V. Fragments of the Suppressed Part of the Legend of the Three Companions
We may now take a step forward and try to group the fragments of the Legend of the Three Companions, or of Brother Leo, which are to be found in later writings.
We must here be more than ever on our guard against absolute theories; one of the most fruitful principles of historic criticism is to prefer contemporary documents, or at least those which are nearest them; but even with these it is necessary to use a little discretion.
It seems impossible to attack the reasoning of the Bollandists, who refuse to know anything of legends written after that of St. Bonaventura (1260), under pretext that, coming after several other authorized biographies, he was better situated than anyone for getting information and completing the work of his predecessors.[44] In reality this is absurd, for it assumes that Bonaventura undertook to write as a historian. This is to forget that he wrote not only for the purpose of edification, but also as minister-general of the Minor Brothers. From this fact his first duty was to keep silent on many facts, and those not the least interesting. What shall we say of a biography where Francis's Will is not even mentioned?
It is easy to turn away from a writing of the fourteenth century, on the ground that the author did not see what was going on a hundred years before; still we must not forget that many books of the end of the Middle Ages resemble those old mansions at which four or five generators have toiled. An inscription on their front often only shows the touch of the last restorer or the last destroyer, and the names which are set forth with the greatest complacency are not always those of the real workmen.
Such have been many Franciscan books; to attribute them to any one author would be impracticable; very different hands have worked upon them, and such an amalgam has its own charm and interest.
Turning them over—I had almost said associating with them—we come to see clearly into this tangled web, for every work of man bears the trace of the hand that made it: this trace may perhaps be of an almost imperceptible delicacy; it exists none the less, ready to reveal itself to practised eyes. What is more impersonal than the photograph of a landscape or of a painting, and yet among several hundreds of proofs the amateur will go straight to the work of the operator he prefers.
These reflections were suggested by the careful study of a curious book printed many times since the sixteenth century, the Speculum Vitæ S. Francisci et sociorum ejus.[45] A complete study of this work, its sources, its printed editions, the numerous differences in the manuscripts, would by itself require a volume and an epitome of the history of the Order. I can give here only a few notes, taking for base the oldest edition, that of 1504.
The confusion which reigns here is frightful. Incidents in the life of Francis and his companions are brought together with no plan; several of them are repeated after the interval of a few pages in a quite different manner;[46] certain chapters are so awkwardly introduced that the compiler has forgotten to remove the number that they bore in the work from which he borrowed them;[47] finally, to our great surprise, we find several Incipit.[48]
However, with a little perseverance we soon perceive a few openings in the labyrinth. In the first place, here are several chapters of the legend of Bonaventura which seem to have been put in the van as if to protect the rest of the book. If we abstract them and the whole series of chapters from the Fioretti, we shall have diminished the work by nearly three-quarters.