On Sanctitatis nova signa: A provisional case against Celano's authorship

Abstract

This paper advances a provisional case denying the attribution of the medieval liturgical sequence Sanctitatis nova signa, written in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, to Thomas of Celano (died c. 1260), who is best known for writing the earliest biography of the saint. The Conventual Franciscan friar and bishop, Pietro Ridolfi, provides the oldest extant attribution of this sequence to Celano. Luke Wadding (died 1657) echoes this point in his Annales Minorum; several recent critical editions of early Franciscan texts, as well as countless secondary sources, cite Wadding for the attribution to Celano. This identification remains problematic, not only due to the lateness of the Ridolfi-Wadding claim; the sequence's use of Dionysian mystical motifs and details unique to Bonaventure's Legenda Major (completed 1262) should exclude the possibility of Celano's authorship. Consequently this study tentatively dates the sequence to the latter part of the thirteenth century. Unlike the earlier sequences for Saint Francis attributed to Pope Gregory IX (died 1241) and Thomas of Capua (died 1243), Sanctitatis depicts Francis as a model Dionysian mystic. This mystical exemplarity becomes the image of unity advanced by the Franciscans to heal the internal crises plaguing the order in the later thirteenth century.

Introduction

In the editions of both Dominican¹ and Franciscan² liturgical books in force prior to the Second Vatican Council, the Mass for the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi included a sequence with the incipit Sanctitatis nova signa. Composed in the zagialesca form made especially popular by Adam of Saint-Victor and increasingly utilized for high medieval liturgical prosae or sequences (e.g., Thomas Aquinas's Lauda Sion Salvatorem),³ its text extols the stigmatic Francis and poetically narrates his reception of the wounds on Mount Alverna. While the exceptional poetic quality of the sequence is evident, its adoption into more recent editions of mendicant missals over and against other medieval sequences for Saint Francis⁴ is a curious historical detail. While we cannot here engage in a full textual and historical comparison of all these sequences, perhaps the attribution of Sanctitatis to the authorial hand of Thomas of Celano (died c. 1260), Francis's first biographer, helped to ‘canonize’ this sequence over the others.

However, this attribution remains problematic. The oldest extant source attributing Sanctitatis to Celano is found in the History of the Seraphic Order of the Conventual friar and bishop Pietro Ridolfi (published 1586).⁵ The famous Annales Minorum of the Irish Franciscan historian, Luke Wadding, (died 1657) repeats the attribution.⁶ Such a late attribution cannot but remain unsatisfactory; nevertheless, the editors of future critical editions of early Franciscan sources, from Volume Ten of Analecta Franciscana to Volume 1 of the Francis of Assisi: Early Documents series, not to mention countless secondary works, are content to simply note the attribution to Celano by deferring to Wadding, even if the Analecta editors take a slightly cautious tone (‘attribuitur Fr. Thomae Celanensis’).⁷ Compounding the problem is that, in the few extant manuscript sources, none date from before the fourteenth century and none show any indication of authorship.⁸ Barring the resurgence of hitherto undiscovered manuscripts proving otherwise, the exact authorship of this beautiful sequence seems destined to remain a mystery.

In the forthcoming pages, I intend to advance a provisional, text-based case against the attribution of Sanctitatis to Celano in four steps. First, a biographical sketch of Celano will help to situate our question historically. Second, an excursus on the medieval reception of Dionysius the Areopagite will set the stage for later arguments based on the sequence's text. Third, analysis of certain textual features will suggest that the sequence is more indebted to Bonaventure's Legenda Major rather than the biographies of Celano. Fourth, a general historical synthesis drawing on the preceding sections will highlight the improbability of Celano's authorship. By way of conclusion, I will then offer some modest suggestions as to the significance of this liturgical text not as an exponent of the Franciscan ‘first generation’ but as a response to the concrete context of the order in the late thirteenth-early fourteenth centuries.

Thomas of Celano: A brief sketch

Born around 1185–1190, Thomas of Celano was probably educated at Rome, Bologna, or Monte Cassino; this latter hypothesis is based on his apparent familiarity with the monastic tradition as diffused in Italy.⁹ Entering the Order of Friars Minor in 1215, Celano certainly knew Francis firsthand, as later evinced in some excerpts from his biographies of Francis.¹⁰ In 1221 he took part in a mission to German-speaking lands, becoming custos at Worms, Speyer, and Cologne.¹¹ The exact timing of his return to Italy is uncertain, but he was almost certainly in Assisi for the 1228 canonization of Francis, and may have even been present at Francis's death in 1226.¹² Ordered by Pope Gregory IX to compose an official biography of the saint, Celano completed his Life of Saint Francis (today commonly known as ‘Celano 1’), by 1229.¹³ It enjoyed an initial widespread success and was essential in diffusing the cult of Francis in the years immediately following the canonization.

