Of almost double the length of that of Giordano, Eccleston's work is far from furnishing as interesting reading. The former had seen nearly everything that he described, and thence resulted a vigor in his story that we cannot find in an author who writes on the testimony of others. More than this, while Giordano follows a chronological order, Eccleston has divided his incidents under fifteen rubrics, in which the same people continually reappear in a confusion which at length becomes very wearisome. Finally, his document is amazingly partial: the author is not content with merely proving that the English friars are saints; he desires to show that the province of England surpasses all others[6] by its fidelity to the Rule and its courage against the upholders of new ways, Brother Elias in particular.

But these few faults ought not to make us lose sight of the true value of this document. It embraces what we may call the heroic period of the Franciscan movement in England, and describes it with extreme simplicity.

Aside from all question of history, we have here enough to interest all those who are charmed by the spectacle of moral conquest. On Monday, September 10th, the Brothers Minor landed at Dover. They were nine in number: a priest, a deacon, two who had only the lesser Orders, and five laymen. They visited Canterbury, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, and less than ten months later all who have made their mark in the history of science or of sanctity had joined them; it may suffice to name Adam of Marisco, Richard of Cornwall, Bishop Robert Grossetete, one of the proudest and purest figures of the Middle Ages, and Roger Bacon, that persecuted monk who several centuries before his time grappled with and answered in his lonely cell the problems of authority and method, with a firmness and power which the sixteenth century would find it hard to surpass.

It is impossible that in such a movement human weaknesses and passions should not here and there reveal themselves, but we owe our chronicler thanks for not hiding them. Thanks to him, we can for a moment forget the present hour, call to life again that first Cambridge chapel—so slight that it took a carpenter only one day to build it—listen to three Brothers chanting matins that same night, and that with so much ardor that one of them—so rickety that his two companions were obliged to carry him—wept for joy: in England as in Italy the Franciscan gospel was a gospel of peace and joy. Moral ugliness inspired them with a pity which we no longer know. There are few historic incidents finer than that of Brother Geoffrey of Salisbury confessing Alexander of Bissingburn; the noble penitent was performing this duty without attention, as if he were telling some sort of a story; suddenly his confessor melted into tears, making him blush with shame and forcing tears also from him, working in him so complete a revolution that he begged to be taken into the Order.

The most interesting parts are those where Thomas gives us an intimate view of the friars: here drinking their beer, there hastening, in spite of the Rule, to buy some on credit for two comrades who have been maltreated, or again clustering about Brother Solomon, who had just come in nearly frozen with cold, and whom they could not succeed in warming—sicut porcis mos est cum comprimendo foverunt, says the pious narrator.[7] All this is mingled with dreams, visions, numberless apparitions,[8] which once more show us how different were the ideas most familiar to the religious minds of the thirteenth century from those which haunt the brains and hearts of to-day.

The information given by Eccleston bears only indirectly on this book, but if he speaks little of Francis he speaks much at length of some of the men who have been most closely mingled with his life.

III. CHRONICLE OF FRA SALIMBENI[9]

As celebrated as it is little known, this chronicle is of quite secondary value in all that concerns the life of St. Francis. Its author, born October 9, 1221, entered the Order in 1238, and wrote his memoirs in 1282-1287; it is therefore especially for the middle years of the thirteenth century that his importance is capital. Notwithstanding this, it is surprising how small a place the radiant figure of the master holds in these long pages, and this very fact shows, better than long arguments could do, how profound was the fall of the Franciscan idea.

IV. THE CHRONICLE OF THE TRIBULATIONS BY ANGELO CARENO[10]

This chronicle was written about 1330; we might therefore be surprised to see it appear among the sources to be consulted for the life of St. Francis, dead more than a century before; but the picture which Clareno gives us of the early days of the Order gains its importance from the fact that in sketching it he made constant appeal to eye-witnesses, and precisely to those whose works have disappeared.

Angelo Clareno, earlier called Pietro da Fossombrone[11] from the name of his native town, and sometimes da Cingoli, doubtless from the little convent where he made profession, belonged to the Zelanti of the March of Ancona as early as 1265. Hunted and persecuted by his adversaries during his whole life, he died in the odor of sanctity June 15, 1339, in the little hermitage of Santa Maria d' Aspro in the diocese of Marsico in Basilicata.

Thanks to published documents, we may now, so to speak, follow day by day not only the external circumstances of his life, but the inner workings of his soul. With him we see the true Franciscan live again, one of those men who, while desiring to remain the obedient son of the Church, cannot reconcile themselves to permit the domain of the dream to slip away from them, the ideal which they have hailed. Often they are on the borders of heresy; in these utterances against bad priests and unworthy pontiffs there is a bitterness which the sectaries of the sixteenth century will not exceed.[12] Often, too, they seem to renounce all authority and make final appeal to the inward witness of the Holy Spirit;[13] and yet Protestantism would be mistaken in seeking its ancestors among them. No, they desired to die as they had lived, in the communion of that Church which was as a stepmother to them and which they yet loved with that heroic passion which some of the ci-devant nobles brought in '93 to the love of France, governed though she was by Jacobins, and poured out their blood for her.

Clareno and his friends not only believed that Francis had been a great Saint, but to this conviction, which was also that of the Brothers of the Common Observance, they added the persuasion that the work of the Stigmatized could only be continued by men who should attain to his moral stature, to which men might arrive through the power of faith and love. They were of the violent who take the kingdom of heaven by force; so when, after the frivolous and senile interests of every day we come face to face with them, we feel ourselves both humbled and exalted, for we suddenly find unhoped-for powers, an unrecognized lyre in the human heart.

There is one of Jesus's apostles of whom it is difficult not to think while reading the chronicle of the Tribulations and Angelo Clareno's correspondence: St. John. Between the apostle's words about love and those of the Franciscan there is a similarity of style all the more striking because they were written in different languages. In both of these the soul is that of the aged man, where all is only love, pardon, desire for holiness, and yet it sometimes wakes with a sudden thrill—like that which stirred the soul of the seer of Patmos—of indignation, wrath, pity, terror, and joy, when the future unveils itself and gives a glimpse of the close of the great tribulation.

Clareno's works, then, are in the strictest sense of the word partisan; the question is whether the author has designedly falsified the facts or mutilated the texts. To this question we may boldly answer, No. He commits errors,[14] especially in his earlier pages, but they are not such as to diminish our confidence.

Like a good Joachimite, he believed that the Order would have to traverse seven tribulations before its final triumph. The pontificate of John XXII. marked, he thought, the commencement of the seventh; he set himself, then, to write, at the request of a friend, the history of the first six.[15]

His account of the first is naturally preceded by an introduction, the purpose of which is to exhibit to the reader, taking the life of St. Francis as a framework, the intention of the latter in composing the Rule and dictating the Will.

Born between 1240 and 1250, Clareno had at his service the testimony of several of the first disciples;[16] he found himself in relations with Angelo di Rieti,[17] Egidio,[18] and with that Brother Giovanni, companion of Egidio, mentioned in the prologue of the Legend of the Three Companions.[19]

His chronicle, therefore, forms as it were the continuation of that legend. The members of the little circle of Greccio are they who recommend it to us; it has also their inspiration.

But writing long years after the death of these Brothers, Clareno feels the need of supporting himself also on written testimony; he repeatedly refers to the four legends from which he borrows a part of his narrative; they are those of Giovanni di Ceperano, Thomas of Celano, Bonaventura, and Brother Leo.[20] Bonaventura's work is mentioned only by way of reference; Clareno borrows nothing from him, while he cites long passages from Giovanni di Ceperano,[21] Thomas of Celano[22] and Brother Leo.[23]

Clareno takes from these writers narratives containing several new and extremely curious facts.[24]

I have dwelt particularly upon this document because its value appears to me not yet to have been properly appreciated. It is indeed partisan; the documents of which we must be most wary are not those whose tendency is manifest, but those where it is skilfully concealed.

The life of St. Francis and a great part of the religious history of the thirteenth century will surely appear to us in an entirely different light when we are able to fill out the documents of the victorious party by those of the party of the vanquished. Just as Thomas of Celano's first legend is dominated by the desire to associate closely St. Francis, Gregory IX., and Brother Elias, so the Chronicle of the Tribulations is inspired from beginning to end with the thought that the troubles of the Order—to say the word, the apostasy—began so early as 1219. This contention finds a striking confirmation in the Chronicle of Giordano di Giano.

V. THE FIORETTI[25]

With the Fioretti we enter definitively the domain of legend. This literary gem relates the life of Francis, his companions and disciples, as it appeared to the popular imagination at the beginning of the fourteenth century. We have not to discuss the literary value of this document, one of the most exquisite religious works of the Middle Ages, but it may well be said that from the historic point of view it does not deserve the neglect to which it has been left.

Most authors have failed in courage to revise the sentence lightly uttered against it by the successors of Bollandus. Why make anything of a book which Father Suysken did not even deign to read![26]

Yet that which gives these stories an inestimable worth is what for want of a better term we may call their atmosphere. They are legendary, worked over, exaggerated, false even, if you please, but they give us with a vivacity and intensity of coloring something that we shall search for in vain elsewhere—the surroundings in which St. Francis lived. More than any other biography the Fioretti transport us to Umbria, to the mountains of the March of Ancona; they make us visit the hermitages, and mingle with the life, half childish, half angelic, which was that of their inhabitants.

