5 - The fervour of the early friars

Summary

While the monks’ focus was on the discipline of the cloister and the litur-gical cycle, the friars found their vocation among the urban communities of western Christendom; their outlook was global rather than local and this must have amounted to a contrast with the local clergy focused on a diocese, a city and a parish. Moreover, they carried news from afar. Gladly divesting themselves of their possessions, they lived for the day and their course was lit by the flame of the Gospel. Their lives were based on what they heard in the Scriptures. They used but did not own material things. They ministered to their neighbours, testifying to the liberating teaching of the Gospel. Dr Andrew G. Little remarked that ‘enthusiasm and self-sacrifice’ were the instruments which brought them success and favour. The friars were renowned for their devotions, especially towards the Eucharist and the Divine Office. John of Parma, minister general, led the friars by example and he celebrated Mass daily with a devotion that transmitted itself to those present. This is confirmed by the example concerning Cambridge recounted in the last collatio. They were instinctively good and enjoyed the company of their brethren, forming communities grounded in charity. Contemporaries were impressed by them and many were drawn to absorb their teaching and to take their religious habit, as shown in the third collatio.

The life of the fraternity

Some monastic historians were enthralled by this new form of religious life and wrote about the friars with immense admiration. One of them was Roger Wendover, the Benedictine chronicler, who enumerated the admirable and refreshing changes associated with the friars:

About that time [1207], there sprang up, under the auspices of Pope Innocent, the preachers, called Minors who quickly filled the earth. They dwell in cities and towns in groups of ten or seven, possessing no property at all, living according to the Gospel, displaying the most extreme poverty in both food and clothing, walking about barefoot, and giving to all the greatest example of humility. On Sundays and feast days they went forth from their dwellings, preaching the word of the Gospel in the parish churches, eating and drinking whatever they found among the people to whom they preached.