Francis focused on complete poverty, simplicity and humility, and preaching,
characteristics that were identified with the “apostolic life” modeled on the lives of Jesus
and his disciples. The characteristic that most distinguishes Franciscans from other orders
is the insistence from the very founding of the order on complete poverty, not only
personal (which was true of monastic orders) but also corporate (which was not true of
monastic orders). They were to support themselves by manual labor or by begging, to live
in whatever simple lodgings they might find, and to possess neither property nor money.
This insistence, fundamental to Francis’s vision, later became a point of intense and
tragic dispute in the order and the church.
The chapter of 1217, meeting in Assisi, decided to send friars on preaching missions
outside Italy and divided the potential mission field into provinces: six in Italy, two
(north and south) in France, and one each for Germany, Spain, and the Holy Land. Each
province had a provincial minister to supervise the friars, and after the death of Francis a
minister general supervised the order. The Rule of 1223 called for a meeting of the
general chapter every three years, but not until 1239 was this firmly fixed.
Work in the province of southern France went slowly, but by ca. 1220 there were
settlements at Mirepoix, Arles, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier, and Périgueux. In 1222,
houses were founded in Draguignan, Nîmes, and Apt. The year 1224 saw foundations in
Limoges and Brive, then later at Nice, Bordeaux, La Réole, Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and Le
Puy.
The northern province advanced steadily under the leadership of Pacifico, a poet and
one of Francis’s early converts. By 1218 or 1219, Franciscans were at Paris, and by 1223
there were thirty friars and a convent was being built. After the Paris foundation, houses
were started at Le Mans, Bayeux, Vézelay, Chartres, Arras, and Vendôme. Houses were
later founded in Nantes, Tours, Rouen, Sézanne (1223–24); Compiègne, Beauvais, and
Auxerre (1225); Samur, Angers, and Mirebeau (1226); and Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres
(1227). At Francis’s death, France was divided into three provinces (France/Paris,
Provence, and Aquitaine), with two others soon following, Burgundy and Touraine. In
addition to Paris as a major center for study, there were schools for friars in Rouen,
Reims, Metz, Bruges, Marseille, Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux.
Francis’s death produced a crisis of definition, for in his last writing, the Testament, he
had unambiguously insisted yet again on absolute poverty and simplicity for the friars
personally and communally. One of Francis’s strong supporters, Pope Gregory IX, finally
declared the Testament nonbinding in its insistence on literal poverty and allowed, in the
bull Quo elongati of 1230, communities to have buildings, books, furniture, and the like,
arguing that they were merely using what others (i.e., ecclesiastics appointed for the
purpose or even the pope) owned/ possessed “for” them. Rigorists in the order rejected
this “compromise” and looked for leadership to John of Parma (minister general 1247–
57), while those who favored Gregory IX’s move, the so-called Conventuals, found a
leader in Bonaventure, the theologian and mystical writer who was minister general
1257–74. Bonaventure, selected to write the official vita of Francis, not only defended the
theory of the “use” of possessions, arguing that the friars needed large convents, books,
vestments, and the like to carry out their ministry; he also defended the mendicants in
their conflict with the secular clergy, led by William of Saint-Amour, over the right of the
mendicant orders to preach and hear confessions without regard to parish and diocesan
boundaries, arguing that the friars were a new order that combined monastic virtue,
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