Over the past week, I worked my way through The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis.

Not an easy book if you’re not already conversant in the period – took me a while to get my bearings, and then I had to go re-read big chunks of it. If you want a basic introduction to that first century of Franciscan history, you’d be better off reading up on it on the Internet or finding another more general book.

But once I regrouped and got back into it, all was well. As usual, it prompted much thought.

St. Francis is such a compelling figure, subject to such romanticization from beginning to end. When we think of St. Francis, we are almost conditioned to think of bunnies and birds, flowers and a happy band of brothers,  when the reality is filth, lepers, almost unbearable pain, disappointment and discord.

Which is what happens when a movement emerges from a charismatic figure’s convictions and ideals.

It seems so simple: live in the poverty of Jesus, serve the poor, and preach the Gospel.

But since the world is complex, so, it seems, nothing can be simple for long.

If you don’t know your early Franciscan history, this is a good introduction. Even before Francis died, of course, the ground was shifting, as Brother Elias took over, looked about, and decided adaptation was in everyone’s best interest. And so was set the path for Franciscans ever since: Gospel ideals adapted (or compromised), then reassessment and reform, then gradual adaptation (or compromise) once again, and back and forth, – Spirituals – Observants – Capuchins –  the cycle repeating itself even up to the present day (Fr. Groeschel’s Franciscan Friars of the Renewal being an modern example).

The Spirituals were a particularly knotty problem because they were seen as a problem, to the point of heresy and to the point of some of them being burned at the stake. The superficial version says little more than that – implying that it was all fat, self-satisfied urban university friars not wanting to be shown up by the barefoot Spirituals –  but Burr’s book (and any close history of the Spirituals) makes clear there was so much more.

I won’t go into it in detail, but simply know that there was an almost dizzying array of issues at play. The purpose of Burr’s book is to tease out a particular question: was what we call the "Spirituals" an organized movement? Did it really have its roots in the late 13th century or was it rather more diffuse? How were the major players related?

Working through this, we encounter, as I said, the tangle of issues raised by the Spirituals and responded to by the Conventuals (the mainstream Franciscans) and the Papacy (which for most of this was residing in Avignon, by the way).  The basic question is – what is poverty? Everyone agreed that ownership of goods was out, but beyond that…what? Could you have laity who procured goods for you, goods that you just used? Was there a limit on how many goods there could be? Did Jesus and the apostles own property? What was the nature of the evangelical counsels? Was disobeying or even mitigating it in the context of the Franciscan life a mortal sin? How to adapt the Franciscan life to new situations, such as university life, urban mileus and the epsicopacy?

Did the Pope have the power to change any of this himself? If a Franciscan made a vow to live evangelical poverty could the Pope order him to break that vow (by making the order use a procurator for owning goods, etc, which violated the conscience of some.)? Franciscans were rapidly moving into urban and university life – how could they live in that environment with all of its varied demands and not have substantial use of property? Could or should Franciscans become bishops?

Various undercurrents ran strong: if the Spirituals "won" – if their view that Christ and the disciples did not own property and that the Franciscan life must be in profound imitation of that – how would that make the Conventuals look? Heck, how would make every other Christian look? Wasn’t that setting up these Spirituals as somehow intrinsically closer to Christ?

There was also a constant apocalyptic theme running through the whole conversation, rooted in the thought of Joachim of Fiore, whose apocalyptic vision and timetables had a persistent impact on many of the Spirituals who hinted – and outright said – that the life of St. Francis initiated a final age before the Second Coming, and that those who opposed strict adherance to Francis’ Rule and Testament were, er…the AntiChrist. Even if they were Pope.

Which was sort of a problem.

It is always so fascinating to me how seemingly esoteric arguments can, indeed, have profound implications. It’s what people sometimes don’t understand about discussions about Jesus’ divine and human nature. Certainly, there is a point at which it all gets too much and we must ultimately admit how limited our knowledge is, but there is quite often a rather profound point at stake, and for the conflict with the Spirituals, you can see this on both sides. Without the challenge of the Spirituals, who can doubt that the Franciscan ideal might have died right there in the early 14th century? But when you look at the general course of thought of most of the Spirituals (and no, it was not an "organized" movement, but rather had some prominent thinkers and defenders who drew on each other’s work), you also see the problems. Ah, the dialectic. That frustrating, mystifying dialectic. It can be so challenging to sort out at times.

But it’s necessary to confront, lest we get lost in our ideals, fall into false nostalgia for a mythical golden, tension-free past that never was and surely must have been better than our discordant present.

(And do read the comments on this post – from people who know Franciscans and the period a lot better than I do, including Augustine Thompson, OP, the author of the wonderful Cities of God, which I discussed a month or so ago.!)