It is difficult to pronounce upon the name of the author. His work was only that of gathering the flowers of his bouquet from written and oral tradition. The question whether he wrote in Latin or Italian has been much discussed and appears to be not yet settled; what is certain is that though this work may be anterior to the Conformities,[27] it is a little later than the Chronicle of the Tribulations, for it would be strange that it made no mention of Angelo Clareno, if it was written after his death.

This book is in fact an essentially local[28] chronicle; the author has in mind to erect a monument to the glory of the Brothers Minor of the March of Ancona. This province, which is evidently his own, "does it not resemble the sky blazing with stars? The holy Brothers who dwelt in it, like the stars in the sky, have illuminated and adorned the Order of St. Francis, filling the world with their examples and teaching." He is acquainted with the smallest villages,[29] each having at a short distance its monastery, well apart, usually near a torrent, in the edge of a wood, and above, near the hilltop, a few almost inaccessible cells, the asylums of Brothers even more than the others in love with contemplation and retirement.[30]

The chapters that concern St. Francis and the Umbrian Brothers are only a sort of introduction; Egidio, Masseo, Leo on one side, St. Clara on the other, are witnesses that the ideal at Portiuncula and St. Damian was indeed the same to which in later days Giachimo di Massa, Pietro di Monticulo, Conrad di Offida, Giovanni di Penna, and Giovanni della Verna endeavored to attain.

While most of the other legends give us the Franciscan tradition of the great convents, the Fioretti are almost the only document which shows it as it was perpetuated in the hermitages and among the people. In default of accuracy of detail, the incidents which are related here contain a higher truth—their tone is true. Here are words that were never uttered, acts that never took place, but the soul and the heart of the early Franciscans were surely what they are depicted here.

The Fioretti have the living truth that the pencil gives. Something is wanting in the physiognomy of the Poverello when we forget his conversation with Brother Leo on the perfect joy, his journey to Sienna with Masseo, or even the conversion of the wolf of Gubbio.

We must not, however, exaggerate the legendary side of the Fioretti: there are not more that two or three of these stories of which the kernel is not historic and easy to find. The famous episode of the wolf of Gubbio, which is unquestionably the most marvellous of all the series, is only, to speak the engraver's language, the third state of the story of the robbers of Monte Casale[31] mingled with a legend of the Verna.

The stories crowd one another in this book like flocks of memories that come upon us pell-mell, and in which insignificant details occupy a larger place than the most important events; our memory is, in fact, an overgrown child, and what it retains of a man is generally a feature, a word, a gesture. Scientific history is trying to react, to mark the relative value of facts, to bring forward the important ones, to cast into shade that which is secondary. Is it not a mistake? Is there such a thing as the important and the secondary? How is it going to be marked?

The popular imagination is right: what we need to retain of a man is the expression of countenance in which lives his whole being, a heart-cry, a gesture that expresses his personality. Do we not find all of Jesus in the words of the Last Supper? And all of St. Francis in his address to brother wolf and his sermon to the birds?

Let us beware of despising these documents in which the first Franciscans are described as they saw themselves to be. Unfolding under the Umbrian sky at the foot of the olives of St. Damian, or the firs of the March of Ancona, these wild flowers have a perfume and an originality which we look for in vain in the carefully cultivated flowers of a learned gardener.

APPENDICES OF THE FIORETTI

In the first of these appendices the compiler has divided into five chapters all the information on the stigmata which he was able to gather. It is easy to understand the success of the Fioretti. The people fell in love with these stories, in which St. Francis and his companions appear both more human and more divine than in the other legends; and they began very soon to feel the need of so completing them as to form a veritable biography.[32]

The second, entitled Life of Brother Ginepro, is only indirectly connected with St. Francis; yet it deserves to be studied, for it offers the same kind of interest as the principal collection, to which it is doubtless posterior. In these fourteen chapters we find the principal features of the life of this Brother, whose mad and saintly freaks still furnish material for conversation in Umbrian monasteries. These unpretending pages discover to us one aspect of the Franciscan heart. The official historians have thought it their duty to keep silence upon this Brother, who to them appeared to be a supremely indiscreet personage, very much in the way of the good name of the Order in the eyes of the laics. They were right from their point of view, but we owe a debt of gratitude to the Fioretti for having preserved for us this personality, so blithe, so modest, and with so arch a good nature. Certainly St. Francis was more like Ginepro than like Brother Elias or St. Bonaventura.[33]

The third, Life of Brother Egidio, appears to be on the whole the most ancient document on the life of the famous Ecstatic that we possess. It is very possible that these stories might be traced to Brother Giovanni, to whom the Three Companions appeal in their prologue.

In the defective texts given us in the existing editions we perceive the hand of an annotator whose notes have slipped into the text,[34] but in spite of that this life is one of the most important of the secondary texts. This always itinerant brother, one of whose principal preoccupations is to live by his labor, is one of the most original and agreeable figures in Francis's surroundings, and it is in lives of this sort that we must seek the true meaning of some of the passages of the Rule, and precisely in those that have had the most to suffer from the enterprise of exegetes.

The fourth includes the favorite maxims of Brother Egidio; they have no other importance than to show the tendencies of the primitive Franciscan teaching. They are short, precise, practical counsels, saturated with mysticism, and yet in them good sense never loses its rights. The collection, just as it is in the Fioretti, is no doubt posterior to Egidio, for in 1385 Bartolommeo of Pisa furnished a much longer one.[35]

VI. CHRONICLE OF THE XXIV. GENERALS[36]

We find here at the end of the life of Francis that of most of his companions, and the events that occurred under the first twenty-four generals.

It is a very ordinary work of compilation. The authors have sought to include in it all the pieces which they had succeeded in collecting, and the result presents a very disproportioned whole. A thorough study of it might be interesting and useful, but it would be possible only after its publication. This cannot be long delayed: twice (at intervals of fifteen months) when I have desired to study the Assisi manuscript it was found to be with the Franciscans of Quaracchi, who were preparing to print it.

It is difficult not to bring the epoch in which this collection was closed near to that when Bartolommeo of Pisa wrote his famous work. Perhaps the two are quite closely related.

This chronicle was one of Glassberger's favorite sources.

VII. THE CONFORMITIES OF BARTOLOMMEO OF PISA[37]

The Book of the Conformities, to which Brother Bartolommeo of Pisa devoted more than fifteen years of his life,[38] appears to have been read very inattentively by most of the authors who have spoken of it.[39] In justice to them we must add that it would be hard to find a work more difficult to read; the same facts reappear from ten to fifteen times, and end by wearying the least delicate nerves.

It is to this no doubt that we must attribute the neglect to which it has been left. I do not hesitate, however, to see in it the most important work which has been made on the life of St. Francis. Of course the author does not undertake historical criticism as we understand it to-day, but if we must not expect to find him a historian, we can boldly place him in the front rank of compilers.[40]

If the Bollandists had more thoroughly studied him they would have seen more clearly into the difficult question of the sources, and the authors who have come after them would have been spared numberless errors and interminable researches.

Starting with the thought that Francis's life had been a perfect imitation of that of Jesus, Bartolommeo attempted to collect, without losing a single one, all the instances of the life of the Poverello scattered through the diverse legends still known at that time.

He regretted that Bonaventura, while borrowing the narratives of his predecessors, had often abridged them,[41] and himself desired to preserve them in their original bloom. Better situated than any one for such a work, since he had at his disposal the archives of the Sacro Convento of Assisi, it may be said that he has omitted nothing of importance and that he has brought into his work considerable pieces from nearly all the legends which appeared in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; they are there only in fragments, it is true, but with perfect accuracy.[42]

When his researches were unsuccessful he avows it simply, without attempting to fill out the written testimonies with his own conjectures.[43] He goes farther, and submits the documents he has before him to a real testing, laying aside those he considers uncertain.[44] Finally he takes pains to point out the passages in which his only authority is oral testimony.[45]

As he is almost continually citing the legends of Celano, the Three Companions, and Bonaventura, and as the citations prove on verification to be literally accurate, as well as those of the Will, the divers Rules, or the pontifical bulls, it seems natural to conclude that he was equally accurate with the citations which we cannot verify, and in which we find long extracts from works that have disappeared.[46]

The citations which he makes from Celano present no difficulty; they are all accurate, corresponding sometimes with the First sometimes with the Second Legend.[47]

Those from the Legend of the Three Companions are accurate, but it appears that Bartolommeo drew them from a text somewhat different from that which we have.[48]

With the citations from the Legenda Antiqua the question is complicated and becomes a nice one. Was there a work of this name? Certain authors, and among them the Bollandist Suysken, seem to incline toward the negative, and believe that to cite the Legenda Antiqua is about the same as to refer vaguely to tradition. Others among contemporaries have thought that after the approbation and definitive adoption of Bonaventura's Legenda Major by the Order the Legends anterior to that, and especially that of Celano, were called Legenda Antiqua. The Conformities permit us to look a little closer into the question. We find, in fact, passages from the Legenda Antiqua which reproduce Celano's First Life.[49] Others present points of contact with the Second, sometimes a literary exactitude,[50] but often these are the same stories told in too different a way for us to consider them borrowed.[51]

Finally there are many of these extracts from the Legenda Antiqua of which we find no source in any of the documents already discussed.[52] This would suffice to show that the two are not to be confounded. It has absorbed them and brought about certain changes while completing them with others.[53]

The study of the fragments which Bartolommeo has preserved to us shows immediately that this collection belonged to the party of the Zealots of Poverty; we might be tempted to see in it the work of Brother Leo.

