Francis of Assisi

ON ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, CONFESSOR, FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR, IN UMBRIA,

AT ASSISI IN UMBRIA.

IN THE YEAR MCCXXVI.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Francis, confessor, founder of the Order of Friars Minor, at Assisi in Umbria. (S.)

BHL Number: 3095, 3103, 3117

BY C. S.

§ I. The chief writers who have treated of St. Francis, the last of whom is St. Bonaventure: the Lives to be published here, with their supplements.

To the illustration of the deeds of St. Francis of Assisi

our own John Stilting had already for some time

devoted diligent labor after his manner,

From the six Lives named by Wadding and had already written no little,

when, seized by illness,

he was called by God to the happy fellowship of that Saint and of the others

in the narrating of whose Acts he had spent very many years —

as indeed we can and ought to trust. What he prepared

will be of great use to me, and, just as he had begun,

I begin with the biographers. Luke Wadding, in the Annals

of the Minors of the first Lyons edition

of the year 1625 (which I shall use throughout the course of this Commentary,

except where I give notice otherwise), at

the year 1230, n. 7, enumerates them thus. The first

of all to write his Life, by the command of Gregory

IX (from whom the Legend itself was named), was Thomas

of Celano, of the province of Penne, now called that of St.

Bernardine, a familiar of the holy Father, from whom,

or from his companions, he received all that he related. The second

was the venerable lord John of Ceperano,

apostolic notary, most highly devoted

to the holy Man. Third, a certain Englishman reduced that Legend

of Celano's to the meter of a grave and learned

heroic poem. Fourth, his acts were related more at length

by his three companions, Leo, Angelus

and Rufinus, by the command of the Minister general,

Brother Crescentius. Fifth, at the same man's bidding

the aforenamed Celano wrote a fuller History

of the holy Man than before, to which he added a second

part, John of Parma, the Minister general, so directing;

and this is that which is commonly called the Ancient Legend.

Sixth, St. Bonaventure wove together out of them all

a grave and candid Legend, at

the request of well-nigh the whole brotherhood: then he composed

another and briefer one, which is distributed through

the Office to be recited on the solemnities of St. Francis.

[2] Wadding passes on to others; but let us halt

here a little while; we have the first from the abbey of Longpont, for although he has enumerated the chief documents

which lay before St. Bonaventure,

yet that most learned man could not do this

accurately enough, perhaps because he had not seen all

those Lives, although he has cited no few fragments of them

in the Annals, transcribed sometimes, as I suspect,

from others. There is reason for doubting, both because he nowhere asserts

that he has them all

in his possession, and because he sometimes seems that he would altogether have written

otherwise, had he consulted them all,

as I shall indicate in their places. Perhaps the Life written by

Bonaventure, on account of the surpassing authority of the holy doctor,

brought it about that the earlier ones were neglected.

Certainly we know of none of the earlier ones hitherto published in print.

Casimir Oudin, vol. 3 On Ecclesiastical Writers,

col. 105, speaks thus of the copy of the first Life by Celano: This work indeed

exists anonymously in manuscript on parchment in the library

of Longpont, of the Cistercian Order, in the

district of Soissons, bearing such marks of antiquity

that it might seem to be the original codex. A copy of it

was sent to me by John Baptist Desnoiville,

Prior of this abbey, and by my care

was destined for and received by Daniel Papebroch.

[3] written by Thomas of Celano at the bidding of Gregory IX So it is; we have it, sent from Oudin with a letter,

while he, before his defection to the heterodox,

was acting as subprior in the abbey of Bucilly,

of the Premonstratensian Order, in the diocese of Laon.

It is a quite excellent Life, exhibiting a writer

learned and pious, who indeed keeps silence about his own

name, but since in the Prologue he says that he writes

at the bidding of the lord and glorious Pope Gregory,

and in many places hints that he was a disciple of St. Francis,

I do not doubt that he is the Thomas of Celano praised

by Wadding, who alone, at least among the Friars Minor,

wrote a Life of St. Francis at the command of that same

Pontiff. There is this further reason as well, that everything Wadding

has cited as from the Legend of Thomas of Celano

is found in this one. And that he is the first

biographer of St. Francis is abundantly shown by

the very beginning of the Prologue, which I subjoin. Desiring to set forth in order, with pious

devotion, the acts and life of our most blessed father Francis,

truth always going before as guide and mistress,

and because no one's memory holds in full all that he

did and taught, I have striven at least to set out, at the bidding of

the lord and glorious Pope Gregory, as best I

could, though in unskilled words, those things which I heard from his own lips

or learned from faithful and approved witnesses.

This Prologue, not the Life, exists published entire

in Martène, vol. 1 of the Anecdota, col.

956.

[4] and divided into three books, Further, this whole Life is divided not only into two parts, as

Wadding hinted above concerning Celano's second

composition, but into three parts or books,

as the author himself sets forth in the Prologue. The first book,

generally preserving the order of time, presents

the deeds and miracles of St. Francis down to the last year but one

of his life, 1224 of the Christian era. The second

relates the acts of the two final years,

the sacred stigmata then impressed, the Saint's infirmities,

his blessed death and honorable burial.

The third, finally, narrates his canonization,

which took place in the year 1228, and the earlier miracles after his

death. But it is silent about the translation of the body,

which followed in the year 1230. Wherefore that Life

was completed before the translation, which otherwise

he would not have passed over in silence; so that perhaps it was begun to be written, at the bidding of Gregory IX, before a year

had elapsed from the Saint's death; for

the first book, and indeed the second as well, could have been finished before

the canonization, and the third added after it.

[5] Accordingly its authority is not less than that of

the Life written by St. Bonaventure, which Wadding did not know well enough. if you consider the time

and the testimonies of an eyewitness and familiar writer;

and that pious and learned biographer deserved by this

little work of his fuller praises than Wadding

gave him, both in the Library of Writers

and in the Annals. But, as I have already noted,

that erudite Annalist seems not to have had this

little work. In the Library, p. 323, he likewise attributes

a double Legend to Thomas de Cellano (so the name is written there).

Of the former he says: He had earlier published the other

Lesser Legend, which

was read in choir. He agrees in the Annals at

the year 1244, n. 10; but he adds that that Lesser one

was composed by Celano at the command of Gregory IX

of happy memory. Of the other, which he holds to have been written

much later, namely under Crescentius, Minister general

of the Order, I shall dispute below. Celano may,

at Gregory's bidding, after Francis's canonization,

celebrated by that same Pontiff in the year 1228,

have composed some lesser Legend for the use of the choir;

but ours, which is established to have been written by Celano

at that same Gregory's order, is neither brief

nor adapted to that use, and it is earlier than the translation

of the sacred body, made in the year 1230.

Wherefore if the aforesaid Annalist had had this our Life

entire, he would, I think, have spoken otherwise about Celano's little works;

for from the fragments which

he received from somewhere he could not know it well enough.

[6] But what the same Annalist of the Minors says

is certain, Its author was received into the Order by St. Francis himself. that he was among the disciples of St. Francis.

But at about what time he joined himself to him, he himself seems

to me to have hinted in some fashion in humble words

in the Life to be published, when at n. 56, narrating

that St. Francis in Spain was hindered by illness

from crossing over into Africa, he speaks in this way:

But the good God, to whom it was pleasing to be mindful of me and of many others,

when he had already gone into Spain

… by a persistent sickness recalled him from the journey he had begun.

And as he was returning to the church

of St. Mary of the Portiuncula, a short time

afterward certain lettered men and certain

nobles most gladly attached themselves to him. Among these lettered

men Celano himself probably was: for which

reason, since that return of the Saint from Spain is to be assigned to the year

1215, Thomas's entrance into his brotherhood

seems to have taken place in the same year, or in the one that followed.

Certainly in the year 1222 he was not a novice in the Order,

but a man of great authority, if what

Wadding writes in the same place, n. 24, is true, that he had already

then been appointed custos, as they call it, of the convents of Mainz,

Worms and Cologne by Caesarius,

Minister of Germany, and soon afterward his vicar as well.

Wadding at the year

1221, n. 6, called the same man Thomas of

Zelchium or Celano; but I judge him to have been called Celanus or Celanensis

from the town of Celano, which

is near Lake Fucinus, commonly called de Celano

in the Marsian country. This is enough about the man, whom

the Life to be published will itself commend, inasmuch as it is written

piously, learnedly and elegantly — at least if we pardon

certain grammatical trifles to the author's century.

[7] Other Lives of the same Saint are also attributed to him. As to the other Life, Wadding

in the Library, at the place cited, speaks of it thus:

Thomas de Cellano, of the province of Penne, disciple and

companion of St. Francis, published by the command

of Crescentius, Minister general, and of the general

chapter of Genoa, a book on the life and miracles

of St. Francis, which Gregory the Ninth, most intimately

familiar with that Saint, approved. It begins:

It has pleased your holy body.

It is commonly called by the Friars the Ancient

Legend. He handed down the same things in the Annals

at the year 1244, in which the said chapter was

held at Genoa, n. 10; but there he more correctly did not say

that this Legend was approved by Gregory IX.

Certainly Gregory IX, who died in the year 1241,

could not approve a Legend which, by the command

of the general chapter celebrated in the year 1244,

was begun to be written. That a double Legend of St. Francis

was written by Celano I have also been informed

by the Reverend Conventual Fathers of Rome in the documents

which they most kindly sent us,

and which will be of great use to me. They cite

a manuscript Chronicle on parchment, preserved at Rome in the library

of the most excellent prince de Conti, duke of Poli,

but mutilated, whose author is Salimbene

of Parma, received into the Order of Minors by Brother

Helias in the year 1238, as they say is established from

p. 246 of the same Chronicle. In it, at p. 283, concerning Crescentius,

Minister general, they assert that the following is read to our purpose.

[8] of which others ascribe the chief one to Ceperano, He enjoined on Brother Thomas of Celano, who

had made the first Legend of B. Francis, that he should again

write another book, because many things

were found concerning B. Francis which had not been

written; and he wrote a most beautiful book, both

on the miracles and on the life, which he called

the Memorial of B. Francis in the desire of the soul…

But in the course of time, by Brother Bonaventure,

Minister General, there was compiled out of all of these

one exceedingly well ordered. The Prologue of this

Legend begins: It has pleased the holy body

of the general chapter of old, and you,

most reverend father. The same most kind fathers offered us a copy

of the former Legend, as they suppose,

from the manuscript codex of their convent of Assisi,

and I should have used their kindness here also,

had the shortness of time permitted, and had not the Life which we have,

and St. Bonaventure, who out of all the compositions on St. Francis

earlier than himself put together a Life,

sufficiently made up for this lack. But the same Reverend Fathers here

cast a scruple upon me, when from the Chronicle of the twenty-

four Generals they recount nearly the same things of Thomas of Ceperano,

Rodulphius agreeing, of whom Wadding

in the Annals at the year 1244, n. 10,

speaking on the same subject, says: For Celano

Rodulphius substituted Ceperano, deceived by the similarity

of the name. Whether this is right or otherwise

I do not discern; but I shall presently give the words

of the aforesaid Chronicle below.

[9] [nor is there sufficient certainty about the rest. What is called the Ancient Legend.] Further, from what has been said thus far it would follow that Thomas

of Celano wrote the deeds of his holy Father four times;

first, namely, at the command of Gregory IX,

a briefer Legend for the use of the choir; secondly

a fuller one at the same man's bidding, which I shall publish; thirdly

by the command of Crescentius, Minister general, and finally

fourthly at the order of John of Parma, who in the year

1247 had succeeded Crescentius in the general ministry.

He would more easily find credit with me who

should say that Celano, at the command of the aforesaid Pontiff or of one or other

of the named Ministers general, added to the Life which we have as composed by him

a part, or fourth book, in which the translation

of the sacred body — before which he had written the three earlier books —

and the later miracles were set forth;

whether, however, he did this, I have not ascertained.

It also appears to me not a little doubtful whether,

when Wadding in the Annals cites the Ancient Life,

this is truly that other one which Salimbene

mentioned above; both because I cannot gather with certainty from Wadding

that it was seen by him,

and because the name Ancient Legend may deceive;

for other Lives too could have been so called by the writers

who preceded Wadding. Indeed he himself,

in the words given at n. 8, acknowledged that the one which

Ceperano is believed to have written is called the Ancient Legend

by Rodulphius, which is also asserted

in the Chronicle of the twenty-four Generals, in the words

presently to be recited. In Pisanus too, in the book

of Conformities, the Ancient Legend is cited several times;

but generally for certain admonitions and sayings of St. Francis,

so that by the Ancient Legend a Life does not seem

to be indicated there, but rather a certain

collection of the sayings of that same Saint. So much thus far about

Celano.

[10] Of the second biographer of St. Francis Wadding

has less to say Another Life by John or Thomas Ceperanus, than of the first. In the words

given at n. 1 he is called John of Ceperano, and is said

to have been an apostolic notary, most highly devoted to the holy

Man. In the Annals at the year

1244, n. 10, he is called Thomas Ceparanus,

and it is added: He was a secular, by office

a protonotary; he too by the command of Gregory the Ninth

followed B. Francis with his pen. But in the

Library of the Minors we read: Thomas of Ceperano,

imitating the man of Celano (of whom we have just treated),

also wrote by the command of the same General

(Crescentius) a Life of St. Francis. From wherever

this variation arose, he is also called Thomas,

and is said to have belonged to the Order of Minors, and is read to have written

by the command of Crescentius in the Chronicle

of the twenty-four Generals, whose words, transcribed from the parchment

manuscript of the archive of the convent of St. Francis at Assisi,

I have received from the Reverend Conventual Fathers praised above and to be praised again.

The anonymous author of this Chronicle, after he had said that by the command

of Crescentius, given in the chapter at Genoa, many things about

St. Francis had been written by many, and among these by the Three

Companions, and sent to Crescentius,

went on thus: And afterward Brother Thomas of Ceperano,

by the command of the same Minister and of the General chapter,

compiled the first treatise of the Legend of B. Francis,

namely on his life and words and his intention concerning

those things which pertain to the Rule,

which is called the Ancient Legend, and which is addressed to the said

General and chapter with a Prologue that

begins: It has pleased your holy body.

Which Legend afterward Brother Bernard

de Bessa reduced to a more compendious form.

[11] Again in the same place, in the Life of Brother John

of Parma, they say this is read: said to have been written by a secular or a Minorite, This General enjoined,

with repeated letters, upon Brother Thomas of Ceperano,

that he should complete the Life of B. Francis which is called

the Ancient Legend; because he had made mention only of

his conversion and words in the first treatise,

compiled at the command of Brother Crescentius;

and so he compiled the second treatise, which treats of

the miracles of the same holy Father.

This he sent to the same General with a letter which begins, Our religious

solicitude.

All these things, if they are not the same, certainly have so great

an affinity with those which Wadding narrated of Thomas

of Celano, that I can scarcely doubt

that from the similarity of the two biographers' names

certain things which belonged to the one were attributed to the other,

or the reverse. And that I may doubt still less,

the aforesaid chronologist called the author of the Life abridged by Bernard de Bessa

Thomas Ceperanus, while Wadding in the Library called him Thomas

of Celano, whose words we shall give

below, when there will be discussion of Bernard de Bessa.

However that may be, I wrote to obtain the aforesaid Work of Ceperano,

whether he was called John or Thomas,

whether a secular or a Friar Minor, from the most kindly

Conventual Fathers of Rome; but

they regretfully denied that there was any copy of it in their keeping

that they knew of. In this darkness I am compelled to doubt

whether what Wadding asserted at the year 1244,

Ceperanus, a secular protonotary, who

in the time of Gregory IX wrote the deeds of St. Francis after the man of Celano.

Why I suspect this, I shall set forth.

[12] if he was a secular, the Life which I have in a codex may be his, There exists in our Museum a thick parchment codex,

once Isaac Vossius's, marked P. MS. 10,

which seems to have been written about the end of the thirteenth century or

the beginning of the next. In it, at the fourth day of October,

is read a Life of St. Francis which, of all

that I have seen, one may not idly conjecture to be the second,

and written not many years after

1230. The author of this Life beyond doubt had at hand

the first, written by Celano, since

he generally follows it, and narrates the deeds related in it in nearly

the same order, but very often in different words and a little

more briefly. But since the first Life is not

carried down to the translation of the body, made in the year

1230, this one added that, and nothing besides,

except that it mentions in a general way that miracles were obtained after

the translation. Hence it is manifest

that this Life was composed after the first.

That its author wrote under Gregory IX is gathered

from his manner of speaking of Gregory, of whom he always

writes as of one living, otherwise than of the two

predecessors of that same Pope, Honorius III and Innocent

III. He also mentions St. Clare as living, when

he narrates that the body of St. Francis was carried to her and

seen by her. A third reason is drawn from the comparison

of the remaining Lives, the last of which was written by

St. Bonaventure. For from the comparison of the said Life

with the Legend of the Three Companions, written in the year 1246 or

1247, and with another manuscript account of nearly the same time,

to be cited below, and finally

with the one written by Bonaventure, it is detected

that these three little works were unknown to the writer of the Life

with which we are dealing.

[13] which is truly ancient, Moreover, what still more surely commends its antiquity:

from this one and from the first Vincent of Beauvais took, indeed

almost transcribed, the things which, before the Life written by Bonaventure,

he inserted about St. Francis from his Deeds into his Speculum Historiale,

bk. 29, ch. 97 and the two following,

and again bk. 30, ch. 99 and some following,

as will become beyond doubt to anyone comparing these with the aforesaid Lives.

And indeed, that at least two Lives of St.

Francis existed before the year 1246 or 1247, is clear

from the little Work of the Three Companions, to be mentioned below,

which they, in one or the other of those years, sent together with their letter

to Crescentius, Minister general.

For in the Letter they say: We do not write

after the manner of a Legend, since Legends have long since been composed

of his life (that is, of Francis's) and miracles

… . And they acknowledge that these were not the work of a single

writer only, when they say of the things they have collected: For we believe

that if these things had been known to the venerable men

who composed the aforesaid Legends,

they would by no means have passed them over. They also approve the credit

of those same Lives by their own most weighty authority,

saying that they omit many things

which are set down in the aforesaid Legends

in speech as truthful as it is luminous. Of those Lives,

however, the first is without doubt that of Thomas of Celano.

If the other had as its author John or

Thomas Ceperanus, and he was a secular man,

an apostolic notary, or by office a protonotary,

as Wadding asserted in two places of the Annals,

I strongly suspect that his little work is

the one we have in our aforesaid codex;

for its author nowhere indicates that he was of the Order

of Minors, and the rest, as I have said, agrees.

[14] Hence it is not at all surprising that there is not prefixed to this Life of ours

the Prologue and which I shall insert into this Commentary piece by piece, whose beginning the anonymous author

of the Chronicle of the twenty-four Generals recites,

and a very similar one to which Salimbene, above at n. 8, attributes to Celano's second

little work — Salimbene being much older

than that anonymous writer, inasmuch as he is read to have carried that Chronicle down

to the year 1374. Why say more?

The Work of Ceperano which that anonymous writer praises

cannot be the second of all the Lives of St. Francis,

since that, on the testimony of the same anonymous writer, is later

than the little Work of the Three Companions; but this one, from what has been said,

is much earlier. Perhaps two men of Ceperano wrote the Saint's Life

at different times, one called John

and an apostolic notary under Gregory IX;

the other Thomas, of the Order of Minors, by the command of

Crescentius under Innocent IV. The one we have may be

the first man's, not the second's. Yet I do not equally

judge that ours wrote at the bidding of Gregory IX,

since the author nowhere says so, nor does a sufficiently fitting reason occur

why the aforesaid Pontiff should have ordered that the same subject of writing,

excellently treated by the man of Celano, the Saint's disciple,

should be set forth anew by a secular man,

and he should have followed the man of Celano's composition almost entirely.

Certainly this Life would be worthy

to be published in the second place, if it added anything to the first

besides the Prologue and the translation of the body.

Wherefore I prefer to insert the whole of it, in order of time

so far as will be possible, piecemeal into this Commentary,

so that both the words of the first may come less often to be cited,

and readers may have the deeds of St. Francis arranged through the Commentary

from a document of the best standing.

[15] With this intention I here prefix the whole Preface of it.

the Prologue being prefixed here. In the name of the Lord, the introduction to the Life

of St. Francis. To this end certain earlier weaknesses of the Saints —

of those whom the Lord has purposed to privilege with a special

prerogative of merits — are recorded in the divine

utterances, in order that, while we alike marvel at and praise

the inscrutable depth of the divine counsel, whereby * certain fallen ones

are exalted with merits more excellent than those of most

of the just, neither may the innocent, as though trusting in

their own righteousness, despise those laid low in the depth of vices;

nor yet may the impious, despairing of their own crimes,

be afraid to draw near to God, the fount of mercy,

to ask for pardon.

Thus assuredly the pious humility of the just fears

the justice of the Lord the judge, lest the ruinous swelling of presumption

lift them up; thus the hope of the fallen, as

firm as it is discerning, presumes upon the kindness of the loving Father,

lest the horrid abyss of despair

swallow them up. Thus too the glory of the Lord's

magnificence — stupendous and in all things to be praised —

is * proclaimed; which both, loving freely, sustains

the just lest they fall, and, kindly taking pity,

raises up the stricken lest they perish. Hence we read that Christ's

first vicar denied him; hence

that the very vessel of Christ's election

persecuted the Church. For this reason also there is that Publican

who is called both Apostle and Evangelist;

and that special woman disciple of Christ is related to have been beset

by seven demons. Hence, being about to write, however briefly,

the deeds of the glorious confessor

and levite of Christ, Francis, we set down first

certain earlier weaknesses, so that, when the last things of his manner of life,

which we cannot fully or worthily unfold,

are compared with the first, the Author of his conversion

may be magnificently praised by all, pious humility

may be increased in the innocent, and to the fallen may be given

a firmer hope of pardon. Perhaps the author fortified himself with this Prologue

because he knew that some had complained

of the deeds of Francis's youth, candidly set forth in the first Life.

[16] We take no account of the metrical Life by the Englishman; but the little work The third biographer of St. Francis, for Wadding,

is an Englishman, who rendered the first Life by Celano

in heroic verse. This is perhaps the one of

whom the Conventual Fathers of Rome, in what they wrote to me,

say thus: There exists indeed in the same archive

(of the convent of St. Francis at Assisi) a codex

likewise of parchment, of the thirteenth century, in which we have found another

Legend of St. Francis, drawn out at length in rather rude hexameter verses

and dedicated to Gregory IX.

But this will never stand with us in place

of the first Life by the man of Celano, both because no one has ever asserted

that that one was composed in verse, and

because this has more frequent slips in chronology,

and mixtures of things less coherent.

It appears certain that the man of Celano did not write

the deeds of Francis metrically; and even if it were established that that

Assisi one was soon made metrical by another out of Celano's prose,

we do not greatly require it,

both on account of the slips mentioned and because we have

the prose one itself. There is, however, in our keeping a certain metrical

Life in heroic verse, published without the author's name

at Cracow in the year 1594, which Wadding

in the Writers attributes to Hieronymus Maripetrus of Venice,

and says was first printed at Venice in the year

1531, and dedicated to Clement VIII (he meant to say the seventh).

This writer is too recent

to be of use to us. The fourth Life of St. Francis

(if indeed that metrical one deserves the place of the third)

is, for Wadding, the Legend of the Three Companions of that

same Saint, composed by their common labor. For what

cause these men wrote, the aforesaid Annalist sets forth

at the year 1244, n. 8, treating of the general chapter

celebrated at Genoa in that same year:

In that chapter, he says, both the General

and all the Fathers commanded, letters being sent through the whole world,

that whatever came to hand concerning the life, sanctity and miracles

of the holy father Francis should be committed to writing

and sent to the General himself.

[17] [written by three companions of the Saint, at the command of Crescentius the General,] This was specially enjoined upon three companions of the blessed Father;

namely upon the holy brother Leo, who

was the holy Father's confessor and confidant; likewise

upon the holy brothers Angelo of Rieti and Rufinus,

who were enrolled among his first twelve companions.

These men, diligently applying themselves to the work, dictated the Legend

which they call that of the Three Companions,

in which chiefly that is supplied which was omitted

by the others. They finished the work in the place

of Greccio, in the Roman province, on the third of the Ides of August,

in the year MCCXLVI; and when finished they directed it to the General

with the letter that follows, which letter

is thereafter inserted and prefixed to the Work in place of a preface.

He then recites the said letter, which is

there read as given at Greccio on the third of the Ides of August, in the year

MCCXLVI; but in our transcript it stands thus:

Given in the place of Greccio on the third of the Ides of August, in the year

of the Lord MCCXLVII. If Wadding's chronology is correct concerning Crescentius,

to whom that letter

was written, and who was removed from office in the month of July of that same year 1247,

then without doubt we must read the year

MCCXLVI. Yet it is now of no importance to our purpose

whether that composition was written in the one year or the other,

which composition even the chronologist of the twenty-four

Generals mentioned above expressly affirms to have been made by the aforesaid brothers

at the command of that same Crescentius in the chapter of Genoa;

nor do I see that this can be doubted.

[18] It is equally certain that those three were companions of St. Francis;

as a supplement to the first Life but whether they were among the first twelve,

and among these whether Leo was confessor to that same Saint,

I do not here inquire. But the Conventual Fathers praised above informed me

that there had been men who contended

that the Work which goes under the name of these Three Companions

is the offspring of some sycophant from among the heretical Fraticelli,

and that in it St. Bonaventure is reckoned among

the damned. But the same Fathers rightly suspect

that either some other little Work than the one mentioned in the Chronicle

of the twenty-four Generals,

or at any rate one interpolated by the malice of some impostor,

lay before those men. Certainly the one we shall publish is earlier than

Bonaventure, and makes no mention of Bonaventure;

and it contains nothing but what is most worthy of the authors it claims;

so that it must have been far from them to have uttered, or even to have been able to utter,

a blasphemy of that kind.

Now we received that little Work from a manuscript

codex of the Reverend Fathers Minor of the convent of Louvain

in our Belgium. Before the Letter of the Three Companions

this annotation is placed: These are certain things

written by the Three Companions of B. Francis concerning

his life and manner of living in the secular habit,

concerning his marvelous and perfect manner of living, and

concerning the perfection of the origin and the foundation of the Order

in him and in the first brothers. There follows the Letter,

from which it is most clearly understood that those three companions

did not propose to write the Saint's whole Life,

but only some of his deeds passed over by others

or not sufficiently set forth, which accordingly,

if it should seem good, might be inserted into the Lives

that were extant.

[19] The composition itself confirms this purpose of theirs:

for many things are added in it concerning the deeds of St. Francis

in the secular state, we shall publish; another by the anonymous writer of Perugia which the first biographers

had not mentioned; and other things are set forth more at length

than in them, and others again more briefly, or

even passed over in silence, which in those writers could be read

at greater length. Wherefore this little Work of the Three Companions,

written in a quite simple style, I shall append

to the first Life, as a supplement to it

or an Appendix: for it will not rightly be called a Life,

since most of the deeds of the holy Founder are omitted in it

for the reasons given. Hence again I am compelled

to suspect that this little composition was not sufficiently known

to the Annalist of the Minors, because he believed it to have been written

by them at greater length than the one which has the man of Celano

as its author, which latter is much more extensive.

There is also another composition at my hand, mutilated

in the latter part, from a Perugia manuscript, from which

on the twenty-third day of April the Acts of B.

Giles, one of the first companions of St. Francis, were given among us. Our Papebroch,

who had it transcribed, added

to it this note: These things were contained in the Perugia manuscript

of which there is mention at the Life of B. Giles on the twenty-third of April,

among whose Conferences and miracles these

writings were read. It is perhaps by Brother Leo.

[20] The Conventual Fathers of Rome, already praised

elsewhere, thinking far otherwise, assert that it is

reckoned the Work of an anonymous Ultramontane, to be employed in the Commentary. who lived among mortals in the fifteenth

century, and that it contains

good things mixed with bad. I for my part cannot support Papebroch's

suspicion; but neither can I assent to the Conventuals'

opinion, since they prove it by no argument;

and the author himself professes that he was a disciple of St.

Francis, or at any rate of his companions.

Further, although it is read among the Conferences and miracles of B. Giles,

that it is not by Giles is proved by the eulogy

with which he himself is adorned in it. For which reason

I shall employ this little Work also in its places in this Commentary.

It has this title prefixed:

On the beginning and the acts of those Friars Minor

who were the first in the Religion and the companions

of B. Francis. There is subjoined this brief Preface:

Since the servants of the Lord ought not to be ignorant

of the way and the teaching of holy men, by

which they may be able to come to the Lord; therefore to

the honor of the Lord and the edification of those who read

and hear, I, who saw their acts and heard their words,

and whose disciple also I was, have narrated and compiled

some things concerning the acts of our most blessed brother Francis and of some

of the brothers who came at the beginning of the Religion,

as my mind was divinely

taught.

[21] St. Bonaventure too wrote a Life of the same Saint, Out of all the earlier instruments of the middle of the thirteenth century

St. Bonaventure at length composed a Life of St.

Francis, as one may clearly perceive from comparison;

yet he drew the chief things from the first Life,

by the man of Celano, and added the rest partly,

as I think, from the documents written before by various men at the command

of Crescentius the General; partly from

the report of the companions of St. Francis, of whom, while he was writing,

very many survived. For he himself testifies in

his Preface that for that cause he went

to Assisi, and there diligently and frequently conferred

with the surviving intimate companions of the Saint,

and chiefly with certain men who were both privy to his sanctity

and its chief followers,

to whom, because of their acknowledged truthfulness and approved

virtue, indubitable credit is to be given.

Hence the holy doctor, although he wrote easily thirty years after

Celano, and could have seen Francis only as a boy

of five, nevertheless far surpassed him in the abundance of instruments;

and therefore it is no wonder

that many things are found in this later Life

which are missing in the first. Nor for all that

is the first to be neglected; since in it too there are many things

which Bonaventure handed down less expressly,

perhaps lest his little Work should grow too large.

[22] at the request of his brethren in the chapter of Narbonne, What was this Saint's reason for writing

this Life after others, Wadding at the year

1260, n. 18, speaking of the general chapter

celebrated at Narbonne in the same year, narrates in these words:

In that same chapter the fathers asked the holy

primicerius (that is, Bonaventure, the Minister general)

that, the variety of the many Legends being removed,

he himself should put together out of the various fragments of histories

which were circulated concerning St. Francis

a weighty and sincere history.

To whom, although he replied that more cares of office

remained to him than that he could attend to serious studies,

at length, acquiescing, he took upon himself

the burden of narrating the deeds of his Founder.

Wadding proves this by St. Bonaventure's own words,

and adds: And he compiled this Legend

in the following year (that is, 1261) at Paris, mixing nothing into the sacred

history but what was approved and certain,

asserted by candid testimonies; and that we should believe this true,

the surpassing erudition and sanctity of St. Bonaventure

altogether persuades. I pass over the praises of this Life

reported in the same place by Wadding from some more recent writers:

for the holy doctor sufficiently commends himself,

and the Life itself will commend itself to its readers.

Then again Wadding says: This Legend,

distributed into several sections, the holy man (Bonaventure)

reduced to a compendium

at the prayers of a certain bishop of Gaul, which Legend

is called the Lesser Legend, and portions of it are read

through the days of the Octave of St. Francis in the divine

Office.

[23] Both Histories, the longer and the shorter,

he presented three years later in the chapter of Pisa

to the fathers of the Order, which was in use beyond the rest; but now in two places and they reverently, with the giving

of thanks, admitted them, all other Legends being suppressed.

It is likely that hence it came about that

the older Lives thereafter lay hidden in darkness, unpublished.

That they were not altogether neglected, however, among

the writers of the Order of Minors is plain from Wadding,

who not rarely cited them in the margin, and

recited not a few fragments of the first Life, perhaps from

Marianus of Florence, of whom in the Letter to the reader

he says: Above all I was helped by the manuscript History of Marianus

of Florence, divided into five books,

or from other writers of the middle time whom

he cited. But that the editions of that Greater Legend

which are now extant, and indeed the manuscript copies too,

are not free from every interpolation, is proved by the often-

praised Conventual Fathers, whose words I here

transcribe. We assert, therefore, that that has been interposed by another hand

which we can now prove, or

rather are compelled to confess, namely those things which Brother

Jerome of Ascoli, afterward the supreme Pontiff

Nicholas IV, added. And he added both the most well-known vision

of Pope Innocent III, and that miracle

about the blind man, his eyes having been gouged out, who was given light,

inserted in the chapter On the blind enlightened.

[24] The first was established from the Chronicle of the twenty-four Generals

cited above, in the Life of Brother Jerome

of Ascoli, it has some copies interpolated: this too is to be published. where at p. 110 the following is read:

"This General added to the Legend of B. Francis,

compiled by the lord Brother Bonaventure,

that vision of the lord Pope Innocent

III, when he indignantly drove B. Francis away from that place

as an unknown man: When

therefore he was Christ's vicar in the place

which is called Speculum, etc. Which the lord

Richard, Cardinal deacon of the title of St. Angelo,

nephew of the same lord Pope, as he had received it from

that same uncle, devoutly disclosed."

The same addition is furthermore established from the collated

manuscripts of our archive at Assisi, in which, out of

eleven copies — six, namely, of the Greater

Legend, and five of the Lesser, of B. Bonaventure —

only two have the narration of the aforesaid vision,

and of these one has it only below

the text, and the other set in the margin.

But of the second addition the witnesses are

both Wadding at the year MCCX, and the Letter

of the same Brother Jerome of Ascoli, an authentic

transcript of which, out of abundance, we send among

the other documents. Entirely agreeing with these men,

I shall cut both narrations out of the Life and place them

only among the Annotations, where I shall also make

mention of the aforesaid letters of Jerome of Ascoli.

In the rest I shall follow the edition of Henry

Sedulius, and shall compare it with the Vatican, Surian

and Waddingian editions, and with the manuscript codex of our

Museum.

* read quo

* is it gloriæ?

§ II. What is to be thought of the Mirror of the Life of S.

Francis, published several times in varying forms, and in manuscript among us; other writers, ancient and more recent, who

have treated of the same Saint.

We have the Metz edition of the Mirror of the year 1509 Among the ancient instruments which Wadding

cites in the Annals there occurs the Mirror of the Life

of S. Francis and of his companions, often printed

and also in manuscript among us; and he would doubtless

have cited it far more frequently, had he held everything contained in it

as true and certain. We have in our Museum

three editions of this Mirror, of which in the first

the place, year and author of the printing

are indicated thus at the end: Printed at Metz by Jaspar

Hochffeder in the year of the Lord 1509. There is prefixed to the little work

this title: The Mirror of the life of the blessed Francis and

of his companions. The beginning is this, but with the words abbreviated:

To the praise and glory of our Lord

Jesus Christ and of our most holy father Francis.

And here are certain notable things concerning the blessed

Francis and his companions, and certain marvelous acts of the same,

which were omitted in his Legends,

which are also very useful and devout.

But these are not in the later editions,

nor in our transcript. Then follow

some notable things as far as folio 5 verso,

where at last it reads thus: Here begins the Mirror of the life

of the blessed Francis and of his companions.

[26] a second, of Antwerp, of the year 1620, Nor yet does the ancient little Work seem to begin here,

since at folio 7 verso it is again read:

Here begins the Mirror of the perfection of the Friars

Minor. And what makes me judge that the little Work

which is called the Mirror begins at this place is

that it begins there also in our manuscript transcript,

with this annotation, however, added: This Work was compiled

in the manner of a Legend out of certain

ancient things which in various places the companions of the blessed Francis wrote and

caused to be written. The second edition of the Mirror

was seen through the press by William Spoelberch, of the Order

of Minors of the Regular Observance, definitor of the province

of Lower Germany, from the Antwerp press

in the year 1620. This differs much from the other,

nor yet did the author conceal that it is not unadulterated,

candidly saying of it in the Letter to the Minister general: Which (book),

since it had now almost fallen out of use, moved by the pious desire and request

of many, I restored, as you see, gathered

into another order, illustrated with certain little notes according to my slenderness,

and suppressed a few things here and there which either

we have in the writing of the divine Bonaventure, or which

could offend our supercilious age.

[27] and a third, of Cologne, of the year 1623, differing from one another. There followed in the year 1623 another edition by Philip

Bosquier, a Minor of the province of Flanders,

printed at Cologne, which bears this title:

Franciscan Antiquities, or

the Mirror of the life of the blessed Francis and of his Companions,

by the authors Brothers Fabianus and Hugelinus, and

other Minorites contemporary with the divine Francis. Bosquier gave

no reason for his design in reprinting the Mirror,

nor did he name the copies which he used.

But the censor of books in his approbation

testifies that this Mirror of the life of B. Francis and of his companions,

collated with other faithfully printed

copies, differs from them in nothing:

which testimony indeed cannot be admitted universally,

unless it means only that in this edition nothing

is reported which is not reported in the others: for in it

many things are omitted which are contained in

the Metz edition. Besides these, no other editions exist in

our Museum. Wadding, presently to be cited more fully,

mentions a Venice edition of the year 1504;

but I suspect this to be entirely like the Metz one,

because the things which he assigns in the Venice edition to folios 77 and 78 are read

on exactly the same folios in the Metz one.

[28] Just as there is a great difference among

the editions of the Mirror, Likewise three manuscript copies differ, and in all of these so it is not slight among the three

manuscript copies, of Louvain, Brussels and

Antwerp, which in the time of our Elders were collated

with one another and with the said editions.

Further, concerning the authors of the Mirror, the aforesaid Spoelberch

in his Preface to the reader says this: If Bartholomew of Pisa,

author of the book of the Conformities

of the holy Francis, has any weight with you; if the authority of Caesar Baronius —

in fact and in name the historian of all historians —

is of any account with you; believe the authors of this Work

to be brother Leo, brother

Rufinus and brother Angelo: for he cites these

as writers. Baronius does indeed mention these three writers

in the Annotations to the Roman Martyrology

on this day; but there he says

that they wrote about the deeds of St. Francis, yet

he does not say that they were the authors of the Mirror; Pisanus too

sometimes cites their Legend, not the Mirror.

We shall give that Legend, as has been said, but it is in all respects different from the Mirror.

That those three are not the authors

of the Mirror was seen by Bosquier, who in the very title

named other authors, but did not prove it.

Hence neither did Bosquier's opinion please Wadding,

who at the year 1226, n. 44, on the occasion of the letters

of Brother Helias, which Spoelberch inserted into the Mirror,

declared his mind about the Mirror and its

authors in some fashion, as I subjoin.

[29] Which (letters of Helias) William Spoelberch,

definitor of the province of Lower Germany, many apocryphal and frivolous things are read

transcribed into the Mirror published and polished by him,

many apocryphal and frivolous narrations being left out

which were contained in the old edition;

which Philip Bosquier, of the province of Flanders,

would also have done more advisedly in the other, later one

which he had made in the year just past at Cologne.

From these things it is understood what the aforesaid

annalist judged concerning those three editions. He judged, namely,

that in the Venice one (to which, for the reason

given at n. 27, the Metz one seems entirely similar)

there are many apocryphal and frivolous narrations,

which he was sorry had not been omitted by Bosquier.

Yet the latter omitted many of them, as is clear

from comparison; but not enough of them, as it seemed

to Wadding. Spoelberch, indeed, struck out many more;

but he inserted other things into his edition which you would find neither

in the other editions nor in the manuscripts from which

our transcript was made. Wherefore

it becomes certain that no edition of that Mirror

is unadulterated; which is abundantly gathered from

the manuscripts, in which far fewer things are read, although

the manuscript codices themselves are not free from interpolations.

So much concerning the Mirror itself.

[30] Concerning its authors, against Bosquier,

Wadding in the same place continues thus: Its authors were not contemporaries of the Saint, From whom I should like

to know this: Whence did he get that Brothers Fabianus

and Hugelinus, with other Minorites contemporary with St. Francis,

were the authors of that little book? But Henry

Sedulius too, a learned and pious man, will have its founders

to be Leo, Angelo and Rufinus,

the perpetual companions of St. Francis. These men indeed compiled

the Legend of the holy Father, not this

little Work; from that Legend many things were inserted here, and more recent things

added by others far later. The compiler

of this Work lived after the year MCCC; and this

father Bosquier will admit, if he reads the old

volume of the old Venetian printing of the year

MDIV, fol. 77 and 78 (or also the Metz edition

of the year 1509), or the one newly published by himself, century

one, ch. 96, where from a certain event

of the year MCCCIII the truth of the indulgence of S.

Mary of the Portiuncula is confirmed: and ch. 97, where to that same point

the testimony of others is brought in under the year MCCCX.

Those three companions assigned by Sedulius, therefore, could not have written the book,

nor those contemporaries reported by Bosquier,

nor has it hitherto been established by any certain argument

or by a proved inscription of the Work

who its legitimate author is. So far Wadding,

proving that that Mirror is not older than the fourteenth century,

and not denying that it is even more recent than that.

[31] since deeds of the 141 century are read in it Certainly the one from which the Metz edition and Bosquier's came forth

was not written before the fourteenth century.

In the former of these, fol. 99, in the latter, century

2, ch. 13, a certain deed of the year

1343 is narrated. Take the beginning of the chapter from the Metz edition: In the year

of the Lord MCCCXLIII, when for the sake of visitation

I was approaching the sacred place of Mount Alverna,

etc.: which words, if they are the compiler of the Mirror's,

prove that he at least is not older than the middle

of the fourteenth century; but, what is more likely, if they are another's,

and merely adopted by the author of the Mirror, nothing

stands in the way of his being able to be referred to the fifteenth century.

Among other annotations I have from our Stilting of pious memory

the following. I carefully inquired in the Work

of Bartholomew of Pisa, who flourished and wrote

toward the end of the fourteenth century, whether he cited the aforesaid Mirror,

or seemed to have drawn from it many things asserted about St. Francis.

