Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖
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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.
1. Text in Firmamentum, 10; Spec., 189; Spec., Morin. Tract., iii., 2b. M. Müller (Anfänge) 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.
This passage 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. Cum facit (subditus) voluntatem (prælati) dummodo benefacit vera obedientia est. Admon., iii.; Conform., 139a, 2.—Si vero prælatus subdito aliquid contra animam præcipiat licet ei non obediat tamen ipsum non dimittat., Ibid.—Nullus tenetur ad obedientiam in eo ubi committitus 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 hæc 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 Bréholles, 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-Bréholles, vol. ii., pp. 122-127.
14. 2 Cel., 3, 86; Bon., 78; Spec., 27b.
15. Vide K. Eubel: Die Bischöfe, Cardinäle und Päpste aus dem Minoritenorden bis 1305, 8vo, 1889.
16. He was in Northern Italy. Vide Registri: Doc., 17-28.
17. Reynerius, cardinal-deacon with the title of S. M. in Cosmedin, Bishop of Viterbo (cf. Innocent III., Opera, Migne, 1, col. ccxiii), 1 Cel., 125. He had been named rector of the Duchy of Spoleto, August 3, 1220. Potthast, 6319.
18. Giord, 16. The presence of Dominic at an earlier chapter had therefore been quite natural.
19. This view harmonizes in every particular with the witness of 1 Cel., 36 and 37, which shows the Third Order as having been quite naturally born of the enthusiasm excited by the preaching of Francis immediately after his return from Rome in 1210 (cf. Auctor vit. sec.; A. SS., p. 593b). Nothing in any other document contradicts it; quite the contrary. Vide 3 Soc., 60. Cf. Anon. Perus.; A. SS., p. 600; Bon., 25, 46. Cf. A. SS., pp. 631-634. The first bull which concerns the Brothers of Penitence (without naming them) is of December 16, 1221, Significatum est. If it really refers to them, as Sbaralea thinks, with all those who have interested themselves in the question to M. Müller inclusively—but which, it appears, might be contested—it is because in 1221 they had made appeal to the pope against the podestàs of Faenza and the neighboring cities. This evidently supposes an association not recently born. Sbaralea, Bull. fr., 1, p. 8; Horoy, vol. iv., col. 49; Potthast, 6736.
20. Bull Supra montem of August 17, 1289, Potthast. 23044. M. Müller has made a luminous study of the origin of this bull; it may be considered final in all essential points (Anfänge, pp. 117-171). By this bull Nicholas IV.—minister-general of the Brothers Minor before becoming pope—sought to draw into the hands of his Order the direction of all associations of pious laics (Third Order of St. Dominic, the Gaudentes, the Humiliati. etc.). He desired by that to give a greater impulse to those fraternities which depended directly on the court of Rome, and augment their power by unifying them.
21. Vide Bull Significatum est of December 16, 1221. Cf. Supra montem, chap. vii.
22. The Rule of the Third Order of the Humiliati, which dates from 1201, contains a similar clause. Tiraboschi, vol ii., p. 132.
23. In the A. SS., Aprilis, vol. ii. p. 600-616. Orlando di Chiusi also received the habit from the hands of Francis. Vide Instrumentum, etc., below, p. 400. The Franciscan fraternity, under the influence of the other third orders, rapidly lost its specific character. As to this title, Third Order, it surely had originally a hierarchical sense, upon which little by little a chronological sense has been superposed. All these questions become singularly clearer when they are compared with what is known of the Humiliati.
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After the chapter of 1221 the evolution of the Order hurried on with a rapidity which nothing was strong enough to check.
The creation of the ministers was an enormous step in this direction; by the very pressure of things the latter came to establish a residence; those who command must have their subordinates within reach, must know at all times where they are; the Brothers, therefore, could no longer continue to do without convents properly so-called. This change naturally brought about many others; up to this time they had had no churches. Without churches the friars were only itinerant preachers, and their purpose could not but be perfectly disinterested; they were, as Francis had wished, the friendly auxiliaries of the clergy. With churches it was inevitable that they should first fatally aspire to preach in them and attract the crowd to them, then in some sort erect them into counter parishes.1
The bull of March 22, 1222,2 shows us the papacy hastening these transformations with all its power. The pontiff accords to Brother Francis and the other friars the privilege of celebrating the sacred mysteries in their churches in times of interdict, on the natural condition of not ringing the bells, of closing the door, and previously expelling those who were excommunicated.
By an astonishing inadvertence the bull itself bears witness to its uselessness, at least for the time in which it was given: "We accord to you," it runs, "the permission to celebrate the sacraments in times of interdict in your churches, if you come to have any." This is a new proof that in 1222 the Order as yet had none; but it is not difficult to see in this very document a pressing invitation to change their way of working, and not leave this privilege to be of no avail.
Another document of the same time shows a like purpose, though manifested in another direction. By the bull Ex parte of March 29, 1222, Honorius III. laid upon the Preachers and Minors of Lisbon conjointly a singularly delicate mission; he gave them full powers to proceed against the bishop and clergy of that city, who exacted from the faithful that they should leave to them by will one-third of their property, and refused the Church's burial service to those who disobeyed.3
The fact that the pope committed to the Brothers the care of choosing what measures they should take proves how anxious they were at Rome to forget the object for which they had been created, and to transform them into deputies of the Holy See. It is, therefore, needless to point out that the mention of Francis's name at the head of the former of these bulls has no significance. We do not picture the Poverello seeking a privilege for circumstances not yet existing! We perceive here the influence of Ugolini,4 who had found the Brother Minor after his own heart in the person of Elias.
What was Francis doing all this time? We have no knowledge, but the very absence of information, so abundant for the period that precedes as well as for that which follows, shows plainly enough that he has quitted Portiuncula, and gone to live in one of those Umbrian hermitages that had always had so strong an attachment for him.5 There is hardly a hill in Central Italy that has not preserved some memento of him. It would be hard to walk half a day between Florence and Rome without coming upon some hut on a hillside bearing his name or that of one of his disciples.
There was a time when these huts were inhabited, when in these leafy booths Egidio, Masseo, Bernardo, Silvestro, Ginepro, and many others whose names history has forgotten, received visits from their spiritual father, coming to them for
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