Life of St. Francis of Assisi
took his steps to forward this double aim. On the very morrow of his
nomination he sketched the programme of reforms against the Liberal
party, and at the same time secured the summons of the Joachimite
Brothers before an ecclesiastical tribunal at Citta-della-Pieve. This
tribunal condemned them to perpetual imprisonment, and it needed the
personal intervention of Cardinal Ottobonus, the future Adrian V., for
Giovanni di Parma to be left free to retire to the Convent of Greccio.
The first chapter held under the presidence of Bonaventura, in the
extended decisions of which we find everywhere tokens of his influence,
assembled at Narbonne in 1260. He was then commissioned to compose a new
life of St. Francis.[77]
We easily understand the anxieties to which this decision of the
Brothers was an answer. The number of legends had greatly increased, for
besides those which we have first studied or noted there were others in
existence which have completely disappeared, and it had become equally
difficult for the Brothers who went forth on missions either to make a
choice between them or to carry them all.
The course of the new historian was therefore clearly marked out: he
must do the work of compiler and peacemaker. He failed in neither. His
book is a true sheaf, or rather it is a millstone under which the
indefatigable author has pressed, somewhat at hazard, the sheaves of his
predecessors. Most of the time he inserts them just as they are,
confining himself to the work of harvesting them and weeding out the
tares.
Therefore, when we reach the end of this voluminous work we have a very
vague impression of St. Francis. We see that he was a saint, a very
great saint, since he performed an innumerable quantity of miracles,
great and small; but we feel very much as if we had been going through a
shop of objects of piety. All these statues, whether they are called St.
Anthony the Abbot, St. Dominic, St. Theresa, or St. Vincent de Paul,
have the same expression of mincing humility, of a somewhat shallow
ecstasy. These are saints, if you please, miracle-workers; they are not
men; he who made them made them by rule, by process; he has put nothing
of his heart in these ever-bowed foreheads, these lips with their wan
smile.
God forbid that I should say or think that St. Bonaventura was not
worthy to write a life of St. Francis, but the circumstances controlled
his work, and it is no injustice to him to say that it is fortunate for
Francis, and especially for us, that we have another biography of the
Poverello than that of the Seraphic Doctor.
Three years after, in 1263, he brought his completed work to the
chapter-general convoked under his presidence at Pisa. It was there
solemnly approved.[78]
It is impossible to say whether they thought that the presence of the
new legend would suffice to put the old ones out of mind, but it seems
that at this time nothing was said about the latter.
It was not so at the following chapter. This one, held at Paris, came to
a decision destined to have disastrous results for the primitive
Franciscan documents. This decree, emanating from an assembly presided
over by Bonaventura in person, is too important not to be quoted
textually: "Item, the Chapter-general ordains on obedience that all the
legends of the Blessed Francis formerly made shall be destroyed. The
Brothers who shall find any without the Order must try to make away with
them since the legend made by the General is compiled from accounts of
three who almost always accompanied the Blessed Francis; all that they
could certainly know and all that is proven has been carefully inserted
therein."[79] It would have been difficult to be more precise. We see
the perseverance with which Bonaventura carried on his struggle against
the extreme parties. This decree explains the almost complete
disappearance of the manuscripts of Celano and the Three Companions,
since in certain collections even those of Bonaventura's legend are
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 vitae 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