St. Francis and Umberto Eco

- Eberbach Abbey where they filmed The Name of the Rose

There's a post at the Episcopal Cafe about Francis of Assisi and it reminded me of a past post of mine on the Spirituals (Fraticelli) and Umberto Eco's book, The Name of the Rose. Here's part of what I wrote ...

[A]fter Florence had been put under inderdict in 1376 by Gregory XI, the Fraticelli, who had previously been deemed heretics, re-emerged in Florence ....

The Fraticelli ("Little Brethren") were extreme proponents of the rule of Saint Francis of Assisi, especially with regard to poverty, and regarded the wealth of the Church as scandalous, and that of individual churchmen as invalidating their status. They were thus forced into open revolt against the whole authority of the Church .... Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose is set against the persecution of Fraticelli.

But anyway, the Episcopal Cafe post quotes a review in The New Yorker of a couple of books on Francis and how his movement was in a way co-opted by the church. Here's a bit of that quote ...

The schism that opened between Francis and the centrist members of the order has never healed. The minute he died, the Church redoubled its campaign of annexing this revered man .... Some of Francis’s companions survived him for many years and remained true to his code, as did other, later recruits who joined the order because of the code. From these loyalists came the so-called Spirituals, who loudly opposed any abandonment of Francis’s rules. The Church eventually disciplined them. In 1323, the Pope declared that anyone who claimed that Jesus and his disciples lived in absolute poverty (part of the inspiration for Francis’s rule) was guilty of heresy. Some of the Spirituals were put to death.

This makes me think of that scene from the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon ...

The Barefoot Prince from Travels in Transmedia on Vimeo.