Pietro Di Giovanni Olivi Frate Minore

SOCIETÀ INTERNAZIONALE DI STUDI FRANCESCANI CENTRO INTERUNIVERSITARIO DI STUDI FRANCESCANI

PIETRO DI GIOVANNI OLIVI FRATE MINORE

Atti del XLIII Convegno internazionale

Assisi, 16-18 ottobre 2015

FONDAZIONE CENTRO ITALIANO DI STUDI SULL’ALTO MEDIOEVO FSPOLETOONDAZIONE CENTRO ITALIANO DI STUDI SULL’ALT2016O MEDIOEVO SPOLETO 2016 ISBN 978-88-6809-118-7

prima edizione: ottobre 2016

Consiglio direttivo della Società internazionale di studi francescani e organi direttivi del Centro interuniversitario di studi francescani ...... pag. VII Programma del XLIII Convegno internazionale ...... » IX Relazioni ...... » 1

JACQUES CHIFFOLEAU - CLÉMENT LENOBLE, Les Frères mineurs dans les sociétés de Provence et du Languedoc au temps d’Olivi ...... » 3

TIZIANA SUAREZ-NANI, Il profilo intellettuale di Olivi e il progetto di una ‘filosofia spirituale’ ...... » 101

FORTUNATO IOZZELLI, Aspetti dell’esegesi biblica di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi ...... » 131

ANTONIO MONTEFUSCO, Il progetto bilingue di Olivi e la memoria dissidente ...... » 183

DAMIEN RUIZ, La Règle et l’Ordre chez Pierre de Jean- Olivi ...... » 211

GIOVANNI CECCARELLI, Il Tractatus de contractibus di Olivi nel discorso economico dei Frati minori ...... » 241

MARCO BARTOLI, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi: una eccle- siologia minoritica? ...... » 277 VI SOMMARIO

PAOLO VIAN, L’interpretazione della storia nella Lec- tura super Apocalipsim di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi e i contesti della sua ricezione ...... pag. 307

LOUISA A. BURNHAM, The Angel With the Book ...... » 363

ALBERTO FORNI, Pietro di Giovanni Olivi nella peni- sola italiana: immagine e influssi tra letteratura e storia ...... » 395

PAOLO EVANGELISTI, Da Guillem Rubió a Joan Bassols. L’eredità di Olivi nei territori iberici ...... » 439

ROBERTO LAMBERTINI, Conclusioni ...... » 483

INDICE DEI NOMI ...... » 497 LOUISA A. BURNHAM

The Angel With the Book bianca First, four Franciscan friars defied the pope, all the authorities of their order and the inquisitor of Provence. All four went up in flames in the market place below the church of Notre-Dame-des- Accoules in Marseille on May 7, 1318. Their crime? Holding fast to a belief in the sanctity and doctrines of Peter Olivi. Their followers swiftly called them saints and martyrs. Next were three martyrs for Olivi amongst the beguins in Narbonne in October 1319, including a certain beloved « brother Mai ». Mai and the two others were so inspiring in their firm faith in evangelical poverty that their deaths moved a young man to commit his life to the cause they espoused – and he himself died at the stake eight years later. On January 11, 1321, a fifteen-year old girl named Amegiardis died « most beautifully » on a pyre in Béziers. Six others died with her. On October 18, 1321, Esclarmonda Durban and her companion Astruga of Lodève climbed bravely to the top of a pile of wood and vines and allowed themselves to be chained to the stake where they soon died engulfed in smoke and a mighty fire. Everyone who saw them die remarked on their steadfast manner and calm demeanor, calling them saints and martyrs. Fifteen other beguins died along with them in the cemetery of Notre-Dame-du-Lac of Lunel. On a particularly gruesome day in February 1322, twenty-one went together to their deaths just outside the walls of Narbonne, 366 LOUISA A. BURNHAM and proclaimed their beliefs to the skies so vehemently and vociferously that they frightened the crowds. On March 1, 1327, a beguin named Guilhem Serralier cried out to the assembled crowd in the market of the bourg of Carcassonne that Peter Olivi was a saint, and all his doctrines and writings were holy, especially his writings on the Apocalypse. Guilhem denounced all those who condemned him and all the beguins as persecutors of the very life of Christ, including the pope. He went to his impenitent death surrounded by five or six others. On November 11, 1328, a beguine named Prous Boneta who had preached to many others her call to martyrdom died in Carcas- sonne, impenitent and faithful to the end: not quite the last, but one of the most fervent and outspoken. These were not all. Nine died in Capestang and four in Pézenas. A total of nineteen died in Carcassonne, seventeen in Lunel and twenty-four in Narbonne. In all, at least one hundred and two indivi- duals ended their lives on the stake in more than eleven towns and cities of the Midi in just over 10 years 1. Inquisitors called them the « burned beguins », beguini combusti. In the years after their deaths, those who had loved them inscribed their names in a calendar of martyrs that they carried with them and used in litanies and masses: the beguini combusti were martyrs for the faith and saints in heaven. Believers admired their deaths, collected relics from their burned bodies and begged for their intercession in fervent prayers 2.

1 The last beguin burned in Languedoc died in Carcassonne in September 1329. For the names and figures here, see the list in L. BURNHAM, So great a light, so great a smoke: the beguin heretics of Languedoc, Ithaca, NY, 2008, appendix A, pp. 189-193. 2 Two manuscripts of the martyrology are WOLFENBÜTTEL, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Helmstedt 1006, ff. 12v-13v and PRAGUE, University of Prague, IV. B. 15, ff. 304r–315r. An edition of the martyrology from the Wolfenbüttel manuscript is in L. BURNHAM, So great a light, so great a smoke: the heresy and resistance of the beguins of Languedoc (1314-1330), Phd. dissertation, Northwestern University, 2000, appendix A, pp. 315-320. A related list of martyrs is in ESCORIAL, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 367

The faith of all these martyrs had been tested many times. Some of them faltered and many of them dissembled to the authorities. Others never waivered at all. All of them continued to believe that their best hope in navigating these awful times was in the teachings, doctrines, ideas and especially, the Apocalypse commentary of the man they called Saint Peter of John Olivi. He had told them, and they believed, that these were the end times, and ever more terrible things were ahead. All of them died because they obstinately, pertinaciously and absolutely refused to renounce Olivi or his teachings. If they were to die for them, so be it. They were witnesses, martyrs, for the truth, and their deaths were fully in accord with the apocalyptic narrative unfolding around them. The choice between martyrdom and apostasy is a dreadful one, but they chose to stay stalwart to the end. Such dedication to the death on the parts of so many is difficult for most of us to fathom, especially since we know that the man whose teachings they followed, Peter Olivi, had been dead for twenty years before the first pyre was lit. Their leader was long gone and only a few seem to have known him personally. All of the beguins died defending ideas that they had merely read or heard read in Olivi’s written commentaries, quaestiones and spiritual teachings. If we look to a modern apocalyptic movement like the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas to try to understand, we see men and women led by a living charismatic figure who navigated the difficult task of interpreting the unfolding End Times for, and most importantly with them. The seventy-three Branch Davidians who stayed with David Koresh and died in the horrific conflagration in April 1993 did so because they loved him and believed him as he continued to tell them that they were living in the time when the fifth seal of Revelation had been opened, and the faithful would

N. I. 18, edited in J. DE PUIG I OLIVER, Notes sobre el manuscript del Directorium Inquisitorum de Nicolau Eimeric conservat a la Biblioteca de l’Escorial (ms. N. I. 18), Arxiu de textos catalans antics 19, pp. 538-539. 368 LOUISA A. BURNHAM have to die. But for the beguins, only Olivi’s memory and writings remained. So why did they do it? Why did more than one hundred men and women ultimately choose martyrdom in Languedoc between 1318 and 1329? What supported their ardor and kept their faith alive? In this article, I will argue that it is because they had cast their venerated Saint Peter of John Olivi as a powerful apocalyptic figure, the angel of Revelation 10:2. That mighty angel’s face shone like the sun, and the book he bore called them to speak out and to bear witness. In apocalyptic times, much would be asked of the faithful, and studying Olivi’s writings had strengthened them and prepared them for the test. The beguins’ inspiration and support was the call to prophecy given to them by the Angel of the Book.

