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this.⁶⁰¹ Second, Pelbartus enumarates all the popes who issued bulls concerning the stigmata and their conmemoration. Third, he mentions briefly miracles and revelations testifying to the authenticity of stigmata and gives an account of the event.⁶⁰²

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the towns of Upper Hungary to Nyitra, from where, after the dissolution or the sack of a convent, it ended up in the attic of a house. ⁶⁰⁷

The Jókai Codex is damaged: at least 27 folios are missing, so one can only have an approximate idea concerning its original content. What I call the ―core‖ of the Jókai Codex is made up of 27 chapters of the Speculum perfectionis, 18 of the Actus, and 3 from the so-called Legenda vetus which, with one exception, can be all found in the printed Speculum vitae but, as it has been pointed out by János P. Balázs, often in a more contaminated form.⁶⁰⁸ In addition, the codex includes a prayer about the Passion narrated by the Crucifix reported also in Bartolomeo da Pisa‘s De Conformitate⁶⁰⁹ and a list of eight post mortem miracles of Francis based on the Legenda maior.⁶¹⁰

The editor of the codex, János P. Balázs, even though he was the one who found a possible source of the prayer to the Crucified in Bartolomeo‘s work in 1981, he dated the Jókai Codex to after 1370/around 1440, which is not entirely comprehensible in the light of the date of composition of the De Conformitate (1385-1390).⁶¹¹ Even less, if one considers the fact that the work was approved by the order only in 1399; it is not likely that it circulated widely and was translated into Hungarian before that date. In case the De Conformitate was indeed among the sources of the early translation of the Jókai Codex, then it is more likely that the supposed earlier translation was made in the early fifteenth century. The other possibilities are that the source of the prayer to the Crucified was not the De Conformitate but some earlier source instead, or that this section was added later to an already existing vernacular translation of the legend and in this case there is no reason to postpone the date of the supposed earlier translation.⁶¹²

607 János P. Balázs, intoduction to Jókai-kódex, 9-19, at 10.

608 P. Balázs, intoduction to Jókai-kódex 12-13

609 The modern edition of the work was published in 1906 with the title De Conformitate Vitae B. Francisci ad Vitam Domini Iesu, auctore Fr. Bartholomaeo de Pisa, in Analecta Franciscana 4-5.

610 Bonaventure‘s Tractatus de miraculis is reported in Legendae s. Francisci Assisiensis, 627-652, and Fontes franciscani, 912-961.

611 Jókai-kódex, 10.

612 The same prayer but with an ending different from the one reported in the De Conformitate is reported in Guido Maria Dreves, Analecta hymnica medii aevi, XXXI, Leipzig, 1898, 53-54. The two manuscripts signaled by Dreves that have a slightly different ending are: Cod. Palat. Matriten 2 N 4 dated to the 13th-14th century and the Cod.

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The overwhelming majority (ca. 85 %) of the sources of the surviving part of the Jókai Codex are based on the Speculum perfectionis and the Actus beati Francisci that, as we have seen, originated from a Spiritual Franciscan environment. The chapters are from the so-called Legenda vetus, as it has been shown by Arnold Magyar, correspond to the three chapters of the Codex Latinus 77 (Codex of Budapest). These chapters are the following: ―Hogÿ kelnekuala neky az baratok kyk regulat tartanakuala‖ (Legenda vetus, Ch.3: Exemplum de praedicta voluntate); ―Az tudomanrol kÿt zent ferencz eleue meg mondott‖ (Legenda vetus, Ch.4: De scientia quam praedixit); ―Angÿalnak yzanÿv yelenetyrewl‖ (Legenda vetus, Ch.5: Ad idem de apparitione stupenda angeli).⁶¹³ I have mentioned earlier that these chapters circulated either individually or as a set, so it was not only the Avignon Compilation through which these three chapters could fare to the Jókai Codex. Moreover, the manuscripts of the Avignon Compilation do not contain two chapters of the Actus that are organic parts of the Jókai Codex.⁶¹⁴ Whereas the prayer to the Crucified and the list of miracles at the end of the Jókai Codex can be additions to its ‗core‘, the translations of Ch. 39 and 45 of the Actus fit perfectly in the sequence of the chapters of the Hungarian codex.⁶¹⁵ Nevertheless, the striking resemblance between the Avignon Compilation and the Jókai Codex in their content makes it possible to hypothesize that the ‗core‘ of the latter was not put together by the Hungarian compiler/translator but was translated from an already existing Latin compilation, made up of excerpts from the Actus, the Speculum perfectionis and the set of the seven chapters that were relatively widespread in the period⁶¹⁶, and many of them (although not always all the seven or not as a set) can be found in a number of fifteenth-century manuscripts in Italy.⁶¹⁷ In any case, the chapters that are based on Londinen Reg.7 A VI, dated to the 14th-15th century, so it is theoretically possible that the source of the prayer to the Crucified was not the De Conformitate.

613 Jókai-kódex, 266-273; Arnold Magyar, ―Eine Vergessene Franziskus-Handschrift: Der Jókai Codex von Budapest,‖ Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 62 (1969): 662-677, at 675.

614 See the table of comparison in Magyar, ―Eine Vergessene Franziskus-Handschrift,‖ 670-676.

615 Jókai-kódex, 146-148 ―Frater leorol mykoron latta uala zent ferenczet fewlttewl fel emeletlennÿ‖ (Actus, Ch.

39: De fratre Leone quando vidit sanctum Franciscum elevatum a terra et vidit et palpavit eius stigmata); 174-176

―Mykeppen frater Egyed vonot kÿ nemÿ mestert ew ketsegebelewl‖ (Actus, Ch. 45=67² in : Qualiter, dicente fr.

Egidio: Virgo ante partum, Virgo in partu, Virgo post partum, orta sunt tria lilia); reported in Fontes Franciscani, 2166-2167; 2218-2219.

616 On the problems concerning the early translation of the Jókai Codex, see Dávid Falvay and Eszter Konrád,

―Osservanza francescana e letteratura in volgare dall‘Italia all‘Ungheria: ricerche e prospettive,‖ in Osservanza francescana e cultura tra Quattrocento e primo Cinquecento, 161-186, at 175-178.

617 I had the opportunity to consult those manuscripts that are located in the libraries of Rome. MS Isidoriano 1/142, fol. 82r: Exemplum de predicta voluntate sancti francisci, fol.82r-v: De stupenda apparitione angeli; MS

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the Actus may originate from Italy since, as it was observed by Jenő Kastner, the translator was unable to translate the phrases and sentences of Francis reported in the Italian vernacular.⁶¹⁸ That Latin compilations of Franciscan hagiographic material similar in content to the Avignon Compilation and the printed Speculum vitae circulated and were available in Hungary is attested both in Latin and vernacular literature produced in Hungary.⁶¹⁹

Various hypotheses have been offered concerning the audience of the Jókai Codex although none of them took into account that the codex is written in northern dialect: on the analogy with the later codices written in the vernacular, Horváth supposed that the Jókai Codex was made for nuns, and perhaps for Clarissan sisters, since the codex contains two stories about Clare.⁶²⁰ This idea was opposed by Kastner,⁶²¹ who, based on textual analysis, noted that the text supposes an audience for whom begging was an essential activity and who are warned also against the excessiveness in eating and the scorn of money. Furthermore, Kastner interpreted the omission of a phrase Francis said to Brother Leo that not even preaching that converts all the infidels implies perfect joy⁶²² as intentional, saying that the translator did not want to lay anything before the preaching friars‘ main activity and ideal of life.⁶²³ Although almost all the later surviving vernacular codices of Franciscan content were translated for and copied by nuns in Óbuda, this was not the environment the Jókai Codex originated from; the besides, I have not found any hint in the text that would particularly suggest a female audience.

