CHAPTER XIII
ST. FRANCIS (1182-1226)
In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not well with the Church in Italy. Corruption threatened it from within, heresy from without. Simony was rampant; livings were almost put up at auction. Innocent asserted that there was no cure but fire and steel. The prelates of the Roman Curia were "tricky as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiable as the Minotaur." The priests were often shameless; some became usurers to get money for their bastards, others kept taverns and sold wine. Worship had become a vain repetition of formulas. The monks were superstitious, many of them disreputable. The inevitable consequence of this decay in the Church was heresy. Italy was nearly, if not quite, as badly honeycombed with heretics as Languedoc had been. The Patarini, whom we remember in Hildebrand's time, now become a species of heretics, abounded in Milan; other sects sprang up in towns near by. In Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Faenza, Treviso, Florence, Prato, anti-sacerdotal sentiment was very strong. In Viterbo the heretics were numerous enough to elect their consul. At Piacenza priests had been driven out, and the city left unshepherded for three years. In Orvieto there had been grave disorders. In Assisi a heretic had been elected podestà (governor).
The great Innocent knitted his brows; he knew well that his noisy triumphs, which echoed over the Tagus, the Thames, the Rhine, and the Golden Horn, were of no avail, if heretics sapped and mined the Church within. It seemed as if the great ecclesiastical fabric, to which he had given the devotion of a life, was tottering from corner-stone to apex; when, one day, a cardinal came to him and said, "I have found a most perfect man, who wishes to live according to the Holy Gospel, and to observe evangelical perfection in all things. I believe that through him the Lord intends to reform His Holy Church in all the world." Innocent was interested, and bade the man be brought before him. This man was Francis Bernadone, known to us as St. Francis, the leader of a small band of Umbrian pilgrims from Assisi, who asked permission to follow literally the example of Jesus Christ. The Pope hesitated. To the cardinals, men of the world, this young man and his pilgrims were fools and their faith nonsense. "But," argued a believer, "if you assert that it is novel, irrational, impossible to observe the perfection of the Gospel, and to take a vow to do so, are you not guilty of blasphemy against Christ, the author of the Gospel?" Thinking the matter over, the Pope dreamed a dream. He beheld the Church of St. John Lateran, the episcopal church of the bishops of Rome, leaning in ruin and about to fall, when a monk, poor and mean in appearance, bent under it and propped it with his back. Innocent awoke and said to himself, "This Francis is the holy monk by whose help the Church of God shall be lifted up and stand again." So he said to Francis and his followers, "Go brethren, God be with you. Preach repentance to all as He shall give you inspiration. And when Almighty God shall have made you multiply in numbers and in grace, come back to us, and we will entrust you with greater things."
So St. Francis, "true servant of God and faithful follower of Jesus Christ," went about his ministry with the blessing of the Church. To the people of Assisi, of Umbria, and afterwards of all Central Italy, his life was a revelation of Christianity. He imparted the gospel anew, as fresh as when it had first been given under the Syrian stars. He embodied peace, gentleness, courtesy, and self-sacrifice. It is not too much to say that he saved the Catholic Church, and put off the Protestant Reformation for three hundred years. His example and influence raised the standard of conduct within the Church; and his love, his devotion, his insistence on the essential parts of Christ's teaching, and his dislike of worldly pomps, deprived heresy of all its weapons. He satisfied the widespread religious hunger better than heresy did. He was so characteristically Italian, and his ministry throws so much light on the state of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth century, that it is worth while to dwell for a few pages on his doings.
Assisi, built for safety on a hill and protected by great walls and gates, was a good example of a little mediæval town. In the centre was the piazza, on which fronted a Roman temple to Minerva, haughtily scornful of its mediæval surroundings. Hard by was the cathedral, where every baby was taken for baptism. On the tiptop of the hill stood a huge castle, where the feudal baron dwelt with his ruffianly soldiers and received his feudal lord, the Emperor, when he stopped at Assisi on his way to Rome. In Francis's boyhood, the people, aided by Pope Innocent, had driven out the German count, and had formed themselves into a free commune, save for their allegiance to the Holy See; but the change was not all gain. The town was divided into discordant classes; the nobility, maintained in idleness by the produce of their estates, the bourgeoisie, engaged in trade (Francis's father was a merchant), the artisans grouped in guilds, and the serfs, who tilled the fields and tended the vineyards and olive orchards. Once rid of the German count, the bourgeoisie endeavoured to rid themselves of the arrogant and idle nobility. Street war broke out. The nobles fled to Perugia, another little town perched on a hill some dozen miles across the plain, and asked for help. Perugia rejoiced in the opportunity. The miseries of a petty war between two little neighbours need no description. Fields and vineyards were devastated, olive orchards destroyed, farm-houses burned. Even in peace the peasants around Assisi lived in constant disquiet, ready to fling down their mattocks and flee to the protection of the city walls.
