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1 Prologue The Challenges to the Historian In the mid-thirteenth century, Matthew Paris, an English Benedictine monk, wrote about the early Franciscans: [They] carry constantly their books, indeed libraries, in sacks hanging from their necks. In time they built schools, afterward houses and cloisters , next large and lofty churches and offices, with the nobles bearing the expense....Then, establishing schools of theology within their confines, lecturing and disputing, and preaching to the people, they carried much crop to the barn of Christ, “where the harvest is rich, but the laborers are few [Matt. 9:37].”1 Evidently, when he wrote these lines, Matthew Paris did not particularly object to friars carrying books, opening schools, and lecturing and disputing.2 For 1. “Libros continue suos, videlicet bibliotecas, in forulis a collo dependentes baiulantes. Tandem scolas edificaverunt, deinde domos et claustra, denuo, magnatibus sumptus sufficienter administrantibus, ecclesias et officinas amplas et excelsas fabricaverunt....Tandem scolas theologie infra septa sua constituentes , legentes et disputantes et populo predicantes, fructum ad horrea Christi, quia messis multa et operarii pauci fuerant, non modicum reportarunt.” Matthei Parisiensis historia Anglorum, in Monumenta Germaniae historica: Scriptores, 28 (Hannover, 1888), 397. 2. This quotation is from the earliest entry on the Friars Minor in Matthew Paris’s chronicle. In later entries, he seems to have had a change of heart and criticizes certain practices of the friars, although he still maintains a favorable view of many individual friars, often those engaged in scholarly activities. For Matthew Paris’s view of friars and his increasing frustration with them, see Williell R. Thomson, “The Image of the Mendicants in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris,” AFH 70 (1977): 3–34. 2 PROLOGUE the modern scholar, this is an unexpected image when contrasted to that of Francis,who founded the Order of Friars Minor (OFM) in 1209. It is difficult to imagine Francis or any of his early brothers going around with a sack of books hanging from their necks. The sources at our disposal portray this most popular saint as a man strictly devoted to evangelical poverty, so much so that his followers were not allowed to have anything other than a tunic and a breviary. A sack of books,quite expensive items in the Middle Ages,was out of the question, as were permanent convents, money, and a school education.3 The Francis we know was literate but not highly educated in theology, nor did he want to be. He respected theologians but was clear that his brotherhood was one of joyful minstrels of the apostolic life, not of well-educated schoolmen. Nevertheless, within only thirty years, his movement evolved into a Europe-wide order with hundreds of permanent houses, schools, and libraries, an order that produced some of the finest theologians and philosophers of all time. Its members were to be seen on the highways of Europe, walking from their friaries to distant schools, and carrying a sack of books, as Matthew observed. This did not seem to trouble Matthew, as he refers to the friars approvingly as laborers carrying crops to the barn of Christ. It did, however—and still does—trouble modern scholars. The image of Franciscan friars carrying books and listening to lectures in a classroom is problematic for us in a way that it was not for Matthew Paris, or many other religious men of the Middle Ages, who associated the pursuit of education and learning with respectability and pastoral duties. Taking this apparent discrepancy between medieval and modern perspectives on the Franciscans’ intellectual pursuits as a point of departure, this book deals with the questions of why and how the Franciscans, despite having their origins in a simple and predominantly lay brotherhood, embraced scholastic learning. Why did they open schools, establish libraries, and eagerly seek out and produce books? Why did they move to university towns and compete with the Dominicans to enroll scholars and masters? When did this “scholastic” transformation take place and under what conditions? Was it criticized within and outside of the Order, and if so, what was the nature of this criticism? How did the learned Franciscans reconcile their intellectual activities to their Franciscan identity? What were the consequences of making education a part of the Franciscan life? This book is not a comprehensive history of Franciscan education in the way Bert Roest’s A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) is, nor of Franciscan intellectual activities and theology. Instead, it is essentially a story of how and why learning...

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