Chapter xxxii

. fills pages 349-353, and is entitled _De ordine et prædicatione fratrum Minorum_. See above, p. 229.

[4] This appears from the passage: _Videmus primus ordinis fundatorem magestrum cui tanquam summo Priori suo omnes alii obediunt._ _Loc. cit._, p. 352.

[5] It is inserted in the treatise of Sigonius on the bishops of Bologna: _Caroli Sigonii de episcopis Bononiensibus libri quinque cum notis L. C. Rabbii_, a work which occupies cols. 353-590 of t. iii. of his _Opera omnia_, Milan, 1732-1737, 6 vols., f^o. We find our fragment in col. 432.

[6] This passage will be found above, p. 241.

[7] _Guillelmi Tyrensis arch. Continuala belli sacri historia_ in Martène: _Amplissima Collectio_, t. v. pp. 584-572. The piece concerning Francis is cols. 689-690.

[8] _Chronicon Montis Sereni_ (at present Petersberg, near Halle), edited by Ehrenfeuchter in the _Mon. Germ. hist. Script._, t. 23, pp. 130-226, 229.

[9] _Burchardi et Cuonradi Urspergensium chronicon_ ed., A. Otto Abel and L. Weiland, _apud Mon. Germ, hist._, t. 23, pp. 333-383. The monastery of Ursperg was half-way between Ulm and Augsburg. Vide p. 376.

[10] _Matthæi Parisiensis monachie Albanensis, Historia major_, edition Watts, London, 1640. The Brothers Minor are first mentioned in the year 1207, p. 222, then 1227, pp. 339-342.

[11] See the article, _Minores_, in the table of contents of the _Mon. Germ. hist. Script._, t. xxviii.

[12] _Franz von Assisi_, p. 168 ff.

[13] See above, p. 97, his story of the audience with Innocent III.

[14] For example, _Chronica Albrici trium fontium_ in Pertz: _Script._, t. 23, _ad ann. 1207_, 1226, 1228. Vide Fragment of the chron. of Philippe Mousket ([Cross] before 1245). _Recueil des historiens_, t. xxii., p. 71, lines 30347-30360. The number of annalists in this century is appalling, and there is not one in ten who has omitted to note the foundation of the Minor Brothers.

[15] For example, Vincent de Beauvais ([Cross] 1264) gives in his _Speculum historiale_, lib. 29, cap. 97-99, lib. 30, cap. 99-111, nearly every story given by the Bollandists under the title of _Secunda legenda_ in their _Commentarium prævium_.

[16] _Legenda aurea_, Graesse, Breslau, 1890, pp. 662-674.

[17] A good reproduction of it will be found in the _Miscellanea francescana_, t. ii., pp. 33-37, accompanied by a learned dissertation by M. Faloci Pulignani.

* * * * *

APPENDIX

CRITICAL STUDY OF THE STIGMATA AND THE INDULGENCE OF AUGUST 2

I. THE STIGMATA

A dissertation upon the possibility of miracles would be out of place here; a historic sketch is not a treatise on philosophy or dogmatics.

Still, I owe the reader a few explanations, to enable him with thorough understanding to judge of my manner of viewing the subject.

If by miracle we understand either the suspension or subversion of the laws of nature, or the intervention of the first cause in certain

## particular cases, I could not concede it. In this negation physical and

logical reasons are secondary; the true reason--let no one be surprised--is entirely religious; the miracle is immoral. The equality of all before God is one of the postulates of the religious consciousness, and the miracle, that good pleasure of God, only degrades him to the level of the capricious tyrants of the earth.

The existing churches, making, as nearly all of them do, this notion of miracle the very essence of religion and the basis of all positive faith, involuntarily render themselves guilty of that emasculation of manliness and morality of which they so passionately complain. If God intervenes thus irregularly in the affairs of men, the latter can hardly do otherwise than seek to become courtiers who expect all things of the sovereign's _favor_.

The question changes its aspect, if we call miracle, as we most generally do, all that goes beyond ordinary experience.

Many apologists delight in showing that the unheard of, the inexplicable, are met with all through life. They are right and I agree with them, on condition that they do not at the close of their explanation replace this new notion of the supernatural by the former one.

It is thus that I have come to conclude the reality of the stigmata. They may have been a unique fact without being more miraculous than other phenomena; for example, the mathematical powers or the musical ability of an infant prodigy.

There are in the human creature almost indefinite powers, marvellous energies; in the great majority of men these lie in torpid slumber, but awaking to life in a few, they make of them prophets, men of genius, and saints who show humanity its true nature.

