as the norm of the acts of the friars appears still more in the
chapters concerning St. Clara than in all the others. Vide 2
Cel., 3, 132: _Non credatis, charissimi (dixit Franciscus),
quodeas perfecte non diligam.... Sed exemplum do vobis, ut
quemadmodum ego facio, ita et vos faciatis._ Cf. ibid., 134.
[3] 2 Cel., 3, 55. _Fateor veritatem ... nullam me si aspicerem
recogniturum in facie nisi duas_. This chapter and the two
following give us a sort of caricature, in which Francis is
represented as so little sure of himself that he casts down his
eyes for fear of yielding to desire. The stories of Francis and
Jacqueline of Settesoli give a very different picture of the
relations between the Brothers and the women in the origin of
the Order from that which was given later. Bernard de Besse
(Turin MS., f^o. 113) relates at length the coming of Jacqueline
to Portiuncula to be present at St. Francis's death. Cf.
_Spec._, 107; 133; Bon., 112. Also Clara's repast at
Portiuncula. _Fior._, 15; _Spec._, 139b.; A. SS. _Aug. Vita
Clar._, No. 39 ff.
[4] Isaiah, lxiii., 8 and 9 (Ségond's [French] translation). At
the Mass on Holy Monday Isaiah lxiii. is read for the Epistle
and Mark xiv. for the Gospel.
[5] San Paolo on the Chiasco, near Bastia.
[6] At the present day diocesan seminary of Assisi, "_Seminarium
seraphicum_." In the thirteenth century the north gate of the
city was there. The houses which lie between there and the
Basilica form the new town, which is rapidly growing and will
unite the city with Sacro Convento.
[7] _Nam steteramus in alio loco, licet parum. Test. Clar._ It
is truly strange that there is not a word here for the house
where the first days of her religious life were passed. Cf.
_Vit._, no. 10: _S. Angelus de Panse ... ubi cum non plene mens
ejus quiesceret._
[8] Mittarelli, _Annales Camaldulenses_ (Venice, 1755-1773, 9
vols., f^o.), t. iv., app. 431 and 435. Cf. 156.
[9] The act of donation is still in the archives of Assisi. An
analysis of it will be found in Cristofani, t. i., p. 133. Their
munificence remained without result; the bull _Ab Ecclesia_ of
July 27, 1232, shows that they were suppressed less than twenty
years after. _Sbaralea_, t. 1, p. 81. Potthast, 8984. Cf., ib.,
p. 195, note c, and 340, note a, and the bulls which are there
indicated.
[10] See p. 81, note ii.
[11] 1 Cel., 18; 21; 3 Soc., 24; 2 Cel., 1, 8.
[12] _An. Perus._, A. SS., p. 600. Cf. 3 Soc., 60. The three
Orders are contemporary, one might even say, the four, including
among them the one that miscarried among the secular priests
(see below).
In a letter St. Clara speaks of her Order as making only a part
with that of the Brothers: _Sequaris consilia Reverendi Patris
nostri fratris Eliæ Ministri generalis totius ordinis_. A. SS.,
Martii, t. i., p. 507.
[13] This point of view is brought into relief by an anecdote in
the _De laudibus_ of Bernard of Besse (Turin MS., 113a). This is
how he ends chap. vii. on the three Orders: _Nec Santus his
contentus ordinibus satagebat omnium generi salutis et
penitentiæ viam dare. Unde parochiali cuidam sacerdoti dicenti
sibi quod vellet suus, retenta tamen ecclesia. Frater esse, dato
vivendi et induendi modo, dicitur indixisse ut annuatim,
collectis Eclesiæ fructibus daret pro Deo, quod de præteritis
superesset._
[14] See the lovely story in the _Fior._, 13. Cf. _Spec._, 65a;
_Conform._, 168b. 1.
[15] The text of it was doubtless formerly inserted in chapter
vi. of the Rule granted to the Clarisses of St. Damian, August
9, 1253, by the bull _Solet annuere_. Potthast, 15,086. But this
chapter has been completely changed in many editions. The text
of the _Speculum_, Morin, Rouen 1509, should be read. _Tract_
iii., 226b. The critical study to be made upon this text by
comparing the indications given by the bull _Angelis guadium_ of
May 11, 1238, Sbaralea, i., p. 242, is too long to find a place
here.
[16] 2 Cel., 3, 132. Cf. _Test. B. Clar._
[17] _In illa gravi infirmitate ... faciebat se erigi ... et
sedens filabat._ A. SS., 760e. _Sic vult eas [sorores] operare
manibus suis._ Ib. 762a.
[18] _Fior._ 33.
[19] Rule of 1221, chap xii. _Et nulla penitus mulier ab aliquo
frater recipiatur ad obedientiam, sed dato sibi consilio
spirituali, ubi voluerit agat penitentiam._ Cf. below, p. 252,
note 1, the remainder of this chapter and the indication of the
sources. This proves, 1, that the friars had received women into
the Order; 2, that at the beginning they said The Order in the
singular, and under this appellation included Sisters as well as
Brothers. We see how far the situation was, even at the end of
1221, from being what it became a few years later. It is to be
noted that in all the reforming sects of the commencement of the
thirteenth century the two sexes were closely united. (Vide
_Burchardi chronicon_, Pertz, 1, 23, p. 376. Cf. Potthast, 2611,
bull _Cum otim_ of Nov. 25, 1205.)
On the 7th of June, 1201 (bull _Incunubit nobis_), Innocent III.
had approved the Rule of the Humiliants. This was a religious
association whose members continued to live in their own homes,
and who offer surprising points of contact with the Franciscan
Order, though they took no vow of poverty. From them issued a
more restricted association which founded convents where they
worked in wool; these convents received both men and women. Vide
Jacques de Vitry, _Hist. Occidentalis_, cap. 28. _De religione
et regula Humiliatorum_ (Douai, 1597, pp. 334-337). The time
came when from these two Orders issued a third, composed solely
of priests. These _Humiliati_ are too little known, though they
have had a historian whose book is one of the noble works of the
eighteenth century: Tiraboschi, _Vetera Humiliatorum monumenta_
(Milan, 3 vols., 4to, 1766-1768). Toward 1200 they had
monopolized _l'arte della lana_ in all upper Italy as far as to
Florence; it is evident, therefore, that Francis's father must
have had relations with them.
[20] The bull approving the Rule of St. Damian is of August 9,
1253. Clara died two days later.
[21] 1 Cel., 122. Cf. Potthast, 8194 ff.; cf. ib., 709.
[22] A. SS., _Vita Cl._, p. 758. Cf. bull of canonization.
[23] _Vit. S. Clar._, A. SS., p. 758. This petition was surely
made by the medium of Francis; and there are several indications
of his presence in Perugia in the latter part of the life of
Innocent III. _In obitu suo [Alexandri papæ] omnes familiares
sui deseruerunt eum præter fratres Minores. Et similiter Papam
Gregorium et Honorium et Innocentium in cujus obitu fuit
præsentialiter S. Franciscus._ Eccl. xv. _Mon. Germ. hist.
Script._, t. 28 p. 568. Sbaralea puts forth doubts as to the
authenticity of this privilege, the text of which he gives;
wrongly, I think, for Clara alludes to it in her will, A. SS.,
p. 747.
[24] He was born about 1147, created cardinal in 1198. Vide
Raynald, _ann._, 1217, § 88, the eulogy made upon him by
Honorius III. _Forma decorus et venustus aspectu ... zelator
fidei, disciplina virtutis, ... castitatis amator et totius
sanctitatis exemplar_: Muratori, _Scriptores rer. Ital._, iii.,
1, 575.
[25] 1 Cel., 74.
[26] The bull _Litteræ tuæ_ of August 27, 1218, shows him
already favoring the Clarisses. Sbaralea, i., p. 1. Vide 3 Soc.,
61. _Offero me ipsum, dixit Hugolinus, vobis, auxilium et
consilium, atque protectionem paratus impendere._
[27] In the Conformities, 107a, 2, there is a curious story
which shows Ugolini going to the Carceri to find Francis, and
asking him if he ought to enter his Order. Cf. _Spec._, 217.
[28] He succeeded so well that Thomas of Celano himself seems to
forget that, at least at St. Damian, the Clarisses followed the
Rule given by St. Francis himself: _Ipsorum vita mirifica et
institutio gloriosa a domino Papa Gregorio, tunc Hostiensi
episcopo._ 1 Cel. 20. Cf. _Honorii Opera_ Horoy, t. iii., col.
363; t. iv., col. 218; Potthast, 6179 and 6879 ff.
[29] This privilege is inserted in the bull _Sacrosancta_ of
December 9, 1219. _Honorii opera_, Horoy, t. iii., col. 363 ff.
[30] G. Levi, _Registri dei Cardinali_, no. 125. Vide below, p.
400. Cf. Campi, _Hist. eccl. di Piacenza_, ii., 390.
[31] See, for example, the letter given by Wadding: Annals, ii.,
p. 16 (Rome, 1732). _Tanta me amaritudo cordis, abundantia
lacrymarum et immanitas doloris invasit, quod nisi ad pedes
Jesu, consolationem solitæ pietatis invenirem, spiritus meus
forte deficeret et penitus anima liquefieret._ Wadding's text
should be corrected by that of the Riccardi MS., 279. f^o 80a
and b. Cf. Mark of Lisbon, t. i., p. 185; Sbaralea, i., p. 37.
[32] Bull _Angelis gaudium_ of May 11, 1238; it may be found in
Sbaralea, i., p. 242. Cf. Palacky, _Literarische Reise nach
Italien_, Prague, 1838, 4to, no. 147. Potthast, 10,596; cf.
11,175.
[33] A. SS., _Vit. Clar._, p. 762. Cf. _Conform._, 84b, 2.
[34] A. SS., _Aprilis_, t. iii., p. 239a; _Conform._, 54a, 1;
177a, 2.
[35] A. SS., _Vit. Clar._, p. 764d.
[36] The bull of canonization says nothing of the Saracens whom
she put to flight. Her life in the A. SS. relates the fact, but
shows her simply in prayer before the Holy Sacrament. Cf.
_Conform._, 84b, 1. Mark of Lisbon t. i., part 2, pp. 179-181.
None of these accounts represents Clara as going to meet them
with a monstrance.
[37] Bon., 173; _Fior._ 16; _Spec._, 62b; _Conform._, 84b, 2;
110b 1; 49a, 1. With these should be compared _Spec._, 220b:
_Frater Leo narravit quod Sanctus Franciscus surgens orare_
(sic) _venit ad fratres suos dicens: "Ite ad sæculum et
dimittatis habitum, licentio vos._"
[38] 2 Cel., 3, 134.
* * * * *
CHAPTER X
FIRST ATTEMPTS TO REACH THE INFIDELS
Autumn, 1212-Summer, 1215
The early Brothers Minor had too much need of the encouragement and
example of Francis not to have very early agreed with him upon certain
fixed periods when they would be sure to find him at Portiuncula. Still
it appears probable that these meetings did not become true
Chapters-General until toward 1216. There were at first two a year, one
at Whitsunday, the other at Michaelmas (September 29th). Those of
Whitsunday were the most important; all the Brothers came together to
gain new strength in the society of Francis, to draw generous ardor and
grand hopes from him with his counsels and directions.
The members of the young association had everything in common, their
joys as well as their sorrows; their uncertainties as well as the
results of their experiences. At these meetings they were particularly
occupied with the Rule, the changes that needed to be made in it, and
above all, how they might better and better observe it;[1] then, in
perfect harmony, they settled the allotment of the friars to the various
provinces.
One of Francis's most frequent counsels bore upon the respect due to the
clergy; he begged his disciples to show a very particular deference to
the priests, and never to meet them without kissing their hands. He saw
only too well that the Brothers, having renounced everything, were in
danger of being unjust or severe toward the rich and powerful of the
earth; he, therefore, sought to arm them against this tendency, often
concluding his counsels with these noble words: "There are men who
to-day appear to us to be members of the devil who one day shall be
members of Christ."
"Our life in the midst of the world," said he again, "ought to be such
that, on hearing or seeing us, every one shall feel constrained to
praise our heavenly Father. You proclaim peace; have it in your hearts.
Be not an occasion of wrath or scandal to anyone, but by your gentleness
may all be led to peace, concord, and good works."
It was especially when he undertook to cheer his disciples, to fortify
them against temptations and deliver them from their power, that Francis
was most successful. However anxious a soul might be, his words brought
it back to serenity. The earnestness which he showed in calming sadness
became fiery and terrible in reproving those who fell away, but in these
days of early fervor he seldom had occasion to show severity; more often
he needed gently to reprove the Brothers whose piety led them to
exaggerate penances and macerations.
