Vide Cardella, _Memorie storiche de' Cardinali_, 9 vols., 8vo,
Rome, 1792 ff., t. i., p. 177. He was at Rome in the summer of
1210, for on the 11th of August he countersigned the bull
_Religiosem vitam_. Potthast, 4061. Angelo Clareno relates the
approbation with more precision in certain respects: _Cum vero
Summo Pontifici ea quæ postulabat [Franciscus] ardua valde et
quasi impossibilia viderentur infirmitate hominum sui temporis,
exhortabatur eum, quod aliquem ordinem vel regulam de approbatis
assumeret, at ipse se a Christo missum ad talem vitam et non
aliam postulandam constanter affirmans, fixus in sua petitione
permansit. Tunc dominus Johannes de Sancto Paulo episcopus
Sabinensis et dominus Hugo episcopus Hostiensis Dei spiritu moti
assisterunt Sancto Francisco et pro his quæ petebat coram summo
Pontifice et Cardinalibus plura proposuerunt rationabilia et
efficacia valde. Tribul._ Laurentinian MS., f^o 6a. This
intervention of Ugolini is mentioned in no other document. It
is, however, by no means impossible. He also was in Rome in the
summer of 1210. (Vide Potthast, p. 462.)
[15] 1 Cel., 32 and 33; 3 Soc., 47 and 48. Cf. _An. Per._, A.
SS., p. 590.
[16] 1 Cel., 33.
[17] 3 Soc., 48.
[18] 3 Soc., 49; 1 Cel., 33; Bon., 35 and 36. All this has been
much worked over by tradition and gives us only an echo of the
reality. It would certainly have needed very little for the
Penitents to meet the same fate before Innocent III. as the
Waldenses before Lucius III. Traces of this interview are found
in two texts which appear to me to be too suspicious to warrant
their insertion in the body of the narrative. The first is a
fragment of Matthew Paris: _Papa itaque in fratre memorato
habitum deformem, vultum despicabilem, barbam prolixam, capillos
incultos, supercilia pendentia et nigra diligenter considerans;
cum petitionem ejus tam arduam et executione impossibilem
recitare fecisset, despexit cum et dixit: Vade frater, et quære
porcus, quibus potius debes quam hominibus comparari, et involve
te cum eis in volutabro, et regulam illis a te commentatam
tradens, officium tuæ prædicationis impende. Quod audiens
Franciscus inclinato capite exixit et porcis tandem inventis, in
luto se cum eis tamdiu involvit quousque a planta pedis usque ad
verticem, corpus suum totum cum ipso habitu polluisset. Sicque
ad consistorium revertens Papæ se conspectibus præsentavit
dicens: Domine feci sicut præcepisti exaudi nunc obsecro
petitionem meam_. Ed. Wats, p. 340. The incident has a real
Franciscan color, and should have some historic basis.
Curiously, it in some sort meets a passage in the legend of
Bonaventura which is an interpolation of the end of the
thirteenth century. See A. SS., p. 591.
[19] 3 Soc., 50 and 51; Bon., 37; 2 Cel., 1, 11; Bernard de
Besse, Turin MS., f^o 101b. Ubertini di Casali (_Arbor vitæ
crucifixæ_, Venice, 1485, lib. v., cap. iii.) tells a curious
story in which he depicts the indignation of the prelates
against Francis. _Quænam hæc est doctrina nova quam infers
auribus nostris? Quis potest vivere sine temporalium
possessione? Numquid tu melior es quam patres nostri qui
dederunt nobis temporalia et in temporalibus abundantes
ecclesias possiderunt?_ Then follows the fine prayer inserted by
Wadding in Francis's works. The central idea is the same as in
the parable of poverty. This story, though not referable to any
source, has nevertheless its importance, since it shows how in
the year 1300 a man who had all the documents before his eyes,
represented to himself Francis's early steps.
[20] Bon., 36.
[21] The attempt of Durand of Huesca to create a mendicant order
has not yet been studied with sufficient minuteness. Chief of
the Waldenses of Aragon, he was present in 1207 at the
conference of Pamiers, and decided to return to the Church.
Received with kindness by the pope he at first had a great
success, and by 1209 had established communities in Aragon, at
Carcassonne, Narbonne, Béziers, Nimes, Uzès, Milan. We find in
this movement all the lineaments of the institute of St.
Dominic; it was an order of priests to whom theological studies
were recommended. They disappeared almost completely in the
storm of the Albigensian crusade. Innocent III., _epistolæ_,
xi., 196, 197, 198; xii., 17, 66; xiii., 63, 77, 78, 94; xv.,
82, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 137, 146. The first of these
bulls contains the very curious Rule of this ephemeral order.
Upon its disappearance vide Ripoli, _Bullarium Prædicatorum_, 8
vols., folio, Rome, 1729-1740, t. i., p. 96. Cf. Elie Berger,
_Registres d'Innocent IV._, 2752.
[22] Burchard, of the order of the Premostrari, who died in
1226. See below, p. 234.
[23] 3 Soc., 52; Bon., 38.
[24] 3 Soc., 52 and 49.
[25] St. Antonino, Archbishop of Florence, saw very clearly that
it was _quædam concessio simplex habitus et modi illius vivendi
et quasi permissio_. A. SS., p. 839. The expression "approbation
of the Rule" by which the act of Innocent III. is usually
designated is therefore erroneous.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
RIVO-TORTO
1210-1211
The Penitents of Assisi were overflowing with joy. After so many
mortally long days spent in that Rome, so different from the other
cities that they knew, exposed to the ill-disguised suspicions of the
prelates and the jeers of pontifical lackeys, the day of departure
seemed to them like a deliverance. At the thought of once more seeing
their beloved mountains they were seized by that homesickness of the
child for its native village which simple and kindly souls preserve till
their latest breath.
Immediately after the ceremony they prayed at the tomb of St. Peter, and
then crossing the whole city they quitted Rome by the Porta Salara.
Thomas of Celano, very brief as to all that concerns Francis's sojourn
in the Eternal City, recounts at full length the light-heartedness of
the little band on quitting it. Already it began to be transfigured in
their memory; pains, fatigues, fears, disquietude, hesitations were all
forgotten; they thought only of the fatherly assurances of the supreme
pontiff--the vicar of Christ, the lord and father of the Christian
universe--and promised themselves to make ever new efforts to follow the
Rule with fidelity.
Full of these thoughts they had set out, without provisions, to cross
the Campagna of Rome, whose few inhabitants never venture out in the
heat of the day. The road stretches away northward, keeping at some
distance from the Tiber; on the left the jagged crest of Soracte, bathed
in mists formed by the exhalations of the earth, looms up
disproportionately as it fades in the distance; on the right, the
everlasting undulations of the hillocks with their wide pastures
separated by thickets so parched and ragged that they seemed to cry for
mercy and pardon. Between them the dusty road which goes straight
forward, implacable, showing, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but
the quivering of the fiery air. Not a house, not a tree, not a passing
breeze, nothing to sustain the traveller under the disquietude which
creeps over him. Here and there are a few abandoned huts, their ruins
looking like the corpses of departed civilizations, and on the edge of
the horizon the hills rising up like gigantic and unsurmountable walls.
There are no words to describe the physical and moral sufferings to
which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross
this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon
succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous
dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your
skin, and parches your mouth even more than thirst. Little by little all
energy ebbs away, a dumb dejection seizes you, sight and thought become
alike confused, fever ensues, and you cast yourself down by the
roadside, unable to take another step.
In their haste to leave Rome Francis and his companions had forgotten
all this, and had imprudently set forth. They would have succumbed if a
chance traveller had not brought them succor. He was obliged to leave
them before they had shaken off the last hallucinations of fever,
leaving them amazed with the unexpected succor which Providence had sent
them.[1]
They were so severely shattered that on arriving at Orte they were
obliged to stop awhile. In a desert spot not far from this city they
found a shelter admirably adapted to serve them for refuge;[2] it was
one of those Etruscan tombs so common in that country, whose chambers
serve to this day as a shelter for beggars and gypsies. While some of
the brethren hastened to the city to beg for food, the others remained
in this solitude enjoying the happiness of being together, forming a
thousand plans, and more than ever delighting in the charm of freedom
from care and renunciation of material goods.
This place had so strong an attraction for them that it required an
effort of will to quit it at the end of a fortnight. The seduction of a
life purely contemplative assailed Francis, and he asked himself if
instead of preaching to the multitudes he would not do better to live in
retreat, solely mindful of the inward dialogue between the soul and
God.[3]
This aspiration for the selfish repose of the cloister came back to him
several times in his life; but love always won the victory. He was too
much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness
which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in
paradise--peace. _Beati mortui quia quiescunt!_ His distinguishing
peculiarity is that he never gave way to it.
The reflections of Francis and his companions during their stay at Orte
only made their apostolic mission more clear and imperative to them. He,
above all, seemed to be filled with a new ardor, and like a valiant
knight he burned to throw himself into the thick of the fray.
Their way now led through the valley of the Nera. The contrast between
these cool glens, awake with a thousand voices, and the desolation of
the Roman Campagna, must have struck them vividly; the stream is only a
swollen torrent, but it runs so noisily over pebbles and rocks that it
seems to be conversing with them and with the trees of the neighboring
forest. In proportion as they had felt themselves alone on the road from
Rome to Otricoli, they now felt themselves compassed about with the
life, the fecundity, the gayety of the country.
The account of Thomas of Celano becomes so animated as it describes the
life of Francis at this epoch that one cannot help thinking that at this
time he must have seen him, and that this first meeting remained always
in his memory as the radiant dawn of his spiritual life.[4]
The Brothers had taken to preaching in such places as they came upon
along their route. Their words were always pretty much the same, they
showed the blessedness of peace and exhorted to penitence. Emboldened by
the welcome they had received at Rome, which in all innocence they might
have taken to be more favorable than it really was, they told the story
to everyone they met, and thus set all scruples at rest.
These exhortations, in which Francis spared not his hearers, but in
which the sternest reproaches were mingled with so much of love,
produced an enormous effect. Man desires above all things to be loved,
and when he meets one who loves him sincerely he very seldom refuses him
either his love or his admiration.
It is only a low understanding that confounds love with weakness and
compliance. We sometimes see sick men feverishly kissing the hand of
the surgeon who performs an operation upon them; we sometimes do the
same for our spiritual surgeons, for we realize all that there is of
vigor, pity, compassion in the tortures which they inflict, and the
cries which they force from us are quite as much of gratitude as of
pain.
Men hastened from all parts to hear these preachers who were more severe
upon themselves than on anyone else. Members of the secular clergy,
monks, learned men, rich men even, often mingled in the impromptu
audiences gathered in the streets and public places. All were not
converted, but it would have been very difficult for any of them to
forget this stranger whom they met one day upon their way, and who in a
few words had moved them to the very bottom of their hearts with anxiety
and fear.
Francis was in truth, as Celano says, the bright morning star. His
simple preaching took hold on consciences, snatched his hearers from the
mire and blood in which they were painfully trudging, and in spite of
themselves carried them to the very heavens, to those serene regions
where all is silent save the voice of the heavenly Father. "The whole
country trembled, the barren land was already covered with a rich
harvest, the withered vine began again to blossom."[5]
Only a profoundly religious and poetic soul (is not the one the other?)
can understand the transports of joy which overflowed the souls of St.
Francis's spiritual sons.
The greatest crime of our industrial and commercial civilization is that
it leaves us a taste only for that which may be bought with money, and
makes us overlook the purest and truest joys which are all the time
within our reach. The evil has roots far in the past. "Wherefore," said
the God of old Isaiah, "do you weigh money for that which is not meat?
why labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken unto me, and ye shall
eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in
fatness."[6]
Joys bought with money--noisy, feverish pleasures--are nothing compared
with those sweet, quiet, modest but profound, lasting, and peaceful
joys, enlarging, not wearying the heart, which we too often pass by on
one side, like those peasants whom we see going into ecstasies over the
fireworks of a fair, while they have not so much as a glance for the
glorious splendors of a summer night.
In the plain of Assisi, at an hour's walk from the city and near the
highway between Perugia and Rome, was a ruinous cottage called
Rivo-Torto. A torrent, almost always dry, but capable of becoming
terrible in a storm, descends from Mount Subasio and passes beside it.
