"For July, in Siena by the willow-tree
I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine,
In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat, in company,
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
Boiled capons, sovereign kids;--and let their treat
Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree."
Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language was
its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he became
the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the Lady
Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the decay of the
Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes, merchants, even
many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned the poor. The
voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God, and he sent their
terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.
In Sicily, Frederick II.--the Julian of the time--lived among
fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,--a type
of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness which
Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury Francis put
the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poetes Franciscains,' Frederick
Ozanam says:--
"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all
perfection,--the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify
Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time: he imagined her as the
daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his
thoughts, his affianced, and his bride."
The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout.
Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with the
Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of his
comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne, who
was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies. About this
time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a shivering
soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed that the
voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly fame," he
said.--"But which of two is better for you,--the Master, or the
servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant, the Lord
for the slave?"--"O Lord, what shall I do?" asked Francis.--"Return
unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be told you what
you shall do and how you may interpret this vision."
He obeyed; he left the army; his old companions were glad to see him,
and again he joined the _corti_. But he was paler and more silent.
"You are in love!" his companions said, laughingly.
"I am in truth thinking of a bride more noble, more richly dowered,
and more beautiful than the world has ever seen."
Pietro was away from home, and his son made donations to the poor. He
grew more tranquil, though the Voice had not explained its message. He
knelt at the foot of the crucifix one day in the old chapel of St.
Damian, and waited. Then the revelation came:--"Francis, go to rebuild
my house, which is falling into ruin!"
Francis took this command, which seemed to have come from the lips of
his crucified Redeemer, literally. It meant that he should repair the
chapel of St. Damian. Later, he accepted it in a broader sense. More
important things than the walls of St. Damian were falling into ruin.
Francis was a man of action, and one who took life literally. He went
to his father's shop, chose some precious stuffs, and sold them with
his horse at Foliquo, for much below their value. Pietro had brought
Francis up in a princely fashion: why should he not behave as a
prince? And surely the father who had not grudged the richest of his
stuffs for the celebrations of the _corti_, would not object to their
sacrifice at the command of the Voice for the repairing of St. Damian!
Pietro, who had not heard the Voice, vowed vengeance on his son for
his foolishness. The priest at St. Damian's had refused the money; but
Francis threw it into the window, and Pietro, finding it, went away
swearing that his son had kept some of it. Francis wandered about
begging stones for the rebuilding of St. Damian's. Pietro, maddened by
the foolishness of his son, appealed to a magistrate. Francis cast off
all his garments, and gave them to his father. The Bishop of Assisi
covered his nakedness with his own mantle until the gown of a poor
laborer was brought to him. Dipping his right hand in a pile of
mortar, Francis drew a rough cross upon his breast: "Pietro
Bernardone," he said, "until now I have called you my father;
henceforth I can truly say, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' for
he is my wealth, and in him do I place all my hope."
Francis went away, to build his chapel and sing in the Provencal
speech hymns in honor of God and of love for his greatness. In June
1208 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and of rank,
the other a priest. They gave all to the poor, and took up their abode
near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the chapel of the
Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning of the great
order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.
Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech--a poet who was
inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the author of
a recent monograph on St. Francis says, "destroy or tread on a written
page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain the name of God;
even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained the letters that
make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the people and singing
for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked Fra Pacifico, who
had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his verses to the rules
of metre."
St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the author
of the 'Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his footsteps.
"The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well as offensive.
The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with respect, was not
far from Christendom." Frederick of Sicily, with his Saracens, menaced
Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices were rife; and the
thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled themselves in the band of
Francis gained the love of the people, preached Christianity anew,
symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read, and, as St. Francis
had done, they appealed to the imagination. The legends of St.
Francis--one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of which there are
at least two good English translations--became the tenderest poems of
the poor.
If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of a
saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1226: he asked to be buried on
the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest;
"and," he said, "sing my 'Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a
song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be
found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole.'"
Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best
known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive 'Life' is by
the Abbe Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been
translated into English.
[Signature: Maurice Francis Egan]