But out of everything which I considered to this end,

I could by no means observe that the Mirror of the life of St. Francis was

even known to Pisanus. For I do not see it cited

in his Work; and very many things asserted only

in the Mirror I do not find in Pisanus.

But if Pisanus has anything that is not found

in the older writers, and things like which are read in the Mirror,

the collector of the Mirror is rather to be judged to have drawn

from Pisanus than Pisanus from the Mirror.

For since Pisanus was a writer more

pious and credulous than one who used severe criticism, he would have adopted

far more from the Mirror, and would agree with it more closely in the very words,

if the things which he has in some way

similar to it had been drawn from that source, and if he had had

that lengthy book lying open before him.

Wherefore I am altogether persuaded that the Mirror

is later than Pisanus, and was collected in the fifteenth

century.

[32] indeed it was perhaps only begun to be collected in the 15th century: This judgment of Stilting's is favored by the age of the manuscript

codices which I know. The Louvain manuscript codex, on the testimony

of the Reverend Father Matthias Grouwels, often to be cited below,

was written in the year 1454, as has been said among us

in vol. 2 of August, p. 454. In the Antwerp manuscript

the following annotation is read: Here end certain

notable things, very devout and useful, extracted from

a certain ancient Legend of our most holy father

Francis. To the praise of our Lord Jesus

Christ, who is blessed forever. Amen.

In the year of the Lord MCCCCLXXII, on the XII day of the month of August,

on the feast of Clare the holy virgin. It seems,

therefore, that that codex was finished in this year

and on this day. Of the Brussels one I find it noted that it

was written in the year 1549. None, therefore, of the three

codices is older than the middle of the fifteenth century, so that on this

head no greater age can be ascribed to the Mirror.

Further, from what has been said thus far it becomes likely to me that it

was collected in the aforesaid fifteenth century by an uncertain author,

and interpolated in many ways; since neither the printed

nor the manuscript codices agree with one another. Everyone

seems to have wished to add something to it, from which liberty

not even Spoelberch abstained in his edition.

Wherefore I judged that so uncertain a little Work should by no means be reprinted,

nor indeed employed in this Preliminary

Commentary; for although there are many

true and certain things in it, those same things are nevertheless more certain

from the Lives to be published, which have weighty and pious authors, most worthy

of certain historical credit.

[33] If from Thomas of Celano — a writer who was St. Francis's

disciple, why we shall not use this little Work; diligent, pious and learned — some things slipped away owing to the multitude

of his deeds, the Three Companions of that same Saint,

Leo, Rufinus and Angelo, and

another, the Anonymous of Perugia, added them

in great part; and if any escaped their diligence besides,

St. Bonaventure had not only

their little Works, but also what others noted down at the command

of Crescentius, the Minister general,

and what he himself had learned from the surviving disciples of the holy Father.

But if the compiler and the interpolators of the Mirror

reported anything further out of ancient papers of that kind,

it is likely that these were, at least for the greater

part, either disapproved by the holy doctor,

or seemed to him less certain and to be passed over.

For which reason, in my judgment at least,

the deeds of St. Francis are not to be learned from that Mirror of such uncertain

authority, while we have such upright instruments,

which represent to us that most holy Man as far

greater, more prudent and more holy, and in a more elegant style

too than is read in it. The aforesaid father Grouwels did indeed judge

that the Mirror was begun to be written by the Three Companions of Francis,

and then continued by others down to the year MDVI;

but he adduces nothing by which to persuade us of it,

except that certain things are inserted as narrations of his Companions:

and why could this not have been done by the compiler,

who certainly took no care of style?

Accordingly I shall add no more about this little Work.

[34] The Annalist of the Minors praised above sometimes

also cites the Vineyard of St. Francis, as also the Vineyard of St. Francis, likewise not ancient. as

an ancient book and fit for the knowing of his deeds;

but only from others, as I judge: for this book,

written in our Belgian tongue, he probably did not know. This book, which I have at hand,

was printed at Antwerp in the year 1518,

and certainly composed not long before, since there are reported in it

not a few things that happened in that same sixteenth century.

It is likely that it seemed older to Wadding

because he had read it cited not rarely

in Henry Sedulius, and perhaps in other

Belgians who could read the Vineyard in the vernacular tongue.

Many things in that Work are narrated from ancient

authors, but certain things too are sometimes mixed in

from sources not equally pure, as our Sollier showed

by several examples in vol. III of July,

p. 823, in St. Bonaventure. This little Work, therefore, is useless to us

for illustrating the acts of St. Francis,

while other and better documents of certain credit are at hand.

For the rest, I have treated here of this Vineyard and of the Mirror,

even though other and older writers are to be found; because

those two, although in truth they are not very ancient,

I have nevertheless found cited among the more ancient ones.

[35] I return to Wadding, who at the year

1230, n. 7, reviews the biographers of St. Francis.

After the first ones and the holy Bonaventure he goes on

to mention them thus: Seventh, Bernard of Bessa,

Bonaventure's companion, embraced the deeds of that same Saint (Francis)

in a longer history. The little Work of Bernard of Bessa, whether it be one or twofold. So

there: but in the Writers, among the Works of the same Bernard,

he lists first a Little book on the threefold state

of the Religion of the Minors, in the first of which he put together

In the second, the Chronicle of the Ministers general

down to Brother Bonagratia, the tenth in

that series. In the third he collected the miracles and divine

attestations for the approbation of the threefold state,

or Order, instituted by St. Francis, namely

of the Minors, the Poor Clares, and the Penitents.

Then, with one apologetic little book interposed, in the same place

he adds: He reduced to a compendium the Legend of St. Francis

written more diffusely by Thomas of

Celano, and cleaned it up in a more polished style. It begins:

Full of virtues. The Work itself: As

a rising sun. Agreeing about this latter Work,

in the Annals at the year 1244, n. 10, when

he had said that Thomas of Celano by the command of Crescentius,

the Minister general, wrote a certain Legend

of St. Francis, he added: This Brother Bernard de Bessa,

of the province of Aquitaine, St. Bonaventure's companion, soon contracted

into a compendium,

whose beginning is: As a rising sun.

[36] we do not have it, nor do we greatly want it. From all this it is to be determined either that Bernard

de Bessa wrote two Lives of his holy Father,

or that Wadding mentioned one twice,

as though it had been twofold. That one only was written by him

is the more likely: for to what end should he have written two?

Room for the error (if indeed Wadding erred)

may have been given by the fact that perhaps that same single one was both

reported at the head of the little book on the threefold state of the Religion of the Minors,

and also published separately, and this latter

seems to have been better known to Wadding than

the aforesaid little book, since he noted the beginning not of the latter but of the former.

However that may be, it is not very likely that

a longer one was composed by him after St. Bonaventure, whose

companion he was, had already published his own, sufficiently lengthy one. But if he wrote before,

then Bonaventure will have had that Life, and will have taken from it

what he thought worth knowing and certain; so that

we do not vehemently want this Work of Bernard's, if it truly exists.

Still less do we require the other,

namely the compendium of the Life written by Thomas

of Celano, which we shall give entire.

[37] Pisanus toward the end of the 14th century wrote the books of the Conformities, To Bernard of Bessa, Wadding at the year

1230, n. 7, subjoins Bartholomew Albizzi,

called Pisanus from his native place, who wrote toward the end

of the fourteenth century. Eighth, he says, Bartholomew

of Pisa so distributed whatever all had narrated

through his sections of Conformities and fruits

that it is laborious to pluck anything out of it according

to historical method. Yet Wadding often cited him

in those same Annals,

even in places in which he could rather have cited the most ancient

documents, had they been at

hand. The same annalist in the Writers

mentions this book thus, from Rodulphius: The Work of the Conformities

of the holy Francis with Christ. It is had

in manuscript at Urbino in the ducal library. It came out

at Milan by Zariotus Castilioneus in the year

MDXIII in folio, and often elsewhere. This, however, is not

the older edition of this Work, as Wadding also teaches,

saying after some remarks that it

came out in the infancy of typography at Venice and Milan

in the year MDX. The Milan edition of this year was most kindly

lent me from his distinguished household library

at Antwerp by that most illustrious and

most noble gentleman Charles de Proli, supreme prefect of the fleet

of his Sacred Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty on

the Scheldt, whom we commonly call the Admiral. The place, printer and year

of the published book are read at the end in this way: Printed at Milan

by Gotardus Ponticus, whose bookshop

is by the church of Saint Satyrus. In the year of the Lord

M.CCCCCX. The XVIII. Day. Of the Month of September.

[38] So the printer; but the one who prepared the Work for the press

and saw to its being printed published in varying forms, was Brother Francis

Zeno of Milan, vicar general of the Friars Minor

of the Observance in the Cisalpine regions,

as one may read in his letters published in the same place. Concerning

the year, too, in which Pisanus himself published or finished it,

this annotation is set at the head of the Prologue,

but with the words abbreviated: In the name of our Lord

Jesus Christ and of the most blessed Virgin Mary,

his Mother, and of our blessed father Francis,

here begins the Work which is entitled On the Conformity

of the life of the blessed Francis to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ,

our Redeemer, published by brother Bartholomew

of Pisa, of the Order of Minors, master of sacred theology,

out of reverence for his special father

blessed Francis. In the year of the Lord. M.CCC.LXXXV.

I said: of the year in which he published or finished it; for

from Pisanus's own letters, and from the reply of Henry,

the Minister general, and of the fathers assembled in the general chapter

in the year 1399, which stand at the end

of the Work, we learn that Pisanus in this latter

year sought and obtained from them leave to publish this

book of his. The Venice and Milan editions

of the year 1513, cited by Wadding,

I do not have; but besides the first Milan one,

as I have said, I have another of our Museum, made at Bologna

in the year 1590, differing however in various places from our first,

and indeed augmented by Jeremiah

Bucchius, of the Order of Minors, as is read on the frontispiece of the book.

Nor is it certain enough whether

everything that is read in the first Milan edition of the year

1510 is truly Pisanus's. For since

Francis of San Colombano, vicar of the province of Milan

of the same Order, in his Preface,

which he prefixed to Zeno's Prologue, expressly says

that Zeno delivered Pisanus's book of the Conformities first to be corrected

and then to be printed, we do not know

whether that correction was not made as much by addition

as by excision.

[39] Pisanus called this Work of his the book of the Conformities

nor of equal authority in everything: because in it he intends to prove

that Francis, as he truly was, was an outstanding imitator of Christ

our Lord. Hence he collected many things about his deeds

from the older writers, or from the Lives to be published;

but he also added many other things, the source of which he did not

set forth. Wherefore all his assertions

cannot be of the same value: for those which

he drew from those older writers, even though he does not name them,

are historically certain; but the rest, whose authors

he neither indicates himself, nor do we know them from elsewhere, can only

be of doubtful credit, since Pisanus wrote almost

150 or 160 years after the death of St. Francis,

and did not live in such an age that he could supply the defect

of his time by accurate criticism. For these reasons

I shall cite him in this Commentary only when

matters come up for dispute for which his authority

is cited by more recent writers.

[40] The heretics in Luther's time assailed this Work of Pisanus

with many calumnies: whom the heretics calumniated, its defense

was undertaken by Henry Sedulius of the Order of Minors,

in an Apologetic writing against the Alcoran

of the Franciscans on behalf of the book of the Conformities, published

from the Plantin press at Antwerp in the year 1607. In the Prologue

alone he shows how impotently Luther

and Erasmus Alberus, a German of Brandenburg,

declaimed against that book of the Conformities,

and how impudently they lied,

when they did not blush to say that this book was held

in no other place by Catholics than the Alcoran

by the Turks, and by the Franciscans in place of the Gospel.

What Catholic writer of any name ever

made so much of that book, or extolled it with such praises?

Who ever wished to establish, confirm, or defend

the dogmas of the faith from it?

[41] Sedulius defended it in an apology. Sedulius, the very defender of the book, candidly acknowledged

that it was not free from faults: for thus in

the Prologue he speaks: Yet this I grant you, my Alberus,

that some things in it are written rather freely, in accord with the simplicity of the age.

But, as wine does not cease to be wine

if there are a few little drops of water in it, so neither is

this book a wicked one on account of some faults. If

the founders of that new religion wished to attack the book

of the Conformities, it was fair that they should abstain

from open lies and foul calumnies.

Nevertheless those lies were reprinted even in our own century

in Latin and in French; and in another Work,

whose author suppressed his own name, in the Belgian tongue

partly from Pisanus, partly from the Mirror mentioned above,

nearly the same things, or at any rate similar ones, are hurled

petulantly and impiously against the Franciscans, against Catholics, against

St. Francis himself.

I do not approve everything that is read in that same book of Pisanus

and in the Mirror; but neither does it please me to touch further upon

men who trust so little in the foundation of their own heresy

that they believe they need tricks, lies,

and calumnies for attacking Catholics.

Let us therefore return to Wadding.

[42] Others too are said to have written about the Saint Ninth, says he, James Oddo of Perugia

divided the whole life of Francis through twelve

partitions of virtues, in the old Italian idiom.

In the Writers he calls this Italian Work

the Mirror of the Order of Minors, and says that it is commonly

called the Francischina. He mentions the same at

the year 1474, n. 14, in which year he writes that he put an end

to this composition. This author, therefore, is too recent

for us to want him much.

Wadding adds: Likewise several fragments were written by

brother Hugolinus of Montemaggiore, brother

James of Siena, and brother James Guarini,

whose little Works we have all used in reporting up to this point

the life and death of Francis, and we have transcribed

the more important parts. The first of these in the Writers

is called Hugolinus of Santa Maria in Monte,

and is said to have been a contemporary of St. Francis, and to have written

in which he narrates the life and deeds of the holy Francis

and of his companions down to the Pontificate of Alexander

IV. I have it (Wadding adds) in my keeping,

written on parchment in a clear hand.

[43] various other Franciscans. Hugolinus's Floretum I do not have at hand;

but Wadding himself makes me doubt about his age.

For in the Annals at the year 1322,

wrote from eyewitness knowledge the deeds of B. John of Fermo,

who died in that same year 1322. He had already set down similar things

at the year 1272, n. 23, where that man is called Hugolinus

of Monte S. Mariæ, and he seems

to be the same as the one who in the words given above is named Hugolinus

of Montemaggiore, and in the Writers Hugolinus

of Santa Maria in Monte.

And if this is so, either that Hugolinus did not write

the deeds of B. John of Fermo, or he was not a contemporary of

St. Francis — unless someone prefers to believe that he was much

more than a hundred years old when he began to write B. John's

deeds. Or did Wadding perhaps

believe in the Writers that the author of the Floretum was a contemporary of St.

Francis because he had carried the history only to the Pontificate of Alexander IV, who

began to sit in the year 1254?

But not all writers carry their histories down to their own times;

and therefore the argument from that head would not be certain enough,

even if it were established that the copy of Hugolinus's History

which Wadding had was full and

entire.

[44] To James of Siena there are attributed in the Writers

brief Chronicles of the Order of Minors, who are reviewed here, among whom are Marianus of Florence, and he himself

is said to have flourished about the year MCCCXXX. Into his

age I do not inquire at length, since even so he was neither a contemporary

of St. Francis nor nearly so. James Guarini

Wadding does not mention in the Writers, unless

perhaps he is the James Garibi who is there said to have composed

Gonzaga, Minister of the whole Order.

That James, therefore, flourished not a little after the middle of the sixteenth

century, while Gonzaga held the general Ministry of the Order of Minors,

and in any case we have slight hope

of learning anything to our purpose from an Italian poem.

He adds Francis Maurus, another

poet; but the more recent writers, although he frequently

cited them, he passes over there — namely Marianus

of Florence, whose manuscript Chronicle at Florence

our Henschen examined. Now in the notice of it

transmitted hither it is said that that Chronicle consists

of five volumes in folio of fair size;

that it was carried down to the year 1486, but that the author

died in the year 1523, for which year of death

Dionysius Pulinarius is cited in the Proem

of the Chronicle of Tuscany. Marianus therefore belongs to the sixteenth

century, even if perhaps he began to write in the fifteenth.

[45] Another of the more recent writers whom Wadding frequently follows

Mark of Lisbon, Peter Rodulphius, Francis Gonzaga, is Mark of Lisbon,

who in the Portuguese tongue, as is read in the Writers,

composed Chronicles, translated by others into

the Spanish, Italian and French tongues.

Mark of Lisbon wrote about the middle of the sixteenth century,

and died as bishop of Porto about

the year MDLXXX, on Wadding's testimony in the Writers.

A third writer of the same century, often cited by Wadding,

is Peter Rodulphus or Rodulphius

of Tossignano, who composed the Seraphic History,

and died as bishop of Senigallia. Henry

Sedulius, whom Wadding also mentioned not rarely,

wrote various works at the beginning of the seventeenth century,

and illustrated with a Commentary the Life of St. Francis composed by Bonaventure,

and published it in the Seraphic History

at Antwerp in the year 1621. About the same

time had flourished Francis Gonzaga, Minister general

of the Order of Minors, afterward archbishop

of Mantua, whose Work on the Origin of the Seraphic

Franciscan Religion, etc., is likewise frequently cited

by Wadding. I pass over others more rarely mentioned by the same

Annalist, as also nearly all the other

writers of the Order of Minors later than Wadding,

since they have generally followed him.

[46] I shall therefore say nothing of Francis Harold,

who contracted Wadding's Annals into an Epitome; Harold, Fremaut and Chalippe.

nothing of Benignus Fremaut, who wrote much in Flemish;

nothing of the others who in various tongues celebrated the deeds of St. Francis

after Wadding. Candide Chalippe,

who in the year 1720 published at length a Life of the same holy Founder

in the French idiom, professes in

the Preface that he wished to adhere closely to Wadding,

which he asserts was done also by the remaining writers of the Franciscan Order

who wrote after the aforesaid Annalist.

Chalippe did indeed do this,

but as a learned man; and therefore I judge his Work by no means

to be neglected. I shall likewise consult the Supplements

to Wadding's Annals, composed by

Antonio de Macro, which were printed at Turin in the year 1710,

and inserted, each in its own place, in the last Roman edition

of Wadding's Annals.

When, however, I cite Wadding's Annals,

let the reader remember that the Lyons edition is meant by me,

unless I give notice otherwise.

[47] Likewise Vincent of Beauvais, James of Voragine, Nevertheless not only Franciscans, but the writers of other

Orders too have mentioned not a few things about

St. Francis in their Works. Of

Vincent of Beauvais, of the Order of Preachers,

who wrote before St. Bonaventure, mention has already been made

above. Of the same Order was James

of Voragine, but promoted to the bishopric of Genoa,

in whom one may read not a few things about St. Francis

related in compendious form. He flourished indeed

in the same century in which the Saint died; yet he cannot be said

to have been his contemporary, inasmuch as he was born some years

after his death, and died in the year 1298.

He drew most things from the older writers, but he inserted

marvels above all into his compendium. In the fifteenth century wrote

St. Antoninus, made archbishop of Florence from the same Order,

who hinted whence he took

what he reports of the deeds and miracles of St. Francis,

at tit. 24, ch. 2, prefixing as a title:

Concerning the blessed Francis, these things have been extracted from the Speculum

Historiale of Vincent, and the Legend according to James

of Voragine, and the Chronicles of the Minors.

[48] St. Antoninus, all of the Order of Preachers, These words teach not obscurely that neither the earlier Lives,

nor the fuller one composed by Bonaventure,

lay before St. Antoninus. Yet he had some sort of compendium of the first

and second in Vincent's Speculum,

in which, since certain facts too

are set forth less correctly or confusedly, it will be no wonder

if in Antoninus's account some confusion sometimes

occurs — seeing that it would have been most difficult for him

to reduce to right order the things reported

by James of Voragine, and, without the aid of the old Lives,

to set right the few things confused by Vincent.

But if he drew anything from the Chronicles of the Minors,

or also from James of Voragine, which cannot

be confirmed by the certain authority of the ancients, we shall weigh these

as we proceed. This is certain, that Antoninus,

as befitted a holy man, faithfully expressed

the chief glories of St. Francis which he found in

the writers he was following. But that

he did not have the chief Lives is to be pardoned

to his age; for he wrote before the invention or common use

of the typographic art, by which it came about that

books were more easily published.

[49] Peter de Natalibus, afterward bishop of Jesolo, Long before St. Antoninus, but nearly a whole

century after James of Voragine, or rather well after

the middle of the fourteenth century, wrote Peter de Natalibus,

at that time parish priest of the Holy Apostles

at Venice, afterward a bishop. He, in

the Catalogue of Saints, bk. 9, ch. 18, in touching upon the deeds of St. Francis,

has many things like those in James

of Voragine, but fewer. Nor in

him is the whole of St. Francis recognized; for his marvels

are reported briefly rather than his deeds.

Certain errors also crept upon the author, so that

accordingly that eulogy is by no means to be read by those who wish

to know the deeds of St. Francis. That several ancient writers,

and some contemporaries as well, wrote certain things about that same Saint

will appear in the course of this Commentary,

whose age and credit I shall indicate

when they come to be cited. Of two, however,

who were both in some fashion contemporaries of Francis,

but were far distant from him in place, I shall treat briefly

here.

[50] Richerius of Senones and Matthew Paris. The first is Richerius, a monk of Senones

in the Vosges, who in the Chronicle of Senones, in

Achery's Spicilegium, bk. 4, ch. 17, mentions S.

Francis and the Order instituted by him,

but with so much negligence, and with so many errors mingled into that brief

account, that he seems to have written from the uncertain rumor of the crowd.

The other is Matthew Paris,

an English monk, who in the Greater History

at the year 1227 noted down rather more things about the same

Saint, but used equal negligence, and likewise mingled

various errors. From the account of both

I perceive that not even contemporary writers

are always to be given undoubted credit,

especially when they wrote at a long distance of lands from the matters

they treat. Yet I should not wish

to assert with certainty that everything was written by Paris as

it is read published there. Finally the remaining historians,

older and more recent, from whom some

help may be had, I shall name in their places. Nevertheless

Wadding's diligence in the Annals brings it about

that we want nothing, or little, of any moment,

in the others.

[51] His assertions, therefore, will chiefly come

to be weighed, Wadding's Annals chiefly to be employed. whether the chronology is to be treated, or

the Saint's deeds, of which some are more certain than others,

as is usual in the Acts of all the Saints, especially

of those who are so ancient that in the lapse of time many things accrued

to the older Lives from the tradition of the people

and from conjectures, or even from approved documents. I should wish, then, that the prudent

reader should understand that Luke Wadding is to me

a venerable, sincere, diligent and learned annalist;

and that for no other cause do I ever

dissent from him, save that for the plan of our Work

I am compelled to examine everything diligently,

and not only to seek the truth alone, but also,

so far as I am able, to separate the doubtful from the certain.

§ III. The birth, native place and parents of St. Francis, whose Order is believed to have been foretold; the name imposed on him in baptism, and afterward changed.

The Saint, and the Order instituted by him in calamitous times, are believed Wadding, who undertook the writing

of the Annals of the Order of Minors — whereas my sole

purpose is to elucidate the deeds of the Founder

of that Order — discusses many things in the Apparatus to those same Annals

which I judge either to be passed over altogether,

or to be touched only lightly. The same

will be done through the course of this Commentary, lest its bulk

grow too great. Hence I refer the reader to him

for learning the calamities by which the Church

was oppressed about the time in which SS. Francis

and Dominic were born, which he pursues at length

in §1, and for the general assertions of writers

about the help afforded against so many evils of the Church

by the distinguished Religious Orders instituted by those two

Saints. Yet the Lives which I shall publish

will sufficiently show that the state of affairs at that time was

wretched, and will supply most certain documents

concerning the help brought by St. Francis to souls.

[53] In the second § he reviewed the prophecies by which

St. Francis and his Order were foretold, foretold in various ways. which

I shall likewise touch only lightly. He adduces

the Erythraean Sibyl, the prophet Zechariah, John

the Evangelist in the Apocalypse, and Joachim,

abbot of Fiore. Concerning the earlier of these I should not dare

to interpose a judgment, especially since Wadding here puts forward

not his own views but the assertions of others,

and among these of men more to be venerated by me

than that I should attempt to bring their opinion about passages quite obscure

to the balance. Of B. Joachim,

abbot of Fiore, there has been treatment in our Work in vol. VII

of May, where our Papebroch at p. 141 examined in some fashion

his prophecies concerning SS. Francis and Dominic,

and strove to prove that the Orders of the aforesaid

two Saints were most clearly foretold by that same Joachim,

as also the immense fruits

which they were to produce. He went on

to examine other matters also pertaining to those same Orders,

which may be read there, and are not to be repeated here.

[54] The Saint was born, most likely, not in the year 1181. The birth of St. Francis Marianus of Florence,

and some others in the aforesaid Wadding,

attached to the year 1181 of the Christian era;

from whom Wadding, dissenting, places it one

year later. For this opinion of his he cites

Cardinal Baronius in the Ecclesiastical Annals

at this year, and the man whom Baronius followed here, Albert,

abbot of Stade, and several other more recent writers.

Weighty is this authority of Albert of Stade,

inasmuch as he was in some fashion a contemporary of St.

Francis, and, leaving his abbey, joined himself

to his Order of Minors in the year 1240; so that we easily understand

that he could have inquired diligently and successfully into the Saint's natal

year. Wadding adds another

argument, drawn from the age which

Antoninus attributes to the Saint at his death. For in part

3, Historical, tit. 24, ch. 7, §6, he writes that he

died in the forty-fifth year of his age; wherefore,

since it is also established from elsewhere that the same Saint ceased to live

in the year 1226, on the fourth day, or, by another reckoning,

on the third day of the month of October, he concludes that to him at his death,

against the common opinion, forty-six years would have to be assigned,

if he had been brought forth into the first light in the year 1181.

[55] but in 1182, at Assisi, which city is in Umbria But this reasoning does not conclude. For

since nothing is known of the month of his birth, let us suppose

that Francis was born in the year 1181 after the month

of October: even so only the forty-fifth year

of his age would have been running when in the year

1226 he died on the fourth or third of October, as will be plain

to anyone who reckons. From the ancient Lives nothing can be determined

in this matter, except that the Saint at the time of his death had most likely

not yet completed the forty-fifth year

of his age. Nevertheless Wadding's opinion is to be preferred,

on account of the authority of Albert of Stade,

far older than Marianus of Florence,

and because it is today the generally common opinion of writers,

and suffers no difficulty:

the words of the man of Stade in the Chronicle are these: In the year of the Lord

M.C.LXXXII. The boy Francis was born in

the city of Assisi, his father being Peter de Bernardone. Concerning

the place of his birth Wadding discusses thus: He had his native seat

in Umbria, once a most ancient and most warlike

region of Italy, although some Tuscan,

to the praise of his own region, scraped out the name Umbria in Marianus's

Chronicle and put in

Tuscia; and Thomas Walsingham by an error

named Francis a Tuscan, and by a similar

slip the Great Belgic Chronicle, out of Alberic,

said that the Order of Minors arose in Tuscany at

Assisi: unless you would say with Isidore

of Seville that Umbria is a part of Tuscia, and

thereupon surname Francis a Tuscan. But

nowadays that region which is called Umbria is commonly

distinguished by the cosmographers from Etruria.

[56] So he, adding more about the origin and name

of the Umbrians, by no means necessary to us here. But now

Umbria, or a great part of it, is generally called the Duchy

of Spoleto, and of the Pontifical dominion, as he himself also observes;

and for very many centuries it has been of the Pontifical dominion.

Further, in this region, at the end of the vale of Spoleto,

the city of Assisi is situated on a steep hill (often called Assisium

or also Asisium), which is certainly

a quite ancient city, but, having suffered much from civil discords,

has degenerated not a little from its former

splendor. Yet in this time also it ought to be held

illustrious, because it gave birth

to St. Francis and to the most celebrated sacred Order instituted by him,

as also to St. Clare, and to the Order of the Poor

Ladies or Poor Clares, which he likewise

instituted, and which she first embraced and governed

according to his prescription; and because it possesses the bodies

of both, renowned for miracles. Let this,

said meanwhile about the city in which all the Lives agree

that St. Francis was born, suffice.

[57] The Saint's parents the same annalist mentions thus:

The progenitors of this so great Man were Peter

Bernardoni, his father Peter Bernardoni and his mother Pica, so surnamed from his father, and

a most honorable woman, the lady Pica, foremost among

the people of Assisi. For although the father applied himself to trade,

he is not therefore to be reckoned ignoble; since

very many nobles throughout Italy, even of those who

shine with titular dignity, have their contracts among

foreigners and opulent commerce with people of other nations.

Wadding adds more in the same place,

by which he seems to hint that St. Francis was born of noble

stock, which I cannot prove from

the Lives to be published, in which his father is represented as a rich,

or at least as a not wholly middling, cloth

merchant. There is, however, in them one place and

another in which I do not know whether the nobility of his family

is asserted or denied. One is in

the man of Celano at n. 5, where it is said: A certain nobleman

of the city of Assisi was preparing himself in no

middling fashion with military arms… Hearing which, Francis…

conspires to go with him, unequal in nobility

of birth, but superior in magnanimity,

poorer in riches, but more lavish in generosity.

It is doubtful, I say, whether in this place the man of Celano

wished to deny all nobility of family to Francis,

or only to assert a lesser one (as he said his riches were less than those

of the aforesaid soldier). But

since both the man of Celano and the author of the Life which

we call the second call that soldier noble,

and neither they, nor the Three

Companions, nor Bonaventure ever ascribe this title to St. Francis,

it appears more likely that the man of Celano's words

are to be taken in the first way.

[58] Indeed the said Three Companions in the Appendix,

concerning whose families where they treat of the prison of Perugia, in

which he was detained with many other men of Assisi for a year in time

of war. For there they observe this of Francis:

Because he was noble in character,

he was placed as a captive with the knights (that is, with noblemen). What else does this indicate but

that Francis, although he was not noble by family, was nevertheless

adorned with noble character, and that on account of this

a place was given him among the noble captives in that prison?

See also the first Life, n. 53,

where it is read that the Saint himself applauded his brother, who called him a rustic,

a hireling and useless, saying:

May the Lord bless you, for you have spoken most truly:

for such things it is fitting that the son of Peter de

Bernardone should hear; and the biographer adds: Speaking thus,

he was recalling the HUMBLE beginnings of his birth.

Perhaps, however, Wadding wished only to say

that the Saint's parents were not of wholly middling condition,

but of an honorable and honored fortune among the citizens.

If he means this, he certainly has the Lives to be published

in his favor. Chalippe in the French Life, although elsewhere

generally agreeing with Wadding, at p. 2 called his father

a rich merchant without any mention of nobility;

but in the Annotations there he observed certain things

from the little Work of Octavius, bishop of Assisi,

published in print in the year 1701. Namely, in the year 1689, there was shown to this

prelate at Lucca in Etruria, by a certain

canon of Lucca, an ancient document

in which was read what I subjoin in Latin from the French.

[59] some things partly uncertain, There were at Lucca two brothers, merchants,

called Morico. Of these one remained in his native place; the other,

named Bernard, having set out for Assisi,

fixed his dwelling there, where he was surnamed Bernardone.

He took a wife, and had a son

whom he called Peter, who, being now rich, married

a daughter of a noble family, named Pica. S.

Francis, their son, for the sake of despising himself

sometimes named himself the son of Peter

Bernardone, not wishing to use the name of the family,

which was Morico. The aforesaid bishop added,

on Chalippe's testimony, that the Moricos of Lucca who

survived at Lucca in his own time were held among the nobles.

If to anyone this document seems ancient

and certain enough, it will prove, first, that

St. Francis's paternal family was called Morico; secondly,

that the descendants of that same family who remained at Lucca,

either before or after, attained nobility;

thirdly, that the Saint's mother was noble.

But perhaps they will prefer to believe that the Saint's great-grandfather was called Moricus

by his own proper name. Wadding

says that he received from a nobleman of Assisi, an investigator of the antiquities

of his own city, the paternal line described not

long after Francis's death, from which, beginning with

his grandfather, he writes thus: The paternal grandfather was

Morico of Bernardone; the father, Peter Bernardoni;

he had only one full brother, younger than

himself, Angelo. But now, since

St. Francis's father was called by his own proper name

Peter, and was surnamed from his father's name

Bernardoni or de Bernardone, why should we not suspect

that the same Saint's grandfather, called by his own proper name

Bernardone, had likewise from his father's name

the surname Morici or de Morico,

and that this Moricus was Francis's great-grandfather?

For if the name Morico had already clung to that family before Peter,

Francis's father, he would not

have been called Peter Bernardoni, but Peter

Morico.

[60] and certain things also about his descendants, are observed. I too received from the Reverend Conventual Fathers

of Rome a genealogical tree taken from a parchment

codex of their convent at Assisi,

written in Gothic letters in the year 1381, and subscribed by Blasius Epiphani,

public notary of Assisi, as agreeing

with the original, which I here share with the

reader. St. Francis's grandfather is called Bernardone,

his father Peter, his mother the lady Pica,

his full brother Angelo; to this last two sons are attributed,

Picardus, who is noted to have been then still living

continent, that is, to have remained celibate, and John, who

begot Ciccolus; and Ciccolus is said to have had

two daughters, Francischina, who married, and Clara,

abbess of Panzo, and four sons: Franciscutius,

afterward Guardian of San Damiano; Antonius,

afterward of the Order of Minors, lector

at Paris; Petrutius; and Bernard, who begot

John. After these things it is subjoined: And further

the genealogy of the holy Francis did not proceed, failing

in mortality. And to Francis these things are added:

He begot in Christ countless sons

in XXXXIIII provinces throughout the whole world, among

whom was one Pope. So there: but Wadding

in the Apparatus, §3, adducing the public letters of the city of Assisi,

teaches that at least in the year 1534 there survived

two of that same Saint's family, who in those letters are commended

to the pious faithful as poor men.

But what he discusses there about the family's coat of arms

it does not please me to touch upon. It was by his own deeds

and virtues that St. Francis shone, not by the arms or titles

of forefathers, which he did not even desire.

[61] The same Annalist in the place cited, citing no witness,

The tradition of the Saint's being born in a stable reports some things about his birth which

I have neither found in the ancients, nor does he himself confirm

by the testimony of any writer. Take his words: This

was singular in the holy Man's birth, that when his most blessed mother

had been in labor for several days and was suffering

great torments, and was unable to bring forth the child, there came

to the door of the house a certain man

(believed to be a heavenly messenger) in the guise of a pilgrim,

and said that she would give birth not in a costly bedchamber but in

a stable, and that the Offspring was to be brought forth not in silks but

in hay: and he advised that she should as soon as possible

be carried across to a stable near the house. Although the thing

seemed new and almost empty, nevertheless,

that provision might be made against the danger of the woman in labor (since nothing

in straits of this kind is left untried),

she was carried to the appointed place, where (a marvel!)

without much help or labor, lying in

the hay, she brought forth this most brilliant star. O blessed

Boy, who from the first threshold of his life is

made like his Creator! I myself saw that the stable is still held in great

honor, and that a chapel has been built there

in honor of the holy Man, and that it is commonly called

San Francesco il piccolo, that is: S.

Francis the Little. It has inscribed on the lintel-stone

of the door, in golden but ancient characters,

these two verses of inelegant meter:

This oratory was the stable of an ox and an ass,

In which was born Francis, the mirror of the world.

It is not far distant, at the end of the same square, from the paternal

house itself, and the Conventual fathers have

the care and possession of it. From them I received the same inscription

from Rome, with the character in which it was made preserved;

but in this it differs from Wadding's, that

it is read in one continuous line, and that before Francis's name

is set the word Scs, that is Sanctus; which differences, however,

I do not know whether they argue a variation in the transcribing,

or a change in the inscription itself since Wadding's

time.

[62] I for my part would rather read those things in some ancient and approved

writer now turned into a chapel than in a gilded inscription

of uncertain age. The praised and often to be praised

Conventual Fathers of Rome, in their manuscript Notices

sent to me, do indeed cite for that birthplace

five writers whom they call ancient: the Hungarian,

otherwise Hugarius of Pest, Pelbart

of Temesvár, Mark of Lisbon,

and Ludovicus Tiphernas, all nurselings of the Franciscan

Order, and they report their words;

but the oldest of these, Pelbart, Wadding in

the Writers of the Minors teaches to have flourished in the year MD under Alexander

VI, supreme Pontiff; so that accordingly

their authority cannot be of any weight here.

They add, and prove from a sworn instrument transmitted to us,

fortified with the public authority of a notary,

that the same history was seen painted in

the choir of their church in the land of Montefalco, of the diocese

of Spoleto; but neither is the antiquity of this painting

great enough, since in the same instrument it is said

that this is read of it there: In the name of the Most Holy Trinity

Benotius of Florence painted this chapel

in the years of the Lord one thousand four hundred

and fifty-two. Hence it is established that that opinion

was received in Umbria at least from the middle of the fifteenth century.

But was it also much earlier? The aforesaid

Conventual Fathers think it follows from this

that it flourished earlier at Assisi, and that it seems

to be determined that that chapel of Assisi was consecrated already before the end

of the fourteenth century, and the stone inscribed

about the stable turned into a church.

[63] it lacks a sufficiently ancient testimony, But I cannot assent to those learned men in this,

on account of Bartholomew of Pisa's deep silence on the matter,

which here cannot but be of the very

gravest weight. He wrote, at the end of that same fourteenth century,

the Conformities of Francis with Christ, and, beginning

from the prophets who foretold Christ the Lord,

he likewise interpreted certain prophecies about Francis.

What, then, could be devised more apt to his purpose

than the birth of both

in a stable? Yet he is silent. But what cause of this

silence shall we allege, save that at the end of

the fourteenth century that which they call a tradition

had not yet been born; and that the chapel at Assisi did not exist

under that title, which otherwise, by the mere sight of it,

would have reminded him, even against his will, not to omit so

singular a conformity. Perhaps on account of this silence of all

the ancients, Henry Sedulius, although he

too was of the Order of Minors, spoke more cautiously thus in the Commentary

on the Life of his holy father Francis:

I saw a little shrine at Assisi, sacred to the divine Francis,

which they say was the stable in which he was

born. These are not the words of one asserting that natal stable,

but of one hesitantly reporting another's opinion

about it. Nor can I make that certain from tradition alone,

which is not sufficiently proved to me to be ancient, nor from

an inscription of uncertain time, whose characters

do not go before the fifteenth century, nor from

the painting of the same century at Montefalco, nor finally from writers

certainly more recent than it.

Yet I nowise doubt that that sacred little shrine

was dedicated to St. Francis not without some peculiar cause;

perhaps because it was, when he was born,

a part of the paternal house. But if it should be established

that he grew up in another house, not even so will the conjecture

about his being born there, even if not in a stable,

become improbable, since his parents could have inhabited one house at the time

of his birth and another

while he was a boy or a youth.

[64] nor is it firm enough, as neither is the other about the godfather What if that little shrine was dedicated to this Saint

for a wholly different cause, unknown to us, and,

just as the Liberian basilica, because it is more excellent than the other

churches of the most blessed Mother of God in the city of Rome,

is commonly called Maria Maggiore or Maria

Major, so the lesser church of St. Francis

at Assisi (for besides this it has there the great basilica

erected a few years after his death) came to be called

San Francesco il piccolo, that is S. Francis

the Little, and that appellation in the lapse of time gave occasion

for saying that he was born there,

and for adding the rest to make a greater conformity with Christ.

However that may be, it is even less

likely that Francis's mother, already laboring for several days

in childbirth, was carried on the advice of an unknown pilgrim

to the stable of another house, that she might give birth.

Another tradition about the same Saint's baptism, likewise without any ancient witness,

Wadding reports in the same place, §4: There was present,

he says, at the baptismal ministry a pilgrim,

grave in dress and gait,

who of his own accord offered himself to lift the Little One

from the sacred font. But when he had performed the service offered,

and the mysterious functions were ended, he disappeared from the eyes

of the bystanders, leaving behind the traces of his knees,

which he had bent at the propitiatory of the altar,

in the marble, which to this very day

I have myself seen preserved among the other relics,

protected with an iron grating, in the cathedral church of S. Rufinus, where

the thing itself took place, on the left of one entering;

and I have learned from all that this tradition is universal

through continuous ages in that city and church.

[65] There also still exists in the same church the baptistery

in which Francis was cleansed by the sacred laver,

from the sacred font, which survives to this day. and likewise, as is reported, the blessed Clare.

Its form is quite ancient; its material rough and hard

stone. It has affixed above it this Italian inscription:

"Questo e il fonte, doue fu battizzato

il Serafico padre san Francesco." Which

you may render thus in Latin: This is the font in which was baptized

the Seraphic father saint Francis. Accordingly

these things rest on tradition alone, which not even

Chalippe could confirm by any testimony of the ancients.

Yet what Wadding says, that that font is the same

in which Francis was baptized, is

altogether likely, and not so singular as

to need the authority of the old writers. For indeed,

after Francis, about the 47th or 48th year from

his birth, was solemnly enrolled among the Saints,

it could easily be known where he had been baptized,

and that font could on that account begin to be held

in veneration; but it was of no concern to the biographers to indicate

that font. But what is added about the pilgrim godfather,

if it truly so happened, ought not equally

to have been passed over by them. Hence that tradition of the people

of Assisi alone cannot make that deed certain to me;

since it is little likely that the office

of lifting from the sacred font was permitted to an unknown pilgrim.

[66] Wadding immediately adds another marvel,

going on thus: after the baptism a certain pilgrim is said When, now a Christian,

(Francis being baptized) he returned home and was being carried

in his nurse's arms, there came, as though for alms before the doors,

another man — or that same pilgrim — and earnestly begged

that he might be allowed to see and touch the Boy.

