sepulchre for their rank. These monuments were intended as aide memoires to prompt the living to take care of the dead through intercessory prayer, anniversary services and chantry Masses. The friars were important interlocutors and the record of Franciscan gravestones in London shows not only that the friars were commemorated alongside the laity but that they took the interests of their dead brethren just as seriously as they did those of their

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Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 188–189. Nick Holder, ‘Medieval foundation stones and foundation ceremonies’, in Memory and Commemoration, ed. Barron and Burgess, 6–23.

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patrons. We have seen that monuments had other benefits, as suggested by the litigation in the de Lisle case and evident again during the Grey v. Hastings suit in 1408. The written record, much of it relating to tombs, reveals, incidentally, the splendour of Franciscan chapels, and their monuments, and the extent of colour in the polychromy of the tomb effigies and in the heraldic glazing in the windows. Because the mendicant houses were repositories of the important dead, the burial registers can reveal more than simply the names of those buried there but also something of the architecture and the furnishings of their final resting place.

chapter 20

Franciscan Nuns in England, the Minoress Foundations and Their Patrons, 1281–1367 Anna Campbell

This chapter seeks to pose a number of questions regarding the foundation of Franciscan nuns—and more specifically, the establishment of the order of Minoresses, or Sorores Minores—in England in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The first Franciscan friars had arrived in England in 1224, but it was not until 1293–1294 that Franciscan nuns were permanently established in the country, though there had been earlier attempts to do so: a Damianite house in Northampton had lasted only twenty years, while plans for an Urbanist foundation in Newcastle-upon-Tyne never materialized. The Minoresses, however, put down resilient roots in England that were to last until the Dissolution of their convents in 1539. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine some of the reasons for their longevity and success. We need, therefore, to consider the institutional development of the movement that was associated with St Clare of Assisi. Between 1212, when Clare fled her family to join Francis, and 1263, there were six Rules written for the so-called ‘second order’ of Franciscans. The English Minoresses followed the ‘Isabella Rule’ for sorores minores that had been co-authored by Isabelle of France, sister of Louis ix, and Franciscan masters of theology at the University of Paris. There is a strong suggestion that one of the reasons for the Minoresses’s initial popularity in England was due to the nuns being the ‘right’ kind of Franciscan nun, with clear links to the highly popular Friars Minor. Such overt, papally sanctioned, institutional relations between the first and second orders has to be one of the main reasons why it was the Minoresses that met with great favour among patrons. Nevertheless, it is also the case that one of the key strengths of the Minoresses lay in their links to the royal and noble houses of England and France. The London house was founded by Edmund, earl of Lancaster, brother of Edward i, and his wife, Blanche of Artois, niece of Isabelle of France and Louis ix. The house at Waterbeach was founded by Denise de Munchensey, who, through birth and marital links, was one of the ‘chief ladies’ of the realm;1 likewise, 1 Frederick M. Powicke, Stephen Langton: Being the Ford Lectures delivered in the University of Oxford in Hilary Term 1927 (Oxford, 1928), 6–7.

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Marie de St Pol, foundress of Denney Abbey, was the grandniece of Edmund, duke of Lancaster, and Blanche of Navarre.2 Marie’s family had very close links with France and was almost completely French: her father, Guy de Châtillon, count of St Pol (d. 1317), was a leading French magnate. Her mother, Marie of Brittany, however, was the granddaughter of Henry iii. Finally, Bruisyard was founded by Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, son of Edward iii and his queen, Philippa of Hainault. It is something of a paradox that a religious order that found fame in St Clare’s love of poverty and the virtue of humility should have been brought into being by a princess of France, and was rooted in a specific sector of English society where at least fifty out of sixty of the order’s patrons and benefactors over twelve generations could all be plotted on a single family tree.3 The support that the nuns received from such Anglo-French aristocracy is all the more intriguing given the political context of the time. There are, therefore, immediate contradictions regarding the founding of the Minoresses in England, which this chapter will seek to elucidate through an examination of the order’s beginnings and patronage both in France and England in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. On the one hand, the Minoresses had a clear identity and Franciscan origins and institutional associations, but they were also socially exclusive in the years covered by this volume. Beyond 1350, there are changes in the nature of the social make-up of the convents and their benefactors, which are beyond the scope of this chapter, but which will be considered in the concluding remarks.

∵ Recent scholarship and increased interest in St Clare have challenged the traditional narrative that St Clare—or even St Francis—was the sole founder of such an order. As Sean Field notes, such a view ‘leaves little room for competing visions of female Franciscanism in the thirteenth century’, of which there were many.4 Few of the female communities that associated themselves with

2 Marie Neville, ‘Chaucer and St. Clare’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 55.3 (1956), 423–430; Anne F.C. Bourdillon, The Order of Minoresses in England (Manchester, 1926), 18–19. 3 Bourdillon, Minoresses, 15. 4 S.L. Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France: An English Translation with Introductory Study (St. Bonaventure, ny, 2013), 10. For recent scholarship on St Clare and the evolution of what is known as the second order of St Francis, see Lezlie Knox, ‘Audacious nuns: institutionalising the Franciscan order of St Clare’, Church History 69.1 (2000), 41–62; Bert Roest, ‘Rules, customs, and constitutions within the medieval order of Poor Clares’ in Consuetudines et Regulae, ed. C.M. Malone and C. Maines (Turnhout, 2014), 305–330; Bert Roest, Order and Disorder:

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Clare and the Franciscan movement had any real link with her and her community of San Damiano. It is striking how early in the evolution of the Franciscan movement these different groups developed, and it is worth asking the question as to whether the foundations in the English province failed until the point at which would-be patrons in the thirteenth century were sure that they were supporting the ‘right’ sort of Franciscan woman. Francis gave Clare a ‘form of life’ that guided her community for the first few years after she joined him in 1212, but the provisions of Lateran iv in 1215 forbade the creation of new religious orders, requiring them instead to follow an existing Rule. However, special favours were shown to the Franciscan friars due to their popularity and the papacy’s recognition of their potential usefulness to the Church. Communities of female penitents sought a similar life of poverty, and claimed affinity with the friars, who in turn feared that their holiness of life would be besmirched by such ‘loose’ and unenclosed women. In 1219, Ugolino of Ostia, cardinal protector of the Franciscan order, wrote a specific Rule for the female penitent communities based on the Benedictine Rule, in order to comply with the decrees of Lateran iv. His aim, however, was to merge the female communities into a new ‘order of San Damiano’, using Clare as its figurehead, and making the Franciscan friars responsible for the nuns’ spiritual care.5 The friars, led by Francis, baulked at the responsibility, and tried to limit their connection with the sisters for fear of scandal and too great a burden of care. Clare possibly allowed her monastery to come under Ugolino’s Rule as a means of formalizing the relationship between the two orders, and continued to fight to secure the ‘privilege’ of owning nothing, neither corporately nor individually.6 It was not until 1253 that she was able to enshrine these two central characteristics of her view of the female Franciscan life in her own Rule. Although Ugolino had managed to establish a regulated order, there were still communities of unregulated religious women springing up, particularly in Italy and Germany, calling themselves sorores minores, minoritae or sorores Sancti Damiani, thus identifying themselves with the Franciscan fratres minores. The friars protested about having responsibility for these, or indeed, any of the ‘Damianite’ women. Clare spoke of herself and her sisters as sorores pauperes in order to differentiate between the two groups. Pope Innocent iv, The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden, 2013); Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France; Lezlie S. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden, 2008). 5 Also known as Damianites. 6 Roest, Order and Disorder, 35.

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in 1247, issued another Rule aimed at cementing the relationship between the Franciscan friars and the Damianites, replacing all references to the Benedictine Rule with references to the Franciscan Regula bullata of 1223 and firmly placing the Damianites under the control, rather than ‘care’, of the Friars Minor. Yet the continued provision for holding property frustrated a number of the houses, including San Damiano; moreover, the provisions for bringing the sisters under the jurisdiction and authority of the friars essentially prohibited the nuns from all independent action. The Rule was rejected by the majority on either side. In 1253, Pope Innocent iv approved the Rule that Clare had written herself, ending her lifelong battle to have the papacy recognize the Franciscan inspiration for her way of life, based upon penitential, evangelical poverty and dependence upon the Friars Minor. However, adherence to this Rule was limited to Clare’s convent only, though, with papal dispensation, a few other houses were permitted to follow it.7 Thus when Clare died in 1253, just days after her Rule was approved on 9 August, the communities of the female Franciscan movement were grouped under three different Rules. When Clare was canonized in the following year, there was no single Rule, nor a single, unified order of women, over which the papacy could promote its new saint as figurehead. In 1263, two ways of life for Franciscan women were approved. The first, co-authored by Isabelle of France, and Franciscan Paris masters of theology, including Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, was approved in July and created the order of Sorores minores inclusae. The Rule presented Franciscan women with a different type of monasticism to Clare’s way of life: one that allowed for property, rents and endowments, and dowries for postulants. Isabelle introduced a fourth vow of enclosure, alongside the vows of poverty, humility and obedience that Clare had stipulated. This set her nuns apart from the wandering religious women against which the papacy had issued warnings. Isabelle, with the help of her brother, Louis ix, secured papal permission for her nuns to be called sorores minores, thus associating them in name and status with the fratres minores, which was highly significant.8 Field writes that ‘Isabelle wanted to be certain that her sisters were Franciscans, that they were recognised as such by the society around them and especially the male order.’9 Further, by calling her

7 For example, the convent of Agnes of Prague, and the double-monastery in Naples founded under patronage of King Robert d’Anjou and his wife Queen Sancia of Mallorca. 8 Isabelle’s Rule had originally been published in 1259, approved by Pope Alexander iv; the 1263 Rule, however, underwent changes, including the privilege of the sisters being accorded the title sorores minores. See Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France. 9 Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France, 112.

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sisters sorores minores, she ensured the nuns were placed on an equal footing with the brothers. No longer were the nuns to be dominated by the friars, as in Innocent iv’s Rule; instead, the abbess was given greater powers, and the sisters greater autonomy, with the Rule stating that the minister or visitor could change nothing in the Rule without the agreement of the nuns.10 Isabelle’s Rule also stipulated that the nuns’ chaplains and confessors were to be Franciscan brothers, thus restoring the relationship with the friars that Clare had envisaged. The Urbanist Rule, written by Urban iv, was approved in the following September, 1263. It also allowed for property and endowment, but the nuns’ visitors and chaplains did not have to be Franciscan. Ironically, the Urbanist Rule took the name of St Clare and called the sisters ‘poor’, but neither maintained the family relationship with the Franciscan brothers nor upheld Clare’s privilege of poverty, both of which formed the essential nature of Clare’s version of the female Franciscan life. Despite Urban’s Rule, the variation in observance between different communities was wide, and would continue to be so until at least the late fourteenth century.11 In order to analyse the origins of the Minoresses in England, we need to understand the spread of the Isabelle Rule in France under the patronage of the French royal family. From the time of St Francis’s canonization, the French crown was known for its support of the fledgling mendicant order. Louis ix was an active patron, who visited many of the Franciscan houses within his kingdom, and took a particularly keen interest in the Minoress houses of Longchamp and St Cloud.12 From 1254, Eudes of Rosny, the Franciscan master of theology in Paris, acted as Isabelle’s confessor, and he, along with other Franciscan masters, including Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, advised and collaborated with the princess on her Rule.13 Isabelle herself founded the royal monastery of Longchamp in 1255 in which her Rule was first instituted. The foundation attracted women from the highest noble families in the royal court, and the success of the convent and implementation of the new Rule quickly led to the establishment of new Minoress houses, many of which attracted royal patronage.14 In 1264, Theobald ii of Navarre and his wife, Isabelle, daughter of Louis ix, requested permission for the convent of Saint-Catherine of 10 11 12 13 14

Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France, 26. Roest, ‘Rules, customs, and constitutions’, 314–318. Michael Robson, ‘Queen Isabella (c. 1295/1358) and the Greyfriars: an example of royal patronage based on her accounts for 1357/1358’, fs 65 (2007), 325–348, esp. 327. Field, The Rules of Isabelle of France, 22. On the foundations of Minoress houses in France see Roest, Order and Disorder, 122–124; S.L. Field, Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity, 98–120.

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Provins, founded in 1247 by Theobald’s parents, to adopt the Longchamp Rule. In 1268, they also founded a monastery in Troyes with the help of five nuns from Longchamp. The house later moved to Faubourg Saint-Marcel in Paris in 1287– 1289, was granted permission to follow the Longchamp Rule in 1290 and was supported by Louis ix’s widow, Marguerite of Provence, who later retired there with her daughter, Blanche. La-Garde-de-Notre-Dame at La Guiche in Blois was founded in 1277 by Jean de Chatillon, count of Blois, and his wife, along with their daughter and her husband, Pierre of Alençon, son of Louis ix. This convent followed Isabelle’s Rule from 1285. Blanche of Navarre, daughter of Robert of Artois, niece of Louis ix and Isabelle, and sister-in-law to Theobald ii through her first husband Henry i of Navarre, founded the royal monastery of Nogentl’ Artaud in 1299. A further royal monastery was founded in 1309 at Moncel by Philip iv and populated by Longchamp nuns. The French royal house was essentially responsible for enabling the spread of Isabelle’s Rule in France. Noticeably it was the royal women—Blanche of Navarre, Isabelle, daughter of Louis ix, and Isabelle of France herself—who were the principal patrons of the Longchamp Rule and ensured that it became the most successful Rule for Franciscan women in France. Thus it was patrons very closely linked to the royal courts of England and France who wanted to bring the new, French, royal ‘order’ to England. Indeed, it had been Blanche of Navarre, foundress of Nogent-l’Artaud, who introduced the Minoresses into England just five years earlier, in 1293, when she founded the Minoress convent in London—known as the Minories—in the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate.15 Blanche, who married her second husband, Edmund of Lancaster, in 1276, was a devoted supporter of the Franciscans. In 1291 Nicholas iv granted her a licence ‘to visit, accompanied by twelve matrons, the monastery of Provins in the diocese of Sens, and with eight matrons any monastery in France or England of the order of St. Clare’.16 Blanche brought a group of Minoress nuns from France, most likely from the convent of Longchamp, and instituted Isabella’s Rule in the London house, with its provisions that the nuns could receive

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cpl, vol. 1, 558–563. Boniface ix refers to Blanche as the ‘foundress’ although it was her husband, Edmund of Lancaster, who granted the necessary lands and properties in 1292– 1293. cpl, vol. 1, 512–513: ‘Faculty to Blanche, wife of Edmund, earl of Leicester, to visit, accompanied by twelve matrons, the monastery of Provins in the diocese of Sens, and with eight matrons any monastery in France or England of the order of St. Clare, but they are not to eat, or spend the night with the sisters.’ In 1291, however, there were no known houses of the order of St Clare in England, though the records were ambiguous.

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endowments and rents and own property.17 Edmund of Lancaster provided all the land and properties that the house required initially, including a plot of land in the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate, a tenement in Cordwainer Street and other land in the suburbs.18 He also granted Shapwick manor in Dorset to the nuns in 1293, and ten acres Hartingdon and the advowson of the church in 1294.19 In 1294, at Edmund’s request, the convent was granted exemption from the jurisdiction of the justices in eyre by the king, which simplified the funding of the convent from the lands outside London.20 In 1295, Boniface viii confirmed that the London house was exempt from the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates, and instead came directly under the jurisdiction of the pope for the price of a pound of wax annually.21 Boniface viii also confirmed the foundation in London and the use of the Isabella Rule, along with other aspects of life, in the convent in 1295.22 When Edmund died in June 1296, his body lay in the convent church prior to its burial in Westminster Abbey, but his heart was later interred in the nuns’ church. The prestige that Edmund’s death and guardianship of his heart conferred upon the convent, and the subsequent granting of royal protection in 1297, clearly established the status of the monastery as one of the most important religious houses in London, attracting numerous other wealthy and influential benefactors to help bankroll its existence.23 Almost simultaneously to the foundation in London, Denise de Munchensey, daughter and heir of Nicholas Anesty and widow of the wealthy landowner, Warin de Munchensey (d. 1255), received royal permission and papal consent to establish a religious foundation.24 In July 1281, the manor of Waterbeach was quit-claimed to the king by a certain Richard Botiller, from whom Denise had held the land by the service of a rose, so that she could hold the lands immediately from the king.25 In the following month, the king then granted her the 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

cpr, 1292–1301, 24, states that the nuns were ‘brought into England’ by Blanche, though does not specify from where. The fact that the Isabella Rule was instituted at the convent is the best evidence that we have for the origin of the nuns, unless new evidence comes to light. Records of the auditors of the land revenue (lr), 14/122; lr 14/264; lr 14/285; lr 14/532; lr 14/567; Chancery: Inquisitions Ad Quod Damnum (c) 143/22/26. c 143/21/3; lr 14/1173. cpr, 1292–1301, 86. cpl, vol. 1, 558–563. Ibid. cpr, 1292–1301, 296. Powicke, Stephen Langton, 7. ccr, 1271–1281, 453.

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manor ‘so that she may thereof enfeoff religious men or found there a house of religion’.26 In October, Martin iv issued a bull granting an indulgence to penitents who visited the convent of St Clare in Waterbeach.27 Waterbeach received a number of the same papal privileges that had been given to the London convent: relaxation of an enjoined penance for visitors to the convent; confirmation of the use of the Isabelle Rule and all the regulations therein; and exemption from the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops.28 How Denise first encountered the Minoresses is unknown, but she must have been well acquainted with their foundations in France.29 She is known to have gone ‘beyond seas’ in 1271, where she may have come into contact with them.30 In 1294, she was licenced to bring ‘Sisters Minoresses of the order of St. Clare’ from ‘beyond the seas’ to the manor of Waterbeach.31 We know that the nuns were French from the evidence of the canons of Barnwell.32 That the nuns were almost certainly from the convent in Longchamp is evidenced by the fact that the first abbess of Waterbeach, Joan de Nevers, had been abbess at Longchamp from March 1289 to April 1294, and that the nuns at Waterbeach followed the Longchamp Rule.33 In 1296, Denise gave the nuns the advowson of the church of Ridgewell, in Essex.34 She was buried, nonetheless, in the church of the Greyfriars in London in 1304. The third English foundation was established by Marie de St Pol, countess of Pembroke, daughter of the French nobleman, Guy de Châtillon and Marie of Brittany, granddaughter of Henry iii of England. Marie de St Pol was closely related to both the French and English royal families: she was a cousin of Philip iii and Philip iv of France and her sister, Mahaut, was also 26 27 28 29

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ccr, 1271–1281, 454. bf, iii, 471. The Isabelle Rule is identified as ‘the Rule corrected and approved by popes Alexander iv and Urban iv’ referring to both the 1259 and 1263 Rules. It has been suggested that, through her first husband, Walter de Langton, brother of Archbishop Stephen Langton, she had come into contact with the people who had first welcomed the Franciscans on their arrival in England, Louis Francis Salzman, The Victoria History of the County of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely (Oxford, 1938), 292–295 n. 4. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 16. cpr, 1292–1301, 63. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 14. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 17; ccr, iii, 1300–1326, 373, mentions Joan de Nevers as the abbess; Honoré Fisquet, La France pontificale, (Paris, 1864), t. 2, 580, lists Jeanne i de Nevers as abbess of Longchamp 1288–1294, so presumably she was in England at this time. bf, iv, 385. cpl, vol. 1, 566.

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the third wife of Philip iii’s son, Charles of Valois. Through her marriage to Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, she was the daughter-in-law of William de Munchensey, Denise de Munchensey’s stepson, and subsequently became heir to the Munchensey lands and hereditary patron of the Waterbeach nuns. In 1327, Marie inherited the manor of Denney, which she planned to donate to Waterbeach. Yet in 1339, on the basis that the site of Waterbeach was ‘narrow, low, bad, and insufficient’, she gained royal and papal permission to build a new abbey at Denney, to which the Waterbeach nuns would be relocated.35 By 1342 the majority of the nuns had transferred. However, there was a small group of nuns in Waterbeach who refused to leave, and elected their own abbess. Marie sought papal support and by 1351, the remaining Waterbeach nuns had been removed forcibly to Denney. Marie had a residence built for herself there, allowing her to take part in convent life as a layperson without being professed, and she was later buried there in the Minoress habit. Her interest in the Minoresses stemmed both from her familial links and her personal devotion to the Franciscan order. Her parents had owned a residence outside the Paris walls in Faubourg Saint-Marcel, neighbouring the Minoress convent, and Marie bought a second house in the same location in 1324–1330.36 Her confessors were Franciscan, and it makes perfect sense that she should be favourable towards the Minoresses given her proximity to the convents and her family ties with both patrons and professed nuns. Her testament points to her ownership of a Franciscan breviary that she was given by the nuns at Saint-Marcel, where her niece, Isabelle of Valois, retired when she was widowed.37 The final English Minoress foundation was relatively late and takes us beyond the scope of this volume. Bruisyard, in the diocese of Norwich, was founded in 1367 by Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, son of Edward iii and Philippa of Hainault, for his widowed mother-in-law, Maud of Lancaster, countess of Ulster (d. 1377).38 Maud’s second husband, Ralph de Ufford, died in 1346 and was buried at Campsey Ash in Suffolk, where, the following year, Maud entered as a professed Augustinian canoness. In 1364, however, Maud obtained papal permission to become a Minoress, and became one of the first nuns at the Franciscan abbey in Bruisyard. She is known to be living in the convent in 1369, but was never an abbess. The first abbess of Bruisyard was Emma de Beau35 36 37 38

L.F. Salzman, The Victoria history of the county of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, (Oxford, 1938), 295. Ibid. Ibid. Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, married Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of William de Burgh and Maud of Lancaster.

