Saint-à-porter : fashioning Saint Francis in the encyclopedias of Vincent and Ps.-Vincent of Beauvais

Tomas ZAHORA

A memorable scene from his vita places Saint Francis naked in front of the bishop and the people of Assisi. Determined to give up his earthly possessions, the former cloth merchant brought up in rich fabrics becomes a trader in gospels (evangelicus negotiator) for whom a single garment is enough¹. In his hagiographies the garment metamorphoses, and not only in shape (girdle, shirt, short tunic, eremitical tunic, prototypical « Franciscan » habit). The meagre, inexpensive habit could be miraculously divided to cover others, yet it could also be conveniently valuable, as when Francis exchanged his (borrowed) overcoat for a lamb being led to the market by a merchant who gladly made the trade². Like his mutating garments, the vitae of Francis change to suit the needs of the order he founded as well as its critics and enemies. Some events, even people — like Elias, Francis’ companion and the third Minister General — vanish ; others, as in the messianic reinvention of Francis in Ubertino of Casale’s Arbor vitae, are added or invented³. The rewriting of one of Western Christianity’s more popular saints, embraced by Catholics as well as many Protestants, continues⁴. The resulting image of Francis is not unlike a cubist portrait : a vibrant, fragmented patchwork of often clashing perspectives, visions, interpretations, and memories⁵.

The Encyclopedic works of Vincent of Beauvais are not often consulted in the studies of Saint Francis — even in the Middle Ages the campaigns for constructing Francis were played out elsewhere and Vincent was, after all, a Dominican. The Speculum maius, as the most influential medieval encyclopedia, is supposed to rest, peaceful and impartial, as a mirror of savoir vulgarisé in a library and provide the broader context. Yet the process of encyclopedic translation of knowledge is hardly straightforward, and its impartiality is tenuous at best⁶. In fact, the Speculum maius and its fourteenth-century continuation Speculum morale offer a unique perspective on the construction of Francis in the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. As I will show, the authors of the Speculum historiale and the Speculum morale actively re-fashioned the persona of the saint : in the first to lessen the shadow he cast over St Dominic, and in the second to curb extreme positions within the Franciscan order itself. Both works build on the charisma and uniqueness of Francis, but also find them problematic. The compilers’ re-writing of the saint through abridging, cutting, and rearranging already present texts, shows us that relatively simple textual strategies could be quite effective in adjusting Francis to fit their specific needs.

Speculum historiale : Francis abridged

The work of the Dominican scholar and encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais is closely connected with Paris and with the French royal family who generously supported the mendicant orders⁷. By the time of Vincent’s patron Louis IX, the future Saint Louis, the king was accustomed to maintaining a Dominican confessor and the queen a Franciscan one in a tradition carried through into the fourteenth century⁸. We get a sense of the impact of the friars in Vincent’s Speculum historiale, a vast chronicle of human history with a strong French undertone, whose chronology extends from the beginning to the end of time, and in which both Francis and Dominic are given extensive descriptions.⁹. As Vincent developed his work, however, his presentation of the two saints changed. While in the earlier version of the Historiale (c.1244) Francis is mentioned first and is given approximately the same coverage as Dominic, in the version completed by 1259 and known mainly through the edition printed in Douai at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Vincent roughly doubled the amount of text describing Dominic without adding anything new regarding Francis¹⁰. If anything, the formerly privileged position of Francis is lessened by being newly prefaced with chapters dealing with Dominic who receives considerably more attention.

The changes made to the portrayal of Dominic were not the only ones made in the course of editing and re-editing the Speculum historiale. As Isabelle Draelants has recently pointed out, adjustments made by Vincent between 1244 and 1245 already reveal the addition of the antisemitic tract Dialogus contra Iudaeos by Peter Alfonsi against a background suggestive of Dominican priorities like the eradication of heresy and unbelief¹¹. The incorporation of new material relevant to Dominic thus occurred in the context of a more focused attention to a specifically Dominican audience. It is also helpful to consider the fluid nature of available hagiographical sources in the first half of the thirteenth century. While in abridging the vitae of older saints Vincent could rely on established vitae, the relative contemporaneity of Dominic and Francis meant his sources were limited and could soon be contested in the orders’ evolving self-portrayal¹². The creation of the first version of the Speculum historiale before 1244 meant that Vincent was confined to the officially sanctioned Legenda of Dominic by Pierre Ferrand, which had supplanted the Libellus of Jordan of Saxony by 1238¹³. For Francis, he had the choice of the vitae of Francis composed by Thomas of Celano (Vita prima or Celano 1) and Julian of Speyer¹⁴. Yet the transformations made to the descriptions of Francis that occur between the versions of the Speculum historiale are not solely the result of adding more Dominican material as it became available in the course of a decade and a half. As we will see, they have as much to do with Vincent’s choice of a source text for writing about Francis as with the affective power of the depicted saint.

