Life of St. Francis of Assisi - Paul Sabatier (the top 100 crime novels of all time txt) 📗
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St. Damian had too often echoed with St. Francis's hymns of love and liberty to forget him so soon and become an ordinary convent. Clara remained surrounded with the master's early companions; Egidio, Leo, Angelo, Ginepro never ceased to be assiduous visitors. These true lovers of poverty felt themselves at home there, and took liberties which would elsewhere have given surprise. One day an English friar, a celebrated theologian, came according to the minister's orders to preach at St. Damian. Suddenly Egidio, though a simple layman, interrupted him: "Stop, brother, let me speak," he said to him. And the master in theology, bowing his head, covered himself with his cowl as a sign of obedience, and sat down to listen to Egidio.
Clara felt a great joy in this; it seemed to her that she was once again living in St. Francis's days.34 The little coterie was kept up until her death; she expired in the arms of Brothers Leo, Angelo, and Ginepro. In her last sufferings and her dying visions she had the supreme happiness of being surrounded by those who had devoted their lives to the same ideal as she.35
In her will her life shows itself that which we have seen it—a daily struggle for the defence of the Franciscan idea. We see how courageous and brave was this woman who has always been represented as frail, emaciated, blanched like a flower of the cloister.36
She defended Francis not only against others, but also against himself. In those hours of dark discouragement which so often and so profoundly disturb the noblest souls and sterilize the grandest efforts, she was beside him to show him his way. When he doubted his mission and thought of fleeing to the heights of repose and solitary prayer, it was she who showed him the ripening harvest with no reapers to gather it in, men going astray with no shepherd to lead them, and drew him once again into the train of the Galilean, into the number of those who give their lives a ransom for many.37
Yet this love with which at St. Damian Francis felt himself surrounded frightened him at times. He feared that his death, making too great a void, would imperil the institution itself, and he took pains to remind the sisters that he would not be always with them. One day when he was to preach to them, instead of entering the pulpit he caused some ashes to be brought, and after having spread them around him and scattered some on his head, he intoned the Miserere, thus reminding them that he was but dust and would soon return to dust.38
But in general it is at St. Damian that St. Francis is the most himself; it is under the shade of its olive-trees, with Clara caring for him, that he composes his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called the most perfect utterance of modern religious sentiment, the "Canticle of the Sun."
1. Easy as it is to seize the large outlines of her life, it is with difficulty that one makes a detailed and documentary study of it. There is nothing surprising in this, for the Clarisses felt the rebound of the struggles which divided and rapidly transformed the Order of the Brothers Minor. The greater number of the documents have disappeared; we give summary indication of those which will most often be cited: 1. Life of St. Clara by an anonymous author. A. SS., Aug., t. ii., pp. 739-768. 2. Her Will, given by Wadding (Annales, 1253, No. 5), but which does not appear to be free from alteration. (Compare, for example, the opening of this will with Chapter VI. of the Rule of the Damianites approved by Innocent IV., August 8, 1253.) 3. The bull of canonization, given September 26, 1255—that is to say, two years after Clara's death; it is much longer than these documents ordinarily are, and relates the principal incidents of her life. A. SS., loc. cit., p. 749; Potthast, 16,025. 4. Her correspondence. Unhappily we have only fragments of it; the Bollandists, without saying whence they drew them, have inserted four of her letters in the Acta of St. Agnes of Bohemia, to whom they were addressed. (A. SS., Martii, t. i., pp. 506-508.)
2. Reading the Chronicle of Fra Salimbeni, which represents the average Franciscan character about 1250, one sees with what reason the Rule had multiplied minute precautions for keeping the Brothers from all relations with women.
The desire of Celano to present the facts in the life of Francis as the norm of the acts of the friars appears still more in the chapters concerning St. Clara than in all the others. Vide 2 Cel., 3, 132: Non credatis, charissimi (dixit Franciscus), quodeas perfecte non diligam.... Sed exemplum do vobis, ut quemadmodum ego facio, ita et vos faciatis. Cf. ibid., 134.
3. 2 Cel., 3, 55. Fateor veritatem ... nullam me si aspicerem recogniturum in facie nisi duas. This chapter and the two following give us a sort of caricature, in which Francis is represented as so little sure of himself that he casts down his eyes for fear of yielding to desire. The stories of Francis and Jacqueline of Settesoli give a very different picture of the relations between the Brothers and the women in the origin of the Order from that which was given later. Bernard de Besse (Turin MS., fo. 113) relates at length the coming of Jacqueline to Portiuncula to be present at St. Francis's death. Cf. Spec., 107; 133; Bon., 112. Also Clara's repast at Portiuncula. Fior., 15; Spec., 139b.; A. SS. Aug. Vita Clar., No. 39 ff.
