Poverty struggle
The poverty dispute was a conflict in the medieval Franciscan order about the right way to deal with the ideal of poverty left by the founder of the order. Parts of the order were accused of heresy in the course of this dispute, which threatened to split the order for a long time . By instrumentalizing the dispute in the ecclesiastical political struggle between Ludwig the Bavarian and the Avignon Curia , the dispute over Protestant poverty briefly became politically explosive and dangerous for the papacy . In the course of the 15th century, the contradictions regarding the observation of the ideal of poverty led to a division of the order into observants and conventuals .
Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Rule of the Order
Already during the lifetime of Francis of Assisi a conflict emerged between the ideal of Francis, which was essentially inspired by the mission of Jesus ( Matth. 10), and the demands on the organization of a steadily growing order. Francis had the oral confirmation of his original order rule directly from Pope Innocent III. receive.
The Franciscan order experienced rapid growth during the lifetime of St. Francis and quickly developed well beyond the original community of hermits . This development made changes to the rules of the order in relation to the organizational requirements necessary. Several attempts were made to give the Order a written rule. Francis resisted all attempts to change his original ideals. Ultimately, however, he was forced to compromise. In his will, Francis expressly committed the order he founded to the ideal of evangelical poverty.
The poverty ideal as legal fiction
The papacy tried to promote the development of the order through milder interpretations of rules and privileges and to adapt the order rule to the organizational requirements of a large monastic order. Pope Gregory IX had in his bull " Quo elongati " of September 28, 1230 denied that Francis' testament was legally binding in order to accommodate the circles in the order who wanted to change the ideal of poverty in favor of the growth of the order. A year later, on August 21, 1231, he put the Franciscan Order under the jurisdiction of the Holy See with the bull " Nimis iniqua " . In 1245, with the bull " Ordinem vestrum ", both the movable and immovable property of the order was declared property of the Roman Church by Pope Innocent IV . The adherence to the poverty ideal should then be ensured by a construction. The core of this was that the order should remain freed from ownership and especially from property rights enforceable in court (usus iuris) through the involvement of third parties for asset management. But this led to the accusation that Franciscan poverty was just a legal fiction . In reality, the brothers in the city convents were able to take advantage of the better economic opportunities, especially since the economic boom from the middle of the 13th century. The brothers lived legally in the status of propertyless beggars, but their living conditions approached those of the bourgeois middle class. However, they were only allowed to accept gifts , which did not amount to an actual acquisition. And the whole thing met with the determined resistance of the spirituals , as the explanations below show here. The practice that arose in this way led to the fact that the conventuals within the order increasingly became secularized and increasingly came into competition with the parish clergy until General Minister Johannes Bonaventura took office .
The parties in the Franciscan order
In the order itself there were still groups of old companions of the founder of the order. These Zelanti or spirituals passed on the ideals of Francis in the form of oral tradition and observed the ideal of poverty in their own hermitages. They were represented by the elected Minister General of the Order of John of Parma , who after ten years in office was forced to abdicate by the Pope in 1257. The spirituals were in contrast to the relaxati, later also called conventuals, who took a more moderate stance in accordance with the papal interpretations of rules or wanted to get rid of the ideal of poverty openly by gaining ecclesiastical dignity or with the help of rich patrons. Such brothers in particular often achieved leading influence in the order and church, for example Elias of Cortona , Sixtus IV. And Sixtus V.
The bull "Exiit qui seminat"
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio is also considered to be the second founder of the order. At the time of his inauguration as general in 1257, the entire order was in a deep crisis. Although his predecessor had been entrusted with important tasks by the Pope, he even rejected a papal interpretation when interpreting the rule of the order. On the other hand there was criticism from the parish clergy ( university dispute ). The mendicant order was accused of interfering in the competences of the parish clergy and their branches in the cities of abandoning the ideal of poverty. Bonaventure tried to counter these allegations by bringing the order back to the actual ideal of poverty and trying to monitor it through stricter discipline.