The ruin had no owner; it had served as a leper hospital before the
construction by the Crucigeri[7] of their hospital San Salvatore
delle Pareti; but since that time it had been abandoned. Now came
Francis and his companions to seek shelter there.[8] It is one of the
quietest spots in the suburbs of Assisi, and from thence they could
easily go out into the neighborhood in all directions; it being about an
equal distance from Portiuncula and St. Damian. But the principal motive
for the choice of the place seems to have been the proximity of the
_Carceri_, as those shallow natural grottos are called which are found
in the forests, half way up the side of Mount Subasio. Following up the
bed of the torrent of Rivo-Torto one reaches them in an hour by way of
rugged and slippery paths where the very goats do not willingly venture.
Once arrived, one might fancy oneself a thousand leagues from any human
being, so numerous are the birds of prey which live here quite
undisturbed.[9]
Francis loved this solitude and often retired thither with a few
companions. The brethren in that case shared between them all care of
their material wants, after which, each one retiring into one of these
caves, they were able for a few days to listen only to the inner voice.
These little hermitages, sufficiently isolated to secure them from
disturbance, but near enough to the cities to permit their going thither
to preach, may be found wherever Francis went. They form, as it were, a
series of documents about his life quite as important as the written
witnesses. Something of his soul may still be found in these caverns in
the Apennine forests. He never separated the contemplative from the
active life. A precious witness to this fact is found in the
regulations for the brethren during their sojourn in hermitage.[10]
The return of the Brothers to Rivo-Torto was marked by a vast increase
of popularity. The prejudiced attacks to which they had formerly been
subjected were lost in a chorus of praises. Perhaps men suspected the
ill-will of the bishop and were happy to see him checked. However this
may be, a lively feeling of sympathy and admiration was awakened; the
people recalled to mind the indifference manifested by the son of
Bernardone a few months before with regard to Otho IV. going to be
crowned at Rome. The emperor had made a progress through Italy with a
numerous suite and a pomp designed to produce an effect on the minds of
the populace; but not only had Francis not interrupted his work to go
and see him, he had enjoined upon his friars also to abstain from going,
and had merely selected one of them to carry to the monarch a reminder
of the ephemeral nature of worldly glory. Later on it was held that he
had predicted to the emperor his approaching excommunication.
This spirited attitude made a vivid impression on the popular
imagination.[11] Perhaps it was of more service in forming general
opinion than anything he had done thus far. The masses, who are not
often alive to delicate sentiments, respond quickly to those who,
whether rightly or wrongly, do not bow down before power. This time they
perceived that where other men would see the poor, the rich, the noble,
the common, the learned, Francis saw only souls, which were to him the
more precious as they were more neglected or despised.
No biographer informs us how long the Penitents remained at Rivo-Torto.
It seems probable, however, that they spent there the latter part of
1210 and the early months of 1211, evangelizing the towns and villages
of the neighborhood.
They suffered much; this part of the plain of Assisi is inundated by
torrents nearly every autumn, and many times the poor friars, blockaded
in the lazaretto, were forced to satisfy their hunger with a few roots
from the neighboring fields.
The barrack in which they lived was so narrow that, when they were all
there at once, they had much difficulty not to crowd one another. To
secure to each one his due quota of space, Francis wrote the name of
each brother upon the column which supports the building. But these
minor discomforts in no sense disturbed their happiness. No apprehension
had as yet come to cloud Francis's hopes; he was overflowing with joy
and kindliness; all the memories which Rivo-Torto has left with the
Order are fresh and sweet pictures of him.[12]
One night all the brethren seemed to be sleeping, when he heard a
moaning. It was one of his sheep, to speak after the manner of the
Franciscan biographer, who had denied himself too rigorously and was
dying of hunger. Francis immediately rose, called the brother to him,
brought forth the meagre reserve of food, and himself began to eat to
inspire the other with courage, explaining to him that if penitence is
good it is still necessary to temper it with discretion.[13]
Francis had that tact of the heart which divines the secrets of others
and anticipates their desires. At another time, still at Rivo-Torto, he
took a sick brother by the hand, led him to a grape-vine, and,
presenting him with a fine cluster, began himself to eat of it. It was
nothing, but the simple act so bound to him the sick man's heart that
many years after the brother could not speak of it without emotion.[14]
But Francis was far from neglecting his mission. Ever growing more sure,
not of himself but of his duty toward men, he took part in the political
and social affairs of his province with the confidence of an upright and
pure heart, never able to understand how stupidity, perverseness, pride,
and indolence, by leaguing themselves together, may check the finest and
most righteous impulses. He had the faith which removes mountains, and
was wholly free from that touch of scepticism, so common in our day,
which points out that it is of no more use to move mountains than to
change the place of difficulties.
When the people of Assisi learned that his Rule had been approved by the
pope there was strong excitement; every one desired to hear him preach.
The clergy were obliged to give way; they offered him the Church of St.
George, but this church was manifestly insufficient for the crowds of
hearers; it was necessary to open the cathedral to him.
St. Francis never said anything especially new; to win hearts he had
that which is worth more than any arts of oratory--an ardent conviction;
he spoke as compelled by the imperious need of kindling others with the
flame that burned within himself. When they heard him recall the horrors
of war, the crimes of the populace, the laxity of the great, the
rapacity which dishonored the Church, the age-long widowhood of
Poverty, each one felt himself taken to task in his own conscience.
An attentive or excited crowd is always very impressionable, but this
peculiar sensitiveness was perhaps stronger in the Middle Ages than at
any other time. Nervous disturbances were in the air, and upon men thus
prepared the will of the preacher impressed itself in a manner almost
magnetic.
To understand what Francis's preaching must have been like we must
forget the manners of to-day, and transport ourselves for a moment to
the Cathedral of Assisi in the thirteenth century; it is still standing,
but the centuries have given to its stones a fine rust of polished
bronze, which recalls Venice and Titian's tones of ruddy gold. It was
new then, and all sparkling with whiteness, with the fine rosy tinge of
the stones of Mount Subasio. It had been built by the people of Assisi a
few years before in one of those outbursts of faith and union which were
almost everywhere the prelude of the communal movement. So, when the
people thronged into it on their high days, they not merely had none of
that vague respect for a holy place which, though it has passed into the
customs of other countries, still continues to be unknown in Italy, but
they felt themselves at home in a palace which they had built for
themselves. More than in any other church they there felt themselves at
liberty to criticise the preacher, and they had no hesitation in proving
to him, either by murmurs of dissatisfaction or by applause, just what
they thought of his words. We must remember also that the churches of
Italy have neither pews nor chairs, that one must listen standing or
kneeling, while the preacher walks about gesticulating on a platform;
add to this the general curiosity, the clamorous sympathies of many, the
disguised opposition of some, and we shall have a vague notion of the
conditions under which Francis first entered the pulpit of San Rufino.
His success was startling. The poor felt that they had found a friend, a
brother, a champion, almost an avenger. The thoughts which they hardly
dared murmur beneath their breath Francis proclaimed at the top of his
voice, daring to bid all, without distinction, to repent and love one
another. His words were a cry of the heart, an appeal to the consciences
of all his fellow-citizens, almost recalling the passionate utterances
of the prophets of Israel. Like those witnesses for Jehovah the "little
poor man" of Assisi had put on sackcloth and ashes to denounce the
iniquities of his people, like theirs was his courage and heroism, like
theirs the divine tenderness in his heart.
It seemed as if Assisi were about to recover again the feeling of Israel
for sin. The effect of these appeals was prodigious; the entire
population was thrilled, conquered, desiring in future to live only
according to Francis's counsels; his very companions, who had remained
behind at Rivo-Torto, hearing of these marvels, felt in themselves an
answering thrill, and their vocation took on a new strength; during the
night they seemed to see their master in a chariot of fire, soaring to
heaven like a new Elijah.[15]
This almost delirious enthusiasm of a whole people was not perhaps so
difficult to arouse as might be supposed: the emotional power of the
masses was at that time as great all over Europe as it was in Paris
during certain days of the Revolution. We all know the tragic and
touching story of those companies of children from the north of Europe
who appeared in 1212 in troops of several thousands, boys and girls
mingled together pell-mell. Nothing could stop them, a mania had
overtaken them, in all good faith they believed that they were to
deliver the Holy Land, that the sea would be dried up to let them pass.
They perished, we hardly know how, perhaps being sold into slavery.[16]
They were accounted martyrs, and rightly; popular devotion likened them
to the Holy Innocents, dying for a God whom they knew not. Those
children of the crusade also perished for an unknown ideal, false no
doubt; but is it not better to die for an unknown and even a false ideal
than to live for the vain realities of an utterly unpoetic existence? In
the end of time we shall be judged neither by philosophers nor by
theologians, and if we were, it is to be hoped that even in this case
love would cover a multitude of sins and pass by many follies.
Certainly if ever there was a time when religious affections of the
nerves were to be dreaded, it was that which produced such movements as
these. All Europe seemed to be beside itself; women appeared stark naked
in the streets of towns and villages, slowly walking up and down, silent
as phantoms.[17] We can understand now the accounts which have come
down to us, so fantastic at the first glance, of certain popular orators
of this time; of Berthold of Ratisbon, for example, who drew together
crowds of sixteen thousand persons, or of that Fra Giovanni Schio di
Vicenza, who for a time quieted all Northern Italy and brought Guelphs
and Ghibellines into one another's arms.[18]
That popular eloquence which was to accomplish so many marvels in 1233
comes down in a straight line from the Franciscan movement. It was St.
Francis who set the example of those open-air sermons given in the
vulgar tongue, at street corners, in public squares, in the fields.
To feel the change which he brought about we must read the sermons of
his contemporaries; declamatory, scholastic, subtile, they delighted in
the minutiæ of exegesis or dogma, serving up refined dissertations on
the most obscure texts of the Old Testament, to hearers starving for a
simple and wholesome diet.
With Francis, on the contrary, all is incisive, clear, practical. He
pays no attention to the precepts of the rhetoricians, he forgets
himself completely, thinking only of the end desired, the conversion of
souls. And conversion was not in his view something vague and
indistinct, which must take place only between God and the hearer. No,
he will have immediate and practical proofs of conversion. Men must give
up ill-gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with their
adversaries.
At Assisi he threw himself valiantly into the thick of civil
dissensions. The agreement of 1202 between the parties who divided the
city had been wholly ephemeral. The common people were continually
demanding new liberties, which the nobles and burghers would yield to
them only under the pressure of fear. Francis took up the cause of the
weak, the _minores_, and succeeded in reconciling them with the rich,
the _majores_.
His spiritual family had not as yet, properly speaking, a name, for,
unlike those too hasty spirits who baptize their productions before they
have come to light, he was waiting for the occasion that should reveal
the true name which he ought to give it.[19] One day someone was
reading the Rule in his presence. When he came to the passage, "Let the
brethren, wherever they may find themselves called to labor or to serve,
never take an office which shall put them over others, but on the
contrary, let them be always under (_sint minores_) all those who may be
in that house,"[20] these words _sint minores_ of the Rule, in the
circumstances then existing in the city, suddenly appeared to him as a
providential indication. His institution should be called the Order of
the Brothers Minor.
We may imagine the effect of this determination. The _Saint_, for
already this magic word had burst forth where he appeared,[21] the
Saint had spoken. It was he who was about to bring peace to the city,
acting as arbiter between the two factions which rent it.
We still possess the document of this _pace civile_, exhumed, so to
speak, from the communal archives of Assisi by the learned and pious
Antonio Cristofani.[22] The opening lines are as follows:
"In the name of God!
"May the supreme grace of the Holy Spirit assist us! To the
honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, the
Emperor Otho, and Duke Leopold.
"This is the statute and perpetual agreement between the
_Majori_ and _Minori_ of Assisi.
"Without common consent there shall never be any sort of
alliance either with the pope and his nuncios or legates, or
with the emperor, or with the king, or with their nuncios or
legates, or with any city or town, or with any important person,
except with a common accord they shall do all which there may be
to do for the honor, safety, and advantage of the commune of
Assisi."
What follows is worthy of the beginning. The lords, in consideration of
a small periodical payment, should renounce all the feudal rights; the
inhabitants of the villages subject to Assisi were put on a par with
those of the city, foreigners were protected, the assessment of taxes
was fixed. On Wednesday, November 9, 1210, this agreement was signed and
sworn to in the public place of Assisi; it was made in such good faith
that exiles were able to return in peace, and from this day we find in
the city registers the names of those _émigrés_ who, in 1202, had
betrayed their city and provoked the disastrous war with Perugia.
Francis might well be happy. Love had triumphed, and for several years
there were at Assisi neither victors nor vanquished.
