Francis, the little poor man of Assisi, a short story of the founder of the Brothers Minor

Preface

My object in compiling this little sketch of Francis of Assisi is merely to provide a small life of the saint for those who for any reason are unable to indulge in the purchase of the larger biographies. This book does not profess to put forth any original views on the subject of Francis, it is little more than a much-condensed epitome of the principal parts of M. Paul Sabatier’s Lzfe of S. Francis of Assist, with occasional references to Brother Leo’s Mirror of Perfection, and the Fiorettz,

I sincerely hope that what I have written may whet the appetite of some so that they may pursue the study of this great saint. In the Appendix on “Sources of Information,” I have referred to M. Sabatier’s book, but I would remark here also that it is to him pre-eminently that we owe the very much truer conception of Francis and his work that we now possess, much truer than it was possible to have before his painstaking studies and remarkable discoveries. I wish here to thank him both for his public work and for his private kindness to me, notably in this latter respect, in writing the vi PREFACE beautiful introduction to this book, and in letting me see the proofs of his latest book concerning the Indulgence of the Portiuncula.

I have only to add that the quotations in this book are made by special permission of the authors or publishers from the following publications—

Life of S. Francis of Assist, by Paul Sabatier. Translated by Louise Seymour Houghton; published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1894. Referred to in this book as Sadat.

S. Francis of Assist, the Mirror of Perfection (Speculum Perfectionis). Translated by Sebastian Evans; published by David Nutt, London, 1899. Referred to in this book as Sec.

The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. Translated by T. W. Arnold; published by J. M. Dent, London (The Temple Classics). Referred to in this book as Forettz.

Un Nouveau Chapitre de la Vie de S. Francois d@ Asstse, by Paul Sabatier (A New Chapter of the Life of S. Francis of Assisi); published by Fischbacher, Paris, 1896. Referred to in this book as

Un Nouveau Chapitre.

JAMES ADDERLEY.

Introduction

By M. PAUL SABATIER (Translated )

THE life of S. Francis is a simple, living illustration of the mind of Jesus. Many Christians will tell me that it is better to consider the original than the copy; that I concede to them very willingly. But I hope that, in return, they will allow me to own that I am but achild,and that the copy has often helped me to understand and love the original.

In giving a name to His message, Jesus called it the Good News, the Gospel. But in what did this news consist, which was destined to penetrate the world and to transform it? It is summed up in the first words which fell from His mouth on the holy mountain, “Blessed are the poor!”

We shall understand this much better when we have seen it realized in Francis, and we may well say that, in this respect, the Umbrian prophet has entered even further into the heart of Jesus than the great S. Paul.

vili INTRODUCTION

“Blessed are the poor!” Here, in this utterance of the Gospel, is the one most necessary for us, living at this dark end of a century. Consider carefully how we are situated. Look at Society, shaken to its foundations by unheard-of scandals, people pitted one against another by unprincipled journalists; then seek out the cause of all this suffering, of all this disorder, and you will almost always find it, after careful examination, in the fallacy which makes us confound happiness with the possession of riches. At the present moment everything, in politics, in education, and (why not say it?) even in the Church, is organized, directed, and inspired as if we had in this error an evident truth, which does not even need to be proved.

On the one hand, the more conservative sections of Society defend their gold and their property by every means. On the other, the more liberal sections war against them with a kind of frenzy. What if these last should have perceived the real mistake? Ought we to join them? No, their desires are identical, and they only aspire to substitute themselves for those whom they denounce.

“Blessed are the poor!” Here is the secret of political, social, and religious reform.

I add that we must desire poverty in the spirit of S. Francis, and preach it in the same way.

He began by desiring it for himself, and thus perceived what it really is—the pledge of the Liberty of Obedience. He never sought to enforce poverty ; he had for all men, even for those who

INTRODUCTION ix were furthest from him, that deep respect which is the true power of the Apostolate.

