DISCOVERY 



169 



to beg for food, agreeing to meet at a certain stone. 

 Francis came back with his scraps, but Bernardo 

 confessed with shame that he was so hungry that he 

 had eaten all the crusts given to him. Francis shed 

 tears of joj' (or laughed till he cried), and said : " Thou 

 art more blessed than I, dear son ; thou art truly a 

 perfect observer of the Gospel ; for thou hast gathered 

 nothing and kept nothing for the morrow, but hast 

 cast thy whole thought upon the Lord." 



The number of books on St. Francis which have 

 come out in the last thirty or forty years is enormous, 

 and is still growing. It is something more than a 

 literary fashion. It is noteworthy that the first 

 impetus to Franciscan studies proceeded, not from 

 CathoUc but from Protestant circles, and a certain 

 amount of religious controversy has been mixed up 

 with the histon,'. It is easy to see what attracted 

 Protestant theologians and historians to St. Francis: 

 it was his attempt to go back directly to the Gospels 

 for inspiration, and to reproduce again on earth the 

 life of Christ and His Apostles. He habituall}' claimed 

 immediate revelation from God as his authority. 

 " After the Lord had given me the care of brethren, 

 no one showed me what I should do, but the Most 

 High revealed to me that I should live according to 

 the pattern of the Holy Gospel." One can hear in this 

 sentence from the Testament of St. Francis an echo 

 of the perennial conflict between prophet and priest ; 

 but some of his recent biographers have over- 

 emphasised the differences between the saint and the 

 Papacy, and have even suggested that he was not a 

 loyal and submissi\"e son of the Roman Church. The 

 charge has been brought against Paul Sabatier — not 

 without a certain measure of justification — that his 

 famous Vie de Saint Francois represents the poor man 

 of Assisi as a precursor of the Reformation. Sabatier 's 

 profound researches into Franciscan history since he 

 wrote the Life have materially modified his original 

 views, and we may look for considerable changes in 

 the reused Vie de Saint Francois which he has pre- 

 pared ; but his original views were far nearer the 

 truth than those which make St. Francis a passive 

 instrument in the hands of the Roman hierarchy. 



Few have reconciled more completely than St. Francis 

 submission with liberty. His attitude to the Church 

 may be compared with that of a loyal subject to the 

 State. The loyal subject recognises the authority of 

 the State ; but that does not prevent him from en- 

 deavouring to change and reform the State, and bring 

 its policy into harmony with his own ideas. A point 

 may come when one has to choose between rebelUon 

 and submission either to Church or State ; this point 

 was reached by some of St. Francis's followers a 

 century later, when they renounced allegiance to the 

 " carnal Church " and tried to estabhsh a spiritual 



Church. It is safe to say that the idea of rebellion 

 never even occurred to St. Francis. He was saved 

 from this partly by the wisdom of the rulers of the 

 Church, but mainly bj' his own character and power. 



Pope Innocent III was an autocrat, but he did not 

 claim a monopoly of initiative, and was willing to admit 

 that a simple layman might have surer instincts, might 

 be more truly inspired by God, than a Pope. Francis 

 asked his approval for the way of life which he had 

 already chosen for himself and his followers. " Pray 

 God, my son," the Pope replied, according to one 

 accoimt, " that He reveal unto thee whether what ye 

 seek Cometh of His Will, so that we, being assured of 

 the Lord's Will, may accede unto thy desire." " Go," 

 he said finally, " and the Lord be with j^ou, brethren, 

 and as He shall deign to inspire you, preach repentance 

 to all." 



There is plenty of evidence of the extraordinary 

 power exercised by Francis over all classes of people. 

 He radiated peace, goodwill, and confidence. It was 

 not what he said, but his personality, that affected 

 them. A learned philosopher remarked that, while he 

 could remember every word of the seiTnons of others, 

 " the words uttered by holy Francis alone escape 

 me ; and if I commit any of them to memory, they 

 do not seem to me the same that dropped from his 

 hps before." Another description of his preaching — 

 by the Archdeacon of Spalato — runs as follows: 

 " In 1222, on the day of the Assumption (August 15), 

 when I was a student at Bologna, I saw St. Francis 

 preaching in the piazza in front of the public palazzo. 

 Almost all the city had assembled there. His text 

 was ' Angels, men, devils,' and he discoursed of these 

 three rational spirits so well and \visely that many 

 learned men who were present were not a little amazed 

 at the words of such an ignorant man. Yet his style 

 was not that of a preacher, but of a man conversing. 

 The whole matter of his discourse was an appeal to 

 extinguish enmities and to make lasting peace. His 

 dress was mean, his appearance contemptible, and 

 his face without beauty ; but God lent such power to 

 his words that many bands of nobles, among whom 

 the savage fury of ancient feuds had raged with much 

 shedding of blood, were brought back to the way of 

 peace. Such was the reverence and devotion which 

 he inspired that men and women rushed to him in 

 crowds, happy if they could touch the hem of his 

 garment or carry off some bit of his habit." 



A peacemaker had no lack of opportunity in thir- 

 teenth-century Italy. Feuds between families, be- 

 tween cities, between classes, between parties, between 

 ecclesiastical and civil authorities, were everywhere 

 prevalent, and every success involved reprisals and 

 every act of violence intensified hatred, \^hen 

 Francis lay dying, a great quarrel arose between the 



