Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖

Their concord and their joyous semblances
The love, the wonder and the sweet regard
They made to be the cause of holy thought.

Dante: Paradiso, canto xi., verses 76-78. Longfellow's translation.

11. Amor factus ... castis eam, stringit amplexibus nec ad horam patitur non esse muritus. 2 Cel., 3, 1; cf. 1 Cel., 35; 51; 75; 2 Cel., 3, 128; 3 Soc., 15; 22; 33; 35; 50; Bon., 87; Fior. 13.

12. Bon., 93.—Prohibuit fratrem qui faciebat coquinam ne poneret legumina de sero in aqua calida quæ debebat dare fratribus ad manducandum die sequenti ut observaverint illud verbum Evangelii: Nolite solliciti esse de crastino. Spec., 15.

13. 2 Cel., 3, 50.

14. Cap., 21. Cf. Fior., I. consid., 18; 30; Conform., 103a, 2; 2 Cel., 3, 99; 100; 121. Vide Müller, Anfänge, p. 187.

15. Vide his Opera omnia postillis illustrata, by Father de la Haye, 1739, fo. For his life, Surius and Wadding arranged and mutilated the sources to which they had access; the Bollandists had only a legend of the fifteenth century. The Latin manuscript 14,363 of the Bibliothèque Nationale gives one which dates from the thirteenth. Very Rev. Father Hilary, of Paris: Saint Antoine de Padone, sa légende primitive, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Imprimerie Notre-Dame-des-Prés, 1890, 1 vol., 8vo. Cf. Legenda seu vita et miracula S. Antonii sæculo xiii concinnata ex cod. memb. antoniæ bibliothecæ a P.M. Antonio Maria Josa min. comv. Bologna, 1883, 1 vol., 8vo.

16. This evangelical character of his mission is brought out in relief by all his biographers. 1 Cel., 56; 84; 89; 3 Soc. 25; 34; 40; 43; 45; 48; 51; 57; 2 Cel., 3, 8; 50; 93.

17. Spec., 134; 2 Cel., 3, 128.

18. The Order was at first essentially lay (at the present time it is, so far as I know, the only one in which there is no difference of costume between laymen and priests). Vide Ehrle, Archiv., iii., p. 563. It is the influence of the friars from northern countries which has especially changed it in this matter. General Aymon, of Faversham (1240-1243), decided that laymen should be excluded from all charges; laicos ad officia inhabilitavit, quæ usque tunc ut clerici exercebant. (Chron. xxiv. gen. cod. Gadd. relig., 53, fo 110a). Among the early Brothers who refused ordination there were surely some who did so from humility, but this sentiment is not enough to explain all the cases. There were also with certain of them revolutionary desires and as it were a vague memory of the prophecies of Gioacchino di Fiore upon the age succeeding that of the priests: Fior., 27. Frate Pellegrino non volle mai andare come chierico, ma come laico, benche fassi molto litterato e grande decretalista. Cf. Conform., 71a., 2. Fr. Thomas Hibernicus sibi pollecem amputavit ne ad sacerdotium cogeretur. Conform., 124b, 2.

19. See, for example, the letter to Brother Leo. Cf. Conform., 53b, 2. Fratri Egidio dedit licentiam liberam ut iret quocumque vellet et staret ubicumque sibi placeret.

20. The hermitage of Monte-Casale, at two hours walk northeast from Borgo San Sepolero, still exists in its original state. It is one of the most significant and curious of the Franciscan deserts.

21. The office of guardian (superior of a monastery) naturally dates from the time when the Brothers stationed themselves in small groups in the villages of Umbria—that is to say, most probably from the year 1211. A few years later the monasteries were united to form a custodia. Finally, about 1215, Central Italy was divided unto a certain number of provinces with provincial ministers at their head. All this was done little by little, for Francis never permitted himself to regulate what did not yet exist.

22. Fior., 26; Conform., 119b, 1. Cf. Rule of 1221, cap. vii. Quicumque ad eos (fratres) venerint, amicus vel adversarius, fur vel latro benigne recipiatur.

23. 2 Cel., 3, 120; Spec., 37; Conform., 53a, 1. See below, p. 385, n. 1.

24. Fior., Vita di fra Ginepro; Spec., 174-182; Conform., 62b.

25. A. SS., p. 600.

26. 3 Soc., 56; 2 Cel., 1, 13; Bon., 24.

27. Bon., 30; 3 Soc., 30, 31; 2 Cel., 3, 52. Cf. Fior., 2. The dragon of this dream perhaps symbolizes heresy.

28. Bon., 83; 172; Fior., 1, 16; Conform., 49a, 1, and 110b, 1; 2 Cel., 3, 51.

29. Bernard de Besse, De laudibus, Turin MS., fo. 102b and 96a. He died November 15, 1271. A. SS., Augusti, t. ii., p. 221.

