w oui ^t-UBRARY ^•LIBRARYO^ ^UIBRARYQ^ ^E-UBRARY0/ ^OFCAllFOfy^ <\\\EUNIVER% <3\ ^LOS-ANGELÔg. ,5»E-UNIVER% ^•LIBRARY^ ^OFCALIFO/?^ ^aim-^ ^AHvaaiB^ ^lOSANGEL£r> ^lO^ANGFLfj^. %il3AIN(13\\V^ ^maina^ ^UIBRARY^ ^LIBRARY^ ^lOSASGELFj> ^OF-CALIFO^ ^OFCALIFO% ^WEUNIVER% A\tf-UNIVER% <3\ — ^UIBRARYgr AME-UNIVERS/a ^lOSANCElfj^. ^UIBRARYO^ %OJITVDJO^ >^lO$ANGElfj> ^•UBRARYQr ^ILIBRARYQ^ UNIVERS/A Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/lifeofstfrancisoOOsaba TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction, xi CHAPTER I. Youth, 1 CHAPTER H. Stages of Conversion, 15 CHAPTER III. h ;hurch about 1209, 28 ] CHAPTER IV. GGLES AND TRIUMPHS, 53 CHAPTER V. t Year op Apostolate, , . . . . . ,71 CHAPTER VI. Francis and Innocent III., ,88 I CHAPTER VII. /o-Torto, 103 Viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ?AGE CHAPTER VIII. PORTIUNCULA, 120 CHAPTER IX. Santa Clara, .147 CHAPTER X. First Attempts to reach the Infidels, . . . . 1G8 CHAPTER XL The Inner Man and Wonder-working, . . . .183 CHAPTER XII. The Chapter-General of 1217, . . . . . . 198 CHAPTER XIII. St. Dominic and St. Francis, CHAPTER XIV. The Crisis of the Order, S&y CHAPTER XV. The Rule of 1221, ......... 252 CHAPTER XVI. The Brothers Minor and Learning, 271 CHAPTER XVII. The Stigmata, 287 TABLE OF CONTEXTS ix PAGE CHAPTER XVIII. The Canticle of the Sun, .297 CHAPTER XIX. The Last Yeab, 308 CHAPTER XX. Francis's Will and Death, 383 Critical Study of the Sources, 847 APPENDIX. Critical Study of the Stigmata and of the Indulgence of August 2, 433 1^ INTRODUCTION In the renascence of history which is in a manner the characteristic of our time, the Middle Ages have been the object of peculiar fondness with both criticism and erudition. We rummage all the dark corners of the libraries, we bring old parchments to light, and in the zeal and ardor we put into our search there is an inde- finable touch of piety. These efforts to make the past live again reveal not merely our curiosity, or the lack of power to grapple with great philosophic problems, they are a token of wisdom and modesty ; we are beginning to feel that the present has its roots in the past, and that in the fields of politics and religion, as in others, slow, modest, persevering toil is that which has the best results. There is also a token of love in this. We love our ancestors of five or six centuries ago, and we mingle not a little emotion and gratitude with this love. So, if one may hope everything of a son who loves his parents, we must not despair of an age that loves history. The Middle Ages form an organic period in the life of humanity. Like all powerful organisms the period began with a long and mysterious gestation ; it had its youth, its manhood, its decrepitude. The end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth mark its full expansion ; it is the twentieth year of life, with its poetry, its dreams, its enthusiasm, its generosity, its dar- ing. Love overflowed with vigor ; men everywhere had xii INTRODUCTION but one desire — to devote themselves to some great and holy cause. Curiously enough, though Europe was more parcelled out than ever, it felt a new thrill run through its entire extent. There was what Ave might call a state of Eu- ropean consciousness. In ordinary periods each people has its own interests, its tendencies, its tears, and its joys ; but let a time of crisis come, and the true unity of the human family will suddenly make itself felt with a strength never be- fore suspected. Each body of water has its own cur- rents, but when the hurricane is abroad they mysteriously intermingle, and from the ocean to the remotest mountain lake the same tremor will upheave them all. It was thus in '89, it was thus also in the thirteenth century. Never was there less of frontier, never, either before or since, such a mingling of nationalities ; and at the present day, with all our highways and railroads, the people live more apart. 1 The great movement of thought of the thirteenth century is above all a religious movement, presenting a double character — it is popular and it is laic. It comes out from the heart of the people, and it looks athwart many uncertainties at nothing less than wresting the sacred things from the hands of the clergy. The conservatives of our time who turn to the thir- 1 The mendicant orders were in their origin a true International. When in the spring of 1216 St. Dominic assembled his friars at Notre Dame de la Prouille, they were found to be sixteen in number, and among them Castilians, Navarese, Normans, French, Languedocians, and even English and Germans. Heretics travelled all over Europe, and nowhere do we find them checked by the diversity of languages. Arnold of Brescia, for example, the famous Tribune of Rome, appeared in France and Switzerland and in the heart of Germany. INTRODUCTION xiii teenth century as to the golden age of authoritative faith make a strange mistake. If it is especially the century of saints, it is also that of heretics. We shall soon see that the two words are not so contradictory as might appear ; it is enough for the moment to point out that the Church, had never been more powerful nor more threatened. There was a genuine attempt at a religious revolution, which, if it had succeeded, would have ended in a universal priesthood, in the proclamation of the rights of the individual conscience. The effort failed, and though later on the Revolution made us all kings, neither the thirteenth century nor the Reformation was able to make us all priests. Herein, no doubt, lies the essential contradiction of our lives and that which periodically puts our national institutions in peril. Politically emancipated, we are not morally or re- ligiously free. 1 The thirteenth century with juvenile ardor undertook this revolution, which has not yet reached its end. In the north of Europe it became incarnate in cathedrals, in the south, in saints. The cathedrals were the lay churches of the thirteenth century. Built by the people for the people, they were originally the true common house of our old cities. Mu- 1 The Reformation only substituted the authority of the book for that of the priest ; it is a change of dynasty and nothing more. As to the majority of those who to-day call themselves free-thinkers, they confuse religious freedom with irreligion ; they choose not to see that in religion as in politics, between a royalty based on divine right and anarchy there is room for a government which may be as strong as the first and a better guarantee of freedom than the second. The spirit of the older time put God outside of the world ; the sovereignty outside of the people ; authority outside of the conscience. The spirit of the new times has the contrary tendency : it denies neither God nor sovereignty nor authority, but it sees them where they really are. xiv INTRODUCTION seuins, granaries, chambers of commerce, halls of justice, depositories of archives, and even labor exchanges, they were all these at once. That art of the Middle Ages which Yictor Hugo and Viollet-le-Duc have taught us to understand and love was the visible expression of the enthusiasm of a people who were achieving communal liberty. Very far from being the gift of the Church, it was in its beginning an unconscious protest against the hieratic, impassive, esote- ric art of the religious orders. We find only laymen in the long list of master-workmen and painters who have left us the innumerable Gothic monuments which stud the soil of Europe. Those artists of genius who, like those of Greece, knew how to speak to the populace without be- ing common, were for the most part humble workmen ; they found their inspiration not in the formulas of the masters of monastic art, but in constant communion with the very soul of the nation. Therefore this renascence, in its most profound features, concerns less the archae- ology or the architecture than the history of a country. While in the northern countries the people were build- ing their own churches, and finding in their enthusiasm an art which was new, original, complete, in the south, above the official, clerical priesthood of divine right they were greeting and consecrating a new priesthood, that of the saints. The priest of the thirteenth century is the antithesis of the saint, he is almost always his enemy. Separated by the holy unction from the rest of mankind, inspiring awe as the representative of an all-powerful God, able by a few signs to perform unheard-of mysteries, with a word to change bread into flesh and wine into blood, he ap- peared as a sort of idol which can do all things for or against you and before which you have only to adore and tremble. INTRODUCTION The saint, on the contrary, was one whose mission was proclaimed by nothing in his apparel, but whose life and words made themselves felt in all hearts and consciences ; he was one who, with no cure of souls in the Church, felt himself suddenly impelled to lift up his voice. The child of the people, he knew all their material and moral woes, and their mysterious echo sounded in his own heart. / Like the ancient prophet of Israel, he heard an imperious voice saying to him : " Go and speak to the children of my people." "Ah, Lord God, I am but a child, I know not how to speak." " Say not, I am but a child, for thou shalt go to all those to whom I shall send thee. Behold I have set thee to-day as a strong city, a pillar of iron and a wall of brass against the kings of Judah, against its princes and against its priests." These thirteenth - century saints were in fact true prophets. Apostles like St. Paul, not as the result of a canonical consecration, but by the interior order of the Spirit, they were the witnesses of liberty against au- thority. The Calabrian seer, Gioacchino di Fiore, hailed the new-born revolution ; he believed in its success and pro- claimed to the wondering world the advent of a new min- istry. He was mistaken. When the priest sees himself vanquished by the prophet he suddenly changes his method. He takes him under his protection, he introduces his harangues into the sacred canon, he throws over his shoulders the priestly chasuble. The days pass on, the years roll by, and the moment comes when the heedless crowd no longer distinguishes between them, and it ends by believ- ing the prophet to be an emanation of the clergy. This is one of the bitterest ironies of history. Francis of Assisi is pre-eminently the saint of the Mid- dle Ages. Owing nothing to church or school he was xvi INTRODUCTION truly Iheodidacty* and if he perhaps did not perceive the revolutionary bearing of his preaching, he at least always refused to be ordained priest. He divined the superi- ority of the spiritual priesthood. The charm of his life is that, thanks to reliable docu- ments, Ave find the man behind the wonder worker. We find in him not merely noble actions, we find in him a life in the true meaning of the word ; I mean, we feel in him both development and struggle. How mistaken are the annals of the Saints in repre- senting him as from the very cradle surrounded with aureole and nimbus ! As if the finest and most manly of spectacles were not that of the man who conquers his soul hour after hour, fighting first against himself, against the suggestions of egoism, idleness, discouragement, then at the moment when he might believe himself victorious, finding in the champions attracted by his ideal those who are destined if not to bring about its complete ruin, at least to give it its most terrible blows. Poor Francis! The last years of his life were indeed a via dolorosa as painful as that where his master sank down under the weight of the cross ; for it is still a joy to die for one's ideal, but what bitter pain to look on in advance at the apotheosis of one's body, while seeing one's soul — I would say his thought — misunderstood and frustrated. If we ask for the origins of his idea we find them ex- clusively among the common people of his time ; he is the incarnation of the Italian soul at the beginning of the thirteenth century, as Dante was to be its incarnation a hundred years later. He was of the people and the people recognized them- selves in him. He had their poetry and their aspirations, 1 Nemo ostendebat mihi quod dcberem facere, sed ipse Altissimus revela- vit mihi quod deberem vivere seciuidem for mam sancti Evangelii. Testa- men turn Fr. INTRODUCTION xvii he espoused their claims, and the very name of his insti- tute had at first a political signification : in Assisi as in most other Italian towns there were majores and minores, the popolo grosso and the popolo minuto; he resolutely placed himself among the latter. This political side of his apostolat e needs to be clearly apprehended if we would understand its amazing success and the wholly unique character of the Franciscan movement in its beginning. As to its attitude toward the Church, it was that of filial obedience. This may perhaps appear strange at first as regards an unauthorized preacher who comes speaking to the world in the name of his own immediate personal inspiration. But did not most of the men of '89 believe themselves good and loyal subjects of Louis XYI. ? The Church was to our ancestors what the fatherland is to us ; we may wish to remodel its government, over- toil its administration, change its constitution, but we do not think ourselves less good patriots for that. In the same way, in an age of simple faith when re- ligious beliefs seemed to be in the very fibre and flesh of humanity, Dante, without ceasing to be a good Catholic, could attack the clergy and the court of Rome with a violence that has never been surpassed. St^ Francis so surely believed that the Church had become unfaithful to her mission that he could speak in his symbolic lan- guage of the widowhood of his Lady Poverty, who from Christ's time to his own had found no husband. How could he better have declared his purposes or revealed his dreams ? What he purposed was far more than the foundation of an order, and it is to do him great wrong thus to restrict his endeavor. He longed for a true awakening of the Church in the name of the evangelical ideal which he had regained. All Europe awoke with a start when it heard of these penitents from a little Umbrian town. xviii INTRODUCTION l^w^s-reported that they had craved a strange privilege from the— eourt of Kome : that of possessing nothing. Men saw them pass by, earning their bread by the labor of their hands, accepting only the bare necessities of bodily sustenance from them to whom they had given with lavish hands the bread of life. The people lifted up their heads, breathing in with deep inspirations the airs of a springtime upon which was already floating the perfume of new flowers. Here and there in the world there are many souls capable of all heroism, if only they can see before them a true leader. St. Francis became for these the guide they had longed for, and whatever was best in humanity at that time leaped to follow in his footsteps. This movement, which was destined to result in the constitution of a new family of monks, was in the begin- ning anti-monastic. It is not rare for history to have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who preached the religion of a personal revelation, with- out ceremonial or dogmatic law, triumphed only on con- dition of being conquered, and of permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a church essen- tially dogmatic and sacerdotal. In the same way the Franciscan movement was orig- inally, if not the protest of the Christian consciousness against monachism, at least the recognition of an ideal singularly higher than that of the clergy of that time. Let us picture to ourselves the Italy of the beginning of the thirteenth century with its divisions, its perpetual warfare, its depopulated country districts, the impossi- bility of tilling the fields except in the narrow circle which the garrisons of the towns might protect ; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging their neighbors ; sieges terminated by un- INTRODUCTION xix speakable atrocities, and after all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, they were in these dis- ordered times the only refuge of peaceful souls and timid hearts. 