When he had taken him from the nurse, like another Simeon,

holding with joy the sacred pledge, and sweetly embracing him

with his arms and gently kissing him,

he impressed the sign of the Cross on his right shoulder,

adorning as with a token the one who would soon be a distinguished

Soldier of Christ, and, as though he already had

the use of reason, addressed him with loving and mysterious

words. At last he gave him back to the nurse, and commended him to her,

that she should bear a solicitous care for him, saying:

Know that the Little Child, when he shall have grown greater, will also be great

before the Lord, and will attain to such

a degree of perfection that he will come to be numbered among the most perfect

men of the world.

The demons envy him this virtue; take care that he lie not open

through your negligence, or to their * snares.

Having said this, he very quickly disappeared, nor, though diligently sought,

could he any more be found in the city.

[67] For these things he cites in the margin the Ancient

Legend, to have appeared at his father's house, and, having embraced the Boy, Sedulius in the Apologeticum, bk. 1, ch.

3, n. 4, and Rodulphus, bk. 1, fol. 14, leaving out

Pisanus, who has nearly the same things in bk. 1,

Conformity 4, part 2, and likewise cites

the Ancient Legend. What this is, is unknown to me,

since nothing on the matter is read in our copies. Nor was it,

I think, better known to Wadding than to me, since he transcribed

no word from it. It may have been

some Life written after Bonaventure, after the end of the thirteenth century,

and for that cause cited as ancient by Pisanus in the decrepit fourteenth

century. Let us therefore hear him,

who from this event intends to prove that Francis

as an infant was shown to an angel much as

Christ was to the aged Simeon and to Anna the prophetess.

For, as he says, as the ancient Legend discloses, and

brother Nicholas of Assisi, afterward guardian of Spoleto,

had it from the lady Margaret, his mother,

a neighbor and acquaintance of the mother of the blessed Francis, the mother reporting it,

and the attendant or maidservant of the blessed Francis,

etc. If I rightly grasp Pisanus's mind, the mother of S.

Francis and her maidservant narrated the event to the lady

Margaret, their neighbor; she to her son Nicholas;

and he at last to the writer of the aforesaid Legend.

Now let us hear from Pisanus the account of the event, which

he appended to the words just given.

[68] [to have signed him with the cross, and, having prophesied about him, to have vanished from sight:] On the very day on which the blessed Francis was born,

a certain angel came to the door of the house of the blessed Francis

in the guise of a pilgrim, urgently asking

the maidservant that the boy Francis should be shown him

to see and touch. But when the maidservant

feared to do this, and he persisted in his request,

at last, by the order of the mother of the blessed Francis,

Francis was offered to the pilgrim. And he, taking him

in his arms, pressing and kissing him,

impressed a cross on his shoulders on the right side. And he said:

Today in this street two boys have been born,

this Francis and another. This one will be among the better

men of the world; and the other will be among the worse.

At length he foretold that the little child Francis

must be guarded with great care because of the snares

of the demons, who, troubled at his birth, would prepare

many snares for him to kill him.

And having said these things, he at once disappeared, and was nowhere

seen any more in the said city of Assisi. So Pisanus

in the first Milan edition. If now we compare this

testimony with the silence of St. Bonaventure

and of the others who wrote before him,

it will be necessary to confess that the aforesaid event is less certain

than if it had been reported in one of them,

and yet that it does not lack its own probability, which

we shall presently see also increased from elsewhere.

[69] although these things are not read in the first Lives, For from the Saint's mother herself and her maidservant,

who alone knew it at first, it is said to have become known

through only two intermediate persons, namely

the lady Margaret, a neighbor of that same mother, and her

son Nicholas, to the writer, unknown to us,

of a Life of St. Francis. And it could have become known to him

thus some years after the Life written by St. Bonaventure,

indeed even at the end of the thirteenth

century, if Nicholas of Assisi was much younger than St.

Francis, and narrated the event to the biographer when already an old man.

The Saint's mother too could prudently have kept the matter

long in silence, lest she be accused of a vain estimation

of her Son, or move others to laughter as being foolishly

credulous; and then afterward, along with her maidservant,

have committed her secret to her neighbor Margaret.

On this reckoning it will be no wonder if that matter

escaped the first biographers and St. Bonaventure himself.

[70] from Pisanus's narrative, however, and from elsewhere From elsewhere too it becomes likely that something happened

to St. Francis's mother from which she was led

into hope of her Son's future sanctity. In the Appendix

to the first Life, written by the Three Companions, of whom

one certainly was a man of Assisi and knew the Saint's mother,

at n. 2 she is read to have answered those who complained

of the prodigality of the young Francis: What

do you think of my Son? He will yet be a son of God

by grace. This answer seems to hint at some peculiar

knowledge and confidence of the mother about her Son's future

sanctity. Still more worthy of observation

is what is reported in the same place at n. 4, that Francis

himself before his conversion, while detained in the prison

of Perugia, said: What do you think

of me? I shall yet be adored throughout the whole world.

Those who on account of these words believe that Francis here prophesied

have not sufficiently considered

how little that agrees with his very frivolous manners at that time.

More rightly Chalippe with Wadding

simply narrates the words, making no mention of a prophecy.

To me it appears more likely that Francis

had heard something from his mother about the aforesaid prophecy of the unknown man,

and thence, out of youthful levity,

spoke so, although he was not yet striving to make his manners

conformable to so great a hope.

[71] For these reasons, then, that prediction about Francis's future

sanctity does not seem to me improbable, they become likely.

even if it has perhaps been set forth in a rather free style,

and somewhat amplified. Perhaps too this taking of the Infant

into the pilgrim's arms gave occasion to the other

assertion, by which the same Infant is said to have been lifted by a pilgrim from the sacred

font — which also lacks every testimony of the ancients,

and needs it so much the more, the harder it is

that anyone, especially of more honorable fortune, should commit

an office of this kind to an unknown pilgrim offering himself

of his own accord. Nor does that approach of the pilgrim to the house

agree well enough with the stable in which

the Saint was, unless one will have it that the mother was carried back

from the stable to her own house immediately after the birth.

For, on Pisanus's testimony, that pilgrim on the very day

on which the blessed Francis was born came not to the stable

but to the door of the house of the blessed Francis,

that is, I think, to the door of the paternal house itself,

and the mother was then in the same house in which the Boy was,

as is gathered from Pisanus's account.

What Wadding adds about a man possessed, by whose

mouth a demon confessed that snares were laid in vain by the demons

against the Boy's life, I pass over as received from more recent writers

and of lesser moment.

[72] As to the Saint's name, from the Three

Companions in the Appendix to the first Life, n. 2,

it is established In baptism he was named John by his mother, that he was born at Assisi while his father

was absent in France, and that the name of John was given him at his mother's order

in baptism, and that this was changed into Francis by the father

on his return from France, perhaps because he

had not been consulted about the imposing of the name and was

rather tenacious of his own authority. The two earlier biographers

and St. Bonaventure in the Life to be published made no mention of the first name

and its change, because

they began to write his deeds from his youth,

omitting his birth and the years of boyhood. St. Bonaventure himself, however,

mentions it in the Exposition on the Rule

of the same Saint, ch. 1, where he takes up those words of his,

Brother Francis, thus: This name of the Saint

was adventitious, since John is said to have been imposed * as his proper

name in regeneration, first

by his mother. Wadding for the same matter cites

also the same holy doctor's Lesser Legend

of St. Francis, unknown to me. Hence some

have held various opinions about the author and the time of the changed name.

[73] But clear are the words of the Three Companions in the place

just cited, but afterward Francis, by his father returned from abroad. where they say this: Francis, sprung from the city

of Assisi … was first called

John by his mother; but by his father, then returning from

France, in whose absence he had been born, he was

afterward named Francis. If Wadding had had this Legend

entire, and not merely fragments of it in others,

I do not think he would have discoursed

about the name, or at any rate would not have sought

mysteries where there seem to be none. For

these words hint at nothing else than that the father, returned

from France, took it ill that a name had been given the Boy without his being consulted,

and by his own authority imposed

another on him, which was indeed rare in that

time, but not wholly new, as Wadding believed,

following others, as Chalippe has already noted

in the French Life, vol. 1, p. 3.

James of Voragine, everywhere playing upon the names

of the Saints, did so also in the name of St. Francis,

and from him some have drawn their conjectures

on this subject. Let us therefore hear him.

[74] James of Voragine, alleging various causes of the changed name, Francis (he says) was first called John;

but afterward, the name being changed, he was called

Francis. Of which change of name

the cause is said to have been manifold. First, by reason

of a miracle to be marked: for he is known to have received

the French tongue miraculously from God. Whence

it is said in his Legend that always, when he was filled

with the ardor of the Holy Spirit, belching forth burning

words outwardly, he spoke in French. Secondly,

by reason of the office to be divulged. Whence it is said in the Legend

that divine providence gave him this name,

that from the singular and unusual name

the report of his ministry might become known the sooner to the whole

world. Thirdly, by reason of the effect to be attained, namely

that by this it might be given to understand that he himself, by

himself and by his sons, was to make many slaves of sin and

of the devil free (Franks) and at liberty. Fourthly,

by reason of magnanimity in the heart: for the Franks

are so called from ferocity, because there is in them a natural

fierceness and magnanimity of spirit. Fifthly,

by reason of the potency of his speech; because his

speech cut away vices like an axe. Sixthly, by reason

of terror in the putting to flight of demons. Seventhly,

by reason of security from virtue and the perfection of his works,

and of honorableness in his way of life. For they say

that FRANCISCAS is the name of certain ensigns like axes,

which were borne at Rome before the consuls,

which were for terror and for honor.

[75] labors in vain. All this James of Voragine says, and how

plainly cold or frivolous it is, anyone will easily perceive

who has considered the ancient Lives and these very reasonings.

That Francis learned the French tongue

by a miracle can be gathered from no older Life,

nor does Wadding himself admit it, judging more truly

that Francis was so called by his father out of

affection for things French, and because, having readily grasped the Frankish tongue,

by speaking it fluently he could seem to have turned out

as it were a Frank. To this end

he proves that at that time the word Franciscus meant the same

as Francicus and Francus; and this

is true. From the Lives too we know that Francis

gladly used the French tongue, but

the Three Companions, presently to be cited, add: Although he did not know how to speak it

correctly. Finally, that I should not believe that the name

of Francis was given him on that account, those same Companions stand in the way,

from whose account he seems altogether to be said

to have received that name from his father in his infancy, and

therefore before he had learned the French tongue.

Further it is uncertain whether the father so willed it because

he had been born while he himself was staying in France; or because

the same name was already in his kindred; or for

some other cause unknown to me.

* is it pereat?

* is it imposito:

§ IV. The Saint's boyhood, adolescence and

youth: his resolve not to refuse alms to the poor: his yearlong detention in

the prison of Perugia.

As a boy he learns letters; likewise the French tongue Of St. Francis's boyhood almost nothing is handed down

in the ancient Lives. The author of the second, treating of

the place of his first burial in the church of St. George

in the city, only observes that he was in that same

place imbued with the first elements of letters.

Then, he says, the most holy body was carried into the city,

and in the place where as a Little Boy he had first learned

letters … it was buried. St. Bonaventure agrees, following the earlier writer,

writing in the Life at n. 219: The precious treasure which

they were carrying (namely the body of St. Francis) they laid up in the church

of St. George with all reverence.

For in that place the Little Boy learned letters.

That he knew the French tongue in some fashion I have already

said above, and it is established from Thomas of Celano, the second

biographer, and Bonaventure, who with equal agreement

write that he sang the praises of God in French.

Doubtless his father had seen to his being imbued with it

on account of the commerce which he carried on with the French,

and to which he had determined to apply him. That he was not,

however, able to use the said tongue perfectly, the Three

Companions teach in the Appendix, n. 10, in these words:

He gladly spoke in the French tongue, although he did not know how to speak it

correctly.

[77] That he also gave labor in adolescence or youth to the learning

of Latin letters, and Latin; then he is set to trade. and was not wholly

ignorant of them, is argued by

what the man of Celano has in the Life at n. 22: namely

that Francis, when amid the solemnities of the Mass he had understood

the words of the Gospel, which of course were read in Latin,

was incited to a holier life. The same things

the second biographer narrates, and St. Bonaventure

in the Life at n. 26, who also in the same place at n. 1 attributes to him

some knowledge of letters before he turned his mind

to trade. On the same testimony,

he practiced this paternal craft in such a way that he could not be held

among the greedy or avaricious merchants, although

he was intent on gains, nor

did he hope in money and treasures. This very thing all the remaining

biographers hint, so that there can be no

suspicion of unjust commerce, to which an immoderate

desire of gain often impels.

[78] As to Francis's upbringing in his father's

house, He was softly brought up, in youth given to vain delights, the first biographer inveighs

against the negligence of parents who strive to imbue their boys

with worldly and perverse manners, and he reckons

Francis's parents among them. The author of the second Life,

perhaps Ceperano, who had the first before him, begins thus:

There was, then, in the borders of the Vale of Spoleto,

in the city of Assisi, a certain man named Francis,

a merchant by occupation, exceedingly rich in transitory

wealth, but poor in the works of justice. For in the earliest

time of his age, unbecomingly reared amid the vanities of the world,

he became more insolent than even those who reared him.

Why say more? He was wholly intent on the most wretched felicity

and glory of the world, and, striving to outstrip the rest in these,

he displayed the wantonness of a restless heart by jests and sports,

by gesture and dress,

by unchaste words (see the correction below)

and songs. And though he was a most careful seeker

of money, yet, if in spending

or in keeping he did not hold the mean of liberality,

he inclined nevertheless more to the side of prodigality than

of avarice.

[79] devoted to catching empty glory and to prodigality, Whence, since by reason of the vain squandering of his goods

he seemed affable and kindly, he drew after him

the wicked tail of many

clinging to him on this account, who followed him as head and leader,

headlong to ruin. Thus, surrounded by troops of his

accomplices, he walked in the way of perdition down to

the twenty-fifth year of his age;

until, to declare the glory of his marvels,

it pleased the Lord that a wondrous change of the right hand

of the Most High should take place in him, and become

for posterity an example of amazement, and afford to sinners

the hope of breathing again into grace. These things

Vincent of Beauvais expressed a little more briefly, but in nearly the same words,

in bk. 29, ch. 97, from the Deeds,

that is, from this very Life which we call the second.

Thomas of Celano, who went before the second biographer,

does not accuse the young Francis of unchaste

words, but only of scurrilous ones;

although elsewhere he says much about his ardent time of life, and uses other

unfavorable phrases, which

we shall presently discuss, so as to remove the brand of unchastity which

some have, without sufficient consideration, burned upon his youth.

[80] not, however, of unchastity, from which the Three Companions The Three Companions, who beyond all others

could know the young Francis, in the Appendix

to the first Life accuse, beyond the rest, his prodigality

and his ostentation in the adorning of his clothes,

beyond what his condition bore, and indicate

that he was vehemently given to jests and sports,

and they even call him wanton. Yet they do not use this word

in such a sense as to mean that he was unchaste:

indeed they vindicate him from this stain in the same place,

naturally courteous (that is, affable and urbane)

in manners and in words, according to the purpose of his heart,

saying to no one an * injurious

or foul word: indeed, although he was thus a jesting

and wanton young man, he resolved not to answer at all those who said foul things to him.

Whence from this his repute was so widely spread as it were

through the whole province that by

many who knew him he was said to be destined to be something

great. What do those things indicate but

a man pursuing youthful jests and vain delights,

but at the same time studiously taking care not to mingle anything unchaste

in word or deed, nor even to consent to companions

undertaking it? Which continence in a young man of this sort

could deservedly beget admiration of him among others,

and seem to portend something great concerning him.

[81] and St. Bonaventure vindicate him: The writings of the aforesaid and of others about St. Francis

St. Bonaventure saw, and, that he might be more deeply instructed

about his deeds, having set out for Assisi,

he had frequent and diligent conference about them with his intimates

who were then surviving,

and especially with certain men … to whom, because of

their acknowledged truthfulness and approved virtue, indubitable credit

is to be given, as he himself says

in the Prologue at n. 4. After so careful an inquiry,

than which no one could reasonably require a greater, he wrote more favorably

about Francis's adolescence and youth,

and denied that he was unchaste. That

the matter may become clearer, it will be well to have recited his words.

He began chapter 1 thus: There was a man in the city of Assisi,

Francis by name, whose memory is in benediction,

for that God, kindly forestalling him with the benedictions

of sweetness, both mercifully snatched him from the perils of the present

life, and abundantly filled him with the gifts of heavenly

grace. For although

he was among the vain sons of men, reared in his youthful

age amid vanities, and after some

knowledge of letters assigned to the lucrative business of trading,

nevertheless, with the help of heaven assisting him,

neither among wanton youths, though given over

to pleasures, did he go after the petulance of the flesh,

nor among greedy merchants, though

intent on gains, did he hope in money and treasures.

[82] With these words Bonaventure vindicated the young Francis

from the petulance of the flesh in the same way as

from avarice; and that he was free from both these stains

he ascribed to divine protection;

and that he was avaricious even the earlier biographers expressly

denied. Accordingly these things, together with the words of the Three Companions,

abundantly suffice me to judge altogether with Wadding

that Francis's body was never

defiled by any stain of unchastity. Nor did

Vincent of Beauvais assert it, nor St. Antoninus, nor any

ancient writer; so that one may wonder that one man and another

reported by Wadding took from him the glory of virginity.

The aforesaid Annalist in the same place adduces more testimonies of writers

for vindicating virginity to him,

but such as, being of more recent men, add no weight

to the ancients. But what he adds about the testimony

of Leo, his confessor, and about the divine revelation

made to him on this subject, is found in

Pisanus, Conformity 25, part 2, near the end,

nor have I found it in older writers. If anyone, however,

should believe that in the first and second Lives it is at least hinted

that the Young Man did not shrink from unseemly words and songs,

to him I propose certain things here to be considered.

[83] It is little likely that St. Francis was

known to Thomas of Celano but the things in the first Life which seem contrary, before he was admitted

into his company. For Celano,

situated by Lake Fucinus in the Abruzzi, is too far distant

from Assisi for it to appear like the truth, without a witness,

that the manners of the young man of Assisi were sufficiently known to him.

Wherefore, since the man of Celano in the Prologue

professes that he will narrate what he had heard from the mouth of the Saint

himself, or from faithful and approved witnesses,

it scarcely seems to me to be doubted that the things

which he reported about his worldly life he received,

at least for the most part, from the mouth of the Saint himself, accusing

his own adolescence. This being laid down, it is further to be noted

how greatly that most humble Despiser of himself

was wont to exaggerate his own defects, of whatever sort;

how greatly to accuse his own deeds, in which not even

the severest censor would have found anything to carp at.

I shall bring forward one example from the first Life,

where at n. 52 a truly stupendous deed is narrated,

likewise reported by others. Weighed down by infirmity,

he had eaten a little chicken meat. Who

would deservedly reproach this? Yet the Saint willed

to be led through the city with a rope tied about his neck; he willed

that his companion, who was also his leader, should cry out: Behold

the glutton, who has grown fat on the flesh of hens,

etc.

[84] These things being premised, let us carefully weigh the words

of the first biographer are explained when compared with others. which seem more opposed;

but at the same time let us remember the testimonies of the Three ancient

Companions and of St. Bonaventure, who are not to be set at odds with the man of Celano

but, if it can be done, to be reconciled

with him. At n. 2 he says: In elaborate jests,

in scurrilous and empty words, in ditties,

in soft and flowing garments. There is nothing unchaste in these,

unless one should wish to change the proper signification

of the words. Harsher are the things he

says in the same place at n. 3. While that Man was still

glowing with youthful heat in sins, and his slippery

age impelled him insolently to fulfill youthful rights,

and, not knowing how to grow tame, he was stirred up by the venom

of the ancient serpent, suddenly there comes upon him

a divine vengeance, or unction. These things

may seem graver, yet they are not necessarily to be taken of sins

of unchastity. For youthful heat does not incite

to these alone, nor do youthful rights convey this

sense, but rather the immoderate affection of the heart

for pursuing jests, idle companionships,

banquets, vain adornments of the body, empty

glory, a freer kind of life, prodigality

and other things of this sort, which inconsiderate youth

persuades itself without difficulty to be lawful for it.

No more does Slippery age prove the point, since this

impels to various vices according to the diversity of dispositions.

Since, therefore, the Three Companions and the holy Bonaventure

remove every stain of unchastity from Francis,

while the man of Celano utters no word by which

the opposite is certainly affirmed, he too is to be said

to favor St. Francis's chastity, even if he candidly reported

other vices of the Young Man, which perhaps he had learned from his own mouth

somewhat exaggerated, that God's

grace might shine forth the more in his conversion.

[85] Nor are the second biographer and others to be heard here, The author of the second Life, whom we suspect to have been

the man of Ceperano, favors less the honorableness of Francis's words

in adolescence and youth, but

ought to be reckoned of less authority. Ceperano

too is too far distant from Assisi for it to be likely enough

that St. Francis, while he was a young man, was sufficiently known

to this writer; and in writing the Life he had

the man of Celano before his eyes, whom he did not rightly

interpret when he says of Francis: The wantonness of a restless

heart he displayed by jests and sports, by gesture and dress,

by unchaste words and songs.

These words Vincent of Beauvais adopted from him,

and from Vincent St. Antoninus, who

accordingly are to be excused, not heard. For all of them

are to be corrected from the man of Celano, who went before

the first of them, and from the Three Companions, who were nearer

both in time and in place; especially since

these dwelt longer at Assisi, where those things happened, with the Saint

himself, and to their most weighty testimony

there has been added, after a new and diligent examination,

the testimony too of St. Bonaventure, to whom, without

any doubt, the man of Ceperano — or whoever else

is the author of the second Life — ought to yield.

[86] but the Saint's virginity and chastity are to be asserted. Finally, in no Life is there anywhere even the least

mention of the Young Man's familiarity with women,

from whose company those do not usually abstain

who have a mind addicted to foul lust.

Wherefore let St. Francis's virginity remain unimpaired,

historically certain; let his manner of life remain chaste in words

no less than in deeds, as well as liberal, honorable

and kindly toward all. But if

he was lavish and prodigal beyond measure, as is established

from the biographers; if he hunted after praise and glory too ardently;

if with adornment of clothing more costly than his

condition bore he imitated worldly ostentation;

if he indulged too much in jests and sports;

if, finally, he strove to excel among his equals,

these were the vices of his upbringing, which had inclined his mind

to worldly rather than to divine things from his tender

years. But amid the very vices of the Youth there shone forth

a great spirit, which, once it turned itself,

by the working of divine grace, to better things,

raised itself more and more, and sought divine things far more ardently

than before it had sought earthly ones, as will appear clearer than light

through the course of this Commentary.

[87] Among his virtues in youth there shone

first of all an outstanding liberality toward the poor, of which

the Three Companions gave a clear testimony in

the Appendix to Life 1, Having once repulsed a poor man, he determined thereafter n. 3, and St. Bonaventure

at n. 6, and they narrate the occasion on which

he resolved thereafter to refuse alms to no one

asking for the love of God. Life 1 agrees about that occasion,

at n. 17, but out of order; and

hence too the writer of the second Life, after first narrating

the Saint's conversion and certain other things,

speaks thus about the same deed: But other poor

and afflicted persons, while he was still given over to the world,

he always regarded with a pious * affection of compassion, and

most gladly stretched out the hand of mercy to those asking

for God's sake. But when on a certain occasion, contrary to

his custom, he reproached a poor man asking of him for God's sake,

he was soon stung by compunction on this account and grieved most bitterly,

and, judging it exceedingly unworthy to deny

anything to one asking in the name of so great a King,

he determined from this on to give no refusal to poor men

about to ask something of him for God's sake:

which he also anxiously strove to keep so far as he could.

[88] The anonymous author in our Perugia manuscript,

whom on that account I shall call the Anonymous of Perugia, never to refuse alms to those asking in God's name,

who perhaps knew the Saint, reports the same things thus:

When on a certain day in the shop in which

he was accustomed to sell cloth he was thinking anxiously

with himself about business of this kind, there appeared

a certain poor man, asking that alms be given him

for the Lord's sake. To whom the said Francis,

allured by the thought of riches and the care

of the aforesaid matters, having given him leave to go, refused the alms.

And as he withdrew, being looked upon by divine *

grace, he began to reproach himself with great boorishness,

saying: If for some count or great

baron a poor man of this sort had asked, you would have held out what was asked

to the asker; how much more ought you to have done this for the King

of kings and Lord of all? For which reason

he resolved in his heart that thenceforth he would refuse to no one

what was asked for so great a Lord: and calling the said poor man,

he bestowed charity (that is, alms) upon him.

[89] The author adds, in words somewhat corrupted,

that this mercy profited Francis much; which he also did: a certain man augurs well of him.

to this end he adduces the passage of Isaiah, ch. 58, v.

10: When thou shalt pour out thy soul to the hungry, and

shalt satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in darkness,

and thy darkness shall be as the noonday.

And this, vv. 7 and 8: Deal thy bread to the hungry…

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,

and thy health shall spring forth speedily, and thy justice shall go before

thy face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather

thee. St. Bonaventure adds also other seeds of virtues,

and narrates the prophecy or presage

of a certain man of Assisi, who once spread his cloak for Francis

as he walked through the city, saying

that he would accomplish great things. This indeed is not read in the other older writers

whom we have; yet the authority of the holy doctor makes it certain,

who both had the things collected by others, and wrote the Life

only after a diligent examination

and after conversation held with the companions of St. Francis himself.

Perhaps that man knew something

of the prophecy which is said to have been uttered to the mother and the maidservant,

as was reported at n. 66. Of

the year in which these things happened there is no certainty; yet

since the Three Companions narrate that pious resolve of the Saint about not refusing

alms before his prison at Perugia, which preceded his conversion

by a few years, one may conjecture that it belongs

to the earlier years of the thirteenth century.

[90] Taken in time of war by the Perugians, he is held a year in prison, Wadding in the same place, n. 18, after reporting

that prophecy of the man, treats of the prison into which

Francis, not yet converted to better things, was

cast by the Perugians, citing in the margin

the Chronicle of the Minors, Marianus, and Pisanus

in Conformity 5. The antiquity of that Chronicle

I do not know; but Pisanus, earlier than Marianus, wrote toward the end

of the fourteenth century. But even though neither

the man of Celano, nor the second biographer, nor finally

St. Bonaventure himself mentioned this matter, it is nevertheless certain

from the Three Companions, in whose Appendix

it is reported at n. 4, where it may be read. Pisanus

has things consonant in the place cited, whose words I subjoin

from the Milan edition of the year 1510. While he was

a secular, and there was war between Perugia and

Assisi, being taken with several of his fellow citizens

and sent to prison, he remained there for a year,

until peace was established between the men of Assisi and the Perugians.

While he was in that prison, though he ought to have felt

displeasure from the things which are had in prisons,

and from the liberty which they lack, the man of God

Francis, while the other fellow captives grieved and were sad,

stood himself glad and cheerful, so much

that it was imputed to him as folly. Being on this reproached by

one of his companions, why he rejoiced with such great joy,

he answered with a living voice: What do you think

of me? I shall yet be adored throughout the whole world.

[91] meanwhile of cheerful spirit and courteous: Remaining therefore a fellow captive at Perugia, like

another Tobit, he served his fellow captives as

he could. And a certain knight *, who had done an injury to another,

on account of which he had been sent out * by the others —

the blessed Francis neither deserted his company, nor ceased

to minister to him. Pisanus drew these things from

the aforesaid Appendix, except what he says about

Francis ministering to the others; but in the Appendix

it is added about him: Because he was noble in character, he was placed

as a captive with the knights (that is, with noblemen).

The biographers do not state whether

Francis was taken by the Perugians in some battle, or at least as one enrolled

in the militia of Assisi, or

only intercepted, because the Perugians carried off as captives all the men of Assisi

whom they could. The Three Companions, however,

mentioned the war too in the same place, in these

words: At a certain time, when war was breaking out between Perugia

and Assisi, Francis was taken with

many other of his fellow citizens, etc. He may therefore then

have borne arms for his native place, and that he sometimes bore a mind

not averse from the handling of them will appear below.

He may also have been taken otherwise, as has been said,

since he is not said to have been then in military service.

[92] the year of the detention is uncertain; In Wadding, in the first edition which

I use, this deed is attached, most likely by a typographical error,

to the year 1120, in place of which in

the latest edition the year MCCI has been substituted; and

in both places the occasion of the war between the Perugians and the men of Assisi

is derived from Marcomaldus, by others called Marquard,

Seneschal of the empire, who, as he had said before, invaded

the lands of the Church and tyrannically possessed or retained them

in Picenum, Aemilia and Umbria. But

that Marquard had already from the year 1198 been stripped of the possession of the March

of Ancona, and in the following year began to stir up

many things in the kingdom of Naples and in

Sicily, where also in the year 1201 or 1202 he died,

as may be seen in Muratori in the Annals

of Italy. Therefore Marquard's or Marcomaldus's domination in Picenum

cannot be squared with the year 1201 alleged.

But whatever was the cause or the occasion

of that war in which the Saint was taken (for in those

calamitous times dissensions of this kind between the cities of Italy were not

rare), if the year is rightly marked by Wadding,

the Saint's restoration to liberty from the prison of Perugia

is to be referred to the year 1202. Nor can this year

be far wrong, since the Three Companions pass from that

deed by these words, But after a few years,

to another thing which must necessarily be fixed

in the year 1205 or 1206, seeing that it happened

a short time before his conversion, which from what is to be said

is to be attached to the year 1206.

[93] Of the aforesaid captivity of St. Francis among the Perugians

the Life of B. Columba of Rieti makes mention twice, mention of it in the Life of B. Columba of Rieti. in which, in our Work at the twentieth day of May,

of St. Francis, who as a youth, when together with

several others he had been taken by the Perugians and consigned to a dreadful prison,

while the others grieved, alone exulted;

and being reproached on this by his fellow captives,

he answered: Know that I exult for this reason, that

I shall yet as a Saint be adored through the whole age (that is, through

the whole world). That saying of the Saint was taken

from our Life, but slightly changed.

I have already noted that those same words seem to have been uttered not

from a prophetic spirit, but rather from the hope

which the Young Man could have conceived from the prophecy made to his mother;

or even from the presage of that man

who spread his cloak for Francis and had foretold

that he would accomplish great things — if indeed this happened

before the prison of Perugia. Again in the same

Life of B. Columba of Rieti, n. 74, where it had been narrated

how B. Columba with her father and others, after

she had crossed the Tiber by the bridge of St. John into the territory

of Perugia, she was detained by wicked

men, the author adds this: I remember that I have read

that in this same place B. Francis, then a young man,

was consigned to prison with several companions.

That biographer may have seen other documents too about

St. Francis's captivity; for about the place in which he

was taken nothing is read in our sources.

* is it dicens?

* is it compassionis?

* is it perstrictus?

* read unum militem

* that is, deserted

§ V. Francis's conversion to better things, begun by an illness, and gradually advanced in various ways.

Recovering from illness he grows weary of worldly things, Francis, released from his year in prison and

returned to his father, carried on his former cloth

trade until his conversion,

which followed a few years later. Of the beginning

of the conversion the first Life treats at length in ch. 1, more briefly

Bonaventure at n. 8. The Three Companions, whose

chief care was to supply what was omitted by the first biographers,

passed over in silence the illness with which it began.

But the second biographer, whose

words about Francis's excessive affection for worldly things

we gave at n. 78 and the following, proceeds thus to it:

Divine compassion therefore first undertakes,

for his salvation and that of many, to recall the wanderer by bodily

troubles, and, seizing him with various

languors, compelled him to think things unlike his wonted ones:

and so it came about that he began, though

not fully, to grow tame under the scourges, which before

he knew not how to do amid prosperity. For at length, when he had resumed

so much strength as to walk supported by the help of a staff,

as he contemplated the whole province

lying round about him, whatever he had earlier held in desire as fair

to the sight somehow bred in him weariness;

and moreover he reckoned the lovers of such things

most foolish.

[95] But since prosperity after danger

is easily wont to deceive the incautious, this Man began,

but a little later he resolved to go soldiering into Apulia: when prosperity smiled again, to promise himself

yet greater things than before from the vanity of the world,

for he had not yet fully shaken the yoke of perverse strength *

from his neck. For when a certain nobleman of the city

of Assisi was gaping after vain praises and increased moneys,

and on this account preparing himself with military equipment to go

into Apulia, Francis, having now recovered his former

vigor of body, and no less desirous of riches

and glory, strove to associate himself with that nobleman,

as one who, being of a light mind, no longer remembered

his father's chastisement. But in this the disposition

of the divine counsel is sufficiently to be marveled at, that he

who had long since begun to grow tame through languors,

and deservedly ought to have been fully corrected through scourges,

now for the second time began to be called back from his purpose

the more wonderfully from that very quarter whence

it reasonably seemed that he ought rather to have been

encouraged to it. These last things the author says about the purpose

of soldiering in Apulia. For he judged that Francis

by the dream presently to be reported ought to have been the more encouraged

to follow soldiering, but that by it he was nevertheless the more

called away from it.

[96] he gives his costly clothes to a poor nobleman: Into this opinion he was led because

he had seen only the first Life, in which the chief reason is not reported

by which the Saint altogether abstained from the purpose of soldiering,

even though he had been confirmed in it by a dream.

That we may bring everything into order,

there must be premised what went before that military dream,

and what was omitted by the two first

biographers. The Three Companions in the Appendix,

8, premise the Saint's notable liberality toward a nobleman,

whose reward, the same holy doctor asserts, was signified

in the dream that followed.

There is, however, between him and them some difference in the narrating.

For Bonaventure, no mention yet being made

of the desire of soldiering, reports that Francis,

after he had fully recovered his bodily strength,

procured for himself becoming garments after his wonted manner;

and when he met a knight (that is, a nobleman)

well-born indeed, but poor and ill

clad, moved by an affection of mercy,

he straightway stripped himself and clothed him with them. Whence

the holy doctor adds in the same place that it was so done by the Saint

that at one stroke he fulfilled a twofold

office of piety, whereby he both covered the shame of a noble knight

and relieved the want of a poor man.

[97] certain things are noted concerning this gift. But the Three Companions either mention a twofold gift of clothes

after the desire of soldiering was conceived,

or narrate one and the same in different ways,

unless perhaps there is a fault in our transcript. For

at n. 5 they say thus: A certain nobleman of the city

of Assisi prepares himself with military arms, that … he may

go into Apulia. Hearing which, Francis aspires to the same

(perhaps: to going) with him, that by

a certain gentile count he may be made a knight; he prepares as he can

garments more costly than his fellow citizen's, poorer

in riches, but more lavish in generosity. By these words

they indicate that Francis out of a certain prodigality

gave to the richer nobleman more costly garments than he had prepared

for himself; unless perhaps for

concivi suo we should read concive suo, so that

Francis be said to have procured for himself garments more costly

than that nobleman's, although he was less rich than he.

But to this exposition, besides

that it changes the reading, these words do not agree:

more lavish in generosity. However that may be, at n. 6, after

they have reported the purpose of soldiering and the dream,

they say: Yet a certain token of great elegance

and nobility had gone before in him on the day

immediately preceding the aforesaid vision,

which is believed to have been no slight occasion of that vision.

For he had given all his garments, which

he had newly made for himself, elegant and costly, to a certain

poor knight on that day. This certainly is that

gift which St. Bonaventure mentions,

who, since he had the little Work of the Three Companions,

is not to be believed to have set it, without cause, contrary to what

they had done, together with the vision or dream, before

the purpose of soldiering. Wherefore I think we should stand

by his authority.

[98] But on the following night, as Bonaventure goes on,

the aforesaid dream befell the Saint, Roused by a nocturnal dream to soldiering

that, he says, it might show beforehand that the mercy shown

for the love of the highest King to a poor knight

was to be compensated with an incomparable reward. This dream,

which all the biographers narrate, the second

set forth in these words: For on a certain night,

when he had given himself with entire deliberation

to accomplishing the journey to Apulia, there was shown him in a vision

his own house full of military equipment,

which had been wont to be occupied by heaps of cloth

for sale. As he stood amazed, therefore, at the unwonted event,

the answer was made that all these would be

his and his knights'. But on waking, although

he saw a vision of this sort to applaud his purpose,

and reckoned it a presage of prosperity

for carrying it out, nevertheless suddenly

and wonderfully he began to grow lukewarm about these very things

which he had conceived, so that to fulfill them

he now had to do violence to himself; until

at length, not long after, he altogether refused to go into Apulia.

Thus the future leader of a new soldiery, from

this very change in himself, weighed that the aforesaid

vision carried far other meaning than he had believed.

Thus, having received the heavenly arms

which he afterward used manfully against all temptations,

he began from then to change his former manners

fully. With these things the first Life agrees, from

which they are drawn: but the true reason on account of which St. Francis abstained

from following the dream will presently be given

from others.

[99] The Three Companions, St. Bonaventure and our anonymous

writer of Perugia altogether agree he sets out on the journey toward Apulia, that the Saint

was raised by this military dream into hope of vast worldly

greatness, and thus encouraged set out

on the journey toward Apulia, and indeed reached as far as Spoleto

or the city next to Assisi,

as St. Bonaventure says, but that there

by another vision he was unlearned of it and called back from the journey he had begun.

Let us hear our anonymous writer of Perugia.

To this blessed Man, he says, in the time preceding

there befell something which I judge unworthy to be passed over in silence;

for when he was sleeping at night on his

bed, there appeared to him a certain one who, calling him by

name, led him into a palace of unspeakable

and lovely pleasantness, full of military arms,

with gleaming shields hanging on the wall

on every side. And when he (Francis) asked

whose were these arms shining with such brightness,

and the palace so pleasant, he received answer

from him who was leading him: All these are

yours, with the palace, and your knights'. And on waking

he began to think in a worldly way, as one

who had not yet fully tasted the spirit of the Lord,

that he was to hold magnificent princedom in these things.

And as his thinking * on this matter multiplied, he resolved

to become a knight, that such a princedom

might come to him as a knight.

[100] Whence he arranged, having prepared for himself cloths (that is,

but on the way, recalled from his undertaking by a heavenly voice, he returns. garments) as costly

as he could, to set out to the gentile count into Apulia,

that by that same count he might be made a knight.

And being made more cheerful than usual by this, he was wondered at

by all. And when they asked him about this new gladness,

whence it came, he answered: I know that I shall

be a great prince. And taking a squire with him, mounting

a horse, he was riding toward Apulia. But

when he had come to Spoleto, anxious about his journey,

and when night had fallen he had laid himself down to sleep,

he heard, half asleep, a certain voice

asking him whither he wished to go. To whom

he revealed in order his whole purpose.

And the voice again: Who can do better for you,

the Lord or the servant? And he answered, saying:

The Lord. Why then do you leave the Lord for the servant,

the Prince for the dependent? To whom

Francis said: What, Lord, do you wish me to do? Return, he said,

into your own land, to do what the Lord

shall reveal to you. And he by divine grace * was changed,

as it seemed to him, into another man.

So far that anonymous writer: but now a few things are to be

observed.

[101] Certain circumstances of the event are weighed All the ancients so narrated this change of Francis's mind

that they vary in some circumstances of lesser

moment. By this token we understand

that the Anonymous of Perugia did not draw from the little Work of the Three

Companions, but narrated the matter as

he had learned it either from the mouth of St. Francis himself,

or from his earlier companions, or finally from the men of Assisi, whom

he judged worthy of credit. But from the same

fountains the Three Companions also drew, and they learned many things

more certainly from Francis himself, with whom

they lived more intimately than the rest. And Bonaventure

had the writings of all of them, and besides diligently consulted several

of the Saint's companions.

Let us see, then, whose sayings, where they vary, are here

to be preferred. It matters little whether there appeared to Francis

in the first dream his father's house furnished with military arms,

as the man of Celano and the second

biographer report, or a palace adorned in like

manner, as the Three Companions, the Anonymous

of Perugia and Bonaventure have it. Yet we should rather stand

for the palace, because the Three Companions, although they wrote later

than the man of Celano, nevertheless knew the Saint himself earlier and more intimately

than he did, and with them the Anonymous of Perugia, instructed

from elsewhere, is consonant, and after careful examination

Bonaventure agreed.

[102] in the biographers For the same reasons, however silent those two

earlier biographers may be, the revelation is altogether to be admitted

that was just mentioned, which entirely shook out of Francis

the desire of soldiering, which had been stirred up in him, or rather kindled,

by the preceding dream.

I add this because it does not appear certain enough

whether he conceived the thought of following soldiering from

that warlike array seen in his sleep, as Bonaventure hints,

whom the Anonymous of Perugia also favors;

or whether he had determined to soldier before that vision,

as the first and second Lives have it, and as

the older Three Companions agree. Wadding followed

St. Bonaventure; nor is that to be wondered at,

since he does not appear to have had the little Works of the others entire.

But to me the contrary is more probable: for

the man of Celano, the Author of the second Life and the Three Companions agree

about the purpose of soldiering preceding; while Bonaventure

and the Anonymous of Perugia did not deny it,

but only omitted it. St. Bonaventure alone

at n. 9 has handed down that the military arms seen in that same

dream, as has been said, appeared marked

with the sign of Christ's Cross; which most likely

he learned at Assisi from the Saint's companions, and which agrees

excellently with the future spiritual soldiery of Francis which that vision

portended.

[103] Wadding also raises some doubt

whether the Saint then came as far as Spoleto not reported in the same way.

and there laid aside his mind for soldiering, because

Bonaventure only says that he went as far as the next

city. His doubt, together with the way of reconciling the writers,

he sets forth in the same place in these words: That he set out on the journey

and came to Spoleto, the Three Companions report in his Legend,

and Pisanus, although Bonaventure says that he did not pass

THE NEXT CITY, since Spoleto

is not the first city from Assisi on the Flaminian

way, by which one goes into Apulia; perhaps he went

by another way, and entered no city before

Spoleto, so that Bonaventure asserted the truth,

calling it the next in this sense…

But writers commonly agree in this, that

in the very city of Spoleto he was recalled by God from the journey he had begun

by the following vision; namely

that which we have already reported. To these things it may be added that Spoleto

was perhaps called the next city by Bonaventure here

not because on that journey it is by its situation

nearest of all to Assisi, but because it was nearest

for the Saint to rest in on the first night: for

since that city is only twenty thousand paces

or a little more distant from Assisi, he could conveniently reach it,

being on horseback, in a single day. No

reason, therefore, persuades us to suspect that that change

of the young Francis happened elsewhere than at Spoleto.

