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THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA $ fi Lf
FRANCIS OF ASSIST
LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES
DANTE . . . B y PAGET TOITNBEE
SAVONAROLA . . . By E. L. S. HORSBURGH
JOHN HOWARD . By E. C. S. GIBSON, D.D.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH . By I. A. TAYLOR
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON By A. C. BENSON
ERASMUS . . . By E. F. H. CAPET
GOETHE . . . By H. G. ATKINS
CANNING . . By W. ALISON PHILLIPS
LORD CHATHAM . By A. S. McDoWALL
THE YOUNG PRETENDER . By C. S. TEBBY
ROBERT BURNS . . By T. F. HENDERSON
PORTRAIT OK BROTHER FRANCIS
In Hit Church of the Sacra Sfeco, Subiaco
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
BT
ANNA M. STODDART
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1903
TO
MY FRIEND AND PASTOR
ROBERT FORMAN HORTON
PREFACE
THIS book is meant to be a popular account
of St. Francis of Assisi, of his ideal and his
attainment, relieved on a background of history
essential to its full understanding. It has no
pretension to be a work for students of the period
and its most important movement. But it has
been written in Rome and Assisi with constant in-
debtedness to the researches of living Franciscan
scholars.
Not only has the writer profited by what M.
Paul Sabatier and his colleagues have brought
to light, but she has enjoyed the rare advantage
of M. Sabatier's personal interest in her work,
and of his careful revision of a large portion of her
manuscript, and his cordial encouragement. To
him her grateful acknowledgment of such price-
less stimulus and assistance is first due.
She wishes to thank her friend Miss Pipe and
Count Antonio Fiumi, President of the Inter-
national Society of Franciscan Study, for their
valued help in choosing and securing illustrations.
viii PREFACE
To Signer Oreste Rossi, of the Hotel Subasio,
she offers her sincere recognition of his constant
kindness in supplying her with local information
and in lending her books of the greatest use to
her work.
Many other distinguished Assisans helped her
in details, and of these she would like to mention
here Professor Alessandri, Professor Casali and
Father Luigi Fratini.
CONTENTS
PART I. HISTORICAL
CHAPTER I
PAQE
POTERTY AND HOLINESS I
Poverty and Holiness Brahmanic Conception Begging
Students Abuses The Sophists The First Roman
Christians The Hermits St. Jerome The Bene-
dictines In England Their Decay and Reform The
Augustinians Influence of the Papacy.
CHAPTER II
THE CHURCH IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CEN-
TURIES --...-.--13
Early System Growth of Hierarchical Body Rome the
Seat of Ecclesiastical Power Change in the Character
of the Church Its Feudal Possessions Its Decadence
in the Ninth Century Its Restoration by Henry III.
Gregory VII. Investitures Struggle between
Papacy and Empire Arnold of Brescia The Peace
of Venice.
x CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
PAGE
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 27
Three Popes in Exile Clement III. and the Romans The
Great Crusade Henry VI. Celestine III. Tus-
culum Innocent III. The Emperor Otto Francis
at the Lateran Assisi in the Remote Past Under
Rome Its First Christian Martyrs Goths, Huns,
Lombards and Germans in Assisi Its Troubled Civic
History.
PART II. BIOGRAPHICAL
CHAPTER I
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE. 1181 1204 - - 48
Birth of Francis His Parents Peter Waldo Childhood
of Francis At School As a Youth The Commune
of Assisi Francis as Citizen and Soldier Prisoner in
Perugia His Return.
CHAPTER II
CONVERSION. 1204 1206 - - - -- - -67
Illness The Porta Nuova Walter of Brienne The
Expedition from Assisi Return Penitence The
Vision of Poverty Farewell to Friends The Poor
At Rome Heresies San Damiano Renuncia-
tion.
CHAPTER III
THE BROTHERS MINOR. 1206 1210 86
The Benedictine Convent Gubbio Cesena San Dami-
ano again Santa Maria degli Angeli Francis be-
gins to Preach His First Followers The First
Mission A Crisis The Second Mission Pope Inno-
cent III. and the Order.
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER IV
PAGE
THE THREE ORDERS, izio 1212 109
The Return from Rome Orte Rivo Torto Santa Maria
degli Angeli The Career! Increase of the Order
The Order of Penitents Clare degli Sciffi The
Poor Ladies of Penitence San Damiano Rule of
the Second Order.
CHAPTER V
YEARS OF INCREASE. 1212 1218 *-;, h-i, - 128 I
Failure of First Attempts at Foreign Missions Monte
Alverna given to the Order Increase of the Sisters
of Poverty Accession of Scholars Cannara and
Bevagna Sermon to the Birds First Visit to Monte
Alverna Missionary Itinerary through Central Italy
God's Minstrels Lateran Council of 1215 Decree
affecting the New Orders Innocent's Death Ugolino
The Pentecostal Chapters Foreign Missions
Brother Elias Francis in Rome St. Dominic
Subiaco and Oldest Portrait of Francis Chapter of
1218 First Murmurs against the Rule Dominic
and Poverty.
CHAPTER VI
YEARS OF TROUBLE. 1218 1223 150
Chapter of 1218 Francis in Egypt and Palestine Changes
made during his Absence His Return At Bologna
Ugolino's Management Michaelmas Chapter of 1220
The New Rule Pietro de Cattani appointed General
Francis and Dominic in Rome Rule for the Third
Order Elias appointed General The Revolution of
the Order The Rule of 1223.
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
LAST YEARS. 1223 1226 ........ 173
The Rule of 1223 The Praesepio of Greccio The Friars
in England Monte Alverna The Stigmata Canticle
of the Sun Rieti Siena Bagnara Assisi Bishop
and Magnates at Variance Francis makes Peace.
CHAPTER VIII
TESTAMENT, DEATH AND CANONISATION. 1226 1230 - 194
Francis at the Vescovado Laudes Domini His Pre-
occupation with the Future of the Order Mental
Agony Letter to the Order Welcome Sister Death
Letter and Message to Clare Benediction of Assisi
The Testament Jacopa dei Settisoli Death Funeral
Procession San Damiano San Giorgio Letter
written by Elias The Collis Inferni Speculum
Perfectionis Gregory IX. Elias Deposed Building
of San Francesco Canonisation of St. Francis
Completion of the Lower Church The Saint's Body
hidden by Elias.
PART III
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 219
The Earliest Biographical Frescoes The First Portraits
St. Francis by Cimabue By Lorenzetti Giotto's
Frescoes in the Upper Church Above the High Altar
in the Lower Church Santa Croce in Florence
Fra Angelico Benozzo Gozzoli at Montefalco
Ghirlandaio Benedetto da Maiano Donatello
Andrea Delia Robbia Garofalo Agostino Carracci.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Brother Francis in the Church of the Sacro Speco,
Subiaco ....... Frontispiece
Incident in the youth of Francis (from Oiotto' s fresco in the
Upper Church at Assisi) .... to face p. 62
The Crucifix of San Damiano .... to face p. 81
The Renunciation (from Oiotto' s fresco in the Upper Church
at Assisi) to face p. 85
Pope Innocent IIL's Dream (from Oiotto' s fresco in the
Upper Church at Assisi) .... to face p. 106
Francis and His First Followers presenting the Rule to
Pope Innocent III. (from Giotto's fresco in the Upper
Church at Assisi) to face p. 108
Sermon to the Birds (from Giotto's fresco in the Upper
Church at Assisi) to face p. 135
Francis Preaching before Pope Honorius III. (from Giotto's
fresco in the Upper Church at Assisi) . . to face p. 144
Francis before the Sultan of Egypt (from Giotto's fresco in
the Church of Santa Croce, Florence) . . to face p. 152
Presentation of the Rule of 1223 to Pope Honorius IIL
(from Ghirlandaio' s fresco in the Church of Santa
Trinit^, Florence) to face p. 173
The Benediction of Brother Leo (from the original in
the Sacristy of the Upper Church at Assisi) to face p. 180
Francis Blessing Assisi (from the picture by Benouvile
in the Louvre) to face p. 202
xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
The Death of Francis (from Giotto's fresco in the Church,
of Santa Grace, Florence) . . . .to face p. 206
Appearance of Francis just after Death to the Bishop of
Assisi, and to a Dying Friar (from Giotto's fresco
in the Church of Santa Croce, Florence) to face p. 208
Early Portrait of Francis (now in the Sacristy of the Upper
Church at Assisi) . . . . ..to face p. 221
Statue of Francis by Donatello (in the Church of S.
Antonio, Padua) ... . . .to face p. 236
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
PART I
HISTORICAL
CHAPTER I
POVERTY AND HOLINESS
Poverty and Holiness Brahmanic Conception Begging
Students Abuses The Sophists The First Roman
Christians The Hermits St. Jerome The Benedic-
tines In England Their Decay and Reform The
Augustinians Influence of the Papacy.
T)OVERTY and holy living have always been asso-
J_ ciated in those European and Asiatic civilisa-
tions capable of conceiving the spiritual life. "In
the wide East, where all wisdom sprung," poverty
and holiness were united by an indissoluble tie. No
code of morals, no philosophy, no benediction could
be received as genuine from men dwelling in luxury,
however exalted their office, however eagerly sought
their material gifts and influence. The line of
demarcation was absolute the gifts of this world
came from its own princes and potentates, the gifts
from above from those who had abandoned the
things of this world, and, having food and clothing,
were content to seek after the spiritual life and
1
2 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
the wisdom that is given to its votaries. Brahmans
and Buddhists alike maintained the impossibility of
reconciling God and Mammon. If we constrain our
minds into an effort to realise what Brahmanism
was in its earliest course, we shall find in the still
limpid waters of its fountain-head a sense of the
presence of God in the sphere of man's obligations,
and along with it the experience that this mar-
vellous presence became obscured when men sought
wealth, luxury, even comfort each accession to
material well-being acting as a veil fold on fold to
blind the spiritual vision.
Thus, the sacred rites which initiated the Brah-
man novice involved a long period of poverty ;
without poverty his faculties were inadequate to
penetrate the mysteries of spirituality. During
many years of study he begged his bread, and
others honoured their own domestic life by filling
his bowl with rice and adding what could be spared
of savoury condiment. It is an indication, too, of
the position of women in those remote ages, that he
was enjoined to beg from the woman, the mistress
of all household economies, not from her husband,
whose labour provided them. Some perception
there was, before the wide-spread degradation of
oriental womanhood, of the greater purity, the more
delicate spirituality of the pristine feminine nature.
" Bhavate Bhiksham Dehi," the student begged at
the door, and there was no taint of squalor, failure,
imposture about the words, for it was well under-
stood that he was in his novitiate, learning to
POVERTY AND HOLINESS 3
apprehend, to meditate, to preserve his soul in
perfect peace, unentangled by the cares of the
trivial, workaday, transitory world, for whose help
and guidance he was necessary.
The act, indeed, was part of his study, for it
assisted him in the toilsome achievement of self-
effacement.
The whole custom, revered as it was throughout
the civilised East, served as a national endowment
of research, perhaps better in its effects upon the
nobler students than are the costly colleges of our
Western world. Even now, the Brahman has in
him a two- fold capacity that of sharing in the
practical life of to-day, profiting by its chances,
manipulating its possibilities, rising to wealth, power
and political importance, and that of renouncing all
these at the call of his spiritual nature and retiring
to poverty, meditation and seclusion.
Of course, the further we follow the Brahmanic
conception down the long stream of time, the
more we become conscious of its decay, and of the
increasing multitude of beggars little hallowed by
sanctity of life. It was inevitable that as popula-
tions increased, their idler and lazier constituents
should make the life of sacred poverty a means of
mere brazen beggary. Such abuses are incident
to all creeds inculcating what we call charity. In
every Christian country how many are there who
maintain themselves by unabashed and mendacious
mendicancy without any return whatever except
cynical ingratitude. Every great age fallen into
4 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
decay shows like symptoms. Thus, in Greece,
when seers, thinkers, lawgivers, and patriots were
a splendid memory, the heritage of their deeds and
wisdom dwindled to a residuum of cant phrases,
and in every household might be seen a professor
of wisdom and poetry, maintained as a kind of
family adviser, although little meriting his main-
tenance. What had been the free gift of the
world's greatest thinkers degenerated to a com-
pendium of sophistries cleverly handled by beggars.
Influences from the East abounded in imperial
Rome, and this principle of the separation of the
spiritual from the physical life was well known.
And as Christianity made its way amongst slaves
and paupers, the association of poverty with faith
in the Man of poverty and of sorrow was inevitable.
Such wealthy Romans as joined the humble wor-
shippers of our Lord made valid their confession
by sharing their goods amongst their fellow-
Christians, by voluntary abnegation of wealth, by
tending the sick and the dying, by care for the
decorous burial of the dead. The exquisite stories
of saints and martyrs, who lived and laboured
during the centuries of persecution, bear full testi-
mony that the Christian life was lived in Christ's
way by His genuine followers. For Christ Himself
not only preached a gospel infinitely more con-
soling to the poor than to the rich, but He indicated
on more than one occasion that it was a gospel
difficult of acceptance by the rich. And His own
methods were those of the East. Followed by a
POVERTY AND HOLINESS 5
group of men, either labourers, or having sacrificed
lucrative posts for His sake, He passed from village
to village, healing, consoling, teaching, living on
the hospitality of the villagers, not refusing that of
the wealthy, but alert to point out the immeasur-
ably greater value of the gifts of the poor.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of
mutual help constantly given in the commerce of
daily life. It is not the gospel of individual
accumulation of material wealth, against which He
hurled His most scathing invective, " Thou fool ! '*
And for this reason, that He knew what wealth does
for the spirits of men, devitalising, impoverishing,
perhaps quenching for ever.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that in the
decadence of Rome, when her life was corrupt to
the core, Christian men and women fled into the
wilderness to practise the poverty and holiness
impossible in the cities, and that hermits became
the forerunners of the monastic orders.
Nor was it wonderful that the sanctity, learning
and curative skill of the early hermits obtained for
them a prestige which heralded degeneration.
Because, when the idle and the vicious found that,
by simulating sanctity and seeking solitude, they
received veneration and support from the country
people around their caves and huts, they hastened
to assume a virtue which they did not practise, and
in time brought contempt and suspicion upon the
whole system. From its inadequacy sprang the
earliest of the monastic orders.
6 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Perhaps St. Jerome may be accounted as the
first of the monks of the West, although he began
as a hermit in Egypt. But, in response to the
petition of certain patrician Romans, he founded a
primitive monastery at Bethlehem, where both men
and women practised the life of self-denial and
devotion under his direction. In later centuries
the small order of the Jeronomites perpetuated his
Rule, which admitted of industry, manufacture and
gradual wealth. But St. Jerome is not so intimately
associated as is Benedict with the institution of
what became one of the most powerful and en-
during systems of the Catholic Church.
Benedict, who was born at Norcia in Umbria,
belonged to the end of the fifth and first half of
the sixth centuries. It was an age when the
hermit life seemed to be the only refuge from
depravity and violence, and in his school-boy years
at Rome he revolted from the corruption around
him. Wealth, rank and power seemed to be only
agents of vice, cruelty and effeminacy, and his pure
young spirit turned from all to seek in poverty and
solitude that communion with the immortal and
invisible, which was not denied to him. But as the
fame of his holiness and its supernatural efficacy
went abroad, numbers of refugees collected about
him, and he was forced to organise them into
communities of twelve, each under a superior, in
simple accord with the example of Christ and His
disciples. And on the summit of Monte Cassino he
founded his chief monastery, whose Rule comprised
POVERTY AND HOLINESS 7
not only the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience
already known to the hermits, but daily manual
labour for seven hours and a novitiate lasting a
whole year before the final vows might be taken.
The metropolis of monasticism was founded in
poverty and for poverty poverty and hard work
being clearly recognised as tutelary against corporeal
and mental backsliding.
Already, however, a missionary colony in an
island of the northern seas, which had not heard of
Benedict, was practising a missionary Rule on the
lines laid down by Christ Himself, and from lona
brothers went two by two throughout Scotland and
Northern England, crossing the dangerous seas in
fragile coracles, living with the wild and lonely
Caledonians, Scots, Picts and Angles, carrying
neither purse nor scrip, but bearing in their hearts
the love of men ; in their memories and on their
lips the story of salvation ; in their hands power to
heal, to help, to work with the toiling poor amongst
whom they sojourned.
The Benedictines slowly degenerated from the
practice of their founder's Rule, and by the end of
the ninth century had almost forgotten his injunc-
tions. Laziness and idleness triumphed as usual,
where Christ was no longer the example. And worse
than these, although inevitable to these, crimes of
the blackest character so that the better monks,
who sought to restore the primitive Rule, ran con-
stant risk of murder, and left the monasteries for
the hermitage again. A great resuscitation of the
8 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
hermit system belongs to the ninth, tenth and
eleventh centuries.
The last of these was an age of monastic reform,
and many offshoots from Benedictinism began in the
full inspiration of poverty and sanctity, to forget
and betray both when their reputation brought
offerings and bequests of land and wealth.
Gregory the Great sent Benedictine missionaries
to England, who came into collision with the
Christian Church amongst the Britons of various
Celtic stocks. These were gifted with a somewhat
critical spirituality, and preferred the life and teach-
ing of our Lord to ecclesiastical authority ; they
were obtuse therefore to the advantages of a super-
imposed code and hierarchy. This element in the
mixed population prevented the absolute domination
of Rome in Great Britain, maintaining a wholesome
resistance which shaped the national life, although
it contained the germs of future schisms and dis-
ruptions. But these were almost invariably a
protest against the worldliness of the Church and
an effort to restore the simple worship of apostolic
times.
The other great monastic order took its name,
although scarcely its origin, from St. Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo. Its communities appeared in the
ninth century, when Pope Leo and the Emperor
Lothaire collected all the clergy who were outside
of the Benedictine Rule and placed them under a
Rule said to have been promulgated by St. Augus-
tine. Four centuries later the hermits and other
POVERTY AND HOLINESS 9
free lances of the life of poverty and contemplation
had become less a help than a hindrance to the
Church, as they evaded discipline, and were mere
bold beggars, whose practice was less devotion
than squalor. These the Popes forced into the
Augustinian Order, and Alexander IV. added the
scourge to their penitential exercises.
From this order sprang many branches, amongst
them the Knights Templars and the Knights of
St. John, for it appealed more to the noble classes
than did the Benedictines, beloved of the poor. It
is, therefore, somewhat astonishing to discover that
when the Mendicant Orders arose they adopted
the Rule of Augustine rather than of Benedict.
Of the sources of decay in these communities
much has been written. It may be taken as
indubitable that the chief agent in their failure
was the Papacy, its example, its struggle to become
a world power, its success, and its consequent re-
moval of the Church from the sphere within whose
limits the Divine Founder had placed its functions
and aspirations. But the almost incredible per-
versity of the Popes in steadily disregarding Christ's
injunctions belongs to the history of their conflict
with the Empire, and in this chapter we can only
glance at its disastrous operation upon every organ
and function of the visible Church.
It is difficult to make a whole generation see
what the one witness to God can see during its
existence, but had the Head of the Church on earth
been that witness, how different now would be its
10 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
relation to God and its influence upon men. A
line of Popes spiritually descended from Gregory
the First might have saved the Church from its
materialism, its polytheism, its despotism, its wars,
cruelties and crimes, might have kept its light clear,
fed by the Divine oil of humility, charity and
unworldliness, not quenched by assumptions and
dogmas founded on impious forgery and unholy
ambition.
" My Kingdom is not of this world," proclaimed
Christ, and it was this kingdom which the Popes
declined to establish, preferring to yield to just
those temptations which our Lord in the wilderness
repelled and overcame.
Almost every so-called heresy from the ninth
century onwards was a courageous protest against
the materialism, arrogance, ambition and luxurious
living of the whole hierarchical body and a demand
for the Church's return to the simple organisation of
apostolic times.
The Cathari, or Albigenses, the Poor Men of
Lyons, the Arnoldists, the followers of Pons of
Perigord, laid long and apparently futile siege to
the false foundations of the mighty ecclesiastical
fortress, and if, for the most part, they were ruth-
lessly crushed, still their mines and galleries facili-
tated the explosion when it came in the form of
the Protestant disruption. That some of these
courageous men were affected by the Oriental
doctrine of the suppression of all human duties,
relationships and necessities, in order to attain a
POVERTY AND HOLINESS 11
spiritual exaltation which placed them en rapport
with the other world, seems to be certain, and these
extremists were, of course, dangerous to the daily
life and conduct consecrated by Christ. But others,
as Peter Waldo, Arnold of Brescia and his stern
persecutor, Bernard of Clairvaux, attacked the
shameful lives of the clergy, their greed, luxury and
immorality, and demanded a return to the poverty
enjoined by Christ on all whom He consecrated to
preach the gospel. How furiously the Church
assailed its critics is matter of history. Where they
were poor and unprotected they were slain by the
sword, as in the case of the Albigenses, rooted out
by command of Innocent III., who dared to call
himself the Vicar of Christ !
It is no wonder, therefore, that the monastic
orders grew wealthy, luxurious, haughty. We may
be thankful that some of them grew learned also,
that before the invention of printing they collected
manuscripts and copied them, and that they pre-
served the Bible by means of constant transcrip-
tions. To learned monks we owe most of the
history of Europe, the preservation of the classics,
of books of doctrine, patristic and theological ; the
beginnings of education, the early arts, the rudi-
mentary sciences or pseudo-sciences. And, espe-
cially in England, the convents were the only
centres of charity to the poor, of healing and
nursing, of consolation and of escape from the
turbulence and cruelties of pre-reformation times.
But their spiritual influence was at a minimum,
12 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
and they encouraged rather than over-bridged the
gulf between the secular and the monastic life,
making a bequest to their order the price for
death-bed repentance and absolution, although the
life of the testator had been a prolonged defiance of
every one of God's commandments.
What worth for the world they retained was due
to the spirit in which they had been founded, and
to the rule prescribed, although too often relaxed.
What spiritual failure they suffered was due to the
precepts, example and influence of the Roman
Curia.
CHAPTER II
THE CHURCH IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH
CENTURIES
Early System Growth of Hierarchical Body Rome the Seat
of Ecclesiastical Power Change in the Character of
Church Its Feudal Possessions Its Decadence in
Ninth Century Its Restoration by Henry III. Gregory
VII. Investitures Struggle between Papacy and
Empire Arnold of Brescia The Peace of Venice.
THE simple congregational system of apostolic
times passed away with the Apostles. As
Christianity spread and new congregations were
formed, it became necessary to call general meet-
ings of their representatives at some convenient
centre for each district. The president at such a
meeting, chosen for his personal worth, became by
common consent the spiritual overseer of his dis-
trict, and these overseers formed the first episcopal
body. The overseer in the city gradually grew in
importance as his area of supervision became more
densely populated, more complicated intellectually,
morally and politically, than that of his colleague in
the country. The ecclesiastical hierarchy hastened
to its full equipment.
Why the Bishop of Rome should have over-
shadowed the bishops of other cities and other
(13)
14 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
countries it is not difficult to understand. Chris-
tianity began in Judea, and it might have been
reasonably expected that the Bishop of Jerusalem
should rise to be head of the Church government,
but Judea was a province of the Roman Empire,
and some centuries elapsed during which the
Christian hierarchy was under the ban of the
Empire and Palestine under its heel. That mar-
vellous centralisation of power in the City of Rome
not only long outlasted its virtual sway, but left be-
hind it a prestige, a legend, to which the minds of
men succumbed for fifteen centuries.
When the Emperor removed to Constantinople
after sanctioning Christianity, that prestige became
the heritage of the Church, which began to wield
it in a manner altogether similar to the methods by
which the Romans had consolidated their authority.
The erewhile humble and saintly Bishops of Rome
became potentates, and for the most part the
change wrecked their humility and their saintliness.
The hierarchical confederacy furthered their aims
in all parts of the world to which Christianity had
penetrated. Submission to the Church, faith in its
dogmas, tribute to its treasury, took the place of the
old-world attitude to the Empire. Its dogmas
ceased to be the commands of Christ, or became
perverted versions of His commands ; traditions
supplemented and almost replaced the Apostolic
Scriptures ; inventions and forgeries welded into
tyranny the double authority assumed by the
Bishops of Rome ; men were taught an elaborate
CHURCH IN. ELEVENTH CENTURY 15
paganism of angels and fiends, of miracles and
judgment, to supply the gap of prescribed deities,
nymphs, satyrs, and portents, instead of being led
to recognise the working of the Holy Spirit, and of
being strengthened in the life immortal and invis-
ible proclaimed by St. Paul.
A policy of expediency in times of almost incon-
ceivable difficulty extended and materialised the
influence of the Church. It attempted to unite the
legacy of Christ with the heritage of the Empire,
and it succeeded in combining the domination of
the latter with a terrifying assumption of super-
natural authority, wherein there was little of Christ,
but a great deal of the mysterious influence
exercised upon superstitious and ignorant multi-
tudes by every determined priesthood.
It had become, after some centuries of increasing
power, the aim of the Roman Church no longer to
preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God, His
Fatherhood, His adoption of men willing to believe
in His Son, but to preach the Church's acceptance
of all who acknowledged her authority and bowed
to her dogmas. Yet, even in these days, men and
women averted the calamitous declension by indi-
vidual return to the precepts and example of Christ,
and the proud and worldly organisation has ever
been prompt to display those exceptional lives as
the flower and fruit of her teaching.
Lands and wealth were bequeathed to the Church
by nobles, princes and emperors, till the Bishop of
Rome was suzerain in many parts of Italy, in Sicily
16 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
and Corsica, in Gaul, in the north of Africa and in
Asia. It was becoming a world-power, made its
own alliances as with the Prankish Kingdom
defended its territories with the sword ; disputed
its own throne, two or three pretenders struggling
at once for what was called the Chair of St. Peter ;
drew up its own codes of jurisdiction, based upon
audacious forgeries, and shared in the disorders of
the terrible years which brought the ninth century
to a close.
During the succeeding century the power of the
Papacy shrank to its minimum, and could scarcely
claim from its vassals recognition of its feudal
supremacy, losing Sicily and Southern Italy to
Saracens and Normans. A like anarchy prevailed
in the Empire of the West, but it revived with Otho
of Saxony, son of Henry the Fowler, who made
himself feared as King of Germany and Emperor
of the Romans, head of both State and Church
within his dominions. This great Emperor came
to Rome to put his supremacy in force, and found
the Church suffering from a Pope so profligate,
reckless and irresponsible, that we recognise in him
the authentic heir of that insanity which befel many
of the Roman Emperors, when in their own person
they assumed the position and received the homage
due both to the Deity and to the sovereign. On
representations made to him by the Synod, which
he convened at St. Peter's, Otho deposed Pope
John XII. and raised Leo VIII. to the Papacy.
But the Romans, ever capricious, changed their
CHURCH IN ELEVENTH CENTURY l?
minds and revolted against the Germans, and Otho
was obliged to use force for their submission. In
the end he established the imperial right to control
papal elections, as well as to receive the homage of
the Romans, and until the middle of the eleventh
century his successors maintained their authority so
far as it was possible over treacherous Pontiffs and
turbulent citizens. One of them indeed, the
brilliant Otho III., aimed at making Rome his
capital, and but for his early and violent death
might have succeeded in realising this great con-
ception.
The Papacy continued to be a scorn and a
derision in the hands of infamous or incompetent
Popes, three of whom Henry III. deposed early in
the eleventh century, nominating one German
bishop after another to the pontifical chair, and
superintending the reform which these commenced
in the lives of the degenerate clergy. With that
reform, however, began unconsciously the gradual
growth of the arrogance inseparable from actual
power, which led to the restoration of the temporal
power, to the vast and imperial pretensions of a
line of determined Popes, to the bloody struggle
with the very Empire which had re-established,
protected, and in some respects reformed the
Papacy, a struggle lasting two centuries, and
although almost successful for the latter, still the
essential cause of its downfall.
The Church, at Henry III.'s death, was still
bound to the Empire, not only by ties of gratitude,
2
18 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
but by an understood subjection to its head. But
as the latter depended on the co-operation of Rome
for the coronation which legalised his title of
Emperor, the Popes, once more restored to the
respect of Christianity, realised how powerful was
this prerogative for the furtherance of their ambi-
tions. Nicholas II. summoned a Council in 1059,
which excluded the Emperor as elector to the
Papacy, as well as both nobles and burgesses of
Rome, and which revolutionised the existing con-
stitution. His successor, Gregory VII., who had
counselled this step, was thus furnished with the
preliminary means towards his audacious aim of
freeing the Papacy from secular intervention. No
longer were Empire and Church to work together
as body and soul for the civilisation and Christiani-
sation of the world, but the Church was to sway
the destinies of its kingdoms, unhindered by the
voice of their sovereigns, or the vote of their
Councils.
Fortunately, strong sovereigns were on some of
the thrones thus menaced, such as Norman William,
who laughed the attempt to convert England into
a Papal fief to scorn.
The Romans, too, were a perpetual thorn in the
Pontiffs side, and nothing testifies so irrefragably to
the spiritual futility of the Roman Church as its
powerlessness to deal with its immediate difficulties.
Whatever impression of holiness it might maintain
beyond Rome's ring of city-studded mountains,
within that circle familiarity with its methods, its
CHURCH IN ELEVENTH CENTURY 19
hypocrisies, its cruelties and its greed had bred
immortal contempt. Gregory VII. re founded the
Church, not upon the Rock Christ Jesus, but upon
the absolute power of the Papacy. He asserted
the supremacy of the Popes, not alone in ecclesi-
astical, but in political matters, and as to spiritual
matters, he and his successors were greater adepts
at wielding a spiritual terrorism than at making
Christian precept influential. The man's love of
power was unbounded ; it had the harsh Teutonic
quality, which eventuates in tyranny, and it was
this overweening and unspiritual humanity which
he forced into the mediaeval conception of the
Papacy.
Great as was his apparent success, it was flawed
and rent with the strain to which he subjected
the system, and from his time the Western world
rocked and reeled above the tremors of doubt and
repulsion, which heralded the inevitable outbreak
in the countries of slow-broadening freedom. That
it was an outbreak of volcanic force and not a
reformation from within was due to Gregory VII.
and his successors, whose assumption of infallibility
for the Church destroyed its need and its faculty
for critical introspection, and armed it with a ready
sword, with tortures and with death against the
very men who might have recalled it to its first and
forgotten purity. The Popes, who clung to their
lands and their wealth, who equipped armies and
cursed nations, made the outbreak a terrible necessity.
Gregory VII. dared to use the anathema for
20 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
purely worldly purposes, and conquered by virtue
of the blight which interdict and excommunication
effected. And if the papal weapons could terrorise
the very Emperor, how natural it was that the
feudal vassals of the Empire, who resented con-
trol, should seek alliance with the power which
wielded them. The very existence of the Popes,
secularised into aggressive politicians, while retain-
ing in the imaginations of men this blasting poten-
tiality, was a menace to the States of Europe. It
was more than a menace to Henry IV., against
whom Gregory employed every artifice of priest-
craft, every treason that man can practise against
man, every sacrilegious use of the terrors whose
exercise he dared to arrogate.
But he planted two strong seeds and watered
them with blood detestation of the Papacy in
Germany and the war between Papacy and Empire.
The struggle began on the question of investiture.
It was the prerogative of Henry IV.'s predecessors
to appoint the prelates and dignitaries who ruled
the German Church, and if he abused this pre-
rogative and sold these high places to unworthy
clerics, he did what Popes had done before him
and what his training under corrupt Pope-chosen
ecclesiastics had taught him to do. Recovering
from the penance imposed upon him, he appointed
an anti-pope and began to lay siege to the papal
fiefs, so that Gregory was forced to call the terrible
sword of Robert Guiscard to his aid, and himself
died in exile.
CHURCH IN TWELFTH CENTURY 21
His successors carried on the strife and perpetu-
ated the use of intrigue and treachery so associated
with the practice of the Roman Curia, while the
Emperors learned to emulate their craft and could
devastate Italy with larger armies.
Sixteen Popes, with but few exceptions, were in
arms against the Emperors during the course of the
twelfth century, and five anti-popes testify to the
occasional success of the latter. They were fight-
ing for their very existence as Emperors, the Popes
for their very existence as territorial Lords. It
was the tremendous question between temporal
suzerainty and a spiritual suzerainty bent as well on
temporal supremacy.
Many of the papal temporalities were based upon
a forgery known as the " Donation of Constaiitine,"
a document literally conceived in iniquity and
expressed in blasphemy, while its claim to be the
tribunal at which kings and emperors must be
judged was based on the " Decretal Epistles," a
clever collection of forgeries, here and there pro-
vided with a genuine pastoral letter. Without
these two foundation stones, the temporal power,
which has betrayed the spiritual, could not have
been erected. Neither one nor the other suggests
the Rock Christ Jesus.
The very schemes, which the Popes evolved for
the occupation of Christendom and the restoration
of their Asiatic fiefs, were educating men into
larger views, into more logical conception of the
Divine intention for both Church and nations.
22 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
This spectacle of an armed and death-dealing
Papacy intent on territorial possession, concerned
not at all for the souls and bodies of men, under-
mined the imposing structure. Every secession
marked an acute perception of the monstrous
anomaly displayed by the Papacy. Even its most
zealous supporters brought home charges of luxury,
ostentation, vice and idleness against its clergy,
and Bernard of Clairvaux, who persecuted its op-
ponents and conciliated its schisms, spoke bravely
against its pride, avarice, secularisation and corrup-
tion. The strife was at its culminating point during
the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, and when Hadrian
IV. and Alexander III. were Popes, that is, from the
middle of the twelfth century till about 1180.
Eugenius III. succeeded Lucius II. in 1145, and
inherited his strife with the Romans, who, under
Arnold of Brescia, had almost succeeded in secur-
ing their civic independence of both Pope and
Emperor. Lucius, indeed, died a soldier's death
at the head of his mercenaries, storming the
Capitol, where the Romans had established their
government. Arnold was perhaps more formidable
to the Papacy than both the dynasties of Saxon
and Hohenstaufen emperors. A Brescian by birth,
a student at Paris, where he acquired the art of
rhetoric, the practice of logical reasoning, dialec-
tics and liberal theology under Abelard, blameless
in life and attractive in person, with flawless courage
both physical and moral, he discerned the root of
every monstrous evil which had sprung from papal
CHURCH IN TWELFTH CENTURY 23
misguidance. Brescia was already accustomed to
plain speaking and to discontent with the luxury
and arrogance of its own prelate and priests, whom,
as Gregorovius has said, " words failed to describe,
but whom neither councils nor monastic orders
could cure".
Arnold plunged into the fray, declaring with
acute diagnosis that neither property nor power
could righteously belong to the clergy, but that
holy living would entitle them to receive tithes
from those whom they spiritually benefited. In
support of this doctrine was the adolescent mind
of Northern Italy and of Germany, for the crusa-
ders had effected much in liberating, informing
and maturing the intelligence of the West.
His war-cry was, " Let the temporal power of
the prelates come to an end " and it was echoed
wherever light had dawned on the minds of men,
and wherever was felt the tyrannous pressure of
the sovereign curia. Above all, at its very gates,
in Rome itself, the citizens and nobles maintained
a constant contention with the Dominium Temporale,
and when Arnold appeared amongst them they wel-
comed his cause as one with which they had been
long familiar, and secured his assistance in estab-
lishing the civic independence on which they were
bent. For it was the birth-time of the burgher
rights, and industries, arts and crafts were sending
into the broad field of the world powers that made
for liberty, scarcely aware of whose banner they
had hoisted.
24 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
One Pope had already in half-hearted fashion
acknowledged the anomaly of the feudal position
of prelates and priests, but his attempt to reform
it did not seek to purge the Papacy from the evil
which he condemned, and it broke down. But
that the canker had, in some of its symptoms,
been admitted by Paschal II., might have been
pushed home had Bernard of Clairvaux and Arnold
been able to combine on a common ground of
action. Unfortunately, Arnold was too much ali-
enated by the hopeless corruption of the Church
to admit that even ecclesiastically its hierarchy
was fitted for government, and Bernard was as
much convinced of its spiritual potentiality as he
was concerned about its moral degeneracy. He
was Arnold's unrelenting foe, and had pursued him
with stern denunciation wherever he had taken
refuge.
In the new outbreak of Rome against the Pope,
Arnold was protected by the citizens, and when
Lucius died, Eugenius III. practised a crafty states-
manship, which, while flattering the Romans, slowly
undermined their resistance and depreciated their
enthusiasm for its leader. And Hadrian inherited
what his predecessor's craft effected, when his op-
portunity arrived.
A cardinal was murdered in a Roman brawl, and
Pope Hadrian laid the city under interdict until
Arnold was banished. Alas ! he too was the victim
of the men whom he tried to help, and they be-
trayed him because Eugenius had bought their
CHURCH IN TWELFTH CENTURY 25
good-will with alms and Hadrian had paralysed
their cowardly souls. But, while he lived, that
one pure spirit, whom money could not purchase
nor papal thunders terrify, Popes sat uneasy on
their throne, and Hadrian made him the price of
Barbarossa's coronation. Rather the man of fire
and sword, who could be fought by hirelings, kept
at bay by diplomacy, managed by invocation of all
the infernal terrors, than the voice speaking in
the wilderness, which called men to repentance,
and whose owner practised the simplicity, the au-
sterity, the pitifulness of Christ.
Into a new era Empire and Papacy carried the old
war. But there was scarcely any rag of spiritual
pretension left with which to veil its violence.
The casus belli was the fair domain in Northern Italy
claimed alike by Pope and Emperor. Other mo-
tives, indeed, mingled with this, and while Frederick
appealed to authority ancient as the Roman power
and deriving from the Ruler of Heaven and earth,
Hadrian curbed his vaulting ambition with the
reminder that, unconsecrated by the Pope, his
imperial state was a figment of the imagination.
The only English Pope held his dominion very
briefly, but his successor, Alexander III., although
harassed by Frederick's anti-popes and threatened
by his determined effort to recover the control
wielded by Otho and Henry III., maintained an
unyielding resistance, and secured both the papal
chair and the ultimate victory over Frederick.
This great event was signalised by the Peace of
26 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Venice, on 1st August, 1177. It was precipitated
by the defeat suffered by Frederick from the
Lombard cities, whose League the Pope approved
and blessed, helping civic liberty when it was use-
ful against his foe. There were more signatories
to the Peace than the two principals, for the great
republics sent their envoys, and both Sicily and
Constantinople furnished their rulers to the con-
gress assembled by Sebastian Ziani, the Doge of
Venice.
And Alexander III. emerged triumphant from
his perplexities, the independent ruler of Rome,
the feudal lord of his Patrimonium, pardoning with
dramatic impressiveness his mighty foe, whom awe
of the invisible had shaken into penitence.
Then stubborn Rome yielded to the infection
and begged the Pope's return to the Lateran,
where he took prompt measures to ensure the
papal elections once for all against secular inter-
vention and against the scandal of anti-popes from
which he had just been delivered. He called an
CEcumenical Council and issued its decree, that
two-thirds of the votes of the College of Cardinals
should henceforth elect a Pope, and that neither
Emperor, nor prince nor burgess might vote at all.
Two years more of trouble and exile he endured,
and then in 1181 Alexander III. died at Civita
Castellana, bequeathing that strange combination
of power abroad and impotence at home to his
successor.
CHAPTER III
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER
Three Popes in Exile Clement III. and the Romans The
Great Crusade Henry VI. Celestine III. Tusculum
Innocent III. The Emperor Otho Francis at the
Lateran Assisi in the Remote Past Under Rome Its
First Christian Martyrs Goths, Huns, Lombards and
Germans in Assisi Its Troubled Civic History.
