Francis was upset at the Friars Minor for accepting a house as gift from the Sultan of Egypt that they converted. Upon learning this, an outraged Francis went to kick the friars out of the house in person, all the while  pissed at the actions of the friars, telling them that accepting the house went against all they stood for and that it was unacceptable! Hugoloino stepped, in an attempt to calm Francis down, and said house actually belonged to him and that he would gladly let them use the house. While this was a generous offer, Francis was concerned about the potential for abuse and arrogance in the hierarchy of legal ownership and wanted to install a simpler egalitarian lifestyle model that the brothers could model their lives after and share with those that they were converting.

Francis even went so far as to create new rules for the order, even though he had officially stepped down as leader; he wanted the brothers to keep in mind the rules they followed and tried to instill in them these rules. The newest rule he drafted, the Rule of 1221 was a rule that insisted that the brothers keep an eye on the higher-ups and, if it went against the gospels, refuse to give obedience (127) The Rule of 1221 never left the Pope’s desk, and, I can imagine, royally irritated the Pope. A couple years later, though, Francis rewrote his rule, which called for the brothers to live their lives in “voluntary poverty”, completely rejecting comfort and even safety. (127)

The papacy decided to sanction the Franciscan order because they determined that the brothers could actually be of use (that sounds bad when I say “of use” but for lack of a better phrase.) The papacy saw the brothers as useful teachers, bishops, cardinals, preachers, pastors and even inquisitors (131) These brothers could go out and do the Pope’s bidding (again for lack of a better word) without the Pope breaking a sweat. The pope stated that it was ok for the friars to use money, and, as Deana states, “enjoy the fruits of property” (131) This distressed the friars, because they were worried that what they were doing would royally upset Francis (if he had still been alive) since he was the one that, in a sense, forbade or outlawed the very practices that they were doing.

The Franciscans distinguished between the words dominium and usus in the sense that Francis was borrowing (usus) the ragged garment that he died in, and therefore he didn’t have the power to give it away or bequeath it (dominium) to someone else upon his death. After their beloved leader died, the Franciscans were stuck as to what to do: do they follow Francis’s example and be, as Deane states, “bound to the Testament” (130) or are they free to reinterpret it according to their own ideas? At a total loss as to what to do, they turned to a long time and old supporter: Hugoloino, or at that point, better known as Pope Gregory IX. He gave them a very simple answer: not at all were they bound to the testament and were more than able to reinterpret it, even though the friars knew that, had he been alive, Francis would be seething in anger.

To make Francis even more upset, had he been alive to see it, Pope Gregory redefined the definition of Franciscan poverty. Pope Gregory decided that the friars still had to live without property, but they could use books, houses and other things that were owned by the papacy; in a sense, they were on loan from the papacy for the friars to use in their ministry or whatever they needed them for. This change made it tough for the Franciscan brothers, because they knew that this was going against everything that their order stood for. As Deane states, “the concept of use and the simple borrowing habit was ragged, patched and unworldly and Francis would have never accepted a new, clean or costly garment.”  (Going back to the garment example for a second.) (131)

He condemned them because he saw them as being “extremists” within the Francis’s order. They were extreme especially when it came to the aspect of poverty; he especially didn’t like them and banned them because of the fact that they didn’t acknowledge the fact that Pope John XXII was the pope. They argued with the fact that the decrees that he wrote were completely invalid, which was another reason that Pope John XXII was more than happy to condemn them. what better way to get rid of your opponents than to condemn them and either drive them out or put them to death for going against you…either way you slice it, you’re getting rid of your enemies and sending a message to the next group that is thinking of going against the papacy.