TOMMASO da Celano. - Franciscan friar, born in Celano ca. 1190, died ca. 1260 in S. Giovanni in Val de' Varri.
Perhaps he was already a man of letters, a "clericus," when he received the habit at the Porziuncola from the hands of St. Francis of Assisi, ca. 1215; in 1222 he volunteered for the mission to Germany and the following year was vicar of the provincial minister. It is uncertain whether he attended the last hours of the Saint; he did, however, witness his solemn canonization (16 July 1228), which he recounted with vivid touches. In 1230 he was in Assisi, where he returned repeatedly thereafter, for the preparation of his celebrated biographies. The *Vita beati Francisci* (known as the *Vita Prima* or *Legenda Gregorii* because it was commissioned by Gregory IX) was composed before 25 April 1229; in 1230 he made an epitome of it: *Legenda ad usum chori*. Between 1245 and mid-1247 he compiled into a single biographical work, dedicated to the Minister General Fra Crescenzio da Jesi, the material presented by the three companions (Leo, Angelo, and Rufinus); thus was born the *Memoriale in desiderio animae de gestis et verbis sanctissimi patris nostri Francisci*, or *Vita secunda*, which supplements rather than corrects the *Prima*. After repeated invitations from the new Minister General, Fra Giovanni da Parma, he collected the miracles of the Assisian in a separate work, the *Tractatus de miraculis*, written between 1250 and 1253. Contemporary with, or slightly earlier than, these is the *Dies irae*, the authorship of which is again no longer doubted to be his; some uncertainty remains regarding certain hymns in honor of St. Francis. To the triple biography of the Father was added the celebration of the first disciple, namely the *Legenda s. Clarae Virginis*, composed shortly after her canonization (1255).
The two *Legendae* of St. Francis by T., together with the *Speculum perfectionis* and the various presumed versions of the *Legenda trium sociorum*, have been at the center of the debated and complex question of the sources (v. QUESTIONE FRANCESCANA). Scholars have now generally reassessed his honesty as a historian and acknowledged his merits as a writer. St. Bonaventure drew extensively on T.'s works for his *Legenda maior*.