Brother Ugolino Boniscambi - The Little Flowers of Saint Francis

The Little Flowers of Saint Francis

2011 First Printing
Copyright 2011 by Jon M. Sweeney
ISBN: 978-1-55725-784-0

All scriptural references used by the editor are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fioretti di San Francesco. English.

The little flowers of Saint Francis / [ascribed to] Brother Ugolino; introduced, annotated, arranged chronologically, and rendered into contemporary English by Jon M. Sweeney.

p. cm. (Paraclete heritage edition)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN 978-1-55725-784-0

1. Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 11821226Legends. I. Ugolino, di Monte Santa Maria. II. Sweeney, Jon M., 1967- III. Title.

BX4700.F63E5 2011

271'.302dc22

2011011005

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts
www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE SPIRITUAL BOOKS ever written, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis was originally penned in the mountains of rural Italy by friends of a deceased saint. Since first committed to paper, these stories of St. Francis have been told in order to inspire. For centuries, people have read The Little Flowers to become better followers of Jesus.

The book was originally written in Latinthe lingua franca of all serious Christian work in those daysand given the title Actus Beati Francisci et Sociorum Eius, which translates as The Deeds of Blessed Francis and His Companions. From that came a translation into Italiana budding vernacular in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuriesas Fioretti di Santo Francesco dAscesi, or The Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi. Today we usually call it simply The Little Flowers.

Many of the stories in The Little Flowers are known to us from other biographical sources written at about the same time. In some cases, the stories here are expanded or made more florid; in other cases, stories here appear for the first time.

Amazingly, this collection wasnt translated and published in English until 1864, more than four centuries after they were first published in Latin and then Italian. Those first decades after it appeared were a time of flowery Victorian and Edwardian writing, and sentimental rhapsodizing on the beauty of The Little Flowers was commonplace in spiritual literature. I have a fondness for this sort of literature because of its earnestness, as when one such writer describes the issue of authorship of these tales with these sentences:

The Fioretti, if you must needs break a butterfly on your dissecting-board, was written, as I judge, by a bare-foot Minorite of forty; compiled, that is, from the wonderings, the pretty adjustments and nave disquisitions of any such weather-worn brown men as you may see to-day toiling up the Calvary to their Convent.

Similar to the rhapsody just quoted, Ive long been convinced that the title of this work stands in the way of its becoming more generally popular today. The Little Flowersthe title given to it by the editors of the first Italian editionreeks with sentiment. It is a title that probably only speaks to the already converted. In English, a metaphorical flower still feels somewhat one-dimensional, but fioretti could just as easily be translated blossoms, a word that connotes more of a sense of becoming. It might also help to explain that fioretti was also common in early Italian to colloquially connote a collectionsomewhat akin to how we might use the adjective bunch, (another botanical word) today. The negative reaction that the metaphor little flowers sometimes inspires made me more than once consider changing the title for the purposes of this new, contemporary English edition of these stories. But that idea was just as quickly discarded; it would be an injustice to so great a classic. Regardless, I recognize how true it is that The Little Flowers is perhaps a title that feels irrelevant to many people today who might otherwise benefit from these examples of basic humanity borne in faithfulness to the vision of Christ.

St. Francis died in 1226, and it was not until a century laterduring the 1320sthat these tales were first collected in a serious fashion. Together, the stories represent the singular vision of Francis of Assisi for his time. Brother Leo, Franciss closest friend, was surely one of their early authors, but he was not their final editor. Leo mostly passed them on orally to the other friars who were anxious to preserve the original vision of the early Franciscan movement.

It was an anonymous Italian translatorworking during the 1370swho added some additional stories about St. Francis receiving the stigmata, and these are included in some editions. But for reasons of space as well as an intention to present only the original collection, those stories are excluded here.

The influential seventeenth-century Irish Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding ascribes the original edition of the Actus to Friar Ugolino of Monte Santa Maria, whose name occurs three times in the work. Still, most scholars who have studied the text have concluded that it is likely the work of many hands. The first modern biographer of St. Francis, Paul Sabatier, declared the Fioretti to be so widely diverse in authorship that it will always remain anonymous. Some of the friars mentioned in the text are probably also among its authors.

The Little Flowers tells the story of St. Francis and his earliest companionsthe men and women of the early Franciscan movement. They are teaching tales, intended to motivate the reader toward holiness. There is never a question as to the sanctity of the subject of these tales; they are not the subject of objective history. They fit historically into the period of writings about Francis that began with St. Bonaventures Major Legend, or Life of St. Francis (finished in 1263), telling the details of Franciss life while explaining the many-faceted ways of his unusual sanctity. For example, it was in Bonaventure that we first heard a story, probably of dubious foundation in actual fact, that a simple Assisan man used to lay down (More on this, below.)

The characters in these stories are the closest of friends, working together as comrades, living together as family. The Italian words frate and fratello are close cousins. Both can mean brother, although frate