L'amministrazione francescana di Inghilterra e Francia. Personale di governo e strutture dell'Ordine fino al Concilio di Vienne (1311) (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 235 autem ista tria quae tangunt isti tres articuli sint diffinienda per Sanctitatem Vestram tanquam haeretica non auderem adhuc dicere donec audiam quid decernet Sanctitas Vestra. Quidquid autem decreverit, inviolabiliter tenebo. Et si intellectus meus non posset capere, in obsequium determinationis vestrae ipsum captivare intendo. The Franciscan Institute DAVID FLOOD, O.F.M. St. Bonaventure, NY Francesca Joyce Mapelli, L’amministrazione francescana di Inghilterra e Francia. Personale di governo e strutture dell’Ordine fino al Concilio di Vienne (1311). Medioevo 7. Rome, Edizioni Antonianum, 2003. XXXVI + 613 pp. Francesca Joyce Mapelli affixes a Guida alla lettura (XV-XX) to her very useful book. In a five-page “help to readers,” she explains her source material and its presentation. Mapelli has gathered the data available on the ministers provincial and local of England and France from the origins of the provinces down to the Council of Vienne (1311). She presents the data both as she gathered it on index cards (the Schede of pages 295-577) as well as in her account of the administration of the English (one) and French provinces (five: France, Touraine, Aquitaine, Burgundy, Provence) (37-293). The whole project she sums up in her title and subtitle: Franciscan Administration in England and France. The Governing Personnel and the Structures of the Order down to the Council of Vienne. Casting a wide net, Mapelli has drawn in a large sum of information. She explains where she has found it and where not. She has not herself extracted it from archival dust; she has gathered her abundant information from published sources as well as from the secondary literature of well-known scholars of things Franciscan. As a consequence, Mapelli often has to work with bare facts, without the narrative to which they belong. The careful footnotes that support her presentation display just how much has come to light in the past century 236 BOOK REVIEWS or so; and if it suggests how much more we would like to know, it does establish the achievement from which further research can proceed. As for her index cards on pages 295 to 577, Mapelli has given them the following structure. Each province has its own block of cards, a block divided into four sections, one each for minister provincial, vicar ministers, custodes, and guardians. (A province subdivided into sections called custodies, the administrative responsibility of a custos, plural custodes.) Mapelli identifies each individual by two letters (province and function) and the sequential number in his charge. Within each card she supplies the information on the individual, both prior to and after access to his administrative role. In order to get to the administration of the English and French provinces, Francesca Mapelli has to say something about the order of which the provinces were parts. And so she sets out to review the institutional development of the Franciscan organization, seeing as the organization’s institutions allowed and directed provincial administration . That she does on pages 1 to 35, and there’s the rub. Historians disagree on the nature of the change that took place among the Franciscans and how it worked itself out in the system of roles and norms (the institutional apparatus) that supported the life. The changes resulted, quite properly, in tensions and trouble among Franciscans. Mapelli skirts the problem by playing down the institutional achievement of the first Franciscans and guiding the history towards the safe port of the Narbonne constitutions. Once there, she can address her task of examining the administration of the English and French provinces. Seeing as Mapelli is doing more of a report on individuals than a history, she did not need this semblance of historical explanation. A factual statement of the order that resulted from the early history suffices. The author puts her index of information to use in her examination of the personnel that administered the English and French provinces (37-293). For each of the six provinces, she groups together the names of those who served at each level of administration, offering observations both about their careers as well as about the administrative consequences of their service. Thanks to Thomas of Eccleston, we find out much about the English province. The...