<
FROM ST. FRANCIS TO DANTE.
BAPTISTERY OF PARMA
WITH SALIMBENE'S HOUSE
[See page xvi.J
FROM
ST. FRANCIS TO DANTE
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHRONICLE OP THE
FRANCISCAN SALIMBENE J
(1221-1288)
WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM OTHER
MEDIEVAL SOURCES.
BY
G. G. COULTON, M.A.
(EMtion,
REVISED AND ENLARGED
" Whan alle tresores aren tried, trewtJie is the best."
(PIERS PLOWMAN).
DAVID NUTT, 57, LONG ACRE.
1907.
BARNICOTT AND PEARCE
PRINTERS
TO
MV FATHER, MY MOTHER,
AND MY WIFE.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
THE present edition contains a considerable amount of fresh
matter from Salimbene's chronicle, omitted from the first mainly
for the insufficient reason that I had already published it else-
where. The notes and appendices have been even more extended,
especially on points where different critics seemed to think the
evidence inadequate.
Apart from the more obvious advantages of a second edition,
an author must always welcome the further opportunity of ex-
plaining himself ; especially when he has struck for a definite
cause and provoked hard knocks in return. To most of my re-
viewers I owe hearty thanks, and certainly not least to a Guardian
critic, whose evident disagreement with me on important points
did not prevent him from giving me credit for an honest attempt
to describe the facts as they appeared to one pair of eyes. In
that recognition an author finds his real reward : after all, even
Goethe was content to say, " I can promise to be sincere, but not
to be impartial."* Genuine impartiality is one of the rarest of
virtues, though there have always been plenty of authors who
shirk thorny questions, or who concede points to the weaker side
with the cheap generosity which impels a jury to find for a needy
plaintiff against a rich man. Never, perhaps, was this kind of
impartiality so common as at present, when (to quote a recent
witty writer) " the fashion is a Roman Catholic frame of mind
with an agnostic conscience : you get the medieval picturesqueness
of the one with the modern conveniences of the other." Even
the Editors of the Cambridge Modern History, fearing more the
* Goethe's Maxims and Reflections, translated by T. Bailey Saundera, p. 91.
viii Preface to Second Edition.
suspicion of partiality than the certainty of an error, have
allowed two contributors to contradict each other almost categor-
ically, within a few pages, on one of the most important points
in the first volume * Direct references to authorities are for-
bidden by the plan of the History : there is, of course, nothing
to warn the ordinary reader how far one of the two contributors
surpasses the other in originality and depth of research ; and it
is practically left to him to accept whichever of the two state-
ments fits in best with his preconceived opinions. We cannot
imagine a great co-operative work on Natural Science written
nowadays on these principles ; and this alone would go far to
account for the present unjust neglect of history by readers of
an exact turn of mind. Yet there is a further reason also ; for
to shirk disputed questions is to neglect matters of the deepest
interest : and the elaborate dulness of many official histories is
a libel on the many-coloured web of human life.
Eleven years ago, finding it impossible to get from the accredited
text-books satisfactory information on points which I had long
studied in a desultory way, I began systematic work for myself
within a narrow area, and soon found how little the original
documents are really studied, and how much one historian is
content to take at second-hand from another. In cases like this,
anything that can be done to sweep away ancient cobwebs is a
real gain. I knew that I should make mistakes, as even officialism
is far from infallible, and we have recently seen a reviewer fill
three and a half quarto columns with the slips made by one of
our most dignified professors in a single octavo volume. I knew
also that, however correct my facts, the very effort to expose
widely-accredited fallacies would give a certain want of perspec-
tive to my work. But, without for a moment supposing that this
book would by itself give anything like a complete picture of
medieval life, I yet believed that our forefathers' "common
* Cambridge Modern History, vol. i, p. 632 : cf. 660, 672, 674-6.
Preface to Second Edition. ix
thoughts about common things " would never really become in-
telligible without informal and frankly personal studies of this
kind ; and the public reception has now strengthened this belief.
I have, however, departed even more from official usage in
another matter the direct criticism of many misstatements
which have gained currency by reaction from the equally one-
sided Protestantism of a century ago, more especially through
the writings of Abbot Gasquet. While it is to the direct in-
terest of all Roman Catholic clergy, and of many High Church-
men, to misread certain facts of history, there are comparatively
few who have the same official excuse for equal vigilance and
persistence on the other side. The extreme dread of partiality,
into which modern literature has swung from the still worse
extreme of blind partisanship, restrains first-rate historians from
speaking with sufficient plainness, even in the few cases where
they have found time to convince themselves, by carefully verify-
ing his references, of an author's inaccuracy. So long, therefore,
as the most authoritative writers salve their consciences by merely
describing certain books as able pleas from the Roman Catholic
point of view, the public will never grasp what this indulgent
phrase really means. Moreover, the euphemism itself would seem
to imply a very low view both of history and of religion. No
man of science would content himself with such equivocal language
in the face of systematic distortions and suppressions of evidence,
however personally respectable the literary offender might be.
For it is absolutely necessary here to separate the personal and
the literary questions as much as possible. The fact that an
author is sincerely attached to a particular church, in which he
also holds a high official position, is thoroughly honourable to him
personally ; but it aggravates the ill effect of his interested mis-
statements. Not charity, but cynicism underlies the plea which
is constantly implied, if not expressed, that certain religious
beliefs should be allowed wide licence in the treatment of historical
x Preface to Second Edition.
facts that a writer's public falsehoods may be considered an
almost inseparable accident of his private creed, a superfetation
of his excessive piety. No bitterer condemnation could be
imagined than this contemptuous leniency which most men extend
to a priest's misstatement in the name of Christian Truth.
Moreover, we all know Roman Catholics whose theory and
practice alike contradict this plea. It was Lord Acton who said,
after years of struggle against official distortions of history,
" the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never to
debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude,
but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives,
and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty
which history has the power to inflict on wrong." Nor did
Lord Acton stand alone here : for cultivated laymen show an
increasing repugnance to the crooked historical methods which
are still only too popular in ecclesiastical circles ; and certain
apologists pay already to truth at least the unwilling homage of
anonymity. Legends, which once stalked boldly abroad, are
fain to lurk now in unsigned articles for the Church Times, or
to creep into corners of the Athenceum while the editor nods, or
to herd with other ancient prejudices in the Saturday Review.
Yet, to clear the ground thoroughly, it is necessary sometimes
to pursue them even into this last ditch, and to show the public
how, in spite of the high general tone of our periodical literature,
the editorial we must inevitably cover some creatures which do
well become so old a coat. When the Saturday proclaims, with
its traditional wealth of epithet, that our writings lack the odour
of sanctity, we may profitably point out that there have always
been two separate voices on that journal. As in the days of the
Stephens and J. B. Green, it still doubtless owes its real flavour
to witty latitudinarians, and only keeps a few vrais croyants on
the premises to do the necessary backbiting.
I realise as clearly, perhaps, as some of my critics, how inade-
Preface to Second Edition. xi
quate and unsatisfactory mere negative work must necessarily be.
But, having once liberated my soul by plainly exposing the dis-
like felt by a certain school of historians and critics for the open
discussion of actual medieval documents, I hope presently to
pass on to a more constructive picture of social life in the past.
Yet it may still be doubted whether any history of the Middle
Ages can at present avoid controversy without falling into super-
ficiality : and the blame of these conditions lies partly with the
want of proper organization at our universities, though there are
recent signs of a real awakening. All history is a chain which
may break at any point unless each link has been forged with
separate care. We cannot understand our place in the modern
world without comprehending the French Revolution and the
Reformation : nor can we understand these without an accurate
conception of the ancien regime which each replaced. For
instance (to state the problem which the Cambridge History
sometimes obscures), were the clergy, from whom the laity
revolted four hundred years ago, such as would be tolerated by
any civilized country of to-day ? The question is far from in-
soluble ; it may almost be said that judgment has already gone by
default, since Dr. Lea's Sacerdotal Celibacy has held the field
for forty years. Certainly, if it were made worth their while,
one or two able men could in a few years work through the
evidence, and bring the public to the same rough agreement as
has long been reached on many subjects once as contentious as
this. Dozens of important questions similarly await a solution
before any real history of medieval life can be written ; and, in
default of such organized study as we have long seen in physical
science, most of this necessary foundation-work will continue to
be done slowly and fitfully by volunteers, amateurs, and con-
troversialists, while the universities are raising enormous monu-
ments on the quicksands of our present uncertainties. The
forthcoming Cambridge Medieval History cannot possibly come
xii Preface to Second Edition.
near to finality, even in the limited sense in which that word can
ever be rightly used. Large numbers of vital documents are
still unprinted : many even of the printed volumes are not yet
digested, and generations of acute controversy are likely to elapse
before a real historian of the Middle Ages could find such
materials as Gibbon found ready to his hand. It is pathetic to
see how much of professional historiography is still a mere pour-
ing of old wine into new bottles, and to think that Carlyle wrote
half a century ago " After interpreting the Greeks and Romans
for a thousand years, let us now try our own a little. .. . How clear
this has been to myself a long while ! Not one soul, I believe,
has yet taken it into him. Universities founded by "monk ages"
are not fit at all for this age. . . . What all want to know is
the condition of our fellow men ; and, strange to say, it is the
thing of all least understood, or to be understood as matters go."*
The condemnation of the universities is, of course, couched in
terms of Carlylean exaggeration : but it can scarcely be denied
that the official schools are still tempted through official
timidity, or natural laziness, or mere muddle to neglect those
questions of past history which are indeed most contentious, but
which go nearest to the roots of human life.
Fronde's "Early Life of Thomas Carlyle" (1891), vol. ii, pp. 16, 80.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
THERE are many nowadays, and of the best among us, who
still halt between the medieval and the modern ideals. In
their just dislike of much that is blameworthy in the present,
they are often tempted to imagine Religion as a lamp glimmeriDg
in the far depths of the past, dimmer and dimmer to human
eyes as the world moves onward down the ages. At other
times, with the healthy instinct of life, they cling to the more
hopeful conception of Faith as a sacred flame kindled from
torch to torch in the hands of advancing humanity varying
and dividing as it passes on, yet always essentially the same
broadening over the earth to satisfy man's wider needs, instead
of fading away in proportion as God multiplies the souls that
need it.
These two ideals are mutually exclusive, and the choice is
plain if historians would write plainly. Medieval history has
been too exclusively given over to the poet, the romancer, and
the ecclesiastic, who by their very profession are more or less
conscious apologists. Yet we cannot understand the present
until we face the past without fear or prejudice. The thirteenth
century the golden age of the old ideal is on the one hand
near enough for close and accurate observation, while it is
sufficiently distant to afford the wide angle needed for our
survey.
This present study lays no claim to impartiality in one
sense, for I cannot affect to doubt which is the higher of the
two ideals. At the same time, when I first fell in love with the
Middle Ages, thirty years ago, it was as most people begin to
love them, through Chaucer and the splendid relics of Gothic
art. An inclination, at first merely aesthetic, has widened and
deepened with the growing conviction that the key to most
xiv Preface to First Edition.
modern problems is to be found in the so-called Ages of Faith.
Even here, where the very conception of my work compels me
to run counter to many cherished convictions, I have honestly
tried to avoid doubtful statements or exaggerations, and am
ready to guarantee this by the only pledge in my power by an
offer which I have already made (in substance) several times in
vain. Many writers disparage modern civilization in comparison
with what seems to me a purely imaginary past. If any one
of these will now take me at my word, I will willingly accept
his severest criticisms to the extent of thirty-two octavo pages,
restrict my reply within the same limit, and publish the whole
at my own expense without further comment. If my content-
ions are false, I am thus undertaking to offer every facility for
my own exposure.
I must here record my special thanks to Prof. L. Cledat
of Lyons, and Geheimrath-Prof. O. Holder-Egger of Berlin.
The former, who had once projected a complete edition of
Salimbene, generously put his very extensive collations at my
service : and the latter, who has at last published the Chronicle
with a perfection of scholarly apparatus which leaves nothing
to be desired, has not only met my enquiries with the most
ungrudging courtesy, but has kindly supplied me with advance
sheets of his great work.
G. G. COULTON.
EASTBOURNE, July, 1906.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
i. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BROTHER SALIMBENE . 1
ii. PARENTAGE AND BOYHOOD . . . .12
in. THE GREAT ALLELUIA . . . .21
iv. CONVERSION . . . . . .38
v. A WICKED WORLD . . . . .49
vi. CLOISTER LIFE . . . . .62
vn. FRATE ELIA . . . . .76
viii. THE BITTER CRY OF A SUBJECT FRIAR . . 89
ix. CONVENT FRIENDSHIPS . . . .98
x. THE SIEGE OF PARMA . . . .115
xi. THE GUELFS VICTORIOUS . . . .124
xn. WANDERJAHRE ..... 134
xin. ABBOT JOACHIM'S THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT . . 150
xiv. FURTHER WANDERINGS . . . .167
xv. A BISHOP'S CONSCIENCE . . . .176
xvi. SETTLING DOWN . . . . .185
xvn. TAKING IN SAIL ..... 201
xvin. FRESH STORMS ..... 213
xix. LAST DAYS ...... 227
xx. THE PRINCES OF THE WORLD . . . 239
xxi. NEITHER FISH NOR FLESH .... 257
xxii. THE PRINCES OF THE CHURCH . . . 273
xxin. CLERGY AND PEOPLE ..... 292
xxiv. FAITH ...... 305
xxv. BELIEVING AND TREMBLING . . . .316
xxvi. THE SALT AND ITS SAVOUB .... 334
xxvn. CONCLUSION ...... 349
APPENDICES . . . . . . . 355
INDEX .... 435
DESCRIPTION OF FRONTISPIECE.
THE frontispiece (for kind permission to use which I have to thank
Messrs. Caasell and Co. ), shows the Baptistery which was the special
glory of Parma. Salimbene tells us (585) " in the year 1196 it was
begun ; and my father (as I have heard from his lips) laid stones in
its foundation for a memorial and a sign of good remembrance to
posterity : for there was naught (nulla interposilio) between the
Baptistery and my house." This definitely marks the site of
Salimbene's house as the corner building on the spectator's right
hand, since the left-hand corner house does not stand near enough to
satisfy what he tells us in another place, of his mother's fear lest
the earthquake should bring the Baptistery down upon their heads.
The picture is taken from a spot close by the west front of the
Cathedral ; opposite the Baptistery (and therefore behind the spec-
tator to the right) stands the Bishop's palace. These three buildings,
which stand thus round the head of the Piazza Vecchia, were all in
course of construction during the chronicler's lifetime.
Very many of the houses in Parma keep their 13th century walls
under the later stucco : and it is quite possible that the shell of our
chronicler's house is still there. The Baptistery was first used in
1216, though not actually finished until 1270 : the delay was
occasioned by Ezzelino's domination of Verona, which stopped the
supplies of that delicate pink-and-white Verona marble of which the
building was made. (Salimbene p. 519 : Affo. i.v, 3).
CHAPTER I.
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene.
the most remarkable autobiography of the Middle
I Ages is only now beginning to take its proper place in
history. Inaccessible until lately even to most medieval scholars,
it is now at last being published in its entirety under the
admirable editorship of Prof. Holder-Egger, in the Monumenta
Germanics (Vol. xxxii, Scriptores). An edition was indeed
published in 1857 at Parma : but this was printed from an
imperfect transcript, mutilated in deference to ecclesiastical
susceptibilities. The original MS., after many vicissitudes, had
been bought into the Vatican library in order to render a
complete publication impossible ; and it was only thrown open to
students, with the rest of the Vatican treasures, by the liberality
of the late Pope Leo XIII. Even now, the complete Salimbene
will never be read ; for many sheets have been cut out of the
MS., and parts of others erased, by certain scandalized readers
of long ago : l but, in the shape in which we have him at last,
he is the most precious existing authority for the ordinary life of
Catholic folk at the period which by common consent marks the
high-water line of the Middle Ages.
There have been few more brilliant victories in history than
those of St. Francis, and few more pathetic failures. The very
qualities which put him in a class by himself, and command
admiration even from his least sympathetic critics, foredoomed
his ideal to a fall as startling as its rise. The generation which
followed him was at least as far from fulfilling his hopes as the
First Empire was from realizing the ideal of 1789. In each case,
an impulse was given which shook Europe to its foundations,
and still vibrates down the ages. But in each case there was
something of necessary blindness in the passionate concentration
of the original idea ; so that the movement soon took quite a
different direction, and liberated quite different forces, from
those which had been comtemplated by the men who threw their
whole soul into the first blow. In Dante's lifetime, not a century
2 From St. Francis to Dante.
after St. Francis's death, friars were burned alive by their
brother friars for no worse fault than obstinate devotion to the
strict Rule of St. Francis. The Saint was the especial Apostle
of Poverty : yet that century of steadily-growing wealth and
luxury which stirred Cacciaguida's gall so deeply (Par. xv. 97
foil.) coincided precisely with the century of first and purest
Franciscan activity : especially if we read the poet in the light
of contemporary chroniclers, who date the change from "the
days of Frederick II." St. Francis was born in that age of
Bellincion Berti to which Dante looked back as so simple, so
sober, and so chaste ; and if he had come back to earth on the
centenary of his death, he would have found himself "in the
days of Sardanapalus." Making all allowance for Dante's
bitterness, and for his characteristically medieval praise of past
times at the expense of the present, still we cannot doubt that
the change was real and far-reaching. It was in Dante's life-
time, for instance, that the custom of buying Oriental slaves
grew up, with other similar luxuries which the friars were quite
powerless to banish, even when they did not themselves set the
example. 2
Again, Innocent III had seen in a vision St. Francis propping
the falling Church : yet this hope, too, was partly belied by the
facts of later history. The friars, it is true, seemed for a time
to have entirely checked the growing spirit of antisacerdotalism ;
but they brought among the clergy themselves a ferment of free
thought which only found its proper outlet at the Reformation ;
just as the Oxford movement, though initiated as a protest not
against the Low Church but against Liberalism, has worked in
the long run for Liberalism within our own communion. The
Church, in the narrower sense in which Innocent and Francis
understood the word, was partly propped, but also seriously
shaken, by the thrust of the Franciscan buttress.
Yet the true kernel of St. Francis's teaching has lived and
grown : he has given an undying impulse to the world's spiritual
life. He showed that a man need not leave the world to live the
highest life that indeed he can scarcely live the highest life
except in the world and, in spite of occasional hesitation on
the Saint's own part, in spite of the blindness of many of his
most devoted successors, this is a lesson which men have
never since forgotten. In this at least, the twentieth century
is more Franciscan than the thirteenth ; that you may find a
true saint in cricketing flannels or at a theatre, or selling you a
pennyworth of biscuits without any airs whatever behind the
counter of a village shop. Society in general has grown sufficiently
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene. 3
decent to render the retirement into monastic life almost or quite
unnecessary : and therefore, though there has been no age in
which monks might so easily live in undisturbed retirement as in
our own (if indeed they would seek such retirement, and avoid
worldly politics), yet monastic vocations among grown-up men
and women are extremely rare even in Roman Catholic countries.
The good man seldom dreams of cutting himself off from society :
and both he and society find themselves the better for it.
The persistence with which most English writers on St. Francis
ring the changes on M. Sabatier's admirable biography without
refreshing themselves at original sources is apt to create a very
artificial atmosphere. Indeed, M. Sabatier himself seems at
times to forget the essential impracticability of the strict
Franciscan ideal. When he writes that there was something
" which all but made of the Franciscans the leaven of a quite
new civilization " in " the thought . . that the return of the
Spirit of Poverty to dwell on the earth should be the signal for
a complete restoration of the human race" (Sacrum Commercium,
p. 8) he himself would probably frankly confess, on second
thoughts, that his enthusiasm has carried him too far. The idea
of a formal and absolute renunciation of property was from the
first as essentially incapable of regenerating the world as the
idea of formal celibacy was of settling "the social problem."
It was simply a religious charge of the Light Brigade magnifi-
cent in its moral effect, eternally inspiring within its own limits,
but vitiated by a terrible miscalculation of the opposing forces.
It had no more effect on the growing luxury of the 13th century
than had the Six Hundred on the solid Russian army. Military
suicide is in the long run as fatal to victory in the Holy War as
in any other : and many of the worst treasons to the Franciscan
spirit may be traced directly to the Saint's own exaggerations.
T he Franciscan legend in England seems in danger of becoming
almost as artificial as the Napoleonic legend in France : the
strain of praise is pitched higher and higher by each successive
writer, till it comes very near to the falsetto of cant. The time
seems almost at hand when those who cared for the Saint before
M. Sabatier's Life was published will feel like those who cared
for art before the coming of JEstheticism. The cycle of early
Franciscan legends is studied almost as the Bible was two hundred
years ago as a Scripture rather desecrated than honoured by
illustration from outside sources. Miss Macdonell's Sons of
Francis, in spite of the lacunae in her scholarship, is, however, a
real attempt to illustrate the Saint's life by those of some of his
nearest companions and most distinguished followers. But even
4 From St. Francis to Dante.
she moves almost altogether in the plane of exceptional mani-
festations, and lacks the deeper knowledge of contemporary
manners which is necessary for a comprehension of the average
friar. Yet it is in fact almost as important to understand the
average friar as to understand St. Francis himself, if we would
realize the 13th century. And though Salimbene himself cannot
be called an average friar he was in many ways far above the
ordinary yet there is no other single book in which the ordinary
friar, and the world on which he looked out, may so well be
studied.
The author's time and circumstances were among the most
favourable that could possibly be conceived for an autobiographer.
He was a citizen of one of the busiest cities of Italy during in-
comparably the most stirring period of its history. A Franciscan
of the second generation, overlapping St. Francis by five years
and Dante by twenty-five, he knew personally many of the fore-
most figures in Franciscan and Dantesque history : and the course
of his long and wandering life brought him into contact with
many real saints, and still more picturesque sinners, whom he
describes with the most impartial interest. His naturally obser-
vant and sympathetic mind had been ripened, when he wrote, by
forty years' work in the busiest, most popular, most enterprising
religious order that ever existed :
" Lo, goode men, a five, and eek a frere
Wol falle in every dyshe and mateere."
And, rarest and most precious circumstance of all, he is among
the frankest of autobiographers, not so much composing as
thinking aloud. Like Pepys, whom he resembles so closely in
other ways, he wrote with small thought for posterity : the Chron-
icle was apparently designed at first for the edification of his dear
niece, a nun of his own order. As he tells us (p. 187 ), " Moreover,
in writing divers chronicles I have used a simple and intelligible
style, that my niece for whom I wrote might understand as she
read ; nor have I been anxious and troubled about ornaments of
words, but only about the truth of my story. For my niece
Agnes is my brother's daughter, who, having come to her fifteenth
year, entered the order of St. Clare, and continues in the service
of Jesus Christ even to this present day, A.D. 1284, wherein I
write these words. Now this Sister Agnes, my niece, had an
excellent understanding in Scripture, and a good understanding
and memory, together with a delightful tongue and ready of
speech, so that it might be said of her, not without reason, ' Grace
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene. 5
is poured abroad in thy lips, therefore hath God blessed thee for
ever.' " 3 We have here, therefore in Montaigne's words, " un livre
de bonne foy" If some of the stories which the grey-headed friar
chronicles for the edification of his aristocratic and cultured
niece seem to us a trifle full-flavoured, we must remember that
this was thoroughly characteristic of the Ages of Faith. After
all, Madame Eglantine and her two fellow-nuns heard worse still
on their pious journey to Canterbury : and the most classical
educational writer of the Middle Ages, the Knight of La Tour
Landry, records even stranger tales than Chaucer's for the instruc-
tion of his two motherless daughters. If, again, the friar's very
plain-spoken criticisms of matters ecclesiastical may startle
those who have indeed read their Dante, but who have been
taught, perhaps, that Dante writes with peculiar bitterness as
a disappointed man, this is only because many of the most
important facts of thirteenth century history have never in
modern times been fairly laid before the public. Nobody could
gather from even the most candid of modern ecclesiastical
historians that the crowning period of the Middle Ages seemed,
to those who lived in it, almost hopelessly out of joint. The
most pious, the most orthodox, the bravest men of the thirteenth
century write as unwilling dwellers in the tents of Kedar. To
them, their own world, whether before or after the coming of the
Friars, was the mere dregs of the good old world of the past :
and they expected God's final vengeance in the near future.
Herein lies one of the principal, though hitherto imperfectly
recognized, causes of the strange unprogressiveness of the Middle
Ages : the strongest minds were hopelessly oppressed by the
sight of the crying evils around them, and by the want of
histories to teach them how, barbarous as the present was in so
many ways, it yet marked a real improvement on the past.
The modern historian, therefore, cannot be too thankful for
these memoirs, written without pose or effort, to interest his
favourite niece, by a man who had looked sympathetically on
many sides of the world in which St. Francis and Dante lived
and worked. The learned Jesuit Michael, sadly as he is shocked
by our author in many ways, cannot deny that this book presents
a mirror of the times, and quotes with approval the verdict of
Dove : " His character stands out in striking completeness of
modelling by the side of the bas-reliefs of other medieval
authors.' 4 The dryness of the ordinary medieval chronicler,
his apparent unconsciousness of any human interest beyond
the baldest facts, is often exasperating : or again, when he
betrays real interest, it is too often at the expense of fact. Not.
6 From St. Francis to Dante.
only lives of saints, but whole histories, were written avowedly
by direct angelic revelation, pure from all taint of earthly
documents. 6 But, fortunately for us, Salimbene had more modern
notions of the historian's duty. With him, fact comes first,
and even edification takes a subordinate place. "Whereas I
may seem sometimes to digress from the matter in hand," he
says, " it must be forgiven me. I cannot tell my stories otherwise
than as they came about in very deed, and as I saw with mine
own eyes in the days of the Emperor Frederick II ; yea, and
many years after his death, even unto our own days wherein I
write these words, in the year of our Lord 1284 " (185). Later
on (217) he gives us further evidence of his anxiety to learn
the exact truth of the stories current in his own day : and the
passage is interesting also as exemplifying the difficulties which
ordinary medieval writers experienced in producing even a
single copy of their work. He is speaking of a book of his, which
unfortunately has not survived : " The chronicle beginning
* Octavianus C&sar Augustus, etc.J which I wrote in the convent
of Ferrara in the year 1250 ; the style of which chronicle I
gathered from divers writings, and continued it as far as to the
story of the Lombards. Afterwards I slackened my quill, and
ceased to write upon that chronicle, being, indeed, so poor that
I could procure neither paper nor parchment. And now we
are in the year 1284 : yet I ceased not to write divers other
chronicles which, in mine own judgment, I have excellently
composed, and which I have purged of their superfluities, follies,
falsehoods, and contradictions. Nevertheless, I could not purge
them of all such ; for some things which have been written are
now so commonly noised abroad that the whole world could not
remove them from the hearts of men who have thus learnt them
from the first. Whereof I could show many examples ; but to
rude and unlearned people all examples are useless ; as it is
written in Ecclesiasticus, 'He that teacheth a fool, is like one
that glueth a potsherd together.' ' Nor are these mere idle
boasts. With all his partiality here and there a partiality the
more harmless because it is so naively shown Salimbene stands
the test of comparison with independent documents quite as well
as Villani. Among modern writers, those who have least reason
to love him are glad to avail themselves of his authority. The
footnotes to the three volumes of Analecta Franciscana, by
which the friars of Quaracchi have laid modern students under
such heavy obligations, swarm with references to Salimbene,
whose data are constantly used to correct even so painstaking a
compiler as Wadding.
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene. 7
Amid all that has been written of the thirteenth century, there
is extraordinarily little to guide the general reader in a compari-
son between those men's real lives and ours. It is true that the
main ebb and flow of their conflicts in Church and State has often
been related ; the theory of their institutions has been described
and analysed ; we have excellent studies of the lives and ideals
of some of their greatest men. All this is most important, yet
it says comparatively little to the ordinary reader, who, without
leisure for special study, often craves nevertheless to compare
other states of life with his own. Even the student of greater
leisure and opportunities can find but little answer to the all-
important question, " Which would be the better to live and die
in, a world with those institutions and ideals, or a world with
ours ? " Those who have set themselves most definitely to
answer this question have too often placed themselves from
the outset at a necessarily distorting point of view. They have
painted the medieval life mainly after medieval theories of
Church and State, or after the lives of a few great men. Yet
there never was an age in which theory was more hopelessly
divorced from practice than in the thirteenth century ; or in
which great men owed more of their greatness to a passionate
and lifelong protest against the sordid realities of common life
around them. The Franciscan gospel of poverty and humility
was preached to a world in which money and rank had far more
power than in modern England ; and there is scarcely a page
of the Divina Commcdia that does not breathe a sense of the
terrible contrast between Catholic theory and Catholic life.
Dean Church, in one of his essays, shows himself fully alive to
the danger of judging an "age simply after the pattern of its
great men. 6 Yet perhaps no writer on the Middle Ages follow-
ed this dangerous path more closely than Church's great Oxford
master, with all his genius and his natural love of truth. New-
man's pictures of the Middle Ages have all the charm and the
earnest personal conviction of his best writings, but they have
often scarcely more correspondence with the historical facts of
any state of society than has Plato's Republic. A momentary
survey of periods with which we are more familiar will at once
show us how fatally history of this kind must take the colour of
the writer's personal ideals and prepossessions, in the absence of
unquestionable landmarks to correct the play of his imagination.
What conception could we form of the real differences between
our life and that of our seventeenth-century ancestors from even
the most brilliant and penetrating comparisons between Jeremy
Taylor and Liddon, Hobbes and Herbert Spencer, Clarendon
8 From St. Francis to Dante.
and Carlyle ? At the best, such studies could only illustrate and
complete a real history written from very different sources.
Such sources are abundant enough for the actual ways and
thoughts of the people in the Middle Ages : yet a vast amount of
work remains to be done before the historian of the future can
give us a full and intimate picture of thirteenth century life.
The foundation needs first to be laid in a series of exhaustive
monographs with full references, such as Dr. Rashdall' Universi-
ties of Europe in the Middle Ages, Dr. Dresdner's Kultur-und
Sittcngcschichtc dcr Italicnischen Geistlichkeit, and Dr. Lea's
admirable books on the Inquisition, Confession, Indulgences, and
Celibacy. Yet such monographs are still far too few : many of
the most important documents are still unprinted : many of those
in print have been most imperfectly read and discussed ; and a
period of acute controversy must necessarily come before we can
arrive at even a rough agreement as to the main facts. Though
the history of medieval civilization needs most care of all
for here at every step we move among the flames, or at least
over the smouldering ashes, of passionate convictions and pre-
judices it is still the one domain of history into which, in
England at least, the scientific spirit has least penetrated. Even
the new series of English Church histories published by Messrs.
Macmillan nay, the Cambridge Modern History itself are
shorn of half their use to the serious student by the entire absence
of references or similar guarantees of literary good faith. No
bank can exist in these days without publishing its balance-
sheets : yet we are still expected to accept teaching which may
be more vital than money, upon the ipse dixit of this or that
writer. Half our religious quarrels are due to this habit of
writing without references, and therefore too often in reliance
upon evidence which will not bear serious criticism. The tempta-
tion is too strong for human nature. Whether a writer's
prepossessions be pro-medieval or anti-medieval, he can count
upon a sympathetic public of his own, and upon comparative
immunity from criticism ; since his separate blunders, unsup-
ported by references, can be traced and exposed only with the
greatest difficulty ; and, in the present state of public opinion,
nobody thinks the worse of him for making the most sweeping
statements without adequate documentary vouchers. The
inevitable result is that well-meaning men, whom a careful study
of their opponents' sources would soon bring to some sort of
rough agreement, spend their lives beating the air in wild attempts
to strike an adversary who is heating himself with equally vain
and violent demonstrations after his own fashion. Moving in
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene. 9
wholly different planes, with scarcely a single point of possible
contact, they are necessarily carried farther apart at every step ;
and the consciousness of their own good faith in the main compels
them to look upon their mysteriously perverse adversaries as
Jesuits or Atheists (as the case may be) in disguise. At the
same time, the general reader is rather annoyed than interested
by interruptions. I have, therefore, omitted footnotes as far as
possible, not even marking the necessarily frequent omissions
of repetitions and irrelevancies in direct quotations from
Salimbene omissions which sometimes run to a page or more
but simply giving page-references by means of which students
can always verify my translations. To the general reader I
offer the guarantee of good faith already explained in my
preface, viz., an undertaking to print at my own expense the
first criticism of my methods which any scholar may care to
send me, to the extent of 36 octavo pages. Those who may
wish to verify my illustrations from other sources will find full
quotations in the notes (Appendix A), whither I have also
relegated a good deal of detailed evidence interesting in its
bearing upon my subject, but too lengthy to find a place in
the text. I have found it hopeless, however, to give in a
book of this compass more than a very small fraction of the
evidence which I have collected during the past nine years to
show that what Salimbene describes is nothing exceptional, but
simply the normal state of thirteenth-century society. For he is
indeed the natural and artless chronicler of ordinary life in the
age of St. Francis and Dante. As with Pepys or Boswell, his
very failings as a man are to his advantage as a historian ; and,
for us, his lively interest in all sorts of men more than counter-
balances his occasional lukewarmness of family affection. The
figures which too often stalk like dim ghosts through the pages
of far more famous authors, startle us here with their almost
modern reality. They move indeed in a world differing from
ours to an extent almost past belief, except to those who have
carefully measured the strides of civilization even during the
past century : yet the most startling of his anecdotes are cor-
roborated by unimpeachable independent testimony. All the
documents of the thirteenth century, from poems and romances
to saints' lives and bishops' registers, yield to the patient student
scattered bones from which a complete skeleton of the society of
that time might be built up. Beyond this, there are a few authors
who in themselves show us something more than mere bones
Joinville, for instance, and Cicsarius of Heisterbach, and Thomas
of Chantimpre. But Salimbeue alone shows us every side of hi?
io From St. Francis to Dante.
age, clothed all round in living flesh, and answering in every part
to the dry bones we find scattered elsewhere.
The history of his MS. is sufficient to explain why he is as
yet so little known : for it is difficult to do much with a
notoriously imperfect text. The reader will, however, find a
good deal about Salimbene in Gebhart's fascinating Ultalic
Mystique, and La Renaissance Italicnnc. He has been the
subject of learned monographs by Professors Cledat of Lyons
and Michael of Innsbruck, the latter of whom analyses the book
very fully and without too obvious partiality. A very short
abstract of the Chronicle has been printed in English by Mr.
Kington Oliphant ; and, quite recently, Miss Macdonell has
dealt with Salimbene at some length on pp. 252 foil, of her
Sons of Francis. Lively and interesting as this chapter is, it
fails, however, to give an adequate idea either of the contents
of Salimbene's book, or of his value as a historian. The author,
though she quotes from the Latin text, has evidently worked
almost entirely from Cantarelli's faulty Italian translation, of
which she herself speaks, somewhat ungratefully, with exag-
gerated scorn. Not only has she followed Cantarelli blindly
in all his worst blunders quoting, for instance, as specially
characteristic of Salimbene's attitude towards Frederick II a
paragraph, which, in fact, describes a different man altogether
(p. 300) but she adds several of her own. The greatest weak-
ness of her study, however, is that her comparative unfamiliarity
with other first-hand contemporary sources tempts her to
depreciate Salimbene's value as a faithful mirror of his times.
She evidently looks upon certain perfectly normal facts as strange
and exceptional ; and her essay, though well worth reading,
fails in this respect to do justice to its subject. 7
In the following pages 1 have made no attempt to translate
the Chronicle in the exact state in which Salimbene left it. The
good friar jotted things down just as they came into his head,
with ultra-medieval incoherence : " For the spirit bloweth
whither it listeth, neither is it in man's power to hinder the
spirit," as he says after one of his wildest digressions. Whole
pages are filled with mere lists of Scripture texts, often apparently
strung together from a concordance, though he undoubtedly
knew his Bible thoroughly well. Pages more are occupied with
records of historical events compiled from other chronicles : the
parentheses and repetitions are multitudinous and bewildering.
The book as it stands is less a history than materials for a
history, like the miscellaneous paper bags from which Hofrath
Heuschrecke compiled the biography of Teufelsdrockh. The
The Autobiography of Brother Salimbene. 1 1
only possible way of introducing the real Salimbene to the modern
public is to translate or summarize all the really characteristic
portions of the Chronicle, reducing them by the way to some sort
of order. But I have been compelled to omit a good deal both
from my author's text and from the scope of my illustrations :
for there is one side of medieval life which cannot be discussed
in a book of this kind. To the darkest chapter in Celano's life
of St. Francis I have barely alluded ; and I have turned aside
altogether from the most terrible canto in the Inferno. The
student will, however, find in Appendix C the original Latin
of certain passages and allusions omitted from the text.
CHAPTER II.
Parentage and Boyhood.
~T)ROTHER Salimbene di Adamo was born of a noble family at
IJ Parma, in 1221, the year of St. Dominic's death. One of
his sponsors was the Lord Balian of Sidon, a great baron of
France who had been viceroy for Frederick II in the Holy Land.
" My father was Guido di Adamo, a comely man and a valiant
in war, who once crossed the seas for the succour of the Holy
Land, in the days of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, before my
birth. And I have heard from him that, whereas other Lombards
in the Holy Land enquired of diviners concerning the state of
their houses at home, my father would never enquire of them ;
and, on his return, he found all in comfort and peace at home ;
but the others found evil, as the diviners had spoken. Further-
more, I have heard from my father that his charger, which he had
brought with him to the Holy Land, was commended for its
beauty and worth above those of all the rest who were of his
company. Again, I have heard from him that, when the
Baptistery of Parma was founded, he laid stones in the foundations
for a sign and a memorial thereof, and that on the spot whereon
the Baptistery is built had been formerly the houses of my
kinsfolk, who after the destruction of their houses, went to
Bologna" (37). In 1222 occurred the Great Earthquake in
Lombardy, attributed by the orthodox to God's anger against
the heretics, who swarmed in France, Germany and Italy, and
who in Berthold of Ratisbon's excited imagination numbered
a round hundred-and-fifty sects. 1 The common folk, however,
when their first panic was over, treated it rather as a joke :
" They became so hardened by the earthquake that, when a
pinnacle of a tower or a house fell, they would gaze thereon
with shouts and laughter. My mother hath told me how at the
time of that earthquake I lay in my cradle, and how she caught
up my two sisters, one under each arm, for they were but babes
as yet. So, leaving me in my cradle, she ran to the house of
her father and mother and brethren, for she feared (as she said),
Parentage and Boyhood. 13
lest the Baptistery should fall on her, since our house was hard
by. Wherefore I never since loved her so dearly, seeing that
she should have cared more for me, her son, than for her
daughters. But she herself used to say that they were easier
for her to carry, being better grown than I " (34). Yet he
describes her as a most loveable woman, in spite of her perverse
choice on that eventful day. " She was named the Lady Imelda,
a humble lady and devout, fasting much and gladly dispensing
alms to the poor. Never was she seen to be wroth ; never did
she smite any of her maidservants with her hand. In winter,
she would ever have with her, for the love of God, some poor
woman from the mountains, who found in the house both lodging
and food and raiment all winter long ; and yet my mother had
other maids who did the service of the house. Wherefore Pope
Innocent [the IVth, who knew her personally] gave me letters
at Lyons that she might be of the order of St. Clare, and the
same he gave another time to Brother Guido, my blood-brother,
when he was sent on a mission from Parma to the Pope. She
lieth buried in the convent of the ladies of St. Clare ; may her
soul rest in peace ! Her mother, that is, my grandmother, was
called the Lady Maria, a fair lady and a full-fleshed, sister to
the Lord Aicardo, son to Ugo Amerigi, who were judges in Parma,
rich men and powerful, and dwelt hard by the church of St.
George " (55). The implication in this remark about the maid-
servants is only too fully justified by all contemporary evidence.
The Confessionale, a manual for parish priests, variously at-
tributed to St. Bonaventura, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Albertus
Magnus, specifies the canonical penances to be imposed for some
sixty probable transgressions. One of them runs, " If any
woman, inflamed by zealous fury, have so beaten her maid-
servant that she die in torments within the third day, ....
if the slaying have been wilful, let her not be admitted to the
communion for seven years ; but if it have been by chance, let
her be admitted after five years of legitimate penance." A
stock case in Canon Law is that of the priest who, wishing to beat
his servant with his belt, had the misfortune to wound him With
the dagger thereto attached. A Northumbrian worthy in 1279,
striking at a girl with a cudgel, struck and killed by mistake
the little boy whom she held in her arms ; the jury treated it as
a most pardonable misadventure, though he showed his sense of
having sailed very close to the wind by absconding until the trial
was over. It is necessary, indeed, on the threshold of any out-
spoken study of medieval life, to recognise the essential difference
between past and present manners in this matter of personal
14 From St. Francis to Dante.
violence. On this subject, as on so many others, a false glamour
has been thrown over the past by writers who have studied only
the theory of knightly courtesy, without making any attempt to
gauge the actual practice. The instances of brutality to women
in high life quoted by Leon Gautier and Alwin Schulz from the
Chansons dc Geste might be multiplied almost indefinitely. The
right of wifebeating was formally recognised by more than one
code of laws : and it was already a forward step when, in the
thirteenth century, the Coutumcs du Beauvoisis provided " que le
man ne doit battre sa femme que raisonnablcment." But what
were the limits of reason in this matter, to the medieval mind ?
We may infer them fairly well from the tales told by the Knight
of La Tour-Landry (1372) for the instruction of his daughters.
He tells, for instance, how a lady so irritated her husband by
scolding him in company, that he struck her to the earth with his
fist and kicked her in the face, breaking her nose. Upon this
the good Knight moralises, "And this she had for her euelle
and gret langage, that she was wont to saie to her husbonde.
And therefor the wiff aught to suffre and lete the husbonde
haue the wordes, and to be maister, for that is her worshippe."
This was also the opinion of St. Bernardino, who said in a
public sermon : " And I say to you men, never beat your wives
while they are great with child, for therein would lie great peril.
I say not that you should never beat them, but choose your time.
. . . . I know men who have more regard for a hen that
lays a fresh egg daily, than for their own wives : sometimes the
hen will break a pot or a cup, and the man will not beat her, for
the mere fear of losing the egg that is her fruit. How stark
mad are many that cannot suffer a word from their own lady
who bears such fair fruit : for if she speak a word more than
he thinks fit, forthwith he seizes a staff and begins to chastise
her : and the hen, which cackles all day without ceasing, you
suffer patiently for her egg's sake Many a man, when
he sees his wife less clean and delicate than he would fain see
her, strikes her forthwith ; and the hen may befoul your table,
and yet you have patience with her : why not, then, with her to
whom you owe patience ? Seest thou not the hog, too, always
grunting and squealing and defiling thy house ! yet thou sufferest
him until slaughter-time. Thy patience is but for the fruit's
sake of the beast's flesh, that thou mayst eat it. Bethink thee,
wretch, bethink thee of the noble fruit of thy lady, and have
patience ; it is not meet to beat her for every trifle, no ! "
Moreover, it is the same story if we pass upwards from such a
citizen's house, where the pigs and the fowls were as familiar as
Parentage and Boyhood. 1 5
in an Irish cabin, and peep into the palace of Frederick II, the
wonder of the world. Weary of his wife, the Emperor had
seduced her cousin : and Jean de Brienne, exasperated by this
double wrong to his daughter and his niece, talked loudly of
washing it out in blood. Therefore the Emperor " so threatened
and beat the Empress as almost to slay the babe in her womb."
We get a similar glimpse of the relations between Frederick's
father and mother the Costanza of Par. iii, 118. "I have
heard," writes Etienne de Bourbon, " that when the father of the
Ex-Emperor Frederick had gone to bed, and the Empress his
spouse would fain come to him, and had taken off in his presence
her head-attire with a great mass of false hair, then he began to
call his knights and squires, and in their presence, loathing that
hair as a piece of carrion, he cried aloud as one raving : ' Quick,
quick ! bear away this carrion from my room and burn it in the
fire, that ye may smell its evil savour : for I will have no dead
wife, but a living one.' ' When these things were done in the
green tree of their honeymoon, we need scarcely wonder that
Salimbene should give a sad account of their married life in the
dry, after deep political differences had multiplied the causes of
quarrel. "There was grievous discord and war between these
two, so that wise and learned men were wont to say these are
not as Ecclesiasticus teacheth, ' man and wife that agree well
together : ' while, again, buffoons would say ' if one should now
cry Mate ! to the King, the Queen would not defend him ' " (359).
Nor was it the rougher sex alone which permitted itself such
violence, as Salimbene has already hinted. We may find the
exact antithesis of the good Imelda in Benvenuto da Imola's
description of another lady of high rank in Dante's Florence
the Cianghella of Par. xv, 128. " She was most arrogant and
intolerable ; she was wont to go through the house with a
bonnet on her head after the fashion of the Florentine ladies,
and with a staff in her hand ; now she would beat the serving-
man, now the cook. So it befell once that she went to mass
at the convent of Friars Preachers in Imola, not far from
her own house ; and there a friar was preaching. Seeing,
therefore, that none of the ladies present rose to make room for
her, Cianghella was inflamed with wrath and indignation, and
began to lay violent hands on one ladj after another, tearing hair
and false tresses on the one hand, wimple and veil on the other.
Some suffered this not, but began to return her blow for blow,
whereat there arose so great noise and clamour in the church
that the men standing round to hear the sermon began to laugh
with all their might, and the preacher laughed with them, so
1 6 From St. Francis to Dante.
that the sermon ended thus in merriment." One wonders how
Cianghella's children were brought up ; and we might almost be
tempted to look for one of them in the contemporary boy who
was sent by his mother " to the common prison of Florence, to
be there retained until he return to his good senses." 2
Salimbene, however, grew up under very different home
influences. " My father's mother was the Lady Ermengarda.
She was a wise lady, and was a hundred years old when she went
the way of all flesh. With her I dwelt fifteen years in my
father's house ; how often she taught me to shun evil company
and follow the right, and to be wise, and virtuous, and good, so
often may God's blessing light upon her ! For oft-times she
taught me thus. She lieth buried in the aforesaid sepulchre,
which was common to us and to the rest of our house " (54).
An equally definite religious influence was that of an old
neighbour on the Piazza Vecchia : " The Lord Guidolino da
Enzola, a man of middle stature, rich and most renowned and
devoted beyond measure to the Church, whom I have seen a
thousand times. Separating himself from the rest of the family,
who dwelt in the Borgo di Santa Cristina, he came and dwelt
hard by the Cathedral Church, which is dedicated to the glorious
Virgin, wherein he daily heard mass and the whole daily and
nightly offices of the Church, each at the fit season ; and when-
soever he was not busied with the offices of the Church, he would
sit with his neighbours under the public portico by the Bishop's
Palace, and speak of God, or listen gladly to any who spake of
Him. Nor would he ever suffer children to cast stones against
the Baptistery or the Cathedral to destroy the carvings or paint-
ings 3 ; for when he saw any such he waxed wroth and ran swiftly
against them and beat them with a leather thong as though he
had been specially deputed to this office ; yet he did it for pure
godly zeal and divine love, as though he said in the Prophet's
words, ' The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.' Moreover,
this said lord, besides the orchard and town and palace wherein
he lived, had many other houses, and an oven and a wine cellar ;
and once every week, in the road hard by his house, he gave to
all the poor of the whole city who would come thither a general
dole of bread and sodden beans and wine, as I have seen, not
once or twice only, with mine own eyes. He was a close friend
of the Friars Minor, and one of their chief benefactors " (609).
For a man of such exceptional piety, Guidolino was unfortunate
in his descendants. His son Jacobino, who bought Salimbene's
father's house, was an usurer, and failed miserably as Podesta
of Reggio, leaving a son who was the hero of a somewhat
Parentage and Boyhood. 17
disreputable quarrel. His only daughter, the Lady Rikeldina,
" was a worldly and wanton woman," and married a rich lord who
" consumed all his substance with his banquetings and buffoons
and courtly fashions ; so that his sons must needs starve unless
they would beg, as one of them told me even weeping."
The Chronicler has warm words of praise for most of his elder
relations : " fair ladies and wise " ; "a very fair lady " ; " an
honourable lady and devout " ; "a fair lady, wise and honour-
able, who ended her days in a convent " ; " the most fair lady
Caracosa, excellent in prudence and sagacity, who ruled her house
most wisely after her husband's death." There was evidently
a definitely religious note in the family, though this, in good
medieval society, was perfectly consistent with the fact that our
chronicler's father had a son by a concubine named Rechelda (54).
He had also three legitimate sons. First came Guido, by a first
wife, " the lady Ghisla of the family de' Marsioli, who were of old
noble and powerful men in the city of Parma. They dwelt in the
lower part of the Piazza Vecchia, hard by the Bishop's Palace ;
whereof I have seen a great multitude, and certain of them were
clad in robes of scarlet, more especially such as were judges. They
were also kinsfolk of mine own through my mother, who was
daughter to the Lord Gerardo di Cassio, a comely old man, who
died (as I think) at the age of one hundred years. He had three
sons ; the lord Gerardo, who wrote the Book of Composition, for he
was an excellent writer of the more noble style ; the Lord Bernardo,
who was a man of no learning, but simple and pure ; and the
Lord Ugo, who was a man of learning, judge and assessor. He
was a man of great mirth, and went ever with the Podestas to
act as their advocate" (55). This eldest brother Guido married
into a greater family still. " My brother Guido was a married
man in his worldly life, and a father, and a judge ; and afterwards
he became a priest and a preacher in the Order of the Friars
Minor. His wife was of the Baratti, who boast that they are of
the lineage of the Countess Matilda, and that in the service of
the Commune of Parma forty knights of their house go forth to
war " (38). It was natural, therefore, that our chronicler, as he
tells us on another page, should have owed special reverence to
the great protectress of the Church whom Dante also set on so
high a pinnacle, if we are to accept the almost unanimous opinion
of the early commentators. When Guido became a friar, his
wife entered a convent, and their only daughter was that Agnes
for whom, in her Franciscan convent of Parma, Salimbene wrote
part at least, of his Chronicle. It is noteworthy that of the
sixty-two persons who are named in this genealogy, no less than
1 8 From St. Francis to Dante.
fourteen became monks, friars, or nuns, while five were knights
and three were judges.
After Guido came Nicholas, who " died while he was yet a
child, as it is written, ' while I was yet growing he cut me off'
(38). "The third am I, Brother Salimbene, who entered the
Order of the Friars Minor, wherein I have lived many years, as
priest and preacher, and have seen many things, and dwelt in
many provinces, and learnt much. And in my worldly life I
was called by some Dalian of Sidon, by reason of the above-
mentioned lord who held me at the sacred font. But by my
comrades and my family I was called Ognibcne (All-good), by
which name I lived as a novice in our Order for a whole year
long" (38).
The name seems to indicate a docile, impressionable disposition,
and all Salimbene's home memories point the same way. " From
my very cradle I was taught and exercised in [Latin] grammar "
(277). In other respects, his upbringing must necessarily have
been rough, however favourable it may have been for those
times. Home life even among the highest classes in the 13th
century was such, in many of its moral and sanitary conditions,
as can now be found only among the poor. The children had
ordinarily no separate bedroom, but slept either with their
parents or with servants and strangers on the floor of the hall.
Thomas of Celano, describing the home education of St. Francis's
day, and showing by his present tenses that things were still the
same in the generation in which he wrote, gives a piature which
we might well dismiss as an unhealthy dream if it were riot so
accurately borne out by the repeated assertions of Gerson 150
years later. " Boys are taught evil as soon as they can babble,"
says Celano, " and as they grow up they become steadily worse,
until they are Christians only in name." As half-fledged youths
they ran wild in the streets : and we cannot understand the
Friars until we have realized how many of them had plunged
into Religion, like Salimbene, just at the age when a boy begins
to realize dimly the responsibilities of a man, and to look back
upon what already seem long years spent as his awakened
imagination may now warn him with even hysterical emphasis
in the service of the Devil.
Our author had three sisters also, " fair ladies and nobly wed-
ded," of whom the first was the Lady Maria, married to the
Lord Azzo, cousin-german to the Lord Guarino, who was of kin
to the Pope [Innocent IV]. He had many other relations and
connections of noble rank and distinction in other ways. His
musical tastes came partly by birth and partly by education.
Parentage and Boyhood. 19
(54). " My father's sister was the mother of two daughters,
Grisopola and Vilana, excellent singers both. Their father, the
Lord Martino de' Stefani, was a merry man, pleasant and jocund,
who loved to drink wine ; he was an excellent musician, yet no
buffoon. One day in Cremona he beguiled and out-witted
Master Gerardo Patechio, who wrote the Book of Pests*. But
he was well worthy to be so out-witted, and deserved all that be-
fell him."
