Life of St. Francis of Assisi
money, which he spent with both hands, made him welcome among them. Well
pleased to enjoy themselves at his expense, the young nobles paid him a
sort of court. As to Bernardone, he was too happy to see his son
associating with them to be niggardly as to the means. He was miserly,
as the course of this history will show, but his pride and self-conceit
exceeded his avarice.
Pica, his wife, gentle and modest creature,[16] concerning whom the
biographers have been only too laconic, saw all this, and mourned over
it in silence, but though weak as mothers are, she would not despair of
her son, and when the neighbors told her of Francis's escapades, she
would calmly reply, "What are you thinking about? I am very sure that,
if it pleases God, he will become a good Christian."[17] The words were
natural enough from a mother's lips, but later on they were held to have
been truly prophetic.
How far did the young man permit himself to be led on? It would be
difficult to say. The question which, as we are told, tormented Brother
Leo, could only have suggested itself to a diseased imagination.[18]
Thomas of Celano and the Three Companions agree in picturing him as
going to the worst excesses. Later biographers speak with more
circumspection of his worldly career. A too widely credited story
gathered from Celano's narrative was modified by the chapter-general of
1260,[19] and the frankness of the early biographers was, no doubt, one
of the causes which most effectively contributed to their definitive
condemnation three years later.[20]
Their statements are in no sense obscure; according to them the son of
Bernardone not only patterned himself after the young men of his age, he
made it a point of honor to exceed them. What with eccentricities,
buffooneries, pranks, prodigalities, he ended by achieving a sort of
celebrity. He was forever in the streets with his companions, compelling
attention by his extravagant or fantastic attire. Even at night the
joyous company kept up their merrymakings, causing the town to ring
with their noisy songs.[21]
At this very time the troubadours were roaming over the towns of
Northern Italy[22] and bringing brilliant festivities and especially
Courts of Love into vogue. If they worked upon the passions, they also
made appeal to feelings of courtesy and delicacy; it was this that saved
Francis. In the midst of his excesses he was always refined and
considerate, carefully abstaining from every base or indecent
utterance.[23] Already his chief aspiration was to rise above the
commonplace. Tortured with the desire for that which is far off and
high,[24] he had conceived a sort of passion for chivalry, and fancying
that dissipation was one of the distinguishing features of nobility, he
had thrown himself into it with all his soul.
But he who, at twenty, goes from pleasure to pleasure with the heart not
absolutely closed to good, must now and then, at some turning of the
road, become aware that there are hungry folk, who could live a month on
what he spends in a few hours on frivolity. Francis saw them, and with
his impressionable nature for the moment forgot everything else. In
thought he put himself in their place, and it sometimes happened that he
gave them all the money he had about him and even his clothes.
One day he was busy with some customers in his father's shop, when a man
came in, begging for charity in the name of God. Losing his patience
Francis sharply turned him away; but quickly reproaching himself for his
harshness he thought, "What would I not have done if this man had asked
something of me in the name of a count or a baron? What ought I not to
have done when he came in the name of God? I am no better than a clown!"
Leaving his customers he ran after the beggar.[25]
Bernardone had been well pleased with his son's commercial aptitude in
the early days when the young man was first in his father's employ.
Francis was only too proficient in spending money; he at least knew well
how to make it.[26] But this satisfaction did not last long. Francis's
bad companions were exercising over him a most pernicious influence. The
time came when he could no longer endure to be separated from them; if
he heard their call, nothing could keep him, he would leave everything
and go after them.[27]
All this time political events were hurrying on in Umbria and Italy;
after a formidable struggle the allied republics had forced the empire
to recognize them. By the immortal victory of Legnano (May 29, 1176) and
the Peace of Constance (June 25, 1183) the Lombard League had wrested
from Frederick Barbarossa almost all the prerogatives of power; little
was left to the emperor but insignia and outward show.
From one end of the Peninsula to the other visions of liberty were
making hearts beat high. For an instant it seemed as if all Italy was
about to regain consciousness of its unity, was about to rise up as one
man and hurl the foreigner from its borders; but the rivalries of the
cities were too strong for them to see that local liberty without a
common independence is precarious and illusory. Henry VI., the successor
of Barbarossa (1183-1196), laid Italy under a yoke of iron; he might
perhaps in the end have assured the domination of the empire, if his
career had not been suddenly cut short by a premature death.
Yet he had not been able to put fetters upon ideas. The communal
movement which was shaking the north of France reverberated beyond the
Alps.
Although a city of second rank, Assisi had not been behind in the great
struggles for independence.[28] She had been severely chastised, had
lost her franchise, and was obliged to submit to Conrad of Suabia, Duke
of Spoleto, who from the heights of his fortress kept her in subjection.
