Abo then spoke up and said that, though he was a man of the church and abbot of an order to which the church owed much (a murmur of respect and deference was heard from both sides of the hemicycle), he still did not feel the Emperor should remain aloof from such questions, for the many reasons that Brother William of Baskerville would expound in due course. But, Abo went on, it was nevertheless proper that the first part of the debate should take place between the papal envoys and the representatives of those sons of Saint Francis who, by their very participation in this meeting, showed themselves to be the most devoted sons of the Pope. And then he asked that Brother Michael or his nominee indicate the position he meant to uphold in Avignon.
Michael said that, to his great and joyous emotion, there was in their midst that morning Ubertino of Casale, from whom the Pope himself, in 1322, had asked for a thorough report on the question of poverty. And Ubertino could best sum up, with that lucidity, erudition, and devout faith that all recognized in him, the capital points of those ideas which now, unswervingly, were those of the Franciscan order.
Ubertino rose, and as soon as he began to speak, I understood why he had aroused so much enthusiasm, both as a preacher and as a courtier. Impassioned in his gesticulation, his voice persuasive, his smile fascinating, his reasoning clear and consequential, he held his listeners fast for all the time he spoke. He began a very learned disquisition on the reasons that supported the Perugia theses. He said that, first of all, it had to be recognized that Christ and the apostles were in a double condition, because they were prelates of the church of the New Testament, and in this respect they possessed, so as to give to the poor and to the ministers of the church, as is written in the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
But secondarily, Christ and the apostles must be considered as individual persons, perfect despisers of the world. And on this score two ways of having are posited, one of which is civil and worldly, so that it is one thing to defend in a civil and worldly sense one’s own possession against him who would take it, appealing to the imperial judge—but to say that Christ and the apostles owned things in this sense is heretical, because, as Matthew says, if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also; nor does Luke say any differently, where Christ dismisses from himself all power and lordship and imposes the same on his apostles; and consider further Matthew, where Peter says to the Lord that to follow him they have left everything; but in the other way temporal things can yet be held, for the purpose of common fraternal charity, and in this way Christ and his disciples possessed some goods by natural right, to sustain nature.
And so they had clothing and the bread and fishes, and as Paul says in 1 Timothy: Having food and raiment let us be therewith content. Wherefore Christ and his disciples did not hold these things in possession but in use, their absolute poverty remaining intact. Which had already been recognized by Pope Nicholas II in the decretal Exiit qui seminat.
But on the opposite side Jean d’Anneaux rose to say that Ubertino’s positions seemed to him contrary both to proper reason and to the proper interpretation of Scripture. Whereas with goods perishable with use, such as bread and foods, a simple right of use cannot be considered, nor can de-facto use be posited, but only abuse; everything the believers held in common in the primitive church, as is deduced from Acts 2 and 3, they held on the basis of the same type of ownership they had had before their conversion; the apostles, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, possessed farms in Judaea; the vow of living without property does not extend to what man needs in order to live, and when Peter said he had left everything he did not mean he had renounced property; Adam had ownership and property of things; the servant who receives money from his master certainly does not just make use or abuse of it; the words of the Exiit qui seminat to which the Minorites are always referring and which establish that the Friars Minor have only the use of what serves them, without having control and ownership, must be referring only to goods that are not consumed with use; and in fact if the Exiit included perishable goods it would sustain the impossible; de-facto use cannot be distinguished from juridical control; every human right, on the basis of which material goods are owned, is contained in the laws of kings; Christ as a mortal man, from the moment of his conception, was owner of all earthly goods, and as God he received from the Father universal control over everything; he was owner of clothing, food, money for tribute, and offerings of the faithful; and if he was poor, it was not because he had no property, but because he did not receive its fruits; for simple juridical control, separated from the collection of interest, does not enrich the possessor; and finally, even if the Exiit had said otherwise, the Roman Pontiff can revoke the decisions of his predecessors and can even make contrary assertions.
It was at this point that Brother Jerome, Bishop of Kaffa, rose vehemently, his beard shaking with wrath even though he tried to make his words sound conciliatory. He began an argumentation that to me seemed fairly confused. “What I will say to the Holy Father, and myself who will say it, I submit to his correction, because I truly believe John is the vicar of Christ, and for this confession I was seized by the Saracens. And I will refer first to an event recorded by a great doctor, in the dispute that arose one day among monks as to who was the father of Melchizedek.
Then the abbot Copes, questioned about this, shook his head and declared: Woe to you, Copes, for you seek only those things that God does not command you to seek and neglect those He does command. There, as is readily deduced from my example, it is so clear that Christ and the Blessed Virgin and the apostles held nothing, individually or in common, that it would be less clear to recognize that Jesus was man and God at the same time, and yet it seems clear to me that anyone denying the evidence of the former must then deny the latter!”
He spoke triumphantly, and I saw William raise his eyes to heaven. I suspect he considered Jerome’s syllogism quite defective, and I cannot say he was wrong, but even more defective, it seemed to me, was the infuriated and contrary argumentation of Jean de Baune, who said that he who affirms something about the poverty of Christ affirms what is seen (or not seen) with the eye, whereas to define his simultaneous humanity and divinity, faith intervenes, so that the two propositions cannot be compared.
In reply, Jerome was more acute than his opponent: “Oh, no, dear brother,” he said, “I think exactly the opposite is true, because all the Gospels declare Christ was a man and ate and drank, and as his most evident miracles demonstrate, he was also God, and all this is immediately obvious!”
“Magicians and soothsayers also work miracles,” de Baune said smugly.
“True,” Jerome replied, “but through magic art. Would you compare Christ’s miracles to magic art?” The assembly murmured indignantly that they would not consider such a thing. “And finally,” Jerome went on, feeling he was now close to victory, “would his lordship the Cardinal del Poggetto want to consider heretical the belief in Christ’s poverty, when this proposition is the basis of the Rule of an order such as the Franciscan, whose sons have gone to every realm to preach and shed their blood, from Morocco to India?”
“Holy spirit of Peter of Spain,” William muttered, “protect us.”
“Most beloved brother,” de Baune then cried, taking a step forward, “speak if you will of the blood of your monks, but do not forget, that same tribute has also been paid by religious of other orders. . . .”
“With all due respect to my lord cardinal,” Jerome shouted, “no Dominican ever died among the infidels, whereas in my own time alone, nine Minorites have been martyred!”
The Dominican Bishop of Alborea, red in the face, now stood up. “I can prove that before any Minorites were in Tartary, Pope Innocent sent three Dominicans there!”
“He did?” Jerome said, snickering. “Well, I know that the Minorites have been in Tartary for eighty years, and they have forty churches throughout the country, whereas the Dominicans have only five
