CHAPTER XX.

FRANCIS'S WILL AND DEATH, 333

CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SOURCES, 347

APPENDIX.

CRITICAL STUDY OF THE STIGMATA AND OF THE INDULGENCE

OF AUGUST 2, 433

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION

In the renascence of history which is in a manner the characteristic of

our time, the Middle Ages have been the object of peculiar fondness with

both criticism and erudition. We rummage all the dark corners of the

libraries, we bring old parchments to light, and in the zeal and ardor

we put into our search there is an indefinable touch of piety.

These efforts to make the past live again reveal not merely our

curiosity, or the lack of power to grapple with great philosophic

problems, they are a token of wisdom and modesty; we are beginning to

feel that the present has its roots in the past, and that in the fields

of politics and religion, as in others, slow, modest, persevering toil

is that which has the best results.

There is also a token of love in this. We love our ancestors of five or

six centuries ago, and we mingle not a little emotion and gratitude with

this love. So, if one may hope everything of a son who loves his

parents, we must not despair of an age that loves history.

The Middle Ages form an organic period in the life of humanity. Like all

powerful organisms the period began with a long and mysterious

gestation; it had its youth, its manhood, its decrepitude. The end of

the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth mark its full

expansion; it is the twentieth year of life, with its poetry, its

dreams, its enthusiasm, its generosity, its daring. Love overflowed with

vigor; men everywhere had but one desire--to devote themselves to some

great and holy cause.

Curiously enough, though Europe was more parcelled out than ever, it

felt a new thrill run through its entire extent. There was what we might

call a state of European consciousness.

In ordinary periods each people has its own interests, its tendencies,

its tears, and its joys; but let a time of crisis come, and the true

unity of the human family will suddenly make itself felt with a strength

never before suspected. Each body of water has its own currents, but

when the hurricane is abroad they mysteriously intermingle, and from the

ocean to the remotest mountain lake the same tremor will upheave them

all.

It was thus in '89, it was thus also in the thirteenth century.

Never was there less of frontier, never, either before or since, such a

mingling of nationalities; and at the present day, with all our highways

and railroads, the people live more apart.[1]

The great movement of thought of the thirteenth century is above all a

religious movement, presenting a double character--it is popular and it

is laic. It comes out from the heart of the people, and it looks athwart

many uncertainties at nothing less than wresting the sacred things from

the hands of the clergy.

The conservatives of our time who turn to the thirteenth century as to

the golden age of authoritative faith make a strange mistake. If it is

especially the century of saints, it is also that of heretics. We shall

soon see that the two words are not so contradictory as might appear; it

is enough for the moment to point out that the Church had never been

more powerful nor more threatened.

There was a genuine attempt at a religious revolution, which, if it had

succeeded, would have ended in a universal priesthood, in the

proclamation of the rights of the individual conscience.

The effort failed, and though later on the Revolution made us all kings,

neither the thirteenth century nor the Reformation was able to make us

all priests. Herein, no doubt, lies the essential contradiction of our

lives and that which periodically puts our national institutions in

peril. Politically emancipated, we are not morally or religiously

free.[2]

The thirteenth century with juvenile ardor undertook this revolution,

which has not yet reached its end. In the north of Europe it became

incarnate in cathedrals, in the south, in saints.

The cathedrals were the lay churches of the thirteenth century. Built by

the people for the people, they were originally the true common house of

our old cities. Museums, granaries, chambers of commerce, halls of

justice, depositories of archives, and even labor exchanges, they were

all these at once.

That art of the Middle Ages which Victor Hugo and Viollet-le-Duc have

taught us to understand and love was the visible expression of the

enthusiasm of a people who were achieving communal liberty. Very far

from being the gift of the Church, it was in its beginning an

unconscious protest against the hieratic, impassive, esoteric art of the

religious orders. We find only laymen in the long list of master-workmen

and painters who have left us the innumerable Gothic monuments which

stud the soil of Europe. Those artists of genius who, like those of

Greece, knew how to speak to the populace without being common, were for

the most part humble workmen; they found their inspiration not in the

formulas of the masters of monastic art, but in constant communion with

the very soul of the nation. Therefore this renascence, in its most

profound features, concerns less the archæology or the architecture than

the history of a country.

While in the northern countries the people were building their own

churches, and finding in their enthusiasm an art which was new,

original, complete, in the south, above the official, clerical

priesthood of divine right they were greeting and consecrating a new

priesthood, that of the saints.

The priest of the thirteenth century is the antithesis of the saint, he

is almost always his enemy. Separated by the holy unction from the rest

of mankind, inspiring awe as the representative of an all-powerful God,

able by a few signs to perform unheard-of mysteries, with a word to

change bread into flesh and wine into blood, he appeared as a sort of

idol which can do all things for or against you and before which you

have only to adore and tremble.

The saint, on the contrary, was one whose mission was proclaimed by

nothing in his apparel, but whose life and words made themselves felt in

all hearts and consciences; he was one who, with no cure of souls in the

Church, felt himself suddenly impelled to lift up his voice. The child

of the people, he knew all their material and moral woes, and their

mysterious echo sounded in his own heart. Like the ancient prophet of

Israel, he heard an imperious voice saying to him: "Go and speak to the

children of my people." "Ah, Lord God, I am but a child, I know not how

to speak." "Say not, I am but a child, for thou shalt go to all those to

whom I shall send thee. Behold I have set thee to-day as a strong city,

a pillar of iron and a wall of brass against the kings of Judah, against

its princes and against its priests."

These thirteenth-century saints were in fact true prophets. Apostles

like St. Paul, not as the result of a canonical consecration, but by the

interior order of the Spirit, they were the witnesses of liberty against

authority.

The Calabrian seer, Gioacchino di Fiore, hailed the new-born revolution;

he believed in its success and proclaimed to the wondering world the

advent of a new ministry. He was mistaken.

When the priest sees himself vanquished by the prophet he suddenly

changes his method. He takes him under his protection, he introduces his

harangues into the sacred canon, he throws over his shoulders the

priestly chasuble. The days pass on, the years roll by, and the moment

comes when the heedless crowd no longer distinguishes between them, and

it ends by believing the prophet to be an emanation of the clergy.

This is one of the bitterest ironies of history.

Francis of Assisi is pre-eminently the saint of the Middle Ages. Owing

nothing to church or school he was truly _theodidact_,[3] and if he

perhaps did not perceive the revolutionary bearing of his preaching, he

at least always refused to be ordained priest. He divined the

superiority of the spiritual priesthood.

The charm of his life is that, thanks to reliable documents, we find the

man behind the wonder worker. We find in him not merely noble actions,

we find in him a life in the true meaning of the word; I mean, we feel

in him both development and struggle.

How mistaken are the annals of the Saints in representing him as from

the very cradle surrounded with aureole and nimbus! As if the finest and

most manly of spectacles were not that of the man who conquers his soul

hour after hour, fighting first against himself, against the suggestions

of egoism, idleness, discouragement, then at the moment when he might

believe himself victorious, finding in the champions attracted by his

ideal those who are destined if not to bring about its complete ruin, at

least to give it its most terrible blows. Poor Francis! The last years

of his life were indeed a _via dolorosa_ as painful as that where his

master sank down under the weight of the cross; for it is still a joy to

die for one's ideal, but what bitter pain to look on in advance at the

apotheosis of one's body, while seeing one's soul--I would say his

thought--misunderstood and frustrated.

If we ask for the origins of his idea we find them exclusively among the

common people of his time; he is the incarnation of the Italian soul at

the beginning of the thirteenth century, as Dante was to be its

incarnation a hundred years later.

He was of the people and the people recognized themselves in him. He had

their poetry and their aspirations, he espoused their claims, and the

very name of his institute had at first a political signification: in

Assisi as in most other Italian towns there were _majores_ and

_minores_, the _popolo grasso_ and the _popolo minuto_; he resolutely

placed himself among the latter. This political side of his apostolate

needs to be clearly apprehended if we would understand its amazing

success and the wholly unique character of the Franciscan movement in

its beginning.

As to its attitude toward the Church, it was that of filial obedience.

This may perhaps appear strange at first as regards an unauthorized

preacher who comes speaking to the world in the name of his own

immediate personal inspiration. But did not most of the men of '89

believe themselves good and loyal subjects of Louis XVI.?

The Church was to our ancestors what the fatherland is to us; we may

wish to remodel its government, overturn its administration, change its

constitution, but we do not think ourselves less good patriots for that.

In the same way, in an age of simple faith when religious beliefs seemed

to be in the very fibre and flesh of humanity, Dante, without ceasing to

be a good Catholic, could attack the clergy and the court of Rome with a

violence that has never been surpassed. St. Francis so surely believed

that the Church had become unfaithful to her mission that he could speak

in his symbolic language of the widowhood of his Lady Poverty, who from

Christ's time to his own had found no husband. How could he better have

declared his purposes or revealed his dreams?

What he purposed was far more than the foundation of an order, and it is

to do him great wrong thus to restrict his endeavor. He longed for a

true awakening of the Church in the name of the evangelical ideal which

he had regained. All Europe awoke with a start when it heard of these

penitents from a little Umbrian town. It was reported that they had

craved a strange privilege from the court of Rome: that of possessing

nothing. Men saw them pass by, earning their bread by the labor of their

hands, accepting only the bare necessities of bodily sustenance from

them to whom they had given with lavish hands the bread of life. The

people lifted up their heads, breathing in with deep inspirations the

airs of a springtime upon which was already floating the perfume of new

flowers.

Here and there in the world there are many souls capable of all heroism,

if only they can see before them a true leader. St. Francis became for

these the guide they had longed for, and whatever was best in humanity

at that time leaped to follow in his footsteps.

This movement, which was destined to result in the constitution of a new

family of monks, was in the beginning anti-monastic. It is not rare for

history to have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who

preached the religion of a personal revelation, without ceremonial or

dogmatic law, triumphed only on condition of being conquered, and of

permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a church

essentially dogmatic and sacerdotal.

In the same way the Franciscan movement was originally, if not the

protest of the Christian consciousness against monachism, at least the

recognition of an ideal singularly higher than that of the clergy of

that time. Let us picture to ourselves the Italy of the beginning of the

thirteenth century with its divisions, its perpetual warfare, its

depopulated country districts, the impossibility of tilling the fields

except in the narrow circle which the garrisons of the towns might

protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in

watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging

their neighbors; sieges terminated by unspeakable atrocities, and after

all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the

devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine

abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed

to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in

their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, they were in these

disordered times the only refuge of peaceful souls and timid hearts.[4]

The monks were in great majority deserters from life, who for motives

entirely aside from religion had taken refuge behind the only walls

which at this period were secure.

Overlook this as we may, forget as we may the demoralization and

ignorance of the inferior clergy, the simony and the vices of the

prelates, the coarseness and avarice of the monks, judging the Church of

the thirteenth century only by those of her sons who do her the most

honor; none the less are these the anchorites who flee into the desert

to escape from wars and vices, pausing only when they are very sure that

none of the world's noises will interrupt their meditations. Sometimes

they will draw away with them hundreds of imitators, to the solitudes of

Clairvaux, of the Chartreuse, of Vallombrosa, of the Camaldoli; but even

when they are a multitude they are alone; for they are dead to the world

and to their brethren. Each cell is a desert, on whose threshold they

cry

O beata solitudo.

