6. An institution made of individuals: Peter John Olivi and Angelo Clareno on the Franciscan experience*

Sylvain Piron

To David Burr

Francis of Assisi had no intention of creating a new institution. His conversion to a life of destitution was, first and foremost, a personal experience. The so-called Legend of the Three Companions, which provides the fullest treatment of his gradual severing of social ties, was apparently written by someone who possessed detailed information about his youth in Assisi and his early spiritual practices.¹ It recalls that, after spending some time caring for the lepers, he was drawn to San Damiano to pray. There the crucifix told him: ‘Francis, can’t you see that my home is falling apart? Go and mend it!’ He understood the message as a literal command to repair the derelict building.² The only prophetic meaning he gave at the time to these works of restoration was that the premises would one day be devoted to a nunnery.³ Two years later, when he started to live as a wandering penitent, soon joined by a few companions, he still conceived of his mission as being in support of the Church, not actually as a part of it. The famous statement found in the Testament (‘After the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I should do, but the Most High revealed to me that I ought to live according to the form of the Holy Gospel’) is not an abstract reflection.⁴ It strictly corresponds to the scene when Francis, together with his first companions Bernard and Peter, entered the church of San Nicolò in Piazza, opened a liturgical gospel book three times and repeatedly came across the evangelical counsels which would define their way of life: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor’; ‘Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor pack, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece’; and ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself ’.⁵ Those verses constitute the nucleus of a series of counsels which served as guiding principles to the penitents and were later expanded in different early versions of the rule. This reading through biblical sortilege (sortes biblicae) defined not only the contents but also the most distinctive character of the Franciscan experience, as rooted in unmediated obedience to the word of God.

Such bypassing of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in order to establish a direct connection to Christ continued throughout Francis’s life, turning at times into a genuine face-to-face dialogue, yet it went together with an intense respect for and submission to the Church. This might be a reason for giving preference to the earlier version of the San Nicolò episode, in which the three young men asked a priest to open the book for them and to translate the passages.⁶ The first half of the Testament (§§ 4–13) forcefully reiterates what is apparent in many other early documents: a veneration for churches and the priests who minister the holy body of Christ, as well as for the ‘theologians’ who proclaim his holy word. The argument put forward by Francis does not imply respect for the ecclesiastical institution as such. Instead, it arises from an existential perception of how the divine is concentrated into a limited number of instances of the sacred. Nothing of the Lord is visible on earth apart from his presence in scripture and the eucharist.⁷ The Church and her ministers have to be revered as the only vessel through which God is made present and manifest to all. The all-encompassing notion which best describes this attitude towards the clergy is that of a claim to absolute inferiority (minoritas). The same notion also implies a radical detachment from all sorts of social manners and duties; and an indifference to the frequent mockeries and humiliations the first friars had to endure owing to what was popularly perceived as their outrageous nakedness.⁸ This submission would later even be extended to all animals as part of a universal compassion towards all creatures.⁹ The Testament sums it up in the tersest way: ‘we were illiterate and subject to all’ (eramus idiotae et subditi omnibus). Even as the number of his followers rapidly grew, Francis still conceived of their mission not as taking part in the institution but as dwelling within it as ‘pilgrims and foreigners’.¹⁰ Although nobody would have been in a position to express it clearly at the time, a tremendous amount of tension was lodged in this unheard-of situation. Achieving a life based on a strict and literal adherence to the gospel amounted to an implicit challenge to all other forms of Christian life, a theme which became explicit decades later with the notion of ‘evangelical perfection’.

The sheer success with which Francis and his first companions met as they toured central Italy made it impossible for them to remain for much longer on the margins of the Church.¹¹ In the process through which an informal band of penitents evolved into a full-blown institution, the support of the papacy was obviously crucial. The various reports of the first encounter with Innocent III in 1209 are replete with too many interpolations to be taken at face value.¹² The only sure facts may be summarized as follows: besides a general approval of his ‘way of living’ (propositum vitae), Francis was granted permission to preach penance; and only he would be entitled to allow some of his companions to act in a similar fashion. The acquaintance he made on that occasion, and during further stays in Rome, of a number of important people at the curia proved as important as the initial approbation. This trip was soon followed by an unexpected, yet inevitable, outcome which had the potential to undermine the whole project of minoritas. Starting with Sylvester, who had supported Francis at an early date, a few priests were admitted into the group as soon as 1210. In a world in which the distinction between lay and clerical status was a fundamental social divide, the presence of clerics among them meant the brotherhood of penitents had now to be treated as part of the ecclesiastical institution. This meant Francis had to be ordained a deacon so that a lay person would not be placed over a cleric.

As the number of friars grew, his personal hold over his movement gradually loosened. By 1217 it was described as the ‘religion of friar minors’, not quite yet an ‘order’, but a formal way of life characterized by some distinctive habits and practices. The institution was now divided into twelve provinces, placed under the responsibility of ministers who had the capacity to test and themselves admit new friars. The delegation of authority was even more dramatic when Francis travelled to Egypt (1219–20), leaving two vicars in charge. Hearing they had introduced a stricter rule concerning days of fasting, upon his return Francis headed first to Rome to obtain support from the papacy and then had Cardinal Hugolino of Segni appointed as a permanent cardinal protector. Nevertheless, Francis’s attempt at regaining control over the evolution of his creation was doomed to failure. What the papacy now conceived of as an ordo, in which a year-long noviciate was made compulsory for newcomers, had to be regulated by a specific rule. Responding to Cardinal Hugolino and the ‘learned friars’ in some dramatic speeches recorded by Brother Leo, Francis at first refused to accept any type of monastic rule, being content only to follow the gospel.¹³ The document drawn up in 1221 (the Regula non bullata) was still designed as an anthology of evangelical counsels and rejected as such by Pope Honorius III. The shorter version eventually approved in 1223 (the Regula bullata) more closely resembled a standard, normative, monastic text, but the personal voice of Francis was still strongly present, warning and urging the friars in the first person. Yet, by that date he had long since resigned as head of the order. Although the hagiographical documents insist his abdication was due to his poor health, the chronology rather suggests that Francis gave up his position as a response to the pressure exerted upon him to normalize his ‘religion’. Many episodes narrated by Brother Leo bear witness to his discontent with an institution which did not match his initial inspiration. As Francis dictated his Testament to Leo in spring 1226, he spoke in the same voice he had used in the rule in the name of his charismatic authority. When Hugolino as Pope Gregory IX eventually decreed in Quo elongati (1230) that this declaration was not binding, the process of normalization had apparently been achieved. However, many seeds of discord had been sown which would bear fruit at different moments. Besides the Testament and Leo’s record of Francis’s intentions, the rule itself provided the friars with an important restriction on standard monastic obedience. It requested them ‘to obey their ministers in everything they have promised the Lord to observe and which is not against their soul or our rule’.¹⁴ The possibility of such a reservation implied that individual friars could oppose their personal compliance with the rule to the orders of their superiors.

