Europe's inner demons

In 1466 a score of Fraticelli “de opinione” were subjected to inquisitorial investigation in the papal prison in Rome, the Castel Sant’ Angelo.⁽²⁵⁾ Some of the accused made horrifying confessions; and down to the present day there have been serious and eminent historians, including specialists in this particular field, who have accepted these confessions at their face value.⁽²⁶⁾ For some five centuries, a cloud has hung over the reputation of the Fraticelli. In the following pages the case will be investigated afresh.

The Fraticelli can be understood only in terms of the Franciscan movement and its development.⁽²⁷⁾ The original confraternity which St Francis gathered around him, from 1209 onwards, was wholly unworldly and lived in absolute poverty. Members had to dispose of all their possessions before joining; they aimed to own nothing but the barest necessities of life; they earned their bread from day to day, by manual work; they were not permitted to receive or to handle money. All the energies of these first Franciscans were devoted to nomadic preaching amongst the poor, and to caring for lepers and outcasts. But within a few years the little confraternity grew until it numbered thousands of members; and in 1220 a papal bull constituted it as a monastic order.

Francis died in 1226, and by the 1230s the Franciscan Order had already departed far from his ideal. It was now a great organization extending throughout western Christendom; seeking and wielding influence in church and state; active in teaching theology and canon law in the universities; and — like other monastic orders — owning vast properties in land and buildings. But many Franciscans could not reconcile themselves to these transformations and strove to restore the hard, simple way of life that had prevailed in the earliest years. At first these zealots — or Spirituals, as they called themselves — formed a minority within the order; and at times they were even able to set the tone for the order as a whole. The most extreme amongst them, however, chose another course.

Already in the thirteenth century some of the Spiritual party left first the official order and then the Church itself. Inspired by apocalyptic writings which were falsely ascribed to the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore, these men regarded the Church of Rome as the Whore of Babylon and the pope as Antichrist; while regarding themselves as the one true church, an elite appointed by God to lead the whole world to a life of voluntary poverty. Inevitably they were condemned as heretics and persecuted accordingly; which in turn increased their fury against the Church.

The Fraticelli were the successors, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of these heretical Spirituals. In the fourteenth century they had a certain importance, especially in Italian life. At that time they enjoyed the support of the political enemies of the popes: the Ghibellines welcomed and protected them. Many others, who were simply dissatisfied with the Church because of its wealth and worldliness, were also attracted by these poverty-loving rebels.

The most radical of the Fraticelli were known as the Fraticelli “de opinione”; a term which requires some elucidation. At one time, very many Franciscans had believed that Christ and the apostles had lived in absolute poverty, owning no property at all, whether as individuals or in common. A general chapter of the order, held at Perugia in 1322, had even accepted a proposition to that effect. But the papacy had always recognized the dangerous implications of the belief. The chapter at Perugia was held in the pontificate of John XXII — the great financial administrator who, in his determination to restore the papacy to its former independence of secular monarchs, concentrated above all on increasing its wealth. In 1323 John declared that to affirm the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles was to fall into heresy: and this view of the matter was maintained by subsequent popes. It was also accepted, however reluctantly, by the Franciscan order as such. For the Fraticelli “de opinione”, on the other hand, the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles was an article of faith. In response to papal condemnations they retorted that John XXII and all popes following him were themselves heretics; that the Catholic clergy, in so far as they obeyed the popes, had forfeited all authority; and that sacraments administered by such clergy were worthless. These views on the poverty of Christ and the apostles, and on the illegitimacy of the Catholic hierarchy, constituted the “opinion” after which the sect was named.