ST. FRANCIS (1182-1226)
In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not
well with the Church in Italy. Corruption threatened it from within,
heresy from without. Simony was rampant; livings were almost put up at
auction. Innocent asserted that there was no cure but fire and steel.
The prelates of the Roman Curia were "tricky as foxes, proud as bulls,
greedy and insatiable as the Minotaur." The priests were often
shameless; some became usurers to get money for their bastards, others
kept taverns and sold wine. Worship had become a vain repetition of
formulas. The monks were superstitious, many of them disreputable. The
inevitable consequence of this decay in the Church was heresy. Italy was
nearly, if not quite, as badly honeycombed with heretics as Languedoc
had been. The Patarini, whom we remember in Hildebrand's time, now
become a species of heretics, abounded in Milan; other sects sprang up
in towns near by. In Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Faenza, Treviso, Florence,
Prato, anti-sacerdotal sentiment was very strong. In Viterbo the
heretics were numerous enough to elect their consul. At Piacenza priests
had been driven out, and the city left unshepherded for three years. In
Orvieto there had been grave disorders. In Assisi a heretic had been
elected _podesta_ (governor).
The great Innocent knitted his brows; he knew well that his noisy
triumphs, which echoed over the Tagus, the Thames, the Rhine, and the
Golden Horn, were of no avail, if heretics sapped and mined the Church
within. It seemed as if the great ecclesiastical fabric, to which he had
given the devotion of a life, was tottering from corner-stone to apex;
when, one day, a cardinal came to him and said, "I have found a most
perfect man, who wishes to live according to the Holy Gospel, and to
observe evangelical perfection in all things. I believe that through him
the Lord intends to reform His Holy Church in all the world." Innocent
was interested, and bade the man be brought before him. This man was
Francis Bernadone, known to us as St. Francis, the leader of a small
band of Umbrian pilgrims from Assisi, who asked permission to follow
literally the example of Jesus Christ. The Pope hesitated. To the
cardinals, men of the world, this young man and his pilgrims were fools
and their faith nonsense. "But," argued a believer, "if you assert that
it is novel, irrational, impossible to observe the perfection of the
Gospel, and to take a vow to do so, are you not guilty of blasphemy
against Christ, the author of the Gospel?" Thinking the matter over, the
Pope dreamed a dream. He beheld the Church of St. John Lateran, the
episcopal church of the bishops of Rome, leaning in ruin and about to
fall, when a monk, poor and mean in appearance, bent under it and
propped it with his back. Innocent awoke and said to himself, "This
Francis is the holy monk by whose help the Church of God shall be lifted
up and stand again." So he said to Francis and his followers, "Go
brethren, God be with you. Preach repentance to all as He shall give you
inspiration. And when Almighty God shall have made you multiply in
numbers and in grace, come back to us, and we will entrust you with
greater things."
So St. Francis, "true servant of God and faithful follower of Jesus
Christ," went about his ministry with the blessing of the Church. To the
people of Assisi, of Umbria, and afterwards of all Central Italy, his
life was a revelation of Christianity. He imparted the gospel anew, as
fresh as when it had first been given under the Syrian stars. He
embodied peace, gentleness, courtesy, and self-sacrifice. It is not too
much to say that he saved the Catholic Church, and put off the
Protestant Reformation for three hundred years. His example and
influence raised the standard of conduct within the Church; and his
love, his devotion, his insistence on the essential parts of Christ's
teaching, and his dislike of worldly pomps, deprived heresy of all its
weapons. He satisfied the widespread religious hunger better than heresy
did. He was so characteristically Italian, and his ministry throws so
much light on the state of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth
century, that it is worth while to dwell for a few pages on his doings.
Assisi, built for safety on a hill and protected by great walls and
gates, was a good example of a little mediaeval town. In the centre was
the _piazza_, on which fronted a Roman temple to Minerva, haughtily
scornful of its mediaeval surroundings. Hard by was the cathedral, where
every baby was taken for baptism. On the tiptop of the hill stood a huge
castle, where the feudal baron dwelt with his ruffianly soldiers and
received his feudal lord, the Emperor, when he stopped at Assisi on his
way to Rome. In Francis's boyhood, the people, aided by Pope Innocent,
had driven out the German count, and had formed themselves into a free
commune, save for their allegiance to the Holy See; but the change was
not all gain. The town was divided into discordant classes; the
nobility, maintained in idleness by the produce of their estates, the
bourgeoisie, engaged in trade (Francis's father was a merchant), the
artisans grouped in guilds, and the serfs, who tilled the fields and
tended the vineyards and olive orchards. Once rid of the German count,
the bourgeoisie endeavoured to rid themselves of the arrogant and idle
nobility. Street war broke out. The nobles fled to Perugia, another
little town perched on a hill some dozen miles across the plain, and
asked for help. Perugia rejoiced in the opportunity. The miseries of a
petty war between two little neighbours need no description. Fields and
vineyards were devastated, olive orchards destroyed, farm-houses burned.
Even in peace the peasants around Assisi lived in constant disquiet,
ready to fling down their mattocks and flee to the protection of the
city walls.
