FRANCISCAN QUESTION. - This is the name given to the question of the biographical sources for St. Francis, and particularly of the legend called “of the Three Companions,” which, in scholarly discussions, has also involved the legend called Speculum Perfectionis and other biographies from the first century of Franciscan historical literature.
I. THE BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES OF S. FRANCESCO. - In addition to the writings left by the Saint, there is a considerable body of biographical material in numerous legends or biographies of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, which are regarded as sources for his life and are divided into two broad groups: authentic legends and legends of uncertain origin. Authentic legends are the two by Tommaso da Celano, together with the Trattato dei miracoli, and the legend written by s. Bonaventura; various versions of these were prepared (such as one by Cesario da Spira and another, in verse, by Enrico d'Avranches), especially for liturgical use. Legends of uncertain origin are those whose author, precise provenance, and date of composition are unknown. Among these, the most important are: the legend “of the Three Companions” and the Specchio di perfezione. The entire q. f., which arose toward the end of the last century and has not yet been settled, centres upon them.
II. ORIGINS OF THE CONTROVERSY
The legend “of the Three Companions” is so called because it bears as its prologue a letter that the three companions of s. Francesco, friar Leone, friar Angelo, and friar Rufino, wrote at Greccio on 17 September 1246; in it they stated that they were sending some of their recollections to the Minister General. It was already known from the Acta SS. (Octobris, II, Antwerp 1768). In 1856, however, the Order’s annalist, Fr. Stanislao Melchiorri, published a vernacular version of the same legend, but one much more extensive (79 chapters instead of the traditional 18), whose material had been taken from other biographical sources concerning the Saint (Celano, s. Bonaventura, Fioretti, etc.).In 1894 SABATIER, PAUL (v.), in his Vie de St François, while analyzing the legend, pointed out that it was defective and disproportionate in its narration of the Saint’s life (of the 18 chapters, 14 concerned the youth and first conversion of s. Francesco, 2 concerned Cardinal Ugolino [Gregory IX], and the remainder the Saint’s death and canonization), and advanced the idea that the legend had been mutilated, perhaps by the Superiors of the Order. This idea was put forward by Frs. Marcellino da Civezza and Teofilo Domenichelli, who claimed to reconstruct it in its entirety on the basis of the vernacular version published in 1856 by Melchiorri (1899). The childish attempt gave Fr. Van Ortroy occasion to demolish critically the authenticity of the legend itself, as a compilation of the fourteenth century or the end of the thirteenth. For him, the letter of the prologue remained doubtful, since it did not correspond to the contents. Sabatier replied, but the majority of critics sided with Fr. Van Ortroy.
At this point the Speculum perfectionis appeared, known indeed to Franciscan historians, but now presented in a learned edition by P. Sabatier (1898) as an unpublished work and attributed to friar Leone. Basing himself on false information from the Mazarine Codex, Sabatier dated its composition to 1227, only a year after the death of the Seraphic, without noticing the manifest implausibility of the date, soon pointed out by the critics: in 1900 Salvatore Minocchi discovered another codex at the Convent of Ognissanti in Florence, bearing the date 1318, which was far more plausible. Through simple critical inferences, however, he discerned among the narratives of the Speculum an older stratum that might go back to the companions of s. Francesco. Shortly afterward, Fr. Leonardo Lemmens actually found an older recension of the Speculum in a codex of s. Isidoro (1/73) in Rome, in almost perfect agreement with Minocchi’s deductions; the latter consequently concluded that the authentic writing sent by the “Three Companions,” together with the letter from Greccio, to the General in 1246, was precisely this work. Other difficulties, however, prevent complete certainty: for example, the fact that the aforementioned prologue is always found joined to the traditional legend “of the Three Companions” in the codices, and never to the Speculum Perfectionis.
III. RESULTS AND HYPOTHESES
Once Minocchi’s opinion is accepted, what remains of the legend «of the Three Companions»? Some, especially the older scholars, the Sabatierians, and also several of the more recent ones, admit its authenticity; but among them there are those who regard it as complete and in full agreement with the prologue (Pulignani, and more recently Barbi, etc.), others as mutilated (Sabatier), and others as part of a composition completed by the Speculum (Mandonnet, Tilleman, Joergensen). The majority, however, reject its authenticity and assign it to the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century: some consider it a unified but late compilation based on earlier sources, especially Celano (Bibl); some see in it the exploitation of earlier sources, partly unknown or lost (Cuthbert); for others, it drew on the same sources as Celano’s Legenda secunda (Oliger); a very recent opinion (Moorman) would have it composed in successive stages, of which an initial core would date back to a period preceding even Celano’s Legenda Prima (1228 onwards).All this shows how far we still are from solving the problem, which also entails other subsidiary problems.
Contra duas novas hypotheses prolatas a Joh. P. H. Moorman, in Archiv. franc. hist., 39 (1946, ed. 1948), pp. 2-37.