Postillators of Poverty and the Vita Apostolica: Matthean Exegesis on Apostolic Poverty in the Age of Pope John XXII.

摘要

This dissertation explores the methods of creation as well as the place of scriptural exegesis in the intellectual world of the fourteenth century after Pope John XXII's final decrees on the apostolic poverty controversy. In the thirteenth century, theologians considered the vita apostolica to be the most perfect form of Christian living that one could hope to achieve. Still, they had been content to leave the practical details of the vita apostolica undefined until its ambiguity produced violent discord between Christendom's two most recognizable mendicant orders. In the early fourteenth century, Pope John XXII sought to alleviate the conflict between the Dominican and Franciscan orders by removing discussions of the vita apostolica from the description of the apostles' physical way of life and placing it in the realm of their interior, spiritual disposition. While his authoritative pronouncements of 1322 and 1323, accompanied by subsequent administrative action, effectively ended the debilitating interfraternal tensions, John XXII's re-envisioning of the vita apostolica also redefined orthodox Biblical interpretation and ended a particularly fruitful interpretation of the vita apostolica that had been birthed in response to the twelfth-century commercial revolution.;Drawing upon five commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew – those of Nicholas Gorran, O.P.; Peter Olivi, O.F.M.; Jacques Fournier, O. Cist.; Nicholas of Lyra, O.F.M.; and Michael of Massa, O.E.S.A. – all of which were written within approximately fifty years of Pope John XXII's decrees on apostolic poverty, this study offers new perspectives on the relationships between religious reading, theological authority, and institutional structures within the late medieval Church. The contrasting scriptural exegesis of Gorran and Olivi demonstrate the Dominican and Franciscan theological discord prior to the fourteenth-century debates on apostolic poverty while that of Fournier, Lyra, and Massa reveal the nature of the hermeneutical shift that John XXII's decrees had introduced. Commentaries on the moment when the apostles began to follow Christ (Matt. 4:18-22), on Christ's prohibition against taking gold, silver, or money on the apostles' evangelical missions (Matt. 10:9-10), and on Christ's teachings on perfection (Matt. 19: 16-30) no longer freely discuss the apostolic life in terms of a measurable, physical expression of Christian perfection.