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

Dominic at an earlier chapter
had therefore been quite natural.

[19] This view harmonizes in every particular with the witness
of 1 Cel., 36 and 37, which shows the Third Order as having been
quite naturally born of the enthusiasm excited by the preaching
of Francis immediately after his return from Rome in 1210 (cf.
Auctor vit. sec. ; A. SS., p. 593b). Nothing in any other
document contradicts it; quite the contrary. Vide 3 Soc., 60.
Cf. Anon. Perus. ; A. SS., p. 600; Bon., 25, 46. Cf. A. SS.,
pp. 631-634. The first bull which concerns the Brothers of
Penitence (without naming them) is of December 16, 1221,
Significatum est . If it really refers to them, as Sbaralea
thinks, with all those who have interested themselves in the
question to M. Müller inclusively--but which, it appears, might
be contested--it is because in 1221 they had made appeal to the
pope against the podestàs of Faenza and the neighboring cities.
This evidently supposes an association not recently born.
Sbaralea, Bull. fr. , 1, p. 8; Horoy, vol. iv., col. 49;
Potthast, 6736.

[20] Bull Supra montem of August 17, 1289, Potthast. 23044. M.
Müller has made a luminous study of the origin of this bull; it
may be considered final in all essential points ( Anfänge , pp.
117-171). By this bull Nicholas IV.--minister-general of the
Brothers Minor before becoming pope--sought to draw into the
hands of his Order the direction of all associations of pious
laics (Third Order of St. Dominic, the Gaudentes, the Humiliati.
etc.). He desired by that to give a greater impulse to those
fraternities which depended directly on the court of Rome, and
augment their power by unifying them.

[21] Vide Bull Significatum est of December 16, 1221. Cf.
Supra montem , chap. vii.

[22] The Rule of the Third Order of the Humiliati, which dates
from 1201, contains a similar clause. Tiraboschi, vol. ii., p.
132.

[23] In the A. SS., Aprilis, vol. ii. p. 600-616. Orlando di
Chiusi also received the habit from the hands of Francis. Vide
Instrumentum , etc., below, p. 400. The Franciscan fraternity,
under the influence of the other third orders, rapidly lost its
specific character. As to this title, Third Order, it surely had
originally a hierarchical sense, upon which little by little a
chronological sense has been superposed. All these questions
become singularly clearer when they are compared with what is
known of the Humiliati.

* * * * *


CHAPTER XVI

THE BROTHERS MINOR AND LEARNING

Autumn, 1221-December, 1223


After the chapter of 1221 the evolution of the Order hurried on with a rapidity which nothing was strong enough to check.

The creation of the ministers was an enormous step in this direction; by the very pressure of things the latter came to establish a residence; those who command must have their subordinates within reach, must know at all times where they are; the Brothers, therefore, could no longer continue to do without convents properly so-called. This change naturally brought about many others; up to this time they had had no churches. Without churches the friars were only itinerant preachers, and their purpose could not but be perfectly disinterested; they were, as Francis had wished, the friendly auxiliaries of the clergy. With churches it was inevitable that they should first fatally aspire to preach in them and attract the crowd to them, then in some sort erect them into counter parishes.[1]

The bull of March 22, 1222,[2] shows us the papacy hastening these transformations with all its power. The pontiff accords to Brother Francis and the other friars the privilege of celebrating the sacred mysteries in their churches in times of interdict, on the natural condition of not ringing the bells, of closing the door, and previously expelling those who were excommunicated.

By an astonishing inadvertence the bull itself bears witness to its uselessness, at least for the time in which it was given: "We accord to you," it runs, "the permission to celebrate the sacraments in times of interdict in your churches, if you come to have any ." This is a new proof that in 1222 the Order as yet had none; but it is not difficult to see in this very document a pressing invitation to change their way of working, and not leave this privilege to be of no avail.

