Part 6 (1/2)

against Marckwald; Huillard-Breholles, _Hist. dipl._, i. p., 46 ff. Cf. Potthast, 1126. _Gesta Innocenti_, Migne, vol. i., x.x.xii, ff. Cf. Huillard-Breholles, _loc. cit._, pages 60, 84, 89, 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a mere adjective; the 3 Soc. say _Gentile nomine_.

[5] 1 Cel., 4; 3 Soc., 5.

[6] 3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 8.

[7] 1 Cel., 5; 3 Soc., 5; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 9.

[8] 3 Soc., 6; Bon., 9; 2 Cel., 1, 2.

[9] 3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2.

[10] These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him about them (2 Cel., 3, 68 and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other hand, nothing forbids his having been informed on this matter by Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, ”To-day, two infants were born--this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst”--of having been invented by the _zelanti_ against Brother Elias. It is evident that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at a.s.sisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (_suebat cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere_, Salimbene, p.

402) he was _scriptor_ at Bologna (Eccl., 13). And from the psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the pa.s.sage, 1 Cel., 6, differs in the different ma.n.u.scripts (cf. A. SS. and Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the latter's fall.

Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of a.s.sisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from a.s.sisi in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be that of which we are about to speak.

[11] 1 Cel., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 5; 3 Soc., 8, 12; Bon., 10, 11, 12.

[12] 3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel., 7; 2 Cel., 1, 3; 3 Soc., 13.

[13] 3 Soc., 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4.

[14] To this day in the centre and south of Italy they kiss the hand of priests and monks.

[15] See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc., 11; 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; A. SS., p. 566.

[16] 3 Soc., 11; Bon., 13.

CHAPTER III

THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209

St. Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions in which he lived.

We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St.

Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride, and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without seeming in the least to be preaching himself.

We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we are now arrived, 1205-1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the path which he finally entered.

The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegarde to put a stop to wickedness. Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his chronicle with this appalling picture. The advance in historic research permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion remains the same; without Francis of a.s.sisi the Church would perhaps have foundered and the Cathari would have won the day. The _little poor man_, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III., saved Christianity.

We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of its most prominent features.

The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places was carried on with boundless audacity; benefices were put up to the highest bidder, and Innocent III. admitted that fire and sword alone could heal this plague.[1] Prelates who declined to be bought by _propinae_, fees, were held up as astounding exceptions![2]

”They are stones for understanding,” it was said of the officers of the Roman _curia_, ”wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness; deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the minotaur.”[3] The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III. for rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Rome in this respect.[4]

The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of keeping with their calling, for extorting money from the simple priests.[5] Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other.[6] As to the priests, they bent all their powers to acc.u.mulate benefices, and secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable measures for providing for their b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.[7]