Abstract
There is a story about Francis and a theologian. One day a very learned Dominican theologian was visiting, and he asked Francis to explicate a troubling passage in Ezekiel: If you do not warn the wicked man about his wickedness, I will hold you responsible for his soul” (Eze. 3.18–20). The theologian is worried that since he doesn’t always scold the wicked, he may be responsible for their souls. Francis advises that the “brightness” of our own lives “will proclaim their wickedness to all of them.” His interpretation prompts the visiting scholar to say: “My brothers, the theology of this man, held aloft by purity and contemplation, is a soaring eagle, while our learning crawls on its belly on the ground.”1 But Francis was no theologian: he does not respond with theological discourse but exhorts his hearers to live a certain way, to transform their lives. The Dominican’s praise affirms that the practice of Christian spirituality trumps scholastic achievement. In the light of this story, it may seem rather risky for me to offer a theological remembrance of Brother Francis.
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Notes
Thomas of Celano, The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3 vols., Vol. II, The Founder, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, William J. Short (New York: New City Press, 2000), 103. The texts from which scholars draw their picture of Francis are famously problematic. What we have are largely hagiographical writings rooted in story and memory. For advice on reading the genre see William J. Short, “Hagiographical Method in Reading Franciscan Sources: Stories of Francis and Creatures in Thomas Celano’s First Life (58-61),” Greyfriars Review 4 (1990): 63–89.
Cynthia Hahn, “Picturing Text: Narrative in the Life of the Saints,” Art History 13 (1990): 1–33.
Jacques Dalarun, The Misadventures of Francis of Assisi: Toward a Historical Use of the Franciscan Legends, trans. Edward Hagman (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2002).
Celano, Remembrance, 102, 164, and 195. For comparisons see William R. Cook, “Fraternal and Lay Images of St. Francis,” in James Ross Sweeney and Stanly Chadrow, eds., Popes, Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 269–89
For a discussion of the historical relationship of Christian theology and spirituality see Keith J. Egan, “The Divorce of Spirituality from Theology,” in Patrick W. Carey and Earl C. Muller, eds., Theological Education in the Catholic Tradition: Contemporary Challenges (New York: Crossroad, 1997), pp. 296–307.
Robert Ellwood, The History and Future of Faith: Religion Past, Present, and to Come (New York: Crossroad, 1998).
J. Matthew Ashley, “The Turn to Spirituality? The Relationship between Theology and Spirituality,” in Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows, eds., The Study of Christian Spirituality (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 159–70.
For a sense of the theologian’s terrain see David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), esp. pp. 3–21.
Schubert M. Ogden, Doing Theology Today (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996).
Bernard Lonergan puts it in Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. xi
Michael F. Cusato, “To Do Penance/Facere poenitentiam,” The Cord 57 (February/March 2007): 9 [3-24].
See Raffaele Pazzelli, St. Francis and the Third Order (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1989), esp. pp. 120–37.
Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), p. 171.
“Messianic or ‘Bourgeois’ Religion?” in Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann, Faith and the Future: Essay on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), pp. 18–19.
Johann Baptist Metz, in John K. Downey, ed., Love’s Strategy: The Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), p. 175.
“This anamnestic reason we are seeking here wins its enlightened character and its legitimate universality when it knows itself to be guided by a specific memory, precisely by the memory of suffering: that is to say, not the form of a self-referential memory of suffering (the root of all conflicts!), but in the form of a memory of others’ suffering, in the form of a remembrance of the stranger’s suffering.” Johann Baptist Metz, “God: Against the Myth of the Eternity of Time,” in Tiemo Rainer Peters and Claus Urban, eds., The End of Time? The Provocation of Talking about God, trans. J. Matthew Ashley (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), p. 42.
Axel Honneth, Thomas McCarthy, Claus Offe, and Albrecht Wellmer, eds., Cultural-Political Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 189–196.
Johann Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 26.
