The writings of St. Francis1 are assuredly the best source of acquaintance with him; we can only be surprised to find them so neglected by most of his biographers. It is true that they give little information as to his life, and furnish neither dates nor facts,2 but they do better, they mark the stages of his thought and of his spiritual development. The legends give us Francis as he appeared, and by that very fact suffer in some degree the compulsion of circumstances; they are obliged to bend to the exigencies of his position as general of an Order approved by the Church, as miracle-worker, and as saint. His works, on the contrary, show us his very soul; each phrase has not only been thought, but lived; they bring us the Poverello's emotions, still alive and palpitating. So, when in the writings of the Franciscans we find any utterance of their master, it unconsciously betrays itself, sounding out suddenly in a sweet, pure tone which penetrates to your very heart, awakening with a thrill a sprite that was sleeping there. This bloom of love enduing St. Francis's words would be an admirable criterion of the authenticity of those opuscules which tradition attributes to him; but the work of testing is neither long nor difficult. If after his time injudicious attempts were here and there made to honor him with miracles which he did not perform, which he would not even have wished to perform, no attempt was ever made to burden his literary efforts with false or supposititious pieces.3 The best proof of this is that it is not until Wadding—that is to say, until the seventeenth century—that we find the first and only serious attempt to collect these precious memorials. Several of them have been lost,4 but those which remain are enough to give us in some sort the refutation of the legends. In these pages Francis gives himself to his readers, as long ago he gave himself to his companions; in each one of them a feeling, a cry of the heart, or an aspiration toward the Invisible is prolonged down to our own time. Wadding thought it his duty to give a place in his collection to several suspicious pieces; more than this, instead of following the oldest manuscripts that he had before him, he often permitted himself to be led astray by sixteenth-century writers whose smallest concern was to be critical and accurate. To avoid the tedious and entirely negative task to which it would be necessary to proceed if I took him for my starting-point I shall confine myself to a positive study of this question. All the pieces which will be enumerated are found in his collection. They are sometimes cut up in a singular way; but in proportion as each document is studied we shall find sufficient indications to enable us to make the necessary rectifications. The archives of Sacro Convento of Assisi5 possess a manuscript whose importance is not to be overestimated. It has already been many times studied,6 and bears the number 338. It appears, however, that a very important detail of form has been overlooked. It is this: that No. 338 is not one manuscript, but a collection of manuscripts of very different periods, which were put together because they were of very nearly the same size, and have been foliated in a peculiar manner. This artificial character of the collection shows that each of the pieces which compose it needs to be examined by itself, and that it is impossible to say of it as a whole that it is of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century. The part that interests us is perfectly homogeneous, is formed of three parchment books (fol. 12a-44b) and contains a part of Francis's works. 1. The Rule, definitively approved by Honorius III., November 20, 12237 (fol. 12a-16a). 2. St. Francis's Will8 (fol. 16a-18a). 3. The Admonitions9 (fol. 18a-23b). 4. The Letter to all Christians10 (fol. 23b-28a). 5. The letter to all the members of the Order assembled in Chapter-general11 (fol. 28a-31a). 6. Counsel to all clerics on the respect to be paid to the Eucharist12 (fol., 31b-32b). 7. A very short piece preceded by the rubric: "Of the virtues which adorn the Virgin Mary and which ought to adorn the holy soul"13 (fol. 32b). 8. The Laudes Creaturarum, or Canticle of the Sun14 (fol. 33a). 9. A paraphrase of the Pater introduced by the rubric: Incipiunt laudes quas ordinavit. B. pater noster Franciscus et dicebat ipsas ad omnes horas diei et noctis et ante officium B. V. MariÆ sic incipiens: Sanctissime Pater15 (fol. 34a). 10. The office of the Passion (34b-43a). This office, where the psalms are replaced by several series of biblical verses, are designed to make him who repeats them follow, hour by hour, the emotions of the Crucified One from the evening of Holy Thursday.16 11. A rule for friars in retreat in hermitages17 (fol. 43a-43b). A glance over this list is enough to show that the works of Francis here collected are addressed to all the Brothers, or are a sort of encyclicals, which they are charged to pass on to those for whom they are destined. The very order of these pieces shows us that we have in this manuscript the primitive library of the Brothers Minor, the collection of which each minister was to carry with him a copy. It was truly their viaticum. Matthew Paris tells us of his amazement at the sight of these foreign