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Paupertas Christi: old wealth and new poverty in the twelfth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Brenda M. Bolton
Brenda M. Bolton*
Affiliation:
University of LondonWestfield College
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Extract

The consequential implications for those who adopted a life of apostolic poverty in the twelfth century can in turn raise many complex questions. This paper makes little attempt to resolve the questions raised. Rather it is hoped that in discussing them suggestions will be forthcoming which will help either to achieve some degree of clarification or raise further and perhaps more searching questions in the minds of others.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 14: Renaissance and Renewal in Christian History , 1977 , pp. 95 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1977

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References

1 Among recent works on poverty I have found especially valuable Mollat, [M.], [Etudes sur] l’histoire de la pauvreté, Publications de la Sorbonne, Etudes, 8, 2 vols (Paris 1974)Google Scholar; [Poverty in the Middle Ages, ed Flood, D.], FF 27 (Werl-Westfalia 1975)Google Scholar; La povertà [del secolo XII e Francesco d’Assisi], Atti del II Convegno Internationale (Assisi 1975).

2 Chenu, [M.-D.], ‘Monks, Canons and Laymen in search of the Apostolic Life’ and ‘The Evangelical Awakening’ in Nature, Man and Society [in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West], ed and translated by Taylor, J. and Little, L. K. (Chicago 1968) pp 202-69Google Scholar; Nelson, Janet L., ‘Society, theodicy and the origins of medieval heresy’, SCH 9 (1972) p 75 Google Scholar. Also C. Violante, ‘Hérésies urbaines et rurales en Italie du 11e au 13e siècle’ in Goff, [J.] Le, Hérésies et Sociétés [dans l’Europe pré-industrielle 11-18 siècles], École pratique des hautes études: Civilisations et Sociétés 10 (Paris 1968)Google Scholar who offers an analysis of the movement towards the vita apostolica.

3 On the lack of evidence for one such group see my article ‘Sources for the early history of the humiliati’, SCH 11 (1975)pp 125-33.

4 Walter Map was expressing a widely held view when he says of the Waldensians ‘they are now beginning in a very humble guise because they cannot get their foot in; but if we let them in, we shall be turned out’, translated by Brooke, [R. B.], The Coming of the Friars (London 1975) pp 151-2Google Scholar; Map, [Walter], [De Nugis Curialium, ed James, M. R.], Anecdota Oxoniensia, Medieval and Modern Series, 14 (Oxford 1914) pp 60-2Google Scholar.

5 Ibid p 62; Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli sociorum S. Francisci: the Writings of Leo, Rufino and Angelo, Companions of St Francis, ed and translated by Brooke, R.B. (Oxford 1970) pp 155-7Google Scholar, 181-7, 193-7, 240-1.

6 Bolton, B. M., ‘Tradition and temerity: papal attitudes to deviants 1159-1216’, SCH 9 (1972) pp 79–91 Google Scholar for a general discussion of these questions.

7 M. Mollat, ‘Pauvres et pauvreté dans le monde médiéval’, La povertà, pp 81-97.

8 Selge, [K.-V.], [Die ersten Waldenser] (Berlin 1967)Google Scholar; Thouzellier, [C.], [Catharisme et Valdéisme en Languedoc à la fin du xiie et au début du xiiie siècle (2 ed Louvain 1969)Google Scholar and Grundmannpp 91-100.

9 On the humiliati see especially Zanoni; Grundmann pp 70-97, 487-538; and my articles ‘Innocent III’s treatment of the humiliati’, SCH 8 (1971) pp 73-82; ‘Sources for the early history of the humiliati’, SCH 11 (1975) and ‘The poverty of the humiliati’ in Flood pp 52-9.

10 Thouzellier pp 212-32; Selge pp 104-9; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 2, [ed Privat, E., Vaudois languedociens et Pauvres Catholiques] (Toulouse 1967)Google Scholar.

11 Thouzellier pp 232-5; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 2 (1967); Grundmann pp 118-27.

12 Brooke, The Coming of the Friars; Lambert, [M. D.], Franciscan Poverty: [the doctrine of the absolute poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the Franciscan order 1210-1321] (London 1961)Google Scholar; La povertà; Grundmann pp 127-35.

13 Borst, A., Die Katharer, MGH SS, 12 (Stuttgart 1953)Google Scholar; Moore, [R. I.], The Birth of Popular Heresy (London 1975)Google Scholar; Le Goff, Hérésies et Sociétés pp 120-38; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 3, [ed Privat, E., Cathares en Languedoc] (Toulouse 1968)Google Scholar.

