The Liturgical Legislation of the Franciscan Rules

THE LITURGICAL LEGISLATION OF THE FRANCISCAN RULES THE MENDICANT Movement gave rise to a grave disciplinary problem in the Church.1 In the ecclesiastical organization tliere was no place for gospel-preaching, free lance laymen and clerics. Until the end of the twelfth century the popes consistently frowned upon them. Innocent III, recognizing the signs of the time, changed the official policy of his predecessors. His protection of the orthodox fraternities opened the way for development; yet, it was a winding path, blocked with obstacles numerous and complicated. The ideal of the Poor Man of Assisi, at first only related to the Movement , soon became its finest expression. In a few years a whole world stood behind Francis and his first companions. Clerics and laymen, learned and ignorant, lived according to the gospel. "They gave a wonderful example of humility, going barefoot in their long, ample, grey, hooded habits, patched and girded with a cord. On Sundays and festivals they went forth from their dwellings and preached in the parish churches and other places where people came together . . . carrying their bibliothecae2 in satchels hung from their shoulder. Eventually they built schools, then houses and friaries and, finally, with the aid of wealthy citizens, spacious and lofty churches and offices. From the Sovereign Pontiff they obtained privileges and permission (indulgentiae) for building chapels in the towns, so that they might say Mass and hear confession, because many were less willing to confess to their own priests and were in spiritual danger. Then they set up schools of theology in their own houses. Lecturing and disputing and preaching to the people, they reaped no small harvest for the barns of Christ . . ." It was Matthew Paris3 who in these lines sketched the history of little more than twenty-five years. Still, it is 1 H. Grundmann, Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter in Historische Studien . . . Heft 267, Berlin 1935, 59 ff., 70 ff., 91, 97 ff. 2 That is their bibles; see Ducange, Glossarium s.v.—E. Clop, St. François et la liturgie de la chapelle papale in Arch. Franc. Hist, xix, 1926, 758, V. D. Scudder, The Franciscan adventure, London s.a. (1931), r26, note 7, and M. Righetti, Storia litúrgica ii, Milan 1946, 462, give it unduly the wider meaning of Office books and breviaries. ^Historia Anglorum. Chronica minor, London 1866, 109 (Rolls Series). 176 Stephan Van ?'?\, OJ1M.??? the view of an outsider—and a jealous one too. The outline is too smooth. It lacks the force and the tormented conflict, the struggle for an ideal which spread at such a speed that it endangered the common sense of proportion.4 The old life of Rivo Torto was an ideal and a reality; both of them soon became impossible. Many, even those of good will, missed the necessary direction and changed it into homeless wandering and doing odd jobs. They were the always-happy, who have no problems, never see danger and ignore the need for discussion. But clerics and scholars clamoured for education, security of work, fixed abodes, a regular life. They wanted organization. The latter was not the strongest point in Francis' character. When, in 1220, Francis returned to Italy from a missionary journey to the Holy Land, he found his brotherhood confused, bewildered and distressed.5 It had reached the painful crisis out of which the Order had to be born. While maintaining some characteristics of its own, it took its place in the Church according to the then prevailing concept of religious life.6 The dangerous stage of the internal crisis lies between the years 1220 and 1223 in which legend is difficult to separate from history.7 Francis worked out three Rules: the first one, generally called the Rule of 1221, was mostly a compilation of what previously had been concluded; the second, made at Fonte Colombo, was either lost or destroyed; the third, a second edition of this project, was given official papal confirmation by Honorius III in the bull Solet annuere of 29 November 1223.8 Ever since it has been the foundation stone of the Franciscan Order. It is in this Rule that we first meet the liturgical ordinance which is the cause...