When all was finished and each one had had his part in this banquet of
love, Francis would bless them, and they would disperse in all
directions like strangers and travellers. They had nothing, but already
they thought they saw the signs of the grand and final regeneration.
Like the exile on Patmos they saw "the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband
... and the throne upon which is seated the Desired of all nations, the
Messiah of the new times, he who is to make all things new."[2]
Yet all eyes were turned toward Syria, where a French knight, Jean de
Brienne, had just been declared King of Jerusalem (1210), and toward
which were hastening the bands of the children's crusade.
The conversion of Francis, radical as it was, giving a new direction to
his thoughts and will, had not had power to change the foundation of his
character. "In a great heart everything is great." In vain is one
changed at conversion--he remains the same. That which changes is not he
who is converted, but his surroundings; he is suddenly introduced into a
new path, but he runs in it with the same ardor. Francis still remained
a knight, and it is perhaps this which won for him in so high a degree
the worship of the finest souls of the Middle Ages. There was in him
that longing for the unknown, that thirst for adventures and sacrifices,
which makes the history of his century so grand and so attractive, in
spite of many dark features.
Those who have a genius for religion have generally the privilege of
illusion. They never quite see how large the world is. When their faith
has moved a mountain they thrill with rapture, like the old Hebrew
prophets, and it seems to them that they see the dawning of the day
"when the glory of the Lord will appear, when the wolf and the lamb will
feed together." Blessed illusion, that fires the blood like a generous
wine, so that the soldiers of righteousness hurl themselves against the
most terrific fortresses, believing that these once taken the war will
be ended.
Francis had found such joys in his union with poverty that he held it
for proven that one needed only to be a man to aspire after the same
happiness, and that the Saracens would be converted in crowds to the
gospel of Jesus, if only it were announced to them in all its
simplicity. He therefore quitted Portiuncula for this new kind of
crusade. It is not known from what port he embarked. It was probably in
the autumn of 1212. A tempest having cast the ship upon the coast of
Slavonia, he was obliged to resign himself either to remain several
months in those parts or to return to Italy; he decided to return, but
found much difficulty in securing a passage on a ship which was about to
sail for Ancona. He had no ill-will against the sailors, however, and
the stock of food falling short he shared with them the provisions with
which his friends had overloaded him.
No sooner had he landed than he set out on a preaching tour, in which
souls responded to his appeals[3] with even more eagerness than in
times past. We may suppose that he returned from Slavonia in the winter
of 1212-1213, and that he employed the following spring in evangelizing
Central Italy. It was perhaps during this Lent that he retired to an
island in Lake Trasimeno, making a sojourn there which afterward became
famous in his legend.[4] However that may be, a perfectly reliable
document shows him to have been in the Romagna in the month of May,
1213.[5] One day Francis and his companion, perhaps Brother Leo,
arrived at the chateau of Montefeltro,[6] between Macerata and San
Marino. A grand fête was being given for the reception of a new knight,
but the noise and singing did not affright them, and without hesitation
they entered the court, where all the nobility of the country was
assembled. Francis then taking for his text the two lines,
Tanto è il bene ch' aspetto
Ch'ogni pena m'è diletto,[7]
preached so touching a sermon that several of those present forgot for a
moment the tourney for which they had come. One of them, Orlando dei
Cattani, Count of Chiusi in Casentino, was so much moved that, drawing
Francis aside, "Father," he said to him, "I desire much to converse with
you about the salvation of my soul." "Very willingly," replied Francis;
"but go for this morning, do honor to those friends who have invited
you, eat with them, and after that we will converse as much as you
please."
So it was done. The count came back and concluded the interview by
saying, "I have in Tuscany a mountain especially favorable to
contemplation; it is entirely isolated and would well suit anyone who
desired to do penance far from the noises of the world; if it pleased
you I would willingly give it to you and your brethren for the salvation
of my soul."
Francis accepted it joyfully, but as he was obliged to be at Portiuncula
for the Whitsunday chapter he postponed the visit to the Verna[8] to a
more favorable time.
It was perhaps in this circuit that he went to Imola; at least nothing
forbids the supposition. Always courteous, he had gone immediately on
his arrival to present himself to the bishop, and ask of him authority
to preach. "I am not in need of anyone to aid me in my task," replied
the bishop dryly. Francis bowed and retired, more polite and even more
gentle than usual. But in less than hour he had returned. "What is it,
brother, what do you want of me again?" "Monsignor," replied Francis,
"when a father drives his son out at the door he returns by the window."
The bishop, disarmed by such pious persistence, gave the desired
authorization.[9]
The aim of Francis at that time, however, was not to evangelize Italy;
his friars were already scattered over it in great numbers; and he
desired rather to gain them access to new countries.
Not having been able to reach the infidels in Syria, he resolved to seek
them in Morocco. Some little time before (July, 1212), the troops of the
Almohades had met an irreparable defeat in the plains of Tolosa; beaten
by the coalition of the Kings of Aragon, Navarre, and Castile,
Mohammed-el-Naser had returned to Morocco to die. Francis felt that this
victory of arms would be nothing if it were not followed by a peaceful
victory of the gospel spirit.
He was so full of his project, so much in haste to arrive at the end of
his journey, that very often he would forget his companion, and
hastening forward would leave him far behind. The biographers are
unfortunately most laconic with regard to this expedition; they merely
say that on arriving in Spain he was so seriously ill that a return home
was imperative. Beyond a few local legends, not very well attested, we
possess no other information upon the labors of the Saint in this
country, nor upon the route which he followed either in going or
returning.[10]
This silence is not at all surprising, and ought not to make us
undervalue the importance of this mission. The one to Egypt, which took
place six years later, with a whole train of friars, and at a time when
the Order was much more developed, is mentioned only in a few lines by
Thomas of Celano; but for the recent discovery of the Chronicle of
Brother Giordano di Giano and the copious details given by Jacques de
Vitry, we should be reduced to conjectures upon that journey also. The
Spanish legends, to which allusion has just been made, cannot be
altogether without foundation, any more than those which concern the
journey of St. Francis through Languedoc and Piedmont; but in the actual
condition of the sources it is impossible to make a choice, with any
sort of authority, between the historic basis and additions to it wholly
without value.
The mission in Spain doubtless took place between the Whitsunday of 1214
and that of 1215.[11] Francis, I think, had passed the previous
year[12] in Italy. Perhaps he was then going to see the Verna. The
March of Ancona and the Valley of Rieti would naturally have attracted
him equally about this epoch, and finally the growth of the two branches
of the Order must have made necessary his presence at Portiuncula and
St. Damian. The rapidity and importance of these missions ought in no
sense to give surprise, nor awaken exaggerated critical doubts. It took
only a few hours to become a member of the fraternity, and we may not
doubt the sincerity of these vocations, since their condition was the
immediate giving up of all property of whatever kind, for the benefit
of the poor. The new friars were barely received when they in their turn
began to receive others, often becoming the heads of the movement in
whatever place they happened to be. The way in which we see things going
on in Germany in 1221, and in England in 1224, gives a very living
picture of this spiritual germination.
To found a monastery it was enough that two or three Brothers should
have at their disposition some sort of a shelter, whence they radiated
out into the city and the neighboring country. It would, therefore, be
as much an exaggeration to describe St. Francis as a man who passed his
life in founding convents, as to deny altogether the local traditions
which attribute to him the erection of a hundred monasteries. In many
cases a glance is enough to show whether these claims of antiquity are
justified; before 1220 the Order had only hermitages after the pattern
of the Verna or the Carceri, solely intended for the Brothers who
desired to pass some time in retreat.
Returned to Assisi, Francis admitted to the Order a certain number of
learned men, among whom was perhaps Thomas of Celano. The latter, in
fact, says that God at that time mercifully remembered him, and he adds
further on: "The blessed Francis was of an exquisite nobility of heart
and full of discernment; with the greatest care he rendered to each one
what was due him, with wisdom considering in each case the degree of
their dignities."
This does not harmonize very well with the character of Francis as we
have sketched it; one can hardly imagine him preserving in his Order
such profound distinctions as were at that time made between the
different social ranks, but he had that true and eternal politeness
which has its roots in the heart, and which is only an expression of
tact and love. It could not be otherwise with a man who saw in courtesy
one of the qualities of God.
We are approaching one of the most obscure periods of his life. After
the chapter of 1215 he seems to have passed through one of those crises
of discouragement so frequent with those who long to realize the ideal
in this world. Had he discovered the warning signs of the misfortunes
which were to come upon his family? Had he come to see that the
necessities of life were to sully and blight his dream? Had he seen in
the check of his missions in Syria and Morocco a providential indication
that he had to change his method? We do not know. But about this time he
felt the need of turning to St. Clara and Brother Silvestro for counsel
on the subject of the doubts and hesitations which assailed him; their
reply restored to him peace and joy. God by their mouth commanded him to
continue his apostolate.[13]
Immediately he rose and set forth in the direction of Bevagna,[14] with
an ardor which he had never yet shown. In encouraging him to persevere
Clara had in some sort inoculated him with a new enthusiasm. One word
from her had sufficed to give him back all his courage, and from this
point in his life we find in him more poetry, more love, than ever
before.
Full of joy, he was going on his way when, perceiving some flocks of
birds, he turned aside a little from the road to go to them. Far from
taking flight, they flocked around him as if to bid him welcome.
"Brother birds," he said to them then, "you ought to praise and love
your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings
for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the noblest
of his creatures; he permits you to live in the pure air; you have
neither to sow nor to reap, and yet he takes care of you, watches over
you and guides you." Then the birds began to arch their necks, to spread
out their wings, to open their beaks, to look at him, as if to thank
him, while he went up and down in their midst stroking them with the
border of his tunic, sending them away at last with his blessing.[15]
In this same evangelizing tour, passing through Alviano,[16] he spoke a
few exhortations to the people, but the swallows so filled the air with
their chirping that he could not make himself heard. "It is my turn to
speak," he said to them; "little sister swallows, hearken to the word of
God; keep silent and be very quiet until I have finished."[17]
We see how Francis's love extended to all creation, how the diffused
life shed abroad upon all things inspired and moved him. From the sun to
the earthworm which we trample under foot, everything breathed in his
ear the ineffable sigh of beings that live and suffer and die, and in
their life as in their death have a part in the divine work.
"Praised be thou, Lord, with all thy creatures, especially for my
brother Sun which gives us the day and by him thou showest thy light. He
is beautiful and radiant with great splendor; of thee, Most High, he is
the symbol."
Here again, Francis revives the Hebrew inspiration, the simple and
grandiose view of the prophets of Israel. "Praise the Lord!" the royal
Psalmist had sung, "praise the Lord, fire and frost, snow and mists,
stormy winds that do his will, mountains and all hills, fruit-trees and
all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and fowls with wings,
kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth,
young men and maidens, old men and children, praise the Lord, praise ye
the Lord!"
The day of the birds of Bevagna remained in his memory as one of the
most beautiful of his whole life, and though usually so reserved he
always loved to tell of it;[18] it was because he owed to Clara these
pure ardors which brought him into a secret and delicious communion with
all beings; it was she who had revived him from sadness and hesitation;
in his heart he bore an immense gratitude to her who, just when he
needed it, had known how to return to him love for love, inspiration for
inspiration.
Francis's sympathy for animals, as we see it shining forth here, has
none of that sentimentalism, so often artificial and exclusive of all
other love, which certain associations of his time noisily displayed; in
him it is only a manifestation of his feeling for nature, a deeply
mystical, one might say pantheistic, sentiment, if the word had not a
too definitely philosophical sense, quite opposite to the Franciscan
thought.
This sentiment, which in the poets of the thirteenth century is so often
false and affected, was in him not only true, but had in it something
alive, healthy, robust.[19] It is this vein of poetry which awoke
Italy to self-consciousness, made her in a few years forget the
nightmare of Catharist ideas, and rescued her from pessimism. By it
Francis became the forerunner of the artistic movement which preceded
the Renaissance, the inspirer of that group of Pre-Raphaelites, awkward,
grotesque in drawing though at times they were, to whom we turn to-day
with a sort of piety, finding in their ungraceful saints an inner life,
a moral feeling which we seek for elsewhere in vain.
If the voice of the Poverello of Assisi was so well understood it was
because in this matter, as in all others, it was entirely
unconventional. How far we are, with him, from the fierce or Pharisaic
piety of those monks which forbids even the females of animals to enter
their convent! His notion of chastity in no sense resembles this
excessive prudery. One day at Sienna he asked for some turtle-doves, and
holding them in the skirt of his tunic, he said: "Little sisters
turtle-doves, you are simple, innocent, and chaste; why did you let
yourselves be caught? I shall save you from death, and have nests made
for you, so that you may bring forth young and multiply according to the
commandment of our Creator."
