Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 55

No. 7. February 13, 1221.--New bull for the same priest.

No. 8. December 16, 1221.--_Significatum est n.o.bis._ Honorius III.

recommends to the Bishop of Rimini to protect the Brothers of Penitence (Third Order).

No. 9. March 22, 1222.[5]--_Devotionis vestrae._ Concession to the Franciscans, under certain conditions, to celebrate the offices in times of interdict.

No. 10. March 29, 1222.--_Ex parte Universitatis._ Mission given to the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Brothers of the Troops of San Iago in Lisbon.

Nos. 11, 12, and 13.--September 19, 1222.--_Sacrosancta Romana._ Privileges for the monasteries (Clarisses) of Lucca, Sienna, and Perugia.

No. 14. November 29, 1223.--_Solet annuere._ Solemn approbation of the Rule, which is inserted in the bull.

No. 15. December 18, 1223.--_Fratrum Minorum._ Concerns apostates from the Order.

No. 16. December 1, 1224.--_c.u.m illorum._ Authorization given to the Brothers of Penitence to take part in the offices in times of interdict, etc.

No. 17. December 3, 1224.--_Quia populares tumultus._ Concession of the portable altar.

No. 18. August 28, 1225.--_In hiis._ Honorius explains to the Bishop of Paris and the Archbishop of Rheims the true meaning of the privileges accorded to the Brothers Minor.

No. 19. October 7, 1225.--_Vineae Domini._ This bull contains divers authorizations in favor of the Brothers who are going to evangelize Morocco.

This list includes only those of Sbaralea's bulls which may directly or indirectly throw some light upon the life of St. Francis and his inst.i.tute. Sbaralea's nomenclature is surely incomplete and should be revised when the Registers of Honorius III. shall have been published in full.[6]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It was published by Sbaralea, Bull., t. iv., p. 156, note h.

This act was drawn up July 9, 1274, at a time when the son of Orlando as well as the Brothers Minor desired to authenticate the donation, which until then had been verbal.

[2] See _Registri dei Cardinali Ugolino d'Ostia e Ottaviano degli Ubaldini pubblicati a cura di Guido Levi dall'Ist.i.tuto storico italiano.--Fonti per la storia d'Italia_, Roma, 1890, 1 vol., 4to, xxviii. and 250 pp. This edition follows the ma.n.u.script of the National Library, Paris: Ancien fonds Colbert lat., 5152A. We must draw attention to a very beautiful work due also to Mr. G. Levi: _Doc.u.menti ad ill.u.s.trazione del Registro del Card. Ugolino_, in the _Archivio della societa Romana di storia patria_, t. xii. (1889), pp. 241-326.

[3] _Bullarium franciscanum seu Rom. Pontific.u.m const.i.tutiones epistolae diplomata ordinibus Minorum, Clarissarum et Poenitentium concessa, edidit Joh. Hyac. Sbaralea ord. min.

conv._, 4 vols., fol., Rome, t. i. (1759), t. ii. (1761), t.

iii. (1763), t iv., (1768)--_Supplementum ab Annibale de Latera ord. min. obs. Romae_, 1780.--Sbaralea had a comparatively easy task, because of the number of collections made before his. I shall mention only one of those which I have before me. It is, comparatively, very well done, and appears to have escaped the researches of the Franciscan bibliographers: _Singularissimum eximiumque opus universis mortalibus sacratissimi ordinis seraphici patris nostri Francisci a Domino Jesu mirabili modo approbati necnon a quampluribus nostri Redemptoris sanctissimis vicariis romanis pontificabus multipharie declarati not.i.tiam habere cupientibus profecto per necessarium. Speculum Minorum ... per Martinum Morin ... Rouen_, 1509. It is 8vo, with numbered folios, printed with remarkable care. It contains besides the bulls the princ.i.p.al dissertations upon the Rule, elaborated in the thirteenth century, and a _Memoriale ordinis_ (first part, f^o 60-82), a kind of catalogue of the ministers-general, which would have prevented many of the errors of the historians, if it had been known.

[4] The Bollandists themselves have entirely overlooked those sources of information, thinking, upon the authority of a single badly interpreted pa.s.sage, that the Order had not obtained a single bull before the solemn approval of Honorius III., November 29, 1223.

[5] And not March 29, as Sbaralea has it. The original, which I have had under my eyes in the archives of a.s.sisi, bears in fact: _Datum Anagnie XI. Kal. aprilis pontificatus nostri anno s.e.xto_.

