Life of St. Francis of Assisi
_b._ _Ave Domina sancta._ Cf. _Spec._, 127a; _Conform._, 138a, 2.
_c._ _Sancta Maria virgo._ Cf. _Spec._, 126b; _Conform._, 202b, 2.
[27] Vide S. Francois, in 4to, Paris. 1885 (Plon), p. 233. The
authenticity of this benediction appears to be well established,
since it was already jealously guarded during the life of Thomas
of Celano. No one has ever dreamed of requiring historical proof
of this writing. Is this perhaps a mistake? The middle of the
sheet is taken up with the benediction which was dictated to
Brother Leo: _Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodiat te, ostendat
faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui convertat vultum suum ad te
et det tibi pacem._ At the bottom, Francis added the letter
_tau_. ~[Greek: Tau]~, which was, so to speak, his signature
(Bon., 51; 308), and the words: _Frater Leo Dominus benedicat te_.
Then when this memorial became a part of the relics of the
Saint, Brother Leo, to authenticate it in a measure, added the
following notes: toward the middle: _Beatus Franciscus
scripsit manu sua istam benedictionem mihi fratri Leoni_;
toward the close: _Simili modo fecit istud signum thau cum
capite manu sua_. But the most valuable annotation is found at
the top of the sheet: _Beatus Franciscus duobus annis ante
mortem suam fecit quadragesimam in loco Alvernae ad honorem
Beatae Virginia Mariae matris Dei et beati Michael archangeli a
festo assumptionis sanctae Mariae Virginis usque ad festum
sancti Michael septembris et facta est super eum manus Domini
per visionem et allucotionem seraphym et impressionem
stigmatum in corpore suo. Fecit has laudes ex alio latere
catule scriptas et manu, sua scripsit gratias agens Domino de
beneficio sibi collato._ Vide 2 Cel., 2, 18.
[28] Wadding gives the text according to St. Bernardino da
Siena. _Opera_, t. iv., _sermo_ 16, _extraord. et sermo feriae
sextae Parasceves_. Amoni: _Legenda trium sociorum_, p. 166.
[29] Wadding has drawn the text from St. Bernardino, _loc.
cit._, _sermo_ iv., _extraord._ It was also reproduced by Amoni,
_loc. cit._, p. 165. Two very curious versions may be found in
the Miscellanea, 1888, pp. 96 and 190.
[30] 2 Cel., 3, 35. This took place under the vicariat of Pietro
di Catania; consequently between September 29, 1220, and March
10, 1221.
* * * * *
II
BIOGRAPHIES PROPERLY SO CALLED
I. PRELIMINARY NOTE
To form a somewhat exact notion of the documents which are to occupy us,
we must put them back into the midst of the circumstances in which they
appeared, study them in detail, and determine the special value of each
one.
Here, more than anywhere else, we must beware of facile theories and
hasty generalizations. The same life described by two equally truthful
contemporaries may take on a very different coloring. This is especially
the case if the man concerned has aroused enthusiasm and wrath, if his
inmost thought, his works, have been the subject of discussion, if the
very men who were commissioned to realize his ideals and carry on his
work are divided, and at odds with one another.
This was the case with St. Francis. In his lifetime and before his own
eyes divergences manifested themselves, at first secretly, then in the
light of day.
In a rapture of love he went from cottage to cottage, from castle to
castle, preaching absolute poverty; but that buoyant enthusiasm, that
unbounded idealism, could not last long. The Order of the Brothers Minor
in process of growth was open not only to a few choice spirits aflame
with mystic fervor, but to all men who aspired after a religious
reformation; pious laymen, monks undeceived as to the virtues of the
ancient Orders, priests shocked at the vices of the secular clergy, all
brought with them--unintentionally no doubt and even unconsciously--too
much of their old man not by degrees to transform the institution.
Francis perceived the peril several years before his death, and made
every effort to avert it. Even in his dying hour we see him summoning
all his powers to declare his Will once again, and as clearly as
possible, and to conjure his Brothers never to touch the Rule, even
under pretext of commenting upon or explaining it. Alas! four years had
not rolled away when Gregory IX., at the prayer of the Brothers
themselves, became the first one of a long series of pontiffs who have
explained the Rule.[1]
Poverty, as Francis understood it, soon became only a memory. The
unexampled success of the Order brought to it not merely new recruits,
but money. How refuse it when there were so many works to found? Many of
the friars discovered that their master had exaggerated many things,
that shades of meaning were to be observed in the Rule, for example,
between counsels and precepts. The door once opened to interpretations,
it became impossible to close it. The Franciscan family began to be
divided into opposing parties often difficult to distinguish.
At first there were a few restless, undisciplined men who grouped
themselves around the older friars. The latter, in their character of
first companions of the Saint, found a moral authority often greater
than the official authority of the ministers and guardians. The people
turned to them by instinct as to the true continuers of St. Francis's
work. They were not far from right.
