Spiritual Fathers and Capuchin Accounting: The Object, Its Context and Its Sources

In the following pages, I will take a closer look at the institution of the ‘spiritual father’ (geistlicher Vater) in the context of the Swiss Capuchin Province during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. As a secular bookkeeper, the spiritual father was alien to both the order and the Church. However, he was partly responsible for upholding Capuchin poverty. This feature distinguished the office from comparable institutions of other religious orders, but can be traced back to the early Franciscan movement.Footnote ¹² As an external steward who managed the Capuchins’ financial exchange with their lay environment, enabling the mendicants to keep their vow of poverty and thus maintain their relationship with the sphere of the sacred, the spiritual father assumed a pivotal intermediary role. However, in doing so, he would benefit in a particular manner from the order’s mediation both within and outside the ‘world.’ This makes him the ideal person to explore the mediality of Capuchin poverty. The main question guiding my investigation is how the order-specific accounting mentality, which, in the Franciscan tradition, integrated the convents’ relationship with money and alms with their exchange with the sacred, was reflected out in the ‘world’ through concrete and meaningful practices. Towards the end of the article, I will briefly compare the practices in the Swiss Capuchin province with those in the Capuchin missions in Asia, whose economies have barely been investigated until now.

This contribution is based on a study of five convents in the old Swiss Confederacy: Schwyz, Stans, Zug, Solothurn, and Lucerne. These convents, established in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, marked the beginning of the order’s long-term presence in confessional contact zones north of the Alps.Footnote ¹³ From the outset, the papacy’s interest in the religiously divided Swiss Confederacy shaped their establishment. Competing princely houses, most notably the Holy Roman Emperor, the Spanish rulers of Milan and the French crown, courted the Swiss Confederacy.Footnote ¹⁴ The rapidly expanding Capuchin order found itself caught between these competing patrons, the local surroundings, and the papal curia.

In addition to a variety of sources concerning the social and economic exchange between the convents and their secular environments, primarily from the local authorities (e.g. council minutes, treasury account books, and correspondence from magistrates, spiritual fathers and princely envoys), this essay pays special attention to the order’s normative sources regarding the implementation of the commandment of poverty and the spiritual father’s accounting activities. Included in this are not only the traditional normative texts of the order (rules, constitutions, and parenetic writings), but also the community’s self-description in its annals. The final chapter puts selective insights into the still poorly studied organisation of the global Capuchin missions, compiled from the Propaganda Fide archive and the available literature, into dialogue with the observations on the transformation processes in Catholic Europe. From the outset, it is important to note that all the Swiss convents analysed here began to manage their own finances only with the abolition of the office of the spiritual father towards the end of our survey period. The spiritual fathers also only sporadically left accounting documents. Accordingly, this essay focuses less on the account books of a religious order – which, in our case and period, do not actually exist – and more on how to explain and to deal with their absence.

Abundance through Lack: The Social and Transcendental Reciprocity of Capuchin Poverty

The Franciscan precept of voluntary poverty in evangelical succession aimed to bring a transcendental indifference and paradise-like needlessness into a world burdened by sin. The ascetic limitation to the material ‘necessities’ for religious life (usus pauper) was to be accompanied by an emotional disposition towards a lack of worldly desires for wealth, power, and honour. From a Franciscan viewpoint, these desires were associated with avaritia – the eternal rival of Lady Poverty – and prevented self-recognition before God.Footnote ¹⁵ Despite incessant debates about its scope and proper form since the Middle Ages,Footnote ¹⁶ the virtue of voluntary poverty was universally recognised as both a fundamental condition and a primary principle of representation of Franciscan humility.

The Capuchin order, which was approved by the pope in 1528, had emerged when a group of reform-oriented Observant Franciscans, led by Matteo de Bascio (1495–1552), broke away from their convents in the Italian Marche region. Similar to the Observants, who had split from the Conventual Franciscans only a few years earlier in 1517, the Capuchins also sought to return to the original Franciscan ideals of humility and poverty. The three largest branches of the Franciscan family (the Conventuals, the Observants, and the Capuchins) distinguished themselves through their different interpretations of the Franciscan tradition. However, they all considered themselves to be the true heirs of Francis of Assisi and competed with each other for his legacy. Poverty thus formed a fundamental pillar within the normative and ethical framework of the Capuchin reform, which, starting in the 1520s, sought to revive Franciscan virtues. The Capuchins appeared to succeed in this endeavour, as contemporary Catholic opinion held that the friars’ exemplary poverty and humility offered a particularly reliable path to salvation, not only for the friars themselves, but also for their lay followers.Footnote ¹⁷

As both an evangelical and an order-specific way of honouring God, paupertas was a key element of the Capuchins’ code of humility. It was a sign of a religious mindset detached from secular interests and biases.Footnote ¹⁸ Meticulously ritualised signs of poverty staged Capuchin self-negation. The commandment of poverty prescribed how the brothers should feed (by begging for alms and without stockpiling), dress (in rough, self-patched habits reminiscent of the Holy Cross and Christ’s rejection of immortality), model their sacred space (without pomp or secular representation), move (with dead eyes and an averted gaze, regularly changing convents to avoid forming local attachments), and speak and write (using as few words and pages as possible).Footnote ¹⁹

