Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 17

He felt that in this respect the Rule could not be too absolute, and that if unfortunately the door was opened to various interpretations of it, there would be no stopping-point. The course of events and the periodical convulsions which shook his Order show clearly enough how rightly he judged.

I do not know nor desire to know if theologians have yet come to a scientific conclusion with regard to the poverty of Jesus, but it seems evident to me that poverty with the labor of the hands is the ideal held up by the Galilean to the efforts of his disciples.

Still it is easy to see that Franciscan poverty is neither to be confounded with the unfeeling pride of the stoic, nor with the stupid horror of all joy felt by certain devotees; St. Francis renounced everything only that he might the better possess everything. The lives of the immense majority of our contemporaries are ruled by the fatal error that the more one possesses the more one enjoys. Our exterior, civil liberties continually increase, but at the same time our inward freedom is taking flight; how many are there among us who are literally possessed by what they possess?[9]

Poverty not only permitted the Brothers to mingle with the poor and speak to them with authority, but, removing from them all material anxiety, it left them free to enjoy without hindrance those hidden treasures which nature reserves for pure idealists.

The ever-thickening barriers which modern life, with its sickly search for useless comfort, has set up between us and nature did not exist for these men, so full of youth and life, eager for wide s.p.a.ces and the outer air. This is what gave St. Francis and his companions that quick susceptibility to Nature which made them thrill in mysterious harmony with her. Their communion with Nature was so intimate, so ardent, that Umbria, with the harmonious poetry of its skies, the joyful outburst of its spring-time, is still the best doc.u.ment from which to study them.

The tie between the two is so indissoluble, that after having lived a certain time in company with St. Francis, one can hardly, on reading certain pa.s.sages of his biographers, help _seeing_ the spot where the incident took place, hearing the vague sounds of creatures and things, precisely as, when reading certain pages of a beloved author, one hears the sound of his voice.

The worship of Poverty of the early Franciscans had in it, then, nothing ascetic or barbarous, nothing which recalls the Stylites or the n.a.z.irs.

She was their bride, and like true lovers they felt no fatigues which they might endure to find and remain near her.

La lor concordia e lor lieti sembianti, Amor e maraviglia e dolce sguardo Facean esser cagion de' pensier santi.[10]

To draw the portrait of an ideal knight at the beginning of the thirteenth century is to draw Francis's very portrait, with this difference, that what the knight did for his lady, he did for Poverty.

This comparison is not a mere caprice; he himself profoundly felt it and expressed it with perfect clearness, and it is only by keeping it clearly present in the mind that we can see into the very depth of his heart.[11]

To find any other souls of the same nature one must come down to Giovanni di Parma and Jacoponi di Todi. The life of St. Francis as troubadour has been written; it would have been better to write it as knight, for this is the explanation of his whole life, and as it were the heart of his heart. From the day when, forgetting the songs of his friends and suddenly stopped in the public place of a.s.sisi, he met Poverty, his bride, and swore to her faith and love, down to that evening when, naked upon the naked earth of Portiuncula, he breathed out his life, it may be said that all his thoughts went out to this lady of his chaste loves. For twenty years he served her without faltering, sometimes with an artlessness which would appear infantine, if something infinitely sincere and sublime did not arrest the smile upon the most sceptical lips.

Poverty agreed marvellously with that need which men had at that time, and which perhaps they have lost less than they suppose, the need of an ideal very high, very pure, mysterious, inaccessible, which yet they may picture to themselves in concrete form. Sometimes a few privileged disciples saw the lovely and pure Lady descend from heaven to salute her spouse, but, whether visible or not, she always kept close beside her Umbrian lover, as she kept close beside the Galilean; in the stable of the nativity, upon the cross at Golgotha, and even in the borrowed tomb where his body lay.

During several years this ideal was not alone that of St. Francis, but also of all the Brothers. In poverty the _gente poverelle_ had found safety, love, liberty; and all the efforts of the new apostles are directed to the keeping of this precious treasure.

Their worship sometimes might seem excessive. They showed their spouse those delicate attentions, those refinements of courtesy so frequent in the morning light of a betrothal, but which one gradually forgets till they become incomprehensible.[12]

The number of disciples continually increased; almost every week brought new recruits; the year 1211 was without doubt devoted by Francis to a tour in Umbria and the neighboring provinces. His sermons were short appeals to conscience; his heart went out to his hearers in ineffable tones, so that when men tried to repeat what they had heard they found themselves incapable.[13] The Rule of 1221 has preserved for us a summary of these appeals:

"Here is an exhortation which all the Brothers may make when they think best: Fear and honor G.o.d, praise and bless him. Give thanks unto him. Adore the Lord, Almighty G.o.d, in Trinity and unity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Repent and make fruits meet for repentance, for you know that we shall soon die.

Give, and it shall be given unto you. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven; for if you forgive not, G.o.d will not forgive you.

Blessed are they who die repenting, for they shall be in the kingdom of heaven.... Abstain carefully from all evil, and persevere in the good until the end."[14]

We see how simple and purely ethical was the early Franciscan preaching.