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camp, who transferred from Denney, along with thirteen nuns, to populate the Bruisyard house in 1367, and was certainly still abbess in 1377 and perhaps also in 1390.39 One of the significant factors driving the Minoress foundations in England was the fact that there were no Franciscan houses for women anywhere in England. It seems unusual that it took until 1293–1294 for a prominent and lasting order of Franciscan nuns to become established in England, despite the rapid, early developments of a female version of Franciscan life and the popularity of Franciscan nuns among the Italians, Spanish and French. Some of these orders had in fact reached the shores of England within the first decade of Franciscan friars arriving there, but had not lasted. In 1241, Pope Gregory ix issued a letter to the English bishops warning them about unregulated communities of ‘wandering women’ who called themselves sororum minorum.40 These communities, he explained, were not associated with the group of female communities of which St Clare was head, and therefore were neither legitimate nor under a Rule and could not be called ‘Franciscan’. However, his stipulation that they could not set up convents without the permission of the minister provincial gives credence to the women’s identification with the Franciscans.41 Between 1252 and 1272, a house of sorores minores existed in Northampton.42 Very little is known about this house other than donations made to the sisters there by Henry iii. It is possible that the five sisters were given permission by the minister provincial to found a house, as per the letter of Innocent iv in 1251, but without any documentary evidence of such, this can only be supposition. In 1281, an indulgence was granted by Martin iv to the sisters of the order of St Clare situated outside the walls in London, suggesting that the foundation in 1293–1294 in St Botolph without Aldgate was in fact a re-foundation.43 The

39 40 41 42

43

S.L. Field, ‘Marie of Saint-Pol and her Books’, ehr cxxv, 513 (2010), pp. 255–278. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 10. The Register of Walter Giffard, Lord Archbishop of York, 1266– 1279, ed. William Brown, Surtees Society (Durham, 1904), 93–94. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 10. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 11, notes that they are variously referred to in the sources as ‘Sisters of Penitence’, ‘Sisters of God’s House’, ‘Poor Sisters’, ‘Sisters of the Hospital of St. Mary’, and ‘Sisters of the King’s House of St. Mary’, as well as sorores minores. bf, iii, 471: Indulgentiam elargitus visitantibus orationis causa certis diebus Londinen, Ecclesiam Clarissarum, which gives the indulgence to Ecclesia Sororum Inclusarum de Gratia Beate Mariae extra muros Londonien … Ordinis S. Clarae. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 12; J. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539, Vita Regularis 21 (Münster, 2004), 64.

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earlier date for the London house is difficult to explain. It certainly seems as if there was a Franciscan house already in London, even if it was not Minoress, or indeed inhabited. The same indulgence referred to the foundation in Waterbeach, even though it too was not populated until 1293–1294. It is possible, as Bourdillon suggests, that the 1281 indulgence was a confirmation of the papal blessing in anticipation of the eventual foundation of the monastery.44 One final attempt at founding a house of Franciscan nuns in England prior to the first Minoress foundations was in 1286 when John de Vescy, Lord of Alnwick, received papal licence to found a house of ‘Sisters of St. Clare’ in Newcastle, but his death in 1289 possibly caused the project to fail.45 Thus it would appear that houses of Franciscan sisters prior to the establishment of the Minoresses in 1293 could not be sustained. This seems unusual, given the popularity the friars had enjoyed in England since their arrival at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Franciscan spirituality was the most fashionable form of lay piety at the time, especially among the female members of the French and English courts, and Franciscan friars were such ladies’ preferred confessors.46 Isabelle of France, as we know, had Franciscan confessors from among the Franciscan masters in Paris, who had helped her with the composition of her Rule. Queen Marguerite of Provence’s confessor was William de St Pathus, a member of the Cordeliers of Paris.47 Female members of the English royal house also sought the advice and guidance of Franciscan friars. Queen Margaret of England, wife of Edward i, rebuilt the church of the Greyfriars in London. Isabella of France, wife of Edward ii, had Franciscan confessors, and was a great patron of both the Greyfriars and Minoresses in London.48 Indeed, when she died in November 1357, she was buried in the Franciscan church in London. Edward iii’s sister, Joan, queen of Scotland, was buried in the choir of Greyfriars in 1352, while his eldest daughter, Isabella, countess of Bedford, was buried in a Franciscan friary.49 Edward iii’s wife, Philippa of Hainault, was also devoted to the Greyfriars, and had the Cambridge friar, John de Mablethorpe, as her confessor.50 Members of the nobility followed suit. Denise de Munchensey was buried in the church of the Greyfriars

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Bourdillon, Minoresses, 13. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 12; Roest, Order and Disorder, 124. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 216. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 2008), 156. Robson, ‘Queen Isabella’. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 370. Walter Duffy, The Greyfriars in Cambridge (Cambridge, 1937), 68.

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in London, whilst Marie de St Pol was buried in Denney Abbey, and numerous others were benefactresses of Franciscan friaries. It is possible that, until the establishment of the Isabelle Rule, patrons were unclear as to which form of female Franciscan life was the ‘right’ version behind which they should place their patronage. Apart from Clare’s own Rule of 1253, none of the Rules available to the majority of Franciscan women guaranteed one of the central aspects to Clare’s Franciscan vision: a familial relationship with the Friars Minor. Isabelle’s Rule ensured that the nuns were recognized as Franciscan by society around them and by the friars themselves. The popularity of Isabelle’s Rule among Franciscan nuns in France and Italy must surely have been one of the deciding factors for the patrons who introduced the Rule into England. Shortly after the papacy approved Isabelle’s Rule, nuns came from Viterbo to the Curia, claiming to represent many Franciscan nuns who wanted to follow Isabelle’s Rule instead of Urban iv’s, most likely because of the link with the friars. Thus it was just as important for the Minoresses to have Friars Minor as their confessors and chaplains as it was to their patrons, and these friars were often resident in the convents in their own quarters.51 Henry Waleys, a benefactor of the Greyfriars and Minoresses, who was buried in the Minoress church in London in 1302, bequeathed funds for building accommodation for the five friars who acted as confessors to the Minoresses.52 The nuns in Waterbeach and Denney were provided for spiritually by the friars of the custody of Cambridge, such as Brother Thomas de Trumpington, who served them for at least fourteen years.53 Isabelle of France herself was also a model for potential patrons of the Minoresses from among the English nobility, particularly among female patrons. Isabelle’s vision of the religious life, her role in the foundation of the Minoresses and her life as a religious laywoman provided a model of female lay patronage that appealed to many women. Isabelle had rejected marriage and devoted herself to a life of celibacy, living as a religious laywoman in a residence that had been built in the precinct of Longchamp Abbey. Her royal status had made very public her insistence on remaining single and living a religious life in the world rather than taking the vows of a nun. She had, after all, rejected marriage to both Hugh xi de Lusignan, half-brother of Henry iii, and Conrad iv of Germany, son of Emperor Frederick ii. While she did not enter the religious life herself, she lived a structured routine of a courtly laywoman, something

51 52 53

Bourdillon, Minoresses, 56–57. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 422. Duffy, The Greyfriars in Cambridge, 90.

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that appeared to appeal to other aristocratic women, keen to identify their piety, but unwilling, or unable to enter a religious order themselves.54 Isabelle’s example was followed most notably by Marie de St Pol and Elizabeth de Burgh, both wealthy dowagers, and great friends. We have evidence of Marie’s devotion to Franciscan spirituality through the witness of her Franciscan breviary (cul, ms. Dd. 5. 5); such devotion must have influenced her actions in founding Denney Abbey. Elizabeth de Burgh, like Isabelle, was a vowess, and in the 1350s she had a residence built in the outer precinct, no doubt for both religious and social reasons.55 Likewise, Marie de St Pol had quarters built for herself in Denney Abbey and had papal licence to enter Denney and the Minories. Such accommodation afforded these ladies the religious lifestyle and encounters with religious women without the restrictions that the Rule imposed.

∵ It is possible that the catalyst for the French Minoress nuns arriving from France in 1293–1294 was the growing tension in the feudal relationship between the kings of France and England. This can only be surmised; nevertheless, the same personnel who were active in the founding of the London house in particular were also at the centre of peace negotiations between England and France. The conflict had its roots in the perennial issue of whether the French or England crown had primary jurisdiction over the duchy of Gascony, which England had held as a vassal of the French since the Norman Conquest. France had the right as overlord to overrule the English administration, but, should conflict break out in the duchy, this could lead to political confusion if differences arose in the punishment of the perpetrators. The issue of juridical primacy required resolution, to which a solution had been found.56 However, war broke out in 1294 between the two countries before the issue could be resolved. The conflict was ignited by fighting between Norman and Gascon sailors and ship owners, which resulted in full-scale maritime war in which Norman sailors were alleged to have been killed and others taken hostage. When Edward i refused Philip iv’s summons to court, France confiscated Aquitaine (Gascony and Poitou), thus causing the beginning of the English quest to regain the duchy 54 55 56

Field, Isabelle of France, 38–42. Jennifer Ward, ‘Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (d. 1360)’, in Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500, ed. Caroline Barron and Anne F. Sutton (London, 1994), 37. Malcolm Vale, ‘Edward i and the French: chivalry and rivalry’, in Thirteenth Century England ii: Proceedings of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Conference 1987, ed. Peter R. Coss and Simon D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1988), 170.

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from the French.57 As Edward i had not chosen to go to war, he sent diplomatic envoys to Paris, led by his brother, Edmund of Lancaster, to offer terms of peace. A ‘secret treaty’, negotiated by Edward i’s female relatives in the French court, Marie de Brabant and Jeanne de Navarre, agreed that Edward i would marry Philip’s sister, Margaret, in return for a temporary surrender of Aquitaine until other matters could be resolved.58 The treaty, however, was not honoured by the French, so war continued until Boniface viii declared perpetual peace between the two sides in June 1298. To confirm the peace, the pope arranged Edward i’s marriage to Margaret of France, and the future Edward ii to Philip iv’s daughter, Isabella. A final peace agreement was signed in May 1303. It cannot be insignificant that the Minoress nuns arrived in England under the patronage of Blanche of Navarre and Edmund of Lancaster, at a time when diplomatic relations between the two countries were highly fragile. There were often political motivations behind the extension of religious patronage, and this was surely no different for the Minoress foundations. The Minoresses were a new order, and a royal order, founded by the sister of a king of France. The foundations in England, populated initially by nuns from French royal and noble houses, aided diplomatic links between England and France. Such patronage was a ‘soft’ form of influence and power, sustaining existing and new relations between the two sides through the strength of religious piety. By allowing their foundations, the English were almost making a gesture of peace with their French relations. The Minoresses had strong papal support, and both Isabelle of France and her brother, Louis ix, were persons of proven sanctity and high status, so any act of patronage associated with them could be construed as political.59 Support for the order would be a good way of strengthening links between the royal houses and their supporters. Friars were already agents of the kings in matters of diplomacy; the extension of patronage to new houses of Franciscan nuns brought the two sides together in mutual support of the Franciscan order, albeit that this was more pronounced on the part of the French. Röhrkasten argues that Edward i’s donation in 1305 of a chapel dedicated to St Louis in the church of the Greyfriars priory in London

57

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Malcolm Vale, The origins of the Hundred Years War: the Angevin legacy 1250–1340, (Oxford, 1996), 175–226; Michael Prestwich, Edward i (London, 1997); M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward i (London, 1972). Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, (London, 1975), vol. 2, 418–420. Marie of Brabant was stepmother of Philip iv and sister-in-law of Edward i and Edmund of Lancaster. Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philip iv, was the daughter of Edmund’s wife, Blanche of Navarre, and Blanche’s first husband, Henry i of Navarre. Field, Isabelle of France, chs 5–6.

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was politically symbolic, giving emphasis to the bonds between the English and French crowns, and keeping them as peaceable as possible.60 Indeed, such bonds were demonstrated during the celebration of Mass held at Greyfriars for the soul of Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip iv of France, in the presence of Queen Margaret of England, Philip iv’s sister and wife of Edward i.61 Royal support was essential for the establishment of Minoress houses in England, and significant too since the Minories without Aldgate was the last foundation of a mendicant house under royal support in England until Edward iv founded a house of Observant friars in Greenwich in the late fifteenth century.62 The initial founding phase of the Minoress houses in England attracted a large amount of royal patronage which was demonstrated in a number of ways, including the granting of licences to acquire land free of royal taxation or control, and exemption from taxes and confirmation of privileges already granted. Henry iii and Edward i were already great supporters of the mendicant orders in England, and although they tended to favour the Dominicans, the Franciscans also benefited from their generosity.63 Henry iii was known as the founder of the Greyfriars priory in York, and one of the main patrons of the Grey Friar friaries in Norwich and Shrewsbury, and made over three hundred grants to the Greyfriars within his kingdom.64 Henry iii was also a benefactor of one of the earliest female Franciscan houses in England, founded in Northampton in 1252.65 In London, Henry iii and Edward i granted licences to allow lands to be given to the new Franciscan foundations of Greyfriars and to the Minoresses.

60 61 62

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Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 354. Robson, ‘Queen Isabella’, 340. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 356. The house in Greenwich was founded by Edward iv at the insistence of his sister, Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy, who, along with her husband, Charles the Bold, was a keen supporter of the Colettine nuns in the Low Countries as well as the Observant friars. See Anna Campbell, ‘At the request of the duchess? Gift exchange and the gendering of religious patronage’, in Staging the Court of Burgundy: Proceedings of the Conference ‘The Splendour of Burgundy’, ed. Wim Blockmans, Till-Holger Borchert, Nele Gabriëls, Johan Oosterman and Anne van Oosterwijk (Turnhout, 2013), 183–188. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 350, 360–361. Edward i demonstrated an obvious bias towards Dominicans. Of all donations to the mendicant foundations in London, 66 % went to the Dominicans, 13% to the Greyfriars and just 1% to Minoresses. Under Edward ii, the ratio was 66 %, 15% and 1% respectively. The majority of the kings’ patronage, however, went to the traditional monastic orders such as the Benedictines. Janet E. Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), 120. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 11.

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Thus Edward i granted lands to Edmund, his brother, for the London foundation;66 exemptions from taxes and crown jurisdiction;67 and afforded them royal protection.68 He also granted lands to Denise de Munchensey, which Edward ii confirmed in an ‘inspeximus’ charter of 1318.69 Edward iii similarly gave the London convent licence to buy land; confirmed the exemption from tallage—or land tax—on city estates granted to it by Edward ii; exempted the nuns from taxes levied by the king’s lay subjects and clergy; and licenced land and property in the manor of Hertendon to be made over to the Minoresses without Aldgate.70 This last licence was granted at the request of Edward iii’s late mother, Isabella of France, herself a significant supporter of the Franciscans in England and France, and a generous benefactor of the Minoresses.71 After the execution of Roger Mortimer, following his revolt against Edward ii, Isabella is said to have taken the habit of the Minoresses in London.72 However, the privileges gained by the Minoresses without Aldgate from Edward iii onwards appear to have been sought by the nuns rather than granted freely by the king. While Henry iii and Edward i granted the necessary privileges and licences for land and property during the foundation of the house in London, by the time that Edward ii and Edward iii had acceded to the throne, the abbess and nuns were having to petition and fight for confirmation of their privileges and exemptions.73 At the same time, however, Edward iii freely and willingly granted privileges and exemptions to the new abbey in Denney, ‘out of special grace, and at the request of Mary de Sancto Paulo’.74 When Marie de St Pol gave the king and his successors the advowson and patronage of Denney in 1361, Edward iii responded by making a further grant of privileges in 1368, placing the abbey under royal protection, granting exemptions from taxation and ensuring free election of the abbesses.75 Thus, towards the middle 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75

lr 14/264; lr 14/122; lr 14/109; lr 14/1173; cpr, 1292–1301, 24. cpr, 1292–1301, 86. cpr, 1292–1301, 296. ccr, ii, 254; ccr, iii, 373. lr 14/109; Henry Fly, ‘Some account of an abbey of nuns formerly situated in the street now called the Minories’, Archaeologia 15 (1806), 101–103. Robson, ‘Queen Isabella’, 342. Isabella’s donations included those made for the souls of Edward ii and their son, John de Eltham (d. 1336), earl of Cornwall, in 1357, and for those of her parents in 1357 and 1358. Robson, ‘Queen Isabella’, 342 n. 129: Chronicon de Lanercost, 266, says that she ‘assumpsit habitum sororum de ordine Sanctae Clarae’. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 45; Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 369. ccr, v, 168. ccr, v, 214–215.

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and end of the fourteenth century, the London house discovered that the kings were less interested in their foundation, once the initial founding and building phases were complete. As can be seen from numerous wills from the early fourteenth century onwards, the convent was amply provided for through bequests left in the wills of many London citizens. It had been granted royal protection and remained under royal patronage; in the mid-fourteenth century, Denney was in its formative stage, therefore requiring specific royal patronage in terms of licences for land acquisition and various privileges. The early success of the Minoress foundations was in part due to the support that they received from a close-knit network of patrons from among the nobility, extending from the convents’ original patrons. Marie de St Pol exemplified this characteristic, being related both to Denise de Munchensey and Blanche of Navarre. Patronage of the Minoresses, certainly in the early years, was therefore something of a ‘family business’. Such ‘hereditary patronage’ ensured the ongoing benefaction of the monasteries, particularly in the years immediately following the initial foundations. Prior to its merger with Denney Abbey, the patronage of the abbey of Waterbeach remained within Denise de Munchensey’s immediate family. In 1310, Hugh de Vere and his wife, Denise de Munchensey (the younger), received a papal indult allowing them ‘to enter twice a year, accompanied by a retinue, the monastery of nuns of the order of St. Clare, at Beche, in the diocese of Ely, founded by them’.76 That they were referred to as the founders highlights their status as the hereditary patrons of the convent. As we have seen earlier in this chapter, Marie de St Pol, continued the family patronage of Waterbeach, later transferring it to Denney. The patronage of Denney Abbey remained in the hands of her family until the death of the last earl of Pembroke in 1389, at which point it continued in lay hands under the patronage of the Greys of Ruthin, later earls of Kent.77 The house of Lancaster played an important role in the patronage of the Minoresses, particularly concerning the Minories and the convent in Bruisyard. Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby, grandson of Edmund and Blanche, continued in his grandparents’ footsteps by showing particular favour towards the nuns of the Minories.78 John of Gaunt, husband of Henry’s daughter, Blanche of Lancaster, continued the family interest by leaving £ 100 in his will to the sisters 76 77 78

cpl, 2/58/1310–1311/79–93. Karen Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons: England and Wales, c. 1300–1540 (Woodbridge, 2007), 59. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 48; he received an indulgence to enter the Minories with ten ‘honest persons’ in 1349; he petitioned the king to allow the nuns licence to receive an annual rent in mortmain of £ 30.

