The joyous Penitents who loved to call themselves Joculatores Domini, God's jongleurs, no doubt often did the same.[10] They did even better, for not willing to be a charge to anyone, they passed a part of the day in aiding the peasants in their field work.[11] The inhabitants of these districts are for the most part kindly and sedate; the friars soon gained their confidence by relating to them first their history and then their hopes. They worked and ate together; field-hands and friars often slept in the same barn, and when with the morrow's dawn the friars went on their way, the hearts of those they left behind had been touched. They were not yet converted, but they knew that not far away, over toward Assisi, were living men who had renounced all worldly goods, and who, consumed with zeal, were going up and down preaching penitence and peace.
Their reception was very different in the cities. If the peasant of Central Italy is mild and kindly the townsfolk are on a first acquaintance scoffing and ill disposed. We shall shortly see the friars who went to Florence the butt of all sorts of persecutions.
Only a few weeks had passed since Francis began to preach, and already his words and acts were sounding an irresistible appeal in the depths of many a heart. We have arrived at the most unique and interesting period in the history of the Franciscans. These first months are for their institution what the first days of spring are for nature, days when the almond-tree blossoms, bearing witness to the mysterious labor going on in the womb of the earth, and heralding the flowers that will suddenly enamel the fields. At the sight of these men—bare footed, scantily clothed, without money, and yet so happy—men's minds were much divided. Some held them to be mad, others admired them, finding them widely different from the vagrant monks,[12] that plague of Christendom.
Sometimes, however, the friars found success not responding to their efforts, the conversion of souls not taking form with enough rapidity and vigor. To encourage them, Francis would then confide to them his visions and his hopes. "I saw a multitude of men coming toward us, asking that they might receive the habit of our holy religion, and lo, the sound of their footsteps still echoes in my ears. I saw them coming from every direction, filling all the roads."
Whatever the biographies may say, Francis was far from foreseeing the sorrows that were to follow this rapid increase of his Order. The maiden leaning with trembling rapture on her lover's arm no more dreams of the pangs of motherhood than he thought of the dregs he must drain after quaffing joyfully the generous wine of the chalice.[13]
Every prosperous movement provokes opposition by the very fact of its prosperity. The herbs of the field have their own language for cursing the longer-lived plants that smother them out; one can hardly live without arousing jealousy; in vain the new fraternity showed itself humble, it could not escape this law.
When the brethren went up to Assisi to beg from door to door, many refused to give to them, reproaching them with desiring to live on the goods of others after having squandered their own. Many a time they had barely enough not to starve to death. It would even seem that the clergy were not entirely without part in this opposition. The Bishop of Assisi said to Francis one day: "Your way of living without owning anything seems to me very harsh and difficult." "My lord," replied he, "if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defence, for it is the source of quarrels and lawsuits, and the love of God and of one's neighbor usually finds many obstacles therein; this is why we do not desire temporal goods."[14]
The argument was unanswerable, but Guido began to rue the encouragement which he had formerly offered the son of Bernardone. He was very nearly in the situation and consequently in the state of mind of the Anglican bishops when they saw the organizing of the Salvation Army. It was not exactly hostility, but a distrust which was all the deeper for hardly daring to show itself. The only counsel which the bishop could give Francis was to come into the ranks of the clergy, or, if asceticism attracted him, to join some already existing monastic order.[15]
If the bishop's perplexities were great, those of Francis were hardly less so. He was too acute not to foresee the conflict that threatened to break out between the friars and the clergy. He saw that the enemies of the priests praised him and his companions beyond measure simply to set off their poverty against the avarice and wealth of the ecclesiastics, yet he felt himself urged on from within to continue his work, and could well have exclaimed with the apostle, "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!" On the other hand, the families of the Penitents could not forgive them for having distributed their goods among the poor, and attacks came from this direction with all the bitter language and the deep hatred natural to disappointed heirs. From this point of view the brotherhood appeared as a menace to families, and many parents trembled lest their sons should join it. Whether the friars would or no, they were an unending subject of interest to the whole city. Evil rumors, plentifully spread abroad against them, simply defeated themselves; flying from mouth to mouth they speedily found contradictors who had no difficulty in showing their absurdity. All this indirectly served their cause and gained to their side those hearts, more numerous than is generally believed, who find the defence of the persecuted a necessity.
As to the clergy, they could not but feel a profound distrust of these lay converters, who, though they aroused the hatred of some interested persons, awakened in more pious souls first astonishment and then admiration. Suddenly to see men without title or diploma succeed brilliantly in the mission which has been officially confided to ourselves, and in which we have made pitiful shipwreck, is cruel torture. Have we not seen generals who preferred to lose a battle rather than gain it with the aid of guerrillas?