Part 51 (1/2)

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 inst.i.tute 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 const.i.tute a sort of commission charged to study and coordinate 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 princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstances 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 DOc.u.mENTS

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 a.s.sisi 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 a.s.sisii ortus a puerilibus annis nutritus ext.i.tit 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 ma.n.u.script 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 t.i.tle: _Ex gestis ejus abbreviatis quae sic incipiunt: Quasi stella_ (_Zeitschrift fur kath. Theol._, vii., p. 710. Cf. _Archiv._, i., p.