O sola beatitudo.

The book of the Imitation is the picture of all that is purest in this

cloistered life.

But is this abstinence from action truly Christian?

No, replied St. Francis. He for his part would do like Jesus, and we may

say that his life is an imitation of Christ singularly more real than

that of Thomas à Kempis.

Jesus went indeed into the desert, but only that he might find in prayer

and communion with the heavenly Father the inspiration and strength

necessary for keeping up the struggle against evil. Far from avoiding

the multitude, he sought them out to enlighten, console, and convert

them.

This is what St. Francis desired to imitate. More than once he felt the

seduction of the purely contemplative life, but each time his own spirit

warned him that this was only a disguised selfishness; that one saves

oneself only in saving others.

When he saw suffering, wretchedness, corruption, instead of fleeing he

stopped to bind up, to heal, feeling in his heart the surging of waves

of compassion. He not only preached love to others; he himself was

ravished with it; he sang it, and what was of greater value, he lived

it.

There had indeed been preachers of love before his day, but most

generally they had appealed to the lowest selfishness. They had thought

to triumph by proving that in fact to give to others is to put one's

money out at a usurious interest. "Give to the poor," said St. Peter

Chrysologus,[5] "that you may give to yourself; give him a crumb in

order to receive a loaf; give him a shelter to receive heaven."

There was nothing like this in Francis; his charity is not selfishness,

it is love. He went, not to the whole, who need no physician, but to the

sick, the forgotten, the disdained. He dispensed the treasures of his

heart according to the need and reserved the best of himself for the

poorest and the most lost, for lepers and thieves.

The gaps in his education were of marvellous service to him. More

learned, the formal logic of the schools would have robbed him of that

flower of simplicity which is the great charm of his life; he would have

seen the whole extent of the sore of the Church, and would no doubt have

despaired of healing it. If he had known the ecclesiastical discipline

he would have felt obliged to observe it; but thanks to his ignorance he

could often violate it without knowing it,[6] and be a heretic quite

unawares.

We can now determine to what religious family St. Francis belongs.

Looking at the question from a somewhat high standpoint we see that in

the last analysis minds, like religious systems, are to be found in two

great families, standing, so to say, at the two poles of thought. These

two poles are only mathematical points, they do not exist in concrete

reality; but for all that we can set them down on the chart of

philosophic and moral ideas.

There are religions which look toward divinity and religions which look

toward man. Here again the line of demarcation between the two families

is purely ideal and artificial; they often so mingle and blend with one

another that we have much difficulty in distinguishing them, especially

in the intermediate zone in which our civilization finds its place; but

if we go toward the poles we shall find their characteristics growing

gradually distinct.

In the religions which look toward divinity all effort is concentrated

on worship, and especially on sacrifice. The end aimed at is a change in

the disposition of the gods. They are mighty kings whose support or

favor one must purchase by gifts.

Most pagan religions belong to this category and pharisaic Judaism as

well. This is also the tendency of certain Catholics of the old school

for whom the great thing is to appease God or to buy the protection of

the Virgin and the saints by means of prayers, candles, and masses.

The other religions look toward man; their effort is directed to the

heart and conscience with the purpose of transforming them. Sacrifice

disappears, or rather it changes from the exterior to the interior. God

is conceived of as a father, always ready to welcome him who comes to

him. Conversion, perfection, sanctification become the pre-eminent

religious acts. Worship and prayer cease to be incantations and become

reflection, meditation, virile effort; while in religions of the first

class the clergy have an essential part, as intermediaries between

heaven and earth, in those of the second they have none, each conscience

entering into direct relations with God.

It was reserved to the prophets of Israel to formulate, with a precision

before unknown, the starting-point of spiritual worship.

Bring no more vain offerings;

I have a horror of incense,

Your new moons, your Sabbaths, and your assemblies;

When you multiply prayers I will not hearken.

Your hands are full of blood,

Wash you, make you clean,

Put away from before my eyes the evil of your ways,

Cease to do evil,

Learn to do well.[7]

With Isaiah these vehement apostrophes are but flashes of genius, but

with Jesus the interior change becomes at once the principle and the end

of the religious life. His promises were not for those who were right

with the ceremonial law, or who offered the greatest number of

sacrifices, but for the pure in heart, for men of good will.

These considerations are not perhaps without their use in showing the

spiritual ancestry of the Saint of Assisi.

For him, as for St. Paul and St. Augustine, conversion was a radical and

complete change, the act of will by which man wrests himself from the

slavery of sin and places himself under the yoke of divine authority.

Thenceforth prayer, become a necessary act of life, ceases to be a magic

formula; it is an impulse of the heart, it is reflection and meditation

rising above the commonplaces of this mortal life, to enter into the

mystery of the divine will and conform itself to it; it is the act of

the atom which understands its littleness, but which desires, though

only by a single note, to be in harmony with the divine symphony.

_Ecce adsum Domine, ut faciam voluntatem tuam._

When we reach these heights we belong not to a sect, but to humanity; we

are like those wonders of nature which the accident of circumstances has

placed upon the territory of this or that people, but which belong to

all the world, because in fact they belong to no one, or rather they are

the common and inalienable property of the entire human race. Homer,

Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt belong to us all

as much as the ruins of Athens or Rome, or, rather, they belong to

those who love them most and understand them best.

But that which is a truism, so far as men of genius in the domain of

imagination or thought are concerned, still appears like a paradox when

we speak of men of religious genius. The Church has laid such absolute

claim to them that she has created in her own favor a sort of right. It

cannot be that this arbitrary confiscation shall endure forever. To

prevent it we have not to perform an act of negation or demolition: let

us leave to the chapels their statues and their relics, and far from

belittling the saints, let us make their true grandeur shine forth.

* * * * *

It is time to say a few words concerning the difficulties of the work

here presented to the public. History always embraces but a very feeble

part of the reality: ignorant, she is like the stories children tell of

the events that have occurred before their eyes; learned, she reminds us

of a museum organized with all the modern improvements. Instead of

making you see nature with its external covering, its diffuse life, its

mysterious echoes in your own heart, they offer you a herbarium.

If it is difficult to narrate an ordinary event of our own time, it is

far more so to describe the great crises where restless humanity is

seeking its true path.

The first duty of the historian is to forget his own time and country

and become the sympathetic and interested contemporary of what he

relates; but if it is difficult to give oneself the heart of a Greek or

a Roman, it is infinitely more so to give oneself a heart of the

thirteenth century. I have said that at that period the Middle Age was

twenty years old, and the feelings of the twentieth year are, if not the

most fugitive, at least the most difficult to note down. Everyone knows

that it is impossible to recall the feelings of youth with the same

clearness as those of childhood or mature age. Doubtless we may have

external facts in the memory, but we cannot recall the sensations and

the sentiments; the confused forces which seek to move us are then all

at work at once, and to speak the language of beyond the Rhine, it is

_the essentially phenomenal hour of the phenomena that we are;_

everything in us crosses, intermingles, collides, in desperate conflict:

it is a time of diabolic or divine excitement. Let a few years pass, and

nothing in the world can make us live those hours over again. Where was

once a volcano, we perceive only a heap of blackened ashes, and

scarcely, at long intervals, will a chance meeting, a sound, a word,

awaken memory and unseal the fountain of recollection; and even then it

is only a flash; we have had but a glimpse and all has sunk back into

shadow and silence.

We find the same difficulty when we try to take note of the fiery

enthusiasms of the thirteenth century, its poetic inspirations, its

amorous and chaste visions--all this is thrown up against a background

of coarseness, wretchedness, corruption, and folly.

The men of that time had all the vices except triviality, all the

virtues except moderation; they were either ruffians or saints. Life was

rude enough to kill feeble organisms; and thus characters had an energy

unknown to-day. It was forever necessary to provide beforehand against a

thousand dangers, to take those sudden resolutions in which one risks

his life. Open the chronicle of Fra Salimbeni and you will be shocked to

find that the largest place is taken up with the account of the annual

expeditions of Parma against the neighboring cities, or of the

neighboring cities against Parma. What would it have been if this

chronicle, instead of being written by a monk of uncommonly open mind, a

lover of music, at certain times an ardent Joachimite, an indefatigable

traveller, had been written by a warrior? And this is not all; these

wars between city and city were complicated with civil dissensions,

plots were hatched periodically, conspirators were massacred if they

were discovered, or massacred and exiled others in their turn if they

were triumphant.[8] When we picture to ourselves this state of things

dominated by the grand struggles of the papacy against the empire,

heretics, and infidels, we may understand how difficult it is to

describe such a time.

The imagination being haunted by horrible or entrancing pictures like

those of the frescos in the _Campo Santo_ of Pisa, men were always

thinking of heaven and hell; they informed themselves about them with

the feverish curiosity of emigrants, who pass their days on shipboard in

trying to picture that spot in America where in a few days they will

pitch their tent.

Every monk of any notoriety must have gone through this. Dante's poem is

not an isolated work; it is the noblest result of a condition which had

given birth to hundreds of compositions, and Alighieri had little more

to do than to co-ordinate the works of his predecessors and vivify them

with the breath of his own genius.

The unsettled state of men's minds was unimaginable. That unhealthy

curiosity which lies at the bottom of the human heart, and which at the

present day impels men to seek for refined and even perverse enjoyments,

impelled men of that time to devotions which seem like a defiance to

common sense.

Never had hearts been shaken with such terrors, nor ever thrilled with

such radiant hopes. The noblest hymns of the liturgy, the _Stabat_ and

the _Dies Iræ_, come to us from the thirteenth century, and we may well

say that never has the human plaint been more agonized.

When we look through history, not to find accounts of battles or of the

succession of dynasties, but to try to grasp the evolution of ideas and

feelings, when we seek above all to discover the heart of man and of

epochs, we perceive, on arriving at the thirteenth century, that a fresh

wind has blown over the world, the human lyre has a new string, the

lowest, the most profound; one which sings of woes and hopes to which

the ancient world had not vibrated.

In the breast of the men of that time we think sometimes we feel the

beating of a woman's heart; they have exquisite sentiments, delightful

inspirations, with absurd terrors, fantastic angers, infernal cruelties.

Weakness and fear often make them insincere; they have the idea of the

grand, the beautiful, the ugly, but that of order is wanting; they fast

or feast; the notion of the laws of nature, so deeply graven in our own

minds, is to them entirely a stranger; the words possible and impossible

have for them no meaning. Some give themselves to God, others sell

themselves to the devil, but not one feels himself strong enough to walk

alone, strong enough to have no need to hold on by some one's skirt.

Peopled with spirits and demons nature appeared to them singularly

animated; in her presence they have all the emotions which a child

experiences at night before the trees on the roadside and the vague

forms of the rocks.

Unfortunately, our language is a very imperfect instrument for rendering

all this; it is neither musical nor flexible; since the seventeenth

century it has been deemed seemly to keep one's emotions to oneself, and

the old words which served to note states of the soul have fallen into

neglect; the Imitation and the Fioretti have become untranslatable.

More than this, in a history like the present one, we must give a large

place to the Italian spirit; it is evident that in a country where they

call a chapel _basilica_ and a tiny house _palazzo_, or in speaking to a

seminarist say "Your Reverence," words have not the same value as on

this side of the Alps.

