His next sojourn was Vallombrosa, where after his decease one of his

disciples was to found a famous cloister. From that nest in the Tuscan

Apennines, he went to dwell permanently on the Umbrian mount of Sytrio.

At this point his biographer proceeds:

“Whoever hears that the holy man so often changed his habitation, must

not ascribe this to the vice of levity. For the cause of these changes

was that wherever he stayed, an almost countless crowd assembled, and

when he saw one place filled with converts he very properly would

appoint a prior and at once hasten to fill another.

“In Sytrio what insults and what indignities he endured from his

disciples! We will set down one instance, and omit the rest for

brevity. There was a disciple named Romanus, noble by birth, but

ignoble by deed. Him the holy man for his carnal impurity not only

chided by word but corrected with heavy beatings. That diabolic man

dared to retort with the fabrication of the same charge, and to bark

with sacrilegious mouth against this temple of the Holy Spirit, saying

forsooth that the holy man was spotted with this same infection. The

rage of the disciples broke out immediately against Romuald. All were

his enemies: some declared that the wicked old man ought to be hanged

from a gallows, others that he should be burned in his cell.

“One cannot understand how spiritual men could have believed such

wickedness of a decrepit old man, whose frigid blood and aridity of

attenuated frame would have forbade him, had he had the will. But

doubtless it is to be deemed that this scourge of adversity came upon

the holy man by the will of Heaven, to augment his merit. For he said

himself that he had foreknown it with certainty in the solitude which

he had left just before, and had come with alacrity to undergo this

shame. But that false monkish reprobate who brought the charge against

the holy man, afterwards became Bishop of Noceria through simony, and

in the first year of his occupancy, saw, as he deserved, his house

with his books and bells and the rest of his sacred paraphernalia

burned; and in the second year, the divine sentence struck him and he

wretchedly lost both his dignity and his life.

“In the meanwhile the disciples put a penance on the holy man as if he

had been guilty, and deprived him of the right to celebrate the holy

mysteries. He willingly accepted this false judgment, and took his

penance like a culprit, not presuming to approach the altar for

well-nigh six months. At length, as he afterwards told his disciples,

he was divinely commanded to celebrate mass. On the next day, when

proceeding with the sacrifice, he became rapt in ecstasy, and

continued speechless for so long a time that all present marvelled.

When afterwards asked the reason of his delay, he replied: ‘Carried

into heaven, I was borne before God; and the divine voice commanded

me, that with such intelligence as God had set in me, I should write

and commend for use a Commentary on the Psalms. Overcome with terror,

I could only respond: so let it be, so let it be.’ For this reason the

holy man made a Commentary on the whole Psalter; and although its

grammar was bad, its sense was sound and clear.”[462]

Various attempts were made in the Middle Ages to render the hermit life

practicable, through permitting a limited intercourse among a cluster of

like-minded ascetics, as well as to regulate it under the direction of a

superior. In Italy, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the picturesque

energy of the individual hermit is prodigious, while in the north, as in

the establishment of the Carthusian Order, the organization is better, the

result more permanent, but the imaginative and consistent extravagance of

personality is not there. In the hermit communities founded by Romuald

there was a prior or abbot, invested with some authority. Yet the

organization was less complete than in coenobitic monasteries; for

Romuald’s hermit methods sought to minimize the intercourse among the

brethren, to an extent which was scarcely compatible with effective

organization. An idea of these communities may be had from Damiani’s

description of one of them:

“Such was the mode of life in Sytrio, that not only in name but in

fact it was as another Nytria.[463] The brethren went barefoot;

unkempt and haggard; they were content with the barest necessaries.

Some were shut in with doomed doors (_damnatis januis_), seemingly as

dead to the world as if in a tomb. Wine was unknown, even in extreme

illness. The attendants of the monks (_famuli monachorum_) and those

who kept the cattle, fasted and preserved silence. They made

regulations among themselves, and laid penances for speaking.”[464]

For seven years Romuald lived at Sytrio as an _inclusus_, shut up in his

cell, and preserving unbroken silence. Yet though his tongue was dumb his

life was eloquent. He lived on, setting a shining example of squalor and

austerity, eating only vile food, and handing back untouched any savoury

morsel. His conflicts with the devil continued; nor was he ever

vanquished. Advancing years intensified his aversion to human society and

his passion for solitude. In proportion as he made his ways displeasing to

men, his self-approval was enhanced.[465] A solitary death kept tally with

the temper of a recluse life.

“When he saw his end draw near he returned to the Valley of the Camp,

and had a cell with an oratory prepared, in which to immure himself

and keep silence until death. Twenty years before, he had foretold to

his disciples that there he should attain his peace; and had declared

his wish to breathe forth his spirit with no one standing by or

bestowing the last rites. When this cell of immurement (_reclusorium_)

was ready, the mind in Romuald was so that it scarcely could be

imprisoned. But his body grew heavy with the increasing ills of

extreme age, and the hard breathing of tussis. Yet not for this would

the holy man lie on a bed or relax his fasts. One day his strength

gradually forsook him, and he found himself sinking with fatigue. So

as the sun was setting he directed two brothers who stood by to go out

and shut the door of his cell after them. He told them that when the

time came for them to celebrate the matin hymns at dawn, they might

return. Unwillingly they went out, but did not go at once to rest; and

waited anxiously, concealing themselves by the master’s cell. After a

while, as they listened intent and could hear no movement of his body

nor any sound of his voice, correctly conjecturing what had happened,

they broke open the door, rushed in and lighted the light; and there,

the blessed soul having been transported to heaven, they found the

holy corpse supine. It lay as a celestial pearl neglected, but

hereafter to be placed with honour in the treasury of the King.”[466]

The spiritual unity which lies beneath the actions of Romuald should be

sought in the reasons and temper of the hermit life. To perfect the soul

for its passage to eternity is the fundamental motive. Monastic logic

convinces the man that this can best be accomplished through withdrawal

from the temptations of the world; and the hermit temper draws

irresistibly to solitude. The only consistent social function left to such

a man is that of turning the steps of his fellows to his own recluse path

of perfection. Romuald’s life manifests such motives and such temper, and

also this one function passionately performed. We see in him no love of

kind, but only a fiery passion for their salvation. Also we see the

absorption of self in self with God, the harsh intolerance of other men,

the fierce aversions and the passionate cravings which are germane to the

hermit life.

Physical self-mortification is the element of the hermit life most

difficult for modern people to understand. Yet nothing in Romuald extorted

more entire admiration from his biographer than his austerities. And if

there was one man on earth whom Peter admired as much as he did Romuald,

it was a certain mail-coated Dominicus, a virtuoso in self-mortification.

He exhibits its purging and penitential motives. Scourging purifies the

body from carnality; that is one motive. It also atones for sins, and

lessens the purgatorial period after death; this is another. There is a

third which is rooted rather in temperament than in reason. This is

contrition; the contrite heart may love to flagellate itself in love of

Him who suffered sinless.

Dominicus was surnamed Loricatus because he wore a coat of mail against

the attacks of the devil through the frailties of the too-comfortable

flesh. In his youth, family influence had installed him in a snug

ecclesiastic berth. As he reached maturity and bethought himself, the

sense of this involuntary simoniacal contamination filled him with

remorse. He abjured the world and became a member of the hermit community

of Fonte Avellana, where Damiani exercised the authority of prior. Yet the

latter looked on Dominic as his master, whom he admired to the pitch of

marvel, while regretting that he lacked himself the strength and leisure

to equal his flagellations. So Peter was enraptured with this wonder of a

Dominic, and wrote his biography, which deserved telling if, as Peter

says, his entire life, his _tota quippe vita_, was a preaching and an

edification, instruction and discipline (_praedicatio, aedificatio,

doctrina, disciplina_).

One descriptive passage from it will suffice:

“I am speaking of Dominic, my teacher and my master, whose tongue

indeed is rustic, but whose life is polished and accomplished

(_artificiosa satis et lepida_). His life indeed preaches more

effectively by its living actions (_vivis operibus_) than a barren

tongue which inanely weighs out the balanced phrases of a bespangled

urbanity (_phaleratae urbanitatis_). Through a long course of gliding

years, girt with iron mail, he has waged truceless war against the

wicked spirits; with cuirassed body and heart always ready for battle,

he marches eager warrior against the hostile array.

“Likewise it is his regular and unremitting habit, with a rod in each

hand every day to beat time upon his naked body, and thus scourge out

two psalters. And this even in the slacker season. For in Lent or when

he has a penance to perform (and he often undertakes a penance of a

hundred years), each day, while he plies himself with his rods, he

pays off at least three psalters repeating them mentally

(_meditando_).

“The penance of a hundred years is performed thus: With us three

thousand blows satisfies a year of penance; and the chanting

(_modulatio_) of ten psalms, as has often been tested, admits one

thousand blows. Now, clearly, as the Psalter consists of one hundred

and fifty psalms, any one computing correctly will see that five years

of penance lie in chanting one psalter, with this discipline. Now,

whether you take five times twenty or twenty times five you have a

hundred. Consequently whoever chants twenty psalters, with this

accompanying discipline, may be confident of having performed a

hundred years of penance. Herein our Dominic outdid those who struck

with only one hand; for he, a true son of Benjamin, warred

indefatigably with both hands against the lawless rebels of the flesh.

He has told me himself that he easily accomplished a penance of a

hundred years in six days.”[467]

This loricated Dominic was conscious of his virtuosity. We find him at the

beginning of a certain Lent, requesting the imposition of a penance of a

thousand years! Again, he comes after vespers to Damiani’s cell to tell

him that between morning and evening he has broken his record by “doing”

eight psalters! And once more we read of his coming troubled to his

master, saying: “You have written, as I have just heard, that in one day I

chanted nine psalters with corporeal discipline. When I heard it, I turned

pale and groaned. ‘Woe is me,’ I said; ‘without my knowledge, this has

been written of me, and yet I do not know whether I could do it.’ So I am

going to try again, and I shall certainly find out.”[468]

Dominic probably derived more pleasure than pain from his scourgings. For

besides the vanity of achievement, and some ecstasy of contrition, the

flesh itself turns morbid and rejoices in its laceration. Yet such

austerity is pre-eminently penal, and is initially impelled by fear. With

Dominic, with Romuald, with Damiani, the fear of hell entered the motives

of the secluded life. To observe this fear writ large in panic terror, we

turn to the old legend regarding the conversion of Bruno of Cologne, the

founder of the Carthusian Order. The scene is laid in Paris, where (with

much improbability) Bruno is supposed to be studying in the year 1082. One

of the most learned and pious of the doctors of theology died. His funeral

had been celebrated, and his body was about to be carried to the grave,

when the corpse raised its head and cried aloud with a dreadful voice:

“Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum.” Then the head fell back. The people,

terror-stricken, postponed the interment to the following day, when again,

as before, with a grievous and terrible voice the corpse raised its head

and cried: “Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum.” Amid general terror the

interment was again postponed to the next day, when, as before, with a

horrible cry the corpse shrieked: “Justo Dei judicio condemnatus sum.”

At this, Bruno, impressed and terrified, said to his friends: “Beloved,

what shall we do? Unless we fly we shall all perish utterly. Let us

renounce the world, and, like Anthony and John the Baptist, seek the caves

of the desert, that we may escape the wrath of the Judge, and reach the

port of salvation.” So they flee, and the Carthusian Order, with its

terrific asceticism, begins.[469]

This story, aside from its marvellous character, does not harmonize with

the more authentic facts of Bruno’s life. It is, however, a striking

expression of the ascetic fear; it also reflects psychologic truth. Who

but the man himself knows the naughtiness of his own heart? its

never-to-be disclosed vile and morbid thoughts? The modern may realize

this. Hamlet did. And it was just such a phase of self-consciousness as

the mediaeval imagination would transform into a tale of horror. Bruno

himself had been a learned doctor, a teacher, and the head of the

cathedral school at Rheims; he had been a zealous soldier of the Church.

In all this he had not found peace. The profession of a doctor of

theology, even when coupled with more active belligerency for the Church,

afforded no certain salvation. The story of the Paris doctor may have

symbolized the anxieties which dwelt in Bruno’s breast, until under their

stimulus the yearnings of a solitary temper gathered head and at last

brought him with six followers to Carthusia (_la grande Chartreuse_),

which lies to the north of Grenoble. 1084 is the year of its beginning.

It was a hermit community, the brethren living two by two in isolated

cells, but meeting for divine service in a little chapel. Camaldoli may

have been the model. Bruno wrote no _regula_ for his followers, and the

practices of the Order were first formulated by Guigo, the fifth prior, in

his _Consuetudines Cartusiae_, about the year 1130.[470] These permit a

limited intercourse among the brethren, for the service of God and the

regulation of their own lives. Yet the broader object was seclusion. Not

only severance from the world, but the seclusion of the brethren from each

other, in solitary labour and contemplation, was their ideal. The

asceticism of these _Consuetudines_ is of the strictest. And somehow it

would seem as if in the Carthusian Order the frailties of the spirit and

the lusts of the flesh were to be permanently vanquished by this set life

of labour, meditation, and rigid asceticism. _Carthusia nunquam reformata,

quia nunquam deformata_, remained true century after century. This long

freedom from corruption was partly due to the lofty and somewhat

exclusive character of the brotherhood. Carthusia was no broad way for the

monastic multitude. Its monks were relatively few and holy, the select of

God. Men of devout piety, they must be. It was also needful that they

should be possessed of such intellectual endowment and meditative capacity

as would with God’s grace yield provision for a life of solitary thought.

