Mystics and Heretics in Italy at the End of the Middle Ages

Émile Gebhart, Edward Maslin Hulme

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317296164
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1922, this translation of French historian Émile Gebhart's work by Hulme gives a detailed religious history of Italy in the middle ages clearly demonstrating Gebhart's expertise in this area. Poetry, art and politics all centred around religion in the period studied and Gebhart identifies three key areas to be discussed; the Church in Rome, Christian concern and rationalism or secular independence whilst also focussing on famous heretics of the period including Arnold of Brescia and Francis of Assisi. This title will be of interest to students of History.

CHAPTER VI

THE HOLY SEE AND THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. POPULAR ART AND POETRY

THE condemnation of the Eternal Gospel by no means relaxed the zeal of the Spiritual Franciscans, who, according to the words of John of Parma, “cared only for eternal things, desired nothing carnal or earthly, looked only to Jesus, and, attaching themselves to the evangelical life, naked and dead to the world, carried the bare cross of the Saviour”. The deposition of John of Parma, brought about in 1257 by their opponents, the Conventual Franciscans, seemed to them the accomplishment of the words of Francis of Assisi announcing the religious falling away of certain brethren, the tribulations that his better disciples would suffer, and even the persecution that several popes would visit upon them. The mystics, therefore, were expecting the dark days of war and schism. Hughues de Digne had said at Lyons : “The Christians are about to lose the Holy Land. The Templars will be destroyed. The Franciscans will be divided. The Dominicans will aspire to riches”. John of Parma said in his turn : “Those who wish to observe the testament of the founder must sever themselves from those who claim privileges contrary to the Rule.” (⁸⁵) Italy, for half a century and down to the Avignonese captivity, was to be occupied with this gross question of heresy : Is the true Christian life, based upon a pure imitation of the Gospel, always in agreement with the spirit of the secular Church?

I

The problem would have been easy of solution if monastic society had remained faithful to the tradition of wisdom and liberty belonging to the first Franciscan epoch. The Holy See wished only for religious peace. It had always left great independence to the ascetics and hermits. It had just given evidence, in the case of Joachimism, of its indulgence of the mystics. Between Innocent IV and Boniface VIII the Church elected several popes of a very gentle disposition and of true political genius, who asked for nothing better than to welcome under their mantle the more adventurous of the Franciscans. These genial pontiffs were Alexander IV (1254–1261), vir placidus, sanguineus, jucundus, risibilis says the chronicler of St. Bertin; Gregory X (1271–1276), who was elected under the inspiration of Bonaventura, general of the Minorites, and who endeavoured to reconcile all the hostile brothers in Christendom, Ghibeline and Guelf, Greek and Latin, the Papacy and the Empire; then, after the Portuguese John XXI (1276–1277), who hated the regular clergy, who occupied himself with medicine and scholasticism, and who was accused by the regulars of magic, the Church chose a cardinal-patron of the Order of Assisi, John Gaetani Orsini, Nicholas III (1277–1280), the author of the constitution of 1278, who restored civil liberty to the Sacred College and to the pontiff* by casting out of the senate and the magistracies of Rome every prince or captain who did not belong to the Roman families. After Honorius IV (1285–1287), a valetudinarian pope, who pacified his states to the advantage of his family, the first Franciscan pope appeared in the person of Nicholas IV (1288–1292), who organized the Tertiaries into a society independent of the parochial clergy and the bishops, a society that left them subject only to the supervision of the regular Minorites. Finally, towards the close of the century, a hermit, a Fraticello. Celestine V (¹²⁹⁴), sat for a few days in the chair of St. Peter. (⁸⁶)