The Italians have an imagination which enlarges and simplifies. They see

the forms and outlines of men and things more than they grasp their

spirit. What they most admire in Michael Angelo is gigantic forms, noble

and proud attitudes, while we better understand his secret thoughts,

hidden sorrows, groans, and sighs.

Place before their eyes a picture by Rembrandt, and more often than not

it will appear to them ugly; its charm cannot be caught at a glance as

in those of their artists; to see it you must examine it, make an

effort, and with them effort is the beginning of pain.

Do not ask them, then, to understand the pathos of things, to be touched

by the mysterious and almost fanciful emotion which northern hearts

discover and enjoy in the works of the Amsterdam master. No, instead of

a forest they want a few trees, standing out clearly against the

horizon; instead of a multitude swarming in the penumbra of reality, a

few personages, larger than nature, forming harmonious groups in an

ideal temple.

The genius of a people[9] is all of a piece: they apply to history the

same processes that they apply to the arts. While the Germanic spirit

considers events rather in their evolution, in their complex becoming,

the Italian spirit takes them at a given moment, overlooks the shadows,

the clouds, the mists, everything that makes the line indistinct, brings

out the contour sharply, and thus constructs a very lucid story, which

is a delight to the eyes, but which is little more than a symbol of the

reality.

At other times it takes a man, separates him from the unnamed crowd, and

by a labor often unconscious, makes him the ideal type of a whole

epoch.[10]

Certainly there is in every people a tendency to give themselves a

circle of divinities and heroes who are, so to say, the incarnation of

its instincts; but generally that requires the long labor of centuries.

The Italian character will not suffer this slow action; as soon as it

recognizes a man it says so, it even shouts it aloud if that is

necessary, and makes him enter upon immortality while still alive. Thus

legend almost confounds itself with history, and it becomes very

difficult to reduce men to their true proportions.

We must not, then, ask too much of history. The more beautiful is the

dawn, the less one can describe it. The most beautiful things in nature,

the flower and the butterfly, should be touched only by delicate hands.

The effort here made to indicate the variegated, wavering tints which

form the atmosphere in which St. Francis lived is therefore of very

uncertain success. It was perhaps presumptuous to undertake it.

Happily we are no longer in the time when historians thought they had

done the right thing when they had reduced everything to its proper

size, contenting themselves with denying or omitting everything in the

life of the heroes of humanity which rises above the level of our

every-day experience.

No doubt Francis did not meet on the road to Sienna three pure and

gentle virgins come from heaven to greet him; the devil did not overturn

rocks for the sake of terrifying him; but when we deny these visions and

apparitions, we are victims of an error graver, perhaps, than that of

those who affirm them.

The first time that I was at Assisi I arrived in the middle of the

night. When the sun rose, flooding everything with warmth and light, the

old basilica[11] seemed suddenly to quiver; one might have said that it

wished to speak and sing. Giotto's frescos, but now invisible, awoke to

a strange life, you might have thought them painted the evening before

so much alive they were; everything was moving without awkwardness or

jar.

I returned six months later. A scaffold had been put up in the middle of

the nave; upon it an art critic was examining the paintings, and as the

day was overcast he threw upon the walls the beams of a lamp with a

reflector. Then you saw arms thrown out, faces grimacing, without unity,

without harmony; the most exquisite figures took on something fantastic

and grotesque.

He came down triumphant, with a portfolio stuffed with sketches; here a

foot, there a muscle, farther on a bit of face, and I could not refrain

from musing on the frescos as I had seen them bathed in sunlight.

The sun and the lamp are both deceivers; they transform what they show;

but if the truth must be told I own to my preference for the falsehoods

of the sun.

History is a landscape, and like those of nature it is continually

changing. Two persons who look at it at the same time do not find in it

the same charm, and you yourself, if you had it continually before your

eyes, would never see it twice alike. The general lines are permanent,

but it needs only a cloud to hide the most important ones, as it needs

only a jet of light to bring out such or such a detail and give it a

false value.

When I began this page the sun was disappearing behind the rains of the

Castle of Crussol and the splendors of the sunset gave it a shining

aureola; the light flooded everything, and you no longer saw anywhere

the damage which wars have inflicted upon the old feudal manor. I

looked, almost thinking I could perceive at the window the figure of the

chatelaine ... Twilight has come, and now there is nothing up there but

crumbling walls, a discrowned tower, nothing but ruins and rubbish,

which seem to beg for pity.

It is the same with the landscapes of history. Narrow minds cannot

accommodate themselves to these perpetual transformations: they want an

objective history in which the author will study the people as a chemist

studies a body. It is very possible that there may be laws for historic

evolution and social transformations as exact as those of chemical

combinations, and we must hope that in the end they will be discovered;

but for the present there is no purely objective truth of history.

To write history we must think it, and to think it is to transform it.

Within a few years, it is true, men have believed they had found the

secret of objectivity, in the publication of original documents. This is

a true progress which renders inestimable service, but here again we

must not deceive ourselves as to its significance. All the documents on

an epoch or an event cannot usually be published, a selection must be

made, and in it will necessarily appear the turn of mind of him who

makes it. Let us admit that all that can be found is published; but

alas, the most unusual movements have generally the fewest documents.

Take, for instance, the religious history of the Middle Ages: it is

already a pretty delicate task to collect official documents, such as

bulls, briefs, conciliary canons, monastic constitutions, etc., but do

these documents contain all the life of the Church? Much is still

wanting, and to my mind the movements which secretly agitated the masses

are much more important, although to testify to them we have only a few

fragments.

Poor heretics, they were not only imprisoned and burned, but their books

were destroyed and everything that spoke of them; and more than one

historian, finding scarcely a trace of them in his heaps of documents,

forgets these prophets with their strange visions, these poet-monks who

from the depths of their cells made the world to thrill and the papacy

to tremble.

Objective history is then a utopia. We create God in our own image, and

we impress the mark of our personality in places where we least expect

to find it again.

But by dint of talking about the tribunal of history we have made most

authors think that they owe to themselves and their readers definitive

and irrevocable judgments.

It is always easier to pronounce a sentence than to wait, to reserve

one's opinion, to re-examine. The crowd which has put itself out to be

present at a trial is almost always furious with the judges when they

reserve the case for further information; its mind is so made that it

requires precision in things which will bear it the least; it puts

questions right and left, as children do; if you appear to hesitate or

to be embarrassed you are lost in its estimation, you are evidently only

an ignoramus.

But perhaps below the Areopagites, obliged by their functions to

pronounce sentence, there is place at the famous tribunal for a simple

spectator who has come in by accident. He has made out a brief and would

like very simply to tell his neighbors his opinion.

This, then, is not a history _ad probandum_, to use the ancient formula.

Is this to say that I have only desired to give the reader a moment of

diversion? That would be to understand my thought very ill. In the grand

spectacles of history as in those of nature there is something divine;

from it our minds and hearts gain a virtue at once pacifying and

encouraging, we experience the salutary sensation of littleness, and

seeing the beauties and the sadnesses of the past we learn better how to

judge the present hour.

In one of the frescos of the Upper Church of Assisi, Giotto has

represented St. Clara and her companions coming out from St. Damian all

in tears, to kiss their spiritual father's corpse as it is being carried

to its last home. With an artist's liberty he has made the chapel a rich

church built of precious marbles.

Happily the real St. Damian is still there, nestled under some

olive-trees like a lark under the heather; it still has its ill-made

walls of irregular stones, like those which bound the neighboring

fields. Which is the more beautiful, the ideal temple of the artist's

fancy, or the poor chapel of reality? No heart will be in doubt.

Francis's official historians have done for his biography what Giotto

did for his little sanctuary. In general they have done him ill-service.

Their embellishments have hidden the real St. Francis, who was, in fact,

infinitely nobler than they have made him to be. Ecclesiastical writers

appear to make a great mistake in thus adorning the lives of their

heroes, and only mentioning their edifying features. They thus give

occasion, even to the most devout, to suspect their testimony. Besides,

by thus surrounding their saints with light they make them superhuman

creatures, having nothing in common with us; they are privileged

characters, marked with the divine seal; they are, as the litanies say,

vials of election, into which God has poured the sweetest perfumes;

their sanctity is revealed almost in spite of themselves; they are born

saints as others are born kings or slaves, their life is set out against

the golden background of a tryptich, and not against the sombre

background of reality.

By such means the saints, perhaps, gain something in the respect of the

superstitious; but their lives lose something of virtue and of

communicable strength. Forgetting that they were men like ourselves, we

no longer hear in our conscience the command, "Go and do likewise."

It is, then, a work of piety to seek behind the legend for the history.

Is it presumptuous to ask our readers to try to understand the

thirteenth century and love St. Francis? They will be amply rewarded for

the effort, and will soon find an unexpected charm in these too meagre

landscapes, these incorporate souls, these sickly imaginations which

will pass before their eyes. Love is the true key of history.

A book has always a great number of authors, and the following pages owe

much to the researches of others; I have tried in the notes to show the

whole value of these debts.

I have also had colaborers to whom it will be more difficult for me to

express my gratitude. I refer to the librarians of the libraries of

Italy and their assistants; it is impossible to name them all, their

faces are better known to me than their names, but I would here say that

during long months passed in the various collections of the Peninsula,

all, even to the most humble employees, have shown a tireless

helpfulness even at those periods of the year when the number of

attendants was the smallest.

Professor Alessandro Leto, who, barely recovered from a grave attack of

influenza, kindly served as my guide among the archives of Assisi,

deserves a very particular mention. To the Syndic and municipality of

that city I desire also to express my gratitude.

I cannot close without a warm remembrance to the spiritual sons of St.

Francis dispersed in the mountains of Umbria and Tuscany.

Dear dwellers in St. Damian, Portiuncula, the Carceri, the Verna, Monte

Colombo, you perhaps remember the strange pilgrim who, though he wore

neither the frock nor the cord, used to talk with you of the Seraphic

Father with as much love as the most pious Franciscan; you used to be

surprised at his eagerness to see everything, to look at everything, to

thread all the unexplored paths. You often tried to restrain him by

telling him that there was not the smallest relic, the most meagre

indulgence in the far-away grottos to which he was dragging you, but you

always ended by going with him, thinking that none but a Frenchman could

be possessed by a devotion so fervent and so imprudent.

Thank you, pious anchorites of Greccio, thank you for the bread that you

went out and begged when I arrived at your hermitage benumbed with cold

and hunger. If you read these lines, read here my gratitude and also a

little admiration. You are not all saints, but nearly all of you have

hours of saintliness, flights of pure love.

If some pages of this book give you pain, turn them over quickly; let me

think that others of them will give you pleasure, and will make the name

you bear, if possible, still more precious to you than it now is.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The mendicant orders were in their origin a true

_International_. When in the spring of 1216 St. Dominic

assembled his friars at Notre Dame de la Prouille, they were

found to be sixteen in number, and among them Castilians,

Navarese, Normans, French, Languedocians, and even English and

Germans.

Heretics travelled all over Europe, and nowhere do we find them

checked by the diversity of languages. Arnold of Brescia, for

example, the famous Tribune of Rome, appeared in France and

Switzerland and in the heart of Germany.