The best way of furthering the triumph of truth and justice is not to attack the wicked; it is to serve God. It is not to prove to others that they are in the wrong; it is to make the truth shine out.

Where will the Church of Christ be to-morrow? I donot know. But what I am certain of is this, that she will be on the side of those who have made themselves poor; who have not imposed poverty on themselves as a privation or as a merit, but who have gained it with the enthusiasm of the prisoner who ended by breaking his last chain. Then they will understand the triumphant joy of the “Little poor Man,” and what his life is who has no other aim than to “have Him only, that is sweeter than any!”

1 Mirror of Perfection, chap. xxvi.

aa

Contents

CHAP PAGE PREFACE : : ‘ Vv INTRODUCTION ‘ ‘ ‘ ep 9

I. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE ; 3 ne i

Il. THE TIMES OF FRANCIS j : 23

Chapter I The Religious Life

To understand the place which Francis and the Friars hold in the history of the Christian Church, it may be well to begin by a review of the ideas which have been embodied by those individuals or communities, who, in different ages, have lived in some form or other what is called the “ Religious Life.” By the term “Religious Life,” used technically, is meant a life lived in special devotion to God, according to some peculiar method or rule.

It is more than probable that the virgins and widows mentioned in the early Christian writings were a regular order in the Church. S. Timothy is directed by S. Paul concerning the enrolment of widows. They are persons who have a certain character of devotion, their hopes “set on God ”— continuing in supplications and prayers night and day ; they are to be “well reported of for good

* works” (1 Tim. v. 5-10). It need not, however, be supposed that they lived in community, or that they bore the characteristic marks of religious orders of a later period, such as a special dress. Probably they occupied themselves in regular prayer and psalm singing, and in good works.

But the desire that led to the Religious Life proper was the desire to get away from the wickedness of the world that surrounded the Church. This desire was encouraged by the contact of the Christians with the asceticism so common in the East. This is not the place to discuss the true and false ideas of asceticism, but it is sufficient to say that the Eastern ascetics ran into wild extremes of self-torture, as they do now. This was due to the root fallacy underlying all Eastern heathenism, that the body is evil in itself. Christian ascetics had a different ideal, namely, to discipline the body by fasting and self-denial, so as to render it a fitter instrument with which to serve God. It is true that this ideal was not consistently maintained, and that asceticism tended to become oriental in character. There were also ascetics among the Jews, who, no doubt, influenced Christian thought. Such were the Essenes, who existed a century or more before the birth of Christ, and numbered some thousands in the first century. They had common “ Houses,” and a special dress ; they had community of goods with regular labour and times of prayer; they objected to oaths, weapons, and slaves ; they rejected marriage. Their celibacy is

Lae

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE I one of the indications that other besides Jewish influences had had an effect on the development of Essenism.!

There were also, chiefly in Egypt, a kind of monks—called Therapeutee—whose object, according to their name, was the healing of the soul.? It is possible that S. John the Baptist, with the wild ascetic habits of his life in the desert, and S. James, the author of the stern Catholic Epistle, with its teaching about oaths, riches, etc., may have been partly affected by the prevalent ideas of Jewish ascetics.

But though these heathen, heretical, and Jewish ascetics paved the way for the Christian hermits, there was a distinction between them. The false idea of self-torture was protested against by Christian writers, at least at first.

It was from the middle of the second century that Christian asceticism developed. The “ Solitaries,” or “hermits,” went into the deserts and elsewhere in crowds and settled there. They literally swarmed in the Thebaid and the Nitrian mountains. The two great names round which a tradition has woven itself are those of Paul the Hermit and Anthony. These hermits, or desertmen, spent their lives in solitude in caves and huts, They fasted from sleep and food for long periods,

1 See Lightfoot’s Efpzstle to the Colossians, and Schiirer’s Jewish People in the time of Christ, div. ii.

2 The name may mean “worshippers.” They were not Christians. See Delaunay’s Jones et Stbylles, p. 7.

and, it must be confessed, sometimes did so in a spirit of most culpable rivalry, exhibiting feats of asceticism for their own glorification. Many of them were quite undisciplined, and even idle and unspiritual.

