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

was right in desiring that religious communities should hold estates; he had a right to his own views on the subject; but there is something shocking, to say no more, in seeing him placing Francis among the saints at the very moment when he was betraying his dearest ideals, and seeking to induce those who had remained faithful to betray them.

Had Clara and Francis foreseen the difficulties which they would meet? We may suppose so, for already under the pontificate of Innocent III. she had obtained a grant of the privilege of poverty. The pope was so much surprised at such a request that he desired to write with his own hands the opening lines of this patent, the like of which had never been asked for at the court of Rome.[23]

Under his successor, Honorius III., the most important personage of the curia was this very Cardinal Ugolini. Almost a septuagenarian in 1216 he inspired awe at first sight by the aspect of his person. He had that singular beauty which distinguishes the old who have escaped the usury of life; pious, enlightened, energetic, he felt himself made for great undertakings. There is something in him which recalls Cardinal Lavigerie and all the prelates whose red robes cover a soldier or a despot rather than a priest.[24]

The Franciscan movement was attacked with violence[25] in various quarters; he undertook to defend it, and a very long time before the charge of protector of the Order was officially confided to him, he exercised it with devouring zeal.[26] He felt an unbounded admiration for Francis and Clara, and often manifested it in a touching manner. If he had been a simple man he might have loved them and followed them. Perhaps he even had thought of doing so.[27] Alas! he was a prince of the Church; he could not help thinking of what he would do in case he should be called to guide the ship of St. Peter.

He acted accordingly; was it calculation on his part or simply one of those states of conscience in which a man absorbed in the end to be attained hardly discusses the ways and means? I do not know, but we see him immediately on the death of Innocent III., under pretext of protecting the Clarisses, take their direction in hand, give them a Rule, and substitute his own ideas for those of St. Francis.[28]

In the privilege which as legate he gave in favor of Monticelli, July 27, 1219, neither Clara nor Francis is named, and the Damianites become as a congregation of Benedictines.[29]

We shall see farther on the wrath of Francis against Brother Philip, a Zealot of the Poor Ladies, who had accepted this privilege in his absence. His attitude was so firm that other documents of the same nature granted by Ugolini at the same epoch were not indorsed by the pope until three years later.

The cardinal's ardor to profit by the enthusiasm which the Franciscan ideas everywhere excited was so great that we find, in the register of his legation of 1221, a sort of formula all prepared for those who would found convents like those of the Sisters of St. Damian; but even there we search in vain for the name of Francis or Clara.[30]

This old man had, however, a truly mystical passion for the young abbess; he wrote to her, lamenting the necessity of being far from her, in words which are the language of love, respect, and admiration.[31] There were at least two men in Ugolini: the Christian, who felt himself subdued before Clara and Francis; the prelate, that is, a man whom the glory of the Church sometimes caused to forget the glory of God.

Francis, though almost always resisting him, appears to have kept a feeling of ingenuous gratitude toward him to the very end. Clara, on the contrary, had too long a struggle to be able to keep any illusions as to the attitude of her protector. After 1230 there is no trace of any relations between them.

All the efforts of the pope to mitigate the rigor of Clara's vow of poverty had remained vain. Many other nuns desired to practise strictly the Rule of St. Francis. Among them was the daughter of the King of Bohemia, Ottokar I., who was in continual relations with Clara. But Gregory IX., to whom she addressed herself, was inflexible. While pouring eulogies upon her he enjoined upon her to follow the Rule which he sent to her--that is, the one which he had composed while he was yet cardinal. The Rule of the Poverello was put among the utopias, not to say heresies.[32] He never, however, could induce St. Clara to completely submit herself. One day, indeed, she rebelled against his orders, and it was the pope who was obliged to yield: he had desired to bring about a wider separation between the friars and the Sisters than had formerly prevailed; for a long time after the death of Francis a certain familiarity had continued between St. Damian and Portiuncula; Clara especially loved these neighborly relations, and often begged one or another Brother to come and preach. The pope thought ill of this, and forbade, under the severest penalty, that any friar of Portiuncula should go to St. Damian without express permission of the Holy See.

