Spirituals

SPIRITUALS. - Extremist current that arose within the Franciscan Order, organized and active from c. 1274 until 1318.

I. ORIGIN AND CHARACTERS

In their writings the S. never call themselves by this name: it seems to have originated among the people of southern France. The geographical extent of the spiritual movement must originally be restricted to the Franciscan provinces of the Marches and Tuscany in Italy, and of Provence in France. It is difficult to determine concretely what the movement consisted of, also because it is not unitary. A fundamental element is to observe strictly poverty and the Franciscan Rule according to the personal example of St. Francis, to reject the pontifical interpretations that adapted its application to the evolution of the Order, and to follow the so-called "poor use" even of things permitted. No less marked, however, are the ideas against science, especially profane science, and the tendency toward the eremitical life; characteristic is the attachment to the testament of St. Francis, which Gregory IX had already declared not binding, and the fanatical fervor for Joachimite ideas. To this, in moments of greater difficulty, was added the separatist tendency, aiming to constitute a family independent of the Order.

Before 1274, there are precedents in the current of those "zealous" friars who already in the times of St. Francis and especially under the subsequent generals, particularly Brother Elias (v.), Crescentius of Jesi, John of Parma (v.), in close connection with some of the companions of the Saint, such as Brother Leo, shared with them the ideas on the primitive ideal of the Franciscan Order. On the part of the more balanced generality of the Order, the Community, they were ever looked upon with suspicion and often persecuted.

II. THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF SPIRITUALS

Three distinct ones are known, corresponding to the three regions named above: the Marches, Tuscany, Provence.

1. The Spirituals of the Marches

This is the most important faction and the one about which we are best informed. Its immediate origin is generally traced back to 1274, when the rumor spread that the Pontiff, at the Council of Lyons, intended to reform the religious Orders, especially the Mendicants, by granting them property as well. Some friars of the Marches immediately declared that they would never accept such a reform. Since it was not carried through, most lost interest in it, but some persisted in their own ideas, and the superiors segregated them for a year (Friar Trasmundo, Pietro, later Liberato of Macerata, and Tommaso of Tolentino) and then dispersed them among various hermitages to do penance for three years. When in the meantime their proselytes increased, the superiors, at a meeting of five provincials (c. 1280), decided to subject them to trial, condemning them as heretics to imprisonment. From this moment their historian Angelo Clareno (v.) is also with them. They were freed by the minister general Raimondo Godefroy in 1290, who sent them as missionaries to Lesser Armenia, where King Hethum II had asked for evangelizers. This king praised the missionaries in a letter to the general Chapter of 1292. But, persecuted by the friars of the Holy Land, they had to return to Italy. When Celestine V was elected in 1294, they obtained from him to be withdrawn from obedience to the Order, changing their habit and taking the name Poor Hermits of Pope Celestine, under the protection of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini. The separation was disapproved by the Spirituals of Provence and opposed by the Community. Boniface VIII suspended all the privileges of his predecessor and thus removed the juridical basis for the existence of the new Congregation. Having abandoned Italy around 1295, they took refuge in Achaea, where they had two years of peace on a small island near Euboea. After further vicissitudes they had to return once more to Italy and settle in the Kingdom of Naples, where the Inquisition struck a great number of them, having them expelled from the Kingdom. They took refuge in the surroundings of Rome, where in 1308 they underwent a new trial from which they seem to have been released free, and they had a little peace, until the Council of Vienne, where Clareno, their leader, went to obtain its recognition.

2. The Spirituals of Provence

This second faction is linked in a particular way to the figure of Peter Olivi (v.) and to the great question of poverty, debated during the Council of Lyons. The antecedents of Spiritualism in Provence must still be linked to Hugh of Digne, perhaps more for his Joachimism than for his ideas on poverty. Olivi's doctrines, ardently spiritual in favor of poverty and poor use, as well as for his Joachimite ideas, were condemned several times within the Order while he was alive, and after his death (1298) his writings were consigned to the flames. His disciples venerated him as a saint, but his theories were again called into question at the Council of Vienne, where the great question of poverty was debated. It was provoked by a petition of the Narbonnese in favor of the Spirituals and by a conversation with Clement V held by the famous physician Arnald of Villanova (v.), who also induced King Charles II of Naples to write to the general in their favor. Clement V, having secretly heard the leaders of the Spirituals of Provence and Ubertino of Casale (v.), on 14 April 1310 established a cardinalatial commission to examine the question by means of the bull Dudum ad Apostolatus, very benign toward the Spirituals, who considered it a triumph. Then the Community protested through Bonagrazia of Bergamo (v.), in a public consistory on 1 March 1311. The dispute was accompanied by a flood of polemical pamphlets from both sides, and particularly from the fiery pen of Ubertino of Casale. The pontifical solution was a compromise: in favor of the Spirituals he issued the decretal Exivi de Paradiso (6 May 1312), a new interpretation of the Franciscan Rule more faithful than the previous ones to its spirit; and for the Community he issued the dogmatic constitution Fidei catholicae fundamentum, which condemns certain ideas attributed to Olivi, without naming him. With this the dispute in the Curia was ended, but within the Order the agitations and persecutions continued.

3. The Spirituals of Tuscany

They form a group of lesser importance; they were already organized at the end of the 13th century, when Peter Olivi and Ubertino of Casale resided in Florence. In the early years of the 1300s they too were subjected to penalties and trials, about which, however, little is known. During the Council of Vienne, while the question of the separation of the Order was still pending, they detached themselves on their own account, seizing by force the convents of Arezzo, Carmignano, and Asciano, while some fled to Sicily, where the others, after trials and excommunications, also joined them, finding a tacit protection in King Frederick II. Forced to leave, they dispersed, some to Tunisia, some to Calabria (c. 1317).

III. THE PINE OF THE SPIRITUALS

While Clement V had shown himself favorable to the S., John XXII from his very election thought of extinguishing this movement. Having summoned the leaders to the Court, Angelo Clareno and Ubertino da Casale, the first was imprisoned, but then freed for having defended himself well with the Epistula excavatoria; the second on 1 Oct. 1317 obtained permission to pass to the Benedictines. The S. of Provence appeared before the Pope on 25 May 1317 in number of 64. On 7 Oct. the bull Quorumdam exigit was issued, by which they were obliged to return to the obedience of the Order. Twenty-five opposed it, but brought before the Inquisition, 21 retracted their ideas, and the other four who persisted in them were handed over to the secular arm on 7 May 1318. On 30 Dec. 1317 the bull Sancta Romana condemned and declared heretics the S. of Italy dependent on Angelo Clareno, and the Gloriosam Ecclesiam of 23 Jan. 1318 did the same with the S. of Tuscany. After these bulls of condemnation the S. became part of the movement of the Fraticelli, which developed further a few years later following the theoretical question on poverty under John XXII.

Alberto Ghinato