The Name of the Rose

When Gerard Segarelli was rejected by the Franciscans, he took matters into his own hands and formed the Apostolic Brethren in 1260. The Brethren, active in northern Italy, gained many followers with their life of extreme poverty and their message of repentance.

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In 1274, at the Second Council of Lyon, Pope Honorius IV prohibited all mendicant orders if they were not sanctioned by the papacy. In 1280, the Bishop of Parma imprisoned Segarelli, and in 1286 banished him from the diocese.

The prohibition against unapproved mendicant orders was renewed in 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV, who also began going after those "orders"; the Brethren were a particular target.

In 1294, four members of the sect were burned at the stake. Segarelli himself was sentenced to life in prison, but on 18 July, 1300, he was burned at the stake in Parma after being made to confess that he had relapsed into heresy. The Apostolic Brethren gained a new leader in the charismatic Fra Dolcino, who is worth his own post someday.

The motto of the Brethren under Segarelli, and later under Fra Dolcino, was Poenitentiam agite [Latin: Make penitence]. This was abbreviated to Penitenziagite! and made known to millions of readers 680 years after Segarelli's execution in Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose.

Mendicants—Grey

St. Francis of Assisi

The Mendicant Orders were a 13th century movement that stirred up great controversy in the Middle Ages. Called so from the Latin verb mendicare (to beg), they rejected wealth and possessions in order to emulate their view of the ideal Christian life.

The first group that earned the title "mendicant" was founded by St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Deciding that a life without material possessions was more godly, he created a group that he called the Ordo Fratrum Minorum. Literally, this means Order of Minor Brothers—Francis himself referred to his members as fraticelli, "little brothers"—but from Latin frater through French frere the word became friar to denote these men. Therefore, it is usually now officially called (in English) the Order of the Friars Minor, or the Grey Friars, although colloquially they are called simply Franciscans. His first step was to gather 12 disciples; then he presented his group to Pope Innocent III for official recognition. Innocent was reticent at first, and wanted Francis to return when his group was larger and better established, but (supposedly) he had a dream in which he saw Francis supporting the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the Pope's "seat" in his role as Bishop of Rome. Innocent accepted that Francis would support the Church, so he approved the new Order. He had the men tonsured; ordained or not (and Francis never was, another reason that they were "minor" brothers), tonsuring was a mark of their Church connection, and was a way to say "you're part of the team now, so stick with approved doctrine!"

Francis wrote a set of rules that included this:

And let those who have promised obedience take one tunic with a hood, and let those who wish it have another without a hood. And those who must may wear shoes. All the brothers are to wear inexpensive clothing, and they can use sackcloth and other material to mend it with God's blessing.

Maybe it was a dissatisfaction with the growing wealth and opulence of the church, or a desire to do something toward Salvation that didn't require traveling on Crusade, or merely the eloquence of the messengers and the attraction of the message, but the Order grew quickly. Franciscans traveled to preach in England, France, Spain, Hungary; Francis went to Egypt, but returned to make sure the message of the Friars Minor was not being diluted by too many new ideas. Still, he did not feel the need to "rule" his Order: in 1220, he resigned his position as its head, leaving it to Peter of Cattaneo (who died in 1221) and then Elias of Cortona (who, with Franciscan humility, always signed his name "Brother Elias, sinner).

St. Clare of Assisi

He also formed, with St. Clare of Assisi, a sister order; as well as the Third Order of St. Francis for lay people who wish to live as nearly as possible a godly life while still being part of the world.

The nice thing about being a saintly person and creating your own fan club while alive is that, upon your death, your memory is likely to spur people to action. Elias of Cortona immediately started to raise funds for building a church to Francis in Assisi, and labored to get him canonized—which he was, less than than 2 years after his death, by Pope Gregory IX. The new church was far enough along by June 1230 to receive Francis' body.

The Mendicant Orders, and the Franciscans especially, would become involved in serious debates in the future over whether priests or the Church should own property. Those arguments are what provided Umberto Eco with the setting for his best-selling first novel, The Name of the Rose.

Wycliffe the Reformer

John Wycliffe (c.1324-1384), first discussed yesterday, started his career as a respectable Oxford scholar and theologian. His religion and study taught him that wealth was not needed for a Christian life, and not appropriate for the clergy. This was not a radical idea, or new—Francis of Assissi had been preaching and embodying the ascetic life almost 200 years earlier*—however, his arguments and his public presence and patronage made him notorious.

It was after the conference at Bruges (mentioned briefly in the above link) that he seems to have decided he needed to make a more overt defense of his views. Wycliffe might have been fine keeping his views in the rather private academic arena, but when he was denounced and challenged in public by William Bynham of Wallingford Priory in Oxford, Wycliffe decided to go public with his Summa Theologiae in which he explained why the church should not have temporal authority, and that the king was above the pope in earthly matters. He followed this with De civili dominio (On civil lordship), in which he stated that if the church should abuse any of its temporal holdings, the king should take those holdings away; not to do so would be remiss. It was the strongest argument (and the most welcome, to members of the nobility) for the king's authority over the church.

The monastic orders, who benefited from the feudal system of rents and tenants, were understandably threatened by this, especially considering the patronage Wycliffe enjoyed from men like John of Gaunt, who was effectively the ruler of England during Edward III's decline. When Wycliffe was summoned before Bishop William Courtenay of London, he was accompanied by John of Gaunt, the Earl Marshal Henry Percy, other nobles, and even some friars of the orders that rejected personal possessions. Gaunt's presence cowed the bishop, and the gathering broke up without immediate consequence for Wycliffe. This pattern, of attempts to chastise or reign in Wycliffe being overwhelmed by his supporters, would be repeated more than once in the years to come.

In fact, Wycliffe's views were so popular in England that they sparked the anti-establishment movement called "Lollardy" about which it was supposedly said at the time "Every second man that you meet is a Lollard." It is certain that the citizens involved in the Peasants' Revolt were familiar with his views on equality, although he disapproved of their violence. It is ironic that Wycliffe's most powerful patron, Gaunt, was also one of the chief targets of the mob because of his aristocratic standing. It was not long after the Revolt that Wycliffe was officially being denounced as a heretic, which complicated his life but didn't stop him from writing. As well as other tracts and letters, he had one more major work he wished to produce that would shake the church to its foundations. He decided to do what had never been done before: translate the entire Bible into English.

*Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is remembered as a murder mystery set in 1327 by many readers who have forgotten that one of the central themes is the philosophical debate on the topic of the church and material wealth.