Chapter XX: Francis's Will and Death (2)

These considerations, so simple that one almost needs to beg pardon for uttering them, have not, however, guided those who have studied St. Francis's life. The most learned, like Wadding and Papini, have brought together the narratives of different biographers, here and there pruning those that are too contradictory; but they have done this at random, with neither rule nor method, guided by the impression of the moment.

The long work of the Bollandist Suysken is vitiated by an analogous fault; fixed in his principle that the oldest documents are always the best,[2] he takes his stand upon the first Life of Thomas of Celano as upon an impregnable rock, and judges all other legends by that one.[3]

When we connect the documents with the disturbed circumstances which brought them into being, some of them lose a little of their authority, others which have been neglected, as being in contradiction with witnesses who have become so to say official, suddenly recover credit, and in fact all gain a new life which doubles their interest.

This altered point of view in the valuation of the sources, this criticism which I am inclined to call reciprocal and organic, brings about profound alterations in the biography of St. Francis. By a phenomenon which may appear strange we end by sketching a portrait of him much more like that which exists in the popular imagination of Italy than that made by the learned historians above mentioned.

When Francis died (1226) the parties which divided the Order had already entered into conflict. That event precipitated the crisis: Brother Elias had been for five years exercising the functions of minister-general with the title of vicar. He displayed an amazing activity. Intrenched in the confidence of Gregory IX. he removed the _Zelanti_ from their charges, strengthened the discipline even in the most remote provinces, obtained numerous privileges from the curia, and with incredible rapidity prepared for the building of the double basilica, destined for the repose of the ashes of the Stigmatized Saint; but notwithstanding all his efforts, the chapter of 1227 set him aside and chose Giovanni Parenti as minister-general.

Furious at this check, he immediately set all influences to work to be chosen at the following chapter. It even seems as if he paid no attention to the nomination of Giovanni Parenti, and continued to go on as if he had been minister.[4]

Very popular among the Assisans, who were dazzled by the magnificence of the monument which was springing up on the _Hill of Hell_, now become the _Hill of Paradise_, sure of being supported by a considerable party in the Order and by the pope, he pushed forward the work on the basilica with a decision and success perhaps unique in the annals of architecture.[5]

All this could not be done without arousing the indignation of the Zealots of poverty. When they saw a monumental poor-box, designed to receive the alms of the faithful, upon the tomb of him who had forbidden his disciples the mere contact of money, it seemed to them that Francis's prophecy of the apostasy of a part of the Order was about to be fulfilled. A tempest of revolt swept over the hermitages of Umbria. Must they not, by any means, prevent this abomination in the holy place?

They knew that Elias was terrible in his severities, but his opponents felt in themselves courage to go to the last extremity, and suffer everything to defend their convictions. One day the poor-box was found shattered by Brother Leo and his friends.[6]

To this degree of intensity the struggle had arrived. At this crisis the first legend appeared.

II. First Life by Thomas of Celano[7]

Thomas of Celano, in writing this legend, to which he was later to return for its completion, obeyed an express order of Pope Gregory IX.[8]

Why did he not apply to one of the Brothers of the Saint's immediate circle? The talent of this author might explain this choice, but besides the fact that literary considerations would in this case hold a secondary place, Brother Leo and several others proved later that they also knew how to handle the pen.

If Celano was put in trust with the official biography, it is because, being equally in sympathy with Gregory IX. and Brother Elias, his absence had kept him out of the conflicts which had marked the last years of Francis's life. Of an irenic temper, he belonged to the category of those souls who easily persuade themselves that obedience is the first of virtues, that every superior is a saint; and if unluckily he is not, that we should none the less act as though he were.

We have some knowledge of his life. A native of Celano in the Abruzzi, he discreetly observes that his family was noble, even adding, with a touch of artless simplicity, that the master had a peculiar regard for noble and educated Brothers. He entered the Order about 1215,[9] on the return of Francis from Spain.

At the chapter of 1221 Cæsar of Speyer, charged with the mission to Germany, took him among those who were to accompany him.[10] In 1223 he was named custode of Mayence, Worms, Cologne, and Speyer. In April of the same year, when Cæsar returned to Italy, devoured with the longing to see St. Francis again, he commissioned Celano to execute his functions until the arrival of the new provincial.[11]

We have no information as to where he was after the chapter-general held at Speyer September 8, 1223. He must have been in Assisi in 1228, for his account of the canonization is that of an eye-witness. He was there again in 1230, and doubtless clothed with an important office, since he could commit to Brother Giordano the relics of St. Francis.[12]

Written in a pleasing style, very often poetic, his work breathes an affecting admiration for his hero; his testimony at once makes itself felt as sincere and true: when he is partial it is without intention and even without his knowledge. The weak point in this biography is the picture which it outlines of the relations between Brother Elias and the founder of the Order: from the chapters devoted to the last two years we receive a very clear impression that Elias was named by Francis to succeed him.[13]

Now if we reflect that at the time when Celano wrote, Giovanni Parenti was minister-general, we at once perceive the bearing of these indications.[14] Every opportunity is seized to give a preponderating importance to Elias.[15] It is a true manifesto in his favor.

Have we reason to blame Celano? I think not. We must simply remember that his work might with justice be called the legend of Gregory IX. Elias was the pope's man, and the biography is worked up from the information he gave. He could not avoid dwelling with peculiar satisfaction upon his intimacy with Francis.

