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

the donation, which until then had been verbal.

[2] See Registri dei Cardinali Ugolino d'Ostia e Ottaviano
degli Ubaldini pubblicati a cura di Guido Levi dall'Istituto
storico italiano.--Fonti per la storia d'Italia , Roma, 1890, 1
vol., 4to, xxviii. and 250 pp. This edition follows the
manuscript of the National Library, Paris: Ancien fonds Colbert
lat., 5152A. We must draw attention to a very beautiful work due
also to Mr. G. Levi: Documenti ad illustrazione del Registro
del Card. Ugolino , in the Archivio della societa Romana di
storia patria , t. xii. (1889), pp. 241-326.

[3] Bullarium franciscanum seu Rom. Pontificum constitutiones
epistolæ diplomata ordinibus Minorum, Clarissarum et
Poenitentium concessa, edidit Joh. Hyac. Sbaralea ord. min.
conv. , 4 vols., fol., Rome, t. i. (1759), t. ii. (1761), t.
iii. (1763), t iv., (1768)-- Supplementum ab Annibale de Latera
ord. min. obs. Romæ , 1780.--Sbaralea had a comparatively easy
task, because of the number of collections made before his. I
shall mention only one of those which I have before me. It is,
comparatively, very well done, and appears to have escaped the
researches of the Franciscan bibliographers: Singularissimum
eximiumque opus universis mortalibus sacratissimi ordinis
seraphici patris nostri Francisci a Domino Jesu mirabili modo
approbati necnon a quampluribus nostri Redemptoris sanctissimis
vicariis romanis pontificabus multipharie declarati notitiam
habere cupientibus profecto per necessarium. Speculum Minorum
... per Martinum Morin ... Rouen , 1509. It is 8vo, with
numbered folios, printed with remarkable care. It contains
besides the bulls the principal dissertations upon the Rule,
elaborated in the thirteenth century, and a Memoriale ordinis
(first part, f^o 60-82), a kind of catalogue of the
ministers-general, which would have prevented many of the errors
of the historians, if it had been known.

[4] The Bollandists themselves have entirely overlooked those
sources of information, thinking, upon the authority of a single
badly interpreted passage, that the Order had not obtained a
single bull before the solemn approval of Honorius III.,
November 29, 1223.

[5] And not March 29, as Sbaralea has it. The original, which I
have had under my eyes in the archives of Assisi, bears in fact:
Datum Anagnie XI. Kal. aprilis pontificatus nostri anno sexto .

[6] The Abbé Horoy has indeed published in five volumes what he
entitles the Opera omnia of Honorius III., but he omits,
without a word of explanation, a great number of letters,
certain of which are brought forward in the well-known
collection of Potthast. The Abbé Pietro Pressuti has undertaken
to publish a compendium of all the bulls of this pope according
to the original Registers of the Vatican. I regesti del
Pontifice Onorio III. Roma, t. i., 1884. Volume i. only has as
yet appeared.

* * * * *


IV

CHRONICLERS OF THE ORDER


I. CHRONICLE OF BROTHER GIORDANO DI GIANO[1]

Born at Giano, in Umbria, in the mountainous district which closes the southern horizon of Assisi, Brother Giordano was in 1221 one of the twenty-six friars who, under the conduct of Cæsar of Speyer, set out for Germany. He seems to have remained attached to this province until his death, even when most of the friars, especially those who held cures, had been transferred, often to a distance of several months' journey, from one end of Europe to the other. It is not, then, surprising that he was often prayed to commit his memories to writing. He dictated them to Brother Baldwin of Brandenburg in the spring of 1262. He must have done it with joy, having long before prepared himself for the task. He relates with artless simplicity how in 1221, at the chapter-general of Portiuncula, he went from group to group questioning as to their names and country the Brothers who were going to set out on distant missions, that he might be able to say later, especially if they came to suffer martyrdom: "I knew them myself!"[2]

His chronicle bears the imprint of this tendency. What he desires to describe is the introduction of the Order into Germany and its early developments there, and he does it by enumerating, with a complacency which has its own coquetry, the names of a multitude of friars[3] and by carefully dating the events. These details, tedious for the ordinary reader, are precious to the historian; he sees there the diverse conditions from which the friars were recruited, and the rapidity with which a handful of missionaries thrown into an unknown country were able to branch out, found new stations, and in five years cover with a network of monasteries, the Tyrol, Saxony, Bavaria, Alsace, and the neighboring provinces.

It is needless to say that it is worth while to test Giordano's chronology, for he begins by praying the reader to forgive the errors which may have escaped him on this head; but a man who thus marks in his memory what he desires later to tell or to write is not an ordinary witness.

Reading his chronicle, it seems as if we were listening to the recollections of an old soldier, who grasps certain worthless details and presents them with an extraordinary power of relief, who knows not how to resist the temptation to bring himself forward, at the risk sometimes of slightly embellishing the dry reality.[4]

In fact this chronicle swarms with anecdotes somewhat personal, but very artless and welcome, and which on the whole carry in themselves the testimony to their authenticity. The perfume of the Fioretti already exhales from these pages so full of candor and manliness; we can follow the missionaries stage by stage, then when they are settled, open the door of the monastery and read in the very hearts of these men, many of whom are as brave as heroes and harmless as doves.

It is true that this chronicle deals especially with Germany, but the first chapters have an importance for Francis's history that exceeds even that of the biographers. Thanks to Giordano of Giano, we are from this time forward informed upon the crises which the institute of Francis passed through after 1219; he furnishes us the solidly historical base which seems to be lacking in the documents emanating from the Spirituals, and corroborates their testimony.


II. ECCLESTON: ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IN ENGLAND[5]

Our knowledge of Thomas of Eccleston is very slight, for he has left no more trace of himself in the history of the Order than of Simon of Esseby, to whom he dedicates his work. A native no doubt of Yorkshire, he seems never to have quitted England. He was twenty-five years gathering the materials of his work, which embraces the course of events from 1224 almost to 1260. The last facts that he relates belong to years very near to this date.

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

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

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

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