or a
long time before his death our Brother and Father appeared as crucified,
having in his body five wounds which are truly the stigmata of Christ,
for his hands and his feet bore marks as of nails without and within,
forming a sort of scars; while at the side he was as if pierced with a
lance, and often a little blood oozed from it."

2. Brother Leo. We find that it is the very adversary of Elias who is
the natural witness, not only of the stigmata, but of the circumstances
of their imprinting. This fact adds a peculiar value to his account.

We learned above (Critical Study, p. 377) the untoward fate of a part of
the Legend of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. The chapters with which
it now closes (68-73) and in which the narrative of the miracle occurs,
were not originally a part of it. They are a summary added at a later
time to complete this document. This appendix, therefore, has no
historic value, and we neither depend on it with the ecclesiastical
authors to affirm the miracle, nor with M. Hase to call it in question.

Happily the testimony of Brother Leo has come down to us in spite of
that. We are not left even to seek for it in the Speculum, the Fioretti,
the Conformities, where fragments of his work are to be found; we find
it in several other documents of incontestable authority.

The authenticity of the autograph of St. Francis preserved at Assisi
appears to be thoroughly established (see Critical Study, p. 357); it
contains the following note by Brother Leo's hand: "The Blessed Francis
two years before his death kept on the Verna in honor of the B. V. Mary
mother of God, and St. Michael Archangel, a Lent from the festival of
the Assumption of the B. V. M. to the festival of St. Michael in
September, and the hand of God was upon him by the vision and the
address of the seraph and the impression of the stigmata upon his body.
He made the laudes that are on the other side, ... etc."

Again, Eccleston (13) shows us Brother Leo complaining to Brother Peter
of Tewkesbury, minister in England, that the legend is too brief
concerning the events on the Verna, and relating to him the greater
number of the incidents which form the nucleus of the Fioretti on the
stigmata. These memorials are all the more certain that they were
immediately committed to writing by Peter of Tewkesbury's companion,
Brother Garin von Sedenfeld.

Finally Salembeni, in his chronicle (ad ann. 1224) in speaking of
Ezzelino da Romano is