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

first four chapters, looks into the early days of the Order when evangelical
poverty was the essential creed, and traces the rise of learning up until the time of
“equality” between learning and poverty, that is, up to the time when an
uneducated lay friar and a learned friar with material ambitions were equally
despised. To be able to detect the changes over time, this part follows a
chronological order. It is, therefore, natural to start from the beginning to look for
the existence or absence of the basic elements which contributed to its growth.
Hence, the thesis begins with tackling the inevitable question of whether Francis
saw learning and organized study as part of the Franciscan vocation. This
examination concentrates on a number of common problems and arguments in
Franciscan historiography. It seems that the answer changes according to the
choice of primary source on the life of the saint. Hence, the reliability of the
sources is a subject of discussion. In connection with the examination of the Rule
as the first piece of legislation to define the Franciscan vocation, emphasis is
given to disputing the common tendency to interpret Francis’s emphasis on
preaching as an indirect approval of studying theology.
After establishing the initial status of learning in the spiritual and
constitutional milieu of the Order, I proceed to look into the actual developments,
the stepping stones which signalled and facilitated the foundation of an
educational system. Thus, the second chapter marks the transition from the
absence of learning to its first firm introduction into the Order. For this early
period, the significant events are the settlement of the Franciscans in the
university towns and the recruitment of schoolmen, for which the chronicles of
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