Chapter VIII: Part 8

"We must regard it as a special gift from God to be able to do that
in a few hours which other men can only perform in many days of
labor. But should this rapidity cause a man to fail in his best
realization it would be better to proceed slowly. No artist should
allow his eagerness to hinder him from the supreme end of
art--perfection."

Mr. Longfellow, in his unfinished dramatic poem, "Michael Angelo" (to which reference has already been made), has one scene laid in the convent chapel of San Silvestre, in which these passages occur:--

VITTORIA.

"Here let us rest awhile, until the crowd
Has left the church. I have already sent
For Michael Angelo to join us here."

MESSER CLAUDIO.

"After Fra Bernardino's wise discourse
On the Pauline Epistles, certainly
Some words of Michael Angelo on Art
Were not amiss, to bring us back to earth."

* * * * *

MICHAEL ANGELO, _at the door_.

"How like a Saint or Goddess she appears!
Diana or Madonna, which I know not,
In attitude and aspect formed to be
At once the artist's worship and despair!"

VITTORIA.

"Welcome, Maestro. We were waiting for you."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

"I met your messenger upon the way.
And hastened hither."

VITTORIA.

"It is kind of you
To come to us, who linger here like gossips
Wasting the afternoon in idle talk.
These are all friends of mine and friends of yours."

MICHAEL ANGELO.

"If friends of yours, then are they friends of mine.
Pardon me, gentlemen. But when I entered
I saw but the Marchesa."

Vittoria tells the master that the Pope has granted her permission to build a convent, and Michael Angelo replies:--

"Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow....

... Yet he beholds
Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins
Of temples in the Forum here in Rome.
If God should give me power in my old age
To build for Him a temple half as grand
As those were in their glory, I should count
My age more excellent than youth itself,
And all that I have hitherto accomplished
As only vanity."

To which Vittoria responds:--

"I understand you.
Art is the gift of God, and must be used
Unto His glory. That in art is highest
Which aims at this."

The poet, with his characteristically delicate divination, has entered into the inner spirit of these two immortal friends.

Walter Pater, writing of Michael Angelo, truly says:--

"Michael Angelo is always pressing forward from the outward
beauty--_il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace_--to apprehend the
unseen beauty; _trascenda nella forma universale_--that abstract
form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives
the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the
houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the
frail and yielding flesh."

Again we find Pater saying:--

"Though it is quite possible that Michael Angelo had seen Vittoria,
that somewhat shadowy figure, as early as 1537, yet their closer
intimacy did not begin till about the year 1542, when Michael
Angelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, an ardent
Neo-Catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had
reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful
and princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had
received in the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of
great passion. In a dialogue written by the painter, Francesco
d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse of them together in an empty church
at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, discussing indeed the
characteristics of various schools of art, but still more the
writings of St. Paul, already following the ways and tasting the
sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward things is
slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he
visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made, or
set to work to make, a crucifix for her use, and two drawings,
perhaps in preparation for it, are now in Oxford.... In many ways
no sentiment could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice
than Michael Angelo's for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early
youth; Beatrice is a child, with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a
child, with a character still unaccentuated by the influence of
outward circumstances, almost expressionless. Vittoria is a woman
already weary, in advanced age, of grave intellectual qualities.
Dante's story is a piece of figured work inlaid with lovely
incidents. In Michael Angelo's poems frost and fire are almost the
only images--the refining fire of the goldsmith; once or twice the
phoenix; ice melting at the fire; fire struck from the rock which
it afterwards consumes."

Visconti notes that among Italian poets, Vittoria Colonna was the first to make religion a subject of poetic treatment, and the first to introduce nature's ministry to man into poetry. Rota, her Italian biographer, states that she died in February of 1547, in the Palazzo Cesarini. This palace is in Genzano, on Lago di Nemi, and has been one of the Colonna estates; but from Visconti and other authorities it is evident that she died in Rome, either in the convent of Santa Anna or in the palace of Cesarini, the husband of her kinswoman, Giulio Colonna, which must have been near the convent in Trastevere, the old portion of Rome across the Tiber. Visconti records that on the last evening of her life when Michael Angelo was beside her, she said: "I die. Help me to repeat my last prayer. I do not now remember the words." He clasped her hand and repeated it to her, while her own lips moved, she gazed intently on him, smiled and passed away. This translation has been made of Vittoria Colonna's last prayer:--

"Grant, I beseech Thee, O Lord, that I may ever worship Thee with
such humility of mind as becometh my lowliness and such elevation
of mind as Thy loftiness demandeth.... I entreat, O Most Holy
Father, that Thy most living flame may so urge me forward that, not
being hindered by any mortal imperfections, I may happily and
safely again return to Thee."

It is recorded by an authority that her body, "enclosed in a casket of cypress wood, lined with embroidered velvet," was placed in the chapel of Santa Anna which has since been destroyed. Visconti says: "She desired, with Christian humility, to be buried in the manner in which the sisters were buried when they died. And, as I suppose, her body was placed in the common sepulchre of the nuns of Santa Anna." Grimm declares that he cannot discover the place of her burial, and Visconti declares that her tomb remains unknown.

