Part 61 (2/2)

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a coa.r.s.e gown, some daring friar must overcome his very natural repugnances, and come to kneel there. The indulgence of August 2d is then the reply of the Zealots to the persecutions of their brothers.

An attentive study will perhaps show it emerging little by little under the generals.h.i.+p of Raimondo Gaufridi (1289-1295); Conrad di Offida ([Cross]

1306) seems to have had some effect upon it, but only with the next generation do we find the legend completed and avowed in open day.

Begun in a misapprehension it ends by imposing itself upon the Church, which to-day guarantees it with its infallible authority, and yet in its origin it was a veritable cry of revolt against the decisions of Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The text was published in 1620 by Spoelberch (in his _Speculum vitae 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 doc.u.ment 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 Abbe 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 Spoelberch's text has it. The reading _Nam diu_ appears preferable from a philological point of view.

[2] Engraved in Saint Francois d'a.s.sise, 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. Ma.n.u.script 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. a.s.sisi_. 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 doc.u.ment is ma.n.u.script 344 of the archives of Sacro Convento at a.s.sisi. _Liber indulgentiae S.

Mariae de Angelis sive de Portiuncula in quo libra ego fr.

Franciscus Bartholi de a.s.sisio 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 cert.i.tudinis potui invenire de sacra indulgentia prefati loci, quomodo scilicet fuit impetrata et data b. Francisco de miraculis ipsius indulgentiae quae 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 doc.u.ments 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.

Indulgentiae B. Mariae 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 Francois d'a.s.sise_, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Abbe Le Monnier (_Histoire de Saint Francois_, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1889), moderate Catholic opinion in non-Franciscan circles.

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