[2] The Reformation only substituted the authority of the book

for that of the priest; it is a change of dynasty and nothing

more. As to the majority of those who to-day call themselves

free-thinkers, they confuse religious freedom with irreligion;

they choose not to see that in religion as in politics, between

a royalty based on divine right and anarchy there is room for a

government which may be as strong as the first and a better

guarantee of freedom than the second. The spirit of the older

time put God outside of the world; the sovereignty outside of

the people; authority outside of the conscience. The spirit of

the new times has the contrary tendency: it denies neither God

nor sovereignty nor authority, but it sees them where they

really are.

[3] _Nemo ostendebat mihi quod deberem facere, sed ipse

Altissimus revelavit mihi quod deberem vivere secundem formam

sancti Evangelii._ Testamentum Fr.

[4] The wealthiest monasteries of France are of the twelfth

century or were enlarged at that time: Arles, S. Gilles, S.

Sernin, Cluny, Vézelay, Brioude, Issoire, Paray-le-Monial. The

same was the case in Italy.

Down to the year 1000, 1,108 monasteries had been founded in

France. The eleventh century saw the birth of 326 and the

twelfth of 702. The convents of Mount Athos in their present

state give us a very accurate notion of the great monasteries of

Europe at the close of the twelfth century.

[5] St. Petrus Chrysologus, sermo viii., de jejunio et

eleemosyna. _Da pauperi ut des tibi: da micam ut accipias totum

panem; da tectum, accipe coelum._

[6] By what right did he begin to preach? By what right did he,

a mere deacon, admit to profession and cut off the hair of a

young girl of eighteen? That is an episcopal function, one which

can only devolve even upon priests by an express commission.

[7] Isaiah i. 10-17. Cf. Joel 2, Psalm 50.

[8] The chronicles of Orvieto (_Archivio, storico italiano_, t.

i., of 1889, pp. 7 and following) are nothing more than a list,

as melancholy as they are tedious of wars, which, during the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all the places of that

region carried on, from the greatest to the smallest.

[9] Do not forget that in the thirteenth century Italy was not a

mere geographical expression. It was of all the countries of

Europe the one which, notwithstanding its partitions, had the

clearest consciousness of its unity. The expression _profectus

et honor Italiæ_ often appeared from the pen of Innocent III.

See, for instance, the bull of April 16, 1198, _Mirari cogimur_,

addressed particularly to the Assisans.

[10] Note what the Fioretti say of Brother Bernard: "_Stava solo

sulle cime dei monti altissimi contemplando le cose celesti._"

Fior., 28. The learned historian of Assisi, Mr. Cristofani, has

used similar expressions; speaking of St. Francis, he says:

"_Nuovo Christo in somma e pero degno d'essere riguardoto come

la piu gigantesca, la piu splendida, la piu cara tra le grandi

figure campeggianti nell' aere del medio evo_" (_Storia

d'Assisi_, t. i., p. 70, ed. of 1885).

[11] It remains open all night.

* * * * *

LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

YOUTH

Assisi is to-day very much what it was six or seven hundred years ago.

The feudal castle is in ruins, but the aspect of the city is just the

same. Its long-deserted streets, bordered by ancient houses, lie in

terraces half-way up the steep hill-side. Above it Mount Subasio[1]

proudly towers, at its feet lies outspread all the Umbrian plain from

Perugia to Spoleto. The crowded houses clamber up the rocks like

children a-tiptoe to see all that is to be seen; they succeed so well

that every window gives the whole panorama set in its frame of rounded

hills, from whose summits castles and villages stand sharply out against

a sky of incomparable purity.

These simple dwellings contain no more than five or six little

rooms,[2] but the rosy hues of the stone of which they are built give

them a wonderfully cheerful air. The one in which, according to the

story, St. Francis was born has almost entirely disappeared, to make

room for a church; but the street is so modest, and all that remains of

the _palazzo dei genitori di San Francesco_ is so precisely like the

neighboring houses that the tradition must be correct. Francis entered

into glory in his lifetime; it would be surprising if a sort of worship

had not from the first been centred around the house in which he saw the

light and where he passed the first twenty-five years of his life.

He was born about 1182.[3] The biographies have preserved to us few

details about his parents.[4] His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a

wealthy cloth-merchant. We know how different was the life of the

merchants of that period from what it is to-day. A great portion of

their time was spent in extensive journeys for the purchase of goods.

Such tours were little short of expeditions. The roads being insecure, a

strong escort was needed for the journey to those famous fairs where,

for long weeks at a time, merchants from the most remote parts of Europe

were gathered together. In certain cities, Montpellier for example, the

fair was perpetual. Benjamin of Tudela shows us that city frequented by

all nations, Christian and Mohammedan. "One meets there merchants from

Africa, from Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Gaul, Spain, and England,

so that one sees men of all languages, with the Genoese and the Pisans."

Among all these merchants the richest were those who dealt in textile

stuffs. They were literally the bankers of the time, and their heavy

wagons were often laden with the sums levied by the popes in England or

France.

Their arrival at a castle was one of the great events. They were kept as

long as possible, everyone being eager for the news they brought. It is

easy to understand how close must have been their relations with the

nobility; in certain countries, Provence for example, the merchants were

considered as nobles of a second order.[5]

Bernardone often made these long journeys; he went even as far as

France, and by this we must surely understand Northern France, and

particularly Champagne, which was the seat of commercial exchange

between Northern and Southern Europe.

He was there at the very time of his son's birth. The mother, presenting

the child at the font of San Rufino,[6] had him baptized by the name of

John, but the father on his return chose to call him Francis.[7] Had

he already determined on the education he was to give the child; did he

name him thus because he even then intended to bring him up after the

French fashion, to make a little Frenchman of him? It is by no means

improbable. Perhaps, indeed, the name was only a sort of grateful homage

tendered by the Assisan burgher to his noble clients beyond the Alps.

However this may be, the child was taught to speak French, and always

had a special fondness for both the language and the country.[8]

These facts about Bernardone are of real importance; they reveal the

influences in the midst of which Francis grew up. Merchants, indeed,

play a considerable part in the religious movements of the thirteenth

century. Their calling in some sense forced them to become colporters of

ideas. What else could they do, on arriving in a country, but answer

those who asked for news? And the news most eagerly looked for was

religious news, for men's minds were turned upon very different subjects

then from now. They accommodated themselves to the popular wish,

observing, hearkening everywhere, keeping eyes and ears open, glad to

find anything to tell; and little by little many of them became active

propagandists of ideas concerning which at first they had been simply

curious.

The importance of the part thus played by the merchants as they came

and went, everywhere sowing the new ideas which they had gathered up in

their travels, has not been put in a clear enough light; they were

often, unconsciously and quite involuntarily, the carriers of ideas of

all kinds, especially of heresy and rebellion. It was they who made the

success of the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Humiliati, and many other

sects.

Thus Bernardone, without dreaming of such a thing, became the artisan of

his son's religious vocation. The tales which he brought home from his

travels seemed at first, perhaps, not to have aroused the child's

attention, but they were like germs a long time buried, which suddenly,

under a warm ray of sunlight, bring forth unlooked-for fruit.

The boy's education was not carried very far;[9] the school was in

those days overshadowed by the church. The priests of San Giorgio were

his teachers,[10] and taught him a little Latin. This language was

spoken in Umbria until toward the middle of the thirteenth century;

every one understood it and spoke it a little; it was still the language

of sermons and of political deliberations.[11]

He learned also to write, but with less success; all through his life we

see him take up the pen only on rare occasions, and for but a few

words.[12] The autograph of Sacro-Convento, which appears to be

entirely authentic, shows extreme awkwardness; in general he dictated,

signing his letters by a simple [Greek: tau], the symbol of the cross of

Jesus.[13]

That part of his education which was destined to have most influence

upon his life was the French language,[14] which he perhaps spoke in his

own family. It has been rightly said that to know two languages is to

have two souls; in learning that of France the boy felt his heart thrill

to the melody of its youthful poetry, and his imagination was

mysteriously stirred with dreams of imitating the exploits of the French

cavaliers.

But let us not anticipate. His early life was that of other children of

his age. In the quarter of the town where his house is still shown no

vehicles are ever seen; from morning till night the narrow streets are

given over to the children. They play there in many groups, frolicking

with an exquisite charm, very different from the little Romans, who,

from the time they are six or seven years old, spend hours at a time

squatting behind a pillar, or in a corner of a wall or a ruin, to play

dice or "morra," putting a passionate ferocity even into their play.

In Umbria, as in Tuscany, children love above all things games in which

they can make a parade; to play at soldiers or procession is the supreme

delight of Assisan children. Through the day they keep to the narrow

streets, but toward evening they go, singing and dancing, to one of the

open squares of the city. These squares are one of the charms of Assisi.

Every few paces an interval occurs between the houses looking toward the

plain, and you find a delightful terrace, shaded by a few trees, the

very place for enjoying the sunset without losing one of its splendors.

Hither no doubt came often the son of Bernardone, leading one of those

_farandoles_ which you may see there to this day: from his very babyhood

he was a prince among the children.

Thomas of Celano draws an appalling picture of the education of that

day. He describes parents inciting their children to vice, and driving

them by main force to wrong-doing. Francis responded only too quickly to

these unhappy lessons.[15]

His father's profession and the possibly noble origin of his mother

raised him almost to the level of the titled families of the country;

money, which he spent with both hands, made him welcome among them. Well

pleased to enjoy themselves at his expense, the young nobles paid him a

sort of court. As to Bernardone, he was too happy to see his son

associating with them to be niggardly as to the means. He was miserly,

as the course of this history will show, but his pride and self-conceit

exceeded his avarice.

Pica, his wife, gentle and modest creature,[16] concerning whom the

biographers have been only too laconic, saw all this, and mourned over

it in silence, but though weak as mothers are, she would not despair of

her son, and when the neighbors told her of Francis's escapades, she

would calmly reply, "What are you thinking about? I am very sure that,

if it pleases God, he will become a good Christian."[17] The words were

natural enough from a mother's lips, but later on they were held to have

been truly prophetic.

How far did the young man permit himself to be led on? It would be

difficult to say. The question which, as we are told, tormented Brother

Leo, could only have suggested itself to a diseased imagination.[18]

Thomas of Celano and the Three Companions agree in picturing him as

going to the worst excesses. Later biographers speak with more

circumspection of his worldly career. A too widely credited story

gathered from Celano's narrative was modified by the chapter-general of

1260,[19] and the frankness of the early biographers was, no doubt, one

of the causes which most effectively contributed to their definitive

condemnation three years later.[20]

Their statements are in no sense obscure; according to them the son of

Bernardone not only patterned himself after the young men of his age, he

made it a point of honor to exceed them. What with eccentricities,

buffooneries, pranks, prodigalities, he ended by achieving a sort of

celebrity. He was forever in the streets with his companions, compelling

attention by his extravagant or fantastic attire. Even at night the

joyous company kept up their merrymakings, causing the town to ring

with their noisy songs.[21]

At this very time the troubadours were roaming over the towns of

Northern Italy[22] and bringing brilliant festivities and especially

Courts of Love into vogue. If they worked upon the passions, they also

made appeal to feelings of courtesy and delicacy; it was this that saved

Francis. In the midst of his excesses he was always refined and

considerate, carefully abstaining from every base or indecent

utterance.[23] Already his chief aspiration was to rise above the

commonplace. Tortured with the desire for that which is far off and

high,[24] he had conceived a sort of passion for chivalry, and fancying

that dissipation was one of the distinguishing features of nobility, he

had thrown himself into it with all his soul.