TWO Popes in exile wore the tiara, but could
not sit in St. Peter's Chair, kept'at bay by the
Romans, whom they cursed in vain. It was into
Christendom, so vexed for lack of Christ, that
Francis was born, shortly after Pope Alexander's
death, and while Lucius III. was branding his
Romans as heretics from the safe distance of
Verona, where, on his death, Urban III. kept such
state as was possible outside the Lateran and St.
Peter's. He prosecuted the feud with Barbarossa's
son, who would not slacken hold on Matilda's
lands, and refused to crown him. So, in right of
his wife, Henry assumed the suzerainty as well as
the possession of Sicily, got himself crowned by
the Patriarch of Aquileia, and commenced to harass
the Papal States. Urban died after two years of
disaster, and his successor, Gregory VIII., anxious
(27)
28 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
for peace and for a new crusade to recover Jeru-
salem, had scarcely time to make his wishes known
when he too died, and a man of Roman birth and
sterner character was raised to the Papacy as
Clement III. He entered into negotiations with
Rome as with a separate Power, and for certain
payments and permission to destroy the City of
Tusculum, so often the refuge of Popes from the
Romans, he was allowed to return to the Lateran,
but with his secular power reduced to a minimum.
However, that was a matter which time might
remedy, and for the present there was Jerusalem to
be recaptured and the sovereigns of Europe to be
managed to that end, an easier matter than keep-
ing his citizens in order. So Barbarossa, Philip of
France and Richard of England, with a host of
minor princes and dukes, made alliance, and sailed
for the East, the first to his death by misadventure,
the last to failure and captivity on his homeward
way. No one of them visited the Pope on the out-
ward journey, although they were as close to Rome
as Ostia and Messina. On Barbarossa's death,
Clement was prepared to crown Henry emperor,
but he died before the Easter of 1191, which he
had fixed for the ceremony. A fortnight later, his
successor, Celestine III., was ordained, and crowned
Henry VI. the following day ; but the Romans had
exacted as price of the hallowing the complete
destruction of Tusculum by the German soldiers,
and together they made of the ancient and powerful
city a melancholy desert, a few heaps of scattered
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 29
and unrecognisable stones. Such requital its lords
received for long years of loyalty to the Curia.
This atrocity was completed two days after the
Emperor's coronation, three after the Pope's ordina-
tion. Celestine let the Romans do much as they
liked, so long as he might hold the Lateran and
the Leonine City, but their incessant feuds and the
habitual indolence of a pleasure-loving populace,
ready for revolts and ready for the pageantries of
peace, without determination and without union,
made it impossible for Rome to attain the dignity
founded on industry, energy and civic responsi-
bility which obtained in Lombardy and Tuscany.
Its Senate was already in the hands of the nobles,
and a succession of revolutions fills the Roman
chronicles of this time.
Henry VI. had suppressed Sicily and secured
Spoleto, Romagna and the Marches before his
sudden and early death in September, 1197, and
Celestine had no time to seize the opportunity
which this event afforded, for a few months later
he, too, ended his vexed and hampered life in the
beginning of 1198.
The eighteen years of his successor's sway form
the most remarkable period of papal pretension,
audacity and political influence. Innocent III., a
man who, as far as mere vice was concerned, was
blameless, but in whom it is impossible to deny
the vigorous existence of every spiritual sin which
can lead the soul astray from the Divine intention,
made himself literally arbiter of the kings and
30 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
governments of Western Europe. His first care was
to purchase terms with the Romans ; his next, to re-
gain the papal suzerainty over Campania, the Mari-
tima, the Sabina and Tuscany. The disturbed state
of the Empire gave him his next opportunity, and
he played the impressive part of liberator from the
hated German yoke, attracting the cities to his
banner and forcing the German princes to surrender
and even to leave Italy. Scarcely six months a
Pope, he was able to make a royal progress and
to receive the homage of many a city long accus-
tomed to give grudging service to imperial governors.
For the first time Perugia, on the Umbrian hills,
bent to a sovereign Pontiff, and received from his
hands the communal franchise already granted by
Henry VI. Assisi he claimed and won from Count
Conrad, its people gladly consenting, and tearing
down their castle walls that they might never again
harbour a foreign master. Francis was sixteen years
old then, a fascinating lad, gay in his father's
cloths and silks from the markets of Southern
France, ruffling it with the younger nobles of Assisi,
taking part, we may be sure, in all the gala doings
of that day of liberation, doubtless receiving into
his sub-consciousness that object-lesson of Innocent,
Vicar of Christ, with hand to sword, chasing away
his foes with a mere arm of flesh, anomalously rein-
forced, somehow, by an incalculable mysterious
power to send their souls to hell. Florence, Lucca
and Siena were matured in civic liberty, and would
not grant him political ascendency, so that, in spite
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 31
of his masterly treatment of the role elected, he
played it to their suspicious burghers with too much
intention to secure their confidence. In Tuscany,
therefore, he was a name rather than a power, and
its cities kept that portion of Matilda's heritage
which they had wrested from Barbarossa. From the
Marches to Latium he placed his provinces in the
care of his own officers, protected by powerful for-
tresses securely garrisoned. The strife for the
imperial throne between the houses of Hohenstaufen
and Saxony gave him a further chance, promptly
converted into an unscrupulous but brilliant diplo-
matic advantage ; and while either side sought his
suffrage, he played one against the other, noting and
rising upon the weaknesses of both. All the time
he held in the background the little Frederick,
Barbarossa's grandson, neglected by the rivals and
apparently of no account to Innocent, but at the
right moment to be produced for the discomfiture
of the unmanageable pretenders and for the further-
ance of his own purposes. For he had carefully
seen to the boy's corruption, and had discounted his
inheritance of mind and craft from the Hohenstau-
fen line. That Frederick lived to be a thorn in
the side of the Papacy was not merely one of time's
revenges, but a proof that even the most daring,
far-seeing and provident of intriguers cannot always
cope with the future he has himself contrived.
It was ever as the friend of freedom that Inno-
cent posed, taking advantage of the discord between
thrones and nations at the time, as he had taken
32 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
advantage of the strife between the Italian cities
and the Empire. How great a freedom he would
have granted had all power been his may be com-
puted from his menaces, his persecutions, his inter-
ventions, his interdicts and his excommunications.
He ripened the Papacy for the Inquisition, for the
systems of espionage and betrayal which have
made it odious and which have been the startling
and conclusive evidence of its spiritual decay.
But the Romans gave him scant domestic rest,
although he tried to buy it at the cost of Viterbo,
helping them with troops and money to subdue
that unhappy city with which they were at war.
He had his own reasons for this alliance. Italy
swarmed with heretics who exalted renunciation
and poverty, and taught a recalcitrant attitude
towards the wealthy land-owning hierarchy. Not
alone were the Waldensians giving trouble, but
Patarins and Cathari were sedulously spreading
their antagonism to doctrines essential to the
Church's supremacy. They revived the Oriental
creeds of poverty and mysticism combined, of the
conflict of principles good and evil, of the spiritual
in opposition to the carnal ; they encouraged re-
nunciation, even of life itself in certain cases, of
marriage, industry and commerce. Milan and
Viterbo were their headquarters in Italy, and
thence they sent their missionaries, winning to
their numbers some of the finest minds of the
Peninsula, and some of its nobles estranged by the
materialism of the court and clergy of Rome. In-
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 33
nocent himself dictated the peace which made
Viterbo vassal to the Roman Commune.
He paid himself for this singular alliance by
seizing the lands of Count Odo of Poli, who had
offered them to the Romans for sale, and by con-
ferring them on his brother. This rapacious act
roused the ready suspicion of the citizens, amongst
whom the old hatred broke out in tumult and
fighting. Innocent had to fly to Palestrina, where,
lord of the civilised world, he was tossed to and
fro like a puppet in the hands of conflicting parties
at home, shifting from one side to the other, nobles,
senators, people, alive only to their own interest,
while the Pope had to bide his opportunity. Five
years were occupied in this domestic quarrel, and
Rome was in a state so deplorable that at last
the people cried aloud for peace, and Innocent,
knowing acutely the civic temperament, found the
moment opportune for copious bribery, and although
the resolute citizen Capocci protested against sur-
render, papal tactics and the papal soldiery made
brief work of the enfeebled resistance. Innocent
triumphed and returned, his umpires yielding to
him the right of electing the Roman Senate. The
city was worn out, and until he died this constitu-
tion was maintained. Papal greed had roused the
strife and papal greed revived with its close, but
this time Innocent seized the territories of the
child king of Sicily, who could not defend them,
nor even dispute his usurpation. He gave his
brother Richard the title of Count of Sora, and
3
34 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
bestowed upon him not only the lands of the
Counts of Poli, but Sora, Arpino, Arce and I sola,
to be held as fiefs of the Church. It was after this
act of dishonourable spoliation that he crowned
Otho of Saxony emperor, who forthwith fell to
making treaties against him, intent upon recon-
quering the imperial fiefs. But Innocent promptly
excommunicated him, a fact which was of waning
significance in Italy and of none at all in Rome,
but which retained its baleful power in Germany,
and Otho returned thither after two years of further
conflict during which the Umbrian cities were faith-
ful to Innocent.
It was in the summer of 1210, three months
before he launched this excommunication, while he
was receiving news of Otho's successes in Southern
Italy, where even Naples surrendered to the Em-
peror, and while his haughty and rapacious spirit
was infuriated at the losses inflicted upon the
Papacy by its minion, whose discomfiture he medi-
tated by that thunderbolt that Francis was brought
face to face with Innocent.
It was one of the most impressive interviews
which history records, and reminds us of our Lord
before King Herod. But Herod was a trifler com-
pared to the able Pontiff and our Lord was no
suppliant at his paltry court. We can picture that
crowned nonentity growing restless and ill at ease
in presence of so majestic a silence.
Nor was the stupendous contrast between Inno-
cent and Francis conceivable in their time. It is
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 35
only now, almost seven centuries since it happened,
that we see it in the full depth of its shadow, the
full radiance of its light. On the papal throne, the
world incarnate ; at its foot, the one man who be-
lieved that Christ's Rule of living was the only Rule
possible for the health of humanity. For there was
no Rule practically held by the Curia to be so foolish,
so undesirable as Christ's Rule, and to the illumined
soul of Francis there was none so wise and so to be
desired.
This man came from Assisi, which had done
homage to Pope Innocent twelve years earlier, had
flung off the imperial suzerainty and discarded its
Count-Governor. No older city sits upon the
Umbrian hills. That it was important in the time
of Augustus, and earlier, is proved by its beautiful
portico of the ancient Temple of Minerva now lead-
ing to a Christian church ; by its extensive forum
buried under the modern piazza ; by its amphitheatre
and stadium, whose grass-grown seats still circle round
what forms a kind of village green in the Piazza
Nuova, houses interrupting their tiers ; by Roman
sculptures, reliefs and inscriptions, collected in its
Pinacoteca, its public gardens, its municipal palace.
Some of these date from about three centuries B.C.,
when Assisi came under the power of Rome with
the other cities of Umbria. But she had a history
of her own before her subjection to the invincible
republic.
If we may credit Pliny and Dionysius, it was in
ages hardly calculable and prior to the siege of
36 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Troy that the Ombri had been chased from Sicily
by the Siculi, and had swarmed up the Italian
peninsula and over the plains that lie west of the
Adriatic. Thence the Etruscans drove them to seek
safety within the Apennines, and they settled where
that great plain, to which they gave their name,
forms a table-land about 1,100 feet above the sea
level, uplifted by mountain walls which enclose it
on every side. Here they built towns upon the
lower slopes, simple towns of little huts compacted
of wood and clay or mud. They seem to have
been an agricultural and pastoral people when they
fled from their plains, but the mountain air hardened
them into warriors and the exigencies of their lot
completed the transformation. It was a time of
restless movement, and the Etruscans followed them
into Umbria and possessed themselves of one of
these simple towns, building Perugia on its site
and overlooking the wide plain with masterful and
covetous eyes. Assisi was the nearest Umbrian
city, and its neighbours made periodical attacks
upon its inhabitants, which, at first, they evaded
by withdrawing, with all their goods, into the bowels
of Monte Subasio, upon an outlying slope of which
their homes were built, and whose mass was pierced
by caves and galleries. But in time they braced
themselves up to conflict with the Etruscans, and
became strong and gallant soldiers, aggressive as
well as defensive, and the rivalry went on vigorously
between them.
Then came the Romans at the end of the fourth
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 37
century before Christ, and Perugia allied herself to
the cities of Umbria, in brave but unavailing resist-
ance. Fabius, the consular general, conquered
Umbria, and Rome established her garrisons in
every city and commenced her educative processes.
It is more than probable that Assisi had already
acquired some of the arts of civilisation from her
long though hostile intercourse with Perugia, and
that prisoners there returned to their homes with
knowledge of architecture and other civic advan-
tages, which they proceeded to use. There exist
massive remains of what might very well have been
drains in the Etruscan manner, evidently older than
the Roman occupation, and at Santa Maria delle
Rose great Etruscan blocks still support an arch
built and decorated in the time of Charlemagne.
But it is certain that Assisi was rebuilt in the
years that followed its subjection, and that it be-
came in time a singularly beautiful and richly
decorated city. Its historian, Antonio Cristofani,
helps us to reconstruct the old forum. Its chief
ornament must have been the Temple of Minerva,
whom a myth associates with the founding of the
town by Dardanus, for Roman historians loved to
support these pious frauds. Palladio considered
the Corinthian columns which remain as the type
of architectural perfection. Another temple, of
Doric construction, was sacred to Apollo, and
there are remains of more, of which three were
dedicated to Jove, Hercules and Esculapius.
Others rose in different parts of the romanised
.38 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
city, and the temple of Janus has left its name
in the Porta Mojano.
Remains of walls, columns, capitals, friezes and
foundations attest the splendour of Assisi in im-
perial times, while numerous inscriptions supply
dates and other details, and on these is based
Cristofani's admirable account.
It was in Assisi, about the middle of the century
before the Christian era, that the Latin poet, Pro-
pertius, was born, and, although educated at Rome
and spending there the years of his literary and
social success, he returned to " Umbria rich in
fertile plains " so soon as his family property was
restored to him, and spent the last lustrum of his
brief life in simple domestic happiness "where
misty Mevania stands among the dews of the
hill-girt plain, and the waters of the Umbrian
lake grow warm the summer through ".
Morning mists still crown Bevagna, and Bastia's
old name of Isola Romanesca marks the site of
Umbria's vanished lake. Many inscriptions attest
the residence of the Propertius family in Assisi,
most of them carefully stored under the portico
of Minerva.
We find that during the decline of Rome its
luxury penetrated into Assisi, where the nobles
became conspicuous by their absence, preferring
the pleasures of the capital to their duties at
home, and where even the middle classes and
the labourers fell into idle and effeminate ways.
Agriculture was neglected ; what industry there
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 39
was took the shape of the manufacture of luxuries,
such as litters, of which so many were made that
the workmen were united in a guild or college.
In the second century the once flourishing town
was impoverished by the combined influences of
fashion and taxation, and it became necessary to
maintain the children of its poorer inhabitants by
public charity.
But even during this decadence the first breath
of the new spirit was felt. We cannot accept the
tradition that St. Peter, during his alleged episco-
pate, sent a special band of evangelists into Um-
bria, but it is certain that by the beginning of
the third century evangelists were there, and that
amongst the Assisans a small Christian community
existed, leading the precarious lives of that age of
persecution. The first bishop mentioned in local
tradition was Rufino, one of these evangelists who
had preached the gospel in Spoleto before he came
to Assisi. Faithful to the Cross, when he was be-
trayed he confessed Christ in the presence of his
judges, and was condemned to the flames, which
died out, so that his half-scorched and suffering
body was flung into the river Chiaggio on the
other side of the plain. His followers drew it
from the water, and gave it first burial near at
hand, but when the reign of terror passed it was
secretly transported up to the city, where now
stands the old Duomo of San Rufino.
Nor do the first impressive annals end here.
The second bishop, Vittorino, suffered martyrdom
40 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
about the middle of the same century, and the
first years of the next witnessed the imprisonment,
the cruel torture and the death by bastinado of
Bishop Savino. But with him is connected an
incident so beautiful that we must linger over it
more fully to understand the legends of the Assi-
san Church, told to the little Francis by Madonna
Pica, which sowed in his tender mind seed that
blossomed into the most Christ-like life of Chris-
tendom, whose fruit is still for the healing of the
nations.
Betrayed to the prefect Venustiano, Savino and
two of his deacons confessed Christ and challenged
the governor to produce an idol comparable to the
Lord of Heaven and earth. The prefect sent for a
little image of Jove set in coral, which Savino,
getting leave to hold it in his hands, flung with
all his strength upon the marble floor, so that it
broke into pieces. The furious governor bade a
soldier cut off his hands, and dismissed him to
prison for future torture, while the deacons, em-
boldened by such courage, refused to deny their
Lord and were flung into the Chiaggio to die.
While Savino lingered in prison, a woman from
Spoleto sought him out and asked him to heal
her little nephew, who was blind. The saint
called upon Christ and implored Him to show
His saving health to the heathen, and then touch-
ing the child's eyes restored them to sight. The
boy gave the glory to Christ, and eleven bystanders,
including the gaoler, heathen hitherto, joined in
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 41
His praises, knelt down to confess His name, and
received baptism from the bishop. Just at this
time Venustiano suffered from acute spasms of pain
in his eyes, from which no remedy gave him relief.
Hearing of this cure he sent for the boy and learned
all its details. Savino was brought from prison, and
when the boy led him in, the prefect wept before
him, asking his pardon and his help. The old man
raised his eyes to heaven and prayed : " He will
give thee light, who lighteth every man that
cometh into the world, but thou must believe in
Jesus Christ." Then the prefect ground the pieces
of his once cherished idol into powder and flung it
away. So Savino took water and sprinkled him
with all the members of his family, baptising them
in the new name, and with the water came light,
and his eyes were whole again. In a transport of
gratitude the prefect flung himself at Savino's feet,
and asked him to entreat God's pardon for the
cruelty he had shown, and most tenderly the
bishop assured and comforted him. The news
was quickly carried to Maximian at Rome, and
he sent the tribune Lucius with orders to put
Venustiano, his wife and his children to death,
the Roman's death by decapitation. Their fellow-
Christians in Assisi gave them burial. But Savino
was beaten to death.
Assisi had her full share in the sufferings of the
fifth and sixth centuries, when Italy was the battle-
field of Goths, Huns, Franks, Alemannians and
Lombards. Like some other cities of the peninsula,
42 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
she called in the assistance of the Byzantine Em-
peror and was ruled by his delegate, a Gothic
soldier, who oddly enough took service in the Greek
army. This man, called Siegfried, led the towns-
people in a heroic resistance against Totila, and
made sorties from the gates in gallant attack. In
one of these he fell, and the citizen levy, disheart-
ened, fled back, surrendering Assisi to the Huns,
who tore down its walls, temples and public build-
ings.
But again we get a glimpse of a heroic bishop,
no longer the head of a persecuted remnant, but
the overseer of the local church, and the man who,
when Siegfried fell, seems to have come forward to
negotiate with Totila. Aventius was his name, and
the conqueror respected him sufficiently to make him
his legate to the Byzantine court, although we know
neither his mission nor its success. Perhaps Totila
asked for alliance and for recognition as lord of the
Italian cities which he had conquered. If so,
Justinian refused to listen to terms from the bar-
barian, and sent first unfortunate Belisarius and
then Narses, who broke the power of the Huns
and recovered Italy for the Eastern Empire.
But scarcely were the horrors of this time at an
end, when Italy was again invaded from the north,
and to the misery of war renewed were added floods,
earthquakes and pestilence. The unhappy country
was enfeebled by disease and starvation, its popula-
tions were reduced, and the only consolation left
was the rapid death of its foes, menaced more by
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 43
plague than by the sword of Narses. This was the
moment when the fierce Lombards fell upon its
length and breadth as far as Rome, possessing them-
selves of Umbria as they passed. Assisi perhaps
made terms with Spoleto, whose Lombard Duke
Ariulfo rose to considerable power and even
threatened Rome. But for centuries the annals
of Assisi are almost dumb, and we hear nothing of
her civic and political condition, so that her prob-
able relation to the Duchy of Spoleto is conjecture.
The name of her bishop Aquilino appears amongst
those summoned to Pope Martin I.'s Council in 659.
Her Church seems to have become infected with
the Arianism of her Lombard neighbours and
Charlemagne desired to restore Umbria to Roman
Christianity. He took Assisi by surprise in 773,
first levelling its walls and then rebuilding them,
and his chief care was to import a colony of Roman
Christians. But the old citizens were almost annihi-
lated because of their gallant resistance, and the
civil wars that followed renewed miseries from
which they had been recovering.
Either during this restoration of Assisi, or im-
mediately after, the castle, or Rocca d' Assisi, was
raised at the top of the hill, which forms a buttress
to the broad-based Subasio, and up which the town
climbs towards its now ruined fortress. Built for
protection, the castle with its towers and keep and
ramparts, its walls descending on either flank of
the city to encircle it with fortifications, proved to
be a lure inviting attack, and during the fierce
44 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
hostility between Popes and Emperors poor Assisi
was the objective of many a German adventurer,
who knew better than her citizens how to occupy
and defend the beautiful fortress which the latter
had built. Charles the Great had presented the
cities of Umbria and the Exarchate of Ravenna to
the Papal Curia, then glad enough of imperial pat-
ronage and gifts, so that Assisi counted as part of
the Papal States, and for that sufficient reason was
in constant danger from the Germans.
The city slipped back soon after the eighth
century into tributary alliance with Spoleto, and
for the greater part of the two succeeding centuries
claimed judgment from the Duke of Spoleto in the
numerous disputes between her ecclesiastics and
the rural counts, who had possessed themselves of
suburban lands, and were in constant litigation with
both Church and town.
Documents belonging to the annals of the ninth,
tenth and eleventh centuries are very numerous,
but relate more to the attendance of her bishops
at Lateran Councils in Rome ; to the exchange,
sale and purchase of property ; to the prominence,
as castellan, of this and that Lombard and German
count, or to the disputes between counts and abbots
as to the ownership of certain lands, than to matters
of more immediate interest. But some of them
celebrate the building of churches and monasteries,
and, amongst the latter, of the large and wealthy
monastery of St. Benedict, which was raised upon
the southern slope of Monte Subasio, at some dis-
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 45
tance east of the town, in 1041, and whose abbot,
Aginaldo, founded the church and nunnery of St.
Paul down in the plain thirty years later. Earlier
in the century the church of St. Peter had been
built, perhaps by one of the Lombard counts, and
during its whole course religious settlements were
established within and without the walls, the
Benedictines predominating as founders. The
bishops encouraged their spread. One of these,
Bishop Hugo, whose episcopate lasted from 1036
to 1050, revived local interest in San Rufino and
San Savino, building a church to the latter on the
site of the ruined Temple of Janus, and raising the
cathedral of San Runno over the little oratory
beneath which his bones had rested for eight
centuries. He transferred the episcopal chair to
this church and established a college of canons in
a neighbouring cloister. This pious and venerable
prelate was succeeded by one less worthy, Bishop
Agino, who enriched himself by the tenure of
abbacies and other benefices, following the scan-
dalous example of contemporary ecclesiastics. We
find him in far greater repute than his humble
predecessors, appointed arbitrator in a court held
by the Duchess of Perugia, wife of Geoffrey, Duke
of Spoleto, at which was present her daughter
Matilda, afterwards the great countess. The lust
of power, which had taken possession of the court
of Rome, had spread far and wide. The old rivalry
with Perugia broke out before the death of Bishop
Hugo, and Todi with Foligno took part on the
46 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
side of Assisi, a sign of advancing civic inde-
pendence, but the long strife in Italy and the
constant usurpation and tyranny of imperial ad-
venturers delayed even while they stimulated the
popular longing for its development.
Five bishops held the see during the twelfth
century, men interested in the advancement of
Assisi, for to their time belong both the hospital of
San Rufino and the school opened in San Giorgio
for educating the children of its townspeople.
It was the period of the Lombard League, which
checked imperial ambition, although before the
battle of Legnano, Barbarossa's chancellor, Arch-
bishop Christian, invaded Umbria and possessed
himself of both Spoleto and Assisi, an event which
once more delayed the slow-maturing commune.
Until he entered the city, much as Charlemagne
had done three centuries earlier, by a drain, Assisi
was only nominally subject to Barbarossa, and there
are indications of an understanding between the
commune and her nobles, an alliance for defensive
purposes, celebrated in 1160 by a donation to the
citizens of land and castles on the part of Count
OfFreduccio, and accepted by Bishop Ranieri in
their name at an assembly of the nobles, clergy
and townspeople held in the cathedral, on the sole
condition that Assisi should help the donor in the
perils of that time.
But Christian's siege and capture followed soon
after, and was the Emperor's answer to so manifest
an intention of home rule.
CLIMAX OF THE PAPAL POWER 47
Apparently the great Hohenstaufen was himself
in Assisi from the middle of December, 1177, till
after the new year, his son Henry with him. The
Emperor took all authority from the native nobles
and invested Conrad of Liitzen, whom he had
already made Duke of besieged and despoiled
Spoleto, with the government and title of Count
of Assisi. He was less of a tyrant than most of
the Emperor's deputies, had certain whims which
secured him the nickname of " Conrad Fly in his
Head," but he allowed the town to join the
Umbrian League and, as we have seen, he sub-
mitted to Innocent III. in 1198. Pier Bernardone's
house stood a few steps behind the upper corner of
the piazza, and he must have witnessed the imperial
state that Christmas-tide, four years before his son's
birth, and have shared in the civic discontent with
the new ruler.
PART II
BIOGRAPHICAL
CHAPTER I
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE
1181 1204
Birth of Francis His Parents Peter Waldo Childhood of
Francis At School As a Youth The Commune of
Assisi Francis as Citizen and Soldier Prisoner in
Perugia His Release.
FRANCIS, son of Pier Bernardone, was bom
towards the end of the year 1181, just four
years after Barbarossa's visit, and shortly after the
death of Pope Alexander III., to whom the proud
Hohenstaufen had knelt in St. Mark's.
September the twenty-sixth is celebrated in As-
sisi as the exact date of his birth, but it cannot be
certified.
His father was a merchant in silks and cloths,
making long journeys for sale and purchase.
Umbrian silk was a more important manufacture
then than now, although the mulberry still flourishes
for the double purpose of feeding the silkworm and
(48)
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 4.9
supporting the vine. But the quality of silken
tissue made in the present day is inferior to that
of other silk-weaving districts in Italy, perhaps
because leaves of the elm are used as well as of
the mulberry. Pier Bernardone, an Assisan him-
self, married a lady known to us as Pica, perhaps
a foreigner and of gentle birth, but content to be
the wealthy merchant's wife. Indeed, the mer-
chants of that time were rising everywhere into
importance, and M. Sabatier has reminded us of
the conspicuous part which they played in the
middle ages and later, travelling with their valu-
able wares in strong companies from market to
market, from castle to castle, where not alone their
silks and velvets made them welcome, but also their
knowledge of what was going on in the countries
traversed by their caravans. It was usual for
them to receive shelter and hospitality where
they halted ; to carry oral messages and missives
of political import; to be the special agents of
princes and papal legates. The position of such
men cannot be confounded with that of petty
tradesmen, as their necessary conversance with
other languages than their own, their use of
courtly manners, and their value in those days
when the exchange of despatches and the con-
veyance of money or jewels was beset with difficul-
ties, must have given them both personal dignity
and exceptional knowledge of the world.
Proven9al was the language in all probability
most familiar to Bernardone, and it is surmised
4
50 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
that Madonna Pica had been wooed and won in
Southern France, in the gay accents of her native
tongue. For Southern France was Bernardone's
goal when he set out with bales and escort, and
we can picture him at the fairs of its cities, where
the world's commerce was transacted, and where,
as at Venice and in the towns of Southern Ger-
many, men of all nations met each other for barter
and to exchange news from England on the West
to Egypt on the East.
In Southern France, during the years before his
son's birth, there was much talk of heresy. A
money-lender called Peter Waldo, who had made
a great fortune by his dubious trade, was stricken
with contrition on hearing the story of St. Alexius
from a traveller, probably a pilgrim. This was in
the city of Lyons, and in the year 1171. The
death of the saint, who had given up all that he
might not be drawn into a worldly life, and who
returned to his wife and parents as a dying men-
dicant, unrecognised by them till the last, made
so profound an impression upon Waldo, that he
consulted a master of theology as to what he
should do to be saved. The divine spoke Christ's
word to the man of many possessions : " Go, sell
all that thou hast, give it to the poor and come
follow Me."
Peter Waldo received the command with child-
like faith and obedience. He settled his house
and lands upon his wife, with money sufficient for
her maintenance, and put aside funds to provide
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 51
for his little daughters as nuns in the order of
Fontevraux. He then realised all that remained
of his fortune and began to distribute it to the
poor. A famine was desolating the country dur-
ing that summer, and three times a week he gave
bread, vegetables and meat to all who came to
him. But on 15th August, not satisfied that he
was fully carrying out Christ's injunction, he went
amongst the poor on the streets, flinging money
to them and calling aloud : " No man can serve
two masters, God and Mammon."
The people crowded about him thinking him
mad, but he declared that when they found him
accumulating money they might call him mad, for
only he was mad who trusted to wealth and forbore
to trust in God.
Then, having given away all that he possessed,
he went to a friend to beg bread, who gave it wil-
lingly and promised it for his life-time. Waldo's
wife was deeply wounded that her husband should
seek for maintenance from any one but herself,
and went to the Archbishop, who recognised her
right, and granted her permission to provide for his
daily needs, but more than meagre fare and simplest
clothing the penitent would not accept. His next
step was to make himself acquainted with the
Holy Scriptures and the Patristic writings. Two
priests aided him in this, as he did not know
Latin. He grew familiar with Christ's methods
of proclaiming the gospel, and of organising, in-
structing and consecrating its missionaries. This
.52 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
opened to him the next stage on the path of
obedience. Men and women of the poorer classes
crowded to him, confident that his holy poverty
meant some definite hope for them, at a time
when the poor were crushed under the arrogant
heal of authority. Already he had a band of fol-
lowers, willing to trust the spiritual rather than
the material providence, and becoming confident
that the latter was assured in sufficient measure.
Waldo and his disciples began to preach repent-
ance and obedience to Christ's commands in the
streets of Lyons. After a short time he sent them,
two by two, to the outlying towns and villages,
where they were welcomed into the houses and
even into the churches. Lyons and its neighbour-
hood were soon ringing with the forgotten teaching
of Jesus, which had lain in cerements of Latin for
a thousand years. The people listened gladly, for
beautiful in all ages are the feet of the messengers
of peace.
In all things our Lord's instructions were followed.
Two by two, the Waldensians went from place to
place, from country to country. They wore sandals
of wood, a simple tunic of woollen cloth, and car-
ried neither purse nor scrip, trusting to the hospi-
tality of those to whom they preached. They
renounced possessions and settled homes, since the
Son of Man had not where to lay His head. It was
these preachers and teachers who were called Wal-
densians, not the people to whom they ministered.
The latter might form congregations and accept
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 53
evangelical creed and practice, but, unless they de-
sired to become missionary brethren, they were not
called upon to give up their trades and homes, for
Christ had consecrated home life, and only demanded
poverty and renunciation from those whom He com-
missioned to teach and preach. This must be kept
strictly in mind, because these so-called heretics
were a protest against that wealth, material power
and worldly authority which cankered Curia, hier-
archy and monastic life. When men spoke of the
Waldensians, they meant these poor preachers
whom Waldo sent out from Lyons.
We have not space in which to narrate their ex-
traordinaiy success throughout Southern France and
Switzerland, Savoy and Lombardy. In two years
the importance of their work was recognised in
Rome, and some of them were summoned to the
Lateran Council held by Alexander III. in 1179-
Peter Waldo placed a translation into the vernacular
of the Psalms and several other Scriptures before
the Pope, and asked his permission to preach. Our
bishop, Walter Map, was deputed with two others to
examine Waldo and his colleagues, and foreseeing
the effect of preaching a life of holy poverty upon
the popular attitude towards his own wealthy and
luxurious order, he sought to enmesh them in the
subtleties of scholastic theology, and prevented
Alexander from granting their request on the
ground of their incompetence. So, although the
Pope embraced Waldo, moved to tears by his
humility, he made pretext after pretext for delay,
54 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
and died without giving the desired permission.
For Waldo did not wish to leave the Church, nor to
place himself in opposition to its authority. Like
John Wesley, six centuries later in England, he
longed to serve the Church through Christ's com-
mission. But the hierarchy would have nought of
Christ, and bishops and archbishops industriously
followed Walter Map's initiative, until the Walden-
sians were in such ill odour at Rome that Lucius
III. placed them under the papal ban in 1184, as
one of the thirty-two heretical sects against which
his Bull was promulgated.
Persecution was the incentive which, while exil-
ing them from the Church, opened their eyes to
the contrast between the authority wielded by the
Curia and the authority given to the Apostles by our
Lord. Never did Rome pursue a more impolitic
course than when it emphasised this contrast by re-
pudiating those who followed implicitly the instruc-
tions of Christ. A later Pope, led by one of his
wisest cardinals, refrained from repeating Alexan-
der's blunder when a similar crisis arose.
But the Waldensian influence spread and matured
into an evangelical Church, which neither misprision
nor persecution has availed to destroy, and now that
more than seven centuries have passed, the Church
of the Waldensians is the most actire and honoured
of those which are opposed to the ecclesiastical
domination of the Curia.
These " Poor Men of Lyons " made a consider-
able stir during the final quarter of the twelfth
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 55
century, and Pier Bernardone must have met them
as he travelled in Southern France and in Lom-
bardy, faring two by two on their preaching tours.
He would hear of all that befel them, and would
know well that the " common people heard them
gladly ". On his return to Assisi, doubtless he would
tell, amongst much else, the story of these gospel
mendicants, perhaps laughing at their infatuation,
perhaps with some not unkindly compassion for
their sufferings. The movement was too conspicuous
to be ignored by one who went and came through
Lombardy and the valleys to Southern France. So
while Francis was a child, a boy, a youth, he would
hear from year to year of these men.
Of his childhood we know very little. Legends
gathered round the story of his infancy, but they
were almost inevitable in the time and to the people,
when books did not exist, and accuracy had small
chance beside loving imagination. But Francis
needs no tender legends of angelic voices, angelic
predictions, angelic sponsor at his baptism, which
took place in the cathedral of San Rufino, probably
a few days after his birth, and in the absence of his
father, who was visiting the autumn fairs. The
name given to him at the font was Giovanni, and
perhaps the Baptist was his patron saint, the herald
of Christ, who went out into the wilderness to call
men to repentance.
But when Bernardone returned from France he
picked up the babe with a gay greeting to his
" little Frenchman," and Francesco became the
56 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
home name, the life name, the everlasting name.
It was unique at the time, though kings and em-
perors were proud to bear it in generations that
followed. This incident strengthens the surmise
that Madonna Pica came from Provence.
Her first-born inherited his mother's nature,
rather than that of his burly, business-like, dom-
ineering father, to whom his younger brother Angelus
seems to have had a greater resemblance. From
her he must have drawn both the delicate body
and gracious nature which distinguished him. And
from her he learned the earliest lessons of life, the
manners and dainty fastidiousness by which he first
expressed his instinctive making for perfection as it
revealed its climbing steps. From her, too, he
received in gentle hints, example and absorbing
story that education of his intuitive reverence and
devotion, which grew into steady saintliness. Hand
in hand the mother and child would walk down
the steep streets from Bernardone's house behind
the municipal palace, and through the olive garths,
to the tiny church of St. Mary of the Little Portion,
most cherished of suburban shrines in those days.
For it had a history nearly as old as the Assisan
Church. Built early in the sixth century by St.
Benedict during a pilgrimage over his native
Umbria, for the settlement of brotherhoods belong-
ing to his order, it was, even before his days, a
place where prayer was wont to be made, for a
little oratory existed there, shaped like a tomb,
which perhaps it was, and legend ascribed the ruin
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 57
to palmers from the East, who had placed in it a
relic from the Virgin Mary's sepulchre. Benedict
found their ruined oratory, and caused the sanc-
tuary to be built, and of his erection a wide door
and the bases of its walls exist still in spite of scathe
and pillage through fourteen centuries till now. For
its walls were made of stout blocks of travertine,
and local veneration prompted repair when earth-
quake or barbarian had unroofed them, so that the
angels never ceased to abide there, or to guard
their hallowed memories. For since it was a shrine
built for the peasants and the poor, where the con-
trite might know the presence of God, it had no
lure to distract from single-minded worship.
Hither Madonna Pica would lead her boy, and as
they climbed home again, she doubtless told him
the sweet stories of old, and pointed out to him the
remote Chiaggio, in which so many of Assisi's sons
had passed into life eternal for the sake of Christ.
Other instructions he had as he grew into boy-
hood, for a little down the hill from his father's house,
towards the great plain, stood the beautiful Church
of San Giorgio, now incorporated in Santa Chiara,
where the clerical school for Assisan boys had been
opened a century before his birth. Here he learned
to read and write, and was taught Latin sufficiently
well to enable him to use it in after years, if not
with perfect facility, still in a style not far behind
that of the ecclesiastics themselves. Another im-
portant accomplishment acquired at San Giorgio
was the best Italian vernacular of the Middle Ages,
58 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
which he, long before Dante, was to use as an
exquisite poetic medium. At home, if Madonna
Pica was a native of Provence, the Proven9al which
came so naturally to Francis would be his mother-
tongue, and Pica perhaps taught her boy its dainty
canticles and chants d' amour, which were the chief
literary expression of that day, echoing from country
to country, in Southern Germany and even in Eng-
land, and caught up with sympathetic rapture in
Italy, where, even now, the plains and fields are
filled with long, lingering cadences first heard a
millennium ago.
As he grew older, he may have gone with Ber-
nardone on his rounds, although we have no evidence
on which to rest the conjecture, except his familiarity
with the Troubadour contests of song, the Courts of
Love, the rondels and chansonnettes in which royal
and knightly rivals delighted to celebrate the beauty
of some chosen damsel.
To a strain of gentle birth may be attributed his
preference of the beautiful, the romantic, to the
homely realities of life. As he passed from boyhood
to youth, these tastes became so marked as to single
him out, even amongst the young nobles of Assisi,
for fastidiousness in food, dress and personal clean-
liness. This last characteristic clung to him through
life, in spite of the poverty which he wooed, and we
find it in the exquisite stanza of his Canticle of the
Sun, composed nearly at the end of his life, where he
praises God for " our sister water, who is very useful,
lowly, valuable and clean".
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 59
His intense solicitude for the cleanliness of
churches, pyxes and awmbries, of all vessels con-
nected with the Church celebrations, is another
proof of its presence in him to the end. For there
was too great a tendency to neglect and disorder
in such matters then, and to Francis this was a
constant source of regret. But in his youth the
loftier uses of cleanliness were less pressing than
the more immediate, and he spent much pains on
his slim and graceful person, investing it in tunics
and mantles of beautiful texture and colour, and
loving the sheen and flash of jewelled clasp and
brooch. The same daintiness characterised his use
of food, and we learn that he shrank from meat and
messes, and liked cakes and sweets and delicate
dishes.
What he loved best of all in those days was the
world of romance, and he was leader in the mimic
tournaments of song and jest which occupied the
young Assisan 'nobles. The sons of Lombard
counts, perhaps of German, certainly of Assisan
fief-holders, liegemen of the Empire, whose de-
scendants still occupy the ancient palaces and
gardens, had been his school-fellows. His gaiety,
graciousness, genius, and the wealth which enabled
him to go choicely clad, made him their favourite
companion, a fact which reconciled the miserly
Bernardone to his extravagance, although on one
occasion he reprimanded him not unnaturally for
some excessive expenditure.
