"Among these freed prisoners there was one, Angelo Clareno, who then met another friar from Provence, Pierre Olieu, who preached the prophecies of Joachim, and then he met Ubertino of Casale, and in this way the movement of the Spirituals originated. . ."
Thousands of people have read this account of the Spiritual Franciscans in the pages of Umberto Eco, but David Burr's account is better. Much better. Burr has been working on the subject for over thirty years: his first papers on Peter Olivi were published in 1971. Nobody knows the Spiritual Franciscans as well as he does, and his expertise is complemented by literary distinction. One characteristic of that distinction is his gift for blending narrative with analysis. Starting with Francis himself he points out that the Saint did not consider poverty to be the single distinguishing characteristic of his brotherhood; rather he sought to encourage the deepest humility, or self-emptying, that evidently demanded a life of poverty but also demanded unquestioning obedience to superiors and the fullest possible rejection of the cares and knowledge of the world. Thus it was not so much poverty as issues concerning the assumption of worldly responsibility and its attendant comforts that initially provoked debate during the poverello's lifetime and for roughly the first half century after his death.
These circumstances lead Burr to the vexed questions of whether there was a continuous opposition of parties within the Franciscan Order from the start, and, if so, whether one of them was recognized as that of "Spirituals". Franciscan historiography has been absorbed by these questions ever since the late nineteenth century because the thirteenth-century evidence offers room for discussion and also because Angelo Clareno built his account of the tribulations of the "Spirituals" (c. 1326) on the framework of affirmative answers to both. Indeed some prestigious historians of the Order, including Franz Ehrle and John Moorman, have taken the side of Angelo Clareno. But Burr does not. By penetrating reexamination of the full dossier of evidence he concludes that one cannot talk about a continuous opposition of parties or the emergence of a recognizably "Spiritual Franciscan" movement until the 1270s. From that point on he really does see a movement (relying on the familiar Wittgensteinian notion of "family resemblance"), despite his awareness of internal disagreements.
Once into the real substance of his book, Burr comfortably moves back and forth between Italy and southern France. (The Italian material is new to him, but one would never guess that from the product.) He sees the initial emergence of a distinct Spiritual opposition to the Franciscan majority in the March of Ancona in the 1270s when a group of rigorous dissidents were condemned as schismatics and sentenced to life imprisonment. Soon after, the usus pauper controversy flared up regarding the theses of the Occitan Olivi. In discussing the relevant debates Burr is fully in his element, for he is as attuned to the nuances of scholastic questiones as if he had been reading Scotus in his playpen. Whereas most of us had assumed that the controversy concerned specific practices -- the extent of poverty one was obliged to pursue in order to be a true son of Saint Francis -- Burr corrects us by showing that the debate concerned something else: whether "poor use" -- however it might be interpreted in practice -- was an essential part of the Franciscan vow.
No participant in the debate denied that "poor use" was necessary; the question was whether violating it entailed mortal sin. Olivi argued that it did, whereas his opponents insisted that such a position would cause unbearable anguish among the brethren inasmuch as one could never be sure how far he was really living "poorly" on any given day. (Franciscans, for example, could hardly wear the same clothing in the snows as in the deserts, but if one dressed more warmly for the snows, was he then violating the vow and going to hell?) Olivi's answer was that Franciscans by precept had to adhere to poor use but he acknowledged that adherence was "indeterminate," with actual practice determined by circumstance. Thus Burr is warranted to observe that the difference between the two sides was "razor-thin." And yet in making "poor use" a shibboleth Olivi was preparing the ground for what developed into bitter quarrels about real laxity.
Burr proceeds with several chapters treating the advance toward full-fledged schism in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Ubertino da Casale here becomes prominent because he was a leader of Olivi's party after the master's death in 1298, but otherwise the Italian story recedes into the background. Employing his skills in doctrinal analysis, Burr reveals how Joachite prophecy was added to "poverty" as a source of contention (he notices a revealing debate between Franciscans and Dominicans as to whether prophecy is a habitus or an actus), and how positions became more extreme by the time of the Council of Vienne. Regarding the debates instigated by Clement V he enlivens the minutiae of pro and contra with telling observations, and often shows how apparently trivial details had larger implications.
Burr's thesis about the cause of outright rupture places the blame on the hapless Clement V. Although this infirm old man wished to effect a lasting compromise between the by now bitterly warring parties (he ruled out the alternative of splitting them into separate orders), his pacification program depended on having regional ministers and guardians define contested issues of practice. In this way Spiritually-oriented regions might follow their own route to rigorism without troubling the less rigorous majority. But when Clement himself and the reigning Minister General died in close succession, Spirituals in southern France took advantage of the vacuum to move to rigorist extremes and to welcome like-minded refugees from other provinces. Not surprisingly, a new Minister General, Michael of Cesena, was then elected who refused to accept this situation, and a pope, John XXII, was elected soon after who felt bound to support the new Minister General. These events transformed the contest about poverty into one about obedience. When intransigent Spirituals resolved to disobey their superiors rather than compromise their commitment to the vow as they understood it, Michael of Cesena and John XXII suppressed them by force.
