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

place has been unknown.

d. The bull of canonization makes no mention of the stigmata.

e. They were not admitted without a contest, and among those who denied them were some bishops.

None of these arguments appears to me decisive.

a. In the Middle Ages funerals almost always took place immediately after death (Innocent III. dying at Perugia July 16, 1216, is interred the 17th; Honorius III. dies March 18, 1227, and is interred the next day).

b. It is more difficult than many suppose to know what were the habits concerning funerals in Umbria in the thirteenth century. However that may be, it was certainly necessary to put Francis's body into a coffin. He being already canonized by popular sentiment, his corpse was from that moment a relic for which a reliquary was necessary; nay more, a strong box such as the secondary scenes in Berlinghieri's picture shows it to have been. Without such a precaution the sacred body would have been reduced to fragments in a few moments. Call to mind the wild enthusiasm that led the devotees to cut off the ears and even the breasts of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. [ Quædam aures illius truncabant, etiam summitatem mamillarum ejus quidam praecidebant et pro reliquiis sibi servabant. -- Liber de dictis iv. ancillarum , Mencken, vol. ii., p. 2032.]

c. The ceremony of translation brought an innumerable multitude to Assisi. If Brother Elias concealed the body,[6] he may have been led to do so by the fear of some organized surprise of the Perugians to gain possession of the precious relic. With the customs of those days, such a theft would have been in nowise extraordinary. These very Perugians a few years later stole away from Bastia, a village dependent on Assisi, the body of Conrad of Offida, which was performing innumerable miracles there. ( Conform. , 60b, 1; cf. Giord., 50.) Similar affrays took place at Padua over the relics of St. Anthony. (Hilaire, Saint Antoine de Padoue, sa légende primitive , Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1 vol., 8vo, 1890, pp. 30-40.)

d. The bull of canonization, with the greater number of such documents, for that matter, makes no historic claim. In its wordy rhetoric we shall sooner learn the history of the Philistines, of Samson, or even of Jacob, than of St. Francis. Canonization here is only a pretext which the old pontiff seizes for recurring to his favorite figures.

This silence signifies nothing after the very explicit testimony of other bulls by the same pontiff in 1227, and after the part given to the stigmata in the liturgical songs which in 1228 he composed for the office of St. Francis.

e. These attacks by certain bishops are in nowise surprising; they are episodes in the struggle of the secular clergy against the mendicant orders.

At the time when these negations were brought forward (1237) the narrative of Thomas of Celano was official and everywhere known; nothing therefore would have been easier, half a score of years after the events, than to bring witnesses to expose the fraud if there had been any; but the Bishop of Olmütz and the others base their objections always and only upon dogmatic grounds.

As to the attacks of the Dominicans, it is needless to recall the rivalry between the two Orders;[7] is it not then singular to find these protestations coming from Silesia (!) and never from Central Italy, where, among other eye-witnesses, Brother Leo was yet living ([Cross] 1271)?

Thus the witnesses appear to me to maintain their integrity. We might have preferred them more simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience to which he is speaking.


II. THE PARDON OF AUGUST 2D, CALLED INDULGENCE OF PORTIUNCULA[9]

This question might be set aside; on the whole it has no direct connection with the history of St. Francis.

Yet it occupies too large a place in modern biographies not to require a few words: it is related that Francis was in prayer one night at Portiuncula when Jesus and the Virgin appeared to him with a retinue of angels. He made bold to ask an unheard-of privilege, that of plenary indulgence of all sins for all those who, having confessed and being contrite, should visit this chapel. Jesus granted this at his mother's request, on the sole condition that his vicar the pope would ratify it.

The next day Francis set out for Perugia, accompanied by Masseo, and obtained from Honorius the desired indulgence, but only for the day of August 2d.

Such, in a few lines, is the summary of this legend, which is surrounded with a crowd of marvellous incidents.

The question of the nature and value of indulgences is not here concerned. The only one which is here put is this: Did Francis ask this indulgence and did Honorius III. grant it?

Merely to reduce it to these simple proportions is to be brought to answer it with a categorical No.

It would be tedious to refer even briefly to the difficulties, contradictions, impossibilities of this story, many a time pointed out by orthodox writers. In spite of all they have come to the affirmative conclusion: Roma locuta est .

