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REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.D.
Censor
imprimatur
JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY
Archbishop of New York
NEW YORK
November 16, 1912
i*
ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
EVERYBODY'S
ST. FRANCIS
BY
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERA-
TURE AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA;
AUTHOR OF "SONGS AND SONNETS," THE
"SEXTON MAGINNIS" STORIKS, ETC.
WITH PICTURES BY
M. BOUTET DE MONVEL
' 3
> > > >
- .>
D. APPLFTON-CENTURY COMPANY
INCORPORATED
New York
1939
London
Copyright, 1912, by
THE CENTURY Co.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.
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\: -.: . . ..
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO MY FRIEND
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON
INSPIRER AND CRITIC OF THIS BOOK
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 3
II. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW LIFE . 45
III. THE WOLF OF GUBBIO AND THE
COMING OF SANTA CLARA ... 90
IV. ST. FRANCIS AND THE PEOPLE . 127
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
St. Francis of Assisi Frontispiece
Francis Bernardone, as a child, walking with his parents Page 5
Francis kissing the hand of a leper 16
Francis at the head of a band of his pleasure-loving com-
panions 25
Francis carrying a stone for the reconstruction of the chapel
of St. Damien 36
St. Francis distributing gold to the poor of Assisi ... 58
St. Francis receiving food from a peasant woman in Assisi 67
Brother Giles giving his clothes to a beggar woman ... 77
St. Francis receiving permission to preach repentance from
Pope Innocent III 84
St. Francis consoling the friar who doubted his affection . 93
St. Francis subjugating the wolf of Gubbio 100
Children of Assisi feeding the wolf of Gubbio .... 105
Clara receiving her sister Agnes 116
St. Francis and the Turtle-Doves ... v .... 121
St. Francis and the Birds 131
St. Francis with the three brigands 148
St. Francis and Brother Masseo 153
St. Francis preaching to the people of Assisi 164
Santa Clara and her sister waiting on St. Francis . , . 177
Death of St. Francis . . . 187
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
PROPERTY OF T
CITY OF KEV.
EVERYBODY S ST. FRANCIS
I
THE YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS
OF ASSISI
HE power of St. Francis of
Assisi, son of the practical
Peter Bernardone and the ten-
der Madonna Pica, over the
Western world of his time,
and over our hearts in our time, has been
explained in many ways. But it has only one
source and that is love. Love made him a
poet; love made him a saint; love gave him
life and fire and understanding and all the
things that were added to him. Let us see if
this is not true.
Francis Bernardone, first named John in
honor of the first little friend of Our Lord,
was not born in a peaceful time. Even dis-
tance can lend little enchantment to the view
of the panorama of the hating and envious
cities, towns, villages, and feudal strongholds
[3]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
which we call Italy at the end of the twelfth
century. It is possible that Francis was born
during the last week of September, in the
year 1181. 1 So far as beauty is concerned,
there is no question that he was happy in
the place of his birth. People who love
beauty would go to Umbria, even if Fran-
cis once Bernardone, and afterwards name-
less, that he might belong to the whole world
had not become one with Assisi and Um-
bria. He was not the first poet that Assisi
had claimed. There was the elegant Sextus
Aurelius Propertius, the equal at least of Lu-
cius Varius Rufus who, according to Brown-
ing, in the vestibule of the bath at Rome,
Read out that long planned, late completed piece,
His Panegyric on the Emperor.
And later Francis of Assisi imitated the
deified Emperor Augustus by assuming the
guise and the garb of a mendicant, and in
Rome, too, though not with the same purpose.
Once a year Augustus begged through fear,
Asking and taking alms of who may pass,
And so averting, if submission help,
Fate's envy, the dread chance and change of things. 2
'The date of his birth is uncertain, some authorities placing it in 1182.
'Browning: "Imperante Augusto Natus est."
U]
FRANCIS BERN AD ONE, AS A CHILD,
WALKING WITH HIS PARENTS
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Francis, as we shall see, became a beggar at
the door of St. Peter's from a motive more
imperial than that of the emperor's.