By 1230, Celano completed a second work, the Legend for Use in Choir. As the title indicates, this work was intended as a compilation of readings used for the communal recitation of the Office in Franciscan communities. Written at the request of Brother Benedict of Arezzo, Provincial Minister for Romania and Greece, it takes excerpts from Celano 1 and divides them into maututinal lessons to be read during the Octave of the Feast of Saint Francis.¹⁴ In 1245, at the request of the Minister General Crescentius of Jesi pursuant to the 1244 General Chapter at Genoa, Celano was once again requested to compile stories circulating about Francis into a new biography. This new work, The Desire and Remembrance of a Soul (also known as ‘Celano 2’), did not enjoy the same success as Celano 1. The exact reasons for its general rejection across the order has been discussed elsewhere,¹⁵ but this text remains notable for the correction of some innacuracies found in the first biography as well as the addition of new stories drawn from Anonymous of Perugia and the Legend of the Three Companions.¹⁶ A final work, the Treatise on the Miracles of Saint Francis, written at the request of the Minister General John of Parma, was written between 1250 and 1252.¹⁷ For purposes of this article, I abstain from considering this final text. The newly discovered Vita Brevior, also called ‘Celano 3’ but written between 1238 and 1239 (at the close of Elias of Cortona's generalate), likewise does not affect this study.¹⁸

In this brief overview of Celano's life and works, two details are worth noting. First, while we have ample documentation of his major periods of activity as well as his works, we have no evidence that any poetic project was ever assigned to him or written by him. Second: his significant activities take place only in Italy or Germany. No source ever places him in France, much less in Paris. It is thus clear that Celano is not to be numbered among the great Franciscan scholastics of his era, all of whom were schooled at the University of Paris (e.g., Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, among others). While this observation may prima facie appear strange at this point, it will be important as we consider the importance of Paris for the diffusion of Dionysian motifs in the West—motifs which are clearly present in Sanctitatis nova signa.

Excursus: High medieval reception of Dionysius

While the texts of Dionysius the Areopagite were present in the West from the ninth century through the difficult and idiosyncratic Latin translation of Abbot Hilduin of Saint-Denis (840) and a slightly better translation by John Scotus Eriugena (862), its study was rather restricted to monasteries. While an even more accessible translation by John Sarrazin (1167) helped to open the Areopagite's corpus to an even wider audience,¹⁹ their interpretation remained the province of literate clerics. By the thirteenth century, however, two developments at Paris converged to catalyze the diffusion of Dionysian themes far beyond priestly centers of learning: (1) the rise of the mendicant orders, to include their presence at the University of Paris, and (2) the compilation of the Parisian Corpus Dionysiacum (hereafter ‘PCD’).

The Franciscan and Dominican orders, with their missionary impulse and activity of popular preaching, would serve as a bridge between the refined University speculations on Dionysian theology, on the one hand, and the promotion of a more diffused mystical consciousness in the Church at large, on the other hand. To make the obscure works of this presumed author of the apostolic era more legible, however, a development in critical Dionysian scholarship was necessary, and the compilation of the PCD served this end. This anthology, which became a veritable ‘handbook of theology’²⁰ at the University of Paris, contained the following: (1) Abbot Hilduin's preface to his translation of Dionysius; (2) letters to King Charles the Bald from Anastasius Bibliothecarius (fl. 858–878) and Eriugena on their works on Dionysius; (3) Eriugena's translation; (4) a Latin interlinear gloss by Anastasius and other anonymous authors; (5) the so-called ‘Parisian scholia’, or another commentary in a distinct hand inserted into the body of the text, also containing citations from the Periphyseon of Maximus the Confessor; (6) Sarrazin's translation; (7) commentaries on Celestial Hierarchy by Sarrazin, Gallus, and Hugh of Saint-Victor, and (8) the Extractio (‘paraphrase’) of Thomas Gallus on all the works of Dionysius.²¹ The final compilation of this ‘textbook’ can be dated no earlier than 1238, the year in which the latest of these works (Gallus's Extractio) was completed.²² The addition of these other commentatorial texts and glosses into a single volume provided Parisian scholars—now including the nascent ‘schools’ of the Dominicans and Franciscans—with a valuable new resource to help navigate the Areopagite's difficult doctrines.