Rather than drawing on the better known Vita prima of Thomas of Celano in his construction of Francis, Vincent relied exclusively on the Vita Sancti Francisci of Julian of Speyer, composed in the mid-1230s. Only ascribed to Julian in 1900, the work has been considered one of the historically less interesting biographies of Francis, in part because of its uneven style and inelegant language¹⁵. As Julian’s Vita also includes, in sometimes awkward constellations, pieces of liturgy he composed in praise of Francis, the parallels between the Vita and Celano 1 have led historians to conclude it was an inferior derivation of the latter work, with a distant possibility that Julian who moved in the same milieu as Celano wrote independently and used the same source material while incorporating his own, quite successful, liturgical text¹⁶.

Vincent probably knew Julian personally. Already a master of the chant at the royal chapel in Paris under Louis VIII, Julian was in a position to be at the center of Vincent’s milieu close to the royal court¹⁷. Julian’s liturgy was so popular it was adopted also by Vincent’s Dominican confreres, and eventually made its way into the liturgy of Louis IX, whose canonization was one of the achievements of Philip IV’s reign¹⁸. Apart from a personal connection, Vincent could have been impressed by the interweaving of the lines of liturgy and the expanded narrative, or simply attracted to the text of the Vita itself, which portrays Francis as an active, charismatic participant in a journey of transformation from a merchant of fabrics into a merchant of the gospels and saintly life. Unlike Celano’s work, Julian’s transformative narrative also presents Francis as a confessor of God, and develops a number of vivid parallels between Francis and Christ in a narrative dotted with idiosyncratic descriptions of signs of divine approval¹⁹.

With Julian’s Vita, Vincent thus received access to a version of Francis which may have been written in rough language, but which carried a powerful message within an engagingly simple narrative structure. The apparent inelegance of Julian’s expression may have actually worked to Vincent’s advantage as both men shared an interest in brevity. Julian’s work is roughly half the size of Celano’s, a characteristic of the Vita Vincent may have found appealing as an expert in condensation and abridgment. To adjust the Vita Sancti Francisci for the purposes of the Speculum, Vincent retained just below 45% (incidentally nearly the exact proportion of Julian’s assumed borrowing from Celano) of the original. The resulting Vita in the Speculum historiale is a brisk, compact outline of an already abbreviated account of Francis’ life, and comprises only about one fifth of material contained in Celano’s Vita prima²⁰.

Although Vincent mostly used Julian’s own vocabulary, including one reference to Francis as a confessor Christi²¹, he did eliminate or tone down a number of Julian’s superlatives : Francis becomes not most full (plenissimus) but full (plenus) of dove-like simplicity²² ; and not most holy (sanctissimus) but simply holy (sanctus)²³. For the most part, though, Vincent’s abridging method ranges from avoiding certain expressions, sentences, or entire passages — the latter in the case of Francis’ establishment of the first three churches^24, and of the majority of miracles associated with him during his lifetime²⁵ — to cutting and re-arranging, usually in the same order, segments of Julian’s text. Some of the excisions eliminate the idiosyncrasies of Julian’s style, such as his narrative of prefiguration of Francis’ significance which develops in the course of the vita. Others end up condensing the text so much that some significant details, such as the mention of the merchant expedition to Apulia in order to sell armaments, which explains why in a vision Francis sees his house full of arms instead of the accustomed bales of fabric, vanish and distort the text (Table 1).

Table 1 : Vincent’s abridgment of the account of Francis’ journey to Apulia.

In another passage, the distortion is geographical. By skipping a paragraph which narrates the journey of Francis and his companions from Syria across the Mediterranean, with a stop at the Portiuncula before heading towards Morocco, Vincent makes the Sultan of Morocco rule Syria²⁶. Such practice is consistent with Vincent’s practice elsewhere, and raises the question whether Vincent’s account was meant to be a first-encounter outline, or a mnemonic skeleton to help the reader organize fragments of memories already available elsewhere in chants, liturgical readings, exempla, and stories circulating about Francis beyond the confines of written word²⁷.

