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

-" id="pgepubid00305"> himself reassured as to the future of the Order; he might indeed have thought thus, but the history of the troubles which burst out immediately after his departure, the astounding story of the kind reception given by the court of Rome to some meddlers who took the opportunity of his absence to imperil his Order, would suffice to show how much the Church was embarrassed by him, and with what ardor she longed for the transformation of his work. We shall find later on the detailed account of these facts.

It appears that a Romagnol brother Christopher was at this same chapter nominated provincial of Gascony; he lived there after the customs of the early Franciscans, working with his hands, living in a narrow cell made of the boughs of trees and potter's earth.15

Egidio set out for Tunis with a few friars, but a great disappointment awaited them there; the Christians of this country, in the fear of being compromised by their missionary zeal, hurried them into a boat and constrained them to recross the sea.16

If the date of 1219 for these two missions has little other basis than conjecture, the same is not the case as to the departure of the friars who went to Spain and Morocco. The discovery has recently been made of the account of their last preachings and of their tragic death, made by an eye-witness.17 This document is all the more precious because it confirms the general lines of the much longer account given by Mark of Lisbon. It would be out of place to give a summary of it here, because it but very indirectly concerns the life of St. Francis, but we must note that these acta have beyond their historic value a truly remarkable psychological—one must almost say pathological—significance; never was the mania for martyrdom better characterized than in these long pages, where we see the friars forcing the Mahometans to pursue them and make them win the heavenly palm. The forbearance which Miramolin as well as his fellow religionists at first show gives an idea of the civilization and the good qualities of these infidels, all the higher that very different sentiments would be natural in the vanquished ones of the plains of Tolosa.

It is impossible to call by the name of sermons the collections of rude apostrophes which the missionaries addressed to those whom they wished to convert; at this paroxysm the thirst for martyrdom becomes the madness of suicide. Is this to say that friars Bernard, Pietro, Adjutus, Accurso, and Otho have no right to the admiration and worship with which they have been surrounded? Who would dare say so? Is not devotion always blind? That a furrow should be fecund it must have blood, it must have tears, such tears as St. Augustine has called the blood of the soul. Ah, it is a great mistake to immolate oneself, for the blood of a single man will not save the world nor even a nation; but it is a still greater mistake not to immolate oneself, for then one lets others be lost, and is oneself lost first of all.

I greet you, therefore, Martyrs of Morocco; you do not regret your madness, I am sure, and if ever some righteous pedant gone astray in the groves of paradise undertakes to demonstrate to you that it would have been better worth while to remain in your own country, and found a worthy family of virtuous laborers, I fancy that Miramolin, there become your best friend, will take the trouble to refute him.

You were mad, but I envy such madness, for you felt that the essential thing in this world is not to serve this ideal or that one, but with all one's soul to serve the ideal which one has chosen.

When, a few months after, the story of their glorious end arrived at Assisi, Francis discerned a feeling of pride among his companions and reproached them in lively terms; he who would so have envied the lot of the martyrs felt himself humbled because God had not judged him worthy to share it. As the story was mingled with some words of eulogy of the founder of the Order, he forbade the further reading of it.18

Immediately after the chapter he had himself undertaken a mission of the same kind as he had confided to the Brothers of Morocco, but he had proceeded in it in an entirely different manner: his was not the blind zeal which courts death in a sort of frenzy and forgets all the rest; perhaps he already felt that the persistent effort after the better, the continual immolation of self for truth, is the martyrdom of the strong.

This expedition, which lasted more than a year, is mentioned by the biographers in a few lines.19 Happily we have a number of other papers regarding it; but their silence suffices to prove the sincerity of the primitive Franciscan authors; if they had wanted to amplify the deeds of their subject, where could they have found an easier opportunity or a more marvellous theme? Francis quitted Portiuncula in the middle of June and went to Ancona, whence the Crusaders were to set sail for Egypt on St. John's Day (June 24th).

Many friars joined him—a fact which was not without its inconveniences for a journey by sea, where they were obliged to depend upon the charity of the owners of the boats, or of their fellow-travellers.

We can understand Francis's embarrassment on arriving at Ancona and finding himself obliged to leave behind a number of those who so earnestly longed to go with him. The Conformities relate here an incident for which we might desire an earlier authority, but which is certainly very like Francis; he led all his friends to the port and explained to them his perplexities. "The people of the boat," he told them, "refuse to take us all, and I have not the courage to make choice among you; you might think that I do not love you all alike; let us then try to learn the will of God." And he called a child who was playing close by, and the little one, charmed to take the part of Providence put upon him, pointed out with his finger the eleven friars who were to set sail.20

We do not know what itinerary they followed. A single incident of the journey has come down to us: that of the chastisement inflicted in the isle of Cyprus on Brother Barbaro, who had been guilty of the fault which the master detested above all others—evil-speaking. He was implacable with regard to the looseness of language so customary among pious folk, and which often made a hell of religious houses apparently the most peaceful. The offence this time appeared to him the more grave for having been uttered in the presence of a stranger, a knight of that district. The latter was stupefied on hearing Francis command the guilty one to eat a lump of ass's dung which lay there, adding: "The mouth which has distilled the venom of hatred against my brother must eat this excrement." Such indignation, no less than the obedience of the unhappy offender, filled him with admiration.21

It is very probable, as Wadding has supposed, that the missionaries debarked at St. Jean d'Acre. They arrived there about the middle of July.22 In the environs of this city, doubtless, Brother Elias had been established for one or two years. Francis there told off a few of his companions, whom he sent to preach in divers directions, and a few days afterward he himself set out for Egypt, where all the efforts of the Crusaders were concentrated upon Damietta.

From the first he was heart-broken with the moral condition of the Christian army. Notwithstanding the presence of numerous prelates and of the apostolic legate, it was disorganized for want of discipline. He was so affected by this that when there was talk of battle he felt it his duty to advise against it, predicting that the Christians would infallibly be beaten. No one heeded him, and on August 29th the Crusaders, having attacked the Saracens, were terribly routed.23

His predictions won him a marvellous success. It must be owned that the ground was better prepared than any other to receive the new seed; not surely that piety was alive there, but in this mass of men come together from every corner of Europe, the troubled, the seers, the enlightened ones, those who thirsted for righteousness and truth, were elbowed by rascals, adventurers, those who were greedy for gold and plunder, capable of much good or much evil, the sport of fleeting impulses, loosed from the bonds of the family, of property, of the habits which usually twine themselves about man's will, and only by exception permit a complete change in his manner of life; those among them who were sincere and had come there with generous purposes were, so to speak, predestined to enter the peaceful army of the Brothers Minor. Francis was to win in this mission fellow-laborers who would assure the success of his work in the countries of northern Europe.

Jacques de Vitry, in a letter to friends written a few days later, thus describes the impression produced on him by Francis: