TOMMASO da CELANO. – Friar Minor, born at Celano ca. 1190, died around 1260 at 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 s. Francesco d'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 was present during the Saint’s final hours; he did attend his solemn canonization (16 July 1228), which he described in vivid strokes. In 1230 he was in Assisi, to which he returned repeatedly thereafter in preparation for his celebrated biographies. The Vita beati Francisci (called Vita Prima or Legenda Gregorii, because it was commissioned from him by Gregorio 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 condensed into a single biography, dedicating it to the minister general, fra' Crescenzio da Jesi, the material presented by the « three companions » (Leone, Angelo and Rufino); 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 gathered the miracles of the man of Assisi in a separate short work, the Tractatus de miraculis, written between 1250 and 1253. The Dies irae, whose authorship by Celano is once again no longer doubted, may be regarded as contemporary or slightly earlier; some uncertainty remains concerning certain hymns in honor of s. Francesco. To the threefold biography of the Father was added the celebration of his first disciple, namely the Legenda s. Clarae Virginis, composed shortly after her canonization (1255).
The two Legendae of s. Francesco by T., together with the Speculum perfectionis and the various presumed versions of the Legenda trium sociorum, have stood at the center of the debated and complex question of the sources (v. QUESTIONE FRANCESCANA). Scholars have now, in general, reassessed his honesty as a historian and recognized his merits as a writer. s. Bonaventura made extensive use of T.’s works for his Legenda maior.