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

Anfänge der Kunst , Berlin, 1885, 8vo. illust.) and the Rev.
Father Fratini ( Storia della Basilica d'Assisi , Prato, 1882,
8vo) are much too brief so far as these frescos are concerned.

[30] It is needless to say that I do not claim that Francis was
the only initiator of this movement, still less that he was its
creator; he was its most inspired singer, and that may suffice
for his glory. If Italy was awakened it was because her sleep
was not so sound as in the tenth century; the mosaics of the
façade of the Cathedral of Spoleto (the Christ between the
Virgin and St. John) already belong to the new art. Still, the
victory was so little final that the mural paintings of St.
Lawrence without the walls and of the Quattro Coronate, which
are subsequent to it by half a score of years, relapse into a
coarse Byzantinism. See also those of the Baptistery of
Florence.

[31] Hence the more or less subtile explanations with which they
adorn these incidents.--As to the part of animals in thirteenth
century legends consult Cæsar von Heisterbach, Strange's
edition, t. ii., pp. 257 ff.

[32] 1 Cel., 80-83.

[33] 1 Cel., 83; Conform. , 111a. M. Thode ( Anfänge , pp.
76-94) makes a study of some thirty portraits. The most
important are reproduced in Saint François (1 vol., 4to,
Paris, 1885); 1, contemporary portrait, by Brother Eudes, now at
Subiaco ( loc. cit. , p. 30); 2, portrait dating about 1230, by
Giunta Pisano (?); preserved at Portiuncula ( loc. cit. , p.
384); 3, finally, portrait dated 1235, by Bon. Berlinghieri, and
preserved at Pescia, in Tuscany ( loc. cit. , p. 277). In 1886
Prof. Carattoli studied with great care a portrait which dates
from about those years and of which he gives a picture (also
preserved of late years at Portiuncula). Miscellanea
francescana t. i., pp. 44-48; cf. pp. 160, 190, and 1887, p.
32. M. Bonghi has written some interesting papers on the
iconography of St. Francis ( Francesco di Assisi , 1 vol., 12mo,
Citta di Castello, Lapi, 1884. Vide pp. 103-113).

* * * * *


CHAPTER XI

THE INNER MAN AND WONDER-WORKING


The missionary journey, undertaken under the encouragement of St. Clara and so poetically inaugurated by the sermon to the birds of Bevagna, appears to have been a continual triumph for Francis.[1] Legend definitively takes possession of him; whether he will or no, miracles burst forth under his footsteps; quite unawares to himself the objects of which he has made use produce marvellous effects; folk come out from the villages in procession to meet him, and the biographer gives us to hear the echo of those religious festivals of Italy--merry, popular, noisy, bathed in sunshine--which so little resemble the fastidiously arranged festivals of northern peoples.

From Alviano Francis doubtless went to Narni, one of the most charming little towns in Umbria, busy with building a cathedral after the conquest of their communal liberties. He seems to have had a sort of predilection for this city as well as for its surrounding villages.[2] From thence he seems to have plunged into the valley of Rieti, where Greccio, Fonte-Colombo, San Fabiano, Sant-Eleuthero, Poggio-Buscone retain even stronger traces of him than the environs of Assisi.

Thomas of Celano gives us no particulars of the route followed, but, on the other hand, he goes at length into the success of the apostle in the March of Ancona, and especially at Ascoli. Did the people of these districts still remember the appeals which Francis and Egidio had made to them six years before (1209), or must we believe that they were peculiarly prepared to understand the new gospel? However this may be, nowhere else was a like enthusiasm shown; the effect of the sermons was so great that some thirty neophytes at once received the habit of the Order.

The March of Ancona ought to be held to be the Franciscan province par excellence . There are Offida, San-Severino, Macerata, Fornaro, Cingoli, Fermo, Massa, and twenty other hermitages where, during more than a century, poverty was to find its heralds and its martyrs; from thence came Giovanni della Verna, Jacopo di Massa, Conrad di Offida, Angelo Clareno, and those legions of nameless revolutionists, dreamers, and prophets, who since the extirpés in 1244 by the general of the Order, Crescentius of Jesi, never ceased to make new recruits, and by their proud resistance to all powers filled one of the finest pages of religious history in the Middle Ages.