The complications of dogma and scholasticism are entirely absent from it. To understand how new this was and how refreshing to the soul we must study the disciples that came after him.

With St. Anthony of Padua ([Cross] June 13, 1231; canonized in 1233[15]), the most ill.u.s.trious of them all, the descent is immense. The distance between these two men is as great as that which separates Jesus from St. Paul.

I do not judge the disciple; he was of his time in not knowing how to say simply what he thought, in always desiring to subtilize it, to extract it from pa.s.sages in the Bible turned from their natural meaning by efforts at once laborious and puerile; what the alchemists did in their continual making of strange mixtures from which they fancied that they should bring out gold, the preachers did to the texts, in order to bring out the truth.

The originality of St. Francis is only the more brilliant and meritorious; with him gospel simplicity reappeared upon the earth.[16]

Like the lark with which he so much loved to compare himself,[17] he was at his ease only in the open sky. He remained thus until his death.

The epistle to all Christians which he dictated in the last weeks of his life repeats the same ideas in the same terms, perhaps with a little more feeling and a shade of sadness. The evening breeze which breathed upon his face and bore away his words was their symbolical accompaniment.

"I, Brother Francis, the least of your servants, pray and conjure you by that Love which is G.o.d himself, willing to throw myself at your feet and kiss them, to receive with humility and love these words and all others of our Lord Jesus Christ, to put them to profit and carry them out."

This was not a more or less oratorical formula. Hence conversions multiplied with an incredible rapidity. Often, as formerly with Jesus, a look, a word sufficed Francis to attach to himself men who would follow him until their death. It is impossible, alas! to a.n.a.lyze the best of this eloquence, all made of love, intimate apprehension, and fire. The written word can no more give an idea of it than it can give us an idea of a sonata of Beethoven or a painting by Rembrandt. We are often amazed, on reading the memoirs of those who have been great conquerors of souls, to find ourselves remaining cold, finding in them all no trace of animation or originality. It is because we have only a lifeless relic in the hand; the soul is gone. It is the white wafer of the sacrament, but how shall that rouse in us the emotions of the beloved disciple lying on the Lord's breast on the night of the Last Supper?

The cla.s.s from which Francis recruited his disciples was still about the same; they were nearly all young men of a.s.sisi and its environs, some the sons of agriculturists, and others n.o.bles; the School and the Church was very little represented among them.[18]

Everything still went on with an unheard-of simplicity. In theory, obedience to the superior was absolute; in practice, we can see Francis continually giving his companions complete liberty of action.[19] Men entered the Order without a novitiate of any sort; it sufficed to say to Francis that they wanted to lead with him a life of evangelical perfection, and to prove it by giving all that they possessed to the poor. The more unpretending were the neophytes, the more tenderness he had for them. Like his Master, he had a partiality for those who were lost, for men whom regular society casts out of its limits, but who with all their crimes and scandals are nearer to sainthood than mediocrities and hypocrites.

One day St. Francis, pa.s.sing by the desert of Borgo San Sepolcro came to a place called Monte-Casale,[20] and behold a n.o.ble and refined young man came to him. "Father," he said, "I would gladly be one of your disciples."

"My son," said St. Francis, "you are young, refined, and n.o.ble; you will not be able to follow poverty and live wretched like us."

"But, my father, are not you men like me? What you do I can do with the grace of Jesus." This reply was well-pleasing to St.

Francis, who, giving him his blessing, incontinently received him into the Order under the name of Brother Angelo.

He conducted himself so well that a little while after he was made guardian[21] of Monte-Casale. Now, in those times there were three famous robbers who did much evil in the country. They came to the hermitage one day to beg Brother Angelo to give them something to eat; but he replied to them with severe reproaches: "What! robbers, evil-doers, a.s.sa.s.sins, have you not only no shame for stealing the goods of others, but you would farther devour the alms of the servants of G.o.d, you who are not worthy to live, and who have respect neither for men nor for G.o.d your Creator. Depart, and let me never see you here again!"

They went away full of rage. But behold, the Saint returned, bringing a wallet of bread and a bottle of wine which had been given him, and the guardian told him how he had sent away the robbers; then St. Francis reproved him severely for showing himself so cruel.... "I command thee by thine obedience," said he, "to take at once this loaf and this wine and go seek the robbers by hill and dell until you have found them, to offer them this as from me, and to kneel there before them and humbly ask their pardon, and pray them in my name no longer to do wrong but to fear G.o.d; and if they do it, I promise to provide for all their wants, to see that they always have enough to eat and drink. After that you may humbly return hither."

Brother Angelo did all that had been commanded him, while St.

Francis on his part prayed G.o.d to convert the robbers. They returned with the brother, and when St. Francis gave them the a.s.surance of the pardon of G.o.d, they changed their lives and entered the Order, in which they lived and died most holily.[22]

What has sometimes been said of the voice of the blood is still more true of the voice of the soul. When a man truly wakens another to moral life, he gains for himself an unspeakable grat.i.tude. The word _master_ is often profaned, but it can express the n.o.blest and purest of earthly ties.