We have caught but fleeting glimpses into the domain of mental pathology, so vast is it and unexplored; the learned men of the future will perhaps make, in the realms of psychology and physiology, such discoveries as will bring about a complete revolution in our laws and customs.

It remains to examine the stigmata from the point of view of history. And though in this field there is no lack of difficulties, small and great, the testimony appears to me to be at once too abundant and too precise not to command conviction.

We may at the outset set aside the system of those who hold that Brother Elias helped on their appearance by a pious fraud. Such a claim might indeed be defended if these marks had been gaping wounds, as they are now or in most cases have been represented to be; but all the testimony agrees in describing them, with the exception of the mark on the side, as blackish, fleshy excrescences, like the heads of nails, and in the palms of the hands like the points of nails clinched by a hammer. There was no bloody exudation except at the side.

On the other hand, any deception on the part of Elias would oblige us to hold that his accomplices were actually the heads of the party opposed to him, Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. Such want of wit would be surprising indeed in a man so circumspect.

Finally the psychological agreement between the external circumstances and the event is so close that an invention of this character would be as inexplicable as the fact itself. That which indeed almost always betrays invented or unnatural incidents is that they do not fit into the framework of the facts. They are extraneous events, purely decorative elements whose place might be changed at will.

Nothing of the sort is the case here: Thomas of Celano is so veracious and so exact, that though holding the stigmata to be miraculous, he gives us all the elements necessary for explaining them in a diametrically opposite manner.

1. The preponderating place of the passion of Jesus in Francis's conscience ever since his conversion (1 Cel., 115; 2 Cel., 1, 6; 3, 29; 49; 52).

2. His sojourn in the Verna coincides with a great increase of mystical fervor.

3. He there observes a Lent in honor of the archangel St. Michael.

4. The festival of the exaltation of the cross comes on, and in the vision of the crucified seraph is blended the two ideas which have taken possession of him, the angels and the crucifix (1 Cel., 91-96, 112-115).

This perfect congruity between the circumstances and the prodigy itself forms a moral proof whose value cannot be exaggerated.

It is time to pass the principal witnesses in review.

1. Brother Elias, 1226. On the very day after the death of Francis, Brother Elias, in his capacity of vicar, sent letters to the entire Order announcing the event and prescribing prayers.[1]

After having expressed his sorrow and imparted to the Brothers the blessing with which the dying Francis had charged him for them, he adds: "I announce to you a great joy and a new miracle. Never has the world seen such a sign, except on the Son of God who is the Christ God. For a long time before his death our Brother and Father appeared as crucified, having in his body five wounds which are truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands and his feet bore marks as of nails without and within, forming a sort of scars; while at the side he was as if pierced with a lance, and often a little blood oozed from it."

2. Brother Leo. We find that it is the very adversary of Elias who is the natural witness, not only of the stigmata, but of the circumstances of their imprinting. This fact adds a peculiar value to his account.

We learned above (Critical Study, p. 377) the untoward fate of a part of the Legend of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. The chapters with which it now closes (68-73) and in which the narrative of the miracle occurs, were not originally a part of it. They are a summary added at a later time to complete this document. This appendix, therefore, has no historic value, and we neither depend on it with the ecclesiastical authors to affirm the miracle, nor with M. Hase to call it in question.

Happily the testimony of Brother Leo has come down to us in spite of that. We are not left even to seek for it in the Speculum, the Fioretti, the Conformities, where fragments of his work are to be found; we find it in several other documents of incontestable authority.

The authenticity of the autograph of St. Francis preserved at Assisi appears to be thoroughly established (see Critical Study, p. 357); it contains the following note by Brother Leo's hand: "The Blessed Francis two years before his death kept on the Verna in honor of the B. V. Mary mother of God, and St. Michael Archangel, a Lent from the festival of the Assumption of the B. V. M. to the festival of St. Michael in September, and the hand of God was upon him by the vision and the address of the seraph and the impression of the stigmata upon his body. He made the laudes that are on the other side, ... etc."

Again, Eccleston (13) shows us Brother Leo complaining to Brother Peter of Tewkesbury, minister in England, that the legend is too brief concerning the events on the Verna, and relating to him the greater number of the incidents which form the nucleus of the Fioretti on the stigmata. These memorials are all the more certain that they were immediately committed to writing by Peter of Tewkesbury's companion, Brother Garin von Sedenfeld.