On the other hand, we cannot expect to find here such details as might have sustained the pretension of the adversaries of Elias, those unruly Zealots who were already proudly adorning themselves with the title of _Companions of the Saint_ and endeavoring to constitute a sort of spiritual aristocracy in the Order. Among them were four who during the last two years had not, so to say, quitted Francis. We can imagine how difficult it was not to speak of them. Celano carefully omits to mention their names under pretext of sparing their modesty;[16] but by the praises lavished upon Gregory IX., Brother Elias,[17] St. Clara,[18] and even upon very secondary persons, he shows that his discretion is far from being always so alert.

All this is very serious, but we must not exaggerate it. There is an evident partiality, but it would be unjust to go farther and believe, as men did later, that the last part of Francis's life was an active struggle against the very person of Elias. A struggle there surely was, but it was against tendencies whose spring Francis did not perceive. He carried with him to his tomb his delusion as to his co-laborer.

For that matter this defect is after all secondary so far as the physiognomy of Francis himself is concerned. In Celano's Life, as in the Three Companions or the Fioretti, he appears with a smile for all joys, and floods of tears for all woes; we feel everywhere the restrained emotion of the writer; his heart is subjected by the moral beauty of his hero.

III. SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER FROM 1230-1244

When Thomas of Celano closed his legend he perceived more than anyone the deficiencies of his work, for which he had been able to collect but insufficient material.

Elias and the other Assisan brothers had told him of Francis's youth and his activity in Umbria; but besides that he would have preferred, whether from prudence or from love of peace, to keep silence upon certain events,[19] there were long periods upon which he had not received a single item of information.[20]

He therefore seems to indicate his intention of resuming and completing his work.[21]

This is not the place to write the history of the Order, but a few facts are necessary to put the documents into their proper surroundings.

Elected minister-general in 1232, Brother Elias took advantage of the fact to labor with indomitable energy toward the realization of his own ideas. In all the provinces new collections were organized for the Basilica of Assisi, the work upon which was pushed with an activity which however injured neither the strength of the edifice nor the beauty of its details, which are as finished and perfect as those of any monument in Europe.

We may conceive of the enormous sums which it had been necessary to raise in order to complete such an enterprise in so short a time. More than that, Brother Elias exacted absolute obedience from all his subordinates; naming and removing the provincial ministers according to his personal views, he neglected to convoke the chapter-general, and sent his emissaries under the name of visitors into all the provinces to secure the execution of his orders.

The moderate party in Germany, France, and England very soon found his yoke insupportable. It was hard for them to be directed by an Italian minister resident at Assisi, a small town quite aside from the highways of civilization, entirely a stranger to the scientific movement concentred in the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.

In the indignation of the _Zelanti_ against Elias and his contempt for the Rule, they found a decisive support. Very soon the minister had for his defence nothing but his own energy, and the favor of the pope and of the few Italian moderates. By a great increase of vigilance and severity he repressed several attempts at revolt.

His adversaries, however, succeeded in establishing secret intelligence at the court of Rome; even the pope's confessor was gained; yet in spite of all these circumstances, the success of the conspiracy was still uncertain when the chapter of 1239 opened.

Gregory IX., still favorable to Elias,[22] presided. Fear gave sudden courage to the conspirators; they threw their accusations in their enemy's face.

Thomas of Eccleston gives a highly colored narrative of what took place. Elias was proud, violent, even threatening. There were cries and vociferations from both sides; they were about to come to blows when a few words from the pope restored silence. He had made up his mind to abandon his _protégé_. He asked for his resignation. Elias indignantly refused.

Gregory IX. then explained that in keeping him in charge he had thought himself acting in accordance with the wishes of the majority: that he had no intention to dominate the Order, and, since the Brothers no longer desired Elias, he declared him deposed from the generalate.

The joy of the victors, says Eccleston, was immense and ineffable. They chose Alberto di Pisa, provincial of England, to succeed him, and from that time bent all their efforts to represent Elias as a creature of Frederick II.[23] The former minister wrote indeed to the pope to explain his conduct, but the letter did not reach its destination. It must have reached the hands of his successor, and not been sent forward; when Alberto of Pisa died it was found in his tunic.[24]

All the fury of the aged pontiff was unchained against Elias. One must read the documents to see to what a height his anger could rise. The friar retorted with a virulence which though less wordy was far more overpowering.[25]

These events gained an indescribable notoriety[26] all over Europe and threw the Order into profound disturbance. Many of the partisans of Elias became convinced that they had been deceived by an impostor, and they drew toward the group of Zealots, who never ceased to demand the observance pure and simple of the Rule and the Will.

Thomas of Celano was of this number.[27] With profound sadness he saw the innumerable influences that were secretly undermining the Franciscan institute and menacing it with ruin. Already a refrain was going the rounds of the convents, singing the victory of Paris over Assisi, that is, of learning over poverty.

The Zealots gained new courage. Unaccustomed to the subtleties of ecclesiastical politics, they did not perceive that the pope, while condemning Brother Elias, had in nowise modified the general course which he had marked out for the Order. The ministers-general, Alberto di Pisa, 1239-1240, Aymon of Faversham, 1240-1244, Crescentius de Jesi, 1244-1247, were all, with different shades of meaning, representatives of the moderate party.