They had the vigor, the vehemence of absolute convictions; they could
not have temporized had they desired to do so. When they emerged from
their hermitages in the Apennines, their eyes shining with the fever of
their ideas, absorbed in contemplation, their whole being spoke of the
radiant visions they enjoyed; and the amazed and subdued multitude
would kneel to kiss the prints of their feet with hearts mysteriously
stirred.
A larger group was that of those Brothers who condemned these methods
without being any the less saints. Born far away from Umbria, in
countries where nature seems to be a step-mother, where adoration, far
from being the instinctive act of a happy soul soaring upward to bless
the heavenly Father, is, on the contrary, the despairing cry of an atom
lost in immensity, they desired above all things a religious
reformation, rational and profound. They dreamed of bringing the Church
back to the purity of the ancient days, and saw in the vow of poverty,
understood in its largest sense, the best means of struggling against
the vices of the clergy; but they forgot the freshness, the Italian
gayety, the sunny poetry that there had been in Francis's mission.
Full of admiration for him, they yet desired to enlarge the foundations
of his work, and for that they would neglect no means of influence,
certainly not learning.
This tendency was the dominant one in France, Germany, and England. In
Italy it was represented by a very powerful party, powerful if not in
the number, at least in the authority, of its representatives. This was
the party favored by the papacy. It was the party of Brother Elias and
all the ministers-general of the Order in the thirteenth century, if we
except Giovanni di Parma (1247-1257) and Raimondo Gaufridi (1289-1295).
In Italy a third group, the liberals, was much more numerous; men of
mediocrity to whom monastic life appeared the most facile existence,
vagrant monks happy to secure an aftermath of success by displaying the
new Rule, formed in this country the greater part of the Franciscan
family.
We can understand without difficulty that documents emanating from such
different quarters must bear the impress of their origin. The men who
are to bring us their testimony are combatants in the struggle over the
question of poverty, a struggle which for two centuries agitated the
Church, aroused all consciences, and which had its monsters and its
martyrs.
To determine the value of these witnesses we must first of all discover
their origin. It is evident that the narratives of the no-compromise
party of the right or the left can have but slender value where
controverted points are concerned; whence the conclusion that the
authority of a narrator may vary from page to page, or even from line to
line.
These considerations, so simple that one almost needs to beg pardon for
uttering them, have not, however, guided those who have studied St.
Francis's life. The most learned, like Wadding and Papini, have brought
together the narratives of different biographers, here and there pruning
those that are too contradictory; but they have done this at random,
with neither rule nor method, guided by the impression of the moment.
The long work of the Bollandist Suysken is vitiated by an analogous
fault; fixed in his principle that the oldest documents are always the
best,[2] he takes his stand upon the first Life of Thomas of Celano as
upon an impregnable rock, and judges all other legends by that one.[3]
When we connect the documents with the disturbed circumstances which
brought them into being, some of them lose a little of their authority,
others which have been neglected, as being in contradiction with
witnesses who have become so to say official, suddenly recover credit,
and in fact all gain a new life which doubles their interest.
This altered point of view in the valuation of the sources, this
criticism which I am inclined to call reciprocal and organic, brings
about profound alterations in the biography of St. Francis. By a
phenomenon which may appear strange we end by sketching a portrait of
him much more like that which exists in the popular imagination of Italy
than that made by the learned historians above mentioned.
When Francis died (1226) the parties which divided the Order had already
entered into conflict. That event precipitated the crisis: Brother Elias
had been for five years exercising the functions of minister-general
with the title of vicar. He displayed an amazing activity. Intrenched in
the confidence of Gregory IX. he removed the _Zelanti_ from their
charges, strengthened the discipline even in the most remote provinces,
obtained numerous privileges from the curia, and with incredible
rapidity prepared for the building of the double basilica, destined for
the repose of the ashes of the Stigmatized Saint; but notwithstanding
all his efforts, the chapter of 1227 set him aside and chose Giovanni
Parenti as minister-general.
Furious at this check, he immediately set all influences to work to be
chosen at the following chapter. It even seems as if he paid no
attention to the nomination of Giovanni Parenti, and continued to go on
as if he had been minister.[4]
Very popular among the Assisans, who were dazzled by the magnificence of
the monument which was springing up on the _Hill of Hell_, now become
the _Hill of Paradise_, sure of being supported by a considerable party
in the Order and by the pope, he pushed forward the work on the basilica
with a decision and success perhaps unique in the annals of
architecture.[5]
All this could not be done without arousing the indignation of the
Zealots of poverty. When they saw a monumental poor-box, designed to
receive the alms of the faithful, upon the tomb of him who had forbidden
his disciples the mere contact of money, it seemed to them that
Francis's prophecy of the apostasy of a part of the Order was about to
be fulfilled. A tempest of revolt swept over the hermitages of Umbria.
Must they not, by any means, prevent this abomination in the holy place?
They knew that Elias was terrible in his severities, but his opponents
felt in themselves courage to go to the last extremity, and suffer