Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (top 10 inspirational books .txt) 📕

of his counsels to the friars: Unusquisque habet in potestate sua inimicum suum videlicit corpus, per quod peccat. Assisi MS. 338, folio 20b. Conform. 138, b. 2.—Cum majorem inimicum corpore non habeam. 2 Cel., 3, 63. These are momentary but inevitable obscurations, moments of forgetfulness, of discouragement, when a man is not himself, and repeats mechanically what he hears said around him. The real St. Francis is, on the contrary, the lover of nature, he who sees in the whole creation the work of divine goodness, the radiance of the eternal beauty, he who, in the Canticle of the Creatures, sees in the body not the Enemy but a brother: Cæpit hilariter loqui ad corpus; Gaude, frater corpus. 2 Cel., 3, 137.

23. Quodam die, dicta fabrissa dixit ipsi testi prægnanti, quod rogaret Deum, ut liberaret eam a Dæmone, quem habebat in ventre ... Gulielmus dixit quod ita magnum peccatum erat jacere cum uxore sua quam cum concubina. Döllinger, loc. cit., pp. 24, 35.

24. Those of the Concorrezenses and Bajolenses. In Italy Cathari becomes Gazzari; for that matter, each country had its special appellatives; one of the most general in the north was that of the Bulgari, which marks the oriental origin of the sect, whence the slang term Boulgres and its derivatives (vide Matthew Paris, ann. 1238). Cf. Schmit, Histoire des Cathares, 8vo, 2 vols, Paris, 1849.

25. The most current name in Italy was that of the Patarini, given them no doubt from their inhabiting the quarter of second-hand dealers in Milan: la contrada dei Patari, found in many cities. Patari! is still the cry of the ragpickers in the small towns of Provence. In the thirteenth century Patarino and Catharo were synonyms. But before that the term Patarini had an entirely different sense. See the very remarkable study of M. Felice Tocco on this subject in his Eresia net medio evo, 12mo, Florence, 1884.

26. Cesar von Heisterbach, Dial. mirac., t. i., p. 309, Strange's edition.

27. Innocentii opera, Migne, t. i., col. 537; t. ii., 654.

28. Computruistis in peccatis sicut jumenta in stercore suo ut fumus ac fimus putrefactionis vestræ jam fere circumadjacentes regionis infecerit, ac ipsum Dominum ut credimus ad nauseam provocaverit. Loc. cit., col. 654. Cf. 673; Potthast, 2532, 2539.

29. Gesta Innocentii, Migne, t. i., col. clxii. Cf. epist. viii., 85 and 105.

30. Campi, Historia Ecclesiastica di Piacenza, parte ii., p. 92 ff. Cf. Innoc., epist. ix., 131, 166-169; x., 54, 64, 222.

31. A. SS., Maii, t. v., p. 87.

32. Bull of June 6, 1205, Potthast, 2237; Migne, vii., 83. This Cardinal Leo (of the presbyterial title of Holy Cross of Jerusalem) was one most valued by Innocent III. To him and Ugolini, the future Gregory IX., he at this epoch confided the most delicate missions (for example, in 1209, they were named legates to Otho IV.). This embassy shows in what importance the pope held the affairs of Assisi, though it was a very small city.

33. Not once do we find him fighting heretics. The early Dominicans, on the contrary, are incessantly occupied with arguing. See 2 Cel., 3, 46.

34. It need not be said that I do not assert that no trace of it is to be found after the ministry of St. Francis, but it was no longer a force, and no longer endangered the very existence of the Church.

35. This strange personality will charm historians and philosophers for a long while to come. I know nothing more learned or more luminous than M. Felice Tocco's fine study in his Eresia nel medio evo, Florence, 1884, 1 vol., 12mo, pp. 261-409.

36. A. SS., Sept., t. vii., p. 283 ff.

37. A. SS., Maii, vii.; Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum historiale, lib. 29, cap. 40. La Sila is a wooded mountain, situated eastward from Cosenza, which the peasants call Monte Nero. The summits are nearly 2,000 metres above the sea.

38. Toward 1195. Gioacchino died there, March 30, 1202.

39. A whole apochryphal literature has blossomed out around Gioacchino; certain hypercritics have tried to prove that he never wrote anything. These are exaggerations. Three large works are certainly authentic: The Agreement of the Old and New Testaments, The Commentary on the Apocalypse, and The Psaltery of Ten Strings, published in Venice, the first in 1517, the two others in 1527. His prophecies were so well known, even in his lifetime, that an English Cistercian, Rudolph, Abbot of Coggeshall (Cross 1228), coming to Rome in 1195, sought a conference with him and has left us an interesting account of it. Martène, Amplissima Collectio, t. v., p. 839.