1 The monks were in great majority de- serters from life, who for motives entirely aside from religion had taken refuge behind the only walls which at this period were secure. Overlook this as we may, forget as we may the demor- alization and ignorance of the inferior clergy, the simony and the vices of the prelates, the coarseness and avarice of the monks, judging the Church of the thirteenth cen- tury only by those of her sons who do her the most honor ; none the less are these the anchorites who flee into the desert to escape from wars and vices, pausing only when they are very sure that none of the world's noises will in- terrupt their meditations. Sometimes they will draw away with them hundreds of imitators, to the solitudes of Clairvaux, of the Chartreuse, of Yallombrosa, of the Camaldoli ; but even when they are a multitude they are alone ; for they are dead to the world and to their breth- ren. Each cell is a desert, on whose threshold they cry beata solitudo, O sola beatitudo. 1 The wealthiest monasteries of France are of the twelfth century or were enlarged at that time: Aries, S. Grilles, S. Sernin, Cluny, Yézelay, Brioude, Issoire, Paray-le-Monial. The same was the case in Italy. Down to the year 1000, 1,108 monasteries had been founded in France. The eleventh century saw the birth of 326 and the twelfth of 702. The convents of Mount Athos in their present state give us a very accurate notion of the great monasteries of Europe at the close of the twelfth century. XX INTRODUCTION The book of the Imitation is the picture of all that is purest in this cloistered life. But is this abstinence from action truly Christian ? No, replied St. Francis. He for his part would do like Jesus, and we may say that his life is an imitation of Christ singularly more real than that of Thomas à Kempis. Jesus went indeed into the desert, but only that he might find in prayer and communion with the heavenly Father the inspiration and strength necessary for keep- ing up the struggle against evil. Far from avoiding the multitude, he sought them out to enlighten, console, and convert them. This is what St. Francis desired to imitate. More than once he felt the seduction of the purely contemplative life, but each time his own spirit warned him that this was only a disguised selfishness ; that one saves oneself only in saving others. When he saw suffering, wretchedness, corruption, in- stead of fleeing he stopped to bind up, to heal, feeling in his heart the surging of waves of compassion. He not only preached love to others ; he himself was ravished with it ; he sang it, and what was of greater value, he lived it. There had indeed been preachers of love before his day, but most generally they had appealed to the lowest selfishness. They had thought to triumph by proving that in fact to give to others is to put one's money out at a usurious interest. "Give to the poor," said St. Peter Chrysologus, 1 " that you may give to yourself ; give him a crumb in order to receive a loaf ; give him a shelter to re- ceive heaven." 1 St. Petrus Chrysologus, sermo viii., de jejunio et eleemosyna. Da pauperi utdes tibi : da micam at accipias totum panem ; da tectum, accipe cœlum. INTRODUCTION xxi There was nothing like this in Francis ; his charity is not selfishness, it is love. He went, not to the whole, who need no physician, but to the sick, the forgotten, the dis- dained. He dispensed the treasures of his heart accord- ing to the need and reserved the best of himself for the poorest and the most lost, for lepers and thieves. The gaps in his education were of marvellous service to him. More learned, the formal logic of the schools would have robbed him of that flower of simplicity which is the great charm of his life ; he would have seen the whole extent of the sore of the Church, and would no doubt have despaired of healing it. If he had known the ecclesiastical discipline he would have felt obliged to ob- serve it ; but thanks to his ignorance he could often vio- late it without knowing it, 1 and be a heretic quite una- wares. We can now determine to what religious family St. Francis belongs. Looking at the question from a somewhat high stand- point we see that in the last analysis minds, like relig- ious systems, are to be found in two great families, -stand- ing, so to say, at the two poles of thought. These two poles are only mathematical points, they do not exist in concrete reality ; but for all that we can set them down on the chart of philosophic and moral ideas. There are religions which look toward divinity and re- ligions which look toward man. Here again the line of demarcation between the two families is purely ideal and artificial ; they often so mingle and blend with one an- other that we have much difficulty in distinguishing them, especially in the intermediate zone in which our civiliza- 1 By what right did lie begin to preach '? By what right did he, a mere deacon, admit to profession and cutoff the hair of a young girl of eighteen ? That is an episcopal function, one which can only devolve even upon priests by an express commission. xxii INTRODUCTION tion finds its place ; but if we go toward the poles we shall find their characteristics growing gradually distinct. In the religions Avhich look toward divinity all effort is concentrated on worship, and especially on sacrifice. The end aimed at is a change in the disposition of the gods. They are mighty kings whose support or favor one must purchase by gifts. Most pagan religions belong to this category and phari- saic Judaism as well. This is also the tendency of cer- tain Catholics of the old school for whom the great thing is to appease God or to buy the protection of the Vir- gin and the saints by means of prayers, candles, and masses. The other religions look toAvard man ; their effort is di- rected to the heart and conscience with the purpose of transforming them. Sacrifice disappears, or rather it changes from the exterior to the interior. God is con- ceived of as a father, always ready to welcome him who comes to him. Conversion, perfection, sanctification be- come the pre-eminent religious acts. Worship and prayer cease to be incantations and become reflection, medita- tion, virile effort ; while in religions of the first class the clergy have an essential part, as intermediaries between heaven and earth, in those of the second they have none, each conscience entering into direct relations with God. It was reserved to the prophets of Israel to formulate, with a precision before unknown, the starting-point of spiritual worship. Bring no more vain offerings; I have a horror of incense, Your new moons, your Sabhaths, and your assemblies ; When you multiply prayers I will not hearken. Your hands are fall of blood, Wash you, make you clean. INTRODUCTION xxiii Put away from before my eyes the evil of your ways, Cease to do evil, Learn to do well. 1 With Isaiah these vehement apostrophes are but flashes of genius, but with Jesus the interior change be- comes at once the principle and the end of the religious life. His promises were not for those who were right with the ceremonial law, or who offered the greatest num- ber of sacrifices, but for the pure in heart, for men of good will. These considerations are not perhaps without their use in showing the spiritual ancestry of the Saint of Assisi. For him, as for St. Paul and St. Augustine, conversion was a radical and complete change, the act of will by which man wrests himself from the slavery of sin and places himself under the yoke of divine authority. Thenceforth prayer, become a necessary act of life, ceases to be a magic formula ; it is an impulse of the heart, it is reflection and meditation rising above the commonplaces of this mortal life, to enter into the mystery of the divine will and conform itself to it ; it is the act of the atom which understands its littleness, but which desires, though only by a single note, to be in harmony with the divine symphony. Ecce adsum Domine, ut faciam voluntatem tuam. When we reach these heights we belong not to a sect, but to humanity ; we are like those wonders of nature which the accident of circumstances has placed upon the territory of this or that people, but which belong to all the world, because in fact they belong to no one, or rather they are the common and inalienable property of the entire human race. Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Michael Angelo,. Rembrandt belong to us all as much as the ruins of Athens or Rome, or, rather, they be- 1 Isaiah i. 10-17. Cf. Joel 2, Psalm 50. xxiv INTRODUCTION long to those who love them most and understand them best. But that which is a truism, so far as men of genius in the domain of imagination or thought are concerned, still appears like a paradox when we speak of men of relig- ious genius. The Church has laid such absolute claim to them that she has created in her own favor a sort of right. It cannot be that this arbitrary confiscation shall endure forever. To prevent it we have not to perform an act of negation or demolition : let us leave to the chapels their statues and their relics, and far from be- littling the saints, let us make their true grandeur shine forth. It is time to say a few words concerning the difficul- ties of the work here presented to the public. History always embraces but a very feeble part of the reality : ignorant, she is like the stories children tell of the events that have occurred before their eyes ; learned, she re- minds us of a museum organized with all the modern im- provements. Instead of making you see nature with its external covering, its diffuse life, its mysterious echoes in your own heart, they offer you a herbarium. If it is difficult to narrate an ordinary event of our own time, it is far more so to describe the great crises where restless humanity is seeking its true path. The first duty of the historian is to forget his own time and country and become the sympathetic and interested contemporary of what he relates ; but if it is difficult to give oneself the heart of a Greek or a Eoman, it is in- finitely more so to give oneself a heart of the thirteenth century. I have said that at that period the Middle Age was twenty years old, and the feelings of the twentieth year are, if not the most fugitive, at least the most dif- ficult to note down. Everyone knows that it is impos- INTRODUCTION XXV sible to recall the feelings of youth with the same clear- ness as those of childhood or mature age. Doubtless we may have external facts in the memory, but we can- not recall the sensations and the sentiments ; the con- fused forces which seek to move us are then all at work at once, and to speak the language of beyond the Rhine, it is the essentially phénoménal hour of the phenomena that we are ; everything in us crosses, intermingles, collides, in desperate conflict : it is a time of diabolic or divine ex- citement. Let a few years pass, and nothing in the world can make us live those hours over again. Where was once a volcano, we perceive only a heap of blackened ashes, and scarcely, at long intervals, will a chance meet- ing, a sound, a word, awaken memory and unseal the fountain of recollection; and even then it is only a flash ; we have had but a glimpse and all has sunk back into shadow and silence. We find the same difficulty when we try to take note of the fiery enthusiasms of the thirteenth century, its poetic inspirations, its amorous and chaste visions — all this is thrown up against a background of coarseness, wretchedness, corruption, and folly. The men of that time had all the vices except triviality, all the virtues except moderation ; they were either ruf- fians or saints. Life was rude enough to kill feeble or- ganisms ; and thus characters had an energy unknown to-day. It was forever necessary to provide beforehand against a thousand dangers, to take those sudden resolu- tions in which one risks his life. Open the chronicle of Fra Salimbeni and you will be shocked to find that the largest place is taken up with the account of the annual expeditions of Parma against the neighboring cities, or of the neighboring cities against Parma. What would it have been if this chronicle, instead of being written by a monk of uncommonly open mind, a lover of music, at xxvi INTRODUCTION certain times an ardent Joachimite, an indefatigable traveller, had been written by a warrior ? And this is not all ; these wars between city and city were complicated with civil dissensions, plots were hatched periodically, conspirators were massacred if they were discovered, or massacred and exiled others in their turn if they were triumphant. 