But it is apparently a fact that the body of Vittoria Colonna is entombed in the sacristy of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples, the sarcophagus containing it resting by the side of the one containing the body of her husband, Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara. This church is one of the finest in Naples, with twenty-seven chapels and twelve altars, and it is here that nearly all the great nobles of the kingdom of Naples are entombed. Here is the tomb of the learned Thomas Aquinas and here is shown, in relief, the miracle of the crucifix by Tommaso de Stefani, which--as the legend runs--thus addressed the learned doctor:--

"_Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercedem recipies?_"

To which he replied: "_Non aliam nisi te._"

It is in the sacristy in which lie all the Princes of the House of Aragon that the sarcophagi of the Marchese and the Marchesa di Pescara are placed side by side in the high gallery near the ceiling. The altar has a fine Annunciation ascribed to Andrea da Salerno. The ceiling (whose coloring is as fresh and vivid as if painted yesterday) is by Solimena. Around the walls near the ceiling are two balconies or galleries, filled with very large wooden sarcophagi, whose scarlet velvet covers have faded into yellow browns with pink shades, many of which are tattered and are falling to pieces. The casket containing the body of Fernando Francesco d'Avalos, Marchese of Pescara (the husband of Vittoria Colonna), has on it an inscription by Ariosto; and his portrait (showing in profile a young face with blonde hair and a full reddish brown beard) and a banner, also, is suspended above the casket. That containing the body of the Marchesa, his wife (Vittoria Colonna), has an aperture at the top where the wood is worn away and the embalmed form, partly crumbled, may be seen. This seems strange to the verge of fantasy, but it is, apparently, true. The writer of this volume visited the Church of Santa Domenica Maggiore in Naples in December of 1906, and was assured by the sacristan that this sarcophagus contains the body of the Marchesa. Inquiries were then made of other prelates and of the Archbishop, who gave the same assurance. Later, learned archæologists in Rome were appealed to, regarding this assertion made in Naples, and the consensus of opinion obtained declares their assertion true. Professor Lanciani has himself publicly expressed this conviction. Still, it remains a curious question as to when this sarcophagus was placed in the sacristy, for the date goes back into long-buried centuries.

Adjoining Santa Domenica Maggiore is the monastery in which Thomas Aquinas lived and lectured (in 1272), and the cell of the great doctor of philosophy is now made into a chapel. His lectures called together men of the highest rank and learning and were attended by the king and the members of the royal family. The entire locality of this church is replete with historic association. The most distinguished of the nobility of Naples have, for centuries, held their chapels in this church, and in these are many notable examples of Renaissance sculpture.

The Accadémia des Arcades of Rome, founded in the seventeenth century to do honor to lyric art, celebrated the placing of a bust of Vittoria Colonna in a gallery of the Capitoline, in May of 1865, by a resplendent poetic festa. According to the gentle, leisurely customs of the land, where it is always afternoon and time has no value, thirty-two poets read their songs, written in Latin or in Italian, for this occasion, which were published in a sumptuous volume to be preserved in the archives of the Arcadians, who take themselves more seriously than the world outside quite realizes. This bust of Vittoria Colonna was the gift of the Duca and Duchessa of Torlonia of that period. It was crowned with laurel, as that of Petrarca had been, and the government took official recognition of the event.

Goethe was made a member of this Accadémia that regarded itself as reflecting the glories of the Golden Age of Greece, and which was a century old at the time of his visit to Italy. "No stranger of any consequence was readily permitted to leave Rome without being invited to join this body," he recorded, and he wrote a humorous description of the formalities of his initiation.

Mrs. Horatio Greenough was honored by being made a member of this Accadémia in recognition of her musical accomplishments, and the record of it is placed on the memorial marble over her grave in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Every year, on Tasso's birthday (April 25), the Accadémia holds a festa in a little amphitheatre near "Tasso's oak," on the Janiculum, at which his bust is crowned with laurel. The gardens in which the seventeenth-century Arcadians disported themselves are now known among the Romans as _il Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi_.

Throughout Italy the fame of Vittoria Colonna only deepens with every succeeding century. Her nobility of character, her lofty spirituality of life, fitly crowned and perfected her intellectual force and brilliant gifts. Although from the customs of the time the Marchesa lived much in convents, she never, in any sense, save that of her fervent piety, lived the conventual life. Her noble gifts linked her always to the larger activities, and her gifts and rank invested her with certain demands and responsibilities that she could not evade. She was one of the messengers of life, and her place as a brilliant and distinguished figure in the contemporary world was one that the line of destiny, which pervades all circumstances and which, in her case, was so marked, absolutely constrained her to fill. She had that supreme gift of the lofty nature, the power of personal influence. Her exquisite courtesy and graciousness of manner, her simple dignity and unaffected sincerity, her delicacy of divination and her power of tender sympathy and liberal comprehension all combined to make her the ideal companion, counsellor, and friend, as well as the celebrity of letters and lyric art.

