Early Commentaries On The Rule Of The Friars Minor Ii: Peter Of John Olivi

Francis of Assisi managed a few last words to his brothers. He reviewed what a brother had to know to keep step with the instruction of the Spirit of the Lord. Indirectly he told his brothers to include the needy in their Life (Vita). He told them to show the clergy respect. He also claimed authorship, with God’s help, of a way to deal with the times. (Come, Francis. People do not do these things alone. And Memory simplifies the deeds of long ago. Your brothers, who believed in you, were not dumb. They helped.) Then Francis said clearly his companions were to work with the common people. They were to pull people into the life for which God created them.

Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Peter of John Olivi and John Pecham picked up on Francis’s effort, in his last days, to cast light on the Franciscan way. (Chapter VI of the Rule called them strangers to the world they left behind.) They carried further the study of the Rule which set the men on their journey. Olivi and Pecham were not glossing the Rule. Francis warned against it, in his final words, after he had surveyed the past (recordari: remember, think over). Reviewing the lessons of the past was not glossa. Not working with the lessons of the past was glossing the brotherhood onto another track. For the social context sweeps a man up, if he does not watch out. Olivi and Pecham might have missed some basics. At heart, however, they wanted to keep the action going. Their commentaries help historians assess where the brothers were on the journey that began around 1209. The two reports on Franciscan life deserve study and discussion.