True Followers of Justice: Identity, Insertion and Itinerancy among the Early Franciscans

Wall-to-Wall Ministry

31 Spirit and Life, 10 Wall-To-Wall Ministry: Franciscan Ministry in the Cities of Thirteenth-Century Italy Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M. Introduction In 1270, the outgoing Prior General of the Carmelite Order, Nicholas of Narbonne, wrote an encyclical letter to his confrères, strongly rebuking the direction which his Order had been taking over the previous twenty years. In bitter tones, he lamented how the spiritual life, which had flourished among them in their life of solitude, had come to be abandoned once they had given up their lives as hermits to become mendicants and preachers in the revived and prospering cities of Italy. Nicholas then sarcastically reports what his brothers might say in their own defense: [They would say:] “It was never our intention to resist the divine will, but rather to follow it. For we only desire to build up the people of God by preaching His word, by hearing confessions and counselling, and performing other good works, both for our own profit and that of our neighbors. It was for this reason—and a most justifiable one—that we fled the solitude of the desert to settle among people in the cities so as to perform these tasks.”1 To which Nicholas retorts: Fools! I will show you that in the city you accomplish none of this, but that in times past in the solitude you accomplished it all. . . . What is this new religion discovered in the cities? . . . and tell me: how many have been found in the Order who are truly fit and adequate to preach, to hear confessions and counsel the people . . . who dwell in towns? 1 The Flaming Arrow (Ignea sagitta) by Nicholas, Prior General of the Carmelite Order 1266-1271, trans. and intro. Bede Edwards (n.p., n.d.), 21. The translation, though occasionally stilted, is based on the critical text established by Adrian Staring, which appeared in Carmelus 9 (1962), 237-307. The passages cited here are found between pp. 278-283. 32 / Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M. . . . It is not in public, in the marketplace, not amid the noise and bustle that [God] shows Himself to his friends. . . and reveals His secret mysteries, but rather behind closed doors. . . [that is, only in the “desert” of the hermitage].2 These are indeed sobering words, written in 1270, contemporaneous to Bonaventure and fifty years after the “Franciscan Spring” of 1210. And yet they are reflective of a whole attitude—indeed it is the classic posture of early medieval Churchmen—towards the city and clerical ministry within the city. Given this negative assessment of life and ministry in the city in the thirteenth century, I would like to pose several questions at the outset: What are Franciscans doing in the city? Have they always been there? If so, why? If not, when and why did they enter the city? And once there, what might have been the aims and forms of Franciscan ministry? It is my hope that an exploration of questions such as these might provide several avenues for reflection on the aims and forms of ministry which friars are currently exercising in the various provinces of the Order. To do this, I would like to examine the following subjects: (1) the traditional attitude of the Church towards the city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; (2) the attitude of the early Franciscans vis-à-vis the city; (3) the movement of the friars into the city; (4) the types of urban ministries undertaken by our medieval confrères; and, to conclude, (5) some broader reflections on contemporary ministry in the city. Attitudes Towards the City in the Twelfth Century The twelfth century, surely one of the most extraordinarily rich transitional periods in Western history, gives evidence of two opposing attitudes with regard to the city: one is drawn from secular sources, produced from within the newly revived cities of Italy; the other is found in ecclesiastical and religious writings of the period. Let us examine both of them and see how they might eventually relate to the Franciscan view of the city. 2 The Flaming Arrow, 25-26. Wall-to-Wall Ministry / 33 As to the first attitude, we read, for example, in an anonymous chronicle associated with the city of Venice in northeastern Italy, a mythological account of the history of humanity—its origins and its destiny.3 We are told that in the beginning human...