But the causes of dissension between the two great factions of the Franciscan Order, and those between the Holy See and the mystics, were too deep to be easily eradicated. The Spirituals no longer accepted any but the heroic aspects of Christianity, and the more they detached themselves from the earthly life, the more they isolated themselves by the harshness of their discipline from the common life, the more they supposed they were carrying out the intention of their founder and the Gospel. They were no longer capable of understanding moderation in faith and virtue. As soon as a brother interested himself in the government of religious affairs or of temporal society, as soon as he entered into the councils of the Church or devoted himself to the study of profane science, he became suspect and lost all authority. The powerlessness of Bonaventura to pacify these restless souls is well worth attention. Bonaventura (1221–1274), known as the Seraphic Doctor, was himself a mystic; but he had been a deep student of scholasticism and had taught with distinction in the School of Paris; dialectic and exegesis had developed in him a respect for the reason, and, as he was rational, his actions were for a long time very influential in the Order as well as with the Holy See., There was not in the thirteenth century, and after John of Parma, any Franciscan leader who more poetically retained the memory of Francis and who was more suited to put the first tradition of Assisi in agreement with the real conditions of Latin Christianity. But he was a cardinal and a doctor, a theologian who had the ear of Rome, the enemy of pious chimeras, convinced that the doctrine of absolute poverty would weaken the social value of the Order; finally, he succeeded John of Parma, and although the latter had nominated him to the chapter for election, he seemed to the exalted to be in possession of an illegitimate power. “He was created general”, says Angelo Clareno, “and under him began the fourth persecution”. Angelo is not afraid of accusing Bonaventura of duplicity and lying; in the course of the inquiry set on foot to deal with the faith of John of Parma, “when he shut himself up with John in his cell, he thought as he did; but in the presence of the brothers he spoke against John Bonaventura, having read in a sermon by a Spiritual a vehement criticism of prevaricating prelates, recognized his own portrait and wept, and that was one of the four cases of the new persecution. When it was necessary to pronounce sentence against John, the wisdom and saintliness of Brother Bonaventura suffered eclipse, his gentleness changed into furious anger, and he cried : “If I had not regard for the honour of the Order I would chastise him as a heretic The Spirituals saw, in their ecstasies, John of Parma clothed in light, and Bonaventura, with his fingers equipped with iron talons, rushing upon the saint to tear him into pieces. Jesus and Francis then appeared and disarmed the hands of the sacrilegious man. (⁸⁷)

But in dealing with the Holy See the Spirituals closed their ranks and put themselves on the defensive, after the manner of a sect decided to resist to the point of schism. The Seraphic Father, in communicating to his sons the free inner life, had formerly relaxed the bonds that united the faithful to the hierarchy; but he maintained for the Church a tender veneration, and for the dogma of which the Church is the tabernacle the simple faith of a child. Here religious liberty was troubled by a breath of revolt. The excessive contempt for things of the earth threw the mystics into a very peculiar form of Christianity, one that was no longer that of the Church of Rome. The secular progress of the Church, begun by Innocent III (1198–1216) under the eyes of Francis, grew so rapidly that the strict Christians, who hated riches and power, looked upon Rome with no feelings but those of anguish; they asked of themselves whether this bishop, so keen in his search for the good things of the world, was still the vicar of God contemplated by the Bible. The thought never occurred to them that perhaps the very history of the age imposed upon the pontiffs that extraordinary passion for temporal greatness. In the desperate struggle they sustained against Frederic II (1212–1250) and Manfred, a natural son of Frederic, who was crowned king in 1258, the popes had judged that the basis given by the masterful Innocent III to the apostolic authority was too narrow. It was no longer sufficient for them to be masters of Rome now that the Empire claimed to be mistress of all Italy. In order to preserve the hegemony of the Guelfic party they had to assure themselves of the alliance of Guelfic Tuscany, and, consequently, they had to guarantee this political compact by their territorial and military power. So too with the Angevin alliance. When the house of Suabia had fallen for ever at Benevento and Tagliacozzo, the Holy See understood that, if it were not as strong as possible, it ran the risk of becoming the client of its French vassal; later still it seemed to it that Florence would be a dangerous ally if not pacified by the very heavy arm of Charles of Valois. Between Clement IV. (1265–1268) and Boniface VIII (1294–1303) the Papacy undertook finally to free itself from the constraint imposed upon it by the old theory of the imperial law. At the council of Lyons, in 1274, Gregory X (1271–1276) had no difficulty in obtaining the greatest results. Rudolf of Hapsburg (1218–1291) recognized the ecclesiastical state and renounced the exercise of the traditional powers of his predecessors at Rome and in the patrimony; he accepted Charles of Anjou as king of Sicily (1266–1285); he bowed himself, and so did all the princes of Germany with him, before the religious primacy of the pontiff, “the greatest luminary”; he avowed himself ready to draw his sword for the defence of the Church at the first sign made by the Holy See. The emperor in 1278 confirmed these engagements and in addition recognized, at the request of Nicholas III (1277–1280), the old donations granted to the Holy See as far back as the Carolingian era, the Pentapolis and Romagna, “the garden of the empire”. The tyrants of the Romagna saw the pontifical suzerainty imposed upon them. Then the pope took from Charles of Anjou the function of senator of Rome. But these conquests of the Holy See, every day compromised by the permanent revolution of the Roman commune, were quite illusory. The Roman families, upon which the hand of the foreigner no longer weighed, became very formidable to the pontiffs. Nepotism, that is to say, dynastic security, seemed then to be a constitutional necessity of the papal monarchy.

