The Spiritual Franciscans.

David Burr Penn State Press, $45, 427 pp.

Unlike the other mendicant orders founded in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans were blessed, and burdened, by having a profoundly charismatic founder. When Saint Francis died in 1226, the order he founded was already large and had a rule that had received papal approval in 1224. Francis nonetheless worried about changes in that rule, which demanded that members of the order observe a severe form of religious poverty. His friars were not to have possessions, property, or money, nor were they to accept privileges from either the papacy or the local hierarchy.

When Francis had but a few like-minded companions, this understanding of poverty was plausible. However, as the order grew, a whole range of practical and seemingly intractable problems arose: How did the friars who were scholars make use of their talents without books? Where were the friars to live, worship, or receive the people who came to them?

After the death of Francis, factions within the order vigorously debated the solutions to those problems, and from these seemingly petty divisions a fascinating phenomenon arose. David Burr has so thoroughly mastered the complex literature on this topic that he is able to offer us the first full account of the Spiritual Franciscans in English. His book is a model of sober scholarship and, despite the complicated subject, clearly written.

The complexity of this story makes it hard to summarize. For two generations after the death of Francis the debate centered on the meaning of evangelical poverty. Toward the century's end, the debate sharpened: Did the vow of poverty include an implicit vow not to use goods of any kind that violated the vow itself? Could friars, for instance, store grain or wine or oil not actually being used? Popes got involved, and the issue shifted from poverty to obedience. The Spirituals soon began to wonder about the status of the papacy itself. Were the popes asking them to do something that was sinful? And there was an increasing fascination with apocalyptic thinking: Was Saint Francis the angel of the sixth seal who would usher in the age of the Spirit? Who (the pope?) was the promised Antichrist? Did these true believers and their sympathizers constitute the saving remnant called to resist the powers of the institutional church? Those questions and the movements associated with them came to the zealous attention of the inquisitors. In the early fourteenth century, some of the Spirituals actually went to the stake in southern France.

Burr has read the pertinent writings of those who were at the center of the controversy, and takes us through the concerns of the popes and councils in question. In a fascinating appendix he profiles some Beguine women who had associations with the Spirituals, and throughout the text he warns against a tendency to see every upholder of evangelical poverty as either a heretic or even a Spiritual.

The story of the Spirituals is not simply a chapter in the past. It was suggested some decades ago that theological discussions about the status of the irreformability of papal teaching in this period constitute the roots from which the debate on papal infallibility developed. The theological meaning of vows, central to this debate, would come to the fore in the early sixteenth century at the time of the Reformation.

Lovers of Saint Francis and things Franciscan will find little to edify them in this work. Those seriously interested in church history and historical theology, however, will find ample reward from a close reading of this judicious study. As I finished reading I could not but think of other, more contemporary, apocalyptic groups who saw themselves as a saving vanguard besieged by a corrupt and powerful world. In the fourteenth century these groups lived in the south of France and the Marches of Italy; today they have dwelt in Waco and Ruby Ridge--perennial victims of end-time fantasies.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.