He was essential to every banquet, every merry-
60 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
making, where his quick repartee, gift of song and
joyousness radiated good-fellowship. And when he
headed the fantastic processions and mummeries
of the time, he would improvise new lays of love
and go singing down the streets at the head of his
band of friends a brilliant spectacle, which brought
the townsfolk to their windows and doors to look
and listen. But nearly every biographer, from
the thii'teenth century till to-day, testifies to his
freedom from all vicious excess, to the essential
purity of his life. As he shrank from the coarser
adjuncts of existence, so he shrank from vice.
Mind, spirit and body were in harmony, loving all
things that were pure and lovely and of good
report. He had not yet discovered that plane of
inspiration where our eyes open to things immortal,
and we reverse our appraisal of the things that
perish, but he refused to descend to that dark
plane where men wallow in things carnal and
destructive.
He was sixteen years old when the last im-
perial ceremony was held in Assisi. In 1197 Count
Conrad, who had finally abandoned Spoleto, where
the Guelfs had become stronger than the Ghibel-
lines, began to feel the growing influence of the
communal spirit in Assisi, which his own laxity
had fostered. He remained in the castle with his
retinue and garrison. Its great strength induced
the widow of Henry VI. to commit the little
Frederick II. to Conrad's care. The child was
only three years old, and the Assisans witnessed
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 6l
his baptism in San Rufino, in the font where, six-
teen years before, Francis had been immersed.
" It was," says Cristofani, " the last flash of imperial
splendour." Fifteen bishops and cardinals helped
to christen Frederick, who was to give the Papacy
more trouble than any of his predecessors. But
who that visits San Rufino thinks now of the heir
of the Empire of the West ? It is Francis, heir
of the Kingdom of Heaven and entered into his
heritage, that draws us thither.
Early next year Innocent III. became Pope, and
Perugia, Assisi, Foligno, Trevi, Spoleto and Rieti
declared for his sovereignty. His legate took over,
not only the castle of Assisi, which the townsmen
attacked and wrested from its imperial garrison,
but also the guardianship of the child-king of
Sicily in Innocent's name. Conrad tendered his
submission at Narni, and surrendered all lands,
cities and castles, which he had held for the
Empire. The Assisans set themselves to the work
of pulling down their castle, its double walls and
towers, determined in their new-found freedom
from the foreigner to offer no eyrie for another
bird of prey, but they strengthened the walls that
girded their city and built towers of massive form
and foundations to protect the lands restored to
them.
Pope Innocent required a very absolute subjec-
tion from his Umbriaii cities, and signified that his
love and patronage depended on their obedience,
and it is grimly entertaining to note that along
62 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
with the loyal protestation towards his Holiness,
they prosecuted these labours and appointed their
consuls and deliberated their own affairs. The
people were now the masters, although they gladly
admitted to their commune and its privileges such
of the nobles as had been loyal to the town,
making them consuls and conceding to them the
right of forming a body of cavalry in times of war.
They attacked those nobles, however, who placed
themselves in haughty opposition to the commune,
and who kept bands of retainers to infest the
suburbs and harass the citizens.
In all these doings Francis doubtless had his share,
for we find him, after this revolution, mounted like
a young noble of the commune, and ready to take
his part in cavalry expeditions. Till 1202 Assisi
was engaged in these historical and domestic
affairs, and it must have been a time of strenu-
ous education for her citizens, and amongst
them for Francis, the most observed of her
jeunesse doree. He was twenty-one years old by
the time the new fortifications were finished, the
castles of the suburban counts destroyed and civic
peace restored for a short interval. We might also
venture to surmise that he had borne a gallant part
in those years of energy and revival, for the anec-
dote of a man, accounted a character in the town,
who would spread his mantle for Francis to tread
upon, and bid men note him as a youth called to
future greatness, seems to point already to distinc-
tion. Giotto painted the incident, apparently well
INCIDENT IN THE YOUTH OF FKANCIS
From Giotto's fresco in the Ufper Church at Assist
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 63
known in Assisi, emphasising the gentle humourous-
ness with which Francis accepts the attention, as of
one saying : " Why are you doing this ? "
He was busy, too, in his father's shop, and showed
considerable commercial aptitude, which disposed
Bernardone to leniency when he was extravagant.
Madonna Pica grieved over her son's tastes and
caprices. She feared that they might lead him
into places more dangerous than the wayward
paths of romance and chivalry. She prayed for
him without ceasing, and comfort was vouchsafed
to her anxious mother-heart, for when the neigh-
bours gossiped to her of his mad doings, she
answered calmly : " I have hope, that if it please
God, he will become a good Christian."
And, indeed, his compassion for the poor betrayed
his preservation from that worst of ills, the blunting
of human tenderness, the hardening of the heart so
often incident to those who live for pleasure.
It was a time when few were rich and many were
poor. The crusaders had filled all countries with
the disbanded remnants of armies consecrated to
conquest, doomed to failure. The oppression of for-
eigners had forced poverty on the masses. Lands
were left uncultivated ; the troubles of those days
checked industry and commerce ; pestilence fol-
lowed war, and famine was the handmaid of pes-
tilence. Malarial fevers and plagues abounded.
The refugees from the East brought leprosy and
ophthalmia with them. Wherever men came and
went blind, emaciated, covered with sores, in
64 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
rags summer and winter the beggars chanted
their doleful demand.
Francis, with that sensitive sympathy for sorrow
which belonged to a nature responsive to every
human emotion, was prone to constant charity,
even in those days of careless mirth and festivity.
His compassion would possess him like a sudden
flame, to be quenched only by bountiful giving,
and years before his conversion we hear of his
frequent charity, even to the parting with his
robes and mantles when cold storms from the
east covered the mountains with snow and men-
dicants shivered by the wayside.
One day, when his father's shop was full of
customers, a persistent beggar annoyed him with
asking for the love of God. Francis repulsed him
in a moment of pressure and impatience, but his
tender conscience reproached him with the reminder
that, had the man begged in this count's name
or that baron's, he would not have sent him
away, and yet he had driven from the door one
who begged in the name of God. So he ran after
him to tender alms and ask his pardon.
But in 1202 Assisi was again involved in war.
The suburban counts, whose castles she had de-
stroyed as far as Nocera, at that time within the
radius of her suzerainty, conspired to avenge their
wrongs upon the valiant little commune. Amongst
them was Count Girardo di Gislerio, who, having
lands near Perugia, made submission to its podesta,
and conspired with seven other dispossessed nobles
FRANCIS, SON OF PIER BERNARDONE 65
to secure its assistance against Assisi. His castle
of Sasso Rosso had not only been damaged, but,
with its lands, had been given to Count Favorino
degli Sciffi, an Assisan of rank.
The opportunity was eagerly accepted, for Peru-
gia longed to place the hated town under her
griffin's claw. The Assisans flew to arms, refused
to reinstate the Lombard and German counts,
whom they no longer accounted fellow-townsmen,
and boldly advanced across the plain to meet their
foes.
Francis rode in the body of patriotic cavalry.
The encounter took place between Bastia and
Ponte di San Giovanni, about midway between
the hostile cities, and proved to be a defeat for
Assisi, and their foes returned to Perugia with the
spoils of victory and many prisoners, amongst whom
was Francis. For a whole year he and his com-
panions were kept in custody. While the others
lamented and grumbled, he retained his cheerful-
ness, made plans of glorious adventure for the
future, boasted even a little in his humourous
fashion. "One day," he said, "you shall see
how the whole world will adore me." His day-
dreams were of glory and success, although we
cannot judge what he exactly meant at a time
when young imaginations found nothing impossible
in heaven or on earth. But he spoke straight to
the grumblers, and refused to share in their un-
kindness to a fellow-captive whom they disliked
and whom he consoled and reconciled to the rest.
5
66 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
After their fellow-townsmen had suffered a year's
imprisonment, the Assisans agreed to submit the
difference to arbitration, and the judges sentenced
them to repair the castles, to restore the lands
despoiled, and to receive the exiles back again, on
condition that they made no further attacks on the
citizens, and pledged themselves to enter into no
alliance with their enemies in future. So about
the end of 1203 Francis returned to Assisi with
his fellow-captives.
CHAPTER II
CONVERSION
1204 1 '206
Illness The Porta Nuova Walter of Brienne The Ex-
pedition from Assisi Return Penitence The Vision
of Poverty Farewell to Friends The Poor At Rome
Heresies San Damiano Renunciation.
SOME slight demoralisation had taken place in
his nature. Prison fare and monotony must
have been not only distasteful, but positively harm-
ful to his health and mind, and the close companion-
ship of men more vicious in habits and conversation
may have tainted him with cynicism, since he could
scarcely have isolated himself from his comrades.
We find him plunging more recklessly than ever
into the gaiety from which he and they had fasted
perforce so long. And it may be that this excess
hazarded evil as well as fantastic extravagance. If
we accept Celano's first biography, we are bound to
believe his sinister account. But we shall do well
to remember that it was written under the influence
of Brother Elias, who seems to have been at once
artisan and schoolmaster in Assisi during this time,
not included in the doings of its leisured youth,
(67)
68 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
and perhaps disposed to account their conspicuous
follies as altogether evil. And even if his ungentle
disposition did not wilfully deepen the shadows, he
may have in some tortuous manner suggested them
as a contrast to the life which was to follow, so as
to make more resplendent the change from spiritual
death to life. Francis, weakened physically by
captivity, could not stand the strain of this out-
break of dissipation, and fell seriously ill. For
weeks he lay in danger, but his mother's prayers
and nursing helped him through the crisis, and
slowly he returned to a measure of health. In the
dark house below the main piazza he lay helpless
through the first months of 1204, until the days
began to lengthen, and the sun rose earlier behind
Foligno and sank later behind Perugia.
We know nothing detailed of this illness, but are
perhaps justified in accounting it the true turning-
point of his life. He had aspired to the best as
he understood it. He had touched his goal and
had known the delights of the life that now is
a dazzling social success, the stress and strain of
great events, the joy of battle with his peers. But
the glamour passed at the touch of adversity. He
had seen the gallant bearing of his friends turn
into squalid peevishness ; he had learnt that the
brilliance of rank, wealth and youth faded under
the sullen cloud of failure. It was a semblance
then and unreal. The 6lan of battle was not forti-
tude. There were apparent virtues which could
not endure the shock of opposition. They were
CONVERSION 69
phantasms. Some such despair may have possessed
him as he slowly rallied, and underlying its oppres-
sion there may have germinated that seed whose
increase is of God.
When he was once more able to walk he took
the level road leading to Porta Nuova, least difficult
for an invalid, and went to where the gate opens
upon the grim shoulders of Monte Subasio, upon
the high Apennines beyond Foligno, upon the lower
range on whose slopes glitter Trevi and Spoleto,
and upon the olive-yards and mulberries descending
to the plain, all perchance, that spring afternoon,
steeped in bluest atmosphere. He tried to recover
his former rapture in the scene, but could not.
His very love of natural beauty had lost its thrill.
His youth had been wasted on shadows, and not
even nature could console him. Nor did there
seem for the moment any other source of consola-
tion. For, though the hand of God was upon him,
he knew it not. The Divine processes are slow, and
most of us scarcely attain to be unweaned babes in
the spiritual life.
Francis turned sick at heart from the dregs of
the emptied cup, finding them bitter to his taste,
but to drink the living water was not yet in all his
thoughts. Religion was a duty, doubtless, but not
yet the breath of his being. There were, however,
possibilities in which he might recover his old joie
de vivre, and these, in the opinion of that age, were
hallowed by the sanction and example of the Curia.
Restored to health, he resumed his rich vestments
70 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
and his habit of riding out of the city to the plain.
One evening he found at the wayside an old ac-
quaintance reduced to beggary. He dismounted
and clothed him in his own rich mantle, providing
for his immediate wants. It seems to have been
from this man that he learned of the victories
gained in Puglia by Walter de Brienne, who was
fighting for the restoration of the papal fiefs in the
south of Italy, favoured by Innocent IIL's benedic-
tion. The Pope's champion was a hero in the eyes
of all Guelfs, for he had overcome the German army
twice against great odds, and he was regarded as
a leader specially protected by God. Francis was
easily induced to accompany the poor knight whom
he had befriended, and who intended to seek service
under Count Walter. So he was occupied in fitting
out his friend and himself with the arms and trap-
pings necessary for their expedition.
Its object was almost a crusade ; nothing could
have been more attractive to a mind regaining its
health without recovering its content with his daily
conditions. Filled as his imagination was with day-
dreams of glory in the tented field, it is not wonder-
ful that his sleep was haunted by visions of arms and
banners. Some faith in his destiny he had always
manifested half humourously, no doubt but
caught from his popularity, from portents and pre-
dictions, and none the less real because it had not
spoilt his sweet and gracious bearing. But in the
vision recorded by his biographers there is an
element absent from mere reflection of the day's
CONVERSION 71
preoccupation. Some one seemed to show him a
many-storied palace, whose arcaded chambers were
filled with shields and arms and banners, marked
with the Cross of Christ, and when he asked to
whom these belonged, his guide replied : " They
are for thee and for thy knights."
Arms they were for Christ* s service, which he did
not yet understand, but towards their use his reason
was gradually to be directed. For the moment he
was intoxicated with the thought that he was de-
signed by God to be a great leader in battle for the
Church.
Madonna Pica's heart must have bled to see him
so joyous at the thought of leaving home for the
perils of war once more, and his friends rallied him
on his spirits and ridiculed his confident assertion ;
" I know that I shall become a great prince." Still,
some of them agreed to go with him and to follow
the Assisan count, who proposed to mend his ruined
fortunes by the venture.
Francis was appointed his page. The party
started one morning for Spoleto by the road which
wound round Monte Subasio, passing below the
Benedictine monastery and the Castle of Sasso Rosso,
both on the flanks of the grey old mountain. At
Spoleto the first halt was called. But excitement,
fatigue, and perhaps some return of fever, shattered
Francis, and he was left behind next morning with
half insulting raillery on the part of the others.
Another dream had signalised that night for ever.
" Francis," called the voice of God, " who can make
72 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
thee the better knight, the Master or the servant, the
rich man or the poor ? " " The Master," said Francis,
" not the servant, the rich man, not the poor."
Then said the voice : " But thou leavest the
Master for the servant and the rich man for the
poor."
And Francis said : " What dost Thou will that I
should do, O my Lord ? "
And the Lord said : " Turn thee back to thy own
land, for the vision that thou didst see meant
heavenly and not earthly equipment, and it shall be
given thee by God and not by man."
Obedient to the vision, Francis gave up all
thought of rejoining the band of Assisan soldiers,
and rode slowly home that day, revolving in his
mind this grace vouchsafed of direction in the path
of the Spirit. It must have been from this time
that he felt it was to no mundane glory he was being
guided, but rather to the glory which vanquishes
the world. One wonders how the struggle shaped
itself, how keen were the pangs which moved him,
as one fair temporal hope after another took on the
likeness of a phantasm and trembled into nothing-
ness at the potent presence of these unwonted and
unseen realities. One wonders how his spirit stirred
and shook as their amazing intervention became
indubitable ; how the unequal contest agonised and
astounded him ; how, step by step, the spiritual
gained upon the temporal, whilst his shrinking flesh
cried aloud in the suffering of death.
Only this we know : he obeyed, and, in obedi-
CONVERSION 73
ence to the Will, he fount! the Way, the way of the
Cross, Christ Jesus, from which he never swerved.
But when he returned to Assisi, this stage was in-
cipient, not attained, and he was still in the throes
of bewilderment and upheaval.
His parents and friends were astonished at his
return ; his father was indignant, for he had paid
for the costly accoutrements on which Francis in-
sisted for his friend as well as himself, and the least
he expected was loyalty to the enterprise and some
glory for his son on which to plume himself. But
here he was back again, the victim, too, of a new
eccentricity with which the paternal purse had to
reckon, but which in no way gratified the paternal
ambition. For Francis was now possessed by a
passionate charity towards the poor, and by a grow-
ing distaste for the society of the rich, so that his
extravagances brought in no interest of distinction,
and were doubtless the cause of increasing displea-
sure at home, where his brother Angelus, careful in
expenditure and keen in bargaining, had ingratiated
himself with Bernardone.
Charity and solitude to these Francis seemed
vowed already, although he did not yet realise that
charity could not be done with the goods of another,
but must be purchased with self-sacrifice. He had
no experience of a material want unsatisfied, and
he could not yet discern the difference of value of
the satisfaction of a moral want.
In the meantime he sought lonely paths and re-
treats, and found a sheltering cave on the way to
74 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Beviglie, a mile or two north-west of Assist, where
he could spend long hours of penitent prayer and
of waiting for God's next mandate. For a constant
penitence began to characterise his mental attitude
towards God. We are told that a man of Assisi
was much with him in those days, to whom perhaps
he owed the new light upon those gay doings of his
youth which he now deplored.
There is just a possibility, indeed almost a proba-
bility, that this friend was Bombarone, afterwards
Brother Elias, of whom we last heard as mattress-
maker and schoolmaster. Now, all the indications
brought together by Dr. Lempp, in his recent
Biographical Study of Elias, point to his possession
of a powerful, persistent, and dominant mind, of a
character made austere by circumstances, which had
encouraged the growth of bitterness in his nature ;
and we can well imagine his impressing upon the
sensitive Francis the enormity of those masques and
revels of which he had been the soul for seven or
eight years. Constant weeping, constant penitential
prayer altered the whole mien of Bernardone's once
brilliant son, and to these God left him for a time.
Too gi*acious to turn his back upon the old com-
rades, he sought indirectly to avoid them. But he
did not yet abandon all his old habits of costly
dress and knightly manners, of riding down to the
plain, where forest trees clustered more thickly than
now, and where his horse might pace under the
shadow of oaks and elms, whilst its rider was lost in
self-accusing thought.
CONVERSION 75
One day a leper accosted him as he rode along
one of the ancient ways, now little used, except as
short cuts to the fields and olive-yards. The man
seemed hardly human in his deformity, and for a
moment Francis shrank from so gruesome a spec-
tacle. But recalling Christ's gentleness to lepers,
and his own contrition for that leprosy of the soul
which he believed himself to have contracted, in
deep humility he dismounted and embraced the
mendicant, kissing the disfigured hand, which he
filled with money. And then, as he regained his
seat, he looked round for the leper, who had
vanished, perhaps among the trees, and he rode
on convinced that God had bidden him sacrifice
for ever all those delicacies of feeling and habit
which hindered his perfect obedience. From that
day he was aware of a new vision flitting through
his vigils, haunting his dreams the vision of
Poverty, without whose constant presence he could
not fulfil the complete behest of God. He pondered
over this vision until it sank into his very soul.
Poverty had been the bride of Christ upon earth,
had trod the dusty ways of Galilee at His side, so
that never had He turned from the abject, the out-
cast, the diseased, but having no place where to lay
His head, He had given healing and hope to the
despised and rejected of men. Nigh twelve cen-
turies had passed since the Apostles died and left
Poverty to the care of them who were like-minded
with the Master, but she was fallen on evil times,
for Church and State strove for wealthy brides and
76 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
esteemed nothing so little as Christ's beloved. To
him,. perchance, she was bequeathed, that in true
union with her he might go and come as God di-
rected him, nothing hindering him, since the sweet
ministrations of that bride must fortify him against
all needs, must preserve him unentangled in the
cares of this world.
He would remember the story of Peter Waldo,
whom the Church had banned, and begin to think
out some humble way in which one might be an
apostle of the poverty of Christ and yet be in the
Church and serve it. Not even to the man who
sought him on the plain did he tell all that was in
his heart, for his aforetime expansiveness had de-
serted him and he was learning that there is only
One to whom all things can be told, and had begun
to seek that mystic communion which grants the
needed sympathy and betrays not at all. Down in
his retreat near Beviglie he spent long hours in
prayer, in cries for guidance, for a Divine commis-
sion.
His friends were puzzled at his altered mien and
habits ; they thought him scarcely recovered from
fever ; they could not suppose themselves to be
no longer sought as his companions. One day,
however, he invited them all to a banquet, and
they rejoiced to think that his gaiety was restored,
and that once more he would be the lavish king
of their revels. They sat long at the table that
night, while he ministered with all his old grace
and hospitality then, rising with songs, and shout-
CONVERSION 77
ing, they surged out into the piazza to fill it with
their festal clamour. But Francis was no longer
with them, and when they turned back to claim his
company they found him standing lost in reverie,
his spirit far from them. "Ah!" they cried, "he
thinks of some fair lady, who has rapt away his
heart ; wilt thou marry, Francis ? "
" Yes," he answered, a look in his dark eyes
which no man had seen illumine them before, " I
think of a spouse lovelier, richer, purer than you
can possibly imagine."
It was his leave-taking. Doubtless they thought
him mad, for they troubled him no more. They
fell from him by the inevitable law which groups
the spirits of men into those who seek the temporal
and those whose eyes begin to apprehend the
eternal. They knew well that it was of no earthly
spouse he spoke, and they had no mind to follow
him into the heavenly places.
But the moment for his unity with poverty had
not yet been indicated, and he spent days upon his
knees in solitary places.
I f the friends of his thoughtless years were gone,
there remained to him such friends as Jesus had
the blind, the lame, the leper, the poor. More and
more he spent his time, his money, his affection
upon them, and was astonished at their gratitude,
for they counted him as little less than an angel,
and that they treated him so proves what no words
can represent that personal charm which, even to
these hardened outcasts, prevailed over the fact of
78 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
his generosity and meant for them far more than his
giving what they demanded. From the cave, from
the Portiuncula, that little chapel amongst the
trees, from San Damiano, higher up the slope, but
on the city verge and not within its walls he went
amongst them, his eyes shining with the light of
prayer, his voice thrilling with the joy of doing
the very work Christ chose to do, and they knew
that he was not as other men who flung them
careless alms. For God gave him daily freshness
of love for the friends of Christ.
We do not know how far he received guidance
from the Church at this time. His confessor is
not so much as mentioned, nor do we hear of his
seeking the Duomo or even San Giorgio for de-
votional purposes. Many churches Assisi has always
possessed, and of those within whose walls her
people still kneel when the Host is raised, still make
meek confession and receive assurance of God's
pardon, there are some where he too must have
adored, whose ancient bells he must have known
when they rang out their call to worship. Such
are the Duomo, San Giorgio included now in
Santa Chiara San Pietro, San Paolo, San Damiano,
San Nicola, San Giacomo, and in the belfries of
Santa Maria Maggiore and San Stefano swing to
this very day bells to which he must have listened.
But it is of humble shrines and impoverished
churches that we hear as his favourite resorts, and
of no priest at all for the present, only of the
unknown man, who may have been Bombarone.
CONVERSION 79
How lonely he must have been unwelcome at
home, except to his sorrowing mother, who was
not wholly unconsoled. Bernardone's anger against
him waxed as the summer waned, taking on a note
of fierce contempt for the madnes-s which had be-
fallen him.
We do not know by whose persuasion he went to
Rome, whether Madonna Pica sent him thither for
the counsel refused at Assisi, but he rode to Rome
in the autumn of 1205, doubtless after his father
had set out for the north and west. There his
objective was St. Peter's, at whose tomb he pro-
strated himself, emptying his purse upon its altar.
As he left the basilica he found, crouched upon its
steps, a host of beggars. Surely in that prayer at
the tomb he had vowed himself to their service, had
betrothed himself for ever to the Lady of his vision
for he asked one of them to change tunics with
him, and, like a knight before his initiation, he
passed a vigil, lasting all that day, down upon the
steps, begging from the passers-by, tasting the bitter-
sweet cup of renunciation. It was both his vigil and
his sacring, and from that day he was the knight of
poverty, the champion of the unchampioned, the
hero of a tourney whose umpire is Christ Jesus,
whose prize is life everlasting.
On his return he occupied himself wholly with
the poor, and especially with those whom leprosy
had banished from the city and the villages, and
who were herded together in squalid communities
here and there upon the plain. Perhaps it is true
80 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
that he appealed to the Bishop of Assisi to give
him some light, even some authorisation in minis-
tering to those outcasts, but probably the bishop
saw in Francis one led astray by heretical teaching
and refused to assist him in his work amongst the
lepers. For strange missionaries were going to
and fro, sent out of Viterbo, and there is a record
of a voice lifted up in Assisi calling men to a
mysterious peace. It is certain that Francis was
more and more left to himself, and that he had
no help except the growing assurance that what
he did was well-pleasing to God.
The Church was indeed sick nigh unto death,
distracted by war without, exhausted by defection,
betrayed by internal corruption, while no period
of its existence was ever more signalised by papal
pretensions and spiritual impotence.
One day Francis went down the rough path,
which leads to the small sanctuary of San Damiano,
hidden then more effectually than now by a thicket
and falling to pieces from neglect and the poverty
of its worshippers. As he passed through the
olives, whose size and beauty are greater on this
slope than lower down, and felt the sweet in-
fluences of these visionary trees whose shadow
on the ground is as the shadow of a shadow,
whose silvery foliage gleams and glooms in quick
response to sun and cloud ; who seem to sigh and
smile with sorrows and raptures of their own, as if
they were acquainted with unseen woes and wel-
comed celestial visitants he may have almost
THIS CRUCIFIX OF SAN DO.MINICO
CONVERSION 81
looked for an angel amongst them, for some radi-
ance with a message to guide him. Certain it is
that, with mind remoter from the world than com-
mon, he kneeled to pray at the foot of a painted
crucifix, old even then and beautiful to-day, where
it hangs in San Giorgio, as it was to him. " Send
Thy light into my darkness," he implored ; " O
Christ, my Lord, let me know Thy holy will."
And in the silence he saw the figure of the
Crucified quicken into life, and lo ! Christ spake
to him : " Francis, go and restore My falling
Church."
Then he knew that his cry had been answered,
that he was God's accepted servant, commissioned
to do a mighty work.
He did not yet realise the wreck within the
Church, whose imposing structure blinded men to
its real condition, nor was he fully aware that faith
was an outcast from its palaces, whence poverty
had long been driven, and that patience, chastity
and hope had followed them into the wilderness.
So, eager to obey, and that at once, he looked
about him at the crumbling sanctuary, and remem-
bered how San Pietro was time-worn and no longer
proof against the weather, and how the chapel be-
loved of his mother, Santa Maria degli Angeli, was
falling into ruin. This, he reasoned, must be his
work to repair God's sanctuaries and to make
them fit for His presence. His purse was nearly
empty. Pier Bernardone was at home and did not
care to supply him with money, sure to be squan-
6
82 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
dered on the lepers. So he gave the priest of San
Damiano all that remained to him. He was used
to take what costly stuffs he needed for his cloth-
ing. It did not occur to him that he was not
entitled to them for a purpose infinitely more
sacred and more pressing. Bernardone was not
in his shop at the south-east corner of the
piazza, so he took some pieces of the finest cloths
and silks, made them into a parcel, mounted his
horse and rode to Foligno, ten miles away. There
he sold both merchandise and horse and came
back to San Damiano on foot, intent on taking up
his abode with its priest and on providing for its
repair. The priest, however, knew Bernardone's
character, and, although he willingly allowed
Francis to stay, he refused to take the money.
With some movement of petulance Francis flung
the rejected coins out of the window, since they
were not deemed worthy of acceptance. Bernar-
done missed the stuffs and heard the story of their
disappearance. He waited in vain for his son's
return, and as the evening darkened into night he
realised that Francis had left his home. A search
for the fugitive began, and soon Bernardone knew
that he was at San Damiano. With a crowd of
followers he hurried down the slope to drag him
home. But Francis heard the clamour as it neared
and fled to some concealment prepared for this
emergency. For days he hid from his father's rage,
scarcely knowing what to do, until the resolution
came to him to go back, declare his firm deter-
CONVERSION 83
mination to obey Christ's call, to give up his life
at home and to consecrate himself to the work of
repairing the neglected sanctuaries.
As he climbed to the piazza, pale with sleepless-
ness and fasting, a crowd of children followed him,
shouting in mockery : " The madman ! the mad-
man ! " hurling stones at him in savage delirium,
covering him with mud, mimicking his gestures
and his words of entreaty. Bernardone came to
the door of his house, drawn by their tumult, to
find his son its centre, a pitiable object, bruised,
bleeding and in rags, while his tormentors howled
with delight. The furious merchant seized Francis
by the throat, drew him out of the street and flung
him into a cellar in the staircase. To what public
disgrace had the reprobate brought his wealthy and
respectable father ? Either he was mad indeed, or
so perverted that imprisonment in the dark was the
only treatment likely to bring him to his senses.
But the treatment failed, for neither abuse nor
blows served to change his mind. He was re-
solved to leave father and mother, to take up his
cross and to follow Christ. His cross was already
well bound to his shoulders, and its weight was
rapture as he realised that just such sorrows were
the very signs of his acceptance. At last Bernar-
done left him alone, but locked the door upon
him. Three days later he quitted Assisi on busi-
ness, and Madonna Pica went to her son with
gentle entreaties for his return to filial duty. But
he was pledged to God, and the old life seemed to
84 FRANCIS OF ASSIS1
him no more than dust in the balance compared to
the new. His mother let him out of the cellar,
and he went straight to San Damiano. There he
braced himself by prayer for the coming struggle.
His father returned, and it is said that he struck
his wife a cowardly blow when she confessed her
share in their son's escape. Then, in an excess of
rage, he hurried to San Damiano bent in forcing
Francis to leave Assisi. But prayer and guidance
had fortified the latter, and he met his father out-
side the sanctuary with calm and happy face : " Do
not think," he said, "that anything in the world
can turn me from the love of Christ, for whose sake
I gladly suffer all things."
Bernardone angrily demanded the money paid for
his stuffs, and Francis showed him where it lay be-
neath a grating. Picking up the coins, and consoled
by their touch, he sought to tempt his son by pro-
mises of wealth and indulgence to return with him.
But Francis said : " I desire no other wealth than
the poverty of Christ." "Then that thou shalt
have," cried Bernardone ; " come with me before
the bishop and renounce all right to thy mother's
dowry, all claim to what I might have given thee."
With joy Francis followed him to the bishop's
palace in the little piazza of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Guido was then Bishop of Assisi, second of his
name, a wise, learned and impulsive man. The
angry father came before him, followed by Francis,
who was radiant with the joy of suffering for Christ's
sake. A crowd of citizens pressed round them to
THE RENUNCIATION
From Giotto's fresco in the Upper Church at Assist
CONVERSION 85
hear the matter, but, before it could be judicially
discussed, Francis went into a room, stripped him-
self of all he wore and returned with a bundle of
his garments, which he handed to his father, saying :
"Now have I no father for ever, but our Father
who is in Heaven." The bishop, moved to tears,
embraced him and covered him with his own
mantle until a servant brought a coarse tunic in
which to clothe him. And then the people, seeing
the bishop's care for him and his own happiness,
and knowing well the greedy, ambitious and iras-
cible nature of Bernardone, were smitten with
wondering admiration for the grace which God
had done in their midst, calling from amongst them
and setting His seal upon the spoilt darling of their
city, the gay comrade, cavalier and soldier, whose
career was as familiar to them as their own from
his birth till that day in the winter of 1206.
CHAPTER III
THE BROTHERS MINOR
12061210
The Benedictine Convent Gubbio Cesena San Damiano
again Santa Maria degli Angeli Francis Begins to
Preach His First Followers The First Mission A
Crisis The Second Mission Pope Innocent III. and
the Order.
1 ^RANCIS had given up father and mother and
X wealth for Christ's sake. We can only sur-
mise what that meant to his tender heart ; but the
sacrifice was complete ; he was now Christ's alone,
and the joy of that transfer filled his mouth with
praise.
He left Assisi, perhaps in obedience to some
word of counsel from Bishop Guido, which he under-
stood to be Divine direction. He took a rough path
on the flanks of Monte Subasio, through the woods,
which darkened as the March afternoon closed.
Snow lay on the mountain and drifted into the
wood ; his feet were bare and only a coarse garment
covered him ; but he was singing with all his might,
for on the breast of his tunic he had drawn a cross
in chalk, the badge of a Master whose service is
(86)
THE BROTHERS MINOR 87
perfect freedom from earthly care. As he climbed
and sang, his voice reached the ears of a band of
robber-outcasts who lurked in the wood. They
came down upon him and roughly asked him who
he was. " I am a herald of the Great King," said
he, "and nothing more that can concern you."
They shouted with laughter, dealt him blow after
blow and, stripping off his garment, flung him into
a snowdrift, crying as they left : " There, that's
the place for the herald of God."
When they had gone, Francis rose and went on
his way, singing as loudly as ever, although chilled
to the bone and almost naked. Further east, and
still higher up the slope of Monte Subasio, stood
the Benedictine monastery built nearly two centuries
earlier. To its gate he bent his steps in the dark-
ness. But when a lay brother opened and heard
his petition for food and shelter, he was not greatly
attracted by the shivering, beaten and unclad
beggar before him. The monks sent him to their
kitchen, gave him a dry crust of bread and a ragged
shirt, and set him to earn these bounties by acting
as scullion to their cook. But he felt their suspicion
of his veracity and suffered from their meanness,
which went to the verge of starving him. So after
a few days he left them and made his way to
Gubbio, where he stayed a short time with a friend
called Spadalunga, who cared for his necessities.
It is on the site of this friend's house and garden
that the beautiful church of San Francesco, at
Gubbio, stands. He used his absence from Assisi
88 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
in seeking advice and experience, but we do not
know exactly how long the interval lasted, nor
where he spent its greater part. When he left
Gubbio, it is probable that he sought counsel from
the holier hermits in its neighbourhood. There
existed for a century after his life a common report
amongst the peasants of Romagna that he dwelt
for more than a year in a hermitage near Cesena.
This spot lay in the shelter of a thick wood, cover-
ing an ascending valley, which separates the slopes
of two hills. Both wood and hermitage have been
swept away to make room for vines and corn, but
Signor Finali, who has described the place for us,
often passed in his boyhood under the shady oaks
to the cell, of which no vestige now remains, except
a ruined fountain surmounted by a rude figure in
terra-cotta. Here, in the time of Francis, lived a
holy hermit, a Mantuan by birth, Giovanni Bono.
He was one of those who practised the Rule of St.
Augustine, so-called, a gospel Rule, which prescribed
poverty, prayer and charity. His dress was a tunic
of the common grey cloth worn by the peasants.
The hermits of this order, as well as the Dominicans,
maintained, somewhat to the annoyance of the
Franciscans, that St. Francis wore the grey habit
and professed the hermit's Rule for some time
before returning to Assisi. If their contention is
true, he must have acquired the first principles of
his own Rule from the good and much venerated
Giovanni Bono, whom the peasants loved because
of his ministrations amongst them, and because
THE BROTHERS MINOR 89
when food was brought to him, he shared it with
those who had none. But whatever probability
there is in the tradition, Francis needed no di-
rection but Christ's in all that pertained to such
ministration, for he had already surpassed the
hermit's care for the poor in his work amongst
the lepers outside Assisi. Wherever he may have
been, he recovered strength, serenity, the full use
of his great faculties, mental, practical and spiritual.
When he returned to Assisi he was joyous, alert,
decided, sure of what God meant him to do, pre-
pared to be led step by step into spiritual service
that service of which the Church and the world
stood in such desperate need.
His first visit was to the leper settlement near
Santa Maria degli Angeli, where still the two field
chapels of Santa Maria Maddalena and San Rufino
d'Arce in old times known as San Lazzaro
mark the shrines where these poor outcasts of both
sexes knelt for worship. They received him with
joy, and he returned to San Damiano prepared to
take up the work which he had temporarily
quitted, no longer as the young and wealthy citizen
of Assisi, but as the spouse of poverty, clad in a
grey habit, begging for others. The poor priest
with whom he lived soon loved him as a son, and
would cook little delicacies for him at meal times,
until Francis entreated him not to spend money
upon such things, since bread and water were
sufficient.
He was bent on restoring the three churches
90 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
fallen into disrepair, and set about collecting stones
from the citizens, for which he paid by singing like
a wandering minstrel. Some of these still main-
tained that he was mad, and his sorest trial was
meeting Bernardone, who never failed to curse him.
But he allowed nothing to discourage him in col-
lecting stones and mortar, which he carried on his
back to San Damiano. At other times he asked
food and alms for his sick and poor, and what little
was necessary for himself, so that he might not
bring expense upon his friend, the poor priest, and
when, in going his rounds, he met his old com-
panions, or was aware of them assembled at some
banquet, he would overcome his shyness and go
to them to seek a gift in the name of Jesus whom
he served. He chose a poor townsman to go about
with him, so that when he flinched from his father's
curses, the man might bless him and restore his
spirit.
His brother Angelo made a mock of him when-
ever they met. Once this happened in a church on
a cold day of winter. Francis was shivering in his
grey tunic, while the other was warmly wrapped in
ftir-lined mantle over a long robe of cloth. " Go to
Francis," said Angelo to a friend, " and buy a
ha'porth of his sweat." " No," said Francis, "it
is of greater value to God."
What Madonna Pica thought, if she still lived,
we know not. Doubtless she said nothing, but
pondered all these things in her heart, like the
blessed mother of our Lord, that woman of perfect
THE BROTHERS MINOR 91
dignity and of perfect wisdom, a miracle amongst
women.
It was at first very hard for him to overcome his
repugnance to the scraps and leavings of food which
he brought home, and he had to put his fastidious-
ness under the control of his spirit. So he called
his meals the " table of the Lord," and ate what
was before him with words of praise. He had con-
quered, one by one, his love of company, of fine
clothes, of rank and wealth ; his aversion to squalor,
disease and misery ; his daintiness in food and sur-
roundings. All were laid upon the altar of obedience,
and for all God gave him a thousand-fold of their
anti-types in the spiritual life for parents and
friends, His own continual presence ; for rank, son
ship of the King of kings ; for garments, the robe of
righteousness ; for wealth, " all things " ; for per-
sonal fastidiousness, a purity, tenderness and joy
which lifted him above the annoyances of daily ex-
perience.
The weapons marked with the cross were gaining
him the victory. His vision was in course of fulfil-
ment.
For some time he laboured at his double charge
of repairing the churches and of tending the lepers.
There was another settlement of these besides the
rough lazar-houses near the Portiuncula. This was
at a considerable distance from San Damiano, some
seven miles westwards, at Collistrada, where cy-
presses mark a burial ground on a hill to the left of
the road going to Perugia, while a cluster of stone
92 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
pines, rare in Umbria, attracts our eyes on the
other side of a group of buildings, one of which
may have been the hospital. Hither he bent his
steps from time to time, carrying food and alms for
its wretched inmates, and here, too, he was known
and loved.
His labours at San Pietro and San Damiano came
to an end, and he began to restore the little church
of the Portiuncula. Day after day he toiled down
from the quarries with his burden of stones and
mortar, and fitted them into the breaches made by
storms and time and rough usage. As the winter
of 1208 passed he completed his undertaking, and
Santa Maria degli Angeli was not only weather-
proof, but swept and cleansed with that delicate
care which he practised, and later enjoined, regard-
ing all things used for the service of God.
He grew more and more attached to this humble
sanctuary, and spent much of his time in prayer
and meditation within its walls. Some features of
the hermit life characterised this period. So many
hours of work, so many hours of tending the lepers,
so many hours of solitude, prayer and contempla-
tion, with tears of penitence, of praise and of
patient waiting upon God's further will.
Santa Maria degli Angeli belonged to the Bene-
dictines on Monte Subasio, and one of them came
to say an occasional mass at its altar. One day in
February, 1209, mass was being celebrated there.
Francis was the sole worshipper, and the monk
turned towards him as he read the gospel for the
THE BROTHERS MINOR 93
day from St. Matthew : " As ye go, preach, saying,
The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick,
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils ;
freely ye have received, freely give. Provide
neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses,
nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither
shoes, nor yet staves ; for the workman is worthy of
his meat."