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of the Minories in 1397.79 Another of Henry’s daughters, Eleanor of Lancaster, was given papal permission to enter monasteries of the Minoresses in England.80 Edmund of Lancaster’s great-niece, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, was a considerable patron. She was heiress to vast and wealthy landholdings in Ireland, England and Wales. Having outlived three husbands, and two of her three children, she devoted much of her later life to the Minoresses. In 1355 and 1357, after building her London residence within the precinct of the Minories, she was granted papal indults to enter the Minoress convents whenever she wished.81 On her death, she was buried in the abbey church and a chantry chapel was founded near her tomb to ensure prayers for her soul. The Lancastrian influence continued through Elizabeth’s son, William de Burgh, who married Maud of Lancaster, another daughter of Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby, and granddaughter of Edmund of Lancaster and Blanche of Navarre. The idea that Maud had supposedly always wanted to be a Minoress—despite entering an Augustinian house after the death of her second husband, Ralph de Ufford (d. 1346)—was no doubt due to family links with the order. Maud died and was buried in the abbey of Bruisyard in 1377. Her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, died in 1363, and was brought back from Ireland and buried in the abbey church at Bruisyard; her second daughter, Maud de Ufford, countess of Ulster (d. 1413), continued the family patronage, was buried in the abbey alongside her sister, and bequeathed the manor of Wrabness to the nuns in her will, ‘for the health of my soul, and the souls of my parents, and the souls of all the faithful deceased’.82 The patronage of the abbey of Bruisyard was inherited in 1368 by Lionel of Antwerp’s grandson, Roger Mortimer, earl of March, and came to Richard, duke of York, in 1425, before returning to the crown in 1461 in the reign of Edward iv.83 As the patronage was passed down, members of the family continued to make donations, received licence to enter the monastery and be buried there.84 The foundations’ early success was also due to the high proportion of nuns who entered the order in the beginning coming from the nobility and upper gentry. Indeed, one fuelled the other.85 Catherine Paxton found in her research

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

William Page (ed.), A History of the County of London (London, 1907), vol. 1, 516–519. John of Gaunt was married to Blanche of Lancaster (1345–1368). cpl, 4/38 and 4/56. Eleanor was married to Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel (d. 1376). cpl, 3/225/1355/544–565; cpl, 3/232/1357/580–590. Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, 182. Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons, 59. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 49. Hicks noted that ‘such a network is the result, not the cause, of the introduction of the

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into the lives of ninety-two Franciscan nuns in the Minories, compared to the inmates of five other nunneries in or near the city, that the Minoresses contained the highest percentage of sisters taken from the aristocracy and gentry.86 Among the early sisters of the Minories was Margaret de Clare, Baroness Badlesmere, who entered the Minories in 1322 as a widow, and was awarded a stipend of two shillings per day by Edward ii.87 Another was Katherine de Ingham, widow of John, son of Sir Oliver de Ingham (d. 1346), who was seneschal of Aquitaine 1325 and 1327, and one of the council of twelve appointed to run the country for Edward iii after the dethronement of Edward ii. Katherine appears to have become abbess sometime after 1353.88 Another sister was Elizabeth Ferrers, daughter of William Ferrers, lord of Groby, and Margaret de Ufford, daughter of Robert, first earl of Suffolk, who was the brother of Ralph Ufford, husband of Maud of Lancaster, countess of Ulster. Katherine, widow of John Ingham, had entered the Minories and became abbess there, while Eleanor Lady Scrope, daughter of Ralph de Neville, took vows after the death of her husband, Geoffrey Scrope, in 1362, and was abbess in 1372.89 However, while for much of our period the patronage of the Minoress houses was limited in the main to royal and noble benefactors, in the middle of the fourteenth century and in the fifteenth century, we begin to see a change in the social status both of the sisters populating the convents and of the benefactors. This is particularly noticeable in London, where numerous wills testify to the high number of bequests emanating from wealthy London citizens, many of whose daughters were nuns in the convent without Aldgate. Among the occupations identified are drapers, vintners, fishmongers, mercers and spicers. As the fourteenth century progressed, we also see goldsmiths, armourers and many more crafts represented, as well as aldermen and mayors of London. For example, John Mockyng de Somerset bequeathed to his daughter, Felicia, ‘of the new Hospital of St. Clare without Alegate, an annuity’ in his will, proved September 1347.90 A number of the wills do not specify any particular family

86 87 88

89 90

Sisters Minor’. M. Hicks, The English Minoresses and their Early Benefactors, (Bangor, 1990), 160. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 127. ccr, 1323–1327, 46, 48. Edward ii settled on her a stipend of 2s per day for her maintenance. cpl. vol. 3, 224. Elizabeth de Burgh left £ 20 to Katherine in her will, 1360. Jennifer C. Ward, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (1295–1360): Household and Other Records (Woodbridge, 2014), 143–144. Neville, ‘Chaucer and St. Clare’, 424–425, 427. John of Gaunt supported the convent in 1372, possibly to mark Eleanor’s election as abbess (n. 25). Cal. Wills. Hustings, vol. 1, 492. He notes in a footnote in a record on p. 350 in the same

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link, but instead leave general bequests: for example, the fishmonger, Roger de Ely, left bequests ‘to the Minoress Sisters of St. Clare of the Franciscan order, and for the maintenance of a chantry in their own conventual church’.91 Many of these bequests reflect the growing relationship between the London elite and the Minoress convent, but also reflect the reality that, in fact, bequests were left to many different religious houses, of whom the Minoresses were often just one. Nevertheless, this had the effect, both in London, and also in rural communities such as Bruisyard, of widening the base of patronage and therefore securing the future of the house for the longer term, once aristocratic support had decreased.92 Oliva argues that the aristocracy’s interest in larger bequests of land and property, due in part to economic factors, gave rise to more local bequests from among local nobility and the gentry, even from parish gentry and the yeomanry.93 Despite the rise of anti-fraternalism and criticism of the mendicant friars and nuns in medieval literature such as that by Chaucer, local benefactors still did not see them as ‘worldly’.94 Examining bequests that were made in the diocese of Norwich, Oliva found that they tended to be in the locality of the patron, often from within their parish. For example, Isabella, from the parish of Hacheston, close to Campsey Ash and Bruisyard, left money to both houses.95 Thus, in the later years of the Minoress houses, there was a much wider base of patronage, rather than being concentrated in the hands of the few. This helped to retain local interest in the convents.96 The number of Minoress foundations remained few, compared to convents belonging to other monastic orders: by the late medieval period there were 140 nunneries in England and Wales, yet only 4 Minoress foundations were established in England, of which only 3 remained after the foundation of Denney Abbey.97 There were over four hundred houses of Franciscan women throughout Western Europe. One of the reasons for this, no doubt, was the period

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volume, that the most likely identity of the ‘new Hospital of S. Clare without Alegate’ is the abbey of the Minoresses without Aldgate. Cal. Wills. Hustings, vol. 1, 512. Marilyn Oliva, The convent and the community in late medieval England: female monasteries in the Diocese of Norwich, 1350–1540, (Woodbridge, 1998), 175–182. Oliva, Convent and Community, 171. Oliva, Convent and Community, 176. Oliva, Convent and Community, 177. See Oliva, Convent and Community, ch. 6. Stöber, Late Medieval Monasteries and their Patrons, 53. Bourdillon, Minoresses, 26, does, however, mention that another two Minoress houses were proposed: one in Kingstonupon-Hull in 1365, and a second in the diocese of Exeter c. 1393.

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in which they were founded, for the majority of medieval monasteries had already been founded by 1281.98 Certainly, apart from the Minoresses, only two more nunneries were to be founded in England after 1281.99 In some ways, the Minoresses were not even particularly different to the orders of nuns already resident in England in their acceptance of property. Clare of Assisi had devoted her life to securing the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty, and had chosen poverty, and the rejection of corporate and private property, to be a defining characteristic of her Rule. The Minoress Rule had no such restrictions, freely allowing corporate property.100 Furthermore, the rules on enclosure were broken regularly by patrons, from very early on in the Minoress history. Any examination of the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, for example, or Marie de St Pol, will show that the Minoresses were regularly entertained both within and outside the convent by these patrons, breaking their rules of fasting and enclosure. In principle, only the sisters’ resident chaplains, their confessors, visitors and high churchmen were allowed to enter the convents without papal licence, which was usually only granted to founders and principal patrons. Nevertheless, numerous indults were issued by the papacy, such that the rule of enclosure became somewhat compromised. For example, Matilda de Lisle, widow of John de Lisle, lord of Rougemont, received an indult to enter the Minories and Denney Abbey in the company of ‘two honest matrons’ in 1353.101 Margaret Beauchamp, widow of Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d. 1369) could likewise enter ‘with three honest matrons’ the Minories, ‘or any other of the enclosed nuns of St. Clare or other order, and to remain there for life or at pleasure’.102 The Minoress houses were still used by the nobility as a means of providing a place for daughters who could not make advantageous marriages, while wealthy dowagers saw them as places for social interaction and entertainment, as well as acting as retirement homes. In this period too, the Minoress houses were used by female benefactors as places of refuge. By the late fourteenth century, French influence on the English Minoress houses that characterized the initial foundation stages of the Minoresses in England was almost completely absent, despite the first sisters coming from

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Hicks, The English Minoresses and their Early Benefactors, 159. Hicks, The English Minoresses and their Early Benefactors, 160. These were the convent of Dominican nuns founded in Dartford in 1356, and the house of Brigittines at Syon in 1415. Evidence from late medieval wills also shows that individual nuns owned personal property. See Sharpe, Calendar of Wills. cpl, vol. 3, 222. cpl, vol. 5, 61. Margaret Beauchamp’s only sister, Elizabeth Ferrers, was a nun in the Minories, which was no doubt a reason behind Margaret’s request.

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France. Among the records of known Minoress nuns, we know of Agnes de Arras, mentioned in documents in 1308 and 1310;103 we know too of Isabelle de Lille, abbess of the Minories in 1397.104 Röhrkasten notes that, among the mendicants in general, the absence of the French in the later fourteenth century is ‘striking’, though there is evidence of the continued practice of French friars studying in England, despite the conflict between England and France.105 The English Minoresses became quite separate from their Longchamp mother house, moving away from the highly aristocratic model that remained in the French houses, and began to embrace a mix of social classes, particularly from among the London elite and local nobility, reflecting the changing status of their benefactors. It was the changing nature of patronage associated with the Minoress houses, from the royal protection afforded to the convents in their early years, to lasting family patronage networks, that ensured the foundations lasted into future generations. 103 104 105

Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 113. tna, e403/144 m 2, e101/374/7 fol. 1r. Fly, ‘Some account of an abbey of nuns’, 103, 106. Röhrkasten, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, 115.

chapter 21

The Franciscan Heritage in England (c. 1240–c. 1350) Michael J.P. Robson

St Francis of Assisi was one of the most striking and colourful saints in the Western Church. The son of a prosperous merchant in the Umbrian city of Assisi, he swapped his life of wealth and privilege for one of penance and evangelical poverty in imitation of Jesus Christ and his apostles. The ministry of the Son of God provided the template for Francis’s vocation and liberated him from the shackles of possessions and wealth. After spending about two years repairing churches in the environs of Assisi, the key to his vocation was found in the reading of the Gospel during Mass at the rural chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The text in which the apostles were dispatched to proclaim the Gospel (Matthew 10:9–10, Luke 9:2, Mark 6:7–13) challenged Francis to do the same. Obeying the Scriptures to the letter, he returned to the city of his birth where he called upon his former neighbours to change their lives by embracing penance for their failings. The citizens of Assisi recognized that Francis had undergone a radical change and that his former profligacy and affluence had given way to the apostolic life with a heightened concern for the guidance conveyed by the Scriptures.

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St Francis and the English Province

One inhabitant of Assisi, Bernard of Quintavalle, was so curious about Francis’s new life that he invited him to supper. The unfolding of Francis’s exciting new vision of evangelical life inspired Bernard to commit his future to the direction of il poverello. The following morning they went to the local parish church of San Nicolà in search of direction for their common vocation, and requested a priest to open the book of the Gospels thrice at random to pinpoint the basis of their vocation, the kernel of their incipient fraternity. Informed by three texts regarding penance, evangelical poverty and preaching, Bernard publicly divested himself of his possessions in the piazza di San Giorgio, a gesture that indirectly brought at least two additional penitents to the fraternity, Sylvester and Giles of Assisi. When the disciples had reached

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004331624_022

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the biblical number of twelve, they walked to Rome to seek the approval of Innocent iii, who authorized them to preach penance; Francis was invited to expound the Scriptures in Assisi’s churches and was ordained to the diaconate at an unknown date.1 His homilies were so incisive that they acted as a recruiting sergeant for more vocations. He was a remarkable communicator whose insights and powerful example drew several men to join the small community that was beginning to look beyond Assisi and Umbria. He dreamed that his family would grow into a large army of penitents, attracting men from various parts of Europe. By 1215 the number of recruits began to increase and this facilitated the spread of the movement to other countries. Francis predicted that men from England, Germany and Spain would hasten to join him.2 The chapter of 1217 sent groups of friars throughout Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, the Holy Land and Portugal. The decision to establish the fraternity in England was taken by Francis, who appointed Agnellus of Pisa as the leader of the group, a move that was confirmed by the general chapter. It was left to Gregory of Naples, minister provincial of France, to make preparations for the mission across the Channel. Fr. André Callebaut reflects that the province of France fournit les neuf fondateurs de la province Anglaise.3 The friars landed at Dover in the late summer of 1224 and made their first foundations at Canterbury, London, Oxford and Northampton, laying the foundations for the rapid growth of the English province. Friaries were established in the principal cities and the leading boroughs throughout the length and breadth of the country, although precise dates for foundations and the names of founders are relatively sparse.4 By the end of the thirteenth century there were seven regional clusters, known as custodies, and fifty-two friaries in England and Wales; the foundation at Durham was temporary on account of opposition from the monks of the cathedral priory.

1 For a review of the evidence consult Michael F. Cusato, ‘Francis of Assisi, deacon? An examination of the claims of the earliest Franciscan sources 1229–1235’, in Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life: Essays in Honor of John V. Fleming, ed. Michael F. Cusato and Guy Geltner, The Medieval Franciscans 6 (Leiden, 2009), 9–39. 2 ‘Thomae da Celano Vita prima Sancti Francisci’, no. 27, in ff, 275–424, esp. 301–302. 3 André Callebaut, ‘Les Provinciaux de la province de France au xiiie siècle: notes, documents et études’, afh 10 (1917), 289–356, esp. 295. 4 Chronicon de Lanercost, 42, testifies that the friars reached Carlisle around 15 August 1233 and were accommodated inside the city walls. ‘The Chronicle of John Somer’, 232, 234, 236, provides information on the order’s relocation to new sites at Bridgwater in 1240, Cardiff in 1280 and Exeter in 1300.

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The spectacular rise in the number of friars and friaries fuelled an expansionist air that prevailed into the fourteenth century, albeit at a slower pace. As a result, several communities of friars were formed throughout England and Wales. Groups of friars were dispatched across the Irish Sea to make foundations, initially in the Anglo-Irish colony and then in the Celtic areas.5 The links between the Irish and English provinces are reflected in the Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium, saeculo xiii, the correspondence of Adam Marsh,6 and the chronicle of Thomas of Eccleston. Friars in the north of England crossed into Scotland, making foundations at Berwick and Roxburgh in 1231 and 1232. A Scottish province was formed c. 1236, but it was suppressed three years later, when the general chapter of Rome reduced the number of provinces on both sides of the Alps. The subsequent foundations at Haddington, Dumfries and Dundee were part of the English province until 1329, when a new Scottish vicariate was formed.7 The missionary vocation was integral to the friars’ Rule and English friars were among those who responded to this special call. Adam Rufus, a pupil of Robert Grosseteste, seems to have joined the order to become a missionary, setting out for the Holy Land in 1231/2.8 Friars who volunteered for that mission were named with pride by Thomas of Eccleston.9 William of Heddele, the tenth regent master of Oxford in 1268–1269, accompanied Prince Edward on his visit to the Holy Land in 1270, but died en route in Greece.10 Two English friars were among the members of the order appointed as bishops in the crusading territory, Augustine of Nottingham, bishop of Latakia c. 1254, and Hugh, bishop of Byblos c. 1282, who recounted the heroism of an unnamed English former guardian of Oxford, during the fall of Tripoli in the spring of 1289.11 In contrast, little is known about the life and martyrdom of William Walden, who died

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8 9 10 11

Cf. E.B. Fitzmaurice and Andrew G. Little, Materials for the History of the Franciscan Province of Ireland a.d. 1230–1450, bsfs 9 (Manchester, 1920); Francis J. Cotter, The Friars Minor in Ireland: From their Arrival to 1400, Historical Series 7 (St. Bonaventure, ny, 1994); Colmán Ó Clabaigh, The Friars in Ireland 1224–1540 (Dublin, 2012), 1–29, where the author deals with all four mendicant orders. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 420–421. Cf. William M. Bryce, The Scottish Grey Friars, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1909); John Watts, A Tender Watering: Franciscans in Scotland from the 13th to the 21st Century (Canterbury, 2011); Chronicon de Lanercost, 265. Letters of Robert Grosseteste, 17–21. Eccleston, 4, 89; Richard of Ingworth and Robert of Thornham, custos of Cambridge. Eccleston, 89–90; Chronicon de Lanercost, 81. Chronicon de Lanercost, 128–130.

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in Syria in the 1340s.12 John Pecham reflected that the friars had carried the Gospel to the ends of the world, going among the Greeks, Tartars, barbarians and Saracens.13 He boasted that no winter had ever prevented the unshod friars from making lengthy journeys in their work for the Church.14 A letter of 15 May 1323 refers to the presence of unnamed English friars on the mission to the northern Tartars and notes their facility for learning the languages of that region.15 English monastic chroniclers singled out St Francis and St Dominic, the founders of the two principal mendicant orders, as leading figures in the rejuvenation of the Church in the thirteenth century. Their names and a summary of their deeds appeared in the universal histories, many of which were connected with the orders of friars. Several monastic chroniclers in England announced the impact of these two saints upon the medieval Church, among them a monk of Bury St Edmunds, who sums thus up the two founders of the mendicant orders: St. Dominic, who was the subprior of the [Augustinian] Canons, instituted the order of preachers in 1198 [sic]. St. Francis, who spurned the vanity of the world, founded the order of Friars Minor in 1206. These two orders of friars were confirmed with privileges and their founders were duly canonized.16 St Francis’s stature was such that his Rule was copied verbatim by Matthew Paris, the monastic chronicler of St Albans, in his Chronica Majora.17 Three of the earliest portraits of St Francis are in English manuscripts before 1260 and their themes accord with contemporary art in Umbria and Tuscany. Professor Bradley R. Franco believes that the inclusion of the miraculous sermon to the

12 13 14 15 16 17

ccccl, ms. 194, fol. 74r. Jerome Golubovich, Biblioteca Bio-Bibliografica della Terra Santa e dell’Oriente Francescano, 5 vols (Florence, 1906–1927), vol. 2, 273. Cf. Stimulus amoris Fr.Iacobi Mediolanensis et Canticum pauperis pro dilecto Fr.Ioannis Peckam, bfama 4 (Florence, 1949), 190. Felice Tocco, ‘Tractatus contra Fratrem Robertum Kilwardby, o.p.’, in John Pecham, Tractatus tres, esp. 112, 129. Arthur C. Moule, ‘Textus duarum epistolarum Fr. Minorum Tartariae Aquilonaris an. 1323’, afh 16 (1923), 104–112, esp. 109. Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3 vols, rs 96 (London, 1890–1896), vol. 3, 151. ccccl, ms. 16, fol. 71rv; Matthew Paris, cm, vol. 3, 136–143; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, 314.

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birds and the stigmata in Bonaventure Berlinghieri’s dossal at San Francesco in the Tuscan city of Pescia helped to popularize the scenes in thirteenth-century art; the two miracles were unique to St Francis,18 and are reflected in the early iconography of the saint produced in different provinces of Western Europe.19 There are three striking examples of England art from the middle of the century. First, cul, ms. Gg.6. 42, fol. 5v, portrays Francis bearing the marks of the stigmata, but without a nimbus. He instructs a younger cowled friar in a single leaf inserted into a florilegium of the writings of Alexander Nequam. The manuscript came from either Glastonbury Abbey, Gloucestershire, or Malmesbury, Wiltshire. A date in the 1240s has been suggested.20 Secondly, ccccl, ms. 16, fol. 70v, the autograph text of the Chronica Majora, contains two miniatures. The first depicts a recumbent Francis receiving the stigmata and the second shows him holding a pastoral staff while he preaches to the birds. These paintings, by the monastic chronicler of St Albans Abbey, have been assigned to c. 1240–1245.21 Thirdly, medallions of St Dominic and St Francis decorate the text of Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium veteris Testamenti in Eton College Library, ms. 96, fol. 24r. There is also a second painting of Francis preaching to three birds. The wounds of the stigmata are visible in his hands and feet. He is accompanied by Frater Iohannes. The volume may have been produced at Glastonbury Abbey, with a tentative date of c. 1245–1254.22 A later miniature of Sts Dominic and Francis can be found in ccccl, ms. 194, fol. 171r, where the beginning of the two mendicant orders was commemorated. The stigmatized saint preached to the birds, while a friar sat at his feet. A number of key manuscripts of the life of St Francis are associated with England and they are identified in the critical edition of the Legendae S.Francisci Assisiensis saeculis xiii et xiv conscriptae edited by the College of St. Bonaventure between 1926 and 1941. Matthew Paris had a copy of Henry of Avranches’s

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20 21

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Bradley R. Franco, ‘The functions of early Franciscan art’, in The World of Francis of Assisi: Essays in Honor of William R. Cook, ed. Bradley R. Franco and Beth A. Mulvaney, The Medieval Franciscans 11 (Leiden, 2015), 19–44, esp. 21–23. E.g., Beaune, Bibliothèque Municipale, ms. 39, fol. 56r, and Carpentras, Bibliothèque Municipale, ms. 77, fol. 180v, for examples of St Francis preaching to the birds and receiving the stigmata. Morgan, egm, 1190–1250, 130, no. 84; Binski and Zutshi, 106–107, no. 113. Little, ‘Illuminated manuscripts’, 66. Cf. Rosalind B. Brooke, The Image of St Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006), 192–202; Morgan, egm, 1190–1250, vol. 1, 136–139, no. 88. Cf. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, 313–319. Little, ‘Illuminated manuscripts’, 71; Morgan, egm, 1190–1250, vol. 1, 140–141, no. 90.

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Legenda versificata (cul, ms. Dd. 11. 78).23 Despite the decision of the general chapter of 1266 to recall earlier vitae of St Francis, copies continued to be produced in England in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. For instance, Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, ms. 202, contains Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima, St Francis’s Rule and Gregory ix’s Quo elongati. It has been assigned to the closing years of the thirteenth century, probably for a Franciscan community. The book hand is English Gothic, according to Professor Rodney M. Thomson.24 Celebrations of the feast of St Francis on 4 October and his translation on 25 May provided the friars with ample opportunities to honour their founder, to celebrate his virtues and inspirational teaching in a variety of ways, and to dwell on their own vocation. There are sermons on the founder by unnamed friars in Worcester Cathedral Library, mss. q. 63 and 74.25

2

Friars and English Society

The friars brought with them a new type of vocation and method of proclaiming the Gospel wherever they went, explaining the Scriptures both in parish churches and in the public spaces. Following the example of their founder, they took the Gospel beyond the parish churches. Before the 1270s the friars at Lincoln preached on ground near the castle, le Batailplace.26 The friars who visited St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire were described by Matthew Paris as carrying their books continually, that is, Bibles, in satchels hung from their shoulders to assist them in their mission of disseminating the principles of the New Testament.27 The first eight leaves of a manuscript, cgccl, ms. 437/439, exemplify the small quires carried by itinerant friars, who were equipped with texts for preaching on multiple occasions. The material for sermons was arranged in two columns of each folio with texts suited to various congregations. Sundays and feast days were followed by the appropriate texts from the epistles and Gospels, beginning with the four Sundays of Advent. The quire was the work

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24 25 26 27

Cf. David A. Townsend and A.G. Rigg, ‘Medieval Latin poetic anthologies (v), Matthew Paris’ anthology of Henri of Avranches (Cambridge University Library, ms. Dd. 11. 78)’, Mediaeval Studies 49 (1987), 352–390. Thomson, Corpus, 99–100. Thomson, Worcester, 158–159, 170. Records of Early English Drama, Lincolnshire, ed. James Stokes, 2 vols (London and Toronto, 2009), vol. 1, 103. Matthew Paris, ha, vol. 2, 110: ‘libros continue suos, videlicet Bibliotecas, in forulis a collo dependentes bajulantes’.