Most fortunately there is a passage where Bartolommeo di Pisa cites as being by Conrad di Offida a fragment which he had already cited before as borrowed from the Legenda Antiqua.[54] I would not exaggerate the value of an isolated instance, but it seems an altogether plausible hypothesis to make Conrad di Offida the author of this compilation. All that we know of him, of his tendencies, his struggle for the strict observance, accords with what the known fragments of the Legenda Antiqua permit us to infer as to its author.[55]

However this may be, it appears that in this collection the stories have been given us (the principal source being the Legend of Brother Leo or the Three Companions before its mutilation) in a much less abridged form than in the Second Life of Celano. This work is hardly more than a second edition of that of Brother Leo, here and there completed with a few new incidents, and especially with exhortations to perseverance addressed to the persecuted Zealots.[56]

VIII. CHRONICLE OF GLASSBERGER[57]

Evidently this work, written about 1508, cannot be classed among the sources properly so called; but it presents in a convenient form the general history of the Order, and thanks to its citations permits us to verify certain passages in the primitive legends of which Glassberger had the MS. before his eyes. It is thus in particular with the chronicle of Brother Giordano di Giano, which he has inserted almost bodily in his own work.

IX. CHRONICLE OF MARK OF LISBON[58]

This work is of the same character as that of Glassberger; it can only be used by way of addition. There is, however, a series of facts in which it has a special value; it is when the Franciscan missions in Spain or Morocco are in question. The author had documents on this subject which did not reach the friars in distant countries.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Chronica fratris Jordani a Giano. The text was published for the first time in 1870 by Dr. G. Voigt under the title: "Die Denkwuerdigkeiten des Minoriten Jordanus von Giano in the Abhandlungen der philolog. histor. Cl. der Koenigl. saechsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften," pp. 421-545, Leipsic, by Hirzel, 1870. Only one manuscript is known; it is in the royal library at Berlin (Manuscript. theolog. lat., 4to, n. 196, saec. xiv., foliorum 141). It has served as the base of the second edition: Analecta franciscana sive Chronica aliaque documenta ad historiam minorum spectantia. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) ex typographia collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1885, t. i., pp. 1-19. Except where otherwise noted, I cite entirely this edition, in which is preserved the division into sixty-three paragraphs introduced by Dr. Voigt.

[2] Giord., 81.

[3] He names more than twenty four persons.

[4] It does not seem to me that we can look upon the account of the interview between Gregory IX. and Brother Giordano as rigorously accurate. Giord., 63.

[5] Liber de adventu Minorum in Angliam, published under the title of Monumenta Franciscana (in the series of Rerum Britannicarum medii AEvi scriptores, Roll series) in two volumes, 8vo; the first through the care of J. S. Brewer (1858), the second through that of R. Howlett (1882). This text is reproduced without the scientific dress of the Analecta franciscana, t. i., pp. 217-257. Cf. English Historical Review, v. (1890), 754. He has published an excellent critical edition of it, but unfortunately partial, in vol. xxviii., Scriptorum, of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica by Mr. Liebermann, Hanover, 1888, folio, pp. 560-569.

[6] Eccl., 11; 13; 14; 15. Cf. Eccl., 14, where the author takes pains to say that Alberto of Pisa died at Rome, surrounded by English Brothers "inter Anglicos."

[7] Eccl., 4; 12.

[8] Eccl., 4; 5; 6; 7; 10; 12; 13; 14; 15.

[9] It was published, but with many suppressions, in 1857, at Parma. The Franciscans of Quaracchi prepared a new edition of it, which appeared in the Analecta Franciscana. This work is in manuscript in the Vatican under no. 7260. Vide Ehrle. Zeitschrift fuer kath. Theol. (1883), t. vii., pp. 767 and 768. The work of Mr. Cledat will be read with interest: De fratre Salembene et de ejus chronicae auctoritate, Paris, 4to, 1877, with fac simile.

[10] Father Ehrle has published it, but unfortunately not entire, in the Archiv., t. ii., pp. 125-155, text of the close of the fifth and of the sixth tribulation; pp. 256-327 text of the third, of the fourth, and of the commencement of the fifth. He has added to it introductions and critical notes. For the parts not published I will cite the text of the Laurentian manuscript (Plut. 20, cod. 7), completed where possible with the Italian version in the National Library at Florence (Magliabecchina, xxxvii.-28). See also an article of Professor Tocco in the Archivio storico italiano, t. xvii. (1886), pp. 12-36 and 243-61, and one of Mr. Richard's: Library of the Ecole des chartes, 1884, 5th livr. p. 525. Cf. Tocco, the Eresia nel medio Evo, p. 419 ff. As to the text published by Doellinger in his Beitraege zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, Muenich, 1890, 2 vols., 8vo, II. Theil Dokumente, pp. 417-427, it is of no use. It can only beget errors, as it abounds with gross mistakes. Whole pages are wanting.

[11] Archiv., t. iii., pp. 406-409.

[12] Vide Archiv., i., p. 557 ... "Et hoc totum ex rapacitate et malignitate luporum pastorum qui voluerunt esse pastores, sed operibus negaverunt deum," et seq. Cf., p. 562: "Avaritia et symoniaca heresis absque pallio regnat et fere totum invasit ecclesie corpus."

[13] "Qui excommunicat et hereticat altissimam evangelii paupertatem, excommunicatus est a Deo et hereticus coram Christo, qui est eterna et in commutabilis veritas." Arch., i., p. 509. "Non est potestas contra christum Dominum et contra evangelium." Ib. p. 560. He closes one of his letters with a sentence of a mysticism full of serenity, and which lets us see to the bottom of the hearts of the Spiritual Brothers. "Totum igitur studium esse debet quod unum inseparabiliter simus per Franciscum in Christo." Ib., p. 564.

[14] For example in the list of the first six generals of the Order.

[15] The first (1219-1226) extends from the departure of St. Francis for Egypt up to his death; the second includes the generalate of Brother Elias (1232-1239); the third that of Crescentius (1244-1248); the fourth, that of Bonaventura (1257-1274); the fifth commences with the epoch of the council of Lyon (1274) and extends up to the death of the inquisitor, Thomas d'Aversa (1204). And the sixth goes from 1308 to 1323.

[16] "Supererant adhuc multi de sociis b. Francisci ... et alii non pauci de quibus ego vidi et ab ipsis audivi quae narro." Laur. Ms., cod. 7, pl. xx., f^o 24a: "Qui passi sunt eam (tribulationem tertiam) socii fundatoris fratres Aegdius et Angelus, qui supererant me audiente referibant." Laur. Ms., f^o 27b. Cf., Italian Ms., xxxvii., 28, Magliab., f^o 138b.

[17] The date of his death is unknown; on August 11, 1253, he was present at the death-bed of St. Clara.

[18] Died April 23, 1261.

[19] "Quem (fratrem Jacobum de Massa) dirigente me fratre Johanne socio fratris prefati Egidii videre laboravi. Hic enim frater Johannes ... dixit mihi...." Arch., ii., p. 279.

[20] " ... Tribulationes preteritas memoravi, ut audivi ab illis qui sustinuerunt eas et aliqua commemoravi de hiis que didici in quatuor legendis quas vidi et legi." Arch., ii., p. 135.—"Vitam pauperis et humilis viri Dei Francisci trium ordinum fundatoris quatuor solemnes personae scripserunt, fratres videlicet scientia et sanctitate praeclari, Johannes et Thomas de Celano, frater Bonaventura unus post Beatum Franciscum Generalis Minister et vir mirae simplicitatis et sanctitatis frater Leo, ejusdem sancti Francisci socius. Has quatuor descriptiones seu historias qui legerit...." Laurent. MS., pl. xx., c. 7, f^o 1a. Did the Italian translator think there was an error in this quotation? I do not know, but he suppressed it. At f^o 12a of manuscript xxxvii., 28, of the Magliabecchina, we read: "Incominciano alcune croniche del ordine franciscano, come la vita del povero e humile servo di Dio Francesco fondatore del minorico ordine fu scripta da San Bonaventura e da quatro altri frati. Queste poche scripture ovveramente hystorie quello il quale diligentemente le leggiera, expeditamente potra cognoscere ... la vocatione la santita di San Francisco."

[21] Laur. MS., f^o 4b ff. On the other hand we read in a letter of Clareno: "Ad hanc (paupertatem) perfecte servandam Christus Franciscum vocavit et elegit in hac hora novissima et precepit ei evangelicam assumere regulam, et a papa Innocentio fuit omnibus annuntiatum in concilio generali, quod de sua auctoritate et obedientia sanctus Franciscus evangelicam vitam et regulam assumpserat et Christo inspirante servare promiserat, sicut sanctus vir fr. Leo scribit et fr. Johannes de Celano." Archiv., i., p. 559.

[22] "Audiens enim semel quorundam fratrum enormes excessus, ut fr. Thomas de Celano scribit, et malum exemplum per eos secularibus datum." Laur. MS., f^o 13b. The passage which follows evidently refers to 2 Cel., 3, 93 and 112.

[23] "Et fecerunt de regula prima ministri removeri capitulum istud de prohibitionibus sancti evangelii, sicut frater Leo scribit." Laur. Ms. f^o 12b. Cf. Spec., 9a, see p. 248. "Nam cum rediisset de partibus ultramarinis, minister quidam loquebatur cum eo, ut frater Leo refert, de capitulo paupertatis," f^o 13a, cf. Spec., 9a, "S. Franciscus, teste fr. Leone, frequenter et cum multo studio recitabat fabulam ... quod oportebat finaliter ordinem humiliari et ad sue humilitatis principia confitenda et tenenda reduci." Archiv., ii., p. 129.

