Life of St. Francis of Assisi
detailed account of these facts.
It appears that a Romagnol brother Christopher was at this same chapter
nominated provincial of Gascony; he lived there after the customs of the
early Franciscans, working with his hands, living in a narrow cell made
of the boughs of trees and potter's earth.[15]
Egidio set out for Tunis with a few friars, but a great disappointment
awaited them there; the Christians of this country, in the fear of being
compromised by their missionary zeal, hurried them into a boat and
constrained them to recross the sea.[16]
If the date of 1219 for these two missions has little other basis than
conjecture, the same is not the case as to the departure of the friars
who went to Spain and Morocco. The discovery has recently been made of
the account of their last preachings and of their tragic death, made by
an eye-witness.[17] This document is all the more precious because it
confirms the general lines of the much longer account given by Mark of
Lisbon. It would be out of place to give a summary of it here, because
it but very indirectly concerns the life of St. Francis, but we must
note that these _acta_ have beyond their historic value a truly
remarkable psychological--one must almost say pathological--significance;
never was the mania for martyrdom better characterized than in these
long pages, where we see the friars forcing the Mahometans to pursue
them and make them win the heavenly palm. The forbearance which
Miramolin as well as his fellow religionists at first show gives an
idea of the civilization and the good qualities of these infidels, all
the higher that very different sentiments would be natural in the
vanquished ones of the plains of Tolosa.
It is impossible to call by the name of sermons the collections of rude
apostrophes which the missionaries addressed to those whom they wished
to convert; at this paroxysm the thirst for martyrdom becomes the
madness of suicide. Is this to say that friars Bernard, Pietro, Adjutus,
Accurso, and Otho have no right to the admiration and worship with which
they have been surrounded? Who would dare say so? Is not devotion always
blind? That a furrow should be fecund it must have blood, it must have
tears, such tears as St. Augustine has called the blood of the soul. Ah,
it is a great mistake to immolate oneself, for the blood of a single man
will not save the world nor even a nation; but it is a still greater
mistake not to immolate oneself, for then one lets others be lost, and
is oneself lost first of all.
I greet you, therefore, Martyrs of Morocco; you do not regret your
madness, I am sure, and if ever some righteous pedant gone astray in the
groves of paradise undertakes to demonstrate to you that it would have
been better worth while to remain in your own country, and found a
worthy family of virtuous laborers, I fancy that Miramolin, there become
your best friend, will take the trouble to refute him.
You were mad, but I envy such madness, for you felt that the essential
thing in this world is not to serve this ideal or that one, but with all
one's soul to serve the ideal which one has chosen.
When, a few months after, the story of their glorious end arrived at
Assisi, Francis discerned a feeling of pride among his companions and
reproached them in lively terms; he who would so have envied the lot of
the martyrs felt himself humbled because God had not judged him worthy
to share it. As the story was mingled with some words of eulogy of the
founder of the Order, he forbade the further reading of it.[18]
Immediately after the chapter he had himself undertaken a mission of the
same kind as he had confided to the Brothers of Morocco, but he had
proceeded in it in an entirely different manner: his was not the blind
zeal which courts death in a sort of frenzy and forgets all the rest;
perhaps he already felt that the persistent effort after the better, the
continual immolation of self for truth, is the martyrdom of the strong.
This expedition, which lasted more than a year, is mentioned by the
biographers in a few lines.[19] Happily we have a number of other
papers regarding it; but their silence suffices to prove the sincerity
of the primitive Franciscan authors; if they had wanted to amplify the
deeds of their subject, where could they have found an easier
opportunity or a more marvellous theme? Francis quitted Portiuncula in
the middle of June and went to Ancona, whence the Crusaders were to set
sail for Egypt on St. John's Day (June 24th).
Many friars joined him--a fact which was not without its inconveniences
for a journey by sea, where they were obliged to depend upon the charity
of the owners of the boats, or of their fellow-travellers.
We can understand Francis's embarrassment on arriving at Ancona and
finding himself obliged to leave behind a number of those who so
earnestly longed to go with him. The Conformities relate here an
incident for which we might desire an earlier authority, but which is
certainly very like Francis; he led all his friends to the port and
explained to them his perplexities. "The people of the boat," he told
them, "refuse to take us all, and I have not the courage to make choice
among you; you might think that I do not love you all alike; let us then
try to learn the will of God." And he called a child who was playing
close by, and the little one, charmed to take the part of Providence put
upon him, pointed out with his finger the eleven friars who were to set
sail.[20]
We do not know what itinerary they followed. A single incident of the
journey has come down to us: that of the chastisement inflicted in the
isle of Cyprus on Brother Barbaro, who had been guilty of the fault
which the master detested above all others--evil-speaking. He was
implacable with regard to the looseness of language so customary among
pious folk, and which often made a hell of religious houses apparently
the most peaceful. The offence this time appeared to him the more grave
for having been uttered in the presence of a stranger, a knight of that
district. The latter was stupefied on hearing Francis command the guilty
one to eat a lump of ass's dung which lay there, adding: "The mouth
which has distilled the venom of hatred against my brother must eat this
excrement." Such indignation, no less than the obedience of the unhappy
offender, filled him with admiration.[21]
It is very probable, as Wadding has supposed, that the missionaries
debarked at St. Jean d'Acre. They arrived there about the middle of
July.[22] In the environs of this city, doubtless, Brother Elias had
been established for one or two years. Francis there told off a few of
his companions, whom he sent to preach in divers directions, and a few
days afterward he himself set out for Egypt, where all the efforts of
the Crusaders were concentrated upon Damietta.