[6] The Abbe Horoy has indeed published in five volumes what he ent.i.tles the _Opera omnia_ of Honorius III., but he omits, without a word of explanation, a great number of letters, certain of which are brought forward in the well-known collection of Potthast. The Abbe Pietro Pressuti has undertaken to publish a compendium of all the bulls of this pope according to the original Registers of the Vatican. _I regesti del Pontifice Onorio III._ Roma, t. i., 1884. Volume i. only has as yet appeared.

IV

CHRONICLERS OF THE ORDER

I. CHRONICLE OF BROTHER GIORDANO DI GIANO[1]

Born at Giano, in Umbria, in the mountainous district which closes the southern horizon of a.s.sisi, Brother Giordano was in 1221 one of the twenty-six friars who, under the conduct of Caesar of Speyer, set out for Germany. He seems to have remained attached to this province until his death, even when most of the friars, especially those who held cures, had been transferred, often to a distance of several months' journey, from one end of Europe to the other. It is not, then, surprising that he was often prayed to commit his memories to writing. He dictated them to Brother Baldwin of Brandenburg in the spring of 1262. He must have done it with joy, having long before prepared himself for the task. He relates with artless simplicity how in 1221, at the chapter-general of Portiuncula, he went from group to group questioning as to their names and country the Brothers who were going to set out on distant missions, that he might be able to say later, especially if they came to suffer martyrdom: "I knew them myself!"[2]

His chronicle bears the imprint of this tendency. What he desires to describe is the introduction of the Order into Germany and its early developments there, and he does it by enumerating, with a complacency which has its own coquetry, the names of a mult.i.tude of friars[3] and by carefully dating the events. These details, tedious for the ordinary reader, are precious to the historian; he sees there the diverse conditions from which the friars were recruited, and the rapidity with which a handful of missionaries thrown into an unknown country were able to branch out, found new stations, and in five years cover with a network of monasteries, the Tyrol, Saxony, Bavaria, Alsace, and the neighboring provinces.

It is needless to say that it is worth while to test Giordano's chronology, for he begins by praying the reader to forgive the errors which may have escaped him on this head; but a man who thus marks in his memory what he desires later to tell or to write is not an ordinary witness.

Reading his chronicle, it seems as if we were listening to the recollections of an old soldier, who grasps certain worthless details and presents them with an extraordinary power of relief, who knows not how to resist the temptation to bring himself forward, at the risk sometimes of slightly embellishing the dry reality.[4]

In fact this chronicle swarms with anecdotes somewhat personal, but very artless and welcome, and which on the whole carry in themselves the testimony to their authenticity. The perfume of the Fioretti already exhales from these pages so full of candor and manliness; we can follow the missionaries stage by stage, then when they are settled, open the door of the monastery and read in the very hearts of these men, many of whom are as brave as heroes and harmless as doves.

It is true that this chronicle deals especially with Germany, but the first chapters have an importance for Francis's history that exceeds even that of the biographers. Thanks to Giordano of Giano, we are from this time forward informed upon the crises which the inst.i.tute of Francis pa.s.sed through after 1219; he furnishes us the solidly historical base which seems to be lacking in the doc.u.ments emanating from the Spirituals, and corroborates their testimony.

II. ECCLESTON: ARRIVAL OF THE FRIARS IN ENGLAND[5]

Our knowledge of Thomas of Eccleston is very slight, for he has left no more trace of himself in the history of the Order than of Simon of Esseby, to whom he dedicates his work. A native no doubt of Yorkshire, he seems never to have quitted England. He was twenty-five years gathering the materials of his work, which embraces the course of events from 1224 almost to 1260. The last facts that he relates belong to years very near to this date.

Of almost double the length of that of Giordano, Eccleston's work is far from furnishing as interesting reading. The former had seen nearly everything that he described, and thence resulted a vigor in his story that we cannot find in an author who writes on the testimony of others.

More than this, while Giordano follows a chronological order, Eccleston has divided his incidents under fifteen rubrics, in which the same people continually reappear in a confusion which at length becomes very wearisome. Finally, his doc.u.ment is amazingly partial: the author is not content with merely proving that the English friars are saints; he desires to show that the province of England surpa.s.ses all others[6]

by its fidelity to the Rule and its courage against the upholders of new ways, Brother Elias in particular.

But these few faults ought not to make us lose sight of the true value of this doc.u.ment. It embraces what we may call the heroic period of the Franciscan movement in England, and describes it with extreme simplicity.