No poet has more exquisitely touched the friendship between Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo than has Margaret J. Preston, in a poem supposed to be addressed to the sculptor by Vittoria, in which occur the lines:--

"We twain--one lingering on the violet verge,
And one with eyes raised to the twilight peaks--
Shall meet in the morn again.

* * * * *

... Supremest truth I gave;
Quick comprehension of thine unsaid thought,
Reverence, whose crystal sheen was never blurred
By faintest film of over-breathing doubt;
... helpfulness
Such as thou hadst not known of womanly hands;
And sympathies so urgent, they made bold
To press their way where never mortal yet
Entrance had gained,--even to thy soul."

This is the _Page de Conti_ that one reads in the air as he sails past Ischia on the violet sea; and the _chant d'amour_ of the sirens catches the echo of lines far down the centuries:--

"I understood not, when the angel stooped,
Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul,
Void of true faith in human happiness,
Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.'

"Now, all is clear. For _thy_ sake I am glad
I waited. Not that some far age may say,--
'_God's benison on her, since she was the friend
Of Michael Angelo!_'"

_So sometimes comes to soul and sense
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer:--
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask;
With smile of trust and folded hands,
The passive soul in waiting stands
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,
The One true Life its own renew._

WHITTIER.

"_For Thou only art holy. Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O
Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the Glory of God the
Father._"

_Sometimes in heaven-sent dreams I do behold
A city with its turrets high in air,
Its gates that gleam with jewels strange and rare,
And streets that glow with burning of red gold;
And happy souls, through blessedness grown bold,
Thrill with their praises all the radiant air,
And God himself is light, and shineth there
On glories tongue of man hath never told._

_And in my dreams I thither march, nor stay
To heed earth's voices, howsoe'er they call,
Or proffers of the joys of this brief day,
On which so soon the sunset shadows fall;
I see the Gleaming Gates, and toward them press--
What though my path lead through the Wilderness?_

LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.

V

VOICES OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Oh, Italy! thy strength, thy power, thy crown
Lie in the life that in Assisi stirs
The heart, with impulse of self-sacrifice;
Where still St. Francis gathers weary souls
In his great love, which reaches out to all.
... His blessing falls
In clear sweet tones: "_Benedicat tibi
Convertat vultum suum ad te et
Det Pacem!_" Hushed and holy silence breathes
About the wanderer who lifts his heart
To catch the echo of that voice of love.

CELIA RICHMOND.

The mystic pilgrimage to Assisi, the "Seraphic City," prefigures itself almost as a journey to the Mount of Vision. "Any line of truth that leads us above materialism," says Dr. Wilberforce, Venerable Archdeacon of Westminster Abbey, "that forces us to think, that encourages the imagination to pierce the world's cobwebs, that forces us to remember that we are enwrapped by the supernatural, is helpful and stimulating. A human life lived only in the seen and felt, with no sense of the invisible, is a fatally impoverished life, a poor, blind, wingless life, but to believe that ever around us is a whole world full of spiritual beings; that this life, with its burdens, is but the shadow which precedes the reality; that here we are but God's children at school, is an invigorating conviction, full of hope, productive of patience and fruitful in self-control."

To an age imprisoned in the fear of God the "sweet saint," Francis, brought the message of the love of God. To an age crushed under the abuses of religion as an organization of feudal bishops and ecclesiastics, St. Francis brought the message of hope and of joy. He revealed to his age the absolute reality of the spiritual world that surrounds us. He was born into a time when there existed on the one hand, poverty and misery; on the other, selfish and debasing self-indulgence of wealth and its corresponding oppression of the poor. The Church itself was a power for conquest and greed. Its kingdom was of this world. St. Bernard and others had nobly aimed to effect a reform and had illustrated by their own lives the beautiful example of simplicity and unselfishness, but their work failed in effectiveness and permanent impress.

"Oh, beauty of holiness!
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness."

Not only in beauty, but in power does it stand. St. Francis brought to the sad and problematic conditions of his time that resistless energy of infinite patience, of a self-control based on insight into the divine relationships of life, and of unfailing fidelity to his high purpose. Through good report or through evil report he kept the faith, and pressed onward to the high calling of God. The twelfth and the thirteenth centuries had been a period of religious unrest and chaos. As Archdeacon Wilberforce has so impressively said in the words quoted from him, a life lived with no sense of the invisible is blind and impoverished. The movement initiated by St. Francis proclaimed anew the divine grace and love.

"Tokens are dead if the things live not. The light everlasting
Unto the blind is not, but is born of the eye that has vision."