A COMMUNITY OF TEXTS

In the years after Olivi’s death in 1298, many of the Franciscan friars of Languedoc, and especially those of the three convents of Narbonne, Béziers and Carcassonne, were particular advocates of Olivi’s ideas about evangelical poverty 3. Adhering to his doctrine of ‘poor use’, they did not stockpile basic supplies such as grain or wine, and wore distinctive habits that were short and, to some eyes, tattered or even squalid 4. Though the actual convents were outside the walls of the towns, the friars were tightly integrated into the town communities. They acted as confessors and spiritual advisors to many townspeople, and their cemeteries were popular burying places. There was constant

3 The indispensable history of the Spiritual Franciscans in Languedoc is D. BURR, The spiritual franciscans: from protest to persecution in the century after Saint Francis, University Park, PA, 2001. Older but still useful is R. MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini in Provenza, Rome, 1959. 4 In Quorumdam exigit, Pope John XXII referred to their habits as « curtos, strictos, inusitatos et squalidos »: Bullarium Franciscanum 5, p. 128b. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 369 coming and going between town and convent, as townspeople attended divine offices, listened to public sermons and asked the friars to pray and celebrate masses for the souls of their relatives and friends. As the cult of Peter Olivi grew, the annual pilgrimage and feast on March 14 attracted large and enthusiastic crowds 5. Townspeople supported the friars materially with gifts and legacies, and later, when the friars began to find themselves in trouble with authorities, town officials and ordinary citizens supported them by public protests and appeals to authorities as far away as Montpellier and even Avignon on behalf of the friars 6. Members of the Franciscan Third Order, known locally as beguins, were among those supporters, and lived in many of the cities, towns, and even villages of Languedoc 7. The origins of the name beguin to describe them are uncertain, but Peter Olivi himself used that word in a letter to the sons of Charles of Anjou in 1295 referring to indoctrination in ideas of evangelical poverty 8. Though inquisitors such as Bernard Gui sometimes used the term beguin to describe only members of the Franciscan Third Order, they also applied it more loosely to all their friends and partisans. Bernard Gui described beguins, here meaning tertiaries, in his well-known inquisitorial manual as living communally in small « houses of poverty » in the towns and villages of the region. According to him, they called themselves Poor Brothers and Sisters

5 Though this was surely something of an exaggeration, Angelo Clareno compared the crowds present at the feast of Olivi in 1313 (which he attended) to those at the feast of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula. ANGELO CLARENO, Angeli Clareni Opera, book I, Epistole, ed. L. VON AUW, Rome, 1980, pp. 174-175. 6 L. BURNHAM, La crise spirituelle de 1316: les franciscains de Narbonne et leurs relations avec les habitants de la ville in Moines et religieux dans la ville (XIIe-XVe siècle), in Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 44 (2009), pp. 469-491. 7 The following description of beguins and their communities is expanded in my book, BURNHAM, So great a light cit. (note 1), esp. pp. 30-40. See also BURR, Spiritual Franciscans cit. (note 3), 239-243. 8 See BURR, Spiritual franciscans cit. (note 3), p. 74. The letter is in Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, 3 (1887), pp. 535-540. 370 LOUISA A. BURNHAM of Penitence. They wore habits of coarse fabric, and it was easy to recognize them by their behavior in church since they prayed either facing the wall or prostrate with their hoods over their heads. Other sources reported that beguins often went about barefoot with mortified faces. They also had a distinctive manner of greeting one another, saying « Blessed be Jesus Christ » or « Blessed be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ » when they met, and they said a particular grace before and after meals 9. Beguins of both kinds were especially frequent visitors to the Franciscan convents, where they attended sermons and offices, sought spiritual advice from sympathetic friars, and, in the case of Narbonne, venerated the relics of their beloved St. Peter Olivi. We would like to know more about their socioeconomic situation, but the inquisitors did not always record it. In cities like Narbonne and Montpellier, there were artisans and immigrants from the hinterland, but also members of the mercantile and political elite, and even the nobility 10. We are less well informed about the many beguins living in smaller towns and villages. The story of exactly how the Spiritual Franciscan friars of Languedoc and the beguins associated with them became the object of an inquisitorial manhunt is complex. Suffice it to say that tensions between the Spiritual friars and their opponents within the Franciscan Order, the Community, reached a boiling point in 1314-1316 during the power vacuum caused by both a contested papal election and the death of the Minister General of the Franciscan Order nearly two years before the next General Chapter. During

9 BURNHAM, So great a light cit. (note 1), p. 35. BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, ed. and trans. by G. MOLLAT, Paris, 1926, 1, p. 118. 10 Jean-Louis Biget has provided statistical analyses in two articles from 1984 and 1999, but see also my broader conclusions in BURNHAM, So great a light cit. (note 1), esp. p. 130. J.-L. BIGET, Autour de Bernard Délicieux, in Mouvements franciscains et société française, XIIIe-XXe siècles, ed. A. Vauchez, Paris, 1984, pp. 75-93 and Culte et rayonnement de Pierre Déjean Olieu en Languedoc au début du XIVe siècle, in Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298): pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société, ed. A. BOUREAU and S. PIRON, Paris, 1999, pp. 227-308. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 371 these two years, factions within the Order buffeted one another with epistolary salvos and threats of excommunication, made appeals to various authorities, and even occasionally resorted to violence. By late 1315, the two convents of Narbonne and Béziers were in Spiritual hands, but under siege by the Community. The appointment of Michael of Cesena as Franciscan Minister General in May 1316 and the election of Pope John XXII in August of that year were a double blow to the Spirituals. After this point, papal authorities collaborated with the leadership of the Franciscan Order in efforts to flush the Spirituals out of their refuges and condemn their practices and beliefs. In April 1317, John summoned sixty-one friars from Narbonne and Béziers to Avignon and after a dramatic showdown during a papal audience, imprisoned them. In Quorumdam exigit (October 7, 1317), John clarified the papal position on evangelical poverty and in particular, condemned the three distinctively Spiritual practices of wearing short habits and refusing to stockpile grain or wine. Quorumdam exigit soon became a convenient Franciscan loyalty oath to separate out the disobedient. Delegated by Pope John, Michel le Moine, inquisitor of Provence, put the friars from Narbonne and Béziers to the test. After months of pressure and interrogation, all but four friars agreed to observe Quorumdam 11. On May 7, 1318, the four intractable friars were burned at the stake as impenitent heretics in the public market of Marseille. The inquisitor Michel le Moine had condemned them for their refusal to obey Quorumdam, and in his sentence, he explicitly linked this to the friars’ « venomous source », Olivi’s commentary on the Apocalypse and others of Olivi’s troublesome works. Such insidious books and doctrines could lead anyone (and had already led many) down « slippery roads and twisted paths » 12. This