This time Clara became indignant. She went to the few friars attached to her monastery, and thanking them for their services, "Go," she said; "since they deprive us of those who dispense to us spiritual bread, we will not have those who procure for us our material bread." He who wrote that " the necks of kings and princes are bowed at the feet of the priests " was obliged to bow before this woman and raise his prohibition.[33]

St. Damian had too often echoed with St. Francis's hymns of love and liberty to forget him so soon and become an ordinary convent. Clara remained surrounded with the master's early companions; Egidio, Leo, Angelo, Ginepro never ceased to be assiduous visitors. These true lovers of poverty felt themselves at home there, and took liberties which would elsewhere have given surprise. One day an English friar, a celebrated theologian, came according to the minister's orders to preach at St. Damian. Suddenly Egidio, though a simple layman, interrupted him: "Stop, brother, let me speak," he said to him. And the master in theology, bowing his head, covered himself with his cowl as a sign of obedience, and sat down to listen to Egidio.

Clara felt a great joy in this; it seemed to her that she was once again living in St. Francis's days.[34] The little coterie was kept up until her death; she expired in the arms of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginepro. In her last sufferings and her dying visions she had the supreme happiness of being surrounded by those who had devoted their lives to the same ideal as she.[35]

In her will her life shows itself that which we have seen it--a daily struggle for the defence of the Franciscan idea. We see how courageous and brave was this woman who has always been represented as frail, emaciated, blanched like a flower of the cloister.[36]

She defended Francis not only against others, but also against himself. In those hours of dark discouragement which so often and so profoundly disturb the noblest souls and sterilize the grandest efforts, she was beside him to show him his way. When he doubted his mission and thought of fleeing to the heights of repose and solitary prayer, it was she who showed him the ripening harvest with no reapers to gather it in, men going astray with no shepherd to lead them, and drew him once again into the train of the Galilean, into the number of those who give their lives a ransom for many .[37]

Yet this love with which at St. Damian Francis felt himself surrounded frightened him at times. He feared that his death, making too great a void, would imperil the institution itself, and he took pains to remind the sisters that he would not be always with them. One day when he was to preach to them, instead of entering the pulpit he caused some ashes to be brought, and after having spread them around him and scattered some on his head, he intoned the Miserere , thus reminding them that he was but dust and would soon return to dust.[38]

But in general it is at St. Damian that St. Francis is the most himself; it is under the shade of its olive-trees, with Clara caring for him, that he composes his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called the most perfect utterance of modern religious sentiment, the "Canticle of the Sun."


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Easy as it is to seize the large outlines of her life, it is
with difficulty that one makes a detailed and documentary study
of it. There is nothing surprising in this, for the Clarisses
felt the rebound of the struggles which divided and rapidly
transformed the Order of the Brothers Minor. The greater number
of the documents have disappeared; we give summary indication of
those which will most often be cited: 1. Life of St. Clara by an
anonymous author. A. SS., Aug. , t. ii., pp. 739-768. 2. Her
Will, given by Wadding ( Annales , 1253, No. 5), but which does
not appear to be free from alteration. (Compare, for example,
the opening of this will with Chapter VI. of the Rule of the
Damianites approved by Innocent IV., August 8, 1253.) 3. The
bull of canonization, given September 26, 1255--that is to say,
two years after Clara's death; it is much longer than these
documents ordinarily are, and relates the principal incidents of
her life. A. SS., loc. cit. , p. 749; Potthast, 16,025. 4. Her
correspondence. Unhappily we have only fragments of it; the
Bollandists, without saying whence they drew them, have inserted
four of her letters in the Acta of St. Agnes of Bohemia, to
whom they were addressed. (A. SS., Martii , t. i., pp.
506-508.)

[2] Reading the Chronicle of Fra Salimbeni, which represents the
average Franciscan character about 1250, one sees with what
reason the Rule had multiplied minute precautions for keeping
the Brothers from all relations with women.

The desire of Celano to present the facts in the life of Francis
as the norm of the acts of the friars appears still more in the
chapters concerning St. Clara than in all the others. Vide 2
Cel., 3, 132: Non credatis,