According to the Capuchin self-description in the annals, the ideal of a habitual disposition detached from possession, status, and worldly entanglements was a characteristic of outstanding members of the order. As a virtue that ran counter to the assumption of leadership positions, exemplary love of poverty was typically attributed to high-ranking members of the order, who were limited in the practice of poverty due to the obligations attached to their office. The vita of the former provincial Angelo (Visconti) of Milan (1561–1616), is exemplary in this regard.Footnote ²⁰ His biography does not deny the controversies surrounding his exchanges with high-ranking potentates, whose hospitality he enjoyed during his travels, and whom he even accompanied in their carriages. These exchanges stood in stark contrast to the order’s demand for ostentatious poverty and humility.Footnote ²¹ Instead, Friar Angelo’s proximity to the ‘world’ was interpreted by the province’s chroniclers as evidence of his advanced internalisation of the order’s norms. Because the late provincial was imbued with a pronounced love of poverty and humility, he was said to be immune to the temptations of the ‘world.’ According to his vita, it was this spiritual immunity, paired with his knowledge of courtly manners – he was of noble origins himself – that enabled Friar Angelo to enforce religious norms at the highest levels. The former provincial was said to believe that rejecting gifts from the mighty was even contrary to his community’s religious mission, since accepting them would help to earn their trust and make them receptive to the brothers’ teachings.Footnote ²² For the Capuchins, too, increasing the glory of God always took precedence over strict adherence to the Rule.

The vita of Friar Angelo highlights a broader logic of social distinction that also applied within the context of the Capuchin order. At times, it is precisely the conscious transgression of, or unrestrained approach to, established norms that served as proof of their natural possession.Footnote ²³ Nevertheless, this required a rebalancing within the order’s self-description, in which Friar Angelo was recognised for his lifelong commitment to silence and reserve, despite his frequent association with distinguished individuals.Footnote ²⁴ This was part of a paradoxical communication style implemented by the order’s annalists to justify inequality within a nominally egalitarian brotherhood bound by strict observance. Attributing qualities that stood in contrast to their practice to exemplary members of the order who, due to their virtue, were able to move beyond the narrow confines of the rule, was meant to ensure that the brothers did not strive for power in any other way than by despising it profoundly. This, in turn, was meant to legitimise the Capuchin social hierarchy as the result of divinely inspired virtues – as a ‘hierarchy of humility.’Footnote ²⁵

The dangerous proximity to the ‘world,’ which implied participation in its social logics, also represented a distinguishing feature within the order. Tipping the balance in favour of the vita activa was reserved for exceptional members of the order who could deal with the ensuing temptations. The same logic seemed to apply to Capuchin missionaries. Engaging in pastoral care, particularly the conversion of ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels,’ inevitably meant neglecting the contemplative aspect of the Capuchin way in favour of contact with the ‘world,’ which naturally threatened self-sanctification. It also usually meant turning away from abiding by the strict commandments of poverty. In line with the Capuchins’ paradoxical and circular logic of distinction, commitment to pastoral care and missionary endeavours – and, by association, handling money – necessarily had to be preceded by an advanced process of self-sanctification.Footnote ²⁶ Within the Capuchin Order, missionary status not only justified the transgression of the poverty precepts, but also asserted a special closeness to the sphere of the sacred. However, this required not only recognition within and outside the order, but also the corresponding papal blessings.Footnote ²⁷

Generally speaking, however, the Capuchin interpretation of Franciscan poverty required the friars and the convent families to refrain from entering any kind of debtor–creditor relationships, whether material or immaterial, as the emotional aspects of such relationships would hinder the pursuit of peace and self-recognition, as well as the perception of the order as an impartial intermediary. In the Capuchin understanding of voluntary poverty, a subtle yet important difference existed between participation in gift-exchange practices and the monetary economy. While the latter was to be avoided at all costs, obligations arising from the former were not to extend beyond humble gratitude. Humility and poverty were considered mutually dependent. The shame associated with handling money corresponded with the Capuchins’ refusal to engage in agonistic honour communication.Footnote ²⁸ The monetary economy and its primary medium stood in an indissoluble contradiction to the Capuchins’ vision of Christian peace. Unlike natural goods and ‘useful’ objects, money itself had no charitable effect; rather, it necessarily involved the faithful in struggles for status, power, and profit, as well as the associated feelings of guilt and fear of loss, which prevented the fulfilment of religious norms.Footnote ²⁹ The brothers were to avoid money as if it were a “poisonous snake.”Footnote ³⁰ However, the order also realised – before Marcel Mauss did! – that the emotions evoked by gifts or money would distract the brothers from their desired indifference.Footnote ³¹