monks, clothed in patched tunics, and carrying their books in a sort of case suspended from their necks.18 The Assisi manuscript was without doubt destined to this service; if it is silent on the subject of the journeys it has made, and of the Brothers to whom it has been a guide and an inspiration, it at least brings us, more than all the legends, into intimacy with Francis, makes us thrill in unison with that heart which never admitted a separation between joy, love, and poetry. As to the date of this manuscript, one must needs be a paleographer to determine. We have already found a hypothesis which, if well grounded, would carry it back to the neighborhood of 1240.19 Its contents seem to countenance this early date. In fact, it contains several pieces of which the Manual of the Brother Minor very early rid itself. Very soon they were content to have only the Rule to keep company with the breviary; sometimes they added the Will. But the other writings, if they did not fall entirely into neglect, ceased at least to be of daily usage. Those of St. Francis's writings which are not of general interest or do not concern the Brothers naturally find no place in this collection. In this new category we must range the following documents: 1. The Rule of 1221.20 2. The Rule of the Clarisses, which we no longer possess in its original form.21 3. A sort of special instruction for ministers-general.22 4. A letter to St. Clara.23 5. Another letter to the same.24 6. A letter to Brother Leo.25 7. A few prayers.26 8. The benediction of Brother Leo. The original autograph, which is preserved in the treasury of Sacro Convento, has been very well reproduced by heliograph.27 As to the two famous hymns Amor de caritade28 and In foco l'amor mi mise,29 they cannot be attributed to St. Francis, at least in their present form. It belongs to M. Monaci and his numerous and learned emulators to throw light upon these delicate questions by publishing in a scientific manner the earliest monuments of Italian poetry. I have already spoken of several tracts of which assured traces have been found, though they themselves are lost. They are much more numerous than would at first be supposed. In the missionary zeal of the early years the Brothers would not concern themselves with collecting documents. We do not write our memoirs in the fulness of our youth. We must also remember that Portiuncula had neither archives nor library. It was a chapel ten paces long, with a few huts gathered around it. The Order was ten years old before it had seen any other than a single book: a New Testament. The Brothers did not even keep this one. Francis, having nothing else, gave it to a poor woman who asked for alms, and when Pietro di Catania, his vicar, expressed his surprise at this prodigality: "Has she not given her two sons to the Order?" replied the master30 quickly. 1. Collected first by Wadding (Antwerp, 1623, 4to), they have been published many times since then, particularly by De la Haye (Paris, 1641, fo). These two editions having become scarce, were republished—in a very unsatisfactory manner—by the AbbÉ Horoy: S. Francisci Assisiatis opera omnia (Paris, 1880, 4to). For want of a more exact edition, that of Father Bernardo da Fivizzano is the most useful: Opuscoli di S. Francesco d'Assisi, 1 vol., 12mo, pp. 564, Florence, 1880. The Latin text is accompanied by an Italian translation.2. "Die Briefe, die unter seinem Namen gehen, mÖgen theilweise Ächt sein. Aber sie tragen kaum etwas zur nÄheren Kenntniss bei und kÖnnen daher fast ganz ausser Acht bleiben." MÜller, Die AnfÄnge des Minoritenordens, Freiburg, 1 vol., 8vo, 1885, p. 3.3. Pieces have been often attributed to St. Francis which do not belong to him; but those are unintentional errors and made without purpose. The desire for literary exactness is relatively of recent date, and it was easier for those who were ignorant of the author of certain Franciscan writings to attribute them to St. Francis than to admit their ignorance or to make deep researches.4. For example, the first Rule; probably also a few canticles; a letter to the Brothers in France, Eccl., 6; another to the Brothers in Bologna: "PrÆdixerat per litteram in qua fuit plurimum latinum," Eccl., ib.; a letter to Antony of Padua, other than the one we have, since on the witness of Celano it was addressed: Fratri Antonio episcopo meo (2 Cel., 3, 99); certain letters to St. Clara: "Scripsit ClarÆ et sororibus ad consolationem litteram in qu dabat benedictionem suam et absolvebat," etc. Conform., fo. 185a, 1; cf. Test. B. ClarÆ. A. SS., Augusti, t. ii., p. 767: "Plura scripta tradidit nobis, ne post mortem suam declinaremus a paupertate;" certain letters to Cardinal Ugolini, 3 Soc., 67. It is not to negligence alone that we must attribute the loss of many of the epistles: "Quod nephas est cogitare, in provincia Marchie et in pluribus aliis locis testamentum beati Francisci mandaverunt (prelati ordinis) districte per obedientiam ab omnibus auferi et comburi. Et uni fratri devoto et sancto, cujus nomen est N. de Rocanato combuxerunt dicum testamentum super caput suum. Et toto conatu fuerunt solliciti, annulare scripta beati patris nostri Francisci, in quibus sua intentio de observantia regule declaratur." Ubertino di Casali, apud Archiv., iii., pp. 168-169.5. Italy is too obliging to artists, archÆologists, and scholars not to do them the favor of disposing in a more practical manner this trust, the most precious of all Umbria. Even with the indefatigable kindness of the curator, M. Alessandro, and of the municipality of Assisi, it is very difficult to profit by these treasures heaped up in a dark room without a table to write upon.6. In particular by Ehrle: Die historischen Handschriften von S. Francesco in Assisi. Archiv., t.i., p. 484.7. See pages 252 ff ... and 283.8. See pages 333 ff.9. See pages 259 ff.10. See page 325 ff.11. See pages 322 ff.12. See page 327.13. I give it entire: "Regina sapientia, Dominus te salvet, cum tua sorore sancta pura simplicitate.