Les Franciscains en Terre Sainte (1869-1889): Religion et politique: Une recherche institutionnelle (review)

Giuseppe Buffon, currently a member of the Franciscan Order's Rome-based Antonianum (recently designated a pontifical university), has authored a study that is among the latest in a recent, and ongoing, spate of books about the Franciscans and the Holy Land. Coming on the heels of Giovannelli's La Santa Sede e la Palestina—La Custodia di Terra Santa tra la fine dell'Impero Ottomano e la Guerra dei Sei Giorni (2000), Pieraccini's Cattolici di Terra Santa 1333–2000 (published in 2003), and Fabrizio's Identità Nazionali e Identità Religiose. Diplomazia Internazionale, Istituzioni Ecclesiastiche e Comunità Cristiane di Terra Santa tra Otto e Novecento (2004), Buffon makes a substantial contribution to the unraveling and clarification of perennial and ever-present issues (some still unresolved or partially resolved) concerning the almost 800-year Franciscan presence in the Holy Land.

In what amounts to a well thought-out and well documented modern Apologia Pauperum, the forty-two-year-old Franciscan scholar (doctorate in history from the Gregorianum and in anthropology from the École des Hautes Études, Paris) begins by candidly admitting and then asking why—for centuries, and to this very day—the Franciscans have been perceived and judged (by some) to be "Moines inutiles . . . enfoncés au fond de leur monastère . . . incapables de faire du bien dans leur mission et de conserver plus longtemps les sanctuaires qu'ils se sont laissé enlever par les schismatiques" (p. 11).

At the end of the nineteenth century, France—which had been the Order's protector for so very many years—tried to discard the friars and replace them with French religious (Carmelites, Christian Brothers, White Fathers, Assumptionists, Sisters of Charity, and Dominicans) who, in France's mind, would be much better in combating the Protestant efforts sponsored by England and Germany. Moreover, with the help of Cardinal Lavigerie, French diplomats had even convinced Rome (Italy and the Vatican) that it was time to replace the Franciscans. The friars, in turn, fought French nationalism with Franciscan internationalism. And the Franciscans won!

Buffon, then, devotes the rest of his study to show just how and why the Franciscans were successful. In his opinion, the survival of the Holy Land Custody—at a time when political-religious forces were working for and predicting its elimination—did not occur because of good luck and a smiling fortune. Rather, the author demonstrates (and I think his adroitness in presenting historical documents proves) how, the Order's very organizational structure (or lack thereof, which Buffon describes as a kind of "anarchie rationelle") served as the bedrock of its successful resistance to European politics and ecclesiastical manoeuvres.