Life of St. Francis of Assisi
_Significatum est_. If it really refers to them, as Sbaralea
thinks, with all those who have interested themselves in the
question to M. Mueller inclusively--but which, it appears, might
be contested--it is because in 1221 they had made appeal to the
pope against the podestas of Faenza and the neighboring cities.
This evidently supposes an association not recently born.
Sbaralea, _Bull. fr._, 1, p. 8; Horoy, vol. iv., col. 49;
Potthast, 6736.
[20] Bull _Supra montem_ of August 17, 1289, Potthast. 23044. M.
Mueller has made a luminous study of the origin of this bull; it
may be considered final in all essential points (_Anfaenge_, pp.
117-171). By this bull Nicholas IV.--minister-general of the
Brothers Minor before becoming pope--sought to draw into the
hands of his Order the direction of all associations of pious
laics (Third Order of St. Dominic, the Gaudentes, the Humiliati.
etc.). He desired by that to give a greater impulse to those
fraternities which depended directly on the court of Rome, and
augment their power by unifying them.
[21] Vide Bull _Significatum est_ of December 16, 1221. Cf.
_Supra montem_, chap. vii.
[22] The Rule of the Third Order of the Humiliati, which dates
from 1201, contains a similar clause. Tiraboschi, vol. ii., p.
132.
[23] In the A. SS., Aprilis, vol. ii. p. 600-616. Orlando di
Chiusi also received the habit from the hands of Francis. Vide
_Instrumentum_, etc., below, p. 400. The Franciscan fraternity,
under the influence of the other third orders, rapidly lost its
specific character. As to this title, Third Order, it surely had
originally a hierarchical sense, upon which little by little a
chronological sense has been superposed. All these questions
become singularly clearer when they are compared with what is
known of the Humiliati.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XVI
THE BROTHERS MINOR AND LEARNING
Autumn, 1221-December, 1223
After the chapter of 1221 the evolution of the Order hurried on with a
rapidity which nothing was strong enough to check.
The creation of the ministers was an enormous step in this direction; by
the very pressure of things the latter came to establish a residence;
those who command must have their subordinates within reach, must know
at all times where they are; the Brothers, therefore, could no longer
continue to do without convents properly so-called. This change
naturally brought about many others; up to this time they had had no
churches. Without churches the friars were only itinerant preachers, and
their purpose could not but be perfectly disinterested; they were, as
Francis had wished, the friendly auxiliaries of the clergy. With
churches it was inevitable that they should first fatally aspire to
preach in them and attract the crowd to them, then in some sort erect
them into counter parishes.[1]
The bull of March 22, 1222,[2] shows us the papacy hastening these
transformations with all its power. The pontiff accords to Brother
Francis and the other friars the privilege of celebrating the sacred
mysteries in their churches in times of interdict, on the natural
condition of not ringing the bells, of closing the door, and previously
expelling those who were excommunicated.
By an astonishing inadvertence the bull itself bears witness to its
uselessness, at least for the time in which it was given: "We accord to
you," it runs, "the permission to celebrate the sacraments in times of
interdict in your churches, _if you come to have any_." This is a new
proof that in 1222 the Order as yet had none; but it is not difficult to
see in this very document a pressing invitation to change their way of
working, and not leave this privilege to be of no avail.
Another document of the same time shows a like purpose, though
manifested in another direction. By the bull _Ex parte_ of March 29,
1222, Honorius III. laid upon the Preachers and Minors of Lisbon
conjointly a singularly delicate mission; he gave them full powers to
proceed against the bishop and clergy of that city, who exacted from the
faithful that they should leave to them by will one-third of their
property, and refused the Church's burial service to those who
disobeyed.[3]
The fact that the pope committed to the Brothers the care of choosing
what measures they should take proves how anxious they were at Rome to
forget the object for which they had been created, and to transform them
into deputies of the Holy See. It is, therefore, needless to point out
that the mention of Francis's name at the head of the former of these
bulls has no significance. We do not picture the Poverello seeking a
privilege for circumstances not yet existing! We perceive here the
influence of Ugolini,[4] who had found the Brother Minor after his own
heart in the person of Elias.
What was Francis doing all this time? We have no knowledge, but the very
absence of information, so abundant for the period that precedes as well
as for that which follows, shows plainly enough that he has quitted
Portiuncula, and gone to live in one of those Umbrian hermitages that
had always had so strong an attachment for him.[5] There is hardly a
hill in Central Italy that has not preserved some memento of him. It
would be hard to walk half a day between Florence and Rome without
coming upon some hut on a hillside bearing his name or that of one of
his disciples.