Focused mendicant commentary on the Dionysian corpus is found first in the Summa Halensis (written 1236–1245), the manual of theology begun under the direction of Alexander of Hales (died 1245), with the participation of other Franciscans, principally John of La Rochelle (died 1245).²³ Bonaventure (died 1274), already a student at Paris when he entered the Franciscans in 1243 and who studied under Alexander and John, continued the work of appropriating Dionysius as a revered authority for the Minorite school. On the Dominican side, Albert the Great (who became a Parisian Master of Theology in 1245), would eventually comment on all the works of Dionysius. His student, Thomas Aquinas (died 1274), began studies under Albert in Paris, until both left for Cologne in 1248 to establish a new studium generale; these two friars perhaps represent the vanguard of Dionysian transmission across the Rhine. When Thomas returned to Paris in 1252 to study for the grade of Master of Theology, he arrived fortified with notes on Albert's entire course on Dionysius.²⁴

A slow reception of the PCD in the early 1240s is seen among the Franciscans. For example, Odo Rigaud (died 1275), future Archbishop of Rouen, who entered the Friars Minor at Paris in 1236 and completed his Sentences commentary by 1242, often reverts to Eriugena's translation against Sarrazin's, while the earlier texts of the Summa Halensis (before 1245) likewise give priority to Eriugena.²⁵ Extracts of the Parisian scholia written in Aquinas's hand onto manuscripts used by Albert in Cologne show that, by the time the two moved to Germany in 1248, the PCD was already accessible in Paris and transmitted over the Rhine, perhaps by Aquinas and Albert themselves.²⁶ 1248 is also significant for another reason: it is the same year in which Bonaventure completed introductory theological studies at the Franciscan school in Paris, in preparation for the successive roles of baccalaureus biblicus (until 1251), baccalaureus sententiarum (until 1253), and Master of Theology the following year.²⁷ By the time Aquinas returned to Paris in 1252 to study for the Mastership, the Dominican priory of Saint Jacques in Paris likely possessed a full copy of the PCD.²⁸ The slower Dionysian reception of the 1240's thus seems to accelerate significantly in the 1250's. According to this timeline, Aquinas and Bonaventure may well be among the first—if not the first—members of their respective orders to earn the grade of Master of Theology at Paris in a time when the full PCD was available.

The foregoing historical detour strongly suggests that, unlike Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Odo Rigaud, and Bonaventure, Thomas of Celano is not involved in the rigorous scholarly work at Paris related to the assimilation of Dionysian themes into the life of the Franciscan order. Both Celano 1 (1229) and the Legend for Use in Choir (1230) are written well before even the earliest possible date for the PCD’s availability (1238). Celano 2 is contemporaneous with the final parts of the Summa Halensis, but the geographical separation between Umbria and Paris makes any mutual influence between the two unlikely. Moreover, the slow reception of Dionysius among the Franciscans at Paris through the 1240's further mitigates the possibility that Celano (who never seems to have left Italy after 1228) would have had access to any systematic Dionysian sources to influence the composition of either Celano 2 or the Treatise on the Miracles. This ‘distance’ both physical and thematic between Celano and his more scholastic brethren will remain a crucial background point when considering the text of Sanctitatis nova signa.

Textual arguments

In this focused textual analysis of the sequence, we begin with stanzas 11 and 12.

Describing the conferral of the stigmata upon Francis, the sequence's author notably uses the term ‘hierarch’—a Dionysian neologism referring to both Christ and the Christian bishop.³⁰ Notably, ‘hierarch’ and its variants are absent from all of Celano's known works—opera which are nevertheless not devoid of varied poetic diction. Interestingly, the Life of Francis of Assisi by the Franciscan, Julian of Speyer (completed by 1235, prior to the earliest date for either the Summa Halensis or the PCD), also fails to refer to a ‘hierarch’. By contrast, hierarcha and its related forms are present throughout Bonaventure's corpus.³¹ While the presence of this single word in the sequence may at first glance seem too small by itself to definitively refute Celano's authorship, the contrast between the strong Dionysian influence in Bonaventure's works (including the Legenda Major), on one hand, and Celano's non-involvement in Dionysian studies at Paris, on the other, lends probable support to the notion that the author of Sanctitatis was at least more exposed to the Areopagite than Celano. In light of this, the use of ‘hierarch’ in the sequence is more likely a sign of a later Dionysian reception to which Celano never had access.

