Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 61

Thus the witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he is speaking.

II. THE PARDON OF AUGUST 2D, CALLED INDULGENCE OF PORTIUNCULA[9]

This question might be set aside; on the whole it has no direct connection with the history of St. Francis.

Yet it occupies too large a place in modern biographies not to require a few words: it is related that Francis was in prayer one night at Portiuncula when Jesus and the Virgin appeared to him with a retinue of angels. He made bold to ask an unheard-of privilege, that of plenary indulgence of all sins for all those who, having confessed and being contrite, should visit this chapel. Jesus granted this at his mother's request, on the sole condition that his vicar the pope would ratify it.

The next day Francis set out for Perugia, accompanied by Ma.s.seo, and obtained from Honorius the desired indulgence, but only for the day of August 2d.

Such, in a few lines, is the summary of this legend, which is surrounded with a crowd of marvellous incidents.

The question of the nature and value of indulgences is not here concerned. The only one which is here put is this: Did Francis ask this indulgence and did Honorius III. grant it?

Merely to reduce it to these simple proportions is to be brought to answer it with a categorical No.

It would be tedious to refer even briefly to the difficulties, contradictions, impossibilities of this story, many a time pointed out by orthodox writers. In spite of all they have come to the affirmative conclusion: _Roma locuta est_.

Those whom this subject may interest will find in the note above detailed bibliographical indications of the princ.i.p.al elements of this now quieted discussion. I shall confine myself to pointing out the impossibilities with which tradition comes into collision; they are both psychological and historical. The Bollandists long since pointed out the silence of Francis's early biographers upon this question. Now that the published doc.u.ments are much more numerous, this silence is still more overwhelming. Neither the First nor the Second Life by Thomas of Celano, nor the anonymous author of the second life given in the Acta Sanctorum, nor even the anonymous writer of Perugia, nor the Three Companions, nor Bonaventura say a single word on the subject. No more do very much later works mention it, which sin only by excessive critical scruples: Bernard of Besse, Giordiano di Giano, Thomas Eccleston, the Chronicle of the Tribulations, the Fioretti, and even the Golden Legend.

This conspiracy of silence of all the writers of the thirteenth century would be the greatest miracle of history if it were not absurd.

By way of explanation, it has been said that these writers refrained from speaking of this indulgence for fear of injuring that of the Crusade; but in that case, why did the pope command seven bishops to go to Portiuncula to proclaim it in his name?

The legend takes upon itself to explain that Francis refused a bull or any written attestation of this privilege; but, admitting this, it would still be necessary to explain why no hint of this matter has been preserved in the papers of Honorius III. And how is it that the bulls sent to the seven bishops have left not the slightest trace upon this pontiff's register?

Again, how does it happen, if seven bishops officially promulgated this indulgence in 1217, that St. Francis, after having related to Brother Leo his interview with the pope, said to him: "_Teneas secretum hoc usque circa mortem tuam; quia non habet loc.u.m adhuc. Quia haec indulgentia occultabitur ad tempus; sed Dominus trahet eam extra et manifestabitur._" _Conform._, 153b, 2. Such an avowal is not wanting in simplicity. It abundantly proves that before the death of Brother Leo (1271) no one had spoken of this famous pardon.

After this it is needless to insist upon secondary difficulties; how is it that the chapters-general were not fixed for August 2d, to allow the Brothers to secure the indulgence?

How explain that Francis, after having received in 1216 a privilege unique in the annals of the Church, should be a stranger to the pope in 1219!

There is, however, one more proof whose value exceeds all the others--Francis's Will:

"I forbid absolutely all the Brothers by their obedience, in whatever place they may be, to ask any bull of the court of Rome, whether directly or indirectly, nor under pretext of church or convent, nor under pretext of preaching, nor even for their personal protection."

Before closing it remains for us to glance at the growth of this legend.

