The hagiography of St Francis in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

Francis of Assisi (Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, 1181/2-1226) was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1228.⁵⁰² For this occasion, the Franciscan Thomas of Celano was commissioned by the pope to write the life on the saint which was approved in 1229 and referred to today as the First Life of St Francis (1Cel).⁵⁰³ On the basis of this The Legend for Use in the Choir was made between 1230-1232.⁵⁰⁴ This First Life was abbreviated by Celano sometime between 1232 and 1239 at the request of Minister General Elias of Cortona.⁵⁰⁵ In 1246 Celano was commissioned, this time by Minister General Crescentius of Jesi, to write a new biography incorporating the new material gathered since the call for the collection of information about Francis in 1244. This work, entitled The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul is generally known as the Second Life of St Francis (2Cel) was completed in 1247.⁵⁰⁶ Celano, commissioned

502 The literature on the life of Francis of Assisi is vast; here I only refer only to some recently published important works: Giovanni Miccoli, Francesco d’Assisi. Memoria, storia e storiografia (Milan: Biblioteca francescana, 2010; Augustine Thompson, Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and the Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, trans. Michael Cusato (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2012); for a concise biography, see Roberto Rusconi, ―Francesco d‘Assisi, santo,‖ in: DBI 49 (1997), 664-678.

503 Thomae de Celano, Vita prima s. Francisci, in Analecta Franciscana, X (1926-1941), 1-117, in Fontes Franciscani, ed. Enrico Menestò et al. (Santa Maria degli Angeli-Assisi: Edizione Porziuncola, 1995), 275-424.

The most important pieces of the hagiography of Francis were translated into English in three volumes as Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, William J.Short (New York: New City Press, 1999-2001). Hereafter referred to as FA: ED. Celano‘s Vita prima is in FA: ED I, 180-308.

504 Thomae de Celano, Legenda ad usum chori in Analecta Franciscana, X, 119-126; in Fontes Franciscani, 427-439. FA: ED I, 319-326.

505 Until recently, only excerpts were known from this version, but in 2014 the entire legend was found. It is edited by Jacques Dalarun, ―Thome Celanensis Vita beati patris nostri Francisci (Vita brevior), Analecta Bollandiana 133 (2015): 23-86.

506 Thomae de Celano, Vita secunda s Francisci, in Analecta Franciscana, X, 127-268; in Fontes Franciscani, 441-639; FA: ED II, 239-393.

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by Minister General John of Parma also put together a Treatise of Miracles in 1254 (3Cel).⁵⁰⁷ The works of Celano, together with the Legenda Trium Sociorum,⁵⁰⁸ and the Vita written by Julian of Speyer⁵⁰⁹ were the most important hagiographic sources of St Francis prior to Legenda maior although there existed several other sources, too.⁵¹⁰

The official legend of St Francis and the ―Spiritual‖ Franciscans

In the General Chapter held in Narbonne in 1260, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274), the Minister General at that time (1257-1274), was appointed by the assembly of the friars to compose a complete and definite biography of Francis based on the written and oral traditions accumulated by that time, motivated primarily by the fight against the mendicants, the internal situation of the Order of the Friars Minor and the increasing amount of literature on St.

Francis.⁵¹¹ Bonaventure‘ short (Legenda minor) and the long (Legenda maior)⁵¹² versions of the founder‘s legend were presented at the General Chapter of Pisa (1263), and at the following one in Paris (1266) it was declared to be the only official and definite text and was decreed that all the other biographies had to be destroyed. Thus the Legenda maior remained the only authoritative legend of the saint (known for long time as the Legenda comunis or as the Legenda nova).⁵¹³ Many of the friars, however, especially the so-called ―Spirituals‖, were dissatisfied with the Legenda maior due to its incompleteness or the distortion of the portrait of the founding father and they also missed the information on his companions who remained in the background of the text.

507 Thomae de Celano, Tractatus de miraculis b. Francisci, in Analecta Franciscana, X, 269-331; in Fontes Franciscani, 643-645, 649-650. FA: ED II, 397-469.

508 Legenda trium sociorum, ed. Théophile Desbonnets, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 67 (1974): 89-144, in Fontes Franciscani, 1373-1445; FA: ED II, 66-110.

