ABSTRACT
Ubertino learned a great deal from Olivi at Santa Croce; but unlike Olivi, he had no vocation to be a professional theologian, or to continue as a lector. Instead, Ubertino abandoned teaching to become a wandering preacher, traveling through Tuscany, Umbria, and the Marches, and denouncing both the heresy of the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the corruption of the of cial church. It is clear from the Arbor vite that he considered the resignation of Pope Celestine V and the subsequent election of Pope Boniface VIII illegitimate-a point on which he differed from Olivi. In the Arbor vite he identi ed Boniface, as well as Boniface’s successor Pope Benedict XI, with the mystical Antichrist. How far Ubertino went in expressing these radical views in his public sermons is uncertain, but some hint of his opinions must have reached Benedict XI, because the pope summoned and arrested him. Ubertino was freed only because of the entreaties of a delegation of Perugian citizens; he was then sent by his Franciscan superiors
to La Verna for an extended period of meditation. He used that time to write the Arbor vite, although he can hardly have composed the whole artful and almost interminable work, as he avows, in three months and seven days in 1305, without premeditation and with the aid of just a few books. Perhaps he was referring only to the nucleus of this vast work-a conjecture that might explain how Angelo Clareno could have described it as a “small” book. In any case, the more extreme opinions in the work were evidently not known to Ubertino’s enemies among the Friars Minor for a long time, for they attacked only his defense of Olivi and were unable to keep Ubertino from exerting considerable in uence in high ecclesiastical circles.