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of two hands,28 and was bound with other preaching materials suitable for the friars. Model sermons were produced at an early stage and they, too, formed an integral part of the luggage of mobile friars. The friars’ focus on the cities and large boroughs coexisted with a ministry to towns and rural areas. John of Wales urged his confrères to heed the example of St Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne (685–687), who preached in out of the way places.29 Many friars were renowned for their skills in the pulpit. Henry of Bellington, a friar of the custody of Bristol in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, was deemed to be the finest preacher in the country (et reputabatur tunc melior predicator de patria illa).30 Sermons preached by various friars have been conserved. Robert of Ware was the author of twenty-five homilies on the feasts of the Virgin Mary, recounting in one of them how he had entered the order at Oxford in the 1260s to the dismay of his parents.31 Six of the homilies preached by William Herebert have been edited along with notes for a further three, plus some Middle English lyrics from his commonplace book (bl, ms. Addit. 46919).32 Oxford, Merton College Library, ms. 248 (b. 1. 6) contains homilies of some Oxonian friars of the early fourteenth century, Laurence Bretoun (Britown), Richard Drayton (Dreytone), Henry of Cross and Richard of Leicester.33 At least three languages were in use among friars. The order’s officials communicated through Latin, the language of the sacred liturgy, the Rule and the general constitutions. Many of the formal agreements between the order and its neighbours were committed to writing in Latin. Anglo-Norman was the pre28 29

30 31 32

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S. Gieben, ‘Preaching in the thirteenth century: a note on ms. Gonville and Caius 439’, cf 32 (1962), 310–324. John of Wales, Ordinarium vitae religiosae, p. 3, c.3, in Summa Johannis Valensisde regimine vite humane seu Margarita doctorum ad omne propositum prout patet in tabula (Lyons, 1511), 248rv. Cf. Vita Sancti Cuthberti auctore Beda, in Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge 1940), c.9, 186–187. P.H. Daly, ‘The attitude of the English Franciscans to St Thomas Cantilupe (†1282)’, Franziskanische Studien 66 (1984), 251–264, esp. 259 n. 54. Gray’s Inn Library, London, ms. 7, fols 62–138v; Gerald R. Owst, ‘Some Franciscan memorials at Gray’s Inn’, Dublin Review 176 (1925), 276–284, esp. 281. Andrew G. Little, ‘Two sermons of Fr. Raymond Gaufredi, minister general, preached at Oxford in 1291’, cf 4 (1934), 161–174; Little and Pelster, 192–204, for a transcript of a sermon by Hugh of Hartlepool at Oxford on Good Friday, 20 April 1291; The Works of William Herebert, ofm, ed. Stephen R. Reimer, pims, Studies and Texts 81 (Toronto, 1987), 29–109. Thomson, Merton, 187–192. Richard of Leicester may be a scribal error for Robert of Leicester who was regent master c. 1324/5.

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ferred medium for the educated friars. Hugh of London, for example, recalled a conversation in Anglo-Norman (in Gallico) with John of Clare in the 1280s or 1290s.34 While one of Thomas of Hales’s sermons in Anglo-Norman has been edited, he also wrote in Middle English.35 Knowledge of Cornish or Welsh was helpful for friars assigned to Bodmin, Cardiff, Carmarthen and Llanfaes. One of the duties of the custos was to expound the Rule and constitutions to the lay brothers in the vernacular.36 At least one friar frequently preached in the vernacular on behalf of Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford.37 Local dialects were another medium used by the friars in their mission of evangelization. Dr Rosalind Brooke reflects that St Francis was a ‘subtle, self-conscious imaginative teacher’,38 who wanted music to be a vehicle for the praise of God, despite the fact that instruments were, at the time, seen as being deployed for profane uses.39 The friars showed themselves to be open to music as a medium for the praise of God and the inculcation of virtues. Their musical skills were noted by the order’s chroniclers. Shortly after their arrival in Oxford, two friars were walking barefoot through a snow-filled wood, when they intoned the Salve regina to the edification of a soldier who had been observing them from a discreet distance.40 Eccleston emphasizes the friars’ fervour in singing the Divine Office by citing the example of the three clerical friars of Cambridge, who celebrated the Divine Office solemnly cum nota on the feast of St Lawrence the martyr. Later in that decade, Henry of Burford was the cantor fratrum Parisius.41 Approximately two decades later, Walter, an English friar active in the circle of John of Parma at Naples, was styled as a bonus cantor, bonus predicator et bonus dictator.42 Music reinforced the friars’ promotion of Christian teaching,43 and 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

bav. Lat. ms. 4015, fol. 46r. M. Dominica Legge, ‘The Anglo-Norman sermon of Thomas of Hales’, Modern Language Review, 30 (1935), 212–218; The lyf of Oure Lady: The me translation of Thomas of Hales’ Vita Sancte Marie, ed. Sarah M. Horrall, Middle English Texts 17 (Heidelberg, 1985). Constit. Gen. Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiii, vii, 88, no. 21. Daly, ‘The attitude of the English Franciscans’, 259 n. 53. The Writings of Leo, Rufino and Angelo Companions of St Francis, ed. Rosalind B. Brooke, omt (Oxford, 1970), 22. Cf. Peter V. Loewen, ‘Francis the musician and the mission of the Joculatores Domini in the medieval German lands’, fs 60 (2002), 251–290; and Peter V. Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought, The Medieval Franciscans 9 (Leiden, 2013). Compilatio Assisiensis, c. 66, esp. 1565, 1566. Chronicon de Lanercost, 31. Eccleston, 22, 31. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 2, 830. Cf. David L. Jeffrey, The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (Lincoln, ne, 1975); The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer.

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they used carols to bring the Gospel to life. This prompted Richard Leighton Greene’s judgement that: ‘there are signs of strong Franciscan influence on the subject-matter and spirit of the carols’. He adds that the followers of St Francis were ‘probably the most active group of carol-writers and carol-singers, the “professional class” whose interest and activity propagated and preserved the texts of the carols’.44 Vernacular translations of key Latin liturgical texts were a salient feature of the pastoral endeavours of William Herebert.45 The teaching of the Gospel was communicated in diverse ways, such as hymns and poetry. Walter of Wimborne has been hailed as ‘one of the major Anglo-Latin poets’ of the thirteenth century.46 Later exponents of this art form included Richard Ledrede,47 and Nicholas Bozon, who compiled religious allegories, sermons, exempla and lives of the saints in Anglo-Norman. His Les contes moralises offer a mirror of medieval society and the virtues to be fostered.48 Towards the middle of the fourteenth century John of Grimestone was active pastorally and assembled material for his preaching book or commonplace book which he completed in 1372 (National Library of Scotland, ms. Advocates’ Library 18. 7. 21).49 The friars’ ministry took them into virtually every sector of English society. They were visible on rural paths, main roads and waterways, as they moved from one friary to another, visited the parishes within their territory and carried messages on behalf of the order, the local bishop or the crown. They were drawn to pilgrims’ routes, bound for diverse shrines in England,50 France,51

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48

49 50 51

Richard Leighton Greene (ed.), The Early English Carols, 2nd edn (1935; Oxford, 1977), cl– clvii, esp. clvi, clvii. The Works of William Herebert, ed. Reimer. The Poems of Walter of Wimborne, ed. D. Rigg, pims, Studies and Texts 42 (Toronto, 1978), 1. The Latin Poems of Richard Ledrede, o.f.m., Bishop of Ossory, 1317–1360, ed. Edmund Colledge, pims, Studies and Texts 30 (Toronto, 1974); Benito d’Angelo, ‘English Franciscan poetry before Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)’, fs 43 (1983), 218–260. Benito d’Angelo, Poesia francescana inglese prima di Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400), Pubblicazioni dell’ università degli studi di Salerno, Sezione di Studi Filologici, Letterari e Artistici 12 (Salerno, 1988). Nicholas Bozon, Les contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon, frère mineur, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith and Paul Meyer, Société des anciens textes français 9 (Paris, 1889); Nine Verse Sermons by Nicholas Bozon: The Art of an Anglo-Norman Poet and Preacher, ed. Brian J. Levy, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 11, Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature (Oxford, 1981). A Descriptive Index of the English Lyrics in John of Grimestone’s Preaching Book, ed. Edward Wilson, Medium Aevum monographs, New Series ii (Oxford, 1977). Gieben, ‘Preaching in the thirteenth century’, esp. 323. Eccleston, 13.

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Rome,52 and the Holy Land.53 They were conspicuous at markets and hospitals, fairs and hospices, schools and universities, moving easily among tradesmen and members of the nobility, princes and the marginalized. The sick called upon their spiritual ministrations, the impoverished turned to them for material help in the form of alms dispensed at friaries, and those on the margins of society looked to them for dignity and charitable help. Their lengthy ministry to the prisoners of Newgate prison in London was attested by William of Woodford;54 Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 6, fol. 167v, a copy of the St Albans chronicle, depicts a friar standing behind the prisoner who is about to be beheaded. This latter ministry is exemplified by the friars’ role as confessors to Sir Andrew Harclay, earl of Carlisle, who was executed on 2 March 1323 by the increasingly embattled Edward ii.55 Friars also formed close relations with prelates, such Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham (1333–1345), who engaged both Dominicans and Franciscans.56 Friars were welcomed to the towns and cities by individuals and corporate groups, as at Oxford and Cambridge.57 Clerics were among their benefactors. For example, from 1232/3 the friars of Chichester received three loaves and three gallons of ale on the anniversary of Master William Durand, archdeacon of Chichester. There were similar arrangements for them to attend the anniversaries of Master William of Keynsham, canon of Chichester, and Master Geoffrey of Gloucester, dean of Chichester.58 Friars identified with their neighbours’ vicissitudes in numerous ways. Michael of Merton and Reginald of Kington, confessors, accompanied the northern troops led by Henry of Lacy, earl of Lincoln, to Scotland in the summer of 1300.59 The disastrous harvests of 1314 and 1315 hit the friars hard, prompting William Greenfield, archbishop 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

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Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 454, 480. Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare (1346–1350), ed. Alberto Baccchi della Lega and B. Bagatti, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum IIi (Jerusalem, 1945), 93–94, 156–157. Salimbene de Adam, vol. 1, 505, mentions some of the shrines visited by Salimbene and his companion. William Woodford, His Life and Works, q. 45, 156. Chronicon de Lanercost, 250–251. The author recounts the friars’ ministry to those sentenced to death. Philobiblon Ricardi de Bury, 92–93. Eccleston, 22. Cf. gfo and gfc. The Chartulary of the High Church of Chichester, ed. Walter D. Peckham, Sussex Record Society 46 (Lewes, 1942–1943), 140–141, 142, 154–155, 9, nn. 542, 548, 595. Cf. Le Neve fea, V. Chichester, ed. Diana E. Greenway (London, 1996), 22, 73, 9. Historical Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers, ed. James Raine, rs 61 (London, 1873), 143.

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of York, to give the Greyfriars of York 20s. in subvencionem victus on 16 January 1315 and a further five marks on 18 November of that year propter excessivam temporis caristiam qua gravantur.60 Friaries constructed in densely occupied parts of the cities made the friars vulnerable to pestilences. The chronicler of Lynn reported that before Easter 1349, the Black Death, the inaudita pestilencia epidemia, reached the custody of Cambridge and remained throughout the summer.61 Friaries were equally susceptible to the hazard of fire that intermittently swept through the cities, such as the terrible conflagration at Carlisle on 29 February 1292, which totally destroyed the abbey and all the buildings of the Greyfriars.62 The inundations and storms of 1286/7 obliged the friars at Dunwich and Winchelsea to relocate to new sites. New Romney was suppressed as a result of the heavy storms which buffeted the Kentish town about 1287.63 Floods menaced the friaries, such as the one that washed away the archives of the friary at Boston in 1353/4.64 The friars were no strangers to the royal family. In September 1252 Queen Eleanor of Provence gave 6s. 8d. to feed the Greyfriars of Reading in anniversarii Comitis Provence,65 who had been an outstanding benefactor of the order. In October 1289 Marie of Brittany had a solemn Mass celebrated for her mother, Beatrice, the duchess of Brittany, at the London Greyfriars, where she was buried.66 John de Russel, the twenty-second regent master at Cambridge, seems to have been a chaplain in the service of Edmund, earl of Cornwall and brother of Edward i, at Beckley, a few miles from Oxford, during the long vacation of 1293.67 Following the death of Edward i at Carlisle on 7 July 1307, the church of the London Greyfriars was one of the places where his coffin halted for the celebration of Masses before the cortege wound its way to Westminster Abbey for the Requiem Mass.68 Edward i’s second wife, Margaret of France, 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The Register of William Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York, 1306–1315, ed. William Brown and Alexander Hamilton Thompson, 5 vols, ss 145, 149, 151, 152, 153 (Durham and London, 1931–1940), vol. 5, 43, 50, nn. 2470, 2483. A. Gransden, ‘A fourteenth-century chronicle from the Grey Friars at Lynn’, ehr 72 (1957), 274. The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, 239. Andrew G. Little, ‘The Franciscan Friary at Romney’, Archaeologia Cantiana 50 (1939), 151– 152. cpr, 1354–1358, 36. tna, e.101/349/8. Wardrobe and Household, 1286–1289, 300, no. 2560. Beryl Smalley, ‘John Russel, o.f.m.’, rtam 23 (1956), 277–320, esp. 277–278, citing Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Digby, 154 (1755), fol. 38r. The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, 379.

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died on 14 February 1318 and was buried in the London Greyfriars.69 Friars were in demand for sermons to the nobility and the royal family. John of Stanton, a friar of Nottingham, preached before Edward iii at the royal manor of Clipstone, Nottinghamshire, on Easter Sunday, that is, 16 April 1335.70 The unnamed guardian of the Greyfriars of Cambridge delivered the homily for Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, at Great Bardfield, Essex, on the second Sunday of Lent, that is, on 4 March 1352.71 On 12 March 1358, the feast of St Gregory the Great, Thomas of Rippes, a friar of London, gave the sermon in the chapel of Queen Isabella at Hertford.72 It is estimated that an army of men, numbering approximately 15,000, entered the order in England between 1224 and 1539; the names of 9,600 friars form the biographical register initiated and maintained by the Rev Dr John Moorman over several decades;73 the project has been continued and expanded by others for over a quarter of a century.74 There are relatively few autobiographical references, leaving historians to collect details of external actions, such as ordination registers, licences to hear confessions or bequests from testators. In contrast to the paucity of references there are generally more notices regarding friars in the schools or the upper echelons of the order’s administration, such as Richard of Conington, who was regent master at Oxford and then Cambridge before his election as minister provincial, an office that embroiled him in disputation with Ubertino da Casale at Avignon in 1310 and the council of Vienne the following year. He also contributed to the debates on evangelical poverty at Avignon in 1322. Disputes and litigation were part of the history of the English province. A case brought before the mayor’s court in Oxford on 28 March 1330 involved Walter of Chatton and the guardian; the friars were accused of detaining two books claimed by a clerk, John of Penreth. The verdict went against the friars, who

69

70 71 72 73

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The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334: From Brotherton Collection ms 29, ed. Wendy R. Childs and John Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 147 (Leeds, 1991), esp. 92– 93. bl, Cotton Nero, ms. c.viii, fol. 202r. tna, e 101/93/12, m.3. bl, ms. Cotton Galba, e xiv, fol. 34r. John R.H. Moorman, ‘The Franciscans in England, 1224–1974: a bibliographical essay’, The Ampleforth Journal 79 (1974), 47–55, esp. 48 n. 2; John R.H. Moorman, ‘Contemporary collectors xlvii, Bibliotheca Franciscana’, The Book Collector 23 (1974), 19–26, esp. 26. Michael J.P. Robson, ‘Notice about Bishop Moorman’s index of Franciscans in England, 1224–1539’, Antonianum 66 (1991), 420–435.

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were instructed to return the volumes, worth 40s.75 The friars who absconded from their friaries, thereby becoming apostates and liable to excommunication and arrest, have attracted the scholarly attention of Professor Donald Logan, who enumerates the cases, such as Robert Trone, who, in 1284, had lived for nine years as a friar and had been ordained before claiming that he had entered marriage; he then began to dwell with his wife.76 William of Pershore, initially a Benedictine monk of Pershore Abbey, joined the friars and then regretted it, fleeing with some books from the friary at Winchelsea to Westminster Abbey in 1290.77 Roger of Denemed, minister provincial, informed John Stratford, bishop of Winchester, one of the episcopal conservators of the order, that Thomas of Herthill and Thomas of Corbridge, recently professed friars, had abandoned the friary at Shrewsbury early in 1331 and carried off a chalice, books and other items from the friars’ school. On 23 March 1332 the bishop instructed the abbot of Chester to proceed against the two apostates.78 On 10 August 1349 William Edington, bishop of Winchester, launched an enquiry into the unspecified violence perpetrated by David Kelyng, a priest in the diocese of Bath and Wells, against the friars and convent of Bridgewater.79 The episcopate of Gilbert Welton, bishop of Carlisle (1353–1362), offers a snapshot of the friars’ presence in Carlisle, their only friary in the diocese. On 3 March 1354 the unnamed lector was appointed a confessor and penitentiary. On 13 March 1355 a public penance was imposed upon ten people who were required to carry candles and visit the cathedral, St Cuthbert’s, and the church of the Greyfriars; the dean was given responsibility for informing the laity about the reasons for such penitential conduct. The will of Robert del Shelde of Carlisle on 5 October 1357 requested burial in the city’s Greyfriars, leaving the friars two candles and 40s. Probate of John Lowry’s will was granted on 19 November 1359, leaving the Greyfriars a skep of barley and a skep of oats. Priests, too, such as John of Seburgham, vicar of Walton, on 28 July 1362 were

75 76 77 78

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Munimenta Civitatis Oxonie, ed. Herbert E. Salter, ohs 71 (Oxford, 1920), 80–81, no. 90. F. Donald Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England c. 1240–1540, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series 32 (Cambridge, 1996), esp. 243–246. Monumenta Franciscana, ed. John S. Brewer and Richard Howlett, rs 4, 2 vols (London, 1858, 1882), vol. 2, 31–62. Cf. The Register of John de Stratford Bishop of Winchester, 1323–1333, ed. Roy M. Haines, Surrey Record Society 42–43, 2 vols (Woking, 2010–2011), vol. 1, 221, 246, nn. 665, 742. On 1 February 1333 the bishop wrote to the dean of Auckland, asking him to proceed against Thomas of Corbrigg. The Register of William Edington Bishop of Winchester 1346–1366, ed. Stanley F. Hockey, 2 vols (Southampton, 1986–1987), vol. 2, 30, no. 221.

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among those who sought burial at the local Greyfriars, leaving 6d. to each priest attending his funeral. Three friars replaced the same number of their confrères as preachers at an unspecified date, in accordance with Boniface viii’s Super cathedram.80

3

The Sources

The friaries perished during the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century, when the six houses of the Observants and the fifty-seven friaries of the Friars Minor Conventual were suppressed by the crown in 1534 and 1538/9 respectively. The order’s churches were closed and their cloisters were emptied; items of value were confiscated by the crown’s commissioners. Although the friars had proven themselves to be meticulous keepers of records,81 little remains from their archives, which conserved provincial and custodial statutes, financial accounts, contracts regarding land and agreements about suffrages. The same was true of their conventual libraries that had made them the envy of fellow religious and many members of the secular clergy. The material remains of the patrimony of the English province are patchy in the extreme and historians are generally reduced to dependence upon external sources. In the absence of internal documentation, the friars’ contribution to higher education may be gauged by the incomplete records of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Dr Daniel Callus refers to the ‘profound influence’ that the mendicants had upon the nascent University of Oxford.82 Adam Marsh probably had Oxford in mind when he warmly recommended the exceptional facilities for theological study in England that were not present elsewhere.83 The international stature of the order’s custodial schools was codified by the statutes of Benedict xii on 28 November 1336.84 Friars from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Spain studied theology in the order’s schools in England.

80 81 82

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The Register of Gilbert Welton Bishop of Carlisle 1353–1362, ed. R.L. Storey, cys 88 (Woodbridge, 1999), 5–6, 17, 32, 51–52, 88–89, 105, nn. 20, 90, 181, 280, 482, 568. Registrum Anglie, l. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Hamilton, 30, fol. 64r, a thirteenth-century manuscript of English Franciscan provenance, announces that the order had 1,117 friaries. Daniel A. Callus, ‘The Oxford career of Robert Grosseteste’, Oxoniensia 10 (1945), 42– 72, esp. 43; Maurice W. Sheehan, ‘The religious orders 1220–1370’, in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. Jeremy I. Catto (Oxford, 1984), 193–223. Letters of Adam Marsh, vol. 2, 518–519. Constit. Gen. Fratrum Minorum, saec. xiv, 311, ix, no. 14.

