variable rule. When he reaches the account of the stigmata he
devotes long pages to it,[79] relates a sort of consultation held by
St. Francis as to whether he could conceal them, and adds several
miracles due to these sacred wounds; further on he returns to the
subject to show a certain Girolamo, Knight of Assisi, desiring to touch
with his hands the miraculous nails.[81] On the other hand, he uses a
significant discretion wherever the companions of the Saint are in
question. He names only three of the first eleven disciples,[82] and
no more mentions Brothers Leo, Angelo, Rufino, Masseo, than their
adversary, Brother Elias.

As to the incidents which we find for the first time in this collection,
they hardly make us regret the unknown sources which must have been at
the service of the famous Doctor; it would appear that the healing of
Morico, restored to health by a few pellets of bread soaked in the oil
of the lamp which burned before the altar of the Virgin,[83] has little
more importance for the life of St. Francis than the story of the sheep
given to Giacomina di Settesoli which awakened its mistress to summon
her to go to mass.[84] What shall we think of that other sheep, of
Portiuncula, which hastened to the choir whenever it heard the psalmody
of the friars, and kneeled devoutly for the elevation of the Holy
Sacrament?[85]

All these incidents, the list of which might be enlarged,[86] betrays
the working-over of the legend. St. Francis becomes a great
thaumaturgist, but his physiognomy loses its originality.

The greatest fault of this work is, in fact, the vagueness of the figure
of the Saint. While in Celano there are the large lines of a
soul-history, a sketch of the affecting drama of a man who attains to
the conquest of himself, with Bonaventura all this interior action
disappears before divine interventions; his heart is, so to speak, the
geometrical locality of a certain number of visitants; he is a passive
instrument in the hands of God, and we really cannot see why he should
have been chosen rather than another.

And yet Bonaventura was an Italian; he had seen Umbria; he must have
knelt and celebrated the sacred mysteries in Portiuncula, that cradle of
the noblest of religious reformations; he had conversed with Brother
Egidio, and must have heard from his lips an echo of the first
Franciscan fervor; but, alas! nothing of that rapture passed into his
book, and if the truth must be told, I find it qu