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Angelo Clareno died in utmost solitude in June 1337, in a small hermitage in western Lucania. The collection of miracles performed at his grave offers the image of a local saint attracting pilgrims within a radius of less than thirty miles, mostly from the valley of Val d’Agri.¹⁵ This record stands at odds with the vast network of correspondents with whom he had been in touch for decades and his much wider expectations of historical change. In a letter he sent in his final years to the Neapolitan noble on whose land he was hiding, Angelo complained he had suffered many tribulations for almost sixty years while hoping to witness the reformation of Christ’s life which had been initiated by Francis.¹⁶ Since he had joined the order sometime around 1274 in the Italian Marches, Angelo and his companions had indeed often been badly treated by their superiors, spending a fair amount of time in prison, on the sole account of their desire ‘to adhere to the conscience and teaching of the founder’.¹⁷

The strife had started at the time of the second Council of Lyons (1274), as a rumour spread through the region that the pope might force the friars minor to accept ownership of possessions. In what appears to have been a public dispute held during a provincial chapter, the zealous (zelanti) asserted that it did not fall within the power of the pope or the general council to modify a rule which was evangelical by definition.¹⁸ The debate over various practices which those friars rejected as unfit was merely an extension of this core issue. Essentially, the fight was not about the intensity of poverty practised in the region, but rather touched upon a matter of principle concerning the nature of the Franciscan rule, arguing about whether its ultimate authority stemmed from divine inspiration or its papal approbation. The two views were ultimately irreconcilable. This explains the fury of those opposed to the zelanti, who had the small group jailed without a trial, not even spelling out the nature of their actual misdeed (probably in 1278). The details of their imprisonment are not perfectly clear. In one letter Clareno mentions a transfer of the prisoners to Rome, where they were exposed in public during holy week and then brought back to Ancona. They must have managed to escape, since the same letter adds that they were seized again in southern Sicily two years later (maybe around Easter 1281), exhibited as criminals in every city from Gela to Messina and then expelled to the shores of Calabria.¹⁹

At any rate, by 1290 they were back in prison in Ancona when the general minister Raymond Geoffroy ordered their release and had them sent to the king of Armenia, Hethum II, who himself took the Franciscan habit soon afterwards. There, they fell into trouble again with friars from Syria and Cyprus. In 1294, upon their return to Italy, Celestine V allowed them to form a separate order as ‘Poor Hermits’, changing their name in order to let them fulfil their vocation.²⁰ Boniface VIII swiftly cancelled that decision when he took power, prompting the group to set sail anew towards the east. In his long quest to obtain the reformation of the ‘Poor Hermits’ during the following decades, Angelo was again submitted to a certain amount of rough treatment until John XXII freed him from obedience to his superiors by transferring him to the branch of the Benedictine order founded by Celestine himself. As Angelo settled, not with the Celestines but at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, he retained the observance of Francis’s commands and probably never took off his habit. Although he had by then given up all hope of re-establishing the ‘Poor Hermits’ as an institution, the major works he composed at Subiaco in the 1320s were a Chronicle of the Franciscan order and a commentary on its rule (Expositio Regulae), quite telling signs that he was not in the least alienated from the Franciscan project.

Written at the request of a friar named Tommaso, the Expositio displays a very neat sense of a hierarchy of norms. As the opening sentence shows, the main purpose of this work is not to elucidate the text alone, but rather to explain ‘the pure, simple and ultimate intention of the seraphic man Francis in the rule that was divinely inspired to him by Christ’.²¹ Thus, throughout the commentary the rule has to be understood in the light of other documents in which Francis explained the nature of his project, namely, ‘[i]n his Testament, Admonitions, Letters, and other words, and especially in the replies which that holy man, Brother Leo, writes that he [Francis] gave to his companions when, toward the end, they asked him about such matters’.²² The reference to Leo is crucial here. Clareno builds on various extracts from the collection currently known as the ‘Assisi Compilation’ in order to explain in what frame of mind and in the midst of what tensions the rule was written: ‘In order to understand it … it is extremely helpful to know accurately the story of its beginnings and the circumstances surrounding its creation’.²³ The prologue and the first chapter of the Expositio include a summary of Francis’s life, while other parts explain the wording of the rule in the light of Francis’s reluctance to write it and of his prophetical warnings of the dangers awaiting the friars in the future.

