I - Introduction: The Narrative Sources for the History of Elias

Summary

FRANCISCAN HISTORY AND THE SPIRITUAL TRADITION

EVER since Sabatier published his delightful and profound biography of St Francis, the lives and fortunes of the saint and his followers have been a favourite study of historians, and both Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars have contributed in no small measure to our knowledge of them. The main sources have been critically edited; many problems connected with them have been satisfactorily elucidated; and the results of detailed investigations have been fitted together to form a general picture of the Order's development. Like all students of Franciscan origins, I owe a great debt to previous scholars who have prepared the field so thoroughly and smoothed away so many of die difficulties. But the possibilities of the subject have not been exhausted. The justification for my book is that parts of the story, especially the early part, down to 1239, are in need of considerable reinterpretation; while some of the documents, especially for the years immediately after 1239, have never been thoroughly analysed.

The starting-point of my investigations has been the career of brother Elias, which is of crucial importance for the understanding of the early history of the Order, and which has been left too much at the mercy of prejudices and preconceptions. His worldliness and his apostasy, and the conflicts that disrupted the Order not long after his death, combined to turn him into a legendary and sinister figure, removed and isolated from his true context. Within the first decades of its existence the Order had experienced a radical transformation, remarkable alike for its scope, its thoroughness, and the rapidity of its completion.