1 When we picture to ourselves this state of things dominated by the grand struggles of the papacy against the empire, heretics, and infidels, we may under- stand how difficult it is to describe such a time. The imagination being haunted by horrible or entranc- ing pictures like those of the frescos in the Gampo Santo of Pisa, men were always thinking of heaven and hell ; they informed themselves about them with the feverish curiosity of emigrants, who pass their days on shipboard in trying to picture that spot in America where in a few days they will pitch their tent. Every monk of any notoriety must have gone through this. Dante's poem is not an isolated work ; it is the noblest result of a condition which had given birth to hundreds of compositions, and Alighieri had little more to do than to co-ordinate the works of his predecessors and vivify them with the breath of his own genius. The unsettled state of men's minds was unimaginable. That unhealthy curiosity which lies at the bottom of the human heart, and which at the present day impels men to seek for refined and even perverse enjoyments, impelled men of that time to devotions which seem like a defiance to common sense. Never had hearts been shaken with such terrors, nor 1 The chronicles of Orvieto (Archivio, storko italiano, t. i., of 1889, pp. 7 and following) are nothing more than a list, as melancholy as they are tedious, of wars, which, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all the places of that region carried on, from the greatest to the smallest. INTRODUCTION XXV ii ever thrilled with, such radiant hopes. The noblest hymns of the liturgy, the St abat and the Dies Irce, come to us from the thirteenth century, and we may well say that never has the human plaint been more agonized. When we look through history, not to find accounts of battles or of the succession of dynasties, but to try to grasp the evolution of ideas and feelings, when we seek above all to discover the heart of man and of epochs, we perceive, on arriving at the thirteenth century, that a fresh wind has blown over the world, the human lyre has a new string, the lowest, the most profound ; one which sings of woes and hopes to which the ancient world had not vibrated. In the breast of -the men of that time we think some- times we feel the beating of a woman's heart : they have exquisite sentiments, delightful inspirations, with absurd terrors, fantastic angers, infernal cruelties. Weakness and fear often make them insincere ; they have the idea of the grand, the beautiful, the ugly, but that of order is want- ing ; they fast or feast ; the notion of the laws of nature, so deeply graven in our own minds, is to them entirely a stranger; the words possible and impossible have for them no meaning. Some give themselves to God, others sell themselves to the devil, but not one feels himself strong enough to walk alone, strong enough to have no need to hold on by some one's skirt. Peopled with spirits and demons nature appeared to them singularly animated ; in her presence they have all the emotions which a child experiences at night before the trees on the roadside and the vague forms of the rocks. Unfortunately, our language is a very imperfect instru- ment for rendering all this ; it is neither musical nor flexible ; since the seventeenth century it has been deemed seemly to keep one's emotions to oneself, and the old 1 xxviii INTRODUCTION words which served to note states of the soul have fallen into neglect; the Imitation and the Fioretti have become untranslatable. More than this, in a history like the present one, we must give a large place to the Italian spirit ; it is evident that in a country where they call a chapel basilica and a tiny house palazzo, or in speaking to a seminarist say " Your Reverence," words have not the same value as on this side of the Alps. The Italians have an imagination which enlarges and simplifies. They see the forms and outlines of men and things more than they grasp their spirit. What they most admire in Michael Angelo is gigantic forms, noble and proud attitudes, while we better understand his secret thoughts, hidden sorrows, groans, and sighs. Place before their eyes a picture by Rembrandt, and more often than not it will appear to them ugly ; its charm cannot be caught at a glance as in those of their artists ; to see it you must examine it, make an effort, and with them effort is the beginning of pain. Do not ask them, then, to understand the pathos of things, to be touched by the mysterious and almost fan- ciful emotion which northern hearts discover and enjoy in the works of the Amsterdam master. No, instead of a forest they want a few trees, standing out clearly against the horizon ; instead of a multitude swarming in the pe- numbra of reality, a few personages, larger than nature, forming harmonious groups in an ideal temple. The genius of a people 1 is all of a piece : they apply to 1 Do not forget that in the thirteenth century Italy was not a mere geographical expression. It was of all the countries of Europe the one which, notwithstanding its partitions, had the clearest consciousness of its unity. The expression profectus et honor Italiœ often appeared from the pen of Innocent III. See, for instance, the bull of April 16, 1198, Mirari cogiimir, addressed particularly to the Assisans. INTRODUCTION xxix history the same processes that they apply to the arts. While the Germanic spirit considers events rather in their evolution, in their complex becoming, the Italian spirit takes them at a given moment, overlooks the shadows, the clouds, the mists, everything that makes the line indistinct, brings out the contour sharply, and thus constructs a very lucid story, which is a delight to the eyes, but which is little more than a symbol of the reality. At other times it takes a man, separates him from the unnamed crowd, and by a labor often unconscious, makes him the ideal type of a whole epoch. 1 Certainly there is in every people a tendency to give themselves a circle of divinities and heroes who are, so to say, the incarnation of its instincts ; but generally that requires the long labor of centuries. The Italian charac- ter will not suffer this slow action ; as soon as it recog- nizes a man it says so, it even shouts it aloud if that is necessary, and makes him enter upon immortality while still alive. Thus legend almost confounds itself with his- tory, and it becomes very difficult to reduce men to their true proportions. We must not, then, ask too much of history. The more beautiful is the dawn, the less one can describe it. The most beautiful things in nature, the flower and the but- terfly, should be touched only by delicate hands. The effort here made to indicate the variegated, waver- ing tints which form the atmosphere in which St. Francis 1 Note what the Fioretti say of Brother Bernard : " Stava solo sulle cime dei monti altissimi contemplando le cose celesti," Fior., 28. The learned historian of Assisi, Mr. Cristofani, has used similar expressions ; speaking of St. Francis, he says : " JSTuovo Ghristo in somma e pero degno d'essere riguardato come la piu gigantesca, la piu splendida, la piu car a tra le grandi figure campeggiantinelV aere del medio evo" {Storia d? Assisi, t. 1., p. 70, ed. of 1885). XXX INTRODUCTION lived is therefore of very uncertain success. It was per- haps presumptuous to undertake it. Happily we are no longer in the time when historians thought they had done the right thing when they had reduced everything to its proper size, contenting them- selves with denying or omitting everything in the life of the heroes of humanity which rises above the level of our every- day experience. No doubt Francis did not meet on the road to Sienna three pure and gentle virgins come from heaven to greet him ; the devil did not overturn rocks for the sake of terrifying him ; but when Ave deny these visions and ap- paritions, we are victims of an error graver, perhaps, than that of those who affirm them. The first time that I was at Assisi I arrived in the middle of the night. When the sun rose, flooding every- thing with warmth and light, the old basilica 1 seemed suddenly to quiver; one might have said that it wished to speak and sing. Giotto's frescos, but now invisible, awoke to a strange life, you might have thought them painted the evening before so much alive the}^ were ; everything was moving without awkwardness or jar. I returned six months later. A scaffold had been put rip in the middle of the nave ; upon it an art critic was examining the paintings, and as the day was overcast he threw upon the walls the beams of a lamp with a reflector. Then you saw arms thrown out, faces grimacing, without unity, without harmony ; the most exquisite figures took on something fantastic and grotesque. He came down triumphant, with a portfolio stuffed with sketches ; here a foot, there a muscle, farther on a bit of face, and I could not refrain from musing on the frescos as I had seen them bathed in sunlight. The sun and the lamp are both deceivers ; they trans- 1 It remains open all night. INTRODUCTION xxxi form what they show ; but if the truth must be told I own to my preference for the falsehoods of the sun. History is a landscape, and like those of nature it is continually changing. Two persons who look at it at the same time do not find in it the same charm, and you yourself, if you had it continually before your eyes, would never see it twice alike. The general lines are permanent, but it needs only a cloud to hide the most important ones, as it needs only a jet of light to bring out such or such a detail and give it a false value. * When I began this page the sun was disappearing be- hind the ruins of the Castle of Crussol and the splendors of the sunset gave it a shining aureola; the light flooded everything, and you no longer saw anywhere the damage which wars have inflicted upon the old feudal manor. I looked, almost thinking I could perceive at the window the figure of the chatelaine . . . Twilight has come, and now there is nothing up there but crumbling walls, a discrowned tower, nothing but ruins and rubbish, which seem to beg for pity. It is the same with the landscapes of history. Narrow minds cannot accommodate themselves to these perpetual transformations : they want anjobjecti^^ the author will study the people as a chemist studies a body. It is very possible that there may be laws for historic evolution and social transformations as exact as those of chemical combinations, and we must hope that in the end they will be discovered ; but for the present there is no purely objective truth of history. To write history we must think it, and to think it is to transform it. Within a few years, it is true, men have believed they had found the secret of objectivity, in the publication of original documents. This is a true prog- ress which renders inestimable service, but here again we must not deceive ourselves as to its significance. All xxxii INTRODUCTION the documents on an epoch or an event cannot usually be published, a selection must be made, and in it will neces- sarily appear the turn of mind of him who makes it. Let us admit that all that can be found is published ; but alas, the most unusual movements have generally the few- est documents. Take, for instance, the religious history of the Middle Ages : it is already a pretty delicate task to collect official documents, such as bulls, briefs, con- ciliary canons, monastic constitutions, etc., but do these documents contain all the life of the Church ? Much is still wanting, and to my mind the movements which se- cretly agitated the masses are much more important, al- though to testify to them we have only a few fragments. Poor heretics, they were not only imprisoned and burned, but their books were destroyed and everything that spoke of them ; and more than one historian, finding scarcely a trace of them in his heaps of documents, for- gets these prophets with their strange visions, these poet- monks who from the depths of their cells made the world to thrill and the papacy to tremble. Objective history is then a utopia. We create God in our own image, and we impress the mark of our person- ality in places where we least expect to find it again. But by dint of talking about the tribunal of history we have made most authors think that they owe to themselves and their readers definitive and irrevocable judgments. It is always easier to pronounce a sentence than to wait, to reserve one's opinion, to re-examine. The crowd which has put itself out to be present at a trial is almost always furious with the judges when they reserve the case for further information ; its mind is so made that it re- quires precision in things which will bear it the least ; it puts questions right and left, as children do ; if you ap- pear to hesitate or to be embarrassed you are lost in its estimation, you are evidently only an ignoramus. INTRODUCTION xxxiii But perhaps below the Areopagites, obliged by their functions to pronounce sentence, there is place at the famous tribunal for a simple spectator who has come in by accident. He has made out a brief and would like very simply to tell his neighbors his opinion. This, then, is not a history ad probandum, to use the ancient formula. Is this to say that I have only desired to give the reader a moment of diversion ? That would be to understand my thought very ill. In the grand spectacles of history as in those of nature there is some- thing divine ; from it our minds and hearts gain a virtue at once pacifying and encouraging, we experience the sal- utary sensation of littleness, and seeing the beauties and the sadnesses of the past we learn better how to judge the present hour. In one of the frescos of the Upper Church of Assisi, Giotto has represented St. Clara and her companions coming out from St. Damian all in tears, to kiss their spiritual father's corpse as it is being carried to its last home. With an artist's liberty he has made the chapel a rich church built of precious marbles. Happily the real St. Damian is still there, nestled under some olive-trees like a lark under the heather ; it still has its ill-made walls of irregular stones, like those which bound the neighboring fields. Which is the more beautiful, the ideal temple of the artist's fancy, or the poor chapel of reality ? No heart will be in doubt. Francis's official historians have done for his biography what Giotto did for his little sanctuary. In general they have done him ill-service. Their embellishments have hidden the real St. Francis, who was, in fact, infinitely nobler than they have made him to be. Ecclesiastical writers appear to make a great mistake in thus adorn- ing the lives of their heroes, and only mentioning their edifying features. They thus give occasion, even to the xxxiv INTKODUCTION most devout, to suspect their testimony. Besides, by thus surrounding their saints with light they make them superhuman creatures, having nothing in common with us ; they are privileged characters, marked with the divine seal ; they are, as the litanies say, vials of election, into which God has poured the sweetest perfumes ; their sanctity is revealed almost in spite of themselves ; they are born saints as others are born kings or slaves, their life is set out against the golden background of a tryptich, and not against the sombre background of reality. By such means the saints, perhaps, gain something in the respect of the superstitious ; but their lives lose something of virtue and of communicable strength. For- getting that they were men like ourselves, we no longer hear in our conscience the command, " Go and do like- wise." It is, then, a work of piety to seek behind the legend for the history. Is it presumptuous to ask our readers to try to understand the thirteenth century and love St. Francis ? They will be amply rewarded for the effort, and will soon find- an unexpected charm in these too meagre landscapes, these incorporate souls, these sickly imaginations which will pass before their eyes. Love is the true key of history. A book has always a great number of authors, and the following pages owe much to the researches of others ; I have tried in the notes to show the whole value of these debts. I have also had colaborers to whom it will be more dif- ficult for me to express my gratitude. I refer to the librarians of the libraries of Italy and their assistants ; it is