Throughout his work Clareno makes numerous references to the Regula non bullata, presented as the document approved by Innocent III. Despite their differences, both rules are seen as complementing each other since all evangelical quotations present in the longer text are considered as implicitly referred to in the officially published version.²⁴ The concordance of all Franciscan documents demonstrates that the founder’s first and final intention was simply to follow the Gospel. Therefore, professing the rule amounts to following a ‘law of grace, truth and charity’ which immediately connects the individual friar to Christ. The sense of belonging to a community comes second: common life, compliance to the uniformity of habit and practices and strict obedience to the superiors are requested as ways to foster the evangelical virtues. Nonetheless, Clareno also emphasizes the necessity of disobedience in certain situations in which the strict observance of Christ’s life would otherwise be in danger. In the rule Francis had promised obedience to Honorius and all his ‘canonically elected’ successors, having in mind the many anti-popes of the twelfth century. In turn, this very phrase fuelled the prophetic expectation that one day a usurper would be falsely elected whom the true professors of evangelical perfection would have to resist.²⁵ In Clareno’s eyes this moment had not yet come. Despite his sharp criticism of John XXII and the corrupt Church hierarchy, he consistently maintained the duty of obedience to a legitimate papacy as a crucial part of the vow. Distancing himself from the centre of power by ‘fleeing to the mountains’ (in the evangelical phrase he used) was the surest way to avoid having his submissiveness put to the test.²⁶

An original feature of Clareno’s approach lies in his abundant use of patristic references and especially of numerous Greek Fathers, many of whom he translated specifically for these works. Among them Basil of Caesarea and his rule hold a central place. Clareno sometimes translates him speaking in a typically Franciscan vocabulary, describing his community as a ‘fraternity’ devoted to the fulfilment of evangelical perfection and renouncing any landed property.²⁷ Besides his two stays in the east, during which he certainly made contact with Greek speaking monks, Angelo had a good motive to rely so heavily on the Cappadocian Father. This move was justified by one of Francis’s stronger statements, in which he vociferously refused to follow any monastic rule, naming those of Benedict, Augustine and Bernard. Having the first two in mind, Clareno lists the ways in which the Franciscan rule ‘differs from the two rules that hold primacy in the Roman church, and how arduous it is compared to them’.²⁸ By contrast, the Greeks provided an undisputed authority, located much closer to the source of the evangelical tradition than any Latin Father. Clareno’s precise historical awareness shows, for example, in the way he refers to Jerome as a disciple of Gregory of Nazianzus.²⁹ Since Jerome not only translated the Bible into Latin, but also transmitted to the west many testimonies of eastern asceticism, this detail somehow manages to subordinate one whole tradition to the other. The result of the operation is remarkable. Hosted in the very premises in Lazio where Benedict of Nursia had his first eremitic experiences before founding the monastery of Monte Cassino, for which he composed his famous rule, Clareno bypasses the father of western monasticism in order to present the Franciscan project as a true renewal of the evangelical life. Yet, such a conjunction was not totally unheard of, since the sacred cave (sacro speco) of Subiaco also preserves the oldest known representation of Francis, drawn during his lifetime.

However, the most pervasive source of inspiration for the Expositio is certainly Peter John Olivi. His name shows up only three times in the final pages, accompanied by some extraordinary praise.³⁰ However, as Gian Luca Potestà noted, Olivi’s own commentary on the rule is the real backbone of Clareno’s work.³¹ Their relationship is even stronger than historians have supposed. In his letter to Roberto of Mileto (quoted above), Angelo started by remembering that, ‘about forty years ago, taught by Christ, [he] recognized that the Father of mercy and light had decided to place the spirit of the founder in the man of God, Peter’, whom he then decided to follow and obey as the herald of Francis’s foundation.³² Following Livier Oliger, Potestà understands this reference as recording the decision to accept Olivi’s advice, given in September 1295 in a letter to Conrad of Offida, to admit the legitimacy of Celestine’s resignation and Boniface’s election. However, the wording of Clareno’s remembrance is so strong that it rather seems to imply a continuous commitment to Olivi as a spiritual model. To be valid, such an interpretation would require some degree of personal acquaintance.

Although the hypothesis has never been tested, there are grounds for thinking that such an encounter did actually take place and on the exact date indicated in the letter. One important clue has surfaced recently. In his treatise on the mass (De missa) (before 1298), Olivi quotes an extract from ‘Climacus’ which he could only have come across in Clareno’s translation of the Ladder of Paradise (Scala paradisi).³³ This implies that the translation was produced not in Greece after 1295, as is usually thought, but during the stay in Cilicia before 1294. A confirmation that some contact was made between the Languedoc friar and the exiled Marchegiani comes from a letter in which Angelo recalls the chicanery of Jerome of Catalonia, later bishop of Caffa, who approached his group in Greece, around 1300, claiming he was carrying some books Olivi was sending them.³⁴ Without providing a full reconstruction here, it is only possible to stress the plausibility of some otherwise undocumented events. Between Celestine’s election in July and his resignation in December 1294, either during his stay at L’Aquila or while he was taken to Naples by King Charles II, Olivi could have taken a trip from Narbonne to meet the new pope and the Italian Spirituals who were still present at the court. This is when a personal meeting could have occurred, one which produced a deep impression on the Italian friar.

This timing may fit in well with the dates Clareno recalls in his ‘testament’. Scholars tend to agree the letter should be dated to sometime soon after the summer of 1334, when he arrived alone in Lucania after having had to leave Subiaco in haste in order to escape the inquisitor sent to catch him.³⁵ A period of ‘almost sixty years’ of tribulations points precisely to the controversies which started in the Marches soon after the end of the second Council of Lyons in 1274, while ‘almost forty years’ would match perfectly a meeting with Olivi at the court of Celestine. Establishing such a personal connection has more than merely anecdotal value. On the contrary, it helps to understand the importance of the individual relationships which constitute the core of a ‘Franciscan’ life outside the regular institution. There is some debate as to whether Angelo conceived of himself as a ‘general minister’ of the Fraticelli who admitted his leadership.³⁶ The extant documentation rather suggests he only exerted his authority by acting as a spiritual master towards a number of individuals or small groups of friars by way of epistolary contacts or personal guidance. Some among his disciples, such as the Augustinian friar Simone Fidati da Cascia, would behave in turn as spiritual masters along slightly different lines.³⁷ After the condemnation of the Languedoc Spirituals in 1317 and his own exit into the Benedictines, Angelo’s re-enactment of the Franciscan project had faded to the point of becoming a personal network of devotees committed to the imitation of Francis’s way of life and the expectation of its imminent return. His continuing references to the Franciscan rule and the order suggest he perceived these loose groups as embodying the true institution, ready to fulfil its historical mission in the apocalyptic future – hence his highly selective approach and account of the reception of new friars, illustrated with many examples from Greek monasticism. This issue was crucial, ‘for faulty and indiscrete reception into this religion will be one of the ways in which the demons attack it’.³⁸ When reflecting on an ideal order – which he kept on calling by its early name of ‘religion’ – what Angelo had in mind was a charismatic institution, consisting of just a handful of heroic individuals, connected by their sense of continuing a historical mission started by Francis.