Aside from all question of history, we have here enough to interest all those who are charmed by the spectacle of moral conquest. On Monday, September 10th, the Brothers Minor landed at Dover. They were nine in number: a priest, a deacon, two who had only the lesser Orders, and five laymen. They visited Canterbury, London, Oxford, Cambridge, Lincoln, and less than ten months later all who have made their mark in the history of science or of sanct.i.ty had joined them; it may suffice to name Adam of Marisco, Richard of Cornwall, Bishop Robert Grossetete, one of the proudest and purest figures of the Middle Ages, and Roger Bacon, that persecuted monk who several centuries before his time grappled with and answered in his lonely cell the problems of authority and method, with a firmness and power which the sixteenth century would find it hard to surpa.s.s.

It is impossible that in such a movement human weaknesses and pa.s.sions should not here and there reveal themselves, but we owe our chronicler thanks for not hiding them. Thanks to him, we can for a moment forget the present hour, call to life again that first Cambridge chapel--so slight that it took a carpenter only one day to build it--listen to three Brothers chanting matins that same night, and that with so much ardor that one of them--so rickety that his two companions were obliged to carry him--wept for joy: in England as in Italy the Franciscan gospel was a gospel of peace and joy. Moral ugliness inspired them with a pity which we no longer know. There are few historic incidents finer than that of Brother Geoffrey of Salisbury confessing Alexander of Bissingburn; the n.o.ble penitent was performing this duty without attention, as if he were telling some sort of a story; suddenly his confessor melted into tears, making him blush with shame and forcing tears also from him, working in him so complete a revolution that he begged to be taken into the Order.

The most interesting parts are those where Thomas gives us an intimate view of the friars: here drinking their beer, there hastening, in spite of the Rule, to buy some on credit for two comrades who have been maltreated, or again cl.u.s.tering about Brother Solomon, who had just come in nearly frozen with cold, and whom they could not succeed in warming--_sicut porcis mos est c.u.m comprimendo foverunt_, says the pious narrator.[7] All this is mingled with dreams, visions, numberless apparitions,[8] which once more show us how different were the ideas most familiar to the religious minds of the thirteenth century from those which haunt the brains and hearts of to-day.

The information given by Eccleston bears only indirectly on this book, but if he speaks little of Francis he speaks much at length of some of the men who have been most closely mingled with his life.

III. CHRONICLE OF FRA SALIMBENI[9]

As celebrated as it is little known, this chronicle is of quite secondary value in all that concerns the life of St. Francis. Its author, born October 9, 1221, entered the Order in 1238, and wrote his memoirs in 1282-1287; it is therefore especially for the middle years of the thirteenth century that his importance is capital. Notwithstanding this, it is surprising how small a place the radiant figure of the master holds in these long pages, and this very fact shows, better than long arguments could do, how profound was the fall of the Franciscan idea.

IV. THE CHRONICLE OF THE TRIBULATIONS BY ANGELO CARENO[10]

This chronicle was written about 1330; we might therefore be surprised to see it appear among the sources to be consulted for the life of St.

Francis, dead more than a century before; but the picture which Clareno gives us of the early days of the Order gains its importance from the fact that in sketching it he made constant appeal to eye-witnesses, and precisely to those whose works have disappeared.

Angelo Clareno, earlier called Pietro da Fos...o...b..one[11] from the name of his native town, and sometimes da Cingoli, doubtless from the little convent where he made profession, belonged to the Zelanti of the March of Ancona as early as 1265. Hunted and persecuted by his adversaries during his whole life, he died in the odor of sanct.i.ty June 15, 1339, in the little hermitage of Santa Maria d' Aspro in the diocese of Marsico in Basilicata.

Thanks to published doc.u.ments, we may now, so to speak, follow day by day not only the external circ.u.mstances of his life, but the inner workings of his soul. With him we see the true Franciscan live again, one of those men who, while desiring to remain the obedient son of the Church, cannot reconcile themselves to permit the domain of the dream to slip away from them, the ideal which they have hailed. Often they are on the borders of heresy; in these utterances against bad priests and unworthy pontiffs there is a bitterness which the sectaries of the sixteenth century will not exceed.[12] Often, too, they seem to renounce all authority and make final appeal to the inward witness of the Holy Spirit;[13] and yet Protestantism would be mistaken in seeking its ancestors among them. No, they desired to die as they had lived, in the communion of that Church which was as a stepmother to them and which they yet loved with that heroic pa.s.sion which some of the _ci-devant_ n.o.bles brought in '93 to the love of France, governed though she was by Jacobins, and poured out their blood for her.