—Domina sancta paupertas, Domimus te salvet, cum tua sorore sancta humilitate.—Domina sancta caritas, Dominus te salvet, cum tua sorrore sancta obedientia. SanctissimÆ virtutes omnes, vos salvet Dominus, a quo venitis et proceditis." Its authenticity is guaranteed by a citation by Celano: 2 Cel., 3, 119. Cf. 126b and 127a.14. See pages 304 f.15. I shall not recur to this: the text is in the Conformities 138a 2.16. The authenticity of this service, to which there is not a single allusion in the biographies of St. Francis, is rendered certain by the life of St. Clara: "Officium crucis, prout crucis amator Franciscus instituerat (Clara) didicit et affectu simili frequentavit." A. SS., Augusti, t. ii., p. 761a.17. It begins: Illi qui volunt stare in heremis. This text is also found in the Conformities, 143a, 1. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 43; see p. 97.18. Nudis pedibus incedentes, funiculis cincti, tunicis griseis et talaribus peciatis, insuto capucio utentes ... nihil sibi ultra noctem reservantes ... libros continue suos ... in forulis a collo dependentes bajulantes. Historia Anglorum, Pertz: Script., t. 28, p. 397. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 135; Fior., 5; Spec., 45b.19. See page 322 n.20. See page 252.21. See page 157.22. See pages 318 ff.23. See page 239.24. See page 327.25. See page 262.26. a. Sanctus Dominus Deus noster. Cf. Spec., 126a; Firmamentum, 18b, 2; Conform., 202b, 1. b. Ave Domina sancta. Cf. Spec., 127a; Conform., 138a, 2. c. Sancta Maria virgo. Cf. Spec., 126b; Conform., 202b, 2.27. Vide S. FranÇois, in 4to, Paris. 1885 (Plon), p. 233. The authenticity of this benediction appears to be well established, since it was already jealously guarded during the life of Thomas of Celano. No one has ever dreamed of requiring historical proof of this writing. Is this perhaps a mistake? The middle of the sheet is taken up with the benediction which was dictated to Brother Leo: Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te, ostendat faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui convertat vultum suum ad te et det tibi pacem. At the bottom, Francis added the letter tau. Τ, which was, so to speak, his signature (Bon., 51; 308), and the words: Frater Leo Dominus benedicat te. Then when this memorial became a part of the relics of the Saint, Brother Leo, to authenticate it in a measure, added the following notes: toward the middle: Beatus Franciscus scripsit manu sua istam benedictionem mihi fratri Leoni; toward the close: Simili modo fecit istud signum thau cum capite manu sua. But the most valuable annotation is found at the top of the sheet: Beatus Franciscus duobus annis ante mortem suam fecit quadragesimam in loco AlvernÆ ad honorem BeatÆ Virginia MariÆ matris Dei et beati Michael archangeli a festo assumptionis sanctÆ MariÆ Virginis usque ad festum sancti Michael septembris et facta est super eum manus Domini per visionem et allucotionem seraphym et impressionem stigmatum in corpore suo. Fecit has laudes ex alio latere catule scriptas et manu, sua scripsit gratias agens Domino de beneficio sibi collato. Vide 2 Cel., 2, 18.28. Wadding gives the text according to St. Bernardino da Siena. Opera, t. iv., sermo 16, extraord. et sermo feriÆ sextÆ Parasceves. Amoni: Legenda trium sociorum, p. 166.29. Wadding has drawn the text from St. Bernardino, loc. cit., sermo iv., extraord. It was also reproduced by Amoni, loc. cit., p. 165. Two very curious versions may be found in the Miscellanea, 1888, pp. 96 and 190.30. 2 Cel., 3, 35. This took place under the vicariat of Pietro di Catania; consequently between September 29, 1220, and March 10, 1221. Table of
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ml@files@18787@18787-h@18787-h-19.htm.html#Footnote_18_740" class="fnanchor pginternal">18 and with that Brother Giovanni, companion of Egidio, mentioned in the prologue of the Legend of the Three Companions. 19His 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 Celano22 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 Fioretti25 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 local28 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 Casale31 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. Generals36 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 Pisa37 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 Glassberger57 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 Lisbon58 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. Table of
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