f 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