FOOTNOTES1.1 Cel., 3; cf. Bon., 8, and A. SS., p. 563c.2.It is enough to have lived in the country of Naples to know that there is nothing exaggerated in this picture. I am much surprised that intelligent and good men fancy that to change the religious formula of these people would suffice to transform them. What a mistake! To-day, as in the time of Jesus, the important matter is not to adore on Mount Moriah or Mount Zion, but to adore in spirit and in truth.3.1 Cel., 3 and 4.4.3 Soc., 5. In the existing state of the documents it is impossible to know whom this name designates, for at that time it was borne by a number of counts who are only to be distinguished by the names of their castles. The three following are possible: 1.Gentile comes de Campilio, who in 1215 paid homage for his property to the commune of Orvieto:Le antiche cronache di Orvieto, Arch. stor. ital., 5th series., 1889, iii., p. 47. 2.Gentilis comes filius Alberici, who with others had made donation of a monastery to the Bishop of Foligno: Confirmatory BullIn eminentiof April 10, 1210: Ughelli,Italia Sacra, 1, p. 697; Potthast, 3974. 3.Gentilis comes Manupelli; whom we find in July, 1200, assuring to Palermo the victory over the troops sent by Innocent III. against Marckwald; Huillard-Bréholles,Hist. dipl., i. p., 46 ff. Cf. Potthast, 1126.Gesta Innocenti, Migne, vol. i., xxxii, ff. Cf. Huillard-Bréholles,loc. cit., pages 60, 84, 89, 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a mere adjective; the 3 Soc. sayGentile nomine.5.1 Cel., 4; 3 Soc., 5.6.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 8.7.1 Cel., 5; 3 Soc., 5; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 9.8.3 Soc., 6; Bon., 9; 2 Cel., 1, 2.9.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2.10.These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him about them (2 Cel., 3, 68 and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other hand, nothing forbids his having been informed on this matter by Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, "To-day, two infants were born—this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst"—of having been invented by thezelantiagainst Brother Elias. It is evident that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at Assisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (suebat cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere, Salimbene, p. 402) he wasscriptorat Bologna (Eccl., 13). And from the psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the passage, 1 Cel., 6, differs in the different manuscripts (cf. A. SS. and Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the latter's fall.Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of Assisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from Assisi in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be that of which we are about to speak.11.1 Cel., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 5; 3 Soc., 8, 12; Bon., 10, 11, 12.12.3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel., 7; 2 Cel., 1, 3; 3 Soc., 13.13.3 Soc., 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4.14.To this day in the centre and south of Italy they kiss the hand of priests and monks.15.See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc., 11; 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; A. SS., p. 566.16.3 Soc., 11; Bon., 13.
1.1 Cel., 3; cf. Bon., 8, and A. SS., p. 563c.2.It is enough to have lived in the country of Naples to know that there is nothing exaggerated in this picture. I am much surprised that intelligent and good men fancy that to change the religious formula of these people would suffice to transform them. What a mistake! To-day, as in the time of Jesus, the important matter is not to adore on Mount Moriah or Mount Zion, but to adore in spirit and in truth.3.1 Cel., 3 and 4.4.3 Soc., 5. In the existing state of the documents it is impossible to know whom this name designates, for at that time it was borne by a number of counts who are only to be distinguished by the names of their castles. The three following are possible: 1.Gentile comes de Campilio, who in 1215 paid homage for his property to the commune of Orvieto:Le antiche cronache di Orvieto, Arch. stor. ital., 5th series., 1889, iii., p. 47. 2.Gentilis comes filius Alberici, who with others had made donation of a monastery to the Bishop of Foligno: Confirmatory BullIn eminentiof April 10, 1210: Ughelli,Italia Sacra, 1, p. 697; Potthast, 3974. 3.Gentilis comes Manupelli; whom we find in July, 1200, assuring to Palermo the victory over the troops sent by Innocent III. against Marckwald; Huillard-Bréholles,Hist. dipl., i. p., 46 ff. Cf. Potthast, 1126.Gesta Innocenti, Migne, vol. i., xxxii, ff. Cf. Huillard-Bréholles,loc. cit., pages 60, 84, 89, 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a mere adjective; the 3 Soc. sayGentile nomine.5.1 Cel., 4; 3 Soc., 5.6.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 8.7.1 Cel., 5; 3 Soc., 5; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 9.8.3 Soc., 6; Bon., 9; 2 Cel., 1, 2.9.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2.10.These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him about them (2 Cel., 3, 68 and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other hand, nothing forbids his having been informed on this matter by Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, "To-day, two infants were born—this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst"—of having been invented by thezelantiagainst Brother Elias. It is evident that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at Assisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (suebat cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere, Salimbene, p. 402) he wasscriptorat Bologna (Eccl., 13). And from the psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the passage, 1 Cel., 6, differs in the different manuscripts (cf. A. SS. and Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the latter's fall.Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of Assisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from Assisi in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be that of which we are about to speak.11.1 Cel., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 5; 3 Soc., 8, 12; Bon., 10, 11, 12.12.3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel., 7; 2 Cel., 1, 3; 3 Soc., 13.13.3 Soc., 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4.14.To this day in the centre and south of Italy they kiss the hand of priests and monks.15.See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc., 11; 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; A. SS., p. 566.16.3 Soc., 11; Bon., 13.