11 The official notes from two days of the interrogation are in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), pp. 291-296. 12 A fifth friar recanted only at the last moment. MICHAEL MONACHUS, « Inquisitoris sententia contra combustos in Massilia », ed. S. PIRON, Oliviana [on line], 2/2006, created June 27, 2006, consulted January 12, 2016. http://oliviana.revues.org/36, pp. 4-5. 372 LOUISA A. BURNHAM had important consequences for the beguins. Olivi’s ideas were now officially heretical and anyone who followed the four friars down those « twisted paths » might also be investigated and prosecuted as a heretic. From this moment on, the copies of Olivi’s writings owned by the beguins were heretical contraband and his ideas on evangelical poverty and Apocalypse were anathema. The fact that four well-known Franciscans had actually been burned for their refusal to recant Olivi’s ideas on evangelical poverty was especially shocking to the beguins. May 1318 was a watershed moment where the possible consequences of continued adherence to Olivi’s ideas became frighteningly clear. As a beguin named Peire Calvet told Bernard Gui, they talked amongst themselves, saying that the four friars « had undergone death for the truth and for the [Franciscan] Rule which was the same as the life of the Gospels ». They reached a momentous conclusion: « he and the others said that they were holy martyrs » 13. Difficult choices lay ahead for all of the beguins. None of the Spiritual friars who had gone to Avignon in April 1317 ever returned publicly to Narbonne or Béziers. The Franciscan Order banished even those who had ultimately sworn to obey Quorumdam to imprisonment in remote convents, though some of those banished managed to flee the region or to go into hiding. This absence was a watershed of a different kind: beginning even before the executions of 1318 in April 1317, the beguins had been left entirely on their own to interpret their spiritual lives and the historical times around them. They were well equipped to do so, since spiritual and religious study had always been an important part of the corporate activity of the Third Order. Supra montem, Pope Nicholas IV’s 1289 rule for the Third Order of St. Francis, had decreed that the brothers and sisters should gather once a month for a special mass and sermon, but the Languedo- cian tertiaries appear to have formed tightly knit communities that

13 BERNARD GUI, Le livre des sentences de l’inquisiteur Bernard Gui (1308-1323), ed. and trans. by A. PALES-GOBILLIARD, Paris, 2002, 2, p. 1366. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 373 met once a week, with or without priests or friars to guide them. As early as 1299 in Béziers, a regional Church council reprimanded a group of beguins and accused them of assembling secretly at night to preach the word of God. The beguins themselves responded that they were not preaching, but merely « talking about God » 14. The inquisitor Bernard Gui mentions these assemblies in his manual, noting that the beguins met on Sundays and feast days, reading short texts aloud and discussing them. He labeled the meetings suspect, declaring that it was here that the beguins « sucked the poison » of « the devil’s school » under the disguise of legitimate study. « In the Holy Church, it is rectors and pastors of the Church and doctors and preachers of the word of God who ought to preach and teach, not simple laymen, publicly and not in secret » 15. Since it had always generally been laypeople and not friars who conducted these meetings, they were able to continue even after 1317. Beguins met in one of the houses of poverty where several beguins lived together, or perhaps in the more spacious home of a wealthy sympathizer. One of the literate beguin leaders read an inspirational or educational text aloud (translating it from Latin into the vernacular if necessary) and the group as a whole discussed it. It was in this manner that even illiterate beguins could have access to written texts, sometimes surprising ones: scripture and inspirational manuals, but also scholarly quaestiones and biblical exegesis. It was thus that they became part of what Brian Stock calls a « textual community », where a textual canon was the glue that held a religious movement together 16. It would not matter if many of them could not read in Latin or even in the vernacular, because the literate would read and translate to the non-literate. Texts

14 « Concilium Provinciale Anno M. CC. XCIX. Biterris celebratum sub Ægidio Narbonensi archiepiscopo, » Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, E. MARTÈNE and M. DURAND, eds., Paris, 1717, vol. IV, coll. 225–228. 15 BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur ed. cit. (note 9), 1, pp. 114–117. 16 B. STOCK, The implications of literacy: written language and models of interpretation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Princeton, 1983. 374 LOUISA A. BURNHAM might not even be transmitted verbatim, but could be preached or transmitted orally. Those who read and those who heard created a distinct group identity centered on the texts. As Brian Stock writes, « Texts gradually acquired the capacity to shape experience itself and to operate as intermediaries between orally transmitted ideas and social change » 17. The beguins of Languedoc were part of just such a « textual community » with a specific canon dominated by the works of Peter Olivi that shaped their lives. Bernard Gui specifically mentioned that the beguins had copies of several of Olivi’s quaestiones de paupertate evangelica, his Commentary on the Apocalypse, and « other writings », which are likely to be his spiritual treatises 18. In their depositions before the inquisitors, beguins mentioned Olivi’s treatise on poverty, and commentaries on the Psalms and the Franciscan Rule 19. Many of these were in the vernacular. Bernard Gui also noted that the beguins learned from oral traditions of Olivi’s thought passed down from the friars who had known him: « these they held to be almost documents, authentic and truthful » 20. The beguins read, they listened to texts and traditions related by their fellows, and they absorbed the content of this textual canon as it was preached or taught. Many of the texts studied by the beguins were, even in the asses- sment of the inquisitors, quite conventionally orthodox. The chief goal of the beguins’ study was growth in the spiritual life and their reading was primarily directed toward that end. Bernard Gui, for example, tells us that in addition to books by Olivi, beguins read many other things including « the commandments, the articles of faith, and legends of the saints, such as the Summa of Vices and Virtues » 21. These were practical and influential books for them. In

17 Ibid., p. 527. 18 BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur ed. cit. (note 9), 1, 110. 19 Testimonies of Johan Rotgier and Bernard Maury in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), pp. 306-309 and 323-345. 20 BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur ed. cit. (note 9), 1, p. 112. 21 Ibid., pp. 114–115. A weaver of Narbonne, Peire Espere-en-Diu, mentions having heard a book on vices and virtues. MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), p. 326. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 375 our own fascination with heterodoxy, and the inquisitors’ fascination with poverty and apocalypse, we sometimes forget that the ultimate goal of all serious religious seekers, whether friars or laypeople, was the salvation of their souls and a greater communion with God. When we assess their reading and instruction, it is vital to remember that it is not our job to look always for heretical content – it is unfair to their serious religious endeavor to put the beguins (and Olivi himself) on trial. We are not inquisitors 22.