Who are those among us, who in the hours of manly innocence when they examine their own consciences, do not see rising up before them from out of the past the ever beloved and loving face of one who, perhaps without knowing it, initiated them into spiritual things? At such a time we would throw ourselves at the feet of this father, would tell him in burning words of our admiration and grat.i.tude. We cannot do it, for the soul has its own bashfulness; but who knows that our disquietude and embarra.s.sment do not betray us, and unveil, better than words could do, the depths of our heart? The air they breathed at Portiuncula was all impregnated with joy and grat.i.tude like this.

To many of the Brothers, St. Francis was truly a saviour; he had delivered them from chains heavier than those of prisons. And therefore their greatest desire was in their turn to call others to this same liberty.

We have already seen Brother Bernardo on a mission to Florence a few months after his entrance into the Order. Arrived at maturity when he put on the habit, he appears in some degree the senior of this apostolic college. He knew how to obey St. Francis and remain faithful to the very end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege of the young--of Brother Leo, for example--of being able to transform himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy, which is so great a charm of the others.

Toward this epoch two Brothers entered the Order, men such as the successors of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright light on the simplicity of the early days. It will be remembered with what zeal Francis had repaired several churches; his solicitude went further; he saw a sort of profanation in the negligence with which most of them were kept; the want of cleanliness of the sacred objects, ill-concealed by tinsel, gave him a sort of pain, and it often happened that when he was going to preach somewhere he secretly called together the priests of the locality and implored them to look after the decency of the service. But even in these cases he was not content to preach only in words; binding together some stalks of heather he would make them into brooms for sweeping out the churches.

One day in the suburbs of a.s.sisi he was performing this task when a peasant appeared, who had left his oxen and cart out in the fields while he came to gaze at him.

"Brother," said he on entering, "give me the broom. I will help you," and he swept out the rest of the church.

When he had finished, "Brother," he said to Francis, "for a long time I have decided to serve G.o.d, especially when I heard men speak of you. But I never knew how to find you. Now it has pleased G.o.d that we should meet, and henceforth I shall do whatever you may please to command me."

Francis seeing his fervor felt a great joy; it seemed to him that with his simplicity and honesty he would become a good friar.

It appears indeed that he had only too much simplicity, for after his reception he felt himself bound to imitate every motion of the master, and when the latter coughed, spat, or sighed, he did the same. At last Francis noticed it and gently reproved him. Later he became so perfect that the other friars admired him greatly, and after his death, which took place not long after, St. Francis loved to relate his conversion, calling him not Brother John, but Brother St. John.[23]

Ginepro is still more celebrated for his holy follies.

One day he went to see a sick Brother and offered him his services. The patient confessed that he had a great longing to eat a pig's foot; the visitor immediately rushed out, and armed with a knife ran to the neighboring forest, where, espying a troop of pigs, he cut off a foot of one of them, returning to the monastery full of pride over his trophy.

The owner of the pigs shortly followed, howling like mad, but Ginepro went straight to him and pointed out with so much volubility that he had done him a great service, that the man, after overwhelming him with reproaches, suddenly begged pardon, killed the pig and invited all the Brothers to feast upon it. Ginepro was probably less mad than the story would lead us to suppose; Franciscan humility never had a more sincere disciple; he could not endure the tokens of admiration which the populace very early lavished on the growing Order, and which by their extravagance contributed so much to its decadence.

One day, as he was entering Rome, the report of his arrival spread abroad, and a great crowd came out to meet him. To escape was impossible, but he suddenly had an inspiration; near the gate of the city some children were playing at see-saw; to the great amazement of the Romans Ginepro joined them, and, without heeding the salutations addressed to him, remained so absorbed in his play that at last his indignant admirers departed.[24]

It is clear that the life at Portiuncula must have been very different from that of an ordinary convent. So much youth,[25] simplicity, love, quickly drew the eyes of men toward it. From all sides they were turned to those thatched huts, where dwelt a spiritual family whose members loved one another more than men love on earth, leading a life of labor, mirth, and devotion. The humble chapel seemed a new Zion destined to enlighten the world, and many in their dreams beheld blind humanity coming to kneel there and recover sight.[26]

Among the first disciples who joined themselves to St. Francis we must mention Brother Silvestro, the first priest who entered the Order, the very same whom we have already seen the day that Bernardo di Quintevalle distributed his goods among the poor. Since then he had not had a moment's peace, bitterly reproaching himself for his avarice; night and day he thought only of that, and in his dreams he saw Francis exorcising a horrid monster which infested all the region.[27]

By his age and the nature of the memory he has left behind him Silvestro resembles Brother Bernardo. He was what is usually understood by a holy priest, but nothing denotes that he had the truly Franciscan love of great enterprises, distant journeys, perilous missions. Withdrawn into one of the grottos of the Carceri, absorbed in the contemplative life, he gave spiritual counsels to his brethren as occasion served.[28]