Vincent’s relative « flattening » of the Vita Sancti Francisci through abridgment has its limits. When it comes to Francis’ relationship with the Church — one of Julian’s idiosyncratic touches that creates a parallel between the divine foresight of Francis’ mission and his smooth inclusion in the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy²⁸ — Vincent includes extensive passages that confirm Francis’ orthodoxy and respect for the hierarchy. « In his preaching », Vincent copies Julian, « he advised above all that the faith of the Roman Church be observed as sacred and that the order of priests be held in highest reverence due to the dignity of the Lord’s Sacrament which the ministry of priests performs — and taught that the doctors of divine law and all ecclesiastical orders ought to be highly revered as well »²⁹ Vincent likewise preserves Francis’ reply to a brother burdened with a corrupt priest calling him a hypocrite, in which he « perceptively explained » the priest’s words and purpose without casting shadow on the priest’s authority³⁰. And even as he omits the narrative of Francis’ vision of a tree bent down to the earth, which confirmed in Francis’ mind the pope’s acquiescence to his mission, Vincent does mention the saint’s writing up of a rule for his brethren and its confirmation by Innocent III³¹.

The intensity of borrowing reaches its peak in the sections most popularly associated with Francis : his prophetic ability, his love of poverty, and his ability to talk to animals and command the elements³². These passages, which Vincent copies from Julian nearly verbatim, are among the most powerful in the Vita. It is here that we are introduced a saint who sees so deep into human hearts he can predict their future actions ; whose soul, appearing to his followers in the vision of a fiery ball, bestows the ability of instant insight into one another’s consciences ; who pretends to eat with his hosts but secretly hides away food at a table ; who requested a close companion to abuse him verbally in order to maintain (with great joy) his humility ; and who « because of his extraordinary love of the creator was wonderfully drawn to feel for all creatures » so intensely they not only listened but obeyed his command :

[...] one day while at the town of Alviano, though he wished to explain the Word of God to the people who had assembled there, he was unable to do so because he heard all the noise coming from a multitude of swallows nesting there. To the swallows so chattering, he spoke as follows : « My sister swallows, now it is time (Tb 12,20) for me to speak my piece, because up to now you have spoken enough indeed ; from now on, until the sermon of the Lord is finished (2 Chr 36,21) stop your talking altogether! » They, as though they had reason, immediately quieted down, and did not leave the place until the preaching had been completed³³.

For Julian, the love that bound Francis to his animal sisters and brothers is a reflection of the divine love of the Creator for his creatures. Francis is the joyful, zealous conduit of a love that knows no boundaries : it connects and guides everything from base elements to plants and animals, no matter how small or large — even bees needed to be fed with wine and honey in wintertime.

[...] in his continuous praising, he invited all things to praise the one creator. Indeed, in calling the name of God, gave the impression of one entirely beyond human intellect, entirely in joyful invocation, one who seemed to be of another world³⁴.

The Francis portrayed by Julian and captured by Vincent is truly a cosmic saint, in the sense of achieving the union of the human sphere of microcosmos with the world-sphere of macrocosmos³⁵. Apart from echoing the cosmological discourse of medieval encyclopedias, the cosmic nature of Francis leads seamlessly to a powerful parallel with the Word of God incarnate : the stigmata are only the most visible, and almost inevitable, signs of his resemblance to Christ³⁶. In retrospect, the reference to Francis appearing to participate in a state beyond human intellect (supra hominis intellectum) is prophetic in light of the subsequent work of Bonaventure, as well as the discussions of the role and limitations of the intellect in the latter decades of the thirteenth century³⁷. In 1244, the year Vincent completed the first version of the Historiale and Thomas of Celano was commissioned to write the second Vita of Francis, a recent young convert to the Dominican order, Thomas Aquinas, travelled to Cologne to study with Albert the Great. The master and his student would be in Paris the following year and Vincent would have an opportunity to meet the man whose Summa theologiae not only left an indelible mark on western thought, but also introduced a discourse whose emphasis on the intellect provoked spirited counter-discourse from many Franciscan scholars.