Having come to the end of this genealogy or nearly to the
end, for he throws in occasional postscripts afterwards he
explains why he has entered into such full details. (56) " Lo
here I have written the genealogy of my kinsfolk beyond all that
I had purposed ; yet, for brevity's sake, I have omitted to des-
cribe many men and women, both present and past. But since
I had begun, it seemed good to me to finish the same, for five
reasons. First, for that my niece, Sister Agnes, who is in the
convent of the nuns at St. Clare in Parma, wherein she enclosed
herself for Christ's sake while she was yet a child, hath begged
me to write it by reason of her father's grandmother, of whom
she could obtain no knowledge. Now therefore she may learn
from this genealogy who are her ancestors both on the father's
and on the mother's side. Moreover, my second reason for
writing this genealogy was, that Sister Agnes might know for
whom she ought to pray to God. The third reason was the
custom of men of old time, who wrote their genealogies ; whence
it is written of certain folk in the book of Nehemiah that they
were cast forth from the priesthood, for that they could not find
the writings of their genealogies. The fourth reason was, that
by reason of this genealogy I have said certain good and profitable
words which otherwise I should not have said. The fifth and
last was, that the truth of those words of the Apostle James
might be shown, wherein he saith, ' For what is your life ? It is
a vapour which appeareth for a little while and afterwards shall
vanish away.' The truth of which saying may be shown in the
case of many whom death hath earned off in our days ; for
within the space of sixty years mine own eyes have seen all
but a few of those whom 1 have written in the table of my
kindred, and now they have departed from us and are no longer
in the world. I have seen m my days many noble houses
destroyed, in different parts of the world. To take example from
near at hand, in the city of Parma my mother's house of the
Cassi is wholly extinct in the male branch ; the house of the
Pagani, whom I have seen noble, rich, and powerful, is utterly
extinct; likewise the house of the Stefani, whom I have seen in
2O From St. Francis to Dante.
great multitude, rich men and powerful. Consider now that we
shall go to the dead rather than they shall return to us, as David
saith, speaking of his dead son. Let us therefore be busy about
our own salvation while we have time, lest it be said of us as shall
be said of those of whom .Jeremiah speaketh, 'The harvest is
past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.' Of which
matter 1 have written above at sufficient length." Dante students
will no doubt notice the strong similarity between this last passage
and Purg. XIV. 9, foil., where the Pagani are among the families
whose decay the poet bewails. The same cry is constant through
the Middle Ages, no doubt partly because the noble families,
forming a specially fighting caste, were specially liable to sudden
extinction ; partly also because they led such irregular lives.
Berthold of Ratisbon complains that " so few great lords reach
their right age or die a right death," and ascribes this to their
careless upbringing and to the oppressions which, when grown to
man's estate, they- exercise upon the poor 5 .
CHAPTER III.
The Great Alleluia.
~TT7~HEN Salimbene was in his twelfth year, an event occurred
VV which undoubtedly impressed him deeply, and probably
determined his choice of a career. This was the great North
Italian religious revival of 1233, which was called The Alleluia.
There is an excellent article on this and similar medieval revivals
in Italy by J. A. Symonds, in the Cornhill for January, 1875.
But no chronicler tells the great Alleluia of 1233 with anything
like the same picturesque detail as Salimbene. (70) " This
Alleluia, which endured for a certain season, was a time of peace
and quiet, wherein all weapons of war were laid aside ; a time of
merriment and gladness, of joy and exultation, of praise and re-
joicing. And men sang songs of praise to God ; gentle and simple,
burghers and country folk, young men and maidens, old and young
with one accord. This devotion was held in all the cities of Italy ;
and they came from the villages to the town with banners, a great
multitude of people ; men and women, boys and girls together,
to hear the preaching and to praise God. And they sang God's
songs, not man's ; and all walked in the way of salvation. And
they bare branches of trees and lighted tapers ; and sermons
were made at evening and in the morning and at midday, accord-
ing to the word of the Prophet, ' Evening, and morning, and at
noon will I pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice.' And
men held stations in the churches and the open places, and lifted
up their hands to God, to praise and bless Him for ever and ever ;
and they might not cease from the praises of God, so drunken
were they with His love ; and blessed was he who could do most
to praise God. No wrath was among them, no trouble nor hatred,
but all was done in peace and kindliness ; for they had drunken
of the wine of the sweetness of God's spirit, whereof if a man
drink, flesh hath no more savour to him. Wherefore it is
commanded to preachers, * Give strong drink to them that are
sad, and wine to them that are grieved in mind. Let them drink
and forget their want, and remember their sorrow no more.'
22 From St. Francis to Dante.
And forasmuch as the Wise Man saith, ' Where there is no
governor, the people shall fall,' lest it be thought that these had
no leader, let me tell now of the leaders of those congregations.
First came Brother Benedict to Parma, who was called the
Brother of the Horn, a simple man and unlearned, and of holy
innocence and honest life, whom also I saw and knew familiarly,
both at Parma and afterwards at Pisa. This man had joined
himself unto no religious congregation, but lived after his own
conscience, and busied himself to please God ; and he was a
close friend of the Friars Minor. He was like another John
the Baptist to behold, as one who should go before the Lord and
make ready for him a perfect people. He had on his head an
Armenian cap, his beard was long and black, and he had a little
horn of brass, wherewith he trumpeted ; terribly did his horn
bray at times, and at other times it would make dulcet melody.
He was girt with a girdle of skin, his robe was black as sack-
cloth of hair, and falling even to his feet. His rough mantle
was made like a soldier's cloak, adorned both before and behind
with a red cross, broad and long, from the collar to the foot,
even as the cross of a priest's chasuble. Thus clad he went
about with his horn, preaching and praising God in the churches
and the open places ; and a great multitude of children followed
him, oft-times with branches of trees and lighted tapers. More-
over I myself have oft-times seen him preaching and praising
God, standing upon the wall of the Bishop's Palace, which at
that time was a-building. And thus he began his praises, saying
in the vulgar tongue, ' Praised and blessed and glorified be the
Father.' Then would the children repeat in a loud voice that
which he had said. And again he would repeat the same words,
adding ' be the Son ; ' and the children would repeat the same,
and sing the same words. Then for the third time he would
repeat the same words, adding ' be the Holy Ghost ' ; and then
' Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia ! ' Then would he sound with his
trumpet ; and afterwards he preached, adding a few good words
in praise of God. And lastly, at the end of his preaching, he
would salute the blessed Virgin after this fashion :
' Ave Maria, clemena et pia, etc., etc.' "
But Brother Benedict was far outdone in popularity by the
great Franciscan and Dominican preachers. There was Brother
Giacomino of Reggio, a learned man, and in later life a friend
of our chronicler's, who so wrought upon his hearers that
great and small, gentle and simple, boors and burghers, worked
The Great Alleluia. 23
for the building of the Dominican Church at Reggio. Blessed
was he who could bring most stones and sand and lime on his
back, without regard for his rich furs and silks, for Brother
Giacomino would stand by to see that the work was well done.
This Brother held a great preaching between Calerno and Sant'
llario, whereat was a mighty multitude of men and women, boys
and girls, from Parma and Reggio, from the mountains and
valleys, from the field and from divers villages. And it came to
pass that a poor woman of low degree brought forth among the
multitude a man child. Then, at the prayer and bidding of
Brother Giacomino, many of those present gave many gifts to
that poor woman. For one gave her shoes, another a shirt,
another a vest, another a bandage ; and thus she had a whole
ass's load. Moreover, the men gave one hundred imperial solidi.
One who was there present, and saw all these things, related them
to me a long while afterwards, as I was passing with him through
this same place ; and I have also heard the same from others."
(73) There was another Franciscan of Padua, " who was preach-
ing at Cumae on a certain feast day, and a usurer was having his
tower built : and the friar, impeded by the tumult of the work-
men, said to his hearers ' I forewarn you that within such and
such a time this tower will fall and be ruined to the very found-
ations ' : and so it came to pass, and men held it a great miracle.
Note Ecclesiasticus xxxvii, 18 and Proverbs xvii, 16, and the
example of the man who foretold the fall of the tower, and
Grilla's son, and the three pumpkins, in one of which was a
mouse : he happened to tell all things by chance as they were,
and therefore he was hailed as a prophet" (74). Then there
was " Brother Leo of Milan, who was a famous and mighty
preacher, and a great persecutor and confuter and conqueror of
heretics " a panegyric which shows how soon the Order had
lost the sweet reasonableness which was one of the most
striking characteristics of St. Francis. "He was so bold
and stout-hearted that once he went forward alone, standard
in hand, before the army of Milan which was marching
against the Emperor ; and, crossing the stream by a bridge,
he stood long thus with the standard in his hands, while the
Milanese shrank from crossing after him, for fear of the
Emperor's battle-array. This Brother Leo once confessed the
lord of a certain hospital at Milan, who was a man of great name
and much reputed for his sanctity. While he was at his last
fasp, Brother Leo made him promise to return and tell him of
is state after his death, which he willingly promised. His death
was made known through the city about the hour of vespers.
24 From St. Francis to Dante.
Brother Leo therefore prayed two Brethren, who had been his
special companions while yet he was Minister Provincial, to watch
with him that night in the gardener's cell at the corner of the
garden. While, therefore, they all three watched, a light sleep
fell upon Brother Leo ; and, wishing to slumber, ho prayed his
comrades to awake him if they heard anything. And lo ! they
suddenly heard one who came wailing with bitter grief ; and
they saw him fall swiftly from heaven like a globe of fire, and
swoop upon the roof of the cell as when a hawk stoops to take a
duck. At this sound, and at the touch of the brethren, Brother
Leo awoke from his sleep and enquired how it stood with him,
for ever he wailed with the same woful cries. He therefore
answered and said that he was damned, because in his wrath he
had suffered baseborn children to die unbaptized when they had
been laid at the hospital door, seeing to what travail and cost
the spital was exposed by such desertion of children. When,
therefore, Brother Leo enquired of him why he had not confessed
that sin, he answered either that he had forgotten it, or that he
thought it unworthy of confession. To whom the Brother replied,
' Seeing that thou hast no part or lot with us, depart from us and
go thine own way ! ' so the soul departed, crying and wailing as
it went" (74). Brother Leo's subsequent history is interesting.
The Chapter of Milan, disagreeing hopelessly about the election
of an Archbishop, agreed to leave the choice in his hands. After
due reflection, he announced, " Since you have so good an opinion
of me, I name myself Archbishop." The people, surprised at
first by this decision, presently applauded it, and the Pope
approved. After sixteen years' rule, however, Leo left the city
a prey to civil strife, and for fourteen years the Milanese refused
to accept his successor, in spite of the army and the Papal
anathemas with which he supported his claim. 1
After Leo came Brother Gerard of Modena, " one of the first
Brethren of our Order, yet not one of the Twelve. He was
an intimate friend of St. Francis, and at times his travelling-
companion" (75). He was of noble birth, strict morals, and
great eloquence, though his learning was small. " He it was
who, in the year 1238, prayed Brother Elias to receive me into
the Order, and I was once his travelling-companion. When I call
him to mind, I always think of that text, ' He that hath small
understanding and feareth God is better than one that hath much
wisdom, and transgresseth the law of the Most High.' With
him I also lay sick at Ferrara of that sickness whereof he died ;
and he went about New Year's tide to Modena, where he gave up
the ghost. He was buried in the church of the Brethren Minor,
The Great Alleluia. 25
in a tomb of stone ; and through him God hath deigned to work
many miracles, which, for that they be written elsewhere, I here
omit for brevity's sake." Several of these are recorded by
Angelo Clareno (Archiv. Bd. ii. p. 268) ; they are mostly of the
common type, but one bears a very suspicious resemblance to this
bogus miracle which Salimbene relates immediately below. (76)
" One thing 1 must not omit, namely that, at the time of the
aforesaid devotion, these solemn preachers were sometimes
gathered together in one place, where they would order the
matter of their preachings ; that is, the place, the day, the hour,
and the theme thereof. And one would say to the other, ' Hold
fast to that which we have ordered ' ; and this they did without
fail, as they had agreed among themselves. Brother Gerard
therefore would stand, as I have seen with mine own eyes, in the
Piazza Communale of Parma, or wheresoever else it pleased him,
on a wooden stage which he had made for his preaching ; and,
while the people waited, he would cease from his preaching, and
draw his hood deep over his face, as though he were meditating
some matter of God. Then, after a long delay, as the people
marvelled, he would draw back his hood and open his mouth in
such words as these : ' I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and
I heard our beloved brother, John of Vicenza, who was preaching
at Bologna on the shingles of the river Reno, and he had before
him a great concourse of people ; and this was the beginning of
his sermon : Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord
Jehovah, and blessed are the folk that he hath chosen to him
to be his inheritance.' So also would he speak of Brother
Giacomino ; so spake they also of him. The bystanders marvel-
led and, moved with curiosity, some sent messengers to learn the
truth of these things that were reported. And having found
that they were true, they marvelled above measure, and many,
leaving their worldly business, entered the Orders of St. Francis
or St. Dominic. And much good was done in divers ways and
divers places at the time of that devotion, as I have seen with
mine own eyes. 2 Yet there were also at the time many deceivers
and buffoons who would gladly have sought to bring a blot upon
the Elect. Among whom was Buoncompagno of Florence, who
was a great master of grammar in the city of Bologna. This
man, being a great buffoon, as is the manner of the Florentines,
wrote a certain rhyme in derision of Brother John of Vicenza,
whereof I remember neither the beginning nor the end, for that
it is long since I read it, nor did I even then fully commit it to
memory, seeing that I cared not greatly for it. But therein
were these words following, as they come to my memory :
26 From St. Francis to Dante.
John, in his Johannine way
Dances all and every day.
Caper freely, skip for joy,
Ye who hope to reach the sky !
Dancers left and dancers right,
Thousands, legions infinite
Noble ladies dance in rhythm,
Doge of Venice dances with 'era, etc., etc. 3
Furthermore, this master Buoncompagno, seeing that Brother
John took upon himself to work miracles, would take the same
upon himself ; wherefore he promised to the men of Bologna
that, in the sight of all, he would presently fly. In brief, the
report was noised abroad through Bologna, and on the appointed
day the whole city, men and women, boys and old men, were
gathered together at the foot of the hill which is called Santa
Maria in Monte. He had made for himself two wings, and stood
now looking down upon them from the summit of the mountain.
And when they had stood thus a long while gazing one at the
other, he opened his mouth and spake, ' Go ye hence with God's
blessing, and let it suffice you that ye have gazed on the face of
Buoncompagno ! ' Wherefore they withdrew, knowing that they
were mocked of him " (78).
John's strange career is described at length in Symonds's
article, and still more fully in an exhaustive monograph by C.
Sutter (Johann v. Vicenza. Freib. i/B. 1891). Matthew Paris
(an. 1238) tells how he crossed rivers dry shod, and by his mere
word compelled eagles to stoop in their flight. On the other
hand, a contemporary satire on his reported miracles was attributed
to Piero delle Vigne, and Guido Bonatti complained that he had
sought for years in vain to meet any one of the eighteen men
whom John was said to have raised from the dead. 4 At the back
of all these legends, however, lies the certain fact that many
cities of Italy entrusted him and other friars (e.g. Gerard of
Modena) with dictatorial powers during this Alleluia year, per-
mitting them to make or remodel laws as they pleased. John
was made Lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count ;
and it was apparently these honours which finally turned his head.
He used his power so recklessly that he was cast into prison,
from which he emerged a discredited and neglected man. But,
already in the Alleluia year, Salimbene tells us how he " had
come to such a pitch of madness by reason of the honours which
were paid him, and the grace of preaching which he had, that he
believed himself able in truth to work miracles, even without
God's help. And when he was rebuked by the Brethren for the
many follies which he did, then he answered and spake unto them :
The Great Alleluia. 27
* I it was who exalted your Dominic, whom ye kept twelve years
hidden in the earth, and, unless ye hold your peace, I will make
your saint to stink in men's nostrils and will publish your doings
abroad' (78). For [at the time of the Alleluia] the blessed
Dominic was not yet canonized, but lay hidden in the earth, nor
was there any whisper of his canonization ; but, by the travail
of this aforesaid Brother John, who had the grace of preaching
in Bologna at the time of that devotion, his canonization was
brought about. To this canonization the Bishop of Modena gave
his help ; for he, being a friend of the Friars Preachers, impor-
tuned them, saying, ' Since the Brethren Minor have a saint of
their own, ye too must so work as to get yourselves another, even
though ye should be compelled to make him of straw ' (72). So,
hearing these words of Brother John, they bore with him until
his death, for they knew not how they might rise up against him. 8
This man, coming one day to the house of the Brethren Minor,
and letting shave his beard by our barber, took it exceeding ill
that the brethren gathered not the hairs of his beard, to preserve
them as relics. But Brother Diotisalve, a Friar Minor of
Florence, who was an excellent buffoon after the manner of the
Florentines, did most excellently answer the fool according to
his folly, lest he should be wise in his own conceit. For, going
one day to the convent of the Friars Preachers, when they had
invited him to dinner, he said that he would in no wise abide
with them, except they should first give him a piece of the tunic
of Brother John, who at that time was there in the house, that
he might keep it for a relic. So they promised, and gave him
indeed a great piece of his tunic, which, after his dinner, he put to
the vilest uses, and cast it at last into a cesspool. Then cried he
aloud saying, ' Alas, alas ! help me, brethren, for I seek the relic
of your saint, which 1 have lost among the filth.' And when they
had come at his call and understood more of this matter, they
were put to confusion ; and, seeing themselves mocked of this
buffoon, they blushed for shame. This same Brother Diotisalve
once received an Obedience (i.e., command) to go and dwell in
the province of Penna, which is in Apulia. Whereupon he went
to the infirmary and stripped himself naked, and, having ripped
open a feather bed, he lay hid therein all day long among the
feathers (Lat. in pennis\ so that, when he was sought of the
brethren, they found him there, saying that he had already
fulfilled his Obedience ; wherefore for the jest's sake he was
absolved from his Obedience and went not thither. Again, as
he went one day through the city of Florence in winter time, it
came to pass that he slipped upon the ice and fell at full length.
28 From St. Francis to Dante.
At which the Florentines began to laugh, for they are much given
to buffoonery ; and one of them asked of the friar as he lay
" (79). The dialogue which our good Franciscan here
records is unfortunately quite impossible in modern print. He
himself had evidently some qualms about reporting it, for he
goes on : " The Florentines took no offence at this saying, but
rather commended the friar, saying ' God bless him, for he is
indeed one of us ! ' Yet some say that this answer was made by
another Florentine, Brother Paolo Millemosche (Thousand-flies)
by name. Now we should ask ourselves whether this brother
answered well or not ; and I reply that he answered ill, for many
reasons. First, because he acted contrary to the Scripture
which saith, ' Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou
also be like unto him.' Secondly, for that the answer was
unhonest, since a religious man ought to answer as becometh
a religious. Whence James saith, ' If any man among you
seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth
his own heart, this man's religion is vain.' Again, ' If any man
speak, let him speak as the speech of God.' And Jerome saith,
* Blessed is the tongue which knoweth not to speak, save of God
only.' (Also Eph. iv, 29 and Coloss. iv, 6). Thirdly, in that
he spake an idle word, whereof our Lord saith (Matt, xii, 36).
Now that word is idle which profiteth neither to speaker nor to
hearer, wherefore our Lord addeth (Matt, xii, 37) ; Ecclesiasti-
cus saitb (xxii, 27). Fourthly, in that he who speaketh un-
honest words showeth that he hath a vain heart, and moreover
giveth to others an ensample of sin (1 Cor. xv. 33). But hear
the remedy or vengeance (Isa. xxix. 20). Of the vain heart we
may say that which is spoken of the eye. For even as the
immodest eye is the messenger of an immodest heart, so the vain
word showeth a vain heart. Therefore saith the Wise Man
(Prov. iv. 23 and xxx. 8). Fifthly, because silence is commanded
us (Lam. iii. 28; Isa. xxx. 15; Exod. xiv. 14; Ps. cvii. 30).
It is written that the Abbot Agatho kept a pebble three whole
years in his mouth that he might learn to be silent. Sixthly,
because much speaking is condemned (Prov. x, 19, and 7 similar
texts). Note the example of the philosopher Secundus, by whose
speech his mother met her death ; and he. by reason of penitence,
kept silence even to the day of his death ; to whom we might
indeed say, ' If thou hadst kept silence, thou wouldst have been
a philosopher.' 6 Again, the Apostle bade that ' women should
keep silence in churches, for it is not permitted unto them to
speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also
saith the law ; and if they will learn anything, let them ask their
The Great Alleluia. 29
husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the
church/ For women do indeed speak much in church ; wherefore
some say that the Apostle forbade not to women useful and
laudable speech, as when they praise God, or when they confess
their sins to the priest ; but he forbade their presuming to preach,
an office which is known to belong properly to men. Which,
indeed, is evident from this, that the Apostle was speaking only
of the office of preaching. But Augustine saith that speech is
therefore, forbidden to woman, because she once confounded the
whole world by speaking with the serpent. . . . The eighth
and last reason is, that he who speaketh base and unprofitable
and vain and unhonest words in the Order of the Friars Minor
should be accused and punished for his deeds if they are seen,
or his words if they are heard. And this is right, since the Lord's
words are clean words ; and in the Rule of the Friars Minor it is
said that their speech should be well-considered and clean for the
profit and edification of the people, etc. 7 .... Yet Brother
Diotisalve, by reason of whom I have written this, may be excused
for manifold reasons. However, his words should not be taken
for an example, to be repeated by another, for the Wise Man
saith, ' As a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is a fool that
repeateth his folly.' Now the first reason for his excuse is that
he answered the fool according to his folly, lest he should seem
wise in his own eyes. The second is, that he meant not altogether
as his words sounded ; for he was a merry man, as Ecclesiasticus
saith, * There is one that slippeth with the tongue, but not from
his heart.' .... The third reason is that he spake to his fellow-
citizens, who took no ill example from his words, for they are
merry men and most given to buffoonery. Yet in another place
that brother's words would have sounded ill. . . . Moreover I
know many deeds of this Brother Diotisalve, as also of the
Count Guido [da Montefeltro], of whom many men are wont to
tell many tales, yet as these are rather merry than edifying, I
will not write them. 8 .... Yet one thing I must not omit,
namely, that the Florentines take no ill example if one go forth
from the Order of Friars Minor, nay, they rather excuse him,
saying, ' We wonder that he dwelt among them so long, for the
Friars Minor are desperate folk, who afflict themselves in divers
ways.' Once, when the Florentines heard that Brother John of
Vicenza would come to their city, they said, ' For God's sake
let him not come hither, for we have heard how he raiseth the
dead, and we are already so many that there is no room for us in
the city.' And the words of the Florentines sound excellently
well in their own idiom. Blessed be God, Who hath brought
me safe to the end of this matter."
30 From St. Francis to Dante.
I have given these anecdotes and quotations with some
approach to fullness in spite of their apparent irrelevance to the
Alleluia, because they are well calculated to give the reader an
idea of Salimbene's discursive style, and to prepare him for
many strange things which will come later in this autobiography.
It may indeed seem startling that a friar should feel it necessary
to point out to a nun (for here the reference to his niece seems
obvious) that St. Paul does not mean to forbid women from join-
ing in the service as members of the congregation ; or again,
that he should relate with such complacent triumph the success
of bogus miracles concocted by two of the greatest revivalists in
the century of St. Francis. For not only had Gerard been a
close companion of St. Francis, but he was also one of the six
'* solemn ambassadors " sent to the Pope in 1 236 to protest
against Brother Elias. It was evidently he who had the main
share in Salimbene's conversion, and after his death he was
honoured as a saint. That such a person deliberately reinforced
his preaching by false miracles seems strange enough ; but that
a clever man like Salimbene should tell it in this matter-of-fact
way, in the same breath in which he alludes to real miracles
wrought by his sainted friend, seems to the modern mind abso-
lutely inexplicable, and the Jesuit professor Michael discreetly
slurs over the whole story. But the curious reader may find
abundant evidence of the same kind in the Treatise on Relics of
St. Anselm's pupil, the Abbot Guibert of Nogent, and in the
Papal letter of 1238 to the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem, who forged annually on Easter Eve miraculous flames
of fire which even Guibert, a century earlier, had believed to be
genuine. One of the greatest men of Salimbene's century,
Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, relates with approval an equally
false miracle of a priest who slipped a bad penny instead of the
Host into the mouth of a miserly parishioner at Easter com-
munion, and then persuaded the man that the Lord's body had
been thus transmuted, for his punishment, into the same false
coin which he had been wont to offer yearly at that solemnity.
Csesarius of Heisterbach sees nothing but a triumph for the
Christian religion and for the " God of Justice " in the fact
that a cleric of Worms, who had seduced a Jewess, tricked
the parents into believing that the child to be born would be
Messiah, a hope which was miserably frustrated when the infant
proved to be a girl. The good Bishop Thomas of Chantimpre
does indeed blame the readiness of certain prelates in religion to
tell lies for the profit of their house ; yet even he approves a
wife's pious deceit. The early Franciscan records simply swarm
The Great Alleluia. 31
with pious thefts and pious lies. St. Rose of Viterbo, St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Elizabeth of Portugal, the blessed
Viridiaria, all boast an incident of this sort as one of their chief
titles to fame ; " a pious theft," says the approving Wadding of
the last case, in so many words. 9 St. Francis himself began his
public career with such a pious theft ; and it is very difficult to
understand how, in the face of the early biographers, so admir-
able a writer as M. Sabatier can speak of the Foligno incident
as though the horse and cloth had really been the Saint's own.
At the same time, he is a great deal too careful to allow himself
anything like Canon Knox-Little's astounding assertion that St.
Francis's theft is a figment of "modern biographers," and an
example of " modern prejudice or stupidity in dealing with the
facts of the Middle Ages." If the Canon had consulted so ob-
vious an authority as Wadding, he would have found that, even
in the face of Protestant attacks, the learned and orthodox
Romanist Sedulius felt obliged to admit the evidence against St.
Francis. Moreover, Wadding himself, in the middle of the 17th
century, deeply as he resents criticism on this point, ventures only
upon a half-hearted defence. His main argument, involved in a
cloud of words which betrays his embarrassment, amounts merely
to a plea that the goods might have been the saint's own, or
that he might have thought them such ; and, admitting the possi-
bility that neither of these alternatives were true, he falls back on a
timid defence which really embodies, in more cautious language,
the 13th century theory. "He [Francis] received from Christ,
speaking plainly to his bodily ears, the command to restore this
church, and although the Lord's words intended otherwise, yet
he understood them to lay on him the task of repairing that
building [of St. Damian]. Now he knew full well that Christ
bade no impossibilities, whence he inferred not without proba-
bility that, if he was to obey the divine command, it was lawful
to him to take of his father's goods where his own sufficed not."
His action, concludes Wadding, was therefore worthy not of
blame but of praise (Vol. i. p. 32). To Salimbene and his readers
in the 13th century, the line of thought thus laboriously worked
out by the 17th century apologist was natural and instinctive.
The miracles had impressed men who would otherwise have paid
no attention to the Revival ; they were a most successful
stratagem in the Holy War : they would have been discreditable
only if they had failed. Yet, even then, there were a few who
realized that " nothing can need a lie," and who were almost as
much embarrassed as edified by the frequency of miraculous
claims around them or in their midst. David of Augsburg,
32 From St. Francis to Dante.
whose fundamental good sense remained unshaken by his religious
fervour, wrote very strongly on this point. " Visions of this
sort have thus much in common, that they are vouchsafed 'not
only to the good, but often to the evil also. Moreover, that they
are sometimes true and teach the truth, sometimes deceptive and
delusive as Ezekiel saith (xiii. 7.) Moreover, that they neither
make nor prove their seer holy : otherwise Baalam would be
holy, and his ass who saw the Angel, and Pharaoh who saw
prophetic dreams. Moreover, even if they are true, yet in them-
selves they are not meritorious ; and he who sees many visions is
not therefore the better man than he who sees none, as also in the
case of other miracles. Moreover, many men have often been
more harmed than profited by such things, for they have been
puffed up thereby to vain-glory : many also, thinking themselves
to have seen visions, when in fact they had seen none, seduced
themselves and others, or turned them aside to greed of gain :
many again have falsely feigned to see visions, lest they should
be held inferior to others, or that they might be honoured above
others, as holier men to whom God's secrets were revealed.
Moreover, in some folk such visions are wont to be forerunners
of insanity ; for when their brain is addled, and clouded with its
own fumes, the sight of their eyes is confounded also, until a man
takes for a true vision that which is merely fantastic and false, as
Ecclesiasticus saith (xxxiv. 6,,)" 10
These words of David's are all the more weighty, because he
was the master of the greatest of 13th century mission-preachers,
whose fame spread through Europe only a few years after the
Great Alleluia. About the year 1250, chroniclers of cities
far distant from each other mention the startling appearance
among them of this Berthold of Ratisbon, whom Salimbene
describes at some length on a later page, in connexion with John
of Parma's friends (559). " Now let us come to Brother
Berthold of Allemaunia* of the order of Friars Minor ; a priest
and preacher and a man of honest and holy life as becometh a
Religious. He expounded the Apocalypse, 11 and I copied out
his exposition of the seven bishops of Asia only, who are brought
forward under the title of Angels in the beginning of the
Apocalypse : this I did, to know who those angels were, and
because I had Abbot Joachim's exposition of the Apocalypse,
which I esteemed above all others. Moreover, this Berthold
made a great volume of sermons for the whole course of the year,
both for feast days and de tempore, i.e., for the Sundays of the
* Ratisbon is in the district of Germany once inhabited by the Allenutuni.
The Great Alleluia. 33
whole year. Of which sermons I copied two only, for that they
treated excellently of Antichrist : whereof the first was on Luke
ii. 34, and the other on Matt, viii, 23 : for both teach most fully
both of Antichrist and of the awful judgment. 12 And note that
Brother Berthold had of God a special grace of preaching, and
all who have heard him say that from the apostles even to our
own day there hath not been his like in the German tongue. He
was followed by a great multitude of men and women, sometimes
sixty or a hundred thousand, sometimes a mighty multitude from
many cities together, that they might hear the honeyed words of
salvation which proceeded from his mouth, by His power who
' giveth His voice a voice of might ' and ' giveth word to them
that preach with much virtue.' He was wont to ascend a belfry
or wooden tower made almost after the fashion of a campanile,
which he used for a pulpit in country places when he wished to
preach : on the summit whereof a pennon also was set up by those
who put the work together, so that the people might see whither
the wind blew, and know where they ought to sit to hear best.
And, marvellous to relate ! he was as clearly heard and understood
by those far from him as by those who sat hard by ; nor was there
one who rose and withdrew from his preaching until the sermon
was ended. And when he preached of the dreadful day of doom,
all trembled as a rush quakes hi the water : and they would beg
him for God's sake to speak no more of that matter, for they
were terribly and horribly troubled to hear him. 13 One day when
he was to preach at a certain place, it bef el that a peasant prayed
his lord to let him go, for God's sake, to hear Brother Berthold's
sermon. But the lord answered ' I shall go to the sermon, but
thou shalt go into the field to plough with the oxen,' as it is
written in Ecclesiasticus ' Send him to work, lest he be idle.' So
when the peasant one day at high dawn had begun to plough in
the field, wondrous to relate ! he heard the very first syllable of
Brother Berthold's sermon, though he was thirty miles away at
that time. So he loosed the oxen forthwith from the plough,
that they might eat, and he himself sat down to hear the sermon.
And here came to pass three most memorable miracles. First,
that he heard and understood him, though he was so far away as
thirty miles. Secondly, that he learnt the whole sermon and
kept it by heart. Thirdly, that after the sermon was ended he
ploughed as much as he was wont to plough on other days of un-
interrupted work. So when this peasant afterwards asked of his
lord concerning Brother Berthold's sermon, and he could not
repeat it, the peasant did so word for word, adding how he had
heard and learnt it in the field. So his lord, knowing that this
34 From St. Francis to Dante.
was a miracle, gave the peasant full liberty to go and hear freely
Brother Berthold's preaching, whatever task-work he might have
to do.
Now it was Brother Berthold's custom to order his sermons
which he intended to preach now in one city, now in another, at
divers times and in divers places, that the people who flocked to
hear him might not lack food. It befel upon a time that a certain
noble lady, inflamed with great and fervent desire to hear him
preaching, had followed him for six whole years from city to city
and town to town, with a few companions and carrying her wealth
with her ; yet never could she come to private and familiar talk
with him. But when the six years were past, all her goods
were wasted and spent, and on the Feast of the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin, neither she nor her women had food to eat ;
so she went to Brother Berthold and told him all her tale from
beginning to end. Brother Berthold, therefore, hearing this, sent
her to a certain banker, who was held the richest of all in that
city, bidding her tell him in his name, to give her for her food
and charges as many moneys as the worth of one single day of
that Indulgence for which she had followed the Brother these
six years. 14 The banker hearing this, smiled and said, ' And how
can I know the worth of the Indulgence for one day whereon
you have followed Brother Berthold ? ' And she, ' The man of
God bade me tell you to lay your moneys in one scale of the
balance, and I will breathe into the other scale, and by this sign
ye may know the worth of my Indulgence.' Then he poured in
his moneys abundantly and filled the scale of the balance ; but
she breathed into the other scale, and forthwith it was weighed
down, and the moneys kicked the beam as suddenly as if they
had been changed to the lightness of feathers. And the banker
seeing this was astonished above measure ; and again and again
he heaped moneys upon his side of the balance ; yet not even so
could he outweigh the lady's breath ; for the Holy Ghost lent
such weight thereto that the scale whereon she breathed could be
counterbalanced by no weight of moneys. Wherefore the
banker, seeing this, came forthwith to Brother Berthold with the
lady and her whole company of women ; and they told him in
order all those things which had come to pass. And the banker
added, ' I am ready to restore all my ill-gotten gains and to dis-
tribute my own goods for God's sake amongst the poor, and I
desire to become a good man ; for in truth I have to-day seen
marvellous things.' So Brother Berthold bade him minister the
necessities of life abundantly to that lady by reason of whom he
had seen this marvel, and to them that were with her. This he
The Great Alleluia. 35
fulfilled readily and gladly to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to whom is glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen.
Another time, as Brother Berthold was passing at eventide
by a certain road with a lay-brother his comrade, he was taken
by the hired ruffians (assassinis) of a certain Castellan and brought
to his castle ; where all that night he was kept chained and in
evil plight. (Now this Castellan had so provoked his fellow-
citizens that they had caused a picture to be painted in the Palazzo
Communale shewing forth his punishment if ever he were taken
that is, the doom of hanging.) And on the morrow at dawn
the chief executioner came to the Castellan his lord, and said,
* What are your lordship's commands with respect to those
Brethren who were brought to us yesterday ? ' He answered,
' Away with them,' which was as much as to say, ' Slay them : '
for that was the custom of this Castellan and his ruffians, that
some they robbed and others they slew ; and others again they
cast into the castle dungeons until they should redeem themselves
with money : otherwise they must needs be slain. Now Brother
Berthold slept : but the lay brother his comrade was awake and
said his Mattins ; and, hearing the sentence of death pronounced
upon them by the Castellan (for there was but a party-wall
between them) he began to call again and again on Brother
Berthold. The Castellan therefore, hearing the name of Brother
Berthold, began to think within himself that this might well be
that famous preacher of whom such marvels were told ; and
forthwith he recalled his executioner and bade him do the
Brethren no harm, but bring them before his face. When there-
fore they came before him he enquired what might be their
names : whereto the lay-brother answered, ' My name is such-and-
such : but my comrade here is Brother Berthold, that renowned
and gracious preacher, through whom God worketh so great
marvels.' The Castellan hearing this forthwith cast himself down
at Brother Berthold's feet ; and having embraced and kissed him
he besought for God's sake that he might hear him preach, for
he had long time desired to hear the word of salvation from his
lips. To this Brother Berthold consented on condition that he
should call together before him all the ruffians whom he had in
his castle, that they also might hear his sermon : which he gladly
promised. When therefore the lord had called his ruffians to-
gether and Brother Berthold had gone aside for a while to pray
to God, then came his comrade and said to him, ' Know now,
Brother, that this man condemned us even now to death : there-
fore if ever you have preached well of the pains of hell and the
joys of Paradise, you need now all your skill.' At which words
36 From St. Francis to Dante.
Brother Berthold betook himself wholly to prayer ; and then,
returning to that assembly, he spake the word of salvation with
such exceeding glory that all were moved to tears. And before
his departure thence he confessed them all of their sins, and bade
them depart from that castle and restore their ill-gotten gains
and continue in penance all the days of their life : ' and so,' said
he, * shall ye come to everlasting life.' But the Castellan fell
down at his feet, and besought him with many tears that, for the
love of God, he would deign to receive him into the order of St.
Francis : so he received him, hoping that the Minister General
would grant him this grace. 16 Then he would fain have followed
Brother Berthold on his journey, but he suffered him not, for the
fury of the people whom he had provoked and who had not yet
heard of his conversion. So Berthold went on his way into the
city, and the people were gathered together to hear his sermon
on the shingles of a river bed ; the pulpit was set up over against
the gibbet whereon hung the bodies of thieves. (Thou, when
thou hearest this, picture it to thyself as though it were upon
the shingles of the River Reno at Bologna. 16 ) So the aforesaid
Castellan, after Brother Berthold's departure, was so inflamed
with divine love, and so drawn with desire of hearing the
preacher that he thought no more of all the evils which he had
wrought to that city, but came alone to the place of preaching,
where he was forthwith known, and taken, and led straight to the
gallows : so that all ran after him crying ' Let him be hanged,
and die a felon's death, for he is our most mortal foe.' Brother
Berthold therefore, seeing how the multitude ran together and
departed from his sermon, marvelled greatly, and said : ' Never
before have I known the people depart from me until my sermon
was ended and the blessing given.' And one of those who re-
mained answered, 'Father, marvel not, for that Castellan who
was our mortal foe, is taken, and men lead him to the gallows.'
Whereat Brother Berthold trembled greatly and said with sorrow,
* Know ye that I have confessed him and all them that are with
him ; and the others I have sent away to do penance, and him I
had received into the order of St. Francis : he was come now to
hear my sermon : let us all hasten therefore to loose him.' Yet
though they made all haste to the gallows, they found that he
had even then been drawn up, and had given up the ghost.
Nevertheless, at Berthold's bidding, men took him down, and
round his neck they found a paper written in letters of gold with
these words following : ' Being made perfect in a short space, he
fulfilled a long time : for his soul pleased God : therefore he
hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities.' (Wisdom
The Great Alleluia. 37
iv, 13, 14). Then Brother Berthold sent to the con vent of Friars
Minor in that city, that the Brethren might bring a cross and a
bier and a friar's habit, and see and hear what marvels God had
wrought. And when they came he expounded to them all the
aforesaid story, and they brought his body and buried it honour-
ably in their convent, praising the Lord who worketh such
wonders."
A comparison of these stories in Salimbene with Wadding
(vol. iv, p. 345 foil.) or the parallel passages in xxiv Gen., pp.
238-9, clearly brings out the good friar's superiority to the general
run of medieval chroniclers. Upon one of these stories we have,
by rare good fortune, the criticism of the hero himself. A
precious fragment printed in the Analecta Franciscana (vol. 1,
p. 417) describes how, when Berthold came to France, St. Louis
wished to see and speak with him. " And addressing him in
Latin, he added : ' Good Brother, I know but little of the Latin
tongue.' * Speak boldly, my Lord King,' answered Brother
Berthold, ' for it is no shame or wrong for a king to speak false
Latin.' " The writer then relates how the King of Navarre,
who was present at this interview, recounted to St. Louis, in the
preacher's own presence, the story here told by Salimbene about
the peasant who heard the sermon thirty miles off or, as the
king more modestly put it, at three miles' distance. Berthold's
reply was " ' My Lord, believe it not and put no faith in tales of
this sort which men tell of me as though they were miracles.
For this I believe to be false, nor have 1 ever heard that it was
true. But there are a sort of men who, for greed of filthy lucre
or for some other vain cause, follow with the rest of the multitude
after me, and invent sometimes such stories, which they tell to
the rest.' Whereat both kings were much edified, perceiving
clearly that this Brother loved the truth better than
popular favour or the sound of empty praise."
CHAPTER IV.
Conversion.
""TDLESSED be God," wrote Salimbene at the end of the
IJ long digression into which he had been tempted on the
subject of Diotisalve's witticisms : " blessed be God who hath
brought me safe to the end of this matter ! " He is therefore
conscious of his failing, and will no doubt hasten back to his
main subject : to that great Alleluia which probably determined
his own choice of a career
Nothing lies farther from his thoughts : he goes on in the
same breath with a fresh digression, smacking still less of
revivalism than the first (83). " There lived in these days a
canon of Cologne named Primas, a great rogue and a great
buffoon, and a most excellent and ready versifier ; who, if he had
given his heart to love God, would have been mighty in divine
learning, and most profitable to the Church of God." Here
follow a few specimens of his epigrams, interesting only to the
student. " Moreover he was once accused to his archbishop of
three sins, namely of incontinence or lechery, of dicing, and of
tavern-haunting. And he excused himself thus in verse." Here
Salimbene quotes at length the witty and profligate verses so well
known in their attribution to Walter Map, of which Green gives
a spirited extract in his Short History (p. 116) :
" Die I must, but let me die drinking in an inn !
Hold the wine-cup to my lips sparkling from the bin !
So, when angels flutter down to take me from my sin,
' Ah, God have mercy on this sot,' the cherubs wUl begin ! "
Professor Michael is much scandalized by the impenitent jovial-
ity with which the friar quotes in extenso, on so slight a pretext,
a poem which could scarcely be rendered into naked English.
But Salimbene only followed the custom of his time ; the same
poem, with a collection of others beyond comparison worse, was
kept religiously until modern times in the great monastery of
Beuediktbeuern, and in fact nearly all the ultra-Zolaesque litera-
Conversion. 39
ture of the middle ages (except that of the Fabliaux) has come
down to us through Church libraries. Nor is there the least
a priori reason against Salimbene writing such things to Sister
Agnes : for nuns were often accustomed to hear songs of un-
becoming purport sung in the churches during the Feast of
Fools, and not infrequently joined themselves in the songs and
the dancing. 1
As Diotisalve and Primas drove the Alleluia out of Salimbene's
head, so did like worldly vanities banish it from men's hearts
in Northern Italy after those few months of 1233 were past. All
such religious revivals have been short-lived in direct proportion
to the suddenness of their origin. No doubt they left behind in
many minds some real leaven, however small, of true religion :
but the mass swung back all the more violently into their old
groove : and those populations which had suddenly thrown
away their swords and sworn with tears an eternal peace, were
again in a month or two as busy as ever with the ancient feuds.
During the Alleluia itself, many earnest men must have felt the
fear expressed on a similar occasion by a pious chronicler of the
fifteenth century : " Now may God grant that this be peace
indeed, and tranquillity for all citizens ; whereof I doubt."
Jacopo da Varagine, author of the Golden Legend, describes a
similar religious revival and pacification at which he himself played
a prominent part in 1295 ; yet, since nothing is pure in this world,
the year was not yet out before the Devil inspired the citizens
again with such a spirit of discord that there were several days
of street fighting, in which a church was burned to the ground.
In the year after the great Alleluia, Salimbene records, without
comment, how there was a great battle in the plain of Cremona
between the seven principal towns of Lombardy, in spite of
natural calamities in which they might well have seen the finger
of Providence. For (88) "There was so great snow and frost
throughout the month of January that the vines and all fruit-
trees were frost-bitten. And beasts of the forest were frozen to
death, and wolves came into the cities by night : and by day
many were taken and hanged in the public streets. And trees
were split from top to bottom by the force of the frost, and
many lost their sap altogether and were dried up." The next
year came another bitter winter and greater destruction of
vines : but the warm weather was again marked by the usual
civil wars. In this year 1235 . . . the men of Parma and
Cremona, Piacen/a and Pontremoli, went with those of Modena
to dig the Scotenna above Bologna ; for they would fain have
thrown the stream against Castelfranco to destroy it. And no
40 FronvSt. Francis to Dante.
man was excused from the labour ; for some digged, others
carried earth, both nobles and common folk" (92). Salimbene
more than once speaks of the month of May, in Old Testament
phrase, as "the time when kings go forth to war." "Every
spring," as Ruskin put it, " kindled them into battle, and every
autumn was red with their blood." The worst horrors of civil
war recorded by Salimbene come after the great Alleluia of
1233.
It must be noted also to what an extent this, like most other
religious movements in the Middle Ages, came from the people
rather than from the hierarchy. Brother Benedict of the Horn
had no more claim to Apostolical Succession than General
Booth, or, for the matter of that, than St. Francis when he first
began to preach. There is no hint that either of them had at
first any episcopal licence even of the most informal kind, any
more than the Blessed Joachim of Fiore and St. Catherine of
Siena, and Richard Rolle of Hampole, who all set an example of
lay preaching. No doubt the practice was contrary to canon law :
but the thing was constantly done ; and, so long as the preacher
did not become a revolutionary, it seems to have caused neither
scandal nor surprise. Matthew Paris (ann. 1225) describes a
wild woman-preacher of this sort, not with contempt, but Avith
warm admiration. The canonization of saints, in the same way,
almost always came from the people and the lower classes.
Nothing is more false than to suppose that the medieval Church
was disciplined like the present Church of Rome. It was as
various in its elements, with as many cross-currents and as many
conflicts of theory with practice, as modern Anglicanism ; and
much which seems smooth and harmonious to us, at six hundred
years' distance, was as confusing to contemporaries as a Fulham
Round-Table Conference. Again, the oft-quoted saying of
Macaulay, that Rome has always been far more adroit than Prot-
estantism in directing enthusiasm, is true (so far as it is true at
all) only of Rome since the Reformation. What Darwin took at
first for smooth unbroken grass-land proved, on nearer examina-
tion, to be thick-set with tiny self-sown firs, which the cattle
regularly cropped as they grew. Similarly, that which some love
to picture as the harmonious growth of one great body through
the Middle Ages is really a history of many divergent opinions
violently strangled at birth ; while hundreds more, too vigorous
to be killed by the adverse surroundings, and elastic enough to
take something of the outward colour of their environment,
grew in spite of the hierarchy into organisms which, in their
turn, profoundly modified the whole constitution of the Church.
Conversion. 41
If the medieval theory and practice of persecution had still been
in full force in the eighteenth century in England, nearly all the
best Wesleyans would have chosen to remain within the Church
rather than to shed blood in revolt ; and the rest would have
keen killed off like wild beasts. The present unity of Roman-
ism, so far as it exists, is due less to tact than to naked force ; so
that in the Middle Ages, when communication was difficult and
discipline of any kind irregularly enforced, the religious world
naturally heaved with strange and widespread fermentations. It
is true that the modern Church historian generally slurs them
over : yet they were very pressing realities at the time.
Amid these wars, Salimbene records one very dramatic scene
(88). The Bishop of Mantua, whose sister was afterwards " mea
dcvota " i.e., one of Salimbene's many spiritual daughters was
murdered in a political quarrel. " And note that the College of
Canons and Clergy at Mantua sent news of the murder to the
Pope's court by a special envoy of exceeding eloquence : who,
young though he was, spake so that Pope and Cardinals marvel-
led to hear him. And, having made an end of speaking, he
brought forth the Bishop's blood-stained dalmatic, wherein he
had been slain in the Church of St. Andrew at Mantua, and
spread it before the Pope, saying : * Behold, Father, and see
whether it be thy son's coat or not.' And Pope Gregory IX,
with all his cardinals, wept at the sight as men who could not be
comforted ; for he was a man of great compassion and bowels of
mercy. And the Avvocati of Mantua, who slew this their
Bishop, were driven forth from their city without recall, and they
wander in exile even to this present day : in order that perverse
and incorrigible men (of whom and of fools the number is infinite) 2
and pestilent men who ruin cities, may all know that it is not
easy to fight against God. Note that folk say commonly in Tus-
cany ' D'ohmo alevandhizo, ct de pioclo apicadhizo no po fohm
ynuderc : ' which is, being interpreted, ' A man hath no joy of a
man who is a foreigner, nor of a louse which clingeth : ' that is,
thou hast no solace of another man's louse which clingeth to
thee, nor of a stranger man whom thou cherishest. Which may
be seen in Frederick II, whom the Church cherished as her
ward, and who afterwards raised his heel against her and afflicted
her in many ways. So also it may be seen in the Marquis of
Este who now is, 3 and in many others." After which Salim-
bene loses himself in a long sermon on martyrs, from Abel and
Zacharias to Becket ; from whose legend he quotes a series of
absolutely apocryphal stones relating the miraculous torments
amid which his murderers severally expired. Then the good
42 From St. Francis to Dante.
friar goes on with his common s tory of wars and bloodshed : for
of the 76 years covered by the Chronicle proper, only 21 are
free from express record of war in the writer's own neighbour-
hood, while several of the others were years of famine or pesti-
lence. Salimbene, as he played about the streets of Parma, saw
the heralds of the mighty host that Frederick was bringing to
crush the rebellious cities of Lombardy, " an elephant, with
many dromedaries, camels, and leopards," and all the strange
beasts and birds that the great Emperor loved to have about
him (92). Two years later, another imperial elephant came
through Parma armed for war, with a great tower and pennons
on its back, " as described in the first book of Maccabees and in
the book of Brother Bartholomew the Englishman " (94). From
his earliest childhood he had been familiar with the trophies of
the bloody fight at San Cesario a number of mangonels taken
from the vanquished Bolognese, and ranged along the Baptistery
and the west front of the Cathedral, almost under the windows
of his father's house (60). And now in his seventeenth year
the sad side of war was for the first time brought vividly
before his bodily eyes. The Bolognese in their turn had
destroyed Castiglione, a fortress of friendly Modena ; and
Parma itself was threatened (95 ). " Then the Advocate of
the Commune of Parma (who was a man of Modena) rode on
horseback, followed by a squire, through the Borgo di Sta.
Cristina, crying again and again with tears in his voice, ' Ye
lords of Parma, go and help the men of Modena, your friends
and brothers ! ' And hearing his words my bowels yearned for
him with a compassion that moved me even to tears. For 1
considered how Parma was stripped of men, nor were any left in
the city but boys and girls, youths and maidens, old men and
women ; since the men of Parma, with the hosts of many other
cities, had gone in the Emperor's service against Milan."
In the next year, 1238, came the turning point of Salimbene's
life. The Alleluia had impressed him deeply : Gerard of Mod-
ena, one of the most distinguished men of the Order, took a per-
sonal interest in his conversion : and on February 4th, at the age
of sixteen years and a few months, he slipped away from his father's
home and was admitted that same evening as a novice among
the Franciscans of Parma. Within the brief space of three
hundred yards he had passed from one world to another. A
friend of his, Alberto Cremonella, was admitted at the same
time, but went out during his noviciate, became a physician, and
later on entered the Cistercian Order.
Sixteen years may seem a strangely immature age at which
Conversion. 43
to renounce the world for life ; yet very many joined the Friars
at an earlier age than this. Conrad of Offida and John of La
Vernia, two of the most distinguished Franciscans of the first
generation, were only fourteen and thirteen respectively when
they joined the Order. Salimbene's contemporary, Roger Bacon,
asserts that most Friars had joined before they were of age, and
that in all countries they were habitually received at any age
between ten and twenty years. Thousands become friars, he
says, who can read neither their grammar nor their psalter.
Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, accused the friars of
attracting boys by presents of apples and wine ; and in 1313 the
University of Oxford passed a statute forbidding them to receive
novices below eighteen years of age. The crude spirit of adven-
ture which prompts a modern schoolboy to go to sea, sometimes
found a vent six hundreds years ago in an equally ill-regulated
religious enthusiasm. Only nine years before Salimbene's birth,
Northern Italy had witnessed the Boys' Crusade, which originat-
ed on the Rhine and swelled to a troop of seven thousand youths
and children, many of whom were of noble families, and who
expected to cross the sea dry-shod from Genoa to the Holy Land.
The Genoese, scandalized by the moral disorders which reigned
among them, and judging them " to be led by levity rather than
by necessity," closed their gates upon the juvenile pilgrims, who
were dispersed and perished miserably. Salimbene tells the story
on p. 30, and the author of the Golden Legend makes the
startling assertion that the fathers of the well-born boys had sent
harlots with their children. 4
Albert and Salimbene had chosen their time well ; for Brother
Elias, the powerful Minister-General of the Order, was at that
moment passing through Parma ; and, once received by him in
person, they would be pretty safe from all outside interference.
