Life of St. Francis of Assisi
"Surely they are my people," said Jehovah.
"Children who will not be faithless!"
And he was for them a saviour.
In none of their afflictions were they without succor.
And the angel that is before his face saved them.[4]
Then Francis read again the words of Jesus to his disciples; she vowed
to conform her life to them; her hair was cut off; all was finished. A
few moments after, Francis conducted her to a house of Benedictine
nuns[5] at an hour's distance, where she was to remain provisionally
and await the progress of events.
The very next morning Favorino, her father, arrived with a few friends,
inveighing, supplicating, abusing everybody. She was unmovable, showing
so much courage that at last they gave up the thought of carrying her
off by main force.
She was not, however, at the end of her tribulations. Had this scene
frightened the Benedictines? We cannot tell, but less than a fortnight
after we find her in another convent, that of Sant-Angelo in Panso, at
Assisi.[6] A week after Easter, Agnes, her younger sister, joined her
there, decided in her turn to serve poverty. Francis received her into
the Order. This time the father's fury was horrible. With a band of
relatives he invaded the convent, but neither abuse nor blows could
subdue this child of fourteen. In spite of her cries they dragged her
away. She fainted, and the little inanimate body suddenly seemed to them
so heavy that they abandoned it in the midst of the fields, some
laborers looking with pity on the painful scene, until Clara, whose cry
God had heard, hastened to succor her sister.
Their sojourn in this convent was of very short duration. It appears
that they did not carry away a very pleasant impression of it.[7]
Francis knew that several others were burning to join his two women
friends; he therefore set himself to seek out a retreat where they
could live under his direction and in all liberty practise the gospel
rule.
He had not long to seek; the Benedictine monks of Mount Subasio always
seized every possible opportunity to make themselves popular. They
belonged to that congregation of Camaldoli, whom the common people
appear to have particularly detested, and several of whose convents had
lately been pillaged.[8] The abbey no longer counted more than eight
monks, who were trying to save the wreck of their riches and privileges
by partial sacrifices; on the 22d of April, 1212, they had given to the
commune of Assisi for a communal house a monument which is standing this
day, the temple of Minerva.[9]
Francis, who already was their debtor for Portiuncula, once more
addressed himself to them. Happy in this new opportunity to render
service to one who was the incarnation of popular claims, they gave him
the chapel of St. Damian; perhaps they were well pleased, by favoring
the new Order, to annoy Bishop Guido, of whom they had reason to
complain.[10] However this may be, in this hermitage, so well adapted
for prayer and meditation, Francis installed his spiritual
daughters.[11] In this sanctuary, repaired by his own hands, at the
feet of this crucifix which had spoken to him, Clara was henceforward to
pray. It was the house of God; it was also in good measure that of
Francis. Crossing its threshold, Clara doubtless experienced that
feeling, at once so sweet and so poignant, of the wife who for the first
time enters her husband's house, trembling with emotion at the radiant
and confused vision of the future.
If we are not entirely to misapprehend these beginnings, we must
remember with what rapidity external influences transformed the first
conception of St. Francis. At this moment he no more expected to found a
second order than he had desired to found the first one. In snatching
Clara from her family he had simply acted like a true knight who rescues
an oppressed woman, and takes her under his protection. In installing
her at St. Damian he was preparing a refuge for those who desired to
imitate her and apart from the world practise the gospel Rule. But he
never thought that the perfection of which he and his disciples were the
apostles and missionaries, and which Clara and her companions were to
realize in celibacy, was not practicable in social positions also;
thence comes what is wrongly called the _Tertiari_, or Third Order, and
which in its primitive thought was not separated from the first. This
Third Order had no need to be instituted in 1221, for it existed from
the moment when a single conscience resolved to practise his teachings,
without being able to follow him to Portiuncula.[12] The enemy of the
soul for him as for Jesus was avarice, understood in its largest
sense--that is to say, that blindness which constrains men to consecrate
their hearts to material preoccupations, makes them the slave of a few
pieces of gold or a few acres of land, renders them insensible to the
beauties of nature, and deprives them of infinite joys which they alone
can know who are the disciples of poverty and love.
Whoever was free at heart from all material servitude, whoever was
decided to live without hoarding, every rich man who was willing to
labor with his hands and loyally distribute all that he did not consume
in order to constitute the common fund which St. Francis called _the
Lord's table_, every poor man who was willing to work, free to resort,
in the strict measure of his wants, to this table of the Lord, these
were at that time true Franciscans.
It was a social revolution.
There was then at that time neither one Order nor several.[13] The
gospel of the Beatitudes had been found again, and, as twelve centuries
before, it could accommodate itself to all situations.
Alas! the Church, personified by Cardinal Ugolini, was about, if not to
cause the Franciscan movement to miscarry, at least so well to hedge
about it that a few years later it would have lost nearly its whole
original character.
