Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (top 10 inspirational books .txt) 📕
In the same way the Franciscan movement was originally, if not the protest of the Christian consciousness against monachism, at least the recognition of an ideal singularly higher than that of the clergy of that time. Let us picture to ourselves the Italy of the beginning of the thirteenth century with its divisions, its perpetual warfare, its depopulated country districts, the impossibility of tilling the fields except in the narrow circle which the garrisons of the towns might protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging their neighbors; sieges terminat
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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 Glassberger57Evidently 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 Lisbon58This 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.
1. Chronica fratris Jordani a Giano. The text was published for the first time in 1870 by Dr. G. Voigt under the title: "Die Denkwürdigkeiten des Minoriten Jordanus von Giano in the Abhandlungen der philolog. histor. Cl. der Königl. sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften," pp. 421-545, Leipsic, by Hirzel, 1870. Only one manuscript is known; it is in the royal library at Berlin (Manuscript. theolog. lat., 4to, n. 196, sæc. xiv., foliorum 141). It has served as the base of the second edition: Analecta franciscana sive Chronica aliaque documenta ad historiam minorum spectantia. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) ex typographia collegii S. Bonaventuræ, 1885, t. i., pp. 1-19. Except where otherwise noted, I cite entirely this edition, in which is preserved the division into sixty-three paragraphs introduced by Dr. Voigt.
2. Giord., 81.
3. He names more than twenty four persons.
4. It does not seem to me that we can look upon the account of the interview between Gregory IX. and Brother Giordano as rigorously accurate. Giord., 63.
5. Liber de adventu Minorum in Angliam, published under the title of Monumenta Franciscana (in the series of Rerum Britannicarum medii Ævi scriptores, Roll series) in two volumes, 8vo; the first through the care of J. S. Brewer (1858), the second through that of R. Howlett (1882). This text is reproduced without the scientific dress of the Analecta franciscana, t. i., pp. 217-257. Cf. English Historical Review, v. (1890), 754. He has published an excellent critical edition of it, but unfortunately partial, in vol. xxviii., Scriptorum, of the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica by Mr. Liebermann, Hanover, 1888, folio, pp. 560-569.
6. Eccl., 11; 13; 14; 15. Cf. Eccl., 14, where the author takes pains to say that Alberto of Pisa died at Rome, surrounded by English Brothers "inter Anglicos."
7. Eccl., 4; 12.
8. Eccl., 4; 5; 6; 7; 10; 12; 13; 14; 15.
9. It was published, but with many suppressions, in 1857, at Parma. The Franciscans of Quaracchi prepared a new edition of it, which appeared in the Analecta Franciscana. This work is in manuscript in the Vatican under no. 7260. Vide Ehrle. Zeitschrift für kath. Theol. (1883), t. vii., pp. 767 and 768. The work of Mr. Clédat will be read with interest: De fratre Salembene et de ejus chronicæ auctoritate, Paris, 4to, 1877, with fac simile.
10. Father Ehrle has published it, but unfortunately not entire, in the Archiv., t. ii., pp. 125-155, text of the close of the fifth and of the sixth tribulation; pp. 256-327 text of the third, of the fourth, and of the commencement of the fifth. He has added to it introductions and critical notes. For the parts not published I will cite the text of the Laurentian manuscript (Plut. 20, cod. 7), completed where possible with the Italian version in the National Library at Florence (Magliabecchina, xxxvii.-28). See also an article of Professor Tocco in the Archivio storico italiano, t. xvii. (1886), pp. 12-36 and 243-61, and one of Mr. Richard's: Library of the École des chartes, 1884, 5th livr. p. 525. Cf. Tocco, the Eresia nel medio Evo, p. 419 ff. As to the text published by Döllinger in his Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters, Münich, 1890, 2 vols., 8vo, II. Theil Dokumente, pp. 417-427, it is of no use. It can only beget errors, as it abounds with gross mistakes. Whole pages are wanting.