Thomas of Celano's first legend had become impossible. The prominence there given to Elias was almost a scandal. The necessity of working it over and completing it became clearly evident at the chapter of Genoa (1244).

All the Brothers who had anything to tell about Francis's life were invited to commit it to writing and send it to the minister Crescentius de Jesi.[28] The latter immediately caused a tract to be drawn up in the form of a dialogue, commencing with the words: "_Venerabilium gesta Patrum_." So soon after as the time of Bernard de Besse, only fragments of this were left.[29]

But happily several of the works which saw the light in consequence of the decision of this chapter have been preserved to us. It is to this that we owe the Legend of the Three Companions and the Second Life by Thomas of Celano.

IV. LEGEND OF THE THREE COMPANIONS[30]

The life of St. Francis which has come down to us under the name of the Legend of the Three Companions was finished on August 11, 1246, in a little convent in the vale of Rieti, which appears often in the course of this history, that of Greccio. This hermitage had been Francis's favorite abode, especially in the latter part of his life. He had thus made it doubly dear to the hearts of his disciples.[31] It naturally became, from the earliest days of the Order, the headquarters of the Observants,[32] and it remains through all the centuries one of the purest centres of Franciscan piety.

The authors of this legend were men worthy to tell St. Francis's story, and perhaps the most capable of doing it: the friars Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. All three had lived in intimacy with him, and had been his companions through the most important years. More than this, they took the trouble to go to others for further information, particularly to Filippo, the visitor of the Clarisses, to Illuminato di Rieti, Masseo di Marignano, John, the confidant of Egidio, and Bernardo di Quintavalle.

Such names as these promise much, and happily we are not disappointed in our expectation. As it has come down to us, this document is the only one worthy from the point of view of history to be placed beside the First Life by Celano.

The names of the authors and the date of the composition indicate before examination the tendency with which it is likely to be in harmony. It is the first manifesto of the Brothers who remained faithful to the spirit and letter of the Rule. This is confirmed by an attentive reading; it is at least as much a panegyric of Poverty as a history of St. Francis.

We naturally expect to see the Three Companions relating to us with a very particular delight the innumerable features of the legends of which Greccio was the theatre; we turn to the end of the volume, expecting to find the story of the last years of which they were witnesses, and are lost in surprise to find nothing of the kind.

While the first half of the work describes Francis's youth, filling out here and there Celano's First Life, the second[33] is devoted to a picture of the early days of the Order, a picture of incomparable freshness and intensity of life; but strangely enough, after having told us so much at length of Francis's youth and then of the first days of the Order, the story abruptly leaps over from the year 1220 to the death and the canonization, to which after all only a few pages are given.[34]

This is too extraordinary to be the result of chance. What has happened? It is evident that the Legend of the Three Companions as we have it to-day is only a fragment of the original, which was no doubt revised, corrected, and considerably cut down by the authorities of the Order before they would permit it to be circulated.[35] If the authors had been interrupted in their work, and obliged to cut short the end, as might have been the case, they would have said so in their letter of envoy, but there are still other arguments in favor of our hypothesis.

Brother Leo having had the first and principal part in the production of the work of the Three Companions, it is often called Brother Leo's Legend; now Brother Leo's Legend is several times cited by Ubertini di Casali, arraigned before the court of Avignon by the party of the Common Observance. Evidently Ubertini would have taken good care not to appeal to an apocryphal document; a false citation would have been enough to bring him to confusion, and his enemies would not have failed to make the most of his imprudence. We have at hand all the documents of the trial,[36] attacks, replies, counter replies, and nowhere do we see the Liberals accuse their adversary of falsehood. For that matter, the latter makes his citations with a precision that admits of no cavil.[37] He appeals to writings to be found in a press in the convent of Assisi, of which he gives sometimes a copy, sometimes an original.[38] We are then authorized to conclude that we have here fragments which have survived the suppression of the last and most important part of the Legend of the Three Companions.

It is not surprising that the work of Francis's dearest friends should have been so seriously mutilated. It was the manifesto of a party that Crescentius was hunting down with all his power.

After the fleeting reaction of the generalate of Giovanni di Parma we shall see a man of worth like St. Bonaventura moving for the suppression of all the primitive legends that his own compilation may be substituted for them.

It is truly singular that no one has perceived the fragmentary state of the work of the Three Companions. The prologue alone might have suggested this idea. Why should it take three to write a few pages? Why this solemn enumeration of Brothers whose testimony and collaboration are asked for? There would be a surprising disproportion between the effort and the result.

More than all, the authors say that they shall not stop at relating the miracles, but they desire above all to exhibit the ideas of Francis and his life with the Brothers, but we search in vain for any account of miracles in what we now have.[39]

An Italian translation of this legend, published by Father Stanislaus Melchiorri,[40] has suddenly given me an indirect confirmation of this point of view. This monk is only its publisher, and has simply been able to discover that in 1577 it was taken from a very ancient manuscript by a certain Muzio Achillei di San Severino.[41]

This Italian translation contained only the last chapters of the legend, those which tell of the death, the stigmata, and the translation of the remains.[42] It was, then, made at a time when the suppressed portion had not been replaced by a short summary of the other legends.

From all this two conclusions emerge for the critics: 1. This final summary has not the same authority as the rest of the work, since the time when it was added is unknown. 2. Fragments of a legend by Brother Leo or by the Three Companions scattered through later compilations may be perfectly authentic.

