The Lady Poverty: A XIII. Century Allegory

“Sacrum Commercium Beati Francisci cum Domina Paupertate”
Giotto.
The Espousals of S t . Francis to the Lady Poverty.
The frontispiece of this volume is reproduced by permission from a photograph by Messrs Alinari of Florence.
THE LADY POVERTY
A XIII. CENTURY ALLEGORY TRANSLATED & EDITED BY MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL
WITH A CHAPTER ON THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF EVANGELICAL POVERTY BY FATHER CUTHBERT O. S. F. G.
London John Murray, Albemarle Street 1901
The “Sacrum Commercium” is an Allegory, simple in form and charming in conception, telling how St Francis wooed and won that most difficult of all Brides, my Lady Poverty. It was written some time in the thirteenth century (most probably in the year 1227) by an unknown Franciscan, and has been six times printed, thrice in Latin, and thrice in Italian.
♦The Latin Editions.♦ The first Latin edition was printed at Milan in 1539. It is of exceeding rarity, and has escaped the vigilance of Brunet and Græsse. Père François Van Ortroy, the noted Bollandist (whom few things escape), was the first to call attention to a copy in the Ambrosian Library, and it is the only copy known to exist. (See “Analecta Bollandiana,” xix. 460.)
The next Italian edition (1900) is the one given in parallel columns with the Latin version of Père Edouard d’Alençon’s work above quoted. It is taken from Codex B. 131 in the Vallicellian Library, and is probably a Fourteenth-Century work, but, if interesting, it has little or no merit as an example of fine Tuscan.
Père Edouard d’Alençon, with much ingenuity, seeks to credit Giovanni Parenti, St Francis’ immediate successor as Minister General (1227-1233), with the authorship. He gives an instance tending to show that there was a tradition that a Minister General had written the work, and then he points to the similarity between “Joannes Parenti” and “Joannes Parmensis.” All this proves his acumen and ingenuity, but he is too severely scientific a scholar to advance a clever theory as proof positive. For the present it is safest to admit frankly that the author of the “Sacrum Commercium” is unknown, and to conclude with Fra Ubertino da Casale that he was “quidam sanctus doctor hujus Sanctæ Paupertatis professor et zelator strenuus.”