St. Francis of Assisi : his times, life and work : lectures delivered in substance in the Ladye chapel of Worcester cathedral in the Lent of 1896

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THE VALUE OF A STUDY OF ST. FRANCIS e ° ° EXTERNAL HISTORY OF THE TIMES OF ST. FRANCIS e INTERNAL HISTORY OF THE TIMES OF ST. FRANCIS ° THE EARLY DAYS OF ST. FRANCIS . . . . . THE BEGINNING OF THE ORDER AND THE ESTABLISH-

MENT OF THE RULE E ° e ° . ° THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLY FRANCISCANS . ° THE EARLY MISSIONARY EFFORTS OF THE FRANCISCANS. SOME IMPORTANT INCIDENTS IN EARLY FRANCISCAN

THE NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF

Chapter I

THE lives of the Saints are of high value as a spiritual study. Such things may be treated mainly as _ history. In turning our attention to them, it will, I need hardly say, be necessary to keep strictly to history ; for truth is, and it alone can be, the foundation for an edifying study. There is no possibility of real and permanent edification from what is not based upon truth. Such lives, however, may also be examined philosophically. The student of human nature cannot fail to be interested in the lives, actions, motives, tendencies of remarkable men. This is a scientific interest—right and useful so far as it goes, and especially in harmony with the temper of our times. There is, however, another, perhaps a nobler, method of examining the lives of eminent servants of God. We may treat them devotionally. This includes the others. It must be based upon really historical grounds; it must call into play the philosophical faculty of discriminating, of comparing things and noticing differences, but it ought to add to these an illumination and a glow. After all, it is only the eye of love, directed by philosophical accuracy, and using the light of historical truth, which can ever hope to see the deepest things as they are. “He who wills to do His will”—z.e., he who A truly loves God—“ shall know.” And then such a study as this ought to have a strictly practical purpose ; it ought to help us in falling in with God’s will, and gathering some fresh vigour for our own souls to the glory of God.

Premising this, it is worth our while to dwell upon the special spiritual value of the attentive study of the life of any great saint, especially in the less remote ages of the Church’s history. “Things seen are greater than things heard.” In such lives truth is not merely written, it is shown. At the best of times it is not easy to realise the truth of things; even when we know that there is such truth, we are helped by the study of the actual lives of those who have lived the truth, to bring it home to ourselves. The strange and sacred and lofty sayings of our Lord in the Gospels are wont to pass across our minds as sound and nothing more until we see them acted out, in ways most marvellous, and with a literalness which is startling, in the lives of men like, yet so unlike, ourselves.

Then again, we see—if one May Say so reverently—an idea of God’s own, well carried out. God is a great artist ; He works at man. Unlike the sculptor who manipulates the marble, or the painter who works on the canvas, His material—man—is not unable to resist. He works lovingly and skilfully, but he requires the co-operation of the object of His effort. This shows us the moral value of human biography and of the study of human character. The saints are those who have most perfectly answered to God’s call and the action of His grace, and so each represents some ideal in the Eternal Mind, carried out, as far as can be in this life, to approximate perfection. A saint has been called “the best of his kind.” He is the highest example we know of, of some special thought of God, he exhibits in life some of those lines of perfection, all of which meet in Christ.

In view of this, there are some special advantages in dwelling on such a saint as St. Francis. We Englishmen have drifted unconsciously into the habit of half believing that the grace of God is confined to the New Testament. Here in England most people of any religious feeling will agree that St. Paul, St. John, St. Peter were saints, that God could use them as His special messengers, and employ them as means for advancing His kingdom, and exercising His (as we call them) miraculous powers. With saints in other times it is quite another question. We have an irrational and illogical and unphilosophical idea that miracles, apart from the New Testament, cannot be true, and that great sanctity can nowhere else be found but among the immediate followers of our Lord. It is not unimportant to disabuse our minds of this baseless notion, because by doing so, we learn to open our hearts to God’s grace and teaching, and to remember that He is the same God now as ever, and, if anything, more powerful in action since the Church, wide and far, has received, in increasing degree, the life of the second Adam.

And further, attention to the life of a great saint opens to us a world of pathetic interest and striking beauty. Glorious things lie around us in the spiritual world if we have eyes to see. This present world, however, is close and strong and pressing, and the spiritual eye is clouded by its dust. Nowand again we are awakened and startled to find what is the real beauty of goodness. We measure things by the low standards of the customary and the commonplace, until there flashes upon us the high standard of the saints. In some slight measure to realise the greatness and beauty of a true servant of God, is to make us ashamed of our earthly views and self-seeking ways, and often merely conventional forms of religion.

