Pictures in Umbria

by Katharine S. Macquoid

Francis answered that, "as the Bishop knows, money is at the root of all quarrels, therefore I and my brother penitents, wishing to live in peace, prefer to be without it."

As time went on the number of penitents increased. Francis was perplexed how to dispose of them; he felt also that if he could gain the Papal sanction the power of his mission would be strengthened. He resolved to make a pilgrimage to Rome, in order to ask Pope Innocent the Third to consider his Rule, and to give it his approval.

Eleven of the brothers went with him cheerfully to the Imperial City, singing hymns of praise as they walked. They were received very coldly: it was considered that such a dusty, travel-soiled handful of men, with so small and insignificant a leader, could not have the capacity to found a new Order, and that its Rule of Poverty, Obedience, and Chastity was unseemly and preposterous.

But when at length Francis was admitted to the Pope's presence, Innocent saw in the face of his suppliant something that pleaded too powerfully to be resisted, and, after a little more delay, against the advice of his worldly, pleasure-loving cardinals, he gave his sanction to the objectionable Rule, and named the new community, The Order of Brothers Minor.

They quitted Rome as soon as they could; they seem to have suffered much privation on their homeward journey, so that they were glad, as they approached Assisi, to find and take refuge in a small, empty dwelling at Rivo Torto, near the leper-house.

They established themselves here, but their number increased so rapidly that they soon outgrew their quarters, and were shown that they were unwelcome guests.

When he found that he and his followers could no longer live by themselves at Rivo Torto, Francis went to Guido, the Bishop of Assisi, and begged to be allowed the use of an oratory, or of any chapel, in which he and his brethren could say the Hours of Prayer. He was told that no such building could be allotted him; and, almost weeping with earnestness and baffled hope, Francis climbed the side of Subasio till he reached, near the top, the abbey of the Benedictines. As this side of the great hill belonged to the Abbot, the kindly man, who seems to have fully sympathised with Francis, granted him the chapel of "the Little Portion of St. Mary," to have and to hold for his own.

At once the overjoyed Francis and his disciples, as has been said, set to work and built themselves huts to dwell in, near their place of worship.

Next to the rapidity with which the new Order made its way, its most remarkable feature was its social aspect.

In those days, when the haughty nobles and the still more haughty Church dignitaries seem to have ignored the existence of the peasantry, we find in the Franciscan brotherhood, from its beginning, a complete union of all classes. Its first four members were a canon, a nobleman, a rich merchant's son, and a labourer.