3 - Narrative of the Process Against the Friars Minor, How they Were Expelled from the Town of St Edmund [Bl Ms Harley 638, Fols 29r – 30r]

Summary

A certain narrative concerning the process against the Friars Minor, how they were expelled from the town of St Edmundsbury.

Therefore [Edmund] is to be venerated by the pious devotion of the faithful on account of his merit, who, as if standing in heaven before the supercelestial hierarchy, together with the golden supercelestial emanation, is adorned before others with a multitude of merits in the earthly hierarchy. For he beseeches mercy for sinners, and obtains safety for the sick and for those burdened with any troubles, and he conveys those shipwrecks, people despairing of life, favourably to port. He opens the bosom of his kingly clemency to those pursued by enemies, or sought by snares, and to any evildoers whatsoever, who run together to his sanctuary, and safely protects and defends from every incursion of the enemy. And, as if devoutly sighing for the patronage of his protection, to those destitute of energy by any calamity he dispenses the mercy of his kingly liberty as a safeguard of protection. Thus he drives out from the realm of his dominion those breaking into his liberty with obstinate temerity (which is sanctioned not only by royal munificence but also by apostolic authority), and whispering against his rights with contorted grimace, detaining them with the punishment of justice. The evidence of this fact and its celebrated fame is spread everywhere, and is just as clear.

However, the religious and venerable men, the friars called Minor, had watched for a long time with a crafty stratagem to obtain a place of lodging in the town of the blessed martyr, against the indult conceded as a privilege to the monks dwelling in the same place. When they had been notified of the consequence, and they had been offered warnings in many ways, they little considered following them, and finally, burning more intensely with supercilious bile, they obtained from the Lord Pope Alexander IV a certain privilege, according to the etymology of the same, notwithstanding the pile of very exact instances walling around [the monks] many times. And thus one may see that, by a pious collection from the faithful in the aforesaid town of the blessed martyr, a plot of land was granted them. Without leave of the abbot and with the connivance of the said monks, they entered the same place by the indulgence of the Apostolic See to live and build there.