Francis of Assisi

“ SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
In the sunny land of Italy, high upon hills covered with olive-trees, nestles the little town of Assisi. Such a strange little town it is, with its tall city walls and great gateways, its narrow, steep streets, and houses with wide, overhanging eaves. The road that leads up from the plain below is so steep, as it winds upwards among the silver olive-trees, that even the big white oxen find it a toil to drag the carts up to the city gates, and the people think it quite a journey to go down to the level land below. ”

“ To all who revolt against the vulgar materialism which dominates so much of our present life, Francis of Assisi is as a prophet sent by God. Standing against the dark background of Avarice and Luxury which had already infested the growing commercial centres of the mediæval world, he throws the light of his own clear personality into the dark corners of our own life.
We yearn, many of us, for a deeper spiritual life; we sorrow because the joy of life seems flitting ever further and further away from this complex social organism of ours. ”

“ Many thousand things that I now partly comprehend I should have thought utterly incomprehensible, many things I now hold sacred I should have scouted as utterly superstitious, many things that seem to me lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside I should honestly have called dark and barbarous seen from the outside, when long ago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire with the glory of Francis of Assisi. ”

“ For in this sense there was really something wanting in Francis of Assisi, something to which he was blind that he might see better and more beautiful things. All those limits in good fellowship and good form, all those landmarks of social life that divide the tolerable and the intolerable, all those social scruples and conventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men, all those things that hold many decent societies together, could never hold this man at all. ”

“ Goodness touched them as it does all men. But the immorality of their religious guides did not embarrass them; a bad priest had as powerful spells as a good one. The only kind of Christianity which seemed able to impress them and hold them was that of Francis of Assisi. He was the highest embodiment of the Christian spirit for the Italian peasantry; the impression he had made upon the people of the Peninsula was enduring; the wandering revivalist preacher who lived as Francis had done always made the deepest impression. ”

“ It is not to Assisi in its marvellous basilica that one must go to divine and comprehend St. Francis; he must turn his steps to Santa Maria degli Angeli at the hours when the stated prayers cease, at the moment when the evening shadows lengthen, when all the fripperies of worship disappear in the obscurity,- 68 - when all the nation seems to collect itself to listen to the chime of the distant church bells. ”

“ Assisi, down to our own times, has continued to be the Mecca of thousands of pilgrims. Her churches bear the record of infinite early piety, for when art was in its early prime the most famous masters from 19 Tuscany were called upon to decorate the Franciscan Basilica and leave their choicest treasures there as tributes to the immortal glory of the saint. But the note of war rings louder than the song of praise and love for many years to come in all the Assisan chronicles, and grass and weeds grow up to choke, though not to kill, the blessed seed that Francis sowed and did not live to tend. ”

“ Francis of Assisi, as has been said again and again, was a poet; that is, he was a person who could express his personality. Now it is everywhere the mark of this sort of man that his very limitations make him larger. He is what he is, not only by what he has, but in some degree by what he has not. But the limits that make the lines of such a personal portrait cannot be made the limits of all humanity. St. Francis is a very strong example of this quality in the man of genius, that in him even what is negative is positive, because it is part of a character. ”

“ For the foundation of Francis of Assisi came into existence as a society of itinerant preachers: no one was more deeply convinced than Francis of the duty of working for others, and his own mission was, as he said, to win souls. ”

“ Francis the Builder We have now reached the great break in the life of Francis of Assisi; the point at which something happened to him that must remain greatly dark to most of us, who are ordinary and selfish men whom God has not broken to make anew. ”

“ Francis of Assisi is pre-eminently the saint of the Middle Ages. Owing nothing to church or school he was- xv - truly theodidact,3 and if he perhaps did not perceive the revolutionary bearing of his preaching, he at least always refused to be ordained priest. He divined the superiority of the spiritual priesthood.
The charm of his life is that, thanks to reliable documents, we find the man behind the wonder worker. We find in him not merely noble actions, we find in him a life in the true meaning of the word ”

“ He explained to them who Francis of Assisi was, his vocation, his mission, his mode of life, his Institute, the approbation given to his Rule by Pope Innocent III and Honorius III, and the testimonials given to him by several cardinals. He remarked to them that the new Order had been exceedingly multiplied in a very few years, and that they had seen more than five thousand religious at the general chapter which had been lately assembled in the neighborhood of Assisi, which was considered to be miraculous ”

“ 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. ”

“ I therefore adopted the alternative course, of showing first that nobody but a born fool could fail to realise that Francis of Assisi was a very real historical human being; and then summarising briefly in this chapter the superhuman powers that were certainly a part of that history and humanity. It only remains to say a few words a bout some distinctions that may reasonably be observed in the matter by any man of any views; that he may not confuse the point and climax of the saint's life with thefancies or rumours that were really only the fringes of his reputation. ”

“ Clothed in long grey hooded cloaks, holding lanterns and candles and singing their mediæval hymns, these citizens of the nineteenth century belong to Assisi of the past as much as all her frescoes and early buildings. Their origin goes back to the middle of the thirteenth century when, out of the great devotional movement due to St. Francis, arose that strange body of penitents the Flagellants, who are said to have first appeared in Perugia, and thence spread throughout Italy. ”