Vallicelliano B 131, fol. 133v: Como respuse ad uno frate del observantia della regula, fol.126r-v: Como sancto francisco predisse multe tribulatione per la sciencia delli frati, fol.128-132: Come el nostro padre sancto francesco predixe et adruiptio alli fratri li 5 stati che deveono venire nella religione per rivelatione dell’angelo;

MS Ottob. 681, fol.103r: Lo exemplo dela predicta voluntate de sancti f fol.103r-104v: Quello che dixe san f. dela sciencia, fol. 104v-106r: Ad questo anchora dela stupenda apparitione del angelo. I compared these chapters to those of the OSzK Cod. lat. 77 as well as to the Jókai Codex without any significant results.

618 Kastner, A Jókai-kódex és az obszerváns kódexirodalom, 4-5. The examples are in Jókai-kódex, 110-111, 116.

619 Cf. Lajos Katona, ―A Lobkowitz-codex rendi emlékei,‖ 15; idem, ―A Virginia-kódex Ferencz-legendái,‖ 14; Eszter Konrád, ―The Speculum vitae beati Francisci et sociorum eius in the Old Hungarian Codex Literature.‖ forthcoming.

620 János Horváth, A magyar irodalmi műveltség kezdetei: Szent Istvántól Mohácsig [The origins of Hungarian literature: from St. Stephen to Mohács], first published in Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság, 1931; reprint:

Budapest, 1988, 101-109, at 104-105.

621 Kastner was not the only one who did not agree with the presumption that the Jókai Codex was made for nuns (of Poor Clares); as Zsuzsanna Acél pointed out, the text of the codex is absolutely not suitable for nuns for reading aloud. See her "...totus discretionis sale conditus...," 223.

622 Actus 33, 35-37: ―O frater Leo, quamvis frater minor sciret tam solemniter predicare quod converteret omnes infedeles ad fidem, scribe quia non est ibi perfecta laetitia.‖ It is based on Francis‘ admonition to Brother Leo, the De vera et perfecta laetitia. For its English translation, see FA: ED, I, ―True and Perfect Joy‖, 166.

623 Jenő Kastner, A Jókai –kódex és az obszerváns kódexirodalom, 11.

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Jenő Kastner, who noted the scribal additions about temperance in eating and scorn of money, looked for a Franciscan male community living in convents and would go questing for alms in the second half of the fourteenth century -the generally accepted date of composition of the Jókai Codex at the time he wrote his study- whose way of life was close to the ideals of the Spiritual wing. He came up with the hypothesis that this ―Speculum of Avignon‖ was translated by a Franciscan entrusted with the conversion of the heretics in Bosnia.⁶²⁴ This presumption, however, has no solid basis despite the fact that Bosnia had indeed some connections with the very first friars of the strict Observance in the 1370s, but the spread of the Observance in Hungary, as we have seen in the introductory chapter of the dissertation, was not directly related to them.⁶²⁵ Although it is certainly true that the Observant reformists appeared in the Bosnian vicariate in the last decades of the century⁶²⁶ and several Italian Observant friars came here, as Stanko Andrić noted, it may be ―an exaggeration to state that the vicariate was the first Franciscan jurisdiction to embrace as a whole the Observant reform.‖⁶²⁷

Although scholars have noted a long time ago that the Jókai Codex is a consciously constructed text, based on the selection, reorganization, and on the translation of an already existing non-official hagiography of Francis of Assisi, László Szörényi was the first scholar who analysed its structure in detail.⁶²⁸ Recently a different thematic division was proposed by Piusz Berhidai.⁶²⁹ Here I will follow by and large the structural division of Szörényi. The first thematic unit of the Jókai Codex (Actus, Ch. 1-9; 31-33; 38-40[=65²] 41-43, 45[=67²]) presents the early days of the

624 See Karácsonyi, János. Szent Ferencz, vol. 1, 305-329. For the Franciscan missionary activities in Bosnia from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, see Eusebius Fermendžin, Acta Bosnae potissimum ecclesiastica cum insertis editorum documentorum regestis ab anno 925 usque ad annum 1752 (Zagreb: Soc. Typ., 1892); Mijo Vjenceslav Batinić, Djelovanje franjevaca u Bosni i Hercegovini za prvih šest viekova njihova boravka [The activities of the Franciscans in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first six years of their stay] (Zagreb: Tisk. Dionička, 1881-1887);