From the outset, the Capuchins’ ‘ideal of non-entanglement,’ which can be seen as a derivative of the precept of poverty, seemed fraught with contradictions due to the economic dependencies of the convents.Footnote ³² In line with Franciscan tradition, however, many of these contradictions could be resolved by interpreting alms as a sign of Divine providence, bestowed upon the friars because of their exemplary way of life. In theory, both the order and its patrons remained indebted only to God. Classifying gifts from lay people as alms and presenting the material exchange as a salvific interaction with the sacred, undoubtedly represented a central accounting category used by the mendicant orders to reconcile the transfer of resources with their vow of poverty.Footnote ³³ According to the Capuchin annals, ‘spiritual friends,’ i.e., the order’s secular benefactors, were integrated into the Capuchin sacrum commercium in return for their donations. They themselves became able to embody Franciscan virtues as they experienced sudden healings or profound contrition, and thus were able to die a ‘good death.’ According to the order’s self-description, this was a divine privilege granted to its benefactors on behalf of St. Francis, which turned their lifestyle unambiguous at the moment that mattered most.Footnote ³⁴ Capuchin poverty gave individual benefactors, their families, and entire communities an opportunity to participate in this sacred exchange. In contrast to the hypocrisy accusations levelled at the mendicant orders by both Protestant and Catholic critics due to their controversial wealth, the reference to the Capuchin convents’ prosperity, or rather, the ‘absence of shortage’ within them, was also used as a testament to both the friars’ exemplary lives and the extraordinary piety of their Catholic environment.Footnote ³⁵

Due to the Capuchins’ radical interpretation of Franciscan humility and poverty, safeguarding the friars’ honour and material and financial welfare, which the friars regarded as merely reflecting God’s honour on Earth, necessarily had to be the responsibility of others. In the social environment of the order, this resulted in the reintroduction of a form of distinction based on Franciscan poverty. However, the symbolic violence (Pierre Bourdieu) of Capuchin poverty as a marker of religious unambiguity – its power to legitimise claims to honour and rank on religious groundsFootnote ³⁶  –, always depended on the order’s ability to free the various exchange relationships in which it was involved in from the sense of compulsory gift exchange.

Unfolding a Paradox through Difference: Secular Bookkeepers as ‘Spiritual Fathers’ and the Capuchin Accounting Mentality

The office of the spiritual father played a central role in the unfolding of this inherent paradox of Capuchin poverty. As a secular administrator he (or she, in some rare instances) had the important task of administering monetary alms.Footnote ³⁷ As a third party, the spiritual fathers were to assume ownership rights of the alms on behalf of the donors. Their role was thus essentially to shield the Capuchins from the ‘black magic’ of money and worldly entanglements.Footnote ³⁸ By providing this service, they enabled the friars to honour their vow of poverty.Footnote ³⁹ As this benefited the spiritual welfare of the entire Christian community, their services naturally warranted hopes of social distinction.

As previously mentioned, the tradition of appointing a trustee from outside the order dates back to medieval Franciscan practice.Footnote ⁴⁰ The controversial comments on the Franciscan rule by Pope Gregory IX (di Conti, r. 1227–41) (Quo elongati, 1230), Nicholas III (Orsini, r. 1277–80) (Exiit qui seminat, 1279), Martin IV (de Brion, r. 1281–85) (Exultantes in domino, 1283), and Clement V (de Got, r. 1305–14) (Exivi de paradiso, 1312) gave the Franciscans permission to have a syndicus apostolicus, appointed either by the Holy See or the cardinal protector, to handle indispensable monetary and legal transactions, such as executing contracts, securing funds for the construction of convents, procuring clothing, and providing medical care for sick friars. Francis himself had already foreseen the possibility of appointing a third party to handle monetary transactions, but only in exceptional circumstances. Meanwhile, the thirteenth-century institutionalisation of an apostolic syndic, who was to take over contracts and property rights in the name of the Church and thus free the friars to the ‘simple use of things,’ lay at the very heart of emerging intra-Franciscan controversies about true poverty that such legal fictions threatened to undermine.

These trustees, who were referred to as ‘procurators’ or ‘nuncios,’ were subsequently appointed to oversee a growing number of financial transactions, when the Franciscan convents began to integrate into urban economies by managing properties and dealing with microcredits (monti di pietà).Footnote ⁴¹ Franciscan convents soon began to accept benefices and pensions, moving on from an ideal of absolute poverty based on spontaneity and precariousness to more controlled forms of voluntary poverty.Footnote ⁴² As we will see, the Capuchins’ claim to return to the original Franciscan poverty meant that their spiritual fathers were not to participate in the wide array of financial activities pursued by the Franciscans and their procurators; rather, they had to attain a renewed sense of poverty themselves.

Against the backdrop of ongoing controversies within the Franciscan order regarding the limits of an appropriate devotion to poverty, more moderate Franciscan currents in the late Middle Ages championed bookkeeping as a means of demonstrating the moral integrity of their convent economies. The account books were intended to prove that the convents did not accumulate profit, and that all donations and monastic income were promptly channelled back into the local economy, thereby contributing to the prosperity of the Christian communes.Footnote ⁴³ This financial activity was therefore in line with a Christian economic ethic, the ideological and linguistic distinctions of which the Franciscans helped to formulate. Moreover, this ‘rationalisation’ of the commandment of poverty through accounting consolidated the Franciscan convents as peculiar trading centres. The financial activities they engaged in contradicted radical interpretations of Franciscan poverty, yet they claimed religious legitimacy by linking both income and expenditure to the spiritual mission of the order. Accounting thus became a practice in which accountability for the economy of the convents overlapped with an economy of salvation. This affected not only the friars, but also their secular environment, which relied on the smooth transformation of their charity into salvific practices.Footnote ⁴⁴ Rather than being a sign of a secularised religious practice, the account books were intended to quantify religious observance.Footnote ⁴⁵

