Klöster im Hochmittelalter

292 | David Flood
The men who in 1209 left the world with Francis of Assisi soon had reason to
draw on the work of the canonists for the rights of the poor. We approach that action
and register it through the excellent sources on the origin and development of
the Umbrian brotherhood, a brotherhood recognized by Pope Innocent III. Francis
of Assisi and his associates wrote down (or drew up) their commitment to life by
the gospel. They called it their vita. What that meant concretely they explained. For
the necessary economic support as well as for their involvement with others they
simply worked. Soon they put their idea of work into writing. They understood
their labors as service in the common interest.
The men worked without formally entering and belonging to the work force,
such as it existed in central Italy, and first of all in and around Assisi. Put more
succinctly, they worked without taking pay and especially monetary compensation.
By locating themselves with work as service among the working population, they
saw to their material needs and learned well what was going on in the lives of their
colleagues. At the end of his life, Francis had one word of advice for his brothers:
Go back to work, all of you. By “all of you” he meant the clerics. Work was the
privileged context of the brothers’ vita.
In their basic document, their vita, the brothers twice addressed the question
of the distribution of the social product, first circumstantially, secondly in principle.
³ The first time had to do with providing the old and the sick with food and
clothing. When the brothers set out, they told themselves that they were to keep
busy, at work or at prayer. Some of the brothers were journeymen and exercised
their trades. Others found work in the fields or at communal tasks. As communal
task, some brothers gave the sick and the old the attention and care they needed.
These brothers often sought alms for those they were helping. When refused, they
did not press for charity. Rather, they recalled that the needy had a right to the care
of the well supplied. They petitioned for goods from the rich as a matter of justice.
According to Early Rule 9, 3 –9 the brothers were to point out that they were doing
the rich a service by begging, for they were awakening them to their duty. They
confronted them with the argument of the canonists, that the rich were to see to
the needs of the poor. It is clear that the brothers were drawing on the conclusions
of the Decretists. They did not pluck the idea out of the sky, for then it would lack
any force. And they insisted. The brothers made the moral principle a social reality.
3 The document referred to is the Early Rule. It came about as a program of service which the brothers called
their vita. They elaborated it, and it was not, as a rule, a traditional list of principles and practices. – We
find the latest critical edition of the Early Rule in: Francisci Assisiensis Scripta, ed. Carolus Paolazzi
(Spicilegium Bonaventurianum 36), Grottaferrata 2009. The Early Rule, or Regula non bullata as it is also
called, is on pp. 234 –289. I wrote a brief piece on the edition in: Frate Francesco 74, 2008, pp. 286 –289. –
The book contains the other early writings, called the writings of Francis of Assisi.