Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 23

"Brother birds," he said to them then, "you ought to praise and love your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the n.o.blest of his creatures; he permits you to live in the pure air; you have neither to sow nor to reap, and yet he takes care of you, watches over you and guides you." Then the birds began to arch their necks, to spread out their wings, to open their beaks, to look at him, as if to thank him, while he went up and down in their midst stroking them with the border of his tunic, sending them away at last with his blessing.[15]

In this same evangelizing tour, pa.s.sing through Alviano,[16] he spoke a few exhortations to the people, but the swallows so filled the air with their chirping that he could not make himself heard. "It is my turn to speak," he said to them; "little sister swallows, hearken to the word of G.o.d; keep silent and be very quiet until I have finished."[17]

We see how Francis's love extended to all creation, how the diffused life shed abroad upon all things inspired and moved him. From the sun to the earthworm which we trample under foot, everything breathed in his ear the ineffable sigh of beings that live and suffer and die, and in their life as in their death have a part in the divine work.

"Praised be thou, Lord, with all thy creatures, especially for my brother Sun which gives us the day and by him thou showest thy light. He is beautiful and radiant with great splendor; of thee, Most High, he is the symbol."

Here again, Francis revives the Hebrew inspiration, the simple and grandiose view of the prophets of Israel. "Praise the Lord!" the royal Psalmist had sung, "praise the Lord, fire and frost, snow and mists, stormy winds that do his will, mountains and all hills, fruit-trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and fowls with wings, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, young men and maidens, old men and children, praise the Lord, praise ye the Lord!"

The day of the birds of Bevagna remained in his memory as one of the most beautiful of his whole life, and though usually so reserved he always loved to tell of it;[18] it was because he owed to Clara these pure ardors which brought him into a secret and delicious communion with all beings; it was she who had revived him from sadness and hesitation; in his heart he bore an immense grat.i.tude to her who, just when he needed it, had known how to return to him love for love, inspiration for inspiration.

Francis's sympathy for animals, as we see it shining forth here, has none of that sentimentalism, so often artificial and exclusive of all other love, which certain a.s.sociations of his time noisily displayed; in him it is only a manifestation of his feeling for nature, a deeply mystical, one might say pantheistic, sentiment, if the word had not a too definitely philosophical sense, quite opposite to the Franciscan thought.

This sentiment, which in the poets of the thirteenth century is so often false and affected, was in him not only true, but had in it something alive, healthy, robust.[19] It is this vein of poetry which awoke Italy to self-consciousness, made her in a few years forget the nightmare of Catharist ideas, and rescued her from pessimism. By it Francis became the forerunner of the artistic movement which preceded the Renaissance, the inspirer of that group of Pre-Raphaelites, awkward, grotesque in drawing though at times they were, to whom we turn to-day with a sort of piety, finding in their ungraceful saints an inner life, a moral feeling which we seek for elsewhere in vain.

If the voice of the Poverello of a.s.sisi was so well understood it was because in this matter, as in all others, it was entirely unconventional. How far we are, with him, from the fierce or Pharisaic piety of those monks which forbids even the females of animals to enter their convent! His notion of chast.i.ty in no sense resembles this excessive prudery. One day at Sienna he asked for some turtle-doves, and holding them in the skirt of his tunic, he said: "Little sisters turtle-doves, you are simple, innocent, and chaste; why did you let yourselves be caught? I shall save you from death, and have nests made for you, so that you may bring forth young and multiply according to the commandment of our Creator."

And he went and made nests for them all, and the turtle-doves began to lay eggs and bring up their broods under the eyes of the Brothers.[20]

At Rieti a family of red-b.r.e.a.s.t.s were the guests of the monastery, and the young birds made marauding expeditions on the very table where the Brothers were eating.[21] Not far from there, at Greccio,[22] they brought to Francis a leveret that had been taken alive in a trap. "Come to me, brother leveret," he said to it. And as the poor creature, being set free, ran to him for refuge, he took it up, caressed it, and finally put it on the ground that it might run away; but it returned to him again and again, so that he was obliged to send it to the neighboring forest before it would consent to return to freedom.[23]

One day he was crossing the Lake of Rieti. The boatman in whose bark he was making the pa.s.sage offered him a tench of uncommon size. Francis accepted it with joy, but to the great amazement of the fisherman put it back into the water, bidding it bless G.o.d.[24]

We should never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this kind,[25] for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.[26] He is ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into the limpid water of a brook.[27]

This perfect lover of poverty permitted one luxury--he even commanded it at Portiuncula--that of flowers; the Brother was bidden not to sow vegetables and useful plants only; he must reserve one corner of good ground for our sisters, the flowers of the fields. Francis talked with them also, or rather he replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle language crept into the very depth of his heart.[28]

The thirteenth century was prepared to understand the voice of the Umbrian poet; the sermon to the birds[29] closed the reign of Byzantine art and of the thought of which it was the image. It is the end of dogmatism and authority; it is the coming in of individualism and inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to be followed by obstinate reactions, but none the less marking a date in the history of the human conscience.[30] Many among the companions of Francis were too much the children of their century, too thoroughly imbued with its theological and metaphysical methods, to quite understand a sentiment so simple and profound.[31] But each in his degree felt its charm. Here Thomas of Celano's language rises to an elevation which we find in no other part of his works, closing with a picture of Francis which makes one think of the Song of Songs.[32]

Of more than middle height, Francis had a delicate and kindly face, black eyes, a soft and sonorous voice. There was in his whole person a delicacy and grace which made him infinitely lovely. All these characteristics are found in the most ancient portraits.[33]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 3 Soc., 57; cf. _An. Perus._, A. SS., p. 599.

