Life of St. Francis of Assisi, Paul Sabatier [sci fi books to read .txt] 📗

1. It was published by Sbaralea, Bull., t. iv., p. 156, note h. This act was drawn up July 9, 1274, at a time when the son of Orlando as well as the Brothers Minor desired to authenticate 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 Pœnitentium 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, fo 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.

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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 friars3 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.

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