[104] The aforesaid Annalist also inquires who

that count seems to have been Who was the count to whom the Saint wished to set out. to whom Francis

wished to betake himself in Apulia, and judges him to have been

Walter of Brienne, or de Brienne, who

at the beginning of the thirteenth century waged war vigorously for Pope Innocent III

in what is now the kingdom of Naples,

and there in the year 1205 died, wounded and taken.

Hence that conjecture is probable enough, not

however certain, especially since at that time other counts too

served as soldiers in those parts. More certain

is the observation of the same Wadding, correcting some

more recent writers who hold that the count under whom the Saint

wished to serve was by his proper name called

Gentilis: for although in the Three Companions

he is called a gentile count, the word

gentilis does not seem to have been more proper to him

than the word Liberal in St. Bonaventure

in the Life, n. 9, where he called the same man a liberal

count. There does indeed occur in Muratori's

Annals of Italy at the year 1200 a certain count

apparently called Gentilis, in Sicily, but

that he warred in Apulia I have not read.

[105] From that time, whether these things happened in the year 1205

drawing to its end The error of the Anonymous of Perugia is corrected. or in the year 1206,

which is thus far doubtful to me, Francis began

to meditate better things; yet he was not so quickly torn away

from worldly things as the Anonymous of Perugia hints,

who here wrote things contrary to all the rest,

because he confused two journeys of Francis.

For after reporting the vision by which at Spoleto he was drawn away from military

pursuits, he at once subjoined:

But when morning came he returned, as had been commanded him

(by the heavenly voice), and, making his journey,

when he had come to Foligno, he sold the horse

on which he sat, and the garments with which he had adorned himself

for going into Apulia, clothing himself in meaner

garments, etc. There are here subjoined the same things

which happened after another journey of the Saint from Assisi to Foligno,

in which he sold both his horse and other things,

as we shall say in its place; but many things must here be premised

which came between the two journeys. The Three

Companions testify that Francis returned to Assisi hastily and joyfully,

that he might await the sign of the divine will,

as he had been commanded by the heavenly voice.

[106] The Saint, amid the pomp of a banquet, is filled with divine sweetness, But having returned to Assisi, as the same writers have it

at n. 7, not many days after, on a certain evening,

he is chosen by his companions as lord, that he might make the expenses

according to his own will. He therefore then

had a sumptuous meal prepared,

as he had often done. But God, who

had already begun to call the Young Man, amid these very

vain delights drew his mind to better things.

For while after the feast he was being led through the city by his banqueting companions

as lord or king of the banquet, with singing and

pomp, behold, suddenly (so say

the Three Companions) he is visited by the Lord, and his heart is filled

with such sweetness that he could neither

speak nor move, and was able to feel or hear nothing else

but that sweetness;

which had so alienated him from carnal sense

(that) as he himself afterward said, if he had then

been cut up wholly piecemeal, he could not have moved

from the place, etc.; his companions meanwhile standing amazed, and inquiring

the cause of so unwonted a thing. These things indeed

only the Three Companions report, the other ancient

biographers and Bonaventure being silent; but their

authority suffices, since they allege St. Francis himself

as witness.

[107] and being wholly changed, with prayers and tears Further, from that hour (so the same

Three Companions add at n. 8) he began to grow worthless in his own eyes, and to despise

those things which before he had held in love;

not, however, fully, for he was not yet wholly

loosed from the vanity of the world. Accordingly these things, which happened not

many days after his return to Assisi,

are to be set before those which the other aforesaid biographers

handed down about his notable change, as though made immediately

upon his return, and concerning which, after the first Life,

the author of the second speaks thus: Francis,

therefore, now withdrawing himself from the tumult of public business,

becomes an Evangelical merchant,

and seeks as it were good pearls until he find one

precious one; while, to see what he may begin

most pleasing to God, the meditation of various virtues

enters its workshops. And when he thus withdraws to meditate

in the Lord's field, he finds there the hidden treasure and hides it,

and resolved to buy it, with the field,

when all had been sold.

Now for his new purpose he seeks a new counselor;

he consults God alone as to what he should do,

and to no mortal does he set forth what he intends.

[108] in a solitary place seeks out the will of God; Then only, desiring a certain one who was more familiar to him

than the rest to be a sharer of his joy,

or rather seeking occasion to express in words some gladness

of mind, he often called him out to

more secret places; and indeed speaking to him

under a riddle, but not unlocking at all the secrets of his purpose,

he said that he had found a great and precious

treasure. That man congratulated him not a little,

going out with him gladly whenever he was called,

and most willingly conversing with him as he spoke in whatever way

about the treasure. And the Man, suffused with a new spirit,

frequently entered a certain grotto, his companion waiting outside

and being wholly ignorant of what he was doing within:

and there with tears he besought the heavenly

Father in secret that, directing his way,

he would show him more fully his will.

Thus continually persisting in prayer he both afflicted himself

grievously, and, until he should know from on high how

he must begin, the importunity of affections succeeding

one another did not let him rest. For there alternated

in him joy at the sweetness of the spirit he had tasted,

most grievous sorrow for the sins of time

past, no little fear about things to come, and a fervent

desire to accomplish those things which he had conceived.

[109] At last, the divine compassion having been more fully invoked,

he deserved to be heard for what he wished, and having learned it, he wondrously exults, and by a heavenly

and infallible sign to be taught what he should do.

And thereafter he was filled with such joy that,

now unable to contain himself, he uttered publicly in words even certain things

he did not wish to; he refused indeed to go

into Apulia, but promised that he would do great things

in the land of his own nation.

When all marveled and asked whether he wished

to take a wife, he answered that he would take a bride

wiser, nobler, and more lovely and comely

than all they had ever seen.

All this may be read in nearly other words

in the first Life. Bonaventure at n. 12 writes

that the will of God was then manifested to the Saint

by an apparition of Christ as fixed to the cross. For,

as is subjoined, by this the Man of God understood

that that word of the Gospel was said to him: If thou wilt come after

me, deny thyself, and take up thy cross,

and follow me. The Three Companions write that that figurative saying of the Saint

about taking a wife was uttered by him both here

and before, when, as was said above,

walking through the city with the troop of his companions he stood fixed, suffused with

heavenly sweetness. And they expound the riddle thus in the same place: But he said

this not of himself, but inspired by God; for that

bride was true religion, which he took to himself, nobler than the rest,

richer and fairer in poverty.

[110] The same Three Companions at nn. 8 and 9 add

to his frequent prayer a greater liberality of the Saint at that time

toward the poor and toward churches. and joins large alms to his prayers. Namely, he who

before lavished much on useless and profane expenses,

his parents conniving at it, then spared no expense

to provide for the needy more than

before. What is said about the prayers poured forth in the grotto

they place a little later. There are supplied by them also some other things

which preceded Francis's complete conversion, and these

seem altogether to be fixed in the order in which they are narrated:

for there is no reason why we should believe that the order of the history

was inverted by them. At what time

that deliberation of the Young Man about taking up a way of pious life

began cannot be accurately assigned;

but the complete conversion seems to have happened toward the end of the year

1206, and therefore the deliberation also, at least for

the greater part, is to be referred to the same year.

Certainly I judge that everything which I shall presently subjoin from the little Work

of the Three Companions took place in that same year 1206.

[111] The first is the pilgrimage which he undertook

to the venerable tombs of the holy Apostles Peter and

Paul. At Rome he asks alms in a beggar's dress: Wadding placed this after other things,

doubtless following Marianus of Florence

in the Chronicle, whose ch. 2, §5 he cited

in the margin. On the testimony of the Three Companions, n. 10,

Francis wished to make trial whether he could

publicly ask alms among beggars, and by what

spirit he would bear it. And so when for the sake of devotion

he had come to Rome, he secretly asked there that a certain beggar's garments

be lent him, and, clad in them,

on the steps of the church (of St. Peter, as they had said before)

he was asking alms in French with the other poor…

But afterward, putting off the said

cloths (that is, the beggar's garments) and resuming his own,

he returned to Assisi. Bonaventure, likewise placing the same things

after several others, writes that St. Francis

bestowed his own garments on one of them, namely the beggars,

who was more needy; and that he passed that day

in the midst of the poor with unwonted gladness of spirit.

The last the Three Companions do not deny,

who, that they may be reconciled with St. Bonaventure about the giving away of the garment,

are to be explained of the Saint's resuming garments of his own —

not those which he had given the beggar, but those which he had besides

brought with him from Assisi and had in his lodging.

Of his pious munificence toward the church of St. Peter read

the authors cited.

[112] he kisses lepers and bestows alms on them: Another and no less victory of the Saint over himself

the aforesaid Companions subjoin in the same place at n.

XI, mentioned also by St. Bonaventure at n.

XI, and indeed by Thomas of Celano in the first Life

at n. 17, but out of its place, on the occasion of similar

deeds. Hence the second biographer too, treating of

the same thing out of order, says: Before, however,

he had so despised such persons (the lepers, of whom there is mention there)

that not only when he saw them nearby but even when he saw their houses

from afar, he was accustomed to stop his nostrils with his hands.

But when the Lord visited him with his grace,

while he was still set in the secular habit, a certain leper met him

by chance: and though at the sight of him he shuddered in his wonted way,

yet, doing violence to himself, he conquered

himself, and steadfastly approaching, kissed

him. Thereafter, then, burning more fervently toward the contempt of himself,

he began continually to wage wars against himself,

until it should be given him from above to obtain * a perfect

victory over himself. He therefore showed mercy, as

he himself afterward testified of himself,

toward the lepers, whom he could not even look at

while he still lived in sins. So he:

the Three Companions add that Francis, when

he saw the leper, dismounted from the horse on which he sat, that he might give him

alms, and then kissed his hand;

and that afterward he went to the houses of the lepers,

and to all whom he found there he likewise imparted alms

together with the kiss of the hand. Bonaventure

believed that Christ appeared to him in the form of the leper,

because, when he had mounted his horse again,

he saw the leper no more. This the earlier writers do not have;

but the holy doctor could learn it from other

Companions of St. Francis whom he consulted.

[113] [he persists in prayer, the demon being unwilling; the image of the Crucified speaks to him.] From this second victory the Three Companions pass

to those things about Francis's prayers in the grotto,

his companion being left outside, which I have already reported from others. They add

the temptation by which the demon vainly strove to terrify

the new Champion and call him away from his happy beginnings.

Then at n. 13 they narrate the address

of the image of the Crucified in the church of St. Damian, by

which he was brought to a life plainly other than he had lived before,

or was very greatly incited to complete

the conversion to better things long since begun.

This event Bonaventure too reports

at n. 15, and agrees about the place, namely the church

of St. Damian, in which God through the image of the Crucified

addressed Francis and bade him repair

his house. This alone is the difference between their narratives,

that he writes that the same words were uttered three times

by that sacred image, while they mentioned

a single time. The man of Celano and the second

biographer are silent about the address; yet they agree

with the others that the Saint labored much to repair

the aforesaid church of St. Damian; for so

he judged it had been commanded him by the words of the Crucified.

* read servitutis

* is it cogitationes?

* add opitulante

* obtinere

§ VI. Francis's complete conversion, and his contests with his father, to whom at last, before the bishop, he gives up all his goods and even his clothes.

To repair the church of St. Damian he sells cloths and his horse, The often-praised Three Companions and St. Bonaventure

attribute to the aforesaid address of the Crucified the fact that

Francis immediately took some cloths for sale from his father's

house, and, having loaded them on his horse, carried them

to Foligno, which is a city of Umbria, commonly

called Foligno, and about ten Roman miles

distant from Assisi toward Spoleto. At Foligno

he sold those same cloths and the horse, and carried back on foot

to Assisi the money made from them, that he might see

to the repairing of the aforesaid church of St. Damian (which he believed

had been commanded him). Thomas

of Celano in the first Life, n. 8, likewise narrated the deed;

but since he did not know that the image of the Crucified had spoken

to Francis, he brought him, as one deliberating

what he should do with that money, to

the church of St. Damian, and says that there,

from the sight of the wretched state of that sacred building, he first thought

of repairing it. The second biographer followed Thomas

in his straying, whose words I subjoin: The Man, now confirmed

by a divine gift, did not delay to fulfill

the pious desire of his mind;

but, opportunity of time offering itself, rising joyfully,

he confidently fortified himself with the sign of the Cross,

and, taking with him precious cloths for sale,

went on to the neighboring city which is called Foligno:

and when these had been sold there, along with the horse

on which he had sat, he returned laden with money.

[115] Then at once, wholly fervent in the work of God,

he determined to devote it to the pious uses of the poor, and offers the money made from them to the priest of the place

to the pious service of other necessities. Now that very money

so grievously offended him, as he sought to have his heart

free from cares, that, not enduring the burden of it —

which he reckoned as sand —

he hastened to lay it down as quickly as possible. Thus that

biographer wrote by guessing, because he did not know that that money

had been scraped together by Francis with no other mind

than that the said church might be repaired.

Hence he adds in the same place: He found, then, near Assisi

a certain church, built of old in honor of S.

Damian, but already near to ruin through excessive

age. Whose need he, immediately

(nay, already before) pitying, reverently

entered it. There, having found a certain

poor priest, he first showed him reverence,

kissing his hands; then he offered the money

for the repairing of the church's walls.

But the priest, seeing the Man whom

a little before he had known to be wholly given over to the world, was vehemently

astonished at his deed; and, thinking himself

mocked by him, did not receive the money.

[116] At last, scarcely believing him as he more fully set forth

his purpose, he offers it in vain; a heretic calumniates this deed of the Saint, he at length granted his urgent request

that he might stay with him; yet

for fear of his parents he altogether refused to receive

the money; which, when that true Despiser

of money saw it refused, he made nothing of, throwing it down

on a certain windowsill like dust. Before

I subjoin the rest, let us observe a few things here.

These things agree with the rest. Of the same matter

the Anonymous of Perugia too speaks, and says that the said priest

was named Peter; but he was ignorant of the Saint's previous

purpose of repairing the church;

which nevertheless is not to be doubted, since from it

we understand why he sold the cloths and the horse.

Erasmus Alberus of Brandenburg, of that class of heretics

who hold nothing older or dearer than to calumniate

the Saints of God, pronounces Francis sufficiently convicted of sin in these things

from that saying of Solomon, Proverbs ch. 28, v. 24: He

that taketh away something from his father and from his mother,

and saith, This is no sin, is partaker with the murderer.

The sharpness of the heterodox writer's censure

Henry Sedulius did not refute in the Apologeticum,

acknowledging Francis here, as a man, to be guilty

of sin: but more rightly Wadding at §4 believed that this

stain too should be removed from the holy Father.

He did this both by showing that it is not established that the cloths

and the horse which Francis sold were his father's or

his mother's, and that the Young Man, twenty-four years old,

could then have had things which he could dispose of without

wrong to his parents; and by another argument,

which I shall recite in his own words.

[117] but Wadding rightly vindicates him from his harsh censure He received (says Wadding) from Christ,

speaking perceptibly and openly, a command

to repair the church; and although the intention of the one commanding

tended elsewhere, nevertheless he understood the care enjoined on him

to be about repairing that building. He knew

exceedingly well that Christ does not command impossibilities;

and he inferred, not improbably, that in order to obey

the divine command it was lawful for him to lay hands on his father's

goods, if his own did not suffice,

and that it was not then lawful to beg, nor, if he were allowed

to sit for alms, could there be collected so easily or so quickly

all the things that were necessary that he might be able to carry out

the command he had received. How then could he rebuild

a ruinous church, or straightway meet its impending ruin,

who had nothing of his own right? Or how could he obey the command

of the supreme Lord, if he wished the rights

of his father's ownership to remain wholly inviolate? He did not doubt

that the very One who could lawfully grant to the children

of Israel the precious furnishings of the Egyptians, because of his

supreme and excellent lordship over human affairs,

could also confer authority upon him who, by the privilege of an heir,

was reckoned as it were lord of his father's goods,

so that from his father's goods he might be able to render service

to God commanding.

[118] Wadding rightly vindicates him. ALL THINGS, says the divine Thomas, ARE

GOD'S, AND HE WILL GIVE THEM TO WHOM HE WILL;

why therefore, if he will, should he not receive them into his own service?

He therefore who, for the service of God, for the repairing of God's own

shrine at his open command,

took something which seemed to be his father's,

is not, according to that edict of Solomon, a partaker

with the murderer, especially since from elsewhere

and from the manifold and ambiguous sense of that passage,

Francis may escape the fellowship or the penalty of so great a crime.

More may be read there; for my part

I do not doubt that Francis thought this lawful for him,

whether because he believed that Christ commanding was thus

to be obeyed, or because he took not his father's goods

but what was of his own right. The first appears to me

more likely, on account of what we shall presently see done against him

by his raging father; nor yet is the other made

improbable by these things, as Wadding shows.

Certainly to St. Bonaventure this deed of Francis's seemed

not only not reprehensible but praiseworthy, in the Life at n. 16, where

on that account he is called by him

a happy merchant. Now let us pursue the history.

[119] St. Francis therefore remained with the poor

priest in the suburban church of S.

Damian, that he might more tranquilly give himself to fastings and prayers.

Meanwhile his father, Hiding with the aforesaid priest, he is sought in vain by his father: anxious about his Son's absence,

learned at last where he was staying. What followed from this

the biographers report in nearly the same way:

wherefore let us hear the second, since the rest can be consulted

in their places in the Lives to be published. He has it thus:

Therefore his father, not knowing what had become of him,

did not cease to be exceedingly anxious,

until at last, after long inquiry,

it became known to him how in the aforesaid place

his Son lay hidden, living wretchedly. Being therefore

not a little troubled at the sudden turn of the matter,

he called together his friends and acquaintances and without delay

ran to the place. But to the new Soldier of Christ,

hearing of the coming and the threats of his pursuers,

it seemed good to give place to wrath; and lest he should be seen

by his father, he thrust himself into a certain hollow which he had provided beforehand

for this. Hiding therefore in this for as it were

a whole month, he had clandestine service rendered him by one man alone,

who perhaps knew the place;

and coming out thence rarely, and scarcely save when compelled

by some necessity, he did not cease there to implore the divine clemency

in fastings and weeping, that

it might deign to snatch him from the hands of his pursuers.

[120] All this Thomas of Celano too has in the first Life,

but there is not sufficient certainty about the prodigy of the wall and the Three Companions in the Appendix.

Bonaventure alone, instead of the month which the others

attribute to him as he lay hidden, said for some days.

But it is not likely that Bonaventure by so speaking

wished to dissent from the others, who had known the Saint

and had been his disciples and Companions.

Hence Wadding too extended the same hiding

to a whole month. But the same Annalist

in the same place at n. 25 adds to what has been reported a miracle,

on whose testimony he asserts it I do not know. For treating there

of the father's coming being heard of, he goes on thus: But he (St. Francis),

because he was a new athlete of Christ … hid himself

near the church in the priest's chamber;

and being unable conveniently to avoid the fury of his father suddenly coming upon him,

when at the door he heard his father's threats,

he clung to the wall on the left of the gate with such gathering-in of his limbs

as he could; and the wall, of its own accord opening its bosom,

received the timid Recruit into itself, so that

he found his father harder than the wall,

and the wall conquered the man in humanity.

This hollow in the wall still exists in the monastery

of S. Damian, reverently observed,

into which I myself, with such affection and reverence as I could,

plunged myself.

[121] There are cited in the margin the Legend of the Three

Companions and Antoninus. receiving him into its bosom, Hence Chalippe, adopting Wadding's

assertions, said that this miracle

is affirmed by Three contemporary writers, namely by

those Three Companions. But I, who am about to publish their

Legend, find that prodigy of the wall opening itself

no more in this than in St. Antoninus.

There is like silence in St.

Bonaventure and in the first Life; like silence also in

the Perugia manuscript, and in the other ancients whom I have read.

For which reason one may suspect that Wadding

received that same prodigy from some more recent writer, in whom

the aforesaid Legend and St. Antoninus were cited

for the fact of Francis hiding himself, not

for the miracle in the wall, which perhaps owes its origin

to slight conjectures drawn from the veneration of the place

where the Saint lay hidden. For conjectures of this kind,

once they have been admitted out of excessive credulity,

pass little by little into popular traditions.

For the rest, that that place of the Saint's hiding was afterward

held in veneration, and is now part of the monastery of S. Damian,

there is no reason for us to doubt.

[122] Coming out in public he is very badly received, and by his father And so, while Francis at the church of S. Damian

was persisting in the priest's hollow, as has been said,

in continual prayers to implore the divine help,

there was thereupon poured into him (as the second biographer goes on after the words

recited at n. 119), as he prayed in the darkness,

a certain wondrous and untried gladness, from which he is suddenly

animated to such constancy of mind

that not only, despising his persecutors, does he come out in public,

but also, because he had sluggishly hidden,

grievously accuses himself of torpor and cowardice.

His acquaintances therefore, seeing the Man

utterly altered from his former state, and worn out with leanness and

squalor, imputed it not to heavenly grace

but rather to madness; and, pitiably insulting him,

they assailed him with mud and stones.

But the Man of God, broken by no injury,

passed by as with a deaf ear, and gave thanks to him by whom

he was comforted from above. At last a rumor sounded

in his father's ears that his Son had so appeared:

who, hastening up not in a fatherly but in a savage manner,

began to rage against him more than all the rest.

[123] [is shut up in a domestic prison, and, released by his mother, returns to the priest,] For, having dragged him home quite dishonorably,

thinking to turn him from what he had begun by adversities,

first indeed he cruelly afflicted him with insults and blows;

but then, bound in chains, he thrust him into a prison,

all compassion being withdrawn.

But the more the pressure of tribulation raged against the Soldier of Christ,

the more it rendered him strong

and firm; nor can he be bent from the state of uprightness by

adversities, to whom the Lord is a refuge in tribulation.

Now it happened on a certain day that

his father went away from the house on account of family business;

whereupon his mother, not approving her husband's deed,

addressed her Son with coaxing words:

thus she attempted to recall him from his purpose.

And when she saw that she could not, moved by motherly

tenderness, she secretly broke his chains, and, her Son being loosed,

permitted him to go away free. But he,

as one now tried in temptation, was made more secure than usual,

and, giving thanks to the almighty Lord,

returned in great liberty of spirit to the place

in which he had before made * .

[124] confronted again by his father he gives up the money to him. When his father, returning home, learned what had been done *,

in his anger he assailed his wife with insults:

and not yet ceasing, he ran after his Son

with unbridled spirit. For he strove at least

to remove him utterly from the borders of that land,

if he could not bend him from his purpose.

To whose coming the Son, free and undaunted, offering himself,

no longer gave way to his father's fury, as

he had done before; but cried out that he was gladly willing

to suffer yet greater things for Christ. Seeing therefore

his inflexible constancy, the father turns at last

to extorting the money. And when this had been found and taken away

where the holy Man had thrown it,

he began already to deal more gently with his Son;

because the thirst of avarice, a little quenched, at the same time tempered

the fury of his spirit. Nevertheless, not content with these things,

the hard father accused his Son even before the bishop

of Assisi, and insisted that he be compelled

before him to give back the remaining money which he had,

and to yield to him all his goods and the right

which he could have in them, as

we shall presently report in the words of the same biographer, with whom

Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure also agree.

[125] A certain difficulty is weighed But the three Companions insert something omitted by the rest,

nor do they seem to agree with them about the manner in which the father

received the money, unless

they are reconciled by a convenient explanation. The Three,

I say, keep deep silence about that meeting of the father with Francis in the church

of S. Damian, in which he received the money destined for the repair

of that same church. The reason for this silence may be alleged

to be that they knew that that meeting and what was done in it had already been

sufficiently set forth by others; but the same men say that the father,

after his Son was released from prison, went to

the consuls of the city and asked that they should make him give back

the money which he (the Son) had carried off

from the plundered house. They add that Francis, cited by the consuls

to appear before them,

excused himself from coming; and that, his excuse being admitted,

the father went for the same cause to the bishop, and

obtained what he demanded. Both these actions of the father

Wadding rightly placed after the money received in the church of S. Damian;

but for what reason then did the father

ask the consuls that they should make him give back the money

which he (the Son) had carried off from the plundered house?

How did he also demand this from the bishop,

and how is the bishop read in the same Companions to have then said

to Francis: If you wish to serve God,

give back to him (namely to your father) the money which you have,

which, since it perhaps comes of unjustly acquired goods,

God does not will that you should spend it on the work of the church,

on account of your father's sins, whose fury

will be softened when it is received.

[126] There is a like difficulty from the other biographers,

who with unanimous consent hand down arising from the biographers' accounts, that the Saint, after

the money had been given back in the aforesaid church to his father,

was summoned into court for the same cause, not indeed before the consuls,

but before the bishop. I think

all this must be explained thus. Francis

restored to his father, demanding the money which he had collected

from the goods sold, in the church of S. Damian, retaining

the rest, which he had received either from his own private store, once granted

for his own uses, or otherwise from his mother when,

his father having gone abroad, he was released by her from

prison; for it is not likely that his mother, who,

moved by mercy, loosed him, did not provide for him as he departed

wherewith he might in some fashion sustain his life.

But his raging father, envying him this also,

and perhaps too suspecting that more had been carried off by him,

or wishing that to be believed, cited him first before

the consuls, then before the bishop, so that he should give back

whatever he had, and renounce his hereditary right.

But that the money which the father then

demanded was by some title Francis's

may be gathered from this, that the bishop, in order to induce him

to yield it, did not admonish him about a restitution

to be made out of justice, but out of religion —

namely that that money, even if he justly possessed what he had received

from his parents, had nevertheless perhaps been gotten

from his father's unjust trade.

[127] It will be well to have repeated the bishop's words from the Appendix

of the Three Companions. which are mutually reconciled. Thus he is there read

to have addressed the Saint: If you wish to serve God, give back

to him (your father) the money which you have, which, since it

perhaps comes of unjustly acquired goods, God does not

will that you should spend it on the work of the church, on account of

your father's sins. Nor does he press him with the law of justice,

but exhorts him to yield it out of trust in God,

adding: Have therefore, Son, trust in

the Lord, and act manfully, and do not fear; for

he will be your helper, and for the work of the church

(that is, for the restoring of the church of S. Damian)

he will abundantly supply you with what is needful. These are not

the words of a bishop commanding Francis to make a due restitution

of money, but of one encouraging him to yield what was his own out of love

of God. Nor does it stand in the way that in the same place

the Three Companions had said before that the father ran

to the consuls of the city, that they should make him give back the money

which he (the Son) had carried off from the plundered house;

for there they do not approve the father's words, but

only report them. All the biographers being reconciled in this way,

let us go on to recite the words of the second.

[128] Before the bishop, everything that he has, Of the things done in this suit before the bishop of Assisi

he continues thus: After these things (namely

after the money was received in the church of S. Damian)

he (the father) led him (the Son) to the bishop of the place,

that he might give back before him all that he had,

and resign all his goods into his hands.

But he, prompt and cheerful for this very thing,

offering himself even before he was asked,

laying aside all the garments that he had, not even keeping

his drawers, restored them to his father,

and so, remaining wholly naked before all, he marked himself out as an exile in the world.

But the bishop, marveling at so great a fervor in the Man,

recognized that these things could by no means be done without a divine

prompting. And from then, ready to stand by him with the affection

of fatherly charity, he gathered him within his arms

and covered him with the cloak he was wearing.

Now the Man of God, naked, conforms himself to the Naked One on the cross;

now he had perfectly fulfilled the counsel of renouncing

all things — he from whose divine contemplation

nothing earthly now separated him but the wall of flesh alone.

The Three Companions add that the money too,

which the father was demanding back, was laid by the Saint upon his garments,

and the Anonymous of Perugia, presently to be cited, nearly agrees.

How this about the money may be understood

I have set forth above.

[129] he willingly and joyfully yields to his father, But another doubt arises from what has been reported,

which I have read as not sufficiently discussed by others. All the ancient

writers of the Life agree that St. Francis

laid aside all his garments and even his drawers before the bishop,

and gave them back to his father.

The first at n. 15 says: Straightway, having laid aside and

thrown down his garments, he restored them to his father, and moreover,

not even keeping his drawers, he is wholly stripped before

all. The words of the second I have already given. The Anonymous

of Perugia has it thus: Before the bishop

of Assisi he cheerfully resigned to his father that very money and the garments

with which he was covered, remaining naked under the pelt (that is, the cloak)

of the said bishop, who embraced him naked.

St. Bonaventure at n. 19 and the following: Straightway, having laid aside all

his garments, he restored them to his father. And then the Man of God was found

to have a hair shirt next to his flesh

under his delicate garments. Moreover, drunk in spirit with an admirable

fervor, having cast off even his drawers,

he is wholly stripped before all, etc. There remain

to be heard the Three Companions, who, since they were nearer than the rest

both in time and in place to the thing done,

could be more deeply instructed about it.

[130] even his clothes and his drawers, They set it forth at n. 20 in this manner.

After the bishop's words exhorting the Saint to yield the money to his father,

which I gave at n. 127,

The Man of God rose up, they say, glad and comforted

by the bishop's words, and carrying the money before him,

said to him: Lord, not only the money

which is of his goods (namely his father's) do I wish

to give back to him with a rejoicing spirit, but also my garments.

And entering the bishop's chamber, he put off

all the garments that were of his (that is, of his father's) goods,

or which he had received from his father, and laying

the money upon them before the bishop and

his father and the others standing by, he went out naked,

and said: Hear all of you and understand: Until

now I have called Peter Bernardone my Father;

but since I have resolved to serve God, I give back to him

the money over which he was troubled, and all

the garments which I had of his goods, wishing

from now on to say: Our Father, who art in

heaven; not: Father Peter Bernardone.

And the Man of God was then found to have a hair shirt

next to his flesh, under colored garments. Finally they agree

with the aforesaid biographers that the Saint, thus

stripped, was taken into the bishop's arms, as he marveled at his fervor,

and kept under his cloak.

[131] Further, this deed of St. Francis's, like many other

deeds, Some believe the Saint then used no covering the heretics calumniated, to whom

Wadding replied at n. 19 and following, striving to prove

by many arguments that the Saint did this from a singular divine instinct.

Nor do I doubt that a peculiar divine grace

impelled him to these things; but what

he admits as it were for certain — namely that Francis was then

stripped of absolutely every covering of the body —

does not appear even probable enough to me

from what has been reported. The narrative of the Three Companions, as it is

fuller than the rest, so also ought to seem more likely.

In it, it is said of the Saint: Entering the bishop's

chamber, he put off all the garments that were of his

(his father's) goods. To what end this, unless that he might strip himself alone

more decently? Or to what end this precaution,

if immediately afterward he wished to appear indecently naked before

the same bishop and the bystanders? He did indeed

return to them a little after, but he was found …

then to have a hair shirt next to his flesh under colored garments,

as is read in the same place, and St. Bonaventure agrees.

He was not, therefore, so wholly naked as not

to have covered, at least with the hair shirt, what decency otherwise

persuades us to pass over. Nor are James

of Voragine and Peter de Natalibus to be heard, who, against

the sayings of the ancients, and with Wadding himself

disapproving, placed the putting on of the hair shirt after the yielding of the garments,

as though Francis had first covered himself with the hair shirt

after he had already appeared naked.

[132] Nor does it appear certain enough whether,

just as it is established to have used one; but this is not proved from the biographers, that he wore a hair shirt under his delicate garments,

so under the drawers which he put off he did not have

some coarser loincloth. The reason for doubting

is that St. Bonaventure expressly says

that a cheap peasant's mantle was given him by the bishop

for covering the members of his body, but made

no mention of drawers being given, which certainly decency

would have required more. But, you will say, if

the Saint kept a loincloth and a hair shirt for himself,

in what way did he then restore everything to his father, and appear

wholly naked or stripped before all?

To the first I reply that in the Three Companions it is not in vain

that the words of his goods — namely his father's,

as is manifest from the sense — are used three times. For when he was ordered

by the bishop to give back the money, Francis

answered: Lord, not only the money

which is OF HIS GOODS do I wish to hand over to him… but

also my garments. And entering the bishop's chamber,

he put off all the garments OF HIS GOODS, namely,

as above, his father's. At last, bringing all these

to the bishop, he is read to have said: I give back to him

(his father) the money over which he was troubled, and all

the garments which I had OF HIS GOODS.

Not gratuitously, I say, do those same words seem here

to be added a third time, but studiously, that it might be given to understand

that the few and cheap things which he had kept

for decency's sake had not been procured from his father's goods,

but received from elsewhere — perhaps from the priest of S.

Damian, with whom he was lodging.

[133] Hence flows the answer to the other question.

For when in Thomas of Celano and the holy

Bonaventure it is said: from which it is established that he was at least covered with a hair shirt He is wholly stripped before all,

they are to be explained in the way just stated,

namely of one stripped of all garments, even

the drawers, in which the unjust father might have arrogated

some right to himself. Certainly neither Bonaventure

nor the Three Companions assert that Francis also put off

the hair shirt, which he was then seen to have next to his flesh.

And truly he may be said to have been both wholly stripped and naked,

who had been stripped of all his father's goods, even

those which he was wearing; and had kept no other

covering of his body than the hair shirt received from elsewhere,

and perhaps a loincloth as well, so that

he should not appear indecently naked. Wherefore, since those

assertions of the biographers can conveniently be so explained,

nay seem bound to be, why without any necessity,

without convincing testimony of the ancients, should we attribute to the holy Young Man

a deed which is by no means to be imitated, and for the excusing

and approving of which it is necessary to have recourse

to a singular divine instinct?

[134] and who deservedly praised this deed. The stripping of Francis, understood in the sense given,

all the biographers deservedly praise, and in it

they recognize a divine counsel and mystery. Of

it the first says: Behold, now naked he wrestles with the naked one,

and, having laid aside all that is of the world,

he is mindful of divine justice alone. He strives now

so to despise his own life, laying aside all

solicitude for it, that he might be equal to a poor man on the beset road,

and only the wall of flesh might for the time separate him from the divine vision.

Of this St. Bonaventure, after he had said that a cheap cloak

was given him by the bishop, out of which he had formed for himself

a covering of a crucified and half-naked man,

exclaims: Thus therefore the Servant of the Most High was left naked

(yet decently covered, as is plain),

that he might follow naked the naked Christ the Lord

whom he loved. Finally, other biographers too praise this,

none of whom, however, hints that in it

there was anything more to be wondered at than to be imitated,

or that any shame was struck into the bishop or the other bystanders.

Wherefore I altogether judge that St.

Francis, in order to indulge his unjust father even beyond what

he had expected, laid aside indeed all the garments

received from him, but not all

other things, as the Three Companions clearly assert about the hair shirt.

[135] His father departing with the clothes, the bishop gives the Saint a cheap cloak. Further, that we may finish the interrupted narrative of what was done

before the bishop of Assisi: the hard

father, made no gentler by all this, persisted

in his design. For after the holy Son had now yielded everything,

as has been said, Rising up therefore,

add the aforesaid Three Companions, his father, kindled

with excessive grief and fury, took the pennies

and all the garments. And while he was carrying them

home, those who had been present at this spectacle

were indignant against him, because he had left his Son nothing

of the garments, so that * moved with true

compassion for Francis, they began to weep vehemently.

But the bishop, diligently attending to the mind of the Man

of God, and vehemently admiring his fervor and

constancy, gathered him within his arms, covering him with

his own cloak. Of this deed of the bishop's Thomas of Celano

and St. Bonaventure too made mention, who

adds that the bishop moreover commanded his people to bring something

to cover him. Then there was offered

… to him (as he subjoins) the poor and cheap mantle

of a certain peasant, a servant of the bishop; which

he gratefully receiving, with a bit of mortar that

came to hand marked with his own hand in the manner of a cross,

forming out of it the covering of a crucified

and half-naked poor man. Since the bishop, whom the biographers testify

to have greatly favored him from that time, is read to have given

Francis no other garments, it is likely that Francis

refused others, and soon withdrew from there, the bishop

permitting it, lest he should resist the divine counsel

which he recognized in him.

* fuerat

* est is superfluous

* read &

§ VII. The chronology of his conversion, of the renunciation of all things before the bishop, and of his habit afterward changed, of the gathering of his first companions, and of the Order approved by Innocent III.

The renunciation of all things is not necessarily to be fixed in the year 1206, After the aforesaid deeds of St. Francis before the bishop,

Wadding inquires into the time in which they were done,

and, having reported several opinions of more recent writers,

some of whom certainly went astray from the true chronology,

he himself with St. Antoninus and other more recent writers

fixes his conversion in the year 1206, and

reasons thus. For since he is commonly reported to have died

in the twentieth year from his contempt of the world,

and died in the year MCCXXVI (let us add,

on the fourth day, or, in our manner of speaking, on the third of October),

it seems to follow that he should be said to have been converted

in the year of Christ MCCVI, and the XXV of his age,

under which historians commonly say he was brought to better ways.

But we have already determined above

that he was born in the year MCLXXXII. When the reckonings

are made, therefore, the year of his conversion will be exactly counted

as the one thousand two hundred and sixth,

at least as begun. This reasoning, which below

will be confirmed, does not bind so tightly but that it may stray

by one year of the Christian era. About the year and

month of his death there is plainly no doubt:

for from the consent of all the ancients it is established that St.

Francis died in the year 1226, on the fourth, or the third of October.

Wherefore, if he died in the twentieth year of his conversion,

his conversion cannot be fixed before

the said day of October of the year 1206, yet it may also

be fixed before October of the year 1207.

[137] The year of his birth, which is less certain,

presses less also. but it may also be fixed in the year 1207: the biographers' sayings For let us suppose that St. Francis

was certainly born in the year 1182, but toward the end

or even the middle of it, so that he had nearly completed the twenty-

fifth year of his age before his conversion:

his conversion will again fall into that same

year 1207. Further, the ways of speaking which the ancient

biographers used in designating the time of his conversion

do not sufficiently clear up the difficulty.

The man of Celano at n. 2 writes that Francis

before it wasted his time almost up to the twenty-fifth year

of his age. But these

words admit a double sense. In the first, which

is the more obvious, the Saint must be said to have been converted when

nearly twenty-four years of his life were completed, but

the twenty-fifth was not yet begun. But in

the second, which is less accurate, the little word completed

is to be understood, and he must be said to have wasted his time

before his conversion almost up to the completed twenty-fifth year

of his age.

[138] The same writer at n. 109 says that the Saint died

when the time of his conversion was already accomplished

in the space of twenty years; about the time of his conversion, are weighed, or, as he had said before at n. 88, twenty years being completed from it: in a like

manner in the second Life it is said of the time of his death:

a space of twenty years had already elapsed

since he first … clave to the counsels of Evangelical

perfection. Of the same time

in the Three Companions at n. 68 it is read: After

twenty years from when he most perfectly clave to Christ,

following the life and footsteps of the Apostles.

The Anonymous of Perugia is also consonant, writing that he died

twenty … years being completed after he …

clave to Evangelical perfection. Whoever reads these alone

will not hesitate to say that between Francis's

conversion and his death twenty full years intervened,

and therefore that he departed from this mortal life not in the twentieth

year but in the twenty-first of his conversion.

This being laid down, that same conversion could also

have happened in the year 1205. But

it must be determined otherwise, both from the man of Celano himself,

who at n. 119 fixed the Saint's death in the twentieth year

of his conversion; and from St. Bonaventure,

who, since he had read all the aforesaid Lives, or at least

the chief of them, and had besides instituted a new

examination, having consulted the chief companions of St. Francis

who survived, in the Life at n.

208 attached his death to the year… twentieth

from his conversion, thus expounding or correcting the sayings of the earlier writers;

and by his authority I think we must stand.

[139] and it is asked from what event the man of Celano began it, Accordingly, when nineteen years are completed, or

twenty incomplete, reckoned back from the year of the Christian Era 1226,

the fourth day of October, we shall come to the year 1206 or

1207, according to the season of the year into which

the conversion fell. Besides this it must be inquired

from what event the man of Celano begins St. Francis's conversion,

or whence he begins to number the years of the conversion.

At n. 2 he speaks thus of the years preceding

that conversion, as has been said: Almost

up to the twenty-fifth year of his age

he wretchedly wasted his time. This time he without doubt

places before the conversion. Then at n. 3

he reports his illness, and says that his mind was changed by it,

but not fully, however, nor truly, as

he adds at n. 4; because, namely, a little after

he wished to go soldiering into Apulia; so that not even from this

illness is the man of Celano to be believed to have fixed the beginning of the conversion.

Then at n. 6 he narrates his conversion as almost complete,

when he says that, returning from the journey toward Apulia

which he had begun, he withdrew from the worldly

tumult, prayed frequently in the grotto, burned

within with divine love, and he reports other things

indicating a complete conversion.

[140] and from these it is shown that the conversion From this time, then, he may have numbered

the years of Francis's conversion, who had then truly undertaken

better things, although he still hung doubtful about the rule of life.

Yet he may also have begun

from what he says at n. 7: It was shown him

what he ought to do; he may finally have begun from

his return from the city of Foligno, whence, after the cloths

and the horse had been sold there, returning to Assisi, he stayed,

or lay hidden, with the poor priest of the church of S. Damian,

and thereafter wished to have nothing in common with the world,

as the man of Celano narrates at n. 8.

