A Franciscan of Erfurt, about the middle of the thirteenth century, fixes the date at 1182.

Pertz, vol.
xxiv., p.

193.
[4] A number of different genealogies have been fabricated for Francis; they prove only one thing, the wreck of the Franciscan idea.

How little they understood their hero, who thought to magnify and glorify him by making him spring from a noble family! "_Quae rero_," says Father Suysken, S.J., "_de ejus gentilitio insigni disserit Waddingus, non lubet mihi attingere.
Factis et virtutibus eluxit S.Franciscus non proavorum insignibus aut titulis, quos nec desideravit_." (A.SS.

p.
557a.) It could not be better said.
In the fourteenth century a whole cycle of legends had gathered about his birth.