Another document of the same time shows a like purpose, though manifested in another direction. By the bull Ex parte of March 29, 1222, Honorius III. laid upon the Preachers and Minors of Lisbon conjointly a singularly delicate mission; he gave them full powers to proceed against the bishop and clergy of that city, who exacted from the faithful that they should leave to them by will one-third of their property, and refused the Church's burial service to those who disobeyed.[3]

The fact that the pope committed to the Brothers the care of choosing what measures they should take proves how anxious they were at Rome to forget the object for which they had been created, and to transform them into deputies of the Holy See. It is, therefore, needless to point out that the mention of Francis's name at the head of the former of these bulls has no significance. We do not picture the Poverello seeking a privilege for circumstances not yet existing! We perceive here the influence of Ugolini,[4] who had found the Brother Minor after his own heart in the person of Elias.

What was Francis doing all this time? We have no knowledge, but the very absence of information, so abundant for the period that precedes as well as for that which follows, shows plainly enough that he has quitted Portiuncula, and gone to live in one of those Umbrian hermitages that had always had so strong an attachment for him.[5] There is hardly a hill in Central Italy that has not preserved some memento of him. It would be hard to walk half a day between Florence and Rome without coming upon some hut on a hillside bearing his name or that of one of his disciples.

There was a time when these huts were inhabited, when in these leafy booths Egidio, Masseo, Bernardo, Silvestro, Ginepro, and many others whose names history has forgotten, received visits from their spiritual father, coming to them for their consolation.[6]

They gave him love for love and consolation for consolation. His poor heart had great need of both, for in his long, sleepless nights it had come to him at times to hear strange voices; weariness and regret were laying hold on him, and looking over the past he was almost driven to doubt of himself, his Lady Poverty, and everything.

Between Chiusi and Radicofani--an hour's walk from the village of Sartiano--a few Brothers had made a shelter which served them by way of hermitage, with a little cabin for Francis in a retired spot. There he passed one of the most agonizing nights of his life. The thought that he had exaggerated the virtue of asceticism and not counted enough upon the mercy of God assailed him, and suddenly he came to regret the use he had made of his life. A picture of what he might have been, of the tranquil and happy home that might have been his, rose up before him in such living colors that he felt himself giving way. In vain he disciplined himself with his hempen girdle until the blood came; the vision would not depart.

It was midwinter; a heavy fall of snow covered the ground; he rushed out without his garment, and gathering up great heaps of snow began to make a row of images. "See," he said, "here is thy wife, and behind her are two sons and two daughters, with the servant and the maid carrying all the baggage."

With this child-like representation of the tyranny of material cares which he had escaped, he finally put away the temptation.[7]

There is nothing to show whether or not we should fix at the same epoch another incident which legend gives as taking place at Sartiano. One day a brother of whom he asked, "Whence do you come?" replied, "From your cell." This simple answer was enough to make the vehement lover of Poverty refuse to occupy it again. "Foxes have holes," he loved to repeat, "and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man had not where to lay his head. When the Lord spent forty days and forty nights praying and fasting in the desert, he built himself neither cell nor house, but made the side of a rock his shelter."[8]

It would be a mistake to think, as some have done, that as time went on Francis changed his point of view. Certain ecclesiastical writers have assumed that since he desired the multiplication of his Order, he for that very reason consented to its transformation. The suggestion is specious, but in this matter we are not left to conjecture; almost everything which was done in the Order after 1221 was done either without Francis's knowledge or against his will. If one were inclined to doubt this, it would need only to glance over that most solemn and also most adequate manifesto of his thought--his Will. There he is shown freed from all the temptations which had at times made him hesitate in the expression of his ideas, bravely gathering himself up to summon back the primitive ideal, and set it up in opposition to all the concessions which had been wrung from his weakness.

The Will is not an appendix to the Rule of 1223, it is almost its revocation. But it would be a mistake to see in it the first attempt made to return to the early ideal. The last five years of his life were only one incessant effort at protest, both by his example and his words.

In