Something not unlike this trend of thought must drift through the mind of every one who journeys through the lovely Umbrian country to Assisi, one of those picturesquely beautiful hill towns of Italy whose romantic situation impresses the visitor. Seen from a little distance, one could hardly imagine how it could be reached unless he were the fortunate possessor of an airship. The entire region is most picturesque in character. Journeying from Rome to Assisi there is a constant ascent from the Campagna to the Apennines, and the road passes through wild defile and valley with amethyst peaks shining fair against the sky, with precipitous rocks, and the dense growth of oak and pine trees. In some places the valley is so narrow that the hills, on either side, rise almost within touch of the hand from the car window. The hill towns are frequent, and the apex of these towns is invariably crowned with a castle, a cathedral, or a ruin, and around it, circling in terraces, is built the town. The charm largely vanishes when fairly in these circling roads, for on either side are high walls, so that one's view is completely bounded by them; but from the summit and from the upper floors of the houses the most beautiful views are obtained. The Umbrian region, in which are located Perugia, Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni, Narni, and others, is simply the gem region of all Italy. The Umbrians are the most ancient of the Italian people, and Assisi claims to have been founded eight hundred and sixty-five years before the founding of Rome. It was the scene of constant warfare, and the streets are all underlaid by subterranean passages, in which the inhabitants could disappear from their enemies.

To this ancient Umbrian city, from which went out the life and light that carried wonderful currents of vitality and illumination to all Italy and into almost all parts of the world, one comes as to a special and a sacred pilgrimage. For this mediæval town, perched on the top of a rocky hill, is the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order; in it were the scenes of his early life, and here, in 1226, at the age of forty-four years, he died. The convent-church of San Francesco, built to his memory in 1230; the lower church, completed at that date, while the upper was finished in 1253; the magnificent Cathedral of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, completed in 1640; the Church of Santa Chiara and the Duomo, are the points of interest.

The purple Apennines, on one spur of which Assisi is built, are a picturesque feature of lovely Umbria. The old houses of Assisi rise white in the sunshine. The ancient walls still surround the city, and its towers stand as they stood before the eyes of St. Francis, almost seven centuries ago. The peak of Mt. Subasio, a neighboring peak of the Apennines, looms above the colossal rock that crowns the hill around whose top Assisi clusters in winding terraces. The massive pile of the Francescan church and monastery--the two churches, one above the other--forms an architectural group whose imposing aspect arrests the eye of every traveller for miles around. The pointed arches of the cloisters and the square campanile contrast rather than blend in an effective and harmonious manner and resemble military fortifications rather than an edifice of the church. The old walls still surround Assisi, and the houses all rise white under the blue Italian sky. The narrow streets, hardly wide enough for one carriage to pass another, are so intricate in their curves as they climb the steep hill, that it requires a faith hardly less than the traditional degree said to move mountains to lead the visitor to suppose that he will ever emerge from one that he has entered. Many of the houses along these curious thoroughfares have no windows, the only light and air coming through the open door. The bells from the campanile of the Francescan convent-church, from the Duomo and from the Church of Santa Chiara ring every quarter of an hour; and this constant clash of bells is almost the only sound that breaks the silence of the mediæval town, which lends itself to visions and to dreams. On the very air is stamped the impress of St. Francis. His personality, his teachings, his faith pervaded the atmosphere in a way that no one could believe until he had himself entered into the experience. In narration it cannot but seem like a pleasing and half-poetic fancy; but the lingerer in this shrine of religion and art will realize that the actual personality of the man who trod these streets nearly seven hundred years ago is strangely before him. Canon Knox Little, in a series of lectures on St. Francis of Assisi delivered in the Ladye Chapel of Worcester Cathedral a few years since, says of the panorama of the town:--

"The scene which from Assisi presented itself daily to his youthful
eyes must have had, did have, as we know, a lasting effect upon his
mind. From thence the eye surveys a noble coronet of stately
mountains. You look from Radicofani, above Trena, to Monte Catria,
famous as the scene of some of Dante's saddest times of solitude,
and ever is the eye satisfied with the grace and grandeur of the
curves of mountain outline, and the changing hues of an
incomparable sky. There are rivers and cities and lakes,--from
Thrasymene, just hidden by a line of crests, to the Paglia and
Tiber beneath, where Orvieto crowns its severe and lonely rock.
With the changing lights and shadows always beautiful in the vivid
spring or burning summer, tender-tinted autumn or clear and
sparkling winter, with the bright and pure and buoyant atmosphere
always giving life and vigor, what spot on earth more fitted as the
birthplace of the saint who was, above all things, bright and
tender and strong?"

Assisi was an important town in the twelfth century when Francis, the son of Pietro Bernardone di Mercanti, wandered over its hills, and after severe fasting and prayer communed with God. Born in the midst of the constant warfare between Assisi and Perugia, he was first a soldier. He was captured and thrown into prison, and it was a remarkable dream, or vision, that came to him before he was set free, that determined his life of consecration. Tradition invested his birth with legends, one of which is, that in his infancy an aged man came to the door and begged to be permitted to take the child in his arms, prophesying that he was destined to accomplish a great work. Pietro Bernardone was a wealthy merchant of Assisi. Pica, the mother of Francis, is said to have been of noble origin and of a deeply religious nature. The early youth of Francis was given to games, festivals, and pleasures that degenerated into dissipation, but the mother continually affirmed her assurance that, if it pleased God, her son would become a Christian. In this atmosphere was nurtured "the sweet-souled saint of mediæval Italy," who is described as a figure of magical power, whose ardent temperament and mystic loveliness attracted to him all men.