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Peter John Olivi was certainly a charismatic figure. At the very least, the amount of hatred and hostility concentrated on him during his lifetime and after his death bears testimony to the passions he was able to arouse. His grave in Narbonne was the site of a pilgrimage for two decades until it was destroyed by order of the pope in 1318, when four of his supporters were burnt at the stake in Marseilles. Although the doctrinal trial against his commentary on the Apocalypse (Lectura super Apocalypsim) had not yet reached a conclusion, he was treated post mortem as a heretic and his ashes were scattered in the Rhône in Avignon at night.³⁹ During this period of twenty years some celebrated him as a saint and miracles took place at his tomb, of which we know next to nothing save for a few echoes which survive in inquisitorial depositions. The only hagiographical document to cast some light on his person is actually the section of the Chronicle which Angelo Clareno devotes to him.⁴⁰ It should be noted that, besides Francis, only John of Parma receives similarly extensive treatment. Apparently, Clareno obtained information from witnesses who had first-hand knowledge and fused it with a number of legends he could gather while himself attending the celebration of Olivi’s feast in Narbonne in March 1313.

Charisma is a very general notion. It may be useful to try to discern the aspects under which it applies to this remarkable friar. Had his sainthood been recognized by the papacy, he would have been classified as a saintly scholar, alongside Thomas Aquinas, who was indeed canonized in the very years of Olivi’s condemnation. The quantity and depth of his writings made a strong impression among his followers, in his lifetime and for generations after his death. References to his writings (scriptura) abound in inquisitorial documents from lay people who could only access them on the occasion of collective readings of vernacular translations, performed in small circles in which members of the Franciscan third order usually described as ‘beguins’ would gather weekly.⁴¹ Clareno records different episodes which illustrate his considerable scholastic ability to produce arguments and counter-arguments. Judging by the number and complexity of the disputed questions he held before obtaining any university degree, his versatility and subtlety must have distinguished him very early on. This professorial charisma may have extended to his actions as a preacher, but this side of his activity is less well documented since only a handful of sermons have been preserved, all belonging to the scholarly genre of the inaugural lecture (principia). Besides this facet of his life as a public teacher, a few clues show that Olivi also acted towards some persons as more of a private instructor. Ubertino da Casale describes him acting as a spiritual master in the period they both spent in Florence at Santa Croce (1287–89).⁴² Even more secretly, Olivi admitted on his deathbed to having received some knowledge through divine inspiration. The record of his last moments which circulated among his followers extends this inspiration as the source of ‘all his learning’, which is obviously an exaggeration. The content of this revelation, which is said to have happened in Paris and therefore at the beginning of his teaching career, is beyond the scope of critical enquiry, although one may surmise it had to do with the historical meaning of Francis’s revival of evangelical perfection.⁴³ Nevertheless, the very fact of such a revelation has to be taken into account and helps to make sense of the astonishing self-assurance Olivi demonstrated throughout his own tribulations. As for the personal qualities of the ‘holy man’ presented in Clareno’s account of his life and in the few personal letters he sent to his friends, qualities such as humility, compassion and patience, one has to decide for oneself. However, since the coherence between teaching and action is one of his major ethical claims, there may be reason not to dismiss totally such testimonies or declarations.

What makes Olivi such an interesting character owes even more to the historical circumstances into which he was thrown. He entered the order in Béziers in 1260 at the age of twelve, just as hundreds of friars were gathering at a general chapter at the nearby city of Narbonne and most probably under the effect of their example. The only record of his initial education in lower Languedoc shows him sharing the memories of the early generations of friars minor. As a novice he was taught by the elderly Raymond Barrau, who had become a friar sometime around 1233, having previously spent at least two decades as a canon in Carcassonne cathedral, being in that quality a personal acquaintance of St Dominic and a witness of the arrival of the first Franciscans in the region.⁴⁴ Besides this connection to the heroic period of the founding fathers, Olivi also enjoys the peculiarity of being one of the first major intellectuals exclusively taught within the order, whereas theologians from earlier generations, up to Bonaventure or John Peckham, all joined when they were already university students.

His intellectual achievement was, therefore, entirely shaped by his Franciscan identity. To a lesser degree, a similar claim could be made concerning Bonaventure, whom Olivi presents as the greatest master he encountered during his studies in Paris (c.1266–73) and the only one worth mentioning. It is, therefore, telling to observe the core issues on which they differ.⁴⁵ One key idea for Bonaventure is the participation of all creatures in the divine nature, humans having, in addition, the privilege of a ‘special resemblance’ by way of the three powers of the soul which bear a similarity to the Trinity. In this theology God is forcefully present within the world. In a sharp contrast, Olivi insists on the abyssal divide which separates God’s inconceivable perfection from the limits and imperfection of all creatures. The crucial factor for this reversal of perspective comes from the stress he places on the freedom of the will, both human and divine, which radically sets apart all intellectual and spiritual beings. This move may be perceived as a result of the ongoing philosophical disputes of the 1270s and, in particular, of his confrontation with the Parisian ‘Averroists’ in an effort to counter a perception of the world as consisting of emanations flowing from the first principle.⁴⁶ However, under another angle, this metaphysical approach can also be understood as being part and parcel of his reflection on the Franciscan vocation.

