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feast,6 demonstrably influenced art and literature. Giotto's fresco cycle in Assisi's Upper Basilica of Saint Francis7 and a recast version of Henri d'Avranches's Versified Life bear witness to this.8 Still, fascination with their founder impelled his brothers to "go beyond" this compelling portrait mandated by the General Chapter of 1260 and made official six years later in the General Chapter of 1266.9 Several were interested in supplementing the information it conveyed about Francis. Shortly after Bonaventure's death, Jerome of Ascoli, his successor as General Minister, added details to the Major Legend,10 and, in a request reminiscent of that of Crescentius of lesi,11 requested the brothers in 1276 to send him information about the deeds of Francis and his companions.12 The immediate result of that request is not known, for in 1288, Jerome became Pope Nicholas IV. In his Book of The Praises of Blessed Francis, Bernard of Besse, Bonaventure's secretary and traveling companion, added new details about Francis's companions that were not found in the earlier literature.13
But by the end of the thirteenth century, tensions within the Lesser Brothers prompted an exchange of stories that accentuated the prophetic dimensions of Bonaventure's portrait of Francis – the saint's vehement defense of poverty, his outspoken, fearless call to Gospel truth, and his troubled predictions of trials.14 Bonaventure's theology of history later found a voice in the writings of his student, Peter of John Olivi (1248-1298),15 who, in turn, influenced Ubertino da Casale (+ c. 1325) and Angelo Clareno (+1337). The fourteenth century compilations in this third volume of Francis of Assisi: Early Documents reflect the Parisian-based theology of history in down-to-earth, easily comprehended stories. In the wake of Jerome of Ascoli's request for new information about Saint Francis and his companions, the phenomenon of these new compilations satisfied the brothers' eagerness to supplement Bonaventure's portrait and, at the same time, to promote their particular views of his Gospel way of life.
The crises of fourteenth century Europe
Within Franciscan literature, considerations of the years encompassed by these compilations generally focus on the internal problems of the Order of Lesser Brothers.16 The larger dramas of fourteenth century Europe are generally overlooked, yet the prophetic consciousness of the Lesser Brothers might best be understood in the larger context of the world in which those internal conflicts were unfolding. Three chains of events were symptomatic of the undercurrents moving fourteenth century European history: the Avignon Papacy (1308-73), the Great Famine (1315-17), and the Black Death (1347-50). These situations were symptomatic of a time of profound crises in church and society in which the espoused values of the Lesser Brothers were tried.17
For men bound by their Rule to promise obedience to the Roman Pontiff, the tumultuous events leading to the Avignon Papacy clearly indicated the apocalyptic crises foreshadowed by the writings of Bonaventure were upon them.18 The papacy had been increasing in both power and moral prestige
- Duncan Nimmo notes the effect of the decision of the 1266 Chapter of Paris to favor Bonaventure's Major Legend of Saint Francis by pointing out: "the Franciscan editors knew of 179 manuscripts of Bonaventure's life; they knew less than a score for Celano's first biography, The Life of Saint Francis, most of which had belonged apparently to the Cistercians, not to the brothers at all; and for his Second Life the number of complete copies known at present is two." Cf. Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order: From Saint Francis to the Foundation of the Capuchins. Bibliotecha Seraphico-Capuccina 33 (Rome: Capuchin Historical Institute, 4 1987), 73-4.
- Cf. Gerhard Ruf, San Francesco e San Bonaventura: Un Interpretazione Stofico-salvifica degli Affreschi delta Navata nella Chiesa Superiore di San Francesco in Assisi alla Luce delta Teologia di San Bonaventura (Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana, 1974); William Cook, Images of Saint Francis of Assisi in Painting, Stone, and Glass: From the Earliest Images to c. 1320 in Italy. A Catalogue. (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 199). Richard Emmerson and Ronald Herzman, The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).
- Cf. infra 78-105.
- Cf. FA:ED II 500-5.
- Cf. FA:ED II 548.
- Cf. FA:ED II 61ff.
- Cf. infra 25.
- Infra 31-74.
- Cf. infra 114-137.
- The earliest Latin sources refer to him as Petrus Johannis Olivi. Apparently his father was John Olivi; thus making him Peter of John Olivi, or, in French, Pierre Déjean Olieu.
- Cf. Nimmo, Reform, 1-429; John R.H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order—From Its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford at The Clarendon Press, 1968), 177-368; Lazaro Iriarte, Franciscan History: The Three Orders of St. Francis of Assisi, translated by Patricia Ross, with introduction by Lawrence C. Landidi (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982), 51-83; Gratien Baden of Paris, Histoire de la Fondation e de I'Evolution de I'Ordre des Freres Minuers au X111e Siecle (Paris: Societè de Libraire S. François d'Assise, 1928), 321-509; Raphael M. Huber, A Documented History of the Franciscan Order (Milwaukee, Washington, D.C.: The Nowing Publishing Apostolate, Inc., 1944), 167-253; Heribert Holzapel, The History of the Franciscan Order (Teutopolis: St. Joseph Seminary, 1948), 35-70. Of these works, only Nimmo provides an understanding of the majority of the texts in FA:ED III in a historcal context.
- For an overview of these crises see The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages, Vol. III: 1250-1520, ed. Robert Fossier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1-191. For an evocative description see Barbara Tuchmann, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Knopf, 1978).
- For a thorough understanding of this period, cf. Robert Brentano, Rome Before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth Century Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).