Finally Salembeni, in his chronicle (ad ann. 1224) in speaking of Ezzelino da Romano is led to oppose him to Francis. He suddenly remembers the stigmata and says, "Never man on earth, but he, has had the five wounds of Christ. His companion, Brother Leo, who was present when they washed the body before the burial, told me that he looked precisely like a crucified man taken down from the cross."

3. Thomas of Celano, before 1230. He describes them more at length than Brother Elias (1 Cel., 94, 95, 112).

The details are too precise not to suggest a lesson learned by heart. The author nowhere assumes to be an eye-witness, yet he has the tone of a legal deposition.

These objections are not without weight, but the very novelty of the miracle might have induced the Franciscans to fix it in a sort of canonical and so to say, stereotyped narrative.

4. The portrait of Francis, by Berlinghieri, dated 1236,[2] preserved at Pescia (province of Lucca) shows the stigmata as they are described in the preceding documents.

5. Gregory IX. in 1237. Bull of March 31; _Confessor Domini_ (Potthast, 10307. Cf. 10315). A movement of opinion against the stigmata had been produced in certain countries. The pope asks all the faithful to believe in them. Two other bulls of the same day, one addressed to the Bishop of Olmütz, the other to the Dominicans, energetically condemns them for calling the stigmata in question (Potthast, 10308 and 10309).

6. Alexander IV., in his bull _Benigna operatio_ of October 29, 1255 (Potthast, 16077), states that having formerly been the domestic prelate of Cardinal Ugolini, he knew St. Francis familiarly, and supports his description of the stigmata by these relations.

To this pontiff are due several bulls declaring excommunicate all those who deny them. These contribute nothing new to the question.

7. Bonaventura (1260) repeats in his legend Thomas of Celano's description (Bon., 193; cf. 1 Cel. 94 and 95), not without adding some new factors (Bon., 194-200 and 215-218), often so coarse and clumsy that they inevitably awaken doubt (see for example, 201).

8. Matthew Paris ([Cross] 1259). His discordant witness barely deserves being cited by way of memoir (see Critical Study, p. 431). To be able to forgive the fanciful character of his long disquisitions on St. Francis, we are forced to recall to mind that he owed his information to the verbal account of some pilgrim. He makes the stigmata appear a fortnight before the Saint's death, shows them continually emitting blood, the wound on the side so wide open that the heart could be seen. The people gather in crowds to see the sight, the cardinals come also, and all together listen to Francis's strange declarations. (_Historia major_, Watts's edition London, 1 vol. fol., 1640, pp. 339-342.)

This list might be greatly lengthened by the addition of a passage from Luke bishop of Tuy (Lucas Tudensis) written in 1231;[3] based especially on the Life by Thomas of Celano, and oral witnesses.

The statement of Brother Boniface, an eye-witness, at the chapter of Genoa (1254). (Eccl. 13.)

Finally and especially, we should study the strophes relating to the stigmata in the proses, hymns, and sequences composed in 1228 by the pope and several cardinals for the Office of St. Francis; but such a work, to be done with accuracy, would carry us very far, and the authorities already cited doubtless suffice without bringing in others.[4]

The objections which have been opposed to these witnesses may be reduced, I think, to the following:[5]

_a._ Francis's funeral took place with surprising precipitation. Dead on Saturday evening, he was buried Sunday morning.

_b._ His body was enclosed in a coffin, which is contrary to Italian habits.

_c._ At the time of the removal, the body, wrested from the multitude, is so carefully hidden in the basilica that for centuries its precise place has been unknown.

_d._ The bull of canonization makes no mention of the stigmata.

_e._ They were not admitted without a contest, and among those who denied them were some bishops.

None of these arguments appears to me decisive.

_a._ In the Middle Ages funerals almost always took place immediately after death (Innocent III. dying at Perugia July 16, 1216, is interred the 17th; Honorius III. dies March 18, 1227, and is interred the next day).

_b._ It is more difficult than many suppose to know what were the habits concerning funerals in Umbria in the thirteenth century. However that may be, it was certainly necessary to put Francis's body into a coffin. He being already canonized by popular sentiment, his corpse was from that moment a relic for which a reliquary was necessary; nay more, a strong box such as the secondary scenes in Berlinghieri's picture shows it to have been. Without such a precaution the sacred body would have been reduced to fragments in a few moments. Call to mind the wild enthusiasm that led the devotees to cut off the ears and even the breasts of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. [_Quædam aures illius truncabant, etiam summitatem mamillarum ejus quidam praecidebant et pro reliquiis sibi servabant._--_Liber de dictis iv. ancillarum_, Mencken, vol. ii., p. 2032.]