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For instance, Nicholas Comparini, a friar of Assisi, reached Norwich in 1337, where he transcribed scholastic texts into bav, ms. Chigi b.v.66, before going to Oxford.85 There was a three-tier educational system that stretched from the local friary and the custodial school to the studia generalia.86 Friaries adjacent to the universities offered a programme for prospective lectors. Only about five per cent of the lectors trained in Paris, for instance, returned there for the baccalaureate or doctorate in theology.87 As well as staffing the studia generalia of Oxford and Cambridge, members of the English province lectured as bachelors and regent masters at Paris, beginning with Alexander of Hales. Thomas of Eccleston’s list of the regent masters of theology at Oxford and Cambridge was extended to the middle of the fourteenth century.88 The friars played a conspicuous role at the universities, providing a flow of able students and gifted masters until the Dissolution of the mendicant houses. The friars’ dominance in theological studies is reflected in the decision of the monks of Christi Church cathedral priory in Canterbury to engage three successive Franciscan lectors between 1275 and 1314.89 It is further accentuated by the critical editions of the writings of the members of the English province published by the College of St Bonaventure, initially at Florence, then Grottaferrata and now Rome. John Duns Scotus was the most exceptional theologian of the English province. With some justification the friars claimed that Richard of Slekburne and John of Peverel, the confessors of Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway and Marie de St Pol, the countess of Pembroke, were instrumental in

85

86

87

88 89

Victorin Doucet, ‘Le Studium Franciscain de Norwich en 1337 d’après le ms. Chigi b. v. 66 de la Bibliothèque Vaticane’, afh 46 (1953), 85–98; William J. Courtenay, ‘Nicholas of Assisi and Vatican ms. Chigi b. v. 66’, Scriptorium 36 (1982), 260–263. Andrew G. Little, ‘Educational organisation of the mendicant friars in England (Dominicans and Franciscans)’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series, 8 (1894), 49–70, is overly cautious about the number of local schools; Beneventus Bughetti, ‘Tabulae Capitulares Provinciae Tusciae o.m. (saec. xiv–xviii)’, afh 10 (1917), 413–497, 416–420, reports that the Tuscan provincial chapter of 1394 at Borgo San Lorenzo assigned a lector to each friary in the custodies of Florence, Siena, Pisa and Luca. William J. Courtenay, ‘Early Scotists at Paris: a reconsideration’, fs 69 (2011), 175–229, esp. 176–179; and William J. Courtenay, ‘Scotus at Paris: some reconsiderations’, in Archa Verbi, Subsidia 4 The Opera Theologica of John Duns Scotus: Proceedings of ‘The Quadruple Congress’ on John Duns Scotus, ii, ed. Richard Cross (St. Bonaventure, ny, and Münster, 2012), 1–19, 13 n. 30. Eccleston, 50–61. Michael J.P. Robson, ‘Franciscan lectors at Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, 1275–1314’, Archaeologia Cantiana (Kent Archaeological Society), 112 (1993), 261–281.

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the foundation of Balliol College at Oxford and Pembroke College at Cambridge.90 Medieval manuscripts constitute a tangible link with the friars. The impressive conventual libraries that buttressed the order’s application to theological study grew from four principal sources: first, the volumes which novices brought to the community (e.g., Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 57); secondly, texts donated by benefactors and friends of the order (e.g., York, Dean and Chapter Library, Add. ms. 770); thirdly, books given to individual friars (e.g., bl, Sloane, ms. 1726); fourthly, collections that were copied by or for the friars (e.g., Paris, Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève, ms. 2899). There is evidence that books were also loaned to the friars for the duration of their studies by benefactors (Salisbury Cathedral Library, ms. 142). Several clerics provided friars with books to inform their studies. Robert Grosseteste’s library was donated to the Greyfriars of Oxford because of his strong friendship with Adam Marsh.91 The friars’ desire to trace biblical and patristic texts in 185 monastic, conventual and collegiate churches sired the ambitious project of the Registrum Anglie, a catalogue organized and completed at the Oxford Greyfriars during the first quarter of the fourteenth century;92 the Tabula septem custodiarum, an index of biblical and patristic sources with some medieval authorities, was an earlier project completed by the Oxford friary. The two study aids frequently circulated in the same manuscripts, such as Cambridge, Peterhouse Library, ms. 169.93 The editors of the Catalogus de libris autenticis et apocrificis of Henry of Kirkstede, the librarian of Bury St Edmunds, maintain that the text was compiled substantially before 1360 and that it mirrors cordial relations between the black monks and the Greyfriars; they add, for example, that Kirkstede knew the friars’ libraries at Oxford and Babwell.94 From the middle of the thirteenth century books featured in the polemical exchanges regarding the observance of the Rule. The order created such fine libraries that the renowned bibliophile, Bishop Richard of Bury, contrasted the friars’ poverty with their rich collec-

90 91 92 93 94

William Woodford, Defensorium Fratrum Mendicantium contra Ricardum Armachanum, in cul, ms. Ff. i. 21, fol. 120r. F. Nicholai Triveti, de ordine Frat.Praedicatorum, Annales, ed. T. Hog, English Historical Society 80 (London, 1845), 242–243. Registrum Anglie, xiii, l–liv. Registrum Anglie, xiii, l–liv. Henry of Kirkestede, Catalogus de libris autenticis et apocrificis, ed. Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, cbmlc 11 (London, 2004), lxxxvii–lxxxix, 572–574, nn. 168, 173. E.g., Pembroke College Library, Cambridge, ms. 87, fol. 188r, which records that Kirkstede had consulted a volume at Babwell.

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tion of books.95 Dr Malcolm Parkes affirms that the friars’ libraries constituted ‘the first signs of organisation or corporate enterprise’ in the supply of books for study at Oxford.96 While there are no extant catalogues of the Franciscan libraries in England, the register of books from the Austin Friars of York in 1372 offers a good comparison. The remains of some conventual libraries are minimal, but the Greyfriars of Hereford, for instance, fared much better.97 Miniatures of friars decorated medieval manuscripts, with Matthew Paris’s painting of William as the socius Sancti Francisci in the right-hand margin of the text of the order’s Rule (cccc, ms. 16, fol. 71rb). More frequently, friars were depicted within the texts that they had written. An early fourteenthcentury copy of Bartholomew Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum is unusual in presenting the tonsured friar, clad in a brown habit with joined hands, kneeling in supplication before the crowned Virgin and Child at the beginning of each book of the treatise (e.g., cgccl, ms. 280/673, fol. 8rb). A fifteenth-century portrait of a cowled John Duns Scotus stands above the text of his Ordinatio in the first book of the Sentences (Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 2237, fol. 1r). A seated friar holding a book marks the beginning of Robert of Cowton’s Commentary on the Sentences (cgccl, ms. 281/674, fol. 1r) and a friar seated on his cathedra is painted at the beginning of Roger Conway’s Defensio religionis mendicantium, his treatise against Archbishop Richard FitzRalph (ccccl, ms. 333, fol. 77r). Friars were frequently presented in scenes characteristic of their pastoral ministry in England. Fragments of the friars’ correspondence are to be found in letters to prelates, monarchs, monastic officials and priests. Letters from John of Worcester, a friar, notified Peter d’Aigueblanche, bishop of Hereford, that he and Stephen of Thornbury, dean of Hereford (1234–1241), had deposited at the Cistercian abbey of Dore in Herefordshire the monies collected from the redemption of the vows of those who had taken the cross. On 23 June 1245 the bishop wrote to Stephen of Worcester, the abbot, and requested that the money be handed to his offi-

95 96

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Philobiblon Ricardi de Bury, 90–91: ‘in altissima paupertate altissimas divitias sapientiae thesaurizatas invenimus’. Malcolm B. Parkes, ‘The provision of books’, in The History of the University of Oxford, ii, Late Medieval Oxford, ed. Jeremy I. Catto and T. Ralph Evans (Oxford, 1992), 407–483, esp. 431; Jeremy Cato, Jan Ziolkowski and Michael Twomey, ‘University and monastic texts’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 2: 1100–1400, ed. Nigel J. Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge, 2008), 219–249, esp. 225, present the Franciscans as the ‘pioneers of libraries in Oxford’. Montague R. James, ‘The library of the Grey Friars of Hereford’, in Collectanea Franciscana, vol. 1, ed. A. Little, M.R. James and J.M. Bannister, bsfs 5 (Aberdeen, 1914), 114–123.

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cial.98 A letter from Robert Cross, minister provincial on 18 January 1281 survives in the register of Bishop Richard Swinfield. He announced that the minister general had sent him a copy of a letter of 28 April 1280 from Matthew of Acquasparta, cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Porticu, addressed to the prelates of England and Scotland on the subject of the order’s procurators. The unnamed custos of Bristol was instructed to communicate the substance of the cardinal protector’s letter that bore the seals of the minister provincial and Oliver Sutton, bishop of Lincoln. Three years later Bishop Richard Swinfield wrote to the order’s proctors, directing them to act in accordance with the cardinal’s letter.99 A letter from John Russel to Roger of Marlow, rector of Harwell, Berkshire, was written in the late summer of 1294. Illness had prevented him from visiting Roger during his stay in Oxford for the provincial chapter. He continued by asking alms from him in the form of clothing for the coming winter.100 The episcopal registers of the dioceses of England and Wales from the early thirteenth century onwards constitute a major source of information on the order and the ministries of individual friars. The episcopal rolls of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, name Adam Marsh on a witness list on 29 September 1240 at Haselbech, close to Daventry, Northamptonshire, offering an early example of this friar’s advice regarding clerical appointments.101 An indulgence of 5 August 1279 by John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, was issued for those who prayed at the tomb of Beatrice, duchess of Brittany, in the London Greyfriars or at the cross erected in her memory at Reading; the princess, the daughter of Henry iii and Eleanor of Provence, had died in childbirth on 24 March 1275.102 An indulgence of ten days was granted on 11 September 1290 98 99

100 101 102

eea, 35, Hereford 1234–1275, 52–53, no. 49. Registrum Ricardi de Swinfield, episcopi Herefordnesis, a.d. mcclxxxiii–mcccxvii, ed. William W. Capes, cys 6 (London, 1909), 23–26. The scribe erroneously interpreted r. as Richard. Little, Franciscan Papers, 193, names Robert Cross as the thirteenth minister provincial of England and Wales. Cf. Livario Oliger, ‘De procuratorum Fratrum Minorum institutione in Anglia documenta duo (1280–1283)’, afh 7 (1914), 549–551. Cf. Registrum Johannis de Pontissara episcopi Wyntoniensis. a.d. mcclxxxii–mcciv, ed. Cecil Deedes, 2 vols. cys, 19 and 30 (London and Oxford, 1915, 1924), vol. 1, 254–257, reproduces the letter of the minister provincial on 21 January 1281 to the custos of London. The minister provincial was still at Exeter. On 18 October 1282 the bishop appointed four proctors to value the moveable goods of the Franciscans in the diocese of Winchester. Smalley, ‘John Russel, o.f.m.’, 278–279, citing Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Digby, 154 (1755), fol. 37v. Robert Grosseteste as Bishop of Lincoln: The Episcopal Rolls, 1235–1253, ed. Philippa M. Hoskin (Woodbridge, 2015), 143, no. 767. Registrum Ricardi de Swinfield, episcopi Herefordnesis, 11–12.

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to penitents who prayed a psalter, a Pater noster and Ave Maria for Emma Holt, a widow who was buried in the chancel of the Leicester Greyfriars.103 Recent excavation of the adjacent burial place of Richard iii in 2015 indicates that Emma was interred in a lead coffin inside a limestone sarcophagus. Information on the ordination of John Duns Scotus, doctor subtilis, at the Cluniac priory of St Andrew, Northampton on 17 March 1291 was provided by the registers of Bishop Oliver Sutton. The diocesan officials appointed to examine candidates for the priesthood on that occasion were Master Jocelyn of Kirmington and Sir William of Stockton.104 The friars’ ministry of hearing nuns’ confessions is illustrated by an early fourteenth-century miniature (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce, ms 131, fol. 126r) and the licence for Richard of Slekburne, on 10 September 1302, to hear the confessions of Mabel Giffard, the abbess of Shaftsbury.105 On 30 January 1349 William of Pecham, a vicar general of the diocese of Ely, authorized the unnamed guardian of the Cambridge Greyfriars to have the order’s church dedicated along with its altars and cemetery.106 The Franciscans left their imprint on numerous aspects of English life. Matthew Paris describes the first generation of friars as clad in grey habits (tunicis griseis),107 giving rise to the name of Greyfriars, as early English wills attest. For instance, Henry Sothill of Stokfaston on 16 February 1506 requested burial ‘in the house of the Grey Freers of London’ in the event of his death occurring in the capital city.108 While the friars found alms and benefactors in urban centres, the relationship was reciprocal. Dr John S. Lee comments that several mendicant houses brought fresh water supplies into the cities and towns.109 The friars’ aqueduct at Cambridge was mentioned in the cartulary of

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104 105 106 107 108

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Register, Sutton, vol. 3, 22, 43. An indulgence was offered on 15 July 1290 to penitents who visited the newly consecrated church of the Greyfriars of Leicester and prayed before the altar of St Mary, St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist in the north aisle on the day of the dedication of the altar. Register, Sutton, vol. 7, 10–13. Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, diocesis Saresbiriensis, a.d.1297–1315, ed. C.T. Fowler and M.C.B. Dawes, 2 vols. 40, 41 (Oxford, 1934), vol. 1, 89. cul, Ely Diocesan Registers, Thomas de Lisle, 1/1/1, fol. 17v. Matthew Paris, ha, vol. 2, 109. Cf. Callebaut, ‘Les Provinciaux de la province de France au xiiie siècle’, esp. 316, ‘in tunicis … griseis’. North Country Wills being Abstracts of Wills relating to the Counties of York, Nottingham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland at Somerset House and Lambeth Palace 1383 to 1558, ed. John W. Clay, ss 116 (London, 1908), 64. John S. Lee, ‘Piped water supplies managed by civic bodies in medieval English towns’, Urban History 41 (2014), 369–393, esp. 373–377.

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St John’s Hospital.110 A formal agreement between the Southampton Greyfriars and the burgesses of the port town was reached on 2 February 1311 whereby water was to be piped into the friary and be made available to those living in a neighbouring street.111 Historians of the Franciscan order are indebted to a group of celebrated antiquaries, who preserved information on the friaries and the deeds of some of their members. Despite his waspish comments about a friar of Oxford,112 John Leland (1503–1552) consulted a catalogue de eruditis Franciscanis at Greyfriars, Oxford, on the eve of the Dissolution. The libellus contained information regarding the leading theologians of the English province and their canon of writings, with some biographical details. It lionizes Roger Conway for his contribution to the order’s school at Oxford and for his vigorous response to the criticisms levelled against the order by Archbishop Richard FitzRalph.113 Leland took a keen interest in the friars’ libraries, recording details of some texts consulted at Cambridge, Lincoln, London, Norwich, Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Winchester.114 The Index Britanniae Scriptorum compiled by John Bale (1495–1563), formerly a Carmelite at Doncaster, preserves the memory of some of the lesser-known figures from the friars’ schools, such as Adam Wodeham, Richard of Conington, Robert of Cowton and Robert of Leicester, who compiled his De compoto Hebraeorum aptato ad kalendarium in 1294, dedicating it to Bishop Richard Swinfield; he also compiled a De compoto Hebraeorum and De ratione temporum; the third of these was completed in 1295. Details of the incipits of their writings were recorded.115 John Speed, md (1552–1629), the cartographer and historian, extracted valuable information on the Greyfriars of Southampton from a domestic chronicle that was then conserved in the town’s Audit House. In 1253 Isabella Checkehull, the principalis fundatrix of the convent, gave the friary a plot of land. The foundation stone of the friary was laid on 8 July 1280 and friars took possession of their new church on 4 October

110

111 112 113 114 115

The Cartulary of the Hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge, ed. Malcolm Underwood, Cambridge Records Society [formerly Cambridge Antiquarian Society] 18 (Cambridge, 2008), 20, no. 31. Harry W. Gidden (ed.), The Book of Remembrance of Southampton, Southampton Record Society, 2 vols (Southampton, 1927, 1928), vol. 2, 14–16. Leland, De viris illustribus, 480–481, no. 269. Leland, De viris illustribus, 452–453, 458–459, 632–633, nn. 248, 254, 423. The Friars’ Libraries, ed. Kenneth W. Humphreys, cbmlc 1 (London, 1990), 209–240. John Bales’s Index of British and Other Writers, ed. Reginal L. Poole and Mary Bateson with an introduction by Caroline Brett and James P. Carley, Anecdota Oxoniensia Classical Series 9 (Oxford, 1902; repr. Woodbridge, 1990), 8, 342–343, 367, 384.

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1287. The year 1291 saw the completion of a new dormitory and chapter house and the commencement of work on a new aqueduct. Several altars in the friars’ church were dedicated in 1311 and the cemetery was consecrated in 1382. The obituaries observed by the friars gave details of particular benefactions, while the chronicle provided information on the French attack on Southampton in October 1336.116 The visible remains of the friaries that once graced virtually every diocese of England and Wales are relatively few. The Greyfriars of London became a parish church at the Dissolution of the friaries, but perished in the great fire on 2 September 1666. The fifteenth-century choir stalls in the parish church of Sts Mary and Nicholas at Beaumaris, Anglesey, were probably taken from the nearby friary of Llanfaes.117 Fragments of buildings survive at Canterbury, Chichester, Coventry, Dunwich, Gloucester, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Lynn, Reading, Shrewsbury, Stamford, Walsingham, Ware, Winchelsea and (Great) Yarmouth.118 The church tower of the Greyfriars in Richmond, Yorkshire, serenely overlooks the centre of the medieval town and gives its name to an adjacent supermarket. Vestiges of the friary at Northampton survive in the coach station which is known as Greyfriars. The order’s name survives in medieval streets and lanes, such as Fryrys Lane in Bury St Edmunds,119 and Friars Gate and Friars Hill in Exeter.120 Archaeological evidence constitutes another layer of witness to the topography of the friaries, their churches and those interred therein.121 This is exemplified by the reports on the excavations at the Greyfriars of Cambridge,122 Car116

117

118

119 120 121

122

The History and Antiquity of Southampton with Some Conjectures concerning the Roman Clausentum by John Speed, M.D., Written about the Year 1770, ed. Elinor R. Aubrey, Southampton Record Society (Southampton, 1909), 132–138. Cf. Matthew H. Bloxam, ‘Some account of the Friary of Llanvaes, near Beaumaris, and of the tomb of the Princess Joan, daughter of King John, and wife of Llewelyn, prince of North Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 4th series, 6 (1875), 137–144. Cf. Deirdre O’Sullivan, In the Company of the Preachers: The Archaeology of Medieval Friaries in England and Wales, Leicester Archaeology Monographs 23 (Leicester, 2013), 91, 112, 124, 139, 150, 190, 211, 229, 293, 297, 313, 316, 322, 330, 331, 340, 354. Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, vol. 3, esp. 292. Andrew G. Little and Ruth C. Easterling, The Franciscans and Dominicans of Exeter, History of Exeter Research Group, monograph 3 (Exeter, 1927), 18. Lawrence Butler, ‘The houses of the mendicant orders in Britain: recent archaeological work’, in Archaeological Papers from York presented to M.W. Barley, ed. P.V. Addyman and V.E. Black (York, 1984), 123–136. Peter Salway, ‘Sidney before College’, in Sidney Sussex College Cambridge: Historical Essays in Commemoration of the Quatercentenary, ed. Derek E.D. Beales and Hugh B. Nisbet

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marthen,123 Hartlepool,124 Lewes,125 Lincoln,126 Northampton,127 Norwich,128 and Oxford.129 Interest in the burial place of the last English king to die on the battlefield has been galvanized by the Richard iii Society; in September 2012 the remains of the last Plantagenet monarch were removed from the choir of the friars’ church in Leicester, which was under the car park of the City Council. Fragments of tiles and glass from the church have also been retrieved. Significant amounts of fourteenth-century glass were excavated from Cloister Court at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1958. Two fragments are displayed in the entrance to the College chapel, thanks to the generosity of Dr Oliver Bulman, a Fellow of the College (1944–1974). Further deposits of late fourteenth-century glass were recovered during an excavation of the master’s garden in 2014. The seals used by the order’s officials and various convents provide another physical link with the friars and their cosmos.130

123 124 125 126

127 128 129

130

(Woodbridge, 1996), 3–34; Kenneth R. Dark, ‘Archaeological survey at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1984’, Proceedings of The Cambridge Antiquarian Society 74 (1985, 1987), 81–84. Terence James, ‘Excavations at Carmarthen Greyfriars, 1983–1990’, Medieval Archaeology 41 (1997), 100–194. R. Daniels, ‘The excavation of the church of the Franciscans, Hartlepool, Cleveland’, Archaeological Journal 143 (1986), 260–304. Mark Gardiner, Miles Russell and David Gregory, ‘Excavations at Lewes Friary 1985–1986 and 1988–1989’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 134 (1996), 71–123. D.A. Stocker, ‘The remains of the Franciscan friary in Lincoln: a reassessment’, in Archaeological Papers from York presented to M.W. Barley, ed. Addyman and Black, 137–144. John Wilford, ‘Lincoln Greyfriars: retrospect and prospect’, Lincoln Archaeology 6 (1993–1994), 38–40. John H. Williams et al., ‘Excavations at Greyfriars, Northampton 1972’, in Northamptonshire Archaeology 13 (1978), 96–160. Philip A. Emery et al., Norwich Greyfriars: Preconquest Town and Medieval Friary, East Anglian Archaeology, Report 120 (Dereham, 2007). T.G. Hassall, G.E. Halpin and M. Mellor, ‘Excavations in St. Ebbe’s, Oxford, 1967–1976: Part i: Late Saxon and Medieval Domestic Occupation and Tenements, and the Medieval Greyfriars’, Oxoniensia 54 (1989), 71–277. E.g., H.S. Kingsford, ‘The seals of the Franciscans’, in Franciscan History and Legend in English Medieval Art, 81–100.

