HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

372 MICHAEL GOODICHoften contained extensive accounts of revelations and visions of thenext world, the infant child, and the battle with demons. 50In the same way, Jordan of Saxony’s Libellus de principiis ordinispraedicatorum, written in 1231/33 and reworked in 1234/35, probablywas intended to support Dominic’s (†1221) canonization. TheDominicans had expressed discontent over the speed with whichFrancis’s case had been handled, while their founder had failed toachieve recognition. The canonization itself led to the publication oflives by Peter Ferrand (1237/42), Constantine of Orvieto (1246/47),and the Dominican Minister-General Humbert of Romans (1254).At the Paris Chapter-General in 1256, Humbert called upon membersto collect edifying material concerning the formative history ofthe Friars Preachers. His request seems to have produced a collectionof anecdotes by Stephan of Bourbon, the Vitae fratrum by Gerardof Fracheto, and the Bonum universale de apibus by Thomas of Cantimpré.A similar request regarding the Augustinian hermits led to the publicationof the Liber vitas fratrum (1357?) by Jordan of Quedlinburg.Because of their early composition, such collections still allowed therecording of first- or second-hand accounts of the early years of theorder. As the Dominican Jordan of Saxony wrote in his prologue:I have conversed with and seen the blessed Dominic not only inside,but also outside the order, and knew him intimately. I even confessedto him, and at his suggestion I became a deacon and four years afterits establishment, undertook the habit of the order. I have decided towrite down from my own memory those things that were shown tome, which I myself saw and heard, and which I partly know throughthe reports of others, concerning the beginnings of the order, andabout the life and miracles of that holy man, concerning our holyfather Dominic and other brethren. 51This insistent claim of reliance on either first- or second-hand knowledgerather than hearsay is a continuing theme in contemporaryhagiography.Beginning in the thirteenth century, the establishment of femalereligious houses and of the new penitential orders, along with theencouragement of lay piety, led to the production of female saint’slives, often in the vernacular. Such literature may have been written50Dinzelbacher (1991).51Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de initiis sancti Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. C. Scheeben,in Monumenta ordinis praedicatorum historica, 16 (Rome, 1935), 36 ff.