Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T20:42:48.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Letters of Adam Marsh and the Franciscan School at Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

C. H. Lawrence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Salimbene called the Franciscan Adam Marsh ‘one of the greatest clerks of the world’, an accolade he reserved for a small group of men whom he regarded as the master minds of his time. A glance at Adam's letters suggests that Salimbene's opinion was widely shared by Adam's contemporaries. Few men without official position can have had their advice so eagerly sought by so many different people in high places. He was the counsellor of Henry III and the queen, the confidant of Simon de Montfort and his wife, the mentor of bishops and consultant to the rulers of his order. He enjoyed the trust of men as different as Archbishop Boniface of Savoy, who tried to recruit him to his familia, and Grosseteste, a lifelong friend, with whom he collaborated in the study and transmission of Greek texts. He moved with equal assurance in the world of ecclesiastical politics and the scholastic world of the university. The nature of his political influence has been the subject of frequent surmise, but the importance of his part in directing the Franciscan school at Oxford and creating the scholastic organisation of the English province has long been recognised. Yet several phases of his career and life remain obscure or at best enigmatic. My object here is to elucidate some of the more opaque points of his career and to re-examine his place in the history of the early Franciscan school.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 218 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam, ed. O., Holder-Egger, MGH SS (1913), 235Google Scholar.

2 Little, A. G., The Greyfriars in Oxford, Oxford, 134–9, revised in his paper ‘The Franciscan school at Oxford in the thirteenth century’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum [hereafter AFH] xix (1926), 803–74Google Scholar. Biographical notices of Adam will also be found in Russell, J. C., Dictionary of Writers of Thirteenth-Century England, London 1936, 6–9Google Scholar; Decima, Douie, ‘Adam de Marisco, an English Franciscan’, Durham University Journal xxxii (1940), 81–97Google Scholar; Cantini, G., ‘Adam de Marisco, auctor spiritualis’, Antonianum xxiii (Rome 1948), 441–74Google Scholar; Emden, A. B., Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500, Oxford 1957–1959, ii. 1225Google Scholar. On his political influence see for example the observations of Powicke, F. M., The Thirteenth Century, Oxford 1953, 107Google Scholar.

3 Wadding, L., Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 2nd edn, Rome 1906, 5Google Scholar. The thirteenthcentury library catalogue of Christ Church Canterbury lists a Summa de Penitentia by Adam, Marsh: James, M. R., Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, Cambridge 1903, 71, but this also has not been identifiedGoogle Scholar.

4 Ruello, F., ‘Un commentaire dionysien en quete d'auteur’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du mqyen-àge xix (1952), 141–81.Google Scholar

5 On the chronology of Gallus's commentaries see Thery, P. G., ‘Chronologie des oeuvres de Thomas Gallus, abbÉ de Verceil’, Divus Thomas xxxvii (1934), 265–77, 365–85, 469–94Google Scholar.

6 Lyons, Bibliotheque Municipale MS 414 fo. i6vGoogle Scholar; see the discussion of the index by S. Harrison, Thomson, ‘Grosseteste's topical concordance of the Bible and the Fathers’, Speculum 11 (1934), 139–44;Google Scholar and Southern, R. W., Robert Grosseteste: the growth of an English mind in medieval Europe, Oxford 1986, 188–93Google Scholar.

7 Monumenta Franciscana i, ed. J. S., Brewer (RS, 1858), 77–489Google Scholar. Copies of the last item of the collection, which is a pastoral treatise addressed to Archbishop Sewal of York, also survive in Bodleian MS Digby 104 fos. 94–106, and Vienna, Bibliotheca Palatina MS 4923 (Theol. 547), fos 4 ovffGoogle Scholar.

8 A new edition is in preparation by the present authorGoogle Scholar.

9 At the end of a letter addressed to the Minister-General, Bonaventure, shortly before Adam's death, the copyist of this particular group of letters has added a rubric as follows: ‘Hec est ultima littera quam dictavit pie recordationis frater Adam de Marisco’: Cotton MS Vitellius C viii fo. 6ivGoogle Scholar.

10 Brewer, no. 37, 141; no. 83, 202Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. 314, 315, 334, 390. As Adam pointed out to the Provincial, it was common practice to assign a secretarial helper to a friar who was acting as a lector: Ibid. 349.

12 See the evidence cited by Hunt, R. W., ‘The library of Robert Grosseteste’, in D. A., Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop, Oxford1955, 130Google Scholar. Some support is given to this suggestion by the fact that the copyist has erroneously included in the collection a letter by Grosseteste to the archdeacon of Canterbury - here reproduced without address or heading: Brewer, 382–4Google Scholar; cf. Roberti Grosseteste Epistolae, ed. H. R., Luard (RS, 1861), 432ffGoogle Scholar.