Nicholas III made the Orsini, of which family he was himself a member, the greatest lords in his domain. He dreamt of creating military tyrannies for them in Lombardy and Tuscany. “He was too fond of his family,” writes Ptolemy of Lucca. “He built up Sion for the benefit of his relatives, as several Roman popes had done,” writes Salimbene. He was also fond of gold, the first instrument of all political power. Dante met him in hell, in the region of the simoniacs. “I was so greedy to enrich my bear cubs up there that I filled my purse, and here I am cast to the very bottom of the infernal pit”. (⁸⁸)

This pope, whom Dante damned, was certainly considered by the Spirituals as unworthy to preside over the Church of God. From that time forward the thought of schism, that was to break out quite frankly only after Boniface VIII, silently grew in the conscience of the mystics. The idea that they formed of true Christianity is clearly characterized by these words of a bull of John XXII in 1318 : “They imagine two churches, one carnal, overwhelmed with riches, lost in luxury, soiled with crime, over which, they say, the Roman pope reigns; the other spiritual and free in its poverty” This separated Church of the Spirituals had to wait until the election of the antipope Nicholas V (¹³²⁸), the Franciscan Peter of Corbara, before it got a government distinct from the Holy See. But for half a century past it had been nurtured on the sentiments expressed by Angelo Clareno. Francis of Assisi, writes Angelo, predicted that “there would be seen on the papal throne a man who had not been catholically elected, who would think ill of the way of Christ and the Rule that Christ has given by Francis to his sons and that the Church has confirmed. If the sovereign pontiff, by his decrees, renders sure truths doubtful, and defines as heresies what the Church, the doctors and the rules of the saints, teach as articles of the Catholic faith and the consummation of all perfection, no one will judge him, but he judges himself and condemns himself by the decrees that he precipitately promulgates, urged by his own will and in virtue of his authority, against the doctrine of the saints and the rules approved by the Church (⁸⁹)

II

Between the Franciscans of the strict rule and the Conventuals reconciliation was as difficult as between the mystics and the Holy See. Those Minorites who were attached to the monastic tradition of Elias of Cortona thought that Rome interpreted the Gospel more sanely and that the rigid penance, the bed of cinders and the black bread, were by no means the best conditions of the apostolic life. Then they replied to the intolerant austerity of their brethren by the hatred that the rich are fond of showing to the wretched and revolutionary. Each time the Conventuals felt themselves the stronger, they treated the Spirituals with an implacable harshness, hunted out suspected doctrines, burnt books and, not yet daring to burn them, subjected the theologians to the most odious tortures. From the deposition of John of Parma onwards the History of the Tribulations by Frà Angelo, becomes a veritable martyrology.

Pierre Jean d’Olive,a Franciscan friar of the diocese of Béziers, a pupil of the University of Paris, (⁹⁰) was, under Nicholas IV and Boniface VIII, the most interesting victim of the religious rancour of his brethren. He wrote much, saw all his books condemned, and was even obliged to burn some of them with his own hand. He was moderately chastised by several generals of the Order, by Jerome of Ascoli, the future Nicholas IV, by Bonagratia, at Strasburg and afterwards at Avignon, and by Arlotto of Prato at Paris; a second time, in 1292, at Paris, he had to explain himself before the general chapter presided over by Raymond Gaufridi. He died quietly in the convent of Narbonne in 1298, after an edifying profession of the Catholic faith and an act of submission to pope Boniface. For the space of some years the festival of his death was celebrated with great devotion by the clergy and humble folk of Provence. Later on, under John XXII, those friars who, in spite of numerous censures, persisted in reading his writings, were ill-treated. Finally he was formally accused of heresy, and his body was disinterred and burnt.