In its present condition this legend of the Three Companions is the finest piece of Franciscan literature, and one of the most delightful productions of the Middle Ages. There is something indescribably sweet, confiding, chaste, in these pages, an energy of virile youth which the Fioretti suggest but never attain to. At more than six hundred years of distance the purest dream that ever thrilled the Christian Church seems to live again.

These friars of Greccio, who, scattered over the mountain, under the shade of the olive-trees, passed their days in singing the Hymn of the Sun, are the true models of the primitive Umbrian Masters. They are all alike; they are awkwardly posed; everything in and around them sins against the most elementary rules of art, and yet their memory pursues you, and when you have long forgotten the works of impeccable modern artists you recall without effort these creations of those unknown painters; for love calls for love, and these vapid personages have very true and pure hearts, a more than human love shines forth from their whole being, they speak to you and make you better.

Such is this book, the first utterance of the Spiritual Franciscans, in which we already see the coming to life of some of those bold doctrines that not only divided the Franciscan family into two hostile branches, but which were to bring some of their defenders to the heretic's stake.[43]

V. FRAGMENTS OF THE SUPPRESSED PART OF THE LEGEND OF THE THREE COMPANIONS

We may now take a step forward and try to group the fragments of the Legend of the Three Companions, or of Brother Leo, which are to be found in later writings.

We must here be more than ever on our guard against absolute theories; one of the most fruitful principles of historic criticism is to prefer contemporary documents, or at least those which are nearest them; but even with these it is necessary to use a little discretion.

It seems impossible to attack the reasoning of the Bollandists, who refuse to know anything of legends written after that of St. Bonaventura (1260), under pretext that, coming after several other authorized biographies, he was better situated than anyone for getting information and completing the work of his predecessors.[44] In reality this is absurd, for it assumes that Bonaventura undertook to write as a historian. This is to forget that he wrote not only for the purpose of edification, but also as minister-general of the Minor Brothers. From this fact his first duty was to keep silent on many facts, and those not the least interesting. What shall we say of a biography where Francis's Will is not even mentioned?

It is easy to turn away from a writing of the fourteenth century, on the ground that the author did not see what was going on a hundred years before; still we must not forget that many books of the end of the Middle Ages resemble those old mansions at which four or five generators have toiled. An inscription on their front often only shows the touch of the last restorer or the last destroyer, and the names which are set forth with the greatest complacency are not always those of the real workmen.

Such have been many Franciscan books; to attribute them to any one author would be impracticable; very different hands have worked upon them, and such an amalgam has its own charm and interest.

Turning them over--I had almost said associating with them--we come to see clearly into this tangled web, for every work of man bears the trace of the hand that made it: this trace may perhaps be of an almost imperceptible delicacy; it exists none the less, ready to reveal itself to practised eyes. What is more impersonal than the photograph of a landscape or of a painting, and yet among several hundreds of proofs the amateur will go straight to the work of the operator he prefers.

These reflections were suggested by the careful study of a curious book printed many times since the sixteenth century, the _Speculum Vitæ S. Francisci et sociorum ejus_.[45] A complete study of this work, its sources, its printed editions, the numerous differences in the manuscripts, would by itself require a volume and an epitome of the history of the Order. I can give here only a few notes, taking for base the oldest edition, that of 1504.

The confusion which reigns here is frightful. Incidents in the life of Francis and his companions are brought together with no plan; several of them are repeated after the interval of a few pages in a quite different manner;[46] certain chapters are so awkwardly introduced that the compiler has forgotten to remove the number that they bore in the work from which he borrowed them;[47] finally, to our great surprise, we find several _Incipit_.[48]

However, with a little perseverance we soon perceive a few openings in the labyrinth. In the first place, here are several chapters of the legend of Bonaventura which seem to have been put in the van as if to protect the rest of the book. If we abstract them and the whole series of chapters from the Fioretti, we shall have diminished the work by nearly three-quarters.

If we take away two more chapters taken from St. Bernard of Clairvaux and those containing Franciscan prayers, or various attestations concerning the indulgence of Portiuncula, we finally arrive at a sort of residue, if the expression may be forgiven, of a remarkable homogeneity.

Here the style is very different from that in the surrounding pages, closely recalling that of the Three Companions; a single thought inspires these pages, that the corner-stone of the Order is the love of poverty.

Why should we not have here some fragments of the original legend of the Three Companions? We find here nothing which does not fit in with what we know, nothing which suggests the embellishments of a late tradition.

To confirm this hypothesis come different passages which we find cited by Ubertini di Casali and by Angelo Clareno as being by Brother Leo, and an attentive comparison of the text shows that these authors can neither have drawn them from the Speculum nor the Speculum from them.

There is, besides, one phrase which, apart from the inspiration and style, will suffice at the first glance to mark the common origin of most of these pieces.[49] _Nos qui cum ipso fuimus_. "We who have been with him." These words, which recur in almost every incident,[49] are in many cases only a grateful tribute to their spiritual father, but sometimes, too, they have a touch of bitterness. These hermits of Greccio suddenly recall to mind their rights. Are we not the only, the true interpreters of the Saint's instructions--we who lived continually with him; we who, hour after hour, have meditated upon his words, his sighs, and his hymns?