impossible to name them all, their faces are better known to me than their names, but I would here say that during long months passed in the various collections of INTRODUCTION XXXV the Peninsula', all, even to the most humble employees, have shown a tireless helpfulness even at those periods of the year when the number of attendants was the small- est. Professor Alessandro Leto, who, barely recovered from a grave attack of influenza, kindly served as my guide among the archives of Assisi, deserves a very particular mention. To the Syndic and municipality of that city I desire also to express my gratitude. I cannot close without a warm remembrance to the spiritual sons of St. Francis dispersed in the mountains of Umbria and Tuscany. Dear dwellers in St. Damian, Portiuncula, the Carceri, the Yerna, Monte Colombo, you perhaps remember the strange pilgrim who, though he wore neither the frock nor the cord, used to talk with you of the Seraphic Father with as much love as the most pious Franciscan ; you used to be surprised at his eagerness to see everything, to look at everything, to thread all the unexplored paths. You often tried to restrain him by telling him that there was not the smallest relic, the most meagre indulgence in the far-away grottos to which he was dragging you, but you always ended by going with him, thinking that none but a Frenchman could be possessed by a devotion so fervent and so imprudent. Thank you, pious anchorites of Greccio, thank you for the bread that you went out and begged when I arrived at your hermitage benumbed with cold and hunger. If 3*011 read these lines, read here my gratitude and also a little admiration. You are not all saints, but nearly all of you have hours of saintliness, flights of pure love. If some pages of this book give you pain, turn them over quickly ; let me think that others of them will give you pleasure, and will make the name you bear, if possi- ble, still more precious to you than it now is, LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS CHAPTER I YOUTH Assisi is to-day very much what it was six or seven hundred years ago. The feudal castle is in ruins, but the aspect of the city is just the same. Its long-deserted streets, bordered by ancient houses, lie in terraces half- way up the steep hill-side. Above it Mount Subasio 1 proudly towers, at its feet lies outspread all the Umbrian plain from Perugia to Spoleto. The crowded houses clamber up the rocks like children a-tiptoe to see all that is to be seen; they succeed so well that every window gives the whole panorama set in its frame of rounded hills, from whose summits castles and villages stand sharply out against a sky of incomparable purity. These simple dwellings contain no more than rive or six little rooms, 2 but the rosy hues of the stone of which they are built give them a wonderfully cheerful air. The one in which, according to the story, St. Francis was born has almost entirely disappeared, to make room for a church ; but the street is so modest, and all that remains 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. ? As in the majority of Tuscan cities the dimensions of the houses were formerly fixed by law. 2 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS of the palazzo del genitori di San Francesco is so precisely like the neighboring houses that the tradition must be correct. Francis entered into glory in his lifetime ; it would be surprising if a sort of worship had not from the first been centred around the house in which he saw the light and where he passed the first twenty-five years of his life. He was born about 1182. 1 The biographies have pre- served to us few details about his parents. 2 His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a wealthy cloth-merchant. We know how different was the life of the merchants of that 1 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 im- probable. 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. - 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! " Quœ vero" says Father Suysken, S. J., il de ejus gentUitio insigni dissent Waddingus, non lubet mild aUingere. Factis et rirtutibus eluxit S. Francisais non proavorum insignibus out titulis, quos nee 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 very soon marvellous incidents begin to gather around this nucleus until it becomes unrecog- nizable. Bartholomew of Pisa has preserved it in almost its primitive form. Conform., 28a 2. Francis certainly had several brothers [3 Soc, 9. Mater . . . quœ cum prœ ceteris filiis dUigebat], but they have left no trace in history except the incident related farther on. Vide p. 44. Christofani publishes several official pieces concerning Angela, St. Francis's brother, and his descendants: Storie d 1 Assist, vol. i., p. 78 ff. In these documents Angelo is called Angelus Fke, and his son Johan- nectus oli.n Angeli domine Pier, appellations which might be cited in favor of the noble origin of Pica. YOUTH 3 period from what it is to-day. A great- portion of their time was spent in extensive journeys for the purchase of goods. Such tours were little short of expeditions. The roads being insecure, a strong escort was needed for the journey to those famous fairs where, for long weeks at a time, merchants from the most remote parts of Europe were gathered together. In certain cities, Montpellier for example, the fair was perpetual. Benjamin of Tudela shows us that city frequented by all nations, Christian and Mohammedan. " One meets there merchants from Africa, from Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Gaul, Spain, and England, so that one sees men of all lan- guages, with the Genoese and the Pisans." Among all these merchants the richest were those who dealt in textile stuffs. They were literally the bankers of the time, and their heavy wagons were often laden with the sums levied by the popes in England 01 Prance. Their arrival at a castle was one of the great events. They were kept as long as possible, everyone being eager for the news they brought. It is easy to understand how close must have been their relations with the no- bility ; in certain countries, Provence for example, the merchants were considered as nobles of a second order. 1 Bernardone often made these long journeys ; he went even as far as France, and by this we must surely un- derstand Northern France, and particularly Champagne, which was the seat of commercial exchange between Northern and Southern Europe. He was there at the very time of his son's birth. The mother, presenting the child at the font of San Eufino," had him baptized by the name of John, but the father 1 Documentary History of Languedoc, iii.. p. 607. - The Cathedral of Assisi. To tins day all trie children of the town are baptized there ; the other churches are without fonts. 4 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS on his return chose to call him Francis. 1 Had he al- îeady determined on the education he was to give the child ; did he name him thus because he even then in- tended to bring him up after the French fashion, to make a little Frenchman of him ? It is by no means improb- able. Perhaps, indeed, the name was only a sort of grateful homage tendered by the Assisan burgher to his noble clients beyond the Alps. However this may be, the child was taught to speak French, and always had a special fondness for both the language and the country. 2 These facts about Bernardo-lie are of real importance ; they reveal the influences in the midst of which Francis grew up. Merchants, indeed, play a considerable part in the religious movements of the thirteenth century. Their calling in some sense forced them to become col- porters of ideas. ^What else could they do, on arriving in a country, but answer those who asked for news? And the news most eagerly looked for was religious news, for men's minds were turned upon very different subjects then from now. They accommodated themselves to the popular wish, observing, hearkening everywhere, keeping eyes and ears open, glad to find anything to tell ; and little by little many of them became active propagandists of ideas concerning which at first they had been simply curious. The importance of the part thus played by the mer- ' 3 Soc, 1 ; 2 Cel., 1,1. Vide also 3 Soc. edition of Pesaro, 1831. The langue d'oïl was at this epoch the international language of Europe ; in Italy it was the language of games and tourneys, and was spoken in the petty princely courts of Northern Italy. Vide Dante, De vulgari eloquio, lib. I., cap. x. Brunetto Latini wrote in French he- cause "the speech of France is more delectable and more common to all people." At the other end of Europe the Abbot of Stade, in West- phalia, spoke of the nobility of the Gallic dialect. Ann. 1224 apud Pertz, Script, xvi. We shall find St. Francis often making allusions to the tales of the Pound Table and the Ohtinson rip Roland. YOUTH 5 chants as they came and went, everywhere sowing the new ideas which they had gathered up in their travels, has not been put in a clear enough light ; they were often, unconsciously and quite involuntarily, the carriers of ideas of all kinds, especially of heresy and rebellion. It was they who made the success of the "Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Humiliati, and many other sects. Thus Bernardone, without dreaming of such a thing, be- came the artisan of his son's religious vocation. The tales which he brought home from his travels seemed at first, perhaps, not to have aroused the child's attention, but they were like germs a long time buried, which suddenly, un- der a warm ray of sunlight, bring forth unlooked-for fruit. The boy's education was not carried very far ; 1 the school was in those days overshadowed by the church. Thejpriests of -Saa Oiorgio-w ere his teach ers/ and taught him a little Latin. This language was spoken in Umbria until toward the middle of the^HïîHœntrr-eentury ; "every one understood it and spoke it a little ; it was still the language of sermons and of political deliberations. 3 He learned also to write, but with less success ; all through his life we see him take up the pen only on rare occasions, and for but a few words. 4 The autograph of 1 We must not be led astray by certain remarks upon his ignorance, from which one might at first conclude that he knew absolutely noth- ing ; for example, 2 Cel.. 3, 45 : Quamris 7iomo hie beatus nullis fuerU 8CÎenttœ studiis innutritus. This evidently refers to science such as the Franciscans soon came to apprehend it. and to theology in particular. The close of the passage in Celano is itself an evident proof of this, 2 Bon. , 219 ; Cf. A. SS , p. 560a. 1 Cel. , 23. 8 Ozanam, Documents inédits pour servir à VhUioire littéraire cV Italie (hi Ville au XIITe siècle. Paris, 1851, 8vo, pp. 65, 68, 71, 73. Fauriel. Diinte et les origines de la littérature italienne. Paris, 1854, 2 vols., 8vo. ii., p. 332, 379, 429. 4 V. 3 Soc, 51 and 67 ; 2 Cel., 3, 110 ; Bon., 55 : 2 Cel., 3, 99 ; Eccl., 6. Bernard de Besse, Turin MS., fo. 96a, calls Brother Leo the sec- retary of St. Francis. LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS Sacro-Convento, which appears to be entirely authentic, shows extreme awkwardness ; in general he dictated, signing his letters by a simple r, the symbol of the cross of Jesus. 1 That part of his education which was destined to have most influence upon his life was the French language, 2 which he perhaps spoke in his own family. It has been rightly said that to know two languages is to have two souls ; in learning that of France the boy felt his heart thrill to the melody of its youthful poetry, and his imagi- nation was mysteriously stirred with dreams of imitating the exploits of the French cavaliers. But let us not anticipate. His early life was tl x other children of his age. In the quarter of the towr where his house is still shown no vehicles are ever seen ; from morning till night the narrow streets are given over to the children. They play there in many groups, frol- icking with an exquisite charm, very different from the little Romans, who, from the time they are six or seven years old, spend hours at a time squatting behind a pillar, or in a corner of a wall or a ruin, to play dice or " mor- ra," putting a passionate ferocity even into their play. In Umbria, as in Tuscan} 7 , children love above all things games in which they can make a parade ; to play at sol- diers or procession is the supreme delight of Assisan children. Through the day they keep to the narrow streets, but toward evening they go, singing and dancing, to jjfjfe of the open squares of the city. These squares are one of the charms of Àssisi. Every few paces an interval occurs between the houses looking toward the plain, and you find a delightful terrace, shaded by a few trees, the very place for enjoying the sunset without 1 See page 357, n. 8. Bon., 51 and 308. 2 1 Cel., 16 ; 3 Soc, 10; 23 ; 24 ; 33 ; 2 Cel., 1. 8; 3. 67. See also the Testament of St. Clara and the Speculum, 119a. YOUTH 7 losing one of its splendors. Hither no doubt came often the son of Bernardone, leading one of those farandoles which you may -see there to this day : from his very baby- hood he was a prince among the children. Thomas of Celano draws an appalling picture of the education of that day. He describes parents inciting their children to vice, and driving them by main force to wrong-doing. Francis responded only too quickly to these unhappy lessons. 1 His father's profession and the possibly noble origin of his mother raised him almost to the level of the titled families of the country; 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, 2 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 1 Primum nam que cumfari tel baîbutire incipiunt, turpia quœdam et execrabiWt vdde signis et wcîbus edocentur pueriii nondum nati: et cum tempus ablactationis adcenerit quœlamluxu et lancina plena non solum fari sed et operari coguntur . , . . Sed et cum paulo pluscv.lum œtate profecerini, se ipsis impellentibus, semper ad détériora opera dilabuntur.- 1 Cel., 1. 2 2 Cel., 1. Cf. Conform.. 14a, 1. There is nothing impossible in her having been of Provencal origin, hut there is nothing to indicate it in any document worthy of credence. She was no doubt of noble stock, for official documents always give her the title Domina. Cristofani I., p. 78 ff. Cf. Matrem honestissimam fiabuit. 3 Soc, Edition of Pesaro, 1831, p. 17. 8 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS am very sure that, if it pleases God, lie will become a good Christian." 1 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. 2 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, 3 and the frankness of the early biographers was, no doubt, one of the causes which most effectively con- tributed to their definitive condemnation three years later. 