The intellectual piety of Carthusia finds its loftiest expression in the

_Meditationes_ of this same prior Guigo,[471] the form of which calls to

mind the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. In substance they

reflect Augustine’s intellectual devoutness and many of his thoughts. But

they seem Guigo’s very own, fruit of his own reflection; and thus

incidentally they afford an illustration of the general principle that by

the twelfth century the Middle Ages had made over into themselves what

they had drawn from the Fathers or from the pagan antique. Guigo’s

_Meditations_ possess spiritual calm; their logic is unhesitating; it is

remorselessly correct, however incomplete may be its premises or its

comprehension of life’s data. Whoever wishes to know the high

contemplative mind of monastic seclusion in the twelfth century may learn

it from this work. A number of its precepts are given here for the sake of

their illustrative pertinency and intrinsic merit, and because our author

is not very widely known. He begins with general reflections upon Veritas

and Pax:

“Truth should be set in the middle, as something beautiful. Nor, if

any one abhors it, do thou condemn, but pity. Thou indeed, who

desirest to come to it, why dost thou spurn it when it chides thy

faults?

“Without form and comeliness and fastened to the cross, truth is to be

worshipped.

“If thou speakest truth not from love of truth but from wish to injure

another, thou wilt not gain the reward of a truthspeaker but the

punishment of a defamer.

“Truth is life and eternal salvation. Therefore you ought to pity any

one whom it displeases. For to that extent he is dead and lost. But

you, perverse one, would not tell him the truth unless you thought it

bitter and intolerable to him. You do still worse when in order to

please men you speak a truth which delights them as much as if it

were lies and flattery. Not because it displeases or pleases should

truth be spoken, but as it profits. Yet be silent when it would do

harm, as light to weak eyes.

“Blessed is he whose mind is moved or affected only by the perception

and love of truth, and whose body is moved only by his mind. Thus the

body, like the mind, is moved by truth alone. For if there is no

stirring in the mind save that of truth, and none in the body save

that from the mind, then also there is no stirring in the body save

from truth, that is from God.

“Thou dost all things for the sake of peace, toward which the way lies

through truth alone, which is thine adversary in this life. Therefore

either subject thee to it or it to thee. For nothing else is left

thee.

“The lake does not boast because it abounds in water; for that is from

the source. So as to thy peace. Its cause is always something else.

Therefore thy peace is shifting and inconstant in proportion to the

instability of its cause. How worthless is it when it arises from the

pleasingness of a human face!

“Let not temporal things be the cause of thy peace; for then wilt thou

be as worthless and fragile as they. You would have such a peace in

common with the brutes; let thine be that of the angels, which

proceeds from truth.

“The beginning of the return to truth is to be displeased with

falsity. Blame precedes correction.

“In the cares which engage thee for thy salvation, no service or

medicine is more useful than to blame and despise thyself. Whoever

does this for thee is thy helper.

“Easy is the way to God, since it advances by laying down burdens.

Thou dost unburden thyself so far as thou deniest thyself.

“When anything good is said of thee, it is but as a rumour regarding

which thou knowest better.

“Consider the two experiences of filling and emptying (_ingestionis et

egestionis_); which blesses thee more? That burdens thee with useless

matters; this disburdens thee. To have had that is to have devoured it

altogether. Nothing remains for hope. So in all things of sense. They

perish all. And what of thee after these? Set thy love and hope on

what will not pass.

“Bestial pleasure comes from the senses of the flesh; it is diabolic,

a thing of arrogance, envy, and deceit; philosophic pleasure is to

know the creature; the angelic pleasure is to know and love God.

“When we take our pleasure from that from which brutes draw

pleasure--from lust like dogs, or from gluttony like swine--our souls

become like theirs. Yet we do not shudder. I had rather have a dog’s

body than his soul. It would be more tolerable if our body changed to

bestial shape, while our soul remained in its dignity, that is, in the

likeness of God.

“Readily man entangles himself in love of bodies and of vanity; but,

willy, nilly, he is torn with fear and grief at their dissolution. For

the love of perishable things is as a fountain of useless fears and

sorrows. The Lord frees the poor man from the mighty, by loosing him

from the fetter of earthly love.

“The human soul is tortured in itself as long as it can be tortured,

that is, as long as it loves anything besides God.

“Thou hast been clinging to one syllable of a great song, and art

troubled when that wisest Singer proceeds in His singing. For the

syllable which alone thou wast loving is withdrawn from thee, and

others succeed in order. He does not sing to thee alone, nor to thy

will, but His. The syllables which succeed are distasteful to thee

because they drive on that one which thou wast loving evilly.

“All matters which are called adverse are adverse only to the wicked,

that is, those who love the creature instead of the Creator.

“If in any way thou art tormented by fear, or anger or hate or grief

of any kind, lay it to thyself, that is, to thy concupiscence,

ignorance, or sloth. And if any one wishes to injure thee, lay that to

his concupiscence. Thy distress is evidence of thy sin in loving

anything destructible, having dismissed God. Thou dost grieve over the

ruined show; lay it to thee and thine error because thou hast been

cleaving to things that may be broken.

“He seeks a long temptation who seeks a long life.

“What God has not loved in His friends--power, rank, riches,

dignities--do not thou love in thine.

“Snares thou eatest, drinkest, wearest, sleepest in; all things are

snares.

“We are exiles through love and wantonness and inclination, not

through locality; exiles in the country of defilement, of dark

passions, of ignorance, of wicked loves and hates.

“In so far as thou lovest thyself--that is, this temporal life--so far

dost thou love what is transitory.

“Adverse matters do not make thee wretched, but rather show thee to

have been so; prosperity blinds the soul, by covering and increasing

misery, not by removing it.

“Every one ought to love all men. Whoever wishes another to show

special love toward him is a robber, and an offender against all.

“Mixed through this body, thou wast wretched enough; for thou wast

subject to all its corruptions, even to the bite of the flea or the

sorunculus. This did not suffice thee. Thou hast mixed thyself up with

other quasi bodies, the opinion of men, admiration, love, honour, fear

and the like. When these are harmed, pain comes to thee, as from

bodily hurt. Thy honour is hurt when contempt is shown thee; and so

with the rest. Think also thus regarding bodily forms.

“Unless thou hast despised whatever men can do to thwart or aid thee,

thou wilt not be able to contemn their disposition toward thee, their

hate and love, their opinions, good or bad.

“Why dost thou wish to be loved by men?

“Who rejoices in praise, loses praise.

“Who is pained or angered by the loss of any temporal thing, shows

himself worth what he has lost.

“No thing ought to wish to be loved as good, unless it blesses its

lover in the very matter for which it is loved. But no thing does this

if it needs its lover, or is helped by loving or being loved by

another. Most cruel, then, is the thing which wishes another to place

affection and hope on it when it cannot benefit that other. The devils

do this, who wish men to be engrossed in their service instead of

God’s. So cry to thy lovers, Cease, ye wretched, to admire or respect

or honour me; for I, miserable wretch, can neither aid myself nor you,

but rather need your aid.

“So far as in thee is, thou hast destroyed all men, for thou hast put

thyself between them and God, so that gazing on thee and ignoring God,

they might admire and praise thee alone. This is utterly profitless to

thee and them, not to say destructive.

“Whatever form thou dost enjoy is as the male to thy mind. For thy

mind yields and lies down to it. Thou dost not assimilate it, but it

thee. Its image endures, like an idol in its temple, to which thou

dost sacrifice neither ox nor goat, but thy rational soul and thy

body, to wit, thy whole self, when thou enjoyest it.

“See how, as in a wine-shop, thou dost prostitute thine as a venal

love, and to the measure of pay weighest thyself out to men. In this

wine-shop he receives nothing who gives nothing. And yet thou wouldst

not have that which thou dost sell, unless freely from above it had

been given to thee who gave nothing. Therefore thou hast received thy

pay.

“To be empty and removed from God is to make ready for lust.

“Who wishes to enjoy thee in thyself, deserves from thee the thanks of

flies and fleas who suck thy blood.

“This is the very sum of human depravity to forsake the better, which

is God, and to regard the lesser and cleave to them by delighting in

them--these temporalities!

“The beetle as it flies sees everything, and then selects nothing that

is beautiful or wholesome or durable, but settles down upon dung. So

thy soul in mental flight (_intuitu pervolans_) surveying heaven and

earth and whatever is great and precious therein, cleaves to none of

these, but embraces the cheap and dirty things occurring to its

thought. Blush for this.

“When thou pleadest with God not to take from thee something to which

thou cleavest by desire, it is as if an adulteress caught by her

husband in the act, should not ask pardon for her crime, but beg him

not to interrupt her pleasure. It is not enough for thee to go

wantoning from God, but thou must incline Him to save and approve the

things in which thou takest delight to thy undoing--the forms of

bodies, their savours and their colours.

“The poverty of thine inner vision of God, purblind as thou art,

although He is there, makes thee willing to go out of doors from thine

own hearth, refusing to linger within thyself, as in the dark. So thou

hast nothing to do but go gaping after the external forms of bodies

and the opinions of men. Thou dost carry thyself in this world as if

thou hadst come hither to gaze and wonder at the forms of bodies.

“May God be gracious to thee, that the feet of thy mind may find no

resting-place, so that somehow, O soul, thou mayest return to the Ark,

like Noah’s dove.

“Prosperity is a snare, adversity the knife that cuts it; prosperity

imprisons us from the love of God; adversity breaks the dungeon in

pieces.

“Since you are taken only by pleasure, you should shun whatever gives

it. The Christian soul is safe only in adversity. From what thou

cherishest God makes thee rods.

“The only medicine for every pain and torment is contempt for whatever

in thee is hurt by them, and the turning of the mind to God.

“As many carnal pleasures as thou spurnest, just so many snares of the

devil dost thou escape. As many tribulations--especially those for

truth’s sake--as thou dost flee, so many salutary remedies thou

spurnest.

“In hope thou mayest cherish the unripened grain; thus love those who

are not yet good, Be such toward all as the Truth has shown itself

toward thee. Just as it has sustained and loved thee for thy

betterment, so do thou sustain and love men in order to better them.

“You are set as a standard to blunt the darts of the enemy, that is,

to destroy evil by opposing good to it. You should never return evil

for evil, except very medicinally; which is not to return evil but

good.

“If to cleave to God is thine whole and only good, thine whole and

only evil is separation from Him.

“Who loves all will be saved without doubt; but who is loved by men

will not for that reason be saved.”

The unity of these _Meditations_ lies in the absolute manner in which the

meditating soul attaches itself to God as its whole and only good. Herein

Guigo’s thoughts are Augustinian. One notes their clear intellectual tone.

Nothing lures the thinker from his aim and goal of God. He abhors whatever

might distract him; and as to all except God and God’s commands, he is

indifferent. Guigo detests impermanence as keenly as did the Brahmin and

Buddhist meditators of India. He has as high regard as any Indian or Greek

philosopher for a life of thought. But there are differences between the

Carthusian prior and the Greek or Indian sage. Guigo’s renunciation does

not (from his standpoint) penetrate life as deeply as Gotama’s; for Guigo

renounces only things comparatively insignificant, so utterly transient

are they, so completely they pale before the light of his goal of God.

Therein shall lie clearer attainment than lay at the end of any Indian

chain of reasoning. So note well, that Guigo, like other Christians, is

not essentially a renouncer, but one who attains and receives.

The difference between him and the Greek is also patent. The source of his

blue lake of thought is not himself, but God. Although calm and sustained

by reason, he is rationally the opposite of self-reliant, and so the

opposite of the ideal Stoic or Aristotelian. God is his Creator, the

source of his thoughts, the loadstar of his meditations, the

all-comprehending object of his desire.

We find in Guigo further specific elements of Christian asceticism, which

sharpen his repugnances for the world of transient phenomena. Those

phenomena mostly contain elements of sin: all pleasure is temptation and a

snare; adversity keeps the soul’s wings trimmed true. So the main content

of passing mortal life, while not evil in itself, is so charged with

temptation and allure, that it is worthy only of avoidance. The transient,

the physical, the brutal, the diabolic--one shades into the next, and

leads on to the last. Have none of them, O soul! They are snares all.

Of course, Guigo has the specific monkish horror of sexual lust, that

chief of fleshly snares. But he goes further. With him all particular,

disproportionate love is wrong; love no one, and desire not to be loved,

out of the proportionment of the common love which God has for all His

creatures: so love you, and not otherwise. Others, even women, attained

this standard. In the legend, St. Elizabeth of Hungary gives thanks that

she loves her own children no more than others’. She is no mother, but a

saint. So Guigo will love all--love indeed? one queries. Thus also will he

have others hold themselves toward him, lest he be a stumbling-block in

their or his salvation.

Yea, salvation! If indeed this monk shall not have attained that, of a

truth he would be of all men most miserable--save for the quiet,

thought-filled calm which is his inner and his veritable life. It is a

calm not riven by the storms which drove the soul of Peter Damiani. God

was not less to Guigo; but the temperaments of the two men differed. Not

beyond or out of one’s nature can one love or yearn, or even know the

stress of storm.

CHAPTER XVII

THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN SAINT BERNARD

Through the prodigious power of his personality, St. Bernard gave new life

to monasticism, promoted the reform of the secular clergy and the

suppression of heresy, ended a papal schism, set on foot the Second

Crusade, and for a quarter of a century swayed Christendom as never holy

man before or after him. An adequate account of his career would embrace

the entire history of the first half of the twelfth century.[472]

The man who was to move men with his love, and quell the proud with fear,

had, as a youth, a graceful figure, a sweet countenance, and manners the

most winning. Later in life he is spoken of as cheerfully bearing

reproaches, but shamefaced at praise, and his gentle manners are again

mentioned.