[2] Rev. xxi.; 1 Cel., 46; 3 Soc., 57-59; _An. Perus._, A. SS., p. 600.

[3] 1 Cel., 55 and 56; Bon., 129-132.

[4] _Fior._, 7; _Spec._, 96; _Conform._, 223a, 2. The fact of Francis's sojourn on an island in this lake is made certain by 1 Cel., 60.

[5] Vide below, p. 400. Cf. A. SS., pp. 823 f.

[6] At present Sa.s.so-Feltrio, between Conca and Marecchio, south of and about two hours' walk from San Marino.

[7] The happiness that I expect is so great that all pain is joyful to me. All the doc.u.ments give Francis's text in Italian, which is enough to prove that it was the language not only of his poems but also of his sermons. _Spec._ 92a ff. _Conform._ 113a, 2; 231a, 1; _Fior., Prima consid._

[8] See p. 400.

[9] 2 Cel., 3, 85; Bon., 82.

[10] 1 Cel., 56; Bon., 132.

[11] Vide Wadding, _ann. 1213-1215_. Cf. A. SS., pp. 602, 603, 825-831. Mark of Lisbon, _lib._ i., _cap._ 45, pp. 78-80; Papini, _Storia di S. Francesco_, i., p. 79 ff. (Foligno, 1825, 2 vols., 4to). It is surprising to see Father Suysken giving so much weight to the _argumentum a silentio_.

[12] From Pentecost, 1213, to that of 1214.--_Post non multum vero temporis versus Marochium iter arripuit_, says Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 56), after having mentioned the return from Slavonia. Taking into account the author's _usus loquendi_ the phrase appears to establish a certain interval between the two missions.

[13] _Conform._, 110b, 1; _Spec._, 62b; _Fior._, 16; Bon., 170-174.

[14] Village about two leagues S. W. from a.s.sisi. The time is indirectly fixed by Bon., 173, and 1 Cel., 58.

[15] 1 Cel. 58; Bon., 109 and 174; _Fior._, 16; _Spec._, 62b; _Conform._, 114b, 2.

[16] About halfway between Orvieto and Narni.

[17] 1 Cel., 59; Bon., 175.

[18] _Ad haec, ut ipse dicebat_ ... 1 Cel., 58.

[19] Francis has been compared in this regard to certain of his contemporaries, but the similarity of the words only makes more evident the diversity of inspiration. Honorius III. may say: _Forma rosae est inferius angusta, superius ampla et significat quod Christus pauper fuit in mundo, sed est Dominus super omnia et implet universa. Nam sicut forma rosae_, etc. (Horoy, t. i., col. xxiv. and 804), and make a whole sermon on the symbolism of the rose; these overstrained dissertations have nothing to do with the feeling for nature. It is the a.r.s.enal of mediaeval rhetoric used to dissect a word. It is an intellectual effort, not a song of love. The Imitation would say: _If thy heart were right all creatures would be for thee a mirror of life and a volume of holy doctrine_, lib. ii., cap. 2. The simple sentiment of the beauty of creation is absent here also; the pa.s.sage is a pedagogue in disguise.

[20] _Spec._, 157. _Fior._; 22.

[21] 2 Cel., 2, 16; _Conform._, 148a, 1, 183b, 2. Cf. the story of the sheep of Portiuncula: Bon., 111.

[22] Village in the valley of Rieti, two hours' walk from that town, on the road to Terni.

[23] 1 Cel., 60; Bon., 113.

[24] 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114.

[25] 2 Cel., 3, 54; Bon., 109; 2 Cel., 3; 103 ff.; Bon., 116 ff.; Bon., 110; 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114, 113, 115; 1 Cel., 79; _Fior._, 13, etc.

[26] 2 Cel., 3, 101 ff.; Bon., 123.

[27] 2 Cel., 3, 59; 1 Cel., 80 and 81.

[28] 2 Cel., 3, 101; _Spec._, 136a; 1 Cel., 81.

[29] This is the scene in his life most often reproduced by the predecessors of Giotto. The unknown artist who (before 1236) decorated the nave of the Lower Church of a.s.sisi gives five frescos to the history of Jesus and five to the life of St.

Francis. Upon the latter he represents: 1, the renunciation of the paternal inheritance; 2, Francis upholding the Lateran church; 3, the sermon to the birds; 4, the stigmata; 5, the funeral. This work, unhappily very badly lighted, and about half of it destroyed at the time of the construction of the chapels of the nave, ought to be engraved before it completely disappears. The history of art in the time of Giunta Pisano is still too much enveloped in obscurity for us to neglect such a source of information. M. Thode (_Franz von a.s.sisi und die Anfange der Kunst_, Berlin, 1885, 8vo. ill.u.s.t.) and the Rev.

Father Fratini (_Storia della Basilica d'a.s.sisi_, Prato, 1882, 8vo) are much too brief so far as these frescos are concerned.

[30] It is needless to say that I do not claim that Francis was the only initiator of this movement, still less that he was its creator; he was its most inspired singer, and that may suffice for his glory. If Italy was awakened it was because her sleep was not so sound as in the tenth century; the mosaics of the facade of the Cathedral of Spoleto (the Christ between the Virgin and St. John) already belong to the new art. Still, the victory was so little final that the mural paintings of St.

Lawrence without the walls and of the Quattro Coronate, which are subsequent to it by half a score of years, relapse into a coa.r.s.e Byzantinism. See also those of the Baptistery of Florence.

[31] Hence the more or less subtile explanations with which they adorn these incidents.--As to the part of animals in thirteenth century legends consult Caesar von Heisterbach, Strange's edition, t. ii., pp. 257 ff.