To maintain the ideal of poverty, the monks by the Franciscan Pope Nicholas III. the bull " Exiit qui seminat " imposed an obligation to observe the poverty rule. In this bull the Pope declared the doctrine of evangelical poverty to be the incontrovertible truth and categorically forbade any interpretation or discussion about it. The Pope made a distinction between the legal right of use "usus iuris" and the right of use "usus facti". The brothers therefore had no legal right to any goods. They only had the right of use, which was to be used in the form of the "usus moderatus". The cop was supposed to settle disputes. But the spirituals were dissatisfied with it, since even this mitigated ideal of poverty was often not adhered to. The spirituals, in turn, came under pressure from the conventuals. They wanted to enforce a uniform conception of the ideal of poverty shared by all members of the order. To enforce their demands, they resorted to disciplinary measures against the spirituals. This practice led to further resistance from the spirituals. In connection with the Bull of Nicholas, voices were raised that openly doubted that the papacy was even able to interpret the rules of St. Francis, which were equated with the Gospels, through interpretations. Because of such questions, a group of hermits around the chronicler Angelus Clarenus was strongly harassed by the conventuals because of their attitude that one does not have to submit to unjust orders. The conventuals took severe church sentences against the brothers and imprisoned them for years. The leadership of the order met the hermits by freeing them and sending them on a mission to Armenia. But the fronts were hardened. In some parts of Italy, Francis' will was publicly burned at that time, in one case even on the head of an ascetic.
After the return of the monks around Angelus Clarenus from Armenia, they continued to be criticized by their friars. At the same time, with the southern French editor Petrus Johannis Olivi, a strongly spiritual direction emerged, which pushed back to the actual ideal of the founder of the order. Olivi favored the "usus pauper" (poor usage) and declared everything else to be a mortal sin . Olivi himself was attacked as a heretic and his teachings were made dangerous because they were mixed up with the writings of Abbot Joachim von Fiore . Olivi's teachings were particularly popular with the lay brothers of the third order rule in Provence in the south of France, where fanaticism of poverty and misunderstood Joachimitic teachings mingled into a dangerous mixture.
Popes Cölestin V and Boniface VIII.
In 1294 the hermit Peter von Murrone was elected Pope Cölestin V , who was identified by parts of the spiritual wing with the angelic pope from the writings of Joachim of Fiore. Celestine V took the group around Angelus Clarenus out of the Franciscan order and granted them permission to consider their ideal. After six months, however, Celestine V suddenly renounced the papacy because the burden was too heavy for him. He was followed by Boniface VIII. This revoked all decrees and privileges of his predecessor and took action against the spiritualists in the order. Angelus Clarenus' group was excommunicated and had to flee to Greece. However, Boniface VIII put considerable pressure on the Patriarch of Constantinople in this matter, so the hermits had to return to Italy. The pressure from Boniface VIII led to radicalization. The spiritualists defended themselves against him with the argument that the abdication of Celestine V was void and popes like Gregory IX. and Nicholas III. be heretics because they presumed to have accepted the rule of St. Interpret Francis. The spokesman for this direction from Tuscany was Ubertino di Casale , a colleague and student of Petrus Johannes Olivis. The Tuscan group reacted to the pressure of persecution by the conventuals with rebellion and violence. Eventually its members were forced to leave their convents. They gathered under the protection of sympathetic nobles in Sicily and formed the core of the local fraticelles .
The practical poverty struggle
With the pontificate of Clement V , the situation changed and the spirituals received prominent aristocratic advocates. Pope Clement V had an official investigation carried out at the Council of Vienne , during which Ubertino di Casale was also able to present his arguments. Here Olivi's orthodoxy and observation of the rule of the order were discussed. The Pope tried to preserve the unity of the order and took the spirituals under his protection. Secular religious provinces were strictly exhorted to adhere to the ideal of poverty. But Clemens' hope to prevent a split in the order did not last long. The gap in the Order between the conventuals, who lived out their ideal in large convents with their own studies according to the papal interpretations of rules, and the spiritualists who wanted to return to the observation of the original ideal of poverty in hermitages, was simply too great. After Clemens death, the disputes broke out again. Particularly in Provence in the south of France, there was strong oppression of the spiritual. Trials against supporters of the stricter direction were initiated here. These were imprisoned as rebels and schismatics . Those accused in turn took up arms, occupied Narbonne and Beziers and drove out the superiors of the order with an appeal to the future Pope. As an outer badge, the rebels wore smaller hoods and shorter, narrower and coarser robes than the conventuals, because they believed that they were following the example of St. Follow Francis. For them this was just as much an article of faith as the renouncement of granaries, wine cellars and the refusal to deal with money. The leadership of the order in the form of the new Minister General Michael von Cesena sympathized with the spirituals, but his main concern was to preserve the unity of the order. First he looked in harmony with the new Pope Johann XXII. the conversation with the insurgents. His attempts at mediation were rejected with protests. Pope Johann XXII. then had a group of Provencal agitators summoned to Avignon together with Angelus Clarenus and Ubertino di Casale in 1317. Angelus Clarenus was excommunicated by Boniface VIII on the basis of an earlier judgment. As a result, he fled to central Italy and founded an independent order here, which referred to itself as Clarener or Fraticelli.