Stories of Francis’s nudity are a good example of his “performance theology.” See Lawrence Cunningham, “Francis Naked and Clothed: A Theological Meditation,” in Jay M. Hammond, ed., Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography, and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents (New York: New City Press, 2004), 165–78.
For a critical treatment of this solidarity theme in Francis’s Canticle, see Roger D. Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature: Tradition and Innovation in Western Christian Attitudes toward the Environment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. pp. 125–37.
J. Matthew Ashley, “Environmental Concern and the ‘New Political Theology,’” in John K. Downey, Jürgen Manemann, and Steven T. Ostovich, eds., Missing God? Cultural Amnesia and Political Theology (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2006), pp. 139–58.
For a development of this notion that Francis holds a universal fraternity of all creatures, see Michael F. Cusato, “Hermitage or Marketplace: The Search for an Authentic Franciscan Locus in the World,” in True Followers of Justice: Identity, Insertion and Itinerancy among the Early Franciscans, Spirit and Life 10 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2000), pp. 1–30.
Political theology differs, as does Liberation Theology, from other theological methods in giving transformative praxis primacy as a criterion for truth. For a general introduction to this type of fundamental theology, see Dermot A. Lane, “The Move to Praxis in Theology,” in his Foundations for a Social Theology: Praxis, Process, and Salvation (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), pp. 6–31.
Matthew L. Lamb, “The Theory—Praxis Relationship in Contemporary Christian Theologies,” Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 31 (June 1976): 149–78.
Metz, Love’s Strategy, p. 47. One sees this commitment as well in his notion of narrative. See his “A Short Apology for Narrative,” in Johann Baptist Metz and Jean-Pierre Jossua, eds., The Crisis of Religious Language, Concilium 85 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), pp. 86–87
Celano, Life, 17 is a typical report: “while staying in the world and following its ways, he was also a helper of the poor. He extended a hand of mercy to those who had nothing and he poured out compassion for the afflicted.” Still, it has been argued recently that Francis was basically concerned with his own spiritual growth and identification with Christ rather than with truly helping the poor. See, e.g., Kenneth Baxter Wolfe, The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Michael F. Cusato, “The Mystical Experience Behind the Stigmatization Narrative,” in The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies, New Perspectives (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2006), pp. 29–74
For contemporary theological examples, see liberation theologian Jon Sobrino’s The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), esp. pp. 1–14
For a discussion of the stigmata as neither unheard of nor simply about a miracle, see Richard C. Trexler, “The Stigmatized Body of Francis of Assisi: Conceived, Processes, Disappeared,” in Frommigkeit im Mittelalter: politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, korperliche Ausdrucksformen (Munich: Fink, 2002), pp. 463–97.
E.g., the Misericordia confraternity, not friars went throughout the city assuaging need. The appealing notion of the friars focusing their lives on ministering directly to the poor has not been confirmed by contemporary scholars. See Lester K. Little, “Religion, Economy, and Saint Francis,” in Emily Albu Hanawalt and Carter Lindberg, eds., Through the Eye of the Needle: Judeo-Christian Roots of Social Welfare (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1994), pp. 147–63.
Johann Baptist Metz, “Messianic or ‘Bourgeois’ Religion?” in Johann Baptist Metz and Jürgen Moltmann, eds., Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), p. 20.
“Clearly, something more is required here, a radical process of repentance, a new relationship to social identity, property, and affluence in general, which will be very hard to establish.” Metz, Love’s Strategy, p. 26. For a discussion of the poverty of Francis and Clare as a both mysti-cal and political in this sense see Paul Lachance, “Mysticism and Social Transformation According to the Franciscan Way”, in Janet K. Ruffing, ed., Mysticism and Social Transformation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), pp. 55–75.
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© 2009 Cynthia Ho, Beth A. Mulvaney, and John K. Downey
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Downey, J.K. (2009). Canticle of Memory: Political Theology and Francis of Assisi. In: Ho, C., Mulvaney, B.A., Downey, J.K. (eds) Finding Saint Francis in Literature and Art. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623736_13
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