Arbrissel, Waldoa, Norbert of Xanten, Bernard Prim, or Francis, and whether
their followers define themselves as “Humiliati,” “poor in Christ,” “good men,”
“minor brothers,” or “idiots,” in any case what they state and claim does not
actually concern theological or dogmatic questions, articles of faith, or prob-
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lems of scriptural interpretation. Instead, what is at stake is life and the way of
living, a novum vitae genus, a life that they call “apostolic” ( haeretici qui se dicunt vitam apostolicam ducere . . . ; nos formam apostolicae vitae servamus) or “evangelical” ( pure evangelica et apostolica vita . . . vivere; vita Vangelii Jesu Christi; vivere secundum formam Sancti Evangelii). The claim of poverty, which is present in all
the movements and which in itself is clearly not new, is only one aspect of this
way or form of life, which strikes observers in a special way ( nudipedes incedebant; pecunias non recipiunt; neque peram neque calciamenta neque duas tunicas portabant, “they walked barefoot, they did not accept money, nor did they carry a wallet or shoes or two tunics”; ibid., p. 74). Moreover, it does not represent
an ascetic or mortifying practice to obtain salvation as it did in the monastic
tradition, but it is now an inseparable and constitutive part of the “apostolic”
or “holy” life, which they profess to practice in perfect joy. It is significant in
this sense that Olivi, in a polemic with Thomas’s opinion according to which
poverty is only one of the ways of reaching perfection and not perfection itself
( quod paupertas non est perfectio, sed instrumentum perfectionis), could by contrast state that it coincides essentially and totally with evangelical perfection ( usum
pauperum esse de integritate et substantia perfectionis evangelicae; Ehrle, p. 522).
It goes without saying that from its origins monasticism was inseparable
from a certain way of life. But the problem in cenoby and hermitage was not
life as such so much as the ways, norms, and techniques by means of which one
succeeded in regulating it in all its aspects. To use the terminology of a Cister-
cian text, the life of the monk was traditionally conceived as “penitential,” while
now it reclaims its “apostolic” character, which is to say “angelic” and “perfect”
character ( vita monachorum est apostolica et habitus eorum est angelicus et corona
quam habent est perfectionis signum et clericale . . . monachorum vita non sit penitentialis, sed apostolica; Thesaurus, pp. 1644–49). It is just as obvious that a form of life practiced with rigor by a group of individuals will necessarily have consequences on the doctrinal level, which can bring forth—as they in fact did bring
forth—clashes and disagreements with the Church hierarchy. But it is precisely
on these disagreements that the attention of historians has mainly been focused,
leaving in shadows the fact that perhaps for the first time, what was in question
in the movements was not the rule, but the life, not the ability to profess this or that article of faith, but the ability to live in a certain way, to practice joyfully
and openly a certain form of life.
It is well known, for example, that the claim of poverty and usus pauper on
the part of the Franciscans led, to some degree, to doctrinal clashes without
quarter with the Roman Curia, fought by both parties with a wealth of argu-
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ments that were not only theological but also juridical. Moreover, as Bartolo had
intuited from the beginning, the point was not a dogmatic or exegetical contrast
so much as the novitas of a form of life, to which civil law appeared applicable
only with difficulty. For this reason, when confronted with this “novelty,” the
Church’s strategy consisted on the one hand in seeking to order it, regulate it,
and conform it so as to divert the movements into a new monastic order or in-
sert them into an already existing one. On the other hand, when this appeared
impossible, the Church shifted the conflict from the level of life to that of doc-
trine, condemning them as heretical. In both cases, what remained unthought
was precisely the originary aspiration that had led the movements to reclaim a
life and not a rule, a forma vitae and not a more or less coherent system of ideas and doctrines—or more precisely, to propose not some new exegesis of the holy
text, but its pure and simple identification with life, as if they did not want to
read and interpret the Gospel, but only live it.
In the pages that follow we will therefore seek to understand in the exem-
plary case of Franciscanism not so much or not only the doctrinal, theological,
or juridical implications of the form of life claimed by the movements, but
rather to interrogate the meaning of the very fact that these claims were put
forth essentially on the level of life. We will ask ourselves, therefore, first of all
if by these terms life, form of life ( forma vitae), form of living ( forma vivendi) they were attempting to name something the sense and novelty of which still
remain to be deciphered and which, precisely for this reason, has never ceased
to intimately concern us.
1.2. The syntagma form of life not only is not, as some scholars seem to main-
tain, a Franciscan invention, but it is even earlier than the very origin of mo-
nasticism and late-ancient biography, from which, according to others (Coccia,
p. 135), medieval hagiography had received it. An examination of the Thesaurus shows clearly that the expression is found already in Cicero ( nostrae quidem rationis ac vitae quasi quandam formam . . . vides) and after him, among others,
in Seneca ( hanc . . . sanam ac salubrem formam vitae tenete), and Quintilian (in
the variant certa forma ad quam viveremus). The semantic value of forma that the compilers of the Thesaurus note for this case is imago, exemplar, exemplum, norma rerum, and as the passage from Quintilian shows, it is likely that precisely the
meaning of “example, model” had carried over to the coinage of the syntagma
forma vitae.