4 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, buffoon- eries, pranks, prodigalities, he ended by achieving a sort of celebrity. He was forever in the streets with his com- panions, compelling attention by his extravagant or fan- tastic attire. Even at night the joyous company kept 1 The reading given by the Conform., 14a, 1, Meriiorum gratia del filium ipsum noverilis affuturum, seems better than that of 2 Cel., 1, 1. Mvltorum gratia Dei jiliorum patrem ipsum noveritis affuturum. Cf. 3 Soc, 2. - Bernardo of Besse, Turin MS., 102b. : An integer carne desideram . quod non extorsisset a Sancto . . . meruit obtinere a Deo quod virgo esset. Cf. Conform., 211a, 1, and A. SS., p. 560f. 3 11 In ilia antiphona quœ incipit : Hie mr in vanitatibus nutritu* insolenter, flat talis mutatis : Divinis karismatibus preventus est dé- mériter. " Archive vi., p. 35. 4 Vide p. 395, the decision of the chapter of 1263 ordaining the de- struction of legends earlier than that of Bonaventura. YOUTH 9 up their merrymakings, causing the town to ring with their noisy songs. 1 At this very time the troubadours were roaming over the towns of Northern Italy 2 and bringing brilliant fes- tivities 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 an Cy/consi derate, carefully abstaining from every base or indecent utterance. 3 Already his chief aspiration Avas to rise above the commonplace. Tortured with the desire for that which is far off and high, 4 he had conceived a sort of passion for chivalry, an d 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 1 1 Cel., 1 and 2; 89; 3 Soc, 2. Cf. A. SS., 560c. Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. hist, lib., 29, cap. 97. 2 Pierre Vidal was at the court of Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, about 1195. and liked his surroundings so well that he desired to estab- lish himself there. K. Bartsch, Piere VidaVs Lieder, Berlin, 1857, n. 41. Ern. Monaci, Testi anticld provenzali, Rome, 1889, col. 67. One should read this piece to have an idea of the fervor with which this poet shared the hopes of Italy and desired its independence. This political note is found again in a tenson of Manfred II. Lancia, addressed to Pierre Vidal. (V. Monaci, loc. cit., col. 68.) — Gaucelme Faidit was also at this court as well as Raimbaud of Yacqueyras (1180-1207). — Folquet de Romans passed nearly all his life in Italy. Bernard of Yentadour (1145-1195), Peirol of Auvergne (1180-1220), and many others abode there a longer or shorter time. Very soon the Italians began to sing in Provencal, among others this Manfred Lancia, and Albert, Marquis of Malaspina (1162-1210), Pietro della Caravana, who in 1196 stirred up the Lombard towns against Henry VI., Pietro della Mula, who about 1200 was at the court of Cortemiglia. Fragments from these poets may be found in Monaci, op. cit. y col. 69 ff. 3 3 Soc, 3 ; 2 Cel., 1, 1. 4 Cum met ghriosus ammo et nollet aliquem se prœcellere, Giord., 10. 10 LIFE OF ST. FKAXCIS 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 J3ut 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. 1 Bernardone had been well pleased with his son's com- mercial aptitude in the early days when the } r oung 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. 2 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. 3 All this time political events were hurrying on in Um- bria 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 1 1 Cel., 17; 3 Soc, 3 ; Bon., 7. Cf. A. SS., p. 562. 2 1 Cel., 2 ; Bon., 6 ; Vit. sec. apud, A. SS., p. 560. s 3 Soc, 9. YOUTH 11 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 conscious- ness 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 illu- sory. Henry YL, the successor of Barbarossa (1183- 1196), laid Italy under a yoke of bon ; he might perhaps in the end have assured the domination of the empire, if his career had not been suddenly cut short by a prema- ture 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. 1 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 op- pressed the country. Conrad of Suabia was forced to yield at mercy, and to go to Xarni to put his submission into the hands of two cardinals. Like the practical folk that they were, the Assisans did not hesitate an instant. Xo sooner was the count on J In 1174 Assisi was taken by the chancellor of the empire, Christian, Archbishop of Mayence. A. Cristofani, i., p. 69. 1 2 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS the road to Nanii than they rushed to the assault of the castle. The arrival of envoys charged to take posses- sion of it as a pontifical domain by no means gave them pause. Not one stone of it was left upon another. 1 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 pop da- tion 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 towns- people 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, 2 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 1 All these events are related in the G est a Innocenta 111. ab audore coœtaneo, edited by Baluze : Migne, Inn. op., vol. i., col. xxiv. See especially the letter of Innocent, Kectoribus Tusciœ : Mirari cogimur, of April 16, 1198. Migne, vol. i., col. 75-77. Potthast, No. 82. 2 See Luigi Bonazzi. Storia di Perugia, 2 vols., 8vo. Perugia, 1875- 1879, vol. i., cap. v., pp. 257-322. YOUTH* 13 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. 1 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,- passed the time of his captivity, which lasted an entire year. He greatly aston- shed his companions by his lightness of heart. Very •ften they thought him almost crazy. Instead of pass- ing 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 glori- ous adventures, and always ended by saying : " You will see that one day I shall be adored by the whole world." 3 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 frank- ness 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 al- 1 3 Soc. . 4 ; 2 Cel.. 1, 1. Cristofani, op. cit.. i. , p. 88 ff. : Bonazzi. op. cit.. p. 257. 2 3 Soc. , 4. 3 3 Soc., 4; 2 Cel.. 1, 1. 14 LIFE OF ST. FRANC I. ^ liances without autliorization of the commons. 1 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 achiev- ing 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 ac- corded him by one of his compatriots. 2 The agreement being made the prisoners detained at Perugia were released, and Francis returned to Assisi. He was twenty-two years old. 1 See this arbitration in Cristofani, op. cit., p. 93 ff. 2 Cristofani, loc. cit., p. 70. CHAPTER- II STAGES OF CONVERSION Spring 1204 — Spring 1206 On his return to Assisi Francis at once resumed his former mode of life ; perhaps he even tried in some de- gree to make up for lost time. Fêtes, games, festivals, and dissipations began again. He did his part in them so well that he soon fell gravely ill. 1 For long weeks he looked death so closely in the face that the physical crisis brought about a moral one. Thomas of Celano has pre- served for us an incident of Francis's convalescence. He was regaining strength little by little and had begun to go about the house, when one day he -felt a desire to walk abroad, to contemplate nature quîetîy, and so take hold again of life. Leaning oh a stick he bent his steps toward the city gate._ v The nearest one, called Porta Xuova, is the very one which opens upon the finest scenery. Immediately on passing through it one finds one's self in the open country ; a fold of the hill hides the city, and cuts off every sound that might come from it. Before you lies the winding road to Foligno ; at the' left the imposing mass of Mount Subasio ; at the right the Umbrian plain with its farms, its villages, its cloud-like hills, on whose slopes pines, cedars, oaks, the vine, and the olive-tree shed abroad an incomparable brightness and animation. The whole 1 1 Cel., 3; cf. Bon., 8. and A. SS., p. 563c 16 LIFE OF ST. FKAKCIS country sparkles with beauty, a beauty harmonious and thoroughly human, that is, made to the measure of man. Francis had hoped by this sight to recover the de- licious sensations of his youth. With the sharpened sensibility of the convalescent he breathed in the odors of the spring-time, but spring-time did not come, as he had expected, to his heart. This smiling nature had for him only a message of sadness. He had believed that the breezes of this beloved country-side would carry away the last shudders of the fever, and instead he felt in his heart a discouragement a thousand-fold more painful than any physical ill. The miserable emptiness of his life suddenly appeared before him; he Avas terrified at his solitude, the solitude of a great soul in which there is no altar. Memories of the past assailed him with intolerable bit- terness ; he was seized with a disgust of himself, his former ambitions seemed to him ridiculous or despicable. He went home overwhelmed with the weight of a new suffering. In such hours of moral anguish man seeks a refuge either in love or in faith. Unhappily the family and friends of Francis were incapable of understanding him. As to religion, it was for him, as for the greater number of his contemporaries, that crass fetichism with Christian terminology which is far from having entirely disap- peared. With certain men, in fact, piety consists in mak- ing one's self right with a king more powerful than any other, but also more severe and capricious, who is called God. One proves one's loyalty to him as to other sovereigns, by putting his image more or less everywhere, and punctually paying the imposts levied by his minis- ters. If you are stingy, if you cheat, you run the risk of being severely chastised, but there are courtiers around the king who willingly render services. For a reason- STAGES OF CONVERSION 17 able recompense they will seize a favorable moment to adroitly make away with the sentence of your condem- nation or to slip before the prince a form of plenary ab- solution which in a moment of good humor he will sign without looking at it. 1 Such was the religious basis upon which Francis had lived up to this time. He did not so much as dream of seeking the spiritual balm which he needed for the heal- ing of his wounds. By a holy violence he was to arrive at last at a pure and virile faith ; but the road to this point is long, and sown thick with obstacles, and at the moment at which we have arrived he had not yet entered upon it, he did not even suspect its existence ; all he knew was that pleasure leads to nothingness, to satiety and self -contempt. He knew this, and yet he was about to throw himself once more into a life of pleasure. The body is so weak, so prone to return to the old paths, that it seeks them of itself, the moment an energetic will does not stop it. Though no longer under any illusion with respect to it, Francis returned to his former life. Was he trying to divert his mind, to forget that day of bitter thought ? We might suppose so, seeing the ardor with which he threw himself into his new projects. 2 An opportunity offered itself for him to realize his dreams of glory. A knight of Assisi, perhaps one of those who had been in captivity with him at Perugia, was pre- paring to go to Apulia under orders from Count Gen- 1 It is enough to have lived in the country of Xaples to know that there is nothing exaggerated in this picture. I am much surprised that intelligent and good men fancy that to change the religious for- mula of these people would suffice to transform them. What a mis- take ! To-day, as in the time of Jesus, the important matter is not to adore on Mount Moriah or Mount Zion, but to adore in spirit and in truth. 2 1 Cel.. 3 and 4. IS LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS tile. 1 The latter was to join Gaultier do Brienne, who was in the south of Italy righting on the side of Innocent III. Gaultier's renown was immense all through the Peninsula ; he was held to be one of the most gallant knights of the time. Francis's heart bounded with joy ; it seemed to him that at the side of such a hero he should soon cover himself with glory. His departure was decided upon, and he gave himself up, without reserve, to his joy. He made his preparations with ostentatious prodigal- ity. His equipment, of a princely luxury, soon became the universal subject of conversation. It was all the more talked about because the chief of the expedition, ruined perhaps by the revolution of 1202 or by the ex- penses of a long captivity, was constrained to order things much more modestly. 2 But with Francis kindli- ness was much stronger than love of display. He gave his sumptuous clothing to a poor knight. The biogra- phies do not say whether or not it was to the very one whom he was to accompany. 3 To see him running hither and thither in all the bustle of preparation one would 1 3 Soc , 5. In the existing state of the documents it is impossible to know whom this name designates, for at that time it was borne by a number of counts who are only to be distinguished by the names of their castles. The three following are possible : 1. Gentile comes de Campilio, who in 1215 paid homage for his property to' the commune of Orvieto : Le antichecronaclie di Orvieto, Arch, stor. ital.,5th series., 1889, iii., p. 47. 2. Gentilis come* filitis Alberid, who with others had made donation of a monastery to the Bishop of Foligno : Confirmatory Bull Ineminenti of April 10, 1210 : Ughelli, Italia Sacra, 1, p. 697 ; Pott- hast, 3974. 3. Gentilis comes ManupeUi ; whom we find in July, 1200, assuring to Palermo the victory over the troops sent by Innocent III. against Marckwald; Huillard-Bréholles, Hist dipl.A. p., 46 ff. Cf. Pot- thast, 1126. Gesta Innocent?'. Migne, vol. i.. xxxii, ff. Cf. Huillard- Bréholles. loc. cit., pages 60, 84. 89. 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a mere adjective ; the 3 Soc. say Gentile nomine. M Cel.. 4; 3 Soc, 5. 3 3 Soc, 6 ; 2 Cel., 1, 2 ; Bon., 8. STAGES OF CONVERSION 19 have thought him the son of a great lord. His compan- ions were doubtless not slow to feel chafed by his ways and to promise themselves to make him cruelly expiate them. As for him, he perceived nothing of the jealousies which he was exciting, and night and day he thought only of his future glory. In his dreams he seemed to see his parents' house completely transformed. Instead of bales of cloth he saw there only gleaming bucklers hanging on the walls, and arms of all kinds as in a seigno- rial castle. He saw himself there, beside a noble and beautiful bride, and he never suspected that in this vision there was any presage of the future which was reserved for him. Never had any one seen him so communicative, so radiant ; and when he was asked for the hundredth time whence came all this joy, he would reply with surprising assurance : " I know that I shall become a great prince." 1 The day of departure arrived at last. Francis on horseback, the little buckler of a page on his arm, bade adieu to his natal city with joy, and with the little troop took the road to Spoleto which winds around the base of Mount Subasio. What happened next? The documents do not say. They confine themselves to reporting that that very even- ing Francis had a vision which decided him to return to Assisi. 