Religious Movement

Spiritual Franciscans

Origin 1270 to 1318

The Spiritual Franciscans were a rigorist current within the Franciscan order, insisting on absolute poverty exactly as they read it in Francis of Assisi's own founding rule and rejecting the more flexible property arrangements the wider order and the papacy had come to accept. From the late thirteenth century their reading increasingly drew on Joachim of Fiore's three status historiography, identifying the order's most rigorous members as the awaited spiritual men of a coming Age of the Spirit, an application Joachim himself never made in his own writing. Escalating condemnation culminated in Pope John XXII's bulls of 1317 and 1318, after which the movement, by then commonly called the Fraticelli, was largely suppressed through prosecution, imprisonment and a small number of executions, though isolated adherents persisted quietly for generations afterward.

Facts

Attributions

Church Family

A rigorist faction within the Roman Catholic Franciscan order, not a separate church family of its own. 1

Origins

Origin Period

1270 to 1318 1

Origin Period

Crystallized as a distinct rigorist faction within the Franciscan order from the 1270s onward; condemned and largely suppressed, under the name Fraticelli, by the early fourteenth century. 1

Place of Origin

Italy and southern France, within the Franciscan order. 1

Founder

No single founder; a rigorist current within the Franciscan order that formed around disputes over the strictness of Francis of Assisi's original rule of absolute poverty, radicalized by drawing on Joachim of Fiore's apocalyptic reading of history. 1

Status

Status Today

Historical; not practised continuously 1

History

Separation or Divergence

Tension with the wider Franciscan order and the papacy escalated across the late thirteenth century. A pseudo-Joachimite tract advancing the Spiritual cause, Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino's Introduction to the Eternal Gospel, was condemned by Pope Alexander IV at Anagni on 23 October 1255. Decades later Pope John XXII condemned the Spirituals, by then commonly called the Fraticelli, in three bulls, Quorumdam Exigit (7 October 1317), Sancta Romana (30 December 1317) and Gloriosam Ecclesiam (23 January 1318), the last naming five specific errors. Several adherents were subsequently executed as unrepentant heretics, among them four Spiritual Franciscans burned at Marseille in May 1318 for refusing to submit to the papal ruling. 1

Organisation

Governance

No central authority 2

Ordination

Ordination is into a monastic order, not to a congregation 1

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

Trinitarian: one God in three persons 1

Doctrinal Position Detail

Insisted on absolute poverty exactly as read in Francis of Assisi's own founding rule, and, from the late thirteenth century, increasingly read that reading through Joachim of Fiore's three-status historiography, identifying the order's most rigorous members as the awaited spiritual men of a coming Age of the Spirit. 1

Sacraments or Ordinances

Followed ordinary Roman Catholic sacramental theology; the movement's distinctive practice was radical poverty rather than any reworking of the sacraments. 1

Practice

Baptism

Followed ordinary Roman Catholic infant baptism; the movement's distinctiveness was about apostolic poverty, not the sacraments. 1

Liturgical Language

Latin 1

Connections

Associated With

Francis

This source names Francis directly: "The Spiritual Franciscans were a rigorist current within the Franciscan order, insisting on absolute poverty exactly as they read it in Francis of Assisi's own founding rule and rejecting the more..."