Antonio Montefusco

The History as a Pendulum: The Actus and the Fioretti

According to Benvenuto Bughetti, the Little Flowers of St. Francis “are the fruit of love, and not of battle.”1 For FalociPulignani we are faced with “a book of controversy, passion, struggle.”2 Sword and propaganda versus pacification and irenicism: these two irreconcilable points of view are still present in the contemporary debate, representing two opposite tendencies in reading the text. Nevertheless, the most significant feature of the Fioretti is the omnipresent sentiment of nostalgia. But nostalgia, as Walter Benjamin argues persuasively, inevitably entails an opinion on the negative character of present times and an invitation to take action against injustice, as well as to contribute to the redemption of victims of the past. The characteristic style of the narrative discourse in the Little Flowers as well (which on multiple occasions has been described as “expressive freshness”) may be associated with the philosopher of the theses “On the philosophy of history.”3 The Fioretti were actually defined by Francesco De Sanctis as “the most lovable