An attentive or excited crowd is always very impressionable, but this peculiar sensitiveness was perhaps stronger in the Middle Ages than at any other time. Nervous disturbances were in the air, and upon men thus prepared the will of the preacher impressed itself in a manner almost magnetic.
To understand what Francis's preaching must have been like we must forget the manners of to-day, and transport ourselves for a moment to the Cathedral of Assisi in the thirteenth century; it is still standing, but the centuries have given to its stones a fine rust of polished bronze, which recalls Venice and Titian's tones of ruddy gold. It was new then, and all sparkling with whiteness, with the fine rosy tinge of the stones of Mount Subasio. It had been built by the people of Assisi a few years before in one of those outbursts of faith and union which were almost everywhere the prelude of the communal movement. So, when the people thronged into it on their high days, they not merely had none of that vague respect for a holy place which, though it has passed into the customs of other countries, still continues to be unknown in Italy, but they felt themselves at home in a palace which they had built for themselves. More than in any other church they there felt themselves at liberty to criticise the preacher, and they had no hesitation in proving to him, either by murmurs of dissatisfaction or by applause, just what they thought of his words. We must remember also that the churches of Italy have neither pews nor chairs, that one must listen standing or kneeling, while the preacher walks about gesticulating on a platform; add to this the general curiosity, the clamorous sympathies of many, the disguised opposition of some, and we shall have a vague notion of the conditions under which Francis first entered the pulpit of San Rufino.
His success was startling. The poor felt that they had found a friend, a brother, a champion, almost an avenger. The thoughts which they hardly dared murmur beneath their breath Francis proclaimed at the top of his voice, daring to bid all, without distinction, to repent and love one another. His words were a cry of the heart, an appeal to the consciences of all his fellow-citizens, almost recalling the passionate utterances of the prophets of Israel. Like those witnesses for Jehovah the "little poor man" of Assisi had put on sackcloth and ashes to denounce the iniquities of his people, like theirs was his courage and heroism, like theirs the divine tenderness in his heart.
It seemed as if Assisi were about to recover again the feeling of Israel for sin. The effect of these appeals was prodigious; the entire population was thrilled, conquered, desiring in future to live only according to Francis's counsels; his very companions, who had remained behind at Rivo-Torto, hearing of these marvels, felt in themselves an answering thrill, and their vocation took on a new strength; during the night they seemed to see their master in a chariot of fire, soaring to heaven like a new Elijah.[15]
This almost delirious enthusiasm of a whole people was not perhaps so difficult to arouse as might be supposed: the emotional power of the masses was at that time as great all over Europe as it was in Paris during certain days of the Revolution. We all know the tragic and touching story of those companies of children from the north of Europe who appeared in 1212 in troops of several thousands, boys and girls mingled together pell-mell. Nothing could stop them, a mania had overtaken them, in all good faith they believed that they were to deliver the Holy Land, that the sea would be dried up to let them pass. They perished, we hardly know how, perhaps being sold into slavery.[16] They were accounted martyrs, and rightly; popular devotion likened them to the Holy Innocents, dying for a God whom they knew not. Those children of the crusade also perished for an unknown ideal, false no doubt; but is it not better to die for an unknown and even a false ideal than to live for the vain realities of an utterly unpoetic existence? In the end of time we shall be judged neither by philosophers nor by theologians, and if we were, it is to be hoped that even in this case love would cover a multitude of sins and pass by many follies.
Certainly if ever there was a time when religious affections of the nerves were to be dreaded, it was that which produced such movements as these. All Europe seemed to be beside itself; women appeared stark naked in the streets of towns and villages, slowly walking up and down, silent as phantoms.[17] We can understand now the accounts which have come down to us, so fantastic at the first glance, of certain popular orators of this time; of Berthold of Ratisbon, for example, who drew together crowds of sixteen thousand persons, or of that Fra Giovanni Schio di Vicenza, who for a time quieted all Northern Italy and brought Guelphs and Ghibellines into one another's arms.[18]
That popular eloquence which was to accomplish so many marvels in 1233 comes down in a straight line from the Franciscan movement. It was St. Francis who set the example of those open-air sermons given in the vulgar tongue, at street corners, in public squares, in the fields.
To feel the change which he brought about we must read the sermons of his contemporaries; declamatory, scholastic, subtile, they delighted in the minutiæ of exegesis or dogma, serving up refined dissertations on the most obscure texts of the Old Testament, to hearers starving for a simple and wholesome diet.
With Francis, on the contrary, all is incisive, clear, practical. He pays no attention to the precepts of the rhetoricians, he forgets himself completely, thinking only of the end desired, the conversion of souls. And conversion was not in his view something vague and indistinct, which must take place only between God and the hearer. No, he will have immediate and practical proofs of conversion. Men must give up ill-gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with their adversaries.
At Assisi he threw himself valiantly into the thick of civil dissensions. The agreement of 1202 between the parties who divided the city had been wholly ephemeral. The common people were continually demanding new liberties, which the nobles and burghers would yield to them only under the pressure of fear. Francis took up the cause of the weak, the minores, and succeeded in reconciling them with the rich, the majores.