Gradually it became common for hermits to group their cells near one another, and to organize a kind of community life. Pachomius is said to have drawn up a Rule, and to have gathered many of the Solitaries into bodies, owning a kind of allegiance to Superiors. This was the Ccenobite system, or system of common life. The word monastery originally meant a solitary cell, but when community life became established, the name was applied to the common dwelling-place of monks.

S. Basil in the fourth century was the great founder of monasteries in this new sense, and his Rule is still the fundamental Rule of all Eastern monks. Cassian, also in the fourth century, studied the whole subject, and collected much information about Rules, etc., which formed the foundation upon which the great S. Benedict worked in producing his great Rule. S. Benedict is the founder of Western monasticism. He was born in 480, and died in 543. Though he began as a kind of hermit, he was destined to entirely supersede the old ideas of the solitaries, by a broad and far-reaching development of the community idea, such as the world had never yet witnessed. There had been obedience under the old Rules,

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 17 now it was to be the foundation of a regulated life of common Labour. The monks were bound to a life of busy work. Their chief occupation was worship, regular prayer day and _ night. Besides this there was to be manual labour. S. Benedict made the vows more strict and binding. Up to his time they had been little more than resolutions ; now they were to be permanent and solemnly made. It was, however, only gradually that the three vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience became the regular mark of all monastic communities,

The Benedictine Rule became the foundation of Western monasticism, as Basil’s Rule was of the Eastern. It has been interpreted and modified in many ways; for example, “work,” which at one time meant agriculture, came to include secular study, and the Benedictine monks became the most learned men in Europe. But the main ideas of common life, common and regular worship, systematic labour, silence and obedience—these underlie all modifications, and are still the moving principles of Benedictinism.

The story of monasticism is the story of ups and downs, of enthusiasm and slackness, of strict observance and atrocious indolence, of extraordinary piety and heart-rending degeneracy. Within a short time of the death of S. Benedict the discipline of his houses began to fall. By the end of the ninth century it had fallen very low indeed. Then came a great revival. The Abbey B of Clugny in Burgundy was founded. The Cluniac monks were reformers of the strict observance, that is, they set themselves to revert to the original ideal of obedience. At the end of the eleventh century another great attempt was made to revive the strictness of the Benedictine Rule by the Cistercians, so called from the Abbey of Citeaux, or Cistercium, near Beaume. Many of our beautiful abbeys in England are old foundations of Cistercian monks, The original band of Cistercians was in danger of dying out, when the active power of the order was suddenly revived by the entrance into it of the great and holy S. Bernard.

He has been called “the loveliest flower of medizeval monasticism.”! He was Abbat of Clairvaux, which became a more famous centre even than Clugny which by the time of Bernard had become rich and idle. The Cistercians, with their plain fare and their bare walls, their unornate services with scarcely any ceremonial, were a standing rebuke to the older monks, yet they in their turn fell.

“ These societies,” says a writer, “began by zeal, labour, love, self-denial. Then the world heaped riches upon them. Then they succumbed: then they had to be revived.” By the twelfth century, the century of the birth of Francis of Assisi, the Abbey of Clairvaux had become immensely rich. It was time for the Church to produce a new type of

1 Trench, Medieval Church History.

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 19 the Religious Life. The ideal monk at this critical period was the man of prayer, withdrawn from the world for his own salvation, or acting upon the world only from within his cell, “to avert by the prayers and penitence of a few, God’s anger from a wicked world.”! The new idea was to let him come out to overcome the world and save others by “active self-devotion to mission work,” The world was no longer pagan, but, what was worse, the Church was worldly. It was reserved for the Friars to save the Church from a deadlier foe than external pagan persecution, the internal foe of its own wickedness.

