It was not an easy task. The first time, when at the end of his round he glanced at the broken food in his wallet, he felt his courage fail him. But the thought of being so soon unfaithful to the spouse to whom he had plighted his faith made his blood run cold with shame and gave him strength to eat ravenously.[23]

Each hour, so to speak, brought to him a new struggle. One day he was going through the town begging for oil for the lamps of St. Damian, when he arrived at a house where a banquet was going on; the greater number of his former companions were there, singing and dancing. At the sound of those well-known voices he felt as if he could not enter; he even turned away, but very soon, filled with confusion by his own cowardice, he returned quickly upon his steps, made his way into the banquet-hall, and after confessing his shame, put so much earnestness and fire into his request that every one desired to co-operate in this pious work.[24]

His bitterest trial however was his father's anger, which remained as violent as ever. Although he had renounced Francis, Bernardone's pride suffered none the less at seeing his mode of life, and whenever he met his son he overwhelmed him with reproaches and maledictions. The tender heart of Francis was so wrung with sorrow that he resorted to a sort of stratagem for charming away the spell of the paternal imprecations. "Come with me," he said to a beggar; "be to me as a father, and I will give you a part of the alms which I receive. When you see Bernardone curse me, if I say, 'Bless me, my father,' you must sign me with the cross and bless me in his stead."[25] His brother was prominent in the front rank of those who harassed him with their mockeries. One winter morning they met in a church; Angelo leaned over to a friend who was with him, saying: "Go, ask Francis to sell you a farthing's worth of his sweat." "No," replied the latter, who overheard. "I shall sell it much dearer to my God."

In the spring of 1208 he finished the restoration of St. Damian; he had been aided by all people of good will, setting the example of work and above all of joy, cheering everybody by his songs and his projects for the future. He spoke with such enthusiasm and contagious warmth of the transformation of his dear chapel, of the grace which God would accord to those who should come there to pray, that later on it was believed that he had spoken of Clara and her holy maidens who were to retire to this place four years later.[26]

This success soon inspired him with the idea of repairing the other sanctuaries in the suburbs of Assisi. Those which had struck him by their state of decay were St. Peter and Santa Maria, of the Portiuncula, called also Santa Maria degli Angeli. The former is not otherwise mentioned in his biographies.[27] As to the second, it was to become the true cradle of the Franciscan movement.

This chapel, still standing at the present day after escaping revolutions and earthquakes, is a true Bethel, one of those rare spots in the world on which rests the mystic ladder which joins heaven to earth; there were dreamed some of the noblest dreams which have soothed the pains of humanity. It is not to Assisi in its marvellous basilica that one must go to divine and comprehend St. Francis; he must turn his steps to Santa Maria degli Angeli at the hours when the stated prayers cease, at the moment when the evening shadows lengthen, when all the fripperies of worship disappear in the obscurity, when all the nation seems to collect itself to listen to the chime of the distant church bells. Doubtless it was Francis's plan to settle there as a hermit. He dreamed of passing his life there in meditation and silence, keeping up the little church and from time to time inviting a priest there to say mass. Nothing as yet suggested to him that he was in the end to become a religious founder. One of the most interesting aspects of his life is in fact the continual development revealing itself in him; he is of the small number to whom to live is to be active, and to be active to make progress. There is hardly anyone, except St. Paul, in whom is found to the same degree the devouring need of being always something more, always something better, and it is so beautiful in both of them only because it is absolutely instinctive.

When he began to restore the Portiuncula his projects hardly went beyond a very narrow horizon; he was preparing himself for a life of penitence rather than a life of activity. But these works once finished it was impossible that this somewhat selfish and passive manner of achieving his own salvation should satisfy him long. At the memory of the appearance of the Crucified One his heart would swell with overpowering emotions, and he would melt into tears without knowing whether they were of admiration, pity, or desire.[28]

When the repairs were finished meditation occupied the greater part of his days. A Benedictine of the Abbey of Mont Subasio[29] came from time to time to say mass at Santa Maria; these were the bright hours of St. Francis's life. One can imagine with what pious care he prepared himself and with what faith he listened to the divine teachings.

One day, it was probably February 24, 1209, the festival of St. Matthias, mass was being celebrated at the Portiuncula.[30] When the priest turned toward him to read the words of Jesus, Francis felt himself overpowered with a profound agitation. He no longer saw the priest; it was Jesus, the Crucified One of St. Damian, who was speaking: "Wherever ye go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither silver nor gold nor brass in your purses, neither scrip nor two coats, nor shoes nor staff, for the laborer is worthy of his meat.'"

These words burst upon him like a revelation, like the answer of Heaven to his sighs and anxieties.

"This is what I want," he cried, "this is what I was seeking; from this day forth I shall set myself with all my strength to put it in practice." Immediately throwing aside his stick, his scrip, his purse, his shoes, he determined immediately to obey, observing to the letter the precepts of the apostolic life.

It is quite possible that some allegorizing tendencies have had some influence upon this narrative.[31] The long struggle through which Francis passed before becoming the apostle of the new times assuredly came to a crisis in the scene at Portiuncula; but we have already seen how slow was the interior travail which prepared for it.

The revelation of Francis was in his heart; the sacred fire which he was to communicate to the souls of others came from within his own, but the best causes need a standard. Before the shabby altar of the Portiuncula he had perceived the banner of poverty, sacrifice, and love, he would carry it to the assault of every fortress of sin; under its shadow, a true knight of Christ, he would marshal all the valiant warriors of a spiritual strife.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 3 Soc., 26.

[2] 3 Soc., 10.

[3] This crucifix is preserved in the sacristy of Santa Chiara, whither the sisters carried it when they left St. Damian.

[4] Opuscula B. Francisci, Oratio I.

[5] 3 Soc., 13; 2 Cel., 1, 6; Bon., 12; 15; 16.

[6] 3 Soc., 14.

[7] This incident is found in the narrative of 1 Cel., 8: Ibi ex more venditis.

[8] 1 Cel., 8; 3 Soc., 16; Bon. 16. Foligno is a three hours' walk from Assisi.

[9] 1 Cel., 9; 3 Soc., 16; Bon., 6. Cf. A. SS., p. 567.

[10] 1 Cel., 10; 3 Soc., 16; Bon., 17, A. SS.; p. 568.

[11] 1 Cel., 11.

[12] 1 Cel., 12; 3 Soc., 17; Bon., 18.

[13] 1 Cel., 13; 3 Soc., 18.

[14] 1 Cel., 13. It is possible that at this epoch he had received the lesser order, and that thus he might be subject to the jurisdiction of the Church.

[15] 3 Soc., 18 and 19; 1 Cel., 14; Bon., 19.

[16] From 1204 until after the death of St. Francis the episcopal throne of Assisi was occupied by Guido II. Vide Cristofano, 1, 169 ff.

[17] Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore o del vescovado. Everything has remained pretty nearly in the same state as in the thirteenth century.

[18] 1 Cel., 15; 3 Soc., 20; Bon., 20.

[19] 3 Soc., 16; Bon., 21.

[20] 1 Cel., 16; Bon., 21. The curious will read with interest an article by M. Mezzatinti upon the journey to Gubbio entitled S. Francesco e Frederico Spadalunga da Gubbio. [Miscellanea, t. v., pp. 76-78.] This Spadalunga da Gubbio was well able to give a garment to Francis, but it is very possible that the gift was made much later and that this solemn date in the saint's life has been fixed by an optical illusion, almost inevitable because of the identity of the fact with the name of the locality.

[21] 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; 13; 21; 22; 3 Soc., 11; A. SS., p. 575.

[22] 1 Cel., 18; 3 Soc., 21; Bon., 23.

[23] 3 Soc., 22; 2 Cel., 1, 9.

[24] 3 Soc., 24; 2 Cel., 8; Spec., 24.

[25] 3 Soc., 23; 2 Cel., 7.

[26] 3 Soc., 24; Testament de Claire, Wadding, ann. 1253 v.

[27] Cel., 21; Bon., 24.

[28] 3 Soc., 14; 2 Cel., i., 6.

[29] Portiuncula was a dependence of this abbey.

[30] This is the date adopted by the Bollandists, because the ancient missals mark the pericope, Matt. x., for the gospel of this day. This entails no difficulty and in any case it cannot be very far distant from the truth. A. SS., p. 574.

[31] See in particular Bon., 25 and 26. Cf. A. SS., p. 577d.

* * * * *



CHAPTER V

FIRST YEAR OF APOSTOLATE

Spring of 1209-Summer of 1210

The very next morning Francis went up to Assisi and began to preach. His words were simple, but they came so straight from the heart that all who heard him were touched.