But he who, at twenty, goes from pleasure to pleasure with the heart not

absolutely closed to good, must now and then, at some turning of the

road, become aware that there are hungry folk, who could live a month on

what he spends in a few hours on frivolity. Francis saw them, and with

his impressionable nature for the moment forgot everything else. In

thought he put himself in their place, and it sometimes happened that he

gave them all the money he had about him and even his clothes.

One day he was busy with some customers in his father's shop, when a man

came in, begging for charity in the name of God. Losing his patience

Francis sharply turned him away; but quickly reproaching himself for his

harshness he thought, "What would I not have done if this man had asked

something of me in the name of a count or a baron? What ought I not to

have done when he came in the name of God? I am no better than a clown!"

Leaving his customers he ran after the beggar.[25]

Bernardone had been well pleased with his son's commercial aptitude in

the early days when the young man was first in his father's employ.

Francis was only too proficient in spending money; he at least knew well

how to make it.[26] But this satisfaction did not last long. Francis's

bad companions were exercising over him a most pernicious influence. The

time came when he could no longer endure to be separated from them; if

he heard their call, nothing could keep him, he would leave everything

and go after them.[27]

All this time political events were hurrying on in Umbria and Italy;

after a formidable struggle the allied republics had forced the empire

to recognize them. By the immortal victory of Legnano (May 29, 1176) and

the Peace of Constance (June 25, 1183) the Lombard League had wrested

from Frederick Barbarossa almost all the prerogatives of power; little

was left to the emperor but insignia and outward show.

From one end of the Peninsula to the other visions of liberty were

making hearts beat high. For an instant it seemed as if all Italy was

about to regain consciousness of its unity, was about to rise up as one

man and hurl the foreigner from its borders; but the rivalries of the

cities were too strong for them to see that local liberty without a

common independence is precarious and illusory. Henry VI., the successor

of Barbarossa (1183-1196), laid Italy under a yoke of iron; he might

perhaps in the end have assured the domination of the empire, if his

career had not been suddenly cut short by a premature death.

Yet he had not been able to put fetters upon ideas. The communal

movement which was shaking the north of France reverberated beyond the

Alps.

Although a city of second rank, Assisi had not been behind in the great

struggles for independence.[28] She had been severely chastised, had

lost her franchise, and was obliged to submit to Conrad of Suabia, Duke

of Spoleto, who from the heights of his fortress kept her in subjection.

But when Innocent III. ascended the pontifical throne (January 8, 1199)

the old duke knew himself to be lost. He made a tender to him of money,

men, his faith even, but the pontiff refused them all. He had no desire

to appear to favor the Tedeschi, who had so odiously oppressed the

country. Conrad of Suabia was forced to yield at mercy, and to go to

Narni to put his submission into the hands of two cardinals.

Like the practical folk that they were, the Assisans did not hesitate an

instant. No sooner was the count on the road to Narni than they rushed

to the assault of the castle. The arrival of envoys charged to take

possession of it as a pontifical domain by no means gave them pause. Not

one stone of it was left upon another.[29] Then, with incredible

rapidity they enclosed their city with walls, parts of which are still

standing, their formidable ruins a witness to the zeal with which the

whole population labored on them.

It is natural to think that Francis, then seventeen years old, was one

of the most gallant laborers of those glorious days, and it was perhaps

there that he gained the habit of carrying stones and wielding the

trowel which was destined to serve him so well a few years later.

Unhappily his fellow-citizens had not the sense to profit by their

hard-won liberty. The lower classes, who in this revolution had become

aware of their strength, determined to follow out the victory by taking

possession of the property of the nobles. The latter took refuge in

their fortified houses in the interior of the city, or in their castles

in the suburbs. The townspeople burned down several of the latter,

whereupon counts and barons made request of aid and succor from the

neighboring cities.

Perugia was at this time at the apogee of its power,[30] and had already

made many efforts to reduce Assisi to submission. It therefore received

the fugitives with alacrity, and making their cause its own, declared

war upon Assisi. This was in 1202. An encounter took place in the plain

about half way between the two cities, not far from _Ponte San

Giovanni_. Assisi was defeated, and Francis, who was in the ranks, was

made prisoner.[31]

The treachery of the nobles had not been universal; a few had fought

with the people. It was with them and not with the _popolani_ that

Francis, in consideration of the nobility of his manners,[32] passed the

time of his captivity, which lasted an entire year. He greatly

astonished his companions by his lightness of heart. Very often they

thought him almost crazy. Instead of passing his time in wailing and

cursing he made plans for the future, about which he was glad to talk to

any one who came along. To his fancy life was what the songs of the

troubadours had painted it; he dreamed of glorious adventures, and

always ended by saying: "You will see that one day I shall be adored by

the whole world."[33]

During these long months Francis must have been pretty rudely undeceived

with respect to those nobles whom from afar he had so heartily admired.

However that may be, he retained with them not only his frankness of

speech, but also his full freedom of action. One of them, a knight, had

always held aloof from the others, out of vanity and bad temper.

Francis, far from leaving him to himself, always showed him affection,

and finally had the joy of reconciling him with his fellow-captives.

A compromise was finally arrived at between the counts and the people of

Assisi. In November, 1203, the arbitrators designated by the two parties

announced their decision. The commons of Assisi were to repair in a

certain measure the damage done to the lords, and the latter agreed, on

their part, to make no further alliances without authorization of the

commons.[34] Rural serfage was maintained, which proves that the

revolution had been directed by the burghers, and for their own profit.

Ten years more were not, however, to elapse before the common people

also would succeed in achieving liberty. In this cause we shall again

see Francis fighting on the side of the oppressed, earning the title of

_Patriarch of religious democracy_ which has been accorded him by one of

his compatriots.[35]

The agreement being made the prisoners detained at Perugia were

released, and Francis returned to Assisi. He was twenty-two years old.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Eleven hundred and one metres above the level of the sea;

the plain around Assisi has an average of two hundred, and the

town of two hundred and fifty, metres above.

[2] As in the majority of Tuscan cities the dimensions of the

houses were formerly fixed by law.

[3] The biographies say that he died (October 3, 1226) in his

forty-fifth year. But the terms are not precise enough to make

the date 1181 improbable. For that matter the question is of

small importance. A Franciscan of Erfurt, about the middle of

the thirteenth century, fixes the date at 1182. Pertz, vol.

xxiv., p. 193.

[4] A number of different genealogies have been fabricated for

Francis; they prove only one thing, the wreck of the Franciscan

idea. How little they understood their hero, who thought to

magnify and glorify him by making him spring from a noble

family! "_Quæ rero_," says Father Suysken, S. J., "_de ejus

gentilitio insigni disserit Waddingus, non lubet mihi attingere.

Factis et virtutibus eluxit S. Franciscus non proavorum

insignibus aut titulis, quos nec desideravit_." (A. SS. p.

557a.) It could not be better said.

In the fourteenth century a whole cycle of legends had gathered

about his birth. It could not have been otherwise. They all grow

out of the story that tells of an old man who comes knocking at

the parents' door, begging them to let him take the infant in

his arms, when he announces that it will do great things. Under

this form the episode certainly presents nothing impossible, but

very soon marvellous incidents begin to gather around this

nucleus until it becomes unrecognizable. Bartholomew of Pisa has

preserved it in almost its primitive form. _Conform_., 28a 2.

Francis certainly had several brothers [3 Soc., 9. _Mater_ ...

_quæ cum præ ceteris filiis diligebat_], but they have left no

trace in history except the incident related farther on. Vide p.

44. Christofani publishes several official pieces concerning

_Angelo_, St. Francis's brother, and his descendants: _Storie

d'Assisi_, vol. i., p. 78 ff. In these documents Angelo is called

_Angelus Pice_, and his son _Johannectus olim Angeli domine

Pice_, appellations which might be cited in favor of the noble

origin of Pica.

[5] Documentary History of Languedoc, iii., p. 607.

[6] The Cathedral of Assisi. To this day all the children of the

town are baptized there; the other churches are without fonts.

[7] 3 Soc., 1; 2 Cel., 1, 1. Vide also 3 Soc., edition of

Pesaro, 1831.

[8] The _langue d'oïl_ was at this epoch the international

language of Europe; in Italy it was the language of games and

tourneys, and was spoken in the petty princely courts of

Northern Italy. Vide Dante, _De vulgari eloquio_, lib. I., cap.

x. Brunetto Latini wrote in French because "the speech of France

is more delectable and more common to all people." At the other

end of Europe the Abbot of Stade, in Westphalia, spoke of the

_nobility of the Gallic dialect_. _Ann._ 1224 _apud_ Pertz,

Script. xvi. We shall find St. Francis often making allusions to

the tales of the Round Table and the _Chanson de Roland_.

[9] We must not be led astray by certain remarks upon his

ignorance, from which one might at first conclude that he knew

absolutely nothing; for example, 2 Cel., 3, 45: _Quamvis homo

iste beatus nullis fuerit scientiæ studiis innutritus_. This

evidently refers to science such as the Franciscans soon came to

apprehend it, and to theology in particular.

The close of the passage in Celano is itself an evident proof of

this.

[10] Bon., 219; Cf. A. SS., p. 560a. 1 Cel., 23.

[11] Ozanam, _Documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire

littéraire d'Italie du VIIIe au XIIIe siècle_. Paris, 1851, 8vo,

pp. 65, 68, 71, 73. Fauriel, _Dante et les origines de la

littérature italienne_. Paris, 1854, 2 vols., 8vo, ii., p. 332,

379, 429.

[12] V. 3 Soc., 51 and 67; 2 Cel., 3, 110; Bon., 55; 2 Cel., 3,

99; Eccl., 6. Bernard de Besse, Turin MS., fo. 96a, calls

Brother Leo the secretary of St. Francis.

[13] See page 357, n. 8. Bon., 51 and 308.

[14] 1 Cel., 16; 3 Soc., 10; 23; 24; 33; 2 Cel., 1, 8; 3, 67.

See also the Testament of St. Clara and the Speculum, 119a.

[15] _Primum namque cum fari vel balbutire incipiunt, turpia

quædam et execrabilia valde signis et vocibus edocentur pueri ii

nondum nati: et cum tempus ablactationis advenerit quædam luxu

et lascivia plena non solum fari sed et operari coguntur.... Sed

et cum paulo plusculum ætate profecerint, se ipsis impellentibus,

semper ad deteriora opera dilabuntur._ 1 Cel., 1.

[16] 2 Cel., 1. Cf. _Conform._, 14a, 1. There is nothing

impossible in her having been of Provençal origin, but there is

nothing to indicate it in any document worthy of credence. She

was no doubt of noble stock, for official documents always give

her the title _Domina_. Cristofani I., p. 78 ff. Cf. _Matrem

honestissimam habuit_. 3 Soc., Edition of Pesaro, 1831, p. 17.

[17] The reading given by the _Conform_., 14a, 1, _Meritorum

gratia dei filium ipsum noveritis affuturum_, seems better than

that of 2 Cel., 1, 1, _Multorum gratia Dei filiorum patrem ipsum

noveritis affuturum_. Cf. 3 Soc., 2.

[18] Bernardo of Besse, Turin MS., 102 b.: _An integer carne

desiderans ... quod non extorsisset a Sancto ... meruit obtinere

a Deo quod virgo esset_. Cf. _Conform_., 211a, 1, and A. SS., p.