In the mystic marriages which here and there in history unite a man to a
people, something takes place of which the transports of sense, the
delirium of love, seem to be the only symbol; a moment comes in which
saints, or men of genius, feel unknown powers striving mightily within
them; they strive, they seek, they struggle until, triumphing over all
obstacles, they have forced trembling, swooning humanity to conceive by
them.
This moment had come to St. Francis.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 1 Cel., 34; 3 Soc., 53; Bon., 39.
[2] Probably at Otricoli, which lies on the high-road between
Rome and Spoleto. Orte is an hour and a half further on. It is
the ancient _Otriculum_, where many antiquities have been found.
[3] 1 Cel., 35; Bon., 40 and 41.
[4] The only road connecting Celano with Rome, as well as with
all Central and Northern Italy, passes by Aquila, Rieti, and
Terni, where it joins the high-roads leading from the north
toward Rome.
[5] 1 Cel., 36 and 37; 3 Soc., 54; Bon., 45-48.
[6] Isaiah, lv., 2.
[7] This Order deserves to be better known; it was founded under
Alexander III. and rapidly spread all over Central Italy and the
East. In Francis's lifetime it had in Italy and the Holy Land
about forty houses dedicated to the care of lepers. It is very
probable that it was at _San Salvatore delle Pareti_ that
Francis visited these unhappy sufferers. He there made the
particular acquaintance of a Cruciger named _Morico_. The latter
afterward falling ill, Francis sent him a remedy which would
cure him, informing him at the same time that he was to become
his disciple, which shortly afterward took place. The hospital
_San Salvatore_ has disappeared; it stood in the place now
called _Ospedaletto_, where a small chapel now stands half way
between Assisi and Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was from there
that the dying Francis blessed Assisi. For Morico vide 3 Soc.,
35; Bon., 49; 2 Cel., 3, 128; _Conform._, 63b.--For the hospital
vide Bon., 49; _Conform._, 135a, 1; _Honorii III. opera_, Horoy,
t. i., col. 206. Cf. Potthast, 7746; L. Auvray, _Registres de
Grégoire IX._, Paris, 1890, 4to, no. 209. For the Crucigeri in
the time of St. Francis vide the interesting bull _Cum tu fili
prior_, of July 8, 1203; Migne, _Inn. op._, t. ii., col. 125 ff.
Cf. Potthast, 1959, and _Cum pastoris_, April 5, 1204; Migne,
_loc. cit._, 319. Cf. Potthast, 2169 and 4474.
[8] 3 Soc., 55.
[9] All this yet remains in its primitive state. The road which
went from Assisi to the now ruined Abbey of Mount Subasio
(almost on the summit of the mountain) passed the Carceri, where
there was a little chapel built by the Benedictines.
[10] _Illi qui religiose volunt stare in eremis sint tres aut
quatuor ad plus. Duo ex ipsis sint matres, et habeant duos
filios, vel unum ad minus. Illi duo teneant vitam Marthæ et alii
duo vitam Mariæ Magdalenæ._ Assisi MS., 338, 43a-b; text given
also in _Conf._, 143a, 1, from which Wadding borrows it for his
edition of the _Opuscules_ of St. Francis. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 113.
It is possible that we have here a fragment of the Rule, which
must have been composed toward 1217.
[11] 1 Cel., 42 and 43; 3 Soc., 55; Bon., 41.
[12] 1 Cel., 42-44.
[13] 2 Cel., 1, 15; Bon., 65. These two authors do not say where
the event took place; but there appears to be no reason for
suspecting the indication of Rivo-Torto given by the _Speculum_,
fo. 21a.
[14] 2 Cel., 3, 110. Cf. _Spec._, 22a.
[15] 1 Cel., 47; Bon., 43.
[16] There are few events of the thirteenth century that offer
more documents or are more obscure than this one. The
chroniclers of the most different countries speak of it at
length. Here is one of the shortest but most exact of the
notices, given by an eye-witness (Annals of Genoa of the years
1197-1219, _apud Mon. Germ. hist. Script_., t. 18): 1212 _in
mense Augusti, die Sabbati, octava Kalendarum Septembris,
intravit civitatem Janue quidam puer Teutonicus nomine Nicholaus
peregrinationis causa, et cum eo multitudo maxima pelegrinorum
defferentes cruces et bordonos atque scarsellas ultra septem
millia arbitratu boni viri inter homines et feminas et puellos
et puellas. Et die dominica sequenti de civitate exierunt_.--Cf.
Giacomo di Viraggio: Muratori, t. ix., col. 46: _Dicebant quod
mare debebat apud Januam siccari et sic ipsi debebant in
Hierusalem proficisci. Multi autem inter eos erant filii
Nobilium, quos ipsi etiam cum meretricibus destinarunt (!_) The
most tragic account is that of Alberic, who relates the fate of
the company that embarked at Marseilles. _Mon. Ger. hist.
Script_., t. 23, p. 894.
[17] The Benedictine chronicler, Albert von Stade (_Mon. Ger.
hist. Script_., t. 16, pp. 271-379), thus closes his notice of
the children's crusade: _Adhuc quo devenerint ignorantur sed
plurimi redierunt, a quibus cum quæreretur causa cursus dixerunt
se nescire. Nudæ etiam mulieres circa idem tempus nihil
loquentes per villas et civitates cucurrerunt._ _Loc. cit._,
p. 355.
[18] _Chron. Veronese, ann. 1238_ (Muratori, _Scriptores Rer.
Ital._, t. viii., p. 626). Cf. Barbarano de' Mironi: _Hist.
Eccles. di Vicenza_, t. ii., pp. 79-84.
[19] The Brothers were at first called _Viri pænitentiales de
civitate Assisii_ (3 Soc., 37); it appears that they had a
momentary thought of calling themselves _Pauperes de Assisio_,
but they were doubtless dissuaded from this at Rome, as too
closely resembling that of the _Pauperes de Lugduno_. Vide
_Burchardi chronicon._, p. 376; vide Introd., cap. 5.
[20] Vide Rule of 1221, _cap._ 7. Cf. 1 Cel., 38, and Bon., 78.
[21] 1 Cel., 36.
[22] _Storia d'Assisi_, t. i., pp. 123-129.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII
PORTIUNCULA
1211
It was doubtless toward the spring of 1211 that the Brothers quitted
Rivo-Torto. They were engaged in prayer one day, when a peasant appeared
with an ass, which he noisily drove before him into the poor shelter.
"Go in, go in!" he cried to his beast; "we shall be most comfortable
here." It appeared that he was afraid that if the Brothers remained
there much longer they would begin to think this deserted place was
their own.[1] Such rudeness was very displeasing to Francis, who
immediately arose and departed, followed by his companions.
Now that they were so numerous the Brothers could no longer continue
their wandering life in all respects as in the past; they had need of a
permanent shelter and above all of a little chapel. They addressed
themselves in vain first to the bishop and then to the canons of San
Rufino for the loan of what they needed, but were more fortunate with
the abbot of the Benedictines of Mount Subasio, who ceded to them in
perpetuity the use of a chapel already very dear to their hearts, Santa
Maria degli Angeli or the Portiuncula.[2]
Francis was enchanted; he saw a mysterious harmony, ordained by God
himself, between the name of the humble sanctuary and that of his Order.
The brethren quickly built for themselves a few huts; a quickset hedge
served as enclosing wall, and thus in three or four days was organized
the first Franciscan convent.
For ten years they were satisfied with this. These ten years are the
heroic period of the Order. St. Francis, in full possession of his
ideal, will seek to inculcate it upon his disciples and will succeed
sometimes; but already the too rapid multiplication of the brotherhood
will provoke some symptoms of relaxation.
The remembrance of the beginning of this period has drawn from the lips
of Thomas of Celano a sort of canticle in honor of the monastic life. It
is the burning and untranslatable commentary of the Psalmist's cry:
"_Behold how sweet and pleasant it is to be brethren and to dwell
together._"
Their cloister was the forest which then extended on all sides of
Portiuncula, occupying a large part of the plain. There they gathered
around their master to receive his spiritual counsels, and thither they
retired to meditate and pray.[3] It would be a gross mistake, however,
to suppose that contemplation absorbed them completely during the days
which were not consecrated to missionary tours: a part of their time was
spent in manual labor.
The intentions of St. Francis have been more misapprehended on this
point than on any other, but it may be said that nowhere is he more
clear than when he ordains that his friars shall gain their livelihood
by the work of their hands. He never dreamed of creating a _mendicant_
order, he created a _laboring_ order. It is true we shall often see him
begging and urging his disciples to do as much, but these incidents
ought not to mislead us; they are meant to teach that when a friar
arrived in any locality and there spent his strength for long days in
dispensing spiritual bread to famished souls, he ought not to blush to
receive material bread in exchange. To work was the rule, to beg the
exception; but this exception was in nowise dishonorable. Did not Jesus,
the Virgin, the disciples live on bread bestowed? Was it not rendering a
great service to those to whom they resorted to teach them charity?
Francis in his poetic language gave the name of _mensa Domini_, the
table of the Lord, to this table of love around which gathered the
_little poor ones_. The bread of charity is the bread of angels; and it
is also that of the birds, which reap not nor gather into barns.
We are far enough, in this case, from that mendicity which is understood
as a means of existence and the essential condition of a life of
idleness. It is the opposite extreme, and we are true and just to St.
Francis and to the origin of the mendicant orders only when we do not
separate the obligation of labor from the praise of mendicity.[4]
No doubt this zeal did not last long, and Thomas of Celano already
entitles his chapters, "_Lament before God over the idleness and
gluttony of the friars_;" but we must not permit this speedy and
inevitable decadence to veil from our sight the holy and manly beauty of
the origin.
With all his gentleness Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity
toward the idle; he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused
to work.[5] Nothing in this matter better shows the intentions of the
Poverello than the life of Brother Egidio, one of his dearest
companions, him of whom he said with a smile: "He is one of the paladins
of my Round Table."
Brother Egidio had a taste for great adventures, and is a living example
of a Franciscan of the earliest days; he survived his master twenty-five
years, and never ceased to obey the letter and spirit of the Rule with
freedom and simplicity.
We find him one day setting out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Arrived at Brindisi, he borrowed a water-jug that he might carry water
while he was awaiting the departure of the ship, and passed a part of
every day in crying through the streets of the city: "_Alla fresca! Alla
fresca!_" like other water-carriers. But he would change his trade
according to the country and the circumstances; on his way back, at
Ancona, he procured willow for making baskets, which he afterward sold,
not for money but for his food. It even happened to him to be employed
in burying the dead.
Sent to Rome, every morning after finishing his religious duties, he
would take a walk of several leagues, to a certain forest, whence he
brought a load of wood. Coming back one day he met a lady who wanted to
buy it; they agreed on a price, and Egidio carried it to her house. But
when he arrived at the house she perceived him to be a friar, and would
have given him more than the price agreed upon. "My good lady," he
replied, "I will not permit myself to be overcome by avarice," and he
departed without accepting anything at all.
In the olive season he helped in the gathering; in grape season he
offered himself as vintager. One day on the Piazza di Roma, where men
are hired for day's work, he saw a _padrone_ who could not find a man to
thrash his walnut tree; it was so high that no one dared risk himself
in it. "If you will give me part of the nuts," said Egidio, "I will do
it willingly." The bargain struck and the tree thrashed, there proved to
be so many nuts that he did not know where to put his share. Gathering
up his tunic he made a bag of it and full of joy returned to Rome, where
he distributed them among all the poor whom he met.
Is not this a charming incident? Does it not by itself alone reveal the
freshness, the youth, the kindness of heart of the first Franciscans?
There is no end to the stories of the ingenuousness of Brother Egidio.
All kinds of work seemed good to him provided he had time enough in the
morning for his religious duties. Now he is in the service of the
Cellarer of the Four Crowns at Rome, sifting flour and carrying water to
the convent from the well of San Sisto. Now he is at Rieti, where he
consents to remain with Cardinal Nicholas, bringing to every meal the
bread which he had earned, notwithstanding the entreaties of the master
of the house, who would gladly have provided for his wants. One day it
rained so hard that Brother Egidio could not think of going out; the
cardinal was already making merry over the thought that he would be
forced to accept bread that he had not earned. But Egidio went to the
kitchen, and finding that it needed cleaning he persuaded the cook to
let him sweep it, and returned triumphant with the bread he had earned,
which he ate at the cardinal's table.[6]
From the very beginning Egidio's life commanded respect; it was at once
so original, so gay, so spiritual,[7] and so mystical, that even in
the least exact and most expanded accounts his legend has remained
almost free from all addition. He is, after St. Francis, the finest
incarnation of the Franciscan spirit.
