To carry on with contentment and uprightness the duties of their calling; to seek a holy inspiration for the slightest actions of life; to find in the infinitely little and ephemeral events of existence, the things apparently the most commonplace, the handiwork of the Almighty; to keep pure from debasing deeds, words, thoughts, ambitions, and interests, to use things as if not possessing them, like the servants in the parable who knew that they would have to give an account of the talents confided to them; to close their hearts to hatred; to open them wide to pity; to give their aid to the old, the poor, the infirm, the diseased, the outcast and the abandoned: such were the other essential duties of this most excellent Order of Penitence.
The letter to all Christians in which these thoughts break forth is a living souvenir of St. Francis’s teachings to the Tertiaries. To represent these latter to ourselves in a perfectly concrete form, we may resort to the legend of St. Lucchesio, whom tradition makes the first Brother of Penitence.
And the history of the first Brother of Penitence may be thus condensed into a short narrative:—
A native of a little city of Tuscany, he quitted it to avoid its political enmities, and established himself at Poggibonsi, not far from Sienna, where he continued to trade in grain. Already rich, it was not difficult for him to buy up all the wheat, and, selling it in a time of scarcity, realise enormous profits. But he was disturbed in conscience: he was convinced—it is exactly like the report of a Salvation Army meeting—by the preaching of Francis of Assisi: he was enabled to see himself from the outside—which is indeed the beginning of all repentance and conviction: he resolved to bestow the whole of his superfluous wealth upon the poor, and to keep nothing at all but his house with a small garden and one ass. From that time he was to be seen devoting himself to the cultivation of his ground and the conversion of his house into a sort of free hostelry, which was filled with the poor and the sick. He not only welcomed them, but he sought them out, even to the malaria-infested Maremma, often returning with a sick man astride on his back and preceded by his ass bearing a similar burden. The resources of the garden were necessarily limited: when there was no other way, Lucchesio took a wallet and went from door to door asking alms, but most of the time this was needless, for his poor guests, seeing him so diligent and so good, were better satisfied with a few poor vegetables from the garden, shared with him, than with the most copious repast. In the presence of their benefactor, so joyful in his destitution, they forgot, it is said, their own poverty—one reads with doubt this statement,—and the habitual murmurs of the poor, half-starved and diseased creatures were transformed into outbursts of admiration and gratitude. Conversion had not killed in him all family ties: Donna Bona his wife, became his fellow-labourer, and when in 1260 he saw her gradually fading away, his grief was too deep to be endured. “You know, dear companion,” he said to her when she had received the last sacraments, “how much we have loved one another while we could serve God together: why should we not remain united until we depart to the ineffable joy? Wait for me. I also will receive the sacraments, and go to heaven with you.”
FLAGELLANTS
Facsimile of a Miniature in the Cité de Dieu (MS. of 15th century in St. Genevieve Library, Paris).
So he spoke, and called back the priest to administer them to him. Then after holding the hands of his dying consort, comforting her with gentle words, when he saw that her soul was gone, he made over her the sign of the cross, stretched himself beside her, and calling with love upon Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, he fell asleep for eternity.
The Order, therefore, known as Penitentiarii or Fratres de Saccâ Order, consisted of both men and women: the latter were Sorores de Pœnitentia. They might be married, in which case conjugal abstinence was enjoined on certain days; but they could not marry after admission; they might individually or collectively hold property. They came over in the year 1257, and they remained until 1307, when their Order was dissolved. They had for their House the old Jewish Synagogue of Old Jewry, and apparently were always quite a small fraternity. Beside their London House there were seven Houses of the Order in England, viz. at Lynn, whose Prior was the head of the Order; at Canterbury, Cambridge, Norwich, Worcester, Lincoln, and Leicester.
Their House, on the suppression in 1307, was handed over to Robert FitzWalter: it was the same house which afterward belonged to Robert Large, to whom Caxton was apprenticed; it stood at the north-east corner of the Old Jewry.