THE BEGUINS AND OLIVI

If we want to know the kinds of texts they read and listened to, the two fourteenth-century Franciscan manuscripts from Todi and Assisi that contain spiritual texts translated into Occitan (analyzed by Antonio Montefusco in his contribution to this volume) are good guides. The Assisi manuscript is more comprehensive, with texts including the rules of the first and third Franciscan orders, writings by and about St. Francis, a treatise on the indulgence of the Portiuncula, collations from the Desert Fathers, and many short treatises on the spiritual life, some by Olivi, but others anonymous. The much smaller Todi manuscript contains only five short spiritual treatises, three of them by Olivi 23. Though neither of these

22 See, for instance, P. LACHANCE, review of BURR, The Spiritual franciscans in Church History, 71 (2002), pp. 882-884; L. BURNHAM, Just talking about God: Orthodox Prayer among the Heretical Beguins , in Franciscans at prayer, ed. by T. JOHNSON, Leiden & Boston, 2007, pp. 249-270; and A. MONTEFUSCO, Structure and tradition of Pierre de Jean Olieu’s opuscula: inner experience and devotional writing, in Franciscan studies, 69 (2011), pp. 153-174. Flood challenges readers and editors to « imagine the historical Olivi as anywhere else than in the dock », D. FLOOD, The franciscan and spiritual writings of Peter Olivi, in Archivum franciscanum historicum, 91 (1998), pp. 469-473 at p. 473. Not all of the beguin texts circulating in Languedoc were the kind of propaganda Robert LERNER writes about in Writing and Resistance among Beguins of Languedoc and Catalonia, in P. BILLER and A. HUDSON, eds. Heresy and Literacy, 1100-1500, Cambridge, England, 1996, pp. 186-204. 23 ASSISI, Chiesa Nuova, 9 and TODI, Biblioteca communale, 95 (formerly 128). The most recent detailed analysis of ASSISI, Chiesa Nuova, 9 is in A. MONTEFUSCO Contestazione e 376 LOUISA A. BURNHAM specific manuscripts appear to have circulated in Languedoc, together they constitute a kind of library of the vernacular texts that did. All of these texts were meant to teach, and as we are interested in the inner life of the beguins who heard them, we would like to know what it is the beguins actually learned. It is never easy to assess the impact a spiritual text has on any person. We cannot speak to the beguins, and with very few exceptions, they leave nothing behind that speaks to their inner experience. Montefusco has defined that inner experience as « the action and the transformation which God arouses in the inner conscience » 24. How can we possibly know anything about the inner conscience of a person who lived 700 years ago? There were, of course, articulate and literate mystics who have left behind written accounts of their experience, but we are left mostly ignorant when it comes to the experiences of the less spiritually adept or unlettered. The ordinary beguins of Languedoc were no mystics, but they were nonetheless moved to action by the spiritual texts they heard, and the inner transformation those texts aroused 25. We can only observe two things: what they were taught and how they acted subsequently. To uncover the teaching, I would like to concentrate my attention on the six of Olivi’s opuscula that survive in Occitan in the two manuscripts from Todi and Assisi 26. Though we can assume that even those that only survive in Latin could have been read to the beguins, translated on the fly by their

pietà. Per un stratigrafia di un monumento della diaspora beghina, in Revue d’histoire des textes, n. s., VII, 2012, (Assisi, Chiesa Nuova, 9), pp. 251-328. Codicological analyses of both manuscripts are in P. BIANCHI DE VECCHI, Testi ascetici in antico provenzale, Perugia, 1984, pp. 13-30. 24 MONTEFUSCO, Structure and tradition cit. (note 23), pp. 153-174, at p. 153. 25 I will return to the contrary example of Na Prous Boneta at the end of this article. 26 A full list of Olivi’s Latin and Occitan opuscula (with indications of editions) is in MONTEFUSCO, Structure and tradition cit. (note 23), pp. 154-156. He has explored the nature of these texts in « Per l’edizione degli opuscula di Pierre de Jean Olivi: sul corpus e la cronologia », Oliviana [on line], 4⏐2012, created March 14, 2013, consulted September 13, 2015. URL: http://oliviana.revues.org/555 THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 377 leaders, the ones that survive in the vernacular were those that even less educated beguins were able to access more easily, and without the mediation of the more learned. This would have been especially crucial after 1317, when the beguins were essentially left to conduct their religious and spiritual lives without the guidance of the Spiritual friars who had hitherto been their confessors and spiritual mentors. These treatises are so practical and universal for progression in the Christian life that Robert J. Karris, OFM has translated four of them into English in a short volume meant for a broad, non-scholarly Christian audience 27. A reviewer on Amazon who identifies himself as a Baptist minister wrote in a review that « Peter of John Olivi is from a different day and yet concerned that followers of Jesus know how to pray and to live a life of humble obedience... I found his counsel profitable in fighting the good fight of faith » 28. « Fighting the good fight of faith » was exactly what the beguins found themselves called upon to do. Several of the Occitan texts (and a further few of those that survive in other manuscripts only in Latin) provide numbered lists of steps or stages to help a listener remember and to progress in the spiritual life 29. « Eight steps for true penance », for instance, leads the listener through eight stages to a state of perfect penitence, appropriate for a community that referred to itself as the Poor Brothers and Sisters of Penitence 30. A tract on how to avoid

27 I have drawn my English translations of those four texts (Modus quomodo, Informatio Petri Ioannis, Remedia and Miles armatus) from R. J. KARRIS, Spiritual warfare and six other spiritual writings of Peter of John Olivi, Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2012. Translations of the same four appear in Italian in P. VIAN, Scritti scelti, Rome, 1989 and in French in R. MANSELLI, Spirituels et béguins du midi, trans. by J. DUVERNOY, Toulouse, 1989. A French translation of Exercens is in S. VATTERONI, La version occitane de L’Exercens attribué à Pierre Jean Olivi, in Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire, ed. D. BILLY and A. BUCKLEY, Turnhout, 2005, pp. 187-197. 28 Amazon.com review dated February 8, 2013 by « Stephen » of KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), accessed September 12, 2015. 29 This trope is not unique to Olivi, of course. A single example that will serve for many is St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum, « the Soul’s journey into God ». 30 « Ayssi son .VIII. grases de vera penitentia ». This text survives only in the 378 LOUISA A. BURNHAM spiritual temptations (Remedia) gives listeners twelve concrete tools for evaluating whether or not their own impulses or the teachings of others are authentically from God, or corrupt. In a time where conflicting teachings were doing battle all around them, this could have been not only useful, but essential 31. A tract in both the Assisi and Todi manuscripts, « Fourteen reasons your heart should die for the love of God » (Informatio Petri Ioannis), provides a fourteen-fold guide to deepening spiritual understanding followed by a further fourteen-point recapitulation with suggestions to help the listener remember what he or she has heard and put these principles into action 32. The listener should contemplate God and His glory and Christ and His suffering, reflect on virtues, commandments, graces and saints, lament his or her own sins, and prepare for death and final judgment. All this must be accompanied by « the acknowledgement of one’s own imperfection and nothingness » and « the desire and endeavor to come to a higher stage of life ». The seeker must engage in « deep and expansive contemplation ». Finally, action is essential: « it is necessary that by an affection of your heart you move your will to do the actions required by these guidelines. These guidelines will not have any chance of taking hold unless they move from mind to affection and spiritual understanding and then to action » 33. Spiritual understanding cannot remain inside the spirit alone but must lead the believer to act boldly.

vernacular, in both ASSISI, Chiesa Nuova, 9 and TODI, Biblioteca Comunale, 95. BIANCHI DE VECCHI, Testi ascetici cit. (note 23), pp. 131-141. 31 « Ayssi comensan .XII. remedis ». An edition of the Occitan is in BIANCHI DE VECCHI, Testi ascetici cit. (note 23), pp. 89-99. The Latin text is in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), pp. 282-287. The English translation, « Remedies against spiritual temptations », is in KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), pp. 27-35. 32 « Aysso son .XIIII. raysos per las quals puescas ton cor moure en amor de Dieu ». Occitan edition in BIANCHI DE VECCHI, Testi ascetici cit. (note 23), pp. 113-122 and Latin edition in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), pp. 278-281. The English translation, « Lessons on growth in the spiritual life », is in KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), pp. 18-23. See also MONTEFUSCO, Structure and tradition cit. (note 23), pp. 157-158. 33 KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), p. 21. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 379

