Page:Robinson Writings of St Francis Assisi.djvu/118

 Speculum Perfectionis, in which we read that during an illness (seemingly in April, 1226), St. Francis caused Brother Benedict of Prato to write down a blessing and some words of advice "in token of memory and benediction and testament." But surely from this narration we may not deduce the general proposition that St. Francis wrote "several testaments." The early Legends are silent except as to the one Testament here given, and all the passages which different writers quote "from the Testament" may be found in this one,—if we except two passages in M. Sabatier's edition of the Speculum Perfectionis. But it is not difficult to see that in both these places the Speculum is in error. In the ninth chapter it repeats incorrectly what Brother Leo elsewhere relates, and in the fifty-fifth chapter the compiler of the Speculum is still more astray, as a comparison of this chapter with chapter twenty-seventh of Father Lemmens' edition of the Speculum clearly indicates. Both editions of the Speculum tell in almost the same words of St. Francis' love for the Church of the Portiuncula. M. Sabatier's edition says: "At his death he caused it to be written in the Testament that all the brothers should do likewise;" whereas Father Lemmens' edition reads as follows: "Toward his death he bequeathed this Church to the brothers as a testament."

The Testament is to be found among St. Francis' works in twelve of the codices above described,