It is not easy to hear and apply to one's self the exhortations of preachers who, aloft in the pulpit, seem to be carrying out a mere formality; it is just as difficult to escape from the appeals of a layman who walks at our side. The amazing multitude of Protestant sects is due in a great degree to this superiority of lay preaching over clerical. The most brilliant orators of the Christian pulpit are bad converters; their eloquent appeals may captivate the imagination and lead a few men of the world to the foot of the altar, but these results are not more brilliant than ephemeral. But let a peasant or a workingman speak to those whom he meets a few simple words going directly to the conscience, and the man is always impressed, often won.

Thus the words of Francis seemed to his hearers like a flaming sword penetrating to the very depths of their conscience. His first attempts were the simplest possible; in general they were merely a few words addressed to men whom he knew well enough to recognize their weak points and strike at them with the holy boldness of love. His person, his example, were themselves a sermon, and he spoke only of that which he had himself experienced, proclaiming repentance, the shortness of life, a future retribution, the necessity of arriving at gospel perfection.[1] It is not easy to realize how many waiting souls there are in this world. The greater number of men pass through life with souls asleep. They are like virgins of the sanctuary who sometimes feel a vague agitation; their hearts throb with an infinitely sweet and subtile thrill, but their eyelids droop; again they feel the damp cold of the cloister creeping over them; the delicious but baneful dream vanishes; and this is all they ever know of that love which is stronger than death.

It is thus with many men for all that belongs to the higher life. Sometimes, alone in the wide plain at the hour of twilight, they fix their eyes on the fading lights of the horizon, and on the evening breeze comes to them another breath, more distant, fainter, and almost heavenly, awaking in them a nostalgia for the world beyond and for holiness. But the darkness falls, they must go back to their homes; they shake off their reverie; and it often happens that to the very end of life this is their only glimpse of the Divine; a few sighs, a few thrills, a few inarticulate murmurs—this sums up all our efforts to attain to the sovereign good.

Yet the instinct for love and for the divine is only slumbering. At the sight of beauty love always awakes; at the appeal of holiness the divine witness within us at once responds; and so we see, streaming from all points of the horizon to gather around those who preach in the name of the inward voice, long processions of souls athirst for the ideal. The human heart so naturally yearns to offer itself up, that we have only to meet along our pathway some one who, doubting neither himself nor us, demands it without reserve, and we yield it to him at once. Reason may understand a partial gift, a transient devotion; the heart knows only the entire sacrifice, and like the lover to his beloved, it says to its vanquisher, "Thine alone and forever."

That which has caused the miserable failure of all the efforts of natural religion is that its founders have not had the courage to lay hold upon the hearts of men, consenting to no partition. They have not understood the imperious desire for immolation which lies in the depths of every soul, and souls have taken their revenge in not heeding these too lukewarm lovers.

Francis had given himself up too completely not to claim from others an absolute self-renunciation. In the two years and more since he had quitted the world, the reality and depth of his conversion had shone out in the sight of all; to the scoffings of the early days had gradually succeeded in the minds of many a feeling closely akin to admiration.

This feeling inevitably provokes imitation. A man of Assisi, hardly mentioned by the biographers, had attached himself to Francis. He was one of those simple-hearted men who find life beautiful enough so long as they can be with him who has kindled the divine spark[2] in their hearts. His arrival at Portiuncula gave Francis a suggestion; from that time he dreamed of the possibility of bringing together a few companions with whom he could carry on his apostolic mission in the neighborhood.

At Assisi he had often enjoyed the hospitality of a rich and prominent man named Bernardo di Quintavalle,[3] who took him to sleep in his own chamber; it is easy to see how such an intimacy would favor confidential outpourings. When in the silence of the early night an ardent and enthusiastic soul pours out to you its disappointments, wounds, dreams, hopes, faith, it is difficult indeed not to be carried along, especially when the apostle has a secret ally in your soul, and unconsciously meets your most secret aspirations.

One day Bernardo begged Francis to pass the following night with him, at the same time giving him to understand that he was about to make a grave resolution upon which he desired to consult him. The joy of Francis was great indeed as he divined his intentions. They passed the night without thinking of sleep; it was a long communion of souls. Bernardo had decided to distribute his goods to the poor and cast in his lot with Francis. The latter desired his friend to pass through a sort of initiation, pointing out to him that what he himself practised, what he preached, was not his own invention, but that Jesus himself had expressly ordained it in his word.

At early dawn they bent their steps to the St. Nicholas Church, accompanied by another neophyte named Pietro, and there, after praying and hearing mass, Francis opened the Gospels that lay on the altar and read to his companions the portion which had decided his own vocation: the words of Jesus sending forth his disciples on their mission.

"Brethren," he added, "this is our life and our Rule, and that of all who may join us. Go then and do as you have heard."[4]

The persistence with which the Three Companions relate that Francis consulted the book three times in honor of the Trinity, and that it opened of its own accord at the verses describing the apostolic life, leads to the belief that these passages became the Rule of the new association, if not that very day at least very soon afterward.

If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.

Jesus having called to him the Twelve, gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece. And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart. And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them. And they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?[5]

At first these verses were hardly more than the official Rule of the Order; the true Rule was Francis himself; but they had the great merit of being short, absolute, of promising perfection, and of being taken from the Gospel.

Bernardo immediately set to work to distribute his fortune among the poor. Full of joy, his friend was looking on at this act, which had drawn together a crowd, when a priest named Sylvester, who had formerly sold him some stones for the repairs of St. Damian, seeing so much money given away to everyone who applied for it, drew near and said:

"Brother, you did not pay me very well for the stones which you bought of me."

Francis had too thoroughly killed every germ of avarice in himself not to be moved to indignation by hearing a priest speak thus. "Here," he said, holding out to him a double handful of coins which he took from Bernardo's robe, "here; are you sufficiently paid now?"

"Quite so," replied Sylvester, somewhat abashed by the murmurs of the bystanders.[6]

This picture, in which the characters stand out so strongly, must have taken strong hold upon the memory of the bystanders: the Italians only thoroughly understand things which they make a picture of. It taught them, better than all Francis's preachings, what manner of men these new friars would be.

The distribution finished, they went at once to Portiuncula, where Bernardo and Pietro built for themselves cabins of boughs, and made themselves tunics like that of Francis. They did not differ much from the garment worn by the peasants, and were of that brown, with its infinite variety of shades, which the Italians call beast color. One finds similar garments to-day among the shepherds of the most remote parts of the Apennines.

A week later, Thursday, April 23, 1209,[7] a new disciple of the name of Egidio presented himself before Francis. Of a gentle and submissive nature, he was of those who need to lean on someone, but who, the needed support having been found and tested, lift themselves sometimes even above it. The pure soul of brother Egidio, supported by that of Francis, came to enjoy the intoxicating delights of contemplation with an unheard-of ardor.[8]

Here we must be on our guard against forcing the authorities, and asking of them more than they can give. Later, when the Order was definitely constituted and its convents organized, men fancied that the past had been like the present, and this error still weighs upon the picture of the origins of the Franciscan movement. The first brothers lived as did the poor people among whom they so willingly moved; Portiuncula was their favorite church, but it would be a mistake to suppose that they sojourned there for any long periods. It was their place of meeting, nothing more. When they set forth they simply knew that they should meet again in the neighborhood of the modest chapel. Their life was that of the Umbrian beggars of the present day, going here and there as fancy dictated, sleeping in hay-lofts, in leper hospitals, or under the porch of some church. So little had they any fixed domicile that Egidio, having decided to join them, was at considerable trouble to learn where to find Francis, and accidentally meeting him in the neighborhood of Rivo-Torto[9] he saw in the fact a providential leading.

They went up and down the country, joyfully sowing their seed. It was the beginning of summer, the time when everybody in Umbria is out of doors mowing or turning the grass. The customs of the country have changed but little. Walking in the end of May in the fields about Florence, Perugia, or Rieti, one still sees, at nightfall, the bagpipers entering the fields as the mowers seat themselves upon the hay-cocks for their evening meal; they play a few pieces, and when the train of haymakers returns to the village, followed by the harvest-laden carts, it is they who lead the procession, rending the air with their sharpest strains.

The joyous Penitents who loved to call themselves Joculatores Domini, God's jongleurs, no doubt often did the same.[10] They did even better, for not willing to be a charge to anyone, they passed a part of the day in aiding the peasants in their field work.[11] The inhabitants of these districts are for the most part kindly and sedate; the friars soon gained their confidence by relating to them first their history and then their hopes. They worked and ate together; field-hands and friars often slept in the same barn, and when with the morrow's dawn the friars went on their way, the hearts of those they left behind had been touched. They were not yet converted, but they knew that not far away, over toward Assisi, were living men who had renounced all worldly goods, and who, consumed with zeal, were going up and down preaching penitence and peace.

Their reception was very different in the cities. If the peasant of Central Italy is mild and kindly the townsfolk are on a first acquaintance scoffing and ill disposed. We shall shortly see the friars who went to Florence the butt of all sorts of persecutions.