The most elaborate of the numerical mnemonic schemes is that of a treatise from the Assisi manuscript, « Whoever wishes to exert himself in the study of holy prayers and meditations » (Exercens) 34. Olivi provides seven tools and a prayer for effective spiritual study, seven good affections of the soul that wishes to be close to God, seven ways to please God, and finally, three desires for the faithful Christian to strive for. These last three lead not simply to interior spiritual satisfaction but also to a chain of action. The disciple must desire humility so as to be despised by all, which should lead to a sincere compassion for Jesus Christ in his suffering, and that should ultimately lead to the seeker’s own desire for martyrdom. Olivi enjoins the listener to be prepared to suffer « persecutions, martyrdom and death » for the evangelical life in order to « banish, lift, lighten and eliminate the shadows of the world » 35. The striking treatise « The spiritual warrior » (Miles armatus) seeks to prepare the spiritual seeker for the opposition that is sure to come in the end times. Instead of a numbered list, it uses an extended military metaphor as an aide-mémoire 36. First, Olivi instructs the listener to fully imagine a knight and all of the gear, companions, fortifications and even provisions that he might need in order to succeed in a campaign, seventeen items in all. It is a vivid description. Even the breastplates come together for a « snug fit ». He glosses each of these items as one of the spiritual weapons a true believer might need to « perfectly avoid, flee from, and escape the snares and dangers of the last days »: attributes such as fervor for the faith, trust in Christ, love of poverty, patience and joy in suffering,

34 « Qui se vol exercitar en estudis de sanctas oracios e meditatios ». Exercens se sacris orationibus et meditationibus. Occitan and Latin texts are in VATTERONI, La version occitane de L’Exercens cit. (note 27). The English translations of Exercens are my own. 35 Ibid., p. 191. 36 « Lo Cavalier armat ». A new critical edition is in A. MONTEFUSCO, Petri Iohannis Olivi Miles armatus. Edizione critica e commento, in Studi francescani (2011), pp. 51-170. Olivi appears to have taken the military metaphor from Ephesians 6:11-17, but he considerably expands Paul’s conceit and updates it for his contemporary audience. KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), pp. 103-116. 380 LOUISA A. BURNHAM the words of Scripture, holy meditation and study, and even the company of angels (« the army of superior soldiers »). The opusculum that closes the Assisi manuscript, « Thanks be to you, Lord my God » (Modus quomodo) is in a different mode 37. Not a work of spiritual instruction, it is instead an extended lyrical prayer of thanksgiving in which Olivi evokes the mysteries of the Church in a highly personal vein. Olivi gives voice to his wonderment that God should have given so much to those who are unworthy of Him, and begs God to keep him mindful of all he has to be thankful for. His praise and thanksgiving extends through the mysteries of the Church from the creation of all and the creation of man, through Christ’s incarnation, his Passion, and his institution of the Eucharist all the way to the Resurrection, Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit to the apostles at Pentecost. In an even more personal vein, he further thanks God for his sound body and soul, for his baptism and opportunity to repent for his sins, for all the beautiful created things that make his life possible, and for the « knowledge, reason and intellect by which I am governed » 38. The repeated evocation « Encara te fau gratias » and the frequent cries out to « Senhor mieu Ihesu Crist » and similar constructions lend the prayer a compelling and poetic quality. Towards the end of the treatise, Olivi meditates on Pentecost and thanks Jesus Christ for having sent the Holy Spirit down to the Apostles because of the way the Holy Spirit gave them the strength to surpass their own abilities. The Holy Spirit made them wise: « those who had been ignorant and unlettered became great theologians and teachers ». The Holy Spirit also made them strong and able to stand up under oppression: « those who had been timid

37 « Gratias fau a tu, Senhor Dieus mieu ». The Occitan text is in D. ZORZI, Testi inediti francescani in lingua provenzale , in Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medievali 58 (Milan, 1956), pp. 269-272, and the Latin in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), 274-78. 38 « Sensum et rationem et intellectum quibus regar ». Since the Assisi manuscript is mutilated and is missing the final folio, the Occitan text now ends with the thanksgiving for Pentecost, but we can supply the end by means of the Latin text in MANSELLI, Spirituali e beghini cit. (note 3), pp. 274-78. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 381 in speaking did not fear blows and torments and even death itself ». Most importantly, the Holy Spirit had made them fearless: « Those who had cringed at the voice of a single handmaid were not afraid of kings and tyrants and emperors ». The Holy Spirit gave them audacity, freedom from fear, and strength. Olivi further evokes the perils of his own day, presumably referring to the apocalyptic times he saw approaching. « Ah, Lord God, we are on the brink of perishing! » But with God’s help, he continues, the Holy Spirit could transform the lives of Christ’s present-day disciples: « may they be filled with a spirit of poverty, a spirit of humility, a spirit of justice and love of souls and charity ». They were the true disciples who needed to fight for the true Church because, as Olivi wrote, « it is obvious that those who are in charge now seem to be more mercenaries than pastors ». Olivi’s followers were going to have need of the Apostles’ zeal in the difficult times that lay ahead – what they soon began to believe were the apocalyptic End Times. In addition to the spiritual weapons Olivi had outlined in Miles armatus, they needed Christ’s help to be wise and strong and fearless, able to take action and confront the powerful and hostile forces lined up against them. Putting all this together with the chain of action Olivi laid out in Exercens, it is clear that confronting the powerful might require the true spiritual seeker to encounter persecution and welcome martyrdom.

BEGUINS AND THE ANGEL OF REVELATION 10:2

Anyone who frequented beguin circles in Languedoc in the first quarter of the fourteenth century came to know the apocalyptic side of Olivi’s teachings and writings. His Commentary on the Apocalypse was a crucial text, and became ever more so over time. The immediacy of its predictions was immensely compelling, because although Olivi did not provide an exact date to the tumultuous happenings he foretold, most scholars agree that he expected things to start happening in precisely those years. Already in 1299, only a year 382 LOUISA A. BURNHAM after Olivi’s death, beguins on the streets of Languedoc were telling those who would listen that ”Antichrist is here! » 39. Peter Olivi wrote his Commentary on the Apocalypse in Latin, but the beguins were primarily familiar with an anonymous vernacular translation that circulated widely in Languedoc. No copy of it has survived, but there is a written process of condemnation from before the end of 1319 written by two theologians at the papal curia that allows us to get a glimpse of its contents 40. The vernacular version of the commentary was clearly not quite the same as the original as it appears to have been abridged in some places, and rewritten in others. Most especially, the translator appears to have brought Olivi’s commentary up to date by further interpreting Olivi’s assertions and applying them to current events. It is helpful here to think of the Book of Revelation as a script for the end times. The book is complex and oblique, but at its essence, it has a plot with good guys and bad guys. When any religious group enters what I call ’Apocalyptic Time’, it is as if the movie has begun. They must read the script, the Book of Revelation, and interpret it wisely in order to understand the events that are transpiring and decide how they should act. It is vitally important to get these things right – not an easy task since the enemies are deceptive and frequently appear to be what they are not. Peter Olivi’s Commentary on the Apocalypse was the beguins’ essential guide to the script of the End Times. The abridged, amended and brought-up-to-date Catalan translation the beguins read or heard was generally more radical than Olivi’s Latin text, and it named names 41. Olivi had been wary of being too specific. For example, Olivi writes frequently about the « carnal church », a church infected bottom to top by « great pride, luxury,

