The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

snow. He only rejoiced and sang the louder. A friend in Gubbio gave him a suit of clothes, which he wore for two years, with a girdle and a staff. He washed the feet of lepers in the hospital, and kissed their sores. He begged from doof to door in Assisi for the repairs of the church of St. Damiano, and carried stones for the masons. He did the same for the church of St. Peter; he did the same for the church of Our Lady of Angels at Portiuncula, in the neighborhood of Assisi, where he remained two years. Hearing one day in church the injunction of Christ to his Apostles, “Provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in your purse, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves,” he left off shoes and staff and girdle, and girt himself with a cord, after the manner of the shepherds in that neighborhood. This cord became the distinguishing mark of his future Order. He kissed the ulcer of a man from Spoleto, and healed him; and St. Bonaventura says, “I know not which I ought most to admire, such a kiss or such a cure.” Bernard of Quintavalle and others associated themselves with him, and the Order of the Benedictines was founded.

As his convent increased, so did his humility and his austerities. He sewed his rough habit with packthread to make it rougher; he slept on the ground with a stone for his pillow; he drank water; he ate bread; he fasted eight lents in the year; he called his body “Brother Ass,” and bound it with a halter, the cord of his Order; but a few days before his death he begged pardon of his body for having treated it so harshly. As a penance, he rolled himself naked in the snow and among brambles; he commanded his friars to revile him, and when he said, “O Brother Francis, for thy sins thou hast deserved to be plunged into hell”; Brother Leo was to answer, “It is true; thou hast deserved to be buried in the very bottom of hell.”

In 1215 his convent was removed to Alvernia, among the solitudes of the Apennines. In 1219 he went to Egypt to convert the Sultan, and preached to him in his camp near Damietta, but without the desired effect. He returned to the duties of his convent with unabated zeal; and was sometimes seen by his followers lifted from the ground by the fervor of his prayers; and here he received in a vision of the Crucifixion the stigmata in his hands and feet and side. Butler, Lives of the Saints, X 100, says:⁠—

“The marks of nails began to appear on his hands and feet, resembling those he had seen in the vision of the man crucified. His hands and feet seemed bored through in the middle with four wounds, and these holes appeared to be pierced with nails of hard flesh; the heads were round and black, and were seen in the palms of his hands, and in his feet in the upper part of the instep. The points were long, and appeared beyond the skin on the other side, and were turned back as if they had been clenched with a hammer. There was also in his right side a red wound, as if made by the piercing of a lance; and this often threw out blood, which stained the tunic and drawers of the saint.”

Two years afterwards St. Francis died, exclaiming, “Welcome, Sister Death”; and multitudes came to kiss his sacred wounds. His body was buried in the church of St. George at Assisi, but four years afterwards removed to a church outside the walls. See Note 1483.

In the life of St. Francis it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the facts of history and the myths of tradition; but through all we see the outlines of a gentle, beautiful, and noble character. All living creatures were his brothers and sisters. To him the lark was an emblem of the Cherubim, and the lamb an image of the Lamb of God. He is said to have preached to the birds; and his sermon was, “Brother birds, greatly are ye bound to praise the Creator, who clotheth you with feathers, and giveth you wings to fly with, and a purer air to breathe, and who careth for you, who have so little care for yourselves.”

Forsyth, describing his visit to La Verna, Italy, p. 123, says:⁠—

“Francis appears to me a genuine hero, original, independent, magnanimous, incorruptible. His powers seemed designed to regenerate society; but, taking a wrong direction, they sank men into beggars.”

Finally, the phrase he often uttered when others praised him may be here repeated, “What every one is in the eyes of God, that he is and no more.” ↩

Namely, in winter, when the sun is far south; or, as Biagioli prefers, glowing with unwonted splendor. ↩

It will be noticed that there is a play of words on the name Ascesi (I ascended), which Padre Venturi irreverently calls a concetto di tre quattrini. ↩

His vow of poverty, in opposition to the wishes of his father. ↩

In the presence of his father and of the Bishop of the diocese. ↩

After the death of Christ, she waited eleven hundred years and more till St. Francis came. ↩

The story of Caesar’s waking the fisherman Amyclas to take him across the Adriatic is told by Lucan, Pharsalia, V:⁠—

“There through the gloom his searching eyes explored,
Where to the mouldering rock a bark was moored.
The mighty master of this little boat
Securely slept within a neighboring cot:
No massy beams support his humble hall,
But reeds and marshy rushes wove the wall;
Old, shattered planking for a roof was spread,
And covered in from rain the needy shed.
Thrice on the feeble door the warrior struck,
Beneath the blow