Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (best historical biographies txt) 📕

to evangelical simplicity had become a necessity; all the heretical sects were on this point in accord with pious Catholics, but no one spoke in a manner so Franciscan as Gioacchino di Fiore. Not only did he make voluntary poverty one of the characteristics of the age of lilies, but he speaks of it in his pages with so profound, so living an emotion, that St. Francis could do little more than repeat his words. The ideal monk whom he describes,[41] whose only property is a lyre, is a true Franciscan before the letter, him of whom the Poverello of Assisi always dreamed.

The feeling for nature also bursts forth in him with incomparable vigor. One day he was preaching in a chapel which was plunged in almost total darkness, the sky being quite overcast with clouds. Suddenly the clouds broke away, the sun shone, the church was flooded with light. Gioacchino paused, saluted the sun, intoned the Veni Creator , and led his congregation out to gaze upon the landscape.

It would be by no means surprising if toward 1205 Francis should have heard of this prophet, toward whom so many hearts were turning, this anchorite who, gazing up into heaven, spoke with Jesus as a friend talks with his friend, yet knew also how to come down to console men and warm the faces of the dying at his own breast.

At the other end of Europe, in the heart of Germany, the same causes had produced the same effects. From the excess of the people's sufferings and the despair of religious souls was being born a movement of apocalyptic mysticism which seemed to have secret communication with that which was rousing the Peninsula. They had the same views of the future, the same anxious expectation of new cataclysms, joined with a prospect of a reviving of the Church.

"Cry with a loud voice," said her guardian angel to St. Elizabeth of Schonau ([Cross] 1164), "cry to all nations: Woe! for the whole world has become darkness. The Lord's vine has withered, there is no one to tend it. The Lord has sent laborers, but they have all been found idle. The head of the Church is ill and her members are dead.... Shepherds of my Church, you are sleeping, but I shall awaken you! Kings of the earth, the cry of your iniquity has risen even to me."[42]

"Divine justice," said St. Hildegarde ([Cross] 1178), "shall have its hour; the last of the seven epochs symbolized by the seven days of creation has arrived, the judgments of God are about to be accomplished; the empire and the papacy, sunk into impiety, shall crumble away together.... But upon their ruins shall appear a new nation of God, a nation of prophets illuminated from on high, living in poverty and solitude. Then the divine mysteries shall be revealed, and the saying of Joel shall be fulfilled; the Holy Spirit shall shed abroad upon the people the dew of his prophecies, of his wisdom and holiness; the heathen, the Jews, the worldly and the unbelieving shall be converted together, spring-time and peace shall reign over a regenerated world, and the angels will return with confidence to dwell among men."

These hopes were not wholly confounded. In the evening of his days the prophet of Fiore was able, like a new Simeon, to utter his Nunc dimittis , and for a few years Christendom could turn in amazement to Assisi as to a new Bethlehem.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bull of June 8, 1198, Quamvis . Migne, i., col. 220;
Potthast, 265.

[2] For example, Pierre, Cardinal of St. Chryzogone and former
Bishop of Meaux, who in a single election refused the dazzling
offer of five 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, Policrat. Migne, v. 15.

[5] Among their sources of revenue we find the right of
collagium , by payment of which clerics acquired the right to
keep a concubine. Pierre le Chantre, Verb. abbrev. , 24.

[6] Vide Carmina Burana , Breslau, 8vo, 1883; Political Songs
of England, published by Th. Wright, London, 8vo, 1893; Poésies
populaires latines du moyen âge , du Méril, Paris, 1847. See
also Raynouard, Lexique roman , i., 446, 451, 464, the fine
poems of the troubadour Pierre Cardinal, 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.

[7] Conosco sacerdoti che fanno gli usura per formare un
patrimonio da lasciare ai loro spurii; altri che tengono osteria
coll' insegna del collare e vendono vino ... Salimbene,
Cantarelli, Parma, 1882, 2 vols., 8vo, ii., p. 307.

[8] Vide Brevis historia Prior. Grandimont.--Stephani
Tornacensis. Epist. 115, 152, 153, 156, 162; Honorius III.,
Horoy's edition, lib. i., 280, 284, 286-288; ii., 12, 130, 136,
383-387.

[9] Guérard, Cartulaire de N. D. de Paris , t. i., p. cxi; t.
ii., p. 406. Cf. Honorius III., Bull Inter 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.

[10] Vide Bull Postquam vocante Domino of July 11, 1206.
Potthast 2840.

[11] V. Annales Stadenses [ Monumenta Germaniæ historica,
Scriptorum , t. 16], ad ann. 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 occidentalis: Libri
duo quorum prior Orientalis, alter Occidentalis historiæ nomine
inscribitur Duaci , 1597, 16mo. pp. 259-480.

[12] V. Honorius III., Horoy's edition, lib. i., ep. 109, 125,
135, 206, 273; ii., 128, 164; iv., 120, etc.

[13] Dialogus miraculorum of Cesar of Heisterbach [Strange's
edition, Cologne, 1851, 2 vols., 8vo], t. ii., pp. 255 and 125.
This book, with the Golden Legend of Giacomo di Varaggio, gives
the best idea of the state of religious thought in the
thirteenth century.

[14] Recueil des historiens de France. Bouquet, t. xii., pp.
550, 551.

[15] Bonacorsi: Vitæ hæreticorum [d'Achery, Spicilegium , t.
i., p. 215] Cf. Lucius III., epist. 171, Migne.

[16] Vide Bernard Gui, Practica inquisitionis , Douai edition,
4to, Paris, 1886 p. 244 ff., and especially the Vatican MS.,
2548, folio 71.

[17] A chronicle of St. Francis's time makes this same
comparison: Burchard, Abbot of Urspurg ([Cross] 1226) [ Burchardi et
Cuonradi chronicon. Monum. Germ. hist. Script. , t. 23], has
left us an account of the approbation of Francis by the Pope,
all the more precious for being that of a contemporary. Loc.
cit. , p. 376.

[18] De nugis Curialium , Dist. 1, cap. 31, p. 64, Wright's
edition. Cf. Chronique de Laon , Bouquet xiii., p. 680.

[19] See, for example, the letter of the Italian branch of the
Poor Men of Lyons [ Pauperos Lombardi ] to their brethren of
Germany, there called Leonistes. In it they show the points in
which they are not in harmony with the French Waldenses.
Published by Preger: Abhandlungen der K. bayer. Akademie der
Wiss. Hist. Cl. , t. xiii., 1875, p. 19 ff.

[20] These continual journeyings sometimes gained for them the
name of Passagieni , as in the south of France the preachers of
certain sects are to-day called Courriers . The term, however,
specially designates a Judaizing sect who returned to the
literal observation of the Mosaic law: Döllinger, Beiträge , t.
ii., pp. 327 and 375. They should therefore be identified with
the Circonsisi of the constitution of Frederic II.
(Huillard-Bréholles, t. v., p. 280). See especially the fine
monograph of M. C. Molinier: Mémoires de l'Académie de
Toulouse , 1888.