Begun in a misapprehension it ends by imposing itself upon the Church, which to-day guarantees it with its infallible authority, and yet in its origin it was a veritable cry of revolt against the decisions of Rome.
FOOTNOTES
[1.] The text was published in 1620 by Spœlberch (in his Speculum vitæ B. Francisci, Antwerp, 2 vols., 12mo, ii., pp. 103-106), after the copy addressed to Brother Gregory, minister in France, and then preserved in the convent of the Recollects in Valenciennes. It was reproduced by Wadding (Ann. 1226, no. 44) and the Bollandists (pp. 668 and 669).
So late an appearance of a capital document might have left room for doubts; there is no longer reason for any, since the publication of the chronicle of Giordano di Giano, who relates the sending of this letter (Giord., 50). The Abbé Amoni has also published this text (at the close of his Legenda trium Sociorum, Rome, 1880, pp. 105-109), but according to his deplorable habit, he neglects to tell whence he has drawn it. This is the more to be regretted since he gives a variant of the first order: Nam diu ante mortem instead of Non diu, as Spœlberch's text has it. The reading Nam diu appears preferable from a philological point of view.
[2.] Engraved in Saint François d'Assise, Paris, 4to, 1885, p. 277.
[3.] Bibliotheca Patrum. Lyons, 1677, xxv., adv. Albigenses, lib. ii., cap. 11., cf. iii., 14 and 15. Reproduced in the A. SS., p. 652.
[4.] The curious may consult the following sources: Salimbeni, ann. 1250—Conform., 171b 2, 235a 2; Bon., 200; Wadding, ann. 1228, no. 78; A. SS., p. 800. Manuscript 340 of the Sacro Convento contains (fo. 55b-56b) four of these hymns. Cf. Archiv. i., p. 485.
[5.] See in particular Hase: Franz v. Assisi. Leipsic, 1 vol., 8vo., 1856. The learned professor devotes no less than sixty closely printed pages to the study of the stigmata, 142-202.
[6.] The more I think about it, the more incapable I become of attributing any sort of weight to this argument from the disappearance of the body; for in fact, if there had been any pious fraud on Elias's part, he would on the contrary have displayed the corpse.
[7.] See, for example, 2 Cel., 3, 86, as well as the encyclical of Giovanni di Parma and Umberto di Romano, in 1225.