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

time, and which perhaps they have lost less than they suppose, the need of an ideal very high, very pure, mysterious, inaccessible, which yet they may picture to themselves in concrete form. Sometimes a few privileged disciples saw the lovely and pure Lady descend from heaven to salute her spouse, but, whether visible or not, she always kept close beside her Umbrian lover, as she kept close beside the Galilean; in the stable of the nativity, upon the cross at Golgotha, and even in the borrowed tomb where his body lay.

During several years this ideal was not alone that of St. Francis, but also of all the Brothers. In poverty the gente poverelle had found safety, love, liberty; and all the efforts of the new apostles are directed to the keeping of this precious treasure.

Their worship sometimes might seem excessive. They showed their spouse those delicate attentions, those refinements of courtesy so frequent in the morning light of a betrothal, but which one gradually forgets till they become incomprehensible.[12]

The number of disciples continually increased; almost every week brought new recruits; the year 1211 was without doubt devoted by Francis to a tour in Umbria and the neighboring provinces. His sermons were short appeals to conscience; his heart went out to his hearers in ineffable tones, so that when men tried to repeat what they had heard they found themselves incapable.[13] The Rule of 1221 has preserved for us a summary of these appeals:

"Here is an exhortation which all the Brothers may make when
they think best: Fear and honor God, praise and bless him. Give
thanks unto him. Adore the Lord, Almighty God, in Trinity and
unity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Repent and make
fruits meet for repentance, for you know that we shall soon die.
Give, and it shall be given unto you. Forgive, and you shall be
forgiven; for if you forgive not, God will not forgive you.
Blessed are they who die repenting, for they shall be in the
kingdom of heaven.... Abstain carefully from all evil, and
persevere in the good until the end."[14]

We see how simple and purely ethical was the early Franciscan preaching. The complications of dogma and scholasticism are entirely absent from it. To understand how new this was and how refreshing to the soul we must study the disciples that came after him.

With St. Anthony of Padua ([Cross] June 13, 1231; canonized in 1233[15]), the most illustrious of them all, the descent is immense. The distance between these two men is as great as that which separates Jesus from St. Paul.

I do not judge the disciple; he was of his time in not knowing how to say simply what he thought, in always desiring to subtilize it, to extract it from passages in the Bible turned from their natural meaning by efforts at once laborious and puerile; what the alchemists did in their continual making of strange mixtures from which they fancied that they should bring out gold, the preachers did to the texts, in order to bring out the truth.

The originality of St. Francis is only the more brilliant and meritorious; with him gospel simplicity reappeared upon the earth.[16] Like the lark with which he so much loved to compare himself,[17] he was at his ease only in the open sky. He remained thus until his death. The epistle to all Christians which he dictated in the last weeks of his life repeats the same ideas in the same terms, perhaps with a little more feeling and a shade of sadness. The evening breeze which breathed upon his face and bore away his words was their symbolical accompaniment.

"I, Brother Francis, the least of your servants, pray and conjure you by that Love which is God himself, willing to throw myself at your feet and kiss them, to receive with humility and love these words and all others of our Lord Jesus Christ, to put them to profit and carry them out."

This was not a more or less oratorical formula. Hence conversions multiplied with an incredible rapidity. Often, as formerly with Jesus, a look, a word sufficed Francis to attach to himself men who would follow him until their death. It is impossible, alas! to analyze the best of this eloquence, all made of love, intimate apprehension, and fire. The written word can no more give an idea of it than it can give us an idea of a sonata of Beethoven or a painting by Rembrandt. We are often amazed, on reading the memoirs of those who have been great conquerors of souls, to find ourselves remaining cold, finding in them all no trace of animation or originality. It is because we have only a lifeless relic in the hand; the soul is gone. It is the white wafer of the sacrament, but how shall that rouse in us the emotions of the beloved disciple lying on the Lord's breast on the night of the Last Supper?

