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

his work, for which he had been able to collect but insufficient material.

Elias and the other Assisan brothers had told him of Francis's youth and his activity in Umbria; but besides that he would have preferred, whether from prudence or from love of peace, to keep silence upon certain events,[19] there were long periods upon which he had not received a single item of information.[20]

He therefore seems to indicate his intention of resuming and completing his work.[21]

This is not the place to write the history of the Order, but a few facts are necessary to put the documents into their proper surroundings.

Elected minister-general in 1232, Brother Elias took advantage of the fact to labor with indomitable energy toward the realization of his own ideas. In all the provinces new collections were organized for the Basilica of Assisi, the work upon which was pushed with an activity which however injured neither the strength of the edifice nor the beauty of its details, which are as finished and perfect as those of any monument in Europe.

We may conceive of the enormous sums which it had been necessary to raise in order to complete such an enterprise in so short a time. More than that, Brother Elias exacted absolute obedience from all his subordinates; naming and removing the provincial ministers according to his personal views, he neglected to convoke the chapter-general, and sent his emissaries under the name of visitors into all the provinces to secure the execution of his orders.

The moderate party in Germany, France, and England very soon found his yoke insupportable. It was hard for them to be directed by an Italian minister resident at Assisi, a small town quite aside from the highways of civilization, entirely a stranger to the scientific movement concentred in the universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.

In the indignation of the Zelanti against Elias and his contempt for the Rule, they found a decisive support. Very soon the minister had for his defence nothing but his own energy, and the favor of the pope and of the few Italian moderates. By a great increase of vigilance and severity he repressed several attempts at revolt.

His adversaries, however, succeeded in establishing secret intelligence at the court of Rome; even the pope's confessor was gained; yet in spite of all these circumstances, the success of the conspiracy was still uncertain when the chapter of 1239 opened.

Gregory IX., still favorable to Elias,[22] presided. Fear gave sudden courage to the conspirators; they threw their accusations in their enemy's face.

Thomas of Eccleston gives a highly colored narrative of what took place. Elias was proud, violent, even threatening. There were cries and vociferations from both sides; they were about to come to blows when a few words from the pope restored silence. He had made up his mind to abandon his protégé . He asked for his resignation. Elias indignantly refused.

Gregory IX. then explained that in keeping him in charge he had thought himself acting in accordance with the wishes of the majority: that he had no intention to dominate the Order, and, since the Brothers no longer desired Elias, he declared him deposed from the generalate.

The joy of the victors, says Eccleston, was immense and ineffable. They chose Alberto di Pisa, provincial of England, to succeed him, and from that time bent all their efforts to represent Elias as a creature of Frederick II.[23] The former minister wrote indeed to the pope to explain his conduct, but the letter did not reach its destination. It must have reached the hands of his successor, and not been sent forward; when Alberto of Pisa died it was found in his tunic.[24]

All the fury of the aged pontiff was unchained against Elias. One must read the documents to see to what a height his anger could rise. The friar retorted with a virulence which though less wordy was far more overpowering.[25]

These events gained an indescribable notoriety[26] all over Europe and threw the Order into profound disturbance. Many of the partisans of Elias became convinced that they had been deceived by an impostor, and they drew toward the group of Zealots, who never ceased to demand the observance pure and simple of the Rule and the Will.

Thomas of Celano was of this number.[27] With profound sadness he saw the innumerable influences that were secretly undermining the Franciscan institute and menacing it with ruin. Already a refrain was going the rounds of the convents, singing the victory of Paris over Assisi, that is, of learning over poverty.

The Zealots gained new courage. Unaccustomed to the subtleties of ecclesiastical politics, they did not perceive that the pope, while condemning Brother Elias, had in nowise modified the general course which he had marked out for the Order. The ministers-general, Alberto di Pisa, 1239-1240, Aymon of Faversham, 1240-1244, Crescentius de Jesi, 1244-1247, were all, with different shades of meaning, representatives of the moderate party.

Thomas of Celano's first legend had become impossible. The prominence there given to Elias was almost a scandal. The necessity of working it over and completing it became clearly evident at the chapter of Genoa (1244).

All the Brothers who had anything to tell about Francis's life were invited to commit it to writing and send it to the minister Crescentius de Jesi.[28] The latter immediately caused a tract to be drawn up in the form of a dialogue, commencing with the words: " Venerabilium gesta Patrum ." So soon after as the time of Bernard de Besse, only fragments of this were left.[29]

But happily several of the works which saw the light in consequence of the decision of this chapter have been preserved to us. It is to this that we owe the Legend of the Three Companions and the Second Life by Thomas of Celano.