30. Fior., 8; Spec., 89b ff.; Conform., 30b, 2, and 140a, 2.

31. I need not here point out the analogy in form between this chapter and St. Paul's celebrated song of love, 1 Cor. xiii.

32. We find the same thoughts in nearly the same terms in cap. v. of the Verba sacræ admonitionis.

33. He is the second of the Three Companions. 3 Soc., 1; cf. 1 Cel., 95; Fior., 1; 29, 30, 31; Eccleston, 12; Spec., 110a-114b; Conform., 51b ff.; cf. 2 Cel., 2, 4.

34. Very probably that of the Carceri, though the name is not indicated Vide 3 Soc., 1; Fior., 4; 10; 11; 12; 13; 16; 27; 32; Conform., 51b, 1 ff; Tribul. Archiv., t. ii., p. 263.

35. Fior., 11; Conform., 50b, 2; Spec., 104a.

36. Rule of 1221, chap. 7. Omnes fratres, in quibuscumque locis fuerint apud aliquos ad serviendum, vel ad laborandum, non sint camerarii, nec cellarii, nec præsint in domibus corum quibus serviunt. Cf. 1 Cel., 38 and 40; A. SS., p. 606.

37. 1 Cel., 103; 39; Spec., 28; Reg. 1221, ix.; Giord., 33 and 39.

38. Vide Spec., 34b.; Fior., 4.

39. All the details of this story lead me to think that it refers to Portiuncula and the hospital San Salvatore delle Pareti. The story is given by the Conform., 174b, 2, as taken from the Legenda Antiqua. Cf. Spec., 56b; Fior., 25.

40. In the Speculum, fo 41a, this story ends with the phrase: Qui vidit hæc scripsit et testimonium perhibet de hiis. The brother is here called Frater Jacobus simplex. Cf. Conform., 174b.

41. Conform., 51b, 1. Cf. 2 Cel., 2, 4; Spec., 110b; Fior., 29.

Table of
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Popular piety in Umbria never separates the memory of St. Francis from that of Santa Clara. It is right.

Clara1 was born at Assisi in 1194, and was consequently about twelve years younger than Francis. She belonged to the noble family of the Sciffi. At the age when a little girl's imagination awakes and stirs, she heard the follies of the son of Bernardone recounted at length. She was sixteen when the Saint preached for the first time in the cathedral, suddenly appearing like an angel of peace in a city torn by intestine dissensions. To her his appeals were like a revelation. It seemed as if Francis was speaking for her, that he divined her secret sorrows, her most personal anxieties, and all that was ardent and enthusiastic in the heart of this young girl rushed like a torrent that suddenly finds an outlet into the channel indicated by him. For saints as for heroes the supreme stimulus is woman's admiration.

But here, more than ever, we must put away the vulgar judgment which can understand no union between man and woman where the sexual instinct has no part. That which makes the union of the sexes something almost divine is that it is the prefiguration, the symbol, of the union of souls. Physical love is an ephemeral spark, designed to kindle in human hearts the flame of a more lasting love; it is the outer court of the temple, but not the most holy place; its inestimable value is precisely that it leaves us abruptly at the door of the holiest of all as if to invite us to step over the threshold.

The mysterious sigh of nature goes out for the union of souls. This is the unknown God to whom debauchees, those pagans of love, offer their sacrifices, and this sacred imprint, even though effaced, though soiled by all pollutions, often saves the man of the world from inspiring as much disgust as the drunkard and the criminal.

But sometimes—more often than we think—there are souls so pure, so little earthly, that on their first meeting they enter the most holy place, and once there the thought of any other union would be not merely a descent, but an impossibility. Such was the love of St. Francis and St. Clara.

But these are exceptions. There is something mysterious in this supreme purity; it is so high that in holding it up to men one risks speaking to them in an unknown tongue, or even worse.

The biographers of St. Francis have clearly felt the danger of offering to the multitude the sight of certain beauties which are far beyond them, and this is for us the great fault of their works. They try to give us not so much the true portrait of Francis as that of the perfect minister-general of the Order such as they conceive it, such as it must needs be to serve as a model for his disciples; thus they have made this model somewhat according to the measure of those whom it is to serve, by omitting here and there features which, stupidly interpreted, might have furnished material for the malevolence of unscrupulous adversaries, or from which disciples little versed in spiritual things could not have failed to draw support for permitting themselves dangerous intimacies. Thus the relations of St. Francis with women in general and St. Clara in particular, have