509 Iuliani de Spira, Vita s. Francisci, in Analecta Franciscana, X, 333-371; Fontes Franciscani, 1025-1095;

FA:ED I, 368-420.

510 For an overview, see Roberto Rusconi, Francis of Assisi in the Sources and Writings, trans. Nancy Celaschi (St Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008).

511 Ferdinando Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche di San Francesco e Santa Chiara d’Assisi, secc. 13-14.

(Assisi: Porziuncola, 2002), 234-243.

512 Bonaventure de Balneoregis, Legenda maior S. Francisci, in Analecta Franciscana X, 555-652; FA: ED II, 525-683.

513 This seemed to be a general practice: when a General Chapter approved a new vita, it ordered the destruction of all the previous texts as soon as the new one arrived. Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 243. On Bonaventure‘s vitae of Francis, see Jacques Dalarun, The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi: Toward a Historical Use of the Franciscan Legends (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002), 234-245.

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Although the so-called ―Spiritual‖ Franciscans were a rather heterogeneous group that included individual groups like the Southern French spirituals, the Italian fraticelli, the followers of Peter John Olivi, Umbertino of Casale or those of Angelo Clareno, they were generally considered as loyal opposition in the last decades of the thirteenth century.⁵¹⁴ Despite having quite different agendas, the individual groups were all concerned about the decay of Franciscan life. They shared a number of common interests, such as the insistence on the renunciation of ownership as well as on the observation of usus pauper, lack of confidence in the leaders of both the Church and the Franciscan Order, keen interest in the apocalyptic scenario relying heavily upon Joachimite writings.⁵¹⁵ The ―spiritual controversy‖ occurred in several stages from the 1270 onwards and for about a decade it took place only at provincial level.⁵¹⁶ In the 1290s there was a significant increase in the actions taken against the zealots (i. e. the dissenters of March of Ancona including Angelo Clareno who persisted on the strict observance of poverty) on papal order that eventually ended up in a rather violent step against the Spirituals of France by Pope John XXII in 1317. By 1318 the loyal opposition turned into a heretical movement and the dissenting friars were burnt at stake. The situation of the fraticelli did not improve after the death of John XXII in 1334, as he was followed by Pope Benedict XII, who sympathized more with the Dominicans. Although Minister General Guiral Ot suggested the pope to abolish Franciscan prohibition concerning money, his idea was rejected. The Italian fraticelli by that time covered the spiritual Franciscans known as fraticelli di paupere vita, the followers of Michael of Cesena called as fraticelli de opinione, as well as other small groups from specific places. In 1334 Guiral Ot gave permission to Giovanni della Valle to settle at Brugliano with his four companions and to observe the Rule literally. This is from where the first generation of the Observants originated in the 1360s.

514 For a comprehensive monograph on the history of the so-called Spiritual Franciscans, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); on Angelo Clareno see especially 279-304. Burr has pointed out that the term ―Spiritual Franciscans‖ is a construction of modern historians that obscured the differences of the individual groups. Nevertheless, as the differentiation of the individual groups in the hagiographic overview of the dissertation is of secondary importance, for the sake of simplicity I will keep on using this ―construction‖.

515 Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Roberto Rusconi, L’attesa della fine: crisi della società, profezia ed Apocalisse in Italia al tempo del grande Scisma d’Occidente (1378-1417) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1979); idem, Profezia e profeti alla fine del medioevo (Rome: Viella, 1999).

516 Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Franciscan Order: From Saint Francis to the Foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Capuchin Historical Institute, 1987), on the diffusion of spiritual traditions, 240-278.

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150 The ―non-Bonaventurian‖ compilations

Motivated partly by the call of the General Chapter of Padua in 1276 to collect the deeds and the sayings of Francis and his early companions, the Spirituals were quite active in the compilation of such works. Tor them, Francis‘s Testament and the writings of the deeds and the sayings of his early companions, like the Verba fratri Conradi,⁵¹⁷ and the Verba sancti Francisci⁵¹⁸ were the most cherished documents. The most important of such writings in the thirteenth century was the Compilatio Assisiensis composed probably in Assisi (c.1240-1260)⁵¹⁹, but all the above mentioned collections had a considerable impact on numerous florilegia of the first half of the fourteenth century.

