h a purpose that never knew
hesitation, and a will whose firmness made itself everywhere felt, he
took his steps to forward this double aim. On the very morrow of his
nomination he sketched the programme of reforms against the Liberal
party, and at the same time secured the summons of the Joachimite
Brothers before an ecclesiastical tribunal at Citta-della-Pieve. This
tribunal condemned them to perpetual imprisonment, and it needed the
personal intervention of Cardinal Ottobonus, the future Adrian V., for
Giovanni di Parma to be left free to retire to the Convent of Greccio.

The first chapter held under the presidence of Bonaventura, in the
extended decisions of which we find everywhere tokens of his influence,
assembled at Narbonne in 1260. He was then commissioned to compose a new
life of St. Francis.[77]

We easily understand the anxieties to which this decision of the
Brothers was an answer. The number of legends had greatly increased, for
besides those which we have first studied or noted there were others in
existence which have completely disappeared, and it had become equally
difficult for the Brothers who went forth on missions either to make a
choice between them or to carry them all.

The course of the new historian was therefore clearly marked out: he
must do the work of compiler and peacemaker. He failed in neither. His
book is a true sheaf, or rather it is a millstone under which the
indefatigable author has pressed, somewhat at hazard, the sheaves of his
predecessors. Most of the time he inserts them just as they are,
confining himself to the work of harvesting them and weeding out the
tares.

Therefore, when we reach the end of this voluminous work we have a very
vague impression of St. Francis. We see that he was a saint, a very
great saint, since he performed an innumerable quantity of miracles,
great and small; but we feel very much as if we had been going through a
shop of objects of piety. All these statues, whether they are called St.
Anthony the Abbot, St. Dominic, St. Theresa, or St. Vincent de Paul,
have the same expression of mincing humility, of a somewhat shallow
ecstasy. These are saints, if you please, miracle-workers; they are not
men; he who made them made them by rule, by process; he has put nothing
of his heart in these ever-bowed foreheads, these lips with their wan
smile.

God forbid that I should say or think that St. Bonaventura was not
worthy to write a life of St. Francis,