But when Innocent III. ascended the pontifical throne (January 8, 1199)
the old duke knew himself to be lost. He made a tender to him of money,
men, his faith even, but the pontiff refused them all. He had no desire
to appear to favor the Tedeschi, who had so odiously oppressed the
country. Conrad of Suabia was forced to yield at mercy, and to go to
Narni to put his submission into the hands of two cardinals.
Like the practical folk that they were, the Assisans did not hesitate an
instant. No sooner was the count on the road to Narni than they rushed
to the assault of the castle. The arrival of envoys charged to take
possession of it as a pontifical domain by no means gave them pause. Not
one stone of it was left upon another.[29] Then, with incredible
rapidity they enclosed their city with walls, parts of which are still
standing, their formidable ruins a witness to the zeal with which the
whole population labored on them.
It is natural to think that Francis, then seventeen years old, was one
of the most gallant laborers of those glorious days, and it was perhaps
there that he gained the habit of carrying stones and wielding the
trowel which was destined to serve him so well a few years later.
Unhappily his fellow-citizens had not the sense to profit by their
hard-won liberty. The lower classes, who in this revolution had become
aware of their strength, determined to follow out the victory by taking
possession of the property of the nobles. The latter took refuge in
their fortified houses in the interior of the city, or in their castles
in the suburbs. The townspeople burned down several of the latter,
whereupon counts and barons made request of aid and succor from the
neighboring cities.
Perugia was at this time at the apogee of its power,[30] and had already
made many efforts to reduce Assisi to submission. It therefore received
the fugitives with alacrity, and making their cause its own, declared
war upon Assisi. This was in 1202. An encounter took place in the plain
about half way between the two cities, not far from _Ponte San
Giovanni_. Assisi was defeated, and Francis, who was in the ranks, was
made prisoner.[31]
The treachery of the nobles had not been universal; a few had fought
with the people. It was with them and not with the _popolani_ that
Francis, in consideration of the nobility of his manners,[32] passed the
time of his captivity, which lasted an entire year. He greatly
astonished his companions by his lightness of heart. Very often they
thought him almost crazy. Instead of passing his time in wailing and
cursing he made plans for the future, about which he was glad to talk to
any one who came along. To his fancy life was what the songs of the
troubadours had painted it; he dreamed of glorious adventures, and
always ended by saying: "You will see that one day I shall be adored by
the whole world."[33]
During these long months Francis must have been pretty rudely undeceived
with respect to those nobles whom from afar he had so heartily admired.
However that may be, he retained with them not only his frankness of
speech, but also his full freedom of action. One of them, a knight, had
always held aloof from the others, out of vanity and bad temper.
Francis, far from leaving him to himself, always showed him affection,
and finally had the joy of reconciling him with his fellow-captives.
A compromise was finally arrived at between the counts and the people of
Assisi. In November, 1203, the arbitrators designated by the two parties
announced their decision. The commons of Assisi were to repair in a
certain measure the damage done to the lords, and the latter agreed, on
their part, to make no further alliances without authorization of the
commons.[34] Rural serfage was maintained, which proves that the
revolution had been directed by the burghers, and for their own profit.
Ten years more were not, however, to elapse before the common people
also would succeed in achieving liberty. In this cause we shall again
see Francis fighting on the side of the oppressed, earning the title of
_Patriarch of religious democracy_ which has been accorded him by one of
his compatriots.[35]
The agreement being made the prisoners detained at Perugia were
released, and Francis returned to Assisi. He was twenty-two years old.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Eleven hundred and one metres above the level of the sea;
the plain around Assisi has an average of two hundred, and the
town of two hundred and fifty, metres above.
[2] As in the majority of Tuscan cities the dimensions of the
houses were formerly fixed by law.
[3] The biographies say that he died (October 3, 1226) in his
forty-fifth year. But the terms are not precise enough to make
the date 1181 improbable. For that matter the question is of
small importance. A Franciscan of Erfurt, about the middle of
the thirteenth century, fixes the date at 1182. Pertz, vol.
xxiv., p. 193.
[4] A number of different genealogies have been fabricated for
Francis; they prove only one thing, the wreck of the Franciscan
idea. How little they understood their hero, who thought to
magnify and glorify him by making him spring from a noble
family! "_Quae rero_," says Father Suysken, S. J., "_de ejus
gentilitio insigni disserit Waddingus, non lubet mihi attingere.
Factis et virtutibus eluxit S. Franciscus non proavorum
insignibus aut titulis, quos nec desideravit_." (A. SS. p.
557a.) It could not be better said.
In the fourteenth century a whole cycle of legends had gathered
about his birth. It could not have been otherwise. They all grow
out of the story that tells of an old man who comes knocking at
the parents' door, begging them to let him take the infant in
his arms, when he announces that it will do great things. Under
this form the episode certainly presents nothing impossible, but