that it is not until Wadding--that is to say, until the
seventeenth century--that we find the first and only serious attempt to
collect these precious memorials. Several of them have been lost,[4]
but those which remain are enough to give us in some sort the refutation
of the legends.

In these pages Francis gives himself to his readers, as long ago he gave
himself to his companions; in each one of them a feeling, a cry of the
heart, or an aspiration toward the Invisible is prolonged down to our
own time.

Wadding thought it his duty to give a place in his collection to several
suspicious pieces; more than this, instead of following the oldest
manuscripts that he had before him, he often permitted himself to be led
astray by sixteenth-century writers whose smallest concern was to be
critical and accurate. To avoid the tedious and entirely negative task
to which it would be necessary to proceed if I took him for my
starting-point I shall confine myself to a positive study of this
question.

All the pieces which will be enumerated are found in his collection.
They are sometimes cut up in a singular way; but in proportion as each
document is studied we shall find sufficient indications to enable us
to make the necessary rectifications.

The archives of Sacro Convento of Assisi[5] possess a manuscript whose
importance is not to be overestimated. It has already been many times
studied,[6] and bears the number 338.

It appears, however, that a very important detail of form has been
overlooked. It is this: that No. 338 is not _one_ manuscript, but _a
collection_ of manuscripts of very different periods, which were put
together because they were of very nearly the same size, and have been
foliated in a peculiar manner.

This artificial character of the collection shows that each of the
pieces which compose it needs to be examined by itself, and that it is
impossible to say of it as a whole that it is of the thirteenth or the
fourteenth century.

The part that interests us is perfectly homogeneous, is formed of three
parchment books (fol. 12a-44b) and contains a part of Francis's works.

1. The Rule, definitively approved by Honorius III., November 20,
1223[7] (fol. 12a-16a).

2. St. Francis's Will[8] (fol. 16a-18a).

3. The Admonitions[9] (fol. 18a-23b).

4. The Letter to all Christians[10] (fol. 23b-28a).

5. The letter to all the members of the Order assembled in
Chapter-general[11] (fol. 28a-31a).

6. Coun