Life of St. Francis of Assisi
conference of Pamiers, and decided to return to the Church.
Received with kindness by the pope he at first had a great
success, and by 1209 had established communities in Aragon, at
Carcassonne, Narbonne, Beziers, Nimes, Uzes, Milan. We find in
this movement all the lineaments of the institute of St.
Dominic; it was an order of priests to whom theological studies
were recommended. They disappeared almost completely in the
storm of the Albigensian crusade. Innocent III., _epistolae_,
xi., 196, 197, 198; xii., 17, 66; xiii., 63, 77, 78, 94; xv.,
82, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 137, 146. The first of these
bulls contains the very curious Rule of this ephemeral order.
Upon its disappearance vide Ripoli, _Bullarium Praedicatorum_, 8
vols., folio, Rome, 1729-1740, t. i., p. 96. Cf. Elie Berger,
_Registres d'Innocent IV._, 2752.
[22] Burchard, of the order of the Premostrari, who died in
1226. See below, p. 234.
[23] 3 Soc., 52; Bon., 38.
[24] 3 Soc., 52 and 49.
[25] St. Antonino, Archbishop of Florence, saw very clearly that
it was _quaedam concessio simplex habitus et modi illius vivendi
et quasi permissio_. A. SS., p. 839. The expression "approbation
of the Rule" by which the act of Innocent III. is usually
designated is therefore erroneous.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
RIVO-TORTO
1210-1211
The Penitents of Assisi were overflowing with joy. After so many
mortally long days spent in that Rome, so different from the other
cities that they knew, exposed to the ill-disguised suspicions of the
prelates and the jeers of pontifical lackeys, the day of departure
seemed to them like a deliverance. At the thought of once more seeing
their beloved mountains they were seized by that homesickness of the
child for its native village which simple and kindly souls preserve till
their latest breath.
Immediately after the ceremony they prayed at the tomb of St. Peter, and
then crossing the whole city they quitted Rome by the Porta Salara.
Thomas of Celano, very brief as to all that concerns Francis's sojourn
in the Eternal City, recounts at full length the light-heartedness of
the little band on quitting it. Already it began to be transfigured in
their memory; pains, fatigues, fears, disquietude, hesitations were all
forgotten; they thought only of the fatherly assurances of the supreme
pontiff--the vicar of Christ, the lord and father of the Christian
universe--and promised themselves to make ever new efforts to follow the
Rule with fidelity.
Full of these thoughts they had set out, without provisions, to cross
the Campagna of Rome, whose few inhabitants never venture out in the
heat of the day. The road stretches away northward, keeping at some
distance from the Tiber; on the left the jagged crest of Soracte, bathed
in mists formed by the exhalations of the earth, looms up
disproportionately as it fades in the distance; on the right, the
everlasting undulations of the hillocks with their wide pastures
separated by thickets so parched and ragged that they seemed to cry for
mercy and pardon. Between them the dusty road which goes straight
forward, implacable, showing, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but
the quivering of the fiery air. Not a house, not a tree, not a passing
breeze, nothing to sustain the traveller under the disquietude which
creeps over him. Here and there are a few abandoned huts, their ruins
looking like the corpses of departed civilizations, and on the edge of
the horizon the hills rising up like gigantic and unsurmountable walls.
There are no words to describe the physical and moral sufferings to
which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross
this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon
succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous
dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your
skin, and parches your mouth even more than thirst. Little by little all
energy ebbs away, a dumb dejection seizes you, sight and thought become
alike confused, fever ensues, and you cast yourself down by the
roadside, unable to take another step.
In their haste to leave Rome Francis and his companions had forgotten
all this, and had imprudently set forth. They would have succumbed if a
chance traveller had not brought them succor. He was obliged to leave
them before they had shaken off the last hallucinations of fever,
leaving them amazed with the unexpected succor which Providence had sent
them.[1]
They were so severely shattered that on arriving at Orte they were
obliged to stop awhile. In a desert spot not far from this city they
found a shelter admirably adapted to serve them for refuge;[2] it was
one of those Etruscan tombs so common in that country, whose chambers
serve to this day as a shelter for beggars and gypsies. While some of
the brethren hastened to the city to beg for food, the others remained
in this solitude enjoying the happiness of being together, forming a
thousand plans, and more than ever delighting in the charm of freedom
from care and renunciation of material goods.
This place had so strong an attraction for them that it required an
effort of will to quit it at the end of a fortnight. The seduction of a
life purely contemplative assailed Francis, and he asked himself if
instead of preaching to the multitudes he would not do better to live in
retreat, solely mindful of the inward dialogue between the soul and
God.[3]
This aspiration for the selfish repose of the cloister came back to him
several times in his life; but love always won the victory. He was too
much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness
which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in
paradise--peace. _Beati mortui quia quiescunt!_ His distinguishing
peculiarity is that he never gave way to it.
