Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 50

These events gained an indescribable notoriety[26] all over Europe and threw the Order into profound disturbance. Many of the partisans of Elias became convinced that they had been deceived by an impostor, and they drew toward the group of Zealots, who never ceased to demand the observance pure and simple of the Rule and the Will.

Thomas of Celano was of this number.[27] With profound sadness he saw the innumerable influences that were secretly undermining the Franciscan inst.i.tute and menacing it with ruin. Already a refrain was going the rounds of the convents, singing the victory of Paris over a.s.sisi, that is, of learning over poverty.

The Zealots gained new courage. Unaccustomed to the subtleties of ecclesiastical politics, they did not perceive that the pope, while condemning Brother Elias, had in nowise modified the general course which he had marked out for the Order. The ministers-general, Alberto di Pisa, 1239-1240, Aymon of Faversham, 1240-1244, Crescentius de Jesi, 1244-1247, were all, with different shades of meaning, representatives of the moderate party.

Thomas of Celano's first legend had become impossible. The prominence there given to Elias was almost a scandal. The necessity of working it over and completing it became clearly evident at the chapter of Genoa (1244).

All the Brothers who had anything to tell about Francis's life were invited to commit it to writing and send it to the minister Crescentius de Jesi.[28] The latter immediately caused a tract to be drawn up in the form of a dialogue, commencing with the words: "_Venerabilium gesta Patrum_." So soon after as the time of Bernard de Besse, only fragments of this were left.[29]

But happily several of the works which saw the light in consequence of the decision of this chapter have been preserved to us. It is to this that we owe the Legend of the Three Companions and the Second Life by Thomas of Celano.

IV. LEGEND OF THE THREE COMPANIONS[30]

The life of St. Francis which has come down to us under the name of the Legend of the Three Companions was finished on August 11, 1246, in a little convent in the vale of Rieti, which appears often in the course of this history, that of Greccio. This hermitage had been Francis's favorite abode, especially in the latter part of his life. He had thus made it doubly dear to the hearts of his disciples.[31] It naturally became, from the earliest days of the Order, the headquarters of the Observants,[32] and it remains through all the centuries one of the purest centres of Franciscan piety.

The authors of this legend were men worthy to tell St. Francis's story, and perhaps the most capable of doing it: the friars Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. All three had lived in intimacy with him, and had been his companions through the most important years. More than this, they took the trouble to go to others for further information, particularly to Filippo, the visitor of the Clarisses, to Illuminato di Rieti, Ma.s.seo di Marignano, John, the confidant of Egidio, and Bernardo di Quintavalle.

Such names as these promise much, and happily we are not disappointed in our expectation. As it has come down to us, this doc.u.ment is the only one worthy from the point of view of history to be placed beside the First Life by Celano.

The names of the authors and the date of the composition indicate before examination the tendency with which it is likely to be in harmony. It is the first manifesto of the Brothers who remained faithful to the spirit and letter of the Rule. This is confirmed by an attentive reading; it is at least as much a panegyric of Poverty as a history of St. Francis.

We naturally expect to see the Three Companions relating to us with a very particular delight the innumerable features of the legends of which Greccio was the theatre; we turn to the end of the volume, expecting to find the story of the last years of which they were witnesses, and are lost in surprise to find nothing of the kind.

While the first half of the work describes Francis's youth, filling out here and there Celano's First Life, the second[33] is devoted to a picture of the early days of the Order, a picture of incomparable freshness and intensity of life; but strangely enough, after having told us so much at length of Francis's youth and then of the first days of the Order, the story abruptly leaps over from the year 1220 to the death and the canonization, to which after all only a few pages are given.[34]

This is too extraordinary to be the result of chance. What has happened?

It is evident that the Legend of the Three Companions as we have it to-day is only a fragment of the original, which was no doubt revised, corrected, and considerably cut down by the authorities of the Order before they would permit it to be circulated.[35] If the authors had been interrupted in their work, and obliged to cut short the end, as might have been the case, they would have said so in their letter of envoy, but there are still other arguments in favor of our hypothesis.

