{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_63084/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_63084","id":"gutenberg_63084","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63084","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: History - Religious","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Francis, of Assisi, Saint, 1182-1226"],"text":"Transcriber's Note:\n\nObvious printer errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been\nrationalised.\n\nSmall capitals have been replaced by full capitals. Italics are\nindicated by _underscores_.\n\nA list of other books from the same publisher, and a preface to them,\nhave been moved to the end of the book.\n\n\n\n\n ST. FRANCIS OF\n ASSISI\n\n BY\n G. K. CHESTERTON\n\n [Illustration: H&S]\n\n HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD.\n LONDON\n TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n _Contents_\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n CHAPTER I\n THE PROBLEM OF ST. FRANCIS                                            7\n\n CHAPTER II\n THE WORLD ST. FRANCIS FOUND                                          18\n\n CHAPTER III\n FRANCIS THE FIGHTER                                                  40\n\n CHAPTER IV\n FRANCIS THE BUILDER                                                  58\n\n CHAPTER V\n LE JONGLEUR DE DIEU                                                  74\n\n CHAPTER VI\n THE LITTLE POOR MAN                                                  94\n\n CHAPTER VII\n THE THREE ORDERS                                                    113\n\n CHAPTER VIII\n THE MIRROR OF CHRIST                                                133\n\n CHAPTER IX\n MIRACLES AND DEATH                                                  153\n\n CHAPTER X\n THE TESTAMENT OF ST. FRANCIS                                        172\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter I_\n _The Problem of St.\u00a0Francis_\n\n\nA sketch of St.\u00a0Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written in\none of three ways. Between these the writer must make his selection; and\nthe third way, which is adopted here, is in some respects the most\ndifficult of all. At least, it would be the most difficult if the other\ntwo were not impossible.\n\nFirst, he may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in\nsecular history and a model of social virtues. He may describe this\ndivine demagogue as being, as he probably was, the world's one quite\nsincere democrat. He may say (what means very little) that St.\u00a0Francis\nwas in advance of his age. He may say (what is quite true) that\nSt.\u00a0Francis anticipated all that is most liberal and sympathetic in the\nmodern mood; the love of nature; the love of animals; the sense of\nsocial compassion; the sense of the spiritual dangers of prosperity and\neven of property. All those things that nobody understood before\nWordsworth were familiar to St.\u00a0Francis. All those things that were\nfirst discovered by Tolstoy had been taken for granted by St.\u00a0Francis.\nHe could be presented, not only as a human but a humanitarian hero;\nindeed as the first hero of humanism. He has been described as a sort of\nmorning star of the Renaissance. And in comparison with all these\nthings, his ascetical theology can be ignored or dismissed as a\ncontemporary accident, which was fortunately not a fatal accident. His\nreligion can be regarded as a superstition, but an inevitable\nsuperstition, from which not even genius could wholly free itself; in\nthe consideration of which it would be unjust to condemn St.\u00a0Francis for\nhis self-denial or unduly chide him for his chastity. It is quite true\nthat even from so detached a standpoint his stature would still appear\nheroic. There would still be a great deal to be said about the man who\ntried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens or who interceded\nwith the Emperor for the birds. The writer might describe in a purely\nhistorical spirit the whole of that great Franciscan inspiration that\nwas felt in the painting of Giotto, in the poetry of Dante, in the\nmiracle plays that made possible the modern drama, and in so many other\nthings that are already appreciated by the modern culture. He may try to\ndo it, as others have done, almost without raising any religious\nquestion at all. In short, he may try to tell the story of a saint\nwithout God; which is like being told to write the life of Nansen and\nforbidden to mention the North Pole.\n\nSecond, he may go to the opposite extreme, and decide, as it were, to be\ndefiantly devotional. He may make the theological enthusiasm as\nthoroughly the theme as it was the theme of the first Franciscans. He\nmay treat religion as the real thing that it was to the real Francis of\nAssisi. He can find an austere joy, so to speak, in parading the\nparadoxes of asceticism and all the holy topsy-turvydom of humility. He\ncan stamp the whole history with the Stigmata, record fasts like fights\nagainst a dragon; till in the vague modern mind St.\u00a0Francis is as dark a\nfigure as St.\u00a0Dominic. In short he can produce what many in our world\nwill regard as a sort of photographic negative, the reversal of all\nlights and shades; what the foolish will find as impenetrable as\ndarkness and even many of the wise will find almost as invisible as if\nit were written in silver upon white. Such a study of St.\u00a0Francis would\nbe unintelligible to anyone who does not share his religion, perhaps\nonly partly intelligible to anyone who does not share his vocation.\nAccording to degrees of judgment, it will be regarded as something too\nbad or too good for the world. The only difficulty about doing the thing\nin this way is that it cannot be done. It would really require a saint\nto write the life of a saint. In the present case the objections to such\na course are insuperable.\n\nThird, he may try to do what I have tried to do here; and, as I have\nalready suggested, the course has peculiar problems of its own. The\nwriter may put himself in the position of the ordinary modern outsider\nand enquirer; as indeed the present writer is still largely and was once\nentirely in that position. He may start from the standpoint of a man who\nalready admires St.\u00a0Francis, but only for those things which such a man\nfinds admirable. In other words he may assume that the reader is at\nleast as enlightened as Renan or Matthew Arnold; but in the light of\nthat enlightenment he may try to illuminate what Renan and Matthew\nArnold left dark. He may try to use what is understood to explain what\nis not understood. He may say to the modern English reader: \"Here is an\nhistorical character which is admittedly attractive to many of us\nalready, by its gaiety, its romantic imagination, its spiritual courtesy\nand camaraderie, but which also contains elements (evidently equally\nsincere and emphatic) which seem to you quite remote and repulsive. But\nafter all, this man was a man and not half a dozen men. What seems\ninconsistency to you did not seem inconsistency to him. Let us see\nwhether we can understand, with the help of the existing understanding,\nthese other things that seem now to be doubly dark, by their intrinsic\ngloom and their ironic contrast.\" I do not mean, of course, that I can\nreally reach such a psychological completeness in this crude and curt\noutline. But I mean that this is the only controversial condition that I\nshall here assume; that I am dealing with the sympathetic outsider. I\nshall not assume any more or any less agreement than this. A materialist\nmay not care whether the inconsistencies are reconciled or not. A\nCatholic may not see any inconsistencies to reconcile. But I am here\naddressing the ordinary modern man, sympathetic but sceptical, and I can\nonly rather hazily hope that, by approaching the great saint's story\nthrough what is evidently picturesque and popular about it, I may at\nleast leave the reader understanding a little more than he did before of\nthe consistency of a complete character; that by approaching it in this\nway, we may at least get a glimmering of why the poet who praised his\nlord the sun, often hid himself in a dark cavern, of why the saint who\nwas so gentle with his Brother the Wolf was so harsh to his Brother the\nAss (as he nicknamed his own body), of why the troubadour who said that\nlove set his heart on fire separated himself from women, of why the\nsinger who rejoiced in the strength and gaiety of the fire deliberately\nrolled himself in the snow, of why the very song which cries with all\nthe passion of a pagan, \"Praised be God for our Sister, Mother Earth,\nwhich brings forth varied fruits and grass and glowing flowers,\" ends\nalmost with the words \"Praised be God for our Sister, the death of the\nbody.\"\n\nRenan and Matthew Arnold failed utterly at this test. They were content\nto follow Francis with their praises until they were stopped by their\nprejudices; the stubborn prejudices of the sceptic. The moment Francis\nbegan to do something they did not understand or did not like, they did\nnot try to understand it, still less to like it; they simply turned\ntheir backs on the whole business and \"walked no more with him.\" No man\nwill get any further along a path of historical enquiry in that fashion.\nThese sceptics are really driven to drop the whole subject in despair,\nto leave the most simple and sincere of all historical characters as a\nmass of contradictions, to be praised on the principle of the curate's\negg. Arnold refers to the asceticism of Alverno almost hurriedly, as if\nit were an unlucky but undeniable blot on the beauty of the story; or\nrather as if it were a pitiable break-down and bathos at the end of the\nstory. Now this is simply to be stone-blind to the whole point of any\nstory. To represent Mount Alverno as the mere collapse of Francis is\nexactly like representing Mount Calvary as the mere collapse of Christ.\nThose mountains are mountains, whatever else they are, and it is\nnonsense to say (like the Red Queen) that they are comparative hollows\nor negative holes in the ground. They were quite manifestly meant to be\nculminations and landmarks. To treat the Stigmata as a sort of scandal,\nto be touched on tenderly but with pain, is exactly like treating the\noriginal five wounds of Jesus Christ as five blots on His character. You\nmay dislike the idea of asceticism; you may dislike equally the idea of\nmartyrdom; for that matter you may have an honest and natural dislike of\nthe whole conception of sacrifice symbolised by the cross. But if it is\nan intelligent dislike, you will still retain the capacity for seeing\nthe point of a story; of the story of a martyr or even the story of a\nmonk. You will not be able rationally to read the Gospel and regard the\nCrucifixion as an afterthought or an anti-climax or an accident in the\nlife of Christ; it is obviously the point of the story like the point of\na sword, the sword that pierced the heart of the Mother of God.\n\nAnd you will not be able rationally to read the story of a man presented\nas a Mirror of Christ without understanding his final phase as a Man of\nSorrows, and at least artistically appreciating the appropriateness of\nhis receiving, in a cloud of mystery and isolation, inflicted by no\nhuman hand, the unhealed everlasting wounds that heal the world.\n\nThe practical reconciliation of the gaiety and austerity I must leave\nthe story itself to suggest. But since I have mentioned Matthew Arnold\nand Renan and the rationalistic admirers of St.\u00a0Francis, I will here\ngive the hint of what it seems to me most advisable for such readers to\nkeep in mind. These distinguished writers found things like the Stigmata\na stumbling-block because to them a religion was a philosophy. It was an\nimpersonal thing; and it is only the most personal passion that provides\nhere an approximate earthly parallel. A man will not roll in the snow\nfor a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their\nbeing. He will not go without food in the name of something, not\nourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or\npretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do\nthese things when he is in love. The first fact to realise about\nSt.\u00a0Francis is involved in the first fact with which his story starts;\nthat when he said from the first that he was a Troubadour, and said\nlater that he was a Troubadour of a newer and nobler romance, he was not\nusing a mere metaphor, but understood himself much better than the\nscholars understand him. He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a\nTroubadour. He was a Lover. He was a lover of God and he was really and\ntruly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation. A lover\nof men is very nearly the opposite of a philanthropist; indeed the\npedantry of the Greek word carries something like a satire on itself. A\nphilanthropist may be said to love anthropoids. But as St.\u00a0Francis did\nnot love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.\nSay, if you think so, that he was a lunatic loving an imaginary person;\nbut an imaginary person, not an imaginary idea. And for the modern\nreader the clue to the asceticism and all the rest can best be found in\nthe stories of lovers when they seemed to be rather like lunatics. Tell\nit as the tale of one of the Troubadours, and the wild things he would\ndo for his lady, and the whole of the modern puzzle disappears. In such\na romance there would be no contradiction between the poet gathering\nflowers in the sun and enduring a freezing vigil in the snow, between\nhis praising all earthly and bodily beauty and then refusing to eat,\nbetween his glorifying gold and purple and perversely going in rags,\nbetween his showing pathetically a hunger for a happy life and a thirst\nfor a heroic death. All these riddles would easily be resolved in the\nsimplicity of any noble love; only this was so noble a love that nine\nmen out of ten have hardly even heard of it. We shall see later that\nthis parallel of the earthly lover has a very practical relation to the\nproblems of his life, as to his relations with his father and with his\nfriends and their families. The modern reader will almost always find\nthat if he could only feel this kind of love as a reality, he could feel\nthis kind of extravagance as a romance. But I only note it here as a\npreliminary point because, though it is very far from being the final\ntruth in the matter, it is the best approach to it. The reader cannot\neven begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very\nwild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion\nwas not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair. And the\nonly purpose of this prefatory chapter is to explain the limits of this\npresent book; which is only addressed to that part of the modern world\nwhich finds in St.\u00a0Francis a certain modern difficulty; which can admire\nhim yet hardly accept him, or which can appreciate the saint almost\nwithout the sanctity. And my only claim even to attempt such a task is\nthat I myself have for so long been in various stages of such a\ncondition. Many thousand things that I now partly comprehend I should\nhave thought utterly incomprehensible, many things I now hold sacred I\nshould have scouted as utterly superstitious, many things that seem to\nme lucid and enlightened now they are seen from the inside I should\nhonestly have called dark and barbarous seen from the outside, when long\nago in those days of boyhood my fancy first caught fire with the glory\nof Francis of Assisi. I too have lived in Arcady; but even in Arcady I\nmet one walking in a brown habit who loved the woods better than Pan.\nThe figure in the brown habit stands above the hearth in the room where\nI write, and alone among many such images, at no stage of my pilgrimage\nhas he ever seemed to me a stranger. There is something of harmony\nbetween the hearth and the firefight and my own first pleasure in his\nwords about his brother fire; for he stands far enough back in my memory\nto mingle with all those more domestic dreams of the first days. Even\nthe fantastic shadows thrown by fire make a sort of shadow pantomime\nthat belongs to the nursery; yet the shadows were even then the shadows\nof his favourite beasts and birds, as he saw them, grotesque but haloed\nwith the love of God. His Brother Wolf and Brother Sheep seemed then\nalmost like the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit of a more Christian Uncle\nRemus. I have come slowly to see many and more marvellous aspects of\nsuch a man, but I have never lost that one. His figure stands on a sort\nof bridge connecting my boyhood with my conversion to many other things;\nfor the romance of his religion had penetrated even the rationalism of\nthat vague Victorian time. In so far as I have had this experience, I\nmay be able to lead others a little further along that road; but only a\nvery little further. Nobody knows better than I do now that it is a road\nupon which angels might fear to tread; but though I am certain of\nfailure I am not altogether overcome by fear; for he suffered fools\ngladly.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter II_\n _The World St.\u00a0Francis Found_\n\n\nThe modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or\nfor that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one\ndefinite effect. It has insured that everybody should only hear the end\nof every story. Journalists are in the habit of printing above the very\nlast chapters of their serial stories (when the hero and heroine are\njust about to embrace in the last chapter, as only an unfathomable\nperversity prevented them from doing in the first) the rather misleading\nwords, \"You can begin this story here.\" But even this is not a complete\nparallel; for the journals do give some sort of a summary of the story,\nwhile they never give anything remotely resembling a summary of the\nhistory. Newspapers not only deal with news, but they deal with\neverything as if it were entirely new. Tutankamen, for instance, was\nentirely new. It is exactly in the same fashion that we read that\nAdmiral Bangs has been shot, which is the first intimation we have that\nhe has ever been born. There is something singularly significant in the\nuse which journalism makes of its stores of biography. It never thinks\nof publishing the life until it is publishing the death. As it deals\nwith individuals it deals with institutions and ideas. After the Great\nWar our public began to be told of all sorts of nations being\nemancipated. It had never been told a word about their being enslaved.\nWe were called upon to judge of the justice of the settlements, when we\nhad never been allowed to hear of the very existence of the quarrels.\nPeople would think it pedantic to talk about the Serbian epics and they\nprefer to speak in plain every-day modern language about the\nYugo-Slavonic international new diplomacy; and they are quite excited\nabout something they call Czecho-Slovakia without apparently having ever\nheard of Bohemia. Things that are as old as Europe are regarded as more\nrecent than the very latest claims pegged out on the prairies of\nAmerica. It is very exciting; like the last act of a play to people who\nhave only come into the theatre just before the curtain falls. But it\ndoes not conduce exactly to knowing what it is all about. To those\ncontent with the mere fact of a pistol-shot or a passionate embrace,\nsuch a leisurely manner of patronising the drama may be recommended. To\nthose tormented by a merely intellectual curiosity about who is kissing\nor killing whom, and why, it is unsatisfactory.\n\nMost modern history, especially in England, suffers from the same\nimperfection as journalism. At best it only tells half of the history of\nChristendom; and that the second half without the first half. Men for\nwhom reason begins with the Revival of Learning, men for whom religion\nbegins with the Reformation, can never give a complete account of\nanything, for they have to start with institutions whose origin they\ncannot explain, or generally even imagine. Just as we hear of the\nadmiral being shot but have never heard of his being born, so we all\nheard a great deal about the dissolution of the monasteries, but we\nheard next to nothing about the creation of the monasteries. Now this\nsort of history would be hopelessly insufficient, even for an\nintelligent man who hated the monasteries. It is hopelessly insufficient\nin connection with institutions that many intelligent men do in a quite\nhealthy spirit hate. For instance, it is possible that some of us have\noccasionally seen some mention, by our learned leader-writers, of an\nobscure institution called the Spanish Inquisition. Well, it really is\nan obscure institution, according to them and the histories they read.\nIt is obscure because its origin is obscure. Protestant history simply\nbegins with the horrible thing in possession, as the pantomime begins\nwith the demon king in the goblin kitchen. It is likely enough that it\nwas, especially towards the end, a horrible thing that might be haunted\nby demons; but if we say this was so, we have no notion why it was so.\nTo understand the Spanish Inquisition it would be necessary to discover\ntwo things that we have never dreamed of bothering about; what Spain was\nand what an Inquisition was. The former would bring in the whole great\nquestion about the Crusade against the Moors; and by what heroic\nchivalry a European nation freed itself of an alien domination from\nAfrica. The latter would bring in the whole business of the other\nCrusade against the Albigensians, and why men loved and hated that\nnihilistic vision from Asia. Unless we understand that there was in\nthese things originally the rush and romance of a Crusade, we cannot\nunderstand how they came to deceive men or drag them on towards evil.\nThe Crusaders doubtless abused their victory, but there was a victory to\nabuse. And where there is victory there is valour in the field and\npopularity in the forum. There is some sort of enthusiasm that\nencourages excesses or covers faults. For instance, I for one have\nmaintained from very early days the responsibility of the English for\ntheir atrocious treatment of the Irish. But it would be quite unfair to\nthe English to describe even the devilry of '98 and leave out altogether\nall mention of the war with Napoleon. It would be unjust to suggest that\nthe English mind was bent on nothing but the death of Emmett, when it\nwas more probably full of the glory of the death of Nelson.\nUnfortunately '98 was very far from being the last date of such dirty\nwork; and only a few years ago our politicians started trying to rule by\nrandom robbing and killing, while gently remonstrating with the Irish\nfor their memory of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago. But\nhowever badly we may think of the Black-and-Tan business, it would be\nunjust to forget that most of us were not thinking of Black-and-Tan but\nof khaki; and that khaki had just then a noble and national connotation\ncovering many things. To write of the war in Ireland and leave out the\nwar against Prussia, and the English sincerity about it, would be unjust\nto the English. So to talk about the torture-engine as if it had been a\nhideous toy is unjust to the Spanish. It does not tell sensibly from the\nstart the story of what the Spaniard did, and why. We may concede to our\ncontemporaries that in any case it is not a story that ends well. We do\nnot insist that in their version it should begin well. What we complain\nof is that in their version it does not begin at all. They are only in\nat the death; or even, like Lord Tom Noddy, too late for the hanging. It\nis quite true that it was sometimes more horrible than any hanging; but\nthey only gather, so to speak, the very ashes of the ashes; the fag-end\nof the faggot.\n\nThe case of the Inquisition is here taken at random, for it is one among\nany number illustrating the same thing; and not because it is especially\nconnected with St.\u00a0Francis, in whatever sense it may have been connected\nwith St.\u00a0Dominic. It may well be suggested later indeed that St.\u00a0Francis\nis unintelligible, just as St.\u00a0Dominic is unintelligible, unless we do\nunderstand something of what the thirteenth century meant by heresy and\na crusade. But for the moment I use it as a lesser example for a much\nlarger purpose. It is to point out that to begin the story of\nSt.\u00a0Francis with the birth of St.\u00a0Francis would be to miss the whole\npoint of the story, or rather not to tell the story at all. And it is to\nsuggest that the modern tail-foremost type of journalistic history\nperpetually fails us. We learn about reformers without knowing what they\nhad to reform, about rebels without a notion of what they rebelled\nagainst, of memorials that are not connected with any memory and\nrestorations of things that had apparently never existed before. Even at\nthe expense of this chapter appearing disproportionate, it is necessary\nto say something about the great movements that led up to the entrance\nof the founder of the Franciscans. It may seem to mean describing a\nworld, or even a universe, in order to describe a man. It will\ninevitably mean that the world or the universe will be described with a\nfew desperate generalisations in a few abrupt sentences. But so far from\nits meaning that we see a very small figure under so large a sky, it\nwill mean that we must measure the sky before we can begin to measure\nthe towering stature of the man.\n\nAnd this phrase alone brings me to the preliminary suggestions that seem\nnecessary before even a slight sketch of the life of St.\u00a0Francis. It is\nnecessary to realise, in however rude and elementary a fashion, into\nwhat sort of a world St.\u00a0Francis entered and what has been the history\nof that world, at least in so far as it affected him. It is necessary to\nhave, if only in a few sentences, a sort of preface in the form of an\nOutline of History, if we may borrow the phrase of Mr. Wells. In the\ncase of Mr. Wells himself, it is evident that the distinguished novelist\nsuffered the same disadvantage as if he had been obliged to write a\nnovel of which he hated the hero. To write history and hate Rome, both\npagan and papal, is practically to hate nearly everything that has\nhappened. It comes very near to hating humanity on purely humanitarian\ngrounds. To dislike both the priest and the soldier, both the laurels of\nthe warrior and the lilies of the saint, is to suffer a division from\nthe mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and\nmost flexible of modern intelligences can compensate. A much wider\nsympathy is needed for the historical setting of St.\u00a0Francis, himself\nboth a soldier and a saint. I will therefore conclude this chapter with\na few generalisations about the world that St.\u00a0Francis found.\n\nMen will not believe because they will not broaden their minds. As a\nmatter of individual belief, I should of course express it by saying\nthat they are not sufficiently catholic to be Catholic. But I am not\ngoing to discuss here the doctrinal truths of Christianity, but simply\nthe broad historical fact of Christianity, as it might appear to a\nreally enlightened and imaginative person even if he were not a\nChristian. What I mean at the moment is that the majority of doubts are\nmade out of details. In the course of random reading a man comes across\na pagan custom that strikes him as picturesque or a Christian action\nthat strikes him as cruel; but he does not enlarge his mind sufficiently\nto see the main truth about pagan custom or the Christian reaction\nagainst it. Until we understand, not necessarily in detail, but in their\nbig bulk and proportion that pagan progress and that Christian reaction,\nwe cannot really understand the point of history at which St.\u00a0Francis\nappears or what his great popular mission was all about.\n\nNow everybody knows, I imagine, that the twelfth and thirteenth\ncenturies were an awakening of the world. They were a fresh flowering of\nculture and the creative arts after a long spell of much sterner and\neven more sterile experience which we call the Dark Ages. They may be\ncalled an emancipation; they were certainly an end; an end of what may\nat least seem a harsher and more inhuman time. But what was it that was\nended? From what was it that men were emancipated? That is where there\nis a real collision and point at issue between the different\nphilosophies of history. On the merely external and secular side, it has\nbeen truly said that men awoke from a sleep; but there had been dreams\nin that sleep of a mystical and sometimes of a monstrous kind. In that\nrationalistic routine into which most modern historians have fallen, it\nis considered enough to say that they were emancipated from mere savage\nsuperstition and advanced towards mere civilised enlightenment. Now this\nis the big blunder that stands as a stumbling-block at the very\nbeginning of our story. Anybody who supposes that the Dark Ages were\nplain darkness and nothing else, and that the dawn of the thirteenth\ncentury was plain daylight and nothing else, will not be able to make\nhead or tail of the human story of St.\u00a0Francis of Assisi. The truth is\nthat the joy of St.\u00a0Francis and his Jongleurs de Dieu was not merely an\nawakening. It was something which cannot be understood without\nunderstanding their own mystical creed. The end of the Dark Ages was not\nmerely the end of a sleep. It was certainly not merely the end of a\nsuperstitious enslavement. It was the end of something belonging to a\nquite definite but quite different order of ideas.\n\nIt was the end of a penance; or, if it be preferred, a purgation. It\nmarked the moment when a certain spiritual expiation had been finally\nworked out and certain spiritual diseases had been finally expelled from\nthe system. They had been expelled by an era of asceticism, which was\nthe only thing that could have expelled them. Christianity had entered\nthe world to cure the world; and she had cured it in the only way in\nwhich it could be cured.\n\nViewed merely in an external and experimental fashion, the whole of the\nhigh civilisation of antiquity had ended in the learning of a certain\nlesson; that is, in its conversion to Christianity. But that lesson was\na psychological fact as well as a theological faith. That pagan\ncivilisation had indeed been a very high civilisation. It would not\nweaken our thesis, it might even strengthen it, to say that it was the\nhighest that humanity ever reached. It had discovered its still\nunrivalled arts of poetry and plastic representation; it had discovered\nits own permanent political ideals; it had discovered its own clear\nsystem of logic and of language. But above all, it had discovered its\nown mistake.\n\nThat mistake was too deep to be ideally defined; the short-hand of it is\nto call it the mistake of nature-worship. It might almost as truly be\ncalled the mistake of being natural; and it was a very natural mistake.