11. Archiv., t. iii., pp. 406-409.
12. Vide Archiv., i., p. 557 ... "Et hoc totum ex rapacitate et malignitate luporum pastorum qui voluerunt esse pastores, sed operibus negaverunt deum," et seq. Cf., p. 562: "Avaritia et symoniaca heresis absque pallio regnat et fere totum invasit ecclesie corpus."
13. "Qui excommunicat et hereticat altissimam evangelii paupertatem, excommunicatus est a Deo et hereticus coram Christo, qui est eterna et in commutabilis veritas." Arch., i., p. 509. "Non est potestas contra christum Dominum et contra evangelium." Ib. p. 560. He closes one of his letters with a sentence of a mysticism full of serenity, and which lets us see to the bottom of the hearts of the Spiritual Brothers. "Totum igitur studium esse debet quod unum inseparabiliter simus per Franciscum in Christo." Ib., p. 564.
14. For example in the list of the first six generals of the Order.
15. The first (1219-1226) extends from the departure of St. Francis for Egypt up to his death; the second includes the generalate of Brother Elias (1232-1239); the third that of Crescentius (1244-1248); the fourth, that of Bonaventura (1257-1274); the fifth commences with the epoch of the council of Lyon (1274) and extends up to the death of the inquisitor, Thomas d'Aversa (1204). And the sixth goes from 1308 to 1323.
16. "Supererant adhuc multi de sociis b. Francisci ... et alii non pauci de quibus ego vidi et ab ipsis audivi quæ narro." Laur. Ms., cod. 7, pl. xx., fo 24a: "Qui passi sunt eam (tribulationem tertiam) socii fundatoris fratres Aegdius et Angelus, qui supererant me audiente referibant." Laur. Ms., fo 27b. Cf., Italian Ms., xxxvii., 28, Magliab., fo 138b.
17. The date of his death is unknown; on August 11, 1253, he was present at the death-bed of St. Clara.
18. Died April 23, 1261.
19. "Quem (fratrem Jacobum de Massa) dirigente me fratre Johanne socio fratris prefati Egidii videre laboravi. Hic enim frater Johannes ... dixit mihi...." Arch., ii., p. 279.
20. " ... Tribulationes preteritas memoravi, ut audivi ab illis qui sustinuerunt eas et aliqua commemoravi de hiis que didici in quatuor legendis quas vidi et legi." Arch., ii., p. 135.—"Vitam pauperis et humilis viri Dei Francisci trium ordinum fundatoris quatuor solemnes personæ scripserunt, fratres videlicet scientia et sanctitate præclari, Johannes et Thomas de Celano, frater Bonaventura unus post Beatum Franciscum Generalis Minister et vir miræ simplicitatis et sanctitatis frater Leo, ejusdem sancti Francisci socius. Has quatuor descriptiones seu historias qui legerit...." Laurent. MS., pl. xx., c. 7, fo 1a. Did the Italian translator think there was an error in this quotation? I do not know, but he suppressed it. At fo 12a of manuscript xxxvii., 28, of the Magliabecchina, we read: "Incominciano alcune croniche del ordine franciscano, come la vita del povero e humile servo di Dio Francesco fondatore del minorico ordine fu scripta da San Bonaventura e da quatro altri frati. Queste poche scripture ovveramente hystorie quello il quale diligentemente le leggiera, expeditamente potra cognoscere ... la vocatione la santita di San Francisco."
21. Laur. MS., fo 4b ff. On the other hand we read in a letter of Clareno: "Ad hanc (paupertatem) perfecte servandam Christus Franciscum vocavit et elegit in hac hora novissima et precepit ei evangelicam assumere regulam, et a papa Innocentio fuit omnibus annuntiatum in concilio generali, quod de sua auctoritate et obedientia sanctus Franciscus evangelicam vitam et regulam assumpserat et Christo inspirante servare promiserat, sicut sanctus vir fr. Leo scribit et fr. Johannes de Celano." Archiv., i., p. 559.
22. "Audiens enim semel quorundam fratrum enormes excessus, ut fr. Thomas de
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