Within the city the streets were narrow, the houses small. Dirt abounded. War brought poverty, dirt brought the pest, Crusaders brought leprosy. At the gates of the town stood lazar-houses, and in remote spots lepers in the earlier stages of disease gathered together. Yet, despite war, pest, and leprosy, life in Umbria could never have been wholly sad. Certainly the sons of the well-to-do enjoyed themselves and whiled away the time carelessly. Sometimes a great personage stopped on his Romeward way; sometimes strolling players exhibited their shows on the piazza before the Temple of Minerva; sometimes a troubadour, escaped from the persecution in Provence, passed by on his way to Sicily, and sang his songs to repay hospitality. Many an afternoon and night the clubs of young gentlemen gave fêtes champêtres and dances. Francis, as a boy, was gayest of the gay, dancing and piping in the market-place, fighting in the front rank against the nobles of Perugia, but when he grew to manhood he could not bear the contrast between mirth and misery. He sought for some universal joy and found it in the love of Christ. He gathered about him a scanty band of holy and humble men of heart, who took the vow of poverty, and devoted themselves to praising God, comforting the wretched, and tending lepers. The abbot of the neighbouring Benedictine monastery gave them a little chapel, where St. Benedict himself had once said mass, which lay in the plain a mile below the town. This little chapel, named the Portiuncula (the little portion), which is now covered by the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels), so called because the songs of angels were heard there, was the cradle of the Franciscan Order. It was a tiny building, twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a steep pitched roof, plain walls, and big, round-arched door, and was sadly dilapidated. St. Francis and his friends built it up, and it became their church. Round it they built their huts, and encompassed all with a hedge. Here it was that St. Clare, the daughter of a nobleman of Assisi, donned the nun's dress. Here Francis passed the happy years of his life, while as yet his disciples were few and all were animated by his passionate longing for self-abnegation. He followed the New Testament literally, superstitiously one would say were it not that this literal obedience was accompanied by ineffable peace of heart and joy. He specially enjoined poverty. A smock, a cord, and sandals were enough for a true brother. Once a novice begged for permission to own a psalter, and teased him, but Francis answered: "After you have the psalter you will covet and long for a breviary; and when you possess a breviary you will sit on a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother, fetch me my breviary." Nor would he suffer the brethren to take heed for the morrow. They were only allowed to ask for provisions sufficient for the day. For he, in the rapture of his love, found infinite pleasure in the literal fulfillment of every word that had fallen from Christ's lips. Francis was an orator; he possessed passion, the great source of eloquence, and stirred prelates and Crusaders as well as peasants and lepers. The world wished for sympathy and he gave it. He seemed to be sick with the sick, afflicted with those in affliction, holy with the good; and even sinners felt him one of themselves. To his disciples he was Jesus come again. Joy and happiness radiated from him. All the world felt the charm and beauty of his love of God, and poetry followed him as wild violets attend the spring.
Thus Francis, by rubbing off the incrustations of twelve hundred unchristian years, revealed the poetry of the gospel to an eager world. One charming trait of his character was his love of animals, especially of birds. He wished the ox and the ass, companions of the manger, to share in the Christmas good cheer; and hoped that the Emperor would make a law that nobody should kill larks or do them any hurt. He was always very fond of larks and said that their plumage was like a religious dress. "Wherefore,—according to his disciple, Brother Leo,—it pleased God that these lowly little birds should give a sign of affection for him at the hour of his death. On the eve of the Sabbath day after vespers, just before the night in which he went up to God, a great multitude of larks flew down over the roof of the house where he lay, and all flying together wheeled in circles round the roof and singing sweetly seemed to be praising God."
His disciples went forth from their headquarters, the Portiuncula, like the Apostles, to preach the gospel, first to the people of Umbria and Tuscany, then on to Bologna and Verona, and soon over the Alps and across the seas. The Order had three branches: the begging friars themselves, tonsured and clad in undyed cloth, with cords about their waists and sandals on their feet; the sister Clares, shut up in nunneries, and dressed most simply; and the third order, people who continued to live in the world, but wished to follow the example of Christ and his blessed imitator and servant, Francis. The first rule of the begging friars had been very strict. For Francis the strait gate that led to eternal life was poverty. Even in his lifetime after his Order had become popular, there was grumbling and opposition; and after his death, the literal observance of his wishes was promptly given up. He would never allow his brethren to own a house or have a church; and yet within two years after his death the great basilica in Assisi was begun, dedicated to him, and hurried to magnificent completion. The Church, which held the doctrine of evangelical poverty fit only for mad men of genius, laid her heavy hand on the Order, and guided and governed it as best suited her purposes. But it would be grossly unfair to the Church to blame her for violating Francis's chief dogma. The total rejection of property, the total disregard of the morrow, seemed to her, as they seem to us to-day, doctrines wholly inapplicable to this world in which we find ourselves.