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adventures (in one of which during an expedition against the Moorish tribes of the interior, Friar Berard struck water from the desert rock, like Moses) they were offered wealth, beautiful wives, and honours if they would embrace Mohammedanism. They spat on the ground in contempt of the miscreant offer. The King himself clove the head of one of them with a sword; the rest were despatched in horrible torments." St. Francis received the sad intelligence with triumph, and broke forth in gratulations to the convent of Alonquir, which had thus produced the first purple flowers of martyrdom.

Character of

This was no hardness, or want of compassion, but the counterworking of a stronger, more passionate St. Francis. emotion. Of all saints, St. Francis was the most blameless and gentle. In Dominic and in his disciples all was still rigorous, cold, argumentative; something remained of the crusader's fierceness, the Spaniard's haughty humility, the inquisitor's stern suppression of all gentler feelings, the polemic sternness. Whether Francis would have burned heretics, happily we know not, but he would willingly have been burned for them: himself excessive in austerities, he would at times mitigate the austerity of others. Francis was emphatically the Saint of the people; of a poetic people, like the Italians. Those who were hereafter to chant the Paradise of Dante, or the softer stanzas of Tasso, might well be enamoured of the ruder devotional strains of the mystic poetry of the whole life of St. Francis. The lowest of the low might find consolation, a kind of pride, in the self-abasement of St. Francis even beneath the meanest. The very name of his disciples, the Friar Minors, implied their humility. In his own eyes (says his most pious successor) he was but a sinner, while in truth he was the mirror and splendour of holiness. It was revealed, says the same Bonaventura, to a Brother that the throne of one of the angels, who fell from pride, was reserved for Francis, who was glorified by humility. If the heart of the poorest was touched by the brotherhood in poverty and

n

See on these martyrs Southey's ballad :
What news, O Queen Orraca,

Of the martyrs five what news?

Does the bloody Miramamolin
Their burial yet refuse?

lowliness of such a saint, how was his imagination kindled by his mystic strains? St. Francis is among the oldest vernacular poets of Italy. His poetry, indeed, is but a long passionate ejaculation of love to the Redeemer in rude metre; it has not even the order and completeness of a hymn it is a sort of plaintive variation on one simple melody; an echo of the same tender words, multiplied again and again, it might be fancied, by the voices in the cloister walls. But his ordinary speech is more poetical than his poetry. In his peculiar language he addresses all animate, even inanimate, creatures as his brothers; not merely the birds and beasts; he had an especial fondness for lambs and larks, as the images of the Lamb of God and of the cherubim in heaven. I know not if it be among the Conformities, but the only malediction I find him to have uttered was against a fierce swine which had killed a young lamb. Of his intercourse with these mute animals, we are told many pretty particularities, some of them miraculous. But his poetic impersonation went beyond this. When the surgeon was about to cauterise him, he said, "Fire, my brother, be thou discreet and gentle to me." In one of his Italian hymns he speaks of his brother the sun, his sister the moon, his brother the wind, his sister the water. wonder that in this almost perpetual extatic state, unearthly music played around him, unearthly light shone round his path. When he died, he said, with exquisite simplicity, "Welcome, sister Death." St. Francis himself, no doubt, was but unconsciously presumptuous, when he acted as under divine inspiration, even when he laid the groundwork for that assimilation of his own life to that of the Saviour, which was wrought up by his disciples, as it were, into a new Gospel, and superseded the old. His was the studious imitation of humility, not

• M. de Montalembert is eloquent, as usual, on his poetry.-Preface to "La Vie d'Elizabeth d'Hongrie."

P Bonaventura, c. viii.

9 The words were, "Fratel fuoco, da Dio creato più bello, più attivo, e più giovevole d'ogni altro elemento, noi te mostra or nel cimento discreto e mite."

-Vita (Fuligno), p. 15.

P 64

No

Laudato sia el Dio, mio Signore con tute le Creature; specialmente Messer lo frate Sole. Laudato sia il mio Signore per suor Luna, per frate vento, per suor acqua."

"Ben venga la sorella morte."

the emulous approximation of pride, even of pride disguised from himself; such profaneness entered not into his thought. His life might seem a religious trance. The mysticism so absolutely absorbed him as to make him unconscious, as it were, of the presence of his body. Incessantly active as was his life, it was a kind of paroxysmal activity, constantly collapsing into what might seem a kind of suspended animation of the corporeal functions. It was even said that he underwent a kind of visible and glorious transfiguration." But with what wonderful force must all this have worked upon the world, the popular world around him. About three years before his death, with the permission of the Pope, he celebrated the Nativity of the Lord in a new way. A manger was prepared, the whole scene of the miraculous birth represented. The mass was interpolated before the prayers. St. Francis preached on the Nativity. The angelic choirs were heard ; a wondering disciple declared that he saw a beautiful child reposing in the manger.