1.1 Cel., 3; cf. Bon., 8, and A. SS., p. 563c.
2.It is enough to have lived in the country of Naples to know that there is nothing exaggerated in this picture. I am much surprised that intelligent and good men fancy that to change the religious formula of these people would suffice to transform them. What a mistake! To-day, as in the time of Jesus, the important matter is not to adore on Mount Moriah or Mount Zion, but to adore in spirit and in truth.
3.1 Cel., 3 and 4.
4.3 Soc., 5. In the existing state of the documents it is impossible to know whom this name designates, for at that time it was borne by a number of counts who are only to be distinguished by the names of their castles. The three following are possible: 1.Gentile comes de Campilio, who in 1215 paid homage for his property to the commune of Orvieto:Le antiche cronache di Orvieto, Arch. stor. ital., 5th series., 1889, iii., p. 47. 2.Gentilis comes filius Alberici, who with others had made donation of a monastery to the Bishop of Foligno: Confirmatory BullIn eminentiof April 10, 1210: Ughelli,Italia Sacra, 1, p. 697; Potthast, 3974. 3.Gentilis comes Manupelli; whom we find in July, 1200, assuring to Palermo the victory over the troops sent by Innocent III. against Marckwald; Huillard-Bréholles,Hist. dipl., i. p., 46 ff. Cf. Potthast, 1126.Gesta Innocenti, Migne, vol. i., xxxii, ff. Cf. Huillard-Bréholles,loc. cit., pages 60, 84, 89, 101. It is wrong to consider that Gentile could here be a mere adjective; the 3 Soc. sayGentile nomine.
5.1 Cel., 4; 3 Soc., 5.
6.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 8.
7.1 Cel., 5; 3 Soc., 5; 2 Cel., 1, 2; Bon., 9.
8.3 Soc., 6; Bon., 9; 2 Cel., 1, 2.
9.3 Soc., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 2.
10.These days are recalled by Celano with a very particular precision. It is very improbable that Francis, usually so reserved as to his personal experience, should have told him about them (2 Cel., 3, 68 and 42, cf. Bon., 144). On the other hand, nothing forbids his having been informed on this matter by Brother Elias. (I strongly suspect the legend which tells of an old man appearing on the day Francis was born and begging permission to take the child in his arms, saying, "To-day, two infants were born—this one, who will be among the best of men, and another, who will be among the worst"—of having been invented by thezelantiagainst Brother Elias. It is evident that such a story is aimed at some one. Whom, if not him who was afterward to appear as the Anti-Francis?) We have sufficient details about the eleven first disciples to know that none of them is here in question. There is nothing surprising in the fact that Elias does not appear in the earliest years of the Order (1209-1212), because after having practised at Assisi his double calling of schoolmaster and carriage-trimmer (suebat cultras et docebat puerulos psalterium legere, Salimbene, p. 402) he wasscriptorat Bologna (Eccl., 13). And from the psychological point of view this hypothesis would admirably explain the ascendency which Elias was destined always to exercise over his master. Still it remains difficult to understand why Celano did not name Elias here, but the passage, 1 Cel., 6, differs in the different manuscripts (cf. A. SS. and Amoni's edition, p. 14) and may have been retouched after the latter's fall.