13 In a letter addressed to Thomas Gallus on the subject of his translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius, the copyist misread the title of the treatise De Divinis Nominibus as quibus diebus, thereby rendering the sentence meaningless: fo. 45rGoogle Scholar; Brewer failed to spot the error and added misreadings of his own: p. 206Google Scholar.

14 Douie, ‘Adam de Marisco’, n. 2Google Scholar.

15 A number of formularies of the early thirteenth century contain Oxford matter, see Richardson, H. G., ‘Letters of the Oxford dictatores’, in Oxford Formularies, ed. H. E., Salter ii (Oxford Historical Society 1942), 329–59Google Scholar.

16 Brewer, 77–82Google Scholar.

17 Rockinger, L., Briefsteller und Formelbücher des elften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, Munich 1863, i. 133–8Google Scholar. A good copy of Buoncompagno'c model letter will be found in an English manuscript of the Antiqua Rhetorica in BL Cotton MS Vitellius C viii fo. 113vGoogle Scholar.

18 See Guidonis Fabae Dictamina Rhetorica, ed. A., Gaudenzi in IL Propugnatore, nuova serie v, Bologna 1892, i. 119–23Google Scholar. Adam's incomplete mastery of the rules of the cursus is illustrated by the fact that in this letter to Archbishop Boniface only forty-seven out of ninety clausulae are correctly formedGoogle Scholar.

19 According to Eccleston, he was persuaded to enter the order by Adam of Exeter, who left England by the end of 1232 to preach to the Saracens: Tractatus de Adventu Fralrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. A. G., Little, Manchester 1951, 17–18Google Scholar.

20 Chronica Majora, ed. H. R., Luard (RS, 1872-1884), v. 619Google Scholar.

21 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum ii. 136Google Scholar: mandate to deliver to Adam's clerk a Bible (bibliotheca) bequeathed him by his uncle the bishopGoogle Scholar.

22 Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. J., Stevenson, Edinburgh 1839, 58Google Scholar. He is listed as rector of Wearmouth in the Liber Vitae of Durham, see following note. In the assessment of 1291 the rectory was valued at £100Google Scholar; it was the second richest in the diocese: Taxatio Ecclesiestica Papae Nicholai IV, 1802, 314Google Scholar.

23 Liber Vitae Ecclesiae Dunelmensis, facsimile edition ed. A. H., Thompson (Surtees Society cxxxvi, 1923), fo. 25Google Scholar. The two names were written together in the lower margin by the same thirteenth-century hand. Grosseteste is described as archdeacon of Leicester, which dates the entry 1229–32Google Scholar.

24 Eccleston records that Master Adam of Exeter, who persuaded Adam to join the friars, had been ‘ad robas suas’: Eccleston, 17Google Scholar.

25 Nicholai Trivet Annales, ed. T., Hog, London 1845, 243Google Scholar.

26 AFH xix (1926), 831 n. 5Google Scholar.

27 BL Cotton MS Vitellius D IX fo. 44V-45. Adam's subsequent charter of donation refers to the repayment of the loan, fo. 46VGoogle Scholar.

28 The pedigree of the family was worked out by Eric St John Brooks, ‘The family of Marisco’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 12 (1931), 22–38, 89–112; lxii (1932), 50–74.Google Scholar

29 By Kingsford in the Dictionary of National Biography, xxxvi, 161; but the evidence for the connection is unclearGoogle Scholar.

30 The turbulent part played by Geoffrey and his son in the politics of Henry III's reign was described by Sir Maurice Powicke Henry III and the Lord Edward, Oxford 1947, ii. 740–59Google Scholar.

31 Brewer, 335Google Scholar.

32 Chronica Majora v. 619–20Google Scholar.

33 Beati Iordani de Saxonia Epistulae, ed. A., Walz, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica xxiii, Rome 1951, 19–20Google Scholar.

34 Eccleston, 17Google Scholar.

35 Southern, Grosseteste, 74Google Scholar.

36 Luard, Epistolae, 45–7Google Scholar.

37 In 1260 the general chapter of Narbonne required every Provincial to designate one house, or two if necessary, in each custody where novices were to reside until they made their profession: ‘Die altesten Redactionen der General-constitutionen des Franziskaner-ordens’, ed. F., Ehrle in Archivfiir Literatur-und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters vi, Freiburg 1892, 89Google Scholar. Possibly this arrangement was anticipated in the English provinceGoogle Scholar.

38 Brewer, 145Google Scholar.

39 Rogeri Bacon Opera kactenus inedita, ed. J. S., Brewer (RS, 1859), 187Google Scholar.

40 Bacon coupled Adam with Grosseteste as examples of the sapientes anliqui who worked at mathematics and languages in order to understand the ancient philosophers: The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon, ed. J. H., Bridges, Oxford 1897, ii. 108Google Scholar.