From the first he was heart-broken with the moral condition of the
Christian army. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous prelates and of
the apostolic legate, it was disorganized for want of discipline. He was
so affected by this that when there was talk of battle he felt it his
duty to advise against it, predicting that the Christians would
infallibly be beaten. No one heeded him, and on August 29th the
Crusaders, having attacked the Saracens, were terribly routed.[23]
His predictions won him a marvellous success. It must be owned that the
ground was better prepared than any other to receive the new seed; not
surely that piety was alive there, but in this mass of men come together
from every corner of Europe, the troubled, the seers, the enlightened
ones, those who thirsted for righteousness and truth, were elbowed by
rascals, adventurers, those who were greedy for gold and plunder,
capable of much good or much evil, the sport of fleeting impulses,
loosed from the bonds of the family, of property, of the habits which
usually twine themselves about man's will, and only by exception permit
a complete change in his manner of life; those among them who were
sincere and had come there with generous purposes were, so to speak,
predestined to enter the peaceful army of the Brothers Minor. Francis
was to win in this mission fellow-laborers who would assure the success
of his work in the countries of northern Europe.
Jacques de Vitry, in a letter to friends written a few days later, thus
describes the impression produced on him by Francis:
"I announce to you that Master Reynier, Prior of St. Michael,
has entered the Order of the Brothers Minor, an Order which is
multiplying rapidly on all sides, because it imitates the
primitive Church and follows the life of the Apostles in
everything. The master of these Brothers is named Brother
Francis; he is so lovable that he is venerated by everyone.
Having come into our army, he has not been afraid, in his zeal
for the faith, to go to that of our enemies. For days together
he announced the word of God to the Saracens, but with little
success; then the sultan, King of Egypt, asked him in secret to
entreat God to reveal to him, by some miracle, which is the best
religion. Colin, the Englishman, our clerk, has entered the same
Order, as also two others of our companions, Michael and Dom
Matthew, to whom I had given the rectorship of the Sainte
Chapelle. Cantor and Henry have done the same, and still others
whose names I have forgotten."[24]
The long and enthusiastic chapter which the same author gives to the
Brothers Minor in his great work on the Occident is too diffuse to find
a place here. It is a living and accurate picture of the early times of
the Order; in it Francis's sermon before the sultan is again related. It
was written at a period when the friars had still neither monasteries
nor churches, and when the chapters were held once or twice a year; this
gives us a date anterior to 1223, and probably even before 1221. We have
here, therefore, a verification of the narratives of Thomas of Celano
and the Three Companions, and they find in it their perfect
confirmation.
As to the interviews between Francis and the sultan, it is prudent to
keep to the narratives of Jacques de Vitry and William of Tyre.[25]
Although the latter wrote at a comparatively late date (between 1275 and
1295), he followed a truly historic method, and founded his work on
authentic documents; we see that he knows no more than Jacques de Vitry
of the proposal said to have been made by Francis to pass through a fire
if the priests of Mahomet would do as much, intending so to establish
the superiority of Christianity.
We know how little such an appeal to signs is characteristic of St.
Francis. Perhaps the story, which comes from Bonaventura, is born of a
misconception. The sultan, like a new Pharaoh, may have laid it upon the
strange preacher to prove his mission by miracles. However this may be,
Francis and his companions were treated with great consideration, a fact
the more meritorious that hostilities were then at their height.
Returned to the Crusading camp, they remained there until after the
taking of Damietta (November 5, 1219). This time the Christians were
victorious, but perhaps the heart of the _gospel man_ bled more for this
victory than for the defeat of August 29th. The shocking condition of
the city, which the victors found piled with heaps of dead bodies, the
quarrels over the sharing of booty, the sale of the wretched creatures
who had not succumbed to the pestilence,[26] all these scenes of
terror, cruelty, greed, caused him profound horror. The "human beast"
was let loose, the apostle's voice could no more make itself heard in
the midst of the savage clamor than that of a life-saver over a raging
ocean.
He set out for Syria[27] and the Holy Places. How gladly would we