Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖
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If the voice of the Poverello of Assisi was so well understood it was because in this matter, as in all others, it was entirely unconventional. How far we are, with him, from the fierce or Pharisaic piety of those monks which forbids even the females of animals to enter their convent! His notion of chastity in no sense resembles this excessive prudery. One day at Sienna he asked for some turtle-doves, and holding them in the skirt of his tunic, he said: "Little sisters turtle-doves, you are simple, innocent, and chaste; why did you let yourselves be caught? I shall save you from death, and have nests made for you, so that you may bring forth young and multiply according to the commandment of our Creator."
And he went and made nests for them all, and the turtle-doves began to lay eggs and bring up their broods under the eyes of the Brothers.20
At Rieti a family of red-breasts were the guests of the monastery, and the young birds made marauding expeditions on the very table where the Brothers were eating.21 Not far from there, at Greccio,22 they brought to Francis a leveret that had been taken alive in a trap. "Come to me, brother leveret," he said to it. And as the poor creature, being set free, ran to him for refuge, he took it up, caressed it, and finally put it on the ground that it might run away; but it returned to him again and again, so that he was obliged to send it to the neighboring forest before it would consent to return to freedom.23
One day he was crossing the Lake of Rieti. The boatman in whose bark he was making the passage offered him a tench of uncommon size. Francis accepted it with joy, but to the great amazement of the fisherman put it back into the water, bidding it bless God.24
We should never have done if we were to relate all the incidents of this kind,25 for the sentiment of nature was innate with him; it was a perpetual communion which made him love the whole creation.26 He is ravished with the witchery of great forests; he has the terrors of a child when he is alone at prayer in a deserted chapel, but he tastes ineffable joy merely in inhaling the perfume of a flower, or gazing into the limpid water of a brook.27
This perfect lover of poverty permitted one luxury—he even commanded it at Portiuncula—that of flowers; the Brother was bidden not to sow vegetables and useful plants only; he must reserve one corner of good ground for our sisters, the flowers of the fields. Francis talked with them also, or rather he replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle language crept into the very depth of his heart.28
The thirteenth century was prepared to understand the voice of the Umbrian poet; the sermon to the birds29 closed the reign of Byzantine art and of the thought of which it was the image. It is the end of dogmatism and authority; it is the coming in of individualism and inspiration; very uncertain, no doubt, and to be followed by obstinate reactions, but none the less marking a date in the history of the human conscience.30 Many among the companions of Francis were too much the children of their century, too thoroughly imbued with its theological and metaphysical methods, to quite understand a sentiment so simple and profound.31 But each in his degree felt its charm. Here Thomas of Celano's language rises to an elevation which we find in no other part of his works, closing with a picture of Francis which makes one think of the Song of Songs.32
Of more than middle height, Francis had a delicate and kindly face, black eyes, a soft and sonorous voice. There was in his whole person a delicacy and grace which made him infinitely lovely. All these characteristics are found in the most ancient portraits.33
1. 3 Soc., 57; cf. An. Perus., A. SS., p. 599.
2. Rev. xxi.; 1 Cel., 46; 3 Soc., 57-59; An. Perus., A. SS., p. 600.
3. 1 Cel., 55 and 56; Bon., 129-132.
4. Fior., 7; Spec., 96; Conform., 223a, 2. The fact of Francis's sojourn on an island in this lake is made certain by 1 Cel., 60.
5. Vide below, p. 400. Cf. A. SS., pp. 823 f.
6. At present Sasso-Feltrio, between Conca and Marecchio, south of and about two hours' walk from San Marino.
7. The happiness that I expect is so great that all pain is joyful to me. All the documents give Francis's text in Italian, which is enough to prove that it was the language not only of his poems but also of his sermons. Spec. 92a ff. Conform. 113a, 2; 231a, 1; Fior., Prima consid.
8. See p. 400.
9. 2 Cel., 3, 85; Bon., 82.
10. 1 Cel., 56; Bon., 132.
11. Vide Wadding, ann. 1213-1215. Cf. A. SS., pp. 602, 603, 825-831. Mark of Lisbon, lib. i., cap. 45, pp. 78-80; Papini, Storia di S. Francesco, i., p. 79 ff. (Foligno, 1825, 2 vols., 4to). It is surprising to see Father Suysken giving so much weight to the argumentum a silentio.
12. From Pentecost, 1213, to that of 1214.—Post non multum vero temporis versus Marochium iter arripuit, says Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 56), after having mentioned the return from Slavonia. Taking into account the author's usus loquendi the phrase appears to establish a certain interval between the two missions.
