Christopher MacEvitt - The Martyrdom of the Franciscans: Islam, the Papacy, and an Order in Conflict

The Martyrdom of the Franciscans

THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES

Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor

Edward Peters, Founding Editor

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The MARTYRDOM of the FRANCISCANS

Islam, the Papacy, and an Order in Conflict

Christopher MacEvitt

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright 2020 University of Pennsylvania Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: MacEvitt, Christopher Hatch, 1972 author.

Title: The martyrdom of the Franciscans : Islam, the papacy, and an order in conflict / Christopher MacEvitt.

Other titles: Middle Ages series.

Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2020] | Series: The Middle Ages series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019030172 | ISBN 9780812251937 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: FranciscansHistoryTo 1500. | MartyrdomChristianityHistory. | Christianity and other religionsIslam. | Christian martyrsIslamic countries. | Church historyMiddle Ages, 6001500.

Classification: LCC BX3606.3 .M33 2020 | DDC 272dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030172

To Pamela, my partner in every adventure,
and Evander, whose arrival has made every day
a voyage to a land of wonder

CONTENTS

Chapter 1. I Acquired the Martyrs:
Bishops, Kings, and the Victory of the Martyrs

Chapter 2. Do Not Fear Those Who Kill the Body:
The Desire for Martyrdom in the Thirteenth Century

Chapter 3. To Sustain the Frail:
Franciscan Evangelization in the Thirteenth Century

Chapter 4. Their Blood Has Been Spilled Everywhere:
Evangelization, Martyrdom, and Christian Triumphalism in the Early Fourteenth Century

Chapter 5. The Infidels Learned Nothing:
Poverty, Rejection of the World, and the Creation of the Franciscan Passio

Chapter 6. For the Damnation of Infidels:
Martyrdom and History in the Chronicle of the Twenty-Four Ministers-General

NOTE ON NAMES , TRANSLATIONS , AND TRANSLITERATIONS

Aldous Huxley once wrote that too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. While he was not addressing the vagaries of spelling conventions, it is an apt summary of my own approach to spelling personal names and names of geographic locations. When translating personal names from Latin, I have generally used the vernacular version of the name most common in the land of the persons birth: thus, Giovanni for Italians, Jean for those from northern France, Johan for those from southern France. For very well-known figures, such as Francis of Assisi and popes both famous and obscure, I have used the English versions of their names. For the transliteration of Arabic names, I have followed the conventions of the Encyclopedia of Islam. I have left Arabic titles and names from Latin sources in the original; thus Muhammad is spelled a number of different ways, as is q. Names of geographic locations are generally given with both the orthography from the origin text, and the modern name, again with the exception of those that are very well-known; Cairo simply remains Cairo.

FIGURE 1. Locations of Franciscan martyrdoms in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Central Asia, and India. Map created by Cecilia Gaposchkin.

Introduction

For a man notorious for nepotism, Pope Sixtus IV (147184) spent a surprising amount of time thinking about selflessness and sacrifice. They were the premier virtues of the martyr, and Sixtus thought more about martyrs than any of his papal predecessors had for two hundred and twenty years. Sixtus canonized a group of five Franciscan martyrs in 1481, and considered canonizing another martyr in 1479; the last time a pope had recognized a martyr as a saint was in 1253. The five friarsBeraldo, Pietro, Otto, Accursio, and Adiutohad died in 1220 in Marrakesh, executed by the Almohad caliph for insulting Islam. Not only were the Morocco Five the first Franciscan martyrs to be so honored, but they were also the first Christians to be papally recognized for dying at the hands of Saracens, as medieval texts called the followers of Islam. Considered for canonization but passed over by Sixtus was Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy found dead on Easter Sunday (March 26)in 1475. The prince-bishop of Trent, Johannes Hinderbach, accused the Jewish community of torturing and killing Simon in order to use his blood to make matzoh for Passover. He arrested all the adult men of the small community, and executed seventeen of them; two more died in prison and only one adult man survived the tragedy. Such blood libel accusations had been leveled at Jewish communities as early as the twelfth century, and they grew more common in the early modern period.pope)but his cult was suppressed in 1965 in the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The would-be saints shared little in common other than their appearance at the court of Sixtus IV, separated as they were by centuries, geography, and their ages at the time of their deaths. What their stories did have in common was the potent appeal of a non-Christian persecutor. Though Christians often conflated Jews and Muslims (along with heretics) as fundamental threats to Christians, the Jewish and Muslim protagonists of the would-be martyrs stories were portrayed very differently and provoked surprisingly different responses from the pope, the public, and from the Franciscans. The appeal of the martyr sprang from the flexibility inherent in their stories. The martyr could be a surrogate for any Christian, and the persecutor could similarly represent anyone who oppressed or attacked the virtuous. Each martyrdom was in some way a reenactment of the first martyrdom, the passion of Jesus Christ. But it would be a mistake to see all martyrdoms as endless iterations of the same story; in each, the persons, their manner of dying, and their persecutors are shaped to address contemporary concerns. The account of the martyrs of Morocco was used to address Christian anxieties about Islamic victories over Christians, and also to address concerns more particular to the Franciscan orderthe contentious place poverty occupied as a sign of Franciscan piety but increasingly also as a sign of Franciscan heresy. The story of Simon spoke to Christian anxieties about the intermingling of Christians and non-Christians in the domestic and civic spaces of Christian-ruled cities, and their anxieties over economic changes, for which Jews were a convenient scapegoat.