Thus in the Vetus Latina (Titus 2:7) and in the Vulgate, forma translates
typos (at times rendered with exemplum by the Vulgate): ut nosmet ipsos formam
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daremus vobis ad imitandum (“in order to give you an example to imitate”;
2 Thess. 3:9); forma esto fidelis (“set the believers an example”; 1 Tim. 4:12; the Vulgate has: exemplum esto fidelium).
It is in this sense that the expression appears in Rufinus ( emendationis
vitae formam modumque, “emending their form and way of life”; Historia
monachorum 6.410a); in Hilary of Poitiers ( Christus formam se ipsum universis agendi sentiendique constituens, “Christ contains in himself the form of all acting and thinking”; In Evangelium Matthaei Commentarius, 12.24); in Sulpicius
Severus ( esto . . . omnibus vivendi forma, esto exemplum, “be a form of living for all, be an example”; Epistle 2.19); in Ambrose ( cognitio verbi et ad imaginem eius forma vivendi, “knowledge of the Word and a model of living according to his
image”; De fuga saeculi, 2.9); and in Augustine, whether in reference to the life
of the Christian ( Nam Christianis haec data est forma vivendi, ut diligamus Dominum Deum nostrum ex toto corde, “to Christians this rule of life is given, that we should love the Lord Our God with all the heart”; De moribus Ecclesiae 30.62),
or as typological key ( in
his . . . valet forma mortis ex Adam, in aeternum autem
valebit vitae forma per Christum, “the pattern of death coming from Adam has
power for a time . . . but the pattern of life through Christ will have power over
them for eternity”; Epistle 157.20—with almost the same words, Ambrosiaster
says in his commentary on the first letter to the Corinthians: Adam enim forma
mortis est, causa peccati; Christus vero forma vitae proper iustitiam, “Adam is the image of death because of his sin, but Christ is the image of life because of his
righteousness”; pp. 292/222).
The sense of forma here is “example, paradigm,” but the logic of the example
is anything but simple and does not coincide with the application of a general
law (Agamben 2, pp. 20–24/18–21). Forma vitae designates in this sense a way of
life that, insofar as it strictly adheres to a form or model from which it cannot be
separated, is thus constituted as an example (as in Bernard of Clairvaux, Contra
quaedam capitula errorum Abelardi, chap. 17: [Christus] ut traderet hominibus formam vitae vivendo, “that [Christ] might hand down a form of life to humans
by living”).
It is strange that the expression’s penetration into the monastic literature is
relatively late. It does not appear in the Rule of the Fathers, the Rule of the Master (where the term forma by itself is found many times in the sense of example), or the Benedictine rule. When spiritual movements forcefully took up this syntagma starting from the eleventh century, the accent fell in equal measure on the
two terms that composed it, to mean a perfect coincidence of life and form, ex-
ample and follower. But it is only with the Franciscans that the syntagma forma
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vitae assumes the character of a genuine technical term of monastic literature,
and life as such becomes the question that is in every sense decisive.
1.3. In 1312, more than eighty years after the death of Francis, Clement V
intervened in the dispute between the Spirituals and the Conventuals with the
bull Exivi de Paradiso. After having compared the order of the Friars Minor to a
garden in quo quieties ac securius vacaretur contemplandis servandisque huiusmodi
operibus exemplaris (“in which one might more quietly and securely be freed from
beholding and observing labors of this kind”), the pope evokes the Franciscans’
way of life with these words: haec est illa coelestis vitae forma et regula, quam descripsit ille confessor Christi eximius sanctus Franciscus (“that is the heavenly form of life and rule, which that excellent Confessor of Christ Saint Francis wrote
down”; §1). The pairing of the syntagma form of life with the term rule is not new, and one encounters it many times in the Franciscan literature itself. But precisely
for this reason it will be useful to ask ourselves first of all if what is at stake is
a hendiadys in which the two expressions emerge as synonymous, or if instead
their semantic values may be different—and in this case, in what this difference
may consist and what the strategic sense of their conjunction might be.