Of the Capuchin houses analysed here, there is no evidence of similar accounting practices, or corresponding account books, prior to the late eighteenth century.Footnote ⁴⁶ This absence of accounting can, on the one hand, be interpreted as an expression of the Capuchins’ renewed ideal of Franciscan poverty, according to which the convents should not come into contact with money at all. Keeping account books would inevitably have revealed that this ideal could not be realised. However, this circumstance must also be attributed to the institution of the spiritual father, which the Italian visitors had repeatedly but unsuccessfully demanded to be abolished since the founding of the Swiss province in 1589. This institution developed great appeal within the social fabric of the Catholic villages and towns north of the Alps. As an ‘exclusive’ connection to the Capuchin order – which, despite internal controversies, was legitimised by the order’s own norms – the office was an attractive opportunity for local elites to display their post-Tridentine piety.

In most of the surveyed convents, the spiritual fathers were responsible for the Capuchin convents’ financial administration well into the eighteenth century. However, compared to the Franciscans’ procurators, the office distinguished itself through a lower degree of institutionalisation and formalisation. Its designation, esteem, and practical implementation varied locally. Local secular governments elected the trustees from among themselves.Footnote ⁴⁷ Doubts about the legitimacy, activities, and duties of the spiritual fathers remained both within the province and the local governments. The order’s leadership provided instructions from which normative expectations regarding the Capuchin accounting mentality can be gleaned. This mentality was based on the idea that a harmonious relationship between the convents and the sacred sphere depended on the brothers’ indifference to money and power on earth.Footnote ⁴⁸

An instruction claiming to contribute to the “enlightenment of all the spiritual fathers in this ministry” begins with a simple explanation. Although the Capuchins were not permitted to have secular trustees under their rule, the popes, “as the true interpreters of our [the Capuchins’] Holy Rule,” had authorised the mendicants to appoint a person (“call him what you will”) to receive and administer monetary alms on behalf of the donors until they were spent.Footnote ⁴⁹ Ideally, donors would make their donation to the spiritual father themselves. However, the friars were not to force their benefactors to do so, as this could provoke their displeasure. If the beneficiaries did not accept the appointment of a further layperson to transfer the money, then the friars could deliver the alms to the spiritual father themselves as soon as possible.Footnote ⁵⁰ Thus, the strict demand to refrain completely from contact with money could be momentarily put aside in favour of adhering to norms of social exchange and decency, as their strict enforcement could be perceived as ingratitude and thus detrimental to the order’s image of humility.Footnote ⁵¹

The secular bookkeeper had to categorise the donations using a basic accounting system consisting of different boxes and cases for specific purposes.Footnote ⁵² Ideally, donors would assign a final purpose to their alms and inform the spiritual father in writing. If alms were given without specifying a purpose, they were to be kept in a separate file for “unspecified necessities.” Enquiries were only permitted if they could be done “without any particular damage.”Footnote ⁵³ Legitimate purposes included specific rooms in the convent complex, such as the church, sacristy, or library, as well as specific necessities, such as food, clothing, or the care of the sick. It was the spiritual fathers’ fiduciary duty to ensure that the designated purposes were met. Only in extreme emergencies could the designated use be changed, provided the donors gave their consent.Footnote ⁵⁴

Through their accounting system, the spiritual fathers took responsibility for ensuring that the donors’ wishes were honoured. At the same time, their practice was intended to guarantee that the alms were in line with the order’s commandment of poverty. In this sense, the accounting system was modelled as a gift registry, offering only a limited number of ways in which the faithful could donate. The gifts were thus covered by the order’s constitutions, which ensured that they would flow directly into the order’s religious mission.Footnote ⁵⁵ This system not only guaranteed the alignment of the convent economy with the order’s norms, but also limited the personal and emotional aspects of the alms, thereby minimising the risk of the friars feeling indebted to a particular benefactor beyond humble gratitude. Defining an ultimate use and fulfilling this purpose was crucial as it freed the monetary alms, on a symbolic level, from their shameful medium, while the donors were still offered the opportunity to express their will – within the boundaries of Capuchin poverty.

The bookkeepers were instructed to spend the alms in accordance and not to use them for “things too cheeky, superfluous, or all too delicious and unbecoming of our status.” They were to avoid hoarding money for “uncertain necessities.”Footnote ⁵⁶ The trustees were strictly forbidden from investing accumulated capital for profit or using it to grant interest-bearing loans. If benefactors wished to donate to a specific friar, the spiritual fathers had to consult the local guardian to determine the gift’s permissibility. The same applied to wills and legacies, which likewise remained under the bookkeeper’s care. If these foresaw a sum of money for the friars, the spiritual father had to disclose this to the provincial, who would then instruct him on how to proceed.Footnote ⁵⁷ However, inexperienced spiritual fathers who were not yet familiar with the order’s constitutions and therefore managed the finances contrary to them were only to be instructed gently: “One could well instruct the spiritual father in a simple manner, but one should abstain completely from all words, wisdom, and ways that give the appearance of power or rights.”Footnote ⁵⁸

The bookkeepers were embedded in the order’s governmental structures, at least to some extent. They were expected to observe the order’s norms and, if necessary, seek instruction from senior friars. Despite their status as lay people, the spiritual fathers’ partial commitment to Capuchin rule observance granted them a particular share in the honour of the order. The exclusive proximity, which relieved the convents of additional secular entanglements, and the trust necessary for the spiritual fathers’ religiously sensitive work must be located at the origins of the office’s appeal to local elites. The spiritual fathers were essential intermediaries between the convents’ sacrum commercium and the ‘world,’ administrating its ‘mild gifts.’

The example of a benefactor who walked two hours a day for years to offer his alms to a Capuchin convent highlights the subtle attention paid to avoiding the impression of involvement in debtor–creditor relationships, favouritism, and the affective obligations that go hand in hand with gift-exchange practices. When the loyal benefactor’s clothes were torn on the way, leaving him virtually naked, the friars were morally uncertain as to whether they could ask their spiritual father to provide replacements. The ‘satisfaction’ of the benefactor, which necessarily involved a financial transaction, was deemed possible provided there were unspecified funds available for a strictly charitable and “necessary” purpose, carried out by the spiritual father, not by the friars themselves.Footnote ⁵⁹

The Bookkeepers: Sharing in the Honour of the Order

What is described here as ‘satisfaction,’ a term inextricably linked with premodern honour discourse, refers to arguably the essential social function of the spiritual fathers (and other secular protectors) of the Capuchin order. As well as handling money, they were implicitly responsible for upholding the norms of honour-based social exchanges on behalf of the mendicants. This was an exchange from which the friars were expected to refrain, in accordance with their precept of radical humility.Footnote ⁶⁰ Just as the friars adhered to otherworldly norms on behalf of their protectors to secure their salvation, the spiritual fathers vicariously accounted for the mendicants’ intraworldly honour, which, despite (and because of) their claim to renounce it completely, remained the prime indicator of success for the friars’ religious mission.Footnote ⁶¹ The spiritual fathers shielded the Capuchins from overstepping their own commandments of humility and poverty by taking over agonal communication with competing clergy over prestigious preaching posts or by defending the mendicants’ honour against abusive Catholics or slandering Protestants. Observing these commandments involved the ostentatious renunciation of secular honour discourse and economic possessions. This laid the foundation not only for the order’s recognition in heaven, but also for its social recognition as a trustworthy mediator to the sacred sphere. In the Swiss province, the early spiritual fathers and secular protectors frequently distinguished themselves by exonerating locally esteemed friars from accusations of disobedience towards the Church.Footnote ⁶² By defending the reputation of these friars against accusations from high standing figures within the order and the Church, accusations which had called into question the value of their spiritual services, they preserved the religious integrity of the local Christian community, and with it the communal self-worth. The communal assurance of God’s favour was becoming increasingly attached to the intercession of local exponents of the order, whose ‘exemplary’ humility found particular resonance within the very ‘world’ they had once renounced.Footnote ⁶³ This is a circumstance closely linked to the gift-exchange logic and reciprocity of Capuchin humility: The prestige accorded to individual friars was intimately tied to the social status that the friars had sacrificed under divine guidance, resulting in a peculiar transfer of secular concepts of honour to the order’s own social structure.Footnote ⁶⁴ The brothers’ rejection of status and rank also held particular emotional and religious value within those communities that identified directly with the honour the friars had sacrificed in favour of a life in radical humility. Regardless of the orders’ claim to renounce all secular belongings, the local communities continued to perceive these friars as their very own representatives before God.Footnote ⁶⁵

From an early stage, the Capuchins owed their growing spiritual privileges and increasingly central position on the local religious markets to the protection of their spiritual fathers. Vicarious supplications at the Roman Curia enabled the province and individual friars to circumvent the restrictions imposed on them by the order’s self-image.Footnote ⁶⁶ Through various dispensations from the Order’s Rule, the friars could adapt their religious practices to suit the needs and expectations of their local surroundings, particularly with regard to hearing the confessions of laypeople and female convents. By promoting the order within various forms of local piety, the spiritual fathers actively shaped the interweaving of the order’s honour with the self-perception of its environment. Meanwhile, they themselves capitalised on the increased identification of the communes with the mendicants.Footnote ⁶⁷

The spiritual fathers benefited also from the translocal network of the order. Consider, for example, the influential town clerk of Solothurn, Hans Jakob vom Staal (1540–1615). Not only did he collect the funds for the construction of the convent: in his hometown, but he also acted as its spiritual father until his death. He used this position to seek the intercession of respected friars both within and outside the Swiss Confederacy. In highly emotional letters, he sought the support of high-ranking Milanese Capuchins to advocate for him in Central Switzerland, the Roman Curia, and Milan. The friars’ intermediary services helped him secure valuable pilgrimage and confraternity privileges, as well as prestigious study places at the Collegium Helveticum in Milan for sons from the local patriciate. Thanks to their contacts with curial actors during their trips to the General Chapters in Rome, Capuchins could even help him to obtain papal legitimisation for an illegitimate son.Footnote ⁶⁸

The Zurlauben family, important clients of the ambassador of the King of France in the town of Zug, combined caring for the mendicants with an attempt to symbolically integrate the local convent into a specifically French regional Catholicism by equipping it with the appropriate liturgical artefacts.Footnote ⁶⁹ Loyal friars’ intercessions from the pulpit and in public discourse served to shield the family from persistent accusations of corruption and a lack of denominational solidarity.Footnote ⁷⁰ Upon his return from his travels to the treasurer of the French Crown, Konrad III Zurlauben (1571–1629) brought valuable sacramentals from Vendôme and Chartres with him, intended as gifts for the guardian of the local Capuchin convent. He imparted to his son a lesson that was as simple as it was important to remember within early modern Catholicism: “You have to take care of the spiritual stuff first, then the worldly stuff will follow, along with the man with the money. God have mercy.”Footnote ⁷¹ The family’s correspondence openly discussed the fact that fostering a symbolic and personal proximity to the local Capuchin convent was an efficient strategy for defending their reputation and ‘laundering’ religiously questionable money. In power struggles among the local patricians or between the envoys of princely courts, the reverence surrounding the order, due to its imagined proximity to the honour of God, could never be underestimated. Ironically, this was another lesson that would later cost Beat II Zurlauben, Konrad’s son, his office as Schultheiss (the highest political office in town) and result in broken windows.Footnote ⁷²

The presence of the translocally organised order created new opportunities for its secular protectors to lend religious legitimacy and visibility to their claims to leadership. One important way in which this was achieved was through the meticulously ritualised reception of provincials, generals, or friars who were revered as thaumaturges during provincial chapters, general visitations, or long-planned preaching appearances. If the guests were priests with a reputation for holiness, such as General Innocent of Caltagirone (1589–1655) or the famous preacher Marco of Aviano (1631–1699), their sermons would likely move many listeners to tears, send them into ecstatic states, or prompt them to claim sudden healings.Footnote ⁷³ During these occasions of intensified communal self-observation, in which the cities and villages recognised themselves as collectives touched by God, the social order appeared, at least temporarily, to be free from doubt. For the local authorities and the spiritual fathers, the exemplary public interaction was followed by an obligatory “keeping company” over food and drink. By doing so, they fostered the commune’s (and their own) relationship with the order in the name of, and at the expense of, their community.Footnote ⁷⁴

Symbolic Economic Entanglements and the Communalisation of the Convent Economy

As the convents became increasingly embedded in the local community, most prominent families could claim a particular connection to the order.Footnote ⁷⁵ Secular protectors of the order learned to share in its prestige without the arduous administrative labour of bookkeeping, which seemed to outweigh the surplus in symbolic value. Starting in the mid-seventeenth century, the council minutes show an increase in requests for exemptions from this duty. In the cities especially, the office of spiritual father was now often delegated to the local treasurer or the poor box, which had already covered parts of the convents’ provisions and compensated for their constant negative balances. For financial reasons and arguing that they were safeguarding the common good, but also building on a steadily growing sense of entitlement as the de facto masters of the Capuchin convents, the local authorities increasingly attempted to impose their legal regime on the convents. Among other things, they began issuing mandates that held the spiritual fathers responsible for ensuring that alms and bequests from the local population were used exclusively for the local convents. Moreover, the bookkeepers were ordered to invest these funds against interest to offset future deficits.Footnote ⁷⁶

Consequently, under the pretext that providing the convents with sinful interest income violated the commandment of poverty, the provincial leadership in Lucerne sought to maintain their access to and control over the legacies bequeathed to the local convents, while preserving their image of precarious and spontaneous poverty, although this meant increasing the province’s financial self-administration. Following unsuccessful attempts to control the pia legata in the 1660s, the newly elected provincial, Apollinaris (Jütz) of Schwyz (1607–1675), emphasised again in 1670 the contradiction between the territorial restrictions imposed on alms and bequests, and the constitution of the order as a translocal community of salvation, where the ‘good works’ of each convent complemented those of the others. In the provincial’s view, the decrease in monetary alms, as reported by the spiritual fathers, was grounded in the latter’s “overprovisioning” (Übersorgfalt).Footnote ⁷⁷

Paradoxically, the abolition of the office of the spiritual father, which the provincial decried as a hindrance to true observance, imposed on the friars by the local governments, and the financial self-administration of the convents were now supposed to rebalance the relationship between the convents and domina paupertas. After the tumultuous division of the province from Habsburg territories, which had occurred two years earlier, the government of Lucerne and the provincial elite agreed to abolish the office. In its place, the government granted a comprehensive annual subsidy of 600 florins, which was not subject to any territorial restrictions and would be administered by the province itself.Footnote ⁷⁸ This covered at least half of the two convents’ annual expenses. This sudden agreement, which would slowly be replicated throughout the province, clearly indicates where the Swiss cantons located the boundaries of their community of salvation in economic terms. Moreover, the provincial borders had to align with the territories of the Catholic cantons before the province could be granted free disposal of the funds accumulated locally.

From the viewpoint of the province, the abolition of the spiritual father was intended to counteract the laity’s perception of the convents’ financial security and to uphold the provincial elites’ room for financial manoeuvre within the province. Interestingly, the ban on handling money seemed to be subordinated to these purposes, which suggests that it had lost some of its impact on the laity. According to the provincial’s reasoning, the faithful seemed more inclined to doubt the convents’ poverty when they were administered directly by the authorities than when the Capuchins took the alms of the faithful into their own hands. It was ultimately an attempt by the Capuchins to counteract the ongoing communalisation of their convents, at least on a symbolic level. The simultaneous loss of prestige of the office of the spiritual father in the ‘world’ was less due to the order’s declining social status, and more to this process of communalisation, in which Divine providence was gradually being institutionalised at a communal level. The communalisation of convent economies meant integrating the convents into the local economies in a way that minimised the costs for the local society while compensating for the avaritia of the Catholic communes and their leading clans on a symbolic level.

Consider the practice of mendicancy, a performance of Capuchin poverty (and shamelessness) par excellence, which was strictly regulated to preserve spontaneity and the consensus of the laity. Mirroring the spiritual father’s bookkeeping, it was based on a logic of the gift registry to ensure that the commandment of poverty was observed, and that the emotional value of the offerings remained confined by the constitutions.Footnote ⁷⁹ To secure economic stability and a sound relationship with their local sponsors, the convents drew up elaborate itineraries: topographies of ‘spiritual friends’ in which past and future charity, as well as customised etiquette, were documented.Footnote ⁸⁰ As mendicancy increasingly became institutionalised along these local patterns, so too did the diet of the convents. Magistrate families competed with each other to supply the friars with food and drink on specific weekdays.Footnote ⁸¹

Frequent conflicts arose from legacies and endowments for masses for the soul, which the friaries received in large quantities due to their reputation for facilitating the crossing of the ‘normative threshold’ of death.Footnote ⁸² These endowments often carried interest rates that generated ‘perpetual alms,’ giving the guardians and provincials the recurring opportunity to emphasise their observance by scandalously rejecting “unknowingly” accumulated assets.Footnote ⁸³ However, the Capuchin renunciation of fixed income and interest rates on legacies and endowments ultimately became a farce as it also contradicted the interests of local governments, which could incur unforeseeable costs as a result. In contrast, the institutionalised provision of material goods by the local authorities – for which they even imposed specific taxes – and the accumulation of assets for future construction projects ensured planning security. At the same time, the integration of the convents into the communal economy – not least through their participation in the pension money paid by the European princely courts – performed the rule-stabilising task of incorporating the entire commune into the sacrum commercium of the order.Footnote ⁸⁴

The pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of institutionalised governmental alms were particularly evident in the provision of the convents with what can only be termed the ‘sins of the commune.’ The convents’ supply gained an added meaning when delinquents completed their mandatory confession to the Capuchins with a monetary fine, when the convents were heated with illegally chopped firewood, or when the friars were fed bread weighed with a manipulated pound stone.Footnote ⁸⁵ Moreover, the folkloric notion of the Capuchins as “eaters of deadly sins” (Toodsindäfrässer)Footnote ⁸⁶ took on a tangible form in these orchestrated mechanisms of reconciliation and purification, as documented in the council minutes. By transforming the communal transgressions into alms, these transgressions were woven into the sacrum commercium of the order and thus symbolically purified of their malefic connotations.Footnote ⁸⁷ Given their transcendentally unbounded sense of shame, the Capuchins did not have to shy away from the impure. If we consider the Capuchin convent economy as a medium of social self-observation through which the communes purged themselves of avarice, there is much to suggest that Divine providence gradually became organised according to local structures, reflecting both the economic reality of the convents and the salvific and distinction interests of the communes and their elites.

Around the time that convent economies first began to free themselves from the control of their secular bookkeepers in the 1650s, amidst rising confessional tensions within the Confederacy, the province’s contacts with Propaganda Fide intensified.Footnote ⁸⁸ The provincial leadership’s newly found claim to be elevated to the status of a missionary prefecture of Propaganda Fide can be linked to the specific cultural grammar, as well as confessional and inner-Catholic competition, of a confessional contact zone. By invoking Saint Carlo Borromeo (1583–1584) as its divinely ordained founder and meticulously documenting the convent families’ conversion rates, the province sought to sharpen its Counter-Reformation profile in competition with the Franciscans and Jesuits and to substantiate its claim to missionary privileges.Footnote ⁸⁹

These efforts encountered varying degrees of opposition from the bishops and nuncios, some of whom accused the Capuchins of attempting to endear themselves mainly to the Catholic laity. As late as 1720, the Bishop of Basel complained that if the Swiss Capuchins were granted the same spiritual privileges they enjoyed “in partibus infidelibus,” the faithful would finally estrange themselves from their local parish priests. These privileges were seemingly perceived as a confirmation by Rome of the order’s status as an all-powerful mediator in foro interno.Footnote ⁹⁰ The situation remained unclear well into the eighteenth century. Starting in 1656, individual provincials were granted the coveted title of prefect by the Roman congregation, a fact that the cardinals had to be painstakingly reminded of for decades.Footnote ⁹¹ Following the division of the province in 1668, the Swiss province and the province of Upper Austria fought over this ambiguous inheritance.Footnote ⁹²

Overall, however, the efforts of the Swiss Capuchins, which finally bore fruit in the 1720s, can be seen as characteristic of the ongoing process of communalisation of Capuchin humility and poverty. In this process, the mendicants’ religious practices were found to be structurally aligned with the needs and expectations of their environment. In order to defend their reputation as powerful mediators to the transcendent, the Capuchins adapted their communication strategies, ultimately deviating from the precepts of the Rule. Yet the province’s autonomy, i.e. its ability to transcend not only secular norms, but also those of the order, always remained tied to the symbolic resources of the papacy due to a self-image based on strict rule observance and obedience to the Church. The province gained increasingly universal access to these resources by adapting self-descriptions, localised religious and economic practices, and the local recognition built on them. In this regard, the ambiguous precept of poverty imposed by the order was a surprisingly flexible source of legitimisation. The transgression of this precept, especially if justified in the context of missionary pastoral work, could also be read as a sign of its advanced internalisation and a higher divine calling.

Capuchin Poverty and its ‘Transcendence’ in the Mission

Missionary privileges were associated not only with an active apostolate, but also with a relaxation of the strict commandments of poverty. This made the compatibility between the Capuchins’ religious identity and missionary endeavours a delicate question from the outset.Footnote ⁹³ Tellingly, Capuchin missionary reports, such as that by Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi (1621–1678), an Italian missionary stationed in Congo and Angola, typically emphasised adherence to the commandment of poverty, without providing much information about the missions’ actual economies.Footnote ⁹⁴ Although the popes had decreed that the missionaries were exempt from the strict commandments of poverty, Cavazzi claimed that the Capuchins distinguished themselves by firmly upholding these commandments, adopting a simple lifestyle – exemplified by their consumption of sour fruits and tough cassava – avoiding contact with money, and strictly observing their fasting rules. Observing strict poverty would not only have strengthened the Capuchins spiritually, but would also have promoted the acquisition of “poor souls” by the impression created among the locals.Footnote ⁹⁵

The development of a missionary self-image within the Swiss province of the order must be considered a strategy to legitimise increasingly localised religious practices, particularly with regard to the handling of money. Although, in 1670, the provincial characterised the abolition of the spiritual father as a return to a strict, precarious, and spontaneous poverty, financial self-administration still represented a contradiction. This was a problem that, like the increased pastoral activism and the Capuchin engagement with the ‘world,’ seemed to be solvable through missionary privileges. Paradoxically, however, the Swiss province went in the opposite direction to the trend set by Propaganda Fide in the extra-European Capuchin missions.

In 1773, when the French Capuchin Ferdinand of Thann, missionary in Pondichéry, addressed his doubts about the correct interpretation of Capuchin poverty to the prefect of Propaganda Fide, he set up a search for answers in Rome. Expressing his desire to “avoid losing his own [soul]” in his endeavour to “win some souls for Jesus Christ,” he sought clarification on whether Capuchin missionaries were permitted to handle money, receive monetary alms, take over legacies and property bequeathed to them, sell goods, lend money at interest, and act as executors of wills.Footnote ⁹⁶ Surprisingly, in the congregation’s process of answering these doubts, decrees issued by the Propaganda Fide for the Rhaetian Mission, as well as for the neighbouring Swiss province, proved to be seminal.Footnote ⁹⁷ It turned out that, as early as 1633, the Capuchins in the Rhaetian mission had officially been authorised to handle money and accumulate savings from the parishes they administered. In 1638, Propaganda Fide had authorised all Franciscan and Capuchin mission prefects to grant their missionaries the faculty to handle money. These faculties were confirmed for the Swiss province in 1722 and for the Capuchin missions on the American islands under French protection in 1750.Footnote ⁹⁸

While the doubts about the handling of money and the reception of monetary alms could be clarified by referring to these decrees, the question of managing and investing monetary assets and real estate was resolved with reference to a decree issued by Propaganda Fide on 12 December 1718. Citing the medieval papal bull Exiit qui seminat, the decree stated that the Capuchins were not permitted to own real estate or monetary assets in their own name under any circumstances. Instead, all ownership rights were to be transferred to the Holy See through a Catholic layperson chosen by the friars to act as syndicus saecularis Catholicus, provided the friars could find a Catholic layperson for this task.Footnote ⁹⁹ Propaganda Fide’s decree was a rather optimistic attempt to align local mission economies with a papal standard dating back to the thirteenth-century poverty controversy and early Franciscan practice. Paradoxically, Propaganda Fide sought to introduce the office of a secular administrator in non-European Capuchin missions shortly after this very office was being abolished in the Swiss province of the order, which increasingly wanted to be recognised as a missionary territory. The matter is further complicated by the circumstance that both the introduction of the office in the overseas missions and its abolition in the Swiss province of the order were argued for in terms of a return to a strict and traditional interpretation of Franciscan poverty. The European and the non-European missions seem to reveal themselves as inverted mirror images of each other, which should perhaps remind us of their constant dialogue.

Through Propaganda Fide’s standard-setting practice, the Capuchins were confronted with the specific experiences that the Roman authorities had gathered in both contexts. The introduction of secular bookkeepers in the non-European missions may have been motivated by the fact that convents in Catholic Europe were able to integrate themselves successfully into their local environments thanks to the mediating role of these intermediaries. At the same time, popular demand in Europe for clerics with universal access to divine grace was promoted by confessional rivalry, making it especially feasible to further the autonomy of particularly reputable representatives of the Catholic reform, such as the Capuchins, while symbolically strengthening their ties to Rome through missionary privileges.