John XXII and the Spirituals: Is Angelo Clareno Telling The Truth?

271 Franciscan Studies 63 (2005) JOHN XXII AND THE SPIRITUALS: IS ANGELO CLARENO TELLING THE TRUTH? On April 27, 1317, Pope John XXII wrote to the friars who had seized control of the Franciscan houses at Narbonne and Béziers. He gave them ten days to present themselves at Avignon. When they arrived, John told them to submit to their superiors and accept the discipline they had earned for their defiance. Most of them obeyed the pope. The five who did not were turned over to the inquisitor, who sentenced them to be burned at the stake. One of the five recanted at the last minute and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, but the other four were executed.1 There is no question that John’s dramatic confrontation with the friars represented a turning point in what had been a long struggle between leaders of the order and a small group of Franciscans who, feeling that the order had strayed from the path laid out by Francis, sought freedom to pursue a more rigorous observance of the Franciscan rule. Nor is there any question that Angelo Clareno’s depiction of these events in his Chronicle of the Seven Tribulations of the Franciscan Order2 is a narrative tour de force. The question is whether it’s true. The Problem of Angelo’s Veracity That question is hardly a minor one. Over the last century, in fact ever since Franz Ehrle made Angelo’s Chronicle available to scholars in 1 For the entire story see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), chaps. 8-9. Hereafter this title is referred to as SF. 2 Liber chronicarum sive tribulationum ordinis minorum, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Edizioni Porziuncula, 1998 (hereafter LC), The passage in question is at 704-42. Passages quoted in English will be taken from Angelo Clareno, A Chronicle or History of the Seven Tribulations of the Order of Brothers Minor (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications , 2005), hereafter Chron. DAVID BURR 272 the late nineteenth century,3 scholars have been eager to employ Angelo’s work in explaining how the Franciscan order came to such an unfortunate pass less than a hundred years after Francis’s death. A great deal of what has been written on the matter has been based on the tacit assumption that Angelo could be treated as a more or less trustworthy witness to Franciscan history, or at least that part of it that unfolded within his own lifetime. Historians have tried to be realistic about it. They have recognized that Angelo is a man who likes to mold his story to fit his thesis. His chronicle is riddled with dramatic scenes and eloquent speeches that are probably his own creations. If they can be said to be true at all, they’re such in the sense that they illustrate what Angelo prefers to think the characters in his narrative would have said had they understood the real significance of that particular moment in Franciscan history . Most of us who deal with Angelo have grown more or less used to his limitations as a trustworthy source when the narrative deals with those who lived long before him, like Francis of Assisi or Brother Elias. When we move into the middle distance and encounter characters like John of Parma, we may be slower to accept the fact that Angelo isn’t all that accurate in his reportage, but if we study the matter long enough we finally admit that he isn’t.4 Even when we arrive at figures like Peter John Olivi, who was more or less Angelo’s contemporary and died just over two decades before Angelo wrote his chronicle, we find that the same thing applies; but we can at least console ourselves with the thought that Angelo probably never actually met Olivi.5 The problem is that, in the case of the confrontation between John XXII and the spirituals of Languedoc, Angelo was there. He tells a story in which he himself is a character. How could he not get it right? Or, more precisely, how right did he get it? What in the story can we take safely...