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

1. If any student finds himself embarrassed by the extreme rarity of certain works cited, I shall make it my duty and pleasure to send them to him, as well as a copy of the Italian manuscripts.

2. E. Renan: Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse, Paris, 1884, 8vo, p. 331.

3. See above, pp. 304 ff.

4. Mazarine Library, MS. 8531: Speculum perfectionis S. Francisci; the Canticle is found at fo. 51. Cf. MS., 1350 (date of 1459). That text was published by Boehmer in the Romanische Studien, Halle, 1871. pp. 118-122. Der Sonnengesang v. Fr. d'A.

5. Conform. (Milan, 1510), 202b, 2s. For that matter it is correct that Diola, in the Croniche degli ordini instituti da S. Francisco (Venice, 1606, 3 vols. 4to), translated after the Castilian version of the work composed in Portuguese by Mark of Lisbon, was foolish enough to render into Italian this translation of a translation.

6. See pages 333 ff.

Table of
Contents

The writings of St. Francis1 are assuredly the best source of acquaintance with him; we can only be surprised to find them so neglected by most of his biographers. It is true that they give little information as to his life, and furnish neither dates nor facts,2 but they do better, they mark the stages of his thought and of his spiritual development. The legends give us Francis as he appeared, and by that very fact suffer in some degree the compulsion of circumstances; they are obliged to bend to the exigencies of his position as general of an Order approved by the Church, as miracle-worker, and as saint. His works, on the contrary, show us his very soul; each phrase has not only been thought, but lived; they bring us the Poverello's emotions, still alive and palpitating.

So, when in the writings of the Franciscans we find any utterance of their master, it unconsciously betrays itself, sounding out suddenly in a sweet, pure tone which penetrates to your very heart, awakening with a thrill a sprite that was sleeping there.

This bloom of love enduing St. Francis's words would be an admirable criterion of the authenticity of those opuscules which tradition attributes to him; but the work of testing is neither long nor difficult. If after his time injudicious attempts were here and there made to honor him with miracles which he did not perform, which he would not even have wished to perform, no attempt was ever made to burden his literary efforts with false or supposititious pieces.3 The best proof of this is that it is not until Wadding—that is to say, until the seventeenth century—that we find the first and only serious attempt to collect these precious memorials. Several of them have been lost,4 but those which remain are enough to give us in some sort the refutation of the legends.

In these pages Francis gives himself to his readers, as long ago he gave himself to his companions; in each one of them a feeling, a cry of the heart, or an aspiration toward the Invisible is prolonged down to our own time.

Wadding thought it his duty to give a place in his collection to several suspicious pieces; more than this, instead of following the oldest manuscripts that he had before him, he often permitted himself to be led astray by sixteenth-century writers whose smallest concern was to be critical and accurate. To avoid the tedious and entirely negative task to which it would be necessary to proceed if I took him for my starting-point I shall confine myself to a positive study of this question.

All the pieces which will be enumerated are found in his collection. They are sometimes cut up in a singular way; but in proportion as each document is studied we shall find sufficient indications to enable us to make the necessary rectifications.

The archives of Sacro Convento of Assisi5 possess a manuscript whose importance is not to be overestimated. It has already been many times studied,6 and bears the number 338.

It appears, however, that a very important detail of form has been overlooked. It is this: that No. 338 is not one manuscript, but a collection of manuscripts of very different periods, which were put together because they were of very nearly the same size, and have been foliated in a peculiar manner.

This artificial character of the collection shows that each of the pieces which compose it needs to be examined by itself, and that it is impossible to say of it as a whole that it is of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century.

The part that interests us is perfectly homogeneous, is formed of three parchment books (fol. 12a-44b) and contains a part of Francis's works.

1. The Rule, definitively approved by Honorius III., November 20, 12237 (fol. 12a-16a).

2. St. Francis's Will8 (fol. 16a-18a).

3. The Admonitions9 (fol. 18a-23b).

4. The Letter to all Christians10 (fol. 23b-28a).

5. The letter to all the members of the Order assembled in Chapter-general11 (fol. 28a-31a).

6. Counsel to all clerics on the respect to be paid to the Eucharist12 (fol., 31b-32b).

7. A very short piece preceded by the rubric: "Of the virtues which adorn the Virgin Mary and which ought to adorn the holy soul"13 (fol. 32b).

8. The Laudes Creaturarum, or Canticle of the Sun14 (fol. 33a).

9. A paraphrase of the Pater introduced by the rubric: Incipiunt laudes quas ordinavit. B. pater noster Franciscus et dicebat ipsas ad omnes horas diei et noctis et ante officium B. V. Mariæ sic incipiens: Sanctissime Pater15 (fol. 34a).

10. The office of the Passion (34b-43a). This office, where the psalms are replaced by several series of biblical verses, are designed to make him who repeats them follow, hour by hour, the emotions of the Crucified One from the evening of Holy Thursday.16

11. A rule for friars in retreat in hermitages17 (fol. 43a-43b).

A glance over this list is enough to show that the works of Francis here collected are addressed to all the Brothers, or are a sort of encyclicals, which they are charged to pass on to those for whom they are destined.

The very order of these pieces shows us that we have in this manuscript the primitive library of the Brothers Minor, the collection of which each minister was to carry with him a copy. It was truly their viaticum.

Matthew Paris tells us of his amazement at the sight of these foreign monks, clothed in patched tunics, and carrying their books in a sort of case suspended from their necks.18

The Assisi manuscript was without doubt destined to this service; if it is silent on the subject of the journeys it has made, and of the Brothers to whom it has been a guide and an inspiration, it at least brings us, more than all the legends, into intimacy with Francis, makes us thrill in unison with that heart which never admitted a separation between joy, love, and poetry. As to the date of this manuscript, one must needs be a paleographer to determine. We have already found a hypothesis which, if well grounded, would carry it back to the neighborhood of 1240.19

Its contents seem to countenance this early date. In fact, it contains several pieces of which the Manual of the Brother Minor very early rid itself.

Very soon they were content to have only the Rule to keep company with the breviary; sometimes they added the Will. But the other writings, if they did not fall entirely into neglect, ceased at least to be of daily usage.

Those of St. Francis's writings which are not of general interest or do not concern the Brothers naturally find no place in this collection. In this new category we must range the following documents:

1. The Rule of 1221.20

2. The Rule of the Clarisses, which we no longer possess in its original form.21

3. A sort of special instruction for ministers-general.22

4. A letter to St. Clara.23

5. Another letter to the same.24

6. A letter to Brother Leo.25

7. A few prayers.26

8. The benediction of Brother Leo. The original autograph, which is preserved in the treasury of Sacro Convento, has been very well reproduced by heliograph.27

As to the two famous hymns Amor de caritade28 and In foco l'amor mi mise,29 they cannot be attributed to St. Francis, at least in their present form.

It belongs to M. Monaci and his numerous and learned emulators to throw light upon these delicate questions by publishing in a scientific manner the earliest monuments of Italian poetry.

I have already spoken of several tracts of which assured traces have been found, though they themselves are lost. They are much more numerous than would at first be supposed. In the missionary zeal of the early years the Brothers would not concern themselves with collecting documents. We do not write our memoirs in the fulness of our youth.

We must also remember that Portiuncula had neither archives nor library. It was a chapel ten paces long, with a few huts gathered around it. The Order was ten years old before it had seen any other than a single book: a New Testament. The Brothers did not even keep this one. Francis, having nothing else, gave it to a poor woman who asked for alms, and when Pietro di Catania, his vicar, expressed his surprise at this prodigality: "Has she not given her two sons to the Order?" replied the master30 quickly.