St Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis : Prologue : 4 (conclusion)

St Francis receives the Christ Child from Mary.
 by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1617). 
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. Public domain.

    The following posts present The Life of St Francis (1181-1226) written by St Bonaventure (1221-1274) who joined the Franciscan Order in 1243. Confirmed as seventh Minister General of the Franciscans in 1257, he later wrote this life of St Francis (Legenda Major Sancti Francisci, c1260-63).

     I offer this annotated presentation of St Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis firstly as a small gift to our gentle Queen and Mother in gratitude for her many graces and favours, at the same time praying she will continue to provide help and protection for the author and his family; and secondly, to honour and thank St Francis whose name I received at my Confirmation in 1961 when I was seven.

This presentation of St Bonaventure’s Life of St Francis is based on E. Gurney Slater’s English translation published in 1904, to which I have added Scriptural excerpts and occasional comments in footnotes after each section.

Prologue

- 4 -

View of Assisi in the time of St Francis, by Providoni. From the volume
“Collis Paradisi Amœnitas” - (the Loveliness of the Hill of Paradise) - a
History of the Sacred Convent of Assisi (1704). Public domain.

1. Accordingly, in order that the true story of his life might be handed down unto posterity by me the more assuredly and clearly, I betook me unto the place of his birth[1], and there did hold diligent converse with his familiar friends that were yet living, touching the manner of life of the holy man and his passing away; 

2. and with those in especial that were well acquainted with his holiness, and were his chief followers, who may be implicitly believed by reason of their well-known truthfulness and approved uprightness. 

3. But in relating the things that through His servant God vouchsafed to work, I deemed it best to shun all fantastic ornaments of style, forasmuch as that the devotion of the reader increaseth more by a simple than by an ornate speech. 

4. Nor have I always woven together the history according unto chronology[2], so that I might avoid confusion; but rather I endeavoured to preserve a more coherent order, setting down sometimes facts of different kinds that belong unto the same period, sometimes facts of the same kind that belong unto different periods, as they seemed best to fit in together.

Footnotes

[1] Francis was born in Assisi in 1181. He was baptized Giovanni (de Pietro di Bernardone) but called Francesco by his father.

[2] For a chronological timeline life of St Francis,see sites such as: “Chronology of the Life of St. Francis” and  “Franciscan Preacher.”

[Next post: St Bonaventure’s full Table of Contents]

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The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me shall not sin. They that explain me shall have lifeeverlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.30-31.