Ubertino di Casale managed to remain unmolested by defending a cardinal. But the Provencal spirituals were incarcerated. With the bull " Quorundam exigit " Johann XXII referred. to the obedience command of St. Francis and basically left it to the superiors of the order to decide on the controversial questions of clothing and storage. The most stubborn spirituals were turned over to the Inquisition in Marseilles to renounce their attitude. Five persistent people were convicted because they refused to obey the papal bull and insisted that the rule handed down by Francis was identical to the Gospels. Four of them were burned at the stake in 1318. At the same time, this marked the beginning of a large-scale inquisition activity against the supporters of the spiritual ideal of poverty in southern France. In this context, Olivi's bones were also excavated and his tomb was destroyed. The remaining spirituals integrated themselves as a direction of reform within the order and observed the papal interpretations of rules. With the Pentecost chapter of the order in 1319, the practical poverty struggle can be regarded as ended.
The theoretical poverty struggle
Towards the end of 1321, the Dominican inquisitor Johannes von Belna ( Jean de Beaune ) in Narbonne was given a heresy- suspected begarde . A written list of his heretical errors also contained the sentence that Christ and the apostles lived without goods in the sense of personal or common property. It can be assumed that this statement was a welcome occasion for the Dominican to attack the rival Franciscan order. Johannes de Belna called a meeting to clarify the orthodoxy of this question. The Franciscan lecturer Berengar Teloni also took part, who protested firmly against the condemnation of the sentence and argued that this statement was identical to the bull " Exiit qui seminat " by Pope Nicholas III. Berengar refused to submit when the Inquisitor tried to force him to withdraw and appealed directly to the Pope. This reacted with the convocation of a consistory and gave that of Pope Nicholas III. Prohibited discussion of the bull "Exiit qui seminat" free. He justified this with the fact that his predecessor's decretals had not been legitimized by a college of cardinals and were therefore void. In the consistory, which was made up of bishops and cardinals, there were quite different opinions on the Franciscan ideal of poverty. Just Johann XXII. but was a decidedly secular Pope, who operated the expansion of papal power and finances as well as quite lavish court. Therefore a commitment to the ideal of a poor church was more than unlikely. In order to oppose a decision against the ideal of poverty in advance, the general chapter of the Franciscans in Perugia wrote a letter to all of Christianity in 1322, in which they declare that the statement that Jesus and the apostles did not own property either individually or as a community is not heretical but true and orthodox Catholic teaching. Johann XXII. felt betrayed by this. Known for his outbursts of anger, he reacted with the bull " Ad conditorem canonum ", by which he released the Holy See from all responsibility for Franciscan goods. He accused the entire order of the behavior of the moderate current, which amassed property. He justified this consistently with the fact that in reality the Franciscans actually go to court more often than other orders of Christianity.
This was a severe blow to the Franciscan self-image, according to which the Order was free from any ownership responsibility. The Pope tried to bring the entire order into line with the rival Dominican Order, forcing it to recognize that possession of property was a necessary condition for its existence. The Pope resolutely opposed contradictions to this interpretation and also had the greatest Franciscan scholar of his time, Wilhelm von Ockham , who taught that the assertion that Christ and the apostles owned property was heresy, cited to Avignon. On November 12, 1323, Johann XXII decided. Finally, in the constitution “ Cum inter nonnullos ”, the teaching that Christ and the apostles had no property is a distortion of the Gospels. This basically declared this doctrine to be erroneous and heretical. The Pope based his argument on the fact that the use of consumer goods (such as food, clothing, etc.) basically leads to their destruction. In addition, the dominion was clearly given in Paradise by God himself (Genesis 1:26). Therefore, property is given by God himself.