“As a helpmeet for his holy spirit, God made his body to conform. In

his flesh there was visible a certain grace, but spiritual rather than

of the flesh. A brightness not of earth shone in his look; there was

an angelic purity in his eyes, and a dove-like simplicity. The beauty

of the inner man was so great that it would burst forth in visible

tokens, and the outer man would seem bathed from the store of inward

purity and copious grace. His frame was of the slightest

(_tenuissimum_), and most spare of flesh; a blush often tinged the

delicate skin of his cheeks. And a certain natural heat (_quidquid

caloris naturalis_) was in him, arising from assiduous meditation and

penitent zeal. His hair was bright yellow, his beard reddish with

some white hairs toward the end of his life. Actually of medium

stature, he looked taller.”[473]

This same biography says:

“He who had set him apart, from his mother’s womb, for the work of a

preacher, had given him, with a weak body, a voice sufficiently strong

and clear. His speech, whatever persons he spoke to for the edifying

of souls, was adapted to his audience; for he knew the intelligence,

the habits and occupations of each and all. To country folk he spoke

as if born and bred in the country; and so to other classes, as it he

had been always occupied with their business. He was learned with the

erudite, and simple with the simple, and with spiritual men rich in

illustrations of perfection and wisdom. He adapted himself to all,

desiring to gain all for Christ.”[474]

Bernard was born of noble parents at the Chateau of Fontaines, near Dijon,

in the year 1090, and was educated in a church school at Chatillon on the

Seine. It is an ofttold story, how, when little more than twenty years of

age, he drew together a band formed of his own brothers, his uncle, and

his friends, and led them to Citeaux,[475] his ardent soul unsatisfied so

long as one held back. Three years later, in 1115, the Abbot, Stephen

Harding, entrusted him with the headship of the new monastery, to be

founded in the domains of the Count of Troyes. Bernard set forth with

twelve companions, came to Clara Vallis on the river Aube, and placed his

convent in that austere solitude.

Great were the attractions of Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) under Bernard’s

vigorous and loving rule. Its monks increased so rapidly and so constantly

that during its founder’s life sixty-five bands were sent forth to rear

new convents. Meanwhile, Bernard’s activities and influence widened, till

they seemed to compass western Christendom. He had become a power in the

politics of Church and State. In 1130 he was summoned by Louis le Gros

practically to determine the claims of the rival Popes Innocent II. and

Anacletus II. He decided for the former, and was the chief instrument of

his eventual reinstatement at Rome. Before this Bernard’s health had been

broken by his extreme austerities. Yet even the lamentable failure of the

Second Crusade, zealously promoted by him, did not break his power over

Europe, which continued unimpaired until his death in 1153.

This active and masterful man was impelled by those elements of the _vita

contemplativa_ which formed his inner self. First and last and always he

was a monk. Had he not been the very monk he was, he would not have been

the dominator of men and situations that he proved himself to be.

Temperament fashions the objects of contemplation, and shapes the yearning

and aversions, of great monks. The temperamental element of love--the love

of God and man, with its appurtenant detestations--made the heart of

Bernard’s _vita contemplativa_, and impassioned and empowered his active

faculties. It was the keynote of his life: in his letters it speaks in

words of fire, while other writings of the saint analyze this great human

quality with profundity and truth. In these he renders explicit the modes

of affection which man may have for man and above all for God; he sets

them forth as the path as well as goal of life on earth, and then as the

rapt summit of attainment in the life to come. Through all its stages, as

it flows from self to fellow, as it rises from man to God, love still is

love, and forms the unifying principle among men and between them and God.

Let us trace in his letters the nature and the power of Bernard’s love,

and see with what yearning he loved his fellows, seeking to withdraw them

from the world; and how his love strove to be as sword and armour against

the flesh and the devil. By easy transition we shall pass to Bernard’s

warning wrath, flung against those who would turn the struggling soul

aside, or threaten the Church’s peace; then by more arduous, but still

unbroken stages, we may rise to the love of Jesus, and through love of the

God-man to love of God. We shall realize at the close why that last

mediaeval assessor of destinies, whose name was Dante Alighieri, selected

St. Bernard as the exponent of the blessed vision which is salvation’s

crown in the paradise of God.[476]

The way of life at Clara Vallis might discourage monks of feeble zeal.

Among the brethren of these early days was one named Robert, a cousin of

the Abbot, seemingly of weak and petulant disposition. Soon he fled, to

seek a softer cell in Cluny, the great and rich monastery to which his

parents appear to have dedicated him in childhood. For a while Bernard

suppressed his grief; but the day came when he could endure no longer

Robert’s abandonment of his soul’s safety and of the friend who yearned

for him. He stole out of the monastery, accompanied by a monk named

William. There, in the open (_sub dio_), Bernard dictated a long letter to

be sent to the deserter. While the two were busy, the one dictating, the

other writing, a rainstorm broke upon them. William wished to stop. “It is

God’s work; write and fear not,” said Bernard. So William wrote on, in the

midst of the rain; but no drop fell on him or the parchment; for the power

of love which dictated the letter preserved the parchment on which it was

being written.[477]

Whoever has read this letter in its own fervent Latin will not care to

dispute this miracle, for which it stands first in the collection of

Bernard’s correspondence. Bernard does not recriminate or argue in it; his

love shall bring the young monk back to him. Yes, yes, he says to all that

the other has urged regarding fancied slights and persecution:

“Quite right; I admit it. I am not writing in order to contend, but to

end contention. To flee persecution is no fault in him who flees, but

in him who pursues; I do not deny it. I pass over what has happened; I

do not ask why or how it happened. I do not discuss faults, I do not

dispute as to the circumstances, I have no memory for injuries. I

speak only what is in my heart. Wretched me, that I lack thee, that I

do not see thee, that I am living without thee, for whom to die would

be to live; without whom to live, is to die. I ask not why thou hast

gone away; I complain only that thou dost not return. Come, and there

shall be peace; return, and all shall be made good.

“It was certainly my fault that thou didst go away. I was too austere

with thy young years, and treated thee inhumanly. So thou saidst when

here, and so I hear thou dost still reproach me. But that shall not be

imputed to thee. I never meant it harshly, I was only indiscreet. Now

thou wilt find me different, and I thee. Where before thou didst fear

the master, thou shalt now embrace the companion. Do not think that I

will not excuse any fault of thine. Dost thou wish to be quite free

from fault? then return. If thou wilt forget thy fault I will pardon

it; also pardon thou me, and I too will forget my fault.”

Bernard then argues long and passionately against those who had led the

young man away and received him with such blandishments at Cluny; and

passionately he argues against the insidious softening of monastic

principles.

“Arise, soldier of Christ, arise, shake off the dust, return to the

battle whence thou hast fled, and more bravely shalt thou fight and

more gloriously triumph. Christ has many soldiers who bravely began,

stood fast and conquered; He has few who have turned from flight and

renewed the combat. Everything rare is precious; and thou among that

rare company shalt the more radiantly shine.

“Thou art fearful? so be it; but why dost thou fear where there is no

fear, and why dost thou not fear where everything is to be feared?

Because thou hast fled from the battle-line, dost thou think to have

escaped the foe? It is easier for the Adversary to pursue a fugitive

than to bear himself against manful defence. Secure, arms cast aside,

thou takest thy morning slumbers, the hour when Christ will have

arisen! The multitude of enemies beset the house, and thou sleepest.

Is it safer to be caught alone and sleeping, than armed with others in

the field? Arouse thee, seize thy arms, and escape to thy

fellow-soldiers. Dost thou recoil at the weight of thy arms, O

delicate soldier! Before the enemy’s darts the shield is no burden,

nor the helmet heavy. The bravest soldiers tremble when the trumpet is

heard before the battle is joined; but then hope of victory and fear

of defeat make them brave. How canst thou tremble, walled round with

the zeal of thy armed brethren, angels bearing aid at thy right hand,

and thy leader Christ? There shalt thou safely fight, secure of

victory. O battle, safe with Christ and for Christ! In which there is

no wound or defeat or circumvention so long as thou fleest not. Only

flight loses the victory, which death does not lose. Blessed art thou,

and quickly to be crowned, dying in battle. Woe for thee, if

recoiling, thou losest at once the victory and the crown--which may He

avert, my beloved son, who in the Judgment will award thee deeper

damnation because of this letter of mine if He finds thee to have

taken no amendment from it.”

“It is God’s work,” said Bernard to the hesitating scribe. These words

suggest the character of the love which inspired this letter. He loved

Robert as man yearns for man; but his motive was to do God’s will, and win

the young man back to salvation. In after years this young man returned to

Clara Vallis.

It was Bernard’s lot to write many letters urging procrastinators to

fulfil their vows,[478] or appealing to those who had laid aside the arms

of austerity, perhaps betaking themselves to the more worldly life of the

secular clergy. This seems to have been the case with a young canon Fulco,

whom an ambitious uncle sought to draw back to the world, or at least to a

career of sacerdotal emolument. In fact, Fulco at last became an

archdeacon; from which it may be inferred that in his case Bernard’s

appeal was not successful. He had poured forth his arguments in an ardent

letter.[479] Love compels him to use words to make the recipient grieve;

for love would have him feel grief, that he might no longer have true

cause for grief--good mother love, who can cherish the weak, exercise

those who have entered upon their course, or quell the restless, and so

show herself differently toward her sons, all of whom she loves. This

letter, like the one to Robert, concludes with a burning peroration:

“What dost thou in the city, dainty soldier? Thy fellows whom thou

hast deserted, fight and conquer; they storm heaven (_coelum rapiunt_)

and reign, and thou, sitting on thy palfrey (_ambulatorem_), clothed

in purple and fine linen, goest ambling about the highways!”

Bernard also wrote letters of consolation to parents whose sons had become

monks, or letters of warning to those who sought to withdraw a monk from

his good fight. In one instance, his influence had made a monk of a youth

of gentle birth named Godfrey, to his parents’ grief. So Bernard writes to

them:

“If God makes your son His also, what have you lost, or he? He, from

rich, becomes richer, from being noble, still more illustrious, and

what is more than all, from a sinner he becomes a saint. It behoved

him to be made ready for the Kingdom prepared for him from the

foundation of the world, and for this reason it is well for him to

spend with us his short span of days, so that clean from the filth of

living in the world, earth’s dust shaken off, he may become fit for

the heavenly mansion. If you love him you will rejoice that he goes to

his Father, and such a Father! He goes to God, but you do not lose

him; rather through him you gain many sons. For all of us who belong

to Clara Vallis have taken him to be our brother and you for our

parents.

“Perhaps you fear this hard life for his tender body--that were to

fear where there is nothing to fear. Have faith and be comforted. I

will be a father to him and he shall be my son until from my hands the

Father of Mercies and God of all consolation shall receive him. Do not

grieve; do not weep; your Godfrey is hastening to joy, not to sorrow.

A father to him will I be, a mother too, a brother and a sister. I

will make the crooked ways straight, and the steep places plain. I

will so temper and provide for him that as his spirit profits, his

body shall not want. So shall he serve the Lord in joy and gladness,

and shall sing before Him, How great is the glory of the Lord.”[480]

Young Godfrey was a daintily nurtured plant. For all the Abbot’s eloquence

he did not stay in Clara Vallis. The world drew him back. It was now for

the saint to weep:

“I grieve over thee, my son Godfrey; I grieve over thee. And with

reason. For who would not lament that the flower of thy youth which,

to the joy of angels, thou didst offer unsullied to God in the odour

of sweetness, is now trampled on by demons, defiled with sins, and

contaminated by the world. How could you, who were called by God,

follow the devil recalling thee? How could you, whom He had begun to

draw to Himself, withdraw your foot from the very entry upon glory? In

thee I see the truth of those words: ‘A man’s foes are they of his own

household.’ Thy friends and neighbours drew near and stood up against

thee. They called thee back into the jaws of the lion and the gates of

death. They have set thee in darkness, like the dead; and thou art

nigh to go down into the belly of hell, which now is ravening to

devour thee.

“Turn back, I say, turn back, before the abyss swallows you and the

pit closes its mouth, before you are engulfed whence you shall not

escape, before, bound hand and foot, you are cast into outer darkness

where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, before you are hurled

into darkness, shut in with the darkness of death.

“Perhaps you blush to return, where you have only now fallen away.

Blush for flight, and not for turning to renew the combat. The

conflict is not ended; the hostile arrays have not withdrawn from each

other. We would not conquer without you, nor do we envy you your share

of the glory. Joyful we will run to thee, and receive thee in our

arms, crying: ‘It is meet to make merry and be glad; for this our son

was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.’”[481]

Who knows whether this letter brought back the little monk? Bernard wrote

so lovingly to him, so gently to his parents. He could write otherwise,

and show himself insensible to this world’s pestering tears. To the

importunate parents of a monk named Elias, who would drag him away from

Clara Vallis, Bernard writes in their son’s name thus:

“To his dear parents, Ingorranus and Iveta, Elias, monk but sinner,

sends daily prayers.

“The only cause for which it is permitted not to obey parents is God;

for He said: ‘Whoso loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy

of me.’ If you truly love me as good and faithful parents, why do you

molest my endeavour to please the Father of all, and attempt to

withdraw me from the service of Him, to serve whom is to reign? For

this I ought not to obey you as parents, but regard you as enemies. If

you loved me, you would rejoice, because I go to my Father and yours.

But what is there between you and me? What have I from you save sin

and misery? And indeed the corruptible body which I carry I admit I

have from you. Is it not enough that you brought miserable me into the

misery of this hateful world? that you, sinners, in your sin produced

a sinner? and that him born in sin, in sin you nourished? Envying the

mercy which I have obtained from Him who desireth not the death of a

sinner, would you make me a child of hell?

“O harsh father! savage mother! parents cruel and impious--parents!

rather destroyers, whose grief is the safety of the child, whose

consolation is the death of their son! who would drag me back to the

shipwreck which I, naked, escaped; who would give me again to the

robbers when through the good Samaritan I am a little recovering from

my wounds.