The Order of St. Francis had, and of necessity, its Tertiaries, like that of St. Dominic. At his preaching, and that of his disciples, such multitudes would have crowded into the Order as to become dangerous and unmanageable. The whole population of one town, Canari in Umbria, offered themselves as disciples. The Tertiaries were called the Brethren of Penitence; they were to retain their social position in the world: but, first enjoined to discharge all their debts, and to make restitution of all unfair gains. They were then admitted to make a vow to keep the commandments of God, and to give satisfaction for any breach of which they might have been guilty. They could not leave the Order, except to embrace a religious life. Women were not admitted without the

"E tanto in lei (in Gesu) sovente profondasi, tanto s' immerge, inabissa, e concentra, che assorto non vide, non ascolta, non sente, e se opera carnalmente, nol conosca, non sel rammenta." This state is thus illustrated: he was riding on an ass; he was almost torn in pieces by devout men and women shouting around him; he was utterly unconscious, like a dead man.-From a modern

Vita di S. Francesco. Foligno, 1824.

"Ad conspectum sublimis Seraph et humilis Crucifixi, fuit in vivæ formæ effigiem, vi quâdam deiformi et ignea transformatus; quemadmodum testati sunt, tactis sacrosanctis jurantes, qui palpaverunt, osculati sunt, et viderunt."

X

Bonaventura, in Vit. Minor. i. Chapter of Tertiaries, A.D. 1222; Chroniques, L. ii. c. xxxii.

consent of their husbands. The form and colour of their dress were prescribed, silk rigidly prohibited. They were to keep aloof from all public spectacles, dances, especially the theatre; to give nothing to actors, jugglers, or such profane persons. Their fasts were severe, but tempered with some lenity; their attendance at church constant. They were not to bear arms except in the cause of the Church of Rome, the Christian faith, or their country, and that at the licence of their ministers. On entering the Order, they were immediately to make their wills to prevent future litigation; they were to abstain from unnecessary oaths; they were to submit to penance, when imposed by their ministers.

A.D. 1224.

But St. Francis had not yet attained his height even of worldly fame; he was yet to receive the last marks of his similitude to the Redeemer, to bear on his body actually and really the five wounds of the Redeemer.

That which was so gravely believed must be gravely related. In the solitude of Monte Alverno (a The Stigmountain which had been bestowed on the Order mata. by a rich and pious votary, and where a magnificent church afterwards arose) Francis had retired to hold a solemn fast in honour of the Archangel Michael. He had again consulted the holy oracle. Thrice the Scriptures had been opened; thrice they opened on the Passion of the Lord. This was interpreted, that even in this life Francis was to be brought into some mysterious conformity with the death of the Saviour. One morning, while he was praying in an access of the most passionate devotion, he saw in a vision, or, as he supposed, in real being, a seraph with six wings. Amidst these wings appeared the likeness of the Crucified. Two wings arched over his head, two were stretched for flight, two veiled the body. As the apparition disappeared, it left upon his mind an indescribable mixture of delight and awe. On his body

instantaneously appeared marks of the crucifixion, like those which he had beheld. Two black excrescences, in the form of nails, with the heads on one side, the points bent back on the other, had grown out of his hands and

feet. There was a wound on his side, which frequently flowed with blood, and stained his garment. Francis endeavoured, in his extreme humility, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his disciples, to conceal this wonderful sight; but the wounds were seen, it is declared, at one time by fifty brethren. Countless miracles were ascribed to their power. The wound on his side Francis hid with peculiar care. But it was seen during his life, as it is asserted; the pious curiosity of his disciples pierced through every concealment. Pope Alexander IV. publicly declared that his own eyes had beheld the stigmata on the body of St. Francis. Two years after St. Francis Oct. 4, 1226. died. He determined literally to realise the words of the Scripture, to leave the world naked as he entered it. His disciples might then, and did then, it is said, actually satisfy themselves as to these signs: to complete the parallel an incredulous Thomas was found to investigate the fact with suspicious scrutiny. It became an article of the Franciscan creed; though the now rival Order, the Dominicans, hinted rationalistic doubts, they were authoritatively rebuked. It became almost the creed of Christendom."

Character of

Up to a certain period this studious conformity of the life of St. Francis with that of Christ, heightened, Franciscanism. adorned, expanded, till it received its perfectform in the work of Bartholomew of Pisa, was promulgated by the emulous zeal of a host of disciples throughout the world. Those whose more reverential piety might take offence were few and silent: the declaration of Pope Alexander, the ardent protector of the Mendicant Friars, imposed it almost as an article of the Belief. With the Franciscans, and all under the dominion of the Francis

y The Dominican Jacob de Voragine assigns five causes for the stigmata; they in fact resolve themselves into the first, imagination. His illustrations, however, are chiefly from pregnant women, whose children resemble something which had violently impressed the mother's mind. He does not deny the fact. "Summus ergo Franciscus, in visione sibi factâ imaginabatur Seraphim Crucifixum, et tam fortis imagi

natione extitit, quod vulnera passionis in carne suâ impressit."-Sermo iii. de S. Francisco. Compare Gieseler, ii. 2, 349. Nicolas IV., too, asserted the stigmata of St. Francis (he was himself a Franciscan); he silenced a Dominican, who dared to assert that in Peter Martyr (Peter was a Dominican) were signs Dei vivi, in St. Francis only Dei mortui. -Raynald. A.D. 1291.

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