There is also a legend that Pica went to pray at the Portiuncula and that, for seven years, she prayed for a son. Her prayer was answered in the coming of the infant who was to be the great saint of all the ages. Francis, in his childhood, also knelt and prayed at this shrine. In the year 1211, when Francis was twenty-nine years of age and had entered on his ministry, this chapel was given to him, "and no sooner had they come to live here," it is said, "than the Lord multiplied their number from day to day." At one time he had gone to his devotions in great depression of spirits, "when, suddenly, an unspeakable ecstasy filled his breast. 'Be comforted, my dearest,' he said, 'and rejoice in the Lord, and let us not be sad that we are few; for it has been shown to me by God that you shall increase to a great multitude and shall go on increasing to the end of the world. I see a multitude of men coming to me from every quarter--French, Spaniards, Germans, English--each in their different tongues encouraging the others.'"

At a distance of perhaps a mile and a half from Assisi, down in the valley near the railroad station, four holy pilgrims founded a shrine in the fourth century. Later, on this site, St. Benedict erected a tiny chapel, called "St. Maria della Portiuncula" (St. Mary of the Little Patron), and once, when praying in the chapel, Benedict had a vision of a vast crowd of people kneeling in ecstasy, chanting hymns of praise, while outside greater multitudes waited to kneel before the shrine, and he took this to mean that a great saint would one day be honored there.

So the legends, still conversationally told in Assisi, run on and are locally current. Undoubtedly the dwellers in this curious old town, whose streets have hardly one level spot but climb up and down the steep hillside, realize that their saint is their title to fame and their revenue as well; yet through all the tales there breathes a certain sincerity and simplicity of worship. The little dark primitive shops teem with relics, which make, it is true, a great draft on imagination, and by what miracle modern photography has contrived to present the saint of Assisi in various impressive attitudes and groups it would be as well not to inquire too closely. It is a part of the philosophy of travel to take the goods the gods provide, and the blending of amused tolerance and unsuspected depths of reverential devotion by which the visitor will find himself moved, while in Assisi, can hardly be described. For, surely, here

"... there trod
The whitest of the saints of God,"

and Catholic or Protestant, one equally enters into the beauty of his memory. The double and triple arches of the convent church enclose cloistered walls continually filled with visitors. No shrine in Italy holds such mysterious power. Simplicity and joy were the two keynotes of the life taught by St. Francis. "Poverty," he asserted, "is the happy state of life in which men are set free from the trammels of conventionalism, and can breathe the pure air of God's love. The richest inward life is enjoyed when life is poorest outwardly. Be poor," he continued, "try a new principle; be careless of having and getting; try _being_, for a change. Our life in the world ought to be such that any one on meeting us should be constrained to praise the heavenly Father. Be not an occasion of wrath to any one," he often said, "but by your gentleness may all be led to press onward to good works."

The supreme aim of Francis was that of service to humanity. He gave himself with impassioned fervor to this one work. For him there were no ideals of cloistered seclusion or of devotion to learning and art, but the ideal alone to uplift humanity. It was literally and simply, indeed, the Christ ideal. Of the "Rule" made, one of his biographers says:--

"Amid all these encouragements the Rule was made. It consists, like
other monastic rules, of the three great vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience, differing only in so far that the poverty ordained
by Francis was absolute. In other rules, though the individual was
allowed to possess nothing, the community had often rich
possessions, and there was no reason why the monks should not fare
sumptuously and secure to themselves many earthly enjoyments,
notwithstanding their individual destitution and their vow. But
among the Brothers Minor there was not to be so much as a provision
secured for the merest daily necessities. Day by day they were to
live by God's providence, eating what was given to them, taking no
thought how they were to be fed, or wherewithal clothed; 'neither
gold nor silver in your purses;' not even the scrip to collect
fragments in--as if God could not provide for every returning
necessity. There had been monasteries in Italy for centuries, and
the Benedictines were already a great and flourishing community;
but this absolute renunciation of all things struck a certain chill
to the hearts of all who heard of it, except the devoted band who
had no will but that of Francis. His friend, the Bishop of Assisi,
was one of those who stumbled at this novel and wonderful
self-devotion. 'Your life, without a possession in the world, seems
to me most hard and terrible,' said the compassionate prelate. 'My
lord,' said Francis, 'if we had possessions, arms and protection
would be necessary to us.' There was a force in this response which
perhaps we can scarcely realize, but the Assisan bishop, who knew
something of the temper of the lords of Umbria, and knew how lonely
were the brethren dwelling on the church lands--the little plot
(Portiuncula) a whole half league from the city gates--understood
and perceived the justice of the reply.