And he went and made nests for them all, and the turtle-doves began to
lay eggs and bring up their broods under the eyes of the Brothers.[20]
At Rieti a family of red-breasts were the guests of the monastery, and
the young birds made marauding expeditions on the very table where the
Brothers were eating.[21] Not far from there, at Greccio,[22] they
brought to Francis a leveret that had been taken alive in a trap. "Come
to me, brother leveret," he said to it. And as the poor creature, being
set free, ran to him for refuge, he took it up, caressed it, and finally
put it on the ground that it might run away; but it returned to him
again and again, so that he was obliged to send it to the neighboring
forest before it would consent to return to freedom.[23]
One day he was crossing the Lake of Rieti. The boatman in whose bark he
was making the passage offered him a tench of uncommon size. Francis
accepted it with joy, but to the great amazement of the fisherman put it
back into the water, bidding it bless God.[24]
We should never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this
kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a
perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is
ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a
child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes
ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into
the limpid water of a brook.[27]
This perfect lover of poverty permitted one luxury--he even commanded it
at Portiuncula--that of flowers; the Brother was bidden not to sow
vegetables and useful plants only; he must reserve one corner of good
ground for our sisters, the flowers of the fields. Francis talked with
them also, or rather he replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle
language crept into the very depth of his heart.[28]
The thirteenth century was prepared to understand the voice of the
Umbrian poet; the sermon to the birds[29] closed the reign of Byzantine
art and of the thought of which it was the image. It is the end of
dogmatism and authority; it is the coming in of individualism and
inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to be followed by obstinate
reactions, but none the less marking a date in the history of the human
conscience.[30] Many among the companions of Francis were too much the
children of their century, too thoroughly imbued with its theological
and metaphysical methods, to quite understand a sentiment so simple and
profound.[31] But each in his degree felt its charm. Here Thomas of
Celano's language rises to an elevation which we find in no other part
of his works, closing with a picture of Francis which makes one think of
the Song of Songs.[32]
Of more than middle height, Francis had a delicate and kindly face,
black eyes, a soft and sonorous voice. There was in his whole person a
delicacy and grace which made him infinitely lovely. All these
characteristics are found in the most ancient portraits.[33]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 3 Soc., 57; cf. _An. Perus._, A. SS., p. 599.
[2] Rev. xxi.; 1 Cel., 46; 3 Soc., 57-59; _An. Perus._, A. SS.,
p. 600.
[3] 1 Cel., 55 and 56; Bon., 129-132.
[4] _Fior._, 7; _Spec._, 96; _Conform._, 223a, 2. The fact of
Francis's sojourn on an island in this lake is made certain by 1
Cel., 60.
[5] Vide below, p. 400. Cf. A. SS., pp. 823 f.
[6] At present Sasso-Feltrio, between Conca and Marecchio, south
of and about two hours' walk from San Marino.
[7] The happiness that I expect is so great that all pain is
joyful to me. All the documents give Francis's text in Italian,
which is enough to prove that it was the language not only of
his poems but also of his sermons. _Spec._ 92a ff. _Conform._
113a, 2; 231a, 1; _Fior., Prima consid._
[8] See p. 400.
[9] 2 Cel., 3, 85; Bon., 82.
[10] 1 Cel., 56; Bon., 132.
[11] Vide Wadding, _ann. 1213-1215_. Cf. A. SS., pp. 602, 603,
825-831. Mark of Lisbon, _lib._ i., _cap._ 45, pp. 78-80;
Papini, _Storia di S. Francesco_, i., p. 79 ff. (Foligno, 1825,
2 vols., 4to). It is surprising to see Father Suysken giving so
much weight to the _argumentum a silentio_.
[12] From Pentecost, 1213, to that of 1214.--_Post non multum
vero temporis versus Marochium iter arripuit_, says Thomas of
Celano (1 Cel., 56), after having mentioned the return from
Slavonia. Taking into account the author's _usus loquendi_ the
phrase appears to establish a certain interval between the two
missions.
[13] _Conform._, 110b, 1; _Spec._, 62b; _Fior._, 16; Bon.,
170-174.
[14] Village about two leagues S. W. from Assisi. The time is
indirectly fixed by Bon., 173, and 1 Cel., 58.
[15] 1 Cel. 58; Bon., 109 and 174; _Fior._, 16; _Spec._, 62b;
_Conform._, 114b, 2.
[16] About halfway between Orvieto and Narni.
[17] 1 Cel., 59; Bon., 175.
[18] _Ad hæc, ut ipse dicebat_ ... 1 Cel., 58.
[19] Francis has been compared in this regard to certain of his
contemporaries, but the similarity of the words only makes more
evident the diversity of inspiration. Honorius III. may say:
_Forma rosæ est inferius angusta, superius ampla et significat
quod Christus pauper fuit in mundo, sed est Dominus super omnia
et implet universa. Nam sicut forma rosæ_, etc. (Horoy, t. i.,
col. xxiv. and 804), and make a whole sermon on the symbolism of
the rose; these overstrained dissertations have nothing to do
with the feeling for nature. It is the arsenal of mediæval
rhetoric used to dissect a word. It is an intellectual effort,
not a song of love. The Imitation would say: _If thy heart were
right all creatures would be for thee a mirror of life and a
volume of holy doctrine_, lib. ii., cap. 2. The simple sentiment
of the beauty of creation is absent here also; the passage is a
pedagogue in disguise.
[20] _Spec._, 157. _Fior._; 22.
[21] 2 Cel., 2, 16; _Conform._, 148a, 1, 183b, 2. Cf. the story
of the sheep of Portiuncula: Bon., 111.
[22] Village in the valley of Rieti, two hours' walk from that
town, on the road to Terni.
[23] 1 Cel., 60; Bon., 113.
[24] 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114.
[25] 2 Cel., 3, 54; Bon., 109; 2 Cel., 3; 103 ff.; Bon., 116
ff.; Bon., 110; 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114, 113, 115; 1 Cel., 79;
_Fior._, 13, etc.
[26] 2 Cel., 3, 101 ff.; Bon., 123.
[27] 2 Cel., 3, 59; 1 Cel., 80 and 81.
[28] 2 Cel., 3, 101; _Spec._, 136a; 1 Cel., 81.
[29] This is the scene in his life most often reproduced by the
predecessors of Giotto. The unknown artist who (before 1236)
decorated the nave of the Lower Church of Assisi gives five
frescos to the history of Jesus and five to the life of St.
Francis. Upon the latter he represents: 1, the renunciation of
the paternal inheritance; 2, Francis upholding the Lateran
church; 3, the sermon to the birds; 4, the stigmata; 5, the
funeral. This work, unhappily very badly lighted, and about half
of it destroyed at the time of the construction of the chapels
of the nave, ought to be engraved before it completely
disappears. The history of art in the time of Giunta Pisano is
still too much enveloped in obscurity for us to neglect such a
source of information. M. Thode (_Franz von Assisi und die
Anfänge der Kunst_, Berlin, 1885, 8vo. illust.) and the Rev.
Father Fratini (_Storia della Basilica d'Assisi_, Prato, 1882,
8vo) are much too brief so far as these frescos are concerned.
[30] It is needless to say that I do not claim that Francis was
the only initiator of this movement, still less that he was its
creator; he was its most inspired singer, and that may suffice
for his glory. If Italy was awakened it was because her sleep
was not so sound as in the tenth century; the mosaics of the
façade of the Cathedral of Spoleto (the Christ between the
Virgin and St. John) already belong to the new art. Still, the
victory was so little final that the mural paintings of St.
Lawrence without the walls and of the Quattro Coronate, which
are subsequent to it by half a score of years, relapse into a
coarse Byzantinism. See also those of the Baptistery of
Florence.
[31] Hence the more or less subtile explanations with which they
adorn these incidents.--As to the part of animals in thirteenth
century legends consult Cæsar von Heisterbach, Strange's
edition, t. ii., pp. 257 ff.
[32] 1 Cel., 80-83.
[33] 1 Cel., 83; _Conform._, 111a. M. Thode (_Anfänge_, pp.
76-94) makes a study of some thirty portraits. The most
important are reproduced in _Saint François_ (1 vol., 4to,
Paris, 1885); 1, contemporary portrait, by Brother Eudes, now at
Subiaco (_loc. cit._, p. 30); 2, portrait dating about 1230, by
Giunta Pisano (?); preserved at Portiuncula (_loc. cit._, p.
384); 3, finally, portrait dated 1235, by Bon. Berlinghieri, and
preserved at Pescia, in Tuscany (_loc. cit._, p. 277). In 1886
Prof. Carattoli studied with great care a portrait which dates
from about those years and of which he gives a picture (also
preserved of late years at Portiuncula). _Miscellanea
francescana_ t. i., pp. 44-48; cf. pp. 160, 190, and 1887, p.
32. M. Bonghi has written some interesting papers on the
iconography of St. Francis (_Francesco di Assisi_, 1 vol., 12mo,
Citta di Castello, Lapi, 1884. Vide pp. 103-113).
* * * * *
CHAPTER XI
THE INNER MAN AND WONDER-WORKING
The missionary journey, undertaken under the encouragement of St. Clara
and so poetically inaugurated by the sermon to the birds of Bevagna,
appears to have been a continual triumph for Francis.[1] Legend
definitively takes possession of him; whether he will or no, miracles
burst forth under his footsteps; quite unawares to himself the objects
of which he has made use produce marvellous effects; folk come out from
the villages in procession to meet him, and the biographer gives us to
hear the echo of those religious festivals of Italy--merry, popular,
noisy, bathed in sunshine--which so little resemble the fastidiously
arranged festivals of northern peoples.
From Alviano Francis doubtless went to Narni, one of the most charming
little towns in Umbria, busy with building a cathedral after the
conquest of their communal liberties. He seems to have had a sort of
predilection for this city as well as for its surrounding villages.[2]
From thence he seems to have plunged into the valley of Rieti, where
Greccio, Fonte-Colombo, San Fabiano, Sant-Eleuthero, Poggio-Buscone
retain even stronger traces of him than the environs of Assisi.
Thomas of Celano gives us no particulars of the route followed, but, on
the other hand, he goes at length into the success of the apostle in the
March of Ancona, and especially at Ascoli. Did the people of these
districts still remember the appeals which Francis and Egidio had made
to them six years before (1209), or must we believe that they were
peculiarly prepared to understand the new gospel? However this may be,
nowhere else was a like enthusiasm shown; the effect of the sermons was
so great that some thirty neophytes at once received the habit of the
Order.
The March of Ancona ought to be held to be the Franciscan province _par
excellence_. There are Offida, San-Severino, Macerata, Fornaro, Cingoli,
Fermo, Massa, and twenty other hermitages where, during more than a
century, poverty was to find its heralds and its martyrs; from thence
came Giovanni della Verna, Jacopo di Massa, Conrad di Offida, Angelo
Clareno, and those legions of nameless revolutionists, dreamers, and
prophets, who since the _extirpés_ in 1244 by the general of the Order,
Crescentius of Jesi, never ceased to make new recruits, and by their
proud resistance to all powers filled one of the finest pages of
religious history in the Middle Ages.
This success, which bathed the soul of Francis with joy, did not arouse
in him the smallest movement of pride. Never has man had a greater power
over hearts, because never preacher preached himself less. One day
Brother Masseo desired to put his modesty to the test.
"Why thee? Why thee? Why thee?" he repeated again and again, as
if to make a mock of Francis. "What are you saying?" cried
Francis at last. "I am saying that everybody follows thee,
everyone desires to see thee, hear thee, and obey thee, and yet
for all that thou art neither beautiful, nor learned, nor of
noble family. Whence comes it, then, that it should be thee whom
the world desires to follow?"
On hearing these words the blessed Francis, full of joy, raised
his eyes to heaven, and after remaining a long time absorbed in
contemplation he knelt, praising and blessing God with
extraordinary fervor. Then turning toward Masseo, "Thou wishest
to know why it is I whom men follow? Thou wishest to know? It is
because the eyes of the Most High have willed it thus; he
continually watches the good and the wicked, and as his most
holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any
more insufficient and more sinful, therefore he has chosen me to
accomplish the marvellous work which God has undertaken; he
chose me because he could find no one more worthless, and he
wished here to confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength,
the beauty, and the learning of this world."
This reply throws a ray of light upon St. Francis's heart; the message
which he brought to the world is once again the glad tidings announced
to the poor; its purpose is the taking up again of that Messianic work
which the Virgin of Nazareth caught a glimpse of in her _Magnificat_,
that song of love and liberty, the sighs of which breathe the vision of
a new social state. He comes to remind the world that the welfare of
man, the peace of his heart, the joy of his life, are neither in money,
nor in learning, nor in strength, but in an upright and sincere will.