Despite using a text that has been judged inferior, and despite abridging that text to less than half of its original size, Vincent managed to sketch an intense portrait of a saint of great charismatic power. His narrative embeds Francis into the ecclesiastical hierarchy and makes him part of the same tradition that includes the Dominicans — Francis, Dominic, and Mary of Oignies are among the most extensive biographical treatments in the Historiale, which contains around five hundred vitae of saints³⁸. Francis of the first Historiale can be easily read as one of the mendicants, and his appearance in the narrative before Dominic as a reflection of the chronological precedence of the papal approval of the Franciscan order (1210) before the Dominican (1217). Yet the balance is rather tenuous, and tipping strongly toward Francis, who is given sixteen chapters against Dominic’s eleven, and whose charisma and dramatic appeal are more than a match to those of Dominic, a soberly dutiful student of the liberal arts and theology who joined the regular canons and became a saintly fighter against heresy. While both saints are extraordinary and both love poverty, Dominic becomes a fighter of heretics in a dualistic psychomachia while Francis, as a living conduit of divine grace and in control of the natural forces themselves, does not need to fight the enemy, only to love all living things. When we consider that Vincent also used Julian of Speyer’s vita of Anthony of Padua in chapters succeeding the account of Francis, we realize the first version of the Speculum historiale has a strong Franciscan presence³⁹. One may begin to wonder whether the portrayal of Francis, even in a skeletal outline borrowed from Julian, may have left Dominic look slightly short-changed.

Vincent may have had the same thought in mind when he decided to produce a new version of the Historiale, which he completed around 1254⁴⁰. Apart from extending the chronological range and adding updated material, he also significantly extended the portrayal of Dominic to effectively double the amount of space devoted to him (an increase from eleven to twenty-nine chapters), without altering the description of Francis (sixteen chapters). Moreover, in the latter version Francis is placed after Dominic, and formerly united sections dealing with Francis’ biography are divided differently and surrounded by mentions of Dominic (Table 2).

Table 2 : Outline of chapters dealing with Francis and Dominic in two versions of the Speculum historiale.

The transformation can, on one hand, be read as an updating of chronology. The coronation of Emperor Otto IV in 1209 preceded the approval of both the Franciscan and Dominican orders, but both saints have been active well before that date, and moving the chapter devoted to Otto after the first mentions of the mendicant saints makes sense. At the same time, Dominic was born and died before Francis, so the new arrangement does correspond more closely to their actual lives than the first version which begins with Francis and ends with Dominic.

Yet the patterns in Vincent’s rearrangement also convey more subtle forces at work. The original pattern of five chapters devoted to Francis, followed by eight on Dominic, eleven on Francis, and three on Dominic over two books, is replaced by a new pattern of Dominic (one chapter where he appears along Saint Didachus, plus three chapters on Dominic and the beginnings of his order), followed by Francis (three chapters), and after three more historical chapters one more set (three) of chapters on Dominic in book twenty-nine. In book thirty, we have Dominic (12 chapters), Francis (11 chapters), Dominic (11 chapters), and finally Francis (2 chapters) again. In both books of the latter version of the Speculum historiale, the chapters on Francis are surrounded by roughly twice the number of chapters devoted to Dominic, divided evenly to precede and succeed the presentation of Francis, with two more chapters on the last days of Francis added at the end. The last word, too, belongs to Dominic. Rewriting chapter 81 of the Klosterneuburg version, on the foundation of two orders — the canons of Val-des-Ecoliers and the Carmelites — the author of Douai 797 (31.123) makes Honorius found not two but three orders, the first of them being that of the Friars Preachers⁴¹.

The symmetry with which the Francis chapters are literally enveloped by equally extensive flanks of chapters dealing with Dominic is striking, and considering the care with which Vincent organized the revision of the Historiale, hardly accidental. That Vincent intended this envelopment of Francis is suggested also by an addition, from another source, of the miracle of Dominic’s book leaping from the fire just before the beginning of the discussion of Francis⁴² — as if to strengthen the portrayal of Dominic just before engaging with the other saint, and even then, only for three introductory chapters before reinforcing the Dominican theme once more in an act equivalent to a textual curbing of Francis’ charisma.

The shift witnessed in the Speculum historiale is consistent with the changing climate of discourse among the second generation of Dominicans and Franciscans. Julian of Speyer was one of the earlier converts who, while enthused for a particularly Franciscan way, also considered themselves mendicants, and the first description of Francis in the Speculum historiale does carry through a sense of the atmosphere of collegiality in which Francis was embraced and admired by many outside of the order of Friars Minor. By the middle of the thirteenth century, Vincent could draw on a growing number of available Dominican texts devoted to the founder of the order, but also be aware of the need of the order’s self-definition on its own terms. The Francis of the early Speculum historiale, even in a diminished state — an abbreviation of an abbreviation — shone perhaps too strongly when compared to Dominic.