2 Perhaps it would not be far from the truth to conjecture that once fairly on the way the young no- bles took their revenge on the son of Bernardone for his airs as of a future prince. At twenty years one hardly pardons things like these. If, as we are often assured, there is a pleasure unsuspected by the profane in getting even with a stranger, it must be an almost divine delight to get even with a young coxcomb upon whom one has to exercise so righteous a vengeance. 1 1 Cel.. 5 : 3 Soc, Ô : 2 Cel., 1. 2 ; Bon.. 9. 2 3 Soc. 6; Bou. : 9 ; 2 Cel., 1, 2. 20 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS Arriving at Spoleto, Francis took to his bed. A fever was consuming him ; in a few hours he had seen all his dreams crumble away. The very next day he took the road back to Assisi. 1 So unexpected a return made a great stir in the little city, and was a cruel blow to his parents. As for him, he doubled his charities to the poor, and sought to keep aloof from society, but his old companions came flock- ing about him from all quarters, hoping to find in him once more the tireless purveyor of their idle wants. He let them have their way. Nevertheless a great change had taken place in him. Neither pleasures nor work could long hold him ; he spent a portion of his days in long country rambles, often accompanied by a friend most different from those whom until now we have seen about him. The name of this friend is not known, but from certain indications one is inclined to believe that he was Bombarone da Bevig- lia, the future Brother Elias. - •3 Soc. 6 ; 2 Cel., 1, 2. 2 These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him about them (2 Cel., 3, 68, and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other hand, nothing forbids his having been in- formed on this matter by Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an» old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, " To-day, two infants were born — this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst " — of having been invented by the zelanti against Brother Elias. It is evident 'that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis ?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question. ' There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at As- sisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage trimmer (suebat cult- rii8 et docebat pverulog psnlterium légère, Salimbene, p. 402) he was scriptor at Bologna (Eccl. , 13). And from the psychological point of STAGES OF CONVERSION 21 Francis now went back to his reflections at the time of his recovery, but with less of bitterness. His own heart and his friend agreed in saying to hirn that it is possible no longer to trust either in pleasure or in glory and yet to find worthy causes to which to consecrate one's life. It is at this moment that religious thought seems to have awaked in him. From the moment that he saw this new way of life his desire to run in it had all the fiery im- petuosity which he put into all his actions. He was continually calling upon his friend and leading him apart into the most sequestered paths. But intense conflicts are indescribable. We struggle, we suffer alone. It is the nocturnal wrestling of Beth- el, mysterious and solitary. The soul of Francis was great enough to endure this tragic duel. His friend had marvellously understood his part in this contest. He gave a few rare counsels, but much of the time he con- tented himself with manifesting his solicitude by follow- ing Francis everywhere and never asking to know more than he could tell him. Often Francis directed his steps to a grotto in the country near Assisi, which he entered alone. This rocky cave concealed in the midst of the olive trees became for faithful Franciscans that which Gethsemane is for Chris- tians. Here Francis relieved his overcharged heart by heavy groans. Sometimes, seized with a real horror for the • view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the passage, 1 Cel., 6, differs in the different manuscripts (cf. A. SS. and Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the latter's fall. Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of Assisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from Assisi in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be that of which we are about to speak. 22 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS disorders of his youth, he would implore mercy, but the greater part of the time his face was turned toward the future; feverishly he sought for that higher truth to which he longed to dedicate himself, that pearl of great price of which the gospel speaks: "Whosoever seeks, finds ; he who asks, receives ; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened." AVhen he came out after long hours of seclusion the pallor of his countenance, the painful tension of his feat- ures told plainly enough of the intensity of his asking and the violence of his knocks. 1 The inward man, to borrow- the language of the mystics, was not yet formed in him, but it needed only the oc- casion to bring about the final break with the past. The occasion soon presented itself. His friends were making continual efforts to induce him to take up his old habits again. One day he in- vited them all to a sumptuous banquet. They thought they had conquered, and as in old times they proclaimed him king of the revels. The feast was prolonged far into the night, and at its close the guests rushed out into the streets, which they filled with song and uproar. Sud- denly they perceived that Francis was no longer with them. After long searching they at last discovered him far behind them, still holding in his hand his sceptre of king of misrule, but plunged in so profound a revery that he seemed to be riveted to the ground and uncon- scious of all that was going on. "What is the matter with you?" they cried, bustling about him as if to awaken him. " Don't you see that he is thinking of taking a wife ? " said one. " Yes," answered Francis, arousing himself and look- ing at them with a smile which they did not recognize, 1 1 Cel., 6 ; 2 Cel., 1, 5 ; 3 Soc, 8, 12 ; Bon., 10, 11, 12. STAGES OF CONVERSION 23 " I am thinking of taking a wife mure beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine." 1 This reply marks a decisive stage in his inner life. By it he cut the last links which bound him to trivial pleas- ures. It remains for us to see through what struggles he was to give himself to God, after having torn himself free from the world. His .friends, probably understood nothing of all that had taken place, but he had become aware of the abyss that was opening between them and him. They soon accepted the situation. - As for himself, no longer having any reason for caution, he gave himself up more than ever to his passion for solitude. If he often wept over his past dissipations and wondered how he could have lived so long without tasting the bitterness of the dregs of the enchanted cup, he never allowed himself to be overwhelmed with vain regrets. The poor had remained faithful to him. They gave him an admiration of which he knew himself to be un- worthy, yet which had for him an infinite sweetness. The future grew bright to him in the light of their gratitude, of the timid, trembling affection which they dared not utter but which his heart revealed to him ; this worship which he does not deserve to-day he will deserve to-morrow, at least he promises himself to do all he can to deseiwe it. To understand these feelings one must understand the condition of the poor of a place like Assisi. In an agri- cultural country poverty does not, as elsewhere, almost inevitably involve moral destitution, that degeneration of the entire human being which renders charity so diffi- cult. Most of the poor persons whom Francis knew were in straits because of war, of bad harvests, or of ill- ness. In such cases material succor is but a small part. Sympathy is the thing needed above 'all. Francis had treasures of it to lavish upon them. 1 3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel.. 7; 2 Cel., 1. 3 ; 3 Soc, 13. 24 LIFE OF ST. FRAWCIS He Avas well requited. All sorrows are sisters ; a secret intelligence establishes itself between troubled hearts, however diverse their griefs. The poor people felt that their friend also suffered ; they did not precisely know with what, but they forgot their own sorrows in pitying their benefactor. Suffering is the true cement of love. For men to love each other truly, they must have shed tears together. As yet no influence strictly ecclesiastic had been felt by Francis. Doubtless there was in his heart that leaven of Christian faith which enters one's being without his being aware ; but the interior transformation which was going on in him was as yet the fruit of his own intuition. This period was drawing to a close. His thought was soon to find expression, and by that very act to receive the stamp of external circumstances. Christian instruc- tion will give a precise form to ideas of which as yet he has but vague glimpses, but he will find in this form a frame in which his thought will perhaps lose some- thing of its originality and vigor ; the new wine will be put into old wine-skins. By degrees he was becoming calm, was finding in the contemplation of nature joys which up to this time he had sipped but hastily, almost unconsciously, and of which he was now learning to relish the flavor. He drew from them not simply soothing ; in his heart he felt new com- passions springing into life, and with these the desire to act, to give himself, to cry aloud to these cities perched upon the hill-tops, threatening as warriors who eye one another before the fray, that they should be reconciled and love one another. Certainly, at this time Francis had no glimpse of what he was some time to become ; but these hours are perhaps the most important in the evolution of his thought ; it is to them that his life owes that air of liberty, that per- STAGES OF CONVERSION 25 fume of the fields which make it as different from the piety of the sacristy as from that of the drawing-room. About this time he made a pilgrimage to Roine, whether to ask counsel of his friends, whether as a pen- ance imposed by his confessor, or from a mere impulse, no one knows. Perhaps he thought that in a visit to the Holy Apostles, as people said then, he should find the an- swers to all the questions which he was asking himself. At any rate he went. It is hardly probable that he re- ceived from the visit any religious influence, for his biog- raphers relate the pained surprise which he experienced when he saw in Saint Peter's how meagre were the offer- ings of pilgrims. He wanted to give everything to the prince of the apostles, and emptying his purse he threw its entire contents upon the tomb. This journey was marked by a more important inci- dent. Many a time when succoring the poor he had asked himself if he himself was able to endure poverty ; no one knows the weight of a burden until he has carried it, at least for a moment, upon his own shoulders. He desired to know what it is like to have nothing, and to depend for bread upon the charity or the caprice of the passer by. 1 There were swarms of beggars crowding the Piazza before the great basilica. He borrowed the rags of one of them, lending him his garment in exchange, and a whole day he stood there, fasting, with outstretched hand. The act was a great victory, the triumph of com- passion over natural pride. Returning to Assisi, he doubled his kindnesses to those of whom he had truly the right to call himself the brother. With such sentiments he could not long escape the influence of the Church. On all the roadsides in the environs of the city there were then, as now, numerous chapels. Very often he ! 3 Soc, 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4. 26 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS must have heard mass in these rustic sanctuaries, alone with the celebrant. Recognizing the tendency of simple natures to bring home to themselves everything that they hear, it is easy to understand his emotion and agitation when the priest, turning toward him, would read the gospel for the day. The Christian ideal was revealed to him, bringing an answer to his secret anxieties. And when, a few moments later, he would plunge into the forest, all his thoughts would be with the poor carpenter of Nazareth, who placed himself in his path, saying to him, even to him, " Follow thou me." Nearly two years had passed since the day when he felt the first shock ; a life of renunciation appeared to him as the goal of his efforts, but he felt that his spirit- ual novitiate was not yet ended. He suddenly experi- enced a bitter assurance of the fact. He was riding on horseback one day, his mind more than ever possessed with the desire to lead a life of absolute devotion, when at a turn of the road he found himself face to face with a leper. The frightful malady had always inspired in him an invincible repulsion. He could not control a movement of horror, and by instinct he turned his horse in another direction. If the shock had been severe, the defeat was com- plete. He reproached himself bitterly. To cherish such fine projects and show himself so cowardly ! Was the knight of Christ then going to give up his arms ? He retraced his steps and springing from his horse he gave to the astounded sufferer all the money that he had ; then kissed his hand as he w r ould have done to a priest. 1 This new victory, as he himself saw, marked an era in his spiritual life. 2 ^ 1 To this day in the centre and south, of Italy they kiss the hand of priests and monks. 2 See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc, 11 ; 1 Cel., 17 ; Bon., 11 ; A. SS., p. 566. STAGES OF CONVERSION 27 It is far indeed from hatred of evil to love of good. Those are more numerous than we think who, after severe experience, have renounced what the ancient liturgies call the world, with its pomps and lusts ; but the greater number of them have not at the bottom of their hearts the smallest grain of pure love. In vulgar souls disil- lusion leaves only a frightful egoism. This victory of Francis -had been so sudden that he desired to complete it ; a few days later he went to the lazaretto. 1 One can imagine the stupefaction of these wretches at the entrance of the brilliant cavalier. If in our days a visit to the sick in our hospitals is a real event awaited with feverish impatience, what must not have been the appearance of Francis among these poor recluses ? One must have seen sufferers thus abandoned, to understand what joy may be given by an affectionate word, sometimes even a simple glance. Moved and transported, Francis felt his whole being vibrate with unfamiliar sensations. For the first time he heard the unspeakable accents of a gratitude which cannot find words burning enough to express itself, which admires and adores the benefactor almost like an angel from heaven. 1 3 Soc, 11 ; Bon., 13. CHAPTEK III THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 St. Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions in which he lived. We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St. Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride, and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without seeming in the least to be preaching him- self. We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we are now arrived, 1205- 1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the path which he finally entered. The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, ren- dering any serious reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegarde to put a stop to wickedness. Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his chronicle with THE CTIUKCH ABOUT 1209 29 tliis appalling picture. The adyance in historic research permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion remains the same ; without Francis of Assisi the Church would perhaps haye foundered and the Cathari would haye won the day. The little poor man, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Inno- cent III., sayed Christianity. We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- tury ; it will suffice to trace some of its most prominent features. The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling prominence the ravages of simony ; the traffic in ecclesiastical places was carried on with boundless audacity ; benefices were put up to the highest bidder, and Innocent III. admitted that fire and sword alone could heal this plague. 1 Prelates who declined to be bought by propince, fees,, were held up as astounding exceptions Î 2 " They are stones for understanding," it was said of the officers of the Roman curio, " wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness ; deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the minotaur." 3 The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III. for rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Eome in this respect. 4 The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of keeping with their calling, for extorting 1 Bull of June 8, 1198, Quamvis. Migne, i.. col. 220 ; Pottliast, 265. 2 For example, Pierre, Cardinal of St. Chryzogone and former Bishop of 3Ieaux, vrho in a single election refused the dazzling offer of fire hundred silver marks. Alexander III., Migne's edition, epist. 395. 3 Fasciculus rerum expetend. et fugiend., t. ii.. 7, pp. 254, 255 (Brown, 1690). 4 John of Salisbury, Policr^t. Migne. v. 15. 30 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS money from the simple priests. 1 Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other. 2 As to ' the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate bene- fices, and secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable measures for providing for their bastards/ 5 The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries ; their reputation for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus fatally brought about their own decadence. Few communities had shown the discretion of the first monks of the Order of Grammont in the diocese of Limoges. When Stephen de Muret, its founder, began to manifest his sanctity by giving sight to a blind man, his disciples took alarm at the thought of the wealth and notoriety which was likely to come to them from this cause. Pierre of Limoges, who had succeeded Stephen as prior, went at once to his tomb, praying : 1 Among their sources of revenue we find the right of coUagium. by pay- # ment of which clerics acquired the right to keep a concubine. Pierre Lo Chantre, Verb, abbrev., 24. 2 Vide Carmina Burana, Breslau, 8vo, 1883 ; Political Songs of Eng- land, published by Th. Wright, London, 8vo, 1893 ; Poésies populaires latines du moyen âge, du Méril, Paris, 1847. See also Raynouard, Lexique roman, i., 440, 451, 464, the fine poems of the troubadour Pierre Car- dinal, contemporary of St. Francis, upon the woes of the Church, and Dante. Inferno, xix. If one would gain an idea of what the bishop of a small city in those days cost his flock, he has only to read the bull of February 12. 1219, Justis petentium, addressed by Honorius III. to the Bishop of Terni, and including the contract by which the inhabitants of that city settled the revenues of the episcopal see. Horoy, t. iii., col. 114, or the Bullarium romanum, t. iii., p. 348. Turin. 3 Conosco sacerdoti chef anno gli tmira per for mare un patrimonio da lasciare ai loro spurii ; altri die tengono osteria colV insegni del cottare e vendono nno . . . Salimbene, Cantarelli, Parma, 1882, 2 vols.,8vo. ii.. p. 307. THE CHUKCH ABOUT 1209 31 ; O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and thou art about to chauge this place into a fair and a market-place. We know well that thou art a saint ! Thou hast no need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee, expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the obe- dience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones and throw them into the river. " Stephen obeyed up to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grain - mont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the Christian world. 1 Pierre of Limoges was not entirely without reason in fearing that his monastery would be transformed into a fair-ground ; members of the chapters of most of the ca- thedrals kept wine-shops literally under their shadows, and certain monasteries did not hesitate to attract custom by jugglers of all kinds and even by cour- tesans. 2 To form an idea of the degradation of the greater number of the monks it is not enough to read the ora- torical and often exaggerated reproofs of preachers obliged to strike hard in order to produce an effect. We must run through the collection of bulls, where appeals to the court of Rome against assassinations, 1 Vide Brens Mstoria Prior. Grandimont. — Stephani T'rnacensis. Epist, 115, 152, 153. 156. 162 : Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., 280, 284, 286-288 ; ii., 12, 130, 136. 383-387. 2 Gu§rard, Gartidaire de 3^. D. de Paris, t. i. , p. cxi ; t. ii. , p. 406. Cf. Honorius III., Bull Liter statuta of July 25. 1223, Horoy, t, iv., col. 401. See also canon 23 of the Council of Beziers, 1233 ; Guibert de Gemblours, epist. 5 and 6 (Migne) ; Honorius III., lib ix., 32, 81; ii., 193 : iv., 10 ; iii . 253 and 258; iv.. 33, 27, 70, 144 ; v., 56, 291, 420, 430 ; vi.. 214, 132. 139, 204 : vii , 127 : ix.. 51. 32 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS violations, incests, adulteries, recur on almost every page. It is easy to see that even an Innocent III. might feel himself helpless and tempted to yield to discouragement, in the face of so many ills. 1 The best spirits were turning toward the Orient, ask- ing themselves if perchance the Greek Church might not suddenly come forward to purify all these abuses, and receive for herself the inheritance of her sister.' The clergy, though no longer respected, still overawed the people through their superstitious terror of their power. Here and there might have been perceived many a forewarning of direful revolts ; the roads to Rome were crowded with monks hastening to claim the protection of the Holy See against the people among whom they lived. The Pope would promptly declare an interdict, but it was not to oe expected that such a resource would avail forever. 3 To maintain the privileges of the Church, the papacy w T as often obliged to spread the mantle of its protection over those who deserved it least. Its clients were not always as interesting as the unfortunate Ingelburge. It would be easier to give unreserved admiration to the conduct of Innocent III. if in this matter one could feel certain that his only interest was to maintain the cause of a poor abandoned woman^ But it is only too evident that he desired above all to keep up the ecclesiastical 1 Vide Bull Postquam tocante Domino of July 11, 1206. Pottliast 2840. 2 V. Annales Stadenses [Monumenta GermaniœMstorica, Scriptorum, t. 16], ad aim. 1237. Among the comprehensive pictures of the situation of the Church in the thirteenth century, there is none more interesting than that left us by the Cardinal Jacques de Vitry in his Historia occi- dentalis : Libri duo quorum prior Orientalis, alter Occidentalis Mstorim nomine inscribitur* Duaci, 1597. 16mo. pp. 259-480. 3 V. Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., ep. 109, 125, 135, 206, 273 ; ii.. 128, 164 ; iv., 120, etc. THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 83 immunities. This is very evident in his intervention in favor of Waldemar, Bishop of Schleswig. Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church ; then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices of those who desired a reformation 'aroused only passing interest. Among the populace there was superstition unimagi- nable ; the pulpit, which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other duties. It was the birth of the mendicant orders which obliged the entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching. Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved anything which appealed to the intelli- gence ; it was more and more becoming a sort of self- acting magic formula. Once upon this road, the absurd was not far distant. Those who deemed themselves pious told of miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of faith. In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the invocation dear to his mistress, "Sancte Thoma adjuva rne" and was miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen. having purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchant- ment so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to beggary so soon as, his secret being dis- covered, the relic was taken away from him and placed in a church. 1 These stories, we must observe, do not come from igno- 1 Dîalogv.s miraculorum of Cesar of Heisterbach [Strange's edition, Cologne, 1851, 2 vols.. 8vo], t. ii.. pp. 255 and 125. This book, with the G-olden Legend of Giacomo di Yaraggio, gives the best idea of the state of religious thought in the thirteenth century. 3 34 LIFE OF ST. FKANCIS rant enthusiasts, hidden away in obscure country places ; they are given us by one of the most learned monks of his time, who relates them to a novice by way of forming his mind ! Relics, then, were held to be neither more nor less than talismans. Not alone did they perform miracles upon those who were in no special state of faith or devotion, the more potent among them healed the sick in spite of themselves. A chronicler relates that the body of Saint Martin of Tours had in 887 been secretly transported to some remote hiding place for fear of the Danish invasion. When the time came for bringing it home again, there were in Touraine two impotent men who, thanks to their infirmity, gained large sums by begging. They were thrown into great terror by the tidings that the relics were being brought back : Saint Martin would certainly heal them and take away their means of livelihood. Their fears were only too well founded. They had taken to flight, ]^ut being too lame to walk fast they had not yet crossed the frontier of Touraine when the saint arrived and healed them ! Hundreds of similar stories might be collected, statis- tics might be made up to show, at the accession of Inno- cent III., the greater number of episcopal thrones occu- pied by unworthy bishops, the religious houses peopled with idle and debauched monks ; but would this give a truly accurate picture of the Church at this epoch ? I do not think so. In the first place, we must reckon with the choice spirits, who were without doubt more numerous than is generally supposed. Five righteous men would have saved Sodom ; the Almighty did not find them there, but he perhaps might have found them had He Himself made search for them instead of trusting to Lot. The Church of the thirteenth century had them, and it was for their sakes that the whirlwind of heresy did not sweep it away. THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 35 But this is not all : the Church of that time offered a noble spectacle of moral grandeur. "We must learn to lift our eyes from the wretched state of things which has just been pointed out and fix them on the pontifical throne and recognize the beauty of the struggle there going on : a power wholly spiritual undertaking to command the rulers of the world, as the soul masters the body, and tri- umphing in the end. It is true that both soldiers and generals of this army were often little better than ruffians, but here again, in order to be just, we must understand the end they aimed at. In that iron age, when brute force was the only force, the Church, notwithstanding its wounds, offered to the world the spectacle of peasants and laboring men receiv- ing the humble homage of the highest potentates " of earth, simply because, seated on the throne of Saint Peter, they represented the moral law. This is why Alighieri and many others before and after him, though they might heap curses on wicked ministers, yet in the depths of their heart were never without an immense com- passion and an ardent love for the Church which they never ceased to call their mother. Still, everybody was not like them, and the vices of the clergy explain the innumerable heresies of that day. All of them had a certain success, from those which were simply the outcry of an outraged conscience, like that of the Waldenses, to the most absurd of them all, like that of Eon de l'Étoile. Some of these movements were for great and sacred causes ; but we must not let our sym- pathies be so moved by the persecutions suffered by heretics as to cloud our judgment. It would have been better had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach. The papacy has not 36 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS always been reactionary and obscurantist ; when it over- threw the Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense. The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bolm of mys- ticism and folly. In that day heresy was very much alive ; it was consequently very complex and its powers of transformation inhnite. One may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to condemn one- self to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive, pas- sionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot up- ward, and fell to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible circumstances. Iu certain counties of England there are at the present day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few hundreds of inhabitants. Many of these people change their denomination every three or four years, returning to that they first quitted, leaving it again only to enter it anew, and so on as long as they live. Their leaders set the example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each new movement only to leave it before long. They would all alike find it difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them, but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each of these Protean move- ments. They are surely not worth the trouble. In a somewhat similar condition was a great part of Christendom under Innocent III. ; but while the sects of which I have just spoken move in a very narrow circle of dogmas and ideas, in the thirteenth century every sort of excess followed in rapid succession. Without the THE CHURCH ABOUT 1309 37 slightest pause of transition men passed through the most contradictor}' systems of belief. Still, a few general characteristics may be observed ; in the first place, heresies are no longer metaphysical subtleties as in earlier days ; Arias and Priscillian, Xestorius and Euty- chus are dead indeed. In the second place, they no longer arise in the upper and governing class, but pro- ceed especially from the inferior clergy and the common people. The blows which actually threatened the Church of the Middle Ages were struck by obscure laboring men, by the poor and the oppressed, who in their wretchedness and degradation felt that she had failed in her mission. No sooner was a voice uplifted, preaching - austerity and simplicity, than it drew together not the laity only, but members of the clergy as well. Toward the close of the twelfth century we find a certain Pons rousing all Perigord, preaching evangelical poverty before the com- ing of St. Francis. 