Beviglia is a simple farm three-quarters of an hour northwest of Assisi, almost half way to Petrignano. Half an hour from Assisi in the direction of Beviglia is a grotto, which may very well be that of which we are about to speak.
11.1 Cel., 6; 2 Cel., 1, 5; 3 Soc., 8, 12; Bon., 10, 11, 12.
12.3 Soc., 7; 1 Cel., 7; 2 Cel., 1, 3; 3 Soc., 13.
13.3 Soc., 8-10; Bon., 13, 14; 2 Cel., 1, 4.
14.To this day in the centre and south of Italy they kiss the hand of priests and monks.
15.See the Will. Cf. 3 Soc., 11; 1 Cel., 17; Bon., 11; A. SS., p. 566.
16.3 Soc., 11; Bon., 13.
St. Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions in which he lived.
We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St. Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride, and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without seeming in the least to be preaching himself.
We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we are now arrived, 1205-1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the path which he finally entered.
The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegarde to put a stop to wickedness. Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his chronicle withthis appalling picture. The advance in historic research permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion remains the same; without Francis of Assisi the Church would perhaps have foundered and the Cathari would have won the day. Thelittle poor man, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III., saved Christianity.
We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of its most prominent features.
The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places was carried on with boundless audacity; benefices were put up to the highest bidder, and Innocent III. admitted that fire and sword alone could heal this plague.1Prelates who declined to be bought bypropinæ, fees, were held up as astounding exceptions!2
"They are stones for understanding," it was said of the officers of the Romancuria, "wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness; deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the minotaur."3The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III. for rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Rome in this respect.4
The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of keeping with their calling, for extortingmoney from the simple priests.5Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other.6As to the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices, and secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable measures for providing for their bastards.7
The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; their reputation for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus fatally brought about their own decadence. Few communities had shown the discretion of the first monks of the Order of Grammont in the diocese of Limoges. When Stephen de Muret, its founder, began to manifest his sanctity by giving sight to a blind man, his disciples took alarm at the thought of the wealth and notoriety which was likely to come to them from this cause. Pierre of Limoges, who had succeeded Stephen as prior, went at once to his tomb, praying:
"O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and thou art about to change this place into a fair and a market-place. We know well that thou art a saint! Thou hast no need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee, expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the obedience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones and throw them into the river."
"O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and thou art about to change this place into a fair and a market-place. We know well that thou art a saint! Thou hast no need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee, expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the obedience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones and throw them into the river."
Stephen obeyed up to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the Christian world.8
Pierre of Limoges was not entirely without reason in fearing that his monastery would be transformed into a fair-ground; members of the chapters of most of the cathedrals kept wine-shops literally under their shadows, and certain monasteries did not hesitate to attract custom by jugglers of all kinds and even by courtesans.9
To form an idea of the degradation of the greater number of the monks it is not enough to read the oratorical and often exaggerated reproofs of preachers obliged to strike hard in order to produce an effect. We must run through the collection of bulls, where appeals to the court of Rome against assassinations,violations, incests, adulteries, recur on almost every page. It is easy to see that even an Innocent III. might feel himself helpless and tempted to yield to discouragement, in the face of so many ills.10
The best spirits were turning toward the Orient, asking themselves if perchance the Greek Church might not suddenly come forward to purify all these abuses, and receive for herself the inheritance of her sister.11
The clergy, though no longer respected, still overawed the people through their superstitious terror of their power. Here and there might have been perceived many a forewarning of direful revolts; the roads to Rome were crowded with monks hastening to claim the protection of the Holy See against the people among whom they lived. The Pope would promptly declare an interdict, but it was not to be expected that such a resource would avail forever.12
To maintain the privileges of the Church the papacy was often obliged to spread the mantle of its protection over those who deserved it least. Its clients were not always as interesting as the unfortunate Ingelburge. It would be easier to give unreserved admiration to the conduct of Innocent III. if in this matter one could feel certain that his only interest was to maintain the cause of a poor abandoned woman. But it is only too evident that he desired above all to keep up the ecclesiasticalimmunities. This is very evident in his intervention in favor of Waldemar, Bishop of Schleswig.
Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church; then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices of those who desired a reformation aroused only passing interest.
Among the populace there was superstition unimaginable; the pulpit, which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other duties. It was the birth of the mendicant orders which obliged the entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching.
Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved anything which appealed to the intelligence; it was more and more becoming a sort of self-acting magic formula. Once upon this road, the absurd was not far distant. Those who deemed themselves pious told of miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of faith.
In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the invocation dear to his mistress, "Sancte Thoma adjuva me," and was miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchantment so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to beggary so soon as, his secret being discovered, the relic was taken away from him and placed in a church.13
These stories, we must observe, do not come from ignorantenthusiasts, hidden away in obscure country places; they are given us by one of the most learned monks of his time, who relates them to a novice by way of forming his mind!
Relics, then, were held to be neither more nor less than talismans. Not alone did they perform miracles upon those who were in no special state of faith or devotion, the more potent among them healed the sick in spite of themselves. A chronicler relates that the body of Saint Martin of Tours had in 887 been secretly transported to some remote hiding place for fear of the Danish invasion. When the time came for bringing it home again, there were in Touraine two impotent men who, thanks to their infirmity, gained large sums by begging. They were thrown into great terror by the tidings that the relics were being brought back: Saint Martin would certainly heal them and take away their means of livelihood. Their fears were only too well founded. They had taken to flight, but being too lame to walk fast they had not yet crossed the frontier of Touraine when the saint arrived and healed them!
Hundreds of similar stories might be collected, statistics might be made up to show, at the accession of Innocent III., the greater number of episcopal thrones occupied by unworthy bishops, the religious houses peopled with idle and debauched monks; but would this give a truly accurate picture of the Church at this epoch? I do not think so. In the first place, we must reckon with the choice spirits, who were without doubt more numerous than is generally supposed. Five righteous men would have saved Sodom; the Almighty did not find them there, but he perhaps might have found them had He Himself made search for them instead of trusting to Lot. The Church of the thirteenth century had them, and it was for their sakes that the whirlwind of heresy did not sweep it away.
But this is not all: the Church of that time offered a noble spectacle of moral grandeur. We must learn to lift our eyes from the wretched state of things which has just been pointed out and fix them on the pontifical throne and recognize the beauty of the struggle there going on: a power wholly spiritual undertaking to command the rulers of the world, as the soul masters the body, and triumphing in the end. It is true that both soldiers and generals of this army were often little better than ruffians, but here again, in order to be just, we must understand the end they aimed at.
In that iron age, when brute force was the only force, the Church, notwithstanding its wounds, offered to the world the spectacle of peasants and laboring men receiving the humble homage of the highest potentates of earth, simply because, seated on the throne of Saint Peter, they represented the moral law. This is why Alighieri and many others before and after him, though they might heap curses on wicked ministers, yet in the depths of their heart were never without an immense compassion and an ardent love for the Church which they never ceased to call their mother.
Still, everybody was not like them, and the vices of the clergy explain the innumerable heresies of that day. All of them had a certain success, from those which were simply the outcry of an outraged conscience, like that of the Waldenses, to the most absurd of them all, like that of Eon de l'Étoile. Some of these movements were for great and sacred causes; but we must not let our sympathies be so moved by the persecutions suffered by heretics as to cloud our judgment. It would have been better had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach. The papacy has notalways been reactionary and obscurantist; when it overthrew the Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense.
The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of mysticism and folly. In that day heresy was very much alive; it was consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. One may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive, passionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot upward, and fell to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible circumstances. In certain counties of England there are at the present day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few hundreds of inhabitants. Many of these people change their denomination every three or four years, returning to that they first quitted, leaving it again only to enter it anew, and so on as long as they live. Their leaders set the example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each new movement only to leave it before long. They would all alike find it difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them, but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each of these Protean movements. They are surely not worth the trouble.
In a somewhat similar condition was a great part of Christendom under Innocent III.; but while the sects of which I have just spoken move in a very narrow circle of dogmas and ideas, in the thirteenth century every sort of excess followed in rapid succession. Without theslightest pause of transition men passed through the most contradictory systems of belief. Still, a few general characteristics may be observed; in the first place, heresies are no longer metaphysical subtleties as in earlier days; Arius and Priscillian, Nestorius and Eutychus are dead indeed. In the second place, they no longer arise in the upper and governing class, but proceed especially from the inferior clergy and the common people. The blows which actually threatened the Church of the Middle Ages were struck by obscure laboring men, by the poor and the oppressed, who in their wretchedness and degradation felt that she had failed in her mission.
