Legenda Maior Sancti Francisci

The Legenda Maior is the normative and official biography of St. Francis for the Franciscan Order. Written in 1263 by Bonaventura of Bagnoregio, at the time Minister General of the Ordo Fratrum Minorum, it was subsequently canonized as the official biography of St. Francis for the entire order.

It was consequently ordered that other biographies be destroyed and banned from the order. Recent historical research has proposed this to be an attempt at censorship, however it's worth to mention that the norm was limited to the franciscan order, that no actual persecution against ownership of alternative biography has been recorded, and that these texts have indeed reached us.

In addition, Bonaventura borrows extensively from previous biographies, particularly Tommaso da Celano's works, often qouting the text word-by-word. The Legenda Maior's distinct feature is lack of concern with chronology, and the attempt at grouping events and accounts on the saint in theologically-coherent essays.

For this reason, the Legenda Maior might be better understood as the attempt to systematize the theological importance of St. Francis, and to provide a uniform and authoritative narrative for the onboarding friars, in the now influent and institutionalized franciscan order.