“Cease then, my parents,” concludes the letter after many other

reproofs, “cease to afflict yourselves with vain weeping and to

disquiet me. No messengers you send will force me to leave. Clara

Vallis will I never forsake. This is my rest, and here shall be my

habitation. Here will I pray without ceasing for my sins and yours;

here with constant prayer will I implore that He whose love has

separated us for a little while, will join us in another life happy

and inseparable,--in whose love we may live forever and ever.

Amen.”[482]

If Bernard was severe toward those who threatened some loved person’s

weal, his anger burned more fiercely against those whom he deemed enemies

of God. Heavy was his hand upon the evils of the Church: “The insolence of

the clergy--to which the bishop’s neglect is mother--troubles the earth

and molests the Church. The bishops give what is holy to the dogs, and

pearls to swine.”[483]

Likewise, fearlessly but with restraint arising from his respect for all

power ordained of God, Bernard opposes kings. Thus he writes to Louis the

Fat, in regard to the election of a bishop, with many protests, however,

that he would not oppose the royal power--for which we note his reason:

“If the whole world conspired to force me to do aught against kingly

majesty, yet would I fear God, and would not dare to offend the king

ordained by Him. For neither do I forget where I read that whosoever

resisteth power, resisteth the ordinance of God.” But--but--but--continues

the letter, through many qualifyings which are also admonitions. At last

come the words: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the

living God, even for thee, O king.” Thereupon the saint does not fail to

speak his mind.[484]

Bernard’s fiercest denunciations were reserved for heretics and

schismatics, for Abaelard, for Arnold of Brescia, for the Antipope

Anacletus--were they not enemies of God? Clearly the saint saw and

understood these men from his point of view. Thus in a letter to Innocent

II.[485] he sums up his attitude towards Abaelard: “Peter Abaelard is

trying to make void the merit of Christian faith, when he deems himself

able by human reason to comprehend God altogether. He ascends to the

heavens and descends even to the abyss! Nothing may hide from him in the

depths of hell or in the heights above! The man is great in his own

eyes--this scrutinizer of Majesty and fabricator of heresies.” Here was

the gist of the matter. That a man should be great in his own eyes, apart

from God, and teach others so, stirred Bernard’s bowels.[486]

Of Arnold, the impetuous clerical revolutionist and pupil of Abaelard,

Bernard writes with fury: “Arnold of Brescia, whose speech is honey and

whose teaching poison, whom Brescia vomited forth, Rome abhorred, France

repelled, Germany abominates, Italy will not receive, is said to be with

you.”[487] Again, Bernard rejoices with great joy when he hears that the

anti-pope who divided Christendom was dead.[488]

It is pleasant to turn back to Bernard’s lovingness and mercy. His God

would not condemn those who repented; and the saint can be gentle toward

sinners possibly repentant. He urges certain monks to receive back an

erring brother: “Take him back then, you who are spiritual, in the spirit

of gentleness; let love be confirmed in him, and let good intention excuse

the evil done. Receive back with joy him whom you wept as lost.”[489] In

another letter he urges a countess to be more lenient with her

children;[490] and there is a story of his begging a robber from the hands

of the executioners, and leading him to Clara Vallis, where he became at

length a holy man.[491]

So one sees Bernard’s severity, his gentle mercy, and the love burning

within him for his fellows’ good. Such were the emotions of Bernard the

saint. The man’s human heart could also yearn, and feel bereavement in

spite of faith. As his zeal draws him from land to land, he is home-sick

for Clara Vallis. From Italy, in 1137, fighting to crush the anti-pope, a

letter carries his yearning love to his dear ones there:

“Sad is my soul, and not to be consoled, until I may return. For what

consolation save you in the Lord have I in an evil time and in the

place of my pilgrimage? Wherever I go, your sweet recollection does

not leave me; but the sweeter the memory the more vexing is the

absence. Alas! my wandering not only is prolonged but aggravated. Hard

enough is exile from the Lord, which is common to us all while we are

pilgrims in the body. But I endure a special exile also, compelled to

live away from you.

“For a third time my bowels are torn from me.[492] Those little

children are weaned before the time; the very ones whom I begot

through the Gospel I may not educate. I am forced to abandon my own,

and care for the affairs of others; and it is not easy to say whether

to be dragged from the former, or to be involved in the latter is

harder to bear. Thus, O good Jesus, my whole life is spent in grief

and my years in groaning! It is good for me, O Lord, to die, rather

than to live and not among my brothers, my own household, my own

dearest ones.”[493]

Bernard had a younger brother, Gerard, whom he deeply loved. In 1138 he

died while still young, and having recently returned with Bernard from

Italy. Bernard, dry-eyed, read the burial-service over his body; so says

his biographer wondering, for the saint was not wont to bury even

strangers without tears.[494] No other eyes were dry at that funeral.

Afterwards he preached a sermon;[495] it began with restraint, then became

a long cry of grief.

The saint took the text from Canticles where he had left off in his

previous sermon--“I am black, but comely, as the tents of Kedar.” He

proceeded to expound its meaning: the tents are our bodies, in which we

pilgrims dwell and carry on our war. Then he spoke of other portions of

the text--and suddenly deferred the whole subject till his next sermon:

Grief ordains an end, “and the calamity which I suffer.”

“For why dissemble, or conceal the fire which is scorching my sad

breast? What have I to do with this Song, I who am in bitterness? The

power of grief turns my intent, and the anger of the Lord has parched

my spirit. I did violence to my soul and dissembled till now, lest

sorrow should seem to conquer faith. Others wept, but with dry eyes I

followed the hateful funeral, and dry-eyed stood at the tomb, until

all the solemnities were performed. In my priestly robes I finished

the prayers, and sprinkled the earth over the body of my loved one

about to become earth. Those who looked on, weeping, wondered that I

did not. With such strength as I could command, I resisted and

struggled not to be moved at nature’s due, at the fiat of the

Powerful, at the decree of the Just, at the scourge of the Terrible,

at the will of the Lord. But though tears were pressed back, I could

not command my sadness; and grief, suppressed, roots deeper. I confess

I am beaten. My sorrow will out before the eyes of my children who

understand and will console.

“You know, my sons, how just is my grief. You know what a comrade has

left me in the path wherein I was walking. He was my brother in blood

and still closer by religion. I was weak in body, and he carried me;

faint-hearted, and he comforted me; lazy, and he spurred me;

thoughtless, and he admonished me. Whither art thou snatched away,

snatched from my hands! O bitter separation, which only death could

bring; for living, thou wouldst never leave me. Why did we so love,

and now have lost each other! Hard state, but my fortune, not his, is

to be pitied. For thou, dear brother, if thou hast lost dear ones,

hast gained those who are dearer. Me only this separation wounds.

Sweet was our presence to each other, sweet our consorting, sweet our

colloquy; I have lost these joys; thou hast but changed them. Now,

instead of such a worm as me, thou hast the presence of Christ. But

what have I in place of thee? And perhaps though thou knewest us in

the flesh, now that thou hast entered into the power of the Lord, thou

art mindful only of His righteousness, forgetting us.

“I seem to hear my brother saying: ‘Can a woman forget her sucking

child; even so, yet will I not forget thee.’ That does not help, where

no hand is stretched out.”

Bernard speaks of Gerard’s unfailing helpfulness to him and every one, and

of his piety and religious life. He feels the cares of his life and

station closing around him, and his brother gone. Then he justifies his

grief, and pours it forth unrestrained. Would any one bid him not to weep?

as well tell him not to feel when his bowels were torn from him; he feels,

for his flesh is not brass; he grieves, and his grief is ever before him:

“I confess my sorrow. Will some one call me carnal? Certainly I am

human, since I am a man. Nor do I deny being carnal, for I am, and

sold under sin, adjudged to death and punishment. I am not insensible

to punishments; I shudder at death, my own or others’. Mine was

Gerard, mine! He is gone, and I feel, and am wounded, grievously!

“Pardon me, my sons; or rather lament your father’s state. Pity me,

and think how grievously I have been requited for my sins by the hand

of God. Though I feel the punishment, I do not impugn the sentence.

This is human; that would be impious. Man must needs be affected

towards those dear to him, with gladness at their presence, with

sorrow at their absence. I grieve over thee, Gerard, my beloved, not

because thou art to be pitied, but because thou art taken away. May it

be that I have not lost thee, but sent thee on before! Be it granted

me some time to follow whither thou art gone; for thou hast joined the

company of those heavenly ones on whom in thy last hours thou didst

call exultingly to praise the Lord. For thee death had no sting, nor

any fear. Through his jaws Gerard passed to his Fatherland safe and

glad and exulting. When I reached his side, and he had finished the

psalm, looking up to heaven, he said in a clear voice: ‘Father, into

thy hands I commend my spirit.’ Then saying over again and again the

word, ‘Father, Father,’ he turned his joyful face to me, and said:

‘What great condescension that God should be father to men! What glory

for men to be sons of God and heirs of God!’ So he rejoiced, till my

grief was almost turned to a song of gladness.

“But the pang of sorrow calls me back from that lovely vision, as care

wakens one from light slumber. I grieve, but only over myself; I

lament his loss to this household, to the poor, to all our Order; whom

did he not comfort with deed and word and example? Grievously am I

afflicted, because I love vehemently. And let no one blame my tears;

for Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. His tears bore witness to His

nature, not to His lack of faith. So these tears of mine; they show my

sorrow, not my faithlessness. I grieve, but do not murmur. Lord, I

will sing of thy mercy and righteousness. Thou gavest Gerard; thou

hast taken him. Though we grieve that he is gone, we thank thee for

the gift.

“I bear in mind, O Lord, my pact and thy commiseration, that thou

mightest the more be justified in thy word. For when last year we were

in Viterbo, and he fell sick, and I was afflicted at the thought of

losing him in a strange land and not bringing him back to those who

loved him, I prayed to thee with groans and tears: ‘Wait, O Lord,

until our return. When he is restored to his friends, take him, if

thou wilt, and I will not complain.’ Thou heardest me, God; he

recovered; we finished the work thou hadst laid on us, and returned in

gladness bringing our sheaves of peace. Then I was near to forget my

pact, but not so thou. I shame me of these sobs, which convict me of

prevarication. Thou hast recalled thy loan, thou hast taken again what

was thine. Tears set an end to words; thou, O Lord, wilt set to them

limit and measure.”[496]

We may now turn to Bernard’s love of God, and rise with him from the

fleshly to the spiritual, from the conditioned to the absolute. There is

no break; love is always love. More especially the love of Christ, the

God-man is the mediating term: He presents the Godhead in human form; to

love Him is to know a love attaching to both God and man.

Guigo, Prior of the “Grande Chartreuse,” whose _Meditations_ have been

given,[497] was Bernard’s friend, and wrote to him upon love. Bernard

replies: “While I was reading it, I felt sparks in my breast, from which

my heart glowed within me as from that fire which the Lord sent upon the

earth!” He hesitates to suggest anything to Guigo’s fervent spirit, as he

would hesitate to rouse a bride quiet in the bridegroom’s arms. Yet “what

I do not dare, love dares; it boldly knocks at a friend’s door, fearing no

repulse, and quite careless of disturbing your delightful ease with its

affairs.” Bernard is here speaking of love’s importunate devotion; his

words characterize the soul’s importuning of God:

“I should call love undefiled because it keeps nothing of its own.

Indeed it has nothing of its own, for everything which it has is

God’s. The undefiled law of the Lord is love, which seeks not what

profits itself but what profits many. It is called the law of the

Lord, either because He lives by it, or because no one possesses it

save by His gift. It is not irrational to speak of God as living by

law, that law being love. Indeed in the blessed highest Trinity what

preserves that highest ineffable unity, except love?”

So far, Bernard has been using the word _charitas_. Now, in order to

indicate love’s desire, he begins to use the words _cupiditas_ and

_amor_.[498] When these yearning qualities are rightly guided by God’s

grace, what is good will be cherished for the sake of what is better, the

body will be loved for the soul’s sake, the soul for God’s sake, and God

for His own sake.

“Yet because we are of the flesh (_carnales_) and are begotten through

the flesh’s concupiscence, our yearning love (_cupiditas vel amor

noster_) must begin from the flesh; yet if rightly directed, advancing

under the leadership of grace, it will be consummated in spirit. For

that which is first is not spiritual, but that which is natural

(_animale_); then that which is spiritual. First man loves (_diligit_)

himself for his own sake. For he is flesh, and is able to understand

nothing beyond himself. When he sees that he cannot live

(_subsistere_) by himself alone, he begins, as it were from necessity,

to seek and love God. Thus, in this second stage, he loves God, but

only for his own sake. Yet as his necessities lead him to cultivate

and dwell with God in thinking, reading, praying, and obeying, God

little by little becomes known and becomes sweet. Having thus tasted

how sweet is the Lord, he passes to the third stage, where he loves

God for God’s sake. Whether any man in this life has perfectly

attained the fourth stage, where he loves himself for God’s sake, I do

not know. Let those say who have knowledge; for myself, I confess it

seems impossible. Doubtless it will be so when the good and faithful

servant shall have entered into the joy of his Lord, and shall be

drunk with the flowing richness of God’s house. Then oblivious to

himself, he will pass to God and become one spirit with Him.”[499]

So one sees the stages through which love of self and lust of fellow

become love of God. A responsive emotion attends each ascending step in

the saint’s intellectual apprehension of love--as one should bear in mind

while following the larger exposition of the theme in Bernard’s _De

deligendo Deo_.[500]

The cause and reason for loving God is God; the _mode_ is to love without

measure: “Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est; modus, sine modo diligere.”