\nThe Greeks, the great guides and pioneers of pagan antiquity, started\nout with the idea of something splendidly obvious and direct; the idea\nthat if man walked straight ahead on the high road of reason and nature,\nhe could come to no harm; especially if he was, as the Greek was,\neminently enlightened and intelligent. We might be so flippant as to say\nthat man was simply to follow his nose, so long as it was a Greek nose.\nAnd the case of the Greeks themselves is alone enough to illustrate the\nstrange but certain fatality that attends upon this fallacy. No sooner\ndid the Greeks themselves begin to follow their own noses and their own\nnotion of being natural, than the queerest thing in history seems to\nhave happened to them. It was much too queer to be an easy matter to\ndiscuss. It may be remarked that our more repulsive realists never give\nus the benefit of their realism. Their studies of unsavoury subjects\nnever take note of the testimony which they bear to the truths of a\ntraditional morality. But if we had the taste for such things, we could\ncite thousands of such things as part of the case for Christian morals.\nAnd an instance of this is found in the fact that nobody has written, in\nthis sense, a real moral history of the Greeks. Nobody has seen the\nscale or the strangeness of the story. The wisest men in the world set\nout to be natural; and the most unnatural thing in the world was the\nvery first thing they did. The immediate effect of saluting the sun and\nthe sunny sanity of nature was a perversion spreading like a pestilence.\nThe greatest and even the purest philosophers could not apparently avoid\nthis low sort of lunacy. Why? It would seem simple enough for the people\nwhose poets had conceived Helen of Troy, whose sculptors had carved the\nVenus of Milo, to remain healthy on the point. The truth is that people\nwho worship health cannot remain healthy. When Man goes straight he goes\ncrooked. When he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out\nof joint, or even to cut off his nose to spite his face; and that in\naccordance with something much deeper in human nature than\nnature-worshippers could ever understand. It was the discovery of that\ndeeper thing, humanly speaking, that constituted the conversion to\nChristianity. There is a bias in man like the bias in the bowl; and\nChristianity was the discovery of how to correct the bias and therefore\nhit the mark. There are many who will smile at the saying; but it is\nprofoundly true to say that the glad good news brought by the Gospel was\nthe news of original sin.\n\nRome rose at the expense of her Greek teachers largely because she did\nnot entirely consent to be taught these tricks. She had a much more\ndecent domestic tradition; but she ultimately suffered from the same\nfallacy in her religious tradition; which was necessarily in no small\ndegree the heathen tradition of nature-worship. What was the matter with\nthe whole heathen civilisation was that there was nothing for the mass\nof men in the way of mysticism, except that concerned with the mystery\nof the nameless forces of nature, such as sex and growth and death. In\nthe Roman Empire also, long before the end, we find nature-worship\ninevitably producing things that are against nature. Cases like that of\nNero have passed into a proverb, when Sadism sat on a throne brazen in\nthe broad daylight. But the truth I mean is something much more subtle\nand universal than a conventional catalogue of atrocities. What had\nhappened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world\nwas coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural\npassions becoming unnatural passions. Thus the effect of treating sex as\nonly one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural\nthing became soaked and sodden with sex. For sex cannot be admitted to a\nmere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and\nsleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.\nThere is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human\nnature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special\npurification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like\nany other sense, about the body being beautiful like any tree or flower,\nis either a description of the Garden of Eden or a piece of thoroughly\nbad psychology, of which the world grew weary two thousand years ago.\n\nThis is not to be confused with mere self-righteous sensationalism about\nthe wickedness of the pagan world. It was not so much that the pagan\nworld was wicked as that it was good enough to realise that its paganism\nwas becoming wicked, or rather was on the logical high road to\nwickedness. I mean that there was no future for \"natural magic\"; to\ndeepen it was only to darken it into black magic. There was no future\nfor it; because in the past it had only been innocent because it was\nyoung. We might say it had only been innocent because it was shallow.\nPagans were wiser than paganism; that is why the pagans became\nChristians. Thousands of them had philosophy and family virtues and\nmilitary honour to hold them up; but by this time the purely popular\nthing called religion was certainly dragging them down. When this\nreaction against the evil is allowed for, it is true to repeat that it\nwas an evil that was everywhere. In another and more literal sense its\nname was Pan.\n\nIt was no metaphor to say that these people needed a new heaven and a\nnew earth; for they had really defiled their own earth and even their\nown heaven. How could their case be met by looking at the sky, when\nerotic legends were scrawled in stars across it; how could they learn\nanything from the love of birds and flowers after the sort of love\nstories that were told of them? It is impossible here to multiply\nevidences, and one small example may stand for the rest. We know what\nsort of sentimental associations are called up to us by the phrase \"a\ngarden\"; and how we think mostly of the memory of melancholy and\ninnocent romances, or quite as often of some gracious maiden lady or\nkindly old parson pottering under a yew hedge, perhaps in sight of a\nvillage spire. Then, let anyone who knows a little Latin poetry recall\nsuddenly what would once have stood in place of the sun-dial or the\nfountain, obscene and monstrous in the sun; and of what sort was the god\nof their gardens.\n\nNothing could purge this obsession but a religion that was literally\nunearthly. It was no good telling such people to have a natural religion\nfull of stars and flowers; there was not a flower or even a star that\nhad not been stained. They had to go into the desert where they could\nfind no flowers or even into the cavern where they could see no stars.\nInto that desert and that cavern the highest human intellect entered for\nsome four centuries; and it was the very wisest thing it could do.\nNothing but the stark supernatural stood up for its salvation; if God\ncould not save it, certainly the gods could not. The Early Church called\nthe gods of paganism devils; and the Early Church was perfectly right.\nWhatever natural religion may have had to do with their beginnings,\nnothing but fiends now inhabited those hollow shrines. Pan was nothing\nbut panic. Venus was nothing but venereal vice. I do not mean for a\nmoment, of course, that all the individual pagans were of this character\neven to the end; but it was as individuals that they differed from it.\nNothing distinguishes paganism from Christianity so clearly as the fact\nthat the individual thing called philosophy had little or nothing to do\nwith the social thing called religion. Anyhow it was no good to preach\nnatural religion to people to whom nature had grown as unnatural as any\nreligion. They knew much better than we do what was the matter with them\nand what sort of demons at once tempted and tormented them; and they\nwrote across that great space of history the text: \"This sort goeth not\nout but by prayer and fasting.\"\n\nNow the historic importance of St.\u00a0Francis and the transition from the\ntwelfth to the thirteenth century, lies in the fact that they marked the\nend of this expiation. Men at the close of the Dark Ages may have been\nrude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen\ntribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were\nlike children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the\nclean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a\nwhole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they\nwere a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and\ncarrying a more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial\nin so far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something\nhad survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity: the\nrepublic. Italy was dotted with little states, largely democratic in\ntheir ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no\nlonger lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for\ndefence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. One\nof these stood in a steep and striking position on the wooded hills of\nUmbria; and its name was Assisi. Out of its deep gate under its high\nturrets was to come the message that was the gospel of the hour, \"Your\nwarfare is accomplished, your iniquity is pardoned.\" But it was out of\nall these fragmentary things of feudalism and freedom and remains of\nRoman Law that there was to rise, at the beginning of the thirteenth\ncentury, vast and almost universal, the mighty civilisation of the\nMiddle Ages.\n\nIt is an exaggeration to attribute it entirely to the inspiration of any\none man, even the most original genius of the thirteenth century. Its\nelementary ethics of fraternity and fair play had never been entirely\nextinct and Christendom had never been anything less than Christian. The\ngreat truisms about justice and pity can be found in the rudest monastic\nrecords of the barbaric transition or the stiffest maxims of the\nByzantine decline. And early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a\nlarger moral movement had clearly begun. But what may fairly be said of\nit is this, that over all those first movements there was still\nsomething of that ancient austerity that came from the long penitential\nperiod. It was the twilight of morning; but it was still a grey\ntwilight. This may be illustrated by the mere mention of two or three of\nthese reforms before the Franciscan reform. The monastic institution\nitself, of course, was far older than all these things; indeed it was\nundoubtedly almost as old as Christianity. Its counsels of perfection\nhad always taken the form of vows of chastity and poverty and obedience.\nWith these unworldly aims it had long ago civilised a great part of the\nworld. The monks had taught people to plough and sow as well as to read\nand write; indeed they had taught the people nearly everything that the\npeople knew. But it may truly be said that the monks were severely\npractical, in the sense that they were not only practical but also\nsevere; though they were generally severe with themselves and practical\nfor other people. All this early monastic movement had long ago settled\ndown and doubtless often deteriorated; but when we come to the first\nmedieval movements this sterner character is still apparent. Three\nexamples may be taken to illustrate the point.\n\nFirst, the ancient social mould of slavery was already beginning to\nmelt. Not only was the slave turning into the serf, who was practically\nfree as regards his own farm and family life, but many lords were\nfreeing slaves and serfs altogether. This was done under the pressure of\nthe priests; but especially it was done in the spirit of a penance. In\none sense, of course, any Catholic society must have an atmosphere of\npenance; but I am speaking of that rather sterner spirit of penance\nwhich had expiated the excesses of paganism. There was about such\nrestitutions the atmosphere of the death-bed; as many of them doubtless\nwere examples of death-bed repentance. A very honest atheist with whom I\nonce debated made use of the expression, \"Men have only been kept in\nslavery by the fear of hell.\" As I pointed out to him, if he had said\nthat men had only been freed from slavery by the fear of hell, he would\nat least have been referring to an unquestionable historical fact.\n\nAnother example was the sweeping reform of Church discipline by Pope\nGregory the Seventh. It really was a reform, undertaken from the highest\nmotives and having the healthiest results; it conducted a searching\ninquisition against simony or the financial corruptions of the clergy;\nit insisted on a more serious and self-sacrificing ideal for the life of\na parish priest. But the very fact that this largely took the form of\nmaking universal the obligation of celibacy will strike the note of\nsomething which, however noble, would seem to many to be vaguely\nnegative. The third example is in one sense the strongest of all. For\nthe third example was a war; a heroic war and for many of us a holy war;\nbut still something having all the stark and terrible responsibilities\nof war. There is no space here to say all that should be said about the\ntrue nature of the Crusades. Everybody knows that in the very darkest\nhour of the Dark Ages a sort of heresy had sprung up in Arabia and\nbecome a new religion of a military but nomadic sort, invoking the name\nof Mahomet. Intrinsically it had a character found in many heresies from\nthe Moslem to the Monist. It seemed to the heretic a sane simplification\nof religion; while it seems to the Catholic an insane simplification of\nreligion, because it simplifies all to a single idea and so loses the\nbreadth and balance of Catholicism. Anyhow its objective character was\nthat of a military danger to Christendom and Christendom had struck at\nthe very heart of it, in seeking to reconquer the Holy Places. The great\nDuke Godfrey and the first Christians who stormed Jerusalem were heroes\nif there were ever any in the world; but they were the heroes of a\ntragedy.\n\nNow I have taken these two or three examples of the earlier medieval\nmovements in order to note about them one general character, which\nrefers back to the penance that followed paganism. There is something in\nall these movements that is bracing even while it is still bleak, like a\nwind blowing between the clefts of the mountains. That wind, austere and\npure, of which the poet speaks, is really the spirit of the time, for it\nis the wind of a world that has at last been purified. To anyone who can\nappreciate atmospheres there is something clear and clean about the\natmosphere of this crude and often harsh society. Its very lusts are\nclean; for they have no longer any smell of perversion. Its very\ncruelties are clean; they are not the luxurious cruelties of the\namphitheatre. They come either of a very simple horror at blasphemy or a\nvery simple fury at insult. Gradually against this grey background\nbeauty begins to appear, as something really fresh and delicate and\nabove all surprising. Love returning is no longer what was once called\nplatonic but what is still called chivalric love. The flowers and stars\nhave recovered their first innocence. Fire and water are felt to be\nworthy to be the brother and sister of a saint. The purge of paganism is\ncomplete at last.\n\nFor water itself has been washed. Fire itself has been purified as by\nfire. Water is no longer that water into which slaves were flung to feed\nthe fishes. Fire is no longer that fire through which children were\npassed to Moloch. Flowers smell no more of the forgotten garlands\ngathered in the garden of Priapus; stars stand no more as signs of the\nfar frigidity of gods as cold as those cold fires. They are all like\nthings newly made and awaiting new names, from one who shall come to\nname them. Neither the universe nor the earth have now any longer the\nold sinister significance of the world. They await a new reconciliation\nwith man, but they are already capable of being reconciled. Man has\nstripped from his soul the last rag of nature-worship, and can return to\nnature.\n\nWhile it was yet twilight a figure appeared silently and suddenly on a\nlittle hill above the city, dark against the fading darkness. For it was\nthe end of a long and stern night, a night of vigil, not unvisited by\nstars. He stood with his hands lifted, as in so many statues and\npictures, and about him was a burst of birds singing; and behind him was\nthe break of day.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter III_\n _Francis the Fighter_\n\n\nAccording to one tale, which if not true would be none the less typical,\nthe very name of St.\u00a0Francis was not so much a name as a nickname. There\nwould be something akin to his familiar and popular instinct in the\nnotion that he was nicknamed very much as an ordinary schoolboy might be\ncalled \"Frenchy\" at school. According to this version, his name was not\nFrancis at all but John; and his companions called him \"Francesco\" or\n\"The little Frenchman\" because of his passion for the French poetry of\nthe Troubadours. The more probable story is that his mother had named\nhim John when he was born in the absence of his father, who shortly\nreturned from a visit to France, where his commercial success had filled\nhim with so much enthusiasm for French taste and social usage that he\ngave his son the new name signifying the Frank or Frenchman. In either\ncase the name has a certain significance, as connecting Francis from the\nfirst with what he himself regarded as the romantic fairyland of the\nTroubadours.\n\nThe name of the father was Pietro Bernardone and he was a substantial\ncitizen of the guild of the cloth merchants in the town of Assisi. It is\nhard to describe the position of such a man without some appreciation of\nthe position of such a guild and even of such a town. It did not exactly\ncorrespond to anything that is meant in modern times either by a\nmerchant or a man of business or a tradesman, or anything that exists\nunder the conditions of capitalism. Bernardone may have employed people\nbut he was not an employer; that is, he did not belong to an employing\nclass as distinct from an employed class. The person we definitely hear\nof his employing is his son Francis; who, one is tempted to guess, was\nabout the last person that any man of business would employ if it were\nconvenient to employ anybody else. He was rich, as a peasant may be rich\nby the work of his own family; but he evidently expected his own family\nto work in a way almost as plain as a peasant's. He was a prominent\ncitizen, but he belonged to a social order which existed to prevent him\nbeing too prominent to be a citizen. It kept all such people on their\nown simple level, and no prosperity connoted that escape from drudgery\nby which in modern times the lad might have seemed to be a lord or a\nfine gentleman or something other than the cloth merchant's son. This is\na rule that is proved even in the exception. Francis was one of those\npeople who are popular with everybody in any case; and his guileless\nswagger as a Troubadour and leader of French fashions made him a sort of\nromantic ringleader among the young men of the town. He threw money\nabout both in extravagance and benevolence, in a way native to a man who\nnever, all his life, exactly understood what money was. This moved his\nmother to mingled exultation and exasperation and she said, as any\ntradesman's wife might say anywhere: \"He is more like a prince than our\nson.\" But one of the earliest glimpses we have of him shows him as\nsimply selling bales of cloth from a booth in the market; which his\nmother may or may not have believed to be one of the habits of princes.\nThis first glimpse of the young man in the market is symbolic in more\nways than one. An incident occurred which is perhaps the shortest and\nsharpest summary that could be given of certain curious things which\nwere a part of his character, long before it was transfigured by\ntranscendental faith. While he was selling velvet and fine embroideries\nto some solid merchant of the town, a beggar came imploring alms;\nevidently in a somewhat tactless manner. It was a rude and simple\nsociety and there were no laws to punish a starving man for expressing\nhis need for food, such as have been established in a more humanitarian\nage; and the lack of any organised police permitted such persons to\npester the wealthy without any great danger. But there was, I believe,\nin many places a local custom of the guild forbidding outsiders to\ninterrupt a fair bargain; and it is possible that some such thing put\nthe mendicant more than normally in the wrong. Francis had all his life\na great liking for people who had been put hopelessly in the wrong. On\nthis occasion he seems to have dealt with the double interview with\nrather a divided mind; certainly with distraction, possibly with\nirritation. Perhaps he was all the more uneasy because of the almost\nfastidious standard of manners that came to him quite naturally. All are\nagreed that politeness flowed from him from the first, like one of the\npublic fountains in such a sunny Italian market place. He might have\nwritten among his own poems as his own motto that verse of Mr. Belloc's\npoem\u2014\n\n  'Of Courtesy, it is much less\n  Than courage of heart or holiness,\n  Yet in my walks it seems to me\n  That the grace of God is in Courtesy.'\n\nNobody ever doubted that Francis Bernardone had courage of heart, even\nof the most ordinary manly and military sort; and a time was to come\nwhen there was quite as little doubt about the holiness and the grace of\nGod. But I think that if there was one thing about which he was\npunctilious, it was punctiliousness. If there was one thing of which so\nhumble a man could be said to be proud, he was proud of good manners.\nOnly behind his perfectly natural urbanity were wider and even wilder\npossibilities, of which we get the first flash in this trivial incident.\nAnyhow Francis was evidently torn two ways with the botheration of two\ntalkers, but finished his business with the merchant somehow; and when\nhe had finished it, found the beggar was gone. Francis leapt from his\nbooth, left all the bales of velvet and embroidery behind him apparently\nunprotected, and went racing across the market place like an arrow from\nthe bow. Still running, he threaded the labyrinth of the narrow and\ncrooked streets of the little town, looking for his beggar, whom he\neventually discovered; and loaded that astonished mendicant with money.\nThen he straightened himself, so to speak, and swore before God that he\nwould never all his life refuse help to a poor man. The sweeping\nsimplicity of this undertaking is extremely characteristic. Never was\nany man so little afraid of his own promises. His life was one riot of\nrash vows; of rash vows that turned out right.\n\nThe first biographers of Francis, naturally alive with the great\nreligious revolution that he wrought, equally naturally looked back to\nhis first years chiefly for omens and signs of such a spiritual\nearthquake. But writing at a greater distance, we shall not decrease\nthat dramatic effect, but rather increase it, if we realise that there\nwas not at this time any external sign of anything particularly mystical\nabout the young man. He had not anything of that early sense of his\nvocation that has belonged to some of the saints. Over and above his\nmain ambition to win fame as a French poet, he would seem to have most\noften thought of winning fame as a soldier. He was born kind; he was\nbrave in the normal boyish fashion; but he drew the line both in\nkindness and bravery pretty well where most boys would have drawn it;\nfor instance, he had the human horror of leprosy of which few normal\npeople felt any need to be ashamed. He had the love of gay and bright\napparel which was inherent in the heraldic taste of medieval times and\nseems altogether to have been rather a festive figure. If he did not\npaint the town red, he would probably have preferred to paint it all the\ncolours of the rainbow, as in a medieval picture. But in this story of\nthe young man in gay garments scampering after the vanishing beggar in\nrags there are certain notes of his natural individuality that must be\nassumed from first to last.\n\nFor instance, there is the spirit of swiftness. In a sense he continued\nrunning for the rest of his life, as he ran after the beggar. Because\nnearly all the errands he ran on were errands of mercy, there appeared\nin his portraiture a mere element of mildness which was true in the\ntruest sense, but is easily misunderstood. A certain precipitancy was\nthe very poise of his soul. This saint should be represented among the\nother saints as angels were sometimes represented in pictures of angels;\nwith flying feet or even with feathers; in the spirit of the text that\nmakes angels winds and messengers a flaming fire. It is a curiosity of\nlanguage that courage actually means running; and some of our sceptics\nwill no doubt demonstrate that courage really means running away. But\nhis courage was running, in the sense of rushing. With all his\ngentleness, there was originally something of impatience in his\nimpetuosity. The psychological truth about it illustrates very well the\nmodern muddle about the word \"practical.\" If we mean by what is\npractical what is most immediately practicable, we mean merely what is\neasiest. In that sense St.\u00a0Francis was very unpractical, and his\nultimate aims were very unworldly. But if we mean by practicality a\npreference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay, he was very\npractical indeed. Some might call him a madman, but he was the very\nreverse of a dreamer. Nobody would be likely to call him a man of\nbusiness; but he was very emphatically a man of action. In some of his\nearly experiments he was rather too much of a man of action; he acted\ntoo soon and was too practical to be prudent. But at every turn of his\nextraordinary career we shall find him flinging himself round corners in\nthe most unexpected fashion, as when he flew through the crooked streets\nafter the beggar.\n\nAnother element implied in the story, which was already partially a\nnatural instinct, before it became a supernatural ideal, was something\nthat had never perhaps been wholly lost in those little republics of\nmedieval Italy. It was something very puzzling to some people; something\nclearer as a rule to Southerners than to Northerners, and I think to\nCatholics than to Protestants; the quite natural assumption of the\nequality of men. It has nothing necessarily to do with the Franciscan\nlove for men; on the contrary one of its merely practical tests is the\nequality of the duel. Perhaps a gentleman will never be fully an\negalitarian until he can really quarrel with his servant. But it was an\nantecedent condition of the Franciscan brotherhood; and we feel it in\nthis early and secular incident. Francis, I fancy, felt a real doubt\nabout which he must attend to, the beggar or the merchant; and having\nattended to the merchant, he turned to attend to the beggar; he thought\nof them as two men. This is a thing much more difficult to describe, in\na society from which it is absent, but it was the original basis of the\nwhole business; it was why the popular movement arose in that sort of\nplace and that sort of man. His imaginative magnanimity afterwards rose\nlike a tower to starry heights that might well seem dizzy and even\ncrazy; but it was founded on this high table-land of human equality.\n\nI have taken this the first among a hundred tales of the youth of\nSt.\u00a0Francis, and dwelt on its significance a little, because until we\nhave learned to look for the significance there will often seem to be\nlittle but a sort of light sentiment in telling the story. St.\u00a0Francis\nis not a proper person to be patronised with merely \"pretty\" stories.\nThere are any number of them; but they are too often used so as to be a\nsort of sentimental sediment of the medieval world, instead of being, as\nthe saint emphatically is, a challenge to the modern world. We must take\nhis real human development somewhat more seriously; and the next story\nin which we get a real glimpse of it is in a very different setting. But\nin exactly the same way it opens, as if by accident, certain abysses of\nthe mind and perhaps of the unconscious mind. Francis still looks more\nor less like an ordinary young man; and it is only when we look at him\nas an ordinary young man, that we realise what an extraordinary young\nman he must be.\n\nWar had broken out between Assisi and Perugia. It is now fashionable to\nsay in a satirical spirit that such wars did not so much break out as go\non indefinitely between the city-states of medieval Italy. It will be\nenough to say here that if one of these medieval wars had really gone on\nwithout stopping for a century, it might possibly have come within a\nremote distance of killing as many people as we kill in a year, in one\nof our great modern scientific wars between our great modern industrial\nempires. But the citizens of the medieval republic were certainly under\nthe limitation of only being asked to die for the things with which they\nhad always lived, the houses they inhabited, the shrines they venerated\nand the rulers and representatives they knew; and had not the larger\nvision calling them to die for the latest rumours about remote colonies\nas reported in anonymous newspapers. And if we infer from our own\nexperience that war paralysed civilisation, we must at least admit that\nthese warring towns turned out a number of paralytics who go by the\nnames of Dante and Michael Angelo, Ariosto and Titian, Leonardo and\nColumbus, not to mention Catherine of Siena and the subject of this\nstory. While we lament all this local patriotism as a hubbub of the Dark\nAges, it must seem a rather curious fact that about three quarters of\nthe greatest men who ever lived came out of these little towns and were\noften engaged in these little wars. It remains to be seen what will\nultimately come out of our large towns; but there has been no sign of\nanything of this sort since they became large; and I have sometimes been\nhaunted by a fancy of my youth, that these things will not come till\nthere is a city wall round Clapham and the tocsin is rung at night to\narm the citizens of Wimbledon.