Competing Biographies, and a Fight Over What He Really Meant

Francis was written about almost immediately after his death, and the multiplying accounts did not agree with each other. Thomas of Celano wrote two separate biographies within Francis's own lifetime's living memory, and Bonaventure, elected head of the Franciscan Order decades later, composed a further Legenda Maior intended specifically to become the Order's single official account.

In 1266 the Franciscans went further than simply preferring Bonaventure's version: the Order formally ordered earlier biographies destroyed, a directive that shows how much was at stake in controlling Francis's memory rather than merely preserving it. That stake was real and practical. After his death the Order split into factions, generally called Spirituals and Conventuals, disagreeing sharply over how literally to apply Francis's radical embrace of poverty to the growing, increasingly institutional community he had left behind, and each side had reason to shape the founder's remembered words and priorities to support its own position.

The famous stigmata Francis reportedly received on Mount La Verna in 1224 is described with variation across the surviving early sources as well, consistent with a figure whose earliest and most vivid memories were recorded, edited, and in some cases suppressed by an institution actively working out what it wanted to become in his name.