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

at the other extremity, commanded by hills of a thoroughly tropical aspect, behind which rise the mighty Apennines, almost always covered with snow.

The highway goes directly toward this town, passing between tiny lakes; here and there roads lead off to little villages which you see, on the hillside, between the cultivated fields and the edge of the forests; there are Stroncone, Greccio, Cantalice, Poggio-Buscone, and ten other small towns, which have given more saints to the Church than a whole province of France.

Between the inhabitants of the district and their neighbors of Umbria, properly so called, the difference is extreme. They are all of the striking type of the Sabine peasants, and they remain to this day entire strangers to new customs. One is born a Capuchin there as elsewhere one is born a soldier, and the traveller needs to have his wits about him not to address every man he meets as Reverend Father.

Francis had often gone over this district in every direction. Like its neighbor, the hilly March of Ancona, it was peculiarly prepared to receive the new gospel. In these hermitages, with their almost impossible simplicity, perched near the villages on every side, without the least care for material comfort, but always where there is the widest possible view, was perpetuated a race of Brothers Minor, impassioned, proud, stubborn, almost wild, who did not wholly understand their master, who did not catch his exquisite simplicity, his impossibility of hating, his dreams of social and political renovation, his poetry and delicacy, but who did understand the lover of nature and of poverty.1 They did more than understand him; they lived his life, and from that Christmas festival observed in the woods of Greccio down to to-day they have remained the simple and popular representatives of the Strict Observance. From them comes to us the Legend of the Three Companions, the most life-like and true of all the portraits of the Poverello, and it was there, in a cell three paces long, that Giovanni di Parma had his apocalyptic visions.

The news of Francis's arrival quickly spread, and long before he reached Rieti the population had come out to meet him.

To avoid this noisy welcome he craved the hospitality of the priest of St. Fabian. This little church, now known under the name of Our Lady of the Forest, is somewhat aside from the road upon a grassy mound about a league from the city. He was heartily welcomed, and desiring to remain there for a little, prelates and devotees began to flock thither in the next few days.

It was the time of the early grapes. It is easy to imagine the disquietude of the priest on perceiving the ravages made by these visitors among his vines, his best source of revenue, but he probably exaggerated the damage. Francis one day heard him giving vent to his bad humor. "Father," he said, "it is useless for you to disturb yourself for what you cannot hinder; but, tell me, how much wine do you get on an average?"

"Fourteen measures," replied the priest.

"Very well, if you have less than twenty, I undertake to make up the difference."

This promise reassured the worthy man, and when at the vintage he received twenty measures, he had no hesitation in believing in a miracle.2

Upon Ugolini's entreaties Francis had accepted the hospitality of the bishop's palace in Rieti. Thomas of Celano enlarges with delight upon the marks of devotion lavished on Francis by this prince of the Church. Unhappily all this is written in that pompous and confused style of which diplomats and ecclesiastics appear to have by nature the secret.

Francis entered into the condition of a relic in his lifetime. The mania for amulets displayed itself around him in all its excesses. People quarrelled not only over his clothing, but even over his hair and the parings of his nails.3

Did these merely exterior demonstrations disgust him? Did he sometimes think of the contrast between these honors offered to his body, which he picturesquely called Brother Ass, and the subversion of his ideal? We cannot tell. If he had feelings of this kind those who surrounded him were not the men to understand them, and it would be idle to expect any expression of them from his pen.

Soon after he had a relapse, and asked to be removed to Monte-Colombo,4 a hermitage an hour distant from the city, hidden amidst trees and scattered rocks. He had already retired thither several times, notably when he was preparing the Rule of 1223.

The doctors, having exhausted the therapeutic arsenal of the time, decided to resort to cauterization; it was decided to draw a rod of white-hot iron across his forehead.

When the poor patient saw them bringing in the brazier and the instruments he had a moment of terror; but immediately making the sign of the cross over the glowing iron, "Brother fire," he said, "you are beautiful above all creatures; be favorable to me in this hour; you know how much I have always loved you; be then courteous to-day."

Afterward, when his companions, who had not had the courage to remain, came back he said to them, smiling, "Oh, cowardly folk, why did you go away? I felt no pain. Brother doctor, if it is necessary you may do it again."

