The disputes over poverty within the Franciscan order in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and the ensuing conflicts with Popes John XXII and Benedict XII on this issue were some of the most well-known episodes in Franciscan history, and have stimulated a vast scholarly literature. John Moorman himself in his A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 of necessity had to give an outline treatment of these disputes. The question of poverty and property was an enduring problem for Christianity given the deep suspicion of riches exhibited by the New Testament: in the medieval Church there was tension between the demands of the poverty ethos and ecclesiastical possessions. The memory of the community of possessions referred to in the Acts of the Apostles could create a bad conscience in the face of the Church's compromise with the world through its integration into society's structures of property and power.

The defence of Franciscan positions on poverty lay in the fundamental distinction between use and ownership. In the conflicts with the papacy, Franciscans of various kinds used the authority of previous papal bulls and decretals which they maintained favoured their interpretations.