Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement

David Flood

• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781576594155
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

We have evidence from 1209 about a man of twenty-seven who became famous. We refer to him today as Francis of Assisi. (Assisi was a modest if ambitious city in Umbria, central Italy.) The evidence of 1209 lies in a few words Francis and several companions wrote down. They worded clearly what they intended to do. Their several sentences developed in the following weeks and months, as they kept to their original resolve. The text reached a complete form in 1215. In the following years it took on further material. We have it in the condition it reached in 1221-1223. We refer to it today as the Early Rule or the Regula non bullata. Another rule replaced it in late November 1223. It summarized the Early Rule while adding further details requested by church authority. Pope Honorius III confirmed the text with a bull. It bore the official confirmation of the pope. It was and is called the Regula bullata.[2] In the pages which follow we abide by the designation Early Rule for the text that began in 1209. The official document we simply call the Rule. For that is what it is. It is what I swore to follow when, in August 1951, my novitiate was over and, formally, I became a bona fide Franciscan. [1] We. That is, those interested in early Franciscan life. [2] See the Latin texts in Engelbert Grau OFM's improvement of Kajetan Esser OFM's edition: Die Opuscula des hl. Franziskus von Assisi, Grottaferrata (Rome), 1989; the texts in English in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents I, New York, 1999.

Chapter One

Leaving Assisi

1. Getting Started

In the spring of 1209 Francis and his friends set out on their way by what we know as the Early Rule, Chapter I. I suppose that the reference to the three vows came later, when seeking papal recogntion. What they said, they said to one another. They made themselves a brotherhood. Here is Chapter One:

The rule and life of those brothers is as follows, that is, to live in obedience, in chastity, and without property, and to follow the teaching and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: “If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.” And: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Again: “If anyone wants to come to me and does not hate father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” And: “Everyone who has left father or mother, brothers or sisters, wife or children, homes or fields for my sake will receive a hundredfold and possess eternal life.”

Francis and his companions turned from the world to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Prior to the moment of decision, there existed a few individuals with their private histories. We do not have the information that allows us to circumscribe the social condition and the cast of mind of the first brothers. They had at least mind enough to grasp the origin and promise of Francis’ experience and proposal and seized the moment’s grace. The men, who considered themselves friends of Francis, said yes with their friend to Chapter One and became his brothers. They began action which transcended the individuals they had been.

With this chapter, Francis and his friends immediately stood apart from others of their times. They acquired a visibility of their own among the men and women of Assisi and Umbria. As time passed, they distinguished themselves so strikingly from others that their novelty turned into a puzzle that surprised as well as confounded. They were a new cast of penitents, of Christians serious in their belief.

Although no mention of Francis exists prior to the declaration of Chapter One, soon after his death in 1226 a wide public wanted to know more about his early days. People recalled events. They also fabricated a few. There arose a narrative account which set off an earlier Francis from a later Francis with his conversion in between. The consequences of the decision made by the men around Francis had such repercussions that people wanted to hear and grasp the whole marvelous story.

If we want to reflect on Chapter One, we can recall the discussions which preceded Clare’s entry into the Franciscan movement (March 1212). In the protocol to Clare’s canonization, taken at San Damiano in November 1253, Bona di Guelfuccio related the intense dialog between Clare and Francis. Bona accompanied Clare on her nocturnal visits to the brothers. She told how Clare listened and questioned as Francis poured forth the reasons and promises of the new way of life. Bona evoked the image of a Clare wisely looking before she leapt and of a Francis making a strong case for the decision. Clare wanted to know what it all meant, Francis wanted to win her for the new way of life. They both dealt in Christian logic and human courage.

We can transfer something of the convincing rhetoric Francis turned on Clare to the exchanges between him and his brothers in preparation for Chapter One. The decision was clear. It severed bonds effectively. Once resolved, the men began giving their decision its daily consequences. They did not at first elicit admiration, for they left behind Assisi’s sociality and Assisi’s material achievements. Formally they were out of bounds. We will see some of the inevitable trouble in Chapter Nine of the Early Rule. The trials of the chapter show them abiding by their well-conceived decision.