Within the city the streets were narrow, the houses small. Dirt
abounded. War brought poverty, dirt brought the pest, Crusaders brought
leprosy. At the gates of the town stood lazar-houses, and in remote
spots lepers in the earlier stages of disease gathered together. Yet,
despite war, pest, and leprosy, life in Umbria could never have been
wholly sad. Certainly the sons of the well-to-do enjoyed themselves and
whiled away the time carelessly. Sometimes a great personage stopped on
his Romeward way; sometimes strolling players exhibited their shows on
the _piazza_ before the Temple of Minerva; sometimes a troubadour,
escaped from the persecution in Provence, passed by on his way to
Sicily, and sang his songs to repay hospitality. Many an afternoon and
night the clubs of young gentlemen gave _fetes champetres_ and dances.
Francis, as a boy, was gayest of the gay, dancing and piping in the
market-place, fighting in the front rank against the nobles of Perugia,
but when he grew to manhood he could not bear the contrast between mirth
and misery. He sought for some universal joy and found it in the love of
Christ. He gathered about him a scanty band of holy and humble men of
heart, who took the vow of poverty, and devoted themselves to praising
God, comforting the wretched, and tending lepers. The abbot of the
neighbouring Benedictine monastery gave them a little chapel, where St.
Benedict himself had once said mass, which lay in the plain a mile below
the town. This little chapel, named the _Portiuncula_ (the little
portion), which is now covered by the great church of _Santa Maria degli
Angeli_ (St. Mary of the Angels), so called because the songs of angels
were heard there, was the cradle of the Franciscan Order. It was a tiny
building, twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a steep pitched roof,
plain walls, and big, round-arched door, and was sadly dilapidated. St.
Francis and his friends built it up, and it became their church. Round
it they built their huts, and encompassed all with a hedge. Here it was
that St. Clare, the daughter of a nobleman of Assisi, donned the nun's
dress. Here Francis passed the happy years of his life, while as yet his
disciples were few and all were animated by his passionate longing for
self-abnegation. He followed the New Testament literally,
superstitiously one would say were it not that this literal obedience
was accompanied by ineffable peace of heart and joy. He specially
enjoined poverty. A smock, a cord, and sandals were enough for a true
brother. Once a novice begged for permission to own a psalter, and
teased him, but Francis answered: "After you have the psalter you will
covet and long for a breviary; and when you possess a breviary you will
sit on a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother, fetch me my
breviary." Nor would he suffer the brethren to take heed for the morrow.
They were only allowed to ask for provisions sufficient for the day. For
he, in the rapture of his love, found infinite pleasure in the literal
fulfillment of every word that had fallen from Christ's lips. Francis
was an orator; he possessed passion, the great source of eloquence, and
stirred prelates and Crusaders as well as peasants and lepers. The world
wished for sympathy and he gave it. He seemed to be sick with the sick,
afflicted with those in affliction, holy with the good; and even sinners
felt him one of themselves. To his disciples he was Jesus come again.
Joy and happiness radiated from him. All the world felt the charm and
beauty of his love of God, and poetry followed him as wild violets
attend the spring.
Thus Francis, by rubbing off the incrustations of twelve hundred
unchristian years, revealed the poetry of the gospel to an eager world.
One charming trait of his character was his love of animals, especially
of birds. He wished the ox and the ass, companions of the manger, to
share in the Christmas good cheer; and hoped that the Emperor would make
a law that nobody should kill larks or do them any hurt. He was always
very fond of larks and said that their plumage was like a religious
dress. "Wherefore,--according to his disciple, Brother Leo,--it pleased
God that these lowly little birds should give a sign of affection for
him at the hour of his death. On the eve of the Sabbath day after
vespers, just before the night in which he went up to God, a great
multitude of larks flew down over the roof of the house where he lay,
and all flying together wheeled in circles round the roof and singing
sweetly seemed to be praising God."
His disciples went forth from their headquarters, the _Portiuncula_,
like the Apostles, to preach the gospel, first to the people of Umbria
and Tuscany, then on to Bologna and Verona, and soon over the Alps and
across the seas. The Order had three branches: the begging friars
themselves, tonsured and clad in undyed cloth, with cords about their
waists and sandals on their feet; the sister Clares, shut up in
nunneries, and dressed most simply; and the third order, people who
continued to live in the world, but wished to follow the example of
Christ and his blessed imitator and servant, Francis. The first rule of
the begging friars had been very strict. For Francis the strait gate
that led to eternal life was poverty. Even in his lifetime after his
Order had become popular, there was grumbling and opposition; and after
his death, the literal observance of his wishes was promptly given up.
He would never allow his brethren to own a house or have a church; and
yet within two years after his death the great basilica in Assisi was
begun, dedicated to him, and hurried to magnificent completion. The
Church, which held the doctrine of evangelical poverty fit only for mad
men of genius, laid her heavy hand on the Order, and guided and governed
it as best suited her purposes. But it would be grossly unfair to the
Church to blame her for violating Francis's chief dogma. The total
rejection of property, the total disregard of the morrow, seemed to her,
as they seem to us to-day, doctrines wholly inapplicable to this world
in which we find ourselves.