There is only one point of contact between the Legend of the Three Companions, such as it is to-day, and these passages; but we find on the contrary revised accounts in the Speculum and in the other collections, where they are cited as coming from Brother Leo.

[24] Clareno, for example, holds that the Cardinal Ugolini had sustained St. Francis without approving of the first Rule, in concert with Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo. This is possible, since Ugolini was created cardinal in 1198 (Vide Cardella: Memorie storiche de' Cardinali, 9 vols., 8vo, Rome, 1792-1793, t. i., pt. 2, p. 190). Besides this would better explain the zeal with which he protected the divers Orders founded by St. Francis, from 1217. The chapter where Clareno tells how St. Francis wrote the Rule shows the working over of the legend, but it is very possible that he has borrowed it in its present form from Brother Leo. It is to be noted that we do not find in this document a single allusion to the Indulgences of Portiuncula.

[25] The manuscripts and editions are well-nigh innumerable. M. Luigi Manzoni has studied them with a carefulness that makes it much to be desired that he continue this difficult work. Studi sui Fioretti: Miscelenea, 1888, pp. 116-119, 150-152, 162-168; 1889, 9-15, 78-84, 132-135. When shall we find some one who can and will undertake to make a scientific edition of them? Those which have appeared during our time in the various cities of Italy are insignificant from a critical point of view. See Mazzoni Guido, Capitoli inediti dei Fioretti di S. Francesco, in the Propugnatore, Bologna, 1888, vol. xxi., pp. 396-411.

[26] Vide A. SS., p. 865: "Floretum non legi, nec curandum putavi." Cf. 553f: "Floretum ad manum non habeo."

[27] Bartolommeo di Pisa compiled it in 1385; then certain manuscripts of the Fioretti are earlier. Besides, in the stories that the Conformities borrow from the Fioretti, we perceive Bartolommeo's work of abbreviation.

[28] I am speaking here only of the fifty-three chapters which form the true collection of the Fioretti.

[29] The province of the March of Ancona counted seven custodias: 1, Ascoli; 2, Camerino; 3, Ancona; 4, Jesi; 5, Fermo; 6, Fano; 7, Felestro. The Fioretti mention at least six of the monasteries of the custodia of Fermo: Moliano, 51, 53; Fallerone, 32, 51; Bruforte and Soffiano, 46, 47; Massa, 51; Penna, 45; Fermo, 41, 49, 51.

[30] At each page we are reminded of those groves which were originally the indispensable appendage of the Franciscan monasteries: La selva ch' era allora allato a S. M. degli Angeli, 3, 10, 15, 16, etc. La selva d' un luogo deserto del val di Spoleto (Carceri?), 4; selva di Forano, 42. di Massa, 51, etc.

[31] The Speculum, 46b, 58b, 158a, gives us three states. Cf. Fior., 26 and 21; Conform., 119b, 2.

[32] This desire was so natural that the manuscript of the Angelica Library includes many additional chapters, concerning the gift of Portiuncula, the indulgence of August 2d, the birth of St. Francis, etc. (Vide Amoni, Fioretti, Roma, 1889, pp. 266, 378-386.) It would be an interesting study to seek the origin of these documents and to establish their relationship with the Speculum and the Conformities. Vide Conform., 231a, 1; 121b; Spec., 92-96.

[33] Ginepro was received into the Order by St. Francis. In 1253 he was present at St. Clara's death. A. SS., Aug., t. ii., p. 764d. The Conformities speak of him in detail, f^o 62b.

[34] The first seven chapters form a whole. The three which follow are doubtless a first attempt at completing them.

[35] Conformities, f^o 55b, 1-60a, 1.

[36] See Archiv., t. i., p. 145, an article of Father Denifle: Zur Quellenkunde der Franziskaner Geschichte, where he mentions at least eight manuscripts of this work. Cf. Ehrle: Zeitschrift, 1883, p. 324, note 3. I have studied only the two manuscripts of Florence: Riccardi, 279, paper, 243 fos. of two cols. recently numbered. The Codex of the Laurentian Gaddian. rel., 53, is less careful. It is also on paper, 20 x 27, and counts 254 fos. of 1 column. F^o 1 was formerly numbered 88. The order of the chapters is not the same as in the preceding.

[37] The citations are always made from the edition of Milan, 1510, 4to of 256 folios of two columns. The best known of the subsequent editions are those of Milan, 1513, and Bologna, 1590.

[38] He began it in 1385 (f^o 1), and it was authorized by the chapter general August 2, 1399 (f^o 256a, 1). Besides, on f^o 150a, 1, he set down the date when he was writing. It was in 1390.

[39] I am not here concerned with the foolish attacks of certain Protestant authors upon this life. That is a quarrel of the theologians which in no way concerns history. Nowhere does Bartolommeo of Pisa make St. Francis the equal of Jesus, and he was able even to forestall criticism in this respect. The Bollandists are equally severe: "Cum Pisanus fuerit scriptor magis pius et credulus quam crisi severa usus...." A. SS., p. 551e.

[40] He has avoided the mistakes so unfortunately committed by Wadding in his list of ministers general. Vide 66a. 2, 104a, 1, 118b, 2. He was lecturer on theology at Bologna, Padua, Pisa, Sienna, and Florence. He preached for many years and with great success in the principal villages of the Peninsula and could thus take advantage of his travels by collecting useful notes. Mark of Lisbon has preserved for us a notice of his life. Vide Croniche dei fratri Minori, t. iii., p. 6 ff. of the Diola edition. He died December 10, 1401. For further details see Wadding, ann. 1399, vii., viii., and above all Sbaralea, Supplementum, p. 109. He is the author of an exposition of the Rule little known which can be found in the Speculum Morin, Rouen, 1509, f^o 66b-83a, of part three.

[41] This opinion is expressed in a guarded manner. For example, f^o 207a, 1, Bartolommeo relates the miracle of the Chapter of the Mats, first following St. Bonaventura, then adding: "Et quia non aliter tangit dicta pars (legendae majoris) hoc insigne miraculum: antiqua legenda hoc refertur in hunc modum." Cf. 225a, 2m. "Et quia fr. Bonaventura succincte multa tangit et in brevi: pro evidentia prefatorum notandum est ... ut dicit antiqua legenda."

[42] However, it is necessary to note that not only are there considerable differences between the editions published, but also that the first (that of Milan, 1510) has been completed and revised by its editor. The judgments passed upon Raymond Ganfridi, 104a, 1, and Boniface VIII., 103b, 1, show traces of later corrections. (Cf. 125a, 1. At f^o 72a, 2m, is indicated the date of the death of St. Bernardin, which was in 1444, etc.) Besides, we are surprised to find beside the pages where the sources are indicated with clearness others where stories follow one another coming one knows not from whence.

[43] F^o 70a, 1: "Cujus nomen non reperi." 1a, 2: "Multaque non ex industria sed quia ea noscere non valui omittendo."

[44] F^o 78a, 1: Informationes quas non scribo quia imperfectas reperi. Cf. 229b, 2: "De aliis multis apparitionibus non reperi scripturam, quare hic non pono."

[45] F^o 69a, 1: "Hec ut audivi posui quia ejus legendam non vidi." Cf. 68b, 2m: Fr. Henricus generalis minister mihi magistro Bartholomeo dixit ipse oretenus.

[46] The citations from Bonaventura are decidedly more frequent. We should not be surprised, since this story is the official biography of St. Francis; the chapter from which Bartolommeo takes his quotations is almost always indicated, and, naturally, follows the old division in five parts. Opening the book at hazard at folio 136a I find no less than six references to the Legenda Major in the first column. To give an idea of the style of Bartolommeo of Pisa I shall give in substance the contents of a page of his book. See, for example, f^o 111a (lib. i., conform. x., pars. ii., Franciscus predicator). In the third line he cites Bonaventura: "Fr. Bonaventura in quarta parte majoris legende dicit quod b. Franciscus videbatur intuentibus homo alterius seculi." Textual citation of Bonaventure, 45. Three lines further on: "Verum qualis esset b. F. quoad personam sic habetur in legenda antiqua ... homo facundissimus, facie hilaris, etc." The literal citation of the sketch of Francis follows as 1 Celano, 83, gives it as far as: "inter peccatores quasi unus ex illis," and to mark the end of the quotation Bartolommeo adds: "Hec legenda antiqua." In the next column paragraph 4 commences with the words: B. Francisci predicationem reddebat mirabilem et gloriosam ipsius sancti loquutio: etenim legenda trium Sociorum dicit et Legenda major parte tertia: B. Francisei eloquia erant non inania, neo risu digna, etc., which corresponds literally with 3 Soc., 25, and Bon., 28. Then come two chapters of Bonaventura almost entire, beginning with: In duodecima parte legende majoris dicit Fr. Bonaventura: Erat enim verbum ejus, etc. Textual quotation of Bon., 178 and 179. The page ends with another quotation from Bonaventura: Sic dicebat prout recitat Bonaventura in octava parte Legende majoris: Hac officium patri misericordiarum. Vide Bonav., 102 end and 103 entire. This suffices without doubt to show with what precision the authorities have been quoted in this work, with what attention and confidence ought to be examined those portions of documents lost or mislaid which he has here preserved for us.

