Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 33

At the close of his interviews with Francis and Dominic, he communicated to them some of these thoughts, asking their advice as to the elevation of their friars to prelatures. There was a pious contest between the two saints as to which should answer first. Finally, Dominic said simply that he should prefer to see his companions remain as they were. In his turn, Francis showed that the very name of his inst.i.tute made the thing impossible. "If my friars have been called _Minores_," he said, "it is not that they may become _Majores_. If you desire that they become fruitful in the Church of G.o.d, leave them alone, and keep them in the estate into which G.o.d has called them. I pray you, father, do not so act that their poverty shall become a motive for pride, nor elevate them to prelatures which would move them to insolence toward others."[14]

The ecclesiastical policy followed by the popes was destined to render this counsel of the two founders wholly useless.[15]

Francis and Dominic parted, never again to meet. The _Master_ of the Preaching Friars shortly after set out for Bologna, where he died on August 6th following, and Francis returned to Portiuncula, where Pietro di Catana had just died (March 10, 1221). He was replaced at the head of the Order by Brother Elias. Ugolini was doubtless not without influence in this choice.

Detained by his functions of legate, he could not be present at the Whitsunday chapter (May 30, 1221).[16] He was represented there by Cardinal Reynerio,[17] who came accompanied by several bishops and by monks of various orders.[18] About three thousand friars were there a.s.sembled, but so great was the eagerness of the people of the neighborhood to bring provisions, that after a session of seven days they were obliged to remain two days longer to eat up all that had been brought. The sessions were presided over by Brother Elias, Francis sitting at his feet and pulling at his robe when there was anything that he wished to have put before the Brothers.

Brother Giordani di Giano, who was present, has preserved for us all these details and that of the setting out of a group of friars for Germany. They were placed under the direction of Caesar of Speyer, whose mission succeeded beyond all expectation. Eighteen months after, when he returned to Italy, consumed with the desire to see St. Francis again, the cities of Wurzburg, Mayence, Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Cologne, Salzburg, and Ratisbon had become Franciscan centres, from whence the new ideas were radiating into all Southern Germany.

The foundation of the Tertiaries, or Third Order, generally in the oldest doc.u.ments called Brotherhood of Penitence, is usually fixed as occurring in the year 1221; but we have already seen that this date is much too recent, or rather that it is impossible to fix any date, for what was later called, quite arbitrarily, the Third Order is evidently contemporary with the First.[19]

Francis and his companions desired to be the apostles of their time; but they, no more than the apostles of Jesus, desired to have all men enter their a.s.sociation, which was necessarily somewhat restricted, and which, according to the gospel saying, was meant to be the leaven of the rest of humanity. In consequence, their life was literally the _apostolic life_, but the ideal which they preached was the _evangelical life_, such as Jesus had preached it.

St. Francis no more condemned the family or property than Jesus did; he simply saw in them ties from which the _apostle_, and the apostle alone, needs to be free.

If before long sickly minds fancied that they interpreted his thought in making the union of the s.e.xes an evil, and all that concerns the physical activity of man a fall; if unbalanced spirits borrowed the authority of his name to escape from all duty; if married persons condemned themselves to the senseless martyrdom of virginity, he should certainly not be made responsible. These traces of an unnatural asceticism come from the dualist ideas of the Catharists, and not from the inspired poet who sang nature and her fecundity, who made nests for doves, inviting them to multiply under the watch of G.o.d, and who imposed manual labor on his friars as a sacred duty.

The bases of the corporation of the _Brothers and Sisters of Penitence_ were very simple. Francis gave no new doctrine to the world; what was new in his message was wholly in his love, in his direct call to the evangelical life, to an ideal of moral vigor, of labor, and of love.

Naturally, there were soon found men who did not understand this true and simple beauty; they fell into observances and devotions, imitated, while living in the world, the life of the cloister to which for one reason or another they were not able to retire; but it would be unjust to picture to ourselves the _Brothers of Penitence_ as modelled after them.