"Another grand distinction of the Rule drawn up by Francis was the
occupation it prescribed to its members. They were not to shut
themselves up, or to care first for their own salvation. They were
to preach--this was their special work; they were to proclaim
repentance and the remission of sins; they were to be heralds of
God to the world, and proclaim the coming of His kingdom. It is not
possible to suppose that when he thus began to organize the mind of
Francis did not make a survey of the establishments already in
existence--the convents bound by the same three great vows, where
life at this moment was going on so placidly, with flocks and herds
and vineyards to supply the communities, and studious monks in
their retirement, safe from all secular anxieties, fostering all
the arts in their beginning, and carrying on the traditions of
learning; while all around them the great unquiet, violent world
heaved and struggled, yet within the convent walls there was
leisure and peace. Blessed peace and leisure it was often, let us
allow, preserving for us the germs of many good things we now
enjoy, and raising little centres of safety and charity and
brotherly kindness through the country in which they were placed.
But such quiet was not in the nature of Francis. So far as we can
make out, he had thought little of himself--even of his own soul to
be saved--all his life. The trouble on his mind had been what to
do, how sufficiently to work for God and to help men. His fellow
creatures were dear to him; he gave them his cloak from his
shoulders many a day, and the morsel from his own lips, and would
have given them the heart from his bosom had that been possible."

These are the "voices" that still echo in the air of Assisi. In the suburbs is still shown the spot where the chapel of St. Damian stood up a rocky path on the hillside in an olive grove. It was here that the scene of the miracle of the crucifix is laid. Before the altar Francis knelt, praying: "Great and Glorious Father, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. May I in all things act in accordance with thy holy will."

It is recorded that while he thus knelt in deep prayer, he was unable to turn his eyes from the cross, conscious that something marvellous was taking place. The image of the Saviour assumed life; the eyes turned attentively on him; a voice spoke accepting his service and he felt at once endowed with the most marvellous tide of vitality, of joy, and of exhilaration. At this moment he entered on that life whose impress is left on the ages. Of the character and the peculiar quality of its influence Mrs. Oliphant well says:--

"It is not always possible to follow with our sympathy that
literal, childlike rendering of every incident in the life of the
Master, which sometimes looks fantastical and often unmeaning. He
was a man of his time, and could live only under the conditions
which that time allowed. He made visible to a literal, practical,
unquestioning age the undeniable and astounding fact that the
highest of all beings chose a life of poverty, hardship, and
humbleness; that He chose submission instead of resistance, love
instead of oppression, peace and forgiveness instead of revenge and
war. Christ had died in their hearts, as said the legend of that
Christmas at Greccia; and, as in one of the bold and artless
pictures just then beginning to yield to a more refined and subtle
art, Francis set forth before the world the image of his Master.
The Son of man was lifted up, as on another cross, before the eyes
of Umbria, before all Italy, warlike and wily, priest and baron,
peasant and Pope. In this world Francis knew nothing, acknowledged
nothing, cared for nothing save Christ and Him crucified--except,
indeed, Christ's world, the universe redeemed, the souls to be
saved, the poor to be comforted, the friends to be cherished, the
singing birds and bubbling fountains, the fair earth and the sweet
sky. Courteous, tender, and gentle as any paladin, sweet-tongued
and harmonious as any poet, liberal as any prince, was the
barefooted beggar and herald of God. We ask no visionary reverence
for the Stigmata, no wondering belief in any miracle. As he stood,
he was as great a miracle as any then existing under God's
abundant, miraculous heavens; more wonderful than are the day and
night, the sun and the dew; only less wonderful than that great
Love which saves the world, and which it was his aim and destiny to
reflect and show forth."

That mystic union to which all the ages attest, the union that may, at any moment, be formed between the soul and God, that mystery which the church calls conversion and which finds its perfect interpretation in the words of St. Paul, when he said, that if any man be in Christ he is a new creation, had been accomplished in the life of Francis. He realized the fulness of the knowledge of God's will; he longed only for wisdom and for spiritual understanding. Nor is this experience one to be relegated to the realm of miracle. It is simply entering into the supreme completeness of life. It is not alone St. Paul, but every man, who may truly say, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." Nor does this experience, when translated aright into daily life and action, require any abnormal form of expression. It does not, in its truest significance, mean a life apart from the ordinary duties, but rather it means that these duties shall be fulfilled in the larger and nobler way. The exceptional man may be called to be the standard bearer; to renounce all domestic ties and give his service to the world; but such a life as this differs only in degree from that which in the ordinary home and social relations finds ample means for its best expression. The persistent aim after perfection should be the keynote of every life. No one should be satisfied to hold as his supreme ideal any lesser standard of ultimate achievement than is involved in the divine command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." This is the soul's ideal, whatever ages and eternities it may require for it to recognize this trackless path.

St. Francis recognized joy as a factor of the nobler life. "It was his constant effort," writes one biographer, "that there should be bright looks and cheerful tones about him. To one of his brethren, who had the habit of walking about sadly with his head drooping, he said,--it is evident, with a spark of the impatience natural to his own vivacious spirit,--'You may surely repent of your sins, my brother, without showing your grief so openly. Let your sorrow be between God and you: pray to Him to pardon you by His mercy, and to restore to your soul the joy of His salvation. But before me and the others be always cheerful, for it does not become a servant of God to have an air of melancholy and a face full of trouble.'"

