The Fraticelli can be understood only in terms of the Franciscan movement and its development.(27) The original confraternity which St Francis gathered around him, from 1209 onwards, was wholly unworldly and lived in absolute poverty. Members had to dispose of all their possessions before joining; they aimed to own nothing but the barest necessities of life; they earned their bread from day to day, by manual work; they were not permitted to receive or to handle money. All the energies of these first Franciscans were devoted to nomadic preaching amongst the poor, and to caring for lepers and outcasts. But within a few years the little confraternity grew until it numbered thousands of members; and in 1220 a papal bull constituted it as a monastic order.
Francis died in 1226, and by the 1230s the Franciscan Order had already departed far from his ideal. It was now a great organization extending throughout western Christendom; seeking and wielding influence in church and state; active in teaching theology and canon law in the universities; and — like other monastic orders — owning vast properties in land and buildings. But many Franciscans could not reconcile themselves to these transformations and strove to restore the hard, simple way of life that had prevailed in the earliest years. At first these zealots — or Spirituals, as they called themselves — formed a minority within the order; and at times they were even able to set the tone for the order as a whole. The most extreme amongst them, however, chose another course.
Already in the thirteenth century some of the Spiritual party left first the official order and then the Church itself. Inspired by apocalyptic writings which were falsely ascribed to the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore, these men regarded the Church of Rome as the Whore of Babylon and the pope as Antichrist; while regarding themselves as the one true church, an elite appointed by God to lead the whole world to a life of voluntary poverty. Inevitably they were condemned as heretics and persecuted accordingly; which in turn increased their fury against the Church.
The Fraticelli were the successors, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of these heretical Spirituals. In the fourteenth century they had a certain importance, especially in Italian life. At that time they enjoyed the support of the political enemies of the popes: the Ghibellines welcomed and protected them. Many others, who were simply dissatisfied with the Church because of its wealth and worldliness, were also attracted by these poverty-loving rebels.
The most radical of the Fraticelli were known as the Fraticelli “de opinione”; a term which requires some elucidation. At one time, very many Franciscans had believed that Christ and the apostles had lived in absolute poverty, owning no property at all, whether as individuals or in common. A general chapter of the order, held at Perugia in 1322, had even accepted a proposition to that effect. But the papacy had always recognized the dangerous implications of the belief. The chapter at Perugia was held in the pontificate of John XXII — the great financial administrator who, in his determination to restore the papacy to its former independence of secular monarchs, concentrated above all on increasing its wealth. In 1323 John declared that to affirm the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles was to fall into heresy: and this view of the matter was maintained by subsequent popes. It was also accepted, however reluctantly, by the Franciscan order as such. For the Fraticelli “de opinione”, on the other hand, the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles was an article of faith. In response to papal condemnations they retorted that John XXII and all popes following him were themselves heretics; that the Catholic clergy, in so far as they obeyed the popes, had forfeited all authority; and that sacraments administered by such clergy were worthless. These views on the poverty of Christ and the apostles, and on the illegitimacy of the Catholic hierarchy, constituted the “opinion” after which the sect was named.
The Fraticelli “de opinione” were never very numerous, nor did they evolve a unified organization. Nevertheless, the popes felt these dissidents to be a menace, both on doctrinal and on social grounds. They made repeated efforts to eliminate them, by conversion if possible, by physical extermination if necessary; and in the end they succeeded. By the middle of the fifteenth century the sect had been reduced to a few obscure, clandestine groups, and the heresy had lost most of its importance. The papal onslaught of 1466 was directed against an already defeated foe.
The pope at that time, Paul II, was a man whose enthusiasm was more easily engaged by his magnificent collection of antiquities and works of art, and by the jewels which he assembled for his personal adornment, than by the ideal of absolute poverty. In 1466 it came to his ears that many Fraticelli “de opinione” would be making their way to Assisi, to attend the festival of Portiuncula that was to be held there in July. The little chapel of St Mary of the Angels, known as the Portiuncula, was the place where St Francis had received the revelation which determined his vocation; now it had become a favourite place of pilgrimage for the Fraticelli — and also a place where, amongst the crowds of pilgrims, they could meet without attracting notice. Not so, however, on this occasion: investigators sent specially by the pope seized a score of them, of both sexes and the most various ages.
It turned out that the prisoners had come a long way to Assisi: some from the area around Poli, not far from Rome; others from the area around Maiolati, in the mountainous, inland part of the March of Ancona. All were obscure inhabitants of obscure villages; but despite this, it was thought worthwhile to transport them all the way to Rome and to incarcerate them in the papal fortress itself. Moreover, the ecclesiastics who interrogated them there included an archbishop and two bishops, as well as the commandant of the fortress; and torture was used freely. Clearly, great expectations were attached to this mass interrogation and the confessions it might produce. They were not disappointed.
The first prisoner to be interrogated was a “priest” of the sect, called Bernard of Bergamo. His answers give a lively and convincing picture of Fraticelli life.(28) Bernard had spent his noviciate in Greece; for the Fraticelli, in flight from persecution in Italy, had established monasteries across the water, outside the bounds of Latin Christendom. After ordination Bernard had returned to Italy, to teach the doctrine of the Fraticelli at Poli: preaching against the errors of John XXII, condemning the Catholic clergy, exalting absolute poverty. Though his activity was clandestine, it evidently found some response. Even great nobles were favourably disposed. The overlord of the village, Count Stefano de Conti, protected the Fraticelli and treated Bernard as his father confessor — and in due course was imprisoned by the pope in the fortress of Sant’ Angelo for so doing. Bernard recalled, too, how a great lady of the Colonna family summoned him to her castle, so that she could make her confession to him instead of to a Catholic priest; she has been identified as Sueva, the mother of Stefano Colonna, count of Palestrina.
Such situations, where poverty-loving heretics were secretly patronized by rich and powerful families, were not uncommon in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But the majority of Bernard’s flock consisted of ordinary villagers. He reckoned that twenty or thirty men and women of Poli attended when, secretly, he celebrated mass. One inhabitant had bequeathed his house so that Fraticelli “priests” could celebrate mass, hear confessions and ordain new “priests” in security. Even the Catholic priest of the parish seems to have been implicated to some extent; for when a Fraticelli “bishop” died, he allowed him to be buried in consecrated ground. (In the light of Bernard’s confession, the body was disinterred and burned.)