The Dangers of Desire: Medieval Franciscans as Book Owners

Abstract

The Order of the Friars Minor faced a dilemma from the outset: their Rule of life, written by their founder St Francis of Assisi, included a strict adherence to the ideal of absolute poverty (that is, living without property, even property held in common), and yet it was impossible to fulfil their pastoral activities in the community without at least one type of property – liturgical books. In both the earlier (1209/10–1221) and later (1223) Rules, St Francis discussed the ownership of books, but not their production. Surviving manuscripts and archival records alert us to the fact that friars did produce their own liturgical books and act as the scribes and illuminators of books made for others. As both producers and owners of illuminated manuscripts, the friars engaged in a careful navigation of the relationship between beauty (permissible as an expression of invisible divine beauty, as defined by Hugh of St Victor) and luxury. It was all too easy (as the Franciscan Durand of Champagne bemoaned) for friars to desire ‘beautiful … and … curiously illuminated [books, rather] than true and well corrected ones’. This essay explores the ways in which friars negotiated the issues of poverty, beauty and luxury, and how they expressed and satisfied their desire for books, drawing on examples from the library of the Sacro Convento in Assisi.