IV
CHRONICLERS OF THE ORDER
I. Chronicle of Brother Giordano di Giano[1]
Born at Giano, in Umbria, in the mountainous district which closes the southern horizon of Assisi, Brother Giordano was in 1221 one of the twenty-six friars who, under the conduct of Cæsar of Speyer, set out for Germany. He seems to have remained attached to this province until his death, even when most of the friars, especially those who held cures, had been transferred, often to a distance of several months' journey, from one end of Europe to the other. It is not, then, surprising that he was often prayed to commit his memories to writing. He dictated them to Brother Baldwin of Brandenburg in the spring of 1262. He must have done it with joy, having long before prepared himself for the task. He relates with artless simplicity how in 1221, at the chapter-general of Portiuncula, he went from group to group questioning as to their names and country the Brothers who were going to set out on distant missions, that he might be able to say later, especially if they came to suffer martyrdom: "I knew them myself!"[2]
His chronicle bears the imprint of this tendency. What he desires to describe is the introduction of the Order into Germany and its early developments there, and he does it by enumerating, with a complacency which has its own coquetry, the names of a multitude of friars[3] and by carefully dating the events. These details, tedious for the ordinary reader, are precious to the historian; he sees there the diverse conditions from which the friars were recruited, and the rapidity with which a handful of missionaries thrown into an unknown country were able to branch out, found new stations, and in five years cover with a network of monasteries, the Tyrol, Saxony, Bavaria, Alsace, and the neighboring provinces.
It is needless to say that it is worth while to test Giordano's chronology, for he begins by praying the reader to forgive the errors which may have escaped him on this head; but a man who thus marks in his memory what he desires later to tell or to write is not an ordinary witness.
Reading his chronicle, it seems as if we were listening to the recollections of an old soldier, who grasps certain worthless details and presents them with an extraordinary power of relief, who knows not how to resist the temptation to bring himself forward, at the risk sometimes of slightly embellishing the dry reality.[4]
In fact this chronicle swarms with anecdotes somewhat personal, but very artless and welcome, and which on the whole carry in themselves the testimony to their authenticity. The perfume of the Fioretti already exhales from these pages so full of candor and manliness; we can follow the missionaries stage by stage, then when they are settled, open the door of the monastery and read in the very hearts of these men, many of whom are as brave as heroes and harmless as doves.
It is true that this chronicle deals especially with Germany, but the first chapters have an importance for Francis's history that exceeds even that of the biographers. Thanks to Giordano of Giano, we are from this time forward informed upon the crises which the institute of Francis passed through after 1219; he furnishes us the solidly historical base which seems to be lacking in the documents emanating from the Spirituals, and corroborates their testimony.