The History as a Pendulum: The Actus and the Fioretti

Introduction: struggle or irenicism?

According to Benvenuto Bughetti, the Little Flowers of St. Francis “are the fruit of love, and not of battle.”¹ For Faloci-Pulignani we are faced with “a book of controversy, passion, struggle.”² Sword and propaganda versus pacification and irenicism: these two irreconcilable points of view are still present in the contemporary debate, representing two opposite tendencies in reading the text. Nevertheless, the most significant feature of the Fioretti is the omnipresent sentiment of nostalgia. But nostalgia, as Walter Benjamin argues persuasively, inevitably entails an opinion on the negative character of present times and an invitation to take action against injustice, as well as to contribute to the redemption of victims of the past. The characteristic style of the narrative discourse in the Little Flowers as well (which on multiple occasions has been described as “expressive freshness”) may be associated with the philosopher of the theses “On the philosophy of history.”³ The Fioretti were actually defined by Francesco De Sanctis as “the most lovable and beloved of medieval children’s books.”⁴ Now, Benjamin pointed out that books for children provided the model for a “nostalgic” writing.⁵ This interpretation – which is open to further development – does not help us, however, to escape the impasse, because it remains anchored to one of the major flaws in the approach of the Fioretti, namely that of “simplification.” Both of these trends are two simplifications, evocative and strong but useless for a deeper understanding of the text. Even the use of the word “text” in the singular is already, in itself, a simplification. To orientate the critical discourse in the right direction, we have to talk of a dossier made up of different texts transmitted in a bilingual version. Bilingualism can help us to penetrate in depth the forma mentis of Franciscan authors and readers of the age.⁶

As everyone has known since the edition of Paul Sabatier in 1902, the Fioretti are in truth a translation, or rather a vernacular translation (volgarizzamento) of a Latin text whose exact title is Quedam notabilia de beato Francisco et sociis eius et quidam actus eorum mirabiles. Yet, it is better known by the more evocative (and already interpretative) title of Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, which is registered in the catalogue of the Library of the Sacred Convent of Assisi by Giovanni di Iolo in 1381.⁷ Even in the case of title we need to pay lot of attention to the distinction between philological data and the accumulation of interpretations. For this simple reason, throughout this article I propose a research path, which could help to free us from some simplifications. I am convinced, in fact, that nostalgia is an “ideological tool” which has given rise to a rich variety of receptions, ranging from disagreement and condemnation of the development of the Order to simple “devotion.” My impression is that, in general, this story can be described by the movement of a pendulum, oscillating back and forth between protest and piety: a rich and layered series of episodes produced in a “spiritual” context were collected at a time of serious difficulty of the Order (in the 30s of the fourteenth century) with a consolatory intent; a dissident milieu at the end of the same century (the Fraticelli of Florence) proposed one vernacular translation within a broader project of translations that were aimed to take root in the most dynamic social context of Florence and Tuscany, ensuring to the book in vernacular an extraordinary success as a text of lay devotion.

The Actus and the Fioretti (aller-retour)

First of all, the most dangerous simplification would be to posit a univocal and direct relationship between the Actus and the Fioretti, i.e. the normal relationship between a basic text and its own translated version. In medieval times such is rarely the case, and in fact philologists use a different word – volgarizzamento – which involves a more complex operation of interpretation and paraphrase.⁸ But this is not the only important aspect of this simplification, because the hardest problem is...