Poverty and Charity: Pope John XXII and the Canonization of Louis of Anjou

On April 7, 1317, Pope John XXII canonized his first and only Franciscan saint. Louis of Anjou, the second son of King Charles II of Sicily, had spent a large part of his early life as a hostage in Catalonia, and, following his release, renounced his claim to the throne and joined the Franciscan order before being invested as bishop of Toulouse by Pope Boniface VIII. He died less than a year later, in August 1297, at the age of twenty-three. Attempts to have Louis canonized began soon after his death, on the initiative of his father and his younger brother Robert of Naples. They were rewarded in 1307 when Clement V formally set up a commission to inquire into Louis’s sanctity, a process that ended with John XXII’s canonization bull Sol oriens mundo ten years later.¹

John XXII was not just the pope who formally canonized the bishop of Toulouse; as Jacques Duèse, the future pope had been one of Louis’s advisors, and one of the principal witnesses to his sanctity during the early part of the canonization proceedings in 1307–1308.² From a Franciscan perspective this may seem surprising, in light of John’s suppression of the Franciscan Spirituals in the years 1316–1319 and of the pope’s later condemnation of the order’s poverty ideal. In fact, the canonization bull for the Franciscan bishop of Toulouse was published only six months before the first anti-Spiritual bull, Quorundam exigit (October 7, 1317). Louis of Anjou and John XXII therefore make a rather strange pairing, especially when considering the fact that during his time as a hostage in Catalonia Louis had been in contact with Petrus Johannis Olivi whose argument for the inclusion of a restriction in the use of material goods in the Franciscan vow had made him one of the most influential exponents of what came to be the Spiritual movement in the Franciscan order. Because of a letter written by Olivi to the princes, both Louis and his brother Robert are often linked to the Spiritual Franciscans, a number of whom were also close companions of the bishop of Toulouse.³

The relationship between the two men is therefore intriguing, although it has rarely been explored in any detail.⁴ This is particularly surprising considering that during the canonization proceedings we see the future pope reflecting on the life, death and sanctity of the Franciscan bishop of Toulouse – the only record of any explicit discussion of Franciscan topics by Jacques Duèse before his election to the papacy. Jacques Duèse’s experience as a member of Louis’s retinue, his reflections on both Louis and on his relationship with the bishop during the canonization proceedings, and the re-working of his experience in the eventual canonization of Louis are three distinct phases of interaction between Jacques and the Franciscan order, and they provide a unique body of evidence for John XXII’s views on the order before his election to the pontificate. The papal view of Louis of Anjou was influenced by Jacques Duèse’s experience as a member of Louis’s household, and by his reconstruction of Louis’s life in his testimony. This makes the canonization bull a particularly valuable record of a papal discussion of Franciscan issues at the height of the Spiritual crisis. The canonization proceedings for Louis of Anjou can thus provide insights into the relationship between Louis and the future pope, as well as into the relationship between John XXII and the Franciscan order more generally. It is not so much the reality of Louis’s experience as a prince, friar and bishop that is of interest here as the construction of his sanctity by Jacques Duèse and the ways in which this image of a Franciscan saint was then translated into the canonization bull by Pope John XXII.

The Canonization Proceedings

In January 1300, three years after Louis’s death, King Charles II appointed a procurator to begin a campaign for the...