[Aidevah]

The issue of poverty as espoused by the Franciscan order was a hotly debated theological issue in the 13th and 14th centuries. Eventually the Pope had to get involved to denounce the idea of "Absolute poverty of Christ" as heresy. The Franciscan revolution may have not gone as far as some people have hoped, but it was an important step in the development of Western liberalism (cf. Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual, pp. 288-292). Incidentally, this same debate was also featured as the central plot conflict in Umberto Eco's historical fiction "The Name of the Rose".