n, this chronicle is of quite
secondary value in all that concerns the life of St. Francis. Its
author, born October 9, 1221, entered the Order in 1238, and wrote his
memoirs in 1282-1287; it is therefore especially for the middle years of
the thirteenth century that his importance is capital. Notwithstanding
this, it is surprising how small a place the radiant figure of the
master holds in these long pages, and this very fact shows, better than
long arguments could do, how profound was the fall of the Franciscan
idea.

IV. THE CHRONICLE OF THE TRIBULATIONS BY ANGELO CARENO[10]

This chronicle was written about 1330; we might therefore be surprised
to see it appear among the sources to be consulted for the life of St.
Francis, dead more than a century before; but the picture which Clareno
gives us of the early days of the Order gains its importance from the
fact that in sketching it he made constant appeal to eye-witnesses, and
precisely to those whose works have disappeared.

Angelo Clareno, earlier called Pietro da Fossombrone[11] from the name
of his native town, and sometimes da Cingoli, doubtless from the little
convent where he made profession, belonged to the Zelanti of the March
of Ancona as early as 1265. Hunted and persecuted by his adversaries
during his whole life, he died in the odor of sanctity June 15, 1339, in
the little hermitage of Santa Maria d' Aspro in the diocese of Marsico
in Basilicata.

Thanks to published documents, we may now, so to speak, follow day by
day not only the external circumstances of his life, but the inner
workings of his soul. With him we see the true Franciscan live again,
one of those men who, while desiring to remain the obedient son of the
Church, cannot reconcile themselves to permit the domain of the dream to
slip away from them, the ideal which they have hailed. Often they are on
the borders of heresy; in these utterances against bad priests and
unworthy pontiffs there is a bitterness which the sectaries of the
sixteenth century will not exceed.[12] Often, too, they seem to
renounce all authority and make final appeal to the inward witness of
the Holy Spirit;[13] and yet Protestantism would be mistaken in seeking
its ancestors among them. No, they desired to die as they had lived, in
the communion of that Church which was as a stepmother to them and which
they yet loved with that heroic passion which some of the _ci-devant_
nobles brought in '93 to the love of France