The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis

8 John Acts

JOHN DID NOT INHERIT A SINGLE spiritual Franciscan problem. Rather, he fell heir to a series of them: the Tuscan rebels, the Narbonne and Béziers rebels, Angelo’s associates, and miscellaneous others, such as Ubertino, who fit within none of these groups. The whole matter required thought. Once John had absorbed the evidence, however, he acted swiftly and decisively. The Tuscan Rebels The problem of the Tuscan rebels—now the Sicilian renegades—must have seemed relatively straightforward to him. We find him raising in consistory the questions of whether schismatics should be supported, and whether those who fled from Tuscany to Sicily should be regarded as schismatics,1 yet it is hard to imagine that he found either question very perplexing. Clement V had decided against the Tuscan rebels and they had defied his authority. There was little left to consider. John’s main problem was really not whether to JOHN ACTS E I G H T THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS condemn them but how to pry them loose from Sicily. He wrote King Frederick on March 15, 1317, exposing the serpentine cunning that lurked beneath the refugees’ dovelike exteriors and ordering the king to hand them over to their superiors for correction.2 On April 5 he sent Frederick the same letter, adding only that he had decided to write again because he was very anxious to see the matter settled and was unsure whether Frederick had received his first epistle.3 On the day the pope first wrote, some cardinals corresponded with the Sicilian bishops and archbishops. They underscored the schismatic nature of the Tuscan revolt. Having elected their own minister general, provincial ministers, custodes, and guardians, the renegades were receiving new members , appointing preachers and confessors, and generally carrying on as if they were an independent order.4 However Frederick himself may have felt about the refugees, he soon discovered that a good number of his citizens wanted him to obey the pope. According to a report sent to Frederick’s brother, James II of Aragon, the citizens of Messina told their king that they would suffer death for him but would not consent to be branded as supporters of heresy. However rocky Sicilian relations with the papacy had been during the previous two papacies, at least they had stayed on the right side of excommunication and interdict. That was precisely what the Sicilians now faced if they openly defied the pope, and it was a bad moment to face any such radical break with John. A complex series of circumstances had encouraged Neapolitan military activity and given the Angevins a better hope of success. Should John excommunicate Frederick, place Sicily under interdict, and call for a crusade, Neapolitan chances would improve remarkably. Thus Frederick partially capitulated to John’s demands. He worked out an arrangement with the Muslim ruler of Tunis whereby the spirituals were allowed to settle in his territory as long as they did not preach. This must have been a painful solution for members of an order that valued missionary activity so highly, particularly if they shared Olivi’s apocalyptic expectation regarding conversion of the heathen through spiritual men who had been forced out of Christendom by the carnal church. How many actually took advantage of the arrangement is another matter. Some apparently did, but others returned to the mainland, settling in the kingdom of Naples. A good number remained in Sicily. Of these, some were hidden out of the way in existing monasteries and others in monastic houses especially created for them, while a few continued their ministry in the cities.5 Frederick had managed, at least momentarily, to avoid a seriously damaging confrontation, but John eventually became aware of the situation and 180 JOHN ACTS attempted to do something about it.6 By the early 1320s, he was again applying pressure, but by this time Sicily was already under interdict again for confiscating church lands to finance the war with Naples—so Frederick had less to lose by defying the pope. John Summons the Spirituals Even if he had not surrendered his visitors to the proper authorities, as the pope had directed, Frederick was at least not openly protecting them by late 1317 when John began to rain bulls down on the spirituals and their supporters. By that time, the pope had begun to sort things out in southern France. He had told two cardinals to compose a letter...