HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

292 BERT ROESTand anecdote collections of ‘spiritual’ origin also received vitae oftheir own. 45The various catalogues of Franciscan saints written in the laterMiddle Ages make mention of several hundreds of Franciscan sanctior beati. The fourteenth-century Umbrian Catalogus sanctorum fratrumminorum (ca. 1335), which also stands on the borderline between orderhistory and hagiography, makes mention of at least 200 brethren. 46If we forego for the moment the large order histories that also incorporatemany saints’ lives, such as the Chronica XXIV generalium, themost notorious saints’ catalogue and programmatic work of Franciscanorder hagiography is the vast and influential De conformitate beatiFrancisci ad vitam Domini Iesu of Bartholomew of Pisa (1390). 47 It isfirst of all a lengthy biography of Francis, fleshing out the by thenclassic theme of conformity between the lives of Francis and Christ.In addition, it describes at length the sanctity of the order and itsnotable members. Hence, it is also a lengthy order chronicle and acatalogue of (more than three hundred) holy friars, Poor Clares, tertiaries,Franciscan philosophers, theologians, order superiors, andorder provinces. 48 Comparable numbers of Franciscan saints are mentionedin the early fifteenth century catalogue of Frederick of Amberg(†1432) 49 and in the Compendium chronicarum (1521) written by theobservant Franciscan Mariano of Florence (†1523), to which we willreturn. 50Unlike Francis, the figure of Dominic initially did not become thefocus of conflicting religious ideals from within the order of FriarsPreachers, at least not in such a marked way. Dominic had beenmore careful in establishing an institutional setting than Francis. Bythe time of Francis’s death, there were fierce discussions about the45See for an initial overview Roest (1996), 81–82.46Catalogus sanctorum fratrum minorum (ca. 1335), ed. L. Lemmens, Fragmenta Minora(Rome, 1903). From roughly the same period dates the Memorabilia de Sanctis FratribusMinoribus, ed. M. Faloci Pulignani, in Miscellanea Franciscana 15 (1914), 65–69. Seealso Paciocco (1990), 92–103.47Edited in Analecta Franciscana 4 and 5 (Quaracchi, 1906–12).48The compiler made an eclectic use of a wide range of spiritual and non-spiritualhagiographical and historiographical sources. The book had a wide circulationinside the order during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It becamesubject to harsh criticism and ridicule by sixteenth-century protestants; see Goyau(1926), 90–147; Campagnola (1974), 59 ff.; Erickson (1972), 253–74.49Delorme (1911), 544 ff.50Wyngaert (1921), 3–35. For more information on these various catalogues seePaciocco (1989).