They found the great man on a bed of down in the guesten-hall ;
for the easy-chair was not a medieval institution, and even kings
or queens would receive visitors seated on their beds. Brother
Elias " had a goodly fire before him, and an Armenian cap on his
head : nor did he rise or move from his place when the Podesta
entered and saluted him, as I saw with mine own eyes : and this
was held to be great churlishness on his part, since God Himself
saith in Holy Scripture, ' Rise up before the hoary head, and
honour the person of the aged man.' ' After all, however, such
boorishness was natural to Brother EHas, who in his youth had
been glad to earn a scanty living by sewing mattresses and teach-
ing little boys to read their psalter. Brother Gerard of Modena
was also present : and at his prayer the young Salimbene was re-
44 From St. Francis to Dante.
ceived into the Order. The Abbot of St. John's at Parma had
sent for the Brethren's supper a peasant loaded with capons
hanging before and behind from a pole over his shoulders ; the
friars took the boy to sup in the infirmary, where more delicate
fare could be had than the ordinary Rule permitted. Here,
" though I had supped magnificently in my father's house, they
set an excellent meal before me again. 8 But in course of time
they gave me cabbages, which I must needs eat all the days of
my life : yet in the world I had never eaten cabbages nay,
I abhorred them so sore that 1 had never even eaten the flesh
stewed with them. So afterward I remembered that proverb
which was often in men's mouths : ' The kite said to the chicken
as he carried him off ' You may squeak now, but this isn't the
worst.' 6 And again I thought of Job's words, ' The things
which before my soul would not touch, now through anguish
are my meats ' " (99). Salimbene kept his eyes and ears open
that evening : for he was in the presence of one of the greatest
men in Italy. As a grown man he was far from approving
Brother Elias's policy, of which he has left the most detailed
criticism now extant. (96 foil.) This most thorny question,
however, is exhaustively discussed in Lempp's Frere Elie de
Cortonc, and well summarized by Miss Macdonell ; so I shall
quote elsewhere only such of our chronicler's remarks as throw
definite light upon the general conditions of the Order.
Once admitted, he was sent forthwith to Fano, in the Mark of
Ancona, some hundred and fifty miles from Parma. Guido
di Adamo was a man of influence, and only too likely to resent
the loss of his son and heir : for the proselytizing methods of
the friars constantly caused bitter family quarrels. " Greedy
and injurious men ! " complains an Italian dramatist of the next
century, " who think they have earned heaven when they have
separated a son from his father ! " The friars in their turn,
enforced the strictest separation from all friends during the year
of the noviciate. A s St. Bonaventura's secretary writes " To
speak with outsiders, whether lay folk (even such as serve the
Brethren) or Religious of any Order, is absolutely forbidden to
the novices except in the presence of a professed friar, who shall
hear and follow all the words spoken on either side ; nor may
the novices without special licence be allowed to go to the gate or
to outsiders." 7 How necessary was this rule in the friars' interest,
Salimbene's own words will show. (39.) " My father was sore
grieved all the days of his life at my entrance into the Order of
the Friars Minor, nor would he be comforted, since he had now
no son to succeed him. Wherefore, he made complaint to the
Conversion. 45
Emperor, who had come in those days to Parma, that the
Brethren Minor had robbed him of his son. Then the Emperor
wrote to Brother Elias, Minister-General of the Order, saying
that, as he loved his favour, he should hearken to him and give
me back to my father. Then my father journeyed to Assisi,
where Brother Elias was, and laid the Emperor's letter in the
General's hand, whereof the first words were as follows : To
comfort the sighing of our trusty and well-beloved Guido di Adamo,
etc. Brother Illuminato, 8 who in those days was scribe and
secretary to Brother Elias, and who was wont to write in
a book, apart by themselves, all the fair letters which were
sent by princes of the world to the Minister-General, showed
me that letter, when in process of time I dwelt with him in the
convent of Siena. Wherefore Brother Elias, having read the
Emperor's letter, wrote forthwith to the Brethren of the convent
of Fano, where I then dwelt, bidding them, if I were willing, to
give me back to my father without delay, in virtue of holy
obedience ; but if they found me unwilling to return, their
should they keep me as the apple of their eye. Whereupon
many knights came with my father to the house of the Brethren
in the city of Fano, to see the issue of this matter. To them I
was made a gazing-stock ; and to myself a cause of salvation.
For when the Brethren and the laymen had assembled in the
chapter-house, and many words had been bandied to and fro, my
father brought forth the letter of the Minister-General, and
showed it to the Brethren. Whereupon Brother Jeremiah the
Custode, having read it, replied to my father, ' My Lord Guido,
we have compassion for your grief, and are ready to obey the
letters of our father. But here is your son : he is of age, let
him speak for himself. Enquire ye of him : if he is willing to
fo with you, let him go in God's name. But if not, we cannot
o him violence, that he should go with you.' My father asked
therefore whether I would go with him, or not. To whom I
answered, ' No ; for the Lord saith, " No man, putting his hand
to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of
God." ' And my father said to me : * Thou hast no care then
for thine own father and mother, who are afflicted with divers
pains for thy sake ? ' To whom I made answer, ' No care have
I in truth, for the Lord saith, " He that loveth father or mother
more than Me, is not worthy of Me." Thou, therefore, father,
shouldst have a care for Him, Who for our sake hung on a tree,
that He might give us eternal life. For he it is Who saith,
' For I came to set a man at variance against his father,' etc.,
etc. (Matt. x. 35, 36, 32, 33). And the Brethren marvelled and
46 From St. Francis to Dante.
rejoiced that I spake thus to my father. Then said he to
the Brethren, * Ye have bewitched and deceived my son, lest
he should obey me. I will complain to the Emperor again
concerning you, and to the Minister-General. Yet suffer me
to speak with my sou secretly and apart ; and ye shall see
that he will follow me without delay.' So the Brethren suffered
me to speak alone with my father, since they had some small
confidence in me because of my words that 1 had even now
spoken. Yet they listened behind the partition to hear what
manner of talk we had : for they quaked as a rush quakes in the
water, lest my father by his blandishments should change my
purpose. And they feared not only for the salvation of my
soul, but also lest my departure should give occasion to others
not to enter the Order. My father, therefore, said to me :
* Beloved son, put no faith in these filthy drivellers 9 who have
deceived thee, but come with me, and all that I have will I give
unto thee.' And I answered and spake to my father : * Hence,
hence, father : the Wise Man saith in his Proverbs, in the third
chapter, " Hinder not from well-doing him who hath the power :
if thou art able, do good thyself also." ' And my father answered
even weeping, and said to me, 'What then, my son, can I say
to thy mother, who mourueth for thee night and day ? ' And
I spake unto him : ' Say unto her for my part, Thus saith thy
son : " When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord
will take me up." ' My father, hearing all this, and despairing
of my return, threw himself upon the earth in the sight of the
Brethren and the layfolk who had come with him, and cried, ' I
commit thee to a thousand devils, accursed son, together with
thy brother who is here with thee, and who also hath helped
to deceive thee. My curse cleave to thee through all eternity, and
send thee to the devils of hell ! ' And so he departed, troubled
beyond measure; but we remained in great consolation, giving
thanks unto God, and saying to Him, ' Though they curse, yet
bless Thou. For he who is blessed above the earth, let him be
blessed in God. Amen.' So the layfolk departed, much edified
at my constancy : and the Brethren also rejoiced greatly that
the Lord had wrought manfully through me His little child ;
and they knew that the words of the Lord are true, Who saith,
' Lay it up therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before how
you shall answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which
all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay.' In
the following night the Blessed Virgin rewarded me. For
methought I lay prostrate in prayer before the altar, as is the
wont of the Brethren, when they arise to matins : and I heard
Conversion. 47
the voice of the Blessed Virgin calling unto me. And, raising
my face, I saw her sitting upon the altar, in that place where the
Host and the chalice are set. And she had her little Child in her
lap, Whom she held out to me, saying, ' Draw thou nigh without
fear, and kiss my Son Whom thou hast confessed yesterday before
men.' And when I feared, I saw that the Child opened His arms
gladly, awaiting my coming. Trusting, therefore, in the cheer-
fulness and innocence of the Child, no less than in this so liberal
favour of His mother, I came forward and embraced and kissed
Him ; and His gracious mother left Him to me for a long space.
And since I could not take my fill of Him, at length the Holy
Virgin blessed me, saying : ' Depart, beloved son, and take thy
rest, lest the Brethren should rise to matins, and find thee here
with us.' I obeyed, and the vision disappeared : but in my
heart remained so great sweetness as tongue could never tell.
In very truth I avow, that never in this world had I such sweetness
as that. And then I knew the truth of that scripture which
saith, ' To him who hath tasted of the spirit, there is no taste
in any flesh.'
" At that time, while I was still in the city of Fano, I saw in a
dream that the son of Thomas degli Armari, of the city of Parma,
slew a monk ; and I told the dream to my brother. And after
a few days there came through the city of Fano Amizo degli
Amici, going into Apulia to fetch gold from thence ; and he
came unto the house of the Brethren, where he saw us : for he
was our acquaintance and friend and neighbour. And then,
beginning from another matter, we enquired how it might be
with Such-an-one (now his name was Gerard de' Senzanesi),
and he said to us : ' It is ill with him, for the other day he slew
a monk.' Then we knew that at times dreams are true. Further-
more, at that time also, when first my father passed through
the city of Fano, journeying towards Assisi, the Brethren hid
me many days, together with my brother, in the house of the
Lord Martin of Fano, who was a Master of Laws, and his palace
was hard by the seaside. And at times he would come to us
and speak to us of God and of the Holy Scriptures, and his
mother ministered unto us. Afterwards he entered the Order
of the Friars Preachers, wherein he ended his life with all praise.
While then he was yet in that Order, he was chosen Bishop of his
own city : but the Preachers would not suffer him to accept it,
for they were not willing to lose him. He would have entered
our Order, but he was dissuaded therefrom by Brother Taddeo
Buonconte, who was himself thereof. For our Brethren lay
sore upon Taddeo that he should return all ill-gotten gains, if he
48 From St. Francis to Dante.
would be received among us : and he said to the Lord Martin,
' So will they do with thee also, if thou enter the Order.' So
he feared, and entered the Order of Preachers, which perchance
was better for him and for us." This restitution of ill-gotten
gains was a very sore point with both Orders.
As Salimbene had learnt Latin " from his very cradle," so
now, from the very first days of his conversion, he set himself to
study theology. Forty-six years afterwards, on the anniversary
of his entrance, he looks back with pardonable complacency
over this long term of study. (277) "From my very earliest
noviciate at Fano in the March of Ancona, I learned theology
from Brother Umile of Milan, who had studied at Bologna under
Brother Aymo, the Englishman ; which same Aymo, in his old
age, was chosen Minister-General of our Order, and held that
office three years, even to his death. And in the first year of my
entrance into the Order I studied Isaiah and Matthew as Brother
Umile read them in the schools : and I have not ceased since then
to study and learn in the schools. And as the Jews said to Christ,
' Six and forty years was this temple in building,' so may I also
say : for it is 46 years to-day, Saturday the Feast of St. Gilbert,
in the year 1284, whereon I write these words, since I entered
the Order of Friars Minor. And I have not ceased to study
since then : yet not even so have I come to the wisdom of my
ancestors."
CHAPTER V.
A Wicked World.
BUT Salimbene's stay at Fano was brief. The friary lay
outside the walls, by the sea-shore, and he was haunted
by the idea that his father had hired pirates to seize and
kidnap him. He therefore gladly welcomed a message from
Brother Elias, who, delighted at the boy's constancy in cleaving
to the Order, sent him word that he might choose his own province.
He chose Tuscany, and went thither after a brief stay at Jesi.
On his way, he changed his home name for that which he was
to bear during the rest of his life. (38) " Now as I went to dwell
in Tuscany, and passed through the city of Castello, there 1
found in an hermitage a certain Brother of noble birth, ancient
and fulfilled of days and of good works, who had four sons,
knights, in the world. This was the last Brother whom the
blessed Francis robed and received into the Order, as he himself
related to me. He, hearing that I was called All-good, was
amazed, and said to me, * Son, there is none good but One, that is,
God. 1 From henceforth be thou called no more Ognibene but
Brother Salimbene (Leap-into-good), for thou hast well leapt, in
that thou hast entered into a good Order.' And I rejoiced, know-
ing that he was moved with a right spirit, and seeing that a name
was laid upon me by so holy a man. Yet had I not the name
which I coveted : for I would fain have been called Dionysius,
not only on account of my reverence for that most excellent
doctor, who was the disciple of the Apostle Paul, but also because
on the Feast of St. Dionysius I was born into this world. And
thus it was that I saw the last Brother whom the blessed Francis
received in the Order, after whom he received and robed no other.
I have seen also the first, to wit, Brother Bernard of Quintavalle,
with whom I dwelt for a whole winter in the Convent of Siena.
And he was my familiar friend ; and to me and other young men
he would recount many marvels concerning the blessed Francis ;
and much good have 1 heard and learnt from him."
50 From St. Francis to Dante.
In Tuscany, Salimbene dwelt in turn in the convents of Lucca,
Siena, and Pisa. It is possible that he was twice at Pisa, since
he had there an adventure which seems to imply that he was
scarcely yet settled in the Oi'der. At any rate it belongs logically,
if not chronologically, to this place. (44) " Now at Pisa I was
yet a youth, and one day I was led to beg for bread by a certain
lay-brother, filthy and vain of heart (whom in process of time
the Brethren drew out of a well into which he had thrown himself,
in a fit of I know not what folly or despair. And a few days
later, he disappeared so utterly that no man in the world could
find him : wherefore the Brethren suspected that the devil had
carried him off: let him look to it !). So when I was begging
bread with him in the city of Pisa, we came upon a certain court-
yard, and entered it together. Therein was a living vine,
overspreading the whole space above, delightful to the eye with
its fresh green, and inviting us to rest under its shade. There
also were many leopards and other beasts from beyond the seas,
whereon we gazed long and gladly, as men love to see strange
and fair sights. For youths and maidens were there in the
flower of their age, whose rich array and comely features caught
our eyes with manifold delights, and drew our hearts to them.
And all held in their hands viols and lutes and other instruments
of music, on which they played with all sweetness of harmony
and grace of motion. There was no tumult among them, nor
did any speak, but all listened in silence. And their song was
strange and fair both in its words and in the variety and melody
of its air, so that our hearts were rejoiced above measure. They
spake no word to us, nor we to them, and they ceased not to
sing and to play while we stayed there : for we lingered long in
that spot, scarce knowing how to tear ourselves away. I know
not (I speak the truth in God), how we met with so fair and
glad a pageant, for we had never seen it before, nor could we see
any such hereafter. 2 So when we had gone forth from that place,
a certain man met me whom I knew not, saying that he was of
the city of Parma : and he began to upbraid and rebuke me
bitterly with harsh words of scorn, saying ; ' Hence, wretch,
hence I Many hired servants in thy father's house have bread
and flesh enough and to spare, and thou goest from door to door
begging from those who lack bread of their own, whereas thou
mightest thyself give abundantly to many poor folk. Thou
should st even now be caracoling through the streets of Parma
on thy charger, and making sad folk merry with tournaments,
a fair sight for the ladies, and a solace to the minstrels. For
thy father wasteth away with grief, and thy mother well-nigh
A Wicked World. 51
despaireth of God for love of thee, whom she may no longer see.'
To whom I answered : ' Hence, wretch, hence thyself ! For
thou savourest not the things which are of God, but the things
which are of fleshly men : for what thou sayest, flesh and blood
hath revealed it to thee, not our Father which is in heaven.'*
Hearing this, he withdrew in confusion, for he wist not what to
say. So, when we had finished our round [of begging], that
evening I began to turn and ponder in my mind all that 1 had
seen and heard, considering within myself that if I were to live
fifty years in the Order, begging my bread in this fashion, not
only would the journey be too great for me (I Kings xix, 7), but
also shameful toil would be my portion, and more than my
strength could bear. When, therefore, I had spent almost the
whole night without sleep, pondering these things, it pleased
God that a brief slumber should fall upon me, wherein He
showed me a vision wondrous fair, which brought comfort to
my soul, and mirth and sweetness beyond all that ear hath
heard. And then I knew the truth of that saying of Eusebius,
' Needs must God's help come when man's help ceases : ' for I
seemed in my dream to go begging bread from door to door,
after the wont of the Brethren ; and I went through the quarter
of St. Michael of Pisa, in the direction of the Visconti ; because in
the other direction the merchants of Parma had their lodging,
which the Pisans call Fondaco ; and that part I avoided both
for shame's sake, since I was not yet fully strengthened in Christ,
and also fearing lest 1 might chance to hear words from my
father which might shake my heart. For ever my father pursued
me to the day of his death, and still he lay in wait to withdraw
me from the Order of St. Francis ; nor was he ever reconciled
to me, but persisted still in his hardness of heart. So as I went
down the Borgo San Michele towards the Arno, suddenly 1 lifted
my eyes and saw how the Son of God came from one of the
houses, bearing bread and putting it into my basket. Likewise
also did the Blessed Virgin, and Joseph the child's foster-father,
to whom the Blessed Virgin had been espoused. And so they
did until my round was ended and my basket filled. For it is
the custom in those parts to cover the basket over with a cloth
and leave it below ; and the friar goes up into the house to beg
bread and bring it down to his basket. So when my round was
ended and my basket filled, the Son of God said unto me : * I
* Salimbene here, as usual, reinforces his speech with several other texts
Rev. Hi, 17 ; Jer. ii, 5 ; Ecc. i, 2 ; Pa. Ixxvii, 33 ; and Ixxii, 19 ; Job xxi, 12, 13 ;
and 1 Cor. ii, 14.
52 From St. Francis to Dante.
am thy Saviour, and this is My Mother, and the third is Joseph
who was called My father. I am He Who for the salvation of
mankind left My home and abandoned Mine inheritance and
gave My beloved soul into the hands of its enemies . . ."'
Under the thin veil of our Lord's speech to him, the good friar
here launches out into a long and rambling disquisition on the
merits of voluntary poverty and mendicancy : a theme so
absoi'bing that he more than once loses sight of all dramatic
propriety. Not only does he make our Lord mangle the Bible
text, quote freely from apocryphal medieval legends, and cite the
tradition recorded by " Pietro Mangiadore " that the widow of
2 Kings IV had been the wife of the prophet Obadiah, but more
than once we find Him inadvertently speaking of God in the
third person. 3 There are, however, one or two points of interest
in this wilderness of incoherent texts and old wives' tales. Salim-
bene, who (as he tells us elsewhere) had at least one Jewish friend,
gives us an interesting glimpse of thirteenth century apologetics.
" Moreover in my vision I spake again to the Lord Christ, saying :
' Lord, the Jews who live among us Christians learn our grammar
and Latin letters, not that they may love Thee and believe in
Thee, but that they may carp at Thee and insult us Christians
who adore the crucifix ; and they cite that scripture of Esaias,
"They have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven
work, and pray unto a god that cannot save." ' He represents
the Jews, in fact, as objecting the texts which a modern Jew
might quote ; while he himself meets their objections with
arguments which no modern apologist would dare to use. Indeed,
his wordy and futile apologia illustrates admirably a well-
known anecdote of St. Louis. " The holy king related to me "
(writes Joinville, x. 51) "that there was a great disputation
between clergy and Jews at the Abbey of Cluny. Now a knight
was present to whom the Abbot had given bread for God's sake ;
and he prayed the Abbot to let him say the first word, which
with some pain he granted. Then the knight raised himself on
his crutch, and bade them go fetch the greatest clerk and chief
rabbi of the Jews : which was done. Whereupon the knight
questioned him : * Master,' said he, ' I ask you if you believe
that the Virgin Mary, who bare God in her womb and in her
arms, was a virgin mother, and the Mother of God ? ' And the
Jew answered that of all this he believed naught. Then answered
the knight that he had wrought great folly, in that he believed
not and loved her not, and yet was come into her minster and
her house. ' And of a truth,' said the knight, 'you shall pay it
dear.' With that he lifted his crutch and smote the Jew under
A Wicked World. 53
the ear and felled him to earth. And the Jews turned to flight
and bare off their wounded rabbi ; and thus was the disputation
ended. Then came the Abbot to the knight and said that he
had wrought great folly. But he said that the Abbot had wrought
more folly to ordain such a disputation : ' For here,' he said,
' are many good Christians present who, or ever the dispute had
been ended, would have departed in unbelief, for they would
never have understood the Jews.' ' So say I,' added the king,
' that none should dispute with them, but if he be a very learned
clerk. The layman, when he hears any speak ill of the Christian
faith, should defend it, not with words but with the sword, which
he should thrust into the other's belly as far as it will go.' '
The story is all the more instructive because St. Louis was, in
practice, extremely kind to the Jews in comparison with most
medieval princes. Another medieval practice admirably illus-
trated by these pages of Salimbene's is the wresting of Scripture
to prove a preconceived theory, by distortion of its plain meaning,
interpolation of words or phrases, and quotations from the Gloss,*
as of equal authority with the Bible text. These time-hallowed
liberties in the interpretation of Scripture go far to explain why
medieval religious controversy, even among Christians, nearly
alway ended in an appeal to physical force. So long as a word
and a blow was looked upon as the most cogent religious argument,
men seldom attempted either to understand their opponents'
position or to weigh seriously their own arguments. And so
in this passage our good friar loses himself in his own labyrinth
of texts, and at last confesses that most of this elaborate dialogue
has been a mere afterthought, a " story with a purpose."
It was written, he tells us, to confute Guillaume de St. Amour
and other wicked people who, seeing how far the friars had
already drifted from the Rule of St. Francis, accused them of
being the " ungodly men " of 1 Tim. iii. 5-7 and iv. 3, come as
heralds of the last and worst age of the world. There was,
however, enough tcuth in the first portion of the vision to support
Salimbene himself (53). " Wherefore, after this vision aforesaid,
I had such comfort in Christ, that when jongleurs or minstrels
came at my father's bidding to steal my heart from God, then
I cared as little for their words as for the fifth wheel of a waggon.
For upon a day one came to me and said, ' Your father salutes
you and says thus : " Your mother would fain see you one day ;
after which she would willingly die on the morrow." Wherein
he thought to have spoken words that would grieve me sore,
* i.e., the traditional notes.
54 From St. Francis to Dante.
to turn my heart away ; but I answered him in wrath : ' Depart
from me, wretch that thou art ; for I will hear thee no more.
My father is an Amorite unto me, and my mother a daughter
of Heth.' And he withdrew in confusion, and came no more."
Yet, manfully as Salimbene might resist during his novicate
all temptations to apostasy (for so the Brethren called it, however
unjustly), he felt a natural human complacency in looking back
as an old man on what he had given up. Speaking of Cardinal
Gerardo Albo, he tells us, " He was born in the village of Gainago,
wherein I, Brother Salimbene, had once great possessions " : and
he repeats the same phrase a second time, when he comes again
to speak of the great Cardinal. Similarly, he cannot think
without indignation of the miserable price at which his father's
house was sold when poor Guido was gone, leaving his wife and
children dead to the world in their respective convents. " The
Lord Jacopo da Enzola bought my house in Parma hard by the
Baptistery ; and he had it almost for a gift, that is, for a sum of
small worth in comparison with that whereat my father justly
esteemed it." Finally, he dwells with pardonable pride on the
honours to which he might have attained, under certain very
possible contingencies, even as a friar. In those, as in later, days,
there was no such friend for a cleric as a Pope's nephew : and
Salimbene, speaking of a nephew of Pope Innocent IV, continues :
(61) "I knew him well, and he told me that my father hoped to
procure from Pope Innocent my egress from the Order j but
he was prevented by death. For my father, dwelling hard by
the Cathedral Church, was well known to Pope Innocent, who
had been a canon of Parma and was a man of great memory.
Furthermore, my father had married his daughter Maria to the
Lord Azzo, who was akin to the Lord Guarino, the Pope's
brother-in-law ; wherefore he hoped, what with the Pope's
nephews and what with his own familiar knowledge of him, that
the Pope would restore me to my home, especially since my
father had no other sons. Which, as I believe, the Pope would
never have done ; but perchance to solace my father he might
have given me a Bishopric or some other dignity : for he was a
man of great liberality."
However, for good or for evil, our chronicler is now irrevocably
rooted in his cloister, and his father has no sons left to him in the
world. The two last males of his house have definitely exchanged
all their earthly possessions for a heavenly. (56) " I, Brother
Salimbene, and my Brother Guido di Adamo destroyed our
house in all hope of male or female issue by entering into Religion,
that we might build it in Heaven. Which may He grant us Who
A Wicked World. 55
liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost for
ever and ever. Amen." One needs, of course, at least a homoeo-
pathic dose of Carlyle's " stupidity and sound digestion " to
live at peace anywhere ; but to nine friars out of ten the gain
of the celestial inheritance would seem as certain henceforth
as the loss of the terrestrial : for it is an ever-recurring common-
place in Franciscan chronicles that the Founder had begged
and obtained a sure promise of salvation for all his sons who should
remain true to the Order. But, if we would fully understand
the rest of Salimbene's earthly life, we must pause a moment
here to take stock of the old world he had left, and of the new
world into which he had so intrepidly leapt at the age of sixteen
years.
One would be tempted to say that " the world," in the thir-
teenth century, deserved almost all the evil which religious men
were never weary of speaking about it. It is scarcely possible
to exaggerate the blank and universal pessimism, so far as this
life is concerned, which breathes from literature of the time.
It is always rash to assert a negative ; yet after long search in
likely places, I have found only one contemporary author who
speaks of his own brilliant century as marking a real advance,
in morals and religion, on the past. This is Cardinal Jacques
de Vitry, who died in 1244, before the decline of the friars was
too obvious to be blinked, and who wrote earlier still, while St.
Francis was alive. Moreover, even his testimonial to the improve-
ment during his own days must be taken in connection with his
astounding descriptions of the moral and religious squalor which
reigned before the advent of Francis and Dominic. W hat is more,
he plainly tells us that he looks upon even this new Revival as
the last flicker of an expiring world. The Franciscan Order,
he says, " has revived religion, which had almost died out in the
eventide of a world whose sun is setting, and which is threatened
by the coming of the Son of Perdition : in order that it might
have new champions against the perilous days of Antichrist,
fortifying and propping up the Church." 4
Slender as were Vitry's hopes, his compeers were more hopeless
still. Most of them, however pious and learned and brave,
simply ring variations on the theme which to us seems so incon-
gruous on the lips of our remote ancestors : " The world is very
evil, the times are waxing late ! " Read the great poem of Bernard
of Morlaix from which this hymn is translated, and you will find
page after page of bitter and desperate lamentations on the
incorrigible iniquity of the whole world. The greatest of all
medieval historians, Matthew Paris, had no doubt that the
56 From St. Francis to Dante.
thirteenth century marked the last stage of senile decay. Adam
Marsh, one of the greatest and most strenuous of the early
Franciscans in England, is never weary of alluding to "these
most damnable times," " these days of uttermost perdition,"
in which "no man can fail to see plainly that Satan is either
already loosed or soon to be loosed, except those whom (according
to the Scripture) the Lord hath struck with madness and blind-
ness." Grosseteste, unsurpassed in learning and energy among
our Bishops, complained in a sermon before the Pope at Lyons
that (leaving heretics aside) even the Catholic population was,
as a body, incorporate with the Devil. Innocent III writes in
a Bull of " the corruption of this world, which is hasting to old
age." St. Francis, at the end of his life, sighed over " these times
of superabundant malice and iniquity." St. Bonaventura,
Vincent of Beauvais, Humbert de Romans, Gerard de Frachet,
Thomas of Chantimpre, Raimondo da Vigna (to name only
distinguished friars who were not tempted to minimize the work
of their Orders towards the betterment of the world), echo the
same despairing cry. 5 'Dante shares their belief that the end of
the world is at hand, and leaves but few seats still vacant in
his Paradise (xxx. 131 ; cf. Convivio ii. 18.) His Ubertino da
Casale gives a curious reason for thinking that the world will just
last his own time : viz, Petrus Comestor,* in his commentary on
Gen. ix. 13, had written "that the rainbow will not appear for
30 or 40 years before the Day of Doom ; but the rainbow hath
appeared this year [1318] . . . wherefore we have now at least
30 or 40 years before Doomsday." 6
If Dante or St. Francis could come back to life for a single
day, their first and greatest surprise would probably be that the
world still exists after six hundred years, far younger and more
hopeful than in their days ; a world in which even visionaries
and ascetics look rather for gradual progress than for any sudden
and dramatic appearance of Antichrist. But more significant
even than the chorus of misery and despair from thirteenth-
century theologians and poets is the deliberate pessimism of a
cool and far-sighted genius like Roger Bacon. He anticipated
the verdict of modern criticism on the boasted philosophy of his
contemporaries : that, with all its external perfection, it rested
upon a Bible and an Aristotle frequently misunderstood, and
snowed a fatal neglect of the mathematical and physical sciences.
But in the domain of history he shared the ignorance of his
time, and was deprived of that assurance of progress in the past,
* The Mangiadore of Par. xii. 134.
A Wicked World. 57
which is one of the mainsprings of future progress for the world.
The passage is so significant both of the barbarous atmosphere
which stifled the greatest minds of the thirteenth century, and
of the limited outlook which paralyzed their best energies, that
I must give a full summary of it here. It was written in 1271,
two whole generations after St. Francis began to preach ; and
the writer, it must be remembered, was himself a Franciscan.
Wisdom, he says, is intimately connected with morality ; and
although there has been a vast extension of learning of late
especially through the Friars during the last forty years and,
by the Devil's wiles, much appearance of learning yet " never
was so much ignorance, so much error as now . . . For more
sins reign in these days of ours than in any past age, and sin is
incompatible with wisdom. Let us see all conditions in the
world, and consider them diligently everywhere : we shall find
boundless corruption, and first of all in the Head." The court
of Rome is given up to pride, avarice, and envy ; " lechery
dishonours the whole Court, and gluttony is lord of all." Worse
still when, as lately happened, the Cardinals' quarrels leave the
Holy See vacant for years. " If then this is done in the Head,
how is it in the members ? See the prelates : how they hunt
after money and neglect the cure of souls. ... Let us consider
the Religious Orders : I exclude none from what I say. See
how far they are fallen, one and all, from their right state ; and
the new Orders [of Friars] are already horribly decayed from
their first dignity. The whole clergy is intent upon pride,
lechery, and avarice : and wheresoever clerks are gathered
together, as at Paris and Oxford, they scandalize the whole
laity with their wars and quarrels and other vices." Princea
and Barons live for war : " none care what is done, or how, by
hook or by crook, provided only that each can fulfil his lust : "
for they are slaves to sensuality. The people, exasperated by
their princes, hate them and break faith with them whenever-
they can. But they too, corrupted by the example of their
betters, are daily busy with oppression or fraud or gluttony or
lechery. Yet we have Baptism, and the Revelation of Christ,
and the Sacrament of the Altar, which men cannot really believe
in or revere, or they would not allow themselves to be corrupted
by so many errors. With all these advantages, how do we stand
in comparison with the ancient philosophers ? " Their lives,
were beyond all comparison better than ours, both in all decency
and in contempt of the world, with all its delights and riches and
honours ; as all men may read in the works of Aristotle, Seneca,
Tully, Avicenna, Alfarabius, Plato, Socrates, and others ; and
58 From St. Francis to Dante.
so it was that they attained to the secrets of wisdom and found
out all knowledge. But we Christians have discovered nothing
worthy of these philosophers, nor can we even understand their
wisdom ; which ignorance springs from this cause, that our
morals are worse than theirs." Therefore many wise men be-
lieve that Antichrist is at hand, and the end of the world. We
know, however, from the Bible, that the fulness of the Gentiles
must first enter in, and the remnant, of Israel be turned to the
Faith : which still seems far from accomplishment : for along
the Baltic we have vast populations of pure heathens, to whom
the word of God has never been preached, though they are nearer
to Paris than Rome is. It may be that still, as of old, the long-
suffering God will withhold his Hand awhile : " yet since the
wickedness of men is now fulfilled, it must needs be that some
most virtuous Pope and most virtuous Emperor should rise to
purge the Church with the double sword of the spirit and the
flesh : or else that such purgation take place through Antichrist,
or thirdly through some other tribulation, as the discord of Christ-
ian princes, or the Tartars and Saracens and other kings of the
East, as divers scriptures and manifold prophecies tell us. For
there is no doubt whatever among wise men, but that the Church
must be purged : yet whether in the first fashion, or the second, or
the third, they are not agreed, nor is there any certain definition
on this head." 7
That Bacon, on his lonely pinnacle of contemplation, found
the world of the thirteenth century almost intolerable, will seem
natural enough to those who follow the revelations which flow
so freely even from Salimbene's jovial pen. It is less natural, at
first sight, that he should have done his own age the injustice of
placing it on a far lower moral level than the Rome of Seneca
or the Greece of Aristotle. But the cause is very simple ; he
knew nothing whatever of the inner life of ordinary Greece and
Rome : he had only spent long years in studying the religious
and philosophical writings of their greatest men. In a word, he
had studied Antiquity as Newman studied the Middle Ages :
and this false ideal of the past disabled him from making the best
of the realities among which God had placed him. 8
This false perspective, however, was inevitable in the thirteenth
century. Men could not know the real past ; and the present
seemed only a chaos of conflicts and uncertainties. A broader
view of history might have taught them how the very ferment
of their own age was big with a glorious future ; but such a
wider view was impossible in those days of few and untrust-
worthy books. So they saw no hope in this world ; no hope but
A Wicked World. 59
in a Dens ex mackina. Some Good Emperor and Good Pope
shortly to come, or else Christ's second Advent and the end of all
things that was the heart's cry of the crowning period of the
Middle Ages ! Dante shared this longing for a Good Emperor
and a Good Pope ; but he lived to see Henry of Luxemburg
poisoned, Boniface VIII triumphant, and the Babylonian Captiv-
ity of Avignon. This expectation of a Deus ex machina seems to
die out towards the end of the fourteenth century ; undoubtedly
the Black Death made men take more serious stock of the real
grounds of their faith. Gerson spoke of the world in which he
lived with all Dante's loathing and contempt, but his hopes
rested on a General Council to reform the otherwise hopeless
Church. 9 Meanwhile the lay element increased steadily in power :
its influence may be traced in the growing magnificence of church
buildings, furniture, and ritual. Presently powerful laymen
set their hands, one by one, to assist that regeneration which
the Church by herself had tried in vain to bring about : and
then came the Reformation, with its slow evolution of a better
world a world which, with all its faults, enjoys such a combina-
tion of individual liberty and public order as would have seemed
Utopian to the most hopeful minds of the thirteenth century.
If there had been nothing else in those days to render modern
liberty and order impossible, there was the ingrained habit of
civil and religious war. The fanatical craving of the Middle
Ages for an outward unity fatally frustrated all real inward
peace, as the greedy drinker chokes and spills in his own despite.
The civil wars of Salimbene's Italy were not worse than those
of Stephen's England, or the France of Charles VI, to leave less
civilised countries out of the question : and Guibert of Nogent's
autobiography indicates a state of things quite as bad in the
North of France during St. Bernard's generation. Again, our
good friar takes no cognizance of the still more horrible religious
wars against the Albigenses and Stedingers, and the half -converted
heathen of Prussia. Yet, omitting all those touches which would
add so much deeper a gloom to any comprehensive picture of the
Middle Ages, here is Salimbeue's description of what went on as
the necessary consequence of quarrels between Pope and Emperor,
in that outer world upon which he now looked out in comparative
safety from under his friar's cowl. (190) " But here, that you
may know the labyrinth of affairs, I must not omit to tell how
the Church party in Modena was driven forth from the city,
while the I mperial party held it. So it was also in lleggio ; and
so also, in process of time, in Cremona. Therefore in those days
was most cruel war, which endured many years. Men could
60 From St. Francis to Dante.
neither plough, nor sow, nor reap, nor till vineyards, nor gather
the vintage, nor dwell in the villages : more especially in the
districts of Parma and Reggio and Modena and Cremona. Never-
theless, hard by the town walls, men tilled the fields under guard
of the city militia, who were mustered quarter by quarter
according to the number of the gates. Armed soldiers thus
guarded the peasants at their work all day long : for so it must
needs be, by reason of the ruffians and bandits and robbers who
were multiplied beyond measure. For they would take men
and lead them to their dungeons, to be ransomed for money ;
and the oxen they drove off to devour or to sell. Such as would
pay no ransom they hanged up by the feet or the hands, and
tore out their teeth, and extorted payment by laying toads in
their mouths, which was more bitter and loathsome than any
death. For these men were more cruel than devils, and one
wayfarer dreaded to meet another by the way as he would have
dreaded to meet the foul fiend. For each ever suspected that
the other would take and lead him oft' to prison, that 'the ransom
of a man's life might be his riches.' And the land was made
desert, so that there was neither husbandman nor wayfarer.
For in the days of Frederick, and specially from the time when
he was deposed from the Empire [by the Pope], and when Parma
rebelled and lifted her head against him, * the paths rested, and
they that went by them walked through bye-ways.' And evils
were multiplied on the earth ; and the wild beasts and fowls
multiplied and increased beyond all measure, pheasants and
partridges and quails, hares and roebucks, fallow deer and
buffaloes and wild swine and ravening wolves. For they found
no beasts in the villages to devour according to their wont :
neither sheep nor lambs, for the villages were burned with fire.
Wherefore the wolves gathered together in mighty multitudes
round the city moats, howling dismally for exceeding anguish
of hunger ; and they crept into the cities by night and devoured
men and women and children who slept under the porticoes or
in waggons. Nay, at times they would even break through the
house-walls and strangle the children in their cradles. 10 No
man could believe, but if he had seen it as I have, the horrible
deeds that were done in those days, both by men and by divers
beasts. For the foxes multiplied so exceedingly that two of
them even climbed one Lenten-tide to the roof of our infirmary
at Faenza, to take two hens which were perched under the roof-
tree : and one of them we took in that same convent, as I saw
with mine own eyes. For this curse of wars invaded and preyed
upon and destroyed the whole of Komagna in the days when I
A Wicked World. 61
dwelt there. Moreover, while 1 dwelt at Imola, a certain layman
told me how he had taken 27 great and fair cats with a snare in
certain villages that had been burnt, and had sold their hides to
the furriers : which had doubtless been house-cats in those
villages in times of peace." When we consider that the moral
disorders of the time were almost as great as the political
disorders ; and that the lives of the Saints constantly describe
their heroes as meeting with worse religious hindrances in their
own homes than they would be likely to find in a modern Protes-
tant country then we shall no longer wonder that so many
escaped from a troubled world into what seemed by comparison
the peace of the cloister.
CHAPTER VI.
Cloister Life.
BUT the cloister itself was only half a refuge. In vain did each
generation try afresh to fence " Religion " with an impene-
trable wall, for within a few years " the World " had always
crept in again. Most men brought with them into the cloister a
great deal of the barbarous world without ; the few who cast off
the old man did so only after such a struggle as nearly always left
its life-long shadow on the mind. 1 have pointed out elsewhere
how false is the common impression that " Puritanism " and
" Calvinism " were born with the Reformation. 1 The self-imposed
gloom of religion the waste and neglect of God's visible gifts
in a struggle after impossible otherworldliness the sourness
and formalism and hypocrisy which are the constant nemesis of
so distorted an ideal, meet us everywhere in the 13th century,
and nowhere more inevitably than among the friars of St.
Bouaventura's school. There is, I believe, no feature of
Puritanism (as distinct from Protestanism in general) which had
not a definite place in the ideals of the Medieval Saints. The
" personal assurance of salvation " which Newman mentions as
specially characteristic of " Calrinism or Methodism," was in
fact specially common among the early Friars. 3 So was the
dislike of church ornaments and church music ; high officials in
the Order were disgraced for permitting a painted window or a
painted pulpit in their churches ; and even in the 17th century
there were many who believed that St. Francis had forbidden
music altogether. St. Bernard speaks of the profusion of paint-
ings and carvings in monastic churches as little short of heathen-
ism ; and he argues most emphatically that the highest religion
is least dependent on such extraneous aids to devotion. 3 Multi-
tudes of beautiful works of art were mutilated, and noble buildings
destroyed, by the vandalism of the very ages which gave them
birth ; and the iconoclasm of the reformers was simply the medieval
spirit of destructiveness working under particularly favourable
conditions. Moreover, the selfish view of salvation which is
Cloister Life. 63
often spoken of as distinctively Puritan the idea of the Christian
race as a sort of jostle for heaven was particularly medieval,
and particularly monastic. It is true, St. Francis did much to
shake the idea ; but it was soon flourishing again in his own Order ;
and the ideal friar of St. Bonaventura's school is almost as deeply
imbued with what St. Jerome calls " holy selfishness " as the
older monks themselves. The tenet of the certain damnation
of unbaptized infants, so often charged against Calvinism, is
maintained universally, T believe, by orthodox medieval theolo-
gians. St. Bonaventura (following St. Gregory, aud in company
with Aquinas, Gerson, and numbers of others almost as eminent)
reckons among the delights of the blest that they will see the
damned souls writhing below them in hell. One anecdote will show
how little the early Franciscans realized the lesson which the
modern world has learnt from St. Francis and from others who
have followed in his steps that to save our own souls we not
only need not, but almost must not, avoid our fellow-men, or
break off the ordinary relations of life. The Blessed Angela of
Foligno was the spiritual instructress of Dante's Ubertino da
Casale ; she is singled out by Canon Knox-Little for special
praise among the Franciscan saints. On her conversion to God
she " mourned to be bound by obedience to a husband, by
reverence to a mother, and by the care of her children," and
prayed earnestly to be released from these impediments. Her
prayer was heard, and " soon her mother, then her husband, and
presently all her children departed this life." The story is told
with admiration by one Franciscan chronicler after another,
even down to the sober Wadding in the middle of the 17th cen-
tury. St. Francis's admirable combination of cheerfulness and
religion passed to but few of his disciples, as we realise at once
when we wander afield beyond the charmed circle of the
Fioretti legends. In the generations between St. Francis and
Dante there were merry and sociable friars, and there were
deeply religious friars ; but from a very early period the merry
and the serious were divided into almost irreconcilable parties
within the Order.
1 had hoped to give at this point as full a picture as possible of
inner Franciscan life in the later 13th century, by way of intro-
ducing my reader to Salimbene's experiences, but this would
take me so far from my main purpose that I must reserve it for
another time. At the same time it is necessary to give a few
details, if only to disabuse the reader who may have formed his
notions of ordinary Franciscan life from the Fioretti alone. That
immortal book, true as it is within its own limits, no more gives
64 From St. Francis to Dante.
us the life of the average friar thau the Vicar of Wakcfield shows
us the average country parson of the 18th century. Many
important inferences which might be drawn from it are most
directly contradicted by St. Bonaventura (d. 1274), by other
writers of his school, by the earliest chronicles of the Order, and
most incontrovertible evidence of all by dry official documents.
The Fioretti will always remain an inspiring example of what
some men have done, but for the purposes of historical compari-
son the main question is, " How do most men live ? " ; and from
this the Fioretti, by themselves, would often lead us far astray.
Nowhere within so small a compass can we so clearly realize
average Franciscan life as from the directions to novices and
older brethren compiled by St. Bonaventura, by his secretary
Bernard of Besse, and by his contemporary David of Augsburg.
These little books have been republished in a cheap form by the
Franciscans of Quaracchi, and should be studied by all who wish
to understand the 13th century friar.* But the reader must be
prepared for things undreamt of in M. Sabatier's St. Francis,
admirable as that book is on the whole as a picture of the Order
during the saint's lifetime. Nothing is more remarkable in
religious history than the rapid changes in Franciscan ideals and
practice within a very few years.
The manuals of St. Bonaventura's school and their evidence
is entirely borne out by such early documents as were composed
without the poetic preoccupations which moulded the Fioretti
show a conventual ideal almost as gloomy as that of earlier
monasticism. Of the Puritanism I have already spoken ; the
ideas of discipline were equally formal and lifeless. Novices are
bidden not to thee or thou their seniors in the Order. To carry
flowers or a staff, to twirl the end of one's girdle-cord, to sit with
crossed legs, to laugh, to sing aloud, are all unworthy of Francis-
can decorum. So far from ever talking familiarly with a woman,
or touching her hand, the friar must not even look at one when
he can help it. Warning is heaped upon warning to show that
spiritual friendship in these matters is even more dangerous than
ordinary friendship ; many pillars of the Order have fallen
through this. The friar is thus cut off for life not only from the
help of women, but from any free and personal influence over
them. 4 Again, to carry news is unfranciscan, or to speak of con-
tingent matters without some such qualification as D.V. ; or
* The Italian translation of Bernard of Besse's book, published by the same
community, must, however, be used with caution, as the text is softened down
by omissions and other similar changes, to avoid shocking the modern reader.
Cloister Life. 65
to say How d'ye do ? to people in whose health you have no
special interest. As David of Augsburg sums it up, wherever
the friar has no special prospect of spiritual profit, he is to look
upon worldly folk with no more interest " than if they were so
many sheep."
Of course the average friar did not conform to all these rules.
We cannot even begin to understand medieval life until we
realize that the laws and regulations of those days represented
only pious aspirations, all the more soaring because they were
so little expected to bear fruit in fact. No doubt the average
friar, in his easy sociability, resembled the friar of Chaucer and
of Shakespeare, but the fact remains that the Constitutions of
his Order, and the byelaws of his convent, required him to be
quite a different person. Moreover (literary enjoyment and
dilettante sentiment apart), we may well be glad that these most
picturesque figures of the past are no longer living among us in
their primitive shape. Brother Juniper running naked in our
streets or St. Francis himself ; for on at least one occasion the
earliest authorities expressly deny him even the scanty garments
in which later prudery clokes him we may well be glad to keep
such children of nature within the covers of old books. We
revel in Jacopone da Todi's eccentricities, but we are happy to live
600 years to windward of him. And, in this respect, the sober
prose documents are in complete agreement with the Fioretti :
they show us many traces not only of the old unregenerate
Adam, but, what is more, of the 1 3th century Adam, only dimly
realizable at the best by politer readers of to-day. The direc-
tions for behaviour in refectory and in church are startling indeed,
for they exemplify something more than that " morbid craving
for an indulgence of food and drink, making mockery of their
long fasts and abstinence," which Mr. McCabe describes as
general among modern friars. St. Francis himself had noted and
legislated against this gluttony, and the complaints continue
through St. Bonaventura and others down to Ubertino da Casale.
" Fall not upon thy meat with tooth and claw like a famished
dog," pleads David of Augsburg ; and St. Bonaventura's secretary
enters into minuter details. " Cleanliness should be observed
not only as to thine own and thy fellows' food, but as to the table
also whereat thou eatest. Beware, in the name of cleanliness
and decency alike, of plunging into dish, cup, or bowl that which
thou hast already bitten and art about to bite again. It is a
foul thing to mingle the leavings of thine own teeth with others'
meat. Never grasp the cup with fingers steeped in pottage or
other food, nor plunge thy thumb into the goblet, nor blow upon
66 From St. Francis to Dante.
the drink in the cup or upon any meat whatsoever. It is indecent
for a man to plunge his fingers into the pottage and fish for
gobbets of meat or potherbs with bare hands in lieu of spoon,
thus (as Hugh of St. Victor writes) washing his hands and refresh-
ing his belly with one and the same broth." The friar is further
warned not " to cast forth upon the table the superfluity of his
fish or other meat, to crack nuts with his teeth for another guest,
to cough or sneeze without turning away from the table, to . . ."
but the rest of this warning must be left to the decent obscurity
of the original. It is sufficient to remind the reader that even
sybaritic worldlings in the thirteenth century possessed neither
handkerchief nor fork, and that their most elaborate refinements
of manners under these difficulties will scarcely bear description
in a less downright age. . . . Again, "the cleanliness of the
table demands that the cloth should by no means be fouled through
frequent or superfluous wipings of thy knife or thy hands ; least
of all should it be submitted to purging of teeth. For it is a base
and vile thing to befoul the Brethren's common cloths and towels
with rubbing of thy gums. He who dishonoureth the common
goods oflfendeth against the community." It is only fair to add
that many of these rules for behaviour are adapted from those
drawn up by Dante's Hugh of St. Victor for his fellow-monks ;
and that, on the whole, the friars were apparently just one shade
more civilized at table than the members of a great Augustinian
convent a century earlier, of whom Hugh complains that many
rushed upon their meat like a forlorn hope at the breaches of a
besieged city. The great Dominican General Humbert de
Romans makes similar complaints of his brother-friars' behaviour
at table. 6
But even more significant than these hints on table manners
are the indications which may be gathered as to the conduct of
divine service. St. Bonaventura twice alludes to the extreme
length of the services, assuming that the novice in confession
will have to accuse himself " of much negligence and irreverence
in the matter of thine Hours, for thou sayest them sleepily and
indevoutly and with a wandering heart and imperfectly, omitting
at times whole verses and syllables." David of Augsburg speaks
of the common temptation to melancholy or levity in the friar's
mind, "whence we are forced to attend divine service with a
mind that struggles against it, like puppies chained to a post ;
and this is the vice of accedia, the loathing of good.* Many,
even among Religious, are sick of this disease, and few overcome
* Cf. Inf. vii, 123.
Cloister Life. 67
it." Salimbene bears the same testimony in his own racy style
a propos of the changes made by the great Innocent III, who
(31) "corrected and reformed the church services, adding matter
of his own and taking away some that others had composed ;
yet even now it is not well ordered, as many would have it and
as real truth requires. For there are many superfluities which
beget rather weariness than devotion, both to hearers and to
officiants ; as, for instance, at Prime on Sundays, when priests
have to say their masses and the people await them, yet there is
none to celebrate, for they are yet busied with Prime. So also
with the recitation of the eighteen psalms at Nocturns on Sunday
before the Te Deum. For these things beget sheer weariness,
not only in summer, when we are harassed by fleas and the nights
are short and the heat is intense, but in winter also. There are
yet many things left in divine service which might be changed
for the better. And it would be well if they were changed, for
they are full of uncouth stuff, though not every man can see
this." Caesarius of Heisterbach, again, has many tales of
Brethren who slumber in church. Within the walls of the
sanctuary his saints are as drowsy as his sinners, and, while the
idle Cistercian is dreaming of Hell, the industrious Cistercian,
no less oblivious of earthly psalmody, is rapt into the Seventh
Heaven. In spite of the theoretical gravity of the sin, the stern
moralist unbends to humour in writing of a lapse so natural and
so inevitable in practice. " A certain knight of Bonn once made
his Lenten retreat in our abbey. After that he had returned to
his home, he met our Abbot one day and said to him, ' My Lord
Abbot, sell me that stone which lieth by such and such a column
in your choir, and 1 will pay whatsoever price thou wilt.' Our
Abbot asked, ' What need hast thou thereof ? ' 'I will lay it,'
he replied, ' at my bed's head, for it hath such virtue that the
wakeful need but lay his head thereon and forthwith he falleth
asleep.' . . . Another noble, who had been at our abbey for a
similar penitence, is reported to have said in like words, ' the
stones of the Abbey choir are softer than all the beds of my
castle.' " There is an almost equally amusing story in the
Dominican Vita Fratrum about a friar who was haunted all
through service by a devil offering to his lips a contraband cheese-
cake, " such as the Lombards and French call a tart." It was pre-
cisely during those long, monotonous hours that a man's besetting
sin haunted him most inexorably, as Nicholas of Clairvaux re-
minded his Brethren. " The great patriarch Abraham," he adds,
" could scarce drive away these unclean fowls from his sacrifice,
and who are we to presume that we shall put them to flight ?
68 From St. Francis to Dante.
Who of us can deny that he hath been plunged, if not altogether
submerged, in this river ? " It is the more necessary to insist
upon this point, because of the false sentiment lavished on the
monastic ideal by modern writers who would not touch with one
of their fingers the burden of the strict monastic Rule. It is the
merest cant to expatiate on that Rule without facing the fact
that few ever came even within a measurable distance of strict
conformity to it ; while far more, having taken the vows without
full understanding, bore afterwards not only the natural weari-
ness of human flesh and blood, but the added burden of a system
which less and less commended itself to their reason. 6 Monks
and friars were men like ourselves, who, finding themselves pledged
by profession to an impossible theory of life, struck each an
average depending on his own personal equation, varying in
separate cases from the extreme of self-denial to the extreme of
self-indulgence, but in the main following the ordinary lines of
human conduct. Not one human being in a million can pray in
heart for seven hours a day ; few can even dream of doing so, and
drowsiness in church is a commonplace of medieval monastic
writers. Of the saintly and ascetic Joachim of Flora, for
instance, his enthusiastic biographer assures us that he slept but
little at any time, and least of all in church. It is the same
contrast which meets us everywhere in the Middle Ages. Over-
strained theories bore their fruit in extreme laxity of practice ;
and good men, distressed at this divergence, could imagine no
better remedy than to screw the theory one peg higher. 7
If outraged nature demanded a modicum of slumber during
service, much of the same excuse can be pleaded, and was in fact
allowed by the moralist, for irreverence. The extraordinary
licence of behaviour in medieval churches was the necessary
outcome of the elaborate medieval ritual, and of the small extent
to which the words were understood even by the average
officiant. Friars are warned not to laugh during service, or make
others laugh, or pursue their studies, or walk about, or cleanse
lamps, or come in late, or go out before the end. They must doff
their hoods now and then at the more solemn parts, not toss their
heads or stare around in their stalls ; " It is blameworthy ....
to busy thyself with talk while the office of the Mass is being
celebrated, for Canon Law forbiddeth this at such times even to
the secular clergy." 8 The same warning was needed by the
layfolk in the nave, who (as Ubertino complains) were always
loafing about in the friars' churches "rather for the sake of
curiosity and gossip than for spiritual profit." Care must be
taken to guard these layfolk, ignorant of the different steps
Cloister Life. 69
of the Mass, from the idolatry of adoring prematurely an
unconsecrated wafer. Moreover, an officiating friar himself would
frequently trip in his reading, to the irreverent glee of self-
righteous Brethren, who scandalized others by their laughter or
comments. 9
There remains one more point to be noticed, if we are to realize
the difference between Salimbene's surroundings and our own.
