Life of St. Francis of Assisi
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 cooerdinate 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. quaedam
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 exquisitae vir eloquentiae fr. Thomas jubente Domino Gregorio
papa IX. et eam quae incipit: Quasi stella matutina vir venerabilis
Dominus et fertur Joannes, Apostolicae 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 quae sic incipiunt: Quasi stella_
(_Zeitschrift fuer 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 Hyeres 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