Brother Leo having had the first and princ.i.p.al part in the production of the work of the Three Companions, it is often called Brother Leo's Legend; now Brother Leo's Legend is several times cited by Ubertini di Casali, arraigned before the court of Avignon by the party of the Common Observance. Evidently Ubertini would have taken good care not to appeal to an apocryphal doc.u.ment; a false citation would have been enough to bring him to confusion, and his enemies would not have failed to make the most of his imprudence. We have at hand all the doc.u.ments of the trial,[36] attacks, replies, counter replies, and nowhere do we see the Liberals accuse their adversary of falsehood. For that matter, the latter makes his citations with a precision that admits of no cavil.[37] He appeals to writings to be found in a press in the convent of a.s.sisi, of which he gives sometimes a copy, sometimes an original.[38] We are then authorized to conclude that we have here fragments which have survived the suppression of the last and most important part of the Legend of the Three Companions.

It is not surprising that the work of Francis's dearest friends should have been so seriously mutilated. It was the manifesto of a party that Crescentius was hunting down with all his power.

After the fleeting reaction of the generalate of Giovanni di Parma we shall see a man of worth like St. Bonaventura moving for the suppression of all the primitive legends that his own compilation may be subst.i.tuted for them.

It is truly singular that no one has perceived the fragmentary state of the work of the Three Companions. The prologue alone might have suggested this idea. Why should it take three to write a few pages? Why this solemn enumeration of Brothers whose testimony and collaboration are asked for? There would be a surprising disproportion between the effort and the result.

More than all, the authors say that they shall not stop at relating the miracles, but they desire above all to exhibit the ideas of Francis and his life with the Brothers, but we search in vain for any account of miracles in what we now have.[39]

An Italian translation of this legend, published by Father Stanislaus Melchiorri,[40] has suddenly given me an indirect confirmation of this point of view. This monk is only its publisher, and has simply been able to discover that in 1577 it was taken from a very ancient ma.n.u.script by a certain Muzio Achillei di San Severino.[41]

This Italian translation contained only the last chapters of the legend, those which tell of the death, the stigmata, and the translation of the remains.[42] It was, then, made at a time when the suppressed portion had not been replaced by a short summary of the other legends.

From all this two conclusions emerge for the critics: 1. This final summary has not the same authority as the rest of the work, since the time when it was added is unknown. 2. Fragments of a legend by Brother Leo or by the Three Companions scattered through later compilations may be perfectly authentic.

In its present condition this legend of the Three Companions is the finest piece of Franciscan literature, and one of the most delightful productions of the Middle Ages. There is something indescribably sweet, confiding, chaste, in these pages, an energy of virile youth which the Fioretti suggest but never attain to. At more than six hundred years of distance the purest dream that ever thrilled the Christian Church seems to live again.

These friars of Greccio, who, scattered over the mountain, under the shade of the olive-trees, pa.s.sed their days in singing the Hymn of the Sun, are the true models of the primitive Umbrian Masters. They are all alike; they are awkwardly posed; everything in and around them sins against the most elementary rules of art, and yet their memory pursues you, and when you have long forgotten the works of impeccable modern artists you recall without effort these creations of those unknown painters; for love calls for love, and these vapid personages have very true and pure hearts, a more than human love shines forth from their whole being, they speak to you and make you better.

Such is this book, the first utterance of the Spiritual Franciscans, in which we already see the coming to life of some of those bold doctrines that not only divided the Franciscan family into two hostile branches, but which were to bring some of their defenders to the heretic's stake.[43]

V. FRAGMENTS OF THE SUPPRESSED PART OF THE LEGEND OF THE THREE COMPANIONS

We may now take a step forward and try to group the fragments of the Legend of the Three Companions, or of Brother Leo, which are to be found in later writings.

We must here be more than ever on our guard against absolute theories; one of the most fruitful principles of historic criticism is to prefer contemporary doc.u.ments, or at least those which are nearest them; but even with these it is necessary to use a little discretion.

It seems impossible to attack the reasoning of the Bollandists, who refuse to know anything of legends written after that of St. Bonaventura (1260), under pretext that, coming after several other authorized biographies, he was better situated than anyone for getting information and completing the work of his predecessors.[44] In reality this is absurd, for it a.s.sumes that Bonaventura undertook to write as a historian. This is to forget that he wrote not only for the purpose of edification, but also as minister-general of the Minor Brothers. From this fact his first duty was to keep silent on many facts, and those not the least interesting. What shall we say of a biography where Francis's Will is not even mentioned?

It is easy to turn away from a writing of the fourteenth century, on the ground that the author did not see what was going on a hundred years before; still we must not forget that many books of the end of the Middle Ages resemble those old mansions at which four or five generators have toiled. An inscription on their front often only shows the touch of the last restorer or the last destroyer, and the names which are set forth with the greatest complacency are not always those of the real workmen.

