The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (review)

Wolf contends that Francis of Assisi embraced poverty in a way that made the lives of the involuntary poor harder. In his time, caring for the needy was recognized as meritorious, and several people (like Raymond of Piacenza) were canonized for such activity. Francis began his saintly career in this way, but soon chose to "reject the civic saint model and embrace a different form of imitatio Christi, one that led him to identify with the poor without directly tending to their physical or spiritual needs." The effect on the involuntary poor was resoundingly negative, because Francis, unlike Raymond, "offered his burgher audience a form of religiosity that truly gave them the spiritual upper hand, the moral 'inside track,' in the race to heaven. It was not simply about affluent Christians counteracting the spiritually deleterious effects of wealth by engaging in acts of charity toward the poor. It was about redefining poverty altogether in such a way that only Christians of means could really appreciate it and aspire to it." The involuntary poor were thus doubly neglected, in this life and in the next. Donors chose to increase their own chances of salvation by giving their money to Francis, the meritorious voluntary pauper, rather than to those for whom poverty was not a matter of choice but merely an accident of fate. And, although the Church recognized that psychological detachment from the riches of this world was the important thing and in this sense even those born in squalor could be as meritorious as those who had given a fortune away, the latter were inevitably perceived as having more to work with in assuring themselves a prime spot in heaven.

The thesis itself is hardly unique, and there is something to be said for it. In pursuing it, Wolf asks a number of the right questions and looks in several important directions for answers. His main problem lies in the brevity of his book and in the fact that he chooses to limit his discussion of Franciscan sources almost entirely to those sources usually considered when one tries to reconstruct Francis' life: the various legendae plus Francis' writings. Certainly these materials are important, but they can carry Wolf only so far. Even if we assume a degree of continuity between what Francis intended and what those who succeeded him (popes, Franciscan leaders, etc.) wished to portray as his intention—and that is itself a big assumption—we must still recognize a discontinuity between Francis' activities and those eventually pursued by his order. Francis by himself hardly deflected many resources from the poor, and as a major saint his status was inevitably seen as a special one. All the really interesting questions concern his order, which was soon big enough to have a discernible effect on European economic life. Did it use up resources that would otherwise have gone to the poor? Did it do so without giving society any benefit commensurate with that drain? Was it better or worse for the poor in this respect than the traditional monastic orders? At this point the whole matter gets complicated and cannot be addressed without looking at a great many sources besides the ones Wolf cites.