Should we love God because of His desert, or our advantage? For both

reasons. On the score of His desert, because He first loved us. What stint

shall there be to my love of Him who is my life’s free giver, its

bounteous administrator, its kind consoler, its solicitous ruler, its

redeemer, eternal preserver and glorifier? On the other hand, “God is not

loved without reward; but He should be loved without regard to the

reward. _Charitas_ seeks not its own. It is affection and not a contract;

it is not bought, nor does it buy. _Amor_ is satisfied with itself. It has

the reward, which is what is loved. True love demands no reward, but

merits one. The reward, although not sought by the lover, is due him, and

will be rendered if he perseveres.”

Bernard proceeds to expound the four stages or grades (_gradus_) of love:

“Love is a natural affection, one of the four.[501] As it exists by

nature, it should diligently serve the Author of nature first of all.

But as nature is frail and weak, love is compelled by necessity first

to serve itself. This is carnal love, whereby, above everything, man

loves himself for his own sake. It is not set forth by precept, but is

rooted in nature; for who hates his own flesh? As love becomes more

ready and profuse, it is not content with the channel of necessity,

but will pour forth and overspread the broad fields of pleasure. At

once the overflow is bridled by the command, ‘Thou shalt love thy

neighbour as thyself.’ This is just and needful, lest what is part of

nature should have no part in grace. A man may concede to himself what

he will, so long as he is mindful to provide the same for his

neighbour. The bridle of temperance is imposed on thee, O man, out of

the law of life and discipline, in order that thou shouldst not follow

thy desires, nor with the good things of nature serve the enemy of the

soul, which is lust. If thou wilt turn away from thy pleasures, and be

content with food and raiment, little by little it will not so burden

thee to keep thy love from carnal desires, which war against the soul.

Thy love will be temperate and righteous when what is withdrawn from

its own pleasures is not denied to its brother’s needs. Thus carnal

love becomes social when extended to one’s kind.

“Yet in order that perfect justice should exist in the love of

neighbour, God must be regarded (_Deum in causa haberi necesse est_).

How can one love his neighbour purely who does not love in God? God

makes Himself loved, He who makes all things good. He who founded

nature so made it that it should always need to be sustained by Him.

In order that no creature might be ignorant of this, and arrogate for

himself the good deeds of the Creator, the Founder wisely decreed that

man should be tried in tribulations. By this means, when he shall have

failed and God have aided, God shall be honoured by him whom He has

delivered. The result is that man, animal and carnal, who knew not how

to love any one beside himself, begins for his own sake to love God;

because he has found out that in God he can accomplish everything

profitable, and without Him can do nothing.

“So now for his own interest, he loves God--love’s second grade; but

does not yet love God for God’s sake. If, however, tribulation keeps

assailing him, and he continually turns to God for aid, and God

delivers him, will not the man so oft delivered, though he have a

breast of iron and a heart of stone, be drawn to cherish his

deliverer, and love Him not only for His aid but for Himself? Frequent

necessities compel man to come to God incessantly; repeatedly he

tastes and, by tasting, proves how sweet is the Lord. At length God’s

sweetness, rather than human need, draws the man to love Him.

Thereafter it will not be hard for the man to fulfil the command to

love his neighbour. Truly loving God, he loves for this reason those

who are God’s. He loves chastely, and is not oppressed through obeying

the chaste command; he loves justly, and willingly embraces the just

command. That is the third grade of love, when God is loved for

Himself.

“Happy is he who attains to the fourth grade, where man loves himself

only on account of God. Thy righteousness, O God, is as the mountain

of God; love is that mountain, that high mountain of God. Who shall

ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Who will give me the wings of a

dove and I will fly away and be at rest. Alas! for my long-drawn

sojourning! When shall I gain that habitation in Zion, and my soul

become one spirit with God? Blessed and holy will I call him to whom

in this mortal life such has been given though but once. For to be

lost to self and not to feel thyself, and to be emptied of thyself and

almost to be made nothing, that pertains to heavenly intercourse, not

to human affection. And if any one among mortals here gain admission

for an instant, at once the wicked world is envious, the day’s evil

disturbs, the body of death drags down, fleshly necessity solicits,

corruption’s debility does not sustain, and, fiercest of all,

brotherly love calls back! Alas! he is dragged back to himself, and

forced to cry: ‘O Lord, I suffer violence, answer thou for me’ (Isa.

xxxviii. 14); ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom.

vii. 24).

“Yet Scripture says that God made all things for His own sake; that

will come to pass when the creation is in full accord with its Author.

Therefore we must sometime pass into that state wherein we do not wish

to be ourselves or anything else, except for His sake and by reason of

His will, not ours. Then not our need or happiness, but His will, will

be fulfilled in us. O holy love and chaste! O sweet affection! O pure

and purged intention of the will, in which nothing of its own is

mingled! This is it to be made God (_deificari_). As the drop of water

is diffused in a jar of wine, taking its taste and colour, and as

molten iron becomes like to fire and casts off its form, and as the

air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that same brightness

of light, so that it seems not illumined, but itself to be the light,

thus in the saints every human affection must in some ineffable mode

be liquefied of itself and transfused into the will of God. How could

God be all in all if in man anything of man remained? A certain

substance will remain, but in another form, another glory, another

power.”

Hereupon St. Bernard considers how this fourth grade of love will be

attained in the resurrection, and “perpetually possessed, when God only is

loved and we love ourselves only for His sake, that He may be the

recompense and aim (_praemium_) of those who love themselves, the eternal

recompense of those who love eternally.”

Christ is the universal Mediator between God and man, not only because

reconciling them, but as forming the intervening term, the concrete

instance of the One suited to the comprehension of the other. Such

thoughts and sentiments as commonly apply to man, when they are applied to

Christ become fit to apply to God. Herein especially may be perceived the

continuing identity of love, whether relating to human beings or to God.

The soul’s love of Christ is mediatorial, and symbolic of its love of God.

All of which Bernard has demonstrated with conjoined power of argument and

feeling in his famous _Sermons on Canticles_.[502]

The human personality of Christ draws men to love Him, till their love is

purged of carnality and exalted to a perfect love of God:

“Observe that the heart’s love is partly carnal; it is affected

through the flesh of Christ and what He said and did while in the

flesh. Filled with this love, the heart is readily touched by

discourse upon His words and acts. It hears of nothing more willingly,

reads nothing more carefully, recalls nothing more frequently, and

meditates upon nothing more sweetly. When man prays, the sacred image

of the God-man is with him, as He was born or suckled, as He taught or

died, rose from the dead or ascended to heaven. This image never fails

to nerve man’s mind with the love of virtue, cast out the vices of the

flesh and quell its lusts. I deem the principal reason why the

invisible God wished to be seen in the flesh, and, as man, hold

intercourse with men, was that He might draw the affections of carnal

men, who could only love carnally, to a salutary love of His flesh,

and then on to a spiritual love.”

Conversely, the Saviour’s example teaches men how they should love Him:

“He loved sweetly, wisely, and bravely: sweetly, in that He put on

flesh; wisely, in that He avoided fault; bravely, in that He bore

death. Those, however, with whom He sojourned in the flesh, He did not

love carnally, but in prudence of spirit. Learn then, Christian, from

Christ how to love Christ.”

Bernard shows how even the Apostles failed sometimes to love Him according

to His perfect teaching and example:

“Good, indeed, is this carnal love,” he concludes, “through which a

carnal life is shut out; and the world is despised and conquered. This

love progresses as it becomes rational, and perfected as it becomes

spiritual.”[503]

From his own experiences Bernard could have spoken much of the winning

power of Jesus, and could have told how sweetly it drew him to love his

Saviour’s steps from Bethlehem to Calvary. The fifteenth sermon upon

Canticles is on the healing power of Jesus’ name.

“Dry is all food for the soul unless anointed with that oil. Whatever

you write is not to my taste unless I read Jesus there. Your talk and

disputation is nothing unless that name is rung. Jesus is honey in the

mouth, melody in the ear, joy in the heart. He is medicine as well. Is

any one troubled, let Jesus come into the heart and thence leap to the

lips, and behold! at the rising of that bright name the clouds scatter

and the air is again serene. If any one slips in crime, and then

desponds amid the snares of death, will he not, invoking that name of

life, regain the breath of life? In whom can hardness of heart, sloth,

rancour, languishment stand before that name? In whom at its

invocation will not the dried fount of tears burst forth more

abundantly and sweetly? To what fearful trembler did the power of that

name ever fail to bring back confidence? To what man struggling amid

doubts did not the clear assurance of that name, invoked, shine forth?

Who despairing in adversity lacked fortitude if that name sounded?

These are the languors and sickness of the soul, and that the

medicine. Nothing is as potent to restrain the attack of wrath, or

quell the tumour of pride, or heal envy’s wound, or put out the fire

of lust, or temper avarice. When I name Jesus, I see before me a man

meek and humble of heart, benignant, sober, chaste, pitying, holy, who

heals me with His example and strengthens me with aid. I take example

from the Man, and draw aid from the Mighty One. Here hast thou, O my

soul, an herb of price, hidden in the vessel of that name, bringing

thee health surely and in thy sickness failing thee never.”

This is a little illustration of Bernard’s love of the Christ-man, a love

which is ever taking on spiritual hues and changing to a love of the

Christ-God. Christians, from the time of Origen, had recognized the many

offices of Christ, the many saving potencies in which He ministered unto

each soul according to its need. And so Bernard preaches that the sick

soul needs Christ as the physician, but that the saintly soul has other

yearnings for a more perfect communion.

This perfect communion, this most complete relationship which in this

mortal life a soul can have with Christ, with God, had been symbolized,

likewise ever since the time of Origen, by the words Bride and Bridegroom,

and the Song of Songs had furnished the burning phrases. With surpassing

spirituality Bernard uses the texts of Canticles to set forth the

relationship of the soul to Christ, of man to God. The texts are what they

are, burning, sensuous, fleshly, intense, and beautiful--every one knows

them; but in Bernard’s sermons flesh fades before the spirit’s whiter

glow.

“O love (_amor_), headlong, vehement, burning, impetuous, that canst

think of nothing beyond thyself, detesting all else, despising all

else, satisfied with thyself! Thou dost confound ranks, carest for no

usage, knowest no measure. In thyself dost thou triumph over apparent

opportuneness, reason, shame, council and judgment, and leadest them

into captivity. Everything which the soul-bride utters resounds of

thee and nothing else; so hast thou possessed her heart and

tongue.”[504]

What Bernard here ejaculates as to the overwhelming sufficiency of love,

he sets forth finally in a sustained and reasoned passage, in which man’s

ways of loving God are cast together in a sequence of ardent thought and

image. He has been explaining the soul’s likeness to the Word. Although it

be afflicted and defiled by sin, it may yet venture to come to Him whose

likeness it retains, however obscured. The soul does not leave God by

change of place, but, in the manner of spiritual substance, by becoming

depraved. The return of the soul is its conversion, in which it is made

conformable to God.

“Such conformity marries the soul to the Word, whom it is like by

nature, and may show itself like in will, loving as it is loved. If it

loves perfectly it weds. What more delightful than this conformity,

what more desirable than this love, through which thou, O soul,

faithfully drawest near to the Word, with constancy cleavest to the

Word, consulting Him in everything, as capable in intellect as

audacious in desire. Spiritual is the contracting of these holy

nuptials, wherein always to will the same makes one spirit out of two.

No fear lest the disparity of persons make but a lame concurrence of

wills: for love does not know respect. The name love comes from loving

and not from honouring. He may honour who dreads, who is struck dumb

with fear and wonder. Not so the lover. Love aboundeth in itself, and

derides and imprisons the other emotions. Wherefore she who loves,

loves, and knows nothing else. And He who is to be honoured and

marvelled at, still loves rather to be loved. Bridegroom and Bride

they are. And what necessity or bond is there between spouses except

to be loved and love?

“Think also, that the Bridegroom is not only loving but very love. Is

He also honour? I have not so read. I have read that God is love; not

that He is honour, or dignity. God indeed demands to be feared as

Lord, to be honoured as Father, and as Bridegroom to be loved. Which

excels the rest? Love, surely. Without it, fear is penal, and honour

graceless. Fear is slavish till manumitted by love; and the honour

which does not rise from love is adulation. To God alone belong honour

and glory; but He will accept neither unless it is flavoured with

love’s honey.

“Love asks neither cause nor fruit beyond itself. I love because I

love; I love that I may love. A great thing is love. Among all the

movements, sensations, and affections of the soul, it is the only one

wherein the creature can make a return to its Author. If God be angry

with me, shall I likewise be angry with Him? Nay, I will fear and

tremble and beseech. If He accuse me, I will make no counter-charge,

but plead before Him. If He judge me, I will not judge but worship.

And when He saves me, He asks not to be saved by me; nor does He who

frees all ask to be freed of any one. Likewise if He commands, I obey,

and do not order Him. Now see how different it is with love. For when

God loves, He wishes only to be loved; He loves with no other end than

to be loved, knowing that those who love are blessed with love itself.

“A great thing is love; but there are grades in it. The Bride stands

at the summit. Sons love, but they are thinking of their inheritance.

Fearing to lose that, they honour, rather than love, him from whom

they expect it. Love is suspect when its suffrage appears to be won by

hope of gain. Weak is it, if it cease or lessen with that hope

withdrawn. It is impure if it desires anything else. Pure love is not

mercenary: it gains no strength from hope, nor weakens with lack of

trust. This love is the Bride’s, because she is what she is by love.

Love is the Bride’s sole hope and interest. In it the Bride abounds

and the Bridegroom is content. He seeks nothing else, nor has she

ought beside. Hence he is Bridegroom and she Bride. This belongs to

spouses which none else, not even a son, can attain. Man is commanded

to honour his father and mother; but there is silence as to love.

