Little Flowers of St. Francis

The Little Flowers of St. Francis (Italian Fioretti di San Francesco) is a florilegium (excerpts of his body of work), divided into 53 short chapters, on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi that was composed at the end of the 14th century. The anonymous Italian text, almost certainly by a Tuscan author, is a version of the Latin Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, of which the earliest extant manuscript is one of 1390 AD. Luke Wadding ascribes the text to Fra. Ugolino da Santa Maria, whose name occurs three times in the Actus. Most scholars are now agreed that the author was Ugolino Brunforte (c. 1262 – c. 1348).

Little Flowers of Francis of Assisi is the name given to the classic collection of popular legends about the life of St. Francis of Assisi and his early companions. The collection, one of the most delightful literary works of the Middle Ages, was translated into Italian by an unknown fourteenth-century friar from a larger Latin work, the "Actus B. Francisci et Sociorum Ejus', attributed to Ugolino Brunforte. Or rather the fifty-three chapters which form the true text of the Fioretti were, for the four appendixes, on the Stigmata of St. Francis, the life of Fra Ginepro, and the life and the sayings of the Fra Egidio, are additions of later compilers.

A striking difference is noticeable between the earlier chapters of the "Fioretti", which refer to St. Francis and his companions, and the later ones which deal with the friars in the province of the March of Ancona. The first half of the collection reflects traditions that go back to the early days of the order; the other is believed to be substantially the work of Fra Ugolino da Monte Giorgio of the noble family of Brunforte.

Living as he did a century after the death of St. Francis, Ugolino was dependent on hearsay for much of his information; part of it he is said to have learned from Fra Giacomo da Massa who had been well known and esteemed by the companions of the saint. Whatever may have been the sources from which Ugolino derived his materials, the fifty-three chapters which constitute the Latin work in question seem to have been written before 1328.

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