Non alter Christus: Early Dominican Lives of Saint Francis

69 Franciscan Studies 63 (2005) NON ALTER CHRISTUS: EARLY DOMINICAN LIVES OF SAINT FRANCIS1 In the first forty years after the death of Francis of Assisi, his life was written and rewritten by Franciscan biographers. By the time Bonaventure wrote the Legenda maior circa 1263, so many legendae of Francis were circulating that the general chapter of the order commanded that all previous vitae be burned.2 With some relief, we can report that not all earlier Lives were destroyed. Thomas of Celano’s Vita prima sancti Francisci and the Vita secunda sancti Francisci survived, as did Julian of Speyer’s Life and the Legenda trium sociorum.3 These vitae have been much studied by scholars of Francis over the years,4 but other narrative lives written contemporaneously have been less 1 I drafted and revised this article during a two-month postdoctoral fellowship at the Sonderforschungsbereich 537: Institutionalität und Geschichtlichkeit. My thanks to Dr. Gert Melville and the researchers of SFB 537 for their very helpful comments and suggestions . Thanks also to Dr. Isabelle Cochelin and Dr. Joseph Goering, who com-mented on later drafts. 2 This order was given at the chapter general in Paris in 1266. See J. A. Wayne Hellmann , “Francis of Assisi: Saint, Founder, Prophet” in Francis of Assisi: History, Hagiography and Hermeneutics in the Early Documents, ed. Jay M. Hammond (New York: New City Press, 2004), 15-38, 29; Damien Vorreux, “Introduction to the Major and Minor Life of Saint Francis,” trans. P. Oligny, in Saint Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, ed. Marion A. Habig (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), 615-26, 615. 3 Other sources that told of Francis and the earliest years of the Franciscan Order also survived, including Henri d’Avranches’ lyric vita, the Versified Life of Francis, the Anonymous of Perugia and the Legend of Perugia. For the latest critical edition of these lives, please see Henri d’Avranches, Legenda sancti Francisci versificata, in Fontes Franciscani (FF), ed. E. Menestò and S. Brufani (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1995), 1131-242; Anonymus Perusinus, 1311-51; Legenda Perusina, 1471-687. I have included only those prose narratives that constitute a vita of Saint Francis, arranged in chronological order in this study. 4 Jacques Dalarun’s book, The Misadventure of Francis of Assisi: Toward a Historical Use of the Franciscan Legends, Edward Hagman, trans. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002) summarizes much of the recent work on the earliest vitae of Francis. See also Luigi Pellegrini, Frate Francesco e i suoi agiografi (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 2004). DONNA TREMBINSKI 70 well considered. These marginalized texts are the Dominican-authored vitae of Francis of Assisi. A close comparison between Franciscanauthored lives of Francis and Dominican vitae of that saint provides valuable insight into early relations between the two Orders and stresses how differently members of both orders believed sanctity ought to be constructed. Early Dominican conceptions of sanctity have been examined in depth by Luigi Canetti in his fascinating study of how Dominic’s vitae changed as they were rewritten during the early years of the order. Canetti argues that while the earliest hagiographers of Dominic presented the saint as an individual, giving little attention to his miracles and other proofs of his sanctity, later lives, such as that included in Gerald of Frachet’s Vitae fratrum, portrayed Dominic as a stereotypical saint with few individualizing characteristics.5 Dominic’s lives are not unique in this respect; Hippolyte Delehaye6 and André Vauchez7 have demonstrated that as the textual traditions of many saints developed, the saints themselves took on more generic “saintly” characteristics. Yet many scholars of medieval hagiography agree that early lives of Francis do not follow this trend and instead portray a unique saint who proved his sanctity in radically different ways than other, earlier saints had.8 The research presented below suggests that Vauchez, Canetti and others are essentially correct. Early Franciscan hagiographers portray the saint as a holy man without parallel who conceived of new ways to demonstrate his sanctity through the process of literal imitatio Christi. Beginning with the Vita prima of Thomas of Celano, Franciscan authors position Francis as an 5 Luigi Canetti, L’invenzione della memoria...