Life of St. Francis of Assisi Part 47

d'A._

[5] _Conform._ (Milan, 1510), 202b, 2s. For that matter it is correct that Diola, in the _Croniche degli ordini inst.i.tuti da S. Francisco_ (Venice, 1606, 3 vols. 4to), translated after the Castilian version of the work composed in Portuguese by Mark of Lisbon, was foolish enough to render into Italian this translation of a translation.

[6] See pages 333 ff.

I

ST. FRANCIS'S WORKS

The writings of St. Francis[1] are a.s.suredly the best source of acquaintance with him; we can only be surprised to find them so neglected by most of his biographers. It is true that they give little information as to his life, and furnish neither dates nor facts,[2]

but they do better, they mark the stages of his thought and of his spiritual development. The legends give us Francis as he appeared, and by that very fact suffer in some degree the compulsion of circ.u.mstances; they are obliged to bend to the exigencies of his position as general of an Order approved by the Church, as miracle-worker, and as saint. His works, on the contrary, show us his very soul; each phrase has not only been thought, but lived; they bring us the Poverello's emotions, still alive and palpitating.

So, when in the writings of the Franciscans we find any utterance of their master, it unconsciously betrays itself, sounding out suddenly in a sweet, pure tone which penetrates to your very heart, awakening with a thrill a sprite that was sleeping there.

This bloom of love enduing St. Francis's words would be an admirable criterion of the authenticity of those opuscules which tradition attributes to him; but the work of testing is neither long nor difficult. If after his time injudicious attempts were here and there made to honor him with miracles which he did not perform, which he would not even have wished to perform, no attempt was ever made to burden his literary efforts with false or supposit.i.tious pieces.[3] The best proof of this is that it is not until Wadding--that is to say, until the seventeenth century--that we find the first and only serious attempt to collect these precious memorials. Several of them have been lost,[4]

but those which remain are enough to give us in some sort the refutation of the legends.

In these pages Francis gives himself to his readers, as long ago he gave himself to his companions; in each one of them a feeling, a cry of the heart, or an aspiration toward the Invisible is prolonged down to our own time.

Wadding thought it his duty to give a place in his collection to several suspicious pieces; more than this, instead of following the oldest ma.n.u.scripts that he had before him, he often permitted himself to be led astray by sixteenth-century writers whose smallest concern was to be critical and accurate. To avoid the tedious and entirely negative task to which it would be necessary to proceed if I took him for my starting-point I shall confine myself to a positive study of this question.

All the pieces which will be enumerated are found in his collection.

They are sometimes cut up in a singular way; but in proportion as each doc.u.ment is studied we shall find sufficient indications to enable us to make the necessary rectifications.

The archives of Sacro Convento of a.s.sisi[5] possess a ma.n.u.script whose importance is not to be overestimated. It has already been many times studied,[6] and bears the number 338.

It appears, however, that a very important detail of form has been overlooked. It is this: that No. 338 is not _one_ ma.n.u.script, but _a collection_ of ma.n.u.scripts of very different periods, which were put together because they were of very nearly the same size, and have been foliated in a peculiar manner.

This artificial character of the collection shows that each of the pieces which compose it needs to be examined by itself, and that it is impossible to say of it as a whole that it is of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century.

The part that interests us is perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous, is formed of three parchment books (fol. 12a-44b) and contains a part of Francis's works.

1. The Rule, definitively approved by Honorius III., November 20, 1223[7] (fol. 12a-16a).

2. St. Francis's Will[8] (fol. 16a-18a).

3. The Admonitions[9] (fol. 18a-23b).

4. The Letter to all Christians[10] (fol. 23b-28a).

5. The letter to all the members of the Order a.s.sembled in Chapter-general[11] (fol. 28a-31a).

6. Counsel to all clerics on the respect to be paid to the Eucharist[12] (fol., 31b-32b).

7. A very short piece preceded by the rubric: "Of the virtues which adorn the Virgin Mary and which ought to adorn the holy soul"[13] (fol.

32b).

8. The _Laudes Creaturarum_, or Canticle of the Sun[14] (fol. 33a).

9. A paraphrase of the _Pater_ introduced by the rubric: _Incipiunt laudes quas ordinavit. B. pater noster Franciscus et dicebat ipsas ad omnes horas diei et noctis et ante officium B. V. Mariae sic incipiens: Sanctissime Pater_[15] (fol. 34a).

10. The office of the Pa.s.sion (34b-43a). This office, where the psalms are replaced by several series of biblical verses, are designed to make him who repeats them follow, hour by hour, the emotions of the Crucified One from the evening of Holy Thursday.[16]

11. A rule for friars in retreat in hermitages[17] (fol. 43a-43b).

A glance over this list is enough to show that the works of Francis here collected are addressed to all the Brothers, or are a sort of encyclicals, which they are charged to pa.s.s on to those for whom they are destined.

The very order of these pieces shows us that we have in this ma.n.u.script the primitive library of the Brothers Minor, the collection of which each minister was to carry with him a copy. It was truly their viatic.u.m.

Matthew Paris tells us of his amazement at the sight of these foreign monks, clothed in patched tunics, and carrying their books in a sort of case suspended from their necks.[18]

The a.s.sisi ma.n.u.script was without doubt destined to this service; if it is silent on the subject of the journeys it has made, and of the Brothers to whom it has been a guide and an inspiration, it at least brings us, more than all the legends, into intimacy with Francis, makes us thrill in unison with that heart which never admitted a separation between joy, love, and poetry. As to the date of this ma.n.u.script, one must needs be a paleographer to determine. We have already found a hypothesis which, if well grounded, would carry it back to the neighborhood of 1240.[19]

Its contents seem to countenance this early date. In fact, it contains several pieces of which the _Manual of the Brother Minor_ very early rid itself.

Very soon they were content to have only the Rule to keep company with the breviary; sometimes they added the Will. But the other writings, if they did not fall entirely into neglect, ceased at least to be of daily usage.

Those of St. Francis's writings which are not of general interest or do not concern the Brothers naturally find no place in this collection. In this new category we must range the following doc.u.ments:

1. The Rule of 1221.[20]

2. The Rule of the Clarisses, which we no longer possess in its original form.[21]

3. A sort of special instruction for ministers-general.[22]

4. A letter to St. Clara.[23]

5. Another letter to the same.[24]

6. A letter to Brother Leo.[25]

7. A few prayers.[26]

8. The benediction of Brother Leo. The original autograph, which is preserved in the treasury of Sacro Convento, has been very well reproduced by heliograph.[27]

As to the two famous hymns _Amor de caritade_[28] and _In foco l'amor mi mise_,[29] they cannot be attributed to St. Francis, at least in their present form.

It belongs to M. Monaci and his numerous and learned emulators to throw light upon these delicate questions by publis.h.i.+ng in a scientific manner the earliest monuments of Italian poetry.

I have already spoken of several tracts of which a.s.sured traces have been found, though they themselves are lost. They are much more numerous than would at first be supposed. In the missionary zeal of the early years the Brothers would not concern themselves with collecting doc.u.ments. We do not write our memoirs in the fulness of our youth.

We must also remember that Portiuncula had neither archives nor library.

It was a chapel ten paces long, with a few huts gathered around it. The Order was ten years old before it had seen any other than a single book: a New Testament. The Brothers did not even keep this one. Francis, having nothing else, gave it to a poor woman who asked for alms, and when Pietro di Catania, his vicar, expressed his surprise at this prodigality: "Has she not given her two sons to the Order?" replied the master[30] quickly.