Life of St. Francis of Assisi
source of information. M. Thode (_Franz von Assisi und die
Anfaenge der Kunst_, Berlin, 1885, 8vo. illust.) and the Rev.
Father Fratini (_Storia della Basilica d'Assisi_, Prato, 1882,
8vo) are much too brief so far as these frescos are concerned.
[30] It is needless to say that I do not claim that Francis was
the only initiator of this movement, still less that he was its
creator; he was its most inspired singer, and that may suffice
for his glory. If Italy was awakened it was because her sleep
was not so sound as in the tenth century; the mosaics of the
facade of the Cathedral of Spoleto (the Christ between the
Virgin and St. John) already belong to the new art. Still, the
victory was so little final that the mural paintings of St.
Lawrence without the walls and of the Quattro Coronate, which
are subsequent to it by half a score of years, relapse into a
coarse Byzantinism. See also those of the Baptistery of
Florence.
[31] Hence the more or less subtile explanations with which they
adorn these incidents.--As to the part of animals in thirteenth
century legends consult Caesar von Heisterbach, Strange's
edition, t. ii., pp. 257 ff.
[32] 1 Cel., 80-83.
[33] 1 Cel., 83; _Conform._, 111a. M. Thode (_Anfaenge_, pp.
76-94) makes a study of some thirty portraits. The most
important are reproduced in _Saint Francois_ (1 vol., 4to,
Paris, 1885); 1, contemporary portrait, by Brother Eudes, now at
Subiaco (_loc. cit._, p. 30); 2, portrait dating about 1230, by
Giunta Pisano (?); preserved at Portiuncula (_loc. cit._, p.
384); 3, finally, portrait dated 1235, by Bon. Berlinghieri, and
preserved at Pescia, in Tuscany (_loc. cit._, p. 277). In 1886
Prof. Carattoli studied with great care a portrait which dates
from about those years and of which he gives a picture (also
preserved of late years at Portiuncula). _Miscellanea
francescana_ t. i., pp. 44-48; cf. pp. 160, 190, and 1887, p.
32. M. Bonghi has written some interesting papers on the
iconography of St. Francis (_Francesco di Assisi_, 1 vol., 12mo,
Citta di Castello, Lapi, 1884. Vide pp. 103-113).
* * * * *
CHAPTER XI
THE INNER MAN AND WONDER-WORKING
The missionary journey, undertaken under the encouragement of St. Clara
and so poetically inaugurated by the sermon to the birds of Bevagna,
appears to have been a continual triumph for Francis.[1] Legend
definitively takes possession of him; whether he will or no, miracles
burst forth under his footsteps; quite unawares to himself the objects
of which he has made use produce marvellous effects; folk come out from
the villages in procession to meet him, and the biographer gives us to
hear the echo of those religious festivals of Italy--merry, popular,
noisy, bathed in sunshine--which so little resemble the fastidiously
arranged festivals of northern peoples.
From Alviano Francis doubtless went to Narni, one of the most charming
little towns in Umbria, busy with building a cathedral after the
conquest of their communal liberties. He seems to have had a sort of
predilection for this city as well as for its surrounding villages.[2]
From thence he seems to have plunged into the valley of Rieti, where
Greccio, Fonte-Colombo, San Fabiano, Sant-Eleuthero, Poggio-Buscone
retain even stronger traces of him than the environs of Assisi.
Thomas of Celano gives us no particulars of the route followed, but, on
the other hand, he goes at length into the success of the apostle in the
March of Ancona, and especially at Ascoli. Did the people of these
districts still remember the appeals which Francis and Egidio had made
to them six years before (1209), or must we believe that they were
peculiarly prepared to understand the new gospel? However this may be,
nowhere else was a like enthusiasm shown; the effect of the sermons was
so great that some thirty neophytes at once received the habit of the
Order.
The March of Ancona ought to be held to be the Franciscan province _par
excellence_. There are Offida, San-Severino, Macerata, Fornaro, Cingoli,
Fermo, Massa, and twenty other hermitages where, during more than a
century, poverty was to find its heralds and its martyrs; from thence
came Giovanni della Verna, Jacopo di Massa, Conrad di Offida, Angelo
Clareno, and those legions of nameless revolutionists, dreamers, and
prophets, who since the _extirpes_ in 1244 by the general of the Order,
Crescentius of Jesi, never ceased to make new recruits, and by their
proud resistance to all powers filled one of the finest pages of
religious history in the Middle Ages.
This success, which bathed the soul of Francis with joy, did not arouse
in him the smallest movement of pride. Never has man had a greater power
over hearts, because never preacher preached himself less. One day
Brother Masseo desired to put his modesty to the test.
"Why thee? Why thee? Why thee?" he repeated again and again, as
if to make a mock of Francis. "What are you saying?" cried
Francis at last. "I am saying that everybody follows thee,
everyone desires to see thee, hear thee, and obey thee, and yet
for all that thou art neither beautiful, nor learned, nor of
noble family. Whence comes it, then, that it should be thee whom
the world desires to follow?"
