Antimendicancy in Central Europe and Bishop Robert of Olomouc in Historiography

Abstract

The notion that Bishop Robert, personally, would be actively taking a stance
against mendicants, or the Franciscans specifically on the issue of stigmata, seems
contradictory to statements Robert made concerning stigmata and the utility of
preachers in his own writings. The assumption that Robert was an antimendicant
places blind faith in the credulity of the claims, which are as of yet uncorroborated,
and the long-term attempts of the papacy to control the bishopric of Olomouc
suggest a more political motive to the accusations. Finally, evidence suggests that
resistance to the Franciscans was in part an internal conflict with brothers of the
Dominican order, who themselves had reasons to sew dissent against the competing
mendicant order in their own province, rather than a conflict with the local clergy
or other monastic orders.
The initiative to identify Bishop Robert as an antimendicant is most likely the
result of modern influence; the attempt of reformers or later researchers to pre-date
the clearer antimendicant stance of proto-reformers, or the retroactive application of
wider, European antimendicant concepts, and an insensitivity to the circumstances
surrounding the papal bulls of 1237. If there were antifraternal tendencies in the
region, this probably reflected a wider movement in Moravia to secure the region
for the Dominican order by employing arguments against stigmata, as evidenced
by the three papal bulls issued in 1237, which were targeted at the entire Central
European region.