No sooner was a voice uplifted, preaching austerity and simplicity, than it drew together not the laity only, but members of the clergy as well. Toward the close of the twelfth century we find a certain Pons rousing all Perigord, preaching evangelical poverty before the coming of St. Francis.14
Two great currents are apparent: on one side the Cathari, on the other, innumerable sects revolting from the Church by very fidelity to Christianity and the desire to return to the primitive Church.
Among the sects of the second category the close of the twelfth century saw in Italy the rise of thePoor Men, who without doubt were a part of the movement of Arnold of Brescia; they denied the efficacy of sacraments administered by unworthy hands.15
A true attempt at reform was made by the Waldenses. Their history, although better known, still remains obscure on certain sides; their name,Poor Men of Lyons, recalls the former movement, with which they were inclose agreement, as also with the Humiliants. All these names involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his Order. The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo and that of St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter a sort of imitation of the former. It would be a mistake: the same causes produced in all quarters the same effects; ideas of reform, of a return to gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to understand how it was that before many years the Franciscan preaching reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo, driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the consequences of the premises which he himself had laid down;16while Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church, bent all his efforts to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with the movement of thePoor Men of Lyons. Hence his oft-repeated counsels to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to seek the approbation of Innocent III., it is evident that the prelates with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of the dangers inherent in his own movement.17
The latter had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the Scriptures into the vulgartongue and the permission to preach. They were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map (Cross1210), who was charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life.18Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome, and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Council of Verona. From that day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans. By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating them as excommunicated persons.
Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year, and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain unity of doctrine, the Waldenses rapidly underwent a change according to their environment; some obstinately insisting upon calling themselves good Catholics, others going so far as to preach the overthrow of the hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments.19Hence that multiplicity of differing and even hostile branches which seemed to develop almost hourly.
A common persecution brought them nearer to theCathari and favored the fusion of their ideas. Their activity was inconceivable. Under pretext of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road, simple and insinuating. The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the Church and the reforms that were needed. Such conversations were a means of apostleship much more efficacious than those of the present day, the book and the newspaper; there is nothing like theviva vox20for spreading thought.
Many vile stories have been told of the Waldenses; calumny is far too facile a weapon not to tempt an adversary at bay. Thus they have been charged with the same indecent promiscuities of which the early Christians were accused. In reality their true strength was in their virtues, which strongly contrasted with the vices of the clergy.
The most powerful and determined enemies of the Church were the Cathari. Sincere, audacious, often learned and keen in argument, having among them some choice spirits and men of great intellectual powers, they were pre-eminently the heretics of the thirteenth century. Their revolt did not bear upon points of detail and questions of discipline, like that of the early Waldenses; it had a definite doctrinal basis, taking issue with the whole body of Catholic dogma. But, although this heresy flourished in Italy and under the very eyes of St. Francis, there isneed only to indicate it briefly. His work may have received many infiltrations from the Waldensian movement, but Catharism was wholly foreign to it.
This is naturally explained by the fact that St. Francis never consented to occupy himself with questions of doctrine. For him faith was not of the intellectual but the moral domain; it is the consecration of the heart. Time spent in dogmatizing appeared to him time lost.
An incident in the life of Brother Egidio well brings out the slight esteem in which theology was held by the early Brothers Minor. One day, in the presence of St. Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to merit the favor of God?" "My brother," replied the famous divine, "you know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." "Are you very sure of that?" replied Egidio; "do you believe that a simple woman might please Him as well as a master in theology?" Upon the affirmative response of his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice, for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of heaven than Brother Bonaventura!"21
The Cathari, then, had no direct influence upon St. Francis,22but nothing could better prove the disturbanceof thought at this epoch than that resurrection of Manicheism. To what a depth of lassitude and folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism, Mazdeism, and gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it! The Catharist doctrine rested upon the antagonism of two principles, one bad, the other good. The first had created matter; the second, the soul, which, for generation after generation passes from one body to another until it achieves salvation. Matter is the cause and the seat of evil; all contact with it constitutes a blemish,23consequently the Cathari renounced marriage and property and advocated suicide. All this was mixed up with most complicated cosmogonical myths.
