Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖

1. The text was published in 1620 by Spœlberch (in his Speculum vitæ B. Francisci, Antwerp, 2 vols., 12mo, ii., pp. 103-106), after the copy addressed to Brother Gregory, minister in France, and then preserved in the convent of the Recollects in Valenciennes. It was reproduced by Wadding (Ann. 1226, no. 44) and the Bollandists (pp. 668 and 669).

So late an appearance of a capital document might have left room for doubts; there is no longer reason for any, since the publication of the chronicle of Giordano di Giano, who relates the sending of this letter (Giord., 50). The Abbé Amoni has also published this text (at the close of his Legenda trium Sociorum, Rome, 1880, pp. 105-109), but according to his deplorable habit, he neglects to tell whence he has drawn it. This is the more to be regretted since he gives a variant of the first order: Nam diu ante mortem instead of Non diu, as Spœlberch's text has it. The reading Nam diu appears preferable from a philological point of view.

2. Engraved in Saint François d'Assise, Paris, 4to, 1885, p. 277.

3. Bibliotheca Patrum. Lyons, 1677, xxv., adv. Albigenses, lib. ii., cap. 11., cf. iii., 14 and 15. Reproduced in the A. SS., p. 652.

4. The curious may consult the following sources: Salimbeni, ann. 1250—Conform., 171b 2, 235a 2; Bon., 200; Wadding, ann. 1228, no. 78; A. SS., p. 800. Manuscript 340 of the Sacro Convento contains (fo. 55b-56b) four of these hymns. Cf. Archiv. i., p. 485.

5. See in particular Hase: Franz v. Assisi. Leipsic, 1 vol., 8vo., 1856. The learned professor devotes no less than sixty closely printed pages to the study of the stigmata, 142-202.

6. The more I think about it, the more incapable I become of attributing any sort of weight to this argument from the disappearance of the body; for in fact, if there had been any pious fraud on Elias's part, he would on the contrary have displayed the corpse.

7. See, for example, 2 Cel., 3, 86, as well as the encyclical of Giovanni di Parma and Umberto di Romano, in 1225.

8. The following among many others: Francis had particularly high breeches made for him, to hide the wound in the side (Bon., 201). At the moment of the apparition, which took place during the night, so great a light flooded the whole country, that merchants lodging in the inns of Casentino saddled their beasts and set out on their way. Fior., iii. consid.

Hase, in his study, is continually under the weight of the bad impression made upon him by Bonaventura's deplorable arguments; he sees the other witness only through him. I think that if he had read simply Thomas of Celano's first Life, he would have arrived at very different conclusions.

9. The most important document is manuscript 344 of the archives of Sacro Convento at Assisi. Liber indulgentiæ S. Mariæ de Angelis sive de Portiuncula in quo libra ego fr. Franciscus Bartholi de Assisio posui quidquid potui sollicite invenire in legendis antiquis et novis b. Francisci et in aliis dictis sociorum ejus de loco eodem et commendatione ipsius loci et quidquid veritatis et certitudinis potui invenire de sacra indulgentia prefati loci, quomodo scilicet fuit impetrata et data b. Francisco de miraculis ipsius indulgentiæ quæ ipsam declarant certam et veram. Bartholi lived in the first half of the fourteenth century. His work is still unpublished, but Father Leo Patrem M. O. is preparing it for publication. The name of this learned monk gives every guaranty for the accuracy of this difficult work; meanwhile a detailed description and long extracts may be found in the Miscellanea (ii., 1887). La storia del perdono di Francesco de Bartholi, by Don Michele Faloci Pulignani, pp. 149-153 (cf. Archiv., i., p. 486). See also in the Miscellanea (i., 1886, p. 15) a bibliographical note containing a detailed list of fifty-eight works (cf. ibid., pp. 48, 145). The legend itself is found in the Speculum, 69b-83a, and in the Conformities, 151b-157a. In these two collections it is still found laboriously worked in and is not an integral part of the rest of the work. In the latter, Bartolemmeo di Pisa has carried accuracy so far as to copy from end to end all the documents that he had before him, and as they belong to different periods he thus gives us several phases of the development of the tradition. The most complete work is that of the Recollect Father Grouwel: Historia critica S. Indulgentiæ B. Mariæ Angelorum vulgo de Portiuncula ... contra Libellos aliquos anonymo ac famosos nuper editos, Antwerp, 1726, 1 vol., 8vo. pp. 510. The Bollandist Suysken also makes a long study of it (A. SS., pp. 879-910), as also the Recollect Father Candide Chalippe, Vie de saint François d'Assise, 3 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1874 (the first edition is of 1720), vol. iii., pp. 190-327.

In each of these works we find what has been said in all the others. The numerous writings against the Indulgence are either a collection of vulgarities or dogmatic treatises; I refrain from burdening these pages with them. The principal ones are indicated by Grouwel and Chalippe.

Among contemporaries Father Barnabas of Alsace: Portiuncula oder Geschichte Unserer lieben Frau von den Engeln (Rixheim, 1 vol., 8vo. 1884), represents the tradition of the Order, and the Abbé Le Monnier (Histoire de Saint François, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1889), moderate Catholic opinion in non-Franciscan circles.

The best summary is that of Father Panfilo da Magliano in his Storia compendiosa. It has been completed and amended in the German translation: Geschichte des h. Franciscus und der Franziskaner übersetzt und bearbeitet von Fr. Quintianus Müller, vol. i., Munich, 1883, pp. 233-259.

10. 2 Cel., 1, 13; 3 Soc., 56; Bon., 24.

11. Conform., 239b, 2.

12. See in particular Archiv., ii., p. 259, and the bull of February 7, 1246. Potthast, 12007; Glassberger, ann. 1244 (An. fr. t. ii., p. 69).

13. Is qui ecclesiam, March. 6, 1245, Potthast, 11576.