14 On the problems posed by urban growth and money in twelfth century society see the articles by Little, [L. K.], ‘Pride goes before Avarice’, AHR 76 (1971) pp 16–49 Google Scholar and ‘Evangelical poverty, the new money economy and violence’, Poverty in the Middle Ages pp 11-26.

15 Chronicon anonymi Laudunensis, ed Waitz, G., MGH SS 26 (Hanover 1882) p 447 Google Scholar; Map pp 61-2; [C.] Thouzellier, ‘Hérésie et pauvreté [à la fin du xiie et au début du xiiie siècle’], Histoire de la Pauvreté, pp 371-88 and especially pp 378-9. Valdes found his biblical instruction in Matt 19, 21: si vis perfectas esses . . .

16 Bolton, ‘The poverty of the humiliati’; Poverty in the Middle Ages p 55; Zanoni pp 261-63.

17 PL 215 (1855) cols 1510-14; Potthast I nos 3571-3 p 308; Selge p 96; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 2 (1967) pp 173-85.

18 Lambert, Franciscan Poverty pp 31-67. It is most interesting to compare this view with the chapter ‘Communitas: model and process’ in Turner, [V. W.], The Ritual Process (Harmondsworth 1969) pp 119-54Google Scholar and especially pp 128-35. Celano speaks of Francis’s poverty as ‘the most perfect conquest of himself’, Moorman, J.H., A History of the Franciscan Order from its origins to 1517 (Oxford 1968) p 8 Google Scholar.

19 Chenu, , Nature, Man and Society p 249 n 12 Google Scholar; Morris, [C.], Medieval Media (University of Southampton 1972)Google Scholar; Thouzellier pp 221-3.

20 Loewe, R., ‘The medieval history of the latin vulgate’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible 2, ed Lampe, G. W. H., (Cambridge 1976) p 146 Google Scholar. One extant small-format bible measures 5¾ inches by 4 inches. Ibid p 146 n 2.

21 Goppelt, L., Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, trans Guelich, R. A. (London 1970) pp 25–60 Google Scholar for a discussion of the nature of the first community.

22 Matt 19, 21-2; Lambert, Franciscan Poverty p 57.

23 A. Gieysztor, ‘La Legende de Saint Alexis en Occident: un idéal de pauvreté’, Histoire de la Pauvreté pp 125-39.

24 Ibid p 137; Morris, Medieval Media in which he discusses the impact of the song in transmitting new ideas and values.

25 Lambert, Franciscan Poverty p 61 and Turner, The Ritual Process pp 133-4, both stress the immense, emotional significance which nakedness held for Francis. Such theatricality may be linked to the existential quality of communitas for it ‘involves the whole man in his relation to other whole men’ and ‘is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency. The processes of “levelling” and “stripping” . . . often appear to flood their subjects with affect’, Ibid pp 114-15.

28 ‘Mercator vix aut nunquam potest Deo piacere’, Chenu, , Nature, Man and Society p 224 n 45 Google Scholar.

27 Baldwin, J.W., Masters, Princes and Merchants: the social views of Peter the Chanter and his circle, 2 vols (Princeton 1970) I pp 261–311 Google Scholar; Goff, J. Le, Marchands et banquiers du moyen âge (Paris 1956) pp 70–98 Google Scholar; Vereecke, L., ‘History of Moral Theology’, NCE 9 p 1120 Google Scholar; Chenu, M.-D., L’éveil de la conscience dans la civilisation médiévale (Paris 1969)Google Scholar; McLaughlin, T. P., ‘The teaching of the canonists on usury (XII, XIII and XIV centuries)’, Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939) pp 81–147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 2 (1940) pp 1-22; Noonan, J.T., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Mass., 1957)Google Scholar; de Roover, R., La pensée économique des scolastiques, doctrines et méthodes (Paris 1971)Google Scholar. A recent article by Rosenwein, [B. H.] and Little, [L. K.], [‘Social Meaning in the] Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities’, PP 63 (1974) pp 4–33 Google Scholar especially pp 29-31 gives a useful indication of those justifications of usury which were appearing at this time.

28 1 Cor 15, 44. On St Paul’s salvation imagery see Musurillo, H., Symbolism and the Christian Imagination (Baltimore 1962) pp 14–26 Google Scholar. For evidence that Paul was widely quoted during this period by heretics and orthodox alike see C. Violante, ‘La pauvreté dans les heresies du xie siècle en occident’, Histoire de la Pauvreté pp 347-69 and Brooke, The Coming of the Friars p 126. On the transmission and glosses of the Pauline epistles, Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford 1952) pp 63–75 Google Scholar.

29 A. Richardson, ‘The whole Christ’ An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament pp 242-65 and especially pp 242-52.

