1 - The Ideal: Regulations and Franciscan Manuscripts in Padua

Summary

Introduction

By the middle of the fifteenth century, Franciscans were facing an internal conflict that menaced the unity of the order. Two groups of friars – the unreformed friars of the Community, or Conventuals, on the one side, and the reformed or Observant friars on the other – embraced almost opposite views concerning the nature and purpose of Franciscan spirituality. When, in 1443, a general chapter was summoned at Padua to elect the new minister general of the order, Pope Eugenius IV decided to intervene to solve the problem of increasing division within the order. The pope's project should have been confirmed by the election of the virtuous Observant friar Alberto of Sarteano. However, as Duncan Nimmo describes, during the first session of the chapter.

Alberto of Sarteano as president mounted the rostrum and began to read out a message from the pope, which may very well have expressed the wish that he be elected General. He never reached the end of it. With cries of ‘Liberty!, Liberty!’, a crowd of Conventuals surged forward, tore the missive from his hands, and dragged him bodily from the chamber, and on the floor of the hall the delegates of the two factions came to blows.

Two bands of friars fiercely, and perhaps enthusiastically, exchanging blows to settle a question of spiritual leadership was certainly not the most encouraging display of Christian charity. Nevertheless, the fight at the Paduan chapter was dramatic evidence of a dispute about the proper way of following Francis. In other words, the fight was in essence the physical expression of a debate on the proper way of reading and, if necessary, interpreting the Franciscan rule.

Francis explicitly forbade any glossing of his writings; nevertheless, Franciscan friars found themselves torn between those who wanted a strict and even literal observance of his dispositions and those who considered that interpretations and adaptations of the rule were necessary. In this debate, one of the most important questions was the role of study and books. In effect, learning and the use of books were intrinsically connected to two fundamental aspects of the Franciscan life: the principle of humility and the apostolic mission of preaching. An early biography of Francis of Assisi described his concern for the fact that, apparently, knowledge had become more attractive to friars than virtue.