[47] F^o 31b, 2: ut dicit fr. Thomas in sua legenda, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 60.—140a, 2: Fr. in leg. fr. Thome, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 60.—140a 1, cf. 2 Cel., 3 16.—142b, 1: Fr. in leg. Thome capitulo de charitate, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 115.—144b, 1: Fr. in leg. fr. Thome capitulo de oratione, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 40.—144b, 1, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 65.—144b, 2, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 78.—176b, 2, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 79.—182b, 2, cf. 2 Cel., 2, 1.—241b, 1, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 141.—181a, 2, cf. 1 Cel., 27. It is needless to say that these lists of quotations do not pretend to be complete.

[48] F^o 36b, 2. Ut enim habetur in leg. 3 Soc., cf. 3 Soc., 10.—46b, 1, cf. 3 Soc., 25-28.—38b 2, cf. 3 Soc. 3.—111a, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 25.—134a, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 4.—142b, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 57 and 58.—167b, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 3 and 8.—168a, 1, cf. 3 Soc., 10.—170b, 1, cf. 3 Soc., 39, 4.—175b, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 59.—180b, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 4.—181a, 1, cf. 3 Soc., 5, 7, 24, 33, and 67.—181a. 2, cf. 3 Soc., 36.—229b, 2, cf. 3 Soc., 14. etc. The reading of 3 Soc. which Bartolommeo had before his eyes was pretty much the same we have to day, for he says, 181a, 2. referring to 3 Soc., 67: "Ut habetur quasi in fine leg. 3 Soc."

[49] F^o 111a, 1, Sic habetur in leg. ant., corresponds literally with 1 Cel., 83.—144a, 2. Franciscus in leg. ant. cap. v. de zelo ad religionem, to 1 Cel. 106.

[50] F^o 111b, 1. De predicantibus loqueus sic dicebat in ant. leg. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 99 and 106. 140b, 1. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 84.—144b, 1, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 45—144a, 1, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 95 and 15.—225b, 2, cf. 2 Cel., 3, 116.

[51] F^o 31a, 1. Vide 2 Cel., 3, 83.—143a, 2. Vide 2 Cel., 3, 65 and 116.—144a, 1. Vide 2 Cel., 3, 94.—170b. 1. Vide 2 Cel., 3, 11.

[52] F^o 14a, 2.—32a. 1.—101a, 2.—169b, 1.—144b, 2.—142a, 2.—143b, 2.—168b, 1.—144b, 1.

[53] Chapters 18 (chapter of the mats) and 25 (lepers cured) of the Fioretti are found in Latin in the Conf. as borrowed from the Leg. Ant. Vide 174b, 1, and 207a. 1.

Finally, according to f^o 168b, 2, it is also from the Leg. Ant. that the description of the coat, such as we find at the end of the Chronique des Tribulations, was borrowed. See Archiv., t. ii., p. 153.

[54] F^o 182a, 2; cf. 51b, 1; 144a, 1.

[55] He died December 12, 1306, at Bastia, near Assisi. See upon him Chron. Tribul. Archiv., ii.; 311 and 312; Conform., 60, 119, and 153.

[56] Although the history of the Indulgence of Portiuncula was of all subjects the one most largely treated in the Conformities, 151b, 2—157a, 2, not once does Bartolommeo of Pisa refer to it in the Legenda Antiqua. It seems, then, that this collection also was silent as to this celebrated pardon.

[57] Published with extreme care by the Franciscan Fathers of the Observance in t. ii. of the Analecta Franciscana, ad Clarae Aquas (Quaracchi, near Florence), 1888, 1 vol., crown 8vo, of xxxvi.-612 pp. This edition, as much from the critical point of view of the text, its correctness, its various readings and notes, as from the material point of view, is perfect and makes the more desirable a publication of the chronicles of the xxiv. generals and of Salimbeni by the same editors. The beginning up to the year 1262 has been published already by Dr. Karl Evers under the title Analecta ad Fratrum Minorum historiam, Leipsic, 1882, 4to of 89 pp.

[58] I have been able only to procure the Italian edition published by Horatio Diola under the title Croniche degli Ordini instituti dal P. S. Francesco, 3 vols., 8vo, Venice, 1606.

* * * * *



V

CHRONICLES OUTSIDE OF THE ORDER

I. JACQUES DE VITRY

The following documents, which we can only briefly indicate, are of inestimable value; they emanate from men particularly well situated to give us the impression which the Umbrian prophet produced on his generation.

Jacques de Vitry[1] has left extended writings on St. Francis. Like a prudent man who has already seen many religious madmen, he is at first reserved; but soon this sentiment disappears, and we find in him only a humble and active admiration for the Apostolic Man.

He speaks of him in a letter which he wrote immediately after the taking of Damietta (November, 1219), to his friends in Lorraine, to describe it to them.[2] A few lines suffice to describe St. Francis and point out his irresistible influence. There is not a single passage in the Franciscan biographers which gives a more living idea of the apostolate of the Poverello.

He returns to him more at length in his Historia Occidentalis, devoting to him the thirty-second chapter of this curious work.[3] These pages, vibrating with enthusiasm, were written during Francis's lifetime,[4] at the time when the most enlightened members of the Church, who had believed themselves to be living in the evening of the world, in vespere mundi tendentis ad occasum, suddenly saw in the direction of Umbria the light of a new day.

II. THOMAS OF SPALATO

An archdeacon of the Cathedral of Spalato, who in 1220 was studying at Bologna, has left us a very living portrait of St. Francis and the memory of the impression which his preachings produced in that learned town.[5]

Something of his enthusiasm has passed into his story; we feel that that day, August 15, 1220, when he met the Poverello of Assisi, was one of the best of his life.[6]

III. DIVERS CHRONICLES

The continuation of William of Tyre[7] brings us a new account of Francis's attempt to conquer the Soudan. This narrative, the longest of all three we have on this subject, contains no feature essentially new, but it gives one more witness to the historic value of the Franciscan legends.

Finally, there are two chronicles written during Francis's life, which, without giving anything new, speak with accuracy of his foundation, and prove how rapidly that religious renovation which started in Umbria was being propagated to the very ends of Europe. The anonymous chronicler of Monte Sereno[8] in fact wrote about 1225, and tells us, not without regret, of the brilliant conquests of the Franciscans.

Burchard,[9] Abbot Premontre d'Ursberg (died in 1226), who was in Rome in 1211, leaves us a very curious criticism of the Order.

The Brothers Minor appeared to him a little like an orthodox branch of the Poor Men of Lyons. He even desires that the pope, while approving the Franciscans, should do so with a view to satisfy, in the measure of the possible, the aspirations manifested by that heresy and that of the Humiliati.

It is impossible to attribute any value whatever to the long pages given to St. Francis by Matthew Paris.[10] His information is correct wherever the activities of the friars are concerned, and he could examine the work around him.[11] They are absolutely fantastic when he comes to the life of St. Francis, and we can only feel surprised to find M. Hase[12] adopting the English monk's account of the stigmata.

The notice which he gives of Francis contains as many errors as sentences; he makes him born of a family illustrious by its nobility, makes him study theology from his infancy (hoc didicerat in litteris et theologicis disciplinis quibus ab aetate tenera incubuerat, usque ad notitiam perfectam), etc.[13]

It would be useless to enlarge this list and mention those chroniclers who simply noticed the foundation of the Order, its approbation, and the death of St. Francis,[14] or those which spoke of him at length, but simply by copying a Franciscan legend.[15]

It suffices to point out by way of memory the long chapter consecrated to St. Francis in the Golden Legend. Giachimo di Voraggio ([Cross] 1298) there sums up with accuracy but without order the essential features of the first legends and in particular the Second Life by Celano.[16]

As for the inscription of Santa Maria del Vescovado at Assisi it is too unformed to be anything but a simple object of curiosity.[17]

* * * * *

I have given up preparing a complete bibliography of works concerning St. Francis, that task having been very well done by the Abbe Ulysse Chevalier in his Repertoire des sources historiques du moyen age, Bio-Bibliographie, cols. 765-767 and 2588-2590, Paris, 1 vol., 4to, 1876-1888. To it I refer my readers.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] He was born at Vitry sur Seine, became Cure of Argenteuil, near Paris; Canon of Oignies, in the diocese of Namur, preached the crusade against the Albigenses, and accompanied the Crusaders to Palestine; having been made Bishop of Acre, he was present in 1219 at the siege and at the capture of Damietta and returned to Europe in 1225; created Cardinal-bishop of Frascati in 1229, he died in 1244, leaving a number of writings. For his life, see the preface of his Historiae, edition of Douai, 1597.

[2] This letter may be found in (Bongars) Gesta Dei per Francio, pp. 1146-1149.

[3] Jacobi de Vitriaco Libri duo quorum prior Orientalis, alter Occidentalis Historiae nomine inscribitur studio Fr. Moschi Duaci ex officina Balthazaris Belleri, 1597, 16mo, 480 pp. Chapter xxxii. fills pages 349-353, and is entitled De ordine et praedicatione fratrum Minorum. See above, p. 229.

[4] This appears from the passage: Videmus primus ordinis fundatorem magestrum cui tanquam summo Priori suo omnes alii obediunt. Loc. cit., p. 352.

[5] It is inserted in the treatise of Sigonius on the bishops of Bologna: Caroli Sigonii de episcopis Bononiensibus libri quinque cum notis L. C. Rabbii, a work which occupies cols. 353-590 of t. iii. of his Opera omnia, Milan, 1732-1737, 6 vols., f^o. We find our fragment in col. 432.

[6] This passage will be found above, p. 241.

