fer to it in the _Legenda Antiqua_. It seems, then, that
this collection also was silent as to this celebrated pardon.

[57] Published with extreme care by the Franciscan Fathers of
the Observance in t. ii. of the _Analecta Franciscana, ad Clarae
Aquas_ (Quaracchi, near Florence), 1888, 1 vol., crown 8vo, of
xxxvi.-612 pp. This edition, as much from the critical point of
view of the text, its correctness, its various readings and
notes, as from the material point of view, is perfect and makes
the more desirable a publication of the chronicles of the xxiv.
generals and of Salimbeni by the same editors. The beginning up
to the year 1262 has been published already by Dr. Karl Evers
under the title _Analecta ad Fratrum Minorum historiam_,
Leipsic, 1882, 4to of 89 pp.

[58] I have been able only to procure the Italian edition
published by Horatio Diola under the title _Croniche degli
Ordini instituti dal P. S. Francesco_, 3 vols., 8vo, Venice,
1606.

* * * * *

V

CHRONICLES OUTSIDE OF THE ORDER

I. JACQUES DE VITRY

The following documents, which we can only briefly indicate, are of
inestimable value; they emanate from men particularly well situated to
give us the impression which the Umbrian prophet produced on his
generation.

Jacques de Vitry[1] has left extended writings on St. Francis. Like a
prudent man who has already seen many religious madmen, he is at first
reserved; but soon this sentiment disappears, and we find in him only a
humble and active admiration for the _Apostolic Man_.

He speaks of him in a letter which he wrote immediately after the taking
of Damietta (November, 1219), to his friends in Lorraine, to describe it
to them.[2] A few lines suffice to describe St. Francis and point out
his irresistible influence. There is not a single passage in the
Franciscan biographers which gives a more living idea of the apostolate
of the Poverello.

He returns to him more at length in his _Historia Occidentalis_,
devoting to him the thirty-second chapter of this curious work.[3]
These pages, vibrating with enthusiasm, were written during Francis's
lifetime,[4] at the time when the most enlightened members of the
Church, who had believed themselves to be living in the evening of the
world, _in vespere mundi tendentis ad occasum_, suddenly saw in the
direction of Umb