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BOOK REVIEWS793 Nicolaus Minorita: Chronica. Documentation on Pope John XXII, Michael of Cesena and the Poverty of Christ with Summaries in English. A Source Book. Edited by Gedeon Gal, O.EM., and David Flood, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure , New York: Franciscan Institute PubUcations. 1996. Pp. 30", 1238. $68.00.) In 1317 leaders of the Franciscan order finaUy received papal help in suppressing the spiritual Franciscans. John XXII ordered rebellious spirituals to stop arguing and obey their superiors.Those who refused were referred to the inquisitors, and some ofthose who continued their defiance were burned at the stake the following year. That hardly settled the problem, since a number of those who had purportedly submitted soon left their houses and continued their defiance as fugitives; but John's action marked an important stage in the process, since it changed the remaining spmtuals from dissidents into heretics. Unfortunately, in 1321 those same Franciscan leaders found themselves in an uncomfortably similar situation. A dUference of opinion between a Dominican inquisitor and one of his expert advisors, a Franciscan, allowed the pope to launch an investigation into the question of whether Christ and his apostles were absolutely without possessions, individuaUy or in common.The result was a 1323 papal bull that decided they were not. It had been preceded by a 1322 bull proclaiming that the Franciscan order and not the papacy owned the material goods used by the friars. Both announcements reversed what Franciscans had long seen as cornerstones of their observance. Leaders of the order protested, at first politely and then less so. In 1328 Michael of Cesena, the same minister general who had presided over the suppression of the spirituals, escaped from the papal court at Avignon and began a long Franciscan government in exile under the protection of John XXII's arch-enemy the Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria.The handful of friars who joined him inThe Great Escape included WUUam of Ockham. They would spend the rest of their lives firing polemical salvos at John XXII1 but exUe would remain theU lot. The whole affair is extremely weU-documented, thanks in part to a brother named Nicolaus, a foUower of Michael of Cesena, who coUected and copied many of the pertinent texts. The resultant chronicle offers a source book for those interested in foUowing the battle. It is edited here by two of the best textual scholars working today and is an invaluable research tool for those interested in Franciscan and papal history. For those who do not feel up to reading the gigantic Latin text (370 foUos in the Paris manuscript), David Flood furnishes English-language summaries at the beginning of each chapter.There wUl probably be a great many people who never get beyond Flood's summaries.The argument was an extremely tedious one. Anyone who spends much time with the chronicle will appreciate why such a potentiaUy interesting controversy has received so little attention from modern scholars. Flood also provides an introductory chapter summarizing the history of the Franciscan poverty dispute from its beginnings until 1321, the only genuinely 794BOOK REVIEWS problematic part of the book for this reviewer. Flood argues—as he did in earlier works like Francis ofAssist and the Franciscan Movement (1989)—that the Franciscan movement was born as a socio-economic alternative to the nascent capitalism of Assisi. The impUcations of this perspective become apparent when he considers ideals like poverty and the imitation of Christ, elements most scholars imagine were basic to Francis' project. In Flood's view, they entered the picture more or less as tactical maneuvers countering Assisi's attempt to marginalize the movement that challenged and judged its values. "Franciscan poverty then, began as a defensive maneuver to deal with Assisi's ostracism." Or1 in the case of imitating Christ, Instead of quietly and humbly accepting their lot, the brothers outmaneuvered Assisi. (As in economics, so now with society, they were breaking the monopoly of those in power to define what is real.) . . . They swept the imputation of insignificance aside by drawing Jesus into the excluded group. Flood presents the late thirteenth-century spiritual leader Petrus Iohannis OUvi as a major hero of the movement; yet—despite Flood...

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