Julian Jelenić, Kultura i bosanski franjevci [Culture and the Bosnian Franciscans], 2 vols. (Sarajevo: [n.p.], 1912-1915); Vjeran Kursar, ―Franjevci katoličanstvo Osmanskoj Bosni i Turskoj Hrvatskoj u premoderno doba (15-18.

stoljecé)‖ [Franciscans and Catholics in Ottoman Bosnia and Turkey], Hrvatska revija 2 (2015): 46-55. On the label ―heretics‖ and ―schismatics‖ referring to the non-Catholics in Bosnia, see Fine, The Bosnian Church, 54-65.

625 de Cevins, Les franciscains observant hongrois, 39-43.

626 The missionary territory of the Franciscans, the Bosnian vicariate comprised the whole diocese of Bosnia, Serbia, Croaia, some parts of Hungary, Bulgaria, Bohemia, Transylvania and Moldavia; see Fine, The Bosnian Church, 16-17.

627 Andrić, The Miracles of St. John Capistran, 20.

628 Szörényi, ―La problematica del codice «Jókai»,‖140-147.

629 Piusz Berhidai O.F.M., ―Szent Ferenc képe a XV. századi magyarországi irodalomban‖ [The image of St.

Francis in 15^th-century Hungarian literature], in Európa védelmében: Kapisztrán Szent János és a nándorfehérvári diadal emlékezete, ed. Kálmán Peregin and László Veszprémy (Budapest: Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum, 2013), 117.

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community through the relationship among Francis and his companions. The saint‘s Christiconformitas is elaborated in this section and culminates with his stigmatization in the very middle of this part. The second part of the same unit continues with the narration of the mystical experience and the miracle stories related to the companions, including also Clare of Assisi. The second thematic unit (Speculum perfectionis 12-14; 18; 20-2; Actus 67; Speculum perfectionis 25-26; 28-29) deals with the issues related to absolute poverty: begging for alms, renunciation of worldly goods, the prohibition to get in physical contact with money and further episodes concerning the usus pauper, as well as the care for the poor and the sick. The third unit (Speculum perfectionis 49; 51-53; 56-58) is concerned with obedience, discipline, and peace within the Order. With his humility manifested in different situation Francis wants to show example to his companions. Although at first it seems that the episodes of the fourth major unit (Speculum perfectionis 79; 66; 68-73; 81; 85-86; the so-called Legenda vetus, 3-5) are of miscellaneous content, they are all related to the zeal of the Poverello to instruct the brethren by showing them the contrast between real and worldly knowledge, that conversion is a result of praying and compassion, that the observation of the Rule is necessary. Francis foretells the tribulations of the Order, which is the result of the friars‘estrangement from his original intentions, especially in the field of studies, usus pauper, and humility. The fifth unit (Actus 10;

13-14; 16; 18-19; 24-23) is heavily damaged, but on the basis of the surviving pages it is apparent that it consists of miscellaneous episodes: the approaching death of the saint is mentioned, but then comes an episode relating his revelations and conversations with the Divine, and also two stories about his special relationship with animals are narrated, one of them is the taming of the wolf of Gubbio. The next unit is a short poem, in which an unnamed friar –who in the Jókai Codex can be interpreted as St Francis- (De Conformitate, 521-522) turns to the Crucified for consolation, who, in turn, narrates Francis his Passion. The fragmentary poem separates the stories of St. Francis and his companions from the last section of the codex, the raising of eight dead thanks to the intercession of the saint.