On hearing these words the blessed Francis, full of joy, raised
his eyes to heaven, and after remaining a long time absorbed in
contemplation he knelt, praising and blessing God with
extraordinary fervor. Then turning toward Masseo, "Thou wishest
to know why it is I whom men follow? Thou wishest to know? It is
because the eyes of the Most High have willed it thus; he
continually watches the good and the wicked, and as his most
holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any
more insufficient and more sinful, therefore he has chosen me to
accomplish the marvellous work which God has undertaken; he
chose me because he could find no one more worthless, and he
wished here to confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength,
the beauty, and the learning of this world."
This reply throws a ray of light upon St. Francis's heart; the message
which he brought to the world is once again the glad tidings announced
to the poor; its purpose is the taking up again of that Messianic work
which the Virgin of Nazareth caught a glimpse of in her _Magnificat_,
that song of love and liberty, the sighs of which breathe the vision of
a new social state. He comes to remind the world that the welfare of
man, the peace of his heart, the joy of his life, are neither in money,
nor in learning, nor in strength, but in an upright and sincere will.
Peace to men of good will.
The part which he had taken at Assisi in the controversies of his
fellow-citizens he would willingly have taken in all the rest of Italy,
for no man has ever dreamed of a more complete renovation; but if the
end he sought was the same as that of many revolutionaries who came
after him, their methods were completely different; his only weapon was
love.
The event has decided against him. Apart from the _illuminati_ of the
March of Ancona and the _Fraticelli_ of our own Provence his disciples
have vied with one another to misunderstand his thought.[3]
Who knows if some one will not arise to take up his work? Has not the
passion for worm-eaten speculations yet made victims enough? Are there
not many among us who perceive that luxury is a delusion, that if life
is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle
over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it
may present itself--truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this
expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to
make _amende honorable_ and bequeath to its successor one manly word of
faith?
Yes, the Messiah will come. He who was announced by Gioacchino di Fiore
and who is to inaugurate a new epoch in the history of humanity will
appear. _Hope maketh not ashamed._ In our modern Babylons and in the
huts on our mountains are too many souls who mysteriously sigh the hymn
of the great vigil, _Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant
Justum_,[4] for us not to be on the eve of a divine birth.
All origins are mysterious. This is true of matter, but yet more true of
that life, superior to all others, which we call holiness; it was in
prayer that Francis found the spiritual strength which he needed; he
therefore sought for silence and solitude. If he knew how to do battle
in the midst of men in order to win them to the faith, he loved, as
Celano says, to fly away like a bird going to make its nest upon the
mountain.[5]
With men truly pious the prayer of the lips, the formulated prayer, is
hardly other than an inferior form of true prayer. Even when it is
sincere and attentive, and not a mechanical repetition, it is only a
prelude for souls not dead of religious materialism.
Nothing resembles piety so much as love. Formularies of prayer are as
incapable of speaking the emotions of the soul as model love-letters of
speaking the transports of an impassioned heart. To true piety as well
as to profound love, the formula is a sort of profanation.
To pray is to talk with God, to lift ourselves up to him, to converse
with him that he may come down to us. It is an act of meditation, of
reflection, which presupposes the effort of all that is most personal in
us.
Looked at in this sense, prayer is the mother of all liberty and all
freedom.
Whether or no it be a soliloquy of the soul with itself, the soliloquy
would be none the less the very foundation of a strong individuality.
With St. Francis as with Jesus, prayer has this character of effort
which makes of it the greatest moral act. In order to truly know such
men one must have been able to go with them, to follow Jesus up to the
mountain where he passed his nights. Three favored ones, Peter, James,
John, followed him thither one day; but to describe what they saw, all
that a manly _sursum corda_ added to the radiance and the mysterious
grandeur of him whom they adored, they were obliged to resort to the
language of symbols.
It was so with St. Francis. For him as for his Master the end of prayer
is communion with the heavenly Father, the accord of the divine with the
human; or rather it is man who puts forth his strength to do the work of
God, not saying to him a mere passive, resigned, powerless _Fiat_, but
courageously raising his head: "Behold me, Lord, I delight to do thy
will."
"There are unfathomable depths in the human soul, because at the bottom
is God himself." Whether this God be transcendent or immanent, whether
he be One, the Creator, the eternal and immutable Principle, or whether
he be, as say the doctors beyond the Rhine, the ideal objectivation of
our Me, is not the question for the heroes of humanity. The soldier in
the thick of battle does not philosophize as to how much truth or
falsehood there is in the patriotic sentiment; he takes his arms and
fights at the peril of his life. So the soldiers of spiritual conflicts
seek for strength in prayer, in reflection, contemplation, inspiration;
all, poets, artists, teachers, saints, legislators, prophets, leaders of
the people, learned men, philosophers, all draw from this same source.
But it is not without difficulty that the soul unites itself to God, or
if one prefers, that it finds itself. A prayer ends at last in divine
communion only when it began by a struggle. The patriarch of Israel,