Many of his stories and allusions, far too natural then to need
any special explanation from him, will seem scarcely credible
in our age to those who have not yet realized facts which the
13th century took as matters of course. In studying medieval
religious manners, we come to a point at which it is difficult to
distinguish irreverence from the prevailing coarseness and
uncleanliness of the times. The familiarity with which the
people treated their churches had something pleasant and homely
then, as it has in modern Italy. The absence of a hard-and-fast
line between behaviour within and without the sacred building
is in many ways very touching ; yet, in a rude society, this
familiarity had great inconveniences. The clergy often brought
their hawks and hounds to church ; and similar instances are
recorded by Salimbene. For instance, when the Bishop of
Reggio was buried in his own cathedral, it was quite natural for
a dog to be present, and to show no better manners than a modern
Protestant beast ; nor were the citizens in the least deterred by
reverence for the holy place when they wished to desecrate an
unpopular governor's tomb by filthy defilements. It is natural,
therefore, that the Franciscan precepts for behaviour in church
should resemble the counsels for table-manners. " While a
single voice is reading in choir, as in the collects, chapters, or
lessons, thou must take good heed to make no notable sound of
spitting or hawking, until the end of a period, and the same care
must be taken during a sermon or a reading." A far more
detailed warning lower down proves incontestably that, in personal
cleanliness and respect for the church floor, the Italian of the
thirteenth century was far behind even the Italian of to-day. It
was the same elsewhere ; in Provence, for instance, the dainty
and aristocratic Flamenca is described as gratifying her lover
with a momentary sight of her mouth as she lowered her wimple
to spit in the church porch. And, as usual, we find that the
neglect of cleanliness is accompanied by an almost corresponding
bluntness of moral feeling ; the warnings on this score point to a
state of things which may indeed stagger a modern reader. The
friar is bidden to observe the most scrupulous cleanliness at Mass ;
the server must " never blow his nose on the priestly garments,
jo From St. Francis to Dante.
especially upon the chasuble," a warning which is repeated in
even more grisly detail lower down : " moreover, he who ministers
at mass must so keep his surplice (if he have one), as never in
any degree to blow his nose on it, nor use it to wipe away the
sweat from his face or any other part : neither let him expose its
sleeves to drag, especially in the dust, over wood, stones, or
earth." What was worse, the offenders sometimes made a merit
of their offence. " Certain careless [friars^] .... can scarce
keep [the long sleeves of their frocks], which have frequently
been exposed to the utmost dirt, away from their fellows' food,
from the altar, or from the very maniple of the chalice. Such,
who would fain please [God] by their very filth, brand their
more careful brethren with the reproach of fastidiousness, and
strive to colour their own vicious negligence with the show of
virtue." 10 We may here read between the lines a further, and
just, cause for the unpopularity of the Spirituals, with their
stern insistence upon the Saint's sordid example in dress, and
their pride in wearing garments not only as coarse but also as
old as possible. Many uncompromising old Spirituals wore, as
others complained, frocks that had shrunk to the dimensions of
an Eton jacket, 11 and one such garment attained to a certain
historical notoriety in the Order. Brother Carlino de' Grimaldi,
probably a scion of one of the greatest families in Genoa, had
washed his frock (we are not told after how long an interval)
and had spread it to dry in the sun. Here at last it lay at the
mercy of the Brethren, who, having probably more than mere
doctrinal differences to avenge, cut it into small pieces which
they desecrated with medieval ingenuity. 12 It is necessary to
face this subject, since there is no other, except that of compul-
sory celibacy, which illustrates more clearly the practical weak-
ness of the strict Franciscan Rule. The ideal of absolute and
uncompromising poverty was in fact hopelessly retrograde. Even
without such ascetic exaggerations, the very Rules of the religious
Orders forbade cleanliness in the modern sense. Father Taunton
(Black Monks of St. Benedict^ i. 83) does indeed take some pains
to combat this impression ; but the documents to which he refers
flatly contradict his assertions, nor have I been successful in
eliciting further references from him. Among the real hardships
of a strict monk's life, this would have been the most intolerable,
during his noviciate at least, to a modern Englishman. It some-
times shocked even the medieval layman, accustomed as he was,
in the highest society, to many of the conditions of slum life.
Caesarius describes the conversion of a knight who had long
wished to enter the cloister, but who always hung back, " on the
Cloister Life. 7 1
cowardly plea that he feared the vermin of the garments (for
our woollen clothing harbours much vermin.)" The Abbot
laughed away the scruples of the valiant soldier who would suffer
such tiny creatures to scare him away from the Kingdom of
God ; and indeed, once admitted, the knight was soon sufficiently
hardened to boast that " even though all the vermin of the monks
should fall upon my single body, yet should they not bite me
away from the Order." 13 Salimbene speaks jestingly on the same
topic, quoting (1285-336) "those verses which men are wont to
repeat :
' Three are the torments that rhyme ex,
Pulcx and culex and cimex.
Mighty to leap is the pulex,
Swift on the wing is the culex ;
Bat the cimex, whom no fumigation can slay,
Is a monster more terrible even than they.' "*
Bernard of Besse (p. 327) bears far more significant witness
in solemn prose. The strict rule of poverty would have
condemned the uncompromising Franciscan to something less
than ordinary monastic cleanliness, as it would have condemned
him also to ignorance. 14 In short, all the early writings on the
discipline o the Order, as well as the early collections of legends,
point to the impossibility of carrying out the Franciscan ideal
on a large scale, and under the conditions which the age demanded.
As the strict rule of poverty would have condemned the Order
to barbarism, so the vow of chastity could not in those days be
kept with anything like the strictness which modern society
demands from a religious body, by any but an order of virtual
hermits. The ascetic writers of the time assure us, over and
over again, that this virtue needed a perpetual consciousness of
living in a state of siege, a deliberate aloofness from one half of
mankind, which was patently impossible for any missionary body
on the enormous scale of the Franciscan Order. What the early
disciplinarians prophesy as imminent, later writers complain of
as an accomplished fact. Gower and the author of Piers Plowman^
though they both hated heretics as heartily as Dante did, asserted
roundly that the friar was a real danger to family life. Benvenuto,
in his comment on Par. xii. 144, specifies lubricity as one of
the vices of the friar of his day, and Sacchetti speaks even more
strongly. Again, Busch in the 15th century names " the
* In x linita tria sunt animalia dira :
Sunt pulices fortes, cimices culicumque cohortes ;
Sed pulices saltu fugiunt, culicesque volatu,
Et cimices pravi nequeunt fa-tore necari.
72 From St. Francis to Dante.
unreformed friars " as those who most infected other religious
Orders with the seeds of decay. 16 Like the monks, they had often
pledged themselves as boys to that which no boy can understand,
while their manner of life exposed them to far more temptations
than the average monk. It is impossible to do more than allude
to this subject here, in the text ; but I take the opportunity of
pointing out that I have more than once requested, both privately
and publicly, references for the most important statements of
monastic apologists, such as Abbot Gasquet, and that these refer-
ences have been steadily refused. On the other hand, I have
given very definite evidence for my own contentions in the Con-
temporary Review, and in a separate pamphlet. 16 Apologists of
the Middle Ages have played upon the unwillingness of modern
Englishmen to believe facts which can be proved to the hilt
from contemporary records, though for obvious reasons those who
know these facts find it difficult to publish them. There can be
no better testimony to the civilizing work of the Reformation
than that the average educated Anglican cannot now bring him-
self even to imagine a state of things which is treated as notorious
by medieval satirists and moralists, and is recorded in irrefragable
documents. Charges which would be readily enough believed in
modern Italy or Spain find little acceptance in a country like ours,
where monks and nuns, living in a small minority under a glare
of publicity and criticism, keep their vows with a strictness far
beyond the average of the Middle Ages.
The third vow, that of obedience, was as radically modified as
the two others by the growth of St. Francis's originally small
family into an enormous Order. The most significant anecdote
on this point is quoted by Wadding under the year 1258. In
this year died one Brother Stephen, who deposed as follows to
Thomas of Pavia, Provincial Minister of Tuscany a great friend
of Salimbene's, it may be noted " I, Brother Stephen, dwelt for
a few months in a certain hermitage with St. Francis and other
brethren, to care for their beds and their kitchen ; and this was
our manner of life by command of the Founder. We spent the
forenoon hours in prayer and silence, until the sound of a board
("struck with a mallet, like a gong] called us to dinner. Now the
Holy Master was wont to leave his cell about the third hour [9] ;
and if he saw no fire in the kitchen he would go down into the
garden and pluck a handful of herbs which he brought home,
saying, ' Cook these, and it will be well with the Brethren.' And
whereas at times I was wont to set before him eggs and milk
food which the faithful had sent us, with some sort of gravy stew
[cum aliquo jusculentd], then he would eat cheerfully with the
Cloister Life. 73
rest and say, 'Thou hast done too much, Brother; I will that
thou prepare naught for the morrow, nor do aught in my kitchen.'
So I, following his precepts absolutely, in all points, cared for
nothing so much as to obey that most holy man ; when therefore
he came, and saw the table laid with divers crusts of bread, he
would begin to eat gaily thereof, but presently he would chide
me that I brought no more, asking me why I had cooked naught.
Whereto I answered, ' For that thou, Father, badest me cook
none.' But he would say, ' Dear son, discretion is a noble virtue,
nor shouldest thou always fulfil all that thy Superior biddeth
thee, especially when he is troubled by any passion.' " This
anecdote, which is quite worthy of the Fioretti, gives us a most
instructive glimpse into the strength and weakness of the Saint's
society. All his ways were intensely human and personal, but
everything depended on his own spirit and his own presence.
Nobody could have been angry with a saint who confessed so
naively that he did not wish to be taken at his word : yet one
sees at a glance how necessarily the increase of the Order thrust
his direct authority into the background, and how naturally,
while the veneration for his sanctity steadily increased, he him-
self fell from the position of a working Head into that of a
Dalai Lama, a sort of living relic, mighty to conjure with, but
comparatively passive in the hands of others, and only liberating
his soul by the deathbed protest of his "Testament" against
those hateful courses upon which the Order had already embark-
ed almost beyond recall.
In considering this revolt against St. Francis's rule, we must
bear in mind that it was the very intensity of the Saint's ideal
which caused that recoil, by a natural law as inevitable as
gravitation. Thomas of Eccleston's history, which is constantly
quoted as the most vivid picture of the Order's inner life, avow-
edly refers to a state of things already dead and gone within
thirty years of the Saint's death ; already the writer speaks of
the persecutions endured by those who strove for the original
purity. 17 It is idle to charge this decay to Brother Elias, or to
any man or group of men ; it was fatally involved in the very
ideal of the Saint. As he hastened his own death by sinning
grievously against Brother Body, just so he hastened the decay
of his Order. Admirably as he protested against some of the
crazy asceticisms of his age, he was still too much a child of his
time. It is difficult to wish anything away from St. Francis's
own life, as it is difficult for an Englishman to regret the Charge
of the Light Brigade. But, when our present age is taunted for
its alleged soullessness by reactionaries whose eyes are too weak
j^ From St. Francis to Dante.
to face the growing light of the tiroes in which they live, it may
be profitable to point out that in the Holy War, as in all other
wars, we need not only courage and sudden self-sacrifice, but also
calm judgment and even a certain amount of routine work.
The self-imposed hardships of an average friar's life were very
real, until at least the middle of the 13th century. Men were
not wanting, even then, who managed to live more luxuriously in
the Cloister than they could ever have done in the World, as
their Superiors frequently complained : but quite a considerable
portion of the early friars had been boys of good family and
position, to whom, after the first plunge, the trial was severe,
for some years at least We see something of this in the case
of Salimbene, richly as his opportunities of travel and study in-
demnified him for those cabbages which his soul abhorred. We
may gather it also from the very frequent mention of apostasies,
either contemplated or carried out, in collections of Mendicant
legends ; and Berthold of Ratisbon, preaching to his Brethren
about the middle of the century, implies the same. " Almost
all Religious who have failed or still fail, in all religious Orders,
have perished or still perish by reason of the evil example which
they have seen and still see 'among the rest to whom they come.
For almost all enter Religion with a mind most readily disposed
to all good. But when on their entry they find one impatient,
another wrathful, another carnal, another dissolute, another
agape for news, another a mere trifler, another backbiting,
another slothful, another breaking St. Francis's prohibition
against receiving money, then they follow in their ways and
become like unto them." He goes on to speak in the same breath
of " so many in Religion " who thus " are corrupted and perish " ;
and the whole tenour of his sermons to his fellow-friars implies
that, among the crowds who pressed with more or less precipita-
tion into the Order (for the year of novitiate was not always
strictly enforced) there were comparatively few who even
approached its strict ideal. We get glimpses of this even in the
records of the heroic age, and in those of a generation later the
fact is gross and palpable. As St. Bonaventura shows us, the
development from the friar of the Fioretti to something very like
the friar of Chaucer was rapid and inevitable. Among even the
best-intentioned of the first generation, few were able to keep
their ascetic enthusiasm to the end. 18 " When those who first
kept the Order in its vigour are taken away or become enfeebled
in body," writes the Saint, "then they can no longer give
to their juniors the same strict examples of severity as of old ;
and the new Brethren, who never saw their real labours, imitate
Cloister Life. 75
them only in that which they now behold in them, so that they
become remiss, and spare their bodies under a cloke of discretion,
saying that they will not destroy their bodies as did the Brethren
of old. And, for that they see not the inner virtues which their
elders had, they are negligent on both sides, neither exercising
themselves in outward things nor grasping the inward virtues."
Berthold makes the same complaint in his own style. " Many
take good care to avoid serious penance, clapping on bandages
before they are wounded, . . . sparing themselves as tenderly
as though they were silkworms, or silken stuff, or as though their
flesh were as brittle as an eggshell." Again, " they spare their
bodies almost as tenderly as the relics of saints " ; if one of them
has but a little grace " he is like a hen, cackling so loudly over a
single egg, that all grow weary of her, wherefore she is driven
forth from the house and loses her egg." " Some [friars'] hearts
are as the flesh of an old brood-hen, nay, as that of an old wild
duck, which can scare be sodden ; for indeed a wild duck was
taken for our convent which we boiled three days long and yet
it lacked all natural tenderness, being still so tough that no man
could cut it with a knife, nor would any beast eat thereof. Ye
marvel at this in nature, far more should ye marvel that some
and thou thyself perchance among them are stewed in the
kitchen of Religion for nine or ten years, nay, for twelve, thirteen,
or thirty years, and yet are ye altogether hard-hearted, and, what
is more, impatient." 19
It will be necessary to glance again at the Friars as a whole
towards the end of the book ; meanwhile the present chapter
may prepare the reader for Salimbene's experiences in the Order.
Miss Macdonell seems to think that the average friar was a more
serious person than our chronicler ; I cannot understand anyone
thinking so who has read carefully the disciplinary works of St.
Bonaventura's school, the Constitutions of the Order, Arigelo
Clareno's Seven Tribulations as edited by Father Ehrle, and
Berthold of Ratisbon's Sermons to his Brethren. A study of
those works is calculated to make us accept Salimbene at some-
thing nearer to his own estimate as standing above the common
average of his fellows in nearly all respects, while he is far above
that average in natural gifts, learning, and experience of the world.
CHAPTER VII.
Frate Elia.
OALIMBENE had scarcely completed his novitiate, when a
IO storm burst which had long been brewing within the Order.
The Minister-General Elias, leader of the party which frankly
abandoned the first strict ideal, and builder of the splendid
basilica which now covers the Saint's bones, was deposed from
his office after a bitter struggle. Instead of bearing his defeat
patiently, Elias " gave scandal to the Pope, to the Church, and
to his Order," by joining the Emperor Frederick, then excom-
municate and at war with the Pope. Franciscan frocks were
thus seen flitting about in the rebel camp, for Elias had taken
others over with him : and he rode abroad publicly with the
Emperor, whose trusted counsellor he at once became. " Which
was an evil example to the country folk and the rest of the laity,
for whensoever the peasants and boys and girls met the Brethren
Minor on the roads of Tuscany, they would sing (as I myself have
heard a hundred times)
' Frat' Elia is gone astray,
And hath ta'en the evil way.'
At the sound of which song the good Brethren were cut to the
heart, and consumed with deadly indignation " (160).
Nor does Salimbene's story of these first years leave by any
means an impression of perfect harmony among those who
remained within the Order, though, as will presently be seen,
he himself made many friends there. To begin with, his gall
was stirred by the way in which lady-superiors of Clarisses often
lorded it over their fellow-nuns : for our friar was no believer in
" the monstrous regiment of women." He describes (63) the
" churlishness and avarice " of the Lady Cecilia, niece to Pope
Innocent IV, and Abbess of a rich convent of Clarisses at Lavagna.
The Clarisses of Turin had been driven from their convent by the
ravage of war a common story, as the pages of Wadding show
Frate Elia. 77
and the Visitor of the Lombard province was doing his best to find
other homes for the poor nuns. One only, the last of all, was
brought to this rich convent; yet the Abbess, in her "hardness of
heart and avarice and folly," refused to receive a fresh inmate,
and drove the poor refugee ignominiously from her door, in spite
of the Visitor's anathema. " Hereupon an ancient and devout
Sister of the convent cast herself down before the altar and
appealed against the Abbess to God, Who presently answered,
' I have heard thy prayer, and she shall be no more Abbess.' So
the Visitor sent a swift messenger forthwith to Chiavari to learn
what had befallen that Abbess, and he found her dead and
cursed and excommunicate and unabsolved ; for even while the
messenger was yet on his way, she began to be grievously sick
and to fail for very faintness, and after divers torments she sank
down on her bed and was at the point of death, crying, ' Sisters,
I die ! Hasten ! Help ! Bring me some remedy ! ' The Sisters
came forthwith, pitying their Abbess, as was right. No mention
was made of the salvation of her soul, not a word was spoken of
confession. Her throat so closed that she could scarce breathe ;
and now, seeing death at hand, she said to the Sisters who were
gathered round her, ' Go and take in that lady ! Go and take in
that lady ! Go and take in that lady ! For her sake hath God
smitten me ! For her sake hath God smitten me ! For her sake
hath God smitten me ! ' And with these words she yielded up
her spirit, but it returned not to God Who gave it."
Salimbene thinks the lady might perhaps have behaved better
if she had been sent to rule over a strange convent far away from
her powerful kinsfolk ; but, to his eyes, the root of the matter
lay in the constitutional unfitness of women to bear rule, and he
dilates on this subject in truly medieval fashion, with a wealth
of Biblical and profane quotations : " for woman, whensoever
she may, doth take gladly dominion to herself, as may be seen in
Semiramis who invented the wearing of breeches Blessed
be God Who hath brought me to the end of this matter ! '
Yet, in spite of this sigh of relief, we find our good friar recurring
almost immediately to the same ungallant complaints, and again,
a propos of an Abbess of Clarisses (67 ). This was again in the first
days of his new vocation, at Lucca, where he formed an intimacy
with an aristocratic pair of doubtful morals, of whom he writes
with his usual naivete: "In the year 1229 the Lord Nazzaro
Gherardini of Lucca was Podesta of Reggio, when he built the
bridge and the Porta Bernone. His statue was set up in marble
on the Porta Bernone which he made, and there he sits on his
marble horse in the city of Reggio. He was a comely knight and
78 From St. Francis to Dante.
exceeding rich, my acquaintance and friend when I dwelt in the
convent at Lucca. The Lady Fior d'Oliva, his wife, was a fair
lady, plump and full-fleshed,* and my familiar friend and spiritual
daughter (devota}. She was of Trent, the wife of a certain notary,
by whom she had two daughters, most fair ladies. But the Lord
sazzaro, when he was Podestaof Trent, took her from her husband
and brought her, not unwilling, to the city of Lucca ; and his own
wife, who was still alive, he sent to a castle of his, where she
dwelt till her death. 1 The Lord Nazzai'o died childless, and gave
great riches to this lady, who, in course of time was beguiled
(as she herself hath told me) into another marriage in the city of
Reggio. He who took her to wife was Henry, son of Antonio da
Musso, and she liveth yet in this year 1283 wherein I write. Both
the Lord Nazzaro and the Lady Fior d'Oliva did much to comfort
the Friars Minor of Lucca when the Abbess of the Clarisses at
Gatharola stirred up the whole city of Lucca against the brethren,
laying a blot on the elect, for that Brother Jacopo da Iseo would
fain have deposed her because she bare herself ill in her office.
For she was the daughter of a baker-woman of Genoa, and her
rule was most shameful and cruel, and unhonest to boot, and she
would fain have kept her rule by force, that she might still be
Abbess. Wherefore, the better to hold her office, she lavished
gifts on youths and men and worldly ladies, but especially on those
who had any of near kin in her convent. And to such she would
say, ' This is why the Friars Minor would fain depose me, for that
I will not suffer them to sin with our daughters and sisters ; '
and so, as hath been said, she would have laid a blot on the elect,
for she lied in her teeth. Yet for all that she was deposed, and
the Friars recovered their honour and good report, and the city
had rest from her troubling. I have therefore shown plainly how
shameful is the dominion of women."
Salimbene records only one other noteworthy incident of these
first days at Lucca. (164) "In the year of our Lord 1239 there
was an eclipse of the sun, wherein the light of day was horribly
and terribly darkened, and the stars appeared. And it seemed
as though night had come, and all men and women had sore fear,
and went about as if bereft of their wits, with great sorrow and
trembling. And many, smitten with terror, came to confession,
and made penitence for their sins, and those who were at discord
made peace with each other. And the Lord Manfred da
Cornazano, who was at that time Podesta, took the Cross in his
hands and went in procession through the streets of Lucca, with
* Pinguis et carnosa. This is always high praise from Salimbene.
Frate EHa. 79
the Friars Minor and other men of religion and clerks. And the
Podesta himself preached of the Passion of Christ, and made
peace between those who were at enmity. This I saw with mine
own eyes, for I was there, and my brother Guido di Adamo with
me."
It was apparently from Lucca that he went to Siena, where he
enjoyed the privilege already recorded of a whole winter's
familiar intercourse with St. Francis's first disciple, Bernard of
Quintavalle. (39) Here also he received his first tinge of J oachitic
Millenarianism from Hugues de Digne aud other enthusiasts, as
will be seen later on. Already, like most of his brethren,
Salimbene took an active part in politics, working for the Pope
against the Emperor. (174) " The See of Rome was vacant from
the year 1241 to 1243, for the cardinals were dispersed and at
discord, and Frederick had so straitly guarded all the roads that
many men were taken, for he feared lest any should pass through
to be made Pope. Yea, and 1 myself also was often taken in
those days ; and then I learned and invented the writing of letters
after divers fashions in cypher."
In spite of the preponderance of the lay element at Pisa, his
next place of abode, he made very good friends there and loved
the place. Although a powerful patron, Brother Anselm, Minister
Provincial of Terra di Lavoro (552) " sent me letters that
1 should go with my brother Guido to dwell with him in his
province, yet the Brethren of the convent of Pisa dissuaded us
from the journey, for that they loved us." Long afterwards,
writing of the disastrous defeat of the Pisans at Meloria, he can-
not help showing his pity for the sufferings even of his political
opponents : " God knows I sorrow for them and pity them in my
heart, for I lived four years in the convent of Pisa a good forty
years since.'' (535). Here also he was strengthened in his
J oachism by " a certain abbot of the Order of Fiore, an aged and
saintly man, who had placed in safety at Pisa all the books that
he had of Abbot Joachim's, fearing lest the Emperor Frederick
should destroy his abbey, which lay on the road from Pisa to
Lucca. For he believed that in the Emperor Frederick all the
mysteries of iniquity should be fulfilled. And Brother Rudolf
of Saxony, our lector at Pisa, a great logician and theologian
and disputer, left the study of theology by reason of those books
of Joachim's, which were laid up in our convent, and became a
most eager Joachite" (236).
As his stay at Lucca had been marked by an eclipse, so at Pisa
he was startled by an earthquake. Two similar phenomena
which occurred much later, in 1284, carry him back to these years
8o From St. Francis to Dante.
of his first vocation, aud give occasion for an amusing anecdote
and a very characteristic dissertation. (547-9). " Brother
Roglerio of our Order, a native of Lodi, who had been a com-
rade of the Visitor of the Province of Bologna, was on his way
back from the Roman Court wherein he had been with a certain
Cardinal, and when he passed by Corenno, where he was to lodge,
the inhabitants of that place said unto him ' Holy father, we often
feel earthquakes in this place.' And immediately when they had
said this an earthquake was felt. So the Brother said ' He
looketh on the earth, and it trembleth ; He toucheth the hills, and
they smoke ' : and again ' The earth trembled, and was still ' ;
and again * Thou hast made the earth to tremble, Thou hast broken
it ; heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh.' But when the
Brother had finished speaking thus, he looked round and saw a
certain building thatched with straw, and said that he would sleep
therein that night, ' For if I sleep in some other house, it may be
that the gutter-stones or tiles fall upon me, if the house be
brought low ; and there I shall die.' So the women of that
village, seeing and hearing these things, carried their beds into
that thatched building, that they might sleep in safety by the
side of the Friars. But a certain old man, seeing this, said to
Brother Roglerio ' Ye have done that which ye should not have
done. For ye should always be ready to accept death, that the
dust may return to the earth as it was, and the spirit unto God
who gave it.' To whom the Friar answered * The blessed Jerome
saith that " It is prudent to fear all that may happen " ; and
Ecclesiasticus " The wise man feareth in all things " [also Prov.
xxviii. 14 and xi. 15 ; and Eccles xviii. 27].' All this I heard
from the mouth of Brother Roglerio." With regard to the
following eclipse, Salimbene quotes a whole string of Bible texts
connecting such natural catastrophes with the signs of the Last
Judgment, after which he continues (549), " I have multi-
plied these texts because at one time the sun is darkened, and at
another time the moon, and at times the earth will quake ; and
then some preachers, having no texts ready prepared for this
matter, fall into confusion. I remember that I dwelt in the con-
vent of Pisa forty years since and more, and the earth quaked at
night on St. Stephen's day ; and Brother Chiaro of Florence of
our Order, one of the greatest clerks in the world, preached twice
to the people in the cathedral church there, and his first sermon
pleased them, but the second displeased. And this only because
he founded both sermons on one and the same text, which was a
token of his mastery, since he drew therefrom two discourses ;
but the accursed and simple multitude that knew not the law,
Frate Elia. 8 i
thought that he had preached again the same sermon, by reason
of that same text which had been repeated ; wherefore he reaped
confusion where he should have had honour. Now his text was
that word of Haggai, ' Yet a little while, and I will move the
heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land.' Note that
earthquakes are wont to take place in cavernous mountains,
wherein the wind is enclosed and would fain come forth ; but
since it hath no vent for escape, the earth is shaken and trembles,
and thence we feel an earthquake. Whereof we have a plain
example in the uncut chestnut, which leaps in the fire and bursts
forth with might and main to the dismay of all who sit by."
Pisa, of course, is a city of the plain, but it is interesting to
know what ideas were raised in Salimbene's mind by the mountains
which stand round it on the horizon.
At Siena he had received the subdiaconate (329) ; at Pisa he
was ordained deacon (182) ; some time during the year 1247 he
left the province of Tuscany and went to Cremona, where he soon
found himself a close spectator of the bloody struggle between
Pope and Emperor. But before following him into that world of
treasons, stratagems, and spoils, let us glance at those memories
of Tuscan convents which most haunted his mind as an old man.
The Order in its early days, under St. Francis, had been
specially distinguished by its unsacerdotal character. 2 The saint
himself was never more than deacon ; and in a letter to the Order
he evidently contemplated the presence of two priests in a single
settlement of the Brethren as quite an exceptional case. Of the
twenty-five friars whom he sent to evangelize Germany in 1221,
thirteen were laymen, as were also five of the nine who began the
English mission in 1224 ; it was not until 1239 that a priest,
Agnello of Pisa, was elected Minister-General and could exclaim
in triumph to the assembled brethren, " Ye have now heard the
first mass ever celebrated in this Order by a Minister-General."
St. Francis had been content to impose on his brethren a plain
and brief Rule, without " constitutions " or byelaws ; St. Francis
and his early friars had lived not in convents but in hermitages. 3
But in fourteen years the ideal of the Order was already so
changed that a young and ambitious student like Salimbene, in
spite of his close personal intercourse with several of the earliest
Brethren, could count it among the worst crimes of Brother
Elias to have followed here in the Founder's steps, though in-
deed he accuses him of having done so with a far different
intention. 4 He speaks of it as scandalous that he should have
had to associate with fifty lay brethren during his six years at
the two convents at Siena and Pisa, and that he, a clerk, should
82 From St. Francis to Dante.
lia\o been subject at different times to a lay Gustos and several
lay Guardians. As to the lack of general Constitutions, though
Salimbene is perfectly aware that neither St. Francis nor his
immediate successor Giovanni Parenti had made any, yet he
complains that the absence of such hard-and-fast rules under
Elias resulted in a sort of anarchy ; " in those days there was no
king in Israel," he quotes (102) ; "but every one did that which
seemed right to himself. For under [Brother Elias] many lay
brethren wore the clerical tonsure, as I have seen with mine own
eyes when I dwelt in Tuscany, and yet they could not read a
single letter ; some dwelt in cities, hard by the churches of
the Brethren, wholly enclosed in hermits' cells, and they had a
window through which they talked with women ; and the lay-
brethren were useless to hear confessions or to give counsel ; this
have I seen at Pistoia and elsewhere also. Moreover, some
would dwell alone, without any companion, 5 in hospitals ; this
have I seen at Siena, where a certain Brother Martin of Spain,
a little shrivelled old lay-brother, used to serve the sick in the
hospital, and went alone all day through the city wheresoever he
would, without any Brother to bear him company ; so also have
I seen others wandering about the world. Some also have I seen
who ever wore a long beard, as do the Armenians and Greeks,
who foster and keep their beard ; moreover they had no girdle ;
some wore not the common cord, but one fantastically woven of
threads and curiously twisted, and happy was he who could get
himself the gayest girdle. Many other things I saw likewise,
more than I can relate here, which were most unbecoming to the
decency of the Franciscan habit. Moreover laymen were sent
as deputies to the Chapter, and thither also a mighty multitude
of other laymen would come, who had no proper place there
whatsoever. I myself saw in a general chapter held at Sens a
full 300 brethren, among whom the laymen were in the greater
number, yet they did nought but eat and sleep. And when
I dwelt in the province of Tuscany, which had been joined
together out of three provinces, the lay-brethren were not
only equal in numbers to the clerics, but even exceeded them by
four. Ah God ! Elias, * thou hast multiplied the nation, and
not increased the joy.' It would be a long and weary
labour to relate the rude customs and abuses which 1 have
seen ; perchance time and parchment would fail me, and it
would be rather a weariness to my hearers than a matter of
edification. If a lay-brother heard any youth speaking in the
Latin tongue, he would forthwith rebuke him, saying, ' Ha !
wretch I wilt thou abandon holy simplicity for thy book-learn-
Frate Elia. 83
ing?"* But I for my part would answer them thus from St.
Jerome, ' Holy selfishness profiteth itself alone ; and howsoever
it may edify Christ's Church with the excellence of its life, by so
much it worketh harm if it resist not them who would destroy her.'
In truth, as saith the proverb, an ass would fain make asses of all
that he seeth. For in those days not only were laymen set above
priests, but in one hermitage, where all were laymen save one
scholar and one priest, they made the priest work his day in the
kitchen in turn with the rest. So it chanced on a season that the
Lord's day came to the priest's turn ; wherefore, entering the
kitchen and diligently closing the door after him, he set himself
to cook the potherbs as best he could. Then certain secular folk,
Frenchmen, passed that way and earnestly desired to hear Mass,
but there was none to celebrate. The lay-brethren therefore
came in haste and knocked at the kitchen door that the priest
might come out and celebrate. But he answered and spake unto
them, ' Go ye and sing Mass, for I am busied in the work of the
kitchen, which ye have refused.' Then were they sore ashamed,
perceiving their own boorishness. For it was boorish folly to pay
no reverence to the priest who confessed them ; wherefore in
process of time the lay-brethren were brought to nought, as they
deserved, for their reception was almost utterly forbidden, 6
since they comprehended not the honour paid them, and since the
Order of Friars Minor hath no need of so great a multitude of
laymen, for they were ever lying in wait for us [clerics]. For I
remember how, when I was in the convent of Pisa, they would
have sent to the Chapter to demand that, whensoever one cleric
was admitted to the Order, one lay-brother should be admitted
at the same time, but they were not listened to nay, they were
not even heard to the end for their demand was most unseemly.
Yet in the days when I entered the Order, I found there men of
great sanctity, mighty in prayer and devotion and contemplation
and learning ; for there was this one good in Brother Elias, that
he fostered the study of theology in the Order."
If the clerics of the Order smarted under Brother Elias' en-
couragement of the lay-brethren, all alike groaned under his
masterful government. Even in St. Francis's lifetime we can
see a natural tendency to more mechanical methods of discipline
as the Order grew in size ; in the Saint's "Epistle to a Minister "
of 1223 the conception of discipline is still paternal, and the
Minister's authority mainly moral ; but in the "Testament" of
only three years later we find already a stern insistence on the
* Pro tua sapientia scripturarum.
84 From St. Francis to Dante.
necessity of imprisonment for heresy or certain forms of disobe-
dience among the Brethren. Again, among the Constitutions
passed at Padua in 1277 we find : "item, the General Chapter
commands that there be strong prisons in great numbers (multi-
pliccs}, and at the same time humane." Salimbene's Tuscan re-
collections of the years 1239-1247 fill in these bare notices
admirably, and show the friction caused within the Order by the
strong-willed, unscrupulous man who did more than any other to
discipline these spiritual volunteers into a rigidly organized papal
militia.
(104) " The sixth defect of Brother Elias was that he afflicted
and reviled the Ministers Provincial, unless they would redeem
their vexation by paying tribute and giving him gifts. For he
was covetous and received gifts, doing contrary to the Scripture
(Deut. xvi. 19) ; whereof we have an example in Alberto Balzo-
lano, the judge of Faenza, who changed his judgment on hearing
that a countryman had given him a pig. Moreover the aforesaid
Brother Elias kept the Ministers Provincial so utterly under his
rod that they trembled at him as a rush trembles when it is shaken
under the water, or as a lark fears when a hawk pursues and
strives to take him. And this is no wonder, for he himself was
a son of Belial, so that no man could speak with him. In very
deed none dared to tell him the truth nor to rebuke his evil deeds
and words, save only Brothers Agostino da Recanati and Bona-
ventura da Iseo.* For he would lightly revile such Ministers as
were falsely accused to him by certain malicious, pestilent, and
hot-headed lay-brethren his accomplices, whom he had scattered
abroad throughout the Provinces of the Order. He would depose
them from their office of Minister even without fault of theirs,
and would deprive them of their books, and of their licence to
preach and hear confessions, and of all the lawful acts of their
office. Moreover, he would give to some a long hoodf and send
them from east to west, that is from Sicily or Apulia to Spain or
England, or contrariwise. Moreover, he deposed from his
Ministership Brother Albert of Parma, Minister of the Province
of Bologna, a man of most holy life ; and he bade Brother Gerard
of Modena, whom he appointed by letter into the place of the
deposed Minister, to bring him to himself at Assisi clad in the hood
of probation. But Brother Gerard, who was a most courteous man,
said nought of this matter to the Minister, only praying him that
he would be his companion on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the
* Not to be identified with Dante's Agostino or Bonaventura.
t Le., degrade them to wear the novice's hood.
Frate Elia. 85
blessed father Francis. When therefore Brother Gerard was come
with Brother Albert near to Brother Elias' chamber, he brought
forth from his bosom two hoods of probation, whereof he placed one
on his own shoulders, and gave the other to the Minister of
Bologna, saying ' Place this on thine, father, and await my return
to thee.' So Brother Gerard went in to Elias and fell at his
feet saying, * I have fulfilled thine obedience, in bringing to thee
the Minister of Bologna with a hood of probation, and behold
he watcheth without and is willing to do whatsoever ye command.'
When Elias heard this, all his indignation left him, and the spirit
sank wherewith he had swelled against him. So Brother Albert
was brought in and restored to his former rank ; moreover, he
obtained many favours also for his Province by the mediation of
Brother Gerard. Wherefore on account of this and other deeds
of that wicked man Elias, thoughts of revenge were bred in
the hearts of the Ministers, but they waited for the time when
they might answer a fool according to his folly. For Brother
Elias was a most evil man, to whom we may fitly apply those
words which Daniel saith of Nebuchadnezzar, ' And for the
greatness that he gave to him, all people, tribes, and languages
trembled, and were afraid of him ; whom he would, he slew ;
and whom he would, he destroyed ; and whom he would, he set
up ; and whom he would, he brought down.' Moreover, he sent
Visitors who were rather exactors than correctors, and who
solicited the Provinces and Ministers to pay tributes and grant
gifts ; and if a man gave not something into their mouth, they
prepared war against him. Hence it came about that the
Ministers Provincial in his time caused to be made at Assisi, at
their own expense, for the church of the blessed Francis, a
great and fair and sonorous bell, which I myself have seen,
together with five others like unto it, whereby that whole valley
was filled with delightful harmony. So likewise, while 1 dwelt
as a novice in the convent of Fano, I saw two brethren coming
from Hungary and bearing on sumpter-mules a great and
precious salt fish, bound up in canvas, which the Minister of
Hungary was sending to Brother Elias. Moreover, at the same
time, by the Minister's mediation, the King of Hungary sent
to Assisi a great goblet of gold wherein the head of the blessed
Francis might be nonourably preserved. On the way, in Siena,
where it was laid one night in the sacristy for safety, certain
Brethren, led by curiosity and levity, drank therefrom a most
excellent wine, that they might boast thenceforward of having
drunk with their own lips from the King of Hungary's goblet.
But the Guardian of the convent, Giovannetto by name, a man
86 From St. Francis to Dante.
zealous for justice, a lover of honesty, and a native of Assisi,
hearing this, bade the refectorer, a man of Belfort, who likewise
was named Giovannetto he bade him, I say, at the morrow's
dinner, to place before each of those who had drunk from the
goblet one of those little kitchen-pots called pignatta, black and
stained, wherefrom each must drink will he nill he, in order that,
if he would boast henceforward of having once drunk from the
King's goblet, he might remember also how for that fault he had
drunk from a foul pipkin."
Not content with these liberal contributions from all quarters,
the General sought also for the Philosopher's Stone. (160) " He
was publicly reported of dealing in alchemy, and it is certain
that, whenever he heard of Brethren in the Order who, while yet
in the world, had known aught of that matter or craft, he would
send for them and keep them by him in the Gregorian Palace
for Pope Gregory IX had built himself a great palace in the
convent of Friars Minor at Assisi, both in honour of St. Francis
and that he himself might dwell there when he came to Assisi.
In this palace, therefore, were divers chambers and many lodgings,
wherein Elias would keep the aforesaid craftsmen, and many
others also, which was as much as to consult a pythonic spirit
(Deut. xviii, 1 1 ). Let it be imputed to him ; let him see to it " !
It may be that Elias' dealings in the black art were merely a
popular fiction, but there was no doubt that the liberal contribu-
tions of the faithful were very often diverted from their proper
object a malpractice common everywhere in the 13th century,
when pope after pope set the example of collecting money for
the Crusades and spending it in private wars or in worldly pomp
(157 ). " The seventh defect of Elias was that he would live in too
great splendour and luxury and pomp. For he seldom went
anywhither save to Pope Gregory IX and the Emperor Frederick
II, whose intimate friend he was, and to Santa Maria della
Porziuncula (where the Blessed Francis instituted his Order and
where also he died), and to the convent of Assisi, where the body
of the Blessed Francis is held in veneration, and to the House of
Celle by Cortona, which is a most fair and delightful convent,
and which he caused to be specially built for himself in the
Bishopric of Arezzo, for he was to be found either there or in
the convent of Assisi. And he had fat and big-boned palfreys,
and rode ever on horseback, even if he did but pass a half-mile
from one church to another, thus breaking the rule which saith
that Friars Minor must not ride save of manifest necessity, or
under stress of infirmity. Moreover, he had secular youths to
wait on him as pages, even as the Bishops have, and these were
Frate Elia. 87
clad in raiment of many colours to wait on him and minister to
him in all things. Moreover, he seldom ate in the convent with
the other brethren, but ever alone in his own privy chamber,
which in my judgment was great boorishness, for
The sweetest joys are vain as air
Unless our friend may claim his share.
Moreover, he had his special cook in the convent of Assisi, Brother
Bartholomew of Padua, whom I have seen and known, and who
made most delicate dishes." An anecdote in the Chronicle of
the xxiv Generals (p. 229) at once corroborates Salimbene here,
and suggests that much of his information about Elias may have
come from his old comrade at Siena, the earliest disciple of St.
Francis. " Brother Bernard of Quintavalle, when he saw Brother
Elias on his horse, would pant hard after him and cry ' This is
too tall and big ; this is not as the Rule saith ! ' and would
smite the horse's crupper with his hand, repeating the same again.
And when Elias fared sumptuously in his own chamber, Brother
Bernard aforesaid would at times rise up in great zeal from the
table of the refectory, bearing in his hand a loaf of bread, a flesh-
hook and a bowl, and would knock at the door of Brother Elias's
chamber. When therefore the door was opened he would sit
down beside the Minister at his table, saying, ' I will eat with thee
of these good gifts of God : ' whereat the General was inwardly
tormented, yet for that Bernard was held in the utmost reverence
throughout the Order, he dissembled altogether."
Elias, whose despotic rule and contempt of early traditions
made him so widely unpopular, had yet the magnetic attraction
of a born ruler of men. He enjoyed the love of St. Francis, the
close confidence of Emperor and Pope, even while they were at
war with each other, and the loyal attachment of his humble
intimates. As Salimbene continues, speaking of his special cook,
(157) "this man clung inseparably to Elias until the last day of
his life, and so also did all they of his household. For he had a
special household of twelve or fourteen brethren, whom he kept
by him in the convent of Celle, and they never changed the habit
of the Order" i.e. they never acknowledged themselves truly
excommunicate for their adherence to an excommunicated man.
" And after the death of their evil pastor, or rather their seducer,
having understood that they were deceived, they returned to the
Order. Moreover, Elias had in his company one John, whose
surname was de Laudibus [of Lodi ?], a lay-brother, hard and keen,
and a torturer and most evil butcher, for at Elias's bidding he
88 From St. Francis to Dante.
would scourge the brethren without mercy. And [just before
the Chapter of 1239] Elias, knowing that the Provincial Ministers
were gathered together against him, sent commands to all robust
lay-brethren throughout Italy whom he counted as his friends,
that they should not fail to come to the General Chapter ; for he
hoped that they might defend him with their cudgels." This
plan was frustrated, however ; and after a stormy meeting, in
which the Pope had to remind the friars that " it was not the
fashion of Religious " to shout each other down with Thou liest
and other abusive cries, Elias was deposed. His Man Friday,
John of Lodi, whose great bodily strength is spoken of by another
chronicler, died in the odour of sanctity, and miracles were
wrought at his tomb : he had enjoyed the supreme privilege of
touching the wound in the side of St. Francis. This is not in the
least inconsistent with Salimbene's account; miracles were
commonly worked at the tombs of men who in any way struck
the medieval imagination, even as champions of a popular
cause in purely secular politics, like Simon de Montfort or Thomas
of Lancaster. St. Thomas a Becket would have done all that
Salimbene here describes for the cause of discipline in a matter
where his convictions were fixed.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Bitter Cry of a Subject Friar.
SO Elias was deposed ; yet still he troubled Israel. Not only
was his life in his first retirement at Celle a scandal to the
Rule, but presently he joined the Emperor's camp openly, as we
have already seen. Salimbene has much to say of this : and,
when he describes the difficulties created by this single man, we
must remember also how many more of the same sort would be
created by the numerous supporters who had once raised him to
the Generalship and had nearly succeeded in procuring his re-
election in 1239. Indeed, the deposition of Elias marks only the
beginning of the most serious Francisan dissensions. Salimbene
tells how he went about justifying his apostasy, and how one
friar withstood him to his face, finally dismissing him with St.
Francis's contemptuous farewell, " Go thy way, Brother Fly."
(161). Salimbene's dear friend, Gerard of Modena, who had
known Elias well, went once to Celle, and laboured all day long
to bring him back to the Order : but in vain. Moreover, as
Gerard tossed on his sleepless pallet that night, " it seemed to him
that devils like bats fluttered all night long through the convent
buildings : for he heard the sound of their voices, and fear and
trembling seized him, and all his bones were affrighted, and the
hair of his flesh stood up. W herefore, when morning was come,
he took his leave and departed in all haste with his companion.
So in process of time Brother Elias died : he had been excom-
municated aforetime by Pope Gregory IX : whether he was
absolved and whether he ordered things well with his soul, he
himself knoweth now : let him look to it ! But in course of time
(since, as the Wise Man saith, there is a time and opportunity
for every business), a certain Custode dug up his bones and cast
them upon a dunghill. Now if any would fain know whereunto
this Brother Elias was like in bodily aspect, I say that he may
be exactly compared to Brother Ugo of Reggio, surnamed
Pocapaglia, who in the world had been a master of grammar, and
a great jester and a ready speaker : and in the Order of the
90 From St. Francis to Dante.
Friars Minor he was an excellent and mighty preacher, who by
his sermons and his parables confuted and confounded those who
attacked our Order. For a certain Master Guido Bonatti of
Forli 1 who called himself a philosopher and astrologer, and who
reviled the preaching of the Friars Minor and Friars Preachers,
was so confounded by Brother Ugo before the whole people of
Forli that he not only feared to speak, but durst not even show
himself during all the time that the Brother was in those parts.
For he was brimful of proverbs, stories, and instances ; and they
sounded excellently in his mouth, for he ever suited them to men's
manners ; and he had a ready and gracious tongue, that the
people were glad to hear him. Yet the ministers and prelates of
the Order loved him not, for that he spake in parables, and would
confound them with his instances and proverbs : but he cared
little for them, since he was a man of excellent life. Let it
suffice me to have said thus much of Brother Elias." (163).
The fall of Elias leads Salimbene to moralize on the advantages
of constitutional as compared with absolute government in a
religious Order. The Friars differed from the older Orders in
their frequent change and re-election of officials, a system in
which we find one of the many strong points of similarity between
the Revival of the Xlllth century and the Wesleyan movement. 2
This frequent change had Salimbene's hearty approval. For
one thing, familiarity was apt to breed contempt. (146) " I
have seen in mine own Order certain Lectors of excellent learning
and great sanctity who had yet some foul blemish (merditatem\
which caused others to judge lightly of them. For they love to
play with a cat or a whelp or with some small fowl, but not as
the Blessed Francis was wont to play with a pheasant and a
cicada, rejoicing the while in the Lord." 3
Again, the official might have some strange defect which
forbade his inspiring proper veneration; for instance (137) "I
was once under a minister named Brother Aldebrando, of whom
Brother Albertino of Verona (whose sayings are much remem-
bered) was wont to say in jest that there must have been a
hideous idea of him in God's mind.* For his head was mis-
shapen after the fashion of an ancient helmet, with thick hair on
his forehead : so that whenever it fell to him, in the service for
the octave of the Epiphany, to begin that antiphon, ' caput
draconis ' (the dragon 's head\ then the brethren would laugh,
* Quod turpem ideam in Deo habuerat, an allusion to Plato's doctrine of ideas,
according to which everything in the visible universe had its eternal exemplar in
the Divine mind : BO at least Plato was understood in the Middle Ages.
The Bitter Cry of a Subject Friar. 91
and he himself would be troubled and ashamed. But I used to
recall that saying of Seneca, ' Of what sort, thinkest thou, is the
soul within, where the outward semblance is so hideous ?'....
Therefore we advise the Prelate, who is set for an example to
others, to abstain from levities so far as in him lies ; and, if he
indulged in such when he was a private person, let him quit them
altogether when promoted to a prelacy : as a man did, whom the
monks of a certain monastery chose for abbot as being the most
disorderly (dissolution) of all, hoping to live more laxly under
his rule. But when he was made abbot, he caused the rule and
statutes of his predecessors to be nobly kept. So the monks, be-
ing grieved beyond measure, said to their abbot ' we chose thee
in the hope of fulfilling the desire of our hearts under thy rule :
but thou seemest changed into another man.' To whom he
answered ' My sons, this is the change of the right hand of the
Most High.' .... But there are some who, as prelates, practise
levities even as they did aforetime when they were private per-
sons " (149).
Furthermore, a once vigorous prelate may fall into his second
childhood, as (150) " I have ofttimes read in the Liber Pontifica-
lis of Ravenna that a certain Archbishop of that see became so
old as to speak childishly, for he was grown a babe among babes.
So when the Emperor Charlemagne should come to Ravenna
and dine with him, his clergy besought him to abstain from
levity for his honour's sake, and for a good example in the great
Emperor's presence : to whom he made answer, ' Well said,
my sons, well said ; and I will do as ye say.' So when they
were seated side by side at table, he patted the Emperor's
shoulders familiarly with his hand saying, ' Pappa,t pappa,
Lord Emperor ! ' The Emperor, therefore asked of those who
stood by what this might mean : and they answered him, ' He
would invite you in childish fashion to eat with him ; for he is
in his dotage.' Then with a cheerful face the Emperor embraced
him, saying, ' Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no
guile.'"
Therefore the Prelates (i.e., officials) of Religious Orders
should be regularly and frequently changed, as the Captains and
Podestas of the cities, in whose case the plan works admirably.
It works admirably also amongst the Friars ; for (,112) " Let it
be noted that the conservation of religious Orders lieth in the
frequent change of Prelates, and this for three reasons. First,
lest they wax too insolent with their long prelacy, as we see in
' t Cf. Dante, Purg., xi. 105.
92 From St. Francis to Dante.
the abbots of the Order of St. Benedict, who, since they hold
office for life and are not deposed, treat their subject monks as a
mere rabble (vilificant subditos suos\ and esteem them no more
than the fifth wheel of a waggon, which is a thing of nought ;
and the abbots eat flesh with lay folk while the monks eat pulse
in their refectory ; and many other burdensome and unseemly
things they do to their subjects, which they should not do, since
they themselves choose to live in splendour and in the greatest
liberty. 4 Moreover, not only do nature and human courtesy bid
them not afflict their subjects nor do them evil, but Holy
Scripture also, and the example of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. Of courtesy we have an example in a certain King
of England, to whom, as he was at supper with his knights by a
spring in a wood, a vessel of wine was brought such as the Tus-
cans ca\\Jiasconc, and the Lombards bottaccw. Having asked,
and received an answer that there was no more wine than this, he
said ; ' Here then is enough for all,' and poured the whole vessel
into the spring, saying, * Let all drink in common ' ; which was
held to be a great courtesy in him.* Not so doth the miser who
saith, ' I have found me rest, and now I will eat of my goods
alone ' : not so do those Prelates who eat the finest white bread
and drink the best and choicest wine in the presence of their
subjects and of those who eat with them in the same house, and
w r ho give nought thereof to their subjects (which is held to be
utter boorishness) ; and so also they do with other meats. More-
over some Prelates drink choice wine, yet give nought thereof
to their subjects who are present, though these would as gladly
drink as they ; for all throats are sisters one to another. 8 But
the Prelates of our time, who are Lombards, gladly take to them-
selves all that their throats and appetites crave, and will not give
thereof to others. Indeed, that curse seems in our days to be
fulfilled which Moses imprecated upon evil-doers, saying ' Thine
ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat there-
of.' The prelates of our days, for the most part, ' come for to
kill and to steal and to destroy,' as is written in St. John ; and
as Micah saith ' the best of them is a briar, the' most upright is
as a thorn hedge.' And if some man would now write a dia-
logue concerning prelates, as St. Gregory did, he might rather
find offscourings than holy prelates ; for as Micah again saith, ' the
good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright
among men.' Yet after Christ's example the Prelates should
* This was probably the Re Qiovane of Inf. xxviii. 135, who was a byeword for
courtesy and liberality : cf. Navcllino, 15, 16, 87.
The Bitter Cry of a Subject Friar. 93
minister to their subjects : as is indeed done in the Order of
Pietro Peccatore ; for on fast days at Collation the priors pour
out drink to their subjects in memory of the Lord's example.
Now the head of the Order of Pietro Peccatore is in the church
of Santa Maria in Porto at Ravenna ; and of the same Order is
the convent of Santa Felicula near Montilio in the Bishopric of
Parma, and several other houses in divers parts of the world." 6
Not only does the Rule of St. Francis bid that the superiors
should be real servants of the Brethren, but they might learn
from the example even of a heathen like Julius Ca;sar, who never
said to his soldiers " Go and do that," but " Let us come and do
this."
Salimbene goes on to complain that, whereas the Apostles and the
first Christians had all things in common, "it is not so nowadays"
even in Franciscan convents. St. Francis's Rule prescribes that
the Minister should be a servant to all his brethren, and Christ
rebukes the Pharisees for taking the foremost places in the
synagogues, etc. : " Yet the prelates of our time do this, to the
very letter." Our Lord, again, likened His care for mankind to
that of a hen for her chickens : but the evil prelate of to-day
rather resembles that ostrich of which Job writes, " she is
hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers."
