Writings

Francis wrote little: two rules, a few letters, admonitions, prayers and praises. The pieces cited in this wiki are the Testament and the Canticle of the Sun. In the Testament he looks back on his conversion among the lepers, on the first brothers and on the pope’s confirmation of their way of life, and he lays commands on the order for the future. He calls it “a remembrance, a warning, and an exhortation”, not another rule. The Canticle, written in the Italian of Umbria, is headed in the Assisi manuscript as the praises he made while he lay ill at San Damiano.

Robinson translated from the Latin edition published by the Franciscans of Quaracchi in 1904 and, for the Canticle, from Assisi manuscript 338. His introductions and notes are those of a Franciscan scholar of 1906. The Rule of 1223 is in the same volume and has its own record, the Rule of the Friars Minor (Regula bullata).