THE FRANCISCANS, THE ECONOMY AND POLITICS IN TOWN
Since their arrival in Florence the Franciscans left meaningful traces in public affairs although they
never forgot their authentic spiritual and religious dimension.
They took in consideration politics as an analysis of the effects of the government of the city on its
inhabitants, as the investigation on the repercussion on social life and the mutual relationships. History
testifies the existence, since the origins of the religious group, of councilors, ambassadors, mediators,
confessors of princes and powerful individuals among the Franciscans.
Since the Franciscans moved to Florence they settled in an area where socially excluded and poor
people lived to help develop the aspiration to equality, esteem and optimism proper of their preaching.
The mystical relationship between the friars and poor people is particularly evident in Santa Croce. Saint
Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Order, had first lived the conflict between richness and poverty typical
of the time: son of a wealthy merchant (“by right” belonging to the new bourgeois developed in town) he
renounced to the belongings of the father to live with the poor. This choice was above all spiritual rather
than political because Francis wanted to imitate Christ but this act had important consequences on the
future organization of the social and political life of Florence.
Santa Croce is one of the five big churches that from 1250 forward, gave the city a different urban
structure. It is the border line between the small medieval “Fiorenza” and the metropolis which was coming
up during the 1200s and at the beginning of the fourteenth century.
When the first church of Santa Croce was built, the whole district was only a suburban area of ill
repute. People arrived from the countryside, from the mountains, from different parts of Italy because
Florence was a growing turbulent reality. The manual labourers and artisans, their children, the merchants,
the fabric’s weavers gradually got the political and administrative power. The “new” class which moved the
economy and become the protagonist of the society, is the working class which produced the richness by
using the hands, the talent with industriousness: in a way they formed themselves thanks to the
Franciscans who gave voice to these “new people” like Dante Alighieri used to call them. The Franciscans
immediately succeeded because they were able to talk to crowds and proposed a new idea of the Christian
and evangelic message: peace, justice and human dignity, respect for everybody and everything, richness
produced and used for everybody’s good, aimed at something instead of source of divisions and contrasts.
The Franciscan is attentive to every single person rather to race, nation or class because each human being
exists as unique and not as part of the multitude.
The popular nature of Franciscan spirituality creates a tight collaboration between the religious
group and the Florentine families who asked the permission to bury their loved ones in Santa Croce; so the
wealthy families such as Velluti, Bardi, Alberti, Peruzzi, Medici and others were involved in the building of
the church.
Don’t forget the confraternities which have an important role in Florence during the Middle Ages.
Religion was a part of everyday life and felt as an always lively need, a stimulus to live as a Christian. The
Franciscans organized meetings, created occasions of comparison, offered assistance. The Franciscan
message, learned through the experience acquired in the confraternities, taught the citizens to be aware of
common problems, of the needs of the brothers and the care in finding a solution to their problems in spite
of the political fights which divided the city into factions and ruined families as well.