An incident in the early life of St. Francis, which had determining significance, was his meeting with Dominic. The story is told "that Dominic, praying in a church in Rome, saw, in a vision, our Lord rise from the right hand of the Father in wrath, wearied at last with the contradiction of sinners, with a terrible aspect and three lances in his hand, each one of which was to destroy from the face of the earth a distinct class of offenders. But while the dreamer gazed at this awful spectacle, the Virgin Mother arose and pleaded for the world, declaring that she had two faithful servants whom she was about to send into it to bring sinners to the feet of the Saviour; one of these was Dominic himself, the other was a poor man, meanly clad, whom he had never seen before. This vision came to the devout Spaniard, according to the legend, during the night, which he spent, as he was wont, in a church, in prayer. Next morning, while he mused on the dream which had been sent to him, his eye fell all at once upon a stranger in a brown tunic, of aspect as humble and modest as his garb, coming into the same church to pray. Dominic at once ran to him, fell on his neck, and, saluting him with a kiss, cried, 'Thou art my companion: thy work and mine is the same. If we stand by each other, nothing can prevail against us.'"

No magic mirror, however, revealed to Francis the wonderful panorama of his future. No sibyl turned the leaves of the records yet to unfold. "He was preparing himself for a life of penitence rather than a life of activity," in the opinion of Paul Sabatier, and he had dreamed no dream of becoming a religious founder. He was so entirely without any personal ambition, save that of being obedient to the Heavenly Vision, that this absolute consecration of purpose enabled the divine power to work through him without obstruction. He became a very perfect instrument, so to speak, in the divine hand. After repairing the little chapel called the Portiuncula, on the level ground at the foot of the hill, some two miles from Assisi, his plan was to there pass his time in meditation and prayer. But the legend runs that on the feast of St. Mathias (February 24), in the winter of 1209, a Benedictine monk was celebrating mass and on his turning to read, "Wherever ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand," Francis was profoundly and peculiarly impressed, and he exclaimed: "This is what I desire, O Father; from this day forth I set myself to put this command in practice." He felt that Jesus himself had spoken to him through the priest. Love and sacrifice became to him the supreme ideals, and in this moment, in that poor and bare little chapel, was inaugurated one of the greatest and most far-reaching religious movements of the entire world.

"Not always as the whirlwind's rush
On Horeb's mount of fear,
Not always as the burning bush
To Midian's shepherd seer,
Not as the awful voice which came
To Israel's prophet bards,
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame,
Nor gift of fearful words,--

"Not always thus with outward sign
Of fire or voice from Heaven
The message of a truth divine,
The call of God is given!"

That great ministry of St. Francis, whose influence pervades all time,--that lies between the opening years of the thirteenth and the opening years of the twentieth centuries,--was initiated the next morning in Assisi, when Francis preached for the first time. He spoke simply, emphasizing the truths he had learned to realize through his own experience: the absolute duty of following after perfection; the importance of realizing the shortness of life and the need of repentance. The first disciple of Francis was a wealthy resident of Assisi, named Bernardo. He was impressed with the conviction that he should distribute his possessions and unite with Francis in all his aims and work. Without definite organization, others joined them. They passed that spring and summer going up and down the country, sometimes assisting the harvesters and haymakers, and everywhere entering into the common life of the people. The Bishop of Assisi, however, remonstrated with Francis, saying that to him it seemed very harsh and unwise to try to live without owning anything. To which Francis replied that he did not desire temporal possessions, as these required arms for their defence and were an obstacle to the love of God and one's neighbor. It has remained for later years to discern the still truer significance of the teachings of Jesus, that neither possessions nor the lack of possessions form the real test, but the use which is made of them. As spiritual insight is developed it is more and more clearly realized that the quality of the life lived is the sole matter of importance, and not the conditions that surround it.

The brotherhood increased. The abbot of the Benedictines on Monte Subasio ceded to Francis and his order the little chapel called the Portiuncula, now enclosed within the vast and magnificent church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. M. Paul Sabatier, in his admirable biography of St. Francis, points out clearly that the founder of the Franciscans contemplated a laboring and not a mendicant order. During the decade 1211 to 1221, which Francis and his followers passed at the Portiuncula, a portion of the time was constantly passed in industrial pursuits. "With all his gentleness, Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity toward the idle," says Sabatier, "and he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused to work." Although Francis espoused poverty, declaring that she was his bride, he was unfalteringly loyal to the ideals of honest industry and integrity.

The mystic legends of the life of their saint that abound in Assisi are touched with poetic romance in that a companion figure is always seen by his side, that of Santa Chiara. Not more inseparable in popular thought are Dante and Beatrice, or Petrarca and Laura, than are Francis and Clara. Their statues stand side by side in the Duomo; they are represented together by both painter and sculptor in the churches of Santa Chiara and Santa Maria degli Angeli in the old hill town. Chiara was the daughter of a noble family, and as a girl of sixteen, coming under the influence of Francis from hearing one of his sermons, she, too, became one of his followers and left her father's palace in Assisi to take the vows of perpetual and voluntary poverty at the altar of the Portiuncula. Followed by two women, she passed swiftly through the town in the dead of the night, and through dark woods, her hurrying figure seeming like some spirit driven by winds towards an unknown future. One thing alone was clear before her--that she was nearing the abode of Francis Bernardone whose preaching at San Giorgio only a month before had thrilled her, inspiring her in this strange way to seek the life he had described in fiery words. Just as she came in sight of the Portiuncula the chanting of the brethren, which had reached her in the wood, suddenly ceased, and they came out with lighted torches in expectation of her coming. Swiftly and without a word she passed in to attend the midnight mass which Francis was to serve, and the scene is thus described:--