[7] Guillelmi Tyrensis arch. Continuala belli sacri historia in Martene: Amplissima Collectio, t. v. pp. 584-572. The piece concerning Francis is cols. 689-690.

[8] Chronicon Montis Sereni (at present Petersberg, near Halle), edited by Ehrenfeuchter in the Mon. Germ. hist. Script., t. 23, pp. 130-226, 229.

[9] Burchardi et Cuonradi Urspergensium chronicon ed., A. Otto Abel and L. Weiland, apud Mon. Germ, hist., t. 23, pp. 333-383. The monastery of Ursperg was half-way between Ulm and Augsburg. Vide p. 376.

[10] Matthaei Parisiensis monachie Albanensis, Historia major, edition Watts, London, 1640. The Brothers Minor are first mentioned in the year 1207, p. 222, then 1227, pp. 339-342.

[11] See the article, Minores, in the table of contents of the Mon. Germ. hist. Script., t. xxviii.

[12] Franz von Assisi, p. 168 ff.

[13] See above, p. 97, his story of the audience with Innocent III.

[14] For example, Chronica Albrici trium fontium in Pertz: Script., t. 23, ad ann. 1207, 1226, 1228. Vide Fragment of the chron. of Philippe Mousket ([Cross] before 1245). Recueil des historiens, t. xxii., p. 71, lines 30347-30360. The number of annalists in this century is appalling, and there is not one in ten who has omitted to note the foundation of the Minor Brothers.

[15] For example, Vincent de Beauvais ([Cross] 1264) gives in his Speculum historiale, lib. 29, cap. 97-99, lib. 30, cap. 99-111, nearly every story given by the Bollandists under the title of Secunda legenda in their Commentarium praevium.

[16] Legenda aurea, Graesse, Breslau, 1890, pp. 662-674.

[17] A good reproduction of it will be found in the Miscellanea francescana, t. ii., pp. 33-37, accompanied by a learned dissertation by M. Faloci Pulignani.

* * * * *



APPENDIX

CRITICAL STUDY OF THE STIGMATA AND THE INDULGENCE OF AUGUST 2

I. THE STIGMATA

A dissertation upon the possibility of miracles would be out of place here; a historic sketch is not a treatise on philosophy or dogmatics.

Still, I owe the reader a few explanations, to enable him with thorough understanding to judge of my manner of viewing the subject.

If by miracle we understand either the suspension or subversion of the laws of nature, or the intervention of the first cause in certain particular cases, I could not concede it. In this negation physical and logical reasons are secondary; the true reason—let no one be surprised—is entirely religious; the miracle is immoral. The equality of all before God is one of the postulates of the religious consciousness, and the miracle, that good pleasure of God, only degrades him to the level of the capricious tyrants of the earth.

The existing churches, making, as nearly all of them do, this notion of miracle the very essence of religion and the basis of all positive faith, involuntarily render themselves guilty of that emasculation of manliness and morality of which they so passionately complain. If God intervenes thus irregularly in the affairs of men, the latter can hardly do otherwise than seek to become courtiers who expect all things of the sovereign's favor.

The question changes its aspect, if we call miracle, as we most generally do, all that goes beyond ordinary experience.

Many apologists delight in showing that the unheard of, the inexplicable, are met with all through life. They are right and I agree with them, on condition that they do not at the close of their explanation replace this new notion of the supernatural by the former one.

It is thus that I have come to conclude the reality of the stigmata. They may have been a unique fact without being more miraculous than other phenomena; for example, the mathematical powers or the musical ability of an infant prodigy.

There are in the human creature almost indefinite powers, marvellous energies; in the great majority of men these lie in torpid slumber, but awaking to life in a few, they make of them prophets, men of genius, and saints who show humanity its true nature.

We have caught but fleeting glimpses into the domain of mental pathology, so vast is it and unexplored; the learned men of the future will perhaps make, in the realms of psychology and physiology, such discoveries as will bring about a complete revolution in our laws and customs.

It remains to examine the stigmata from the point of view of history. And though in this field there is no lack of difficulties, small and great, the testimony appears to me to be at once too abundant and too precise not to command conviction.

We may at the outset set aside the system of those who hold that Brother Elias helped on their appearance by a pious fraud. Such a claim might indeed be defended if these marks had been gaping wounds, as they are now or in most cases have been represented to be; but all the testimony agrees in describing them, with the exception of the mark on the side, as blackish, fleshy excrescences, like the heads of nails, and in the palms of the hands like the points of nails clinched by a hammer. There was no bloody exudation except at the side.

On the other hand, any deception on the part of Elias would oblige us to hold that his accomplices were actually the heads of the party opposed to him, Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. Such want of wit would be surprising indeed in a man so circumspect.

Finally the psychological agreement between the external circumstances and the event is so close that an invention of this character would be as inexplicable as the fact itself. That which indeed almost always betrays invented or unnatural incidents is that they do not fit into the framework of the facts. They are extraneous events, purely decorative elements whose place might be changed at will.

Nothing of the sort is the case here: Thomas of Celano is so veracious and so exact, that though holding the stigmata to be miraculous, he gives us all the elements necessary for explaining them in a diametrically opposite manner.

1. The preponderating place of the passion of Jesus in Francis's conscience ever since his conversion (1 Cel., 115; 2 Cel., 1, 6; 3, 29; 49; 52).

2. His sojourn in the Verna coincides with a great increase of mystical fervor.

3. He there observes a Lent in honor of the archangel St. Michael.

4. The festival of the exaltation of the cross comes on, and in the vision of the crucified seraph is blended the two ideas which have taken possession of him, the angels and the crucifix (1 Cel., 91-96, 112-115).

This perfect congruity between the circumstances and the prodigy itself forms a moral proof whose value cannot be exaggerated.

It is time to pass the principal witnesses in review.

1. Brother Elias, 1226. On the very day after the death of Francis, Brother Elias, in his capacity of vicar, sent letters to the entire Order announcing the event and prescribing prayers.[1]

After having expressed his sorrow and imparted to the Brothers the blessing with which the dying Francis had charged him for them, he adds: "I announce to you a great joy and a new miracle. Never has the world seen such a sign, except on the Son of God who is the Christ God. For a long time before his death our Brother and Father appeared as crucified, having in his body five wounds which are truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands and his feet bore marks as of nails without and within, forming a sort of scars; while at the side he was as if pierced with a lance, and often a little blood oozed from it."

2. Brother Leo. We find that it is the very adversary of Elias who is the natural witness, not only of the stigmata, but of the circumstances of their imprinting. This fact adds a peculiar value to his account.

We learned above (Critical Study, p. 377) the untoward fate of a part of the Legend of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. The chapters with which it now closes (68-73) and in which the narrative of the miracle occurs, were not originally a part of it. They are a summary added at a later time to complete this document. This appendix, therefore, has no historic value, and we neither depend on it with the ecclesiastical authors to affirm the miracle, nor with M. Hase to call it in question.

Happily the testimony of Brother Leo has come down to us in spite of that. We are not left even to seek for it in the Speculum, the Fioretti, the Conformities, where fragments of his work are to be found; we find it in several other documents of incontestable authority.

The authenticity of the autograph of St. Francis preserved at Assisi appears to be thoroughly established (see Critical Study, p. 357); it contains the following note by Brother Leo's hand: "The Blessed Francis two years before his death kept on the Verna in honor of the B. V. Mary mother of God, and St. Michael Archangel, a Lent from the festival of the Assumption of the B. V. M. to the festival of St. Michael in September, and the hand of God was upon him by the vision and the address of the seraph and the impression of the stigmata upon his body. He made the laudes that are on the other side, ... etc."

Again, Eccleston (13) shows us Brother Leo complaining to Brother Peter of Tewkesbury, minister in England, that the legend is too brief concerning the events on the Verna, and relating to him the greater number of the incidents which form the nucleus of the Fioretti on the stigmata. These memorials are all the more certain that they were immediately committed to writing by Peter of Tewkesbury's companion, Brother Garin von Sedenfeld.

Finally Salembeni, in his chronicle (ad ann. 1224) in speaking of Ezzelino da Romano is led to oppose him to Francis. He suddenly remembers the stigmata and says, "Never man on earth, but he, has had the five wounds of Christ. His companion, Brother Leo, who was present when they washed the body before the burial, told me that he looked precisely like a crucified man taken down from the cross."

3. Thomas of Celano, before 1230. He describes them more at length than Brother Elias (1 Cel., 94, 95, 112).

The details are too precise not to suggest a lesson learned by heart. The author nowhere assumes to be an eye-witness, yet he has the tone of a legal deposition.

These objections are not without weight, but the very novelty of the miracle might have induced the Franciscans to fix it in a sort of canonical and so to say, stereotyped narrative.

4. The portrait of Francis, by Berlinghieri, dated 1236,[2] preserved at Pescia (province of Lucca) shows the stigmata as they are described in the preceding documents.

5. Gregory IX. in 1237. Bull of March 31; Confessor Domini (Potthast, 10307. Cf. 10315). A movement of opinion against the stigmata had been produced in certain countries. The pope asks all the faithful to believe in them. Two other bulls of the same day, one addressed to the Bishop of Olmuetz, the other to the Dominicans, energetically condemns them for calling the stigmata in question (Potthast, 10308 and 10309).

6. Alexander IV., in his bull Benigna operatio of October 29, 1255 (Potthast, 16077), states that having formerly been the domestic prelate of Cardinal Ugolini, he knew St. Francis familiarly, and supports his description of the stigmata by these relations.