Only a few weeks had passed since Francis began to preach, and already his words and acts were sounding an irresistible appeal in the depths of many a heart. We have arrived at the most unique and interesting period in the history of the Franciscans. These first months are for their institution what the first days of spring are for nature, days when the almond-tree blossoms, bearing witness to the mysterious labor going on in the womb of the earth, and heralding the flowers that will suddenly enamel the fields. At the sight of these men—bare footed, scantily clothed, without money, and yet so happy—men's minds were much divided. Some held them to be mad, others admired them, finding them widely different from the vagrant monks,[12] that plague of Christendom.

Sometimes, however, the friars found success not responding to their efforts, the conversion of souls not taking form with enough rapidity and vigor. To encourage them, Francis would then confide to them his visions and his hopes. "I saw a multitude of men coming toward us, asking that they might receive the habit of our holy religion, and lo, the sound of their footsteps still echoes in my ears. I saw them coming from every direction, filling all the roads."

Whatever the biographies may say, Francis was far from foreseeing the sorrows that were to follow this rapid increase of his Order. The maiden leaning with trembling rapture on her lover's arm no more dreams of the pangs of motherhood than he thought of the dregs he must drain after quaffing joyfully the generous wine of the chalice.[13]

Every prosperous movement provokes opposition by the very fact of its prosperity. The herbs of the field have their own language for cursing the longer-lived plants that smother them out; one can hardly live without arousing jealousy; in vain the new fraternity showed itself humble, it could not escape this law.

When the brethren went up to Assisi to beg from door to door, many refused to give to them, reproaching them with desiring to live on the goods of others after having squandered their own. Many a time they had barely enough not to starve to death. It would even seem that the clergy were not entirely without part in this opposition. The Bishop of Assisi said to Francis one day: "Your way of living without owning anything seems to me very harsh and difficult." "My lord," replied he, "if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defence, for it is the source of quarrels and lawsuits, and the love of God and of one's neighbor usually finds many obstacles therein; this is why we do not desire temporal goods."[14]

The argument was unanswerable, but Guido began to rue the encouragement which he had formerly offered the son of Bernardone. He was very nearly in the situation and consequently in the state of mind of the Anglican bishops when they saw the organizing of the Salvation Army. It was not exactly hostility, but a distrust which was all the deeper for hardly daring to show itself. The only counsel which the bishop could give Francis was to come into the ranks of the clergy, or, if asceticism attracted him, to join some already existing monastic order.[15]

If the bishop's perplexities were great, those of Francis were hardly less so. He was too acute not to foresee the conflict that threatened to break out between the friars and the clergy. He saw that the enemies of the priests praised him and his companions beyond measure simply to set off their poverty against the avarice and wealth of the ecclesiastics, yet he felt himself urged on from within to continue his work, and could well have exclaimed with the apostle, "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!" On the other hand, the families of the Penitents could not forgive them for having distributed their goods among the poor, and attacks came from this direction with all the bitter language and the deep hatred natural to disappointed heirs. From this point of view the brotherhood appeared as a menace to families, and many parents trembled lest their sons should join it. Whether the friars would or no, they were an unending subject of interest to the whole city. Evil rumors, plentifully spread abroad against them, simply defeated themselves; flying from mouth to mouth they speedily found contradictors who had no difficulty in showing their absurdity. All this indirectly served their cause and gained to their side those hearts, more numerous than is generally believed, who find the defence of the persecuted a necessity.

As to the clergy, they could not but feel a profound distrust of these lay converters, who, though they aroused the hatred of some interested persons, awakened in more pious souls first astonishment and then admiration. Suddenly to see men without title or diploma succeed brilliantly in the mission which has been officially confided to ourselves, and in which we have made pitiful shipwreck, is cruel torture. Have we not seen generals who preferred to lose a battle rather than gain it with the aid of guerrillas?

This covert opposition has left no characteristic traces in the biographies of St. Francis. It is not to be wondered at; Thomas of Celano, even if he had had information of this matter, would have been wanting in tact to make use of it. The clergy, for that matter, possess a thousand means of working upon public opinion without ceasing to show a religious interest in those whom they detest.

But the more St. Francis shall find himself in contradiction with the clergy of his time, the more he will believe himself the obedient son of the Church. Confounding the gospel with the teaching of the Church, he will for a good while border upon heresy, but without ever falling into it. Happy simplicity, thanks to which he had never to take the attitude of revolt!

It was five years since, a convalescent leaning upon his staff, he had felt himself taken possession of by a loathing of material pleasures. From that time every one of his days had been marked by a step in advance.

It was again the spring-time. Perfectly happy, he felt himself more and more impelled to bring others to share his happiness and to proclaim in the four corners of the world how he had attained it. He resolved, therefore, to undertake a new mission. A few days were spent in preparing for it. The Three Companions have preserved for us the directions which he gave to his disciples:

"Let us consider that God in his goodness has not called us merely for our own salvation, but also for that of many men, that we may go through all the world exhorting men, more by our example than by our words, to repent of their sins and bear the commandments in mind. Be not fearful on the ground that we appear little and ignorant, but simply and without disquietude preach repentance. Have faith in God, who has overcome the world, that his Spirit will speak in you and by you, exhorting men to be converted and keep his commandments.

"You will find men full of faith, gentleness, and goodness, who will receive you and your words with joy; but you will find others, and in greater numbers, faithless, proud, blasphemers, who will speak evil of you, resisting you and your words. Be resolute, then, to endure everything with patience and humility."

Hearing this, the brethren began to be agitated. St. Francis said to them: "Have no fear, for very soon many nobles and learned men will come to you; they will be with you preaching to kings and princes and to a multitude of peoples. Many will be converted to the Lord, all over the world, who will multiply and increase his family."

After he had thus spoken he blessed them, saying to each one the word which was in the future to be his supreme consolation:

"My brother, commit yourself to God with all your cares, and he will care for you."

Then the men of God departed, faithfully observing his instructions, and when they found a church or a cross they bowed in adoration, saying with devotion, "We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee here and in all churches in the whole world, for by thy holy cross thou hast ransomed the world." In fact they believed that they had found a holy place wherever they found a church or a cross.

Some listened willingly, others scoffed, the greater number overwhelmed them with questions. "Whence come you?" "Of what order are you?" And they, though sometimes it was wearisome to answer, said simply, "We are penitents, natives of the city of Assisi."[16]

This freshness and poetry will not be found in the later missions. Here the river is still itself, and if it knows toward what sea it is hastening, it knows nothing of the streams, more or less turbid, which shall disturb its limpidity, nor the dykes and the straightenings to which it will have to submit.

A long account by the Three Companions gives us a picture from life of these first essays at preaching:

Many men took the friars for knaves or madmen and refused to receive them into their houses for fear of being robbed. So in many places, after having undergone all sorts of bad usage, they could find no other refuge for the night than the porticos of churches or houses. There were at that time two brethren who went to Florence. They begged all through the city but could find no shelter. Coming to a house which had a portico and under the portico a bench, they said to one another, "We shall be very comfortable here for the night." As the mistress of the house refused to let them enter, they humbly asked her permission to sleep upon the bench.

She was about to grant them permission when her husband appeared. "Why have you permitted these lewd fellows to stay under our portico?" he asked. The woman replied that she had refused to receive them into the house, but had given them permission to sleep under the portico where there was nothing for them to steal but the bench.

The cold was very sharp; but taking them for thieves no one gave them any covering.

As for them, after having enjoyed on their bench no more sleep than was necessary, warmed only by divine warmth, and having for covering only their Lady Poverty, in the early dawn they went to the church to hear mass.

The lady went also on her part, and seeing the friars devoutly praying she said to herself: "If these men were rascals and thieves as my husband said, they would not remain thus in prayer." And while she was making these reflections behold a man of the name of Guido was giving alms to the poor in the church. Coming to the friars he would have given a piece of money to them as to the others, but they refused his money and would not receive it. "Why," he asked, "since you are poor, will you not accept like the others?" "It is true that we are poor," replied Brother Bernardo, "but poverty does not weigh upon us as upon other poor people; for by the grace of God, whose will we are accomplishing, we have voluntarily become poor."

Much amazed, he asked them if they had ever had anything, and learned that they had possessed much, but that for the love of God they had given everything away.... The lady, seeing that the friars had refused the alms, drew near to them and said that she would gladly receive them into her house if they would be pleased to lodge there. "May the Lord recompense to you your good will," replied the friars, humbly.

But Guido, learning that they had not been able to find a shelter, took them to his own house, saying, "Here is a refuge prepared for you by the Lord; remain in it as long as you desire."

As for them, they gave thanks to God and spent several days with him, preaching the fear of the Lord by word and example, so that in the end he made large distributions to the poor.

Well treated by him, they were despised by others. Many men, great and small, attacked and insulted them, sometimes going so far as to tear off their clothing; but though despoiled of their only tunic, they would not ask for its restitution. If, moved to pity, men gave back to them what they had taken away, they accepted it cheerfully.

