Highest Poverty or Lowest Poverty?: The Paradox of the Minorite Charism

The controversy over the meaning and parameters of Franciscan poverty is one of the most widely discussed issues in medieval historiography, both within the Franciscan order as well as outside of it, both during the Middle Ages as well as among contemporary scholars even today. Contemporary scholars—be they professed Franciscans or professional Franciscanists—have generally shown an interest in reconstructing the evolution of the friars’ practice of their poverty and the debates about this subject that were raging within the order among the friars themselves as well as between the order and their critics outside of it. These scholarly efforts have followed the trajectory of a more classically historical approach. They have been particularly intent on reconstructing and telling the story in all of its complexity and contentiousness. The emblematic scholarly work of this kind of historical approach still remains the masterly volume of Malcolm Lambert, titled Franciscan Poverty, written in 1961 and then slightly revised and expanded in 1998.2