Those whom this subject may interest will find in the note above detailed bibliographical indications of the principal elements of this now quieted discussion. I shall confine myself to pointing out the impossibilities with which tradition comes into collision; they are both psychological and historical. The Bollandists long since pointed out the silence of Francis's early biographers upon this question. Now that the published documents are much more numerous, this silence is still more overwhelming. Neither the First nor the Second Life by Thomas of Celano, nor the anonymous author of the second life given in the Acta Sanctorum, nor even the anonymous writer of Perugia, nor the Three Companions, nor Bonaventura say a single word on the subject. No more do very much later works mention it, which sin only by excessive critical scruples: Bernard of Besse, Giordiano di Giano, Thomas Eccleston, the Chronicle of the Tribulations, the Fioretti, and even the Golden Legend.

This conspiracy of silence of all the writers of the thirteenth century would be the greatest miracle of history if it were not absurd.

By way of explanation, it has been said that these writers refrained from speaking of this indulgence for fear of injuring that of the Crusade; but in that case, why did the pope command seven bishops to go to Portiuncula to proclaim it in his name?

The legend takes upon itself to explain that Francis refused a bull or any written attestation of this privilege; but, admitting this, it would still be necessary to explain why no hint of this matter has been preserved in the papers of Honorius III. And how is it that the bulls sent to the seven bishops have left not the slightest trace upon this pontiff's register?

Again, how does it happen, if seven bishops officially promulgated this indulgence in 1217, that St. Francis, after having related to Brother Leo his interview with the pope, said to him: " Teneas secretum hoc usque circa mortem tuam; quia non habet locum adhuc. Quia hæc indulgentia occultabitur ad tempus; sed Dominus trahet eam extra et manifestabitur. " Conform. , 153b, 2. Such an avowal is not wanting in simplicity. It abundantly proves that before the death of Brother Leo (1271) no one had spoken of this famous pardon.

After this it is needless to insist upon secondary difficulties; how is it that the chapters-general were not fixed for August 2d, to allow the Brothers to secure the indulgence?

How explain that Francis, after having received in 1216 a privilege unique in the annals of the Church, should be a stranger to the pope in 1219!

There is, however, one more proof whose value exceeds all the others--Francis's Will:

"I forbid absolutely all the Brothers by their obedience, in whatever place they may be, to ask any bull of the court of Rome, whether directly or indirectly, nor under pretext of church or convent, nor under pretext of preaching, nor even for their personal protection."

Before closing it remains for us to glance at the growth of this legend.

It was definitively constituted about 1330-1340, but it was in the air long before. With the patience of four Benedictines (of the best days) we should doubtless be able to find our way in the medley of documents, more or less corrupted, from which it comes to us, and little by little we might find the starting-point of this dream in a friar who sees blinded humanity kneeling around Portiuncula to recover sight.[10]

It is not difficult to see in general what led to the materialization of this graceful fancy: people remembered Francis's attachment to the chapel where he had heard the decisive words of the gospel, and where St. Clara in her turn had entered upon a new life.

When the great Basilica of Assisi was built, drawing to itself pilgrims and privileges, an opposition of principles and of inspiration came to be added to the petty rivalry between it and Portiuncula.

The zealots of poverty said aloud that though the Saint's body rested in the basilica his heart was at Portiuncula.[11] By dint of repeating and exaggerating what Francis had said about the little sanctuary, they came to give a precise and so to say doctrinal sense to utterances purely mystical.

The violences and persecutions of the party of the Large Observance under the generalship of Crescentius[12] (1244-1247) aroused a vast increase of fervor among their adversaries. To the bull of Innocent IV. declaring the basilica thenceforth Caput et Mater of the Order[13] the Zealots replied by the narratives of Celano's Second Life and the legends of that period.[14] They went so far as to quote a promise of Francis to make it in perpetuity the Mater et Caput of his institute.[15]

In this way the two parties came to group themselves around these two buildings. Even to-day it is the same. The Franciscans of the Strict Observance occupy Portiuncula, while the Basilica of Assisi is in the hands of the Conventuals (Large Observance), who have adopted all the interpretations and mitigations of the Rules; they are worthy folk, who live upon their dividends. By a phenomenon, unique, I think, in the annals of the Church, they have pushed the freedom of their infidelity to the point of casting off the habit, the popular brown cassock. Dressed all in black, shod and hatted, nothing distinguishes them from the secular clergy except a modest little cord.

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a coarse gown, some daring friar must overcome his very natural repugnances, and come to kneel there. The indulgence of August 2d is then the reply of the Zealots to the persecutions of their brothers.

An attentive study will perhaps show it emerging little by little under the generalship of Raimondo Gaufridi (1289-1295); Conrad di Offida ([Cross] 1306) seems to have had some effect upon it, but only with the next generation do we find the legend completed and avowed in open day.

Begun in a misapprehension it ends by imposing itself upon the Church, which to-day guarantees it with its infallible authority, and yet in its origin it was a veritable cry