When we view Vincent’s re-composition from the Franciscan perspective, a slightly different picture emerges. With Julian’s biography the Speculum historiale gained an early version of the official portrayal of Francis — one that was to change at the very moment Vincent was redacting his work. At the general chapter of 1244, Thomas of Celano was commissioned to produce another Life of Francis. The second Vita made some changes, one of them being the erasure of the mention of Brother Elias, Francis’ dear companion and the third minister general, who was ousted from office in 1239⁴³. The same erasure was continued in the Legendae of Bonaventure, as the official version of Francis continued to evolve. Perhaps 1244 was too early for Vincent to take notice of the new version of Francis’ life. Perhaps, as even the trifaria version of the Speculum historiale does not include Celano, his priorities lay elsewhere or he was not involved enough in Franciscan politics to feel the need to update the shifts in biographies. From an evolutionary point of view, the Vincent’s life of Francis is thus an archaic branch whose own life took a different trajectory from those sanctioned by the leadership of the Franciscan order.

Speculum morale : the ghost of Francis

As the Speculum maius grew, Vincent expressed a desire to extend his encyclopedia into another volume dealing with mores, a broad range of subjects that would today be classed under ethics⁴⁴. Although he never embarked on the project, a Speculum morale closely fitting Vincent’s plans did indeed appear in Paris during the first decades of the fourteenth century in a milieu close to the royal family and the schools⁴⁵. The work is quite unlike Vincent’s other specula both in its absence of referencing and in its limited pool of sources. Along with brief extracts from Bonaventure’s Legenda minor the Speculum morale consists almost exclusively of large, unreferenced extracts from six texts arranged under vision and method radically different from those of the three volumes of the authentic Speculum maius⁴⁶. It is nevertheless an impressive compilation that covers human passions, virtues, vices, spiritual gifts, as well as last things, and all things pertaining to the sacrament of penance. Its extensive verbatim dependence on the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which provides an analytical treatment of human psychology and theological questions relevant to penance, and on the Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus of Etienne de Bourbon, which supplies a large amount of exempla, suggests its most likely intended audience were the mendicants, involved in preaching and in activities of the penitential forum.

Despite relying heavily on Dominican texts, the Speculum morale reveals a Franciscan presence that goes beyond its three identifiable Franciscan sources, the Legenda minor, the commentary on the Sentences by Richard de Mediavilla and the Speculum dominarum of Durand of Champagne. Already in the early eighteenth century Jacques Echard, observing the compiler’s tendency to delete references to Dominican friars from the Tractatus of Etienne de Bourbon, and to occasionally insert the name of Francis alongside that of Dominic, proposed that the author was a Fransican. His suspicion was confirmed in the subsequent discovery of a new source, the Speculum dominarum of Durand of Champagne, and an analysis of its use in the compilation⁴⁷. The Speculum morale is therefore not just the only other of the four specula associated with Vincent to deal with elements of Francis’ vita, but a promising source of perspectives coming from inside the order of the Friars Minor.

Those looking for a biography of Francis in the Speculum morale will be disappointed, though. There is no « vita » to speak of, no conversion, no talking to animals or foresight into the future — only brief mentions of his name and a few exempla scattered across the compilation’s chapters called distinctiones, unlike the capitula of the Speculum historiale. As far as encyclopedic sources of the biography of Francis go, the work of Vincent of Beauvais does a much better job. But the Speculum morale is above all a specialized encylopedia of ethics (much of it founded on Aristotle as conveyed via Thomas Aquinas) and moral theology. It is more fruitful to look at its engagement with the mendicant saints not so much in terms of constructing the narratives of their vitae, but in terms of the roles they play in the context of exempla which form a counterpoint to the theological discussion of virtues, vices, and other topics relevant to penance.

Name-count itself is revealing. In the Speculum morale Francis receives twenty-eight separate sections while only six deal exclusively with Dominic, and in eight passages the two saints appear together. Francis appears in the context of humility (2 references), poverty (4), fortitude (1), mercy (1), temptation (5), remedies and utility of temptation (2), pride (2), sacrilege, (1), inobedience (1), luxuria (1), motives for penance (2), confession (1), charity (2), visitation of the sick (2), fasting (1), and finally the motives for, effects of, and the utility of prayer (6). The Francis that emerges from the Speculum morale may be a fragmented shadow of the cosmic saint of Julian and Vincent ; nevertheless, certain familiar themes, such as prayer and poverty, do retain their prominence. The rest belong to the deep, murky pool of standard themes of medieval tracts on virtues and vices, although the prominence of temptation suggests that the portrayal of Francis is being stretched in a new direction.