He listened with wonder ; it was an endorse-
ment of the rule of poverty, but it seemed to
include more than that. It meant not the repose
of the hermit's life, not the mere working out of
his own salvation. As he went on his way he must
preach and say : " The Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand." It was the new direction from above, and
the voice was the voice of Christ. Again he was
ready to obey. Not in vain had he called himself
the herald of God. On the very next day he went
up to Assisi and began to preach. He had divested
himself of all forbidden in the gospel, and with bare
feet, and a rope tied round his grey tunic instead of
a belt, he entered the church of San Giorgio, salut-
ing all whom he found there with the words : " My
brothers, God give you peace." And then in
simple language he proclaimed the coming of
Christ and called on all to repent. He used no
rhetoric, no eloquence ; but every word uttered
came like a flame of pure light from that illu-
mined spirit, and the listeners knew that for him
all things were nought save only Christ, and Him
crucified. A change of feeling towards Francis had
94 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
been at work during the years after his renuncia-
tion, especially influenced by his labour amongst
the lepers and at the ruined churches. Men were
ceasing to think him mad and had begun to realise
that he was God-inspired. They listened to him
now as to one of the Divine oracles, so that he
never lacked a congregation when he entered one
of the many churches of Assisi with his greeting of
God's peace.
Peace was much needed in the city, where inter-
nal dissensions prevailed. The Assisans had been
slow to satisiy the conditions concluded with Peru-
gia ; many of the exiled counts were still living
there awaiting the restoration of their castles, and
discussion was hot as to their return. We have
reason to believe that from the time of his preach-
ing Francis was consulted by the commune on these
matters, and gave advice always on the side of
righteous fulfilment of obligations, the events
which followed being marked by a sense of re-
sponsibility to God very unusual in the settlement
of altercations at that time. That their outcome
was both peaceable and orderly we shall find three
years later, when mutual concessions were made
both by nobles and people.
At this time the church of Santa Maria Maggiore
was restored, and engraved on the outer wall of its
apse are the words : " In the time of Bishop Guido
and of Brother Francis" surely a contemporary
testimony to the extraordinary personal influence
exerted by the "poor wise man" in his city.
THE BROTHERS MINOR 95
Indeed, his life, known and read of all men,
rayed out power wherever it was encountered and
felt, and the old sovereignty of personal charm and
wit was transformed into a new sovereignty of holi-
ness and wisdom from above.
We can therefore better understand the effect of
his call to the life of prayer and labour on those of
his hearers in whose hearts 'there pulsed already a
deep longing for God. We are not surprised to
learn that two out of his three first followers were
" simple men ". And when we read in the Aclus
how the third was converted, we are constrained
to believe that had he not been a wealthy noble
the chroniclers would have called Bernard of Quin-
tavalle a "simple man" as well. For all three
were transparently honest, full of faith in the un-
seen, humble and teachable, just such as God loves
and men are prone to despise. They were, in the
order of their coming to St. Francis, Peter of Assisi,
Bernard of Quintavalle and Egidio, the last perhaps
the simplest of all, but destined to confound the
wise and console the mourning, to convince the
doubting and convert the unbelieving. To no
one of the early Franciscans does the tradition of
heavenly-mindedness so impressively belong as to
Brother Egidio, a man of such contrite heart that
God dwelt very visibly with him. But he was the
third to join, and the Rule of the " little flock" was
decided before his adhesion.
When Bernard of Quintavalle, convinced of the
rare grace granted by God to Francis, and longing
96 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
to come under its power, determined to join him,
the saint, notwithstanding his joy, gave proof of
that sound judgment upon which the commune
had learned to draw, by proposing that since the
life of renunciation was hard, they must lay the
whole matter before the Lord, who would Himself
be its judge and their counsellor. So they repaired
to St. Nicholas' Church, whose door is still to be
seen on the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and, after
the office, knelt long in prayer for guidance. The
curate of St. Nicholas was their friend, and he con-
sulted the gospel text when their minds were pre-
pared to accept its mandates. The first time he
opened it these words met his eyes : " Go thy
way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven :
and come, take up thy cross, and follow Me."
The second time, the very gospel which had lately
impelled Francis to preach was on the open page,
while the third test of Bernard's faith was found to
be the great and strenuous commandment : " If any
man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
Bernard bowed his head in obedience to all three,
and leaving the church, he and Francis at once set
about selling his houses and possessions, and bestow-
ing the money realised on hospitals, poor monas-
teries, the neediest townsfolk, conquering by their
action the heart of a miserly priest, who joined
them later as Brother Sylvester. Then, having
finished this affair, the brothers passed down to the
THE BROTHERS MINOR 97
plain, and a new stage in the Franciscan movement
was initiated.
The passages read in the church of St. Nicholas
were adopted as their Rule, and so without novitiate,
without function, with a dignified directness which
passed by the tedious preliminaries of monastic
custom, they proceeded to obey its injunctions.
This was the only Rule whose vital importance
Francis ever recognised, and the additions and
alterations incorporated later were wrung from his
bleeding heart by persons and circumstances as yet
unforeseen. For to him Christ, and Christ alone,
was the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Light, and
he sought to rescue his little flock from the " many
inventions " by which the Church had obscured,
weakened, falsified His commandments. Francis
was His servant, following in His steps, never side
by side making footprints on the way which men
might mistake for his Master's. For there is no
parallel possible between Francis and our Lord ;
they are sundered by the Godhead itself. Christ
was no penitent ; not for His own sins did He
atone upon the Cross. Francis was always a
penitent, for the errors of his youth, for the blun-
ders of his twenty years of saintliness. His service
to the world was to make Christ's will the first and
last and only rule of conduct ; to prove all things
by that rule, and so to choose and reject. His
crucible was scathing, and much shining metal
dimmed and shrivelled in its flame.
The three brothers, soon joined by Egidio, took
7
98 FRANCIS OF ASSlSl
up their residence close to the Portiuncula. Their
dress consisted of two garments, an under shirt and
a tunic of the home-woven grey cloth used by the
peasants, with a cape and narrow hood, and fastened
round the waist by a cord. Francis could not im-
pose four guests on the poor priest at San Damiano,
and apparently their first homes were built of mud
and roofed with wood after the old Umbrian plan.
He was an experienced builder, and must have been
both architect and overseer of this work, although
we may be sure that he gave far less care to the
construction of these rude shelters than he had
given to the sanctuaries.
The brothers had no thought of relapsing into
the tranquillity of hermit life. They were the
heralds of the great King and knew their marching
orders. No sooner were these simple preparations
completed than they left two by two for the March
of Ancona and for Tuscany.
Francis took Egidio with him, Bernard's com-
panion was Pietro. From village to village, from
city to city, from castle to castle, climbing the hills
and visiting every corner where humble homes were
built, the missionaries called to repentance, exhorted
to the life of holiness, proclaimed the Kingdom of
God.
Francis was filled with joy, and when they re-
turned to the Portiuncula to count up their gains
for the Master, he could hardly restrain himself
from predictions of a world-wide success. From
solitude he had been planted in a family, from the
THE BROTHERS MINOR 99
despite of men he had been raised into their honour,
from penitential weeping he had been transferred
to the gladness of accepted service. As they
journeyed, they sang ; they encountered all with
joyous smiles ; for a morsel of bread, for a few
hours' rest in an outhouse, or under the shadow of
a tree, they tendered the bread of heaven, the
peace that passeth understanding. And men
listened and welcomed their message. Some
mocked, but that was the very sign of God's pre-
sence with them. " Happy are ye when men shall
persecute you and shall say all manner of evil
against you for My sake." This pledge of accept-
ance was not denied them.
They had just entered upon a crisis, which only
that invincible attitude could withstand. Three
others joined the brotherhood, men who sold all
they had, gave it to the poor and came down to
the plain. The matter was becoming serious.
Those who expected to inherit were indignant.
Had any man the right to disappoint his heirs by
scattering abroad during his life what should accrue
to them at his death ? This new development,
unconventual, unauthorised, threatened to destroy
the very foundations of civilised life, to attack the
time-honoured institution of adding field to field,
of storing wealth which should ensure unearned
privileges for generations of descendants. There
was a reaction against Francis and his followers.
Even the bishop, who had given him a cautious
measure of protection, was alarmed at this aspect
100 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
of his influence, for the dissipation of large sums
amongst the needy was no gain to the Church and
might disturb her authority. Unless these men
could be haltered and reined by monasticism, their
growth into a numerous body was a menace.
The matter excited a passionate interest, and the
bishop decided to intervene. Francis was sent
for. Guido remonstrated with him on his manner
of life, its want of responsibility, its uncompromising
poverty. Doubtless this last rankled in the clerical
mind, and induced the priests to make common
cause with the laity. Devotion to the name of
Christ was all very well, but devotion to His
poverty and preaching was extremely inconvenient,
and must be diverted into cloistered silences, where
it could do no harm. But Francis stood, unap-
proachable as a celestial being, clothed in Christ
Jesus, gentle, humble, aware. " If we had posses-
sions," he answered, " we should need arms to
defend them ; for from them arise questionings
and strife ; and thus the love of God and of our
neighbour is hindered. And for this cause, we
desire no worldly wealth." What an impeachment
of the Curia, busy then with armed resistance to
Otho in the south, lurked in these unanswerable
words. For Guido found no further argument
against their manner of life, and contented himself
with forbidding his preaching in Assisi, where the
matter raged for a brief interval incited by indis-
creeter men, both priests and laymen. Amongst
the gentler people there was a growing affection
THE BROTHERS MINOR 101
for Francis, as if in him and his followers Christ
were lifted up, and drew others by a magnetism
greater than they knew. But with the controversy
the brothers occupied themselves not at all.
They were eight now, and it was the spring of
1210. It was time to go forth in different directions
to save men by example and by precept. Francis
sent away six and took the eighth himself, each
couple going towards one of the cardinal points.
" Go," he said, " preach repentance to all men,
without concern that ye are of little account and
ignorant, for God, who has overcome the world,
will speak in you and by you to the converting of
many. But fear not when men oppose you and re-
fuse your message, for soon even the nobles and the
wise will be with you, preaching to kings and to
princes and to the nations." And blessing them
one by one " Cast all your care upon God, who
careth for you " he said to each.
This time Bernard took Egidio with him and
turned towards Frorence, while the others, two by
two, went on their respective ways. The adventures
of the brothers in Florence are given by the Three
Companions, and vividly represent their faring and
its incidents. One point stands out in relief from
the simple narrative, and that concerns the attitude
of the first brothers towards alms. St. Francis is
constantly accused of converting the Umbrians, if
not the Italians, into a horde of beggars. It is
quite certain that the Church has done so by
hindering industrial development and independ-
102 FRANCIS OF ASSIS1
ence, by making it meritorious to give to all who
ask without the laborious processes which constitute
effective charity, so that idleness and professional
vagabondage have been studiously encouraged.
Assisi was, as we have noted in her history, a
pauper city a thousand years before Francis was
born, and her misfortunes increased the percentage
of her begging population. This was, indeed, the
very evil which Francis sought to remedy by the
practical means of adopting poverty and giving an
example of how it should be used. Of all things,
he contemned idleness and wanton beggary most.
To his thinking they were more shameful than
wealth, for just as surely did the squalid material
preoccupations of mendicancy estrange the soul
from God, as did great riches. Therefore work
was ordained as an equivalent for whatever men
gave to the brothers, and they were not permitted
to accept more than was immediately needed.
Their daily hunger must be satisfied, the garments
from time to time must be renewed, but both these
needs were reduced to their minimum, and for sup-
plies a fair return was made in the cornfields, the
vineyards, at the olive gathering, in building, repair-
ing, portage. We constantly meet with instances
of money refused, or flung aside with contempt, a
difficult lesson to teach, but strenuously insisted on.
And we discover in this artless account of Bernard's
and Egidio's preaching in Florence a proof of their
care for "the dignity of the Lady Poverty," when
in a Florentine church they declined to receive
THE BROTHERS MINOR 103
money from Messer Guido, because they had be-
come voluntarily poor by the grace of God, and for
that reason were not troubled by their poverty at
all, as those were upon whom it weighed like a load.
Hospitality they accepted in the form of simplest
food and shelter, and they gently declined all super-
fluity. For the true Lady Poverty has her delicacies
and reserves, and is, indeed, a dame of highest birth
and breeding.
For the peace of God, which they bestowed as
His almoners, they accepted the slight return of
a meal and a shelter. Sometimes these were not
forthcoming, and then they bore their temporary
discomfort with cheerful patience. Whining was
unknown in those glorious days of the initiation of
the order.
If they had gone forth with ardour, they re-
turned to the Portiuncula with joy, and perhaps we
may fix the season of Pentecost as the date of their
glad reunion.
But some of his experiences, and amongst them
the prohibition to preach in Assisi, had decided
Francis to take a step of the utmost importance.
Apparently they brought back three new adherents,
or were joined by these on their arrival. Including
Francis, the poor penitents of the Portiuncula had
attained the number of Christ's disciples. He knew
that as they increased difficulties of the kind already
met would increase also. He could not contemplate
monasticism as a solution of these difficulties, for
the work which God had called him to do was in
104 FRANCIS OF ASS1SI
the wide field of the world, not in walled seclusion.
But that he might silence rancour and avoid failure,
he must be possessed of authority, to which his
detractors would bow. The brotherhood was to be-
come a pattern to the world, for nothing is so much
emphasised by his early biographers as his insist-
ence upon such behaviour in all things as should
commend and adorn what they preached. Indeed,
so sensitive was he 011 this point that he constantly
trusted to example alone, forgetting that it is a
sermon which reaches the few and eludes the many,
who may emotionally admire goodness without a
single effort to practise its stern behests. Fortun-
ately, of those silent sermons his companions took
note, and they are eloquent to-day. He believed
that the humility, simplicity and forbearance of
the brothers would prove their safeguard, so he de-
vised for them the name of Brothers Minor when
it became clear to him that some such title was
necessary to their organisation. " A new people "
they were to be, " and an humble," the " little
flock " which Christ desired of the Father.
This point being settled, he wrote out the
gospel Rule, which so many leadings had indicated
and confirmed as their guide of conduct, hid it in
the breast of his tunic, and calling his company
together joyfully started for Rome. A happy dream
gave him courage, and commending themselves to
God the twelve poor men took the way southwards
in August, 1210, just when the days were hottest,
but when, too, the shadow of thick foliage lay on
THE BROTHERS MINOR 105
the narrow roads leading straight as a dart from
point to point. We do not know exactly how they
went, probably by Spoleto, Narni and Civita Castel-
lana, but we do know that they were filled with
hope of a speedy return, bearing their credentials
with them. And their hope did not make them
ashamed, although its realisation was vouchsafed
from the very crisis of despair.
When they reached Rome they sought out Bishop
Guido, of Assisi, who was there at the time. He
was glad that his words to Francis had so far taken
effect, and expected that the Brothers Minor would
be placed under his authority, so that he might
guard them from zeal beyond discretion. He wel-
comed them, therefore, and secured for them the
countenance of Cardinal Colonna, one of the most
influential members of the college, doubtless
acquainting him with the difficulties of the case
and with their leader's prepossession in favour of a
non-monastic, but evangelical and missionary, Rule.
The cardinal, full of questions and obstacles, lis-
tened to all that Francis had to urge on behalf of
his vocation, but, while praising his manner of life,
he sought delicately to suggest its conversion into
monasticism. He confronted the unassailable atti-
tude which had already blunted assaults from
many would-be advisers. Francis answered gently
that he had received both call and Rule from Christ
Himself, and that his obedience was to Him.
Again, that pure flame of faith was triumphant,
and Cardinal Colonna knew the presence of one
106 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
whom the Master needed. He promised his
support with Innocent, who, as we have seen,
was in no mood to waste audiences upon obscure
suppliants.
But he granted them one on the terrace of the
Lateran known as the " Moving Mirror," and they
knelt before him while he gave a scanty attention
to their plea out of courtesy to Cardinal Colonna.
He was by no means prepossessed with their
appearance, and took them for some new faction
of the Patarenes or Albigenses, with whom he waged
an exterminating war in Languedoc. They were
curtly dismissed as his impression took this form,
and Francis left the Lateran stunned with dis-
appointment, although scarcely in need of the
Pontiffs farewell admonition to ask God to make
known His will. He and his followers, reeling
under this blow, betook themselves naturally to
prayer.
God was on their side, for Innocent, a few nights
earlier, had been startled by a dream of the Church
of St. John Lateran, which seemed to be falling to
the ground, except for a poor man who bore up its
walls with arm and shoulder. Somewhere in that
haughty spirit there must have stirred an accusing
consciousness of the Church's decadence, whence
rose this threatening dream. It returned to his
recollection, nor could he forget the suppliant
brother's arresting face. Perhaps it recalled his
vision, which proved to be a prevision. By what-
ever means God ruled his mind, it is certain that
POPE INNOCENT III S DREAM
From Giotto's fresco in the Upper Church at Assist
THE BROTHERS MINOR 107
he decided to see Francis again. Some of the
cardinals objected, but Cardinal Colonna talked
over the situation with him and recalled the
blunder made by Alexander III. when Peter Waldo
was dismissed.
So Francis, found at work in the Leper Hospital,
was sent for. He had received new inspiration
from prayer, and when Innocent turned upon him
a face more favouring and more expectant than on
the previous day, he spoke this parable, which
came from his lips almost as if his Master breathed
it, so wholly was it in the manner of Him who
spake as never man spake.
" In the desert dwelt a woman very poor, but
very fair. A great king espoused her, knowing
that her children would be fair as she was, and she
abode with them in the wilderness. But when the
eldest were tall, she said to them : ' My children,
you have no cause to blush, for you are the sons of
the king ; go, then, to his court and he will supply
all your need.' When they were come to the
court the king wondered at their beauty and at
their likeness to himself. ' Whose sons are you ? '
he asked, and when they told of their mother who
lived in the desert he pressed them to his bosom,
saying : ' Fear not, for you are my sons ; if bastards
sit at my table, shall not you who are my well-
begotten ? ' And he sent messengers to the poor
woman bidding her send the others too. I am,
most Holy Father," said Francis, " the poor woman,
whom God's love has rendered fair and my sons
108 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
are begotten of God. The King of kings will
nourish these my sons, for if He receives even
bastards, will He not far more gladly take care
of His own ? "
It was a bold word, for did he not claim for the
children of his Lady Poverty alone the lawful be-
getting of the sons of God, and how scathingly did
he class the luxurious princes of the Church as
" bastards ".
But it convinced some tortuous depth in Pope
Innocent's mind, which hoped to win the new
order as an accredited force against heresy, and he
granted them authority as preachers and mission-
aries, making Francis superior of the Brothers
Minor, who were required to submit to the tonsure.
It is possible that the saint was ordained deacon at
this time. The Pope, full of affectionate protesta-
tion, took every step, short of alarming their leader,
to mark them as his own.
FRANCIS AND HIS KIRST FOLLOWERS PRF.SENTING THE RULE TO
I'Ol'E INNOCENT III
From Giotto's /res
the Uffer Church at Assisi
CHAPTER IV
THE THREE ORDERS
12101212
The Return from Rome Orte Rivo Torto Santa Maria
degli Angeli The Career! Increase of the Order The
Third Order Clare degli Sciffi The Poor Sisters of
Penitence San Damiano Rule of the Second Order.
r I A HEIR long delay in Rome ended at last, and,
J_ forgetful of all else but their freedom to re-
turn, the Brothers Minor set out from the Porta
Salaria by the summer-parched, sun-smitten road to
the north. They might have perished on the way
had not a traveller given them food. Their modest
triumph at the Curia had been discounted by in-
credulity, mockery and contempt, but out of the
furnace they had snatched authority to exist, to
preach, to go out beyond the seas with the gospel
message. In their simplicity they did not realise
that the grip of the Pope was upon them. They
were not even concerned that their gospel Rule
had not received his endorsement, bore no pendent
seal of authorisation. It was Christ's Rule, and,
with its clauses, His Vicar might not meddle. Had
there been a flaw in their faith they could hardly
(109)
110 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
have survived that terrible journey in the glare and
malaria of early autumn. As it was, they were ex-
hausted by the time they reached Orte and took
refuge from the heat in some ancient tombs in its
neighbourhood. In their cool depths they recovered
physical equilibrium, and from prayer and praise
they drew renewed moral and spiritual strength.
For a brief moment it seemed to them good to
abide where these tabernacles were provided, and
where they could forget, as in a hermitage, the
clamour and distressful worldliness which they had
left behind at Rome, and a measure of which
awaited them even on the beloved Umbrian plain.
Here in quietness they might pass their days, and
the nearness of the place to the world in which their
spirits loved to dwell, the presence of God which
gladdens every solitude, almost overcame their re-
solution. For, in a nature so exalted as that of
Francis, retreat to a desert place to pray held out a
constant allurement battling in his mind with that
call to work which he obeyed. Indeed, the tradition
that he practised a Lenten fast and meditation nine
times a year grew doubtless from his growing need
of such retirement to recruit those spiritual forces
which were exhausted in the desperate pressure of
his duties.
They stayed a fortnight here, going two by two
to the town and villages to preach, now armed with
Innocent's sanction and listened to with respect.
Their simplicity, directness and cheerfulness acted
like a charm on the peasants and the poorer towns-
THE THREE ORDERS ill
folk. We can hardly realise how great an influence
that authority to preach the poverty of Christ must
have exerted upon those oppressed with indigence
and toil, to whom heretofore no consolation had
been offered. Priests, monks and dignitaries they
knew, but never one of them unwilling to add
to his possessions, disposed to lay up treasure
in heaven. The men who decried such and lived
laborious days were under the Pope's ban, went to
and fro with their lives in their hands. But these
happy pilgrims, messengers from Christ truly, had,
what was even more impressive, the Pope's leave to
teach that it was a Christ-like thing to be content
with bread and water, to give brotherly aid at the
vintage and with the plough, asking a crust, a hand-
ful of grapes for recompense ; to comfort mourners
and to preach the coming of righteousness, peace
and joy. Wherever they went or tarried men and
women gathered round them, wondering and listen-
ing to what had been spoken twelve centuries
earlier, but had been silenced. Their homeward
journey lengthened into a missionary itinerary, and
when they reached the Portiuncula at last, it was
to pour out their praise and gratitude for the first
fruits vouchsafed.
Francis knew of a deserted lazar-house, called
Rivo Torto, of which they might make a dormitory.
With a good deal of crowding, each brother could
find in it space to lie down and sleep, and he
assigned to each his post. The settlement was
close to a torrent from Monte Subasio, some bend
112 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
in whose course gave it the name of Crooked Bank,
but both stream and bend have disappeared. In
turn, the brothers cleansed and swept their dwell-
ing, which was little more than a shelter for meals
and sleep. The "table of the Lord" was not
always furnished with food, but they cheerfully
ignored their lack. Faithfully they ministered to
the lepers, providing first for them. Their number
continued to increase, so that some of them went
out to heal the sick in other villages far and near,
where they were welcomed as leeches not unskilled
in binding up wounds, in the use of herbs, in the
treatment of familiar ailments.
They acted as a new hope and a new consolation,
and carried about in their own persons a new pat-
tern of life not merely a stolid endurance of
suffering, but an ardour for toil and destitution as
if they were a privilege hitherto unrecognised. So
they cast out the devils of discontent and selfish-
ness, and filled with songs of praise men's mouths,
that had railed against God and their neighbours.
What the appearance of St. Francis in the pea-
sants' houses and the little towns meant for all
who hurried to greet him and gaze on him, we may
gather from that volume of story known as the
Actus, collected perhaps in the fourteenth century,
perhaps earlier, from many sources, some of true
biographical value, others legendary, but bearing
the seal of verisimilitude, others wholly mythical,
and yet loyal to the impression made by the saint's
charm and hallowed gaiety. They have been
THE THREE ORDERS 113
recently published by M. Sabatier from a beautiful
and ancient manuscript in his possession. From
the Actus Brother Ugolino of Monte Giorgio trans-
lated into Italian that collection of its chapters
known as the Fioretti, in which we find St. Francis
more truly and sweetly limned than in all the
biographies a collection made a century after his
death, but to-day reverenced and read in Italy as
its most precious classic. The Fioretti express what
the people of Italy meant by their beloved saint,
and are his apotheosis in their heart.
We have already noted his influence in Assisi.
The compact between nobles and people, referred
to in our last chapter, belongs to the close of 1210,
and the very terms used to express its two con-
tracting parties point to St. Francis as their source,
for they are no longer sundered as nobles and
common people, but united as the greater and the
minor members of the community. To the minors,
thus delicately distinguished, he gave the name of
those whom Christ has chosen from the wise and
noble, and to whose company might belong such
of both as were willing to give up all for His sake.
Other towns followed this example and the
influence of the Brothers Minor in civic politics
became a memorable factor throughout Italy.
Several popular stories refer to their short stay
in the lazar-house of Rivo Torto. Hither came
the Emperor Otho to seek an interview with
Francis, who warned him of his brief term of
power, a prediction fulfilled with the appearance
8
114 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
of Frederick II. Here, too, the brothers were
aware, one Saturday night, of a vision of celestial
light, which they knew to be the spirit of their
beloved superior, who was sojourning two miles
away in a little arbour made for him by the canons
of the cathedral, whose greater comfort he would
not share, since his companions were huddled within
the narrow walls of Rivo Torto. Permission to
preach in Assisi was restored. He had turned the
tables upon those who founded their opposition to
the Brothers Minor upon their want of legalised
organisation, for the Pope had granted them license
to preach and had not meddled with their doctrine.
Some of the earliest adherents sought to emulate
their superior's abstinence with zeal beyond discre-
tion. One night they were roused by loud groan-
ing, and Francis, finding that it came from a brother
sleepless on account of starvation, took what re-
mained of the day's store, and ate with him that
he might not feel convicted of carnal appetite
bidding him temper his fasts with common sense,
since it availed little for the spirit if the body
broke down altogether. We hear, too, how he
coaxed another brother, invalided and suffering,
out in the early morning to a vineyard, where he
began himself to eat ripe grapes, and to encourage
him to do the like, as they were wholesome for his
malady. This must have happened soon after their
return from Orte, about the time of vintage.
Perhaps the winter months were responsible for
their occasional semi - starvation, for the rains
THE THREE ORDERS 115
stopped all industry, and a handful of turnips or
beans provided but a scanty meal.
In spring, 1211, they were driven from the lazar-
house by a rough peasant, who wanted it as a stable
for his ass, and Francis decided to beg from the
Benedictines on Monte Subasio the little church
of the Portiuncula, with its adjacent clearing in
the woods. His friends at the Duomo had no
spare land to bestow upon the order, but the
Benedictine Abbot, Maccabeo, gave him the sanc-
tuary of Santa Maria degli Angeli, on condition
that it should remain to all time the metropolitan
of the Brothers Minor. Joyfully did the saint agree
to so sympathetic a contract, and he voluntarily
undertook to send a yearly rent, consisting of a
creel of "the little fishes which be called roaches,"
to the monastery. Once a year some gentle brother
had a good day's fishing, perhaps in the Chiaggio
across the plain, or in the Topino close to Bevagna
memorable streams, for one had quieted in death
the tortured body of Assisi's bishop-martyr, and
the other is immortalised in Dante's Paradiso.
Even Izaak Walton could scarcely have taken a
basketful out of the Tescio. We may be sure,
however, that the happy angler used no bait temp-
tingly disposed upon a hook while Francis lived,
and that short work with a net would put bounds
to his sport.
Thankfully the brothers flitted to their "little
portion". They built huts of wood and clay after
the old Umbrian pattern, each with a tiny herb-
116 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
garden at its rear. According to an old print,
there were two rows of huts facing each other,
between the first pair of which stood the church,
and behind it a hut for infirmary purposes, some-
what larger than the others. As new members
swelled their number, huts were added, but not
till much later was the double fence or hedge
planted to serve as a boundary wall. All round
grew the forest, and from their enclosure the
brothers coming and going could look up to Assisi
and her castle. But the print is little more than
two centuries old, and we cannot trust its details as
correctly picturing the first settlement, although it
may preserve its plan. The hut assigned to Francis
is placed to the right of the church and close to the
infirmary. Down at the spot we recapture no im-
pression of its first simplicity. A huge and inhar-
monious basilica covers the sanctuary, which has
itself been desecrated by modern frescoes, so that
but one part of its outer wall is unspoilt, that
entered by St. Benedict's door. Within things
are a little better : the altar is less tawdry than
usual, and we can reverently touch the bare walls
which Francis restored before his call to preach.
For these rough walls constrain us to our knees in
humble seeking after the God who dwelt with the
Brothers Minor.
Here then at last was a rest for the soles of
their feet, a centre for their gatherings twice in
the year. For they desired no abiding city, since
it was their business to go out into the whole world.
THE THREE ORDERS 117
But, even for these pilgrim apostles, some tryst was
essential, and they found it here. It must have
been about the same time, or earlier, that good
Maccabeo gave them leave to seek the caves of the
Carceri for meditation and prayer. It was certainly
while the order was in its infancy, for the hermits
of the Carceri were St. Francis and his first com-
panions. Between the third and fourth shoulders
of Subasio a deep ravine has been worn by a
vanished torrent ; trees climb its steep walls, rem-
nant of the forest which once covered the moun-
tain's massive flanks. Here, on a morsel of plateau,
the Benedictines had built a couple of chapels,
where the office might be said and sung, and in
one of them they hung above the altar a sweet
Byzantine picture of the Madonna, old as the cruci-
fix of San Damiano. Themselves reduced in num-
bers, they were unable to spare monks for so many
settlements. So they willingly opened its retreats
to the Brothers Minor, who found caves to sleep in
amongst rocks which overhang the gorge. The
noise of the torrent, the rustle of ilex and plane-
trees, the song of birds, the bark of some nocturnal
fox, perhaps the howl of a wolf in winter-time, were
the only sounds to distract their thoughts. Santa
Maria dei Carceri Francis called the spot, and
climbed thither from the plain when his recur-
rent hour of panting for the living God called
him away. For, like his Master, he needed the
wilderness for prayer, and amongst his followers
he rated highest, not the busiest and most bustl-
118 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
ing, but those who steeped themselves from time
to time in holy solitude and spent long days and
nights in prayer for themselves and all the world.
They were his "paladins of the Round Table,"
whose going forth was victory. His own cave lies
below the chapels, while the others are on either
side the ravine. He could pass from it into the
woods, where cyclamens and pinks, yellow orchids
and white stitchwort, honeysuckle, citisus and
broom still recall the spring and summer jewels
which gleamed for his delight. And on the trees
perched his little brothers, the birds, who gathered
about him as about a presence harmless and be-
loved, and whom he included in 'his gospel
preached to all "creatures," for did they not
day and night praise God and outweary the very
saint himself, when he tried to cap their strophe
with his antistrophe ?
Here he filled his soul with restoring peace, and
here he fought out those spiritual battles, known
now as then by every farer on the narrow way,
but which then seemed to take the form of a hand-
to-hand combat with the very prince of darkness.
To his sensitive conscience the faintest longing for
physicial comfort, the merest stumble on the rough
way of the Cross, was nothing short of diabolic
temptation, to be resisted unto death.
Abbot Maccabeo's generosity to the Poor Peni-
tents continued in later times by Benedictines to
Franciscans is all the more interesting to us that
it doubtless sprang from the Umbrian birth of their
THE THREE ORDERS 119
own great founder and saint, and we may infer from
these repeated benefactions their conviction that
Francis, too, was a saint. Green Umbria gave to
the Christian world her two greatest reformers,
and although seven centuries lay between their
actual lives, the recognition of the later by the
disciples of the former is a striking testimony to
his worth.
New adherents joined the Brothers Minor from
Assisi, the villages, the peasant homes. Amongst
these was Brother Leo, who, with Brother Sylvester,
represented the clergy. More fortunate was Francis
herein than his Master, to whom came no priest
even by night. But with increase followed diffi-
culty, for some were recalcitrant at times. Thus
Brothers Sylvester and Kufiims loved the passive
better than the active side of his Rule made happy
hermits, but poor labourers and unwilling mission-
aries. Brother Egidio was the exemplar of his
" Round Table," humble, prayerful, obedient, de-
voted to the service of Lady Poverty, ministering
joyfully whether as day labourer, as menial at the
lazar-houses, as gospel herald, as messenger on
business of the order.
When rich young men sought admission, Francis
warned them forcefully of the hardships to which
they must submit ; when the poor desired this life
of perfection, he rejoiced that for them its way was
not so narrow, not so rough. But numbers flocked
to him of rich and poor alike. Some, too, whom
years and duties prevented from becoming Brothers
120 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Minor, petitioned for acceptance as members prac-
tising the Christ-life "in the world, but not of the
world/' and during those glorious years many men
and women thus obeyed the doctrine. This de-
velopment was a sign of the glad welcome given
to the teaching and example of the friars. Francis
gave little heed to the organisation of these in-
formal adherents. To him they meant that the
Kingdom of God was come, and he did not enrol
them as devotees, but as men and women who
obeyed the call to repentance.
It was not till ten years later that the Pope
subjected them to a Rule and to observances, which
bound them together for convenient employment
by the Church. No longer, after 1221, were they
to be considered as leaven whose contact would
spread abroad the gospel fermentation, but rather
as a body set apart for definite devotional purposes
not to be expected from the world at large. After
the saint's death they were still further separated
and constrained, and we may accept M. Sabatier's
surmise, based upon exhaustive research, that the
date of this second and stricter organisation belongs
to one of the years between March, 1228, and No-
vember, 1234. St. Francis was averse to their first
enrolment, and only submitted to Cardinal LJgolino's
advice because of some laxity in the so - called
"Third Order," due to his absence in the East, but
his consent to every step taken for the furtherance
of papal control was wrung from his unaccording
judgment by force majeure.
THE THREE ORDERS 121
But during the first months of 1212 he found
himself face to face with a new departure. Near
the church of San Giorgio rose upon massive
foundations the storied palace of Favorino degli
Sciffi, Count of San Savino and of Sasso Rosso. To
this day its walls endure, arching across the street
on both of whose sides they stand. Close to the
Communal Palace, to the Duomo, to the Porta
Nuova, its site commanded all municipal stir and
movement as well as the southern and eastern
gates of Assisi.
Count Favorino was a strong man, who possessed
himself of Sasso Rosso after the expulsion of the
Gisleri, and held it for himself or for the commune.
During winter he lived in the town with his family,
of whose members we become acquainted with four.
These were his wife a lady of the old house of
Fiume, her own name Ortolana and his three
daughters, Clare, Agnes and Beatrice. The eldest
of these, Clare, was now eighteen years of age.
From childhood she had manifested an exceptional
devoutness, coupled with great tenderness towards
the needy and suffering, as well as much strength
of character, by which she impressed and even
swayed those in contact with her. Clare was
familiar with the whole history of Bernardone's
son, although but a child when he renounced the
world. She, too, felt the hunger within for more
than meat. She went to hear him preach in San
Giorgio and in the Duomo, whither she was accom-
panied by her aunt, Pacifica dei Guelfucci, a pious
122 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
woman, to whom she could confide her spiritual
longings. Some home trouble increased her aver-
sion to the world ; probably Count Favorino's inten-
tion to wed her to a suitor whom her beauty and
dower attracted, but who was antipathetic to her
nature. Her heart was given to God, the life of
poverty filled her day-dreams as a shining pathway
to the world of light ; perhaps her 'home offered no
counter-attraction. She longed to leave a sphere
where she was little needed, and which could not
satisfy her ardent mind. With what expansion of
soul she would walk in the way found by Francis,
if only she might be admitted. She meditated his
words of flame, his conviction, his joy. He was
the one human being she had ever seen in whom
Christ was lifted up, the one man in whom faith
throbbed, about whom a celestial light trembled,
who bore in his very aspect the credentials of God's
herald. And his message was a Divine command.
She induced her aunt to go with her to Francis,
to whom she told her need. He bade her wait
and pray. Again she saw him and entreated for
admittance into the service of poverty. He pointed
out its hardships, its austerities inconceivable to one
so gently nurtured, but her eyes glowed at the pro-
spect and he understood that she was called of God.
So at last he consented, and fixed the night of
Easter Sunday, 18th March, 1212, for her reception.
Her aunt and a friend called Madonna Bona agreed
to bring her to the Portiuncula. Apparently Count
Favorino was ignorant of his daughter's resolution,
THE THREE ORDERS 123
but we can hardly imagine that her mother knew
nothing, for she herself was a devout woman, whose
heart turned altogether in later years towards the
same life of poverty and labour. For Francis the
moment must have been critical. He was a deacon
in orders, it is true, but there was no provision made
in his plan for the admission of a woman. M.
Sabatier calls our attention to his masterly treat-
ment of the situation. Brother Sylvester was Clare's
relative, and another follower was a friend of her
family. Perhaps he took counsel with them, but
it is more likely that he understood at once the
value of such an adhesion, the need of holy woman-
hood to complete and perfect the work of holy
manhood, the infinitely greater influence on the
world of a spirituality to which both minds, con-
secrated and sanctified, might contribute all that
makes each the complement of the other. Women
were the healers and consolers of men when these
were bruised and baffled. They were skilled in
nursing, in cooking, in needlework. Their hearts
went out in sympathy, their minds were swift, their
powers of observation keen. They were more open
to the light from heaven than men, capable of in-
sight for which they could not account, and if apt
to peril their souls in the world, surely blessed with
a celestial purity when they lived within the fear
and the love of God. He had looked into the
depths of Clare's candid nature. He saw more
there than the qualities common to all women
whose gifts have not been wasted on paltry and
124 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
selfish aims. He recognised her lofty mind, her
power of enduring for Christ's sake, her wisdom
and restraint, her courage and supreme spiritual
health. He felt that she was given by God to lead
women into the way of Christ as he led men.
There was no hindrance to her admission, for her
father's consent was not required, but it was neces-
sary to find a home for her until the new way
opened. So he went to San Paolo, near Bastia,
and made arrangements with the Benedictine
prioress for her residence until a permanent settle-
ment could be secured.
After midnight, Clare and her companions left
her father's house, stealing out of an arched door-
way, still pointed out amongst several close together
and the narrowest of them all. Silently they passed
down to the Porta Mojano, whence the road led,
with two sharp turns, to the Portiuncula. How
solemn their flight must have been, shrouded in
darkness, amongst the spectral olives, the budding
oaks and elms, past a farmhouse or two, and past
the hospital of San Salvatore delle Pareti built
by the congregation of the Cross-bearers half-way
between the city and Santa Maria degli Angeli
the young girl absorbed with the joy of her voca-
tion, the older women half afraid but wholly
dominated by her will. Along the mile of straight
road they sped, reaching the sanctuary just as
Francis and his followers were at matins in the first
hours of Easter Monday. The brothers, with lighted
candles in their hands, came out two by two to
THE THREE ORDERS 125
receive her, and led her to the altar. There Francis
celebrated mass, and there they knelt until the last
" Amen " rose to heaven. And then he read aloud
the stern law of poverty and labour, the gospel
Rule, whose clauses might not be violated. Clare
bowed her head in token of obedience, an obedi-
ence unrelaxed during her forty-one years of further
life. Francis, on whom the tonsure had been forced
by Innocent, cut off her hair and left it on the altar.
Her rich robes and mantle were relinquished, and,
clad in a grey gown and black veil, Clare began to
live a poor Sister of Penitence. Surely some spasm
of pain wrung the heart of Francis as he consecrated
her to poverty in the morning of her youth and
beauty, but he had no misgiving about the step, for
he had none about God's will.
The two trembling women bade their charge fare-
well and turned back to the city, apprehension at
their hearts. And Francis led Clare westwards on
their long walk to San Paolo, while the dawn stole
up behind Foligno and Trevi and lighted them as
they stood at the convent door.
How these two hours were occupied we long to
know perhaps for most of the way in holy silence
and in prayer, and towards the end in gentle en-
couragement and counsel from Saint Francis.
