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THE PARISIAN FRANCISCAN COMMUNITY IN 1303 One of the many contributions made by Gedeon Gal in the course of his career has been the precision he has been able to bring to the biographies of numerous English Franciscans, most especially William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, and Adam Wodeham. He achieved this through his deep and extensive knowledge of manuscripts , following in the tradition of Philotheus Boehner and others, but also through his sensitivity to the details of the educational structure of the Franciscan Order in the early fourteenth century. In keeping with that interest, the following piece explores in greater detail a long-known document that throws light both on the resident community at Cordeliers in Paris in June 1303 and on the operation of the Franciscan educational system as it concerned the Paris convent. In 1928 Ephraim Longpré announced his discovery of a document that proved John Duns Scotus was resident at the Franciscan convent in Paris in June 1303, and that because of his refusal to subscribe to Philip the Fair's call for a council against Boniface VIII, Scotus was forced to abandon his studies in Paris and go into exile for almost a year.1 The document was a list of names recorded on June 24 or 25, 1303, by a royal scribe, which contained the names of those willing to adhere to the king's position along with the names (and in this respect it is unique) of those who refused to adhere.2 In the same article Longpré republished the subsequent, official letter of adhesion for the Franciscan convent in 1303, which contained only the names of those who subscribed to the call for a council. The first list, however, is the more important, as Longpré recognized, since it is the archival equivalent of a photograph of the entire— 1E. Longpré, "Le B. Jean Duns Scot. Pour Ie Saint Siège et contre le gallicanisme (25-28 Juin 1303)," La France Franciscaine 11 (1928): 137-62. For more recent assessments of Scotus at Paris in the context of this political crisis, see Allan Wolter's introduction to Duns Scotus' Political and Economic Philosophy (Santa Barbara, Ca.: Old Mission, 1989): 1-9; W. J. Courtenay, "Scotus at Paris," in Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. L. Sileo, vol. I (Rome: Edizioni Antonianum, 1995): 149-63. 2Paris, Arch. Nat., J.488, #595. A few of those who initially refused to adhere eventually joined the ranks of the adherents, while a few names on the initial list of adherents do not appear on the final letter of adhesion. 156WILLIAM J. COURTENAY or almost entire—Franciscan community resident at the convent in Paris at one point in time. Longpré's interest in the document was primarily for the biographical information it provided on Duns Scotus and for the fact that it demonstrated Scotus' support for the papal cause. Longpré also took a certain pride in what he took to be the fact that only the Franciscans had the courage to oppose Philip the Fair, while the Dominicans at St. Jacques had supported the king en masse? And apart from a few notes on individuals on the list, beyond his remarks on Scotus, Longpré did not explore the document further nor use its information as a window into the role of the Paris convent within the Franciscan system of theological education at the opening of the fourteenth century. Longpré did unquestionable service in printing the document and calling attention to it. But it was not precisely a new discovery. The document had been catalogued and briefly described by Pierre Dupuy in his seventeeth-century inventory of the royal Trésor des chartes in which he grouped those documents, 810 of them, that he identified as being related to the dispute between Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII and his successors. But the document was not among those selected for editing by Dupuy in his Histoire du différend.* Nor was it included by Georges Picot in his far more extensive editing of the documents of that controversy, probably because it was not a full document or charter but only a list of names, and because the...

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