M Brunner’s scientific contributions

The theoretical poverty controversy in 1322-1323 concerned the question of the Franciscan doctrine that Christ and the apostles had renounced both individual and communal property. This article examines Pope John XXII's final and often neglected text on the question of Franciscan poverty, the bull Quia vir reprobus published in 1329. It was only in this late bull that the pope addressed the question of the scriptural title of Franciscan poverty, and he used the bull to establish the (temporal) dominion of Christ through biblical exegesis. The middle section of John's bull constitutes an almost completely self-contained treatise on the role of dominion in Scripture, and it is therefore as close as we can get to a personal statement of the pope on his own definition of both the dominion and the poverty of Christ. The pope's preoccupation with the reconstruction of Christ's lordship and poverty from biblical texts shows a different aspect of John XXII's relationship with the Franciscans from the primarily legal argumentation in his earlier bulls, and it illustrates that his dissatisfaction with the Franciscan poverty ideal went beyond legal and administrative concerns.