_c._ The ceremony of translation brought an innumerable multitude to Assisi. If Brother Elias concealed the body,[6] he may have been led to do so by the fear of some organized surprise of the Perugians to gain possession of the precious relic. With the customs of those days, such a theft would have been in nowise extraordinary. These very Perugians a few years later stole away from Bastia, a village dependent on Assisi, the body of Conrad of Offida, which was performing innumerable miracles there. (_Conform._, 60b, 1; cf. Giord., 50.) Similar affrays took place at Padua over the relics of St. Anthony. (Hilaire, _Saint Antoine de Padoue, sa légende primitive_, Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1 vol., 8vo, 1890, pp. 30-40.)

_d._ The bull of canonization, with the greater number of such documents, for that matter, makes no historic claim. In its wordy rhetoric we shall sooner learn the history of the Philistines, of Samson, or even of Jacob, than of St. Francis. Canonization here is only a pretext which the old pontiff seizes for recurring to his favorite figures.

This silence signifies nothing after the very explicit testimony of other bulls by the same pontiff in 1227, and after the part given to the stigmata in the liturgical songs which in 1228 he composed for the office of St. Francis.

_e._ These attacks by certain bishops are in nowise surprising; they are episodes in the struggle of the secular clergy against the mendicant orders.

At the time when these negations were brought forward (1237) the narrative of Thomas of Celano was official and everywhere known; nothing therefore would have been easier, half a score of years after the events, than to bring witnesses to expose the fraud if there had been any; but the Bishop of Olmütz and the others base their objections always and only upon dogmatic grounds.

As to the attacks of the Dominicans, it is needless to recall the rivalry between the two Orders;[7] is it not then singular to find these protestations coming from Silesia (!) and never from Central Italy, where, among other eye-witnesses, Brother Leo was yet living ([Cross] 1271)?

Thus the witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he is speaking.

II. THE PARDON OF AUGUST 2D, CALLED INDULGENCE OF PORTIUNCULA[9]

This question might be set aside; on the whole it has no direct connection with the history of St. Francis.

Yet it occupies too large a place in modern biographies not to require a few words: it is related that Francis was in prayer one night at Portiuncula when Jesus and the Virgin appeared to him with a retinue of angels. He made bold to ask an unheard-of privilege, that of plenary indulgence of all sins for all those who, having confessed and being contrite, should visit this chapel. Jesus granted this at his mother's request, on the sole condition that his vicar the pope would ratify it.

The next day Francis set out for Perugia, accompanied by Masseo, and obtained from Honorius the desired indulgence, but only for the day of August 2d.

Such, in a few lines, is the summary of this legend, which is surrounded with a crowd of marvellous incidents.

The question of the nature and value of indulgences is not here concerned. The only one which is here put is this: Did Francis ask this indulgence and did Honorius III. grant it?

Merely to reduce it to these simple proportions is to be brought to answer it with a categorical No.

It would be tedious to refer even briefly to the difficulties, contradictions, impossibilities of this story, many a time pointed out by orthodox writers. In spite of all they have come to the affirmative conclusion: _Roma locuta est_.

Those whom this subject may interest will find in the note above detailed bibliographical indications of the principal elements of this now quieted discussion. I shall confine myself to pointing out the impossibilities with which tradition comes into collision; they are both psychological and historical. The Bollandists long since pointed out the silence of Francis's early biographers upon this question. Now that the published documents are much more numerous, this silence is still more overwhelming. Neither the First nor the Second Life by Thomas of Celano, nor the anonymous author of the second life given in the Acta Sanctorum, nor even the anonymous writer of Perugia, nor the Three Companions, nor Bonaventura say a single word on the subject. No more do very much later works mention it, which sin only by excessive critical scruples: Bernard of Besse, Giordiano di Giano, Thomas Eccleston, the Chronicle of the Tribulations, the Fioretti, and even the Golden Legend.

This conspiracy of silence of all the writers of the thirteenth century would be the greatest miracle of history if it were not absurd.

By way of explanation, it has been said that these writers refrained from speaking of this indulgence for fear of injuring that of the Crusade; but in that case, why did the pope command seven bishops to go to Portiuncula to proclaim it in his name?

The legend takes upon itself to explain that Francis refused a bull or any written attestation of this privilege; but, admitting this, it would still be necessary to explain why no hint of this matter has been preserved in the papers of Honorius III. And how is it that the bulls sent to the seven bishops have left not the slightest trace upon this pontiff's register?

