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

purified,
enlightened, and kindled by the fire of the Holy Spirit, we may
follow in the footprints of thy well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ.

What separates this prayer from the effort to discern duty made by choice spirits apart from all revealed religion? Very little in truth; the words are different, the action is the same.

But Francis's solicitudes reached far beyond the limits of the Order. His longest epistle is addressed to all Christians; its words are so living that you fancy you hear a voice speaking behind you; and this voice, usually as serene as that which from the mountain in Galilee proclaimed the law of the new times, becomes here and there unutterably sweet, like that which sounded in the upper chamber on the night of the first eucharist.

As Jesus forgot the cross that was standing in the shadows, so Francis forgets his sufferings, and, overcome with a divine sadness, thinks of humanity, for each member of which he would give his life; he thinks of his spiritual sons, the Brothers of Penitence, whom he is about to leave without having been able to make them feel, as he would have had them feel, the love for them with which he burns: "Father, I have given them the words which thou hast given me.... For them I pray!"

The whole Franciscan gospel is in these words, but to understand the fascination which it exerted we must have gone through the School of the Middle Ages, and there listened to the interminable tournaments of dialectics by which minds were dried up; we must have seen the Church of the thirteenth century, honeycombed by simony and luxury, and only able, under the pressure of heresy or revolt, to make a few futile efforts to scotch the evil.

To all Christians, monks, clerics, or laymen, whether men or
women, to all who dwell in the whole world, Brother Francis,
their most submissive servitor, presents his duty and wishes the
true peace of heaven, and sincere love in the Lord.

Being the servitor of all men, I am bound to serve them and to
dispense to them the wholesome words of my Master. This is why,
seeing I am too weak and ill to visit each one of you in
particular, I have resolved to send you my message by this
letter, and to offer you the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Word of God, and of the Holy Spirit, which are spirit and life.

It would be puerile to expect here new ideas either in fact or form. Francis's appeals are of value only by the spirit which animates them.

After having briefly recalled the chief features of the gospel, and urgently recommended the communion, Francis addresses himself in particular to certain categories of hearers, with special counsels.

Let the podestàs, governors, and those who are placed in
authority, exercise their functions with mercy, as they would be
judged with mercy by God....

Monks in particular, who have renounced the world, are bound to
do more and better than simple Christians, to renounce all that
is not necessary to them, and to have in hatred the vices and
sins of the body.... They should love their enemies, do good to
them who hate them, observe the precepts and counsels of our
Redeemer, renounce themselves, and subdue their bodies. And no
monk is bound to obedience, if in obeying he would be obliged to
commit a fault or a sin....

Let us not be wise and learned according to the flesh, but
simple, humble, and pure.... We should never desire to be above
others, but rather to be below, and to obey all men.

He closes by showing the foolishness of those who set their hearts on the possession of earthly goods, and concludes by the very realistic picture of the death of the wicked.

His money, his title, his learning, all that he believed himself
to possess, all are taken from him; his relatives and his
friends to whom he has given his fortune will come to divide it
among themselves, and will end by saying: "Curses on him, for he
might have given us more and he has not done it; he might have
amassed a larger fortune, and he has done nothing of the kind."
The worms will eat his body and the demons will consume his
soul, and thus he will lose both soul and body.

I, Brother Francis, your little servitor, I beg and conjure you
by the love that is in God, ready to kiss your feet, to receive
with humility and love these and all other words of our Lord
Jesus Christ and to conform your conduct to them. And let those
who devoutly receive them and understand them pass them on to
others. And if they thus persevere unto the end, may they be
blessed by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.[32]

If Francis ever made a Rule for the Third Order it must have very nearly resembled this epistle, and until this problematical document is found, the letter shows what were originally these associations of Brothers of Penitence. Everything in these long pages looks toward the development of the mystic religious life in the heart of each Christian. But even when Francis dictated them, this high view had become a Utopia, and the Third Order was only one battalion more in the armies of the papacy.

We see that the epistles which we have just examined proceed definitely from a single inspiration. Whether he is leaving instructions for his successors, the ministers-general, whether he is writing to all the present and future members of his Order, to all Christians or even to the clergy,[33] Francis has only one aim, to keep on preaching after his death, and perhaps, too, by putting into writing his message of peace and love, to provide that he shall not be entirely travestied or misunderstood.

Considered in connection with those sorrowful hours which saw their birth, they form a whole whose import and meaning become singularly energetic. If we would find the Franciscan spirit, it is here, in the Rule of 1221, and in the Will that we must seek for it.

Neglect, and especially the storms which later overwhelmed the Order, explain the disappearance of several other documents which would cast a glimmer of poetry and joy over these sad days;[34] Francis had not forgotten his sister-friend at St. Damian. Hearing that she had been greatly disquieted by knowing him to be so ill, he desired to reassure her: he still deceived himself as to his condition, and wrote to her promising soon to go to see her.

To this assurance he added some affectionate counsels, advising her and her companions not to go to extremes with their macerations. To set her an example of cheerfulness he added to this letter a Laude in the vulgar tongue which he had himself set to music.[35]

In that chamber of the episcopal palace in which he was as it were imprisoned he had achieved a new victory, and it was doubtless that which inspired his joy. The Bishop of Assisi, the irritable Guido, always at war with somebody, was at this time quarrelling with the podestà of the city; nothing more was needed to excite in the little town a profound disquiet. Guido had excommunicated the podestà, and the latter had issued a prohibition against selling and buying or making any contract with ecclesiastics.

The difference grew more bitter, and no one appeared to dream of attempting a reconciliation. We can the better understand Francis's grief over all this by remembering that his very first effort had been to bring peace into his native city, and that he considered the return of Italy to union and concord to be the essential aim of his apostolate.

War in Assisi would be the final dissolution of his dream; the voice of events crying brutally to him, "Thou hast wasted thy life!"

The dregs of this cup were spared him, thanks to an inspiration in which breaks forth anew his natural play of imagination. To the Canticle of the Sun he added a new strophe:

Be praised, Lord, for those who forgive for love of thee,
and bear trials and tribulations;
happy they who persevere in peace,
by thee, Most high, shall they be crowned.

Then, calling a friar, he charged him to beg the governor to betake himself, with all the notables whom he could assemble, to the paved square before the bishop's palace. The magistrate, to whom legend gives the nobler part in the whole affair, at once yielded to the saint's request.

When he arrived and the bishop had come forth from the palace,
two friars came forward and said: "Brother Francis has made to
the praise of God a hymn to which he prays you to listen
piously," and immediately they began to sing the Hymn of Brother
Sun, with its new strophe.

The governor listened, standing in an attitude of profound
attention, copiously weeping, for he dearly loved the blessed
Francis.

When the singing was ended, "Know in truth," said he, "that I
desire to forgive the lord bishop, that I wish and ought to look
upon him as my lord, for if one had even assassinated my brother
I should be ready to pardon the murderer." With these words he
threw himself at the bishop's feet, and said: "I am ready to do
whatsoever you would, for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and
his servant Francis."

Then the bishop, taking him by the hand, lifted him up and said,
"With my position it would become me to be humble, but since I
am naturally too quick to wrath, thou must pardon me."[36]

This unexpected reconciliation was immediately looked upon as miraculous, and increased still more the reverence of the Assisans for their fellow-citizen.

The summer was drawing to a close. After a few days of relative improvement Francis's sufferings became greater than ever: incapable of movement, he even thought that he ought to give up his ardent desire to see St. Damian and Portiuncula once more, and gave the brothers all his directions about the latter sanctuary: "Never abandon it," he would repeat to them, "for that