This last appears to me more likely;

but whichever of these is the truer, certainly I do not

judge that that first biographer began the years of Francis's conversion

from the laying aside of his garments before the bishop,

since from the time when he lay hidden with the aforesaid priest

of the church of S. Damian, persisting in prayers, fastings, vigils

and other afflictions of the body, there was plainly nothing lacking that

could be required for a complete conversion.

[141] Accordingly, since St. Francis by the common

opinion was in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the twentieth

of his conversion, when he died

in the year 1126 on the fourth or third of October, that conversion happened

in the twenty-fifth year of his age; and since it began

at least some months before the renunciation of his goods

before the bishop, [must be fixed in the year 1206, and the renunciation of his goods in the following year;] it is to be fixed

in the year 1206 drawing to its close, or nearly twenty years

before his death. For the same year there also stands

the most weighty authority of Albert, abbot of Stade,

who says in the Chronicle: In the year of the Lord MCCVI the blessed

Francis turned himself from the vanities of the world.

But the surrender of all his goods, made before the bishop of Assisi,

belongs to the year 1207, and most likely

to the month of April of it, as our Anonymous of Perugia at any rate

seems to me to indicate, who

after the preface began thus: After the years from the Incarnation

of the Lord MCCVII were completed, in the month

of April, on the XVI of the Kalends of May, the Lord, seeing his people

whom he had redeemed with the precious blood of his only-begotten Son

forgetful of his commandments

and ungrateful for his benefits, and on everyone * deserving of death

had for a long time had mercy, yet still

not willing the death of the sinner but that he be converted

and live, moved by his most kindly mercy,

willed to send laborers into his harvest,

and enlightened a man who was in the city of Assisi,

Francis by name, and a merchant by occupation,

etc.

[142] By these words, by which certainly the preceding

deeds of St. Francis cannot be indicated, as is shown from the Anonymous of Perugia the anonymous writer must altogether

be said to have designated the surrender of his goods,

by which the holy Founder laid as it were the first stone

of the Order of Minors, and cast a solid foundation.

As to the year, no other can here have been designated by him

than the one thousand two hundred and seventh of the Christian

era, although it is said: After the years from the Incarnation

of the Lord MCCVII were completed. For either, speaking accurately,

he followed the Dionysian reckoning, and numbered the years

from the Incarnation of the Lord, and in

this way on the XVI day of April of the year 1207 of our common

Christian era, which begins from the Kalends of January, there had in fact

already been completed one thousand two hundred and seven years;

since the years of the Incarnation begin

from the twenty-fifth day of March, and anticipate our common year

by nearly a year: or that same anonymous writer spoke

less accurately, and by that phrase wished

to say that so much time had then been completed from the Incarnation

of the Lord that the year 1207 was now reckoned

after the common manner. This is beyond doubt, that

the renunciation of his goods cannot be deferred to our common

year 1208; nor from any other quarter

is it likely that that anonymous writer, who studiously noted

both the month and the day, erred in

the year.

[143] And excellently with this epoch agree

the things which my Elders gave at the twenty-third of April about

B. Giles, compared with another Perugia manuscript, of the Life of B. Giles who two years later joined himself among the first

to St. Francis. For indeed in the Preliminary

Commentary at n. 2 there are cited in the same place these words:

In the same sacristy (of the Friars Minor at Perugia)

there is kept a manuscript book on parchment, quite ancient,

closed with little iron chains, in which are written

the Life, conferences and miracles of B. Br.

Giles in a quite rude Latin tongue, where toward the end

this is contained: "In the year of the Lord MCCIX the venerable

father Br. Giles was associated with St. Francis

and became a Friar Minor: and in MCCLXII,

in the time of the lord Pope Urban, on the X of the Kalends of May,

he passed to heaven: whence he lived in the Religion

of the Friars Minor LIII years." These things about the time

in which Giles associated himself with St. Francis seem

accurate. To the same year MCCIX

Wadding referred that joining, and added

the day sacred to St. George, which is the XXIII of the month of April.

About this day the Life of the same B. Giles

published among us agrees, which at n. 2 has it thus:

Hence after eight days (from the conversion of Bernard and

Peter, the first companions of St. Francis) it happened

that, when the aforesaid Giles was on a certain evening

in his own house, his parents began to relate

what Br. Bernard and Br. Peter had done:

which being heard, it greatly pleased him.

[144] and with the Three Companions in the Appendix. But rising betimes the following morning,

anxious for his salvation, he went on to the church

of S. George, whose feast was celebrated on that day;

and he entered in and adored. And when his prayer

was finished, going out of the church he was thinking how

he might find B. Francis and his companions.

Presently it is narrated how he came to St. Francis,

and was received by him into the fellowship.

Accordingly, since Giles came to St. Francis on the XXIII day of April

in the year 1209, and two others had already come to him

eight days earlier than he, as the most ancient

documents to be cited below also have it,

Francis admitted his first companions about

the middle of April of the aforesaid year 1209. But on the testimony

of the Three Companions in the Appendix, n. 27, And as

the truth both of the blessed Francis's so simple doctrine

and of his life became known among many, there began,

two years after his own manner of life (that is,

after the poor life begun by him), certain men

to be animated by his example to penance,

and, having cast off all things, to be joined to him in habit

and in life; of whom the first was brother Bernard

of holy memory, etc. Then again at n. 32:

But after some days a certain man of Assisi,

Giles by name, came to them, and with great

reverence and devotion, on bended knees, asked

the Man of God to receive him into his fellowship,

etc. Let us therefore count backward two years

from the middle of April of the year 1209, and

we shall come to the middle of April of the year 1207,

on the XVI day of which month our Anonymous of Perugia

rightly noted that St. Francis renounced all things.

[145] This opinion is favored also by the ancients, Let us hear also one and another, contemporaries

and near-contemporaries, who attached the institution of the Order

of Minors to that same year 1207, because St.

Francis in this year, by renouncing all earthly things,

laid the foundation of his Order. Alberic,

a monk of Trois-Fontaines, who certainly lived in St. Francis's

time, says in the Chronicle at the year 1207:

There began, moreover, in this same year (elsewhere: time)

another new Order in Tuscany (rather in Umbria)

at Assisi, and these are called Friars Minor

because of their humility and the abjectness of their body.

They have their own Rule, approved also by

Pope Innocent the third, which the blessed

Francis, with religious and skilled men cooperating,

put forth: and he also instituted for them the manner of reading and of singing psalms

according to the rite of the Roman Church.

They have a superior whom they call Minister

general. Consonant with this, and speaking even more clearly,

is Bernard Gui, who indeed was not a contemporary of the Saint

but a near-contemporary, in the Life of Innocent

III, vol. 3, part I of the Writers of Italy,

p. 481, where he first says generally that the Orders

of Preachers and of Minors were instituted under the same Pontiff,

then about the institution of the latter subjoins

the following.

[146] who referred the beginning of the Order of Minors to the same year. But the Order of Friars Minor was begun

by the holy Francis, who before his conversion

(rather, as an infant from baptism until the return

of his father from France) was called John,

near the city of Assisi at Saint Mary

of the Portiuncula in the year of the Lord MCCVII, in the X

year of the Pontificate of lord Pope Innocent (namely the third

of that name), reckoning from the first beginning

of his conversion. By these last words Bernard clearly

indicates that he traced the beginning of the Order of Minors

from the renunciation of goods made by its

holy Founder (as I have said from the Anonymous

of Perugia, on the XVI day of April of the year 1207), at which time

the tenth year of the Pontificate of Innocent III

had also begun to run, inasmuch as he was raised to it

in the month of January of the year 1198. Another writer indeed

of the Life of the same Pontiff, but more recent, published in the same place

in vol. 3, part 2, p. 379, places the institution

in the year 1206; but he is of less authority,

and in that same place is mistaken; when

he says of St. Francis: He had begun to order and publish

the Order of Friars Minor, namely in the year

from the Nativity of the Lord MCCVI; which certainly is false,

since at that time he had no Companions, nor

perhaps had he thought about instituting an Order, much less publishing it.

[147] St. Antoninus's reckonings about these matters are entangled,

part 3, tit. 24, ch. 7, where he speaks thus of St. Francis:

The narrative of St. Antoninus is weighed, First, for two years wearing a decent

and eremitical habit, carrying a staff

in his hands, girt with a leathern belt, walking with shod

feet, begging through the city of Assisi:

now he lay hidden in deserts, now he devoutly applied himself

to the repairing of churches. And he began

this life in the year of the Lord MCCVI, in the XIIII year of the Pontificate

of the lord Innocent III. But in the year

of the Lord MCCIX… he laid aside his shoes,

renounced his wallet and his money, and, casting away

staff and belt, contented with a single little tunic,

took a rope for a girdle, and so gathered himself with all his strength

to keeping the Evangelical life.

At which time, according to the truer opinion,

upon that foundation stone the Order of Friars Minor

received its beginning and foundation.

And when, thus withdrawn from the world, reckoned by many

mad, he had for two years in the greatest

austerity, poverty and patience served the Lord alone,

a certain venerable man, of the nobler,

more prudent and richer men of the city

of Assisi, Bernard by name, etc.; by which words St. Antoninus

sets forth at length that this Bernard then came to St. Francis's

fellowship.

[148] But not undeservedly did he seem to Wadding in this

place to write contradictory things: who confounded the conversion with the renunciation. for how, if,

beginning that life in the year MCCVI, he wore the decent

and eremitical habit only for two years,

did he exchange it for that harsher one only in the year MCCIX? These things

certainly do not agree: but neither is the cause

of the faulty reckonings obscure. For Antoninus here confounded

Francis's conversion, which happened in the year 1206 drawing to its close,

with the renunciation made in the year 1207, in which

he laid aside his secular garments, and then put on the eremitical one,

which two years later he at length exchanged for a harsher

habit, as we shall show below.

Hence the holy historian favors us so far,

in that he counts two years from the eremitical garment being taken up

to the habit of the Minors, put on in the year 1209.

Perhaps, however, there is only a typographical error

in the year of the Lord MCCVI, and for it we should read

the year MCCVII; such an error as is manifest in

the XIIII year of the Pontificate of Innocent III, whose ninth

and tenth years coincided with the years of the Lord

MCCVI and MCCVII. Finally, the two years after

which St. Francis admitted his first companions are not

to be begun from the year 1209, as Antoninus seems to do,

but from the year 1207, as has just

been proved. Indeed this follows even from Antoninus

himself, who in the same place at §4 writes that St. Francis's Rule

was confirmed by Honorius III in the year

of Christ 1223, and in the XV year from when the Blessed one

began to have brothers. For if from the year of Christ 1223 you subtract

15 incomplete years, or 14 complete ones,

you will come not to the year 1207, but to

1209, in which accordingly, by St. Antoninus's own

opinion, he began to have brothers. Let us pursue the chronology.

[149] [He falls among robbers, serves in a kitchen, and, clad in an eremitical garment, returns to Assisi,] Stripped of all his father's goods and half-naked,

St. Francis in a certain wood fell among

robbers, by whom he was ill handled and cast into a pit

full of snow. This happened a little

after the renunciation of his goods, that is, a little

after the middle of the month of April, at which time

winter snows could remain in pits less exposed

to the sun; and it also agrees with this time that

no mention of cold is made in the biographers. In the same month

he served in the kitchen of a certain

monastery for the sake of getting food, being even

then ill covered. Not long after he came to Gubbio,

where he received a garment from an old friend.

Then also for some time he served the lepers,

and at last returned to Assisi, most likely

in the month of May. Dwelling at Assisi with the priest of S. Damian,

whom we mentioned above, he began

to beg, both to sustain his own life

and to repair the church of S. Damian, as

he had earlier wished to do out of his own money. This work

being finished, most likely in the same year 1207, he changed

his place, and undertook likewise to repair by begging and laboring

another church of the same kind, near

Assisi, dedicated to S. Peter; and then

a third also, called S. Mary of the Angels, or of the Portiuncula,

both most likely in the year

1208.

[150] where he repairs three churches. But that you may wonder the less, reader, that

he could repair three churches within less than two years,

it is to be observed first that these most likely were

but small ones, or chapels, as one may conjecture

from the last, still surviving, which, as

we shall say more fully in its place, is only about seventeen

feet in breadth and thirty-six in length.

It is to be observed secondly that not all

three needed equal repair. Thirdly, finally,

that it can scarcely be doubted that the men of Assisi had by then

begun to look up to the virtues of their Fellow citizen, and

accordingly gladly helped him, both by work and by generous alms,

to restore those pious places:

which is above all most likely of the bishop, who,

marveling, had approved his virtue in the renunciation of all things,

and from then became

his helper, by exhorting and cherishing him,

and by loving and embracing him in the bowels of charity,

as the Three Companions say at n. 20, and before

them the man of Celano at n. 15. Further, after he had repaired those sacred

buildings, or chapels, the Saint went on to dwell near Assisi

and to wear a habit like that of a hermit.

[151] Having heard the reading of the Gospel, he puts on another habit, But some time after, when the third year

of his conversion was already running, on the testimony of

Thomas of Celano at nn. 21 and 22, having heard the reading

of the Gospel on the sending of the Apostles, he took another habit

in place of the eremitical one, and began a life

conformable to the words of the Gospel on the sending of the Apostles.

Now those words, as St. Bonaventure teaches

at n. 26, were from Matthew ch. 10, namely

these: Possess not gold, nor

silver, nor money in your purses:

nor scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor

shoes, nor a staff. The other biographers

also hint at the same words of the Gospel, and Wadding agrees,

who attached this event to the year 1208,

and from it began the Annals of the Minors.

As to the year, he so determined

because the Saint's conversion and the renunciation of all things —

of which we have said that the first belongs to the year 1206

drawing to its end, the other to the month of April

of the year 1207 — he attached both to that same

year 1206, and consequently traced from it

the two years during which the Saint wore the eremitical habit.

But those two years, incomplete, were to be begun

from the renunciation of his goods; or, complete,

from the conversion: for, as the man of Celano expressly teaches,

the third year of his conversion was running

when he exchanged the eremitical habit for that other one.

[152] The day on which this change of habit happened,

which likewise serves to establish the year, and begins another life, which happened

Mark of Lisbon said by conjecture to have been

the XVIII of October, sacred to Luke the Evangelist. But

Wadding observes that this conjecture is fallacious;

both because on the feast of St. Luke another Gospel is read,

namely on the sending of the seventy-two

disciples, from ch. 10 of that same Luke, in which

not all those things are forbidden which Francis forbade himself

from the words of the Gospel; and because on

no feast of the Apostles at this time of year is read the said Gospel,

whose words Francis then heard and presently

resolved to observe. He adds, however,

that perhaps of old on some feast of the Apostles, or even

of St. Luke, the Gospel in question was read,

and that a Missal of this kind perhaps lay before Mark of Lisbon.

That observation of Wadding's is true.

But, what is more certain, we have in our Museum a Missal of Speyer,

printed before the year 1540, as is read written upon it;

but the year of printing, which perhaps was contained on the first

leaf, which is lacking, is nowhere noted.

Now in it, on the XXIV day of February, in the Mass of

St. Matthias the apostle, is found the aforesaid Gospel

from Matthew ch. 10, on the sending of the twelve

Apostles, containing the same words which

the ancient biographers testify moved St. Francis.

[153] Martène too, in the Treatise on the ancient

discipline of the Church in the divine Offices, p. 562, notes

from Sculting in the year 1209, perhaps on the 24th day of February. that in the Mass of the same St. Matthias, according

to the Regulars, the same Gospel is read from Matthew

10: The Lord sent twelve disciples.

He adds, however, that at Esztergom, at Rome, and at Trier, the Gospel

is read: "I confess to thee, O Lord, Father."

These things make me suspect that St. Francis

heard the words so often mentioned on the feast of St. Matthias,

especially because in this way the reckonings

adduced by the ancients rightly agree. St. Antoninus, part 3, tit.

24, ch. 7, tracing the beginning of the Order of Minors from the last

change of garments as from its foundation,

marked the year 1209 in the words which were given at n.

147. Thomas of Celano in the first Life,

in the words likewise given at n. 151, writes that the Saint

was then in the third year of his conversion;

which, if with us you place it in the year 1206 drawing to its close,

that third year truly was running in the year

1209 on the XXIV day of February, on which the feast of S. Matthias

was celebrated. According to all the biographers

Francis, his habit being changed, soon began

to preach, that is, to exhort with words to penance and amendment

of life, and not long after admitted his first companions.

And these, from what has been said above, he admitted about

the middle of April, since one of them is B. Giles,

who was received by him eight days later than the two first of all,

in the same year 1209, on the XXIII day of April.

So that, according to this opinion of mine,

not two whole months intervened between the change

of habit and the admission of the companions,

which agrees excellently with the biographers' narrative.

[154] In this same year Innocent approved the Rule by word of mouth; In the same year 1209 the Order of Minors was approved

by word of mouth by Innocent III, as must altogether

be determined from the first Life and from the time

at which the emperor Otto IV set out for Rome to receive

the crown of the empire. For the man of Celano,

after reporting the approbation of the Order, treats of

St. Francis's and his companions' return from Rome toward the vale

of Spoleto, and at n. 34 narrates that they came

to a certain place near the city of Orte,

and stayed there for about

fifteen days; and then, going further on, dwelt

near Assisi in a place which is called Rugustortus,

as our transcript has it at n. 42,

or Rivo Torto, as it is read more correctly in

Wadding. And while they were living here, it happened

that the emperor Otto passed through those parts with great

noise and pomp to receive the crown of his earthly empire,

says the man of Celano again at n. 43. Accordingly the Order was approved

before Otto's coronation. But now from the common

consent of all it is established that Otto IV, of

whom there is mention here, was crowned emperor at Rome by Pope Innocent

III in the year 1209. About the day and

month there is doubt, some, as Muratori noted in the Annals

of Italy at the same year, assigning

the XXVII day of September, others the IV of October;

which slight difference does nothing for our present

purpose. Meanwhile this is certain, that

the approbation of his Order was obtained by St. Francis

in the year 1209, about one, or perhaps

two, months before Otto's Roman coronation.

[155] [nor do the biographers' sayings, compared with the time of the coronation of the emperor Otto IV, allow this to be deferred to the year 1210.] Wadding rejected the same approbation

to the year 1210, and nevertheless placed Otto's

passage near Rivo Torto at the end of the month

of September of the said year 1209, citing

in the margin Corio in the History of Milan,

Vincent of Beauvais, and Marianus of Florence.

But none of the ancients said that St. Francis

dwelt in that place before the Rule was approved,

and the man of Celano so clearly placed that passage after

the approbation that it cannot be doubted;

and here again Wadding seems not

to have had his composition entire, which otherwise

he could have cited more correctly than the more recent writers whom

he cited in the margin. St. Bonaventure too

mentions no other place of that dwelling of his companions than

at S. Mary of the Portiuncula, before the Roman journey

undertaken to seek the approbation of the Rule:

but on their return he mentions their first

coming to Rivo Torto, the name of the place being unstated,

thus at n. 41: The Man of God therefore gathered himself

with the rest of his companions into a certain abandoned hut

near the city of Assisi, in which, according to the form

of holy poverty, they lived on in much labor and want.

[156] the sayings of the biographers It will be well to have proved this very thing also from the Saint's Three

Companions. At n. 32 they say: And the Man

of God Francis, being joined, as has been said, by two Brothers

(namely Bernard and Peter, who were the first of all admitted by him),

since he had no lodging where he might stay with them (for up to then

he had dwelt with the priest of the church

of S. Damian), betook himself together with them to a certain

poor abandoned church,

which was called Saint Mary of the Portiuncula,

and they made there a little house in which they might sometimes

stay together. So there: then at n.

34, after they had narrated B. Giles's coming, and

the journey which, being then made four, they undertook two by two,

they returned, they say, to the said place

of saint Mary. Then, having reported the joining of three others,

and another journey, at n. 41 they subjoin:

At the appointed time all returned to Saint Mary

of the Portiuncula, bringing with them

others whom they had received on the journey, as is said before in the same place.

[157] Finally, treating of their return after

the Rule was approved at Rome, compared with the time of the coronation of the emperor Otto IV. they no longer say

that they returned to S. Mary of the Portiuncula;

but that they then began to dwell at Rivo Torto

they sufficiently hint afterward, when they report that from this

place they moved to their old dwelling. Their

words at n. 55 are these: And the Father

still dwelt with his sons in a certain place

near Assisi which is called Rivo Torto, where

there was a certain hut abandoned by men,

etc. Presently they mention the cause of their moving,

and subjoin: They left therefore the said hut

for the use of the poor lepers, transferring *

to Saint Mary of the Portiuncula, beside

which they had once stayed in one little house.

Accordingly from all this it is established that St.

Francis with his Companions did not dwell at Rivo Torto

except after the Rule was approved, and therefore

that it had already been approved when Otto IV,

to receive the crown of his earthly empire, while

the Saint was staying in that same place with his companions,

passed that way in the year 1209.

[158] The reader will perhaps wonder that I place so short

a time between the coming of the first companions

and the approbation of the Rule. In the same year, before the said approbation, the Saint But

the contemporary biographers and other documents of the best credit, from which

I have composed this chronology, altogether require it.

Yet, lest the things reported by them as done in the meantime

should seem to conflict with so brief an intervening time,

it is necessary to run over these too in a few words. From what has been said above, the two first

companions came to St. Francis in the year 1209 on the XV

or XVI day of April; B. Giles on the XXVIII of the same

month. After his coming it is narrated that the holy Father,

having sent two companions in another direction, went about with

B. Giles through the March of Ancona, a neighboring

region, and thence back toward Assisi.

That journey may perhaps have been of eight or ten days;

for they are not said to have gone through the whole province.

At least nothing compels us to say that more time was spent on this

journey. And when a few days had passed (after

the return), three other Brothers came to them,

as the Three Companions testify in the Appendix at n.

35, which could have happened before the middle of the month of May.

At nearly the same time another also had come, as

others have it; so that together with St. Francis they could have been eight

in the middle of May. Then the Saint

is read to have sent them again two by two, but

how far they then withdrew from Assisi I do not find.

That two only, namely Bernard and B.

Giles, went to Florence, and stayed there some

days, the Three Companions and the Anonymous

of Perugia hand down.

[159] This mission is so narrated by the man of Celano at n.

30 had gathered eleven companions. as though it had been the Saint's first intention that

they should set out for distant regions; but, he adds,

when a little time had now elapsed, he asked of

God that he might gather them all again, and that so it was done;

which the second biographer and St. Bonaventure also hand down.

The others made no mention of that intention of the Saint's,

but indicate a journey into

various parts, yet not a distant one. After

this journey, from which they could have returned before the end of May,

four other companions were added to the former ones,

partly — or perhaps all of them — admitted on the journey itself;

so that then all were gathered

with whom St. Francis set out for Rome to beg

the approbation of his Order from the supreme Pontiff.

And when they were gathered, he set forth to them

his design, wrote a brief Rule, and,

going with them to Rome, within a few days from his

arrival obtained what he desired, but

only by the Pontiff's word of mouth. This approbation, then,

was perhaps obtained in the month of June or July,

or, if you will allow somewhat more time to the deeds

described above, even in the month of August.

Within a month from the approbation of the Order

St. Francis seems to have begun to dwell at Rivo Torto, and accordingly

could dwell there in the month of September, when

the emperor Otto passed that way to Rome to receive the imperial

crown — provided the approbation

was obtained in the month of August.

* read cui, licet

* add se

§ VIII. The Saint's deeds from the renunciation of his goods to the changing of his habit, that is, of the years MCCVIII and MCCVII, and partly of the year MCCIX.

He is cast by robbers into a pit full of snow We return to the time in which St. Francis

gave up his father's goods, that we may set forth more fully

the deeds which in the preceding § we reduced

to chronological order. The Three Companions, since they had proposed

to themselves not to write a Legend, but to hand down to posterity

only certain deeds of their holy Father, and those the chief ones,

or such as were omitted by the earlier biographers,

in the Appendix at n. 21, after the said renunciation

of goods, treat at once of his return to

the church of S. Damian, omitting what happened between

the one and the other. What befell him after

he had just gone out of the bishop's palace and the city of Assisi

the first biographer narrates at n.

16; with whom the second writes consonantly in this way: After

the blessed Francis, therefore, had escaped the inhumanity

of his father's persecution, it happened one day

that this zealot of the new law was walking half-naked in a certain

wood, and thus, singing the praises of the Lord in the French tongue,

he suddenly fell among robbers.

[161] having first been beaten and stripped of his tunic. And when they in a savage manner asked who he was,

in no way trembling he answered prophetically thus:

I am the herald of the great King. What is that to

you? But they, indignant, threw the Servant of God into a pit

full of snow after beating him, and,

thus insulting the future Shepherd of the Lord's flock,

said: Lie there, rustic herald of God. But he,

when those wicked men had withdrawn, leapt out of the pit gladly

and sounded forth the praises of the Creator of all with a more cheerful

voice. Wadding in the Apparatus, §5,

says that before he was thrown into the pit

he was stripped by those same robbers of his poor cloak, namely that which (as was said above)

he had made for himself out of the peasant's cheap mantle. It is likely

that this is so from what follows; for both the aforesaid biographers

add that after these things he came in only a mean shirt,

that is, an undergarment, to a certain monastery,

and when no one there gave him anything to clothe himself with,

he set out for Gubbio, and there from an old

friend received a little tunic. He had therefore then been stripped

of his former tunic from Assisi, and had remained covered

only by the mean shirt, and most likely by no better drawers.

This deed too St. Bonaventure reported

in the Life at n. 21, where he also touched most briefly

on what follows.

[162] The second biographer continues after the first thus:

At last, He serves in the kitchen of monks; compelled to leave there, he who had been accustomed to use precious garments

came in only a mean shirt to a certain

monastery of monks, where, since he was neither recognized

nor esteemed, he was meanly permitted, with scanty food,

to serve in the kitchen, namely

as the most abject little servant of the rest; until, seeing

that no one regarded his nakedness with eyes of compassion,

after several days, compelled by necessity alone,

he went away. The same, and no other, cause of departing hence

the man of Celano most clearly alleges in these words:

When, all compassion being covered over (perhaps we should read:

withdrawn), he could obtain not even an old

garment, not moved by anger but compelled by necessity, going on from there he came

to the city of Gubbio. Wherefore this

passage of both biographers must not have been seen by

Wadding, who, citing in the margin the Legend of Gregory IX and Marianus,

brought forward a far different cause of his departure:

But feeling, he says, that he had profited little

there in spirit among the scraps and the pots,

and that he was not roused by the monks to spiritual things

but consigned to servile ones, he shortly withdrew from there,

having courteously saluted the dwellers of the monastery. Chalippe

followed Wadding.

[163] Shortly afterward the Prior of the place repented of the inhumanity

of his people, the Prior afterward repenting, he is clothed at Gubbio with a mean tunic. as both our biographers testify;

for, as the second has it: Afterward, however, (when a little

time had now elapsed, says the first) when

the fame of his sanctity became widespread on every side,

the Prior of the place, grievously stung for the neglected care of so great

and humbly asked pardon of him for himself and for his own.

These things too are not read in

Wadding and Chalippe. Going on, therefore,

(so again the second biographer subjoins) from the aforesaid monastery,

the Poor Little One of Jesus Christ,

coming into the city whose name is Gubbio,

sought out there a certain old friend of his whom he knew,

who for old friendship's sake covered his nakedness with a little tunic.

The man of Celano more correctly set these things before the pardon sought by the Prior,

saying more briefly: Thence (namely from the aforesaid monastery)

going on, he came to the city of Gubbio, where

from one who had once been his friend he obtained a little tunic

for himself. St. Bonaventure agrees, in these words:

And going on thence, he came to Gubbio, where,

recognized and received by a certain old friend,

he was covered with a poor little tunic, as a poor little one of Christ.

It seems to me altogether likely,

what Wadding with others judged, that this poor

little tunic was the very eremitical habit

which our biographers testify was worn by him for two years.

There are those who will have it that this eremitical

habit was the Religious habit of the Hermits of the Order

of St. Augustine; but all the biographers oppose their opinion.

[164] I go on to narrate from the second Life, with which the first agrees

at n. 17, and St. Bonaventure at n. 22, He serves the lepers, and, poor himself, piously cherishes them. what

followed thereafter. After these things the humble

Despiser of himself, and now despising being despised by all,

betook himself to the lepers;

serving whom most devoutly, he both humbly washed their sores

and did not shrink from wiping away the matter.

Before, however, he had so despised such persons

that not only when he saw them nearby, but

even when he saw their houses from afar, he was accustomed to stop his nostrils

with his hands. But we have already seen

how strenuously he conquered himself in this matter at the beginning

of his conversion, and the words which here follow

we gave at n. 112. Bonaventure subjoins

that St. Francis on account of these offices of piety

obtained from God a wonderful efficacy in purging away

spiritual and bodily diseases,

and that among other marvels of that kind he suddenly cured by a kiss alone

a horrible and incurable wound of the jaw.

At the same time his mercy toward the poor was growing,

which he went on ever to exercise, although he himself was most poor;

and about which, in the same second Life, after the deed which

I reported in its place at n. 87, this follows: But with what

spirit of compassion toward the poor he was moved

after his conversion, although it may be sufficiently weighed from

the present passage, will nevertheless afterward be set forth somewhat more

fully. For the rest, all these things which we have just

set forth in this §, and which were done outside

the city of Assisi, seem to belong to the months

of April and May of the year 1207; for they more probably

began on the XVII or XVIII day of April; nor do they require

much time.

[165] He repairs the church of S. Damian out of alms collected, In the month of May, then, St. Francis could

have returned to Assisi in the eremitical habit which he had received

from his friend at Gubbio, since he was unwilling

to fail the divine command about repairing, as he certainly

believed, the church of S. Damian. Of this repair

the first Life treats at n. 18, and after it the second

biographer in these words: But since the Saint still

was wholly ignorant of what would come to him,

the first work of piety which after these things, among other things

he did, he bestowed upon repairing

the church of S. Damian, beside which he had at first

made his stay. Which work indeed, as he began it

out of compassion for the necessity of its impending ruin, so also

in a short time, the Lord cooperating, he completed. This

is that place worthy of famous memory, in which

that foretold fullness of so great virtues,

namely the religion of the poor ladies and holy virgins,

took its happy beginning from the same holy Man as it were

after the sixth year of his conversion:

which, praiseworthy by the prerogative of no slight perfection,

the Lord has today magnificently spread abroad through

various parts of Italy. Of the Order of the Poor Ladies, as

they were then called, or Poor Clares, instituted there, I shall treat

in its place.

[166] out of which also he lives, amid many jeers and curses even from his father, That Francis begged at Assisi in order to procure the expenses

necessary for that repair

St. Bonaventure teaches at n. 23. Of the same

matter the Three Companions treat at greater length from n. 21, and they add

other things which happened while he was occupied with this pious

work; namely that he carried stones

on his own shoulders; that he was derided by many, and assailed with jeers

as a madman, and that his father and his brother did not refrain

from injuries of this kind.

That the Saint, while with others he was advancing the building

by his own labor, cried out prophetically with a loud voice to passers-by and to the neighbors

of the place, that they too should contribute their labor and help: Come

and help me in the work of the church of S. Damian,

which is to be a monastery of ladies, whose

fame and life will be glorified in the universal Church.

Our Father who art in heaven. They teach moreover

that at first he received his food from the priest of that same

church, who, though himself poor, nevertheless, marveling at the Man's

virtue, prepared certain special dishes

for him; but that the Saint, on learning this, sought

his food too by begging, and on that occasion did

great violence both to his own modesty

and to his natural horror of eating things sought from door to door

and collected into one dish.

[167] What the same writers add about the poor little father adopted

by him, against which he sets the blessings of a poor old man, and bears all patiently: whose words of blessing

he might set against the curses of his father according to the flesh,

our Anonymous of Perugia too reports, whose

words I here transcribe. And wherever his father

found him, filled with vehement grief he cursed

him. But the blessed Man used to take a certain poor

old man named Albert (namely as a father, as others add,

and he used to give him a share of the alms which he had collected for himself),

asking a blessing from him. Many

others also derided him, and said injurious words to him,

and he was held by almost all as mad.

But he cared for nothing, nor answered them;

but with all solicitude strove to fulfill in deed

what the Lord was showing him:

and he walked not in the learned words of human knowledge, but in

the showing and power of the spirit. So far

concerning the repair of the first church, that of S. Damian,

which, notwithstanding all those things, the Saint,

the grace of the Most High accompanying him, repaired

in a short … time, as the man of Celano testifies at n. 18.

[168] Of the two other sacred buildings repaired

the Three Companions do not speak, in like manner he repairs the church of S. Peter, wearing the eremitical habit, because, as I have already

noted elsewhere, they had proposed to themselves rather to supply what was omitted

by others than to write a new Life. But

the man of Celano treats of them at n. 21, and Bonaventure

at n. 23 and the following. The second biographer,

following the first's footsteps, has this on the same subject:

Meanwhile the Servant of God, changing his habit, moved to

another place not far from Assisi,

where, beginning likewise to rebuild a certain ruinous church,

he did not cease until he finished what he had begun. Let us halt a little,

lest anyone from this passage should determine that the eremitical habit

of which there is here mention is other than that garment which St. Francis

received from his friend at Gubbio, and besides which

I have said above that most likely he wore no other before

he put on the habit of the Minors.

Those words, changing his habit, etc., are to be brought back

to the mind of Thomas of Celano, whom he followed almost

continuously. Now the man of Celano put the change of habit

into the eremitical one before the repair of the church, at n. 21, where,

after he had on the occasion of that restoration reported

the institution of the Order of Poor Clares out of its proper time, returning to the series

of events, he says thus: Meanwhile the Saint of God, his habit being changed,

and the aforesaid church (of S. Damian) repaired, moved

to another place, etc.

[169] This very thing the Three Companions too teach still more clearly

in the Appendix, which seems to have been the garment received from the friend at Gubbio. who at n. 21, before they made

any word about the repair of the church of S. Damian being begun,

say: He made for himself an as it were eremitical

habit; and then they presently set the Saint to that

repair by collecting alms and by the work of his own hands.

And these indeed speak of his return to Assisi

before the taking up of the eremitical garment,

saying: And returning (after the renunciation of goods made before

the bishop) to the church of S. Damian, rejoicing and

fervent, he made for himself an as it were eremitical habit:

but, as I have already noted above, they omitted

the things which happened between that renunciation and his return

to the city of Assisi, one of which

is the receiving of the little tunic from the friend at Gubbio.

Wherefore those words are so to be taken

that the Saint be said, in place of the secular garments laid aside

before the bishop, to have made for himself the eremitical habit,

namely by the help of the aforesaid friend at Gubbio. Now this habit

consisted of the aforesaid little tunic, which

a leathern belt girded, and under which, from what is to be said, he seems

to have worn an inner garment; and he had his feet shod,

and a rod or staff in his hand.

[170] He likewise repairs the church of S. Mary in the Portiuncula, I return to the second biographer, who thus

goes on to narrate: After these things he betook himself to a third place,

which is called the Portiuncula, not far from the aforesaid

city, where formerly a church had been built

in honor of the most glorious Mother of God

Mary, but which was then both desolate

and torn down. Pitying its ruin, but also led by the devotion

which he had in a special way toward the blessed Virgin,

he stayed there assiduously, until

the third year of his conversion was rolling round, the said church

being now repaired. I think this was not

done without the mystery of a worthier thing, namely

that this Saint raised up the three aforesaid churches.

But I think that by this, by God's prompting going before,

was figured that which he in his simplicity

wonderfully fulfilled, who, beginning three famous Orders,

of which in their place we must touch at least briefly,

advanced them by his life and word to a state of perfection.

Consonant with these things are the first Life and the holy Bonaventure,

from whom nevertheless the aforesaid biographer must be corrected,

when in the words just given he says that the same church

was torn down. For in the first, at n. 21, only this is said of it:

Then deserted, it was entered by no one;

but in Bonaventure at n. 23: Then deserted, it was cared for by no one.

It was not therefore torn down, or

utterly destroyed, but wholly neglected

and accordingly most likely ruinous, when St. Francis

undertook to restore it.

[171] which last name seems once to have belonged to the place, not to the church. Wadding in the Apparatus, §5, writes that it

is distant only six hundred paces from the city of Assisi,

and, discoursing about its name,

says that it was once famous under the name of B. Mary

of the Angels. This is established from St. Bonaventure

in the Life at n. 24, where it is said: And perceiving

(Francis), in accordance with the name of that church,

by which from of old it was called S. Mary of the Angels,

the frequency there of angelic visitations,

etc. The same Annalist, discoursing in the same place

about the other name of that same church, sets forth his mind

thus: But the site itself, not indeed the church,

was at first called the Portiuncula on account of

the few little fields and some acres of land which,

as it were a little portion of land in that broad plain of the field,

the Benedictine fathers possessed. Whatever

be the cause of the name, that the place itself was called the Portiuncula,

besides the second biographer reported above, Thomas of Celano

at n. 21 and St. Bonaventure at n. 23 also hand down.

Other opinions likewise on this subject may be seen

in the same place; I myself prefer the one just set forth. For the rest,

of this sacred little building, which now a broad and magnificent

church built over it embraces, we shall have to treat

at greater length below, by reason of the most celebrated indulgence

commonly called the Portiuncula; and

still more fully in the Posthumous Glory.

[172] Having heard the reading of the Gospel in that same church, After the aforesaid three churches were repaired, the Saint

went on to dwell in the Portiuncula, using a garment,

as has been said, as it were eremitical, until the third year

of his conversion was running, and nearly

two years after he had laid aside his secular garments before

the bishop. But on what occasion he then chose another

garment (which we have said was perhaps done

on the feast of S. Matthias, the XXIV day of February)

the first Life sets forth at n. 22, with which the second, agreeing,

has it thus: The blessed Francis, therefore,

the work of the three churches, as has been said, being completed,

still had then the eremitical habit,

and walked carrying a staff in his hand, his feet shod,

and girt with a leathern belt. But hearing

one day amid the solemnities of the Masses

those things which Christ in the Gospel speaks to the disciples sent

to preach: namely, that they should not possess gold

or silver; that they should not carry scrip on the way or

purse, nor staff nor bread; that they should not have

shoes or two tunics; and understanding

these same things afterward more fully from the priest himself,

at once filled with unutterable joy (in the margin is read: unspeakable),

This, he said, is

what I seek; this is what with all my heart

I long for!

[173] Therefore, having committed all that he had heard

to a tenacious memory, he changes the eremitical garment for another. he gladly strives to fulfill them,

and, laying aside without delay his double garments,

from then on he uses no staff, shoes, purse

or scrip. He accordingly made a tunic

exceedingly contemptible and rough,

and, the leathern belt being cast away, girded it with a little cord. Exactly

the same things are read in the Three Companions at n. 25,

and Bonaventure agrees at nn. 26 and 27, who

nevertheless more correctly omits the word bread: for the Gospel

passage is taken from Matthew ch. 10,

where that word is not read. Rightly too the man of Celano

mentions in the same place the precept given by Christ to the Apostles

of preaching the kingdom of God; for this, as well as the other things,

St. Francis determined to observe for himself from that same Gospel,

and presently set about doing. The same biographer

hands down that the church in which

the Saint heard that Gospel was this very one of which

we have just treated, in the Portiuncula;

which Bonaventure too indicates not obscurely

at n. 26, in whose opinion the Saint there

then by the merits of the Mother of mercy conceived and

brought forth the spirit of Evangelical truth, according

to which he instituted his Order.

[174] From what has been reported about the change of garments, among the more recent

writers a twofold controversy has arisen. Some will have it that the Saint was for two years an Augustinian Hermit,

For from the eremitical, or as it were eremitical, habit

which Francis wore for nearly two years, some believed

that he had been enrolled in the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine.

John Marquez, a learned writer of the Augustinian Order,

in a Spanish Work which we have printed at Salamanca

in the year 1618, set forth this controversy at length,

and contended both by authorities and by reasons

that St. Francis, before the institution of the Order of Minors,

was in fact aggregated to the Hermits of the Congregation

of B. John Bonus. On the other side Wadding wove a no less

lengthy Dissertation, to which he gave this title: An Apologetic

on the pretended Augustinian monasticism of saint Francis,

in which various errors arisen from this controversy are detected

and refuted. Chalippe in the French Life,

p. 16, asserts that the opposite opinion has been abandoned after

this Apology of Wadding's. And not undeservedly.

[175] Wherefore I do not wish to discourse much about these things,

and for refuting it there seem to me to suffice alone the four most ancient

Lives of St. Francis, which opinion all our Lives contradict.

three of which entire I shall recite after this Commentary,

and the fourth I shall insert into the Commentary itself, as I have begun.

These, I say, altogether suffice me for refuting the opinion

that affirms St. Francis's Augustinian monasticism;

nor do I doubt that whoever, being attached to neither side

of the former disputants, shall be willing to read them, will think with me.

For he will clearly perceive that the Saint during that whole two years

in which he wore the eremitical or as it were eremitical habit

was enrolled in no Religious Order, but

led the life of a penitent; and that after the short journeys

by which he had gone as far as Gubbio, where too he received that eremitical

garment from his old friend, he returned

to Assisi, and stayed in the neighborhood of this city,

though not always in the same place,

and repaired three churches there, and at length, from the Gospel reading

he heard, took up the habit of the Minors;

there occurring meanwhile not even the slightest mention

of a novitiate begun, or of a Religious profession, among others.

But the Roman journey which within that

two-year period Wadding attributes to him in the same Apologeticum,

§3, n. 4, lacks foundation, and

that it was asserted from a slip of memory is gathered from this,

that in the same place he cites St. Bonaventure, ch. 2, and

his own Apparatus, §5, n. 3, in both which places

there is manifestly mention of a Roman journey not

of St. Francis, but of a certain other man of the county

of Spoleto, from whom, on his return from the thresholds of the Apostles,

St. Francis by a kiss alone took away a foul and incurable

malady of the mouth and jaw.