We can understand that such pretensions were not to the taste of the Common Observance, and that Crescentius, with an incontestable authority, has suppressed nearly all this legend.[51]

As for the fragments that have been preserved to us, though they furnish many details about the last years of St. Francis's life, they still are not those whose loss is so much to be regretted. The authors who reproduce them were defending a cause. We owe them little more than the incidents which in one way or another concern the question of poverty. They had nothing to do with the other accounts, as they were not writing a biography. But even within these narrow limits these fragments are in the first order of importance; and I have not hesitated to use them largely. It is needless to say that while ascribing their origin to the Three Companions, and in particular to Brother Leo, we must not suppose that we have the very letter in the texts which have come down to us. The pieces given by Ubertini di Casali and Angelo Clareno are actual citations, and deserve full confidence as such. As for those which are preserved to us in the Speculum, they may often have been abridged, explanatory notes may have slipped into the text, but nowhere do we find interpolations in the bad sense of the word.[52]

Finally, if we compare the fragments with the corresponding accounts in the Second Life of Celano, we see that the latter has often borrowed verbatim from Brother Leo, but generally he has considerably abridged the passages, adding reflections here and there, especially retouching the style to make it more elegant.

Such a comparison soon proves that Brother Leo's narratives are the original and that it is impossible to see in them a later amplification of those of Thomas of Celano, as we might at first be tempted to think them.[53]

VI. SECOND LIFE BY THOMAS OF CELANO[54]

_First Part_

In consequence of the decision of the chapter of 1244 search was begun in all quarters for memorials of the early times of the Order. In view of the ardor of this inquiry, in which zeal for the glory of the Franciscan institute certainly cast the interests of history into the background, the minister-general, Crescentius, was obliged to take certain precautions.

Many of the pieces that he received were doing double duty; others might contradict one another; many of them, under color of telling the life of the Saint, had no other object than to oppose the present to the past.

It soon became imperative to constitute a sort of commission charged to study and coördinate all this matter.[55] What more natural than to put Thomas of Celano at its head? Ever since the approbation of the first legend by Gregory IX. he had appeared to be in a sense the official historiographer of the Order.[56]

This view accords perfectly with the contents of the seventeen chapters which contain the first part of the second legend. It offers itself at the outset as a compilation. Celano is surrounded with companions who help him.[57] A more attentive examination shows that its principal source is the Legend of the Three Companions, which the compilers worked over, sometimes filling out certain details, more often making large excisions.

Everything that does not concern St. Francis is ruthlessly proscribed; we feel the well-defined purpose to leave in the background the disciples who so complacently placed themselves in the foreground.[58]

The work of the Three Companions had been finished August 11, 1246. On July 13, 1247, the chapter of Lyons put an end to the powers of Crescentius. It is, therefore, between these two dates that we must place the composition of the first part of Thomas of Celano's Second Life.[59]

VII. SECOND LIFE BY THOMAS OF CELANO[59]

_Second Part_

The election of Giovanni di Parma (1247-1257) as successor of Crescentius was a victory for the Zealots. This man, in whose work-table the birds came to make their nests,[61] was to astonish the world by his virtues. No one saw more deeply into St. Francis's heart, no one was more worthy to take up and continue his work.

He soon asked Celano to resume his work.[62] The latter was perhaps alone at first, but little by little a group of collaborators formed itself anew about him.[63] Thenceforth nothing prevented his doing with that portion of the work of the Three Companions which Crescentius had suppressed what he had already done with the part he had approved.

The Legend of Brother Leo has thus come down to us, entirely worked over by Thomas of Celano, abridged and with all its freshness gone, but still of capital importance in the absence of the major part of the original.

The events of which we possess two accounts permit us to measure the extent of our loss. We find, in fact, in Celano's compilation all that we expected to find in the Three Companions: the incidents belong especially to the last two years of Francis's life, and the scene of many of them is either Greccio or one of the hermitages of the vale of Rieti;[64] according to tradition, Brother Leo was the hero of a great number of the incidents here related[65] and all the citations that Ubertini di Casali makes from Brother Leo's book find their correspondents here.[66]

This second part of the Second Life perfectly reflects the new circumstances to which it owes its existence. The question of Poverty dominates everything;[67] the struggle between the two parties in the Order reveals itself on every page; the collaborators are determined that each event narrated shall be an indirect lesson to the Liberals, to whom they oppose the Spirituals; the popes had commented on the Rule in the large sense; they, on their side, undertook to comment on it in a sense at once literal and spiritual, by the actions and words of its author himself.

History has hardly any part here except as the vehicle of a thesis, a fact which diminishes nothing of the historic value of the information given in the course of these pages. But while in Celano's First Life and in the Legend of the Three Companions the facts succeed one another organically, here they are placed side by side. Therefore when we come to read this work we are sensible of a fall; even from the literary point of view the inferiority makes itself cruelly felt. Instead of a poem we have before us a catalogue, very cleverly made, it is true, but with no power to move us.

VIII. NOTES ON A FEW SECONDARY DOCUMENTS

a. _Celano's Life of St. Francis for Use in the Choir._

Thomas of Celano made also a short legend for use in the choir. It is divided into nine lessons and served for the Franciscan breviaries up to the time when St. Bonaventura made his _Legenda Minor_.