Nothing is so saintly as a saint's bearing towards
women, that mingled appreciation, affection and
reverence divine in its character, which a pure
womanly soul repays with devotion untainted by
vanity or earthly soilure. Such a friendship is filled
with God and is immortal.
126 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Next day Clare's father arrived at San Paolo,
accompanied by several friends, and determined to
take her home, but his reproaches and entreaties
were of no avail. The prioress, however, dis-
approved of such scenes, or perhaps feared Count
Favorino, and Clare was transferred to the convent
of Sant'Angelo in Panso, within the city, where
now stands the Diocesan Seminary. Hither, a week
later, her sister Agnes fled from the unquiet home
to join her, and received the tonsure from Saint
Francis. Count Favorino, with a number of male
relatives, rushed to the convent, and in his fury
struck the child repeatedly, dragging her away by
force. But Clare came to her rescue as she fainted,
and Favorino found her suddenly so heavy in his
arms that he dropped her in the field adjoining the
convent, which stood close to one of the city gates
towards the north.
There, too, the sisters were vexed by hostile
influences within the walls, as well as by their
father's anger. Francis was sore put to it to find
them a quiet retreat, where they could practise
their vows in peace. He thought of San Damiano,
secluded amongst trees, and applied once more to
his friend the Benedictine abbot. For the monks,
the time was one of crisis. Their number was
reduced to eight ; some of their monasteries had
been sacked by the people during recent years of
war and revolt ; they had sought in vaki to pro-
pitiate Assisi by the gift of the Portico of Minerva ;
they were anxious to reinstate themselves in popular
THE THREE ORDERS 127
esteem forfeited by their degeneration from the early
standard of monastic life. Francis was venerated by
the citizens, and they gladly granted his request for
a building which they had ceased to use, and whose
ruined walls he had restored with his own hands.
To San Damiano the two sisters were conducted,
and there they were joined by several other noble
ladies of Assisi, and some years later by their sister
Beatrice, their mother and their Aunt Pacifica.
Clare was made Superior of the Poor Sisters of
Penitence, and part of the gospel Rule was assigned
to them for obedience. They were not required to
go from place to place to preach and call men to
repentance, but their duties were sufficient. Chief
amongst them were tending the sick, feeding the
hungry, making garments for the naked, distilling
medicines and soothing draughts all the gracious
ministrations which women know so well how to
render helpful, consolatory, tranquillising. They
made altar-cloths and napery for the little churches
used by the brothers, and for others fallen into
neglect, and those amongst them skilled in em-
broidery copied the flowers in Clare's little garden
and devised patterns for their work, since Francis
loved both beauty and order in the setting of God's
altars. His chivalry would not permit these Sisters
of Poverty to beg from door to door, and some of
his followers were appointed to do them that
service. They built their huts near San Damiano to
be at hand and to furnish bread and vegetables for
their daily need.
CHAPTER V
YEARS OF INCREASE
12121218
Failure of First Attempts at Foreign Missions Mount
Alverna given to the Order Increase of the Sisters of
Poverty Accession of Scholars Cannara and Bevagna
Sermon to the Birds First Visit to Mount Alverna
Missionary Itinerary through Central Italy " God's
Minstrels" Lateran Council of 1215 Decree affecting
the New Orders Innocent's Death Ugolino, Bishop
of Ostia The Pentecostal Chapters Foreign Missions
Brother Elias Francis in Rome St. Dominic
Subiaco and Oldest Portrait of Francis Chapter of
1218 First Murmurs against the Rule Dominic and
Poverty.
THE year 1212 was destined both to encourage
Francis by an amazing development of the
movement which he had initiated, and to check his
premature efforts for its extension beyond the seas.
When the settlement at San Damiano was provided
for in every detail, and its young superior invested
with power to receive new applicants for admission,
the brothers were instructed to bring back such
women as they found truly desirous of the life of
poverty, labour and devotion, and their return from
preaching was from time to time so signalised.
(128)
YEARS OF INCREASE 129
Francis then, concluding that the moment for
missions outside Italy had arrived, made such plans
for the home work as were required and started for
the coast. This may have been in April or May,
although it was probably not till after Whitsuntide.
His longing was to convert the infidels in Palestine.
We are not told whether he had a brother with
him, for the details of this venture are very scanty,
but it may be regarded as certain, seeing Christ had
so ordained the conduct of missions.
From Ancona he took ship for the Levant, but
crossing the Adriatic a fierce wind drove the vessel
either on an island or on the coast of Dalmatia,
then part of Slavonia. Here Francis lingered,
hoping to find a passage to the East, but none was
forthcoming, and he had to abandon the enterprise.
A barque was being loaded for Ancona, and he asked
its master to take him on board. He was refused,
but, collecting a store of provisions from the people
to whom he ministered during this delay, he hid
himself amongst its bales, and the seamen were
well upon their way before he was discovered.
Storms drove them out of their course, and their
own food was exhausted, so that Francis, emerging
with enough for them all, was welcomed, and was
soon after landed at Ancona. He made his way
to the Portiuncula on foot, arriving in time for the
Christmas gathering of the brothers, who had spent
the months of his absence in home missions. Re-
storation to them consoled him for the failure of
this heroic attempt, for many new brothers had
9
130 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
joined, amongst whom, perhaps, was Bombarone as
Brother Elias, who for some years was his zealous
disciple.
For 1213 he planned an extensive missionary
tour in Central Italy, assigning its districts to his
followers in pairs, and taking Brother Leo with
himself to Romagna. He is said to have spent the
Lent of this year in solitude, fasting and prayer, on
an island in Lake Thrasymene, subsisting on a half-
loaf during the whole period of forty days. After
Easter he resumed his itinerary, and arriving at the
Castle of Montefeltro with Brother Leo, he found
great bustle of preparation for a tournament about
to be held in honour of a newly-made knight.
Amongst the guests was Orlando dei Cattani, Count
of Chiusi, a man of large possessions in the Casen-
tino. Entering the castle court, Francis found it
filled with nobles gathered for the spectacle. He
seized his opportunity, and spoke to them on the
words : " So great a joy do I await that every toil
is my delight." The guests listened to him and
were touched by his sincerity. Count Orlando drew
him aside and asked to be admitted amongst those
who obeyed Christ's teaching at home, since his
years and duties forbade him to join the working
brothers.
After the tournament Francis held long converse
with him, and received him into the congregation of
faithful souls. Then Orlando offered him Monte
Alverna, an isolated peak in the Casentino, as a re-
treat for solitude, prayer and contemplation, to be
YEARS OF INCREASE 131
used by himself and the brothers, and the gift was
gladly accepted.
He returned to the Portiuncula for the Pente-
costal assembly, at which reports were made of
missionary success and failure in Central Italy, for
it may be noted that the early Brothers Minor
never cooked their reports, but faithfully recorded
their blunders and defeats as well as their achieve-
ments.
So large a body of followers was now with him
that he mooted a considerable enterprise for 1214.
He and his brothers spread themselves throughout
Italy, preaching the gospel to all who would listen,
up to Pentecost and after the general conference.
While he could trust them to carry on the home
mission, he made a second personal attempt as a
pioneer of foreign work.
The Kings of Arragon, Navarre and Castille had
two years earlier chased across the Sierra Nevada
their gallant Moorish invaders. Spain was left to
the Spaniard, all the richer in art, science and
education for its long period of submission to Arab
domination. The exploit roused all Christendom,
and was deemed a triumph against the infidel.
Francis longed to carry his evangel both to Spaniard
and Moor ; hoped, too, for martyrdom, which was
then the ideal goal of every saint. He took the
westward route through Piedmont and Languedoc
that autumn, and was away till the following spring.
This time we know that a brother accompanied
him, because the legend survives that, in his eager-
132 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
ness to reach Spain, he used to outstrip his companion
and leave him far behind. But a veil falls here
over the enterprise, and we only learn that he was
so seriously ill that his companion brought him
back again. His health, broken ever since 1206,
when the rough treatment which he suffered on
Monte Subasio sowed the seeds of constant deli-
cacy, was not improved by fasts and fatigues. He
came home saddened by a second failure, but con-
vinced that God meant him for a time to work in
his own land and among his own people.
The home mission had achieved unusual success.
Large numbers had been convinced and converted ;
many had joined the order ; some new sisters had
been brought to San Damiano. Not only there,
but in other parts of Umbria, communities of these
ladies were formed, where sick persons were brought
to be nursed, where work and worship went hand-
in-hand, where cheerfulness and saintliness were
practised. These communities retained a certain
homeliness far removed from conventualism, and
were altogether different from the nunneries of
St. Clare, which took their place after her death.
Apparently the Brothers Minor were also greatly
increased in 1215, and their settlement must have
been enlarged. Amongst the new adherents were
men of every rank and character conciliated into
harmony by the graciousness of their superior,
whose discerning sympathy evoked from each all
that was finest. Thus, we hear of a peasant called
John, who, seeing Francis busy cleaning a dirty
YEARS OF INCREASE 133
church at Bastia, took the broom from him and
swept it out with a will, and then asked to be ad-
mitted to the order. His family grudged his loss,
but Francis won their consent by letting them keep
his portion of the common heritage. This John
became so true a follower in the way of the Cross
that Francis tenderly spoke of him as Saint John.
At the same season Thomas of Celano joined, a
man noted for his learning, who became one of the
saint's biographers after his death. Other scholars
were attracted to the order, and it is with some
amusement that we read how Thomas of Celano
believed himself and them to be the recipients
of a special respect from their superior, although
his precautionary measures against property in
manuscripts indicate that he found them inclined
to magnify their knowledge and to make of it a
hindrance to their obedience. It is possible that
Bombarone was the medium of their adhesion.
For some years prior to his own admission he lived
in Bologna, acting as a scrivener, and taking so
great advantage of its university teaching that
he was reckoned one of the most erudite men in
Italy. He had a passion for learning, crossed by
a counter-passion for devotion, both underlaid by
lust of power, intermittent at this stage, but per-
sistent as Francis lost ground, when the ebbing of
his strength gave Brother Elias an opportunity.
There can be little doubt that to this group of
scholars, with Brother Elias at their head, was
due the mutiny within the order which wrecked
134 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
the saint's new covenant with God, and which
broke his heart some years before his death.
But, although the coming and going of grey
friars was now a daily spectacle on the roads in
Tuscany, the March, Umbria and Romagna, they
were not yet separated into filial colonies, as was
soon to be necessary.
When the Pentecostal meetings and duties were
ended, Francis, suffering from prostration, was for a
brief moment disposed to abandon the active side
of his vocation. He consulted Clare and Brother
Sylvester, and received from them such resolute
counsel to continue to save and to preach that he
accepted it as God's message, and much heartened
took the road once more. He went to Cannara,
five miles south of the Portiuncula, and his ser-
mons there were so effectual that the whole village
adopted Christ's Rule as their own. From Can-
nara he went further south, and east to Bevagna.
Brother Leo was his companion, and the sympathy
between them, the beauty of the ways bordered
with flowers amongst them the delicate blue and
white love-in-a-mist, which fringes the hedgerows
in June, blue cornflowers, rose-coloured vetches,
purple loose-strife, scarlet poppies, gay larkspurs
and sheets of feathery bedstraw the twitter of
birds upon the trees, the fields ripe to the harvest,
refreshed and uplifted his heart, so that his joy
welled over in song. Where the birds gathered
he paused, and, unalarmed, they clustered about
his feet and on the branches overhead. In an
SERMON TO THIi BIKDS
From Giotto's fresco in the Upper Church, at Assist
YEARS OF INCREASE 135
ecstasy of tenderness for his " little brothers " he
spoke to them of their Creator, whose care for
them deserved their love and praise. " For He
has made you," he said, "the noblest of His
creatures ; He has given you the pure air for a
home : you need neither to sow nor to reap, for
He cares for you, He protects you, He leads you
whither you should go." And the birds rejoiced
at his words, opening their wings and fluttering
and chirping as if to thank him for rating them
so precious in God's sight. Then moving amongst
them, he blessed them and went on his way.
At Bevagna we see still the beautiful buildings
he looked upon, old San Sylvestro and San Michele,
over whose door is sculptured the mighty angel
destroying the dragon, eternal symbol of salvation,
and above the market-place is the Church of San
Francesco, built upon the spot where he was wont
to preach. The snowy oxen in the meadows by
the river Topi no, which the brothers would cross
and recross, the dark bastions of Monte Subasio,
perhaps cloud-capped as they returned, the blue
ranges opposite them, the greeting and welcome of
peasant and townsman, willing to listen to their
message, all must have cheered and stimulated him
to renewed exertions. About the middle of August,
he paid his first visit to the stern slopes and caverns
of Monte Alverna. Here he spent six weeks in
prayer and fasting, perhaps laying down at God's
feet his longings for work abroad, for martyrdom,
making a heroic sacrifice of those spiritual ambitions
136 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
which he had been unable to realise. For, beyond
the offering up of all material aims, comes that
astonishing experience of the Will of God, the
surrender of sacred ardours and holy toils which
hasten in advance of His command. It is the
saint's keenest agony to withhold the uncommis-
sioned service, which his heart burns within him
to be about.
In October he renewed his itinerary, passing by
Alviano, where crowds gathered to hear him, and
where the wheeling swallows made so much noise
that his voice was drowned, until he bade them be
still and hear the word of God. Narni and the
villages in its neighbourhood ; Rieti and its beloved
valley ; Monte Colombo, where one Christmas Eve
he made the first praesepio of manger, ox, ass and
babe, and was himself astonished when the Child
smiled up in his face as the Infant Jesus might have
done; Sant, Eleuthero, Poggio-Buscone, were his
next halting-places. From them he passed to the
March of Ancona, where the Brothers Minor were
best received, and where already many hermitages
were filled with the apostles of poverty. The pro-
vince of Ascoli seems to have been visited late in
the autumn. About thirty new adherents formed
the immediate harvest of this mission, and amongst
them was Brother Pacifico, a poet and musician,
who was of great service to Francis in regulating
the music for their functions, and whom he en-
couraged in composing songs to be sung in the
market-places, so as to gather together the villagers
YEARS OF INCREASE 137
and townsfolk. " God's Minstrels " he called
Pacifico and his band.
In November, Pope Innocent held his famous
Council at the Lateran, when seventy decrees were
promulgated on Church discipline and doctrine, one
of them annulling all religious orders which were
not subservient to the Rule of either Augustine or
Benedict. St. Dominic was in Rome seeking the
Pope's authorisation of his new order, and in
obedience to this decree he accepted the Rule of
St. Augustine for his followers. We do not know
how Francis warded off the interference of this
ordinance, but it is certain that he escaped its
working.
Not long after the Council, civic hostility com-
pelled Innocent to leave Rome, and he found an
asylum in Perugia, where the papal court was
graphically depicted by Jacques de Vitry, who
visited it there, and who contrasts its infamies with
the charity, humility and orderliness of the Brothers
and Sisters of Poverty, to whom he was greatly
attracted. Francis was summoned to Perugia, pro-
bably because of his reluctance to obey the decree.
He and other friars were there when Innocent died
and when Honorius was elected Pope. The death-
bed was deserted, the corpse was denied the
commonest care. They were Brothers Minor who
washed and clothed his body, guarding it with
pious offices until the time of burial. Cardinal
Colonna had died in May, two months before Inno-
cent, bequeathing his care for Francis to Ugolino,
138 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Bishop of Ostia, who became sincerely attached to
his charge. Already, in 121 6, he attended the
Pentecostal gatherings at Santa Maria degli Angeli.
The saint willingly accepted his friendship his
shrewdness somewhat at fault for he did not at
first detect beneath it Ugolino's far-sighted scheme,
carried out by means of unwearied patience, subtle
assault and the help of Brother Elias.
Up to this time the Whitsuntide Chapter had
consisted of a joyous reunion of all the brothers for
fellowship, spiritual refreshment, communion in
worship, counsel taken and given, interchange of
reports, receiving neophytes, and their superior's
guidance both in general and particular difficulties.
But from the time of Ugolino's patronage these
meetings slowly but surely changed their character.
M. Sabatier points out that the gradual transfor-
mation took place between the summers of 12l6
and 1220, by which latter year Francis found
himself enmeshed in a network of control, so skil-
fully woven that at first it seemed as fragile as a
summer gossamer.
His struggle for independence was vain. Papal
mandates could not bind him, but papal craft
availed. Not for several years did he recognise the
drift of Ugolino's gentle pressure ; but his dis-
covery of treachery within the camp, of discontent,
of needs and demands injurious to the " new
covenant," false to the espousal vows, disloyal to
the Lady Poverty, began earlier and was a pur-
gatorial agony. In the meantime Ugolino was
YEARS OF INCREASE 139
magnetised by his holy living, his rare spirituality,
and we find in his bearing towards Francis a per-
plexing mixture of personal devotion and of untir-
ing intrigue directed against the very work which
God had separated him from the world to do. What
Francis needed for that work was freedom ; what
the Curia could not tolerate was a power outside
their control. The order had become such a power,
and so the fiat went forth that it must be captured
and bridled and tamed.
The papal court was established for some time
at Perugia, where Honorius was elected Pope
on 18th July, 1216, immediately after Innocent's
death. This Pontiff, less haughty than his prede-
cessor, was eager for a new crusade, and his legates
were commissioned to rekindle European fervour
for the recovery of Palestine. His character was
venerable for its saintliness, the simplicity of his
personal habits, his dislike of pomp and display.
For a time Francis saw in him the saviour of the
Church. He felt sure of consideration and support
for his ideal from Honorius.
He had a new inspiration for the salvation of
souls, which required papal sanction. Santa Maria
degli Angeli was very dear to his heart ; its walls
repaired by his own hands were sacred as the walls
of Sion. God's purposes took shape within them.
Prayer there was never in vain. The presence of
the Most High filled the tiny temple, and when the
brothers knelt there they felt the pressure of His
hand upon their brows. Might it not become a
140 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
mercy-seat, whence pardon would flow to the peni-
tent ? Might sinners not pass from its doors, sealed
with Divine forgiveness, and so set free to walk in
the way of life ? He took Brother Leo with him to
Perugia and sought an audience of the new Pope.
A week of devotion in remembrance of the con-
secration of Santa Maria degli Angeli was at hand.
He asked Honorius to grant a pardon to all its
worshippers during that week till the end of time.
As Vicar of Christ he must know Christ's mind upon
the matter. But Popes were not used to bestowing
spiritual gifts without money and without price, and
even Honorius was startled. Then, as the absolute
selflessness of Francis dawned on him, he was moved
by a like holy love to grant the boon required,
although at the complaining of the cardinals who
were indignant at such reckless waste he limited
its action to one day out of the seven. When,
radiant with joy, the saint turned to go, Honorius
cried : " Oh, simple one, whither dost thou hasten
without the charter of thy indulgence ? "
"If it is God's giving," said Francis, "He will
make it manifest. I need no testimonial. Let the
Blessed Virgin Mary be the charter, Christ the
notary and angels the witnesses."
At the Whitsuntide Chapter of 1217 so great a
crowd of friars assembled that huts of reeds and
canes were raised, roofed with branches and carpeted
with mats of woven rushes, for their accommodation.
We infer that these representatives came from
new communities of the Brothers Minor, but there
YEARS OF INCREASE 141
is yet no allusion to any except the original settle-
ment. We know nothing of what occupied Francis
from the summer of 12 16 to that of 1217, although
we may suppose that the astonishing increase in his
following made it necessary for him to send out
bodies of friars under trusted directors to such pro-
vinces as the March, Tuscany and Ascoli.
But all who know Umbria can form some idea of
the great gathering on the plain ; of colonies of
green shelters ; of the strangers present, drawn by
the extraordinary success of the movement ; of the
crowds of villagers from Bastia, Bevagna and Can-
nara, bringing bread and vegetables, oil and wine,
eggs and poultry, fruit and fodder ; of townspeople
from Spello, Foligno, Perugia, all in festal dress,
seeking the shrine which Francis and his com-
panions had made so sacred. And from Perugia,
too, rode daily Bishop Ugolino, the friars going
out in procession to meet him a little way from the
church, when he dismounted and walked at their
head to Santa Maria degli Angeli, celebrating high
mass there and preaching, while Francis chanted
the gospel for the day as his deacon. The bishop
was deeply impressed by the scene ; he saw the
brothers still moved by willing obedience to their
Rule, passing to and fro amongst the people, heal-
ing their sick, listening to their perplexities and
confessions, ministering to the lepers near at hand,
ever joyous, accessible, humble. "Truly," he said,
"these are the camps of God." A vast scheme of
foreign missions was proposed. Friars were sent
142 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
to Spain, to Germany, to Hungary and to Syria.
Each party was placed under wise guidance, but
apparently Francis lost sight of the language diffi-
culty. For in Spain and France men spoke Pro-
ven9al, or some tongue akin to it, and he ignored
the backward civilisation of Germany and his
brothers' ignorance of its uncouth dialects.
Brother Elias comes to the front in these pre-
parations. He had shown great ability in his con-
duct of some business at Florence, and Francis gave
him charge of a special mission to the Holy Land.
The remembrance of his own failures weighed on
his mind and checked his going. In great humility
he decided to choose for himself a country nearer
home. France attracted him, because he was
already familiar with its southern provinces and
could use its language fluently. He selected some
of his followers to accompany him, particularly
Brother Pacifico and his minstrels. They prepared
in solitude and prayer, probably retiring to the caves
and shrines of the Carceri, for his words at starting
breathe the very spirit of retreat. " Go, two by
two," he said, " humble and gentle, keeping silence
until the third hour, praying to God in your hearts,
speaking no idle word. Be as withdrawn during
this journey as if you were shut up in a hermitage,
or in your cell, for wherever we are and go, we bear
our cell along with us : brother body is our cell and
the soul is its hermit praying to the Lord and medi-
tating within it."
But when they reached Florence, Ugolino, now
YEARS OF INCREASE 143
a cardinal and the Pope's legate in Tuscany, refused
to allow him to leave Italy on the ground of diffi-
culties at the papal court concerning his order.
In vain did Francis remonstrate with the cardinal,
arguing with sacred passion that not for Italy alone
were the friars called of God, but for all nations,
whether Christian or infidel. Ugolino was firm, and
convinced that he was bidden from above to re-
nounce this dear project, the saint gave way and
mournfully returned to the plain, there to await
the issue.
His companions were sent to France, Brother
Pacifico at their head, because his gifts of music
and poetic improvisation fitted him for a land
familiar with wandering troubadours, whose love-
lays might be replaced with the joyful chant of
salvation. " The Minstrels of God " would not fail
of a hearing in France.
When the various missionary parties returned
some had doleful failures to report. In Germany
and Hungary they were roughly treated, and their
language of gesture and kind deeds did not suffice
to explain their aim. In deep depression they re-
turned to the Umbrian plain. Those sent to Spain
fared somewhat better, for, although taken for here-
tics by the Spaniards, the Queen of Portugal received
them kindly and allowed them to form settlements
at Lisbon, Coimbra and elsewhere.
Pacifico and his companions succeeded best of
all. They passed up from Southern France to Paris
and settled at St. Denis, where so great was the
144 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
attraction of their minstrelsy, their preaching and
their lives, that many gathered round them, and
they were able to send home an encouraging re-
port. This success led Francis to appoint Pacifico
director of the order in France, and four years later
to send one of his fellow-workers, Agnello di Pisa,
as head of a mission to England.
During that winter, probably early in 1218,
Francis was in Rome and preached before Pope
Honorius. At Cardinal Ugolino's suggestion, he
had for once carefully prepared his sermon, but
forgot it wholly in presence of his congregation, so,
with a cry to God for inspiration, he spoke as he
was moved by the Holy Ghost, and both Pope and
cardinals were melted to tears. Cardinal Ugolino
saw much of him, and was doubtless the cause of
his visit to the capital, for the Curia was occupied
with the question of the new orders, and the
Franciscan Missions, commissioned to preach the
gospel and not the crusade, made its members
uneasy.
Dominic, too, was in Rome, favoured by Honorius,
since his order was bridled by monastic Rule, al-
though appointed to go into all countries to pro-
claim the doctrines of the Church. But in 1218
the Dominicans were not a power in Europe as the
Franciscans had become. Ugolino pressed upon
Dominic the influence of poverty and self-denial,
and may have suggested his combining with Francis,
so as to modify the evangelistic fervour of the
Brothers Minor, and to induce them to adopt the
FRANCIS 1'KEACHINU UEFOKK POl'E HONOK1US III
From Giotto's fresco in the Upper Church at Assisi
YEARS OF INCREASE 145
Rule of St. Augustine. This union Dominic pro-
posed to Francis, who gently refused it, aware of
what it involved. None the less, the two orders
were destined to interpenetrate and influence each
other, although not until Francis lost his power
over the Brothers Minor. But the founders loved
each other and edified each other, and Dominic
promised to be present at the Chapter of 1218.
It may have been in the spring of this year that
Francis went to Subiaco and spent some days or even
weeks in the monastery built over the cavern where
Benedict first found refuge from the world. He
had a friend there, Brother Oddo, a man acquainted
with Santa Maria degli Angeli, who perhaps once
lived in the monastery on Monte Subasio.
The chapel of San Gregorio was added to the
Middle Church of the Holy Cave by Cardinal
Ugolino when he became Pope Gregory IX., and
Brother Oddo, who was an artist, contributed a
portrait of St. Francis to its decoration, which was
the work of Benedictine monks. Different dates
have been assigned for this portrait, but although
we are led to infer that the chapel was not begun
till 1227, a year after his death, the fact that
Francis is represented with neither stigmata nor
halo indicates that Oddo must have painted it
from a portrait taken before 1224, and leads us
to regard this as his only authentic likeness. He
is called " Brother Francis," not St. Francis, in the
inscription.
It is low on the wall to our right as we enter
10
146 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
the chapel. It is not more than thirty inches in
length, and shows him thin and fragile, clad in the
grey gown of his order, with its hood drawn over
his head, and a cord, whose ends are knotted seven
times, round his waist. His eyes are full of power,
and suggest a year prior to his blindness. His
right hand lies on his breast, his left arm hangs
down, the hand holding a scroll on which are the
words " Pax huic Domui ". A tiny figure kneels at
his feet, that of the aged monk who painted him,
and who, with Brother Romanus, executed most of
the frescoes on the chapel walls. Their names are
on an arch behind the present altar-piece, and
Frater Oddo has added to his the words: "Dies
Mei Transierunt ". So that he was an old man
when he bequeathed to us this priceless portrait.
There are traces of an itinerary still further south
in the spring of 1218, and of visits to the valley of
Rieti, to Siena and to Bologna. He and his com-
panion spent Lent at Monte Alverna.
The Chapter of Whitsuntide, 1218, was even more
important than that of the previous summer. It
was crowded with representatives from all Italy,
from France, from far Portugal and Syria. The
news from Palestine was most cheering. Brother
Elias and his colleagues were well received by the
Mussulmans, who recognised their methods and
would deem their poverty sacred. An important
recruit had been gained in the person of Caesar of
Speyer, who three years afterwards conducted a
mission to South Germany with amazing success.
YEARS OF INCREASE 147
His friendship for Elias at this time is a proof of
the latter's fidelity to the Rule, as later he bitterly
opposed him for revolutionising the order. But we
can read between the lines how Elias' temporary
absence from Francis and comparative independence
widened the little inevitable rift between their ideals.
Cardinal Ugolino and Dominic were present at
this Chapter and some five thousand Brothers
Minor and members of the Third Order. Ugolino
was anxious that Dominic should apprehend the
secret of this success, and he hoped to convince
Francis that the learning and research essential to
the Dominicans would be of use to the Franciscans.
Amongst the latter were some students, who re-
gretted the loss of their books, and who complained
that they were compelled to forego the possession
of even a psalter or a copy of the Scriptures. For
their superior " sorrowed to see the knowledge that
pufFeth up sought after to the neglect of godliness,"
and said : " Many brethren there be that set all
their study and all their care upon acquiring know-
ledge, letting go their holy calling by wandering
forth in mind and body beyond the way of humility
and holy prayer ; who, when they have preached to
the people, and have learnt that some have thereby
been edified and converted to repentance, are in-
continent, puffed up, and extol themselves upon
their work and the gain of another, as if it had
been their own gain ; when nevertheless they have
preached rather to their own condemnation and
harm, and have done nothing for themselves accord-
148 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
ing to the truth, save only as the instruments of
them through whom in truth the Lord has gathered
in this harvest, for them that they believe to be
edified and converted to repentance by their know-
ledge and preaching, the Lord doth in truth edify
and convert by the prayers of the holy, poor,
humble and simple brethren, albeit the holy bre-
thren for the most part know not aught thereof,
for thus is it the will of God they should not know,
lest haply they might pride themselves thereon."
Ugolino sympathised with the murmurs rather
than with these masterly arguments, cogent to-day
as they were then. He went to Francis, hoping to
make it clear to him that such an institution as
the Brothers Minor could not be worked on so
self-denying an ordinance as the gospel Rule.
" Surely," he urged, " your wisest and best edu-
cated followers should have some share in your
counsels should be consulted and give you the
help of their larger knowledge. Would it not be
well, indeed, to profit by the experience of the
ancient orders ? "
Francis was only too well acquainted with the
plea as with its source. He seized the cardinal's
hand and led him before the assembly. " My
brothers," he cried, in a voice vibrating with
emotion, "God called me into the way of simpli-
city and humility. In that path He has revealed
the truth for me and for those who wished to
follow me ; do not speak to me of the Rule of
St. Benedict, of St. Augustine, of St. Bernard, nor
YEARS OF INCREASE 149
of any other saint, but of that only which God in
His mercy willed to show me, and through which
He told me that He would make a new covenant
with the world, and through no other. God will
confound you through your knowledge and your
wisdom. I have faith that God will chasten you,
and that, whether you will or no, you will be driven
to understand."
Dominic was amazed at the spectacle of this as-
sembly, and more and more impressed by the sanc-
tity and power of Francis. His trust in providence
when the question of food for such a multitude
arose, and its response when peasants and towns-
folk arrived with ample supplies ; the colony of
green huts, which gave to this meeting the name
of " Chapter of the Mats " a name suitable to
every Pentecostal gathering of those years ; the
cheerfulness and holiness of the brothers, for at
this time the grumblers were but a small faction ;
the missionary reports from distant lands, amongst
them his own Spain all told of the power latent
in this new covenant to save mankind. He de-
cided to make use of the precedent established by
Francis. The force of poverty adopted by the
heralds of God was an endorsement of Christ's
missionary methods. These had fallen into dis-
use, if not disrepute, but here they were trium-
phantly vindicated.
He embraced St. Francis with tears in his eyes,
acknowledged that clad in poverty the servants of
God were best equipped, and two years later he
adopted the vow of poverty for his own order.
CHAPTER VI
YEARS OF TROUBLE
12181223
Chapter of 1218 Francis in Egypt and Palestine Changes
made during his Absence His Return At Bologna
Ugolino's Management Michaelmas Chapter of 1220
The New Rule Pietro de Cattani appointed General
Francis and Dominic in Rome Rule for the Third
Order Elias appointed Minister-General The Revo-
lution of the Order The Rule of 1223.
FRANCIS yielded to Cardinal Ugolino's counsel
on one point at the Chapter of 1218.
The brothers, rejected in Germany and Hungary,
made their pitiful report. Ugolino overbore the
saint's resistance and forced him to accept the pro-
tection of a pontifical brief for his missionary friars.
It was issued in the following year, and is dated
from Rieti, the llth of June, 1219. This month
was the trysting time of Frederick II. 's crusade,
joined by volunteers from all Christian countries.
The embarkation was fixed for St. John's Day, 24th
June, at Ancona.
Francis, encouraged by news from Brother Elias,
found this an opportune moment for joining him in
Syria, and this time no objection was interposed,
(150)
YEARS OF TROUBLE 151
He had sent Brother Egidio to Tunis, Brother
Christopher to Gascony and a third mission to Spain
and Morocco. The first and third proved unsuc-
cessful, Egidio and his companions being driven
from the country and forced to recross the Mediter-
ranean, while five members of the band sent to
Morocco were martyred in the year following. The
second mission prospered, and for fifty years Brother
Christopher lived and laboured according to the
gospel Rule in Gascony.
It was not for Francis to shirk the dangers which
his brothers faced, and he set out for Ancona with
a large following. There it was impossible to find
passage room for so many. Francis called to his
side a child playing near and bade him choose
eleven of the friars to form the mission. These he
accepted, the rest returned to the Portiuncula.
Embarking for St. Jean d'Acre, they touched at
Cyprus on the way. There Brother Barbaro spoke
" idle words " of calumny against another in the
presence of a Cypriote gentleman. Francis inflicted
upon him the penance of eating dung, while he re-
peated : "It is fitting that a mouth, which has
distilled the venom of hatred against my brother,
should eat this excrement."
They reached St. Jean d'Acre, where Elias was
settled, about the middle of July. Francis divided
his company into two parts, left one of them to
reinforce Elias and to preach the gospel in Syria,
and started with the other for Egypt, whither the
crusaders had gone to besiege Damietta.
152 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Here he found French, English and Germans, as
well as Italians. Jacques de Vitry, present at the
siege, tells us of the impression which he made :
" He is so lovable that all venerate him." But he
was powerless to prevent the rabble army from
attacking the Saracens in open battle, when it was
routed and humiliated as he had predicted, for his
experienced eye detected its want of discipline. He
was well known, too, amongst the Saracens capable
of understanding the saintliness of the " little poor
one ".
The Sultan of Egypt was Alkhamil, a man of
open mind and noble nature. Francis sought his
presence and told him of Christ, calling upon him
to test the heralds of God, Pietro de Cattani and
himself, who were willing to pass through flames if
his soothsayers and priests would do the same. But
these slunk away. Francis expounded the gospel
to Alkhamil, who asked him to pray that God
would, by a sign, reveal whether Mahomet or Christ
were the true prophet. He is said to have accepted
the saint's message, and to have received the last
offices from two friars when he died a few years
later. In the meantime, he gave Francis and his
companions a safe-conduct, and commended them
to his brother Almuazzam, the Sultan of Syria.
Damietta was taken by the crusaders, and a hideous
earnage ensued, dishonouring to their standard.
Francis left a scene where men's greed and cruelty
hindered his work, and went to Palestine. We
may surmise that he reached Bethlehem in time for
YEARS OF TROUBLE 153
Christmas Eve, and that there his spirit, rapt in
visions of the Babe, recovered its joy and peace.
But we have only fragmentary and perhaps
legendary record of his seven months' stay in Pales-
tine. Absent from the Portiuncula for a whole
year, he knew nothing of what was happening
there. His arrangements for a lengthened separa-
tion had been most careful, but it is probable that
he hoped to return for the Whitsuntide Chapter of
1220, and was delayed by illness. There is a passing
record of such a hindrance, probably some form of
eye disease, such as ophthalmia. We may be sure
that those afflicted with such troubles, as well as
lepers, would be his special care, and that contact
would expose him to attack, while shelterless noons
and nights would leave him a prey to the poisonous
flies whose swarms plague both Egypt and Syria.
The Chapter was held without him, and revealed
a series of startling innovations and grave dis-
orders.
Pope Honorius, resident at Rieti when Francis
left, was in 1220 at Viterbo. Cardinal Ugolino
remained in Perugia, paying occasional visits to
Bologna, the headquarters of the Dominicans in
Italy. He was still occupied with the affairs of
both orders. The founder of the latter had
proved to be most manageable ; the founder of
the former was in the East by his own passionate
desire and unhindered by Ugolino. A nephew of
the cardinal's had joined Francis some time earlier,
although we are ignorant of the exact date of his
154 FRANCIS OF ASSIS1
adhesion. Brother Gregory of Naples he was
called, and his capacity as a missionary director
had led Francis to appoint him itinerary super-
intendent during his absence. His duties were to
go from centre to centre of the work in Italy to
guide, encourage and console. Brother Matthew
of Narni was made resident director at the same
time to remain at the Portiuncula, receive new
adherents and carry on the local activities.
Just a month after Francis left for Syria, Ugolino
imposed the Benedictine Rule upon the Poor Sisters
at Florence, Siena, Perugia and Lucca. With Clare
at San Damiano he had no chance. From the first
he was much impressed with Clare's rare strength
of character and sanctity, and something almost
approaching to a friendship existed between them.
He visited San Damiano frequently, and must have
sought to convince her of the need of conventualism,
but Clare gently repelled all such suggestions and
maintained the sufficiency of the gospel Rule.
There is little doubt that in the other communi-
ties his counsels met with greater appreciation, for
we are told that it was at the instance of the sisters,
through Brother Filippo Longo, appointed to serve
them, that the Benedictine Rule was imposed.
Then, through Brother Gregory of Naples, an in-
novation was effected in the Rule of the Brothers
Minor. He and Brother Matthew added Monday
to the weekly fasts, and made new ordinances with
regard to the character of what they might eat on
other days. An attempt, too, was made to bring
YEARS OF TROUBLE 155
the government into accord with the old monasti-
cism rather than with the "New Covenant".
When these changes were brought before the
Chapter of 17th May, 1220, the first companions
of St. Francis, who best understood their superior's
ideal, were indignant. Unfortunately, Gregory of
Naples, while discharging his functions, had been
able to influence many of the friars. But those
faithful to Francis, and uneasy at his protracted
absence which had given ground for a rumour of
his death sent one of their number to the East
to seek him out and to entreat his return. This
brother found him so quickly that it is pro-
bable he was about to embark for Italy at St.
Jean d'Acre. On hearing of his vicar's inter-
ference with the Rule, and of disorders initiated
by one of the friars who collected a body of
lepers, both men and women, and asked for papal
authority to unite them under a separate Rule he
was deeply distressed. He was aware of rebellious
elements within the brotherhood, but he had trusted
his vicars, and to them were due these revolutionary
steps, taken under the aegis of Pope and cardinal,
who were careful to keep their share in the changes
passive and unexpressed.
Francis took Pietro de Cattani, Brother Elias,
Caesar of Speyer (Spires) and others with him on
the homeward journey. They were landed at
Venice, whence they set out for Bologna, passing
by Padua, Brescia and Mantua. He sent a mes-
senger to Clare with a letter, of which only a few
lines have been recovered :
156 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
" I, little Brother Francis, wish to follow the life
and the poverty of Jesus Christ, our exalted Saviour,
and of His holy mother, and to persevere therein
until the end ; and I entreat and exhort you all to
persevere always in this holy life and poverty.
And beware never to swerve from it, whoever
may counsel or teach you to that effect.''
As he neared Bologna he was told that the pro-
vincial minister, Pietro Stacia, had placed his friars
in a house built for them, and had organised a
college for the pursuit of learning amongst them.
The house was known as belonging to the Brothers
Minor. This was opposed to the fundamental
principle of his order, which forbade all property,
and, as we have seen in the case of Rivo Torto,
demanded immediate cession of even a ruin to
whoever claimed it. His displeasure was so vehe-
ment that he cursed Brother Pietro Stacia, refusing
to revoke the curse when implored to do so. He
ordered the friars in residence to leave at once,
taking with them the sick persons whom they
were nursing. It is significant that they went to
Cardinal Ugolino, and that he was at pains to ex-
plain to Francis his personal proprietorship of the
building, which he permitted the friars to use. He,
too, was in Bologna, and they met daily. Francis
allowed himself to be over-ruled, but with what
agony he must have realised that the external
success of his order was to be its inward failure,
that Christ was to be betrayed afresh in the house
of His friends,
YEARS OF TROUBLE 157
He was none the less willing to preach and to
call men to repentance, and, although the develop-
ment of his work was gone beyond him, he was still
beloved of all Italy, and the people crowded to
hear him on Assumption Day, when he addressed
them on the Piazza del Piccolo- Palazzo. An arch-
deacon of Bologna cathedral has left a vivid ac-
count of the occasion. He tells us that Francis
spoke on "angels, men and demons"; that his
garments were poor, his appearance was insigni-
ficant, his face without beauty ; but that God gave
such power to his words, which were not those of a
pulpit orator, but of one speaking heart to heart,
that wise men and nobles were filled with admira-
tion, and that blood-feuds in the city came to an
end because of his pleading for peace. The por-
trait is like that of his Master, in whom there was
no beauty that men should desire Him, but such a
power that they pressed to listen to Him.