Which is not because parents are not to be loved by their sons; but

because sons are rather moved to honour them. The honour of the King

loves judgment; but the Bridegroom’s love--for He is love--asks only

love’s return and faith.

“Rightly renouncing all other affections, the Bride reposes on love

alone, and returns a love reciprocal. And when she has poured her

whole self out in love, what is that compared with the perennial flood

of that fountain? Not equals in abundance are this loving one and

Love, the soul and the Word, the Bride and Bridegroom, creature and

Creator--no more than thirst equals the fount. What then? shall she

therefore despair, and the vow of the would-be Bride be rendered

empty? Shall the desire of this panting one, the ardour of this loving

one, the trust of this confiding one be baffled because she cannot

keep pace with the giant’s course, in sweetness contend with honey, in

mildness with the Lamb, in whiteness with the Lily, in brightness with

the Sun, in love with Him who is love? No. For although the creature

loves less, because she is less, yet if she loves with her whole self,

nothing lacks where there is all. Wherefore, as I have said, so to

love is to have wedded; for no one can so love and yet be loved but

little, and in mutual consent stands the entire and perfect

marriage.”[505]

Who has not marvelled that the relationship of marriage should make so

large a part of the symbolism through which monks and nuns expressed the

soul’s love of God? Historically it might be traced to Paul’s precept,

“Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church”; still more

potently it was derived from the Song of Songs. But beyond these almost

adventitious influences, did not the holy priest, the monk, the nun, feel

and know that marriage was the great human relationship? So they drew from

it the most adequate allegory of the soul’s communion with its Maker:

differently according to their sex, with much emotion, and even with

unseemly imaginings, they thought and felt the love of God along the ways

of wedded union or even bridal passion.[506]

CHAPTER XVIII

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI[507]

Twenty-nine years after the death of St. Bernard, Francis was born in the

Umbrian hill town of Assisi. The year was 1182. On the fourth of October

1226, in the forty-fifth year of his age, this most loving and best

beloved of mediaeval saints breathed his last, in the little church of the

Portiuncula, within the shadows of that same hill town.

Of all mediaeval saints, Bernard and Francis impressed themselves most

strongly upon their times. Neither of them was pre-eminently an

intellectual force--Francis especially would not have been what he was but

for certain childlike qualities of mind which never fell away from him.

The power of these men sprang from their personalities and the _vivida

vis_ (their contemporaries would have said, the grace of God) realizing

itself in every word and act. Bernard’s power was more directly dependent

upon the conditions of his epoch, and his influence was more limited in

duration.

The reason is not far to seek. Both men were of the Middle Ages, even of

those decades in which they lived. But Bernard’s strength was part of the

medium wherein he worked and the evil against which he fought--the

clerical corruptions, the heresies, the schisms and political

controversies, the warfare of Christ with Mahomet,--all matters of vital

import for his time, but which were to change and pass.

Francis, on the other hand, was occupied with none of these. He was no

scourge of clerical corruptions, no scourge of anything; he knew nought of

heresy or schism, nothing of politics or war; into the story of his life

there comes not even a far-off echo of the Albigensian Crusade or the

conflict between pope and emperor. His life appears detached from the

special conditions of his time; it is neither held within them nor

compelled by them, but only by its inner impulse. For it was not occupied

with the exigencies of Italy and Germany, or Southern France, during that

first quarter of the thirteenth century, when De Montfort was hurling the

orthodox and brutal north upon the fair but heretical provinces of

Languedoc, and when Innocent III. was excommunicating Otho IV., and

Frederick II. was disclosing himself as the most dangerous foe the papacy

had yet known. The passing turmoil and danger of the time did not touch

this life; the man knew naught of all these things. He was not considering

thirteenth-century Italians, Frenchmen, and Germans; he was fascinated

with men as men, with the dumb brutes as fellow-creatures, and even with

plants and stones as vessels of God’s loveliness or symbols of His Word;

above all he was absorbed in Christ, who had taken on humanity for him,

had suffered for him, died for him, and who now around, above, within him,

inspired and directed his life.

So Francis’s life was not compassed by its circumstances; nor was its

effect limited to the thirteenth century. His life partook of the eternal

and the universal, and might move men in times to come as simply and

directly as it turned men’s hearts to love in the years when Francis was

treading the rough stones of Assisi.

On the other hand, Francis was mediaeval and in a way to give concrete

form and colour to the elements of universal manhood that were his. He was

mediaeval in complete and finished mode; among mediaeval men he offers

perhaps the most distinct and most perfectly consistent individuality. He

is Francis of Assisi, born in 1182 and dying in 1226, and no one else who

ever lived either there and then or elsewhere at some other time. He is

Francis of Assisi perfectly and always, a man presenting a complete

artistic unity, never exhibiting act or word or motive out of character

with himself.

From a slightly different point of view we may perceive how he was a

perfect individual and at the same time a perfect mediaeval type. There

was no element in his character which was not assimilated and made into

Francis of Assisi. Anterior and external influences contributed to make

this Francis. But in entering him they ceased to be what they had been;

they changed and became Francis. For example, nothing of the antique, no

distinct bit of classical inheritance, appears in him; if, in any way, he

was touched by it--as in his joyous love of life and the world about

him--the influence had ceased to be anything distinct in him; it had

become himself. Likewise, whatever he may have known of the Fathers and of

all the dogmatic possession and ecclesiastical tradition of the Church,

this also was remade in Francis. Evidently such an all-assimilating and

transforming individuality could not have existed in those earlier

centuries when the immature mediaeval world was taking over its great

inheritance from the pagan and Christian antique--those centuries when men

could but turn their heritage of thought and knowledge this way and that,

disturb and distort and rearrange it. Such an individuality as Francis

could exist only at the climax of the Middle Age, at the period of its

fullest strength and greatest distinction, when it had masterfully changed

after its own heart whatever it had received from the past, and had made

its transformed acquisitions into itself.

Francis is of this grand mediaeval climacteric. The Middle Ages were no

longer in a stage of transition from the antique; they had attained; they

were themselves. Sides of this distinctive mediaeval development and

temper express themselves in Francis--are Francis verily. The spirit of

romance is incarnate in him. Roland, Oliver, Charlemagne (he of the

_Chansons de geste_), and the knights of the Round Table, are part of

Francis;--his first disciples are his paladins. Again, instead of emperor

or paladin, he is himself the _jongleour_, the _joculator Dei_ (God’s

minstrel).

And of all that had become Francis the greatest was Christ. He had not

taken the theology of Augustine; he had not taken the Christ handed over

by the transition centuries to the early Middle Ages; he had not adopted

the Christ of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He took Jesus from the Gospel,

or at least such elements of Jesus’ life and teaching as he felt and

understood. Francis modelled his life on his understanding of Christ and

His teaching. So many another saint had done; in fact, so must all

Christians try to do. Francis accomplished it with completeness and power;

he created a new Christ life; a Christ life partial and reduced from the

breadth and balance of the original, yet veritable and living. Francis

himself felt that his whole life was Christ-directed and inspired, and

that even because of his own special insignificance Christ had chosen him

to show forth the true Gospel life again--but chosen him indeed.[508]

Although the life of Francis appears as if detached from the larger

political and ecclesiastical movements of the time, it yields glimpses of

the ways and doings of the people of Assisi. We see their jealousies and

quarrels, their war with Perugia, also their rustic readiness to jeer at

the unusual and incomprehensible; or we are struck with instances of the

stupid obstinacy and intolerance often characterizing a small community.

Again, we see in some of those citizens an open and quick impulsiveness,

which, at the sight of love, may turn to love. It would seem as if the

harshest, most impossible man of all the town was Peter Bernardone, a

well-to-do merchant whose affairs took him often from Assisi, and not

infrequently to France.

Bernardone had a predilection for things French, and the child born to his

wife while he was absent in France, he called Francis upon his return,

although the mother had given it the name of John. The mother, whose name

was Pica, may have been of Provençal or French blood. Apparently such

education as Francis received in his boyhood was as much French as

Italian. Through all his life he never lost the habit of singing French

songs which he composed himself.[509]

The biographers assert that Francis was nourished in worldly vanity and

insolence. His temperament drew him to the former, but kept him from the

latter. For while he delighted in making merry with his friends, he was

always distinguished by a winning courtesy of manner toward poor and rich.

An innate generosity was also his, and he loved to spend money as he

roamed with his companions about Assisi singing jovial choruses and

himself the leader of the frolic. Bernardone did not object to his son’s

squandering some money in a way which led others to admire him and think

his parents rich; while Pica would keep saying that some day he would be

God’s son through grace. A vein of sprightly fantasy runs through these

gaieties of Francis’s, which we may be sure were unstained by any gross

dissipation. Francis’s life as a saint is peculiarly free from monkish

impudicity, free, that is, from morbid dwelling upon things sensual; which

shows that in him there was no reaction or need of reaction against any

youthful dissoluteness, and bears testimony to the purity of his

unconverted years.[510]

In those days Francis loved to be admired and praised. He was possessed

with a romantic and imaginative vanity. Costly clothes delighted him as he

dreamed of still more royal entertainment, and fancied great things to

come. His mind was filled with the figures of Romance; a knight would he

be at least; why not a paladin, whom all the world should wonder at? So he

dreamed, and so he acted out his whim as best he might on the little stage

of Assisi; for Francis was a poet, and a poet even more in deed than in

words. He was endowed with exquisite fancy, and he did its dictates never

doubting. His life was to prove an almost unexampled inspiration to art,

because it was itself a poem by reason of its unfailing realization of the

conceptions of a fervent and beautiful imagination.

There came war with Perugia, a very hard-hitting town; and the Assisi

cavaliers, Francis among them, found themselves in their neighbours’

dungeons. There some desponded; but not Francis. For in these careless

days he was always gleeful and jocular, even as afterwards his entire

saintly life was glad with an invincible gaiety of spirit. So Francis

laughed and joked in prison till his fellow-prisoners thought him crazy,

which no whit worried him, as he answered with the glad boast that some

day he would be adored by all the world. He showed another side of his

inborn nature when he was kind to a certain one of the captives whom the

rest detested, and tried to reconcile his fellows with him.

It was soon after his release from this twelvemonth captivity that the

sails of Francis’s spirit began to fill with still more topping hopes, and

then to waver strangely. He naturally fell sick after the privations of a

Perugia prison. As he recovered and went about with the aid of a staff,

the loveliness of field and vineyard failed to please him. He wondered at

himself, and suspected that his former pleasures were follies. But it was

not so easy to leave off his previous life, and Francis’s thoughts were

lured back again to this world’s glory; for a certain nobleman of Assisi

was about to set out on an expedition to Apulia to win gain and fame, and

Francis was inflamed to go with him. In the night he dreamed that his

father’s house with its heaps of cloth and other wares was filled instead

with swords and lances, with glittering shields, helmets and breastplates.

He awoke in an ecstasy of joy at the great glory portended by this dream.

Then he fitted himself out sumptuously, with splendid garb, bright

weapons, new armour, and accoutrements, and in due time set forth with his

fellow-adventurers.

Once more he wavered. Before reaching Spoleto he stopped, left the

company, turned back on his steps, this time impelled more strongly to

seek those things which he was to love through life. He was about

twenty-three years old. It was his nature to love everything, fame and

applause, power perhaps, and joy; but he had not yet loved worthily. Now

his Lord was calling him, the voice at first not very certain, and yet

becoming stronger. Francis seems to have seen a vision, in which the

vanity of his attachments was made clear, and he learned that he was

following a servant instead of the Lord. So his heart replied, “Lord, what

wouldst thou have me to do?” and then the vision showed him that he should

return, for he had misunderstood his former dream of arms. When Francis

awoke he thought diligently on these matters.

Such spiritual experiences are incommunicable, even though the man should

try to tell them. But we know that as Francis had set out joyfully

expecting worldly glory, he now returned with exultation, to await the

will of the Lord, as it might be shown him. The facts and also their

sequence are somewhat confused in the biographies.

On his return to Assisi, his comrades seem to have chosen him as lord of

their revels; again he ordained a merry feast; but as they set forth

singing gleefully, Francis walked behind them, holding his marshal’s

staff, in silence. Thoughts of the Lord had come again, and withdrawn his

attention: he was thinking sweetly of the Lord, and vilely of himself.

Soon after he is found providing destitute chapels with the requisites for

a decent service; already--in his father’s absence--he is filling his

table with beggars; and already he has overcome his fastidious temper, has

forced himself to exchange the kiss of peace with lepers, and has kissed

the livid hands in which he presses alms.[511] He appears to have made a

trip to St. Peter’s at Rome, where, standing before the altar, it struck

him that the Prince of the Apostles was being honoured with mean

offerings. So in his own princely way he flung down the contents of his

purse, to the wonder of all. Then going without the church, he put on the

clothes of a beggar and asked alms.

In such conduct Francis showed himself a poet and a saint. Imagination was

required to conceive these extreme, these perfect acts, acts perfect in

their carrying out of a lovely thought to its fulfilment, and suffering

nothing to impede its perfect realization. So Francis flings down all he

has, and not a measure of his goods; he puts on beggars’ clothes, and

begs; he kisses lepers’ hands, eats from the same bowl with them--acts

which were perfect in the singleness of their fulfilment of a saintly

motive, acts which were likewise beautiful. They are instances of

obsession with a saintly idea of great spiritual beauty, obsession so

complete that the ridiculous or hideous concomitants of the realization

serve only to enhance the beauty of the holy thought perfectly fulfilled.

One day at Assisi, passing by the church of St. Damian, Francis was moved

to enter for prayer. As he prayed before the Crucifix, the image seemed to

say, “Francis, dost thou not see my house in ruins? Rebuild it for me.”