The incidents which are here cited are all, so to speak, illustrations
of the Rule; in fact there is nothing more explicit than its commands
with respect to work.
The Brothers, after entering upon the Order, were to continue to
exercise the calling which they had when in the world, and if they had
none they were to learn one. For payment they were to accept only the
food that was necessary for them, but in case that was insufficient they
might beg. In addition they were naturally permitted to own the
instruments of their calling.[8] Brother Ginepro, whose acquaintance
we shall make further on, had an awl, and gained his bread wherever he
went by mending shoes, and we see St. Clara working even on her
death-bed.
This obligation to work with the hands merits all the more to be brought
into the light, because it was destined hardly to survive St. Francis,
and because to it is due in part the original character of the first
generation of the Order. Yet this was not the real reason for the being
of the Brothers Minor. Their mission consisted above all in being the
spouses of Poverty.
Terrified by the ecclesiastical disorders of the time, haunted by
painful memories of his past life, Francis saw in money the special
instrument of the devil; in moments of excitement he went so far as to
execrate it, as if there had been in the metal itself a sort of magical
power and secret curse. Money was truly for him the sacrament of evil.
This is not the place for asking if he was wrong; grave authors have
demonstrated at length the economic troubles which would have been let
loose upon the world if men had followed him. Alas! his madness, if
madness it were, is a kind of which one need not fear the contagion.
He felt that in this respect the Rule could not be too absolute, and
that if unfortunately the door was opened to various interpretations of
it, there would be no stopping-point. The course of events and the
periodical convulsions which shook his Order show clearly enough how
rightly he judged.
I do not know nor desire to know if theologians have yet come to a
scientific conclusion with regard to the poverty of Jesus, but it seems
evident to me that poverty with the labor of the hands is the ideal held
up by the Galilean to the efforts of his disciples.
Still it is easy to see that Franciscan poverty is neither to be
confounded with the unfeeling pride of the stoic, nor with the stupid
horror of all joy felt by certain devotees; St. Francis renounced
everything only that he might the better possess everything. The lives
of the immense majority of our contemporaries are ruled by the fatal
error that the more one possesses the more one enjoys. Our exterior,
civil liberties continually increase, but at the same time our inward
freedom is taking flight; how many are there among us who are literally
possessed by what they possess?[9]
Poverty not only permitted the Brothers to mingle with the poor and
speak to them with authority, but, removing from them all material
anxiety, it left them free to enjoy without hindrance those hidden
treasures which nature reserves for pure idealists.
The ever-thickening barriers which modern life, with its sickly search
for useless comfort, has set up between us and nature did not exist for
these men, so full of youth and life, eager for wide spaces and the
outer air. This is what gave St. Francis and his companions that quick
susceptibility to Nature which made them thrill in mysterious harmony
with her. Their communion with Nature was so intimate, so ardent, that
Umbria, with the harmonious poetry of its skies, the joyful outburst of
its spring-time, is still the best document from which to study them.
The tie between the two is so indissoluble, that after having lived a
certain time in company with St. Francis, one can hardly, on reading
certain passages of his biographers, help _seeing_ the spot where the
incident took place, hearing the vague sounds of creatures and things,
precisely as, when reading certain pages of a beloved author, one hears
the sound of his voice.
The worship of Poverty of the early Franciscans had in it, then, nothing
ascetic or barbarous, nothing which recalls the Stylites or the Nazirs.
She was their bride, and like true lovers they felt no fatigues which
they might endure to find and remain near her.
La lor concordia e lor lieti sembianti,
Amor e maraviglia e dolce sguardo
Facean esser cagion de' pensier santi.[10]
To draw the portrait of an ideal knight at the beginning of the
thirteenth century is to draw Francis's very portrait, with this
difference, that what the knight did for his lady, he did for Poverty.
This comparison is not a mere caprice; he himself profoundly felt it and
expressed it with perfect clearness, and it is only by keeping it
clearly present in the mind that we can see into the very depth of his
heart.[11]
To find any other souls of the same nature one must come down to
Giovanni di Parma and Jacoponi di Todi. The life of St. Francis as
troubadour has been written; it would have been better to write it as
knight, for this is the explanation of his whole life, and as it were
the heart of his heart. From the day when, forgetting the songs of his
friends and suddenly stopped in the public place of Assisi, he met
Poverty, his bride, and swore to her faith and love, down to that
evening when, naked upon the naked earth of Portiuncula, he breathed out
his life, it may be said that all his thoughts went out to this lady of
his chaste loves. For twenty years he served her without faltering,
sometimes with an artlessness which would appear infantine, if something
infinitely sincere and sublime did not arrest the smile upon the most
sceptical lips.
Poverty agreed marvellously with that need which men had at that time,
and which perhaps they have lost less than they suppose, the need of an
ideal very high, very pure, mysterious, inaccessible, which yet they may
picture to themselves in concrete form. Sometimes a few privileged
disciples saw the lovely and pure Lady descend from heaven to salute her
spouse, but, whether visible or not, she always kept close beside her
Umbrian lover, as she kept close beside the Galilean; in the stable of
the nativity, upon the cross at Golgotha, and even in the borrowed tomb
where his body lay.
During several years this ideal was not alone that of St. Francis, but
also of all the Brothers. In poverty the _gente poverelle_ had found
safety, love, liberty; and all the efforts of the new apostles are
directed to the keeping of this precious treasure.
Their worship sometimes might seem excessive. They showed their spouse
those delicate attentions, those refinements of courtesy so frequent in
the morning light of a betrothal, but which one gradually forgets till
they become incomprehensible.[12]
The number of disciples continually increased; almost every week brought
new recruits; the year 1211 was without doubt devoted by Francis to a
tour in Umbria and the neighboring provinces. His sermons were short
appeals to conscience; his heart went out to his hearers in ineffable
tones, so that when men tried to repeat what they had heard they found
themselves incapable.[13] The Rule of 1221 has preserved for us a
summary of these appeals:
"Here is an exhortation which all the Brothers may make when
they think best: Fear and honor God, praise and bless him. Give
thanks unto him. Adore the Lord, Almighty God, in Trinity and
unity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Repent and make
fruits meet for repentance, for you know that we shall soon die.
Give, and it shall be given unto you. Forgive, and you shall be
forgiven; for if you forgive not, God will not forgive you.
Blessed are they who die repenting, for they shall be in the
kingdom of heaven.... Abstain carefully from all evil, and
persevere in the good until the end."[14]
We see how simple and purely ethical was the early Franciscan preaching.
The complications of dogma and scholasticism are entirely absent from
it. To understand how new this was and how refreshing to the soul we
must study the disciples that came after him.
With St. Anthony of Padua ([Cross] June 13, 1231; canonized in 1233[15]),
the most illustrious of them all, the descent is immense. The distance
between these two men is as great as that which separates Jesus from
St. Paul.
I do not judge the disciple; he was of his time in not knowing how to
say simply what he thought, in always desiring to subtilize it, to
extract it from passages in the Bible turned from their natural meaning
by efforts at once laborious and puerile; what the alchemists did in
their continual making of strange mixtures from which they fancied that
they should bring out gold, the preachers did to the texts, in order to
bring out the truth.
The originality of St. Francis is only the more brilliant and
meritorious; with him gospel simplicity reappeared upon the earth.[16]
Like the lark with which he so much loved to compare himself,[17] he
was at his ease only in the open sky. He remained thus until his death.
The epistle to all Christians which he dictated in the last weeks of his
life repeats the same ideas in the same terms, perhaps with a little
more feeling and a shade of sadness. The evening breeze which breathed
upon his face and bore away his words was their symbolical
accompaniment.
"I, Brother Francis, the least of your servants, pray and conjure you by
that Love which is God himself, willing to throw myself at your feet and
kiss them, to receive with humility and love these words and all others
of our Lord Jesus Christ, to put them to profit and carry them out."
This was not a more or less oratorical formula. Hence conversions
multiplied with an incredible rapidity. Often, as formerly with Jesus, a
look, a word sufficed Francis to attach to himself men who would follow
him until their death. It is impossible, alas! to analyze the best of
this eloquence, all made of love, intimate apprehension, and fire. The
written word can no more give an idea of it than it can give us an idea
of a sonata of Beethoven or a painting by Rembrandt. We are often
amazed, on reading the memoirs of those who have been great conquerors
of souls, to find ourselves remaining cold, finding in them all no trace
of animation or originality. It is because we have only a lifeless relic
in the hand; the soul is gone. It is the white wafer of the sacrament,
but how shall that rouse in us the emotions of the beloved disciple
lying on the Lord's breast on the night of the Last Supper?
The class from which Francis recruited his disciples was still about the
same; they were nearly all young men of Assisi and its environs, some
the sons of agriculturists, and others nobles; the School and the Church
was very little represented among them.[18]
Everything still went on with an unheard-of simplicity. In theory,
obedience to the superior was absolute; in practice, we can see Francis
continually giving his companions complete liberty of action.[19] Men
entered the Order without a novitiate of any sort; it sufficed to say to
Francis that they wanted to lead with him a life of evangelical
perfection, and to prove it by giving all that they possessed to the
poor. The more unpretending were the neophytes, the more tenderness he
had for them. Like his Master, he had a partiality for those who were
lost, for men whom regular society casts out of its limits, but who with
all their crimes and scandals are nearer to sainthood than mediocrities
and hypocrites.
One day St. Francis, passing by the desert of Borgo San Sepolcro
came to a place called Monte-Casale,[20] and behold a noble and
refined young man came to him. "Father," he said, "I would
gladly be one of your disciples."
"My son," said St. Francis, "you are young, refined, and noble;
you will not be able to follow poverty and live wretched like
us."
"But, my father, are not you men like me? What you do I can do
with the grace of Jesus." This reply was well-pleasing to St.
Francis, who, giving him his blessing, incontinently received
him into the Order under the name of Brother Angelo.
He conducted himself so well that a little while after he was
made guardian[21] of Monte-Casale. Now, in those times there
were three famous robbers who did much evil in the country. They
came to the hermitage one day to beg Brother Angelo to give them
something to eat; but he replied to them with severe reproaches:
"What! robbers, evil-doers, assassins, have you not only no
shame for stealing the goods of others, but you would farther
devour the alms of the servants of God, you who are not worthy
to live, and who have respect neither for men nor for God your
Creator. Depart, and let me never see you here again!"
They went away full of rage. But behold, the Saint returned,
bringing a wallet of bread and a bottle of wine which had been
given him, and the guardian told him how he had sent away the
robbers; then St. Francis reproved him severely for showing
himself so cruel.... "I command thee by thine obedience," said
he, "to take at once this loaf and this wine and go seek the
robbers by hill and dell until you have found them, to offer
them this as from me, and to kneel there before them and humbly
ask their pardon, and pray them in my name no longer to do wrong
but to fear God; and if they do it, I promise to provide for all
their wants, to see that they always have enough to eat and
drink. After that you may humbly return hither."
Brother Angelo did all that had been commanded him, while St.
Francis on his part prayed God to convert the robbers. They
returned with the brother, and when St. Francis gave them the
assurance of the pardon of God, they changed their lives and
entered the Order, in which they lived and died most
holily.[22]
What has sometimes been said of the voice of the blood is still more
true of the voice of the soul. When a man truly wakens another to moral
life, he gains for himself an unspeakable gratitude. The word _master_
is often profaned, but it can express the noblest and purest of earthly
ties.
Who are those among us, who in the hours of manly innocence when they
examine their own consciences, do not see rising up before them from out
of the past the ever beloved and loving face of one who, perhaps without
knowing it, initiated them into spiritual things? At such a time we
would throw ourselves at the feet of this father, would tell him in
burning words of our admiration and gratitude. We cannot do it, for the
soul has its own bashfulness; but who knows that our disquietude and
embarrassment do not betray us, and unveil, better than words could do,
the depths of our heart? The air they breathed at Portiuncula was all
impregnated with joy and gratitude like this.
To many of the Brothers, St. Francis was truly a saviour; he had
delivered them from chains heavier than those of prisons. And therefore
their greatest desire was in their turn to call others to this same
liberty.
We have already seen Brother Bernardo on a mission to Florence a few
months after his entrance into the Order. Arrived at maturity when he
put on the habit, he appears in some degree the senior of this apostolic
college. He knew how to obey St. Francis and remain faithful to the very
end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege
of the young--of Brother Leo, for example--of being able to transform
himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His
physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy,
which is so great a charm of the others.