“ Francis might well be happy. Love had triumphed, and for several years there were at Assisi neither victors nor vanquished.
In the mystic marriages which here and there in history unite a man to a people, something takes place of which the transports of sense, the delirium of love, seem to be the only symbol; a moment comes in which saints,- 119 - or men of genius, feel unknown powers striving mightily within them; they strive, they seek, they struggle until, triumphing over all obstacles, they have forced trembling, swooning humanity to conceive by them. ”

“ In simplicity and faith they rise up in the morning and lie down again at night, never fearing that their prayers at dawn and evening, their hastily uttered petitions at a roadside cross, have not winged their way straight to heaven. I too would fain believe it when I am walking in their olive-groves and vineyards, for it is a lovely thing, as dreams are lovely, and young ambitions and young hope. And it is here perhaps that the secret of the intangible beauty of Assisi may be found—because it is a shrine; no matter of St. Francis, or of Jesus of Nazareth, or of the older gods. ”

“ Francis of Assisi, strove to bring the life of man into closer harmony with Christian teaching as then understood, but did not dispute the accepted interpretation of that teaching. He stands forth as the opponent of that godless pagan spirit which marred the movement of the Renaissance, to rebuke the moral turpitude of his country, which was surely working her ruin. ”

“ What it was of which they had caught a glimpse, of which Francis had seen the glory, may be suggested later so far as it can be suggested at all. At this stage we need profess to see no more than all Assisi saw, and that something not altogether unworthy of comment. The citizens of Assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eye of the needle and God doing impossible things because to him all things were possible; only a priest who rent his robes like the Publican and not like the Pharisee and a rich man who went away joyful, for he had no possessions. ”

“ When the others returned in search of their leader, they, wondering at the change that had come over the wildest spirit of Assisi, assailed him with questions. "Are you thinking of marrying, Francis," cried one jester, and amidst the laughter of all came his quiet answer: "Yes, a wife more noble and more beautiful than ye have ever seen; she will outshine all others in beauty and in wisdom." Already the image of the Lady Poverty had visited him, and enamoured like a very troubadour he composed songs in her honour as he walked in the woods near Assisi. ”

“ Francis of Assisi gave his rule of strict poverty to the ten united with him in hungering to work for Christ, it needed more than his great faith to believe that, in forty-two years after his death, two hundred thousand zealous souls would be banded together, under his name, for prayer and alms-deeds; while, through all coming ages of the church, his followers should steadily increase, steadfast in the work for which they had joined hands. ”

“ Surely, to preserve and foster the spirit of penance among Christians, there will be great aid in the examples and favor of the Patriarch Francis of Assisi, who to the greatest innocence of life joined a studious chastisement of himself so that he seemed to bear the image of Jesus Christ crucified not less in his life and customs than in the signs that were divinely impressed upon him. The laws of that order, which have been by us suitably tempered, are very easily observed; their importance to Christian virtue is by no means slight. ”

“ Looking broadly at the part which religious Orders have played in the religious and intellectual history of Europe, it may well be doubted whether even the most gracious and human figure in the history of asceticism, Francis of Assisi, would not have better served his time and land by the natural development, in secular life and activity, of the beautiful if sometimes wildly ebullient character portrayed in the records of his youth, than by cutting away half his life in order to force the other half into a distorted rarity. ”

“ Francis of Assisi and be to them a sure guide to God's abundant graces in this world and to life everlasting in the next.
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR WHEREIN THE PREJUDICES OF CERTAIN PERSONS AGAINST MIRACLES WHICH ARE RECORDED IN THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS ARE SHOWN TO BE BOTH UNREASONABLE AND DANGEROUS, AND THAT THE MIRACLES ATTRIBUTED TO SAINT FRANCIS ARE VERY WELL AUTHENTICATED. A very common failing amongst men is to adopt one extreme in the endeavor to avoid another, and sometimes not to perceive that the extreme into which they fall is greater than that which they had sought to flee from. ”

“ Francis left Assisi one day, to go to preach, not having any longer a doubt but that he and his brethren were called for the service of souls, after the mission they had received from God, and from the Supreme Pontiff; this was confirmed by supernatural lights, as we have seen above. Being near to the Town of Bevagna, he saw on a particular spot a number of birds collected, of various species, and he went up to them, and said: "My sisters, listen to the word of God; you have great reason to praise your Creator; He has covered you with feathers; He has given you wings wherewith to fly ”

“ Looking upon the road to Spello, winding down the hill through luxuriant fields of indian corn and olive groves, with the oak trees spreading their still fresher green over the vineyards of the plain, we feel that this pathway to the Carceri is something novel and unlike anything at Assisi which we have hitherto explored. Just as we are marvelling at its loveliness, a sudden turn brings Assisi once more in view, and the sight we get of it from here carries us straight back to the days of St. Francis ”

“ Since then, as the peasants recount with pride, many come from afar to drink of the waters of this well for it cures every ill. It is over-grown with ferns and close by stands an ancient sarcophagus where the children sit to eat their midday meal. A piece of old worn sculpture still ornaments the chapel of the young martyr, and the feeling of the place is very charming, but the pilgrim who comes to Assisi to visit St. Francis, has a different picture to recall with another kind of beauty belonging to it than that of holy wells and flowering banks and meadows. ”