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[ 7 ] CHAPTER ONE POVERTY AND APOCALYPSE Their Patron “Saint” and His Cult Against the will of the lax brothers, the feast of brother Peter of John was celebrated in Narbonne so solemnly by the clerics and by all the people, that never in these parts in these days was a feast so solemnly celebrated. For the people of the whole province came together to his tomb; no fewer, as they say, than come to the feast of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula. —Angelo Clareno, Epistole I n April of the year 1313, Angelo Clareno, an Italian Franciscan friar of radical tendencies, was in Avignon, having just returned from a midwinter voyage to Majorca.1 When he wrote a letter to some of his equally radical confrères, he told them about a celebration he had attended in Narbonne only three weeks before: the feast of a locally venerated Franciscan, Peter Olivi, celebrated on March 14. The memory was clearly still fresh and vivid. The people of Narbonne, and the entire region in fact, had come in droves to visit the site of Olivi’s tomb. Doubtless, the church of the Franciscans outside the walls of Narbonne was full to bursting—a situation that reminded Angelo of the feast of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula in Assisi, where the even tinier chapel was also overrun with pilgrims annually on August 2. The comparison is even more telling if we realize that pilgrims to the feast at the Portiuncula had benefited from a 1 April 3, 1313. Angelo Clareno, Angeli Clareni Opera, bk. I, Epistole, ed. Lydia Von Auw (Rome, 1980), 174–175. Angelo wrote a letter from Montpellier at Epiphany and apparently went directly to Majorca, where he spent fifty days. Allowing a generous week for each sea voyage, that places him back on the mainland just in time to spend March 14 in Narbonne. See also Von Auw, Angelo Clareno et les spirituels italiens (Rome, 1979), 111–112. The letter was addressed to a number of Franciscans, variously in the March of Ancona, near the city of Rome, and in the kingdom of Naples. [ 8 ] Chapter One general indulgence since the time of Saint Francis, whereas Peter Olivi, as we shall see, was a figure of considerable controversy.2 But Peter Olivi’s followers nonetheless felt that they had something important to celebrate: the Church Council of Vienne, which had ended in May of the previous year, had not condemned their patron by name, and in his bull Exivi de Paradiso, Clement V gave qualified approval to certain customs of Olivi’s followers. Not only that, but as Angelo also pointed out in his letter, Celestine V, the short-lived pope of 1294 who had embodied many of the hopes of these Spiritual Franciscans, was imminently to be canonized.3 Though Angelo did not mention it, we also know that only the previous summer, Clement V had reprimanded quite a number of Franciscan superiors of the Midi hostile to the Spirituals.4 The hierarchy seemed to be on their side, and the convents were no longer warring within themselves. While the news was not all good, neither was it all bad, and a celebration was clearly in order.5 Angelo’s letter attests to the “Olivi fever” that appears to have taken over Languedoc, making for quite a feast for Olivi, the people of Narbonne, and all those who came from across Languedoc to participate. Nor was Narbonne the only center of this “Olivi fever.” Nearby Béziers was also affected. When a Dominican friar named Raimon Barrau later 2 John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), 30n4 and 155. 3 The canonization came on May 5, 1313. Celestine was pope from July 5 to December 13, 1294. Among the few acts of his brief pontificate, brought to an end by his abdication, was the creation of a new order, the Poor Hermits of Pope Celestine, which was composed of radical Spirituals (including Angelo Clareno) who had been suffering in the Order of Friars Minor. Unsurprisingly, many of the Franciscan rigorists revered Celestine as an “angel pope.” See Robert E. Lerner, “On the Origins of the Earliest Latin Pope Prophecies: A Reconsideration,” Fälschungen im Mittelalter, Monumenta Germaniae historica, Schriften 33, vol. 5 (Hannover, 1988), 611–635. 4 The bull summoning them, dated July 23, 1312, can be found in Archiv für Literaturund Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters...

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