The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis

12 Ubertino da Casale and the Controversy over Christ’s Poverty

EVEN AS JOHN’S INQUISITORS were crushing the beguins and French spirituals , John was turning on the Franciscan order itself. Moreover, he was doing so with at least some help from a man leaders of the order detested, Ubertino da Casale. Ubertino’s Escape to the Benedictines We last encountered Ubertino at Avignon in 1317, telling the pope that he would willingly speak for the spirituals if asked to do so. He was, we remember , informed that no such request would be forthcoming. If John wanted to keep Ubertino from testifying, it was obviously because the pope wanted to get on with the task of bringing the recalcitrant friars into line and did not want Ubertino complicating the process. One wonders, though, if his rejection of the offer might also have revealed a degree of sympathy for Ubertino himself. Angelo portrays John as saying, “We don’t want you to involve UBERTINO DA CASALE AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER CHRIST’S POVERTY T W E L V E THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS yourself in this business.” It was, to be sure, a dangerous business in which to be involved. Angelo reports that Ubertino heeded the pope’s warning and stayed out of the affair, but the Franciscan leaders wanted to see him ruined anyway, because they were afraid that he would speak out against them in the future—and indeed that might have been the case. At any rate, he had said enough in the past to keep any leader with a decent memory on his scent for a long time to come. Once the French spirituals had been placed on a path that would eventually lead them back to their superiors (or, if they chose, to the stake), those superiors found it troubling that Ubertino was still living with his patron Napoleone Orsini at the papal court. According to Angelo, they wore the pope out with their incessant requests that Ubertino be returned to obedience. John, hoping to satisfy the order, finally summoned Ubertino and suggested that he spend a few days with the Franciscans while the pope worked out a permanent solution to his problem. Ubertino replied that if the leaders managed to get their hands on him for just one day, there would be no need for John or anyone else to worry about his future. John saw the point and gave Ubertino a choice: he could go back to the Franciscans or join a completely different order. Ubertino chose the second alternative, although he was not happy with it and hoped that he could persuade the pope to find yet another solution. The pope had decided, however, and on October 1, 1317, he officially made Ubertino a Benedictine, assigning him to the monastery at Gembloux. John saw that it was a solution the Franciscan leaders could tolerate , and Angelo affirms that they were jubilant when Ubertino assumed the Benedictine habit as if he were taking up the cross. Moreover, as Angelo also observes, his assignment to Gembloux would keep him well out of the way. In reality it did not. The assignment seems to have been a purely notional one, with Ubertino staying in Avignon under the protection of Cardinal Orsini. Angelo observes that he was treated with honor and respect by the cardinals. Nor did Ubertino’s transfer change the overall plan of the Franciscan leaders. Angelo says that they continued to seek Ubertino’s death, digging a pit for him into which they themselves eventually fell.1 The Controversy over Christ’s Poverty The nature of that pit is another story, and one that must be told here at least in outline. We have seen that by the 1320s, inquisitorial attention had broadened from the spiritual Franciscans to their lay supporters. It was a hearing 262 UBERTINO DA CASALE AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER CHRIST’S POVERTY concerning one such supporter that spread the net even wider, sending heresyhunters beyond distinctively spiritual Franciscan doctrine to examine what had hitherto been considered orthodoxy throughout the order. The story, as related by Nicholas the Minorite,2 is that the Dominican inquisitor Jean de Beaune had been examining a beguin at Narbonne. As was customary, he consulted with a number of local experts concerning the process, and one of these was Berengar Talon, lector in the Franciscan house. One of the purportedly heretical beliefs held by the beguin was the idea that Christ and his disciples possessed nothing...