There were those who threw mud upon them, others who put dice into their hands and invited them to play, and others clutching them by the cowl made them drag them along thus. But seeing that the friars were always full of joy in the midst of their tribulations, that they neither received nor carried money, and that by their love for one another they made themselves known as true disciples of the Lord, many of them felt themselves reproved in their hearts and came asking pardon for the offences which they had committed. They, pardoning them with all their heart, said, "The Lord forgive you," and gave them pious counsels for the salvation of their souls.

A translation can but imperfectly give all the repressed emotion, the candid simplicity, the modest joy, the fervent love which breathe in the faulty Latin of the Three Companions. Yet these scattered friars sighed after the home-coming and the long conversations with their spiritual father in the tranquil forests of the suburbs of Assisi. Friendship among men, when it overpasses a certain limit, has something deep, high, ideal, infinitely sweet, to which no other friendship attains. There was no woman in the Upper Chamber when, on the last evening of his life, Jesus communed with his disciples and invited the world to the eternal marriage supper.

Francis, above all, was impatient to see his young family once more. They all arrived at Portiuncula almost at the same time, having already, before reaching it, forgotten the torments they had endured, thinking only of the joy of the meeting.[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 1 Cel., 23; 3 Soc., 25 and 26; Bon., 27. Cf. Auct. Vit. Sec. ap., A. SS., p. 579.

[2] 1 Cel., 24. We must correct the Bollandist text: Inter quos quidam de Assisio puer ac simplicem animum gerens, by: quidam de Assisio pium ac simplicem, etc. The period at which we have arrived is very clear as a whole: the picture which the Three Companions give us is true with a truth which forces conviction at first sight; but neither they nor Celano are giving an official report. Later on men desired to know precisely in what order the early disciples came, and they tortured the texts to find an answer. The same course was followed with regard to the first missionary journeys. But on both sides they came up against impossibilities and contradictions. What does it matter whether there were two, three, or four missions before the papal approbation? Of what consequence are the names of those early disciples who are entirely secondary in the history of the Franciscan movement? All these things took place with much more simplicity and spontaneity than is generally supposed. There is a wide difference between the plan of a house drawn up by an architect and a view of the same house painted by an artist. The second, though abounding in inexactitudes, gives a more just notion of the reality than the plan. The same is true of the Franciscan biographies.

[3] 1 Cel., 24. Bernard de Besse is the first to call him B. di Quintavalle: De laudibus, fo. 95 h.; cf. upon him Mark of Lisbon, t. i., second part, pp. 68-70; Conform., 47; Fior., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 28; 3 Soc., 27, 30, 39; 2 Cel., 1, 10; 2, 19; Bon., 28; 1 Cel., 30; Salimbeni, ann. 1229, and Tribul. Arch., ii., p. 278, etc.

[4] 1 Cel., 24; 3 Soc., 27, 28, 29; 2 Cel., 1, 10; 3, 52; Bon., 28; A. SS., p. 580. It is evident that the tradition has been worked over here: it soon came to be desired to find a miracle in the manner in which Francis found the passage for reading. The St. Nicholas Church is no longer in existence; it stood upon the piece of ground now occupied by the barracks of the gendarmerie (carabinieri reali).

[5] Matt., xix., 21; Luke, ix., 1-6; Matt., xvi., 24-26. The agreement of tradition upon these passages is complete. 3 Soc., 29; 2 Cel., 1, 10; Bon., 28; Spec., 5b.; Conform., 37b. 2, 47a. 2; Fior., 2; Glassberger and the Chronicle of the xxiv. generals reversing the order (Analecta, fr., t. ii., p. 5) as well as the Conformities in another place, 87b, 2.

[6] 3 Soc., 30. Cf. Anon. Perus., A. SS., p. 581a. This scene is reported neither by Celano nor by St. Bonaventura.

[7] This date is given in the life of Brother Egidio; A. SS., Oct., t. ii., p. 572; Aprilis, t. iii., p. 220. It fits well with the accounts. Through it we obtain the approximate date of the definitive conversion of Francis two full years earlier.

[8] 1 Cel., 25; 3 Soc., 23; Bon. 29. Cf. Anon. Perus., A. SS., p. 582, and A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., p. 220 ff.

[9] Spec., 25a: Qualiter dixit fratri Egidio priusquam esset receptus ut daret mantellum ciudam pauperi. In primordio religionis cum maneret apud Regum Tortum cum duobus fratribus quos tunc tantum habehat. If we compare this passage with 3 Soc., 44, we shall doubtless arrive at the conclusion that the account in the Speculum is more satisfactory. It is in fact very easy to understand the optical illusion by which later on the Portiuncula was made the scene of the greater number of the events of St. Francis's life, while it would be difficult to see why there should have been any attempt to surround Rivo-Torto with an aureola. The Fioretti say: Ando inverso lo spedale dei lebbrosi, which confirms the indication of Rivo-Torto. Vita d' Egidio, Sec. 1.

[10] An. Perus, A. SS., p. 582. Cf. Fior., Vita di Egidio, 1; Spec., 124, 136; 2 Cel., 3, 68; A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., p. 227.

[11] Spec., 34a; Conform., 219b, 1; Ant. fr., p. 96.

[12] The Gyrovagi. Tr.

[13] 3 Soc. 32-34; 1 Cel., 27 and 28; Bon., 31.

[14] 3 Soc., 35. Cf. Anon. Perus.; A. SS., p. 584.

[15] Later on, naturally, it was desired that Francis should have had no better supporter than Guido; some have even made him out to be his spiritual director (St. Francois, Plon, p. 24)! We have an indirect but unexceptionable proof of the reserve with which these pious traditions must be accepted; Francis did not even tell his bishop (pater et dominus animarum, 3 Soc., 29) of his design of having his Rule approved by the pope. This is the more striking because the bishop would have been his natural advocate at the court of Rome, and because in the absence of any other reason the most elementary politeness required that he should have been informed. Add to this that bishops in Italy are not, as elsewhere, functionaries approached with difficulty by the common run of mortals. Almost every village in Umbria has its bishop, so that their importance is hardly greater than that of the cure of a French canton. Furthermore, several pontifical documents throw a sombre light on Guido's character. In a chapter of the decretals of Honorius III. (Quinta compil., lib. ii., tit. iii., cap. i.) is given a complaint against this bishop, brought before the curia by the Crucigeri of the hospital San Salvatore delle Pareti (suburbs of Assisi), of having maltreated two of their number, and having stolen a part of the wine belonging to the convent: pro eo quod Aegidium presbyterum, et fratrem eorem conversum violentas manus injecerat ... adjiciens quod idem hospitale quadam vini quantitate fuerat per eumdem episcopum spoliatum. Honorii opera, Horoy's edition, t. i., col. 200 ff. Cf. Potthast, 7746. The mention of the hospital de Pariete proves beyond question that the Bishop of Assisi is here concerned and not the Bishop of Osimo, as some critics have suggested.

Another document shows him at strife with the Benedictines of Mount Subasio (the very ones who afterward gave Portiuncula to Francis), and Honorius III. found the bishop in the wrong: Bull Conquerente oeconomo monasterii ap. Richter, Corpus juris canonici. Leipzig, 1839, 4to, Horoy, loc. cit., t. i., col. 163; Potthast, 7728.

[16] 3 Soc., 36 and 37. Cf. Anon. Perus. ap., A. SS., p. 585; Test. B. Francisci.

[17] 3 Soc., 38-41.

* * * * *



CHAPTER VI

ST. FRANCIS AND INNOCENT III

Summer 1210[1]

Seeing the number of his friars daily increasing, Francis decided to write the Rule of the Order and go to Rome to procure its approval by the Pope.

This resolution was not lightly taken. It would be a mistake in fact to take Francis for one of those inspired ones who rush into action upon the strength of unexpected revelations, and, thanks to their faith in their own infallibility, overawe the multitude. On the contrary, he was filled with a real humility, and if he believed that God reveals himself in prayer, he never for that absolved himself from the duty of reflection nor even from reconsidering his decisions. St. Bonaventura does him great wrong in picturing the greater number of his important resolutions as taken in consequence of dreams; this is to rob his life of its profound originality, his sanctity of its choicest blossom. He was of those who struggle, and, to use one of the noblest expressions of the Bible, of those who by their perseverance conquer their souls. Thus we shall see him continually retouching the Rule of his institute, unceasingly revising it down to the last moment, according as the growth of the Order and experience of the human heart suggested to him modifications of it.[2]

The first Rule which he submitted to Rome has not come down to us; we only know that it was extremely simple, and composed especially of passages from the Gospels. It was doubtless only the repetition of those verses which Francis had read to his first companions, with a few precepts about manual labor and the occupations of the new brethren.[3]

It will be well to pause here and consider the brethren who are about to set out for Rome. The biographies are in agreement as to their number; they were twelve, including Francis; but the moment they undertake to give a name to each one of them difficulties begin to arise, and it is only by some exegetical sleight of hand that they can claim to have reconciled the various documents. The table given below[4] briefly shows these difficulties. The question took on some importance when in the fourteenth century men undertook to show an exact conformity between the life of St. Francis and that of Jesus. It is without interest to us. The profiles of two or three of these brethren stand out very clearly in the picture of the origins of the Order; others remind one of the pictures of primitive Umbrian masters, where the figures of the background have a modest and tender grace, but no shadow of personality. The first Franciscans had all the virtues, including the one which is nearly always wanting, willingness to remain unknown.