This success, which bathed the soul of Francis with joy, did not arouse in him the smallest movement of pride. Never has man had a greater power over hearts, because never preacher preached himself less. One day Brother Masseo desired to put his modesty to the test.

"Why thee? Why thee? Why thee?" he repeated again and again, as
if to make a mock of Francis. "What are you saying?" cried
Francis at last. "I am saying that everybody follows thee,
everyone desires to see thee, hear thee, and obey thee, and yet
for all that thou art neither beautiful, nor learned, nor of
noble family. Whence comes it, then, that it should be thee whom
the world desires to follow?"

On hearing these words the blessed Francis, full of joy, raised
his eyes to heaven, and after remaining a long time absorbed in
contemplation he knelt, praising and blessing God with
extraordinary fervor. Then turning toward Masseo, "Thou wishest
to know why it is I whom men follow? Thou wishest to know? It is
because the eyes of the Most High have willed it thus; he
continually watches the good and the wicked, and as his most
holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any
more insufficient and more sinful, therefore he has chosen me to
accomplish the marvellous work which God has undertaken; he
chose me because he could find no one more worthless, and he
wished here to confound the nobility and grandeur, the strength,
the beauty, and the learning of this world."

This reply throws a ray of light upon St. Francis's heart; the message which he brought to the world is once again the glad tidings announced to the poor; its purpose is the taking up again of that Messianic work which the Virgin of Nazareth caught a glimpse of in her Magnificat , that song of love and liberty, the sighs of which breathe the vision of a new social state. He comes to remind the world that the welfare of man, the peace of his heart, the joy of his life, are neither in money, nor in learning, nor in strength, but in an upright and sincere will. Peace to men of good will.

The part which he had taken at Assisi in the controversies of his fellow-citizens he would willingly have taken in all the rest of Italy, for no man has ever dreamed of a more complete renovation; but if the end he sought was the same as that of many revolutionaries who came after him, their methods were completely different; his only weapon was love.

The event has decided against him. Apart from the illuminati of the March of Ancona and the Fraticelli of our own Provence his disciples have vied with one another to misunderstand his thought.[3]

Who knows if some one will not arise to take up his work? Has not the passion for worm-eaten speculations yet made victims enough? Are there not many among us who perceive that luxury is a delusion, that if life is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it may present itself--truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to make amende honorable and bequeath to its successor one manly word of faith?

Yes, the Messiah will come. He who was announced by Gioacchino di Fiore and who is to inaugurate a new epoch in the history of humanity will appear. Hope maketh not ashamed. In our modern Babylons and in the huts on our mountains are too many souls who mysteriously sigh the hymn of the great vigil, Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant Justum ,[4] for us not to be on the eve of a divine birth.

All origins are mysterious. This is true of matter, but yet more true of that life, superior to all others, which we call holiness; it was in prayer that Francis found the spiritual strength which he needed; he therefore sought for silence and solitude. If he knew how to do battle in the midst of men in order to win them to the faith, he loved, as Celano says, to fly away like a bird going to make its nest upon the mountain.[5]

With men truly pious the prayer of the lips, the formulated prayer, is hardly other than an inferior form of true prayer. Even when it is sincere and attentive, and not a mechanical repetition, it is only a prelude for souls not dead of religious materialism.

Nothing resembles piety so much as love. Formularies of prayer are as incapable of speaking the emotions of the soul as model love-letters of speaking the transports of an impassioned heart. To true piety as well as to profound love, the formula is a sort of profanation.

To pray is to talk with God, to lift ourselves up to him, to converse with him that he may come down to us. It is an act of meditation, of reflection, which presupposes the effort of all that is most personal in