The Admonitions of St. Francis: Sources and Meanings

Introduction: The Admonitions in General

1 INTRODUCTION THE ADMONITIONS IN GENERAL Before examining in detail each one of Francis’s twenty-eight admonitions, I will consider general questions such as occasion and literary style. I advise my astute readers that they should return to this chapter after they have worked their way through all the admonitions to see whether they might want to consolidate or revise some of the opinions offered here. The Occasion of Francis’s Admonitions Let me give some opinions from various scholars who have studied the issue. Perhaps the most extreme opinion about the occasion of Francis’s Admonitions is that of Stanislao da Campagnola: “Concerning the origin and consequently concerning the chronology of all these spiritual themes the proposals suggested are of a purely hypothetical character.”1 Pierre Brunette (1989, 46) suggests that Francis composed the individual admonitions as instruction for the brothers gathered at community meetings. As far as the compilation of the admonitions into one body, Jerôme Poulenc (1962, 72) believes that with great probability he can situate them between Francis’s Letter to the Chapter and his Testament, “perhaps during his stay in Sienna six months before his death.” Lothar Hardick (1982, xiii) packs much into his paragraph of assessment: It is impossible to say how or when exactly the Admonitions were first composed, but it is quite likely that they were not gathered together until after the death of the saint. It is known from the Legend of the Three Companions (XIV) and from other sources that, at the early general chapter meetings of the friars held at the Porziuncola near Assisi, St. Francis used to give “admonitions, corrections, and precepts” to the friars. These Admonitions, as they have come down to us, may be a collection of the sayings and exhortations given at these chapters, augmented by others given at other times. Paul Sabatier preferred to consider them notes of Cardinal Ugolino and St Francis left over from the 2 The Admonitions of St. Francis original draft of the Rule or not belonging to such a Rule. They should, however, be considered rather as a collection of words of advice given by Francis at various times during his life. Finally, with regard to the dating of Francis’s Admonitions Regis J. Armstrong (1985, 411) says: It would not be rash, therefore, to conclude that these twentyeight admonitions come from the last six or seven years of Francis’s life, and, to be more precise, during that period when, according to his biographers, he seemed ever more eager to instruct his brothers of his understanding of the Gospel life. How might we evaluate these opinions? I believe that that it is more probable that the compilation of Francis’s earlier admonitions into his Admonitions took place while he was alive and under his direction. As Poulenc (1962, 71) reminds us and as we will see for ourselves in the commentaries below, Francis’s characteristic leitmotif of the Good God, giving good gifts to all, links the individual admonitions together. It is easier to imagine Francis himself providing this leitmotif than some compiler after his death.2 When we ask about the occasion itself for this compilation, we stand on thin ice, for it is notoriously difficult to date exhortatory material. For such material, at its best, is timeless.3 Poulenc (1962, 72) suggests various disciplinary problems in the Order that called forth admonitions such as the third one about “obedience.” And Esser writes: Since Francis hardly directs his words of admonition against theoretical trespasses but seeks to correct real and actual abuses in the communal life of his friars, the Admonitions, in their own way, show that the first Franciscan generation is not to be glorified unduly.4 I conclude by dating Francis’s Admonitions somewhere between 1223 and his death in 1226 when Francis was consolidating his view of what his evangelical life meant. His two Rules give two views, his Admonitions another, and his Testament still another. Was it an outside force such as disorder in the Order that occasioned the writing of the Introduction 3 Admonitions? Or was it Francis’s desire to bring together what he had spoken on various occasions as a sort of mini-Rule on the model of what St. Stephen of Muret provided for his followers in his 122 maxims? Literary Form and Style of Francis’s Admonitions Martino Conti has helpfully located the literary...