Moreover, the sequence takes for granted that the seraphic figure who appeared to Francis was both Christ himself as well as the agent of stigmatization. Bonaventure is the first chronicler to make this identification explicit,³² while Celano simply refers to the seraph,³³ as does Julian's text.³⁴ This crucial detail further points to a stronger Bonaventurean influence in Sanctitatis, a hypothesis strengthened after considering stanzas 14 and 15.

Stanza 14 relates that, while receiving the stigmata, Francis entered into a kind of mystical conversation with Christ, wherein the meaning of past and future events were made known to him. Bonaventure's Legenda Major includes this very point;³⁶ by contrast, this notion of mystical understanding is absent from Celano 1’s presentation of the stigmata narrative, while the second vita and the Treatise on Miracles leave this episode out entirely. Instead, Celano's Francis is left wondering about the meaning of this strange seraphic figure, whom the text does not identify as Christ.³⁷ Stanza 15 then describes the wounds in colorful detail. The following comparison between Celano 1 and the Legenda Major will show, despite their broad similarity, some points of divergence helpful for interpreting Sanctitatis.

While Bonaventure closely follows Celano 1 (as he does for much of the Legenda Major)⁴⁰, he nevertheless interpolates certain details, such as the immediate nature of the wounds’ appearance, as well as and the black color of the nails. Thus the lines ‘Patent statim miri clavi | foris nigri, intus flavi’ strongly suggests the sequence's direct dependence on the Legenda Major, not Celano's account.

As other works have amply demonstrated, Bonaventure's Francis is a Dionysian mystic par excellence.⁴¹ In his Journey of the Mind to God, Bonaventure characterizes mystical union by the progressive relinquishing of material and fleshly attachments, the cessation of all intellectual activity, and the passing (transitus) of all affective desire into excessus mentis.⁴² The Mosaic ascent of Sinai in Dionysius's Mystical Theology provides Bonaventure the perfect opportunity to draw a parallel with Francis's own pilgrimage to Mount Alverna, at whose peak the Poverello receives an unprecedented sign of divine union in the form of the wounds of Christ. This final ‘passing’ from the limits of intellectual cognition to purely passive affective love for God is described precisely as a kind of death, a transitus into the dark Dionysian cloud at the summit of mystical ascent.⁴³ In this light, I propose that the central stanzas of Sanctitatis can be understood as a narrative which tracks onto Bonaventure's construal of Dionysian mysticism.

After the first four stanzas which extol the virtues of Francis and his order, the poem then traces Francis's progression toward the stigmata. Stanzas 5 and 6 describe his adoption of poverty and rejection of material goods; the reference to his barefootedness (calceus abiicitur) immediately recalls Moses's first meeting with God. Stanza 7 describes his interior sorrow over his former worldly life; stanza 8 describes his solitary prayer on Alverna's summit (montis antro sequestratus) where his mind is finally calmed (mente serenatus), perhaps referring to the silencing of the intellect prior to the final mystical transitus; stanza 9 narrates how Francis was then raised to higher things (ad divina sursum vectus); stanza 10 notes that, after ‘yielding his flesh’ Francis was thereby ‘transformed in appearance’ (carnem frenat… transformatam in figura), echoing the Transfiguration of Christ; stanzas 11 through 13 speak of Christ conferring the stigmata, signifying Francis's conformity into Christ's death; finally, stanza 14, at the climax of the poetic narrative, speaks of the infusion of prophetic knowledge ‘by mystical inspiration’ (mystico spiramine). Stanzas 15 and 16 simply give further descriptions of the wounds, while the remaining four stanzas address Francis directly, praising him and begging his intercession, as is conventional for the conclusion of high medieval sequences for saints’ feasts.⁴⁴ In sum, it is only after Francis has thrown off his material affixations, silenced his own intellect, given up his flesh to the point of a quasi-death, and been radically conformed to the Passion that he, at the summit of ascent, receives a mystical inspiration from the supreme hierarch, who is Christ himself.

