Angelus Clarenus

Epistol

Angelus Clarenus OFM (* around 1250 in Chiarino , Central Italy ; † 1337 ; original name Pietro da Fossombrone ) was a representative of the spirituals , a radical movement within the Franciscan order .

Life

In the poverty struggle within the Franciscan Order, he campaigned for a rigorous implementation of the original Franciscan ideal of poverty. His opponents within the church achieved that he was imprisoned as a heretic along with other spiritualists in 1280 . In 1289 he was released again at the instigation of the Franciscan Minister General Raymund Gaufredi and sent to Armenia as a missionary to avoid further conflicts . After his return from there in 1293, Pope Celestine V allowed him to found his own monastic community (Pauperes Eremitae Domini Coelestini). Under Boniface VIII , however, he lost the papal benevolence and had to flee to Greece with his brothers around 1295. He later returned to Italy and, in order to find protection from his opponents, entered the important Benedictine Abbey of Subiaco after 1311 . There, too, he continued to work for the cause of the spiritual. As the conflict worsened, he no longer felt safe enough in Subiaco and fled to a southern Italian hermit community in 1334, where he stayed until his death in 1337.

The Clarenes

In 1293 Clarenus gathered a group of Cölestiner around him and, with papal approval, founded the order of the Clarenes named after him (also Clarenines). They lived as hermits and were subordinate to the local bishop as "Hermits of Angelus Clarenus" in the 15th century . In the following time the order split up, in 1473 part joined the Franciscans , others went to the Observants . Pope Julius II (1503–1513) ordered the incorporation into the Observants and Pius V (1566–1572) finally incorporated them into the Franciscan order in 1568.

Literary works

Angelus Clarenus wrote the defense of the beliefs of the spiritual. In the "Expositio regulae fratrum minorum", for example, he interpreted the Franciscan religious rule in terms of his strict ideal of poverty and wrote a critical overview of the history of the church in the "Historia septem tribulationum". He also worked as a translator of theological Greek scriptures.

literature

expenditure

• Lydia von Auw (Ed.): Epistulae / Epistole. (Opera / Angelus <Clarenus>; 1) Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Rome 1980.
• David Burr (Ed.): A chronicle or history of the seven tribulations of the order of brothers minor. Franciscan Inst. Publ., St. Bonaventura 2005, ISBN 1-57659-198-0 .
• Giovanni Boccali (Ed.): Liber chronicarum, sive Tribulationum Ordinis Minorum. (Pubblicazioni della Biblioteca Francescana, Chiesa Nuova, Assisi; 8). Porziuncola, Santa Maria degli Angeli 1999, ISBN 88-270-0380-0 .

Secondary literature

• David Burr: The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2001, ISBN 0-271-02128-4 .
• Helmut Feld: The Franciscans. UTB, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-3011-1 .
• Klaus-Gunther Wesseling :  Petrus von Fossombrone. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 358-360.