From the Perfetio Sancti Evangelii to the Sanctissima Vita et Paupertas : An Hypothesis on the Origin of the Privilegium Paupertatis to Clare and Her Sisters at San Damiano

123 Franciscan Studies 64 (2006) From the PERFECTIO SANCTI EVANGELII to the SANCTISSIMA VITA ET PAUPERTAS: An Hypothesis on the Origin of the PRIVILEGIUM PAUPERTATIS to Clare and Her Sisters at San Damiano The distinctive feature of Clare of Assisi’s forma vitae has typically been characterized as her dedication to a life of total poverty (altissima paupertas), following in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. This radical form of religious poverty has often been associated by long-standing tradition with her having been granted the famous privilegium paupertatis by Pope Innocent III in 1216, upon the instance of her spiritual companion, Francis of Assisi. Such papal authorization, granted to her and her sisters at San Damiano, was necessary since no female religious community of cloistered nuns in the Middle Ages had ever attempted to live such a life of radical dependence upon the providence of God and the generosity of others. Indeed, it was prohibited – lest these women be forced by hunger and want to leave the monastery, wandering about in an unseemly search for the necessities of life while exposing themselves to very real dangers and exploitation. The problem with this centuries-old tradition of the existence of such a privilege is the absence of any 1216 document proving that a concession of this sort had ever actually been granted. Indeed, lacking such a text, Clare’s Privilege of Poverty has become for some a kind of curious example of Anselm’s principle – potuit, decuit, ergo fecit – whereby, absent any definitive proof (a document), since such a privilege ought to have existed, it, therefore, did. The Argument that Re-Opened the Question One such historian who is skeptical of its existence is Werner Maleczek, the noted Austrian expert in medieval diplomatics, especially 124 MICHAEL CUSATO the documents of the papal chancery. In 1995, Maleczek rocked the world of Clarian studies with his publication of a long and searching article on this and other related subjects: “Das ‘Privilegium Paupertatis’ Innocenz’ III. und das Testament der Klara von Assisi. Überlegungen zur Frage ihrer Echtheit.”1 A little over ten years after its publication, it stands as an historic watershed in the study of Clarian sources and an argument to be reckoned with. The substance of Maleczek’s argument can be laid out in the following manner. The first textual evidence that we have for any such 1216 privilege appears in a collection of documents concerning all three Orders of the Franciscan family, gathered together and published in Paris in 1512 under the title Firmamenta Trium Ordinum.2 This 1512 text, Maleczek contends, is not, as has sometimes been thought, simply a late medieval transcription of an original 1216 privilege (now lost).3 Rather, he claims that it is, in fact, a fabrication, made to look like such a privilege, that was created at the Clarian monastery of Monteluce outside Perugia by sisters caught up in the spirit of the Observant Reform movement sweeping central Italy around 1450. Indeed, in this interpretation, some of the sisters of this monastery would have been attempting to convince their fellow religious of the imperative to return to a more austere, indeed radical, form of evangelical poverty in the footsteps of Clare herself. To that end, they drew up – or had someone draw up for them – a document purporting to be a copy of the 1 Werner Maleczek, “Das ‘Privilegium paupertatis’ Innocenz’ III. und das Testament der Klara von Assisi. Überlegungen zur Frage ihrer Echtheit,” Collectanea Francescana 65 (1995):5-82 (simultaneously published in Rome in small book-form in the series Bibliotheca Seraphico-Cappuccina 47). It was subsequently made available in Italian as Chiara d’Assisi: La Questione dell’autenticità del Privilegium Paupertatis e del Testamento (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1996), as well as in English as “Questions about the Authenticity of the Privilege of Poverty of Innocent III and of the Testament of Clare of Assisi,” Greyfriars Review 12 (2002), Supplement: 1-80. 2 Firmamenta Trium Ordinum (Paris: 1512) V: fol.5r. 3 An English translation of this text was offered by Regis Armstrong in his anthology of Clarian texts: Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. and trans. Regis J. Armstrong (New York...