Finally there are many of these extracts from the Legenda Antiqua of which we find no source in any of the documents already discussed.[52] This would suffice to show that the two are not to be confounded. It has absorbed them and brought about certain changes while completing them with others.[53]
The study of the fragments which Bartolommeo has preserved to us shows immediately that this collection belonged to the party of the Zealots of Poverty; we might be tempted to see in it the work of Brother Leo.
Most fortunately there is a passage where Bartolommeo di Pisa cites as being by Conrad di Offida a fragment which he had already cited before as borrowed from the Legenda Antiqua.[54] I would not exaggerate the value of an isolated instance, but it seems an altogether plausible hypothesis to make Conrad di Offida the author of this compilation. All that we know of him, of his tendencies, his struggle for the strict observance, accords with what the known fragments of the Legenda Antiqua permit us to infer as to its author.[55]
However this may be, it appears that in this collection the stories have been given us (the principal source being the Legend of Brother Leo or the Three Companions before its mutilation) in a much less abridged form than in the Second Life of Celano. This work is hardly more than a second edition of that of Brother Leo, here and there completed with a few new incidents, and especially with exhortations to perseverance addressed to the persecuted Zealots.[56]
VIII. Chronicle of Glassberger[57]
Evidently this work, written about 1508, cannot be classed among the sources properly so called; but it presents in a convenient form the general history of the Order, and thanks to its citations permits us to verify certain passages in the primitive legends of which Glassberger had the MS. before his eyes. It is thus in particular with the chronicle of Brother Giordano di Giano, which he has inserted almost bodily in his own work.
IX. Chronicle of Mark of Lisbon[58]
This work is of the same character as that of Glassberger; it can only be used by way of addition. There is, however, a series of facts in which it has a special value; it is when the Franciscan missions in Spain or Morocco are in question. The author had documents on this subject which did not reach the friars in distant countries.
FOOTNOTES
[1.] Chronica fratris Jordani a Giano. The text was published for the first time in 1870 by Dr. G. Voigt under the title: "Die Denkwürdigkeiten des Minoriten Jordanus von Giano in the Abhandlungen der philolog. histor. Cl. der Königl. sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften," pp. 421-545, Leipsic, by Hirzel, 1870. Only one manuscript is known; it is in the royal library at Berlin (Manuscript. theolog. lat., 4to, n. 196, sæc. xiv., foliorum 141). It has served as the base of the second edition: Analecta franciscana sive Chronica aliaque documenta ad historiam minorum spectantia. Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi) ex typographia collegii S. Bonaventuræ, 1885, t. i., pp. 1-19. Except where otherwise noted, I cite entirely this edition, in which is preserved the division into sixty-three paragraphs introduced by Dr. Voigt.