After a few days Ugolino took him to the her-
mitage of San Romualdo, at Camaldoli, in the
Casentino deep in forest shades, and a short
distance from Monte Alverna.
Francis was in sore need of retreat, and Ugolino,
loving the man, but determined to vanquish his pre-
possession for such an inconvenient Rule as Christ's,
found the opportunity of passing St. Michael's Lent
together favourable to his purpose.
The tenor of the saint's preoccupation after quit-
ting Palestine is demonstrated by his pathetic dream
of the little black hen, whose chickens were so
158 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
numerous that her wings could no longer shelter
them. And, indeed, his case was like his Master's,
who would fain have gathered His chickens together
"as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings,"
but they would not. For to this it had come, that
many of the friars would not.
Humble and self-distrustful, in ill-health and
prostrated in spirit by disappointment, he was in
just the case favourable to Ugolino's skilful treat-
ment. Francis loved the cardinal and leant upon
his hardened wisdom, feeling it to be a relief from
his own sensitiveness to successive impressions. Nor
can we doubt that his affection was amply returned,
and that Ugolino reverenced his saintliness and
acknowledged his spiritual power. He must have
convinced Francis of the peculiar virtue of authority
at such crises, for by the middle of September his
point was gained. A month of affectionate com-
panionship and superlative tact, of pressure to the
point with perhaps tender reproof that he forbore
to accept the whole will of God ended in victory
for the cardinal. He did not venture to ask for
more than one concession, but that sufficed.
Francis, realising his own inadequacy, accepted
him as protector of the order and went to Orvieto
to ask and to receive the Pope's sanction for this
appointment. Ugolino's negotiations had been con-
ducted with the far-sighted and patient policy of a
great statesman. He granted to Francis the redress
of every immediate grievance, released the Sisters
from St. Benedict's Rule, discouraged the Leper
YEARS OF TROUBLE 159
Order, and enjoined upon him the drawing up of a
new Rule to include a novitiate of one year for all
candidates, a precaution whose need was endorsed
by the recent disorders. A Bull on this point was
issued, to be read at the Michaelmas Chapter of
1220, the first of a long series which controlled the
future concerns of the order, and the death-knell
of its independence. Francis was no longer able to
inspire his friars with his own mind, and there was
nothing for their subjection to discipline except
authority. While he ruled in their hearts Christ
ruled over their lives ; when they rebelled against
him they followed their own caprices and became a
hindrance rather than an example, more dangerous
than the heretics of Lombardy and Viterbo.
The Chapter took place on 29th September, and
during its sittings Francis began to prepare his
new Rule. He was obliged to admit to his counsels
the ministers of the order. Reduced to deep de-
pression by all that had happened, prone to blame
himself for the defects of others, he lacked the
certainty of God's election and revelation, which had
given such impetus to his first steps. The net was
closing round him. His interpretation of God's will
was no longer deemed final, and his humility under-
mined his assurance. He held deliberate conferences
with the ministers, and a Rule was decided upon,
which, while maintaining some of the original prin-
ciples, mitigated the vow of poverty, that vow which
was the mainspring of the first institution. For, as
poverty had " run to meet our Lord at His nativity,"
160 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
had laid Him in a manger, had gone with Him
along the dusty roads of Galilee, had provided for
Him the desert place for dwelling, the wayside for
rest, the hours of toil, the scanty meal, the dungeon
and the cross so she had saved Him from betray-
ing the will of His Father, had kept Him wholly
God-like, a pattern to all who live for the salvation
of the world. Against this helpmeet of Christ the
blow was levelled when Francis was forced to omit
from the new Rule the passage from St. Luke
which prescribed garb, bearing and forbearing neces-
sary for those who were sent forth as lambs amongst
wolves. "Woe unto those brethren," he cried,
"that set themselves against me in this matter,
which I know of a certainty to be of the will of
God for the greater usefulness and need of the
whole religion, albeit I unwillingly condescend
unto their will." " Herein is my grief and my
affliction, that in these things which, with much
travail of prayer and meditation, I obtain of God
through His mercy for the welfare present and
future of the whole religion, and am by Himself
certified that they be in accordance with His will,
yet certain of the brethren on the authority of their
own knowledge and false forethought, do go
against me and make them void, saying : ' Such
and such things are to be kept and observed and
such others not.' "
But he cried in vain. He resolved to resign his
office of superior, using his waning influence to
appoint Pietro de Cattani in his stead. Before the
YEARS OF TROUBLE 161
autumn Chapter of 1220 ended, he presented Brother
Pietro to the assembly, saying : " Henceforward
am I dead unto you, but see here Pietro de Cattani
unto whom I and all you will be obedient." Then
he knelt on the ground and promised his own
obedience, while the friars who loved him wept sore.
" Lord," he prayed aloud, " unto Thee do I com-
mend the family that hitherto Thou hast committed
unto me. And now, O Lord most sweet, on account
of those infirmities whereof Thou wottest, being
unable to have the care thereof, I do commend the
same unto the ministers, the which in the day of
judgment shall be held answerable before Thee, O
Lord, in case any brother shall perish through their
negligence or evil ensample, or too harsh correction."
The great renunciation was made ; he had yielded
up the care of his flock ; henceforth he went alone
by rocky paths and desert places to his home in
the heart of God, ascribing to the maladies which
beset him this new stern providence for himself,
but understanding well that his own friars thwarted
his ideal for the order. " For some there be among
the number of the superiors, that do draw them
aside to other things, setting before them the ex-
ample of the elders, and holding my advice as of
little account, but that which they themselves do,
and how they do it, will be made clearer in the
end."
Nothing was more contrary to his "new cove-
nant " than the gradual systematising of the
order into monasticism. He sought to bridge
11
162 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
over the gulf between the religious and secular
classes, strained apart by the Church, and to apply
Christ's rule of living as the true rule of living for
all men alike, promising results for the world which
it had not hitherto attained.
But with Ugolino's friendship came the " rift
within the lute," and its harmonies were dying in
discord. The appointment of provincial ministers,
and of vicars to act in his absence, was the first step
taken in the new direction, and this seems to belong
to 1218 and 1219- Their vicarious authority became
a conspiracy against his administrative influence,
although they kept up an appearance of reverence
for his office, even to the extent of calling Pietro
de Cattani vicar rather than minister-general. This
was a concession to the popular veneration for the
dear Umbrian saint.
Francis chose Brother Caesar of Speyer (Spires)
to assist him in drawing up the new Rule, whose
chief clauses were defined at Michaelmas. A student
of the Scriptures and a devoted friend, his collabora-
tion must have partially comforted Francis. Their
work was completed by Christmas. It occupied ten
folio pages, of which one sufficed for the Rule itself,
whilst the others were filled with passionate appeals
to the friars to keep the gospel way, and with
prayers of adoration to the Holy Trinity, to the
Blessed Mother of our Lord, to the archangels and
choirs of cherubim and seraphim, to saints and
apostles. One passage implored all who belonged to
the Catholic and Apostolic Church, not alone its
YEARS OF TROUBLE 163
ecclesiastics and their following, but all who wor-
shipped within its temples babes and children, the
poor and exiled, kings, princes and working men,
servants and masters, old and young, people of
every tribe and of every nation to persevere in the
true faith and in penitence along with the Brothers
Minor unprofitable servants for outside of faith
and penitence no one could be saved. And then,
again and again he recalled the friars to that living
within the love of God which is as essential to the
spiritual as is air to the bodily health ; to the lift-
ing up of humble hearts in praise of the most high,
sovereign and eternal God, who alone can purify
and empower their faculties. The poignant note
of grief, uncertainty, anxiety rings in these an-
guished repetitions.
Francis took this document to Rome early in
1221, but before presenting it to Honorius III.
he submitted it to Cardinal Ugolino for criticism
and correction. As M. Sabatier suggests, it must
have been at this time that he constrained himself
to unresisting obedience. " Take a lifeless body
and set it where you please. Ye will see that it re-
senteth not being moved, nor changeth its position,
nor crieth out when it is let go. If that it be set
upon a throne, it looketh not toward the highest
but the lowest. If it be clad in purple, then is it
doubly wan. This is the truly obedient, that asketh
no question wherefore he should be moved, careth
not where he is placed, urgeth not that he should
be changed elsewhere. Promoted to office, he
164 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
holdeth his wonted humility ; and the more he is
honoured the more he thinketh him unworthy."
Perhaps a touch of hysterical irony lurks in this
simile, but it was in the spirit of this obedience that
he submitted to Cardinal Ugolino's judgment.
The discoveries of M. Sabatier and of Padre
Berardelli give us a Rule, drawn up at the same
time, for the Third Order of Penitents. Twelve
chapters or paragraphs comprise what belongs to
1221, for the thirteenth, subjoined to the copy
found in 1901 by M. Sabatier in the convent of San
Giovanni of Capestrano, in the Province of Aquila,
was added in 1228, and was the first of a series of
changes. These twelve paragraphs concern cloth-
ing, abstinence, fasting, prayer, confession, com-
munion, prohibition to carry arms and use oaths,
works of mercy, masses for departed members, the
making of wills, the treatment of heretics and the .
punishment of wrongdoing. The clauses are short
and incisive, and contain nothing of the essential
quality of the saint's compositions. Doubtless this
memorial for the Third Order of Penitents may be
referred to the cardinal. These had increased to
so great a number throughout Italy that their
organisation would commend itself to him, and his
action was hastened by numerous indiscretions due
to their lack of supervision. We have seen how
they meant for Francis and his first companions the
coming of God's kingdom throughout the world.
His preaching and influence attracted the first :
home missions added to their number. They lived
YEARS OF TROUBLE 165
in their homes, the best of them simply obedient to
Christ's teaching. But want of direction was soon
manifest amongst them. This Rule places them
under four authorities, or ministers the visitor, the
spiritual adviser, the director, and finally the bishop
in whose diocese they dwelt. The visitor's functions
were judicial ; he reproved, corrected and punished
disorders. Throughout the thirteenth century this
Third Order gave the Franciscan generals consider-
able trouble, and the Rule of 1221 was altered and
enlarged in 1228, 1234- and 1289-
Cardinal Ugolino, the most influential member of
the college, friend for the moment of Frederick II.,
powerful with Honorius III., was still much occu-
pied with the development of the Mendicant Orders.
He considered them complimentary to each other,
and wished to effect not only a close alliance between
them, but to invest them with authority, and to
strengthen the hierarchy from their ranks. His
imagination pictured them so firmly welded to the
Church that they would form a strong bulwark for
her power throughout the world.
Dominic was' in Rome at this time and met
Francis frequently in the cardinal's palace. Ugo-
lino suggested to both his project of choosing
bishops from their friars, but failed to win their
approval. " I would rather that my friars remain
as they are," said Dominic, and Francis refused
honour for his on the ground that minores could not
become major es. "If you would that they bring
forth fruit in the Church of God let them stay
166 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
where God has called them. Let not their poverty
become an occasion of pride, and rather thrust them
down than allow them to climb on high."
They parted on the day when Dominic left for
Bologna to die a few months later and as they
bade each other farewell Dominic begged for the
cord which girded Francis and wore it under his
habit to the end. " Of a truth," he said to his
followers, " all the religious ought to imitate this
holy man Francis, so absolute is the perfection of
his holiness."
Pietro de Cattani's death on the 10th of March
recalled Francis to the Portiuncula, when he chose
Brother Elias to be minister-general. This act
marks emphatically his subjection to the papal
policy. Caesar of Speyer (Spires) was out of the
way, despatched to Southern Germany on mission
work shortly before Pietro's death. The Curia
could not have succeeded so well with him as with
Brother Elias, whose character the astute cardinal
readily gauged. Ugolino doubtless desired Francis
to make the appointment, because it owed nothing
to the suffrages of the friars assembled three months
later at the Whitsuntide Chapter. Beyond an occa-
sional convulsion of opposition or bitter cry of
disappointment, Francis made little effort to stem
the backward movement. He seems to have de-
voted himself to the cultivation of personal humility,
no longer exclusively towards God, but also towards
Ugolino and the ministers of the order, whose inter-
position between himself and the friars destroyed
YEARS OF TROUBLE 167
their ere while relations of father and children, and
thwarted the gentle influence with which he had
once swayed their minds and their conduct. It
may have been suggested to him that he was to
blame for their disorders, and in the nervous crisis
produced by all these disasters the suggestion had
taken root and grown into a half-bewildered peni-
tence. Certainly his aim was to offer a constant
example of dumb obedience to Elias. The effort
induced an odd reaction of feeling, in which his
own shrewd intuitions turned and rent him. He
took an aversion to Elias which he could hardly
overcome and which he ascribed to a prevision of
his eternal damnation. But this was merely a
hysterical reason for his well-grounded distrust of
the new government, now passed into the hands
of the men of learning, the men who had sought
out many inventions, preferring them to the simple
Rule of which Christ had been sole mouthpiece.
At the Chapter of May -SOth, 1221, Francis took
his place humbly at Bombarone's feet. To him he
handed the new Rule for proclamation. Some
arrangement had been come to between Elias and
Ugolino, for the Rule disappeared a few days later.
Brother Elias said he had lost it ; more probably
he had sent it to the cardinal, who found himself
unable to be present, and who would take good
care to lose it, since he knew and disapproved of
its contents. So Francis, with some of his earliest
followers, Brothers Bernardo, Leo, Egidio, Bonizio,
retired to the hermitage at Monte Colombo and
168 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
began to write out a second copy. When this was
known there was consternation amongst the friars
whose party was in authority. They came to Elias
complaining that Francis was making a Rule too
heavy to bear, and asking the minister-general to
interfere and to tell the saint that they would not
be bound by his Rule, so that he might make it for
himself but not for them. Elias declined the em-
bassy unless the malcontents were willing to go
with him. They consented to this, and seeking
Francis in his solitude, laid their objections to the
gospel Rule before him. These he repelled, re-
minding them that Christ Himself had called them
to obey this Rule, and suggesting that all those
friars who refused it should leave the order. But
his struggle was vain. Well did the rebels know
that Elias, Ugolino, the Pope were at their back ;
that until the document had been modified by
authority, their obedience could not be exacted ;
that its doom would be pronounced at the forth-
coming Chapter.
Whatever precautions were taken to veil their
policy from Francis and his faithful few, its further-
ance was resolved, and we are almost driven to
conjecture that their attitude towards him was one
of scarcely concealed impatience for his death.
Blow after blow fell upon the fair fabric of his plan.
No longer were the brothers to be as Christ was,
or as those whom Christ ordained. They were to
be gathered into communities, into houses, to have
privileges and possessions, to have churches of their
YEARS OF TROUBLE 169
own, to be under strict command, to be employed
as papal messengers, agents, instruments. Not for
the salvation of the world were they to exist, but
for the endorsement of ecclesiastical authority.
The hermitages were to be abandoned ; the little
temporary homes of canes and branches, which
served them for brief shelter on their itineraries,
were to be disused. Solid structures were begun
to receive them permanently. No longer were the
humble and ancient sanctuaries to be their care ;
were they to fill churches in town and city ; were
they to gather peasants about them in the fields,
townsfolk in the piazzas.
Fine churches began to rise wherever their com-
panies were planted, to give them local importance,
to destroy the very foundations upon which their
order had been raised. For the things invisible
and eternal had once more come to judgment and
were decreed worthless beside the visible.
The friars were granted power to celebrate the
offices and functions of the Church in times of in-
terdict ; they were employed by the Court of Rome
against the regular clergy when these were de-
faulters.
This revolution was relentlessly carried out, while
Francis was kept in partial ignorance of its develop-
ment. He was reduced to fill the role of saint with-
out authority or influence. It was a tragic role, for
the shortcomings of his children recoiled upon him
as if they were his own, and he lamented them in
anguish, which preyed upon him,
170 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
It was not till 1223 that the new Rule was pro-
mulgated, and its clauses betray the setting aside
of what he held to be essential. Even what of his
was retained is modified into futility, given as a
counsel of perfection, and then carefully disallowed.
Thus, his gospel precedent regarding friars con-
victed of sin, either mortal or venial, is disregarded,
and elaborate instructions take its place, giving
judicial functions to the provincial minister through
a priest of the order.
Then the minister-general is endowed with ulti-
mate administrative power. The Chapters are no
longer to be held biennially at Pentecost and
Michaelmas. Their assembling depends on the
good pleasure of the general. His government is
to be without reference to the Chapter, which is
to be convoked for administrative purposes only
when the general is inefficient. There is no doubt
that Ugolino and Elias framed this important clause
without reference to Francis, and that the complete
revolution of the order was effected by virtue of
its action. It stopped the mouths of all who were
loyal to the original purpose and organisation.
Some of these reproached Francis for doing nothing
to hinder this destruction of the old ideal, and his
answer indicates the advantage taken by cardinal
and minister-general of his enfeebled state. " For
so long as I held the office of superior over the
brethren and they did abide in their vocation and
profession, albeit that from the beginning of my
conversion I have ever been ailing, yet with such
YEARS OF TROUBLE 171
small solicitude, as I could, did I endeavour to
satisfy them both by ensample and by preaching ;
but, after that, I perceived how the Lord did
multiply the number of the brethren, and how they
themselves, by reason of their lukewarmness and
want of spirit, did begin to decline from the right
way and safe wherein they had been wont to walk,
and treading the broader way that leadeth unto
death, would no longer pay heed unto their calling
and profession, nor to any good ensample, and were
not minded to forsake the perilous and deadly
journey they had emprised, by reason of any
preaching or admonition or ensample of mine that
I did ever manifest before them, I did, therefore,
resign the superiorship and the government of the
religion unto God and unto the ministers thereof.
Whence, albeit that at the time when I did renounce
mine office of superior over the brethren, I did
excuse me before the brethren in the Chapter
General for that, by reason of mine infirmities, I
was not able to undertake the charge of them ; yet,
natheless, were the brethren willing to walk ac-
cording to my will ; for their comfort and utility I
would that they should have none other minister
but me until my dying day. From the time that
a good and faithful subject knoweth and observeth
the will of his superior, little solicitude need the
superior have about him ; yea, so greatly should I
rejoice in the goodness of the brethren, by reason
of the gain unto them and the gain unto myself,
that if I were lying abed sick it would be no
172 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
trouble unto me to satisfy them ; for that mine
office that is the office of superior is spiritual
only, to wit, to have the mastery over their evil
ways, and spiritually to correct and amend them.
But, seeing that I cannot correct and amend them
by preaching, admonition and example, I am not
minded to become an executioner to punish and
scourge them like the magistrates of this world.
For I trust in the Lord that the invisible enemies
that are the sergeants of the Lord, for punishing
the guilty in this world and in the world to come,
will get like vengeance on them that transgress
the commandments of God and the vow of their
profession, . . . that so they may be turned back
unto their own calling and profession."
CHAPTER VII
LAST YEARS
12231226
The Rule of 1223 The Praesepio of Greccio The Friars in
England Monte Alverna The Stigmata Farewell to
Monte Alverna Canticle of the Sun Rieti Siena
Bagnara Assisi Bishop and Magnates at Variance
Francis makes Peace.
THE Rule was finally passed by Cardinal Ugo-
lino and the ministers at the Michaelmas
Chapter of 1223. Francis took it to Monte
Colombo, and remained at the hermitage there
in prayer and fasting, before he went to Rome,
where he was the cardinal's guest. On Novem-
ber 25th, he was received at the Lateran, and
Honorius, after personally modifying one of its
clauses, bestowed upon the Rule his seal and
sanction.
It was during this visit that he one day shocked
his host by arriving rather late for dinner, with a
collection of crusts which he had begged, and which
he distributed to all at table, explaining afterwards
that for him and his true sons the table of the Lord
far outweighed the richest banquet.
(173)
174 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Some strain of nervous excitability is obvious in
another incident, which recounts his painful ex-
periences in a tower near the palace of Cardinal
Leo, who had persuaded him to spend a few days
as his guest. He was either attacked by thieves
or suffered from a nightmare, in which he believed
himself to be beaten by demons on account of his
selfish disregard of the privations of the brethren, to
punish which God had sent these His sergeants for
his correction. So next morning he bade the car-
dinal farewell, and returned to Monte Colombo, his
solitude near Rieti.
The time approached Christmas Eve. Hallowed
memories of Bethlehem crowded upon him and
dispelled the strange terrors of an over-wrought
imagination, which had invaded even this peaceful
hermitage making him their prey one midnight
because the brothers insisted on his using a feather
pillow, for which his conscience reproached him.
In the neighbourhood lived a friend, John of
Greccio. Francis went to him and asked him to
help in carrying out an inspiration for the festival.
The good man provided a manger filled with hay,
an ox and an ass. From all the neighbouring
monasteries monks were bidden to come to the
hermitage, and the pathways up Monte Colombo
rang with their footsteps and chanting. As the
winter afternoon darkened, peasants, torch in hand,
hastened through the forest, laden with candles for
the praesepio. The cells were filled with light.
In the larger was placed the manger, the ox and ass
LAST YEARS 175
were led to its side, and a babe was laid in it by
Francis himself; it turned in his arms and gazed
upon him smiling. He trembled with joy, while
tears of sorrow for the Babe of Bethlehem, laid
long ago by the Lady Poverty upon hay in a
manger, fell from his eyes. As midnight passed
the brothers joined in matins ; mass was sung,
and Francis read the gospel of Good Tidings and
preached upon the " Child of Bethlehem ". It
seemed to all that they were in Bethlehem, that
time and space were vanquished as they listened
and they adored the God who so loved the world
that He spared not His Son.
Joy returned to the desolate heart : the Babe of
Bethlehem had brought him peace. M. Sabatier
reminds us how this joy inspired Brother Jacopone
di Todi to write a second Stabat Mater, one in
which Mary's heart sings at the cradle of her
Son.
Stood the mother full of joy
By the hay where lay her Boy,
Very fair she was to see.
And she gloried all amazed,
A i id exulted as she gazed,
Worshipping the Babe she bore.
Make me glad in verity,
Little Jesus, one with Thee
All my life, I Thee implore.
At Pentecost, 1224, the new Rule was put into
the hands of the ministers. The copy brought back
176 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
from Rome by Francis, to which is attached the
Pope's seal", is still in existence and can be seen in
the sacristy of San Francesco at Assisi.
A mission was despatched to England, reaching
Dover late in the autumn of that year. One of
Brother Pacifico's best workers in France, Brother
Agnello di Pisa, was placed at its head. Two by
two the friars made for the towns for Oxford and
London first of all and for their worst quarters,
where fevers, leprosy and misery were most at
home. Newgate was their choice in London, while
at Oxford they built their mud and wattle huts
amongst the river swamps. Rebuff and welcome
they accepted with equal mind, for these men were
still of true Franciscan spirit, and perhaps knew
nothing of the revolt. So, at all events, we are led
to believe from their ardent poverty and fidelity to
the Rule. It was not until they had attracted a
large body of adherents, until the first friars had
passed away, that the trend towards monasticism
and learning affected the order in England, and
even then we find its members in fullest sympathy
with the spirit of liberty, of light, of revolt against
papal tyranny. And in England, as elsewhere, they
quickened the current of tenderness for the wretched
and diseased, which had grown stagnant in the
Church as in the State.
Early in August Francis, taking Brothers Leo,
Angelo, Masseo and Illuminate with him, left for
Monte Alverna in the upper valley of the Arno.
There was no duty now to hold him back from
LAST YEARS 177
those desert places, where he could commune with
God. They started on foot, but two days of toil-
some walking exhausted his powers, and a peasant
of the plain of Arezzo pressed upon his use an ass,
which he prepared to lead himself. The Arno flows
there amongst vines and mulberries, and the Apen-
nines circle round, rising three and four thousand
feet, their lower slopes corn and meadow land,
their mid-flanks clad with oaks and chestnuts, their
summits dark with pines. As they journeyed to-
wards the sternest of these mountain heights, the
peasant asked him if he were in truth that Francis
of Assisi of whom all men spoke, and, being as-
sured, he bade him take heed to be as good as men
accounted him, since it were pity that they should
be deceived. And Francis, rejoiced at his homely
sincerity, dismounted that he might the better
thank him on his knees for so congenial a counsel.
Monte Alverna, four thousand feet in height, was
ascended by a narrow path amongst bare rocks,
precipitous and unclad. But on its summit grew a
forest of pines, oaks and beeches, and under their
shade nestled wild flowers, belated cyclamens and
starry pyrolas. Amongst the trees, too, dwelt a
great colony of birds, from fierce falcons frequent-
ing the cliffs to little song-birds merle, mavis and
finch. For the Casentino is very rich in birds. As
the weary company rested under an oak, a flock of
songsters flew from the forest to greet St. Francis,
settling on his head and shoulders and hands, bid-
ding him welcome with shrill cries and fluttering
12
178 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
wings. With gladdened mien he turned to his
companions, saying : " I see it seems good to our
Lord that we sojourn on this lonely mountain, since
our little sisters the birds meet us with such de-
light."
Then resuming their way, they toiled up to the
summit, and found there the preparations made by
Count Orlando for their stay. Caves supplied cells
for the brothers, and on the sward stood a hut
made and roofed of branches for Francis. But not
at once did he retire to solitude. The beauty of
the summer night, the balmy air, the rustle of
leaves, the fragrance all demanded a tribute of
acknowledgment, for all came direct from the
Creator. There were arrangements as well to be
made for the two months which he proposed to
spend there. A small sanctuary had been built for
their daily mass and offices, and Francis called it
Santa Maria degli Angioli, in memory of the be-
loved mother shrine at home. Times and seasons
were appointed for all services. As he sat upon a
rock with the faithful few around him, he talked
of his death as something with which he now stood
face to face, with no personal regret, but with
anxiety for them, lambs amongst wolves, whose
future he could not foresee. For them he was
willing still to live and suffer, to spend and be spent,
would that assure their safety in the narrow way.
The order had gone from him, but these and some
others were his "little flock, "and the kingdom was
given to them.
LAST YEARS 179
For himself, he had sought Monte Alverna for
fasting and prayer, for meditation on the Passion
of his Master, which he understood now as he had
never done before. Christ had been forsaken by
His own, as Francis was now, without even a loyal
remnant to console Him in the dark hour of His
need. Towards mid-September would come the
Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross ; he meant to
prepare himself for it by unremitting surrender of
mind and spirit to the Crucified One and His suf-
ferings. He bade his companions protect his
solitude ; do for all who came what was asked of
them, but suffer no secular visitor to interrupt him
as he wrestled in prayer. He gave Brother Leo
instructions to bring him bread and water daily.
His leafy hut was but a stone's throw from the
cells, and the brothers, hungering and thirsting for
their beloved father, were too near him, watched
him too closely. In a few days the Feast of the
Assumption was due, and it initiated what he called
St. Michael's Lent, which, ending with September,
he was used to observe in strict solitude and fasting.
So he sought a place of absolute seclusion. A chasm
in the Penna lay between an isolated mass of rock
and the cells of the brothers. It was crossed by a
log of wood, and Francis found on the other side a
supreme solitude, broken only by the falcon nesting
there, whom his presence did not disturb, and to
whose cries at dawn he trusted as a call to matins,
believing when the bird wheeled upwards in silence
that he forbore to waken him through pity of his
180 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
prostration and this may well have been, since the
man and all God's creatures were at one.
Here a hut was built for him, and on the Feast
of the Assumption he began his fast. From time
to time Brother Leo was allowed to say matins with
him, and it may have been after this function that
one day he won from him that written benediction
still to be seen in the sacristy of San Francesco at
Assisi, all soiled at the folds with long carrying in
the Pecorello's tunic. In pain and blindness Francis
formed the letters on a little sheet of parchment,
about six inches in length and four in width. On
one side he wrote a number of verses from the
Laudes Creatoris, and on the other the beautiful
benediction from the sixth chapter of Numbers,
which God ordained for Aaron's use :
Benedicat tibi Dominus et custodial te :
Ostcndal faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui :
Convertat vultum suum ad te et det tibi pacem :
Then, to make it specially the Pecorello's own, he
wrote :
Dominus benedicat te Prater Leo :
and below this special consecration he sketched a
cross like a Greek Tau, the old form of the cross,
and placed beside it a recumbent friar, Brother Leo,
to remind him that he must lie low at the foot of
the cross all the days of his life. Some lines in red
ink written by Leo date this most pathetic docu-
ment after the event which befel Francis on the
morning of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
THE BENEDICTION OF BROTHER LEO
From the original in tlte Sacristy of the Upper Church at Assist
LAST YEARS 181
He had spent weekd in prayer and fasting, his
whole spirit absorbed with the sorrow of the Cross,
well understood by one betrayed, too, by his fol-
lowers to the priests. No man on earth ever
realised so keenly as did Francis what the Man of
Sorrows suffered before His crucifixion, and while
He hung upon the tree God's gift of the marks of
that final agony was but the Divine recognition of
his martyrdom. They were bestowed upon him
suddenly after his long vigil while he knelt before the
entrance of his hut praying for union with Christ's
sufferings. His face was turned towards the dawn,
whose light more radiant than common shone upon
him. For down its rays there sped a vision of One
nailed to a cross, flying to him with wings that beat
the air, while two wings covered his head and two
his feet. A moment the marvel rested above him
while he gazed, and then words fell from its lips,
and he understood that his martyrdom was accepted,
his prayer granted. When the glory faded he found
upon hands and feet and side the marks of the
Lord's body. From a wound on his right side
oozed a few drops of blood, and through his hands
and feet were fleshy growths, black in colour and
piercing from side to side. They resembled nails
exactly, and were not the mere wounds of modern
hysterical ecstaticism.
Celestial joy accompanied and followed this great
investiture, and recompensed him for all the pain
that went before. He abode in that joy a fort-
night longer, and on September 30th, the Festival
182 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
of Saints Michael and Jerome, left Monte Alverna
for ever. The circumstances of his going are set
forth in a beautiful letter written long afterwards
by Brother Masseo for the edification of the order.
Masseo was more than ninety years old when he
died, and he spent seventy years of his long life in
humble obedience to the gospel Rule. He tells
how Francis called the brothers into the oratory
of Santa Maria degli Angioli early that morning,
and commended the sanctuary and the mountain
to their care, saying especially to Masseo : " Fra
Masseo, know that it is my mind that in this place
should abide those of the religious who fear God and
are the best of my order : the superiors, therefore,
must seek to place the best of the brothers here."
And then he sighed, remembering how few there
were now of such ! Then he bade Brothers An-
gelo, Sylvestro, Illuminato and Masseo take special
care of the spot where he had fasted and prayed.
These friars he left to care for Monte Alverna and its
shrines, but Brother Leo went with him Fra " Peco-
rello di Dio," as he tenderly called him the man
amongst them all who understood him best, who
has most lovingly portrayed him with least of
vain imagining, most of insight, and who alone at
that time knew of the stigmata. He bade the four
others farewell, each and all again and again.
" Adieu to all, adieu O mountain, adieu Monte
Alverna, adieu mount of angels, adieu thou
dearest ! Brother Falcon, I thank thee for the
kindness thou didst use to me ! Adieu, adieu sharp
LAST YEARS 183
rock, I shall not come to visit thee again ! Adieu
rock, adieu, adieu, adieu rock, which didst receive
me into thy bowels, frustrating the cunning Evil
One ; we shall not see each other again ! Adieu
Santa Maria degli Angioli ; I commend to thee
my children, Mother of the Eternal Word ! "
A copy of this letter, made in the sixteenth cen-
tury, was kept at San Damiano until the middle of
last century, when it was transferred to the monas-
tery on Monte Alverna, where it is read aloud on
every anniversary of the saint's departure. Count
Orlando sent a horse for his use, and after these
charges and farewells he mounted and began the
long descent towards Chiusi, where he probably
visited the count. Then riding by Monte Arcoppe
and the Foresto he came to the summit of Monte
Acuto, whence he could still see the sacred mountain,
and there dismounting, he knelt to bid a last farewell
to the " Mountain in which God is well pleased to
dwell. Adieu, Monte Alverna, may God the Father,
God the Son and God the Spirit bless thee, abide
in peace, for we shall see each other no more ! "
All the brothers went with him as far as Monte
Casale, where there was a little hermitage in which
he rested several days. At this point he dismissed
the four brothers, to whose care he had committed
Monte Alverna, and they took back Count Orlando's
horse to Chiusi. He was lost in meditation while
he passed from village to village, and did not
know that he was making a triumphal progress,
marked by miracles.
184 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
At Citta di Castello he lingered, preaching and
healing for a whole month, and then winter coming
suddenly he started for the Umbrian plain on an
ass, led by the peasant who lent it, and whose
churlish temper he cured by his gaiety and gentle-
ness, during a rough night spent under a rock.
He stayed a few hours only at Santa Maria degli
Angeli, perhaps fearful that God's sacred grace of
the stigmata might become known. He went in
the strength of that grace on a missionary tour
in Umbria. But he was compelled to make it
mounted on an ass, because his physical force
failed daily. His growing blindness distressed all
those who loved him. Amongst them was Elias,
the vicar-general, in whose hands the government
of the order was becoming more firmly concen-
trated. He seems at this time to have used his
authority sparingly over Francis, but, although he
sought his company, and was with him during part
of this itinerary, the saint most carefully concealed
from him the Divine favour bestowed at Alverna.
They were at Foligno together when Elias spoke
of a vision, in which it had been revealed to him
that Francis had but two years more to live. Old
age had descended upon him suddenly. Not only
were his eyes darkened, but he suffered from
constant sickness and frequent spitting of blood.
Every physical organ was impaired, and he was
always in pain. Fasts and austerities and poignant
sorrow had accomplished this collapse.
While he could sing for joy the spare table of
LAST YEARS 185
the Lord had sufficed to keep him in a measure of
health, but when grief invaded his heart the whole
fabric of the man broke down.
Intermittent strife between Honorius and the
Roman citizens forced the Pope into flight in the
spring of 1225, first to Tivoli, and then to Rieti,
where the papal court was established till the
end of 1226. With him were his physicians,
men whose small skill was made worthless by the
nature of their favourite remedies, prescribed by
the dogmatic teaching of centuries, but whose
pretensions gave them a credit to which they
were not entitled. Cardinal Ugolino was anxious
that Francis should come to Rieti to have his eyes
examined. He wrote an affectionate letter to this
effect, and Brother Elias seconding his appeal,
Francis was with much difficulty persuaded to ac-
cept his invitation.
His own forebodings were of death, for few could
hope to survive the surgical butcheries of that age.
He decided to pay Sister Clare a farewell visit
before going to Rieti. It was near the end of July
when he arrived at San Damiano. A few hours after-
wards he was seized with such acute pain that his
departure was delayed. Clare and the sisters nursed
him during the fortnight of his illness. He was
now quite blind, but desired more solitude and
greater freedom than were possible within the walls
of San Damiano. Clare with her own hands built
a large hut of reeds and rushes in her garden, to
which he was removed, and where, in spite of an
186 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
invasion of rats and mice by day and night, which
let him neither eat nor sleep in peace, he recovered
the serenity of mind and the joyousness of spirit
which had so energised the first ten years of his
apostolate. For in the midst of trials, which the
childish mind of that age attributed to diabolic
annoyance, he was comforted once again by the
voice of his Master, who bade him rejoice greatly
in his tribulations and infirmities and heed nothing
but the priceless treasure which God had given him
in reward of them, as if already he had entered into
His kingdom.
His soul was filled with rapture and overflowed
in praise, and the sisters often heard his voice lifted
up in new songs while he walked under the olive-
trees. The vision within was rendered to him a
thousand-fold for the shadow fallen on his eyes.
One day he sat at table with the sisters and
talked to St. Clare. Then he passed into a rapture
away from them all. The Spirit was come upon
him with utterance for the Canticle of the Sun, a
Psalm of the Creator's glory :
Most high, almighty and good Lord,
To Thee belong lauds, glory, honour and all blessing ;
To Thee alone, most high, do they belong,
And none is worthy to speak forth Thy name.
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, through all Thy creatures,
And in especial for the lordly Brother Sun,
Through whom Thou givest light by day ;
For fair is he and radiant with great splendour,
And symbolises Tbee, O Thou most higb.
LAST YEARS 187
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for Sister Moon,
And for the Stars placed in the heavens,
Clear-shining, of great value and beautiful.
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for Brother Wind,
And for the Air, and for the Cloud, and for all Weather,
Through which Thou givest bread unto Thy creatures.
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for Sister Water,
For she is very useful, lowly, valuable and clean.
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for Brother Fire,
Through whom Thou givest light by night,
For he is beautiful and glad, and brave and strong.
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for Sister Earth, our mother,
For she feeds us and maintains us
And grows the varied fruits, and tinted blossoms and the
grass.
He wished to send for Brother Pacifico to arrange
the Canticle of the Sun, so that his minstrels might
sing it everywhere. He rejoiced because the Lord
had given him songs of praise for heaviness. An-
other was composed at this time, for the comfort
and edification of the Sisters of Poverty, but it has
been lost.
When September was half-way through, he went
to Rieti, resting on the way with the poor priest of
San Fabiano, whose hospitality was strained by the
crowd of visitors seeking Francis, even prelates and
their following not disdaining to pluck his ripening
grapes, so that he feared for his vintage until the
188 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
saint reassured him and promised him more than
the average measure of wine.
The Bishop of Rieti was his host, and showered
attentions upon him. Already the Church was
awake to his value, not as an inspiration and an
example, but as an article of merchandise, and he
had a sample of its solicitude for his remains in
eager demands for morsels of his clothing, for his
hair, for even the cuttings of his nails, which dis-
turbed his stay at the Vescovado. He asked to be
transferred to the hermitage of Monte Colombo.
Various remedies had been vainly tried for his eyes,
and the physicians decided on cautery. The heat
of the iron gave him a moment's panic, but making
over it the sign of the Cross, he cried : " Brother
Fire, beautiful amongst all creatures, show me
favour now ; thou knowest how I love thee, show
me courtesy this day."
And when the operation was over he rallied
the brothers, who had fled from witnessing it :
" O cowards, why did you flee ? I felt no pain.
Brother Doctor, if need be, begin again."
He was tortured with every contrivance of the
faculty, steeped then in Cimmerian darkness, hack-
ing, plastering, cauterising, and all in vain. He
was brought back to Rieti for their convenience,
and longed for some assuagement of his pain. He
asked a brother to borrow a guitar and play to him,
but the weakling would not do it lest it should be
counted as a scandal. So in the peace of midnight
an angel played to him upon a violin, and soothed
LAST YEARS 189
him into joy unutterable with the melodies of
heaven.
When the cures were given up he felt a little
better, and eager to redeem the time, he went
from hermitage to hermitage in the valley of Rieti,
preaching to the peasants and townspeople in the
neighbourhood of each. He spent Christmas in a
cell near Poggio Buscone, whither crowds came
daily to listen to him. " You think me a great
saint, do you," he said to them ; " what will you
say when you know that I did not fast all Advent ? "
At Sant' Eleuterio, Greccio, Sant' Urbano, he
preached or kept solitude in the hermitage at
hand. The weather was cold and he sewed bits
of cloth upon his own tunic and that of his com-
panion. Some one gave him the skin of a fox
for lining, and although he gladly accepted it, he
sewed a bit of the fur outside, that all might see
how little he mortified the flesh. It may have been
during this winter that one day when he was near
a fire the flame caught his under-garment and his
companion put it out. " Nay, dear brother, harm
not Brother Fire," he said ; " if he wishes to eat my
clothes, why should he not ? " His joyous humour
had returned to him blind, enfeebled, in constant
pain, suffering cold and exposure because once
more he was about his Master's business. But the
time was short.