Toward this epoch two Brothers entered the Order, men such as the
successors of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright
light on the simplicity of the early days. It will be remembered with
what zeal Francis had repaired several churches; his solicitude went
further; he saw a sort of profanation in the negligence with which most
of them were kept; the want of cleanliness of the sacred objects,
ill-concealed by tinsel, gave him a sort of pain, and it often happened
that when he was going to preach somewhere he secretly called together
the priests of the locality and implored them to look after the decency
of the service. But even in these cases he was not content to preach
only in words; binding together some stalks of heather he would make
them into brooms for sweeping out the churches.
One day in the suburbs of Assisi he was performing this task when a
peasant appeared, who had left his oxen and cart out in the fields while
he came to gaze at him.
"Brother," said he on entering, "give me the broom. I will help
you," and he swept out the rest of the church.
When he had finished, "Brother," he said to Francis, "for a long
time I have decided to serve God, especially when I heard men
speak of you. But I never knew how to find you. Now it has
pleased God that we should meet, and henceforth I shall do
whatever you may please to command me."
Francis seeing his fervor felt a great joy; it seemed to him
that with his simplicity and honesty he would become a good
friar.
It appears indeed that he had only too much simplicity, for after his
reception he felt himself bound to imitate every motion of the master,
and when the latter coughed, spat, or sighed, he did the same. At last
Francis noticed it and gently reproved him. Later he became so perfect
that the other friars admired him greatly, and after his death, which
took place not long after, St. Francis loved to relate his conversion,
calling him not Brother John, but Brother St. John.[23]
Ginepro is still more celebrated for his holy follies.
One day he went to see a sick Brother and offered him his services. The
patient confessed that he had a great longing to eat a pig's foot; the
visitor immediately rushed out, and armed with a knife ran to the
neighboring forest, where, espying a troop of pigs, he cut off a foot of
one of them, returning to the monastery full of pride over his trophy.
The owner of the pigs shortly followed, howling like mad, but Ginepro
went straight to him and pointed out with so much volubility that he had
done him a great service, that the man, after overwhelming him with
reproaches, suddenly begged pardon, killed the pig and invited all the
Brothers to feast upon it. Ginepro was probably less mad than the story
would lead us to suppose; Franciscan humility never had a more sincere
disciple; he could not endure the tokens of admiration which the
populace very early lavished on the growing Order, and which by their
extravagance contributed so much to its decadence.
One day, as he was entering Rome, the report of his arrival spread
abroad, and a great crowd came out to meet him. To escape was
impossible, but he suddenly had an inspiration; near the gate of the
city some children were playing at see-saw; to the great amazement of
the Romans Ginepro joined them, and, without heeding the salutations
addressed to him, remained so absorbed in his play that at last his
indignant admirers departed.[24]
It is clear that the life at Portiuncula must have been very different
from that of an ordinary convent. So much youth,[25] simplicity, love,
quickly drew the eyes of men toward it. From all sides they were turned
to those thatched huts, where dwelt a spiritual family whose members
loved one another more than men love on earth, leading a life of labor,
mirth, and devotion. The humble chapel seemed a new Zion destined to
enlighten the world, and many in their dreams beheld blind humanity
coming to kneel there and recover sight.[26]
Among the first disciples who joined themselves to St. Francis we must
mention Brother Silvestro, the first priest who entered the Order, the
very same whom we have already seen the day that Bernardo di Quintevalle
distributed his goods among the poor. Since then he had not had a
moment's peace, bitterly reproaching himself for his avarice; night and
day he thought only of that, and in his dreams he saw Francis exorcising
a horrid monster which infested all the region.[27]
By his age and the nature of the memory he has left behind him Silvestro
resembles Brother Bernardo. He was what is usually understood by a holy
priest, but nothing denotes that he had the truly Franciscan love of
great enterprises, distant journeys, perilous missions. Withdrawn into
one of the grottos of the Carceri, absorbed in the contemplative life,
he gave spiritual counsels to his brethren as occasion served.[28]
The typical Franciscan priest is Brother Leo. The date of his entrance
into the Order is not exactly known, but we are probably not far from
the truth in placing it about 1214. Of a charming simplicity, tender,
affectionate, refined, he is, with Brother Elias, the one who plays the
noblest part during the obscure years in which the new reform was being
elaborated. Becoming Francis's confessor and secretary, treated by him
as his favorite son, he excited much opposition, and was to the end of
his long life the head of the strict observance.[29]
One winter's day, St. Francis was going with Brother Leo from
Perugia to Santa Maria degli Angeli, and the cold, being
intense, made them shiver; he called Brother Leo, who was
walking a little in advance, and said: "O Brother Leo, may it
please God that the Brothers Minor all over the world may give a
great example of holiness and edification; write, however, and
note with care, that not in this is the perfect joy."
St. Francis, going on a little farther, called him a second
time: "O Brother Leo, if the Brothers Minor gave sight to the
blind, healed the infirm, cast out demons, gave hearing to the
deaf, or even what is much more, if they raised the four days
dead, write that not in this is the perfect joy."
Going on a little farther he cried: "O Brother Leo, if the
Brother Minor knew all languages, all science, and all
scriptures, if he could prophesy and reveal not only future
things but even the secrets of consciences and of souls, write
that not in this consists the perfect joy."
Going a little farther St. Francis called to him again: "O
Brother Leo, little sheep of God, if the Brother Minor could
speak the language of angels, if he knew the courses of the
stars and the virtues of plants, if all the treasures of earth
were revealed to him, and he knew the qualities of birds,
fishes, and all animals, of men, trees, rocks, roots, and
waters, write that not in these is the perfect joy."
And advancing still a little farther St. Francis called loudly
to him: "O Brother Leo, if the Brother Minor could preach so
well as to convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write
that not in this is the perfect joy."
While speaking thus they had already gone more than two miles,
and Brother Leo, full of surprise, said to him: "Father, I pray
you in God's name tell me in what consists the perfect joy."
And St. Francis replied: "When we arrive at Santa Maria degli
Angeli, soaked with rain, frozen with cold, covered with mud,
dying of hunger, and we knock and the porter comes in a rage,
saying, 'Who are you?' and we answer, 'We are two of your
brethren,' and he says, 'You lie, you are two lewd fellows who
go up and down corrupting the world and stealing the alms of the
poor. Go away from here!' and he does not open to us, but leaves
us outside shivering in the snow and rain, frozen, starved, till
night; then, if thus maltreated and turned away, we patiently
endure all without murmuring against him, if we think with
humility and charity that this porter really knows us truly and
that God makes him speak thus to us, then, O Brother Leo, write
that in this is the perfect joy.... Above all the graces and all
the gifts which the Holy Spirit gives to his friends is the
grace to conquer oneself, and willingly to suffer pain,
outrages, disgrace, and evil treatment, for the love of
Christ!"[30]
Although by its slight and somewhat playful character this story recalls
the insipid statues of the fourteenth century, it has justly become
celebrated, its spirit is thoroughly Franciscan; that transcendent
idealism, which sees in perfection and joy two equivalent terms, and
places perfect joy in the pure and serene region of the perfecting of
oneself; that sublime simplicity which so easily puts in their true
place the miracle-worker and the scholar, these are perhaps not entirely
new;[31] but St. Francis must have had singular moral strength to
impose upon his contemporaries ideas in such absolute contradiction to
their habits and their hopes; for the intellectual aristocracy of the
thirteenth century with one accord found the perfect joy in knowledge,
while the people found it in miracles.
Doubtless we must not forget those great mystical families, which, all
through the Middle Ages, were the refuge of the noblest souls; but they
never had this fine simplicity. The School is always more or less the
gateway to mysticism; it is possible only to an elect of subtile minds;
a pious peasant seldom understands the Imitation.
It may be said that all St. Francis's philosophy is contained in this
chapter of the Fioretti.[32] From it we foresee what will be his
attitude toward learning, and are helped to understand how it happens
that this famous saint was so poor a miracle-worker.
Twelve centuries before, Jesus had said, "Blessed are the poor in
spirit. Blessed are they who suffer." The words of St. Francis are only
a commentary, but this commentary is worthy of the text.
It remains to say a word concerning two disciples who were always
closely united with Brother Leo in the Franciscan memorials--Rufino and
Masseo.
Born of a noble family connected with that of St. Clara, the former was
soon distinguished in the Order for his visions and ecstasies, but his
great timidity checked him as soon as he tried to preach: for this
reason he is always to be found in the most isolated hermitages--Carceri,
Verna, Greccio.[33]
Masseo, of Marignano, a small village in the environs of Assisi, was his
very opposite; handsome, well made, witty, he attracted attention by his
fine presence and his great facility of speech; he occupies a special
place in popular Franciscan tradition. He deserves it. St. Francis, to
test his humility, made him the porter and cook of the hermitage,[34]
but in these functions Masseo showed himself to be so perfectly a
_Minor_ that from that time the master particularly loved to have him
for companion in his missionary journeys.
One day they were travelling together, when they arrived at the
intersection of the roads to Sienna, Arezzo, and Florence.
"Which one shall we take?" asked Masseo.
"Whichever one God wills."
"But how shall we know which one God wills?"
"You shall see. Go and stand at the crossing of the roads, turn round
and round as the children do, and do not stop until I bid you."
Brother Masseo began to turn; seized with a vertigo, he was nearly
falling, but caught himself up at once. Finally Francis called out,
"Stop! which way are you facing?"
"Toward Sienna."
"Very well; God wills that we go to Sienna."[35]
Such a method of making up one's mind is doubtless not for the daily
needs of life, but Francis employed still others, like it, if not in
form at least in fact.
Up to this time we have seen the brethren living together in their
hermitages or roving the highways, preaching repentance. It would,
however, be a mistake to think that their whole lives were passed thus.
To understand the first Franciscans we must absolutely forget what they
may have been since that time, and what monks are in general; if
Portiuncula was a monastery it was also a workshop, where each brother
practised the trade which had been his before entering the Order; but
what is stranger still to our ideas, the Brothers often went out as
servants.[36]
Brother Egidio's case was not an exception, it was the rule. This did
not last long, for very soon the friars who entered a house as domestics
came to be treated as distinguished guests; but in the beginning they
were literally servants, and took upon themselves the most menial
labors. Among the works which they might undertake Francis recommended
above all the care of lepers. We have already seen the important part
which these unfortunates played in his conversion; he always retained
for them a peculiar pity, which he sought to make his disciples share.
For several years the Brothers Minor may be said to have gone from
lazaretto to lazaretto, preaching by day in the towns and villages, and
retiring at night to these refuges, where they rendered to these
_patients of God_ the most repugnant services.
The Crucigeri, who took charge of the greater number of leper-houses,
always welcomed these kindly disposed aides, who, far from asking any
sort of recompense, were willing to eat whatever the patients might have
left.[37] In fact, although created solely for the care of lepers, the
Brothers of this Order sometimes lost patience when the sufferers were
too exacting, and instead of being grateful had only murmurs or even
reproaches for their benefactors. In these desperate cases the
intervention of Francis and his disciples was especially precious. It
often happened that a Brother was put in special charge of a single
leper, whose companion and servant he continued to be, sometimes for a
long period.[38]
The following narrative shows Francis's love for these unfortunates, and
his method with them.[39]
It happened one time that the Brothers were serving the lepers
and the sick in a hospital, near to the place where St. Francis
was. Among them was a leper who was so impatient, so
cross-grained, so unendurable, that everyone believed him to be
possessed by the devil, and rightly enough, for he heaped
insults and blows upon those who waited upon him, and what was
worse, he continually insulted and blasphemed the blessed Christ
and his most holy Mother the Virgin Mary, so that there was no
longer anyone who could or would wait upon him. The Brothers
would willingly have endured the insults and abuse which he
lavished upon them, in order to augment the merit of their
patience, but their souls could not consent to hear those which
he uttered against Christ and his Mother. They therefore
resolved to abandon this leper, but not without having told the
whole story exactly to St. Francis, who at that time was
dwelling not far away.
When they told him St. Francis betook himself to the wicked
leper; "May God give thee peace, my most dear brother," he said
to him as he drew near.
"And what peace," asked the leper, "can I receive from God, who
has taken away my peace and every good thing, and has made my
body a mass of stinking and corruption?"
St. Francis said to him: "My brother, be patient, for God gives
us diseases in this world for the salvation of our souls, and
when we endure them patiently they are the fountain of great
merit to us."
