The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy

7. A Franciscan Money Manager: The Archbishop’s Two Bodies?

7 A Franciscan Money Manager The Archbishop’s Two Bodies? Although Franciscans first began holding episcopal offices only a short time after the death of Saint Francis in 1226, there was still something startling in the mid-thirteenth century about the notion of a friar minor serving as a bishop or archbishop.1 How could a minor remain true to his religious order while discharging the functions of a maior in the secular church? The bishop or archbishop was charged with overseeing diocesan temporalities, which meant buying, selling, and leasing church property and collecting quitrents and other rents, tithes, visitation procurations, and seigneurial fees, including the fees due from litigation in ecclesiastical courts. In addition to his own direct involvement with finances, the archbishop was responsible for settling legal disputes that came before his court, many of which involved money. Handling money was an inescapable part of the archbishop’s office. Yet poverty was the distinctive mark of the Order of Friars Minor. The Franciscan rule seemed to be quite clear in prohibiting brothers from handling money or involving themselves in financial transactions. Chapter 7 of the first Rule of Saint Francis of 1221 (regula non bullata) appeared to ban the friars from assuming any responsibility that required them to administer money: “All the brothers, in whatever place they stay with others for serving or working, are not to be chief stewards, or cellarers; nor should they be in charge of the house in which they serve . . . but they should be little ones and subject to all who are in the same house.”2 It was not just the personal use of money that was prohibited but the handling of money in the interest of others. Chapter 8 of the rule stated: No brother, no matter where he is or where he may go, should in any way accept, or cause to be accepted, money or coins, neither for A Franciscan Money Manager 145 clothes, for books, nor as wages for any kind of work, under any circumstances whatever, unless obviously necessary for sick brothers; for we should not grant nor accord greater usefulness to money or coins than we do to stones. And in no way are brothers to receive or cause to be received, or seek or cause to be sought, money for almshouses, nor coins for any house or place; and they should not go with any person who seeks money for the benefit of such places.3 Despite the rule’s injunction, Franciscans involved themselves with money in a variety of capacities. Indeed, in 1266, the city of Perugia, which for some time had been employing Franciscans in its municipal government, turned to a Franciscan for expert advice on financial affairs!4 That some of the most talented economic theorists of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were Franciscans has led some scholars to question whether Franciscans were exceptional in their business acumen.5 Opposition to Franciscans serving in the episcopate predated the emergence of the Spirituals. In his Second Life of Saint Francis, written in 1247 (right around the time Eudes Rigaud was elected archbishop), Thomas of Celano suggested that some Franciscans were abandoning their status as minores by serving as court chaplains and bishops. According to Thomas, Cardinal Hugolino (the cardinal protector of the Franciscan order and later Pope Gregory IX) had once suggested to Saint Francis and Saint Dominic that friars be appointed bishops since the friars were considered outstanding in their learning, their conduct, and their poverty. Yet both Dominic and Francis flatly rejected the idea. Francis reportedly replied to the cardinal: Lord, my brothers are called minors so that they will not presume to become greater. Their vocation teaches them to remain in a lowly station and to follow the footsteps of the humble Christ, so that in the end they may be exalted above the rest in the sight of the saints. If you want them to bear fruit for the church of God, hold them and preserve them in the station to which they have been called, and bring them back to a lowly station, even if they are unwilling. I pray you, therefore, Father, that you by no means permit them to rise to any prelacy, lest they become prouder rather than poorer and grow arrogant toward the rest.6 Even if this scene was largely constructed by Thomas, it reveals early ambivalence and even opposition from within the Franciscan order to friars serving in the...