Bibliorum_, are often printed along with the _Letters, Hymns, Testament_, etc., ascribed to St. Francis.--Among the legends of the order still extant about the life of St. Francis is the _Vita I._ of Thomas of Celano, written in A.D. 1229, the oldest and relatively the most impartial. On the other hand, the later biographies, especially that of the so-called _Tres socii_ and the _Vita II._ of Thomas, which has been made accessible by the Roman edition of Amoni of 1880, written contemporaneously somewhere about A.D. 1245, as well as that of St. Bonaventura of A.D. 1263, recognised by the chapter of the order as the only authoritative form of the legends, are all more or less influenced by the party strifes that had arisen within its ranks, while all are equally overladen with reports of miracles. In A.D. 1399, by authority of the general chapter at Assisi, the “_Liber Conformitatum_” of Bartholomew of Pisa pointed out forty resemblances between Christ and St. Francis, in which the saint has generally the advantage over the Saviour. In the Reformation times an anonymous German version of this book was published by Erasmus Alber with a preface by Luther, under the title, _Der Barfüssermönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran_, Wittenberg, 1542. The most trustworthy contemporary source of information has been only recently again rendered accessible to us in the _Memorabilia de Primitiv. Fratrum in Teutoniam Missorum Conversatione et Vita_ of the above-named Giordano of Giano, embracing the years 1207-1238, which G. Voigt discovered among his father’s papers, and has published with a full and comprehensive introduction. The Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence have re-edited it “after the unique Berlin manuscript,” as well as the supplementary document, the _De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia_, in the first volume of their _Analecta Franciscana, Quar._, 1885.--Thode, in his _Fr. v. A. und die Anfänge d. Kunst d. Renaissance in Ital._ (Berl., 1885), has described in a thorough and brilliant style the mighty influence which St. Francis and his order exerted upon the development of art in Italy, especially of painting and architecture, as well as of poetry in the vernacular; for he has shown how the peculiar and close relation in which the saint stood to nature gave the first effective impulse to the emancipation of art from the trammels of formalism, and how the new artistic tendency, inspired by his spirit, was first given expression to in the building and adorning of the basilica at Assisi dedicated to him.[285]