God did not fail His Church. Within twenty years of Bernard’s death Dominic was born; within thirty years Francis saw the light.

To describe the Friars would be to anticipate the subject of this little book. Suffice it to say that they met the great need of the age in which they started. They were very different from the old monks of the earlier middle ages; their avowed aim was publicity, activity, freedom, human happiness. It is. essential to remember this. It explains the surprise, the sense of novelty, which they evoked, People had never seen Religious at all like them before. It explains too the suspicion which they sometimes called forth.

Alas! they too fell into grievous disrepute and have never, in spite of periodic revivals, re-attained

1 Dr. Creighton.

their early position of usefulness in the Church. The only other great order that has arisen is the Society of Jesus, founded by S. Ignatius Loyola in the sixteenth century, at just about the same period that we English people were reforming our part of the Catholic Church and repudiating the unrighteous claims ofthe Bishop of Rome. In fact it was the troubles of the Papacy which aroused the enthusiasm of the Jesuits, and they became the soldiers of the Pope to protect and advance his interests. If the Friars were different from the ancient monks, much more so were the Jesuits. They wore no distinctive habit, they said no Office, beyond what they were required as priests to say. They were simply a band of ministers bound by the very strictest military obedience, in this matter more strictly [and irrevocably bound than any monks. They were, they are still, an army, drilled and disciplined, to go out, to live and die for the Roman Catholic Church. In studying the life of S. Francis we shall see how very different was his ideal to that of these later Religious in the matter of obedience. It was the difference between fatherly guidance and military despotism, the loving co-operation of children, and the cringing conformity of slaves,?

More Franciscan in their ideas were the active

1 The origin of the peculiar Jesuit “ Obedience” has been lately attributed to Mussulman sources by H. Miiller, Las Origines de la Compagnie de Jesus, ch. ii. on “La Genése de la C. de J.” This has been replied to by Fr. Thurston, S.J.,in Zhe Month, Nov. 1899.

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 21 communities started by S. Vincent de Paul in the seventeenth century. His famous “Sisters of Charity ” were not to be nuns, but they were to live strict lives, as if they were enclosed. “ The sick-room was to be their cell, the Church their convent chapel, the streets and lanes their cloister, the fear of God their Grylle, modesty their Veil.”

From the above short sketch it will be gathered that the place of Francis in the evolution of the Religious Life is that of one who, while maintaining the strictness and the devotional and ascetic character of Religious, yet created a new ideal by bringing them out of their cloisters and making them take their part in the active work of the Church. It must not be supposed that Francis by this deliberately tried to abolish the old monasticism. Asa matter of fact the older form of Religious Life continued and continues to this day; even the followers of Francis himself, as we shall see, very soon relapsed into a kind of life which was and is scarcely distinguishable in its main features from that of the ancient monks. Nevertheless Francis gave a tremendous stimulus to the idea that religious communities must not be content merely to “exist beautifully,” but are bound to be in some sort missionaries, if they areto justify their existence. It is this that makes the study of his life so intensely interesting to us in modern England. With the great Catholic Revival in this country there has come, as there was bound to come, the desire for the Religious Life. It is obvious that the mere fact that King Henry VIII. suppressed the monasteries could not possibly have silenced the voice of the Holy Ghost calling men and women, as He always has done, to some form or other of this life in the Church of England. A king can abolish the outward framework of a religious community, but he cannot interfere with the designs of Almighty God. The remarkable growth of Sisterhoods during the past fifty years, and the intensely earnest, though slowly spreading, movement towards the revival of Brotherhoods, are certain proofs that God intends the Religious Life to exist again as part of the great Catholic system > of our Church. The lines on which this development is running have already sufficiently disclesed themselves to make us sure that they are Franciscan rather than anything else. But no movement can live and last without a spirit to move and guide it. That is why we need a fresh draught of inspiration, such as can be drawn from a study of that sweet saint who, above all others, has been able to influence not only the men of his time, but the men of all ages who are willing to strive after the Imitation of our Lord.