Since the Jókai Codex is quite a faithful but rather poor translation of Latin texts, its original features can be seen in the organization of the material and the additions on the part of the translator/scribe. On the one hand, the sequences of the episodes show a conscious effort for a thematic arrangement; for instance, the episodes from the life of the Poverello and his

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companions are seprated from his post mortem miracles by a poem that evokes the Passion of Christ. On the other hand, the explanatory additions that show the intervention of the translator or the scribe who wrote the legend down in order to make the text more comprehensible to its readers or to add his own conclusion or advice on some of the issues treated.

What are the reasons of relating the Jókai Codex to the Observant Franciscans? As it has been shown, the overwhelming majority of the codex goes back to Latin works originating from the Spirituals. Although the Observant movement cannot be regarded as the direct continuation that of the Spirituals, it is undeniable that some of the recurring themes in the Jókai Codex, such as evangelic poverty or obedience were crucial issues also for the Observant Franciscans in general.⁶³⁰ The scorn for secular knowledge, however, was characteristic only to the friars of the early Observance in Italy whose ideas did not seem to be diffused in Hungary. The most illustrious representatives of the second generation of the Observants, the so-called ―four columns‖ (Bernardino of Siena, John of Capestrano, James of the Marches, Albert of Sarteano) were all highly educated, were active in the production of theological and sermon literature, and were erudite preachers that guaranteed their success in the conversion of masses, at least in the central and northern part of Italy, and the high level of education among the Observants can be perceived in general in the fifteenth century. Since the actual spread of the Observant movement in Hungary occured only in the early fifeenth century and the refrom friars staying for shorter or longer time in the country (James of the Marches and John of Capestrano) were anything but ―simple‖, the scorn of secular knowledge cannot really be associated with the Observants in Hungary at the time when the Jókai Codex was copied. It is true, on the other hand, that the codex was made in the period of the expansion of the Observants in Hungary who within a few years (1448) would obtain a permission to establish an autonomous Hungarian vicariate, separating from the Observant province of Bosnia,. The poem describing the Passion of Christ may be a further hint to the Observant provenance of the codex. The Observant Franciscans had a major role in spreading the extremely minute descriptions of the suffering of

630 The objection to learning was characteristic of the early Observants, motivated more by the fear that the engagement in science would be an obstacle for the aspired humility and simplicity. On the Observants‘ initial distrust in learning and their subsequent re-orientation to the pursuit of studies, see Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c.1210-1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 153-171; idem, ―Sub humilitatis titulo sacram scientiam abhorrentes. Franciscan Observants and the Quest for Education,‖ in: Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life, edited by Mirko Breitenstein et al. (Berlin: Verlag, 2014), 79-106.

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Christ and the instruments of torture, which can be seen also on the seals of the confraternity letters issued by the Franciscan Observants in Hungary.⁶³¹ This can be clearly observed from a sixteenth-century reproduction of the seal of the Franciscan Observant Province of Hungary named ―Provincia Ungariae Salvatoris‖ provided by the Observant Franciscan Francesco Gonzaga. (Fig. 6). It shows a friar kneeling at the foot of the Cross that is crowned with the Crown of Thorns, pierced through by nails, and different instruments of torture exhibited on both sides. I think this seal is the visual equivalent of what one can read in the Jókai Codex.

Even if all this cannot be considered as decisive evidence in favour of the Observant provenance of the codex, there are indeed several arguments –based on indirect evidence though– that hint to this direction.

Figure 6 - Francesco Gonzaga, De origine Seraphicae religionis, Romae 1587, 52.

The importance of the Jókai Codex is, on the one hand, that through this work a high number of the chapters of the Speculum perfectionis and the Actus became available in the vernacular for a Hungarian-speaking audience. On the other hand, the Hungarian codex attests that from the

631 See de Cevins, Koldulórendi konfraternitások, 122. She also provides the list of the documents with seals representing the Passion in different ways. On the Passion of Christ in late medieval visual arts: Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France, 83-135.

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fifteenth century onwards the latest, a Latin compilation containing the deeds of St Francis and the friars of the first generations, originating from the environment of the more radical wing of the Franciscans, was available in Hungary.

In document Presentation of the Sources (Pldal 168-176)