Jordanus of Giano

(DE JANO).

Italian Minorite, b. at Giano in the Valley of Spoleto, c. 1195; d. after 1262. About the year 1220 he entered the Franciscan Order and a year later was sent to Germany with a few other members of his order under the leadership of Cæsarius of Speyer, the first Minorite provincial of Germany. In 1223 he was ordained priest, and in 1225 he became guardian at Mainz and custos of the Minorite houses in Thuringia. He did much for the spread of his order in Northern Germany. In 1230, and again in 1238, he was sent to Italy on business relating to his order' He was present at a chapter of German Franciscans held at Halberstadt in 1262. On this occasion he dictated the early memoirs of the Franciscans in Germany (De primitivorum Fratrum in Theutoniam missorum et conversatione et vita) to a certain Brother Baldwin of Brandenburg. The memoirs begin with the year 1207 and are one of the chief sources for Franciscan history in Germany. The only extant manuscript breaks off abruptly at the year 1238, and has been carefully edited in "Analecta Franciscana", I (Quaracchi, 1885), 1-19. A German translation with many erroneous annotations was published by Voigt in "Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Klasse der sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften", V (Leipzig, 1870).