Peace to men of good will.
The part which he had taken at Assisi in the controversies of his
fellow-citizens he would willingly have taken in all the rest of Italy,
for no man has ever dreamed of a more complete renovation; but if the
end he sought was the same as that of many revolutionaries who came
after him, their methods were completely different; his only weapon was
love.
The event has decided against him. Apart from the _illuminati_ of the
March of Ancona and the _Fraticelli_ of our own Provence his disciples
have vied with one another to misunderstand his thought.[3]
Who knows if some one will not arise to take up his work? Has not the
passion for worm-eaten speculations yet made victims enough? Are there
not many among us who perceive that luxury is a delusion, that if life
is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle
over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it
may present itself--truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this
expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to
make _amende honorable_ and bequeath to its successor one manly word of
faith?
Yes, the Messiah will come. He who was announced by Gioacchino di Fiore
and who is to inaugurate a new epoch in the history of humanity will
appear. _Hope maketh not ashamed._ In our modern Babylons and in the
huts on our mountains are too many souls who mysteriously sigh the hymn
of the great vigil, _Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant
Justum_,[4] for us not to be on the eve of a divine birth.
All origins are mysterious. This is true of matter, but yet more true of
that life, superior to all others, which we call holiness; it was in
prayer that Francis found the spiritual strength which he needed; he
therefore sought for silence and solitude. If he knew how to do battle
in the midst of men in order to win them to the faith, he loved, as
Celano says, to fly away like a bird going to make its nest upon the
mountain.[5]
With men truly pious the prayer of the lips, the formulated prayer, is
hardly other than an inferior form of true prayer. Even when it is
sincere and attentive, and not a mechanical repetition, it is only a
prelude for souls not dead of religious materialism.
Nothing resembles piety so much as love. Formularies of prayer are as
incapable of speaking the emotions of the soul as model love-letters of
speaking the transports of an impassioned heart. To true piety as well
as to profound love, the formula is a sort of profanation.
To pray is to talk with God, to lift ourselves up to him, to converse
with him that he may come down to us. It is an act of meditation, of
reflection, which presupposes the effort of all that is most personal in
us.
Looked at in this sense, prayer is the mother of all liberty and all
freedom.
Whether or no it be a soliloquy of the soul with itself, the soliloquy
would be none the less the very foundation of a strong individuality.
With St. Francis as with Jesus, prayer has this character of effort
which makes of it the greatest moral act. In order to truly know such
men one must have been able to go with them, to follow Jesus up to the
mountain where he passed his nights. Three favored ones, Peter, James,
John, followed him thither one day; but to describe what they saw, all
that a manly _sursum corda_ added to the radiance and the mysterious
grandeur of him whom they adored, they were obliged to resort to the
language of symbols.
It was so with St. Francis. For him as for his Master the end of prayer
is communion with the heavenly Father, the accord of the divine with the
human; or rather it is man who puts forth his strength to do the work of
God, not saying to him a mere passive, resigned, powerless _Fiat_, but
courageously raising his head: "Behold me, Lord, I delight to do thy
will."
"There are unfathomable depths in the human soul, because at the bottom
is God himself." Whether this God be transcendent or immanent, whether
he be One, the Creator, the eternal and immutable Principle, or whether
he be, as say the doctors beyond the Rhine, the ideal objectivation of
our Me, is not the question for the heroes of humanity. The soldier in
the thick of battle does not philosophize as to how much truth or
falsehood there is in the patriotic sentiment; he takes his arms and
fights at the peril of his life. So the soldiers of spiritual conflicts
seek for strength in prayer, in reflection, contemplation, inspiration;
all, poets, artists, teachers, saints, legislators, prophets, leaders of
the people, learned men, philosophers, all draw from this same source.
But it is not without difficulty that the soul unites itself to God, or
if one prefers, that it finds itself. A prayer ends at last in divine
communion only when it began by a struggle. The patriarch of Israel,
asleep near Bethel, had already divined this: the God who passes by
tells his name only to those who stop him and do him violence to learn
it. He blesses only after long hours of conflict.
The gospel has found an untranslatable word to characterize the prayers
of Jesus, it compares the conflict which preceded the voluntary
immolation of Christ to the death-struggle: _Factus in agonia_.[6] We
might say of his life that it had been a long temptation, a struggle, a
prayer, since these words only express different moments of spiritual
activity.
Like their Master, the disciples and successors of Christ can conquer
their own souls only through perseverance. But these words, empty of
meaning for devout conventicles, have had a tragic sense for men of
religious genius.
Nothing is more false, historically, than the saints that adorn our
churches, with their mincing attitude, their piteous expression, that
indescribably anæmic and emaciated--one may almost say emasculated--air
which shows in their whole nature; they are pious seminarists brought up
under the direction of St. Alphonso di Liguori or of St. Louis di
Gonzagua; they are not saints, not the violent who take the kingdom of
heaven by force.
We have come to one of the most delicate features of the life of
Francis--his relations with diabolical powers. Customs and ideas have so
profoundly changed in all that concerns the existence of the devil and
his relations with men, that it is almost impossible to picture to
oneself the enormous place which the thought of demons occupied at that
time in the minds of men.
The best minds of the Middle Ages believed without a doubt in the
existence of the perverse spirit, in his perpetual transformations in
the endeavor to tempt men and cause them to fall into his snares. Even
in the sixteenth century, Luther, who undermined so many beliefs, had no
more doubt of the personal existence of Satan than of sorcery,
conjurations, or possessions.[7]
Finding in their souls a wide background of grandeur and wretchedness,
whence they sometimes heard a burst of distant harmonies calling them to
a higher life, soon to be overpowered by the clamors of the brute, our
ancestors could not refrain from seeking the explanation of this duel.
They found it in the conflict of the demons with God.
The devil is the prince of the demons, as God is the prince of the
angels; capable of all transformations, they carry on to the end of time
terrible battles which will end in the victory of God, but meantime each
man his whole life long is contended for by these two adversaries, and
the noblest souls are naturally the most disputed.
This is how St. Francis, with all men of his time, explained the
disquietudes, terrors, anguish, with which his heart was at times
assailed, as well as the hopes, consolations, joys in which in general
his soul was bathed. Wherever we follow his steps local tradition has
preserved the memory of rude assaults of the tempter which he had to
undergo.
It is no doubt useless to recall here the elementary fact that if
manners change with the times, man himself is quite as strangely
modified. If, according to education, and the manner of life, such or
such a sense may develop an acuteness which confounds common
experience--hearing in the musician, touch with the blind, etc.--we may
estimate by this how much sharper certain senses may have been then than
now. Several centuries ago visual delusion was with adults what it is
now with children in remotest country parts. A quivering leaf, a
nothing, a breath, an unexplained sound creates an image which they see
and in the reality of which they believe absolutely. Man is all of a
piece; the hyperæsthesia of the will presupposes that of the
sensibility, one is conditioned on the other, and it is this which makes
men of revolutionary epochs so much greater than nature. It would be
absurd under pretext of truth to try to bring them back to the common
measures of our contemporary society, for they were veritably demigods
for good as for evil.
Legends are not always absurd. The men of '93 are still near to us, but
it is nevertheless with good right that legend has taken possession of
them, and it is pitiable to see these men who, ten times a day, had to
take resolutions where everything was at stake--their destiny, that of
their ideas, and sometimes that of their country--judged as if they had
been mere worthy citizens, with leisure to discuss at length every
morning the garments they were to wear or the _menu_ of a dinner. Most
of the time historians have perceived only a part of the truth about
them; for not only were there two men in them, almost all of them are at
the same time poets, demagogues, prophets, heroes, martyrs. To write
history, then, is to translate and transpose almost continually. The men
of the thirteenth century could not bring themselves to not refer to an
exterior cause the inner motions of their souls. In what appears to us
as the result of our own reflections they saw inspiration; where we say
desires, instincts, passions, they said temptation, but we must not
permit these differences of language to make us overlook or tax with
trickery a part of their spiritual life, bringing us thus to the
conclusions of a narrow and ignorant rationalism.
St. Francis believed himself to have many a time fought with the devil;
the horrible demons of the Etruscan Inferno still haunted the forests of
Umbria and Tuscany; but while for his contemporaries and some of his
disciples apparitions, prodigies, possessions, are daily phenomena, for
him they are exceptional, and remain entirely in the background. In the
iconography of St. Benedict, as in that of most of the popular saints,
the devil occupies a preponderant place; in that of St. Francis he
disappears so completely that in the long series of Giotto's frescos at
Assisi he is not seen a single time.[8]
In the same way all that is magic and miracle-working occupies in his
life an entirely secondary rank. Jesus in the Gospels gave his apostles
power to cast out evil spirits, and to heal all sickness and all
infirmity.[9] Francis surely took literally these words, which made a
part of his Rule. He believed that he could work miracles, and he willed
to do so; but his religious thought was too pure to permit him to
consider miracles otherwise than as an entirely exceptional means of
relieving the sufferings of men. Not once do we see him resorting to
miracle to prove his apostolate or to bolster up his ideas. His tact
taught him that souls are worthy of being won by better means. This
almost complete absence of the marvellous[10] is by so much the more
remarkable that it is in absolute contradiction with the tendencies of
his time.[11]
Open the life of his disciple, St. Anthony of Padua ([Cross] 1231); it is a
tiresome catalogue of prodigies, healings, resurrections. One would say
it was rather the prospectus of some druggist who had invented a new
drug than a call to men to conversion and a higher life. It may interest
invalids or devotees, but neither the heart nor the conscience is
touched by it. It must be said in justice to Anthony of Padua that his
relations with Francis appear to have been very slight. Among the
earliest disciples who had time to fathom their master's thought to the
very depths we find traces of this noble disdain of the marvellous; they
knew too well that the perfect joy is not to astound the world with
prodigies, to give sight to the blind, nor even to revive those who have
been four days dead, but that it lives in the love that goes even to
self-immolation. _Mihi absit gloriari nisi in cruce Domini._[12]
Thus Brother Egidio asked of God grace not to perform miracles; he saw
in them, as in the passion for learning, a snare in which the proud
would be taken, and which would distract the Order from its true
mission.[13]
St. Francis's miracles are all acts of love; the greater number of them
are found in the healing of nervous maladies, those apparently
inexplicable disquietudes which are the cruel afflictions of critical
times. His gentle glance, at once so compassionate and so strong, which
seemed like a messenger from his heart, often sufficed to make those who
met it forget all their suffering.
The evil eye is perhaps a less stupid superstition than is generally
fancied. Jesus was right in saying that a look sufficed to make one an
adulterer; but there is also a look--that of the contemplative Mary, for
example--which is worth all sacrifices, because it includes them all,
because it gives, consecrates, immolates him who looks.
Civilization dulls this power of the glance. A part of the education the
world gives us consists in teaching our eyes to deceive, in making them
expressionless, in extinguishing their flames; but simple and
straightforward natures never give up using this language of the heart,
"which brings life and health in its beams."
"A Brother was suffering unspeakable tortures; sometimes he would roll
upon the ground, striking against whatever lay in his way, frothing at
the mouth, horrible to see; at times he would become rigid, and again,
after remaining stark outstretched for a moment, would roll about in
horrible contortions; sometimes lying in a heap on the ground, his feet
touching his head, he would bound upward as high as a man's head."
Francis came to see him and healed him.[14]
But these are exceptions, and the greater part of the time the Saint
withdrew himself from the entreaties of his companions when they asked
miracles at his hands.
To sum up, if we take a survey of the whole field of Francis's piety, we
see that it proceeds from the secret union of his soul with the divine
by prayer; this intuitive power of seeing the ideal classes him with the
mystics. He knew, indeed, both the ecstasy and the liberty of mysticism,
but we must not forget those features of character which separate him
from it, particularly his apostolic fervor. Besides this his piety had
certain peculiar qualities which it is necessary to point out.
And first, liberty with respect of observances: Francis felt all the
emptiness and pride of most religious observance. He saw the snare that
lies hidden there, for the man who carefully observes all the minutiæ of
a religious code risks forgetting the supreme law of love. More than
this, the friar who lays upon himself a certain number of supererogatory
facts gains the admiration of the ignorant, but the pleasure which he
finds in this admiration actually transforms his pious act into sin.
Thus, strangely enough, contrary to other founders of orders, he was
continually easing the strictness of the various rules which he laid
down.[15] We may not take this to be a mere accident, for it was only
after a struggle with his disciples that he made his will prevail; and
it was precisely those who were most disposed to relax their vow of
poverty who were the most anxious to display certain bigoted observances
before the public eye.