Those Franciscans like Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo , who had recently taken action against the spirituals with the Pope, now came into open opposition to him. The entire order was enraged and some of its members declared Johann XXII. for heretical. This was all the more dangerous for the Pope as he was also having a dispute with the Empire at the time.
The poverty struggle and the church political struggle of Ludwig of Bavaria
At the same time, Pope John XXII. a quarrel with the empire. The German Empire had been in the interregnum since the death of Henry VII in 1313 . In 1314 there was a king election in Frankfurt . The Habsburgs faced each other with their candidate Friedrich the Beautiful and the Luxembourgers with the candidate Ludwig IV , the Duke of Bavaria. The election was ambivalent , so that no candidate could win the required majority. As a result, both candidates emerged as legitimate rulers. In 1317 Johann XXII. declares that as long as the German throne is finished, the government of the empire is subject to the Pope. He tried to use this situation to enforce papal claims against the Ghibellines in Italy. The battle of Mühldorf in 1322, however, brought a decision in favor of Ludwig IV. The latter now appeared as the rightful ruler and sought to underpin his sovereign rights there with direct support from the Italian Ghibellines. But this brought him into direct conflict with the Pope. Johann XXII. refused Ludwig any recognition and continued the strategy of heretic trials against him that had already begun in Italy against the Ghibellines. Johann XXII. justified his approach with the fact that Ludwig arrogated rights that he did not have through papal confirmation and that he supported convicted heretics in Italy. It was demanded of Ludwig that he should resign the title of king and declare all previous governmental acts to be invalid until his election was confirmed by the apostolic chair. First the ban was imposed on the king on March 23, 1324 , and finally the deposition of the empire followed in the third process. The king reacted to this with the means of appellation . It can be assumed that Ludwig, as a Bavarian duke, did not have a suitable administrative apparatus of his own, and therefore had the written business dealt with by allied Italian law firms, which may also have connections with Fraticellen.
So the Franciscan poverty struggle flowed into Ludwig's argument against the Curia. Ludwig himself refused to defend himself against the accusation, the alliance with the Friars Minor and the consent to the poverty tract in the Sachsenhausen appellation . In his appeals, the king appealed generally against the papal processes and called for the establishment of a council. Already in a first unpublished appellation from Nuremberg there was a reference to the Franciscan poverty struggle. The most important appellation was the "Sachsenhausen Appellation" from 1324. In it he declared the Pope to be a heretic. This was supported by the argument that the Pope's position in the poverty struggle was heretical. This contained arguments, the thoughts and wording of which go back directly to Petrus Johannes Olivi. In the same year, the state-theoretical work " Defensor Pacis " by Marsilius of Padua was published. In what was revolutionary for the time, the author turned radically against the papacy and strengthened the position of the empire.
The Pope himself responded on July 11 with the deposition of Ludwig from the Reich. All clergymen who supported Ludwig were threatened with church sentences. At the same time, Johann XXII. in November the bull " Quia quorundam ", in which any reference to the Sachsenhausen appellation was avoided, in this it was reiterated that the statement that Christ and the apostles had no property was heretical. The majority of the Franciscans had already regained their loyalty to the papacy by this time. The Pentecostal chapter of the order in 1325 generally called for respect for papal edicts. Nevertheless, Johann XXII. Michael von Cesena went to Avignon in 1327 and held him there. The Franciscan Pentecostal chapter of the year 1328 was supposed to have a papal-minded successor for Michael of Cesena. But Michael was re-elected and then excommunicated by the Pope with Bonagratia von Bergamo and Wilhelm von Ockham. Michael managed to escape from Avignon together with Wilhelm von Ockham and Bonagratia von Bergamo. During this time, Ludwig IV was on his way to Italy, where he declared the Pope in Rome deposed and wanted to replace it with a Franciscan antipope . In Pisa the Franciscan refugees from Avignon met Ludwig the Bavarian, in whose company Marsilius of Padua was already.
In 1329 the theoretical poverty struggle came to an end. The Pope had previously deposed numerous superiors of the order who held Michael, and this resulted in the fact that Geraldus Ordonis, loyal to the Pope, was elected as the new general of the order at the Paris chapter. Franciscan personal testimonies, such as the Chronicle of Johannes von Winterthur, speak of the fact that the members of the order clearly sympathized with Michael von Cesena. The group around Michael settled at Ludwig's court in Munich and from here led a journalistic fight against the papacy. But this found no support in the Franciscan order itself.
