Fr. Joachim A. Giermek, Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, with his Letter dated November 15, 2006, published at the friary of the Santi Apostoli in Rome, convoked the 199th General Chapter of the Order to be celebrated at the Sacred Convent in Assisi from May 15 to June 20, 2007, indicating both the participants of the Chapter and the themes that will be dealt with.
According to the current Constitutions of the Order (n. 156, § 1), the General Chapter holds and exercises the supreme authority of the whole religious family, it nominates the authorities and general offices of government, it interprets the Constitutions, makes laws and decrees and formulates particular statutes, and finally it seriously evaluates the spiritual journey made in fidelity to the Rule.
The celebration of a General Chapter among Franciscans is a powerful moment of their consecrated life, as it is an expression of the charism of the sons of St. Francis (1181-1226) who wish to come together to deal with the things of God, to communicate to each other the joy of fraternity and of the spiritual life.
Friar Thomas of Celano, who wrote the first biography of St. Francis between 1228-1229, called the First Life, writes that the disciples of the Saint:
When they gathered somewhere or met each other on the road, in that place a shoot of spiritual love sprang up...they gathered together out of desire and were delighted to stay together; but they found being apart a burden, parting bitter, and separation hard. (Ch. XV, nos. 38-39)
In his Letter to all the friars assembled at the Pentecost Chapter of 1222 or 1223, St. Francis recalled how the sources of an authentic spiritual life are the Eucharist, respect for the Word of God, conversion, the liturgy of the Divine Office prayed with devotion before God and the sacrosanct observance of the Rule.
We shall now see how these goals, proper to each Franciscan General Chapter, have been made concrete throughout the Order’s history.
The first great fraternal gathering was celebrated in 1212, probably around May 13, which was Pentecost. From that time on, until 1216, chapters were celebrated twice a year (Pentecost and at the feast of St. Michael in September) at Assisi, as is shown by the Legend of the Three Companions (Ch. XIV, n. 57) written in the late thirteenth century.
From 1217, chapters were celebrated once a year at Pentecost, and always at Assisi. The Regola non Bollata of 1221 (Ch. XVIII) notes that:
For let all the ministers, who are overseas and beyond the Alps, once in three years, and the other ministers once a year come to the Pentecost Chapter at the Church of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula, unless it will have be ordained otherwise by the minister and servant of the whole fraternity.
It was in 1221, the year of the Regola non Bollata, that St. Francis celebrated the famous Chapter of the “Five Thousand Friars” whose only accommodation were mats. This Chapter, known as the “Chapter of Mats” is well presented in the Little Flowers of St. Francis (n. XVIII).
Two years on, the Regula Bullata of Pope Honorius III established the norm, albeit at first quite flexible as it was left up to the discretion of the General, which was : that the General Chapter is to be celebrated every three years, at Pentecost, at not necessarily in Assisi:
the election of a successor should be done by the ministers provincial and the custodes at the Chapter of Pentecost, for which the ministers provincial are always bound to convene wherever the minister general has decided it is to be held; and they shall do this once every three years or more or less frequently as the minister general decides. (Ch. VIII)
This new norm began with the Chapter of 1224. The Order had by this stage reached much of Europe, and there was greater need to organize such a meeting of friars in a more formal and systematic fashion. From 1221 the untiring organizer Friar Elias of Assisi was the Vicar General of St. Francis in governing the Order.
As we mentioned, the norms were a bit flexible to start with. In fact there were General Chapters in 1230, 1232, 1233 and then in 1239, 1240, 1242, 1244, without following the triennial model.
We now turn our attention to some important occurrences for the life and organization of the Order from these first chapters.
In 1217 (May 14, Pentecost), which could be considered the first true “General Chapter” in the juridical sense, the first missionary friars were sent beyond the Alps and in the lands of the “Saracens” (Tunisia, Syria, Morocco). The Order was subdivided into 12 circumscriptions or “provinces”, each with a “Minister Provincial” at the head, who then would convoke a “Provincial Chapter”.
The Chapter of 1224 saw the erection of the English Province, with 9 friars being sent, and in the Chapter of 1230, celebrated at the Sacred Convent of Assisi with Friar Elias as General, the body of St. Francis was moved on May 25, from the church of St. George, where it was buried temporarily, to the new tomb, excavated from rock in the “hill of Paradise” where the grand Basilica was built in his honor.
The Chapter of 1239, celebrated in Rome, was also of importance, as the first Constitutions of the Order (known as the Antiquae) were promulgated. It was at this chapter that the triennial model for Chapters was established without exception.
Another three chapters are noteworthy in this century. The Chapter held in Narbonne in 1260, with the promulgation of its famous Constitutions penned by the Minister General, St. Bonaventure; the Pisa Chapter of 1263, which approved the new Life of St. Francis written by St. Bonaventure (the Legenda Major), and the Paris Chapter of 1266, which unfortunately ordered the destruction of all the earlier Lives or Legends of St. Francis, including that of Celano, to allow room for the only “official” biography of Bonaventure.
It was a Chapter of “legendoclasts.” A manuscript containing the First Life of Celano, which escaped this destruction, was recovered by the Bollandist Fathers in 1768, and another with the Second Life was found and published by Fr. Stefano Rinaldi OFM Conv in 1806.
We have spent a bit of time on the Chapters of the 13th century as these were the “founding” chapters of the Order.
The 14th and 15th centuries which saw the Western schism (1378-1417), was also a sorrowful time for the Order. Just as there were “antipopes” in Avignon and Pisa, so too the Order had its “antigenerals.”