"How can I endure patiently continual pains which torture me day
and night? And it is not only my disease that I suffer from, but
the friars that you gave me to wait upon me are unendurable, and
do not take care of me as they ought."
Then St. Francis perceived that this leper was possessed by the
spirit of evil, and he betook himself to his knees in order to
pray for him. Then returning he said to him: "My son, since you
are not satisfied with the others, I will wait upon you."
"That is all very well, but what can you do for me more than
they?"
"I will do whatever you wish."
"Very well; I wish you to wash me from head to foot, for I smell
so badly that I disgust myself."
Then St. Francis made haste to heat some water with many
sweet-smelling herbs; next he took off the leper's clothes and
began to bathe him, while a Brother poured out the water. And
behold, by a divine miracle, wherever St. Francis touched him
with his holy hands the leprosy disappeared and the flesh became
perfectly sound. And in proportion as the flesh was healed the
soul of the wretched man was also healed, and he began to feel a
lively sorrow for his sins, and to weep bitterly.... And being
completely healed both in body and soul, he cried with all his
might: "Woe unto me, for I have deserved hell for the abuses and
outrages which I have said and done to the Brothers, for my
impatience and my blasphemies."
One day, Brother John, whose simplicity we have already seen, and who
had been especially put in charge of a certain leper, took him for a
walk to Portiuncula, as if he had not been the victim of a contagious
malady. Reproaches were not spared him; the leper heard them and could
not hide his sadness and distress; it seemed to him like being a second
time banished from the world. Francis was quick to remark all this and
to feel sharp remorse for it; the thought of having saddened one of
_God's patients_ was unendurable; he not only begged his pardon, but he
caused food to be served, and sitting down beside him he shared his
repast, eating from the same porringer.[40] We see with what
perseverance he pursued by every means the realization of his ideal.
The details just given show the Umbrian movement, as it appears to me,
to be one of the most humble and at the same time the most sincere and
practical attempts to realize the kingdom of God on earth. How far
removed we are here from the superstitious vulgarity of the mechanical
devotion, the deceitful miracle-working of certain Catholics; how far
also from the commonplace, complacent, quibbling, theorizing
Christianity of certain Protestants!
Francis is of the race of mystics, for no intermediary comes between God
and his soul; but his mysticism is that of Jesus leading his disciples
to the Tabor of contemplation; but when, overflooded with joy, they long
to build tabernacles that they may remain on the heights and satiate
themselves with the raptures of ecstasy, "Fools," he says to them, "ye
know not what ye ask," and directing their gaze to the crowds wandering
like sheep having no shepherd, he leads them back to the plain, to the
midst of those who moan, who suffer, who blaspheme.
The higher the moral stature of Francis the more he was exposed to the
danger of being understood only by the very few, and disappointed by
those who were nearest to him. Reading the Franciscan authors, one feels
every moment how the radiant beauty of the model is marred by the
awkwardness of the disciple. It could not have been otherwise, and this
difference between this master and the companions is evident from the
very beginnings of the Order. The greater number of the biographers have
drawn the veil of oblivion over the difficulties created by certain
Brothers as well as those which came from the ecclesiastical hierarchy,
but we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by this almost universal
silence.
Here and there we find indications all the more precious for being, so
to say, involuntary. Brother Rufino, for example, the same who was
destined to become one of the intimates of Francis's later days, assumed
an attitude of revolt shortly after his entrance into the Order. He
thought it foolish in Francis when, instead of leaving the friars to
give themselves unceasingly to prayer, he sent them out in all
directions to wait upon lepers.[41] His own ideal was the life of the
hermits of the Thebaïde, as it is related in the then popular legends of
St. Anthony, St. Paul, St. Paconius, and twenty others. He once passed
Lent in one of the grottos of the Carceri. Holy Thursday having arrived,
Francis, who was also there, summoned all the brethren who were
dispersed about the neighborhood, whether in grottos or huts, to observe
with him the memories to which this day was consecrated. Rufino refused
to come; "For that matter," he added, "I have decided to follow him no
longer; I mean to remain here and live solitary, for in this way I
shall be more surely saved than by submitting myself to this man and his
nonsense."
Young and enthusiastic for the most part, it was not always without
difficulty that the Brothers formed the habit of keeping their work in
the background. Agreeing with their master as to fundamentals, they
would have liked to make more of a stir, attract public attention by
more obvious devotion; there were some among them whom it did not
satisfy to be saints, but who also wished to appear such.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 1 Cel., 44; 3 Soc., 55.
[2] 3 Soc., 56; _Spec._, 32b; _Conform._, 217b, 1; _Fior. Bibl.
Angel._, Amoni, p. 378.
[3] This forest has disappeared. Some of Francis's counsels have
been collected in the Admonitions. See 1 Cel., 37-41.
[4] Vide Angelo Clareno, _Tribul._ cod. Laur., 3b.
[5] 2 Cel., 3, 97 and 98. The Conformities, 142a, 1, cite
textually 97 as coming from the _Legenda Antiqua_. Cf. _Spec._,
64b.--2 Cel., 3, 21. Cf. _Conform._, 171a, 1; _Spec._, 19b. See
especially Rule of 1221, _cap._ 7; Rule of 1223, _cap._ 5; the
Will and 3 Soc. 41. The passage, _liceat eis habere ferramenta
et instrumenta suis artibus necessaria_, sufficiently proves
that certain friars had real trades.
[6] A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., pp. 220-248; _Fior. Vita
d'Egidio_; _Spec._, 158 ff; _Conform._, 53-60.
[7] Other examples will be found below; it may suffice to recall
here his sally: "The glorious Virgin Mother of God had sinners
for parents, she never entered any religious order, and yet she
is what she is!" A. SS., _loc. cit._, p. 234.
[8] The passage of the Will, _firmiter volo quod omnes
laborent_, ... has a capital importance because it shows Francis
renewing in the most solemn manner injunctions already made from
the origin of the Order. Cf. 1 Cel., 38 and 39; _Conform._,
219b. 1: _Juvabant Fratres pauperes homines in agris eorum et
ipsi dabant postea eis de pane amore Dei._ _Spec._, 34; 69. Vide
also _Archiv._, t. ii., pp. 272 and 299; Eccleston, 1 and 15; 2
Cel., 1, 12.
[9] _Nihil volebat proprietatis habere ut omnia plenius posset
in Domino possidere._ B. de Besse, 102a.
[10] Their concord and their joyous semblances
The love, the wonder and the sweet regard
They made to be the cause of holy thought.
DANTE: Paradiso, canto xi., verses 76-78. Longfellow's translation.
[11] _Amor factus ... castis eam, stringit amplexibus nec ad
horam patitur non esse muritus._ 2 Cel., 3, 1; cf. 1 Cel., 35;
51; 75; 2 Cel., 3, 128; 3 Soc., 15; 22; 33; 35; 50; Bon., 87;
_Fior._ 13.
[12] Bon., 93.--_Prohibuit fratrem qui faciebat coquinam ne
poneret legumina de sero in aqua calida quæ debebat dare
fratribus ad manducandum die sequenti ut observaverint illud
verbum Evangelii: Nolite solliciti esse de crastino._ _Spec._,
15.
[13] 2 Cel., 3, 50.
[14] _Cap._, 21. Cf. _Fior., I. consid._, 18; 30; _Conform._,
103a, 2; 2 Cel., 3, 99; 100; 121. Vide Müller, _Anfänge_, p.
187.
[15] Vide his _Opera omnia postillis illustrata_, by Father de
la Haye, 1739, f^o. For his life, Surius and Wadding arranged
and mutilated the sources to which they had access; the
Bollandists had only a legend of the fifteenth century. The
Latin manuscript 14,363 of the Bibliothèque Nationale gives one
which dates from the thirteenth. Very Rev. Father Hilary, of
Paris: _Saint Antoine de Padone, sa légende primitive_,
Montreuil-sur-Mer, Imprimerie Notre-Dame-des-Prés, 1890, 1 vol.,
8vo. Cf. _Legenda seu vita et miracula S. Antonii sæculo xiii
concinnata ex cod. memb. antoniæ bibliothecæ_ a P.M. Antonio
Maria Josa min. comv. Bologna, 1883, 1 vol., 8vo.
[16] This evangelical character of his mission is brought out in
relief by all his biographers. 1 Cel., 56; 84; 89; 3 Soc. 25;
34; 40; 43; 45; 48; 51; 57; 2 Cel., 3, 8; 50; 93.
[17] _Spec._, 134; 2 Cel., 3, 128.
[18] The Order was at first essentially lay (at the present time
it is, so far as I know, the only one in which there is no
difference of costume between laymen and priests). Vide Ehrle,
_Archiv._, iii., p. 563. It is the influence of the friars from
northern countries which has especially changed it in this
matter. General Aymon, of Faversham (1240-1243), decided that
laymen should be excluded from all charges; _laicos ad officia
inhabilitavit, quæ usque tunc ut clerici exercebant_. (_Chron._
xxiv. _gen._ cod. Gadd. relig., 53, f^o 110a). Among the early
Brothers who refused ordination there were surely some who did
so from humility, but this sentiment is not enough to explain
all the cases. There were also with certain of them
revolutionary desires and as it were a vague memory of the
prophecies of Gioacchino di Fiore upon the age succeeding that
of the priests: _Fior._, 27. _Frate Pellegrino non volle mai
andare come chierico, ma come laico, benche fassi molto
litterato e grande decretalista._ Cf. _Conform._, 71a., 2. _Fr.
Thomas Hibernicus sibi pollecem amputavit ne ad sacerdotium
cogeretur._ _Conform._, 124b, 2.
[19] See, for example, the letter to Brother Leo. Cf.
_Conform._, 53b, 2. _Fratri Egidio dedit licentiam liberam ut
iret quocumque vellet et staret ubicumque sibi placeret._
[20] The hermitage of Monte-Casale, at two hours walk northeast
from Borgo San Sepolero, still exists in its original state. It
is one of the most significant and curious of the Franciscan
deserts.
[21] The office of guardian (superior of a monastery) naturally
dates from the time when the Brothers stationed themselves in
small groups in the villages of Umbria--that is to say, most
probably from the year 1211. A few years later the monasteries
were united to form a custodia. Finally, about 1215, Central
Italy was divided unto a certain number of provinces with
provincial ministers at their head. All this was done little by
little, for Francis never permitted himself to regulate what did
not yet exist.
[22] _Fior._, 26; Conform., 119b, 1. Cf. Rule of 1221, cap. vii.
_Quicumque ad eos (fratres) venerint, amicus vel adversarius,
fur vel latro benigne recipiatur._
[23] 2 Cel., 3, 120; _Spec._, 37; _Conform._, 53a, 1. See below,
p. 385, n. 1.
[24] _Fior._, Vita di fra Ginepro; _Spec._, 174-182; _Conform._,
62b.
[25] A. SS., p. 600.
[26] 3 Soc., 56; 2 Cel., 1, 13; Bon., 24.
[27] Bon., 30; 3 Soc., 30, 31; 2 Cel., 3, 52. Cf. _Fior._, 2.
The dragon of this dream perhaps symbolizes heresy.
[28] Bon., 83; 172; _Fior._, 1, 16; _Conform._, 49a, 1, and
110b, 1; 2 Cel., 3, 51.
[29] Bernard de Besse, _De laudibus_, Turin MS., f^o. 102b and
96a. He died November 15, 1271. A. SS., Augusti, t. ii., p. 221.
[30] _Fior._, 8; _Spec._, 89b ff.; _Conform._, 30b, 2, and 140a,
2.
[31] I need not here point out the analogy in form between this
chapter and St. Paul's celebrated song of love, 1 Cor. xiii.
[32] We find the same thoughts in nearly the same terms in
_cap._ v. of the _Verba sacræ admonitionis_.
[33] He is the second of the Three Companions. 3 Soc., 1; cf. 1
Cel., 95; _Fior._, 1; 29, 30, 31; Eccleston, 12; _Spec._,
110a-114b; _Conform._, 51b ff.; cf. 2 Cel., 2, 4.
[34] Very probably that of the Carceri, though the name is not
indicated Vide 3 Soc., 1; _Fior._, 4; 10; 11; 12; 13; 16; 27;
32; _Conform._, 51b, 1 ff; _Tribul. Archiv._, t. ii., p. 263.
[35] _Fior._, 11; _Conform._, 50b, 2; _Spec._, 104a.
