The title of this document in the Assisi manuscript [F. III.1] is Gospel Love concerning the Rule of Saint Francis. This is the only manuscript copy that is known at present even though there seems to have been other copies in circulation at the time of the early Capuchins. The copy we have lacks a title page and evidnetly is incomplete. Whoever bound the various documents contained in this manuscript wrote the headings for the five paragraphs dealing with chapter one on a folio and added an illustration of Mary Magdalene on the back. On a page which is now torn he wrote L'amore evangelico sopra la Regola di san Francesco. We have a letter written by Vito da Lucca (+1610) to Giacomo da Salò (+1621), Mattia Bellintani's (+1611) friend, on 14 February 1594 stating that he found this document among many others including an old chronicle by Ubertino da Casale. He though it might be interesting to Mattiafor his chronicle and so he sent it on Giacomo da Salò spoke about these old documents including the one attributed to Ubertino da Casale and claimed that Gospel Love was the work of John of Parma. No doubt this could be true or it could be a statement meant to increase the validity of ideas expressed in the document and connect them to the early Spiritual Franciscans. Others attribute Gospel Love to Giovanni Buralli da Parma (+1289) So authorship is still a matter of debate. Because the content resembles the ammended Dialogue of John of Fano in at least five places, Costanzo Cargnoni regards it as one of John's "secret" sources. With this in mind it was worth including it here in our collection of John of Fano's work. There is also the open question as to whether the scribe who copied the manuscript that we have was a Capuchin who was trying to preserve links with the early Franciscan Spirituals in line with the relish with which these writers have in quoting Saint Francis and his companions whether the quotes are accurate or not.

Bro. Patrick Colbourne