IV. LEGEND OF THE THREE COMPANIONS[30]

The life of St. Francis which has come down to us under the name of the Legend of the Three Companions was finished on August 11, 1246, in a little convent in the vale of Rieti, which appears often in the course of this history, that of Greccio. This hermitage had been Francis's favorite abode, especially in the latter part of his life. He had thus made it doubly dear to the hearts of his disciples.[31] It naturally became, from the earliest days of the Order, the headquarters of the Observants,[32] and it remains through all the centuries one of the purest centres of Franciscan piety.

The authors of this legend were men worthy to tell St. Francis's story, and perhaps the most capable of doing it: the friars Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. All three had lived in intimacy with him, and had been his companions through the most important years. More than this, they took the trouble to go to others for further information, particularly to Filippo, the visitor of the Clarisses, to Illuminato di Rieti, Masseo di Marignano, John, the confidant of Egidio, and Bernardo di Quintavalle.

Such names as these promise much, and happily we are not disappointed in our expectation. As it has come down to us, this document is the only one worthy from the point of view of history to be placed beside the First Life by Celano.

The names of the authors and the date of the composition indicate before examination the tendency with which it is likely to be in harmony. It is the first manifesto of the Brothers who remained faithful to the spirit and letter of the Rule. This is confirmed by an attentive reading; it is at least as much a panegyric of Poverty as a history of St. Francis.

We naturally expect to see the Three Companions relating to us with a very particular delight the innumerable features of the legends of which Greccio was the theatre; we turn to the end of the volume, expecting to find the story of the last years of which they were witnesses, and are lost in surprise to find nothing of the kind.

While the first half of the work describes Francis's youth, filling out here and there Celano's First Life, the second[33] is devoted to a picture of the early days of the Order, a picture of incomparable freshness and intensity of life; but strangely enough, after having told us so much at length of Francis's youth and then of the first days of the Order, the story abruptly leaps over from the year 1220 to the death and the canonization, to which after all only a few pages are given.[34]

This is too extraordinary to be the result of chance. What has happened? It is evident that the Legend of the Three Companions as we have it to-day is only a fragment of the original, which was no doubt revised, corrected, and considerably cut down by the authorities of the Order before they would permit it to be circulated.[35] If the authors had been interrupted in their work, and obliged to cut short the end, as might have been the case, they would have said so in their letter of envoy, but there are still other arguments in favor of our hypothesis.

Brother Leo having had the first and principal part in the production of the work of the Three Companions, it is often called Brother Leo's Legend; now Brother Leo's Legend is several times cited by Ubertini di Casali, arraigned before the court of Avignon by the party of the Common Observance. Evidently Ubertini would have taken good care not to appeal to an apocryphal document; a false citation would have been enough to bring him to confusion, and his enemies would not have failed to make the most of his imprudence. We have at hand all the documents of the trial,[36] attacks, replies, counter replies, and nowhere do we see the Liberals accuse their adversary of falsehood. For that matter, the latter makes his citations with a precision that admits of no cavil.[37] He appeals to writings to be found in a press in the convent of Assisi, of which he gives sometimes a copy, sometimes an original.[38] We are then authorized to conclude that we have here fragments which have survived the suppression of the last and most important part of the Legend of the Three Companions.

It is not surprising that the work of Francis's dearest friends should have been so seriously mutilated. It was the manifesto of a party that Crescentius was hunting down with all his power.

After the fleeting reaction of the generalate of Giovanni di Parma we shall see a man of worth like St. Bonaventura moving for the suppression of all the primitive legends that his own compilation may be substituted for them.

It is truly singular that no one has perceived the fragmentary state of the work of the Three Companions. The prologue alone might have suggested this idea. Why should it take three to write a few pages? Why this solemn enumeration of Brothers whose testimony and collaboration are asked for? There would be a surprising disproportion between the effort and the result.

More than all, the authors say that they shall not stop at relating the miracles, but they desire above all to exhibit the ideas of Francis and his life with the Brothers, but we search in vain for any account of miracles in what we now have.[39]

An Italian translation of this legend, published by Father Stanislaus Melchiorri,[40] has suddenly given me an indirect confirmation of this point of view. This monk is only its publisher, and has simply been able to discover that in 1577 it was taken from a very ancient manuscript by a certain Muzio Achillei di San Severino.[41]

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