Did the Master Make a Mistake?: On Esser's theory about the two versions of Francis's Letter to the Clergy, its dependence on the papal bull Sane cum olim and a new approach

1. The present state of the question

Esser's turnabout

In his collection of studies on the writings of Francis, published in 1973, Kajetan Esser, the acknowledged master of Franciscan textual criticism, wrote that in verse 13 of Francis's Letter to the Clergy there exists "a striking difference, that is difficult to explain," between the oldest manuscript which originally belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco and was written before 1238,¹ and the famous manuscript Assisi 338 which originated between 1250 and 1260. However, Esser considered this difference "a too weak basis to accept a double version of the Letter to the Clergy."² It is therefore somewhat strange, to say the least, that in his textcritical edition of the writings of Francis, published only three years later in 1976, the same Esser concludes, without any further explanation, that the differences are "so serious that one has to accept two versions of one and the same letter."³

Esser's conclusion immediately raises the question about which one of the two versions would be the first. Esser opted for the Subiaco manuscript as the first version and the Assisi manuscript as the second. An important reason for Esser's option was the fact that the Assisi manuscript of the Letter to the Clergy added in verse 13 that the clerics have to observe all of these matters "according to the precepts of the Lord and the constitutions of holy mother Church (secundum praecepta Domini et constitutiones sanctae matris ecclesiae)." With "the constitutions of holy mother Church" Francis referred, according to Esser, to the papal bull Sane cum olim, issued by pope Honorius III on November 22, 1219.⁴ And as this bull, in Esser's view, also "contained references to the will of God as laid down in Holy Scripture," Francis decided to insert both a reference to the papal bull and to "the precepts of the Lord" in a new, second version of the letter.⁵ This would imply that Francis, who in the summer of 1219 left for Egypt, wrote the second version only after his return from the Middle East in the spring of 1220. For it was only then that he came to know about the existence of the papal bull issued during his absence from Italy, and could refer to it in order to strengthen his appeal to the clergy to show greater reverence for the Eucharist. At the same time, however, the absence of these important additions in the first version implies that this version was written before the papal bull of Honorius was issued and thus also before Francis's departure for the Middle East in the summer of 1219.⁶

Present reception of Esser's theory

The latest English translation, published in 1999, follows Esser and contains a separate translation of both versions, the first of which was written before 1219 and the second in 1220.⁷ In the most recent German translation (2003) Leonhard Lehmann acknowledges the existence of two versions but the differences between the two are so small that it suffices to print only the text of the oldest manuscript, that of Subiaco, written before 1238.⁸ He agrees, though, that the addition constitutiones sanctae matris Ecclesiae in the second version refers to the papal bull Sane cum olim and that the earlier version may have been written before 1219.⁹ The revised edition of the Fonti Francescane (2004) still follows Esser's theory as regards the existence of two versions, the early date of the first version and the reference of the second version to Sane cum olim.¹⁰ However, in a lengthy article on Francis's letters, C. Paolazzi, the author of the introduction to the Letters in FF, revised his previous opinion in 2008. He still accepts the existence of two versions but dates both after Sane cum olim and therewith also after Francis's return from the Middle East in 1220...