And more than that: it is often from the study of such characters that we learn how to interpret ourselves to ourselves, and rightly to direct our aims. Before each soul among us lies eternity. Overpowering and soul-subduing are its possibilities. Around us are the things of time. Innumerable are our changing moods and feelings as we are acted upon by such facts. When we look closely at a great life we learn the need of loyalty to the Unseen. We are helped to look with penetrating glance beyond the shadows, and to have some genuine sense of the imperial power of truth, of the soundness of duty, of the solemnity of our destiny. We are comforted, strengthened, guided by the thought that men’s lives are made for doing and suffering so as to form character and please God, and that our supreme calling is to do God’s” will, to bear nobly and humbly what He lays upon us, and to enter into and imitate and reproduce in life His sublime charity

IJ

We do well also to remember that there are special points of interest, peculiar to himself, which recommend to us the study of the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

(1) He is a thoroughly representative character. He lived in a transition period, and he had completely caught the spirit of the age. The age was one of constant war, unsettlement, and trouble, and at the same time two facts are particularly prominent :

(a) There was a growing effort, especially in Italy and France, for commerce. Francis’ own father was a not unimportant merchant, and he was but one of many who traded with France. Side by side with this there were very deep poverty and great suffering amongst the poor. If the middle class was beginning to be called into existence, the poor were still the large majority representing extreme misery. Francis lived to teach men the responsibility of those who possess wealth, and also the blessing belonging to poverty nobly borne. To this question we shall have, of course, to return more particularly again.

(b) It was the age of chivalry and poetry. In France, in Germany, in Sicily, and among the smaller Italian States there was a growing enthusiasm for the poetry of the time. Displays of chivalry were everywhere. The jongleurs, singers, improvvisatori, were welcomed by the people, by all classes. They sang of love and courage and noble deeds, of the legends of Arthur and Charlemagne. Whatever dark side there was in all this—as in all human things—there was a bright side. They were pioneers of progress ; they roused enthusiasm ; they lifted men out of the commonplace into an ideal world, and awakened many of the young to an ambition to

** Do noble things, not dream them all day long.”

For poetry, when society is young, is not merely a source of pleasure ; it is a power for elevating and purifying the moral nature. It has been truly pointed out* that four of the greatest troubadours, Bernard de Ventadour, Cadenet, Raimbaud de Vaqueras, Pierre Vidal, visited Italy at a time when Francis was young, and, by their stay there, gave a considerable impetus to the taste of the time. Francis not only threw himself, as we shall see, with characteristic energy into this movement in his early youth, but the movement affected him. His chivalrous devotion to God, his pure and lofty poetic feeling— affected by his age—acted in turn upon it, and moved men in the highest of all matters, in religion, because he touched the quick of his century. He was a man of the time. ' (2) Francis is a remarkable figure also as a great reformer. The feudal system was then in full force in Europe. Land could only be held by a system of graduated subordination. Freedom, consequently, was scarcely known ; wars and quarrels were numerous, and the people who might be inclined to peace were dragged perforce into the quarrels of their superiors. The yoke of feudalism sat heavily on the people. In Italy in some respects it was heavier than in France, for feudalism in Italy came from Germany, and feudal oppression was weightier in Germany then, and for long after, than in France. But already resistance showed itself in Italy. The serfs were denominated Minori in Italy and especially in Umbria. Gradually they loosened the yoke. They were persevering in commercial enterprise and efforts of industry. They acquired some wealth. Then they united together and resisted oppression.

Many centuries were to elapse before men realised the fact that people did not exist for the benefit of govern-

* Bibliothtque de V Ecole des Chartes, tom. iv. Pp. 30.

ments, but governments for the benefit of the people ; more still before it was fully felt that the people had a right to govern themselves in any well-ordered State. Long reaches of time were to pass before the principles which now guide civilised communities were to have a hold upon men generally, before it would be felt that nations and races were powers to be taken into account, and that individual liberty is a necessary condition of well-being and development. Such principles have to be learned by some men still. Fallen nature is apt to recur to the forms which are attractive to human selfishness, and even where—as for the most part in the western nations—such principles are generally accepted, there is a danger, from desire for power and pride of place or wealth, that they may be often violated. Still such principles are now generally accepted and, broadly speaking, acted upon.

