The topic for this Symposium at Washington Theological Union in 2009 was chosen well in advance of the world economic crisis which developed in 2008-2009, but with that reality the theme was infused with additional significance. While plans to gather academics for a thought-provoking investigation into Franciscan traditions involving poverty continued, their presentations were balanced with insights from activists to bring the past into dialogue with the present in order to help us understand how we might think about our resources.As the papers in this volume demonstrate, Franciscan poverty has and continues to develop and to elicit new forms in the life of the Church. This 2009 Symposium has raised many important questions and possibilities as to how Franciscans can and should use money that will be valuable for the Franciscan family to consider. Even so, the issues relating to prosperity still need further consideration. When one studies the history of the divisions of the Franciscan communities, it seems that they arise out of prosperity rather than poverty. How Franciscans respond to prosperity seems to play a significant role in how Franciscans respond to each other.In 2001, the English Speaking Conference of the orders of Friars Minor (ESC), in collaboration with Franciscan theological schools of the English-speaking world, committed itself to promoting the renewal of Franciscan theological and intellectual formation among the members of the Franciscan family. This promotion as a twofold purpose: to help members understand the beauty and wealth of the Franciscan intellectual tradition and to extend to the whole Franciscan family and to society the intellectual heritage of the Franciscan school so that it can support effective evangelization. This series of publications aims to carry forward this purpose. It is hoped that, with hope, joy and enthusiasm, Franciscans can once again look at their intellectual history, make it part of their lives, and prepare to become better proclaimers of the Word to the world.

Poverty and Prosperity: Franciscans and the Use of Money

Marie Dennis

C. Colt Anderson

Steven McMichael

Jane Kopas

Michael F. Cusato

Davod Burr

Franciscan Inst Pubs

As thirteenth-century urban populations increased, the friars, entrusted by the Church with the ministry of preaching, naturally needed to go where the people were. At the same time they needed to honor their way of life, which required them to live prayerfully in fraternities, yet not settle down permanently in stable religious houses after the monastic model. Cusato and Warner present issues arising from this tension and look at how the Order did, and still does, attempt to resolve it or at least live creatively with it.

True Followers of Justice: Identity, Insertion and Itienerancy Among the Elderly Franciscans

O.F.M.

Keith Warner

<p>At the heart of the struggles and tensions of the early Franciscan movement, contending narratives vied with each other for a hearing and a following within medieval Franciscan history. That struggle was essentially between two different visions of Franciscan life. The earlier minorite vision of Franciscan life was sensitive to and critical of the socio-economic realities operative in the Spoleto Valley at the turn of the thirteen century; friars desired to live with and be at the service of the minores of their time. Another vision preferred a more institutionalized form of charism, stressing the apostolic (and predominantly clerical) usefulness of the Franciscan order to Church and society through the excellence of its preaching, acuity of its learning and radicality of its asceticism., These two version of the Franciscan charism, while complementary expressions of the vision of Francis, were not easily reconcilable or compatible with each other Both represented spiritual visions, but the social formation and location of the friars from which each of these visions originated were not the same, thus conditioning their contrasting perspectives on the forma vitae and explaining at least some of the differences and resulting struggles. This volume gathers together and updates previously published essays on topics related to the contested story of early Franciscan history (1205-1239), treating subjects such as the Franciscan approach to power and authority, the attitude of Francis towards Ismam and the Crusades, the Privilege of Poverty, the connection between the two versions of the Epoistola ad fideles, the relationship between the chartula and stigmata of Francis, the centrality of the Sacrum commercium, and the fall from grace of Elias of Cortona.</p>

The Early Franciscan Movement

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Books by Michael F. Cusato