Did they receive a Rule from St. Francis? It is impossible to say. The one which was given[20] them in 1289 by Pope Nicholas IV. is simply the recasting and amalgamation of all the rules of lay fraternities which existed at the end of the thirteenth century. To attribute this doc.u.ment to Francis is nothing less than the placing in a new building of certain venerated stones from an ancient edifice. It is a matter of facade and ornamentation, nothing more.

Notwithstanding this absence of any Rule emanating from Francis himself, it is clear enough what, in his estimation, this a.s.sociation ought to be. The Gospel, with its counsels and examples, was to be its true Rule.

The great innovation designed by the Third Order was concord; this fraternity was a union of peace, and it brought to astonished Europe a new truce of G.o.d. Whether the absolute refusal to carry arms[21] was an idea wholly chimerical and ephemeral, the doc.u.ments are there to prove, but it is a fine thing to have had the power to bring it about for a few years.

The second essential obligation of the Brothers of Penitence appears to have been that of reducing their wants so far as possible, and while preserving their fortunes to distribute to the poor at proper intervals the free portion of the revenue after contenting themselves with the strictly necessary.[22]

To do with joy the duties of their calling; to give a holy inspiration to the slightest actions; to find in the infinitely littles of existence, things apparently the most commonplace, parts of a divine work; to keep pure from all debasing interest; to use things as not possessing them, like the servants in the parable who would soon have to give account of the talents confided to them; to close their hearts to hatred, to open them wide to the poor, the sick, to all abandoned ones, such were the other essential duties of the Brothers and Sisters of Penitence.

To lead them into this royal road of liberty, love, and responsibility, Francis sometimes appealed to the terrors of h.e.l.l and the joys of paradise, but interested love was so little a part of his nature that these considerations and others of the same kind occupy an entirely secondary place in those of his writings which remain, as also in his biographies.

For him the gospel life is natural to the soul. Whoever comes to know it will prefer it; it has no more need to be proved than the outer air and the light. It needs only to lead prisoners to it, for them to lose all desire to return to the dungeons of avarice, hatred, or frivolity.

Francis and his true disciples make the painful ascent of the mountain heights, impelled solely, but irresistibly, by the inner voice. The only foreign aid which they accept is the memory of Jesus, going before them upon these heights and mysteriously living again before their eyes in the sacrament of the eucharist.

The letter to all Christians in which these thoughts break forth is a living souvenir of St. Francis's teachings to the Tertiaries.

To represent these latter to ourselves in a perfectly concrete form we may resort to the legend of St. Lucchesio, whom tradition makes the first Brother of Penitence.[23]

A native of a little city of Tuscany he quitted it to avoid its political enmities, and established himself at Poggibonsi, not far from Sienna, where he continued to trade in grain. Already rich, it was not difficult for him to buy up all the wheat, and, selling it in a time of scarcity, realize enormous profits. But soon overcome by Francis's preaching, he took himself to task, distributed all his superfluity to the poor, and kept nothing but his house with a small garden and one a.s.s.

From that time he was to be seen devoting himself to the cultivation of this bit of ground, and making of his house a sort of hostelry whither the poor and the sick came in swarms. He not only welcomed them, but he sought them out, even to the malaria-infected Maremma, often returning with a sick man astride on his back and preceded by his a.s.s bearing a similar burden. The resources of the garden were necessarily very limited; when there was no other way, Lucchesio took a wallet and went from door to door asking alms, but most of the time this was needless, for his poor guests, seeing him so diligent and so good, were better satisfied with a few poor vegetables from the garden shared with him than with the most copious repast. In the presence of their benefactor, so joyful in his dest.i.tution, they forgot their own poverty, and the habitual murmurs of these wretches were transformed into outbursts of admiration and grat.i.tude.

Conversion had not killed in him all family ties; Bona Donna, his wife, became his best co-laborer, and when in 1260 he saw her gradually fading away his grief was too deep to be endured. "You know, dear companion,"

he said to her when she had received the last sacraments, "how much we have loved one another while we could serve G.o.d together; why should we not remain united until we depart to the ineffable joy? Wait for me. I also will receive the sacraments, and go to heaven with you."

So he spoke, and called back the priest to administer them to him. Then after holding the hands of his dying companion, comforting her with gentle words, when he saw that her soul was gone he made over her the sign of the cross, stretched himself beside her, and calling with love upon Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, he fell asleep for eternity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Text in _Firmamentum_, 10; _Spec._, 189; _Spec._, Morin.