The reflections of Francis and his companions during their stay at Orte
only made their apostolic mission more clear and imperative to them. He,
above all, seemed to be filled with a new ardor, and like a valiant
knight he burned to throw himself into the thick of the fray.
Their way now led through the valley of the Nera. The contrast between
these cool glens, awake with a thousand voices, and the desolation of
the Roman Campagna, must have struck them vividly; the stream is only a
swollen torrent, but it runs so noisily over pebbles and rocks that it
seems to be conversing with them and with the trees of the neighboring
forest. In proportion as they had felt themselves alone on the road from
Rome to Otricoli, they now felt themselves compassed about with the
life, the fecundity, the gayety of the country.
The account of Thomas of Celano becomes so animated as it describes the
life of Francis at this epoch that one cannot help thinking that at this
time he must have seen him, and that this first meeting remained always
in his memory as the radiant dawn of his spiritual life.[4]
The Brothers had taken to preaching in such places as they came upon
along their route. Their words were always pretty much the same, they
showed the blessedness of peace and exhorted to penitence. Emboldened by
the welcome they had received at Rome, which in all innocence they might
have taken to be more favorable than it really was, they told the story
to everyone they met, and thus set all scruples at rest.
These exhortations, in which Francis spared not his hearers, but in
which the sternest reproaches were mingled with so much of love,
produced an enormous effect. Man desires above all things to be loved,
and when he meets one who loves him sincerely he very seldom refuses him
either his love or his admiration.
It is only a low understanding that confounds love with weakness and
compliance. We sometimes see sick men feverishly kissing the hand of
the surgeon who performs an operation upon them; we sometimes do the
same for our spiritual surgeons, for we realize all that there is of
vigor, pity, compassion in the tortures which they inflict, and the
cries which they force from us are quite as much of gratitude as of
pain.
Men hastened from all parts to hear these preachers who were more severe
upon themselves than on anyone else. Members of the secular clergy,
monks, learned men, rich men even, often mingled in the impromptu
audiences gathered in the streets and public places. All were not
converted, but it would have been very difficult for any of them to
forget this stranger whom they met one day upon their way, and who in a
few words had moved them to the very bottom of their hearts with anxiety
and fear.
Francis was in truth, as Celano says, the bright morning star. His
simple preaching took hold on consciences, snatched his hearers from the
mire and blood in which they were painfully trudging, and in spite of
themselves carried them to the very heavens, to those serene regions
where all is silent save the voice of the heavenly Father. "The whole
country trembled, the barren land was already covered with a rich
harvest, the withered vine began again to blossom."[5]
Only a profoundly religious and poetic soul (is not the one the other?)
can understand the transports of joy which overflowed the souls of St.
Francis's spiritual sons.
The greatest crime of our industrial and commercial civilization is that
it leaves us a taste only for that which may be bought with money, and
makes us overlook the purest and truest joys which are all the time
within our reach. The evil has roots far in the past. "Wherefore," said
the God of old Isaiah, "do you weigh money for that which is not meat?
why labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken unto me, and ye shall
eat that which is good, and your soul shall delight itself in
fatness."[6]
Joys bought with money--noisy, feverish pleasures--are nothing compared
with those sweet, quiet, modest but profound, lasting, and peaceful
joys, enlarging, not wearying the heart, which we too often pass by on
one side, like those peasants whom we see going into ecstasies over the
fireworks of a fair, while they have not so much as a glance for the
glorious splendors of a summer night.
In the plain of Assisi, at an hour's walk from the city and near the
highway between Perugia and Rome, was a ruinous cottage called
Rivo-Torto. A torrent, almost always dry, but capable of becoming
terrible in a storm, descends from Mount Subasio and passes beside it.
The ruin had no owner; it had served as a leper hospital before the
construction by the Crucigeri[7] of their hospital San Salvatore
delle Pareti; but since that time it had been abandoned. Now came
Francis and his companions to seek shelter there.[8] It is one of the
quietest spots in the suburbs of Assisi, and from thence they could
easily go out into the neighborhood in all directions; it being about an
equal distance from Portiuncula and St. Damian. But the principal motive
for the choice of the place seems to have been the proximity of the
_Carceri_, as those shallow natural grottos are called which are found
in the forests, half way up the side of Mount Subasio. Following up the
bed of the torrent of Rivo-Torto one reaches them in an hour by way of
rugged and slippery paths where the very goats do not willingly venture.
Once arrived, one might fancy oneself a thousand leagues from any human
being, so numerous are the birds of prey which live here quite
undisturbed.[9]
Francis loved this solitude and often retired thither with a few
companions. The brethren in that case shared between them all care of
their material wants, after which, each one retiring into one of these