Life of St. Francis of Assisi
perhaps did not perceive the revolutionary bearing of his preaching, he
at least always refused to be ordained priest. He divined the
superiority of the spiritual priesthood.
The charm of his life is that, thanks to reliable documents, we find the
man behind the wonder worker. We find in him not merely noble actions,
we find in him a life in the true meaning of the word; I mean, we feel
in him both development and struggle.
How mistaken are the annals of the Saints in representing him as from
the very cradle surrounded with aureole and nimbus! As if the finest and
most manly of spectacles were not that of the man who conquers his soul
hour after hour, fighting first against himself, against the suggestions
of egoism, idleness, discouragement, then at the moment when he might
believe himself victorious, finding in the champions attracted by his
ideal those who are destined if not to bring about its complete ruin, at
least to give it its most terrible blows. Poor Francis! The last years
of his life were indeed a _via dolorosa_ as painful as that where his
master sank down under the weight of the cross; for it is still a joy to
die for one's ideal, but what bitter pain to look on in advance at the
apotheosis of one's body, while seeing one's soul--I would say his
thought--misunderstood and frustrated.
If we ask for the origins of his idea we find them exclusively among the
common people of his time; he is the incarnation of the Italian soul at
the beginning of the thirteenth century, as Dante was to be its
incarnation a hundred years later.
He was of the people and the people recognized themselves in him. He had
their poetry and their aspirations, he espoused their claims, and the
very name of his institute had at first a political signification: in
Assisi as in most other Italian towns there were _majores_ and
_minores_, the _popolo grasso_ and the _popolo minuto_; he resolutely
placed himself among the latter. This political side of his apostolate
needs to be clearly apprehended if we would understand its amazing
success and the wholly unique character of the Franciscan movement in
its beginning.
As to its attitude toward the Church, it was that of filial obedience.
This may perhaps appear strange at first as regards an unauthorized
preacher who comes speaking to the world in the name of his own
immediate personal inspiration. But did not most of the men of '89
believe themselves good and loyal subjects of Louis XVI.?
The Church was to our ancestors what the fatherland is to us; we may
wish to remodel its government, overturn its administration, change its
constitution, but we do not think ourselves less good patriots for that.
In the same way, in an age of simple faith when religious beliefs seemed
to be in the very fibre and flesh of humanity, Dante, without ceasing to
be a good Catholic, could attack the clergy and the court of Rome with a
violence that has never been surpassed. St. Francis so surely believed
that the Church had become unfaithful to her mission that he could speak
in his symbolic language of the widowhood of his Lady Poverty, who from
Christ's time to his own had found no husband. How could he better have
declared his purposes or revealed his dreams?
What he purposed was far more than the foundation of an order, and it is
to do him great wrong thus to restrict his endeavor. He longed for a
true awakening of the Church in the name of the evangelical ideal which
he had regained. All Europe awoke with a start when it heard of these
penitents from a little Umbrian town. It was reported that they had
craved a strange privilege from the court of Rome: that of possessing
nothing. Men saw them pass by, earning their bread by the labor of their
hands, accepting only the bare necessities of bodily sustenance from
them to whom they had given with lavish hands the bread of life. The
people lifted up their heads, breathing in with deep inspirations the
airs of a springtime upon which was already floating the perfume of new
flowers.
Here and there in the world there are many souls capable of all heroism,
if only they can see before them a true leader. St. Francis became for
these the guide they had longed for, and whatever was best in humanity
at that time leaped to follow in his footsteps.
This movement, which was destined to result in the constitution of a new
family of monks, was in the beginning anti-monastic. It is not rare for
history to have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who
preached the religion of a personal revelation, without ceremonial or
dogmatic law, triumphed only on condition of being conquered, and of
permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a church
essentially dogmatic and sacerdotal.
In the same way the Franciscan movement was originally, if not the
protest of the Christian consciousness against monachism, at least the
recognition of an ideal singularly higher than that of the clergy of
that time. Let us picture to ourselves the Italy of the beginning of the
thirteenth century with its divisions, its perpetual warfare, its
depopulated country districts, the impossibility of tilling the fields
except in the narrow circle which the garrisons of the towns might
protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in
watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging
their neighbors; sieges terminated by unspeakable atrocities, and after
all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the
devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine
abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed
to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in
their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, they were in these
disordered times the only refuge of peaceful souls and timid hearts.[4]
The monks were in great majority deserters from life, who for motives
entirely aside from religion had taken refuge behind the only walls
which at this period were secure.
