St. Francis was inspired as much as any person may be, but it would be a palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions in which he lived. We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St. Francis’s life loses none of its strangeness for that. His conviction that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride, and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor without seeming in the least to be preaching himself.
We must therefore not isolate Francis from external influences or show him too dependent on them. During the period of his life at which we have now arrived, 1205–1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the path that he finally entered.
The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious reform impossible. If some among the heresies of the time were pure and without reproach, many were trivial and impure. Here and there a few voices were raised in protest, but the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore had no more power than those of St. Hildegard to put a stop to wickedness. The little poor man, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III, saved Christianity.
We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of its most prominent features.
Sabatier does not exaggerate about the abuses in the Church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The secular clergy were a frequent object of reformist derision. St. Anthony of Padua wrote around the time of Francis’s death that they “flay the faithful by forced offerings, whereon they fatten their horses, their foals, and the sons of their concubines” (COULTON 2, p. 428).
The first glance at the secular clergy brings into startling prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places was carried on with boundless audacity, and benefices were put up to the highest bidder. The bishops, for their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of keeping with their calling, for extorting money from the simple priests. Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the other. As to the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices and secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable measures for providing for their bastards.
At this time, in late medieval Europe, there were thousands of disenchanted youth, and others, who were in many cases university trained, traveling as vagabonds from city to city, writing lewd, humorous, and satirical verses in Latin in reaction to the Church and societal norms. These poets were generally called goliards, referring either to Goliath, the biblical giant slain by David, or to gula, the sin of gluttony. The movement was pervasive enough that St. Bernard of Clairvaux once referred to both Abelard, the controversial young theologian, and Arnold of Brescia (mentioned by Sabatier, below), both accused of heresy, as goliards. (See WHICHER.)
The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; their reputation for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus fatally brought about their own decadence.
The clergy, though no longer respected, still overawed the people through the superstitious terror of their power. Here and there might have been perceived many a forewarning of direful revolts. The roads to Rome were crowded with monks hastening to claim the protection of the Holy See against the people among whom they lived. The pope would promptly declare an interdict, but it was not to be expected that such a resource would avail forever.
Jacques of Vitry, a thirteenth-century cardinal of the Church, tells an incredible story of a priest who was tired of the miserly habits of one of his flock who attended services each year only on Easter. The priest placed an old penny into the miser’s mouth at communion, rather than a host. When the man asked about it afterwards, the priest persuaded him that God had changed the Eucharist into a penny as punishment for the man’s lack of generosity. (See COULTON 2, p. 30.)
Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church. Then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices of those who desired a reformation aroused only passing interest.
Among the populace there was superstition unimaginable. The pulpit, which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other duties. It was the birth of the mendicant orders that obliged the entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching.
Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved anything that appealed to the intelligence; it was more and more becoming a sort of self-acting magic formula. Once upon this road, the absurd was not far distant. Those who deemed themselves pious told of miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of faith.
“mendicant orders”: Mendicant literally means “a beggar.” Three mendicant orders were founded as reform movements in the thirteenth century—Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carmelites—emphasizing a vow to personal poverty and begging alms.
“secular clergy”: Those who are ordained but do not follow a religious rule (as monks do). They are similar to what today we most often refer to as parish priests, as opposed to members of religious orders.
In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the invocation dear to his mistress, “Sancte Thoma adiuva me,” (St. Thomas, help me!) and was miraculously rescued. In another, a merchant of Groningen, having purloined an arm of St. John the Baptist, grew rich as if by enchantment so long as he kept it concealed in his house, but was reduced to begging as soon as, his secret being discovered, the relic was taken away from him and placed in a church.
These stories, we must observe, do not come from ignorant enthusiasts, hidden away in obscure country places; they are given us by one of the most learned monks of his time, who relates them to a novice by way of forming his mind!
“tohu-bohu”: This odd anachronism is used to mean something similar to the Genesis account of the early Creation as “formless and void”—chaotic, confused.
The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of mysticism and folly.
In that day heresy was very much alive; it was consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite. In certain counties of England there are at the present day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for only a few hundred inhabitants. Many of these people change their denomination every three or four years, returning to one and then leaving it again, and so on, as long as they live. Their leaders set the example, throwing themselves enthusiastically into each new movement only to leave it before long. They would all find it difficult to give an intelligible reason for these changes. They say that the Spirit guides them, and it would be unfair to disbelieve them, but the historian who should investigate conditions like these would lose his head in the labyrinth unless he made a separate study of each of these Protean movements.
A great part of Christendom was in a somewhat similar condition under Innocent III. But while the sects of which I have just spoken move in a very narrow circle of dogmas and ideas, in the thirteenth century every sort of excess followed in rapid succession. Still, a few general characteristics may be observed.
Sabatier refers to four leaders of early heretical movements.
“Arius” (256–336): A priest from Alexandria, Egypt, he argued that Christ, the Son of God, was not co-eternal with God, the Father.
“Priscillian”: A Spaniard who taught extreme asceticism based on his belief in the basic evil of all matter. He was burned at the stake for suspicion of witchcraft in Avila, 383.
“Nestorius” (c. 381–451): A Patriarch of Constantinople, he argued that Jesus Christ had two distinct natures, human and divine, which were voluntarily, not truly, united.
“Eutyches”: The leader, or Archimandrite, of a large monastery near Constantiople, he was sent into exile after the Council of Chalcedon (451), at the age of seventy-three, for teaching that Christ possessed only one nature, not two, after the Incarnation.