39 « Concilium Provinciale Anno M. CC. XCIX. Biterris » cit. (note 14). 40 J. M. POU Y MARTI, Visionarios, beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (siglos XIII-XV), Vich, 1930, pp. 483-512. 41 Catalan and Occitan were mutually understandable along the Mediterranean littoral in the fourteenth century. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 383 simony, litigation, fraud and rapine »: Babylon. But is this the same as the Roman church? Olivi is circumspect. David Burr has characterized Olivi’s position as cautious and probably deliberately unclear 42. The Catalan translation had no such qualms and clearly identifies the carnal church as the Roman church as it exists in the present moment. For example, Article 8 of the condemnation unambiguously refers to « the carnal church that maliciously and falsely fought and condemned the rule of blessed Francis », a clear reference to the Spiritual Franciscans’ present situation 43. Article 18 is even clearer: « that Babylon the Great Whore is Rome » 44. The inquisitorial testimony of the beguins precisely echoes the vernacular translation of the commentary. Amoda Sepiani, a beguine from Narbonne, explicitly said she had heard « some books » read in the context of beguin meetings in which it was said that « the Roman Church was called Babylon the Great Whore » 45. Others, such as Raimon d’Antusan of Cintegabelle, were more prolix: « the Roman Church was that Babylon, the great whore, sitting on the beast of seven heads and ten horns, drunk with the blood of the saints ». It is most likely that at least one of the books Amoda heard was the vernacular commentary, and Raimon confessed to having had a copy that he frequently read to others 46. In his catalogue of the errors of the beguins, Bernard Gui notes that the

42 D. BURR, Olivi’s peaceable kingdom: a reading of the apocalypse commentary, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 94-5. 43 POU Y MARTI, Visionarios cit. (note 40), p. 486. 44 Ibid., p. 506. 45 Testimonies from the General Sermons of Carcassonne are in PARIS, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Doat 27 and 28, seventeenth-century transcriptions of the lost originals. They are also more conveniently available in online transcriptions by J. DUVERNOY as Les registres DDD et GGG de l’inquisition de Carcassonne at http://jean.duvernoy.free.fr/ text/listetexte.htm For testimonies that have not been published elsewhere, I will provide references to the Duvernoy transcription. DUVERNOY, Le registre DDD de l’inquisition de Carcassonne, p. 103. 46 BERNARD GUI, Livre des sentences ed cit. (note 13), 2, p. 1348. 384 LOUISA A. BURNHAM beguins believed that the whole of the Roman church was « Babylon the great whore of whom St. John spoke in the Apocalypse » 47. Another example of the radicalization of Olivi’s commentary is the identification of Antichrist. Olivi distinguishes between an initial mystical Antichrist and a later great Antichrist. The elect were first to undergo persecution under the mystical Antichrist, and while Olivi seems to imply that the mystical Antichrist could be a pope or pseudopope, he does not specify any pope in particular 48. It was a commonplace among the beguins, however, to call Pope John XXII the mystical Antichrist, persecutor of the just. A beguine from Narbonne named Berengaria Donas got a book « of the doctrine of Brother Peter Johannis » from a beguine friend and had frequently had it read to her (she was not literate). This book was surely the Commentary on the Apocalypse, in translated form. In that book, she heard that Pope John was the mystical Antichrist, and that « he had lost all of his papal power when he condemned or had condemned the four friars minor condemned at Marseille and burned » 49. The beguins brought the idea of a mystical Antichrist into the realities of their times and identified him with the individual who appeared to be the chief architect of their persecution, Pope John XXII. As the Church’s suppression made the beguins feel more and more besieged, interpretations such as these were treated as if they were as canonical as Olivi’s original texts. With Olivi’s prophetic warnings coming true all around them, they venerated him personally even more. The Spiritual Franciscans and beguins had called Olivi an « uncanonized saint » ever since his death, but with the persecution came claims of an even greater place for him in the scheme of apocalyptic history: Olivi was none other than the Angel of Revelation 10:2, the « angel whose face shone like the sun ». The text of Olivi’s Latin commentary, of course, claims no such

47 BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur ed. cit. (note 9) , 1, 142. 48 BURR, Spiritual franciscans cit. (note 3), p. 77. 49 The beginning of the persecution on May 7, 1318. Testimony of Berengaria Donas, DUVERNOY, Le registre DDD ed. cit. (note 46), p. 97. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 385 thing. Following St. Bonaventure, Olivi identified the angel of Revelation 7:2, the angel of the sixth seal, with St. Francis 50. More daringly, however, he equated the angel of Revelation 10 with the angel of Revelation 7:2 and declared that they were both St. Francis. 51 Since the angel of Revelation 10 is holding a book, Olivi describes Francis in this context as a preacher and teacher, one whose life of perfect conformity with the Gospel has modeled a moral rule and example for his disciples to follow in the sixth period of apocalyptic history. The open book itself was both the Gospel and Francis’s Rule for the Franciscans 52. Moreover (and here Olivi’s prose takes on a lyrical tone), « his face was like the sun because in the singular contemplation of Christ and his evangelical life, Francis’s appearance was neither defective like the moon nor weak like a star or a light at night, but his was the appearance of the sun and the light of day, aflame and illuminated, illuminating and inflaming » 53. For the beguins, however, this angel represented Olivi himself,

50 BURR, Olivi’s peaceable kingdom cit. (note 42), pp. 36-44; pp. 119-121. 51 As Olivi observes, other commentators such as Richard of St. Victor identified the angel with Christ. He does not deny this, but declares that « nevertheless, he has ordained angelic spirits and angelic humans beneath himself to become ministers of illumination to those beneath themselves » and it is in this sense that « one may rightly understand something similar regarding the proposition that this angel is ’other’ than Christ ». In this, he also follows Joachim. PETRUS IOHANNIS OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalipsim, ed. W. LEWIS, St. Bonaventure, NY, 2015, paragraphs 10:4 and 10:5, p. 450. I am very grateful to Warren Lewis for sharing his translation of parts of the Lectura prior to its publication and for his interpretative help with these passages. I have also consulted the online version of the Lectura, ed. A. FORNI, 2009, updated 2015, available at http://www.danteolivi.com. All references to the Lectura are to the Lewis edition, but I have also provided paragraph numbers for easier reference to the Forni edition. 52 « It is also to be understood that just as our most holy father Francis, after Christ and under Christ, is the prime and principal founder and initiator and exemplar of the sixth stage and of its evangelical rule, so is he, after Christ, designated first by this angel » and « And he had in hand, that is, in full operation and in full possession and power, a little, open scroll of the gospel of Christ, as is clear from the Rule which he observed and wrote, and from the evangelical state that he instituted ». Ibid., paragraphs 10:6 and 10:9, pp. 452-453. 53 Ibid., paragraph 10:9, p. 453. 386 LOUISA A. BURNHAM as is made clear by the testimonies that specifically describe Olivi as « the angel whose face shone like the sun ». We know that calling Olivi the angel whose face shone like the sun long predated the inquisitors’ interest in the Spiritual Franciscans and beguins, since a 1311 polemic letter by Raymond of Fronsac and Bonagratia of Bergamo already records that Olivi’s followers had declared that « brother Peter was that angel of whom it is said in the Apocalypse that he came after the angel who had the sign of the living God » 54. In beguin circles, such a statement came with apocalyptic authority, appearing openly as it did in the Catalan translation and adaptation of Olivi’s commentary: « Peter Johannis [is] that mighty angel coming down from heaven, because among all the other doctors, to him alone has the truth of scripture and the knowledge or intelligence of the Apocalypse been opened » 55. The testimony of two beguins echoes this phrase quite precisely. Peire Gastaut of Belpech, for example, reported in 1322 that he had read (he was the son of a notary and thus probably literate) and heard amongst beguins that Olivi was « spiritually that angel of whom it is writing in the Apocalypse that his face was like the sun and who had an open book in his hand, because of all the other doctors, it was to him that the truth of Christ and the knowledge of the book of the Apocalypse had been revealed » 56. Peire Tort of Montréal confessed the same thing 57. Bernard Gui listed it amongst the beguin errors he recorded, and suggested it as a question to ask suspected beguins 58. This belief was part of the textual canon of ideas in the beguin community. Radical as it was, the switch from St. Francis to Olivi as the angel of Rev. 10:2 was not, however, entirely without textual precedent,