In the Lower Church of Assisi there is an ancient fresco representing five of the companions of St. Francis. Above them is a Madonna by Cimabue, upon which they are gazing with all their soul. It would be more true if St. Francis were there in the place of the Madonna; one is always changed into the image of what one admires, and they resemble their master and one another.[5] To attempt to give them a name is to make a sort of psychological error and become guilty of infidelity to their memory; the only name they would have desired is that of their father. His love changed their hearts and shed over their whole persons a radiance of light and joy. These are the true personages of the Fioretti, the men who brought peace to cities, awakened consciences, changed hearts, conversed with birds, tamed wolves. Of them one may truly say: "Having nothing, yet possessing all things" (Nihil habentes, omnia possidentes).

They quitted Portiuncula full of joy and confidence. Francis was too much absorbed in thought not to desire to place in other hands the direction of the little company.

"Let us choose," he said, "one from among ourselves to guide us, and let him be to us as the vicar of Jesus Christ. Wherever it may please him to go we will go, and when he may wish to stop anywhere to sleep there we will stop." They chose Brother Bernardo and did as Francis had said. They went on full of joy, and all their conversations had for their object only the glory of God and the salvation of their souls.

Their journey was happily accomplished. Everywhere they found kindly souls who sheltered them, and they felt beyond a doubt that God was taking care of them.[6]

Francis's thoughts were all fixed upon the purpose of their journey; he thought of it day and night, and naturally interpreted his dreams with reference to it. One time, in his dream, he saw himself walking along a road beside which was a gigantic and wonderfully beautiful tree. And, behold, while he looked upon it, filled with wonder, he felt himself become so tall that he could touch the boughs, and at the same time the tree bent down its branches to him.[7] He awoke full of joy, sure of a gracious reception by the sovereign pontiff.

His hopes were to be somewhat blighted. Innocent III. had now for twelve years occupied the throne of St. Peter. Still young, energetic, resolute, he enjoyed that superfluity of authority given by success. Coming after the feeble Celestine III., he had been able in a few years to reconquer the temporal domain of the Church, and so to improve the papal influence as almost to realize the theocratic dreams of Gregory VII. He had seen King Pedro of Aragon declaring himself his vassal and laying his crown upon the tomb of the apostles, that he might take it back at his hands. At the other end of Europe, John Lackland had been obliged to receive his crown from a legate after having sworn homage, fealty, and an annual tribute to the Holy See. Preaching union to the cities and republics of Italy, causing the cry ITALIA! ITALIA! to resound like the shout of a trumpet, he was the natural representative of the national awakening, and appeared to be in some sort the suzerain of the emperor, as he was already that of other kings. Finally, by his efforts to purify the Church, by his indomitable firmness in defending morality and law in the affair of Ingelburge and in many others, he was gaining a moral strength which in times so disquieted was all the more powerful for being so rare.

But this incomparable power had its hidden dangers. Occupied with defending the prerogatives of the Holy See, Innocent came to forget that the Church does not exist for herself, that her supremacy is only a transitory means; and one part of his pontificate may be likened to wars, legitimate in the beginning, in which the conqueror keeps on with depredations and massacres for no reason, except that he is intoxicated with blood and success.

And so Rome, which canonized the petty Celestine V., refused this supreme consecration to the glorious Innocent III. With exquisite tact she perceived that he was rather king than priest, rather pope than saint.

When he suppressed ecclesiastical disorders it was less for love of good than for hatred of evil; it was the judge who condemns or threatens, himself always supported by the law, not the father who weeps his son's offence. This priest did not comprehend the great movement of his age—the awakening of love, of poetry, of liberty. I have already said that at the opening of the thirteenth century the Middle Age was twenty years old. Innocent III. undertook to treat it as if it were only fifteen. Possessed by his civil and religious dogmas as others are by their educational doctrines, he never suspected the unsatisfied longings, the dreams, unreasoning perhaps, but beneficent and divine, that were dumbly stirring in the depths of men's hearts. He was a believer, although certain sayings of the historians[8] open the door to some doubts on this point, but he drew his religion rather from the Old Testament than from the New, and if he often thought of Moses, the leader of his people, nothing reminded him of Jesus, the shepherd of souls. One cannot be everything; a choice intelligence, an iron will[9] are a sufficient portion even for a priest-god; he lacked love. The death of this pontiff, great among the great ones, was destined to be saluted with songs of joy.[10]

His reception of Francis furnished to Giotto, the friend of Dante, one of his most striking frescos; the pope, seated on his throne, turns abruptly toward Francis. He frowns, for he does not understand, and yet he feels a strange power in this mean and despised man, vilis et despectus; he makes a real but futile effort to comprehend, and now I see in this pope, who lived upon lemons,[11] something that recalls another choice mind, theocratic like his own, sacrificed like him to his work: Calvin. One might think that the painter had touched his lips to the Calabrian Seer's cup, and that in the attitude of these two men he sought to symbolize a meeting of representatives of the two ages of humanity, that of Law and that of Love.[12]

A surprise awaited the pilgrims on their arrival in Rome: they met the Bishop of Assisi,[13] quite as much to his astonishment as to their own. This detail is precious because it proves that Francis had not confided his plans to Guido. Notwithstanding this the bishop, it is said, offered to make interest for them with the princes of the Church. We may suspect that his commendations were not very warm. At all events they did not avail to save Francis and his company either from a searching inquiry or from the extended fatherly counsels of Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo[14] upon the difficulties of the Rule, counsels which strongly resemble those of Guido himself.[15]

What Francis asked for was simple enough; he claimed no privilege of any sort, but only that the pope would approve of his undertaking to lead a life of absolute conformity to the precepts of the gospel. There is a delicate point here which it is quite worth while to see clearly. The pope was not called upon to approve the Rule, since that came from Jesus himself; at the very worst all that he could do would be to lay an ecclesiastical censure upon Francis and his companions for having acted without authority, and to enjoin them to leave to the secular and regular clergy the task of reforming the Church.

Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo, to whom the Bishop of Assisi presented them, had informed himself of the whole history of the Penitents. He lavished upon them the most affectionate tokens of interest, even going so far as to beg for a mention in their prayers. But such assurances, which appear to have been always the small change of the court of Rome, did not prevent his examining them for several successive days,[16] and putting to them an infinite number of questions, of which the conclusion was always the advice to enter some Order already existing.

To this the unlucky Francis would reply as best he could, often not without embarrassment, for he had no wish to appear to think lightly of the cardinal's counsels, and yet he felt in his heart the imperious desire to obey his vocation. The prelate would then return to the charge, insinuating that they would find it very hard to persevere, that the enthusiasm of the early days would pass away, and again pointing out a more easy course. He was obliged in the end to own himself vanquished. The persistence of Francis, who had never weakened for an instant nor doubted his mission, begat in him a sort of awe, while the perfect humility of the Penitents and their simple and striking fidelity to the Roman Church reassured him in the matter of heresy.

He announced to them, therefore, that he would speak of them to the pope, and would act as their advocate with him. According to the Three Companions he said to the pope: "I have found a man of the highest perfection, who desires to live in conformity with the Holy Gospel and observe evangelical perfection in all things. I believe that by him the Lord intends to reform the faith of the Holy Church throughout the whole world."[17]

On the morrow he presented Francis and his companions to Innocent III. Naturally, the pope was not sparing of expressions of sympathy, but he also repeated to them the remarks and counsels which they had already heard so often. "My dear children," he said, "your life appears to me too severe; I see indeed that your fervor is too great for any doubt of you to be possible, but I ought to consider those who shall come after you, lest your mode of life should be beyond their strength."[18]

Adding a few kind words, he dismissed them without coming to any definite conclusion, promising to consult the cardinals, and advising Francis in particular to address himself to God, to the end that he might manifest his will.

Francis's anxiety must have been great; he could not understand these dilatory measures, these expressions of affection which never led to a categorical approbation. It seemed to him that he had said all that he had to say. For new arguments he had only one resource—prayer.

He felt his prayer answered when in his conversation with Jesus the parable of poverty came to him; he returned to lay it before the pope.

There was in the desert a woman who was very poor, but beautiful. A great king, seeing her beauty, desired to take her for his wife, for he thought that by her he should have beautiful children. The marriage contracted and consummated, many sons were born to him. When they were grown up, their mother spoke to them thus: "My sons, you have no cause to blush, for you are the sons of the king; go, therefore, to his court, and he will give you everything you need."