The Speculum perfectionis is the most widely diffused writing that used to be attributed to Brother Leo. At the end of the 19^th century, Paul Sabatier –who after having identified hundred and eighteen unknown episodes in the printed Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius–, found almost all of them in the MS Mazarine 1743, which he edited and published with the title Speculum perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima, auctore fratre Leone.⁵²⁰ This attribution became one of the key issues of the ―questione francescana‖; Sabatier hypothesised, based primarily on internal criticism, that due to the vividness narration and the familiarity with certain events, the text was composed by an eye-witness. He also noticed that some parts of the Speculum correspond to some of the writings attributed to Brother Leo.

Sabatier‘s proposition for the authorship was challenged by a number of scholars, among them

517 Andrew G. Little, Pierre Mandonnet, Paul Sabatier, ―Verba Fr. Conradi. Extrait de Ms. 1/25 de S. Isidore,‖ in Opuscules de Critique Historique, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1903), 370-392.

518 Edith Pásztor, ―Manoscritto Isidoriano 1/73 e gli scritti leonine su S. Francesco,‖ Cultura e società nell’Italia medievale. Studi per Paolo Brezzi. Studi Storici (Rome: 1988), 635-663.

519 ―Compilatio Assisiensis‖dagli Scritti di fr. Leone e Compagni su s. Francesco d’Assisi. Dal Ms 1046 di Perugia. II. edizione integrale riveduta e corretta con versione italiana a fronte e varianti, ed Marino Bigaroni (Assisi: Santa Maria degli Angeli, 1992) (Pubblicazioni della Biblioteca Francescana di Chiesa Nuova – Assisi); in Fontes Franciscani, 1471-1690; FA: ED II, 118-230. On the Compilatio Assisiensis, see also Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli sociorum S. Francisci. The Writings of Leo, Rufino and Angelo, Companions of St. Francis, ed. Rosalind Brooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Theodore Desbonnets, Introduction à la Légende de Pérouse, in Saint Françoise d’Assise. Documents, écrits et premières biographies, ed. Theodore Desbonnets and Damian Vorreux (Paris, Éditions franciscaines, 2^nd edition 1981), 863-877.

520 The first edition of the work is Speculum perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis Legenda antiquissima, auctore fratre Leone, ed. Paul Sabatier (Paris: Fischbacher, 1898), (Collection de documents pour l‘histoire religieuse et littéraire du Moyen âge 1); the second is Le Speculum perfectionis ou Mémoires de frère Léon sur la seconde partie de la vie de Saint Françoise d’Assise, ed. Paul Sabatier, Andrew G. Little (Manchester: [n. p.]1928-1931), vol.1, 1-350; in Fontes Franciscani, 1849-2053; FA: ED III, 253-372.

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Michele Faloci Pulignani, Edouard D‘Alençon, Leonard Lemmens, Ferdinand Delorme and Michael Bihl,⁵²¹ and according to the present state of scholarship, the Speculum perfectionis is no longer attributed to Brother Leo, although he must have contributed indirectly to its draft in the sense that some of his writings were used by the person who compiled the work. It was probably composed in Porziuncola before 1317, in the circle of the zelanti who were closely related to the ecclesiastical authority. It is based primarily on the Compilatio Assisiensis, but the themes (in which humility, charity and poverty dominate) are organized in a systematic fashion.⁵²² The author of the Speculum thus made a mirror that reflects the ideal of the status of a Franciscan brother. ⁵²³ Already Sabatier noted that the compiler did not want to illustrate the figure of the saint but the founder of the Order of Minor Brothers, this is why his relation to his brethren is accentuated instead of his union with God.⁵²⁴ Uribe considers the works as polemic, written in order to support, with the personal example of Francis and his demand to observe the Rule ad litteram and sine glossa.⁵²⁵ The future of the Order is foreseen in the context of tribulations, and the saint is represented in a way that he is in conformity with Christ.

