ABSTRACT

In seeking to preach the Gospel to the heathen, Friar William of Rubruck was following the example set by the founder of the Franciscan Order and fulfilling one of the requirements of the Rule under which he lived. The visit of Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) to Egypt during the Fifth Crusade, his passing through the lines of the Christian and Muslim armies near Damietta, and his interview with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil, to whom he expounded the Christian faith, 1 form one of the most celebrated episodes of his career. Yet even prior to this the Franciscans were active in the mission to the non-Christian world. The new order of Friars Minor, to use the official designation, was from its first emergence a body of penitents, living in total poverty and preaching to their fellow-men to repent and follow Christ. Mission to the infidel was a part of that wider task, but an important part. There were two abortive attempts to evangelize the Muslims of Morocco in 1212 and 1213, and the chapter of 1217 established a province of the Holy Land, designed for the proclamation of the Gospel to the Muslims, at the same time as it created provufces in Western Europe whose ministry was aimed primarily at Latin Christians. 2 The promotion of the faith in the Near East was considered sufficiently important for the first provincial minister of the Holy Land to be Francis's dear and trusted friend Elias.3 It was natural that both Francis's original Rule (the Regula prima) and the final version, confirmed by Pope Honorius

1 For Francis's visit to Egypt, see Van Ortroy, 'Saint Fran~ois d'Assise et son voyage en Orient', Analecta Bollandiana, XXXI (1912), 451--62; M. Roncaglia, St. Frands and the Middle Easf (Cairo, 1957). There is a useful discussion of the visit and Francis's attitude towards the mission to the Muslims in B. Z. Kedar, Crusade and mission: European approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), pp. 119, 121--6.