Chapter II The Times Of Francis

WE shall best estimate the power which Francis exercised if we begin by trying to realize the “bad old times” in which he was sent by God to save the Church. As we remarked in the last chapter, the old monastic system had been an escape from a wicked world, the Friars were destined to save a wicked Church from itself. The Cistercians in their early days had begun the good work. S. Bernard had said those famous and most terrible words, recalling the style of Jeremiah and Ezekiel: “Tt is no longer true that the priests are as bad as the people, for the priests are worse than the people.” The clergy were some of them living immoral lives; the whole body of the Church was corrupt; the officers of the Church were grand lords with huge households and bands of retainers, some leading a profligate life. The monks were quite separate from the mass of the people, living idle lives and exercising no influence upon them, except by imposing upon their credulity with

‘ a *, 24 FRANCIS. ‘ stories of sham miracles. Some of the very monasteries themselves were immoral places. No doubt the wickedness of some of the monks has been grossly exaggerated, and historians have been too much influenced by contemporary denunciations on the part of their avowed enemies, but, unfortunately, we have also the unimpeachable evidence of most serious disorder and sin from official writings, such as the Papal bulls and documents directly dealing with specific cases. The “secular” clergy— that is, the clergy not belonging to a “ Religious ” order or community—the parish priests, and suchlike, were even worse. The most notorious scandal was the prevalence of simony. Livings were sold to the highest bidder ; bishops descended to the low practice of accepting bribes in what should have been the most solemn transactions; clergy extorted money from dying people in the most barefaced way. To refuse to be bought over was looked upon as a sign of most exemplary virtue in a clergyman.

The masses of the people were steeped in superstition, feeding on stories of miracles and the supposed power inherent in relics, utterly ignorant of the ethical teaching of Christianity, and even of the elementary requirements of the Gospel, such as true repentance and faith in our Lord’s atonement. The God of Love, the Saviour from Sin, the Spirit of Holiness: these were religious conceptions practically unknown to vast masses of Christians. The clergy seldom preached to them: religion was chiefly ig.

THE TIMES OF FRANCIS 25 a perfunctory system of masses and penances. Modern historians, with all their conspicuous fairness and critical insight, with all their patient desire to analyze every scrap of contemporary evidence, seem nevertheless quite unable to draw any picture but this most sad and revolting one of the state of the main body of the Church in the early part of the thirteenth century.

There are, however, certain brighter spots to relieve the darkness, though they are few. There were most certainly many very good and holy people, to whom these scandals were a daily subject for mourning and regret. The very fact that the Church held its own in spite of all the assaults made upon it is a proof that it still contained the salt of the earth. The gates of hell could not prevail. The popes were, many of them, personally holy men, and their office was always a continous assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual over the carnal, a witness to the unseen forces that govern mankind. It was a wild and turbulent age,a time of perpetual civil dissension and war. Even the worst clergy were simply men who had not been able to rise above the average morality of the day. We must not judge them from our nineteenth-century stand-point. Just as we form a wrong judgment if we hastily condemn some of the statesmen of the eighteenth century, who had not learnt the wickedness of bribery as we have learnt it, or some of the ecclesiastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who had not learnt religious toleration as we have learnt it (or think we have learnt it!), so we may be misjudging the Church of the thirteenth century, and condemning where we ought to pity.

There were many scattered here and there in the Church who boldly spoke up against the surrounding sin. Arnold of Brescia condemned the riches of the clergy; the “ Humiliants,” a body of devout men in the neighbourhood of Milan, were the forerunners of the Friars. Poverty was preached, even at the end of the twelfth century, before Francis, by a certain Pons of Perigord, and in South Italy by Gioacchino di Fiore, the great monk-prophet.!