"The sinner can fast," Francis would say at such times; "he can pray,
weep, macerate himself, but one thing he cannot do, he cannot be
faithful to God." Noble words, not unworthy to fall from the lips of him
who came to preach a worship in spirit and in truth, without temple or
priest; or rather that every fireside shall be a temple and every
believer a priest.
Religious formalism, in whatever form of worship, always takes on a
forced and morose manner. Pharisees of every age disfigure their faces
that no one may be unaware of their godliness. Francis not merely could
not endure these grimaces of false piety, he actually counted mirth and
joy in the number of religious duties.
How shall one be melancholy who has in the heart an inexhaustible
treasure of life and truth which only increases as one draws upon it?
How be sad when in spite of falls one never ceases to make progress?
The pious soul which grows and develops has a joy like that of the
child, happy in feeling its weak little limbs growing strong and
permitting it every day a further exertion.
The word joy is perhaps that which comes most often to the pen of the
Franciscan authors;[16] the master went so far as to make it one of the
precepts of the Rule.[17] He was too good a general not to know that a
joyous army is always a victorious army. In the history of the early
Franciscan missions there are bursts of laughter which ring out high and
clear.[18]
For that matter, we are apt to imagine the Middle Ages as much more
melancholy than they really were. Men suffered much in those days, but
the idea of grief being never separated from that of penalty, suffering
was either an expiation or a test, and sorrow thus regarded loses its
sting; light and hope shine through it.
Francis drew a part of his joy from the communion. He gave to the
sacrament of the eucharist that worship imbued with unutterable emotion,
with joyful tears, which has aided some of the noblest of human souls to
endure the burden and heat of the day.[19] The letter of the dogma was
not fixed in the thirteenth century as it is to-day, but all that is
beautiful, true, potent, eternal in the mystical feast instituted by
Jesus was then alive in every heart.
The eucharist was truly the viaticum of the soul. Like the pilgrims of
Emmaus long ago, in the hour when the shades of evening fall and a vague
sadness invades the soul, when the phantoms of the night awake and seem
to loom up behind all our thoughts, our fathers saw the divine and
mysterious Companion coming toward them; they drank in his words, they
felt his strength descending upon their hearts, all their inward being
warmed again, and again they whispered, "Abide with us, Lord, for the
day is far spent and the night approacheth."
And often their prayer was heard.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 1 Cel., 62.
[2] 1 Cel., 66; cf. Bon., 180; 1 Cel., 67; cf. Bon., 182; 1
Cel., 69; Bon., 183. After St. Francis's death the Narniates
were the first to come to pray at his tomb. 1 Cel., 128, 135,
136, 138, 141; Bon., 275.
[3] As concerning: 1, fidelity to Poverty; 2, prohibition of
modifying the Rule; 3, the equal authority of the Will and the
Rule; 4, the request for privileges at the court of Rome; 5, the
elevation of the friars to high ecclesiastical charges; 6, the
absolute prohibition of putting themselves in opposition to the
secular clergy; 7, the interdiction of great churches and rich
convents. On all these points and many others infidelity to
Francis's will was complete in the Order less than twenty-five
years after his death. We might expatiate on all this; the Holy
See in interpreting the Rule had canonical right on its side,
but Ubertino di Casali in saying that it was perfectly clear and
had no need of interpretation had good sense on his side; let
that suffice! _Et est stupor quare queritur expositio super
litteram sic apertam quia nulla est difficultas in regulæ
intelligentia. Arbor vitæ crucifixæ_, Venice, 1485. lib. v.,
cap. 3. _Sanctus vir Egidius tanto ejulatu clamabat super regulæ
destructionem quam videbat quod ignorantibus viam spiritus quasi
videbatur insanus. Id. ibid._
[4] _Heavens drop down your dew, and let the clouds rain down
the Just One._ Anthem for Advent.
[5] _In foramibus petræ nidificabat._ 1 Cel., 71. Upon the
prayers of Francis vide ibid., 71 and 72; 2 Cel., 3, 38-43;
Ben., 139-148. Cf. 1 Cel., 6; 91; 103; 3 Soc., 8; 12; etc.
[6] Luke, xxii. 44.
[7] Felix Kuhn: _Luther, sa vie et son oeuvre_, Paris, 1883, 3
vols., 8vo. t. i., p. 128; t. ii., p. 9; t. iii., p. 257.
Benvenuto Cellini does not hesitate to describe a visit which he
made one day to the Coliseum in company with a magician whose
words evoked clouds of devils who filled the whole place. B.
Cellini, _La vita scritta da lui medesimo_, Bianchi's edition,
Florence, 1890, 12mo, p. 33.
[8] On the devil and Francis vide 1 Cel., 68, 72; 3 Soc., 12; 2
Cel., 1, 6; 3, 10; 53; 58-65; Bon., 59-62. Cf. Eccl., 3; 5; 13;
_Fior._, 29; _Spec._, 110b. To form an idea of the part taken by
the devil in the life of a monk at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, one must read the _Dialogus miraculorium_ of
Cæsar von Heisterbach.
[9] Matthew, x. 1.
[10] Miracles occupy only ten paragraphs (61-70) in 1 Cel., and
of this number there are several which can hardly be counted as
Francis's miracles, since they were performed by objects which
had belonged to him.
[11] Heretics often took advantage of this thirst for the
marvellous to dupe the catholics. The Cathari of Moncoul made a
portrait of the Virgin representing her as one eyed and
toothless, saying that in his humility Christ had chosen a very
ugly woman for mother. They had no difficulty in healing several
cases of disease by its means; the image became famous, was
venerated almost everywhere, and accomplished many miracles
until the day when the heretics divulged the deception, to the
great scandal of the faithful. Egbert von Schönau, _Contra
Catharos_. Serm. I. cap. 2. (Patrol. lat. Migne t. 195.) Cf.
Heisterbach, _loc. cit._, v. 18. Luc de Tuy, _De altera Vita_,
lib. ii. 9; iii. 9, 18 (Patrol. Migne., 208).
[12] "But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ." Gal. vi. 14. This is to this day the
motto of the Brothers Minor.
[13] _Spec._, 182a; 200a; 232a. Cf. 199a.
[14] 1 Cel., 67.
[15] _Secundum primam regulam fratres feria quarta et sexta et
per licentiam beati Francisci feria secunda et sabbato
jejunabant. Giord. 11. cf. Reg. 1221, cap. 3_ and _Reg. 1223,
cap. 3_, where Friday is the only fast day retained.
[16] 1 Cel., 10; 22; 27; 31; 42; 80; 2 Cel., 1, 1; 3, 65-68;
Eccl., 5; 6; _Giord._, 21; _Spec._, 119a; _Conform._, 143a, 2.
[17] _Caveant fratres quod non ostendant se tristes extrinsecus
nubilosos et hypocritas; sed ostendant se gaudentis in Domine,
hilares et convenientes gratiosos._
[18] Eccl., _loc. cit._; Giord., _loc. cit._
[19] Vide _Test._; 1 Cel., 46; 62; 75; 2 Cel., 3, 129; _Spec._,
44a.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XII
THE CHAPTER-GENERAL OF 1217[1]
After Whitsunday of 1217 chronological notes of Francis's life are
numerous enough to make error almost impossible. Unhappily, this is not
the case for the eighteen months which precede it (autumn of
1215-Whitsunday, 1217). For this period we are reduced to conjecture, or
little better.
As Francis at that time undertook no foreign mission, he doubtless
employed his time in evangelizing Central Italy and in consolidating the
foundations of his institution. His presence at Rome during the Lateran
Council (November 11-30, 1215) is possible, but it has left no trace in
the earliest biographies. The Council certainly took the new Order into
consideration,[2] but it was to renew the invitation made to it five
years before by the supreme pontiff, to choose one of the Rules already
approved by the Church.[3] St. Dominic, who was then at Rome to beg
for the confirmation of his institute, received the same counsel and
immediately conformed to it. The Holy See would willingly have conceded
special constitutions to the Brothers Minor, if they had adopted for a
base the Rule of St. Benedict; thus the Clarisses, except those of St.
Damian, while preserving their name and a certain number of their
customs, were obliged to profess the Benedictine rule.
In spite of all solicitations, Francis insisted upon retaining his own
Rule. One is led to believe that it was to confer upon these questions
that we find him at Perugia in July, 1216, when Innocent III. died.[4]
However this may be, about this epoch the chapters took on a great
importance. The Church, which had looked on at the foundation of the
Order with somewhat mixed feelings, could no longer rest content with
being the mere spectator of so profound a movement; it saw the need of
utilizing it.
Ugolini was marvellously well prepared for such a task. Giovanni di San
Paolo, Bishop of the Sabine, charged by Innocent III. to look after the
Brothers, died in 1216, and Ugolini was not slow to offer his
protection to Francis, who accepted it with gratitude. This
extraordinary offer is recounted at length by the Three Companions.[5]
It must certainly be fixed in the summer of 1216[6] immediately after
the death of Giovanni di San Paolo.
It is very possible that the first chapter held in the presence of this
cardinal took place on May 29, 1216. By an error very common in history,
most of the Franciscan writers have referred to a single date all the
scattered incidents concerning the first solemn assizes of the Order,
and have called this typical assembly the _Chapter of the Mats_. In
reality for long years all the gatherings of the Brothers Minor deserved
this name.[7]
Coming together at the season of the greatest heat, they slept in the
open air or sheltered themselves under booths of reeds. We need not pity
them. There is nothing like the glorious transparency of the summer
night in Umbria; sometimes in Provence one may enjoy a foretaste of it,
but if at Baux, upon the rock of Doms, or at St. Baume, the sight is
equally solemn and grandiose, it still wants the caressing sweetness,
the effluence of life which in Umbria give the night a bewitching charm.
The inhabitants of the neighboring towns and villages flocked to these
meetings in crowds, at once to see the ceremonies, to be present when
their relatives or friends assumed the habit, to listen to the appeals
of the Saint and to furnish to the friars the provisions of which they
might have need. All this is not without some analogy with the
camp-meeting so dear to Americans. As to the figures of several
thousands of attendants given in the legends, and furnishing even to a
Franciscan, Father Papini, the occasion for pleasantries of doubtful
taste, it is perhaps not so surprising as might be supposed.[8]
These first meetings, to which all the Brothers eagerly hastened, held
in the open air in the presence of crowds come together from distant
places, have then nothing in common with the subsequent
chapters-general, which were veritable conclaves attended by a small
number of delegates, and the majority of the work of which, done in
secret, was concerned only with the affairs of the Order.
During Francis's lifetime the purpose of these assemblies was
essentially religious. Men attended them not to talk business, or
proceed to the nomination of the minister-general, but in mutual
communion to gain new strength from the joys, the example, and the
sufferings of the other brethren.[9]
The four years which followed the Whitsunday of 1216 form a stage in the
evolution of the Umbrian movement; that during which Francis was
battling for autonomy. We find here pretty delicate shades of
distinction, which have been misunderstood by Church writers as much as
by their adversaries, for if Francis was particular not to put himself
in the attitude of revolt, he would not compromise his independence, and
he felt with an exquisite divination that all the privileges which the
court of Rome could heap upon him were worth nothing in comparison with
liberty. Alas, he was soon forced to resign himself to these gilded
bonds, against which he never ceased to protest, even to his last
sigh;[10] but to shut one's eyes to the moral violence which the papacy
did him in this matter is to condemn oneself to an entire
misapprehension of his work.
A glance over the collection of bulls addressed to the Franciscans
suffices to show with what ardor he struggled against favors so eagerly
sought by the monastic orders.[11]
A great number of legendary anecdotes put Francis's disdain of
privileges in the clearest light. Even his dearest friends did not
always understand his scruples.
"Do you not see," they said to him one day, "that often the
bishops do not permit us to preach, and make us remain several
days without doing anything before we are permitted to proclaim
the word of God? It would be better worth while to obtain for
this end a privilege from the pope, and it would be for the good
of souls."
"I would first convert the prelates by humility and respect," he
replied quickly; "for when they have seen us humble and
respectful toward them, they themselves will beg us to preach
and convert the people. As for me, I ask of God no privilege
unless it be that I may have none, to be full of respect for all
men, and to convert them, as our Rule ordains, more by our
example than by our speech."[12]
The question whether Francis was right or wrong in his antipathy to the
privileges of the curia does not come within the domain of history; it
is evident that this attitude could not long continue; the Church knows
only the faithful and rebels. But the noblest hearts often make a stand
at compromises of this kind; they desire that the future should grow out
of the past without convulsion and without a crisis.
The chapter of 1217 was notable for the definitive organization of the
Franciscan missions. Italy and the other countries were divided off into
a certain number of _provinces_, having each its provincial minister.