[36] Rule of 1221, chap. 7. _Omnes fratres, in quibuscumque
locis fuerint apud aliquos ad serviendum, vel ad laborandum, non
sint camerarii, nec cellarii, nec præsint in domibus corum
quibus serviunt._ Cf. 1 Cel., 38 and 40; A. SS., p. 606.
[37] 1 Cel., 103; 39; _Spec._, 28; Reg. 1221, ix.; _Giord._, 33
and 39.
[38] Vide _Spec._, 34b.; _Fior._, 4.
[39] All the details of this story lead me to think that it
refers to Portiuncula and the hospital _San Salvatore delle
Pareti_. The story is given by the _Conform._, 174b, 2, as taken
from the _Legenda Antiqua_. Cf. _Spec._, 56b; _Fior._, 25.
[40] In the _Speculum_, f^o 41a, this story ends with the
phrase: _Qui vidit hæc scripsit et testimonium perhibet de
hiis_. The brother is here called _Frater Jacobus simplex_. Cf.
_Conform._, 174b.
[41] _Conform._, 51b, 1. Cf. 2 Cel., 2, 4; _Spec._, 110b;
_Fior._, 29.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX
SANTA CLARA
Popular piety in Umbria never separates the memory of St. Francis from
that of Santa Clara. It is right.
Clara[1] was born at Assisi in 1194, and was consequently about twelve
years younger than Francis. She belonged to the noble family of the
Sciffi. At the age when a little girl's imagination awakes and stirs,
she heard the follies of the son of Bernardone recounted at length. She
was sixteen when the Saint preached for the first time in the cathedral,
suddenly appearing like an angel of peace in a city torn by intestine
dissensions. To her his appeals were like a revelation. It seemed as if
Francis was speaking for her, that he divined her secret sorrows, her
most personal anxieties, and all that was ardent and enthusiastic in the
heart of this young girl rushed like a torrent that suddenly finds an
outlet into the channel indicated by him. For saints as for heroes the
supreme stimulus is woman's admiration.
But here, more than ever, we must put away the vulgar judgment which can
understand no union between man and woman where the sexual instinct has
no part. That which makes the union of the sexes something almost divine
is that it is the prefiguration, the symbol, of the union of souls.
Physical love is an ephemeral spark, designed to kindle in human hearts
the flame of a more lasting love; it is the outer court of the temple,
but not the most holy place; its inestimable value is precisely that it
leaves us abruptly at the door of the holiest of all as if to invite us
to step over the threshold.
The mysterious sigh of nature goes out for the union of souls. This is
the unknown God to whom debauchees, those pagans of love, offer their
sacrifices, and this sacred imprint, even though effaced, though soiled
by all pollutions, often saves the man of the world from inspiring as
much disgust as the drunkard and the criminal.
But sometimes--more often than we think--there are souls so pure, so
little earthly, that on their first meeting they enter the most holy
place, and once there the thought of any other union would be not merely
a descent, but an impossibility. Such was the love of St. Francis and
St. Clara.
But these are exceptions. There is something mysterious in this supreme
purity; it is so high that in holding it up to men one risks speaking to
them in an unknown tongue, or even worse.
The biographers of St. Francis have clearly felt the danger of offering
to the multitude the sight of certain beauties which are far beyond
them, and this is for us the great fault of their works. They try to
give us not so much the true portrait of Francis as that of the perfect
minister-general of the Order such as they conceive it, such as it must
needs be to serve as a model for his disciples; thus they have made this
model somewhat according to the measure of those whom it is to serve, by
omitting here and there features which, stupidly interpreted, might have
furnished material for the malevolence of unscrupulous adversaries, or
from which disciples little versed in spiritual things could not have
failed to draw support for permitting themselves dangerous intimacies.
Thus the relations of St. Francis with women in general and St. Clara in
particular, have been completely travestied by Thomas of Celano. It
could not have been otherwise, and we must not bear him a grudge for it.
The life of the founder of an Order, when written by a monk, in the very
nature of things becomes always a sort of appendix to or illustration of
the Rule. And the Rule, especially if the Order has its thousands of
members, is necessarily made not for the elect, but for the average, for
the majority of the flock.[2]
Hence this portrait, in which St. Francis is represented as a stern
ascetic, to whom woman appears to be a sort of incarnate devil! The
biographers even go so far as to assure us that he knew only two women
by sight. These are manifest exaggerations, or rather the opposite of
the truth.[3]
We are not reduced to conjecture to discover the true attitude of the
Umbrian prophet in this matter. Without suspecting it, Celano himself
gives details enough for the correction of his own errors, and there are
besides a number of other documents whose scattered hints correspond and
agree with one another in a manner all the more marvellous that it is
entirely unintentional, giving, when they are brought together, almost
all one could desire to know of the intercourse of these two beautiful
souls.
After the sermons of Francis at St. Rufino, Clara's decision was
speedily taken; she would break away from the trivialities of an idle
and luxurious life and make herself the servant of the poor; all her
efforts should be bent to make each day a new advance in the royal way
of love and poverty; and for this she would have only to obey him who
had suddenly revealed it to her.
She sought him out and opened to him her heart. With that exaltation, a
union of candor and delicacy, which is woman's fine endowment, and to
which she would more readily give free course if she did not too often
divine the pitfalls of base passion and incredulity, Clara offered
herself to Francis.
It is one of the privileges of saints to suffer more than other men, for
they feel in their more loving hearts the echo of all the sorrows of the
world; but they also know joys and delights of which common men never
taste. What an inexpressible song of joy must have burst forth in
Francis's heart when he saw Clara on her knees before him, awaiting,
with his blessing, the word which would consecrate her life to the
gospel ideal.
Who knows if this interview did not inspire another saint, Fra Angelico,
to introduce into his masterpiece those two elect souls who, already
radiant with the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, stop to exchange a
kiss before crossing its threshold?
Souls, like flowers, have a perfume of their own which never deceives.
One look had sufficed for Francis to go down into the depths of this
heart; he was too kind to submit Clara to useless tests, too much an
idealist to prudently confine himself to custom or arbitrary decorum; as
when he founded the Order of Friars, he took counsel only of himself and
God. In this was his strength; if he had hesitated, or even if he had
simply submitted himself to ecclesiastical rules, he would have been
stopped twenty times before he had done anything. Success is so powerful
an argument that the biographers appear not to have perceived how
determined Francis was to ignore the canonical laws. He, a simple
deacon, arrogated to himself the right to receive Clara's vows and admit
her to the Order without the briefest novitiate. Such an act ought to
have drawn down upon its author all the censures of the Church, but
Francis was already one of those powers to whom much is forgiven, even
by those who speak in the name of the holy Roman Church.
Francis had decided that on the night between Palm Sunday and Holy
Monday (March 18-19, 1212) Clara should secretly quit the paternal
castle and come with two companions to Portiuncula, where he would await
her, and would give her the veil. She arrived just as the friars were
singing matins. They went out, the story goes, carrying candles in their
hands, to meet the bride, while from the woods around Portiuncula
resounded songs of joy over this new bridal. Then Mass was begun at that
same altar where, three years before, Francis had heard the decisive
call of Jesus; he was kneeling in the same place, but surrounded now
with a whole spiritual family.
It is easy to imagine Clara's emotion. The step which she had just taken
was simply heroic, for she knew to what persecutions from her family she
was exposing herself, and what she had seen of the life of the Brothers
Minor was a sufficient warning of the distresses to which she was
exposing herself in espousing poverty. No doubt she interpreted the
words of the service in harmony with her own thoughts:
"Surely they are my people," said Jehovah.
"Children who will not be faithless!"
And he was for them a saviour.
In none of their afflictions were they without succor.
And the angel that is before his face saved them.[4]
Then Francis read again the words of Jesus to his disciples; she vowed
to conform her life to them; her hair was cut off; all was finished. A
few moments after, Francis conducted her to a house of Benedictine
nuns[5] at an hour's distance, where she was to remain provisionally
and await the progress of events.
The very next morning Favorino, her father, arrived with a few friends,
inveighing, supplicating, abusing everybody. She was unmovable, showing
so much courage that at last they gave up the thought of carrying her
off by main force.
She was not, however, at the end of her tribulations. Had this scene
frightened the Benedictines? We cannot tell, but less than a fortnight
after we find her in another convent, that of Sant-Angelo in Panso, at
Assisi.[6] A week after Easter, Agnes, her younger sister, joined her
there, decided in her turn to serve poverty. Francis received her into
the Order. This time the father's fury was horrible. With a band of
relatives he invaded the convent, but neither abuse nor blows could
subdue this child of fourteen. In spite of her cries they dragged her
away. She fainted, and the little inanimate body suddenly seemed to them
so heavy that they abandoned it in the midst of the fields, some
laborers looking with pity on the painful scene, until Clara, whose cry
God had heard, hastened to succor her sister.
Their sojourn in this convent was of very short duration. It appears
that they did not carry away a very pleasant impression of it.[7]
Francis knew that several others were burning to join his two women
friends; he therefore set himself to seek out a retreat where they
could live under his direction and in all liberty practise the gospel
rule.
He had not long to seek; the Benedictine monks of Mount Subasio always
seized every possible opportunity to make themselves popular. They
belonged to that congregation of Camaldoli, whom the common people
appear to have particularly detested, and several of whose convents had
lately been pillaged.[8] The abbey no longer counted more than eight
monks, who were trying to save the wreck of their riches and privileges
by partial sacrifices; on the 22d of April, 1212, they had given to the
commune of Assisi for a communal house a monument which is standing this
day, the temple of Minerva.[9]
Francis, who already was their debtor for Portiuncula, once more
addressed himself to them. Happy in this new opportunity to render
service to one who was the incarnation of popular claims, they gave him
the chapel of St. Damian; perhaps they were well pleased, by favoring
the new Order, to annoy Bishop Guido, of whom they had reason to
complain.[10] However this may be, in this hermitage, so well adapted
for prayer and meditation, Francis installed his spiritual
daughters.[11] In this sanctuary, repaired by his own hands, at the
feet of this crucifix which had spoken to him, Clara was henceforward to
pray. It was the house of God; it was also in good measure that of
Francis. Crossing its threshold, Clara doubtless experienced that
feeling, at once so sweet and so poignant, of the wife who for the first
time enters her husband's house, trembling with emotion at the radiant
and confused vision of the future.
If we are not entirely to misapprehend these beginnings, we must
remember with what rapidity external influences transformed the first
conception of St. Francis. At this moment he no more expected to found a
second order than he had desired to found the first one. In snatching
Clara from her family he had simply acted like a true knight who rescues
an oppressed woman, and takes her under his protection. In installing
her at St. Damian he was preparing a refuge for those who desired to
imitate her and apart from the world practise the gospel Rule. But he
never thought that the perfection of which he and his disciples were the
apostles and missionaries, and which Clara and her companions were to
realize in celibacy, was not practicable in social positions also;
thence comes what is wrongly called the _Tertiari_, or Third Order, and
which in its primitive thought was not separated from the first. This
Third Order had no need to be instituted in 1221, for it existed from
the moment when a single conscience resolved to practise his teachings,
without being able to follow him to Portiuncula.[12] The enemy of the
soul for him as for Jesus was avarice, understood in its largest
sense--that is to say, that blindness which constrains men to consecrate
their hearts to material preoccupations, makes them the slave of a few
pieces of gold or a few acres of land, renders them insensible to the
beauties of nature, and deprives them of infinite joys which they alone
can know who are the disciples of poverty and love.
Whoever was free at heart from all material servitude, whoever was
decided to live without hoarding, every rich man who was willing to
labor with his hands and loyally distribute all that he did not consume
in order to constitute the common fund which St. Francis called _the
Lord's table_, every poor man who was willing to work, free to resort,
in the strict measure of his wants, to this table of the Lord, these
were at that time true Franciscans.
It was a social revolution.
There was then at that time neither one Order nor several.[13] The
gospel of the Beatitudes had been found again, and, as twelve centuries
before, it could accommodate itself to all situations.
Alas! the Church, personified by Cardinal Ugolini, was about, if not to
cause the Franciscan movement to miscarry, at least so well to hedge
about it that a few years later it would have lost nearly its whole
original character.
As has been seen, the word poverty expresses only very imperfectly St.
Francis's point of view, since it contains an idea of renunciation, of
_abstinence_, while in thought the vow of poverty is a vow of liberty.