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Conclusion

The 110 years from approximately 1240 witnessed the heyday of the friars in England. Recruitment continued, albeit at a slower rate. Episcopal registers name a legion of friars from different houses licensed to preach and hear confessions, giving insights into the ways in which friars worked closely with bishops. The order’s schools were in good health, as the stream of friars appointed to study and lecture at Oxford and Cambridge Universities confirms. Polemics between the secular masters and the friars, begun in the 1250s, flared up intermittently at diverse stages during the course of the next century. At diverse points in that century there were debates and sharp exchanges between the followers of St Francis and different neighbours, be they monks or fellow mendicants. The friars’ influence has been detected in the writings of English mystic such as Richard Rolle of Hampole (†1349). Despite such tensions, the order enjoyed the support of many of their neighbours, including prelates and the secular clergy, who profited from devotional and scholastic texts written by friars, sought their sacramental ministrations and committed themselves to their suffrages in death.

A Select Bibliography of the English Province Primary Sources Adam de Wodeham, Tractatus de indivisibilibus, with introduction, translation and textual notes by Rega Wood, Synthese historical library 31, Dordrecht, Boston, c. 1988. Adam Wodeham, Lectura secunda in librum primum Sententiarum, ed. Rega Wood and assisted by Gedeon Gál, 3 vols. The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, ny, 1990. Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae de lapsu angelorum ac protoparentum, ed. H. Mateusz Wierzbicki, bfsma 31, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2015. Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae de peccato originali, ed. H. Mateusz Wierzbicki, bfsma 30, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2013. Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae de peccato veniali et de conscientia, ed. H. Mateusz Wierzbicki, bfsma 32, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2016. Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae quae ad rerum universitatem pertinent, ed. H. Mateusz Wierzbicki, bfsma 29, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2013. Alexandri de Hales, Questiones disputatae de gratia: un contributo alla Teologia della Grazia nella prima metà del sec. 13, ed. Jacek Mateusz Wierzbicki, Antoniaum, Rome, 2008. An Anglo-Norman Gospel Poem by Nicholas Bozon, ed. M.A. Kleanke, Studies in Philology 48 (1951), 250–266. The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clynn, ed. Bernadette Williams, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2007. The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334: From the Brotherton Collection ms 29, ed. Wendy R. Childs and John Taylor, yas, rs 147, University of Leeds, Leeds, 1991. Bartholomaeus Anglicus on the Properties of Soul and Body: De proprietatibus rerum librii iii and iv, ed. R.J. Long, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, Toronto, 1979. Benson, Joshua C., ‘Fons sapientiae verbum Dei in excelsis: John Pecham’s Inaugural Sermon?’, cf 81 (2011), 451–478. Bettelorden und Weltgeistlichkeit an der Universität Paris: Texte und Untersuchungen zum literarischen armuts-und exemtionsstreit des 13. Jahrhunderts (1255–1272), ed. Max Bierbaum, Franziskanische Studien, Münster, 1920, 37–168. Bourdillon, A.F. Claudine, The Order of Minoresses in England, bsfs 12, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1926. Bozon, Nicholas, Les contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon, frère mineur, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith and Paul Meyer, Firmin Didot, Paris, 1889. Bozon, Nicholas, Nine Verse Sermons by Nicholas Bozon: The Art of an Anglo-Norman Poet and Preacher, ed. Brian J. Levy, Medium Aevum Monographs, New Series 11, Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, Oxford, 1981.

472

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Bozon, Nicole, Plaintes de la Vierge en anglo-français (xiiie et xive siècles), ed. Frédéric J. Tanquerey, E. Champion, Paris, 1921. Bozon, Nicole, Les proverbes de bon enseignement, ed. Anders C.R. Thorn, Lund universitets årsskrift, Lund, 1921. Bozon, Nicholas, Six Saints’ Lives by Nicholas Bozon as Found in Cotton Domitian a xi, Radcliffe University, 1943. Bozon, Nicholas, Three Saints’ Lives, ed. M. Amelia Klenke, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, ny, 1947. Bullarium Franciscanum, ed. John H. Sbaraleae and Konrad Eubel, 7 vols. Rome, 1758– 1904. Bullarium Franciscanum, nova series, ed. Ulricus Hüntemann and Cesare Cenci, 4 vols. Rome, 1920–1990. Canterbury College Oxford, ed. William A. Pantin, 4 vols. ohs, 2nd Series, 6–8, 30, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1947–1985. Catto, Jeremy I. and Linne R. Mooney, ‘The Chronicle of John Somer, ofm’, in Chronology, Conquest and Conflict in Medieval England, cs, Miscellany, 34, 5th Series, 10, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, 197–285. ‘Cher alme’: Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety, ed. Tony Hunt, tr. Jane Bliss, with an introduction by Henrietta Leyser, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 385, Tempe, Arizona, 2010, 71–125. Chronicon de Lanercost m.cc.i.–m.ccc.xlvi, ed. Joseph Stevenson, The Maitland Club, Edinburgh, 1839. Constitutiones Generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, i (Saeculum xiii), ed. Cesare Cenci and Ramon G. Mailleux, af, xiii, nova series, documenta et studia 1, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2007. Constitutiones Generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, ii (Saeculum xiv/1), ed. Cesare Cenci and Ramon Mailleux, af, 17, nova series, documenta et studia 5, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2010. D’Angelo, Benito, ‘English Franciscan Poetry before Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)’, fs 43 (1983), 218–260. Declarationes magistri Guilelmi de la Mare de variis sententiis S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Franz Pelster, Opuscula et textus historiam ecclesiae eiusque vitam atque doctrinam illustrantia, Series scholastic 21, Aschendorff, 1956. Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica iussu et auctoritate Rmi P. Bernardini Klumper, studio et cura Pp. Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad fidem codicum edita, ed. Victorin Doucet et al., 5 vols. Quaracchi, Florence, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1924–1979. Doctoris subtilis et mariani B. Ioannis Duns Scoti … opera omnia / studio et cura commissionis Scotisticae ad fidem codicum edita, praeside Carolo Balić, Civitas Vaticana, Rome, 1950–.

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Douie, Decima L., ‘Three Treatises on Evangelical Poverty by Fr. Richard Conyngton, Fr. Walter Chatton and an anonymous from ms.v iii 18 in Bishop Cosin’s Library, Durham’, afh 24 (1931), 341–369 and 25 (1932), 36–58, 210–240. Doyle, Eric, ‘A Bibliographical List by William Woodford, o.f.m.’, fs 35 (1975), 93–106. Doyle, Eric, ‘William Woodford, o.f.m.: His Life and Works together with a Study and Edition of His “Responsiones contra Wiclevum et Lollardos”’, fs 43 (1983), 17– 187. Etchemendy, Matthew and Rega Wood, ‘Speculum animae: Richard Rufus on Perception and Cognition. Speculum Animae: Critical Edition’, fs 69 (2011), 53–140. Etzkorn, Girard J. ‘Franciscan Quodlibeta 1270–1285: John Pecham, Matthew of Aquasparta, and Roger Marston’, in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, ed. Christopher D. Schabel, 2 vols. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 1 and 7, Brill, Leiden, 2006–2007, vol. 1, 137–149. Etzkorn, Girard J., ‘Ockham at a Provincial Chapter: 1323: A Prelude to Avignon’, afh 83 (1990), 557–567. Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. Seigfried Wenzel, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989. Fiorentino, Francesco, ‘ms. Merton 284 tra Scoto ed Ockham’, fs 73 (2015), 81–145. Flood, David, ‘John of Wales’s Commentary on the Franciscan Rule’, fs 60 (2002), 93–138. Fratris Thomae vulgo dicti de Eccleston Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. Andrew G. Little, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1951. Fr. Guillelmi Alnwick Quaestiones disputatae de esse intelligibili et de Quodlibet, ed. Athanasius Ledoux, bfsma 10, Quaracchi, Florence, 1937. Fr. Guillelmi Guarrae, Fr. Ioannis Duns Scoti, Fr. Petri Aureoli Quaestiones disputatae de Immaculata Conceptione b.m.v., bfsma 3, Quaracchi, Florence, 1904. The Friars’ Libraries, ed. Kenneth W. Humphreys, cbmlc 1, The British Academy, London, 1990. Fr. Ioannis Pecham Quodlibeta quatuor. Quodlibeta i–iii, ed. Girard J. Etzkorn, Quodlibet iv (Romanum), ed. Ferdinand Delorme and revised Girard J. Etzkorn, bfsma 25, Grottaferrata, 1989. Fr. Rogeri Bacon opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. John S. Brewer, rs 15, London, 1859. Fr. Rogeri Marston Quodlibeta quatuor, ed. Girard J. Etzkorn and Ignatius C. Brady, 2nd edn, bfsma 26, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1994. Gieben, S. (Servus of Sint Anthonis), ‘Preaching in the Thirteenth Century: A Note on ms. Gonville and Caius 439’, cf 32 (1962), 310–324. Gieben, Servus, ‘Robert Grosseteste at the Papal Curia, Lyons 1250: Edition of the Documents’, cf 41 (1971), 340–393. Gransden, Antonia, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Chronicle from the Grey Friars at Lynn’, ehr 72 (1957), 270–278.

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Guilelmi de Nottingham o.f.m. (†1336) Quaestiones sex de Eucharistiae sacramento, ed. J.Barbarić, Pontificia Universitas Lateranensis, Rome, 1976. Guillelmi de Ockham opera philosophica et theologica, ed. Gedeon Gál, Stephen Brown et al., 10 vols. The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, ny, 1967–1986. Guillelmus de la Mare, Quaestiones in tertium et quartum librum Sententiarum, ed. Hans Kraml, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausagabe ungedruckter Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt 22, Munich, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001. Guillelmus de la Mare, Scriptum in primum librum, Sententiarum, ed. Hans Kraml, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausagabe ungedruckter Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt 15, Munich, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1989. Guillelmus de la Mare, Scriptum in secundum Sententiarum, ed. Hans Kraml, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausagabe ungedruckter Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt 18, Munich, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften1995. Hammerich, L.L., ‘The Beginning of the Strife between Richard FitzRalph and the Mendicants, with an Edition of His Autobiographical Prayer and his Proposition Unusquisque’, in Det. Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-filologiske Meddelelser, 26, iii, Copenhagen, Københaun: Levin & Munksgaard, 1938. Hill, Betty, ‘The “Luue-Ron” and Thomas de Hales’, The Modern Language Review 59 (1964), 321–330. Horowski, Aleksander, ‘Il manoscritto Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 292 e Le Questioni disputate postquam Fuit Frater di Akessandro di Hales’, cf 82 (2012), 485–516. Horowski, Aleksander, ‘Questione “De quolibet iii” di Alessandro di Hales’, cf 82 (2012), 23–56. Horowski, Aleksander, ‘Questione “De quolibet iv” di Alessandro di Hales’, cf 81 (2011), 31–70. Horowski, Aleksander, ‘Questione disputata “De locis animarum exutarum a corpore” di Alessandro di Hales’, afh 104 (2011), 387–411. Hughes, B., ‘De Numeris Misticis by John Pecham: A Critical Edition’, afh 78 (1985), 3–28, 333–383. Ioannis Pecham Quaestiones Disputatae, ed. Girard J. Etzkorn, Jerome Spettmann and Livario Oliger, bfsma 28, Grottaferrata, Rome, 2002. Jean de Reading, Scriptum in primum librum Sententiarum, ed. Francesco Fiorentino, Libraire philosophique J. Vrin, Paris, 2011. Jeffrey, David L., The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1975. John Duns Scotus: Four Questions on Mary, tr. and intro. by Allan B. Wolter, Santa Barbara, ca, Desktop Publications by Old Mission, 1988.

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John Duns Scotus, The Examined Report of the Paris Lecture: Reportatio i-a, ed. Allan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, ny, 2004. John Duns Scotus, The Report of the Paris Lecture Reportatio iv-a, vol. 1: Parts 1 and 2, ed. Oleg V. Bychkov and R. Trent Pomplun, The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, ny, 2016. John Pecham, ‘Expositio super regulam Fratrum Minorum’, in Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, 10 vols. Quaracchi, Florence, 1882–1902, vol. 8, 391–437. Kingsford, Charles L., ‘Defensio Fratrum Mendicantium’, in Fratris Johannis Pecham quondam archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Tractatus tres de Paupertate, ed. C.L. Kingsford, Andrew G. Little and Felice Tocco, bsfs 2, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1910, 148–198. Kingsford, Charles L., The Grey Friars of London: Their History with the Register of their Convent and an Appendix of documents, bsfs, 6, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1915. The Latin Poems of Richard Ledrede, o.f.m., Bishop of Ossory, 1317–1360, ed. Edmund Colledge, pims, Studies and Texts 30, Toronto, 1974. Legge, M. Dominica, ‘The Anglo-Norman Sermon of Thomas of Hales’, Modern Language Review 30 (1935), 212–218. The Letters of Adam Marsh, ed. C. Hugh Lawrence, 2 vols. omt, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, 2010. Liber exemplorum ad usum praedicantium, saeculo xiii compositus a quodam fratre minore anglico de provincia Hiberniae, ed. Andrew G. Little, bsfs 1, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, 1908. Little, Andrew G., Franciscan Papers, Lists and Documents, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1943. Little, Andrew G., Grey Friars in Oxford, ohs 20, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1892. Little, Andrew G., ‘Records of the Franciscan Province of England’, in Collectanea Franciscana, vol. 1, ed. A.G. Little, Montague R. James and Henry M. Bannister, bsfs 5, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen 1914, 141–153. Little, Andrew G., ‘Two Sermons of Fr. Raymond Gaufredi, Minister General, Preached at Oxford in 1291’, cf 4 (1934), 161–174. Little, Andrew G. and Francis Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians c. a.d.1282–1302, ohs 96, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1934. Longpré, Ephrem, ‘Fr. Thomas d’York, o.f.m. La première Somme métaphysique du xiiie siècle’, afh 19 (1926), 875–930. Magistri Alexandri de Hales Glossa in quatuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi: studio et cura pp. Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad fidem codicum edita, 4 vols. bfsma 12–15, Quaracchi, Florence, 1951–1957.

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Magistri Alexandri de Hales Quaestiones disputatae ‘antequam esset frater’ nunc primum editae studio et cura pp. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, ed. Victorin Doucet, 3 vols. bfsma 19–21, Quaracchi, Florence, 1960. Magistri Guillelmi de Militona Quaestiones de Sacramentis, ed. Celestin Piana and Gedeon Gál, bfsma 22–23, Quaracchi, Florence, 1961. Mokry, Robert J., ‘An Edition and Study of Henry Wodeston’s ‘Summa de Sacramentis’: A Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Pastoral Manual’, PhD thesis, University of London, Heythrop College, 1998. Mokry, Robert J. ‘The “Summa de sacramentis” of Henry Wodestone, O. Min: A Critical Edition’, afh 94 (2001), 3–84. Moorman, John R.H., The Grey Friars of Cambridge 1225–1538, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1952. Moule, Arthur C., ‘Textus duarum epistolarum Fr. Minorum Tartariae Aquilonaris an. 1323’, afh 16 (1923), 104–112. Nicolai de Ockham Quaestiones disputatae de dilectione Dei, ed. Caesar Saco Alarcón, sb 21, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1981. Nicolai de Ockham Quaestiones disputatae de traductione humanae naturae a primo parente, ed. Caesar Saco Alarcón, sb 27, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1993. Oliger, Livario, ‘Liber exemplorum Fratrum Minorum saeculi xiii (excerpta e cod. Ottob.Lat.522’), Antonianum 2 (1927), 203–276. Oliger, Livario, ‘De procuratorum Fratrum Minorum institutione in Anglia documenta duo (1280–1283)’, afh 7 (1914), 549–551. Philomena: A Poem by John Peckham: The Latin Text with an English Version by William Dobell, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, London, 1924. Pica, Francesco G., ‘La teologia come scienza pratica in Guglielmo di Nottingham. Edizione della Questio 5 del Prologus in I Sententiarum’, afh 103 (2010), 3–40. The Poems of Walter of Wimborne, ed. D. Rigg, pims, Studies and Texts 42, Toronto, 1978. Questions concerning the Eternity of the World by John Pecham, tr. Vincent G. Potter, Fordham University Press, New York, 1993. The Register of John Pecham Archbishop of Canterbury 1279–1292, ed. Francis N. Davis and Decima L. Douie, 2 vols. cys 64, 65, Devonshire Press, Torquay, 1968–1969. The Register of William de Geynesburgh, Bishop of Worcester, 1302–1307, ed. John W. Willis Bund, with an introduction by R.A. Wilson, Worcestershire Historical Society 22, Oxford University Press, Oxford and London, 1907–1929. Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, ed. Roger A.B. Mynors, Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, cbmlc 2, The British Academy, London, 1991. Registrum epistolarum fratris Johannis Peckham archiepiscicopi Cantuariensis, ed. Charles T. Martin, 3 vols. rs 77, London, 1882–1885. Reilly, James P., Jr, ‘A Sermon of Thomas of York on the Passion’, fs 24 (1964), 205–222.

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Richard Rufus of Cornwall In Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione, ed. Neil Lewis and Rega Wood, abma 21, The British Academy, Oxford, 2011. Richard Rufus of Cornwall In Physicam Aristotelis, ed. Rega Wood, abma 16, The British Academy, Oxford, 2003. Robert Grosseteste De cessatione legalium, ed. Richard C. Dales and Edward B. King, abma 7, The British Academy, London, 1986. Roberti Grosseteste episcopi quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae, ed. Henry Luard, rs 25, London, 1861. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘A Franciscan Contribution to the De gestis Britonum (1205–1279) and Its Continuation to 1299’, afh 107 (2014), 265–313. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Franciscan Lectors at Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, 1275–1314’, Archaeologia Cantiana (Kent Archaeological Society) 112 (1993), 261– 281. Robson, Michael J.P. and Patrick N.R. Zutshi, ‘An Early Manuscript of the Admonitions of St Francis of Assisi’, jeh 62 (2011), 217–254. Roger Bacon: Compendium of the Study of Theology, ed. Thomas S. Maloney, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 20, Brill, Leiden, 1988. Rogeri Marston Quaestiones disputatae: De emanatione aeterna, De statu naturae lapsae, et De anima, editae a pp. Collegii s. Bonaventurae, bfsma 7, Quaracchi, Florence, 1932. Rosemann, Philipp W. (ed.), ‘Tabula magistri Roberti Lincolniensis episcopi cum additione fratris Adae de Marisco’, in Opera Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis, ed. James McEvoy, cccm 130, Brepols, Turnhout, 1995, 235–320. Seton, Walter, ‘De vita beati Francisci: A Worcester Text of ii Celano’, afh 18 (1925), 189– 210. Seton, Walter, ‘An Unusual Manuscript Version of the Testamentum Sancti Francisci’, afh 20 (1927), 33–40. Seven More Poems by Nicholas Bozon, ed. M.A. Klenke, Franciscan Institute Publications, 2, New York, 1951. The Song of Lewes, ed. Charles L. Kingsford, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1890. Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Ordinals by Haymo of Faversham and Related Documents (1243–1307), ed. Stephen J.P. van Dijk, 2 vols. Studia et documenta Franciscana, Brill, Leiden, 1963. Le speculum laicorum: Edition d’une collection d’exempla, composée en Angletrre à la fin du xiii siècle, ed. J.Th. Welter, Paris, 1914. Stimulus amoris Fr. Iacobi Mediolanensis. Canticum pauperis Ioannis Pecham, 2nd edn, bfama 4, Quaracchi, Florence, 1949. Summae theologiae partis i quaestiones 75–77: de essentia et potentiis animae in generali, D. Thomae Aquinatis; una cum Guilelmi de La Mare Correctorii articulo 28, ed. Bernard Geyer, Florilegium patristicum 14, P. Hanstein, Bonn, 1920.