ITALY DURING THE LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS
ITALY if we may speak of the atoms striving
to fly apart as Italy was longing for free-
dom in a dim, half-hearted way. In those
days, the rule of the German emperor meant
slavery; that of the pope, the hope of freedom,
as freedom was then understood. And there
was great rejoicing in Assisi in 1198 when the
German and Imperial Duke of Spoleto, Conrad
of Llitzen, was deprived of his place as the
feudal lord of Assisi by a decree of the pope.
The joy of the Assisians and the Umbrians
would not in the least hinder them from oppos-
ing the pope in other temporal matters, if
they saw fit. But in this act Pope Innocent
III - - he who defied the strongest of all forces
at Rome, tradition, to bless the beginnings of
the work of St. Francis; he who loved sym-
bolism so much that he decreed that the black
vestments used in the services for the dead
should be lined with green, the color of hope
[7]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
was hailed by all lovers of freedom in
Umbria as their lover and friend. The Guelfs
had triumphed; still, the triumph was pre-
carious. On the heights of the Lateran the
pope heard threats of civil war; the strength
of the empire was growing in the Two Sicilies,
and that young panther, Frederick of Swabia,
of the race of the Red-bearded, graceful, alert,
and treacherous, was gaining strength in a
palace in Palermo for his chance to spring.
It was not a happy time for the birth of a
poet greater than Propertius. Never had
Assisi been more prosperous, or more besotted
in its love for the things of this world. The
peasants in Umbria, though somewhat better
off than their neighbors, had no time for
abstractions. They believed firmly in what
they could see. If Our Lord and the gracious
Lady, His Mother, had appeared among them,
they would have garlanded the front of their
houses with green bushes and strewn the
flowers of the season before them. The rich
would have treated them as the greatest of
the earth; the fountains would have run with
red and white wine, and Peter Bernardone
[8]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
would have spared none of his store of money,
gained in France and on the road to France,
to do honor to the Son of the Almighty God;
but no poor man or woman would have been
really the better for it all.
"Ah, thou little Lord Jesus," Peter Bernar-
done would probably have said "thou art
poor; we, the rich of Assisi, will make you
rich. Here is a crown of the finest French
workmanship and a little sword, made by the
infidels of Spain, for thee. But, dear and
little Lord, be sure that all the world shall
know what the greatest merchant of no mean
city of Assisi has given thee."
The powerful merchants in the peninsula
believed, with the faith of their eye, that the
unseen might at any moment become seen;
and in this they differed from our modern
men of commerce; but in another way they
were like : they were firm in their belief in the
value of advertising. They were practical.
The thirteenth century was an age of faith;
but, nevertheless, avarice, sensualism, coarse-
ness, neglect of the rights of the weak and the
poor, the worship of material things, were
[9]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
prevalent. In mortal hatred of poverty, in
love of luxury, the end of the twelfth and the
beginning of the thirteenth century were not
exceeded by our own time. Faith without
morals or good works was not rare in that
time, which nourished the germs of our modern
progress into fuller life. The pagan supersti-
tions which led Augustus to propitiate the
gods by professing to be too mean for their
arrows to pierce him (see Browning's "Impe-
rante Augusto Natus est") were a part of life.
Brigands, half Christianized, prayed to their
patron saints for the coming of a fat-pursed
victim; the opulent lord sacked the monastery
of his enemy, the opulent abbot, and offered
stolen rubies and gold at the shrine of the
patron of his family as a propitiation. It
was an age of faith, which is the gift of God,
and of credulity, which is not.
All kinds of horrible beliefs were welcomed.
If the devil appeared frequently, it was prob-
ably because he was sure that nobody who did
not see him occasionally would believe in him;
and honest faith must at times be enforced by
miracles, or faith would cease to be. Men
[101
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST
were restless, impetuous, and unreasonable,
easily wearied of themselves, and ready at a
fiery breath to give up all or to seize all.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THE ardent preacher could make the most
hardened voluptuary, the most heartless free-
companion, burst into passionate tears and
curses by telling how the Roman gave up the
meek Christ to the waiting mob, or a sudden
desire for wealth or woman would lead him
with equal suddenness to sell his soul to the
devil and make hell his portion, though always
with the hope that the good St. John or the
kindly St. Magdalen would cheat the demon in
the end.