In spring he was urged to go to Siena to consult
a physician who had some fame as an oculist.
Four of the brothers accompanied him to a place
190 , FRANCIS OF ASSIST
given to the Franciscans by Bonaventure, where
Francis fell again grievously ill, vomiting blood in
such quantities that his companions wept with
mingled sorrow and terror, expecting his last hour.
He asked that a saintly brother living at Arezzo
might be sent for, and dictated to him a benediction
of all his friars.
Brother Elias hastened to Siena on receiving
news of his condition, and yielded to the saint's
desire to return to his beloved Umbrian plain. But
it was mid-April before he was fit to be carried in
a litter, and then the journey began by stages,
rendered very slow by his constant relapses. Cor-
tona was the first halting-place, for the way was
easy and the hermitage pleasant, but a seizure
followed this transit, and some days were lost be-
fore his bearers could remove him. A roundabout
route was chosen, for it was impossible to pass by
Perugia, where the citizens were on the watch to
possess themselves of the saint's body, dead or
alive, and were prepared to take it by violence.
So their passage from stage to stage had to be care-
fully and secretly chosen, and they made a long
loop by Gubbio and Nocera. He rested many
weeks at Bagnara, a hermitage above Nocera,
famous still for healing waters and fine air, whence
the Topino flows green as the sea down its shelv-
ing and rocky bed, to girdle Foligno's walls and to
cross the plain.
News was sent to Assisi of his arrival and of his
renewed illness. It was certain now that the end
LAST YEARS 191
was near. The Assisans sent soldiers to carry his
litter, and to defend its precious burden should
Perugia attempt to capture it. Down through
Nocera, and by the long descent leading over a low
pass between Subasio's bastions and the hill which
buttresses them on the east, the soldiers bore him,
turning towards Assisi on the southern slope and
taking the path which lies beneath Sasso Rosso
and the Benedictine Convent. A little way below
the Castle of Sasso Rosso they halted at midday to
rest and eat at a village on the slope walled and
under Assisi's lordship. Here a poor man gladly
gave Francis shelter, while his escort sought to
purchase food. But they returned to him empty-
handed, saying in jest : " Brother, needs must you
give us some of your alms, for here can we have
nought to eat." " No," said he, " for you put your
trust in your flies and pence and not in God. Turn
back and ask an alms for the love of God, and by
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they will give
unto you abundantly." And so it came to pass that
the Lord's table was well supplied.
His maladies were now increased by dropsy and
his feet were swollen out of shape.
The Assisans came out to meet him with frenzied
joy that they had secured his dying body. He was
taken to the bishop's palace, in the piazza where
twenty years before he had renounced the world.
Guido was still in possession, and had a quarrel on
his hands with the podesta, or high bailiff, of
Assisi, whom he had excommunicated and forbidden
192 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
to do commerce with his clergy. The town suffered
in pocket, and was agitated by the unseemly vari-
ance between its commercial and spiritual chiefs.
Into this disturbed atmosphere the tender, peace-
loving servant of the Prince of Peace was brought.
He pondered and prayed for such an inspiration as
should end the discord, and it came to him robed
in simplicity and grace. He composed a new stanza
for his canticle :
Praised be Thou, O my Lord, for those who forgive for
love of Thee,
And who bear infirmities and tribulations ;
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
For by Thee, O most High, shall they be crowned.
Then he sent to invite the high bailiff to come
into the piazza of the cloister with his fellow-mag-
nates, and asked the bishop to meet them there
with his canons. Francis could not be present, but
he sent two of the four brothers, whose charge it
was to tend him, Leo, Angelo, Rufino and Masseo,
and bade them sing to those gathered in the piazza
the Canticle of the Sun, with this new stanza at the
end, beginning with a message from himself : " The
blessed Francis in his sickness hath made a Lauds
of the Lord as concerning His creatures to the
praise of the Lord Himself and to the edification
of our neighbour. Whence he doth beseech you
that ye will hearken thereunto with great devout-
ness."
It happened that the high bailiff was especially
LAST YEARS 193
devoted to the saint, and rising, he listened to their
singing with hands clasped as if in reverence,
and accepted the counsel of peace as coming from
the lips of God. " In truth I say unto you," he
cried weeping, "that not only my Lord Bishop,
whom I do desire and ought to have for my Lord,
but were it one that had slain mine own brother
or my son, him would I forgive." And then he
flung himself at the bishop's feet saying : " Behold,
I am ready to do all that thou dost wish, for the
love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His servant,
the blessed Francis."
The bishop raised him with both hands, saying :
" According to my office I should be humble, but
because I am naturally quick of temper thou must
needs forgive me." And embracing each other with
tenderness, they kissed each other.
13
CHAPTER VIII
TESTAMENT, DEATH AND CANONISATION
12261230
Francis at the Vescovado Laudes Domini His Preoccupa-
tion with the Future of the Order Mental Agony
Letter to the Order" Welcome Sister Death "Letter
and Message to St. Clare Benediction of Assist The
Testament Jacopa di Settisoli Death Funeral Pro-
cession San Damiano San Giorgio Letter written by
Elias The Collis Inferni Speculum Perfectionis
Gregory IX. Elias Deposed Building of San Francesco
Canonisation of St. Francis Completion of the Lower
Church The Saint's Body hidden by Elias.
FRANCIS remained in the agony of protracted
death for more than two months at the Vesco-
vado. The four brothers appointed to serve him
were, as we have seen, followers of the gospel Rule,
true sons of Poverty. The monastic brothers were
kept away from his presence, but enough of infor-
mation about the degeneration which had followed
organisation penetrated to his ears to make these
weeks a long drawn-out martyrdom. He was in all
things eager to submit to the will of God, but he
confessed that three days of such agony, bodily and
(194)
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 195
mental, were worse than any death the cruelty of
man could devise.
He was preoccupied with the future of the
order. In spite of betrayal and disappointment,
he cherished a hope that reaction would restore its
first simplicity. This hope was the inspiration of a
letter addressed to faithful souls, who might bring
back the happy days of obedience to Jesus Christ.
While he lay there soldiers watched the palace
day and night, relieved at intervals. This precau-
tion must have intensified his suffering, revealing
as it did such anxiety to keep the fragments to be
left by death, such indifference to the whole im-
mortal purpose of his spirit. But even this he bore
without complaining, bidding the brothers sing
aloud from time to time, that those who stood without
might be refreshed and edified. For himself there
was nothing so consoling as the praises of the Lord.
Indeed, his readiness to break out in these
brought upon him a reproof from Vicar-General
Elias, who deemed such cheerfulness a desecration
of the holy gloom religiously pertinent to death.
" Give me leave, brother," cried the saint, " to re-
joice in the Lord and in His praises, and in mine
own infirmities, seeing that by the grace of the
Holy Ghost I am so joined and made one with my
Lord, that, by His mercy, well may I be glad in
Him most Highest."
Alas ! these intervals of joy were few, for his
heart was burdened by a sorrow which his com-
panions rather quickened than assuaged.
196 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
" Where are they who have taken my brothers
from me ? Where are they who have robbed me
of my children ? " So in fever crises he would
lament, and then he would reproach himself, as if
it were his fault alone, and his spirit would be
shaken at the thought that God would hold him
responsible for the cowardice and selfishness by
which he had wrecked the order. His cries of
agony troubled his entertainers. They were
awkward facts for all in authority, since it was
impossible to smother them, impossible to dissoci-
ate from his deathbed those anguished protests
against their action, or to misrepresent them as
humble acquiescence. The four brothers who were
his companions were witnesses to their truth, and
perhaps it was partly due to this that these men
were persecuted in after years by the friars. His
natural masterfulness asserted itself in one of these
outbreaks.
" Could I but be present at the Chapter-General
I would let them know my will."
We are forced to believe the worst of Ugolino and
Elias. The facts maintain that they had managed
Francis by means of the most daring duplicity, and
that he was led to believe that his intention for the
order would be all the more secured by its organisa-
tion on the lines of monasticism. Good men both
the average moral standard would admit them to
be, but guilty of sins of the soul as black as hell.
It was in these circumstances that he dictated
the letter already mentioned. It is addressed to
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 197
the entire Franciscan community, its ministers, di-
rectors, priests, friars and tertiaries. It begins :
" Listen, sirs, you who are my sons and my
brothers, give ear to my words. Open your hearts
and obey the voice of the Son of God. Keep His
commandments with all your heart and give per-
fect heed to His counsels. Praise Him for He is
good, and glorify Him in your actions. God has
sent you throughout the world, that by word and
example you may bear witness to Him and teach
all that He alone is omnipotent. Persevere in
discipline and in obedience, and hold to that which
you have promised Him with willing and firm
mind." There follow instructions to the priests,
amongst them this perfect counsel : " How holy,
pure and worthy should be the priest, who touches
with his hands, who receives into his mouth and
into his heart, who distributes to others Jesus,
living, glorified, the sight of Whom rejoices the
angels. Understand your dignity, brother priests,
and be holy, for He is holy." This section of the
letter ends with prayer. " All-powerful, eternal,
just and merciful God, give to us, to us unhappy
poor ones, to do for Thy sake, what we know to
be Thy will, and to will always that which pleases
Thee ; so that purified within, illuminated and made
ardent by the flame of the Holy Spirit, we may
follow in the footsteps of Thy beloved Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ."
But of still greater importance is the latter half
of this letter, addressed as it is to all Christians,
198 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
whether clergy or laity, whether men or women,
to all those who live throughout the world.
These he entreats to go forward, to do far more
than if they were "simple Christians," for they
must renounce all that is not necessary, and not
alone must they abhor all vice and all fleshly
sins, but they must love their enemies, do good to
those who hate them, obey their Redeemer's pre-
cepts and counsels, deny themselves and keep
their body under control. " Be not wise after
the flesh," he wrote to them, "but simple, hum-
ble and pure." And after many such injunctions,
he ended : " I, Brother Francis, your little servant,
I pray and conjure you by that love which is God
I, ready to kiss your feet to receive with hu-
mility and love these words and all others which
our Lord Jesus Christ has spoken, and to conform
your conduct to them. And let those who receive
them devoutly, and who understand them, make
them known to others. And if they so persevere
unto the end, may they be blessed by Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. Amen."
Such was the saint's ideal for the conduct of those
born into the Kingdom of God, a reflection of its
Founder's laws.
Many beautiful incidents of this long, last illness
have been preserved, and chiefly by Brother Leo
in the Mirror of Perfection, which he wrote while
all was fresh in his memory. He tells us how
Francis sent for Brother Bernard to share a dainty
dish, which had been prepared for him, and how he
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 199
blessed him as the first brother given him by God,
and enjoined on the minister-general and the whole
order that he should be loved and honoured. This
benediction Brother Elias had the audacity to arro-
gate to himself, as we read in the first biography of
Francis, by Tomaso of Celano, written by order of
Gregory IX. in 1228, for the confutation of the
Mirror of Perfection, and mainly inspired by Elias.
We prefer to accept Brother Leo's account of the
incident.
How the saint's wish was fulfilled may be gathered
from the fact that later Bernard was hunted like a
wild beast from place to place, and was saved from
a violent death only through the kindness of a
wood-cutter, who kept him hidden for two years
in a forest upon the summit of Monte Sefro, not
far from Nocera. Francis foresaw these trials, but
predicted peace at the end for Brother Bernard,
as it befel.
One day an old friend from Arezzo came to see
him. He was a doctor, and Francis begged him
to speak candidly about his state. Thus pressed,
Bono told him that his infirmity was incurable,
and that by the end of September, or early in
October, he must die. Francis raised his hands to
heaven and said aloud : " Welcome, my Sister
Death ! "
He set himself cheerfully to care for the last
things, talking to one of the brothers, probably
Leo, who sought to gladden him more by re-
minding him that comfort and infinite joy would
200 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
be his, " for thou shalt pass away from sore travail
unto everlasting peace, away from short poverty
unto endless wealth, away from brief death unto
the life that faileth not, wherein face to face thou
shalt behold thy Lord, whom thou hast here loved
with so great a love."
Whereat Francis began to offer praises to the
Lord, and bade the brother fetch Angelo to him,
that both might sing the Canticle of the Sun. They
chanted it while tears streamed from their eyes,
and as they sang he prepared a new stanza for
them, which they added to the rest. It ran :
Be Thou praised, O my Lord, for our Sister Death,
From whom the body of none living may escape ;
Woe unto them who die in mortal sin ;
Blessed they who shall be found according to Thy
most holy will,
Unto whom the second death can do uo hurt.
This they sang, and ended with a Doxology :
Praise ye and bless my Lord,
And thank and serve Him with a great humility.
It was probably before he left the Vescovado
that Clare entreated permission to see him, for she
herself was ill at the time and feared to die without
his prayers. Apparently the Poor Ladies did not
know how near to death he was himself, and he,
unwilling to give them pain, dictated a bright letter
for their spiritual consolation, and promised by word
of mouth that they should see him once more. He
bade them rest assured of pardon for all unconscious
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 201
negligence of the Rule, and he asked them not to
carry their austerities too far, but to keep up their
hearts and preserve a cheerful mind, putting from
them all superfluity of sorrow. And he composed
a song of praise in the vernacular, with music to
which they might sing it. All his thoughts were
turned to praise, and the sound of chanting filled
his chamber, to the bewilderment of the Assisans,
who held that a dying saint should be meditating
on mortality, with which that lovely spirit had no
commerce in life or in death. His joy was some-
what of a scandal to those earth-bound citizens,
and both because he wished to die at Santa Maria
degli Angeli, and because his host was scared at his
celestial indiscretions, it was decided to carry him
thither on a litter.
This was about the last week of September, when
Umbrian grapes hang ripe on the festooned trees
and the gatherers are busy for the vintage. He had
become suddenly worse. If he were to die at Santa
Maria degli Angeli the bearers must hasten. Their
way was the same that Clare followed on the memor-
able night when first she took her stand side by side
with Lady Poverty, but it was in the radiance and
warmth of a summer noon that they carried him
down from the Porta Mojano, through olive-garths
and past farmhouses, turning to the right by the
old road which led to the Hospital of San Salvatore
delle Pareti, built by the Congregation of the Cross-
bearers. Francis could see nothing of the sunlight,
of the olives, of the homesteads. He was borne by
202 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
brothers whom he loved, and he sought to realise
the well-remembered road by asking them from time
to time what point they had reached.
When they set him down by the hospital to rest
awhile before they began the long, straight road, he
asked them to turn his litter so that his face might
be set towards Assisi. Then raising himself a little,
he lifted his hand in benediction, saying : " By
reason of Thine abundant mercy Thou hast shown
forth the multitude of Thy mercies in this city
above all other cities, and hast chosen her unto
Thyself to be the place and habitation of them that
in truth acknowledge Thee and give glory to Thy
holy name. Wherefore, I beseech Thee, O Lord
Jesus Christ, father of mercies, that she may be for
ever the place and habitation of them that do truly
acknowledge Thee and glorify Thy blessed and
most glorious name from everlasting unto everlast-
ing. Amen."
When he had so blessed Assisi, the procession
formed again, and he was borne to the infirmary
hut at Santa Maria degli Angeli. He revived in its
freshness and silence. An interval of power was
vouchsafed to him before the end. Meditating
on the road by which God had led him, and on the
revolt of the order, it occurred to him that to be-
queath an account of his call and his obedience of
the revealed will of God for him and his followers
might be well alike for those who loved him and for
the reconversion of the friars. The anxiety shown
to exalt his relics may have suggested to him that
o *
2
% i
5 3
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 203
his ideal might in time secure acknowledgment ;
that the spirit of little Brother Francis might over-
come where his presence and example had failed.
When that time came it would help to have a clear
statement of his vocation and his purpose. In this
mind he dictated his testament, his bequest of
poverty to all faithful friars. He shows a pathetic
anxiety that this document should be accepted as
meaning simply what it says ; that no transforming
glosses should be applied to its text, twisting it out
of its intention. Well did he remember how the
gospel Rule had been manipulated, how the plain
directions of Christ had been belied into cunningly
devised fables. Nor did he ask that his testament
should take the place of the Rule of 1223, only that
it should be read at the Chapters-General as well as
that Rule, that the friars might remember his con-
ception of the gospel.
This clause led Elias and Pope Gregory to absolve
all the brethren from obedience to the testament,
for the one document contrasted too powerfully with
the other. He forbade the friars, too, to seek privi-
leges from the court of Rome, whether for pro-
tection, for preaching, for possession of church or
convent.
Indeed, no part of this testament could be pleas-
ing to authority, for throughout is the essential
quality of the Spouse of Poverty, tenacious obedi-
ence to the Lord who called him, tenacious disre-
gard for the power which has dared to belittle that
Lord.
204 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
To all who shared this obedience he bequeathed
the blessing of God the Father in the world above,
the blessing of His beloved Son and of the Com-
forter in this world. " And I," he ended, " little
Brother Francis, your servant, I confirm as much as
I am able this most holy benediction."
Then he dictated a testament for the Sisters of
Poverty, blessing them too and commending them
to the brethren as members of one family in Christ
Jesus.
The end was near ; his thoughts were toward
those whose spiritual life he had helped, who were
dear to him as children to a father. Amongst
them was a Roman lady given to hospitality towards
him and his companions, a devout tertiary and his
personal friend. He felt some anxiety that she
should be acquainted with his condition, lest the
news of his death should too greatly grieve her.
So he dictated a letter to Brother Jacopa, as he
used to call her, praying her to come to Santa
Maria degli Angeli, bringing with her new cloth
of the colour of ashes, new cord to girdle his burial
garment, wax for the funeral lights, and, remem-
bering her delight in hospitality, he asked her to
make for him some little almond cakes, like some
which he had eaten in her house, called mostac-
cioli.
The letter was written and put on one side until a
messenger was found, but before he set out, there
came a knocking at the door, and lo ! the lady
herself stood without, her maid with her, carrying
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 205
just the things which Francis had asked her
to bring. For it had so happened that while she
was praying the day before his very thoughts had
been revealed to her, and she had gathered all
together, and had hastened to reach the plain ere
it was too late. Special permission was granted to
her to enter the hut and to serve him with the little
cakes, but he tasted them only, although he lay
upon his couch in radiant peace. Madonna Jacopa
stayed until the end ; his shroud-habit was made of
the grey cloth which she brought and the wax was
turned into candles.
September closed, and Thursday, 1st October,
was come. He desired that day to signify that he
passed from life into immortality the faithful Spouse
of Poverty, and bade his companions place him un-
clad upon the ground, where, lifting up his eyes to
heaven, he said : " I have done my duty, may Christ
teach you yours." But the brother appointed to
be his warden took a tunic and under garment and
clothed him, imposing obedience on him, as these
things had been given to him in alms, and he was
laid upon his bed again, whence he blessed them,
laying his hand upon each head in turn. All the
friars in residence at the Portiuncula were called to
his side to receive the blessing, and on this occasion
Brother Elias was present. Then he broke bread
and gave it to them all, bidding them eat it. After-
wards he asked Brothers Angelo and Leo to sing the
Canticle of the Sun, joining his failing voice to theirs.
Then he commenced to chant Psalm cxlii.
206 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
" I cried unto the Lord with my voice ; with
my voice unto the Lord did I make my suppli-
cation."
Again, on their petition, he pardoned the errors
of his brethren, including those absent, and lay
through Friday until Saturday evening in the peace
of God, " his refuge and his portion in the land of
the living". Around him stood the faithful few,
weeping as they chanted songs of praise. On
Saturday evening, 3rd October, just after vespers,
a flock of crested larks wheeled about the infirmary
hut, and seemed to all like a winged choir sent
"to exalt the Lord along with him ". They were
his best loved birds, for " their intent seemed ever
toward the praise of God ".
When night fell Francis had gone to the presence
of his Lord.
" He hungers no more, neither thirsts any more,
and God has wiped away all tears from his eyes."
Next day, Sunday, 4th October, 1226, his body
was borne to the Church of San Giorgio, where it
was provisionally entombed. This haste was due
to Brother Elias, who seems to have made all his
preparations in advance of the expected death.
Francis had desired to be buried in the little church
of the Portiuncula, but the Assisans, who flocked
down to the plain when the tidings of his death
reached them at dawn, were determined that his
remains should be protected, lest the Perugians
took them by force.
The citizens formed themselves into a procession,
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 207
headed by Elias and the friars ; it resembled a
triumph rather than a funeral, so joyous were the
good people over their treasure, but some tears
were shed on the way. A detour was made to San
Damiano that Clare and her sisters might look
upon his face once more, and raising his body from
the bier the friars held it up to the opening where
the sisters were used to communicate, that they
might touch him and bid him farewell, which each
of them did with weeping and lamentation, " see-
ing themselves made orphans of the consolations
and admonitions of so dear a father ".
Then, waving the oak and olive branches which
they carried, and breaking out once more into
hymns of praise, the citizens climbed up through
the olive-yard and entered Assisi by the Porta
Mojano, moving slowly up to San Giorgio. Here,
where he had been taught in childhood, and where
his first sermon had been preached, he was laid in
an oblong marble urn covered with an iron grating,
and a guard was set by day and night.
Elias announced the death of St. Francis in a
Latin letter addressed to Brother Gregory of Naples
at that time Provincial Minister of France but
intended for the whole order. This letter, like
the sarcophagus at San Giorgio, was evidently pre-
pared before the event of which it treated. There
-ire no records of those most touching and inspiring
weeks at the Vescovado and the infirmary. We
gather, while spelling through its paragraphs, that
it was the result of his discovery of the stigmata,
208 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
which on his bed of sickness Francis was no longer
able to conceal. Elias seizes on this miracle for his
purpose, not on the holy living and blessed dying.
This alone seems memorable to him, this glorifies
the father of the order, for this the brethren are
to praise God, not for the life lived, the example
given. He interpolates in haste, as writing a post-
script : " In the first hour of the night preceding
the fourth of October our father and brother Francis
passed to Christ." And then he resumes his in-
junctions to mourn, to pray, to say masses.
In fact, Francis sealed by the stigmata was a
more valuable relic than Francis the follower of
Christ, and this letter is the best commentary on
the saint's anxiety to keep the marks a secret.
Alas ! his care for the spiritual life of the order
was defeated now. The stigmata were matter of
common talk. Already crowds hastened to Assisi
and San Giorgio ; already miracles were ascribed
to the wasted frame which he had left behind.
Brother Elias rose to the height of his oppor-
tunity. For such a relic, should not a shrine be
built, which would draw devotees from every land
and make more illustrious an order which called
itself by the saint's name ?
His first intention was to build a commemorative
church down on the plain, perhaps to enclose Santa
Maria degli Angeli, or, as is more probable, the
infirmary hut where Francis died. It is possible
that this church was to have been small and after
the pattern preferred by the saint, but contrary to
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 209
his wishes nevertheless, since it was his express
provision that the friars were to possess no churches,
only to use those lent to them or for which they
paid a rent. Down at the settlement, however, the
companions and first followers of Francis resided
and watched the vicar-general's movements jea-
lously, and the Assisans were unwilling to let the
body be sepulchred outside their walls. A new
scheme presented itself to his ambition, and this
he proceeded to carry out.
Voluntary offerings were made daily at the tomb
in San Giorgio, some of them of great cost. It was
obvious that an appeal to the Christian world would
result in contributions large enough for the erection
of a church that would draw the gaze of Christen-
dom not alone to the saint, but to the order of
which Elias and the cardinal were determined to
allege him the founder. For it must not be for-
gotten that Francis did not found the order which
for nearly seven centuries has called itself Francis-
can.
A low hill divided from Assisi by a chasm com-
pleted the western flank of Monte Subasio. It is
said to have been used as a gallows-hill, and was
known as the Collis Inferni.
So it was attributed to Francis that in his humility
he had expressed a wish to be buried there. The
ground belonged to Messer Simon PuzzarelK, with
whom Elias entered into negotiations, but these
were not at first made public.
In the meantime, the brothers at Santa Maria
14
210 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
degli Angeli were indignant alike because of what
they knew and of what they surmised. Brother
Leo, who was diligently engaged all winter and
spring with his Mirror of Perfection, revealed certain
aspects of Brother Elias in its pages, which shed
light on the opposition suffered by Francis from
both the man and the minister. This book was
finished on llth May, 1227, and was zealously
studied before and during the Chapter-General of
30th May. Its effect was considerable. Elias
was deposed and Giovanni Parent! elected vicar-
general.
Other influences had conspired towards this
crisis. Elias initiated the insane policy of treating
the zelators, as they were called, with harshness,
and Leo, the friend of Francis, was the first to be
so persecuted.
By the end of May his plans had so far ripened
that he placed a marble vase on the Collis Inferni
to receive money offerings for the church. This was
probably about the end of March, or early in April,
just after the death of Honorius and the election
to the Papacy of Cardinal Ugolino as Gregory IX.
The step was a flagrant defiance of the saint's
injunctions, and even of the Rule of 1223, and it
is evident that Elias was acting with the knowledge
of his protector, the Pope. It created a scandal
amongst the older brethren, which affected even
those who were in agreement with the new order.
Brother Leo sought Egidio's advice, but the latter
could suggest nothing, for interference meant per-
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 211
secution even unto death. But Leo was stimulated
to redoubled zeal in making known the saint's mind
about the building of churches and houses, which he
set in the forefront of his book with anxious repeti-
tion. He was stimulated also to an act of violence.
He and others of the companions went to the Collis
Inferni and knocked down the marble offertory,
breaking it in pieces, and this was the beginning of
trouble for Leo.
Elias was for a short time disconcerted by this
unexpected blow, but, aware of Giovanni Parenti's
feebleness, he went on with his work as if no
such minister existed. He corresponded with
Pope Gregory, used his influence with the ma-
jority of the order, and gradually won back his
dominance over the rest. Only the zelators re-
mained irreconcilable. It was difficult for those
friars, who had known Francis less intimately than
they, to resist the impression which Elias made
upon them, as one acting in concert with Gregory.
So he pushed on his preparations for the building,
towards which money poured in from all parts of
Europe -crowned heads, nobles and ecclesiastics
bringing and sending their gifts. Simon Puzza-
relli made over the Collis Inferni with eager
generosity to Brother Elias for the Pope, that
an "oratory or church for the most holy body
of St. Francis" might be built upon it, although
the deed of gift was not fully made out until after
the ceremony of canonisation in 1228.
At first Elias may have purposed to build a small
212 FRANCIS OF ASSIS1
sanctuary over the tomb, but it is evident that the
wealth flowing in for the shrine altered his plan,
and that he began to design the beautiful upreared
basilica and the convent structures which now
dominate the plain. He secured the assistance
of Brother Filipo of Campello, an architect. He
seems to have been conversant with Gothic art,
and at once suggested that no other could har-
monise so well with the site, precipitous on either
side, and needing just such arched substructures as
were built in the eleventh century for the Bene-
dictine convents and churches at Subiaco. Pro-
bably Brother Filipo knew Santa Scolastica and
the Sacro Speco well, as it is pretty certain so
did Brother Elias, and had noted their fitness to
the rocky heights on which they were reared in
such wise as to become almost on integral part of
the mountain. Here in 1052 the French abbot,
Humbert, had rebuilt Santa Scolastica, its cathedral,
bell tower and cloister, all in the pointed style be-
loved in his native land ; while in 1 075 his successor,
Abbot John, although an Italian, carried out the
restoration by building the beautiful Gothic church
of the Holy Cave, the middle church, as we know
it, where Pope Gregory was completing the chapel
of San Gregorio, on one wall of which Brother Oddo
painted the portrait of his friend, Brother Francis.
Franciscans were well acquainted with St. Bene-
dict's Cave and its shrines.
Gothic art, too, had invaded Italy somewhat
during the generation prior to the founding of
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 213
the Assisan San Francesco, no fewer than three
Gothic Cistercian abbeys having been built be-
tween 1187 and 1217. It is most likely that
Elias and his assistant planned the two churches
of San Francesco with full knowledge of these,
and, as means were ample, that the former decided
to surpass in grandeur and beauty all the existing
churches in this style. Autumn and winter were
spent in these preliminaries. On 29th April, 1228,
Pope Gregory published a Bull announcing that it
was suitable that a church should be built to honour
the memory of the Blessed Francis and to receive
his body. He invited all the faithful to send offer-
ings to this end, requiting them with an indulgence
of forty days. Elias ordered the friars to be carriers
of these offerings from their various mission fields,
so we hear of contributions from even Jerusalem
and Morocco.
Francis was already canonised in the heart of the
Italian people, and the Pope decided to set his
formal seal and benediction upon their election.
At variance with Rome, it was a convenient mo-
ment for him to come to Assisi, and he reached
the world-famed city in the middle of July. The
great solemnity took place upon the l6th of that
month in the church of San Giorgio.
All the citizens trooped to see and hear his
Holiness. He played the role in masterly fashion.
Clad in cloth of gold and surrounded by cardinals,
he sat for their edification on his pontifical chair
until the moment arrived for his rising to deliver
214 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
a eulogy of St. Francis. It was couched in re-
splendent metaphors, with sobs for emphasis. The
function ended with the papal benediction for Assisi.
The day after he crossed to the Collis Inferni
and laid the foundation-stone. Elias with his
workers had toiled to bring the ground into
sufficient order for this ceremony, and he derived
the fullest personal satisfaction from the power
with which it invested him. Gregory renamed
the spot Collis Paradisi.
In addition to these functions the Pope, instructed
concerning the harm done by Leo's book, which he
had doubtless read, gave orders that the learned
Tomaso di Celano should compile the authorised
biography of St. Francis. Celano had been in
Germany for some years, engaged in mission
work. He was, therefore, personally unacquainted
with the last as with _the first years of the saint's
apostolate, and could only know what happened
through those who had been present. But, as a
student, he was not in sympathy with the zelators,
and he was engaged to produce a life which should
present and misrepresent the events so simply told
by Brother Leo in such a way as to magnify Elias,
the Curia and the new order. Naturally, Elias was
his main authority for both matter and manner of
the earlier and later years. He was urged to com-
plete his biography as quickly as possible, and by
working all autumn and winter he did so by the
middle of February, 1229, so that it received
Gregory's sanction on the 25th of that month.
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 215
It appeared, therefore, nine months after the
Speculum Perfectionis, and put a new gloss on all
that had happened.
Elias remained in effect the untitled chief of the
new order, and he pushed on the building with
such imperious urgency that the lower church
was completed in two years. He commanded an
army of workmen, craftsmen, artists. His archi-
tect was Brother Filipo of Campello, unless we
adopt the latest view that he planned these su-
perb structures himself, and that Filipo's technical
knowledge alone was required. Architecture was
well understood in Assisi, which in the fifteenth
century possessed its own lodge of the Comacine
Guild, and where the beautiful churches of San
Rufino and San Pietro had been built in the
eleventh century.
Men crowded from the plain and the neighbouring
towns, eager to help the Assisans in an enterprise
which promised both spiritual and temporal reward,
many of them ready to toil for love of the saint,
whose coming and going amongst them were scarcely
become memories, so fresh and sweet were they to
think upon, while to this day they abide fresh in
Umbria.
Pope Gregoiy, informed of all, declared the new
church to be head and mother church of the order,
another despite done to Francis, who had pledged
himself and his followers to hold the Benedictine
Portiuncula as their centre and mother. Privileges,
too, were showered upon the basilica ; no interdict
216 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
might interrupt its functions, its convent was made
inviolable. Little wonder that the testament was
suppressed and that the friars were exonerated from
obedience to its injunctions.
There remained the consecration of the edifice
and the translation of the saint's body to his tomb
beneath the high altar. The opening day of the
Pentecostal Chapter-General, which Giovanni Parenti
was to hold in the new convent, was chosen for
these ceremonies. To him the Pope gave the
translation in charge. He wished to be present
himself at the consecration, but was prevented by
political troubles.
The 25th of May dawned amidst the rejoicings of
an immense crowd of friars and tertiaries come to
Assisi from all parts of Italy. If the Chapter were
held in the convent, the assembly had to encamp
in the open air, as in times past.
The procession was formed at San Giorgio, before
whose door stood a car drawn by two white oxen
draped in purple cloth and garlanded with flowers.
The legates sent by Gregory assisted Brother Elias
to carry the sarcophagus from the church and place
it upon the car. It was covered with a piece of
rich brocade sent by the Queen Mother of France.
The car was guarded by the three legates and Elias,
while behind it came the friars two by two carrying
palms and lights, and followed by the clergy and
magistrates of Assisi. Down the long street they
passed, while flowers were showered from the
windows upon the car, and then slowly up to the
TESTAMENT, DEATH, CANONISATION 217
Col Us Paradisi. Just as they were singing a hymn
in praise of St. Francis, composed by Gregory him-
self, and were nearing the wonderful new church,
an extraordinary incident occurred, expected, indeed,
by Elias and the magistrates, but wholly unforeseen
by the friars, the clergy and the people. It is
difficult to say whether the legates were privy to
it or not, but we may assume their ignorance.
Armed men suddenly invaded the crowd, seized
the sarcophagus and carried it into the church,
closely followed by Elias, who turned to shut and
fasten the door with heavy bolts and bars.
Once inside, he buried the saint deep in a
sepulchre prepared down in the mountain itself
and lined with huge blocks of travertine, far below
the high altar, and so marvellously concealed that
nearly six centuries passed without its discovery,
which took place only in 1818.
The baffled crowd was indignant ; the friars were
astounded ; the festival so long anticipated was
wrecked. Something like terror brooded over the
day, which was to have crowned Assisi's annals.
The magistrates slunk home knowing very well
that they would be exonerated from blame, and
that in the meantime this scandal had secured for
ever the great relic to their city.
But another comedy had to be played before the
matter ended. The legates, who had come laden
with Gregory's gifts and benedictions, returned to
him in consternation, followed by friars with loud
complaints, by Giovanni Parenti, by appeals from
218 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
the outraged zelators. It was essential that the
grotesque drama should be acted out ; so Brother
Elias, the conventual friars, the church itself were
laid under interdict. The magistrates were sum-
moned before the Curia to explain their noii-
resistance to this sacrilege. Elias was scathingly
censured, and perhaps Gregory rather enjoyed
scolding his masterful tool.
For a time Brother Elias was under a cloud.
Giovanni Parenti was again elected vicar-general
in spite of a bold coup manque from his rival. When
time sufficient had elapsed, Pope Gregory pub-
lished the Bull Quo Elongati, by which Elias was
justified in all his actions, and the farce ended with
his triumph four months after his act of desecra-
tion.
He used it to resume work at the churches. By
1236 the upper church was roofed ; three years
later the bell-tower was full of bells. Fresco
painters were at work, and only Cimabue and
Giotto were awaited to make the walls of both
upper and lower sanctuaries as fair within as they
were without, the glory of Catholic Christendom and
its paradox.
PART III
ST. FRANCIS IN ART
The Earliest Biographical Frescoes The First Portraits
St. Francis, by Cimabue By Lorenzetti Giotto's Fres-
coes in the Upper Church Above the High Altar in
the Lower Church Santa Croce in Florence Fra
Angelico Benozzo Gozzoli at Montefalco Ghirlandajo
Benedetto da Majano Donatello Andrea della
Robbia Garofalo Agostino Carracci.
THE subject of this chapter should be treated
in a volume rather than merely suggested
in a few pages, but no life of the saint can be
considered complete without at least a glance at
some of those representations in easel painting, in
fresco and in sculpture, which, from 1230 onwards,
sought to perpetuate his memory. In dealing with
the older pictures and frescoes we must not let slip
the historic sense.
When Francis died, books were the possession of
princes, monasteries and cathedrals, not of peoples,
as they are now. The uneducated had none, and
the main bulk of every people was uneducated, in
our modern sense, which makes book knowledge a
fundamental test of education, one-sided, inadequate
and misleading although it be. When a saint died,
(219)
220 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
and it was deemed wise to prolong his memory in
such a form as might appeal to unlettered men,
women and children, the natural process was to
paint a memoir on the walls of the sanctuary raised
and dedicated to him, that all who came within
them might read and learn what manner of man he
had been. The frescoed churches are biographies,
and, since the lives of saints touched those of the
world's rulers as well, they are often histories too.
Brother Elias set fresco painters to work at the
lower church so soon as its walls were covered in.
There are remains of five of their attempts on the
left wall of the nave, and of a series on the opposite
wall, whose scenes are taken from the Passion of
our Lord, but only four of them can now be iden-
tified. The Franciscan incidents on the left wall
are somewhat clearer, and may be regarded as the
first effort to memorialise the saint. We detect his
renunciation of the world ; Pope Innocent's dream ;
the sermon to the birds ; the stigmata of which
only the seraphic vision is now visible and his
death. It is difficult to discover in the conflict of
critical surmises any sure clue to the artist of these
frescoes. Perhaps they were painted by the Pisan
Giunta, perhaps by some artist amongst the Brothers
Minor. Whoever executed them was still domi-
nated by Byzantine conventionalism, although they
contain a hint of struggle from its bondage, un-
couth and pathetic, which invests them with
interest.
With Giunta we come to the earliest portraits of
EARLY PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS
N<rw in the Sacristy of the Upper Church at Assist
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 221
Francis. That by Brother Oddo at the Sagro Speco,
near Subiaco, we have already described, but there
are three said to belong to 1230, or a few years
later, attributed to this artist. One of these hangs
outside the chapel built round the infirmary hut at
Santa Maria degli Angeli ; a second is in the Fran-
ciscan Convent al Monte close to Perugia, where
Brother Egidio spent many years ; and the third is
preserved in the inner sacristy of San Francesco di
Assisi.
The first and second may be by Giunta Pisano,
because characteristics which distinguish his other
works are observable in them, especially the Byzan-
tine treatment of eyes and attitude ; but it is not so
easy to pronounce judgment as to the painter of the
third. It has greater delicacy and sweetness than
the others, and is referred by Father Giuseppe
Fratini to a Sienese artist, one of a group who suc-
ceeded the Pisan workers, and who, while excelling
these in freedom and grace, had not attained the
independence of Cimabue and his successors. If
this hypothesis have value, it belongs to a date later
than that usually attributed to it, probably to the
time of some artist from Siena, who was the fore-
runner of Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti.
The tradition repeated to visitors is that this
portrait is painted on half of a slab of wood upon
which St. Francis was laid after death that his body
might be washed before it was robed for burial.
On the one half, we are told, his figure, with four
scenes representing miracles through his agency,
222 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
was painted ; on the other half the unpleasing por-
trait of Santa Maria degli Angeli. But these two
are manifestly by different hands. Father Fratini
has a theory which seems better than the scanty
tradition. It is possible that Giunta painted on
two wooden panels the rough portraits of Santa
Maria degli Angeli and of San Francesco al Monte,
perhaps also that in San Bernardino's chapel ; but
an artist friar, or one of the Sienese school, painted
for the sepulchral altar of the lower church two
pictures on wood, St. Francis in the middle of each,
two scenes of miracles on either side of him, the
panels being placed back to back, and so framed that
the faithful kneeling at either back or front of the
altar might see the form of the great patriarch. In
the Vatican Gallery may be found a picture of St.
Francis painted on a panel of the same size, in the
same manner, and flanked, too, by scenes of miracles.
Fratini's speculation that this may once have been
the counterpart of the portrait in the sacristy is
strengthened by the fact that its four miracles are
different from those represented in the other.
We hear of another piece of wood besides that
on which his body was laid, one which covered his
rough sarcophagus in San Giorgio. It is probable,
however, that one slab served both purposes, and
the loose construction of even cherished traditions,
as well as of the most plausible criticism, leaves us
only sure that the portrait in the sacristy belongs
to the thirteenth century and to its second or third
quarter. It is a noteworthy portrait in spite of
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 223
this uncertainty. Whoever painted it understood
the angelic strain which etherialised the saint's
humanity, imparting to it a quality so celestial
that generations may be pardoned for accounting
him divine. We may almost believe that one who
knew and loved him limned those delicate fea-
tures, quickened them with sorrow and with joy.