Not so in St. Francis’ days either in Church or State. Reforms have seldom come from the higher clergy. Where bishops have been reformers they have usually been swept into a current, often against their wills. They have, not unnaturally, been embodiments of principles of stability, rather than of reform. In the twelfth century bishops and abbots were themselves great lords with multitudes of vassals, to the serious injury of their spiritual usefulness. Here was astereotyped system of oppression. There was, on the one hand, poverty and suffering, on the other hand, wealth and selfishness. The feudal system had done its work in checking anarchy, but it had introduced vast worldliness into the Church. A worldly spirit had come from great power, great dignity, great wealth. This led to scandals. Men’s minds had revolted against it. Effortshad been made. St. Bernard had warned and threatened, and had set the example of an effort to return to Christian simplicity of lifeand conduct. But he passed away, affecting only a comparatively small number. The community of devout men called Humuliants was formed near Milan to foster the same spirit, but their influence was local rather than world-wide. As early as the earliest days of the century, Arnold of Brescia had moved men, especially in Lombardy, by his somewhat extreme denunciations of riches, particularly among the clergy. The “ Poor men of Lyons,” or Waldenses, took the same line and moved men’s hearts, though alas! they fell into exaggeration and religious error. The Albigenses or Cathari gained great popularity by their bold attack upon luxury and worldliness in the Church. They got a strong grip both in France, Germany, and Italy, but unfortunately, like many socialistic reformers, they ran into violence and extremes and then into deadly Manichzan heresy. Attempts such as these were made. They showed the reality of the evil and the need of reform. But they failed in great measure from want of force or want of balance.

It was otherwise with St. Francis. He set himself to correct the terrible evils before his eyes. He succeeded beyond imagination because of his method and his spirit. Some men seeing a state of things around them which needs reform, allow themselves to fret and fume, to be irritated and angry at all that they find threatening or baffling in the facts and conditions of their life. They are impatient. They waste their energies in scorn and temper. They often lose thereby the opportunity of doing much good, by their irritability and headstrong indignation, even though it be just, and against what is wrong. There is another way. It was the way of

Francis. He had boundless patience, boundless selfcommand, inflexible purpose. He loved God as revealed in Christ Jesus, with a tender, deep, and _ passionate emotion. In consequence, he loved his fellow creatures. He embraced what may now appear an extreme form of humiliation and poverty ; but it was probably what was needed by his age. By his gentleness, courage, thoroughness of example, still more than by his genius, he alleviated the hard lot of the oppressed, and exercised a vast influence in undermining the evil principles which made that lot unbearable. He was a great social reformer. To this again we must return more particularly. And no less was he a religious revivalist. When men talk of “the Ages of Faith,” they forget the deepening and spreading infidelity in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Beside the constant danger to faith to be found in the corrupt heart of man and the self-sufficiency so dear to his fallen nature, there were other reasons. One is to be found in the nearer intercourse with the East, arising from the Crusades, and consequently the slackening of moral ties; another in the dissensions of the Schools, where, in some instances, divine truth came to be handled intellectually alone, and without the reverent and spiritual temper necessary in touching the deep things of revelation, and maintained by the great and devout masters of _ theology. One way and another, practical irreligiousness "based upon secret unbelief had laid hold on the unsettled society of the time. The movement of St. Francis was a strong blow struck for the Christian religion. The great feudal nobles, the men of the town as well as the suffering poor, wakened up to feel that the Christianity which produced such a life and such teaching, was still the religion by which men might well live and die.

1Ke) St, FRANCIS OF ASSISI

It will be necessary afterwards to draw attention, in some slight degree, to the benefits bestowed by his work on our own country, and generally on civil society, by increasing in men’s minds a respect for justice and a love of peace : we shall have, in considering his career, to remember, in due course, the greatness of his influence upon literature and art, but here and now it is well to dwell upon one other reason for giving our best attention to his life and work besides those already mentioned.

(3) For St. Francis may well be studied because of an invaluable heritage he has bestowed upon the Christian Church in what may be called “the Franciscan spirit.” Christianity is so large a thing that in it are included many forms of thought, and many expressions of beauty. Christians, and especially saintly Christians, have consequently had special lines of devotion. Different parts of God’s great work for his creatures have made appeal to different characters and moulds of mind. It is not that great and saintly men have lost sight of the broad and necessary truths of the Faith, but that some of those truths have deeply and directly touched them in a special degree, and formed their form of devotion. When we remember this, we see at once the meaning of “the Franciscan spirit.” To some it may fairly seem the most perfect representation in poor humanity ever known of that wonderful vision of beauty and goodness which the Apostle calls “the mind of Christ.’ God’s grace acts upon original character. In Francis that character is very marked. We cannot study his life with any care without being impressed with certain facts about him. He was by nature, as a mere lad, gifted with indomitable courage. He had to the end that sweet and deep simplicity and truth which, even when men have it young, is so often blurred

