Part 47 (1/2)

d'A._

[5] _Conform._ (Milan, 1510), 202b, 2s. For that matter it is correct that Diola, in the _Croniche degli ordini inst.i.tuti da S. Francisco_ (Venice, 1606, 3 vols. 4to), translated after the Castilian version of the work composed in Portuguese by Mark of Lisbon, was foolish enough to render into Italian this translation of a translation.

[6] See pages 333 ff.

I

ST. FRANCIS'S WORKS

The writings of St. Francis[1] are a.s.suredly the best source of acquaintance with him; we can only be surprised to find them so neglected by most of his biographers. It is true that they give little information as to his life, and furnish neither dates nor facts,[2]

but they do better, they mark the stages of his thought and of his spiritual development. The legends give us Francis as he appeared, and by that very fact suffer in some degree the compulsion of circ.u.mstances; they are obliged to bend to the exigencies of his position as general of an Order approved by the Church, as miracle-worker, and as saint. His works, on the contrary, show us his very soul; each phrase has not only been thought, but lived; they bring us the Poverello's emotions, still alive and palpitating.

So, when in the writings of the Franciscans we find any utterance of their master, it unconsciously betrays itself, sounding out suddenly in a sweet, pure tone which penetrates to your very heart, awakening with a thrill a sprite that was sleeping there.

This bloom of love enduing St. Francis's words would be an admirable criterion of the authenticity of those opuscules which tradition attributes to him; but the work of testing is neither long nor difficult. If after his time injudicious attempts were here and there made to honor him with miracles which he did not perform, which he would not even have wished to perform, no attempt was ever made to burden his literary efforts with false or supposit.i.tious pieces.[3] The best proof of this is that it is not until Wadding--that is to say, until the seventeenth century--that we find the first and only serious attempt to collect these precious memorials. Several of them have been lost,[4]

but those which remain are enough to give us in some sort the refutation of the legends.

In these pages Francis gives himself to his readers, as long ago he gave himself to his companions; in each one of them a feeling, a cry of the heart, or an aspiration toward the Invisible is prolonged down to our own time.

Wadding thought it his duty to give a place in his collection to several suspicious pieces; more than this, instead of following the oldest ma.n.u.scripts that he had before him, he often permitted himself to be led astray by sixteenth-century writers whose smallest concern was to be critical and accurate. To avoid the tedious and entirely negative task to which it would be necessary to proceed if I took him for my starting-point I shall confine myself to a positive study of this question.

All the pieces which will be enumerated are found in his collection.

They are sometimes cut up in a singular way; but in proportion as each doc.u.ment is studied we shall find sufficient indications to enable us to make the necessary rectifications.

The archives of Sacro Convento of a.s.sisi[5] possess a ma.n.u.script whose importance is not to be overestimated. It has already been many times studied,[6] and bears the number 338.

It appears, however, that a very important detail of form has been overlooked. It is this: that No. 338 is not _one_ ma.n.u.script, but _a collection_ of ma.n.u.scripts of very different periods, which were put together because they were of very nearly the same size, and have been foliated in a peculiar manner.

This artificial character of the collection shows that each of the pieces which compose it needs to be examined by itself, and that it is impossible to say of it as a whole that it is of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century.

The part that interests us is perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous, is formed of three parchment books (fol. 12a-44b) and contains a part of Francis's works.

1. The Rule, definitively approved by Honorius III., November 20, 1223[7] (fol. 12a-16a).

2. St. Francis's Will[8] (fol. 16a-18a).

3. The Admonitions[9] (fol. 18a-23b).

4. The Letter to all Christians[10] (fol. 23b-28a).

5. The letter to all the members of the Order a.s.sembled in Chapter-general[11] (fol. 28a-31a).

6. Counsel to all clerics on the respect to be paid to the Eucharist[12] (fol., 31b-32b).

7. A very short piece preceded by the rubric: ”Of the virtues which adorn the Virgin Mary and which ought to adorn the holy soul”[13] (fol.

32b).