The hen defends her chickens against the fox, " which is a
stinking and fraudulent beast " : so should the prelate defend his
fellow-friars against the Devil or worldly tyrants. The hen,
" finding a grain of corn, hideth it not, but rather crieth aloud
that her brood may flock to her : and when they are come she
casteth the grain before them without distinction of white or
black or brown, but giving to each alike : yet the prelates of
our days love not their subjects equally, but with a private love :
some they count as sons, others as stepsons or spurious : and the
same whom they invite to share their good cheer to-day, to the
same they give just as freely on the morrow. But the rest who
sing the invitatorium and whose place is in the refectory (i.e. who
do not eat apart with the prelate,) stand all the while idle and
grumble and murmur, saying with the poet, ' The wild boar is
feared for his tusks, the stag is defended by his horns ; while we
the peaceful antelopes are a helpless prey ' : which is as much as
to say, ' the flies flock to the lean horse' " ( 1 18). This favouritism
of our modern prelates in their invitations to good cheer is
contrary both to our Lord's words (Luke xiv. 12) and to the
example of St. Lawrence, which Salimbene quotes at length.
" But [modern prelates] have loved the glory of men more than
the glory of God, and therefore shall they be confounded. For
94 From St. Francis to Dante.
they say, * To-day I will give you a good dinner in the hope that
ye will give me the same to-morrow ' : of whom the Lord saith,
* Amen I say unto you, they have received their reward ' " (119).
To these faults of unfairness and self-seeking the Prelates too
often add that of discourtesy : which Salimbene rebukes by
three Scriptural examples. Our Lord desired (not commanded]
Simon to draw back a little from the land : Simon himself said
to Cornelius, ' Arise, I myself also am a man ' : and the Angel
of the Apocalypse said the same to St. John. " Lo therefore
how our Lord and the Apostle Peter and the Angel honour God's
servants ; and how these boorish Prelates raise themselves above
them in their pride ! Note that in some religious Orders there
will at times be men who were noble in the world, rich and
powerful, and who are ancient in the Order both as to their own
days and as to the time of their entrance into Religion ; more-
over, better still, they are spiritual and contemplative and devout
and amiable to the Brethren ; they are endowed also with wisdom
and learning, having a knowledge of books and a ready tongue
and mother-wit and honest morals. Yet over such men a Prelate
may be set who is of obscure birth, insufficient and unprofitable
in all the aforesaid qualities, and yet he will come to such pride
and folly that his heart will be lifted to pride against his
brethren, paying reverence to no man, but addressing all in the
singular number with ' tu ' ; which, as I may say, is not permitted
except for five reasons." Here he launches into a dissertation
from which we learn incidentally how little the use of the pro-
nouns was as yet fixed in Italian : for " the Apulians and Sicilians
and Romans say thou to the Emperor or the Pope himself, while
the Lombards say you not only to a child but even to a hen or a
cat or a piece of wood" (120). He admits, indeed, that "even
good Prelates have their persecutors and evil-speakers and
scorners," (120) for there are always sons of Belial, unbridled
and uncontrolled, like those who despised Saul. But he harks
back to the same complaints. " Doctors prescribe to their patients
many things which they themselves will not do when they are
sick : so Prelates know how to teach their subjects many things
which they will not do themselves : as the Lord said, 'For they
say and do not' (122). As to what we said above, that he
who is chosen to a Prelacy should know his own insufficiency, if
he be insufficient, we say here that this can seldom be, for who-
soever has dominion and authority believes himself forthwith
altogether sufficient, both in wisdom and in eloquence and in all
things necessary to a Prelate " (123). He is apparently thinking
mainly of the older Orders when he complains, a propos of
The Bitter Cry of a Subject Friar. 95
Ecclesiasticus xiv. 3, 4 (153) "we often see this fulfilled to the
letter ; for one Prelate will have much wealth heaped together,
yet God doth not grant him power to eat thereof, but another
coming after him will scatter them abroad." Against similar
faults he has already quoted (136) " the example of that rich man
who gave nought to the poor, and was utterly given up to gluttony
and lechery, nor would he hear Mass or Gospel. So when the
priests and clergy sang a Requiem over his corpse, the Crucifix
thrust its fingers into its ears, saying that it would in no wise
hear the man who had scorned to hear its voice." Prelates are
apt to be hasty-tempered, and to excuse themselves by pleading
a choleric complexion : such have no business in office, for (as
we may see from Ecc. x. 5-7), " we cannot reduce a fool to silence
by promoting him to the dignity of a Prelacy. This we see done
daily ; for a man is promoted who is not worth three pence,
(unless he chance to have them in his mouth) ; and this is done
of private affection, while another man, though fit and sufficient,
will find no grace." Nowadays, indeed, as often in the past, a
man risks his immortal soul by accepting promotion in the Church
(142) : a saint of old once cut off his own ears to avoid being
made Bishop, and, when this proved an insufficient protection,
swore that he would cut out his tongue also unless they left him in
peace. This holy man, continues our chronicler, resembled the
beaver, who will mutilate himself to escape from his pursuers.
He cites the well-known example of Geoffroi de Peronne, prior
of Clairvaux, who "was chosen Bishop of Tournay and whom
Pope Eugenius and his abbot St. Bernard would have compelled
to submit to the burden : but he fell on his face in the form of a
cross at the feet of the abbot and the clergy who had elected
him, saying : ' I may indeed, if ye elect me, be a runaway monk,
but I shall never be a bishop.' When he was in his death-agony
a monk, his dear friend, who sat by his bedside, said : ' Dear
friend, now that we are being separated in the body, I pray thee
(if by God's will thou art able) to reveal me thy state after
death.' So, as he prayed after his friend's death in front of the
altar, Geoffrey appeared to him in a vision saying : ' Lo here am
I, Geoffrey thy brother ! ' To whom the other said ' Dear friend,
how is it with thee ? ' Whereunto he replied, ' I am well ; but
it has been revealed to me by the Holy Trinity that, if I had
been promoted to a bishopric, I should have been among the
number of the damned.' "
It will be as well to close this chapter with the summary of
another most characteristic digression of Salimbene's. He has
been quoting many shining examples of the past who might well
96 From St. Francis to Dante.
shame the authorities of his day into something better (132).
For post^Biblical times he chooses as typical heroes Saints
Silvester, Nicholas, and Thomas of Canterbury. The mention
of St. Nicholas leads him into a tirade which reads like a
fragment of the Wife of Bath's Prologue. It may well be
commended to the notice of those who have hastily inferred
that, because the Franciscans exaggerated the already exag-
gerated devotion to the Virgin Mary, they were therefore
possessed with a " chivalric respect for women " and " restored
woman to her rightful position in Christian society." 7 Salimbene,
it must be remembered, was no farouche ascetic : he tells us
more than once of the charming ladies whose director he has
been ; he was far from holding, with St. Bouaventura's cherished
secretary, that women are not fit objects for a friar even to gaze
upon. The quotations which he here heaps together are simply
commonplaces of the Middle Ages, and represent the ordinary
clerical attitude towards the fair sex. " Note," he writes, " that
it is said of St. Nicholas, * he avoided the company of women ' :
and herein he was wise ; for it was women who deceived the
children of Israel (Num. xxxi.). Wherefore it is written in
Ecclesiasticus, ' Behold not every body's beauty ; and tarry
not among women. For from garments cometh a moth, and
from a woman the iniquity of a man.' Again, in Ecclesiastes,
4 1 have found a woman more bitter than death, who is the
hunter's snare, and her heart is a net, and her hands are bands.
He that pleaseth God shall escape from her : but he that is a
sinner, shall be caught by her.' In Proverbs again, ' Why art
thou seduced, my son, by a strange woman, and art cherished
in the bosom of another ? ' Again in the sixth chapter, ' Let not
thy heart covet her beauty, be not caught with her winks : For
the price of a harlot is scarce one loaf : but the woman catcheth
the precious soul of a man.' And again in the twenty-third, ' For
a harlot is a deep ditch : and a strange woman is a narrow pit.
She lieth in wait in the way as a robber, and him whom she
shall see unwary, she shall kill.' Moreover, Jerome saith, ' It is
perilous to be ministered to by one whose face thou dost frequently
study':* and again, 'Believe me, he cannot be whole-hearted
with God to whom women have close access ' ; and again, ' With
flames of fire doth a woman sear the conscience of him who
dwelleth by her ' ; and again, ' Where women are with men,
* Lady readers may be glad to learn that, among all the soi-disant patristic
quotations in this passage, only this first from St. Jerome is genuine. Prof.
Holder-Egger has tracked six of the rest to spurious works of the Fathers here
named ; but even his industry has not been able to indentify the remaining two.
The Bitter Cry of a Subject Friar. 97
there shall be no lack of the devil's birdlime.' Again the poet
saith, 'Wouldst thou define or know what woman is? She is
glittering mud, a stinking rose, sweet poison, ever leaning towards
that which is forbidden her.' And another poet, ' Woman is
adamant, pitch, buckthorn, f a rough thistle, a clinging burr, a
stinging wasp, a burning nettle.' And jet another, 'Man hath
three joys praise, wisdom, and glory : which three things are
overthrown and ruined by woman's art ' : and Augustine saith,
' As oil feedeth the flame of a lamp, so doth a woman's conversa-
tion feed the fire of lust.' And Isidore, ' As the green grass
groweth by the waterside, so also groweth concupiscence by
looking upon women.' And John Chrysostom : ' What else is
woman but a foe to friendship, an inevitable penance, a necessary
evil, a natural temptation, a coveted calamity, a domestic peril,
a pleasant harm, the nature of evil painted over with the colours
of good : wherefore it is a sin to desert her, but a torment to keep
her.' And Augustine : ' Woman was evil from the beginning,
a gate of death, a disciple of the serpent, the devil's accomplice,
a fount of deception, a dogstar to godly labours, rust corrupting
the saints ; whose perilous face hath overthrown such as had
already become almost angels.' Likewise Origen : * Lo, woman
is the head of sin, a weapon of the devil, expulsion from Paradise,
mother of guilt, corruption of the ancient law.' " To this whole
page Salimbene has affixed the heading " Here the author shows
that women are to be avoided : see below folio 323." And on
that folio (p. 270) he subjoins another string of the same or
similar quotations, with the addition of one (genuine, alas ! this
time) from St. Augustine. " Among all the Christian's battles the
sorest are the struggles of chastity, wherein is continual conflict
and seldom victory" : a warning which is enforced by the tale of
St. Chrysanthus and his temptations.
We see then that, in spite of all Salimbene's varied interests
and thoroughly human point of view, even in spite of his little
religious idylls, there was one hiatus in his sympathies. He
might have thousands of women under his spiritual guidance ; he
might strike up piquant and dangerous Platonic friendships
with one or two ; but his very profession shut him off from that
free and natural social intercourse without which neither sex can
really understand the other.
" For, trusteth wel, it is impossible
That any clerk wol speke good of wyves,
(But if it he of hooly Seintes lyves),
Ne of noon other womman never the mo."
CHAUCER, Cant. Tales, D. 688.
1 From which a sort of Black Draught was concocted in the Middle Ages
H
CHAPTER IX.
Convent Friendships.
O ALIMBENE was eminently a sociable man, and he has much
fO to tell us of his friends. Many such descriptions will
come later on in other contexts, but it will be well to collect in
this chapter such scattered notices as may give an idea of the
cheerful side of Franciscan life, in contrast to the troubles and
discontents to which he so frequently alludes.
The Friars were still, until some time after his death, the most
real intellectual and moral force in Christendom. All the great
Schoolmen of this period were Friars ; all or nearly all the great
preachers ; and the movement gave a great stimulus to poetry
and to art. Salimbene found in his Order full scope for his love
of travel, his eager (if somewhat random) curiosity, and his
passion for music. All his closest friends seem to have been
musicians ; and he has left us delightful portraits of these
minstrels of God. (181) "Brother Henry of Pisa was a comely
man, yet of middle stature, free-handed, courteous, liberal, and
ready. He knew well how to converse with all, condescending
and conforming himself to each man's manners, gaining the
favour both of his own brethren and of secular persons, which
is given but to few. Moreover, he was a preacher of great weight
and favour with both clergy and people. Again, he was skilled
to write, to miniate (which some call illuminate), for that the
book is illuminated with the scarlet minium), 1 to write music,
to compose most sweet and delightful songs, both in harmony
and in plain-song. He was a marvellous singer ; he had a great
and sonorous voice, so that he filled the whole choir ; but he
had also a flute-like treble, very high and sharp ; sweet, soft,
and delightful beyond measure. He was my Custos in the
Custody of Siena, and my master of song in the days of Pope
Gregory IX. Moreover he was a man of good manners and
devoted to God and the Blessed Virgin and Blessed Mary
Magdalene ; and no wonder, for the church of his contrada at
Pisa was dedicated to this saint. Having heard a certain maid-
Convent Friendships. 99
servant tripping through the cathedral church of Pisa and singing
in the vulgar tongue,
" If thou carest not for me,
I will care no more for thee,"
he made then, after the pattern of that song, words and music of
this hymn following :
" Christ Divine, Christ of mine,
Christ the King and Lord of alL" 8
Moreover, because when he was Guardian and lav sick on his
bed in the infirmary of the convent of Siena, he could write no
music, therefore he called me, and I was the first to note one of
his airs as he sang it." Salimbene goes on to enumerate other
compositions of Brother Henry's, the last of which reminds him
of another musical friend. " Sow the second air of these words,
that is, the harmony, was composed by Brother Vita of the city
of Lucca, and of the Order of Friars Minor, the best singer in
the world of his own time in both kinds, namely, in harmony and
in plain-song. He had a thin or subtle voice, and one delightful
to hear. There was none so severe but that he heard him gladly.
He would sing before Bishops, Archbishops, and the Pope him-
self; and gladly they would hear him. If any spoke when
Brother Vita sang, immediately men would cry out with Ecclesi-
asticus, ' Hinder not music.' Moreover, whenever a nightingale
sang in hedge or thicket, it would cease at the voice of his song,
listening most earnestly to him, as if rooted to the spot, and
resuming its strain when he had ceased ; so that bird and friar
would sing in turn, each warbling his own sweet strains. So
courteous was he in this that he never excused himself when he
was asked to sing, pleading that he had strained his voice, or
was hoarse from cold, or for any other reason ; wherefore none
could apply to him those oft-quoted verses [of Horace], 'All
singers have this fault, that they can never be brought to sing
when they are begged to perform among friends.' He had a
mother and sister who were delightful singers. He composed
this sequence, * Ave mundij both words and air. He composed
many hymns in harmony, wherein the Secular clergy specially
delight. He was my master of song in his own city of Lucca.
Again, the Lord Thomas of Capua having written that sequence,
1 Let the Virgin Mother rejoice,' andhaving begged Brother Henry
of Pisa to compose an air to it, he composed one delightful and
fair and sweet to hear, whereto Brother Vita composed the
secondary air, or harmony ; for whenever he found any plain-
ioo From St. Francis to Dante.
chant of Brother Henry he would gladly compose a harmony
thereto. Moreover, the Lord Philip, Archbishop of Ravenna,
took this Brother Vita to be of his household, both because he
was of his own country, and because he was a Friar Minor,
and because he knew so well to sing and write. He died at
Milan, and was buried in the Convent of the Friars Minor. He
was slender and lean of body, and taller of stature than Brother
Henry. His voice was fitter for the chamber than for the choir.
Oft-times he left the Order, and oft-times returned : yet he never
left us but to enter the Order of St. Benedict ; and when he
wished to return, Pope Gregory IX was ever indulgent to him,
both for St. Francis's sake, and for the sweetness of his song.
For once he sang so enchantingly that a certain nun, hearing his
song, threw herself down from a window to follow him ; but this
might not be, for she broke her leg with the fall. This was no
such hearkening as is written in the last chapter of the Song of
Songs, * Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the friends hearken :
make me hear thy voice.' Truly, therefore, spake Brother Giles
of Perugia (not that he was of Perugia, but that there he lived
and ended his days a man given to ecstasies and rapt in divine
contemplation, the fourth Brother admitted to our Order, after
St. Francis ), truly he spake, ' It is a great grace of God to have
no graces at all,' speaking here of graces not given freely by
God, but acquired, by reason whereof some men are frequently
led into evil." The celebrated Helinand of Froidmont, it may
be noted, speaks still more strongly of the dangers of music to
the Religious, "whether of instruments, or of the human
voice as Orpheus with his lute followed his desire
even to hell. In further proof whereof, mark that thou shalt
scarce find a man of light voice and grave life I have
seen numberless men and women whose life was so much the
more evil as their voice was more sweet." Benvenuto, again,
while noting how Casella too belied Horace's sarcasm by singing
without delay at Dante's request, and while laying stress on the
sovereign virtues of good music, speaks of the danger of
elaborate church music, " wherefore Athanasius, to avoid vanity,
forbade the custom of singing in church, and a
certain good and prudent man who had the care of a great con-
vent of nuns forbade them to celebrate their church services with
song." 3 This Puritan estimate of song was far more common
before the Reformation than is generally realised ; and even
St. Francis was believed by many to have forbidden church
music.
But to return to Brother Henry. " In truth Brother Henry of
Convent Friendships. 101
Pisa was my intimate friend, and such as he of whom the Wise
Man saith 'A man amiable in society shall be more friendly than
a brother ' ; for he himself also had a brother in the Order of my
age, and I a brother of his age ; yet he loved me far more, as he
said, than his own blood-brother. And whereas Ecclesiasticus
saith ' The token of a good heart and of a good countenance thou
shalt hardly find, and with labour,' yet this could in no wise
be said of him. He was made Minister of Greece, which is the
Province of Romania, and gave me a letter of obedience, whereby,
if it pleased me, I might go to him and be of his Province, with
a companion of my own choice. Moreover, he promised that
he would give me a Bible and many other books. But I went
not, for he departed this life in the selfsame year wherein he
went thither. He died at a certain Provincial Chapter, celebrated
at Corinth, where also he was buried and hath found rest in peace.
Moreover he foretold the future in the hearing of the Brethren
who were in that Chapter, saying, * Now are we dividing the
books of departed Brethren ; but it may be that within a brief
while our own too shall be divided.' And so it came to pass ;
for in that same Chapter his books were divided."
Though Brother Henry worked no miracles himself, yet he had
long been of the household of the miracle-working Patriarch of
Antioch. The reader will not fail to notice how many of
Salimbene's friends and acquaintances were distinguished in
life or in death by these thaumaturgic powers. From the matter-
of-fact frequency with which he notes the fact, one might almost
fancy that he half expected the same of his own bones, when
he should come in his turn to lie in the " good thick stupefying
incense-smoke" of the choir at Montefalcone or at Reggio.*
Miracles were in the air : the earlier volumes of Wadding teem
with notices of obscure but wonder-working friars. In many
cases, their very names had been forgotten within a century
or two of their death ; only a vague memory was cherished
among the Brethren that " a saint is buried in our convent." 4
Another intimate friend was Brother Roland of Pavia, humble
and eloquent, of whom Salimbene relates one miracle of the
stereotyped pattern. There is, however, far more individuality
in (556) " Brother Nicholas of Montefeltro . . . who was many
years Minister of Hungary, and afterwards for many years, even
to the day of his death, he dwelt in subjection in the convent
of Bologna. He was humble beyond all men whom I have ever
* A miracle-working Brother Salimbene was in fact buried at Rodi ; but he can
scarcely be our chronicler (Eubel. Provinciate, p. 53).
102 From St. Francis to Dante.
seen in this world. He neither thought nor would have others
to think that he was anything at all : so that, when any man
would do him reverence, forthwith he would fall to the ground
and kiss his feet, if he might. When the refectory bell was rung
for meals, it was he who came first to pour water into the lavatory
for the Brethren's hands : and when strange Brethren came,
he would hasten first of all the convent to wash their feet ; and
though in appearance he was ill-fitted to perform such offices,
for he was aged and corpulent, yet his charity and humility and
holiness and courtesy and liberality and readiness made him
skilful and pleasant and proper thereto. He lieth buried
honourably in the church of the Friars Minor of Bologna. After
his death God showed forth no miracle through him, for that he
had prayed God that he might work none ; as also that most
holy Brother Giles of Perugia had besought God to show forth
no miracles on his behalf after his death. (This was the
Brother Giles, whose life Brother Leo, one of the three special
companions of St. Francis, wrote at some length.) But in his
lifetime Brother Nicholas wrought three miracles or God
through him which are worthy to be related. The first was
that the Guardian of a certain convent had laid upon a certain
young friar, who was also a clerk and sub-deacon, the duty of
cooking the Brethren's soup or pottage for God's sake, until the
cook, who was absent, should return. He then obeyed in all
humility ; but by evil fortune his breviary fell into the pot and
was utterly sodden with the pottage. Since therefore the book
was thus foully destroyed, and the Brother wept and wailed,
for this was his greatest cause of grief, that the book was
borrowed Brother Nicholas hearing this, and willing to console
him, said, ' See, son, weep no more, but lend me the book, which
I need awhile for saying Hours.' And having taken the book,
he went apart and poured forth his soul in prayer ; and behold,
God restored it to its former beauty, so that no spot or blemish
appeared thereon. And the Brother who had before wept so
bitterly at the destruction of the book, seeing this, was comforted
and filled with admiration, and gave praise to God." The next
miracle of Brother Nicholas was of a more commonplace character ;
but the third is truly original. " There was a certain youth in the
convent of Bologna who was called Brother Guido. . He was wont
to snore so mightily in his sleep that no man could rest in the same
house with him ; and, what is more, he made their waking-hours
as hideous as their sleep-time : wherefore he was set to sleep in
a shed among the wood and straw : yet even so the Brethren
could not escape him, for the sound of that accursed rumbling
Convent Friendships. 103
echoed throughout the whole convent. So all the priests and
discreet Brethren gathered together in the chamber of Brother
John of Parma, the Minister-General, and told him of this boy,
how he must be cast utterly forth from the Order by reason of
this monstrous fault ; and I myself was there present. And it was
decreed by a formal sentence that he should be sent back to his
mother, who had deceived the Order, since she knew all this of
her son before he was received among us. Yet was he not sent
back forthwith ; which was the Lord's doing, Who purposed to
work a miracle through Brother Nicholas. For this holy man,
considering within himself that the boy must needs be cast out
through a defect of nature, and without guilt on his own part,
called the lad daily about the hour of dawn to come and serve
him at his Mass : and at the end of the Mass, the boy would
kneel at his bidding behind the altar, hoping to receive some
grace of him. Then would Brother Nicholas touch the boy's
face and nose with his hands, desiring, by God's gifts, to bestow
on him the boon of health, and bidding him reveal this secret to
no man. In brief, the boy was suddenly and wholly healed ;
and thenceforth he slept in peace and quiet, like any dormouse,
without further discomfort to the Brethren. Afterwards he was
transferred to the Province of Rome, where he became a priest
and confessor and preacher, most serviceable and profitable to
the Brethren, ever thankfully remembering the grace bestowed
on him through the merits and prayers of the blessed Nicholas
by God, Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen."
Here again is one more Franciscan of the true type. (429)
" Brother Thomas of Pavia was a holy and good man, and a
great clerk. He had grown old in the Order ; a man of wisdom
and discretion, and of good and sober counsel. He was a friendly
man, ready, humble, and kindly, and devoted to God, and a
gracious and weighty preacher. He wrote a great chronicle,
for he was very full and prolix ; he made also a treatise of
sermons and a great and most diffuse work of theology, which
for its size he named ' The Ox.' He reformed the Province of
Tuscany. He was a dear friend of mine, for I lived with him
many years in the Convent of Ferrara ; may his soul, of God's
mercy, rest in peace ! Amen." Many of Salimbene's other
friends and acquaintances were distinguished authors of their
time : Brother Benvenuto of Modena, a Greek scholar and a
textual critic of the Bible, Master William of Auxerre, to whom
the more famous Durandus was deeply indebted ; Brother Wil-
liam of the Friars Preachers, " with whom 1 was familiar : for
he was a humble and courteous man, though small of stature " ;
IO4 From St. Francis to Dante.
and again, " Brother William Britto of the Friars Minor, whose
Book is remembered of men ; and who in stature was like unto
that other Brother William aforesaid, jet not in manners ; for
he seemed rather wrathful and impatient, as is the nature of men
who are small of stature : wherefore the poet saith :
' Seldom is the small man humble, seldom hath the long man reason ;
Seldom shalt thou find a red-head but his troth will smack of treason."*
Nearly all the portraits of good friars in this chronicle belong
to the same general type : learned men and busy workers of
the first or second generation, who had grown grey in the Order,
and whom our friend knew in the tranquil and honoured evening
of their life. Here and there, however, we have glimpses of
wilder natures in the ferment of their first overwhelming sense
of sin, and in all the agonies of conversion. There is the Lord
Bernardo Bafolo (1285 364J, a knight of great wealth and
renown, who entered the Order in its earliest days, and sought
to share the reproach of Christ by causing his own servants to
scourge him round the city at a horse's tail. As he passed thus
by the portico of S. Pietro, " where the knights are wont to sit
and make merry in their hours of ease, they were pricked to the
heart, saying with groans ' In truth we have seen marvels this
day ' ; and many were goaded by his example to leave the world."
Two usurers, brethren by blood, restored their ill-gotten gains
and joined the Franciscans ; and one of them caused himself
to be scourged likewise all round the city, with a bag of money
round his neck. Bernardo Bafolo, whose father had distinguished
himself at the storming of Constantinople in 1204, did not leave
his own knightly courage behind him when he took the cowl :
for " when he was a Friar Minor, and the men of Parma had
marched with the Emperor's army against Milan, he ran to the
fire which had been kindled in the Borgo di Santa Cristina ; and
standing on the top of a burning house, he cut away with an axe
and cast down on all sides the blazing timbers, that no other
houses might take fire. And all men saw him and commended
him that he had wrought prudently and valiantly ; and ' it was
reputed him unto justice, to generation and generation for ever-
more ' : for this doughty deed of his hath lived many years in
men's memories. After this he crossed to the Holy Land, where
he ended his days with all praise in the Order of St. Francis.
May his soul by God's mercy rest in peace, for he began well
and ended well."
* Vix humilis parvus ; vix longus cum ratione ;
Vix reperitur homo ruffus sine proditione (233).
Convent Friendships. 105
But the greatest by far of Salimbene's friends was John of
Parma, a man of very considerable intellectual force, and the
Minister- General who trod most closely of all in the steps of St.
Francis. For the life of this remarkable man Salimbene is by
far our fullest authority : but he writes of him in so prolix and
rambling a fashion (296 foil.), and John's life has so often been
told elsewhere, that I will abridge it considerably here. His
father was called Albert the Fowler ; for he loved fowling and
made it his business. But John owed his education to an uncle,
priest and Guardian of the Lazar-house at Parma, Avho sent him
to the university. There he fell into an apparently fatal illness,
" but one day he was comforted in the Lord and said in the
bystanders' hearing, ' The Lord chastising hath chastised me,
but He hath not delivered me over to death.'* After this he
recovered suddenly of his sickness and began to study with
fervour, and walked most manfully in the way of the Lord until
he became a Friar Minor ; and then he began to go on most
abundantly from virtue to virtue and was full of power and
wisdom, and God's grace was with him. He was of middle
stature or rather less ; he was shapely in all his limbs, and of a
strong complexion and sound and stout to bear labours, both
in walking and in study. His face was as an angel's face, gracious
and ever bright of cheer : he was free and liberal and courtly
and charitable, humble and mild and kindly and patient ;
devoted to God and fervent in prayer, pious and gentle and
compassionate. He sang Mass daily, and so devoutly that those
who stood by felt some of his own grace : he would preach so
fervently and well both to the clergy and to the Brethren that,
as I have oft-times seen, he provoked many of his hearers to
tears : he had a ready tongue that never stumbled, for he was
most learned also, having been a good grammarian and a Master
in Logic while yet in the world ; and in our Order he was a great
theologian and disputator. He was a mirror and an example
to all that beheld him ; for his whole life was full of honour and
saintliness, and good and perfect manners : he was gracious
both to God and man : learned in music and a good singer.
Never saw I so swift a writer, in so fair and true a hand ; for
his characters were exceeding easy to read. He was a most
noble composer in the polished style ; and whensoever he would,
he enriched his letters with many wise sentences. He was the
first Minister-General who began to go round the whole Order
* Cf . Newman "All through (my fever in Sicily) I had a confident feeling
I should recover .... and gave as a reason . . . . ' I thought God had some
work for me.' " Letters, vol i., p. 414.
io6 From St. Francis to Dante.
and visit province bj province, which had not been the custom
aforetime, except that Brother Aymo once went to England, which
was his native land. But when Brother Bonagratia would have
thus visited the Order after the example of John of Parma,
the travail was more than he could bear, wherefore he fell
sick unto death within four years of his Generalship, and ended
his life at Avignon. Moreover Brother John of Parma gave
licence to Brother Bonaventura of Bagnorrea* to lecture at Paris,
which he had never as yet done anywhere : for he was but a
Bachelor and not yet Master. Moreover, at another time, during
the Chapter of Metz, the Provincials and Custodes said to Brother
John: ' Father, let us make some Constitutions.' [i.e. bye-laws.]
But he answered and said, ' Let us not multiply our Constitutions,
but let us keep well such as we have. For know that the Poor
Brethrenf complain of you that ye make a multitude of Constitu-
tions and lay them on the neck of your subjects, and ye who
make them will not keep them.' For he looked more to a
Superior's hand than to his tongue : as we read of Julius Caesar,
who never said to his soldiers ' Go ye and do that,' but ' Let us
go and do it,' ever associating himself with them." He also
introduced uniformity into the Friars' services : for hitherto
they had made many changes each after his own fancy " either
contrary to the rubrics or altogether beside them, as I have seen
with mine own eyes."
" Moreover, while he was Lector at Naples, and not yet
Minister-General, he passed through Bologna, and sat down
one day to meat in the guesten-hall with his companions and
with other strangers : then certain Brethren came and took
him by force from the table, that they might bring him to eat
in the infirmary. f But he, seeing that his companion was left
uninvited, turned back and said, ' I will eat nowhere without
my companion ' : which was thought great boorishness on the
part of the hosts, and the greatest courtesy and fidelity on Brother
John's part. Another day, when he was General and would
fain find a moment's leisure, he came to the convent of Ferrara :
and, considering himself that the same Brethren were always
invited to eat with him that is, the same who had dined with
him, were at supper also, and the same to-day, the same to-morrow
he saw that our Guardian was a respecter of persons, which
displeased him. So when Brother John was washing his hands
* Saint Bonaventura.
t i.e. the Sphituals, with whom he deeply sympathized.
\ Where the food was always more delicate.
Convent Friendships. 107
one day for supper, then the Brother on service asked of the
Guardian, ' Whom shall I invite ? ' ; and he answered, ' Take
Brother Jacopo of Pavia and Brother A vanzio and such an one and
such an one.' Now these four had already washed their hands in
expectation, and stood ready, behind the General's back, as he
had well seen from the first : wherefore he took up his parable,
inspired perhaps by the Holy Ghost in the fervour of his spirit,
and cried, ' Yea, yea ! take Brother John of Pavia, take Brother
Avanzio, take this one and that other I take ten stripes for thy-
self, for that is a mere goose's song ! ' So they who had been
invited to the meal were confounded and put to shame when they
heard this : and the Guardian was no less ashamed, saying to the
Minister, ' Father, it was for thine honour that I invited these
to bear thee company, since I hold them the most worthy.' The
Minister answered, ' Saith not the Scripture, " When thou makest
a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind : and
thou shalt be blessed" ? (and I heard all this, for I stood by his
side). Then said the friar on service, * Whom then shall I ask? '
' Invite,' said the Guardian, * as the Minister shall bid thee.'
Then said he, ' Go, call me the poor Brethren of the convent ;
for this office [of eating] is one wherein all know enough to bear
their Minister company. So that friar on service went to the
refectory, and said to the feeblest and poorest Brethren, who
seldom ate outside the refectory, ' The General inviteth you to
supper : I bid you on his part to bear him company forthwith ' :
and so it was. For Brother John, whenever he came to some
fresh convent, would ever have the poor Brethren to eat with him,
or else all together, or else these and those by turns, that they
might have some refreshment by his coming. And thus he
would ordain before his guest-table was full, that is, before he
went into the refectory to eat, which he ever did forthwith after
he was refreshed from his journey and his travail, when he stayed
in any convent. So Brother John was no respecter of persons,
nor bare he private love for any, but he was most courteous and
free at table, so that, if divers sorts of good wine were set before
him, he would cause equal portions to be poured out for all, or
else he would pour it into a great cup, that every man might
drink alike, which was esteemed by all to be an excellent courtesy
and charity. Moreover, even when he was Minister-General,
whensoever the bell was rung for cleaning the vegetables or herbs
for the table, he would come to the con vent -workers and labour
with the other Brethren, as I have oft-times seen with mine own
eyes : and, being familiarly known to him, I said to him, * Father,
ye do as the Lord taught : " He that is the leader among you,
io8 From St. Francis to Dante.
let him be as he that serveth." ' And he answered, ' " So it
becometh us to fulfil all justice," that is, perfect humility.'
Moreover he fulfilled his church services both nightly and daily,
and especially Mattins and Vespers and the Conventual Mass,
and whatsoever the Cantor laid upon him he obeyed at once,
either beginning the antiphons or chanting lessons and responses
or singing conventual masses. In short, he was full of all good
deeds : he would fain write with his own hands even when he
was a General, that he might by his labour earn wherewithal to
be clothed : but the Brethren would not suffer this, for they saw
him busied with the service of the Order, and therefore they
gladly supplied him with all things necessary."
But John, as will be seen in Chapter XIII, was a Joachite ;
he apparently did nothing to punish the rash author of the " In-
troduction to the Eternal Gospel " ; and the scandal of the book
fell in a great measure upon him also. His restless energy had
already worn out twelve secretaries one after the other : even
his own iron frame and cheerful temper must have bent under
the discouraging drudgery of visiting convent after convent that
was drifting daily farther from the Founder's purpose : 5 and, if
Salimbene is right, he met his sentence halfway, calling a special
General Chapter to tender his resignation. For a whole day the
Chapter refused to accept it, but at last, "seeing the anguish of
his soul," they unwillingly consented, and besought him to name
his successor : " and forthwith he chose Brother Bonaventura,
saying that he knew none better in the whole Order. So Brother
Bonaventura held the Generalate for 17 years, and did much
good." According to Wadding, it was the Pope who had
insisted on this resignation, partly on account of his Joachism,
and partly because his efforts to enforce the strict observance of
St. Francis's precepts had exasperated a section of the Order :
and John gladly obeyed, alleging " his feebleness, his weariness,
and his age." 6 Before his fall, John had won golden opinions
on all sides : Salimbene tells us of the great respect with which
he was treated by princes so different as the emperor Vatatzes ;
Henry III of England; and, "as I saw with mine own eyes,"
St. Louis and his brothers. Even Popes and Cardinals admired
him, in spite of his Joachism. The worldly Innocent IV (304)
" loved him as his own soul, and ever welcomed him with a kiss
on the mouth when he came to see him, and thought to make him
a Cardinal, but was himself overtaken by death." Alexander IV
had loved him also ; and even now in his disgrace he found
powerful defenders. St. Bonaventura did indeed permit the
heresy-hunters to bait his old master, and would even have
Convent Friendships. 109
acquiesced in his imprisonment ; the disgust of the Spirituals
at this and other concessions to the " relaxed " party found
utterance in the vision of blessed Jacopo dalla Massa (Fioretti
chap. 48). It is true that the compiler of the Fioretti takes
care, for scandal's sake, to suppress the great General's name :
but the earlier versions of the vision in the Actus and the Seven
Tribulations tell us plainly that the bitter adversary, with iron
nails like razors, who would fain have torn John of Parma to
pieces, was no other than Dante's guide through the twelfth
Canto of the Paradiso. John was saved not, as in the vision,
by St. Francis stooping from heaven, but by the intervention
of Cardinal Ottobono, afterwards Pope Adrian V. He was
allowed to choose his own place of retreat, and selected the
secluded hermitage of Greccio, where St. Francis had spent one
Christmas and imitated the Manger of Bethlehem. Even in
this his exile, he was still remembered at the Roman Court. (304)
" When Master Pietro Ispano 7 was made first a Cardinal and
then presently Pope John XXI, being a great dialectician and
logician and disputer and theologian, he sent for Brother John of
Parma, who also had the like qualities. For the Pope would
fain have had him ever at his court, and thought to make him
a Cardinal ; but death overtook him before he could fulfil his
purpose ; for the vault of his chamber fell upon him and slew
him." The next Pope, however, had no less respect for the
saintly ex-General. (302) "A long time after [his retirement],
Pope Nicholas III took him by the hand and led him familiarly
through his palace, saying to him, ' Since thou art a man of much
counsel, were it not better for thyself and for thine Order that
thou shouldst be a Cardinal here with us at our Court, than that
thou shouldst follow the words of fools who prophesy from their
own heart? ' So Brother John answered and said to the Pope, 'I
care nought for your dignities, for it is sung in praise of every
saint : " He sought no glory of earthly dignity, but came to the
Kingdom of Heaven. ' ? As concerning counsel I say unto you
that I could indeed give some counsel if there were any who would
hear me. But in these days little else is treated in the Court
of Rome but wars and buffooneries, instead of matters which
concern the salvation of men's souls.' The Pope, hearing this,
groaned and said, * We are so accustomed to such things that
we believe all that we say and do to be profitable.' Then
answered Brother John, ' And the blessed [Pope] Gregory, as we
read in his Dialogues, would have sighed at such things.' So
Brother John was sent away and returned to the hermitage of
Greccio where he was wont to dwell." Salimbene, in spite of his
no From St. Francis to Dante.
personal affection, agreed with the criticism passed by a fellow-
friar on Brother John, that if he could have given up his Joachism
he might have effected some real reform at the Court of Rome.
He goes out of his way to account for John's clinging to the creed
even after the shock dealt to it by Frederick's premature death
in 1250; "Some men so cling to their opinions that they are
ashamed afterwards to retract, lest they should seem liars : and
therefore they cannot change their minds" (303). He himself
once volunteered to go to Greccio and attempt to convert his
old master : but he is unwoutedly reticent as to the issue of this
journey. Later on, however, he gives us two anecdotes of the
holy man's life there: (310) a pair of wildfowl built their nest
and hatched their brood under his study desk ; and again, an
angel came and served for him at Mass when the poor little
scholar, who should have served, had overslept himself. " Much
more good," continues Salimbene, " have I seen and heard and
known of Brother John of Parma, which would be worthy
of record ; yet 1 must omit the rest for brevity's sake and
because 1 am in haste to pass on to other things ; and because
the Scripture saith, ' Praise not any man before death.' For he
hath lived long and he liveth yet in this year 1284 wherein I
write." 8
Five years afterwards, in the year in which Salimbene himself
probably died, John of Parma undertook a second journey to
Constantinople for the conversion of the Greeks. He started
with the blessing of his general, Acquasparta, and of Pope
Nicholas IV, himself a Franciscan ; but at Camerino in the
Apennines his strength failed him. As he entered the city he
murmured the words of the Psalmist, "This is my rest for ever
and ever ; here will 1 dwell, for ] have chosen it." A few days
later, he breathed his last among the Brethren, and in the presence
of many citizens whom the renown of the stranger's sanctity had
attracted to the convent. Dante's Ubertino da Casale, who in
former days had made a special pilgrimage to Greccio for the sake
of the old man's absolution and blessing, records the vivid and
immediate renown of the miracles worked at his tomb. " Seldom
do I remember to have read, for a long time past, so many mir-
acles worked by any saint The less he hath been formally
approved by that carnal Church which he most bitterly rebuked,
the more richly he would seem to have been endowed in the
heavenly Church with the manifold working of miracles." To
Angelo Clareno he was one of the four great wonder-workers of
the latter 13th century witnesses of God's power in an age
which had almost lost the power of miracles. A hundred and
Convent Friendships. 1 1 1
fifty years later, St. Bernardino of Siena calls him Saint John,
and alludes to a record which attributes more miracles to him
than to any other disciple of St. Francis. His tomb was still
hung round with a multitude of votive offerings at the beginning
of the XVIIIth century, when they were destroyed by "restor-
ers." The original Gothic tomb, which is described as a work
of great beauty, had perished at a still earlier restoration. His
worship had long been officially recognised, if not by the Pope,
at least by the city, so that it remained untouched by that Papal
decree of 1675, which forbade the cult of unauthorised saints
unless they could show a prescription of at least 100 years. John
was formally beatified by Pius VI in 1777, so that Salimbene's
friend has now his special Mass and Offices among the services
of the Roman Church. 9
Our chronicler claims also to have known intimately all the
twelve " companions " or secretaries whom John wore out suc-
cessively by his long journeys on foot from convent to convent ;
and he paints most of them with vivid touches (550 foil.).
First comes Brother Mark of the swift untiring pen ; " an honest
and holy man who lived to a great age ; he was of Modena, and
lies buried at Urbino where he coruscates with miracles. He was
a good writer and swift and easily understood : and for the
labour which he bore as companion to Ministers-general and in
writing their letters, he earned for himself the decree in a general
chapter that each priest in the Order should, after his decease,
say a funeral mass for his soul. He was a special friend of mine,
and he dearly loved Brother Bonaventura, the Minister-General,
so that after his death, whensoever he recalled his great learning
and all the graces that were his, he would burst into tears at the
sweetness of that memory. Moreover, when Brother Bonaven-
tura was to preach before the clergy, Brother Mark would go to
him and say, ' Thou art but an hireling, and when thou preach-
edst last, thou knewest not what to say ; but I hope thou wilt
not do so this time.' Thus said Brother Mark that he might
provoke him to speak the better ; and yet he would write down
all Brother Bonaventura's sermons for his own use I But
Brother Bonaventura rejoiced when Brother Mark reviled him,
for five reasons ; first, because he was a kindly and patient man ;
secondly, because therein he imitated St. Francis ; thirdly, be-
cause he was assured that the Brother loved him dearly ; fourthly,
because he had an occasion of avoiding vainglory ; and fifthly,
because it gave him an occasion of greater prudence." Next
comes Brother Andrew of Bologna, Minister of the Holy Land
and Penitentiary to the Pope. " The third was Brother Walter,
1 1 2 From St. Francis to Dante.
English by birth, and a truly angelic man.* He was a good
singer, slender, and of seemly stature, a goodly man to see, of
holy and honest life, well-mannered and learned. Moreover,
Brother Walter was sent to stay at the Court of Rome, but he
laboured all he could to be removed thence, rather choosing to be
afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin
for a time, esteeming the reproaches of Christ greater riches
than the treasure of the Egyptians. Yet I have heard of this
Walter that afterwards against his will he was made a Bishop, I
know not where. He was my friend. And note that all the
comrades of Brother John of Parma were my intimate and
familiar friends. The fourth was Brother Bonagiunta of Fab-
riano, a good Guardian and a learned man, a good singer,
preacher and writer, bold, and of middling stature, and with a
face like St. Paul. When I was a novice in the convent of
Fano in the year 1238, he was a youth and lived there with me.
He was first and last Bishop of Recanati. The fifth was Brother
John of Ravenna, big and corpulent and black, a good man, and
of honest life. Never saw I a man who so loved to eat macaroni
with cheese " yet, as a native of Parma, Salimbene must have
had great opportunities in this line. " The sixth was Anselmo
Rabuino of the city of Asti in Lombardy, big and black, with
the figure and bearing of a prelate, and of honest and holy life ;
he was a judge while in the world ; he was Minister of the
Province of Terra di Lavoro." The Brethren looked upon him
as a saint (315). " The seventh was Brother Bartolomeo Guis-
colo of Parma, a great orator and a great Joachite, a courtly
and liberal man, who in the world had been a Master in Grammar,
of honest and holy life in the Order. He could write, illuminate,
and preach. The eighth was Brother Guidolino Gennaro of
Parma, a learned man and a good singer, who sang excellently
both in harmony and in plainsong. His singing was better than
his voice, for he had a very slender voice. He was a good writer,
and his hand-writing also was good and fair. And he corrected
texts well in the convent at Bologna, for he knew the text of the
Bible excellently, and was of honest and holy life, so that the
Brethren loved him. The ninth was Brother Giacomino da
Berceto, Guardian of the convent at Rimini, a man of honest and
holy life, and a good preacher, having a mighty voice. The tenth
* The text has " Anglicus nalione, et homo vere angelicus:" there can be no
doubt that the writer intended a pun here : (cf. Sussex Arch. Coll., vol. vii, p. 219.)
Salimbene seems always so interested in his English friends that it is a thousand
pities he died a few years too soon to have known the Adam Goddam who (iu
spite of his truly medieval nickname) was a pillar of the English province in 1320
(Wadding, 1320, 1).
Convent Friendships. 1 1 3
was Brother Jacopo degli Assandri of Mantua, a man of honest
and holy life, and excellently versed in the Decretals, and in giving
counsel. The eleventh was Brother Drudo, Minister of Burgundy,
lector in theology, who would daily preach to the Brethren con-
cerning Divine influences, as I heard with mine own ears, when I
was in Burgundy with him. He was a noble and comely man, and
of incredibly honest and holy life, for he was marvellously devoted
to God beyond all thought of man. The twelfth was Brother
Bonaventura da Iseo, who was ancient both in the Order and in
age, wise and industrious, and most sagacious, and a man of
honest and holy life, and beloved of Ezzelino da Romano ; yet
he played the lord (' baronizabat'} above measure, seeing that
his mother, as men said, was hostess of a tavern. He wrote a
great volume of sermons for the Sundays and Feast-days of the
year. His end was praiseworthy ; may his soul rest in peace !
And note that Brother John of Parma, when he was Minister-
General, had not all the aforesaid comrades travelling with him
at the same time, but successively ; for he would go round and
visit the Order, and his comrades could not endure the labour
therefore he needed to have a multitude of comrades. These
twelve aforesaid had in them much good which I have omitted
for brevity's sake."
But Salimbene was not familiar with saints alone ; we get
constant references to such personages as Buondio the Jew
(394), or Asdente, the harmless cobbler-prophet of Parma,
whom Dante thrust so rudely down to Hell. 10 He dwells, too,
with pardonable pride on his noble friends. (467) "In the
year 1261 died the Lord Simon de Manfredi. He was my
friend, and a good and valiant fighter for the Church party
at the time of the Great War." Again, (377) "The Lady
Mabel, daughter of the Lord Markesopolo* Pallavicini, was
married by her father before I entered the Order, and she came
from Soragna to Parma, and lodged near the church of St. Paul.
And her father gave her a dowry of 1,000 Imperial, and wedded
her to the Lord Azzo, Marquis of Este, 11 who was a good man
and courteous, humble and gentle and peaceful, and a friend of
mine. For once I read to him the Exposition of the Abbot
Joachim on the Burdens of Esaias, and he was alone with me
and another Friar Minor under a fig-tree. The Lady Mabel like-
wise was devoted to me, and to all men of Religion, and especially
to the Friars Minor, to whom she confessed, and whose Offices
she always said, and in whose church at Ferrara she was buried
* ? Marchese Paolo.
1 1 4 From St. Francis to Dante.
by her husband's side, and rests in peace. She did much good in
her lifetime, and at her death scattered abroad and gave to the
poor many alms of her possessions. Seven years I dwelt at
Ferrara, where she likewise dwelt. She was a fair lady, wise,
clement, benign, courteous, honest, and pious, humble, and ever
devoted to God. She was not avaricious of her goods, but freely
she gave to the poor. She had a furnace in an inner chamber of
her palace, as I have seen with mine own eyes, and she herself
made rose-water and gave it to the sick ; wherefore the physicians
stationary* and apothecaries loved her the less. But she cared
for none of these things, if only she might succour the sick,
and please God. Many years she lived with her husband, and
was ever barren. But after the death of her husband she caused
a house to be built for her beside the convent of the Friars Minor,
and there she dwelt in her widowhood. May her soul, through
God's mercy, rest in peace, for she was a virtuous lady. After
the death of the Marquis she came to Parma, and I was there,
and heard from her that she was in marvellous comfort, for that
she was hard by the convent of the Friars Minor, and the church
of the glorious Virgin. Never saw I any lady who so brought to
my mind the Countess Matilda, 12 according to all that I have
found written of her." Her father, Markesopolo, had long since
found himself unable to keep up his old baronial dignity in the
new and prosperous Parma, " for he was noble and great-hearted,
and therefore took it ill that any man of the people soever,
whether of the city or of the country around, might send an
ambassador with a red fillet on his brow, and draw him to the
Palazzo Communale to go to law with him before the judges."
So he went off and fought in Greece, where he was treacherously
slain in his own house : ' for all things obey the power of money.' 13
Moreover, the Lord Kubino, his brother, dwelt in Soragna, and
had to wife the Lady Ermengarda da Palude. She was a fair lady,
but wanton, of whom we might say with Solomon, ' A golden ring
in a swine's snout, a woman fair and foolish.' The Lord Rubino
was old and full of days, and sent for me in the year of the
great mortality (1259), and confessed to me and made his soul
right with God, and died in good old age, passing from this
world to the Father. But his wife took another husband, one
Egidio Scorza ; and afterwards she fell down from an upper
chamber, and died and was buried," For Salimbene is always
laudably anxious to bring his heroes to a good end, and to record
how his villains had their reward at last.
* i.e., those who kept ahopa.
CHAPTER X.
The Siege of Parma.
IN spite of the distant thunder of the Brother Elias storm,
Salimbene's first years in those Tuscan convents seem to
have been among the most peaceful of his life. At Cremona,
however, in the ninth year after his reception, he found himself
a close spectator of one of the most savage and prolonged wars
in civilized history. The conflicts of thirteenth century Italy
between Pope and Emperor on the one hand, and jealous cities
on the other, have seldom been surpassed in horror among
Christian nations. The bitterest period of those conflicts began
with the renewed excommunication and deposition of Frederick
II by Innocent IV in 1245. Salimbene describes Frederick's
spirit at this time as that of " a bear robbed of her whelps."
The war speedily degenerated into a chaos of sickening atrocities
and reprisals : I give a few of the entries as specimens.
In 1239 " The Emperor caused castles of wood to be made, to
fight with the men of Brescia : and on those castles he placed
the captives whom he had taken. But the men of Brescia
smote the said castles with their mangonels, without any hurt
to the captives who were therein ; and they for their part hanged
up by the arms, without the palisade of their town, such of
the Emperor's men as they had taken captive " (95). In
1246 "Tebaldo Francesco and many other barons of Apulia
rebelled against the deposed Emperor Frederick ; and after a
long siege they were taken in the castle of Cappozio, and miserably
tormented, both men, women, and little children." In the
year following, " Ezzelino laid waste the whole diocese of Parma,
on this side of the Lencia toward the castle of Bersello : and
the Mantuans for their part burnt the whole diocese of Cremona
from Torricella downwards. For it was a fierce war, and tangled,
and perilous" (178). In a war of this description, the first
advantage would seem to lie with the more barbarous and
unscrupulous of the two parties : and there can be little doubt
that, on the whole, this bad pre-eminence was with the Ghibel-
lines. With the help of his unspeakable lieutenant Ezzelino,
1 1 6 From St. Francis to Dante.
Frederick had devastated the north of Italy, and was already
thinking of crossing the Alps to attack the Pope in his refuge
at Lyons, when the sudden revolt of Salimbene's own native city
struck the blow which was destined to ruin his hopes. It was the
old story : the Imperialists of Parma had in the previous year
expelled all the principal Guelfs from the city, and burnt their
houses ; so that these desperate men, having nothing further to
lose, led a forlorn hope which turned the whole tide of the war.
(188) "In the year of our Lord 1247 a few banished knights,
dwelling at Piacenza, who were valiant, vigorous, and strong,
and most skilled in war these men were in bitterness of spirit,
both because their houses in Parma had been torn to the ground,
and because it is an evil life to wander as guest from house to
house 1 for they were exiles and banished men, having great
households and but little money, for they had left Parma suddenly
lest the Emperor should catch them in his toils these men, I
say, came from Piacenza and entered Parma, and expelled the
Emperor's party on the 15th day of June, slaying the Podesta
of Parma, who was my acquaintance and friend, and dearly
beloved of the Brethren Minor.