Immediately upon his accession Honorius III. had sought to revive the
popular zeal for the crusades. He had not stopped at preaching it, but
appealed to prophecies which had proclaimed that under his pontificate
the Holy Land would be reconquered.[13] The renewal of fervor which
ensued, and of which the rebound was felt as far as Germany, had a
profound influence on the Brothers Minor. This time Francis, perhaps
from humility, did not put himself at the head of the friars charged
with a mission to Syria; for leader he gave them the famous Elias,
formerly at Florence, where he had had opportunity to show his high
qualities.[14]
This Brother, who from this time appears in the foreground of this
history, came from the most humble ranks of society; the date and the
circumstances of his entrance into the Order are unknown, and hence
conjecture has come to see in him that friend of the grotto who had been
Francis's confidant shortly before his decisive conversion. However this
may be, in his youth he had earned his living in Assisi, making
mattresses and teaching a few children to read; then he had spent some
time in Bologna as _scriptor_; then suddenly we find him among the
Brothers Minor, charged with the most difficult missions.
His adversaries vie with one another in asserting that he was the finest
mind of his century, but unhappily it is very difficult, in the existing
state of the documents, to pronounce as to his actions; learned and
energetic, eager to play the leading part in the work of the
reformation of religion, and having made his plan beforehand as to the
proper mode of realizing it, he made straight for his goal, half
political, half religious. Full of admiration for Francis and gratitude
toward him, he desired to regulate and consolidate the movement for
renovation. In the inner Franciscan circle, where Leo, Ginepro, Egidio,
and many others represent the spirit of liberty, the religion of the
humble and the simple, Elias represents the scientific and
ecclesiastical spirit, prudence and reason.
He had great success in Syria and received into the Order one of the
disciples most dear to Francis, Cæsar of Speyer, who later on was to
make the conquest of all Southern Germany in less than two years
(1221-1223), and who in the end sealed with his blood his fidelity to
the strict observance, which he defended against the attacks of Brother
Elias himself.[15]
Cæsar of Speyer offers a brilliant example of those suffering souls
athirst for the ideal, so numerous in the thirteenth century, who
everywhere went up and down, seeking first in learning, then in the
religious life, that which should assuage the mysterious thirst which
tortured them. Disciple of the scholastic Conrad, he had felt himself
overpowered with the desire to reform the Church; while still a layman
he had preached his ideas, not without some success, since a certain
number of ladies of Speyer had begun to lead a new life; but their
husbands disapproving, he was obliged to escape their vengeance by
taking refuge at Paris, and thence he went to the East, where in the
preaching of the Brothers Minor he found again his hopes and his dreams.
This instance shows how general was the waiting condition of souls when
the Franciscan gospel blazed forth, and how its way had been everywhere
prepared.
But it is time to return to the chapter of 1217: the friars who went to
Germany under conduct of Giovanni di Penna were far from having the
success of Elias and his companions; they were completely ignorant of
the language of the country which they had undertaken to evangelize.
Perhaps Francis had not taken into account the fact that though Italian
might, in case of need, suffice in all the countries bathed by the
Mediterranean, this could not be the case in Central Europe.[16]
The lot of the party going to Hungary was not more happy. Very often it
came to pass that the missionaries were fain to give up their very
garments in the effort to appease the peasants and shepherds who
maltreated them. But no less incapable of understanding what was said to
them than of making themselves understood, they were soon obliged to
think of returning to Italy. We may thank the Franciscan authors for
preserving for us the memory of these checks, and not attempting to
picture the friars as suddenly knowing all languages by a divine
inspiration, as later on was so often related.[17]
Those who had been sent to Spain had also to undergo persecutions. This
country, like the south of France, was ravaged by heresy; but already at
that time it was vigorously repressed. The Franciscans, suspected of
being false Catholics and therefore eagerly hunted out, found a refuge
with Queen Urraca of Portugal, who permitted them to establish
themselves at Coimbra, Guimarraens, Alenquero, and Lisbon.[18]
Francis himself made preparations for going to France.[19] This country
had a peculiar charm for him because of his fervent love of the Holy
Sacrament. Perhaps also he was unwittingly drawn toward this country to
which he owed his name, the chivalrous dreams of his youth, all of
poetry, song, music, delicious dream that had come into his life.
Something of the emotion that thrilled through him on undertaking this
new mission has passed into the story of his biographers; one feels
there the thrill at once sweet and agonizing, the heart-throb of the
brave knight who goes forth all harnessed in the early dawn to scan the
horizon, dreading the unknown and yet overflowing with joy, for he knows
that the day will be consecrated to love and to the right.
The Italian poet has given the one name of "pilgrimages of love" to the
farings forth of chivalry and the journeys undertaken by dreamers,
artists, or saints to those parts of the earth which forever mirror
themselves before their imagination and remain their chosen
fatherland.[20] Such a pilgrimage as this was Francis undertaking.
"Set forth," said he to the Brothers who accompanied him, "and
walk two and two, humble and gentle, keeping silence until after
tierce, praying to God in your hearts, carefully avoiding every
vain or useless word. Meditate as much while on this journey as
if you were shut up in a hermitage or in your cell, for wherever
we are, wherever we go, we carry our cell with us; Brother body
is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who dwells in it, there
to pray to the Lord and to meditate."
Arrived at Florence he found there Cardinal Ugolini, sent by the pope as
legate to Tuscany to preach the crusade and take all needful measures
for assuring its success.[21] Francis was surely far from expecting
the reception which the prelate gave him. Instead of encouraging him,
the cardinal urged him to give up his project.
"I am not willing, my brother, that you should cross the
mountains; there are many prelates who ask nothing better than
to stir up difficulties for you with the court of Rome. But I
and the other cardinals who love your Order desire to protect
and aid you, on the condition, however, that you do not quit
this province."
"But, monsignor, it would be a great disgrace for me to send my
brethren far away while I remained idly here, sharing none of
the tribulations which they must undergo."
"Wherefore, then, have you sent your brethren so far away,
exposing them thus to starvation and all sorts of perils?"
"Do you think," replied Francis warmly, and as if moved by
prophetic inspiration, "that God raised up the Brothers for the
sake of this country alone? Verily, I say unto you, God has
raised them up for the awakening and the salvation of all men,
and they shall win souls not only in the countries of those who
believe, but also in the very midst of the infidels."[22]
The surprise and admiration which these words awoke in Ugolini were not
enough to make him change his mind. He insisted so strongly that Francis
turned back to Portiuncula, the inspiration of his work not even shaken.
Who knows whether the joy which he would have felt in seeing France did
not confirm him in the idea that he ought to renounce this plan? Souls
athirst with the longing for sacrifice often have scruples such as
these; they refuse the most lawful joys that they may offer them to
God. We cannot tell whether it was immediately after this interview or
not till the following year that Francis put Brother Pacifico at the
head of the missionaries sent into France.[23]
Pacifico, who was a poet of talent, had before his conversion been
surnamed Prince of Poesy and crowned at the capital by the emperor. One
day while visiting a relative who was a nun at San Severino in the March
of Ancona, Francis also arrived at the monastery, and preached with such
a holy impetuosity that the poet felt himself pierced with the sword of
which the Bible speaks, which penetrates between the very joints and
marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart.[24] On the
morrow he assumed the habit and received his symbolical surname.[25]
He was accompanied to France by Brother Agnello di Pisa, who was
destined to be put at the head of the first mission to England in
1224.[26]
Francis, on sending them forth, was far from dreaming that from this
country, which exerted such a fascination over him, was to come forth
the influence which was to compromise his dream--that Paris would be the
destruction of Assisi; and yet the time was not very far distant; a few
years more and the Poverello would see a part of his spiritual family
forgetting the humility of their name, their origin, and their
aspirations, to run after the ephemeral laurels of learning.
We have already seen that the habit of the Franciscans of this time was
to make their abode within easy reach of great cities; Pacifico and his
companions established themselves at St. Denis.[27] We have no
particulars of their work; it was singularly fruitful, since it
permitted them a few years later to attack England with full success.
Francis passed the following year (1218) in evangelizing tours in Italy.
It is naturally impossible to follow him in these travels, the itinerary
of which was fixed by his daily inspirations, or by indications as
fanciful as the one which had formerly determined his going to Sienna.
Bologna,[28] the Verna, the valley of Rieti, the Sacro-Speco of St.
Benedict at Subiaco,[29] Gaeta;[30] San Michele on Mount Gargano[31]
perhaps received him at this time, but the notes of his presence in
these places are too sparse and vague to permit their being included in
any scheme of history.
It is very possible that he also paid a visit to Rome during this time;
his communications with Ugolini were much more frequent than is
generally supposed. We must not permit the stories of biographers to
deceive us in this matter; it is a natural tendency to refer all that we
know of a man to three or four especially striking dates. We forget
entire years of the life of those whom we have known the best and loved
the most and group our memories of them around a few salient events
which shine all the more brilliantly the deeper we make the surrounding
obscurity. The words of Jesus spoken on a hundred different occasions
came at last to be formed into a single discourse, the Sermon on the
Mount. It is in such cases that criticism needs to be delicate, to
mingle a little divination with the heavy artillery of scientific
argument.
The texts are sacred, but we must not make fetiches of them;
notwithstanding St. Matthew, no one to-day dreams of representing Jesus
as uttering the Sermon on the Mount all at one time. In the same way, in
the narratives concerning the relations between St. Francis and Ugolini,
we find ourselves every moment shut up in no-thoroughfares, coming up
against contradictory indications, just so long as we try to refer
everything to two or three meetings, as we are at first led to do.
With a simple act of analysis these difficulties disappear and we find
each of the different narratives bringing us fragments which, being
pieced together, furnish an organic story, living, psychologically true.
From the moment at which we have now arrived, we must make a much larger
place for Ugolini than in the past; the struggle has definitively opened
between the Franciscan ideal--chimerical, perhaps, but sublime--and the
ecclesiastical policy, to go on until the day when, half in humility,
half in discouragement, Francis, heartsick, abdicates the direction of
his spiritual family.
Ugolini returned to Rome at the end of 1217. During the following winter
his countersign is found at the bottom of the most important bulls;[32]
he devoted this time to the special study of the question of the new
orders, and summoned Francis before him. We have seen with what
frankness he had declared to him at Florence that many of the prelates
would do anything to discredit him with the pope.[33] It is evident the
success of the Order, its methods, which in spite of all protestations
to the contrary seemed to savor of heresy, the independence of Francis,
who had scattered his friars in all the four corners of the globe
without trying to gain a confirmation of the verbal and entirely
provisional authorization accorded him by Innocent III.--all these
things were calculated to startle the clergy.
Ugolini, who better than any one else knew Umbria, Tuscany, Emilia, the
March of Ancona, all those regions where the Franciscan preaching had
been most successful, was able by himself to judge of the power of the
new movement and the imperious necessity of directing it; he felt that
the best way to allay the prejudices which the pope and the sacred
college might have against Francis was to present him before the curia.
Francis was at first much abashed at the thought of preaching before the
Vicar of Jesus Christ, but upon the entreaties of his protector he
consented, and for greater security he learned by heart what he had to
say.
Ugolini himself was not entirely at ease as to the result of this step;
Thomas of Celano pictures him as devoured with anxiety; he was troubled
about Francis, whose artless eloquence ran many a risk in the halls of
the Lateran Palace; he was also not without some more personal
anxieties, for the failure of his _protégé_ might be most damaging to
himself. He was in all the greater anxiety when, on arriving at the feet
of the pontiff, Francis forgot all he had intended to say; but he
frankly avowed it, and seeking a new discourse from the inspiration of
the moment, spoke with so much warmth and simplicity that the assembly
was won.[34]
The biographers are mute as to the practical result of this audience. We
are not to be surprised at this, for they write with the sole purpose of
edification. They wrote after the apotheosis of their master, and would
with very bad grace have dwelt upon the difficulties which he met during
the early years.[35]
The Holy See must have been greatly perplexed by this strange man,
whose faith and humility were evident, but whom it was impossible to
teach ecclesiastical obedience.
St. Dominic happened to be in Rome at the same time,[36] and was
overwhelmed with favors by the pope. It is a matter of history that
Innocent III. having asked him to choose one of the Rules already
approved by the Church, he had returned to his friars at Notre Dame de
Prouille, and after conferring with them had adopted that of St.
Augustine; Honorius therefore was not sparing of privileges for him. It
is hardly possible that Ugolini did not try to use the influence of his
example with St. Francis.
The curia saw clearly that Dominic, whose Order barely comprised a few
dozen members, was not one of the moral powers of the time, but its
sentiments toward him were by no means so mixed as those it experienced
with regard to Francis.