560f.

[19] "_In illa antiphona quæ incipit: Hic vir in vanitatibus

nutritus insolenter, fiat talis mutatis: Divinis karismatibus

preventus est clementer." Archiv._, vi., p. 35.

[20] Vide p. 395, the decision of the chapter of 1263 ordaining

the destruction of legends earlier than that of Bonaventura.

[21] 1 Cel., 1 and 2; 89; 3 Soc., 2. Cf. A. SS., 560c. Vincent

of Beauvais, _Spec. hist. lib._, 29, cap. 97.

[22] Pierre Vidal was at the court of Boniface, Marquis of

Montferrat, about 1195, and liked his surroundings so well that

he desired to establish himself there. K. Bartsch, _Piere

Vidal's Lieder_, Berlin, 1857, n. 41. Ern. Monaci, _Testi

antichi provenzali_, Rome, 1889, col. 67. One should read this

piece to have an idea of the fervor with which this poet shared

the hopes of Italy and desired its independence. This political

note is found again in a _tenzon_ of Manfred II. Lancia,

addressed to Pierre Vidal. (V. Monaci, _loc. cit._, col.

68.)--Gaucelme Faidit was also at this court as well as Raimbaud

of Vacqueyras (1180-1207).--Folquet de Romans passed nearly all

his life in Italy. Bernard of Ventadour (1145-1195), Peirol of

Auvergne (1180-1220), and many others abode there a longer or

shorter time. Very soon the Italians began to sing in Provençal,

among others this Manfred Lancia, and Albert Marquis of

Malaspina (1162-1210), Pietro della Caravana, who in 1196

stirred up the Lombard towns against Henry VI., Pietro della

Mula, who about 1200 was at the court of Cortemiglia. Fragments

from these poets may be found in Monaci, _op. cit._, col. 69 ff.

[23] Soc., 3; 2 Cel., 1, 1.

[24] _Cum esset gloriosus animo et nollet aliquem se

præcellere_, Giord. 20.

[25] 1 Cel., 17; 3 Soc., 3; Bon., 7. Cf. A. SS., p. 562.

[26] 1 Cel., 2; Bon., 6; _Vit. sec. apud_, A. SS., p. 560.

[27] 3 Soc., 9.

[28] In 1174 Assisi was taken by the chancellor of the empire,

Christian, Archbishop of Mayence. A. Cristofani, i., p. 69.

[29] All these events are related in the _Gesta Innocentii III.

ab auctore coætaneo_, edited by Baluze: Migne, _Inn. op._, vol.

i., col. xxiv. See especially the letter of Innocent,

_Rectoribus Tusciæ: Mirari cogimur_, of April 16, 1198. Migne,

vol. i., col. 75-77. Potthast, No. 82.

[30] See Luigi Bonazzi, _Storia di Perugia_, 2 vols., 8vo.

Perugia, 1875-1879 vol. i., cap. v., pp. 257-322.

[31] 3 Soc., 4; 2 Cel., 1, 1. Cristofani, _op. cit._, i., p. 88

ff.; Bonazzi, _op. cit._, p. 257.

[32] 3 Soc., 4.

[33] 3 Soc., 4; 2 Cel., 1, 1.

[34] See this arbitration in Cristofani, _op. cit._, p. 93 ff.

[35] Cristofani, _loc. cit._, p. 70.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

STAGES OF CONVERSION

Spring 1204-Spring 1206

On his return to Assisi Francis at once resumed his former mode of life;

perhaps he even tried in some degree to make up for lost time. Fêtes,

games, festivals, and dissipations began again. He did his part in them

so well that he soon fell gravely ill.[1] For long weeks he looked

death so closely in the face that the physical crisis brought about a

moral one. Thomas of Celano has preserved for us an incident of

Francis's convalescence. He was regaining strength little by little and

had begun to go about the house, when one day he felt a desire to walk

abroad, to contemplate nature quietly, and so take hold again of life.

Leaning on a stick he bent his steps toward the city gate.

The nearest one, called _Porta Nuova_, is the very one which opens upon

the finest scenery. Immediately on passing through it one finds one's

self in the open country; a fold of the hill hides the city, and cuts

off every sound that might come from it. Before you lies the winding

road to Foligno; at the left the imposing mass of Mount Subasio; at the

right the Umbrian plain with its farms, its villages, its cloud-like

hills, on whose slopes pines, cedars, oaks, the vine, and the olive-tree

shed abroad an incomparable brightness and animation. The whole country

sparkles with beauty, a beauty harmonious and thoroughly human, that is,

made to the measure of man.

Francis had hoped by this sight to recover the delicious sensations of

his youth. With the sharpened sensibility of the convalescent he

breathed in the odors of the spring-time, but spring-time did not come,

as he had expected, to his heart. This smiling nature had for him only a

message of sadness. He had believed that the breezes of this beloved

country-side would carry away the last shudders of the fever, and

instead he felt in his heart a discouragement a thousand-fold more

painful than any physical ill. The miserable emptiness of his life

suddenly appeared before him; he was terrified at his solitude, the

solitude of a great soul in which there is no altar.

Memories of the past assailed him with intolerable bitterness; he was

seized with a disgust of himself, his former ambitions seemed to him

ridiculous or despicable. He went home overwhelmed with the weight of a

new suffering.

In such hours of moral anguish man seeks a refuge either in love or in

faith. Unhappily the family and friends of Francis were incapable of

understanding him. As to religion, it was for him, as for the greater

number of his contemporaries, that crass fetichism with Christian

terminology which is far from having entirely disappeared. With certain

men, in fact, piety consists in making one's self right with a king more

powerful than any other, but also more severe and capricious, who is

called God. One proves one's loyalty to him as to other sovereigns, by

putting his image more or less everywhere, and punctually paying the

imposts levied by his ministers. If you are stingy, if you cheat, you

run the risk of being severely chastised, but there are courtiers around

the king who willingly render services. For a reasonable recompense

they will seize a favorable moment to adroitly make away with the

sentence of your condemnation or to slip before the prince a form of

plenary absolution which in a moment of good humor he will sign without

looking at it.[2]

Such was the religious basis upon which Francis had lived up to this

time. He did not so much as dream of seeking the spiritual balm which he

needed for the healing of his wounds. By a holy violence he was to

arrive at last at a pure and virile faith; but the road to this point is

long, and sown thick with obstacles, and at the moment at which we have

arrived he had not yet entered upon it, he did not even suspect its

existence; all he knew was that pleasure leads to nothingness, to

satiety and self-contempt.

He knew this, and yet he was about to throw himself once more into a

life of pleasure. The body is so weak, so prone to return to the old

paths, that it seeks them of itself, the moment an energetic will does

not stop it. Though no longer under any illusion with respect to it,

Francis returned to his former life. Was he trying to divert his mind,

to forget that day of bitter thought? We might suppose so, seeing the

ardor with which he threw himself into his new projects.[3]

An opportunity offered itself for him to realize his dreams of glory. A

knight of Assisi, perhaps one of those who had been in captivity with

him at Perugia, was preparing to go to Apulia under orders from Count

Gentile.[4] The latter was to join Gaultier de Brienne, who was in the

south of Italy fighting on the side of Innocent III. Gaultier's renown

was immense all through the Peninsula; he was held to be one of the most

gallant knights of the time. Francis's heart bounded with joy; it seemed

to him that at the side of such a hero he should soon cover himself with

glory. His departure was decided upon, and he gave himself up, without

reserve, to his joy.

He made his preparations with ostentatious prodigality. His equipment,

of a princely luxury, soon became the universal subject of conversation.

It was all the more talked about because the chief of the expedition,

ruined perhaps by the revolution of 1202 or by the expenses of a long

captivity, was constrained to order things much more modestly.[5] But

with Francis kindliness was much stronger than love of display. He gave

his sumptuous clothing to a poor knight. The biographies do not say

whether or not it was to the very one whom he was to accompany.[6] To

see him running hither and thither in all the bustle of preparation one

would have thought him the son of a great lord. His companions were

doubtless not slow to feel chafed by his ways and to promise themselves

to make him cruelly expiate them. As for him, he perceived nothing of

the jealousies which he was exciting, and night and day he thought only

of his future glory. In his dreams he seemed to see his parents' house

completely transformed. Instead of bales of cloth he saw there only

gleaming bucklers hanging on the walls, and arms of all kinds as in a

seignorial castle. He saw himself there, beside a noble and beautiful

bride, and he never suspected that in this vision there was any presage

of the future which was reserved for him. Never had any one seen him so

communicative, so radiant; and when he was asked for the hundredth time

whence came all this joy, he would reply with surprising assurance: "I

know that I shall become a great prince."[7]

The day of departure arrived at last. Francis on horseback, the little

buckler of a page on his arm, bade adieu to his natal city with joy, and

with the little troop took the road to Spoleto which winds around the

base of Mount Subasio.

What happened next? The documents do not say. They confine themselves to

reporting that that very evening Francis had a vision which decided him

to return to Assisi.[8] Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to

conjecture that once fairly on the way the young nobles took their

revenge on the son of Bernardone for his airs as of a future prince. At

twenty years one hardly pardons things like these. If, as we are often

assured, there is a pleasure unsuspected by the profane in getting even

with a stranger, it must be an almost divine delight to get even with a

young coxcomb upon whom one has to exercise so righteous a vengeance.

Arriving at Spoleto, Francis took to his bed. A fever was consuming him;

in a few hours he had seen all his dreams crumble away. The very next

day he took the road back to Assisi.[9]

So unexpected a return made a great stir in the little city, and was a

cruel blow to his parents. As for him, he doubled his charities to the

poor, and sought to keep aloof from society, but his old companions came

flocking about him from all quarters, hoping to find in him once more

the tireless purveyor of their idle wants. He let them have their way.

Nevertheless a great change had taken place in him. Neither pleasures

nor work could long hold him; he spent a portion of his days in long

country rambles, often accompanied by a friend most different from those

whom until now we have seen about him. The name of this friend is not

known, but from certain indications one is inclined to believe that he

was Bombarone da Beviglia, the future Brother Elias.[10]

Francis now went back to his reflections at the time of his recovery,

but with less of bitterness. His own heart and his friend agreed in

saying to him that it is possible no longer to trust either in pleasure

or in glory and yet to find worthy causes to which to consecrate one's

life. It is at this moment that religious thought seems to have awaked

in him. From the moment that he saw this new way of life his desire to

run in it had all the fiery impetuosity which he put into all his

actions. He was continually calling upon his friend and leading him

apart into the most sequestered paths.

But intense conflicts are indescribable. We struggle, we suffer alone.

It is the nocturnal wrestling of Bethel, mysterious and solitary. The

soul of Francis was great enough to endure this tragic duel. His friend

had marvellously understood his part in this contest. He gave a few rare

counsels, but much of the time he contented himself with manifesting his

solicitude by following Francis everywhere and never asking to know more

than he could tell him.

Often Francis directed his steps to a grotto in the country near Assisi,

which he entered alone. This rocky cave concealed in the midst of the

olive trees became for faithful Franciscans that which Gethsemane is for

Christians. Here Francis relieved his overcharged heart by heavy groans.

Sometimes, seized with a real horror for the disorders of his youth, he

would implore mercy, but the greater part of the time his face was

turned toward the future; feverishly he sought for that higher truth to

which he longed to dedicate himself, that pearl of great price of which

the gospel speaks: "Whosoever seeks, finds; he who asks, receives; and

to him who knocks, it shall be opened."