Chapter One shakes off the heavy hand of social convention and announces new meaning. It sets loose action which leads so far that we return to the initial moment to wonder how it came about. Men did Chapter One. That is clear. It deserves a better account than the stories about the chance opening of scripture. We have no way of describing what exactly took place and how the account has reached us.

The decision of Chapter One comprises two poles, one negative, the other positive. On the one hand, Francis and his friends sever the relations to people and the relations to properties which made them citizens of Assisi. They do not bid the world an abstract adieu. They do what is necessary to detach themselves effectively from the web of society about them. That is the negative pole of the decision.

Positively, they fall into step behind Jesus Christ. They set out to live by his teachings. At this point we have to recognize that Jesus Christ was not living on the outskirts of Assisi. There existed no social entity outside Assisi with Jesus at its center to which Francis and his brothers could rally in order to give new rhythm and new meaning to their days. There were no footsteps of Jesus Christ outside Assisi’s gates along which they could trot in blessed fidelity. Moreover, had they looked for advice, they would not have received anything like Francis was concocting. He told the men, and they agreed, what God wanted of them. And they left Assisi factually. They broke off social relations, defined the footsteps of Jesus themselves, and set out.

With that in mind, we have to define carefully the function of the gospel texts gathered into Chapter One of the basic document. The texts both manifest the brothers’ determination and make an announcement to the world.

In the years of his education, in the family and then in the social world of his emergent years, a man acquires the culture of his country and of his times. He learns to handle meanings. Francis and his friends chose elements from their culture with which to explain and justify their undertaking. An explanation composed of passages from the gospels had formal validity in a Christian context. Innocent III bowed to their use of the gospel. The Christian world acknowledged an intention extrapolated out of Jesus’ words. Francis and his brothers had to understand and confirm one another, too. As men of their age, they used the gospels to send signals back and forth about their bold plan and to express their belief in its promise.

Yet the compilation of texts in Chapter One is no more than the cultural form of their decision. The texts say nothing about the concrete consequences of the words, which will manifest the decision’s factual meaning. For, once again, Jesus was nowhere near Assisi engaged in a mode of living into which forms the brothers could slip. Having made their momentous decision, the brothers had to decide what it meant in the details of daily life. They had to interpret the culturally acknowledged declaration of intent. They had to do that themselves; the repetition of the gospel texts would get them nowhere. Life moved on. They had to settle activity and income, questions of food and of clothing, of residence and of mutuality.

As soon as the brothers entered upon the concretization of their decision, they gave rise to a few complications, such as history feeds on. For they invoked the words of Jesus to withdraw from the practices and rules, the interests and institutions whereby the people of Assisi pursued their happiness. They declared their non-participation in the ambitions of the city-state. They intended to do something else with their time and energy, they wanted to “follow Jesus Christ.” Yet they remained within the territory claimed and organized by Assisi in the sense of its communal will.

By its institutions, through the varied roles of its citizens, Assisi saw to its survival and prosperity. Nor did the action of organization and pursuit which was Assisi tolerate any challenge to its authority from within. The novel commitment of the brothers, carried out within Assisi’s boundaries but contrary to its rules, inevitably ran afoul of the city’s foremost representatives. Two distinct wills clashed and led to confusions and disgruntlement. It led as well to the serene and merciless application of social pressure.

Later, when new brothers joined, the initial core had a set way of welcoming the arrivals into the life. They describe it in the chapter following on the first one. They made sure the candidates understood the life. If the candidates did, and wanted to join, and could join, then they made the same decision and fell into step with the rest. The decision was soon the more trenchant for having proven itself. Chapter Two underwent development, for the brothers understood its importance. A prospective brother had to grasp the nature of his decision. The role of the chapter was fundamental and its importance was not lost on Francis when working on the Rule in the fall of 1223.

2. Assisi in 1210

Assisi set itself up as a commune with the peace charter of 1210. (The word commune designates the political system of the medieval city-states of central and northern Italy. In this sense the communes arose in the late eleventh century and lasted into the middle of the fourteenth century. For a good survey, see J. K. Hyde, Society and Politics in Medieval Italy, 1973. A peace charter, or simply a peace, spelled out the agreements of a commune.) In 1160, Frederick I had rewarded Assisi for its support by granting it independence from the Duchy of Spoleto. (It was independent as an imperial county. It was not simply independent.) The event encouraged the communal institutions already underway. Yet the institutions did not get the better of feudal structures until 1210.

