"Legende Doree, ou Sommaire de l'Histoire des Freres-mendians de
l'ordre de Saint Francois. (Par Nic. Vignier.) Amsterdam, 1734. 12mo.
Reimpr. sur l'ed. de Leyde, 1608 in 8vo."
Thomas of Celano, the friend and scholar of St. Francis, and the author of
the famous _Dies Irae_, after the saint's death composed a brief account of
his life, which he afterwards greatly enlarged, and which even now is the
most authentic we possess. I should be glad to know the best, as well as
the latest editions of this life.
"Francis," said Luther, "was no doubt an honest and just man. He little
thought that such superstition and unbelief should proceed out of his
life."--_Tischreden._
Berington says of St. Francis:
"In an age of less intemperance in religion, miracles and the fancied
intervention of peculiar favours from heaven, would not have been
deemed necessary to stamp worth and admiration on a character which in
itself possessed the purest excellences that fall to the lot of man.
But this circumstance, and more than this, the reception which an
institute so peculiarly framed met with, serve to manifest the singular
taste of the age."--_Berington's Henry II._, p. 629.
"It is scarcely possible," says Mr. Massingberd, "to read the history of
St. Francis of Assisi, without believing that there was in him a sincere
and self-devoted, however ill-directed, piety." We must not let the foolish
legends afterwards written of him lower him in our estimation, nor cease to
regard him as a sincere and devoted Christian.