Their adherents were divided into two classes—the pure or perfect, and the believers, who were proselytes in the second degree, and whose obligations were very simple. The adepts, properly so called, were initiated by the ceremony of theconsolamentumor imposition of hands, which induced the descent upon them of the Consoling Spirit. Among them were enthusiasts who after this ceremony placed themselves inendura—that is to say, they starved themselves to death in order not to descend from this state of grace.
In Languedoc, where this sect went by the name of Albigenses, they had an organization which embraced all Central Europe, and everywhere supported flourishing schools attended by the children of the nobles. In Italy they were hardly less powerful; Concorrezo, nearMonza in Lombardy, and Bagnolo, gave their names to two congregations slightly different from those in Languedoc.24
But it was especially from Milan25that they spread abroad over all the Peninsula, making proselytes even in the most remote districts of Calabria. The state of anarchy prevailing in the country was very favorable to them. The papacy was too much occupied in baffling the spasmodic efforts of the Hohenstaufen, to put the necessary perseverance and system into its struggles against heresy. Thus the new ideas were preached under the very shadow of the Lateran; in 1209, Otho IV., coming to Rome to be crowned, found there a school in which Manicheism was publicly taught.26
With all his energy Innocent III. had not been able to check this evil in the States of the Church. The case of Viterbo tells much of the difficulty of repressing it; in March, 1199, the pope wrote to the clergy and people of this town to recall to their minds, and at the same time to increase, the penalties pronounced against heresy. For all that, the Patarini had the majority in 1205, and succeeded in naming one of themselves consul.27
The wrath of the pontiff at this event was unbounded; he fulminated a bull menacing the city with fire and sword, and commanding the neighboring towns to throw themselves upon her if within a fortnight she had not given satisfaction.28It was all in vain: the Patarini were dealt with only as a matter of form; it needed the presence of the pope himself to assure the execution of his orders and obtain the demolition of the houses of the heretics and their abettors (autumn of 1207).29
But stifled at one point the revolt burst out at a hundred others; at this moment it was triumphant on all sides; at Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Florence, Prato, Faenza, Treviso, Piacenza. The clergy were expelled from this last town, which remained more than three years without a priest.30
Viterbo is twenty leagues from Assisi, Orvieto only ten, and disturbances in this town were equally grave. A noble Roman, Pietro Parentio, the deputy of the Holy See in this place, endeavored to exterminate the Patarini. He was assassinated.31
But Francis needed not to go even so far as Orvieto to become acquainted with heretics. In Assisi the same things were going on as in the neighboring cities. In 1203 this town had elected for podestà a heretic named Giraldo di Gilberto, and in spite of warnings from Rome had persisted in keeping him at the head of affairs until the expiration of his term of office (1204). Innocent III., who had not yet been obliged to use vigor with Viterbo,resorted to persuasion and despatched to Umbria the Cardinal Leo di Santa Croce, who will appear more than once in this history.32The successor of Giraldo and fifty of the principal citizens made theamende honorableand swore fidelity to the Church.
It is easy to perceive in what a state of ferment Italy was during these early years of the thirteenth century. The moral discredit of the clergy must have been deep indeed for souls to have turned toward Manicheism with such ardor.
Italy may well be grateful to St. Francis; it was as much infected with Catharism as Languedoc, and it was he who wrought its purification. He did not pause to demonstrate by syllogisms or theological theses the vanity of the Catharist doctrines; but soaring as on wings to the religious life, he suddenly made a new ideal to shine out before the eyes of his contemporaries, an ideal before which all these fantastic sects vanished as birds of the night take flight at the first rays of the sun.
A great part of St. Francis's power came to him thus through his systematic avoidance of polemics. The latter is always more or less a form of spiritual pride; it only deepens the chasm which it undertakes to fill up. Truth needs not to be proved; it is its own witness.
The only weapon which he would use against the wicked was the holiness of a life so full of love as to enlighten and revive those about him, and compel themto love.33The disappearance of Catharism in Italy, without an upheaval, and above all without the Inquisition, is thus an indirect result of the Franciscan movement, and not the least important among them.34
At the voice of the Umbrian reformer Italy roused herself, recovered her good sense and fine temper; she cast out those doctrines of pessimism and death, as a robust organism casts out morbid substances.
I have already endeavored to show the strong analogy between the initial efforts of Francis and those of the Poor Men of Lyons. His thought ripened in an atmosphere thoroughly saturated with their ideas; unconsciously to himself they entered into his being.
The prophecies of the Calabrian abbot exerted upon him an influence quite as difficult to appreciate, but no less profound.