To this pontiff are due several bulls declaring excommunicate all those who deny them. These contribute nothing new to the question.

7. Bonaventura (1260) repeats in his legend Thomas of Celano's description (Bon., 193; cf. 1 Cel. 94 and 95), not without adding some new factors (Bon., 194-200 and 215-218), often so coarse and clumsy that they inevitably awaken doubt (see for example, 201).

8. Matthew Paris ([Cross] 1259). His discordant witness barely deserves being cited by way of memoir (see Critical Study, p. 431). To be able to forgive the fanciful character of his long disquisitions on St. Francis, we are forced to recall to mind that he owed his information to the verbal account of some pilgrim. He makes the stigmata appear a fortnight before the Saint's death, shows them continually emitting blood, the wound on the side so wide open that the heart could be seen. The people gather in crowds to see the sight, the cardinals come also, and all together listen to Francis's strange declarations. (Historia major, Watts's edition London, 1 vol. fol., 1640, pp. 339-342.)

This list might be greatly lengthened by the addition of a passage from Luke bishop of Tuy (Lucas Tudensis) written in 1231;[3] based especially on the Life by Thomas of Celano, and oral witnesses.

The statement of Brother Boniface, an eye-witness, at the chapter of Genoa (1254). (Eccl. 13.)

Finally and especially, we should study the strophes relating to the stigmata in the proses, hymns, and sequences composed in 1228 by the pope and several cardinals for the Office of St. Francis; but such a work, to be done with accuracy, would carry us very far, and the authorities already cited doubtless suffice without bringing in others.[4]

The objections which have been opposed to these witnesses may be reduced, I think, to the following:[5]

a. Francis's funeral took place with surprising precipitation. Dead on Saturday evening, he was buried Sunday morning.

b. His body was enclosed in a coffin, which is contrary to Italian habits.

c. At the time of the removal, the body, wrested from the multitude, is so carefully hidden in the basilica that for centuries its precise place has been unknown.

d. The bull of canonization makes no mention of the stigmata.

e. They were not admitted without a contest, and among those who denied them were some bishops.

None of these arguments appears to me decisive.

a. In the Middle Ages funerals almost always took place immediately after death (Innocent III. dying at Perugia July 16, 1216, is interred the 17th; Honorius III. dies March 18, 1227, and is interred the next day).

b. It is more difficult than many suppose to know what were the habits concerning funerals in Umbria in the thirteenth century. However that may be, it was certainly necessary to put Francis's body into a coffin. He being already canonized by popular sentiment, his corpse was from that moment a relic for which a reliquary was necessary; nay more, a strong box such as the secondary scenes in Berlinghieri's picture shows it to have been. Without such a precaution the sacred body would have been reduced to fragments in a few moments. Call to mind the wild enthusiasm that led the devotees to cut off the ears and even the breasts of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. [Quaedam aures illius truncabant, etiam summitatem mamillarum ejus quidam praecidebant et pro reliquiis sibi servabant.—Liber de dictis iv. ancillarum, Mencken, vol. ii., p. 2032.]

c. The ceremony of translation brought an innumerable multitude to Assisi. If Brother Elias concealed the body,[6] he may have been led to do so by the fear of some organized surprise of the Perugians to gain possession of the precious relic. With the customs of those days, such a theft would have been in nowise extraordinary. These very Perugians a few years later stole away from Bastia, a village dependent on Assisi, the body of Conrad of Offida, which was performing innumerable miracles there. (Conform., 60b, 1; cf. Giord., 50.) Similar affrays took place at Padua over the relics of St. Anthony. (Hilaire, Saint Antoine de Padoue, sa legende primitive, Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1 vol., 8vo, 1890, pp. 30-40.)

d. The bull of canonization, with the greater number of such documents, for that matter, makes no historic claim. In its wordy rhetoric we shall sooner learn the history of the Philistines, of Samson, or even of Jacob, than of St. Francis. Canonization here is only a pretext which the old pontiff seizes for recurring to his favorite figures.

This silence signifies nothing after the very explicit testimony of other bulls by the same pontiff in 1227, and after the part given to the stigmata in the liturgical songs which in 1228 he composed for the office of St. Francis.

e. These attacks by certain bishops are in nowise surprising; they are episodes in the struggle of the secular clergy against the mendicant orders.

At the time when these negations were brought forward (1237) the narrative of Thomas of Celano was official and everywhere known; nothing therefore would have been easier, half a score of years after the events, than to bring witnesses to expose the fraud if there had been any; but the Bishop of Olmuetz and the others base their objections always and only upon dogmatic grounds.

As to the attacks of the Dominicans, it is needless to recall the rivalry between the two Orders;[7] is it not then singular to find these protestations coming from Silesia (!) and never from Central Italy, where, among other eye-witnesses, Brother Leo was yet living ([Cross] 1271)?

Thus the witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he is speaking.

II. THE PARDON OF AUGUST 2D, CALLED INDULGENCE OF PORTIUNCULA[9]

This question might be set aside; on the whole it has no direct connection with the history of St. Francis.

Yet it occupies too large a place in modern biographies not to require a few words: it is related that Francis was in prayer one night at Portiuncula when Jesus and the Virgin appeared to him with a retinue of angels. He made bold to ask an unheard-of privilege, that of plenary indulgence of all sins for all those who, having confessed and being contrite, should visit this chapel. Jesus granted this at his mother's request, on the sole condition that his vicar the pope would ratify it.

The next day Francis set out for Perugia, accompanied by Masseo, and obtained from Honorius the desired indulgence, but only for the day of August 2d.

Such, in a few lines, is the summary of this legend, which is surrounded with a crowd of marvellous incidents.

The question of the nature and value of indulgences is not here concerned. The only one which is here put is this: Did Francis ask this indulgence and did Honorius III. grant it?

Merely to reduce it to these simple proportions is to be brought to answer it with a categorical No.

It would be tedious to refer even briefly to the difficulties, contradictions, impossibilities of this story, many a time pointed out by orthodox writers. In spite of all they have come to the affirmative conclusion: Roma locuta est.

Those whom this subject may interest will find in the note above detailed bibliographical indications of the principal elements of this now quieted discussion. I shall confine myself to pointing out the impossibilities with which tradition comes into collision; they are both psychological and historical. The Bollandists long since pointed out the silence of Francis's early biographers upon this question. Now that the published documents are much more numerous, this silence is still more overwhelming. Neither the First nor the Second Life by Thomas of Celano, nor the anonymous author of the second life given in the Acta Sanctorum, nor even the anonymous writer of Perugia, nor the Three Companions, nor Bonaventura say a single word on the subject. No more do very much later works mention it, which sin only by excessive critical scruples: Bernard of Besse, Giordiano di Giano, Thomas Eccleston, the Chronicle of the Tribulations, the Fioretti, and even the Golden Legend.

This conspiracy of silence of all the writers of the thirteenth century would be the greatest miracle of history if it were not absurd.

By way of explanation, it has been said that these writers refrained from speaking of this indulgence for fear of injuring that of the Crusade; but in that case, why did the pope command seven bishops to go to Portiuncula to proclaim it in his name?

The legend takes upon itself to explain that Francis refused a bull or any written attestation of this privilege; but, admitting this, it would still be necessary to explain why no hint of this matter has been preserved in the papers of Honorius III. And how is it that the bulls sent to the seven bishops have left not the slightest trace upon this pontiff's register?

Again, how does it happen, if seven bishops officially promulgated this indulgence in 1217, that St. Francis, after having related to Brother Leo his interview with the pope, said to him: "Teneas secretum hoc usque circa mortem tuam; quia non habet locum adhuc. Quia haec indulgentia occultabitur ad tempus; sed Dominus trahet eam extra et manifestabitur." Conform., 153b, 2. Such an avowal is not wanting in simplicity. It abundantly proves that before the death of Brother Leo (1271) no one had spoken of this famous pardon.

After this it is needless to insist upon secondary difficulties; how is it that the chapters-general were not fixed for August 2d, to allow the Brothers to secure the indulgence?

How explain that Francis, after having received in 1216 a privilege unique in the annals of the Church, should be a stranger to the pope in 1219!

There is, however, one more proof whose value exceeds all the others—Francis's Will:

"I forbid absolutely all the Brothers by their obedience, in whatever place they may be, to ask any bull of the court of Rome, whether directly or indirectly, nor under pretext of church or convent, nor under pretext of preaching, nor even for their personal protection."

Before closing it remains for us to glance at the growth of this legend.

It was definitively constituted about 1330-1340, but it was in the air long before. With the patience of four Benedictines (of the best days) we should doubtless be able to find our way in the medley of documents, more or less corrupted, from which it comes to us, and little by little we might find the starting-point of this dream in a friar who sees blinded humanity kneeling around Portiuncula to recover sight.[10]

It is not difficult to see in general what led to the materialization of this graceful fancy: people remembered Francis's attachment to the chapel where he had heard the decisive words of the gospel, and where St. Clara in her turn had entered upon a new life.

When the great Basilica of Assisi was built, drawing to itself pilgrims and privileges, an opposition of principles and of inspiration came to be added to the petty rivalry between it and Portiuncula.

The zealots of poverty said aloud that though the Saint's body rested in the basilica his heart was at Portiuncula.[11] By dint of repeating and exaggerating what Francis had said about the little sanctuary, they came to give a precise and so to say doctrinal sense to utterances purely mystical.