As has been seen, the word poverty expresses only very imperfectly St.
Francis's point of view, since it contains an idea of renunciation, of
_abstinence_, while in thought the vow of poverty is a vow of liberty.
Property is the cage with gilded wires, to which the poor larks are
sometimes so thoroughly accustomed that they no longer even think of
getting away in order to soar up into the blue.[14]
From the beginning St. Damian was the extreme opposite to what a convent
of Clarisses of the strict observance is now; it is still to-day very
much as Francis saw it. We owe thanks to the Brothers Minor for having
preserved intact this venerable and charming hermitage, and not spoiling
it with stupid embellishments. This little corner of Umbrian earth will
be for our descendants like Jacob's well whereon Christ sat himself down
for an instant, one of the favorite courts of the worship in spirit and
in truth.
In installing Clara there Francis put into her hands the Rule which he
had prepared for her,[15] which no doubt resembled that of the Brothers
save for the precepts with regard to the missionary life. He accompanied
it with the engagement[16] taken by himself and his brothers to supply
by labor or alms all the needs of Clara and her future companions. In
return they also were to work and render to the Brothers all the
services of which they might be capable. We have seen the zeal which
Francis had brought to the task of making the churches worthy of the
worship celebrated in them; he could not endure that the linen put to
sacred uses should be less than clean. Clara set herself to spinning
thread for the altar-cloths and corporals which the Brothers undertook
to distribute among the poor churches of the district.[17] In addition,
during the earlier years, she also nursed the sick whom Francis sent to
her, and St. Damian was for some time a sort of hospital.[18]
One or two friars, who were called _Zealots of the Poor Ladies_, were
especially charged with the care of the Sisters, making themselves huts
beside the chapel, after the model of those of Portiuncula. Francis was
also near at hand; a sort of terrace four paces long overlooks the
hermitage; Clara made there a tiny garden, and when, at twilight, she
went thither to water her flowers, she could see, hardly half a league
distant, Portiuncula standing out against the aureola of the western
sky.
For several years the relations between the two houses were continual,
full of charm and freedom. The companions of Francis who received
Brothers received Sisters also, at times returning from their preaching
tours with a neophyte for St. Damian.[19]
But such a situation could not last long. The intimacy of Francis and
Clara, the familiarity of the earlier friars and Sisters would not do as
a model for the relations of the two Orders when each had some hundreds
of members. Francis himself very soon perceived this, though not so
clearly as his sister-friend. Clara survived him nearly twenty-seven
years, and thus had time to see the shipwreck of the Franciscan ideal
among the Brothers, as well as in almost every one of the houses which
had at first followed the Rule of St. Damian. She herself was led by the
pressure of events to lay down rules for her own convent, but to her
very death-bed she contended for the defence of the true Franciscan
ideas, with a heroism, a boldness, at once intense and holy, by which
she took a place in the first rank of witnesses for conscience.
Is it not one of the loveliest pictures in religious history, that of
this woman who for more than half a century sustains moment by moment a
struggle with all the popes who succeed one another in the pontifical
throne, remaining always equally respectful and immovable, not
consenting to die until she has gained her victory?[20]
To relate her life is to relate this struggle; the greater number of its
vicissitudes may be found in the documents of the Roman _curia_.
Francis had warded off many a danger from his institution, but he had
given himself guardians who were little disposed to yield any of their
rights; Cardinal Ugolini in particular, the future Gregory IX., took a
part in these matters which is very difficult to understand. We see him
continually lavishing upon Francis and Clara expressions of affection
and admiration which appear to be absolutely sincere; and yet the
Franciscan ideal--regarded as the life of love at which one arrives by
freeing himself from all servitude to material things--has hardly had a
worse adversary than he.
In the month of May, 1228, Gregory IX. went to Assisi for the
preliminaries of the canonization of St. Francis. Before entering the
city he turned out of his way to visit St. Damian and to see Clara, whom
he had known for a long time, and to whom he had addressed letters
burning with admiration and paternal affection.[21]
How can we understand that at this time, the eve of the canonization
(July 16, 1228), the pontiff could have had the idea of urging her to be
faithless to her vows?
He represented to her that the state of the times made life impossible
to women who possess nothing, and offered her certain properties. As
Clara gazed at him in astonishment at this strange proposition, he said,
"If it is your vows which prevent you, we will release you from them."
"Holy Father," replied the Franciscan sister, "absolve me from my sins,
but I have no desire for a dispensation from following Christ."[22]
Noble and pious utterance, artless cry of independence, in which the
conscience proudly proclaims its autonomy! In these words is mirrored
at full length the spiritual daughter of the Poverello.
By one of those intuitions which often come to very enthusiastic and
very pure women, she had penetrated to the inmost depths of Francis's
heart, and felt herself inflamed with the same passion which burned in