In the first place, heresies were no longer metaphysical subtleties as in earlier days; Arius and Priscillian, Nestorius and Eutyches were dead indeed. In the second place, they no longer arose in the upper and governing class, but proceeded especially from the inferior clergy and the common people. The blows that actually threatened the Church of the Middle Ages were struck by obscure laboring men, by the poor and the oppressed, who in their wretchedness and degradation felt that she had failed in her mission. No sooner was a voice uplifted, preaching austerity and simplicity, than it drew together not only the laity, but members of the clergy as well.
“Humiliati”: This odd group was an association of lay people who dressed plainly and practiced asceticism of various kinds, devoting themselves to charity. The Humiliati originated in Lombardy in the eleventh or early twelfth century. First approved by Innocent III in 1201, the Order witnessed the supression of its male branch in 1571 by a papal bull after one of its leaders attempted to murder an emissary of Pope Pius V who was charged with reforming it. There are still today some spiritual descendants of the Humiliati in Italy.
“Arnold of Brescia”: A fascinating Italian monk who was active as a reformer before Francis’s birth (d. 1155). Told to confine himself to a monastery, he refused and spoke out against abuses in the Church of his day. He preached about the sanctity of poverty and even challenged the exclusive right of priests to administer the sacraments and hear confessions. Eventually, Arnold was hanged by the Roman authorities, with the blessing of the Church, and his ashes were scattered over the Tiber River so that his followers would not venerate his bones.
“Waldensians”: A reform movement from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries founded by Peter Waldo from the city of Lyons. The Waldensians, also called “the poor of Lyons,” claimed to represent a true remnant who, from within, had been resisting the Catholic Church and attempting to reform it since the days of Constantine in the fourth century.
Two great currents are apparent: on one side the Cathars, on the other, innumerable sects revolting from the Church by their very fidelity to Christianity and the desire to return to the primitive Church. Among the sects of the second category the close of the twelfth century saw in Italy the rise of the Poor Men, who without doubt were a part of the movement of Arnold of Brescia. They denied the efficacy of sacraments administered by unworthy hands. A true attempt at reform was made by the Waldensians. Their history, although better known, still remains obscure on certain sides. Their name, Poor Men of Lyons, recalls the former movement, with which they were in close agreement, as also with the Humiliati. All these names involuntarily suggest that by which St. Francis afterward called his Order.
The analogy between the inspiration of Peter Waldo, founder of the Waldensians, and that of St. Francis was so close that one might be tempted to believe the latter a sort of imitation of the former. But this would be a mistake: The same causes produced in all quarters the same effects; ideas of reform, of a return to Gospel poverty, were in the air, and this helps us to understand how it was that before many years the Franciscan preaching reverberated through the entire world. If at the outset the careers of these two men were alike, their later lives were very different. Waldo, driven into heresy almost in spite of himself, was obliged to accept the consequences of the premises that he himself had laid down, while Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church, bent all his efforts to develop the inner life in himself and his disciples. It is indeed most likely that through his father Francis had become acquainted with the movement of the Poor of Lyons. Hence his oft-repeated counsels to his friars of the duty of submission to the clergy. When he went to seek the approbation of Innocent III, it is evident that the prelates with whom he had relations warned him, by the very example of Waldo, of the dangers inherent in his own movement.
Waldo had gone to Rome in 1179, accompanied by a few followers, to ask at the same time the approbation of their translation of the Scriptures into the venacular and the permission to preach. They were granted both requests on condition of gaining for their preaching the authorization of their local clergy. Walter Map (d. 1210), who was charged with their examination, was constrained, while ridiculing their simplicity, to admire their poverty and zeal for the apostolic life.
“. . . while Francis, remaining the obedient son of the Church”: It is important to realize that heresy is primarily a charge of insolence and disobedience, more so than a misinterpretation of doctrine. It is a question of challenging established order and authority.
Two or three years later they met a very different reception at Rome, and in 1184 they were anathematized by the Council of Verona. From that day nothing could stop them, even to the forming of a new Church. They multiplied with a rapidity hardly exceeded afterward by the Franciscans. By the end of the twelfth century we find them spread abroad from Hungary to Spain; the first attempts to hunt them down were made in the latter country. Other countries were at first satisfied with treating them as excommunicated persons.
Obliged to hide themselves, reduced to the impossibility of holding their chapters, which ought to have come together once or twice a year, and which, had they done so, might have maintained among them a certain unity of doctrine, the Waldensians rapidly underwent a change according to their environment. Some obstinately insisted upon calling themselves good Catholics; others went so far as to preach the overthrow of the hierarchy and the uselessness of sacraments. The multiplicity of differing and even hostile branches seemed to develop almost hourly. Under pretext of pilgrimages to Rome they were always on the road. The methods of travel of that day were peculiarly favorable to the diffusion of ideas. While retailing news to those whose hospitality they received, they would speak of the unhappy state of the Church and the reforms that were needed.
As a young child, St. Bonaventure was healed through Francis, and later became one of the first to record his legend. After Bonaventure’s Life was written and distributed, the Chapter of Paris (1266), an official gathering of Franciscan leaders, ordered that all previous biographies of Francis be destroyed. The earlier lives of Francis written by Thomas of Celano were preserved only in certain Cistercian and Benedictine monastery libraries.
It was Bonaventure’s life of Francis that inspired the great painter Giotto with the subject matter for twenty-eight fresco paintings depicting popular scenes from Francis’s life. They can still be seen in the upper church of the Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi.