The conflict in the university re-ignited in 1253 when, once again, it
embarked upon a strike to protest the death of students while in the custody of the Parisian civil authorities. Again, the mendicant schools, both Preachers and Minors, defied the suspension, infuriating many among the secular masters. They retaliated with the promulgation of a new enactment requiring all masters to swear an oath of obedience to the statutes of the university as a way to be able to compel the mendicants to observe the strike. Any master who failed to swear within fifteen days, i.e. by 17 April 1253, would be
expelled from the university and forfeit his license to teach.17 The mendicants
14 Courtenay, ‘Institutionalization of Theology’, pp. 248-9, 253.
15 At Oxford, candidates commencedwith the sentences before proceeding to study scripture.
A. G. Little, ‘The Franciscan School at Oxford in the Thirteenth Century’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 29 (1926), 803-74.
16 It was this same ban that delayed both Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas from obtaining
their degrees for a number of years. See pages 107-08 above.
declined, objecting that, by virtue of their profession of religious vows, their wills were no longer their own and that to swear an oath such as was being demanded would be inconsistent with the evangelical counsels which they had assumed. They declined the oath and were duly cast out of the
university.18
The dispute widened when the aggrieved friars appealed to Innocent IV since the papacy had juridically established both the university and the mendicant orders. Innocent ordered the immediate reinstatement of the friars and their schools. The university responded that it would do so as soon as the friars swore obedience to its statutes. Until then, mendicant inceptions would be blocked and no degrees would be recommended for their
students.19
The dispute continued with many of the secular masters attacking the very right of the orders to exist, publishing tracts that questioned the merits of evangelical poverty, the notion of mendicancy itself, the absolute poverty of Christ and the incursion of mendicants into the divinely established roles of the secular clergy.20 They accused the mendicant orders generally of
holding the heretical beliefs of Joachism and desiring the overthrow of the Church.21 Disobedience was a further charge levelled at the mendicants; since
18 Traver, ‘Rewriting History?’, p. 13. 19 Traver, ‘Rewriting History?’, pp. 13-14.
20 Roest, A History of Franciscan Education, p. 56. This re-ignition of the secular-mendicant
controversy has not wanted for more detailed considerations of its events and motivations. See especially Michel-Marie Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polémique universitaire parisienne 1250-1259 (Paris: Picard, 1972) and Traver, ‘Rewriting History?’.
21 Joachim, Abbot of Fiore (c. 1135 – 1202), had published apocalyptic works of scriptural
exegesis. Among his many teachings was a coming third age, the ‘Age of the Holy Spirit’ in which the Church and Gospel would be supplanted by newer more spiritual versions. The harbingers of this new age would be ‘two poor men’ living and preaching in simplicity, figures by many readily identified with Francis and Dominic. Much has been written on Joachism, see especially Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985). As to Joachim’s works, the most pertinent to this consideration is Joachim of Fiore, Enchiridion Super Apocalypsim, ed. by
the university’s power to legislate and to suspend classes both derived from papal authority expressed in the bull Parens Scientarum of Gregory IX in 1231, the mendicants were reproached for defying the papal authority.22
The friars felt the tide move dramatically against them when, in 1254, Innocent IV issued the bull Etsi Animarum, substantially curbing the
privileges of the mendicant orders and obliging them to subscribe to the university oath.23 They averted the consequences of that through what was
for them the convenient death of Innocent and his succession by Alexander IV, a pontiff strongly supportive of the mendicant orders. To the friars’ relief, he reinstated their privileges and exemptions and, shortly after, they were reinstated in the university without condition by Alexander’s decree Quasi Lignum Vitae.24
Edward Killian Burger, Studies and Texts, 78 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986). The most notorious enthusiast for Joachism was the Franciscan Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, Introductorium in Evangelium Aeternum, ed. by J. G. V. Engelhardt (Erlangen: Kunstmann, 1828). It was these accusations of Joachism that forced the
resignation of John of Parma as Franciscan Minister General and the subsequent election of Bonaventure.
