SPECULUM PERFECTIONIS. - A little work due to a Friar Minor of the Spiritual tendency, written at the beginning of the 14th century, regarded as one of the sources of Franciscan spirituality, free as it is from literary artifice and suffused with Franciscan feeling and humanity.
Paul Sabatier, its first editor (Speculum perfectionis, seu S. Francisci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima, auctore Fr. Leone; with critical apparatus, Paris 1898), attributed it to fr. Leone, companion of s. Francesco; critics, however, disagree on this point (cf. Ilarino da Milano, in a review of
Lo specchio di perfezione, translated into the vernacular by F. Pennacchi, in Collect. Franc., 13 [1943], pp. 310-11). Because of its intrinsic merit, the work has already been repeatedly translated and published in various languages: Quaracchi 1901, edited by p. Leonardo Lemmens; Assisi 1905; Paris 1911; London n.d. (with a preface by p. Cuthberto da Brighton); Freiburg 1922; Latin and English text with critical study, Manchester 1928-31; Milan 1943.