It was definitively const.i.tuted about 1330-1340, but it was in the air long before. With the patience of four Benedictines (of the best days) we should doubtless be able to find our way in the medley of doc.u.ments, more or less corrupted, from which it comes to us, and little by little we might find the starting-point of this dream in a friar who sees blinded humanity kneeling around Portiuncula to recover sight.[10]

It is not difficult to see in general what led to the materialization of this graceful fancy: people remembered Francis's attachment to the chapel where he had heard the decisive words of the gospel, and where St. Clara in her turn had entered upon a new life.

When the great Basilica of a.s.sisi was built, drawing to itself pilgrims and privileges, an opposition of principles and of inspiration came to be added to the petty rivalry between it and Portiuncula.

The zealots of poverty said aloud that though the Saint's body rested in the basilica his heart was at Portiuncula.[11] By dint of repeating and exaggerating what Francis had said about the little sanctuary, they came to give a precise and so to say doctrinal sense to utterances purely mystical.

The violences and persecutions of the party of the Large Observance under the generalship of Crescentius[12] (1244-1247) aroused a vast increase of fervor among their adversaries. To the bull of Innocent IV.

declaring the basilica thenceforth _Caput et Mater_ of the Order[13]

the Zealots replied by the narratives of Celano's Second Life and the legends of that period.[14] They went so far as to quote a promise of Francis to make it in perpetuity the _Mater et Caput_ of his inst.i.tute.[15]

In this way the two parties came to group themselves around these two buildings. Even to-day it is the same. The Franciscans of the Strict Observance occupy Portiuncula, while the Basilica of a.s.sisi is in the hands of the Conventuals (Large Observance), who have adopted all the interpretations and mitigations of the Rules; they are worthy folk, who live upon their dividends. By a phenomenon, unique, I think, in the annals of the Church, they have pushed the freedom of their infidelity to the point of casting off the habit, the popular brown ca.s.sock.

Dressed all in black, shod and hatted, nothing distinguishes them from the secular clergy except a modest little cord.

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a coa.r.s.e gown, some daring friar must overcome his very natural repugnances, and come to kneel there. The indulgence of August 2d is then the reply of the Zealots to the persecutions of their brothers.

An attentive study will perhaps show it emerging little by little under the generalship of Raimondo Gaufridi (1289-1295); Conrad di Offida ([Cross]

1306) seems to have had some effect upon it, but only with the next generation do we find the legend completed and avowed in open day.

Begun in a misapprehension it ends by imposing itself upon the Church, which to-day guarantees it with its infallible authority, and yet in its origin it was a veritable cry of revolt against the decisions of Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The text was published in 1620 by Spoelberch (in his _Speculum vitae B. Francisci_, Antwerp, 2 vols., 12mo, ii., pp.

103-106), after the copy addressed to Brother Gregory, minister in France, and then preserved in the convent of the Recollects in Valenciennes. It was reproduced by Wadding (Ann.

1226, no. 44) and the Bollandists (pp. 668 and 669).

So late an appearance of a capital doc.u.ment might have left room for doubts; there is no longer reason for any, since the publication of the chronicle of Giordano di Giano, who relates the sending of this letter (Giord., 50). The Abbe Amoni has also published this text (at the close of his _Legenda trium Sociorum_, Rome, 1880, pp. 105-109), but according to his deplorable habit, he neglects to tell whence he has drawn it.

This is the more to be regretted since he gives a variant of the first order: _Nam diu ante mortem_ instead of _Non diu_, as Spoelberch's text has it. The reading _Nam diu_ appears preferable from a philological point of view.

[2] Engraved in Saint Francois d'a.s.sise, Paris, 4to, 1885, p. 277.

[3] _Bibliotheca Patrum._ Lyons, 1677, xxv., _adv.

Albigenses_, lib. ii., cap. 11., cf. iii., 14 and 15.

Reproduced in the A. SS., p. 652.

[4] The curious may consult the following sources: Salimbeni, ann. 1250--_Conform._, 171b 2, 235a 2; Bon., 200; Wadding, _ann. 1228_, no. 78; A. SS., p. 800. Ma.n.u.script 340 of the _Sacro Convento_ contains (fo. 55b-56b) four of these hymns.

