Peter John Olivi and the Question of Franciscan Evangelic Poverty

Abstract

This article is entirely dedicated to the Franciscan monk from Provence Peter John Olivi (c. 1248 - 1298). It is about his role inside the Franciscan order and beyond. The intention is to understand Olivi's historical, political and religious role and also his influence on the Franciscans and secu lar people from that time and the following centuries. In this way, we try to understand more carefully Olivi's role in the Franciscan order, and also his relation with the so-called “Espirituais”, trying to understand what kind of Christian experience he learnt in contact with other members of the order, and how it helped him to think about some questions from his time, as the problems wich the Franciscan order was facing for example, more over concerning the evangelic poverty. To do so, there were used the treaties “De usu paupere” and the “nona Quaestio paupere”,and also an specific bibliography from David Burr, the Italian Paolo Vian and from the French Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron, besides the Brazilian Nachman Falbel and José Antônio de C. R. de Souza. Among these questions, we tried to understand if the concept he thought as being poverty was not the image of an utopia, even though this concept of utopia was created by Thomas Morus. Beyond all, there is the aim to describe the conflicts which evangelic poverty raised in the manhood from the XIII and XIV centuries.