\n\nAnyhow, the tocsin was rung in Assisi and the citizens armed, and among\nthem Francis the son of the cloth merchant. He went out to fight with\nsome company of lancers and in some fight or foray or other he and his\nlittle band were taken prisoners. To me it seems most probable that\nthere had been some tale of treason or cowardice about the disaster; for\nwe are told that there was one of the captives with whom his\nfellow-prisoners flatly refused to associate even in prison; and when\nthis happens in such circumstances, it is generally because the military\nblame for the surrender is thrown on some individual. Anyhow, somebody\nnoted a small but curious thing, though it might seem rather negative\nthan positive. Francis, we are told, moved among his captive companions\nwith all his characteristic courtesy and even conviviality, \"liberal and\nhilarious\" as somebody said of him, resolved to keep up their spirits\nand his own. And when he came across the mysterious outcast, traitor or\ncoward or whatever he was called, he simply treated him exactly like all\nthe rest, neither with coldness nor compassion, but with the same\nunaffected gaiety and good fellowship. But if there had been present in\nthat prison someone with a sort of second sight about the truth and\ntrend of spiritual things, he might have known he was in the presence of\nsomething new and seemingly almost anarchic; a deep tide driving out to\nuncharted seas of charity. For in this sense there was really something\nwanting in Francis of Assisi, something to which he was blind that he\nmight see better and more beautiful things. All those limits in good\nfellowship and good form, all those landmarks of social life that divide\nthe tolerable and the intolerable, all those social scruples and\nconventional conditions that are normal and even noble in ordinary men,\nall those things that hold many decent societies together, could never\nhold this man at all. He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked\neverybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking.\nSomething very vast and universal was already present in that narrow\ndungeon; and such a seer might have seen in its darkness that red halo\nof _caritas caritatum_ which marks one saint among saints as well as\namong men. He might have heard the first whisper of that wild blessing\nthat afterwards took the form of a blasphemy; \"He listens to those to\nwhom God himself will not listen.\"\n\nBut though such a seer might have seen such a truth, it is exceedingly\ndoubtful if Francis himself saw it. He had acted out of an unconscious\nlargeness, or in the fine medieval phrase largesse, within himself,\nsomething that might almost have been lawless if it had not been\nreaching out to a more divine law; but it is doubtful whether he yet\nknew that the law was divine. It is evident that he had not at this time\nany notion of abandoning the military, still less of adopting the\nmonastic life. It is true that there is not, as pacifists and prigs\nimagine, the least inconsistency between loving men and fighting them,\nif we fight them fairly and for a good cause. But it seems to me that\nthere was more than this involved; that the mind of the young man was\nreally running towards a military morality in any case. About this time\nthe first calamity crossed his path in the form of a malady which was to\nrevisit him many times and hamper his headlong career. Sickness made him\nmore serious; but one fancies it would only have made him a more serious\nsoldier, or even more serious about soldiering. And while he was\nrecovering, something rather larger than the little feuds and raids of\nthe Italian towns opened an avenue of adventure and ambition. The crown\nof Sicily, a considerable centre of controversy at the time, was\napparently claimed by a certain Gauthier de Brienne, and the Papal cause\nto aid which Gauthier was called in aroused enthusiasm among a number of\nyoung Assisians, including Francis, who proposed to march into Apulia on\nthe count's behalf; perhaps his French name had something to do with it.\nFor it must never be forgotten that though that world was in one sense a\nworld of little things, it was a world of little things concerned about\ngreat things. There was more internationalism in the lands dotted with\ntiny republics than in the huge homogeneous impenetrable national\ndivisions of to-day. The legal authority of the Assisian magistrates\nmight hardly reach further than a bow-shot from their high embattled\ncity walls. But their sympathies might be with the ride of the Normans\nthrough Sicily or the palace of the Troubadours at Toulouse; with the\nEmperor throned in the German forests or the great Pope dying in the\nexile of Salerno. Above all, it must be remembered that when the\ninterests of an age are mainly religious they must be universal. Nothing\ncan be more universal than the universe. And there are several things\nabout the religious position at that particular moment which modern\npeople not unnaturally fail to realise. For one thing, modern people\nnaturally think of people so remote as ancient people, and even early\npeople. We feel vaguely that these things happened in the first ages of\nthe Church. The Church was already a good deal more than a thousand\nyears old. That is, the Church was then rather older than France is now,\na great deal older than England is now. And she looked old then; almost\nas old as she does now; possibly older than she does now. The Church\nlooked like great Charlemagne with the long white beard, who had already\nfought a hundred wars with the heathen, and in the legend was bidden by\nan angel to go forth and fight once more though he was two hundred years\nold. The Church had topped her thousand years and turned the corner of\nthe second thousand; she had come through the Dark Ages in which nothing\ncould be done except desperate fighting against the barbarians and the\nstubborn repetition of the creed. The creed was still being repeated\nafter the victory or escape; but it is not unnatural to suppose that\nthere was something a little monotonous about the repetition. The Church\nlooked old then as now; and there were some who thought her dying then\nas now. In truth orthodoxy was not dead but it may have been dull; it is\ncertain that some people began to think it dull. The Troubadours of the\nProven\u00e7al movement had already begun to take that turn or twist towards\nOriental fancies and the paradox of pessimism, which always come to\nEuropeans as something fresh when their own sanity seems to be something\nstale. It is likely enough that after all those centuries of hopeless\nwar without and ruthless asceticism within, the official orthodoxy\nseemed to be something stale. The freshness and freedom of the first\nChristians seemed then as much as now a lost and almost prehistoric age\nof gold. Rome was still more rational than anything else; the Church was\nreally wiser but it may well have seemed wearier than the world. There\nwas something more adventurous and alluring, perhaps, about the mad\nmetaphysics that had been blown across out of Asia. Dreams were\ngathering like dark clouds over the Midi to break in a thunder of\nanathema and civil war. Only the light lay on the great plain round\nRome; but the light was blank and the plain was flat; and there was no\nstir in the still air and the immemorial silence about the sacred town.\n\nHigh in the dark house of Assisi Francesco Bernardone slept and dreamed\nof arms. There came to him in the darkness a vision splendid with\nswords, patterned after the cross in the Crusading fashion, of spears\nand shields and helmets hung in a high armoury, all bearing the sacred\nsign. When he awoke he accepted the dream as a trumpet bidding him to\nthe battlefield, and rushed out to take horse and arms. He delighted in\nall the exercises of chivalry; and was evidently an accomplished\ncavalier and fighting man by the tests of the tournament and the camp.\nHe would doubtless at any time have preferred a Christian sort of\nchivalry; but it seems clear that he was also in a mood which thirsted\nfor glory, though in him that glory would always have been identical\nwith honour. He was not without some vision of that wreath of laurel\nwhich C\u00e6sar has left for all the Latins. As he rode out to war the great\ngate in the deep wall of Assisi resounded with his last boast, \"I shall\ncome back a great prince.\"\n\nA little way along his road his sickness rose again and threw him. It\nseems highly probable, in the light of his impetuous temper, that he had\nridden away long before he was fit to move. And in the darkness of this\nsecond and far more desolating interruption, he seems to have had\nanother dream in which a voice said to him, \"You have mistaken the\nmeaning of the vision. Return to your own town.\" And Francis trailed\nback in his sickness to Assisi, a very dismal and disappointed and\nperhaps even derided figure, with nothing to do but to wait for what\nshould happen next. It was his first descent into a dark ravine that is\ncalled the valley of humiliation, which seemed to him very rocky and\ndesolate, but in which he was afterwards to find many flowers.\n\nBut he was not only disappointed and humiliated; he was also very much\npuzzled and bewildered. He still firmly believed that his two dreams\nmust have meant something; and he could not imagine what they could\npossibly mean. It was while he was drifting, one may even say mooning,\nabout the streets of Assisi and the fields outside the city wall, that\nan incident occurred to him which has not always been immediately\nconnected with the business of the dreams, but which seems to me the\nobvious culmination of them. He was riding listlessly in some wayside\nplace, apparently in the open country, when he saw a figure coming along\nthe road towards him and halted; for he saw it was a leper. And he knew\ninstantly that his courage was challenged, not as the world challenges,\nbut as one would challenge who knew the secrets of the heart of a man.\nWhat he saw advancing was not the banner and spears of Perugia, from\nwhich it never occurred to him to shrink; not the armies that fought for\nthe crown of Sicily, of which he had always thought as a courageous man\nthinks of mere vulgar danger. Francis Bernardone saw his fear coming up\nthe road towards him; the fear that comes from within and not without;\nthough it stood white and horrible in the sunlight. For once in the long\nrush of his life his soul must have stood still. Then he sprang from his\nhorse, knowing nothing between stillness and swiftness, and rushed on\nthe leper and threw his arms round him. It was the beginning of a long\nvocation of ministry among many lepers, for whom he did many services;\nto this man he gave what money he could and mounted and rode on. We do\nnot know how far he rode, or with what sense of the things around him;\nbut it is said that when he looked back, he could see no figure on the\nroad.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter IV_\n _Francis the Builder_\n\n\nWe have now reached the great break in the life of Francis of Assisi;\nthe point at which something happened to him that must remain greatly\ndark to most of us, who are ordinary and selfish men whom God has not\nbroken to make anew.\n\nIn dealing with this difficult passage, especially for my own purpose of\nmaking things moderately easy for the more secular sympathiser, I have\nhesitated as to the proper course; and have eventually decided to state\nfirst of all what happened, with little more than a hint of what I\nimagine to have been the meaning of what happened. The fuller meaning\nmay be debated more easily afterwards, when it was unfolded in the full\nFranciscan life. Anyhow what happened was this. The story very largely\nrevolves round the ruins of the Church of St.\u00a0Damian, an old shrine in\nAssisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces. Here\nFrancis was in the habit of praying before the crucifix during these\ndark and aimless days of transition that followed the tragical collapse\nof all his military ambitions, probably made bitter by some loss of\nsocial prestige terrible to his sensitive spirit. As he did so he heard\na voice saying to him, \"Francis, seest thou not that my house is in\nruins? Go and restore it for me.\"\n\nFrancis sprang up and went. To go and do something was one of the\ndriving demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it before\nhe had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. In any case what\nhe had done was something very decisive and immediately very disastrous\nfor his singular social career. In the coarse conventional language of\nthe uncomprehending world, he stole. From his own enthusiastic point of\nview, he extended to his venerable father Peter Bernardone the exquisite\nexcitement and inestimable privilege of assisting, more or less\nunconsciously, in the rebuilding of St.\u00a0Damian's Church. In point of\nfact what he did was first to sell his own horse and then to go off and\nsell several bales of his father's cloth, making the sign of the cross\nover them to indicate their pious and charitable destination. Peter\nBernardone did not see things in this light. Peter Bernardone indeed had\nnot very much light to see by, so far as understanding the genius and\ntemperament of his extraordinary son was concerned. Instead of\nunderstanding in what sort of a wind and flame of abstract appetites the\nlad was living, instead of simply telling him (as the priest practically\ndid later) that he had done an indefensible thing with the best\nintentions, old Bernardone took up the matter in the hardest style; in a\nlegal and literal fashion. He used absolute political powers like a\nheathen father, and himself put his son under lock and key as a vulgar\nthief. It would appear that the cry was caught up among many with whom\nthe unlucky Francis had once been popular; and altogether, in his\nefforts to build up the house of God he had only succeeded in bringing\nhis own house about his ears and lying buried under the ruins. The\nquarrel dragged drearily through several stages; at one time the\nwretched young man seems to have disappeared underground, so to speak,\ninto some cavern or cellar where he remained huddled hopelessly in the\ndarkness. Anyhow, it was his blackest moment; the whole world had turned\nover; the whole world was on top of him.\n\nWhen he came out, it was only perhaps gradually that anybody grasped\nthat something had happened. He and his father were summoned in the\ncourt of the bishop; for Francis had refused the authority of all legal\ntribunals. The bishop addressed some remarks to him, full of that\nexcellent common sense which the Catholic Church keeps permanently as\nthe background for all the fiery attitudes of her saints. He told\nFrancis that he must unquestionably restore the money to his father;\nthat no blessing could follow a good work done by unjust methods; and in\nshort (to put it crudely) if the young fanatic would give back his money\nto the old fool, the incident would then terminate. There was a new air\nabout Francis. He was no longer crushed, still less crawling, so far as\nhis father was concerned; yet his words do not, I think, indicate either\njust indignation or wanton insult or anything in the nature of a mere\ncontinuation of the quarrel. They are rather remotely akin to mysterious\nutterances of his great model, \"What have I to do with thee?\" or even\nthe terrible \"Touch me not.\"\n\nHe stood up before them all and said, \"Up to this time I have called\nPietro Bernardone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the\nmoney but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father,\neven the very clothes he has given me.\" And he rent off all his garments\nexcept one; and they saw that that was a hair-shirt.\n\nHe piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top\nof them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like\none who turns his back on society; and, according to the account, went\nout as he was into the cold world. Apparently it was literally a cold\nworld at the moment, and snow was on the ground. A curious detail, very\ndeep in its significance, I fancy, is given in the same account of this\ngreat crisis in his life. He went out half-naked in his hair-shirt into\nthe winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees; a\nman without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all\nappearance without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he\nwent under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song.\n\nIt was apparently noted as remarkable that the language in which he sang\nwas French, or that Proven\u00e7al which was called for convenience French.\nIt was not his native language; and it was in his native language that\nhe ultimately won fame as a poet; indeed St.\u00a0Francis is one of the very\nfirst of the national poets in the purely national dialects of Europe.\nBut it was the language with which all his most boyish ardours and\nambitions had been identified; it was for him pre-eminently the language\nof romance. That it broke from him in this extraordinary extremity seems\nto me something at first sight very strange and in the last analysis\nvery significant. What that significance was, or may well have been, I\nwill try to suggest in the subsequent chapter; it is enough to indicate\nhere that the whole philosophy of St.\u00a0Francis revolved round the idea of\na new supernatural light on natural things, which meant the ultimate\nrecovery not the ultimate refusal of natural things. And for the purpose\nof this purely narrative part of the business, it is enough to record\nthat while he wandered in the winter forest in his hair-shirt, like the\nvery wildest of the hermits, he sang in the tongue of the Troubadours.\n\nMeanwhile the narrative naturally reverts to the problem of the ruined\nor at least neglected church, which had been the starting point of the\nsaint's innocent crime and beatific punishment. That problem still\npredominated in his mind and was soon engaging his insatiable\nactivities; but they were activities of a new sort; and he made no more\nattempts to interfere with the commercial ethics of the town of Assisi.\nThere had dawned on him one of those great paradoxes that are also\nplatitudes. He realised that the way to build a church is not to become\nentangled in bargains and, to him, rather bewildering questions of legal\nclaim. The way to build a church is not to pay for it, certainly not\nwith somebody else's money. The way to build a church is not even to pay\nfor it with your own money. The way to build a church is to build it.\n\nHe went about by himself collecting stones. He begged all the people he\nmet to give him stones. In fact he became a new sort of beggar,\nreversing the parable; a beggar who asks not for bread but a stone.\nProbably, as happened to him again and again throughout his\nextraordinary existence, the very queerness of the request gave it a\nsort of popularity; and all sorts of idle and luxurious people fell in\nwith the benevolent project, as they would have done with a bet. He\nworked with his own hands at the rebuilding of the church, dragging the\nmaterial like a beast of burden and learning the very last and lowest\nlessons of toil. A vast number of stories are told about Francis at this\nas at every other period of his life; but for the purpose here, which is\none of simplification, it is best to dwell on this definite re-entrance\nof the saint into the world by the low gate of manual labour. There does\nindeed run through the whole of his life a sort of double meaning, like\nhis shadow thrown upon the wall. All his action had something of the\ncharacter of an allegory; and it is likely enough that some\nleaden-witted scientific historian may some day try to prove that he\nhimself was never anything but an allegory. It is true enough in this\nsense that he was labouring at a double task, and rebuilding something\nelse as well as the church of St.\u00a0Damian. He was not only discovering\nthe general lesson that his glory was not to be in overthrowing men in\nbattle but in building up the positive and creative monuments of peace.\nHe was truly building up something else, or beginning to build it up;\nsomething that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past\nrebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had\nrotted away to its first foundation-stone, against which the gates of\nhell shall not prevail.\n\nThe next stage in his progress is probably marked by his transferring\nthe same energies of architectural reconstruction to the little church\nof St.\u00a0Mary of the Angels at the Portiuncula. He had already done\nsomething of the same kind at a church dedicated to St.\u00a0Peter; and that\nquality in his life noted above, which made it seem like a symbolical\ndrama, led many of his most devout biographers to note the numerical\nsymbolism of the three churches. There was at any rate a more historical\nand practical symbolism about two of them. For the original church of\nSt.\u00a0Damian afterwards became the seat of his striking experiment of a\nfemale order, and of the pure and spiritual romance of St.\u00a0Clare. And\nthe church of the Portiuncula will remain for ever as one of the great\nhistoric buildings of the world; for it was there that he gathered the\nlittle knot of friends and enthusiasts; it was the home of many homeless\nmen. At this time, however, it is not clear that he had the definite\nidea of any such monastic developments. How early the plan appeared in\nhis own mind it is of course impossible to say; but on the face of\nevents it first takes the form of a few friends who attached themselves\nto him one by one because they shared his own passion for simplicity.\nThe account given of the form of their dedication is, however, very\nsignificant; for it was that of an invocation of the simplification of\nlife as suggested in the New Testament. The adoration of Christ had been\na part of the man's passionate nature for a long time past. But the\nimitation of Christ, as a sort of plan or ordered scheme of life, may in\nthat sense be said to begin here.\n\nThe two men who have the credit, apparently, of having first perceived\nsomething of what was happening in the world of the soul were a solid\nand wealthy citizen named Bernard of Quintavalle and a canon from a\nneighbouring church named Peter. It is the more to their credit because\nFrancis, if one may put it so, was by this time wallowing in poverty and\nassociation with lepers and ragged mendicants; and these two were men\nwith much to give up; the one of comforts in the world and the other of\nambition in the Church. Bernard the rich burgher did quite literally and\nfinally sell all he had and give to the poor. Peter did even more; for\nhe descended from a chair of spiritual authority, probably when he was\nalready a man of mature years and therefore of fixed mental habits, to\nfollow an extravagant young eccentric whom most people probably regarded\nas a maniac. What it was of which they had caught a glimpse, of which\nFrancis had seen the glory, may be suggested later so far as it can be\nsuggested at all. At this stage we need profess to see no more than all\nAssisi saw, and that something not altogether unworthy of comment. The\ncitizens of Assisi only saw the camel go in triumph through the eye of\nthe needle and God doing impossible things because to him all things\nwere possible; only a priest who rent his robes like the Publican and\nnot like the Pharisee and a rich man who went away joyful, for he had no\npossessions.\n\nThese three strange figures are said to have built themselves a sort of\nhut or den adjoining the leper hospital. There they talked to each\nother, in the intervals of drudgery and danger (for it needed ten times\nmore courage to look after a leper than to fight for the crown of\nSicily), in the terms of their new life, almost like children talking a\nsecret language. Of these individual elements on their first friendship\nwe can say little with certainty; but it is certain that they remained\nfriends to the end. Bernard of Quintavalle occupies in the story\nsomething of the position of Sir Bedivere, \"first made and latest left\nof Arthur's knights,\" for he reappears again at the right hand of the\nsaint on his death-bed and receives some sort of special blessing. But\nall those things belong to another historical world and were quite\nremote from the ragged and fantastic trio in their tumble-down hut. They\nwere not monks except perhaps in the most literal and archaic sense\nwhich was identical with hermits. They were, so to speak, three\nsolitaries living together socially, but not as a society. The whole\nthing seems to have been intensely individual, as seen from the outside\ndoubtless individual to the point of insanity. The stir of something\nthat had in it the promise of a movement or a mission can first be felt\nas I have said in the affair of the appeal to the New Testament.\n\nIt was a sort of _sors virgiliana_ applied to the Bible; a practice not\nunknown among Protestants though open to their criticism, one would\nthink, as being rather a superstition of pagans. Anyhow it seems almost\nthe opposite of searching the Scriptures to open them at random; but\nSt.\u00a0Francis certainly opened them at random. According to one story, he\nmerely made the sign of the cross over the volume of the Gospel and\nopened it at three places reading three texts. The first was the tale of\nthe rich young man whose refusal to sell all his goods was the occasion\nof the great paradox about the camel and the needle. The second was the\ncommandment to the disciples to take nothing with them on their journey,\nneither scrip nor staff nor any money. The third was that saying,\nliterally to be called crucial, that the follower of Christ must also\ncarry his cross. There is a somewhat similar story of Francis finding\none of these texts, almost as accidentally, merely in listening to what\nhappened to be the Gospel of the day. But from the former version at\nleast it would seem that the incident occurred very early indeed in his\nnew life, perhaps soon after his breach with his father; for it was\nafter this oracle, apparently, that Bernard the first disciple rushed\nforth and scattered all his goods among the poor. If this be so, it\nwould seem that nothing followed it for the moment except the individual\nascetical life with the hut for a hermitage. It must of course have been\na rather public sort of hermitage, but it was none the less in a very\nreal sense withdrawn from the world. St.\u00a0Simeon Stylites on the top of\nhis pillar was in one sense an exceedingly public character; but there\nwas something a little singular in his situation for all that. It may be\npresumed that most people thought the situation of Francis singular,\nthat some even thought it too singular. There was inevitably indeed in\nany Catholic society something ultimate and even subconscious that was\nat least capable of comprehending it better than a pagan or puritan\nsociety could comprehend it. But we must not at this stage, I think,\nexaggerate this potential public sympathy. As has already been\nsuggested, the Church and all its institutions had already the air of\nbeing old and settled and sensible things, the monastic institutions\namong the rest. Common sense was commoner in the Middle Ages, I think,\nthan in our own rather jumpy journalistic age; but men like Francis are\nnot common in any age, nor are they to be fully understood merely by the\nexercise of common sense. The thirteenth century was certainly a\nprogressive period; perhaps the only really progressive period in human\nhistory. But it can truly be called progressive precisely because its\nprogress was very orderly. It is really and truly an example of an epoch\nof reforms without revolutions. But the reforms were not only\nprogressive but very practical; and they were very much to the advantage\nof highly practical institutions; the towns and the trading guilds and\nthe manual crafts. Now the solid men of town and guild in the time of\nFrancis of Assisi were probably very solid indeed. They were much more\neconomically equal, they were much more justly governed in their own\neconomic environment, than the moderns who struggle madly between\nstarvation and the monopolist prizes of capitalism; but it is likely\nenough that the majority of such citizens were as hard-headed as\npeasants. Certainly the behaviour of the venerable Peter Bernardone does\nnot indicate a delicate sympathy with the fine and almost fanciful\nsubtleties of the Franciscan spirit. And we cannot measure the beauty\nand originality of this strange spiritual adventure, unless we have the\nhumour and human sympathy to put into plain words how it would have\nlooked to such an unsympathetic person at the time when it happened. In\nthe next chapter I shall make an attempt, inevitably inadequate, to\nindicate the inside of this story of the building of the three churches\nand the little hut. In this chapter I have but outlined it from the\noutside. And in concluding that chapter I ask the reader to remember and\nrealise what that story really looked like, when thus seen from the\noutside. Given a critic of rather coarse common sense, with no feeling\nabout the incident except annoyance, and how would the story seem to\nstand?\n\nA young fool or rascal is caught robbing his father and selling goods\nwhich he ought to guard; and the only explanation he will offer is that\na loud voice from nowhere spoke in his ear and told him to mend the\ncracks and holes in a particular wall. He then declares himself\nnaturally independent of all powers corresponding to the police or the\nmagistrates, and takes refuge with an amiable bishop who is forced to\nremonstrate with him and tell him he is wrong. He then proceeds to take\noff his clothes in public and practically throw them at his father;\nannouncing at the same time that his father is not his father at all. He\nthen runs about the town asking everybody he meets to give him fragments\nof buildings or building materials, apparently with reference to his old\nmonomania about mending the wall. It may be an excellent thing that\ncracks should be filled up, but preferably not by somebody who is\nhimself cracked; and architectural restoration like other things is not\nbest performed by builders who, as we should say, have a tile loose.\nFinally the wretched youth relapses into rags and squalor and\npractically crawls away into the gutter. That is the spectacle that\nFrancis must have presented to a very large number of his neighbours and\nfriends.\n\nHow he lived at all must have seemed to them dubious; but presumably he\nalready begged for bread as he had begged for building materials. But he\nwas always very careful to beg for the blackest or worst bread he could\nget, for the stalest crusts or something rather less luxurious than the\ncrumbs which the dogs eat, and which fall from the rich man's table.