Now there were many reasons why these banished men were
easily able to take the city . . . The third reason is that on that
day the Lord Bartolo Tavernario gave his daughter in marriage
to a certain Lord of Brescia, who had come to Parma to fetch
her ; and those who met the exiles as they came to attack the
city had eaten at that banquet, so that they were full of wine
and over-much feasting ; and they arose from table and fondly
thought to overthrow all at the first onset. Seeing therefore that
they were as men drunk with wine, their enemies slew and
scattered them in flight. The fourth is that the city of Parma
was wholly unfenced, and open in all directions. The fifth is
that those who came to invade the city folded their hands on
their breasts, thus making the sign of the Cross to all whom
they met, saying, ' For the love of God and the Blessed Virgin
His Mother, who is our Lady in this city, may it please you that
we return to our own city, whence we were expelled and banished
without fault of our own ; and we come back with peace to all,
nor are we minded to do harm to any man.' The men of Parma
who had met them unarmed along the street, hearing this, were
moved to pity by their humility, and said to them, ' Enter the
city in peace, in the name of the Lord, for our hand also shall
be with you in all these things.' The sixth is that they who
dwelt in the city did not concern themselves with these matters,
for they neither held with those who had come in, nor did they
The Siege of Parma. 117
fight for the Emperor ; but bankers or money-changers sat at
their tables, and men of other arts worked still at their posts as
though nought were." Our author presently goes on to describe,
in the words which I have already quoted in full, that horrible
devastation of the country which he expressly dates from " the
time when Parma withdrew from Frederick's allegiance, and
clave to the Church."
To Salimbene, this revolt was but a natural consequence of
the Pope's ban, which had reduced the Emperor to the state of
" a bird whose wing feathers have been plucked away." But
the blow only roused Frederick to greater exertions. His son
Enzio, who was the nearest imperialist commander, might have
retrieved the disaster by a sudden counterstroke : but he lacked
the necessary nerve. (193) " When King Enzio heard that the
Guelf exiles had entered Parma by force, leaving the siege of
Quinzano, he came by a forced night march, not singing but
groaning inwardly, as is the wont of an army returning from a
rout. I lived in those days in the convent of the Friars Minor
at Cremona, wherefore I knew all these things well. For at
early dawn the men of Cremona were assembled forthwith with
the King to a Council, which lasted even to high tierce (i.e. past
9 o'clock) ; after which they ate hurriedly and went forth to the
very last man, with the Carroccio in their van. There remained
not in Cremona one man who was able to march and fight in
battle ; and I am fully persuaded that if they had marched
without delay to Parma and quitted themselves like men, they
would have recovered the city. For if one enemy knew how
it fared in all things with his enemy, he might oft-times smite
him ; but by the will of God King Enzio halted with the army
of Cremona by the Taro Morto, and came not to Parma, that
the Lord might bring evil upon them. For he wished to wait
there until his father should come from Turin. Meanwhile
succour came daily from all parts to the men of Parma who had
entered the city : and the citizens made themselves a ditch
and a palisade, that their city might be shut in against the
enemy. Then the Emperor, all inflamed with wrath and fury
at that which had befallen him, came to Parma ; and in the
district called Grola, wherein is great plenty of vineyards and
good wine (for the wine of that land is most excellent), he built
a city, surrounded with great trenches, which also he called
Victoria, as an omen of that which should come to pass. And
the moneys which he minted there were called Victorini; and
the great church was called after St. Victor. So there Frederick
lodged with his army, and King Enzio with the army of Cremona ;
1 1 8 From St. Francis to Dante.
and the Emperor summoned all his friends to come in haste to
his succour. And the first who came was the Lord Ugo Boterio,
a citizen of Parma, sister's son to Pope Innocent IV ; who,
being Podesta of Pavia at that time, came with all the men of
Pavia whom he deemed fit for war. Neither by prayers nor
by promises could the Pope tear away this nephew of his from
the love of Frederick ; and yet the Pope loved his mother best
of all his three sisters for the other two were likewise married
in Parma.
After him came Ezzelino da Romano, who in those days was
Lord of the Mark of Treviso, and he brought with him a vast
army. This Ezzelino was feared worse than the devil : he held it
of no account to slay men, women, and children, and he wrought
such cruelty as men have scarce heard. On one day he caused
11,000 men of Padua to be burnt in the field of Saint George in
the city of Verona ; and when fire had been set to the house in
which they were being burnt, he jousted as if in sport around them
with his knights. It would be too long to relate his cruelties,
for they would fill a great book. I believe most certainly that
as the Son of God wished to have one specially whom He might
make like unto Himself, namely St. Francis, so the Devil chose
Ezzelino. It was of the blessed Francis that it was written
that to one servant He gave five talents ; for never was there
but one man in this world, namely the blessed Francis, on whom
Christ impressed the five wounds in likeness of Himself. 2 For,
as was told me by Brother Leo, his comrade, who was present
when he was washed for burial, he seemed in all things like a
man crucified and taken down from the cross.
Furthermore, after Ezzelino many nations came to Frederick's
succour, as the men of Reggie and Modena, who were for the
Emperor in their several cities, the men of Bergamo also, and
other cities, as well of Tuscany as of Lombardy, and other parts
of the world which held rather with the Emperor than with the
Church. And they came from Burgundy and Calabria and Apulia
and Sicily, and from Terra di Lavoro ; and Greeks, and Saracens
from Nocera, and well-nigh from every nation under the sun.
Wherefore that word of Esaias might have been said to him, ' Thou
hast multiplied the nation, and hast not increased the joy ' : and
this for many reasons. First, with the aid of his whole host he
could but beset that one road from Parma to Borgo San Donnino ;
while the rest of the city felt nothing of the siege. Again,
whereas the Emperor thought in his heart utterly to destroy
the city and to transfer it to the city of Victoria which he had
founded, and to sow salt in token of barrenness over the destroyed
The Siege of Parma. 1 1 9
Parma ; then the women of Parma, learning this, (and especially
the rich, the noble, and the powerful), betook themselves with
one accord to pray for the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that
she might help to free their city ; for her name and title were
held in the greatest reverence by the Parmese in their cathedral
church. And, that they might the better gain her ear, they made a
model of the city in solid silver, which I have seen, and which
was offered as a gift to the Blessed Virgin ; and there were to
be seen the greatest and chiefest buildings of the city, fashioned
of solid silver, as the cathedral church, the Baptistery, the
Bishop's palace, the Palazzo Communale, and many other
buildings which showed forth the image of the city. The Mother
prayed her Son : the Son heard the Mother, to whom of right He
could deny nothing, according to the word which is figuratively
contained in Holy Scripture, * My mother, ask : for I must not
turn away thy face.' These are the words of Solomon to his
mother. And when the Mother of Mercy had prayed her Son
to free her city of Parma from that multitude of nations which
was gathered together against it, and when the night was now
close at hand, the Son said to His Mother, ' Hast thou seen all
this exceeding great multitude? Behold, I will deliver them
into thy hand this day, that thou mayest know that I am the
Lord.'" In repeating this dialogue between the Virgin Mary
and her Son, Salimbene is of course only a child of his time. It
was a commonplace of thirteenth century theology, that " it
was not right for the Son to deny His Mother aught" : and a
far more blasphemous dialogue to the same effect, which is
repeatedly recorded by the Franciscan and Dominican writers,
may be found in the first chapter of " Lives of the Brethren."
More popular ideas of the Virgin Mary's power over her Son are
exemplified by Caesarius's story of the simple-minded Cistercian
lay-brother who was heard to pray, "In truth, Lord, if Thou
free me not from this temptation, I will complain of Thee to Thy
Mother." The convent was much edified by the lay-brother's
simplicity, and by our Lord's humility in condescending to
grant a prayer couched in such terms. 3 We have here only the
grosser side of the rapidly-growing materialism : the great
encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais, who compiled his work with
the help of St. Louis' library, writes of a Pope as saying that
" Mary, the Mother of Jesus ... is the only hope of reconciliation
for [sinful] man, the main cause of eternal salvation " (Spec.
Hist. vii. 95).
Meanwhile the Emperor pushed the siege with an energy
proportionate to the bitterness of his disappointment. Salimbene
1 20 From St. Francis to Dante.
had returned bv this time to his native city probably among
those Guelf exiles from Cremona of whom he speaks so feelingly
below : and here he found plenty of exciting incidents : for
( 1 96) " men went out daily from either side to fight : crossbowmen,
archers, and slingers, as I saw with mine own eyes : and ruffians
also daily scoured the whole diocese of Parma, plundering and
burning on all sides : and likewise did the men of Parma to
those of Cremona and Reggio. The Mantuans also came in
those days and burnt Casalmaggiore to the ground, as I saw
with mine own eyes. And every morning the Emperor came
with his men, and beheaded three or four, or as many more as
seemed good to him, of the men of Parma and Modena and
Reggio who were of the Church party, and whom he kept in
bonds : and all this he did on the shingles by the riverside within
sight of the men of Parma who were in the city, that he might
vex their souls. The Emperor put many innocent men to an
evil death, as we see in the case of the Lord Andrea di Trego,
who was a noble knight of Cremona, and of Conrad di Berceto,
who was a clerk, and valiant in arms, whom he tortured in divers
manners with fire and water and manifold torments. The
Emperor was wont to slay of these captives at his will ; and
especially when he made assault with outrageous words against
the city, and when the battle went against him, then would he
refresh his soul in the blood of these captives. At one time also
certain knights of the Mark of Ancona deserted the Emperor,
and fled to Parma ; because at the beginning of the rebellion
the Emperor caused many knights of the Mark to be put in
ward as hostages in the city of Cremona. And a messenger
came from the Emperor bidding five of these knights, even as
they washed their hands before supper, to mount their horses
forthwith and ride with him to the Emperor. And when they
were come to a certain field called Mosa, which is without the
city of Cremona, he led them to the gallows, and they were
hanged. And these butchers said, ' This is the Emperor's
command, for ye are traitors ' ; yet they had come to his succour.
On the day following the Brethren Minor came and took them
down and buried them ; and scarce could they drive away the
wolves from eating them while they yet hung on the gallows.
All this I saw, for I lived at Cremona in those days, and in
Parma likewise. It would be too long to recount all those of
the Church party whom he slew and caused to be slain in those
days. For he sent the Lord Gerardo di Canale of Parma into
Apulia, and caused him to be drowned in the depths of the sea
with a mill-stone at his neck ; and yet he had been at first one
The Siege of Parma. 121
of his nearest friends, and had held many offices from him ; and
ever he remained with him in the army without Parma. And
the Emperor had but this one cause of suspicion against him,
that the tower of his mansion in Parma was not destroyed. 4
Wherefore the Emperor would sometimes say to him, laughing
in false and feigned jest, ' The men of Parma love us much, my
Lord Gerard, for that whereas they tore down in their city the
other Ghibelline buildings, they have as yet destroyed neither
your tower, nor my palace on the Arena.' Wherein he spoke
ironically, but the Lord Gerard understood him not. When
therefore I left Parma to go into France, I passed through the
village wherein the Lord Gerard then lived ; and he saw me
gladly, saying that he was of much profit to the citizens of
Parma. And I said to him * Since the Emperor is besieging
Parma, be ye wholly with him or wholly with the citizens, and
halt not between two opinions, for it is not to your profit.' Yet
he hearkened not unto me ; wherefore we may say of him with
the Wise Man * The way of a fool is right in his own eyes : but
he that is wise hearkenth unto counsels.' And note that the
Lord Bernard, son of Rolando Rossi of Parma, who was of
kindred with the Lord Pope Innocent IV (for he had the Pope's
sister to wife), better understood the Emperor's ironical speech
than did the Lord Gerard di Canale. For when, as he rode
one day with the Emperor, his horse stumbled, then the Emperor
said to him, ' My Lord Bernard, ye have an evil horse, but I hope
and promise you that within a few days 1 will give you a better,
which shall not stumble.' And the Lord Bernard understood
that he spake of hanging him on the gallows : wherefore he was
inflamed with indignation against the Emperor, and fled from
before his face. 5 Yet the Lord Bernard was the Emperor's
gossip and most intimate friend, and well-beloved of him, and
when he would enter into his chamber, no man ever denied him
the door. But the Emperor could keep no man's friendship ;
nay, rather, he boasted that he had never nourished a pig, but
that at last he had its grease, which was as much as to say that
he had never raised any to riches and honour but that in the
end he had drained his purse or his treasure. Which was a
most churlish saying, yet we see an example thereof in Pier delle
\ f igne, who was the greatest counsellor and writer of State
papers in the Emperor's court, and was called by the Emperor
his chancellor. And yet the Emperor had raised him from the
dust ; and afterwards he returned him to the same dust, for he
found an occasion of a word and a calumny against him, which
was as follows. The Emperor had sent the judge Taddeo and
122 From St. Francis to Dante.
Pier delle Vigne, whom he loved above all, and who stood above
all others in his court, and certain others he had sent with them
to Lyons to Pope Innocent IV, to hinder the said Pope from
hastening to depose him ; for he had heard that to this end the
Council was being gathered together. And he had straitly
charged them that none should speak with the Pope without
his fellow, or without the presence of others. But after they
were returned, his comrades accused Pier delle Vigne that he
had often had familiar colloquy with the Pope without them.
The Emperor therefore sent and caused him to be taken and
slain by an evil death, saying in the words of Job ' They that
were sometime my counsellors have abhorred me : and he whom
I loved most is turned against me.' For in those days the
Emperor was easily troubled in his mind, because he had been
deposed from the Empire, and Parma had fostered the spirit of
rebellion against him.
So Frederick's affliction and cursedness wherewith he was
inflamed against Parma, endured from the end of the month
of June 1247 to Tuesday the 18th of February 1248, on which
day his city of Victoria was taken. For the men of Parma went
forth from their city, knights and commons side by side, fully
harnessed for war ; and their very women and girls went out
with them ; youths and maidens, old men and young together.
They drove the Emperor by force from Victoria with all his
horse and foot ; and many were slain there, and many taken
and led to Parma. And they freed their own captives, whom
the Emperor kept in bonds in Victoria. And the Carroccio of
Cremona, which was in Victoria, they brought to Parma, and
placed it in triumph in the Baptistery. But those who loved
not the men of Cremona, (as the Milanese, and Mantuans, and
many others whom the men of Cremona had offended,) when
they came to see the Baptistery, and saw the Carroccio of their
enemies, carried off the ornaments of ' Berta ' (for so was that
Carroccio called) to keep them as relics. So the wheels alone
and the framework of the carriage remained on the pavement
of the Baptistery : and the mast or pole for the standard stood
upright against the wall. Moreover the men of Parma spoiled
the Emperor of all his treasure for he had a mighty treasure
of gold and silver and precious stones, vessels and vestments.
And they took all his ornaments and his imperial crown, which
Avas of great weight and value, for it was all of gold, inlaid with
precious stones, with many images of goldsmith's work standing
out, and much graven work. It was as great as a cauldron, for
it was rather for dignity and for great price than as an ornament
The Siege of Parma. 123
for his head ; for it would have hidden all his head, face and all,
had it not been raised to stand higher by means of a cunningly
disposed piece of cloth. This crown I have held in my hands,
for it was kept in the sacristy of the Cathedral of the Blessed
Virgin in the city of Parma. It was found by a little man of
mean stature, who was called ironically Cortopasso ( Short-step),
and who bore it openly on his fist as men bear a falcon, showing
it to all who could see it, in honour of the victory they had
gained, and to the eternal disgrace of Frederick. For whatso-
ever each could seize became his own, nor did any dare to tear
aught away from another : nor was a single contentious or injur-
ious word heard there, which was a great marvel. So the afore-
said crown was bought by the men of Parma from this their fellow-
citizen, and they gave him for it 200 Imperial, and a house near
the Church of Santa Cristina, where of old days had been a pool
to wash horses. And they made a statute that whosoever had
aught of the treasure of Victoria should have the half for himself,
and should give half to the community : wherefore poor men
were marvellously enriched with the spoil of so rich a prince.
Now the Emperor's special effects which appertained to
war, as his pavilions and things of that kind, were taken by the
Legate, Gregorio da Montelungo ; but the images and the relics
which he possessed were placed in the sacristy of the Cathedral
Church of the Blessed Virgin, to be kept there. And note that
of the treasures which were found in Victoria little remained
in Parma ; for merchants came from divers parts to buy them,
and had them good cheap, and carried them away namely,
gold and silver vessels, gems, unions, pearls and precious stones,
garments of purple and silk, and of all things known that are
for the use and ornament of men. Note also that many treasures
in gold and silver and precious stones remained hidden in jars,
chests, and sepulchres, in the spot where the city of Victoria
was, and are there even unto these days, although their hiding-
places are unknown. Note also that, after the destruction of
Victoria, each man recognised so clearly the place in which
aforetime he had had his vineyard, that no word of contention
or quarrel arose among them. Moreover, at that time when
Frederick was put to flight by the men of Parma, the Scripture
was fulfilled which saith * As a tempest that passeth, so the
wicked shall be no more.' " Here Salimbene enters upon a
lengthy exposition of the eleventh chapter of Daniel, the detailed
fulfilment of which he sees in Frederick's career, and especially
in the fact that his own illegitimate son Manfred poisoned him
by means of a clyster, and was himself slain in battle by Charles
of Anjou.
CHAPTER XI.
The Guelfs Victorious,
rTMiOUGH Frederick never recovered from the blow that fell
I upon him at Victoria, he still hovered about Parma, ravag-
ing the country and waiting for some unguarded moment. The
Pope vainly attempted to stir up St. Louis against him. Mean-
while the war raged with varying success. Bernardo Rossi was
slain in battle, to the disappointment of Frederick, who had
hoped to take him alive and put out his eyes. Next year,
however, the tide turned again and the Emperor's natural son
Enzio was taken by the Bolognese. (329) " In the year 1249
the Podesta of Genoa came to our convent on the day of Pentecost
to hear Mass. And I was there ; and the sacristan was Brother
Pentecost, a holy, honest, and good man, who would have rung
the bell for the Podesta's coming : but he said, ' Hear first my
tidings, for the men of Bologna have taken King Enzio, with a
great multitude of the men of Cremona and Modena, and German
soldiers.' Now this King Enzio was a valiant man, and bold and
stout-hearted ; and doughty in arms, and a man of solace when
he would, and a maker of songs : and in war he was wont to
expose himself most boldly to perils. He was a comely man, of
middle height ; many years the men of Bologna kept him in prison,
even to the end of his life. And when one day the gaolers would
not give him to eat, Brother Albertino of Verona, who was a
mighty Preacher in our Order, went and besought them to give
him to eat for God's love and his. And when they gave no ear
to his petition, he said to them, ' I will play at dice with you, and if
I win, I may then bring him meat.' So they played, and he won,
and gave the king meat, and remained in familiar converse with
him : and all who heard this commended the friar's charity,
courtesy, and liberality. 1 Moreover, the Lord Guido da Sesso,
who was the chief of the Emperor's party in the city of Reggio,
perished in the flight [of Enzio's army], for he was smothered
with his war-horse in the cesspool of the leper-house of Modena.
He was a most bitter enemy of the Church party, so that once
The Guelfs Victorious. 1 2 5
when many had been taken by the King and doomed to the
gallows, and would fain have confessed their sins, he would grant
them no respite, saying, ' Ye have no need to confess ; for, being
of the Church party, ye are saints, and will go forthwith to
Paradise : ' so they were hanged unshriven. Moreover, in those
days he would enter with other malefactors into the convent of
the Friars Minor ; and calling together the Brethren in the
Chapter-house he would demand of each in turn whence he came ;
and he let write their names by his notary, saying to each, ' Go
thou thy ways, and thou likewise go thy ways, and never dare to
appear again in this convent or this city.' And so they expelled
all but a few who kept the convent, and even these, as they went
begging through the city for their daily needs, were reviled and
slandered by him and his men, as though they carried false
letters, and were traitors to the Emperor. Neither the Friars
Minor nor the Preachers dared to enter the cities of Modena or
Reggio or Cremona on their journeys, and if ever any had
chanced to enter unwittingly, they were led to the Palazzo Com-
munale and kept in ward ; and having been fed with the bread
of affliction and the water of anguish for certain days, they were
opprobriously driven out, cast forth and tormented, or even slain.
For many were tortured in Cremona and in Borgo San Donnino.
In Modena they took the Friars Preachers who had iron moulds
for making holy wafers, and led them with many indignities to
the Palazzo Communale, saying that they bore stamps to coin
false and counterfeit money. Nor did they spare even the
Brethren of their own party whose kin were said to be wholly on
the Emperor's side, and who themselves also persevered therein ;
for Brother Jacopo of Pavia was expelled and thrust forth with
ignominy, and Brother John of Bibbiano and Brother Jacopo of
Bersello among others; and, in a word, all in the convent of
Cremona who were of the Church party, were dismissed : and I
was present in that year. Moreover, they kept Brother Ugolino
da Cavazza long waiting in ward at the gate of the city of
Reggio, and would not suffer him to enter in, though he had
several blood-brethren of the Emperor's party in the city. To
speak shortly, they were men of Satan, the chief of whom in
malice was one Giuliano da Sesso, a man grown old in evil days,
who caused some of the Fogliani family to be hanged, and many
others to be slain because they were of the Church party ; and
he gloried in these things, saying to his fellows, ' See how we
treat these bandits.' This Giuliano was in truth a limb of the
fiend ; wherefore God struck him with palsy, so that he was
wholly withered up on one side, and his eye started from his
1 26 From St. Francis to Dante.
head, yet without leaving its socket, but jutting forth outwardly
like an arrow, which was loathsome to see. Moreover, he
became so stinking that none dared come near him for his
superfluity of nastiness, except a certain German damsel whom
he kept as a leman, and whose beauty was so great that he who
beheld her without pleasure was held most austere. This Giuil-
iano said in full assembly that it were better to eat quicklime
than to have peace with the Church party, though he himself
fed on good capons, while the poor were dying of hunger. Yet
the prosperity of the wicked endureth not long in this world :
for presently the Church party began to prosper ; and then this
wretch was driven forth and carried secretly from the city, and
died a mass of corruption, excommunicate and accursed ; un-
houseled, disappointed, unanel'd. He was buried in a ditch in the
town of Campagnola."
In 1250 Frederick gained his last victory against the rebellious
city, on that very site of Victoria where his own army had been
defeated. He drove them back in such headlong rout that his
men would have entered the city pell-mell with the fugitives,
had not the Blessed Virgin intervened by breaking the bridge
and drowning Guelfs and Ghibellines together in the moat. As
it was, the Ghibellines took the Parmese Carroccio with 3,000
prisoners. (335) "They bound their captives on the gravel of
the River Taro, as the Lord Ghiaratto told me, who was bound
there himself; and they led them to Cremona and cast them
chained into dungeons. There for vengeance sake, and to extort
ransom, they practised many outrages on them, hanging them
up in the dungeons by their hands and their feet, and drawing
out their teeth in terrible and horrible wise, and laying toads in
their mouths. For in those days were inventors of new torments,
and the men of Cremona were most cruel to the captives of
Parma. But the Parmese of the Emperor's party were still
worse, for they slew many ; but in process of time the Church
party in Parma avenged themselves wondrously."
An interesting side-light is thrown on this account of Salim-
bene's by the very impartial contemporary Chronicle of Parma
published by Muratori (Scriptores vol. ix. p. 771 foil.) It tells us
of savage reprisals on the part of the citizens : and how " many
[imperialists] were caught coming in as spies hidden in hay or
straw waggons, or in casks and chests : and such were tortured,
confessed, and were burned on the river-beach of the city. And
many women were thus caught, put to torment, and burned."
The Emperor, adds the Chronicler, beheaded only some ten or
twelve of his prisoners, and spared the rest, partly at the prayer
The Guelfs Victorious. 127
of the men of Pavia, partly because he recognised the uselessness
of such executions. But he kept in bonds about a thousand of
his Guelf prisoners : and " their kinsfolk rejoiced rather in their
death than in their life . . . for oftentimes these prisoners died
in the aforesaid prisons, slain with stench and terror." In the
year 1253 peace was made and all prisoners were released : but
of the thousand only 318 returned to their homes, "since all the
rest had died in the aforesaid prisons by reason of their grievous
and insupportable torments. For daily they were set to the rack,
and hanged upon the engines as upon a cross ; and oft-times
men denied them food ; and they suffered from the stench of
the corpses, for the dead were never drawn forth from prison
until the living had first paid the tax imposed upon them, and
[meanwhile] men gave them no bread : so that the living oft-
times hid their bread and other victuals among the bodies of the
dead, lest their cruel jailors should find them when they locked
up the prison. And the aforesaid prisons wherein the men of the
Church party lay bound were called ' The Hell ' ; and such
indeed they were. The dead had no sepulture, but were cast
into the Po." 3 The Chronicler expressly mentions that the death
of Bernardo Rossi in the battle of 1248 was avenged by the
cold-blooded execution of four of the chief Ghibelline captives
in Parma ; and that the Emperor retaliated by transporting
fourteen of his Guelf prisoners to his A pulian dungeons.
All this time the Parmese Ghibellines had taken up their
headquarters at Borgo San Donnino, a little town some fourteen
miles N.VV. of Parma on the Emilian Way. They long counted
on some such sudden turn of fortune's wheel as that by which
they themselves had lost the city : for they had still partisans
among the citizens. (371) " But in process of time the Parmese
exiles at Borgo San Donnino besought their fellow-citizens of the
Church party that they would vouchsafe to take them into the
city again, for God's sake and the blessed and glorious Virgin's :
for they would have peace, since the Emperor was now dead. So
those made peace with them and brought them into their city,
as I saw with mine own eyes. But they, seeing their houses
destroyed (for this the Church party had done when they expelled
them) began to contend again and to attack the Church party ;
and seeing that Uberto Pallavicino was lord of Cremona and of
many other cities, they thought in their hearts to make him lord
of Parma also. At this the citizens quaked as a rush quakes in
the stream, and set themselves to hide many of their dearest
possessions. I also hid my books (for I lived at Parma then),
and many citizens of the Church party purposed to depart from
il8 From St. Francis to Dante.
the city of their own free will, lest Pallavicino should come and
catch them and spoil their goods. Meanwhile, Parma was full
of rumours of his coming, and yet he came not so soon, since he
had other threads to weave. For he purposed first to take
Colurnio and Borgo San Donnino (as indeed he did), that he might
enter Parma more triumphantly afterwards : seeing that the
Guelfs, driven out from Parma, would have no place of refuge,
and would thus receive checkmate after cherishing the serpent
in their bosom. But suddenly in the meanwhile a man rose up
against him, who dwelt hard by the bridge-head of Parma. This
was a tailor, Giovanni Barisello by name, the son of a farmer
(such as the Parmese call mezzadro) on the estate of theTebaldi.
For he took in fiis hands a cross and a book of the Gospels, and
went through Parma from house to house of the Ghibelline party,
and made each swear obedience to the Pope's bidding and to the
Church party ; for he had with him a full five hundred armed men
who followed him as their chief. Wherefore many swore obedience
to the Church and the Pope, partly of their free will, partly for
fear of the armed men whom they saw : and such as would not
swear went forth hastily from Parma to dwell at Borgo San
Donnino : for whensoever there was a division between the
citizens of Parma, the exiles had that city of refuge ever at hand ;
whose citizens rejoiced in the discords of Parma, and would have
rejoiced yet more to see her utterly destroyed. For they of Borgo
never loved Parma : nay rather, when Parma was at war, all the
ruffians of Lombardy would gather together there, and Borgo
would receive them gladly for the destruction and confusion of
Parma. Yet the Parmele had done well to Borgo, as I saw with
mine own eyes, for I lived there a whole year in 1259, when the
great plague was throughout Italy. The first benefit was, that
they gave them a Podesta yearly from Parma and paid the half of
his salary. The second, that the citizens might have at Borgo,
without contradiction of the Parmese, the market of all the land
on their side of the river Taro, which is five miles distant froTh
Parma : and thug they had ten miles of the Bishopric of Parma
for their market, and the Parmese five miles only. The third
was, that the Parmese defended them if they were at war with
the Cremonese or others. The fourth, that, though there were
but two noble houses in Borgo, the Pinkilini and the Verzoli,
and the rest were citizens and rich farmers, yet the Parmese
would marry their noble ladies among them, which was no small
matter. I think I have seen there a score of ladies from Parma,
clothed in fur of vair and in scarlet cloth. In spite of all these
benefits the men of Borgo were ungrateful, and well they deserved
The Guelfs Victorious. 1 29
their destruction by the men of Parma when a fit time was come.
So this Giovanni Barisello, as he went through Parma and made
all the suspects swear, came to the house of the lord Rolando di
Guido Bovi, who dwelt at the bridge-head by the church of San
Gervasio ; and, calling him forth from his house, he bade him
swear fealty to the Church party without further delay, or else
depart from Parma as he loved his life. This lord was of the
Ghibelline party, and had been Podesta of many cities under the
Emperor : yet when he saw so great a multitude gathered together
and heard their demands and their threats, he did as the Wise
Man saith ' The prudent man saw the evil and hid himself : the
simple passed on, and suffered loss.' For he took the oath,
saying ' I swear to stand by and obey the precepts of the Pontiff
of Rome, and to cleave to the Church party all the days of my
life, to the shame of that other most miserable and utterly filthy
(merdifcrosac.) party of all that are beneath the sky.' This he
said of his own, the Emperor's party, for that they had suffered
themselves to be basely trodden under foot by such men. And
the Parmese Guelfs loved him from thenceforth, for it was
reckoned to his honour. Now this Giovanni Barisello who rose
up in Parma was a man poor and wise, who delivered the city
by his wisdom : wherefore the citizens were not ungrateful but
repaid him with many kindnesses. First, they turned his
poverty to riches ; secondly, they gave him a wife of the noble
family of Cornazano ; thirdly, they ordained that he should
ever be of the Council without further election, for he had mother-
wit and was a gracious speaker ; fourthly, they permitted him
to found and lead a gild called after his own name, on condition
that it should ever be to the honour and profit of the Commune.
This gild lasted many years ; but a certain Podesta of Parma, the
Lord Manf redino di Rosa of Modena, would fain have destroyed
it, for he would not that the men of Parma should be called after
such a man's name : and he wished to rule the city with his own
Council. Wherefore he bade Giovanni Barisello see to his own
house and his own work, and leave this gild and this great show
which he seemed to make : so Giovanni obeyed humbly, and that
same day he went back to his board and took his needle and
thread, and began to sew garments in the sight of his fellow-
citizens. (The father of the aforesaid Podesta was of my
acquaintance ; his mother and his wife were my spiritual
daughters). Yet this Giovanni was ever beloved of the citizens,
and had ever a place and a good repute in Parma. But in
process of time King Charles of Anjou, hearing that the Parmese
were a warlike folk, and friendly to him, and ever ready to succour
1 30 From St. Francis to Dante.
the Church, sent word to them to found a gild in honour of God
and the Holy Roman Church, which should be called the Gild of
the Cross : of which gild he himself would be one ; and he would
that all other gilds of Parma be incorporated in this, and that
they should ever be ready to succour the Roman Church when
she should need it. So the citizens formed this gild and called it
the Gild of the Crusaders, and they inscribed King Charles in
letters of gold at the beginning of the register, that this prince
and duke and count and king and triumphant hero might be
the captain and leader of this gild. And whosoever in Parma
is not thereof, if he offend any of the gild, they defend each other
like bees, and run forthwith and tear down his house to its very
foundations, razing it so utterly to the ground that not one stone
is left upon another : which strikes fear into the rest, for they
must either live in peace or enter this gild. And so the gild hath
increased marvellously, and the men of Parma are no longer
named after Giovanni Barisello, but after King Charles and the
Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom is honour and glory for
ever and ever, Amen."
Prof. Holder-Egger (p. 375. notes 4, 5,) points out inaccuracies
of detail in this account : and Salimbene's narrative needs one im-
portant rectification which the author did not live to make : for in
1298 poor Barisello was taken prisoner and tortured to death. But
the description of the gild's activity is fully borne out by the
Chronicon Parmensc, from which one extract may suffice. " In the
year 1293 the Lord Podesta, with an armed force of 1,000 or more,
made an assault after the customary fashion upon the houses
of the Lord Giovanni de' Nizi (who was a Frate Godente), and of
Poltrenerio de' Ricicoldi, by reason of certain injuries which they
had done to some who were enrolled in the Gild Book." So
valuable a privilege naturally led to abuses ; and we accordingly
find that in 1286 the Gild Register had to be burnt "because
many were found to be illegally enrolled therein. . . . Wherefore
it was ordained that another new register should be compiled
from that copy which was in the Sacristy of the Cathedral Church,
and that it should be so rubricated with red ink as that no fresh
names could be added thereto." But the political morality of
a medieval Italian city rendered all such precautions useless.
Only seven years later the Captain of the City and his notary,
in collusion with another scrivener, falsified the register afresh,
and fled the city on the discovery of their forgery. 3
The Gild, however, had thoroughly done its work of ensuring
Guelf supremacy in Parma. The first inquisition held by
Bariselli with his 500 satellites had inaugurated a three days'
The Guelfs Victorious. 131
reign of terror in the citj, marked by robberies and ravages
which the Podestas were powerless to prevent or to punish.
Many Ghibelline houses were razed, or burned with such blind
fury that even a raven's nest was consumed in the flames, in
spite of the medieval superstition which reprobated so ominous
an outrage. The palaces of the obnoxious Pallavicino were of
course destroyed, and the site turned into a meat market, as in
the case of the Uberti at Florence : Salirnbene mentions a third
case at Reggio under the year 1273. This destruction at Parma
was probably in 1266. In 1268 the citizens already felt strong
enough, with their allies, to attempt the complete reduction of
Borgo San Donnino : " but after a long siege they retired,
destroying the trees and corn and houses outside the walls,
together with the vineyards. And that same year the men of
Parma made peace" (475).
As the Chronicon Parmense tells us, this peace was received in
the city with such wild rejoicing that many were crushed to
death that evening in the crowd. The same year saw the defeat
and death of Conradin, the last hope of the Ghibellines in Italy ;
and it was evident that Borgo could no longer sustain the unequal
struggle. The Parmese were planning the details of a great
fortress to act as a perpetual check upon the rebel stronghold,
when the Podesta and councillors came with the keys of their
town to surrender at discretion. The Parmese might now spare
themselves the expense of the new fortress : " they razed the
walls of Borgo San Donnino to the ground, and filled up the
moats, and commanded the citizens to quit the town and to
rebuild their houses in a long street on either side of the high road
towards Parma ; and thus they did, and thus it remains unto
this day " (478). Eleven years afterwards, another great step
was taken in the cause of peace. Parma had long since allied
herself with her old enemy Cremona ; and now at last (505)
"the Parmese restored to Cremona her Carroccio, which they
had taken when they drove the Emperor from Victoria ; and so
also did the Cremonese with the Carroccio of Parma which they
had captured, restoring it now to the men of Parma ; and these
restitutions were made with great honour and joy and gladness
on either side."
So Parma now no longer fights for life and death, but is a
definitely Guelf city at comparative peace. The stormcloud
drifts away for a while, and we get only fitful glimpses of battle
that flash and die out in the distance like summer lightning all
round Salimbene's horizon ; but such flashes are still frequent
and lurid enough. " In 1248 the town of Castellarano was taken
132 From St. Francis to Dante.
by the Commune of Reggio and many were taken and slain ;
and all men of Trignano and of the Bishopric of Reggio who were
found in the said town were put to an evil death." In 1265 the
Count of Flanders " destroyed the town of Capicolo, and all were
slain therein, men and women and children, for that they had
hanged one of the aforesaid count's knights." Salimbene records
many other similar incidents under the years 1266-1280 : after
which these monotonous notices of petty quarrels give way to
fresh pictures of civil war on a larger scale. For the discords of
Florence from which Dante suffered so cruelly were merely
typical of the state of things throughout Italy. The Guelfs had
hardly assured their supremacy over the Ghibellines, when they
themselves split into new parties as savage and irreconcilable as
the old. Salimbene complains (379) that "the Imperial party
has been utterly destroyed in Imola, and the Church party from
its envy and ambition is now divided into two factions. This same
curse has now come to the men of Modena, and is to be found
in Reggio also. God grant that it be not found in Parma, where
the same matter is likewise to be feared." Again (370) "This
city of Bologna was the last to drink of the cup of God's wrath,
and she drank it even to the dregs, lest perchance she should be
moved to boast of her righteousness and insult other cities which
had already drunk of the cup of the wrath of God, and of His
fury and indignation. For in that city were assassins, nor could
she get the better of them." here a page is cut out of
the manuscript, which (as we learn from the ancient table of
contents), treated " of the causes of the destruction of Bologna,
and against the taking of usury and bribes, and concerning other
sins." 4 Italy, in short, remained for generation after generation
in a state of anarchy and misery which among our own annals
can be paralleled only in Stephen's reign ; when men said that
God and His saints slept. Yet the sad facts must be faced :
for it was from this violent ferment that noble minds like St.
Francis and Dante took much of that special flavour which
appeals so strongly to the modern literary mind. Here, as
on many other points, Salimbene's evidence is all the more
valuable that he himself was neither saint nor poet, but a clever,
observant, sympathetic man with nothing heroic in his com-
position. All through his chronicle runs the feeling that, in
this " hostelry of pain,'' the only fairly happy folk were fools at
one end of the scale and friars at the other : that a man's only
wise bargain was to destroy his house on earth that he might
build himself a mansion in heaven.
Nor was his individual experience specially unfortunate for
The Guelfs Victorious. 133
that time : his long tale of slaughter and ravage includes scarcely
the most distant allusion to those wars in Tuscany which to
Dante and his commentator Benvenuto seemed worst of all. 5
To Benvenuto, indeed, at the end of the 14th century, things
seemed if possible more intolerable than to Salimbene in the
middle of the 13th : he complains of even Sordello's bitter
Philippic as utterly inadequate. " In thy time, O Dante, certain
special evils did indeed oppress Italy, but those were small and
few [in comparison with to-day]. . . . I may say now of all Italy
what thy \ 7 irgil said of one city :
' Look where you will, heart-rending agony
And panic reign, and many a shape of death.'
Assuredly Italy suffered not so much from Hannibal or Pyrrhus
or even from the Goths and Lombards. . . .Thy lines, Dante,
were cast in happy days which may well be envied by all of us
who live in the wretched Italy of to-day." 6 Yet, a century later,
Savonarola might have looked back with regret even to the days
of despairing Benvenuto. 7 This decline, whether real or apparent,
was certainly not so rapid as each of those writers imagined ;
but it is plain that the good man was always uneasy in his own
age, and sighed fondly for a comparatively unknown past, or for
a future in which some sudden stroke of God's hand might create
a new heaven and a new earth. The saint's constant cry was
" Would God it were even ! " or else " Would God it were
morning ! " The conception of a world around us slowly yet
surely working out its own salvation by God's grace was almost
impossible to him. Nowadays, thanks to the work of saints in
all ages, and to this era of patient research and free discussion,
men are able to face the facts of human life with a serener eye.
We see how much richer the world has grown, from age to age,
by the lives of such men as St. Francis ; even though learned
and pious Italians of the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th, centuries
constantly yearned backwards to " the good old days " before
St. Francis was born. It is our privilege, in the broader light of
history, to see how the world is more truly Christian, on the
whole, than in our Lord's days : more truly Franciscan than in
the age of St. Francis : and how the loss of the past centuries is
not worthy to be compared with our present gain and our future
hopes.
CHAPTER XII.
Wanderjahre.
O AL1MBENE, as we have seen, had left Cremona expelled,
JO perhaps, by the Ghibelline authorities and had come to
Parma at the beginning of the siege. However, he did not see
that siege to an end, but left the city after a few months with
news for the Pope ; one of the thousand friars who swarmed on
all the roads of Italy and did such yeoman service to the Guelf
cause as despatch-bearers and spies. (53). "In that same year
1247, while my city was beleaguered by the deposed Emperor
Frederick, I went to Lyons, and arrived there on the Feast of
All Saints. And forthwith the Pope sent for me and spake
familiarly with me in his chamber. For since my departure
from Parma, even until that day, he bad seen no messenger nor
received no letters. And he was very gracious unto me ; that is,
he heard the voice of my petition, being indeed a most courteous
man, and a liberal." Elsewhere he specifies the favours here
received from the Pope : permission for his mother to enter a
convent of Clarisses (55), and for himself the coveted rank of
a Preacher in his Order (178). This Pope had himself been a
canon of Parma and on fairly intimate terms with Salimbene's
father. Now, as the bearer of news from the front, our hero
was fully conscious of his own importance ; and he dwelt fondly
on the scene his whole life long. As he tells us later, he allowed
himself in this interview to hint very plain doubts as to the good
faith of the great Cardinal Ottaviano : (Dante Inf. x. 120,) and
the scene as he describes it supplies a vivid commentary on the
*' messagicr eke porta ulivo " in Dante's meeting with Casella and
his companions. (384) " The bystanders were there in such
multitudes that they lay hard one on the other's shoulders in
their eagerness to hear tidings of Parma 1 ; when therefore they
who stood by heard me end my speech thus, they marvelled,
and in my own hearing they said to each other, * All the days
of our life we have seen no friar so void of fear, and speaking so
plainly.' This they said partly because they saw me sitting
Wanderjahre. 135
between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Guardian, (for
the Guardian had invited me to sit down, and I thought not fit
to spurn and contemn such an honour ;) and also because they
saw and heard me speak so of so great a man, and in the pre-
sence of such an assembly. For in those days I was a deacon,
and a young man of 25 years old."
But Lyons and the Pope were only the beginning of our friar's
adventures on this journey. (206) " After the Feast of All
Saints I set out for France. 2 And when I had come to the first
convent beyond Lyons, on that same day arrived Brother John
di Piano Carpine, returning from the Tartars, whither the Pope
had sent him. This Brother John was friendly and spiritual and
learned, and a great speaker, and skilled in many things. He
showed us a wooden goblet which he bore as a gift to the Pope,
in the bottom whereof was the likeness of a most fair queen, as
I saw with mine own eyes ; not wrought there by art or by a
painter's cunning, but impressed thereon by the influence of the
stars : and if it had been cut into a hundred parts, it would
always have borne the impress of that image. Moreover, lest
this seem incredible, I can prove it by another example. For
the Emperor Frederick gave the Brethren a certain Church in
Apulia, which was ancient and ruined and forsaken of all men.
And, on the spot where of old the altar had stood, grew now a
vast walnut-tree, which when cut open showed in every part the
image of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross ; and if it had
been cut a hundred times, so often would it have shown the image
of the Crucifix. This was miraculously shown by God, since
that tree had grown up on the very spot whereon the Passion
of the spotless Lamb is represented in the Host of Salvation
and the Adorable Sacrifice ; yet some assert that such impres-
sions can be made by the influence of the stars." 3 Brother John
told the Brethren those stories which may still be read in his
own book (Ed. C. R. Beazley, Hakluyt Soc. 1903) : remarkably
true and sober accounts, on the whole, of China and the Far
East. " And he caused that book to be read, as I have often
heard and seen, when he was wearied with relating the deeds
of the Tartars. And when they who read wondered or under-
stood not, he himself would expound and dissert on single points.
When I first saw Brother John he was returning from the Tartars,
and on the morrow he went his way to see Pope Innocent ; and
I on mine to France. And I dwelt in Brie of Champagne ; first
for fifteen days at Troyes, where were many Lombard and Tuscan
merchants, for there is a fair which lasts two months. Then I
went to Provins, from the 13th day of December until the 2nd
136 From St. Francis to Dante.
of February, on which day I went to Paris, and dwelt there a
week, and saw many pleasant sights. Then 1 returned and
dwelt in the convent of Sens, for the French Brethren gladly
kept me with them everywhere, because I was a peaceful and
ready youth, and because I praised their doings. And as I lay
sick in the infirmary by reason of the cold, there came hastily
certain French Brethren of the convent to me, with a letter,
saying, ' We have excellent news of Parma ; for the citizens
have driven out Frederick, the late Emperor, from the city of
Victoria which he had built, and have taken the Emperor's
whole treasure, and also the chariot of the Cremonese ; and here
is a copy of the letter from the men of Parma to the Pope.' And
they asked me to what purpose that chariot could be used. And
I answered them that the Lombards call this kind of chariot a
* Carroccio,' and if the Carroccio of any city be taken in war, the
citizens hold themselves sore shamed ; even as, if the Oriflamme
were taken in war, the French and their King would hold it a
great disgrace. Hearing this, they marvelled, saying, ' Ha !
God ! We have heard a marvellous thing.' After that 1
recovered. And behold ! Brother John di Piano Carpine was on
his way home from the king, to whom the Pope had sent him ;
and he had his book which the Brethren read in his presence ;
and he himself interpreted whatsoever seemed obscure and
difficult to understand or believe. And I ate with Brother John,
not only in the Convent of the Brethren Minor, but outside in
abbeys and places of dignity, and that not once or twice only,
for he was invited gladly both to dine and to sup, partly as the
Pope's Legate, partly as ambassador to the King of France,
partly because he had come from the Tartars, and partly also
for that he was of the Order of Friars Minor, and all believed
him a man of most holy life. For when I was at Cluny, the
monks said to me, ' Would that the Pope would ever send such
Legates as Brother John ! for other Legates, so far as in them
lies, spoil the Church, and carry off all that they can lay their
hands upon. But Brother John, when he passed by our Abbey,
would accept nothing but cloth for a frock for his comrade.' 4 And
know thou who readest my book, that the Abbey of Cluny is the
most noble monastery of Black Monks of St. Benedict in Burgundy ;
and in that cloister are several priors ; and in the aforesaid Abbey
the multitude of buildings is so great that the Pope with his
Cardinals and all his Court might lodge there, and likewise at
the same time the Emperor with all his ; and this without hurt
to the monks : nor on that account would any monk need to
leave his cell or suffer any discomfort. Note also that the Order
Wanderjahre. 137
of St. Benedict, so far as the Black Monks are concerned, is far
better kept in lands beyond the mountains than among us in
Italy. 5 Then from Sens I went to Auxerre, and dwelt there, for
the Minister of France had assigned me specially to that convent."
Auxerre interested him with its many tombs of Saints and
martyrs, and as the dwelling-place of Master William, a great
contemporary theologian and disputant, but one who " when he
undertook to preach, knew not what to say : note the example
of that cobbler in Brother Luke's sermon, who removed a moun-
tain in the land of the Saracens and freed the Christians." But
the city had another still more vivid interest for him : " I remem-
ber how, when I dwelt at Cremona, Brother Gabriel, who was a
most learned and holy man, told me that Auxerre had more plenty
of vineyards and wine than Cremona and Parma and Reggio and
Modena together ; whereat I marvelled and thought it incredible.
But when I dwelt myself at Auxerre, I saw how he had said the
truth ; for not only are the hillsides covered with vineyards,
but the level plain also, as I have seen with mine own eyes. For
the men of that land sow not, nor do they reap, neither have
they storehouse nor barn ; but they send wine to Paris by the
river which flows hard by ; and there they sell it at a noble
price. And I myself have encompassed the diocese of Auxerre
three times on foot ; once with a certain Brother who preached
and gave men the Cross for the Crusade of St. Louis ; another
time with another Brother who, on the day of the Lord's Supper,
preached to the Cistercians in a most fair Abbey ; and we kept
the Feast of Easter with a certain Countess, who gave us for
dinner (or rather, who gave to her whole court) twelve courses
or diversities of food and if the Count, her husband, had been
there, then still greater plenty would have been served. The
third time 1 journeyed with Brother Stephen, and saw and heard
many noteworthy things, which I omit here for brevity's sake.
And note that in the Province of France are eight custodies of
our Order, whereof four drink beer, and four drink wine. Note
also that there are three parts of France which give great plenty
of wine, namely, La Kochelle, Beaune, and Auxerre. Note
that the red wines are held in but small esteem, for they are not
equal to the red wines of Italy. Note likewise that the wines
of Auxerre are white, and sometimes golden, and fragrant, and
comforting, and of strong and excellent taste, and they turn all
who drink them to cheerfulness and merriment ; wherefore of
this wine we may rightly say with Solomon ' Give strong wine
to them that are sad, and wine to them that are grieved in mind :
Let them drink and forget their want, and remember their sorrow
138 From St. Francis to Dante.
no more.' And know that the wines of Auxerre are so strong
that, when they have stood awhile, tears gather on the outer
surface of the jar. Note also that the French are wont to tell
how the best wine should have three B's and seven F's. For
they themselves say in sport
Et bon et bel et blanc
Fort et tier, fin et franc,
Froid et frais et fretillant.' "
Here, as elsewhere where he is reminded of good cheer, Salimbene
seizes the occasion for breaking out into a drinking song : it is
of the usual type of clerkly medieval rhymes ; and I have tried
to render it fairly literally, while softening down some of its
inevitable crudities. It will no doubt be noted that the metre
is one of those which hymn-writers very likely borrowed at first
from secular songs, and which bacchanalian or erotic songsters
undoubtedly borrowed back from the Church hymns, often
with a very definite turn of parody. 6
(219) " Now Master Morando, who taught grammar at Padua,
commended wine according to his own taste in this fashion,
singing
' Drink'st thou glorious, honey'd wine ?
Stout thy frame, thy face shall shine,
Freely shalt thou spit :
Old in cask, in savour full ?
Cheerful then shall be thy soul,
Bright and keen thy wit.
Is it strong and pure and clear ?
Quickly shall it banish care,
Chills it shall extrude :
But the sour will bite thy tongue,
Rot thy liver, rot thy lung,
And corrupt thy blood.
Is thy liquor greyish pale ?
Hoarseness shall thy throat assail
Fluxes shall ensue :
Others, swilling clammy wine,
Wax as fat as any swine,
Muddy-red of hue.
Scorn not red, though thin it be :
Ruddy wine shall redden thee,
So thou do but soak :
Juice of gold and citron dye
Doth our vitals fortify,
Sicknesses doth choke :
Wanderjahre. 1 39
But the cursed water white
Honest folk will interdict,
Lest it spleen provoke.'
" So the French delight in good wine, nor need we wonder,
for wine 'cheereth God and men,' as it is written in the ninth
chapter of Judges." The author here loses himself again in
Biblical quotations Noah, Lot, and the warnings of Proverbs
after which he goes on : " It may be said literally that French
and English make it their business to drink full goblets ; where-
fore the French have bloodshot eyes, for from their ever-free
potations of wine their eyes become red-rimmed, and bleared,
and bloodshot. And in the early morning, after they have
slept off their wine, they go with such eyes to the priest who
has celebrated Mass, and pray him to drop into their eyes the
water wherein he has washed his hands. But Brother Bartolom-
meo Guiscolo of Parma was wont to say at Provins (as I have
often heard with mine own ears) * ale, he malonta ve don De;
metti de Taighe in le vins, non in Us ocli ; ' which is to say, ' Go !
God give you evil speed ! Put the water in your wine when ye
drink it, and not in your eyes ! ' The English indeed delight in
drink, and make it their business to drain full goblets ; for an
Englishman will take a cup of wine, and drain it, saying, Ge hi, a
vui 7 which is to say * It behoveth you to drink as much as I shall
drink,' and therein he thinketh to say and do great courtesy, and he
talceth it exceeding ill if any do otherwise than he himself hath
taught in word and shown by example. And yet he doth against
the Scripture, which saith, ' . . . Wine also in abundance and
of the best was presented, as was worthy of a king's magnificence.
Neither was there any one to compel them to drink that were
not willing.' (Esther i, 7). Yet we must forgive the English
if they are glad to drink good wine when they can, for they have
but little wine in their own country. In the French it is less
excusable, for they have greater plenty ; unless indeed we plead
that it is hard to leave our daily wont. Note that it is thus
written in verse, 'Normandy for sea-fish, England for corn,
Scotland [or Ireland ?] for milk, France for wine.' Enough
of this matter. But note that in France, as I have seen with
mine own eyes, the days are longer in the corresponding months
than in Italy : namely, in May they are longer there than here,
and in winter they are less. Let me return now to my own
affairs, and speak of the French King.
" In the year 1248, about the Feast of Pentecost or somewhat
later, I went down from Auxerre to the convent of Sens, for the
140 From St. Francis to Dante.
Provincial Chapter of our Order in France was to be held there ;
and the Lord Louis (IX), King of France, was to come thither.
And when the King was already hard by our convent, all the
Brethren went forth to meet him, that they might receive him
\\h\\ :\11 honour. And Brother Rigaud of our Order, Professor
of Theology at Paris, and Archbishop of Rouen, clad in his
pontifical robes, hastened forth from the convent, crying as he
went, ' W here is the King ? Where is the King ? ' So I fol-
lowed him, for he went by himself as a man distraught, with his
mitre on his head, and his pastoral staff in his hand. 8 For he
had fallen behindhand in robing himself, so that the other
Brethren had already gone forth, and stood on either side of the
street with their faces turned towards the King, in their eagerness
to see him coming. And I marvelled beyond measure within
myself, saying ' Certainly I have read oftentimes how the Sen-
onian Gauls were so mighty that under Brennus they took the
city of Rome ; but now their women seem for the most part like
handmaids : yet, if the King had passed through Pisa or
Bologna, the whole flower of the ladies of those cities would
have gone out to meet him.' Then I remembered that this is
indeed the custom of the French ; for in France it is the
burgesses only who dwell in the cities, whereas the knights and
noble ladies dwell in the villages and on their estates.
" Now the King was spare and slender, somewhat lean, and of
a proper height, having the face of an angel, and a mien full of
grace. And he came to our Church, not in regal pomp, but
in a pilgrim's habit, with the staff and the scrip of his pilgrimage
hanging at his neck, which was an excellent adornment for the
shoulders of a king. And he came not on horseback, but on
foot; and his blood-brethren, who were three counts, (whereof
the eldest was named Robert, and the youngest Charles, who
did afterwards many great deeds most worthy of praise), followed
him in the same humble guise, so that they might have said in
truth that word of the prophet 'Woe to them that go down to
Egypt for help, trusting in horses, and putting their confidence
in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen, because
they are very strong : and have not trusted in the holy One of
Israel, and have not sought after the Lord.' Nor did the King
care for a train of nobles, but rather for the prayers and suffrages
of the poor ; and therefore he fulfilled that which Ecclesiasticus
teacheth ' Make thyself affable to the congregation of the poor.'
