VII. The Conformities of Bartolommeo of Pisa37

The Book of the Conformities, to which Brother Bartolommeo of Pisa devoted more than fifteen years of his life,38 appears to have been read very inattentively by most of the authors who have spoken of it.39 In justice to them we must add that it would be hard to find a work more difficult to read; the same facts reappear from ten to fifteen times, and end by wearying the least delicate nerves.

It is to this no doubt that we must attribute the neglect to which it has been left. I do not hesitate, however, to see in it the most important work which has been made on the life of St. Francis. Of course the author does not undertake historical criticism as we understand it to-day, but if we must not expect to find him a historian, we can boldly place him in the front rank of compilers.40

If the Bollandists had more thoroughly studied him they would have seen more clearly into the difficult question of the sources, and the authors who have come after them would have been spared numberless errors and interminable researches.

Starting with the thought that Francis's life had been a perfect imitation of that of Jesus, Bartolommeo attempted to collect, without losing a single one, all the instances of the life of the Poverello scattered through the diverse legends still known at that time.

He regretted that Bonaventura, while borrowing the narratives of his predecessors, had often abridged them,41 and himself desired to preserve them in their original bloom. Better situated than any one for such a work, since he had at his disposal the archives of the Sacro Convento of Assisi, it may be said that he has omitted nothing of importance and that he has brought into his work considerable pieces from nearly all the legends which appeared in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; they are there only in fragments, it is true, but with perfect accuracy.42

When his researches were unsuccessful he avows it simply, without attempting to fill out the written testimonies with his own conjectures.43 He goes farther, and submits the documents he has before him to a real testing, laying aside those he considers uncertain.44 Finally he takes pains to point out the passages in which his only authority is oral testimony.45

As he is almost continually citing the legends of Celano, the Three Companions, and Bonaventura, and as the citations prove on verification to be literally accurate, as well as those of the Will, the divers Rules, or the pontifical bulls, it seems natural to conclude that he was equally accurate with the citations which we cannot verify, and in which we find long extracts from works that have disappeared.46

The citations which he makes from Celano present no difficulty; they are all accurate, corresponding sometimes with the First sometimes with the Second Legend.47

Those from the Legend of the Three Companions are accurate, but it appears that Bartolommeo drew them from a text somewhat different from that which we have.48

With the citations from the Legenda Antiqua the question is complicated and becomes a nice one. Was there a work of this name? Certain authors, and among them the Bollandist Suysken, seem to incline toward the negative, and believe that to cite the Legenda Antiqua is about the same as to refer vaguely to tradition. Others among contemporaries have thought that after the approbation and definitive adoption of Bonaventura's Legenda Major by the Order the Legends anterior to that, and especially that of Celano, were called Legenda Antiqua. The Conformities permit us to look a little closer into the question. We find, in fact, passages from the Legenda Antiqua which reproduce Celano's First Life.49 Others present points of contact with the Second, sometimes a literary exactitude,50 but often these are the same stories told in too different a way for us to consider them borrowed.51

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