Unfortunately, the chief of these early protests came from those who lapsed into heresy and became severed from the unity of the Church. The “ Poor men of Lyons,” or Waldenses as they were called after their leader Peter Waldo,? were sincere reformers. They made a vigorous attack on the worldliness of the clergy; they preached the necessity of a return to Gospel simplicity. It was no doubt largely due to such movements that later on, when Francis came preaching the same thing, but in the name of the Church, so many were ready to receive his message. There are many analogies to this in the history of the Church. In our own branch of the Church we

1 Sabat., pp. 37, 46. 2 Or possibly Valdenses or Vaudois from the valleys of

Piedmont.

THE TIMES OF FRANCIS ay have seen how the Oxford Movement followed the Methodist Revival, the earlier reformers unfortunately seceding from the Church, and the later ones preaching many of the same doctrines, but in loyalty to Church order and discipline, and so effecting what the others had failed to do. So in our own day, on a smaller scale, we see the Church Army supplying within the circle of the Church, and in obedience to its bishops, the need which the Salvation Army was intended to supply, but which it has been unable to meet without adding another to the innumerable sects which disturb the unity of Christendom and disparage the Sacraments instituted by our Blessed Lord. No doubt the fault of these failures must be, to a great extent, laid at the door of the Church. As it is now, so it was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There were things in the Church which were quite intolerable to earnest men. Besides the obvious scandals which we have already noticed, there was a false sacerdotalism prevalent, which was a real foe to Christian liberty. The priests, instead of being representative of the people before God, as was and is their rightful position, leading men to God, officers in the great army battling against sin, approaching God at the head of the congregation in worship and sacrifice, had become substitutes for the people, doing things instead of them, separated from them in intention and ideal, carrying on an elaborate external ceremonial in which the congregation could take little intelligent interest. This was due partly, no doubt, to the apathy and indolence of men who were quite ready to have their “religion” done for them, and quite unready to let it interfere with their every-day conduct.

So also the theologians were creating an atmosphere of deadly unreality in respect of Christian doctrine. The intellectual men felt them to be narrow and one-sided, the enthusiasts felt them to be damping and chilly. It is not at all surprising that a revolt ensued.

But the heretics of that age were not all of the same kind. The Waldenses were at first within the Church, and were only evicted by force of circumstances. They were sincere moral reformers, attacking definite moral evils. The Cathari, on the other hand, made a vigorous onslaught on Church doctrine. They taught the Manichean doctrine of Eastern mystics, that matter is the source of all evil. They practised a false asceticism, renouncing marriage and advocating suicide. Some of them starved themselves to death. “Nothing,” says M. Sabatier, “could better prove the disturbance of thought at this epoch than that resurrection of Manicheism. To what a depth of lassitude and folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism, Mazdeism, and Gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it!”!

Against this rising tide of heresy it was the

THE TIMES OF FRANCIS 29

Pope Innocent III.’s wish to turn the zeal of the Crusaders. The Crusades had exercised a great effect upon the Church. In spite of much evil, such as cruelty and immorality, connected with them, they had drawn Christians together in a wonderful way, and caused them to act in concert in defence of the Holy Places. Could this same corporate activity be directed against heresy? Heresy was threatening to break up the unity of the Church, and the Pope was bent on using every available means to stamp it out. Doctor Creighton says that from the time of Innocent the duty of seeking out heretics and punishing them became part of a bishop’s duty.1

But we are concerned with the history of these heretics only as showing us the state of religious turmoil into which Francis stepped with his message of peace and good-will. The significance of Francis lies in this: He met these troubles in a different way to any one else. Unlike the Waldenses, he remained firm in his obedience to the Church, while attacking quite as vigorously as they the corruption of the clergy. Unlike the Pope and the Crusaders, he proposed to use no force of earthly weapons with which to combat false teaching. Unlike the Cathari, he indulged in no theological strife of words or doctrines, Unlike all others, save Jesus his Master, he went out armed only with the shield of Faith in God and