That bread and wine, the commonest of
food, became in substance the body and blood,
soul and divinity, of the risen Christ when the
priest repeated the mystic words in com-
memoration was not doubted by anybody
except outlaws and blasphemers. That the
accidents of color and form and taste con-
cealed the mystic substance in which humanity
and divinity met was a truism of life. For
[11]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
this belief cathedrals were built, not merely
to honor a pure spirit in heaven, unknown and
far-off. For this belief monasteries and con-
vents existed, and through it the mass became
the center of a vast spiritual and economic
system. Later, when it was destroyed, a great
part of Germany and nearly all England
changed as if by magic. To eradicate it was
to eradicate the power of the church. It
would have lived had the temporal organiza-
tion of Christian Rome perished; but Rome,
as a spiritual power, cannot exist an hour
without it. It was, and is, the very life of the
Catholic Church.
In judging the conditions of the time of
Francis of Assisi, this truth is often forgotten
or ignored by persons who will see the past
only through modern eyes. Without the ac-
ceptance of the mass as a potent influence,
neither Francis nor his century can be com-
prehended. In the Middle Ages the sacra-
mental teaching about which the celebration
of the mass centered, was the expression of
the central truths of life. Without knowing
what the sacrifice of the mass stood for, it is
f 12]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST
as impossible to understand the conditions
under which the man of the time of St. Francis
of Assisi existed, as to attempt to know the
modern currents and cross-currents of life
without a knowledge of the meaning and
processes of evolution.
It is necessary, too, to comprehend the
view of the Italians in the matter of their
relations with the popes. In the Middle Ages
a quarrel with the holy father about temporal-
ities meant in no sense a revolt against his
spiritual teachings, and had nothing to do
with those new doctrines frequently arising
in Italy in the time of St. Francis, and with
which he had no sympathy.
St. Francis broke down some of the most
inhuman bulwarks of feudalism, but he was
never a politician. He had no rancor against
any system of government or social organiza-
tion. In fact, he did not trouble himself with
government or political systems; he thought
only of men.
COMMERCE AND GREED
FRANCIS would scarcely have entered into a
world more un-Christlike than that surround-
[13]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
ing him when he lay in his happy mother's
arms under the glowing grapes in the arbor
near his father's house. And his father, elate
with joy at the birth of a son, represented one
phase of the burden of society, for Peter
Bernardone was the personification of the
commercial spirit. To make good bargains,
to show the proud nobles that he could buy and
sell them if the occasion arose, to treat the
poor as wretched outcasts almost as accursed
as lepers, to be content in the luxuries he
could give his own, not caring much who wept
with cold and hunger outside his gates, were
conditions of his life. He was one of the many
prosperous men of his time - - homme moyen.
sensuel. He valued what he could see. He
was intensely practical, a model of common
sense. It is probable that his other son,
Angelo, resembled him; but Francis was like
the Provengal, his mother. She knew the
songs of the troubadours by heart; when she
dreamed, she lived in her own land, and Peter,
coming home and finding his little son, changed
his name from John to Francis, in honor of
her and the far land she loved, where men
[14]
TSlLs^L
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST
understood the splendors of life and women's
taste rendered the journeys of Italian mer-
chants profitable.
THE MONEY-CHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE
AT this time there were bishops in Italy and
everywhere else who acted as feudal lords.
They had been made feudal lords that they
might act as buffers between the king and the
nobles, and they accepted the mission. In
their opinion their personal rights were the
rights of the church. There were some priests
who looked on the practice of celibacy as
merely a feudal ordinance to save the priest
from siding with the nobles. There were
convents whose monks had drawn themselves
from the contagion of poverty, the essential of
one of their vows, and lived the lives of accom-
plished and learned gentlemen, with the con-
sciousness that they were making a proper
compromise between the perfection taught by
the founder of their religion and the duties
demanded of them by the conditions of their
times. There were, too, homes for lepers,
for the spirit of sacrifice survived, and the
[17J
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
poor were not entirely neglected; but they
and their conditions were becoming more
and more despicable in the eyes of all
classes.