When they arrived at the court the king admired their beauty, and finding in them his own likeness he asked, "Whose sons are you?" And when they replied that they were the sons of a poor woman who lived in the desert, the king clasped them to his heart with joy saying, "Have no fear, for you are my sons; if strangers eat at my table, much more shall you who are my lawful sons." Then the king sent word to the woman to send to his court all the sons which she had borne, that they might be nourished there.

"Very holy father," added Francis, "I am this poor woman whom God in his love has deigned to make beautiful, and of whom he has been pleased to have lawful sons. The King of Kings has told me that he will provide for all the sons which he may have of me, for if he sustains bastards, how much more his legitimate sons."[19]

So much simplicity, joined with such pious obstinacy, at last conquered Innocent. In the humble mendicant he perceived an apostle and prophet whose mouth no power could close. Successor of St. Peter and vicar of Jesus Christ that he felt himself, he saw in the mean and despised man before him one who with the authority of absolute faith proclaimed himself the root of a new lineage of most legitimate Christians.

The biographers have held that by this parable Francis sought above all things to tranquillize the pope as to the future of the brethren; they find in it a reply to the anxieties of the pontiff, who feared to see them starve to death. There can be no doubt that its original meaning was totally different. It shows that with all his humility Francis knew how to speak out boldly, and that all his respect for the Church could not hinder his seeing, and, when necessary, saying, that he and his brethren were the lawful sons of the gospel, of which the members of the clergy were only extranei. We shall find in the course of his life more than one example of this indomitable boldness, which disarmed Innocent III. as well as the future Gregory IX.

In a consistory which doubtless was held between the two audiences some of the cardinals expressed the opinion that the initiative of the Penitents of Assisi was an innovation, and that their mode of life was entirely beyond human power. "But," replied Giovanni di San Paolo, "if we hold that to observe gospel perfection and make profession of it is an irrational and impossible innovation, are we not convicted of blasphemy against Christ, the author of the gospel?"[20]

These words struck Innocent III. with great force; he knew better than any one that the possessions of the ecclesiastics were the great obstacles to the reform of the Church, and that the threatened success of the Albigensian heresy was especially due to the fact that it preached the doctrine of poverty.

Two years before he had accorded his approbation to a group of Waldensians, who under the name Poor Catholics had desired to remain faithful to the Church;[21] he therefore gave his approval to the Penitents of Assisi, but, as a contemporary chronicler has well observed, it was in the hope that they would wrest the banner from heresy.[22]

Yet his doubts and hesitations were not entirely dissipated. He reserved his definitive approbation, therefore, while lavishing upon the brothers the most affectionate tokens of interest. He authorized them to continue their missions everywhere, after having gained the consent of their ordinaries. He required, however, that they should give themselves a responsible superior to whom the ecclesiastical authorities could always address themselves. Naturally, Francis was chosen.[23] This fact, so humble in appearance, definitively constituted the Franciscan family.

The mystics whom we saw going from village to village transported with love and liberty accepted the yoke almost without thinking about it. This yoke will preserve them from the disintegration of the heretics, but it will make itself sharply felt by those pure souls; they will one day look back to the early days of the Order as the only time when their life was truly conformed to the gospel.

When Francis heard the words of the supreme pontiff he prostrated himself at his feet, promising the most perfect obedience with all his heart. The pope blessed them, saying: "Go, my brethren, and may God be with you. Preach penitence to everyone according as the Lord may deign to inspire you. Then when the All-powerful shall have made you multiply and go forward, you will refer to us; we will concede what you ask, and we may then with greater security accord to you even more than you ask."[24]

Francis and his companions were too little familiar with Roman phraseology to perceive that after all the Holy See had simply consented to suspend judgment in view of the uprightness of their intentions and the purity of their faith.[25]

The flowers of clerical rhetoric hid from them the shackles which had been laid upon them. The curia, in fact, was not satisfied with Francis's vow of fidelity, it desired in addition to stamp the Penitents with the seal of the Church: the Cardinal of San Paolo was deputed to confer upon them the tonsure. From this time they were all under the spiritual authority of the Roman Church.

The thoroughly lay creation of St. Francis had become, in spite of himself, an ecclesiastical institution: it must soon degenerate into a clerical institution. All unawares, the Franciscan movement had been unfaithful to its origin. The prophet had abdicated in favor of the priest, not indeed without possibility of return, for when a man has once reigned, I would say, thought, in liberty—what other kingdom is there on this earth?—he makes but an indifferent slave; in vain he tries to submit; in spite of himself it happens at times that he lifts his head proudly, he rattles his chains, he remembers the struggles, sadness, anguish of the days of liberty, and weeps their loss. Among the sons of St. Francis many were destined to weep their lost liberty, many to die to conquer it again.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The date usually fixed for the approval of the Rule by Innocent III. is the month of August, 1209. The Bollandists had thought themselves able to infer it from the account where Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 43) refers to the passage through Umbria of the Emperor Otho IV., on his way to be crowned at Rome (October 4, 1209). Upon this journey see Boehmer-Ficker, Regesta Imperii. Dei Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Philipp, Otto IV., etc., Insbruck, 1879, 4to, pp. 96 and 97. As this account follows that of the approval, they conclude that the latter was earlier. But Thomas of Celano puts this account there because the context led up to it, and not in order to fix its date. Everything leads to the belief that the Brothers retired (recolligebat, 1 Cel., 42) to Rivo-Torto before and after their journey to Rome. Besides, the time between April 23d and the middle of August, 1209, is much too short for all that the biographers tell us about the life of the Brothers before their visit to Innocent III. The mission to Florence took place in winter, or at least in a very cold month. But the decisive argument is that Innocent III. quitted Rome toward the end of May, 1209, and went to Viterbo, returning only to crown Otho, October 4th (Potthast, 3727-3803). It is therefore absolutely necessary to postpone to the summer of 1210 the visit of the Penitents to the pope. This is also the date which Wadding arrives at.

[2] 3 Soc., 35.

[3] 1 Cel., 32; 3 Soc., 51; Bon., 34. Cf. Test. B. Fr. M. K. Mueller of Halle, in his Anfaenge, has made a very remarkable study of the Rule of 1221, whence he deduces an earlier Rule, which he believes to be that of 1209 (1210). For once I find myself entirely in accord with him, except that the Rule thus reconstructed (Vide Anfaenge, pp. 14-25, 184-188) appears to me to be not that of 1210, which was very short, but another, drawn up between 1210 and 1221. The plures regulas fecit of the 3 Soc., 35, authorizes us to believe that he made perhaps as many as four—1st, 1210, very short, containing little more than the three passages of the vocation; 2d, 1217 (?), substantially that proposed by M. Mueller; 3d, 1221, that of which we shall speak at length farther on; 4th, 1226, the Will, which if not a Rule is at least an appendix to the Rule. If from 1221-1226 he had time to make two Rules and the Will, as is universally admitted, there is nothing surprising in his having made two from 1210-1221. Perhaps we have a fragment of that of 1217 in the regulation of hermitages. Vide below, p. 109.

[4] Thomas of Celano's list. 1, Quidam pium gerens animum; 2, Bernardus; 3, Vir alter; 4, AEgidius; 5, Unus alius appositus; 6, Philippus; 7, Alius bonus vir; 8, 9, 10, 11, Quatuor boni et idonei viri. 1 Cel., 24, 25, 29, 31. The Rinaldi-Amoni text says nothing of the last four. Three Companions: 1, Bernardus; 2, Petrus; 3, AEgidius; 4, Sabbatinus; 5, Moritus; Johannes Capella; 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Disciples received by the brethren in their missions. 3 Soc., 33, 35, 41, 46, 52. Bonaventura: 1, Bernardus; 2, ... 3, AEgidius; 4, 5, ... 6, Silvestro; 7, Alius bonus viri; 8, 9, 10, 11, Quatuor viri honesti. Bon., 28, 29, 30, 31, 33. The Fioretti, while insisting on the importance of the twelve Franciscan apostles, cite only six in their list: Giovanni di Capella, Egidio, Philip, Silvestro, Bernardo, and Rufino. Fior., 1. We must go to the Conformities to find the traditional list, f^o 46b 1: 1, Bernardus de Quintavalle; 2, Petrus Chatanii; 3, Egidius; 4, Sabatinus; 5, Moricus; 6, Johannes de Capella; 7, Philippus Longus; 8, Johannes de Sancto Constantio; 9, Barbarus; 10, Bernardus de Cleviridante (sic); 11, Angelus Tancredi; 12, Sylvester. As will be seen, in the last two documents twelve disciples are in question, while in the preceding ones there are only eleven. This is enough to show a dogmatic purpose. This list reappears exactly in the Speculum, with the sole difference that Francis being there included Angelo di Tancrede is the twelfth brother and Silvestro disappears. Spec., 87a.