[176] The habit last taken up, and things belonging to it, The other controversy arisen among St. Francis's own Religious

posterity is about the form of the garment

which the Saint took up after the eremitical one, and thereafter

wore until his death. Nor will this long detain us,

since a slight change of habit is of small

moment, and those deserve greater praise who strive to imitate

the surpassing virtues of the holy Father than those who more scrupulously

imitate his ancient habit.

From the consent of the old biographers

it is certain that St. Francis at that time put on a tunic

meaner, rougher and more contemptible

than he had worn before, and girded it with a cord; and that he cast away

his shoes and his staff, in place of which,

since he is not read to have substituted others, it is most likely

that he walked, at least at that time, with feet altogether

bare. He had his head covered with a hood,

which seems to have been attached to the tunic itself, or to have been

a part of that same tunic, from the first Life at n. 22, where

it is said: He prepares for himself from then a tunic bearing the image

of a cross; namely because that part

of the tunic with which the head was covered, or the hood, as

they call it, stood out enough above the shoulders

to represent in some fashion the top of a cross, and the sleeves

its crosswise beam.

[177] are set forth from the old Lives. It is not read whether the Saint in this change

proposed anything to himself about wearing or not wearing a small cloak

against the cold, which that he used several times

is clear from several places in the often-mentioned

old biographers. That likewise after receiving the stigmata he walked

even with shod feet, so as to cover them,

Bonaventure testifies in the Life at n. 200.

But I cannot gather with certainty from those same Lives whether

before that time he protected the soles of his feet with sandals.

The ancient images, very many of which Zacharias

Boverius gave in his Dissertation on the true form of his habit,

do not remove the doubt: for some exhibit the soles

bare, others armed with sandals. If one may use

conjectures, I should believe that the holy Man in the change

of his habit thought neither of a cloak nor of sandals; but

determined to use a single tunic, and to walk with bare feet;

yet that afterward for just causes he sometimes used a cloak

(which is certain), and from time to time sandals too, lest

his injured soles should become unequal to bearing the long and pious journeys

and should delay the preaching of the word

of God. For he will have understood that such

use of a cloak and of sandals is by no means repugnant to the Gospel

or to the precepts given by Christ the Lord to his

Apostles. But neither was there any dispute about these things among his disciples.

[178] But about the hood above all the aforesaid Boverius wrote a lengthy

Dissertation, which

There was dispute about the form of it and of the hood, he published after the first volume of the Capuchin Annals.

What he discourses about the hood is likely:

nor yet does Wadding's observation at the year

1208, n. 4, displease, where he says that Francis afterward

used indeed the same kind of habit, only this not great difference

being admitted, that he sometimes wore one a little longer

and fuller, according to the liberality or the slenderness of those who offered it,

and the measure of the cloth; and that he sometimes sewed on a hood

more or less pyramidal or pointed. This observation is confirmed

by the very many tunics of St. Francis and his companions,

whose forms Boverius exhibits; for

the hoods of some of these are more oblong and

pointed than others, as also in the ancient paintings reproduced in

the same author. Hence Wadding continues thus:

This, moreover, is established, that he himself, of the habits which he wore,

in appearance. For indeed, as I saw, and as Sedulius

noted before me, at Assisi in the building of S. George,

which belongs to the nuns of S. Clare, there is kept the tunic

of the holy Man, and a hood of nearly square

form, a little pointed. Of the same form is another

habit on Mount Alverna; and likewise another

at Florence in Etruria, which he was wearing when

Christ affected him, as graciously as wonderfully,

with the number, form and color of his own wounds. That very one,

and others like it, you have in Boverius.

[179] Let us go on with Wadding. This latter one

the most serene dukes of Etruria hold in the greatest veneration,

about which, from the Saint's own tunics, and keep in a crystal

chest, secured with several locks. After

some remarks the same Annalist describes that habit in these

words: The color perfectly ash-gray, the quality that of a cheap

but not the coarsest cloth: the Spaniards call it Sayal,

the Italians Panno rigato. The Fathers of the Stricter Observance

of Hither, or Tarraconensian, Spain

wear a rougher one, judging by that little piece which I had

in my hands: it is not too narrow, nor

very ragged, nor has it patches of another cloth,

except at the lower left sleeve in one place where it needed

to be mended. I rejoiced that, after so vast

an age, in very many provinces the roughness of the most holy Founder is still

not so much surpassed as surpassing, at least in the outer garment,

and that the cheapness of the tunic, cut and torn

and mended on every side, is increased in his sons. The form of that paternal

habit is the very one which his sons wear in their own;

it has sleeves from the elbow to the body looser

than the laws of today's stricter observance allow.

[180] In this it differs from the common covering of the Minors,

which are kept to this day, and from ancient paintings that it has a square hood

without that rounded part hanging to the breast,

and without that round or full covering of the head,

now customary to all from Bonaventure's time,

as I shall say in its place. This squareness

I would explain thus: that if you unstitch the hood from the habit,

and fold it once, or join its sides,

it makes a two-cornered shape below, and another above;

but the angle of this two-cornered shape at the back part

is sharper, or its point greater or more prominent.

The most religious fathers of the congregation of Capuchins

come nearer to this form than the rest,

if they do not exceed it: for I should not easily judge

that the holy Father wore one so oblong

and pointed as they let down to the shoulders.

I cannot disapprove this judgment of Wadding's,

especially since he aptly answers some ancient

paintings in which the hood appears

more oblong and pointed, and sets others against them.

But the matter seems of so little moment —

whether St. Francis's hood was a little longer and more pointed,

or shorter and less pointed —

that I neither care nor have leisure to write more about it.

[181] some things are noted. Still less do I care to examine whether that

rounded covering, which Wadding said was in use from St. Bonaventure's time,

but which Boverius judged more recent, is in truth

so ancient; I do not care, I say, to examine it, since

certainly St. Francis, whose deeds I am here illustrating, did not use

it. This only I observe from Wadding,

that the habit he took up was such as …

the country people of that region and time

were accustomed to wear, and such as represented the form of the Cross

by a certain notable mystery, and

showed the contempt of all worldly glory and adornment

with a certain lofty disdain, so that it might be merely

a covering of nakedness, a solace of necessity,

a sign of true humility, and a singular remedy against

the enemies by the reproach of the cross of Christ Jesus, which was ever fixed

in his soul.

§ IX. The coming of the first three companions to St. Francis, and his expedition with B. Giles into the March of Ancona.

The Saint begins to exhort publicly to penance, After laying aside the eremitical garment, and taking up a more

austere and meaner one, St. Francis,

just as by his whole habit he preached penance,

so also began to urge it upon others by words, that

he might fulfill another commandment of the Gospel reading.

These things Thomas of Celano narrates at n. 23,

using the word preach, even though the Saint did not properly

preach before the approbation of his Order,

as I shall show below. The second writer of the Life likewise

subjoins this to the aforesaid change of garments: Applying therefore

all the solicitude of his heart

to how he might fulfill the words of the new grace he had heard *,

he began by divine instinct to be an announcer

of Evangelical perfection; he began to set forth words

simply in public. And his utterances were

not empty, nor worthy of laughter; they were full of the power

of the Holy Spirit; they pierced the marrow of the heart,

and provoked the hearers to vehement amazement.

But also, as he himself afterward testified

that he had learned this manner of greeting by the Lord's revealing,

so that he should say: The Lord

give you peace — so in all his preaching,

announcing peace, he greeted the people at the beginning

of his discourse. Suddenly therefore, suffused with the spirit

of the prophets, according to the prophetic word

he announced peace, preached salvation;

and it came to pass that by his saving admonitions

he bound to true peace very many who before had been

at discord with Christ and far from salvation.

[183] imparting peace to all, with great fruit. It is uncertain whether St. Francis, when

he says that he learned that about imparting peace by the Lord's

revealing, speaks of a peculiar divine revelation

made to him, or of the public revelation

in the Gospel; for in Matthew chapter 10, on hearing which

he undertook these things, at v. 12 it is read:

And entering into the house, salute it, saying:

Peace be to this house. However that may be, the Three

Companions add in the Appendix at n. 26 that a certain other man before

St. Francis's conversion had been at Assisi, who

frequently greeted all with these words: Peace and

good, peace and good; and that afterward he appeared

no more. The man of Celano at n. 23 writes that St. Francis

first began to preach in that place

where, when he was still a little child, he had learned to read,

in which place also he was honorably buried;

that is, in the church of S. George; which, however, I doubt

whether it can rightly be said of those first exhortations of which

we are now treating. For the rest, both he and

the other ancient biographers confirm the fruit of his discourses

asserted by the second biographer. By that simple

preaching his first companions were drawn to him, as all those same

biographers agree; the second, suppressing their names, after

the words given goes on to narrate it thus.

[184] As the truth both of the blessed Francis's simple doctrine

and of his life, therefore, became known among many, He joins companions to himself, of whom the first is Bernard,

there began after a little while certain men, by his example,

to be summoned * to penance, and,

having left all things, to be joined to him in habit and in life.

And as the Saint's merits began now to be rewarded

with new sons, he himself too began to be filled more

with new spiritual consolation, and began to watch

more diligently over their salvation. Hence, caressing and

cherishing them with a father's affection, he did not cease to form them

with new admonitions, teaching them to walk without deviation

the way of holy poverty and of true simplicity. So he;

but omitting many things handed down by the other biographers,

and namely by the Three Companions, who, as they were nearest

in place and time, seem also beyond the rest to have set forth

most accurately the coming of the first companions to St. Francis.

But between the first biographer and the rest there is here

some disagreement, at least apparent,

in the order in which the first companions were aggregated

to St. Francis. For the Three Companions in the Appendix, St.

Bonaventure in the Life, our Anonymous of Perugia,

and all the more recent writers, assert that Bernard

was the first of them all. But the man of Celano

at n. 24 sets another before him, saying: Among

whom (the first followers of St. Francis), a certain

boy of Assisi, bearing a simple spirit,

first devoutly followed the Man of God. After him

brother Bernard, etc.

[185] Certainly these words indicate that he who,

either by age not that other, who, although he clave to the Saint earlier, or rather from his service and his simplicity,

is called a boy, clave to St. Francis before Bernard;

and on this reckoning Bernard will be only

his second disciple, and B. Giles,

who by the rest is reckoned in the third place among the disciples,

will have to be placed fourth. Further, that that boy

was truly one of the Saint's companions is clear from the same

man of Celano in the same place at n. 25, where, after the coming of four

others, Philip, who is there narrated to have come fifth,

is said to have filled up the number seven of them, together

with the holy Father himself;

whereas all these would have been only six in number, unless

that boy is counted. Wherefore, that this apparent

disagreement of the biographers may be removed, I judge

that he clave to the Saint at first as an assiduous hearer and familiar

helper and disciple, but was not

presented by him with the same habit which he himself wore, nor taken on as a perpetual companion,

before Bernard and a few others, before whose

coming the Saint perhaps had not yet determined, or even

thought, anything about aggregating companions to himself.

[186] In this way the rest of the biographers, who set Bernard

first among St. Francis's companions, will easily be reconciled with the man of Celano.

yet was not presented with the habit before Bernard. This conjecture of mine

is strengthened by the man of Celano's very manner of speaking;

for of that anonymous boy he only says:

He first devoutly followed the Man of God; mentioning nothing

about his goods, if he had any, being given to the poor,

or about a habit changed. But of Bernard

he speaks far otherwise, reporting among other things

that he distributed to the poor the money realized from the selling of all his goods,

and at last adding: Which being done, he was associated

with saint Francis in life and habit, etc. Bernard therefore is altogether

to be held the first companion of St. Francis in the way

I have said; although on the same day another also came,

called Peter. In what order that other so-called boy

was afterward admitted I do not find;

but perhaps he was Sabbatinus or Moricus, whom

the man of Celano did not name. This difficulty being discussed,

let us hear the manner in which Bernard was converted,

and indeed Peter too, who seems to have been present

at most of the things that led to it.

[187] That Bernard and Peter, by the Saint's counsel Moved by the virtues of St. Francis, whom he had frequently

received into his lodging, Bernard, a rich man,

consulted him as to what he would advise him to do with his wealth.

But the Saint answered that on this matter God should be consulted

by looking into the book of the Gospel;

which also on the next day they did, as the Three Companions

narrate in the Appendix at nn. 28 and 29, who also

hint that Peter was then present, although they speak of Bernard

only, because he was the chief one.

Our Anonymous of Perugia reports the same things a little more briefly,

and more clearly indicates that Peter was present, saying thus:

And seeing and hearing these things (about

St. Francis's preaching), two men of that city,

inspired by the visitation of divine grace, humbly

came to him. One of these was brother Bernard,

and the other brother Peter, and they said to him

simply: We wish to be with you henceforth, and

to do what you do. Tell us therefore what we ought to do

with our goods. And he, exulting at their coming

and their vow, kindly answered

them: Let us go, and seek counsel from the Lord.

[188] They consult the Gospel, and taught by it give all their goods to the poor: They went therefore to a certain church of that same city,

and entering it, on bended

knees, humbly said in prayer:

Lord God, father of glory, we beg thee that

by thy mercy thou show us what

we ought to do. And when the prayer was ended, they said

to the priest of that same church, who was present:

Lord, show us the Gospel

of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when the priest had opened

the book — since they did not yet know how to read well

(namely, in Latin) — they at once found the place

where it was written: "If thou wilt be perfect,

go and sell all that thou hast, and give

to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven."

And turning again, they found: "He that will

come after me, etc." And turning again,

they found: "Take nothing * for the way, etc." And hearing

this, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy,

and said: Behold what we were desiring;

behold what we were seeking. And the blessed

Francis said: This shall be our rule. Then

he said to those two: Go, and, as you have heard, do the counsel

of the Lord.

[189] [and while they do this, Silvester the priest unjustly demands money of the Saint,] Brother Bernard therefore went away, and since he was rich,

selling all his possessions,

he made much money. But that brother Peter

had been poor in temporal things, but had now been made rich

in spiritual ones. He too, therefore, does as

he had had counsel from the Lord; and gathering together

the poor of the city, they distributed to them the money

which they had got from their goods sold.

While they were doing this, and the blessed Francis was present,

there came a certain priest named Silvester,

from whom the blessed Francis had bought stones for repairing

the church of S. Damian, beside which also

he was staying (namely for a time) before he had

companion brothers. Seeing therefore the said priest

them thus spending money, panting with avarice,

he desired that some of that money be given him;

and he began to murmur, saying: Francis,

you did not pay me well for the stones which

you bought from me. But the blessed Francis, hearing

him murmuring unjustly, he who had driven all avarice from himself,

went to brother Bernard,

and, putting his hand into his cloak where

the money was, drew out his hand full of pennies,

and gave them to the priest. And putting his hand again

into the cloak, he drew out pennies as he had done

once already, and again gave them to the said priest,

saying to him: Have you now full payment?

Fully, said he. Which done, the priest returned glad

to his house.

[190] After a few days that same priest, inspired by the Lord,

began to think about those things but repenting a little after, at length passes into his discipline, which the blessed

Francis had done for him, saying: Am I not

a wretch, who, being an old man, desire and seek

temporal goods; while this Young Man

despises and abhors them for the love of God?

And so on the following night he saw in his sleep a cross

exceedingly immense, whose top touched the heavens,

and whose foot stood in the mouth of Francis:

and the arms of the cross stretched from one part of the world

to the other part. Waking, therefore, that priest

believed that the blessed Francis was truly a friend of the Lord,

and that the Religion which he had begun was to be spread

through the whole world.

And so he then began to fear the Lord,

and to do money (read: penance, as the Three Companions

have it) in his house; and when a short time

had rolled by, he entered the Order of the Brothers,

and lived well, and made a religious end. These same things

about Silvester are read also in the Three Companions at n.

30 and the following, so that they are to be held certain and undoubted,

although Thomas of Celano omitted them,

and so did the second biographer, who followed him and almost

abridged him.

[191] About the money sought by Silvester Bonaventure too

kept silence, and piously dies in his Order. perhaps to spare the reputation of a man

who afterward lived and died piously in the Order,

and by this penance abundantly wiped away that fault.

But the holy doctor did not omit that vision

of the cross, to which he added another offered at the same time,

and both repeated a third time, which was then followed

by that same Silvester's conversion and entry into the Order.

Consult him in the Life to be published, n. 30.

These circumstances St. Bonaventure could learn from the diligent

examination which he instituted concerning the deeds of his holy Father,

and from the surviving companions of his whom he consulted.

Of the same Silvester, who not long after the approbation

of the Order by the Roman Pontiff joined himself to St. Francis,

mention will return below. As

to the demand for money, it is credible that the aforesaid

Silvester had earlier remitted to St. Francis the part which was lacking

to the payment, for the pious work of repairing the church,

but that when he afterward saw the coins by that same

Saint's counsel so liberally distributed to the needy,

he inconsiderately seized the occasion of ill

recovering what he had well spent. However the matter

stands, he washed away his fault by a praiseworthy penance,

not only by leaving what he had not rightly received, but also

what he otherwise possessed, and by subjecting himself under religious discipline

to the holy Father whom he had wronged.

[192] The Saint's first companion, Bernard, is very well known; the second A few things are now to be said about those two

first companions of St. Francis, Bernard and Peter.

The first is very well known in his Order, and in

Wadding is everywhere called Bernard of

Quintavalle. He shone with many virtues, and

survived his holy Father, to whom he was most dear, by several years,

and mention of him will recur.

He is called Blessed by Arturus in the Franciscan Martyrology,

and by other Franciscan writers; but

my predecessors did not dare to ascribe this title to his name —

consult them in the Things Passed Over

at the tenth day of July; nor do I dare for the same

reason, especially since I do not find his name even in the Martyrologies

of the Orders of St. Francis added at the end of the Roman

Martyrology published by the authority of Benedict XIV.

The other, namely Peter,

by Wadding and others is everywhere believed to have been

Peter Cathanii, who afterward was made vicar of the whole Order

by St. Francis. Of his conversion

Wadding at the year 1209, n. 9,

says this: On that very same day (as Bernard) the Man of God presented

his humble garment to Peter Cathanii,

canon of the cathedral church sacred to the divine Rufinus,

who had accompanied Bernard in the preludes of his stirring,

until together they gave their names to that same institute,

Bernard the earlier, Cathanii the later.

[193] Peter, is everywhere believed to have been Peter Cathanii; The first author of this opinion is perhaps

Bartholomew of Pisa, or he who saw his book of the Conformities

through the press at Milan in the year

1510, in which edition at fol. 52 verso, col. 2, it is read thus:

Brother Peter Cathanii was a holy brother,

and a son and companion of the blessed Francis. Him

the blessed Francis, when he was canon of the greater

church of Assisi, on one day when all had been given away,

received into the Order with the holy brother Bernard of Quintavalle

and made him a brother. This

brother Peter was first the blessed Francis's vicar,

and at last, when the blessed Francis resigned the office

of the generalate before the brothers, that same brother Peter

was made Minister general. So clear is this opinion of Pisanus,

or at any rate of his first editor,

that it is no wonder it has been everywhere admitted by all

the Franciscans. But there are some things

which make it doubtful to me. The first difficulty

arises from the time during which Peter, who came with

Bernard to St. Francis, is said by Thomas of Celano to have lived

in the Order, compared with the time at which Wadding writes

that Peter Cathanii died,

namely in the year 1221, on the 10th day of March;

and therefore in the twelfth year, nearly complete, from his entry into the Order.

[194] [but there are not lacking reasons which rather persuade that he was different from him.] For the man of Celano, who certainly knew Peter,

at n. 25 says of him: And at once (after

Bernard) a certain man of the city of Assisi followed him,

who was greatly praiseworthy in his manner of life;

and what he began holily, he consummated more holily after

a little while. What else does that after a little while indicate

than that that second companion of St.

Francis lived in the Order only a short time, or a few

years? But that does not seem to have been able to be said

of Peter Cathanii, who was Minister general of the whole Order,

or rather St. Francis's vicar, and completed nearly twelve years in the Order.

The same biographer in the same place says of B.

Giles: Who, enduring a long time, etc.,

even though he wrote that only seven or eight years after the death of Peter

Cathanii, or nearly twenty years after Giles's

entry. But he who called twenty years

a long time does not seem likely to have called twelve years

a little while. The second difficulty is drawn

from the canonry of Peter Cathanii, and from the sayings of the Three

Companions and of our Anonymous of Perugia. The Three Companions,

to whom Peter, the second disciple of St. Francis,

was beyond doubt well known, assert at n. 28

that he was a simple man, and not versed in the reading

of the Gospel: for of him, together with

St. Francis and Bernard, they say: They were simple,

and did not know how to find the word of the Gospel

about renunciation.

[195] Then at n. 29 and following they hint that the Peter

of whom we are treating rather persuade. was poor, since they expressly mentioned Bernard's

riches, and all his goods sold and distributed

among the poor, but of Peter they only

say: Peter too as far as he could fulfilled the divine

counsel. This very thing the Anonymous of Perugia also asserts more openly

in those words already given:

But that brother Peter had been poor in temporal things.

Accordingly I do not know whether the simplicity and poverty just mentioned

agree well enough with a canon of the cathedral church

of Assisi. There is added another reason for doubting,

that St. Bonaventure in the Life at nn.

28 and 29, speaking of St. Francis's first companions,

names only Bernard and Giles, and of the rest

says only in general: Not long

after (Bernard's coming), five men being called by the same spirit,

the number six of Francis's sons was completed,

among whom the holy father Giles obtained the third

place. But the second place our Peter certainly held,

and he was to be named before the rest, if Peter Cathanii

had been a canon of the cathedral church, afterward vicar

general under St. Francis, and commended for holiness

of manners. For which reason these things compel me to doubt

whether the second companion of St. Francis,

Peter, is not different from Peter Cathanii, who perhaps

came to the Religion only after it was approved in the same year

by Innocent III.

[196] That the third of St. Francis's companions was B.

Giles, The Saint's third companion was B. Giles, whose Acts were given among us at

the twenty-third day of April, St. Bonaventure agrees,

and the three Companions at n. 32, where they say that he came

some days after the coming of the two first.

The Anonymous of Perugia narrates his conversion thus:

But after the said brother Bernard and

brother Peter, their goods being sold, bestowed the price of them,

as we have said, upon the poor,

they were clothed as the man of God, the blessed Francis, was clothed,

and were associated with him. But not having

a lodging where they might stay, they went off and

found a certain church (long known to St. Francis),

poor and as it were abandoned,

which was called Saint Mary of the Portiuncula; and

they made there a little house where they stayed together.

Of that church the author here makes mention for the first time,

and therefore he speaks of it as one had to speak

before Francis repaired it. Then of Giles he subjoins: After eight days

(from the coming of the first ones) there came to them again

another man, named Giles, of the same city,

a man most devout and most faithful, to whom

the Lord gave much grace.

[197] And with great devotion and reverence,

on bended knees, whose coming to him he asked the blessed Francis that

he would deign to receive him into his fellowship.

Hearing and seeing which, the blessed Francis is made glad,

and received him cheerfully and willingly.

And so those four had immense gladness

and exceeding great spiritual joy.

So he concerning B. Giles; all which things are also reported more at length

in the aforesaid Life of that same Blessed one,

from which I transfer some things hither. Of St.

Francis many things are there said consonant with what has been reported;

the conversion of Bernard and Peter is narrated, and Giles

is said after eight days to have learned of it from

his parents. Roused by their example,

on the next day, having first sent up prayers to God, he sought

St. Francis and found him. Hearing his desire,

Francis is said to have addressed Giles

in this manner: Brother, the Lord has done to you as

an emperor would do, if he were now to come to this city

and wished to choose for himself someone as his beloved intimate;

all would say one by one:

Would that he choose me! And so the Lord has chosen you.

And he admonished and strengthened him, that in the calling

in which he was called he should faithfully remain.

Then those four are said to have rejoiced, and it is added:

And as yet they were not more.

[198] is set forth from others, and who a little after Then it is subjoined: On that very day there came

a certain poor woman, asking alms of them:

and when St. Francis, who had resolved

in his heart not to refuse anyone asking for the Lord's sake,

so long as he had something to give, that he might fulfill

that word of the Gospel: "Give to everyone that asketh thee;"

calling Giles, told him to give

that poor woman his cloak (for he was not yet

clothed in the habit), he hastened at his bidding, and

cheerfully gave it to her… On the next day B. Francis

clothed him. More about B. Giles may be read there,

as also his journey with St. Francis through the March

of Ancona, of which the Three Companions also treat

at n. 33, while the man of Celano and St. Bonaventure are silent.

I shall report that here from the Anonymous of Perugia, who

is older than the biographer of B. Giles. Thereupon

the blessed Francis took brother Giles,

and led him with him into the March of Ancona,

and the two others remained (according to

the Three Companions, they set out elsewhere). And as they went,

they exulted not a little in the Lord. And the Man

of the Lord, Francis, exulted with a most clear voice,

singing in French, praising and blessing

the Lord.

[199] went with him into the March of Ancona, For indeed great gladness abounded in them,

as though a very great treasure had been gotten by them:

for they could greatly rejoice, because

they had left much, and had reckoned as dung

those things which are wont to sadden men;

considering accordingly the bitternesses which

the lovers of the world suffer in the delights of worldly men,

in which much misery and sadness

is found. And the blessed Francis said

to his companion brother Giles: Our Religion will be like

a fisherman, who casts his nets into the water

and catches a copious multitude of fish:

but seeing the multitude of fish, he chooses the great ones

for his vessels, leaving the small ones

in the water. The said Giles therefore marveled

at the prophecy which the Saint uttered

with his mouth, since he knew that the number of the brothers

was small. Of this prophecy, in the same place and time,

the Three Companions also made mention at n. 33, and

they add: And so he prophesied that the Order was to be spread abroad;

which indeed, while the Saint himself yet survived among the living,

was clearly fulfilled, and to these our own

times is confirmed by steady experience. The man of Celano too

mentions it in the first Life at n. 28, but

a little later, together with other predictions.

[200] about which journey a few things are reported. I return to the anonymous writer, who goes on thus:

As yet the Man of God did not preach to the people: yet

when they passed through cities and towns,

he exhorted men and women to fear

and love the Creator of heaven and earth, and

to do penance for their sins. For this cause, namely,

he is said to have already preached before, as

I noted above at n. 182. Hence the Three Companions too,

who went before our anonymous writer here, at n. 33

say: But although the Man of God did not yet fully

preach to the people, yet when he passed through cities

and towns, he exhorted all, etc.

In the anonymous writer there follows: And brother Giles

used to answer, saying: He speaks excellently; believe

him. Those who heard them said to one another:

Who are these, and what words do they speak? Some

of them said that they seemed fools or drunkards:

but others said: These are not the words of fools

which they utter from their mouth. One of them,

answering, said: Either for the highest perfection

they have clung to the Lord, or they have become mad;

for the life of their body seems desperate.

They walk with bare feet, are clad in mean garments,

using scanty food. As yet, however, they did not

follow them. But the young women,

seeing them from afar, fled in fear, lest

perhaps they should be seized with folly. And although they by no means

followed them, they nevertheless remained filled with awe,

at the sight of the form of holy manner of life

with which they seemed marked for the Lord. And when

they had gone about that province, they returned to the said place

of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula.

* is it audita?

* animari

* tuleritis

§ X. The coming of four other companions to St. Francis, who instructs them

and sends them two by two into various regions:

yet shortly after all return to S. Mary in the Portiuncula, and again,

by the coming of four others, together with the Saint they become twelve.

He admits four other companions, The things which I have proposed to set forth here are read in

the first Life at n. 25 and the following; but

some of them are rather obscure, and would easily lead

into error unless they were explained by the help of other

documents. According to the Three Companions at n.

35, a few days having elapsed from St. Francis's return from the March

of Ancona, three men of Assisi came to him

at the same time, namely Sabbatinus, Moricus

and John de Capella. About those three the Anonymous

of Perugia agrees, whose words I shall recite below.

St. Bonaventure did not sufficiently distinguish the time

at which each came; in the rest he is consonant. But Thomas

of Celano, who, having set before all the companions a certain one

whom he called a boy, wrongly moved B. Giles

from the third place to the fourth, and, having reported

his coming, subjoined at n. 25: And when one other

was added to these, brother Philip filled up the number seven

(namely, Francis himself being counted).

But between Giles and Philip three others are placed

as intermediate by the rest, and it is everywhere believed that Philip

was the eighth, and came alone, and that he is that very one

of whom, the name being unstated, the aforesaid man of Celano

says at n. 29: At the same time (namely after

certain things presently to be reported), another good man

entering the Religion, they advanced to the number eight. This

eighth, I say, is believed to have been Philip,

although he is not named by the others.

[202] St. Bonaventure at n. 31 mentioned his coming

in nearly the same words, but said that the number seven

of St. Francis's sons was then filled up, of whom the last was Philip. The Saint, anxious about his own,

so that St. Francis himself was the eighth. The first

biographer, who was not present at those events, could easily have fallen

into that error, of putting Philip as the seventh with Francis,

who without Francis was the seventh. Let us now hear the second

biographer, who handed everything down more compendiously,

and both the coming of the companions and the holy Father's admonitions,

reported more fully in the first, expressed thus in his own style:

Now the Father himself, seventh of six brothers,

rejoiced in their glad fellowship, and among the Minors bore himself

in all things not as the greater but as the least:

while, still wholly ignorant of his own and his followers' progress,

he vehemently desired to know the outcome of his little flock. Already before

the Saint had foretold certain things about the future greatness of his Order

to B. Giles, as we have seen above;

and therefore the second biographer's words are not so to be taken

as though at that time nothing on this matter had been made known to the Saint;

nor did the man of Celano assert this, from whom he drew these things,

but only that he asked of God with anxious prayer

that he would show him the progress of his own and his followers' manner of life.

[203] learns that his Order is to be wondrously spread abroad, and encourages them, These things being briefly observed, I go on with the aforesaid

second biographer. When therefore (says he)

on a certain day the devout man had given himself more devoutly than his wont

to prayer, and, giving thanks for the benefits divinely bestowed upon him,

and recalling in the bitterness of his soul the years

ill spent, stood trembling before the Lord, there began

to be poured through his mind on every side a wondrous sweetness and gladness,

so much that he even failed from himself;

until at last the darkness congealed from his sins was utterly

put to flight, and there was given him the certitude of the remission

of the debt of his faults, even to the last

farthing. Thereafter he was caught up above himself and

wholly absorbed in a certain brightness of wondrous light;

where, the bosom of his mind being enlarged, he deserved to be assured

of those things which he had desired, and clearly foresaw

the multiplication of his own from every

nation. And contemplating not only these things but also

many other secrets of things to come, at last, returning to himself,

he narrated everything in order to the brothers,

and, wholly renewed in spirit indeed,

admonished them to distrust neither their own nor his

simplicity; but comforted them in the Lord as men

to be manifoldly spread abroad even to the ends of the world.

[204] and sends them into the four quarters of the world; At that time there was added to them a certain

other man, and so their number eight was filled up.

Then calling (read: calling together,

for part of the word has been erased) them all, and

joining them two by two for the sending into various parts of the world,

he set before them many things about the kingdom of God,

about contempt of the world and of themselves, sweetly and earnestly,

and among other things chiefly enjoined patience and

humility. The humble flock therefore rejoices

at the voice of the Shepherd, and gratefully obeying

the receiving of the command of saving obedience,

humbly casts itself at his feet;

whom the most kindly Shepherd himself, raising up and affectionately

embracing as a mother her sons, receives each one

with kisses, and fortifies each with that prophetic

saying: "Cast thy care upon the Lord,

and he will nourish thee." Uttering this word

frequently, as often as he sent them forth,

he wished to direct all the brothers' solicitude to God,

thus to shut off from them the erring and boundless

way of covetousness; thus also a heart wholly estranged from cares

did not provide brass * in their girdles for the morrow. All this

may also be seen in the first Life.

[205] There follows in the same place the setting forth of all eight

into four different parts of the world, yet this pilgrimage was not long, for, at the Saint's prayer, as the man of Celano

and Bonaventure say, as though they wished to indicate that they set out

on long journeys. For the aforesaid man of Celano

at n. 30 says: Then brother Bernard with

brother Giles took the road toward saint James (he means Compostela

in Spain). But

if with that intention they really departed from Assisi

into Etruria, where we shall see them to have then been,

they certainly changed their design, although in the Life of B.

Giles it is also hinted that he then set out for Compostela:

for this pilgrimage of B. Giles's must be fixed much

later. So the reckoning of the time altogether requires;

and the holy Bonaventure clearly teaches that those journeys

were by no means long. For at n. 33 he asserts indeed

that St. Francis with his companion went toward

one part of the world, the remaining six

being assigned in the manner of a cross to three other parts of the world;

but he presently adds that the holy Father,

when a little time had elapsed, desired and asked

of God that all should return, and that so it came about

that after a little time they all met together again

at Assisi. The same things

the man of Celano has at n. 30, whom St. Bonaventure followed.

[206] The author of the second Life agrees, as is his custom,

in whom concerning the same journey this may be read: after a little time all met together again at Assisi. Therefore,

six of them being divided two by two into different regions

to announce peace with penance, he too

withdrew into another part of the world, keeping one with him.

But fatherly affection, not enduring that the absence

of his new offspring should be prolonged, began not long after

to be moved with a vehement desire to see them.

He sought therefore, to obtain *

what he longed for, his wonted refuge of prayer;

and so he deserved to be heard by the Lord, so that

in a short time all were unexpectedly and wonderfully gathered

into one. This journey of all of them, then, was not,

I think, but of a few weeks or of nearly

one month, since the Saint, when a little time had elapsed

after the departure of them all, grieving at their absence,

begged their return of God, and after

a little time saw his desire wonderfully

fulfilled. What, moreover, they did and suffered on that journey

the aforesaid biographers do not say;

but the Three Companions write more about these things at n. 37 and

following, and to this time they refer the form of prayer

handed down by St. Francis to his companions.

[207] With these, as far as the deeds go, our Anonymous

of Perugia agrees, The anonymous writer's narrative of the injuries done to them, whose words, not yet given, from

the coming of the three companions, I here subjoin, that from them

the reader may conjecture with how great virtue

those men were furnished, who bore such things patiently and persisted

in what they had begun. Take his words: And when a few days had elapsed

(from St. Francis's return from the March of Ancona)

three other men of the city of Assisi came to

them, namely brother Sabbatinus, brother jobs

(John, surnamed de Capella) and brother Moricus

the Little, humbly beseeching the blessed Francis

to receive them into his fellowship.

And he kindly and cheerfully received them. But when

they went through the city asking alms,

scarcely would anyone give to them, but they said to them:

You have given up your own goods, and you wish to eat other men's.

And so they suffered exceeding great want.

Their parents too and kinsmen

persecuted them, and others of that city, small

and great, male and female, despised and

derided them as senseless and stupid — none excepted

but the bishop of the city alone, to whom the blessed Francis

went frequently to ask counsel. But for this reason

their parents and kinsmen persecuted them,

and others derided them, because in that time no one was found

who would leave all his goods and go asking alms

from door to door.

[208] of the Saint's dealings with the bishop, of the disciples instructed by him But on a certain day, when the blessed Francis

had gone to the lord bishop, the bishop

said to him: Your life seems to me very hard

and rough, to possess or have nothing in this world.

To whom the Servant of the Lord answered thus: Lord,

if we had any possessions, arms would be

necessary to us for protecting them;

for from these arise quarrels and very many lawsuits,

and the love of the Lord and of one's neighbor is wont to be hindered.

Therefore we wish to possess nothing temporal

in this world. And this answer pleased the bishop.

But the holy Francis, since he was full of the grace

of the Holy Spirit, foretold to his brothers

what things were to come; and calling to him

those six brothers of his whom he had, in the wood

which was beside the church of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula,

to which they frequently went for prayer,

he said to them: Let us consider, dearest

brothers, our calling; for the Lord has mercifully

called us, not only for our own utility and salvation

but for that of many. Let us go therefore

through the world, exhorting and teaching

men and women by word and example, that

they do penance for their sins, and remember

the commandments of the Lord, which they have

so long consigned to forgetfulness.

[209] and sent to preach, And again he said to them: Fear not, little

flock, but have confidence in the Lord;

and do not say: Among us we are unlearned, without

letters; how shall we preach? But be mindful

of the words of the Lord which he spoke to his disciples,

saying: "For it is not you that speak,

but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh

in you." For the Lord himself will give you

spirit and wisdom for beseeching and

preaching to men and women the way of his commandments

and their works. And you will find faithful

men, meek, humble and kindly, who

will receive you and your words with joy and

love. You will find others unbelieving, proud and

blaspheming, resisting and reproaching you

and your words. Set therefore in your hearts

to endure all these things patiently and humbly.

And when the brothers had heard these words,

they were afraid. But the blessed Francis, seeing

that they feared, said to them: Be not dismayed;

for know that not long hereafter

there will come to you many wise and prudent and

noble men; and they will be with us, and will preach to nations

and peoples, to kings and princes; and many

will be converted to the Lord, and through the whole

world the Lord will make his family to be multiplied

and increased. And when he had finished all

these words, he blessed them, and they went away. Other things

too he foretold in the first Life; but not at all

contrary to these.

[210] and to whom the manner of praying was handed down, I go on with the anonymous writer. And when along

the way the most devout servants of Christ the Lord walked,

and found some church, whether inhabited or abandoned,

or some cross beside the way,

they most devoutly bowed themselves toward them in prayer,

saying: We adore thee, O Christ, and

we bless thee, and all thy churches which are

in the whole world, because by

thy holy cross thou hast redeemed the world. And

there they believed and felt that they found a place. That they were taught this peculiar

manner of praying by St. Francis

other biographers hand down, although

they do not agree about the time. Thomas of Celano in

the first Life at n. 45 referred that instruction of St. Francis

to the time at which he, returning with his companions from Rome

after the Order was approved by Pope Innocent III,

dwelt at Rivo Torto or at S.

Mary of the Portiuncula; and St. Bonaventure agrees

in the Life to be published at n. 42. But

the Three Companions, whom the Anonymous followed here, mentioned

the same prayer at the same time as he does,

at n. 37, from which place also the last words of the Anonymous

are thus to be amended, or to be expounded:

For they believed that they always found a place of God

wherever they found a cross or a church.

For the rest, from the testimony of these Three Companions

it becomes at least probable that the use of the said prayer

was commended by the holy Father to his disciples earlier

than is said in the man of Celano and Bonaventure.

[211] Now let us hear from the same Anonymous

what and how much they suffered on that journey. and of the injuries which they endured on this journey.

Whoever, he says, saw them, marveled,

saying: We have never seen such Religious,

clad in this manner. For, unlike all others in habit and

life, they seemed wild men.

When they entered any city, town

or house, they announced peace. For wherever

they found men or women on the roads or in the squares,

they strengthened them to fear

and love the Creator of heaven and earth, and that,

remembering his commandments which they had given over to forgetfulness,

they should strive henceforth to fulfill them in deed.

And some of them gladly heard them with

joy; but others on the contrary derided them:

by many they were questioned in many ways;

and it was very laborious for them to answer so many and so great

questions; for in new matters

new questions very often arise. For some

asked them: Whence are you? And others

said: Of what Order are you? But they simply

answered: We are penitents, and

we were born in the city of Assisi. For as yet the Religion

of the brothers was not called an Order. And many

who saw and heard them thought them deceivers

or fools; and someone among them would say:

I do not wish to receive them into my house,

lest perhaps they steal my goods. And on this account

in many places many injuries were done to them: whence

often they lodged in the porches * of churches

or of houses.

[212] At the same time there were two brothers in

the city of Florence, Two of them, shut out from lodging at Florence, who went through the city

seeking a lodging, and could by no means

find one. Coming therefore to a certain house

before which there was a certain * porch, and in the porch

a certain oven, they said to one another: Here

we shall be able to lodge. They asked therefore the mistress

of that house that she would deign to receive them

into her house. And when she at once refused to do this,

they besought her that she would at least permit them

to lodge that night beside the oven; and she granted it

to them. But when her husband had come, and had looked at

the brothers in the porch beside the oven, he said to her *:

Why have you granted lodging to those ribalds

(that is, rascals)? And she answered: I did not wish to lodge them

in the house, but permitted them to lie outside in the porch,

lest within they might be able to steal anything from us,

save perhaps firewood. And on account of this suspicion

they would not give the brothers anything to cover themselves with,

although at that time the cold was great.

By our chronology these things were done in the month of May:

the cold at Florence at night could then have been

too sharp for men clad in a single

poor little tunic and barefoot to pass the night without other covering

in a porch with any comfort.

[213] but afterward, their virtue being known. But the Brothers, rising (so the Anonymous goes on)

that night for Matins, went on to the church nearest

to them. And when morning came,

that woman, going to church to hear

Mass, looked upon them remaining devoutly

and humbly in prayer; and she said within herself: If

these men were evildoers, as my husband

said, they would not thus reverently persist in prayer.

And while many were thinking this *, behold, a certain man

named Guido was going through that church,

and giving alms to the poor whom

he found. And when he had come to the Brothers, and

wished to give each one a penny, as he did to the others,

they refused to take it. To whom he said:

Why do you not take the pennies, as the other poor do,

since I see you thus needy and destitute?

One of them, a brother named Bernard, answered him:

It is true indeed that we are poor;

but our poverty is not so heavy

as that of other poor men, because by the grace of the Lord,

and by fulfilling his counsel, we have been made

poor. That man, marveling, asked

them whether they had once had anything in the world: and they

answered that they had had something, but for the love

of God had given it to the poor. And the said woman,

considering that the Brothers had refused the pennies, coming

to them, said to them: Christians, if you will

return to my lodging, I will receive you within

the house. To whom the Brothers humbly answered:

May the Lord repay you.

[214] are kindly received by a pious man; their companions very ill treated by others, When therefore that man had seen that the brothers

could not have found a lodging, taking

them he led them into his house, and said to them:

Behold the lodging which the Lord has prepared for you;

stay in it according to your good pleasure.

But they gave thanks to the Lord, who

showed his mercy upon them, and heard

the cry of the poor; and they stayed with

him for some days. And so, on account of their

words which he heard, and the good examples

which he saw, he afterward bestowed much on the poor.

For again * the Brothers were reckoned mean

among men, so that many, small and great,

did and said to them as masters

to their servants. And although they had the meanest

and poorest garments, yet they gladly took these away from them.

And when they thus remained naked (covered, namely, with their drawers alone),

since they had only one tunic,

yet very often they observed the Evangelical form,

not demanding them back from those who took them away:

if, however, those, moved by pity, wished to restore them,

they received them gladly. And on some they threw mud

on the head: to one of them also

dice were put into his hand, inviting him

if he wished to play; and a certain one of them was carried

on another's back, hung up by his hood,

as long as it pleased the carrier. These things and many others

they did to them, afflicting them; which * things therefore we do not

relate, lest we draw out our words too much.

For those who securely and boldly afflicted them reckoned them

so utterly mean, as though they were evildoers.

Moreover in hunger and in thirst,

in cold and nakedness they endured many tribulations and

straits. These last things, as also what follows,

seem to be said not of those two alone, but of all

the companions.

[215] But all this they bore steadfastly and patiently,

as they had been admonished by the blessed Francis. by their patience they at last move many, and admit some into their fellowship,

They were not saddened, nor troubled,

but, like men set in great gain,

they exulted in tribulations, and rejoiced,

and earnestly besought the Lord for their persecutors.

And when men saw them exulting in

their tribulations, and patiently bearing them

for the Lord, and not ceasing from most devout prayer,

and also not receiving money nor

carrying it, as the other needy poor received it,

and having great love for one another, in which

they were known to be disciples of the Lord,

many by the kindness of the Lord were stung in heart,

and, coming to them, asked pardon for their offenses

against them; and they, forgiving them from the heart,

cheerfully answered: The Lord

pardon you. And so afterward they gladly heard them;

and some asked them that they would deign to receive them

into their fellowship; and of these

they received very many, because at that time, on account of

the fewness of the Brothers, each one had

power from the blessed Francis to receive whom

he would. And at the term appointed for them they returned

to saint Mary of the Portiuncula.

[216] In nearly the same way the Three Companions, whom the Anonymous

had before his eyes; and they return to S. Mary of the Portiuncula. yet they more correctly, instead of

They received very many, have at n. 41: They received

some; for we shall see only four presented with the garment

after this journey. But in those words at the term appointed for them,

or, as the Three Companions have it,

at the appointed term all returned to Saint Mary

of the Portiuncula, a difficulty lies hidden. For

in the man of Celano in the first Life at nn. 29 and 30, and

in St. Bonaventure at nn. 32 and 33, they altogether seem

to have been sent by St. Francis on long journeys, and are said

after a little time, Francis praying God for their return,

all without any human summons, and, as Bonaventure

expressly adds, all unexpectedly after a little time, …

by the working of the divine clemency, not without their own

wonder, to have come together at Assisi. But by what

reckoning is all this true, if they returned at the appointed term,

or at the term appointed for them? To me

it appears most likely that that term is to be explained neither of the space of time

which the Saint had prefixed for the pilgrimage,

nor of the place to which by his command it

was to extend, but of the place to which they were to return,

and which had been appointed by the Saint as the term or end

of the whole pilgrimage. The sense therefore will be this: To

the term appointed for them, namely to Saint Mary

of the Portiuncula, they returned.

[217] Into what parts St. Francis (for by what has been said

he too had chosen one for himself) with his companion

then went, The Saint had perhaps then set out for the Vale of Rieti; none of the old biographers

whom I have has committed to memory.

Perhaps, however, he went into the Vale of Rieti, in the Sabine country

of Umbria, to which Wadding writes that he set out in the same year, but

at another time before the journey just mentioned,

at this year 1209, n. 24, citing Marianus and Angelo

of Rieti. He says, namely, in the same place, on the authority of the aforesaid

writers, that Francis led his disciples thither with this design,

that, being removed from their native city, they might beg alms with greater

confidence and receive them without harsher insult. That Angelo, in the Writers

of the Minors, is called by the same Annalist

Angelo Tancredi, of Rieti by birth, and is said

to have been the last of the eleven companions of St. Francis,

and to have written a Little History of the deeds of St. Francis

in the city and vale of Rieti, and a Life of the same

holy Patriarch, together with two other

companions, Leo and Rufinus. This Life, which

we call the Appendix, I have already frequently named;

but since I do not have that other Little History,

I cannot pronounce about it. Nevertheless,

if the aforesaid setting out of the Saint with all his followers to the Vale of Rieti

is narrated in it at this year,

I cannot sufficiently wonder why neither in the first

nor in the second Life, nor in the Appendix of the Three

Companions, one of whom was that Angelo

of Rieti, nor finally in St. Bonaventure, is there

even the slightest trace of that setting out to be found.

[218] for another setting out to the same place before this is not certain enough. Wherefore, if in doubtful matters one may conjecture,

I somewhat suspect that St. Francis, on Angelo's testimony,

set out with one companion for the Vale of Rieti

when, as has been said above, he sent the other six

companions into different parts of the world; and that Angelo

brought forward the cause of this setting out and mission which Wadding

cited from him, but that Marianus, who is nearly three

centuries later, believed that he was speaking of a common setting out

of all the companions to the Vale of Rieti; whence Wadding may easily have been led

to distinguish three settings out of theirs in the same year:

the first, namely, when St. Francis went with B. Giles

into the March of Ancona; the second, this common one; and

the third, finally, when, from what has been said above, he appointed all his companions,

two by two, to the four quarters. Yet this is only

a conjecture, because in the old Lives which I have there exists

absolutely no trace at this time of that middle setting out, which

perhaps happened in another year, and was referred to this

by Marianus from a slight conjecture. Now let us look again

at the companions returned from their journeys to saint Mary

in the Portiuncula.

[219] Returning, they congratulate one another; and four new companions That Francis, most loving of his own, and all his companions

were filled with great joy when

they saw themselves returned unharmed, both reason itself

persuades and the first Life teaches at n. 30,

where it is added with what great charity they embraced one another,

and the coming of four others into the fellowship

is narrated. Of the joy of those who returned the Three Companions too

briefly made mention at n. 41, and Bonaventure

at n. 33. But the second biographer, following the first,

says this: When they were thus gathered together, it is no

wonder if the loving Father is glad in his sons. The sons too

congratulated the Father's joy, and, marveling alike

and rejoicing, unanimously glorified

the magnificence of the Savior. He related

in what order the Lord had fulfilled his desire;

they too narrated the benefits divinely bestowed upon them,

and humbly accused themselves of ingratitude

for all things. And it came to pass

after these things that four other suitable men were joined to that little flock,

so that thus the number twelve of the brothers

was filled up. The fame, then, of the holy Man and of his followers

began now to be more widely spread;

and also their joy in the Lord was daily increased,

seeing that they rejoiced over the conversion

of sinners without respect of persons.

[220] are clothed with the sacred habit. Those four who are said, after the Saint's return,

to have been presented with the Franciscan habit, either all

or some of them were admitted by the companions

on the journey itself, as we have seen.

Their names are not stated in our ancient

Lives; but the catalogue of the first companions (Francis being counted)

printed in the edition of the Mirror by Spoelberch, part 2, ch. 2,

sets them forth thus: Ninth, Br. John of

Constantino. Tenth, Br. Barbarus. Eleventh,

Br. Bernard de Violente. Twelfth, Br. Angelo

of Rieti. The first of these in the Annotations

in the same place is said to be called by others Constantius; in

Wadding, Constantius or John of S.

Constantius; the third in the Annotations Bernard Vigilantius,

as also in Wadding, otherwise Bernard

de Viridante, as we read; the fourth, namely Angelo,

is one of the Three Companions who wrote the Appendix

to the first Life. The aforesaid

Wadding at the year 1209, n. 38, put Silvester

fourth in place of Angelo, and believed that Angelo was first

admitted by St. Francis in the following year,

when the latter, going to Rome to obtain the confirmation of his Rule

from the supreme Pontiff,

passed through the city of Rieti; so that by that

Annalist's opinion that Angelo then completed

the number twelve of St. Francis's companions, Francis

not being counted. But we shall weigh this

opinion in its place. Further, although I am certain

about the number eleven of St. Francis's companions,

I would not nevertheless contend that Angelo was one

of these eleven; because I cannot confirm from older

documents the names and the order of the coming

of all those who are listed in the aforesaid catalogue of the Mirror.

* read æs

* obtinendum

* read porticibus

* read quædam

* perhaps ei

* is it multis cogitaret?

* perhaps Interim

* is it quæ?

§ XI. Certain virtues of the companions: the Saint writes

and obtains it, with the faculty of preaching, from Innocent III.

The companions' occupations, their zeal for prayer, their mutual charity, About the mutual charity of the companions and their other

virtues, much is added to what has been said in the Appendix

to the first Life from n. 41. The Anonymous of Perugia

has like things, whose words take here.

But when they saw one another again (from the journey reported in the preceding

§), they were filled with such pleasantness and spiritual

joy that they remembered nothing

of adversity or of the very great poverty which they were suffering.

They were busy daily in prayer and in the labor of their

hands, that they might wholly drive from themselves all idleness,

the enemy of the soul. And at night likewise,

careful to rise at midnight, according to

that word of the Prophet, "At midnight I rose to give

praise to thee," they prayed with much devotion

and frequently with tears. With inmost love

they loved one another. One also served

and nourished another, as a mother serves and nourishes

her son. So great a fire of charity burned in them

that it seemed easy to them to give up their bodies,

not only for the name of our Lord

Jesus Christ, but also one for another, and gladly.

For on a certain day, when two Brothers

were passing along a certain road, they found

a madman who threw stones at them.

One of those brothers, when he saw stones being thrown

at his brother, running up and setting himself against the blows

of the stones, chose rather to be struck himself

than his brother, on account of their burning mutual

charity. These and like things they often did.

[222] They were rooted and grounded in humility,

and one revered another as though he were

his lord. humility, obedience, care to keep brotherly charity, Whoever among them excelled in office or grace

seemed humbler and meaner than the rest.

All also gave themselves wholly to obeying

when the mouth of him who commanded * opened,

continually preparing their feet for walking, and their hands also

for working. Whatever

he enjoined on them, they thought had been enjoined according

to the will of the Lord: and therefore it was sweet

and easy for them to fulfill everything.

They abstained from carnal desires, and took careful judgment of themselves

that they should not avenge themselves. For if by chance one

said to another a word which might perhaps displease

him, he was so reproached by conscience

that he could not rest until he said

his fault, and, prostrating himself on the ground,

made the other, though unwilling, set his foot

upon his mouth. And if he would by no means set it there,

if he who had spoken the word was a superior,

he commanded him to do this; otherwise he had it commanded

by the superior, so that malice might be driven away from them,

and full love always kept among them.

And so he took care to set single virtues

against vices.

[223] common use of things, poverty, liberality to the needy, Whatever they had, book or tunic,

they used in common; and no one ever

said that anything was his own. So it was done in the primitive

Church of the Apostles. And although

excessive poverty abounded in them, yet they were always generous,

and gladly shared with all who asked of them for the love of the Lord

the alms given to them.

And when they went along the way and

found poor men asking of them, some of them,

having nothing else to offer, bestowed something

of their own garments on the poor. For a certain one

of them cut the hood from his tunic and gave it to a poor man

who asked; another too separated a sleeve

and gave it; and others some part,

and others gave of their tunic, that they might observe that word

of the Gospel: "Give to everyone that asketh

thee." But on a certain day there came a certain

poor man to the church of Saint Mary of the Portiuncula,

where they were staying, and asked alms

of the brothers *. Now there was there a certain

cloak which one of them had had when

he was still in the world. And the blessed Francis

said to that brother whose that cloak had been, that

he should bestow it on that poor man: and he gladly and quickly

gave it to him. And immediately, on account of the reverence

and devotion which the brother had had

in giving it, it seemed to him that that alms

ascended to heaven, and he at once felt himself filled with a new

spirit. This deed I have already reported

about B. Giles, in whose Life the same things are read.

[224] manner of dealing with the rich and with kinsmen; the penance for touching money But when the rich of this world turned aside to them,

they received them cheerfully and kindly,

and invited them, that they might call them back from

evil and provoke them to doing penance.

Anxiously at that time they asked that they might not

be sent into the lands whence they had sprung; that

so they might flee the company and familiarity

of their kinsmen, and observe the prophetic word:

"I am become a stranger to my brethren,

and an alien to the sons of my mother."

In poverty they greatly rejoiced, since * riches

were not desired by them. Gold and

silver they never possessed, and they despised all the riches

of this world; but above all they trampled money

under their feet. On a certain day,

when the brothers were staying at Saint

Mary of the Portiuncula, there came certain

men and entered the church, and, without their knowing,

laid pennies upon the altar. But a certain

brother, entering the church, took the pennies he found,

and put them on a certain window of that same church. But another

brother, finding the money where the brother had put it, reported it to the holy

Francis.

[225] And when the blessed Francis had heard this,

he had diligent inquiry made imposed on a certain brother by the Saint. as to which of the brothers had put

this money there. And when he was found, he bade him

come to him, and said: Why did you do this? Did you not

know that I wish that the brothers should not only

not use money, but should not even touch it?

Hearing which, the brother bowed himself, and said

his fault on bended knees, asking that

he should give him a penance. And he imposed on him

that he should carry that money out of the church with his own mouth,

until that brother, finding the dung * of an ass,

should place it with the same mouth with which he carried it.

Which the brother diligently fulfilled. And thereafter

he admonished the brothers that wherever they found money

they should make light of it and reckon it as nothing.

They rejoiced continually, because they had nothing

whereby they could be * troubled. For the more they were divided

from the world, the more they were joined * with the Lord.

These men entered by the narrow path, the true way,

and kept its roughness; upon the rocks they trod down thorns,

and so the way has been made smooth for us. All this the Three

Companions also have: but doubtless some things

have been torn out of the order of time: for just as B.

Giles gave his cloak to a poor man earlier

than it is here reported for an example, so the penance for touching money

was given later, since the Minors did not receive the church

of S. Mary in the Portiuncula until after the Order was approved.

[226] I return to the time indicated and proved above,

at which St. Francis sought and obtained the approbation of his Order

from Innocent III, the supreme Pontiff.

The Saint writes a brief Rule for himself and his followers, The event Thomas of Celano narrates

in the first Life at n. 32 and the following. As helpers

at Rome the Saint had Guido, bishop of Assisi,

and John of St. Paul, Cardinal bishop of Sabina,

or more truly he had as helper

God himself, who through the aforesaid Guido gave him the aforesaid

Cardinal as supporter, as the biographers agree. Before this Roman

journey Francis wrote a certain brief Rule

to offer to Innocent III for approbation.

Of this it is read thus in the first Life at n. 32: He wrote

for himself and his brothers, present and to come,

simply and in few words a form of life and Rule,

using chiefly the words of the holy Gospel,

to whose perfection alone he panted.

Yet he inserted a few other things, all of which he indicated as altogether

necessary for the practice of a holy manner of life;

perhaps we should read: he found necessary.

The second biographer agrees in these words:

In brief speech, therefore, he wrote the Rule,

the sacred words of the Gospel being interposed in it. Likewise

the Three Companions in the Appendix at n. 51 say of it:

The Rule which he had written in simple words,

using the sayings of the holy Gospel, etc.;

and St. Bonaventure in the Life at n. 34: He wrote

for himself and his brothers in simple words a formula

of life, in which, the observance of the holy Gospel

being set as an indissoluble foundation, he inserted a few

other things which seemed necessary for a uniform manner

of living.

[227] Wadding both in the Little Works of St. Francis,

from p. 133, and in the Annals at the year

1210, which Wadding believed to be the one he published; n. 2, published a Rule divided into twenty-three

chapters, with which he filled nearly nine pages

of the Annals in folio, as they call it; and this

he judged to be the first of all, of which we are now treating.

But I cannot reconcile so lengthy a Rule

with the sayings of the biographers, especially the first and second.

For by what reckoning will that be said to have been written in few words

and in brief speech, which is much more lengthy

than the one which Honorius III afterward approved, inasmuch as this latter,

published in the same Annals at the year 1223 from n. 12,

scarcely occupies four and a half pages?

There is added another reason: namely that in chapter 2

of that same Rule it is read that, according to the command

of the lord Pope, it is not lawful for Minors after making

their profession to pass over to another Religion;

which prohibition in vol. 1 of the Franciscan Bullarium is said to have been first

made in the year 1220 by Honorius III,

the successor of Innocent III; which Wadding, acknowledging it

in the Annotations to the Rule which he calls the second,

were inserted by Francis himself into the Rule which for him

is the first, as soon as that prohibition of Honorius

was published.

[228] which is not likely enough; and that Waddingian one seems, I nowise doubt that the learned man so thought

because there exist only two Rules of the Minors

written by St. Francis, of which the briefer is certainly

the last; and because he did not know that several (even

besides the one which brother Elias lost, or secretly

destroyed) had been composed by the same Saint. This,

however, the Three Companions teach in express words in the Appendix

at n. 35, where they say this of Francis:

He so despised all transitory things, and especially money,

that in all his Rules he chiefly commended

poverty, and made all the brothers careful

about avoiding money;

for he made several Rules, and tried them,

before he made that one which he last left

to the brothers. Whence in one of them he said, in detestation of money: "Let us who have left all things take care

lest for so small a thing we lose the kingdom of heaven.

And if we should find money in any place,

let us care no more about it than about the dust

which we tread under our feet." Several

Rules, therefore, St. Francis made before the one which

the Minors now use; nor can that one which Elias lost

be numbered among those several, since

it was the same as the last of all; and if it were to be numbered

among them, it would have to be said that not several,

but only two, were written before the last.

[229] to be one of the others which the Saint made after the first. The words cited by the Three Companions from one of those

several are read in ch. 8 of the Rule published by Wadding

as the first of all; but if

this was really the first of all, or the only one written

before the last, why did the Three Companions

call it not the first or the only one, but one

of those several? But that it is not the first

the reasons which I have alleged persuade me.

Wherefore, that we may not depart from the Three Companions,

whose authority here ought to be chief, I for my part believe

that the first of all, which Innocent

III approved, was quite brief and written in few

words; but that it perished long ago;

and that the one which seemed to Wadding the first of all

is one of the others which St. Francis afterward wrote

before the last, the substance and primary precepts of the first Rule

being always preserved. For in this way

the credit of the first biographers will stand safe,

and that Rule which seemed to Wadding the first will rightly

be said to have been approved by Innocent III, as is read

in the Preface in the same place, and mention could be made in it

of the prohibition made by Honorius III in the year 1220,

without any interpolation. Let us now hear

the second biographer, who speaks thus about these matters.

[230] The blessed Francis, therefore, seeing the number of brothers

increasing everywhere, To have this approved he goes to Rome with eleven companions, explained to them more fully

the purpose of his heart, and also the secret

of the divine revelation. In brief speech, therefore, he wrote the Rule,

the sacred words of the Gospel being interposed in it,

to whose perfection, so far as he could, he panted.

And desiring that what he had written be confirmed

by the supreme Pontiff, he took the eleven brothers

whom he had with him, and so went to Rome

with them, himself the twelfth. About the number eleven of the companions

who departed from Assisi with St. Francis, all agree;

but Wadding at the year 1210,

to which he deferred this setting out, and who made Silvester

the priest the eleventh among the companions,

writes at n. 3 that another companion was again joined to the rest

on this very journey toward Rome,

so that St. Francis began the journey with XI companions

but reached Rome with XII and returned thence with them.

For this opinion he cites the very man whom

he believed to have been then joined, Angelo

Tancredi of Rieti, in his Little History of the

Deeds of St. Francis in the city and vale of Rieti,

which I have cited above from him. Since

we lack that book, I shall recite Wadding's words.

[231] But they (Francis and his eleven companions,

to whom Angelo of Rieti was added on the way, on their way to Rome) turned aside a little to the city

of Rieti, in which, staying one or two

days, Francis met a certain noble

knight called Angelo

Tancredi; to whom, though before unknown to him,

by God's prompting he said on the spot:

Lord Angelo, you have girded on the military belt, the sword and the spurs

for a long enough time: it behooves you

now to bear for a girdle a rough cord, for

a sword the cross of Christ, for spurs the dust

and mud of the streets. Follow me therefore, and I will make

you a knight of Christ. Wonderful to say! At once

the grace of the Holy Spirit so bent the man's heart to his

will that, leaving everything immediately,

he followed the Man of God, and on the following day

humbly clothed himself in this poor ash-colored garment,

and completed the number twelve of the Franciscan college

(Francis not being counted). I note briefly

here that Bonaventure,

Vincent of Beauvais, and others teach

that Francis went to Rome with eleven disciples only;

because he had no more when he departed from Assisi,

nor did they mention this Angelo initiated on the way.

The course of his own conversion Angelo himself

expressed exactly and humbly in that

little Work which he wrote about Francis's deeds

in the parts of Rieti. So far the aforesaid Annalist

of the Minors.

[232] I would not dare to call the fact itself

into doubt; Wadding writes, but the authority of the biographers altogether persuades me

not to believe it happened on this journey begun

toward Rome. Certainly that only eleven companions

had been admitted before that journey, besides St. Bonaventure

and Vincent of Beauvais, the man of Celano too hands down;

and that the Saint did not arrive at Rome with more,

he teaches at n. 32, saying: He came accordingly

to Rome with all the said brothers, namely

with the XI whom he had mentioned. The Three Companions, one of whom,

by Wadding's own favor, was Angelo himself,

at n. 46 say of Francis about to set out for Rome with all his followers:

He said to the eleven, himself the twelfth,

their leader and father, etc.; then at n.

52, of the same men about to leave Rome, they again say:

Having therefore received a blessing from the supreme Pontiff,

and visited the thresholds of the Apostles, and tonsures having been given

to the blessed Francis and to the other brothers, as

the said Cardinal had procured, wishing all

those twelve to be clerics, the Man of God, leaving the City

with the said brothers, set out into the world.

[233] which is not conformable to our ancient Lives. Certainly from these testimonies I for my part cannot

but be persuaded that no more than

eleven companions set out with the Saint for Rome

and returned thence, and that among them there was no priest,

such as it is established that Silvester was before

he joined himself to the Saint. Add that for those going from Assisi

to Rome the city of Rieti is by no means to be passed through,

since with its vale it lies plainly off the road

to the left; nor from any other quarter is it likely enough that Francis,

who had undertaken this journey solely that he might see to his Rule

being approved by the supreme Pontiff,

would have wished to turn so far out of his way. Wherefore

it is more probable to me that, if the aforesaid conversion of Angelo

Tancredi happened in the same year as the Saint's Roman journey,

it happened about one month earlier,

at which time I have observed above at nn. 217 and the following

that Francis was perhaps in the vale

of Rieti. This being laid down, the aforesaid Angelo could

have been the eleventh companion of St. Francis, as

the catalogue cited at n. 220 has it, in whose place

Wadding substituted Silvester the priest,

so that with the ancient biographers he might attribute eleven companions

to the Saint as he set out on his journey, whom otherwise

he would have found to be only ten, Angelo being then first admitted

on the journey.

[234] After a journey piously and prosperously accomplished, coming to Rome, The Three Companions at n. 46 have certain things about

the manner of traveling which they observed on this Roman

setting out. The same things the Anonymous of Perugia reports,

from whom I have transcribed the following: And as they went along

the way, he said to them (namely St. Francis):

Let us make one of ourselves our leader,

and let us hold him for us as it were the vicar

of Jesus Christ. Wherever it shall please him to turn aside,

let us turn aside; and when he wishes to lodge,

let us lodge. And they chose brother Bernard,

who had been first received by the blessed Francis;

and as they had said, they carried it out in deed. They went

rejoicing, and spoke the words of the Lord, and

none of them dared to say anything except

what pertained to the praise and glory of the Lord,

and what was for the profit of their own souls,

or else they gave themselves to prayer. And the Lord prepared for them

a lodging and food in the time of their need.

So much for the journey; but of what was done at Rome

I again set forth the second biographer, clinging to the first's footsteps

in such a way, however, that (as Bonaventure

also did) he omitted what the first, with the Three Companions

and the Anonymous of Perugia, has about the bishop

of Assisi, found at Rome.

[235] he is kindly received by the Cardinal bishop of Sabina, Take the second's words. Arriving there (at Rome),

he went to one of the Cardinal bishops,

a man approved and discreet,

and explained to him in order more fully the cause of his coming.

And he, having diligently heard the business of the poor men

of Christ, although he not undeservedly commended so praiseworthy a purpose,

yet first of all suggested to him

that he should betake himself to the eremitical or monastic life

(namely to one of the approved ones).

But the Servant of Christ, perseveringly persisting in what he had begun,

did not admit persuasions of this sort, as humbly as

he could. And he at last so far prevailed, the Lord cooperating,

that, the same bishop faithfully managing it, the matter came

to the hearing of the supreme Pontiff. Divine providence

also accompanied the blessed Man in all that he did,

and made him secure

by frequent revelations and visions.

He saw also at that time a vision promising

the lord Pope's consent to his purpose; namely

a certain great tree of wondrous height,

whose top he himself easily bent down with his hands

to the ground. This vision signified

that Innocent III would easily be inclined by Francis to consent,

as may be seen in the first Life at n. 33;

for in the second the words are here faulty, which

on that account I have not transcribed.

[236] Our Anonymous of Perugia, more consonant

with the Three Companions, by the good offices of the bishop of Assisi, and yet not dissenting from the others,

teaches that Francis then came into the acquaintance and favor of the aforesaid Cardinal

bishop through the bishop of Assisi,

Guido, or, as he is called in Ughelli's

Italia sacra, Vido; that very man, namely,

before whom the Saint two years before had given up all his father's goods,

and even the very garments with which

he was clad. And when he had come to Rome,

says the Anonymous, they found the bishop of the city of Assisi,

who was staying at Rome at that time.

And he saw them with immense joy, and

received them. The bishop was known to a certain Cardinal

who was called John of Saint Paul, and was

a good man, religious, and loved the servants of the Lord

very much. To whom the said bishop had disclosed

the purpose and the life of the blessed Francis and

of his brothers. And he, hearing these things, with desire

longed to see the blessed Francis

and some of his brothers. And when he had heard that

they were in the City, he sent for them, and had them

come to him. And seeing them, he received them

with devotion and love. And when they had stayed

with him a few days, and what he had heard about them,

he saw shining forth in their deeds, he loved them inwardly.

[237] And he said to the blessed Francis: I commend

myself to your prayers, [and, the same Cardinal managing it, he is admitted to converse with the supreme Pontiff,] and I wish that henceforth you hold me as one

of your brothers.

Tell me therefore why you have come. Then the blessed

Francis revealed to him his whole purpose,

and that he wished to speak to the lord Apostolic, and

to pursue what he was doing by his will and command.

To whom he answered: I will be your procurator

in the court of the lord Pope. And so, going

to the court, he said to the lord Pope Innocent

III: I have found a most perfect Man, who wishes to live

according to the form of the holy Gospel,

and to observe Evangelical perfection; through

whom, I believe, the Lord wishes to renew his whole Church

throughout the whole world.

Hearing which, the lord Pope marveled, and said

to him: Bring him to me. And on the following day

he brought him to him. The blessed Francis therefore disclosed

his whole purpose to the lord Pope,

as he had said before to the Cardinal. The lord Pope answered:

Your life is exceedingly hard and rough,

if, wishing to make a congregation, you will possess nothing in

this world. For whence will necessities come to you?

The blessed Francis answered:

Lord, I trust in my Lord Jesus Christ;

since he promises to give us life and glory

in heaven, he will not withhold from us the necessities

of the body on earth in due time.

[238] The Pope answered: It is true, my Son;

yet human nature is fragile, and, after the prayers enjoined by him, his return to him, and never remains in

the same state: but go, and with all your heart

beseech the Lord that he deign to show you what is better and more useful

for your souls; and returning,

report these things to me, and I will afterward grant them.

Then, going away to prayer, he prayed to

the Lord with a pure heart, that by his ineffable

loving-kindness he would deign to show this to him. And when

he had persevered in prayer, and had gathered his whole heart

to the Lord, the word of the Lord came into his heart,

and by a similitude

said to him: There was in the palace of a certain great king a certain

woman, exceedingly poor but comely,

who found favor in the eyes of the king, and by her he begot several

sons. But on a certain day that woman

began to think within herself, saying: What shall I do,

a poor woman, to whom so many sons have been born? I have

no possessions whereby they can live. And

when she was thinking such things in her heart, and because of the multitude

of her thoughts her face seemed sad,

the king appeared and said to her: What ails you, that

I see you thinking and being sad? And she told

him all the thoughts of her mind. The king answered,

saying: Fear not because of your great poverty,

nor because of your sons born and the many to be born;

since, when many hired servants in my house

abound in bread, I do not wish that my sons

should perish of hunger.

[239] [and, setting forth the vision he had had, he obtains the approbation of the Rule,] Straightway the blessed Francis understood that

by that poor woman he himself was designated: from

this, therefore, the Man of the Lord established himself in his purpose

of observing most holy poverty thenceforth;

and rising that same hour, he went to the Apostolic one,

and showed him what the Lord had revealed to him.

And hearing this, the lord Pope marveled

vehemently, because the Lord had revealed his will

to so simple a Man;

and he recognized that he walked not in the wisdom of men

but in the showing of the spirit and in power.

Then the blessed Francis bowed himself, and

promised to the lord (Pope, as the Three Companions add)

perpetual obedience and reverence, humbly and

devoutly: and the other brothers, since they had not yet promised

obedience, according to the command of the lord

Pope likewise promised obedience and reverence

to the blessed Francis. And the lord Pope

granted him the Rule (which he had brought, as

the Three Companions add) and to his brothers present

and to come. All this is read a little more fully in

the Appendix written by the Three Companions, and by them the parable

of the poor woman is expounded in a somewhat different way,

yet so that it tends to the same

purpose, and equally, or even more expressly, proves

that sons clinging to God alone are not to be deserted

by the best of Fathers, who feeds even hired servants

liberally. This most true and most pious thought

of St. Francis's the outcome has for more than five

centuries confirmed, and goes on confirming, in his Order.

[240] [and the faculty of preaching for himself and his followers, who all likewise receive the tonsure.] Nor did the Pontiff's benevolence stop here;

but, as follows presently in the same Anonymous,

and he gave him authority to preach everywhere, as

the grace of the Holy Spirit should bestow upon him, and that

the other brothers too might preach, to whom

the office of preacher had been granted by the blessed Francis…

And again, after some things in between, he subjoins:

And the said Cardinal (bishop of Sabina),

on account of the devotion which he had toward the Brother,

had the clerical mark, namely the tonsure, given to all those twelve

brothers; as the Three Companions also

teach that it was done, the same Cardinal John of

S. Paul managing it, in the Appendix

at n. 52; of which tonsure Bonaventure too

makes mention in the Life at n. 38. These dealings of St. Francis with

Innocent III the second biographer touched more briefly,

handing down only this: The supreme Pontiff therefore, giving

to the twelve (in number) brothers his loving consent about confirming the Rule,

giving them also a mandate for preaching penance,

dismissed them with joy, a blessing being given. But

he also promised them yet fuller things when they should be multiplied hereafter.

The blessed Francis therefore, reckoning it no small thing

that he had obtained such benefits from Christ's

vicar, gave thanks for all things to the divine

clemency, and, having visited the thresholds of the Prince

of the Apostles, joyfully withdrew from the City with

his followers.

[241] There remain some things belonging to the same subject

to be examined here. To grant these things the Pontiff is said The Three Companions at n. 51, besides the reasons adduced

which impelled Innocent to approve the Rule,

bring forward another vision. Namely that the Pontiff

saw in his sleep, before Francis came to him,

the Lateran church threatening ruin,

and being held up by a certain religious and

despised man; and that when after a few days he saw Francis,

as has been said, and heard him,

he said silently to himself: Truly this is that religious

and holy man by whom the Church of God will be raised up

and upheld! St. Bonaventure has like things

at n. 38; but the rest of the biographers are silent. Their

account, however, can also be strengthened by the testimony

of Ricordano Malaspina, who certainly wrote in the thirteenth

century, and probably lived when the Order of Minors

was approved. He therefore in the Florentine History,

ch. 92, in Muratori, vol. 8 of the Writers,

has to our purpose in Italian what

I subjoin in Latin.

[242] At this time the holy Order of Friars Minor was begun,

to have been induced by another vision as well. while Innocent III administered the Pontificate.

Its Founder was saint Francis, born in the city of Assisi.

And by the aforesaid Pontiff the said Order was confirmed

and accepted; because its whole Rule

is founded on humility, charity and poverty,

following in all things the holy Gospel of Christ,

and fleeing all human delights:

and the said Pontiff saw in a vision S. Francis

upholding the Lateran church on his shoulders.

So Ricordano Malaspina. A like

vision is also said to have been offered to Pope Honorius III for

confirming the Order of Preachers, about which see

the fourth day of August in the Preliminary Commentary to the Acts

of S. Dominic, §22, from n. 417. Further, Wadding

at the year 1210, n. 14, rightly observes

that the aforesaid vision of Innocent did not portend the restoration and propping

of the Lateran basilica's structure, afterward seen to first by Nicholas IV,

and then by Sixtus IV, raised from the Order of Minors

to the supreme Pontificate; but that it is to be explained

of the notable help which the Order of Minors was to bring

to the universal Church, and which in fact it goes on bringing

now in the sixth century.

[243] Again another vision of the same Pontiff

is read in Bonaventure as given by Sedulius, Another account of these things is weighed, which, as being

foisted upon Bonaventure, I have removed from the text of the Life for the reasons

given above at n. 23 and the following. Wadding

at the aforesaid year 1210, n. 8, says: Many

report this Vision from ch. 3 of the Legend of the divine Bonaventure;

nor, however, did he himself insert it

into this little Work of his; but Jerome

of Ascoli, Bonaventure's successor in the generalate,

afterward proclaimed the supreme Pontiff Nicholas IV,

who received it from Richard Hannibaldensis

de Molaria, Cardinal deacon of the title

of S. Angelo in Pescheria, created by Gregory IX…

To him the whole matter was related by Gregory

IX himself, son of Innocent III's cousin,

to whom, when he had already been created by him Cardinal of the title of S. Eustachius,

Innocent unfolded the vision made to him. These things are consonant

with what I reported in this Commentary

at n. 23 and the following; nor is there reason why we should not believe

the Annalist writing them so affirmatively. Nor,

moreover, is it to be wondered at that it was unknown to the other biographers:

for both Innocent himself and Gregory IX

could have been unwilling that a vision which portended so great

a greatness of Francis and of his Order should be published;

and at last Jerome of Ascoli, having heard it from Richard

Hannibaldensis, inserted it into St. Bonaventure's Legend.

[244] which is not without difficulty However that may be, the matter is there reported in these words.

But when (Francis) had come to the Roman

curia, and was being brought before the sight

of the supreme Pontiff, and Christ's vicar was

in the Lateran palace, in the place which is called the Speculum,

walking about, occupied with deep meditations,

he indignantly drove away Christ's Servant as an unknown man.

And when he had humbly gone out,

on the following night a revelation of this kind was made by God

to the supreme Pontiff himself. For he saw

a palm between his feet gradually springing up

and rising into a most beautiful tree. And as he marveled

what this vision might mean to show, a divine

light impressed upon the mind of Christ's vicar

that this palm designated that Poor Man whom on the preceding

day he had driven away. And the next morning

he commanded that the said Poor Man be sought through the city

by his servants. And when he was found near

the Lateran in the hospital of saint Anthony, he ordered him

to be brought quickly before his sight, etc. What

follows agrees well enough with what has been reported above from

others, and would cohere well enough with the preceding narrative of Bonaventure,

even if that whole account which is said to have been inserted

were wholly absent.

[245] from the testimonies of the other biographers, The greater difficulty, however, is how that first

coming of St. Francis to the Pontiff, and the rebuff

and the recall, such as are there narrated, are to be reconciled

with the assertions of Thomas of Celano, the Three Companions

and the Anonymous of Perugia, in all of whom no

shadow of these things appears, and the Saint by the good offices of the Cardinal

of Saint Paul was introduced to Innocent

and strenuously helped. Indeed St. Bonaventure himself too

testifies at n. 36 that the same Cardinal

refuted the chief reason which the Pontiff and some other Cardinals brought forward,

lest the Rule, which excluded all possessions,

should be admitted. Accordingly that vision which is said to have been added

to St. Bonaventure's little Work may indeed be

true, but the other circumstances are not likely enough

in view of more certain testimonies. This is certain,

that the form of life and Rule of the Minors was approved by word of mouth

by Pope Innocent III in the year 1209,

as I have proved before.

[246] and what may be admitted from it is shown. But it seems to me to have been accomplished thus. Francis

became known through the bishop of Assisi to John

of S. Paul, Cardinal bishop of Sabina. After

he had approved to him the norm of his life and his Rule,

he was commended by him to Innocent and introduced to him.

The Pontiff received him kindly, but,

judging his Rule too arduous, deferred approving it,

and bade him return to him after prayers

poured out to God. After this meeting

the Pontiff perhaps had the aforesaid vision of the palm

growing into a most beautiful tree: probably

he then also consulted the Cardinals about

the Rule, and the aforesaid Cardinal happily undertook its patronage

against others who thought otherwise. After

this, Francis, having returned to the Pontiff, set forth the parable

of the poor woman reported at n. 238;

and the Pontiff, marveling at a parable so very

apt, and at the same time mindful both of the vision

about the Lateran basilica upheld by a poor man

and of the more recent one about the palm, granted to St. Francis

the desired approbation of the Rule and the faculty of preaching,

as has been said above.

* read præcipiens

* a fratribus

* read quia

* stercus

* possens

* conjuncti

§ XII. The departure of Francis and his companions from Rome:

food miraculously given them on the way: their stay in a desert place near

Orte, then at Rivo Torto near Assisi: their return to

the Portiuncula, and the church granted to him: some deeds done there.

Returning from Rome, in a solitary place We proceed in examining the things done in the year 1209

according to the chronology we have given,

which Wadding judged should be deferred to the year 1210.

Francis, having obtained the approbation of his Order

and the faculty of preaching penance, with

the eleven companions with whom he had come, who had then, like himself,

been presented with the clerical tonsure of the head, immediately

departed from Rome and directed his journey toward the vale of Spoleto,

or Assisi, as Thomas of Celano testifies

in the first Life at n. 34, and St. Bonaventure

at n. 39. Both add that as they traveled they spoke

so piously and diligently of the affairs of their Order, and of what conduced

to the perfection of their souls,

and were so little anxious about the care of their bodies,

that once, when the time of refreshing them with food

was at hand, they came into a solitude where there was no hope

of having any; but that divine providence did not fail

its servants when human help was lacking.

The second biographer, clinging to the first's footsteps, after reporting

their withdrawal from the City narrates this thus: The consideration of

what had been given moved him (Francis) straightway, lest

perhaps he should remain ungrateful, and he began to take pious counsel

with the brothers as to how, in observing the Rule, they might

first make progress in themselves through increases

of virtues; and further how, by edifying their neighbors,

they might put out at interest for the Lord what had been entrusted to them.

[248] While they were piously conferring on these and like matters,

it happened they are divinely refreshed: they stay near Orte. that they came to a certain * desert place,

the hour of the day now advancing, where they seemed

destitute of human help, since they needed refreshment

of the body for the labor of the journey.

But divine providence did not fail its poor men,

which wonderfully held out bread to them by a certain man

coming unexpectedly and suddenly disappearing.

Eating therefore together and marveling,

they gave thanks to the Lord, and, not a little

comforted, went forward on the journey they had begun.

They came then to a certain solitary place

near the city of Orte, where, some of them

begging in that same city, they stayed for nearly forty days

in great want of necessaries,

and there, with immense joy renewing the beginnings

of holy poverty, they confirmed it by a perpetual

compact. Orta, of which there is mention here,

elsewhere Horta and Hortanum, is a city of Tuscany on

the river Tiber, where it receives the Nera, and is of the Pontifical

dominion and situated between Rome and Assisi;

and accordingly it meets those going from Rome to Assisi. Of

this stay the Three Companions and Bonaventure are silent;

but the man of Celano in the Life at n. 34 makes it much

shorter, saying: They stayed there for about

fifteen days; and Wadding agrees

at the year 1210, n. 21, so that perhaps by a mere error of the copyists

forty is read for fifteen

in the second Life, whose author generally drew his matter

from the first. What was done in that place may be seen

in the aforesaid man of Celano; for what Wadding

added from Marianus, as appears, is not

equally certain.

[249] Thence they move to Rivo Torto near Assisi, From the territory of Orte the Saint with his followers

went on further toward Assisi, as the aforesaid

biographers have it, and with them began to dwell in

a certain hut situated not far from this city.

This place in the first Life is called Rugus Tortus, in

the second Rigus Tortus, in the Three Companions in the Appendix

Rivus Tortus; Bonaventure did not state

the name. Of it Wadding at the cited year

1210, n. 23, writes this: The Man of God therefore gathered himself

with the rest of his companions into that little hut, which

we have hinted at above, near the city of Assisi,

called Rivo Torto or Winding Stream; which

Bernard de Bessa and James Oddo of Perugia record to have been so

narrow that they could scarcely all sit in it together,

and by no means lie down with the body stretched out. That they might

more conveniently, without mutual annoyance, either rest or pray, the devout Father

appointed each his own place, the names

of all being marked upon the props or beams

of the lowly little building. What Wadding reports about the narrowness

of the place and other things done there may be read abundantly

in the Lives to be published; but plainly contrary

to those Lives is the fact that, by reason of his own chronology, the same Annalist

said that St. Francis with his followers dwelt there even before the Roman

journey: for, as I have already proved above, in none of them is

mention made of that place except after that journey and the approbation of the Rule

obtained from Innocent III.

