IX - The Constitutions of 1239–60

Summary

IN 1892 Ehrle published the results of his researches into early Franciscan constitutional history. He had collected evidence from the chronicles and histories of the Order, the decisions and decrees of Ministers General and of General Chapters, and from Papal documents, and from these sources he was able to reconstruct a narrative of the Order's constitutional evolution and to analyse the nature of its organisation at the various stages of its development. The treatment accorded to each aspect and period was necessarily conditioned by the quality and quantity of the available material, and at some points was much fuller and more complete than at others. The work of the General Chapter of Narbonne in 1260 was illuminated by the publication of a full text of the constitutions then promulgated; but on the work of the 1239 Chapter his findings were meagre. He noted decisions to reduce the powers of the Ministers and increase those of the General and Provincial Chapters, to hold an experimental Chapter of dimnitors, and to fix the number of provinces at thirty-two; and concluded: ‘That is all that I can discover of the “great multitude of constitutions” which according to Salimbene should already have been promulgated at the one single General Chapter meeting at Rome in 1239.’ Since the appearance of his article our knowledge of those earlier constitutions has increased very little. When Father Bihl re-edited the Constitutions of Narbonne in 1941 he contented himself with remarking that very few of the constitutions prior to 1260 had survived, and that Ehrle's study of them was by far the best.