Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (best historical biographies txt) 📕

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