It looked like a footnote, an ordinary note in Latin between the pages of a thirteenth-century manuscript, but it turned out to be the oldest and most complete version ever found of the Exhortation to the Praise of God, the work of st Francis of Assisi anticipating Brother Sun’s song.
The discovery, anticipated byRoman Observerwas possible thanks to Dr. Roberta Iannetti, PhD student in Paleography at the University of Ferrara (which announces it on their website) and his supervisor, Professor Sandro Bertelli from the Department of Humanities.
The new transcription was found in the first paper of Pluteus Codex 22 Dex. 3, now preserved in the Laurentian Library in Florence, but comes from the ancient library of the Franciscan Monastery of Santa Croce in Florence. The “Laurentian” version identified by Unife, so defined in relation to where the manuscript is located, consists of seventeen verses, mostly quotations from the Bible.
L’admonition – hitherto known only thanks to two later sources – it would have been composed to accompany a pictorial representation of the creatures and written on the tablet personally by the saint. «There are no less than five additional verses in the Laurentian version: two at the end are blessings; other – Praise the Lord who made us – fits into the long list of exhortations to praise modeled after biblical passages. The first and third, on the other hand, seem to refer directly to the circumstances of the composition of the text and to the group of friars around Francis. One addresses “all monks with hoods” and offers us an early testimony of the habit the saint of Assisi wanted for himself and his companions. Finally, Iannetti and Bertelli explain, the other exhorts all who “look upon this table” to praise God.