When he came out after long hours of seclusion the pallor of his

countenance, the painful tension of his features told plainly enough of

the intensity of his asking and the violence of his knocks.[11]

The inward man, to borrow the language of the mystics, was not yet

formed in him, but it needed only the occasion to bring about the final

break with the past. The occasion soon presented itself.

His friends were making continual efforts to induce him to take up his

old habits again. One day he invited them all to a sumptuous banquet.

They thought they had conquered, and as in old times they proclaimed him

king of the revels. The feast was prolonged far into the night, and at

its close the guests rushed out into the streets, which they filled with

song and uproar. Suddenly they perceived that Francis was no longer with

them. After long searching they at last discovered him far behind them,

still holding in his hand his sceptre of king of misrule, but plunged in

so profound a revery that he seemed to be riveted to the ground and

unconscious of all that was going on.

"What is the matter with you?" they cried, bustling about him as if to

awaken him.

"Don't you see that he is thinking of taking a wife?" said one.

"Yes," answered Francis, arousing himself and looking at them with a

smile which they did not recognize. "I am thinking of taking a wife

more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine."[12]

This reply marks a decisive stage in his inner life. By it he cut the

last links which bound him to trivial pleasures. It remains for us to

see through what struggles he was to give himself to God, after having

torn himself free from the world. His friends probably understood

nothing of all that had taken place, but he had become aware of the

abyss that was opening between them and him. They soon accepted the

situation.

As for himself, no longer having any reason for caution, he gave himself

up more than ever to his passion for solitude. If he often wept over his

past dissipations and wondered how he could have lived so long without

tasting the bitterness of the dregs of the enchanted cup, he never

allowed himself to be overwhelmed with vain regrets.

The poor had remained faithful to him. They gave him an admiration of

which he knew himself to be unworthy, yet which had for him an infinite

sweetness. The future grew bright to him in the light of their

gratitude, of the timid, trembling affection which they dared not utter

but which his heart revealed to him; this worship which he does not

deserve to-day he will deserve to-morrow, at least he promises himself

to do all he can to deserve it.

To understand these feelings one must understand the condition of the

poor of a place like Assisi. In an agricultural country poverty does

not, as elsewhere, almost inevitably involve moral destitution, that

degeneration of the entire human being which renders charity so

difficult. Most of the poor persons whom Francis knew were in straits

because of war, of bad harvests, or of illness. In such cases material

succor is but a small part. Sympathy is the thing needed above all.

Francis had treasures of it to lavish upon them.

He was well requited. All sorrows are sisters; a secret intelligence

establishes itself between troubled hearts, however diverse their

griefs. The poor people felt that their friend also suffered; they did

not precisely know with what, but they forgot their own sorrows in

pitying their benefactor. Suffering is the true cement of love. For men

to love each other truly, they must have shed tears together.

As yet no influence strictly ecclesiastic had been felt by Francis.

Doubtless there was in his heart that leaven of Christian faith which

enters one's being without his being aware; but the interior

transformation which was going on in him was as yet the fruit of his own

intuition. This period was drawing to a close. His thought was soon to

find expression, and by that very act to receive the stamp of external

circumstances. Christian instruction will give a precise form to ideas

of which as yet he has but vague glimpses, but he will find in this form

a frame in which his thought will perhaps lose something of its

originality and vigor; the new wine will be put into old wine-skins.

By degrees he was becoming calm, was finding in the contemplation of

nature joys which up to this time he had sipped but hastily, almost

unconsciously, and of which he was now learning to relish the flavor. He

drew from them not simply soothing; in his heart he felt new compassions

springing into life, and with these the desire to act, to give himself,

to cry aloud to these cities perched upon the hill-tops, threatening as

warriors who eye one another before the fray, that they should be

reconciled and love one another.

Certainly, at this time Francis had no glimpse of what he was some time

to become; but these hours are perhaps the most important in the

evolution of his thought; it is to them that his life owes that air of

liberty, that perfume of the fields which make it as different from the

piety of the sacristy as from that of the drawing-room.

About this time he made a pilgrimage to Rome, whether to ask counsel of

his friends, whether as a penance imposed by his confessor, or from a

mere impulse, no one knows. Perhaps he thought that in a visit to the

_Holy Apostles_, as people said then, he should find the answers to all

the questions which he was asking himself.

At any rate he went. It is hardly probable that he received from the

visit any religious influence, for his biographers relate the pained

surprise which he experienced when he saw in Saint Peter's how meagre

were the offerings of pilgrims. He wanted to give everything to the

prince of the apostles, and emptying his purse he threw its entire

contents upon the tomb.

This journey was marked by a more important incident. Many a time when

succoring the poor he had asked himself if he himself was able to endure

poverty; no one knows the weight of a burden until he has carried it, at

least for a moment, upon his own shoulders. He desired to know what it

is like to have nothing, and to depend for bread upon the charity or the

caprice of the passer by.[13]

There were swarms of beggars crowding the Piazza before the great

basilica. He borrowed the rags of one of them, lending him his garment

in exchange, and a whole day he stood there, fasting, with outstretched

hand. The act was a great victory, the triumph of compassion over

natural pride. Returning to Assisi, he doubled his kindnesses to those

of whom he had truly the right to call himself the brother. With such

sentiments he could not long escape the influence of the Church.

On all the roadsides in the environs of the city there were then, as

now, numerous chapels. Very often he must have heard mass in these

rustic sanctuaries, alone with the celebrant. Recognizing the tendency

of simple natures to bring home to themselves everything that they hear,

it is easy to understand his emotion and agitation when the priest,

turning toward him, would read the gospel for the day. The Christian

ideal was revealed to him, bringing an answer to his secret anxieties.

And when, a few moments later, he would plunge into the forest, all his

thoughts would be with the poor carpenter of Nazareth, who placed

himself in his path, saying to him, even to him, "Follow thou me."

Nearly two years had passed since the day when he felt the first shock;

a life of renunciation appeared to him as the goal of his efforts, but

he felt that his spiritual novitiate was not yet ended. He suddenly

experienced a bitter assurance of the fact.

He was riding on horseback one day, his mind more than ever possessed

with the desire to lead a life of absolute devotion, when at a turn of

the road he found himself face to face with a leper. The frightful

malady had always inspired in him an invincible repulsion. He could not

control a movement of horror, and by instinct he turned his horse in

another direction.

If the shock had been severe, the defeat was complete. He reproached

himself bitterly. To cherish such fine projects and show himself so

cowardly! Was the knight of Christ then going to give up his arms? He

retraced his steps and springing from his horse he gave to the astounded

sufferer all the money that he had; then kissed his hand as he would

have done to a priest.[14] This new victory, as he himself saw, marked

an era in his spiritual life.[15]

It is far indeed from hatred of evil to love of good. Those are more

numerous than we think who, after severe experience, have renounced what

the ancient liturgies call the world, with its pomps and lusts; but the

greater number of them have not at the bottom of their hearts the

smallest grain of pure love. In vulgar souls disillusion leaves only a

frightful egoism.

This victory of Francis had been so sudden that he desired to complete

it; a few days later he went to the lazaretto.[16] One can imagine the

stupefaction of these wretches at the entrance of the brilliant

cavalier. If in our days a visit to the sick in our hospitals is a real

event awaited with feverish impatience, what must not have been the

appearance of Francis among these poor recluses? One must have seen

sufferers thus abandoned, to understand what joy may be given by an

affectionate word, sometimes even a simple glance.

Moved and transported, Francis felt his whole being vibrate with

unfamiliar sensations. For the first time he heard the unspeakable

accents of a gratitude which cannot find words burning enough to express

itself, which admires and adores the benefactor almost like an angel

from heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1 Cel., 3; cf. Bon., 8, and A. SS., p. 563c.

[2] It is enough to have lived in the country of Naples to know

that there is nothing exaggerated in this picture. I am much

surprised that intelligent and good men fancy that to change the

religious formula of these people would suffice to transform

them. What a mistake! To-day, as in the time of Jesus, the

important matter is not to adore on Mount Moriah or Mount Zion,

but to adore in spirit and in truth.

[3] 1 Cel., 3 and 4.

[4] 3 Soc., 5. In the existing state of the documents it is

impossible to know whom this name designates, for at that time

it was borne by a number of counts who are only to be

distinguished by the names of their castles. The three following

are possible: 1. _Gentile comes de Campilio_, who in 1215 paid

homage for his property to the commune of Orvieto: _Le antiche

cronache di Orvieto, Arch. stor. ital._, 5th series., 1889,

iii., p. 47. 2. _Gentilis comes filius Alberici_, who with

others had made donation of a monastery to the Bishop of

Foligno: Confirmatory Bull _In eminenti_ of April 10, 1210:

Ughelli, _Italia Sacra_, 1, p. 697; Potthast, 3974. 3. _Gentilis

comes Manupelli_; whom we find in July, 1200, assuring to

Palermo the victory over the troops sent by Innocent III.

against Marckwald; Huillard-Bréholles, _Hist. dipl._, i. p., 46

ff. Cf. Potthast, 1126. _Gesta Innocenti_, Migne, vol. i.,

xxxii, ff. Cf. Huillard-Bréholles, _loc. cit._, pages 60, 84,

89, 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a

mere adjective; the 3 Soc. say _Gentile nomine_.

[5] 1 Cel., 4; 3 Soc., 5.

[6] 3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 8.

[7] 1 Cel., 5; 3 Soc., 5; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 9.

[8] 3 Soc., 6; Bon., 9; 2 Cel., 1, 2.

[9] 3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2.

[10] These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular

precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so

reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him

about them (2 Cel., 3, 68 and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other

hand, nothing forbids his having been informed on this matter by

Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an

old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging

permission to take the child in his arms, saying, "To-day, two

infants were born--this one, who will be among the best of men,

and another, who will be among the worst"--of having been

invented by the _zelanti_ against Brother Elias. It is evident

that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was

afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis?) We have sufficient

details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of

them is here in question. There is nothing surprising in the

fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the

Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at Assisi his

double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (_suebat

cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere_, Salimbene, p.

402) he was _scriptor_ at Bologna (Eccl., 13). And from the

psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably

explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to

exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to

understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the passage,

1 Cel., 6, differs in the different manuscripts (cf. A. SS. and

Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the

latter's fall.

Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of

Assisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from Assisi

in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be

that of which we are about to speak.

[11] 1 Cel., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 5; 3 Soc., 8, 12; Bon., 10, 11, 12.

[12] 3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel., 7; 2 Cel., 1, 3; 3 Soc., 13.

[13] 3 Soc., 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4.

[14] To this day in the centre and south of Italy they kiss the

hand of priests and monks.

[15] See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc., 11; 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; A. SS.,

p. 566.

[16] 3 Soc., 11; Bon., 13.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209

St. Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a

palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions

in which he lived.

We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of

Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St.

Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction

that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride,

and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without

seeming in the least to be preaching himself.

We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show

him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we are

now arrived, 1205-1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than

at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the

path which he finally entered.

The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious

reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and

without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few

voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di

Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegarde to put a stop to

wickedness. Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his

chronicle with this appalling picture. The advance in historic research

permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion

remains the same; without Francis of Assisi the Church would perhaps

have foundered and the Cathari would have won the day. The _little poor

man_, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III.,

saved Christianity.