Pierre Jean d’Olive had written two treatises, the De paupere usu and the De Perfectione evangelica that have disappeared, and commentaries upon Genesis the Psalms the Proverbs the Song of Songs the Gospels and the Apocalypse a treatise On the Authority of the Pope and the Council and an ‘Explanation of the Rule of Francis of which we possess the manuscripts. His views upon poverty, that are summed up by the historian of the Tribulations are very clear; he grants his brothers merely the use of the daily necessaries of life and the objects, breviaries or sacred vestments, that are used in the divine office. He forbids them to exact payment for burials permitted in the churches of the Minorites or to receive legacies. The basis of his doctrine was, according to his censors and his apologists, a Joachimite idea. He proclaimed a future state of the Church more perfect than the preceding, of which Francis was the forerunner and the coming of which was to be hastened by the reform of monasticism. He came back to the Joachimite vision of the angel who carries the Eternal Gospel. Nicholas Eymeric did not fail to transcribe in his Directorium Inquisitorum the list of the heresies exumed from books of Pierre Jean d’Olive. The articles that follow recall the pure tradition of the Eternal Gospel but with a singular accent of violence : “The Rule of Francis is truly the evangelical law. The law of the Franciscans is reproved by the carnal Church, as the law of the Christians was by the Synagogue. It is inevitable that the carnal Church, in order to merit its destruction completely, should condemn the Rule of Francis. The evangelical law of Francis is called to prosper among the Greeks, the Jews, the Saracens and the Tartars, more than in the carnal Church of the Latins. That Church, which is called universal, catholic and militant, is merely the impure Babylon, the great prostitute, meretrix magna precipitated into hell by simony, pride, and all other vices. It appertains to the doctors of the perfect state, much more than it ever appertained to the apostles, to open the spiritual gates of the Christian wisdom”. Later on, when the storm called up by the revolt of the Fraticelli had long been dissipated, the Church itself proved more indulgent to the memory of Pierre Jean d’Olive. Antoninus, a Dominican, praised him for his orthodoxy and docility; Sixtus IV (1471–1484), a Franciscan pope, permitted the reading of his books. But we know, through the chronicler of the Seven Tribulations to what excesses the Italian Conventuals were carried against the immediate disciples of Pierre Jean. One of them, Ponce of Buontugato, who had refused to surrender the master’s books, was chained at the bottom of a dark well and fastened in some manner to the wall; his food, consisting of panem artum et aquam brevem was lowered to him; greatly cramped, and sickened by the filth of his dungeon, he awaited death “with a joyous soul and burning with love.” The same fate was in store for Thomas of Casteldemilio. Some others, such as Peter of Macerata, who had likewise been condemned to perpetual imprisonment, the deprivation of their breviary, of confession and of ecclesiastical burial, were delivered in time by the general Raymond Gaufridi. They asked to be sent as missionaries to the east, convinced that they would find among the Saracens the pity and liberty they no longer expected from their brothers.

Thus, in the last years of the thirteenth century, the rupture between the religious of Italy, who laid claim to absolute perfection, and the rest of the Franciscan family, between the rational and the lukewarm, who, satisfied with a less sublime stftte, chose, after the manner of the secular Church, a less thorny path to salvation, was completed. This detachment from all things was at that time very noticeable even among a great number of afflicted members of the Third Order, who endeavoured to escape the obligations of their social condition and sought the peace and egotism of the cloister in the midst of the populous towns. The Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, had in 1289 renewed, by the bull Supra montem, the constitution of the Tertiaries, or the Brothers of Penitence, whose first Rule was five or six years subsequent to the death of Francis. In 1290, by the bull Unigenitus, he confirmed the visitors of the Order in the privilege of watching over the afflicted members who, withdrawn from the inquisition of their bishops, thus formed a kind of religious institution. A considerable part of the middle class in each commune was, by virtue of this new Rule, dependent upon the chiefs of the Minorites and in consequence upon the Holy See. In 1291, by the bull Ad audientiam, addressed to the bishop of Florence, Nicholas IV published information to the world regarding the crisis that had rapidly been produced among the Tertiaries; those among them who, rebellious to the constitution of the bull Supra montem, had rallied round their bishop, and who had received as a reward for their attachment to the old discipline the privileges, breviaries, furniture and goods of the old fraternity. The pope thus took up the cudgels in defence of the others, more docile to the Holy See, who, in the eyes of the bishop and parochial clergy of Florenc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Foreword
• I. The Religious and Moral Condition of Italy Before the Time of Joachim of Flora
• II. Joachim of Flora
• III. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Apostolate
• IV. The Emperor Frederic II and the Rationalistic Spirit in Southern Italy
• V. Exaltation of the Franciscan Mysticism. The Eternal Gospel. John of Parma. Frà Salimbene
• VI. The Holy See and the Spiritual Franciscans. Popular Art and Poetry
• VII. The Mysticism, the Moral Philosophy and the Faith of Dante
• Notes
• List of Works by Gebhart
• Index