Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement

By David Flood

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Release date: Feb 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781576594155

Book preview

Companions

Introduction

I wrote Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Movement in 1988. I was responding to the wish of Franciscans in Asia who wanted in English something like Frère François et le Mouvement Franciscain, Paris, Éditions Ouvrières, 1983. I have been asked to update and republish the English account. I would do the whole story quite differently now, twenty-five years on. So I made a few changes in the text and, at the end, wrote three pieces, on work, religion, and the Rule. They follow on the conclusion to the essay. I would have the three much in mind, were I to write such a book at present.

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We¹ 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.

After the death of Francis of Assisi on the third of October 1226, stories were told about his unruly youth, his conversion, his gospel rule. The stories have little critical worth. Furthermore, in the time that preceded his death, Francis reviewed the origins of the brotherhood.³ However interesting the text, it is a subjective account, difficult to confirm in detail. He would strengthen life by the Rule (his words a recordatio, in Franciscan terms). It is to be used by the brothers in discussing their vita. There is no need to begin with the text, for we have much better with the Early Rule. The Early Rule has all we need to get the journey of Francis and his brothers in 1209 underway. Then it tells us how they fared. Their discussion about how they were faring involves us in the journey. The Early Rule becomes the context in which Francis’s final words, just mentioned, are to be read. The Early Rule tells us how they succeded in leaving the world and keeping out of it.

Here in brief is the case for the Early Rule as the primary source for Franciscan history. The Early Rule contained enough in its first edition to get Francis and his brothers underway. They started in 1209, encountered problems and challenges, and came through them very well. In the 1221 wording of the Early Rule, we find elements that got them underway. We have the decision that set them loose (Chapter I), we have the way they handled the material support for such a venture (Chapter VII), and we have them determinedly interacting with others (Chapter XIV). The prologue declares that what follows is the Life (Vita) to which Francis and his brothers committed themelves. It had the approval of Pope Innocent III. When petitioned for recognition, the papacy saw to the brothers’ formal place in the church. That is: All obeyed Francis while Francis obeyed the pope; then, in the first words of the first chapter the men professed the three vows of religious life. The vows defined them canonically as members of a religious community. At the end of the Early Rule, in Chapter XXIV, written in 1221, Francis urged his brothers to remember how they put their Life together, origins and process. Prologue and Chapter XXIV contain the Early Rule. It certainly has a history. It institutes ministers who are responsible for different gatherings of brothers (Chapters IV-V); it has a minirule for those who go among the Saracens (XVI). And so on, an historian’s delight. The Early Rule is an indirect chronicle of the brothers’ life from 1209 to 1223. It is more than a chronicle: it is the journal of their common commitment, their Vita.

The history of the Early Rule is the primary history of Francis himself. The text gives him context and fashions him. Francis has his inner life of prayer. He invites us to prayer in his confession of God. He does that first of all among his brothers and then among those whom he and his brothers win to their vision. We can follow his words, but we have no access to his religious experience. As for his life as a man, he works with others as they carry out what they began with Early Rule I, VII, and XIV. Much goes on in those chapters and their consequences. The chapters draw in other early writings. For example, Admonitions VII to XII have to do with the conclusion to Early Rule XVII.⁴ The Message of Recall and Encouragement shares the experience of the Early Rule with the working population.⁵ The other early writings, usually referred to as the writings of Francis, come from what Francis and his brothers learn and what they pursue, as reported in the Early Rule.

Francis assumes a foremost role in the details of the action documented by the Early Rule. He puts ideas forward for consideration when the men are few (Early Rule X) and instructs when they are many (Early Rule XXIV). Or he is tentative when they are one small group; he is forthright when they are a considerable movement. The brothers start out together, with Francis at the center of the brotherhood. He frees them more than leads them. His role as its primary conscience emerges as the months and years pass. Francis earns the trust his brothers put in him. We cannot say how much comes from him and how much from others. In a way, everything comes from his brothers, for were it not for them, he would not have said what he did say. He interacted with many outside the brotherhood. He shared with them what he had learned with his brothers. In such sharing, he played their ways into humankind’s search for truth and love. Francis and his brothers depended on good talk, and they continued drawing on their prayer and experience. They had much to say. We find it in the history of the brotherhood.

On September 17, 2015 I started tinkering with this book which first came out in 1989. It was to be published anew with modifications. September 17: At morning prayer (Lauds), we gave Francis of Assisi’s stigmata much attention. The wording and the summary of our prayer bothered me. We do not know what transpired that left Francis wounded. It has little relevance to my life. As I considered the Stigmata, I remembered how, April 16, earlier in the year, we said our daily late-afternoon prayer on the day we recalled our first profession. There was a little confusion while we cleared up exactly what we were doing. We were celebrating the Rule. We did so indirectly, for what we did factually was renew our vows.⁶ When first we swore to Franciscan life, we gave our lives a definite course in swearing to live by the Rule. We have not followed up on the commitment. The Rule plays but a formal role in our lives. It incorporates us in the institution. Our course in life consists of religious life, as understood in the church and practiced by the province we belong to. And yet the Rule commits, in its way, to a peace that would last and to a justice that would never fail (Rule X 11). It also has its way of going about it. I started this rewrite of sorts after saying the office on the Stigmata of Francis. I would like to enhance the presence of the Rule in the life of Franciscans and tell people interested about true, early Franciscan life. Francis will play a primary role in the study. He was not only the prime figure in getting it going. At one moment he saved the Rule (late November 1223, Rule VI and X). And still the history is far greater than he, given the Rule he saved.

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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.

³ Franciscan Studies recently (Volume 72, 2014) published a study on the text. Mark Weaver, Francis of Assisi’s Testament: A Counter-Proposal to Kajetan Esser, pages 1-26.

⁴ See the argument in: Social Designs and Admonitions IX-XI in The Cord, 2005, 50-62.

⁵ The manuscript Assisi 338 calls it Opusculum commonitorium et exhortatorium.

⁶ I add that the two events took place in different chapels, about 445 miles apart.

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