Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 40

"Fourteen measures," replied the priest.

"Very well, if you have less than twenty, I undertake to make up the difference."

This promise rea.s.sured the worthy man, and when at the vintage he received twenty measures, he had no hesitation in believing in a miracle.[2]

Upon Ugolini's entreaties Francis had accepted the hospitality of the bishop's palace in Rieti. Thomas of Celano enlarges with delight upon the marks of devotion lavished on Francis by this prince of the Church.

Unhappily all this is written in that pompous and confused style of which diplomats and ecclesiastics appear to have by nature the secret.

Francis entered into the condition of a relic in his lifetime. The mania for amulets displayed itself around him in all its excesses. People quarrelled not only over his clothing, but even over his hair and the parings of his nails.[3]

Did these merely exterior demonstrations disgust him? Did he sometimes think of the contrast between these honors offered to his body, which he picturesquely called Brother a.s.s, and the subversion of his ideal? We cannot tell. If he had feelings of this kind those who surrounded him were not the men to understand them, and it would be idle to expect any expression of them from his pen.

Soon after he had a relapse, and asked to be removed to Monte-Colombo,[4] a hermitage an hour distant from the city, hidden amidst trees and scattered rocks. He had already retired thither several times, notably when he was preparing the Rule of 1223.

The doctors, having exhausted the therapeutic a.r.s.enal of the time, decided to resort to cauterization; it was decided to draw a rod of white-hot iron across his forehead.

When the poor patient saw them bringing in the brazier and the instruments he had a moment of terror; but immediately making the sign of the cross over the glowing iron, "Brother fire," he said, "you are beautiful above all creatures; be favorable to me in this hour; you know how much I have always loved you; be then courteous to-day."

Afterward, when his companions, who had not had the courage to remain, came back he said to them, smiling, "Oh, cowardly folk, why did you go away? I felt no pain. Brother doctor, if it is necessary you may do it again."

This experiment was no more successful than the other remedies. In vain they quickened the wound on the forehead, by applying plasters, salves, and even by making incisions in it; the only result was to increase the pains of the sufferer.[5]

One day, at Rieti, whither he had again been carried, he thought that a little music would relieve his pain. Calling a friar who had formerly been clever at playing the guitar, he begged him to borrow one; but the friar was afraid of the scandal which this might cause, and Francis gave it up.

G.o.d took pity upon him; the following night he sent an invisible angel to give him such a concert as is never heard on earth.[6] Francis, hearing it, lost all bodily feeling, say the Fioretti, and at one moment the melody was so sweet and penetrating that if the angel had given one more stroke of the bow, the sick man's soul would have left his body.[7]

It seems that there was some amelioration of his state when the doctors left him; we find him during the months of this winter, 1225-1226, in the most remote hermitages of the district, for as soon as he had a little strength he was determined to begin preaching again.

He went to Poggio-Buscone[8] for the Christmas festival. People flocked thither in crowds from all the country round to see and hear him. "You come here," he said, "expecting to find a great saint; what will you think when I tell you that I ate meat all through Advent?"[9]

At St. Eleutheria,[10] at a time of extreme cold which tried him much, he had sewn some pieces of stuff into his own tunic and that of his companion, so as to make their garments a little warmer. One day his companion came home with a fox-skin, with which in his turn he proposed to line his master's tunic. Francis rejoiced much over it, but would permit this excess of consideration for his body only on condition that the piece of fur should be placed on the outside over his chest.

All these incidents, almost insignificant at a first view, show how he detested hypocrisy even in the smallest things.

We will not follow him to his dear Greccio,[11] nor even to the hermitage of St. Urbano, perched on one of the highest peaks of the Sabine.[12] The accounts which we have of the brief visits he made there at this time tell us nothing new of his character or of the history of his life. They simply show that the imaginations of those who surrounded him were extraordinarily overheated; the least incidents immediately took on a miraculous coloring.[13]

The doc.u.ments do not say how it came about that he decided to go to Sienna. It appears that there was in that city a physician of great fame as an oculist. The treatment he prescribed was no more successful than that of the others; but with the return of spring Francis made a new effort to return to active life. We find him describing the ideal Franciscan monastery,[14] and another day explaining a pa.s.sage in the Bible to a Dominican.

Did the latter, a doctor in theology, desire to bring the rival Order into ridicule by showing its founder incapable of explaining a somewhat difficult verse? It appears extremely likely. "My good father," he said, "how do you understand this saying of the prophet Ezekiel, 'If thou dost not warn the wicked of his wickedness, I will require his soul of thee?'

I am acquainted with many men whom I know to be in a state of mortal sin, and yet I am not always reproaching them for their vices. Am I, then, responsible for their souls?"

At first Francis excused himself, alleging his ignorance, but urged by his interlocutor he said at last: "Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, by the truth which shines forth in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life."[15]

He soon suffered so grave a relapse that the Brothers thought his last hour had come. They were especially affrighted by the hemorrhages, which reduced him to a state of extreme prostration. Brother Elias hastened to him. At his arrival the invalid felt in himself such an improvement that they could acquiesce in his desire to be taken back to Umbria. Toward the middle of April they set out, going in the direction of Cortona. It is the easiest route, and the delightful hermitage of that city was one of the best ordered to permit of his taking some repose. He doubtless remained there a very short time: he was in haste to see once more the skies of his native country, Portiuncula, St. Damian, the Carceri, all those paths and hamlets which one sees from the terraces of a.s.sisi and which recalled to him so many sweet memories.

Instead of going by the nearest road, they made a long circuit by Gubbio and Nocera, to avoid Perugia, fearing some attempt of the inhabitants to get possession of the Saint. Such a relic as the body of Francis lacked little of the value of the sacred nail or the sacred lance.[16] Battles were fought for less than that.