[5] According to tradition, the five compagni del Santo buried there beside their master are Bernardo, Silvestro, William (an Englishman), Eletto, and Valentino(?)

[6] 3 Soc., 46; 1 Cel., 32; Bon., 34.

[7] 1 Cel., 33; 3 Soc., 53; Bon., 35.

[8] St. Ludgarde (1182-1246) sees him condemned to Purgatory till the Last Judgment. Life of this saint by Thomas of Catimpre in Surius: Vitae SS. (1618), vi., 215-226.

[9] Vir clari ingenii, magnae probitatis et sapientiae, cui nullus secundus tempore suo: Rigordus, de gestis Philippi Augusti in Duchesne. Historiae Francorum scriptores coaetanei, t. v., p. 60.—Nec similem sui scientia, facundia, decretorum et legum perititia, strenuitate, judiciorum nec adhuc visus est habere sequentem. Cf. Mencken, Script. rer. Sax., Leipzig, 1728, t. iii., p. 252. Innocentius, qui vere stupor mundi erat et immutator saeculi. Cotton, Hist. Anglicana, Luard, 1859, p. 107.

[10] Cujus finis laetitiem potius quam tristitiam generavit subjectis. Alberic delle Tre Fontane. Leibnitz, Accessiones historicae, t. ii., p. 492.

[11] Decidit in acutam (febrem) quam cum multis diebus fovisset nec a citris quibus in magna quantitatae et ex consuetudine vescebatur ... minime abstineret ... ad ultimum in lethargia prolapsus vitam finivit. Alberic delle Tre Fontane, loc. cit.

[12] Fresco in the great nave of the Upper Church of Assisi.

[13] 1 Cel., 32; 3 Soc., 47.

[14] Of the Colonna family; he died in 1216. Cf. 3 Soc., 61. Vide Cardella, Memorie storiche de' Cardinali, 9 vols., 8vo, Rome, 1792 ff., t. i., p. 177. He was at Rome in the summer of 1210, for on the 11th of August he countersigned the bull Religiosem vitam. Potthast, 4061. Angelo Clareno relates the approbation with more precision in certain respects: Cum vero Summo Pontifici ea quae postulabat [Franciscus] ardua valde et quasi impossibilia viderentur infirmitate hominum sui temporis, exhortabatur eum, quod aliquem ordinem vel regulam de approbatis assumeret, at ipse se a Christo missum ad talem vitam et non aliam postulandam constanter affirmans, fixus in sua petitione permansit. Tunc dominus Johannes de Sancto Paulo episcopus Sabinensis et dominus Hugo episcopus Hostiensis Dei spiritu moti assisterunt Sancto Francisco et pro his quae petebat coram summo Pontifice et Cardinalibus plura proposuerunt rationabilia et efficacia valde. Tribul. Laurentinian MS., f^o 6a. This intervention of Ugolini is mentioned in no other document. It is, however, by no means impossible. He also was in Rome in the summer of 1210. (Vide Potthast, p. 462.)

[15] 1 Cel., 32 and 33; 3 Soc., 47 and 48. Cf. An. Per., A. SS., p. 590.

[16] 1 Cel., 33.

[17] 3 Soc., 48.

[18] 3 Soc., 49; 1 Cel., 33; Bon., 35 and 36. All this has been much worked over by tradition and gives us only an echo of the reality. It would certainly have needed very little for the Penitents to meet the same fate before Innocent III. as the Waldenses before Lucius III. Traces of this interview are found in two texts which appear to me to be too suspicious to warrant their insertion in the body of the narrative. The first is a fragment of Matthew Paris: Papa itaque in fratre memorato habitum deformem, vultum despicabilem, barbam prolixam, capillos incultos, supercilia pendentia et nigra diligenter considerans; cum petitionem ejus tam arduam et executione impossibilem recitare fecisset, despexit cum et dixit: Vade frater, et quaere porcus, quibus potius debes quam hominibus comparari, et involve te cum eis in volutabro, et regulam illis a te commentatam tradens, officium tuae praedicationis impende. Quod audiens Franciscus inclinato capite exixit et porcis tandem inventis, in luto se cum eis tamdiu involvit quousque a planta pedis usque ad verticem, corpus suum totum cum ipso habitu polluisset. Sicque ad consistorium revertens Papae se conspectibus praesentavit dicens: Domine feci sicut praecepisti exaudi nunc obsecro petitionem meam. Ed. Wats, p. 340. The incident has a real Franciscan color, and should have some historic basis. Curiously, it in some sort meets a passage in the legend of Bonaventura which is an interpolation of the end of the thirteenth century. See A. SS., p. 591.

[19] 3 Soc., 50 and 51; Bon., 37; 2 Cel., 1, 11; Bernard de Besse, Turin MS., f^o 101b. Ubertini di Casali (Arbor vitae crucifixae, Venice, 1485, lib. v., cap. iii.) tells a curious story in which he depicts the indignation of the prelates against Francis. Quaenam haec est doctrina nova quam infers auribus nostris? Quis potest vivere sine temporalium possessione? Numquid tu melior es quam patres nostri qui dederunt nobis temporalia et in temporalibus abundantes ecclesias possiderunt? Then follows the fine prayer inserted by Wadding in Francis's works. The central idea is the same as in the parable of poverty. This story, though not referable to any source, has nevertheless its importance, since it shows how in the year 1300 a man who had all the documents before his eyes, represented to himself Francis's early steps.

[20] Bon., 36.

[21] The attempt of Durand of Huesca to create a mendicant order has not yet been studied with sufficient minuteness. Chief of the Waldenses of Aragon, he was present in 1207 at the conference of Pamiers, and decided to return to the Church. Received with kindness by the pope he at first had a great success, and by 1209 had established communities in Aragon, at Carcassonne, Narbonne, Beziers, Nimes, Uzes, Milan. We find in this movement all the lineaments of the institute of St. Dominic; it was an order of priests to whom theological studies were recommended. They disappeared almost completely in the storm of the Albigensian crusade. Innocent III., epistolae, xi., 196, 197, 198; xii., 17, 66; xiii., 63, 77, 78, 94; xv., 82, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 137, 146. The first of these bulls contains the very curious Rule of this ephemeral order. Upon its disappearance vide Ripoli, Bullarium Praedicatorum, 8 vols., folio, Rome, 1729-1740, t. i., p. 96. Cf. Elie Berger, Registres d'Innocent IV., 2752.

[22] Burchard, of the order of the Premostrari, who died in 1226. See below, p. 234.

[23] 3 Soc., 52; Bon., 38.

[24] 3 Soc., 52 and 49.

[25] St. Antonino, Archbishop of Florence, saw very clearly that it was quaedam concessio simplex habitus et modi illius vivendi et quasi permissio. A. SS., p. 839. The expression "approbation of the Rule" by which the act of Innocent III. is usually designated is therefore erroneous.

* * * * *



CHAPTER VII

RIVO-TORTO

1210-1211

The Penitents of Assisi were overflowing with joy. After so many mortally long days spent in that Rome, so different from the other cities that they knew, exposed to the ill-disguised suspicions of the prelates and the jeers of pontifical lackeys, the day of departure seemed to them like a deliverance. At the thought of once more seeing their beloved mountains they were seized by that homesickness of the child for its native village which simple and kindly souls preserve till their latest breath.

Immediately after the ceremony they prayed at the tomb of St. Peter, and then crossing the whole city they quitted Rome by the Porta Salara.

Thomas of Celano, very brief as to all that concerns Francis's sojourn in the Eternal City, recounts at full length the light-heartedness of the little band on quitting it. Already it began to be transfigured in their memory; pains, fatigues, fears, disquietude, hesitations were all forgotten; they thought only of the fatherly assurances of the supreme pontiff—the vicar of Christ, the lord and father of the Christian universe—and promised themselves to make ever new efforts to follow the Rule with fidelity.

Full of these thoughts they had set out, without provisions, to cross the Campagna of Rome, whose few inhabitants never venture out in the heat of the day. The road stretches away northward, keeping at some distance from the Tiber; on the left the jagged crest of Soracte, bathed in mists formed by the exhalations of the earth, looms up disproportionately as it fades in the distance; on the right, the everlasting undulations of the hillocks with their wide pastures separated by thickets so parched and ragged that they seemed to cry for mercy and pardon. Between them the dusty road which goes straight forward, implacable, showing, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but the quivering of the fiery air. Not a house, not a tree, not a passing breeze, nothing to sustain the traveller under the disquietude which creeps over him. Here and there are a few abandoned huts, their ruins looking like the corpses of departed civilizations, and on the edge of the horizon the hills rising up like gigantic and unsurmountable walls.