Nevertheless, the Speculum perfectionis in this respect is less radical than other contemporary writings of the zelanti.⁵²⁶ Although the value of the Speculum perfectionis cannot be compared to the earlier hagiographic sources, it provides a considerable amount of additional information about places and times, as well as about the life of Francis that cannot be found any other sources, such as the representation of the saint as ―a man of his age‖, who in his youth had chivalric dreams of the great paladins, like Charlemagne, Orlando and Oliviero, and who called his companions the ―knights of the Round Table‖.⁵²⁷ Many of its chapters appeared in print,

521 For a detailed list of the scholars with bibliographic references, see Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 339.

522A detailed analysis of the sources is provided by Daniele Solvi, ―Lo ‗Speculum perfectionis‘ e le sue fonti,‖

Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 88 (1995): 377-472.

523 Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 358-359.

524 Sabatier, introduction to Speculum Perfectionis (1898), LXVI.

525 Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 359.

526 Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 364.

527 Uribe, Introduzione alle fonti agiografiche, 363. This chivalric theme was discussed also by Zsuzsanna Acél,

―A Jókai-kódex gondolati rendszeréről‖ [On the system of thought of the Jókai Codex], Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények 63 (1981): 865-881; eadem, ‗"...totus discretionis sale conditus...": il codice Jókai e la prima letteratura francescana,‘ in: Francescanesimo in volgare: secoli XIII – XIV. Atti del XXIV convegno internazionale, Assisi, 17 - 19 ottobre 1996 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1997): 221-243.

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first as part of the Speculum exemplorum as early as 1481, then as of the Speculum vitae beati Francisci sociorum eius (1504).⁵²⁸

The Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius is a collection of stories about the life of the saint, his companions, and some friars minor from the Province of the Marche who lived between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century.⁵²⁹ It is (or at least the first part of it) was written by Ugolino Boniscambi of Montegiorgio, while its second redactor (if there was indeed) could belong to the circle of Angelo Clareno (1255-1337), the leader of the Spiritual branch in the Marche and Umbria and a key figure of the Fraticelli. The possible ante quem of the final redaction of the work is 1337, which date corresponds to the death of Angelo Clareno. It is based on several sources, including Celano, Bonaventure, Angelo Clareno or Conrad of Offida. The main theme of the work appears in the very first sentence of the text: ―In primo ergo sciendum est quod b.p.n. Franciscus in omnibus suis actibus fuit Cristo conformis.‖⁵³⁰ The idea of conformity returns in the Actus again when Francis is called ―quasi alter Christus.‖⁵³¹ The saint and his companions are represented as the living models of the most characteristic Franciscan ideals. The Actus beati Francisci concentrates much more on the display of the Franciscan spirituality than the precise report on the historical events. It fits very well into the hagiographic tradition of the age, showing a predilection towards ecstasies, visions and dreams. In addition to the favoured (and often debated) topics of the Spiritual Franciscans, such as absolute poverty, learning, ascetic practices, the importance of contemplation, and Francis‘s discussion with Clare and Silvester about the future orientation of his fraternity are also present. Despite that some other places are also mentioned, the frequent references to the area of the Marche of Ancona, which was one of the privileged refuges of the Spirituals, influence the character of the Actus. Vauchez sees in the Actus a process of folklorization of the Franciscan lifestyle manifested both by the nostalgia of a lost paradise and the strive of the

528 The Speculum exemplorum is a vast collection of more than 1200 short edifying stories taken from earlier works that served as preaching aid for sermons. The first editions of the Speculum exemplorum are Deventer 1481;

Cologne, 1485; Strasbourg 1487, 1490, 1495; Hagenau 1512, 1519.

529 Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, ed. Paul Sabatier (Paris: Fischbacher, 1902); in Fontes Franciscani, 2085-2219; FA: ED III, 435-565.

530 Fontes Franciscani, 2085.

531 Fontes Franciscani, 2098.

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author(s) to praise the greatness of the spiritual revolution that Francis initiated.⁵³² The Fioretti (or Fior, ca. 1337-1396) written in the Tuscan vernacular is basically is a selection from and the adaptation of the Actus, which became extremely popular reading and was published and translated to many languages. Some scholars maintain that also the five Considerazioni sulle stigmate are the part of the Fioretti.⁵³³ A selection of the chapters of the Actus, like those of the Speculum perfectionis, were published in the Speculum exemplorum and the Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius.

