The Little Flowers of Saint Francis (I Fioretti di San Francesco)

The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, I Fioretti di San Francesco, is an anonymous medieval Franciscan compilation of legends; the atlas records no publisher and no exact publication year because it survives through manuscript transmission from the tradition itself rather than a single dated modern edition, and names no individual author because it is a communal compilation rather than one writer's work. Its strength is that it is the primary source for many of the best known Francis legends, in the Franciscan tradition's own voice. Its limit is that it is explicitly legendary material compiled generations after Francis's death, read by scholars as evidence of how the early Franciscan community remembered and mythologised him, not as a historical record of events.