Overlook this as we may, forget as we may the demoralization and
ignorance of the inferior clergy, the simony and the vices of the
prelates, the coarseness and avarice of the monks, judging the Church of
the thirteenth century only by those of her sons who do her the most
honor; none the less are these the anchorites who flee into the desert
to escape from wars and vices, pausing only when they are very sure that
none of the world's noises will interrupt their meditations. Sometimes
they will draw away with them hundreds of imitators, to the solitudes of
Clairvaux, of the Chartreuse, of Vallombrosa, of the Camaldoli; but even
when they are a multitude they are alone; for they are dead to the world
and to their brethren. Each cell is a desert, on whose threshold they
cry
O beata solitudo.
O sola beatitudo.
The book of the Imitation is the picture of all that is purest in this
cloistered life.
But is this abstinence from action truly Christian?
No, replied St. Francis. He for his part would do like Jesus, and we may
say that his life is an imitation of Christ singularly more real than
that of Thomas a Kempis.
Jesus went indeed into the desert, but only that he might find in prayer
and communion with the heavenly Father the inspiration and strength
necessary for keeping up the struggle against evil. Far from avoiding
the multitude, he sought them out to enlighten, console, and convert
them.
This is what St. Francis desired to imitate. More than once he felt the
seduction of the purely contemplative life, but each time his own spirit
warned him that this was only a disguised selfishness; that one saves
oneself only in saving others.
When he saw suffering, wretchedness, corruption, instead of fleeing he
stopped to bind up, to heal, feeling in his heart the surging of waves
of compassion. He not only preached love to others; he himself was
ravished with it; he sang it, and what was of greater value, he lived
it.
There had indeed been preachers of love before his day, but most
generally they had appealed to the lowest selfishness. They had thought
to triumph by proving that in fact to give to others is to put one's
money out at a usurious interest. "Give to the poor," said St. Peter
Chrysologus,[5] "that you may give to yourself; give him a crumb in
order to receive a loaf; give him a shelter to receive heaven."
There was nothing like this in Francis; his charity is not selfishness,
it is love. He went, not to the whole, who need no physician, but to the
sick, the forgotten, the disdained. He dispensed the treasures of his
heart according to the need and reserved the best of himself for the
poorest and the most lost, for lepers and thieves.
The gaps in his education were of marvellous service to him. More
learned, the formal logic of the schools would have robbed him of that
flower of simplicity which is the great charm of his life; he would have
seen the whole extent of the sore of the Church, and would no doubt have
despaired of healing it. If he had known the ecclesiastical discipline
he would have felt obliged to observe it; but thanks to his ignorance he
could often violate it without knowing it,[6] and be a heretic quite
unawares.
We can now determine to what religious family St. Francis belongs.
Looking at the question from a somewhat high standpoint we see that in
the last analysis minds, like religious systems, are to be found in two
great families, standing, so to say, at the two poles of thought. These
two poles are only mathematical points, they do not exist in concrete
reality; but for all that we can set them down on the chart of
philosophic and moral ideas.
There are religions which look toward divinity and religions which look
toward man. Here again the line of demarcation between the two families
is purely ideal and artificial; they often so mingle and blend with one
another that we have much difficulty in distinguishing them, especially
in the intermediate zone in which our civilization finds its place; but
if we go toward the poles we shall find their characteristics growing
gradually distinct.
In the religions which look toward divinity all effort is concentrated
on worship, and especially on sacrifice. The end aimed at is a change in
the disposition of the gods. They are mighty kings whose support or
favor one must purchase by gifts.
Most pagan religions belong to this category and pharisaic Judaism as
well. This is also the tendency of certain Catholics of the old school
for whom the great thing is to appease God or to buy the protection of
the Virgin and the saints by means of prayers, candles, and masses.
The other religions look toward man; their effort is directed to the
heart and conscience with the purpose of transforming them. Sacrifice
disappears, or rather it changes from the exterior to the interior. God
is conceived of as a father, always ready to welcome him who comes to
him. Conversion, perfection, sanctification become the pre-eminent
religious acts. Worship and prayer cease to be incantations and become
reflection, meditation, virile effort; while in religions of the first
class the clergy have an essential part, as intermediaries between
heaven and earth, in those of the second they have none, each conscience
entering into direct relations with God.
It was reserved to the prophets of Israel to formulate, with a precision
before unknown, the starting-point of spiritual worship.
Bring no more vain offerings;
I have a horror of incense,
Your new moons, your Sabbaths, and your assemblies;
When you multiply prayers I will not hearken.
Your hands are full of blood,
Wash you, make you clean,
Put away from before my eyes the evil of your ways,
Cease to do evil,