The uniquely Dionysian character of this poetic narrative can perhaps be highlighted by way of contrast with the other early sequences written for Francis. Laetabundus, attributed to Cardinal Thomas of Capua, is a contrafaction of the famous Christmas sequence.⁴⁵ Constrained by the close, almost parodic imitation of its model, this sequence loosely gestures to various events in Francis's life. Caput Draconis, attributed to Pope Gregory IX, depicts not a Franciscus mysticus but a Franciscus dux.⁴⁶ Its incipit refers to Joachim of Fiore's fourteenth diagram in the Liber Figurarum—the famous figure of the seven headed dragon (cf. Revelation 7:2, 12:3, et al.)—whose heads are reinterpreted by the Calabrian abbot to signify a series of prominent persecutors of the Church. In this sequence, Francis is the angel of the sixth seal heralding the final battle of the apocalypse, leading a triple-ranked formation (representing the three Franciscan ‘orders’) against the armies of Satan. Finally, the sequence Fregit victor virtualis, a contrafaction of the Easter sequence, Surgit Christus cum tropaeo (itself an extended contrafaction of the older Easter sequence, Victimae Paschali laudes),⁴⁷ refashions the paschal poems; whereas Surgit and Victimae ask Mary Magdalene what she saw at the tomb, Fregit victor asks Francis what he saw while gazing on the seraphic Christ.⁴⁸ These sequences neither manifest the narrative elegance nor the masterful technical regularity of Sanctitatis. More importantly, none of the three—exhibit a clear sense of the Bonaventurean-Dionysian mysticism which is so evident in our principal sequence. In other words, the influence of Dionysianism is a distinctive characteristic of Sanctitatis nova signa. By contrast, the sequences attributed to Gregory IX (died 1241) and Thomas of Capua (died 1243), likely written in Italy the 1230's and well before the full flowering of the Parisian Dionysian ‘renaissance’, represent a geographic, historical, and intellectual context closer to Celano 1.

General historical points

We can now begin to synthesize the foregoing insights into a few historical comments. The early Franciscans using the works of Dionysius are Parisian Masters of Theology (Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Bonaventure, etc.). Celano, by contrast, was neither at Paris nor a university master;⁴⁹ his entrance into the Friars Minor preceded the development of schools within the order, and thus it is even more unlikely that he would have engaged the works of Dionysius in any concerted way.

Next, the undisputed works of Celano (the three vitae and the Legend for Use in Choir) are positively attributed to him not least because we also know who asked him to compose these works. Benedict of Arezzo, Crescentius of Jesi, and John of Parma all occupied senior leadership positions within the order, while the commissioner of Celano 1 was none other than the former Cardinal-protector of the Franciscans and reigning Roman Pontiff (Gregory IX). In other words, Celano only writes when commanded. Were he ordered to write another liturgical text, we would likely have manuscripts confirming both Celano's authorship and the identity of the commissioner, as we have with the vitae. But the extant manuscripts containing Sanctitatis, dating only from the fourteenth century, leave the sequence anonymous; thus the earliest assertion of Celano's authorship seems to be Ridolfi's sixteenth century conjecture.

Conclusions

Based on the foregoing historical and textual examination of Sanctitatis nova signa, I propose that the attribution of this sequence to Thomas of Celano should be rejected. Some details of Francis's reception of the stigmata are narrated in Bonaventure's Legenda Major but not in the biographies of Celano. Moreover, Sanctitatis is a text clearly marked by an advanced stage of Dionysian reception in Latin theology; the description of Christ as a ‘hierarch’ and the progression of Francis's mystical ascent as narrated in the poem echoes themes in Bonaventure's Journey of the Mind to God. On the basis of the poem's strong Bonaventurean savor, we therefore tentatively suggest a terminus ante quem non of 1262, the year in which Bonaventure would have completed the Legenda Major.

If the Legenda Major is indeed a principal source for Sanctitatis, then the sequence must have been written in a time when all previous biographies of Francis—including those by Celano and Speyer—should have been suppressed pursuant to the order of the 1260 General Chapter at Narbonne. Based on the dispersed geographical collocation of the few extant manuscripts of Celano 1,⁵⁰ especially when compared with the extant manuscripts of the Legenda Major,⁵¹ we have every reason to believe that the destruction of the older vitae was widely enforced. Thus the sequence must be the product of a Bonaventurean or post-Bonaventurean generation, and ought not be read as a text intended to promote the new cultus of the Poverello, but perhaps addresses concerns relating to the life of the order in the late thirteenth century.

