Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume II: The Founder (review)

Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Volume II: The Founder. Edited by Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., J. A. Wayne Hellman, O.F.M. Conv., and William J. Short, O.F.M. (New York: New City Press. 2000. Pp. 832. $49.00 cloth; $29.95 paperback.)

Franciscan history remains no stranger to controversy. This second volume of the series Francis of Assisi: Early Documents continues a chronological ordering of texts, moving from the earliest "celebratory" sources that situate the person of Francis of Assisi in Volume I to sources that herein reveal the sometimes turbulent course of the Franciscan movement from 1240 to 1276. In these texts succeeding generations of this movement reflected on the values and ideals of the founder in hagiography and in biography. "Different perspectives soon sowed the seeds of uncertainty and subsequent discord," the editors forthrightly assert (Vol. II, p. 12).

An extended General Introduction (Vol. II, pp. 11-25) charts the diversity of opinion reflected in the texts. An indicator of this diversity surfaces when the editors explain their own debate on placing The Sacred Exchange in Volume I despite its "tendency to focus on the ideals of the founder and the primitive fraternity" consonant with the texts in this volume (Vol. II, p. 23, n. 13). Without question the 1991 Sorbonne thesis of Michael Cusato, O.F.M., La renonciation au pouvoir chez les Frères Mineurs au 13e siècle, contributes significantly to their dilemma. His scholarship casts new light on the experience of the friars after the death of Francis by focusing on the very sources--pre-eminently The Sacred Exchange--that these first two volumes contain.

Such scholarship places the so-called Second Life of Celano, here given its revealing title The Remembrance of the Desire of a Soul, in a richer context. Celano purposefully extols the virtues of Francis. Whether cleverly calling the Church and the friars to discern in the Portiuncula "a mirror of the Order, always preserved in humility and highest poverty" (Vol. II, p. 257), or adroitly commending the humble leadership of Francis, who held "that a man had not yet given up everything for God as long as he held on to the moneybag of his own opinions" (Vol. II, p. 338), Celano spotlighted a virtuous founder who challenged the social order far more fundamentally than the virtuous Saint that Bonaventure portrayed in his Legenda (Vol. II, pp. 525-717). The editors rightly claim that texts extending into the fourteenth century included in the forthcoming third volume of the series "attest to the fact that Bonaventure did not resolve fundamental questions about the spirit of the Founder" (Vol. II, p. 22).

This volume repays study with insights into medieval religion in general and the Franciscan contribution in particular. The reader benefits from an introduction to each major work or cluster of texts as well as a concluding gazetteer with maps. New translations of familiar texts coincide with translations of works previously unavailable in modern English, such as several complete sermons of Bonaventure. Translations and apparatus prove reliable though one notices lapses that call for more attentive proofreading.

Ecclesiastical historians will value access to sources that not only illumine the early Franciscan movement but also illustrate the unfolding of spirituality and reform in the central Middle Ages. Grateful scholars and general readers now await the concluding third volume, which will contain the complete index to the series.

Kenneth M. Capalbo, O.F.M.
Office of the Provincial, St. Louis, Missouri

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