Customer Reviews

Olivi and Franciscan Poverty: The Origins of the Usus Pauper Controversy (Middle Ages Series)

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This is a book for specialists, written by an author who is probably the foremost expert on Olivi alive today (aside from writing three books and numerous articles on Olivi, he has also edited some of Olivi's writings -- including some of the more important *quaestiones* of his on *usus pauper*). Peter John Olivi (1248-98) was one of the 14th centuries brightest, as well as quite prolific, thinkers whose writings on Franciscan issues and whose apocalypticism formed the background to the still nebulous 'spiritual' Franciscans.

This book is concerned primarily with the last two decades of Olivi's life, which is the beginning of the *usus pauper* controversy. *Usus pauper*, i.e. 'minimal use', was a concept (probably) implicit in St Francis's view of the Franciscan lifestyle; in particular, Olivi is convinced that it is contained in the vow of poverty. Olivi's contemporaries agreed with Olivi that *usus pauper* is very important in the Franciscan lifestyle, but they could not agree that it is contained in the vow of poverty. The reasons as to why Olivi and many of his contemporaries disagreed sometimes seem obvious, sometimes obscure; e.g., can *usus pauper* be delineated in explicit terms so that one will always be able to tell where the line he's not to cross is? (Olivi says no.) The danger of this position is that many believed that violating a vow entailed a mortal sin -- so if one cannot recognize what does or does not violate *usus pauper*, he could commit a mortal sin without realizing it. (Olivi argues that a minor violation of *usus pauper* is only a venial sin.) Yet I am oversimplifying the whole controversy: those interested in this topic would be better served by actually reading the book.

In this book, Burr also tracks down the origins of the controversy and forms hypotheses as to why this debate took place so long after the Franciscan rule was appoved (1223); toward the end of the work, he notes several ways in which this controversy was to have important repercussions -- particularly in the second and third decades of the 14th century.

As I said before, this is a book with a very specific focus. In terms of achieving what he set out to do, Burr succeeds admirably. Yet this is a book that only a lay reader extremely interested in the history of the Franciscan order would want to read. For most people interested in this topic (yet aren't actually intending to, say, study the mendicant debate on poverty), much better, by far, would be his most recent book, *The Spiritual Franciscans* (2001) for a general, yet detailed, account of the rise and fall of the 'spirituals', in which Olivi (and *usus pauper*), amongst others, figures largely. Another excellent book on an overlapping topic is Malcolm Lambert's *Franciscan Poverty* (1998) -- though good luck ordering it through Amazon!