Roberto Lambertini

Poverty and Power: Franciscans in Later Medieval Political Thought

Was there a contribution to late medieval political theory which can be regarded as specifically Franciscan? Recent developments in this field have made the answer to this question more difficult than it was in the past. For Michel Villey and George de Lagarde, it was still obvious to connect Franciscan theologians (at least since the time of Scotus) to a supposed crisis of scholastic systems of thought and the beginnings of a new approach to political problems. Nowadays historians tend to question the necessary connection between a so-called Franciscan voluntarism and specific positions in political theory. In addition, the category itself of a Franciscan school has undergone a thorough-going revision; moreover, many scholars feel increasingly uneasy about the very concept of ‘voluntarism’ as applied to Franciscan thinkers, while a specialist in Ockham’s political thought, such as John Kilcullen, has overtly denied that the Venerabilis Inceptor himself can be considered a voluntarist. One can, furthermore, point to the fact that Franciscan authors took very different stances in the field of political theory and, as a matter of fact, fought in opposite camps in the political discussions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. At the same time as Michael of Cesena’s rebellion,