THE VALUE OF A STUDY OF ST. FRANCIS II and corrupted by the world. In his gayest days of worldly popularity, when “in the swim’—as we should say— with his light-hearted, thoughtless companions, he was never carried off his feet by it. He was never a victim to conventionality. He showed that extraordinary courage and simplicity which alone can withstand the allurements of a strong though unreal “world.” This is to be noted. In those years of solemn changes, when men pass from childhood to manhood, how often, alas! here is the point of failure. Before now, anxious and older guides have had to note, with tears in their hearts, how the bright boy who left them courageous and with a noble simplicity, has returned from school—or, still more, from the university—a sad reproduction of the blasé man of the world ; all the real courage and winning transparency of character shadowed, if not gone, by submission to the imperious foolishness of an insolent and low-minded “world.” In his trial—and it is one of the greatest, especially to one so winning, so fascinating as he was— Francis stood his ground. For besides, in him (when once really convinced) there was—a fine inheritance, in part, from his father—an inflexible purpose. Once truly set upon an object which commended itself as worthy, no power could break that iron will.

Men of strong will, however, are often severe, inconsiderate, masterful, hectoring. Side by side with all this, there was a vein of sunshine—that is the only way to describe it—which ran through his entire life and work. He had a horror of sadness, as a real enemy to good, although never was a soul more filled with penitential sorrow. He was bright as a spring morning where the sun rises above the mountains without a fleck of cloud. There was a sweet amiability about him which attracted his young companions in “the Courts of Love” at Assisi, and made him a power for purity and chivalry long before his conversion. He was—we feel it as we read his biographies—utterly sincere. No sort of pretence could find a place in this strong, sunny nature. Then there was his instinct for poetry, his love of music, his high thoughts about common things. He was intensely human: loving nature, loving his fellow - creatures, gracious and courteous and bright, so that all men who knew him in his early days, and before God’s finger touched him for his higher calling, felt the spell of that sweet, strong, bright personality—never leading downwards, always helping men to put their feet on the track of the dawn.

When divine grace touched such a character in a special way, the result was sure to be of singular loveliness. Such a man, under the influence of grace, could be trusted to do nothing by halves, and to do nothing with the unbalanced temper of ordinary men. And so it was. Once turned to God, he was turned with his whole soul. He loved God with passionate intensity. He realised, as man hardly realised before, the meaning, the sorrow, the awfulness, the tenderness of the Cross of Christ. A deep, personal, tender, absolute devotion “to Jesus Christ and Him crucified” was the mark of his life. Hence his generous, tender love for all that the Eternal Word had deigned to think of—the birds, the breezes, the flowers, the sunsets, the dawns; above all, man, fallen and redeemed man, in all his misery, in all his opportunity, in all his splendid destiny, man in every rank and place, simply as man, but above all the miserable, the suffering, the poor. Everywhere he saw Jesus Christ and loved Him.

And what was the consequence ? This. There have been great and serious Christians who have been so impressed with the awfulness of life—its miseries, its failures, its tragic situations—that, while they have been noble examples and bracing teachers, they have seemed to impress and warn, but give us no “comfort of the Gospel.” They are noble, they are helpful, they have their place. Such was Pascal, such (though scarcely Christian) has been poor Amiel. One thing they want utterly. There is one very necessary “fruit of the spirit”—needed, as I think, especially for us gloomstricken, half-puritan Englishmen, needed especially in these times—which many great servants of God had not, which Francis had: the grace of brightness, the grace of joy. No man had passed through more terrible struggles of soul than he. No man had more utterly renounced all that human nature loves. No man had more than he to go on, all his life, with self-denial, disappointment, annoyance, trial, suffering to the end, yet no one heard a word of impatience from his lips, or a sound of anger on his tongue. With his life of fierce self-conquest and suffering he was, to all who came near him, a power of sunny sweetness, of bright and breezy delight, inspiring them to feel the exhilarating joy of being a Christian, the sweetness, the poetry, the comfort, the exaltation of trying truly to follow Jesus Christ.

Like all great saints Francis had keen intelligence, ready tact, large common sense. Lesser Christians, having “shortened thought,” and being unbalanced, often dias piayethe fool... The saints never do. Their greatest gift, perhaps—certainly that of Francis—is common sense. Such a character, so exalted, so purified and effecting so mighty a work for his age, was sure to leave behind him a tone and temper as an invaluable heritage. And so he did. This is what I venture to call “the Franciscan spirit.”

