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A Letter in Response to Three Questions of an Unknown Master (1254-55) One of the more unedifying features of the mendicant movement was the polemic which at times marked the spirited rivalry between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Each claimed to be reviving t h e 'apostolic life' within the contemporary church, yet their respective interpretations of what such a life entailed differed on several significant points. Which of them was a more authentic expression o f it? This question was by no means a meaningless one for potential recruits and benefactors, for whom the two orders were in great competition. This letter was composed for an unnamed university master, most likely of arts, who had written to Bonaventure for some clarifications regarding the Franciscan Rule.1 He seems to have been a young Englishman who was considering joining the Order, but was being dissuaded by a Dominican, presumably so that he would enter t h e Friars Preacher instead.2 Some Dominicans apparently viewed t h e Franciscans as parvenus, who had belatedly assumed the preaching ministry proper to their own Order.3 What better propaganda for them than to claim that by so doing, the Friars Minor had betrayed their own origins, and were in fact failing to observe the Rule t h e y had vowed? 1At least one manuscript states that the recipient was a master in arts. Trib. qu. (VIII, 331). 2 "It seems likely that critic and inquirer were both located in England" (Burr, p. 151). The rivalry between Franciscans and Dominicans appears to have been particularly fierce there; Matthew Paris already reports quite a controversy in 1243 (Chron. Mai., ed. H.R. Luard. Rolls Series 57 [London, 1872-1883]: IV, 279). 3As an example, from a renewed English controversy some years later, see Robert Kilwardby's Letter to Dominican Novices: "There are indeed people in other states of life who preach, but they do not do it in the same way. For the friars of the Order of Preachers do it by virtue of the very institution of their Order, by virtue of their job which gives them their name: others do it, certainly, but in imitation of them, because they could not find anything better or more useful that they could do. So what our Order does essentially by virtue of its original institution, others try to do in imitation, incidentally and beside their formal profession." From Simon Tugwell, Early Dominicans CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), p 150. John Pecham would offer a spirited reply, Contra Kilwardby, in 1271-72 (cf. n. 13 below). 40 / Dominic Monti, O.F.M. Bonaventure's reply in this letter is significant in several respects. First of all, three manuscripts contain the notice that h e composed it while regent master at Paris, which would therefore date it between 1254 and 1257.4 This, of course, was at the height of t h e secular-mendicant controversy at Paris, and explains w h y Bonaventure takes such great pains to assure his questioner that such negative propaganda was not characteristic of the Dominicans at a l l . It was important that the friars in Paris, facing a common foe, not be divided by such bickering. In fact, when Humbert of Romans was elected Master General of the Preaching Friars in 1254, he made it one of his primary objectives to heal any breaches with the Minors; this came to fruition the next year in a joint encyclical of Humbert and John of Parma to their friars, urging them to submerge their rivalry in t h e interest of mutual cooperation.5 Bonaventure, as regent master of t h e Franciscan school in Paris, undoubtedly supported this policy, and would continue to do so as General Minister. This would suggest t h a t this letter comes from the early years of his regency, 1254 or 1255. It is also important to note that many of Bonaventure's arguments in this letter are virtually identical to sections of Hugh of Digne's Rule Commentary. Hugh, an intimate friend of John of Parma, h a s often been portrayed as the "father of the Spirituals," a faction which would later condemn Bonaventure's moderate policies in governing the Order. However, the very close similarity in the w a y which the two men develop their understanding of Franciscan poverty in these writings suggests that it is quite misleading to read t h e subsequent polemics on...

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