CHAPTER III - THE FRATICELLI

Summary

We have seen how John XXII created and exterminated the heresy of the Spiritual Franciscans, and how Michele da Cesena enforced obedience within the Order as to the question of granaries and cellars and the wearing of short and narrow gowns. The settlement of the question, however, on so illogical a basis as this was impossible, especially in view of the restless theological dogmatism of the pope and his inflexible determination to crush all dissidence of opinion. Having once undertaken to silence the discussions over the rule of poverty which had caused so much trouble for nearly a century, his logical intellect led him to carry to their legitimate conclusions the principles involved in his bulls Quorumdam, Sancta Romana, and Gloriosam Ecclesiam, while his thorough worldliness rendered him incapable of anticipating the storm which he would provoke. A character such as his was unable to comprehend the honest inconsistency of men like Michele and Bonagrazia, who could burn their brethren for refusing to have granaries and cellars, and who, at the same time, were ready to endure the stake in vindication of the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles, which had so long been a fundamental belief of the Order, and had been proclaimed as irrefragable truth in the bull Exiit qui seminat.

In fact, under a pope of the temperament of John, the orthodox Franciscans had a narrow and dangerous path to tread. The Spirituals were burned as heretics because they insisted on following their own conception of the Rule of Francis, and the distinction between this and the official recognition of the obligation of poverty was shadowy in the extreme.