Adam Marsh

The reign of Henry III (1216–1272) was pivotal in English political history. It saw the entrenchment of Magna Carta, the growth of parliament and the widening of political society, as well as England's first revolution (1258–1265), led by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Montfort and his confederates seized the reins of government from Henry III and governed by a council in the king's name, in the most dramatic political upheaval before the 17th century civil war. Blessed with a rich collection of sources, historians over the past two decades have used the tools of military, biographical, intellectual and social history, as well as sociological approaches, to analyse these events. Their work has placed 13th century politics firmly within its own society and culture, throwing fresh light on Henry III, Simon de Montfort and the events of the first revolution in English history.

The famous image of Francis of Assisi holding up the falling Church has come to symbolise the nature of the relationship between the Franciscans and the papacy in the thirteenth century. Deliberately manufactured by Franciscan propagandists at a time when they were becoming indispensable in almost every area of Christian activity, it represented a complex set of ideas about medieval spirituality, power and responsibility. This article investigates the ideals, concerns and ambitions of the order through examination of a number of occasions on which prominent Franciscans offered criticism and advice to the papal curia. In the process, light is shed on the anxieties of Christendom in an age of crisis.

Medieval conceptions of counsel ('consilium') were multifold, encompassing the spectrum from internal deliberation and divine illumination to public criticism and discussion. This paper specifically examines the views and influences of the Franciscan Adam Marsh (c. 1200 – 1259) concerning the role of counsel, admonition, and debate as articulated in his extant letters.

Trained in Oxford, Adam exerted a wide influence well beyond the bounds of his order, including in the royal court. Sought out as a spiritual counsellor but also inevitably drawn into a world of politics and mediation, Adam appears to give a rich, yet pragmatic role to counsel and debate. While making continuous reference to divine counsel, he also frames the perpetual search for truth and for the right course of action within a context of lively discussion and inquiry and assigns a positive role even to public disagreement, referring to ‘sweet disputes’ which can lead to concord rather than conflict. The natural inference is that decisions are therefore not only matters for the individual conscience, but rather may often also best be hammered out in many-sided communal discussion and debate—a striking conclusion in light of contemporary political disputes between Henry III and his barons.

Adam Marsh (d. 1259) was a prominent spiritual counsellor to princes, prelates, and the superiors of his order. Counsel and exhortations are prominent features of his surviving letters, through which he sought to advance his theological vision, particularly with regard to the pastoral work of the church and its need for correction and reform. Although confident in the immutability of divine truth and its ultimate victory, Adam often expresses uncertainty and anxiety in his letters concerning what he and many of his correspondents viewed as a spiritually (and politically) fraught and dangerous landscape, in which truth had become more difficult to discern and sound counsel more difficult to provide. In his letters, Adam confronts the difficulties of such uncertainties and considers how he and his recipients can determine not only what is true but what course of action they ought to take. Over the course of various correspondences, Adam refers himself and others to several external sources of insight-the illumination of divine counsel, the exchange of human counsel, and the interchange of multilateral deliberation-all mechanisms which, to differing degrees, rely on the aid of both divine mercy and human fellowship in order to provide the support necessary to navigate the contingencies of changing circumstance. Together, these considerations emphasize the interconnectedness of those seeking the will of God, as those engaged in the active life rely on the prayers, exhortations, counsels, and even the disagreements of others to help them to navigate the darkness of temporal uncertainties.

Abstract: The France of Louis IX has recently been described as a morally repressive ‘redemptive regime’ (William Chester Jordan, 2014). This reading focuses on the determination of the king and his inner circle to impose a restrictive morality on his subjects through wide-ranging inquisitions and harsh punishments for what might seem minor infractions. The context for their endeavours was a fierce drive to strengthen the power of the church in society by agents acting within many areas of European life. In this paper, I will examine the efforts of the new order of Franciscan friars, together with reforming bishops such as Robert Grosseteste, to create a similar environment in England during the middle decades of the thirteenth century. These men were closely connected to the court of Henry III and prominent barons such as Simon de Montfort, as well as to the emerging universities and other centres of power. The idealised view of Francis of Assisi and his order as poor, gentle and humble, has tended to obscure the fact that the friars were members of an educated male elite that sought to re-shape the religious imagination and behaviour of the whole population through intensive pastoral practices including compulsory confession.