Of the strange doctrines that grew and
flourished in Italy at the time, that of Cathari
was wide-spread. It was a mixture of various
Oriental opinions. It had a flavor of Zoroaster
and a touch of the teachings of Buddha, and
it was so pessimistic that marriage, the posses-
sion of property, and the care of the body were
denounced. Suicide was held to be the best
method of relieving the wretched soul from
the weight of matter, which is accursed . Mani-
cheism and Gnosticism were revived. Their
strange reading of the book of life threatened
Christianity and society. In vain Pope Inno-
cent III, occupying the most dangerous and
insecure position in Christendom, thundered.
Hatred was everywhere; sensuality and ava-
rice were rampant, lean, hungry, and strong.
Men were voluptuously in love with the tem-
poral things of life. The beginnings of the
progress in the sciences and the arts, which
we see in the Middle Ages, were everywhere
[18]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
evident, but they did not constitute life, and
they were as nothing without love.
THE little Francis was a spoiled child, for it
is easy to spoil a pretty child, and Francis
had a charming exterior in childhood and
youth. Besides, his mother had nothing to
do but spoil him. Peter Bernardone was rich
enough to give an easy life to the Madonna
Pica, whom he had brought into Umbria from
Provence, a transplanted bloom, to add grace
to the home of the merchant. And the
Madonna Pica lived only for the wondrous
son who, she firmly believed, would one day
be a great prince. She loved her other son,
too; but, then, he was so like her husband's
family !
It has always been the fashion for biog-
raphers of the saints to supply their heroes
with noble ancestors; for was not the Mother
of Christ of the house of David? In such
manner to the Madonna Pica was given the
pedigree of the great French family of Bourle-
ment. At any rate, she had a very noble and
romantic point of view of life. The Provengal
[19]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
ballads were always on her lips. The first
poet to sing the Italian speech was nurtured
in the language of Provence. He was to be
the preux chevalier, a great son of God; a
merchant, perhaps, like his father, also, but
with the poetry of Provence grafted on the
shrewd, prudent, prosperous Umbrian stem.
And Madonna Pica, making her little boy
Francis a poet and a knight, began the mak-
ing of the saint who was to give a new world
to Italy and to Christendom. He was to
fight the antichrist, then unhappily reigning,
not with the sword and lance of Pica's beloved
paladins, but with weapons so subtle that we
of to-day can only wonder at and admire
without understanding, his success.
Thomas of Celano, to whom we owe many
facts of Francis Bernardone's early life, is
never intemperate except in the use of rhetoric.
In his heart he knew well that this attractive
young stripling, better versed in the tales of
the paladins than in the art of reading and
writing, was in the eyes of the world not only
gay, but good. It was not from the point of
view of the world that Thomas of Celano, the
[20]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
devout follower of the older Francis, judged
the younger Francis, but by comparison with
his own ideal of ascetic perfection. And it is
to be hoped that his denunciations of the bale-
ful carelessness of Italian fathers and mothers
which he uttered were made from that high
point of view, too.
THE BRINGING UP OF THE BOY
FOR the good of his mind and the discipline
of his body, Francis was sent to the priests
of the Church of St. George. It is insinuated
that the neighbors pointed out to his proud
parents that he needed such discipline. But
whatever he learned from the clerics of St.
George, he was not long with them. His
father wanted him to assist him in his business,
for Peter was much away from home, and the
father thought that his younger son would
make a salesman in the Assisian branch of the
business.
It is not hard to understand Bernardone.
He was a man of common sense, opulent,
ambitious, and of the merchant stock that
hoped in time to become barons and princes
[21]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
by peaceful arts. Francis looked and acted
like a young noble. Bernardone was inordi-
nately proud of him. He could afford to give
his son anything that the most arrogant lord
in Assisi could give his, and the charming
Francis, with his romantic and fashionable
ideas and ways and his stories of the gay
science, of song and farandola, for his
mother had taught him all that was sweet
about her delectable country, - - was received
by the nobles of Assisi not only as a com-
panion, but as a leader. The neighbors were
aghast at the extravagance of the son of a
merchant, and though the pride of his father
was flattered, his parents themselves were not
altogether easy about their son, for he was the
gayest of the gay. He was at the head of the
corti of Assisi. They admitted with some
trepidation that, when free from his business,
he lived like a prince; but, when the keen-
eyed and sharp-tongued neighbors put this
thought into words, his mother said: "What
do you expect? Francis may live as the son
of God, and give many children to the Lord."