Surprisingly, several of the references to Francis in the Speculum morale are not inserted by the Franciscan compiler but are borrowed from a Dominican text, the Tractatus de diversis materiis predicabilibus, a successful compilation of exempla and moral theology written by Etienne de Bourbon⁴⁸. As Jacques Echard pointed out in his analysis of the Speculum, the compiler occasionally suppressed references to Dominic or Dominican friars, and used those passages relevant to Francis he found convenient, further adding the name of Francis, sometimes next to Dominic, in others⁴⁹.

Other additions are more consistent with a Franciscan author. They are more involved and draw, as the exemplum on the disobedience involving the devil, on Bonaventure’s Legenda minor, a shortened version of the life of Francis for liturgical readings composed in the 1260s (Table 3).

Table 3 : the exemplum of Francis’ vision in Etienne and the Speculum morale.

*Paris, B.n.F., lat. 15970, fol. 371r, col. 2; J. Echard, Sancti Thomae summa, p. 484.

**l. 3, p. 3, d. 22, col. 1094-95, de inobedientia.

As he copied Etienne’s text and arrived at the story of Dominic’s vision involving a dragon, the compiler must have been reminded of a similar exemplum featuring Francis. Rather than simply exchanging the saints’ names, he omitted Etienne’s exemplum and inserted his own, after which he proceeded to copy from the original. The fact that two very similar stories have both Francis and Dominic experiencing a vision in which a monster — dragon in Dominic’s and a devil in Francis’ vision — represents the possession of a disobedient brother’s soul is a striking reminder of the flexibility with which medieval exempla could skip from one saint to another. What is even more telling, given the compiler’s usual dependence on extensive verbatim borrowing, is the fluidity with which the story, which first appears in Celano 2 and further metamorphoses in the re-tellings of Francis by Bonaventure, is incorporated within the exactly copied text of Etienne (Table 4).

Table 4 : Francis’ vision of a devil as represented in the Speculum morale and three other vitae of the saint.

*St. Bonaventure, Legenda maior sancti Francisci, in Legendae S. Francisci Assisiensis saeculis XIII et XIV conscriptae, vol. 1, Quaracchi-Firenze, 1926-1941 (Analecta Franciscana 10), p. 557-652.

**St. Bonaventure, Legenda minor sancti Francisci, in Legendae S. Francisci Assisiensis, p. 655-678.

Unlike the bricolage-style borrowing evident throughout the Speculum morale, in which large chunks of unchanged text are copied or slightly rearranged, the evident paraphrase of the story of Francis’ vision points to someone quoting from memory⁵⁰. When we also consider the compiler’s insertion of references to domina paupertas, into another passage, also a nearly exact copy of Etienne’s discourse of poverty, we can confirm we are dealing with a Franciscan or at least someone intimately familiar with Franciscan ways⁵¹. This may explain the paucity and fragmentary nature of references to the saint, as the compiler, thoroughly familiarized with the details of Francis’ life from other sources, did not need to write another vita at all. Yet rather than weakening the importance of Franciscan references in the Speculum morale, this finding makes them even more interesting : the use of Francis’ name and aura brings us directly into the field of practice, and with it into the sphere of early-fourteenth-century Franciscan politics.

The Francis of Julian of Speyer may have been called Confessor Christi, but confessions strictly speaking were not his forte. Because the order did not yet have priests, Julian portrayed Francis as encouraging his brethren to confess to secular priests⁵². As the friars became more active in this area, confession made its way into the depictions of the saint : in Bonaventure’s Legenda maior, friars are already described as confessing to women⁵³. The mendicants’ entry into the business of confessing was not without tensions. The new orders pushed existing jurisdictional boundaries and impinged not only on the secular clergy’s ability to oversee and develop spiritual relationships with their flock, but also on a potentially lucrative source of revenue and symbolic capital⁵⁴. In December 1281 Pope Martin IV addressed this issue in the bull Ad fructus uberes, which confirmed preaching and confession rights of the mendicants. As could be expected, many secular ecclesiastics responded less than enthusiastically⁵⁵. The conflict lasted well into the early fourteenth century ; in fact, the Speculum morale contains an extended citation from the Franciscan theologian Richard de Mediavilla who commented on the Ad fructus uberes and defended the friars’ right to perform confessions⁵⁶.