David Burr is the first scholar to have reached a global view of Olivi, both as a sophisticated thinker active in many different fields and as an intriguing personality. When discussing his contribution to the debate on poverty, Burr correctly emphasized that the main issue at stake was not so much the degree of asceticism as the definition of the Franciscan vow.⁴⁷ In the summer of 1279 Olivi wrote an impressive series of ‘Questions on evangelical perfection’ (QPE), while a commission of prelates, including many Franciscans, were working on a new explanation of the rule, which Pope Nicholas III published on 14 August as Exiit qui seminat. The questions on obedience, which focused mainly on obedience to papal power, were certainly written while the commission was at work. Olivi, like other friars, seems to have been extremely worried about the outcome. The very title of this series also indicates a sense of continuity with similar works produced a decade or two earlier by Bonaventure and Peckham on ‘evangelical perfection’. In many respects the Languedoc friar was correct in thinking he was following in his elders’ footsteps. The major development Olivi introduces lies in his shifting of the debate from the rule to developing instead a theology of the vow. A brief but fundamental question (QPE 5) enquires whether it is better to achieve a good action through a vow or a one-time decision (simplex propositum).⁴⁸ The former is certainly preferable. Whereas the goodness of an act is limited both in time and scope, a vow implies that all the freedom and power to accomplish such acts are offered to God. Since this power potentially contains an infinity of acts, its dedication is, therefore, infinitely superior to the achievement of a single action. One crucial argument is set out along the way. Since this freedom is constitutive of human nature, once assumed it can never be abdicated: ‘This grant that is made to God by a vow does not remove the property [proprietas] we have, in that we are naturally the proprietors [domini] of our acts and of everything that depends on our faculty of free will’.⁴⁹ Thus, a perpetual vow cannot be pronounced once and for all. Instead, it has to be repeated at every instant and is correctly defined as a ‘continual vow’ (votum continuatum). The retention of freedom in the very act of self-abnegation is the most original philosophical feature in Olivi’s approach. It should be stressed that such a definition constitutes a complete reversal of the Benedictine rule, in which the monk is requested to give up his free will in total submission to his abbot.

There are good reasons for describing Olivi as the most radical thinker on the freedom of the will in the western philosophical tradition. The intensity of his involvement on that issue would not be comprehensible were it not for the central purpose to which he wished to apply it. First, total freedom is a necessary condition for engaging oneself in the pursuit of evangelical perfection, since here no vow could tolerate even the slightest form of constraint. The evangelical vow then opens up a whole field of action in which freedom is constantly required. This is particularly true of achieving the highest poverty. Renouncing all rights over any material goods (abnegatio juris) implies that all legal relationships are voluntary, a notion which in turn became central to Olivi’s acute economics.⁵⁰ Evangelical poverty implies a constant will not to possess or attach oneself to any thing. The crucial test is not to claim any goods in court, even if they were unjustly seized by a third party. However, the severing of all legal bonds (abdicatio omnis iuris) is not sufficient in itself to define a positive relationship to the material world. Such poverty would be ‘formless and confused, unstable, elusive and empty or vain and sterile’ without a moral limitation described as ‘poor use’.⁵¹ Usus pauper is the Olivian concept which provoked the sharpest discussion. As David Burr demonstrated, the core of the matter was not the harshness of the practices it involved. On the contrary, the notion was meant to encompass as valid different levels of ascetic achievement according to the capacities of each individual. Usus pauper was conceived as a virtue in an Aristotelian way, admitting variations within a certain breadth (latitudo). The conflictual issue was its inclusion in a vow which Olivi conceived of as ‘indeterminate’. Precisely because it consists in the exercise of freedom, the vow cannot be reduced to the observance of a series of fixed precepts. The proper behaviour may have to be adjusted according to the circumstances. His opponents objected by pointing to the dangers of obliging oneself to duties whose contents are not known in advance at the risk of falling into mortal sin unknowingly. Olivi’s answer was simply that one should put one’s trust in the gospel. He who professes to follow the life of Christ shall always find the proper measure of all actions in his conscience. It would be hard to be closer to what Francis meant when he said he did not care about a rule. Equally, and in turn, the Franciscan order as an institution was not ready to accept such a high degree of risk and indeterminacy.

The keystone of evangelical perfection was, therefore, located within the conscience of the individual. In expressing such views, Olivi was drawing the ultimate consequences of a strict identification of the Franciscan rule with the gospel.⁵² All his discussion constantly refers to ‘evangelical vows’, taken immediately to Christ. In the face of such a commitment, the duty of all religious and ecclesiastical superiors is to support its fulfilment and never to impede it. Ultimately, the evangelical vow implies a potential limitation of the power of the pope. This was the most problematic corollary of Olivi’s indeterminate conception of the Franciscan vow. According to Olivi, the sovereign pontiff does not have the authority to modify the contents of the vow, since that would amount to ruling against the gospel. A pope who would attempt to diminish the Franciscan rule would fall into heresy by doing so.⁵³ What Olivi discussed as a working hypothesis in 1279 had gained much more reality by the time of John XXII’s election to the papacy. The ‘Spiritual’ friars from Languedoc resisted their superiors on the basis of the same texts and then repeated their opposition to the Franciscan inquisitor Michael Monachus (Monge). The general sermon he delivered in Marseilles in May 1318, returning four rebels to the secular arm, contains the sharpest expression of the conflicting visions of the two sides: ‘This rule is not identical to the Gospel, but some sort of laudable way of life approved and confirmed by the Roman pontiffs and simply and absolutely subjected to their declarations, modification and decisions’.⁵⁴ As a response to the Spirituals’ evangelical understanding of the rule, the normalization of the Franciscan order as simply one part of the Roman Church had never been expressed so strongly.

Often, what matters more is not what one does, but the reasons for which one does it. For Olivi and his followers the stress put on the freedom of the will was not a simple scholastic device, but a vital choice which characterized their conception of the Franciscan project and for which they were ready to sacrifice their lives. In their perception, the fabric of the ‘institution’ consisted in a set of free individuals bound together and united by the goal they were pursuing in common. This does not mean they had no sense of the institution as such, nor that they despised the need to maintain some degree of uniformity within it so as to preserve its unity. On the contrary, the Spirituals also attributed a powerful meaning to the Franciscan order as an institution which was achieving a specific historical function. Moreover, Olivi developed a remarkable and unusual reflection on what constitutes an ‘institution’. These are the final pieces we need to put together briefly in order to obtain a full vision of the puzzle.

