Part 24 (1/2)
[32] 1 Cel., 80-83.
[33] 1 Cel., 83; _Conform._, 111a. M. Thode (_Anfange_, pp.
76-94) makes a study of some thirty portraits. The most important are reproduced in _Saint Francois_ (1 vol., 4to, Paris, 1885); 1, contemporary portrait, by Brother Eudes, now at Subiaco (_loc. cit._, p. 30); 2, portrait dating about 1230, by Giunta Pisano (?); preserved at Portiuncula (_loc. cit._, p.
384); 3, finally, portrait dated 1235, by Bon. Berlinghieri, and preserved at Pescia, in Tuscany (_loc. cit._, p. 277). In 1886 Prof. Carattoli studied with great care a portrait which dates from about those years and of which he gives a picture (also preserved of late years at Portiuncula). _Miscellanea francescana_ t. i., pp. 44-48; cf. pp. 160, 190, and 1887, p.
32. M. Bonghi has written some interesting papers on the iconography of St. Francis (_Francesco di a.s.sisi_, 1 vol., 12mo, Citta di Castello, Lapi, 1884. Vide pp. 103-113).
CHAPTER XI
THE INNER MAN AND WONDER-WORKING
The missionary journey, undertaken under the encouragement of St. Clara and so poetically inaugurated by the sermon to the birds of Bevagna, appears to have been a continual triumph for Francis.[1] Legend definitively takes possession of him; whether he will or no, miracles burst forth under his footsteps; quite unawares to himself the objects of which he has made use produce marvellous effects; folk come out from the villages in procession to meet him, and the biographer gives us to hear the echo of those religious festivals of Italy--merry, popular, noisy, bathed in suns.h.i.+ne--which so little resemble the fastidiously arranged festivals of northern peoples.
From Alviano Francis doubtless went to Narni, one of the most charming little towns in Umbria, busy with building a cathedral after the conquest of their communal liberties. He seems to have had a sort of predilection for this city as well as for its surrounding villages.[2]
From thence he seems to have plunged into the valley of Rieti, where Greccio, Fonte-Colombo, San Fabiano, Sant-Eleuthero, Poggio-Buscone retain even stronger traces of him than the environs of a.s.sisi.
Thomas of Celano gives us no particulars of the route followed, but, on the other hand, he goes at length into the success of the apostle in the March of Ancona, and especially at Ascoli. Did the people of these districts still remember the appeals which Francis and Egidio had made to them six years before (1209), or must we believe that they were peculiarly prepared to understand the new gospel? However this may be, nowhere else was a like enthusiasm shown; the effect of the sermons was so great that some thirty neophytes at once received the habit of the Order.
The March of Ancona ought to be held to be the Franciscan province _par excellence_. There are Offida, San-Severino, Macerata, Fornaro, Cingoli, Fermo, Ma.s.sa, and twenty other hermitages where, during more than a century, poverty was to find its heralds and its martyrs; from thence came Giovanni della Verna, Jacopo di Ma.s.sa, Conrad di Offida, Angelo Clareno, and those legions of nameless revolutionists, dreamers, and prophets, who since the _extirpes_ in 1244 by the general of the Order, Crescentius of Jesi, never ceased to make new recruits, and by their proud resistance to all powers filled one of the finest pages of religious history in the Middle Ages.
This success, which bathed the soul of Francis with joy, did not arouse in him the smallest movement of pride. Never has man had a greater power over hearts, because never preacher preached himself less. One day Brother Ma.s.seo desired to put his modesty to the test.
”Why thee? Why thee? Why thee?” he repeated again and again, as if to make a mock of Francis. ”What are you saying?” cried Francis at last. ”I am saying that everybody follows thee, everyone desires to see thee, hear thee, and obey thee, and yet for all that thou art neither beautiful, nor learned, nor of n.o.ble family. Whence comes it, then, that it should be thee whom the world desires to follow?”
On hearing these words the blessed Francis, full of joy, raised his eyes to heaven, and after remaining a long time absorbed in contemplation he knelt, praising and blessing G.o.d with extraordinary fervor. Then turning toward Ma.s.seo, ”Thou wishest to know why it is I whom men follow? Thou wishest to know? It is because the eyes of the Most High have willed it thus; he continually watches the good and the wicked, and as his most holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any more insufficient and more sinful, therefore he has chosen me to accomplish the marvellous work which G.o.d has undertaken; he chose me because he could find no one more worthless, and he wished here to confound the n.o.bility and grandeur, the strength, the beauty, and the learning of this world.”
This reply throws a ray of light upon St. Francis's heart; the message which he brought to the world is once again the glad tidings announced to the poor; its purpose is the taking up again of that Messianic work which the Virgin of Nazareth caught a glimpse of in her _Magnificat_, that song of love and liberty, the sighs of which breathe the vision of a new social state. He comes to remind the world that the welfare of man, the peace of his heart, the joy of his life, are neither in money, nor in learning, nor in strength, but in an upright and sincere will.
Peace to men of good will.
The part which he had taken at a.s.sisi in the controversies of his fellow-citizens he would willingly have taken in all the rest of Italy, for no man has ever dreamed of a more complete renovation; but if the end he sought was the same as that of many revolutionaries who came after him, their methods were completely different; his only weapon was love.
The event has decided against him. Apart from the _illuminati_ of the March of Ancona and the _Fraticelli_ of our own Provence his disciples have vied with one another to misunderstand his thought.[3]
Who knows if some one will not arise to take up his work? Has not the pa.s.sion for worm-eaten speculations yet made victims enough? Are there not many among us who perceive that luxury is a delusion, that if life is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it may present itself--truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to make _amende honorable_ and bequeath to its successor one manly word of faith?
Yes, the Messiah will come. He who was announced by Gioacchino di Fiore and who is to inaugurate a new epoch in the history of humanity will appear. _Hope maketh not ashamed._ In our modern Babylons and in the huts on our mountains are too many souls who mysteriously sigh the hymn of the great vigil, _Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant Justum_,[4] for us not to be on the eve of a divine birth.
All origins are mysterious. This is true of matter, but yet more true of that life, superior to all others, which we call holiness; it was in prayer that Francis found the spiritual strength which he needed; he therefore sought for silence and solitude. If he knew how to do battle in the midst of men in order to win them to the faith, he loved, as Celano says, to fly away like a bird going to make its nest upon the mountain.[5]
With men truly pious the prayer of the lips, the formulated prayer, is hardly other than an inferior form of true prayer. Even when it is sincere and attentive, and not a mechanical repet.i.tion, it is only a prelude for souls not dead of religious materialism.
Nothing resembles piety so much as love. Formularies of prayer are as incapable of speaking the emotions of the soul as model love-letters of speaking the transports of an impa.s.sioned heart. To true piety as well as to profound love, the formula is a sort of profanation.
To pray is to talk with G.o.d, to lift ourselves up to him, to converse with him that he may come down to us. It is an act of meditation, of reflection, which presupposes the effort of all that is most personal in us.
Looked at in this sense, prayer is the mother of all liberty and all freedom.