That of Celano may be found in part (the first three lessons) in the Assisi MS. 338, fol. 52a-53b; it is preceded by a letter of envoy: "_Rogasti me frater Benedicte, ut de legenda B. P. N. F. quædam exciperem et in novem lectionum seriem ordinarem_ ... etc. _B. Franciscus de civitate Assisii ortus a puerilibus annis nutritus extitit insolenter._"

This work has no historic importance.

b. _Life of St. Francis in Verse._

In the list of biographers has sometimes been counted a poem in hexameter verse[68] the text of which was edited in 1882 by the lamented Cristofani.[69]

This work does not furnish a single new historic note. It is the Life by Celano in verse and nothing more; the author's desire was to figure as a poet. It is superfluous, therefore, to concern ourselves with it.[69]

c. _Biography of St. Francis by Giovanni di Ceperano._

One of the biographies which disappeared, no doubt in consequence of the decision of the chapter of 1266,[71] is that of Giovanni di Ceperano. The resemblance of his name to that of Thomas of Celano has occasioned much confusion.[72] The most precious information which we have respecting him is given by Bernard of Besse in the opening of his _De laudibus St. Francisci_: "_Plenam virtutibus B. Francisci vitam scripsit in Italia exquisitæ vir eloquentiæ fr. Thomas jubente Domino Gregorio papa IX. et eam quæ incipit: Quasi stella matutina vir venerabilis Dominus et fertur Joannes, Apostolicæ sedis notarius._"[73]

In the face of so precise a text all doubt as to the existence of the work of Giovanni di Ceperano is impossible. The Reverend Father Denifle has been able to throw new light upon this question. In a manuscript containing the liturgy of the Brothers Minor and finished in 1256 he found the nine lessons for the festival of St. Francis preceded by the title: _Ex gestis ejus abbreviatis quæ sic incipiunt: Quasi stella_ (_Zeitschrift für kath. Theol._, vii., p. 710. Cf. _Archiv._, i., p. 148). This summary of Ceperano's work gives, as we should expect, no new information; but perhaps we need not despair of finding the very work of this author.

d. _Life of St. Francis by Brother Julian._

It was doubtless about 1230 that Brother Julian, the Teuton, who had been chapel-master at the court of the King of France, was commissioned to put the finishing touches to the Office of St. Francis.[74] Evidently such a work would contain nothing original, and its loss is little felt.

IX. LEGEND OF ST. BONAVENTURA

Under the generalate of Giovanni di Parma (1247-1257) the Franciscan parties underwent modifications, in consequence of which their opposition became still more striking than before.

The Zelanti, with the minister-general at their head, enthusiastically adopted the views of Gioacchino di Fiore. The predictions of the Calabrian abbot corresponded too well with their inmost convictions for any other course to be possible: they seemed to see Francis, as a new Christ, inaugurating the third era of the world.

For a few years these dreams moved all Europe; the faith of the Joachimites was so ardent that it made its way by its own force; sceptics like Salimbeni told themselves that on the whole it was surely wiser not to be taken unawares by the great catastrophe of 1260, and hastened in crowds to the cell of Hyères to be initiated by Hugues de Digne in the mysteries of the new times: as to the people, they waited, trembling, divided between hope and terror. Nevertheless their adversaries did not consider themselves beaten, and the Liberal party still remained the most numerous. Of an angelic purity, Giovanni di Parma believed in the omnipotence of example: events showed how mistaken he was; at the close of his term of office scandals were not less flagrant than ten years earlier.[75]

Between these two extreme parties, against which he was to proceed with equal rigor, stood that of the Moderates, to which belonged St. Bonaventura.[76]

A mystic, but of a formal and orthodox mysticism, he saw the revolution toward which the Church was hastening if the party of the eternal Gospel was to triumph; its victory would not be that of this or that heresy in detail, it would be, with brief delay, the ruin of the entire ecclesiastical edifice; he was too perspicacious not to see that in the last analysis the struggle then going on was that of the individual conscience against authority. This explains, and up to a certain point gains him pardon for, his severities against his opponents; he was supported by the court of Rome and by all those who desired to make the Order a school at once of piety and of learning.

No sooner was he elected general than, with a purpose that never knew hesitation, and a will whose firmness made itself everywhere felt, he took his steps to forward this double aim. On the very morrow of his nomination he sketched the programme of reforms against the Liberal party, and at the same time secured the summons of the Joachimite Brothers before an ecclesiastical tribunal at Città-della-Pieve. This tribunal condemned them to perpetual imprisonment, and it needed the personal intervention of Cardinal Ottobonus, the future Adrian V., for Giovanni di Parma to be left free to retire to the Convent of Greccio.

The first chapter held under the presidence of Bonaventura, in the extended decisions of which we find everywhere tokens of his influence, assembled at Narbonne in 1260. He was then commissioned to compose a new life of St. Francis.[77]

We easily understand the anxieties to which this decision of the Brothers was an answer. The number of legends had greatly increased, for besides those which we have first studied or noted there were others in existence which have completely disappeared, and it had become equally difficult for the Brothers who went forth on missions either to make a choice between them or to carry them all.

The course of the new historian was therefore clearly marked out: he must do the work of compiler and peacemaker. He failed in neither. His book is a true sheaf, or rather it is a millstone under which the indefatigable author has pressed, somewhat at hazard, the sheaves of his predecessors. Most of the time he inserts them just as they are, confining himself to the work of harvesting them and weeding out the tares.

