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THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCISCANS AND THEIR CRITICS ?. Poverty, Jurisdiction, and Internal Change Between the first wave of plague in the mid-fourteenth century and the early years of the fifteenth the mendicant orders came under widespread attack. Lay and clerical critics — some of whom were themselves friars or former friars — accused the mendicants of a broad range of abuses and vices: increasing their numbers by "stealing " young and unsophisticated boys, deceiving the poor and exploiting their piety, flattering the great, and giving themselves up to pleasures while preaching austerity. These criticisms, summarized in a previous article,1 were examined in the light of other kinds of evidence from within the Franciscan Order. In particular, the information provided by the statutes and constitutions formulated at fourteenth-century provincial and general chapters was compared to the claims of the mendicants' opponents, both in order to examine the validity of the critical literature in another context and to reevaluate a widely-held view of the late fourteenth century as a period of unalleviated decline in the Order's history. Three other dimensions of mendicant criticism are examined here: abuses in the practice of poverty, jurisdictional disputes between the friars and secular clergy, and the unrest and irregularity that characterized the Franciscans' internal history after 1350. "...sine pauperie pauper, sanctus sine Christo" Probably the most conspicuous paradox in the life of the Franciscan community in the late fourteenth century was that, given the friars' seeming devotion to poverty, they were remarkably wealthy. 1 "The Fourteenth-Century Franciscans and their Critics, 1: The Order's Growth and Character," Franciscan Studies, 35 (1975), 107-35. Fourteenth-Century Franciscans and Their Critics109 Their rental and other income, combined with a steady stream of donations, made the begging they continued to do largely superfluous . It certainly seemed so to their opponents, who saw in their mendicancy simply another attempt to extort from the poor what was rightfully theirs. Disregarding scriptural prohibitions and examples — St. Paul worked with his hands, and Peter was still a fisherman after Jesus' resurrection — and even the injunctions Francis made to his followers, the Minorites ...seyn in dede, that hit is medeful to leeve the comaundement of Crist, of gyvynge of almes to pore feble men, to pore croked men, to pore blynde men, and to bedraden men, and gif this almes to ypocrites, that feynen horn holy and nedy when thei ben strong in body and haven over myche richesse, both in grete waste housis, in preciouse clothis, in grete feestis, and mony jewels and tresoure. And thus thei sleen pore men with hor fais beggynge; sich thei take falsely fro horn hor worldly godis, by whiche thei schulden susteyne hor bodily lif, and deceyven riche men in hor almes, and mayntenen or countorten horn to lyve in falsenesse, ageyns Jesus Crist. For sith ther weren pore men ynowe to take mennis almes before that freris comen in, and tho erthe is nowe more bareyn then hit was, outher freris or pore men moten wante of this almes.2 Although the friars began by renouncing possessions and embracing poverty, in fact they grew wealthy on donations and continued to amass more and more through begging.3 Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh — among the severest of mendicant critics in the 1SO0'3 — pointed to the fact that, although Francis forbade the Minorites from receiving money directly or indirectly, nearly all of them traveled with a socius or companion who collected money gifts.4 8 "Fifty Heresies and Errors of Friars," Select English Works ofJohn Wyclif, Vol. Ill, ed. Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1871), 372-373. The treatise may have been written by Wyclif or by one of his followers. 8 Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, Composed During the Period from the Accession of Edward III to that of Richard III, ed. Thomas Wright, Rolls Series, Vol. XIV, i (London, 1861), 258. 4 British Museum MS Lansdowne 393, fol. I3iv, quoted in Arnold Williams, "Chaucer and the Friars," Speculum, 28 (1953), 5°7- Here FitzRalph referred specifically to the Franciscans; as a rule, however, the mendicants' critics were vague and sweeping in their denunciations. Of course, in nearly every part of Western Europe...

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