sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 1

Società internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi: Identità e autocoscienza dei frati Minori (secc. XIII-XIV)

This collection of articles stems from a conference of the Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani/Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani that took place October 13-15, 2022 (Assisi, Italy). The main theme of the conference and this volume is the identity and self-awareness (identità e autocoscienza) of Friars Minor (and Poor Clares) during the thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries. There are ten articles, seven written in Italian and three in English, along with a conclusion written in Italian by Roberto Lambertini, the program schedule of the conference, and an index of names. This volume is a significant contribution to the continual study and understanding of the Franciscan movement from its beginning, circa 1208, to the middle of the fourteenth century.

The first three articles deal with Francis of Assisi (1282-1226), Clare of Assisi (1194-1253), and Anthony of Padua/Lisbon (1195-1231). Grado Giovanni Merlo contributes the first essay entitled "Et ego, frater Franciscus" in which he focuses on the self-awareness of Francis and shows how any discussion of Francis' life and spirituality needs to begin with the Testament that Francis wrote shortly before he died in 1226. Francis wrote this text to show how he was called by God to live according to the form of the Gospel. Francis signed his Testament with "ego, frater Franciscus, parvulus, vester servus", which expresses his identity and self-awareness of who the Lord called him to be. Francis expected that the friars minor should find their own identity in his evangelical identity, even though the friars contested this identity, which led to the publication of the papal bull Quo elongati of Gregory IX (1230). Grado offers in this essay a significant introduction to - and commentary on - the Testament that acts as a "remembrance, admonition, and exhortation" to all followers of Francis.

Maria Pia Alberzoni's essay "Il 'francescanesimo' di madonna Chiara" examines Clare's desire to identify with Francis' approach to poverty in common and to live the evangelical life similar to Francis. Alberzoni deals with the issue of the friars' spiritual engagement with the Poor Clares at San Damiano. She also deals with some major questions: do we call the female religious experience Franciscanism (as the Poor Clares did in Umbria) or Minoritism (as they referred to themselves outside of Umbria)? Can Clare be referred to as a "Domina" (Lady) or a "minor sister" (soror minor)? Or should she be considered a sister (soror), nun (monialis), or handmaid (ancilla)? She not only explores Clare's self-identity through the use of these titles, but she shows also how important the life of poverty was to Clare. This is a significant article on Clare's own self-identity and the challenge she faced when the papacy tried to impose another, more mainstream identity upon her.

Luciano Bertazzo's essay ("Frate Francesco e frate Antonio: due identità") presents Francis and Anthony of Padua/Lisbon as complementary in their minoritas identity. The article presents an excellent introduction to Francis - based largely on the Testament - and Anthony that is based principally on the late thirteenth-century hagiographical text Benignitas and his sermons. Significant also is Bertazzo's presentation of the iconographic legacy of both Francis and Anthony, naming this as "an index of an identity path". What we witness by the end of the thirteenth century is the transformation of identities in which Anthony becomes more "Franciscanized" and Francis becomes more "Anthonized" by certain segments of the Franciscan community.

Jean-François Godet-Calogeras' "The Morphing of the Franciscan movement between fraternitas and ordo" uses the evidence presented by the sources of Jacques de Vitry, Pope Honorius III, and Cardinal Hugolino to show how the events of 1217 to the early 1220s marked a shift (a morphing) of the fraternitas of Francis into an Ordo recognized by the papacy, thus the movement from charism (or intuition) to institution, as this transition was titled many years ago by Theophile Desbonnets. In the midst of the institutional church intervening in the ascribed identity of the friar minors as a religious ordo, Godet-Calogeras presents Francis as holding up to the friars - especially in the evangelical life outlined in the Testament - the original identity of the friars as a fraternitas by praying together, travel restrictions, the activity of preaching and deeds, and the communal celebration of penance and eucharist.