The class from which Francis recruited his disciples was still about the same; they were nearly all young men of Assisi and its environs, some the sons of agriculturists, and others nobles; the School and the Church was very little represented among them.[18]

Everything still went on with an unheard-of simplicity. In theory, obedience to the superior was absolute; in practice, we can see Francis continually giving his companions complete liberty of action.[19] Men entered the Order without a novitiate of any sort; it sufficed to say to Francis that they wanted to lead with him a life of evangelical perfection, and to prove it by giving all that they possessed to the poor. The more unpretending were the neophytes, the more tenderness he had for them. Like his Master, he had a partiality for those who were lost, for men whom regular society casts out of its limits, but who with all their crimes and scandals are nearer to sainthood than mediocrities and hypocrites.

One day St. Francis, passing by the desert of Borgo San Sepolcro
came to a place called Monte-Casale,[20] and behold a noble and
refined young man came to him. "Father," he said, "I would
gladly be one of your disciples."

"My son," said St. Francis, "you are young, refined, and noble;
you will not be able to follow poverty and live wretched like
us."

"But, my father, are not you men like me? What you do I can do
with the grace of Jesus." This reply was well-pleasing to St.
Francis, who, giving him his blessing, incontinently received
him into the Order under the name of Brother Angelo.

He conducted himself so well that a little while after he was
made guardian[21] of Monte-Casale. Now, in those times there
were three famous robbers who did much evil in the country. They
came to the hermitage one day to beg Brother Angelo to give them
something to eat; but he replied to them with severe reproaches:
"What! robbers, evil-doers, assassins, have you not only no
shame for stealing the goods of others, but you would farther
devour the alms of the servants of God, you who are not worthy
to live, and who have respect neither for men nor for God your
Creator. Depart, and let me never see you here again!"

They went away full of rage. But behold, the Saint returned,
bringing a wallet of bread and a bottle of wine which had been
given him, and the guardian told him how he had sent away the
robbers; then St. Francis reproved him severely for showing
himself so cruel.... "I command thee by thine obedience," said
he, "to take at once this loaf and this wine and go seek the
robbers by hill and dell until you have found them, to offer
them this as from me, and to kneel there before them and humbly
ask their pardon, and pray them in my name no longer to do wrong
but to fear God; and if they do it, I promise to provide for all
their wants, to see that they always have enough to eat and
drink. After that you may humbly return hither."

Brother Angelo did all that had been commanded him, while St.
Francis on his part prayed God to convert the robbers. They
returned with the brother, and when St. Francis gave them the
assurance of the pardon of God, they changed their lives and
entered the Order, in which they lived and died most
holily.[22]

What has sometimes been said of the voice of the blood is still more true of the voice of the soul. When a man truly wakens another to moral life, he gains for himself an unspeakable gratitude. The word master is often profaned, but it can express the noblest and purest of earthly ties.

Who are those among us, who in the hours of manly innocence when they examine their own consciences, do not see rising up before them from out of the past the ever beloved and loving face of one who, perhaps without knowing it, initiated them into spiritual things? At such a time we would throw ourselves at the feet of this father, would tell him in burning words of our admiration and gratitude. We cannot do it, for the soul has its own bashfulness; but who knows that our disquietude and embarrassment do not betray us, and unveil, better than words could do, the depths of our heart? The air they breathed at Portiuncula was all impregnated with joy and gratitude like this.

To many of the Brothers, St. Francis was truly a saviour; he had delivered them from chains heavier than those of prisons. And therefore their greatest desire was in their turn to call others to this same liberty.

We have already seen Brother Bernardo on a mission to Florence a few months after his entrance into the Order. Arrived at maturity when he put on the habit, he appears in some degree the senior of this apostolic college. He knew how to obey St. Francis and remain faithful to the very end to the ideal of the early days; but he had no longer that privilege of the young--of Brother Leo, for example--of being able to transform himself almost entirely into the image of him whom he admired. His physiognomy has not that touch of juvenile originality, of poetic fancy, which is so great a charm of the others.

Toward this epoch two Brothers entered the Order, men such as the successors of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright light on the simplicity