Standing on the confines of Italy and as it were at the threshold of Greece, Gioacchino di Fiore35was the last link in a chain of monastic prophets, who during nearly four hundred years succeeded one another in the monasteries and hermitages of Southern Italy. The most famous among them had been St. Nilo, a sort of untamed John the Baptist, living in desert places, but suddenly emerging from them when his duties of maintaining the right called him elsewhere. We see him on one occasion appearing in Rome itself, to announce to pope and emperor the unloosing of the divine wrath.36
Scattered in the Alpine solitudes of Basilicata these Calabrian hermits were continually obliged to retreat higher and higher into the mountain fastnesses to escape the populace, who, pursued by pirates, were taking refuge in these mountains. They thus passed their lives between heaven and earth, with two seas for their horizon. Disquieted by fear of the corsairs, and by the war-cries whose echoes reached even to them, they turned their thoughts toward the future. The ages of great terror are also the ages of great hope; it is to the captivity of Babylon that we owe, with the second part of Isaiah, those pictures of the future which have not yet ceased to charm the soul of man; Nero's persecutions gave us the Apocalypse of St. John, and the paroxysms of the twelfth century the eternal Gospel.
Converted after a life of dissipation, Gioacchino di Fiore travelled extensively in the Holy Land, Greece, and Constantinople. Returning to Italy he began, though a layman, to preach in the outskirts of Rende and Cosenza. Later on he joined the Cistercians of Cortale, near Catanzaro, and there took vows. Shortly after elected abbot of the monastery in spite of refusal and even flight, he was seized after a few years with the nostalgia of solitude, and sought from Pope Lucius III. a discharge from his functions (1181), that he might consecrate all his time to the works which he had in mind. The pope granted his request, and even permitted him to go wherever he might deem best in the interest of his work. Then began for Gioacchino a life of wandering from convent to convent, which carried him even as far as Lombardy, to Verona, where we find him with Pope Urban III.
When he returned to the south, a group of disciples gathered around him to hear his explanations of the most obscure passages of the Bible. Whether he would or nohe was obliged to receive them, to talk with them, to give them a rule, and, finally, to instal them in the very heart of the Sila, the Black Forest of Italy,37over against the highest peak, in gorges where the silence is interrupted only by the murmurs of the Arvo and the Neto, which have their source not far from there. The new Athos received the name of Fiore (flower), transparent symbol of the hopes of its founder.38It was there that he put the finishing touch to writings which, after fifty years of neglect, were to become the starting-point of all heresies, and the aliment of all souls burdened with the salvation of Christendom. The men of the first half of the thirteenth century, too much occupied with other things, did not perceive that the spiritual streams at which they were drinking descended from the snowy mountain-tops of Calabria.
It is always thus with mystical influences. There is in them something vague, tenuous, and penetrating which escapes an exact estimation. Let two choice souls meet, and they will find it a difficult thing to analyze and name the impressions which each has received from the other. It is so with an epoch; it is not always those who speak to her the oftenest and loudest whom she best understands; nor even those at whose feet she sits, a faithful pupil, day after day. Sometimes, while on the way to her accustomed masters, she suddenly meets a stranger; she barely catches a few words of what he says; she knows not whence he comes nor whither he goes; she never sees him again, but those few words of his go on surging in the depths of her soul, agitating and disquieting her.
Thus it was for a long while with Gioacchino di Fiore. His teachings, scattered here and there by enthusiastic disciples, were germinating silently in many hearts.39Giving back hope to men, they restored to them strength also. To think is already to act; alone under the shadow of the hoary pines which surrounded his cell, the cenobite of Fiore was laboring for the renovation of the Church with as much vigor as the reformers who came after him.
He was, however, far from attaining the height of the prophets of Israel; instead of soaring like them to the very heavens, he always remained riveted to the text, upon which he commented in the allegorical method, and whence by this method he brought out the most fantastic improbabilities. A few pages of his books would wear out the most patient reader, but in these fields, burnt over by theological arguments more drying than the winds of the desert, fields where one at first perceives only stones and thistles, one comes at last to the charming oasis, with repose and dreams in its shade.
