FIORETTI DI SAN FRANCESCO. — The full title, according to the manuscripts, would be: Fioretti, miracoli et esempi divoti del glorioso poverello di Cristo messer santo Francesco e d'alquanti suoi santi compagni, and it comprises the flower (selection) and the translation of 53 chapters of a Latin work: Actus b. Francisci et sociorum eius, begun by Brother Ugolino de S. Maria in Montegiorgio (Marche) in the last decades of the 13th century, later continued by other friars with the addition of later episodes that allow the final terms of the translation to be established, namely not before 1370 and not after 1396.
The translator of the 53 selected chapters is an unknown friar from Florence or Siena (some suppose he was from the Marche and a nephew of Brother Ugolino), who began his work perhaps around 1380, and perhaps it was he himself who directly wrote in the vernacular the five Considerazioni delle sacre stimmate di S. Francesco, which supplement the Fioretti. The protagonists of the first 40 chapters are St. Francis and his companions; of the last 13, the Franciscans of the Marche, most faithful to the most austere tradition. In the first part, the human and supernatural originality of St. Francis prevails, which is in itself a marvel; in the second, the mysticism of his followers interwoven with miraculous visions. The historical value of the Fioretti has vanished if one considers factual data; it is great if by history one means the ideal meaning and the spirit of the narrative: in reality few books express, as this one does, the Franciscan conception of life. Hence also its spiritual value. The Fioretti present nature in its original beauty, creatures in their creative goodness, human relations in the simplicity of the Gospel, and radiate the joy of poverty (that is, the forgetting of self in the love of God) even over the most searing pain, as is evident from chapter 5, which depicts in a dialogue between—