In truth he might rather be called a monk in devotion of heart,
than a knight in weapons of war. When he had come into our
church, and had made a most devout genuflexion, he prayed
Wander] ahre. 1 4 1
before the altar ; and as he departed from the church, and was
yet standing on the threshold, I was by his side ; and behold,
the treasurer of the cathedral of Sens sent him a great living
pike in water, in a vessel of fir-wood, such as the Tuscans call
' bigonzaj wherein nursling children are washed and bathed :
for in France the pike is esteemed a dear and precious fish. And
the King thanked not only the sender, but him who brought the
gift.
" Then cried the King in a loud and clear voice that none but
knights should enter the Chapter-house, save only the Brethren,
with whom he would fain speak. And when we were gathered
together, the King began to speak of his own matters, commending
himself and his brethren and the Queen his mother, and his
whole fellowship ; and kneeling most devoutly he besought the
prayers and suffrages of the Brethren. And certain Brethren
of France who stood by my side wept so sore for devotion and
pity that they could scarce be comforted. After the King, the
Lord Oddo, Cardinal of the Roman Court, who had formerly
been Chancellor of the University of Paris, and was now to go
beyond the seas with him, began to speak, and concluded the
matter before us in a few words, as Ecclesiasticus teach eth :
' Desire not to appear wise before the king.' After those two,
Brother John of Parma, the Minister-General, (on whom in
virtue of his office fell the task of replying), spake as follows :
" * Our King and lord and benefactor hath come to us humbly
and profitably, courteously and kindly ; and he first spake to
us, as was right ; nor doth he pray us for gold or silver, whereof
by God's grace there is sufficient store in his treasury ; but only
for the prayers and suffrages of the Brethren, and that for a
most laudable purpose. For in truth he hath undertaken this
pilgrimage and signed himself with the Cross, in honour of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and to succour the Holy Land, and to conquer
the enemies of the Faith and Cross of Christ, and for the honour
of Holy Church and the Christain Faith, and for the salvation
of his soul, with all theirs who are to pass the seas with him.
Wherefore, seeing that he hath been a special benefactor and
defender of our Order, not only at Paris, but throughout his
kingdom ; and that he hath come humbly to us with so worthy
a fellowship to pray for our intercession, it is fitting that we
should render him some good. Now whereas the Brethren of
France are already more willing to undertake this matter, and
purpose to do more than I could impose upon them, therefore
upon them I lay no precept. But, seeing that I have begun
to visit the Order, I have purposed in my mind to enjoin on
142 From St. Francis to Dante.
each priest of the whole Order to sing four Masses for the King
and this holy fellowship. And if so be that the Son of God call
him from this world to the Father, then shall the Brethren add
jet more Masses. And if 1 have not answered according to his
desire, let the King himself he our lord to command us, who
lack not obedient hearts, but only a voice to prescribe.' The
King, hearing this, thanked the Minister-General, and so wholly
accepted his answer that he would fain have it confirmed under
his hand and seal. Moreover, the King took upon himself all
that day's cost, and ate together with us in the refectory ; and
with us sat down to meat the King's three brethren, and the
Cardinal, and the Minister-General, and Brother Rigaud, Arch-
bishop of Rouen, and the Minister-Provincial of France, and the
Custodes and Definitores, and the Discreti, 9 and all who were of
the capitular body, and the Brethren our guests, whom we call
' foreigners.' The Minister-General therefore, seeing that the
King had already a noble and worthy fellowship, was unwilling
to thrust himself forward, according to the word of Ecclesiasticus,
* Be not exalted in the day of thy honour,' though indeed he
was invited to sit by the King's side ; but he loved rather to
practise that courtesy and humility which our Lord taught by
word and example. Wherefore Brother John chose rather to sit
at the table of the humble ; and it was honoured by his presence,
and many were edified thereby : for consider that God hath
not placed all the lights of heaven in one part alone, but hath
distributed them in divers parts and in sundry manners for the
greater beauty and utility of the heavens. This then was our
fare that day : first, cherries, then most excellent white bread ;
and choice wine, worthy of the King's royal state, was placed
in abundance before us ; and, after the wont of the French,
many invited even the unwilling and compelled them to drink.
After that we had fresh beans boiled in milk, fishes and crabs,
eel-pasties, rice cooked with milk of almonds and cinnamon
powder, eels baked with most excellent sauce, tarts and junkets,
[or curd-cheeses] and all the fruits of the season in abundance and
comely array. And all these were laid on the table in courtly
fashion, and busily ministered to us. On the morrow the King
went on his way ; and I, when the Chapter was ended, followed
him ; for I had a command from the Minister-General to go and
dwell in Provence : and it was easy for me to overtake the King,
for oft-times he turned aside from the high, road to visit the her-
mitages of Brethren Minor or of other Religious, that he might
commend himself to their prayers ; and so he did daily until he
came to the sea, and set sail for the Holy Land. When therefore
Wander] ah re. 143
I had visited the Brethren of Auxerre, which had been my convent,
I went in one day to Urgeliac, a noble town in Burgundy, where
the body of the Magdalene was then thought to lie. And the
morrow was a Sunday ; so at early dawn the King came to our
church to pray for our suffrages, according to the word which is
written in Proverbs * Well doth he rise early who seeketh good
things.' And he left all his fellowship in the town hard by, save
only his three brethren, and a few grooms to hold their horses ;
and, when they had knelt and made obeisance before the altar, his
brethren looked round for seats and benches. But the King
sat on the ground in the dust, as I saw with mine own eyes,
for that church was unpaved. 10 And he called us to him, saying,
' Come unto me, my most sweet Brethren, and hear my words ' ;
and we sat round him in a ring on the ground, and his blood-
brethren did likewise. And he commended himself to us,
beseeching our suffrages : and after we had made answer, he
departed from the church to go on his way ; and it was told
him that Charles still prayed fervently ; so the King was glad,
and waited patiently without mounting his horse while his
brother prayed. And the other two counts, his brethren, stood
likewise waiting without. Now Charles was his youngest brother,
who had the Queen's sister to wife ; and oft-times he bowed his
knee before the altar which was in the church aisle hard by the
door. So I saw how earnestly Charles prayed, and how patiently
the King waited without ; and I was much edified, knowing the
truth of that Scripture ' A brother that is helped by his brother
is like a strong city.' Then the King went on his way ; and,
having finished his business, he hastened to the vessel which had
been prepared for him : but 1 went to Lyons, and found the
Pope still there with his Cardinals. Thence I went down the
Rhone, to the city of Aries, and it was the 29th of June."
We here take leave of the saintly King, of whose crusade
Salimbene tells us briefly later on (320) that it failed "by reason
of the sins of the French," and whom after this he only mentions
cursorily here and there, without any first-hand touches. But
the next stage of his journey brought him into contact with a
man almost as celebrated in his own day as St. Louis himself :
the holy Cordelier of Joinville's narrative ( 657 foil.), which
is too vivid and characteristic to be omitted here. " King
Louis," writes Joinville of the year 1254, " heard tell of a Grey
Friar whose name was Brother Hugh : and for the great renown
that he had the King sent for that Friar to see and hear him
speak. The day he came to Hyeres, we looked down the road
whereby he came, and were aware of a great company of people,
144 From St. Francis to Dante.
both men and women, following him on foot. The King bade
him preach : and the first words of his sermon dealt with men
of Religion. ' My Lord,' said he, ' I see many more folk of
Religion in the King's court and in his company than should of
right be there ' ; and then * First of all,' said he, ' I say that
such are not in the way of salvation, nor can they be, unless
Holy Scripture lie. For Holy Scripture saith that the monk
cannot live out of his cloister without mortal sin, even as the
fish cannot live without water. 11 And if the Religious who are
with the King say that his court is a cloister, then I tell them it
is the widest that ever I saw ; for it stretches from this side of
the great sea to the other. And if they plead that in this cloister
a man may lead a hard life to save his soul, therein I believe
them not ; for I tell you that I have eaten with them great plenty
of divers flesh-meats, and drunken of good wines, both strong
and clear ; wherefore I am assured that if they had been in
their cloister they would not have been so at their ease as they
now are at the King's court.' Then in his sermon he taught
the King how he should hold himself to please his people ; and
at the end of his sermon he said that he had read the Bible and
all the books that go against the Bible ; and never had he found,
whether in believers' books or in unbelievers', that any kingdom
or lordship was ever ruined or ever changed its lord, but by reason
of defect of justice: 'Wherefore' said he 'let the King look
well to it, since he is returning to his kingdom of France, that
he render his folk such justice as to keep God's love, that God
may never take the kingdom from him so long as he is alive ! '
So I, Joinville, told the King that he should not let this man quit
his company, if by any means he might keep him : but he
answered ' I have already prayed him, and he will do nought
for me. ' Come,' said he, taking me by the hand, ' let us go and
pray him once more.' We came to him and I said to him,
' Sir, do as my Lord the King hath prayed you, to abide with
him while he is yet in Provence.' And he answered me in great
wrath, ' Be sure, Sir, that I will not do so : for 1 shall go to a
place where God will love me better than He would love me in
King's company.' One day he tarried with us, and on the
morrow he went his way. They have told me since that he lieth
buried in the city of Marseilles, where he worketh many fair
miracles." A fine, sturdy John-Baptist of a friar, this : but
how will he suit our chronicler, who is so far from sharing his
abhorrence of delicate fare and choice wines in Kings' houses ?
Excellently, according to Salimbene's own account ; nor is
there any reason to doubt his word. To begin with they had
Wanderjahre. 145
common friends and strong common interests : for Joachism
was a powerful freemasonry in the thirteenth century. More-
over, Salimbene was one of those who, without great pretensions
to superior personal sanctity, are yet so sympathetic and sociable
that the most intractable saints suffer their company as gladly as
Johnson suffered Boswell's. Our friar, like so many others,
constantly plumed himself on the theoretical strictness of that
Rule which in practice he interpreted so liberally ; and he took
just the same aesthetic delight in the rugged sanctity of his friend.
So from Aries he went to Marseilles (226) " and thence to
see Brother Hugues de Barjols, or de Digne, whom the Lombards
call Brother Hugh of Montpellier. He was one of the greatest
and most learned clerks in the world, a most famous preacher,
beloved of clergy and lay folk alike, and a most excellent disputant,
ready for all questions. He would entangle and confound all
men in argument ; for he had a most eloquent tongue, and a
voice as a ringing trumpet, or mighty thunder, or the sound of
many waters falling from a cliff. He never tripped or stumbled,
but was ever ready with an answer for all. He spake marvellously
of the Court of Heaven, and the glories of Paradise, and most
terribly of the pains of hell. He was of middling stature, and
somewhat swarthy of hue a man spiritual beyond measure, so
that he seemed a second Paul or Elisha ; for in his days he feared
neither principalities nor powers ; none ever conquered him or
overcame him in word. For he spake in full consistory to the
Pope and his Cardinals as he might have spoken to boys as-
sembled in school ; both at the Council of Lyons, and aforetime
when the Court was at Rome : and all trembled as a reed trembles
in the water. For once being asked by the Cardinals what sort
of tidings he had, he rated them like asses, saying, ' I have no
tidings, but I have full peace, both with my conscience and with
God, which passeth all understanding, and keepeth my heart
and mind in Christ Jesus. I know in truth that ye seek new
tidings, and are busy about such things all day long, for ye are
Athenians, and no disciples of Christ.' " This little incident
forms a living commentary upon one of the precepts most
frequently insisted upon in the Franciscan disciplinary writings.
The friar of Shakespeare's plays a sort of walking newspaper
and ready dens ex machina for any innocent little plot that may
be on foot the indispensable confidant in all family matters,
from the least to the greatest was already fully developed in
St. Bonaventura's time, and was the bugbear of the convent
authorities, since he brought into the Order the oft-forbidden
" familiarities with women," together with all sorts of other
146 From St. Francis to Dante.
purely worldly interests. To take only one quotation out of
many from the " Mirror of Novices " (p. 239) ; " Study thy
whole life long, so far as thou well mayest, to avoid familiarities
with secular persons ; for they are ' a perverse generation and
unfaithful children,' as the Scripture saith. And when thou
art brought among them by the compulsion of necessity or
[spiritual] profit, beware lest thou ever speak with them any
but profitable and honest words ; and if they themselves speak
of secular matters, or of the wars, or of other unprofitable
things, never follow them even though thou know of these
matters, but say with the Prophet 'That my mouth may not
speak the works of men.' . . . Moreover, flee from women, so
far as in thee lieth, as thou wouldst flee from serpents, never
speaking with them but under compulsion of urgent necessity ;
nor ever look in any woman's face ; and if a woman speak to
thee, circumcise thy words most straitly, for as the Prophet
saith ' Her words are smoother than oil, and the same are darts.' "
The rest of Hugh's long speech to the Cardinals, vivid as its
interest is for the student of medieval manners, belongs rather
to another place : 12 as indeed Salimbene himself must have
realized by the time he had come to the end of it : for he exclaims
again " Blessed be God that 1 am at last at the end of this
matter ! "
He goes on to enumerate Hugh's special friends: (232) the
first was John of Parma, " for whose love he became my familiar
friend also, and because I seemed to believe in the writings of
Abbot Joachim of Fiore." The second was the Archbishop
of Vienne ; the third, Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln ; the
fourth, Adam Marsh, the great Oxford scholar and adviser of
Simon de Montfort. While Salimbene was a youthful convert
at Siena he had already met Hugh, whose eloquence and
readiness in disputation had electrified him (233). Our
chronicler had again heard him preach on a solemn occasion
at Lucca: (234) for "it chanced that I came thither from
Pistoia at the very hour at which he must needs go to the
Cathedral Church, and the whole convent was gathered together
to go with him. But he, seeing the Brethren without the gate,
marvelled and said, * Ha ! God ! Whither would these men go ? '
And it was answered him that the Brethren did thus for his
honour, and for that they would fain hear him preach. So he
said * 1 need no such honour, for I am not the Pope ; but if they
will hear me, let them follow when I am entered into the church ;
for I will go on with a single comrade, and not with this multitude.'
Brother Hugh therefore preached with such edification and
Wanderjahre. 1 47
comfort of his hearers that the clergy of the Bishopric of
Lucca were wont to say many years after how they had never
heard a man speak so well ; for the others had recited their
sermons even as a psalm which they might have learnt by heart.
And they loved and revered the whole Order for his sake. Another
time I heard him preach to the people in Provence, at Tarascon
on the Rhone, at which sermon were men and women of Tarascon
and Beaucaire, (which are two most noble towns lying side by
side, with the river Rhone between ; and in each town is a fair
convent of the Brethren Minor). And he said to them (as I
heard with mine own ears) words of edification, useful words,
honeyed words, words of salvation. And they heard him gladly,
as a John the Baptist, for they held him for a Prophet. These
things find no credence with men who are themselves deprived
of such grace ; yet it is most ridiculous if I will not believe that
there is any Bishop or any Pope because I myself am not a
Bishop or a Pope ! Moreover, at the court of the Count of
Provence was a certain Riniero, a Pisan by birth, who called
himself an universal philosopher, and who so confounded the
judges and notaries and physicians of the Court that no man
could live there in honour. Wherefore they expounded their
tribulation to Brother Hugh, that he might vouchsafe to succour
and defend them from this bitter enemy. So he made answer :
' Order ye with the Count a day for disputation in the palace,
and let knights and nobles, judges and notaries and physicians
be there present, and dispute ye with him ; and then let the
Count send for me, and I will prove to them by demonstration
that this man is an ass, and that the sky is a frying-pan.' All
this was so ordered, and Brother Hugh so involved and entangled
him in his own words that he was ashamed to remain at the
Count's court, and withdrew without taking leave of his host;
nor did he ever dare thereafter to dwell there, or even to show
his face. For he was a great sophist, and thought within himself
to entangle all others in his sophistries. Brother Hugh therefore
'delivered the poor from the mighty, and the needy that had
no helper ; ' and they kissed his hands and feet. Note that
this aforesaid Count was called Raymond Berenger, (Paradiso,
vi, 134), a comely man, and a friend of the Friars Minor, and
father to the Queens of France and of England. Moreover, in
Provence there is a certain most populous town named Hye"res,
where is a great multitude of men and women doing penitence
even in worldly habit in their own houses. These are strictly
devoted to the Friars Minor ; for the Friars Preachers have no
convent there, since they are pleased and comforted to dwell in
148 From St. Francis to Dante.
great convents rather than in small. In this town Brother Hugh
lived most gladly, and there were many notaries and judges and
physicians and other learned men, who on solemn days would
assemble in his chamber to hear him speak of the doctrine of
Abbot Joachim, or expound the mysteries of Holy Scripture, or
foretell the future. For he was a great Joachite, and had all the
works of Abbot Joachim written in great letters : and I myself
also was there to hear him teach."
These Franciscan Tertiaries of whom Salimbene speaks were
the nucleus of one of the earliest and most famous Beguinages,
under the direction of Hugh's sister St. Douceline, of whom
Salimbene gives a brief account lower down (554). " In another
stone chest by Brother Hugh's side is buried his sister in the
flesh, the Lady Douceline, whose fame God likewise showed
forth by miracles. She never entered any religious Order, but
ever lived chastely and righteously in the World. She chose
for her spouse the Son of God, and for the saint of her special
devotion the blessed Francis, whose cord she wore round her
body ; and almost all day long she prayed in the church of the
Friars Minor. There was none who spoke or thought evil of
her ; for men and women, religious and layfolk, honoured her
for her exceeding sanctity. She had of God a special grace of
ecstasies, as the Friars saw a thousand times in their church.
If they raised her arm, she would keep it thus raised from morning
to evening, for she was wholly absorbed in God : and this was
spread abroad through the whole city of Marseilles, and through
other cities also. She was followed by eighty noble ladies of
Marseilles, of middle and of higher rank, who would fain save
their souls after her example ; and she was lady and mistress of
them all." Of this saint, her asceticism and her trances, and the
wonderful power over others which she found in her single-
hearted devotion to God, the reader may find a full account in
Albanes' edition and translation of the thirteenth-century life
by one of her disciples, and in a recent essay by Miss Macdonell.
Here then dwelt Salimbene, for the second time in his life, in
an atmosphere of the most contagious religious enthusiasm,
thoroughly enjoying it all, and yet saved by his critical faculty
(as we shall presently see) from being swept off his legs altogether.
It is not difficult, I think, to trace in his history a very usual
type of religious development. The Alleluia of 1233 marked
his conversion, his first realization of a life to come ; an over-
powering appeal to his feelings while his intellect was as yet
utterly undeveloped. Now, as an impressionable and (for his
age) highly educated young man, he is brought into close contact
Wanderjahre. 149
with a party leader of intense magnetic power, from whom,
and from others of the same party, he imbibes a new and
startling theory of Church statesmanship, and a philosophy of
history which, even after experience had proved its partial
falsehood, was so noble and true that it could not fail to influence
all the rest of his life. Even in the ashes of Salimbene's old
age lived the wonted fires of Joachism : after all his disillusions,
and even through his period of antagonism to his old comrades,
he was always a different man for having once accepted this
13th-century "Theory of Development." It is this which
gives much of its charm to his book : one feels the mellow
judgment of a man who, (to put it in terms of our own age),
after having been " converted " as a boy in the Evangelical
sense after having been carried away at Oxford by Newman
has gradually settled down to views more consonant with the
facts of human life than that earlier intense Tractarianism,
and yet Tractarian in their sense of an eternal purpose for the
Church amid the perlexing phenomena of daily life.
CHAPTER XIII.
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development*
HO W is it that Dante assigned one of the most conspicuous
places in his Paradise to a visionary, one of whose most
important writings had been solemnly condemned by Innocent
III at the great Lateran Council, and thought worthy of
an elaborate refutation by St. Thomas Aquinas ? It is not
sufficient to say that Dante claimed in his poem an unusujd
liberty of private judgment ; for three popes had patronized
Joachim even in his lifetime ; and, strangest of all, his most
dangerous speculations were never definitely condemned, even
after they had been pushed to what seems their only legitimate
conclusion, in a book which raised a storm throughout Latin
Christendom. The real explanation of so strange a paradox is
to be found in that comparative freedom of thought which makes
the 13th century, especially in Italy, so living a period in the
history of the pre-reformation Church. Dante, in fact, caused
as little scandal by promoting Joachim to a high place in heaven
as by degrading a canonized pope, Celestine V, to one of the most
contemptible corners of the lower regions. The rigid framework
and the inexorable discipline of the modern Roman Church are
mainly the work of the Counter-Reformation ; and the records
of the 13th century show us, beneath much orthodox intolerance,
an irrepressible diversity of religious life which in many essential
respects reminds us rather of Anglicanism. The Church, as it
embraced the whole population, embraced also every type of
mind, from the most superstitious to the most agnostic : and
many of these unorthodox elements worked far more freely,
under the cloak of outward conformity, than is generally supposed.
Almost all variations of opinion were tolerated, so long as their
outward expression was fairly discreet : partly, no doubt, because
the machinery of repression was as yet imperfect; but partly
also because there was too much life and growth to be easily
repressed. It was far less dangerous to hint that Rome was the
Scarlet Woman, as Joachim did ; or again (with certain friars
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 151
of whom Eccleston tells us), to debate in the Schools " whether
God really existed," 1 than to wear publicly and pertinaciously a
frock and cowl of any but the orthodox cut. Joachim's book
against Peter Lombard was condemned as a public attack on a
pillar of the Schools ; his evolutionary speculations were treated
leniently because any other course would have enabled the
secular clergy to triumph over the Friars, and no pope could
afford to lose the support of the two Orders.
The story of the Abbot Joachim is admirably told by Kenan,
Gebhart, Tocco, Father Denifle, and Dr. Lea : a summary of
these by Miss Troutbeck appeared in the Nineteenth Century
for July 1902. Born about 1132 in Calabria, where Roman
religious ideas were leavened with Greek and even Saracen
elements : by turns a courtier, a traveller, an active missionary,
and a contemplative hermit, he has been claimed with some
justice as a sort of St. John Baptist to the Franciscan movement :
and he may be called with almost equal truth its St. John the
Divine also. The hateful and notorious corruption of the Church,
which impelled Francis to found his Order, had previously driven
Joachim into an attempt to interpret the world's history in the
light of Scripture. He found the solution of present evils in a
theory of gradual decay and renewal, elaborated from St.
Augustine's philosophy of history. The visible Church, in
Joachim's system, was no temple of stone, but a shifting taber-
nacle in this worldly wilderness ; pitched here to-night, but
destined to be folded up with to-morrow's dawn, and carried one
stage onward with an advancing world. As Salimbene puts it
(466) ; " he divides the world into a threefold state ; for in the
first state the Father worked in mystery through the patriarchs
and sons of the prophets, although the works of the Trinity are
indivisible. In the second state the Son worked through the
Apostles and other apostolic men ; of which state He saith in
John ' My Father worketh until now, and I work.' In the third
state the Holy Ghost shall work through the Religious." In
other words, the first state of the Church was taught by the
Father through the Old Testament ; the second state by the Son
through the New Testament ; the third state (which maybe said
in one sense to have begun with St. Benedict) shall be taught by
the Holy Spirit. Not that the Old and New Testaments are to
be abrogated, or that a new Bible shall be revealed ; but that
men's eyes shall be opened by the Spirit to see a new revelation
in the time-honoured scriptures an Eternal Gospel, proceeding
from the Old and New Testaments as its Author the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son. And to these threefold
i 52 From St. Francis to Dante.
stages of inspiration correspond three orders of missionaries :
first, the patriarchs and prophets : secondly, the Apostles and
their successors the clergy : the third era of the Church shall be
an era of hermits, monks, and nuns, not superseding the present
hierarchy, but guiding it into new ways. Further, like nearly
all the prophets of this age, Joachim argued from the corruption
of the then world to the imminence of Antichrist, of the Battle
of Armageddon, and of all the convulsions foretold in the
Apocalypse as preceding the Reign of the Saints.
It is obvious how these prophecies would be caught at by all
who felt deeply the miseries caused by the wars between Pope
and Emperor ; and how to all good Guelfs Frederick would seem
a very sufficient Antichrist. The Friars, too, had every reason
to welcome prophecies of a millennium to be heralded by new
Orders of surpassing holiness and authority : and the spiritual
Franciscans especially found in Joachism the promise of a reign
of glory after their bitter persecutions of the present time. Here
therefore was plenty of material for a great conflagration, to
which the match was set by one of Salimhene's friends, Gerard
of Borgo San Donnino. Appointed professor of theology at Paris
about 1250, he published four years later an Introduction to the
Eternal Gospel, containing one of Joachim's best-known works,
with a preface and notes of his own, The work created an
instant sensation, and was eagerly read by the laity. The saintly
John of Parma, General of the Franciscans and himself a strong
Joachite, certainly took no steps to punish the writer, and was
himself often credited with the authorship. But the University
of Paris, delighted to find a handle against the unpopular friars,
took the matter up. There seems no doubt that this book
pressed Joachim's theories to the antisacerdotal conclusions
which they would seem legitimately to bear, but which Joachim
himself had studiously avoided. Gerard regarded the sacraments
as transitory symbols, to be set aside under the reign of the Holy
Ghost ; and he predicted that the Abomination of Desolation
should be a simoniacal pope shortly to come a prediction of
which many saw the fulfilment forty years later in Boniface VIII.
Gerard was further accused, we cannot tell now with what justice,
of seeing in St. Francis a new Christ who was to supersede the
Christ of the Second Age. Speculations like this, published in
the very Schools of Paris, could not be allowed to pass uncon-
demned : and the matter was brought in 1 255 before a Papal
Commission : Gerard's work was condemned and suppressed, and
exists at present only in the extracts singled out by his accusers.
This event, as we have seen, brought about the fall of John of
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 1 53
Parma. Yet, all through this storm, Joachim's own prophecies
were never condemned ; the whole affair was hushed up as quietly
as possible, not only for the sake of the Franciscan Order, but
because there were so many others who had long held Joachim for
a prophet, feeling with him that traditional Christianity was a
failure, and that an altogether new world was needed for its re-
newal. The immense popularity of his prophecies which were
quoted as authoritative by Roman Catholic divines even in the
1 7th century goes far to explain many of the strangest religious
phenomena recorded by Salimbene. He himself believed to the
end in Joachim as a prophet, even after he had long given up
Joachism in the strictest sense.
He had received his first tinge of Joachism from Hugues de
Digne at Siena, and was confirmed in this creed at Pisa by an
Abbot of the Order of Fiore, and by his own Franciscan Lector
there. Again, at the very beginning of these his wander-years,
in December 1247, he had been brought under the immediate
influence of the future author of the notorious " Introduction."
(237) "When King Louis was on his first passage to succour the
Holy Land, and I dwelt at Provins, there were two brethren
wholly given to Joachism, who essayed all they could to draw
me to that doctrine. Whereof one was Brother Bartolommeo
Guiscolo, of my own city of Parma, a courteous and spiritual
man, but a great talker and a great Joachite, and devoted to the
Emperor's party. He was once Guardian in the Convent of
Capua : he was most active in all his works. In the world he
had taught grammar, but in our Order he knew to copy, to
illuminate, to compose writings, and to do many other things.
In his lifetime he did marvels, and in his death he worked still
more marvellously ; for he saw such things when his soul went
forth from his body, that all the Brethren present were in
admiration. The other was Brother Gerardino of Borgo San
Donnino, who had grown up in Sicily, and had taught grammar,
and was a well-mannered youth, honest and good, save for this one
thing, that he persevered too obstinately in Joachim's doctrine,
and clung so to his own opinion that none could move him.
These two lay hard upon me that I should believe the writings
of Abbot Joachim and study in them ; for they had Joachim's
exposition on Jeremias 1 ' and many other books. And when
the King of France in those days was preparing to cross the seas
with other Crusaders, they mocked and derided, saying that he
would fare ill if he went, as the event showed afterwards. And
they showed me that it was thus written in Joachim's exposition
on Jeremias, and therefore that we must expect its fulfilment.
1 54 From St. Francis to Dante.
And whereas throughout the whole of France all that year men
sang daily in their conventual Masses the psalm * O God, the
heathens are come into thy inheritance,' yet these two scoffed
and said in the words of Jeremiah * " Thou hast set a cloud before
thee, that our prayer may not pass through " ; for the King of
France shall be taken, and the French shall be conquered in war,
and many shall be carried off' by the plague.' Wherefore they
were made hateful to the Brethren of France, who said that
these evil prophecies had been fulfilled on the former Crusade.
There was at that time in the convent of Provins a Lector named
Brother Maurice, a comely man, and noble, and most learned, who
had studied much, first in the World, at Paris, and then eight
years in our Order. He had lately become my friend, and he said
to me : ' Brother Salimbene, have no faith in these Joachites, for
they trouble the Brethren with their doctrines ; but help me in
writing, for I would fain make a good Book of Distinctions,
which will be most useful for preachers.'
" Then the Joachites separated of their own free will ; for I
went to dwell at Auxerre, Brother Bartolommeo to dwell in the
convent of Sens, Brother Gerardiuo was sent to Paris to study for
the Province of Sicily, on behalf of which he had been received
into the Order. And there he studied four years, and thought
out his folly, composing a book, and publishing it abroad without
the knowledge of the Brethren. And because for this book's
sake the Order was evil-spoken of both at Paris and elsewhere,
therefore the aforesaid Gerardino was deprived of his offices of
Lector and Preacher, and of the power of hearing confessions,
and of all priestly powers. And because he would not amend
himself and humbly acknowledge his fault, but with wayward
obstinacy persevered in his headstrong contumacy, therefore
the Brethren cast him into prison and bonds, feeding him with
bread of affliction and water of distress. Yet not even then
would this wretch withdraw from his obstinate purpose ; but he
suffered himself to die in prison, and was deprived of the burial
of the Church and buried in a corner of the garden. Let all
know, therefore, that due rigour of justice is kept among us against
all that transgress : wherefore one man's fault is not to be imputed
to the whole Order. 2
" So when in the year of our Lord 1248 I was at Hyeres with
Brother Hugh (seeing that I was curious of the teaching of Abbot
Joachim, and gladly heard him, applauding and rejoicing with
him), he said to me, ' Art thou infatuated as those who follow
this doctrine ? ' For they are indeed held infatuated by many,
since although Abbot Joachim was a holy man, yet he had three
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 155
hindrances to his doctrine. The first was the condemnation of
that book which he wrote against Master Peter Lombard, whom
he charged with heresy and madness. The second was that he
foretold tribulations to come, which was the cause why the Jews
slew the Prophets, for carnal men love not to hear of tribulations
to come. The third hindrance came from men who believed in
him, but who would fain forestall the times and seasons which
he had prescribed : for he fixed no certain terms of years though
some may think so. Rather, he named several terms, saying,
' God is able to show His mysteries yet more clearly, and they
shall see who come after us. 3 '
" Now when 1 saw that judges and notaries and other learned
men were gathered together in Brother Hugh's chamber to hear
him teach the doctrine of Abbot Joachim, I remembered Eliseus,
of whom it is written 'But Eliseus sat in his house, and the
ancients sat with him.' In those days there came two other
Joachites of the convent of Naples, whereof one was called
Brother John the Frenchman, the other Brother Giovannino
Pigolino of Parma. These had come to Hyeres to see Brother
Hugh and hear him speak on this Doctrine. Then also came
two Friars Preachers returning from their General Chapter at
Paris, whereof the one was called Brother Peter of Apulia, the
Lector of their Order at Naples, and a learned man and a great
talker ; and he was waiting a fit time to sail. To him one day
after dinner said Brother Giovannino, who knew him very well,
* Brother Peter, what thinkest thou of the doctrine of Abbot
Joachim ? ' To which he answered, ' I care as little for Joachim
as for the fifth wheel of a waggon ; for even Pope Gregory in
one of his homilies believed that the end of the world would come
almost in his own time, since the Lombards had come in his days
and were destroying all things.' Brother Giovannino therefore
hastened to Brother Hugh's chamber, and in the presence of those
aforesaid men said to him, ' Here is a certain Friar Preacher who
will have nothing of this doctrine.' To whom Brother Hugh
said, ' What is that to me ? To him shall it be imputed. Let
him look to it when " vexation alone shall make him understand
what he hears." Yet call him to disputation and I will hear his
doubts.' So he came, but unwillingly, for he despised Joachim,
and deemed that there were none in our convent to be compared
with himself in learning or in knowledge of the Scriptures.
Brother Hugh said to him, 'Art thou he who doubts of the
doctrine of Joachim?' Brother Peter answered, 'I am he
indeed.' ' Hast thou then read Joachim ? ' 'I have read him,'
said he, ' with care.' ' Yea,' said Brother Hugh, ' I believe thou
156 From St. Francis to Dante.
hast read him as a woman her Psalter, who when she is come to
the end knows and remembers no word of that which she read
at the beginning. So many read without understanding, either
because they despise what they read, or because their foolish
heart is darkened. Tell me now what thou wouldest hear of
Joachim.' To whom Brother Peter answered, 'Prove me now
by Esaias, as Joachim teacheth, that the life of the Emperor
Frederick must be ended in seventy years (for he liveth yet) :
and that he cannot be slain but by God that is, by no violent,
but by a natural death.' To whom Brother Hugh said, ' Gladly ;
but listen patiently, and with no declamations or cavils, for in the
matter of this doctrine it behoveth to listen with faith.' ' Here
follows a discussion so long that I am compelled reluctantly to
omit by far the greater part of it : though it contains one most
interesting anecdote of the Saint (240). "As to the holiness
of Joachim's life, beyond what is to be read in his Legend, I can
cite one example wherein his admirable patience is shown.
Before he was made Abbot, when he was a subordinate and
private person, the refectorer was wroth against him, and for a
whole year long always filled his jug with water to drink, wishing
to keep him on the bread of affliction and water of distress ; all
which he bore patiently and without complaint. But when at the
end of the year he was sitting beside the Abbot at table, the
Abbot said to him, * Wherefore drinkest thou white wine, and
5ivest none to me ? Is that thy courtesy ? ' To whom the holy
oachim answered, ' I was ashamed, Father, to invite you, for
" my own secret to myself." ' Then the Abbot taking his cup,
and wishing to prove him, tasted thereof, and saw that his mer-
chandise was not good. So, when he had tasted this water not
turned to wine, he said, ' And what is water but water ? ' And
he said to him, * By whose leave drinkest thou such drink ? '
And Joachim answered, ' Father, water is a sober drink, which
neither tieth the tongue, nor bringeth on drunkenness, nor maketh
men to babble.' But when the Abbot had learnt in the Chapter-
house that this injury and vengeance had been done of the malice
and rancour of the refectorer, he would have driven him forth
from the Order, but Joachim fell at the Abbot's feet, and prayed
him until he spared to expel that lay-brother from the Order.
Yet he reviled and rebuked him hard and bitterly, saying,
' I give thee for a penance that thou drink nought but water for
a whole year long, as thou hast dealt unjustly with thy neighbour
and brother.' " This story (of which Prof. Holder-Egger gives
a different and less picturesque version from Joachim's biographer
Luke of Cosenza) was well worth recording : but the rest of this
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 1 5 7
long episode is chiefly interesting for the light it throws on
medieval methods of theological discussion, which closely resemble
those of the tavern disputants in Janet's Repentance. Brother
Hugh is as mercilessly rhetorical as Lawyer Dempster ; and to
Salimbene, as to Mr. Budd, the consideration that his hero had
" studied very hard when he was a young man " and was always
ready to answer any question on any subject without the least
hesitation, entirely outweighs the fact that the event had proved
him altogether wrong for Frederick was now long since dead, at
an age considerably short of the prophetical seventy years. Brother
Hugh's methods, though every whit as reasonable as those of
world-famed controversialists like St. Bernardino of Siena and
St. James of the Mark, would carry but little conviction to-day.
In vain did the sceptical Dominican ask for more real evidence,
and protest against Merlin and the Sibyl being quoted as final
authorities : in vain did he " turn to the original words of the
Saints and to the sayings of the philosophers " : for " therein
Brother Hugh entangled and involved him forthwith ; since he
was a most learned man. Then Brother Peter's comrade who
was a priest and an old and good man, began to help him, but
Brother Peter cried to him * Peace ! Peace ' I So when Brother
Peter found himself conquered, he turned to commend Brother
Hugh for his manifold wisdom. And when the aforesaid words
had been ended, behold suddenly the shipman's messenger came
for the Preachers, telling them to go hastily to the ship. So after
their departure, Brother Hugh said to the remaining learned men
who had heard the disputation, ' Take it not for an ill example if
we have said some things which we should not have said ; for they
who dispute of presumptuous boldness are wont to run hither
and thither over the field of licence.' And Brother Hugh added
' These good men always boast of their knowledge, and say that
in their Order is the foundation of wisdom. They say also that
they have passed among unlearned men when they have passed
through the convents of the Friars Minor, wherein they are
charitably and diligently entertained. But by God's grace they
shall not say this time that they have passed among men of no
learning, for I have done as the Wise Man teacheth " Answer a
fool according to his folly, lest he imagine himself to be wise." '
So the lay folk departed much edified and consoled, saying ' We
have heard marvels to-day ; but on the Feast following we would
hear somewhat of the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.' To
whom Brother Hugh said, 'If I be still alive I will receive you
fladly, and therefore come indeed.' Moreover, that same day the
riars Preachers returned and solaced themselves with us, for
i 58 From St. Francis to Dante.
they had no fit weather to sail. And after supper Brother Hugh
was familiar with them, and Brother Peter seated himself on the
ground at his feet, nor was there any who could make him rise
and sit on a level bench with him no, not even Brother Hugh
himself, though he prayed him instantly. Moreover Brother
Peter, now no longer disputing or contradicting, but humbly
listening, heard the honeyed words which Brother Hugh spake,
(which indeed would be worthy to be related here, but I omit
them for brevity's sake, for I hasten to other things.) Then
Brother Peter's comrade said to me in private, ' For God's sake,
tell me who is that Brother, whether he be a prelate a Guardian,
a Gustos, or a Minister?' To whom I said, 'He has no prelacy,
for he will have none. Once he was a Minister-Provincial, but
now he is a private person, and he is one of the greatest clerks of
the world, and is so esteemed by all who know him.' Then said
he to me, ' In good truth I believe it, for never did 1 see a man
who speaketh so well, and is so ready in all knowledge. But I
wonder wherefore he dwelleth not in great convents.' 4 To whom
1 said, ' By reason of his humility and sanctity, for he is more
comforted to dwell in little houses.' Then said he, ' God's bless-
ing light on him, for he seemeth all heavenly.' And after many
commendations on both sides, the Friars Preachers departed,
consoled and much edified." 6
This was in 1248 : and Hugh's triumphant exposition of
Joachism was shattered in less than two years by the Emperor's
death not after 1264, as it should have been, but as early as
1250. No doubt Hugh's robust faith survived the shock, for he
could still look forward to the Reign of the Holy Ghost, prophesied
to begin in the year 1260 a year which, by the bye, he never
lived to see. Bxit when 1260 also passed without the expected
signs (though the Flagellants' mania of that year had given him
a brief gleam of hope) then Salimbene's faith in Joachism as an
-ism collapsed. (302) "After the death of the ex-Emperor
Frederick, and the passing of the year 1260, then I let that whole
doctrine go ; and I am purposed to believe no more than I can
see."
Yet he always kept up a lively outsider's interest, and gives
us a long account of a talk with the notorious Gerard of Borgo
San Donnino which took place, as Prof. Michael has shown, in
1256. The condemnation of the Introduction to the Eternal
Gospel naturally led to the punishment of its author, who
(456) "had been sent back [from Paris] to his own province
[of Sicily] ; and, because he would not draw back from his folly,
Bonaventura the Minister-General sent for him to join him in
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. i 59
France. When therefore he passed through Modena, I dwelt
there, and I said to him, since I knew him well : ' Shall we dispute
of Joachim ? ' Then said he, * Let us not dispute, but confer
thereof : and let us go to some privy place.' So I took him
behind the dormitory, and we sat under a vine ; and I said
to him ' My question is of Antichrist, when and where he shall
be born ? ' Then said he ' He is already born and full-grown ;
and the Mystery of Iniquity shall soon be at work.' So I said
4 Dost thou know him ? ' 'I have not seen his face, but I know
him well through the Scripture.' * Where then is that Scripture ? '
' In the Bible,' said he. ' Tell me then, for I know my Bible
well.' ' Nay, I will by no means tell it but if we have a Bible
here. So I brought him one, and he began to expound the
whole 18th chapter of Isaiah, beginning ' Woe to the land the
winged cymbal ' and so on to the end, as referring to a certain
King [Alfonso] of Castile in Spain. 6 So 1 said to him, ' Sayest
thou then that this King of Castile now reigning is Antichrist ? '
' Beyond all doubt he is that accursed Antichrist whereof all
doctors and saints have spoken who have treated of this matter.'
Then I answered, mocking him, ' I hope in my God that thou
shalt find thyself deceived.' And as I thus spake, suddenly
many brethren and secular folk appeared in the meadow behind
the dormitory, speaking sadly one with another, : so he said, ' Go
thou and hear what these say, since they seem to bring woful
news.' I went and returned and said to him, ' They say that the
Lord Philip Archbishop of Ravenna [and Papal legate] hath
been taken by Ezzelino.' Then he answered * Thou seest that
the mysteries are even now begun.' Then he enquired of me
whether I knew a certain man of Verona dwelling in Parma,
who had the spirit of prophecy and wrote of the future. ' I
know him well,' said I, ' and have seen his writings.' ' I would
fain have his writings : I beseech thee therefore to procure them
for me if it be possible.' * Yea, for he is glad to publish them
abroad, and rejoices greatly whensoever any will have them : for
he has written many homilies which I have seen, and has left
the trade of a weaver whereby he was wont to live in Parma,
and betaken himself to the convent of the Cistercians at
Fontanaviva. There he dwells in worldly dress at the monks'
expense, and writes all day long in a chamber which they have
assigned to him : and thou mayest go to him, for the convent is
no more than two miles below the high road.' ' Nay,' said he,
' for my companions would not turn aside from the road ; but I
beseech thee to go thither and procure me those books, and thou
shalt earn my gratitude.' So he went on his way, and I saw him
160 From St. Francis to Dante.
no more : but when I had time I went to that convent. There
I found a friend of mine, Brother Alberto Cremonella, who
entered the Order of Friars Minor the same day as I,
but he quitted the Order during his novitiate, returning to the
world and studying medicine, and after that he entered the
Cistercian Order at Fontanaviva. where he was held in great
esteem by all. Seeing me therefore, he thought (as he said) to
see an angel of God ; for he loved me familiarly. Then said I
that he would do me much favour if he would lend me all the
writings of that man of Verona. But be answered and said,
* Know, Brother Salimbene, that I am great and powerful in this
house, and the brethren love me of their own lovingkindness
and for my gift of physic ; and if thou wilt I can lend thee all
the works of St. Bernard : but this man of whom thou speakest
is dead, nor is there one letter of all his writings left in the world,
for with mine own hands have I scraped all his books clean, and
I will tell thee how and why. We had a Brother in this convent
who was excellently skilled in scraping parchment, and he said
to our Abbot, " Father, the Blessed Job and Ecclesiastes warn
us of our death : and it is written in Hebrews * It is appointed
unto men once to die : ' since therefore it is clearer to me than
the light of day that I must some day depart this life, for I am
no better than my fathers ; therefore, Father, I pray you
vouchsafe to assign me certain disciples who would learn to scrape
parchment : for they might be profitable to this convent after
my death." Since therefore there was none found but I who
would learn this art, therefore after the death of my master and
of this man of Verona, I scraped all his books so clean that not
one letter is left of all his writings : not only that I might have
material whereon to learn my art, but also for that we had been
sorely scandalized by reason of those prophecies.' 7 So I, hearing
this, said in my heart, ' Yea, and the book of Jeremias the Pro-
phet was once burned, and he who burned it escaped not due
punishment ; and the law of Moses was burned by the Chaldees,
yet Esdras restored it again by the aid of the Holy Ghost.' So
there arose in Parma a certain simple man whose intellect was
enlightened to foretell the future, as it is written in Proverbs,
' God's communication is with the simple.' 8 Moreover after
many years, while I dwelt in the convent of Imola, Brother
Arnolfo my Guardian came to my cell with a book written on
paper sheets, saying, ' There is in this land a certain notary who
is a friend of the brethren ; and he hath lent me this book to
read, which he wrote at Rome when he was there with the Lord
Brancaleone of Bologna, Senator of Rome ; and the book is
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 1 6 1
exceedingly dear to him, for it is written and composed by
Brother Gerard of Borgo San Donnino : wherefore do thou, who
hast studied in the books of Abbot Joachim, read now this
treatise and tell me whether there is any good therein.' So when
I had read and understood it, 1 answered Brother Arnolfo say-
ing : ' This book hath not the style of the ancient doctors ; but
rather frivolous and ridiculous words ; wherefore the book is of
evil fame and hath been condemned, so that I counsel you to cast
it into the fire and burn it, and bid this friend of yours have
patience with you for God's sake and the Order's.' So it was
done, and the book burned. Yet note that this Brother Gerard
who wrote the aforesaid book seemed to have much good in him.
For he was friendly, courteous, liberal, religious, honest, modest,
well-mannered, temperate in word and food and drink and raiment,
helpful with all humility and gentleness. He was indeed such as
the Wise Man writeth in Proverbs 'a man amiable in society,
who shall be more friendly than a brother ' ; yet his wayward-
ness in his own opinion brought all these good things to nought.
It was ordained by reason of this Gerard that from henceforward
no new writing should be published without the Order, save only
such as had first been approved by the Ministers and the
Definitors in a Chapter General; and that if any did contrary
to this rule, he should fast three days on bread and water, and
his book should be taken from him." Gerard's book, according
to our chronicler, "contained many falsehoods contrary to the
doctrine of Abbot Joachim, and such as he had never written ;
as for instance that Christ's Gospel and the teaching of the New
Testament had led no man to perfection, and would be super-
seded in the year 1260."
In judging the apparent coolness with which Salimbene speaks
of his friend's disgrace and death, we must remember that he
himself had given up the Millennarian side of Joachism, and was
therefore compelled, like nine-tenths of the other Franciscans, to
look upon Gerard as the man whose blundering obstinacy might
easily have caused the defeat of the Orders in their great struggle
with the secular doctors at Paris. Gerard was the intellectual
black sheep of the Order ; Angelo Clareno, excluding him from
the list of persecuted Spirituals, rejoices on the contrary to
record that " he died as a heretic and excommunicate, and was
denied Christian burial" after 18 years of imprisonment in Fran-
ciscan dungeons (Arch, iv, n, 283 ff.) ; and, considering the
usual tone of medieval religious controversy, Salimbene's gener-
ous tribute to Gerard's character is far more noticeable than his
failure to sympathize with sufferings which a recantation would
1 62 From St. Francis to Dante.
at any moment have ended. It is difficult for us in this age to
realize even remotely the scorn which the most sympathetic men
felt then for all poor fools who went to death as champions of
unorthodox ideas. " This is the utmost folly " (writes Salimbene,
p. 460), " when a man is rebuked by men of the greatest learn-
ing, and yet will not retreat from his false opinions against the
Catholic faith .... no man, therefore, ought to be wanton and
pertinacious in his own opinions." St. James of the Mark,
again, was an able man and a real saint : but it is impossible to
read without a shudder the reasons by which he overcame his
natural reluctance to burn heretics. 9
Frequent as are Salimbene's further allusions to Joachim,
they mostly imply no more than that he still looked upon him as
a man of great personal holiness, and endowed with the gift of
foretelling certain particular events. He caught gladly, to the
very end, at all Joachistic prophecies which fell in with his own
views, but tacitly abandoned the rest. He is especially fond of
the spurious " Exposition of Jeremiah," with its prophecies of
the greatness of the friars, and especially with the preference
which it shows for the Franciscans over the Dominicans. The
Franciscans (it says) shall be the more popular and less exclusive
Order : they alone shall last till the day of Judgment : for
Salimbene, like most men of his time, was haunted by that vague,
not always uncomfortable, foreboding of the near end of the
world which contributed so much to the popularity of Joachism.
He quotes how (579) "it was once revealed in a vision to a
certain spiritual brother of the Friars Preachers that they would
have as many Ministers- General as there are letters in the word
dirigimur (" we are governed ") : which hath nine letters ; so
that, if the vision be true, there are but two to come : namely,
u and r. For the first letter signifieth Dominic, the second,
lordan, the third, Raymund, the fourth, lohn, the fifth, Gumbert
[z.e., Humbert de Romans], the sixth, lohn the Second, the
seventh, Munio, who is now their General : whereof a like example
is recorded by St. Gregory in the third book of his dialogues.
And note that Abbot Joachim, to whom God revealed the future,
said that the Order of Preachers should suffer with the rest of
the clergy, but the Order of Friars Minor should endure to the
end." The reference to St. Gregory is no doubt chap. 38, where
the Pope, writing about 600 A.D., speaks of the probability
or, rather, the certainty that the Last Judgment is close at
hand. He therefore proceeds to relate a series of miracles
designed to confute those " many folk within the bosom of Holy
Church who doubt whether the soul survive the death of the
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 163
flesh." Salimbene, as we may see from a sentence recorded
above in his description of Hugh's argument, was critical
enough to observe that these expectations of immediate judgment
had been common at least from an early period of the Middle
Ages. Later on he records another story showing how men's
minds were haunted in his day by similar terrors of a coining
Visitation of God. It may remind some readers of Chaucer's
" Miller's Tale," the plot of which was probably taken from some
13th-century fabliau. (620) "In the year 1286 there died in
the city of Keggio a certain man of Brescia, who had aforetime
taught boys to read the Psalter, and feigned himself to be poor,
and went about begging, singing also at times and playing the
panpipe, that men might the more readily give. The devil put it
into his heart that there would be a great famine ; wherefore
he would roast crusts of bread and lay them in chests ; and he
filled sacks with meal trodden down, which likewise he laid up in
chests, against this famine which, as I have said, he hoped for
at the devil's suggestion. But as it was said to the rich man in
the Gospel ' Thou fool, etc.' so it befel this wretched miser. For
one evening he fell into a grievous sickness beyond his wont,
and, being alone in his house, he diligently bolted the door upon
himself ; and that night he was foully choked by the devil, and
shamefully mishandled. So on the morrow when he appeared not,
his neighbours came together, men and women and children, and
burst his door by force, and found him lying dead on the earth ;
and they found the sacks of meal already rotten in one chest,
and two other chests they found full of roasted bread-crusts.
And it was found likewise that he had two houses in the city,
in different quarters, which became forfeit to the Commune of
Reggio ; that the common proverb might be fulfilled, ' Quod non
accipit Christies accipit Fiscus That which is not given to Christ
goeth to the public treasury.' Moreover the children stripped
that wretch naked, and bound shackles of wood to his feet, and
dragged his naked corpse through all the streets and places of
the city, for a laughing-stock and a mockery to all men. And,
strange to relate ! no man had taught them to deal thus, nor did
any reprove them or say that they had done ill. But when at
last they came to St. Anthony's spital, and were weary with
their labour, it chanced that a certain peasant came that way
with an ox-waggon. The boys therefore would have bound this
outcast corpse to the tail of his waggon, but he strove to hinder
them ; then the boys rose up suddenly against that boor, and
beat him sore, that he was fain at last to let them do as they
would. They went out of the city therefore by the bridge of
164 From St. Francis to Dante.
S. Stefano, and cast the corpse from the bridge upon the gravel
of the torrent called Crostolo, and then climbing down they
heaped thereon a mighty pile of stones, crying ' Thy famine and
thine avarice go down with thee to hell, and thy churlishness
withal, for ever and a day.' Whence it became a proverb that
men would say to miserly persons * Take heed lest ye provoke
the boys' fury by your churlishness.' " 10
It is disappointing from many points of view that our chronicler
so early lost sympathy with Joachism as a life-force : with that
Joachism which was soon to inspire Dolcino, and after him
Kienzi, and was so often the mainspring of those antisacerdotal
sects which flourished all through the Middle Ages. For it can
scarcely be out of place here to point out a more than superficial
analogy between 13th century and 19th century religious life.