The exegesis of Gioacchino di Fiore in fact led up to a sort of philosophy of history; its grand lines were calculated to make a striking appeal to the imagination. The life of humanity is divided into three periods: in the first, under the reign of the Father, men lived under the rigor of the law; in the second, reigned over by the Son,men live under the rule of grace; in the third, the Spirit shall reign and men shall live in the plenitude of love. The first is the period of servile obedience; the second, that of filial obedience; the third, that of liberty. In the first, men lived in fear; in the second, they rest in faith; in the third, they shall burn with love. The first saw the shining of the stars; the second sees the whitening of the dawn; the third will behold the glory of the day. The first produced nettles, the second gives roses, the third will be the age of lilies.
If now we consider that in the thought of Gioacchino the third period, the Age of the Spirit, was about to open, we shall understand with what enthusiasm men hailed the words which restored joy to hearts still disturbed with millenarian fears.
It is evident that St. Francis knew these radiant hopes. Who knows even that it was not the Calabrian Seer who awoke his heart to its transports of love? If this be so, Gioacchino was not merely his precursor; he was his true spiritual father. However this may be, St. Francis found in Gioacchino's thought many of the elements which, unconsciously to himself, were to become the foundation of his institute.
The noble disdain which he shows for all men of learning, and which he sought to inculcate upon his Order, was for Gioacchino one of the characteristics of the new era. "The truth which remains hidden to the wise," he says, "is revealed to babes; dialectics closes that which is open, obscures that which is clear; it is the mother of useless talk, of rivalries and blasphemy. Learning does not edify, and it may destroy, as is proved by the scribes of the Church, swollen with pride and arrogance, who by dint of reasoning fall into heresy."40
We have seen that the return to evangelical simplicityhad become a necessity; all the heretical sects were on this point in accord with pious Catholics, but no one spoke in a manner so Franciscan as Gioacchino di Fiore. Not only did he make voluntary poverty one of the characteristics of the age of lilies, but he speaks of it in his pages with so profound, so living an emotion, that St. Francis could do little more than repeat his words. The ideal monk whom he describes,41whose only property is a lyre, is a true Franciscan before the letter, him of whom thePoverelloof Assisi always dreamed.
The feeling for nature also bursts forth in him with incomparable vigor. One day he was preaching in a chapel which was plunged in almost total darkness, the sky being quite overcast with clouds. Suddenly the clouds broke away, the sun shone, the church was flooded with light. Gioacchino paused, saluted the sun, intoned theVeni Creator, and led his congregation out to gaze upon the landscape.
It would be by no means surprising if toward 1205 Francis should have heard of this prophet, toward whom so many hearts were turning, this anchorite who, gazing up into heaven, spoke with Jesus as a friend talks with his friend, yet knew also how to come down to console men and warm the faces of the dying at his own breast.
At the other end of Europe, in the heart of Germany, the same causes had produced the same effects. From the excess of the people's sufferings and the despair of religious souls was being born a movement of apocalyptic mysticism which seemed to have secret communication with that which was rousing the Peninsula. They had the same views of the future, the same anxious expectation of new cataclysms, joined with a prospect of a reviving of the Church.
"Cry with a loud voice," said her guardian angel to St. Elizabeth of Schonau (Cross1164), "cry to all nations: Woe! for the whole world has become darkness. The Lord's vine has withered, there is no one to tend it. The Lord has sent laborers, but they have all been found idle. The head of the Church is ill and her members are dead.... Shepherds of my Church, you are sleeping, but I shall awaken you! Kings of the earth, the cry of your iniquity has risen even to me."42
"Divine justice," said St. Hildegarde (Cross1178), "shall have its hour; the last of the seven epochs symbolized by the seven days of creation has arrived, the judgments of God are about to be accomplished; the empire and the papacy, sunk into impiety, shall crumble away together.... But upon their ruins shall appear a new nation of God, a nation of prophets illuminated from on high, living in poverty and solitude. Then the divine mysteries shall be revealed, and the saying of Joel shall be fulfilled; the Holy Spirit shall shed abroad upon the people the dew of his prophecies, of his wisdom and holiness; the heathen, the Jews, the worldly and the unbelieving shall be converted together, spring-time and peace shall reign over a regenerated world, and the angels will return with confidence to dwell among men."
These hopes were not wholly confounded. In the evening of his days the prophet of Fiore was able, like a new Simeon, to utter hisNunc dimittis, and for a few years Christendom could turn in amazement to Assisi as to a new Bethlehem.