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La Tabula Exemplorum secundum ordinem alphabeti: Recueil d’exempla compilé en France à la fin du xiiie siècle, ed. J.Th. Welter, Thesaurus exemplorum 3, E.-H. Guitard, Paris, 1926. Teologia come ‘scienza pratica’ secondo Giovanni di Reading: studio e testo critico, ed. Josip Percan, sb 26, Grottaferrata, Rome, 1986. Theissing, Hermann, Glaube und Theologi bei Robert Cowton, ofm, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelaltaers, 42/3, Münster Westfalen: Aschendorf, 1970. Walmsley, Conrad, ‘Robert of Leicester’s Treatise on Evangelical Poverty’, cf 30 (1960), 78–100 and 176–207. Walter Chatton, Lectura super Sententias, Liber i, Distinctiones 1–17, ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard J. Etzkorn, 3 vols. pims, Studies and Texts 156, 158, 164, Toronto, c. 2007. Walter Chatton, Reportatio et Lectura super Sententias: Collatio ad Librum Primum et Prologus, ed. Joseph C. Wey, pims, Studies and Texts 90, Toronto, 1989. Walter Chatton, Reportatio super Sententias, ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard Etzkorn, 4 vols. pims, Studies and Texts 141, 142, 148, 149, Toronto, 2002–2005. William of Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, ed. Arthur S. McGrade and J. Kilcullen, tr. J. Kilcullen, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995. William of Ockham Opera Politica, iv, ed. H.S. Offler, abma 14, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997. The Works of William Herebert, ofm, ed. Stephen R. Reimer, pims, Studies and Texts 81, Toronto, 1987.

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Johnstone, H., ‘The Chapel of St. Louis, Greyfriars, London’, ehr 56 (1941), 447–450. Kehnel, Annette, ‘The Narrative Tradition of the Medieval Franciscan Friars on the British Isles: Introduction to the Sources’, fs 63 (2005), 461–530. Kidd, Peter, ‘A Franciscan Bible Illuminated in the Style of William de Brailes’, eBritish Library Journal 2007, article 8, http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2007articles/article8.html, accessed 31 December 2015. Kraml, Hans, ‘The Quodlibet of William de la Mare’, in Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, ed. Chistopher D. Schabel, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 1 and 7, Brill, Leiden, 2006–2007, vol. 1, 151–170. Lawrence, C. Hugh, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movements on Western Society, Longmans, London-New York, 1994. Lawrence, C. Hugh, ‘The Letters of Adam Marsh and the Franciscan School at Oxford’, jeh 42 (1991), 218–238. Levy, Ian C., ‘Wycliffites, Franciscan Poverty, and the Apocalypse’, fs 73 (2015), 295–316. Light, Laura, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy: Bibles with Missals’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Library, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, Brill, Leiden, 2013, 185–215. Little, Andrew G., ‘Aumônes faites par Édouard Ier aux Frères Mendiants en Guyenne et dans d’autres parties de la France en 1289’, Revue d’Histoire Franciscaine 2 (1925), 178–185. Little, Andrew G., ‘The Authorship of the Lanercost Chronicle’, ehr 31 (1916), 269–279 and 32 (1917), 28–29. Little, Andrew G., ‘Brother William of England’, ehr 35 (1920), 402–405. Little, Andrew G., Brother William of England, Companion of St. Francis, and Some Franciscan Drawings in the Matthew Paris Manuscripts, in Collectanea Franciscana, vol. 1, ed. Andrew G. Little, M.R. James and H.M. Bannister, bsfs 5, Aberdeen University Library, Aberdeen, 1914, 1–8. Little, Andrew G., Chronicles of the Mendicant Friars, in Franciscan Essays, vol. 2, ed. Francis C. Burkitt, H.E. Goad and A.G. Little, bsfs, extra series, 3, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1932, 85–103. Little, Andrew G., ‘Educational Organisation of the Mendicant Friars in England (Dominicans and Franciscans)’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series 8 (1894), 49–70. Little, Andrew G., ‘The Franciscan Friary at Romney’, Archaeologia Cantiana 50 (1939), 151–152. Little, Andrew G., ‘Franciscan Letters of Fraternity’, The Bodleian Library Record 5 (1954– 1956), 13–25. Little, Andrew G., ‘The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century’, afh 19 (1926), 803–874. Little, Andrew G., ‘The Franciscans and the Statute of Mortmain’, ehr 49 (1934), 673–676.

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O’Sullivan, Deirdre, In the Company of the Preachers: The Archaeology of Medieval Friaries in England and Wales, Leicester Archaeology Monographs 23, University of Leicester, Leicester, 2013. Offler, H.S., ‘A Note of the Northern Franciscan Chronicle’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 28 (1984), 45–59. Owst, Gerald R., ‘Some Franciscan Memorials at Gray’s Inn’, Dublin Review 176 (1925), 276–284. Panti, Cecilia, ‘Fisica e metafisica della luce nella cultura francescana delle origini’, in Il rosone della Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi, ed. Laura Lametti, Valeriana Mazzasette and Nicoletta Nardelli, Gangemi Editore, Rome, 2012, 99–110. Panti, Cecilia, ‘Necessaria sunt ei latera quae sapiant iura regni et iura Dei: Il ruolo dei francescani nell’ episcopato di Roberto Grossetesta’, in I francescani e la politca (secc. xiii–xvii). Atti del convegno internazionale Palermo 3–7 dicembre 2002, ed. Alessandro Musco, Officina di Studi medievali, Palermo, 2007, 755–769. Panti, Cecilia, ‘Robert Grosseteste and Adam of Exeter’s Physics of Light: Some Remarks on Transmission, Authenticity and Chronology of Grosseteste’s Scientific Opuscula’, in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu: New Editions and Studies, ed. John Flood, James R. Ginther and Joseph Goering, pims, Papers in Medieval Studies 24, Toronto, 2013, 165–190. Panti, Cecilia, ‘Scienza e teologia agli esordi della scuola dei Minori di Oxford: Roberto Grossatesta, Adamo Marsh e Adamo di Exeter’, in I Francescani e le scienze, Società internazionale di studi Francescani, Centro interuniversitario di studi Francescani, Atti del xxxix Convegno internazionale Assisi, 6–8 October 2011, Spoleto, 2012, 310– 350. Parkes, Malcolm B., ‘The Provision of Books’, in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. Jeremy I. Catto and T. Ralph Evans, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, 407–483. Pere Tomàs [Petrus Thomae], Tractatus brevis de modis distinctionum, ed. Celia López Alcalde, Josep Batalla, Claus A. Andersen and Robert D. Hughes, Santa Coloma de Queralt, Obrador Edèndum: uab: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2011. Power, Amanda, ‘A Mirror for Every Age: The Reputation of Roger Bacon’, ehr 121 (2006), 657–692. Power, Amanda, ‘The Problem of Obedience among the English Friars’, in Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life, ed. Mirko Breitenstein et al., Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2014, 129–167. Power, Amanda, Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series 84, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013. Principe, Walter H., The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century, vol. 2: Alexander of Hales’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union, pims, Studies and Texts 12, Toronto, 1967.

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Raedts, Peter, Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology, Oxford Historical Monographs, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987. Ready, Kathryn J., ‘The Marian Lyrics of Jacopone da Todi and Friar William Herebert: The Life and the Letter’, fs 55 (1998), 221–238. Retucci, Fiorella, ‘Nuovi percorsi del platonismo medievale: i commentari bizantini all’Etica Nicomachea nel Sapientiale di Tommaso di York’, Documenti e Studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 24 (2013), 85–120. Retucci, Fiorella, ‘The Sapientiale of Thomas of York, ofm: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Critical Edition’, Bullettin de Philosophie Médiévale 52 (2010), 133–155. Robbins, Rossell H., ‘The Earliest Carols and the Franciscans’, Modern Language Notes 53 (1938), 239–245. Robbins, Rossell H., ‘Father Herebert and the Carol’, Anglia 75 (1957), 194–198. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Francis and the Friars Minor in the Monastic Chronicles of Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris (1217–1259)’, in Francesco e i minori nello specchio dell’ Europa, ed. E. Menestò, ns. 25, Società internazionale di studi francescani centro interuniversitario di studi francescani, Atti del 42 Convegno internazionale, Assisi, 17–19 October 2014, Spoleto, 2015, 81–119. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Franciscan Bachelors and Masters of Theology in the Custody of York (1250–1350)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 111 (2016), 5–33. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘The Franciscan Custody of York in the Thirteenth Century’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain, Proceedings of the 2007 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nicholas Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 19, Shaun Dyas, Donington, 2010, 1–24. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘The Franciscans’ Ministry in England (1240–1299)’, Frate Francesco, rivista di cultura francescana, nuova serie, 77 (2011), 301–325. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘The Greyfriars’ Itinerant Ministry Inside their limitatio: Evidence from the Custody of York, c. 1230–1539’, in Canterbury Studies in Franciscan History, vol. 1, ed. M.J.P. Robson and Jens Röhrkasten, Franciscan International Study Centre, Canterbury, 2008, 9–49. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘The Greyfriars of Lincoln, c. 1230–1330: The Establishment of the Friary and the Friars’ Ministry and Life in the City and Its Environs’, in Franciscan Organisation in the Mendicant Context: Formal and Informal Structures of the Friars’ Lives and Ministry in the Middle Ages, ed. M.J.P. Robson and J. Röhrkasten, Vita Regularis, 44, Lit Verlag, Münster, 2010, 119–137. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Robert Grosseteste and the Greyfriars in the Diocese of Lincoln’, in Robert Grosseteste and the Beginnings of a British Theological Tradition, ed. M. O’Carroll, Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 69, Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, Rome, 2003, 289–317. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Robert Grosseteste: His Memory among the Greyfriars, His Cult in Lincoln Cathedral and the Petition for his Canonisation’, mf 104 (2004), 306– 323.

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Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Robert Grosseteste’s Two Sermons to the Friars Minor in Commendation of Evangelical Poverty’, in Robert Grosseteste and His Intellectual Milieu: New Editions and Studies, ed. John Flood, James R. Ginther and Joseph W. Goering, Papers in Medieval Studies, 24, pims, Toronto, 2013, 102–127. Robson, Michael J.P., ‘Sermons Preached to the Friars Minor in the Thirteenth Century’, in Franciscan Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came About through Words, ed. T. Johnson, The Medieval Franciscans 7, Brill, Leiden, 2012, 273– 296. Roger Bacon: Compendium of the Study of Theology, ed. Thomas S. Maloney, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 20, Brill, Leiden, 1988. Roger Bacon on Signs, tr. Thomas Maloney, pims, Mediaeval Sources in Translation 54, Toronto, 2013. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘The Convents of the Franciscan Province of Anglia and their Role in the Development of English and Welsh Towns in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome—Moyen Âge 124 (2012), 207–220. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘The Creation and Early History of the Franciscan Custody of Cambridge’, in Canterbury Studies in Franciscan History, vol. 1, ed. Michael Robson and Jens Röhrkasten, Franciscan International Study Centre, Canterbury, 2008, 51–81. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Friars and the Laity in the Franciscan Custody of Cambridge’, in The Friars in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 2007 Harlaxton Conference, ed. Nicholas Rogers, Shaun Tyas, Donington, 2010, 107–124. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Local Ties and International Connections of the London Mendicants’, in Mendicants, Military Orders, and Regionalism in Medieval Europe, ed. Jürgen Sarnowsky, Ashgate, Aldershot, 1999, 145–183. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Londoners and London Mendicants in the Late Middle Ages’, jeh 47 (1996), 446–477. Röhrkasten, Jens, The Mendicant Houses of Medieval London 1221–1539, Vita Regularis 21, Lit Verlag, Münster, 2004. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Mendicants in the Metropolis: The Londoners and the Development of the London Friaries’, in Thirteenth Century England vi, ed. Michael Prestwich, R.H. Britnell and Robin Frame, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 1997, 61–75. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘The Origin and Early Development of the London Mendicant Houses’, in The Church in the Medieval Town, ed. T.R. Slater and Gervase Rosser, Aldershot, 1998, 76–99. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Reality and Symbolic Meaning among the Early Franciscans’, in SelfRepresentation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British Isles in Context, ed. Anne Müller and Karen Stöber, Vita Regularis 40, Lit Verlag, Münster, 2009, 21–41. Röhrkasten, Jens, ‘Secular Uses of the Mendicant Priories of Medieval London’, in The Use and Abuse of Sacred Places in Late Medieval Towns, ed. P. Trio and M. de Smet, Mediaevalia, series 1, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2006, 135–151.

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Salway, Peter, ‘Sidney before College’, in Sidney Sussex College Cambridge: Historical Essays in Commemoration of the Quatercentenary, ed. Derek E.D. Beales and Hugh B. Nisbet, Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 1996, 3–34. Şenocak, Neslihan, ‘In Pursuit of Knowledge: The Franciscan Settlement in England, 1224–1240’, Frate Francesco 71 (2005), 131–148. Sheehan, Maurice W., ‘The Religious Orders 1220–1370’, in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. Jeremy I. Catto, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984, 193–223. Sheehan, Maurice W., ‘St. Francis in the Chronicle of Eccleston’, in Francesco d’Assisi nella storia secoli xiii–xv, 2 vols, ed. Servus Gieben, Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, Rome, 1983, vol. 1, 201–218. Shogimen, Takashi, Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series 69, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. Smalley, Beryl, ‘John Russel, o.f.m.’, rtam 23 (1956), 277–320. Spade, Paul V., The Cambridge Companion to William of Ockham, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999. Spooner, Jane, ‘The Fourteenth-Century Wall-Paintings at Castle Acre and Greyfriars, Great Yarmouth’, in King’s Lynn and the Fens: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology, ed. John McNeill, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 31, Leeds, 2008, 170–185. Stocker, D.A., ‘The Remains of the Franciscan Friary in Lincoln: A Reassessment’, in Archaeological Papers from York Presented to M.W. Barley, ed. P.V. Addyman and V.E. Black, York Archaeological Trust, York, 1984, 137–144. Swanson, Jenny, John of Wales: A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. Thompson, Benjamin, ‘The Academic and Active Vocations in the Medieval Church: Archbishop John Pecham’, in The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Studies in Honour of R.B. Dobson, ed. C.M. Barron and J. Stratford, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 11, Sean Tyas, Donington, 2002, 1–24. Traver, Andrew G., ‘Thomas of York’s Role in the Conflict between Mendicants and Seculars at Paris’, fs 57 (1999), 179–202. Walmsley, Conrad, ‘Two Long Lost Works of William Woodford and Robert of Leicester’, afh 46 (1953), 458–470. Walsh, Katherine, ‘Archbishop FitzRalph and the Friars at the Papal Court in Avignon, 1357–1360’, Traditio 31 (1975), 223–245. Walsh, Katherine, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981. Williams, Arnold, ‘Relations between the Mendicant Friars and the Secular Clergy in

488

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England in the Later Fourteenth Century’, Duquesne Studies Annuale Médiévale 1 (1960), 22–95. Williams, John H. et al., ‘Excavations at Greyfriars, Northampton 1972’, Northamptonshire Archaeology 13 (1978), 96–160. Williams, Thomas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. Williams, Thomas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William of Ockham, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. Wolter, Allan, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1987.

Index Acre 6, 61, 166 Acts 28, 143 Adam of Chadnor 3, 371, 376, 378 Adam of Exeter (Adam Rufus) 6, 15, 17, 188, 256, 450 Ad conditorem 403 Ad fructus uberes 163 Advent 22, 237, 240, 453 Agnellus of Pisa 3, 4, 6, 11, 17, 18, 20, 37, 38, 90, 251, 257, 424, 449 Albert of Pisa 8, 9, 12, 13, 25, 100, 103, 109, 407 Alexander iv 6, 100, 291, 301 Alexander the Great 166, 169, 170, 171 Alexander of Hales 8, 15, 96, 97, 109, 137, 176, 273–293, 295, 208, 308, 314, 462 Alps 450 Amazons 165–174 See also nuns Ambrose 236, 345 Anglo-Norman 20, 188, 190, 192, 234, 257, 264, 454–456 Anselm of Canterbury 120, 317, 325, 326, 329 Anthony of Padua 16, 217–220, 224–226, 228–229, 231–244 anti-fraternalism 46, 47, 82, 445 Aquinas, Thomas, St. 131, 221, 228, 233, 235, 138, 239, 241, 292, 301, 319, 340 Aquitaine 67, 70, 72, 81, 83, 131, 166, 438, 439, 444 archbishops 40 archives 133, 458, 461 Aristotle 170, 209, 210, 235, 249, 254, 273, 279, 280, 295, 298, 300, 301, 303–306 Arnulph 6, 11, 12, 95, 99, 100 Assisi, basilica of San Francesco 405 Assisi, piazza di San Giorgio 88, 448 Assisi, Portiuncula/Santa Maria degli Angeli 448 Assisi, San Damiano 147, 428, 429 Assisi, San Nicolà 448 Augustine of Hippo 4, 23, 24, 115, 298, 303, 304 Augustine of Nottingham 6, 450 Augustinian Canons 24, 179, 214, 451

Austin Friars 214, 219, 464 Avignon 335–338, 381, 383, 386, 391, 393, 398, 400–403, 459 Bacon, Roger 15, 17, 130, 133, 148, 176, 212, 247–249, 265, 266, 268–272, 294–315, 409 Balliol College, Oxford 463 Bannister. John 13, 109, 110 Bartholomew Anglicus 7, 147–174, 464 Bartholomew of Pisa 252 Beatrice, duchess of Brittany 465 Bede 4, 5 Bedford, friary 70 begging 128, 141, 374, 375, 390 Benedict 24 Benedict xi 400 Benedict xii 346–348, 350, 352, 353, 461 Benedictines 5, 27, 57, 58, 214, 136, 358, 369 benefactors 22, 25, 32, 95, 404–412, 420, 421, 423, 427, 432, 444–447, 457, 463, 466 Benjamin the Jewish householder 67 bequests 442, 444, 445 Bernard of Clairvaux 119, 298 Berwick, friary 224 Black Death 412, 458 black monks 24, 57, 463 Binkley, Peter 164 Bodmin, friary 412, 455 Boethius 256, 281–283, 306 Bologna 12, 18, 109, 405, 464 Bonagratia of Bergamo 335, 339, 340 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio 123, 135–137, 143, 163, 180, 188, 202, 203, 275, 290, 291, 294– 296, 300–302, 304, 305, 308, 314, 340, 429, 430, 452, 462 Boniface viii 400, 432, 439, 461 Boniface of Savoy 22, 42, 60 books/manuscripts 22, 23, 124, 135, 149, 150, 156, 176–178, 180–184, 190, 192, 202, 213– 244, 249, 252, 274, 276–278, 281, 290, 291, 304, 337, 384, 385, 389, 451–453, 459, 460, 463, 464 Boston, friary 458 Boyle, Leonard 175, 178–181 Bozon, Nicholas 189, 456

490 breviaries 214, 216, 217, 225 Breviloquium de Virtutibus 111, 181 Bridgewater, friary 69, 371, 460 Bridgnorth, friary 67–70 Bristol, friary 5, 19, 69, 80, 90, 454, 465 Brooke, Rosalind B. 455 Brown, Carleton 190 Bruisyard 427, 434, 435, 442, 443, 445 buccina 162–165 building materials 10, 65, 66, 74 building projects 10, 65, 66, 68, 70, 78, 79, 84, 94, 95, 400, 408 burials 405–414, 417, 420, 421, 423 See also monuments Bury St Edmunds/Babwell, friary 25–27, 57, 67, 73, 74, 79, 216, 228, 451, 463, 468 calendars 214, 215, 217, 219–223, 243 Callus, Daniel 461 Cambridge, friary 67, 68, 79, 436, 437, 457– 459, 466–469 Cambridge University 19, 148, 197, 198, 206, 458, 461, 461–463, 470 Cambridge, Pembroke College 197, 198, 225, 463 canon law 179, 180, 253, 254, 303, 313, 340 canonization 357–379, 430 Canterbury, friary 4, 5, 9, 23, 44, 64, 71, 73, 133, 454, 449, 462, 468 Canticle of Brother Sun 147, 187 Canticum pauperis pro dilecto 134 Cantilupe, Walter 357–379 Cardiff, friary 455 Carlisle, friary 21, 68, 69, 457, 458, 460 Carmarthen, friary 455 Carmelites 214, 219, 358 Castle of Love 264, 265 Channel 4, 19, 23, 449 Chaplains 6, 75, 76, 430, 437, 446 chapters 27, 73, 77, 82, 83, 103, 104, 109, 202, 213 Chester, friary 7, 24, 70, 460 Chichester, friary 22, 68, 69, 73, 216, 457, 468 Chronica Majora 46–62, 451, 452 Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds 26 Chronicon de Lanercost 5, 7, 64 Cicero 302, 303, 305, 345 Cistercians 17, 27, 57, 63, 73, 75

index Clare of Assisi 216, 217, 426–430, 435, 437, 446 Clement iv 148, 297, 300, 303 Clement v 357 Clement vi 380, 383, 385, 394, 400, 401 Clement of London 14 clergy 20–22, 25, 29, 33, 34, 39, 41, 47, 55, 60, 126, 140, 141, 163, 178, 185, 186, 192, 195, 201, 234, 258, 265, 290, 357, 367, 370, 375, 396, 404, 413, 414, 441, 461, 470 Cluniac monks 17, 25, 130, 466 Colchester, friary 67, 68, 70 colour 247, 262–264, 425 Comestor, Peter 50 Commentary on the Franciscan Rule/Declaratio Regulae 112, 127 Commentary on the Rule of the Friars Minor 130–143 Communiloquium 111, 181 Communion 38 confessional handbook 179 confessions 18, 20, 21, 25, 38, 52, 54, 57, 58, 102, 163, 173, 194, 396, 459, 466, 470 conscience 102, 276, 285–287, 344, 368, 400 Contes moralisés 189 convents 65, 67–73, 79, 82, 125, 127, 128, 172, 371, 405, 406, 426, 427, 434, 435, 437, 442–447, 469 Conway, Roger 391, 393, 395, 397, 399, 401– 403, 464, 467 Cornish 455 court, the 29–31, 105–107, 174, 253 Coventry, friary 406, 412–418 Crombie, Alistair 249, 250 Crusades 27, 30, 31, 52, 55, 59, 81, 165–167, 290 Daly, Patrick 357 Delorme, Ferdinand 135 De musica 147–174 Denise de Munchensey 426, 432, 434, 436, 441, 442 Denmark 6 Denney, Minoresses 427, 434, 435, 437, 438, 441, 442, 445, 446 De Pauperie Salvatoris 382–387, 389 De proprietatibus rerum 8, 147–174, 267, 464 Dialogue 337, 340, 341, 347–349 Divine Office 9, 138, 139, 455

index disobedience 199, 211, 342 divine law 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 59, 62, 347 Docking, Thomas 249, 268–272 Dominic, St. 221, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 233, 235, 236, 244, 451, 452 Dominicans (Blackfriars) 10, 15, 17, 21– 23, 25, 26, 47, 53, 56, 57, 62, 65, 74, 77, 70, 103, 104, 134, 136, 137, 140, 147, 160, 171, 175, 179, 180, 184, 191, 214, 219, 221, 226, 238, 358, 384, 397, 405, 440, 457 Doncaster, friary 467 Dorchester, friary 371 Douie, Decima 132, 186 Dover 3, 4, 18, 449 Dundee, friary 450 Dumfries, friary 224, 450 Duns Scotus 176, 249, 288, 216–334, 462, 464, 466 Dunwich, friary 405, 458, 468 education 19, 108, 148, 164, 174, 175, 179, 185, 191, 195, 201, 202, 209, 212, 247, 253, 255, 258, 298, 302, 308, 316, 350, 461, 462 Edward i 68, 69, 76, 77, 79, 80–83, 132, 409, 421, 426, 436, 438–441, 453 Edward ii 57, 80, 160, 231, 422, 436, 439, 441, 444, 457 Edward iii 217, 232, 427, 434, 436, 441, 444, 459 Edward iv 440, 443 Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope 337, 338, 347, 348 Eleanor of Aquitaine 155 Eleanor of Provence 21, 80, 458, 465 Elias of Cortona 7, 10, 13, 40, 87–108 elites 30–32, 35, 44 Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare 438, 443, 446, 459 Elizabeth of Hungary 217, 218, 225, 227, 229, 233, 237, 242, 243 end times 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 59, 62 English society 33, 36, 427, 453–461 episcopal authority 29, 194 Ethelbert 4 Etymologies 115, 150, 159, 162, 166 Eustace of Normanville 15, 38, 254 exempla 3, 8, 17, 19, 112, 170, 171, 173, 182, 189, 264, 312, 456