To unite the two Orders, to throw over the shoulders of the Dominicans
the brown cassock of the Poor Men of Assisi, and thus make a little of
the popularity of the Brothers Minor to be reflected upon them, to leave
to the latter their name, their habit, and even a semblance of their
Rule, only completing it with that of St. Augustine, such a project
would have been singularly pleasing to Ugolini, and with Francis's
humility would seem to have some chance of success.
One day Dominic by dint of pious insistance induced Francis to give him
his cord, and immediately girded himself with it. "Brother," said he, "I
earnestly long that your Order and mine might unite to form one sole and
same institute[37] in the Church." But the Brother Minor wished to
remain as he was, and declined the proposition. So truly was he inspired
with the needs of his time and of the Church that less than three years
after this Dominic was drawn by an irresistible influence to transform
his Order of Canons of St. Augustine into an order of mendicant monks,
whose constitutions were outlined upon those of the Franciscans.[38]
A few years later the Dominicans took, so to speak, their revenge, and
obliged the Brothers Minor to give learning a large place in their work.
Thus, while hardly come to youth's estate, the two religious families
rivalled one another, impressed, influenced one another, yet never so
much so as to lose all traces of their origin--summed up for the one in
poverty and lay preaching, for the other in learning and the preaching
of the clergy.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The commencement of the great missions and the institution
of provincial ministers is usually fixed either at 1217 or 1219,
but both these dates present great difficulties. I confess that
I do not understand the vehemence with which partisans of either
side defend their opinions. The most important text is a passage
in the 3 Soc., 62: _Expletis itaque undecim annis ab inceptione
religionis, et multiplicatis numero et merito fratribus, electi
fuerant ministri, et missi cum aliquot fratribus quasi per
universas mundi provincias in quibus fides catholica colitur et
servatur._ What does this expression, _inceptio religionis_,
mean? At a first reading one unhesitatingly takes it to refer to
the foundation of the Order, which occurred in April, 1209, by
the reception of the first Brothers; but on adding eleven full
years to this date we reach the summer of 1220. This is
manifestly too late, for the 3 Soc. say that the brethren who
went out were persecuted in most of the countries beyond the
mountains, as being accredited by no pontifical letter; but the
bull _Cum dilecti_, bears the date of June 11, 1219. We are thus
led to think that the eleven years are not to be counted from
the reception of the first Brothers, but from Francis's
conversion, which the authors might well speak of as _inceptio
religionis_, and 1206 + 11 = 1217. The use of this expression to
designate conversion is not entirely without example.
Glassberger says (_An. fr._, p. 9): _Ordinem minorum incepit
anno 1206._ Those who admit 1219 are obliged (like the
Bollandists, for example), to attribute an inaccuracy to the
text of the 3 Soc., that of having counted eleven years as
having passed when there had been only ten. We should notice
that in the two other chronological indications given by the 3
Soc. (27 and 62) they count from the conversion, that is from
1206, as also Thomas of Celano, 88, 105, 119, 97, 88, 57, 55,
21. Curiously, the Conformities reproduce the passage of the 3
Soc. (118b, 1), but with the alteration: _Nono anno ab
inceptione religionis_. Giordano di Giano opens the door to many
scruples: _Anno vero Domini_ 1219 _et anno conversionis ejus
decimo frater Franciscus ... misit fratres in Franciam, in
Theutoniam, in Hungariam, in Hespaniam_, Giord., 3. As a little
later the same author properly harmonizes 1219 with the
thirteenth year from Francis's conversion, everyone is in
agreement in admitting that the passage cited needs correction;
we have unfortunately only one manuscript of this chronicle.
Glassberger, who doubtless had another before him, substitutes
1217, but he may have drawn this date from another document. It
is noteworthy that Brother Giordano gives as simultaneous the
departure of the friars for Germany, Hungary, and France; but,
as to the latter country, it certainly took place in 1217. So
the Speculum, 44a.
The chronicle of the xxiv. generals and Mark of Lisbon (Diola's
ed., t. i., p. 82) holds also to 1217, so that, though not
definitely established, it would appear that this date should be
accepted until further information. Starting from slightly
different premises, the learned editors of the _Analecta_ arrive
at the same conclusion (t. ii., pp. 25-36). Cf. Evers, _Analecta
ad Fr. Minorum historiam_, Leipsic, 1882, 4to, pp. 7 and 11.
That which appears to me decidedly to tip the balance in favor
of 1217, is the fact that the missionary friars were persecuted
because they had no document of legitimation; and in 1219 they
would have had the bull _Cum dilecti_, from June 11th of that
year. The Bollandists, who hold for 1219, have so clearly seen
this argument that they have been obliged to deny the
authenticity of the bull (or at least to suppose it wrongly
dated). A. SS., p. 839.
[2] Vide A. SS., p. 604. Cf. Angelo Clareno, _Tribul. Archiv._,
i., p. 559. _A papa Innocentis fuit omnibus annuntiatum in
concilio generali ... sicut sanctus vir fr. Leo scribit et fr.
Johannes de Celano._ These lines have not perhaps the
significance which one would be led to give them at the first
glance, their author having perhaps confounded _consilium_ and
_consistorium_. The Speculum, 20b says: _Eam (Regulam
Innocentius) approvabit et concessit et postea in consistorio
omnibus annuntiavit._
[3] _Ne nimia Religionem diversitas gravem in Ecclesia Dei
confusionem inducat, firmiter prohibemus, ne quis de
coetero novam Religionem inveniat; sed quicumque voluerit
ad Religionem converti, unam de approbatis assumat._ Labbé and
Cossart: _Sacrosancta concilia_, Paris, 1672, t. xi., col. 165.
[4] Eccl., 15 (_An. franc._, t. 1, p. 253): _Innocentium in
cujus obitu fuit presentialiter S. Franciscus_.
[5] 3 Soc., 61; cf. _An. Perus._, A. SS., p. 606f.
[6] Thomas of Celano must be in error when he declares that
Francis was not acquainted with Cardinal Ugolini before the
visit which he made him at Florence (summer of 1217): _Nondum
alter alteri erat præcipua familiaritate conjunctus_ (1 Cel., 74
and 75). The Franciscan biographer's purpose was not historic;
chronological indications are given in profusion; what he seeks
is the _apta junctura_. Tradition has preserved the memory of a
chapter held at Portiuncula in presence of Ugolini during a stay
of the curia at Perugia (_Spec._, 137b.; _Fior_., 18;
_Conform._, 207a; 3 Soc., 61). But the curia did not come back
to Perugia between 1216 and Francis's death. It is also to be
noted that according to Angelo Clareno, Ugolini was with Francis
in 1210, supporting him in the presence of Innocent III. Vide
below, p. 413. Finally the bull _Sacrosancta_ of December 9,
1219, witnesses that already during his legation in Florence
(1217) Ugolini was actually interesting himself for the
Clarisses.
[7] See, for example, the description of the chapter of 1221 by
Brother Giordano. Giord., 16.
[8] With regard to the figure of five thousand attendants given
by Bonaventura (Bon., 59) Father Papini writes: _Io non credo
stato capace alcuno di dare ad intendere al S. Dottore simil
fanfaluca, ne capace lui di crederla_.
_... In somma il numero quinque millia et ultra non è del Santo,
incapace di scrivere una cosa tanto improbabile e relativamente
impossibile. Storia di S. Fr._, i., pp. 181 and 183. This
figure, five thousand, is also indicated by Eccl., 6. All this
may be explained and become possible by admitting the presence
of the Brothers of Penitence, and it seems very difficult to
contest it, since in the Order of the Humiliants, which much
resembles that of the Brothers Minor (equally composed of three
branches approved by three bulls given June, 1201), the
chapters-general annually held were frequented by the brothers
of the three Orders. Tiraboschi t. ii., p. 144. Cf. above, p.
158.
[9] Vide 2 Cel., 3, 121; _Spec._, 42b; 127b.
[10] _Præcipio firmiter per obedientiam fratribus universis quod
ubicunque sunt, non audeant petere aliquam litteram in Curia
Romana._ _Test. B. Fr._
[11] A comparison with the Bullary of the Preaching Friars is
especially instructive: from their first chapter at Notre Dame
de Prouille, in 1216, they are about fifteen; we find there at
this time absolutely nothing that can be compared to the
Franciscan movement, which was already stirring up all Italy.
But while the first bull in favor of the Franciscans bears the
date of June 11, 1219, and the approbation properly so called
that of November 29, 1223, we find Honorius already in the end
of 1216 lavishing marks of affection upon the Dominicans;
December 22, 1216, _Religiosam vitam_. Cf. Pressuti, _I regesti,
del Pontefice Onorio III._, Roma, 1884, t. i., no. 175; same
date; _Nos attendentes_, ibid., no. 176; January 21, 1217,
_gratiarum omnium_, ib., no. 243. Vide 284, 1039, 1156, 1208. It
is needless to continue this enumeration. Very much the same
could be done for the other Orders; whence the conclusion that
if the Brothers Minor alone are forgotten in this shower of
favors, it is because they decidedly wished to be. It must be
admitted that immediately upon Francis's death they made up for
lost time.
[12] The authenticity of this passage is put beyond doubt by
Ubertino di Casal's citation. _Archiv._, iii., p. 53. Cf.
_Spec._, 30a; _Conform._, 111b, 1; 118b, 1; Ubertino, _Arbor
vitæ cruc._, iii., 3.
[13] _Burchardi chronicon ann. 1217_, _loc. cit._, p. 377. See
also the bulls indicated by Potthast, 5575, 5585-92.
[14] Before 1217 the office of minister virtually existed,
though its definitive institution dates only from 1217. Brother
Bernardo in his mission to Bologna, for example (1212?),
certainly held in some sort the office of minister.
[15] Imprisoned by order of Elias, he died in consequence of
blows given him one day when he was taking the air outside of
his prison. _Tribul._, 24a.
[16] Giord., 5 and 6; 3 Soc., 62.
[17] Of Giovanni di Parma, Clareno, Anthony of Padua, etc.
[18] Mark of Lisbon, t. i., p. 82. Cf. p. 79, t. ii., p. 86,
Glassberger _ann._, 1217. _An. fr._, ii., pp. 9 ff.; _Chron
xxiv. gen._, MS. of Assisi, no. 328, f^o 2b.
[19] _Spec._, 44a.; _Conform._, 119a, 2; 135a; 181b, 1; 1 Cel.,
74 and 75.
[20] Cel., 3, 129. _Diligebat Franciam ... volebat in ea mori_.
[21] V. bull of January 23, 1217, _Tempus acceptabile_,
Potthast, no. 5430, given in Horoy, t. ii., col. 205 ff.; cf.
Pressuti, i., p. 71. This bull and those following fix without
question the time of the journey to Florence. Potthast, 5488,
5487, and page 495.
[22] It is superfluous to point out the error of the Bollandist
text in the phrase _Monuit (Cardinalis Franciscum) coeptum non
perficere iter_, where the _non_ is omitted, A. SS., p. 704.
Cf., p. 607 and 835, which has led Suysken into several other
errors.
[23] Bon., 51. Cf. Glassberger, _ann_. 1217; _Spec._, 45b.
[24] Heb., iv., 12; 2 Cel., 3, 49; Bon., 50 and 51.
[25] Brother Pacifico interests us [the French people]
particularly as the first minister of the Order in France;
information about him is abundant: Bon., 79; 2 Cel., 3, 63;
_Spec._, 41b.: _Conform._, 38a, 1; 43a, 1; 71b; 173b, 1, and
176; 2 Cel., 8, 27; _Spec._, 38b; _Conform._, 181b; 2 Cel., 3,
76; _Fior._, 46; _Conform._, 70a. I do not indicate the general
references found in Chevalier's Bibliography. The Miscellanea,
t. ii. (1887), p. 158, contains a most precise and interesting
column about him. Gregory IX. speaks of him in the bull _Magna
sicut dicitur_ of August 12, 1227. Sbaralea, Bull, fr., i., p.
33 (Potthast, 8007). Thomas of Tuscany, _socius_ of St.
Bonaventura, knew him and speaks of him in his _Gesta
Imperatorum (Mon. germ. hist. script._, t. 22, p. 492).
[26] Eccl., 1; _Conform._, 113b, 1.
[27] Toward 1224 the Brothers Minor desired to draw nearer and
build a vast convent near the walls of Paris in the grounds
called Vauvert, or Valvert (now the Luxembourg Garden), (Eccl.,
10; cf. _Top. hist. du vieux Paris_, by Berty and Tisserand, t.
iv., p. 70). In 1230 they received at Paris from the
Benedictines of Saint-Germain-des-Prés a certain number of
houses _in parocchia SS. Cosmæ et Damiani infra muros domini
regis prope portam de Gibardo (Chartularium Universitatis
Parisiensis_, no. 76. Cf. _Topographie historique du vieux
Paris; Région occid. de l'univ._, p. 95; Félibien, _Histoire de
la ville de Paris_, i., p. 115). Finally, St. Louis installed
them in the celebrated Convent of the Cordeliers, the refectory
of which still exists, transformed into the Dupuytren Museum.