\nThus he probably fared worse than an ordinary beggar; for the beggar\nwould eat the best he could get and the saint ate the worst he could\nget. In plain fact he was ready to live on refuse; and it was probably\nsomething much uglier as an experience than the refined simplicity which\nvegetarians and water-drinkers would call the simple life. As he dealt\nwith the question of food, so he apparently dealt with the question of\nclothing. He dealt with it, that is, upon the same principle of taking\nwhat he could get, and not even the best of what he could get. According\nto one story he changed clothes with a beggar; and he would doubtless\nhave been content to change them with a scarecrow. In another version he\ngot hold of the rough brown tunic of a peasant, but presumably only\nbecause the peasant gave him his very oldest brown tunic, which was\nprobably very old indeed. Most peasants have few changes of clothing to\ngive away; and some peasants are not specially inclined to give them\naway until it is absolutely necessary. It is said that in place of the\ngirdle which he had flung off (perhaps with the more symbolic scorn\nbecause it probably carried the purse or wallet by the fashion of the\nperiod) he picked up a rope more or less at random, because it was lying\nnear, and tied it round his waist. He undoubtedly meant it as a shabby\nexpedient; rather as the very destitute tramp will sometimes tie his\nclothes together with a piece of string. He meant to strike the note of\ncollecting his clothes anyhow, like rags from a succession of dust-bins.\nTen years later that make-shift costume was the uniform of five thousand\nmen; and a hundred years later, in that, for a pontifical panoply, they\nlaid great Dante in the grave.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter V_\n _Le Jongleur de Dieu_\n\n\nMany signs and symbols might be used to give a hint of what really\nhappened in the mind of the young poet of Assisi. Indeed they are at\nonce too numerous for selection and yet too slight for satisfaction. But\none of them may be adumbrated in this small and apparently accidental\nfact: that when he and his secular companions carried their pageant of\npoetry through the town, they called themselves Troubadours. But when he\nand his spiritual companions came out to do their spiritual work in the\nworld, they were called by their leader the Jongleurs de Dieu.\n\nNothing has been said here at any length of the great culture of the\nTroubadours as it appeared in Provence or Languedoc, great as was their\ninfluence in history and their influence on St.\u00a0Francis. Something more\nmay be said of them when we come to summarise his relation to history;\nit is enough to note here in a few sentences the facts about them that\nwere relevant to him, and especially the particular point now in\nquestion, which was the most relevant of all. Everybody knows who the\nTroubadours were; everybody knows that very early in the Middle Ages, in\nthe twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, there arose a civilisation\nin Southern France which threatened to rival or eclipse the rising\ntradition of Paris. Its chief product was a school of poetry, or rather\nmore especially a school of poets. They were primarily love-poets,\nthough they were often also satirists and critics of things in general.\nTheir picturesque posture in history is largely due to the fact that\nthey sang their own poems and often played their own accompaniments, on\nthe light musical instruments of the period; they were minstrels as well\nas men of letters. Allied to their love-poetry were other institutions\nof a decorative and fanciful kind concerned with the same theme. There\nwas what was called the \"Gay Science,\" the attempt to reduce to a sort\nof system the fine shades of flirtation and philandering. There were the\nthings called Courts of Love, in which the same delicate subjects were\ndealt with with legal pomp and pedantry. There is one point in this part\nof the business that must be remembered in relation to St.\u00a0Francis.\nThere were manifest moral dangers in all this superb sentimentalism; but\nit is a mistake to suppose that its only danger of exaggeration was in\nthe direction of sensualism. There was a strain in the southern romance\nthat was actually an excess of spirituality; just as the pessimist\nheresy it produced was in one sense an excess of spirituality. The love\nwas not always animal; sometimes it was so airy as to be almost\nallegorical. The reader realises that the lady is the most beautiful\nbeing that can possibly exist, only he has occasional doubts as to\nwhether she does exist. Dante owed something to the Troubadours; and the\ncritical debates about his ideal woman are an excellent example of these\ndoubts. We know that Beatrice was not his wife, but we should in any\ncase be equally sure that she was not his mistress; and some critics\nhave even suggested that she was nothing at all, so to speak, except his\nmuse. This idea of Beatrice as an allegorical figure is, I believe,\nunsound; it would seem unsound to any man who has read the _Vita Nuova_\nand has been in love. But the very fact that it is possible to suggest\nit illustrates something abstract and scholastic in these medieval\npassions. But though they were abstract passions they were very\npassionate passions. These men could feel almost like lovers, even about\nallegories and abstractions. It is necessary to remember this in order\nto realise that St.\u00a0Francis was talking the true language of a\ntroubadour when he said that he also had a most glorious and gracious\nlady and that her name was Poverty.\n\nBut the particular point to be noted here is not concerned so much with\nthe word Troubadour as with the word Jongleur. It is especially\nconcerned with the transition from one to the other; and for this it is\nnecessary to grasp another detail about the poets of the Gay Science. A\njongleur was not the same thing as a troubadour, even if the same man\nwere both a troubadour and a jongleur. More often, I believe, they were\nseparate men as well as separate trades. In many cases apparently the\ntwo men would walk the world together like companions in arms, or rather\ncompanions in arts. The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester;\nsometimes he was what we should call a juggler. This is the point, I\nimagine, of the tale about Taillefer the Jongleur at the battle of\nHastings, who sang of the death of Roland while he tossed up his sword\nand caught it, as a juggler catches balls. Sometimes he may have been\neven a tumbler; like that acrobat in the beautiful legend who was called\n\"The Tumbler of Our Lady,\" because he turned head over heels and stood\non his head before the image of the Blessed Virgin, for which he was\nnobly thanked and comforted by her and the whole company of heaven. In\nthe ordinary way, we may imagine, the troubadour would exalt the company\nwith earnest and solemn strains of love and then the jongleur would do\nhis turn as a sort of comic relief. A glorious medieval romance remains\nto be written about two such companions wandering through the world. At\nany rate, if there is one place in which the true Franciscan spirit can\nbe found outside the true Franciscan story, it is in that tale of the\nTumbler of Our Lady. And when St.\u00a0Francis called his followers the\nJongleurs de Dieu, he meant something very like the Tumblers of Our Lord.\n\nSomewhere in that transition from the ambition of the Troubadour to the\nantics of the Tumbler is hidden, as under a parable, the truth of\nSt.\u00a0Francis. Of the two minstrels or entertainers, the jester was\npresumably the servant or at least the secondary figure. St.\u00a0Francis\nreally meant what he said when he said he had found the secret of life\nin being the servant and the secondary figure. There was to be found\nultimately in such service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity. It\nwas comparable to the condition of the jongleur because it almost\namounted to frivolity. The jester could be free when the knight was\nrigid; and it was possible to be a jester in the service which is\nperfect freedom. This parallel of the two poets or minstrels is perhaps\nthe best preliminary and external statement of the Franciscan change of\nheart, being conceived under an image with which the imagination of the\nmodern world has a certain sympathy. There was, of course, a great deal\nmore than this involved; and we must endeavour however insufficiently to\npenetrate past the image to the idea. It is so far like the tumblers\nthat it is really to many people a topsy-turvy idea.\n\nFrancis, at the time or somewhere about the time when he disappeared\ninto the prison or the dark cavern, underwent a reversal of a certain\npsychological kind; which was really like the reversal of a complete\nsomersault, in that by coming full circle it came back, or apparently\ncame back, to the same normal posture. It is necessary to use the\ngrotesque simile of an acrobatic antic, because there is hardly any\nother figure that will make the fact clear. But in the inward sense it\nwas a profound spiritual revolution. The man who went into the cave was\nnot the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different\nas if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the\neffects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as\nextravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as\ndifferently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole\nwalking on his hands.\n\nIf we apply this parable of Our Lady's Tumbler to the case, we shall\ncome very near to the point of it. Now it really is a fact that any\nscene such as a landscape can sometimes be more clearly and freshly seen\nif it is seen upside down. There have been landscape-painters who\nadopted the most startling and pantomimic postures in order to look at\nit for a moment in that fashion. Thus that inverted vision, so much more\nbright and quaint and arresting, does bear a certain resemblance to the\nworld which a mystic like St.\u00a0Francis sees every day. But herein is the\nessential part of the parable. Our Lady's Tumbler did not stand on his\nhead _in order_ to see flowers and trees as a clearer or quainter\nvision. He did not do so; and it would never have occurred to him to do\nso. Our Lady's Tumbler stood on his head to please Our Lady. If\nSt.\u00a0Francis had done the same thing, as he was quite capable of doing,\nit would originally have been from the same motive; a motive of a purely\nsupernatural thought. It would be _after_ this that his enthusiasm would\nextend itself and give a sort of halo to the edges of all earthly\nthings. This is why it is not true to represent St.\u00a0Francis as a mere\nromantic forerunner of the Renaissance and a revival of natural\npleasures for their own sake. The whole point of him was that the secret\nof recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light\nof a supernatural pleasure. In other words, he repeated in his own\nperson that historic process noted in the introductory chapter; the\nvigil of asceticism which ends in the vision of a natural world made\nnew. But in the personal case there was even more than this; there were\nelements that make the parallel of the Jongleur or Tumbler even more\nappropriate than this.\n\nIt may be suspected that in that black cell or cave Francis passed the\nblackest hours of his life. By nature he was the sort of man who has\nthat vanity which is the opposite of pride; that vanity which is very\nnear to humility. He never despised his fellow creatures and therefore\nhe never despised the opinion of his fellow creatures; including the\nadmiration of his fellow creatures. All that part of his human nature\nhad suffered the heaviest and most crushing blows. It is possible that\nafter his humiliating return from his frustrated military campaign he\nwas called a coward. It is certain that after his quarrel with his\nfather about the bales of cloth he was called a thief. And even those\nwho had sympathised most with him, the priest whose church he had\nrestored, the bishop whose blessing he had received, had evidently\ntreated him with an almost humorous amiability which left only too clear\nthe ultimate conclusion of the matter. He had made a fool of himself.\nAny man who has been young, who has ridden horses or thought himself\nready for a fight, who has fancied himself as a troubadour and accepted\nthe conventions of comradeship, will appreciate the ponderous and\ncrushing weight of that simple phrase. The conversion of St.\u00a0Francis,\nlike the conversion of St.\u00a0Paul, involved his being in some sense flung\nsuddenly from a horse; but in a sense it was an even worse fall; for it\nwas a war-horse. Anyhow, there was not a rag of him left that was not\nridiculous. Everybody knew that at the best he had made a fool of\nhimself. It was a solid objective fact, like the stones in the road,\nthat he had made a fool of himself. He saw himself as an object, very\nsmall and distinct like a fly walking on a clear window pane; and it was\nunmistakably a fool. And as he stared at the word \"fool\" written in\nluminous letters before him, the word itself began to shine and change.\n\nWe used to be told in the nursery that if a man were to bore a hole\nthrough the centre of the earth and climb continually down and down,\nthere would come a moment at the centre when he would seem to be\nclimbing up and up. I do not know whether this is true. The reason I do\nnot know whether it is true is that I never happened to bore a hole\nthrough the centre of the earth, still less to crawl through it. If I do\nnot know what this reversal or inversion feels like, it is because I\nhave never been there. And this also is an allegory. It is certain that\nthe writer, it is even possible that the reader, is an ordinary person\nwho has never been there. We cannot follow St.\u00a0Francis to that final\nspiritual overturn in which complete humiliation becomes complete\nholiness or happiness, because we have never been there. I for one do\nnot profess to follow it any further than that first breaking down of\nthe romantic barricades of boyish vanity, which I have suggested in the\nlast paragraph. And even that paragraph, of course, is merely\nconjectural, an individual guess at what he may have felt; but he may\nhave felt something quite different. But whatever else it was, it was so\nfar analogous to the story of the man making a tunnel through the earth\nthat it did mean a man going down and down until at some mysterious\nmoment he begins to go up and up. We have never gone up like that\nbecause we have never gone down like that; we are obviously incapable of\nsaying that it does not happen; and the more candidly and calmly we read\nhuman history, and especially the history of the wisest men, the more we\nshall come to the conclusion that it does happen. Of the intrinsic\ninternal essence of the experience I make no pretence of writing at all.\nBut the external effect of it, for the purpose of this narrative, may be\nexpressed by saying that when Francis came forth from his cave of\nvision, he was wearing the same word \"fool\" as a feather in his cap; as\na crest or even a crown. He would go on being a fool; he would become\nmore and more of a fool; he would be the court fool of the King of\nParadise.\n\nThis state can only be represented in symbol; but the symbol of\ninversion is true in another way. If a man saw the world upside down,\nwith all the trees and towers hanging head downwards as in a pool, one\neffect would be to emphasise the idea of _dependence_. There is a Latin\nand literal connection; for the very word dependence only means hanging.\nIt would make vivid the Scriptural text which says that God has hanged\nthe world upon nothing. If St.\u00a0Francis had seen, in one of his strange\ndreams, the town of Assisi upside down, it need not have differed in a\nsingle detail from itself except in being entirely the other way round.\nBut the point is this: that whereas to the normal eye the large masonry\nof its walls or the massive foundations of its watchtowers and its high\ncitadel would make it seem safer and more permanent, the moment it was\nturned over the very same weight would make it seem more helpless and\nmore in peril. It is but a symbol; but it happens to fit the\npsychological fact. St.\u00a0Francis might love his little town as much as\nbefore, or more than before; but the nature of the love would be altered\neven in being increased. He might see and love every tile on the steep\nroofs or every bird on the battlements; but he would see them all in a\nnew and divine light of eternal danger and dependence. Instead of being\nmerely proud of his strong city because it could not be moved, he would\nbe thankful to God Almighty that it had not been dropped; he would be\nthankful to God for not dropping the whole cosmos like a vast crystal to\nbe shattered into falling stars. Perhaps St.\u00a0Peter saw the world so,\nwhen he was crucified head-downwards.\n\nIt is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, \"Blessed\nis he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.\" It was\nin a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St.\u00a0Francis said, \"Blessed\nis he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything.\" It was by\nthis deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of\nhis own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few\npeople have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working\nexample of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star\nor deserve a sunset. But there is more than this involved, and more\nindeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that\nthe less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck\nand of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the\nthings themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is\na part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they\nbecome more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them\nbut less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is\nsignificant and not when it is insignificant; and a monster, shapeless\nor dumb or merely destructive, may be larger than the mountains, but is\nstill in a literal sense insignificant. For a mystic like St.\u00a0Francis\nthe monsters had a meaning; that is, they had delivered their message.\nThey spoke no longer in an unknown tongue. That is the meaning of all\nthose stories, whether legendary or historical, in which he appears as a\nmagician speaking the language of beasts and birds. The mystic will have\nnothing to do with mere mystery; mere mystery is generally a mystery of\niniquity.\n\nThe transition from the good man to the saint is a sort of revolution;\nby which one for whom all things illustrate and illuminate God becomes\none for whom God illustrates and illuminates all things. It is rather\nlike the reversal whereby a lover might say at first sight that a lady\nlooked like a flower, and say afterwards that all flowers reminded him\nof his lady. A saint and a poet standing by the same flower might seem\nto say the same thing; but indeed though they would both be telling the\ntruth, they would be telling different truths. For one the joy of life\nis a cause of faith, for the other rather a result of faith. But one\neffect of the difference is that the sense of a divine dependence, which\nfor the artist is like the brilliant levin-blaze, for the saint is like\nthe broad daylight. Being in some mystical sense on the other side of\nthings, he sees things go forth from the divine as children going forth\nfrom a familiar and accepted home, instead of meeting them as they come\nout, as most of us do, upon the roads of the world. And it is the\nparadox that by this privilege he is more familiar, more free and\nfraternal, more carelessly hospitable than we. For us the elements are\nlike heralds who tell us with trumpet and tabard that we are drawing\nnear the city of a great king; but he hails them with an old familiarity\nthat is almost an old frivolity. He calls them his Brother Fire and his\nSister Water.\n\nSo arises out of this almost nihilistic abyss the noble thing that is\ncalled Praise; which no one will ever understand while he identifies it\nwith nature-worship or pantheistic optimism. When we say that a poet\npraises the whole creation, we commonly mean only that he praises the\nwhole cosmos. But this sort of poet does really praise creation, in the\nsense of the act of creation. He praises the passage or transition from\nnonentity to entity; there falls here also the shadow of that archetypal\nimage of the bridge, which has given to the priest his archaic and\nmysterious name. The mystic who passes through the moment when there is\nnothing but God does in some sense behold the beginningless beginnings\nin which there was really nothing else. He not only appreciates\neverything but the nothing of which everything was made. In a fashion he\nendures and answers even the earthquake irony of the Book of Job; in\nsome sense he is there when the foundations of the world are laid, with\nthe morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy.\nThat is but a distant adumbration of the reason why the Franciscan,\nragged, penniless, homeless and apparently hopeless, did indeed come\nforth singing such songs as might come from the stars of morning; and\nshouting, a son of God.\n\nThis sense of the great gratitude and the sublime dependence was not a\nphrase or even a sentiment; it is the whole point that this was the very\nrock of reality. It was not a fancy but a fact; rather it is true that\nbeside it all facts are fancies. That we all depend in every detail, at\nevery instant, as a Christian would say upon God, as even an agnostic\nwould say upon existence and the nature of things, is not an illusion of\nimagination; on the contrary, it is the fundamental fact which we cover\nup, as with curtains, with the illusion of ordinary life. That ordinary\nlife is an admirable thing in itself, just as imagination is an\nadmirable thing in itself. But it is much more the ordinary life that is\nmade of imagination than the contemplative life. He who has seen the\nwhole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth; we\nmight almost say the cold truth. He who has seen the vision of his city\nupside down has seen it the right way up.\n\nRossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that\nthe worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has\nnobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true; and it\nis certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here\nconsidering, the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man.\nThe great painter boasted that he mixed all his colours with brains, and\nthe great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All\ngoods look better when they look like gifts. In this sense it is certain\nthat the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to\neverything else. But it must always be remembered that everything else\nhas for ever fallen into a second place, in comparison with this simple\nfact of dependence on the divine reality. In so far as ordinary social\nrelations have in them something that seems solid and self-supporting,\nsome sense of being at once buttressed and cushioned; in so far as they\nestablish sanity in the sense of security and security in the sense of\nself-sufficiency, the man who has seen the world hanging on a hair does\nhave some difficulty in taking them so seriously as that. In so far as\neven the secular authorities and hierarchies, even the most natural\nsuperiorities and the most necessary subordinations, tend at once to put\na man in his place, and to make him sure of his position, the man who\nhas seen the human hierarchy upside down will always have something of a\nsmile for its superiorities. In this sense the direct vision of divine\nreality does disturb solemnities that are sane enough in themselves. The\nmystic may have added a cubit to his stature; but he generally loses\nsomething of his status. He can no longer take himself for granted,\nmerely because he can verify his own existence in a parish register or a\nfamily Bible. Such a man may have something of the appearance of the\nlunatic who has lost his name while preserving his nature; who\nstraightway forgets what manner of man he was. \"Hitherto I have called\nPietro Bernardone father; but now I am the servant of God.\"\n\nAll these profound matters must be suggested in short and imperfect\nphrases; and the shortest statement of one aspect of this illumination\nis to say that it is the discovery of an infinite debt. It may seem a\nparadox to say that a man may be transported with joy to discover that\nhe is in debt. But this is only because in commercial cases the creditor\ndoes not generally share the transports of joy; especially when the debt\nis by hypothesis infinite and therefore unrecoverable. But here again\nthe parallel of a natural love-story of the nobler sort disposes of the\ndifficulty in a flash. There the infinite creditor does share the joy of\nthe infinite debtor; for indeed they are both debtors and both\ncreditors. In other words debt and dependence do become pleasures in the\npresence of unspoilt love; the word is used too loosely and luxuriously\nin popular simplifications like the present; but here the word is really\nthe key. It is the key of all the problems of Franciscan morality which\npuzzle the merely modern mind; but above all it is the key of\nasceticism. It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man\nwho really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He\nwill be for ever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be\nexpected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a\nbottomless pit of unfathomable thanks. Men who think they are too modern\nto understand this are in fact too mean to understand it; we are most of\nus too mean to practise it. We are not generous enough to be ascetics;\none might almost say not genial enough to be ascetics. A man must have\nmagnanimity of surrender, of which he commonly only catches a glimpse in\nfirst love, like a glimpse of our lost Eden. But whether he sees it or\nnot, the truth is in that riddle; that the whole world has, or is, only\none good thing; and it is a bad debt.\n\nIf ever that rarer sort of romantic love, which was the truth that\nsustained the Troubadours, falls out of fashion and is treated as\nfiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern\nworld about asceticism. For it seems conceivable that some barbarians\nmight try to destroy chivalry in love, as the barbarians ruling in\nBerlin destroyed chivalry in war. If that were ever so, we should have\nthe same sort of unintelligent sneers and unimaginative questions. Men\nwill ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly\nexacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature\nshe can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as\nthey ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and\nself-denial. They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant\nby love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not\ndemanded that it was done. But whether or no any such lesser things will\nthrow a light on the greater, it is utterly useless to study a great\nthing like the Franciscan movement while remaining in the modern mood\nthat murmurs against gloomy asceticism. The whole point about\nSt.\u00a0Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he\ncertainly was not gloomy. As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the\nglorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he\nflung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself\nfuriously into battle. He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there\nwas no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There\nwas nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical\nsimplicity of life. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of\nself-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of\nbeing as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours\nfood. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is\nprecisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his\npersonality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem\nof the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and\nthere attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is\ncertain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment\nwhen he went forth in his hair-shirt into the winter woods to the moment\nwhen he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare\nground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say,\nwith almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that\ngaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all\ntheir shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down\nupon a happy man.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter VI_\n _The Little Poor Man_\n\n\nFrom that cavern, that was a furnace of glowing gratitude and humility,\nthere came forth one of the strongest and strangest and most original\npersonalities that human history has known. He was, among other things,\nemphatically what we call a character; almost as we speak of a character\nin a good novel or play. He was not only a humanist but a humorist; a\nhumorist especially in the old English sense of a man always in his\nhumour, going his own way and doing what nobody else would have done.\nThe anecdotes about him have a certain biographical quality of which the\nmost familiar example is Dr. Johnson; which belongs in another way to\nWilliam Blake or to Charles Lamb. The atmosphere can only be defined by\na sort of antithesis; the act is always unexpected and never\ninappropriate. Before the thing is said or done it cannot even be\nconjectured; but after it is said or done it is felt to be merely\ncharacteristic. It is surprisingly and yet inevitably individual. This\nquality of abrupt fitness and bewildering consistency belongs to\nSt.\u00a0Francis in a way that marks him out from most men of his time. Men\nare learning more and more of the solid social virtues of medieval\ncivilisation; but those impressions are still social rather than\nindividual. The medieval world was far ahead of the modern world in its\nsense of the things in which all men are at one: death and the daylight\nof reason and the common conscience that holds communities together. Its\ngeneralisations were saner and sounder than the mad materialistic\ntheories of to-day; nobody would have tolerated a Schopenhauer scorning\nlife or a Nietzsche living only for scorn. But the modern world is more\nsubtle in its sense of the things in which men are not at one; in the\ntemperamental varieties and differentiations that make up the personal\nproblems of life. All men who can think themselves now realise that the\ngreat schoolmen had a type of thought that was wonderfully clear; but it\nwas as it were deliberately colourless. All are now agreed that the\ngreatest art of the age was the art of public buildings; the popular and\ncommunal art of architecture. But it was not an age for the art of\nportrait-painting. Yet the friends of St.\u00a0Francis have really contrived\nto leave behind a portrait; something almost resembling a devout and\naffectionate caricature. There are lines and colours in it that are\npersonal almost to the extent of being perverse, if one can use the word\nperversity of an inversion that was also a conversion. Even among the\nsaints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of\none whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre.\n\nBefore resuming the narrative of his first adventures, and the building\nof the great brotherhood which was the beginning of so merciful a\nrevolution, I think it well to complete this imperfect personal portrait\nhere; and having attempted in the last chapter a tentative description\nof the process, to add in this chapter a few touches to describe the\nresult. I mean by the result the real man as he was after his first\nformative experiences; the man whom men met walking about on the Italian\nroads in his brown tunic tied with a rope. For that man, saving the\ngrace of God, is the explanation of all that followed; men acted quite\ndifferently according to whether they had met him or not. If we see\nafterwards a vast tumult, an appeal to the Pope, mobs of men in brown\nhabits besieging the seats of authority, Papal pronouncements, heretical\nsessions, trial and triumphant survival, the world full of a new\nmovement, the friar a household word in every corner of Europe, and if we\nask _why_ all this happened, we can only approximate to any answer to\nour own question if we can, in some faint and indirect imaginative\nfashion, hear one human voice or see one human face under a hood. There\nis no answer except that Francis Bernardone had happened; and we must\ntry in some sense to see what we should have seen if he had happened to\nus. In other words, after some groping suggestions about his life from\nthe inside, we must again consider it from the outside; as if he were a\nstranger coming up the road towards us, along the hills of Umbria,\nbetween the olives or the vines.\n\nFrancis of Assisi was slight in figure with that sort of slightness\nwhich, combined with so much vivacity, gives the impression of\nsmallness. He was probably taller than he looked; middle-sized, his\nbiographers say; he was certainly very active and, considering what he\nwent through, must have been tolerably tough. He was of the brownish\nSouthern colouring, with a dark beard thin and pointed such as appears\nin pictures under the hoods of elves; and his eyes glowed with the fire\nthat fretted him night and day. There is something about the description\nof all he said and did which suggests that, even more than most\nItalians, he turned naturally to a passionate pantomime of gestures. If\nthis was so it is equally certain that with him, even more than with\nmost Italians, the gestures were all gestures of politeness or\nhospitality. And both these facts, the vivacity and the courtesy, are\nthe outward signs of something that mark him out very distinctively from\nmany who might appear to be more of his kind than they really are. It is\ntruly said that Francis of Assisi was one of the founders of the\nmedieval drama, and therefore of the modern drama. He was the very\nreverse of a theatrical person in the selfish sense; but for all that he\nwas pre-eminently a dramatic person. This side of him can best be\nsuggested by taking what is commonly regarded as a reposeful quality;\nwhat is commonly described as a love of nature. We are compelled to use\nthe term; and it is entirely the wrong term.\n\nSt.\u00a0Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of\nnature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the\nmaterial universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental\npantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and\nScott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a\nchapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in\nthe harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over\nsome scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which\nthe author was a little vague. In short, the hermit might love nature as\na background. Now for St.\u00a0Francis nothing was ever in the background. We\nmight say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine\ndarkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured\ncreature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its\nsetting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A\nbird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose,\nthough it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could\nstop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the\nbrigand as the bush.\n\nIn a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees.\nSt.\u00a0Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He\nwanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a\nchild of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. But he did not\nwant to stand against a piece of stage scenery used merely as a\nbackground, and inscribed in a general fashion: \"Scene; a wood.\" In this\nsense we might say that he was too dramatic for the drama. The scenery\nwould have come to life in his comedies; the walls would really have\nspoken like Snout the Tinker and the trees would really have come\nwalking to Dunsinane. Everything would have been in the foreground; and\nin that sense in the footlights. Everything would be in every sense a\ncharacter. This is the quality in which, as a poet, he is the very\nopposite of a pantheist. He did not call nature his mother; he called a\nparticular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister. If he\nhad called a pelican his aunt or an elephant his uncle, as he might\npossibly have done, he would still have meant that they were particular\ncreatures assigned by their Creator to particular places; not mere\nexpressions of the evolutionary energy of things. That is where his\nmysticism is so close to the common sense of the child. A child has no\ndifficulty about understanding that God made the dog and the cat; though\nhe is well aware that the making of dogs and cats out of nothing is a\nmysterious process beyond his own imagination. But no child would\nunderstand what you meant if you mixed up the dog and the cat and\neverything else into one monster with a myriad legs and called it\nnature. The child would resolutely refuse to make head or tail of any\nsuch animal. St.\u00a0Francis was a mystic, but he believed in mysticism and\nnot in mystification. As a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those\nmystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into\nits environment. He was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness; but\nnot a mystic of the twilight. He was the very contrary of that sort of\noriental visionary who is only a mystic because he is too much of a\nsceptic to be a materialist. St.\u00a0Francis was emphatically a realist,\nusing the word realist in its much more real medieval sense. In this\nmatter he really was akin to the best spirit of his age, which had just\nwon its victory over the nominalism of the twelfth century. In this\nindeed there was something symbolic in the contemporary art and\ndecoration of his period; as in the art of heraldry. The Franciscan\nbirds and beasts were really rather like heraldic birds and beasts; not\nin the sense of being fabulous animals but in the sense of being treated\nas if they were facts, clear and positive and unaffected by the\nillusions of atmosphere and perspective. In that sense he did see a bird\nsable on a field azure or a sheep argent on a field vert. But the\nheraldry of humility was richer than the heraldry of pride; for it saw\nall these things that God had given as something more precious and\nunique than the blazonry that princes and peers had only given to\nthemselves. Indeed out of the depths of that surrender it rose higher\nthan the highest titles of the feudal age; than the laurel of C\u00e6sar or\nthe Iron Crown of Lombardy. It is an example of extremes that meet, that\nthe Little Poor Man, who had stripped himself of everything and named\nhimself as nothing, took the same title that has been the wild vaunt of\nthe vanity of the gorgeous Asiatic autocrat, and called himself the\nBrother of the Sun and Moon.\n\nThis quality, of something outstanding and even startling in things as\nSt.\u00a0Francis saw them, is here important as illustrating a character in\nhis own life. As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was\nalways dramatic. We have to assume throughout, needless to say, that he\nwas a poet and can only be understood as a poet. But he had one poetic\nprivilege denied to most poets. In that respect indeed he might be\ncalled the one happy poet among all the unhappy poets of the world. He\nwas a poet whose whole life was a poem. He was not so much a minstrel\nmerely singing his own songs as a dramatist capable of acting the whole\nof his own play. The things he said were more imaginative than the\nthings he wrote. The things he did were more imaginative than the things\nhe said. His whole course through life was a series of scenes in which\nhe had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful\ncrisis. To talk about the art of living has come to sound rather\nartificial than artistic. But St.\u00a0Francis did in a definite sense make\nthe very act of living an art, though it was an unpremeditated art. Many\nof his acts will seem grotesque and puzzling to a rationalistic taste.\nBut they were always acts and not explanations; and they always meant\nwhat he meant them to mean. The amazing vividness with which he stamped\nhimself on the memory and imagination of mankind is very largely due to\nthe fact that he was seen again and again under such dramatic\nconditions. From the moment when he rent his robes and flung them at his\nfather's feet to the moment when he stretched himself in death on the\nbare earth in the pattern of the cross, his life was made up of these\nunconscious attitudes and unhesitating gestures. It would be easy to\nfill page after page with examples; but I will here pursue the method\nfound convenient everywhere in this short sketch, and take one typical\nexample, dwelling on it with a little more detail than would be possible\nin a catalogue, in the hope of making the meaning more clear. The\nexample taken here occurred in the last days of his life, but it refers\nback in a rather curious fashion to the first; and rounds off the\nremarkable unity of that romance of religion.\n\nThe phrase about his brotherhood with the sun and moon, and with the\nwater and the fire, occurs of course in his famous poem called the\nCanticle of the Creatures or the Canticle of the Sun. He sang it\nwandering in the meadows in the sunnier season of his own career, when\nhe was pouring upwards into the sky all the passions of a poet. It is a\nsupremely characteristic work, and much of St.\u00a0Francis could be\nreconstructed from that work alone. Though in some ways the thing is as\nsimple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of\ndifferentiation in it. Notice, for instance, the sense of sex in\ninanimate things, which goes far beyond the arbitrary genders of a\ngrammar. It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce\nand gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate.\nRemember that St.\u00a0Francis was neither encumbered nor assisted by all\nthat Greek and Roman polytheism turned into allegory, which has been to\nEuropean poetry often an inspiration, too often a convention. Whether he\ngained or lost by his contempt of learning, it never occurred to him to\nconnect Neptune and the nymphs with the water or Vulcan and the Cyclops\nwith the flame. This point exactly illustrates what has already been\nsuggested; that, so far from being a revival of paganism, the Franciscan\nrenascence was a sort of fresh start and first awakening after a\nforgetfulness of paganism. Certainly it is responsible for a certain\nfreshness in the thing itself. Anyhow St.\u00a0Francis was, as it were, the\nfounder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from\nhis mermen and his witches from his wizards. In short, he had to make\nhis own mythology; but he knew at a glance the goddesses from the gods.\nThis fanciful instinct for the sexes is not the only example of an\nimaginative instinct of the kind. There is just the same quaint felicity\nin the fact that he singles out the sun with a slightly more courtly\ntitle besides that of brother; a phrase that one king might use of\nanother, corresponding to \"Monsieur notre fr\u00e8re.\" It is like a faint\nhalf ironic shadow of the shining primacy that it had held in the pagan\nheavens. A bishop is said to have complained of a Nonconformist saying\nPaul instead of Saint Paul; and to have added \"He might at least have\ncalled him Mr. Paul.\" So St.\u00a0Francis is free of all obligation to cry\nout in praise or terror on the Lord God Apollo, but in his new nursery\nheavens, he salutes him as Mr. Sun. Those are the things in which he has\na sort of inspired infancy, only to be paralleled in nursery tales.\nSomething of the same hazy but healthy awe makes the story of Brer Fox\nand Brer Rabbit refer respectfully to Mr. Man.\n\nThis poem, full of the mirth of youth and the memories of childhood,\nruns through his whole life like a refrain, and scraps of it turn up\ncontinually in the ordinary habit of his talk. Perhaps the last\nappearance of its special language was in an incident that has always\nseemed to me intensely impressive, and is at any rate very illustrative\nof the great manner and gesture of which I speak. Impressions of that\nkind are a matter of imagination and in that sense of taste. It is idle\nto argue about them; for it is the whole point of them that they have\npassed beyond words; and even when they use words, seem to be completed\nby some ritual movement like a blessing or a blow. So, in a supreme\nexample, there is something far past all exposition, something like the\nsweeping movement and mighty shadow of a hand, darkening even the\ndarkness of Gethsemane; \"Sleep on now, and take your rest....\" Yet there\nare people who have started to paraphrase and expand the story of the\nPassion.\n\nSt.\u00a0Francis was a dying man. We might say he was an old man, at the time\nthis typical incident occurred; but in fact he was only prematurely old;\nfor he was not fifty when he died, worn out with his fighting and\nfasting life. But when he came down from the awful asceticism and more\nawful revelation of Alverno, he was a broken man. As will be apparent\nwhen these events are touched on in their turn, it was not only sickness\nand bodily decay that may well have darkened his life; he had been\nrecently disappointed in his main mission to end the Crusades by the\nconversion of Islam; he had been still more disappointed by the signs of\ncompromise and a more political or practical spirit in his own order; he\nhad spent his last energies in protest. At this point he was told that\nhe was going blind. If the faintest hint has been given here of what\nSt.\u00a0Francis felt about the glory and pageantry of earth and sky, about\nthe heraldic shape and colour and symbolism of birds and beasts and\nflowers, some notion may be formed of what it meant to him to go blind.\nYet the remedy might well have seemed worse than the disease. The\nremedy, admittedly an uncertain remedy, was to cauterise the eye, and\nthat without any an\u00e6sthetic. In other words it was to burn his living\neyeballs with a red-hot iron. Many of the tortures of martyrdom, which\nhe envied in martyrology and sought vainly in Syria, can have been no\nworse. When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an\nurbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: \"Brother Fire, God\nmade you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with\nme.\"\n\nIf there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such\na moment was one of its masterpieces. Not to many poets has it been\ngiven to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live\none of their own poems. Even William Blake would have been disconcerted\nif, while he was re-reading the noble lines \"Tiger, tiger, burning\nbright,\" a real large live Bengal tiger had put his head in at the\nwindow of the cottage in Felpham, evidently with every intention of\nbiting his head off. He might have wavered before politely saluting it,\nabove all by calmly completing the recitation of the poem to the\nquadruped to whom it was dedicated. Shelley, when he wished to be a\ncloud or a leaf carried before the wind, might have been mildly\nsurprised to find himself turning slowly head over heels in mid air a\nthousand feet above the sea. Even Keats, knowing that his hold on life\nwas a frail one, might have been disturbed to discover that the true,\nthe blushful Hippocrene of which he had just partaken freely had indeed\ncontained a drug, which really ensured that he should cease upon the\nmidnight with no pain. For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis\nthere was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first\nfancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame\nwas a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers\nin the garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the\nshape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old\nfriend, calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its\nChristian name.\n\nThat is only one incident out of a life of such incidents; and I have\nselected it partly because it shows what is meant here by that shadow of\ngesture there is in all his words, the dramatic gesture of the south;\nand partly because its special reference to courtesy covers the next\nfact to be noted. The popular instinct of St.\u00a0Francis, and his perpetual\npreoccupation with the idea of brotherhood, will be entirely\nmisunderstood if it is understood in the sense of what is often called\ncamaraderie; the back-slapping sort of brotherhood. Frequently from the\nenemies and too frequently from the friends of the democratic ideal,\nthere has come a notion that this note is necessary to that ideal. It is\nassumed that equality means all men being equally uncivil, whereas it\nobviously ought to mean all men being equally civil. Such people have\nforgotten the very meaning and derivation of the word civility, if they\ndo not see that to be uncivil is to be uncivic. But anyhow that was not\nthe equality which Francis of Assisi encouraged; but an equality of the\nopposite kind; it was a camaraderie actually founded on courtesy.\n\nEven in that fairy borderland of his mere fancies about flowers and\nanimals and even inanimate things, he retained this permanent posture of\na sort of deference. A friend of mine said that somebody was the sort of\nman who apologises to the cat. St.\u00a0Francis really would have apologised\nto the cat. When he was about to preach in a wood full of the chatter of\nbirds, he said, with a gentle gesture \"Little sisters, if you have now\nhad your say, it is time that I also should be heard.\" And all the birds\nwere silent; as I for one can very easily believe. In deference to my\nspecial design of making matters intelligible to average modernity, I\nhave treated separately the subject of the miraculous powers that\nSt.\u00a0Francis most certainly possessed. But even apart from any miraculous\npowers, men of that magnetic sort, with that intense interest in\nanimals, often have an extraordinary power over them. St.\u00a0Francis's\npower was always exercised with this elaborate politeness. Much of it\nwas doubtless a sort of symbolic joke, a pious pantomime intended to\nconvey the vital distinction in his divine mission, that he not only\nloved but reverenced God in all his creatures. In this sense he had the\nair not only of apologising to the cat or to the birds, but of\napologising to a chair for sitting on it or to a table for sitting down\nat it. Anyone who had followed him through life merely to laugh at him,\nas a sort of lovable lunatic, might easily have had an impression as of\na lunatic who bowed to every post or took off his hat to every tree.\nThis was all a part of his instinct for imaginative gesture. He taught\nthe world a large part of its lesson by a sort of divine dumb alphabet.\nBut if there was this ceremonial element even in lighter or lesser\nmatters, its significance became far more serious in the serious work of\nhis life, which was an appeal to humanity, or rather to human beings.\n\nI have said that St.\u00a0Francis deliberately did not see the wood for the\ntrees. It is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for\nthe men. What distinguishes this very genuine democrat from any mere\ndemagogue is that he never either deceived or was deceived by the\nillusion of mass-suggestion. Whatever his taste in monsters, he never\nsaw before him a many-headed beast. He only saw the image of God\nmultiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man and did\nnot disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured\nall men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave\nhim his extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the\nbeggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers\ncrawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those\nbrown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was\nreally interested in _him_; in his own inner individual life from the\ncradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken\nseriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or\nthe names in some clerical document. Now for this particular moral and\nreligious idea there is no external expression except courtesy.\nExhortation does not express it, for it is not mere abstract enthusiasm;\nbeneficence does not express it, for it is not mere pity. It can only be\nconveyed by a certain grand manner which may be called good manners. We\nmay say if we like that St.\u00a0Francis, in the bare and barren simplicity\nof his life, had clung to one rag of luxury; the manners of a court. But\nwhereas in a court there is one king and a hundred courtiers, in this\nstory there was one courtier, moving among a hundred kings. For he\ntreated the whole mob of men as a mob of kings. And this was really and\ntruly the only attitude that will appeal to that part of man to which he\nwished to appeal. It cannot be done by giving gold or even bread; for it\nis a proverb that any reveller may fling largesse in mere scorn. It\ncannot even be done by giving time and attention; for any number of\nphilanthropists and benevolent bureaucrats do such work with a scorn far\nmore cold and horrible in their hearts. No plans or proposals or\nefficient rearrangements will give back to a broken man his self-respect\nand sense of speaking with an equal. One gesture will do it.\n\nWith that gesture Francis of Assisi moved among men; and it was soon\nfound to have something in it of magic and to act, in a double sense,\nlike a charm. But it must always be conceived as a completely natural\ngesture; for indeed it was almost a gesture of apology. He must be\nimagined as moving thus swiftly through the world with a sort of\nimpetuous politeness; almost like the movement of a man who stumbles on\none knee half in haste and half in obeisance. The eager face under the\nbrown hood was that of a man always going somewhere, as if he followed\nas well as watched the flight of the birds. And this sense of motion is\nindeed the meaning of the whole revolution that he made; for the work\nthat has now to be described was of the nature of an earthquake or a\nvolcano, an explosion that drove outwards with dynamic energy the forces\nstored up by ten centuries in the monastic fortress or arsenal and\nscattered all its riches recklessly to the ends of the earth. In a\nbetter sense than the antithesis commonly conveys, it is true to say\nthat what St.\u00a0Benedict had stored St.\u00a0Francis scattered; but in the\nworld of spiritual things what had been stored into the barns like grain\nwas scattered over the world as seed. The servants of God who had been a\nbesieged garrison became a marching army; the ways of the world were\nfilled as with thunder with the trampling of their feet and far ahead of\nthat ever swelling host went a man singing; as simply he had sung that\nmorning in the winter woods, where he walked alone.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter VII_\n _The Three Orders_\n\n\nThere is undoubtedly a sense in which two is company and three is none;\nthere is also another sense in which three is company and four is none,\nas is proved by the procession of historic and fictitious figures moving\nthree deep, the famous trios like the Three Musketeers or the Three\nSoldiers of Kipling. But there is yet another and a different sense in\nwhich four is company and three is none; if we use the word company in\nthe vaguer sense of a crowd or a mass. With the fourth man enters the\nshadow of a mob; the group is no longer one of three individuals only\nconceived individually. That shadow of the fourth man fell across the\nlittle hermitage of the Portiuncula when a man named Egidio, apparently\na poor workman, was invited by St.\u00a0Francis to enter. He mingled without\ndifficulty with the merchant and the canon who had already become the\ncompanions of Francis; but with his coming an invisible line was\ncrossed; for it must have been felt by this time that the growth of that\nsmall group had become potentially infinite, or at least that its\noutline had become permanently indefinite. It may have been in the time\nof that transition that Francis had another of his dreams full of\nvoices; but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all nations,\nFrenchmen and Italians and English and Spanish and Germans, telling of\nthe glory of God each in his own tongue; a new Pentecost and a happier\nBabel.\n\nBefore describing the first steps he took to regularise the growing\ngroup, it is well to have a rough grasp of what he conceived that group\nto be. He did not call his followers monks; and it is not clear, at this\ntime at least, that he even thought of them as monks. He called them by\na name which is generally rendered in English as the Friars Minor; but\nwe shall be much closer to the atmosphere of his own mind if we render\nit almost literally as The Little Brothers. Presumably he was already\nresolved, indeed, that they should take the three vows of poverty,\nchastity and obedience which had always been the mark of a monk. But it\nwould seem that he was not so much afraid of the idea of a monk as of\nthe idea of an abbot. He was afraid that the great spiritual\nmagistracies which had given even to their holiest possessors at least a\nsort of impersonal and corporate pride, would import an element of\npomposity that would spoil his extremely and almost extravagantly simple\nversion of the life of humility. But the supreme difference between his\ndiscipline and the discipline of the old monastic system was concerned,\nof course, with the idea that the monks were to become migratory and\nalmost nomadic instead of stationary. They were to mingle with the\nworld; and to this the more old-fashioned monk would naturally reply by\nasking how they were to mingle with the world without becoming entangled\nwith the world. It was a much more real question than a loose\nreligiosity is likely to realise; but St.\u00a0Francis had his answer to it,\nof his own individual sort; and the interest of the problem is in that\nhighly individual answer.\n\nThe good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life\nwhich the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts,\nwithout possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow\non the ground. St.\u00a0Francis answered him with that curious and almost\nstunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club\nof stone. He said, \"If we had any possessions, we should need weapons\nand laws to defend them.\" That sentence is the clue to the whole policy\nthat he pursued. It rested upon a real piece of logic; and about that he\nwas never anything but logical. He was ready to own himself wrong about\nanything else; but he was quite certain he was right about this\nparticular rule. He was only once seen angry; and that was when there\nwas talk of an exception to the rule.\n\nHis argument was this: that the dedicated man might go anywhere among\nany kind of men, even the worst kind of men, so long as there was\nnothing by which they could hold him. If he had any ties or needs like\nordinary men, he would become like ordinary men. St.\u00a0Francis was the\nlast man in the world to think any the worse of ordinary men for being\nordinary. They had more affection and admiration from him than they are\never likely to have again. But for his own particular purpose of\nstirring up the world to a new spiritual enthusiasm, he saw with a\nlogical clarity that was quite reverse of fanatical or sentimental, that\nfriars must not become like ordinary men; that the salt must not lose\nits savour even to turn into human nature's daily food. And the\ndifference between a friar and an ordinary man was really that a friar\nwas freer than an ordinary man. It was necessary that he should be free\nfrom the cloister; but it was even more important that he should be free\nfrom the world. It is perfectly sound common sense to say that there is\na sense in which the ordinary man cannot be free from the world; or\nrather ought not to be free from the world. The feudal world in\nparticular was one labyrinthine system of dependence; but it was not\nonly the feudal world that went to make up the medieval world nor the\nmedieval world that went to make up the whole world; and the whole world\nis full of this fact. Family life as much as feudal life is in its\nnature a system of dependence. Modern trade unions as much as medieval\nguilds are interdependent among themselves even in order to be\nindependent of others. In medieval as in modern life, even where these\nlimitations do exist for the sake of liberty, they have in them a\nconsiderable element of luck. They are partly the result of\ncircumstances; sometimes the almost unavoidable result of circumstances.\nSo the twelfth century had been the age of vows; and there was something\nof relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks\nvows from slaves any more than from spades. Still, in practice, a man\nrode to war in support of the ancient house of the Column or behind the\nGreat Dog of the Stairway largely because he had been born in a certain\ncity or countryside. But no man need obey little Francis in the old\nbrown coat unless he chose. Even in his relations with his chosen leader\nhe was in one sense relatively free, compared with the world around him.\nHe was obedient but not dependent. And he was as free as the wind, he\nwas almost wildly free, in his relation to that world around him. The\nworld around him was, as has been noted, a network of feudal and family\nand other forms of dependence. The whole idea of St.\u00a0Francis was that\nthe Little Brothers should be like little fishes who could go freely in\nand out of that net. They could do so precisely because they were small\nfishes and in that sense even slippery fishes. There was nothing that\nthe world could hold them by; for the world catches us mostly by the\nfringes of our garments, the futile externals of our lives. One of the\nFranciscans says later, \"A monk should own nothing but his harp\";\nmeaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song\nwith which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle\nand cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in his creation and the\nbeauty of the brotherhood of men. In imagining the life of this sort of\nvisionary vagabond, we may already get a glimpse also of the practical\nside of that asceticism which puzzles those who think themselves\npractical. A man had to be thin to pass always through the bars and out\nof the cage; he had to travel light in order to ride so fast and so far.