Such have been many Franciscan books; to attribute them to any one author would be impracticable; very different hands have worked upon them, and such an amalgam has its own charm and interest.

Turning them over--I had almost said a.s.sociating with them--we come to see clearly into this tangled web, for every work of man bears the trace of the hand that made it: this trace may perhaps be of an almost imperceptible delicacy; it exists none the less, ready to reveal itself to practised eyes. What is more impersonal than the photograph of a landscape or of a painting, and yet among several hundreds of proofs the amateur will go straight to the work of the operator he prefers.

These reflections were suggested by the careful study of a curious book printed many times since the sixteenth century, the _Speculum Vitae S.

Francisci et sociorum ejus_.[45] A complete study of this work, its sources, its printed editions, the numerous differences in the ma.n.u.scripts, would by itself require a volume and an epitome of the history of the Order. I can give here only a few notes, taking for base the oldest edition, that of 1504.

The confusion which reigns here is frightful. Incidents in the life of Francis and his companions are brought together with no plan; several of them are repeated after the interval of a few pages in a quite different manner;[46] certain chapters are so awkwardly introduced that the compiler has forgotten to remove the number that they bore in the work from which he borrowed them;[47] finally, to our great surprise, we find several _Incipit_.[48]

However, with a little perseverance we soon perceive a few openings in the labyrinth. In the first place, here are several chapters of the legend of Bonaventura which seem to have been put in the van as if to protect the rest of the book. If we abstract them and the whole series of chapters from the Fioretti, we shall have diminished the work by nearly three-quarters.

If we take away two more chapters taken from St. Bernard of Clairvaux and those containing Franciscan prayers, or various attestations concerning the indulgence of Portiuncula, we finally arrive at a sort of residue, if the expression may be forgiven, of a remarkable h.o.m.ogeneity.

Here the style is very different from that in the surrounding pages, closely recalling that of the Three Companions; a single thought inspires these pages, that the corner-stone of the Order is the love of poverty.

Why should we not have here some fragments of the original legend of the Three Companions? We find here nothing which does not fit in with what we know, nothing which suggests the embellishments of a late tradition.

To confirm this hypothesis come different pa.s.sages which we find cited by Ubertini di Casali and by Angelo Clareno as being by Brother Leo, and an attentive comparison of the text shows that these authors can neither have drawn them from the Speculum nor the Speculum from them.

There is, besides, one phrase which, apart from the inspiration and style, will suffice at the first glance to mark the common origin of most of these pieces.[49] _Nos qui c.u.m ipso fuimus_. "We who have been with him." These words, which recur in almost every incident,[49] are in many cases only a grateful tribute to their spiritual father, but sometimes, too, they have a touch of bitterness. These hermits of Greccio suddenly recall to mind their rights. Are we not the only, the true interpreters of the Saint's instructions--we who lived continually with him; we who, hour after hour, have meditated upon his words, his sighs, and his hymns?

We can understand that such pretensions were not to the taste of the Common Observance, and that Crescentius, with an incontestable authority, has suppressed nearly all this legend.[51]

As for the fragments that have been preserved to us, though they furnish many details about the last years of St. Francis's life, they still are not those whose loss is so much to be regretted. The authors who reproduce them were defending a cause. We owe them little more than the incidents which in one way or another concern the question of poverty.

They had nothing to do with the other accounts, as they were not writing a biography. But even within these narrow limits these fragments are in the first order of importance; and I have not hesitated to use them largely. It is needless to say that while ascribing their origin to the Three Companions, and in particular to Brother Leo, we must not suppose that we have the very letter in the texts which have come down to us.

The pieces given by Ubertini di Casali and Angelo Clareno are actual citations, and deserve full confidence as such. As for those which are preserved to us in the Speculum, they may often have been abridged, explanatory notes may have slipped into the text, but nowhere do we find interpolations in the bad sense of the word.[52]

Finally, if we compare the fragments with the corresponding accounts in the Second Life of Celano, we see that the latter has often borrowed verbatim from Brother Leo, but generally he has considerably abridged the pa.s.sages, adding reflections here and there, especially retouching the style to make it more elegant.

Such a comparison soon proves that Brother Leo's narratives are the original and that it is impossible to see in them a later amplification of those of Thomas of Celano, as we might at first be tempted to think them.[53]

VI. SECOND LIFE BY THOMAS OF CELANO[54]

_First Part_