She was always ready to defend her son, or,
[22]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST
rather, to make an apology for him. Had not
a strange visitor, as benevolent and as joyous
as the holy Simeon, appeared at his birth and
predicted that this cheerful and charming son
of hers would in time do great work on earth
for God?
It was a time for pageants, for symbolical
pomp of all kinds. In Umbria the religious
instinct was strong, and its teachings were
made as objective as possible. It was in
Umbria that the banner, "in the dominions
of religious painting what the hymn is in
poetry," was first used. Great painters
touched religious banners with glory for the
processions of the feast-days. It is asserted
that the "Madonna of San Sisto' : was first
painted for this purpose. No expense was
spared in those days for pageants, sacred or
profane. It was in the profane pageants that
Francis excelled.
THE LOVE OF PAGEANTRY
THE Provengal poets were all the fashion in
Italy, and Francis, from his mother, knew
them well. When he attired himself as a
[23]
EVERYBODY'S ST. FRANCIS
jongleur, in a suit one half of ordinary stuff
and the other half of silk and velvet, and led
the procession of his friends, the effect was
pronounced ires chic, or its equivalent in the
argot of the Assisians. Peter Bernardone
may have grumbled, but he was secretly
pleased. What young noble was the peer of
his son in the invention and carrying out of
these splendors? Besides, as a shrewd mer-
chant, he recognized that his son helped to set
costly fashions; so Francis used all the silk
and damask, satin and velvet, he wished for
making windows and balconies bright in the
days and nights of the parades of the corti.
Folgore da San Geminiano, somewhat later,
about the year 1260, recites in sonnets
the doings of the rich and idle youth of Siena;
and from these we may gather the nature of
the goings-on of the gay band of Assisi, of
which Francis was the leader. In April the
members of the club had
Provencal songs and dances that surpass;
And quaint French mummings; and through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air. 1
'This and the following quotations are from Dante GabrieJ Rossetti's
" Dante and His Circle."
[24J
FRANCIS A T T II K HE A D O F A BAND OF
HIS P L E A S U R E - L O V I N G COMPANIONS
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Thomas of Celano and "The Three Com-
panions" who have much to say of Francis,
\
do not mention the German band, but possibly
the ascetic Thomas thought of it when he
made the extravagance of the early life of
Francis appear a thing more evil than it really
was.
In July both the gay companions of Assisi
and that of Siena had
. . . barrels of white Tuscan wine
In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat in company
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet.
Folgore ends his twelve sonnets by taking
thought of his best friend :
Ah! had he but the emperor's wealth, my place
Were fitted in his love more steadily
Than is Saint Francis at Assisi.
It is recorded that the members of the com-
pany in Siena, celebrated by Folgore in his
sonnets of the months, became bankrupt in a
single year; but the earlier company of Assisi
became bankrupt only when it lost its leader,
Francis. This came about through his love
of the poor. This question had interrupted
[271
EVERYBODYS ST. FRANCIS
his gaiety many times: "If you learn how to
be gracious and munificent in the sight of men,
of whom you can expect only a transient kind-
ness, is it not reasonable that you should,
for God, Who gives back all with interest,
strive to be gracious and munificent to His
poor?' Once Francis was rude to a poor
man who bored him during business hours,
for the son of Bernardone was a careful mer-
chant. "If this poor man came in the name
of a baron or a count, thou would'st have
given him what he asked," Francis said.
"But he came in the name of the King of
kings! How much better should you have
received him!" And after the poor man he
went, leaving a crowd of customers to wait
until he had made loving amends.
THE DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL
IMPERIAL absolutism in the peninsula had
received some hard blows. The emperor was
no longer admitted as all-powerful, and when
the pope seemed inclined to encroach on the
liberties of the communes, he was reminded
that even a father might not take all liberties
[28]
YOUTH OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI
from his children. Perugia stood for feudal-