\nIt was the whole calculation, so to speak, of that innocent cunning,\nthat the world was to be outflanked and outwitted by him, and be\nembarrassed about what to do with him. You could not threaten to starve\na man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce\nhim to beggary, for he was already a beggar. There was a very lukewarm\nsatisfaction even in beating him with a stick, when he only indulged in\nlittle leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity.\nYou could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in\na halo.\n\nBut one distinction between the old monks and the new friars counted\nespecially in the matter of practicality and especially of promptitude.\nThe old fraternities with their fixed habitations and enclosed existence\nhad the limitations of ordinary householders. However simply they lived\nthere must be a certain number of cells or a certain number of beds or\nat least a certain cubic space for a certain number of brothers; their\nnumbers therefore depended on their land and building material. But\nsince a man could become a Franciscan by merely promising to take his\nchance of eating berries in a lane or begging a crust from a kitchen, of\nsleeping under a hedge or sitting patiently on a doorstep, there was no\neconomic reason why there should not be any number of such eccentric\nenthusiasts within any short period of time. It must also be remembered\nthat the whole of this rapid development was full of a certain kind of\ndemocratic optimism that really was part of the personal character of\nSt.\u00a0Francis. His very asceticism was in one sense the height of\noptimism. He demanded a great deal of human nature not because he\ndespised it but rather because he trusted it. He was expecting a very\ngreat deal from the extraordinary men who followed him; but he was also\nexpecting a good deal from the ordinary men to whom he sent them. He\nasked the laity for food as confidently as he asked the fraternity for\nfasting. But he counted on the hospitality of humanity because he really\ndid regard every house as the house of a friend. He really did love and\nhonour ordinary men and ordinary things; indeed we may say that he only\nsent out the extraordinary men to encourage men to be ordinary.\n\nThis paradox may be more exactly stated or explained when we come to\ndeal with the very interesting matter of the Third Order, which was\ndesigned to assist ordinary men to be ordinary with an extraordinary\nexultation. The point at issue at present is the audacity and simplicity\nof the Franciscan plan for quartering its spiritual soldiery upon the\npopulation; not by force but by persuasion, and even by the persuasion\nof impotence. It was an act of confidence and therefore a compliment. It\nwas completely successful. It was an example of something that clung\nabout St.\u00a0Francis always; a kind of tact that looked like luck because\nit was as simple and direct as a thunderbolt. There are many examples in\nhis private relations of this sort of tactless tact; this surprise\neffected by striking at the heart of the matter. It is said that a young\nfriar was suffering from a sort of sulks between morbidity and humility,\ncommon enough in youth and hero-worship, in which he had got it into his\nhead that his hero hated or despised him. We can imagine how tactfully\nsocial diplomatists would steer clear of scenes and excitements, how\ncautiously psychologists would watch and handle such delicate cases.\nFrancis suddenly walked up to the young man, who was of course secretive\nand silent as the grave, and said, \"Be not troubled in your thoughts for\nyou are dear to me, and even among the number of those who are most\ndear. You know that you are worthy of my friendship and society;\ntherefore come to me, in confidence, whensoever you will, and from\nfriendship learn faith.\" Exactly as he spoke to that morbid boy he spoke\nto all mankind. He always went to the point; he always seemed at once\nmore right and more simple than the person he was speaking to. He seemed\nat once to be laying open his guard and yet lunging at the heart.\nSomething in this attitude disarmed the world as it has never been\ndisarmed again. He was better than other men; he was a benefactor of\nother men; and yet he was not hated. The world came into church by a\nnewer and nearer door; and by friendship it learnt faith.\n\nIt was while the little knot of people at the Portiuncula was still\nsmall enough to gather in a small room that St.\u00a0Francis resolved on his\nfirst important and even sensational stroke. It is said that there were\nonly twelve Franciscans in the whole world when he decided to march, as\nit were, on Rome and found a Franciscan order. It would seem that this\nappeal to remote headquarters was not generally regarded as necessary;\npossibly something could have been done in a secondary way under the\nBishop of Assisi and the local clergy. It would seem even more probable\nthat people thought it somewhat unnecessary to trouble the supreme\ntribunal of Christendom about what a dozen chance men chose to call\nthemselves. But Francis was obstinate and as it were blind on this\npoint; and his brilliant blindness is exceedingly characteristic of him.\nA man satisfied with small things, or even in love with small things, he\nyet never felt quite as we do about the disproportion between small\nthings and large. He never saw things to scale in our sense, but with a\ndizzy disproportion which makes the mind reel. Sometimes it seems merely\nout of drawing like a gaily coloured medieval map; and then again it\nseems to have escaped from everything like a short cut in the fourth\ndimension. He is said to have made a journey to interview the Emperor,\nthroned among his armies under the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, to\nintercede for the lives of certain little birds. He was quite capable of\nfacing fifty emperors to intercede for one bird. He started out with two\ncompanions to convert the Mahomedan world. He started out with eleven\ncompanions to ask the Pope to make a new monastic world.\n\nInnocent III., the great Pope, according to Bonaventura, was walking on\nthe terrace of St.\u00a0John Lateran, doubtless revolving the great political\nquestions which troubled his reign, when there appeared abruptly before\nhim a person in peasant costume whom he took to be some sort of\nshepherd. He appears to have got rid of the shepherd with all convenient\nspeed; possibly he formed the opinion that the shepherd was mad. Anyhow\nhe thought no more about it until, says the great Franciscan biographer,\nhe dreamed that night a strange dream. He fancied that he saw the whole\nhuge ancient temple of St.\u00a0John Lateran, on whose high terraces he had\nwalked so securely, leaning horribly and crooked against the sky as if\nall its domes and turrets were stooping before an earthquake. Then he\nlooked again and saw that a human figure was holding it up like a living\ncaryatid; and the figure was that of the ragged shepherd or peasant from\nwhom he had turned away on the terrace. Whether this be a fact or a\nfigure it is a very true figure of the abrupt simplicity with which\nFrancis won the attention and the favour of Rome. His first friend seems\nto have been the Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo who pleaded for the\nFranciscan idea before a conclave of Cardinals summoned for the purpose.\nIt is interesting to note that the doubts thrown upon it seem to have\nbeen chiefly doubts about whether the rule was not too hard for\nhumanity, for the Catholic Church is always on the watch against\nexcessive asceticism and its evils. Probably they meant, especially when\nthey said it was unduly hard, that it was unduly dangerous. For a\ncertain element that can only be called danger is what marks the\ninnovation as compared with older institutions of the kind. In one sense\nindeed the friar was almost the opposite of the monk. The value of the\nold monasticism had been that there was not only an ethical but an\neconomic repose. Out of that repose had come the works for which the\nworld will never be sufficiently grateful, the preservation of the\nclassics, the beginning of the Gothic, the schemes of science and\nphilosophies, the illuminated manuscripts and the coloured glass. The\nwhole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for\ngood; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a very plain\nsupper. But the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he\nwould get his supper. There was always a possibility that he might get\nno supper. There was an element of what would be called romance, as of\nthe gipsy or adventurer. But there was also an element of potential\ntragedy, as of the tramp or the casual labourer. So the Cardinals of the\nthirteenth century were filled with compassion, seeing a few men\nentering of their own free will that estate to which the poor of the\ntwentieth century are daily driven by cold coercion and moved on by the\npolice.\n\nCardinal San Paolo seems to have argued more or less in this manner: it\nmay be a hard life, but after all it is the life apparently described as\nideal in the Gospel; make what compromises you think wise or humane\nabout that ideal; but do not commit yourselves to saying that men shall\n_not_ fulfil that ideal if they can. We shall see the importance of this\nargument when we come to the whole of that higher aspect of the life of\nSt.\u00a0Francis which may be called the Imitation of Christ. The upshot of\nthe discussion was that the Pope gave his verbal approval to the project\nand promised a more definite endorsement, if the movement should grow to\nmore considerable proportions. It is probable that Innocent, who was\nhimself a man of no ordinary mentality, had very little doubt that it\nwould do so; anyhow he was not left long in doubt before it did do so.\nThe next passage in the history of the order is simply the story of more\nand more people flocking to its standard; and as has already been\nremarked, once it had begun to grow, it could in its nature grow much\nmore quickly than any ordinary society requiring ordinary funds and\npublic buildings. Even the return of the twelve pioneers from their\npapal audience seems to have been a sort of triumphal procession. In one\nplace in particular, it is said, the whole population of a town, men,\nwomen and children, turned out, leaving their work and wealth and homes\nexactly as they stood and begging to be taken into the army of God on\nthe spot. According to the story, it was on this occasion that\nSt.\u00a0Francis first foreshadowed his idea of the Third Order which enabled\nmen to share in the movement without leaving the homes and habits of\nnormal humanity. For the moment it is most important to regard this\nstory as one example of the riot of conversion with which he was already\nfilling all the roads of Italy. It was a world of wandering; friars\nperpetually coming and going in all the highways and byways, seeking to\nensure that any man who met one of them by chance should have a\nspiritual adventure. The First Order of St.\u00a0Francis had entered history.\n\nThis rough outline can only be rounded off here with some description of\nthe Second and Third Orders, though they were founded later and at\nseparate times. The former was an order for women and owed its\nexistence, of course, to the beautiful friendship of St.\u00a0Francis and\nSt.\u00a0Clare. There is no story about which even the most sympathetic\ncritics of another creed have been more bewildered and misleading. For\nthere is no story that more clearly turns on that simple test which I\nhave taken as crucial throughout this criticism. I mean that what is the\nmatter with these critics is that they will not believe that a heavenly\nlove can be as real as an earthly love. The moment it is treated as\nreal, like an earthly love, their whole riddle is easily resolved. A\ngirl of seventeen, named Clare and belonging to one of the noble\nfamilies of Assisi, was filled with an enthusiasm for the conventual\nlife; and Francis helped her to escape from her home and to take up the\nconventual life. If we like to put it so, he helped her to elope into\nthe cloister, defying her parents as he had defied his father. Indeed\nthe scene had many of the elements of a regular romantic elopement; for\nshe escaped through a hole in the wall, fled through a wood and was\nreceived at midnight by the light of torches. Even Mrs. Oliphant, in her\nfine and delicate study of St.\u00a0Francis, calls it \"an incident which we\ncan hardly record with satisfaction.\"\n\nNow about that incident I will here only say this. If it had really been\na romantic elopement and the girl had become a bride instead of a nun,\npractically the whole modern world would have made her a heroine. If the\naction of the Friar towards Clare had been the action of the Friar\ntowards Juliet, everybody would be sympathising with her exactly as they\nsympathise with Juliet. It is not conclusive to say that Clare was only\nseventeen. Juliet was only fourteen. Girls married and boys fought in\nbattles at such early ages in medieval times; and a girl of seventeen in\nthe thirteenth century was certainly old enough to know her own mind.\nThere cannot be the shadow of a doubt, for any sane person considering\nsubsequent events, that St.\u00a0Clare did know her own mind. But the point\nfor the moment is that modern romanticism entirely encourages such\ndefiance of parents when it is done in the name of romantic love. For it\nknows that romantic love is a reality, but it does not know that divine\nlove is a reality. There may have been something to be said for the\nparents of Clare; there may have been something to be said for Peter\nBernardone. So there may have been a great deal to be said for the\nMontagues or the Capulets; but the modern world does not want it said;\nand does not say it. The fact is that as soon as we assume for a moment\nas a hypothesis, what St.\u00a0Francis and St.\u00a0Clare assumed all the time as\nan absolute, that there is a direct divine relation more glorious than\nany romance, the story of St.\u00a0Clare's elopement is simply a romance with\na happy ending; and St.\u00a0Francis is the St.\u00a0George or knight-errant who\ngave it a happy ending. And seeing that some millions of men and women\nhave lived and died treating this relation as a reality, a man is not\nmuch of a philosopher if he cannot even treat it as a hypothesis.\n\nFor the rest, we may at least assume that no friend of what is called\nthe emancipation of women will regret the revolt of St.\u00a0Clare. She did\nmost truly, in the modern jargon, live her own life, the life that she\nherself wanted to lead, as distinct from the life into which parental\ncommands and conventional arrangements would have forced her. She became\nthe foundress of a great feminine movement which still profoundly\naffects the world; and her place is with the powerful women of history.\nIt is not clear that she would have been so great or so useful if she\nhad made a runaway match, or even stopped at home and made a _mariage de\nconvenance_. So much any sensible man may well say considering the\nmatter merely from the outside; and I have no intention of attempting to\nconsider it from the inside. If a man may well doubt whether he is\nworthy to write a word about St.\u00a0Francis, he will certainly want words\nbetter than his own to speak of the friendship of St.\u00a0Francis and\nSt.\u00a0Clare. I have often remarked that the mysteries of this story are\nbest expressed symbolically in certain silent attitudes and actions. And\nI know no better symbol than that found by the felicity of popular\nlegend, which says that one night the people of Assisi thought the trees\nand the holy house were on fire, and rushed up to extinguish the\nconflagration. But they found all quiet within, where St.\u00a0Francis broke\nbread with St.\u00a0Clare at one of their rare meetings, and talked of the\nlove of God. It would be hard to find a more imaginative image, for some\nsort of utterly pure and disembodied passion, than that red halo round\nthe unconscious figures on the hill; a flame feeding on nothing and\nsetting the very air on fire.\n\nBut if the Second Order was the memorial of such an unearthly love, the\nThird Order was as solid a memorial of a very solid sympathy with\nearthly loves and earthly lives. The whole of this feature in Catholic\nlife, the lay orders in touch with clerical orders, is very little\nunderstood in Protestant countries and very little allowed for in\nProtestant history. The vision which has been so faintly suggested in\nthese pages has never been confined to monks or even to friars. It has\nbeen an inspiration to innumerable crowds of ordinary married men and\nwomen; living lives like our own, only entirely different. That morning\nglory which St.\u00a0Francis spread over earth and sky has lingered as a\nsecret sunshine under a multitude of roofs and in a multitude of rooms.\nIn societies like ours nothing is known of such a Franciscan following.\nNothing is known of such obscure followers; and if possible less is\nknown of the well-known followers. If we imagine passing us in the\nstreet a pageant of the Third Order of St.\u00a0Francis, the famous figures\nwould surprise us more than the strange ones. For us it would be like\nthe unmasking of some mighty secret society. There rides St.\u00a0Louis, the\ngreat king, lord of the higher justice whose scales hang crooked in\nfavour of the poor. There is Dante crowned with laurel, the poet who in\nhis life of passions sang the praises of the Lady Poverty, whose grey\ngarment is lined with purple and all glorious within. All sorts of great\nnames from the most recent and rationalistic centuries would stand\nrevealed; the great Galvani, for instance, the father of all\nelectricity, the magician who has made so many modern systems of stars\nand sounds. So various a following would alone be enough to prove that\nSt.\u00a0Francis had no lack of sympathy with normal men, if the whole of his\nown life did not prove it.\n\nBut in fact his life did prove it, and that possibly in a more subtle\nsense. There is, I fancy, some truth in the hint of one of his modern\nbiographers, that even his natural passions were singularly normal and\neven noble, in the sense of turning towards things not unlawful in\nthemselves but only unlawful for him. Nobody ever lived of whom we could\nless fitly use the word \"regret\" than Francis of Assisi. Though there\nwas much that was romantic, there was nothing in the least sentimental\nabout his mood. It was not melancholy enough for that. He was of far too\nswift and rushing a temper to be troubled with doubts and\nreconsiderations about the race he ran; though he had any amount of\nself-reproach about not running faster. But it is true, one suspects,\nthat when he wrestled with the devil, as every man must to be worth\ncalling a man, the whispers referred mostly to those healthy instincts\nthat he would have approved for others; they bore no resemblance to that\nghastly painted paganism which sent its demoniac courtesans to plague\nSt.\u00a0Anthony in the desert. If St.\u00a0Francis had only pleased himself, it\nwould have been with simpler pleasures. He was moved to love rather than\nlust, and by nothing wilder than wedding-bells. It is suggested in that\nstrange story of how he defied the devil by making images in the snow,\nand crying out that these sufficed him for a wife and family. It is\nsuggested in the saying he used when disclaiming any security from sin,\n\"I may yet have children\"; almost as if it was of the children rather\nthan the woman that he dreamed. And this, if it be true, gives a final\ntouch to the truth about his character. There was so much about him of\nthe spirit of the morning, so much that was curiously young and clean,\nthat even what was bad in him was good. As it was said of others that\nthe light in their body was darkness, so it may be said of this luminous\nspirit that the very shadows in his soul were of light. Evil itself\ncould not come to him save in the form of a forbidden good; and he could\nonly be tempted by a sacrament.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter VIII_\n _The Mirror of Christ_\n\n\nNo man who has been given the freedom of the Faith is likely to fall\ninto those hole-and-corner extravagances in which later degenerate\nFranciscans, or rather Fraticelli, sought to concentrate entirely on\nSt.\u00a0Francis as a second Christ, the creator of a new gospel. In fact any\nsuch notion makes nonsense of every motive in the man's life; for no man\nwould reverently magnify what he was meant to rival, or only profess to\nfollow what he existed to supplant. On the contrary, as will appear\nlater, this little study would rather specially insist that it was\nreally the papal sagacity that saved the great Franciscan movement for\nthe whole world and the universal Church, and prevented it from petering\nout as that sort of stale and second-rate sect that is called a new\nreligion. Everything that is written here must be understood not only as\ndistinct from but diametrically opposed to the idolatry of the\nFraticelli. The difference between Christ and St.\u00a0Francis was the\ndifference between the Creator and the creature; and certainly no\ncreature was ever so conscious of that colossal contrast as St.\u00a0Francis\nhimself. But subject to this understanding, it is perfectly true and it\nis vitally important that Christ was the pattern on which St.\u00a0Francis\nsought to fashion himself; and that at many points their human and\nhistorical lives were even curiously coincident; and above all, that\ncompared to most of us at least St.\u00a0Francis is a most sublime\napproximation to his Master, and, even in being an intermediary and a\nreflection, is a splendid and yet a merciful Mirror of Christ. And this\ntruth suggests another, which I think has hardly been noticed; but which\nhappens to be a highly forcible argument for the authority of Christ\nbeing continuous in the Catholic Church.\n\nCardinal Newman wrote in his liveliest controversial work a sentence\nthat might be a model of what we mean by saying that his creed tends to\nlucidity and logical courage. In speaking of the ease with which truth\nmay be made to look like its own shadow or sham, he said, \"And if\nAntichrist is like Christ, Christ I suppose is like Antichrist.\" Mere\nreligious sentiment might well be shocked at the end of the sentence;\nbut nobody could object to it except the logician who said that C\u00e6sar\nand Pompey were very much alike, especially Pompey. It may give a much\nmilder shock if I say here, what most of us have forgotten, that if\nSt.\u00a0Francis was like Christ, Christ was to that extent like St.\u00a0Francis.\nAnd my present point is that it is really very enlightening to realise\nthat Christ was like St.\u00a0Francis. What I mean is this; that if men find\ncertain riddles and hard sayings in the story of Galilee, and if they\nfind the answers to those riddles in the story of Assisi, it really does\nshow that a secret has been handed down in one religious tradition and\nno other. It shows that the casket that was locked in Palestine can be\nunlocked in Umbria; for the Church is the keeper of the keys.\n\nNow in truth while it has always seemed natural to explain St.\u00a0Francis\nin the light of Christ, it has not occurred to many people to explain\nChrist in the light of St.\u00a0Francis. Perhaps the word \"light\" is not here\nthe proper metaphor; but the same truth is admitted in the accepted\nmetaphor of the mirror. St.\u00a0Francis is the mirror of Christ rather as\nthe moon is the mirror of the sun. The moon is much smaller than the\nsun, but it is also much nearer to us; and being less vivid it is more\nvisible. Exactly in the same sense St.\u00a0Francis is nearer to us, and\nbeing a mere man like ourselves is in that sense more imaginable. Being\nnecessarily less of a mystery, he does not, for us, so much open his\nmouth in mysteries. Yet as a matter of fact, many minor things that seem\nmysteries in the mouth of Christ would seem merely characteristic\nparadoxes in the mouth of St.\u00a0Francis. It seems natural to re-read the\nmore remote incidents with the help of the more recent ones. It is a\ntruism to say that Christ lived before Christianity; and it follows that\nas an historical figure He is a figure in heathen history. I mean that\nthe medium in which He moved was not the medium of Christendom but of\nthe old pagan empire; and from that alone, not to mention the distance\nof time, it follows that His circumstances are more alien to us than\nthose of an Italian monk such as we might meet even to-day. I suppose\nthe most authoritative commentary can hardly be certain of the current\nor conventional weight of all His words or phrases; of which of them\nwould then have seemed a common allusion and which a strange fancy. This\narchaic setting has left many of the sayings standing like hieroglyphics\nand subject to many and peculiar individual interpretations. Yet it is\ntrue of almost any of them that if we simply translate them into the\nUmbrian dialect of the first Franciscans, they would seem like any other\npart of the Franciscan story; doubtless in one sense fantastic, but\nquite familiar. All sorts of critical controversies have revolved round\nthe passage which bids men consider the lilies of the field and copy\nthem in taking no thought for the morrow. The sceptic has alternated\nbetween telling us to be true Christians and do it, and explaining that\nit is impossible to do. When he is a communist as well as an atheist, he\nis generally doubtful whether to blame us for preaching what is\nimpracticable or for not instantly putting it into practice. I am not\ngoing to discuss here the point of ethics and economics; I merely remark\nthat even those who are puzzled at the saying of Christ would hardly\npause in accepting it as a saying of St.\u00a0Francis. Nobody would be\nsurprised to find that he had said, \"I beseech you, little brothers,\nthat you be as wise as Brother Daisy and Brother Dandelion; for never do\nthey lie awake thinking of to-morrow, yet they have gold crowns like\nkings and emperors or like Charlemagne in all his glory.\" Even more\nbitterness and bewilderment has arisen about the command to turn the\nother cheek and to give the coat to the robber who has taken the cloak.\nIt is widely held to imply the wickedness of war among nations; about\nwhich, in itself, not a word seems to have been said. Taken thus\nliterally and universally, it much more clearly implies the wickedness\nof all law and government. Yet there are many prosperous peacemakers who\nare much more shocked at the idea of using the brute force of soldiers\nagainst a powerful foreigner than they are at using the brute force of\npolicemen against a poor fellow-citizen. Here again I am content to\npoint out that the paradox becomes perfectly human and probable if\naddressed by Francis to Franciscans. Nobody would be surprised to read\nthat Brother Juniper did then run after the thief that had stolen his\nhood, beseeching him to take his gown also; for so St.\u00a0Francis had\ncommanded him. Nobody would be surprised if St.\u00a0Francis told a young\nnoble, about to be admitted to his company, that so far from pursuing a\nbrigand to recover his shoes, he ought to pursue him to make him a\npresent of his stockings. We may like or not the atmosphere these things\nimply; but we know what atmosphere they do imply. We recognise a certain\nnote as natural and clear as the note of a bird; the note of\nSt.\u00a0Francis. There is in it something of gentle mockery of the very idea\nof possessions; something of a hope of disarming the enemy by\ngenerosity; something of a humorous sense of bewildering the worldly\nwith the unexpected; something of the joy of carrying an enthusiastic\nconviction to a logical extreme. But anyhow we have no difficulty in\nrecognising it, if we have read any of the literature of the Little\nBrothers and the movement that began in Assisi. It seems reasonable to\ninfer that if it was this spirit that made such strange things possible\nin Umbria, it was the same spirit that made them possible in Palestine.\nIf we hear the same unmistakable note and sense the same indescribable\nsavour in two things at such a distance from each other, it seems\nnatural to suppose that the case that is more remote from our experience\nwas like the case that is closer to our experience. As the thing is\nexplicable on the assumption that Francis was speaking to Franciscans,\nit is not an irrational explanation to suggest that Christ also was\nspeaking to some dedicated band that had much the same function as\nFranciscans. In other words, it seems only natural to hold, as the\nCatholic Church has held, that these counsels of perfection were part of\na particular vocation to astonish and awaken the world. But in any case\nit is important to note that when we do find these particular features,\nwith their seemingly fantastic fitness, reappearing after more than a\nthousand years, we find them produced by the same religious system which\nclaims continuity and authority from the scenes in which they first\nappeared. Any number of philosophies will repeat the platitudes of\nChristianity. But it is the ancient Church that can again startle the\nworld with the paradoxes of Christianity. _Ubi Petrus ibi Franciscus._\n\nBut if we understand that it was truly under the inspiration of his\ndivine Master that St.\u00a0Francis did these merely quaint or eccentric acts\nof charity, we must understand that it was under the same inspiration\nthat he did acts of self-denial and austerity. It is clear that these\nmore or less playful parables of the love of men were conceived after a\nclose study of the Sermon on the Mount. But it is evident that he made\nan even closer study of the silent sermon on that other mountain; the\nmountain that was called Golgotha. Here again he was speaking the strict\nhistorical truth, when he said that in fasting or suffering humiliation\nhe was but trying to do something of what Christ did; and here again it\nseems probable that as the same truth appears at the two ends of a chain\nof tradition, the tradition has preserved the truth. But the import of\nthis fact at the moment affects the next phase in the personal history\nof the man himself.\n\nFor as it becomes clearer that his great communal scheme is an\naccomplished fact and past the peril of an early collapse, as it becomes\nevident that there already is such a thing as an Order of the Friars\nMinor, this more individual and intense ambition of St.