Klöster im Hochmittelalter

294 | David Flood
directional commitment. They want the brothers to make the work of historians
easy, and not merely strengthen the brothers’ vita.
There are two other clear passages in the early Franciscan writings that put in
action what the Decretists taught about the rights of the poor. One we find in
the Opusculum commonitorium et exhortatorium, Commonitorium for short, or
more easy still, the Message (of Recall and Encouragement). ⁶ As spokesman of the
brotherhood, Francis of Assisi wrote this long text, the Message, first of all for the
working population. He wrote it to those with whom he and his brothers had to do
in their daily rounds. The working population were the ones who wanted to hear
from the brothers about the dynamics of their lives. As for the Message, one line
has to do with those in the guilds who heard and judged problems in the guilds.
Francis calls his addressees his brothers, as the workers addressed one another. At
one moment he includes women among those to whom he writes. A core passage
has to do with work itself and with its results.
Francis did not write the text “to the faithful” indiscriminately, for in the second
part of the Message he assails the wealthy who waste the means they should be
sharing with those in need. He has, factually, cut the faithful in two. After roughing
them up rhetorically, Francis adds a tale about one rich man who did not do justice
with his possessions and would not change even on his death bed. He died and went
to hell, criminal that he was. A criminal he truly was, and not just a sinfully greedy
man, for he wrote off the common good. Francis censured his stewardship and not
his greed. The criticism Francis addresses the rich and the criminality he sees in the
moribund’s behavior belong to a cast of mind prompted by the Decretists.
Francis of Assisi wrote a brief message to those who ruled over cities and states.
In a manner similar to the second part of the Message, he urged the rulers of the
people to see to the return of all good things to God. Otherwise they too would fall
under God’s judgment as did the moribund who misused his possessions.
When we do early Franciscan history, we tell how the first brothers pieced together
the cultural elements of their age into a relatively new way of Christian life,
which they called their vita. The elements were: the penitential tradition; the religious
movements of the twelfth century; the working religious in Milan. There was
as well the work of the Decretists on the Decretum Gratiani. The evidence in the
early writings, and especially in the Early Rule and the Admonitions, is sound and
readily explicable. It made the brotherhood something historically new.
6 See Francisci Assisiensis Scripta (note 3 above), pp. 186 –201. Opusculum commonitorium et exhortatorium
is what the earliest manuscript with the text, Assisi, Biblioteca Communale, codex 338, calls it. The
title fits the text.