The Dominicans, who arrived in Paris September 12, 1217, went
straight to the centre of the city, near the bishop's palace on
the _Ile de la Cité_, and on August 6, 1218, were installed in
the Convent of St. Jacques.
[28] _Fior._, 27; _Spec._, 148b; _Conform._, 71a and 113a, 2;
Bon., 182.
[29] The traces of Francis's visit here are numerous. A Brother
Eudes painted his portrait here.
[30] Bon., 177.
[31] Vide A. SS., pp. 855 and 856. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 136.
[32] Among others those of December 5, 1217, Potthast, 5629;
February 8, March 30, April 7, 1218, Potthast, 5695, 5739, 5747.
[33] 1 Cel., 74. _O quanti maxime in principio cum hæc agerentur
novellæ plantationi ordinis insidiabantur ut perderent._ Cf. 2
Cel., 1, 16. _Videbat Franciscus luporum more sevire
quamplures._
[34] 1 Cel., 73 (cf. 2 Cel., 1, 17; _Spec._, 102a); 3 Soc., 64;
Bon., 78. The fixing of this scene in the winter of 1217-1218
seems hardly to be debatable; Giordano's account (14) in fact
determines the date at which Ugolini became _officially_
protector of the Order; it supposes earlier relations between
Honorius, Francis, and Ugolini. We are therefore led to seek a
date at which these three personages may have met in Rome, and
we arrive thus at the period between December, 1217, and April,
1218.
[35] A word of Brother Giordano's opens the door to certain
conjectures. "My lord," said Francis to Honorius III., in 1220,
"you have given me many fathers (popes) give me a single one to
whom I may turn with the affairs of my Order." (Giord., 14,
_Multos mihi papas dedisti da unum_, ... etc.)
Does not this suggest the idea that the pontiff had perhaps
named a commission of cardinals to oversee the Brothers Minor?
Its deliberations and the events to be related in the following
chapter might have impelled him to issue the bull _Cum dilecti_
of June 11, 1219, which was not an approbation properly so
called, but a safe-conduct in favor of the Franciscans.
[36] He took possession of St. Sabine on February 28, 1218.
[37] 2 Cel., 3, 87. The literal meaning of the phrase is
somewhat ambiguous. The text is: _Vellem, frater Francisce, unam
fieri religionem tuam et meam et in Ecclesia pari forma nos
vivere_. _Spec._ 27b. The echo of this attempt is found in
Thierry d'Apolda, _Vie de S. Dominique_ (A. SS., Augusti, t. i.,
p. 572 d): _S. Dominicus in oscula sancta ruens et sinceros
amplexus, dixit: Tu es socius meus, tu curres pariter mecum,
stemus simul, nullus adversarius prævalebit_. Bernard of Besse
says: _B. Dominicus tanta B. Francisco devotione cohesit ut
optatam ab eo cordam sub inferiori tunica devotissimi cingeret,
cujus et suam Religionem unam velle fieri diceret, ipsumque pro
sanctitate cæteris sequendem religiosis assereret._ Turin MS.,
102b.
[38] At the chapter held at Bologna at Whitsunday, 1220. The
bull _Religiosam vitam_ (Privilege of Notre Dame de Prouille) of
March 30, 1218, enumerates the possessions of the Dominicans.
Ripolli, _Bull. Præd._, t. i., p. 6. Horoy, _Honorii opera_, t.
ii., col. 684.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIII
ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS
The Egyptian Mission. Summer 1218-Autumn 1220
Art and poetry have done well in inseparably associating St. Dominic and
St. Francis; the glory of the first is only a reflection of that of the
second, and it is in placing them side by side that we succeed best in
understanding the genius of the Poverello. If Francis is the man of
inspiration, Dominic is that of obedience to orders; one may say that
his life was passed on the road to Rome, whither he continually went to
ask for instructions. His legend was therefore very slow to be formed,
although nothing forbade it to blossom freely; but neither the zeal of
Gregory IX. for his memory nor the learning of his disciples were able
to do for the _Hammer of heretics_ that which the love of the people did
for the _Father of the poor_. His legend has the two defects which so
soon weary the readers of hagiographical writings, when the question is
of the saints whose worship the Church has commanded.[1] It is
encumbered with a spurious supernaturalism, and with incidents borrowed
right and left from earlier legends. The Italian people, who hailed in
Francis the angel of all their hopes, and who showed themselves so
greedy for his relics, did not so much as dream of taking up the corpse
of the founder of the Order of Preaching Friars, and allowed him to wait
twelve years for the glories of canonization.[2]
We have already seen the efforts of Cardinal Ugolini to unite the two
Orders, and the reasons he had for this course. He went to the
Whitsunday chapter-general which met at Portiuncula (June 3, 1218), to
which came also St. Dominic with several of his disciples. The
ceremonial of these solemnities appears to have been always about the
same since 1216; the Brothers Minor went in procession to meet the
cardinal, who immediately dismounted from his horse and lavished
expressions of affection upon them. An altar was set up in the open air,
at which he said mass, Francis performing the functions of deacon.[3]
It is easy to imagine the emotion which overcame those present when in
its beautiful setting of the Umbrian landscape burst forth that part of
the Pentecostal service, that most exciting, the most apocalyptic of the
whole Catholic liturgy, the anthem _Alleluia, Alleluia, Emitte Spiritum
tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terræ_. _Alleluia_,[4] does
not this include the whole Franciscan dream?
But what especially amazed Dominic was the absence of material cares.
Francis had advised his brethren not to disquiet themselves in any
respect about food and drink; he knew by experience that they might
fearlessly trust all that to the love of the neighboring population.
This want of carefulness had greatly surprised Dominic, who thought it
exaggerated; he was able to reassure himself, when meal-time arrived, by
seeing the inhabitants of the district hastening in crowds to bring far
larger supplies of provisions than were needed for the several thousands
of friars, and holding it an honor to wait upon them.
The joy of the Franciscans, the sympathy of the populace with them, the
poverty of the huts of Portiuncula, all this impressed him deeply; so
much was he moved by it that in a burst of enthusiasm he announced his
resolution to embrace gospel poverty.[5]
Ugolini, though also moved, even to tears,[6] did not forget his
former anxieties; the Order was too numerous not to include a group of
malcontents; a few friars who before their conversion had studied in the
universities began to condemn the extreme simplicity laid upon them as a
duty. To men no longer sustained by enthusiasm the short precepts of the
Rule appeared a charter all too insufficient for a vast association;
they turned with envy toward the monumental abbeys of the Benedictines,
the regular Canons, the Cistercians, and toward the ancient monastic
legislations. They had no difficulty in perceiving in Ugolini a powerful
ally, nor in confiding their observations to him.
The latter deemed the propitious moment arrived, and in a private
conversation with Francis made a few suggestions: Ought he not give to
his disciples, especially to the educated among them, a greater share of
the burdens? consult them, gain inspiration from their views? was there
not room to profit by the experience of the older orders? Though all
this was said casually and with the greatest possible tact, Francis felt
himself wounded to the quick, and without answering he drew the cardinal
to the very midst of the chapter.
"My brothers," said he with fire, "the Lord has called me into the ways
of simplicity and humility. In them he has shown me the truth for myself
and for those who desire to believe and follow me; do not, then, come
speaking to me of the Rule of St. Benedict, of St. Augustine, of St.
Bernard, or of any other, but solely of that which God in his mercy has
seen fit to show to me, and of which he has told me that he would, by
its means, make a new covenant with the world, and he does not will that
we should have any other. But by your learning and your wisdom God will
bring you to confusion. For I am persuaded that God will chastise you;
whether you will or no you will be forced to come to repentance, and
nothing will remain for you but confusion."[7]
This warmth in defending and affirming his ideas profoundly astonished
Ugolini, who added not a word. As to Dominic, what he had just seen at
Portiuncula was to him a revelation. He felt, indeed, that his zeal for
the Church could not be greater, but he also perceived that he could
serve her with more success by certain changes in his weapons.
Ugolini no doubt only encouraged him in this view, and Dominic, beset
with new anxieties, set out a few months later for Spain. The intensity
of the crisis through which he passed has not been sufficiently
noticed; the religious writers recount at length his sojourn in the
grotto of Segovia, but they see only the ascetic practices, the prayers,
the genuflexions, and do not think of looking for the cause of all this.
From this epoch it might be said that he was unceasingly occupied in
copying Francis, if the word had not a somewhat displeasing sense.
Arrived at Segovia he follows the example of the Brothers Minor, founds
a hermitage in the outskirts of the city, hidden among the rocks which
overlook the town, and thence he descends from time to time to preach to
the people. The transformation in his mode of life was so evident that
several of his companions rebelled and refused to follow him in the new
way.
Popular sentiment has at times its intuitions; a legend grew up around
this grotto of Segovia, and it was said that St. Dominic there received
the stigmata. Is there not here an unconscious effort to translate into
an image within the comprehension of all, that which actually took place
in this cave of the Sierra da Guaderrama?[8]
Thus St. Dominic also arrived at the poverty of the gospel, but the road
by which he reached it was different indeed from that which St. Francis
had followed; while the latter had soared to it as on wings, had seen in
it the final emancipation from all the anxieties which debase this life,
St. Dominic considered it only as a means; it was for him one more
weapon in the arsenal of the host charged with the defence of the
Church. We must not see in this a mere vulgar calculation; his
admiration for him whom he thus imitated and followed afar off was
sincere and profound, but genius is not to be copied. This sacred malady
was not his; he has transmitted to his sons a sound and robust blood,
thanks to which they have known nothing of those paroxysms of hot
fever, those lofty flights, those sudden returns which make the story
of the Franciscans the story of the most tempest-tossed society which
the world has ever known, in which glorious chapters are mingled with
pages trivial and grotesque, sometimes even coarse.
At the chapter of 1218 Francis had other causes for sadness than the
murmurs of a group of malcontents; the missionaries sent out the year
before to Germany and Hungary had returned completely discouraged. The
account of the sufferings they had endured produced so great an effect
that from that time many of the friars added to their prayers the
formula: "Lord preserve us from the heresy of the Lombards and the
ferocity of the Germans."[9]
This explains how Ugolini at last succeeded in convincing Francis of his
duty to take the necessary measures no longer to expose the friars to be
hunted down as heretics. It was decided that at the end of the next
chapter the missionaries should be armed with a papal brief, which
should serve them as ecclesiastical passport. Here is the translation of
this document:
Honorius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to the
archbishops, bishops, abbots, deacons, archdeacons, and other
ecclesiastical superiors, salutation and the apostolic blessing.
Our dear son, brother Francis, and his companions of the life
and the Order of the Brothers Minor, having renounced the
vanities of this world to choose a mode of life which has
merited the approval of the Roman Church, and to go out after
the example of the Apostles to cast in various regions the seed
of the word of God, we pray and exhort you by these apostolic
letters to receive as good catholics the friars of the above
mentioned society, bearers of these presents, warning you to be
favorable to them and treat them with kindness for the honor of
God and out of consideration for us.
Given (at Rieti) this third day of the ides of June (June 11,
1219), in the third year of our pontificate.[10]
It is evident that this bull was calculated to avoid awakening Francis's
susceptibilities. To understand precisely in what it differs from the
first letters usually accredited to new Orders it is necessary to
compare it with them; that which had instituted the Dominicans had been,
like the others, a veritable privilege;[11] here there is nothing of
the kind.
The assembly which was opened at Whitsunday of 1219 (May 26) was of
extreme importance.[12] It closed the series of those primitive
chapters in which the inspiration and fancy of Francis were given free
course. Those which followed, presided over by the vicars, have neither
the same cheerfulness nor the same charm; the crude glare of full day
has driven away the hues of dawn and the indescribable ardors of nature
at its awakening.
The summer of 1219 was the epoch fixed by Honorius III. for making a new
effort in the East, and directing upon Egypt all the forces of the
Crusaders.[13] Francis thought the moment arrived for realizing the
project which he had not been able to execute in 1212. Strangely enough,
Ugolini who, two years before had hindered his going to France, now left
him in entire liberty to carry out this new expedition.[14] Several
authors have deemed that Francis, having found in him a true protector,
felt himself reassured as to the future of the Order; he might indeed
have thought thus, but the history of the troubles which burst out
immediately after his departure, the astounding story of the kind
reception given by the court of Rome to some meddlers who took the
opportunity of his absence to imperil his Order, would suffice to show
how much the Church was embarrassed by him, and with what ardor she
longed for the transformation of his work. We shall find later on the
detailed account of these facts.