Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose

I had already heard much talk about him, even before I came to Italy, and more still as I frequented the Franciscans of the imperial court. Someone had told me that the greatest poet of those days, Dante Alighieri of Florence, dead only a few years, had composed a poem (which I could not read, since it was written in vulgar Tuscan) of which many verses were nothing but a paraphrase of passages written by Ubertino in his Arbor vitae crucifixae . Nor was this the famous man’s only claim to merit. But to permit my reader better to understand the importance of this meeting, I must try to reconstruct the events of those years, as I understood them both during my brief stay to central Italy and from listening to the many conversations William had had with abbots and monks in the course of our journey.

I will try to tell what I understood of these matters, even if I am not sure I can explain them properly. My masters at Melk had often told me that it is very difficult for a Northerner to form any clear idea of the religious and political vicissitudes of Italy.

The peninsula, where the power of the clergy was more evident than in any other country, and where more than in any other country the clergy made a display of power and wealth, for at least two centuries had generated movements of men bent on a poorer life, in protest against the corrupt priests, from whom they even refused the sacraments. They gathered in independent communities, hated equally by the feudal lords, the empire, and the city magistrates.

Finally Saint Francis had appeared, spreading a love of poverty that did not contradict the precepts of the church; and after his efforts the church had accepted the summons to severe behavior of those older movements and had purified them of the elements of disruption that lurked in them. There should have followed a period of meekness and holiness, but as the Franciscan order grew and attracted the finest men, it became too powerful, too bound to earthly matters, and many Franciscans wanted to restore it to its early purity. A very difficult matter for an order that at the time when I was at the abbey already numbered more than thirty thousand members scattered throughout the whole world. But so it was, and many of those monks of Saint Francis were opposed to the Rule that the order had established, and they said the order had by now assumed the character of those ecclesiastical institutions it had come into the world to reform. And this, they said, had already happened in the days when Saint Francis was alive, and his words and his aims had been betrayed. Many of them rediscovered then a book written at the beginning of the twelfth century of our era, by a Cistercian monk named Joachim, to whom the spirit of prophecy was attributed. He had in fact foreseen the advent of a new age, in which the spirit of Christ, long corrupted through the actions of his false apostles, would again be achieved on earth. And he had announced certain future events in a way that made it seem clear to all that, unawares, he was speaking of the Franciscan order. And therefore many Franciscans had greatly rejoiced, even excessively, it seems, because then, around the middle of the century, the doctors of the Sorbonne condemned the teachings of that abbot Joachim. Apparently they did so because the Franciscans (and the Dominicans) were becoming too powerful, too learned, at the University of Paris; and those Sorbonne doctors wanted to eliminate them as heretics. But this scheme was not carried out, happily for the church, which then allowed the dissemination of the works of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, certainly not heretics. Whence it is clear that in Paris, too, there was a confusion of ideas or someone who wished to confuse them for his own purposes. And this is the evil that heresy inflicts on the Christian people, obfuscating ideas and inciting all to become inquisitors to their personal benefit. For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics-where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven, to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.

But I was speaking of the heresy (if such it was) of the Joachimites. And in Tuscany there was a Franciscan, Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, who repeated the predictions of Joachim and made a deep impression on the Minorites. Thus there arose among them a band of supporters of the old Rule, against the reorganization of the order attempted by the great Bonaventure, who had become general of the order. In the final thirty years of the last century, the Council of Lyons rescued the Franciscan order from its enemies, who wanted to abolish it, and allowed it ownership of all property in its use (already the law for older orders). But some monks in the Marches rebelled, because they believed that the spirit of the Rule had been forever betrayed, since Franciscans must own nothing, personally or as a convent or as an order. These rebels were put in prison for life. It does not seem to me that they were preaching things contrary to the Gospel, but when the session of earthly things is in question, it is difficult for men to reason justly. I was told that years later, the new general of the order, Raymond Gaufredi, found these prisoners in Ancona and, on freeing them, said: “Would God that all of us and the whole order were stained by such a sin.” A sign that what the heretics say is not true, and there are still men of great virtue living in the church.

Among these freed prisoners there was one, Angelus Clarenus, who then met a monk from Provence, Pierre Olieu, who preached the prophecies of Joachim, and then he met Ubertino of Casale, and in this way the movement of the Spirituals originated. In those years, a most holy hermit rose to the papal throne, Peter of Murrone, who reigned as Celestine V; and he was welcomed with relief by the Spirituals. “A saint will appear,” it had been said, “and he will follow the teachings of Christ, he will live an angelic life: tremble, ye corrupt priests.” Perhaps Celestine’s life was too angelic, or the prelates around him were too corrupt, or he could not bear the strain of the interminable conflict with the Emperor and with the other kings of Europe. The fact is that Celestine renounced his throne and retired to a hermitage. But inthe brief period of his reign, less than a year, the hopes of the Spirituals were all fulfilled. They went to Celestine, who founded with them the community known as that of the fratres et pauperes heremitae domini Celestini. On the other hand, while the Pope was to act as mediator among the most powerful cardinals of Rome, there were some, like a Colonna and an Orsini, who secretly supported the new poverty movement, a truly curious choice for powerful men who lived in vast wealth and luxury; and I have never understood whether they simply exploited the Spirituals for their own political ends or whether in some way they felt they justified their carnal life by supporting the Spiritual trend. Perhaps both things were true, to judge by the little I can understand of Italian affairs. But to give an example, Ubertino had been taken on as chaplain by Cardinal Orsini when, having become the most respected among the Spirituals, he risked being accused as a heretic. And the cardinal himself had protected Ubertino in Avignon.

As happens, however, in such cases, on the one hand Angelus and Ubertino preached according to doctrine, on the other, great masses of simple people accepted this preaching of theirs and spread through the country, beyond all control. So Italy was invaded by these Fraticelli or Friars of the Poor Life, whom many considered dangerous. At this point it was difficult to distinguish the spiritual masters, who maintained contact with the ecclesiastical authorities, from their simpler followers, who now lived outside the order, begging for alms and existing from day to day by the labor of their hands, holding no property of any kind. And these the populace now called Fraticelli, not unlike the French Beghards, who drew their inspiration from Pierre Olieu.