13. Conform., 110b, 1; Spec., 62b; Fior., 16; Bon., 170-174.
14. Village about two leagues S. W. from Assisi. The time is indirectly fixed by Bon., 173, and 1 Cel., 58.
15. 1 Cel. 58; Bon., 109 and 174; Fior., 16; Spec., 62b; Conform., 114b, 2.
16. About halfway between Orvieto and Narni.
17. 1 Cel., 59; Bon., 175.
18. Ad hæc, ut ipse dicebat ... 1 Cel., 58.
19. Francis has been compared in this regard to certain of his contemporaries, but the similarity of the words only makes more evident the diversity of inspiration. Honorius III. may say: Forma rosæ est inferius angusta, superius ampla et significat quod Christus pauper fuit in mundo, sed est Dominus super omnia et implet universa. Nam sicut forma rosæ, etc. (Horoy, t. i., col. xxiv. and 804), and make a whole sermon on the symbolism of the rose; these overstrained dissertations have nothing to do with the feeling for nature. It is the arsenal of mediæval rhetoric used to dissect a word. It is an intellectual effort, not a song of love. The Imitation would say: If thy heart were right all creatures would be for thee a mirror of life and a volume of holy doctrine, lib. ii., cap. 2. The simple sentiment of the beauty of creation is absent here also; the passage is a pedagogue in disguise.
20. Spec., 157. Fior.; 22.
21. 2 Cel., 2, 16; Conform., 148a, 1, 183b, 2. Cf. the story of the sheep of Portiuncula: Bon., 111.
22. Village in the valley of Rieti, two hours' walk from that town, on the road to Terni.
23. 1 Cel., 60; Bon., 113.
24. 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114.
25. 2 Cel., 3, 54; Bon., 109; 2 Cel., 3; 103 ff.; Bon., 116 ff.; Bon., 110; 1 Cel., 61; Bon., 114, 113, 115; 1 Cel., 79; Fior., 13, etc.
26. 2 Cel., 3, 101 ff.; Bon., 123.
27. 2 Cel., 3, 59; 1 Cel., 80 and 81.
28. 2 Cel., 3, 101; Spec., 136a; 1 Cel., 81.
29. This is the scene in his life most often reproduced by the predecessors of Giotto. The unknown artist who (before 1236) decorated the nave of the Lower Church of Assisi gives five frescos to the history of Jesus and five to the life of St. Francis. Upon the latter he represents: 1, the renunciation of the paternal inheritance; 2, Francis upholding the Lateran church; 3, the sermon to the birds; 4, the stigmata; 5, the funeral. This work, unhappily very badly lighted, and about half of it destroyed at the time of the construction of the chapels of the nave, ought to be engraved before it completely disappears. The history of art in the time of Giunta Pisano is still too much enveloped in obscurity for us to neglect such a source of information. M. Thode (Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst, Berlin, 1885, 8vo. illust.) and the Rev. Father Fratini (Storia della Basilica d'Assisi, Prato, 1882, 8vo) are much too brief so far as these frescos are concerned.
30. It is needless to say that I do not claim that Francis was the only initiator of this movement, still less that he was its creator; he was its most inspired singer, and that may suffice for his glory. If Italy was awakened it was because her sleep was not so sound as in the tenth century; the mosaics of the façade of the Cathedral of Spoleto (the Christ between the Virgin and St. John) already belong to the new art. Still, the victory was so little final that the mural paintings of St. Lawrence without the walls and of the Quattro Coronate, which are subsequent to it by half a score of years, relapse into a coarse Byzantinism. See also those of the Baptistery of Florence.
31. Hence the more or less subtile explanations with which they adorn these incidents.—As to the part of animals in thirteenth century legends consult Cæsar von Heisterbach, Strange's edition, t. ii., pp. 257 ff.
32. 1 Cel., 80-83.
33. 1 Cel., 83; Conform., 111a. M. Thode (Anfänge, pp. 76-94) makes a study of some thirty portraits. The most important are reproduced in Saint François (1 vol., 4to, Paris, 1885); 1, contemporary portrait, by Brother Eudes, now at Subiaco (loc. cit., p. 30); 2, portrait dating about 1230, by Giunta Pisano (?); preserved at Portiuncula (loc. cit., p. 384); 3, finally, portrait dated 1235, by Bon. Berlinghieri, and preserved at Pescia, in Tuscany (loc. cit., p. 277). In 1886 Prof. Carattoli studied with great care a portrait which dates from about those years and of which he gives a picture (also preserved of late years at Portiuncula). Miscellanea francescana t. i., pp. 44-48; cf. pp. 160, 190, and 1887, p. 32. M. Bonghi has written some interesting papers on the iconography of St. Francis (Francesco di Assisi, 1 vol., 12mo, Citta di Castello, Lapi, 1884. Vide pp. 103-113).
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