[250] where they dwell in a narrow hut. For the stay spent in this place after the aforesaid journey

consult the first Life at n. 42, the Three

Companions at n. 55, and St. Bonaventure at n. 41;

in the second biographer this may be read: But that

most true Zealot of poverty had gathered himself

with his brothers into a certain abandoned dwelling of the aforesaid

place (which he had called Rigo Torto), that there

they might in some fashion defend themselves from heat

and rain. Which indeed was so

narrow that they could not even rest in it conveniently.

But nevertheless the narrowness of the place

did not cramp the breadth of their heart, but that they lived there joyfully

in the greatest want, and persisted in continual

thanksgiving and praise.

The holy Man also wrote the names of the brothers along the beams of the little house,

lest anyone should be able even a little to disturb another

who wished to rest or pray, but that each should know

the place assigned to him. Of the want

which they suffered there the other biographers give more;

but below we shall say for what cause they afterward moved elsewhere

from here, after we have weighed certain other things which were partly

done during this stay.

[251] The Saint, preferring the winning of souls to the quiet of solitude, Thomas of Celano at n. 35, and St. Bonaventure

at n. 40, teach that St. Francis, after

his return into the vale of Spoleto — whether while he was still

on the journey, or when he had already come to the aforesaid hut —

deliberated with his brothers

whether it were expedient to remain in solitary places

or to live among men; and that he decided upon this latter

after prayers poured out to God. Let us hear the second

biographer, agreeing with them. After

these things, entering the vale of Spoleto, the pious zealots

of the new justice held a discussion whether

they should stay in solitary places, or rather among men.

But indeed the holy Man, as though distrusting his own

industry, forestalling all business with devout

pursuits of prayer, there learned infallibly

what he should do, and, led by divine zeal,

purposed to attend to the winning of his neighbors rather than to live

for himself alone. Assuredly this deliberation would have been late

if it had been doubted whether they should preach

penance; inasmuch as they had long since decided to do that,

and the supreme Pontiff had commanded it together with the approbation of the Rule.

Wherefore it seems to me that they only deliberated

whether it were better to fix their dwellings near cities, or even in cities,

or in solitary places, from which they might sometimes

come out in public to preach. The former

part was chosen, as more useful to the salvation of their neighbor; nor yet

did they have their first fixed dwelling in the city of Assisi itself,

but near it.

[252] From that time too Francis began to go about

cities and villages with greater confidence, he preaches in many places with great fruit, that he might preach peace and penance. Go to the first Life

from n. 36, with which the second is plainly consonant,

from which take this: Then the holy Francis, comforted

in the Lord, began by Apostolic authority

to act more confidently, and, going about through cities and villages

and towns, most steadfastly preached penance.

He took care above all to show himself

irreproachable in all things, lest he should be compelled to cloak

the truth with flattering words.

Learned men marveled at the power of his words, whom no man

had taught; seeing nobles and commoners, rich and needy,

flock to him in crowds,

and carefully attend to him as to a new

star rising in the darkness.

For to every order, condition, age and sex

he fittingly bestowed the teachings of salvation. To all

he gave a rule of living, whose happy leadership

the Church today rejoices that she triumphs

in the threefold soldiery of those to be saved who follow him in both sexes.

[253] For, as we touched above, he ordained three Orders;

the founder of three Orders, by his examples, his companions of which the first he himself held by profession

and by habit most excellently above all,

and which he called the Order of Friars Minor,

as he had written in the Rule.

The second also, which was mentioned above, of the Poor

Ladies and virgins, took its happy beginning from him.

The third too, an Order of no middling * perfection,

is called that of the Penitents, which,

common to clerics and laymen, to virgins and to the continent

and to the married, salutarily embraces both

sexes. Note that what is here said about the second and third Orders

instituted by St. Francis is later,

and is to be more fully elucidated in its places. More closely

pertinent here is what follows in the same place. But how

B. Francis himself kept the Order of Friars Minor

in every height of virtues, magnificently doing more than was required,

and how he formed his brothers and sons

to all things that belong to true religion,

who could narrate in detail? For in all things

which were done, being sufficiently instructed by the grace of the teaching

of the Holy Spirit, he willed to know all perfection

in himself by the witness of experience;

and so he first taught the brothers everything by deeds

which afterward he admonished them of by the frequency

of his honey-sweet discourse.

[254] But how the brothers too, personally serving under so great

and teaching made progress in every perfection,

I think should rather be passed over in silence than said

inadequately, even with a multitude of words.

For with the utmost vigilance the blessed Man stood

over the keeping of himself and of his own: and instructs them notably by words, bearing nothing in himself or in others with the utmost

diligence he continually took care, not only lest perhaps he should suffer

some manifest inroad of sin, but also lest any hidden thought

should germinate into vice: and also lest any deceit should

insinuate itself under the appearance of virtue or on the occasion of necessity,

or lest through the incautious openings of the outward senses

death should perhaps enter to the inward man.

He did not suffer, in himself or in others, that

anything to be punished by discipline should pass unpunished,

lest perhaps a relaxed hand should bring in the torpor of negligence.

For he exercised so great a rigor of justice upon himself

that, if ever, as is wont to happen,

a temptation of the flesh crept upon him, in winter

time he would plunge himself into a place full of ice or snow

until the unlawful motion departed.

[255] reprehensible to go unpunished, and restraining his senses. The other brothers too were provoked to do the like,

seeing him keep himself under such strictness.

For with so great a rigor, as has been said,

the Man of God not only repressed the incitements of the flesh,

but also fortified the senses of the body with the bars of the utmost

caution, lest they should drink in anything of vanity. For, when he was staying

in the place which is called Rigo Torto,

near Assisi, it happened that the emperor, about to be crowned

at Rome, passed that way with a great

retinue and pomp. But the blessed Francis,

as he was staying beside the road with his brothers,

neither he nor any of his followers wished

even to go out or to look from the hut to see the emperor,

except one only of them, whom he steadfastly charged

to announce to that same emperor that glory

of this kind would last but a little while. The first Life

agrees; and from this event, which must have happened

about the beginning or middle of the month of September

of the year 1209, I showed above in §7 that the approbation of the Order

by Innocent III is to be fixed not in the year 1210

but in 1209; because it is established that Otto

IV, of whom there is mention there, in the aforesaid year 1209 toward

the end of September or the beginning of October received from the same

Innocent the crown of the empire at Rome.

[256] If the order of things is rightly arranged in the first

and second Lives, as seems to me more probable for these matters,

the reason must now be given on account of which St.

Francis withdrew with his followers from this hut of Rivo Torto

to S. Mary in the Portiuncula, where before

the Roman journey he had stayed. Bonaventure being silent,

the cause is reported by the man of Celano at n. 44,

and by the Three Companions at n. 56. To these I add the words of the second Life.

But on a certain day a certain man came with an ass

to the place, and, perhaps to seek shade,

wishing to enter the hut, so that he might enter

more freely without a rebuff, said to the ass:

Go in; for we shall yet do well by this place.

But the Man of God, taking ill the man's word and intention

(who, namely, believed that they had gathered there

for the building of houses and for enlarging or appropriating

the little place to themselves), soon left the dwelling,

and migrated to the place which is called the Portiuncula,

where he had rebuilt the church of the glorious Virgin.

The holy Father saw that that hut was held

as his own possession, and for that cause

he is here said to have deserted it, fleeing even the shadow of possession,

as the aforesaid man of Celano says more clearly,

saying: He wished to have nothing of ownership.

[257] The Three Companions, one of whom was there present, add another reason,

namely because he (the rustic)

had made a great tumult with his ass, disturbing

all the brothers, who were then giving themselves to silence and prayer.

By this example, namely, the Saint understood

he returns to the hut near the church of S. M. of the Portiuncula, that that place was by no means suited to prayer,

and therefore, as follows in the same place, he said

to the brothers: I know, brothers, that God has not called

us to prepare a lodging for an ass,

and to have the resort of men, but that,

sometimes preaching to men the way of salvation

and offering saving counsels, we ought chiefly to apply ourselves

to prayers and thanksgivings.

And hence, as is subjoined, they left

therefore the said hut for the use of the lepers,

transferring * to Saint Mary of the Portiuncula.

Wholly different reasons for moving from Rivo Torto

Wadding alleges at the year 1210, n.

26, of which the first is that several were asking to be aggregated

to their college, whom the narrowness of that place

did not permit to be admitted; the second, that provision must be made

for a church in which all might both be present

at the divine Sacrifice of the Mass, and recite the canonical

Hours, and be buried after death. But

although these reasons are by no means unfitting, I nevertheless

do not find them in our ancient Lives; nor does he himself

cite any author here for them.

[258] Consequently to this opinion of his,

the same Annalist of the Minors hints which, not then but afterward, for their use that St. Francis

did not move from Rivo Torto before he had at last obtained

the aforesaid church of S. Mary in the Portiuncula from the Benedictine Fathers,

to whom it belonged, after having in vain asked the bishop

and the canons for some church. This too

seems not to agree well enough with our older biographers.

For the man of Celano, after reporting the rustic's deed,

subjoins this: And at once St. Francis, going out

thence, having left that hut on account of the rustic's

word, betook himself to another place, not far

from it, which is called the Portiuncula, where, as

was said above, the church of Saint Mary had before

been repaired by him. In like manner the second biographer,

reported at n. 256, writes: He soon left the dwelling,

etc. He did not, therefore, put off the removal

until he obtained that church; but soon withdrew

to the little house which, after the admission of his three first

companions, Bernard, Peter and B. Giles,

he had built for himself there, and from which with

those same companions he had departed for Rome, and to which finally

he could return without the Benedictines' leave.

Hence the man of Celano does not say that Francis betook himself

to the church of S. Mary in the Portiuncula, but

to another … place not far from it, which is called the Portiuncula,

etc.

[259] This too the Three Companions seem to me to hint,

when in the Appendix, after reporting at n. 55

this removal, the abbot of the monastery of Mount Subasio granted to him. they presently subjoin at n. 56:

But afterward B. Francis acquired it (read: her, namely the church)

… from the abbot of S. Benedict of

Mount Subasio, near Assisi.

The Saint therefore seems to have obtained the often-mentioned church

a little later; but of the time I am not certain.

Wadding at the year 1212, n.

45, citing in the margin Marianus of Florence,

affirms that St. Francis's decree about a chapter to be celebrated

twice each year belongs to that same year 1212;

and since the Three Companions at n. 57 most clearly assert that it was enacted by him

after the church was obtained,

it may be said that this was granted to him at least not later,

if the epoch assigned to the decree is certain. Moreover

Wadding at the year 1210, n. 26 and

following, narrates various things about the dealings between the Benedictine

abbot and the holy Francis for the granting of that church,

and other matters relating to it,

and at n. 29 a certain apparition made

to the Saint as he passed the night in it; which I would neither

deny nor affirm, because the older writers are silent about them.

Of the many too admitted in that place into the Order by the holy

Father he treats at length, which things

pertain more to the Annals of the Minors, which he was composing,

than to the Life of St. Francis, which alone

I have undertaken to illustrate.

[260] The Saint handed down to his followers a formula of prayer I return therefore to the ancient Lives, the first

of which, after reporting the removal to the place

of the Portiuncula, immediately narrates how

St. Francis taught his disciples to pray. The second

biographer, treading the first's footsteps, has this about it:

Asked by the brothers at that time,

the blessed Francis, that he would teach them to pray, simply

handed down to them a form of this kind, saying:

When you pray, say: "Our Father";

and, "We adore thee, Lord Jesus Christ, at

all thy churches which are in the whole world,

and we bless thee, because by thy holy

cross thou hast redeemed the world." Which the brothers

themselves humbly carrying out, and simply reckoning the word

as a command of obedience, bowed themselves

even toward churches which they could see from afar,

and, prostrate on the ground, adored,

as they had been instructed. This formula of prayer

as handed down by the Saint to his companions at nearly the same time

St. Bonaventure records in the Life at n. 42:

but the Three Companions and the Anonymous of Perugia

speak of it as already in use among the brothers before the Roman journey,

as I said at n. 210; but of whatever

time it be, it is certainly a teaching of St.

Francis.

[261] about which a few things are noted; his disciples Wadding at the year 1210, n. 24,

says to the present subject: He (Francis, while they were still staying

at Rivo Torto) set up an altar of the cross

in the middle of the little hut, a wooden cross of moderate size

being fixed in the ground, around which all,

drawn up in a circle, with great veneration and the highest

affection said: "We adore thee, Christ,

and we bless thee, because by thy holy cross

thou hast redeemed the world;" and then they often

repeated the Lord's prayer. For these things he cites

in the margin Marianus and Oddo of Perugia;

and they may be true, provided you place the dwelling

at Rivo Torto after the Roman journey.

Nevertheless, if you consult the passages of the old biographers

which I have produced both here and above at n. 210,

that formula of prayer will seem to have been commended rather to those going out

of doors than to those staying at home; although it may have been in use

here too. The same prayer, with a few changes, is read in

the same Saint's Testament, to be recited below. These things

being observed, I go on to transcribe the interrupted narrative of the second biographer,

who followed the first. The brothers too,

then having no priests of the Order,

confessed indifferently to secular priests,

good and bad; nor did they consider it sin in

anyone; but after the example and teaching

of the holy Father they showed the greatest reverence to all.

[262] piously simple, greatly venerated priests, For this that Catholic and wholly

Apostolic Man chiefly admonished in his preaching,

that the faith of the Roman Church should be inviolably

kept, and that, on account of the dignity of the Lord's Sacrament,

which is confected by the ministry of priests,

the priestly Order should be held in the highest

reverence. But also the doctors of the divine Law and all

ecclesiastical orders he taught were to be reverenced

with the greatest care. And so great was the brothers'

simplicity that, when a certain priest, who

was not unknown to be of ill repute, said to one of the brothers:

See that you are not a hypocrite *, that brother

most certainly believed that he was a hypocrite; because

he thought that a priest could not lie. And when

for a long time the said brother was most grievously troubled about this,

at the fiery eloquence of the holy Father, by which

every cloud was frequently driven from the brothers' hearts,

he at last received consolation, for he shrewdly excused

the priest's word and intention.

In one place this writer departed from the first,

who did not say that the brothers were accustomed to confess indifferently to good

and bad priests.

[263] But he only says that they were of such veneration toward priests

and of such simplicity nor could they suspect anything evil of them. that they dared

suspect evil of none of them, or give assent to sinister

rumors about them. And this he then proves

by a twofold example, the first of which he has thus:

For while they often confessed their sins to a certain priest

of the seculars, who was greatly infamous in his deserts,

and by the enormity of his crimes to be despised by all,

and though his wickedness had become known to them through many,

they nevertheless by no means would believe it;

nor on that account did they omit to confess

their sins to him as usual, nor to show him the due

reverence. The other example conforms to the one

reported in the second Life, and from both it is established that they

then with the utmost care took heed not to suspect evil of others,

especially of priests, of whom one of them could, out of simplicity

and veneration, persuade himself that they could not even

lie. Read, if you please, St. Francis's Testament below at n.

623, where, speaking of the honoring of priests, among

other things he says: I will not consider sin in them,

because I discern the Son of God in them. Of these things

the Three Companions and Bonaventure are silent; but what presently follows,

the last of these records at n. 43 as a deed done at

Rivo Torto, or at least in the poor little dwelling

in the Portiuncula.

[264] It is reported after what has just been said in the first Life

at n. 47, Absent in body, he appears to his followers in a wondrous manner; and is set forth by the second biographer thus.

By frequent revelations too the simplicity of the brothers

was consoled at that time, which indeed they deserved

to receive from the presence of so great a Father. For when on a certain night

the blessed Francis had absented himself, behold, about

the middle hour of the night,

while some brothers rested and others

prayed, a fiery chariot, entering through the little door

of the house, turned itself several times hither and thither

through the little house, and upon it a globe

of no small size, having the appearance of the sun,

by its brightness drove away the very darkness of the night.

When therefore all came together, and with great amazement asked

one another what this might be,

a thing worthy of famous memory happened: namely

that by the power of that other and pure light the conscience of each

was laid bare to the other. They understood, therefore, that this

was the soul of their most holy Father, which, for its surpassing

purity, he had thus deserved to have shown transfigured

for his sons' consolation. Truly he is *

the Saint who deservedly merited to be called the chariot and charioteer

of the threefold soldiery of which has been spoken above,

who, borne in the likeness of the sun in a fiery four-horse chariot,

while still living in mortal flesh obtained *

the prerogative of transfiguration.

[265] The man of Celano and Bonaventure have the same things,

except that in the first of these that chariot he knows their secrets, and various things to them

is read to have turned itself through the dwelling not several times but twice and thrice,

and in the other three times. The cause

of that absence Bonaventure teaches at n. 43 in these

words: The holy Man on a certain Sabbath day entered the city

of Assisi, to preach on the morning of the Lord's

day, as was his custom, in the cathedral church.

And when in a certain hut, situated in the garden

of the canons, the Man devoted to God was passing the night in prayer

after his wonted manner, etc., which things I have already recounted

from the second biographer. After these things both Thomas

of Celano and Bonaventure go on to the knowledge

of the secrets of minds with which St. Francis

was divinely furnished. The author of the second Life

discourses of it thus. Having therefore returned bodily

to his brothers, the Man of God began subtly to search out

the secrets of their consciences,

which they had frequently not been inexperienced in finding

were not hidden from him. O thing indeed in our times

full of amazement and joy! namely, that a weak man

should discern the secrets of others' minds. For to many

that glorious Man laid open the hidden things of their hearts;

he also many times knew the acts of absent brothers;

forbidding some indeed in dreams that they should do

this or that; and commanding others

to do this or that.

[266] he foretells: likewise, far absent, he appears in the chapter of Arles, Foreseeing also the damnable evils of many

who appeared good in the face, he announced them:

but of those who were evil he also foretold the gifts of graces

to come. Truly a double spirit of the prophets rested upon him,

who both shone with such great miracles in life,

as will appear in part, and foresaw so much

about things to come, of which we pursue a few.

Very often too the Man of God bestowed on his brothers

the solaces of spiritual joy, to whom he was indeed

absent in body but present in spirit.

I shall briefly report one of many. For

at a certain time, when brother John of Florence

was celebrating a chapter in Provence, where he had been appointed minister

by the blessed Francis, there was present

at that same chapter that venerable brother who now

stands forth a holy and glorious confessor of Christ,

Anthony (everywhere called of Padua, and in the year 1232

enrolled among the Saints). And while this Saint,

full of the spirit of wisdom in expounding the sayings

of the divine pages, was affectionately setting forth a word of exhortation

to the assembled brothers upon this text,

Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews,

a certain brother named Monaldus, a priest,

a simple man and illustrious with the adornment of many (virtues),

turned his face toward the door of the house;

and he saw with bodily eyes how

the blessed Francis, raised up in the air, with his hands stretched out as on a cross,

blessed the brothers who were present.

[267] where S. Anthony was preaching. And so great a joy of spirit was suddenly poured

into each and all, that, what the same priest

afterward narrated of that same vision, to the wonder of all,

experience itself made worthy (of credit). The same apparition

the man of Celano narrates at n. 48, and St. Bonaventure at n.

53; but all neglected the order of time, that they might

join together things belonging to the same subject.

Wadding referred it to the year 1224 at n.

42, citing no other authors than the aforesaid

St. Bonaventure and Surius in the Life of S. Anthony,

ch. 10, in my copy 12: but these indeed report the fact,

but do not attach it to a certain year. In the Acts of S.

Anthony, given among us at the thirteenth day of June, mention

is twice made of the same apparition, first in the Life

at n. XI, and again in the book of Miracles at n. 8,

at the first of which places our Papebroch noted at letter e

that it seemed to him that that thing happened in the year

1226, or a little earlier; and so he dissented from Wadding

either not at all or little. For my part I have nothing at hand

from which to define the time more closely;

but certainly it cannot be fixed later than the year 1226,

in which St. Francis died. Only from Bonaventure

I observe that it happened in the chapter of Arles, in Provence

in Gaul.

[268] Of the knowledge of secrets the second biographer subjoins another example

without order of time; He takes away a secret fear from brother Richerius.

But how, he says, he often laid open the hidden things

of others' hearts, let it suffice to narrate one

of very many. A certain brother named Richerius,

noble as much in character as in family,

so presumed upon the merits of the blessed Francis

that he believed that a man assuredly deserved divine grace

if he obtained the gift of that Saint's goodwill;

or that, if anyone lacked it, he none the less

deserved God's anger. And when he vehemently aspired

to obtain the benefit of his familiarity, he greatly feared

lest the holy Man should perhaps secretly detect some vice in him,

by occasion of which it should happen that he was further

removed from his favor. Therefore, as a fear of this kind

continually and grievously afflicted the said brother,

and he revealed his thought to no man,

it happened that on a certain day, troubled after his wonted manner,

he came to the little cell in which the holy Francis

was praying. And the Man of God knew at once his coming

and his mind, and, kindly calling him to himself, spoke thus:

Let no fear henceforth, no temptation, trouble you, my son,

since you are most dear to me, and among those especially

dear I love you with a special charity. Come to me securely

when it pleases you, and depart from me freely

according to your will. The brother was greatly amazed

and gladdened at the holy Father's words,

and thenceforth, secure of his love,

he grew also, as he had believed, in the grace of the Savior.

[269] Exactly the same things Thomas of Celano has

in the first Life at nn. 49 and 50. A deed like this But Bonaventure is silent,

who also omitted certain other things: and

hence, I think, it came about that Wadding, since he did not have

the first Life entire, at the year

1226, n. 13, had recourse to Pisanus, Conformity

8, where the matter is narrated in a wholly different way.

He does indeed also cite St. Antoninus and Vincent

of Beauvais, who have things conformable to the first

and second Lives, but he did not dare, as

I think, to follow them, because he had not examined the source

from which they had drawn. Further, that the reader

may understand how little we can trust Pisanus

as he stands, I shall here report his whole passage from the first Milan edition

of the year 1510. And brother

Rizerius, the companion of the said brother Peregrinus on earth,

and now his fellow citizen in heaven, walking

by the active life while he lived, and faithfully serving

God and his neighbor, became most familiar

and most dear to B. Francis, and learned many things from

B. Francis himself, and knew the truth of very many things,

and in things to be done the will of the Lord. And

according to B. Francis's prophecy brother Rizerius,

serving the brothers, was made Minister of the province

of the March of Ancona; and on account of his zeal for God,

which always burned in his heart, he ruled that province

with the greatest peace and discretion,

following the example of Christ, who willed first

to do rather than to teach.

[270] But after much time God permitted,

or rather the same one greatly disfigured, for the gain of his soul, most grievous temptations to come upon him,

that he might be tried like gold in the furnace;

on account of which temptations he afflicted himself

with abstinence and disciplines, with tears and prayers,

but could not be freed from the temptation, and

many times was led to despair. For

because of the hugeness of the temptation he believed himself forsaken

by God. But being set in the utmost desolation

and despair, he thought in his heart, saying:

I will rise and go to my father B. Francis;

and if he shows me familiarity,

I believe that God will be merciful to me a sinner;

but if not, it will be a sign that I am forsaken

by the Lord. And taking the road he went to B.

Francis with the greatest confidence and affection. But

the blessed Francis was lying in the palace of the bishop

of Assisi, very ill: and as he was thinking of

the Lord Jesus Christ, there was revealed to him by

God the order of the temptation and the coming and the purpose

of the said brother Rizerius. And at once calling his companions,

namely brothers Masseus and Leo, he said:

Go to meet my son, brother Rizerius,

and on my behalf embracing, kissing

and greeting him, tell him on my behalf that

among all the brothers who are in the world I love him

singularly. And they, as of obedience

sons, at once went out to meet brother Rizerius;

and finding him, as B. Francis had said,

embracing and receiving him, the friendly

and loving words of the Father so filled his soul with consolations

that he was wholly as it were

melted with joy.

[271] is narrated in the Conformities of Pisanus But with how great joy and gladness he was then filled,

and what thanks he rendered to God, could not

be uttered; because the Lord had prospered

his journey. And coming to the place where our father

Francis was lying, although he was grievously

ill, he rose and came to meet him,

and embracing him with sweetness said: Dearest

son, brother Rizerius, among all the brothers

who are in the whole world, I love you. And impressing

on him the sign of the cross on the forehead, and kissing him

most lovingly, in that same place he said: My dearest

son, brother Rizerius, this temptation was given

you for your greatest gain: but if you no longer

wish that gain, you shall not have it. Wonderful

to say! At once all that diabolical temptation ceased,

as though in his life he had never felt it,

and he remained consoled in the Lord. All this

is read also in all three editions of the Mirror

of S. Francis which we have in the Museum, and

indeed often in the same words, so that there is scarcely a doubt

that either Pisanus's Work lay before the first editor of the Mirror,

or the first editor of this had the Mirror before

his eyes. But now everyone will easily perceive

that this account is very like

the preceding one which I recounted from the second Life, and

that it must necessarily be said either that there is question of a twofold temptation

of Richerius, Rixerius or Rizerius, as the name

is variously written, who first, while he was a young man,

was tempted in the manner reported above, and then again

was assailed by another and graver temptation when he was already

in charge of the March of Ancona; or that in the second

account this history is wholly disfigured.

[272] and in the editions of the Mirror of S. Francis. I will gladly leave it to the readers' judgment

to choose which side they will. But to me the first

account is historically certain on the authority of Thomas

of Celano, who beyond doubt knew that Richerius;

the second does not appear even probable,

as being destitute of a sufficiently ancient and fit witness, and so akin

to the first that it could easily have been so disfigured

from it by an incautious writer, who knew that Richerius

had once been in charge of the province of the March of Ancona.

But that Wadding referred these things to the year

1226 rests on no other foundation

than that in Pisanus and the Mirror, as has been said,

St. Francis, at Richerius's coming, is said to have lain ill

in the palace of the bishop of Assisi, in which

it is established from elsewhere that he lay in that same year 1226 not long before

his blessed death. But at what

time the coming of that same Richerius, mentioned by the first and

second biographers, happened, is plainly

uncertain; but from the very manner of narrating it Richerius seems

then to have been staying not in a different place, but in the same

place in which St. Francis was.

* add in

* mediocris

* add se

* hypocrita

* est is superfluous

* obtinuit

§ XIII. His care to keep poverty, the austerity of his life,

his humility, and the Saint's other virtues: S. Clare's conversion in the year MCCXII to

a stricter life, and her Order begun: the first chapter of the Order

of Minors: a journey into Syria vainly attempted by him by sea.

He narrows poverty, keeps a wondrous abstinence in food; I have already begun to say some things about the virtues and marvels

of St. Francis, which in the Lives are not

tied to a certain time, nor can by certain arguments

be recalled to determined years, even though

Wadding narrated several things under single years, as

he found them in other writers not ancient enough

to establish a chronological series of this kind without other

witnesses. I prefer, in things of uncertain time,

to follow the order of the first Life,

until I come to deeds whose times can be proved

by certain reasons. The man of Celano in the first Life

from n. 51 commends the Saint's diligent care for his subjects,

and his immense zeal for keeping holy poverty.

The second biographer follows, whose words take. The holy confessor

of Christ, Francis, with all care took heed

lest, overleaping the bounds of holy and highest poverty,

he should in any way run out into superfluities,

so that, always inclining rather to indigence than

to abundant sufficiency or excess,

he scarcely left even a little vessel in the house beyond the demand

of the greatest necessity.

What shall we say of delicate foods or the drinking of wine, what

of superfluity even of other and cheap things,

since, most rarely using cooked things, he mixed them with ashes

or cold water, and did not drink sufficiently even

of water itself? For he asserted that it is most difficult

to satisfy necessity and not to obey

pleasure.

[274] Very often too, when he went about preaching penance,

he punishes in himself a harmless eating of meat, and, being invited, took refreshment in the houses

of seculars, he seemed indeed to eat

meats, and carried his hand to his mouth, but only

on account of the word of the Gospel in which it is said:

"Eating and drinking such things as they have;"

very rarely tasting some very little thing, he put the remains

into his bosom with subtle caution. The bare ground,

when he was compelled to sleep, with only a little tunic laid between,

was his bed; and more often sitting than lying,

with his head bowed upon wood or a stone,

he dozed. It happened also that, when from the necessity of illness

he ate of a chicken on one occasion,

his strength afterward being somewhat recovered, he strictly

commanded a certain brother that, a rope being tied about his neck,

he should lead him like a thief through the middle

of the city of Assisi, and none the less cry out with a herald's

voice: Behold, see the glutton,

who fattened himself on the flesh of hens,

which he ate in secret, unknown to you.

And it came to pass that many, stung by so wondrous

a spectacle, indeed mourned with tearful *

voice, and proclaimed themselves most wretched,

as being given over to daily pleasures.

[275] and how he is condemned by all. Many things too in this manner he often

did, that he might perfectly despise himself,

and provoke others to contempt of him.

But also this most true Despiser of himself, when

he was not undeservedly magnified by men, wondrously kept

the favor of men outside the doors, reckoning himself alone

most vile. For when he heard himself

exalted with human praises, taking it ill, he enjoined

upon one of the brothers by obedience

that he should manfully assail him at his side with contumelious words,

and against the lies of those who praised him bring forth

words of truth. And when the brother, unwilling,

called him a Rustic and a useless hireling,

that most holy man smiled with glad applause,

and answered him who reproached him thus:

May the Lord bless you, dearest son, because

you speak most truly, and it is fitting that the Son of Peter of

Bernardone should hear such things. Lest anyone should think that

in these sayings of that brother little care was had

of truth, I observe that they, if rightly weighed,

were true in a certain sense. He could say Rustic,

because in outward habit and simplicity of manners

he imitated rustics rather than nobles.

Hireling, because, although he served God from pure love rather

than for the sake of a wage, he nevertheless expected

an ample wage from him. Useless in that

sense in which the Lord said, Luke 17, v. 10: When

you shall have done all things that are commanded you, say:

We are unprofitable servants.

[276] he labors wondrously. A brief observation on certain things, To what has gone before the aforesaid biographer again subjoins this:

Desiring also to be reckoned perfectly useless

by all, he did not blush to confess his sins

in public preaching. But also, if

anything sinister crept in by a light thought about anyone,

confessing that very thing humbly to the one about whom

he had thought, he asked pardon of him.

And by this very thing it will be plain even to one who notes it lightly

how that Man avoided words of murmuring

and detraction. Why say more? Desiring to reach

the very summit in every kind of perfection,

he above all shunned human favor,

and, that with conscience as witness he might inwardly possess

a vessel of sanctification, he became to himself outwardly

as a vessel that is lost. St. Bonaventure has like

things too, but not always in the same order.

Many things too could be added from the Mirror about the rigor

with which St. Francis wished poverty to be observed,

as also about the austerity of his life, his humility

and his contempt of self; but since those things are

less certain, and this Commentary will in any case be lengthy enough,

I shall touch only briefly on

what Wadding at the years 1210 and 1211 recounted at length

to our purpose, that we may then pass on to the deeds of the year 1212.

Accordingly the aforesaid Annalist at the year 1210 from n. 32 treats of the conversion

and entry into the Order of Minors of brothers

Leo, Rufinus, Masseus, and many others

whom we know to have been illustrious men admitted into the Order by St. Francis;

but the years in which this happened

we do not find in the ancients, nor do we think

they are to be investigated by us.

[277] Moreover he also treats of certain particulars which

are said to have happened between them and the holy Francis,

and most of which are taken from the Mirror. Then

he discourses much about his virtues, which Wadding attached to the years 1210 and the following. which may partly

be read in the Lives to be published, partly in the same Mirror.

But when at n. 59 he says: And that these things which we have reported

were done in this year, Marianus teaches, and

the ancient Legend of Celano, and others, although the things

which we have transcribed from Bonaventure are marked in him

by no year, who prudently and knowingly declares beforehand

that he did not have regard to chronology; when,

I say, he says this, he meant, I think, that Celano

is cited by Marianus, who placed those things at the aforesaid year.

For Celano no more than St. Bonaventure indicated

a certain year for these things.

No more could I learn from the old Lives whether

in the year 1211 there happened all those things which Wadding, with Marianus

as his guide, narrated about St. Francis's virtues, miracles and journeys

at that same year, as also about the entry of many

into the Order, and the dwellings built for the use of the friars Minor

in various places of Italy. I cannot, I say, gather from

the aforesaid writers whether all these things are to be fixed in the aforesaid year

1211 or later. For that certain things reported there

were done later the Lives in some fashion hint;

but these do not always accurately observe the order of events,

and St. Bonaventure beyond the rest more frequently departs

from order, caring more for the order of apt connection than of time,

as he confesses in the Prologue. Accordingly, leaving aside the examination

of his chronology and of the things narrated,

I pass to the year 1212, to which some deeds can be more certainly tied.

[278] Memorable is this year 1212 for the beginning

of the second Order of S. Francis, In the year 1212 a beginning was given to the Order of S. Clare, called from S. Clare, the first

who professed it, whose institution

by the common consent of writers is referred to this year.

This epoch is confirmed from Thomas

of Celano in the Life to be published at n. 18, where, after narrating

the repair of the church of S. Damian by Francis,

which we mentioned above, he goes on thus:

This is that blessed and holy place in which

the glorious Religion and most excellent Order of the Poor

Ladies (so was the Order of S. Clare called at first)

and of holy virgins, when a space of nearly six years

from the conversion of B. Francis had already

elapsed, took its happy beginning through that same blessed

Man. The sixth year of St. Francis's conversion

was running about Easter of the year 1212, and went on

running to nearly the later months of that same

year. Now S. Clare fled from her father's house

and plainly bade farewell to the world on the night after Palm

Sunday, which in that year fell on the XVIII

day of March, and was soon shorn by St. Francis in the church

of S. Mary of the Portiuncula, as

is more fully set forth in the Life of that same Saint, written by a contemporary

author and published among us at the twelfth day of August.

The whole course of her conversion may be read there;

wherefore I shall transfer hither only a few things

which pertain more closely to St. Francis.

[279] Clare was a virgin illustrious in family, wealth

and virtues, who, a noble virgin of Assisi, instructed by St. Francis's admonitions, and dwelt at Assisi in her native place

and in her father's house. But hearing (says her biographer

at n. 5) the then famous name of Francis,

who, like a new man, was renewing with new virtues

the way of perfection blotted out in the world,

she at once desires to hear and see him, the Father of spirits

himself persuading to this, of whom each of them, though differently,

had already received the first fruits.

Nor did he less, breathed upon by the famous report of so gracious

a maiden, desire to see and address her, to see if in any way

he, who wholly panted after prey and had come

to lay waste the kingdom of the world, could snatch

that noble prey from the wicked age

and claim it for his Lord. He visits her,

and she more often him, moderating the times

of their visits, so that that divine

pursuit could neither be perceived by man nor

be disparaged by public rumor. For with only a single

familiar companion attending her, the maiden, going out from her father's house,

made frequent secret approaches to the Man of God,

whose words seemed to her flaming, and

whose works beyond man. Father Francis exhorts her

to contempt of the world; he shows by living speech the arid hope

of the world and its deceptive appearance: he instills

into her ears the sweet nuptials of Christ, persuading her

that the pearl of virginal modesty should be kept

for that blessed Spouse whom love made man.

[280] fleeing by night from her father's house to S. Mary of the Portiuncula, Why should I delay with many words? At the urging of the most holy

Father, and as he skillfully acted after the manner of a most faithful bridal escort,

the virgin does not draw out her consent long.

There is at once opened to her the sight of eternal

joys, at whose beholding the world grew worthless to her…

From then she commits herself wholly to Francis's counsel,

setting him, after God, as the charioteer of her guidance.

Thereafter her soul hangs upon his sacred admonitions,

and with a warm breast she receives whatever he utters in speech

about the good Jesus…

Straightway, lest worldly dust should further stain

the mirror of her unspotted mind, … the loving Father hastens

to lead Clare out of the dark age.

The solemn day of Palms was at hand, when the maiden with fervent heart

betakes herself to the Man of God, asking

what and how is to be done about her conversion.

Father Francis bids her go forth on the feast

day, adorned and arrayed, to the palm

with the throng of the peoples, and on the following night,

going out beyond the camp, turn worldly joy

into mourning for the Lord's passion. And so when

the Lord's day came, the maiden, shining amid the crowd of ladies

with festive splendor, enters the church with

the rest… On the following night, preparing herself at the Saint's

command, she undertakes the desired flight with honorable

company. And when it did not please her to go out by the accustomed door,

another door, which weights of wood and stones blocked up,

she unbarred with her own hands with wondrous strength.

[281] is presented by him with the habit of penance, Therefore, having left her house, her city and her kinsmen,

she hastened to Saint Mary of the Portiuncula;

where the brothers, who were keeping the sacred watches

in the hall of God, received the virgin Clare with

lights. Soon there, the filth of Babylon being cast away,

she delivered to the world a bill of divorce:

there, laying aside her hair by the hands of the brothers, she left behind

her various adornments. Nor was it fitting that the Order of flowering

virginity should elsewhere be raised up at the evening of the ages

than in the hall of her who first

of all and most worthily alone stood forth Mother and

Virgin. This is that place in which the new soldiery

of the poor, with Francis as leader, took its happy

beginnings, so that it might plainly seem that the Mother of mercy

brought forth both Religions in her own lodging.

And when before the altar of the most blessed

Mary she had received the insignia of holy penance,

and as if before the bridal bed of this Virgin the humble handmaid

had wedded Christ, St. Francis at once led her

to the church of S. Paul (which was a girls' monastery of the Order

of S. Benedict), to remain in that same place

until the Most High should provide otherwise.

Then are narrated the attempts of her kinsmen to bring Clare back,

which she with steadfast spirit manfully overcame

and rendered vain.

[282] After these things at n. 10 the author subjoins: A few

days intervening, and after one and another place of stay, fixed her seat at S. Damian's. she passed to the church of S. Angelo of

Panzo (which was also a Benedictine monastery

near Assisi); where, since her mind did not fully

rest, at last, by the blessed Francis's counsel, she moved to the church

of S. Damian. There, fixing the anchor of her mind

as it were in a sure place, she no longer

wavers for change of place, nor doubts because of straitness,

nor shrinks because of solitude. This is that church in

whose repair Francis sweated with wondrous

zeal, and to whose priest he had offered money

for the work of repair. This is that in which, while

Francis prayed, a voice gliding down to him from the wood of the cross

sounded: Francis, go, repair my house,

which, as you see, is wholly being destroyed.

In the prison-house of this little place, for the love of her heavenly

Spouse, the virgin Clare shut herself up, etc. Thus in the year

1212 was begun the Order of S. Clare, to whom her sister

Agnes and others came, who from their profession

were called Poor Ladies, and from the aforesaid

dwelling also Damianites, and they lived for some years

under the instruction of St. Francis

and of Cardinal Hugolinus, until they obtained a written Rule

of their own composed by that same Saint, which Wadding

referred to the year 1224; where mention of it will return.

[283] In the same year 1212, as the same

Annalist observes at n. 45, The Saint enacted that a chapter be held twice each year at the Portiuncula, Francis enacted that thereafter

the assemblies of his Order — they call it a Chapter —

should be held twice a year at S. Mary of the Portiuncula.

About this decree the Three Companions in the Appendix agree

at n. 57, but they say nothing of the time,

except that it was established after the aforesaid…

place of S. Mary (of the Portiuncula) was obtained from

the aforesaid abbot, namely the Benedictine of the monastery

of Mount Subasio, as was said above. Hence one may conjecture

that that church was perhaps granted to St. Francis and his companions

about the beginning of the year 1212, or toward the end of the preceding one,

although from the year 1210 at least

they had already dwelt in a certain little house beside it. Of the same decree

the Anonymous of Perugia makes mention, saying: Afterward

the blessed Francis ordained that a chapter should be held twice

a year, at Pentecost and on the feast of blessed Michael,

namely the XXIX day of September. Nor can I doubt

that in the same year the first assembly of this kind was held

at Pentecost, and that to it were summoned all the absent brothers

who could come: for, as the aforesaid Three Companions assert

in the same place, at Pentecost all used to come together

at S. Mary's. But about what matters they conferred when gathered

may also be read there, as also in the Anonymous of Perugia,

who, following them, writes this.

[284] At Pentecost all the brothers used to come together

to a chapter at the church of Saint Mary

of the Portiuncula. chiefly at Pentecost, where he presiding, by word and deed, In which chapter it was discussed

how they might observe another and better Rule.

In the Three Companions the word another is not read,

but only: how they might better observe the Rule.

I would not dare, however, to accuse the Anonymous

of certain error: for if, on the testimony of those same Three

Companions at n. 35, St. Francis made several…

Rules, and tried them before he made

that one which he last left to the brothers,

he could also have discussed in the assemblies the perfecting of the Rule which

he had first written, and the adding of some things

which seemed opportune for its better observance;

in which sense the Anonymous is perhaps to be expounded.

However that may be, he goes on thus about the things usually treated

in the general chapters. And they appointed

brothers through the several provinces to preach to the people,

and that * they should station brothers in their own province.

And the holy Francis made admonitions,

reproofs and precepts to the brothers,

as it seemed to him, the Lord being first consulted.

And all that he said to them in words

he affectionately and carefully showed them in deed.

He venerated the prelates and priests

of the holy Church, and reverenced the elders too;

and he honored the noble and the rich; the poor also

he inwardly loved, and had compassion on them;

and finally to all he showed himself subject.

[285] preferring obedience to command, And although he was higher than all the brothers,

yet he appointed one * of the brothers staying with him

as his guardian and his lord,

whom he obeyed humbly and devoutly,

that he might drive from himself every occasion of pride.

This Saint humbled his head among men

to the ground, and therefore among his Saints