They made a short halt near Nocera, at the hermitage of Bagnara, on the slopes of Monte-Pennino.[17] His companions were again very much disturbed. The swelling which had shown itself in the lower limbs was rapidly gaining the upper part of the body. The a.s.sisans learned this, and wishing to be prepared for whatever might happen sent their men-at-arms to protect the Saint and hasten his return.

Bringing Francis back with them they stopped for food at the hamlet of Balciano,[18] but in vain they begged the inhabitants to sell them provisions. As the escort were confiding their discomfiture to the friars, Francis, who knew these good peasants, said: "If you had asked for food without offering to pay, you would have found all you wanted."

He was right, for, following his advice, they received for nothing all that they desired.[19]

The arrival of the party at a.s.sisi was hailed with frantic joy. This time Francis's fellow-citizens were sure that the Saint was not going to die somewhere else.[20]

Customs in this matter have changed too much for us to be able thoroughly to comprehend the good fortune of possessing the body of a saint. If you are ever so unlucky as to mention St. Andrew before an inhabitant of Amalfi, you will immediately find him beginning to shout "_Evviva San Andrea! Evviva San Andrea!_" Then with extraordinary volubility he will relate to you the legend of the _Grande Protettore_, his miracles past and present, those which he might have done if he had chosen, but which he refrained from doing out of charity because St.

Januarius of Naples could not do as much. He gesticulates, throws himself about, hustles you, more enthusiastic over his relic and more exasperated by your coldness than a soldier of the Old Guard before an enemy of the Emperor.

In the thirteenth century all Europe was like that.

We shall find here several incidents which we may be tempted to consider shocking or even ign.o.ble, if we do not make an effort to put them all into their proper surroundings.

Francis was installed in the bishop's palace; he would have preferred to be at Portiuncula, but the Brothers were obliged to obey the injunctions of the populace, and to make a.s.surance doubly sure, guards were placed at all the approaches of the palace.

The abode of the Saint in this place was much longer than had been antic.i.p.ated. It perhaps lasted several months (July to September). This dying man did not consent to die. He rebelled against death; in this centre of the work his anxieties for the future of the Order, which a little while before had been in the background, now returned, more agonizing and terrible than ever.

"We must begin again," he thought, "create a new family who will not forget humility, who will go and serve lepers and, as in the old times, put themselves always, not merely in words, but in reality, below all men."[21]

To feel that implacable work of destruction going on against which the most submissive cannot keep from protesting: "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why? why hast thou forsaken me?" To be obliged to look on at the still more dreaded decomposition of his Order; he, the lark, to be spied upon by soldiers watching for his corpse--there was quite enough here to make him mortally sad.

During these last weeks all his sighs were noted. The disappearance of the greater part of the legend of the Three Companions certainly deprives us of some touching stories, but most of the incidents have been preserved for us, notwithstanding, in doc.u.ments from a second hand.

Four Brothers had been especially charged to lavish care upon him: Leo, Angelo, Rufino, and Ma.s.seo. We already know them; they are of those intimate friends of the first days, who had heard in the Franciscan gospel a call to love and liberty. And they too began to complain of everything.[22]

One day one of them said to the sick man: "Father, you are going away to leave us here; point out to us, then, if you know him, the one to whom we might in all security confide the burden of the generalship."

Alas, Francis did not know the ideal Brother, capable of a.s.suming such a duty; but he took advantage of the question to sketch the portrait of the perfect minister-general.[23]

We have two impressions of this portrait, the one which has been retouched by Celano, and the original proof, much shorter and more vague, but showing us Francis desiring that his successor shall have but a single weapon, an unalterable love.

It was probably this question which suggested to him the thought of leaving for his successors, the generals of the Order, a letter which they should pa.s.s on from one to another, and where they should find, not directions for particular cases, but the very inspiration of their activity.[24]

To the Reverend Father in Christ, N ..., Minister-General of the entire Order of the Brothers Minor. May G.o.d bless thee and keep thee in his holy love.

Patience in all things and everywhere, this, my Brother, is what I specially recommend. Even if they oppose thee, if they strike thee, thou shouldst be grateful to them and desire that it should be thus and not otherwise.

In this will be manifest thy love for G.o.d and for me, his servant and thine; that there shall not be a single friar in the world who, having sinned as much as one can sin, and coming before thee, shall go away without having received thy pardon.

And if he does not ask it, do thou ask it for him, whether he wills or not.

And if he should return again a thousand times before thee, love him more than myself, in order to lead him to well-doing. Have pity always on these Brothers.

These words show plainly enough how in former days Francis had directed the Order; in his dream the ministers-general were to stand in a relation of pure affection, of tender devotion toward those under them; but was this possible for one at the head of a family whose branches extended over the entire world? It would be hazardous to say, for among his successors have not been wanting distinguished minds and n.o.ble hearts; but save for Giovanni di Parma and two or three others, this ideal is in sharp contrast with the reality. St. Bonaventura himself will drag his master and friend, this very Giovanni of Parma, before an ecclesiastical tribunal, will cause him to be condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and it will need the intervention of a cardinal outside of the Order to secure the commutation of this sentence.[25]

The agonies of grief endured by the dying Francis over the decadence of the Order would have been less poignant if they had not been mingled with self-reproaches for his own cowardice. Why had he deserted his post, given up the direction of his family, if not from idleness and selfishness? And now it was too late to take back this step; and in hours of frightful anguish he asked himself if G.o.d would not hold him responsible for this subversion of his ideal.

"Ah, if I could go once again to the chapter-general," he would sigh, "I would show them what my will is."

Shattered as he was by fever, he would suddenly rise up in his bed, crying with a despairing intensity: "Where are they who have ravished my brethren from me? Where are they who have stolen away my family?"