40. Comm. in apoc., folio 78, b. 2.

41. Qui vere monachus est nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam: Apoc., ib., folio 183. a. 2.

42. E. Roth, Die Visionen der heiligen Elisabeth von Schönau: Brünn, 1884, pp. 115-117.

Table of
Contents

CHAPTER IV STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPH Spring of 1206—February 24, 1209

The biographies of St. Francis have preserved to us an incident which shows how great was the religious ferment even in the little city of Assisi. A stranger was seen to go up and down the streets saying to every one he met, "Peace and welfare!" (Pax et bonum.)1 He thus expressed in his own way the disquietude of those hearts which could neither resign themselves to perpetual warfare nor to the disappearance of faith and love; artless echo, vibrating in response to the hopes and fears that were shaking all Europe!

"Vox clamantis in deserto!" it will be said. No, for every heart-cry leaves its trace even when it seems to be uttered in empty air, and that of the Unknown of Assisi may have contributed in some measure to Francis's definitive call.

Since his abrupt return from Spoleto, life in his father's house had become daily more difficult. Bernardone's self-love had received from his son's discomfiture such a wound as with commonplace men is never healed. He might provide, without counting it, money to be swallowed up in dissipation, that so his son might stand on an equal footing with the young nobles; he could never resign himself to see him giving with lavish hands to every beggar in the streets.

Francis, continually plunged in reverie and spending his days in lonely wanderings in the fields, was no longer of the least use to his father. Months passed, and the distance between the two men grew ever wider; and the gentle and loving Pica could do nothing to prevent a rupture which from this time appeared to be inevitable. Francis soon came to feel only one desire, to flee from the abode where, in the place of love, he found only reproaches, upbraidings, anguish.

The faithful confidant of his earlier struggles had been obliged to leave him, and this absolute solitude weighed heavily upon his warm and loving heart. He did what he could to escape from it, but no one understood him. The ideas which he was beginning timidly to express evoked from those to whom he spoke only mocking smiles or the head-shakings which men sure that they are right bestow upon him who is marching straight to madness. He even went to open his mind to the bishop, but the latter understood no more than others his vague, incoherent plans, filled with ideas impossible to realize and possibly subversive.2 It was thus that in spite of himself Francis was led to ask nothing of men, but to raise himself by prayer to intuitive knowledge of the divine will. The doors of houses and of hearts were alike closing upon him, but the interior voice was about to speak out with irresistible force and make itself forever obeyed.

Among the numerous chapels in the suburbs of Assisi there was one which he particularly loved, that of St. Damian. It was reached by a few minutes' walk over a stony path, almost trackless, under olive trees, amid odors of lavender and rosemary. Standing on the top of a hillock, the entire plain is visible from it, through a curtain of cypresses and pines which seem to be trying to hide the humble hermitage and set up an ideal barrier between it and the world.

Served by a poor priest who had scarcely the wherewithal for necessary food, the sanctuary was falling into ruin. There was nothing in the interior but a simple altar of masonry, and by way of reredos one of those byzantine crucifixes still so numerous in Italy, where through the work of the artists of the time has come down to us something of the terrors which agitated the twelfth century. In general the Crucified One, frightfully lacerated, with bleeding wounds, appears to seek to inspire only grief and compunction; that of St. Damian, on the contrary, has an expression of inexpressible calm and gentleness; instead of closing the eyelids in eternal surrender to the weight of suffering, it looks down in self-forgetfulness, and its pure, clear gaze says, not "I suffer," but, "Come unto me."3

One day Francis was praying before the poor altar: "Great and glorious God, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind.... Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with thy holy will."4

Thus he prayed in his heart, and behold, little by little it seemed to him that his gaze could not detach itself from that of Jesus; he felt something marvellous taking place in and around him. The sacred victim took on life, and in the outward silence he was aware of a voice which softly stole into the very depths of his heart, speaking to him an ineffable language. Jesus accepted his oblation. Jesus desired his labor, his life, all his being, and the heart of the poor solitary was already bathed in light and strength.5

This vision marks the final triumph of Francis. His union with Christ is consummated; from this time he can exclaim with the mystics of every age, "My beloved is mine, and I am his."

But instead of giving himself up to transports of contemplation he at once asks himself how he may repay to Jesus love for love, in what action he shall employ this life which he has just offered to him. He had not long to seek. We have seen that the chapel where his spiritual espousals had just been celebrated was threatened with ruin. He believed that to repair it was the work assigned to him.

From that day the remembrance of the Crucified One, the thought of the love which had triumphed in immolating itself, became the very centre of his religious life and as it were the soul of his soul. For the first time, no doubt, Francis had been brought into direct, personal, intimate contact with Jesus Christ; from belief he had passed to faith, to that living faith which a distinguished thinker has so well defined: "To believe is to look; it is a serious, attentive, and prolonged look; a look more simple than that of observation, a look which looks, and nothing more; artless, infantine, it has all the soul in it, it is a look of the