V CHRONICLES OUTSIDE OF THE ORDER

I. Jacques de Vitry

The following documents, which we can only briefly indicate, are of inestimable value; they emanate from men particularly well situated to give us the impression which the Umbrian prophet produced on his generation.

Jacques de Vitry1 has left extended writings on St. Francis. Like a prudent man who has already seen many religious madmen, he is at first reserved; but soon this sentiment disappears, and we find in him only a humble and active admiration for the Apostolic Man.

He speaks of him in a letter which he wrote immediately after the taking of Damietta (November, 1219), to his friends in Lorraine, to describe it to them.2 A few lines suffice to describe St. Francis and point out his irresistible influence. There is not a single passage in the Franciscan biographers which gives a more living idea of the apostolate of the Poverello.

He returns to him more at length in his Historia Occidentalis, devoting to him the thirty-second chapter of this curious work.3 These pages, vibrating with enthusiasm, were written during Francis's lifetime,4 at the time when the most enlightened members of the Church, who had believed themselves to be living in the evening of the world, in vespere mundi tendentis ad occasum, suddenly saw in the direction of Umbria the light of a new day.

II. Thomas of Spalato

An archdeacon of the Cathedral of Spalato, who in 1220 was studying at Bologna, has left us a very living portrait of St. Francis and the memory of the impression which his preachings produced in that learned town.5

Something of his enthusiasm has passed into his story; we feel that that day, August 15, 1220, when he met the Poverello of Assisi, was one of the best of his life.6

III. Divers Chronicles

The continuation of William of Tyre7 brings us a new account of Francis's attempt to conquer the Soudan. This narrative, the longest of all three we have on this subject, contains no feature essentially new, but it gives one more witness to the historic value of the Franciscan legends.

Finally, there are two chronicles written during Francis's life, which, without giving anything new, speak with accuracy of his foundation, and prove how rapidly that religious renovation which started in Umbria was being propagated to the very ends of Europe. The anonymous chronicler of Monte Sereno8 in fact wrote about 1225, and tells us, not without regret, of the brilliant conquests of the Franciscans.

Burchard,9 Abbot Prémontré d'Ursberg (died in 1226), who was in Rome in 1211, leaves us a very curious criticism of the Order.

The Brothers Minor appeared to him a little like an orthodox branch of the Poor Men of Lyons. He even desires that the pope, while approving the Franciscans, should do so with a view to satisfy, in the measure of the possible, the aspirations manifested by that heresy and that of the Humiliati.

It is impossible to attribute any value whatever to the long pages given to St. Francis by Matthew Paris.10 His information is correct wherever the activities of the friars are concerned, and he could examine the work around him.11 They are absolutely fantastic when he comes to the life of St. Francis, and we can only feel surprised to find M. Hase12 adopting the English monk's account of the stigmata.

The notice which he gives of Francis contains as many errors as sentences; he makes him born of a family illustrious by its nobility, makes him study theology from his infancy (hoc didicerat in litteris et theologicis disciplinis quibus ab ætate tenera incubuerat, usque ad notitiam perfectam), etc.13

It would be useless to enlarge this list and mention those chroniclers who simply noticed the foundation of the Order, its approbation, and the death of St. Francis,14 or those which spoke of him at length, but simply by copying a Franciscan legend.15

It suffices to point out by way of memory the long chapter consecrated to St. Francis in the Golden Legend. Giachimo di Voraggio ( 1298) there sums up with accuracy but without order the essential features of the first legends and in particular the Second Life by Celano.16

As for the inscription of Santa Maria del Vescovado at Assisi it is too unformed to be anything but a simple object of curiosity.17

I have given up preparing a complete bibliography of works concerning St. Francis, that task having been very well done by the Abbé Ulysse Chevalier in his Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen age, Bio-Bibliographie, cols. 765-767 and 2588-2590, Paris, 1 vol., 4to, 1876-1888. To it I refer my readers.

FOOTNOTES