Feudalism was a system of dependencies through which, in Assisi, some twenty noble families profited from the labors of the population. The feudal lords considered the region a part of the empire. To their mind, the other inhabitants made up the common folk circumscribed in its liberties by the traditional rights of the dominant military class.

A commune came about by handling non-feudal business. It arose through the association of merchants and artisans. These groups developed the institutions and claimed the social space of their activities. The people of the commune, in contrast to the feudal lords, saw the country of Assisi as fertile countryside (contado) around its center, the city. In its history and in its interests, the city had a clear sense of its identity. It distinguished itself from everything which lay beyond the boundaries of its country. Although of the people, the leading men of the commune had means and agreements which made them stand out from the mass. Good at trade and business, they turned to their advantage the age’s economic expansion. They congealed into a new class.

In these years, as in the whole of the Middle Ages, the empire and the papacy were locked in a struggle for primacy in the West. The emperor and the pope kept a wary eye on each other, repairing and extending their vast alliances. They contested one another’s presence and advantages in Umbria and around and in Assisi. In a minor key, benefiting from the preoccupation of pope and emperor with one another, the communes urged their economic and political interests along. With no greater ambition than their progressive enrichment and the proper conditions for enjoying their wealth, the communes put their mark on their times.

In the pursuit of its place in the sun, Assisi overreached itself in 1174, was cast back, and passed through a thirsty stretch until 1197. It happened in this way. In 1174, Frederick I came under pressure in Italy and had difficulty imposing his rule. Assisi bolted the imperial camp and extended its civil liberties. Christian of Mainz, archbishop, led the imperial forces against the upstart city and laid Assisi low. In 1177, Conrad of Ürslingen refeudalized the county of Assisi into the Duchy of Spoleto. It took him two years to work out the details.

The people of Assisi never accepted the feudal reduction of their liberties. In 1197, with the sudden death of Henry VI, imperial policy and power in Italy faltered. Assisi’s people seized the chance to destroy the feudal strongholds (outside and inside the city) and reestablish the city in its communal liberties. The feudal party withdrew temporarily. A few nobles sought relief and support in Perugia, the nearby rival city.

In 1202, at the Battle of Collestrada (at the Bridge of St. John), the feudal lords rode with the forces of Perugia and routed the soldiers and horsemen of Assisi. (Francis ended up a prisoner.) By power of arms, they forced the communal party to recognize their feudal rights and to repair the damage done their houses. The feudal and communal parties swore their agreement in the peace (charter) of 1203.

The death of Henry VI led to a fight between Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick for the succession. Innocent III sought to adjudicate the rival claims with an eye to his policy of recuperations (recovery of territories claimed by the papacy). Otto of Brunswick became emperor in 1209: Otto IV. He had won the Pope’s support by swearing to keep out of Italy. Once he had the crown he returned to traditional imperial politics. Innocent III’s carefully laid plans rapidly crumbled. Meanwhile, Perugia, a papal city, and Assisi, a city of the empire, pursued their communal and rival ambitions.

The men of Assisi’s thriving businesses were demonstrating the economic promise of their ways. They persuaded the noble families to abandon feudal extractions for a generous share in the new abundance. The two sides, the minores (the business party) and the maiores (the feudal party), reached agreement and drew up the peace of 1210. The leading men of the city published it as the new order, for the good and glory of the Assisian commune, with a clear warning to dissidents. Together, the minores and maiores had the numbers and the means to make their peace stick.

The charter of 1210 defined Assisi’s constitution for the following years. It stoked the ambitions of Assisi’s dynamic circles, projecting wealth and honor as well within reach. The peace of 1210 gave rise to the social purpose and the organizing force from which the Franciscan movement turned and consequently against which it worked. After a long and difficult gestation, the commune took off in 1210. The Franciscan movement set forth in 1209, building on the experience first of Francis and then of his first companions.