There are no words to describe the physical and moral sufferings to which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your skin, and parches your mouth even more than thirst. Little by little all energy ebbs away, a dumb dejection seizes you, sight and thought become alike confused, fever ensues, and you cast yourself down by the roadside, unable to take another step.

In their haste to leave Rome Francis and his companions had forgotten all this, and had imprudently set forth. They would have succumbed if a chance traveller had not brought them succor. He was obliged to leave them before they had shaken off the last hallucinations of fever, leaving them amazed with the unexpected succor which Providence had sent them.[1]

They were so severely shattered that on arriving at Orte they were obliged to stop awhile. In a desert spot not far from this city they found a shelter admirably adapted to serve them for refuge;[2] it was one of those Etruscan tombs so common in that country, whose chambers serve to this day as a shelter for beggars and gypsies. While some of the brethren hastened to the city to beg for food, the others remained in this solitude enjoying the happiness of being together, forming a thousand plans, and more than ever delighting in the charm of freedom from care and renunciation of material goods.

This place had so strong an attraction for them that it required an effort of will to quit it at the end of a fortnight. The seduction of a life purely contemplative assailed Francis, and he asked himself if instead of preaching to the multitudes he would not do better to live in retreat, solely mindful of the inward dialogue between the soul and God.[3]

This aspiration for the selfish repose of the cloister came back to him several times in his life; but love always won the victory. He was too much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in paradise—peace. Beati mortui quia quiescunt! His distinguishing peculiarity is that he never gave way to it.

The reflections of Francis and his companions during their stay at Orte only made their apostolic mission more clear and imperative to them. He, above all, seemed to be filled with a new ardor, and like a valiant knight he burned to throw himself into the thick of the fray.

Their way now led through the valley of the Nera. The contrast between these cool glens, awake with a thousand voices, and the desolation of the Roman Campagna, must have struck them vividly; the stream is only a swollen torrent, but it runs so noisily over pebbles and rocks that it seems to be conversing with them and with the trees of the neighboring forest. In proportion as they had felt themselves alone on the road from Rome to Otricoli, they now felt themselves compassed about with the life, the fecundity, the gayety of the country.

The account of Thomas of Celano becomes so animated as it describes the life of Francis at this epoch that one cannot help thinking that at this time he must have seen him, and that this first meeting remained always in his memory as the radiant dawn of his spiritual life.[4]

The Brothers had taken to preaching in such places as they came upon along their route. Their words were always pretty much the same, they showed the blessedness of peace and exhorted to penitence. Emboldened by the welcome they had received at Rome, which in all innocence they might have taken to be more favorable than it really was, they told the story to everyone they met, and thus set all scruples at rest.

These exhortations, in which Francis spared not his hearers, but in which the sternest reproaches were mingled with so much of love, produced an enormous effect. Man desires above all things to be loved, and when he meets one who loves him sincerely he very seldom refuses him either his love or his admiration.

It is only a low understanding that confounds love with weakness and compliance. We sometimes see sick men feverishly kissing the hand of the surgeon who performs an operation upon them; we sometimes do the same for our spiritual surgeons, for we realize all that there is of vigor, pity, compassion in the tortures which they inflict, and the cries which they force from us are quite as much of gratitude as of pain.

Men hastened from all parts to hear these preachers who were more severe upon themselves than on anyone else. Members of the secular clergy, monks, learned men, rich men even, often mingled in the impromptu audiences gathered in the streets and public places. All were not converted, but it would have been very difficult for any of them to forget this stranger whom they met one day upon their way, and who in a few words had moved them to the very bottom of their hearts with anxiety and fear.

Francis was in truth, as Celano says, the bright morning star. His simple preaching took hold on consciences, snatched his hearers from the mire and blood in which they were painfully trudging, and in spite of themselves carried them to the very heavens, to those serene regions where all is silent save the voice of the heavenly Father. "The whole country trembled, the barren land was already covered with a rich harvest, the withered vine began again to blossom."[5]

Only a profoundly religious and poetic soul (is not the one the other?) can understand the transports of joy which overflowed the souls of St. Francis's spiritual sons.

The greatest crime of our industrial and commercial civilization is that it leaves us a taste only for that which may be bought with money, and makes us overlook the purest and truest joys which are all the time within our reach. The evil has roots far in the past. "Wherefore," said the God of old Isaiah, "do you weigh money for that which is not meat? why labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken unto me, and ye shall eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in fatness."[6]

Joys bought with money—noisy, feverish pleasures—are nothing compared with those sweet, quiet, modest but profound, lasting, and peaceful joys, enlarging, not wearying the heart, which we too often pass by on one side, like those peasants whom we see going into ecstasies over the fireworks of a fair, while they have not so much as a glance for the glorious splendors of a summer night.

In the plain of Assisi, at an hour's walk from the city and near the highway between Perugia and Rome, was a ruinous cottage called Rivo-Torto. A torrent, almost always dry, but capable of becoming terrible in a storm, descends from Mount Subasio and passes beside it. The ruin had no owner; it had served as a leper hospital before the construction by the Crucigeri[7] of their hospital San Salvatore delle Pareti; but since that time it had been abandoned. Now came Francis and his companions to seek shelter there.[8] It is one of the quietest spots in the suburbs of Assisi, and from thence they could easily go out into the neighborhood in all directions; it being about an equal distance from Portiuncula and St. Damian. But the principal motive for the choice of the place seems to have been the proximity of the Carceri, as those shallow natural grottos are called which are found in the forests, half way up the side of Mount Subasio. Following up the bed of the torrent of Rivo-Torto one reaches them in an hour by way of rugged and slippery paths where the very goats do not willingly venture. Once arrived, one might fancy oneself a thousand leagues from any human being, so numerous are the birds of prey which live here quite undisturbed.[9]

Francis loved this solitude and often retired thither with a few companions. The brethren in that case shared between them all care of their material wants, after which, each one retiring into one of these caves, they were able for a few days to listen only to the inner voice.

These little hermitages, sufficiently isolated to secure them from disturbance, but near enough to the cities to permit their going thither to preach, may be found wherever Francis went. They form, as it were, a series of documents about his life quite as important as the written witnesses. Something of his soul may still be found in these caverns in the Apennine forests. He never separated the contemplative from the active life. A precious witness to this fact is found in the regulations for the brethren during their sojourn in hermitage.[10]

The return of the Brothers to Rivo-Torto was marked by a vast increase of popularity. The prejudiced attacks to which they had formerly been subjected were lost in a chorus of praises. Perhaps men suspected the ill-will of the bishop and were happy to see him checked. However this may be, a lively feeling of sympathy and admiration was awakened; the people recalled to mind the indifference manifested by the son of Bernardone a few months before with regard to Otho IV. going to be crowned at Rome. The emperor had made a progress through Italy with a numerous suite and a pomp designed to produce an effect on the minds of the populace; but not only had Francis not interrupted his work to go and see him, he had enjoined upon his friars also to abstain from going, and had merely selected one of them to carry to the monarch a reminder of the ephemeral nature of worldly glory. Later on it was held that he had predicted to the emperor his approaching excommunication.

This spirited attitude made a vivid impression on the popular imagination.[11] Perhaps it was of more service in forming general opinion than anything he had done thus far. The masses, who are not often alive to delicate sentiments, respond quickly to those who, whether rightly or wrongly, do not bow down before power. This time they perceived that where other men would see the poor, the rich, the noble, the common, the learned, Francis saw only souls, which were to him the more precious as they were more neglected or despised.

No biographer informs us how long the Penitents remained at Rivo-Torto. It seems probable, however, that they spent there the latter part of 1210 and the early months of 1211, evangelizing the towns and villages of the neighborhood.

They suffered much; this part of the plain of Assisi is inundated by torrents nearly every autumn, and many times the poor friars, blockaded in the lazaretto, were forced to satisfy their hunger with a few roots from the neighboring fields.

The barrack in which they lived was so narrow that, when they were all there at once, they had much difficulty not to crowd one another. To secure to each one his due quota of space, Francis wrote the name of each brother upon the column which supports the building. But these minor discomforts in no sense disturbed their happiness. No apprehension had as yet come to cloud Francis's hopes; he was overflowing with joy and kindliness; all the memories which Rivo-Torto has left with the Order are fresh and sweet pictures of him.[12]

One night all the brethren seemed to be sleeping, when he heard a moaning. It was one of his sheep, to speak after the manner of the Franciscan biographer, who had denied himself too rigorously and was dying of hunger. Francis immediately rose, called the brother to him, brought forth the meagre reserve of food, and himself began to eat to inspire the other with courage, explaining to him that if penitence is good it is still necessary to temper it with discretion.[13]

Francis had that tact of the heart which divines the secrets of others and anticipates their desires. At another time, still at Rivo-Torto, he took a sick brother by the hand, led him to a grape-vine, and, presenting him with a fine cluster, began himself to eat of it. It was nothing, but the simple act so bound to him the sick man's heart that many years after the brother could not speak of it without emotion.[14]