And he answered, “Gladly, Lord,” thinking that the little chapel of St.

Damian was intended. Filled with joy, having felt the Crucified in his

soul, he sought the priest and gave him money to buy oil for the lamp

before the Crucifix. This day was ever memorable in Francis’s walk with

God. His way had lost its turnings; he saw his life before him clear,

glad, and full of tears of love. “From that hour his heart was so wounded

and melted at the memory of his Lord’s passion that henceforth while he

lived he carried in his heart the marks of the Lord Jesus. Again he was

seen walking near the Portiuncula, wailing aloud. And in response to the

inquiries of a priest, he answered: ‘I bewail the passion of my Lord Jesus

Christ, which it should not shame me to go weeping through the world!’

Often as he rose from prayer his eyes were full of blood, because he had

wept so bitterly.”[512]

It appears to have been after this vision in St. Damian’s Church that

Francis went on horseback to Foligno, carrying pieces of cloth, which he

sold there, and his horse as well. He travelled back on foot, and seeking

out St. Damian’s astonished little priest, he kissed his hands devoutly

and offered him the money. When, for fear of Bernardone, the priest would

not receive it, Francis threw it into a box. He prevailed on the priest,

however, to let him stay there.

What Bernardone thought of this son of his is better only guessing. The

St. Damian episode brought matters to a crisis between the two. He came

looking for his son, and Francis escaped to a cave, where he spent a month

in tears and prayer to the Lord, that he might be freed from his father’s

pursuit, so that he might fulfil his vows. Gradually courage and joy

returned, and he issued from his cave and took his way to the town. Former

acquaintances of his pursued him with jeers and stones, as one demented,

so wretched was he to look upon after his sojourn in the cave. He made no

reply, save to give thanks to God. The hubbub reached the father, who

rushed out and seized his son, beat him, and locked him up in the house.

From this captivity he was released by his mother, in her husband’s

absence, and again betook himself to St. Damian’s.

Shortly afterward Bernardone returned, and would have haled Francis before

the magistrates of the town for squandering his patrimony; but his son

repudiated their jurisdiction, as being the servant of God. They were glad

enough to turn the matter over to the bishop, who counselled Francis to

give back the money which was his father’s. The scene which followed has

been made famous by the brush of Giotto. The _Three Companions_ narrate it

thus:

“Then arose the man of God glad and comforted by the bishop’s words,

and fetching the money said, ‘My lord, not only the money which is his

I wish to return to him, but my clothes as well, and gladly.’ Then

entering the bishop’s chamber, he took off his clothes, and placing

the money upon them, went out again naked before them, and said: ‘Hear

ye all and know. Until now I have called Pietro Bernardone my father;

but because I have determined to serve God, I return him the money

about which he was disturbed, and these clothes which I had from him,

wishing only to say, “Our Father who art in heaven” and not “Father

Pietro Bernardone.”’ The man of God was found even then to have worn

haircloth beneath his gay garments. His father rising, incensed, took

the money and the clothes. As he carried them away to his house, those

who had seen the sight were indignant that he had left not a single

garment for his son, and they shed tears of pity over Francis. The

bishop was moved to admiration at the constancy of the man of God, and

embraced him and covered him with his cloak.”[513]

Thus Francis was indeed made naked of the world. With joy he hastened back

to St. Damian’s; and there prepared himself a hermit garb, in which he

again set forth through the streets of the city, praising God and

soliciting stones to rebuild the Church. As he went he cried that whoever

gave one stone should have one reward, and he who gave two, two rewards,

and he who gave more as many rewards as he gave stones. Many laughed at

him, thinking him crazy; but others were moved to tears at the sight of

one who from such frivolity and vanity had so quickly become drunken with

divine love.

Francis became a beggar for the love of Christ, seeking to imitate Him

who, born poor, lived poor, and had no place to lay His head. Not only did

he beg stones to rebuild St. Damian’s, but he began to go from house to

house with a bowl to beg his food. Naked before them all, he had chosen

“holy poverty,” “lady poverty”[514] for his bride. He was filled with the

desire to copy Christ and obey His words to the letter. According to the

_Three Companions_, when the blessed Francis completed the church of St.

Damian, his wont was to wear a hermit garb and carry a staff; he wore

shoes on his feet and a girdle about him. But listening one day to Jesus’

words to His disciples, as He sent them out to preach, not to take with

them gold, or silver, or a wallet, or bread, or a staff, or shoes, nor

have two cloaks, Francis said with joy: “This is what I desire to fulfil

with my whole strength.”[515]

The literal imitation of certain particular Gospel instances, and the

unconditional carrying out of certain of Christ’s specially intended

precepts, mark Francis’s understanding of his Lord. It is exemplified in

the account of the conversion of Francis’s first disciple, as told by the

_Three Companions_:

“As the truth of the blessed Francis’s simple life and doctrine became

manifest to many, two years after his own conversion, certain men were

moved to penitence by his example, and were drawn to give up

everything and join with him in life and garb. Of these the first was

Bernard of saintly memory, who reflecting upon the constancy and

fervour of the blessed Francis in serving God, and with what labour he

was repairing ruined churches and leading a hard life, although

delicately nurtured, he determined to distribute his property among

the poor and cling to Francis. Accordingly one day in secret he

approached the man of God and disclosed his purpose, at the same time

requesting that on such an evening he would come to him. Having no

companion hitherto, the blessed Francis gave thanks to God, and

rejoiced greatly, especially as Messer (_dominus_) Bernard was a man

of exemplary life.

“So with exulting heart the blessed Francis went to his house on the

appointed evening and stayed all night with him. Messer Bernard said

among other things: ‘If a person should have much or a little from his

lord, and have held it many years, how could he do with the same what

would be the best?’ The blessed Francis replied that he should return

it to his lord from whom he had received it.

“And Messer Bernard said: ‘Therefore, brother, I wish to distribute,

in the way that may seem best to thee, all my worldly goods for love

of my Lord, who conferred them on me.’

“To whom the saint said: ‘In the morning we will go to the Church, and

will learn from the copy (_codex_) of the Gospels there how the Lord

taught His disciples.’

“So rising in the morning, with a certain other named Peter, who also

desired to become a brother, they went to the church of St. Nicholas

close to the piazza of the city Assisi. And commencing to pray

(because they were simple men and did not know where to find the

Gospel text relating to the renouncing of the world) they asked the

Lord devoutly, that He would deign to show them His will at the first

opening of the Book.

“When they had prayed, the blessed Francis taking in his hands the

closed book, kneeling before the altar opened it, and his eye fell

first upon this precept of the Lord: ‘If thou wouldst be perfect, go,

sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have

treasure in heaven.’ At which the blessed Francis was very glad and

gave thanks to God. But because this true observer of the Trinity

wished to be assured with threefold witness, he opened the Book for

the second and third time. The second time he read, ‘Carry nothing for

the journey,’ and the third time, ‘Who wishes to come after me, let

him deny himself.’

“At each opening of the Book, the blessed Francis gave thanks to God

for the divine confirmation of his purpose and long-conceived desire,

and then said to Bernard and Peter: ‘Brothers, this is our life and

this is our rule, and the life and rule of all who shall wish to join

our society. Go, then, and as you have heard, so do.’

“Messer Bernard went away (he was very rich) and, having sold his

possessions and got together much money, he distributed it to the poor

of the town. Peter also complied with the divine admonition as best he

could. They both assumed the habit which Francis had adopted, and from

that hour lived with him after the model (_formam_) of the holy Gospel

shown them by the Lord. Therefore the blessed Francis has said in his

Testament: ‘The Lord himself revealed to me that I should live

according to the model (_formam_) of the holy Gospel.’”[516]

The words which met the eyes of Francis on first opening this Gospel-book,

had nearly a thousand years before his time driven the holy Anthony to the

desert of the Thebaid. Still one need not think the later tale a fruit of

imitative legend. The accounts of Francis afford other instances of his

literal acceptance of the Gospels.[517]

After the step taken by Bernard and Peter, others quickly joined

themselves to Francis, and in short time the small company took up its

abode in an abandoned cabin at Rivo-torto, near Assisi. In a twelvemonth

or more they removed to the little church of Santa Maria de Portiuncula

(Saint Mary of the little portion).[518] In the meanwhile Francis had been

to Rome and gained papal authorization from the great Innocent III. for

his lowly way of life. It would be hard to describe the joyfulness of

these first Gospel days of the brethren: they come and go, and pray and

labour; all are filled with joy; _gaudium_, _jucunditas_, _laetabantur_,

such words crowd each other in accounts of the early days. Their love was

complete; they would gladly give their bodies to pain or death not only

for the love of Christ, but for the love of each other; they were founded

and rooted in humility and love; Francis’s own life was a song of joy, as

he went singing (always _gallice_) and abounding in love and its joyful

prayers and tears. What joy indeed could be greater than his; he had

given himself to his Lord, and had been accepted. One day he had retired

for contemplation, and as he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” an

ineffable joy and sweetness was shed in his heart. He began to fall away

from himself; the anxieties and fears which a sense of sin had set in his

heart were dispelled, and a certitude of the remission of his sins took

possession of him. His mind dilated and a joyful vision made him seem

another man when he returned and said in gladness to the brethren: “Be

comforted, my best beloved, and rejoice in the Lord. Do not feel sad

because you are so few. Let neither my simplicity nor yours abash you, for

it has been shown me of the Lord that God will make of you a great

multitude, and multiply you to the confines of the earth. I saw a great

multitude of men coming to us, desiring to assume the habit and rule of

our blessed religion; and the sound of them is in my ears as they come and

go according to the command of holy obedience; and I saw the ways filled

with them from every nation. Frenchmen come, and Spaniards hurry, Germans

and English run, and a multitude speaking other tongues.”[519]

Thus far the life of Francis was a poem, even as it was to be unto the

end; for, although the saint’s plans might be thwarted by the wisdom and

frailty of men, his words and actions did not cease to realize the

exquisite conceptions of his soul. But the volume of his life, from this

time on, becomes too large for us to follow, embracing as it does the far

from simple history of the first decades of his Order. Our object is still

to observe his personality, and his love of God and man and creature-kind.

Francis’s mind was as simple as his heart was single. He had no distinctly

intellectual interests, as nothing appealed to his mentality alone.[520]

In his consciousness, everything related itself to his way of life, its

yearnings and aversions. Whatever was unsuited to enter into this catholic

relationship repelled rather than interested him. Hence he was averse to

studies which had nothing to do with the man’s closer walk with God, and

love of fellow. “My brothers who are led by the curiosity of knowledge

will find their hands empty in the day of tribulation. I would wish them

rather to be strengthened by virtues, that when the time of tribulation

comes they may have the Lord with them in their straits--for such a time

will come when they will throw their good-for-nothing books into holes and

corners.”[521]

The moral temper of Francis was childlike in its simple truth. He could

not endure in the smallest matter to seem other than as he was before God:

“As much as a man is before God so much is he, and no more.”[522] Once in

Lent he ate of cakes cooked in lard, because everything cooked in oil

violently disagreed with him. When Lent was over, he thus began his first

sermon to a concourse of people: “You have come to me with great devotion,

believing me to be a holy man, but I confess to God and to you that in

this Lent I have eaten cakes cooked in lard.”[523] At another time, when

in severe sickness he had somewhat exceeded the pittance of food which he

allowed himself, he rose, still shaking with fever, and went and preached

to the people. When the sermon was over, he retired a moment, and having

first exacted a promise of obedience from the monks accompanying him, he

threw off his cloak, tied a rope around his waist, and commanded them to

drag him naked before the people, and there cast ashes in his face; all

which was done by the weeping monks. And then he confessed his fault to

all.[524]

Francis took joy in obedience and humility. One of his motives in

resigning the headship of the Order was that he might have a superior to

obey.[525] However pained by the shortcomings and corruptions of the

Church, he was always obedient and reverent. He had no thought of

revolution, but the hope of purifying all. One day certain brothers said

to him: “Father, do you not see that the bishops do not let us preach, and

keep us for days standing idle, before we are able to declare the word of

God? Would it not be better to obtain the privilege from the Pope, that

there might be a salvation of souls?”

“You, brothers Minorites,” answered Francis, “know not the will of God,

and do not permit me to convert the whole world, which is God’s will; for

I wish first through holy obedience and reverence to convert the prelates,

who when they see our holy life and humble reverence for them, will beg

you to preach and convert the people, and will call the people to hear you

far better than your privileges, which draw you to pride. For me, I desire

this privilege from the Lord that I may never have any privilege from man

except to do reverence to all, and through obedience to our holy rule of

life convert mankind more by example than by word.”[526]

And again he said to the brothers: “We are sent to aid the clergy in the

salvation of souls, and what is found lacking in them should be supplied

by us. Know, brothers, that the gain of souls is most pleasing to God, and

this we may win better by peace with the clergy, than by discord. If they

hinder the salvation of the people, vengeance is God’s and He will repay

in time. So be ye subject to the prelates and take heed on your part that

no jealousy arise. If ye are sons of peace ye shall gain both clergy and

people, and this will be more acceptable to God than to gain the people

alone by scandalizing the clergy. Cover their slips, and supply their

deficiencies; and when ye shall have done this be ye the more

humble.”[527]

So Francis loved _sancta obedientia_ as he called it. As a wise builder he

set himself upon a rock, to wit, the perfect humility and poverty of the

Son of God; and because of his own humility he called his company the

Minorites (the “lesser” brethren).[528] For himself, he deemed that he

should most rejoice when men should revile him and cast him forth in

shame, and not when they revered and honoured him.[529]

Above all he loved his “lady poverty” and could not say enough to impress

his followers with her high worth and beauty, and with the dignity and

nobility of begging alms for the love of the Lord.[530] As a high-born

lady, poor and beautiful, he had seen her in a vision, in the midst of a

desert, and worthy to be wooed by the King.[531] In the early days when

the brothers were a little band, Francis had gone about and begged for

all. He loved them so that he dreaded to require what might shame them.