Therefore, when we reach the end of this voluminous work we have a very vague impression of St. Francis. We see that he was a saint, a very great saint, since he performed an innumerable quantity of miracles, great and small; but we feel very much as if we had been going through a shop of objects of piety. All these statues, whether they are called St. Anthony the Abbot, St. Dominic, St. Theresa, or St. Vincent de Paul, have the same expression of mincing humility, of a somewhat shallow ecstasy. These are saints, if you please, miracle-workers; they are not men; he who made them made them by rule, by process; he has put nothing of his heart in these ever-bowed foreheads, these lips with their wan smile.

God forbid that I should say or think that St. Bonaventura was not worthy to write a life of St. Francis, but the circumstances controlled his work, and it is no injustice to him to say that it is fortunate for Francis, and especially for us, that we have another biography of the Poverello than that of the Seraphic Doctor.

Three years after, in 1263, he brought his completed work to the chapter-general convoked under his presidence at Pisa. It was there solemnly approved.[78]

It is impossible to say whether they thought that the presence of the new legend would suffice to put the old ones out of mind, but it seems that at this time nothing was said about the latter.

It was not so at the following chapter. This one, held at Paris, came to a decision destined to have disastrous results for the primitive Franciscan documents. This decree, emanating from an assembly presided over by Bonaventura in person, is too important not to be quoted textually: "Item, the Chapter-general ordains on obedience that all the legends of the Blessed Francis formerly made shall be destroyed. The Brothers who shall find any without the Order must try to make away with them since the legend made by the General is compiled from accounts of three who almost always accompanied the Blessed Francis; all that they could certainly know and all that is proven has been carefully inserted therein."[79] It would have been difficult to be more precise. We see the perseverance with which Bonaventura carried on his struggle against the extreme parties. This decree explains the almost complete disappearance of the manuscripts of Celano and the Three Companions, since in certain collections even those of Bonaventura's legend are hardly to be found.

As we have seen, Bonaventura aimed to write a sort of official or canonical biography; he succeeded only too well. Most of the accounts that we already know have gone into his collection, but not without at times suffering profound mutilations. We are not surprised to find him passing over Francis's youth with more discretion than Celano in the First Life, but we regret to find him ornamenting and materializing some of the loveliest incidents of the earlier legends.

It is not enough for him that Francis hears the crucifix of St. Daraian speak; he pauses to lay stress on the assertion that he heard it _corporeis auribus_ and that no one was in the chapel at that moment! Brother Monaldo at the chapter of Arles sees St. Francis appear _corporeis oculis_. He often abridges his predecessors, but this is not his invariable rule. When he reaches the account of the stigmata he devotes long pages to it,[79] relates a sort of consultation held by St. Francis as to whether he could conceal them, and adds several miracles due to these sacred wounds; further on he returns to the subject to show a certain Girolamo, Knight of Assisi, desiring to touch with his hands the miraculous nails.[81] On the other hand, he uses a significant discretion wherever the companions of the Saint are in question. He names only three of the first eleven disciples,[82] and no more mentions Brothers Leo, Angelo, Rufino, Masseo, than their adversary, Brother Elias.

As to the incidents which we find for the first time in this collection, they hardly make us regret the unknown sources which must have been at the service of the famous Doctor; it would appear that the healing of Morico, restored to health by a few pellets of bread soaked in the oil of the lamp which burned before the altar of the Virgin,[83] has little more importance for the life of St. Francis than the story of the sheep given to Giacomina di Settesoli which awakened its mistress to summon her to go to mass.[84] What shall we think of that other sheep, of Portiuncula, which hastened to the choir whenever it heard the psalmody of the friars, and kneeled devoutly for the elevation of the Holy Sacrament?[85]

All these incidents, the list of which might be enlarged,[86] betrays the working-over of the legend. St. Francis becomes a great thaumaturgist, but his physiognomy loses its originality.

The greatest fault of this work is, in fact, the vagueness of the figure of the Saint. While in Celano there are the large lines of a soul-history, a sketch of the affecting drama of a man who attains to the conquest of himself, with Bonaventura all this interior action disappears before divine interventions; his heart is, so to speak, the geometrical locality of a certain number of visitants; he is a passive instrument in the hands of God, and we really cannot see why he should have been chosen rather than another.

And yet Bonaventura was an Italian; he had seen Umbria; he must have knelt and celebrated the sacred mysteries in Portiuncula, that cradle of the noblest of religious reformations; he had conversed with Brother Egidio, and must have heard from his lips an echo of the first Franciscan fervor; but, alas! nothing of that rapture passed into his book, and if the truth must be told, I find it quite inferior to much later documents, to the Fioretti, for example; for they understood, at least in part, the soul of Francis; they felt the throbbing of that heart, with all its sensitiveness, admiration, indulgence, love, independence, and absence of carefulness.

X. DE LAUDIBUS OF BERNARD OF BESSE[87]

Bonaventura's work did not discourage the biographers. The historic value of their labor is almost nothing, and we shall not even attempt to catalogue them.

Bernard of Besse, a native probably of the south of France[88] and secretary of Bonaventura,[89] made a summary of the earlier legends. This work, which brings us no authentic historic indication, is interesting only for the care with which the author has noted the places where repose the Brothers who died in odor of sanctity, and relates a mass of visions all tending to prove the excellence of the Order.[89]

Still the publication of this document will perform the valuable office of throwing a little light upon the difficult question of the sources. Several passages of the _De laudibus_ appear again textually in the Speculum,[91] and as a single glance is enough to show that the Speculum did not copy the _De laudibus_, it must be that Bernard of Besse had before him a copy, if not of the Speculum at least of a document of the same kind.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bull _Quo elongati_ of September 28, 1230. See p. 336.