\u00a0Francis emerges\nmore and more. So soon as he certainly has followers, he does not\ncompare himself with his followers, towards whom he might appear as a\nmaster; he compares himself more and more with his Master, towards whom\nhe appears only as a servant. This, it may be said in passing, is one of\nthe moral and even practical conveniences of the ascetical privilege.\nEvery other sort of superiority may be superciliousness. But the saint\nis never supercilious, for he is always by hypothesis in the presence of\na superior. The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood\nwithout a god. But in any case the service to which St.\u00a0Francis had\ncommitted himself was one which, about this time, he conceived more and\nmore in terms of sacrifice and crucifixion. He was full of the sentiment\nthat he had not suffered enough to be worthy even to be a distant\nfollower of his suffering God. And this passage in his history may\nreally be roughly summarised as the Search for Martyrdom.\n\nThis was the ultimate idea in the remarkable business of his expedition\namong the Saracens in Syria. There were indeed other elements in his\nconception, which are worthy of more intelligent understanding than they\nhave often received. His idea, of course, was to bring the Crusades in a\ndouble sense to their end; that is, to reach their conclusion and to\nachieve their purpose. Only he wished to do it by conversion and not by\nconquest; that is, by intellectual and not material means. The modern\nmind is hard to please; and it generally calls the way of Godfrey\nferocious and the way of Francis fanatical. That is, it calls any moral\nmethod unpractical, when it has just called any practical method\nimmoral. But the idea of St.\u00a0Francis was far from being a fanatical or\nnecessarily even an unpractical idea; though perhaps he saw the problem\nas rather too simple, lacking the learning of his great inheritor\nRaymond Lully, who understood more but has been quite as little\nunderstood. The way he approached the matter was indeed highly personal\nand peculiar; but that was true of almost everything he did. It was in\none way a simple idea, as most of his ideas were simple ideas. But it\nwas not a silly idea; there was a great deal to be said for it and it\nmight have succeeded. It was, of course, simply the idea that it is\nbetter to create Christians than to destroy Moslems. If Islam had been\nconverted, the world would have been immeasurably more united and happy;\nfor one thing, three quarters of the wars of modern history would never\nhave taken place. It was not absurd to suppose that this might be\neffected, without military force, by missionaries who were also martyrs.\nThe Church had conquered Europe in that way and may yet conquer Asia or\nAfrica in that way. But when all this is allowed for, there is still\nanother sense in which St.\u00a0Francis was not thinking of Martyrdom as a\nmeans to an end, but almost as an end in itself; in the sense that to\nhim the supreme end was to come closer to the example of Christ. Through\nall his plunging and restless days ran the refrain: I have not suffered\nenough; I have not sacrificed enough; I am not yet worthy even of the\nshadow of the crown of thorns. He wandered about the valleys of the\nworld looking for the hill that has the outline of a skull.\n\nA little while before his final departure for the East a vast and\ntriumphant assembly of the whole order had been held near the\nPortiuncula; and called The Assembly of the Straw Huts, from the manner\nin which that mighty army encamped in the field. Tradition says that it\nwas on this occasion that St.\u00a0Francis met St.\u00a0Dominic for the first and\nlast time. It also says, what is probable enough, that the practical\nspirit of the Spaniard was almost appalled at the devout\nirresponsibility of the Italian, who had assembled such a crowd without\norganising a commissariat. Dominic the Spaniard was, like nearly every\nSpaniard, a man with the mind of a soldier. His charity took the\npractical form of provision and preparation. But, apart from the\ndisputes about faith which such incidents open, he probably did not\nunderstand in this case the power of mere popularity produced by mere\npersonality. In all his leaps in the dark, Francis had an extraordinary\nfaculty of falling on his feet. The whole countryside came down like a\nlandslide to provide food and drink for this sort of pious picnic.\nPeasants brought waggons of wine and game; great nobles walked about\ndoing the work of footmen. It was a very real victory for the Franciscan\nspirit of a reckless faith not only in God but in man. Of course there\nis much doubt and dispute about the whole story and the whole relation\nof Francis and Dominic; and the story of the Assembly of the Straw Huts\nis told from the Franciscan side. But the alleged meeting is worth\nmentioning, precisely because it was immediately before St.\u00a0Francis set\nforth on his bloodless crusade that he is said to have met St.\u00a0Dominic,\nwho has been so much criticised for lending himself to a more bloody\none. There is no space in this little book to explain how St.\u00a0Francis,\nas much as St.\u00a0Dominic, would ultimately have defended the defence of\nChristian unity by arms. Indeed it would need a large book instead of a\nlittle book to develop that point alone from its first principles. For\nthe modern mind is merely a blank about the philosophy of toleration;\nand the average agnostic of recent times has really had no notion of\nwhat he meant by religious liberty and equality. He took his own ethics\nas self-evident and enforced them; such as decency or the error of the\nAdamite heresy. Then he was horribly shocked if he heard of anybody\nelse, Moslem or Christian, taking _his_ ethics as self-evident and\nenforcing _them_; such as reverence or the error of the Atheist heresy.\nAnd then he wound up by taking all this lop-sided illogical deadlock, of\nthe unconscious meeting the unfamiliar, and called it the liberality of\nhis own mind. Medieval men thought that if a social system was founded\non a certain idea it must fight for that idea, whether it was as simple\nas Islam or as carefully balanced as Catholicism. Modern men really\nthink the same thing, as is clear when communists attack their ideas of\nproperty. Only they do not think it so clearly, because they have not\nreally thought out their idea of property. But while it is probable that\nSt.\u00a0Francis would have reluctantly agreed with St.\u00a0Dominic that war for\nthe truth was right in the last resort, it is certain that St.\u00a0Dominic\ndid enthusiastically agree with St.\u00a0Francis that it was far better to\nprevail by persuasion and enlightenment if it were possible. St.\u00a0Dominic\ndevoted himself much more to persuading than to persecuting; but there\nwas a difference in the methods simply because there was a difference in\nthe men. About everything St.\u00a0Francis did there was something that was\nin a good sense childish, and even in a good sense wilful. He threw\nhimself into things abruptly, as if they had just occurred to him. He\nmade a dash for his Mediterranean enterprise with something of the air\nof a schoolboy running away to sea.\n\nIn the first act of that attempt he characteristically distinguished\nhimself by becoming the Patron Saint of Stowaways. He never thought of\nwaiting for introductions or bargains or any of the considerable backing\nthat he already had from rich and responsible people. He simply saw a\nboat and threw himself into it, as he threw himself into everything\nelse. It has all that air of running a race which makes his whole life\nread like an escapade or even literally an escape. He lay like lumber\namong the cargo, with one companion whom he had swept with him in his\nrush; but the voyage was apparently unfortunate and erratic and ended in\nan enforced return to Italy. Apparently it was after this first false\nstart that the great re-union took place at the Portiuncula, and between\nthis and the final Syrian journey there was also an attempt to meet the\nMoslem menace by preaching to the Moors in Spain. In Spain indeed\nseveral of the first Franciscans had already succeeded gloriously in\nbeing martyred. But the great Francis still went about stretching out\nhis arms for such torments and desiring that agony in vain. No one would\nhave said more readily than he that he was probably less like Christ\nthan those others who had already found their Calvary; but the thing\nremained with him like a secret; the strangest of the sorrows of man.\n\nHis later voyage was more successful, so far as arriving at the scene of\noperations was concerned. He arrived at the headquarters of the Crusade\nwhich was in front of the besieged city of Damietta, and went on in his\nrapid and solitary fashion to seek the headquarters of the Saracens. He\nsucceeded in obtaining an interview with the Sultan; and it was at that\ninterview that he evidently offered, and as some say proceeded, to fling\nhimself into the fire as a divine ordeal, defying the Moslem religious\nteachers to do the same. It is quite certain that he would have done so\nat a moment's notice. Indeed throwing himself into the fire was hardly\nmore desperate, in any case, than throwing himself among the weapons and\ntools of torture of a horde of fanatical Mahomedans and asking them to\nrenounce Mahomet. It is said further that the Mahomedan muftis showed\nsome coldness towards the proposed competition, and that one of them\nquietly withdrew while it was under discussion; which would also appear\ncredible. But for whatever reason Francis evidently returned as freely\nas he came. There may be something in the story of the individual\nimpression produced on the Sultan, which the narrator represents as a\nsort of secret conversion. There may be something in the suggestion that\nthe holy man was unconsciously protected among half-barbarous orientals\nby the halo of sanctity that is supposed in such places to surround an\nidiot. There is probably as much or more in the more generous\nexplanation of that graceful though capricious courtesy and compassion\nwhich mingled with wilder things in the stately Soldans of the type and\ntradition of Saladin. Finally, there is perhaps something in the\nsuggestion that the tale of St.\u00a0Francis might be told as a sort of\nironic tragedy and comedy called The Man Who Could Not Get Killed. Men\nliked him too much for himself to let him die for his faith; and the man\nwas received instead of the message. But all these are only converging\nguesses at a great effort that is hard to judge, because it broke off\nshort like the beginnings of a great bridge that might have united East\nand West, and remains one of the great might-have-beens of history.\n\nMeanwhile the great movement in Italy was making giant strides. Backed\nnow by papal authority as well as popular enthusiasm, and creating a\nkind of comradeship among all classes, it had started a riot of\nreconstruction on all sides of religious and social life; and especially\nbegan to express itself in that enthusiasm for building which is the\nmark of all the resurrections of Western Europe. There had notably been\nestablished at Bologna a magnificent mission house of the Friars Minor;\nand a vast body of them and their sympathisers surrounded it with a\nchorus of acclamation. Their unanimity had a strange interruption. One\nman alone in that crowd was seen to turn and suddenly denounce the\nbuilding as if it had been a Babylonian temple; demanding indignantly\nsince when the Lady Poverty had thus been insulted with the luxury of\npalaces. It was Francis, a wild figure, returned from his Eastern\nCrusade; and it was the first and last time that he spoke in wrath to\nhis children.\n\nA word must be said later about this serious division of sentiment and\npolicy, about which many Franciscans, and to some extent Francis\nhimself, parted company with the more moderate policy which ultimately\nprevailed. At this point we need only note it as another shadow fallen\nupon his spirit after his disappointment in the desert; and as in some\nsense the prelude to the next phase of his career, which is the most\nisolated and the most mysterious. It is true that everything about this\nepisode seems to be covered with some cloud of dispute, even including\nits date; some writers putting it much earlier in the narrative than\nthis. But whether or no it was chronologically it was certainly\nlogically the culmination of the story, and may best be indicated here.\nI say indicated for it must be a matter of little more than indication;\nthe thing being a mystery both in the higher moral and the more trivial\nhistorical sense. Anyhow the conditions of the affair seem to have been\nthese. Francis and a young companion, in the course of their common\nwandering, came past a great castle all lighted up with the festivities\nattending a son of the house receiving the honour of knighthood. This\naristocratic mansion, which took its name from Monte Feltro, they\nentered in their beautiful and casual fashion and began to give their\nown sort of good news. There were some at least who listened to the\nsaint \"as if he had been an angel of God\"; among them a gentleman named\nOrlando of Chiusi, who had great lands in Tuscany, and who proceeded to\ndo St.\u00a0Francis a singular and somewhat picturesque act of courtesy. He\ngave him a mountain; a thing somewhat unique among the gifts of the\nworld. Presumably the Franciscan rule which forbade a man to accept\nmoney had made no detailed provision about accepting mountains. Nor\nindeed did St.\u00a0Francis accept it save as he accepted everything, as a\ntemporary convenience rather than a personal possession; but he turned\nit into a sort of refuge for the eremitical rather than the monastic\nlife; he retired there when he wished for a life of prayer and fasting\nwhich he did not ask even his closest friends to follow. This was\nAlverno of the Apennines, and upon its peak there rests for ever a dark\ncloud that has a rim or halo of glory.\n\nWhat it was exactly that happened there may never be known. The matter\nhas been, I believe, a subject of dispute among the most devout students\nof the saintly life as well as between such students and others of the\nmore secular sort. It may be that St.\u00a0Francis never spoke to a soul on\nthe subject; it would be highly characteristic, and it is certain in any\ncase that he said very little; I think he is only alleged to have spoken\nof it to one man. Subject however to such truly sacred doubts, I will\nconfess that to me personally this one solitary and indirect report that\nhas come down to us reads very like the report of something real; of\nsome of those things that are more real than what we call daily\nrealities. Even something as it were double and bewildering about the\nimage seems to carry the impression of an experience shaking the senses;\nas does the passage in Revelations about the supernatural creatures full\nof eyes. It would seem that St.\u00a0Francis beheld the heavens above him\noccupied by a vast winged being like a seraph spread out like a cross.\nThere seems some mystery about whether the winged figure was itself\ncrucified or in the posture of crucifixion, or whether it merely\nenclosed in its frame of wings some colossal crucifix. But it seems\nclear that there was some question of the former impression; for\nSt.\u00a0Bonaventura distinctly says that St.\u00a0Francis doubted how a seraph\ncould be crucified, since those awful and ancient principalities were\nwithout the infirmity of the Passion. St.\u00a0Bonaventura suggests that the\nseeming contradiction may have meant that St.\u00a0Francis was to be\ncrucified as a spirit since he could not be crucified as a man; but\nwhatever the meaning of the vision, the general idea of it is very vivid\nand overwhelming. St.\u00a0Francis saw above him, filling the whole heavens,\nsome vast immemorial unthinkable power, ancient like the Ancient of\nDays, whose calm men had conceived under the forms of winged bulls or\nmonstrous cherubim, and all that winged wonder was in pain like a\nwounded bird. This seraphic suffering, it is said, pierced his soul with\na sword of grief and pity; it may be inferred that some sort of mounting\nagony accompanied the ecstasy. Finally after some fashion the apocalypse\nfaded from the sky and the agony within subsided; and silence and the\nnatural air filled the morning twilight and settled slowly in the purple\nchasms and cleft abysses of the Apennines.\n\nThe head of the solitary sank, amid all that relaxation and quiet in\nwhich time can drift by with the sense of something ended and complete;\nand as he stared downwards, he saw the marks of nails in his own hands.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter IX_\n _Miracles and Death_\n\n\nThe tremendous story of the Stigmata of St.\u00a0Francis, which was the end\nof the last chapter, was in some sense the end of his life. In a logical\nsense, it would have been the end even if it had happened at the\nbeginning. But truer traditions refer it to a later date and suggest\nthat his remaining days on the earth had something about them of the\nfingering of a shadow. Whether St.\u00a0Bonaventura was right in his hint\nthat St.\u00a0Francis saw in that seraphic vision something almost like a\nvast mirror of his own soul, that could at least suffer like an angel\nthough not like a god, or whether it expressed under an imagery more\nprimitive and colossal than common Christian art the primary paradox of\nthe death of God, it is evident from its traditional consequences that\nit was meant for a crown and for a seal. It seems to have been after\nseeing this vision that he began to go blind.\n\nBut the incident has another and much less important place in this rough\nand limited outline. It is the natural occasion for considering briefly\nand collectively all the facts or fables of another aspect of the life\nof St.\u00a0Francis; an aspect which is, I will not say more disputable, but\ncertainly more disputed. I mean all that mass of testimony and tradition\nthat concerns his miraculous powers and supernatural experiences, with\nwhich it would have been easy to stud and bejewel every page of the\nstory; only that certain circumstances necessary to the conditions of\nthis narration make it better to gather, somewhat hastily, all such\njewels into a heap.\n\nI have here adopted this course in order to make allowance for a\nprejudice. It is indeed to a great extent a prejudice of the past; a\nprejudice that is plainly disappearing in days of greater enlightenment,\nand especially of a greater range of scientific experiment and\nknowledge. But it is a prejudice that is still tenacious in many of an\nolder generation and still traditional in many of the younger. I mean,\nof course, what used to be called the belief \"that miracles do not\nhappen,\" as I think Matthew Arnold expressed it, in expressing the\nstandpoint of so many of our Victorian uncles and great-uncles. In other\nwords it was the remains of that sceptical simplification by which some\nof the philosophers of the early eighteenth century had popularised the\nimpression (for a very short time) that we had discovered the\nregulations of the cosmos like the works of a clock, of so very simple a\nclock that it was possible to distinguish almost at a glance what could\nor could not have happened in human experience. It should be remembered\nthat these real sceptics, of the golden age of scepticism, were quite as\nscornful of the first fancies of science as of the lingering legends of\nreligion. Voltaire, when he was told that a fossil fish had been found\non the peaks of the Alps, laughed openly at the tale and said that some\nfasting monk or hermit had dropped his fish-bones there; possibly in\norder to effect another monkish fraud. Everybody knows by this time that\nscience has had its revenge on scepticism. The border between the\ncredible and the incredible has not only become once more as vague as in\nany barbaric twilight; but the credible is obviously increasing and the\nincredible shrinking. A man in Voltaire's time did not know what miracle\nhe would next have to throw up. A man in our time does not know what\nmiracle he will next have to swallow.\n\nBut long before these things had happened, in those days of my boyhood\nwhen I first saw the figure of St.\u00a0Francis far away in the distance and\ndrawing me even at that distance, in those Victorian days which did\nseriously separate the virtues from the miracles of the saints\u2014even in\nthose days I could not help feeling vaguely puzzled about how this\nmethod could be applied to history. Even then I did not quite\nunderstand, and even now I do not quite understand, on what principle\none is to pick and choose in the chronicles of the past which seem to be\nall of a piece. All our knowledge of certain historical periods, and\nnotably of the whole medieval period, rests on certain connected\nchronicles written by people who are some of them nameless and all of\nthem dead, who cannot in any case be cross-examined and cannot in some\ncases be corroborated. I have never been quite clear about the nature of\nthe right by which historians accepted masses of detail from them as\ndefinitely true, and suddenly denied their truthfulness when one detail\nwas preternatural. I do not complain of their being sceptics; I am\npuzzled about why the sceptics are not more sceptical. I can understand\ntheir saying that these details would never have been included in a\nchronicle except by lunatics or liars; but in that case the only\ninference is that the chronicle was written by liars or lunatics. They\nwill write for instance: \"Monkish fanaticism found it easy to spread the\nreport that miracles were already being worked at the tomb of Thomas\nBecket.\" Why should they not say equally well, \"Monkish fanaticism found\nit easy to spread the slander that four knights from King Henry's court\nhad assassinated Thomas Becket in the cathedral\"? They would write\nsomething like this: \"The credulity of the age readily believed that\nJoan of Arc had been inspired to point out the Dauphin although he was\nin disguise.\" Why should they not write on the same principle: \"The\ncredulity of the age was such as to suppose that an obscure peasant girl\ncould get an audience at the court of the Dauphin\"? And so, in the\npresent case, when they tell us there is a wild story that St.\u00a0Francis\nflung himself into the fire and emerged scathless, upon what precise\nprinciple are they forbidden to tell us of a wild story that St.\u00a0Francis\nflung himself into the camp of the ferocious Moslems and returned safe?\nI only ask for information; for I do not see the rationale of the thing\nmyself. I will undertake to say there was not a word written of\nSt.\u00a0Francis by any contemporary who was himself incapable of believing\nand telling a miraculous story. Perhaps it is all monkish fables and\nthere never was any St.\u00a0Francis or any St.\u00a0Thomas Becket or any Joan of\nArc. This is undoubtedly a _reductio ad absurdum_; but it is a _reductio\nad absurdum_ of the view which thought all miracles absurd.\n\nAnd in abstract logic this method of selection would lead to the wildest\nabsurdities. An intrinsically incredible story could only mean that the\nauthority was unworthy of credit. It could not mean that other parts of\nhis story must be received with complete credulity. If somebody said he\nhad met a man in yellow trousers, who proceeded to jump down his own\nthroat, we should not exactly take our Bible oath or be burned at the\nstake for the statement that he wore yellow trousers. If somebody\nclaimed to have gone up in a blue balloon and found that the moon was\nmade of green cheese, we should not exactly take an affidavit that the\nballoon was blue any more than that the moon was green. And the really\nlogical conclusion from throwing doubts on all tales like the miracles\nof St.\u00a0Francis was to throw doubts on the existence of men like\nSt.\u00a0Francis. And there really was a modern moment, a sort of high-water\nmark of insane scepticism, when this sort of thing was really said or\ndone. People used to go about saying that there was no such person as\nSt.\u00a0Patrick; which is every bit as much of a human and historical howler\nas saying there was no such person as St.\u00a0Francis. There was a time, for\ninstance, when the madness of mythological explanation had dissolved a\nlarge part of solid history under the universal and luxuriant warmth and\nradiance of the Sun-Myth. I believe that that particular sun has already\nset, but there have been any number of moons and meteors to take its\nplace.\n\nSt.\u00a0Francis, of course, would make a magnificent Sun-Myth. How could\nanybody miss the chance of being a Sun-Myth when he is actually best\nknown by a song called The Canticle of the Sun? It is needless to point\nout that the fire in Syria was the dawn in the East and the bleeding\nwounds in Tuscany the sunset in the West. I could expound this theory at\nconsiderable length; only, as so often happens to such fine theorists,\nanother and more promising theory occurs to me. I cannot think how\neverybody, including myself, can have overlooked the fact that the whole\ntale of St.\u00a0Francis is of Totemistic origin. It is unquestionably a tale\nthat simply swarms with totems. The Franciscan woods are as full of them\nas any Red Indian fable. Francis is made to call himself an ass, because\nin the original mythos Francis was merely the name given to the real\nfour-footed donkey, afterwards vaguely evolved into a half-human god or\nhero. And that, no doubt, is why I used to feel that the Brother Wolf\nand Sister Bird of St.\u00a0Francis were somehow like the Brer Fox and Sis\nCow of Uncle Remus. Some say there is an innocent stage of infancy in\nwhich we do really believe that a cow talked or a fox made a tar baby.\nAnyhow there is an innocent period of intellectual growth in which we do\nsometimes really believe that St.\u00a0Patrick was a Sun-Myth or St.\u00a0Francis\na Totem. But for the most of us both those phases of paradise are past.\n\nAs I shall suggest in a moment, there is one sense in which we can for\npractical purposes distinguish between probable and improbable things in\nsuch a story. It is not so much a question of cosmic criticism about the\nnature of the event as of literary criticism about the nature of the\nstory. Some stories are told much more seriously than others. But apart\nfrom this, I shall not attempt here any definite differentiation between\nthem. I shall not do so for a practical reason affecting the utility of\nthe proceeding; I mean the fact that in a practical sense the whole of\nthis matter is again in the melting pot, from which many things may\nemerge moulded into what rationalism would have called monsters. The\nfixed points of faith and philosophy do indeed remain always the same.\nWhether a man believes that fire in one case could fail to burn, depends\non why he thinks it generally does burn. If it burns nine sticks out of\nten because it is its nature or doom to do so, then it will burn the\ntenth stick as well. If it burns nine sticks because it is the will of\nGod that it should, then it might be the will of God that the tenth\nshould be unburned. Nobody can get behind that fundamental difference\nabout the reason of things; and it is as rational for a theist to\nbelieve in miracles as for an atheist to disbelieve in them. In other\nwords there is only one intelligent reason why a man does not believe in\nmiracles and that is that he does believe in materialism. But these\nfixed points of faith and philosophy are things for a theoretical work\nand have no particular place here. And in the matter of history and\nbiography, which have their place here, nothing is fixed at all. The\nworld is in a welter of the possible and impossible, and nobody knows\nwhat will be the next scientific hypothesis to support some ancient\nsuperstition. Three quarters of the miracles attributed to St.\u00a0Francis\nwould already be explained by psychologists, not indeed as a Catholic\nexplains them, but as a materialist must necessarily refuse to explain\nthem. There is one whole department of the miracles of St.\u00a0Francis; the\nmiracles of healing. What is the good of a superior sceptic throwing\nthem away as unthinkable, at the moment when faith-healing is already a\nbig booming Yankee business like Barnum's Show? There is another whole\ndepartment analogous to the tales of Christ \"perceiving men's thoughts.\"\nWhat is the use of censoring them and blacking them out because they are\nmarked \"miracles,\" when thought-reading is already a parlour game like\nmusical chairs? There is another whole department, to be studied\nseparately if such scientific study were possible, of the well-attested\nwonders worked from his relics and fragmentary possessions. What is the\nuse of dismissing all that as inconceivable, when even these common\npsychical parlour tricks turn perpetually upon touching some familiar\nobject or holding in the hand some personal possession? I do not\nbelieve, of course, that these tricks are of the same type as the good\nworks of the saint; save perhaps in the sense of _Diabolus simius Dei_.\nBut it is not a question of what I believe and why, but of what the\nsceptic disbelieves and why. And the moral for the practical biographer\nand historian is that he must wait till things settle down a little\nmore, before he claims to disbelieve anything.\n\nThis being so he can choose between two courses; and not without some\nhesitation, I have here chosen between them. The best and boldest course\nwould be to tell the whole story in a straightforward way, miracles and\nall, as the original historians told it. And to this sane and simple\ncourse the new historians will probably have to return. But it must be\nremembered that this book is avowedly only an introduction to\nSt.\u00a0Francis or the study of St.\u00a0Francis. Those who need an introduction\nare in their nature strangers. With them the object is to get them to\nlisten to St.\u00a0Francis at all; and in doing so it is perfectly legitimate\nso to arrange the order of the facts that the familiar come before the\nunfamiliar and those they can at once understand before those they have\na difficulty in understanding. I should only be too thankful if this\nthin and scratchy sketch contains a line or two that attracts men to\nstudy St.\u00a0Francis for themselves; and if they do study him for\nthemselves, they will soon find that the supernatural part of the story\nseems quite as natural as the rest. But it was necessary that my outline\nshould be a merely human one, since I was only presenting his claim on\nall humanity, including sceptical humanity. I therefore adopted the\nalternative course, of showing first that nobody but a born fool could\nfail to realise that Francis of Assisi was a very real historical human\nbeing; and then summarising briefly in this chapter the superhuman\npowers that were certainly a part of that history and humanity. It only\nremains to say a few words about some distinctions that may reasonably\nbe observed in the matter by any man of any views; that he may not\nconfuse the point and climax of the saint's life with the fancies or\nrumours that were really only the fringes of his reputation.