The choice of interpolations of Franciscan passages into the Speculum morale assumes the right of friars to confess their flock both implicitly, through the use of extracts from the Speculum dominarum of Durand of Champagne, the confessor of Philip IV’s queen Jeanne of Navarre, but also more directly. In the following exemplum, not found in the official vitae, Francis is seen requesting the permission to preach and confess, and the secular clergy does not come out in the most positive light :

Also, an example of the Blessed Francis who, when humbly petitioning from a certain bishop to approve for himself and his brothers the right to preach and hear confessions, the bishop responded in a harsh and disgraceful manner, but the patient and humble man of God patiently left, only to humbly return at once, at which the irritated bishop arrogantly told him that he had already expressed his will most plainly. [Francis] responded humbly : Lord, if an angry father expels his son through one gate, an entry is yet possible through another one. Hearing this, the bishop, embracing him in a friendly manner, conceded to him whatever he requested, saying that his holy humility changed his heart to clemency⁵⁷.

The incident does draw on a history of secular opposition to the friars — even Julian mentions unpleasant or corrupt priests whose attitude is pacified or explained away by Francis — but the placement of this passage is very specific. Francis is co-opted into the current discussions, in which preaching and confession are already major activities of the friars. The exemplum also notes the potential opposition, and recommends a model of behavior : in this case guided by patience, and humility, trademark mendicant and particularly Franciscan virtues, presented as sorely missing among the seculars.

Apart from patience and humility, poverty was another founding stone of Francis’s mission, even though the discussion and appreciation of poverty were not limited to Franciscans⁵⁸. The nearly exclusive source for the Speculum morale regarding poverty, Etienne de Bourbon, acknowledges that neither Dominic nor Francis « made no provisions regarding possessions, and held nothing whether in common or individually, but gave all their attention to God »⁵⁹. Considering the probable Franciscan affiliation of the compiler of the Speculum morale, the dependence on Etienne does surprise. What surprises even more, though, is the transformation to which Etienne’s extensive discourse on poverty is subjected. It appears that rather than enthusiastically piling up as much information as possible on a subject of great importance to Franciscans, the compiler intended precisely the opposite : to avoid an excessive discussion of poverty and maintain the discussion within the confines of tradition.

At over twelve thousand words, the Speculum morale’s treatment of poverty comprises one of its longer distinctiones⁶⁰. It draws on an even more extensive treatment by Etienne stretching across fourteen manuscript folios, through which the compiler rummaged with a comprehensive enthusiasm⁶¹. Apart from an extended discussion of the different kinds, effects, and rewards of poverty, he also borrowed most of Etienne’s exempla, which range from classical great-men stories to the lives of the Brahmins and of early Christian saints. But while the compiler added two references to domina paupertas, his changes to Etienne’s text also include the deletion of two exempla that feature Francis. The first mentions the great honor which God bestows on those who follow poverty — men like Francis and Dominic⁶². The second omitted exemplum features a vision of the soul of Francis, a great spokesman for poverty, appearing in the splendor of the sun and the size of the moon near the hour of his death⁶³.

A clue to the curious omission is offered in the rearrangement of the presentation of poverty in the Speculum morale. For Etienne, as for the Franciscans, poverty is the foundation of Christian religion, and the surest pathway to Christian perfection⁶⁴. But in the Speculum morale the text Etienne classifies under perfection is presented instead under the rubric of peacefulness and humility — a relative weakening of the stronger claim for poverty by Etienne⁶⁵. Etienne could afford to emphasize the paramount importance of poverty both because Dominicans did not make poverty the foundation of their identity, and because, writing in the mid-thirteenth century, the poverty controversies were yet to erupt. Even later, though, Dominicans did not have to face the awkward situation in which Franciscans found themselves in the second half of the thirteenth century, when they had to define precisely what usus pauper or the poor use of resources which they vowed to observe, should consist of⁶⁶. As David Burr has pointed out, the paradox of Francis’ vision of the order’s minoritas was that its fine balance of poverty, humility, and obedience depended on the sharing of that vision with higher authority. As soon as the pope decided to involve Franciscans in the framework of church hierarchy including elite posts where they exercised a majoritas over others, they were placed « in a situation where, in order to obey him, they had to stop obeying others and start ordering them about » — and to take on the trappings of power that had the potential of making them walking contradictions of Francis’ vision of poverty⁶⁷.