491 Exeter, friary 23, 468 Exiit qui seminat 136, 143 Expositio super regulam fratrum minorum 19, 35–43 Exposition of the Four Masters on the Rule of the Lesser Brothers 109 fasts 123, 131, 139, 446 Fécamp, monks 23 Felder, Hilarin 248 Field, Sean 427 fires 269, 311, 408, 458, 468 FitzRalph, Richard 380–404, 464, 467 Flood, David 112 floods 49, 259, 310, 407, 458 Fourth Lateran Council 19, 49, 61, 153, 163, 178, 193, 316 France 12, 17, 44, 56, 59, 62, 83, 89, 97, 102, 137, 172, 231, 365, 426, 427, 430, 431, 433, 437–439, 447, 449, 461 Francis of Assisi death 10, 36, 141, 201 stigmata 378, 452 Francis of Marcia 338 Franciscan Christocentrism 317–322 Franciscan life 13, 113, 118, 120, 125–129, 134, 137, 139, 143, 163, 186, 428, 430, 435, 437 Franciscan nuns 67, 68, 71, 426–447 Franciscan poverty 338–340, 346, 350, 352 See also most high poverty poverty Franco, Bradley R. 451–452 Frederick ii 54, 60, 101, 105–107, 437 freedom 322–328 Freppert, Lucan 351 friendship 23, 44, 105, 107, 255, 256, 308, 316, 325, 328, 330–334, 463 fund raising 102 Gainsborough, William 81, 83 Gaufredi, Raymond 83 general chapter, Bologna (1328) 109 general chapter, Genoa (1244, 1251), (1302) 13 general chapters, Lyon (1247), (1272), (1274), (1299), (1325), (1351) 83 general chapter, Metz (1254) 201 general chapters, Montpellier (1287) 12, 109, 137, 274

492 general chapter, Narbonne (1260) 17, 202 general chapters, Padua (1276), (1310) 131, 138 general chapter, Rieti (1289) 87, 94 general chapters, Rome (1239), (1257) 6, 11, 27 general constitutions 13, 454 Gerard of Abbeville 134 Germany 8, 18, 21, 64, 89, 90, 97, 137, 428, 437, 449, 461 Gloucester, friary 9, 10, 16, 27, 68, 69, 71, 77, 92, 236, 371 Goering, Joseph 250 Gospels 28, 143, 274, 448, 453 governance ecclesiastical 28–45, 51 papal 35 secular 28–45, 51 Goffen, Rona 147 Greene, Richard L. 456 Gregory ix 6, 7, 13, 26, 39, 40, 62, 87, 88, 90, 96, 98, 99, 104–107, 123, 128, 141, 143, 163, 192, 195, 196, 435, 453 Gregory x 134 Gregory of Bosellis 13 Gregory of Naples 15, 449 Greek 158, 275, 281, 309 Grimsby, friary 69 Grocheio, Johannes de 158, 160 Grosseteste, Robert 5–7, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 38, 40, 43, 44, 56, 61, 148, 149, 156, 157, 175–178, 185, 186, 189, 192, 212, 247–273, 309, 314, 450, 463, 465 Grundmann, Herbert 32 Haddington, friary 450 Hartlepool, friary 72, 405, 469 Hamilton, Sarah 50, 52 happiness 326, 331, 333 Harkins, Conrad 135, 136 harmonica 155 harmony and sound 155–157 Haymo of Faversham 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 38, 39, 97, 101, 108, 109, 214, 230 Hebrew 309 Henquinet, François-Marie 274 Henry ii 64, 75

index Henry iii 4, 13, 21, 30, 37, 39, 43, 51, 54–56, 60, 62, 64–68, 70, 73–82, 427, 430, 435, 327, 440, 441, 465 Henry of Burford 6, 187, 455 Henry of Kirkstede 463 Henry of Wodestone 180, 184 Herebert, William 162, 190, 191, 454, 456 Hereford Franciscans 358, 361, 366–379 heresy 55, 58, 164, 165, 335–338, 340–343, 348, 349, 391, 400 papal 333, 338, 339, 343–346, 348, 349, 352, 353 heretics 64, 143, 165, 341–344, 400 hermitage 13, 102 Hildegard 53, 55, 58 Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 4 Holy Land 6, 15, 52, 56, 166, 167, 257, 374, 449, 450, 457 Holy Spirit 12, 110, 112–114, 117, 118, 126–128, 158, 159, 262, 281, 288, 293, 299, 300, 390 Holy Trinity 180, 261, 262, 268, 269, 271, 278, 282, 2889, 291, 292 homilies 20, 195, 449, 454 Honorius iii 4, 143, 252 Hubert de Burgh 14, 37 Hugh of Brompton 366, 372–376, 378 Hugh of Hartlepool 405 Hugh of London 359, 360, 362, 363, 455 Hugh of St Victor 278 human dignity 316–318, 324, 326–328, 330, 333, 334 human fulfilment 328–333 humanism 316–334 human nature 45, 283, 289, 292, 293, 316, 317, 320–322, 324, 326, 318, 333, 334 humility 25, 30, 40, 41, 52, 54, 61, 62, 64, 118, 120, 141, 171, 203, 209–211, 256, 257, 263, 313, 368, 381, 407, 427, 429 Humphreys, K.W. 177 Hungary 55, 64, 106, 107, 449 hymnals 214, 217 hymns 158–160, 162, 165, 186, 187, 190, 192, 217, 230, 456 Immaculate Conception 250, 318 Incarnation 250, 261, 264, 276, 285, 287–289, 292, 318, 320–322, 325 Innocent iii 4, 163, 252, 449

index Innocent iv 6, 13, 26, 62, 81, 202, 301, 400, 428–430, 435 Innocent vi 384, 391, 395, 396, 400, 401 Irish province 27, 77, 80, 82, 92 Isabelle of France 172, 426, 429, 431, 436, 437, 439 Isabelle’s Rule 172, 430, 432, 437 Isidore of Seville 115 itinerancy 28, 127 Jacques de Vitry 61, 166, 167 James, Montague 198 Jean de la Rochelle 289, 290 Jeffrey, David 189 John (King) 7, 36, 37 John xxi 131 John xxii 336, 339, 340, 346, 347, 350, 352, 353, 358, 381, 385, 389, 402, 403 John of Clare 78, 362, 363, 368, 377, 455 John of Garland 5 John of Gaunt 442 John of Malvernia 9, 90 John of Murrovalle 131 John Parenti 18, 87, 88, 90 John of Parma 13, 19, 301, 455 John of Peverel 462 John of Reading 16 John of Wales 109–129, 137, 181, 182, 454 John of Yarmouth 6 Jordan of Giano 7, 12, 14, 18, 27, 65, 89–92, 94–98 Kilwardby, Robert 132, 134, 137, 366 Knights Templar 404 Knowles, David M. 5 laity

19, 21, 28, 32, 35, 38–41, 62, 63, 94, 175, 178, 186, 188–189, 192, 195, 201, 414, 424, 460 land grants 65–67 Lanercost Chronicle 79 Langton, Stephen 9, 37, 186 Langton, Simon 22, 37 last days. See end days Lateran iv. See Fourth Lateran Council Later Rule 87, 164 Latin 20, 50, 162, 182, 183, 187–190, 192, 234, 281, 309, 408, 412, 418, 454, 456 law of necessity 123

493 lectors 12, 18, 19, 22, 176, 462 Lee, John S. 466 Leicester, friary 19, 68, 77, 90, 256, 405, 466, 469 Leland, John 406, 410, 467 Lewes, friary 69, 216, 469 Lewis, Suzanne 46 Liber exemplorum 450 libraries Franciscan 177, 252, 461, 463, 464, 467 Lichfield, friary 7, 14, 21, 68, 69, 73, 186, 381, 408, 424, 468 Lidaka, Juris 15 Llanfaes, friary 74, 111, 455, 468 Little, Andrew George 248, 271 Liturgy in Medieval England 215 Lombard, Peter 273–293, 296, 314, 335 London, friary 5, 10, 19, 68, 69, 71–74, 77, 79, 80, 90, 92, 243, 357–366, 368, 369, 372, 373, 377–379, 407, 418–425 London (Aldgate), Minoresses 431, 432, 435, 440, 441, 444 Louis ix 56, 62, 79, 81, 165, 172, 290, 421, 426, 429–431, 439 Luuv Ron 190, 191 Lynn (King’s Lynn), friary 405 Lyons general council of 1245 274, 290 general council of 1274 290 Mackie, Evelyn 188, 189 Magna Carta 12, 51 manual labour 125–127, 142, 382, 389 Margaret of France 80, 421, 439, 458 Marie de St Pol, countess of Pembroke 224, 427, 433, 437, 438, 441, 442, 446, 462 Marsh, Adam 5, 7, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 30, 36, 40, 80, 81, 105, 109, 175, 177, 178, 180, 184, 188, 197, 199, 212, 247–249, 256, 265, 266, 271, 314, 407, 411, 450, 461, 463, 465 Marshal, Richard, earl of Pembroke 39 Marsilius of Padua 345, 350, 386 Martin iv 163, 400, 433, 435 martyrology 411, 412 Mass 12, 14, 25, 16, 57, 76, 118, 173, 200, 218, 357, 424, 440, 448, 458 mathematics 173, 247, 268–270, 308–310 Matthew of Acquasparta 130, 465

494 Matthew Paris 16, 18, 23–26, 46–62, 252, 256, 451–453, 464, 466 McEvoy, James 250, 260, 266 mendicants 21, 34, 45, 47, 54, 57, 60, 64, 65, 74, 77, 79, 131, 134, 163, 177, 179, 294, 301, 302, 304, 384, 387, 395, 447, 461, 470 Meyer, Heinz 149 Michael of Cesena 335, 336, 339, 340 Middle English 183, 188–191, 234, 454, 455 Minoresses 8, 68, 172, 173, 426, 427, 430, 431, 433, 434, 436, 437, 439–447 miracles 259, 311, 357–378, 408, 452 missals 214–217, 226, 242 money 22, 51, 56, 58, 59, 65, 72, 73, 81, 93, 94, 102, 123, 139–142, 363, 364, 421, 445, 464 Mongols 106–108 monuments of the dead 405–425 Moorman, John R.H. 459 morale 7 most high poverty 121–124, 128 See also Franciscan poverty poverty music 147–174 Naples, friary 455 Narbonne, constitutions 17, 123, 128, 208 natural law 48, 50, 51, 60, 62, 352, 353 New Romney, friary 5, 458 Newcastle, friary 68, 72, 73, 240, 426 Nicholas iii 131, 136, 143, 203, 339, 385 Nicholas iv 431 Niger, Ralph 22 Norman Conquest 438 Northampton, friary 16, 17, 64, 65, 68–70, 80, 190, 197, 426, 435, 440, 449, 465, 466, 468, 469 Norwich, friary 23, 177, 180, 440, 462 Nottingham, friary 13, 65, 68, 69, 189, 459 novices 13, 14, 164, 185, 252, 255, 463 nuns 67, 68, 71, 75, 224, 426–447, 466 See also Amazons obedience 30, 39, 51, 52, 54, 61, 118–120, 140, 196, 197, 199, 200, 203, 204, 211, 342, 381, 388, 429 On the Duties of Ministers 345–346 Ordinem vestrum 13, 202 organs and fiddles 157–162 Oxford, friary 5, 9, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 38, 64–73,

index 78, 79, 92, 109–111, 128, 130, 131, 134, 137, 148, 149, 156, 175–177, 180, 185, 236, 247, 272 Oxford University 110, 131, 134, 137, 148, 149, 195, 250, 254, 461 Oxford, Balliol College 463 Page, Christopher 158 papal bulls 29, 336 papal power 338, 346–348, 350, 353, 393 pastoral aids 175–192 pastoral ministry 3, 7, 18–23, 136, 127, 464 Patarenes 55 Paxton, Catherine 443–444 Pecham, John 81, 130, 111–141 Peter of John Olivi 130, 137, 305, 326 Peter of Ramsey 22 Philip iv 81, 231, 431, 437–440 Philip the Chancellor 289, 291 Philomena 133, 186 pilgrims 28, 121, 141, 363, 360, 456 poetry 186, 187, 189, 191, 192, 456 polemics 113, 249, 347, 470 politics 30, 31, 37, 60, 81, 340, 353, 395, 398 Poor Clares 172 Poore, Richard 21, 186 poverty 5, 8, 10, 40, 41, 52–55, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 131, 134, 139–142, 177, 185, 197, 206, 207, 211, 255, 256, 294, 296, 301, 302, 326, 336, 380–404, 407, 427–420, 446, 448, 459, 463 See also Franciscan poverty most high poverty preaching 4, 19–22, 28, 38, 40, 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 64, 102, 111, 112, 119, 120, 140, 141, 143, 178, 179, 182, 190, 247, 252, 253, 257–260, 263, 268, 271, 280, 308, 366, 382, 383, 389, 296, 418, 448, 452– 456 celebration of the liturgy 147–174 sermon collections 193–213 techniques 207–212 work 124–127 See also sermons Prentice, Robert 329–331 Preston, friary 69 priests 14, 18, 22, 41, 47, 57, 58, 148, 150, 175, 179, 185, 186, 194, 201, 460, 469

index Quesnel, Peter 180, 181 Quo elongati 13, 39, 90, 123, 128, 141, 143, 196, 453 Ralph of Maidstone 16, 39 Ralph of Rheims 8, 13 Reading, abbey and friary 17, 25, 65, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 77, 177, 407, 458, 465, 467, 468 Reformation 214, 337 Regula bullata 36, 87, 294, 195, 429 Regula non bullata 117, 164, 193, 194 Richard iii 466, 469 Richard of Conington 459, 467 Richard of Ingworth 6, 18 Richard of Insula 357, 364–365, 378 Richard of Slekburne 462, 466 Richard Rufus of Cornwall 11, 12, 15, 22, 29, 100, 180 Richmond, friary 240, 468 Rigaud, Eudes (Odo Rigaldi) 109, 137, 290, 291 Robert of Cowton 18, 464, 467 Robert of Herton 371 Robert of Somercote 12, 100 Robert of Thornham 6 Robert of Ware 454 Robbins, Rossell H. 189 Robinson, Jonathan 339 Roest, Bert 111, 172, 175, 182, 185, 192 Roger of Weasenham 22 Roger of Wendover 5, 23, 54 Rome 4, 6, 11, 17, 27, 98–101, 108, 133, 150, 449, 450, 457, 462 Roxburgh, friary 224, 450 Rule of Isabelle of France 425–427, 429–431, 436 Rule of St. Augustine 23 Rule of St. Benedict 23, 57, 428 Rule of St. Clare 426, 428, 429 Rule of St. Francis 4, 8–13, 19, 20, 28, 31, 36, 37, 49, 52, 54, 56, 58, 61, 72, 88, 90, 94, 100, 101, 103, 108, 164, 175, 193–197, 200, 206, 274, 275, 381, 389 Salimbene of Adam 7, 11, 12, 17–19, 27, 92, 94, 103, 149 Salisbury, friary 5, 10, 68, 69, 71, 73, 179, 411, 415

495 sanctorals 215, 217–219 sandals 139 Saracens 56, 112, 139, 166, 167, 311, 451 scholasticism 335 science 137, 148, 150, 156, 157, 173, 200, 211, 247–249, 251, 256, 258–260, 268–272, 279–281, 285–287, 292– 315 Scotland 59, 89, 224, 450, 457, 465 secular clergy 29, 39, 47, 136, 149, 185, 265, 287, 404, 461, 470 self-mastery 322–325 sermons 20, 111, 133, 150, 165, 173, 175, 178, 189, 194, 195, 202, 203, 206, 207, 213, 247, 256, 257, 260, 275, 290, 300, 381, 387–392, 450, 454–456, 469 See also preaching Shrewsbury, friary 10, 66, 68 Simon de Montfort 27, 38, 47, 51, 81 sistrum 65, 166, 171, 172 Smalley, Beryl 198 Solomon 9, 14, 20 soul(s) 40–42, 44, 76, 95, 118, 119, 126, 178, 186, 188, 195, 204, 209, 210, 213, 237, 240, 262, 265, 280, 283, 295, 292, 310, 321–324, 418, 440, 443 Southern, Richard W. 250, 261, 264, 316 Spain 14, 298, 449, 461 Stafford, friary 69, 70 Stamford, friary 68–71, 468 Super cathedram 461 Sutton, Oliver 465, 466 Swinfield, Richard 465, 467 Tartars 52, 55, 451 teaching 3, 4, 8, 18, 19, 52, 58, 117, 118, 127, 128, 131, 147, 164, 171, 173, 176, 178, 179, 183, 184, 190, 203, 208, 209, 247–272, 293, 297, 204, 217, 218, 320, 331, 340, 453, 455, 456 Teutonic Knights 75 theology 6, 8, 12, 18, 19, 24, 38, 110, 111, 126, 130, 131, 148, 176, 180, 181, 183, 187, 191, 196, 201, 248, 250–261, 265, 267–295, 297–300, 304–312, 314, 315, 335, 337, 339, 340, 346, 348, 366, 383, 386, 397, 402, 417, 419, 426, 429, 430, 461, 462 Thomas of Celano 453

496 Thomas of Eccleston 3–27 Thomas of Hales 20, 181, 455 Thomas le Waleys 266 Thomas of York 249, 267 towns 6, 13, 23–25, 64, 79, 201, 214, 251, 405, 417, 454, 457, 466 Tuscany 7, 451 University of Paris 8, 15, 96, 123, 149, 150, 254, 273, 295, 300, 306, 426 vernacular 20, 187–189, 192, 264, 297, 455, 456 Vienne, council 459 Vincent of Coventry 15, 16 Virgin Mary 187, 264, 428, 454 visions 427 visitations 42, 88–98, 102, 104, 107, 108 vocations 14–18, 40, 194, 449 Walsingham, friary 405, 468 Walter of Chatton 18, 459 Walter of Knulle 369 Ware, friary 468 Welsh 455 Wesley, Charles and John 187

index Westminster Abbey 43, 76, 79, 409, 432, 458, 460 white monks 24, 57 Wich, Richard 22 William of Auvergne 255 William of Auxerre 289, 291 William de la Mare 308 William of Gainsborough 81, 83 William of Melitona 290, 291, 299 William of Nottingham Jr. 199–201, 212, 407 William of Nottingham Sr. 6, 10, 13, 16, 19, 28, 30, 44, 185, 195, 197 William of Ockham 18, 249, 335–353 William of Ware 18, 317, 324 William of Woodford 457 Winchester, friary 24, 25, 55, 66, 67–71, 73, 82, 177, 409, 460, 467 Winchelsea, friary 216, 458, 460, 468 Wygerius 11, 90–93 Yarmouth (Great Yarmouth), friary 67, 74, 412, 468 York, friary 5, 19, 22, 25, 40, 69, 70, 187, 249, 267, 405, 406, 440, 443, 458, 463, 464, 468