There was a time when these huts were inhabited, when in these leafy
booths Egidio, Masseo, Bernardo, Silvestro, Ginepro, and many others
whose names history has forgotten, received visits from their spiritual
father, coming to them for their consolation.[6]
They gave him love for love and consolation for consolation. His poor
heart had great need of both, for in his long, sleepless nights it had
come to him at times to hear strange voices; weariness and regret were
laying hold on him, and looking over the past he was almost driven to
doubt of himself, his Lady Poverty, and everything.
Between Chiusi and Radicofani--an hour's walk from the village of
Sartiano--a few Brothers had made a shelter which served them by way of
hermitage, with a little cabin for Francis in a retired spot. There he
passed one of the most agonizing nights of his life. The thought that he
had exaggerated the virtue of asceticism and not counted enough upon the
mercy of God assailed him, and suddenly he came to regret the use he had
made of his life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil
and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such
living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined
himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the vision would
not depart.
It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out
without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make
a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are
two sons and two daughters, with the servant and the maid carrying all
the baggage."
With this child-like representation of the tyranny of material cares
which he had escaped, he finally put away the temptation.[7]
There is nothing to show whether or not we should fix at the same epoch
another incident which legend gives as taking place at Sartiano. One day
a brother of whom he asked, "Whence do you come?" replied, "From your
cell." This simple answer was enough to make the vehement lover of
Poverty refuse to occupy it again. "Foxes have holes," he loved to
repeat, "and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man had not
where to lay his head. When the Lord spent forty days and forty nights
praying and fasting in the desert, he built himself neither cell nor
house, but made the side of a rock his shelter."[8]
It would be a mistake to think, as some have done, that as time went on
Francis changed his point of view. Certain ecclesiastical writers have
assumed that since he desired the multiplication of his Order, he for
that very reason consented to its transformation. The suggestion is
specious, but in this matter we are not left to conjecture; almost
everything which was done in the Order after 1221 was done either
without Francis's knowledge or against his will. If one were inclined to
doubt this, it would need only to glance over that most solemn and also
most adequate manifesto of his thought--his Will. There he is shown
freed from all the temptations which had at times made him hesitate in
the expression of his ideas, bravely gathering himself up to summon back
the primitive ideal, and set it up in opposition to all the concessions
which had been wrung from his weakness.
The Will is not an appendix to the Rule of 1223, it is almost its
revocation. But it would be a mistake to see in it the first attempt
made to return to the early ideal. The last five years of his life were
only one incessant effort at protest, both by his example and his words.
In 1222 he addressed to the brethren of Bologna a letter filled with sad
forebodings. In that city, where the Dominicans, overwhelmed with
attentions, were occupied with making themselves a stronghold in the
system of instruction, the Brothers Minor were more than anywhere else
tempted to forsake the way of simplicity and poverty. Francis's warnings
had put on such dark and threatening colors that after the famous
earthquake of December 23, 1222, which spread terror over all northern
Italy, there was no hesitation in believing that he had predicted the
catastrophe.[9] He had indeed predicted a catastrophe which was none
the less horrible for being wholly moral, and the vision of which forced
from him the most bitter imprecations:
"Lord Jesus, thou didst choose thine apostles to the number of
twelve, and if one of them did betray thee, the others,
remaining united to thee, preached thy holy gospel, filled with
one and the same inspiration; and behold now, remembering the
former days, thou hast raised up the Religion of the Brothers in
order to uphold faith, and that by them the mystery of thy
gospel may be accomplished. Who will take their place if,
instead of fulfilling their mission and being shining examples
for all, they are seen to give themselves up to works of
darkness? Oh! may they be accursed by thee, Lord, and by all the
court of heaven, and by me, thine unworthy servant, they who by
their bad example overturn and destroy all that thou didst do in
the beginning and ceasest not to do by the holy Brothers of this
Order."[10]
This passage from Thomas of Celano, the most moderate of the
biographers, shows to what a pitch of vehemence and indignation the
gentle Francis could be worked up.
In spite of very natural efforts to throw a veil of reserve over the
anguish of the founder with regard to the future of his spiritual
family, we find traces of it at every step. "The time will come," he
said one day, "when our Order will so have lost all good renown that its
members will be ashamed to show themselves by daylight."[11]
He saw in a dream a statue with the head of pure gold, the breast and
arms of silver, the body of crystal, and the legs of iron. He thought it
was an omen of the future in store for his institute.[12]
He believed his sons to be attacked with two maladies, unfaithful at
once to poverty and humility; but perhaps he dreaded for them the demon
of learning more than the temptation of riches.
What were his views on the subject of learning? It is probable that he
never examined the question as a whole, but he had no difficulty in