22 Gregory IX (Ugolino di Conti di Segni), Parens Scientarum, Papal Bull of 13 April 1231,
reproduced in Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain, eds, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols (Paris: Delalain, 1889-97), I (1889), No. 79, pp. 136-39. One of the leaders of the secular masters, William of St Amour, produced many of the polemical texts of the seculars at this time, especially William of Saint Amour, De Periculis Novissimorum Temporum, ed. by Guy Geltner, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 8 (Louvain: Peeters, 2007). It was in this context that the mendicant champions composed similarly polemical replies: Thomas Aquinas, Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum et Religionem, ed. by John Proctor and Mark Johnson (Leesberg, VA: Alethes Press, 2007); Bonaventure,
‘Quaestiones Disputatae de Perfectione Evangelica’, in Opera Omnia, ed. by Collegium S. Bonaventura, 9 vols (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1884-1907), VI (1891), pp. 117-98; Thomas of York, Commentaria in Libros Viginti Quattuor
Philosophorum, hoc est Sapientiale (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). Traver, ‘Rewriting History?’, pp. 9-45.
23 Innocent IV (Sinibaldo Fieschi), Etsi Animarum, Papal Bull of 10 May, 1254, reproduced
in Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium, I, No. 236, pp. 263-64.
24 Their privileges were restored in Alexander IV (Rinaldo di Jenne), Nec Insolitum, Papal
Bull of 22 December, 1254, reproduced in Denifle and Chatelaine, Chartularium, I, No. 244, pp, 276-77. Quasi Lignum Vitae, Papal Bull of 12 April 1255, reproduced in Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium, I, No. 247, p. 279-85. It may be significant that Alexander was a nephew of Gregory IX who had canonised Francis and Dominic. Gregory, as Cardinal Ugolino di Segni, had been the first Cardinal Protector of the Franciscans and had a hand in the writing of their rule. He was, in turn, the great nephew of Innocent III who had granted approval to both mendicant orders. Alexander, like Gregory IX, had served as Cardinal Protector of the Franciscans.
The mendicants found that the combination of this papal support along with that of Louis IX, a devoted benefactor of both orders, was more than their opponents in the university were able to withstand. In 1256 the resolve of those opponents weakened and they begrudgingly accepted the presence of the friars in the university.
The period of that ban, 1253 to 1256, were the very years in which Richard was in Paris. It is Peter Raedts’ contention that in 1253 Richard had fallen out with Thomas of York when the latter was appointed as Franciscan regent master of theology at Oxford in preference to Richard. Richard in resentment invoked the permission that the Minister General had given him to go to Paris and wiped his hands of the English friars.25
Certainly Adam Marsh records in a letter to his Minister Provincial, William of Nottingham, that Richard’s change of mind in favour of Paris was decisive and sudden:
Proinde, cum ante dies aliquot ob vehementiores perturbationum occasiones dictus Frater Richardus inexorabile concepit propositum transferendi se, secundum concessionem ministri generalis olim indultam, in provinciam Francie.26
Raedts posits that when Thomas of York was moved to Cambridge in 1256, Richard was at last offered the post of regent master in Oxford and he hastily returned to take it up his long coveted post. This account does fit the known events, but for a lack of any evidence of some acrimony between Richard and Thomas of York.27 This feud is only speculation and, moreover, a
25 Raedts, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, pp. 5-9.
26 ‘Likewise, several days ago, due to instances of quite vehement agitation, the said Brother
Richard reached a firm decision to transfer himself to the French province, in accord with the permission that the Minister General previously gave him’. Adam Marsh, Letters, cciii, p. 496.
27 Raedts himself concedes the dispute with Thomas of York is but a ‘hypothesis’: Raedts, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, p. 8.
simple dislike of Thomas of York and wounded pride seem insufficient reasons to drive one into exile and embark on the composition of the Abbreviatio.
A simpler explanation can be found in the events of a reopening of hostilities in the secular-mendicant controversy. Unable to produce its own lectors and masters, the Franciscan school in Paris temporarily needed to import teachers from elsewhere. Richard, a former master of arts in Paris, was a logical choice for such a role. Such an account would also explain why Richard is described as ‘reading the sentences’ in Paris as masters were pressed into service for teaching when no more bachelors could be obtained.
In 1256 the Franciscans were again able to fill teaching posts that had been blocked since the early 1250s. Rather than seeing Richard Rufus’ return to England as a cooling of temper in a hypothetical quarrel with Thomas of York, when in 1256 French masters like Bonaventure, Eudes of Rosny and Gilbert of Tournai were all able to assume teaching posts in the Grand Couvent, they freed the ‘borrowed’ personnel in Paris for posts in England and elsewhere. Thus Bertrand of Bayonne was released to go to Rome and Richard Rufus for Oxford.28
When Richard returned to England, he brought back with him the latest ideas and developments from Parisian theology to use in his new Oxford post. He drew these from the writing of the new shining light of the Parisian school, Bonaventure, who in that November would be elected Minister General of the order.