Social Control, Regular Observance and Identity of a Religious Order: A Franciscan Interpretation of the Libellus ad Leonem

The key to this study lies in my own identity as a researcher who specializes in the fifteenth century and Franciscan reforms, especially the confrontation in eastern Central Europe between the theory of the via media based on a return to the Martianian Constitutions (1430), and the Observance sub vicariis brought by Giovanni of Capistrano when he crossed the Alps in 1451.² The major aspect of this (a medievalist’s analysis) is a view on the “pre-history” of the Libellus ad Leonem, which was written in 1513 by Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini in preparation of the Fifth Lateran Council. This “pre-history” concerns a century of transformations of the links between the Observant reforms, humanist culture and the reform of society after the Great Schism. Whatever influences of the Benedictine world remained, the link between the Libellus and Franciscanism seems inevitable when one considers factors such as: Paolo Giustiniani’s devotion to Saint Francis; the importance attached to the ideals of poverty and simplicity; and the role of the Libellus for Ludovico and Raffaele of Fossombrone in the genesis of the Capuchin Order, whose early legislation (the Bull Religionis zelus, 1528) resembled the Camaldolese propositum.³ I do not intend, however, to analyze the Libellus in the light of what happened several years after it was written; nor do I seek to make an inventory of the so-called “Franciscan” elements in it. My aim is rather to put the Libellus in perspective and highlight what appears to me as a combination of consistency and hybridity in the synthetic dimension of this project.

The Observant Movements (De Observantia) and the Reform of Society

When discussing the status of prophecy in Savonarola’s time, Claudio Leonardi wrote:

Provided that there is such a thing as a distinction between Christianity and the Church, Humanism is a triumphant criticism of medieval Christianity. In this context, one may define the Church as a society of Christian believers mystically unifying themselves with God and others in a relationship of love; Christianity, on the contrary, is the ideological use of the Church and the presence of Christian principles in political and social institutions. Italian humanists, especially Florentine humanists, believed in a specifically human space for knowledge in which revelation was not necessary — the space of ethics and politics, the very space of Christianity.⁴

According to Leonardi, monasticism “is perceived by humanists exclusively in controversial terms; it is seen as the opposite of humanism.” When discussing the “Christians who sought to go against humanism with projects of reform of Christian life,” Leonardi refers to the Dominican Giovanni Dominici and the Franciscan Bernardino of Siena, the two founders of the Observant Movement in their respective orders.⁵

Historiography has recently shown the need to articulate the links between humanist culture and the religious orders from the late fourteenth and fifteenth century.⁶ One major influence was Petrarch who, despite having very close connections with the Franciscans, believed that the Carthusians and the Hermits of Saint Augustine held the highest expressions of intellectual retreat. At the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a controversy over the links between poetry and theology (i.e. Classical culture and Christianity) brought Coluccio Salutati into conflict with the Camaldolese Giovanni of San Miniato and later Giovanni Dominici.⁷ However, the least compromising choice, from Dominici to Savonarola, was not everyone’s preference. The debate on the Christian use of the studia humanitatis was not new, and should not result in an opposition between two approaches or even two civilizations (“medieval” and “humanist”). On the contrary, the Observant movements, particularly the Camaldolese (with Ambrosio Traversari’s network in the first third of the fifteenth century) played a crucial role. This point is well-developed by Cécile Caby, and the Hermits of Saint-Augustine whose pioneering Observant retreat in San Salvatore di Lecceto in Toscana hosted Giles of Viterbo in 1503. These humanist monks, who were integrated into political networks, did not consider intellectual retreat to be disconnected...