Cf. _Archiv._ i., p. 485.

[5] See in particular Hase: _Franz v. a.s.sisi_. Leipsic, 1 vol., 8vo., 1856. The learned professor devotes no less than sixty closely printed pages to the study of the stigmata, 142-202.

[6] The more I think about it, the more incapable I become of attributing any sort of weight to this argument from the disappearance of the body; for in fact, if there had been any pious fraud on Elias's part, he would on the contrary have displayed the corpse.

[7] See, for example, 2 Cel., 3, 86, as well as the encyclical of Giovanni di Parma and Umberto di Romano, in 1225.

[8] The following among many others: Francis had particularly high breeches made for him, to hide the wound in the side (Bon., 201). At the moment of the apparition, which took place during the night, so great a light flooded the whole country, that merchants lodging in the inns of Casentino saddled their beasts and set out on their way. _Fior., iii. consid._

Hase, in his study, is continually under the weight of the bad impression made upon him by Bonaventura's deplorable arguments; he sees the other witness only through him. I think that if he had read simply Thomas of Celano's first Life, he would have arrived at very different conclusions.

[9] The most important doc.u.ment is ma.n.u.script 344 of the archives of Sacro Convento at a.s.sisi. _Liber indulgentiae S.

Mariae de Angelis sive de Portiuncula in quo libra ego fr.

Franciscus Bartholi de a.s.sisio posui quidquid potui sollicite invenire in legendis antiquis et novis b. Francisci et in aliis dictis sociorum ejus de loco eodem et commendatione ipsius loci et quidquid veritatis et cert.i.tudinis potui invenire de sacra indulgentia prefati loci, quomodo scilicet fuit impetrata et data b. Francisco de miraculis ipsius indulgentiae quae ipsam declarant certam et veram._ Bartholi lived in the first half of the fourteenth century. His work is still unpublished, but Father Leo Patrem M. O. is preparing it for publication. The name of this learned monk gives every guaranty for the accuracy of this difficult work; meanwhile a detailed description and long extracts may be found in the Miscellanea (ii., 1887). _La storia del perdono di Francesco de Bartholi_, by Don Michele Faloci Pulignani, pp. 149-153 (cf. _Archiv._, i., p. 486). See also in the Miscellanea (i., 1886, p. 15) a bibliographical note containing a detailed list of fifty-eight works (cf. ibid., pp. 48, 145). The legend itself is found in the _Speculum_, 69b-83a, and in the _Conformities_, 151b-157a. In these two collections it is still found laboriously worked in and is not an integral part of the rest of the work. In the latter, Bartolemmeo di Pisa has carried accuracy so far as to copy from end to end all the doc.u.ments that he had before him, and as they belong to different periods he thus gives us several phases of the development of the tradition. The most complete work is that of the Recollect Father Grouwel: _Historia critica S.

Indulgentiae B. Mariae Angelorum vulgo de Portiuncula ... contra Libellos aliquos anonymo ac famosos nuper editos_, Antwerp, 1726, 1 vol., 8vo. pp. 510. The Bollandist Suysken also makes a long study of it (A. SS., pp. 879-910), as also the Recollect Father Candide Chalippe, _Vie de saint Francois d'a.s.sise_, 3 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1874 (the first edition is of 1720), vol. iii., pp. 190-327.

In each of these works we find what has been said in all the others. The numerous writings against the Indulgence are either a collection of vulgarities or dogmatic treatises; I refrain from burdening these pages with them. The princ.i.p.al ones are indicated by Grouwel and Chalippe.

Among contemporaries Father Barnabas of Alsace: _Portiuncula oder Geschichte Unserer lieben Frau von den Engeln_ (Rixheim, 1 vol., 8vo. 1884), represents the tradition of the Order, and the Abbe Le Monnier (_Histoire de Saint Francois_, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1889), moderate Catholic opinion in non-Franciscan circles.