54 The « angel with the sign of the living God » is the angel of Rev. 7:2, and thus Olivi is the angel of Rev. 10. BURR, Spiritual franciscans cit. (note 3), p. 94; Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 2, p. 371. 55 POU Y MARTI, Visionarios cit. (note 40), p. 501. 56 BERNARD GUI, Livre des sentences ed. cit. (note 13), 2, p. 1396. 57 Ibid., p. 1412. 58 BERNARD GUI, Manuel de l’inquisiteur ed. cit. (note 9), 1, pp. 138-140 and p. 166. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 387 albeit oblique. In his Commentary on the Apocalypse, Olivi had quoted Joachim’s suggestion that the angel could also « spiritually » represent not only Christ or a single great preacher, but also « many spiritual men » of the future 59. Olivi’s followers appear to have made the leap from the abstract to the particular and declared him to be one of those spiritual men, and thus they were able to declare him to be the mighty angel coming down from heaven. Let us examine that angel more closely in Revelation 10 itself. It is easy for modern scholars to read this strange, complicated and frequently fantastical book dispassionately, but in the context of Apocalyptic Time, it had an emotionally compelling predictive power for believers. The angel coming down from heaven is myste- riously wrapped in a cloud but has a blazing countenance, a head crowned with a rainbow, and feet that are pillars of flame. His stride spans the whole world, earth and sea, and as he descends, he cries out with a voice loud as a lion. The angel of Rev. 10:2 is mighty indeed. In addition to his awesome appearance, this angel holds an open book in his hand. A voice from Heaven tells John to approach and to take and eat the book. The angel warns John that the book will be both sweet and bitter, sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly - and when he eats the book and absorbs it, he finds it so 60. At the very beginning of the chapter and in agreement with tradition, Olivi identifies the book as the « gospel of Christ ». But if the Spiritual Franciscans and beguins understood the angel to be Peter Olivi instead of Francis, what book did they believe he was holding? At one level, it surely was Holy Scripture, but that is not

59 PETRUS IOHANNIS OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalipsim ed. cit. (note 51), paragraph 10:5, p. 451. 60 Rev. 10:9. The image of the book is drawn from Ezekiel 3:1-3, in which the Lord gives the prophet his commission to preach to the people of Israel by handing him and telling him to eat a book that tastes like honey in the mouth. « Eat this book, and go speak to the children of Israel. And I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that book: And he said to me: Son of man, thy belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book, which I give thee. And I did eat it: and it was sweet as honey in my mouth ». 388 LOUISA A. BURNHAM quite all. In the same passage, Olivi had also evoked the Franciscan Rule (and Francis’s embodiment of the Rule in his holy life) as part of his identification of Francis with the angel, and the double meaning of the book is at least implied 61. But it was the writings of Peter Olivi, writings that the beguins frequently described as « holy, true and catholic », that had provided the beguins their most important interpretations of the book of Revelation, their indispensable guide to the difficult times to come. As Peire Tort had heard in a public sermon before the persecution began, « the doctrine and writings [of Peter Olivi] were more important for these end times than those of any other teacher besides the apostles and the evangelists » 62. This book, this precious text, had also been given to them to devour and to act upon. Olivi’s commentary on Rev. 10:9 lingers nearly sensuously on the eating and what he calls the book’s « spiritual taste »: « the angel wants the spiritual meaning and understanding of the little book to be chewed and savored through white-hot affection and the all-consuming appetite of devotion to the marrow ». But after the sweet comes the sourness in the stomach, a bitterness that represents suffering because of the actions required in order that the teachings may be fulfilled. Olivi maintains that transforming the teachings of the book will require more suffering than just an upset stomach: « a groaning and affliction of spirit » 63. And as the next verse of Revelation makes clear, the apocalyptic script requires John to do exactly what the angel commands: eat the book, act on its sweet teachings, and expect to suffer for it 64.

61 « And he [Francis as the angel] had in hand, that is, in full operation and in full possession and power, a little book of the gospel of Christ, as is clear from the Rule which he observed and wrote, and from the evangelical state that he instituted ». OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalipsim ed. cit (note 51), paragraph 10:11, p. 453. 62 BERNARD GUI, Livre des sentences ed. cit. (note 13), 2, p. 1412. 63 PETRUS IOHANNIS OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalipsim ed. cit. (note 51), paragraphs 10:34 and 10:35, p. 468. 64 « And I took the book from the hand of the angel, and ate it up: and it was in my mouth, sweet as honey: and when I had eaten it, my belly was bitter » (Rev. 10:10). THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 389

The nature of the action the angel requires is made clear in the final verse of Revelation 10: « and he said to me: thou must prophesy again to many nations, and peoples, and tongues, and kings. » Just as the angel said « eat! » he also demanded « prophesy! » The hearers of this powerful message must go out and tell the world the truth about these terrible times, no matter the consequences. It is here that we must exercise our powers of imagination and put ourselves in the place of any beguin in Languedoc at the beginning of the fourteenth century hearing this chapter read. You know that Peter Olivi is both a saint and now an angel, a key player in these terrifying end times. You have been told that your only hope to faithfully navigating those times is to follow his teachings. His face shines like the sun, and he is a mighty angel who hands you a book, the book that is both sweet and bitter. And then he says to you: Prophesy! Go out and spread the word to nations and peoples and tongues and kings! What else could you do but answer his call? The specific words of Revelation might even have had additional resonance for any beguin whose spiritual world had also been shaped by Olivi’s other texts. In the treatise on giving thanks to God we examined above (Modus quomodo), Olivi had emphasized that the Holy Spirit given to the apostles allowed them to transcend their timidity and shyness and no longer fear kings, tyrants or emperors ». They themselves were to be the « true disciples », « full of the spirit of poverty, the spirit of humility, the spirit of justice, patience and charity » who would fight for truth in these perilous times 65. The End Times were no time for being timid, but were a time to stand up and be counted among the Just, who would, as Olivi had said in Exercens, « banish, lift, lighten and eliminate the shadows of the world » with their martyrdom 66. The identification of Peter Olivi with the angel whose face shines like the sun and a book in his hand was a call to religious intransigence and martyrdom. One hundred and two followed that call all the way to death on the stake 67.