\n\nThere is so immense a mass of legends and anecdotes about St.\u00a0Francis of\nAssisi, and there are so many admirable compilations that cover nearly\nall of them, that I have been compelled within these narrow limits to\npursue a somewhat narrow policy; that of following one line of\nexplanation and only mentioning one anecdote here or there because it\nillustrates that explanation. If this is true about all the legends and\nstories, it is especially true about the miraculous legends and the\nsupernatural stories. If we were to take some stories as they stand, we\nshould receive a rather bewildered impression that the biography\ncontains more supernatural events than natural ones. Now it is clean\nagainst Catholic tradition, co-incident in so many points with common\nsense, to suppose that this is really the proportion of these things in\npractical human life. Moreover, even considered as supernatural or\npreternatural stories, they obviously fall into certain different\nclasses, not so much by our experience of miracles as by our experience\nof stories. Some of them have the character of fairy stories, in their\nform even more than their incident. They are obviously tales told by the\nfire to peasants or the children of peasants, under conditions in which\nnobody thinks he is propounding a religious doctrine to be received or\nrejected, but only rounding off a story in the most symmetrical way,\naccording to that sort of decorative scheme or pattern that runs through\nall fairy stories. Others are obviously in their form most emphatically\nevidence; that is they are testimony that is truth or lies; and it will\nbe very hard for any judge of human nature to think they are lies.\n\nIt is admitted that the story of the Stigmata is not a legend but can\nonly be a lie. I mean that it is certainly not a late legendary\naccretion added afterwards to the fame of St.\u00a0Francis; but is something\nthat started almost immediately with his earliest biographers. It is\npractically necessary to suggest that it was a conspiracy; indeed there\nhas been some disposition to put the fraud upon the unfortunate Elias,\nwhom so many parties have been disposed to treat as a useful universal\nvillain. It has been said, indeed, that these early biographers,\nSt.\u00a0Bonaventura and Celano and the Three Companions, though they declare\nthat St.\u00a0Francis received the mystical wounds, do not say that they\nthemselves saw those wounds. I do not think this argument conclusive;\nbecause it only arises out of the very nature of the narrative. The\nThree Companions are not in any case making an affidavit; and therefore\nnone of the admitted parts of their story are in the form of an\naffidavit. They are writing a chronicle of a comparatively impersonal\nand very objective description. They do not say, \"I saw St.\u00a0Francis's\nwounds\"; they say, \"St.\u00a0Francis received wounds.\" But neither do they\nsay, \"I saw St.\u00a0Francis go into the Portiuncula\"; they say, \"St.\u00a0Francis\nwent into the Portiuncula.\" But I still cannot understand why they\nshould be trusted as eye-witnesses about the one fact and not trusted as\neye-witnesses about the other. It is all of a piece; it would be a most\nabrupt and abnormal interruption in their way of telling the story if\nthey suddenly began to curse and to swear, and give their names and\naddresses, and take their oath that they themselves saw and verified the\nphysical facts in question. It seems to me, therefore, that this\nparticular discussion goes back to the general question I have already\nmentioned; the question of why these chronicles should be credited at\nall, if they are credited with abounding in the incredible. But that\nagain will probably be found to revert, in the last resort, to the mere\nfact that some men cannot believe in miracles because they are\nmaterialists. That is logical enough; but they are bound to deny the\npreternatural as much in the testimony of a modern scientific professor\nas in that of a medieval monkish chronicler. And there are plenty of\nprofessors for them to contradict by this time.\n\nBut whatever may be thought of such supernaturalism in the comparatively\nmaterial and popular sense of supernatural acts, we shall miss the whole\npoint of St.\u00a0Francis, especially of St.\u00a0Francis after Alverno, if we do\nnot realise that he was living a supernatural life. And there is more\nand more of such supernaturalism in his life as he approaches towards\nhis death. This element of the supernatural did not separate him from\nthe natural; for it was the whole point of his position that it united\nhim more perfectly to the natural. It did not make him dismal or\ndehumanised; for it was the whole meaning of his message that such\nmysticism makes a man cheerful and humane. But it was the whole point of\nhis position, and it was the whole meaning of his message, that the\npower that did it was a supernatural power. If this simple distinction\nwere not apparent from the whole of his life, it would be difficult for\nanyone to miss it in reading the account of his death.\n\nIn a sense he may be said to have wandered as a dying man, just as he\nhad wandered as a living one. As it became more and more apparent that\nhis health was failing, he seems to have been carried from place to\nplace like a pageant of sickness or almost like a pageant of mortality.\nHe went to Rieti, to Nursia, perhaps to Naples, certainly to Cortona by\nthe lake of Perugia. But there is something profoundly pathetic, and\nfull of great problems, in the fact that at last, as it would seem, his\nflame of life leapt up and his heart rejoiced when they saw afar off on\nthe Assisian hill the solemn pillars of the Portiuncula. He who had\nbecome a vagabond for the sake of a vision, he who had denied himself\nall sense of place and possession, he whose whole gospel and glory it\nwas to be homeless, received like a Parthian shot from nature, the sting\nof the sense of home. He also had his _maladie du clocher_, his sickness\nof the spire; though his spire was higher than ours. \"Never,\" he cried\nwith the sudden energy of strong spirits in death, \"never give up this\nplace. If you would go anywhere or make any pilgrimage, return always to\nyour home; for this is the holy house of God.\" And the procession passed\nunder the arches of his home; and he laid down on his bed and his\nbrethren gathered round him for the last long vigil. It seems to me no\nmoment for entering into the subsequent disputes about which successors\nhe blessed or in what form and with what significance. In that one\nmighty moment he blessed us all.\n\nAfter he had taken farewell of some of his nearest and especially some\nof his oldest friends, he was lifted at his own request off his own rude\nbed and laid on the bare ground; as some say clad only in a hair-shirt,\nas he had first gone forth into the wintry woods from the presence of\nhis father. It was the final assertion of his great fixed idea; of\npraise and thanks springing to their most towering height out of\nnakedness and nothing. As he lay there we may be certain that his seared\nand blinded eyes saw nothing but their object and their origin. We may\nbe sure that the soul, in its last inconceivable isolation, was face to\nface with nothing less than God Incarnate and Christ Crucified. But for\nthe men standing around him there must have been other thoughts mingling\nwith these; and many memories must have gathered like ghosts in the\ntwilight, as that day wore on and that great darkness descended in which\nwe all lost a friend.\n\nFor what lay dying there was not Dominic of the Dogs of God, a leader in\nlogical and controversial wars that could be reduced to a plan and\nhanded on like a plan; a master of a machine of democratic discipline by\nwhich others could organise themselves. What was passing from the world\nwas a person; a poet; an outlook on life like a light that was never\nafter on sea or land; a thing not to be replaced or repeated while the\nearth endures. It has been said that there was only one Christian, who\ndied on the cross; it is truer to say in this sense that there was only\none Franciscan, whose name was Francis. Huge and happy as was the\npopular work he left behind him, there was something that he could not\nleave behind, any more than a landscape painter can leave his eyes in\nhis will. It was an artist in life who was here called to be an artist\nin death; and he had a better right than Nero, his anti-type, to say\n_Qualis artifex pereo_. For Nero's life was full of posing for the\noccasion like that of an actor; while the Umbrian's had a natural and\ncontinuous grace like that of an athlete. But St.\u00a0Francis had better\nthings to say and better things to think about, and his thoughts were\ncaught upwards where we cannot follow them, in divine and dizzy heights\nto which death alone can lift us up.\n\nRound about him stood the brethren in their brown habits, those that had\nloved him even if they afterwards disputed with each other. There was\nBernard his first friend and Angelo who had served as his secretary and\nElias his successor, whom tradition tried to turn into a sort of Judas,\nbut who seems to have been little worse than an official in the wrong\nplace. His tragedy was that he had a Franciscan habit without a\nFranciscan heart, or at any rate with a very un-Franciscan head. But\nthough he made a bad Franciscan, he might have made a decent Dominican.\nAnyhow, there is no reason to doubt that he loved Francis, for ruffians\nand savages did that. Anyhow he stood among the rest as the hours passed\nand the shadows lengthened in the house of the Portiuncula; and nobody\nneed think so ill of him as to suppose that his thoughts were then in\nthe tumultuous future, in the ambitions and controversies of his later\nyears.\n\nA man might fancy that the birds must have known when it happened; and\nmade some motion in the evening sky. As they had once, according to the\ntale, scattered to the four winds of heaven in the pattern of a cross at\nhis signal of dispersion, they might now have written in such dotted\nlines a more awful augury across the sky. Hidden in the woods perhaps\nwere little cowering creatures never again to be so much noticed and\nunderstood; and it has been said that animals are sometimes conscious of\nthings to which man their spiritual superior is for the moment blind. We\ndo not know whether any shiver passed through all the thieves and the\noutcasts and the outlaws, to tell them what had happened to him who\nnever knew the nature of scorn. But at least in the passages and porches\nof the Portiuncula there was a sudden stillness, where all the brown\nfigures stood like bronze statues; for the stopping of the great heart\nthat had not broken till it held the world.\n\n\n\n\n _Chapter X_\n _The Testament of St.\u00a0Francis_\n\n\nIn one sense doubtless it is a sad irony that St.\u00a0Francis, who all his\nlife had desired all men to agree, should have died amid increasing\ndisagreements. But we must not exaggerate this discord, as some have\ndone, so as to turn it into a mere defeat of all his ideals. There are\nsome who represent his work as having been merely ruined by the\nwickedness of the world, or what they always assume to be the even\ngreater wickedness of the Church.\n\nThis little book is an essay on St.\u00a0Francis and not on the Franciscan\nOrder, still less on the Catholic Church or the Papacy or the policy\npursued towards the extreme Franciscans or the Fraticelli. It is\ntherefore only necessary to note in a very few words what was the\ngeneral nature of the controversy that raged after the great saint's\ndeath, and to some extent troubled the last days of his life. The\ndominant detail was the interpretation of the vow of poverty, or the\nrefusal of all possessions. Nobody so far as I know ever proposed to\ninterfere with the vow of the individual friar that he would have no\nindividual possessions. Nobody, that is, proposed to interfere with his\nnegation of private property. But some Franciscans, invoking the\nauthority of Francis on their side, went further than this and further I\nthink than anybody else has ever gone. They proposed to abolish not only\nprivate property but property. That is, they refused to be corporately\nresponsible for anything at all; for any buildings or stores or tools;\nthey refused to own them collectively even when they used them\ncollectively. It is perfectly true that many, especially among the first\nsupporters of this view, were men of a splendid and selfless spirit,\nwholly devoted to the great saint's ideal. It is also perfectly true\nthat the Pope and the authorities of the Church did not think this\nconception was a workable arrangement, and went so far in modifying it\nas to set aside certain clauses in the great saint's will. But it is not\nat all easy to see that it _was_ a workable arrangement or even an\narrangement at all; for it was really a refusal to arrange anything.\nEverybody knew of course that Franciscans were communists; but this was\nnot so much being a communist as being an anarchist. Surely upon any\nargument somebody or something must be answerable for what happened to\nor in or concerning a number of historic edifices and ordinary goods and\nchattels. Many idealists of a socialistic sort, notably of the school of\nMr. Shaw or Mr. Wells, have treated this dispute as if it were merely a\ncase of the tyranny of wealthy and wicked pontiffs crushing the true\nChristianity of Christian Socialists. But in truth this extreme ideal\nwas in a sense the very reverse of Socialist, or even social. Precisely\nthe thing which these enthusiasts refused was that social ownership on\nwhich Socialism is built; what they primarily refused to do was what\nSocialists primarily exist to do; to own legally in their corporate\ncapacity. Nor is it true that the tone of the Popes towards the\nenthusiasts was merely harsh and hostile. The Pope maintained for a long\ntime a compromise which he had specially designed to meet their own\nconscientious objections; a compromise by which the Papacy itself held\nthe property in a kind of trust for the owners who refused to touch it.\nThe truth is that this incident shows two things which are common enough\nin Catholic history, but very little understood by the journalistic\nhistory of industrial civilisation. It shows that the Saints were\nsometimes great men when the Popes were small men. But it also shows\nthat great men are sometimes wrong when small men are right. And it will\nbe found, after all, very difficult for any candid and clear-headed\noutsider to deny that the Pope was right, when he insisted that the\nworld was not made only for Franciscans.\n\nFor that was what was behind the quarrel. At the back of this particular\npractical question there was something much larger and more momentous,\nthe stir and wind of which we can feel as we read the controversy. We\nmight go so far as to put the ultimate truth thus. St.\u00a0Francis was so\ngreat and original a man that he had something in him of what makes the\nfounder of a religion. Many of his followers were more or less ready, in\ntheir hearts, to treat him as the founder of a religion. They were\nwilling to let the Franciscan spirit escape from Christendom as the\nChristian spirit had escaped from Israel. They were willing to let it\neclipse Christendom as the Christian spirit had eclipsed Israel.\nFrancis, the fire that ran through the roads of Italy, was to be the\nbeginning of a conflagration in which the old Christian civilisation was\nto be consumed. That was the point the Pope had to settle; whether\nChristendom should absorb Francis or Francis Christendom. And he decided\nrightly, apart from the duties of his place; for the Church could\ninclude all that was good in the Franciscans and the Franciscans could\nnot include all that was good in the Church.\n\nThere is one consideration which, though sufficiently clear in the whole\nstory, has not perhaps been sufficiently noted, especially by those who\ncannot see the case for a certain Catholic common sense larger even than\nFranciscan enthusiasm. Yet it arises out of the very merits of the man\nwhom they so rightly admire. Francis of Assisi, as has been said again\nand again, was a poet; that is, he was a person who could express his\npersonality. Now it is everywhere the mark of this sort of man that his\nvery limitations make him larger. He is what he is, not only by what he\nhas, but in some degree by what he has not. But the limits that make the\nlines of such a personal portrait cannot be made the limits of all\nhumanity. St.\u00a0Francis is a very strong example of this quality in the\nman of genius, that in him even what is negative is positive, because it\nis part of a character. An excellent example of what I mean may be found\nin his attitude towards learning and scholarship. He ignored and in some\ndegree discouraged books and book-learning; and from his own point of\nview and that of his own work in the world he was absolutely right. The\nwhole point of his message was to be so simple that the village idiot\ncould understand it. The whole point of his point of view was that it\nlooked out freshly upon a fresh world, that might have been made that\nmorning. Save for the great primal things, the Creation and the Story of\nEden, the first Christmas and the first Easter, the world had no\nhistory. But is it desired or desirable that the whole Catholic Church\nshould have no history?\n\nIt is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that St.\u00a0Francis walked\nthe world like the Pardon of God. I mean that his appearance marked the\nmoment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and,\nmost difficult of all, to themselves. For it marked the moment when all\nthe stale paganism that had poisoned the ancient world was at last\nworked out of the social system. He opened the gates of the Dark Ages as\nof a prison of purgatory, where men had cleansed themselves as hermits\nin the desert or heroes in the barbarian wars. It was in fact his whole\nfunction to tell men to start afresh and, in that sense, to tell them to\nforget. If they were to turn over a new leaf and begin a fresh page with\nthe first large letters of the alphabet, simply drawn and brilliantly\ncoloured in the early medieval manner, it was clearly a part of that\nparticular childlike cheerfulness that they should paste down the old\npage that was all black and bloody with horrid things. For instance, I\nhave already noted that there is not a trace in the poetry of this first\nItalian poet of all that pagan mythology which lingered long after\npaganism. The first Italian poet seems the only man in the world who has\nnever even heard of Virgil. This was exactly right for the special sense\nin which he is the first Italian poet. It is quite right that he should\ncall a nightingale a nightingale, and not have its song spoilt or\nsaddened by the terrible tales of Itylus or Procne. In short, it is\nreally quite right and quite desirable that St.\u00a0Francis should never\nhave heard of Virgil. But do we really desire that Dante should never\nhave heard of Virgil? Do we really desire that Dante should never have\nread any pagan mythology? It has been truly said that the use that Dante\nmakes of such fables is altogether part of a deeper orthodoxy; that his\nhuge heathen fragments, his gigantic figures of Minos or of Charon, only\ngive a hint of some enormous natural religion behind all history and\nfrom the first foreshadowing the Faith. It is well to have the Sybil as\nwell as David in the Dies Irae. That St.\u00a0Francis would have burned all\nthe leaves of all the books of the Sybil, in exchange for one fresh leaf\nfrom the nearest tree, is perfectly true; and perfectly proper to\nSt.\u00a0Francis. But it is good to have the Dies Irae as well as the\nCanticle of the Sun.\n\nBy this thesis, in short, the coming of St.\u00a0Francis was like the birth\nof a child in a dark house, lifting its doom; a child that grows up\nunconscious of the tragedy and triumphs over it by his innocence. In him\nit is necessarily not only innocence but ignorance. It is the essence of\nthe story that _he_ should pluck at the green grass without knowing it\ngrows over a murdered man or climb the apple-tree without knowing it was\nthe gibbet of a suicide. It was such an amnesty and reconciliation that\nthe freshness of the Franciscan spirit brought to all the world. But it\ndoes not follow that it ought to impose its ignorance on all the world.\nAnd I think it would have tried to impose it on all the world. For some\nFranciscans it would have seemed right that Franciscan poetry should\nexpel Benedictine prose. For the symbolic child it was quite rational.\nIt was right enough that for such a child the world should be a large\nnew nursery with blank white-washed walls, on which he could draw his\nown pictures in chalk in the childish fashion, crude in outline and gay\nin colour; the beginnings of all our art. It was right enough that to\nhim such a nursery should seem the most magnificent mansion of the\nimagination of man. But in the Church of God are many mansions.\n\nEvery heresy has been an effort to narrow the Church. If the Franciscan\nmovement had turned into a new religion, it would after all have been a\nnarrow religion. In so far as it did turn here and there into a heresy,\nit was a narrow heresy. It did what heresy always does; it set the mood\nagainst the mind. The mood was indeed originally the good and glorious\nmood of the great St.\u00a0Francis, but it was not the whole mind of God or\neven of man. And it is a fact that the mood itself degenerated, as the\nmood turned into a monomania. A sect that came to be called the\nFraticelli declared themselves the true sons of St.\u00a0Francis and broke\naway from the compromises of Rome in favour of what they would have\ncalled the complete programme of Assisi. In a very little while these\nloose Franciscans began to look as ferocious as Flagellants. They\nlaunched new and violent vetoes; they denounced marriage; that is, they\ndenounced mankind. In the name of the most human of saints they declared\nwar upon humanity. They did not perish particularly through being\npersecuted; many of them were eventually persuaded; and the\nunpersuadable rump of them that remained remained without producing\nanything in the least calculated to remind anybody of the real\nSt.\u00a0Francis. What was the matter with these people was that they were\nmystics; mystics and nothing else but mystics; mystics and not\nCatholics; mystics and not Christians; mystics and not men. They rotted\naway because, in the most exact sense, they would not listen to reason.\nAnd St.\u00a0Francis, however wild and romantic his gyrations might appear to\nmany, always hung on to reason by one invisible and indestructible hair.\n\nThe great saint was sane; and with the very sound of the word sanity, as\nat a deeper chord struck upon a harp, we come back to something that was\nindeed deeper than everything about him that seemed an almost elvish\neccentricity. He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning\ntowards the centre and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most\nzigzag short cuts through the wood, but he was always going home. He was\nnot only far too humble to be an heresiarch, but he was far too human to\ndesire to be an extremist, in the sense of an exile at the ends of the\nearth. The sense of humour which salts all the stories of his escapades\nalone prevented him from ever hardening into the solemnity of sectarian\nself-righteousness. He was by nature ready to admit that he was wrong;\nand if his followers had on some practical points to admit that he was\nwrong, they only admitted that he was wrong in order to prove that he\nwas right. For it is they, his real followers, who have really proved\nthat he was right and even in transcending some of his negations have\ntriumphantly extended and interpreted his truth. The Franciscan order\ndid not fossilise or break off short like something of which the true\npurpose has been frustrated by official tyranny or internal treason. It\nwas this, the central and orthodox trunk of it, that afterwards bore\nfruit for the world. It counted among its sons Bonaventura the great\nmystic and Bernardino the popular preacher, who filled Italy with the\nvery beatific buffooneries of a Jongleur de Dieu. It counted Raymond\nLully with his strange learning and his large and daring plans for the\nconversion of the world; a man intensely individual exactly as\nSt.\u00a0Francis was intensely individual. It counted Roger Bacon, the first\nnaturalist whose experiments with light and water had all the luminous\nquaintness that belongs to the beginnings of natural history; and whom\neven the most material scientists have hailed as a father of science. It\nis not merely true that these were great men who did great work for the\nworld; it is also true that they were a certain kind of men keeping the\nspirit and savour of a certain kind of man, that we can recognise in\nthem a taste and tang of audacity and simplicity, and know them for the\nsons of St.\u00a0Francis.\n\nFor that is the full and final spirit in which we should turn to\nSt.\u00a0Francis; in the spirit of thanks for what he has done. He was above\nall things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of\ngiving which is called thanksgiving. If another great man wrote a\ngrammar of assent, he may well be said to have written a grammar of\nacceptance; a grammar of gratitude. He understood down to its very\ndepths the theory of thanks; and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He\nknew that the praise of God stands on its strongest ground when it\nstands on nothing. He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle\nof the mere fact of existence if we realise that but for some strange\nmercy we should not even exist. And something of that larger truth is\nrepeated in a lesser form in our own relations with so mighty a maker of\nhistory. He also is a giver of things we could not have even thought of\nfor ourselves; he also is too great for anything but gratitude. From him\ncame a whole awakening of the world and a dawn in which all shapes and\ncolours could be seen anew. The mighty men of genius who made the\nChristian civilisation that we know appear in history almost as his\nservants and imitators. Before Dante was, he had given poetry to Italy;\nbefore St.\u00a0Louis ruled, he had risen as the tribune of the poor; and\nbefore Giotto had painted the pictures, he had enacted the scenes. That\ngreat painter who began the whole human inspiration of European painting\nhad himself gone to St.\u00a0Francis to be inspired. It is said that when\nSt.\u00a0Francis staged in his own simple fashion a Nativity Play of\nBethlehem, with kings and angels in the stiff and gay medieval garments\nand the golden wigs that stood for haloes, a miracle was wrought full of\nthe Franciscan glory. The Holy Child was a wooden doll or bambino, and\nit was said that he embraced it and that the image came to life in his\narms. He assuredly was not thinking of lesser things; but we may at\nleast say that one thing came to life in his arms; and that was the\nthing that we call the drama. Save for his intense individual love of\nsong, he did not perhaps himself embody this spirit in any of these\narts. He was the spirit that was embodied. He was the spiritual essence\nand substance that walked the world, before anyone had seen these things\nin visible forms derived from it: a wandering fire as if from nowhere,\nat which men more material could light both torches and tapers. He was\nthe soul of medieval civilisation before it even found a body. Another\nand quite different stream of spiritual inspiration derives largely from\nhim; all that reforming energy of medieval and modern times that goes to\nthe burden of _Deus est Deus Pauperum_. His abstract ardour for human\nbeings was in a multitude of just medieval laws against the pride and\ncruelty of riches; it is to-day behind much that is loosely called\nChristian Socialist and can more correctly be called Catholic Democrat.\nNeither on the artistic nor the social side would anybody pretend that\nthese things would not have existed without him; yet it is strictly true\nto say that we cannot now imagine them without him; since he has lived\nand changed the world.\n\nAnd something of that sense of impotence which was more than half his\npower will descend on anyone who knows what that inspiration has been in\nhistory, and can only record it in a series of straggling and meagre\nsentences. He will know something of what St.\u00a0Francis meant by the great\nand good debt that cannot be paid. He will feel at once the desire to\nhave done infinitely more and the futility of having done anything. He\nwill know what it is to stand under such a deluge of a dead man's\nmarvels, and have nothing in return to establish against it; to have\nnothing to set up under the overhanging, overwhelming arches of such a\ntemple of time and eternity, but this brief candle burnt out so quickly\nbefore his shrine.\n\n\n\n\n HODDER AND STOUGHTON'S\n PEOPLE'S LIBRARY\n\n GENERAL EDITOR: SIDNEY DARK\n\n 2/6 net each volume\n\n ST. PAUL'S HOUSE, WARWICK SQUARE, E.C.4\n\n\nST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON.\n\nVICTORIAN POETRY. By JOHN DRINKWATER.\n\nEVERYDAY BIOLOGY. By J. ARTHUR THOMSON.\n\nTHE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE. By FRANK RUTTER.\n\nTHE STORY OF THE RENAISSANCE. By SIDNEY DARK.\n\nATOMS AND ELECTRONS. By J. W. N. SULLIVAN.\n\nHOW TO READ HISTORY. By W. WATKIN DAVIES.\n\nOUR DEBT TO GREECE AND ROME. By E. B. OSBORN.\n\nHOW TO ENJOY THE COUNTRYSIDE. By MARCUS WOODWARD.\n\nHOW TO ENJOY LIFE. By SIDNEY DARK.\n\nHOW TO ENJOY THE BIBLE. By CANON ANTHONY C. DEANE, M.A.\n\n\n _General Preface_\n\nThe object of HODDER AND STOUGHTON'S PEOPLE'S LIBRARY is to supply in\nbrief form simply written introductions to the study of History,\nLiterature, Biography and Science; in some degree to satisfy that\never-increasing demand for knowledge which is one of the happiest\ncharacteristics of our time. The names of the authors of the first\nvolumes of the Library are sufficient evidence of the fact that each\nsubject will be dealt with authoritatively, while the authority will not\nbe of the \"dry-as-dust\" order. Not only is it possible to have learning\nwithout tears, but it is also possible to make the acquiring of\nknowledge a thrilling and entertaining adventure. HODDER AND STOUGHTON'S\nPEOPLE'S LIBRARY will, it is hoped, supply this adventure.\n\n_Printed in Great Britain. R. Clay & Sons, Ltd., Printers, Bungay._","title":"St. Francis of Assisi","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":44242}