4. Isaiah, lxiii., 8 and 9 (Ségond's [French] translation). At the Mass on Holy Monday Isaiah lxiii. is read for the Epistle and Mark xiv. for the Gospel.
5. San Paolo on the Chiasco, near Bastia.
6. At the present day diocesan seminary of Assisi, "Seminarium seraphicum." In the thirteenth century the north gate of the city was there. The houses which lie between there and the Basilica form the new town, which is rapidly growing and will unite the city with Sacro Convento.
7. Nam steteramus in alio loco, licet parum. Test. Clar. It is truly strange that there is not a word here for the house where the first days of her religious life were passed. Cf. Vit., no. 10: S. Angelus de Panse ... ubi cum non plene mens ejus quiesceret.
8. Mittarelli, Annales Camaldulenses (Venice, 1755-1773, 9 vols., fo.), t. iv., app. 431 and 435. Cf. 156.
9. The act of donation is still in the archives of Assisi. An analysis of it will be found in Cristofani, t. i., p. 133. Their munificence remained without result; the bull Ab Ecclesia of July 27, 1232, shows that they were suppressed less than twenty years after. Sbaralea, t. 1, p. 81. Potthast, 8984. Cf., ib., p. 195, note c, and 340, note a, and the bulls which are there indicated.
10. See p. 81, note ii.
11. 1 Cel., 18; 21; 3 Soc., 24; 2 Cel., 1, 8.
12. An. Perus., A. SS., p. 600. Cf. 3 Soc., 60. The three Orders are contemporary, one might even say, the four, including among them the one that miscarried among the secular priests (see below).
In a letter St. Clara speaks of her Order as making only a part with that of the Brothers: Sequaris consilia Reverendi Patris nostri fratris Eliæ Ministri generalis totius ordinis. A. SS., Martii, t. i., p. 507.
13. This point of view is brought into relief by an anecdote in the De laudibus of Bernard of Besse (Turin MS., 113a). This is how he ends chap. vii. on the three Orders: Nec Santus his contentus ordinibus satagebat omnium generi salutis et penitentiæ viam dare. Unde parochiali cuidam sacerdoti dicenti sibi quod vellet suus, retenta tamen ecclesia. Frater esse, dato vivendi et induendi modo, dicitur indixisse ut annuatim, collectis Eclesiæ fructibus daret pro Deo, quod de præteritis superesset.
14. See the lovely story in the Fior., 13. Cf. Spec., 65a; Conform., 168b. 1.
15. The text of it was doubtless formerly inserted in chapter vi. of the Rule granted to the Clarisses of St. Damian, August 9, 1253, by the bull Solet annuere. Potthast, 15,086. But this chapter has been completely changed in many editions. The text of the Speculum, Morin, Rouen 1509, should be read. Tract iii., 226b. The critical study to be made upon this text by comparing the indications given by the bull Angelis guadium of May 11, 1238, Sbaralea, i., p. 242, is too long to find a place here.
16. 2 Cel., 3, 132. Cf. Test. B. Clar.
17. In illa gravi infirmitate ... faciebat se erigi ... et sedens filabat. A. SS., 760e. Sic vult eas [sorores] operare manibus suis. Ib. 762a.
18. Fior. 33.
19. Rule of 1221, chap xii. Et nulla penitus mulier ab aliquo frater recipiatur ad obedientiam, sed dato sibi consilio spirituali, ubi voluerit agat penitentiam. Cf. below, p. 252, note 1, the remainder of this chapter and the indication of the sources. This proves, 1, that the friars had received women into the Order; 2, that at the beginning they said The Order in the singular, and under this appellation included Sisters as well as Brothers. We see how far the situation was, even at the end of 1221, from being what it became a few years later. It is to be noted that in all the reforming sects of the commencement of the thirteenth century the two sexes were closely united. (Vide Burchardi chronicon, Pertz, 1, 23, p. 376. Cf. Potthast, 2611, bull Cum otim of Nov. 25, 1205.)
On the 7th of June, 1201 (bull Incunubit nobis), Innocent III. had approved the Rule of the Humiliants. This was a religious association whose members continued to live in their own homes, and who offer surprising points of contact with the Franciscan Order, though they took no vow of poverty. From them issued a more restricted association which founded convents where they worked in wool; these convents received both men and women. Vide Jacques de Vitry, Hist. Occidentalis, cap. 28. De religione et regula Humiliatorum (Douai, 1597, pp. 334-337). The time came when from these two Orders issued a third, composed solely of priests. These Humiliati are too little known, though they have had a historian whose book is one of the noble works of the eighteenth century: Tiraboschi, Vetera Humiliatorum monumenta (Milan, 3 vols., 4to, 1766-1768). Toward 1200 they had monopolized l'arte della lana in all upper Italy as far as to Florence; it is evident, therefore, that Francis's father must have had relations with them.
20. The bull approving the Rule of St. Damian is of August 9, 1253. Clara died two days
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