30 ‘Put away...the old man, which waxeth corrupt...be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, which after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth’ Eph 4, 22-24.

31 Eph 2, 14-17.

32 Douglas, [M.], Natural Symbols (2 ed London 1973) pp 93–112 Google Scholar on the use of the body as a symbol.

33 Such ideas might possibly have stemmed from the seventh century Irish treatise De duodecim abusivis saeculi which stresses that the behaviour of a king affects the quality of the society over which he rules and that he must first correct himself before he can correct others, PL 4 (1865) cols 877-78; Could these ideas have filtered down through society and have led those who regarded themselves as kings and priests towards the notion of self-correction before they could become representatives of Christ? This text may have been quite widely known since it was included by Jonas of Orleans in his De institutione Regia, PL 106 (1864) col 288 Google Scholar. See also Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., ‘The Via Regia of the Carolingian Age’ in Trends in Medieval Political Thought, ed Smalley, B. (Oxford 1965) pp 22–41 Google Scholar and Thouzellier, ‘Hérésie et pauvreté’, Histoire de la Pauvreté p 374 for a similar suggestion.

34 de Lubac, H., Corpus Mystictim (Paris 1949) pp 116-26Google Scholar; Kantorowicz, E., The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton 1957) pp 193-98Google Scholar.

35 Danielou, J., Couratin, A. H. and Kent, John, The Pelican Guide to Modern Theology (Harmondsworth 1971) p 134 Google Scholar.

36 Chenu, Nature, Man and Society p 243 discusses those groups in society, juvenes, wage-earners and merchants who lived on the margins of society and who thus constituted a homogeneous milieu for the poor of Christ. Clothmakers as a group were noted above the others for a critical spirit.

37 Lambert le Bègue appears to have believed that wealth was socially divisive, Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy pp 103-11. It is paradoxical that the groups who condenmed money as a source of corruption were precisely those who undertook to bring the gospels home to merchants, Chenu, Nature, Man and Society p 226 and Rosenwein and Little, ‘Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities’, pp 22-31.

38 Little, ‘Pride goes before Avarice’ p 44 figures 10 and 11 shows the revulsion which the handling of money caused. We are also told how Francis made a friar place money on a dungheap after he had accidently touched it, Thomas of Celano, Vita Secunda, in Analecta Franciscana 10 (Quaracchi 1926-41) pp 178-9Google Scholar.

39 VHM II pp 131-2.

40 Valdes’s profession of faith states that ‘we believe one catholic Church, apostolic and immaculate . . . we humbly praise and venerate all ecclesiastical orders’, Brooke, The Coming of the Friars pp 148-50; Dondaine, A., ‘Aux origines du Valdéisme—une profession de foi de Valdes’, AFP 16 (1946) pp 191–235 Google Scholar; Selge pp 104-9.

41 Brooke, The Coming of the Friars p 149 where Valdes professes that ‘the sacraments...although they may be administered by a sinful priest, while the church receives him we in no way reject, nor do we withdraw from ecclesiastical services and blessings celebrated by such a one, but with a benevolent mind embrace it as we do from the most righteous’. For Durand de Huesca’s propositum conversations see PL 215 (1855) cols 1510-14; Potthast I, nos 3571-3 p 308. For Bernard Prim see PL 216 (1855) cols 648-50; Potthast I, no 4567 p 394. Francis too was insistent that priests be honoured and some of the first friars deliberately confessed to a priest of ill-repute because they refused to believe ill of him, Brooke, The Coming of the Friars p 31.

42 For a fine discussion of this point see Thouzellier, ‘Hérésie et pauvreté’, Histoire de la Pauvreté pp 380-1 and Selge, K.-V., ‘Characteristiques du premier mouvement vaudois et crises au cours de son expansion’, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 2 (1967) pp 110-42Google Scholar.

43 Cernay, Peter de Vaux, Petri Vallium Sarnau monachi Hystoria albigensis, ed Guerin, P. and Lyon, E., 3 vols (Paris 1926-39) I pp 14–17 Google Scholar.

44 See Moore, The Birth of Popular Heresy pp 122-7 for the views of cathars in Lombardy between c1170 and c1200. This extract demonstrates not only aspects of their reforming vision but also the variety of different views attributed to them.

45 Ibid p 2.

46 Cahiers de Fanjeaux 3 (1968); Douglas, Natural Symbols p 17 where this attitude is discussed. ‘Here the body is not primarily the vehicle of life, for life will be seen as purely spiritual and the body as irrelevant matter...It follows that the body tends to serve as a symbol of evil, as a structured system contrasted with pure spirit which by its nature is free and undifferentiated’.

47 Lambert, Franciscan Poverty pp 184-246.