[2] It is needless to say that I have no desire to put myself in
opposition to that principle, one of the most fruitful of
criticism, but still it should not be employed alone.

[3] The learned works that have appeared in Germany in late
years err in the same way. They will be found cited in the body
of the work.

[4] Eccl., 13. _Voluerunt ipsi, quos ad capitulam concesserat
venire frater Helias; nam omnes concessit, etc._ _An. fr., t.
i._, p. 241. Cf. _Mon. Germ. hist. Script._, t., 28, p. 564.

[5] The death of Francis occurred on October 3, 1226. On March
29, 1228, Elias acquired the site for the basilica. The
_Instrumentum donationis_ is still preserved at Assisi: Piece
No. 1 of the twelfth package of _Instrumenta diversa pertinentia
ad Sacrum Conventum_. It has been published by Thode: _Franz von
Assisi_, p. 359.

On July 17th of the same year, the day after the canonization,
Gregory IX. solemnly laid the first stone. Less than two years
afterward the Lower church was finished, and on May 25, 1230,
the body of the Saint was carried there. In 1236 the Upper
church was finished. It was already decorated with a first
series of frescos, and Giunta Pisano painted Elias, life size,
kneeling at the foot of the crucifix over the entrance to the
choir. In 1239 everything was finished, and the campanile
received the famous bells whose chimes still delight all the
valley of Umbria. Thus, then, three months and a half before the
canonization, Elias received the site of the basilica. The act
of canonization commenced at the end of May, 1228 (1 Cel., 123
and 124. Cf. Potthast, 8194ff).

[6] _Spec._, 167a. Cf. _An. fr._, ii., p. 45 and note.

[7] The Bollandists followed the text (A. SS., Octobris, t. ii.,
pp. 683-723) of a manuscript of the Cistercian abbey of Longpont
in the diocese of Soissons. It has since been published in Rome
in 1806, without the name of the editor (in reality by the
Convent Father Rinaldi), under the title: _Seraphici viri S.
Francisci Assisiatis vitæ dual auctore B. Thoma de Celano_,
according to a manuscript (of Fallerone, in the March of Ancona)
which was stolen in the vicinity of Terni by brigands from the
Brother charged with bringing it back. The second text was
reproduced at Rome in 1880 by Canon Amoni: _Vita prima S.
Francisci, auctore B. Thoma de Celano. Roma, tipografia della
pace_, 1880, in 8vo, 42 pp. The citations will follow the
divisions made by the Bollandists, but in many important
passages the Rinaldi-Amoni text gives better readings than that
of the Bollandists. The latter has been here and there retouched
and filled out. See, for example, 1 Cel., 24 and 31. As for the
manuscripts, Father Denifle thinks that the oldest of those
which are known is that at Barcelona: _Archivo de la corona de
Aragon_, Ripoll, n. 41 (_Archiv._, t. i., p. 148). There is one
in the National Library of Paris, Latin alcove, No. 3817, which
includes a curious note: "_Apud Perusium felix domnus papa
Gregorius nonus gloriosi secundo pontificus sui anno, quinto
kal. martii (February 25, 1229) legendam hanc recepit,
confirmavit et censuit fore tenendam._" Another manuscript,
which merits attention, both because of its age, thirteenth
century, and because of the correction in the text, and which
appears to have escaped the researches of the students of the
Franciscans, is the one owned by the École de Médicine at
Montpellier, No. 30, in vellum folio: _Passionale vetus ecclesiæ
S. Benigni divionensis_. The story of Celano occupies in it the
fos. 257a-271b. The text ends abruptly in the middle of
paragraph 112 with _supiriis ostendebant_. Except for this final
break it is complete. Cf. Archives Pertz, t. vii., pp. 195 and
196. Vide General catalogue of the manuscripts of the public
libraries of the departments, t. i., p. 295.

[8] Vide 1 Cel., Prol. _Jubente domino et glorioso Papa
Gregorio_. Celano wrote it after the canonization (July 16,
1228) and before February 25, 1229, for the date indicated above
raises no difficulty.

[9] 1 Cel., 56. Perhaps he was the son of that Thomas, Count of
Celano, to whom Ryccardi di S. Germano so often made allusion in
his chronicle: 1219-1223. See also two letters of Frederick II.
to Honorius III., on April 24 and 25, 1223, published in
Winckelmann: _Acta imperii inedita_, t. i., p. 232.

[10] Giord., 19.

[11] Giord., 30 and 31.

[12] Giord., 59. Cf. Glassberger, ann. 1230. The question
whether he is the author of the _Dies iræ_ would be out of place
here.

[13] This is so true that the majority of historians have been
brought to believe in two generalates of Elias, one in
1227-1230, the other in 1236-1239. The letter _Non ex odio_ of
Frederick II. (1239) gives the same idea: _Revera papa iste
quemdam religiosum et timoratum fratrem Helyam, ministrum
ordinis fratrum minorum ab ipso beato Francisco patre ordinis
migrationis suæ tempore constitutum ... in odium nostrum ...
deposuit_. Huillard-Breholles: _Hist. dipl. Fred. II._, t. v.,
p. 346.

[14] He is named only once, 1 Cel., 48.