The Vidi Alterum Angelum Topos in Two Sermons by Guibert of Tournai for the Feast of St. Francis

Scholars have recently noted the interest of Guibert of Tournai’s sermons on Francis of Assisi. Nicole Bériou partially edited Guibert’s sermon Surrexit Helyas, focusing on the theme of prophecy, in 1994,¹ and Sean Field edited two more, Inflammatum est cor meum and Veni columba mea, highlighting the theme of Francis as a perfected soul through annihilation, in 1999.² The two yet unexamined works in Guibert’s corpus of sermons discussing Francis hold their own interest, as they discuss an important topos in Franciscan literature of the mid-thirteenth century. The present article edits and analyzes these two previously unedited sermons for the first time.³

This topos is the Biblical quotation Vidi alterum angelum, ascendentem ab ortu solis, habentem signum Dei vivi – “I saw another angel, ascending from the rising of the sun, bearing the seal of the living God” (Apoc 7:2). This is worthy of attention in the study of thirteenth-century sermons for St. Francis of Assisi for a number of reasons. First, it is extremely prevalent in Franciscan sermons from that time; Jacques-Guy Bougerol notes that thirty-one of the 540 thirteenth-century sermons on the topic of St. Francis in his catalogue begin with this quotation, making it the most frequently-occurring incipit in that century.⁴ Second, applying this Biblical phrase to Francis was potentially controversial in the middle of the century due to its Joachite implications at a time when both the hierarchical Church and factions within the order itself wished to control the shifting representations of the saint.⁵ Third, this language is found in Bonaventure’s Legenda Maior,⁶ which achieved such enthusiastic approval in 1263 that all other legenda for St. Francis were ordered collected and destroyed.⁷ Thus, model sermons using the Vidi alterum angelum language to discuss Francis leading up to 1263, such as Guibert of Tournai’s two sermons considered here, may show the process of normalizing imagery that had previously been controversial at a critical time in the development of the official representation of St. Francis.⁸

The Context for Guibert’s Sermon Collection

These particular sermons are of importance to the question of normalizing such imagery because of the evident purpose of their composition. The theoretical purpose of the model sermon collection, of course, was to disseminate from the university a theologically consistent message; ever under fire from the seculars, the order’s hierarchy wished to ensure that the Franciscans’ ministry was blameless in its adherence to orthodoxy. The two sermons considered in this article show several signs, however, of having an altogether different purpose, reflective of the moment in time when they were composed. Guibert may well have written these sermons specifically with an eye on the papal commission investigating Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino, in an attempt to mitigate the effects of the Joachite controversy brewing in the summer of 1255. The underlying goal of their composition and submission, of course, remained essentially to ensure that the Franciscan order at large avoided papal censure, and so Guibert’s discussion of the topos may be understood as a conscious effort to use this imagery in a way that would defuse the tension around this language. This paved the way for Bonaventure’s use of the Vidi alterum angelum imagery in the Legenda Maior.

Gerardo, a young Franciscan in Paris, had been deeply influenced by Joachite ideas while at the university there, and had written a work that he called the “Eternal Gospel” in the early 1250s. In this work, Gerardo asserted the Joachite belief that an impending third age of the Church was to bring Jews and Gentiles together, and added his own belief that it would be the age of the perfected Christians in much the same way that the second age of the Church had been the age of the perfected Jews. These more perfect Christians, he wrote, were represented by the two mendicant orders, harbingers of the Apocalypse and third age as foretold by Joachim...