Another point is of secondary interest. His
robe is coloured grey, rather deep and blackish,
but still indubitably grey, and in this resembles
the fresco of Subiaco, which is free, however, from
the darkening effect of altar smoke and incense.
Just such a tinge might be expected on a picture
which once stood on the high altar of a church. In
one hand Francis holds a cross, an attribute to which
he is entitled as Patriarch of the Franciscan Order ;
in the other a gospel, on whose open pages can be
read that principle of the saintly life, which to him
contained its very essence : Si vis perfectus esse, vade,
vende omnia que habes el da pauperibus. The stigmata
on hands and feet and the halo are clearly marked.
Another portrait belonging to the thirteenth
century is in the church of the San Sargiano,
near Arezzo, and is attributed to Margaritone of
Arezzo, who was born ten years after the saint
died, and who, therefore, followed the earlier
portraits, and more particularly that of the Holy
Cave, painting him with his pointed hood drawn
over his head. In all of these the robe is grey,
this colour having been used during nearly two
centuries for the Franciscan habit.
224 FRANCIS OF ASSIST
By 1252 both upper and lower churches were
completed, and next year Pope Innocent IV. con-
secrated them with great splendour of function.
He came accompanied by a court of cardinals and
princes to Assisi in April, and took up his resi-
dence in the convent buildings for six months.
The solemnity was consummated on the fifth Sun-
day after Easter, and both sanctuaries received the
papal benediction.
In that year Cimabue was thirteen years old.
This long residence, and the privileges showered
upon convent and basilica, revived the interest of
Christendom, and contributions for fuller decora-
tion increased to such an extent that the friars
could dream of perfecting their church. But art
for the moment was in the trough of the wave.
Wearied of Byzantine tyranny, artists turned to-
wards the wind, which blew from the north, for
a deep inspiration. Already it had invigorated
Italian architecture ; it had ruffled the stagnant
art of Pisa ; it had awakened the dreamers of
Siena ; it stirred amongst the dry bones in Flor-
ence. The friars had to wait awhile, and in the
meantime their wealth accumulated. Even Assisi,
impoverished as it was by internal and external
commotions, made civic and individual sacrifices
for the church of its patron.
Renaissant art reached Assisi with Cimabue.
There is a disposition amongst our newest critics
to look upon this man as apocryphal, to sink
him in later fame ; but we may ignore them and
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 225
continue firm in the faith which was Vasari's,
Tuscany's, Italy's.
He came to work in the upper church, where
his great scriptural frescoes, his noble angels, pro-
phets, fathers of the church, have been cruelly
maltreated by time, and are suffering gradual
effacement from the damp, to which the mala-
droit interference of a government commission has
recklessly surrendered them. But with these we
have nothing to do. It is his sublime Madonna in
the lower church almost intact, except for the
encroachment on its left of a door leading into
St. Mary Magdalen's Chapel that includes a
figure of St. Francis, standing beyond the Queen
of Heaven and her angel courtiers, looking some-
what dwarfed beside her majesty, his face shorter
and rounder than in the first portraits, his lips
thick and ungainly, his eyes peaceful, almost
smiling, as if he were amused to find himself in
such great company, which, sooth to say, ignores
his presence absolutely. It is less attractive than
other portraits, and Cimabue seems to have made
it a point to differentiate the poverello in kind as
well as in degree.
Pleasanter is Lorenzetti's St. Francis in the tran-
sept to our left, as we face the high altar, but it
belongs to a date more than half a century later.
It is like Cimabue's in one respect only. The face
is rounder and shorter than in the earlier pictures.
But its features are refined, and the Madonna
points him out to her babe with a gesture of
15
226 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
turned-back thumb peculiarly Italian, while Jesu-
lino, although much surprised at his appearance,
bestows upon him the benediction requested. On
the other side stands St. John the Evangelist,
truly companion to St. Francis in spirit, although
not his name-saint as was the other John, herald
of our Lord. This picture is very lovely, with
delicate treatment and golden background, and its
date is that of the second group of Sienese artists,
who filled up the spaces left by Giotto and his
disciples.
Fifty years earlier than Lorenzetti, Giotto arrived,
a lad of twenty, fresh from Cimabue's workshop.
Apparently the lower church, beneath which St.
Francis was sepulchred, was more precious to the
friars than the upper, whose roofs, transepts and
apse were now jewelled with Cimabue's creations,
for not until he had filled its nave with the story
of Francis was he permitted to work below. His
frescoes triumphantly testified his power, and he
was invited to obliterate all that was inadequate in
the lower church and to fill the spaces above the
high altar, the walls, roof, arch and shallow chapel
of San Nicholas with those inspirations of his
genius, which make this church one of the marvels
of Christendom.
Giotto was invited to come by the Franciscan
General, Brother Giovanni da Muro, whose term of
office lasted from 1296 to 1304, when he was made
a cardinal. These dates approximately fix the time
of his work in Assisi, where he not only compassed
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 227
the frescoes in San Francesco, but found time to
design and superintend those of the right transept
in Santa Chiara, the church raised and dedicated to
St. Clare after her death.
Cimabue and his pupils had not filled the walls
of the nave in the upper church. It is probable
that other commissions prevented his carrying out
this part of the scheme of decoration, and that he
commended his pupil Giotto as one able to fill these
with scenes from the saint's life as was desired.
Already there must have been an authoritative
sequence of incidents drawn up from San Bonaven-
tura's biography and from the Speculum Perfectionis,
now no longer in discredit as before the excom-
munication of Brother Elias. These were founded
on the testimony of witnesses, and were not yet old
enough to have become tradition, although some of
them were already slipping into its golden haze.
San Bonaventura's Life was as much inspired by
tenderness and insight as Leo's. It was in greater
repute at this time than Celano's, which had been
recast and considerably altered. Apparently it was
the main source for this sequence by Giotto, who,
with his colleagues, filled eight and twenty spaces
with these accredited scenes. They begin at the
end of the nave nearest the altar with the predic-
tion of greatness accorded to Francis in his worldly
youth, and continue through his conversion, voca-
tion, renunciation, reception by Innocent III., mini-
strations, missions, visions, miracles, stigmata, to
his death and canonisation. That every scene was
228 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
planned and drawn by one master brain and hand
is evident except to decadent modern critics, whose
genius is that of Mephistopheles, a spirit of steady
denial. The composition far outsteps the conven-
tional grouping, from which even Cimabue could
not deliver his art. With Giotto, we are on the
way to Raphael, but our point of departure detains
us with a wealth of suggestion, subtlety, humour,
delicacy, sincerity, absent from our goal. Never
were pictures more imbued than these with one
mind, and that a very mirror of what it contem-
plated, magically reflecting in added grace, vivacity
and charm what Bonaventura in words, and the
piazzas, palaces, sanctuaries of Assisi, in the con-
crete, presented as material for translation into
etherial form and colour.
Giotto adopts in these beautiful pictures the
curved, oval face, which has been preferred by
many artists in depicting Francis. We do not
know whether he was cognisant of a cast reputed
to have been taken from the saint's features after
death, in whose authenticity it is difficult to be-
lieve. Used as the guide of sculptors and painters
in renaissance times, this cast indicates a short face,
delicately moulded, with great breadth of brow.
Giotto does not make breadth of brow a special
feature, but aims at a fine oval, thin even in his
presentments of the young son of Bernardone,
although never emaciated to the degree suggested
by the early portraits.
When Giovanni da Muro was satisfied that
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 229
Giotto's frescoes in the upper church were worthy
of their subject, he invited him to complete the
wall and roof decoration of the lower church, and
it is here that we find his masterpieces. Again, his
composition and colouring are dominant in the fres-
coes of right and left transepts, on roof and wall,
although Taddeo Gaddi and Puccio Capanna may
have carried out their execution. The first series
presents scenes in the life of the Madonna and the
infancy of our Lord, and Giotto's conceptions fill
the whole space except that occupied by Cimabue's
Madonna and by the Crucifixion next to it, said to
have been painted by Brother Martino under Giotto's
guidance. Simone Martini's exquisite figures of
Franciscan saints are below the frescoes. In the
Crucifixion we find St. Francis kneeling to the left
of the Cross. One of Simone Martini's saints is
meant for him, but it is the least attractive of the
five.
The left transept is covered with scenes from the
Passion of our Lord, and its decoration culminates
in another Crucifixion of fine workmanship, which
Fratini maintains to have been painted by Cavallini,
commissioned by Walter, Duke of Athens, and for
a time Tyrant of Florence, who tried to gain the
favour of the Minorites.
But we must go to the great triangular frescoes
over the high altar to find Francis once more. Here
Giotto allowed his imagination full play, and him-
self carried out its wonderful suggestions. The
saint's life had been storied, its analogy to that of
230 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
his Lord and Master fully illustrated, but there
remained his work to chronicle in a manner which
would present both his ideal and his rigorous prac-
tice. For these allegories are realistic enough, and
to the genuine Franciscan are the only realities.
First, it was desired to have the apotheosis of
their patriarch facing the nave, so that all who
came towards the altar might see him throned
gloriously in glory. The central figure, dressed in
white dalmatic and mantle of dark brocade, is on a
throne, surrounded by rejoicing angels so full of
life, colour and almost sound, that we are conscious
of their longing to make up to him for his afflictions
here, with "an exceeding weight of glory " yonder.
When the high altar is lighted up, and we approach
it by the nave, this fresco glows with beauty. Op-
posite to it is the mystical marriage of Francis to
the Lady Poverty of his dreams in those years of
God's guidance in the wilderness. Christ Himself
unites the half-shrinking bridegroom to Poverty,
whose worn garments and faded beauty present no
lure to win the man, while they but thinly veil the
soul which Jesus loved on earth. For, vowed to
Poverty, what shall separate him from the love of
Christ ? And even while he gazes half- unwilling
on his bride, she reveals to him the blossoms
of a heavenly joy and purity, which their union
ensures to him for ever, and which far outweigh
the scorn of dogs, the contumely of men blind to
her immortal beauty. Beneath he reappears in
Giotto's scheme of thought, as parting gladly with
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 231
his mantle to the poor knight, his angel leading
him, while on the other side miser and worldlings
turn from their heavenly guide for ever. For the
pictures mean, as Francis meant, that man has
choice of the life that now is, or the life that is to
come, but that no man can have both unless he
has overcome in the life that now is those desires
of the eye and that pride of life in which Christ
had neither part nor lot. Such renunciation here
means glory there, and the one picture is the com-
plement of the other.
The side pictures illustrate the vows of chastity
and obedience incumbent on all who enter the
orders of penitence. There is no attempt to mini-
mise the difficulty of keeping these vows. Chastity
dwells on high ; to attain to her heavenly precincts
needs constant warfare against sin. The pilgrims
must be armed with fortitude, must climb under
the banner of purity. And it needs such suffering
as Christ's crucifixion to resist the alluring call from
every side. Warriors on earth, the faithful who
attain become glorified spirits when they reach the
courts of heaven where she dwells. On the left,
at the base of this fresco, St. Francis urges repre-
sentatives of his orders to the upward course, the
three figures being meant for Giovanni da Muro,
one of the Sisters of Poverty perhaps St. Clare
and a cordelier of the Third Order, for whom Dante
himself was Giotto's model.
The fresco illustrating obedience faces this, and
symbolises with a yoke imposed upon a kneeling
232 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
friar with an unbridled centaur, who recoils from
the revelation made to him by his reflection in the
mirror of prudence, the need of restraint, the horror
of license, the beauty of voluntary submission, of
the will hallowed by obedience. And that this
obedience is unto God is shown by the figure of
St. Francis yoked and directed by the two hands
of Christ.
The church of the Holy Cross was begun in
Florence in 1294, Arnolfo being its architect.
Giotto did not start his work upon its walls until
long after Arnolfo's death, which happened in 1310.
His fame had greatly increased, and he was soon to
be ask ad to build his wonderful campanile beside
the Duomo, whose foundation-stone was laid in
1298, while he was busy at Assisi. After his work
there, he had, according to the high method of the
greatest artists in Italy, studied architecture, sculp-
ture, relief and mosaic, and could with his own
hand achieve masterpieces in each kind of art.
It was about 1320 that the Capella dei Bardi
della Liberta was put into his hands for decora-
tion, when he was well over forty years of age.
The Franciscans of Florence were anxious to se-
cure for its walls some incidents in their patriarch's
life, like those renowned over all Christendom, in
San Francesco di Assisi. They had already placed
over the high altar a portrait of Francis, said to
have been painted by Cimabue, which they tried
to consider an authentic likeness. On the vault-
ing of the Bardi Chapel is another portrait, and
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 233
Poverty, Chastity and Obedience are personified
on its remaining quarters.
Here, too, the four great saints of the order
other than Francis, one of them only just cano-
nised, were painted on each side of the window
by Giotto himself, and St. Louis, King of France,
beloved of the friars, remains there beautiful to-
day. But the artist's especial work was to fill the
spaces made by the Gothic arching with incidents
in the patriarch's life. He was hampered by want of
room, by difficulties of form, but he left six frescoes,
variants of six in the upper church at Assisi, remind-
ing us of these and yet different. Francis visiting
the Sultan of Egypt and recommending to him the
gospel of Christ is perhaps the finest of these, but
his renunciation rivals it in force and interest.
Giotto is faithful to his first conception of the saint.
A whole century passed ere St. Francis became
again a leading inspiration in art. It was natural
that he should appeal to the Dominican artist, Fra
Angelico, who has placed him facing St. Dominic
in the foreground of his Coronation of Mary. They
kneel on a lower plane than that where the Ma-
donna and our Lord are seated, and behind them
martyrs, apostles and doctors of the Church gaze
in rapture at the pearly heavens above them,
where Christ crowns His Blessed Mother.
But it was Fra Angelico's pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli,
who made Francis the subject of a series of pictures
designed, like the frescoes of Giotto, to record the
incidents of his life.
234 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
A Franciscan church had been built at Monte-
falco, a "city set upon a hill," which glows in the
sunset light, disappearing from view at noon if our
eyes seek it towards the south-east from Assisi.
The friars may have communicated with Fra
Angelico, who was at Orvieto in 1452. He sent
Benozzo Gozzoli to do the work. Gozzoli had
been painting for five years, but was still under
the influence of his master, not yet, as seven years
later, feeling his own temperament and giving
scope to its artistic impulses.
So the frescoes at Montefalco are of simple de-
sign, even clumsy when compared with Giotto's,
which were so much earlier.
He could not compass Fra Angelico's stately
lines, his purity of conception sufficing without
detail. So, although he gives a pleasant anima-
tion to the scenes and delightful colouring, they
lack both the tenderness of Giotto's frescoes and
the wealth of homely and natural detail which
distinguishes his own later masterpieces at the Ric-
cardi Palace and in the Pisan Campo Santo. His
pictures at Montefalco are seventeen in the bio-
graphical series, and figures of the first companions
round the arch of the choir. They follow Giotto's
sequence, but include a blessing of Montefalco by
the saint, which may very well have happened in
his life-time. In the fresco of Francis preaching
to the birds near Bevagna, he put a background
of Monte Subasio and Assisi.
Jn the portraits round the choir arch he makes
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 235
the number of first companions twelve, for by his
time the analogy between Christ's life on earth
and that of the patriarch was a Franciscan
dogma.
Nine years later Benozzo Gozzoli painted a small
easel picture for the Compagnia di San Marco in
Florence, which is now in our National Gallery.
Its Madonna is a copy of that painted by Fra
Angelico for the high altar-piece of San Marco,
now to be seen in the Academy of Florence. But
he gave rein to his delight in natural details, and
painted St. Francis kneeling amongst sweet flowers
such as Francis loved.
Later in the century, about 1485, Ghirlandajo
painted a beautiful set of pictures in the Sassetti
Chapel of the Church of the Trinity in Florence,
having the life of Francis for their subject, of which
the death scene is considered to be finest, although
his presentation of the Rule of 1223 to Pope Hon-
orius is quite as impressive, and Mrs. Jameson
selects Francis before the Soldan for special
notice.
About the same time Benedetto da Majano
executed the reliefs round the pulpit of Santa
Croce.
A chapel was built by San Bonaventura over the
infirmary hut where Francis died, and its walls
were decorated early in the sixteenth century with
figures of the first friars by Lo Spagna. About the
same date the altar was furnished with a beautiful
terra-cotta figure of Francis by Andrea della Robbia,
236 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
which is, perhaps, the only really artistic present-
ment of the saint at Santa Maria degli Angeli. It
has been photographed by Signor Lunghi, and Miss
Duff Gordon uses it as a frontispiece to her charm-
ing Story of Assist.
Far nobler, however, is the splendid statue of St.
Francis belonging to the fifteenth century which is
on the high altar of Sant' Antonio in Padua. Dona-
tello was its sculptor, and placed it on the right of
our Lord and St. Antonio of Padua on His left, a
group so magnificent that its impression on the
mind can never be erased.
After the beginning of the sixteenth century Lo
Spagna, a pupil of Perugino's, Garofalo, Agostino
Carracci and Cigoli were the chief painters of
Franciscan subjects, and of these Garofalo and
Carracci were the best. The former decorated San
Francesco at Ferrara with a series about 1520. A
Madonna enthroned by Garofalo, which once deco-
rated the high altar of San Guglielmo in Ferrara,
is now in our National Gallery, and the saints in
attendance on Mary are Francis, Antony of Padua,
Clare and St. William, who was a Brother of Peni-
tence.
Agostino Carracci painted the finest example
known of the Stigmata, a subject popular with
painters of the sixteenth and later centuries, and
especially with Cigoli and the great Spanish master
Zurburan. Carracci's picture is at Vienna, but is
well known from engravings. Zurburan' s examples
are full of the gloomy rendering of suffering observ-
STATUE OF FKANCIS BY DONATELLO
In the Church of S. Antonio, Padua
ST. FRANCIS IN ART 237
able in Spanish pictures. Many others might be
noted, for St. Francis is patron of many cities and
localities besides Umbria and Assisi in Umbria.
Cloth-weavers and menders, carpet-makers and
other cognate crafts adopted him as their protector.
But this brief chapter may do no more than suggest
the subject. The Franciscan art of recent centuries
lacks the ardent faith which gave value to the
earlier pictures.
Perhaps, seeing that our age has a new revelation
of the spirit of St. Francis, we may hope for a new
conception and a new artistic presentment of his
ideal, his failure, his coming victory.
A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
HISTORICAL
Der Bettler von Assist, das Ritterthum, die Poesie und Kunst
seiner Zeit, Dr. H. v. Schmitz.
Die Waldenser, Prof. Muller.
Franz von Assist und Seine cultur-historische Bedeutung, J.
B. Heinrich.
Franz von Assist und die Anfange der Kunst der Renaissance,
H. Thode.
History of the Papacy, Dr. Creighton.
History of the Papacy, Canon Pennington.
History of Rome, Gregorovius.
Holy Roman Empire, J. Bryce.
Papal Monarchy, The, Dr. W. Barry.
Petrus Waldus und Franz von Assist, H. E. Schneider.
Storia delta Citta d'Assisi, A. Cristofani.
BIOGRAPHICAL
Actus S. Francisci et Sociorum, ed. P. Sabatier.
Analecta Bollandiana.
Annales Minorum, E. Wadding.
B. P. Francisci Assisiensis Opusc., E. Wadding.
Brother Francis, Eileen Douglas.
Cantico al Sole di San Francesco comentato nella Divina
Commedia, Bonanni.
De Adventu Minorum, Eccleston.
Description of the Holy Mount of Alverna, T. Canevese.
Floretum S. Francisci Assisiensis, ed. P. Sabatier.
Francesco d' Assist e il Suo Secolo, F. Prudenzano.
Francis and Dominic and the Mendicant Orders, J. Herkless.
(239)
240 FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Histoire de St. Francois d' Assist, Le Monnier.
Lady Poverty, The, translated from the Latin of P. Ed.
D'Alencon by M. Carmichael.
Legenda S. Francisci, St. Bonaventure.
Legenda Trium Sociorum, ed. Faloci-Palignani.
Legend of St. Francis, by the Three Companions, translated
by E. Gurney Salter.
Legende de St. Francois, dite des Trois Compagnons, De
V authenticity de la, P. Sabatier.
Les Poetes Franciscains, Ozanam.
L' Eresia net Media Evo, Tocco.
Mirror of Perfection, translated by Sebastian Evans.
Monumenta Franciscana, ed. Brewer (Rolls Series).
Notes concerning the death, burial, canonisation and transla-
tion of St. Francis of Assisi and the recovery of his
body collected by a member of the Conventual Brothers
Minor, N. Papini.
Regies (Les) et le Gouvernement de I'Ordo De Penitentia au
XII I Siecle, Rev. P. Mandonnet.
Regula Antiqua Fratrum et Sororum de Penitentia, ed. P.
Sabatier.
San Francesco di Assisi, Giulio Salvadori.
Sons of Francis, A. Macdonell.
Speculum Perfectionis, by Brother Leo, ed. P. Sabatier.
St. Francis and You, Father Cuthbert.
Storia di San Francesco, N. Papini.
Un Nouveau Chapitre de la Vie de St. Francois, P. Sabatier.
Vie de St. Francois, P. Sabatier.
Vie de Frere Elie, Prof. Lempp.
Vita Prima S. Francisci, Tomaso di Celano.
Vita Secunda S. Francisci, ditto, ed. by Amoni.
Vita di San Francesco, A. Cristofani.
ST. FRANCIS IN ART
Architecture, Painting and Printing at Subiaco, Dr. Croke.
Characteristics of Saints in Art, Abbe Cahier.
Monastic Orders, The, Mrs. Jameson.
A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 241
On the Authentic Portraiture of St. Francis of Assist, N. H.
J. Westlake.
Storia delta Basilica e del Convento di San Francesco, P.
Giuseppe Fratini.
Umbrian Towns, The, J. W. and A. M. Cruikshank.
16
INDEX
Actus, 113.
Agnes, Clare's sister, 121, 126.
Albigenses, the, n, 106.
Alexander III., Pope, 22, 25, 26,
45. 63.
Alkhamil, Sultan of Egypt, 152.
Almuazzam, Sultan of Syria, 152.
Alverna, Monte, given to Francis,
130, 131; his first visit to, 135,
136 ; his second visit to, 146,
157 ; his last visit, 176-183 ;
journey to, 177, 178; fast at,
179-181 ; stigmata bestowed at,
181 ; farewell to, 182, 183.
Ancona, 129, 136, 151.
Angeli, Santa Maria degli, 81 ;
leper settlement near, 89 ; Mass
at, 92,93, 115, 124; pardon of,
139, 140; Ugolino at, 141 ; re-
turn of Francis from Monte
Alverna to, 184; journey from
Vescovado to, 201, 202 ; Jacopa
dei Settisoli at, 202, 203; death
of Francis at, 206 ; first plan of
Elias regarding, 208 ; Andrea
della Robbia's figure of Francis
at, 235, 236.
Angelico, Fra, 233, 234.
Angelo, Brother, 182, 192,200,205.
Aquilino, Bishop, 43.
Aginaldo, Abbot, 45.
Arnold of Brescia, 11, 22-25.
Arnolfo, 232.
Assisi, 30 ; history of, 35-47 ; Fran-
cis born at, 48; last imperial
ceremony at, 60, 61 ; at war with
Perugia, 64-66 ; Francis in-
fluential in, 94, 95 ; compact
between nobles and people at,
113 ; Francis returns to, 191 ;
podesta of, 191-193 ; Francis
leaves, 201 ; blesses, 202 ; his
body borne to, 206, 207 ; Cima-
bue in, 224, 225 ; Giotto in, 226-
232; St. Francis, patron of, 237.
(243)
Assist, Bishop of, So, 84-86, 94 ; for-
bade Francis to preach, 100; in
Rome, 105; Francis in palace
of, 191-201 ; reconciled to po-
desta, 193.
Augustine, St., rule of, 148.
Aventius, Bishop, 42.
Bagnara, Francis at, 190.
Bardi, chapel of the, pictures in,
-232, 233. Z-f-
Bastia, 38, 65, 124 ; John of, 132.
Benedict, St., 6-9, 56, 116, 148.,
Berardelli, Padre, 164. '
Bernard, Brother, 95, 96, 98, 101,
198 ; persecution of, 199.
Bernard of Clairvaux, n, 22, 24.
Bernardone, Pier, 47-50, 55, 56,
59. 63, 73. 74. 79. 8 i- 8 5. 9-
Bevagna, 38, 115, 134, 135, 234.
Beviglie, 74, 76.
Bologna, 155-157, 166.
Bonaventura, St., 190 ; life of
Francis by, 227; chapel over
infirmary hut given by, 235.
Bono, Giovanni, 88, 89, 199.
Brescia, 23.
Brienne, Walter of, 70.
Caesar of Speyer joins the Order,
146 ; returns with Francis from
Palestine, 155 ; assists Francis
with new rule, 162 ; sent to
Germany, 166.
Canticle of the Sun, 186, 187, 192,
200.
Capanna, Puccio, 229.
Capocci, 33.
Caracci, Agostino, 236.
Carceri, the, 117, 118.
Cathari, the, 32.
Cattani, Orlando dei, 130, 176,
183.
244
INDEX
Cattani, Pietro dei, 155, 160, 161 ;
death of, 166.
Cavallini, 229.
Celano, Tomaso di, 133, 199, 214.
Celestine III., Pope, 28, 29.
Cesena, 88.
Charlemagne, 43.
Chiaggio, the river, 39, 115.
Christopher, Brother, in Gas-
cony, 151.
Cigoli, 236.
Cimabue, 218, 224, 225.
Citta di Castello, Francis at, 184.
Civita Castellana, 26.
Clare, St., 121-127; madesuperior
at San Damiano, 128 ; Cardinal
Ugolino and, 154 ; letter from
Francis to, 155, 156 ; Francis
visits, 185, 186; asks permission
to see Francis, 200; his body
brought to San Damiano, 207.
Clement III., Pope, 28.
Collis Inferni, 209, 211 ; name
changed, 214.
Collistrada, leper settlement at,
91.
Colombo, Monte, 167, 168, 173-175.
Colonna, Cardinal, 105-107, 137.
Conrad of LiiUen, 47, 6b, 61.
Cristofani, Antonio, 37.
Cyprus, 151.
Damiano, San, 78, 80-82, 84, 89,
117, 126-128, 132; Ugolino at,
154; Francis at, 185, 186; Can-
ticle of the Sun composed at,
186, 187 ; body brought to, 207.
Damietta, Francis at, 151, 152.
Decretal epistles, 21.
Dominic, St., in Rome, 137, 144 ;
present at Chapter of Mats, 147,
149 ; in Rome, 165 ; his parting
from Francis, 166 ; death, ib.
Donation of Constantine, 21.
Duke of Athens, Walter, 229.
Egidio, Brother, 95, 97, 98, 101,
119, 151.
Elias, Brother, 67, 74; joins the
Order, 130, 133, 134, 138; sent
to Holy Land, 142; news from,
150; wins Csesar of Speyer,
146, 147; at St. Jean d'Acre,
151 ; returns with Francis, 155 ;
made Minister-General, 166; in
power, 167 ; loses new Rule, ib. ;
at Monte Colombo, 168 ; with
Francis at Fpligno, 184, 185 ; at
Siena, 190; ^during last illness
of Francis, 195, 196, 199 ;
treatment of " Testament," 203 ;
present at breaking of bread,
205 ; preparations for funeral
of Francis, 206 ; letter after
death of Francis, 207, 208 ;
church planned by, 208, 209,
210 ; building of San Francesco,
211-213, 215 ; concealment of
saint's body, 217; under a cloud,
218 ; restored to favour, ib. ;
churches resumed, ib. ; sets
fresco-painters to work, 220.
Eugenius III., Pope, 22.
Filipo of Campello, Brother,
helps Elias in planning and
building San Francesco, 212,
213, 215.
Fioretti, the, 113.
Fiume, Ortolana dei, 121, 127.
Florence, 30 ; Ugolino and Francis
at, 142, 143; frescoes by Giotto
at, 232, 233 ; by Ghirlandajo at,
235-
Foligno, 45, 68, 69, 125, 141 ; Fran-
cis and Elias at, 184, 190.
Francis, 27, 30, 34, 35, 40 ; birth
of, 48; parentage of, 48, 49 ;
baptism of, 55 ; " Francesco,"
ib. ; lessons learned from Pica
by_i 56, 57 ; education in San
Giorgio, 57, 58 ; fastidious-
ness, 58-60; as citizen, 62-65;
prisoner in Perugia, 65, 66 ;
release, 66 ; illness, 68, 69 ;
visions, 71, 72 ; conversion, 72-
76; amongst the lepers, 77, 78;
at St. Peter's, 79; the crucifix
of San Damiano, 80, 81 ; re-
nunciation, 84, 85 ; at the Be-
nedictine Monastery, 87 ; at
Gubbio, ib. ; Cesena, 88, 89 ;
return to San Damiano, 89 ; re-
storation of churches, 89, 92;
commissioned to preach, 92, 93 ;
influence in Assisi, 94, 95 ; first
followers, 95 ; Gospel Rule,
96, 97 ; first settlement, 98 ;
missions to March of Ancona
and Tuscany, ib. ; crisis, 99,
lop; forbidden to preach, 100;
mission to Tuscany, 101-103 ;
goes to Rome with followers.
INDEX 245
103-105; interviews with Inno- 187; at Siena, 189, 190; returns to
cent III., 105-108; authority to Assist, 100-192; makes peace at
preach granted, 108 ; return Assisi, 192, 193; protracted illness,
journey, 109; at Orte, no, in; 194-206; distress about future of
Rivo Torto, 111-115; settle- Order, 195, 196; letter to Order,
ment at the Portiuncula, 115, 195-198; incidents of illness at
116; the Carceri, 117, 118; in- Vescovado, 198-201; leaves for
crease of followers, 119, 120; Santa Maria degli Angeli, 201 ;
Clare's adhesion, 121-127 ; fail- blesses Assisi, 202 ; at Infirmary
ure of first foreign mission, Hut, ib. ; his Testament, 203,
129; Monte Alverna granted 804; Jacopa dei Settisoli visits,
to, 130, 131; failure of second 204, 205; breaking of bread, 205 ;
foreign mission, 131, 132; at last hours, 206; body borne to
Cannara and Bevagna, 134, 135; San Giorgio, 206, 207; halt at
sermon to birds, ib., ib. ; at San Damiano, 207; canonised by
Monte Alverna, 135, 136; itine- Pope Gregory IX., 213, 214;
rary, 136; "God's Minstrels," body transferred to San Fran-
136, 137 ; in Perugia, 137 ; cesco, 216, 217 ; earliest por-
Cardinal Ugolino and, 137-139; traits of, 220-223; frescoes of
the Pardon, 139, 140; Cardinal life, 227, 228, 233-235 ; allegories
Ugolino at the Portiuncula, of work, 229-232.
141 ; forbidden to go to France, Fratini, Father, 229.
143 ; preaches before Pope Frederick, Barbarossa, 22, 25, 28,
Honorius III., 144 ; Dominic 31, 47.
and, 144, 145; at Subiaco, 145, Frederick II., 31, 60, 61, 114, 150.
146 ; murmurs at Chapter of
1218, 147-149 ; Dominic at
Chapter, ib., ib.; missions of Gaddi, Taddeo, 229.
1219, 150, 151; goes to Holy Garofalo, 236.
Land, 151 ; innovations in Giorgio, San, school in church of,
Order, 152-155; returns, 155 ; at 46, 57, 81 ; Francis preaches in,
Bologna, 156, 157 ; at Camaldoli 93,121; body of Francis borne
with Ugolino, 157, 158 ; accepts to, 206, 207; crowds at, 208,
Ugolino as Protector of Order, 209 ; ceremonial at, 213.
158, 159; New Rule, 158-164; Giotto, 218; his work at San
resignation, 161 ; Rule for Ter- Francesco, 226-232 ; at Santa
tiaries, 164, 165 ; parting from Croce in Florence, 232, 233.
Dominic, 166; disappearance of Giunta Pisano, 220-222.
Rule, 167 ; at Monte Colombo, Gozzoli, Benozzo, frescoes by,
167, 168 ; answer to malcontents, 233, 234.
168 ; revolution of Order by Greccio, John of, 174 ; Francis
Ugolino, 168-172 ; in Rome, 173, at, 189.
174; at Lateran with Rule of Gregory of Naples, Brother, 154,
1223,16.; returns to Monte Co- 156.
lombo, 174 ; his Prsesepio, 174, Gregory I., Pope, 8, 10.
175 ; mission sent to England, Gregory VII., Pope, 18-20.
176; leaves for Monte Alverna, Gregory VIII., Pope, 27.
ib. ; journey thither, 177, 178; Gregory IX., Pope, Ugolino
fasting and prayer, 179, 180 ; became, 210; Elias and, 211;
Benediction of Brother Leo, builds chapel at Subiaco, 212 ;
180 ; the stigmata, 181 ; his Bull regarding church of San
adieu to Monte Alverna, 182; Francesco, 213; Francis ca-
return to Santa Maria degli nonised by, 213, 214; appoints
Angeli, 183, 184 ; Umbrian mis- new church Metropolitan of
sion and illness, 184; visit to San Order, 215; legates and gifts
Damiano and Canticle of the from, 216,217; Bull, Quo Elon-
Sun, 185-187; at Rieti, 187-189; gati, by, 211.
preaching in the Valley of Rieti, Gubbio, Francis at, 87, 190.
246
INDEX
Guelfucci, Pacifica dei, 124, 127.
Guiscard, Robert, 20.
Hadrian IV., Pope, 22, 24, 25.
Henry III., Emperor, 17, 25
Henry IV., Emperor, 20.
Henry VI., Emperor, 27-30.
Honorius III., Pope, at Perugia,
I 37" I 39 i grants Francis the
"Pardon," 139, 140; at Rieti,
150; in Viterbo, 153; in Orvieto,
158 ; Francis and, 158, 159 ;
Rule of 1223 sanctioned by,
173; at Rieti, 185.
Hugo, bishop of Assisi, 45.
Illuminate, Brother, 182.
Innocent III., Pope, n, 29-35, 61,
70, 106-108, no, 125, 137.
Innocent IV., Pope, at Assisi, 224.
Jacopa dei Settisoli visits Francis,
202, 203.
Jacques de Vitry, 137, 153.
Jerome, St., 6-.
ohn XII., Pope, 16.
Legnano, battle of, 46.
Lempp, Dr., Biographical Study
of Brother Elias by, 74.
Leo, Brother, 119, 130, 134,
140 ; benediction written by
Francis for, 180-182, 192, 198-
200, 205 ; busy with Mirror of
Perfection, 210 ; opposed to
Elias, 210, 211 ; Celano's Life
opposed to Mirror, 214, 215.
Leo, Pope, 8, 16.
Lorenzetti, 225, 226.
Lothaire, Emperor, 8.
Louis, King, of France, portrait
of, 233.
Lucca, 30.
Lucius II., Pope, 22.
Lucius III., Pope, 27, 54.
Maccabeo, Abbot, 115, 117, 118,
126.
Majano, Benedetto da, 235.
Map, Bishop Walter, 53, 54.
Maria Maggiore, Santa, Piazza of,
84; church of, old bell in, 78,
inscription on apse of, 94.
Martini, Simone, 229.
Martino, Brother, 229.
Masseo, Brother, 182, 192.
Matilda, Countess, 31, 45.
Matthew, Brother, 154.
Maximian, Emperor, 41.
Milan, 32. f
Mirror of Perfection, 198, 210, 214,
215.
Mojano, Porta, 38, 124, 207.
Monastery, Benedictine, 44, 71,
87, 115, 117, 126, 127.
Montefalco, frescoes at, 234, 235.
Montefeltro, castle of, Francis at,
130.
Morocco, mission to, 151.
Muro, Giovanni da, 226, 228, 231.
Naples, 34.
Narni, 61.
Nicholas II., Pope, 18.
Nicholas, St., church of, 96, 97.
Nocera, 64, 190, 191, 199.
Norcia, 6.
Odo, Count, 33.
Orte, Francis at, no, in.
Orvieto, Honorius and Francis at,
158, 234.
Otho of Saxony, 16, 17, 25, 34,
113-
Pacifico, Brother, 136, 137, 142;
sent to France, 143, 144, 176,
187.
Palladio, 37.
Paolo, St. Clare taken to San, 124.
Parenti, Giovanni, made minister-
general, 210; Elias and, 211,
216; re-elected, 218.
Patarins, the, 32, 106.
Perugia, 30, 45, 64-66, 68, 94 ; In-
nocent at, 137 ; Honorius at, ib.,
139, 141.
Peter of Assisi, 95.
Pica, Madonna, 40, 49, 50, 56-58,
63, 7L 79, 83. 90, 91-
Pietro, San, church of, 45, 78.
Poggio Buscone, Francis at, 189.
Portiuncula, the, 56, 57, 78 ; leper
settlements near, 89, 91; Francis
at, 98, 103 ; granted to Francis,
115; settlement at, 115, 116;
Clare received at, 124, 129, 131,
153-
INDEX
247
Ravenna, 44.
Rieti, Honorius at, 185 ; Francii
at, 187-189.
Rivo Torto, first Franciscan
settlement at, 111-115.
Robbia, Andrea delta, 235.
Romagna, 29, 88.
Romualdo, San, at Camaldoli,
Francis and Ugolino at, 157,
158.
Rufino, Brother, 119, 192.
Rufino, San, 39 ; church of, 45, 55.
Sabatier, M., 49, 113, 120, 123, 138,
163, 164, 175.
St. Jean d'Acre, 151, 155.
Salvatore, San, delle Pareti, 124.
Sant' Eleuterio, Francis at, 189.
Sasso Rosso, castle of, 55, 71, 121,
191.
Savino, San, 40, 41 ; church of, 45.
Sciffi, Favorino degli, 65, 121, 122,
126.
Siegfried, 42.
Siena, Francis at, 189.
Spadalunga, 87.
Spagna, Lo, 235, 236.
Spoleto, 29, 30, 43-45, 60, 69, 71.
Stacia, Pietro, 156.
Stigmata, the, 181.
Subasio, Monte, 36, 43, 44, 69, 71,
86, 87, in, 115, 117, 132, 135,
234-
Subiaco, Francis at, 145 ; portrait
at, 145, 146; churches at, 212.
Sylvestro, Brother, 96, 119, 123,
182.
Tertiaries, Rule for the, 164, 165.
Tescio, the river, 115.
Thrasymene, Lake, Lent at, 130.
Topino, the river, 115, 135, 190.
Totila, 42.
Tusculum, 28, 29.
Ugolino, Cardinal,i20,i37 ; patron
of Order, 138, 139; at Whitsun-
tide Chapter, 140, 141 ; at Flor-
ence, 142, 143 ; Dominic and,
144 ; at Chapter of Mats, 147-
149 ; builds chapel at Subiaco,
145 ; gradual victory over Fran-
cis, 150-158 ; his friendship for
Clare, 154 ; at Bologna, 156 ; at
Camaldoli with Francis, 157,
158 ; and new Rule, 163 ; con-
cerned with Mendicant Orders,
165 ; revolution of Order by,
166-172, 173 ; letter to Francis
from, 185 ; management of
Francis, 196 ; became Pope
Gregory IX., 210.
Umbria, 6, 35-37, 39, 43, 44, 46, 119,
141, 184.
Urban III., Pope, 27.
Venice, Peace of, 25, 26 ; markets
at, 50; Francis at, 155.
Venustiano, the Prefect, 40, 41.
Verona, 27.
Viterbo, 32, 33, 80, 153, 159.
Vittorino, San, 39.
Waldensians, the, 52-55.
Waldo, Peter, n ; account of, 50-
54.76-
Wesley, John, 54.
Ziani, Sebastian, 26.
Zurburan, 236, 237.
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