Clare, Leo, and the Authorship of the Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague

91 Franciscan Studies 62 (2004) CLARE, LEO, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOURTH LETTER TO AGNES OF PRAGUE The question of authorship is not merely an aberration postulated by postmodern literary theorists such as Michel Foucault. Various fields of contemporary scholarship note that Bonaventure offers a succinct, albeit pre-modern definition of literary production in the Commentary on the Sentences, where he distinguishes among the scribe, compiler, commentator, and author: To understand what is said, it should be noted that there is a fourfold manner of making a book. Namely, someone writes what belongs to someone else, neither adding nor changing anything; that person is simply called scribe. Someone writes what belongs to someone else, adding something but not his own; and that person is called compiler. Someone writes both what belongs to someone else and to himself, but that of the other is foremost so to speak, and his own is added as it were to clarify; and that person is called commentator, not author. Someone writes both what belongs to himself and to someone else, but his own is foremost so to speak, and that of the other is added as it were for confirmation; and that person should be called author. Such was the Master, who states his own sentences and confirms them through the sentences of the Fathers. Hence he must be called the author of this book.1 1 “Ad intelligentiam dictorum notandum, quod quadruplex est modus faciendi librum. Aliquis enim scribit aliena, nihil addendo vel mutando; et iste mere dicitur scriptor. Aliquis scribit aliena, addendo, sed non de suo; et iste compilator dicitur. Aliquis scribit et aliena et sua, sed aliena tanquam prinicipalia, et sua tamquam annexa ad evidentiam; et iste dicitur commentator, non auctor. Aliquis scribit et sua et aliena, sed sua tanquam principalia, aliena tamquam annexa ad confirmationem; et talis debet dici auctor.” I Sent, prooem., q. 4, resp. (I, 14b-15a). On this text and contemporary scholarship, see: Philipp Rosemann, “What is an Author? Bonaventure and Foucault on the Meaning of Authorship” in Fealsûnacht 2 (2001): 22-24 and Raffaele Simone, “The Body of the Text” in The Future of the Book, ed. Geoffrey Nunberg and aft. Umberto Eco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 245-247. On this text as a window on the evolving textual activities of the Minorites, see: Attilio Bartoli Langeli, “La cultura scritta dell’Ordine dei Minori” in Francesco d’Assisi e il primo secolo di storia francescana, ed. Attilio Bartoli Langeli and Emanuela Prinzivalli (Torino: Biblioteca Einaudi, 1997), 299-300. 92 TIMOTHY JOHNSON This fourfold category offers a glimpse into the medieval world of literary production, where Clare of Assisi, together with others in the emerging heterogeneous Minorite textual community like Bonaventure, articulated compelling, and in certain instances, clearly competing visions of the vita evangelica. This essay examines the question of Clare as author through a critical reading of the Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague. Close scrutiny of this exquisite spiritual text inevitably raises questions regarding the sources for Clare’s literary and theological education, and hence, her status as author. Studies of Clare’s corpus appear, at times, to gloss over these questions in the understandable rush to glean the riches of her spiritual heritage. A. J. Minnis, in Medieval Theory of Authorship, argues that the thirteenth century witnessed a growing appreciation of the individual human author.2 Although separated by centuries from her, twenty-first century readers continue to appreciate the unique individuality of this woman so closely identified with the poor Christ of the early Minorite movement. However, the more readers look at Clare of Assisi as a potential author through the window of the Fourth Letter to Agnes of Prague, the clearer her participation in the Minorite textual community becomes. At issue here is not the authenticity of the letter, but the community that produced it. Three essentially relational questions drive this proposed inquiry: 1) Who was Clare’s scribe?; 2) Who introduced Clare to the ars dictaminis?; and 3) Who guided Clare’s theological development? While each question is intriguing, this study will focus on the first by acknowledging the hints of scribal activity in the Fourth Letter...