Then he ordered the minor brothers to hasten to the magistrates and go with them to the bishop, before whom they were to chant the new verse of the canticle of the sun. The adversaries present could not resist the chanting of the mineurs, and they were reconciled.
Since I have mentioned the canticle of the sun, one of the models of Franciscan poetry of this age, I cannot forego the pleasure of relating the end of it. After the pacification of Assisi, Saint Francis, who suffered terribly from his stigmata, had gone, to recruit his health, to Foligno, where it was revealed to him he would die in two years. He then composed the last verse:
"Be praised, my God, for our sister, corporal death, from which no man living may escape! Woe to him who dies in mortal sin! Happy he who at the hour of death is found conformable to thy most holy will! for death cannot injure him.
"Praise and bless my God, render him thanks, and serve him with great humility."
The spirit of party had become truly a moral malady in the Italian cities of the thirteenth century. If among my readers there are those who abuse their own time because the spirit of party condemns them to the struggle, I will tell them that in Italy, in the time of Saint Francis and Saint Louis, they saluted each other "in Ghibelline style" and cut their bread "à la Guelph," and for a trifle parties attacked each other in the cross-streets and in the public places. We have certainly progressed since then.
In 1233, the nobles and the people of Plaisance were in open warfare; the Franciscan Leon, selected as arbiter, published a law, and divided equally all the employments of state between the two inimical factions; he exacted, besides, a confirmation of the sentence through the kiss of peace. In the same year the brother Gerard, of the same order, reconciled the parties at Modena. At Parma, he reformed the statutes of the people and recalled the proscriptions. In 1257, the Dominican Eberhard caused to be set at liberty the Guelphs imprisoned at Brescia. One of his companions had the same success at Parma. But the most interesting example of the powerful influence of religion on civil life was the mission of the brother John of Vicenza, in the Lombard towns.
Inspired by an apostolic zeal, the aged Pope Gregory IX. charged the Dominican, John of Vicenza, (Fra Giovanni Chio,) to go preach peace to the inimical factions, and re-establish everywhere among the people union and concord. Brother John, endowed with winning eloquence, commenced his mission at Bologna. He obtained immense and unhoped-for success in the city where Saint Francis and Saint Anthony had already achieved extraordinary triumphs; nobles and people, professors and students, all laid down their enmities at the feet of the brother preacher; the magistrates handed him the statutes of the people, in order that he might correct all that could give rise to new discussions. The Paduans, informed that he was coming to them, went to meet him, preceded by their magistrates and the carroccio, to Monselice, four or five miles from the city; Brother John, seated on the patriotic car, made a triumphal entry among the people; the success in Padua surpassed that of Bologna; the people assembled at the Place de la Valle, applauded him with joy, and begged him to reform the statutes. The same triumphs at Trevise, Feltre, Belluna, and Vicenza. At Verona, Ezelin and the Montecchi promised him under oath to do everything the pope might order. The eloquent monk again visited such places as Camino, Conegliano, Saint Boniface, Mantua, Brescia, preaching everywhere universal peace, reconciling factions, and setting prisoners at liberty. At last, he appointed the 28th of August, the feast of Saint Augustine, for a general assembly to be held on the plain of Pacquara, on the borders of the Adige, about three miles from Verona. On the day determined, the entire populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, Vicenza, with their magistrates and carroccio, arrived at the appointed place; a multitude of people from Trevise, Feltre, Venice, Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Bologna, and most of them barefooted in sign of penitence; the bishops of Verona, Brescia, Mantua, Bologna, Modena, Reggio, Trevise, Vicenza, and Padua; the patriarch of Aquila; the margrave of Este, Ezelin and Alberic de Romano, the Signers de Camino, and all of Venetia. Parisio de Cereta, a contemporary author, in his Veronese chronicle, enumerates his auditory at four hundred thousand persons. The Dominican took for his text: "My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you." Never had Christians witnessed a more august spectacle. The enthusiasm was carried even to excess. It was a delirium of peace and union. Brother John ordained, in the name of God and the church, a general pacification, and devoted those who infringed upon it to excommunication and eternal malediction. He proposed the marriage of Renaud, son of the margrave of Este, with Adelaide, daughter of Alberic of Romano, and obtained also from the brothers Romano the promise they would sell to the town of Padua for fifteen hundred livres the possessions they had in the territory of this city. The act embraced divers clauses, and contained promises of pacification.
Sixty years after the assassination of Pope Lucius II. by the Arnoldites, the spiritual power of the papacy was, so to say, omnipotent in Italy, if not in the whole of Europe. And it is precisely about this epoch that in proportion as the civil power of the Roman Church determined, limited, and fortified itself, in Italy the ecclesiastical principalities were extinguished; while for centuries they have been maintained in other countries, less submissive to the Holy See. This fact will not astonish us, if we follow with attention the progression of ideas propagated by Christianity, and taking such deep root in the thirteenth century.