Although a moderate solution was found and received the approval of successive popes, by the early fourteenth century some Franciscans were beginning to reclaim the more elemental early vision of Franciscan poverty. Moreover, they began to accuse those who sought to maintain a strong presence of the order within the established social and ecclesiastical hierarchy, including the order’s presence at the universities and courts of nobility, of betraying the founders’ ideals. The first decades of the fourteenth century, during which the Speculum morale was composed, witnessed the beginning of a virtual fragmentation of the Franciscan order. Etienne’s understanding of poverty as the foundation of Christianity, which makes one a « perfect disciple of Christ » is supremely accommodating to the vision of men like Angelo Clareno and Ubertino da Casale who set out to reclaim poverty for the Friars Minor — but very problematic for those who found such an emphasis on poverty too constricting⁶⁸. In choosing to erase the reference to the association of poverty with perfection the compiler not only abridged Etienne : he made a stance against the spiritual position. Rather than pouring oil on the burning poverty debates, the Speculum morale recalls that poverty is also essentially connected to peace and humility. In the end, domina paupertas ends up wrapped in a discourse of virtues that may be Franciscan, but which ring with much less enthusiasm than even their Dominican source.

The editing of Etienne de Bourbon’s Tractatus in the Speculum morale suggests that the compiler struggled to maintain a balance between, on one hand, the spiritual aura of Francis and his message, and on the other, the demands of the administrative framework as well as the nebulous and often clashing political spheres of the Parisian royal court, the Papacy, and the Franciscan order itself, rent by the emerging Spiritual crisis. The tension is visible especially in the contrast between the reference to domina paupertas, a catchword readily associated with Franciscan passion for poverty, and the simultaneous de-radicalization of poverty and its placement within the realm of humility and obedience. The Francis of the Speculum morale may challenge some representatives of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but he does not shake the system itself. Rather than the ideal of apostolic perfection championed by the Spirituals, the Speculum offers a Francis whose charisma is stretched to validate the newly acquired activities of his order.

When we combine the references to Francis with the Speculum morale’s structure (well-organized and easily searchable material applicable at all stages of the penitential forum) and contents (Aquinas’ Summa theologiae amended with other scholastic and homiletic material), we realize that the vision it offers is even more specific than that. From the perspective of Paris-educated Franciscan scholars the Francis of miracles and super-human, super-intellectual grace needed to be toned down so as not to break apart the institutional structure of the order he created and they were determined to protect. The vision the Speculum morale offers instead is one in which Francis gives his tacit assent to an order of mendicant friars who not only give confessions, but who are increasingly versed in the complexities of canon law and theology⁶⁹. The simple merchant of gospels from Assisi is transformed, through scattered but carefully selected references that are vague enough to leave plenty of room for invention, into a man of the schools with an ambition to reform society by becoming an integral part of the existing ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Conclusion : a ready-to-wear saint

The Speculum historiale and the Speculum morale show us a Francis who is for the most part familiar to the readers of his vitae. Like his evolving vitae, which reveal a re-shaping of the saint to suit the needs of the growing order, the encyclopedias attempt to fit him within their own physical and thematic boundaries. But that familiarity is not a creation of their own. For the full appreciation of an abridged Francis, both specula depend on the readers’ familiarity, or a desire to become familiar with him. And while they acknowledge the immense attraction of the saint, they also curtail — we could say sentimentalize — Francis by avoiding to deal with some of the substance that justified that attraction in the first place. In that sense, the Franciscan Speculum morale complements the Speculum historiale of the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais only too well not just because both works reflect an educated Parisian interpretation of Francis, but because both works make sure his portrayal is tightly controlled through a cut-and-paste approach to biography which reuses and re-represents ready-made sources.

Ironically both specula seem threatened by what could be considered the very essence of Francis : his deeply visionary, non-intellectual nature. The Historiale is challenged by the shadow he cast over Dominic ; the Morale finds Francis capable of inspiring the wrong kind of zeal. That the re-imagined versions of Francis could coexist with others is a remarkable indication of the vitality of the discourses that have appropriated him. Through abridgment, alteration, and re-interpretation, Vincent, Pseudo-Vincent, and their readers actively participated in the process of creating the body of the historical Francis — adding new layers of text, imagination, and belief to coat the more-than-human, constantly fluid and yet indomitably charismatic body of the saint.