41 Eccleston, 50Google Scholar.

42 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H., Denifle and E., Chatelain, Paris 1889, i. 41Google Scholar.

43 Statuta Antigua Universitatis Oxoniensis, ed. Gibson, Strickland, Oxford 1931, 48Google Scholar.

44 ‘quod nullus in eadem uniuersitate incipiat in theologia nisi prius rexerit in artibus in aliqua uniuersitate, et nisi legerit aliquem librum de canone Biblie uel librum Sentenciarum uel Historiarum’: Ibid. 49. In this context the first ‘uel’ must be construed as ‘and’ – by this date a Baccalarius was required at Paris and Oxford to have lectured on both a book of the Bible and a book of the Sentences before proceeding to the master's degree; see discussion of the required exercises at Oxford by Little, A. G. and Pelster, F., Oxford Theology and Theologians c. 1281-1302, Oxford 1934, 25–6Google Scholar; Catto, J. I., ‘Theology and Theologians 1220–1320’, in J. I., Catto (ed.), The History ofthe University of Oxford,i, Oxford 1984, 473–9Google Scholar; cf. for Paris, P. Glorieux, ‘L'enseignement au moyen-âge. Techniques et mÉthodes en usage à la facultÉ de theologie de Paris au Xllle siècle’, Archives d'hist. doctr. el lilt, du M.A xxxv (1969), 65–186Google Scholar.

45 Luard, Epistolae, 334–5Google Scholar.

46 Dufeil, M.-M., Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polemique universitaire parisienne 1230–1259, Paris 1972, 8–9Google Scholar. Dufeil argues that Jean de la Rochelle was the sole incumbent of the chair at the Franciscan house, Alexander of Hales having ceased to be regentGoogle Scholar.

47 On this much controverted point see Frascadore, E. and Ooms, H., ‘S. Francesco e la cultura’, in Bibliografia delle bibliografie francescane, Florence 1964–1965, 5–7Google Scholar.

48 Hugh of Digne's Rule Commentary, ed. David, Flood, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum xiv, Grottaferrata 1979, 187Google Scholar.

49 In a letter of March 1253 to William of Nottingham, Adam reports a decree of congregation, observing that he had ‘ceased to teach in their university for three years and was an outsider’ (quasi foras factus): Brewer, 348Google Scholar.

50 Brewer, 335, 342–3Google Scholar.

51 Ibid. 327–9.

52 Cal. Liberate Rolls 1245–51, 132Google Scholar; Cal. Pat. Rolls 1247–58, 594Google Scholar.

53 Brewer, 336Google Scholar.

54 Ibid. 335–6, 342, 609–12.

55 The king's appeal against the election of Hugh of Balsham is set out in a letter dated 22 November 1256: Close Rolls I256–5Q, 108–9. Matthew Paris reports that an attempt was made to substitute Adam Marsh, but that Hugh made good his claims at Rome: Chron. Majora v. 619–20, 635–6; the story is confirmed by Hog, Trivet Annales, 243Google Scholar.

56 The date, apparently excerpted from the necrology of the Franciscans at Salisbury, is cited in Itineraria Symonis Simeonis et Willelmi de Worcestre, ed. J., Nasmith, Cambridge 1778, 81Google Scholar. In 1260 the general chapter of Narbonne ordered masses for his soul: ‘Diffinitiones capituli generalis Narbonensis’, ed. F. M. Delorme in AFH iii (1910), 504Google Scholar.

57 Brewer, 406–7Google Scholar.

58 Ibid. 336.

59 Ibid. 146–7. The expression Adam uses to describe the contents – paucas particulas de variis expositionibus – suggests the book was an anthology of Joachim's works, of which many were circulating in the thirteenth century, see Reeves, Marjorie,The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford 1969, 46Google Scholar. Adam's comments suggest the collection contained the treatise De Ultimis Tribulationibus, see the edition by E. R. Daniel in Williams, Ann (ed.), Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in honour of Marjorie Reeves, Harlow 1980, 167–89Google Scholar.

60 Brewer, 408Google Scholar.

61 In the Manus que contra Omnipotentem, ed. M., Bierbaum, Bettelorden und Weltgeistlichkeit an der Universität Paris, Munster 1920, 134–5Google Scholar.

62 See for example the letter to William of Nottingham: Brewer, 371–2Google Scholar.

63 The writer refers to Adam, and Antony, St as the duo luminaria ordinis who led the attack on Elias: Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis Minorum in Analecta Franciscana, iii, Quaracchi 1897, 230–1. He has confused Antony with Haymo of Faversham, who took the lead in denouncing Elias; see discussion of Rosalind Brooke, Early Franciscan Government, Cambridge 1959, 157–67Google Scholar.

