Part 52 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sive instrument in the hands of G.o.d, 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 n.o.blest 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 pa.s.sed into his book, and if the truth must be told, I find it quite inferior to much later doc.u.ments, 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 sanct.i.ty, and relates a ma.s.s of visions all tending to prove the excellence of the Order.[89]

Still the publication of this doc.u.ment will perform the valuable office of throwing a little light upon the difficult question of the sources.

Several pa.s.sages 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sisi: Piece No. 1 of the twelfth package of _Instrumenta diversa pertinentia ad Sacrum Conventum_. It has been published by Thode: _Franz von a.s.sisi_, 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 ma.n.u.script 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 t.i.tle: _Seraphici viri S.

Francisci a.s.sisiatis vitae dual auctore B. Thoma de Celano_, according to a ma.n.u.script (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 pa.s.sages 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 ma.n.u.scripts, Father Denifle thinks that the oldest of those which are known is that at Barcelona: _Archivo de la corona de Aragon_, Ripoll, n. 41 (_Archiv._, t. i., p. 148). There is one in the National Library of Paris, Latin alcove, No. 3817, which includes a curious note: ”_Apud Perusium felix domnus papa Gregorius nonus gloriosi secundo pontificus sui anno, quinto kal. martii (February 25, 1229) legendam hanc recepit, confirmavit et censuit fore tenendam._” Another ma.n.u.script, which merits attention, both because of its age, thirteenth century, and because of the correction in the text, and which appears to have escaped the researches of the students of the Franciscans, is the one owned by the ecole de Medicine at Montpellier, No. 30, in vellum folio: _Pa.s.sionale vetus ecclesiae S. Benigni divionensis_. The story of Celano occupies in it the fos. 257a-271b. The text ends abruptly in the middle of paragraph 112 with _supiriis ostendebant_. Except for this final break it is complete. Cf. Archives Pertz, t. vii., pp. 195 and 196. Vide General catalogue of the ma.n.u.scripts of the public libraries of the departments, t. i., p. 295.

[8] Vide 1 Cel., Prol. _Jubente domino et glorioso Papa Gregorio_. Celano wrote it after the canonization (July 16, 1228) and before February 25, 1229, for the date indicated above raises no difficulty.

[9] 1 Cel., 56. Perhaps he was the son of that Thomas, Count of Celano, to whom Ryccardi di S. Germano so often made allusion in his chronicle: 1219-1223. See also two letters of Frederick II.

to Honorius III., on April 24 and 25, 1223, published in Winckelmann: _Acta imperii inedita_, t. i., p. 232.

[10] Giord., 19.

[11] Giord., 30 and 31.

[12] Giord., 59. Cf. Gla.s.sberger, ann. 1230. The question whether he is the author of the _Dies irae_ would be out of place here.

[13] This is so true that the majority of historians have been brought to believe in two generalates of Elias, one in 1227-1230, the other in 1236-1239. The letter _Non ex odio_ of Frederick II. (1239) gives the same idea: _Revera papa iste quemdam religiosum et timoratum fratrem Helyam, ministrum ordinis fratrum minorum ab ipso beato Francisco patre ordinis migrationis suae tempore const.i.tutum ... in odium nostrum ...

deposuit_. Huillard-Breholles: _Hist. dipl. Fred. II._, t. v., p. 346.