was a general tendency to treat the idea of exemplarity metaphorically, to see in exceptional behaviour a moral lesson perhaps, but also the presence of something which, for the average person, was unreachably divine. As Christ began to be conceptualized less as an impossibly exalted, quasi-supernatural figure and more as the most perfect human being who ever lived, the idea that other human beings could live in “imitation” of Him became more influential. Figures like Saint Francis of Assisi adopted a more literal interpretation of what it meant to “imitate” Christ, aspiring not only to live up to His moral vision, but to replicate His voluntary poverty and His translation of neighbourly love into an active principle manifested in an ongoing commitment to good works. The godliness of Francis and those he himself inspired was expressed in a consistent and all-consuming pattern of life.[16]
Aside from what has already been canvassed in this necessarily brief overview, there are three further things to note about the Christian exemplum before assessing the way it was taken up by the Catholic Worker. First of all, the moral quality of Christian exemplarity was central—Christian exempla united not just universal and particular (as a more technical definition of exemplum might connote) but “ought” and “is.” They fit that category of exemplarity identified by the critical theorist Alessandro Ferrara as overcoming the “dichotomic view of our world as split between facts and values, facts and norms, Sein and Sollen, is and ought.” Exemplars, from this perspective, are “entities, material or symbolic, that are as they should be, atoms of reconciliation where is and ought merge and, in so doing, liberate an energy that sparks our imagination.”[17] Secondly, it is important to note that within mainstream Christianity the notion of the “imitation” of Christ was invoked not as a binding moral commandment so much as an exemplary ideal. Understandings of just how relevant such an ideal was to everyday people evolved over the course of time. Isolated groups always existed in which individuals attempted to attain a state of Christ-like “perfection,” but only gradually did similarly ambitious movements arise (like the Franciscans) that were strong enough to carve out an officially recognized place within the Church. Were we to carry the story of Christian exemplarity beyond the Catholic tradition specifically and into the
