Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE LIFE OF JORDAN. Apart from the Chronicle of Jordan, there is only one other source for the biography of this author, viz., the three letters on the invasion of the Tartars preserved in the Chronica Majora of Matthew of Paris (M. G. SS. T. XXVIII, p. 207 ss.). The Catalogus Sanctorum Fra- trum Minorum, written about 1335 and published by Father Leonard Lemmens in Fragment a Franciscana (Rome, 1903), p. 38, merely mentions his name: In Provincia Saxoniae Fi Jordanus de Italia, The Chronica XXIV Generalium (Ed. Anal. Franc., T. Ill, p. 237) mentions him among the saintly members of the Saxon province: In Madeburch frater - Jor- danus de Italia. The narratives in Gonzaga (De Ori- gine, Ed. 1587, p. 661 ss.), who, according to Boehmer, drew from Glassberger (see Boehmer's edition, Introd., p. LII); Glassberger, Anal. Franc., T. II, p. 19 ss.; Hueber, (Menologium, columns 1.110 and 2100); Wadding, Annales T. I, p. 247; Mazzara (Leggendario Francescano, T. XI, p. 43, Ed. 1722), are mere transcripts and extracts from Jordan's Chronicle, and tell us absolutely nothing that is not contained therein. Jordan is all too reticent about himself, 'and we cannot but regret that he has naught of the vanity so naively displayed by his famous confrere, Fr. Salimbene de Adam. He tells nothing about the date of his birth, his family, and the important events of his life, except incidentally and in as far as they have any bearing on the history of his mission to Germany and his subsequent administration of various important offices in the Order. Thus we are informed at the very outset of Jordan's Chronicle that in 1262, when he dictated his work to Fr. Baldwin of Brandenburg, he was "jam senex et debilis" (Prologus, p. 2,l. 5, Ed. Boehmer). At the time of the famous Chapter of 1221 he Wa...