sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 4

Francis Young (ed.): The Franciscans in Medieval Bury St Edmunds

Contemporary Franciscan studies have, in general, focused on many different aspects of the friars' relationship with the papacy, government authorities, the secular clergy, and other mendicant groups such as the Dominicans. Scholars have written works that compare monastic and mendicant theology, but there is not enough written about the actual relationships between monks and friars.

These relationships have revealed the tension that has existed from the beginning of the Franciscan movement about the inner dimension of fraternal life - especially regarding the vow of poverty - and the Franciscan approach to ministry during the first hundred years of its existence. Many of these studies have focused on the friars in Italy, and Assisi in particular. We have seen scholars who have engaged also in the study of the friars who lived outside of Italy, especially those engaged in the study of the friars in medieval England. Scholars such as Andrew G. Little, John Moorman, and recently Michael Robson have shown us much about the similarities and differences between the friars living in England and those living in other places of medieval Europe.

The Grey Friars - as the Franciscans were named in England - first arrived in Dover on September 10, 1224, while Francis of Assisi was still alive. Young makes a significant comment in his introduction: "Although the Franciscans were not the first mendicant friars in England - they were preceded by the Dominicans in 1221 - their arrival would profoundly disrupt English religious life and radically challenge existing structures of authority, even though they were initially welcomed by some traditional monasteries". (8) This book is about how the friars challenged the religious structures of the Benedictine community in England. Francis Young presents us with a detailed study on the presence of the Franciscans in one location in England: Bury St Edmunds, a city very much dominated by the presence and authority of the Benedictine monastic community. There are two phases of Franciscan presence in this area: the first is the initial presence of the friars between the years 1233 and 1263, and then from 1265 to the English Reformation in the fifteenth century.

The introduction is a significant overview of what we can know from primary sources, previous scholarship, and archeology. Young presents the history of the friars' arrival in the area of Bury St Edmunds when this area was under the control of the Benedictine abbey, their initial difficulties with the Benedictine community as they set up a friary in the southern part of the city, and their departure and eventual return to the area north of St Edmunds.

The second and more lengthy section of the book (47-152) is broken up into two parts that present the primary documents - both the original Latin texts and translation - regarding the friars' presence in the Banleuca of St Edmunds (1233-1263) and their eventual more permanent presence north of the city at Babwell (1265-1538) that was outside the jurisdiction of the Benedictine Abbey. The claims made in the introduction are clearly supported by these documents.

This book is a must-read for those interested in early Franciscan history, especially since it teaches us about the history of the friars a long way from Italy. It tells us a lot about how the friars engaged in mendicant-papal relations as the friars quite often appealed to the papacy to ensure their active presence and ministry in Bury St Edmunds. The documentation of the book gives us a glimpse of the friars' internal and external life as they engaged in living and ministry in England. It tells us a lot about the inner-religious relations between a specific mendicant and monastic community, especially with the conflicts that arose but also showing there were moments of inter-religious positive relations.