Close scrutiny of the occurrences of the syntagma form of life in the Fran-
ciscan sources show that it does not appear as such in the writings attributed
to Francis. The Regula non bullata—after having opened, as we have seen, with
the drastic declaration Haec est vita Evangelii Iesu Christi, quam frater Franciscus
petiit a Domino Papa concedi et confirmari sibi (“This is the life of the Gospel of Christ which Brother Francis asked the Lord Pope to be granted and confirmed
for him”)—pairs the two terms regula and vita ( regula et vita istorum fratrum haec est, scilicet vivere in oboedientia, in castitate et sin proprio, “The rule and life of these brothers is this: to live in obedience, in chastity, and without anything
of their own”; Francis 1, 1, pp. 6/108–9). The pairing is repeated in the Regula
bullata of 1223 ( regula et vita minorum fratrum haec est, “The rule and life of the Friars Minor is this”; ibid., pp. 108/137). In the Testament, moreover, the term
forma appears, and it is paired not with vita but with vivere in the passage in which Francis writes that Christ himself revealed to him quod deberem vivere
secundum formam sancti Vangelii (“that I must live according to the form of the
Holy Gospel”). Since a little earlier Francis defines priests as those “who live
according to the form of the holy Roman Church” ( qui vivunt secundum formam
sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae; ibid., pp. 220/154), it is clear that the Testament distinguishes explicitly and firmly between the two forms of life. On the one hand
Francis declares that the Lord has given him “such faith” in the priests who live
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“according to the form of the Roman Church” that even if they were to persecute
him (it is significant that this possibility would be contemplated), he would fear,
love, and honor them as his lords. On the other hand, he takes care to specify
that “after the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I should do
[ quid deberem facere], but the Most High Himself revealed to me that I should
live [ quod deberem vivere] according to the form of the Holy Gospel,” and he
immediately adds: “And I had this written down simply and in a few words and
the Lord Pope confirmed it for me” ( Et ego paucis verbis et simpliciter feci scribi et dominus papa confirmavit mihi; ibid., pp. 222/154–55).
The technical opposition between the substantial and content-oriented quid
( what I must do) and the existential and factual quod ( that I must live) shows that Francis cannot be concerned with a rule in the proper sense, which establishes precepts and duties ( quid deberem facere). And the opposition is not only
between “what” and “that,” but also between “doing” and “living,” the obser-
vation of precepts and norms and the simple fact of living according to a form
(we have seen that Hugh of Digne will draw a distinction in this sense between
promittere regulam and promittere vivere secundum regulam). As opponents and followers immediately understood, the “form of the holy Gospel” is not in any
way reducible to a normative code.
But what does Francis mean, then, when he says that he had that way of life
written down simply and with few words? This “writing” (the so-called short
Rule of 1210) coincides, according to scholars, with the text of the prologue and
the first chapter of the Regula bullata, in which the regula et vita of the brothers is summarized in “a few words”: vivere in oboedientia, in castitate et sine proprio,
“to live in obedience, in chastity, and without anything of their own,” followed
by four citations from the Gospels (Francis 1, pp. 6/109). The two following rules
start from this nucleus—which is essential, generic, and moreover apparently
considered exhaustive (the proclamations haec est vita and regula et vita . . . haec est are peremptory and allow for no doubt in this case)—and only add prescriptions that concern the acceptance of new brothers, the relationship between
ministers and the other brothers, corrections, illnesses, special cases like going
on horseback, relationships with women, receiving alms, traveling through the
world, preaching, and various other questions, with regard to which he limits
himself to suggesting indications in homage to the tradition of the monastic
rules, without touching on the meaning of “living according
to the form of the
holy Gospel,” already summarized on a small scale in the introduction.
The original nucleus of the rule consisted, then, in attributing a “normative
status to the New Testament narrative” as such (Tarello, p. 318): with respect to
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this nucleus, the prescriptions and duties that follow (in the modern edition
of the Regula non bullata, chapters 2–23—the chapter divisions are obviously
lacking in the manuscript) only represent glosses in view of a survey that is ob-
viously not exhaustive. By mixing together the Gospel with the rule in this way,
the archetypal rule or Urregel implied unacceptable consequences for the Curia,
which already in the 1230 bull Quo elongati introduced a distinction between
evangelical example and rule, deciding that the monk was obligated only to
those evangelical counsels that had been incorporated into the rule.
א The Franciscan principle according to which the rule was the very life of Christ is
found already enunciated in a text—the Askētikai diataxeis or Ascetic Constitution—that the tradition attributes to Basil and that must have been very familiar to the Spiritual
Franciscans, in particular to Clarence, the Latin translator of the Cappadocian monk.
“Every action . . . and every word [ pasa praxis . . . kai pas logos] of our Savior Jesus Christ,”
one reads in this text (chap. 1, PG, 31, 1326a–b), “is a rule [ kanon] of piety and virtue.”
A little later we even find articulated the idea of the life of Christ as model and image of life: “The Savior proposes to all those who want to live fully a form and a model of virtue
[ typon aretēs kai programma] . . . and gave to those who want to follow him his own life as image of the best way of life [ eikona politeias aristēs]” (chap. 4, §4, ibid., 1351d). The Benedictine rule itself opens by asking rhetorically, “What page or what utterance of the
divinely inspired books of the Old and New Testaments is not a rectissima norma vitae
humanae?” ( Rule of St. Benedict, p. 155). However, as has been noted (Tarello, p. 403), attributing normative value to the Gospel text was not in itself a new thing (Gratian’s
Concordantia defines natural law as quod in Lege et Evangelio continetur). What was new, however, was drawing from the complete and total equation of rule and life of Christ a
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