The Franciscan Order celebrated 13 General Chapters between 1379 and 1414 (the 65th to 77th Chapters), electing Minister Generals obedient to the Pope at Rome. But vast groups of French friars broke away with the antipope at Avignon, celebrating another 14 “general chapters” from 1379 at Naples and 1416 at Saragossa, electing anti-generals.
There were of course the antipopes of Pisa, and thus another “general chapters” were celebrated at Rome (1411) and at Lausanne (1414), who gave their obedience to the antipope of Pisa John XXIII.
Unity was regained with the end of the Western schism and obedience given to Pope Martin V of Rome from the 78th legitimate General Chapter held at Mantua in 1418. As a sign to pacify the situation, the Chapter elected Friar Antonio Vinitti, who had been elected at Pisa in good faith.
During the 15th century we recall the 100th General Chapter, celebrated in 1479 at Rome in the new friary of the Santi Apostoli (Twelve Holy Apostles) and presided by Pope Sixtus IV, a Conventual friar. This was the year in which the friary of the Santi Apostoli was made the headquarters of the Order as the General Curia, which it holds to this very day.
This same friary is the scene for another chapter, held on May 30, 1517, vigil of Pentecost, when the Conventual Franciscans, who are juridically separated from the reform of the Observants (who received full autonomy and the right to elect their own General the day before with the Papal Bull Ite Vos of Pope Leo X) came together for the 113th General Chapter to elect their own General in the person of friar Antonio Marcello de Petris da Cherso, who according to the same Bull, should have taken the title “Master General”. From this moment the Conventual friars and the Observant friars would hold their own General Chapter autonomously.
The friary of the Santi Apostoli becomes as important as the Sacred Convent in Assisi with 45 General Chapter being celebrated there from 1479 and 1960.
Some of these were presided over by Popes: Sixtus IV (100th General Chapter, 1479); Benedict XIII (157th General Chapter, 1725); Benedict XIV (General Chapter 159th, 160th , 161st ,1741, 1747, 1753); Clement XIII (General Chapter 162nd , 163rd , 1759, 1765); Clement XIV (164th General Chapter, 1771).
It was at the Santi Apostoli friary during the 142nd General Chapter Pentecost 1617, that the decision was made to hold General Chapter every six years as opposed to every three, which is the norm to this day. Friar Giacomo Montanari was elected and work commenced on the famous new “Urban Constitutions” approved by Pope Urban VIII in 1628, which were in force, with some updates, until the new Constitutions approved at the 181st General Chapter held at Assisi in 1930, in conformity to the 1917 Code of Canon Law.
The 164th General Chapter on 1771 held at Santi Apostoli, with Friar Luigi Maria Marzoni as General saw the decree to unify the Observants of France with the Conventuals. This saw the height of the Order with some 25 000 friars.
A great sense of sorrow is felt remembering that at the Santi Apostoli, the last General Chapter of the old regime was held in 1789 (the 167th General Chapter) with friar Giuseppe Maria Medici of Gubbio as General. What followed was the horrors of the French Revolution and the ruins of the Napoleonic suppression: no General Chapter was celebrated for 35 years.
The 168th General Chapter was celebrated in 1824 in Assisi on October 5. The night before saw the body of St. Francis restored in the rocky tomb under the Lower Basilica, were it had been relocated with great joy after 52 nights of hard digging into the rock on December 12, 1818. The new underground crypt designed by Giuseppe Brizi had just been inaugurated.
The fall of the Papal States and the occupation of Rome by the Italian troops (September 20, 1870), together with the successive suppression of Religious Orders, again held back the celebration of a General Chapter for 25 years. The last chapter celebrated in “papal” Rome was at the Santi Apostoli in 1866 (175th General Chapter). The next was in 1891, the 176th, celebrated in the small friary-college of S.Nicola da Tolentino. Though modest in comparison to the Santi Apostoli or the Sacred Convent, this friary was able to accommodate the capitulars. The Conventual Franciscans, after all these negative occurrences had fallen to its lowest numbers: only 1481 friars in 1889, as opposed to 6500 Observant friars and 7600 Capuchin friars.
Again, thirteen years without a Chapter until 1904 with the 177th General Chapter. This was the last stagnant period, with the Order taking off and developing due to formation houses being opened for the young men entering in the various provinces (from 1919), the celebration of the 7th centenary of the death of St. Francis (1926), the friars returning to areas of suppression ( Spain, 1905; England, 1907; Syria, 1911; France and Latin America, 1947); opening of the mission in China in 1924, Zambia 1930, Indonesia 1937, Albania 1940, and the works of St. Maximilian Kolbe at Niepokalanow or the City of the Immaculate in Poland and his mission to Japan in 1930. With divine grace, the Order saw a new rebirth with its numbers tripling and General Chapters being celebrated again.
Among the more recent we recall the General Chapter of 1984, which saw the hard work of the preceding fifteen years come to its fruition in the new Constitutions of the Order, updated according to the decrees of the Second Vatican Council and the norms of the new Code of Canon Law, promulgated by Pope John Paul II on January 25, 1983.
This brief but essential history of General Chapters throughout the centuries enables us to listen with greater understanding to the words of the Minister General in his Letter convoking the 199th General Chapter:
My dear brothers, Chapter is a moment of fraternal encounter, of the sharing of experiences, of mutual enrichment: the presence of so many friars coming from different cultures and from different parts of the world increases the sense of family and at the same time shows how the same charism can be lived in different forms or expressions… The Chapter has the duty of projecting a path for Order for the next six years, by selecting a new governing body and forging some lines of action. These goals, proper to each General Chapter, become even more stimulating from the fact this next chapter falls within the celebration of the eighth centenary of the beginnings of Franciscanism. The whole Order, by means of this chapter, feels called to conversion and to rediscover the thrust and vitality of its origins.
Fr. LIBERALE GATTI
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