The text of the 1210 charter manifests a pride and enthusiasm lacking in the pragmatic text of 1203. It proclaims the communal order in the name of God and to the glory of Jesus Christ. It supplies a descriptive definition of Assisi as a commune, before entering upon the changes and rules of the new order. The commune exists in the fact that the people of Assisi (the people who count in Assisi) swear alliance among themselves, before any agreement with strangers, for the glory and growth of their city. The commune arises when the two parties (minores and maiores) turn from feudal forms to pursue together economic growth. The text prescribes the punishments for either of the two parties which fails to put Assisi’s common interests first.

Though the text celebrates its achievement, it is as precise and practical in its details as the charter of 1203. Assisi’s strong men knew what they were doing and why. The charter defines the terms by which people can free themselves from feudal obligations. It spells out the price which, once paid, dissolved remittance of goods and services to feudal masters.

A man could claim citizen rights, rights of liberty and of protection, if he had the means to indemnify his lord and the means to cover his needs outside servile dependency. That was not the case for everyone; many remained in bondage to feudal lords. By implication, the costs of citizenship rewarded work and thrift. They blessed skill with merchandise and money. A man good at getting and holding onto things achieved standing in Assisi. The lord on his land in an order willed by God ceded place to the urban dweller good at business.

Whereas the charter of 1203 reimposed feudal dependencies (hominitium), the charter of 1210 admitted their dissolution. In spelling out reparation for damages done since 1197, the document of 1203 referred to persons by name. “As redress for the destruction of Mount Moro and Podio San Damiano, the commune of Assisi will build and has built for the sons of John of Matthew two houses with three walls … For the sons of Beatrice and for Peter of Lopo …” The peace of 1210 laid down the details of release from feudal duties. It listed a series of obligations and declared: “Whoever is held (to these obligations) shall give his lord or lords 100 soldi … and he shall be free of his condition as serf and of its services.” It dealt in economic relations and their monetary importance. The feudal lord withdrew before a numerical relation to the social product.

We do not conduct a thorough analysis of Assisi, such as the two documents allow. They allow it, for in conjunction with the larger history of central Italy, Assisi was shifting its economic gears as it passed from the determinations of 1203 to those of 1210. We have seen enough, however, for a comment which contextualizes Franciscan history.

The people of Assisi pressed for and achieved an open economy by mobilizing new riches. They did not vanquish the nobles in the field; they persuaded them at the city’s counters and in the city’s markets. Assisi’s noble families, the maiores, did not embrace peace for the glory of God. They went along with the new circulation of goods.

The bondsmen who worked the land for their lords had rights, though limited, to their fields and their produce. The accumulation which stimulated trade in the cities of central Italy came first from the countryside. Those who drew well from their fields moved into the city for further investment and exchange. The accumulation reached a size sufficient to break down the opposition of feudal interests. Assisi generated goods enough to disentangle itself from feudal restrictions. In the charter of 1210, Assisi’s leaders called for harmony and commitment and material increase. That is, they were rich and wanted more.

The will of Assisi’s ambitious class picked up and carried the city-state in these years. It imposed itself on everyone within Assisi’s borders. It felt sure enough of its power to issue a warning to anyone who thought differently. The will to economic success infused daily life in Assisi with purpose, it elicited belief.

Francis and his brothers disappropriated themselves just as Assisi’s leaders were celebrating the promises of appropriation. They refused to believe.

3. Daily Life

Francis and his brothers had to spell out immediately the concrete implications of their decision. They had burned their bridges to Assisi’s patterns of life; they had “left all to follow Jesus.” However noble the decision, it did not halt time’s passage. They could not bask indefinitely in the sublimity of their lofty intention. They had to begin with consequences. They had to get on with life, if not in one world then in some other one. And the consequences would eventually show what their decision “to leave all” factually meant.

Several hours after their formal commitment to walk in Jesus’ footsteps, the brothers faced the question of their material provision. Once they had eaten, they had to decide where to spend the night. They found themselves at a crossroads. The details of food and lodging admitted into their lives factors of decisive consequence.

The young men initiated what turned into the economics of the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Leaving Assisi
• Chapter Two: Abroad in the World
• Chapter Three: Discipline and Method
• Conclusion
• Franciscan Work
• The Spirit of the Lord
• The Rule of 1223
• The Rule of Francis of Assisi and His Companions