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Ugolino Brunforte
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Friar Minor and chronicler, born c. 1262; died c. 1348. His father Rinaldo, Lord of Sarnano in the Marches, belonged to an ancient and noble
family of French origin, from which sprang the famous Countess Matilda. Ugolino entered the
Order of Friars Minor at the age of sixteen and served his
novitiate at the
convent of Roccabruna, but passed most of his life at the
convent of
Santa Maria in Monte Giorgio, whence he is often called Ugolino of Monte Giorgio. In 1295 he was chosen
Bishop of Abruzzi (Teramo) under
Celestine V, but before his
consecration the
pope had resigned and
Boniface VIII who suspected Ugolino as belonging to the Zelanti annulled the appointment (see
Bull "In Supremae Dignitatis Specula" in "Bullarium Francis", IV, 376. Nearly fifty years later he was elected
provincial of
Macerata. Most scholars are now agreed on fixing upon Ugolino as the author of the "Fioretti" or "Little Flowers of St. Francis" in their original form. For recent research has revealed that this classic collection of narratives, which forms one of the most delightful productions of the
Middle Ages, or rather the fifty-three chapters which form the
true text of the "Fioretti" (for the four appendixes are additions of later compilers) were translated into Italian by an unknown fourteenth-century
friar from a larger Latin work attributed to Ugolino. Although this Latin original has not come down to us, we have in the "Actus B. Francisci et Sociorum Ejus", edited by Paul Sabatier in "Collection d'Etudes" (Paris, 1902, IV), an approximation to it which may be considered on the whole as representing the original of the "Fioretti". That Ugolino was the principal compiler of the "Actus" seems
certain; how far he may be considered the sole author of the "Fioretti" of the primitive "Actus Fioretti" is not so clear. His labour which consisted chiefly in gathering the flowers for his bouquet from written and oral local tradition appears to have been completed before 1328.
Sources
WADDING, Script. ord. Min. (1650), 179; SBARALEA, Supplementum (8106), addenda 727; LUIGI DA FABRIANO, Disquisizione istorica intorno all' autore dei Fioretti (Fabriano, 1883); Cenni cronologico-biografici dell' osservante Provincia Picena (Quaracchi, 1886), 232 sqq.; MANZONI, Fioretti (2nd ed., Rome, 1902), prefazione; SABATIER, Fioretum S. Francisci (Paris, 1902), preface; MARIOTTI, Primordi Gloriosi dell' ordine Minoritico nelle Marche (Castelplanio, 1903), VI; ARNOLD, The Authorship of the Fioretti (London, 1904); PACE, L'autore del Floretum in Rivista Abruzzese, ann. XIX, fasc. II; VAN ORTROY in Annal. Bolland., XXI, 443 sqq.
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Bibliography Information
Obstat, Nihil. Lafort, Remy, Censor. Entry for 'Ugolino Brunforte'. The Catholic Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​tce/​u/ugolino-brunforte.html. Robert Appleton Company. New York. 1914.