Franciscans

“ Among the Franciscans themselves it has been the occasion of endless strife, and has been kept alive only by dint of successive reforms and fresh starts, each successful for a time, but doomed always, sooner or later, to yield to the inexorable logic of facts. ”

“ The Franciscans, who solemnly obligated themselves to remain forever poor, incessantly grasped after riches. When they had built nunneries, convents, and became the proprietors of extensive domains, they abrogated their vow of perpetual poverty, lest it should invalidate their title to vast possessions which they held. With equal duplicity and ambition, they assumed, upon their first organization, a vow of perpetual ignorance; abjuring the acquisition of any intellectual accomplishment, and consecrating themselves strictly to the preaching of the gospel. ”

“ Franciscans are spread out all over the Holy Land. They have schools and churches and orphanages in every part of the country.
Seventeen years later, John of Brienne, the Commander of the Crusade, after fighting many battles, and rising to great earthly glory, became converted and entered a branch of the Franciscan brotherhood then established in the Holy Land. This was no doubt due to the influence of Francis, who by the power of God alone, subdued the enemies of Christ. ”

“ Soon disciples joined him, and with the bishop’s approval he built a church and monastery. At first they called themselves “Hermits of St Francis”; but the object they proposed to themselves was to go beyond even the strict Franciscans in fasts and bodily austerities of all kinds, in poverty and in humility; and therefore, as the Franciscans were the Minors (minores, less) , the new order took the name of Minims (minimi, least) . By 1474 a number of houses had been established in southern Italy and Sicily, and the order was recognized and approved by the pope. ”

“ Francis of Assisi endeavored to make it more heartfelt and compassionate. They founded two monastic orders with divergent yet harmonious aims. The Dominicans called men to a life of study and self-examination, enlisting the human reason to explain and justify the universe under the Christian scheme; the Franciscans called men to poverty, humility, and chastity, and service to the unfortunate. ”

“ Unluckily, at the General Chapter held at Perugia, May 30, 1322, the Franciscans appealed to Christendom at large by a definition addressed to all the faithful, in which they proved that the absolute poverty of Christ was the accepted doctrine of the Church, as set forth in the bulls Exiit and Exivi de Paradiso, and that John himself had approved of these in his bull Quorumdum. ”

“ His reign would be short, and in 1370 a pope canonically elected would bring mankind to Christianity, after which all cardinals would be chosen from the Greek Church. During these tribulations the Franciscans would be nearly exterminated, in punishment for their relaxation of the Rule, but the survivors would be reformed and the Order would fill the earth, innumerable as the stars of heaven; in fact, two Franciscans of the most abject poverty were to be the Elias and Enoch who would conduct the Church through that disastrous time. ”

“ The Franciscans do not earn their reputation for self-denying sanctity, without working for it. Judging by the cells which I saw in this convent, I may say, that if their comforts by day, are no greater than those provided for night, their lives are truly lives of penance and mortification. Near to the Franciscan convent are the remains of a Roman amphitheatre ”

“ The Superior, seeing that Brother Juniper was incorrigible, then said, "Come now, since thou wilt have it so, let us eat it, you and I together"; and so they made their peace with one another, and, in the dead of the night, finished the gruel between them. This is a quaint illustration of the simple spirit, the absolute unconventionality, which characterised the Franciscans.
The Franciscans were not only the first popular preachers, they were also the first to embody a practical philanthropy. Their social work amongst the poor was something quite unknown before. ”

“ Francis was utterly incompatible with social life in any form.
For three centuries the Franciscans and Dominicans practically ruled the Church and state. They filled the highest civil ecclesiastical positions; they taught authoritatively in the universities and churches; they maintained the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiffs against kings, bishops, and heretics; and they were to the Church before the Reformation what the Jesuits were after the Reformation. The Mendicants increased so rapidly however that they soon became a burden to the Church and the people. ”

“ As the church of one of the two great preaching orders, it had a nave large beyond all proportion to its choir. That order being the Franciscan, bound by vows of poverty, the simplicity of the worship preserved the whole space clear from any adventitious ornaments. The popularity of the Franciscans, especially in a convent hallowed by a visit from St. Francis himself, drew to it not only the chief civic festivals, but also the numerous families who gave alms to the friars, and whose connection with their church was, for this reason, in turn encouraged by them. ”

“ The dispute on the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin began between the Dominicans and Franciscans as early as the thirteenth century. The contending parties stood at first upon equal ground; but “the merits of faith and devotion” were so decidedly on the side of the Franciscans, that they soon had the Christian mob to support them, and it became dangerous for any Divine to assert that the Mother of God (such is the established language of the Church of Rome) had been, like the rest of mankind, involved in original sin. ”

“ We know as a fact that the Franciscans were ever foremost in the cure of the sick, that they tended the hospitals in the midst of pestilence, and that to their intelligent devotion is due whatever progress the science of healing made in the dark ages. We are told, moreover, that the tender love of{262} Francis lavished itself on the brute creation as well as on man—on insects, birds, and beasts, whom he was wont to call his brethren and sisters, and for whom he was never weary in caring. ”

“ FRANCISCANS, an order of friars founded in 1209, by St Francis of Assini, who had led a dissolute life, but a fit of sickness produced an entire change in his method of living; and at the age of twenty one he solemnly determined to practise the most rigorous self-denial; and had the courage to support that resolution, without the least deviation, during a life of forty six years. Absolute poverty was his fundamental rule, which he rigorously enjoined on all his followers. ”

“ In the caves and dens of the earth and in the mountain villages and little convents, there dwelt a severe sect of the Franciscans, men whose love of Poverty, their founder's bride and choice, was almost stronger than their love of that founder himself. ”

