To my family for giving me life and love - Bilkent University

and the laity. By uniting poverty with absolute obedience to the papacy under a
Rule bearing the papal seal, St Francis of Assisi provided the means for a large
number of clerics and lay people to embrace “evangelical poverty” without the
fear of heresy. The acquisition of learning, on the other hand, was not at all a
motivation present at the foundation of the order. Learning established itself only
slowly and gradually, though also constantly, within the Order, as the passion for
learning continued to grow in the world around it.
Voluntary poverty as a medieval movement did not just mean selling off
all one’s property, rather it was a self-deprivation of any kind of earthly power,
born as a reaction to the avarice of both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. 1
This was the true intention of Francis: to deny all earthly power by embracing
humility, simplicity, and material poverty. Thus, it was impossible to reconcile it
with scholastic learning, which was based on the bold assertion that the human
mind was capable of understanding the divine mystery through the application of
reason to the Gospel, therefore, stressing and exalting the intellectual power of
man. One who truly sought to dispossess himself of all claims to power and
strength, could not possibly boast of his powers of reasoning.
To the medieval onlooker watching Francis and his friends, who chose to
live in poverty for the love of God, this was not powerlessness but a
demonstration of an enormous spiritual power—the strength to refuse to satisfy
what seemed to be human weaknesses. It was exactly this which astounded
everyone. Poverty in itself was commonplace in the medieval world and too dull
1 R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1992), p. 103.
2