1 Two great currents are apparent : on one side the Cathari, on the other, innumerable sects revolting from the Church by very fidelity to Christianity and the desire to return to the primitive Church. Among the sects of the second category the close of the twelfth century saw in Italy the rise of the Poor Men, who without doubt were a part of the movement of Arnold of Brescia ; they denied the efficacy of sacra- ments administered by unworthy hands. 2 A true attempt at reform was made by the Waldenses. Their history, although better known, still remains ob- scure on certain sides ; their name, Poor Men of Lyons, recalls the former movement, with which they were in 1 Recueil des historiens de France. Bouquet, t. xii., pp. 550, 551. 2 Bonacorsi: Yitœ hœretiœrum [d'Acherj, SpicUegium, t. i.. p. 215]. Cf. Lucius III., epist. 171, Migne. LIKE OF ST. FKANCIS close agreement, as also with the Humiliants. All these names involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his Order. The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo and that of St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter a sort of imitation of the former. It would be a mistake : the same causes produced in all quarters the same effects ; ideas of reform, of a return to gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to un- derstand how it Avas that before many years the Francis- can preaching reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo, driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the consequences of the premises which he him- self had laid down ; 1 while Francis, remaining the obe- dient son of the Church, bent all his efforts to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with the movement of the Poor Men of Lyons. Hence his oft-repeated counsels to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to seek the approbation of Innocent III., it is evident that the prel- ates with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of the dangers inherent in his own movement. 2 The latter had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar 1 Vide Bernard Gui, Praciica inquisition's. Douai edition, 4to, Paris, 1886 p. 244 ff., and especially the Vatican MS., 2548, folio 71. 2 A chronicle of St. Francis's time makes this same comparison : Bur- chard, Abbot of Urspurg 1226) [Burchardiet Guonradi chronicon. Mo- num. Germ. hist. Script , t. 23], has left us an account of the approba- tion of Francis by the Pope, all the more precious for being that of a contemporary. Loc. et., p. 376. THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 39 tongue and the permission to preach. They were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map (-1-1210), who was charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life. 1 Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome, and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Coun- cil of Verona. From that day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Fran- ciscans. By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from Hungary to Spain ; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating them as excommunicated persons. Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossi- bility of holding their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year, and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain unity of doctrine, the TTaldenses rapidly underwent a change according to their environment ; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments. 2 Hence that mul- tiplicity of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost hourly. A common persecution brought them nearer to the 1 De nugis Curialium, Dist. 1. cap. 81. p. 64. Wright's edition. Cf. Chronique de Laon, Bouquet xiii.. p. 680. 2 See, for example, the letter of the Italian branch of the Poor Men of Lyons [Pauperos Lombardt] to their brethren of Germany, there called Leonistes. In it they show the points in which they are not in har- mony with the French Waldenses. Published by Preger : Abhand- Inngen dtr K. bayer. Akademie der Wiss. Hist. CI., t. xiii., 1875, p. 19 ff. 40 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS Cathari and favored the fusion of their ideas. Their activity was inconceivable. Under pretext of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and insin- uating. The methods of travel of that day were pecul- iarly favorable to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the Church and the reforms that were needed. Such conversations were a means of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the book and the newspaper ; there is nothing like the viva vox 1 for spreading thought. Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses ; calumny is far too facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay. Thus they have been charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early Chris- tians were accused. In reality their true strength was in their virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy. The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari. Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century. Their revolt did not bear upon points of detail and ques- tions of discipline, like that of the early Waldenses ; it had a definite doctrinal basis, taking issue with the whole body of Catholic dogma. But, although this heresy nourished in Italy and under the very eyes of St. Francis, there is 1 These continual journeyings sometimes gained for them the name of Passafjieni, as in the south of France the preachers of certain sects are to-day called Courriers. The terra, however, specially designates a Judaizing sect who returned to the literal observation of the Mo.-aic law : Dôliinger, Beitràge, t. ii., pp. 327 and 375. They should therefore be identified with the GirconMsi of the constitution of Frederic II. (Huillard Bréholles, t. v., p. 280). See especially the fine monograph of M. C. Mplinier : Mémoires de V Académie de Toulouse, 1888. THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 41 need only to indicate it briefly. His work may have received many infiltrations from the Waldensian move- ment, but Catharism was wholly foreign to it. This is naturally explained by the fact that St. Francis never consented to occupy himself with questions of doc- trine. For him faith was not of the intellectual but the moral domain ; it is the consecration of the heart. Time spent in dogmatizing appeared to him time lost. An incident in the life of Brother Egidio well brings out the slight esteem in which theology was held by the early Brothers Minor. One day, in the presence of St. Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to merit the favor of God ? " " My brother," replied the famous divine, " you know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." " Are you very sure of that ? " replied Egidio ; " do you believe that a simple woman might please Him as well as a master in theology ? " Upon the affirmative response of his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice, for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of heaven than Brother Bonaventura !" 1 The Cathari, then, had no direct influence upon St. Francis, 2 but nothing could better prove the disturbance 1 A. SS., Aprilis, t. iii., p. 238d. - I would say that between the inspiration of Francis and the Catha- rian doctrines there is an irreconcilable opposition ; but it would not be difficult to find acts and words of his which recall the contempt for mat- ter of the Cathari ; for example, his way of treating his body. Some of his counsels to the friars : Unmquisque liabet in potestate sua inimi- cum suum videlicit corpus, per quod peccat. Assisi MS. 338, folio 20b. Conform. 138, b. 2. — Cum majorem inimicum corpore non habeam. 2 Cel. , 3, 63. These are momentary but inevitable obscurations, moments of forgetfulness, of discouragement, when a man is not himself, and repeats mechanically what he hears said around him. The real St. Francis is, on the contrary, the lover of nature, he who sees in the 42 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS of thought at this epoch than that resurrection of Mani- cheism. To what a depth of lassitude and folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism, Mazdeism, and gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it ! The Catharist doctrine rested upon the antago- nism of two principles, one bad, the other good. The first had created matter; the second, the soul, which, for generation after generation passes from one body to another until it achieves salvation. Matter is the cause and the seat of evil ; all contact with it constitutes a blemish, 1 consequently the Cathari renounced marriage and property and advocated suicide. All this was mixed up with most complicated cosmogonical myths. Their adherents were divided into two classes — the pure or perfect, and the believers, who were proselytes in the second degree, and whose obligations were very simple. The adepts, properly so called, were initiated by the ceremony of the consolamentum or imposition of hands, which induced the descent upon them of the Con- soling Spirit. Among them were enthusiasts who after this ceremony placed themselves in endura — that is to say, they starved themselves to death in order not to descend from this state of grace. In Languedoc, where this sect went by the name of Albigenses, they had an organization which embraced all Central Europe, and everywhere supported flourish- ing schools attended by the children of the nobles. In Italy they were hardly less powerful ; Concorrezo, near whole creation the work of divine goodness, the radiance of the eternal beauty, he who, in the Canticle of the Creatures, sees in the body not the Enemy but a brother : Cœpit liilariter loqui ad corpus; Gaude,frater corpus. 2 Cel., 3, 137. 1 Quodam die, dicta fabrissa dixit ipsi testi prœgnanti, quod rogaret Deum, ut liberaret earn a Dœmone, quern Jiabebat in ventre . . . Gulielmus dixit quod ita magnum peccatum erat jacere cum nxore sua quam cum concubina. Dollinger, loc. cit., pp. 24, 35. THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 43 Monza in Lombardy, and Bagnolo, gave their names to two congregations slightly different from those in Lan- guedoc. 1 But it was especially from Milan 2 that they spread abroad over all the Peninsula, making proselytes even in the most remote districts of Calabria. The state of anar- chy prevailing in the country was very favorable to them. The papacy was too much occupied in baffling the spas- modic efforts of the Hohenstaufen, to put the necessary perseverance and system into its struggles against here- sy. Thus the new ideas were preached under the very shadow of the Lateran ; in 1209, Otho IV., coming to Rome to be crowned, found there a school in which Mani- cheism was publicly taught. 3 With all his energy Innocent III. had not been able to check this evil in the States of the Church. The case of Yiterbo tells much of the difficulty of repressing it ; in March, 1199, the pope wrote to the clergy and people of this town to recall to their minds, and at the same time to increase, the penalties pronounced against heresy. For all that, the Patarini had the majority in 1205, and succeeded in naming one of themselves consul. 4 1 Those of the Concorrezemes and Bfjolertses . In Italy Cnthnri be- comes Gazznri ; for that matter, each country had its special appella- tives ; one of the most general in the north was that of the Bulgrtri, which marks the oriental origin of the sect, whence the slang term Boulgres and its derivatives (vide Matthew Paris, ann. 1238). Cf. Schmit, Histoire des Gath'ires, 8vo. 2 vols Paris, 1849. 2 The most current name in Italy was that of the Patarini, given them no doubt from their inhabiting the quarter of second-hand dealers in Milan : la contrada dei Palai'i, found in many cities. PataH! is still the cry of the ragpickers in the small towns of Provence. In the thir- teenth century Patarino and Catharo were synonyms. But before that the term Patarini had an entirely different sense. See the very remark- able study of M. Felice Tocco on this subject in his Eresia nel medio evo, 12mo, Florence, 1884. 3 Cesar von Heisterbach, Dial, mirac, t. i.. p. 309, Strange's edition. * Iniiocentii opera, Migne, t. i.. col. 537; t. ii. . 654. 44 LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS The wrath of the pontiff at this event was unbounded ; he fulminated a bull menacing the city with fire and sword, and commanding the neighboring towns to throw themselves upon her if within a fortnight she had not given satisfaction. 1 It was all in vain : the Patarini were j dealt with only as a matter of form ; it needed the pres- ence of the pope himself to assure the execution of his orders and obtain the demolition of the houses of the heretics and their abettors (autumn of 1207). 2 But stifled at one point the revolt burst out at a hun- dred others ; at this moment it was triumphant on all sides ; at Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Florence, Prato, Faenza, Treviso, Piacenza. The clergy were expelled from this last town, which remained more than three years without a priest. 3 Viterbo is twenty leagues from Assisi, Orvieto only ten, and disturbances in this town were equally grave. A noble Roman, Pietro Parentio, the deputy of the Holy See in this place, endeavored to exterminate the Patarini. He was assassinated. 4 But Francis needed not to go even so far as Orvieto to become acquainted with heretics. In Assisi the same things were going on as in the neighboring cities. In 1203 this town had elected for podestà a heretic named Giraklo di Gilberto, and in spite of warnings from Rome had persisted in keeping him at the head of affairs until the expiration of his term of office (1204). Innocent III., who had not yet been obliged to use vigor with Viterbo, 1 Gomputruistis in peccatis sicut jumenta in stercore suo ut fumus oc fimus pvtrefactionis vestrœ jam fere circumadjacentes re