At this point I hope the reader will permit an even more speculative suggestion. One of the principal problems facing the Franciscan order from Bonaventure's generalate and into the fourteenth century was the increasing rift between the Conventuals and Spirituals over apostolic poverty. Through his Legendae, the Seraphic Doctor seems for a time to have placated the brewing conflict. In a passage worth quoting at length, Damien Vorreux contextualizes the composition of the Legenda Major against the background of intra-ordinal disputes over poverty.

[Bonaventure's] primary concern was to present in a very forceful way the pacifying activity of Francis, restoring peace to communities or to cities, adopting as his formula of greeting: ‘May the Lord give you peace.’ From that time on, it became manifestly illogical to carry on quarrels in the name of an ideal that excluded all quarrels.

But once this spiritual position was solidly assured, he still had to use diplomacy to appease the unrest that followed… His Legend, without being tendentious, …bears witness to a certain flexibility. Despite all the grievences that he could have nurtured against the somewhat ‘restless’ movement of the Spirituals, St. Bonaventure kept his admiration for ‘persons’… In brief, ‘where we accuse him of having tried to suppress historical documents, he had in mind the suppression of errors of the moral and religious order.’

As for the seculars, their pacification required other methods. They took exception to the sanctity and even to the possibility of the Franciscan ideal; they were shown that the founder had lived it, that it had been approved by Christ, for the approbation of the Church had not removed all their doubts. The entire argumentation rested on the fact of the stigmata. The first thing was to ‘prove’ this fact historically… The most solid and the most precise [testimonies] were retained. It was especially a question ‘of interpreting’ the miracle exegetically and spiritually for the consumption of an audience fed on good scholastic philosophy which demanded, before a fact was admitted, that it know its meaning. The interpretation adopted was that of the spiritual conformity of Francis with Christ, since Christ had granted him bodily conformity. The basic scriptural text was the passage from the Apocalypse (chap. 7) where we see the second ‘angel rising where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God.’ […] It is to St. Bonaventure that credit is due for having purified the ‘politics’ by putting it back in its one and only viable climate: mysticism.⁵²

Unfortunately, Bonaventure's efforts to keep the order unified did not survive his death, but his depiction of the Poverello as a mystic on the Dionysian model remained a shared motif among the Franciscan factions.⁵³ And if the Francis of Sanctitatis is a Dionysian Francis, then the text is almost certainly a post-Celano product, marked by a period in which the various factions still extolled Francis as a man who, on the peak of Alverna, reached the summit of Dionysian mystical union. Even if we cannot go so far as to attribute this sequence to Bonaventure himself, we can at this point make some connections between this new provisional dating of Sanctitatis after 1262 and the intra-ordinal difficulties over which Bonaventure presided. For while Sanctitatis does not manifest the explicitly martial imagery of the earlier sequence Caput draconis, there remains some reference to a conflict in the final intercessory part.

There are many possible candidates for what concrete enemies are meant in this stanza. Could it refer to anti-mendicant party of secular clergy, against whom both Bonaventure and Aquinas engaged in bitter public polemics? Could it refer to the so-called ‘Latin Averroists’ or ‘radical Aristotelians’ at Paris, whose exaltation of natural reason seemed to denigrate the faith in the eyes of many Franciscans like Bonaventure? Could it refer to agitators within the Franciscan order itself, whose interpretation of apostolic poverty threatened to tear the friars apart? Could the ‘adversaries’ simply stand for ‘the Adversary’, that is, the power of Satan against whom all Christians are called to resist? Or could it be some combination of all these options?

Perhaps we never answer these questions definitively on the basis of the sequence text alone, but the host of problems facing the Franciscans in the latter half of the thirteenth century certainly evince a renewed need within the order to rally around the memory of their holy founder. Sanctitatis nova signa is perhaps best understood a liturgical composition responding to this imperative. With the unity of the order at stake, the sequence exhorts the friars to heed the example of the Dionysian Francis, whose total conformity to the Crucified merited the conferral of these ‘new signs of sanctity’ from the supreme Hierarch himself. The brothers, then, ought to beg Francis's intercession in the face of all the enemies and trials plaguing the integrity of the order. Thus, by conformity to the founder, as the sequence says, may the unified flock of Friars Minor follow their holy father Francis into eternal joy: ‘Consequatur grex Minorum | sempiterna gaudia’.