We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the

beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of

its most prominent features.

The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling

prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places

was carried on with boundless audacity; benefices were put up to the

highest bidder, and Innocent III. admitted that fire and sword alone

could heal this plague.[1] Prelates who declined to be bought by

_propinæ_, fees, were held up as astounding exceptions![2]

"They are stones for understanding," it was said of the officers of the

Roman _curia_, "wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness;

deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the

minotaur."[3] The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III. for

rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a

golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Rome in this

respect.[4]

The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of

keeping with their calling, for extorting money from the simple

priests.[5] Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to

ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other.[6] As

to the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices, and

secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable

measures for providing for their bastards.[7]

The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these

had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; their reputation

for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus

fatally brought about their own decadence. Few communities had shown the

discretion of the first monks of the Order of Grammont in the diocese of

Limoges. When Stephen de Muret, its founder, began to manifest his

sanctity by giving sight to a blind man, his disciples took alarm at the

thought of the wealth and notoriety which was likely to come to them

from this cause. Pierre of Limoges, who had succeeded Stephen as prior,

went at once to his tomb, praying:

"O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and

behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path

of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal

death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and

thou art about to change this place into a fair and a

market-place. We know well that thou art a saint! Thou hast no

need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy

our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment

it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee,

expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the

obedience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones

and throw them into the river."

Stephen obeyed up to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that

time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the

solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the

Christian world.[8]

Pierre of Limoges was not entirely without reason in fearing that his

monastery would be transformed into a fair-ground; members of the

chapters of most of the cathedrals kept wine-shops literally under their

shadows, and certain monasteries did not hesitate to attract custom by

jugglers of all kinds and even by courtesans.[9]

To form an idea of the degradation of the greater number of the monks it

is not enough to read the oratorical and often exaggerated reproofs of

preachers obliged to strike hard in order to produce an effect. We must

run through the collection of bulls, where appeals to the court of Rome

against assassinations, violations, incests, adulteries, recur on

almost every page. It is easy to see that even an Innocent III. might

feel himself helpless and tempted to yield to discouragement, in the

face of so many ills.[10]

The best spirits were turning toward the Orient, asking themselves if

perchance the Greek Church might not suddenly come forward to purify all

these abuses, and receive for herself the inheritance of her sister.[11]

The clergy, though no longer respected, still overawed the people

through their superstitious terror of their power. Here and there might

have been perceived many a forewarning of direful revolts; the roads to

Rome were crowded with monks hastening to claim the protection of the

Holy See against the people among whom they lived. The Pope would

promptly declare an interdict, but it was not to be expected that such a

resource would avail forever.[12]

To maintain the privileges of the Church the papacy was often obliged to

spread the mantle of its protection over those who deserved it least.

Its clients were not always as interesting as the unfortunate

Ingelburge. It would be easier to give unreserved admiration to the

conduct of Innocent III. if in this matter one could feel certain that

his only interest was to maintain the cause of a poor abandoned woman.

But it is only too evident that he desired above all to keep up the

ecclesiastical immunities. This is very evident in his intervention in

favor of Waldemar, Bishop of Schleswig.

Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church;

then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices

of those who desired a reformation aroused only passing interest.

Among the populace there was superstition unimaginable; the pulpit,

which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only

to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in

this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other

duties. It was the birth of the mendicant orders which obliged the

entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching.

Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved

anything which appealed to the intelligence; it was more and more

becoming a sort of self-acting magic formula. Once upon this road, the

absurd was not far distant. Those who deemed themselves pious told of

miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of

faith.

In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the

invocation dear to his mistress, "_Sancte Thoma adjuva me_," and was

miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having

purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchantment

so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to beggary

so soon as, his secret being discovered, the relic was taken away from

him and placed in a church.[13]

These stories, we must observe, do not come from ignorant enthusiasts,

hidden away in obscure country places; they are given us by one of the

most learned monks of his time, who relates them to a novice by way of

forming his mind!

Relics, then, were held to be neither more nor less than talismans. Not

alone did they perform miracles upon those who were in no special state

of faith or devotion, the more potent among them healed the sick in

spite of themselves. A chronicler relates that the body of Saint Martin

of Tours had in 887 been secretly transported to some remote hiding

place for fear of the Danish invasion. When the time came for bringing

it home again, there were in Touraine two impotent men who, thanks to

their infirmity, gained large sums by begging. They were thrown into

great terror by the tidings that the relics were being brought back:

Saint Martin would certainly heal them and take away their means of

livelihood. Their fears were only too well founded. They had taken to

flight, but being too lame to walk fast they had not yet crossed the

frontier of Touraine when the saint arrived and healed them!

Hundreds of similar stories might be collected, statistics might be made

up to show, at the accession of Innocent III., the greater number of

episcopal thrones occupied by unworthy bishops, the religious houses

peopled with idle and debauched monks; but would this give a truly

accurate picture of the Church at this epoch? I do not think so. In the

first place, we must reckon with the choice spirits, who were without

doubt more numerous than is generally supposed. Five righteous men would

have saved Sodom; the Almighty did not find them there, but he perhaps

might have found them had He Himself made search for them instead of

trusting to Lot. The Church of the thirteenth century had them, and it

was for their sakes that the whirlwind of heresy did not sweep it away.

But this is not all: the Church of that time offered a noble spectacle

of moral grandeur. We must learn to lift our eyes from the wretched

state of things which has just been pointed out and fix them on the

pontifical throne and recognize the beauty of the struggle there going

on: a power wholly spiritual undertaking to command the rulers of the

world, as the soul masters the body, and triumphing in the end. It is

true that both soldiers and generals of this army were often little

better than ruffians, but here again, in order to be just, we must

understand the end they aimed at.

In that iron age, when brute force was the only force, the Church,

notwithstanding its wounds, offered to the world the spectacle of

peasants and laboring men receiving the humble homage of the highest

potentates of earth, simply because, seated on the throne of Saint

Peter, they represented the moral law. This is why Alighieri and many

others before and after him, though they might heap curses on wicked

ministers, yet in the depths of their heart were never without an

immense compassion and an ardent love for the Church which they never

ceased to call their mother.

Still, everybody was not like them, and the vices of the clergy explain

the innumerable heresies of that day. All of them had a certain success,

from those which were simply the outcry of an outraged conscience, like

that of the Waldenses, to the most absurd of them all, like that of Eon

de l'Étoile. Some of these movements were for great and sacred causes;

but we must not let our sympathies be so moved by the persecutions

suffered by heretics as to cloud our judgment. It would have been better

had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but

unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is

at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach. The papacy has

not always been reactionary and obscurantist; when it overthrew the

Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense.

The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but

it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who

are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of

mysticism and folly. In that day heresy was very much alive; it was

consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. One

may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to

condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive,

passionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot upward, and fell

to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible

circumstances. In certain counties of England there are at the present

day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few

hundreds of inhabitants. Many of these people change their denomination

every three or four years, returning to that they first quitted, leaving

it again only to enter it anew, and so on as long as they live. Their

leaders set the example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each

new movement only to leave it before long. They would all alike find it

difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say

that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them,

but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would

lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each

of these Protean movements. They are surely not worth the trouble.

In a somewhat similar condition was a great part of Christendom under

Innocent III.; but while the sects of which I have just spoken move in a

very narrow circle of dogmas and ideas, in the thirteenth century every

sort of excess followed in rapid succession. Without the slightest

pause of transition men passed through the most contradictory systems of

belief. Still, a few general characteristics may be observed; in the

first place, heresies are no longer metaphysical subtleties as in

earlier days; Arius and Priscillian, Nestorius and Eutychus are dead

indeed. In the second place, they no longer arise in the upper and

governing class, but proceed especially from the inferior clergy and the

common people. The blows which actually threatened the Church of the

Middle Ages were struck by obscure laboring men, by the poor and the

oppressed, who in their wretchedness and degradation felt that she had

failed in her mission.

No sooner was a voice uplifted, preaching austerity and simplicity, than

it drew together not the laity only, but members of the clergy as well.

Toward the close of the twelfth century we find a certain Pons rousing

all Perigord, preaching evangelical poverty before the coming of St.

Francis.[14]

Two great currents are apparent: on one side the Cathari, on the other,

innumerable sects revolting from the Church by very fidelity to

Christianity and the desire to return to the primitive Church.

Among the sects of the second category the close of the twelfth century

saw in Italy the rise of the _Poor Men_, who without doubt were a part

of the movement of Arnold of Brescia; they denied the efficacy of

sacraments administered by unworthy hands.[15]

A true attempt at reform was made by the Waldenses. Their history,

although better known, still remains obscure on certain sides; their

name, _Poor Men of Lyons_, recalls the former movement, with which they

were in close agreement, as also with the Humiliants. All these names

involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his

Order. The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo and that of

St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter

a sort of imitation of the former. It would be a mistake: the same

causes produced in all quarters the same effects; ideas of reform, of a

return to gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to

understand how it was that before many years the Franciscan preaching

reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of

these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo,

driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the

consequences of the premises which he himself had laid down;[16] while

Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church, bent all his efforts

to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed

most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with

the movement of the _Poor Men of Lyons_. Hence his oft-repeated counsels

to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to

seek the approbation of Innocent III., it is evident that the prelates

with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of

the dangers inherent in his own movement.[17]

The latter had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to

ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the

Scriptures into the vulgar tongue and the permission to preach. They

were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching

the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map ([Cross] 1210), who was

charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their

simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life.[18]

Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome,

and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Council of Verona. From that

day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They

multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans.

By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from

Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the

latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating

them as excommunicated persons.

Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding

their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year,

and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain

unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to

their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves

good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the

hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.[19] Hence that multiplicity

of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost

hourly.

A common persecution brought them nearer to the Cathari and favored the

fusion of their ideas. Their activity was inconceivable. Under pretext

of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and

insinuating. The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable

to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose

hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the

Church and the reforms that were needed. Such conversations were a means

of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the

book and the newspaper; there is nothing like the _viva vox_[20] for

spreading thought.

Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses; calumny is far too

facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay. Thus they have been

charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early

Christians were accused. In reality their true strength was in their

virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy.

The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari.

Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among

them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were

pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century. Their revolt did

not bear upon points of detail and questions of discipline, like that of

the early Waldenses; it had a definite doctrinal basis, taking issue

with the whole body of Catholic dogma. But, although this heresy

flourished in Italy and under the very eyes of St. Francis, there is

need only to indicate it briefly. His work may have received many

infiltrations from the Waldensian movement, but Catharism was wholly

foreign to it.

This is naturally explained by the fact that St. Francis never consented

to occupy himself with questions of doctrine. For him faith was not of

the intellectual but the moral domain; it is the consecration of the

heart. Time spent in dogmatizing appeared to him time lost.

An incident in the life of Brother Egidio well brings out the slight

esteem in which theology was held by the early Brothers Minor. One day,

in the presence of St. Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a

touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to

merit the favor of God?" "My brother," replied the famous divine, "you

know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." "Are you very sure of

that?" replied Egidio; "do you believe that a simple woman might please

Him as well as a master in theology?" Upon the affirmative response of

his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar

woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice,

for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of

heaven than Brother Bonaventura!"[21]