We now proceed to give a brief criticism upon the intellect of St. Francis. He has left very little behind him. Only a few sermons, hymns, letters, and sayings, from which we can glean that he must have been an earnest preacher of the true popular type, driving home his truths by familiar illustrations, the type of that peculiar preaching which rendered his order so popular, and paved the way for their marvellous success. We subjoin a few extracts, which illustrate not only his style, but the design of his order. In one of his epistles he says: [Footnote 154]
[Footnote 154: Ep. ii. Ad universes Christi fideles.]
"Let us not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but simple, humble, and poor; and let us hold our bodies in contempt, because we are all miserable and putrid; as the Lord says through the prophet, I am a worm and not a man. We should never desire to be above others, but subjected and submissive to every human creature, for the sake of God. And upon all who do so, and persevere unto the end, the holy spirit will rest, and make in them his tabernacle and his mansion, and they shall be sons of the heavenly Father, whose works they do, and shall be the brides, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brides are we, since faithful souls are joined to the Holy Spirit; brothers are we of Jesus Christ, when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven; mothers are we, when we bear him in our hearts and bodies through love, and bring him forth by the sacred operation of our example, which ought to shine before others. Oh! how glorious and great to have a Father in heaven! Oh! how holy to have a betrothal of the Spirit! Oh! how sacred, how delightful, well pleasing, peaceful, sweet, loving, desirable above all, is it to have a brother who has laid down his life for the sheep, and has prayed his Father for us, saying, 'Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me. Father, all those whom thou hast given me in the world are thine, and thou hast given them to me, and the word which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received it, and know well that I came from thee, and have believed that thou hast sent me. I pray for them: I sanctify myself, that they may be sanctified as we are. And I will, O Father! that where I am there they may be also, and see my glory in my kingdom.'" [Footnote 155]
[Footnote 155: We translate from the Latin of St. Francis, which is somewhat different from our version.]
A graphic picture of a death-bed scene follows soon after the above beautiful passage in the same epistle.
"The body droops, death draws near, relatives and friends come, and say, 'Arrange thy house.' And behold, his wife and his sons, his relatives and friends, pretend to weep; and he, looking up, sees them weeping, and is moved, and says, my soul and my body, and all my goods, I place in your hands. Verily, that man is cursed who deposits his soul, his body, and all his goods in such hands; or, as the Lord says by the prophet, cursed is that man who places his trust in man. And then they send for the priest, who says to him, 'Dost thou wish to receive absolution from all thy sins?' he replies, 'I do.' Wilt thou make restitution from thy substance for those things which thou hast obtained through fraud and deception?' He says, 'No.' 'Why not?' asks the priest. 'Because I have divided all amongst my relations.' And then his speech begins to fail, and he dies miserably. But let all men know that wherever any man dies in sin, without making satisfaction, which he can, but will not make, such a demon seizes his soul, and drags it from the body with such agony that no one can conceive who has not experienced it. And all his money, power, and knowledge, which he thought he had, are taken from him; and his relations and friends, to whom he has given his goods, take them, and divide them, and then say, Cursed be his soul, who might have given us more, and did not; who might have hoarded more, and did not. Worms destroy his body, demons his soul; and thus he loses both soul and body for the sake of this brief life."
Humility, deep and sincere, was the great characteristic of his life. He was in his own words, "Franciscus parvulus et vester servus in Domino;" "Homo vilis et caducus;" "minus servorum;" "indigna creatura Domini." Being asked, one day, why he wore such scanty clothing in the depth of winter, he replied, "If we are clothed within with the flame of our heavenly country, we shall easily bear this external cold." One of the brethren asked him why he scarcely took anything to sustain nature. "Because," said St. Francis, "it is difficult to satisfy the necessity of the body without indulging the longing of the senses."
On an occasion a brother asked him if he might have a psalter. "When you have got a psalter," replied St. Francis, "then you will want a breviary; and when you have got a breviary, you will sit in your chair as great as a lord, and you will say to your brother, 'Friar, fetch me my breviary.'" There was a competition amongst the brethren as to who should bring in the greatest number of female devotees, when St. Francis checked their ardor by the caustic remark, "I am afraid, my brethren, that when God forbade us wives the devil gave us sisters." Here we must take our farewell of the saint. Willingly would we devote more space to him; but we have much yet to say about his work, especially as it influenced the destinies of our own land. He was a great man, an enthusiast in the highest sense of the word; his character and career remind us forcibly of John the Baptist; his food was locusts and wild honey, his raiment was scanty, he was a voice crying in the wilderness of a wicked world, and his name will last for ever.
But we advance to investigate the doings of the order in England. At the second general chapter held by St. Francis, at Porzioncula, in the year 1219, when the brethren were divided into parties and sent out on their missions, England was one of the first mission stations assigned. France was the first, then came England, chiefly, it is thought, through the influence of an Englishman, one William, who was a follower of St. Francis. The honor of leading this mission was assigned to Brother Angnello [Footnote 156] de Pisa, who was made minister-general of the order in England.