JORDAN OF GIANO

Franciscan chronicler; b. Giano, in the valley of Spoleto, Italy, c. 1195; d. Magdeburg, Germany (where he is buried), after 1262. He entered the order in 1217 or 1218, when he was probably already a deacon. Toward the end of September 1221 he went to Germany with cae sarius of speyer; he was ordained in 1223, and from 1224 to 1239, was custos of the order in Thuringia. In 1230 and again in 1238 he was sent by his superiors to Rome, becoming involved in the difficulties with elias of cortona. In 1241 he was provincial vicar of Bohemia-Poland, where he lived through the Tartar invasion, of which he gave a good account in his letters. In 1242 he was provincial vicar of Saxony. The provincial chapter commissioned him (1262) to put into writing his recollections of the foundations of the order in Germany. His chronicle, dictated to Brother baldwin of branden burg, runs from 1207 to 1262 and was continued as the provincial chronicle of Saxony until the end of the 15th century. Although partly anecdotal, betraying the weaknesses and lacunae that often mar the efforts of old age, it is still an important source for the early history of the order.

Bibliography: Chronica, ed. h. boehmer (Paris 1908). Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores (Berlin 1826—) 28:208–211. e. j. auweiler, The "Chronica fratris Jordani a Giano" (Washington 1917). l. hardick, ed., Nach Deutschland und England (Werl 1957).

[l. hardick]