Two articles focus on the friars and the papacy: Andrea Bartocci's "Abdictio proprietatis. Le dichiarazioni pontifici della Regola dei Minori: de Gregorio IX a Clemente V" and Patrick Nold's "An identity denied: John XXII and the Franciscan Order (The evidence of Vatican BAV Borgh, 280)". The first article deals with the major papal legislation on the interpretation of the Later Rule of 1223, especially concerning the issue of poverty. The article begins with an analysis of the Rule regarding poverty, and then proceeds with the major papal documents that begin with Pope Gregory IX's Quo elongati (1230) and concludes with Innocent IV's Quanto studiosius (1247). What we see evidenced in this article is the exaltation of the papacy regarding the church and the Franciscan Order (external) and the inner discussion of poverty, both personal and communal, and the proper use of money.

Patrick Nold's essay focuses on Pope John XXII (1316-1334) and his relationship with the Franciscans, especially regarding the issue of evangelical poverty. His focus is on the manuscript Vatican BAV Borgh 280 that had much influence on John XXII's response to the question of Franciscan poverty, as it contains a summary of Gratian's Decretum and several other documents. The article deals with all the considerations - made manifest by his comments in the margins of certain documents including Vatican BAV Borgh, 280 - that John read when dealing with the papal, political, and religious issues regarding how the first line of the Franciscan Rule should be interpreted. Hold presents how John declared in a papal bull that the papacy did not own the property of the friars, granted them an exemption from the rule that absolutely forbade ownership of anything even in common, and declared that it is heretical to believe that Jesus and his disciples did not have possessions.

Carolyn Bruzelius describes the role of sacred space and architecture in her essay "'Avere chiese': Identity in the Mid-Thirteenth century Architecture of the Friar Minor" that includes six ground plans of various thirteenth-century Franciscan churches. The essay presents the evidence that we have from architecture - and the mid-thirteenth century document Determinationes quaestionum - that shows how the sacred spaces (hermitage, the single nave church in a small center of the countryside, and the large administrative and educational convents of a big city) parallel the multifaceted reality of the friars in the second half of the thirteenth century. This is an excellent presentation concerning the role of architecture that shows how the friars were truly everywhere and were involved in the many activities of the church: prayer, liturgy, conventual living, and service to the populace of the rural and urban areas of Italy.

Paolo Evangelisti's essay "'Vilitas attenditur in pretio pariter et colore'. La stima del valore come habitus dei Minori" focuses on the economics of the Franciscan movement, especially as it was discussed in the Later Rule of 1223, Expositio Regulæ quatuor Magistri, the Constitutions of Narbonne (1260), and in the thought of Bonaventure. The title of the essay is about the price and color of the Franciscan habit as discussed in the Constitutions, but it is more than that, as it deals with the issue of poverty (usus pauper) in general. Even though the friars were conscious of the term money (pecunia) as coined "money", the term meant anything that was of a certain value that was given to the friars.

Michele Pellegrini's article "Identità minoritica e identità locali" focuses on how the local community in cities and the province determined the way the friars lived. The author provides a fourfold program for his essay: first, he wants to explore all the types of awareness and the conscious argumentation of the identity relationship created between minoritism and the urban environment. Second, he chose to transcend the city horizon by opting for the province - and therefore the regional dimension - as a vital cell of reference for minority life. Third, he centers on defining the friars' mobility within a double-circuit, double-speed binary system. Fourth, he focuses on the acceptance and progressive regulation of practices which, in practice, ensured the insertion of the order into the local systems of pre-eminence.

It would have been helpful to have an introduction to the articles and a subject index to go along with the index of names. Beside this modest criticism, this is a significant contribution to the study of the identity and self-awareness of the Franciscans during their first one hundred years of existence. It includes many insights into Francis and Clare, Anthony, and many other friars and documents of the early Franciscan movement. It presents much of the most important material including hagiography, papal documents, spiritual literature, architecture, and theology. It shows how complex the early Franciscan movement was in the first hundred years regarding their attempt to live the evangelical life. To conclude, using the words of Roberto Lambertini, "'Identity' and 'self-awareness' are therefore pertinent tools for investigating the history of a religious group such as the Friars Minor, but also for other similar realities, whose dynamics cannot be adequately understood without taking such factors into account, or by relegating them to mere instrumental appendices" (370).