The observant movement and the final split in the order
From the second half of the 14th century there was a movement of observants who wanted to observe the lack of property in the community as well. Regular income and lying goods were rejected. On the other hand stood the conventuals, who wanted to hold on to common property, pensions and real estate. From the Council of Constance in 1414-1418, the Observants were granted their own vicars in some cases. Attempts to maintain unity and reform the order as a whole failed. The work of the Italian Saint Bernardine of Siena and John of Capestrano aimed at a division of the order. In 1446 Pope Eugene IV made the Vicars of the Observants so independent of the Franciscan General Minister that they became independent. The full division of the order took place in 1517.
literature
- Josef Balthasar: History of the poverty dispute in the Franciscan order up to the Council of Vienne . Aschendorff, Münster 1911, ( Pre-Reformation History Research 6, ZDB -ID 528184-2 ), (At the same time in part: Freiburg i. Br., Univ., Diss., 1910).
- Friedrich Bock: The imperial idea and nation states. From the fall of the old Reich to the termination of the German-English alliance in 1341. Callwey, Munich 1943.
- Carl Brun: The poverty struggle with Johannes von Winterthur. In: Journal for Swiss History , ZDB -ID 201420-8 , 3, 1923, pp. 111–122, doi: 10.5169 / seals-66482 .
- Martin Burgwitz: The poverty disputes in the Franciscan order under the pontificate of Johann XXII. (Diss.), Berlin 1923.
- Ulrich Horst : Evangelical poverty and papal teaching post. Minorite theologians in conflict with Pope John XXII. (1316-34). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart et al. 1996, ISBN 3-17-013799-9 , ( Munich Church History Studies 8).
- Lázaro Iriarte: The Order of St. Francis. Handbook of Franciscan Order History. Verlag der Bayerischen Kapuziner, Altötting 1984.
- Erwin Iserloh : The spiritual movement and the poverty struggle. In: Hubert Jedin (ed.): Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte . Volume 3: The Medieval Church . Part 2: Hans-Georg Beck (Ed.): From the ecclesiastical high Middle Ages to the eve of the Reformation . Special edition. Herder, Freiburg et al. 1985, ISBN 3-451-20454-1 , pp. 453-460.
- Henry Charles Lea : History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. Volume 3: The Inquisition's Activity in Special Areas . Authorized translation, edited by Heinz Wieck and Max Rachel. Revised and edited by Joseph Hansen . Unchanged reprint of the edition published in 1905 by Georgi, Bonn. Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-8218-0507-2 .
- Jürgen Miethke : State of Paradise - Apostolic Age-Franciscan Poverty, Religious Self-Image, Criticism of Time and Social Theory in the 14th Century. In: Franz J. Felten, Nikolaus Jaspert (Hrsg.): Vita Religiosa in the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Kaspar Elm on his 70th birthday . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-09965-6 , ( Berlin historical studies 31, order studies 13), pp. 503-532.
- John Moorman: A History of the Franciscan Order. From its origins to the year 1517. The Clarendon Press et al., Oxford et al. 1968.
- Karl Müller : Some files and writings on the history of the disputes among the Minorites in the first half of the 14th century. In: Journal of Church History. 6, 1884, ISSN 0044-2925 , pp. 63-112.
- Karl J. Rivinius: Between Heresy and Orthodoxy. The poverty movements of the Middle Ages using the example of the Waldensians and Franciscans. Catholic Academy, Schwerte 1990, ISBN 3-927382-05-1 , ( Catholic Academy Schwerte - Academy Lectures 35), (Lecture as part of the conference "Consensus Fidelium - or about the anchoring of doctrine in the life of believers", 4. - March 6, 1988).
- Bernd Schmies, Kirsten Rakemann: Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Edited by Dieter Berg . Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag, Werl 1999, ISBN 3-87163-240-6 , ( Saxonia Franciscana special volume).
- Max Shaper: The Sachsenhausen appellation from 1324. Rehm, Berlin 1888, (Greifswald, Univ., Phil. Fak., Inaug.-Diss., 1888): archive.org .