Born in Biddeford, Maine (USA), on December 15, 1929, son of James Flood and Florence Gallagher. One of four children, he had a brother named James Anthony, and two sisters, Florrie and Ruth. He received his secondary education at St. Francis Mission House High School, Island Creek, Massachusetts, and St. Francis College, Biddeford, Maine. He pursued philosophical studies at the Séminaire St-Antoine, Québec (1951-1954); theological studies at the Séminaire franciscain de théologie, Montréal (1954-1958); post-graduate studies in ecclesiastical history at the University of Cologne, Germany (1961-1965), where he earned a Ph. D. in history for his work on the critical edition of the first Rule of Saint Francis (1971-1972).
He entered the Franciscan Novitiate in Sherbrooke, QC in 1950, where he began his Franciscan formation. A year later, in 1951, he pronounced his simple vows. He then moved to Montreal, where he made his solemn profession in 1954 at the Rosemont friary. He entered Priesthood in 1958 in Portland, Maine.
Brother David has made a significant contribution to Franciscan studies and life. The bibliography of his publications numbers more than fifty entries and includes a significant number of critical text editions, each of which is recognized as a quality example of medieval text editing. In addition to his edition of the Early Rule and Olivi’s Rule Commentary, David also has published editions of the Rule commentaries of Hugh of Digne (1980), David of Augsburg (1993), and John of Wales (2002). In addition to the exegetical texts and the Rule Commentary of Olivi, David edited Olivi’s Quaestio de Mendicitate, and together with David Burr, he published an edition of Olivi’s Sixteenth Question on Evangelical Perfection dealing with poverty and revenue. Together with these text editions, he has published monographs on various aspects of Olivi’s Franciscan thought, theology and understanding of history, with a particular focus on questions of poverty and the economy.
A second focus of Brother David’s publications deals with the early Franciscan movement, its texts and their interpretation. In addition to providing a critical edition of the text of the Early Rule, David’s doctoral dissertation included a detailed analysis of the rule text with its various strata of redactions, highlighting the process through which the brothers articulated their way of life (forma vitae) in light of the Gospel, the social conditions of their times, and their shared experience of life. The results of this study were made available to a wider public with the publication of his La naissance d’un charisme (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1973) with Thaddée Matura and Willibrord-Christian van Dijk, published in English as The Birth of a Movement (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1975).
Anyone who does serious study of the Franciscan Movement in the thirteenth century will undoubtedly come in contact with many of his publications. Anyone who studies the early Franciscan history and sources cannot bypass the work and contribution of David Flood.
The scholarship of Brother David has helped Franciscans recapture and reclaim their common memory. He has argued convincingly that the ways of the Spirit, the gift of grace, needs social embodiment in the real world in which it operates.
In addition to these scholarly publications, David has also used his archival skills and critical historical method to help produce histories for women’s communities in the United States. He published the history of the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God of Paterson, New Jersey in 1993. With Rose Margaret Delaney he published the history of the Saint Anthony Community Hospital, Warwick, New York, and the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, in 2004.
After several years in the U.S. and Europe, David returned to Canada for good in 2015. He returned to the Rosemont friary in Montreal, QC, where he lived until February 2022, at which time he was admitted to the Christian Brothers’ infirmary on the banks of the Rivière des Prairies in Laval, QC.
He passed away in Montreal, QC, January 11, 2024, at the age of 94, after 74 years of religious life and 66 years of priesthood.
DAVID ETHELBERT FLOOD, OFM
1929 – 2024
MAY HE REST IN PEACE
This short biography is inspired by Br. Michael W. Blastic’s tribute to David E. Flood, at the presentation of the Franciscan Institute Medal in St. Bonaventure, New York, in 2005. Brother David was the 17th recipient of this honor.