This experiment was no more successful than the other remedies. In vain they quickened the wound on the forehead, by applying plasters, salves, and even by making incisions in it; the only result was to increase the pains of the sufferer.5

One day, at Rieti, whither he had again been carried, he thought that a little music would relieve his pain. Calling a friar who had formerly been clever at playing the guitar, he begged him to borrow one; but the friar was afraid of the scandal which this might cause, and Francis gave it up.

God took pity upon him; the following night he sent an invisible angel to give him such a concert as is never heard on earth.6 Francis, hearing it, lost all bodily feeling, say the Fioretti, and at one moment the melody was so sweet and penetrating that if the angel had given one more stroke of the bow, the sick man's soul would have left his body.7

It seems that there was some amelioration of his state when the doctors left him; we find him during the months of this winter, 1225-1226, in the most remote hermitages of the district, for as soon as he had a little strength he was determined to begin preaching again.

He went to Poggio-Buscone8 for the Christmas festival. People flocked thither in crowds from all the country round to see and hear him. "You come here," he said, "expecting to find a great saint; what will you think when I tell you that I ate meat all through Advent?"9 At St. Eleutheria,10 at a time of extreme cold which tried him much, he had sewn some pieces of stuff into his own tunic and that of his companion, so as to make their garments a little warmer. One day his companion came home with a fox-skin, with which in his turn he proposed to line his master's tunic. Francis rejoiced much over it, but would permit this excess of consideration for his body only on condition that the piece of fur should be placed on the outside over his chest.

All these incidents, almost insignificant at a first view, show how he detested hypocrisy even in the smallest things.

We will not follow him to his dear Greccio,11 nor even to the hermitage of St. Urbano, perched on one of the highest peaks of the Sabine.12 The accounts which we have of the brief visits he made there at this time tell us nothing new of his character or of the history of his life. They simply show that the imaginations of those who surrounded him were extraordinarily overheated; the least incidents immediately took on a miraculous coloring.13

The documents do not say how it came about that he decided to go to Sienna. It appears that there was in that city a physician of great fame as an oculist. The treatment he prescribed was no more successful than that of the others; but with the return of spring Francis made a new effort to return to active life. We find him describing the ideal Franciscan monastery,14 and another day explaining a passage in the Bible to a Dominican.

Did the latter, a doctor in theology, desire to bring the rival Order into ridicule by showing its founder incapable of explaining a somewhat difficult verse? It appears extremely likely. "My good father," he said, "how do you understand this saying of the prophet Ezekiel, 'If thou dost not warn the wicked of his wickedness, I will require his soul of thee?' I am acquainted with many men whom I know to be in a state of mortal sin, and yet I am not always reproaching them for their vices. Am I, then, responsible for their souls?"

At first Francis excused himself, alleging his ignorance, but urged by his interlocutor he said at last: "Yes, the true servant unceasingly rebukes the wicked, but he does it most of all by his conduct, by the truth which shines forth in his words, by the light of his example, by all the radiance of his life."15

He soon suffered so grave a relapse that the Brothers thought his last hour had come. They were especially affrighted by the hemorrhages, which reduced him to a state of extreme prostration. Brother Elias hastened to him. At his arrival the invalid felt in himself such an improvement that they could acquiesce in his desire to be taken back to Umbria. Toward the middle of April they set out, going in the direction of Cortona. It is the easiest route, and the delightful hermitage of that city was one of the best ordered to permit of his taking some repose. He doubtless remained there a very short time: he was in haste to see once more the skies of his native country, Portiuncula, St. Damian, the Carceri, all those paths and hamlets which one sees from the terraces of Assisi and which recalled to him so many sweet memories.

Instead of going by the nearest road, they made a long circuit by Gubbio and Nocera, to avoid Perugia, fearing some attempt of the inhabitants to get possession of the Saint. Such a relic as the body of Francis lacked little of the value of the sacred nail or the sacred lance.16 Battles were fought for less than that.

They made a short halt near Nocera, at the hermitage of Bagnara, on the slopes of Monte-Pennino.17 His companions were again very much disturbed. The swelling which had shown itself in the lower limbs was rapidly gaining the upper part of the body. The Assisans learned this, and wishing to be prepared for whatever might happen sent their men-at-arms to protect the Saint and hasten his return.

Bringing Francis back with them they stopped for food at the hamlet of Balciano,18 but in vain they begged the inhabitants to sell them provisions. As the escort were confiding their discomfiture to the friars,