Klöster im Hochmittelalter

In the context of the brothers’ vita, as described in the Early Rule, there arose
the questions of poverty and mendicancy. Both relate to life’s temporalities. They
have to do with the social product. As we ease into the question, we recall that the
brothers had a sound economics. In their way, they provided well for themselves.
They worked at different tasks, productive and social, without claiming wages in
goods or in money. They had left the world and did not bargain with society. They
interacted with colleagues and Christians, yes, but not in communal terms. Das
heißt, nicht im Interesse des Sich-Aneignens. They spoke to them as people ready to
share with others. And things worked out well. Their vita did not result in a dearth
of what they as humans needed to survive. They recommended themselves to others
as men able to cooperate. In particular they enhanced the religious practices of the
guilds. Into the sequence of events we call early Franciscan history we insert their
poverty and their mendicancy.
First the mendicancy. ⁷ Within the early writings, we come across the expression
vadere pro eleemosynis several times. The brothers go begging. We do not encounter
the term mendicancy, in part because it did not figure in the vocabulary of the
Decretists on whom the brothers drew. ⁸ Vadere pro eleemosynis, to go for alms,
seems to have the same meaning as mendicancy. The connotations, however, are
different.
Begging belonged to the brothers’ economy when they did not have enough, and
I suppose that means food above all. They first mention turning to alms in need in
Early Rule 7, 8. In that simple line they refer to Early Rule 9, 3 –9, where the brothers
affirm the right of the hungry to food. When in 1223 Francis elaborates with
the help of the papal curia a more canonical form of the brothers’ Rule, he sees to it
in Rule 6, 2 and 7–9 that the brothers understand the economics of their common
life. They are strangers to the society about them. They work with the workers of
that society and give people to understand that they deserve what they need. They
do that as committed laborers and workers who take care of one another. They
manifest a solidarity which the working population can understand, for it includes
them in a way, but which workers lack the liberty to follow. This is the material we
have to place in context and interpret in order to understand well the mendicancy
of Francis and his brothers. It leaves us with a good enough grasp of their story to
understand how the question of poverty arose and what it meant.
Early Rule 7, 7 tells the brothers that their work will supply them with what
they need. There follows chapter 7, 8 which explains what they do when that is not
the case. The line reads: “And when it is necessary they may seek alms as the other
7 The word has Sanskrit origins meaning blemish or deficiency. See menda or mendum.
8 As far as I know.
Franciscans at Work | 295