Tract., iii., 2b. M. Muller (_Anfange_) has made a study of the Rule of 1221 which is a masterpiece of _exegetical scent_.

Nevertheless if he had more carefully collated the different texts he would have arrived at still more striking results, thanks to the variants which he would have been able to establish. I cite a single example.

Text _Firm_.--Wadding, adopted by Mr. M.

_Omnes fratres ubicunque sunt vel vadunt, caveant sibi a malo visu et frequentia mulierum et nullus c.u.m eis consilietur solus. Sacerdos honeste loquatur c.u.m eis dando penitentiam vel aliud spirituale consilium._

Text of the _Speculum_, 189 ff.

_Omnes fratres ubicunque sunt et vadunt caveant se a malo visu et frequentia mulierum et nullus c.u.m eis concilietur aut per viam vadat solus aut ad mensam in una paropside comedat. (!!) Sacerdos honeste loquatur c.u.m eis dando ...

etc._

This pa.s.sage is sufficient to show the superiority of the text of the Speculum, which is to be preferred also in other respects, but this is not the place for entering into these details. It is evident that the phrase in which we see the earliest friars sometimes sharing the repast of the sisters and eating from their porringer is not a later interpolation.

[2] _Tribul._, 12b; _Spec._, 54b; _Arbor._ V., 3; _Spec._, 8b.

[3] Cf. _cap._ 17 and 21.

[4] 2 Cel., 3, 136.

[5] See below, p. 354, text in the _Firmamentum_, 19 ff.; _Speculum_, Morin, tract. iii., 214a ff.; cf. _Conform._, 137 ff.

[6] _c.u.m facit (subditus) voluntatem (praelati) dummodo benefacit vera obedientia est. Admon._, iii.; _Conform._, 139_a_, 2.--_Si vero praelatus subdito aliquid contra animam praecipiat licet ei non obediat tamen ipsum non dimittat._, Ibid.--_Nullus tenetur ad obedientiam in eo ubi committ.i.tus delictum vel peccatum.

Epist._, ii.

[7] 2 Cel., 3, 89; _Spec._, 29b; _Conform._, 176b, 1; Bon., 77.

[8] _Per caritatem spiritus voluntarii serviant et obediant invicem. Et haec est vera et sancta obedientia. Reg._, 1221, v.

[9] _Tribul._, Laur. MS., 14b; _Spec._, 125a; _Conform._, 107b, 1; 184b, 1.

[10] Wadding gives it (_Epist._ xvi.), after the autograph preserved in the treasury of the Conventuals of Spoleto. The authenticity of this piece is evident.

[11] This plural, which perplexed Wadding, shows plainly that Brother Leo had spoken in the name of a group.

[12] This date for the new communications between them seems incontestable, though it has never been proposed; in fact, we are only concerned to find a time when all three could have met at Rome (2 Cel., 3, 86; _Spec._, 27a), between December 22, 1216 (the approbation of the Dominicans), and August 6, 1221 (death of Dominic). Only two periods are possible: the early months of 1218 (Potthast, 5739 and 5747) and the winter of 1220-1221. At any other time one of the three was absent from Rome.

On the other hand we know that Ugolini was in Rome in the winter of 1220-1221 (Huillard-Breholles, _Hist. dipl._, ii., pp. 48, 123, 142. Cf. Potthast, 6589).--For Dominic see A. SS., Aug., vol. i., p. 503. The later date is imperative because Ugolini could not offer prelatures to the Brothers Minor before their explicit approbation (June 11, 1219), and this offer had no meaning with regard to the Dominicans until after the definitive establishment of their Order.

[13] See the imperial letters of February 10, 1221; Huillard-Breholles, vol. ii., pp. 122-127.

[14] 2 Cel., 3, 86; Bon., 78; _Spec._, 27b.

[15] Vide K. Eubel: _Die Bischofe, Cardinale und Papste aus dem Minoritenorden bis_ 1305, 8vo, 1889.

[16] He was in Northern Italy. Vide _Registri: Doc._, 17-28.