ABSTRACT

Ubertino da Casale (1259-c. 1329), a Franciscan from Casale Monferrato, Italy, emerged in the early fourteenth century as one of the most significant leaders of a movement that subsequently became known as the Franciscan Spirituals (a form of self-identification which he himself did not use).1 While there is uncertainty about the precise evolution of his early career, it seems that he entered the Order at Genoa (1273-76), spending at least part of his novitiate (1276-85) in Paris. Between 1285 and 1289 Ubertino was in Florence, where after 1287 he came into contact with Peter of John Olivi (1248-99), who had provoked great controversy in the 1270s by his arguments on the importance of usus pauper. According to a recollection in his most famous treatise, The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus, an encounter with Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), perhaps as early as 1285, enabled him to resolve certain unspecified inner difficulties.2 Ubertino initially completed that treatise, of great relevance to discussion of poverty within the Franciscan Order, in 1305.3 He subsequently revised the work in 1310-11, when he was heavily engaged in defending Olivi’s memory. He added an initial prologue in which he mentioned that he had introduced certain changes, producing a further revision between 1326 and 1329. However, these versions are beyond the scope of these pages, as are all his later writings.4 The 1485 edition of The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus, used in this study, is divided into five books, covering almost 500 folio pages with the text in double columns. The work deserves attention for the two contrasting ways it speaks about poverty. The first four books are meditations or reflections on the life, preaching and death of Jesus Christ. In these four books, Ubertino speaks of Christ as a tree, of which he describes the root and branches. In the fifth book, he deals with what he calls the fruit of the tree, and this book is no longer a meditation on the Gospel. In this last book, rather than meditate on the Gospels, Ubertino uses extensively the Book of Revelation as interpreted by Peter of John Olivi (d. 1299), whom he had known personally from his time in Florence between 1285 and 1287.5 The Tree of the Crucified Life of Jesus initially circulated in Italy and the South of France. Picked up by the Observant Franciscans in the late fourteenth century, the work would become much more widely read in the fifteenth century than the writings of Ubertino’s mentor, Peter of John Olivi.6