Property is the cage with gilded wires, to which the poor larks are
sometimes so thoroughly accustomed that they no longer even think of
getting away in order to soar up into the blue.[14]
From the beginning St. Damian was the extreme opposite to what a convent
of Clarisses of the strict observance is now; it is still to-day very
much as Francis saw it. We owe thanks to the Brothers Minor for having
preserved intact this venerable and charming hermitage, and not spoiling
it with stupid embellishments. This little corner of Umbrian earth will
be for our descendants like Jacob's well whereon Christ sat himself down
for an instant, one of the favorite courts of the worship in spirit and
in truth.
In installing Clara there Francis put into her hands the Rule which he
had prepared for her,[15] which no doubt resembled that of the Brothers
save for the precepts with regard to the missionary life. He accompanied
it with the engagement[16] taken by himself and his brothers to supply
by labor or alms all the needs of Clara and her future companions. In
return they also were to work and render to the Brothers all the
services of which they might be capable. We have seen the zeal which
Francis had brought to the task of making the churches worthy of the
worship celebrated in them; he could not endure that the linen put to
sacred uses should be less than clean. Clara set herself to spinning
thread for the altar-cloths and corporals which the Brothers undertook
to distribute among the poor churches of the district.[17] In addition,
during the earlier years, she also nursed the sick whom Francis sent to
her, and St. Damian was for some time a sort of hospital.[18]
One or two friars, who were called _Zealots of the Poor Ladies_, were
especially charged with the care of the Sisters, making themselves huts
beside the chapel, after the model of those of Portiuncula. Francis was
also near at hand; a sort of terrace four paces long overlooks the
hermitage; Clara made there a tiny garden, and when, at twilight, she
went thither to water her flowers, she could see, hardly half a league
distant, Portiuncula standing out against the aureola of the western
sky.
For several years the relations between the two houses were continual,
full of charm and freedom. The companions of Francis who received
Brothers received Sisters also, at times returning from their preaching
tours with a neophyte for St. Damian.[19]
But such a situation could not last long. The intimacy of Francis and
Clara, the familiarity of the earlier friars and Sisters would not do as
a model for the relations of the two Orders when each had some hundreds
of members. Francis himself very soon perceived this, though not so
clearly as his sister-friend. Clara survived him nearly twenty-seven
years, and thus had time to see the shipwreck of the Franciscan ideal
among the Brothers, as well as in almost every one of the houses which
had at first followed the Rule of St. Damian. She herself was led by the
pressure of events to lay down rules for her own convent, but to her
very death-bed she contended for the defence of the true Franciscan
ideas, with a heroism, a boldness, at once intense and holy, by which
she took a place in the first rank of witnesses for conscience.
Is it not one of the loveliest pictures in religious history, that of
this woman who for more than half a century sustains moment by moment a
struggle with all the popes who succeed one another in the pontifical
throne, remaining always equally respectful and immovable, not
consenting to die until she has gained her victory?[20]
To relate her life is to relate this struggle; the greater number of its
vicissitudes may be found in the documents of the Roman _curia_.
Francis had warded off many a danger from his institution, but he had
given himself guardians who were little disposed to yield any of their
rights; Cardinal Ugolini in particular, the future Gregory IX., took a
part in these matters which is very difficult to understand. We see him
continually lavishing upon Francis and Clara expressions of affection
and admiration which appear to be absolutely sincere; and yet the
Franciscan ideal--regarded as the life of love at which one arrives by
freeing himself from all servitude to material things--has hardly had a
worse adversary than he.
In the month of May, 1228, Gregory IX. went to Assisi for the
preliminaries of the canonization of St. Francis. Before entering the
city he turned out of his way to visit St. Damian and to see Clara, whom
he had known for a long time, and to whom he had addressed letters
burning with admiration and paternal affection.[21]
How can we understand that at this time, the eve of the canonization
(July 16, 1228), the pontiff could have had the idea of urging her to be
faithless to her vows?
He represented to her that the state of the times made life impossible
to women who possess nothing, and offered her certain properties. As
Clara gazed at him in astonishment at this strange proposition, he said,
"If it is your vows which prevent you, we will release you from them."
"Holy Father," replied the Franciscan sister, "absolve me from my sins,
but I have no desire for a dispensation from following Christ."[22]
Noble and pious utterance, artless cry of independence, in which the
conscience proudly proclaims its autonomy! In these words is mirrored
at full length the spiritual daughter of the Poverello.
By one of those intuitions which often come to very enthusiastic and
very pure women, she had penetrated to the inmost depths of Francis's
heart, and felt herself inflamed with the same passion which burned in
him. She remained faithful to him to the end, but we perceive that it
was not without difficulty.
This is not the place in which to ask whether Gregory IX. was right in
desiring that religious communities should hold estates; he had a right
to his own views on the subject; but there is something shocking, to say
no more, in seeing him placing Francis among the saints at the very
moment when he was betraying his dearest ideals, and seeking to induce
those who had remained faithful to betray them.
Had Clara and Francis foreseen the difficulties which they would meet?
We may suppose so, for already under the pontificate of Innocent III.
she had obtained a grant of the privilege of poverty. The pope was so
much surprised at such a request that he desired to write with his own
hands the opening lines of this patent, the like of which had never been
asked for at the court of Rome.[23]
Under his successor, Honorius III., the most important personage of the
curia was this very Cardinal Ugolini. Almost a septuagenarian in 1216 he
inspired awe at first sight by the aspect of his person. He had that
singular beauty which distinguishes the old who have escaped the usury
of life; pious, enlightened, energetic, he felt himself made for great
undertakings. There is something in him which recalls Cardinal Lavigerie
and all the prelates whose red robes cover a soldier or a despot rather
than a priest.[24]
The Franciscan movement was attacked with violence[25] in various
quarters; he undertook to defend it, and a very long time before the
charge of protector of the Order was officially confided to him, he
exercised it with devouring zeal.[26] He felt an unbounded admiration
for Francis and Clara, and often manifested it in a touching manner. If
he had been a simple man he might have loved them and followed them.
Perhaps he even had thought of doing so.[27] Alas! he was a prince of
the Church; he could not help thinking of what he would do in case he
should be called to guide the ship of St. Peter.
He acted accordingly; was it calculation on his part or simply one of
those states of conscience in which a man absorbed in the end to be
attained hardly discusses the ways and means? I do not know, but we see
him immediately on the death of Innocent III., under pretext of
protecting the Clarisses, take their direction in hand, give them a
Rule, and substitute his own ideas for those of St. Francis.[28]
In the privilege which as legate he gave in favor of Monticelli, July
27, 1219, neither Clara nor Francis is named, and the Damianites become
as a congregation of Benedictines.[29]
We shall see farther on the wrath of Francis against Brother Philip, a
Zealot of the Poor Ladies, who had accepted this privilege in his
absence. His attitude was so firm that other documents of the same
nature granted by Ugolini at the same epoch were not indorsed by the
pope until three years later.
The cardinal's ardor to profit by the enthusiasm which the Franciscan
ideas everywhere excited was so great that we find, in the register of
his legation of 1221, a sort of formula all prepared for those who would
found convents like those of the Sisters of St. Damian; but even there
we search in vain for the name of Francis or Clara.[30]
This old man had, however, a truly mystical passion for the young
abbess; he wrote to her, lamenting the necessity of being far from her,
in words which are the language of love, respect, and admiration.[31]
There were at least two men in Ugolini: the Christian, who felt himself
subdued before Clara and Francis; the prelate, that is, a man whom the
glory of the Church sometimes caused to forget the glory of God.
Francis, though almost always resisting him, appears to have kept a
feeling of ingenuous gratitude toward him to the very end. Clara, on the
contrary, had too long a struggle to be able to keep any illusions as to
the attitude of her protector. After 1230 there is no trace of any
relations between them.
All the efforts of the pope to mitigate the rigor of Clara's vow of
poverty had remained vain. Many other nuns desired to practise strictly
the Rule of St. Francis. Among them was the daughter of the King of
Bohemia, Ottokar I., who was in continual relations with Clara. But
Gregory IX., to whom she addressed herself, was inflexible. While
pouring eulogies upon her he enjoined upon her to follow the Rule which
he sent to her--that is, the one which he had composed while he was yet
cardinal. The Rule of the Poverello was put among the utopias, not to
say heresies.[32] He never, however, could induce St. Clara to
completely submit herself. One day, indeed, she rebelled against his
orders, and it was the pope who was obliged to yield: he had desired to
bring about a wider separation between the friars and the Sisters than
had formerly prevailed; for a long time after the death of Francis a
certain familiarity had continued between St. Damian and Portiuncula;
Clara especially loved these neighborly relations, and often begged one
or another Brother to come and preach. The pope thought ill of this, and
forbade, under the severest penalty, that any friar of Portiuncula
should go to St. Damian without express permission of the Holy See.
This time Clara became indignant. She went to the few friars attached to
her monastery, and thanking them for their services, "Go," she said;
"since they deprive us of those who dispense to us spiritual bread, we
will not have those who procure for us our material bread." He who wrote
that "_the necks of kings and princes are bowed at the feet of the
priests_" was obliged to bow before this woman and raise his
prohibition.[33]
St. Damian had too often echoed with St. Francis's hymns of love and
liberty to forget him so soon and become an ordinary convent. Clara
remained surrounded with the master's early companions; Egidio, Leo,
Angelo, Ginepro never ceased to be assiduous visitors. These true lovers
of poverty felt themselves at home there, and took liberties which would
elsewhere have given surprise. One day an English friar, a celebrated
theologian, came according to the minister's orders to preach at St.
Damian. Suddenly Egidio, though a simple layman, interrupted him: "Stop,
brother, let me speak," he said to him. And the master in theology,
bowing his head, covered himself with his cowl as a sign of obedience,
and sat down to listen to Egidio.
Clara felt a great joy in this; it seemed to her that she was once again
living in St. Francis's days.[34] The little coterie was kept up until
her death; she expired in the arms of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginepro.
In her last sufferings and her dying visions she had the supreme
happiness of being surrounded by those who had devoted their lives to
the same ideal as she.[35]
In her will her life shows itself that which we have seen it--a daily
struggle for the defence of the Franciscan idea. We see how courageous
and brave was this woman who has always been represented as frail,
emaciated, blanched like a flower of the cloister.[36]
She defended Francis not only against others, but also against himself.
In those hours of dark discouragement which so often and so profoundly
disturb the noblest souls and sterilize the grandest efforts, she was
beside him to show him his way. When he doubted his mission and thought
of fleeing to the heights of repose and solitary prayer, it was she who
showed him the ripening harvest with no reapers to gather it in, men
going astray with no shepherd to lead them, and drew him once again into
the train of the Galilean, into the number of those who _give their
lives a ransom for many_.[37]
Yet this love with which at St. Damian Francis felt himself surrounded
frightened him at times. He feared that his death, making too great a
void, would imperil the institution itself, and he took pains to remind
the sisters that he would not be always with them. One day when he was
to preach to them, instead of entering the pulpit he caused some ashes
to be brought, and after having spread them around him and scattered
some on his head, he intoned the _Miserere_, thus reminding them that he
was but dust and would soon return to dust.[38]
But in general it is at St. Damian that St. Francis is the most
himself; it is under the shade of its olive-trees, with Clara caring for
him, that he composes his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called
the most perfect utterance of modern religious sentiment, the "Canticle
of the Sun."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Easy as it is to seize the large outlines of her life, it is
with difficulty that one makes a detailed and documentary study
of it. There is nothing surprising in this, for the Clarisses
felt the rebound of the struggles which divided and rapidly
transformed the Order of the Brothers Minor. The greater number
of the documents have disappeared; we give summary indication of
those which will most often be cited: 1. Life of St. Clara by an
anonymous author. A. SS., _Aug._, t. ii., pp. 739-768. 2. Her
Will, given by Wadding (_Annales_, 1253, No. 5), but which does
not appear to be free from alteration. (Compare, for example,
the opening of this will with Chapter VI. of the Rule of the
Damianites approved by Innocent IV., August 8, 1253.) 3. The
bull of canonization, given September 26, 1255--that is to say,
two years after Clara's death; it is much longer than these
documents ordinarily are, and relates the principal incidents of
her life. A. SS., _loc. cit._, p. 749; Potthast, 16,025. 4. Her
correspondence. Unhappily we have only fragments of it; the
Bollandists, without saying whence they drew them, have inserted
four of her letters in the _Acta_ of St. Agnes of Bohemia, to
whom they were addressed. (A. SS., _Martii_, t. i., pp.
506-508.)
[2] Reading the Chronicle of Fra Salimbeni, which represents the
average Franciscan character about 1250, one sees with what
reason the Rule had multiplied minute precautions for keeping
the Brothers from all relations with women.