The violences and persecutions of the party of the Large Observance under the generalship of Crescentius[12] (1244-1247) aroused a vast increase of fervor among their adversaries. To the bull of Innocent IV. declaring the basilica thenceforth Caput et Mater of the Order[13] the Zealots replied by the narratives of Celano's Second Life and the legends of that period.[14] They went so far as to quote a promise of Francis to make it in perpetuity the Mater et Caput of his institute.[15]

In this way the two parties came to group themselves around these two buildings. Even to-day it is the same. The Franciscans of the Strict Observance occupy Portiuncula, while the Basilica of Assisi is in the hands of the Conventuals (Large Observance), who have adopted all the interpretations and mitigations of the Rules; they are worthy folk, who live upon their dividends. By a phenomenon, unique, I think, in the annals of the Church, they have pushed the freedom of their infidelity to the point of casting off the habit, the popular brown cassock. Dressed all in black, shod and hatted, nothing distinguishes them from the secular clergy except a modest little cord.

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a coarse gown, some daring friar must overcome his very natural repugnances, and come to kneel there. The indulgence of August 2d is then the reply of the Zealots to the persecutions of their brothers.

An attentive study will perhaps show it emerging little by little under the generalship of Raimondo Gaufridi (1289-1295); Conrad di Offida ([Cross] 1306) seems to have had some effect upon it, but only with the next generation do we find the legend completed and avowed in open day.

Begun in a misapprehension it ends by imposing itself upon the Church, which to-day guarantees it with its infallible authority, and yet in its origin it was a veritable cry of revolt against the decisions of Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The text was published in 1620 by Spoelberch (in his Speculum vitae B. Francisci, Antwerp, 2 vols., 12mo, ii., pp. 103-106), after the copy addressed to Brother Gregory, minister in France, and then preserved in the convent of the Recollects in Valenciennes. It was reproduced by Wadding (Ann. 1226, no. 44) and the Bollandists (pp. 668 and 669).

So late an appearance of a capital document might have left room for doubts; there is no longer reason for any, since the publication of the chronicle of Giordano di Giano, who relates the sending of this letter (Giord., 50). The Abbe Amoni has also published this text (at the close of his Legenda trium Sociorum, Rome, 1880, pp. 105-109), but according to his deplorable habit, he neglects to tell whence he has drawn it. This is the more to be regretted since he gives a variant of the first order: Nam diu ante mortem instead of Non diu, as Spoelberch's text has it. The reading Nam diu appears preferable from a philological point of view.

[2] Engraved in Saint Francois d'Assise, Paris, 4to, 1885, p. 277.

[3] Bibliotheca Patrum. Lyons, 1677, xxv., adv. Albigenses, lib. ii., cap. 11., cf. iii., 14 and 15. Reproduced in the A. SS., p. 652.

[4] The curious may consult the following sources: Salimbeni, ann. 1250—Conform., 171b 2, 235a 2; Bon., 200; Wadding, ann. 1228, no. 78; A. SS., p. 800. Manuscript 340 of the Sacro Convento contains (fo. 55b-56b) four of these hymns. Cf. Archiv. i., p. 485.

[5] See in particular Hase: Franz v. Assisi. Leipsic, 1 vol., 8vo., 1856. The learned professor devotes no less than sixty closely printed pages to the study of the stigmata, 142-202.

[6] The more I think about it, the more incapable I become of attributing any sort of weight to this argument from the disappearance of the body; for in fact, if there had been any pious fraud on Elias's part, he would on the contrary have displayed the corpse.

[7] See, for example, 2 Cel., 3, 86, as well as the encyclical of Giovanni di Parma and Umberto di Romano, in 1225.

[8] The following among many others: Francis had particularly high breeches made for him, to hide the wound in the side (Bon., 201). At the moment of the apparition, which took place during the night, so great a light flooded the whole country, that merchants lodging in the inns of Casentino saddled their beasts and set out on their way. Fior., iii. consid.

Hase, in his study, is continually under the weight of the bad impression made upon him by Bonaventura's deplorable arguments; he sees the other witness only through him. I think that if he had read simply Thomas of Celano's first Life, he would have arrived at very different conclusions.

[9] The most important document is manuscript 344 of the archives of Sacro Convento at Assisi. Liber indulgentiae S. Mariae de Angelis sive de Portiuncula in quo libra ego fr. Franciscus Bartholi de Assisio posui quidquid potui sollicite invenire in legendis antiquis et novis b. Francisci et in aliis dictis sociorum ejus de loco eodem et commendatione ipsius loci et quidquid veritatis et certitudinis potui invenire de sacra indulgentia prefati loci, quomodo scilicet fuit impetrata et data b. Francisco de miraculis ipsius indulgentiae quae ipsam declarant certam et veram. Bartholi lived in the first half of the fourteenth century. His work is still unpublished, but Father Leo Patrem M. O. is preparing it for publication. The name of this learned monk gives every guaranty for the accuracy of this difficult work; meanwhile a detailed description and long extracts may be found in the Miscellanea (ii., 1887). La storia del perdono di Francesco de Bartholi, by Don Michele Faloci Pulignani, pp. 149-153 (cf. Archiv., i., p. 486). See also in the Miscellanea (i., 1886, p. 15) a bibliographical note containing a detailed list of fifty-eight works (cf. ibid., pp. 48, 145). The legend itself is found in the Speculum, 69b-83a, and in the Conformities, 151b-157a. In these two collections it is still found laboriously worked in and is not an integral part of the rest of the work. In the latter, Bartolemmeo di Pisa has carried accuracy so far as to copy from end to end all the documents that he had before him, and as they belong to different periods he thus gives us several phases of the development of the tradition. The most complete work is that of the Recollect Father Grouwel: Historia critica S. Indulgentiae B. Mariae Angelorum vulgo de Portiuncula ... contra Libellos aliquos anonymo ac famosos nuper editos, Antwerp, 1726, 1 vol., 8vo. pp. 510. The Bollandist Suysken also makes a long study of it (A. SS., pp. 879-910), as also the Recollect Father Candide Chalippe, Vie de saint Francois d'Assise, 3 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1874 (the first edition is of 1720), vol. iii., pp. 190-327.

In each of these works we find what has been said in all the others. The numerous writings against the Indulgence are either a collection of vulgarities or dogmatic treatises; I refrain from burdening these pages with them. The principal ones are indicated by Grouwel and Chalippe.

Among contemporaries Father Barnabas of Alsace: Portiuncula oder Geschichte Unserer lieben Frau von den Engeln (Rixheim, 1 vol., 8vo. 1884), represents the tradition of the Order, and the Abbe Le Monnier (Histoire de Saint Francois, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1889), moderate Catholic opinion in non-Franciscan circles.

The best summary is that of Father Panfilo da Magliano in his Storia compendiosa. It has been completed and amended in the German translation: Geschichte des h. Franciscus und der Franziskaner uebersetzt und bearbeitet von Fr. Quintianus Mueller, vol. i., Munich, 1883, pp. 233-259.

[10] 2 Cel., 1, 13; 3 Soc., 56; Bon., 24.

[11] Conform., 239b, 2.

[12] See in particular Archiv., ii., p. 259, and the bull of February 7, 1246. Potthast, 12007; Glassberger, ann. 1244 (An. fr. t. ii., p. 69).

[13] Is qui ecclesiam, March. 6, 1245, Potthast, 11576.

[14] 2 Cel., 1, 12 (cf. Conform., 218a, 1); 3 Soc., 56; Spec., 32b ff.; 49b ff.; Conform., 144a, 2.

[15] Conform., 169a; 2, 217b. 1 ff. Cf. Fior., Amoni's ed. (Appendix to the Codex of the Bib. Angelica), p. 378.

* * * * * * * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

TEXT CONVENTIONS

Text surrounded by underscores (text) indicates italics in the original.

Text surrounded by tildes (text) indicates bold in the original.

'Folio' abbreviation: The original has two versions. 'F' or 'f' followed by superscripted 'o' is transcribed F^o/f^o. 'fo.'/'fos.' is transcribed 'fo.'/'fos.'.

[Cross] is used where the text had a single character that resembled a Maltese Cross, and denotes year of death.

Footnotes have been moved from the bottom of each page to the end of each chapter, and renumbered by chapter.

CHANGES FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXT

In many spots in the scans, primarily in footnote citations, periods and commas are partially or completely obscured, with white space where the mark would logically appear. Where the scan is unclear, punctuation has been transcribed to match the most common use in the book. Where the punctuation is different from common usage, but clearly present (i.e. no extra white space after an abbreviation or full comma where a period seems to make more sense), the scans have been replicated.

There were a number of incidences of missing closing quotation marks, particularly for dialog or prayers. These have been corrected without further comment.

Two lines missing from the translation of the prayer commonly known as "The Canticle of All Creatures" (Chapter XVII) have been added. The added text is shown in braces ({}).

'Analecta Fracniscana' in CRITICAL STUDY OF THE WORKS, Section IV, Part III, Footnote 9 was changed to 'Analecta Franciscana'.

'Served by a poor priest who scarely' in Chapter IV was changed to 'Served by a poor priest who scarcely'.

In the original text, 'obediunt' was NOT italicized in the following quotation: "Videmus primus ordinis fundatorem magestrum cui tanquam summo Priori suo omnes alii obediunt." (CRITICAL STUDY OF THE WORKS, Section III, Part V, Footnote 4). It is italicized here.

Chapter XV, footnote 4 had no anchor marker in the original text. The placement of this marker in this transcription is not confirmed.

THE END