Burr dedicates two chapters to the persecutions in Languedoc that were aimed against some of these Spirituals and even more against their lay followers, the "Beguins." One of the chapters considers "case histories" -- accounts of four of the victims concerned, emphasizing the range of their backgrounds and ideas; the second moves to generalizations, partly from original research and partly with help for statistics from a recent article by J.-L. Biget. Although these chapters taken together are now the best summary we have of the Beguin story (a full-scale history is expected from Louisa Burnham), I find some problematic aspects. One is that Burr draws the line at the Pyrenees, intentionally excluding Catalonia. While surely a defensible practical decision, this limits full appreciation of the subject because the border was porous and contacts were evidently close. (The languages of Occitania and Catalonia were mutually comprehensible.) Moreover, neglecting the Catalan side occasionally hampers Burr in other respects: Arnald of Villanova (or, as some would have it, a close disciple), referred to Olivi's writings with veneration in a treatise probably written shortly after 1303, and the Liber de Flore, written by one of Arnald's admirers in 1304 or 1305, termed Olivi the "new Hector."
I think Burr tends to underestimate the extent of the Beguin movement, not only by leaving out Catalonia but by his willingness to follow Biget's deprecatory statistics. Even if it is true that Beguins comprised only 1 to 2% of the total population of Narbonne around 1318, the percentage roughly doubles if we reinterpret it in terms of Narbonne's population of non-superannuated adults, and even then we are still ignorant about the number of silent sympathizers. My last reservation is that without pandering to sensationalism there could have been more employment of the drama and vibrancy that the sources convey: Pierre Trencavel's fleeing from shelter to shelter across the Rhône as if on an underground railway; Na Prous's receiving of three gifts in divine transport -- "tears, the sweetest aroma she had ever inhaled, and a feeling of warmth as though someone had placed a cloak over her shoulders."
After a penultimate chapter that considers the links between the persecutions of the Spirituals and the opening of the theoretical poverty controversy (whether Christ and the Apostles held no property individually or in common), Burr's last chapter treats the later career and thought of Angelo Clareno. Particularly sensible is a section in which he weighs the various possible meanings of the term "Joachite" and concludes that Angelo does not match up with any of the most useful meanings. An appendix contains thorough explorations of possible links between the Spirituals and three Italian women mystics: Clare of Montefalco, Margaret of Cortona, and Angela of Foligno.
For a book of this length there are remarkably few mistakes: Joachim died in 1202, not 1205 (p. 23); the Fourth Lateran Council was held in 1215, not 1214 (p. 72); Arnald of Villanova was released from captivity in Perugia many months before the election of Clement V (p. 112); and John XXII dealt with the Spirituals in Avignon, not Vienne (p. 201). In addition I believe that Burr's use of the term "apocalyptic" to describe those who did not think the end was near (p. 310) is inappropriate. (Cf. B. McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, 5: "what sets off apocalypticism from general eschatology is the sense of the proximity of the end.") Finally comes the grave fault of printing the notes at the back of the book, which of course was not Burr's responsibility. Permit the reviewer a cri de coeur: When, Lord, oh when, will university presses recognize that they are not going to place their scholarly books in the airport racks by trying to hide their documentation?
This book above all is not appropriate even for the bugle or black death history buffs. As noted, Burr tends to shun blood and thunder. His style is spare and his wit is acerbic. Although he does draw occasionally on modern parallels, these are never of the "poke em in the ribs," Monica Lewinsky, variety. Regarding a position of the Franciscan majority he writes: "The reaction it inspired . . . must have been similar to that evoked by a modern television commercial in which a slim, gorgeous young woman appears holding a dish of ice cream and announces that her new diet allows her to eat whatever she likes. The viewer instinctively feels that, whatever the value of the product being sold, this particular young woman is an actress who does not eat whatever she likes." While I am quoting favorite passages, here is another, referring to Bonaventure's statement that a "little old lady" could love God as much as a master of theology: "Anyone who has read much medieval theology will be familiar with the little old lady and the uses to which she was put. Scholars as diverse as Aquinas and Olivi ratified her claim to known more about salvation than Aristotle did, while Ockham imagined her calling a general council." Burr's wit is merely a bonus. The central virtues of this book are its clarity, its comprehensiveness, its closeness to the sources, and its measured judgments. Scholars familiar with the material will find new insights and neglected sources such as a questio of Henry of Ghent on Joachim's third age, or a petition from the city government of Narbonne of 1309 in behalf of Olivi. Students coming to the material for the first time will find a treasury of instruction. Burr is one of America's finest medievalists and is here at the pinnacle of his accomplishments.