Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller

by Lina Eckenstein

To his companions the Poverello of Assisi appeared as the true representative of the Lord’s anointed, and it was owing to this that the movement which he inaugurated had so great an influence on life, on literature and on art. The measure of the man is not easy to recover. His companions never tired of drawing parallels between him and Jesus of Nazareth, and, as in the case of Jesus, a number of miracles wrought by him were introduced into the descriptions of his life, which throw darkness rather than light on his personality. But the influence of the man may well appear miraculous, considering how instantaneous and far-reaching was the impression which he produced—an impression to which history offers few parallels. This influence is so marvellous that the historian who would show it in the light of cause and effect must needs have a firm hold on the sequence of events that led up to it, and on the prevalent attitude of mind in the different strata of society that prepared it.

The influence of the Franciscan movement on literature and art has been made the subject of a number of interesting inquiries. Ozanam was the first to analyse it in its bearings on Italian poetry. The Canticle of the Sun (Laudes Creaturarum) by St Francis, is among the earliest poems in the vernacular, and it led to the composition of numerous poems and hymns. Apparently St Francis in early days himself sang the songs of the troubadours, and among his first converts was a troubadour who was afterwards known as Fra Pacifico. Hence an element in the religious poems of the Franciscans which reflects the poet’s delight in nature and the beggar’s freedom from care. Many celebrated hymns were written by Franciscans, among them the Dies Irae, first sung by Thomas of Celano, and the Stabat Mater Dolorosa written by Jacopone of Todi, a famous and prolific poet. As a companion to the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, the Hymn of the Virgin at the Cross, Jacopone afterwards wrote the Stabat Mater Speciosa, the Hymn of the Virgin at the cradle; the keynote of the one is sorrow, the keynote of the other is joy.

The study of Ozanam on the influence of the Franciscans on Italian literature might be extended to other countries. Some of the earliest and most beautiful writings in Middle English were the outcome of Franciscan influence. Wherever the friars gained a foothold they succeeded in identifying themselves with popular and national interests, and the Christianity which they preached was as a light by which the common realities of life appeared more beautiful and more worthy of praise in sermon and song.

In regard to art, Ruskin long ago drew attention to the spirit which the friars infused into painting; his keen sense of beauty and his desire for religious exaltation were soothed by no art so well as by that of the Quattrocento. In Italian painting the friars inaugurated a new era. Since the days when Byzantine artists had decorated churches and chapels with mosaics, practically no attempt had been made to represent incidents of Biblical history and saint legend in church. The friars were the first to favour the idea of having the stories of religion set forth on a large scale in effective and inexpensive frescoes. And compared to the artists of the Byzantine School, these painters were animated by the health-giving breath of a new kind of realism. To the Byzantine, as interpreted by his work, dispassionateness appeared as an adjunct of holiness in the saint. The fresco painter, on the contrary, did not hesitate in animating the saints with passion, which appears as additional strength, since it is passion brought well under control.

The Franciscan churches of Italy have recently been made the subject of an inquiry by Thode, who enters also into the incidents of the saint’s life which were there represented. In the choice of these incidents the painters were apparently guided by the early accounts of the saint’s life, but there is considerable diversity in the scenes which they chose for representation and combined together into a series. The early accounts of St Francis include a life written by Thomas of Celano between 1228 and 1229, which was afterwards re-written; a life written by three of the companions of St Francis, which was finished in 1246; and a life in which St Francis’s great follower, Bonaventura, combined all that had previously been written of the saint. It was completed in the year 1260.

But the development of the legend of St Francis did not stop here. The Little Flowers of St Francis, which were put into writing in the course of the fourteenth century, describe such incidents in the life of the saint as appealed to popular fancy, set down in a popular form. The thread of historical truth in this book is of the slenderest, and the incidents

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as they stand cannot claim to have happened. And yet the Little Flowers, in their bluntness and simplicity, have all the charm of an unreflective and uncritical belief in the beauty of the new teaching. They give a true picture of humble life in mediæval Italy and show us the early Franciscans in the light in which they saw themselves. The book was widely read, and the first part, which dealt with St Francis among his followers, was amplified by accounts of the mad and saintly freaks of Fra Ginepro, and of the steadfastness with which Fra Egidio kept to his resolve of living by the labour of his hands. The influence of the Poverello of Assisi was, in fact, felt by the highest and the lowest alike. While current fables made popular heroes of him and his followers, Giotto at Assisi represented the decisive incidents of his life in a series of paintings, which have been likened to an epic, and Dante devoted an entire canto of the Paradiso to his praise. In the Paradiso the praise of St Francis is sung by St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the followers of St Dominic, while the praise of St Dominic is sung by St Bonaventura, the most influential of Franciscans, a proof of the bond which united the two orders in Dante’s mind. The jealousy which afterwards estranged them was never as pronounced in Italy as north of the Alps. In many churches the figures of St Francis and St Dominic still stand side by side. And Andrea della Robbia, in a most charming relief in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella at Florence, gave expression to the affection of the two orders by representing their founders embracing as they meet.

And how shall we picture him in the flesh, the man who was so close to the best side of the religion and the morality of his age? In the year 1222 St Francis, attracted by the thought of St Benedict, went to stay at the ancient monastery at Subiaco, and here, in memory of his visit, his portrait was painted on the wall of a chapel which was completed before 1228. On this picture St Francis is represented without the stigmata and without a halo. He wears the penitent’s rough garb with a cord round his waist, and he is designated simply as Frater Franciscus. The Poverello is seen full face. His figure is slim, his hair and beard are crisp and fair, his face is long and thin. In spite of a certain awkwardness, due no doubt to the painter, he has an appearance of refinement and delicacy well in keeping with the stock from which he had sprung. His large eyes and parted lips suggest the enthusiast; his thin neck and slender hands belong to a physique which might well contract phthisis. There are other early pictures of St Francis. But the great painters who set forth his life’s history do not appear to have been directly influenced by them. Thode has shown how, in some parts of Italy, a bearded type of the saint is traditional, in others a beardless type. Sometimes he was painted dark, sometimes fair, sometimes comely in figure, sometimes emaciated. Even Giotto, judging by the two series of pictures he painted, the one at Assisi, the other in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, had before him different ideal types of the saint.