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As an opening to his discussion of the sacraments Olivi raises an unexpected question: what sort of reality is posited by civil right or political power (Quid ponat ius)?⁵⁵ This intriguing text is often referred to, but its implications are rarely explained in full. A significant part of its importance is what it reveals about both the power – and therefore the risk – which Olivi associated with the reification of spiritual impetus within regularized forms which then took priority over the impulses. It takes as its starting point an expression used by Bonaventure while discussing Peter Lombard’s definition of the sacrament as ‘the sign of something sacred’ (sacrae rei signum). If the sacrament belongs to the category of signs, it cannot be of the type which signifies according to its nature (as a scream naturally connotes pain or fear). Owing to the fact that it has been instituted by God in order to convey some specific meaning, the sacrament has to be qualified as a ‘voluntary sign’.⁵⁶ Accepting this term, Olivi opens a much wider discussion, bringing together other types of ‘voluntary signs’, such as rights, power and language. The question he raises is concerned with the metaphysical qualification of such signs and of the obligations they create. Do they posit any reality which adds to the subjects in which they are grounded? It would not be inappropriate to translate the question in modern terms as: what does an institution consist of?

Olivi’s answer is not immediately eloquent. Those signs do produce some real effects, as an impressive series of examples makes clear, but they do not add any new essence to their subjects. They only consist in being the object of the divine will. To grasp fully the meaning of such a phrase, it is necessary to recall a central feature of Olivi’s metaphysics. Breaking with all forms of ‘participation’ of the creatures in the Creator, he also rejects the notion that the first cause would be operating in each operation of the secondary causes, to paraphrase Aquinas.⁵⁷ For Olivi the transcendence of divine will is such that it can only translate into immediately creative acts. Therefore, God does not act within or through his creatures. Instead, he provides them with autonomous agency while preserving them in existence at every instant (since he could as well annihilate them instantly).

The reflection on ‘voluntary signs’ takes on a clearer meaning in such a perspective. Humans are not solely defined by their free will. Their rational nature also requires them to demonstrate towards each other the virtues of justice, concord and friendship and to exert their domination over irrational beings.⁵⁸ Such requirements imply they possess some normative capacity through which they may organize their communication and coexistence by setting out political, juridical and linguistic rules. In order to make such rules binding, God wants them to stand as if they were taking his place. Those institutions can, therefore, be said to be the object of God’s will, while being strictly human institutions. Unusual in its formulation, the question draws the consequences of the full autonomy granted to secondary causes into the realm of human sociability. The same metaphysical principles also underlie Olivi’s approach to economics, in which he stresses likewise the voluntary nature of contractual relationships.

Olivi’s brief Quid ponat ius? does not discuss the metaphysical consistency of the Franciscan order or of the Roman Church as a whole, yet the way in which he refers to those institutions in his commentary on Revelation or his questions on evangelical perfection leaves no doubt they should be understood along the same lines. It is worth also observing the polysemy of the notion of ordo in Revelation. The word does not only refer to some ranks within the Church, as in Pseudo-Dionysius’s vocabulary (priestly, pontifical order; ordo sacerdotalis, pontificalis, etc.), or to forms of Christian life appropriate to the different stages of history, as in Joachim (order of martyrs, doctors (ordo martyrum doctorum), etc.). Instead, when discussing the latest stages of history, it applies to specific modern institutions. Among them, the evangelical order (ordo evangelicus), which is meant to play a major role in the confrontation with the soon-to-come Antichrist, clearly stands for the order of friars minor.⁵⁹

The reference to Francis as possessing a distinctive historical signification was common in the central decades of the thirteenth century, including his depiction as an other Christ (alter Christus), or as the angel of the seventh seal. Such typological identifications would point to him as a person, or might sometimes extend to the group of his companions. Even so, it is striking that the tendency to attribute a strong historical meaning to the Franciscan institution itself would develop especially among a minority group; and that this use would grow stronger the more they were marginalized and ‘de-institutionalized’.

In order to understand the rise of the ‘order’ as a historical agent, we must again turn to Brother Leo. For years Leo had been Francis’s closest associate, acting as his confessor and secretary, writing under his dictation many of the Latin texts which are currently known as Francis’s writings. Understandably, this relationship continued after Francis’s death, in the form of visions and apparitions in which the saint would sometimes explain the meaning of his earlier prophetical announcements.⁶⁰ When Leo first wrote his account, twenty years after Francis’s death, he made few references to such visions. However, Leo lived on much longer and added more testimonies in which he (and the saint’s speech to him) grew increasingly bitter towards what the institution was becoming, especially in the collection known as Verba sancti Francisci, and stronger still in what Leo told Conrad of Offida in the late 1260s.⁶¹

In those texts, one prophecy attributed to Francis deserves particular attention. It claims that the order will never cease but will be reduced to a very few friars during the sharpest tribulations; they will resist the Antichrist and regenerate the Church in the new Age of the Spirit after his downfall. In a way which is not without examples in modern political movements, the minority asserts a claim to represent the whole, claiming to be its most legitimate incarnation. In his lifetime Olivi could still feel that the number of true practitioners of the rule within the order was sufficient to defend it as a whole. When the confrontation really started the leaders claimed to represent the ‘community’ of the order while the ‘Spirituals’ asserted their identity as ‘true’ friars minor.⁶² Although he had been often rejected and even expelled, Clareno still imagined himself and his band as representing the true order. At an even later date, in the mid fourteenth century, the prophet, visionary and alchemist John of Rupescissa kept on defending a vision of the order as non-dependent on the institution. After all, he admitted the pope could change or suppress the order in the eventuality that no one was following the rule any longer.⁶³ As a prophet, he knew this would never be the case and that the order could live on, reduced to one person only. This is a striking – logical – conclusion to the trajectory described here across several generations of Franciscans. It was already implicit in Celestine’s permission to Angelo and his group to practise their Franciscan vocation outside the Franciscans and within the ‘Poor Hermits’. All were wrestling with the problem set by Francis, namely how to reconcile or even articulate the inbuilt tensions of a spiritual impulse which was never supposed to be an institution, let alone a formal religious order. Within it, as Olivi and some others argued, the vow took precedence over any set of rules, most fundamentally because such an evangelical vow was always larger and more all-encompassing than any particular set of institutionalized prescriptions, Franciscan or otherwise.

