Daily Labor of the Early Franciscans

Part One: On Learning to Work:* Franciscan History from Below

PART ONE ON LEARNING TO WORK:* FRANCISCAN HISTORY FROM BELOW Thomas of Celano unwittingly slipped a message from below into his first account of Francis of Assisi. His message can serve well to introduce a history from below of the early Franciscan years. Thomas of Celano’s first life has three parts. The second part covers Francis’s final two years. Within the second part, we find one unit, paragraphs 102-104, that criticizes the brotherhood’s change of mind on work. Paragraph 102, with due praise, introduces the four brothers who cared for the sick Francis in his final years. (One could suppose these brothers are the source for the following two paragraphs.) Paragraph 103 says Francis, although a saint, still struggled to progress in virtue. The final paragraph bewails the fact that the brothers were pursuing positions as pastors or prelates , while others had lost interest in the early ways of working (prima opera). I read the first paragraph as the context in which Francis voiced the criticism that follows; he unburdened his soul to those who were close to him. Somehow their recall of his words got into the material gathered for Francis’s canonization , material made available to Thomas of Celano for his account. Thomas’s piece of hagiography belonged to the canonization process. We have no difficulty understanding that Thomas took the material into his way of telling the story. In the second paragraph, Francis wanted to return to the DaviD FlooD 2 original life of service.4 As the topic sentence of the third paragraph, Francis aspired to show those he criticized how a brother lived. That ties the second paragraph to the third: first the example, then the application. The connection is repeated a bit further on in the third paragraph when the criticism is summed up. Those criticized have abandoned the early way of working. I see nothing that suggests Thomas of Celano understood and supported the point of Francis’s criticism. As a consequence we have to figure out how his disjointed account fits into a story larger than his praise for the new saint. We read that Francis wanted to return to the early ways and he criticizes brothers who had given up those early ways. More specifically, they had ceased working, whereas Francis and his first companions had made work the bedrock of their vita (as they called their life together).5 Seeing as the criticism has to do with work, we can conduct the analysis of this unit of Thomas’s life under the aegis of Francis’s line on work in his Testament. At the end of his life, Francis said he worked; he wanted to continue working; and he wanted his brothers to work as well. Those who did not know how, which suggests what particular brothers Francis had in mind, should learn. There is a further detail that allows us to tie the Testament and paragraph 104 together. In his Testament, Francis said all should work as an example to others. In paragraph 104 of Thomas’s account, Francis wanted to work as an example to brothers who understood work differently. The example , if we consider the work Francis had in mind, was not only the fact of work and the banishment of idleness. When Francis talked about work, he meant the movement’s idea of 4 * Qui nesciunt, discant: [If you don’t know, learn how]. Testament, 21. See Aragon, Summa, 82. The word used is servitus. As a Franciscan term, it means a laboring life for others. It belongs with words such as servus and servire, so important in the early Franciscan writings. They all have to do first of all with the early movement’s idea of work. Servitus occurs at a pivotal moment in the Commonitorium. See Summa, 32, sentence 40. For Thomas of Celano, First Life, §§ 102-104, see 141-42. 5 As Francis does in Early Rule XXIV, the brothers referred to their basic document and their way of life as their vita. on learning to Work 3 labor and the very social message sent by such work.6 The brothers worked for the inclusion of people in great need and they labored for the just distribution of the good things God gives us. Given the mind in which most people read the early Franciscan sources, with their great interest in Francis ’s spirituality, such readers suppose...