Mysticism and Rationalism, little as they care to recognize each
other, have strong secret affinities : enthusiasm may give a
mighty impulse, but can never be sure what direction the forces
thus liberated will finally take. Every fresh presentment of
Christianity is double-edged in its truth as in its error. By
means of his Theory of Development Newman reconciled himself
to a Rome which, as he saw only too clearly, was very different
from the Rome of the Apostles : he took the theory with him
into his new church, and there it has borne unexpected fruit in
the doctrines of Abbe Loisy and his school. To Newman, it was
the high road from dreary Private Judgment to blessed Authority :
to the modern intellectual Romanist, it is as easy a backward
road from Authority to Private Judgment. Much of this same
tendency may be traced in the history of Joachism. The Prophet
of Calabria reconciled himself to the corruptions of the Church
around him as to tokens which, after all, marked the imminent
birth of a new era ; and his theory undoubtedly did much to
create a favourable atmosphere for the coming friars, who were
themselves deeply inspired by the conviction that old things
were passed away, and all things were become new. When,
however, after a generation or so, it became evident how little
the Church in general was shaken from its old evil ways, then the
restless energies of the new movement began in many cases to work
backwards, rebounding with the very force of their own impact
against so vast and inert a mass. The more men realized the
living forces liberated by the Franciscan and Dominican reform,
the more they were tempted to despair of a priesthood on which
even such a shock could scarcely make an appreciable impression. 11
It was certain (so at least Joachim, truly interpreting the
yearnings of his age, had taught), that the world was on the brink
Abbot Joachim's Theory of Development. 1 65
of a new and brighter era, with nothing now intervening save
Antichrist and the Abomination of Desolation the death-throes
of a dying world from which the new world was to be born. Men
whose every thought was coloured by this conviction and
thousands of the best and most pious, such as Adam Marsh,
were more or less avowed Joachites would find it difficult
indeed to stifle antisacerdotal suggestions, as decade after decade
passed without real reform within the Church. So long as
Frederick and his race were alive, so that the civil wars of Italy
bore some real appearance of religious wars, so long good Church-
men could always see Antichrist in the Empire. But when, in
the latter half of the 13th century, the Emperors became almost
vassals of the Popes, and yet the world seemed rather worse
than better then at last men began to ask themselves whether
the real enemy of the Church was not the Cleric himself : whether
that Antichrist and that Abomination of Desolation, which by
the Joachitic hypothesis were already let loose upon the world,
could be any other than the Pope and his court, so powerful to
fight with carnal weapons, and so powerless to reform the Church.
And so among the Franciscans who naturally counted a dis-
proportionate number of enthusiasts and quick intellects, and
with whom the liberties of the individual friar were often all
the greater for his Order's well-earned reputation of subservience
to the Pope many among the Franciscans, first as zealous
Spirituals and then as schismatical Fraticelli, became the chief
exponents of the Antipapal element in Joachim's theories.
Much is permitted to a man who is labelled with the label of a
powerful party : and antipapalism often grew up unchecked
among the Papal militia of the Middle Ages, just as
Unitarianism grew up under the 18th century Presbyterianism,
and as in our own generation a strict devotion to ritual
will cover views on inspiration and on miracles which to the
early Tractarians would have seemed unspeakably abominable.
We can see this under our own eyes : we can trace much of the
same tendency in the 13th century ; and it would have been
welcome indeed if Salimbene had spoken as freely on this subject
as he did on many others. But the old chronicler had already
forgotten many of the interests of his youth ; and indeed this
matter of Joachism is the one solitary case in which Salimbene
seems ever to have cherished sectarian sympathies ; some of
his most important and entertaining records, as will be seen
later on, are directed against enthusiasts of his age whose
religious zeal outran their discretion. Nor is it easy to imagine
that he ever fully sympathized even under the daily influence
1 66 From St. Francis to Dante.
of Brothers Hugh and John of Parma with that passionate
longing for a new world which was the soul of real Joachism.
The world he saw and knew, with all its shortcomings, was a
great deal too full of interest to be wished away. He was an
Epicurean in the higher sense, recognizing that there are few
pleasures in life so keen and abiding as that of learning ; and
that, so long as one is young and strong, there is no better way
of learning than to travel among many men and many cities.
CHAPTER XIV.
Further Wanderings.
Q1ALIMBENE, however happy in Brother Hugh's company,
JO had no real business at Hyeres, and could not stay there
indefinitely. Accordingly (294) " I borrowed from him what
he had of the Expositions of Abbot Joachim on the four
Evangelists, and went to dwell in the convent of Aix, where I
copied the book with the help of my comrade for Brother John
of Parma, who was likewise a very mighty Joachite." Aix
attracted him for those romantic but mythical traditions which
may still be read in the Golden Legend, a book which was com-
piled by a contemporary of Salimbene's and probably an acquain-
tance : for he seems to have been in the Dominican convent of
Genoa in this year 1248 when Salimbene spent some months at
the Franciscan convent there. Martha and Lazarus and the
Magdalene, with St. Maximin who had been one of the 72
disciples, and Martilla who had cried in the crowd " Blessed is
the womb that bare thee," and Cedonius, the blind man of John
ix. 2, had been put by the Jews on board a boat without sails
or rudder ; and " by God's will they came to Marseilles, where
in process of time Lazarus was Bishop ; and he wrote his book
On the Pains of Hell, as he had seen them with his own eyes. But
when I enquired after this book at Marseilles, I heard that it had
been burnt by the negligence and carelessness of the guardian
of the church." 1 (295) " When therefore I had written this
book, the month of September was come, and Brother Raymond,
Minister of Provence, wrote me w.ord to come and meet the
Minister-General. He wrote also to Brother Hugh to meet him,
and we found him at Tarascon, where now is the body of St.
Martha : so we went to visit her body we twelve Brethren
besides the General ; and the Canons showed us her arm to
kiss. So when we had said our Compline in the convent, and
beds had been assigned to the guests to sleep in the same building
with the General, he went out into the cloister to pray. But the
strange Brethren feared to enter their beds until the General
1 68 From St. Francis to Dante.
came to his ; and I, seeing their distress, for they murmured,
because they would fain have slept, and could not, for the bed-
places were lighted with bright tapers of wax therefore I went
to the General, who was my very close and intimate friend, being
of my country, and akin to my kindred. So I found him praying,
and said, ' Father, the strange -Brethren, wearied with their
journey and their labour, would fain sleep ; but they fear to enter
their beds, until you be first come to yours.' Then said he, ' Go,
tell them from me to sleep with God's blessing ' : and so it was.
But it seemed good to me to await the General, that I might
show him his bed. When therefore he was come from prayer,
1 showed him the bed prepared for him : but he said, * Son, the
Pope's self might sleep in this bed:* never shall John of Parma
sleep therein.' And he threw himself upon the empty bed which
I hoped to have. And I said to him, ' Father, God forgive you,
for you have deprived me of my allotted bed, wherein I thought
to sleep.' And he said, ' Sou, sleep thou in that Papal bed ' ;
and when after his example I would have refused, he said to me,
* I am firmly resolved that thou shalt lie there, and that is my
command ' : wherefore I must needs do as he commanded."
Here at Tarascon Salimbene saw and admired two English friars,
of whom the principal, Brother Stephen, " had entered the Order
in his boyhood ; a comely, spiritual, and learned man, of most
excellent counsel, and ready to preach daily to the clergy ; and
he had most excellent writings of Brother Adam Marsh, whose
lectures on Genesis I heard from him." Stephen, of whom
Salimbene has an interesting tale to tell presently, is possibly
the hero of one of the most charming anecdotes in Eccleston.
(R.S. p. 26.} " Brother Peter the Spaniard, who was afterwards
Guardian of Northampton and wore a shirt of mail to tame the
temptations of the flesh . . . had in his convent a novice who
was tempted to leave the Order : but he persuaded him with
much ado to go with him to the Minister. On the road, Brother
Peter began to preach to him of the virtue of Holy Obedience ;
and lo ! a wild bird went before them as they walked on the way.
So the novice, whose name was Stephen, said to Brother Peter,
' Father, if it be as thou sayest, bid me in virtue of obedience to
catch this wild bird, and bid it wait for me.' The Brother did
so : and the bird stood suddenly still, and the novice came up
and took it and handled it as he would. Straightway his tempt-
ation was wholly assuaged, and God gave unto him another
* Alia paperina was a common Italian phrase to denote great comfort : cf.
Sacchetti Nov. 131 and 156.
Further Wanderings. 169
heart, and he returned forthwith to Northampton and made his
profession of perseverance ; and afterwards he became a most
excellent preacher, as I saw with mine own eyes."
Salimbene accompanied John of Parma down the Rhone
again to Aries. (297) "And one day when the General was
alone, I went to his chamber, and behold, after me came my
comrade who was likewise of Parma, Brother Giovannino dalle
Olle by name, and he said, ' Father, vouchsafe that I and Brother
Salimbene may have the aureole.'* Then the General showed a
jocund face, saying to my comrade, ' How then can I give you
the aureole ? ' To whom Brother Giovannino answered, * By
giving us the office of Preachers.' Then said Brother John,
* In very truth, if ye were both my blood-brethren, ye should not
have that office otherwise than by the sword of examination.'
Then I answered and said to my comrade in the Minister's
hearing, ' Hence, hence, with thine aureole I I received the office
of Preacher last year from Pope Innocent IV at Lyons. Since
therefore it hath once been granted to me by him who had all
power, shall I receive it now from Brother Giovannino of San
Lazzaro ? ' (For Brother John of Parma was called Master
Giovannino when he taught logic in the world ; and di San
Lazzaro after the spital of San Lazzaro where his uncle brought
him up.) Then answered my comrade, ' I would rather have the
office from the Minister-General than from any Pope, and if we
must needs pass by the sword of examination, then let Brother
Hugh examine us.' ' Nay,' said Brother John, ' I will not that
Brother Hugh examine you, for he is your friend and will spare
you ; but call me the Lector and Repetitor of this convent.'
They came at his call, and he said, ' Lead these Brethren apart,
and examine them on matters of preaching alone, and bring me
word whether they are worthy to have that office/ It was done
as he commanded : to me he gave the office, but not to my com-
rade, who was found wanting in knowledge. Yet the General
said to him, ' Delay is no robbery. Study wisdom, my son, and
make my heart joyful, that thou mayest give an answer to him
that reproacheth.' Then came two young Brethren of Tuscany
also, deacons and good scholars, who had studied many years
with me in the convent of Pisa : and on the morrow, when they
would have departed, they sent to the General through Brother
* It waa commonly believed that a halo of special glory in heaven was reserved
for virgins, or doctors, or martyrs, and that a preacher might rank for this
purpose with a doctor. Salimbene, who certainly did not aspire to martyrdom, is
glad to think that, through the Pope's grace, he is yet sure of his future crown of
glory.a
i 70 From St. Francis to Dante.
Mark his companion, beseeching the office of Preacher and a
licence for the priesthood. The General was saying his Com-
pline, and I with him : then came Brother Mark and interrupted
our Compline to give his message : to whom the General answer-
ed in fervour of spirit (as was his wont when he believed himself
to be stirred with zeal for God) saying * These brethren do ill,
in that they beg shamelessly for such honours : for the Apostle
saith : " No man doth take the honour to himself." Lo these
men have come away from their own Minister, who knew them
and might have given them that which they seek from me :
let them therefore go now to Toulouse whither they are sent to
study, and continue to learn there ; for we need not their
preaching : yet at a fitting season they may obtain this.' Then,
seeing that he was wroth, Brother Mark withdrew from him
saying : ' Father, ye should rather believe that they ask not of
their own accord : for it might well have been that Brother
Salimbene had besought me to plead with you on their behalf.'
Then answered the General : * Brother Salimbene hath been
all the while saying his Compline here with me : therefore know
I that it was not he who spake to thee of this matter.' So
Brother Mark withdrew saying, 'Father, be it as thou wilt.'
Knowing therefore that Brother Mark had not taken the
General's answer in good part, I went to comfort him when
our Compline was done. And he said unto me : ' Brother Salim-
bene, Brother John hath done evil in that he hath turned away
my face, and would not admit my prayers, even though the favour
were but small ; albeit that I pain myself for the Order, in follow-
ing him and in writing his letters, though I be now advanced
in years.' " Brother Mark's distress gains additional pathos
from the character which Salimbene gives him elsewhere (see
Chap, ix) ; but the first fault was in his own indiscretion. John
of Parma was not among the many who, in St. Bonaventura's
words, " say the Hours sleepily and indevoutly and imperfectly,
with a wandering heart, and a tongue that sometimes omits
whole verses and syllables " : on the contrary, Angelo Clareno
assures us that he took his Breviary very seriously, always
standing and doffing his hood to recite, as St. Francis
had done : so that his old friend ought to have known better
than to interrupt him at Compline. 3 No doubt Brother
Mark's zeal had for a moment overrun his discretion : and
his disappointment was now all the more bitter. "If they
were priests," he complained, " then they might celebrate
Masses for both quick and dead, and be more profitable
to the Brethren to whom they go ; and God knoweth that I am
Further Wanderings. 1 7 i
ashamed now to return to them with my prayer ungranted."
Salimbene, however sympathetic, could only remind him that
" patience hath a perfect work."
" That evening " (he continues) " the General sent for me and
my comrade, and said, ' My sons, I hope soon to leave you, for
I purpose to go to Spain ; wherefore choose for yourselves any
convent soever, except Paris, in the whole Order, and take the
space of this night to ponder and make your choice, and tell me
to-morrow.' On the morrow he said, * What have ye chosen ? '
So I answered, ' In this matter we have done nothing, lest it
should become an occasion of mourning to us ; but we leave it
in your choice to send us whithersoever it may seem good, and we
will obey.' Whereat he was edified, and said, ' Go therefore
to the convent of Genoa, where ye shall dwell with Brother
Stephen the Englishman. Moreover, 1 will write to the Minister
and Brethren there, commending you to their favour even as my-
self ; and that thou, Brother Salimbene, mayest be promoted to the
priesthood, and thy comrade to the diaconate. And when I come
thither, if I find you satisfied, I shall rejoice ; and if not, I will
console you again.' And so it was. Moreover, that same day
the General said to Brother Hugh his friend, ' What say ye, shall
we go to Spain, and fulfil the Apostle's desire ? ' And Brother
Hugh answered him, ' Go ye, Father ; for my part I would fain
die in the land of my fathers.' So we brought him forthwith to
his ship, which lay ready on the Rhone : and he went that day to
St.-Gilles, but we went by sea to Marseilles, whence we sailed
to Hyeres to Brother Hugh's convent. There I dwelt with my
comrade from the Feast of St. Francis until All Saints ; rejoicing
to be with Brother Hugh, with whom I conversed all day long of
the doctrine of Abbot Joachim : for he had all his books. But
I lamented that my comrade grew grievously sick, almost to
death ; and he would not take care of himself, and the weather
grew daily worse for sailing as the winter drew on. And that
country was most unwholesome that year, by reason of the sea-
wind ; and by night I could scarce breathe, even as I lay in
the open air. And I heard wolves crying and howling in the
night in great multitudes, and this not once or twice only. So
I said to my comrade, who was a most wayward youth, ' Thou
wilt not guard thyself from things contrary to thy health, and art
ever relapsing into sickness. But I know that this country is
most unwholesome, and I would fain not die yet, for I would
fain live to see the things foretold by Brother Hugh. Wherefore
know thou, that if fitting fellowship of our Brethren shall come
hither, I will go with them.' And he said, ' What thou sayest
1 72 From St. Francis to Dante.
pleases me. I also will go with thee.' For he hoped that none
of the Brethren would come at that time. And behold, by the
will of the Lord forthwith there came one Brother Ponce, a holy
man, who had been with us in the Convent of Aix ; and he was
going to Nice, of which Convent he had been made Guardian.
And he rejoiced to see us ; and I said to him, ' We will go with
you, for we must needs come to Genoa to dwell there.' And he
answered and said, ' It is most pleasing to me. Go therefore
and procure us a ship.' So on the morrow after dinner we went
to the ship, which was a mile from our Convent, but my comrade
would not come, until, seeing that I was straitly purposed to
depart, he took leave of the Guardian, and came after us. And
when 1 gave him my hand to raise him up into the ship, he
abhorred it, and said, * God forbid that thou shouldst touch me,
for thou hast not kept faith and good comradeship with me.'
To whom I said, ' Wretched man ! know now God's goodness
towards thee. For the Lord hath revealed to me that if thou
hadst stayed here, thou wouldst doubtless have died.' Yet
he believed me not, until 'vexation did make him understand
what he heard ' ; for all that winter he could not shake off the
sickness which he had taken in Provence. And when on the
Feast of St. Matthew following I again visited Hyeres, I found
six Brethren of that convent dead and buried, the first of whom
was the Guardian, who had accompanied my comrade to the
ship. So when I was come back to Genoa and had told my
comrade of these deaths, he thanked me that I bad snatched
him from the jaws of death." It would have been a thousand
pities if he had died in his wayward youth : for he went after-
wards as a missionary to the Christian captives in Egypt after
the disastrous failure of St. Louis' second crusade, "for the
merit of salutary obedience and for the remission of all his sins.
For he himself did much good to those Christians, and was the
cause of much more j and he saw an Unicorn and the Balsam
Vine,* and brought home Manna in a vessel of glass, and water
from St. Mary's Well (with which alone the Balsam Vine can be
watered so as to bear fruit) : and Balsam wood he brought home
with him, and many such things which we had never seen, which
he was wont to show to the Brethren : and he would tell also
how the Saracens keep Christians in bonds and make them to
* For this Balsam see Sir John Mandeville (chap, v), who gives an equally
miraculous, though quite different account of its methods of fructification. It
grows only near Cairo, and in "India the Greater, in that desert where the
trees of the sun and moon spake to Alexander. But I have not seen it, for I
have not been so far upward, because there are too many perilous passages."
Further Wanderings. 1 73
dig the trenches of their fortifications and to carry off the earth
in baskets, and how each Christian receives but three small
loaves a day. So he was present at the General Chapter in
Strasburg [A.D. 1282]; and on his way thence he ended his days
at the first convent of the brethren this side of Strasburg [i.e.
Colmar], and shone with the glory of miracles. So lived and died
Brother Giovannino dalle Olle, who was my comrade in France,
in Burgundy, in Provence, and in the convent at Genoa : a good
writer and singer and preacher ; an honest and good and profitable
man : may his soul rest in peace ! In the convent wherein he
died was a brother incurably diseased, for all that the doctors
could do, of a long-standing sickness ; yet when he set himself
wholly to pray God that He would make him whole for love of
Brother Giovannino, then was he forthwith freed from his sickness,
as I heard from Brother Paganino of Ferrara, who was there
present." In his company, then, Salimbene sailed to Nice,
where they picked up a famous Spiritual, Brother Simon of
Montesarchio. The three sailed on from Nice to Genoa ; and
here our chronicler found himself again among good friends.
(315) " The Brethren rejoiced to see us, and were much cheered ;
more especially Brother Stephen the Englishman, whom afterwards
the Minister-General sent to Rome as he had promised ; and
he became Lector in the convent of Rome, where he died with his
comrade, Brother Jocelin, after they had completed their desire
of seeing Rome and her sanctuaries. Moreover, in the convent of
Genoa when I arrived there was Brother Taddeo, who had been
a Canon of St. Peter's Church in Rome. He was old and stricken
in years, and was reputed a Saint by the Brethren. So likewise
was Brother Marco of Milan, who had already been Minister : so
likewise was Brother Anselmo Rabuino of Asti, who had been
Minister of the Provinces of Terra di Lavoro, and Treviso, and had
dwelt long at Naples with Brother John of Parma. There were
also at Genoa Brother Bertolino the Custode, who was afterwards
Minister, and Brother Pentecost, a holy man, and Brother Matthew
of Cremona, a discreet and holy man : and all these bore themselves
kindly and courtly and charitably towards us. For the Guardian
gave me two new frocks, an outer and an inner, and the same to
my comrade. And the Minister, Brother Nantelmo, promised to
give me whatsoever consolation and ^race 1 might require. He
gave his own companion, Brother William of Piedmont, a worthy
and learned and good man, to teach me to sing Mass. These
have passed all from this world to the Father, and their names are
in the Book of Life, for they ended their life well and laudably."
Here in Genoa, therefore, Salimbene settled down for a while,
i 74 From St. Francis to Dante.
happy in his easily-won Preacher's aureole ; but his companion
passed straight on to fight for a Martyr's crown. (3 18) "In
this same year 1248, Pope Innocent IV sent Brother Simon of
Montesarchio into Apulia, to withdraw that kingdom and Sicily
from the dominion of the deposed Emperor. And he drew
many to the Church party ; but at last the Emperor took him
and had him tortured with eighteen divers torments, all of which
he bore patiently, nor could the tormentors wring aught from
him but praise of God ; Who wrought many miracles through
him may he be my Intercessor, Amen ! He was my friend at
the Court of Lyons when we travelled together to the Pope, and
when we travelled from Nice to Genoa we told each other many
tales. He was a man of middle height, and dark, like St.
Boniface* ; always jocund and spiritual ; of good life and proper
learning. There was also another Brother Simon, called ' of the
Countess,' whom God glorified by miracles, and who was my
familiar friend at the convent of Marseilles this same year."
This Simon, also called Simon of Colazzone, was one of the
leaders of the Spirituals in their resistance to Brother Elias ; but
the wily Minister, dreading his noble and royal connexions,
spared him when he scourged St. Anthony of Padua and
imprisoned Cassarius of Spires. A long list of his miracles, from
the Papal Bull of Beatification, may be found in Mark of Lisbon
(L. i. cap. x.) The allusion to him here is important as a further
proof that, if Salimbene took for granted the " relaxed " view
of the Rule, it was not for want of zealous Spiritual friends.
John of Parma, Hugues de Digne, Bernard of Quintavalle, Giles
of Perugia, Illuminate, Simon of Colazzone, all six Beati and
miracle-workers, show that Salimbene kept the best of company
within his Order. This lends all the more point to the story of
holy violence which he tells ; a tale admirably illustrating those
encroachments by which the friars, to the detriment of their
own healthy influence in other directions, needlessly exasperated
the parish clergy. (316) "There was in the city of Genoa a
certain Corsican Bishop, who had been a Black Monk of St.
Benedict, and whom King Enzio or Frederick, in their hatred
of the Church, had expelled from Corsica. He now dwelt at
Genoa and copied books with his own hand for a livelihood ; and
daily he came to the Mass of the Friars Minor, and afterwards
he heard Brother Stephen the Englishman teach in our Schools.
This Bishop consecrated me priest in the church of Sant' Onorato,
* Who is described in the Golden Legend as ''a square-built and stout man,
with thick hair," and as " bearing pain readily."
Further Wanderings. 175
which is now in the convent of the Friars Minor at Genoa. But
in those days it was not so naj, rather, a certain priest had and
held it just over our convent, though he had no folk for his
parishioners. And when the Brethren came back from Matins
to rest in their cells, this good man troubled their rest with his
church-bells ; and thus he did every night. Wherefore the
Brethren grew weary, and so wrought with Pope Alexander IV
that they took that church from him. This Pope had canonized
St. Clare, and at the very hour whereat he celebrated the first
Mass of St. Clare, when he had said his prayer, the priest drew
near and said, ' I beseech you, Father, for love of the Blessed
Clare, not to take from me the church of Sant' Onorato.' But
the Pope took up his parable and began to say, in the vulgar
tongue, ' For the love of theBlessed Clare 1 will that the Brethren
Minor have it.' And thus he said many times over, so that he
seemed almost mad (infatuatus) to repeat it so often, and that
the priest groaned to hear it and departed from him."
CHAPTER XV.
A Bishop's Conscience.
O AL1MBENE had come to Genoa in November 1248 : in Feb.
O 1249 he was already on the move again : for (320) " It
pleased Brother Nantelmo my Minister to send me to the
Minister-General for the business of the Province. So I put to
sea, and came in four days to Brother Hugh's convent at Hyeres.
And he rejoiced to see me ; and, being Guardian for the time
being, he ate familiarly with me and my comrade and none else
but the Brethren who served us. He gave us a magnificent
dinner of sea-fish and other meats, for we were at the beginning
of Lent ; and not only my comrade from Genoa, but even the
Brethren of that convent marvelled at his great familiarity and
complaisance with me : for in those days Brother Hugh was not
wont to eat with any, perchance because Lent was at hand. And
we spake much of God during that dinner, and of the doctrine of
Abbot Joachim, and of what should come to pass in the world.
When I left Genoa there was an almond-tree in blossom hard by
our sacristy, and in Provence I found the fruit of this tree already
big with green husk. 1 found also broad beans fresh grown in their
pods. After dinner I went on my way to the Minister-General,
whom I presently found at Avignon on his return from Spain ; for
he had been recalled by the Pope to go among the Greeks, of whom
there was hope that by the mediation of Vatatzes they might be
reconciled to the Roman Church. Thence I went to Lyons with
the Minister-General, and at Vienne we found the messenger of
Vatatzes, who was of our Order, and was called Brother Salimbene,
even as I. He was Greek of one parent, and Latin of another,
and spoke Latin excellently, though he had no clerical tonsure.
And when the General had come to the Pope, the Holy Father
received him and vouchsafed to kiss him on the mouth, and said
to him, ' God forgive thee, son, for thou hast delayed long. Why
didst thou not come on horseback, to be with me the sooner ? '
To whom Brother John answered, 'Father, 1 came swiftly enough
when I had seen thy letters ; but the Brethren by whom I have
A Bishop's Conscience. 1 77
passed have kept me on the way.' To whom the Pope said,
' We have prosperous tidings, namely that the Greeks are willing
to be reconciled with the Church of Rome ; wherefore I will that
thou go to them with good fellowship of Brethren of thy Order,
and it may be that by thy mediation God will deign to work some
good. Receive therefore from me every favour which thou
mayest desire.' So the Minister-General departed from Lyons
when Easter week was passed.
" I found at Lyons Brother Ruffino, Minister of Bologna,* who
said to me, ' I sent thee into France to study for my Province, and
thou hast gone to dwell in the convent of Genoa. Know there-
fore that I take this very ill, since I bring students together for
the honour of my Province.' And I said, ' Forgive me, Father,
for I knew not that you would take it ill.' Then he answered,
' I forgive under this condition, that thou write forthwith an
Obedience whereby thou mayest return to my Province whence
thou hast come, with thy comrade who is now in Genoa.' So I
did, and the Minister-General knew not of this Obedience when
he was at Lyons. So I went on my way to Vienne, and thence
through Grenoble and the valley of the Count of Savoy, where
I heard of the fall and ruin of the mountain. For the year
before, in the valley of Maurienne between Grenoble and
Chambery there is a plain called the valley of Savoy proper,
a league distant from Chambery, over which rose a great and
lofty mountain, which fell one night and filled the whole valley ;
the ruin whereof is a whole league and a half in breadth : under
which ruin seven parishes were overwhelmed, and 4000 men
were slain. I heard tell of this ruin at Genoa ; and in this year
following I passed through that country, that is, through
Grenoble, and understood it with more certainty ; and many
years after, at the convent of Ravenna, I enquired of the fall of
this mountain from Brother William, Minister of Burgundy, who
was passing through that city on his way to a Chapter General :
and I have written it faithfully and truly as I heard it from his
mouth. 1 On this journey I entered a certain church dedicated
to St. Gerard, which was all full of children's shirts.f Thence
I passed on to Embruu, where was an Archbishop born of
Piacenza, who daily gave dinner to two Friars Minor, and ever
set places for them at his table, and portions of all his dishes
before them. So if any came, they had this dinner ; but if not,
* Not the Kuflino of the Fioretti.
t No doubt as thanksgiving offerings for cures : perhaps the church was that
of Gieres by Grenoble.
i 78 From St. Francis to Dante.
he caused it to be given to other poor folk. Moreover, in that
country dwell thirteen Brethren. Then came the Guardian and
said to me, ' Brother, may it please tbee to go and eat with the
Archbishop, who will take it in excellent good part ; for it is long
since the Brethren have eaten with him, because they are wearied
to go thither so often.' But I said, 'Father, forgive me, and take
it not ill : for 1 must depart without delay after meat ; but the
Archbishop, hearing that I was from the Court, would hinder my
journey by asking after tidings.' Then the Guai'dian held his
peace, but I said softly to my comrade, ' I have bethought me
that it is well to finish our journey while we have fair weather and
good letters, that we may quickly answer those who sent us, and
also lest the Minister-General come before us to the convent of
Genoa ; for our own Minister would not take our journey in so
good part : ' and that which I said and did pleased my comrade.
So we departed therefore and passed through the lands of the
Count Dauphin, and so came to Susa. And when we were come
to Alessandria we found two Brethren of Genoa, to whom my
comrade said, 'Know that ye are losing Brother Salimbene and his
comrade at Genoa, for the Minister of Bologna is recalling them
to his Province. But I, though I be of Genoa, will not go thither ;
but I am purposed to return to my convent of Novara, whence
the Minister took me when he sent me to the General. Now
therefore take these letters and give them to the Minister
Provincial of Genoa on the General's part.' Then he brought
forth his letters, and gave them to my comrades [of Genoa]. So
on the morrow we went from Alessandria to Tortona, which is
ten miles' journey : and next day to Genoa, which is a far
journey.* And the Brethren rejoiced to see me, for I was come
from afar, and brought good tidings.
" Now at Lyons I had found Brother Rinaldo, of Arezzo in
Tuscany, who had come to the Pope to be absolved from his
Bishopric. For he was Lector at Rieti, and when the Bishop of
that city died, the folk found such grace in him that the canons
of one accord elected him. And Pope Innocent, hearing of his
learning and sanctity, would not absolve him, nay, rather, by the
counsel of his brother Cardinals, he straitly commanded him to
accept the Bishopric, and afterwards honoured him by consecrating
him personally, while I was at Lyons. A few days therefore
after [my return to Genoa] Brother Rinaldo returned as a Bishop
from Lyons ; and on Ascension Day he preached to the people,
and celebrated with his mitre on his head in the church of our
* It is between 35 and 40 English miles.
A Bishop's Conscience. 179
convent at Genoa. And by that time I was a priest, and served
him at Mass, although a deacon was there, and a sub-deacon,
and other ministers. And he gave the Brethren a most excellent
dinner of sea-fish, and other meats, eating familiarly with us in
the refectory. But the night following after Mattins, Brother
Stephen the Englishman preached to the Brethren in the Bishop's
hearing, and among other honied words (such as he was wont to
speak), he told a story to the Bishop's confusion, saying : ' A
certain Friar Minor in England, a layman, but a holy man, spake
truly one day concerning the Easter candle. When it is kindled
to burn in the church, it shines and sheds light around : but
when the extinguisher is placed upon it, its light is darkened,
and it stinks in our nostrils. So it is with a Friar Minor when he
is fully kindled and burns with Divine love in the Order of St.
Francis : then indeed doth he shine and shed light on others
by his good example. Now I bethought me yesterday at dinner
how our Bishop suffered his Brethren to bow their knees to him
when dishes were placed before him on the table. To him,
therefore may we well apply that word which the English Brother
spake.'* The Bishop groaned to hear this ; and when the sermon
was ended, he bent his knees and besought Brother Bertolino the
Custode for leave to speak ; (for the Minister Provincial was not
present) and, leave being given, he well excused himself,
saying, ' I was indeed aforetime a candle, kindled, burning,
shining, and shedding light in the Order of St. Francis, giving
a good example to those that beheld me, as Brother Salimbene
knows, who dwelt two years with me in the convent of Siena.
And he knows well what conscience the Brethren of Tuscany have
of my past life ; nay, even in this convent here the ancient
Brethren know of my conversation : for it was on behalf of this
convent that I was sent to study at Paris. If the Brethren have
done me honour by bowing the knee before me at table, that
hath not proceeded from my ambition ; for I have forbidden
them often enough to do thus. But it was not in my power to
beat them with my staff; neither could I nor dared I insist upon
obedience. Wherefore I pray you for God's sake to hold me
excused, seeing that there was neither ambition nor vainglory
in me.' Having thus spoken, he bent his knees (as I myself saw
and heard), confessing his fault, if by chance he had given evil
example to any man, and promising to remove, as quickly as
* This anecdote gains point from the fact recorded by Eccleston and others,
that the English Province was noted for its comparatively strict observance of
St. Francis's rule.
1 80 From St. Francis to Dante.
might be, that extinguisher which by force had been set over him.
After this he commended himself to the brethren, and so we led
him honourably forth, and accompanied him to an Abbey of
White Monks without the city, where was an old man who had
resigned of his own free will the Bishopric of Turin that he might
live more freely in that cloister for himself and for God. Hearing
then that Brother Rinaldo was a mighty clerk and had lately been
made Bishop, he sighed and said : ' I marvel how thou, a wise
man, art fallen so low in folly as to undertake a Bishopric,
whereas thou wert in that most noble order of St. Francis, an
Order of most excellent perfection, wherein whosoever endureth to
the end shall without doubt be saved. Meseemeth therefore that
thou hast greatly erred, and art become as it were an apostate,
because thou hast returned to active life from that state of
contemplative perfection. For I also was a Bishop like unto
thee, but when I saw that I could not correct the follies of my
clergy who walked after vanity, then " my soul rather chose
hanging : " I resigned therefore my Bishopric and my clergy
and chose rather to save mine own soul. And this I did after
the example of St. Benedict, who left the company of certain
monks for that he had found them froward and wicked.'
" When therefore Brother Rinaldo had heard these words, he
made no answer, though he was a man of learning and of great wit ;
for the Bishop's words were to his mind, and he knew that he
had spoken truth. Then I answered and said to the Bishop of
Turin, lest he should seem wise in his own eyes, ' Father, lo thou
sayest that thou hast forsaken thy clergy, but consider whether
thou hast done well. For Pope Innocent III among many other
things said to a certain Bishop who would have refused his
Bishopric, " Think not that because Mary hath chosen the best
part, which shall not be taken away from her, therefore Martha
hath chosen an evil part in that she was busy about many things :
for, though the contemplative life be more free from care, yet is
the active life the more fruitful : though the former be sweeter,
yet is the latter more profitable : for Leah the blear-eyed sur-
passed in fertility of offspring the well-favoured Rachel. ' '
" When therefore I had spoken thus, the Bishops listened on
either side, but Brother Rinaldo answered me not a word, lest he
should seem to delight in his Bishopric. For he purposed in his
mind to lay down the load imposed upon him as soon as a fit
season should come. He went therefore to his Bishopric, and
when he was come thither the canons came to see him, and told
him of a certain wanton fellow-canon of theirs, who seemed
rather a layman than a clerk, for he had long hair even to his
A Bishop's Conscience. 1 8 1
shoulders, and would wear no tonsure. And the Bishop dragged
him by the hair and smote him on the cheek, and called his parents,
and kinsfolk, who were noble, rich, and powerful, and said to
them, * Let this son of jours either choose the life of a layman,
or wear such a habit as may show him to be a clerk ; for I can in
no wise suffer that he go thus clad.' And his parents answered
and said to the Bishop, ' It is our pleasure that he should be a
clerk, and that ye should do to him whatsoever seems to you
honest and good.' Then with his own hands the Bishop cut his
hair and made him a tonsure, round and great, in the figure of a
circle, that therein he might for the future be amended wherein
he had aforetime sinned. And he to whom these things were
done was grieved, but the canons rejoiced beyond measure.
" When therefore Brother Rinaldo could no longer dissemble
with a whole conscience the works of his clergy, seeing that they
would not return to the way of honesty and righteousness, he
visited Pope Innocent I V, who was come to Genoa, and resigned
the dignity which had been conferred on him at Lyons, saying
that he was wholly purposed from thenceforward to be no Bishop.
The Pope, seeing the anguish of his soul, promised to absolve him
when he should be come to Tuscany ; for he hoped that perchance
Brother Rinaldo would yet change his mind, which however was
far from him. So Brother Rinaldo came and dwelt many days
at Bologna, hoping that the Pope would pass that way into
Tuscany ; and when the Holy Father had come to Perugia
Brother Rinaldo came to him, and before the cardinals in Con-
sistory resigned his office and benefice, laying his pontificals, that
is, his staff, his mitre, and his ring, at the Supreme Pontiffs feet.
And the Cardinals marvelled and were troubled, seeing how
Brother Rinaldo seemed therein to derogate from their state, as
though they were not in a state of salvation, being promoted to
dignities and prelacies. The Pope likewise was troubled, for that
he had consecrated him with his own hands, believing himself to
have conferred a fit man upon the church of Rieti, as all held him
to be, and as indeed he was. So the Cardinals and the Pope prayed
him instantly for the love of God and for their honour and for
the profit of the Church and the salvation of souls that he should
not renounce his dignity. But he answered that they laboured
thus in vain. And the Cardinals said, ' What if an angel hath
spoken to him, or God hath revealed this to him ? ' Then the
Pope, perceiving his steadfast purpose, said to him, * Although
thou wilt not have the thought and care of Episcopal rule, yet let
the pontifical powers at least be left, and keep dignity and
authority to ordain others, that thy Order may thus have some
1 82 From St. Francis to Dante.
profit from thee.' And he answered, ' I will keep nothing what-
soever.' So, being absolved from his office, he came to the
Friars that same day : and, taking his bag or wallet or basket,
he besought leave to go with the almoner begging for bread.
And as he went thus begging through the city of Perugia a certain
Cardinal met him on his way back from the Consistory, perchance
by the will of God, that he might see, teach, and hear. Who,
knowing him well, said to him, ' Wert thou not better to be still
a Bishop than to go begging from door to door ? ' But Brother
Rinaldo answered him, 'The Wise Man saith in Proverbs, "It
is better to be humbled with the meek than to divide spoils with
the proud." As to my Bishopric, I grant indeed that it is more
blessed to bestow spiritual gifts than to beg them from others :
but the Friars Minor do indeed bestow such gifts ; whereof the
Psalmist saith " Take a psalm and bring hither the timbrel,"
which is to say " Take spiritual gifts and bring hither temporal
gifts."* Wherefore I will cleave to the end to this way which I
have learnt in the Order, as the blessed Job saith, "Till I die
I will not depart from my innocence : my justification, which
1 have begun to hold, I will not forsake." However, as the
Apostle saith, " Everyone hath his proper gift from God, one
after this manner, and another after that : " yet " Some trust in
chariots and some in horses, but we will call upon the name of
the Lord our God." : The Cardinal, hearing this, and knowing
that God had spoken through the mouth of his saint, departed
from him, and reported all his words on the morrow to the Pope
and Cardinals in Consistory : and they all marvelled. But Brother
Rinaldo told the Minister-General, Brother John of Parma, to
send him to dwell wheresoever he would ; and he sent him to the
convent of Siena, where he was known to many ; and there he
dwelt from All Saints until after Christmas, and so he died and
went to God. Now as he lay sick of the sickness whereof he died,
there was at Siena a certain canon of the cathedral church who
had lain six years palsied in bed, and with all the devotion of his
heart had recommended himself to Brother Rinaldo. He, about
daybreak, heard in his dreams a voice that said unto him, ' Know
thou that Brother Rinaldo hath passed from this world to the
Father, and through his merits God hath made thee altogether
whole.' And waking forthwith, and feeling himself wholly de-
livered from that sickness, he called his boy to bring his garments,
* This explanation is from the Glossa Ordinaria, and well exemplifies the
confusion imported into medieval theology by this habit of arguing from far-
fetched traditional glosses as almost equal in authority to the Bible text.
A Bishop's Conscience. i 83
and going to the chamber of a fellow-canon, told him of this new
miracle, and both hastened forthwith to the Brethren to tell them
this evident miracle which God had deigned to work that night
by the merits of the blessed Kinaldo. And when they were come
out of the town gate they heard the Brethren chanting as they
carried his body to church ; and so they were present at his
funeral, and afterwards related the miracle with joy ; and the
Brethren rejoiced, saying ' Blessed be God.' Such was Brother
Rinaldo of Arezzo, of the Order of the Friars Minor, Bishop of
Rieti, who in his life wrought marvels, and in his death did yet
greater wonders. He was a man of most excellent learning, a
great Lector in theology, a splendid and gracious preacher, both
to clergy and to people, for he had a most eloquent tongue that
never stumbled, and was a man of great heart. Two years 1
dwelt with him in the convent of Siena, and saw him oft-times
in those of Lyons and Genoa. 1 could not have believed, if any
man had told me, that Tuscany could have produced such a man,
unless I had seen it with mine own eyes.* He had a blood-
brother in the Order of Vallombrosa, who was Abbot of the
monastery of Bertinoro in Romagnola, (Purg. xiv. 112) a holy,
learned, and good man, and a great friend of the Friars Minor ;
may his soul rest in peace !
(332) " Moreover, in the year of our Lord 1249, after the Feast
of St. Anthony of Padua I departed from the Convent of Genoa
with my comrade, and we came to Bobbio, and saw one of the
water-pots wherein the Lord turned water into wine at the
wedding-feast, for it is said to be one of them. Whether it be so
indeed, God knoweth, to Whose eyes all things are naked and
open. Therein are many relics ; it stands on the altar of the
monastery of Bobbio, and there are many relics of the blessed
Columban, which we saw. Afterwards we came to Parma,
where we had been before, and there we did our business. Now
after our departure from Genoa, the Minister-General, Brother
.John of Parma, came thither ; to whom the Brethren said,
' Wherefore, Father, hast thou taken away from us our Brethren,
whom thou hadst sent hither? We rejoiced in your love, for
that they were here with us, and for that they are good Brethren,
and full of consolation, and have behaved themselves well.'
Then the Minister answered and said, 'Where then are they ?
Are they not in this Convent ? ' And they said, ' No, Father,
* Compare the character which Salimbene has already given to the Tuscans
in hia account of the Great Alleluia, and Sacchetti's letter to Giacomo di Conte.
The Saints of the Order came far more from mountain districts like Umbria and
the Mark of Ancona than from the great towns.
i 84 From St. Francis to Dante.
for Brother Ruffino of Bologna hath recalled them to his Province.'
Then said the General, * God knoweth I knew nothing of this
command ; nay, rather, I believed that they were in this house,
and marvelled much that they came not to me.' Afterwards he
found us at Parma, and said to us with a merry face, * Ye are
much abroad, my children, now in France, now in Burgundy,
now in Provence, now in the Convent of Genoa, and now ye
furpose to dwell in that of Parma. If I might rest as ye may
would not wander so much abroad.' And I said to him, ' On
you, Father, falls the labour of travelling by reason of your
ministry ; but know of us that true and pure obedience has
always been our part.' Hearing this, he was satisfied, for he
loved us. And when we were at Bologna, he said one day in his
chamber to the Minister, Brother Ruffino, * I had placed those
Brethren in the Convent of Genoa to study, and thou hast
removed them thence.' Brother Ruffino answered, * Father,
this I did for their consolation, for I had sent them to France in
the days when the Emperor was besieging Parma, and thought
therefore to comfort them by recalling them.' Then said I to
the Minister-General, ' Yea, Father, it was as he saith.' Then
said the General to him, ' Thou wilt therefore place them well,
that they may be comforted, and attend to their studies, and
wander not so much abroad.' To whom Brother Ruffino
answered, ' Gladly, Father, will I do them favour and comfort,
for your love and for theirs.' Then he kept my comrade at
Bologna to correct his Bible for him ; but me he sent to Ferrara,
where I lived seven years continuously without changing my
abode."
CHAPTER XVI.
Settling Down.
SEVEN jears on end ! With what tell-tale emphasis Saliin-
bene writes here, and repeats elsewhere, this significant
phrase ! Hitherto he had travelled about pretty much as he
pleased ; if only by getting different " obediences " from differ-
ent authorities, and choosing whichever pleased him best : for
we see clearly in his pages how impossible it was even for the
untiring John of Parma to superintend more than a small
fraction of so extensive an Order, with all its complicated details
and overlappings of jurisdiction. One can realize too how easily
the more wayward friars could manage to live in vagabondage
for years ; and Wadding's records of constant complaints on this
subject, in spite of vainly-repeated papal anathemas, are seen to
be natural enough. From this arrival at Ferrara onwards, we
find far fewer autobiographical records, until Salimbene's last
few years brought him again into the mid vortex of civil war.
It seems that for a period of about 32 years, from 1249 to 1281,
our good friar lived a comparatively uneventful convent life,
studying, preaching, writing, always observing no doubt, but with
fewer experiences of the sort that would specially interest his
niece in her convent. If only he had kept a business diary dur-
ing those years, like his acquaintance the Archbishop of Rouen,
and passed down to us a record of that daily convent life which
was too trivial to be told to Sister Agnes !
Yet even this comparatively stationary and uniform life was
not without many distractions. Prof. Holder-Egger points out
that a chance observation of Salimbene's suggests the probabil-
ity of brief wanderings even during the " seven continuous
years" of Ferrara (p. 41, note 3). Prof. Michael had previously
traced Salimbene's places of abode during the next few years,
and they make a very varied list. After the Ferrara years came
a long abode in Romagna five years altogether at Ravenna, five
at Imola, and five at Paenza, of which periods however the two
last were certainly not unbroken and consecutive. One year he
i 86 From St. Francis to Dante.
spent at Bagnaeavallo, and one at Montereggio : another year
he passed in his native Parma, probably only off and on. In
1259 we find him in neighbouring Borgo san Donnino : twice
again in neighbouring Modena. He went on a pilgrimage to
Assisi, some time after 1270. He was at Forli when it was be-
sieged in 1273, and at Faenza during the siege of 1274. In
1281, at last, he came to end his days in his native province of
Emilia.
It is quite possible that, as Michael supposes, he worked hard
as preacher and confessor all these years, though the quotation
adduced scarcely goes so far as this : " I have now lived in the
Order many years as a priest and preacher, and have seen many
things and dwelt in many provinces and learnt much." (38)
He was no doubt always sociable, always busy, always popular,
but nothing in his chronicle seems to imply that he worked really
hard among the people : and certainly he always lent his heart
out with usury to just those worldly sights and sounds, just those
innumerable and thoroughly human trifles, which the disciplinar-
ians of his Order tried so earnestly to exclude from a friar's life.
He read hard undoubtedly, or he would never have known his
Bible so well : though here and there his strings of quotations
seem to smack rather of the concordance, which was the inven-
tion of a 13th century Dominican, to whom our good Franciscan
pays a somewhat grudging tribute on p. 175. And he wrote
busily too, witness the list of his writings, mostly compilations,
and now all unfortunately lost but one. First, in 1250, he wrote
his " Chronicle beginning : Octavianus Ccesar Augustus" (217) :
in another place he tells us that he wrote three other chronicles
besides the one which has survived (293). One of these may be
the " Treatise of Pope Gregory X " to which he refers on page
245 (A.D. 1266) : and another the chronicle concerning Frederick
II (204, 344, 592). The "Treatise of Elisha " (293) and the
" Types and Examples, Signs and Figures and Mysteries of Both
Testaments" (238) were doubtless of a purely theological char-
acter. Another was apparently in verse, an imitation of Patec-
chio's satirical " Book of Pests." (464) Two other treatises
have been preserved by the happy impulse which prompted the
author to copy them bodily into the present chronicle : these are
the " Book of the Prelate," a violent pamphlet against Brother
Elias, from Avhich I have already quoted and shall quote again
(96 foil.) and the " Treatise of the Lord's Body," mainly
liturgical (336 foil.)
But his life during these 32 years was by no means entirely
devoid of outward interest : as the rest of this chapter will show.
Settling Down. 187
To begin chronologically with the seven years at Ferrara : here
he found himself a close spectator of the cruelties of Ezzelino
and his Brother Alberigo, and of the crusade which finally
crushed the former. Here too he heard of Frederick's death,
and saw the Pope come home in triumph from his long exile at
Lyons. This was in 1251, while Europe was still shuddering at
the failure of St. Louis' first crusade and mourning for thousands
of Christians slaiu : but no news of public disaster to Christen-
dom could spoil the Pope's private triumph. (445) " He came in
the month of May to his own native city of Genoa, and there
gave a wife to one of his nephews ; at whose wedding he himself
was present with his cardinals and 80 bishops ; and at that feast
were many dishes and courses and varieties of meats, with divers
choice and jocund wines ; and each course of dishes cost many
marks. No such great and pompous wedding as this was
celebrated in my days in any country, whether we consider the
guests who were present or the meats that were set before
them : so that the Queen of Sheba herself would have marvelled
to see it."
Meanwhile very different events were taking place in the land
which the Pope had just left. The common people of France,
indignant at the failure of their nobles in the Crusade, rose under
a leader who boasted that he had no mere papal or episcopal
authority, but a letter direct from the Virgin Mary, which he
held night and day in his clenched hand. So writes Matthew
Paris, whose very full account, from the lips of an English monk
jwho had fallen into the hands of these Pastoureaux, confirms
the briefer notice of Salimbene. (444) "In this year an
innumerable host of shepherds was gathered together in France,
saying that they must cross the sea to slay the Saracens and
avenge the King of France : and many followed them from
divers cities of France, nor dared any man withstand them, but
all gave them food and whatsoever they desired ; wherefore the
very shepherds left their flocks to join them. For their leader
told how God had revealed to him that the sea should be parted
before him, and he should lead that innumerable host to avenge
the King of France. But I, when I heard this, said ' Woe to
the shepherds that desert their sheep. Where the King of
France could do so little with his armed host, what shall these
fellows do ? ' Yet the common folk of France believed in them,
and were terribly provoked against the Religious, more especially
against the Friars Preachers and Minors, for that they had
preached the Crusade and given men crosses to go beyond seas
with the King, who had now been conquered by the Saracens.
i 88 From St. Francis to Dante.
So those French who were then left in France were wroth against
Christ, to such a degree that they presumed to blaspheme His
Name, which is blessed above all other names. For in those
days when the Friars Minor and Preachers begged alms in France
in Christ's name, men gnashed with their teeth on them ; then,
before their very faces, they would call some other poor man and
give him money and say, * Take that in Mahomet's name ; for
he is stronger than Christ.' So our Lord's word was fulfilled in
them ' They believe for a while, and in time of temptation they
fall away.' Wretched misery I whereas the King of France was
not provoked to wrath, but suffered patiently, these men were
goaded to fury ! Moreover that host of shepherds destroyed
a whole Dominican convent in one city so utterly that not one
stone was left upon another, and this because the friars had
dared to speak a word against them. But in this same year
they were brought to nought, and their whole congregation was
utterly destroyed." Matthew Paris tells us how the Pastoureaux
owed much of their popularity to their attacks on the clergy,
especially upon the friars : he looks upon these crusaders as
precursors of Antichrist, but admits that many pious folk,
including the severe queen Blanche herself, favoured their
preaching at first, in spite of its entire lack of ecclesiastical
authority. He speaks also in the strongest terms of the wide-
spread infidelity in France at that time : " faith began to waver
in the kingdom of France : " " the devil .... saw that the
Christian faith was tottering to its fall even in the sweet realm
of France." A few pages higher up, under the year 1250, after
describing the outbreak of blasphemy among the French at the
first news of St. Louis' failure, he adds : " Moreover the most
noble city of Venice, and many cities of Italy whose inhabitants
are but half-Christians, would have fallen into apostasy if they
had not been comforted and strengthened by bishops and holy
men of Religion."
After his nephew's wedding at Genoa, Innocent IV "came
through Brescia and Mantua (445) to the great Abbey of San
Benedetto di Polirone, where the Countess Matilda lieth buried in
a tomb of marble : in whose honour the Pope with his cardinals
recited the psalm De Profundis around her grave ; for they were
mindful of the benefits which she had conferred in old time on
the Roman Church and Pontiffs. Then he came on to Ferrara,
where I dwelt. So when he should have entered the city, he
sent word that the Friars Minor should come out to meet him,
and abide ever by his side ; which we did all along the Via San
Paolo. His messenger this time was a certain Brother of Parma
Settling Down. 189
named Buiolo, who dwelt with the Pope and was of his family : and
the Pope's confessor was another Minorite, Brother Nicholas, [the
Englishman] my friend, whom the Pope made Bishop of Assisi : l
and there was likewise in the Holy Father's household my friend
and companion Brother Lorenzo, whom he afterwards made Bishop
of Antivari [in Greece], and there were yet two other Friars Minor
in the Pope s household. And the Pope stayed many days at
Ferrara, until the octave of St. Francis, and he preached a sermon
standing at the window of the Bishop's palace ; and certain
cardinals stood by him on either side, one of whom, the Lord
William his nephew, made the Confession in a loud voice after
the sermon. For there was a great multitude gathered together
as for judgment ; and the Pope took for his text ' Blessed is the
nation whose God is the Lord : the people whom He hath chosen
for His inheritance.' And after his sermon he said : ' The Lord
hath kept me on my journey from Italy, and while I dwelt at
Lyons, and on my way back hither ; blessed be He for ever and
ever ! ' And he added : ' This is mine own city ; 1 beseech you
to live in peace ; for the lord who was once your Emperor and
who persecuted the Church, is now dead.' Now I stood hard
by the Pope, so that I might have touched him when I would ;
for he was glad to have Friars Minor about him. Then Brother
Gerardino of Parma, who was the master of Brother Bonagrazia
[the Minister-General], touched me with his elbow and said :
* Hear now that the Emperor is dead : for until now thou hast been
unbelieving ; leave therefore thy Joachim.' Moreover in those
days when the Pope dwelt at Farrara, the cardinals sent us oft-
times swine ready slaughtered and scalded which men gave them
continually : and we in our turn gave thereof to our Sisters of
the Order of St. Clare. Moreover the Pope's seneschal sent word
to us saying : ' To-morrow the Holy Father will depart : send
me therefore your porters, and I will give you bread and wine
for yourselves, seeing that we have no further need thereof : '
and so we did. And when the Pope was come to Bologna, he
was received w 