It has been often said that many men are strong, but their very strength may lead them to be hard, and then unsympathetic ; that many men are sympathetic and tender, but then they are apt to verge upon weakness ; that many men are clear and decisive in their grip of truth, but their very decisiveness may lead them to be narrow, to close their eyes to the peculiar conditions and terrible contingencies which hover around mortal lives ; that others are broad and generous enough, but then they are misty and vague, they lose the sense of definite truth and are latitudinarian—which means helpless dreaming— not Catholic—which means exact but large.

From Francis there spread among his fellow men, and then among the men of his time, a spirit at once strong and tender—tender as a loving woman, strong as an indomitable force ; a spirit stern, exact, definite, playing no tricks with truth, nor emptying it of its meaning by vague generalisations ; and also broad and generous and loving, with large considerateness, and with tender affectionateness for all that was human, even though misguided and weak. A divine spirit! A temper, making men feel the sweetness of Christianity and the beauty of the love of God, and hence making them hate iniquity as men hate darkness and death and her daughters, by feeling the sweetness of life, where the breezes are fresh, and the flowers are out, and the birds are singing in the breaking of the morning on the mountains when spring has come.

The Franciscan spirit did untold work for the saving of souls, for the advance of religion, for the progress of civilisation, for the amelioration of the sad lot of sufferers in the society of the time.

If, as centuries rolled on, some Franciscans failed in their mission, and were unworthy of their calling—as all human institutions are doomed in time to some measure of failure—it was because they lost hold of the spirit of their founder, and where they have not failed, it is in proportion to the hold they have upon that spirit, so akin to “the mind of Christ.”

IT]

If the life of this saint be important for these and other reasons, an important question remains to be answered before one can study that life itself, viz., what are the sources of our knowledge ?

Fortunately for us, there are few saints so far removed from our own time as St. Francis, of whose lives and actions we possess such authentic details.

There are three principal sources of our knowledge as to St. Francis.

(1) There is first the life by Thomas of Celano, a brother of the Order, much esteemed for his saintliness At Celano his festival is, I believe, still observed. At Tagliacozzo, where he died, his relics are still venerated, and the Franciscan Order treat him as one of the “ Blessed.” He knew St. Francis intimately, and wrote his life, by order of Pope Gregory IX., a little more than a year after the saint’s death. This life was finished before the year 1230 A.D. It was called, on account of the Pope’s request for its composition, “The Legend of Gregory IX.”

Some years later, by request of the Provincials of the the Order, Thomas wrote a fresh life. In it he relates more of the saint’s youthful years, and then collects all the accounts of him which he had not gathered at the time of the composition of his earlier work. This went by the name of “ The Second Life of St. Francis.”

Of the first life an abridgment was made by John of Ceperano, who was not himself a member of the Order.* Also a translation into hexameter verse was made by, not improbably, a brother of the Order whose name is uncertain, but who has done his work well, and has shown great accuracy as to the dates connected with the saint's life.+ These are the first sources of our knowledge.

(2) A new life was undertaken. This was done at the request of the General Chapter of Genoa in 1244. Three of the early companions of St. Francis, Rufinus, Angelo Tancredi, and Leo were appointed to do the work, and especially to supply the omissions as to St. Francis’ early days found in Celano’s life. This life, then, chiefly touches the early years ; it includes anecdotes not noted before, and it is strict in its chronology. This was called the “Life by the Tres Socii,” and is the second important source of our knowledge.t

It was an epoch in the Franciscan Order, when St. Bonaventura was elected General in 1257. In 1260, at the request of the brethren, he undertook his life of the founder, which was meant to be, and for long held to be, the authoritative biography. He had himself known St. Francis intimately, and it was believed that it was by a miracle worked by St. Francis that he had been

* Parts are quoted in the Acta Sanctorum.

+ Wadding believed that the author was an Englishman. There is some evidence, since forthcoming, that this is notso. Theauthorship is doubtful.

Probably the work was done by one of the Order. + This is to be found in the Acta Sanctorum.

saved from death at the age of four years. His life of St. Francis was published in 1263, and is known as “The New Legend.” St. Bonaventura, in the first part, collects with care information unpublished before. This gives real value to this part of his work. In the second part he merely abridges and alters Thomas of Celano, and the earlier biographies. St. Bonaventura deliberately suppresses the facts as to the trouble St. Francis suffered from the more lax members of the brotherhood as to the practice of poverty. He probably felt it more prudent, as he was endeavouring himself, as General, to arrange and bring into harmony the two extreme parties, not to refer to the question in “the Life.” This suppression, however desirable for edification at the moment, renders the second part of his work less valuable as history. This “New Legend” now became the accredited history of the life of the founder. This is our third source of knowledge.