Before the introduction of the next important mid-fourteenth century compilation, the Avignon Compilation (Compilatio Avenionensis, ca. 1328-1343), a brief digression to terminology is needed due the confusion in the scholarly literature in the use of names such as ―Speculum vitae‖, ―Legenda antiqua‖, ―Avignon Compilation‖, or ―Legenda vetus‖ that I try to clarify.

They are all related to Sabatier‘s philological achievements but this categorization has been contested and, with some exceptions, has been abandoned in scholarship. Sabatier, based on the information found in the Prologue of MS Vat. lat. 4354, discovered that this Franciscan compilation made around 1310-1330 and read in the refectory of the Franciscan convent of Avignon contained excerpts from an ―old legend‖ of Francis. Sabatier called these old pieces Legenda antiqua (assuming that it was based on writings prior to Bonaventure‘s Legenda maior), of which longer or shorter excerpts were copied by the Franciscan friars who spent some time in the convent of Avignon. According to Sabatier, even though the mixture of the old and new material was called Legenda antiqua for a while, at a certain point it was given a new title: Speculum vitae Sancti Francisci et sociorum eius. The intense and often hasty reproduction of this compilation of Avignon by the friars who then took the copies with themselves resulted in the greatest possible variety among the manuscripts of the Speculum

532 Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: The Life and the Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, 206.

533 The text of the Actus and that of the Fioretti, although not completely identical, are published in the Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius. Nuova edizione postuma di Jacques Cambell con testo dei Fioretti a fronte, a cura di Marino Bigaroni e Giovanni Boccali (Assisi, S. Maria degli Angeli: 1988) (Pubblicazioni della Biblioteca francescana, Chiesa nuova, 5); reprinted in Fontes Franciscani, 2085-2219. For a recent, brief but comprehensive introduction to the work, see See Enrico Menestò‘s introduction to the Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius in Fontes Franciscani, 2057-2084, on 2078-2079 and Jacques Dalarun‘s introduction to the French translation of the Actus in François d’Assise: Écrits, Vies, témoinages, 2713-2734.

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vitae.⁵³⁴ Today, the MS Vat. lat. 4354 is regarded to be one of the representatives of a group of manuscripts referred to as Avignon Compilation, so Sabatier – in whose lifetime such a group of manuscripts had not yet been as crystallized as it is today- traced back the origins of the Speculum vitae as far as the composition of the first manuscripts of the above-mentioned compilation family.

The manuscripts that belong to the Avignon Compilation all begin with the same incipit of the prologue: Fac secundum exemplar.⁵³⁵ Although the eleven manuscripts of this group -dated almost all to the second part of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century- have a rather varied structure, they usually contain the short version of the Speculum perfectionis, a part of the Actus, the Vita secunda of Thomas of Celano, an excerpt from the Legenda maior, collections of edifying anecdotes, historical documents and several other writings as well as a set of seven chapters edited by Sabatier as Legenda vetus, which reports the predictions of Francis about the future tribulations of the Order.⁵³⁶ This set of chapters can be found either fully or partially in a number of writings originating from the Spirituals, among others in Angelo Clareno‘s Expositio super regulam fratrum Minorum (1321-1323) and his Historia septem tribulationum Ordinis Minorum⁵³⁷ and they probably originate from the Spiritual Franciscan Conrad of Offida and his entourage.⁵³⁸ One of the manuscripts of Avignon Compilation, the late fourteenth- or early

534 Speculum perfectionis, ed. by Sabatier, CLII-CLXI. On the question of the Legenda Antiqua and the Avignon Compilation see also Pazzelli, ‗La compilazione Avignonese‘.

535 The best study on the evolution and the manuscript tradition of the Avignon Compilation is by Enrico Menestò, La Compilatio Avenionensis: una raccolta di testi francescani della prima metà del XIV secolo, Estratti dagli studi medievali 16 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull‘alto medioevo, 2004), 1423-1541; see also Raffaele Pazzelli,

―La compilazione Avignonese della Legenda antiqua beati Francisci,‖ Analecta TOR 25 (1994): 5-24.