64 Epistolae, 181–2Google Scholar.

65 Eccleston, 71 and n. The surviving return from the French province, Exposition Quattuor Magistrorum super Regulam Fratrum Minorum, ed. L., Oliger, Rome 1950, makes it clear that the magistri chosen for the purpose were not all fully fledged doctors of theologyGoogle Scholar.

66 Brewer, 361–3Google Scholar.

67 Eccleston, 12Google Scholar.

68 Ibid. 50.

69 Ehrle, n. 37 above, 89Google Scholar.

70 The Dominican William of Thetford, writing to Grosseteste in 1239–1242, reported that the Oxford friary of the Dominicans contained forty novices at the time of writing: Humphreys, R. W., ‘The letters of William of Thetford OP’, this JOURNAL V (1954), 204Google Scholar. The Franciscans quickly outgrew their first premises in the parish of St Ebbe's at Oxford and the pressure of numbers is indicated by successive enlargements of their buildings: Little, Greyfriars, 295–306Google Scholar; Sheehan, M. W., ‘The Religious Orders 1220–1370’, in History of the University of Oxford, i. 194–5Google Scholar.

71 On the Cambridge house see Moorman, J. R. H., The Greyfriars in Cambridge, Cambridge 1952Google Scholar.

72 Eccleston, 50Google Scholar.

73 Brewer, 357Google Scholar; see Little, A. G., Franciscan Papers, Lists and Documents, Manchester 1943, 63Google Scholar.

74 Brewer, 357Google Scholar.

75 Ibid. 357.

76 Eccleston, 51 and nGoogle Scholar.; see Emden, , Biographical Register ii. 1364Google Scholar.

77 Brewer, 319, 321Google Scholar.

78 Eccleston, 58Google Scholar; Moorman, , Greyfriars, 30, 31, 143, 17Google Scholar.

79 I can find no evidence for the contrary statement by Sheehan in History of the University of Oxford, i. 200. It is not clear when the Oxford school was assigned the status of a studium generate for the order. It was not a development likely to be welcomed by the school itself, as the support of many foreign students would be burdensome. For this reason the Dominican school at Oxford resisted the status of studium generate until 1261, see W.A. Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars Preachers, Rome 1951, 341. The Franciscan school had evidently been assigned the status before 1292, when the general chapter ordered that students from other provinces who were studying at Oxford should be dispersed among the houses of Oxford, Cambridge and London during the long vacation in order to alleviate the burden on the Oxford friary: Ehrle, vi. 63Google Scholar.

80 Ehrle, 52; Bihl, 77Google Scholar.

81 Brewer, 365–6Google Scholar.

82 Ibid. 184. In order to retain Richard, Adam invited the papal nuncio to join a hasty conference at Oxford. The previous letter refers to Richard's desire to go’ ob vehementiores perturbationum occasiones’. Peter Raedts in Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Tradition of Oxford Theology, Oxford 1987, 7–9 suggests that the cause of Richard's disturbance was wounded feelings because Thomas of York had been preferred to incept before him. This is an interesting surmise, but an alternative and more probable explanation for Richard's discontent was the resistance at Oxford to the new Parisian method of teaching speculative theology, see below p. 237.

83 Brewer, 354Google Scholar.

84 Ibid. 354.

85 See Lawrence, in History of the University of Oxford, i. 100–2Google Scholar.

86 See e.g. Brewer, 99–102Google Scholar.

87 Dufeil, 8–9Google Scholar.

88 Denifle, and Chatelain, , Chartularium i. 226–7Google Scholar.

89 Strickland Gibson, 49, see n. 43 aboveGoogle Scholar. On Thomas of York's inception see Little, Greyfriars, 38–9Google Scholar.

90 The course of the dispute over the inception of Thomas and the purport of the statute are described by Adam in a long letter to the Provincial, William of Nottingham: Brewer, 346–9Google Scholar

91 Bierbaum, , Bettelorden, 37–168.Google ScholarThomas of York's authorship of this polemical treatise was demonstrated by Pelster, F., ‘Thomas of York als Verkaufer des Traktat Mantis ’, AFH 15 (1922), 3–22.Google Scholar

92 Rogeri Bacon Opera hactenus inedita, ed. Brewer, , 329, 428.Google Scholar

93 Luard, , Epistolae, 346–7Google Scholar.

94 Abate, G., ‘Lettere “secretae” d'Innocenzo iv in una raccolta inedita del secolo xiii’, Miscellanea Franciscana iv (1955), no. 149, 347Google Scholar. The whole question of the dispute is discussed by Raedts, , 122–50, and by me in History of the University of Oxford, i. 101.Google Scholar

95 Cf. n. 81 above.Google Scholar

96 Hunt, R. W. in Callus, Robert Grosseteste, 121–5.Google Scholar