But when the labour was too great for one man, so delicate and weak, he

said to them: “Best beloved brothers and my children, do not be ashamed to

go for alms, because the Lord made Himself poor for us in this world after

whose example we have chosen the truest poverty. For this is our heritage,

which our Lord Jesus Christ achieved and left to us and to all who, after

His example, wish to live in holy poverty. I tell you of a truth that many

wise and noble of this world shall join that congregation and hold it for

an honour and a grace to go out for alms. Therefore boldly and with glad

heart seek alms with God’s blessing; and more freely and gladly should you

seek alms than he who offers a hundred pieces of money for one coin, since

to those from whom you ask alms you offer the love of God, saying, ‘Do us

an alms for the love of the Lord God,’ in comparison with which heaven and

earth are nothing.”[532]

With Francis all virtues were holy (_sancta obedientia_, _sancta

paupertas_). Righteousness, goodness, piety, lay in imitating and obeying

his Lord. What joy was there in loving Christ, and being loved by Him! and

what an eternity of bliss awaited the Christian soul! To do right, to

imitate Christ and obey and love Him, is a privilege. Can it be other than

a joy? Indeed, this following of Christ is so blessed, that not to rejoice

continually in it, betokens some failure in obedience and love. Many have

approved this Christian logic; but to realize it in one’s heart and

manifest it in one’s life, was the more singular grace of Francis of

Assisi. His heart sang always unto the Lord; his love flowed out in

gladness to his fellows; his enchanted spirit rejoiced in every creature.

The gospel of this new evangelist awoke the hearts of men to love and joy.

Nothing rejoiced him more than to see his sons rejoice in the Lord; and

nothing was more certain to draw forth his tender reproof than a sad

countenance.

“Once while the blessed Francis was at the Portiuncula, a certain good

beggar came along the way, returning from alms-begging in Assisi, and

he went along praising God with a high voice and great jocundity. As

he approached, Francis heard him, and ran out and met him in the way,

and joyfully kissed his shoulder where he bore the wallet containing

the gifts. Then he lifted the wallet, and set it on his own shoulder,

and so carried it within, and said to the brothers: ‘Thus I wish to

have my brothers go and return with alms, joyful and glad and praising

God.’”[533]

“Aside from prayer and the divine service, the blessed Francis was

most zealous in preserving continually an inward and outward spiritual

gladness. And this he especially cherished in the brothers, and would

reprove them for sadness and depression. For he said that if the

servant of God would study to preserve, inwardly and outwardly, the

spiritual joy which rises from purity of heart, and is acquired

through the devotion of prayer, the devils could not harm him, for

they say: So long as the servant of God is joyful in tribulation and

prosperity, we cannot enter into him or harm him.... To our enemy and

his members it pertains to be sad, but to us always to rejoice and be

glad in the Lord.”[534]

Thus the glad temper of his young unconverted days passed into his saintly

life, of which Christ was the primal source of rapture.

“Drunken with the love and pity of Christ, the blessed Francis would

sometimes do such acts, when the sweetest melody of spirit within him

boiling outward gave sound in French, and the strain of the divine

whisper which his ear had taken secretly, broke forth in a glad French

song. He would pick up a stick and, holding it over his left arm,

would with another stick in his right hand make as if drawing a bow

across a violin (_viellam_), and with fitting gestures would sing in

French of the Lord Jesus Christ. At last this dancing would end in

tears, and the jubilee turn to pity for the Passion of Christ. And in

that he would continue, drawing sighs and groans, as, oblivious to

what he held in his hands, he was suspended from heaven.”[535]

Francis had been a lover from his youth; naturally and always he had loved

his kind. But from the time when Christ held his heart and mind, his love

of fellow-man was moulded by his thought and love of Christ. Henceforth

the loving acts of Francis moving among his fellows become a loving

following of Christ. He sees in every man the character and person of his

Lord, soliciting his love, commanding what he should do. He never refused,

or permitted his followers to refuse, what was asked in Christ’s name; but

it displeased him when he heard the brothers ask lightly for the love of

God, and he would reprove them, saying: “So high and precious is God’s

love that it never should be invoked save with great reverence and under

pressing need.”[536]

Such a man felt strong personal affection. Pure and wise was his love for

Santa Clara;[537] and a deep affection for one of his earliest and closest

followers touches us in his letter to brother Leo. Not all of the writings

ascribed to Francis breathe his spirit; but we hear his voice in this

letter as it closes: “And if it is needful for thy soul or for thy

consolation, and thou dost wish, my Leo, to come to me, come. Farewell in

Christ.”

Francis’s love was unfailing in compassionate word and deed. Although cold

and sick, he would give his cloak away at the first demand, till his own

appointed minister-general commanded him on his obedience not to do so

without permission; and he saw that the brothers did not injure themselves

with fasting, though he took slight care of himself. On one occasion he

had them all partake of a meal, in order that one delicate brother, who

needed food, might not be put to shame eating while the rest fasted. And

once, early in the morning, he led an old and feeble brother secretly to a

certain vineyard, and there ate grapes before him, that he might not be

ashamed to do likewise, for his health.[538]

The effect of his sweet example melted the hearts of angry men,

reconciling such as had been wronged to those who had wronged them, and

leading ruffians back to ways of gentleness. His conduct on learning of

certain dissensions in Assisi illustrates his method of restoring peace

and amity.

“After the blessed Francis had composed the Lauds of the creatures,

which he called the Canticle of Brother Sun, it happened that great

dissension arose between the bishop and the podestà of the City of

Assisi, so that the bishop excommunicated the podestà, and the podestà

made proclamation that no person should sell anything to the bishop or

buy from him or make any contract with him.

“When the blessed Francis (who was now so very sick) heard this, he

was greatly moved with pity, since no one interposed between them to

make peace. And he said to his companions: ‘It is a great shame for us

servants of God that the bishop and the podestà hate each other so,

and none interposes to make peace.’

“And so for this occasion he at once made a verse in the Lauds above

mentioned and said:

‘Praised be thou, O my Lord, for those who forgive from love of thee,

And endure sickness and tribulation.

Blessed are those who shall endure in peace,

For by thee, Most High, shall they be crowned.’

“Then he called one of his companions and said to him: ‘Go to the

podestà, and on my behalf tell him to come to the bishop’s palace with

the magnates of the city and others that he may bring with him.’

“And as that brother went, he said to two other of his companions: ‘Go

before the bishop and podestà and the others who may be with them, and

sing the Canticle of Brother Sun, and I trust in the Lord that He will

straightway humble their hearts, and they will return to their former

affection and friendship.’

“When all were assembled in the piazza of the episcopate, the two

brothers arose, and one of them said: ‘The blessed Francis in his

sickness made a Lauds of the Lord from His creatures in praise of the

Lord and for the edification of our neighbour. Wherefore he begs that

you would listen to it with great devoutness.’ And then they began to

say and sing them.

“At once the podestà rose, and with folded hands listened intently, as

if it were the Lord’s gospel; this he did with the greatest devoutness

and with many tears, for he had great trust and devotion toward the

blessed Francis.

“When the Lauds of the Lord were finished, the podestà said before

them all: ‘Truly I say to you that not only my lord-bishop, whom I

wish and ought to hold as my lord, but if any one had slain my brother

or son I would forgive him.’ And so saying, he threw himself at the

bishop’s feet, and said to him: ‘Look, I am ready in all things to

make satisfaction to you as shall please you, for the love of our Lord

Jesus Christ and His servant the blessed Francis.’

“The bishop accepting him, raised him with his hands and said:

‘Because of my office it became me to be humble, and since I am

naturally quick-tempered you ought to pardon me.’ And so with great

kindness and love they embraced and kissed each other.

“The brothers were astounded and made glad when they saw fulfilled to

the letter the concord predicted by the blessed Francis. And all

others present ascribed it as a great miracle to the merits of the

blessed Francis, that the Lord suddenly had visited them, and out of

such dissension and scandal had brought such concord.”[539]

It would be mistaken to refer to any single pious sentiment, the saint’s

blithe love of animals and birds and flowers, and his regard even for

senseless things. It is right, however, for Thomas of Celano, as a proper

monkish biographer, to say:

“While hastening through this world of pilgrimage and exile that

traveller (Francis) rejoiced in those things which are in the world,

and not a little. As toward the princes of darkness he used the world

as a field for battle, but as toward the Lord he treated it as the

brightest mirror of goodness; in the fabric he commended the

Artificer, and what he found in created things, he referred to the

Maker; he exulted over all the works of the hands of the Lord, and in

the pleasing spectacle beheld the life-giving reason and the cause. In

beautiful things he perceived that which was most beautiful, as all

good things acclaim, He who made us is best. Through vestiges

impressed on things he followed his chosen, and made of all a ladder

by which to reach the throne. He embraced all things in a feeling of

unheard of devotion, speaking to them concerning the Lord and

exhorting them in His praise.”[540]

This was true, even if it was not all the truth. Living creatures spoke to

Francis of their Maker, while things insensible aroused his reverence

through their suggestiveness, their scriptural associations, or their

symbolism. But beyond these motives there was in this poet Francis a happy

love of nature. If nature always spoke to him of God, its loveliness

needed no stimulation of devotion in order to be loved by him. His feeling

for it found everywhere sensibility and responsiveness. He was as if

possessed by an imaginative animism, wherein every object had a soul. His

acts and words may appear fantastic; they never lack loveliness and

beauty.[541]

“Wrapped in the love of God, the blessed Francis perfectly discerned

the goodness of God not only in his own soul but in every creature.

Wherefore he was affected with a singular and yearning (_viscerosa_)

love toward creatures, and especially toward those in which was

figured something of God or something pertaining to religion.

“Whence above all birds he loved a little bird called the lark (the

_lodola capellata_ of the vulgar tongue) and would say of her: ‘Sister

lark has a hood like a Religious and is a humble bird, because she

goes willingly along the road to find for herself some grains of corn.

Even if she find them in dung she picks them out and eats them. In

flying she praises the Lord very sweetly, as the good Religious look

down upon earthly things, whose conversation is always in the heavens

and whose intent is always upon the praise of God. Her garments are

like earth, that is, her feathers, and set an example to the Religious

that they should not have delicate and gaudy garments, but such as are

vile in price and colour, as earth is viler than other

elements.’”[542]

The unquestionably true story of Francis preaching to the birds is known

to all, especially to readers of the _Fioretti_. Thus Thomas of Celano

tells it: As the blessed Father Francis was journeying through the Spoleto

Valley, he reached a place near Mevanium, where there was a multitude of

birds--doves, crows, and other kinds. When he saw them, for the love and

sweet affection which he bore toward the lower creatures, he quickly ran

to them, leaving his companions. As he came near and saw that they were

waiting for him, he saluted them in his accustomed way. Then wondering

that they did not take flight, he was very glad, and humbly begged them to

listen to the word of God; among other things he said to them: “My

brothers who fly, verily you should praise the Lord your Maker and love

Him always, who gave you feathers to clothe you and wings to fly with and

whatever was necessary to you. God made you noble among creatures,

prepared your mansion in the purity of air; and though you neither sow nor

reap, nevertheless without any solicitude on your part, He protects and

guides you.”

At this, those little birds as he was speaking, marvellously exulting,

began to stretch out their necks and spread their wings and open their

beaks, looking at him. He passed through their midst, sweeping their heads

and bodies with his mantle. At length he blessed them, and with the sign

of the cross gave them leave to fly away. Then returning gladdened to his

companions, he yet blamed himself for his neglect to preach to the birds

before, since they so reverently heard the word of God. And from that day

he ceased not to exhort all flying and creeping things, and even things

insensible, to the praise and love of their Creator.[543]

Thomas also says that above all animals Francis loved the lambs, because

so frequently in Scripture the humility of our Lord is likened unto a

lamb. One day, as Francis was making his way through the March of Ancona

he met a goat-herd pasturing his flock of goats. Among them, humbly and

quietly, a little lamb was feeding. Francis stopped as he saw it, and,

deeply touched, said to the brother accompanying him: “Dost thou see this

sheep walking so gently among the goats? I tell you, thus our Lord Jesus

Christ used to walk mild and humble among Pharisees and chief priests. For

love of Him, then, I beg thee, my son, to buy this little sheep with me

and lead it out from among these goats.”

The brother was also moved with pity. They had nothing with them save

their wretched cloaks, but a merchant chancing to come along the way, the

money was obtained from him. Giving thanks to God and leading the sheep

they had bought, they reached the town of Osimo whither they were going;

and entering the house of the bishop, were honourably received by him. Yet

my lord bishop wondered at the sheep which Francis was leading with such

tender love. But when Francis had set forth the parable of his sermon, the

bishop too was touched and gave thanks to God.

The following day they considered what to do with the sheep, and it was

given over to the nuns of the cloister of St. Severinus, who received it

as a great boon given them from God. Long while they cared for it, and in

the course of time wove a cloak from its wool, which they sent to the

blessed Francis at the Portiuncula at the time of a Chapter meeting. The

saint accepted it with joy, and kissed it, and begged all the brothers to

be glad with him.[544]

Celano also tells how Francis loved the grass and vines and stones and

woods, and all comely things in the fields, also the streams, and earth

and fire and air, and called every creature “brother”;[545] also how he

would not put out the flame of a lamp or candle, how he walked reverently

upon stones, and was careful to injure no living thing.[546]