536 For the contents of the Avignon Compilation, see Menestò, La Compilatio Avenionensis,1435-1438. Sabatier edited the seven chapters that he called Legenda vetus because he believed to be the part of an individual legend of Francis. The first edition of these chapters in Sabatier, ―S. Francisci Legendae veteris fragmenta quaedam,‖ 87-109. The seven chapters are the following: 1) De statu malo futuro fratrum; 2) De intentione S. Francisci; 3) Exemplum de praedicta voluntate; 4) De scientia quam praedixit; 5) De apparitione stupenda angeli; 6) De euntibus inter infideles; 7) De loco S. Mariae de Angelis. Another version of the De apparitione can be found in the Actus (Ch. 25; De statua simili statue Nabuchodonosor), in Fontes Franciscani, 2138-2142. In the text I refer to the chapter number of the Legenda vetus. For an examination of the content of the Legenda vetus, see Annalaura Trinci, ―S. Francesco e l‘osservanza della Regola nella Legenda Vetus‖ in Temi e immagini del medio evo: Alla memoria di Raoul Manselli da un gruppo di allievi, Edith Pásztor (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1996), 137-149.

537 According to Menestò, the sixth chapter of this set can be found already in the Regula non bullata (1221), and the seventh one in the Compilatio Assisiensis (1244-1260); see Menestò, La Compilatio Avenionensis, 1512-1513.

538 See the introduction of Sylvain Piron to the French translations of excerpts from Angelo Clareno‘s Historia septem tribulationum Ordinis Minorum in Françoise d’Assise. Écrits,Vies, témoignages, ed. Dalarun, vol. 2, 2571-2572.

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fifteenth-century Codex Latinus 77 is preserved in the National Széchényi Library of Budapest which is indicated as a textual parallel in the 1981 edition of the Jókai Codex but was probably not used in Hungary in the Middle Ages.⁵³⁹

Notwithstanding the important observations of Sabatier, according to present-day scholarship the nucleus of the Speculum vitae manuscript that was eventually printed in 1504 as Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius was compiled approximately a hundred years later than the Avignon Compilation, in the first half of the fifteenth century.⁵⁴⁰ The manuscript exemplar on the basis of which the edition of 1504 was made is not known. The printed work consists of excerpts of different length of the Speculum perfectionis, the Actus, the sayings of Francis and some of the early brothers, the Chronica XXIV generalium,⁵⁴¹ Bartolomeo da Pisa‘s De conformitate,⁵⁴² documents related to the Indulgence of Portiuncula, some chapters of the so-called Legenda vetus, prayers, Francis‘s blessing of Brother Leo, collections of instructional stories and sayings, as well as several catalogues of saints or related the history of the Order.⁵⁴³ Notwithstanding the close similarity between the Avignon Compilation and the printed Speculum vitae, the two are considered as distinct works.

The printed Speculum vitae was linked to the Jókai Codex because it was the closest printed work available that provided textual parallels to the codex at the time of the discovery in 1871 until the publication of Sabatier‘s first critical editions of the Speculum perfectionis (1898) and the Actus (1902). Besides, this work is still refferred to as a textual parallel or even as a source in some of the modern editions of the Hungarian vernacular codices.⁵⁴⁴

The last fourteenth century work is Bartolomeo of Pisa‘s (1338-1401) extremely influential and popular work, entitled De Conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu was composed between 1385 and 1390 and was officially approved by the General Chapter of Assisi

539 The OSzK Codex Latinus 77 (also called as Codex of Budapest) was purchased by the Hungarian antiquarian and book collector Miklós Jankovich (1772-1846).

540 Clasen lists seven extant manuscripts of the Speculum vitae but their content is not identical. Sophronius Clasen, O.F.M. Legenda antiqua S. Francisci. Untersuchung über die nachbonaventurianischen Franziskusquellen, Legenda trium sociorum, Speculum perfectionis, Actus beati et sociorum eius und verwandtes Schrifttum (Leiden:

Brill, 1967), 150-151.

541 Chronica XXIV Generalium Ordinis ed. in Analecta Franciscana 3.

542 The first edition was made in Milan, 1510.

543 Sabatier, ‗Description du Speculum vitae (éd. de 1504)‘, 323-357; Bihl, ‗L‘édition du Speculum vitae B.

Francisci, 145-150.

544 Such as the Jókai Codex, the Lobkowitz Codex, the Lázár Zelma Codex, and the Virginia Codex.

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In document Presentation of the Sources (Pldal 147-158)