***

As a conclusion to the third book he devoted to Olivi, David Burr brilliantly summarized his understanding of him: ‘[H]e could be the patron saint of those who refuse to put their trust in institutions’.⁶⁴ This is a comment which has served me as a compass while trying to navigate the immensity of Olivi’s works. A coda may now be added: Olivi’s distrust is even more understandable, since he knew all too well the power of institutions.

_____________

* My thanks to John Sabapathy for his help with this article.

¹ Jacques Dalarun believed the author was Rufinus, cousin of Clare of Assisi, which makes considerable sense. For references and the respective roles of the companions, see S. Piron, ‘Note sur Léon et Rufin, l’écriture et le corps’, Archivum Franciscanum historicum, cxi (2018), 365–75.

² Legenda trium sociorum, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. R. J. Armstrong et al. (4 vols, New York and London/Manila, 1999–2004), ii. 66–110, at p. 76 (§ 13).

³ Legenda trium sociorum, p. 83, § 2 4.

⁴ Francis of Assisi, Testament (Early Documents, i. 124–7, at p. 125, § 14).

⁵ Matthew XIX: 21; Luke IX: 3; Matthew XVI: 24; Legenda trium sociorum, pp. 85–6, §§ 28–9. Since they found it on the altar, the book was not a whole Bible but a liturgical codex. Neither was it a full lectionary, since they were specifically looking for ‘the word of the Gospel’.

⁶ De inceptione ordinis (Early Documents, ii. 34–59, at p. 38, § 11a). The usual designation of this text as ‘The Anonymous of Perugia’ is irrelevant since we know this narrative was written by Brother John, companion of Giles of Assisi.

⁷ This notion first appears in the Epistola ad clericos (Early Documents, i. 52), probably written in 1220. The devotion to the eucharist is also expressed in the first of the Admonitions (Early Documents, i. 128–37, at pp. 128–9). Even if these texts were produced in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council, which defined the dogma of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, it cannot be doubted that these words represent an early concern for Francis.

⁸ Armstrong et al., De inceptione, pp. 42–5, §§ 19–23, based on Giles’s memories. See the Chronica by Jordan of Giano about the initial missions to Hungary and Germany, J. Schlageter, ‘Die Chronica des Bruders Jordan von Giano: Einführung und kritische Edition nach den bisher bekannten Handschriften’, Archivum Franciscanum historicum, civ (2011), 3–63, at p. 35, §§ 5–6.

⁹ A Salutation of the Virtues (Early Documents, i. 164–5, at p. 165, §§ 16–17).

¹⁰ 1 Peter II: 11, quoted in the Regula bullata (Early Documents, i. 99–106, at p. 103, § 6).

¹¹ F. Delmas-Goyon, Saint François d’Assise. Le frère de toute créature (Paris, 2008), pp. 124–36.

¹² R. Manselli, François d’Assise, trans. H. Louette and J. Mignon (Paris, 2001), pp. 237–48.

¹³ Compilatio Assisiensis (Early Documents, ii. 118–230, at pp. 132–3, § 18).

¹⁴ Regula bullata (Early Documents, i. 99–106, at p. 105, § 10).

¹⁵ F. Accrocca, Un ribelle tranquillo. Angelo Clareno e gli Spirituali francescani tra Due e Trecento (Assisi, 2009), pp. 133–9. Identification of places in A. Sancricca, I ‘fratres’ di Angelo Clareno (Macerata, 2015), pp. 67–70.

¹⁶ A. Clareno, Epistole, ed. L. von Auw, in Angeli Clareni opera (Rome, 1980), i. 204; G. L. Potestà, Angelo Clareno. Dai poveri eremiti ai fraticelli (Rome, 1990); D. Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (University Park, Pa., 2000), pp. 279–301.

¹⁷ A. Clareno, A Chronicle or History of the Seven Tribulations of the Order of the Brothers Minor, trans. D. Burr and E. R. Daniel (St Bonaventure, N.Y., 2005), p. 150; also Clareno, Epistole, pp. 241–4.

¹⁸ Clareno, Chronicle, pp. 148–9.

¹⁹ Clareno, Epistole, p. 80. The letter continues with a reference to a journey overseas to Cyprus and Romania which took place in the following decade.

²⁰ Clareno, Epistole, p. 244; Potestà, Angelo Clareno, pp. 126–7.

²¹ Early Commentaries on the Rule of Friars Minors, iii: Angelo Clareno, ed. and trans. D. Burr (St Bonaventure, N.Y., 2014), p. 1.

²² Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 1.

²³ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 9.

²⁴ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 28.

²⁵ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 39.

²⁶ Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 293–5. The allusion is to Matthew XXIV: 16.

²⁷ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 15.

²⁸ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 16.

²⁹ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 151.

³⁰ He is ‘that man of great sanctity and virtue as well as outstanding wisdom’ (Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 169), ‘the holy man of God’ (p. 224), ‘this man who, above all others in his time, was a lover and extoller of his order … a man Christ loved and singularly illumined with his wisdom’ (p. 231).

³¹ Potestà, Angelo Clareno, p. 155.

³² ‘Christo docente, cognovi, iam fere sunt anni XL elapsi quod Pater misericordiarum et luminum decreverat in homine Dei P. ponere spiritum fundatoris, ideo subesse, sequi et conformare me ei tanquam nunctio signato primi lapidis angularis Francisci, integre et cordialiter amo’ (Clareno, Epistole, p. 203).

³³ S. Piron, ‘La bibliothèque portative des fraticelles, 1. Le manuscrit de Pesaro’, Oliviana, v (2016), at §§ 21–7 <http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/804> [accessed 7 July 2019].

³⁴ ‘portans secum libros … nobis missos a sancte memorie Petro Iohanne’ (Clareno, Epistole, p. 248).

³⁵ Potestà, Angelo Clareno, pp. 279–95.

³⁶ Potestà, Angelo Clareno, pp. 283–6.