“ They early began to extend their influence over the universities, and the two most distinguished theologians and teachers of the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, were Dominicans. Among the Franciscans, on the other hand, there was always a considerable party who were suspicious of learning and who showed far more anxiety to remain absolutely poor than did the Dominicans. Yet as a whole the Franciscans, like the Dominicans, accepted the wealth that came to them, and they, too, contributed distinguished scholars to the universities. ”

“ In fact, under a pope of the temperament of John, the orthodox Franciscans had a narrow and dangerous path to tread. The Spirituals were burned as heretics because they insisted on following their own conception of the Rule of Francis, and the distinction between this and the official recognition of the obligation of poverty was shadowy in the extreme. The Dominicans were not slow to recognize the dubious position of their rivals, nor averse to take advantage of it. ”

“ No order has had so stormy an internal history as the Franciscans; yet in spite of all the troubles and dissensions and strivings that have marred Franciscan history, the Friars Minor of every kind have in each age faithfully and zealously carried on St Francis’s great work of ministering to the spiritual needs of the poor. Always recruited in large measure from among the poor, they have ever been the order of the poor, and in their preaching and missions and ministrations they have ever laid themselves out to meet the needs of the poor. ”

“ And they speedily [163] attained a marvellous power over men. The Franciscans in the thirteenth century were exactly like the early Methodists in the last century. Both societies placed their chapels among the abodes of want; there they laboured, and there they triumphed, because they worked in the spirit and power indicated by this first recorded miracle of the beggar healed at the temple gate. [81] It will be a bad day for religion and for society when the Church ceases to be the Church and champion of the weak, the down-trodden, the destitute. ”

“ The popular imagination is right: what we need to retain of a man is the expression of countenance in which lives his whole being, a heart-cry, a gesture that expresses his personality. Do we not find all of Jesus in the words of the Last Supper? And all of St. Francis in his address to brother wolf and his sermon to the birds?
Let us beware of despising these documents in which the first Franciscans are described as they saw themselves to be. ”

“ To him the Franciscan Order was merely an instrument for the furtherance of his ambitious schemes, and its worldliness was rather to be stimulated than repressed. Though he placed in his Sixth Book of Decretals the bull Exiit qui seminat, his practical exposition of its provisions is seen in two bulls issued July 17, 1296, by one of which he assigns to the Franciscans of Paris one thousand marks, to be taken from the legacies for pious uses, and by the other he converts to them a legacy of three hundred livres bequeathed by Ada, lady of Pernes, for the benefit of the Holy Land. ”

“ He proposed later, as protestants seemed indifferent to his project, that the Pope divide the fields of learning among the catholic orders, assigning the study of nature to the Benedictines and Cistercians, that of law to the Dominicans and the Jesuits, that of language to other orders, and to the Franciscans the care of souls. ”

“ Grosseteste relied on the friars, Franciscan and Dominican, to revive religion in his diocese. From their first coming to England he had befriended the little brothers of St. Francis and St. Dominic’s order of preachers, and at Oxford had been conspicuously their rector. He writes to Pope Gregory IX. in the highest praise of the Franciscans: “Inestimable benefits have been wrought in my diocese by the friars. They enlighten our whole land with the bright light of their preaching and learning.” ”

“ The Carmelites were divided into two main branches, the Calced and the Discalced; the Franciscans were divided into three main bodies, the Conventuals, the Observants, and the Capuchins; the Dominicans made various efforts to restore the ancient discipline especially from about the beginning of the fifteenth century; while many of the Augustinians who were determined on reform established new congregations, as for example, the Discalced Augustinian Hermits, who spread themselves over France, Spain, and Portugal. ”

“ Although the Franciscans are now no longer the titular confessors of these nuns, nevertheless they are on the most friendly terms with one another; upon which friendships the Italians exercise their satirical and sarcastic wit. The confessors are now chosen by the respective bishops, who confer the honour upon their most faithful adherents, as a reward for their services. The rivalries of those sainted women, and their ingenious contrivances to engage the smile of their holy father, are notorious to every one who lives near a convent. ”

“ The vices of the clergy serve to account also for the appearance of the begging monks, the Franciscans and Dominicans, and to explain the need of the great reform which they undertook in the thirteenth century. ”

“ Still, had the Franciscans alone arisen, it would have been impossible for the more cultured and educated people to be really impressed by the movement The dramatic side, we may almost call it the vulgar side, of the conduct of the Franciscans revolted many of the more educated people, and the only practical way they had of expressing their disgust was to try and create a certain amount of antagonism by favouring the Dominican Order. ”

“ Every branch of the Franciscan Order has a house at Assisi, but most of these communities have been dispersed by the Italian government. People are at liberty to dress in purple and fine linen, and indulge in every earthly pleasure; but to do penance, to put on sandals and a brown habit, and “clothe one’s self in good St. Francis’ girdle,” is quite another affair. Besides, the Franciscans are traditionally the friends of the people, and the influence they once exerted against the German emperors who oppressed Italy may not be forgotten. ”

“ The Franciscans or Grey Friars, following Scotus, waged war with the Dominicans, who followed Aquinas. Pope Sixtus IV. had in 1483 issued a bull favouring the Franciscans and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Foxe tells us that it was in consequence ‘holden in their schools, written in their books, preached in their sermons, taught in their [Pg 416] churches, and set forth in their pictures.’ On the other side had occurred the tragedy of the weeping image of the Virgin, and the detection and burning of the Dominican monks who were parties to the fraud. ”