"The ceremony was simple, wherein lies the charm of all things
Franciscan. The service over and the last blessing given, St.
Francis led Clare toward the altar, and with his own hands cut off
her long, fair hair and unclasped the jewels from her neck. But a
few minutes more and a daughter of the proud house of Scifi stood
clothed in the brown habit of the order, the black veil of religion
falling about her shoulders, lovelier far in this nun-like severity
than she had been when decked out in all her former luxury of
silken gowns and precious gems.

"It was arranged that Clare was to go afterward to the Benedictine
nuns of San Paolo, near Bastia, about an hour's walk farther on in
the plain. So when the final vows had been taken, St. Francis took
her by the hand and they passed out of the chapel together just as
dawn was breaking, while the brethren returned to their cells
gazing half sadly, as they passed, at the coils of golden hair and
the little heap of jewels which still lay upon the altar cloth."

Clara founded a convent and lived as its abbess, and the great church of Santa Chiara is built on the site of this convent. She was born in Assisi in 1194, and died in 1253, surviving Francis by twenty-seven years. Her father was the Count Favorini Scifi, and he had destined his daughter--who had great beauty--to a rich and brilliant marriage. He violently opposed her choice of the religious life, but no earthly power, she declared, should sever her from it.

The beauty of the lifelong friendship between Francis and Clara is thus touched upon by Mrs. Oliphant:--

"It was one of those tender and touching friendships which are to
the student of history like green spots in the desert; and which
gave to the man and the woman thus voluntarily separated from all
the joys of life a certain human consolation in the midst of their
hardships. They can have seen each other but seldom, for it was one
of the express stipulations of the Franciscan Rule that the friars
should refrain from all society with women, and have only the most
sparing and reserved intercourse even with their sisters in
religion. And Francis was no priest, nor had he the privilege of
hearing confession and directing the spiritual life of his daughter
in the faith. But he sent to her to ask enlightenment from her
prayers, when any difficulty was in his way. He went to see her
when he was in trouble; especially once on his way to Rieti to have
an operation performed on his eyes. Once the two friends ate
together at a sacramental meal, the pledge and almost the
conclusion on earth of that tenderest, most disinterested, and
unworldly love which existed between them. That he was sure of her
sympathy in all things, of her prayers and spiritual aid,
whatsoever he might be doing, wheresoever he might be, no doubt was
sweet to Francis in all his labors and trials. As he walked many a
weary day past that church of St. Damian, every stone of which was
familiar to him, and many laid with his own hands, must not his
heart have warmed at thought of the sister within, safe from all
conflict with the world, upon whose fellow-feeling he could rely
absolutely as man can rely only on woman? The world has jeered at
the possibility of such friendships from its earliest age; and yet
they have always existed,--one of the most exquisite and delicate
of earthly ties. Gazing back into that far distance over the
graves, not only of those two friends, but of a hundred succeeding
generations, a tear of grateful sympathy comes into the student's
eye. He is glad to believe that, all those years, Francis could see
in his comings and goings the cloister of Clara; and that this
sacred gleam of human fellowship,--love purified of all
self-seeking,--tender, visionary, celestial affection, sweetened
their solitary lives."

Legends innumerable, attesting supernormal manifestations regarding Francis, sprang up and have been perpetuated through the ages. One is as follows:--

"Hardly more than three years from the moment when the pale
penitent was hooted through Assisi amid the derisive shouts of the
people, and driven with blows and curses into confinement in his
own father's house, we find that it has already become his custom
on Sunday to preach in the cathedral; and that, from his little
convent at the Portiuncula, Francis has risen into influence in the
whole country, which no doubt by this time was full of stories of
his visit to Rome and intercourse with the Pope, and all the
miraculous dreams and parables with which that intercourse was
attended. Already the mind of the people, so slow to adopt, but so
ready to become habituated to, anything novel, had used itself to
the sight of the brethren in their brown gowns, and, leaping from
one extreme to the other, instead of madmen, learned to consider
them saints. The air about the little cloister began to breathe of
miracles,--miracles which must have been a matter of common report
among the contemporaries of the saint, for Celano wrote within
three years of Francis's death. Once, when their leader was absent,
a sudden wonder startled the brethren. It was midnight between
Saturday and Sunday, and Francis, who had gone to preach at Assisi,
was at the moment praying in the canon's garden. A chariot of fire,
all radiant and shining, suddenly entered the house, awaking those
who lay asleep, and moving to wonder and awe those who watched, or
labored, or prayed. It was the heart and thoughts of their leader
returning to them in the midst of his prayer, which were figured by
this appearance."

When Francis died a pathetic scene is thus described:--