65 KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), pp. 14-15. 66 VATTERONI, La version occitane de l’Exercens cit. (note 27), p. 191. 67 See BURNHAM, So great a light cit. (note 1), pp. 189-193. 390 LOUISA A. BURNHAM

They had begun their spiritual journey for the love of God and a desire to follow Christ. But throughout the 1310s and 1320s, each of the beguins had to make an individual choice about this new, apocalyptic command to prophesy. Most of them backed down, telling the inquisitors that whatever they had heard or believed previously, they now accepted the correction of the Church and repented. Some pretended to repent, but were later caught aiding and abetting those on the run. Some escaped. But a significant number were intransigent, and smoke rose from their pyres across Languedoc from 1318 until the last auto-da-fé of 1329.

CONCLUSION

Let us return briefly to the one beguine whose spiritual world we can enter more directly, Prous Boneta of Montpellier, burned in Carcassonne in 1328 68. As David Burr has noted, Prous « provides us with an extreme version of the Olivi cult » 69. Prous’s deposition is far more detailed than others in the inquisitorial registers of Carcassonne, amounting to well over 7000 words, and the scribe noted that she spoke spontaneously, without being questioned. It appears that she regarded her interrogation as an opportunity to tell her own story and to preach her particular message, a message that involves Peter Olivi at nearly every turn.

68 See ibid., pp. 140-161; BURNHAM, The visionary authority of Na Prous Boneta , in Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248-1298): Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société cit. (note 10), pp. 140-161; D. BURR, Na Prous Boneta and Olivi, in Collectanea franciscana, 67 (1997), pp. 477-500; and BURR, Spiritual franciscans cit. (note 3), pp. 230-237. The title « Na » was an Occitan honorific frequently given to women who had taken religious vows. Her deposition before the inquisitors of Carcassonne was published in W. H. MAY, The confession of Prous Boneta, heretic and heresiarch, in Essays in medieval life and thought, ed. A. P. EVANS, New York, 1955, pp. 3-30, but is now available on the web, DUVERNOY, Le registre DDD ed. cit. (note 46). All references are to the latter edition. The translation into English I have used by David Burr is online at http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/naprous.asp 69 BURR, Spiritual franciscans cit. (note 3), p. 231. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 391

Prous’s religious life practically began with Olivi, because as she told inquisitors, she had made a vow of chastity nine months before visiting Olivi’s shrine in Narbonne, where she had her first mystical experience (she was eight or nine years old). Her more mature revelations did not begin until Good Friday 1321 (at the age of approximately 25), and while those revelations are fascinating in many ways, it is her role for Olivi that interests us here. Like other beguins, Prous identified Olivi as the angel of Revela- tion 10:2, the angel of the shining face and proffered book, and it is his writings (scriptura) that concern her the most 70. He had written them with the « power of the Holy Spirit », and believing in them was absolutely necessary for salvation since he had « discovered all the words of the saints and conveyed them in his writings » 71. The pope had damned himself and the entire Church by destroying them since they were « written by the hand of divinity » 72. At their destruction, even the sacrament of the altar lost its power 73. In one of her most potent images, she made the writings themselves into actors in the apocalyptic drama: just as Christ had done battle with the devil, so Peter Olivi’s inspired writings « battled with Antichrist in single combat » 74. Prous went further, placing herself alongside Olivi in this cosmic and ultimate battle. Her most outrageous claim was that just as the Virgin had given birth to God the Son, she herself would give birth to God the Holy Spirit to begin a new age 75. She was not to be alone in her special place at the crux of history, however, because she and Olivi were an inseparable pair. Hitherto, she said, God had ruled the Church by means of two fleshly bodies, Christ

70 Burr suggests that while Prous may also be speaking about the entire corpus of his writings, she is probably referring most especially to the Lectura super Apocalipsim. Ibid., p. 231. 71 DUVERNOY, Le registre DDD ed. cit. (note 46), pp. 32, 30. 72 Ibid., p. 28. 73 Ibid., p. 34. 74 Ibid., p. 31. 75 Ibid., p. 26. 392 LOUISA A. BURNHAM and the Virgin, but from now on, he would rule the Church with two spiritual bodies, Peter Olivi’s and her own « for the spirit of friar Peter of John and the spirit of Na Prous are one and the same » 76. She would never have wished to say such things about herself, she said, would rather have been cut in pieces with swords, or have lightning from heaven fall upon her and lay her stretched out upon the ground » than to speak of it, but God had commanded her to speak and so she must 77. It was absolutely crucial: « you shall be the beginning and cause of the salvation of all human nature or humankind through these words I make you speak », he had said to her 78. Prous’s idiosyncratic apocalyptic script took her far beyond where Olivi had gone and where his other beguin followers had taken him. It is unique and it is breathtakingly bold. In her pious life and spiritual formation, however, Prous had much in common with the other beguins of Languedoc. She had certainly honed her spiritual yearnings through Olivi’s opuscula in addition to her study of the Commentary on the Apocalypse. Her heart had died for love of God in the twenty-eight steps of the Informatio. She had used the seven tools of effective spiritual study, sought the seven affections to be close to God, and had swelled with a desire to act on that love as the Exercens had instructed her. Her passionate love for God had echoed Olivi in Modus quomodo, his prayer of thanksgiving, and found her spirit emboldened like the apostles at Pentecost. She would not be afraid of « kings, tyrants or emperors » and would have no more fear under « blows, under torments [or] even death itself » 79. Fearless martyrdom was her mission: « and having been warned, asked, and exhorted many times in judicial proceedings and on other occasions to revoke and abjure all the things reported above as erroneous and heretical, she persevered in them, claiming

76 Ibid., p. 32. 77 Ibid., pp. 34-35. 78 Ibid., p. 36. 79 KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), pp. 14-15. THE ANGEL WITH THE BOOK 393 that in the aforesaid, as in the truth, she wishes to live and die » 80. Like the other beguini combusti, Prous was inspired by Olivi’s teaching and writings to take her message all the way to the stake. Prous had taken the book the Angel offered to her, swallowed it, embraced the sweet and the bitter alike, and had gone out to prophesy more brazenly than any other. The first passion of the beguins of Languedoc was to follow God in the best ways they could imagine: poverty, humility, shunning vices and embracing virtues. Through his writings, Olivi the spiritual advisor told them that their hearts should burn to follow Christ, and so they did. He told them to do penance and to thank God, and they did that, too. Olivi the friar and exegete told them to honor and practice evangelical poverty, and they did. The Apocalyptic times they believed they were in, however, forced them to answer what they saw as Olivi the prophet’s call to passionate action, even if it led them to the stake. Their painful deaths would make them martyrs in Heaven, they believed. Olivi had written about St. Francis that « his was the appearance of the sun and the light of day, aflame and illuminated, illuminating and inflaming » and this was the way the beguins imagined Olivi himself 81. Olivi’s was the face that was both alight and illuminated, aflame and inflaming, and his was the book that guided them. In Olivi, they were in the inspirational company of an angel, one of the « superior soldiers » of Olivi’s Miles armatus who would help them win their battles 82. The beguins had followed the Angel with the Book, and in the terrible times of persecution, they learned both the bitter and the sweet. Boldly and with fortitude, they had heeded their Angel’s call to « prophesy! ».

80 DUVERNOY, Le registre DDD ed. cit. (note 46), p. 36. 81 PETRUS IOHANNIS OLIVI, Lectura super Apocalipsim ed. cit. (note 51), paragraph 10:9, p. 453. 82 KARRIS, Spiritual warfare cit. (note 27), p. 114. bianca