³⁷ X. Biron-Ouellet, ‘Simone Fidati da Cascia’s spiritual direction in fourteenth-century Italy’, in Agostino, Agostiniani e Agostinismi ne Trecento italiano, ed. J. Bartuschat, E. Brilli and D. Carron (Ravenna, 2018), pp. 67–86.

³⁸ Burr, Angelo Clareno, p. 45.

³⁹ S. Piron, ‘Censures et condamnation de Pierre de Jean Olivi: enquête dans les marges du Vatican’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age, cxviii (2006), 313–73, at p. 353.

⁴⁰ Clareno, Chronicle, pp. 129–44.

⁴¹ L. A. Burnham, So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: the Beguin Heretics of Languedoc (Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past, Ithaca, N.Y., 2007).

⁴² A. Montefusco, ‘Autoritratto del dissidente da giovane. Gli anni della formazione di Ubertino nel primo Prologo dell’Arbor vitae’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno internazionale: Assisi, 18–20 ottobre 2013 (Spoleto, 2014), pp. 27–82.

⁴³ According to Pierre Tort’s deposition, this happened while Olivi washed his hands, preparing himself to celebrate a mass in Paris (Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, p. 226). This implies he must have been at least 25 and probably not much more since his presence in Paris is recorded only up to 1273, when he was precisely that age.

⁴⁴ É. Griffe, ‘Un chanoine de Carcassonne, ami de Saint Dominique’, Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, lxxviii (1977), 54–7.

⁴⁵ S. Piron, ‘Olivi and Bonaventure: paradoxes of faithfulness’, Franciscan Stud., lxxiv (2016), 1–14.

⁴⁶ S. Piron, ‘Olivi et les averroïstes’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, liii (2006), 251–309.

⁴⁷ D. Burr, Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: the Origins of the Usus Pauper Controversy (Philadelphia, Pa., 1989).

⁴⁸ The ‘Questions on evangelical perfection’ are edited in A. Emmen, ‘La dottrina dell’Olivi sul valore religioso dei voti’, Studi Francescani, lxiii (1966), 88–108.

⁴⁹ ‘donatio facta Deo per votum non aufert proprietatem illam quam habemus per hoc quod naturaliter sumus domini actuum nostrorum et omnium eorum quae subiacent facultati liberi arbitrii.’ It continues, ‘Donatio etiam ipsa, qua datum fuit a principio quod erat iuris proprii, in eo cui votum placet, semper manet et semper replicatur’ (Emmen, La dottrina dell’Olivi’, p. 104). The translation is mine.

⁵⁰ P. J. Olivi, A Treatise on Contracts, ed. S. Piron and trans. R. Thornton (St Bonaventure, N.Y., 2016); original Latin text and French translation in P. J. Olivi, Traité de contrats, ed. and trans. S. Piron (Paris, 2012).

⁵¹ P. J. Olivi, Quaestio de usu paupere. The Quaestio and the Tractatus, ed. D. Burr (Florence and Perth, 1992), p. 35: ‘Unde sicut materia sine forma est informis et confusa, instabilis, fluxibilis et vacua seu vana et infructuosa, sic abdicatio omnis iuris sine paupere usu se habet’. The translation is mine.

⁵² R. Lambertini, ‘Idem quod evangelium Christi: interpretazioni dell’identità tra regola francescana e Vangelo da Olivi a Clareno’, Cristianesimo nella storia, xxxvi (2015) 299–327.

⁵³ P. J. Olivi, Quaestiones de Romano pontifice, ed. M. Bartoli (Grottaferrata, 2002).

⁵⁴ ‘Regule vero predicte et quorumcunque religiosorum omnis tenor et vigor sic a romane sedis potestate manat ut nulla sit eius auctoritas que ab indulgencia seu confirmacione sedis apostolice non decurrat. Non faceret igitur romanus pontifex contra evangelium et fidem Christi, etiamsi statueret contra, mutaret vel tolleret ipsam regulam. Nec est ipsa regula idem quod evangelium, sed est quedam vite laudabilis forma a romanis pontificibus approbata et confirmata, ipsorum declarationi, mutationi et omnimode dispositioni simpliciter et absolute subiecta’ (M. Monachus, ‘Inquisitoris sententia contra combustos in Massilia’, Oliviana, ii (2006), § 8 <http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/36> [accessed 7 July 2019]).

⁵⁵ P. J. Olivi, ‘Quid ponat ius vel dominium’, ed. F. Delorme and S. Piron, Oliviana, v (2016) <https://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/882> [accessed 7 July 2019].

⁵⁶ Bonaventure, Commentaria in quattuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, in Opera omnia (10 vols, Ad Claras Aquas, 1882–1902), iv. 14.

⁵⁷ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 105, a. 5.

⁵⁸ ‘Natura rationalis … est etiam debitrix virtutis iustitie et unanimis ac fidelis concordie et amicitie ad omnes personas rationales’ (Olivi, ‘Quid ponat ius’, § 30).

⁵⁹ P. J. Olivi, Lectura super Apocalipsim, ed. W. Lewis (St Bonaventure, N.Y., 2015).

⁶⁰ E.g., Thomas de Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, bk ii, ch. 23 (Early Documents, ii. 239–393, at pp. 281–3), also reflected in Actus beati Francisci et sociorum ejus, ed. P. Sabatier (Collection d’études et documents, iv, Paris, 1902), p. 38.

⁶¹ Verba fratris Conradi. Extrait du Ms. 1/25 de S. Isidore, ed. P. Sabatier, in Opuscules de critique historique (Paris, 1903), pp. 370–92.

⁶² M. Cusato, ‘Whence “the community”?’, Franciscan Stud., lx (2002), 39–92; S. Piron, ‘Le mouvement clandestin des dissidents franciscains au milieu du XIVe siècle’, Oliviana, iii (2009) <http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/337> [accessed 7 July 2019].

⁶³ S. Piron, ‘L’ecclésiologie franciscaine de Jean de Roquetaillade. À propos d’une édition récente’, Franciscan Stud., lxv (2007), 281–94, at p. 292.

⁶⁴ D. Burr, Olivi’s Peaceable Kingdom: a Reading of the Apocalypse Commentary (Philadelphia, Pa., 1993), p. 263.