Again, how does it happen, if seven bishops officially promulgated this indulgence in 1217, that St. Francis, after having related to Brother Leo his interview with the pope, said to him: "_Teneas secretum hoc usque circa mortem tuam; quia non habet locum adhuc. Quia hæc indulgentia occultabitur ad tempus; sed Dominus trahet eam extra et manifestabitur._" _Conform._, 153b, 2. Such an avowal is not wanting in simplicity. It abundantly proves that before the death of Brother Leo (1271) no one had spoken of this famous pardon.

After this it is needless to insist upon secondary difficulties; how is it that the chapters-general were not fixed for August 2d, to allow the Brothers to secure the indulgence?

How explain that Francis, after having received in 1216 a privilege unique in the annals of the Church, should be a stranger to the pope in 1219!

There is, however, one more proof whose value exceeds all the others--Francis's Will:

"I forbid absolutely all the Brothers by their obedience, in whatever place they may be, to ask any bull of the court of Rome, whether directly or indirectly, nor under pretext of church or convent, nor under pretext of preaching, nor even for their personal protection."

Before closing it remains for us to glance at the growth of this legend.

It was definitively constituted about 1330-1340, but it was in the air long before. With the patience of four Benedictines (of the best days) we should doubtless be able to find our way in the medley of documents, more or less corrupted, from which it comes to us, and little by little we might find the starting-point of this dream in a friar who sees blinded humanity kneeling around Portiuncula to recover sight.[10]

It is not difficult to see in general what led to the materialization of this graceful fancy: people remembered Francis's attachment to the chapel where he had heard the decisive words of the gospel, and where St. Clara in her turn had entered upon a new life.

When the great Basilica of Assisi was built, drawing to itself pilgrims and privileges, an opposition of principles and of inspiration came to be added to the petty rivalry between it and Portiuncula.

The zealots of poverty said aloud that though the Saint's body rested in the basilica his heart was at Portiuncula.[11] By dint of repeating and exaggerating what Francis had said about the little sanctuary, they came to give a precise and so to say doctrinal sense to utterances purely mystical.

The violences and persecutions of the party of the Large Observance under the generalship of Crescentius[12] (1244-1247) aroused a vast increase of fervor among their adversaries. To the bull of Innocent IV. declaring the basilica thenceforth _Caput et Mater_ of the Order[13] the Zealots replied by the narratives of Celano's Second Life and the legends of that period.[14] They went so far as to quote a promise of Francis to make it in perpetuity the _Mater et Caput_ of his institute.[15]

In this way the two parties came to group themselves around these two buildings. Even to-day it is the same. The Franciscans of the Strict Observance occupy Portiuncula, while the Basilica of Assisi is in the hands of the Conventuals (Large Observance), who have adopted all the interpretations and mitigations of the Rules; they are worthy folk, who live upon their dividends. By a phenomenon, unique, I think, in the annals of the Church, they have pushed the freedom of their infidelity to the point of casting off the habit, the popular brown cassock. Dressed all in black, shod and hatted, nothing distinguishes them from the secular clergy except a modest little cord.

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a coarse 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 generalship 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 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 Spoelberch'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.

[14] 2 Cel., 1, 12 (cf. _Conform._, 218a, 1); 3 Soc., 56; _Spec._, 32b ff.; 49b ff.; _Conform._, 144a, 2.

[15] _Conform._, 169a; 2, 217b. 1 ff. Cf. _Fior._, Amoni's ed. (Appendix to the Codex of the Bib. Angelica), p. 378.

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Text surrounded by underscores (_text_) indicates italics in the original.

Text surrounded by tildes (~text~) indicates bold in the original.

'Folio' abbreviation: The original has two versions. 'F' or 'f' followed by superscripted 'o' is transcribed F^o/f^o. 'fo.'/'fos.' is transcribed 'fo.'/'fos.'.

[Cross] is used where the text had a single character that resembled a Maltese Cross, and denotes year of death.

Footnotes have been moved from the bottom of each page to the end of each chapter, and renumbered by chapter.

CHANGES FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXT

In many spots in the scans, primarily in footnote citations, periods and commas are partially or completely obscured, with white space where the mark would logically appear. Where the scan is unclear, punctuation has been transcribed to match the most common use in the book. Where the punctuation is different from common usage, but clearly present (i.e. no extra white space after an abbreviation or full comma where a period seems to make more sense), the scans have been replicated.

There were a number of incidences of missing closing quotation marks, particularly for dialog or prayers. These have been corrected without further comment.

Two lines missing from the translation of the prayer commonly known as "The Canticle of All Creatures" (