SERVASANTO DA FAENZA: PREACHING AND PENANCE IN THE WORK OF A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCISCAIN By RAYMOND JOSEPH DANSEREAU A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History. Written under the direction of Samantha Kelly And approved by __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________________ New Brunswick, NJ January 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Servasanto da Faenza: Preaching and Penance in the Work of a Thirteenth-Century Franciscan By RAYMOND JOSEPH DANSEREAU Dissertation Director: Samantha Kelly My dissertation, Servasanto da Faenza: Preaching and Penance in the Work of a Thirteenth Century Franciscan, uses a careful study of the sermons and preaching material of the Franciscan Servasanto da Faenza in order to shed light on the Franciscans’ role as preachers and confessors and on the place of penance in their ministry, which played a formative role in the views of Christianity of their lay audiences. His preaching material shows that penance was a significant concern and that it was central to his conception of his and his fellow friars’ mission to the laity of medieval Europe. For him the task of penance was not purely negative, that is, to wipe away sin. Rather, it was also positive, to lay the foundation for the growth in virtue that would let one “see” the highest good, God. Partly, as a result of this, Servasanto clearly preached penance in largely a positive way. To him confession was less about going to a harsh judge than going to skilled, sensitive, and discrete doctor of souls who would seek to cure the person ii sick with sin. Indeed, ultimately, penance was less an act of judgment than an act of love, as one should be driven by penance by a sorrow for sin that sprang from a sincere love of God. The positive nature of this preaching, its ubiquity, and the well-known popularity of the Franciscans as preachers and confessors, among other factors, suggests that previous tendencies to see medieval penance as part of a story of surveillance and repression should be revised. The laity were not helpless objects of social control terrified by a harsh and threatening penitential regime; rather, penance offered significant opportunity for lay choice and agency, supporting the work of popular friars like Servasanto and choosing them as preachers and confessors. iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank my dissertation committee, John Coakley, James Masschaele, Paola Tartakoff and especially my doctoral adviser Samantha Kelly, for their generous willingness to read and comment on multiple drafts of this project. I would also like to acknowledge those at previous universities who have had a significant impact on my own studies including Patrick Nold and John Monfasani. I thank the staff at both Rutgers Library and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary for their assistance throughout my doctoral studies especially, James Niessen and Thomas Izbecki. Finally, I wish to thank my family: my parents, Raymond and Marygrace, for their love and support throughout my education and, most of all, my wife Erin for her patience, love, and support. iv Contents Abstract of the Dissertation ................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations: ........................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Servasanto da Faenza: Life, Works, and Historical Background.................... 28 Chapter 2: Servasanto da Faenza’s Interest in Preaching Penance ................................... 68 Chapter 3: A Portrait of Penance .................................................................................... 107 Chapter 4: A Loving Penitent, Loving Penitence: Penance as an Act of Love in the Preaching of Servasanto da Faenza................................................................................. 158 Chapter 5: Painful Penance, Penitential Pain: Penance, the Value of Pain and the Problem of Suffering....................................................................................................... 195 Chapter 6: Penance and the “Oppression Thesis”........................................................... 236 APPENDIX ONE: Works and Manuscripts .................................................................. 261 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 269 v Abbreviations De exemplis- Liber de exemplis naturalibus De virtutibus- Liber de virtutibus et de vitiis NHP- New History of Penance Penitentia- Summa de Penitentia ST- Summa Theologie AFP- Archivum fratrum praedicatorum AFH- Archivum franciscanum historicum RLS- Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones Manuscripts of Servasanto’s Works Cited De exemplis: Ms Firenze conv. soppr. G.I.695 De virtutibus: Ms Firenze conv. soppr. E.VI.1046 Penitentia: Ms Firenze conv. soppr. G.VI.773 De communi sanctorum: Vat. Lat. 1261 Dominicales: Vat Lat. 5933 De sanctis: Vat. Lat. 9884 vi List of Illustrations: Figure 1: Late 14th century. Panel Painting by Antonio Veneziano, p.162 vii 1 Introduction This project studies the sermons and preaching material of the Franciscan preacher and confessor, Servasanto da Faenza,1 in order to shed light on the role of the mendicant friars as preachers and confessors in late medieval society. The mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans, founded by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, have long been a major focus in scholarship on the medieval Church and its role in society. They have also been a popular subject of study in recent years with the appearance of books on the history of the orders,2 their preaching,3 involvement in combating heresy,4 apostolic poverty controversies,5 and biographies of notable individuals6 as well as other aspects of the orders’ histories. Indeed, whole journals, including the Archivum franciscanum historicum and the Archivum fratrum praedicatorem, are devoted to the study of these mendicant orders and deal with a wide 1 Livario Oliger OFM, “Servasanto da Faenza OFM et il suo Liber de virtutibus et vitiis,” in Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, Per la storia della teologia e della filosophia (Rome, 1924). For more on Servasanto see Chapter 1. 2 John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Michael Robson, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages, (Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2006); C.H. Lawrence, The Friars: the Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society, (London; NY: Longman, 1994). 3 David d’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985; Ibid., Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Christopher T. Maier, Preaching the Crusades: Mendicant Friars and the Cross in the Thirteenth Century, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Katherine Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 4 Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 5 Patrick Nold, Pope John XXII and His Franciscan Cardinal: Bertrand de la Tour and the Apostolic Poverty Controversy, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003; David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after St. Francis, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001). 6 Augustine Thompson, Francis of Assisi: a New Biography, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2012). 2 range of subjects related to their history. The orders, especially the Dominican order, were founded in part to combat the popular heresies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.7 They also served to bolster the range and authority of the popes, who found in them a corps of dependable and well- trained agents, repaying papal protection with loyal service,8 and who could implement his policies throughout western Christendom through an order answerable only to him. In them, the Pope further found loyal and well-trained agents to staff the medieval inquisitions. Mendicant involvement in inquisition, especially the role of the Dominican order, has been much studied to the point that some have referred to “the inseparable identification of Dominicans and inquisition.”9 This identification has been repeated in scholarly studies and popular culture10 such that to think of the Dominicans almost is to picture an order of inquisitors.11 This identification has recently been studied in major international conferences, including one in February 2002, with many of its papers recently having been published as Praedicatores, Inquisitores: