Regule a alternativa : motiv dobrovolné chudoby v reformních proudech vrcholného středověku

Jesus of the Synoptical Gospels showed poverty as perfcct. The Jerusalem community tried to be a church of the poor and a poor church at the same time. Later development makes "a life in the gospel poverty" a synonym for monastic existence and the whole early Middle Ages are driven by an individual endeavour for the literal fulfilment of the Christian ideal of the monastic vow, which seems to be a definite guarantee of a "perfection". Not until the beginning of the High Middle Ages did spontaneous initiatíves strive for a change in the social application of voluntary poverty and for enforcing of its radical; i. e. literal, conception. The "Poverty movement" - as continuum of such initiatíves and streams (formally made up by the rise of begging orders) is called, belongs to an epoch of new social and economical differentiation within feudal society. It is not exclusively an urban phenomenon, although it was established in the urban environment, which were communication centres during the twelfth century. It is mostly a more or less the privileged movement, for those who have both the objective prerequisites, and the subjective need to satisfy their "conscience of their faith" - to follow their religious instincts. Poverty, according to the Gospel, however, is not a static motive. While the vagabond preachers and their groups (the valdenians belong genetically to them) the pathos of apostolic duty dominates, and poverty (however eccentric) is only an exterior factor, the stress on life modesty appears among some groups (mostly with a dominant feminine element) inspired by the modus vivendi of Jerusalem community. In St. Francis of Assisi, both positions culminate and harmonise. Poverty, although it still had only its function of salvation, was presented for the first time not as a "better form of life". For smaUer brethren, the crucial question at the end of the twelfth century was, whether in practice of perfect poverty, the minimum consumption principle and the non-ownership principle have the same level of necessity. The opposition and leadership agree on the preference of alms (or donations) at the expense of physical labour. The begging poverty of intellectualised Franciscanism loses its popular aspect in this phase. In contrast to this, lay Franciscanism, with its ethos of humble existence would in the future begin to be a kind of veiy unorthodox movement of spiritu al inclination. In an opposition to Beguines, Catholic poor, humble orders, etc, who often kept their social settings of small producers (textores), the Franciscan tertiaries quickly started to spread through European society, both vertically and horízontally.